--- aliases: - Ferenc Koszorús - Ferenc Koszorus - Ferenc Koszorus Sr. - Colonel Ferenc Koszorus - Ferencz Koszorus - Ferenc Koszorús Sr. - Ferenc Kossorus - Frank Kossorus category: Military created: 2026-10-08 location: Washington, D.C. relations: - end: 1944 fn: 1 role: colonel, general staff start: 1918 type: member_of with: '[[Hungarian Army]]' - end: 1970 fn: 6 role: covert security clearance and recruitment files start: 1951 type: subject_of with: '[[Central Intelligence Agency]]' - end: 1958 fn: 4 reverse: true start: 1958 type: investigated with: '[[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]' - fn: 17 role: father type: relative_of with: '[[Frank Koszorus Jr.]]' summary: Hungarian army colonel who guarded Admiral Horthy in 1944, was cleared by the CIA in 1952 to organize Hungarian veterans in America, and was interviewed by the FBI in 1958; father of Frank Koszorus Jr. tags: - Person - HungarianAmerican - HungarianVeterans - CIA - OPC - FBI - NaziWarCrimesDisclosureAct title: Ferenc Koszorús updated: 2026-10-08 --- Ferenc Koszorús (born February 3, 1899, in Debrecen) was a Hungarian army colonel. His command guarded Admiral Miklós Horthy in July 1944. He reached the United States in 1951, and [Central Intelligence Agency](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) files released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act record that the agency cleared him in 1952 to organize a Hungarian veterans' group in America. The [Federal Bureau of Investigation](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/) interviewed him in 1958. He was the father of [Frank Koszorus Jr.](/people/frank-koszorus-jr/) ### Army service and emigration The CIA's biographical sheet gives his parents as Ferenc Koszorús and Katalin Koszorús and his spouse as Gabriella Pulop Koszorús. It records service as a colonel on the general staff of the Hungarian Army from 1918 to 1944, with an education at the Military Academy in Budapest and the Hungarian General Staff Academy, and his admission to the United States in February 1951, with a farm job in Watsonville, California, and then a job with the Southern Pacific Railroad there from September 1951.[^1] A 1951 CIA security summary records that he was a professional soldier, a professor at the military academy, and an opponent of the German alliance who left Hungary in April 1945.[^2] A CIA memorandum states that a force under his command guarded Admiral Horthy in July 1944; it reports that after the war he served in 1945 as lay president of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Exile in Germany and that he became a member of the Hungarian veterans' association that the files abbreviate as UHBK. A report of July 20, 1949 describes him as the deputy in Germany of General Zakó, who had set up an organization of former Hungarian army officers in Austria and Germany for intelligence work. A source of undetermined reliability described him and Albin Kapitánffy as the only two leading members of the association who could be considered "democratic," and the memorandum reports that he was reputed to have led internal opposition to Zakó's leadership.[^3] The FBI recorded in 1958 that he and his wife had been sponsored in coming to the United States by a Protestant minister in Watsonville and by the World Church Service, that they arrived in New York in 1951, and that they moved to Washington in 1952.[^4] ### CIA recruitment and clearance, 1951 to 1952 On October 9, 1951, a CIA officer telephoned Koszorús in Watsonville and asked whether he would accept employment in the United States to organize and manage Hungarian veterans of America, and whether he could travel East for an interview. The memorandum records that he was willing, subject to a personal conference about plans and terms, but that he did not want to jeopardize his new job.[^5] The request for a covert security clearance, dated December 6, 1951, described him as "one of the very few high ranking Hungarian ex-Army officers with a clean past, untainted by either Nazi-ism or Communism," proposed that he launch an organization for the "decent and reliable element of the Hungarian veterans" to combat the organization of "the notorious General Zako," and described the organization as subsidized by the agency with no connection to it other than through him, as a pool from which to draw recruits for paramilitary activities, with areas of operation in the United States, Germany, Austria and possibly France.[^6] A memorandum for the record of December 1951 states that a redacted officer had contacted Koszorús, who "did not display any interest in working for us," and that the recommendation was to drop him as a prospect.[^7] On March 7, 1952 the agency's Special Security Division nevertheless granted a covert security clearance for his use as an autonomous principal agent to launch a Hungarian veterans organization, with the instruction that he was not to represent himself as an employee of the agency.[^8] A job description of April 7, 1952 in the file states that he would organize and direct the veterans organization and recruit desirable Hungarian veterans into it.[^9] The file series in his name continues through 1952 with records of an agent under the pseudonym Edwin F. Mycroft. The pages read do not equate the pseudonym with Koszorús in so many words. The records under that pseudonym describe a married, Hungarian-speaking agent with poor English who was to be in charge of organizing and directing a proposed Hungarian veterans' organization, paid monthly through a case officer. They include an April 9, 1952 memorandum on a contract carrying a bonus of up to $500 for a six-month term, a covert training request of June 26, 1952 giving the United States as the assignment area, a July 7, 1952 request for an additional $50 a month, contact reports of August 1952 recording that he had sent money to his wife in California and was awaiting her departure, and a memorandum of September 12, 1952 stating that he had held cover employment from August 18 to 20, 1952 and no longer had it.[^10] Reports in the name Koszorús from the same months describe meetings with a case officer in Washington restaurants, the move of his wife from California, his search for cover employment and his monthly salary. An October 1952 contact report places him at a restaurant on Connecticut Avenue, working without pay in a sign painter's shop to learn the business and short of funds, and states that there was practically no conversation about the development of the Veterans Organization.[^11] A report of November 7, 1952 records that he asked to see a senior officer to discuss new plans for the project and had asked two Hungarian émigré acquaintances for help in finding a job.[^11] A memorandum of December 3, 1952 states that the contract of Edwin F. Mycroft was terminating on December 11, 1952 and requests a bonus of $500 for satisfactory completion of his obligations, and a receipt dated December 12, 1952 in that name acknowledges $646.63, of which $500 is the bonus, and states that the contract "is now terminated."