Edited title: Did They "Do It" Together?

[Thomas Graves]

I mean, of course, the KGB and the CIA and the assassination of JFK, not something of a kinkier nature, you naughty boys and girls!

You know, maybe they had some common "vested interests" --- that sort of thing?

Or, maybe it was a case of "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, and we'll both get filthy rich ...

... or at least a shiny new Lada / Ferrari and a dacha / house on the Black Sea / in La Jolla!)".

--Tommy

Edited May 7, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Guest Robert Morrow]

I mean, of course, the assassination of JFK, not something of a kinkier nature, you naughty boys and girls!

You know, common maybe they had some common "vested interests" and all that? Or, maybe it was a case of "You scratch my back, I'll scratch your back, and we'll both get filthy rich (or at least a shiny new Lada/Ferrari and a dacha/summer home on the Black Sea/in La Jolla!)".

--Tommy

The answer is yes, it is possible the CIA and the Russian GRU could have conspired to kill John Kennedy.

But the probability of that is about 100 million to one against the theory. Why would the GRU kill a dove in the White House just to get a hawk that might be more likely to put the USA in Vietnam, possibly invade Cuba and engage them elsewhere in the world? Especially when the USA was the far superior nuclear power at that time.

Back then at the height of Cold War tensions, when the world almost blew up during the Cuban Missile Crisis ... why would the Russians want to aggravate that and risk complete annihilation and NO dacha and NO summer home? ... because the cities incinerated would be Moscow and possibly Wash DC.

Why are you wasting Education Forum space with this? Why not ask if all the Chinese farted at the same time, would the Earth be knocked off its rotation and would that affect the climate?

This theory seems similar to Hugh McDonald's "Appointment in Dallas: The Final Solution to the Assassination of JFK." I think he had the Russians and Lyndon Johnson in on the plot together.

http://www.amazon.com/Appointment-Dallas-Final-Solution-Assassination/product-reviews/0821738933/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

I think a much more likely possiblity is the LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK: http://lyndonjohnsonmurderedjfk.blogspot.com/2011/12/lbj-cia-assassination-of-jfk-updated.html

Edited February 2, 2012 by Robert Morrow

[David Josephs]

I mean, of course, the assassination of JFK, not something of a kinkier nature, you naughty boys and girls!

You know, common maybe they had some common "vested interests" and all that? Or, maybe it was a case of "You scratch my back, I'll scratch your back, and we'll both get filthy rich (or at least a shiny new Lada/Ferrari and a dacha/summer home on the Black Sea/in La Jolla!)".

--Tommy

The answer is yes, it is possible the CIA and the Russian GRU could have conspired to kill John Kennedy.

But the probability of that is about 100 million to one against the theory. Why would the GRU kill a dove in the White House just to get a hawk that might be more likely to put the USA in Vietnam, possibly invade Cuba and engage them elsewhere in the world? Especially when the USA was the far superior nuclear power at that time.

Back then at the height of Cold War tensions, when the world almost blew up during the Cuban Missile Crisis ... why would the Russians want to aggravate that and risk complete annihilation and NO dacha and NO summer home? ... because the cities incinerated would be Moscow and possibly Wash DC.

Why are you wasting Education Forum space with this? Why not ask if all the Chinese farted at the same time, would the Earth be knocked off its rotation and would that affect the climate?

This theory seems similar to Hugh McDonald's "Appointment in Dallas: The Final Solution to the Assassination of JFK." I think he had the Russians and Lyndon Johnson in on the plot together.

http://www.amazon.com/Appointment-Dallas-Final-Solution-Assassination/product-reviews/0821738933/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

I think a much more likely possiblity is the LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK: http://lyndonjohnsonmurderedjfk.blogspot.com/2011/12/lbj-cia-assassination-of-jfk-updated.html

Hold up a second Robert...

Are you trying to tell us that you cannot see how HAWKS in the KGB as well as the ruling economic elite in Russia (yes virginia, there really are wealthy people in communist nations)

would not want to perpetuate the Cold War and avoid peace at all costs...? Yet you have no problem with the HAWKS of the USA, in the Military and CIA, to perpetuate the Cold War?

I think you are missing the role of the emerging global corporations, financed by the international banks and the benefit derived by the constant state of Cold (and Hot) War.

Billions upon billions of "officially spent money" was lost in Russia when the Cold War finally ended... Where the US government & companies just shifted focus from the WAR on Communism to the WAR on Terrorism and continued to spend accordingly, the Russian economy was corrupted by organized crime taking on all shapes and persona.

Richard Case Nagell was not even sure which side was ordering him to kill Oswald...

I believe if you step back and see the overriding focus was on MONEY and POWER... and that the groups that desired control of such things continue regardless of ideology, theology, political party or any other such nonsense... AND add that the CIA as well as a number of other agencies were choked full of "communists" who thought it crucial NEVER to give in to the USA..

It is not such a stretch to see cooperation among thieves to keep their livlihoods AND organizations intact.

