MEETING WITH HSCA STAFFER KEN KLINE, 10 MAY 1978.
Originator: CIA
From: CIA
To: MEMO FOR THE RECORD, CIA
Document date: 05/12/1978
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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2022 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

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USE ONLY

•CONFIDENTIAL

SECRET

ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET

ASCA

SUBC Meeting with House Select Committee on Assassinations Staffer

Ken Kline, 10 May 1978

FROM:

EXTENSION

NO.

03

Edmund L. Andrews]

DATE

Chief, SE/OR/I

TO: (Officer designation, room number, and

DATE

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12 May 1978

COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whor

to whom.

Draw a line across column after each comment.

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12 MAY 1978

C/SE/ORP.

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AC/C&R Staff

Office

of Legislative Council

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12 May 1978

MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD:

FROM

03

Edmund L. Andrews

Chief,

SE/OR/I

SUBJECT: Meeting with House Select Committee on Assassinations

Staffer Ken Kline, 10 May 1978

1.

This meeting was in response to Mr. Kline's request

to Ben Pepper on 26 April 1978 for a briefing on KGB Second

Chief Directorate Operations against Americans to give him a

context in which to place both Nosenko's reporting and Oswald's

the soviet theon

sojourn in the Soviet Union.

The meeting lasted approximately

one hour. No one other than Mr. Kline and I was present.

2.

At the outset, I gave Mr. Kline a brief presentation

on the functions and organization of the KGB, showing where

Nosenko fit in and identifying the various operational elements

of both the First and Second Chief Directorates which are in-

volved in operations against the United states.

I also ex-

plained the relationship of the various Republic and Regional

KGB's, e.g., the Belorussian KGB in Minsk, to the All-Union KGB

and gave a

short rundown on KGB m.o. against toreign tourists.

I emphasized that most of this information came from Nosenko,

but that bits and pieces acquired from subsequent sources by

and large confirmed his information.

3.

Mr. Kline asked my comments on a number of points:

a.

He asked if the KGB "talked to" all American

tourists and I replied they did not, but that any Ameri-

can expressing

whether he was of any operational or positive intelli-

gence

I said I could provide no detailed

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information on KGB handling of American defectors, re-

to CI Staff, which I understood was assembling

files

for him on American re-defectors, and the FBI, which

would

most certainly have interviewed any re-defectors.

b.

Mr. Kline asked how the KGB, if it wanted to con-

vince

us, truthfully or not, that Oswald was not a Soviet

agent would prepare an operation to do this.

I said that

any answer on

we have no data base in this regara.

though much has

formation operations, there was no documented case in

the past 20 years or

so in which the KGB was known to

have used a controlled agent for the purpose of passing

information designed to deceive us on a substantive

issue, as opposed to simply convincing us of the bona

fides of a false defector dispatched for espionage pur-

poses.

He asked if there had been many such false de-

fectors,

to which I replied there had been some who had

the mission of

attaching themselves in some fashion to

the U.S. Intelligence Services, but none of these was

or claimed to be a KGB officer.

The purpose of these

operations, all of which took place quite a number of

years ago, was penetration of U.S. Intelligence, not

strategic

or political deception.

He inquired as to whether anyone other than

Nosenko, or someone in roughly the same position, would

have been in a position effectively to convince us that

Oswald was not a Soviet agent.

I conceded that it would

take a KGB officer to make a credible negative state-

him in a position to review Oswald's KGB file, was

obviously one of the very few who could make an authori-

tative statement based on first hand knowledge.

I also

noted, however, that if Oswald had been recruited and

trained for so

sensitive a mission as assassinating the

resident of the United States,

such an operation would

ave been authorized at highest levels of the Soviet

government, would have been kept compartmented to the

most

extreme degree, and would not have been run by the

Foreign Tourist Department. Nosenko almost certainly

would have had no knowledge of it.

d. Mr. Kline asked me how I would go about setting

up an operation designed to convince the U.S. that

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Oswald was not a Soviet agent.

