Howard Osborne; Director of Security wrote:
Michael,
His name is Osborn, not Osborne.
Regardless, guess who coached Nosenko through the 1968 "softball" polygraph exams?
Bruce "Gum Shoe" Solie!
From
Spy Wars:
A signal success of the KGB’s operation with [triple-agent] Igor Kochnov ["Operation Kittyhawk," in which the CIA suffered the loss of a true defector when he was kidnapped in Vienna by the KGB and killed] — in addition to eliminating the defector Artamonov ["Shadrin"] — was the
restoration of Yuri Nosenko’s fortunes in the West. Although I knew none of this at the time, I sensed in the second half of 1966 the CIA leadership’s growing skepticism, not just impatience, concerning our case against Nosenko. It was evident that some unknown factor was influencing them. This became clearer at the end of that year when they ordered a fresh review of the case— not so much to get new insights as to find ways to rationalize the doubts and to whitewash Nosenko to prepare his release. Deputy Director Rufus Taylor called in Gordon Stewart, a CIA veteran and old friend of Helms, to take a fresh, detached look at this forbidding can of worms. Stewart enjoyed a reputation for integrity and had the added quality of knowing nothing of the Nosenko case and little about KGB deception. To simplify Stewart’s review I organized the essential file materials (including my “1000-page” file summary) with an explanatory table of contents, and turned them over to Stewart in early 1967. This was my parting shot, for I was already preparing my assignment abroad (note: as Chief of Station in Brussels). After my departure the Soviet Block— without telling me— condensed this huge file summary into some 440 pages, lumping together many separate points of doubt into broad categories, each category to support a “conclusion.” In effect, they transformed justifable points of doubt into debatable (and unnecessary) conclusions, making a case against Nosenko. He did not have the naval service he claimed, it said, adding that he did not join the KGB when or how he said, did not serve in the KGB’s American Embassy Section, and had not been deputy chief of its Tourist Department. Stewart thus found himself faced with a mass of material loaded with indications of Nosenko’s bad faith and lacking any innocent explanation. To his professorial eye, these papers looked “unscholarly” (as he said to associates) and “more like a prosecutor’s brief.” Indeed, a file summary is not an academic dissertation, and the Soviet Block's report’s conclusions were unproven. So he called for a critique of the Soviet Block report. In mid-1967 Helms selected for this task the same
Bruce Solie who had learned from Kochnov, the KGB volunteer, that Nosenko was a genuine defector. Solie submitted eighteen pages of critique of the 440-page Soviet Block report and of the previous handling of Nosenko. He recommended a new and “untainted” questioning in a friendlier, less confrontational, and “more objective” atmosphere. So Helms and Taylor picked him to do the job himself. Solie was a taciturn, cigar-smoking man whose lean features gave him an air of the American farmlands. He had sat in on some of our interrogations of Nosenko prior to Kochnov’s advent, not contributing but maintaining a generally approving if reserved demeanor. Now, with Nosenko ’s earlier interrogators removed from the scene and being himself convinced by Kochnov of Nosenko ’s genuineness, Solie set out to prove that we had been wrong. Behind Solie’s effort lay the hopes of CIA leaders that he would find ways to believe in Nosenko and rid the Agency of what Director Richard Helms later called this “incubus,” this “bone in the throat.” They picked the right man -- Solie delivered the goods. Starting in late 1967, sometimes accompanied by FBI Special Agent Turner, Solie talked in a friendly manner for nine months with Nosenko and together they worked out ways things might— somehow— be made to look plausible. One who read the transcripts of these interviews described to me the way they were conducted:
Solie: “Wouldn’t you put it this way, Yuri?”
Nosenko: “Yup, yup.”
On another sticking point, Solie: “But you really meant to say it differently, didn’t you?”
Nosenko: "Sure.”
Solie: “Wouldn’t it be more correct to say, for example, that . . . ?
Nosenko: “Yup, yup.”
Solie submitted his [278-page] report on 1 October 1968. That whitewash had been the purpose from the outset was revealed by the speed with which the CIA leadership adopted its conclusions. They could not have studied it and had perhaps not even read it before, three days later, Deputy Director Taylor informed Director Helms that "I am now convinced that there is no reason to conclude that Nosenko is other than what he has claimed to be, that he has not knowingly and willfully withheld information from us, that there is no conflict between what we have learned from him and what we have learned from other defectors or informants that would cast any doubts on his bona fides. Most particularly I perceive no significant conflict between the information Nosenko has provided and the information and opinions Golitsyn has provided. Thus, I conclude that Nosenko should be accepted as a bona fide defector."(fn 6)
.
So well had Solie done the job that CIA gave him a medal for his travails. One can only concur in their assessment of him as a “true hero .” (fn 7) The task he performed was truly Herculean and required tricks as cunning as those of Hercules himself. Solie seems to have hidden from Taylor facts that flatly contradicted the deputy director’sconclusions. In reality there were significant “conflicts” between what Nosenko reported and “the information and opinions Golitsyn . . . provided.” And an "other defector,” Peter Deriabin, had cast an indelible stain of doubt on Nosenko’s bona fides. Deriabin was outraged by Taylor’s statement.
A question inevitably arises in the mind of anyone who knows of the accumulated doubts described in previous chapters. How, in the face of all that, could CIA have ever believed in Nosenko?
(emphasis added)