To dovetail back to your thesis - LBJ - he cooperated cause of all the money involved, and his freedom. "None Dare Call It a Conspiracy" helps in this question to see that the CIA and KGD were in the same business... perpetuate the organization, protect the organization, expand the organization so that a state of fear persists and people will be more and more willing to give up personal freedoms and liberty to FEEL protected...

JFK's future dictated that these two agencies would no longer be needed - or at least be seriously curtailed... and they both knew it.

And this is why men like Dub'ya Bush do not get executed... He's one of THEM

[Thomas Graves]

On 2/2/2012 at 4:10 PM, David Josephs said:

On 2/2/2012 at 3:46 PM, Robert Morrow said:

On 2/2/2012 at 2:37 PM, Thomas Graves said:

I mean, of course, the assassination of JFK, not something of a kinkier nature, you naughty boys and girls!

You know, common maybe they had some common "vested interests" and all that? Or, maybe it was a case of "You scratch my back, I'll scratch your back, and we'll both get filthy rich (or at least a shiny new Lada/Ferrari and a dacha/summer home on the Black Sea/in La Jolla!)".

--Tommy

The answer is yes, it is possible the CIA and the Russian GRU could have conspired to kill John Kennedy.

But the probability of that is about 100 million to one against the theory. Why would the GRU kill a dove in the White House just to get a hawk that might be more likely to put the USA in Vietnam, possibly invade Cuba and engage them elsewhere in the world? Especially when the USA was the far superior nuclear power at that time.

Back then at the height of Cold War tensions, when the world almost blew up during the Cuban Missile Crisis ... why would the Russians want to aggravate that and risk complete annihilation and NO dacha and NO summer home? ... because the cities incinerated would be Moscow and possibly Wash DC.

Why are you wasting Education Forum space with this? Why not ask if all the Chinese farted at the same time, would the Earth be knocked off its rotation and would that affect the climate?

This theory seems similar to Hugh McDonald's "Appointment in Dallas: The Final Solution to the Assassination of JFK." I think he had the Russians and Lyndon Johnson in on the plot together.

http://www.amazon.com/Appointment-Dallas-Final-Solution-Assassination/product-reviews/0821738933/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

I think a much more likely possiblity is the LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK: http://lyndonjohnsonmurderedjfk.blogspot.com/2011/12/lbj-cia-assassination-of-jfk-updated.html

Hold up a second Robert...

Are you trying to tell us that you cannot see how HAWKS in the KGB as well as the ruling economic elite in Russia (yes Virginia, there really are wealthy people in communist nations)

would not want to perpetuate the Cold War and avoid peace at all costs...? Yet you have no problem with the HAWKS of the USA, in the Military and CIA, to perpetuate the Cold War?

I think you are missing the role of the emerging global corporations, financed by the international banks and the benefit derived by the constant state of Cold (and Hot) War.

Billions upon billions of "officially spent money" was lost in Russia when the Cold War finally ended... Where the US government & companies just shifted focus from the WAR on Communism to the WAR on Terrorism and continued to spend accordingly, the Russian economy was corrupted by organized crime taking on all shapes and persona.

Richard Case Nagell was not even sure which side was ordering him to kill Oswald...

I believe if you step back and see the overriding focus was on MONEY and POWER... and that the groups that desired control of such things continue regardless of ideology, theology, political party or any other such nonsense... AND add that the CIA as well as a number of other agencies were choked full of "communists" who thought it crucial NEVER to give in to the USA..

It is not such a stretch to see cooperation among thieves to keep their livlihoods AND organizations intact.

To dovetail back to your thesis - LBJ - he cooperated cause of all the money involved, and his freedom. "None Dare Call It a Conspiracy" helps in this question to see that the CIA and KGB were in the same business... perpetuate the organization, protect the organization, expand the organization so that a state of fear persists and people will be more and more willing to give up personal freedoms and liberty to FEEL protected...

JFK's future dictated that these two agencies would no longer be needed - or at least be seriously curtailed... and they both knew it.

And this is why men like Dub'ya Bush do not get executed... He's one of THEM (emphasis added by T. Graves)

David,

Exactly, Komarad.

The fact that Nagell was working for both the CIA and the KGB (or the GRU) is what gave me the idea. That and the fact that Kennedy was pushing hard for nuclear disarmament and had recently signed a limited test ban treaty with the Soviet Union.

--Tommy

Edited May 7, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

On 2/2/2012 at 4:27 PM, Thomas Graves said:

On 2/2/2012 at 4:10 PM, David Josephs said:

On 2/2/2012 at 3:46 PM, Robert Morrow said:

On 2/2/2012 at 2:37 PM, Thomas Graves said:

I mean, of course, the assassination of JFK, not something of a kinkier nature, you naughty boys and girls!

You know, common maybe they had some common "vested interests" and all that? Or, maybe it was a case of "You scratch my back, I'll scratch your back, and we'll both get filthy rich (or at least a shiny new Lada/Ferrari and a dacha/summer home on the Black Sea/in La Jolla!)".

