The Central Intelligence Agency Act (CIA Act of 1949, Publication L. 81-110), or Public Law 110, gave the CIA the authority to keep its budget, fiscal operations and administrative procedures confidential and exempt from public disclosure. The act is codified in 50 USC., 403a. This exempted the CIA from legal limitations on the use of federal funds. Section 6 of the 1949 act exempted the Agency from revealing its “organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel deployed.” Section 6 was created to protect the CIA from hostile foreign intelligence services, which could exploit this information to determine CIA structural and operational planning.
The CIA Act of 1949 created the program titled “PL-110.” PL-110 gave the Agency the responsibility of handling defectors and “essential aliens” using classified techniques outside federal immigration procedures. The program also provided these persons with official cover stories, similar to a witness protection program, as well as financial support, housing and US citizenship.
Defector Protection
CIA regulation assigns the task of protecting defectors to the Office of Security. Trained security officers are responsible for protecting defectors from assassination, or any other threat to their personal safety, while they are being debriefed by their Agency handlers. In the past, defectors were assigned only security officers for their protection. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. I was assigned as the team leader for security officers assigned to protect defectors just after the re-defection of Vitaly Yurchenko.
Public Law 110 does not give the CIA authority to keep these aliens, or defectors, as prisoners in the US. They are free to leave if they elect to do so. This provision is important because, without it, not many foreigners would defect to the US
KGB Defector Yuri Nosenko
The CIA has misused the privilege of the P.L. 110 in the past, most notably in the case of KGB agent Yuri Nosenko. It has since learned from this mistake, but is still adjusting to the nuances of this risky type of operation. Nosenko was one of the most controversial defectors of Cold War espionage. A debate still rages over whether Yuri was a credible high-value KGB defector, or a plant sent by the KGB to counter the information provided by an earlier Soviet defector, who had implied Moscow was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The CIA was deeply divided over Nosenko’s bona fides. This dispute was never fully resolved, even leading up to Nosenko’s death. Nosenko was a KGB officer assigned to the American desk, an operative in the KGB Seventh Department and was assigned to recruit Western tourists to spy for the Soviet Union. In 1959 former US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald approached the KGB, offering to betray his country. Nosenko was one of Oswald’s case officers. Oswald lived in the Soviet Union for three years. When Nosenko contacted the CIA in 1962 to defect to the US, his connections with Oswald purported to cause a significant rift in Soviet-American relations. During his debriefings by the CIA, Nosenko told his handlers Oswald was not a Soviet agent. According to Nosenko, Oswald was considered too unstable to be recruited. He also claimed Moscow was in an uproar, concerned it would be held responsible for Kennedy’s assassination and drawn into military conflict.
Nosenko’s first CIA handlers were immediately suspicious of his claims. He had requested a mere two hundred dollars for betraying his country, to settle his drinking debt. Other parts of his story just did not add up.
KGB Defector Anatoly Golitsyn
Nosenko’s story was further weakened by KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn. Golitsyn had defected three years earlier. Golitsyn was the real thing. A KGB Major, he had revealed the identities of several high-level spies who had penetrated NATO. Golitsyn provided information indicating Moscow was implementing a vast operation to gain global dominance. He also provided information indicating Western intelligence services were infested with “moles” at high levels and Soviet defectors were now KGB double agents.
CIA Counterintelligence Chief, James Jesus Angleton considered Golitsyn the most important defector the West had ever entertained. Angleton’s sensitivities to Soviet penetrations were heightened by the defection of his close friend Kim Philby. Harold Adrian Russel “Kim” Philby was a counterpart of Angleton and a high ranking member of British Intelligence. In 1963, in one of the most damaging espionage cases in British history, Philby was exposed as a member of the “Cambridge Five” spy ring, which included four other British officials. Philby had been providing Moscow with secret British intelligence and eventually defected to the Soviet Union. Philby was a KGB operative.
