John Newman's latest on Popov's Mole

[Benjamin Cole]

20 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

My copy of Uncovering Popov's Mole arrived yesterday. I am not well-read in the areas of the documents and matters Newman discusses so much of what Newman argues is out of my league, but I can nevertheless comment on what I understand. 

First, identification of Bruce Solie as the mole, the chief mole-hunter (who despite years of effort never could find the mole) being himself the mole, bamboozling Angleton just as that mole's predecessor Kim Philby had earlier bamboozled Angleton, is fascinating. I will be interested in more informed reviews giving opposing views or weaknesses in Newman's argument if any but I did not spot any obvious problems to what comes across as a convincing solution worthy of a Sherlock Holmes closing of a case. I immediately think of a comparative parallel: the American Indian Movement in its armed standoff at Wounded Knee in 1973. The chief of security of AIM tasked with identifying government spies and agents in their midst turned out all along to have been an undercover police officer and paid FBI informant (Durham). That came out in court and is a matter of record. A similar situation has been suspected with the IRA of Northern Ireland though I think that remains contested. So there is one and perhaps two good parallels to the idea of a chief mole-hunter being the mole. Of course that matters little except as irony, the argument depends on the evidence itself. 

In this analysis defector Golitsyn was for real and Nosenko, sent by the KGB and defended by Solie, was a fraud. Newman brings out a new document, a debriefing of an instructor in a Soviet counterintelligence school in Minsk from later than the time Oswald was there, reporting on other faculty at that school telling of having handled Oswald and Marina in Minsk. Oswald had been recruited and was an agent claimed by the Ukraine KGB. Marina was not claimed to be an agent but was a "swallow", asked to get into bed with Oswald for information, who then went her own way after coming to the U.S. This debriefing supports the same basic account of Oleg Kalugin, chief of KGB operations in the US in 1963, in Russo and Moses, eds., Where Were You? (2013), who said "Marina was planted just to find information ... Later the KGB made a deal with her that if she came here to the United States--she was recruited; let's put it that way. But she didn't perform the mission. She was actually thrown out of the Russian network of sources--totally useless". The document published in an appendix by Newman in Uncovering Popov's Mole, "The 2/27/90 CIA Report on the Debriefing of IJDECANTER", is fascinating and rings as the true story of Oswald in Minsk. According to the debriefing (also in agreement with Kalugin), Oswald was ultimately deemed unreliable and the Soviets were not in contact with him after his redefection back to the US.

Newman recapitulates a horrifying narrative of Cold War history and nuclear war planning of the 1950s and early 1960s as Kennedy came into the presidency. Newman argues in favor of the utterly terrifying argument earlier published by James Galbraith and Heather Purcell that there existed a Joint Chiefs plan in 1961, which was discussed, to launch a first-strike nuclear attack to wipe out the Soviet Union ca. 1963. At the time that argument of Galbraith and Purcell was disputed and somewhat persuasively countered as having been a misunderstanding of a contingency plan, not an actual plan to do it. Newman puts the original idea of Galbraith and Purcell back on the map, arguing there was significant support inside the Joint Chiefs for doing that, that it was more than simple contingency war-gaming. 

Reading Newman's account of the evolving nuclear war-fighting doctrine, the SIOP debates, of LeMay and Lemnitzer, the Dr. Strangelove logic in actual history, is for me psychologically like a descent into Dante's hell. What have humans come to? 

My simplified takeaway from Newman's analysis: the US had an overwhelming advantage over the Soviet nuclear arsenal, though this was secret, not publicly said by either USSR or US. That advantage was so overwhelming that apparently a majority of the Joint Chiefs believed there was a temporary window of time--a small number of years--in which the US could first-strike the USSR and China, destroying both communist superpowers (and killing and radiation-poisoning most of their people), and that compared to the alternatives that should be done. 

Then: the single most important legacy of JFK is he kept that nuclear war from happening. (Not a foregone conclusion.)

And then into the Conrad heart of darkness: the argument of a serious framing of the USSR, Castro, and Oswald for the assassination of JFK, as part of prior knowledge of planning of that assassination.  

Incidentally, trivia note: Newman is now referring to "Oswald (or an imposter) traveled to Mexico City (28 September-3 October 1963)" (p. 2). I could not find elaboration on that in the rest of the book. Newman also says in passing, without elaborating or arguing in this book, that a decision was made in 1962 to frame the USSR, Cuba, and Oswald for an assassination of JFK in 1963, and that that actual framing occurred in about a six-week period prior to the assassination in Nov 1963 (by which I think Newman means to include the Mexico City trip).

