HW 53060 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 —— yee fn — Se aN a 94 have stressed that and every Soviet defector has stressed this. Mr. Preyer. I have to be at a meeting over at the Capitol at 12:45. If you want to continue some questioning, could you come back? I suggest if it's agreeable with everyone that we recess until 2 o'clock today.in this room and we can post a notice on the door if we have to go to another room. The committee stands in recess. (Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the hearing was recessed, to resume at 2 p.m., this same day.) Doclda: 37273600 Page 116
11 12 13 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 HW 53080 DocId: 273600 Page 119 95 AFTERNOON SESSION (2:10 p.m.) Mr. Preyer. The committee will resume its sitting. The Chair recognizes Mr. Klein to complete his questions. Mr. Klein. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be exceedingl brief, with. only one question. Mr. Bagley, to your knowledge is there any documentation, reports, memos, that fully describe the efforts made by the CIA in 1964, ‘65, '66, '67, to investigate what Nosenko had to say about Oswald? Mr. Bagley. No, and I would say as of 1966 or '67, when I cut off, my best guess is that such a document doesn't exist. I don't remember marking one and I am not quite certain what the reason for making one would be. Mr. Klein... Is it normal procedure that during the course of the investigation you wouldn't document the course of the investigation? Mr. Bagley. You would document everything you do, but you certainly need not go back and describe everything you did or everything you propose to do. I don't know who such a document would be directed to, for example. If one were reporting | progress of an investigation there would be reports of what was done and what not. But this was one aspect of one larger investigation and I can't remember any document being made up on the subject.
HW 53060 18 19 20. 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 90 Mr. Kline. Thank you. I have no further questions. Mr. Preyer, Mr. Fithian, Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Judge. My first question is less specific. We ‘11 have more spe- cific ones later.. But I have.always been puzzled since Mr. Hart appeared before us as to why the Director would accept a man who would testify in such a way as to create smashing anti-CIA headlines out of that testimony and that goes beyond what you said this morning as to his own personal knowledge or creden- tials for making such testimony. Can you shed any light on that at all? | Mr. Bagley. It goes without saying, I have thought about this a lot. I think the dates of the Director's takeover of the agency may have something to do with it. He came in from out- side, very much outside, and he was faced with what to him was probably repulsive or abominable state of affairs and he turns to what was then the recognized expert, the man who had just before his takeover of the agency conducted this study. I have not seen it; I understand it's bulky and have no doubt as to its conclusion. But I would say from the Director's point of view, this man might. appear to be the expert even though he was already retired at the time he did the 1976 study. Mr. Fithian. Going back to Mr. Hart's testimony on page 114 of our record, he says to this committee explaining how he would proceed, he says: "Therefore, what.I have before me are a 273600 Page 120
10 1 12 19 20° 21 @ » | 23 24 25 97 series of notes which were finished about 8 o'clock last night based on guidance which I got at that time from Admiral Stans- field Turner, Director of the CIA." Mr. Bagley. I am mystified and have been asked the ques= .° tion and have asked others the question and no one I know in the Agency during my time or since has come up with any sensible explanation. Mr. Fithian. Your assessment or judgment as to why Mr. Hart was selected then stems from and concurs with what Mr. Hart is saying a little later in his testimony when he says since Admiral Turner has become Director of Central Intelligence he has been quite concerned about this case and he specifically requested I come back to the Agency from which I retired in '72 and give presentations to agents on the nature of the case. Now my question is this, since the Nosenko case became a celebrated one long before this committee became interested or long before we even knew he existed, was Mr. Hart's operation such that he would be the logical person within the Agency or immediately retired from the Agency to make the kind of presenta tions to "senior officials or agents in the case" that we might have expected? Mr. Bagley. No, sir, he was not. Mr. Fithian. May I reiterate in the record at this point what Mr. Dodd so ably did during the questioning that day, and that is to say that kind of testimony didn't in any way square HW 53060 Docld: 39273600 Page 1271
HW 53060 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 98 with what this committee had requested of the Agency. We had submitted to the Agency a very detailed list of questions or concerns we had, Mr. Klein can amplify that, of all our concerns. Then they were sent over to the Agency for a representative to discuss these matters. I might state, in no way did the Department comply with the request. It's worse than I thought in this sense. We were very surprised that day that the subject of Oswald was not discussed after some 30 or 40 minutes of testimony and then all the questions and even the statement that he was not qualified to comment on Oswald, which happens to be the only thing this committee was primarily interested in. So I make that comment at this point in the record. Now, let me turn to your specific testiomony, Mr. Bagley, and ask you to refer to page 10 of your testimony. “Prior to asking a question as to this particular page, let me ask a couple of background questions: as a professional in this field, I believe I read into your statement here that it is highly unlikely, perhaps totally impropable, that someone with Oswald's particular background would have been able to move in, do the things he did in the Soviet Union, and move out without being questioned by the KGB. Mr. Bagley. That is absolutely my thought. I would say it's absolutely unthinkable and it's unthinkable for the Soviet defectors I know, it's unthinkable for anyone who knows the automatic procedures of the Soviet Union, there is no way he 273600 Page 122
HW 53080 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 99 could have evaded this action. One described to me that the KGB yas it would face an American swimming into their sea, it would be like a pool of piranhas, insofar as one could make a statement as dogmatic and final as that. I would say it can't have happened as described. Mr. Fithian. Well, then, when Mr. Nosenko told you, told the Agency that story, that.would have been as early as Geneva? Mr. Bagley. Yes. Mr. Fithian. Just prima facie; doesn’t this raise ques- tions on the part of the Agency as to credibility of this man at all? I mean, even at the very outset, the first or second con- tact you had with him in Geneva? Mr. Bagley. Yes. Mr. Fithian. Now, staying with the Geneva scene for just a minute, this is a digression, but I was appalled at statements made to us somewhere along the way, Mr. Chairman, as to the techniques of questioning Nosenko in Geneva, that the CIA non- Russian-language person doing the recording and -- I have for- gotten all the details. I would like some amplification, becaus I occasionally vote on budgets around here. Mr. Bagley. Yes, sir. A slight correction of dates and the manner in which I entered into this case. | I was in fact stationed in Switzerland, not in headquarters in the Soviet Division at the time this case broke. Therefore, I came into it, if you like, as the Soviet operations expert in 273600 Page 123
HW 53060 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 100 that area. While I had given myself in the course of my career a lot of home learning of Russian to the point where I occasionally served as a low-level translator for the Ambassador or inter- preter in some of his contacts with the Soviet Embassy, I was most definitely never fluent or competent in the language. But on the.other hand, this shouldn't keep one from operating against the Soviet Union. The contact made by a member of a Soviet delegation to that area, in this instance a disarmament conference in Geneva, he ! says "I want a contact with American intelligence," so somebody had to do that. oe was quite clear I was the person to contact _ ; and ae did. In the course of the first meeting with him, both English and Russian were spoken. I told the man from the outset that I would appreciate his speaking clearly and relatively slowly and I would like to break into English whenever possible, and we’ tried to reach a language of understanding. At times either from excitement, impatience or whatever, he expressed himself over a considerable number of sentences, fast, in Russian, here yanders tanding of it was imperfect. Now, I think at this late date, I told you this-at a much earlier date, but very early along our questioning of the man and of our writing reports on him, gM we were aware of those points where he had said something and I had failed to 273600 Page 1274