Angleton was faced with a dilemma; trust Golitsyn and Nosenko was a plant. Trust Nosenko and Golitsyn could be a plant. Angleton chose to believe Golitsyn. Golitsyn convinced Angleton Nosenko was sent to discredit his information and claim his story about the Kennedy assassination was a fabrication.
Nosenko’s CIA debriefings turned into hostile interrogations. He was imprisoned by the CIA for three years in solitary confinement in a small cell, with disgusting food to eat and continual humiliation bordering on torture.
Nosenko never broke, and did not change his story. He passed several polygraph tests. Defectors who followed Nosenko confirmed his story that Moscow had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination. He was eventually released, given a new identity, provided a life-long salary and resettled in the US. He never lost his dedication to America and did not regret his defection. Nosenko died in 2008.
Angleton was forced to resign from the CIA in 1975. He was never able to successfully identify a Soviet mole. Nosenko’s credibility remained and Golitsyn, also resettled in the US, became a forgotten artifact of the Cold War.
In his memoir, Nosenko’s original CIA handler, Tennent H. "Pete" Bagley, continued to maintain Nosenko was a KGB plant.
A Classic KGB Defector
Stanislav Alexandrovich Levchenko, a Russian KGB Major, defected to the US in 1979. Levchenko was one of the most important Soviet defectors in the CIA’s history. In 1964 Levchenko graduated from the Moscow State University Institute of Asia and Africa with a degree in Japanese language, literature and history. He did his post graduate studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he majored in modern history of Japan. Levchenko joined the KGB in 1968 and was eventually promoted to KGB staff operations officer in the Foreign Intelligence Service. In 1975, the KGB assigned Levchenko to Japan using the cover of bureau chief of the Russian magazine Novoye Vrema (New Times) in Tokyo, Japan. Based out of Tokyo, Levchenko collected political intelligence and conducted far reaching Russian covert operations in Japan and the Far East. He was promoted to the rank of Major in the KGB in 1979, where he became the chief of the KGB Covert Action Group in Tokyo. In October of 1979, he approached US officials and requested political asylum.
A Soviet court condemned Levchenko to death in 1981 and Soviet KGB officers tried to hunt him down in the US to assassinate him. The assassination plot was foiled when KGB access agents Svetlana and Nicolai Orgorodnikov were discovered and arrested during the espionage investigation of FBI Agent turned traitor Richard Miller.
Levchenko exposed the entire Soviet spy network in Japan and the Far East. He provided the names of two hundred Japanese agents working for the KGB. This included the former Labor Minister for the Liberal Democratic Party and the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party.
Stanislav Levchenko was a classic defector; a high ranking Soviet intelligence officer who defected to the US for ideological reasons rather than greed or revenge. Levchenko defected to America because of his disdain for the atheistic Soviet system and his fundamental, secretly held, belief in democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. While in the Soviet Union, he had secretly converted to Christianity. Stanislav, or “Stan” as his friends call him, was, and is, an intellectual; a man of insight and a gentleman. He exposed in great detail the inner workings of the Russian KGB. He will go down in history as one of the most valuable, successful and distinguished defectors the CIA has hosted in its sixty-one year history.
A Defection Gone Wrong
This brings us to the dramatic story of a KGB defection gone terribly wrong. As in the Nosenko and Golitsyn cases, it provides another painful example of the complexity and risk involved in handling defectors. During my days at the CIA, I was assigned as a counterintelligence investigator, collocated with the FBI and tasked with hunting for moles in the CIA. After handling multiple internal espionage cases, I reached a conclusion about counterintelligence and espionage cases, including handling defectors. I summed it up in a sign I posted at my desk: “The only thing predictable about counterintelligence cases is that they are unpredictable.” This could not be more true than in the case of handling defectors.
