This unclassified 1978 memo from the Director of the CIA to all CIA employees is about KGB defector Yuri Nosenko, who had defected to the United States in 1964.

Notes from the Director, No. 30
21 September 1978

NOSENKO

As you are aware from the press accounts, on 15 September 1978, John Hart, a retired senior CIA officer, testified in open session before the House Select Committee on Assassinations regarding the credibility of Yuriy Nosenko, a former officer in the internal operations section of the KGB. Mr. Hart was chosen to be the Agency spokesman in response to a request for testimony by the Committee because he had studied the Nosenko case exhaustively and prepared a careful report on its principal ramifications.

Mr. Nosenko first supplied information to CIA in 1962 and finally defected to the US in 1964. Between these dates, the senior CIA officers responsible for the case had concluded that Mr. Nosenko had defected under KGB orders to give information which would confound and confuse our analysis of Soviet intelligence operations. Among the statements he made was the definite assertion that Lee Harvey Oswald had never been utilized by Soviet intelligence.

When Mr. Nosenko refused to admit that he had been dispatched by the KGB, he was subjected to hostile interrogation and eventually held in extremely strict solitary confinement for a period of over three years. He did not materially change his story during this long period, and the then DCI ordered a new look to be taken at his case by an entirely new team. It was eventually determined that he had defected of his own free will, had not sought to deceive us and had indeed supplied very valuable intelligence information to the US Government. The hypothesis which had led to the original decision that he was misleading us was found to have been based on inadequate evidence.

The excessively harsh treatment of Mr. Nosenko went beyond the bounds of propriety or good judgment. At my request, Mr. Hart has discussed this case with many senior officers to make certain that its history will not again be repeated. The other main lesson to be learned is that although counterintelligence analysis necessarily involves the making of hypotheses, we must at all times treat them as what they are, and not act on them until they have been objectively tested in an impartial manner. In fairness. I should note that even among the few CIA officers aware of the Nosenko case at the time, there was always a minority who disagreed with the prevailing judgment, and eventually their analysis prevailed. The findings of the Warren Commission inquiry into President Kennedy's death were not, affected by the doubts CIA then held regarding Mr. Nosenko's credibility. Today Mr. Nosenko is a well adjusted American citizen utilized as a consultant by CIA and is making a valuable contribution to our mission.

More about the Yuri Nosenko Case:

Yuri Nosenko Speech

A speech given by KGB defector Yuri Nosenko in December 1998. Each part is about 15 minutes and in .mp3 format. Nosenko is introduced in Part 1 by Dr. Cleveland Cram, a senior CIA officer who wrote the CIA's official internal classified history of the Counterintelligence Staff under James Angleton (see below for more info on this 12-volume report).

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Nosenko Bona Fides

October 1968 CIA Office of Security report by Bruce Solie examining Nosenko's bona fides and concluding Nosenko is a true defector and not a "false" defector sent by the KGB. This report was declassified in 1994.

Part 1 [.pdf] | Part 2 [.pdf] | Part 3 [.pdf]

Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton - CIA's Master Spy Hunter by Tom Mangold

Mangold interview 208 retired CIA officers for this book. This book, and the the below book by David Wise, are the best and most highly recommended books to read about the Angleton era. Required reading.

1991 NYT review of book

Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA by David Wise

Wise interview 200 people, mostly CIA and conducted over 650 interviews over two years. From the book: "The 'war of defectors,' the conflict over Golitisin and Nosenko, a central event of the mole hunt, split the Agency into two camps, creating scars that had yet to heal decades later."

Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents by John C. Martin

From the book: Angleton's mole hunt "was the single most corrosive episode in the CIA's history."

Authors Mangold, Wise and Martin all note in their books that the retired CIA officers they interviewed were all very pro-CIA. As Tom Mangold writes, "I encountered a group of decent and conscientious former CIA officers who felt that with Angleton's death, the time was now opportune to reveal the truths of his controversial years in power. These men and women are not politically motivated, nor frustrated or bitter failures. To the contrary, each is ferociously pro-CIA, and most achieve high office, retiring with honor and dignity.....It is their love for the Agency's mission that helped them conclude individually to give me first their trust and then their knowledge."

From "The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB" (2003) by ret. senior CIA Case Officer Milt Bearden and James Risen: "Angleton was certain that the Soviets had penetrated the CIA and launched a mole hunt that lasted for years, ruining one career after another.....The end result of these mind games was virtual paralysis in the CIA's operations against the Soviet Union throughout much of the 1960s.....[Because of Angleton's 'sick-think' theories] the CIA had been turning away one genuine volunteer in Moscow after another and the result was that the Agency had probably missed out on a gold mine of secrets from citizens of the Soviet empire who had sought to change sides."

"The negative effect of the Golitsyn era on our Soviet operational management was in fact devastating--the inevitable culmination of a long-standing belief that CIA could not have a bona fide Soviet operation. Potential cases were turned down, ongoing operations were judged to be deception operations (including Penkovsky), and defectors who gave information supporting Nosenko were judged to have been dispatched by the KGB."--Len McCoy, CIA officer

Reviews of "Spy Wars" (2007) by Pete Bagley

Bagley was part of the CIA's Counterintelligence Staff under James Angleton and wrongly believes Yuri Nosenko was and is a false defector.

