Bart Kamp & Malcolm Blunt discuss Dallas

[Pete Mellor]

 

[George Govus]

I turned on CNN and it's the freaking coronation!!! This is like a balm.

[Pete Mellor]

32 minutes ago, George Govus said:

I turned on CNN and it's the freaking coronation!!! This is like a balm.

CNN.  George, you should see the tv stuff on over here!  Jumpin' Jesus, I detest the whole lot of 'em.

King's coronation my left foot, thankfully I'm off to watch Sale Sharks v Newcastle Falcons.  A few hours relief from the insanity.

[Adam Johnson]

It would be great if Bart could do a 15 minute to 30 minute video with Malcolm and simply ask just one question:

After your 30 years of personal research, getting hands on with 100s and 1000s of documents,  reports, photos and actual case evidence....what do you think happened on November 22nd 1963, whom can you pin point was involved and whom do you feel was behind the planning and cover up?

Thats it, one question 3 parts and let Malcolm talk, we can all just sit back and listen.  

Regards,

AJ

[Gerry Down]

What is Malcolm Blunt referring to at 56 minutes in on the video?

Is he saying chunks of Jesse Currys WC testimony is blanked out?

Here is Jesse Currys WC testimony: https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh12/pdf/WH12_Curry.pdf

[Joseph Backes]

Well, to get back to Malcolm's talk, he mentions several CIA people I think it fair to say most people are not familiar with that I'd like to give you all some information about.

1.) Donald Deneselya, allegedly saw the CIA debrief on LHO when LHO returned from Russia..  The CIA deny any debrief occurred.

2.) Brian J Kelley, was with Counterintelligence in the CIA. At one time suspected of being a KGB mole in the 1990's. The real mole was Robert Hansen.

3.) Howard J Osborn, a CIA security officer. In 1963 he was the head of the Soviet Russia division. Later forced to resign for withholding documents from the FBI & Watergate congressional committee.  One of those documents was about a visit by Lee R Pennington, Jr. to the home of James J McCord shortly after the break-in.  Pennington witnessed McCord's wife burning documents which may have detailed info on McCord's links to the CIA.  

4.) Col. Lawrence Kermit "Red" White, CIA executive director.  

5.) Paul Leo Dillon, a CIA case officer.  He handled GRU General Dmitri Polyakov in India.  He may have been murdered, died of a lung problem in Oct 1980. Dillon had his cover blown by Phil Agee's book, "Inside the Company." Polyakov was given the codename TOPHAT. Dillon was the CIA case officer for Polyakov. The GRU gave Dillon the code name Plaid.  His daughter, Eva Dillon, wrote a book, "Spies in the Family." Dillion later went to Mexico City. Bagley commented to Malcolm that Paul Dillon was not with him long that he "was in the basement," a term meaning unacknowledged deep cover. Bagley knew not to ask.

6.) Lee H Wigren, a research supervisor in SR/CI.  Tennent Bailey was his supervisor.  

7.) William J Hood, Western Hemisphere, Chief of Operations. Bagley was astonished when Malcolm gave him a list of everyone who ever worked in Bagley's unit.   

8.) John Sherwood.  His alias was John Breitheim. His pseudonym was Sidney P. Di Ubaldo.  He later moved to Boulder, Co and apparently stalked a woman leading to a restraining order and an arrest.  He committed suicide July 16, 2001.  In an interview with someone John Sherwood told the interviewer that Cal Hicks, who was an interested part with Vecianna  "was in the basement with Alpha-66."  Malcolm was surprised to see the term "in the basement," in reference to Cal Hicks.  The CIA likes to claim they had nothing to do with Alpha-66 and could not control them.

9.) Cal Hicks.  Cal Hicks is Calvin W Hicks.  See RIF#104-10193-10077 for CIA Op file on him. A member of WH/4/PM. 

10.) Bill Bright, SR/CI/4. William C Bright.  See Chapter 2 of Bill Simpich's State Secret for info on Bill Bright. 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by Joseph Backes
grammar & to add clarity

[Gerry Down]

24 minutes ago, Joseph Backes said:

Well, to get back to Malcolm's talk, he mentions several CIA people I think it fair to say most people are not familiar with that I'd like to I've you all some information about.

1.) Donald Deneselya, allegedly saw the CIA debrief on LHO when LHO returned from Russia..  The CIA deny any debrief occurred.

2.) Brian J Kelley, was with Counterintelligence in the CIA. At one time suspected of being a KGB mole in the 1990's. The real mole was Robert Hansen.

3.) Howard J Osborn, a CIA security officer. In 1963 he was the head of the Soviet Russia division. Later forced to resign of withholding documents from the FBI & Watergate congressional committee.  One of those documents was about a visit by Lee R Pennington Jr to the home of James J McCord shortly after the break-in.  Pennington witnessed McCord's wife burning documents which may have detailed info on McCord's links to the CIA.  

4.) Col. Lawrence Kermit "Red" White, CIA executive director.  

