Yuri Nosenko

Yuri Nosenko    (spook, defector)
Born	Юрий Иванович Носенко October 30, 1927 Nikolaev, Ukrainian SSR (now, Mykolaiv, Ukraine
Died	August 23, 2008 (Age 80)
Nationality	US (Born: Soviet)
Victim of	LSD
Soviet KGB defector who ended up being tortured in secret CIA prison.

Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko was a KGB officer who defected to the United States in 1964. Controversy arose in the CIA over whether he was a bona fide defector and he was held in detention for over three years before he was finally accepted as a legitimate defector by the CIA. After his release, he became an American citizen, working as a consultant and trainer for the CIA.

KGB career

Nosenko was born in Nikolaev, Ukrainian SSR (now Mykolaiv, Ukraine). His father, Ivan Nosenko, was USSR Minister of Shipbuilding from 1939 until his death in 1956. During the Second World War, Nosenko attended naval preparatory school, intending on a career in shipbuilding, like his father. After the war, he attended the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), graduating in 1950. On graduation he served in Naval Intelligence until he transferred to the KGB in 1953. In the KGB, he worked primarily in the Second Chief Directorate, which was responsible for internal security.

Nosenko became deputy chief of the Seventh Department of the KGB. His main responsibility was the recruitment of foreign spies. In 1961 Nosenko was a member of the Soviet delegation to disarmament talks in Geneva. While in the city he was robbed of $200 by a prostitute. In an attempt to repay the money he approached a US official he knew to sell secrets. Nosenko was put into contact with Tennant H. Bagley, a member of the CIA. He revealed that he served in the Far East and specialized in the recruitment of tourists in Tokyo and other cities. Nosenko also told Bagley about listening devices at the US embassy in Moscow, and confirmed the identities of British Admiralty clerk John Vassall, the Canadian ambassador John Watkins and the CIA agent Edward Ellis Smith, all compromised in KGB "honeytrap" stings".

Then, at a meeting set up in 1964 he unexpectedly claimed that he had been discovered by the KGB and needed to defect immediately. Nosenko claimed that the Geneva KGB residency had received a cable recalling him to Moscow and he was fearful that he had been found out. NSA was later, but not at the time, able to determine that no such cable had been sent, and Nosenko subsequently admitted making this up to persuade the CIA to accept his defection, which the CIA did.

Defection and secret torture prison

The below passage is taken verbatim from the declassified CIA document referencing Nosenko's defection and subsequent treatment.

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 safehouse in Clinton, 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 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 remarried 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."

Nosenko has later said he was tortured and even at one point, he said during interrogation, he was given LSD, and it almost killed him. The guards revived him by dragging him into the shower and alternating the water between hot and cold

Soviet Military Power Conference

On March 1, 1969, Nosenko was formally acknowledged to be a genuine defector, and released, with $80,000 worth of financial compensation from the CIA. He was also provided with a new identity to live out his life in the South of the US.

Scott Ritter told of an event with Nosenko in 1985, at the Soviet Military Power Conference, held at the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington. Since 1981, the DIA had been publishing an annual booklet with the same title:

“The highlight of the event came when we entered an auditorium and saw a man onstage wearing a wig, a fake beard and mustache, and makeup designed to alter the angles of his face — either for his own protection or to heighten the Reagan-era theatrics, we couldn’t be sure. He was introduced as Yuri Nosenko, a defector from the KGB. Nosenko proceeded to regale us with tales of the wicked and bellicose Soviet Union, whose details coincidentally matched almost every talking point in the latest edition of Soviet Military Power. This was exciting stuff. For the better part of a week, we had been the recipients of dull presentations from DIA staff. Now we were listening to an actual acolyte of evil, whose indictment included not only the military elite but also the common people, and we soaked it up.
Nosenko, in other words, had been dead wrong....I should have been even more skeptical about my own government’s motivations for showcasing Nosenko.”
Scott Ritter (2017) 

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