--Tommy

The answer is yes, it is possible the CIA and the Russian GRU could have conspired to kill John Kennedy.

But the probability of that is about 100 million to one against the theory. Why would the GRU kill a dove in the White House just to get a hawk that might be more likely to put the USA in Vietnam, possibly invade Cuba and engage them elsewhere in the world? Especially when the USA was the far superior nuclear power at that time.

Back then at the height of Cold War tensions, when the world almost blew up during the Cuban Missile Crisis ... why would the Russians want to aggravate that and risk complete annihilation and NO dacha and NO summer home? ... because the cities incinerated would be Moscow and possibly Wash DC.

Why are you wasting Education Forum space with this? Why not ask if all the Chinese farted at the same time, would the Earth be knocked off its rotation and would that affect the climate?

This theory seems similar to Hugh McDonald's "Appointment in Dallas: The Final Solution to the Assassination of JFK." I think he had the Russians and Lyndon Johnson in on the plot together.

http://www.amazon.com/Appointment-Dallas-Final-Solution-Assassination/product-reviews/0821738933/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

I think a much more likely possiblity is the LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK: http://lyndonjohnsonmurderedjfk.blogspot.com/2011/12/lbj-cia-assassination-of-jfk-updated.html

Hold up a second Robert...

Are you trying to tell us that you cannot see how HAWKS in the KGB as well as the ruling economic elite in Russia (yes Virginia, there really are wealthy people in communist nations)

would not want to perpetuate the Cold War and avoid peace at all costs...? Yet you have no problem with the HAWKS of the USA, in the Military and CIA, to perpetuate the Cold War?

I think you are missing the role of the emerging global corporations, financed by the international banks and the benefit derived by the constant state of Cold (and Hot) War.

Billions upon billions of "officially spent money" was lost in Russia when the Cold War finally ended... Where the US government & companies just shifted focus from the WAR on Communism to the WAR on Terrorism and continued to spend accordingly, the Russian economy was corrupted by organized crime taking on all shapes and persona.

Richard Case Nagell was not even sure which side was ordering him to kill Oswald...

I believe if you step back and see the overriding focus was on MONEY and POWER... and that the groups that desired control of such things continue regardless of ideology, theology, political party or any other such nonsense... AND add that the CIA as well as a number of other agencies were choked full of "communists" who thought it crucial NEVER to give in to the USA..

It is not such a stretch to see cooperation among thieves to keep their livlihoods AND organizations intact.

To dovetail back to your thesis - LBJ - he cooperated cause of all the money involved, and his freedom. "None Dare Call It a Conspiracy" helps in this question to see that the CIA and KGB were in the same business... perpetuate the organization, protect the organization, expand the organization so that a state of fear persists and people will be more and more willing to give up personal freedoms and liberty to FEEL protected...

JFK's future dictated that these two agencies would no longer be needed - or at least be seriously curtailed... and they both knew it.

And this is why men like Dub'ya Bush do not get executed... He's one of THEM (emphasis added by T. Graves)

David,

Exactly, Komarad.

The fact that Nagell was working for both the CIA and the KGB (or the GRU) is what gave me the idea. That and the fact that Kennedy was pushing hard for nuclear disarmament and had recently signed a limited test ban treaty with the Soviet Union.

Personally, I've been thinking of having some bumper stickers printed up that say "Thermonuclear War Is The Answer!" Just kidding.

--Tommy

Edited May 7, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Guest Robert Morrow]

There is a problem with that "theory" of CIA-KGB working together in the JFK assassination.

There is just no evidence of it. There is a LOT that implicates Johnson and the CIA separately. There is some critical evidence (Madeleine Duncan Brown) that implicates the Dallas Texas oil men (Murchison and H.L. Hunt) who would be the Dallas oil executive leaders.

The evidence in the record so far is pretty much non-existent implicating the KGB.

Focus more on who had a lot to LOSE if John Kennedy lived, rather than some fanciful projection on who in Russia had to gain if he died. The players who had a LOT to LOSE if John Kennedy stayed alive were Lyndon Johnson (being dropped from the 1964 Demo ticket, political disgrace, possible impeachment, possible indictments in Bobby Baker affair), J. Edgar Hoover (mandatory retirement at age 70 on 1-1--65), Texas oil men (the loss or massive reduction of the oil depreciation allowance was *reason enough* for the JFK assassination), the CIA (suffering under RFK; JFK planning to shatter it into a 1,000 pieces and cast it to the wind in a second term), war hawks (under JFK would never get an invasion of Cuba - it did not even happen under LBJ- no Vietnam War).

Oops did not mean to leave out the CIA affiliated anti-Castro Cubans. Or the Rockefellers who were engaged in a 3 year war with JFK over domestic policy. The Rockefellers were also hawks on foreign policy.

So there ya go - the American players with a lot to LOSE far outweigh the few Russian players who might have had something to gain (if they did not die in the process under Lyndon Johnson or Goldwater).

