U.S. FEARS SOVIET ATTEMPT TO KIDNAP OR KILL NOSSENKO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000400430019-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 4, 1999
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: March 2, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

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Sanitized - Approved F
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Fears So Viet
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A W to
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ossen 1 o
sia's secret -police has asked political asylum
in this country, U. S. intelligence authorities
fear that Soviet security police in the United
States may be under orders to kidnap or kill
Red defector Yuri 1. Nossenko.
By NICOLAS RIVERO
Yuri Ivanovich Nossenko, a member ot
the Soviet delegation to the Geneva disar-
mament conference who defected and re-
quested U.S. asylum last month, seems to
be far more important than a regular KGB
(Soviet Russia's State Security Committee
or secret police) member assigned to spy
on his own disarmament mission, or on the
Western delegation, or on both.
Nossenko is now in the United States
under the "protective custody" of the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency and is perhaps the
best protected man in this country today.
It is feared by U.S. Intelligence officials
that Soviet counter-espionage agents are
under orders to kidnap Nossenko if possi-
ble and to kill him, if not. If they should
succeed in killing him, it would not be the
first time they have murdered a Soviet de-
fector in the United States in order to pro-
tect their network of more than 1,000 mili-
tary, scientific and industrial spies in this
country. This figure is based on an esti-
mate made recently by FBI director I. Ed-
gar Hoover, who in turn based his esti-
mate on reports made by previous defectors.
In 1941, Gen. Walter Krivitsky, a former
Red Army Intelligence chief whose break
with Stalin in 1937 and subsequent revela-
tions had caused word-wide sensation, was
found murdered in a Washington hotel.
Another case of KGB's special murder
unit operations in the United States was
the strange "accident" on a U.S. turnpike
of Reino Hayhanen, a former KGB liteuten-
ant colonel.
in e spring
was ordered back to Moscow from a for-
eign assignment. He suspected he would
be liquidated on his return home. Instead
of flying to the Soviet Union he went t
Paris, where he contacted the America
Embassy and asked for asylum.
Rushed to the United States, Hayhane
became, a counter-espionage agent for the
CIA. He located in New York the studi
of Russian master spy Rudolph Ivanovic
Abel who was the most important Sovie ,
spy caught in the United States to date
Abel was running a photographer's studio
in Brooklyn under the alias of Emil R. Gold
fus. It was in that studio that Abel pro
essed secret documents by photographin
them and reducing the papers to the size
The importance that Moscow attached
Mc wnrk- mn;L he judged by the fact that
IRATE BOSS of defector Yuri Nossenko is
understandably upset over recent events.
Semyon K. Tsarapkin, head of the Soviet
delegation to the Geneva disarmament con-
ference, charged that Switzerland permitted
"foreign agents" to engineer the disappear-
ance of Nossenko. Nossenko is under wraps
1-in political asylum in Washington.
was exchanged for the American U-2 pilot,,
Francis Gary Powers.
U.S. officials have refused to release de-,
tails of the Nossenko defection. He was
described as a ranking staff member of the
KGB. But the circumstances of his disap-
pearance were left vague. American offi-
cials also declined to say how high up Mr.
Nossenko was in the KGB apparatus and
,why he defected.
All these facts may never be published.
Often defectors to the West from the Soviet
Union are thoughtful people who are fed.
up with the dreary processes of the police
state.
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Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-.RDP75-00149R000400430019-4