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# E. January 1960 to January 1962 (American Department)## 1. IntroductionNOSENKO claims to have served as Deputy Chief of the U.S.Embassy Section of the American Department, KGB Second ChiefDirectorate, from sometime in January 1960 until the first daysof January 1962.* This section, in his words, was workingagainst "the most important counterintelligence target in theSoviet Union," the permanent American representation in Moscow.It regarded every American stationed there as a possible spyand, simultaneously, as a target for eventual compromise andrecruitment.The functions of the U.S. Embassy Section were described byNOSENKO as being, first, to control all contacts by Embassy per-sonnel with Soviet citizens; second, to evaluate informationcollected from all possible sources on American Embassy employees,and third, to use this information as a basis for planning andcarrying out recruitment approaches. The Americans' personal-ities, jobs, personal relationships, weaknesses, daily routines,security precautions, contacts with Soviet citizens, and themajor and minor scandals in their Moscow lives formed the basisfor this work. To gather such information, the section's officersdirected and debriefed large numbers of agents and informants,including the indigenous employees of the Embassy, Soviet citizensmoving in Embassy social circles, and third-country nationals withAmerican contacts; the officers also assigned tasks to and assim-ilated the reports from the numerous surveillance teams at theirdisposal, and they read and tried to exploit materials from tele-phone taps and microphones placed in the offices and homes ofthe Americans. Each officer had a limited number of Americantargets and attempted to become thoroughly familiar with ach:annually, they submitted detailed operational plans to exploitthe knowledge they had gained of their target. During 1960 and1961, NOSENKO said, special emphasis was placed within the sectionon "identifying intelligence officers at the Embassy and activedevelopment of them, the acquisition of ciphers, and the detailedand painstaking study of code clerks, creating the conditions onthe basis of which they can be recruited."As Deputy Chief of this section, NOSENKO has said, he hadaccess to all information concerning its activities: "Nothingwas hidden" from him. On this basis, he expressed certaintythat in 1960 and 1961 the KGB did not recruit any Americansassociated with the Embassy, that no Americans assigned to theEmbassy were being handled in Moscow as KGB agents in thisperiod, and that, in fact, the KGB had recruited no AmericanEmbassy personnel since "ANDREY."** From continuing friendshipswith his fellow-officers of 1960 and 1961, NOSENKO has alsoclaimed certainty that there were no KGB recruitments from thetime he left the section in January 1962 until the January 1964trip to Geneva.In debriefing and interrogating NOSENKO, CIA placed partic-ular emphasis on his activities during the period January1960 to January 1962, since this information was of specialimportance to U.S. Government security.See Part VI.D.3.b. for a discussion of the case of the KGBagent "ANDREY" (Dayle SMITH), whose recruitment has beenvariously dated by NOSENKO between the years 1949 and 1953.