Thomas Graves

Mervyn, John Newman believes Oswald was a very important "pawn" during the Cold War. Malcolm Blunt interviewed Newman's and my "main man," Tennent H. Bagley (RIP; have you heard of him?), a few years ago, and one of the things that came out of their conversation is that Bagley believed that, based on an analysis of the way the CIA's documents on Oswald during that period of time were distributed (or were not distributed), that Oswald must have been a witting false defector to the USSR, probably dispatched there by Angleton (if I understand correctly). -- T.G.

Thank you, David! Interesting stuff. You da Man! -- T.G. PS Obtuseness? What does that mean? PPS Hey, David. Got anything on Byetkov?

I have recently shown in another thread that, during the 1975 and 1976 Church Committee hearings, James Jesus Angleton wasn't talking about some unknown KGB dude by the name of "Leontov," but KGB's 35 year-old, short, blond, very thin-faced operations officer in Mexico, Colonel Nikolai Leonov, whose "personal card" was allegedly found in Fidel Castro's wallet (not Oswald's pocket, and not a photograph) when Fidel was arrested in Mexico in 1956. For what it's worth, if I understand Angleton's other testimony correctly, he seemed to believe, based on 1) the possibility that Oswald met with KGB operations officer Leonov in Mexico City (as confirmed by Leonov, himself, in the 1990s), and 2 ) that a certain KGB triple agent after the assassination had tried to convince CIA that KGB had had no relationship with Oswald, that Oswald may have been working for the Ruskies. A Committee member, a certain Mr. Schwarz, clearly misspoke when he said Oswald had been arrested in Mexico City. He meant to say that Castro had been arrested there back in the day. I beg to differ with Bill Simpich's interpretation of one particular part of Angleton's testimony. To wit; when Mr. Schwarz practically puts not only words but mistakes in Angleton's mouth by asking him the rhetorical question, "What about the pictures, one of which was a picture of Leontov (sic) that was in a piece of paper found in Mr. Oswald's pocket when he was arrested in Mexico City?" And Angleton replies. "There's an allegation." Period. Full stop. Given the context of this circus, in my humble opinion Angleton's reply should not be taken as some sinister substitute for, "That's right. Whaddaya want to make of it?," but rather ..... .... "Hmm, your allegation sure is news to me. Sure you got that right?" https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1447#relPageId=15&tab=page Bill Simpich, what say you? "Angleton also claimed that a photo of Leonov was supposedly found in Oswald’s pocket when he was supposedly arrested in Mexico.[ 25 ]" -- from Chapter 6 of State Secret

Sandy, 1 ) What, pray tell, do you mean by "false flag operation" in this context? 2 ) How do you know that Leonov's photo was the one Scott was referring to when he wrote "a certain person who is known to you"? 3 ) The Cubans got what right? 4) Which page(s) would you like to refer me to? -- T.G.

Ronnie, Nice! -- T.G.

Ronnie, I see. -- T.G.

