Thomas Graves

James, "Molehunt" was written in 1992, for cryin' out loud. And yes, I have read it. Have you gotten around to reading Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 book "Spy Wars" yet, or even his much shorter 2014 PDF "Ghosts of the Spy Wars"? Please get back to me when you have, so we can have an equally well-informed and intelligent debate. -- Tommy PS Your boy Mangold was as naive and gullible as his mentors Leonard McCoy, et al., and therefore totally wrong about Popov. If you'll finally read "Spy Wars," you'll realize that Popov was betrayed to the Ruskies in 1957 by Edward Ellis Smith, the first CIA officer the KGB ever recruited. Consolidated, edited and bumped -- TG

Anytime, Paul. -- TG

John, Do you agree with the Kremlin's "near abroad" claims and assertions? Would Georgia and Crimea and Donbas (eastern Ukraine) fall into that category, do you think? How about Transnistria (eastern Moldova)? The Balkans? The .......... ? -- TG

Mr. Brancato, That would have been Tom Scully. -- Mr. Graves

Mr. Brancato, How many do you need? Better than what? Oct. 1? See date stamps on the backs Oct 2 Some researchers say this isn't the same guy who was photographed on 10/02/63, but I believe that it is. -- Mr. Graves

Tom Scully? -- TG

Thank you, Paul. -- TG

Bart Kamp wrote: "Good for you Tommy, believing the words of someone (Brian Doyle) who has been economically (sic) with the truth from the word go. He said he met Groden. He has done no such thing, same with (Gloria Calvery's son) Calvery. ..... . " My reply to Bart Kamp: A couple of hours ago, Brian Doyle e-mailed to me this photo of he and Groden together on the Grassy Knoll in September, 2016. So, Brian Doyle is a xxxx, huh, Bart? -- TG

Bart, I seriously doubt that even that would satisfy you, seeing as how you've already got so much "invested" in your theory ... -- TG

Bart, Why would Brian Doyle lie about this? Hasn't he been pushing the idea that the lithe "Running Woman" on Elm Street Extension was Gloria Calvery? -- TG How about if I get a signed, notarized letter from Mr. Calvery, a $300 background report, an-admissible-as-evidence, studio-quality video (with moderator), a Mayo Clinic DNA analysis proving that Mr. Calvery (I don't know his first name yet) really is who he says he is, and have it all delivered to you by special courier for your inspection. In triplicate.

Bart, Brian Doyle just now contacted me on FB and said that he had spoken with Gloria Calvery's son. He said that Mr. Calvery referred him to Betzner 3, and that Sandy Larsen and I were correct in our identification of his mother as the tall woman, above the Queen Mary's windshield, who is wearing a black blouse and a black headscarf, and that she is the same woman (i.e., his mother Gloria Calvery) who was "caught" in Darnel-Couch on the TSBD steps about 20 seconds after the assassination, and whom Sandy Larsen and I (and Robert Prudhomme) have been claiming was talking to Billy Lovelady in that Couch-Darnell clip. https://www.jfkassassinationgallery.com/displayimage.php?pid=1267&fullsize=1 -- TG

James, Did that old apologist for Stalin ever reconcile himself with the now generally held verdict that Julius Rosenberg was guilty as charged? Does he still erroneously claim that a great deal of the VENONA-uncovered espionage by American citizens during the Cold War was nothing more than "exchanges of information among people of good will," and that most of these exchanges were" innocent and were within the law"? (I'm speaking of Victor Navasky, of course.) Regardless, how, specifically, did Navasky debunk "the Pumpkin Patch films"? -- TG PS If Oswald's defection had not been planned by the CIA (i.e., if it had been "unwitting"), how, then, would his files have been routed? PPS Even if CIA did send Oswald to Moscow, would that necessarily mean that CIA "patsied" Oswald in its assassination of JFK?