In his talk with Doug Campbell, Newman said LHO both actually visited Mexico City and was impersonated there. 

This jives with Kostikov telling PBS, on camera with two colleagues, that they had met the real LHO in MC. 

That's my take: LHO went to MC and was shadowed and imposted while there also. 

And yes, the Deep State plans for a first-strike nuke attack in 1963 are beyond comprehension. 

[Gerry Down]

If the IJDECANTER story is true, LHO could quiet possibly have told the three USSR officials in Mexico that he was a KGB agent. If so, that would explain why the three sent a cable to Moscow about LHO right after he left their building.

Have we ever seen the text of the cable that the three sent to Moscow?

[Gerry Down]

So if i'm understanding John Newmans podcast, Birch O'Neal first set up the file on LHO when he defected. This file went to the Office of Security where Angleton then did not have access to it (see 87 minutes on thepodcast: https://www.spreaker.com/user/7338953/197-october-16-2022-with-intent-to-suppr ).

Jeff Morely often suggests that Angleton was the one who controlled Oswalds file. But apparently that is not true. The Office of Security controlled Oswalds file. And in the Office of Security, the person that was controlling the file was Bruce Solie?

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

So if i'm understanding John Newmans podcast, Birch O'Neal first set up the file on LHO when he defected. This file went to the Office of Security where Angleton then did not have access to it (see 87 minutes on thepodcast: https://www.spreaker.com/user/7338953/197-october-16-2022-with-intent-to-suppr ).

Jeff Morely often suggests that Angleton was the one who controlled Oswalds file. But apparently that is not true. The Office of Security controlled Oswalds file. And in the Office of Security, the person that was controlling the file was Bruce Solie?

I could be wrong, but I think Solie was deputy chief of the Security Research Staff at the time, and OS/SRS worked directly with Angleton’s counterintelligence group to root out moles and that sort of thing. 

[Greg Doudna]

8 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

So if i'm understanding John Newmans podcast, Birch O'Neal first set up the file on LHO when he defected. This file went to the Office of Security where Angleton then did not have access to it (see 87 minutes on thepodcast: https://www.spreaker.com/user/7338953/197-october-16-2022-with-intent-to-suppr ).

Jeff Morely often suggests that Angleton was the one who controlled Oswalds file. But apparently that is not true. The Office of Security controlled Oswalds file. And in the Office of Security, the person that was controlling the file was Bruce Solie?

Yes according to pp. 347-348 of Uncovering Popov's Mole (italics is Newman's, bold is mine):

"Here I would like to briefly recapitulate a few points from Chapter Two. There, I laid out the reasons for replacing the phrase The Angleton Molehunt with  the phrase The False CIA Molehunt. Taking this step finally pulled the curtain back to reveal a different wizard at the controls--a warlock more powerful, intelligent, and devious than the spectacled counterintelligence legend. Angleton did believe that the 1959 Oswald dangle in Moscow might surface Popov's mole from somewhere in the Soviet Russia Division. But that idea did not originate with him. It was Bruce Solie who convinced Angleton that the lair of the KGB mole was hidden in SRD.

"I reviewed my conversation with the Deputy Chief of the Office of Security (OS) Bob Bannerman. The evidence that was suddenly screaming at me had been there since the day we spoke on 8 August 1994. In addition to being the deputy director, Bannerman's OS portfolio included overseeing the Security Research Staff (SRS), then headed by Paul Gaynor, who was engrossed in the expanding OS mind-control programs--Bluebird and Artichoke--seeking to scramble the brains of communists through electric shocks, drugs, and hypnotism.

"While OS had received cooperation from Angleton's staff 'and others,' Bannerman made it clear that the OS was the office of primary concern, and that most of his staff (i.e., SRS) were involved. Bannerman emphasized that Paul Gaynor and Bruce Solie were "very active" in handling the molehunt. But it was Solie's Research Branch (RB) that handled defectors and moles, and managed agent and personnel files. 

"CIA document registers reveal that all incoming messages and cables on Oswald from other government agencies did not go to where they normally would--the Soviet Russia Division (SRD). All of those incoming messages and cables were shunted off to OS by the Office of Mail Logistics (OML) and Records Integration Division (RID). OS then decided what to share or not share with Angleton and his CI/Staff.

