The Office that Spied on Its Own Spies

[Thomas Graves]

2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Tommy - it doesn’t imply that Oswald was a KGB agent. Simpich’s sentence was either badly constructed or missing a word. No?

Hi Paul,

I haven't even read "Simpich's bad sentence" because, well ... I don't need to.

I had simply noticed that David Josephs had posted oodles and gobs of recently released CIA documents pertaining to Nosenko, and, having read Spy Wars and Ghosts of the Spy Wars, and having watched the two videos of John Newman's March, 2018, presentation on same, I thought I'd inform y'all that Newman, who has obviously read the two works mentioned above, convinced Peter Dale Scott (with Simpich sitting to his left) that Nosenko was, indeed, a FALSE defector.

Bottom line as regards your question whether or not Nosenko claimed LHO was working for the KGB?  

David Joseph's is right, but with a widdle caveat -- FALSE DEFECTOR Nosenko said, in so many words, that the KGB didn't touch Oswald with a ten-foot pole during the 2.5 years Oswald lived in the USSR.

(I Am Laughing Out Loud)

--  TG

PS  By the way, Paul, I know from previous conversations with you that you're very, very, very averse to reading Bagley's Spy Wars, or even his 35-page Ghosts of the Spy Wars pdf.

Okay, then, how about watching Newman's two videos, above?

PPS  Didn't you note what I wrote in my earlier post?  --  "Bagley posits somewhere that Nosenko's claiming in early 1964 that not only had KGB not monitored Oswald very closely during the 2.5 years he lived in the USSR, but that KGB didn't even interview him (we know now that KGB interviewed him twice in Moscow) is not necessarily indicative of LHO's assassinating JFK for the KGB, but it does strongly suggest to Bagley that the KGB had had some sort of relationship with Oswald before he (wittingly and falsely; for Angleton) defected to the USSR in late 1959." 
 

PPPS   Where can I find "Simpich's Bad Sentence"?

Could you please quote it here for me?

Thanks, Paul!
 

Edited May 4, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Brancato]

23 minutes ago, Thomas Graves said:

Hi Paul,

I haven't even read "Simpich's bad sentence" because, well ... I don't need to.

I had simply noticed that David Josephs had posted oodles and gobs of recently released CIA documents pertaining to Nosenko, and, having read Spy Wars and Ghosts of the Spy Wars, and having watched the two videos of John Newman's March, 2018, presentation on same, I thought I'd inform y'all that Newman, who has obviously read the two works mentioned above, convinced Peter Dale Scott (with Simpich sitting to his left) that Nosenko was, indeed, a FALSE defector.

Bottom line as regards your question whether or not Nosenko claimed LHO was working for the KGB?  

David Joseph's is right, but with a widdle caveat -- FALSE DEFECTOR Nosenko said, in so many words, that the KGB didn't touch Oswald with a ten-foot pole during the 2.5 years Oswald lived in the USSR.

(I Am Laughing Out Loud)

--  TG

PS  By the way, Paul, I know from previous conversations with you that you're very, very, very averse to reading Bagley's Spy Wars, or even his 35-page Ghosts of the Spy Wars pdf.

Okay, then, how about watching Newman's two videos, above?

PPS  Didn't you note what I wrote in my earlier post?  --  "Bagley posits somewhere that Nosenko's claiming in early 1964 that not only had KGB not monitored Oswald very closely during the 2.5 years he lived in the USSR, but hadn't even interviewed him (we know now that KGB interviewed him twice in Moscow) is not necessarily indicative of LHO's assassinating JFK for the KGB, but that it does strongly suggest that KGB had had some sort of relationship with LHO before Oswald (wittingly and falsely; for Angleton) defected to the USSR." 
 

Tommy - two things. I’ve seen the info on Newman and Scott. If I take the point, what difference does it make? I simply cannot understand why you find this suggestive of a prior relationship between KGB and Oswald. Btw I did try to read Ghosts of the Spy Wars and found it too difficult. I mean, what would Bagley say, that Oswald was a trained KGB killer? Feel very free to write a long explanation of how you see things going down, without, if you can, referring to me or other non believers in your Castro and or KGB did it theories. Just lay it out for us to read. 