HW 53060 10 - 11 12 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoctlId: 101 understand simply because there were taped recordings of these meetings. During the second meeting -- it possibly could have been the third but I think it was the second -- there was present in the room a native-speaking Russian officer to accompany me in my dealings with this man. | Although I came into it.:as a member of the Switzerland component of the Agency, I was already known as particularly competent and experienced in this field, so it was considered as I think Mr. Helms said in 1964, it was considered a good face for the Agency, a competent qualified face for this extremely valuable source. But from the second meeting on -- even in the first meeting, & mi > there were few understandings which consisted, I believe, of my taking notes on certain things he said about his background.. Th military school which he attended was cited in your testimony and there were one or two other minor things having to do with the manner of his father's death. I made a mistake, I heard it wrong. So, in my initial report to headquarters there were mistakes. But at least for most of that first meeting I had no doubt there was good understanding and for all subsequent Ineetings, there was a total understanding. To take misunderstandings which may have appeared in the first cable and first meeting on insignificant matters and extend them into a judgment as to the manner in which this @ 273600 Page 125
HW 53060 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25, DoclId: 102 source was handled from beginning to end is confusing, it mis- _leads you and is unnecessary and has no relevancy at all. I want to say the so-called drunkenness, the heartfelt Sonn statement of Mr. Nosenko to Mr. Hart, rie I was snookered," ‘he wasn't snookered, he probably had a lot of booze, but he was entirely lucid at all times. There was never a time when communications were broken because of the influence of alcohol. Therefore, I suggest that element of language misunder- standing that you are speaking of and the element of drinking wa artificially introduced as an explanation and excuse for other irregularities in Mr. Nosenko's reporting. Mr. Fithian. Are you then saying that Nosenko used his drinking to make up or cover up or disguise the fact he did not know answers to certain questions or the account of that is erroneous? ‘Ye>e Mr. Bagley. \ Later when confronted with that in Geneva in 1962, he simply said, "I was drunk" or "I did not say that," or "There was a misunderstanding." ‘In one case, Mr. Fithian, a very important case, he described in 1962, his participation in an operation involving an American of which we had a record. In 1964, he denied any knowledge of that. operation at all. It wasn't a question of a transcript being ineptly made by some process I don't under- stand, was not the transcript at all which entered into this confrontation, we brought back a tape. This tape was loud and 273600 Page 1276
HW 53060 20 21 22 23 24 25. DoctlId: 103 clear. We said, "You don't remember this operation? Here is your voice."'. And he hears his voice loud and clear, giving de- tails of the operation. And his explanation was that he was drunk ; he had no knolwedge of having spoken to. it a year anda half earlier. It's my premise that drunkenness doesn't give you second sight. Mr. Fithian. I think Nosenko used the term as to Oswald being an "uninteresting target." Mr. Epstein in his book perhaps makes a little too much of Oswald's potential knowledge of the U-2.— Am I off base on that? | Mr. Bagley. I chink oe It makes a good story. It's logical, but after all, this is something which escaped American attention. I have had an American friend who has come to me since then and said, "You can't expect me to believe the securit review of Oswald failed to pick up the fact he knew about the U-2." I don't think it's even been proven he knew about the U-2), and I think it's the sort of thing that would have slipped by in any instance. He was at a Marine radar base 500 meters from where .the U-2 took off, and his radar unit tracked it. Possibly certain things as to speed and altitude might have come to Oswald's attention. For example, Mr. Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union would have been a part of naval intelligence to see what he knew or didn't know; and I have a hunch the most conscientious investigation you could make about that man might not ‘bring up 273600 Page 127
HW 53060 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 104 the fact that his service in that radar shack was in any way related to a highly secret operation which was documented in totally different ways. I do agree with you that it's unlikely that the U-2 was the special information that Nosenko -- excuse me, that Oswald told Snader. There has been a lot of speculation as to the informa- tion of special interest he had. It may be he realized there was a special operation and this was the special thing he had to offer to the Soviets, but it's certainly not provable. Mr. Fithian. One of the central questions which may go unanswered, but I would appreciate your best guess, I am not sure from your testimony whether you believe that Nosenko came to the United States, became available as a defector -- I conclude you believe him to be a plant. I am not sure as to what your real belief is as to why he might have become the plant. Some very wrapped-up in the assassination would have us believe this was of such tremendous potential disturbing nature for Soviet-American relations that even if Oswald didn't have that much of a role to play with the KGB, they would defuse anything that had to do with Oswald before they sent him over here. Therefore, it might be worthwhile to send someone of Nosenko's caliber. ‘The other possibility is the one I think you alluded to, that is, they believed the kind of information Agent "X" was giving was of such a potential damaging nature, that they should]. 273600 Page 123
HW 53060 10 11 12 14 15 16 17 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoctlId: 105 muddy the water and send a plant calling attention to what he was testifying to. You call it on page 14, a "crude message."" I take it from that you have no definitive information. But I would like to know what your guess is. Mr. Bagley. It would be a pleasure to say. It seems to be difficult for Mr. Hart or for anybody coming into this case to make distinctions, and one of the big distinc- tions is between his contact in Geneva in '62 and his recon- tacts in coming out in '64 saying he was going to defect. In 1962, he made it absolutely clear to us that he would never defect, under no circumstances. He had his family, he liked living in the Soviet Union, but he had certain undefined objections to the Soviet regime. I was reminded in Mr. Hart's ‘testimony, I think that he needed some money urgently and therefore he was coming to us. He not only said he wouldn't defect but he wouldn't accept contact with us inside the Soviet Union. However he would see us whenever he came out on official duty on Soviet delegations abroad. In January of '64 he came out and stupefied us with this statement that now he wants to defect. I can assure you my first question was, "Why? Didn't you tell us you never would?" His answers were extremely vague. "Well, I think they may. suspect me. I have decided to make a. new life." I asked, "How about your family?" He said well, he had 273600 Page 129
HW 53060 12 13 14 16 17 18 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 106 decided to start anew and they would be all right. Now, I detect in that a tremendous change of course. Therefore, I would like to answer your question as to what he might have been about in '62 and '64. In '62 I say in my letter and testimony he was deflecting information given 6 months before by Defector "X." This was clear. There were such connections, there was an astonishing overlap. I have dealt with many Soviet-bloc intelligence officers and of course many would know two or three doing the same thing. But the degree his information coincided to certain information given to us by ''X" was simply not unacceptable, but it was noteworthy. I would guess on that basis, Mr. Fithian, that the purpose in 1962 was that this man was sent out to do a perfectly under- standable counterespionage technique. The question has been asked why the tremendous change between 1962 and 1964. His reasons make no sense. They are not convincing. So what is it in the Soviet mind that would cause a man to physically send a | tan out when they said they never would? By way of footnote, I would like to say I mentioned in my testimony the insight we got into this man is’ that he hadn't in fact held the positions he said he had held. Not only was he not a plant but he was not a real KGB officer. The reason we have what we have in this tremendous volume of information is 273600 Page 130