Vitaly Yurchenko
Vitaly Yurchenko was a high ranking KGB officer. In 1972 he was appointed as the Deputy Chief of the KGB’s Third Department, Third Chief Directorate. He was tasked with running foreign agents spying for the Soviet Union. Yurchenko was assigned to Washington, DC in 1975, in charge of Soviet embassy security in the prestigious Soviet embassy located on Mount Alto, Washington, DC. The new Soviet Embassy on Mount Alto amounted to a classic example of bad judgment on the part of the US Department of State. The Soviets could not have chosen a better location themselves. In 1973 the US government gave approval for the Soviet Union to build the new embassy building on Mount Alto, at an altitude of three hundred and fifty feet, the third highest point in Washington, DC. The embassy had direct visual line of sight to the US Capitol, the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department. From this location, the Soviets would be capable of electronic surveillance of all communications dealing with national security unless they were encrypted. It also allowed the Russians to intercept business and personal conversations and the “chatter” of US government employees. Thus, the Soviets conducted highly sophisticated electronic surveillance from this prime location. From this platform, the Soviets conducted espionage activities which included the stealth of US technology secrets. No doubt, Yurchenko was part of this program. He returned to Moscow in 1980 and became the KGB section chief in charge of ferreting moles out of Soviet intelligence. Yurchenko was then assigned as deputy chief of KGB intelligence operations in the US and Canada. This high-level position potentially gave him access to the identities of all Soviet agents in North America.
In 1985, after twenty-five successful years in the KGB, Yurchenko was driven by his guards to Villa Abamelek, a Soviet embassy outside of Rome. On the morning of July 28, he told his companions he wanted to visit the Vatican museums alone. He departed for the museums and never returned. On August first, he walked into the US Embassy in Rome and defected to the CIA. The US State Department issued a statement explaining Yurchenko approached US officials and requested political asylum. He was transported by the CIA to a classified location in the Suburbs of Virginia. He was debriefed by CIA officers over the next three months. He passed his CIA polygraph examinations.
During covert meetings with the CIA he was debriefed by Aldrich Ames, who had begun spying for the Soviet Union just a few months before. It is apparent Yurchenko did not know Ames was a Soviet mole, but may have reached this conclusion during his debriefings with Ames. This could have been part of the impetus for his re-defection back to Russia. During debriefings, Yurchenko fingered Edward Lee Howard, a CIA trainee who was fired in 1983 and turned over information to the KGB and Ronald Pelton, an NSA employee who sold information to the KGB. Pelton was convicted and sentenced, but Howard eluded his FBI surveillance team and defected to the Soviet Union before he could be questioned. Although Yurchenko probably knew the identities of scores of Soviet agents in North America, he did not provide this information to the CIA. It has been theorized that he chose to reveal the information he knew selectively for his own benefit, or he was indeed a KGB double agent.
CIA Director William Casey personally acted as Yurchenko’s Chief debriefer. During debriefings, Yurchenko also provided information about the “Spy Dust” the Soviet Secret Police employed against Americans in Moscow to track their movements. He also revealed that Soviet Defector Nicholas Shadrin, who had disappeared without a trace in Vienna in 1957, had been kidnapped and assassinated by KGB agents.
Yurchenko revealed he was having a romantic affair with the wife of a Soviet diplomat assigned to Canada, whom he had met during his tour in Washington, DC. The CIA arranged for him to meet the woman in Ottawa. He was rejected by the woman, possibly because she spurned him as a defector. After he was rejected by what he thought was his true love, Yurchenko became dark, depressed and suffered from insomnia. He was a hypochondriac, afraid to drink water that was not boiled and was disgruntled by the fact that the information he disclosed to the CIA about Edward Howard and Nicholas Shadrin had been made public. There were also indications his CIA handlers did not take his mental state seriously and he was roughly treated during interviews.
On a Saturday night in November 1985 Yurchenko was accompanied by his CIA security officer to the Georgetown bistro Au Pied de Cochon. As the security officer was paying the check, Yurchenko surprised him with the question,
“What would you do if I got up and walked out? Would you shoot me?”
