The KGB and the JFK case

[Paz Marverde]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

To the second he says Golitsyn was genuine but later, after being given first class treatment by Angleton and CIA he looked out for his own self interest.

I could not disagree more 

[Paul Brancato]

35 minutes ago, Paz Marverde said:

I could not disagree more 

I’m not sure where I stand, but I agree with Peter Dale Scott that even if he was real he became very destructive later. 

Whether the two were real, or whatever they were, the mole in the CIA that Golitsyn and others said was in place in the CIA since about 1951 was never discovered. But the hunt for Popov’s mole (Angleton called him that because Popov, the CIA mole in the KGB, was discovered and later executed, and it was assumed that the KGB mole in the CIA outed Popov) never succeeded, and in the wake of that hunt many careers were destroyed, which ultimately led to Angleton being fired by William Colby.

its important to remember that none of this implicates the KGB in the death of JFK, as Newman himself reiterates.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Paul Brancato

[James DiEugenio]

McGovern and BInney are really good on this issue. I remember when no one wanted to touch it for fear they would be equated with Sean Hannity.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/06/07/still-waiting-for-evidence-of-a-russian-hack/

[Gene Kelly]

As far James Angleton is concerned, he is certainly not what he seems.  I think its too simplistic to brand him as "KGB" or fascist.  However, I do not think he was always playing for the home team (i.e. upholding the President's policies, the United States' interests).  Rather, he had his own agenda, and a toxic allegiance to Allen Dulles and company.  He notably had a destructive effect on his own Agency … strange and irrational behavior for an important member of the CIA 'management team' and a supposedly loyal (to the United States) staff intelligence officer.  It is notable that civil servants like Angleton take an Oath when joining any Agency of government (CIA is no exception):  

" …  solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Its unclear whether Angleton's allegiances were as his Oath required.  Nonetheless, he maintained peculiar allegiances to Israeli (Mossad) and to Italian intelligence … far too close for comfort, at worst a conflict of interest.  Angleton's over-the-top insistence of KGB infiltration and the Soviet threat seems just that; overstated to an extreme, having an opposite effect (i.e. what is he protecting?)  His friendship and sharing of information with Kim Philby also seems  too obvious, in retrospect.  Was he really duped and betrayed (forever skeptical of Soviet  as the legend has it) ... or was there something more sinister at play?   It's difficult to believe that the brilliant, well-educated expert counterintelligence intellectual from Yale was simply fooled by a dear friend. As one EF member once posted about Angleton's liaison with the Warren Commission post-assassination, its hard to fathom that this erudite and brilliant strategist would believe that Oswald acted alone, unabetted ... and even more difficult to accept that Angleton (of all people) didn't suspect all of the other irregularities now well known about JFK's murder. 

Angleton suffered a 'forced retirement' by William Colby, just four months after the resignation of Richard Nixon, his fall described by Jeff Morley as "the denouement of the Watergate scandal" closely followed by the Church Senate investigation.  Cleveland Cram's subsequent internal investigation explored what in the world Angleton had actually been doing when he ran the Counterintelligence Staff for 20 years, from 1954 to 1974 ... asking the question: 'Did his operations serve the agency’s mission ... did they serve the country?'  Cram's study (later declassified) concluded that Angleton was “self-centered, ambitious and paranoid with little regard for his agency colleagues or simple common sense” ... ironically putting it mildly, and not the worst that could be said. Clare Petty challenged the anomalies of Angleton’s career: his friendship with Kim Philby; his faith in Golitsyn; his insistence that the Sino-Soviet split was a ruse; Petty's conclusion was that every decision Angleton made seemed to impede American intelligence operations, perhaps intentionally.  Angleton spent what remained of his career (after CIA) working for the American Security Council, a conservative lobbyist group. Angleton's story and character seem far too difficult to unravel; his legacy is described by writers and researchers on the CIA's website as follows:

"Delving into the Angletonian library is a Rashomon-like experience. As one scholar of Angleton has written with only mild exaggeration, 'One could ask a hundred people about [him] and receive a hundred lightly shaded different replies that ranged from utter denunciation to unadulterated hero worship. That the positions could occupy these extremes spoke of the significance and the ambiguity of the role he had played'. 

Necessary restrictions on information about the enterprise that he considered the foundation of all other intelligence work probably will prevent us from seeing the reality of him and instead consign us to continue looking at shadows and reflections. Angleton may remain to history, as he fancied himself in life, an enigma. 