[Thomas Graves]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

(dupe)

 

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Tommy - two things. I’ve seen the info on Newman and Scott. If I take the point, what difference does it make? I simply cannot understand why you find this suggestive of a prior relationship between KGB and Oswald. Btw I did try to read Ghosts of the Spy Wars and found it too difficult. I mean, what would Bagley say, that Oswald was a trained KGB killer? Feel very free to write a long explanation of how you see things going down, without, if you can, referring to me or other non believers in your Castro and or KGB did it theories. Just lay it out for us to read. 

 

Paul,

 

I don't know how to make it more clear to you than I already have, but I am willing to "give it the old college try."

Unfortunately, however, I may have to ask you some questions along the way in order to understand what you are asking me!

(I Am Laughing Out Loud, Again; I Am Very Sorry)

First of all, what "info" have you "seen on Newman and Scott"?  (The two videos, above, I presume.  If so, did you watch both of them all the way through, Paul?  If you were to do that, then reading Bagley's 35-page PDF wouldn't be quite so "difficult" for you.  Suggestion:  Try the book; maybe it's easy enough for you to get a "handle" on, but only after watching those two videos by John Newman all the way through, Paul.)

Secondly, you need to get one thing straight:  Bagley (RIP), after hearing what Nosenko had to say, did NOT think that Oswald, IF he killed JFK, necessarily killed him for "the KGB," "the Ruskies," "the Commies," ... however you want to put it, but that Nosenko was trying to cover up something else about Oswald.

In that regard, you need to realize that it is not I who came up with the idea that (based on what FALSE DEFECTOR Yuri Nosenko told his hip-to-his-tricks CIA debriefers / interrogators about Oswald in January, 1964, i.e., that KGB had not interviewed Oswald in the USSR, and had only lightly monitored him) Nosenko must have been dispatched to the U.S. to cover up the fact that Oswald had had a relationship with the KGB before he "defected" to the USSR.  Not I, but ... (gasp) ... Soviet Russia Division counterintelligence officer Tennent H. Bagley.


Paul, you gotta understand.  It's like John Newman says in the first video, above:  Dealing with the "active measures" and "strategic/operational deception" ops that KGB Second Chief Directorate spymaster Gribanov was dealing out to Bagley and his occasional brainstorming partner, Angleton, especially from 1958 on, was multi-layered, convoluted, and very complicated.

That's why you need to read the book, Paul, for if I were to "lay it out" for you, it would be nearly as long as his book, but not nearly as convincing.

Sorry, Paul, there is no "Cliff Notes" for Tennent H. Bagley's "Spy Wars," or even his "Ghosts of the Spy Wars".

Bummer, huh?
 

 

Edited May 4, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Sandy Larsen]

6 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

 

Sandy,

Did you make a "typo of omission" when you wrote, "I don't comment much on Nosenko because I have ??? done a lot of studying regarding him."

Did you forget to put the word "not" in?


--  TG

PS  You really do need to read the work that Newman drew most of his presentation from, Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 book "Spy Wars" (or if you don't have enough time to do that, at least his 35-page 2014 PDF "Ghosts of the Spy Wars") if you want to talk about that evil, evil, evil Angleton, the evil, evil, evil CIA, and that nice, nice, nice Nosenko, et al., in a knowledgeable way.

In my humble opinion.



Here they are for you, Sandy.

(By the way, Bill Simpich was incorrect when he posted somewhere on this forum some time back that "Bagley was Angleton's guy," or words to that effect.)

https://archive.org/details/SpyWarsMolesMysteriesAndDeadlyGames

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362


PPS  Bagley posits somewhere that Nosenko's claiming in early 1964 that not only had KGB not monitored Oswald very closely during the 2.5 years he lived in the USSR, but hadn't even interviewed him (we know now that KGB interviewed him twice in Moscow) is not necessarily indicative of LHO's assassinating JFK for the KGB, but that it does strongly suggest that KGB had had some sort of relationship with LHO before he (wittingly and falsely, for Angleton) defected to the USSR.

