Thomas Graves

Paul, EDIT ALERT: I think Angleton's "paranoia" was quite justified, seeing as how a very important true defector, Ptyor Popov, had been arrested (and later executed) by KGB in October, 1959, under fake and long-in-the-making (due to the interruption caused by the important Penkovsky case) "surveillance scenario" conditions contrived by the KGB to protect the identity of the American mole (Edward Ellis Smith or someone whom he had helped the KGB to recruit) who had betrayed Popov -- thirteen months after his secret original arrest, at which time he had been "tripled" and actually played back against U.S. Intel !). But even before Popov's well-publicized October 1959 arrest and trial, what had really gotten Angleton's attention was Popov's telling his CIA handler, George Kisevalter, in April, 1958, that a drunken GRU general had bragged to him at a party that the GRU already knew all about the super secret U-2 spy plane -- implying the existence of a really big-time mole in the U.S. Please remember, too, that true defector Anatoly Golitsyn told U.S. Intel shortly after he defected in December, 1961, that it was compromised by a mole whom Golitsyn said was code-named "Sasha," but as it turned out several years later when the (now-inactive) Soviet spy, Igor Orlov, was finally tracked down at his art gallery in N.Y.C., "Sasha" wasn't his KGB code name, but his nickname! As my final example in this little summary of why Angleton can be excused for being paranoid, there was J. Edgar Hoover's beloved "Fedora" who, to JEH's great chagrin, eventually turned out to have been a long term spy. -- TG PS Etc, Etc, Etc

Steve, Tried clicking on the links, but stupid me couldn't find the documents on MFF you are referencing. Regardless, regarding your CD 1023 -- Russia - Cuba (Oklahoma City), I wonder if it matters that FBI's TUMBLEWEED, double-agent Guenter Schulz, was living in Oklahoma? (I mean, at some point, anyway.) -- Tommy

Speaking of that crazy evil guy, James Jesus Angleton, has anyone here ever heard of ... Edward Ellis Smith? Hint: google [ "edward ellis smith" kovshuk ] Also, did you know that true defector Anatoly Golitsyn unintentionally sent JJA on a long, destructive, "wild goose chase" Mole Hunt by, instead of realizing that the word "SASHA" (in some KGB reports he'd seen about a Slavic officer/agent who'd penetrated U.S. Intel in postwar Germany and whose last name began with the letter "K" and ended with -sky or -ski) wasn't the dude's KGB codeword, but just the diminutive form of his fake first name "Alexandr" (which Nazi Intel had given him when he was captured in Germany during WWII.) His full fake Nazi Intel name was "Alexandr Kopatsky," but his real name was Igor Orlov. Dude was finally tracked down by FBI and CIA many years later in the U.S. (where he'd "worked" for the CIA), but it was after he'd supposedly retired from the KGB, and therefore he was not prosecuted. This was the long-running, misdirected mole hunt that "ruined the lives" of CIA officers Peter Karlow and Richard Kovich (whom, ironically, I do believe was a mole, seein' as how the three very important KGB defectors he'd handled were all uncovered by the KGB, and seein' as how he was instrumental in very sneakily getting Tennent H. Bagley's very convincing assessment of Nosenko "reviewed" and overturned), and so many others ... Ironically, Bagley's partner in interviewing Nosenko in Geneva in 1962, George Kisevalter, was never interrogated. In retrospect, perhaps he should have been. -- Tommy

I mean ... it's obvious that we hadn't been penetrated by those nice Ruskies, so he must have been one or the other, right? (lol) Okay ... 1) Who says: "The evil son-of-a-gun was the mastermind of the assassination of our beloved President!!!" 2) Who says: "He evil son of a gun just masterminded the Cover Up, to protect some evil, evil, evil, evil CIA officers and Agents!!!" 3) Who says "The poor guy was just really, really paranoid, and for no darn good reason!!!" ? Don't be shy, now ... -- Tommy

Dear Kirk, That's what I was hoping you'd meant, but the thought did cross my mind that maybe you didn't understand double-negatives. Or something. Hmm. Must have been that ambivalent "certainly on the surface" phrase that threw me ... -- Tommy

Kirk, With all due respect, I'm not sure if you're serious about "Bush in Dealey Plaza," but ... in case you didn't know ... that Bush lookalike was proved to be someone else. -- Tommy

"There you go again!" -- Tommy.