The "Russian participation" theory is effectively rounded down to ZERO percent in my book.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Robert Morrow

[David Josephs]

Why do you not see that there was a very specific and powerful group of Russians who would indeed LOSE

if JFK remained president and the relations between the countries improved?

The KBG and the Russian industrialists AND the government leaders stood to lose Billions on Peace...

and this group is on par with the same bunch in the US... and both are "controlled" by the ebb and flow of capital...

What I find most amusing in your post... ?

"There is just no evidence of it" - as if the largest spy organizations in the world would allow evidence to exist that leads back to them...

The only real evidence against LBJ is circumstantial... he was in a position to save his ass by looking the other way and cooperating.. possibly even helping to make it happen as you propose..

yet trying to argue that Hoover helped kill or coverup the JFK assassination cause he didn't want to retire is absurd.

These men were in the business of pleasing their masters... the Russians, as JFK said... breathe the same air....

DJ

[Douglas Caddy]

A book published in 2010 by Trineday titled, “A Certain Arrogance: The sacrificing of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Cold War Manipulation of Religious Groups by the U.S. Intelligence”, written by George Michael Evica with an Introduction by Charles Robert Drago, has the following on its back cover:

“In the predetermined drive to portray Lee Harvey Oswald as a disaffected loser who acted alone, one of the many issues surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy which the Warren Commission glossed over was the ‘dirty rumor’ about Oswald’s ties to U.S. Intelligence.

“In eight interrelated essays, the late George Michael Evica begins with the spectacle of Earl Warren deflecting and quickly burying an inconvenient FBI report on Oswald, then launches the reader into a world of lies, deception and cynical manipulation, where spymasters of the U.S. and Soviet Union actually worked together when their espionage industry was threatened by peace initiatives.”

President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev had quietly begun laying the groundwork for mutual cooperation in some areas, such as outer space. Kennedy was killed in 1963 and Khrushchev was removed from power in 1964. Both leaders paid a high price for defying the Intelligence establishments in their respective countries, which valued their power and money more than ending the Cold War and establishing world peace.

From Wikipedia:

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (April 15 [O.S. April 3] 1894 – September 11, 1971) led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.

[Mark Knight]

I would simply remind Mr. Morrow that, initially, there was no evidence for MANY of the theories we now consider plausible...until someone searched it out and discovered that it existed. Perhaps this direction simply hasn't been investigated thoroughly enough yet.

[Guest Robert Morrow]

It is good to think "outside of the box." That does not mean that the "outside the box" low percentage scenario is necessarily right. "Outside the box" and 100% wrong is how I would classify Russian (or Castro) participation.

As for Hoover wanting to actually murder John Kennedy because he faced mandatory retirement at age 70 on 1/1/65...it is a very good possibility. J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson saw their jobs, or rather positions of status as WHO they were. Hoover had been running the FBI since when? ... the 1920's? And LBJ was having a strong say in running the USA under a golfing and heart attack-having, passive Dwight Eisenhower. LBJ, along with his mentor House Speaker Sam Rayburn, was exercising enormous amounts of power in the mid 1950's onward. He was more than the "Master of the Senate," (Robert Caro) - he was rivaling Eisenhower in power.

Hoover and LBJ, close personal friends who lived exactly 57 yards down the street from each other for 19 years, would both take a threat against their "personal status" as the equivalent of a death threat against their person... and act accordingly.

We now know that the Kennedys were on the verge of politically executing Lyndon Johnson - via a LIFE expose and in the Senate Rules Committee, literally within 7 days of 11/22/63. Even Richard Nixon was predicting it and reported in headlines of the Dallas Morning News on the day of the assassination. And if LBJ went down, a whole LOT of his allied interests, including Hoover eventually, would go down, too. "Political execution and public disgrage" to LBJ would be the equivalent of a death threat.

If all the other "gang members" are killing JFK: LBJ, Allen Dulles, GHW Bush, Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, Edward Lansdale, Nelson Rockefeller ... it becomes just a little bit easier for Hoover to justify his participation. "Hey I just work here" at SOG as he called it: "Seat of Government."

Hoover within scant hours is pushing the lone nutter theory - in the face of pretty massive evidence of a shot from the front from both witnesses, the crowd and the Zapruder Film.

I have to think that Hoover was in on the JFK assassination and knew that his role would be to cover it up quickly for Johnson and the other parties (Ed Lansdale and whoever at CIA was facilitating it, Texas oil men).

Edited February 3, 2012 by Robert Morrow

[Robert Howard]

However implausible one considers Tommy's point about joint hardliners in the KGB and CIA to be, the fact is that there are overtones that suggest somewhere this dynamic was in play...Consider the cooperation that the Warren Commission

recieved getting files on Oswald after the assassination, the fact that the Russians seem to have helped quash a lot of controversial issues related to key aspects of the assassination such as Oleg Nechiporenko's book helped preserve some of the myths of Oswald in Mexico, Oswald's note to "Mr. Hunt" see below......

