Detention of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko

Active: 1964 to 1969

Declassified

Editorial summary

On February 4, 1964, a Soviet intelligence officer named Yuri Nosenko walked into the American embassy in Geneva and asked to defect. He had information, he said, about the recently assassinated President Kennedy: the KGB had taken a hard look at Lee Harvey Oswald during Oswald's years in the Soviet Union, decided he was unstable, and declined to recruit him. The Soviets had nothing to do with the killing in Dallas.

The CIA's counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, did not believe him. Angleton had spent two decades hunting Soviet penetrations of the agency, and he was convinced that Nosenko was a planted asset sent to mislead American investigators about Soviet involvement in Kennedy's death. Two months after Nosenko's arrival in the United States, Angleton's staff classified him a Soviet provocation and recommended he be held and interrogated until he confessed.

What followed lasted nearly five years. Nosenko was first confined at a safe house in Maryland, then moved to a purpose-built cell at Camp Peary, the CIA's training facility in Virginia known as the Farm. He was held in isolation, deprived of reading material, given inadequate food, subjected to repeated polygraph examinations, and questioned for hours at a stretch. He spent 1,277 days in conditions the agency itself later described as harsh. There was no charge, no lawyer, no review by any court.

In 1968, a new internal CIA team reviewed the case and concluded that Nosenko was a genuine defector and his information about Oswald was honest. He was released into a CIA pension, given a new identity, and put on contract as a consultant. He lived under government protection in the American South until his death in 2008.

The Nosenko case did not involve foreign nationals or wartime emergency. It was the indefinite detention of a defector who had asked the United States for asylum, carried out by a civilian intelligence agency on American soil.

Editorial summary by govweird, grounded in the declassified record and the Church Committee public hearings.

Originating agency

Central Intelligence Agency

Activity period

1964 to 1969

Source document

CIA Family Jewels (702 pp.)

Public release

June 25, 2007

Originating directive

Schlesinger memo, May 1973

Source page range

p. 5, pp. 23 to 24, p. 531

Topics

Government Conspiracies JFK Assassination Records

Original document, embedded

The full 702-page Family Jewels document is hosted by govweird. The embedded viewer above is anchored to the relevant pages (p. 5, pp. 23 to 24, p. 531); scroll within the frame to browse adjacent material. Mirror copies are at the National Security Archive and the CIA reading room.

Transcript (OCR)

Show the OCR-extracted text from the source pages

--- PAGE 5 --- MORI DocID: 1451843 SECRET EYES ONLY Attachment A "FAMILY JEWELS" 1. [REDACTED] 2. Johnny Roselli -- The use of a member of the Mafia in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. 3. Project MOCKINGBIRD -- During the period from 12 March 1963 to 15 June 1963, this Office installed telephone taps on two Washington- based newsmen who were suspected of disclosing classified information obtained from a variety of governmental and congressional sources. 4. Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko -- A KGB defector who from the period 13 August 1965 to 27 October 1967 was confined in a specially constructed "jail" at [REDACTED]. He was literally confined in a cell behind bars with nothing but a cot in it for this period. 5. Various Surveillance and Support Activities -- These are briefly summarized and range from the surveillance of newsmen to the provision of specialized support of local police officials in the Metropolitan area. I believe that each one is self-explanatory and, therefore, no further comment is needed here. 6. Equipment Support to Local Police -- Attached is a list provided me by the Director of Logistics (he will simply report these items in his report) which we have provided local police in the Metropolitan D.C. area over the past four or five years on indefinite loan. During the period when the Agency's installations in this area appeared to be a target of dissident elements SECRET 00005 EYES ONLY [vision-ocr] --- PAGE 23 --- MORI DocID: 1451843 SECRET EYES ONLY SUBJECT: Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko, an officer of the KGB, defected to a representative of this Agency in Geneva, Switzerland, on 4 February 1964. The responsibility for his exploitation was assigned to the then SR Division of the Clandestine Service and he was brought to this country on 12 February 1964. After initial interrogation by representatives of the SR Division, he was moved to a safe- house in Ulrich, Maryland, from 4 April 1964 where he was confined and interrogated until 13 August 1965 when he was moved to a specially constructed "jail" in a remote wooded area at [REDACTED]. The SR Division was convinced that he was a dispatched agent but even after a long period of hostile interrogation was unable to prove their contention and he was confined at [REDACTED] in an effort to convince him to "confess." This Office together with the Office of General Counsel became increasingly concerned with the illegality of the Agency's position in handling a defector under these conditions for such a long period of time. Strong representations were made to the Director (Mr. Helms) by this Office, the Office of General Counsel, and the Legislative Liaison Counsel, and on 27 October 1967, the responsibility for Nosenko's further handling was transferred to the Office of Security under the direction of the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, then Admiral Rufus Taylor. Nosenko was moved to a comfortable safehouse in the Washington area and was interviewed under friendly, sympathetic conditions by his Security Case Officer, Mr. Bruce Solie, for more than a year. It soon became apparent that Nosenko was bona fide and he was moved to more comfortable surroundings with considerable freedom of independent movement and has continued to cooperate fully with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and this Office since that time. He has proven to be the most 00023 SECRET EYES ONLY [vision-ocr] --- PAGE 24 --- MORI DocID: 1451843 SECRET EYES ONLY valuable and economical defector this Agency has ever had and leads which were ignored by the SR Division were explored and have resulted in the arrest and prosecution [REDACTED] He currently is living under an alias; secured a divorce from his Russian wife and married an American citizen. He is happy, relaxed, and appreciative of the treatment accorded him and states "While I regret my three years of incarceration, I have no bitterness and now understand how it could happen." 2 00024 SECRET EYES ONLY [vision-ocr] --- PAGE 531 --- MORI DocID: 1451843 - 2 - 6. As a means of sharing more fully our operational experience we have invited three FBI officers to be students in our [REDACTED] Course from 14 to 25 May 1973. 7. The Soviet defector Yuriy NOSENKO was confined at a CIA facility from April 1964 to September 1967 while efforts were being made to establish whether he was a bona fide defector. Although his present attitude toward the Agency is quite satisfactory, the possibility exists that the press could cause undesirable publicity if it were to uncover the story. [REDACTED] David H. Blee Chief Soviet Bloc Division 00522 [vision-ocr]

Extracted by haiku-vision. Carbon-copy typewriter text from 1973 is imperfect; words may be misread. Always cross-check against the embedded image above.