Mice "cover job," again. Dang it. Hard to type "vermin" on a tiny android. Was that an evil, evil, evil CIA-directed "autocorrect," a Freudian slip, or due to the fact that I, @ 6'' 5" and 255 lbs, have and unusually large little finger ... even, and that the "n" and the "m" are only about 1/4" apart on this so-called device? Regardless, as you can see I've decided to leave it as it is -- for the poetic beauty of it all! Duly noted? ....... Back to your apparent "cover job," though ... Not to worry, I'll just wait at least the Forum Rules-required 24 hours and "bump" it. Who will "cover" it almost immediately then? You, or his "Ditto", "I agree 100%" personal cheerleader? Should you flip a virtual bitcoin? -- Tommy

Paul, With all due respect ... Claud Cockburn? You mean the Communist and close friend at Oxford of KGB mole and MI-5 head, Roger Hollis (who, in 1961, forced MI-6 counterintelligence officer Peter Wright to tell him the true name of the GRU double-agent whom both CIA and MI-6 had only just started handling -- i.e., GRU colonel Oleg Penkovsky), and which "Claud Cockburn" Hollis had so conveniently forgotten to mention on his application with Britain's Secret Services back in the day? THAT Claud Cockburn? (lol) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362 "When Penkovsky came to London in April 1961, MI6 was compelled to bring this to the attention of MI5, which is responsible for secret operations on UK soil. They told only the top level. When Hollis asked [Peter Wright] the name of the imminent arrival, he was reminded that this was unnecessary and would breach the tight security barrier surrounding the operation. But, remarkably, Hollis insisted and was told." -- (see note 30, which mentions Wright in this context, near the end of the PDF) -- Tommy

Hmm. "Info: ....... C/CI/SI[G] ... Mr. O'Neal" Gasp ... did somebody suspect a mole and think Special Interests Group should know about it? Or was it the other way around? -- Tommy PS for Big D: Wow. Your evolving theory really does require the highly implausible "The-Two-Sometimes-Lookalike-and-Sometimes-Not-So-Lookalike-Oswalds-and-Ditto-the-Two-Marguerites" theory, doesn't it? I mean, I mean, I mean ... that's the only way the whole she-bang "works." Right? I mean, kinda?

Big D, With all due respect, I'm terribly sorry about the disjointed post. You must be rubbing off on me, again. -- Tommy PS Out, out damned Spot? PPS You do realize that Leonard McCoy was a piece of work, don't you? You haven't read the first five or so pages of "Ghosts of the Spy Wars" yet, have you? Pity that. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362

Why would they be knocked off? To keep them from slipping a coded message to National Enquirer? Hard to determine, Steve, seeing as how the KGB wasn't very transparent about its activities, and has always been pretty good at spreading fake news. It is interesting, though, that Edward Ellis Smith (Popov's Mole, per Tennent H. Bagley) died in a strange temporary hit-and-run accident in 1982 in Redwood City, California, some 25 years after being the first CIA officer to be recruited by the KGB ... -- Tommy PS And of course there WAS George DeMohrenschildt, wasn't there ...

James, Uhh, with all due respect ... Once again, Oswalds' "real nature" did Dulles and Angleton collaborate on covering up while Dulles was on the Warren Commission, HARVEY or LEE? -- Tommy PS Or you'd rather not commit yourself on that one just yet?

James, With all due respect, who was Oswald? I mean, I mean, I mean ... really? An extremely low-paid agent of the evil, evil CIA who was tasked with killing JFK? An extremely low-paid CIA agent who was manipulated by the evil, evil CIA into becoming a patsy? A wannabe high-paid CIA agent whose amateurish "programs" were piggybacked by the evil, evil CIA in such a way as to make him an unwitting patsy? A KGB "Manchurian candidate" or trained assassin who (maybe) couldn't be called off by Khrushchev after JFK's heartwarming American University speech? Someone who got really, really fed up being manipulated by both sides and decided to make a name for himself? A volunteer assassin for Fidel Castro? An encouraged-by-Castro assassin? A paid-by-Castro assassin? Just a really, really, really, really good friend of (probable) longterm KGB "illegal" George DeMohrenschildt? Have I forgotten any? Regardless, since you seem to believe the "Harvey and Lee and the Two Marguerites" theory (which I don't), which Oswald are you talking about here, anyway? LOL -- Tommy PS Corroborated or Collaborated?