Reviewed by Leonard McCoy, retired CIA Soviet Division Reports Officer

Podcast Book Review of book:

Counterintelligence and intelligence experts David Major (ret FBI), Jack Platt (ret CIA) and Oleg Kalugin (ret KGB) review the 2007 book "Spy Wars" by Pete Bagley. Major, Platt and Kalugin discuss their opinions of the book and its harmful effects to today's counterintelligence. Book Review (.mp3)

The US Intelligence Community has come a long way in re-valuing, supporting and believing in counterintelligence since the negative reaction against the type of counterintelligence practiced by Angleton, Bagley and a few others of that era. How? By learning about this era, how damaging it was to people and operations, and essentially how NOT to do counterintelligence. Bagley's "sick-think" book does a tremendous amount of harm to the Intelligence Community.

James Jesus Angleton: The Kremlin's Favorite Spook by former KGB Major Yuri Shvets

....."Take it easy, guys," smiled the colonel. Angleton wasn't really our agent. He was, the colonel explained, "our useful idiot." But given his position and his obsessive hunt for moles in the CIA, he was more valuable to us than a whole army of real agents."

Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature, 1977-1992 by Dr. Cleveland Cram, a CIA Chief of Station, who wrote the official internal classified CIA report on the history of the CIA's Counterintelligence Staff under Angleton. The report filled twelve volumes, each 300 to 400 pages long. From Tom Mangold's "Cold Warrior" book about this report:

"Cram's conclusions were that the Angleton years (1954-1974) had a 'very detrimental' effect on the CIA. For the first eight years, Angleton had generally run the Counterintelligence Staff effectively. But, from 1962 on (after the arrival of Golitsyn), Cram found that there was no real counterintelligence. He judged that the search for evidence of the KGB's 'Monster Plot' had brought the CIA's collection of counterintelligence to a halt. He also stressed that Soviet operations had effectively ended after 1963, when Pete Bagley added his weight and authority to that of the Fundamentalists. The recruitment of Soviet agents and defectors had ceased because of the neurosis of the hunters and the belief that no Soviet defector or agent could be a bona fide defector. Cram further judged that Angleton's leadership had severely hurt CIA morale and had seriously damaged US intelligence liaison in Britain, France, Norway and Canada. He found that even more damage had been caused by the willful turning away of Soviet intelligence defectors and the ditching of their material. Inside the copious twelve volumes, the Cram Report contained the full and shocking indictment of a twenty-year period, with tragic case-by-case revelations scrupulously documented."

Targeted by the CIA: An Intelligence Professional Speaks Out on the Scandal that Turned the CIA Upside Down

by S. Peter Karlow. CIA officer Karlow was a victim of Angleton's mole hunt.

The CIA's Russians by retired CIA officer John Hart. One of the defectors Hart focuses on is Nosenko.

CIA Wife: One Woman's Life Inside the CIA by Florence Garbler, wife of CIA Chief of Station Paul Garbler who was caught up in Angleton's molehunt

HONETOL

Aldrich "Rick" Ames, a CIA spy for the Soviets/Russians, spent time in the Counterintelligence Center's Analysis Group and had read the "HONETOL" mole hunt files from the Angleton days. Ames knew the aversion the Agency had towards counterintelligence due to the "sick-think" Angleton period and had concluded the CIA wouldn't look for a real mole--himself and thought he was safe.

Another Angleton

Robert Hanssen (arrested in February 2001) was tasked by his handlers to identify another "Angleton". Why? See "James Jesus Angleton: The Kremlin's Favorite Spook" by former KGB Major Yuri Shvets.

Mole Relief Act

On 14 October 1980, Public Law 96-450 was signed, authorizing the CIA to pay CIA officers whose careers had been damaged by Angleton's mole hunt.

Learn more about the Nosenko case by attending the CI Centre's flagship course:

501 | An Overview of Critical Counterintelligence Issues

Listen to a podcast description of this course by CI Centre President David Major

This course focuses on the evolution of the legal, organizational and ethical aspects of counterintelligence and security over the past 100 years. It is designed to increase the number of personnel who have a broad and current understanding of the development of the counterintelligence discipline in the US.

We highlight the historical consequences of ignoring counterintelligence and the strategic importance of a robust national CI program.

We examine the period from 1916-1954, including intelligence collection by and US the response to the German IIIB during WWI, the enactment in 1917 of The Espionage Act, and Japanese and Nazi espionage before and during WWII.

A comprehensive examination is made of the nexus between communism and Soviet espionage during the period the USSR was our “ally.” We examine in-depth a number of the 235 spies exposed by VENONA, highlighting the deep penetration of the OSS, and later the impact on CIA/FBI relationships and the political and government response and lack of response to the truth of espionage.

We examine the ethical implications of doing it “wrong” with a detailed discussion of the Angleton era and its impact on the CIA covering the period 1954 to 1974.

A detailed analytical case study of the widely held myth of “The False Defector” and asset validation is included to challenge the student’s ability to evaluate the key concept that CI is the “art of the probable, not the art of the possible.”

The course includes a detailed examination of the CIA’s actions in the Ames case and concludes with a discussion of CI today. [5 days]

More information including course topics and feedback

Call the CI Centre at 703-642-7450 or 1-800-779-4007 to schedule a running of this course.