CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

James J. Angleton

The Golitsyn-Nosenko Debate

F - Z

The references included here overlap with materials relating both to Kim Philby and to KGB history and operations. For reviews and other comments on these items, see the appropriate subject files.

Yuri I. Nosenko died 23 August 2008 "under an assumed name in a Southern state, according to intelligence officials." Walter Pincus, "Yuri I. Nosenko, 81; KGB Agent Who Defected to the U.S.," Washington Post, 27 Aug. 2008, B5.

Golitsyn, Anatoliy. New Lies for Old: The Communist Strategy of Deception and Disinformation. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1984. London: Bodley Head, 1984.

Clark comment: Golitsyn defected from the KGB in 1961. According to Pforzheimer, the focus in this book is "on what [the author] thinks are major Soviet disinformation operations.... The book is more solid when [he] considers activities that are within his own KGB career span." While acknowledging that "some of Anatoliy Golitsyn's more controversial views ... border on the incredible," Milivojevic, I&NS 2.2, notes that, nonetheless, "Golitsyn is unusually qualified to analyse KGB Active Measures operations against the West." He provides "a masterly analysis of communist disinformation methods, Western vulnerability to such methods, and the lack of a Western counter-strategy."

Halpern, Samuel, and Hayden Peake. "Did Angleton Jail Nosenko?" International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 3, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 451-464.

The authors conclude that "Admiral Turner got it wrong" in the accusation that Angleton was responsible for the incarceration of Nosenko. That responsibility rests with SR Division, Dave Murphy, and others, but not Angleton.

In a personal interview in February 1998, Dave Murphy commented, "I wish Sam had talked to me before he wrote the article," and suggested that the article had failed to take all the facts into account.

Hart, John Limond. The CIA's Russians. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003.

In the "Foreword" (ix), William E. Colby noted that the author brought the approach of a "professional intelligence operator who also is a scholar" to this work. "[H]is depiction comes from many years of involvement in the recruitment, management, and sometimes even psychological counseling of real spies."

Peake, I&NS 19.2, finds that "[d]espite the relatively small sample of cases, Hart combines his experience and access to the case files to reach some first-order conclusions. They are important though not surprising." Seamon, Proceedings 129.8 (Aug. 2003), adds that the author spices his stories "with illuminating insights commendably free from any taint of professional jargon." Jonkers, AFIO WIN 20-03 (27 May 2003), calls this an "[o]utstanding book. Get a feel for what these spies were really like as human beings. Good, useful reading."

Focusing on Hart's handling of Yuri Nosenko and James J. Angleton, Evans, IJI&C 17.3 finds little to please in the book. Evans believes that an "unstated but blatant purpose of the book is to defend Nosenko.... A second, yet by no means secondary underlying purpose ... is to denigrate" Angleton. "Instead of helping the intelligence historian or the current case officer, Hart has transformed the CIA's Cold War operations into mere polemics."

Heuer, Richards J., Jr. "Nosenko: Five Paths to Judgment." Studies in Intelligence 31, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 71-101. In Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992, ed. H. Bradford Westerfield, 379-414. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. [Available as a 300 kb (vice 2.6 mb thanks to Kathrine M. Graham/NMSU) pdf file at: http://intellit.muskingum.edu/alpha_folder/H_folder/Heuer_on_NosenkoV1.pdf]

From Westerfield's headnote: The Angleton-Golitsin-Nosenko story "has been told many times -- but never, I think, as well as in this meticulous logical and empirical exercise."

Clark comment: Heuer goes beyond a review of the case, presenting "five criteria for making judgments about deception" and describing "how each was applied by different parties to the Nosenko controversy." He also draws conclusions from his discussion of the case. Heuer notes: "I remain firmly opposed to the view that the master plot was an irresponsible, paranoid fantasy. Given the information available at the time,... it would have been irresponsible not to have seriously considered this possibility. The mistake was not in pursuing the master plot theory, but in getting so locked into a position that one was unable to question basic assumptions or note the gradual accumulation of contrary evidence."

For the author (in comment to Clark 4/98), "The long-term value of this article is not what it says about Nosenko or Angleton, but the lessons about how bona fides analysis in general should be done."

Messer, W. Alan. "In Pursuit of the Squared Circle: The Nosenko Theories Revisited." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 26, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 457-452.

Whatever his stated purpose, the author clearly comes on the side of Tennent Bagley's Spy Wars (2007).

Murphy, David E.

1. "The Hunt for Sasha Is Over." CIRA Newsletter 25, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 11-15.

Materials in Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield (1999) identify "Sasha" as Aleksandr Grigoryevich Kopatzky, a Russian emigre who was recruited by the KGB in 1949. Murphy doubts the accuracy of Andrew's description of Kopatzky as "the most important American agent recruited (by the KGB) during the early Cold War."

2. "Sasha Who?" Intelligence and National Security 8, no. 1 (Jan. 1993), reprinted in CIRA Newsletter 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1993), pp. 21-25.

Murphy concludes that Golitsyn's "Sasha" was a U.S. Army major identified by Kochnov in 1966.

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