“No, we don’t treat defectors that way.”
“I’ll be back in fifteen or twenty minutes….if I’m not, it will not be your fault.”
It was not the security officer’s fault. He was placed in the position of protecting Yurchenko from assassination by the KGB, but he had no authority to protect Yurchenko from himself. Yurchenko was free to go of his own volition, a fact unknown by most of the public. The security officer was placed in a catch 22 situation. In essence, he was given no training or tools to handle this kind of event. He was also not a trained psychiatrist. Yurchenko was in a morose state of mind, deeply depressed and in a state of self destruction. The CIA should have recognized this, provided him with the appropriate treatment, not left him alone on weekends, and had a trained officer with Yurchenko and the security officer at all times. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx In the case of Yurchenko, this change came too late.
Yurchenko was not heard from until the following Monday at four o’clock p.m. Soviet Embassy Press Counselor Boris Malakhov called the State Department correspondent of the Associated Press and advised the Embassy would hold a press conference in ninety minutes.
“We’ll have Vitaly Yurchenko.” He said.
Ninety minutes later, fifty journalists were gathered at the Soviet compound on Mount Alto. Vitaly Yurchenko appeared with a statement for the press. Yurchenko claimed he had never defected. He related the tale of being “forcibly abducted” in Rome, drugged by the CIA and flown to the US. He revealed he had been held at a safe house in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He claimed on November second, his CIA “torturers” let down their guard and he was able to escape. He denied providing any KGB secrets to the CIA. He claimed he did not know what he had said while he was drugged.
“Please ask CIA officials what kind of secret information I gave them” he said.
“It would be very interesting for me to know too, because I don’t know.”
“I am not going to make any comments about spying business” he responded to questions about his connections to the KGB. His answers were contradictory and suspicious. It was apparent to most he was lying. The question was; why?
The State Department demanded to interview Yurchenko to make sure his departure was voluntary. He was interviewed by senior State Department officials and a government psychiatrist. The conclusion was reached his decision to go back to the Soviet Union was voluntary.
Yurchenko boarded an Aeroflot plane and was flown back to the Soviet Union. Soviet officials reported he was awarded the Russian Order of the Red Star upon his return. Skeptical CIA officials predicted after Moscow’s public display, Yurchenko would be executed.
Most intelligence officers, including this humble author, are convinced Yurchenko was a legitimate defector, who was holding back information to ensure his security. Documented reports of his deep depression and physical symptoms were indicative of a man in severe emotional and mental dissonance. These symptoms appeared to be very real. The intelligence he did turn over was legitimate. It is unlikely the KGB would jeopardize one of its highest ranking officers, possessing his knowledge of Soviet operations in North America, for such a risky operation. Although the truth will never be fully known, it appears Yurchenko was simply love sick, clinically depressed and homesick.
Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri
During a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia from May to June 2009, Iranian Nuclear Scientist Shahram Amiri disappeared. Iran accused the US of kidnapping Amiri. ABC News reported Amiri “wanted to seek asylum abroad.” The US government confirmed he had traveled to reside in the United States with the assistance of the CIA.
Iranian reports said Amiri was an employee of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. The Iranian government would not confirm he was a nuclear scientist. Amiri’s disappearance came three months before the news media revelation that Iran had a second uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom. He was suspected of giving the West information on Iran’s nuclear program.
The New York Times reported Washington “sources” confirmed Amiri was a US spy working in Iran for years. He traveled to Saudi Arabia and was transported out of the country by the CIA. According to the Associated Press, Amiri was paid the sum of five million dollars for providing significant information to the CIA.
On July 13, 2010, Amiri unexpectedly arrived at the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, DC and requested to be returned to Iran. US officials commented on the likelihood the Iranian government was threatening to hurt his family in Iran if he did not return. A source told The Wall Street Journal the Iranian government had threatened Amiri’s family and threatened to kill his son.