 

 

 

[Paul Brancato]

1 hour ago, Gene Kelly said:

As far James Angleton is concerned, he is certainly not what he seems.  I think its too simplistic to brand him as "KGB" or fascist.  However, I do not think he was always playing for the home team (i.e. upholding the President's policies, the United States' interests).  Rather, he had his own agenda, and a toxic allegiance to Allen Dulles and company.  He notably had a destructive effect on his own Agency … strange and irrational behavior for an important member of the CIA 'management team' and a supposedly loyal (to the United States) staff intelligence officer.  It is notable that civil servants like Angleton take an Oath when joining any Agency of government (CIA is no exception):  

" …  solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Its unclear whether Angleton's allegiances were as his Oath required.  Nonetheless, he maintained peculiar allegiances to Israeli (Mossad) and to Italian intelligence … far too close for comfort, at worst a conflict of interest.  Angleton's over-the-top insistence of KGB infiltration and the Soviet threat seems just that; overstated to an extreme, having an opposite effect (i.e. what is he protecting?)  His friendship and sharing of information with Kim Philby also seems  too obvious, in retrospect.  Was he really duped and betrayed (forever skeptical of Soviet  as the legend has it) ... or was there something more sinister at play?   It's difficult to believe that the brilliant, well-educated expert counterintelligence intellectual from Yale was simply fooled by a dear friend. As one EF member once posted about Angleton's liaison with the Warren Commission post-assassination, its hard to fathom that this erudite and brilliant strategist would believe that Oswald acted alone, unabetted ... and even more difficult to accept that Angleton (of all people) didn't suspect all of the other irregularities now well known about JFK's murder. 

Angleton suffered a 'forced retirement' by William Colby, just four months after the resignation of Richard Nixon, his fall described by Jeff Morley as "the denouement of the Watergate scandal" closely followed by the Church Senate investigation.  Cleveland Cram's subsequent internal investigation explored what in the world Angleton had actually been doing when he ran the Counterintelligence Staff for 20 years, from 1954 to 1974 ... asking the question: 'Did his operations serve the agency’s mission ... did they serve the country?'  Cram's study (later declassified) concluded that Angleton was “self-centered, ambitious and paranoid with little regard for his agency colleagues or simple common sense” ... ironically putting it mildly, and not the worst that could be said. Clare Petty challenged the anomalies of Angleton’s career: his friendship with Kim Philby; his faith in Golitsyn; his insistence that the Sino-Soviet split was a ruse; Petty's conclusion was that every decision Angleton made seemed to impede American intelligence operations, perhaps intentionally.  Angleton spent what remained of his career (after CIA) working for the American Security Council, a conservative lobbyist group. Angleton's story and character seem far too difficult to unravel; his legacy is described by writers and researchers on the CIA's website as follows:

"Delving into the Angletonian library is a Rashomon-like experience. As one scholar of Angleton has written with only mild exaggeration, 'One could ask a hundred people about [him] and receive a hundred lightly shaded different replies that ranged from utter denunciation to unadulterated hero worship. That the positions could occupy these extremes spoke of the significance and the ambiguity of the role he had played'. 

Necessary restrictions on information about the enterprise that he considered the foundation of all other intelligence work probably will prevent us from seeing the reality of him and instead consign us to continue looking at shadows and reflections. Angleton may remain to history, as he fancied himself in life, an enigma. 

 

 

 

Gene - good post as always. The ASC was as you describe a lobbyist group. (I didn’t know Angleton joined them) but Conservative is too kind. Lots of Nazi types from what I’ve read. 

The whole question of Angleton’s loyalties seems key to me. When some CIA analyst opined that he was the kgb mole I thought that interesting but not quite subtle enough. The Mossad and Italian fascist connections (and accompanying mafiosi) seem underappreciated. I’ve no doubt he helped Israel develop their nuclear program. 

[Steve Thomas]

43 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

 

The whole question of Angleton’s loyalties seems key to me. When some CIA analyst opined that he was the kgb mole I thought that interesting but not quite subtle enough. The Mossad and Italian fascist connections (and accompanying mafiosi) seem underappreciated.

Paul,

 

You've been studying Vosjoli for a while. How close were he and Angleton?

 

Steve Thomas

[Gene Kelly]

Steve

Philippe de Vosjoli was the French intelligence service's liaison to Angleton. and also a double-agent working for Angleton against his own country (France). He was strongly anti-DeGaulle, and allegedly led Angleton to believe that the KGB had penetrated the French intelligence service (SDECE), as supposedly confirmed by Anatoly Golitsyn.  He became disenfranchised from SDECE, and "defected" to the US, aided by Angleton. Later Interviewed by the HSCA investigators, de Vosjoli told them that while in New York City on November 19, 1963 he spotted Monsieur Herve, of French intelligence along with the chief of counter-intelligence for SDECE, and followed them to the Harvard Club where they had lunch with “a group of right-wing extremists from Texas,” a meeting that de Vosjoli believed had something to do with the assassination.  Apparently the “National Archives cannot locate a copy of the full transcript of the (HSCA) interview with de Vosjoli.

