37 Facts About Yuri Nosenko

Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko was a putative KGB officer who allegedly defected to the United States in 1964.

Strong representations were made to the Director by this Office, the Office of General Counsel, and the Legislative Liaison Counsel, and on 27 October 1967, the responsibility for Yuri Nosenko's further handling was transferred to [possible KGB "mole" Bruce Solie in] the Office of Security under the direction of the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, then Admiral Rufus Taylor.

Yuri Nosenko was moved to a comfortable safehouse in the Washington area and was interviewed under friendly, sympathetic conditions by his Security [Office] Case Officer, Mr Solie, for more than a year.

Yuri Nosenko has proven to be the most 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] Yuri Nosenko currently is living under an alias; secured a divorce from his Russian wife and remarried an American citizen.

Yuri Nosenko further asserted that none of the leads Nosenko provided to the CIA identified Soviet assets who had current access to NATO governmental secrets, were actively cooperating with Soviet intelligence at the time, and had previously been unsuspected by Western counterintelligence agencies.

In late May 1962, Yuri Nosenko contacted the CIA in Geneva, Switzerland, about two months after accompanying an arms-control delegation to the city as its ostensible security officer.

Yuri Nosenko met one-on-one with Bagley at a Geneva safe house and offered his services to the CIA in exchange for approximately $250 worth of Swiss francs.

Yuri Nosenko explained that he had spent the money on "wine, women, and song" and needed to replenish it, as it was an unauthorized expenditure of KGB funds that he would soon have to account for with his superiors.

Yuri Nosenko told Bagley that he was a major in the KGB's Second Chief Directorate.

Yuri Nosenko claimed that until recently, he had served as the deputy chief of the KGB department targeting the American Embassy in Moscow and was now the head of the department responsible for monitoring and attempting to recruit American and British tourists in the USSR.

Yuri Nosenko provided some information that could only have been known by someone connected to the KGB, and Bagley assured him that he would receive the requested money at their next meeting.

Yuri Nosenko volunteered that he did not want to leave his wife and two daughters behind in Moscow and, therefore, would never defect to the West.

Yuri Nosenko, who spoke English, met one-on-one with Bagley, who understood Russian, during their first meeting.

Yuri Nosenko claimed that an American diplomat, George Winters, had been observed mailing a letter to Popov, leading to his arrest.

In late January 1964, two months after the assassination of President John F Kennedy by a former Marine who had lived in the USSR for two and a half years, Nosenko accompanied the delegation to Geneva and reestablished contact with Bagley and Kisevalter.

Yuri Nosenko shocked them by claiming that he had been the case officer for the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, during Oswald's time in the Soviet Union.

Yuri Nosenko interpreted this as a sign that the Kremlin had discovered his espionage for the CIA.

Yuri Nosenko eventually admitted that he had fabricated the story to persuade the CIA to accept his request to defect to the United States.

However, in 1978, Yuri Nosenko testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, though the committee members ultimately found him to be unreliable.

Additionally, Anatoliy Golitsyn had warned that the KGB would soon send someone like Yuri Nosenko to discredit him.

Yuri Nosenko realized that everything Nosenko had told Kisevalter and himself in Geneva about specific Soviet penetrations of NATO intelligence services either contradicted or minimized what Golitsyn had already revealed to Angleton.

About a month after Yuri Nosenko arrived in the US, Bagley took him on a two-week vacation to Hawaii.

The situation became even more complicated when a KGB informant to the FBI's New York City field office, Aleksei Kulak confirmed that Yuri Nosenko was a lieutenant colonel.

At that point, the Yuri Nosenko issue evolved into an inter-service confrontation.

The results of the 1964 and 1966 exams suggested that Yuri Nosenko was lying, while the 1968 exam seemed to indicate that he was telling the truth.

Some evidence against Yuri Nosenko came from the analysis of his file by an earlier KGB defector, Peter Deriabin, who had defected to the US in 1954.

Years after the incident, Deriabin still believed Yuri Nosenko was a KGB plant.

The question of whether Yuri Nosenko was a KGB plant remains controversial.

Ever since Bagley read Golitsyn's file at CIA headquarters in mid-June 1962, he suspected that Yuri Nosenko was a false defector, and he was pleased to have his suspicions confirmed by Kondrashev.

On March 1,1969, Yuri Nosenko was formally acknowledged as a genuine defector and released, with $80,000 in financial compensation from the CIA.

Yuri Nosenko was provided with a new identity to live out his life in the southern United States.

The excessively harsh treatment of Mr Yuri Nosenko went beyond the bounds of propriety or good judgment.

The movie depicted the intense debate over whether Yuri Nosenko was a true defector.

Furthermore, Yuri Nosenko had told Bagley and Kisevalter in 1962 that he had transferred out of the American Embassy section of the KGB at the end of 1961, which, if true, would have meant he no longer had access to the reports on the dead-drop monitoring that would have been generated after that time.

Yuri Nosenko claimed in 1964 to have read these reports.

Bagley acknowledged that Yuri Nosenko did drink a lot in the safe house but insisted that he never appeared to be inebriated.

Bagley points out in his book Spy Wars that Yuri Nosenko never appeared to be drunk.