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8816&st=30

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/mrhunt.txt

We are still wondering 'where's the beef' regarding the files former President Clinton recieved from another ex-KGB

head Vladimir Putin.

The Nagell issue with 'Bob' is, of course a salient point, then there are the overtones of CIA connections in Russia itself, the fact that they knew there was no assassination training school in Minsk, it was actually in Kiev.

I would even point out that the McMillan government's disintegration in England factors in there somewhere....

Three heads of state removed from office in how many months?

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/23/world/son-tells-of-khrushchev-s-last-days-in-power.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Khrushchev even joked once about sharing intelligence with the US once since they oftimes had sources playing the middle.....

I think it is more than a silly theory, and although I do not think this was some kind of central plot in the JFK assassination I believe there is some smoke there.

Harold McMillan - October 1963

John F Kennedy - November 1963

Nikita Khrushchev - October 1964

Edited February 3, 2012 by Robert Howard

[John Dolva]

Lumumba, Hammarskjold

[Andric Perez]

I don't know; but it is well known that the Soviet military leadership did not like Khrushchev. They thought he was weak. In fact, he had to step down in 1964.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Andric Perez

[Thomas Graves]

On 2/3/2012 at 4:02 AM, Robert Howard said:

However implausible one considers Tommy's point about joint hardliners in the KGB and CIA to be, the fact is that there are overtones that suggest somewhere this dynamic was in play...Consider the cooperation that the Warren Commission

recieved getting files on Oswald after the assassination, the fact that the Russians seem to have helped quash a lot of controversial issues related to key aspects of the assassination such as Oleg Nechiporenko's book helped preserve some of the myths of Oswald in Mexico, Oswald's note to "Mr. Hunt" see below......

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8816&st=30

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/mrhunt.txt

We are still wondering 'where's the beef' regarding the files former President Clinton recieved from another ex-KGB

head Vladimir Putin.

The Nagell issue with 'Bob' is, of course a salient point, then there are the overtones of CIA connections in Russia itself, the fact that they knew there was no assassination training school in Minsk, it was actually in Kiev.

I would even point out that the McMillan government's disintegration in England factors in there somewhere....

Three heads of state removed from office in how many months?

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/23/world/son-tells-of-khrushchev-s-last-days-in-power.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Khrushchev even joked once about sharing intelligence with the US once since they oftimes had sources playing the middle.....

I think it is more than a silly theory, and although I do not think this was some kind of central plot in the JFK assassination I believe there is some smoke there.

Harold McMillan - October 1963

John F Kennedy - November 1963

Nikita Khrushchev - October 1964

Robert,

Let's not forget Yuri Nosenko, the KGB officer who defected to the US in January 1964 who claimed that: 1) he'd personally been in charge of monitoring Oswald in Russia (how convenient!), 2) the KGB had had absolutely no interest in Oswald (of course not; why would they be interested in a former Marine who had been a U2 radar operator at Atsugi?), and 3) the KGB hadn't even tried to recruit Oswald (Sure, I believe that. And I also believe that the moon is made out of green cheese).

I'm starting to think Nosenko might have been a member of a KGB clique which conspired with rogue elements of the CIA in assassinating JFK (and and then covering it up). It is interesting to note that Angleton thought Nosenko was a false defector, whereas Helms and Hoover claimed he was the "real deal". Well, if I'm right in my little theory (the subject of this thread), they would, wouldn't they? John Newman's book Oswald and the CIA convinced me that Angleton was [edit: may have been] a major player in the assassination. So I'm a bit perplexed by the fact that Angleton tried to discredit Nosenko. 

 

From http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SSnosenko.htm :

Yuri Nosenko was born in Nikolaev on 30th October 1927. His father, served under Joseph Stalin for nearly 20 years as the Soviet minister of shipbuilding.

Nosenko graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and after three years in naval intelligence he joined the KGB in 1953. Nosenko became deputy chief of the Seventh Department of the KGB. His main responsibility was the recruitment of foreign spies.

In 1961 Nosenko was a member of the Soviet delegation to disarmament talks in Geneva. While in the city he was robbed of $200 by a prostitute. In an attempt to repay the money he approached a US official he knew to sell secrets. Nosenko was put into contact with Tennant H. Bagley, a member of the CIA. Nosenko told Bagley about listening devices at the US embassy in Moscow, and confirmed the identities of British Admiralty clerk John Vassall, the Canadian ambassador John Watkins and the CIA agent Edward Ellis Smith, all compromised in KGB "honeytrap" stings, which had revealed by an earlier defector, Anatoli Golitsin.

However, some of the information supplied by Nosenko contradicted the testimony of Golitsin. This included Golitsin's claim that a senior figure in the Admiralty was a spy. Tennant H. Bagley reported back to the CIA that he found Nosenko "totally convincing". Nosenko refused to defect because he was unwilling to leave his wife and children behind in the Soviet Union.

