[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

position that Nosenko was a false defector who was sent to the United States after the
assassination “to protect...the prior connection Oswald had had with the KGB.” 276
Epstein described how Nosenko defected to the United States in early 1964,
claiming to have supervised the KGB file on Oswald after his own defection to the
Soviets in 1959. Nosenko told his CIA handlers that “neither Oswald nor Marina had
ever been recruited or even approached by the KGB as possible agents” and had not even
debriefed the former Marine because “he was deemed ‘unstable…and of little
importance.” 277 Epstein explained that Angleton and his colleagues found it hard to
believe Nosenko’s story because Oswald “was probably the only person in the Soviet
Union who had observed the U-2 up close and had had access to its pilots and other
personnel” at the time of the downing of Francis Gary Power’s U-2 plane in May,
1960. 278 In the United States, Nosenko would endure several years of illegal detention
and harsh interrogation techniques – years before the “War on Terrorism.” Eventually,
the CIA released Nosenko with a new identity and accepted him as a true defector.
Epstein defended the CIA’s harsh treatment of Nosenko and accepted the Angleton view
of him as a false defector. In 1974, Angleton was forced out following revelations of
abuses during his tenure. Epstein concluded that, “With Nosenko accredited and the
counterintelligence staff purged, the CIA had truly been turned inside out.” 279
276
Edward Jay Epstein, Legend: the Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, (New York:
Reader’s Digest Press, 1978), 44.
277
Epstein, 9.
278
Epstein, 120.
279
Epstein, 274.
125