I said that this, again,

vas highly speculative and would not necessarily have

any relation to what the KGB would do. I did say, how-

ever, that one of the things I would take into consider-

stion was keeping the cost of the operation, in terms

of the counterintelligence information which would have

to be divulged to establish the agent's credibility,

Although it might be necessary

to use an intelligence officer who could have plausible

iccess to such information, I would not use an intelli-

ence officer who acknowledged having been deeply in-

volved in operations against the American target over a

period of ten years.

Neither would I have such an of-

ficer defect.

It would be much simpler and less costly

in the long

run to have an officer stationed abroad

volunteer his services, work in place for a short time

uring which he could pass the desired disinformation,

und then return on plausible

grounds to the USSR, never

to be seen abroad again.

While an officer stationed

abroad probably could

not claim, as Nosenko ala,

to have

personally seen Oswald's file, it would not be difficult

to construct a plausible

story as to how he obtained this

information (from friends in SCD, etc.) as to make his

information convincing.

e.

As to whether the KGB would be likely to recruit

an individual like Oswald, I said I rather doubted it.

Any re-defector

is automatically suspect to scrutiny by

his own counterintelligence service and most certainly

will never be allowed in a position involving access to

sensitive information.

to assassinate the president seemed even more implausible,

given the man's obvious personal weaknesses and insta-

sility and the fact that, as a re-defector,

certainly (I would have assumed) be on the list of

persons to be watched by those with responsibility for

the President's security.

The fact that this did not

occur in Oswald's case does not alter the fact that,

if the

KGB were looking for someone to perform this

task

it would probably seek someone with the lowest

profile possible rather than an individual who could be

expected to attract security attention.

I noted that

the KGB had conducted some assassinations in the post-

war years, but these had all been carried out by Soviet,

not foreign, agents, and had been directed against former

Soviet citizens.

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f.

With regard to KGB training facilities in Minsk,

I stated that the KGB has schools for training internal

counterintelligence officers in a number of provincial

cities,

including Minsk, but these are for staff officers

assigned to duty in these areas and not for agents being

dispatched abroad.

Such agent training is conducted on a

tutorial basis in safehouses and no foreign KGB agent would

ever be allowed to enter a KGB official installation.

Kline suggested that Oswald was sent to Minsk so that he

totally different nature from that given to an agent tor

dispatch abroad and this connection

seemed unlikely.

swald could have been trained in Minsk, or, for that

matter, anywhere in the Soviet Union, but I

did not

believe that the

presence of a KGB training facility

in Minsk relates to this one way or the other.

Mr. Kline raised a number of questions relative

to the general question of KGB competen su

e.g., whether

drilled, if dispatched, would have been sufficiently

on questions he would be asked as to establish

a false legend concerning himself

and not be tripped up

by questions from persons such as Deryabin. I said that

although KGB competence varies widely,

their counterintel-

ligence capabilities are formidable and, in an important

case, they could not comment on how well®

are capable of a very high degree of sophisti-

cation.

they would

a man to live a false legend corresponding to

Nosenko's story, but pointed out that clairvoyance as

to what questions will be put, etc., exists only in

The KGB would, however, carefully study

previous detections, etc.,

ensure that information supplied would fit in with what

earlier defectors are assumed to have reported.

3.

At the conclusion of our meeting, Mr. Kline said that

some of my comments had been helpful. He made no specific

requests for further information, but said he might contact

me if any should occur to him later

Edmund L. Andrews

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12 May 1978

Select Committee

(Memo for the Recor Assassinations

is starter et kiwith to say

1978, continued)

Distribution:

Orig - Acting Office of Legislative Council

Coordination and Review Staff,

1 - 0/SA/DO/0 - Mr. Shepanek

- C/CI via DC/CI

- C/SE/OR/I

- C/SE

- C/SE/ORP

4/28504

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