5.) Paul Leo Dillon, a CIA case officer.  He handled GRU General Dmitri Polyakov in India.  He may have been murdered, died of a lung problem in Oct 1980. Dillon had his cover blown by Phil Agee's book, "Inside the Company." Polyakov was given the codename TOPHAT. Dillon was the CIA case officer for Polyakov. The GRU gave Dillon the code name Plaid.  His daughter, Eva Dillon, wrote a book, "Spies in the Family." Dillion later went to Mexico City.

6.) Lee H Wigren, a research supervisor in SR/CI.  Tennent Bailey was his supervisor.  

7.) William J Hood, Western Hemisphere, Chief of Operations. Bagley was astonished when Malcolm gave him a list of everyone who ever worked in Bagley's unit.   

8.) John Sherwood.  His alias was John Breitheim. His pseudonym was Sidney P. Di Ubaldo.  He later moved to Boulder, Co and apparently stalked a woman leading to a restraining order and an arrest.  He committed suicide July 16, 2001.  In an interview with someone John Sherwood told the interviewer that Cal Hicks, who was an interested part with Vecianna  "was in the basement with Alpha-66."  

9.) Cal Hicks.  Cal Hicks is Calvin W Hicks.  See RIF#104-10193-10077 for CIA Op file on him. A member of WH/4/PM. 

10.) Bill Bright, SR/CI/4. William C Bright.  See Chapter 2 of Bill Simpich's State Secret for info on Bill Bright. 

 

 

Thanks. Do you know if Howard J Osborn was chief of the SR division in 1959 at the time Angleton was trying to block that division from having access to LHOs file?

[Joseph Backes]

2 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

Thanks. Do you know if Howard J Osborn was chief of the SR division in 1959 at the time Angleton was trying to block that division from having access to LHOs file?

No, I don't know but it might be in a book on the CIA.  

David Murphy was at one point. 

Jack Maury was another.  

I read somewhere today the importance of Greece to the CIA.  They had a secure line to send message from HQ to Greece and then from Greece to other places.  George Joannides came from Greece.  Jack Maury was CIA chief of station in Athens.  In 1967 the CIA installed Georgios Papadopoulos as head of state in a military coup. Philip Talbot, the U.S. ambassador disapproved of the coup which ushered in the regime of the colonels ( 1967 - 1974 ) calling it a rape of democracy.  Jack Maury replied "How do you rape a whore?"  Maury must have been really popular in Greece after that.  

It was another George Papadopoulos who got the whole Trump - Russia thing going.  I wonder if there is a relation?

 

 

[Pete Mellor]

10 hours ago, Joseph Backes said:

2.) Brian J Kelley, was with Counterintelligence in the CIA. At one time suspected of being a KGB mole in the 1990's. The real mole was Robert Hansen.

More information on this concerning Hansen please Joseph.  Clearly Uncle Malcolm & John Newman point towards Bruce Sollie in the Office of Security as per 'Uncovering Popov's Mole'.

Although CIA is a 'wilderness of mirrors' to me per se, I've been collecting stuff on Angleton, so this reference to Robert Hansen is interesting.  Don't tell me there were TWO moles!

[Joseph Backes]

No, no, no, no, no.  The term "mole" is not something used for one man and only once, never to be used again.

There have been several moles in different agencies over time.  Learn to use Google, please.  Robert Hanssen was caught.  Laughably, Google refers to Hanssen as a "public servant," when the more accurate description is traitor.  Hanssen worked for the FBI. He turned traitor in '79. He stopped in 1981, and then started again in 1985 and stopped in 1991. He was arrested in 1992.

Aldrich Ames was another mole. He worked for the CIA. He was arrested in 1994.

Bruce Solie was never caught, never suspected until the research of John Newman. Solie worked for the CIA. Solie worked in the CIA's Office of Security. Solie was Angleton's boss. Solie died December 25, 1992. I believe John Newman is correct. Bruce Solie was a lot like the character of "security" in the movie Stalag 17.  He attained the position of top mole hunter while being the mole himself.

I also recommend watching the Martin Scorsese film, "The Departed." A gangster in the Boston mob played by Jack Nicholson recruited a young Irish mob kid to go into the Massachusetts state police academy and become a mole. He's played by Matt Damon.  He'd be a real cop but secretly working for Nicholson's character, who is based on real life mobster Whitey Bulger.  The cops think there's a mole. They recruit an undercover cop who infiltrates the Irish mob. He's played by Leonardo DiCaprio. So, the two moles are in a race to uncover each other.  The problem is the mob boss has more than one mole in the police dept.  

Joe

[Joseph Backes]

An issue Malcolm briefly touches upon is the question of did the ARRB interview Tennent "Pete" Bagley? Currently it doesn't appear that they formally, properly did.