HW 53060 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 107 that we have that detention and we were able to take it. We had him sitting -- he tried to avoid him sitting down but once we had him sitting down, we could see he did not know about the operations of his colleagues, he did not know about his main target, he did not know those things. But still in '62, had he come out to see us in Copenhagen, New York or Buenos Aires, he could have seen us only for an hour here or there under tense circumstances where there would be no chance to get into details under the controlled conditions I am speaking of. Therefore I think the Soviets had a good thing going had they left the man where he was. But as a defector they were running a big risk. This is not going away from your question, because it involves the decision to do this, to change the course. This is all assuming under your category we are speculating that he is a KGB plant. Something made them want us to have him in hand as a defector. One of the possibilities could be the event -.which happened in the interim, the assassination of President Kennedy, and therefore he was as you say, used for this message because he may have been the only valid, controlled and trusted secret contact to CIA. — The Soviets have shown a proclivity to use tricky methods like this.to give us messages through clandestine means going directly to the President, escaping suspicious desk officers. 273600 Page 131
Milis fls. 2:45 HW 53060 15 20 21 22 23 24 25 DocId: 108 But it's possible they looked for a way to get a message of their innocence as.to President Kennedy's assassination. If it was the best available channel, I can see the non-KGB or let us say a member of the Soviet leadership, like Mr. Khrush- chev himself, may have said do it, and the professional might have said, yes, but the fellow might run into trouble, and the reply would be yes, but do it. This is again in the realm of speculation. I only know of one other -- by way of background -- I only know of one potential explanation of this man coming out to see us in short stretches or the man putting himself into our hands as a defector. 273600 Page 132
Mills at 2:45p JFK 11/16 HW 453080 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 109 That has to do with an unrelated matter. It is very difficult -- it is even more speculative than is related to the Kennedy assassination. In other words, I am not at all sure that the other spec- ulation is any more valid than what I have just said. So, I would say that in groping for an explanation on the basis of the hypothesis that he is a sent KGB agent, one of the two things, one of the only two that I can think of, is that he was sent to give a message to the Warren Commission. Mr. Fithian. In that 1962 interview, is there any reference made to Nosenko's alleged role in recruiting American tourists? Mr. Bagley. Yes. He said that at that time he had made his career from 1955 until 19 -- until the end of 1959 in the tourist department, and he spoke about it at that time. In 1962 he had just gone back, after a two-year period in the section working against the American Embassy in Moscow, he had gone back to that section, working against tourists, with a promotion. | So, needless to say he did talk about operations against tourists. - Mr. Fithian. Was there in that interview, in 1962, - anything which tends to support his later claims of his position within the KGB? Mr. Bagley. Prior to his contact with us in 1962, he 273600 Page 133
13 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 @ 22 23 24 25 HW 53060 DoctId: 111 Now, one of the interesting things about that particular case is those meetings with Nosenko playing a junior role continued well into 1960, at a time when Mr. Nosenko said later that he had shifted into the section working against the American Embassy in Moscow. Mr. Fithian. And held an important position in it. | Mr. Bagley. The Deputy Chief of it. Mr. Fithian. “And you are saying that according to Soviet structure, that would be highly improbable? Mr. Bagley. Very. I can't imagine why the Deputy Chief of a section busy working against the American Embassy should accompany a senior Tourist Department officer in meeting an agent who, while admittedly American, a resident -- from time to time a resident in Moscow -- but primarily directed to tourist-oriented operations, why he should continue in that capacity. If we were the senior case officer and had a special relationship with the man > would be acceptable, quite, no reason why not. | They might feel no one else could do it as well, and maybe this man had some potential to talk about members of the American Embassy. I believe by the way that that is the way that Nosenko explained it when we asked him about this. He. knew people in the Embassy, but that doesn't really check with the story as given by the man himself when 273600 Page 135
17 18 19 20 21 @ 22, 23 24 25 HW 53060 Doctd: 112 interviewed by the FBI. - Mr. Fithian. Do you have any information on the treat- ment of Nosenko's family in Russia after his defection? Mr. Bagley. There was a story, as unlikely as the story I mentioned in my testimony, of Mr. Epstein's being told by an official member of the Soviet Embassy in Washington that Nosenko is the best qualified man in the United States, the best qualified man in the world really to talk about Oswald in Russia. | That other story has to do -- let me see -- with the approach by a Soviet official to a large circulation magazine, in this case Paris Match, offering a story to them, illustrated . by pictures, a story of the pathos of the family of Yuri Nosenko, Colonel Nosenko, I believe is one of the many people who referred to Nosenko as a Colonel, having left his family divorce, and these children were left behind. He offered, by way of illustration of this heart- rendering article, apicture of two daughters, I think, as I remember -- I think we got a hold of them -- on a boat ina lake somewhere, I suppose in Moscow. In other words, here was a Soviet official coming and saying here is the family. In other words, they were talking about the family. For the first time in our experience, | behind, and how this would turn into -- there would be a after a defection, the wife and mother of the defector came 273600 Page 136
HW 53060 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 113 to the American Embassy to plead with the Embassy to, I don't know, give their son back or something, I don't know. There had been at that time no precedent. I believe since then there have been one or two similar cases where the family has done this, but I can assure you that no family of any defector is going to be free to go to the American Embassy in Moscow, unless the KGB wants it that way. So, I find the whole family business, from what we know about the family after the defection, very strange. As to their faith, I don't think we do know. At least not at the time I left the operation, I don't think we had | any really firm information about whether they had suffered or whether they just had gone ahead with a divorce. I am told, by the way, by some sources, that if a man defects, he becomes automatically an enemy of the state and a divorce is granted automatically. I was told unofficially somewhere in between, after I had left the case, that, if memory serves me, that a divorce had gone through in the Soviet Union. | | Now, how that is known, I have no idea. Perhaps through Nosenko, perhaps he was notified in some way. Mr. Fithian. I wanted to turn to what seems to me to be kind of a curious situation. I refer to the questions that you say you submitted to the FBI. Just glancing over them, there seems to be several questions in which the CIA would have just been vitally © 273600 Page 137
HW 53060 20 21 22 | 23 24 25 DoctlId: 114 interested in -- how the KGB works against American tourists, for example, any techniques, any process, any procedure or whatever. I don't know, Mr. Klein, I have not reviewed the = interviews of the 23rd and the 27th -- I.have not had them available to me, so I may just be covering ground that you have already covered. If that is so, Judge, we could save this time. But in the second question listed, the second set of questions that you gave to the FBI, among others in that section was "Describe the routine handling procedure of U.S. tourists to the Soviet Union. Was Oswald's trip handled any “differently?” You alluded earlier this morning to the fact that you were always trying to update your files on procedures. It seems to me that you had a potential, at least, a superb opportunity, a person who had worked in this sensitive area, right in the area of one of the important procedures as far as we would be concerned, and that is safeguarding American tourists from being somehow enticed away to become defectors | and so on. Am I to believe that you submitted these to the FBI, the FBI did or did not use them, you are not sure, and then’ subsequently you never really returned to this?- Mr. Bagley. No. I don't know. how it got included in the 273600 Page 133