Sandy, As far as why Nikita Khrushchev might have killed JFK, I refer you to pages 207 - 208 in Mark Riebling's fine book Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA. If I can summon up enough energy, I might even copy-and-paste (if it's viewable on googlebooks), or ... gasp ... type up the whole one-page excerpt here for your enlightenment. -- T.G. PS OH MY GOODNESS, LOOKIE-LOOKIE WHAT I FOUND! But what would the Soviets possibly gain from Kennedy’s death that would be worth the risk of U.S. retaliation? From a pragmatic Western perspective, there seemed little profit indeed, but Angleton thought about the problem with more subtlety. First of all, the nuclear age precluded any massive U.S. retaliation — as Johnson’s craven cover-ups of all possible communist connections were already demonstrating. Second, if the Soviets had truly penetrated the Soviet Division at CIA, as Angleton believed, the KGB might even have hoped to steer U.S. investigation of the crime. As for the Soviet motive: Out was Kennedy, a charismatic leader who could “sell” a socially conscious anticommunism in the Third World and even to Western liberals. In was Johnson, who would only “heighten the contradictions” between East and West and therefore hasten (by Feninist dialectical reasoning) the ultimate collapse of late capitalism. Angleton also took seriously the observations marshaled in a November 27 memo by defector Deriabin, who cited the Kennedy administration’s opposition to long-term credits to the Soviets, which he said were vital to survival of the USSR. Johnson, by contrast, came from an agricultural state and had always supported grain sales to Russia. Moreover, Western pressure on the USSR “would automatically ease up” if the KGB murdered the president. As evidence, Deriabin noted a “conciliatory telegram” by a frightened and disoriented Lyndon Johnson to Khrushchev. A more amenable America would “strengthen Khrushchev’s hand” at a time when the Soviet leader was under intensifying internal pressures because of mismanagement of the 1963 harvest and disputes with China. Kennedy’s death, as Deriabin put it, thus “effectively diverts the Soviets’ attention from their internal problems. It directly affects Khrushchev’s longevity.” Finally, Deriabin ventured that “the death of President Kennedy, whether a planned operation or not, will serve the most obvious purpose of providing proof of the power and omniscience of the KGB.” Much later, Angleton would obliquely compare the Soviets’ probable motivation to a famous scene in Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather, in which a Mafia chieftain puts a horse’s head into the bed of a stubborn film producer, in order to demonstrate “pure power.” https://archive.org/stream/WedgeFromPearlHarborTo911HowTheSecretWarBetweenTheFBIAndCIAHasEndangeredNationalSecurity/Wedge+-+From+Pearl+Harbor+to+9%3A11+-+How+the+Secret+War+between+the+FBI+and+CIA+Has+Endangered+National+Security_djvu.txt

James, Yes, but you left out a few widdle details, James. I mean, I mean, I mean ... isn't it interesting that Putin's gig shortly before being named First Prime Minister by corrupt 'n drunk Yeltsin was that of head of the FSB, and that shortly after he'd left the FSB, the martial law-inducing "Russian Apartment Bombings" happened (in 1999), you know, right before the elections? Which "terrorist bombings," by the way, were traced by the local Ryazan, Russia, police to the ... gasp ... FSB? And for writing about said bombings, by the way, former KGB officer Litvinenko was slipped some Polonium Tea by a couple of his old KGB buds in Merry Old London Town a few years back, you know ... I mean, I mean, I mean ... for having had the gall to write about Putin's connection to said bombings? I mean, I mean, I mean, doesn't it kinda look as thought it was all planned that way so that the 1 ) "Chechen Terrorists" could be blamed for murdering 300 Russian citizens, 2 ) martial law could be declared, and 3 ) Vladimir Putin (who, as First Prime Minister, had been covering Yeltsin's corrupt xxx), would automatically, per the Russian Constitution, become interim president when good ol' Boris Y. up and decided to ... gasp ... retire? Hard to image your buddy Vladimir Putin doing such a horrible thing as arranging the "Russian Apartment Bombings" in order to become president, James? Well, consider the fact that your boy, recently laid off by the KGB in Dresden, East Germany, "made his bones" with the powers that be by helping the so-called "liberal" but corrupt mayor of Saint Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, steal $124 million of food funds from the mouths of practically starving Saint Petersburg residents in 1992. You can read all about it in Marsha Gessen's fine book, "Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin," or if you prefer, you can google "Putin's Way" and watch the highly fascistic PBS's Frontline production by the same title. For free! -- T.G. PS As to how all of this relates to Trump's becoming our president? Well, haven't you ever heard of "active measures" counterintelligence ops (continuous since 1921) and "strategic/operational deception" counterintelligence ops (since 1958 with the dispatching to the U.S. of false double-agent Polyakov in "Operation Boomerang")? Tsk, Tsk, Tsk ...

Correction: Bill O'Riley claimed he heard the shotgun blast ... George de Mohrenschildt claim In his bestselling 2013 book Killing Kennedy and on Fox and Friends, O'Reilly claimed he was knocking at the front door of George de Mohrenschildt's daughter's home at the moment Mohrenschildt committed suicide and that he heard the shotgun blast: This claim has been disproven by former Washington Post editor Jefferson Morley, who cites audio recordings made by Gaeton Fonziindicating O'Reilly was not present in Florida on the day of Mohrenschildt's suicide. -- Wikipedia article on Bill O'Reilly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_O'Reilly_(political_commentator)#George_de_Mohrenschildt_claim -- T.G.