"There is little doubt that Solie was the right person, in the right place, and at the right time into whose hands control of the molehunt fell. Solie--not Angleton--was the 'wizard behind the curtain' directing, as he saw fit, a false hunt for the KGB mole from his desk in the CIA."

Questions and comments of my own:

• I would like to better understand how Solie, who had two levels of reporting superiors above him in OS (Gaynor and Bannerman), managed to have himself tasked with finding the mole. 
• Almost no biographical information of Solie ... question of motivation ... how to explain why he would become a mole for the Soviets ...
• If the Solie as mole argument is correct, that could in itself account for wide-scale CIA coverup of how many were "taken in" by the successful Soviet mole operation? With spillover and implications to CIA coverup of what was going on with Oswald?
• Yet, a nagging question: is this "conspiracy within the CIA" theory re Solie too pat, too simple. Is it certain Solie is the right guy? A lot matches and becomes explained, but is the argument that it was Solie, which in the end is circumstantial without document, confession, or smoking-gun, correct? Yet the argument that there existed a mole is strong, the mole was never found, and it looks like the mole was in the vicinity of what and where Solie was working--that is the argument that it was Solie. I will be interested in the critical reviews sure to follow.  
• And a personal note: I have a special reason for curiosity in this story. Although I never knew him, the father of my long-time best friend was an officer in the Soviet Russia Division, CIA, of that era who was one of Angleton's victims in being suspected, along with the entire rest of the Soviet Russia Division, of being the possible mole, had his promotions blocked, etc. as a result. This was Vasia Gmirkin, called in Tom Mangold's book on Angleton, Cold Warrior, the closest thing the US has had in real life to James Bond. Vasia Gmirkin was involved in both the Golitsyn and Nosenko cases and debriefings among other things, and can be found in MFF site documents as accompanying Nosenko to Nosenko's testimony. He divorced my friend Russ's mother when Russ was two and Russ saw little of him and knew little of his activities except for a time when his father made an attempt to reestablish a relationship with Russ when Russ was a teenager. I remember Russ telling me of his father when I first got to know Russ in college in the early 1970s, how his father was somewhere in Africa and it was all secret and he and his mother did not know where he was. Where he was turned out to be Malta until his cover was blown by Philip Agee and he had to precipitously leave Malta. According to Russ his father never forgave Agee for making him give up his good life and great swimming pool he had in Malta. Around 1990, somewhere in there, I happened to be on a long-distance phone call talking to Russ, and while talking, Russ had his TV on in the background, and there was a 20-20 program (ABC's investigative show like CBS's Sixty Minutes). Russ interrupted me on the phone that he had to hang up because he was astonished to see his father on TV that very moment. Russ had no knowledge that his father, Vasia Gmirkin, had even been interviewed by 20-20 or that it was going to be aired that evening. On 20-20 Vasia Gmirkin told of how Angleton had blocked his and fellow officers' promotions, etc., suspected everyone in the SRD, and the effects this had had. Until hearing his father tell his story on 20-20 Russ had no idea his father's career had even been affected by Angleton. Unfortunately by the time the 20-20 program aired his father was already dead, dead of a brain tumor which started after the time he had been filmed. I remembered that former CIA director William Casey died of a brain tumor in the midst of some Iran-Contra investigations, a few rumors of foul play there, and I asked Russ if he thought the CIA might have had his father knocked off. Russ said he didn't know, he doubted it, there was nothing unusual in any medical records. I knew Russ well, also his mother, in those years but only heard about his father through Russ. Russ's son loved to give elementary school reports on his famous grandfather who was like James Bond.  

Edited October 27, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Gerry Down]

On 10/27/2022 at 2:59 AM, Tom Gram said:

I could be wrong, but I think Solie was deputy chief of the Security Research Staff at the time, and OS/SRS worked directly with Angleton’s counterintelligence group to root out moles and that sort of thing. 

I haven’t read Newmans book but here are some points that occurred to me. Angleton was technically more senior than Solie. Angleton was the chief of Counterintelligence while Solie was further down in the Office of Security. The only thing Solie was head of was RB, which was a branch of SRS, which in turn was a branch of the Office of Security. Angletons counterpart in terms of seniority would, I think, have been the Director of the Office of Security who was Sheffield Edwards.