He may have been a pragmatic "good citizen". Make some money (nothing wrong with that, in my humble opinion), and make sure it gets developed before it can "up and mysteriously disappear." -- TG

James, Yes, I know about the typewriter. Going from memory here, but isn't it alleged that it was manufactured after a typewriter salesman had retired? Regardless, what do you make of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's belief that Hiss was a mole? Did he recant on that? Question: If Hiss wasn't ALES, who was? Just a figment of someone's imagination? Most importantly, what do you mean by, "Bagley is what I thought he was"? -- TG PS James, is the main reason you disparage Bagley so much because he was convinced that the "former" KGB officer who was anxious to tell CIA that his organization didn't interview LHO or monitor him very closely in the USSR was a false defector, or is there something more about your obvious animosity towards Bagley than that?

James, This is what CIA's Soviet Russia Division Counterinterintelligence officer Tennent H. Bagley (who, fwiw, was independent of James Angleton at a CIA) says about Alger Hiss on pages 272-273 of his 2007 book Spy Wars: Alger Hiss was another beneficiary of willful neglect of the obvious. His secret collaboration with Soviet Intelligence was known to Western authorities long before he moved up to play a substantive role in conferences where America’s posture toward the Soviet regime was being worked out, and more than a decade before he was finally brought before a court. Here is how: In 1937 the Soviet defector Walter Krivitsky, when he met the former Soviet diplomat Alexander Barmine in Paris, named Hiss as an agent. In September 1939 French Intelligence passed to American Ambassador Bullitt information (presumably from Krivitsky) that Alger and his brother Donald Hiss were Soviet agents. Bullitt told President Roosevelt soon thereafter. On 2 September 1939 the journalist Isaac Don Levine, Krivitsky’s friend, escorted Whittaker Chambers to the home of Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle, where Chambers gave details of his Soviet and Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) intelligence activity and clandestine contacts with Alger and Donald Hiss. Berle took notes and reported to President Roosevelt—who laughed it off. Others also told Roosevelt about the suspicions, but neither he nor Berle passed the information to the FBI. In 1941 the FBI got its first news of Hiss directly from Chambers. Despite their initial interest, they neglected to follow up. In April 1945 at the San Francisco Conference, which founded the United Nations, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko indiscreetly told American Secretary of State Stettinius that he would be ‘‘very happy to see Alger Hiss appointed temporary secretary general, as he had a very high regard for Hiss, particularly for his fairness and impartiality.’’ In August 1945 the GRU code clerk Igor Gouzenko defected and reported that an assistant to Secretary Stettinius was a Soviet spy. In November 1945 Elizabeth Bentley, a communist underground courier, named to the FBI Soviet spies in government, including some who had been previously named by Chambers. She had been told about Hiss. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover asked President Truman for permission to take action against Hiss, but Truman remained ‘‘stubbornly antagonistic’’ to the allegations. Hiss’s career path to the top was blocked only when Congress took an interest in him after a 1946 grand jury in New York had begun looking into Soviet espionage. This finally forced the State Department to remove him from access to secrets. In mid-1948—more than ten years after he had first been exposed—the spotlight finally shone on him. The House Un-American Activities Committee called Chambers to testify and arranged his dramatic confrontation with Hiss. Chambers then revealed the famous ‘‘pumpkin papers’’ that documented Hiss’s treason. He denied under oath having ever known Chambers, but when confronted with contrary facts began to back off and equivocate. The committee ‘‘kept Hiss on the stand, leading him point by point over his past testimony, leading him to dodge, bend and weave—a spectacle of agile and dogged indignity —through his discrepancies and contradictions, but never bringing him completely to lose his footing or to yield an inch in his denials.’’ To one committee member Hiss’s testimony appeared ‘‘clouded by a strangely deficient memory.’’ Nevertheless the press echoed public sympathy for Hiss (‘‘tall, handsome, well-educated, a brilliant law student’’) and skepticism and contempt for Chambers: ‘‘Not only was he untidy,’’ commented a biographer of President Truman, ‘‘but he had had an erratic career and was clearly far gone into paranoia.’’ In 1977 the writer Allen Weinstein, helped by Hiss and intending to prove his innocence, set out to review all the data. But he was an honest man and the facts he found convinced him (as they do any reader of his book) that Hiss was guilty. Still some journalists kept suggesting that Hiss had been diabolically framed. (footnote #11) footnote #11: "These citations come from Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, 1952), and Allen Weinstein, Perjury (New York: Vintage, 1979)." -- TG PS Next up: Bagley's "take" on some other interesting folks.