115 7 ' questions for the FBI for Nosenko because it involves the 2 handling of tourists. We did a very, very systematic debrief- 3 ing of Mr. Nosenko on the subject of the KGB's handling of }@ 4 American and other tourists in the Soviet Union. I must say 5 that if I had to list the information which Nosenko has given, 6 which is valuable, that would be at the top of the list. 7 | He had that. He gave it well, We got it out, and we 3 put it into forms which would serve the purposes that you 9 just mentioned, Mr. Fithian. 10 We circulated widely not only to those elements of the 7 United States Government, and even to the American public -- 12 I think a version was put out into the public domain. But 3 to foreign liaison services,. to our allies who themselves 14 could draw value from knowing the techniques of the KGB ° control and actions against foreign tourists in the USSR. . Yes, indeed, we did that. Why it appears there, I don't know. 17 Mr. Fithian. Another is a question which seems logical . enough. If you worked so hard at trying to establish Nosenko's ° authenticity, it would be likely that they would work equally . hard on establishing whether Oswald was bona fide or not. @ " Mr. Bagley. Much, much harder. Mr. Fithian. Did you. ever ask Nosenko?. 23 . Mr. Bagley. Of course. 24 Mr. Fithian. Those questions? 25 HW 53060 Docld:3P273600 Page 139
18 19 20 21 23 24 25 116 Mr. Bagley. I can only say the answer is of course. I don't know what the record shows, but there is no doubt that we at some point showed some -- perhaps it was inthe house -- but we must have indicated to Mr. Nosenko our disbelief in this disinterest on the part of the KGB. I don't know what the record shows on chat, but it was blatant. We were aware of it at the time. It seems almost unthinkable to me that we didn't confront Nosenko with it and ask for an explanation. | By the way, I would think that this is one of the many times when he, I won't say clams up, but when he stubbornly opposes the line of questioning by simply repeating what he said before; that is, that it is uninteresting, uninteresting - at which a standard -- I am not sure this happened, I am - saying this is the way it would have gone -- we would have said, "Well, that doesn't answer the question." This was an American young ex-Marine coming into your country. He would say, he is unstable. I am sure this was. his line of defense against this type of question -- that this man-was considered personally unstable, and uninteresting- those words are used over and over again, I believe, in the reports. | I think Mr. Klein knows the reports better than I do at this point. But he emphasized that the act of suicide, or attempted suicide, in the first place, showed that the man HW 53060 Docld: 2273600 Page 140
HW 53060 10 11 12 20 al. 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 117 was unstable, and after that the psychiatric examinations which either were or were not done more or less confirmed this. To believe Mr. Nosenko, this suspended all their procedures. But that the question was asked to him, how is this possible I have no doubt. It must have been. Mr. Fithian. Do you happen to know, just from your own knowledge of Russian operations, whether a person judged unstable, an American who wanted to defect and so on, would have been permitted under Russian law or procedures to marry a Russian citizen? Mr. Bagley. I don't know the answer to that question. I don't know. Mr. Fithian. Do you have any information at all on Marina and any relationship that she had to the KGB in any way, shape or form? | Mr. Bagley. None whatsoever. On the contrary, he said she was an uninteresting girl with no character, nothing. I remember this response about Marina. | Mr. Fithian. You mean that is Nosenko's? Mr. Bagley. Nosenko's response, as I remember. I am surely not having a failure of memory here, but I know that he must have addressed himself, and that we must have asked him about Marina. His reaction, I know, I remember his statement that she 273600 Page 141
10 19 20 2] 23° 24 25 HW 53060 Doctd: 118 was of no interest. I think it may have been in connection ‘with why did they let her go. Well, she was of no value, no interest, it didn't matter, dumb girl, something of that sort. Mr. Fithian. Let me suspend at the moment. I may not have .any more questions. I thought I had one or two more as I walked back over, Judge. Mr. Preyer. Well, I will ask a few, and maybe it will refresh your recollection. When you first brought Nosenko to this country, there was a free period, as you described it, in which he was treated like any other defector. Some of the recent news stories, some of the treatment is quite free indeed, I notice. But you indicated that he resisted normal questioning during the free period. That resistance was more in terms of simply evading your questions? He was not physically trying to evade you? ' | | Mr. Bagley. _ No, no, no, no. It was in terms of evading the questions. Mr. Preyer. But you felt he wasn't responding the way a normal defector during that free period might respond, in the openness with which he would answer questions? | Mr. Bagley. Absolutely. | : Mr. Preyer. Then you went into a period of controlled questioning. He was first confined to a safe house, I 273600 . Page 14?
11 HW 53060 19 20 21 22 23 24. 25 . 119 gather, somewhere in the general area here. Mr. Bagley. Yes. Mr. Preyer. When was he no longer allowed to use alcohol? Or was there ever any period in which he was never allowed to use alcohol? - Mr. Bagley. I would say the entier period of detention. There was never any question of his having. any alcohol from the 4th of April onward. Mr, Preyer. So as soon as he went from the free period of questioning to the safe house, controlled period, all alcohol was barred from that time on? Mr. Bagley. Yes, sir. ' Mr. Preyer. On the questionof hallucinations, I think you indicated that he did not suffer from any hallucinations from alcohol. Did he ever have any periods in which he hallucinated, to your knowledge? Mr. Bagley. This is a debated question. You may remember- in the periods when he was alone, not being questioned, he sometimes spoke to himself, and he would tell his guards that, "IT see something." That is as I remember the form the hallucinations took. — “We were both concerned and interested in it. The doctor went to him. ‘He maintained he. was hallucinating. This was, I believe, a very limited period. It has been made out as if this took place during periods when he was in face-to-face Docld: 82273600 Page 145
12 | : | | | . 120 contact with someone in answering questions. 2 It isn't true. It was strictly noted by the guards and 3 Nosenko himself saying this to.them. The doctor, who is a @ 4 trained psychiatrist, his opinion was that these hallucinations 5 were feigned. I am certainly not qualified to say whether 6 they were or not. . 7 | So, the answer to your question is I don't know whether 3 he was actually hallucinating or not. I do know that it had 5 nothing whatsoever at any time to do with the question sessions|. 10 It had no impact on his answers to any questions that he was H ever asked. 12 Mr. Preyer. Well, once controlled questioning began, you 3 have described it as somewhat spartan conditions. I think you 14 have helped restore some balance to this nature of that ° is questioning and confinement. 16 Now, you mentioned on the diet, your comments on that L gather was that there was a deliberate effort to put him on . a lean diet, but that that was checked with a doctor. 19 Mr. Bagley. Yes, sir. | 50 Mr. Preyer. At. regular intervals? Mr. Bagley. Yes, sir. | @ 8 Mr. Preyer. How often did you see Nosenko yourself once a he got into a controlled period of questioning? * Mr. Bagley. Frequently, during the first period of hostile * interrogation. I believe that is all. I participated from 25 , the wings m subsequent questioning, but not directly face-to- HW 53060 DBocld:4¢273600 Page 144