Counterintelligence
Chief of Counterintelligence: Angleton

Office of Security
Director of Office of Security: Edwards
Deputy Director of Office of Security: Bannerman
SRS
Chief of SRS: Gaynor
Deputy Chief of SRS: Solie
RB (which controlled the Mole Hunt)
Chief of RB: Solie
Handler of Oswalds file: Marguerite Stevens (not sure who her boss was or where inside the Office of Security she was)

So the molehunt could be led in reality by Angleton. Potentially, the Office of Security may only have viewed the mole hunt as a small thing and was off loaded to the Research Branch (RB) headed by Solie. Angleton then came in to help out but quite possibly could have been leading Solie around rather than, as Newman posits, Solie leading Angleton around (Angleton being more senior inside the CIA and being in the “in group” with Dulles and Helms etc).

As I said I haven’t read Newmans book yet, so maybe Newman has documentation showing that it was Solie (the guy with less seniority) that was doing the leading rather than Angleton (the guy with more seniority).
 

Edited October 28, 2022 by Gerry Down

[Matt Allison]

On 10/26/2022 at 7:14 PM, Gerry Down said:

So if i'm understanding John Newmans podcast, Birch O'Neal first set up the file on LHO when he defected. This file went to the Office of Security where Angleton then did not have access to it (see 87 minutes on thepodcast: https://www.spreaker.com/user/7338953/197-october-16-2022-with-intent-to-suppr ).

This document from the WC obviously isn't new, but it does serve to remind the world that CIA started lying about Oswald within hours of the assassination.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10450#relPageId=24

[Benjamin Cole]

On 10/26/2022 at 2:19 AM, Gerry Down said:

If the IJDECANTER story is true, LHO could quiet possibly have told the three USSR officials in Mexico that he was a KGB agent. If so, that would explain why the three sent a cable to Moscow about LHO right after he left their building.

Have we ever seen the text of the cable that the three sent to Moscow?

How solid is this, that a cable was sent to Moscow from MC Soviet Embassy, with any details about LHO's visit?

I am dying to see that cable, if it exists....

[David Josephs]

It is with respect and interest that I post this link to a thread which ended 4+ years ago soon after the records release.  I have not done the work necessary to form an educated opinion..  I only offer this as added background for those wishing to dig deeper, quicker.  And a very interesting article to start the thread by Bill.

On this thread page I sorted and posted the links in the 17/18 release related to NOSENKO..  If you want to get right to it rather than dig through 50,000 links...

Maybe someone can help me understand how the work of Leonard McCoy and how he was so instrumental in forming the attitude toward Russian defectors, is not more center stage when discussing moles and defectors of the time......
His 50+ page analysis was not released until 2012...  https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10095-10151.pdf 

Here is Bagley on McCoy

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362    Bagley: Ghost of the Spy Wars

THE MCCOY INTERVENTION
The SB R&R officer who started the process, Leonard McCoy, was later made deputy chief of CIA’s Counterintelligence Staff (under a new CI Staff chief, previously unconnected with anti-Soviet operations, who had replaced James Angleton). There, he continued fiercely to defend Nosenko’s bona fides5 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.6 

TENNENT H. (PETE) BAGLEY INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE

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

 

Good thing John is so tenacious...  FWIW I gave a presentation on Mexico to a small group in SF a number of years back where John and PDScott were there... I was highly encouraged when Scott backed my hypothesis about Oswald never going, and never being down there...  The room was a who's who of 1st & 2nd Gen researchers/authors and I do feel as if my work has allowed others to become more comfortable with the idea the entire thing was a False Mystery designed to bolster the Phase 1 story.

Also from that thread's page:   Was always impressed how BA was able to get to the heart of most any matter...
Sincerely.. DJ

B. A. Copeland

 

Posted May 3, 2018 (edited)

I am of the same opinion of Blunt and Dale when they see to have at least questions concerning Bruce Solie....he's certainly someone to really focus on as far as a hunt for a potential mole. I'm not saying the guy is guilty but certainly some time should be dedicated to him. Bill do you have any opinion of him? Listening to Dale and Blunt's talks (phenomenal IMHO) are really enlightening on Solie and his actions in a few operations at the least.

Edited May 4, 2018 by B. A. Copeland

 

[Tom Gram]

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

How solid is this, that a cable was sent to Moscow from MC Soviet Embassy, with any details about LHO's visit?