James, I'll just mention one for now, and let Tennent H. Bagley ("Spy Wars" page 271 - ) do my talking. (More to come after I take a much-needed siesta here in laid-back San Diego. All those enchiladas I had for lunch made me sleepy ....) In September, 1949, Kim Philby was posted to Washington, D.C., as MI6's liason to the CIA. KIM PHILBY -- ... self-deception joined with a lack of courtroom-quality proof to grant to Kim Philby many extra years to do the work that has since caused him to be labeled (perhaps prematurely) as “the spy of the century.” Philby's career was jolted on 25 May 1953 when British diplomats Guy Bur- gess and Donald Maclean fled England to the USSR just after Burgess had re- turned to London from Washington, where he had lived for a year with Philby, and just three days before Maclean was to have been interviewed by British counterintelligence. As MI6 chief in Washington, Philby had been one of the few people to know of the impending move against Maclean (exposed by a break of KGB ciphers code-named "Venona”). Now the CIA and FBI refused to deal fur- ther with Philby, so he was recalled to London and questioned about “indiscre- tions" and “misconduct.” His interrogators, Milmo and Skardon, considered Philby a traitor and they had better reasons than the “third man” warning to Burgess and Maclean. One was Philby’s communist first wife, another was “the nasty little sentence in Krivit- sky’s evidence” (as Philby later called it). NKVD operative Walter Krivitsky, after defecting in 1937, had told the British that the NKVD had sent a young English journalist to Spain during the civil war there. This had caused Philby no problem at the time because many fit this description. But the lead hung there waiting for a cross-bearing. Pointing more directly toward Philby were four fingers left behind by the ghost of Konstantin Volkov. This British-desk NKVD officer had contacted the British Consulate in Istanbul in August 1945 offering information about Soviet spies in the British government. His information could have uncovered Philby, Maclean, and Burgess (and doubtless others) but fate— and Soviet manipulation —had placed Philby across his path. Philby had become head of counterintelli- gence work against the USSR and was the logical choice, as he pointed out, to handle the case. He quickly alerted the NKVD, which removed Volkov before he could make his next contact. But these pointers remained: • Volkov had told the British Consul that a “head of a British counteres- pionage organization” was an NKVD agent. Philby was now head of a recently formed MI6 organization to counter Soviet espionage. • Within MI6 Philby had handled the Volkov matter almost single-handedly. Any suspicion that a leak might have caused Volkov’s untimely disappear- ance would necessarily point toward him. • Philby had so dragged his fee and delayed the British response to Volkov’s appeal that the British Consul correctly concluded that unless Philby was criminally incompetent, he must be a Soviet agent. • "Two days after the Volkov information reached London," as Philby learned from his British interrogator Milmo, "there had been a spectacular rise in the volume of NKVD wireless traffic between London and Moscow, fol- lowed by a similar rise in the traffic between Moscow and Istanbul.” But this had not been enough. It took the Burgess-Maclean flight, eight years later, to halt Philby’s rise toward the top of MI6. And even that was not enough to make him confess. MI6 dropped him for errors of judgment, not for treason, and a few years later, in what may have been an accident of parliamentary procedure, he was publicly cleared by Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan. So those ice- bergs of suspicion gradually melted in the warm waters of organizational self- deception and forgetfulness— and Philby sailed on. Incredibly, MI6 rehired him. Its chiefs, like many MI6 officers, had scoffed at the very thought that Philby might be a traitor, and at the paranoid idea that the Soviets might have pene- trated their ranks. Now they set him up as a journalist in Beirut where they thought his contacts would prove useful. Useful they were, but mainly for the KGB. Though removed from MI6’s central files, Philby kept in touch with former colleagues and other Westerners of interest to KGB recruiters. These Westerners still trusted Philby; even those who thought he might have warned Burgess and Maclean did not suspect he had done it on the KGB’s behalf. A former CIA official in the area wrote, “When I went to Beirut in 1957 to set up a consulting firm I was told by both CIA officers and SIS officers that Philby was still suspect, although he had been formally cleared of any connection with Burgess and Maclean, and that I would be doing a great service to my country were I to keep an eye on him. I did, as did other British and American laymen who were friends of his. Like all the others, I didn’t have the slightest suspicion that he was a Soviet agent and, in fact, wouldn’t believe it until he surfaced in Moscow. . . . Believe me, it was a terrible shock.” 10 Finally, in 1962 new information pointed unmistakably at Philby, and MI6 had to act. A longtime colleague, Nicholas Elliott, got a partial confession from him, but then he fled to the Soviet Union and until his death in 1988 kept on helping the KGB damage the West.