Bernie, I don't know about you, but I'm seriously beginning to think that "Harvey and Lee and the Two Marguerites" is an "active measures" counterintelligence op. With so many gullible people believing in it, it's no wonder we ended up with a "useful idiot" president. -- Tommy

David, With all due respect, Bagley wrote quite a lot about Golitsyn in his 2007 book, "Spy Wars" and his 2015 PDF, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars." Here's a long but informative passage from the book, pages 57 - 58: KGB Major Anatoly Golitsyn walked in to the CIA chief in Helsinki on 15 December 1961. For more than two years he had been preparing this break but, fearing leaks, had never taken the risk of contacting us or giving any hint of his intention. During this time he took pains to memorize details from hundreds of reports that crossed his desk and conversations with KGB colleagues, and as a result he was nearly as productive as if he had been operating in place. And he was also alive and safe here in the United States. In his KGB position Golitsyn had wide access to operational secrets because his job entailed analyzing reports on NATO coming into Moscow from KGB spies in at least eight countries. Additional information came from his indoctrination periods in several KGB departments, and from his service in two KGB residencies abroad. In the process Golitsyn had learned the precise identities of some spies but, most remarkably, had heard and seen and remembered things that would point us to many more whom he couldn’t directly place. His information led to identification of important KGB spies still active in Western governments: senior diplomats, intelligence officers, and prominent businessmen. Many were later arrested or fired from their positions of trust, including two NATO officials, a Norwegian intelligence official, a Canadian ambassador, a former CIA principal agent, a double agent misleading CIA, and some highly placed French intelligence officers. Others who could not be firmly identified or, if identified, could not be prosecuted for lack of evidence included West German intelligence officers, French diplomats, and American code clerks. Each of Golitsyn’s leads had been listed as a ‘'serial," divided by nationality and shared with the security services of the friendly countries involved. These serials might sometimes have stemmed from fragmentary hearsay—for example, ‘‘My KGB colleague X in the Y section told me in [year] that he was handling as a source a diplomat serving in Z Embassy in Moscow who kept a large dog there.’’ Or they might be descriptions of specific intelligence reports he’d handled that emanated from an unidentified source in a certain NATO country. Some serials were sharper and included the spies’ names or KGB code names. Two or more serials might apply to one and the same spy; the diplomat with the dog, for instance, might have been the source of one or more of the intelligence reports. The number of these serials was phenomenal: more than one hundred fifty British and about one hundred French, of which more than ten pointed to spies in French intelligence and security staffs. Because so many of his leads were fragmentary and could not be verified, some outsiders later criticized Golitsyn for causing turmoil and tension between allies and even suggested that this was his purpose. Shocked and feeling attacked by his revelations, some Western European officials accused him of paranoia and dismissed his information as mad ravings. They were wrong. Golitsyn was not easy to deal with, but those who did over the years attested to his effort to separate fact from supposition. When he was later shown Western files to help him identify spies about whom he knew only fragmentary facts, he erred in two or three cases and pointed in wrong directions (though the leads themselves were later found to have been valid). But what he told in the first months after his defection proved to be accurate and priceless. Those of us who worked with those leads came to call them "vintage Golitsyn," in contrast to his later, more speculative pointers and notions. -- emphasis added Sorry, "Big D", but I'm not interested in reading about his "more speculative pointers and notions," the stuff that tinfoil hat-wearing Conspiracy Theorists like to point to and shout at the top of their lungs "See dere? I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean ..... Da guy was a delusional pair-wah-noid!" Spy Wars is full of "vintage Golitsyn," and to tell you the truth, "Big D", that's all I need to know ... -- Tommy

Paul, With all due respect, can you prove that the CIA did it? And regarding Simpich, what did he say? That Duran's and Azcue's describing an Oswald Impostor who supposedly went into the Cuban Consulate on 9/27/63 in such a way as to so closely resemble Nikolai Leonov was just a "red herring," or something like that? I honestly don't remember, and I'm too tired to look it up right now. You've worn me out, Big Guy. -- Tommy Trivia Question: How could world-traveler Lee Harvey Oswald or an Oswald Impostor forget to take a couple of passport size photos of Lee Harvey Oswald with him to the Cuban Consulate that day?

Paul, With all due respect. So, you can't rebut the specific things I've posted during the past hour or two, huh? -- Tommy PS Actually, the more I think about it the more I realize that Fidel Castro probably dood da deed. Missed my previous post (couple of weeks ago) to that effect, huh?