 

Tommy,

Thanks for pointing out my typo.

I'm not really interested in becoming a spy games expert. But I did do a search for "Oswald" in Bagley's book because I wondered if anything he wrote would affect my working CT. As it turns out, it made no difference.

I couldn't understand  one thing you said. You said that Nosenko's (false) claim that Oswald hadn't been monitored closely or interviewed by the KGB suggests that some sort of relationship with Oswald had existed before his false defection. Please explain how it suggests that. To me it suggests only that Nosenko was distancing the KGB from Oswald.

[Paul Brancato]

I can think of another explanation for Nosenko defecting. Can’t you? The JFK assassination was aimed at the Communists, whether Castro or USSR. The Kennedy family knew this, and sent an emissary to assure the Russians that they did not suspect them. Oswald, the Communist, was the named lone shooter, despite reams of contradictory evidence. Seems that both leaderships wanted to avoid the set up put in place by the plotters. It’s the best, simplest explanation, and leads towards the obvious conclusion that the plotters were from the far right wing.

Edited May 4, 2018 by Paul Brancato

[Thomas Graves]

17 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

I can think of another explanation for Nosenko defecting. Can’t you? The JFK assassination was aimed at the Communists, whether Castro or USSR. The Kennedy family knew this, and sent an emissary to assure the Russians that they did not suspect them. Oswald, the Communist, was the named lone shooter, despite reams of contradictory evidence. Seems that both leaderships wanted to avoid the set up put in place by the plotters. Much simpler explanation.  It’s the best, simplest explanation, and leads towards the obvious conclusion that the plotters were from the far right wing.

Paul,
 

"Defect"?

I Am Laughing Out Loud, Again

Nosenko didn't defect. 

He was only pretending to defect. 

Can't you understand that?


And his prevarications about what the KGB did-or-did-not-do with Oswald in the USSR was only one of the reasons KGB sent him here.



You simply aren't going to watch those videos all the way through, and then read the book and/or the pdf, are you, Paul?  If you did, then you would at least understand why Peter Dale Scott now believes that Nosenko was a FALSE DEFECTOR.

Are they really too "dificult"? 

Or would it be more accurate to say that they are just too dog-gone painfully confusing (in a cognitive dissonance kind of way) ?

 

--  TG

 

 

Edited May 4, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Brancato]

Tommy - stop laughing for a second. You know full well the point I was making. I’ll rephrase - I can think of another reason why Nosenko was sent posing as a genuine defector. Happy now? 

[Thomas Graves]

2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Tommy - stop laughing for a second. You know full well the point I was making. I’ll rephrase - I can think of another reason why Nosenko was sent posing as a genuine defector. Happy now? 

Paul,

Interesting you didn't answer my question as to whether or not you'd watched those two March, 2018, videos by John Newman all the way through, yet ...

--  TG

 

PS  When it comes to what you are thinking or mean to convey, unfortunately all too often I know fully too poorly.

Like "Simpich's Bad Sentence," for example.

What bad sentence, Paul?

How in the heck can I comment on it if I don't know what it is?

 

Edited May 5, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[David Josephs]

I thought Nosenko was simply to refute Golitsyn whose predictions and defection appear the real deal....

But without Leonard McCoy (i know, right?) refuting the Nosenko Conclusions, and somehow listened to, the entire pov towards him changed...

 

Edited October 10, 2018 by David Josephs

[Thomas Graves]

On 5/6/2018 at 6:49 AM, David Josephs said:

I thought Nosenko was simply to refute Golitsyn whose predictions and defection appear the real deal....

But without Leonard McCoy (I know, right?) refuting the Nosenko Conclusions, and somehow listened to, the entire pov towards him changed...