Bill, You mean to say you weren't impressed as much as PDS was by John Newman's presentation of Bagley's "Spy Wars"? I did see you taking notes, and smiling and vigorously nodding your head up and down when PDS, sitting next to you, had an "epiphany" of sorts when he realized that Popov, having been betrayed by Edward Ellis Smith (or someone he helped the KGB to recruit) in early 1957, had been allowed by the Ruskies to continue spying us for awhile, then called back on a ruse and secretly arrested in Moscow in 1958, tripled against us, and finally publicly arrested (and later executed) about the same time that Oswald arrived in Moscow ( i.e., in late October, 1959). Regardless, after Newman's presentation, do you still think that Nosenko might have been a true defector??? Have you read Bagley's "Spy Wars" and "Ghosts of the Spy Wars"??? -- T.G. PS As far as I know, the only thing Blunt adds to the "Nosenko was a false defector" conversation is that he was able to elicit from Bagley the fact that Oswald must have been a witting (dispatched by Angleton?) false defector to the USSR.

6' 0.5" -- T.G.

B.A. Copeland, Just curious -- Did you read the long excerpt from "Spy Wars" I posted, above? For your edification, I'll try to find some of Bagley's assessments of Solie and post them here for you. You do realize, don't you, that John Newman recently gave a presentation in San Francisco titled "Spy Wars," which was based on Bagley's book "Spy Wars" and a book ("Spymaster") that Bagley co-wrote with a former KGB officer (general Kondrashev), at the end of which presentation Peter Dale Scott turned to Newman and said, "You've convinced me that Nosenko was a false defector"? -- T.G.

Joseph, I already wasted some perfectly good money on Jefferson Morley's (IMHO) intellectually dishonest "The Ghost." Have you seen my one-star review of it on Amazon? It's under my code name "dumptrumpputin". -- TG

-- T.G. Actually, probably not from the sixth floor, but from that part of the Grassy Knoll (much closer to the TDBD than the "classic" Grassy Knoll) where "diving man" Malcolm Summers, on the other side of Elm Street on the "infield grass," said he saw something happening behind a low retaining wall.

RI = Records Integration Department / Division? (Just a wild guess.) -- T.G.

James, I'm looking forward to borrowing it from any San Diego area library (whenever the system decides to purchase a copy), reading it, and then ... (gasp) ... writing a really, really glowing review of it! -- T.G.