Sorry, but I'm busy right now, fending off Paul "Tall Guy" Brancato, who seems to believe that a blond-haired, blue-or-green-eyed, sport coat or suit jacket-wearing "American-looking" guy who was only ... 5' 4" ... or ... (gasp) ... 5' 4.5" ... tried to impersonate 5' 9.5" Oswald, or, even more implausibly, that Sylvia Duran expected the Mexican Police and the HSCA to believe that. You know, ... that a blond American-looking midget had tried to impersonate slightly shorter-than-average (but still 5' 9.5") Oswald? So, seein' as how I'm busy, why don't you inform us of what Leonov's "observations" were in that 1998 lecture of his, and whether or not you agree with his "take" in the context of the JFK assassination, if that's even possible? And while you're at it, why could you please explain why Leonov told National Enquirer about that same time (iirc) that HE dealt one-on-one with a pistol-brandishing, emotional Oswald at the Soviet Embassy on Sunday, September 29? Was he just trying to sow more confusion among Tinfoil Hat-Wearing Conspiracy Theorists? But, but, but ... Why would a nice KGB guy do that? -- Tommy Wait. You want me to read something you referenced from something David had posted??? LOL

Paul, Are you capable of thinking in relativistic terms, Maestro? You are? Good! Well, are men generally taller than women? -- Tommy

Oh, Am I supposed to have read the transcript of his 1998 lecture? Hmm. Well, if I promise to read it, will you read Tennent H. Bagley's 35-page PDF, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars"? Which, if I remember correctly, deals with the general issue of "KGB" counterintelligence ops, both the 90 year-old "active measures" sort, and "strategic deception" kind that's been interwoven with the former for about 58 years now? https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362 -- Tommy

Care to comment on the rest of the post? -- Tommy

Paul, With all due respect, when a woman who is 5' 3.5" or 5' 3.75" (as Duran was) says that a man is "short," I think some poor guy who is only 5' 7" (iirc, I've also seen a document that said Leonov was 5' 6") certainly falls into that stigmatized category as far as she, and most women, are concerned. Do you really think she was describing a hypothetical white American man who was only 5' 4", five-and one-half inches shorter than Oswald? How plausible would it have been for some (even imaginary, as in this case) impersonator THAT short to try to ... "impersonate" ... 5' 9.5" Oswald? -- Tommy PS Sorry if I've hurt your feelings, Paul. You're ... like ... 5' 2", right?

David, With all due respect, according to contemporary CIA records, 5' 3.5" - 5' 3.75" Sylvia Duran, to the Mexican Police in late November, 1963, first started describing the Oswald Impersonator (with whom she and Azcue had probably not even dealt!) as being short (even by her standards) and blond-haired https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=3025&search=#relPageId=7&tab=page Nikolai Leonov was only 5' 7" tall, and he was blond-haired. (Five-seven is short, yes?) I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, David, but do you think the CIA forced the Mexican Police to force Duran to say that? Then in 1978 when she was testifying to the HSCA, Duran added that "Oswald" had blue or green eyes, and that he was wearing a coat. Yep, Nikolai Leonov had blue eyes, all right. And wouldn't you know it ... as "Third Secretary" at the Soviet Embassy, (KGB colonel) Leonov was in the habit of wearing a sport coat / suit jacket, especially, one would think, on work days, no matter how warm it might be in Mexico City in late September. So, your implication that Sylvia Duran didn't start describing the (probably non-existent) Oswald Impersonator in a Leonov-like-way until 1978 is highly misleading at the best. -- Tommy PS Regarding your insinuation that colonel Leonov was only a "translator," I found a little something today that you might find interesting ,,, "Between 1983 and January 1991, General Nikolai Leonov was Sub-Director of the State Security Committee (KGB) of the Soviet Union, the second most important post within the KGB structure. Previously he was Sub-Director of the KGB’s Analysis and Information Department (1973-1982) and Sub-Director of its Latin American Department (1968-1972). General Leonov is Doctor in Latin American History, at the USSR Academy of Sciences, and author of the book, Essays on Contemporary Central American History (Moscow: Ed. Nauka, Academy of Sciences, 1973). In 1985 he published his memoirs under the title Difficult Times (Moscow: International Relations). Currently he is a professor at the Institute of International Relations in Moscow." https://cepchile.cl/cep/site/artic/20160303/asocfile/20160303183724/rev73.leonov-lect_ing.pdf PPS Although I've never "dropped acid," I'm thinking that I might have to do so just to be able to understand your highly scattered and "mysto," modern poetry-like posts ... dude.

bumped -- Tommy