13 HW 53060 10 11 12 20 21. 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 121 face with Nosenko. Mr. Preyer. During the first period, the safe house period, would you see him once a week or once a month? Mr. Bagley. Oh, no. I spoke about the hostile interro- gation. That was daily. That was for the period it lasted. I actually can't remember whether that was a matter of a week or two weeks. It wasn't long. It was a very short period. Then I saw him very frequently indeed at the other side of the table. Mr. Preyer. Well, when he went into what has been described as the bank vault period of questioning, was that the period when you did not see him very often? Mr. Bagley. Well, yes, I did not see him during the bank vault period at all. I did not see him after the first hostile interrogation. I did not see him face-to-face even in the first holding area. | In other words. during this summer questioning, the ques- tioning that followed the hostile interrogation, and during the second hostile. interrogation, I did not see him. I saw him no more after the month of April 1964. Mr. Preyer. Well, under whose direct control was he at thattime, afteryou no longer saw him face-to-face? .. Mr. Bagley. Mine. Your question was whether I saw him face-to-face. Mr. Preyer. Yes. 273600 Page 145
14 13 14 1S 16 19 20 21 @ 22 | 23 24 25 HW 53060 DBoctId | 122 Mr. Bagley. But direct control, I would say, in the sense of responsibility for the interrogation and for the handling of the case -- Mr. Preyer. These are all people in your division who were seeing him and questioning him daily. Mr. Bagley. Yes, sir. Mr. Preyer. What relation is Mr. Bycteton to your division? Mr. Bagley. They are entirely separate. Mr. fbigleton' s counterintelligence staff has a staff role as against an | operational or executive role. The Soviet division was the organization within the agency specifically operating against the USSR and the satellites. We would run the cases, handle the defectors, plan and carry out, sometimes through people who were not members of the Soviet division, of course, in the stations abroad. Mr. Preyer. Did Mr. Feeleton ever see him face-to-face during this period? Mc. Bagley. No, sir. Mr. Engleton's role was as the overall agency, the seat of agency expertise in counter- intelligence in general. He kept an eye.on these things, and he would have an advisory role. In this particular case, his role was conditioned by the fact that his staff was managing the earlier defector, X. “Mr.. Preyer. Were you aware of the two lie detector tests 273600 Page 146 ; ; ~
15 123 tests that were given to him? 2 Mr. Bagley. Yes, sir. 3 Me. Preyer. Was it two or three? @ A Mr. Bagley. I think three. 5 Mr. Preyer. Three?’ P Mr. Bagley. Yes, sir. Indeed, I was aware of them. 7 Mr. Preyer. Is it accurate that they were given to him 3 with the understanding that he would be told he failed the 9 test whether he did or not?. 10 Mr. Bagley. After the test, yes. That is true. The " first test given, at the time of his confinement, but before 12 he was told he was going to be confined, he was simply taken 13 and given the test. 13 Now, Mr. Hart has said that here was already an ° i extraneous element added, that somebody, instead of putting 1 on the normal three controls of palm moisture and blood . pressure and heart beat, that an additional thing, something 0 to increase his tension, was put on him to allegedly be | . capable of measuring brain waves, . I don't remember that. It is possible. . If he has the . record that it was done, fine, but I thought that the first @ " lie detector test was given straight, and there was indeed, “ sir, the intent to tell him that he had failed it, as the i means of opening the hostile interrogaticn, which would “ ‘confront him with all the collected contradictions in his 25 - HW 53060 Docld:3P273600 Page 147
16 HW 53060 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 20 21° 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 124 story and the data from outside his story which indicated that he wasn't what he said he was. Mr. Preyer. You mentioned somewhere in your testimony about the word "disposal" being political jargon, CIA jargon. Disposal does not necessarily mean liquidation in -the jargon, or does it? Mr. Bagley. No, sir. I have never heard of the word’ disposal being used for liquidation. I would like to just add one -- as long as the subject comes up once more -- I would really like to say one more thing about liquidation. I remember some years ago Mr. Helms saying that not only would there be no assassination, murder. liquidation, any kind of what this action which has been in the jargon called executive action, not only would there not be any, but there would not be any discussions or proposals, it would not be a subject fit for human ears within the agency. I have lived my time in the agency under that belief. Like many other officers of the agency were surprised when the publicity came out about someone had contemplated, one or two or three of these political assassinations, they were counter to what I thought was the very specific, explicit policy of the agency. | It was unthinkable that anyone could therefore have thought of disposal in those terms : Mr. Preyer. Well, the question of disposal in the sense 273600 Page 143.
17 HW 53060 10 1 12 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 125 of resolving this issue in some way must have certainly occurred from -- at increasingly frequent intervals, I would think -- where you have a man in this controlled custody for some five years and where it became, was beginning to become clear that you were not going to get much one way or the other from him. Which gets back to the question of what you referred to .as the duped leadership, and the idea that a small handful of you were aware of this, were aware of his treatment, but that no. one else was. really very aware of what was going on. Would you make periodic reports to somebody from time to time of the progress or lack of progress that was being made? | Mr. Bagley. Oh, yes, yes, indeed. First of all, who knew about it is the first thing -- the small group we are talking bout consisted of everyone on that particular case, that operation, everyone responsible. In other words, for the interrogation of Nosenko and the investigation of his leads, md the use of his information for whatever purpose within our agency, which meant primarily certain elements of the Soviet division, Soviet bloc division. It involved the counterintelligence staff, as I mentioned, because of their advisory function in counterintelligence matters. In that case it meant the chief of staff and those members that he delegated to be aware of this, and there were 273600 Page 149
18 10 11 12 | 20 21 23 24 25 HW 53060 DBoctId: - 126 several. | It meant the Office of the Chief of the Clandestine Services, known then as the Deputy Director for Plans, and since changed to the Deputy Director for Operations, I believe, the DDO, his office and the assistant DDO office, DDP, at that time -- the assistant DDP's office, and those members of | that office who needed to cope with the paper. On upward to the office of the, I guess -- my dates may be a little fuzzy -- but I think the then Deputy Director of the agency, then Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. Helms. It goes without saying if we are sending the doctor out to check him next week, or if we are planning to interrogate him on a certain subject, or if we are talking about making -- giving him or not giving him books to read, or things like that that we would never go to Mr. Helms about that. | But if we were planning an interrogation session on a certain subject, or planning something that was substantive, or if a certain amount of time had passed, and it was just time to check in, Mr. Helms was always available, as I think he has testified. He was always available. Surely, as I read what he said, 'I think what he said was a very accurate reflection of what was really going on. In other words, he got some of it, but by no means all of it, 273600 Page 150 —
19 HW 53060 10 11 12 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoctlId: 127 He wouldn't have known that the man was hot or cold. If the man had been -- if that had been a matter of policy, to make the man hot or cold, he most surely would have known about it. But the various little aspects of this holding certainly would not have been brought to his attention routinely. They would have been brought to the attention of whoever was concerned. | There was a lot of consultation in advance. There was a lot of periodic consultation -- staff meetings, I suppose you would call it -- on the subject. As you say, sir, there was increasing concern ‘as time went on because I felt that Mr. Helms was always aware, (a) that what we were dong was legal but, (b) that it became more and more sensitive as time went on and this couldn't go on indefinitely. He was as interested as he could be because he understood the implications behind this operation, which were immense, and they went way beyond Mr. Nosenko. They went to several other operations, several other Soviet intelligence people who were in touch with us in one. way or another. The implication underlying it clearly pointed at serious matters. Not only that Mr. Oswald may have been a Soviet agent, but also that there would be penetration in the U.S. . Government. | | it followed logically as an implication of the fact that Nosenko could have been sent -- and by the way, could have 273600 Page 151