James, I agree with you that parts of the Mitrokhin Archive are implausible. Like "Mark Lane was paid by the CPUSA to cast aspersions on the Warren Report," and that "Yuri Nosenko was a true defector," for example. Regardless, regarding Joseph McCarthy (whom Don asked me about), do you, or do you not, sir (a little humor there, James) agree with me that the U.S. Government, including the CIA, had been penetrated by some at-that-time-still-uncovered Soviet spies and American "moles"? Thanks, -- TG

Don, If you're asking whether or not McCarthy was basically right in his assessment that the U.S. Government (including the CIA) had been been penetrated by Soviet counterintelligence agents and compromised by some home-grown, recruited-by-KGB "moles," yes, he was. He was rabid, though, and way over-the-top in the number of people he accused of being said spies and "moles". -- TG

Tracy, I just now went there and took a look at that post and a few of the others on that page. In my humble opinion, Mytton has done some excellent work there. Thanks for sharing the link. -- TG

Bart, (from left to right in the Jimmy Darnell frame, below) NOT "Maybe Carol Reed," Gloria Calvery, and Karen Westbrook. NOR Thierry Speth's, Robin Unger's and Don Roberdeau's "Gloria Calvary, Karan Hicks, and Carol Reed" But: (Native American) Stella Mae Jacob, Gloria Jeanne Holt, and Sharon Simmons. The Gloria Calvery you've never been able to find in the films and photos is the largish girl standing directly to the left of John Templin in the Z-Film. -- TG PS The following FBI statements are in alphabetical order. Scroll down to the ones by Jacob, Holt, and Simmons. https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1381.pdf Note: A simple mistake was made in their statements. They weren't standing on the south side of Elm Street (i.e., on the grass between Elm Street and Main Street), but on the north side (i.e., on the Grassy Knoll side of Elm, not far from the Stemmons Freeway Sign). PPS Apparently Sandy Larsen and I have finally convinced Don Roberdeau about Jacob, Holt, and Simmons, because he's finally positioned them correctly on his map. (But he has Calvery mis-labled as "J. Newman")

David, Wasn't Trafficante rumored to have been an informant for the guy who had let him out of prison whilst the other mobbed-up (former) casino owners remained incarcerated, i.e., Fidel Castro? Has that theory been discredited? -- TG

Bart, How do you know that Gloria Jeanne Holt didn't have similarly colored hair? Also, I find it interesting that Westbrook equivocated on whether or not the other young woman in that little group was Carol Reed. Which makes me think that when Westbrook was looking at the stature/physique of that brown coat-wearing woman in the Z-frame, and at her dark "fluffed-up" hair, it didn't remind her of the Carol Reed she had known. -- TG PS Something else I just thought of -- If Westbrook is correct that that threesome in the Z-frame is comprised of herself, Calvery, and Reed, then where is Karan Hicks? Their FBI statements said that she was with them. Would you agree with me, Bart, that the woman wearing the brown coat in the Z-frame was dark complected? (Obviously, you can't see her face in the Z-film, so one reference her in those two frames from the Darnell clip which shows the three gals, dark-complected Stella Mae Jacob, crying Gloria Holt, and headscarf-wearing Sharon Simmons) walking back towards the TSBD.) Were either Carol Reed or Karan Hicks dark-complected and dark-haired like that?

Bumped for Bart and anyone else who might be interested. Sorry about the missing graphics in this thread, and in particular about the missing highschool photos of Gloria Jeanne Holt, whom Karen Westbrook Scranton misidentified (in a Z-film frame, from behind, 55 years after the fact) as Gloria Jean Calvery. -- TG

Eddy, Do you know of any "miscreants" on this forum? If so, who? -- TG

David, I'm working on it. (Laughing Out Loud) -- TG