YURI NOSENKO, KGB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610001-7
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE ZQ
FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE LITERARY SCENE
November/December 1986
"Yuri Nosenko, KGB"
Lo and behold a miracle has oc-
curred. A serious TV movie about
CIA has been broadcast, and it is
neither childishly superficial in plot
and character nor filled with naive
and arrogant hostility toward the
assumed iniquity of the intelligence
profession.
The CIRA Newsletter, published
by the Central Intelligence Retirees'
Association in its Winter 1986/87
issue, gave notice of this remarkable
TV presentation in an excellent
review by F. Mark Wyatt.
The movie, "Yuri Nosenko, KGB,"
is based on a script by Stephen Davis
and was produced by Graham
Massey for the British Broadcasting
Corporation. It was first shown in the
United States by Home Box Office on
September 7, 1986. Adults with some
knowledge of real intelligence work
can look at this film with fascination
and suspense as a parable of the
uncertainties, moral dilemmas, and
genuine intellectual differences CIA
case officers know.
The story tells of the handling of a
KGB defector who might have been a
key intelligence source but more like-
ly was a plant sent to deflect suspi-
cion that the Soviet Union might have
had something to do with Lee Harvey
Oswald's assassination of President
John F. Kennedy. It is not spy fiction.
It is history as it comes in the world of
international secrets - enigmatic,
gripping, perhaps eternally without a
firm conclusion to a haunting tale.
The three main roles were played
by Josef Sommers as James Angleton,
Oleg Rudnik as Yuri Nosenko, and
Tommy Lee Jones as "Steve Daley," a
pseudonym for CIA's case officer in
charge of Nosenko.
Many old hands will know who the
case officer is, as well as a number of
other actors with pseudonyms. The
name of Richard Helms is used in the
script, with the part being played by
Christopher Wynkopf. The mixture of
real names, including another famous
KGB defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn,
plus pseudonymous recognizable
figures from CIA's roster, makes the
story grab the knowledgeable viewer.
The question posed is: Was
Nosenko a neurotic and erratic defec-
tor or a deception agent? Steve Daley,
the case officer, considers that he was
a fraud, and the movie leans in this
direction although it does not come to
a clear-cut conclusion. Nor does it
portray the CIA as either cruel or
negligent in its handling of defectors
or foolishly obsessed with searching
for KGB penetrations, although some
viewers might plausibly leap to those
conclusions.
It is true that Nosenko was confined
and interrogated for years by the CIA.
He never broke down under stress and
was finally released and nominally
cleared. Yet questions linger, and the
viewers are allowed the rare luxury of
making up their own minds from a
rich body of evidence.
FILS managed to get a special view-
ing that was eminently worthwhile.
Try to get a chance to see the movie.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610001-7