When Anatoli Golitsin had been interviewed he had claimed the KGB would be so concerned about his defection, they would attempt to convince the CIA that the information he was giving them would be completely unreliable. He predicted that the KGB would send false defectors with information that contradicted what he was saying. The CIA were now uncertain whether to believe Golitsin or Nosenko.

In January 1964 Nosenko contacted the CIA and said he had changed his mind and was now willing to defect to the United States. He claimed that he had been recalled to Moscow to be interrogated. Nosenko feared that the KGB had discovered he was a double-agent and once back in the Soviet Union would be executed.

Nosenko arrived in the United States on 14th February, 1964. Nosenko claimed that he had important information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He told the CIA that he had been the KGB officially who had personally handled the case of Lee Harvey Oswald. After interviewing Oswald it was decided that he was not intelligent enough to work as a KGB agent. They were also concerned that he was "too mentally unstable" to be of any use to them. Nosenko added that the KGB had never questioned Oswald about information he had acquired while a member of the U.S. Marines. This surprised the CIA as Oswald had worked as a Aviation Electronics Operator at the Atsugi Air Base in Japan.

Nosenko defection story was undermined by the US National Security Agency who had been monitoring communications between Moscow and Geneva. It discovered that Nosenko had lied about being recalled to the Soviet Union. He was now taken to a CIA detention cell and after extensive interrogation he admitted the story about him being recalled was untrue.

Members of the Warren Commission were pleased to hear this information as it helped to confirm the idea that Oswald had acted alone and was not part of a Soviet conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. CIA chief of intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, chief of the CIA's counter-intelligence section, did not believe parts of Nosenko's story. He was able to convince Tennant H. Bagley that Nosenko was a disinformation agent.

Anatoli Golitsin supported this view. He had worked in some of the same departments as Nosenko but had never met him. After being interviewed for several days Nosenko admitted that some aspects of his story were not true. For example, Nosenko had previously said he was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB. Nosenko confessed that he had exaggerated his rank to make himself attractive to the CIA. However, initially he had provided KGB documents that said Nosenko was a lieutenant colonel.

The story was further complicated by the fact that another Soviet KGB defector under FBI control (code name Fedora) corroborated Nosenko's story. Therefore, if Nosenko was lying, it meant that Fedora was also a disinformation agent sent to the United States to confuse the security agencies. Nosenko was given two lie detector tests by the CIA. Both suggested he was lying about Lee Harvey Oswald.

The CIA now decided to put Nosenko under intense physical physical and psychological pressure. This involved him being kept in solitary confinement for 1,277 days. A light was left burning in his unheated cell for twenty-four hours a day and he was given nothing to read and his guards were ordered not to speak to him. However, Nosenko did not crack and insisted that Oswald was not a KGB agent.

James Jesus Angleton believed that Anatoli Golitsin was a genuine double-agent but argued that Nosenko was part of a disinformation campaign. However, Richard Helms (CIA) and J. Edgar Hoover (FBI) believed Nosenko and considered Golitsin was a fake.

In 1969 Nosenko was released and given a false identity. He became an adviser to the CIA and the FBI on a salary of more than $35,000 a year. He was also given a lump sum of $150,000 as payment for his ordeal.

Yuri Nosenko died on 23rd August 2008.

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[...]

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(1) Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy (1985)

Exactly one year after these hearings on drug experimentation, the CIA was back in the press for another error of the past. This time it was the prolonged incarceration of a Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko, who came to the United States in 1964, a few months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Nosenko came to public attention in 1978, when a special committee was set up in the House of Representatives to study the assassination again. Nosenko had been a KGB officer during the time that Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had lived in the Soviet Union, from 1959 to 1962. When Nosenko first arrived in the United States, he was extensively debriefed by the intelligence agencies. He was especially interrogated about any connection between Oswald and the KGB. He contended that the KGB had paid no attention to Oswald. Now, in 1978, this special House committee wanted to review Nosenko's testimony on that issue. This led to an airing of the disgraceful way the CIA had attempted to determine whether Nosenko was telling the truth.

It was the job of the counterintelligence branch under James Jesus Angleton (whom Schlesinger had mentioned to me warily) to check on whether a defector was truly defecting or pretending to defect in order to spy on the United States. Angleton concluded that since Oswald had worked on the U2 spy plane when he was in the U.S. Marine Corps, it was unlikely that the KGB would have overlooked him entirely when he was in the Soviet Union. There was, then, cause to be suspicious of Nosenko's story about Oswald. It appeared to Angleton that the Soviets might have sent Nosenko to plant a story that would absolve them of any complicity with Oswald in the Kennedy assassination. Angleton's suspicions were heightened by an earlier Soviet defector, Anatoli Golitsyn, who claimed he knew Nosenko was a double agent. In Nosenko's favor, if he were a genuine defector, was that his knowledge of Soviet intelligence operations would have been more current than Golitsyn's, making him more valuable to us than Golitsyn.

