Nosenko, under interrogation, fell into a trance-like state and mumbled something strange to himself

The following is an excerpt from Tennent H. Bagley’s 2007 book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games.

Background:

False-defector-in-place-in-Geneva-in-June-1962 / rogue-physical-defector-to-the-US-in February-1964 Yuri Nosenko, who has not been cooperating with the CIA, has just returned to Washington from his requested two-week vacation in Hawaii.

My comments are in brackets.

. . . . . . .

[In April 1964] the [CIA] car [Nosenko was riding in] entered the driveway of a secluded house surrounded by large woody grounds in a Maryland suburb of Washington. In one room, a long table and chairs had been set up with the polygraph apparatus standing at one side of the table. A bedroom in the attic stood ready to house Nosenko between questioning sessions. The polygraph apparatus, as is well known, tests physiological reactions to questions: breathing, sweating of palms, and blood pressure and heartbeat. The subject faces away from the operator who asks the questions and observes the reactions as recorded by a needle on a revolving roll of graph paper. A qualified CIA operator previously unacquainted with Nosenko's case was assigned to the job. After we explained our points of doubt, he devised the questions that would best test them by permitting a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Contrary to some movies and TV shows, the machine does not measure the truth of discussion type answers. To the three pieces of test equipment normally strapped onto the subject we added a fourth that we told Nosenko would measure his “brain waves.” If, like so many false refugees the KGB sent to the West, he had been trained to beat the machine, this additional equipment might increase his apprehension and reveal his true reactions. The polygraph examiner concluded that Nosenko was in fact lying. He reacted suspiciously when asked whether he intended to deceive the Americans, whether the KGB had sent him, and whether he was still under Soviet control. A particularly strong “lie” reaction came when he was asked, “Did you tell us the truth about Lee Harvey Oswald?” What mattered to us was not the validity of the measurements, the interpretation of which was always subject to question, but how Nosenko, rocked by our accusations, then explained the contradictions and anomalies. Nosenko was left alone while the test results were examined and discussed in another room. After a long break, I entered with an officer of the section and expressed my shock and disappointment to find that he had lied.

“I never lied!”

“You have lied, and this time you've put us on the spot. This test was an official requirement. Now your whole position in this country is in doubt. We'll have to go over these problems one by one. We'll stay here until we straighten them out.”

“OK, I'll prove that I've been telling only the truth.”

He was led off by guards to the prepared bedroom, a bare cell-like attic room, where they had him change into an army fatigue uniform to underline the seriousness of his situation. They led him back to a chair in front of the long table where I sat with Serge, a Russian-speaking member of the section. We launched into some of the sticking points in this story. To our consternation, he couldn't explain any of the contradictions. He would either mechanically repeat earlier versions or, when we gave him the facts that showed them to be false or impossible, he would improvise new versions so unlikely -- sometimes so absurd -- that we could hardly imagine them to occur to an experienced KGB officer.

“Tell me why Kovshuk went to the US.”

“I told you. To restore contact with Andrey.” [Note: “Andrey” was former cypher machine mechanic at the U.S. Embassy Army Sergeant Dayle W. Smith, who had been honey-trapped and recruited in 1953 but who had no access to classified information (or critical cypher machine parts) and therefore was of no use to the KGB.]

“How long did he stay?”

“I don't remember, maybe a week.” What difference does it make?”

“It makes this difference. He stayed ten months [of an ostensible two-year diplomatic gig]. And he didn't contact Andrey for more than nine months. What was he doing all that time?” [Answer: Meeting with a “mole” in D.C. movie houses regarding CIA’s spy, GRU Lt. Col. Pyotr Popov]

Nosenko looked stunned. He evidently had no idea that Kovshuk [his ostensible boss at KGB headquarters] had been gone for so long. He fell silent, then brightened.

“Now I remember. He couldn't find Andrey and they had to search for him.”

This thoughtless improvisation hardly merited comment. The interviewer asked Nosenko the unanswerable question why, if the KGB had not known where Andey was, did they send a key Moscow supervisor to Washington to hunt for him, and under a diplomatic cover holding him within a 25-mile-radius? And what took so long, since (as was true) Andrey’s name and address were listed in the Washington area phone book at the time?

Nosenko hunkered down and refused to say more.

Nosenko insisted that no one from the KGB had even talked to Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia, much less used him as an agent. Nothing in this interrogation got him to budge an inch from his wholly unbelievable story about President Kennedy's assassin. The KGB must have implanted a holy fear when instructing him to tell (and stick to) this tale. It was probably their need to deliver this message that caused the Soviets to have Nosenko physically defect to the West changing, the whole basis of an operation that originally had entirely different aims. Nosenko stuck to his tale, then and forever, to the uniform incredulity of his hearers.

“Tell us about KGB relations with the president of Finland.”

“I know nothing about that. Why should I?”

“Remember,” I told him, “you asked me whether Golitsyn had told us about him. What were you referring to? What might Golitsyn have told us?”

“I never heard anything, ever, about this. I could never have asked any such question.”

“You recently told about tailing Embassy security guard John Abidian and observing him setting up a dead drop on Pushkin Street.”

“Yes, we staked out the place but no one came. I was getting the reports week after week.”

“When was that?”

“I remember exactly. At the end of 1960.”

“And you left the American Embassy section at the very end of 1961?”

“Yes, I've told you that.”

“But in 1962 you were telling us about your systematic coverage of a Abidian. Why didn't you tell us then about seeing him set up a dead drop?”

Nosenko looked blank, speechless.

We resumed. “Are you absolutely sure of the date?”

“Absolutely.”

“But you're wrong, and so is your story. Abidian went to that drop at the end of 1961, not 1960. How could you be getting the stakeout reports if you were no longer in the American Embassy Section?”

“That's not true. I know it was 1960.”

“No. We know. It was our dead drop.”

Nosenko was flabbergasted. He fell into a solemn silence.

“Your job was to watch over John Abidian. Would you know of any trips he took outside Moscow?”

“Of course. We had him under full-time surveillance. Any travel by Embassy staff was reported in advance to us. In the case of Abidian, and the code clerks, I would be told and we would prepare coverage where they were going.”

“Did Abidian make any trips outside Moscow?”

“None.”

“Think hard.”

“Of course I would have to know.”

“He made a very big trip. Where did he go?”

“He did not travel.”

“Not only did he travel, but he traveled to the land of the Armenian ancestors, to Armenia itself.”

“Impossible. That would be big news to us. It would offer opportunities.”

Silence. Nosenko, morose, remained sunken in thought. We waited. Suddenly we heard him muttering, as if talking to himself.

“If I admit I wasn't watching Abidian, then I'd have to admit I'm not George [i.e.,Yuri], that I wasn't born in Nikolayev, and that I’m not married.”

That strange sentence, recorded on tape, might have been nothing more than rhetoric, but to all evidence Nosenko was not serving in the American Embassy Section and the course was not watching Abidian. Such were the contradictions in his life story and his seeming forgetfulness of his wife and children that we doubted he was telling the truth about them. His odd reaction suggested that now, for some reason, we had struck a chord that might impel him to confess.

The silence continued. Finally, perceptibly, he shook himself out of his near-trance and refused to answer any more questions. He tucked himself into a sort of crouch on his chair, his face closed and grim.