[^12] ### FBI inquiries, 1958 A memorandum of the FBI dated May 19, 1958, loaned to the CIA, concerns "Ferenc Koszorus, also known as Frank Kossorus." A confidential informant reported that on April 25, 1958 Vasile Baluse, third secretary of the Romanian legation in Washington, mentioned a letter and a fee of $10 and advised that a telephone number be called; a second informant reported that the number was subscribed to by Ferenc Kossorus of 4540 MacArthur Boulevard N.W. The FBI checked city directories, credit bureau and police records, employers, and telephoned Gabriella Koszorús under a pretext. It recorded that he was a draftsman earning about $390 a month at the Air Survey Corporation in Arlington, Virginia, a firm that made maps for commercial clients and for United States agencies such as the Army Map Service; that he had worked there from January 27, 1953, been laid off on July 28, 1955 and rehired in March 1958; that his earlier employers included the post exchange at Fort Ord (March to July 1952) and a children's home in Washington (August to September 1952); and that his wife did commercial and religious art for the American Hungarian Federation, 1761 P Street N.W., and the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America, 1801 P Street N.W. The vice president of Air Survey described him as patriotic and opposed to communism.[^13] In an interview reported in a memorandum of October 1958, Koszorús and his wife told FBI agents at their apartment that they had had no contact with Soviet bloc officials, that he would have terminated any such contact, and that he would volunteer his military knowledge to the United States government. He described an incident before the war in which he was ordered to show Soviet diplomatic officials around the military academy and one tried to "pump" him for information. The FBI's director sent the memoranda to the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans under cover of October 26, 1958.[^14] ### Later records In 1966 the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans sent the Department of State's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Security a copy of the September 5, 1951 memorandum on Koszorús, which had earlier been sent to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, in answer to a request received August 19, 1966. A CIA cross-reference sheet of January 16, 1970 notes his address in the 1969 Washington telephone directory.[^15] His son Frank Koszorus Jr. later wrote, in a letter to the editor of *[The New York Times](/organizations/new-york-times/)* on April 27, 1994, about "his father's role in saving Jews from deportation," according to the son's report of his activities to the Justice Department.[^16] The Hungarian American Coalition's obituary of the son names Ferenc and Gabriella Koszorús as his parents and records that his father died in 1974.[^17] [^1]: Central Intelligence Agency, biographical sheet on Ferenc Koszorus, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0001 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0001), released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. [^2]: Central Intelligence Agency, clearance request summary on Colonel Ferenc Koszorus, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0002 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0002). [^3]: Central Intelligence Agency, memoranda on Ferenc Koszorus, Internet Archive items KOSZORUSFERENC-0013 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0013) and KOSZORUSFERENC-0028 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0028), which compile reports of July 20, 1949 and September 19, 1950. [^4]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, memorandum of May 19, 1958, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0069 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0069). [^5]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the record, October 9, 1951, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0016 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0016). [^6]: Central Intelligence Agency, request for covert security clearance, December 6, 1951, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0019 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0019). [^7]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the record, December 1951, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0018 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0018). [^8]: Central Intelligence Agency, Special Security Division, memorandum of March 7, 1952, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0023 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0023). [^9]: Central Intelligence Agency, job description of April 7, 1952, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0024 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0024). [^10]: Central Intelligence Agency, Internet Archive items KOSZORUSFERENC-0026 (memorandum of April 9, 1952), -0033 (covert training request, June 26, 1952), -0039 (July 7, 1952), -0042 (meeting memorandum, 1952), -0045 (August 1952), -0046 and -0047 (contact reports, August 1952) and -0054 (September 12, 1952), each at https://archive.org/details/ followed by the item identifier. The OCR of these pages is imperfect and the quoted phrase is taken from item -0039. [^11]: Central Intelligence Agency, contact reports on Koszorus of October 1952 and November 7, 1952, Internet Archive items KOSZORUSFERENC-0060 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0060) and KOSZORUSFERENC-0061 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0061). [^12]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum of December 3, 1952 and receipt of December 12, 1952, Internet Archive items KOSZORUSFERENC-0064 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0064) and KOSZORUSFERENC-0066 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0066). [^13]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, memorandum of May 19, 1958 (note 4). [^14]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, memorandum of October 1958 on the interview of Ferenc Koszorus and Gabriella Koszorus, and letter of October 26, 1958 from the Director to the Deputy Director (Plans), Central Intelligence Agency, Internet Archive item KOSZORUSFERENC-0070 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0070). [^15]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Security, Department of State, 1966, and document transfer and cross-reference sheet of January 16, 1970, Internet Archive items KOSZORUSFERENC-0073 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0073) and KOSZORUSFERENC-0074 (https://archive.org/details/KOSZORUSFERENC-0074). [^16]: Registration 4772, Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, Supplemental Statement for the six months ending September 30, 1994, Attachment on activity on his own behalf. https://efile.fara.gov/docs/4772-Supplemental-Statement-19940930-DHFIFJ02.pdf [^17]: "In Memoriam: Frank Koszorus, Jr. (1947-2024)," Hungarian American Coalition. https://hacusa.org/in-memoriam-frank-koszorus-jr-1947-2024/ --- *The Info Web has an MCP server for agents at https://theinfoweb.org/mcp (streamable HTTP, no auth): search by meaning, exact text, source or date, and follow typed, footnoted connections. 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