I am dying to see that cable, if it exists....

John Tunhiem said recently that the ARRB was in negotiations to get the KGB file on Oswald - all five linear-feet of it - but they never did so it’s still locked up in Russia somewhere. 

Nosenko said he saw that file and the KGB never talked to Oswald while he was in Russia - so if there’s anything in that file that suggests otherwise I doubt we’ll ever see it.

I think Malcolm Blunt is right on this. It’s positively absurd to think that the KGB never interviewed Oswald during his defection, and despite the twisted logic of his defenders, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Nosenko was a total fraud. 

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

John Tunhiem said recently that the ARRB was in negotiations to get the KGB file on Oswald - all five linear-feet of it - but they never did so it’s still locked up in Russia somewhere. 

Nosenko said he saw that file and the KGB never talked to Oswald while he was in Russia - so if there’s anything in that file that suggests otherwise I doubt we’ll ever see it.

I think Malcolm Blunt is right on this. It’s positively absurd to think that the KGB never interviewed Oswald during his defection, and despite the twisted logic of his defenders, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Nosenko was a total fraud. 

I don't remember where I heard this, but I am almost certain someone (perhaps even Nosenko) said the KGB failed to interview Oswald because they thought he was a false defector. If so, that makes sense. Oswald "defects". The KGB has their doubts about him. A few years pass. Oswald gets nowhere. And then says "Well, I guess it's time to go home." 

If, for that matter, Solie or someone like Solie, was a mole, the KGB may very well have known--for a fact--that Oswald was a false defector. 

Edited January 8, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Tom Gram]

32 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

I don't remember where I heard this, but I am almost certain someone (perhaps even Nosenko) said the KGB failed to interview Oswald because they thought he was a false defector. If so, that makes sense. Oswald "defects". The KGB has their doubts about him. A few years pass. Oswald gets nowhere. And then says "Well, I guess it's time to go home." 

If, for that matter, Solie or someone like Solie, was a mole, the KGB may very well have known--for a fact--that Oswald was a false defector. 

That’s a good point, but even if they knew Oswald was a false defector from a CIA mole, I’d think the KGB would still want to talk to him - at least for source protection. 

Basically, if the CIA found out that Oswald offered to reveal secrets but the KGB never interviewed him, I think they’d be pretty suspicious of a leak. 

I don’t think Nosenko claimed that the KGB thought Oswald was a false defector, but I could be wrong on that. 

[David Josephs]

4 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

John Tunhiem said recently that the ARRB was in negotiations to get the KGB file on Oswald - all five linear-feet of it - but they never did so it’s still locked up in Russia somewhere. 

Nosenko said he saw that file and the KGB never talked to Oswald while he was in Russia - so if there’s anything in that file that suggests otherwise I doubt we’ll ever see it.

I think Malcolm Blunt is right on this. It’s positively absurd to think that the KGB never interviewed Oswald during his defection, and despite the twisted logic of his defenders, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Nosenko was a total fraud. 

John Kennedy Assassination - Lee Harvey Oswald KGB Files

This collection is a set of KGB documents given to President Bill Clinton in 1999 by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The files date from 1959 when Lee Harvey Oswald sought defection to the Soviet Union. Each original Russian language KGB document is accompanied by a translation later made by the United States Department of State.

It's a 164 page document so only half that are unique...  and I was always under the impression that the US had such little info on Soviet life that they would relish a written out detailed picture of production capacities and anything else Harvey would care to write about...  In 1959 we were still getting their Russian info from Gehlen's National Socialist network... somewhat suspect info at best.

I apologize if this is a repeat or already been discussed... DJ

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

That’s a good point, but even if they knew Oswald was a false defector from a CIA mole, I’d think the KGB would still want to talk to him - at least for source protection. 

Basically, if the CIA found out that Oswald offered to reveal secrets but the KGB never interviewed him, I think they’d be pretty suspicious of a leak. 

I don’t think Nosenko claimed that the KGB thought Oswald was a false defector, but I could be wrong on that. 

Tom and Pat--

From what I recall, the KGB even bugged LHO's apartment, and I guess LHO suspected as much. 

Only a guess, but yes LHO got bored going nowhere in Russia and decided to come home. 

 

[Matt Allison]

FWIW, Solie appears to have been in charge of assembling Richard Case Nagell's CIA file for distribution to the HSCA.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10305-10005.pdf