(2) Edward Jay Epstein, Who Killed the CIA? The Confessions of Stansfield Turner (October, 1985)

Although Turner had had little previous experience in intelligence, he viewed it simply as a problem of assessing data, or, as he described it to his son, nothing more than "bean' counting." Accepting the position of "chief bean counter," he assumed that he could bring the CIA, and American intelligence, to the same standard of operational efficiency he had brought the ships under his command. The four-year effort to achieve this goal is the subject of his book, Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition.'

He quickly found, however, that the CIA was a far more complex and elusive entity than he had expected. To begin with, the acting CIA Director, Henry Knoche, rather than behaving like a ship's "executive officer," surprised Turner by refusing his "captain's" first order: a request that Knoche accompany him to meetings with congressional leaders. As far as Turner was concerned, this was insubordination (and Knoche's days were numbered). When he met with other senior executives of the CIA at a series of dinners, he found "a disturbing lack of specificity and clarity" in their answers. On the other hand, he found the written CIA reports presented to him "too long and detailed to be useful." He notes that "my first encounters with the CIA did not convey either the feeling of a warm welcome or a sense of great competence."- This assessment that led to the retirement of many of these senior officers.

Turner was further frustrated by the system of Secrecy that kept vital intelligence hermetically contained in bureaucratic "compartments" within the CIA. Not only did he view such secrecy as irrational, he began to suspect that it cloaked a wide range of unethical activities. He became especially concerned with abuses in the espionage division, which he discovered was heavily overstaffed with case officers-some of whom, on the pretext of seeing agents abroad, were disbursing large sums in "expenses" to themselves, keeping mistresses, and doing business with international arms dealers. Aside from such petty corruption, Turner feared that these compartmentalized espionage operations could enmesh the entire CIA in a devastating scandal. The potential for such a "disgrace," as he puts it, was made manifest to him by a single traumatic case that occurred in the 1960's, one which he harks back to throughout his book, and which he uses to justify eliminating the essential core of the CIA's espionage service.

The villain of this case, as Turner describes it, is James Jesus Angleton, who was chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1974; the victim was Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who began collaborating, with the CIA in 1962 and then defected to the United States in 1964, and who claimed to have read all the KGB files on Lee Harvey Oswald. The crime was the imprisonment of Nosenko, -which, according to Turner, was "a travesty of the rights of the individual under the law." It all began in 1964, after Nosenko arrived in the United States. Turner states that Angleton "decided that Nosenko was a double agent, and set out to force him to confess. . . . When he would not give in to normal interrogation, Angleton's team set out to break the man psychologically. A small prison was built, expressly for him."

(3) Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (1990)

In a remarkable attempt to resolve the issue, Nosenko underwent "hostile interrogation." He was kept in solitary confinement for 1,277 days under intense physical and psychological pressure.

He was put on a diet of weak tea, macaroni, and porridge, given nothing to read, a light was left burning in his unheated cell twenty-four hours a day, and his guards were forbidden to speak with him or even smile. His Isolation was so complete that Nosenko eventually began to hallucinate, according to CIA testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Toward the end of this ordeal, Nosenko was given at least two lie detector tests by the CIA. He failed both. But Nosenko did not crack.

The believers of Nosenko, headed by the CIA's Richard Helms and J. Edgar Hoover, took his intransigence to mean that he was telling the truth but the KGB having no interest in Oswald.

But doubts remained. So at the CIA's request, the Warren Commission obligingly made no reference to Nosenko. Angleton retired from the CIA and later wrote: "The ... exoneration or official decision that Nosenko is/was bona fide is a travesty. It is an indictment of the CIA and, if the FBI subscribes to it, of that bureau too. The ramifications for the U.S. intelligence community, and specifically the CIA, are tragic."

The counterintelligence faction, led by Angleton, still believes that Nosenko's defection was contrived by the KGB for two purposes: to allay suspicions that the Soviets had anything to do with the JFK assassination to cover for Soviet "moles," or agents deep within US intelligence.

(4) Arkady Shevchenko, Breaking With Moscow (1985)

In November 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Everyone in the (Soviet) mission was stunned and confused, particularly when there were rumors that the murder had been Soviet-inspired... Our leaders would not have been so upset by the assassination if they had planned it and the KGB would not have taken upon itself to venture such a move without Politburo approval. More important, Khrushchev's view of Kennedy had changed. After Cuba, Moscow perceived Kennedy as the one who had accelerated improvement of relations between the two countries. Kennedy was seen as a man of strength and determination, the one thing that Kremlin truly understands and respects. In addition, Moscow firmly believed that Kennedy's assassination was a scheme by "reactionary forces" within the United States seeking to damage the new trend in relations. The Kremlin ridiculed the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald had acted on his own as the sole assassin. There was in fact widespread speculation among Soviet diplomats that Lyndon Johnson, along with the CIA and the Mafia, had masterminded the plot. Perhaps one of the most potent reasons why the U.S.S.R. wished Kennedy well was that Johnson was anathema to Khrushchev. Because he was a southerner, Moscow considered him a racist (the stereotype of any American politician from below the Mason Dixon line), an anti-Soviet and anti-Communist to the core. Further, since Johnson was from Texas, a center of the most reactionary forces in the United States, according to the Soviets, he was associated with the big-time capitalism of the oil industry, also known to be anti-Soviet.

