CIA Targeted Soviet Defector for Special Interrogation in 1957
By June Hargrove ·
An unnamed Soviet defector faced "special interrogation techniques" during a November weekend in a guarded safehouse, while the project name and outcome remain redacted.
The request was specific and time-bound. According to the catalogue entry for a two-page memorandum dated November 13, 1957, CIA personnel were preparing for a window of three days: the weekend of November 22-24. The target was an unnamed Soviet defector. The location was a CIA safehouse guarded by personnel from the Office of Security.
"Normal Interrogations Techniques"
The file's archival description records that the memorandum was addressed to the Director of the Office of Security through the Deputy Director (Plans). At the time of the writing, the defector had already been under interrogation by CIA personnel. The record states that agents were continuing to attempt the use of "normal interrogations techniques" on the subject, but suggests these efforts were insufficient.
Because the standard approach had not produced the desired results, the memo asserts that "it appears that use of special interrogation techniques will be required in the near future." The document serves as a formal request to make the necessary preparations to initiate this "special interrogation" during the aforementioned November weekend.
In the terminology of the 1950s intelligence community, the gap between "normal" and "special" is where the record typically goes quiet. The memorandum does not define the specific nature of these special techniques, nor does it list the personnel assigned to administer them. It only establishes that the Office of Security was responsible for the perimeter of the safehouse where the activity was to occur.
Document imagery from nsarchive.gwu.edu From the files: nsarchive.gwu.edu
Project [Deleted]
The memorandum is titled "Request for Project alias [Deleted]." The specific name of the project has been redacted, leaving a void where the operational label should be. This redaction obscures whether the interrogation was part of a wider standing program or a bespoke operation tailored to this specific defector.
However, the context provided by the National Security Archive suggests a connection to the work of Sidney Gottlieb. The archive notes that investigators for the Church Committee—the Senate committee tasked in the 1970s with studying intelligence activities—referred to this specific memo when questioning Gottlieb. The line of inquiry concerned whether Gottlieb knew of cases where "P-1," the agency's designation for LSD, had been used on defectors.
Public record establishes that Gottlieb headed the CIA's Technical Services Staff and managed MKUltra, an illegal human experimentation program. MKUltra was designed to develop procedures and identify drugs that could alter human behavior, often disregarding consent in a manner that was later condemned as a violation of individual rights. The Church Committee's interest in this 1957 memo indicates that the "special interrogation techniques" requested for the Soviet defector were suspected to involve the chemical agents Gottlieb oversaw.
The November Weekend
The record ends with the request for preparations. It does not provide a post-action report. There is no summary of what happened between November 22 and November 24, 1957, nor is there a record of whether the "special techniques" succeeded in extracting the information the agency sought from the defector.
This fragment is part of a larger, disjointed puzzle of records. Other files held by the National Security Archive and the U.S. National Archives touch on the periphery of these activities. There are references to the destruction of records on drugs and toxins in a 1975 memorandum from Inspector General Donald F. Chamberlain, and a 1983 deposition of Sidney Gottlieb that spans 174 pages. There are also subject files for Attorney General Griffin Bell and reports regarding the MKUltra program from 1963.
Despite these surrounding files, the specific fate of the unnamed Soviet defector in the November 1957 safehouse remains absent from this particular record. The memorandum establishes the intent and the timeline, but it stops at the threshold of the operation. We have the request for the tools and the scheduling of the weekend, but the outcome of the "special interrogation" is not contained within the archive's description. The record leaves only the redacted project alias and the dates of a weekend spent in a guarded house.