David, Do yourself a big favor and read this to get an inkling of what a "piece of work" your beloved Leonard McCoy was. To tell you the truth, I wouldn't be surprised to find out he was in the employ of the Soviets. (He, and Richard Kovich, and John Hart, that is.) (...) Most of the ghosts I stir up here still hover undetected because back in the second half of the 1960s the CIA changed its mind and decided that the deeply-suspected KGB defector Yuri Nosenko had, after all, genuinely defected and had been telling CIA the truth. That change of mind began in 1967, five years after Nosenko first appeared to the CIA. By then the CIA's Soviet Bloc (SB) Division had concluded, on the basis of years of debriefing, interrogation, investigation, observation, and analysis, that the KGB's Second Chief Directorate (internal counterintelligence) sent Nosenko to CIA with the aim (among others) of diverting leads to its spies in the West that CIA had been given a few months earlier by the genuine KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn. The SB Division summarized its reasons in a 439-page report, one copy of which they apparently mounted in a “notebook.” But then the tide shifted. A reports-and-requirements (R&R) officer of the Division, alerted to the notebook's existence by a colleague (note: The colleague was Richard Kovich, who though not involved in the (closely-held) handling of Nosenko, had been subtly seeking for a year or more to learn—and had evidently found out—the dire assessment of Nosenko's bona fides and his situation), got hold of it and, without checking with his Division superiors, drafted a forty-page paper and three memoranda for higher Agency supervisors, pleading that his Division's position on Nosenko as set out in the notebook was wrong, mindless, and indefensible. He urged that it be reconsidered “by a new team of CIA officers.” This evidently launched the Agency's re-review of the case, with new interviews of Nosenko by others, culminating in a 1968 report by security officer Bruce Solie that exonerated Nosenko and led to his acceptance as an advisor to the Agency's anti-Soviet operations. THE MCCOY INTERVENTION The Soviet Block Reports & Requirements officer who started the process, Leonard McCoy, was later made deputy chief of CIA's Counterintelligence Staff (under a new CI Staff chief (note: George Kalaris), previously unconnected with anti-Soviet operations, who had replaced James Angleton). There, he continued fiercely to defend Nosenko's bona fides and, in the guise of cleansing unnecessary old files, destroyed all the CI Staff's existing file material that (independent of SB Division's own findings) cast doubt on Nosenko's good faith. Not until forty-five years later was McCoy's appeal declassified and released by the National Archives (NARA) on 12 March 2012 under the JFK Act “with no objection from CIA.” McCoy opened, as we can now see, with his own finding and with a plea: “After examining the evidence of Nosenko's bona fides in the notebook,” he wrote, “I am convinced that Nosenko is a bona fide defector. I believe that the case against him has arisen and persisted because the facts have been misconstrued, ignored, or interpreted without sufficient consideration of his psychological failings.” The evidence, he said, is that Nosenko is “not a plant and not fabricating anything at all, except what is required by his disturbed personality.” He recommended “that we appoint a new judge and jury for the Nosenko case consisting of persons not involved in the case so far” and proposed six candidates. According to McCoy, it was not only Nosenko's psychology that should determine his bona fides, but also his reporting. “The ultimate conclusions must be based on his production,” McCoy asserted, specifically claiming to be the only person qualified to evaluate that production. Certain of Nosenko's reports were important and fresh, he stated, and could not be considered KGB “throwaway” or deception, as the notebook described them. In reality, however, the value of Nosenko's intelligence reports had not been a major factor in the Division's finding. It had judged him a KGB plant on the basis of the circumstances of the case (of the sort listed in the “40 Questions” of the Appendix). McCoy did not explain—or even mention—a single one of these circumstances in his paper, so his arguments were irrelevant to the matter he pretended to deal with. His was not a professional assessment of a complex counterintelligence situation but, instead, an emotional plea. He referred with scorn to his superiors' “insidious conclusions” and “genuine paranoia” and called their analysis “very strange, to say the least.” The case against Nosenko, he wrote, was based on (unnamed) “assumptions, subjective observations, unsupported suspicions, innuendo, insinuations [… and] relatively trivial contradictions in his reporting.” Nosenko's failure to pass the lie detector test, McCoy asserted, “rules out Nosenko immediately” as a plant—because the KGB would have trained him to beat it. He dismissed (unspecified) findings as “trivial, antique, or repetitive” and cited one which “borders on fantasy. … In fact, it is fantastic!” (sic—with exclamation point). “I cannot find a shred of solid evidence against Nosenko,” he wrote, “The case would be thrown out of court for lack of evidence.” Closing his paper he asked, “What kind of proof do we need of his innocence, when we call him guilty with none?” McCoy used as argument his speculation about what the KGB would or would not do. His paper was studded with untruths, distortions, and unsupported assertions like those cited above—all designed to discredit any doubts or doubters of Nosenko's bona fides. For instance, he judged the defector Pyotr Deryabin, a former KGB Major of more than ten years' experience, to be “not experienced.” When Deryabin decided that Nosenko was a KGB plant, wrote McCoy, he was making a “snap judgment … after having been briefed on the mere facts of the case.” In reality, Deryabin had spent years reviewing and commenting upon the full record of this and related cases, listening to tapes (and correcting the transcripts) of every meeting with and debriefing of Nosenko—and had then personally questioned Nosenko in twelve long sessions. McCoy told the demonstrable untruth that Nosenko “damaged the Soviet intelligence effort more than all the other KGB defectors combined” and that “no Soviet defector has identified as many Soviet agents.” Had Nosenko not uncovered William Vassall as a spy, McCoy wrote, certain secret British documents (shown by Golitsyn to be in KGB hands) “could have been assumed to come from the Lonsdale-Cohen-Houghton net”—though they could not conceivably have been. He said that Sgt. Robert Lee Johnson “would still be operating against us” had Nosenko not uncovered him—though by then, in fact, Johnson had already lost his post and his wife was publicly denouncing him as a Soviet spy. McCoy asserted that it was Nosenko who identified Kovshuk's photo whereas Golitsyn had made the identification. He confused two separate KGB American recruits, following Nosenko's line and successfully hiding the active, valid one. And he made uncounted other equally unfounded assertions. But by then the Nosenko case—the CIA's holding of a suspected KGB plant—had become a thorn in the side of the Agency leadership, an “incubus” and “bone in the throat,” as Director Richard Helms put it. So the CIA happily accepted McCoy's authority and as a result many KGB moles were never identified. Let's have a look at some of these ghosts. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362 -- T.G.