 

(5) James Scott Linville, review of Tennant H. Bagley's Spy Wars (24th July, 2008)

An old-school espionage story from the early Cold War, “Pete” Bagley was the counter-intelligence officer who handled the noted case of the defector Yuri Nosenko. The question of whether Nosenko was a bona fide defector, or had been dispatched as part of a deception plot, tore the CIA apart for the better part of a decade. Some forty years later Bagley finally makes public his report, and it diverges considerably from the comfortable version of events the agency has long presented.

In The Spectator, Oleg Gordievsky described the author, one-time head of Soviet Block Counter-Intelligence for the CIA, as "one of the most respected and knowledgeable experts on Soviet espionage." The book, he said, was "perhaps the most amazing non-fiction spy book that has ever appeared during or after the Cold War."

After my second reading I turned to a series of "twenty unavoidable questions" posed by Bagley. Bagley's questions are indeed unavoidable. What's more, his account was persuasive that the Russian defector could not have been who he said he was; that Nosenko could not have, as he’d claimed, reviewed the file of Lee Harvey Oswald; and that Nosenko's stories of how the KGB discovered the identities of two CIA moles in Moscow could not have been true. David Ignatius in the Washington Post wrote, "It's impossible to read this book without developing doubts about Nosenko's bona fides. Spy Wars should reopen the Nosenko case." I don't know what it would mean to "open" a case forty years old, but certainly a new generation of analysts and historians should examine the case. The account of the long history of deception operations, stretching back to Peter the Great, is alone worth the price of the book.

So, why did the Soviet's concoct such a deception? In the book Bagley argues that the KGB's real game was to steer the CIA away from realizing that the Russians had recruited an American code clerk in Moscow in 1949, and perhaps two others later on.  [If you'll read the book, you'll realize that one of those "two others" was the first CIA agent stationed at the American Embassy in Moscow, Edward Ellis Smith, and the fact that his job, before he was caught-up in a KGB "honeytrap" operation and recalled to Washington and fired, was to prepare dead drops for GRU Lt. Col. Pytor Popov! --  Tommy ] 

(6) The Daily Telegraph (28th August, 2008)

The controversy over Nosenko's bona fides was to continue for years, and had the effect of splitting the American counter-intelligence community. The central issue was the concept of the "dispatched defector": the idea that a professional intelligence agency would risk sending a well-informed staff officer directly and deliberately into the hands of an adversary.

On the one hand, the Counterintelligence Staff, led by James Angleton, found it impossible to reconcile the many inconsistencies in the defector's story; they pointed out that Nosenko's family was part of Moscow's elite and that he was therefore an improbable traitor. Furthermore, Nosenko's claim that he had had access to Oswald's file, a claim made just as the Warren Commission was investigating the background of the assassination, seemed a little too convenient – especially as Nosenko's essential message was that the KGB had been innocent of any plot.

The case against Nosenko was made in Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games (2007), a book by Pete Bagley, a CIA officer stationed in Switzerland in the early 1960s who initially handled Nosenko's case.

The opposing view suggested that Nosenko was a hard-drinking womaniser who had found himself in financial difficulty in Geneva and, in turning to the CIA for help, had exaggerated his own status.

(7) Michael Carlson, Yuri Nosenko (1st September, 2008)

The argument about whether Nosenko was bona fide or a KGB plant would, according to David Wise's Molehunt (1992), "split the agency into two camps, creating scars that had yet to heal decades later". Indeed, just last year, in his book Spy Wars, Tennent "Pete" Bagley, Nosenko's original CIA handler, continued to argue that Nosenko was a KGB "provocateur and dissembler", which caused the CIA director Michael Hayden to visit Nosenko just a month before his death, bringing a ceremonial flag and official letter of thanks....

The arguments for Nosenko's being a plant are thin. He could not undo Golitsin, and if the KGB worried that Oswald was a clumsy attempt to frame them for Kennedy's assassination, it could be countered through back-channels. Yet Nosenko's crippling of American intelligence could not have been more effective had the KGB orchestrated it. The increasingly paranoid Angleton would suspect the likes of Pierre Trudeau, Olaf Palme and Willi Brandt of being Soviet agents. When he started suspecting his own superiors at the CIA, he was forced into retirement. KGB assets within the agency, such as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanson, would be exposed not by counterintelligence, but by their own over-confidence. And Nosenko would die, under an assumed name after "a long illness".

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--Tommy

Edited May 7, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Martin Blank]

I've had this thought in the back of my mind for awhile; i even think a case might be made for the U-2 affair being a joint operation. although i can't remember who said it, i can remember someone saying at some level the same people were working for both sides or both sides were using the same people.