Gene

 

[James DiEugenio]

Gene:

I think that story by Vosjoli is complete BS.

Have you read what I wrote about him in Destiny Betrayed second edition?

[Paul Brancato]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Gene:

I think that story by Vosjoli is complete BS.

Have you read what I wrote about him in Destiny Betrayed second edition?

I’ll have to revisit Destiny Betrayed. Why do you think it’s BS? It’s an odd story because it’s hard to imagine Texas right wingers meeting with DeGaulles people. Maybe with OAS. And that might be the real story.

i think Gene answered Steve’s question about Angleton and DeVosjoli. 

[Steve Thomas]

On 6/10/2018 at 9:28 PM, Gene Kelly said:

Steve

Philippe de Vosjoli was the French intelligence service's liaison to Angleton. and also a double-agent working for Angleton against his own country (France). He was strongly anti-DeGaulle, and allegedly led Angleton to believe that the KGB had penetrated the French intelligence service (SDECE), as supposedly confirmed by Anatoly Golitsyn. 

Gene

 

Gene,

 

That's interesting. It mirrors the position taken by the OAS vis a vis DeGaulle and communist penetration of the SDECE.

 

Steve Thomas

Edited March 2, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[Gene Kelly]

Jim

I was simply relaying what's written about Philippe de Vosjoli in several references, including Joan Mellen's "Our Man in Haiti", Edward Epstein’s “diary”, Bill Kelly’s JFK Countercoup and several other sources.   It appears that he was indeed close to Angleton.  What’s at least documented (not sure how much of it to take on face value) is that he resigned from the French SDECE in November 1963, after he had learned that he had been ordered assassinated by his own intelligence service.  When he received a telegram ordering him back to Paris, he assumed it was his death notice. Rather than returning to Paris, Angleton helped arranged his defection and resettling in the US (sounds familiar to the Nosenko story).  

He was born in 1920 Philippe L. Thyraud in Romorantin, a small town in the Loire valley.  In the French Résistance he assumed the grand sounding code name "de Vosjoli." He is associated with Allen Dulles and Henry Cabot Lodge, helping to “fund” the war in Indochina, and reporting on missiles in Cuba.  In the book “Brandy: Our Man in Acapulco”, in mid-1963 Vosjoli opened the doors of the French embassy for Angleton and his team to snatch the code books, photograph documents and take out a stack of magnetic tapes, a story later confirmed by Clare Petty, a former member of Angleton's CI Staff.  Thyraud (or some imposter calling himself Phillipe) also appears during the Garrison investigation, to throw more sand in the gears.  It seems that de Vosjoli was an Angleton operator, taking a page from the Angleton playbook on alerting British and French intelligence services to KGB influence and using Anatolyi Golitsiyn as a “source”.

I do agree that the story told to the HSCA (on a 3-page summary was ever released) sounds to be classic disinformation. 

Gene

[Gene Kelly]

Steve

I would speculate that Philippe L. Thyraud (aka de Vosjoli) was working with (or supporting) Allen Dulles and the OAS, to assassinate Charles DeGaulle.  He was of the same anti-Communist bent as Angleton and Dulles.

Gene

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

Steve

I would speculate that Philippe L. Thyraud (aka de Vosjoli) was working with (or supporting) Allen Dulles and the OAS, to assassinate Charles DeGaulle.  He was of the same anti-Communist bent as Angleton and Dulles.

Gene

Gene,

 

I'm not so sure the OAS per se wanted to see DeGaulle assassinated. See the line in the cable cited above, "Therefore, the OAS believed that it was important to allow DeGaulle to remain in power while the OAS strengthened its organization." It would be hard to do that if DeGaulle was dead. The OAS also disavowed Jean Bastien-Thiry in his attack on DeGaulle at Petit-Clamart.

Assassinations have a way of making martyrs out of people.

On the other hand, Perez did tell Fensterwald that the OAS had sent a three man hit team down to Mexico to assassinated DeGaulle.

I think by 1963, the OAS had split into different factions, sometimes working at cross purposes with each other.