Sandy, I couldn't agree more. Personally, I think it's almost as though the Russians knew in advance that Oswald was either going to try to kill JFK (either for himself, for themselves, for Castro, or for the evil, evil CIA), or was going to be patsied for same, and they were trying to proactively dispel the notion that KGB had recruited Oswald during the 2.5 years he lived in the USSR. What really "seals the deal" for me in this regard is that Nikolai Leonov, himself, is on record (in the National Inquirer newspaper and in a book written in the Russian language) as claiming that he had met one-on-one at the Soviet Embassy with an unstable, revolver-brandishing Oswald on Sunday, September 29, 1963, one day after the three stooges, mentioned above, had allegedly met with the same crazy-dangerous guy.. So, we have five dubious Ruskies alleging that Oswald couldn't have killed JFK for the KGB: KGB false defector Nosenko, KGB-boy Nechiporenko, KGB-boy Yatskov, good ol' (Department 13?) KGB-boy Kostikov, and, yep, that 35 year-old, quite short, blond-haired, blue-eyed, very-thin faced "Blond Oswald in Mexico City," KGB colonel Nikolai Leonov. Talk about overkill! (Pardon the pun.) -- T.G. PS I like the idea that the Ruskies found out that Castro was going to pay Oswald kill JFK, and that Castro was gonna try to blame the assassination on the Russians ...

Thanks, Douglas. I don't know how I managed to miss this interesting article from a year ago, but since I'm convinced that KGB Counterintelligence-boy Vladimir Putin (through Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear, Guccifer 2.0, and Putin's legions of professional Saint Petersburg trolls) and his lackey, Julian Assange, installed a Russian mobbed-up, blackmail-able, expendable-for-Putin "useful idiot" as our president, I'm gonna go ahead and "bump" this AP article so folks here can see how the Trump Campaign might have colluded with the above-mentioned usual suspects in helping to make it all happen. (Another interesting character in this regard is, of course, that Assange-friendly scumbag, Roger Stone.) https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/22/former-trump-campaign-chair-paul-manafort-secretly-worked-benefit-putin/21905514/ -- T.G.

Thank you so much, Ron. But unfortunately, I'd already edited it before I read this fine post of yours. My bad. I must have been thinking of Harvey and Lee and ... gasp ... the two Marguerites. -- T.G.

Okay. -- T.G. PS Why did you try to delete your post?

Paul, I have been moderated twice now for violating the 24-hour "no bumping" rule. IMHO, DiEugenio did the same thing a short time ago on this thread. Okay? -- TG

Isn't "bumping" a post within 24 hours verboten, James? I mean, I mean, I mean, .. isn't that what you've effectively done? -- "TG"

David, Don't you realize it doesn't really matter because James "Sacrosanct" DiEugenio and his ilk obviously, obviously, obviously proved a long, long time ago that the evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, evil CIA, through the auspices of that evil, evil Dallas mayor Earle Cabell (brother of that evil, evil, evil, evil, evil former Deputy Director of the CIA, Charles P. Cabell) and, of course, the evil, evil Mafia, controlled the evil, evil, evil, evil Dallas Police Department and the evil evil , etc, etc, etc, ... and killed our beloved president John Fitzgerald Kennedy, no matter what the evidence does or does not say? (sarcasm) -- T.G.

Kathy, Really? None of you ever saw those threats/insults starting on page 8 of the "The KGB and the JFK Case" thread? Just curious: How do you know that? I mean, I mean, I mean ... Did you ask all of them? Isn't it probable that at least one moderator did see those threats / insults, but since it is politically-correct-on-this-forum to make comments like those against me, just kinda decided to "let it slide"? I mean, you know, ... seein' as how I hadn't complained to y'all in PMs 'n everythang? An' if you don't mind my askin', How many moderators are there, anyway? Let's see ... You, James, Mark (?), ... anybody else? OMG, ...gasp ... Don Jeffries? -- T.G.