John Arthur Paisley (August 25, 1923 – September 24, 1978) was a former official of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Early life
When Paisley was two years old, his father left the family. He was raised by his grandparents when his mother went to work as a practical nurse.
On January 7, 1979, The New York Times' investigative report ("The Missing CIA Man", by Tad Szulc), revealed that "Paisley was called in when the C.I.A. began the lengthy and laborious process of debriefing [Yuri] Nosenko, a member of the K.G.B.'s Second Chief Directorate, responsible for counterintelligence within the Soviet Union, who had defected to the United States early in 1964. Nosenko was the most important K.G.B. officer ever to defect. Ostensibly, Nosenko's greatest value to United States intelligence was to provide information on Soviet counterintelligence agents operating at home and abroad. This may have included data on counterintelligence in the strategic field - part of Paisley's expertise - and Paisley became enmeshed in the most controversial C.I.A. secret intelligence project of the decade".
Paisley retired as deputy director in the Office of Strategic Research,
Later life and presumed death
Around 1976, Paisley and Maryann separated. The authors state that the body discovered in the Chesapeake Bay was not Paisley's.
See also
- John Barth's 1982 Sabbatical: A Romance