I ran across this interesting article - just some food for thought. This sounds more Gladio than OAS:

The Lessons of History: In 1966 President De Gaulle Said No to US-NATO

How De Gaulle did it his way

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-lessons-of-history-in-1966-president-de-gaulle-said-no-to-us-nato/5386501

"The author using the pen name of William Torbitt describes how De Gaulle decided to do what looked (and to many European leaders looks, still today) impossible: the immediate expulsion of foreign namely US military forces from French soil. This was a clear example for the leaders of France, Germany, Italy on how a real leader (not a Hollywoodian caricature of a leader) acts in a moment of deep crisis for his country.

Today, Washington and London – and behind them Wall Street and the City of London – are threatening retribution against those political leaders who dare uphold the national interest of their respective countries, while also refusing to accept a confrontation with Russia and China.

These leaders are instructed by Washington to be accomplices in the process of destruction and destabilization of the European project.

From ‘The Assassination Attempt on De Gaulle’ by William Torbitt:

General De Gaulle was furious at the assassination plots and attempted assassination upon himself. He called in his most trusted officers with the French Intelligence Agency and they advised him that they were already working on the investigation to ferret out who was behind DeGaulle’s attempted assassination.

The French Intelligence Agency in a very short while completely traced the assassination attempt through Permindex, the Swiss corporation, to the Solidarists, the Fascist White Russian emigre intelligence organization and Division Five, the espionage section of the FBI, into the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels, Belgium.

French intelligence thus determined that the attempts on General De Gaulle’s life were being directed from NATO in Brussels through its various intelligence organizations and specifically, Permindex in Switzerland, basically a NATO intelligence front using the remnants of Adolph Hitler’s intelligence units in West Germany and also, the intelligence unit of the Solidarists headquartered in Munich, Germany. The overall command of the De Gaulle assassination unit was directed by Division Five of the FBI.

Upon learning that the intelligence groups controlled by the Division Five of the FBI in the headquarters of the NATO organization had planned all of the attempts of his life, DeGaulle was inflamed and ordered all NATO units off of French soils. Under the contract between France and NATO, General De Gaulle could not force them to move for a period of time somewhat exceeding one year; yet, he told NATO to get off the soil of France and put the machinery in operation to remove them within the treaty agreements with the organization.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence arm of all armed forces in the United States and Division Five, the counter-espionage agency for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were both found to have been the controlling agencies in NATO directing the assassination attempts on De Gaulle’s life. DIA and Division Five of the FBI were working hand in glove with the White Russian emigre intelligence arm, the Solidarists, and many of the Western European intelligence agencies were not aware of the assassination plan worked directly through NATO headquarters.  http://www.ctrl.org/essay2/torbitt.html

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Umberto Pascali, Global Research, 2014"

 

Steve Thomas

[Larry Hancock]

I would respectfully suggest that anything quoted from Global Research be reviewed in terms of their rather obvious political agenda.  You an see it on their web site and even in their Wiki overview.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/

On the other hand I know some folks love this particular worldview so all I can do is extend a caution on using them as a source...

 

[Paul Brancato]

6 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

I would respectfully suggest that anything quoted from Global Research be reviewed in terms of their rather obvious political agenda.  You an see it on their web site and even in their Wiki overview.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/

On the other hand I know some folks love this particular worldview so all I can do is extend a caution on using them as a source...

 

It’s a poor summary, but I have read many times that DeGaulle blamed the OAS, or some faction thereof, for the assassination attempts against him, and figured out that Permindex, or CMC were funding OAS. Fensterwald, through a source in French Intelligence, claimed that in 1962 Guy Banister delivered $200,000 by courier (Maurice Gatlin) to OAS reps in Paris. DeGaulle later pressured the Swiss Government to close the Geneva headquarters of Permindex, whereupon they moved yo South Africa. Going from memory now so there may be a detail or two off, but that’s the gist.  

I’ve found Global Research to be as you describe Larry. But these facts seem true nonetheless.

Steve - Souetre says (by the way I never saw that doc before so thanks for posting it) that OAS wanted DeGaulle alive for a while. But I would read that as propaganda. As you say, maybe OAS was factionalized. Does anyone doubt that at least some of the attempts on DeGaulle originated with OAS? DeGaulle didn’t, and Talbot, in The Devil’s Chessboard quotes DeGaulle as saying he thought JFK was the victim of the same group of conspirators. 

Gene - I’m glad Im not the first person to suggest that De Vosjoli used Golitsyn as a source. I’m also wondering if Golitsyn’s detailed knowledge of French Intel came from Golitsyn. So on one side you have these two plus Angleton, and on the other DeGaulle and his Intelligence Organization. My instinct is to side with the latter, rather than go with the view that the KGB was in control of DeGaulle. By Angleton’s definition, if you took DeGaulle’s side you were a Communist, a very black and white polarized world view.