Amiri returned to Iran on July 15, 2010. At an Iranian press conference, he claimed he had been psychologically mistreated by “the US intelligence Agency” after his kidnapping. He stated he had been kidnapped by armed men in Medina, drugged and interrogated by the CIA and Israel. "Americans wanted me to say that I defected to America of my own will, to use me for revealing some false information about Iran's nuclear work," he said upon his arrival back in Tehran. "I have some documents proving that I've not been free in the United States and have always been under the control of armed agents of US intelligence services." Iran claimed he was an Iranian intelligence officer secretly working against the US
It was clear Amiri had defected to the US and had been cooperating with the CIA. His decision to return to Tehran, probably in an effort to save his family, placed him at great personal risk of retribution. US officials confirmed the CIA paid him over five million dollars in exchange for information on Iran’s nuclear program. The Washington Post reported CIA officials were “stunned” by his request to return to Tehran and he had been working with the CIA for a year.
Following Tehran’s public display of Amiri’s triumphant return to his homeland, his fate is uncertain. It is the opinion of this author that, when the propaganda is over, the interrogation will begin. Under Iran’s Ja'fari school of Sharia law, Amiri’s punishment for defection could be a violent but secret death by stoning.
Over Reliance on Defector Information
Historically, defectors have been one of the most important sources of human intelligence (HUMINT) collected by the CIA. HUMINT was the cornerstone of CIA intelligence collection until the mid 1970s. Its importance and use were significantly hampered beginning in the late 1970s and culminating in 1996. This reduction in the CIA’s HUMINT operations left the CIA, and the US, vulnerable; especially to domestic terrorist attacks. The CIA’s intelligence senses had been blinded and deafened. This led the CIA to place an over reliance on information provided by defectors. The reduction of capability in one area, HUMINT from recruited agents, led to an over reliance in another; defectors. Two significant events led the CIA to this over reliance on defector provided information.
In 1979, CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner eliminated eight hundred and twenty operational human intelligence positions from the CIA. Turner’s view was HUMINT was no longer necessary and could be replaced with Technical Intelligence (TECHINT), Imagery Intelligence (IMINT) and Signal Intelligence (SIGINT). Letters were sent to case officers simply stating “your services are no longer needed.” This action set back CIA HUMINT collection efforts to such an extent the CIA still has not fully recovered.
As discussed in Chapter Five, in 1996 the Clinton Administration enacted the policy known as the “Torricelli Principle,” proposed by Senator Robert Torricelli (D-N.J). Releasing the classified name of a Guatemalan Army Colonel, Torricelli accused the CIA of illegal funding and the Colonel’s role in the killing of an American. Investigation revealed the Guatemalan Colonel had not killed the American and allegations the CIA was engaging in back-channel funding were proven false. The Torricelli Principle banned CIA officers from recruiting any sources who had done anything illegal. Subsequently, CIA Director John Deutch and his Executive Assistant Nora Slatkin implemented a “human rights scrub” policy, which forbad CIA officers from recruiting any asset with human rights violations. This is akin to telling a DEA agent he cannot have any contact with an individual who uses drugs. By definition, most notorious terrorists are culturally human rights violators and engaged in criminal activity. This principle tied the hands of the CIA and prevented the Agency from recruiting any valuable terrorist sources leading up to 9-11. Before a Senate panel on bio-terrorism, CIA Director James Woolsey decried the restriction.
"These rules make absolutely no sense with respect to terrorist groups because the only people who are in terrorist groups are people who want to be terrorists," Woolsey testified. "That means they have a background in violence and human rights violations.”
"If you make it difficult for a CIA case officer in, say, Beirut, to recruit spies with this sort of background, he'll be able to do a dandy job for you, telling you what's going on inside, for example, the churches and the chambers of commerce of Beirut, but we don't really care what's going on there. He'll have no idea, however, what's going on inside Hezbollah." Woolsey went on to say the US was now the only country that engages in "politically correct spying."