20 16 7 18 19 20 21, 23 24 25 128 told us a false story about his career. I think that is a. very menacing little piece of information because if he can. lie to us about a key job during a key period, it would suggest to me that the KGB knows that we are unable to check on this, which I find disturbing. Mr. Preyer. Well, you categorically deny, then, any implication that this was the treatment that Nosenko, and was known to only a handful, five or six people in the agency, and that they were deliberately -- I think this is at least an implication from the testimony -- deliberately hiding it from the upper echelon of the CIA for fear that the planted agent might get wind of it. Mr. Bagley. I certainly do categorically deny that. There was -- it is fiction. Within the agency, it always works on the need to know, and some operations are kept tighter. than others. But a defector in our hand, unfortunately by the very nature of things, can't be very tightly held. The number of people who knew about the case and generally about what was going on were -- was appropriate. I would say there were in our division alone,there must have been five or six people directly talking to Nosenko. Plus those that were supporting them at the desk, and plus the leadership of the division, plus all these elements of the counterintelligence staff. We are talking abouta multiple of the five or six you are HW §3080 DocId: #2273600 Page 152
21 10 11 12 20 21 @ 22 23 24 25 HW 53080 DoctId: 129 speaking of. It was done as any such operation would be done in the agency. | In other words, all who had any responsibility would know about it. All who had any responsibility for that particular line of work. | | Mr. Preyer. This question might be an invasion of privacy. If you don't want to answer it, don't answer it. I am just curious as to your general political views -- whether you are a liberal or conservative. I ask that because knowing some of your relatives, and knowing their views, they are hardly what _ would be known as hard line conservatives. There has been some implication that this group controllin Nosenko was a very hard line group. I don't know whether you want to comment on what your political views are. Mr. Bagley. Oh, yes, I would welcome that. Insofar as the tradition, family and otherwise, it certainly has been liberal indeed. | My line of work has kept me apart from active political life in the United States, so I haven't identified myself in any way. But, I would certainly consider myself very strongly middle of the road. | Then we come to the whole question of being anti-Soviet or not. To say that I am hard line anti-Soviet, anti-KGB, anti- -- well, that is enough -- Soviet and KGB I most assuredly. am. I think -- I make remarks here which I think 273600 Page 153
22 18 19 20 21 @ 22 23 24 25 HW 53080 DoctId: 130 even looking at them now seem fairly firm about what the KGB is up to in terms of deception and subversion. I have been exposed to the people who are doing it for a very long time, and none of them has ever given any other view of what the KGB is up to. That is just as much 1978 as 1962 or 1958 or 1952, before the death of Stalin. Nothing has changed the basic thrust of the KGB's work against this country. I found it tremendously rewarding as a career to be able to focus on what was very clearly the enemy of our country, outside enemy of our country, rather than some of these Third World things which have caused such, well, really confusion in the motivations of some of the men that have had to work with them. | I consider not that I would have been -- I might have shared some of these feelings, and I might have taken -- might have fallen on either side of the fence in those operations where we were supporting a government or a political party in certain Third World areas. I don't know how I would have felt about it because I didn't have to. So, I consider myself more lucky than anything else to have avoided that. But certainly the group who were exposed to KGB officers day in and day out, whether as adversaries or as defectors, are extremely anti-Soviet. I believe, by the way, that that permits me to be in 273600 Page 154
23 HW 53060 10 11 12 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 131 American political terms a liberal. Mr. Preyer. Yes, I think Mr. Moynihan and Ben Wattenberg and a number of people of that sort would agree with you on that. | Did you ever talk to Mr. Epstein? Mr. Bagley. Yes. Mr. Preyer, About his book? Mr. Bagley. Yes. Mr. Epstein has made that clear publicly and I think there are certain things in the book which make that clear, too. Mr. Epstein got from others the basic outlines of the. Nosenko story, and then made an approach to me, and I of course refused to talk to him. Later he came back, a few months later, and with a long letter telling me someof the things he knew, which were things which I would never have thought could have gotten into the public domain. At which point I did accept to see him and he, without my saying a word, exposed exactly what he had and what he was doing and showed me what he was going to write, | which was in its broad lines the general story of the Nosenko case andinits details full of confusion and inaccuracies. So, the primary help that I gave to Mr. Epstein on that book was to insure that at least the errors were not in there, and that this book, which was going to be the first 273600 Page 155
24 18 19 20. 21 23 24 25 WW 53080 Docla: 132 time that the Nosenko story was going to become public, that at least there would not be egregious errors. There are some errors of emphasis which Mr. Fithian has pointed out, which I happen to agree with. But that is entirely Mr. Epstein's business, how he chooses to interpret what he hears. Several of the things are wrong, and I gather they have even been accepted by the CIA. For example, Mr. Epstein insisted that there was some sort of a cleansing, of purposeful cleansing of the Soviet operations of the CIA, and people Like myself and the chief of the Soviet division were got rid of. I explained to him at the time, I said I didn't think that should get into his book because that was incorrect. I told him how I had gotten my assignment abroad, and how I justified my leaving my headquarters position. I happen to know the way in which the chief of the division got his overseas assignment. It had nothing to do wth any such plot. I think in retrospect that we would have both done better to stay here and be purged, if purging was in the mill. In fact, it did, our assignments abroad did oceur in the normal course of events. Mr. Epstein put it different. There are two or three things like that, interpretaions which I most assuredly don't share. But the facts that Mr. Epstein has in the book are generally accurate. 273600 Page 156
25 HW 53060 10 11 12 20 21 22 23. 24 25 DocId: | 133 Mr. Preyer. Thank you. Mr. Fithian? Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bagley, do you think that the CIA did all it could to cooperate with the Warren Commission? Mr. Bagley. Yes, I do, because -- my exposure to it was by the way a minor one. I think -- I know -- on one of these occasions -- it hasn't emerged in the record, and perhaps it will, but I thought I had actually gone over once with Mr. Helms to the commission. | It was at a time when Mr. Helms was making a statement --. when Mr. Helms was telling -- I think it is one of these things that has come out in all this testimony. My exposure to it was practically nil.. I don't know, but the impression - I get is that every effort within the agency, in every corner of the agency was to dig out everything we could that could possibly help the Warren Commission in its job. ' I am absolutely. convinced of that. But I do stress that I am not in a position to judge because it was the counter- intelligence staff that centralized. the activity and all. But I know that. our people dug and dug and dug. ~ For example, in my section at the time, an officer went -- we thought what can we do, how can we use the files of the CIA to contribute in any way. We decided to have a look at the photograph file of the agency, whichis a rather extensive thing, and see just what Minsk looked like, and what we could 273600 Page 157 —