LEONARD MCCOY RECOMMENDATION TO REEVALUATE NOSENKO 104-10095-10126.pdf

 

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.
 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[B. A. Copeland]

Bill, have you ever dug into Bruce Solie? I believe Blunt and Dale mentioned that he was best man at Nosenko's wedding lol? He vouched for his authenticity as a defector (compare Solie's review and Bagley's investigation) he was also his handler and...surely Solie as a security officer cannot be that blind? (speculation on my part!). Am I paranoid in even lightly wondering if Solie was up to something? I'd love Simpich's take on this guy. I know for a fact that Blunt and Dale, in their amazing series of talks, at the very least consider the guy as someone to devote serious study. I hate to to seemingly accuse the guy of evil deeds, for which I am not (without evidence) but I am looking at event contextually and simply desire to study him as a part of the context. The results could be negative or positive.

Edited May 8, 2018 by B. A. Copeland

[Thomas Graves]

29 minutes ago, B. A. Copeland said:

Bill, have you ever dug into Bruce Solie? I believe Blunt and Dale mentioned that he was best man at Nosenko's wedding lol? He vouched for his authenticity as a defector (compare Solie's review and Bagley's investigation) he was also his handler and...surely Solie as a security officer cannot be that blind? (speculation on my part!). Am I paranoid in even lightly wondering if Solie was up to something? I'd love Simpich's take on this guy. I know for a fact that Blunt and Dale, in their amazing series of talks, at the very least consider the guy as someone to devote serious study. I hate to to seemingly accuse the guy of evil deeds, for which I am not (without evidence) but I am looking at event contextually and simply desire to study him as a part of the context. The results could be negative or positive.

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.

 

Edited May 8, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Bill Simpich]

Mr. Copeland,

On the background of Bruce Solie, Pete Bagley and the question of whether Nosenko was a false defector, I defer to Malcolm Blunt and John Newman, who have studied these issues at length - I haven't.

[Thomas Graves]

3 hours ago, Bill Simpich said:

Mr. Copeland,

On the background of Bruce Solie, Pete Bagley and the question of whether Nosenko was a false defector, I defer to Malcolm Blunt and John Newman, who have studied these issues at length - I haven't.

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.

 

Edited May 9, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[B. A. Copeland]

On 5/8/2018 at 2:43 PM, Bill Simpich said:

Mr. Copeland,

On the background of Bruce Solie, Pete Bagley and the question of whether Nosenko was a false defector, I defer to Malcolm Blunt and John Newman, who have studied these issues at length - I haven't.

Thanks Bill! I was (literally) and merely curious as to your thoughts about him, if any. Thanks for the response! I have certainly deferred to Blunt, Newman and Dale. Primarily Alan Dale & Blunt's talks because they bring up very interesting points or thoughts concerning Solie.

I also asked because this is definitely your territory (and I know how you feel about Stephan Roll, Bill Bright, et al. and please forgive me if I'm wrong!) and after listening to Dale/Blunt's talks, I could not help but to wonder if you or Newman had any opinions on Solie, especially after listening to Dale/Blunt. So naturally my thinking was "wow....I wonder what Simpich and Newman think about Solie after a careful listen to Dale/Blunt's talks?".

 

On 5/8/2018 at 3:20 PM, Thomas Graves said:

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.

 

I'd imagine Simpich was certainly impressed (and VERY attentive!) but as with all research, one has to ultimately study themselves and see if they arrive at the same conclusion, no? I'd say, given the weight of what Newman presented, I'd be more convinced than not that Nosenko was a false defector but I've an open mind. However, I lean more towards him being false than not. I also want to highlight a very important point that PDS (either directly or indirectly) brought up: just because Nosenko is most likely false, doesn't necessarily mean that Golitsyn is a true defector (not that I believe you've even remotely expressed that lol) but certainly a point worth repeating. 

My wish is....a 5 hour-ish round table discussion with Simpich, Dale, Blunt, Newman....please, in my lifetime lol...