As the CIA attempted to recover from the reduction in human intelligence capability in the Directorate of Operations (DO), the Torricelli Principle and the policy of Deutch and Slatkin, defectors became a priority source of intelligence and counterintelligence information on the inner workings, planning and intentions of hostile intelligence services. Now, the CIA had virtually no substantial penetrations of target terrorist organizations. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the CIA turned to defectors as a primary source of pre-war intelligence. Iraqi generals, who defected to the US, were paid millions of dollars for information on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction program. It turned out the information was erroneous. This colossal failure of intelligence led to one of the largest military mistakes in US history. It was another stinging lesson demonstrating the consequences of placing too much emphasis on information provided by high-level defectors.
A Defector’s State of Mind
I write about the above defector cases to illustrate the risk and complexity the CIA faces when handling defectors. I have seen the mental and emotional state defectors are in after they have been transported to the US Many have just committed what amounts to an act of suicide. Others are attempting to out-fox the CIA to gain large sums of money. Still, others have defected because they were passed over for a promotion or did not receive the recognition they thought they deserved. Finally, some defect because of ideological or religious reasons and are the most valuable, stable sources.
When a defector arrives in the United States, he or she has just committed treason against their country. More often than not, their government has activated its intelligence service through its Washington, DC embassy to find a way to exterminate him or her, before they provide the CIA with information. Back home, his family now knows he has betrayed them and their country. Some of their family members may likely be at risk of torture and even death.
The defector leaves what is usually a communist, socialist or Muslim culture, where life is quite a bit simpler and he is not responsible for every small detail of his life, finances, health and future. Many, already suffering from trauma and depression, are faced with significant culture shock. The American lifestyle is intense and complex compared to the lifestyle they knew. First, they are shown to “Disneyland,” which is what they think America is. They are taken to the finest restaurants, stay in the finest hotels, are taken shopping at the finest clothing stores, and provided a stipend to spend on whatever they wish. They are promised nice homes and a good income for the rest of their life. This lifestyle must be earned through a long series of debriefings. These are not pleasant, even when conducted by the most adroit interviewer. Soon, “Disneyland” begins to fade and they are confronted with the thing they have never faced before; balancing a checkbook, managing the vast array of bills they now have to pay in America, and a complete change in their way of life.
Since many defectors are already traumatized and depressed, the experience of debriefings and the shock of a new culture amplify the dramatic emotional and mental upheavals they are experiencing. Some, like Yurchenko, cannot handle it and run back to the only thing they know, in a state of denial about what their own government will do to them when they return. They convince themselves a story about CIA cruelty will be believed by everyone. Surely, their government will understand and believe them. They even convince themselves the CIA has “tortured” them. Denial is their only way of escape. The pattern of self destruction they engaged in when they defected continues as they make the move to return to the country they betrayed. After the public show by their country, reality sets in as real interrogation begins by agents of their own government.
Other defectors are professional men and women who have made an intellectual or philosophical decision to leave what they are convinced is an oppressive system and transition to the democratic way of life. Although they face pressure similar to other defectors, because their motivations are more grounded, they are able to assimilate into American society and become life-long assets of the CIA and the US government, and even close friends with their handlers and other CIA officers.
The primary lesson here, learned the hard way by the CIA, is defectors desperately need mental and emotional support constantly throughout the entire time they are being processed. This has to be balanced with constant investigation into their credibility and continued diligence regarding their intentions. If either of these components is missing, the results can be catastrophic.
Defectors remain one of the most valuable sources of credible intelligence the CIA receives. Over the years, the CIA has instituted new procedures to treat them fairly, support them during their transition, treat them with dignity, help to protect their families by bringing them out of the country with them, and resettle them in the US with a stable new life. The CIA and the Intelligence Community continue to refine this process, for the sake of US policy information and the defectors themselves.