26 | 134 . 1 see, the places that were in Oswald's life, in Oswald's back- 2 || ground. 3 It was a member of my section who dredged up, out of files @ A of the CIA, a tourist picture which showed Oswald in front of 5 I believe the opera house. It was one of those columned 6 buildings. There was a tourist group, and there was Oswald. 7 This fellow came up to me and said, look, I have been 8 looking through pictures of Minsk and doesn't this look funny 9 to you, and showed me this picture, and that was him. 10 That document, of course, is a part of the Warren H Commission report. Tn other words, we were doing everything 12 we could think of to do to help the Warren Commission. 3 Absolutely good faith. 14 Mr. Fithian. I am curious. At the very outset Nosenko : 5 appears to be a fraud -- that is pretty harsh, but I will let 16 it stand. Assuming that was your interpretation, assuming. 7 you didn't get anything to persuade you that you were wrong, 18 isn't five years a long investment in somebody that you 19 thought was a fraud? 50 Mr. Bagley. What do you mean by investment, Mr. Fithian? 31 Mr. Fithian. Time, money, resources, commitment. | e » “Mr. Bagley. No, sir. For what that meant, that case is potentially the most important and the most interesting a operation possible, because as I say the implications under- “ lying it -- had we been able to ptove, which we never were -- 25 HW 53080 Docld: 9P273600 Page 156
27 16 17 18 19 20 21 sd 22 23 24 25 HW 53060 DoctId: ~135 we were certainly able to give operational indications and enough to draw -- operational conclusions at least as a basis for further activity or investigations. But we were not able to prove that this man was a sent KGB agent. Had we proved it, all of those implications would have come to the surface and would have been investigated, and I think the security of the United States would have been the better for it. So, I don't think this investment was too great By five years, you are presumably -- Mr. Fithian. Is that longer than you worked with any other defector? | | ‘Mr. Bagley. Well, it is absolutely unique in the sense thatthere was no other defector that we gave either that much attention to or that type of attention to. Mr. Fithian. But you concluded, didn't you, that he really wasn't a very important person in the KGB? Mr. Bagley. I conclude that he may never have served properly within the KGB. That he was sent by the KGB to pose as a KGB agent there is no doubt. He is not a fabricator, he is not somebody who pretends to be just on his own. He -had detailed knowledge of KGB opeations, which he claimed to _ have been part of his knowledge as an officer. Mr. Fithian. Is he: the only person in your whole span that falls in that category?. Mr. Bagley. No, sir. 273600 Page 159
28 | 136 1 Mr. Fithian. That is, he was sent by the KGB? 2 ' Mr. Bagley. No, sir, he is not. 3 Mr. Fithian. Well, then, I kind of repeat, if that is @ 4 your conclusion, and if you thought him designed to mislead 5 you to start with, you still don't think that much investment 6 of time and resources and so forth is -- 7 Mr. Bagley. No, very much not so. 8 If you know the man or you can make the operational 9 assumption that the man is being sent against you, as we just 10 have for purposes of this discussion, you can read it in H reverse and find ‘out what really lies behind this mission 12 of the KGB. 13 Those indications are very, very interesting. They are as 14 good as a look inside the KGB files. - " 5 . By the way, I won't digress here for very long, but I \e do want to give you an example to illustrate my answer. md Mills | 1:35 p.m. 17 | 19 20 21 Y 22 23 24 25 HW 53060 DBocld: 37273600 Page 160
browning fils mills 3:30 HW 53080 DocId: 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 137 Mr. Bagley. In the invasion of Normandy, 1944, there was a large, tremendous investment in deception by which the Germans were led to believe the main thrust of the invasion would fall on the Pas de Calais region instead of Normandy. Under General Patton an invasion unit was set up. All the radio communication which would accompany an army group were set up in trying to fool the Germans in making them think there was a group there. There were landing craft much too far away to participate in the Normandy invasion. The result was the Germans were fooled and when the invasion struck in Normandy, I believe it was the Qeey . 17 German\ groups were held at Pas de Calais because the Germans believed the Normandy invasion was a diversion. They : held the force there and as you know, the landing was nip and tuck for 4 days. Had that German force in the north been able to be present at the landing beaches, it's possible the invasion would have failed. ‘The problem is, had the deception been known to the Germans as a deception, it would have told them chat first of all, the First U.S. Army Group doesn't exist, and second, that the diver- sion was toward the Pas de Calais to the north, and there was only one other place for the invasion, and that was Normandy. In other words, the perception of the allied deception would have been a spectacular piece of intelligence for the Germans. I don't necessarily want to put this thing on the same y =O Pp g scale as Normandy, but it has all the same effect. If a 273600 Page 161
u2 HW 53060 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 138. perception is perceived it can be turned against the deceiver, and that is, in my opinion, what we did so long as we made the operating assumption Nosenko was sent. In other words, I do believe it was a valuable expenditure of time. Mr. Fithian. You think the mistake to depart from that interpretation was a serious one? Mr. Bagley. Very. More important in terms of lost opportunities than the things I speak about in my prepared testimony about the exposure of personnel to him. I think it's bad enough to bring him onto the premises and let him talk to counterintelligence trainees. I think it a very bad mistake to oe let him talk to our foreign liaison agents without informing him there is a body of evidence suggesting he is no good. I don't know exactly what they are doing, but in Mr. Helms' testimony I found an indication, a statement that he was of value to current counterintelligence investigations. It suggest to me that current information, current activities. are being exposed to him. I think that is a mistake. | Mr. Fithian. You say in your letter to the committee, in a paragraph you say if Nosenko is a KGB plant there can be no doubt that Nosenko's recited story about Oswald and the USSR is a message from the KGB. Then you say by sending out such a message, the KGB exposes the fact it has something to hide. As Mr. Helms told you, that something may be the fact that: Oswald may -be an agent of the KGB. 273600 Page 162
u3 HW 53060 20 21 22 23 24 25 Docld: 139 Do you have an opinion, and if so, will you provide the basis for your opinion, on two. things: 1, the likelihood of that; and, 2, I am struck by the use of the word "fact" -- that conveys to me a very strong impression. | Mr. Bagley. That was probably not the very best word I could have chosen. It was meant to be softened by the verb, which was "may" _- one of these messages "may" have been the fact that. It was not meant it was a statement of fact. It Relicitougl y just follows -- perhaps I can put that more sebeditously by saying it would hide the possibility -- instead of saying the operation would hide the fact, say the message hides the possibility that this man is or could have been a Soviet agent. By a "Soviet -agent'' I don't mean a Soviet assassination agent. I mean something quite different. Mr. Fithian. I was just asked by Congressman Dodd's staff to follow up on this, whether or not you would rule out the possibility that even though the KGB had nothing to do with the assassination that they would spend this kind of energy or | effort personally to convince us they had nothing to do with it. Mr. Bagley. I think it. entirely conceivable. If you ac- cept the hypothesis, the supposition, the speculation that in fact they had something to hide and that something might have been perhaps he had a code name, perhaps he was. a sleeper agent, ‘they obviously couldn't expect as much from him coming back to the United States with a Soviet wife, they couldn't expect him 273600 Page 163
ud HW 53060 10 11 12 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 140 to be elected President, but at the same time, they may have said, "We will get in touch with you in time of war," or they may have recruited him by saying, "We will get in touch with you by the following procedures." This is pure speculation. But then if he is on their rolls as a sleeper agent or for wartime sabotage or something of that sort, they would be absolutely shocked to hear their man had taken it upon himself to kill the American President. I would think their reaction could very well be of the sort you suggest. They might indeed change the mission of another man of another operation in order to get this message over to us that they really had nothing to do with it. The only thing I am quite sure of, I don't want to tell you what I think is behind us, because I really don't know, but I am quite sure of one thing, and that is that it's not true. That's all, it's not true, they didn't speak to him, that the KGB didn't speak to Oswald in the Soviet Union, that is not true, by all logic, by everything we know. I can't prove that, and I am not making that as a statement of hard fact, but certainly within the framework of my knowledge of the Soviet Union and the KGB it is not true. Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman, you will be happy to know I only have two more questions. | Mr. Hart says rather flat out that there was a direct conflict between the two agencies as to interpretation of whethe 273600 Page 164
