104-10210-10014 aetiaiaes, er my - acsinea tine SAE PIRES EET ITT CS Ie ree eee cnennngnecenernenscereninit inet CONC Ct CC CCA A OT . ‘ er) . 7 ETT oe | ; @ SUBJECT: The Bona Fides of Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko . : 1. KGB officer Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko first. contacted CIA in. Geneva-in—June- 1962. —~Over.the-course-of-five: meetings he provided sufficient’ information-to enable-the. two officers. ‘ from CIA's ~Soviet-Russia Division who met him to establish that-he-was~a~bona- fide’ source. ‘The major_information-furnished by-hirr at~that time was~the identification of-a US code tech- nician.who~had-been-recruited by the KGB, and -the- identification of "the location of-KGB-microphones in the US. Enbassy in Moscow, - 52-o0f which were later" “found. . . Ze. When CIA's “Counterintélligence Staff: was inforned of Nosenko's 1952approach;-its ‘management regarded this news within the context of what they had-been-hearing-from.a KG.’ defector whom they were-then debriefing, Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn. Golitsyn, who had defected in December 1961, was. a counterintelligence officer who was-obsessed.with. the. subject of KGBdeception operations: Even though.Golitsyn was diag- nosed“in early 1962 as a “paranoid personality," the-CI Staff had-complete. faith in the validity of his theories and analyses. _ A-sSanitized version.of Nosenko's information was-therefore shown to Golitsyn; who ‘flatly concluded that Nosenko was acting under-~KGB control. --The CI Staff accepted Golitsyn's analysis and persuaded- ‘the-management of SR Division also to accept it. 3, By..the time Nosenke was again heard from, in January _ 1964,-again-in Geneva, the management of SR Division and CI tafi was firmly committed to the position that Nosenko was part of a KGB deception. operation. Nosenko- actually. defected - on “4" February ~1964,/ 2
pis Seve -4. In-October'1967 the DC! turned Nosenko's case over to the Office of Security for final resolution, and at the same time the FBI began a review of the information it had obtained from Nosenko. The results of these two very thorough investigations were set forth in a memorandum from the Office of Security dated 1 October 1968 and one from the FBI dated 20 September 1968, both of which concluded that Nosenko was who he claimed-to be and was a bona fide defector. Since that time this has been and is the position of CIA. 5. Nosenko-was probably the most valuable source of counterintelligence-information that the US Government has ever-had, and the enormous scope and value of his information attest conclusively to his bona fides as a defector. He | identified.some-2,000 KGB officers and 300 Soviets who were acting as KGB agents. . He provided information on some 235 Americans in whom the KGB had displayed some interest, including many who had been recruited. For example, one of his identi- fications led-to.the trial and a sentence of 25 years for US Arny~Sergeant Robert Lee Johnson. Nosenko also provided infor- mation on some 200 foreign nationals in 36 countries in whom the KGB had taken an active ‘interest, and the friendly foreign “governments with which we shared this informaticn were able to neutralize a number of important KGB agents as a result. For example, the British were able on the basis of Nosenko's infor- mation to identify William John Vassall, a high Admiralty official, as a KGB agent and sentence him to 18-years. Lane aah ca PSA