u5 16 17 18 19 20 21 @ 22 23 24 25 HW 53060 DBoctId: 141 or not Nosenko was bona fide. He indicates the FBI thought Nosenko was bona fide when he arrived and that the CIA assumed he was a plant when he arrived. Is that accurate? Mr. Bagley. Again, I don't like the word "assumed‘’. but changing that word "assumed" to "suspected" I would certainly say yes. | Now I don't know the FBI part of it, either. They had no basis to. make such a judgment and they had no stake in it, as far as I can tell. They had a source coming here who had told them about a few Americans who had been recruited as tourists in the Soviet Union, he had a good knowledge as to how the Soviet Union recruited tourists who have been useful to the FBI. But they didn't get into as many fields as we did because Nosenko - was a Moscow-based officer. Mr. Fithian. One other question. Is it totally unreason- able to speculate that the Agency might be in the process of | leading Nosenko on at this point, using him even now to pass false information along to the Soviets? Mr. Bagley. May I ask your third word there, I think you said "totally" -- | Mr. Fithian. "Totally unreasonable." Mr. Bagley. Totally excluded, no, it's not totally exclude because I don't know. I have not been in the Agency and such people within the Agency who have talked with him make me believe it's not so. 273600 Page 165°
u6 HW 53060 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 24 22 23 24 25 he. Mr. Fithian. I was trying to look for other alternatives - for the Agency to bristle so intensely as to send over Mr. Hart and sort of throw up the smokescreen and get the Agency in the worst possible light as far as the newspapers are concerned. The whole scenario is so totally unthinkable that I-am puzzled. Mr. Bagley. The only thing I can say is if they were working on the basis of a hypothesis or knowledge which is most concretely and specifically represented by myself, it would seem to me not terribly unreasonable to let me know that instead of doing what they did to me here. Therefore, all my instincts tell me that isn't it at all. Mr. Fithian. You might be expendable? Mr. Bagley. Yes, but they must get some use out of me ‘before they dispose of me. Mr. Fithian. On page 39 of your testimony I would like for you to look at that again. This is my last point, Mr. Chairman. Down at the last full paragraph, which starts with "How- ~ ever,'' skipping the first part and dropping down to "Mr. Hart .an Admiral Turner may frivolously dismiss them as they have done before your committee but the doubts are still there and it's irresponsible to expose clandestine personnel to this invidivualL|' The doubts you refer to are the doubts about Nosenko's authenticity. I guess my question is, do you want to close out the record standing by that statement? Doclda: 332773600 Page 166
u/7 HW 53060 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 DocId: 143 Mr. Bagley. Well, I must admit your calling attention to that -- is it the word "frivolously''? Mr. Fithian. Both the words''frivolously dismiss them" and the subordinate charge that they are acting frivolously. | Mr. Bagley. I would be happy because of the emotions involved in the word to retract the word "frivolously." Quite happy. But I suppose it has come through my testimony and what I have said in answer to your questions that I find the use of this man, the positive use of this man vis-a-vis innocents, such as trainees, terribly bothersome. I know -- I don't think -- I know that the people who are exposed to Nosenko in counterintelligence training are not told -- they know there was doubt, but they are being specifical ly told, as Admiral Turner pointed out in a memo and as Mr. Hart has indicated here, was the work of halfwits. If this man is a Soviet agent and has a mission for the KGB in this country it's a poor way to have some young man begin his career, to be ex- posed to him. Mr. Fithian. In an irresponsible way? I. am getting to the tremendous charge involved in this paragraph. Mr. Bagley. I appreciate your concern about that and of course to the contrary I think you are being -- Mr. Fithian, and may I ask you for a word, because I think you have offered me an 7 opportunity to withdraw my word from the testimony and I'm > certainly not going to say no. Knowing now exactly what I meant 273600 Page 167 Pa
ug HW 53060 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoclId: 144 by that, can you think of -- perhaps I think it wrong to expose'-- perhaps that should be the phraseology there. Mr. Fithian. I hate to put words in your mouth , but Mr. Hart and Admiral Turner may dismiss them. To say "frivolously dismiss them" might do the Admiral injustice here. Maybe Mr. Hart's statement before the committee may well constitute, you know, frivolous treatment or something, I was pretty provoked by it myself. Then the second, that it's irresponsible -- it's an error to expose. Mr. Bagley. I very definitely will withdraw the word | "irresponsible." | Mr. Fithian. That is in my reading such a terribly serious || charge against the Director -- Mr. Bagley. I accept your comment with appreciation. Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman, I have no further comments. I would like to say this: I enormously appreciate our witness' time and patience with us in this matter. I think it has been just to me, as an individual Member of the House, just tremen-- dously helpful, perhaps one of the better days I have had on the committee. | | Mr. Bagley. Thank ‘you. Mr. Preyer. I might just ask one more question which might be more a comment. You raise the question of what the explanation of Mr. Hart' 273600 Page 168 _
ug HW 53060 10 11 12 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 DoctlId: 145 testimony was, Mr. Fithian, that where we seem to get a minimum amount of information about Lee Harvey Oswald, which is what we were after, and a maximum amount as to Mr. Nosenko's bona fides in a wide intelligence sense, would one explanation be, could it be it was simply the CIA's answer to Mr. Epstein's book, which was current at the time, very much in the news, and in that - book, you are left with the thought there is a mole in the CIA? If you accept Mr. Epstein's thinking they may have thought it worth a little bad publicity temporarily if it would kill the idea there was a possible mole in the CIA? Mr. Bagley. I would say no one I have talked to has had that reaction to what Mr. Hart did. But on the contrary they are aghast and confused by it. I don't think it laid anything to rest. Now, it could very well have been the motive. I have even looked at the motive of their, in a sense, punishing me for having helped Mr. Epstein. I have used the analogy of somebody using a blow on the head, shoots himself in the foot. I don't believe they have helped their cause very. much by this sort of reaction. “Mr. Preyer. Mr. Klein, do you have any further questions? Mr. Klein. No, I don't, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Preyer. Mr. Bagley, when a witness has concluded his testimony, under our rules, he is entitled to make a statement for 5 minutes on any subject that may have come up that he wishe to clarify or anything further he wishes to say, if there is 273600 Page 169
uld , WW 53060 20 21 22 . 23 24 25 DoclId: 146 anything further you wish to add at this point, we will recognize you for 5 minutes for that purpose. Mr. Bagley. Well, Mr. Fithian has made a kind remark and I would like to reciprocate, not as a reciprocation but from the beginning of your work, I got hold of both Mr. Hart's testimony and the staff's work and was deeply impressed with the quality of the work of the committee. I have today been treated with immense courtesy and interest: and knowing full well at your regular schedule, at a time when you are pressed with some other things, not the least being the King matter, I am awed, impressed, and deeply appreciative that you should have given me the time. As you know, I wanted to come and answer those charges, but I also wanted to make some points which I felt important which I do think are pertinent to your mission. Nevertheless, whether they are or not, you have received me with great courtesy and I appreciate it enormously. Mr. Preyer. Your testimony has been helpful and your testimony can add to our knowledge in this area. We appreciate your being here. | | If there is nothing further, the committee stands adjourned. (Whereupon, at 4:55 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene upon the call of the Chair.) 273600 Page 170