I love Malcolm but I could kill him, he was a very, very disorganized researcher.  He copied what was interesting to him when he found it and wanted to copy something.  He did not copy entire documents. He did not copy the RIF page and then the whole document. He would often fly right past the RIF page, find something interesting, like page 18 of a 52 page document. He'd copy that.  And them move onto another document, finding page 22 of a 78 page document interesting and copy that.  Then he'd copy a finding aid without copying the whole intact thing, just parts of it, and it might be a finding aid to something not in NARA at all but at a completely different place, like a presidential library, or a special collection at a college or university.  And then he'd go back to NARA and cherry pic this page and that page.  Then that weeks worth of copying went into a bag for poor old Bart Kamp to try to make sense of years, if not decades later.  Bart would take pics of docs stripped of their RIF sheet and context and email them to me, sometimes 10 a day.  And it would take hours trying to make sense of each document as I tried to put some text, proper nouns, names into an advanced search on MFF in an attempt to learn, aha, this is page X from RIF # yadda-yadda.  I had to organize what Bart sent me by what day, what email address he used, what title he gave to the file, even when Malcolm did copy the RIF page Bart wouldn't use it to name what he's sending to me.  I created a whole index, it was like translating the language of what Malcolm and Bart used and then translating it into the language of RIFS.  It took forever!

It was infuriating because it was and still is properly organized at NARA. It was organized to begin with. It's like the Tasmanian Devil became a researcher.  HIs memories and stories would be so much more powerful if every time, boom, there's the doc, there's the RIF#, there, you can read it yourself and see he's telling you the truth, there, this document is really important.  See? 

If we could match his memory with a RIF# we'd be so much better off, we'd be so much further along in the research.  

So, we get these interviews of Malcolm, and he remembers this and that, but it's nearly impossible to reverse engineer what he did and when.  It's very difficult to match up his memory with the specific document he's talking about because he didn't copy the RIF page, and keep his stuff properly organized.  You can do it some of the time but not all the time.  

So, we don't have a date for when Bagley came over.  We don't have any documentation, not even a fax or email between Bagley and the ARRB. We don't have a government voucher for his hotel, plane trip, nothing, if he did come over.  If those records exist they are in the ARRB's internal files. 

And making things worse is the ARRB's internal records do not have RIFs ( they oddly seem to be exempt from the whole RIF system ) and they are not 100% open and declassified for us to search through. None of it is online. You have to be in Archives II to access them. 

So, I'm not 100% convinced they did talk with Bagley with a formal interview that would have been recorded on audiotape, and that every trace of it disappeared.  

Malcolm was going through stuff as it came into NARA while NARA was processing it.  So, sometimes that's great as Malcolm might get something free and clear, open in full before the spook boys and girls try and redact it and put a withdrawal form in the folder / box.  Sometimes Malcolm would be there too early or too late to get anything. Sometimes if Malcolm was there a few days earlier, or a few later, it would be there no problem.  There was no way to tell and schedule when best to be there. It was a bit chaotic in the 1990's, especially when the "interfiling" was goin on.  

Oh, and in 1993 the CIA docs had their own funky number, what I call the 1993 numbers. For example, a document titled "REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ON SOVIET PERSONALITIES" had the CIA's own internal number - 1993.05.17.13:51:03:000088.  Many CIA docs didn't have a RIF number until years later.  

So, it needs some proper research by someone being physically present in Archives II by someone properly anal enough to take meticulous notes as to what he's going through and when, what box #, what folder #, which ARRB staff person's files, to see if there is a record, any record or a tape of an ARRB interview with Bagley.  Maybe there's some indication they talked.  Who knows?

Joe

[Pete Mellor]

On 5/8/2023 at 9:07 PM, Joseph Backes said:

An issue Malcolm briefly touches upon is the question of did the ARRB interview Tennent "Pete" Bagley? Currently it doesn't appear that they formally, properly did.

I love Malcolm but I could kill him, he was a very, very disorganized researcher.  He copied what was interesting to him when he found it and wanted to copy something.  He did not copy entire documents. He did not copy the RIF page and then the whole document. He would often fly right past the RIF page, find something interesting, like page 18 of a 52 page document. He'd copy that.  And them move onto another document, finding page 22 of a 78 page document interesting and copy that.  Then he'd copy a finding aid without copying the whole intact thing, just parts of it, and it might be a finding aid to something not in NARA at all but at a completely different place, like a presidential library, or a special collection at a college or university.  And then he'd go back to NARA and cherry pic this page and that page.  Then that weeks worth of copying went into a bag for poor old Bart Kamp to try to make sense of years, if not decades later.  Bart would take pics of docs stripped of their RIF sheet and context and email them to me, sometimes 10 a day.  And it would take hours trying to make sense of each document as I tried to put some text, proper nouns, names into an advanced search on MFF in an attempt to learn, aha, this is page X from RIF # yadda-yadda.  I had to organize what Bart sent me by what day, what email address he used, what title he gave to the file, even when Malcolm did copy the RIF page Bart wouldn't use it to name what he's sending to me.  I created a whole index, it was like translating the language of what Malcolm and Bart used and then translating it into the language of RIFS.  It took forever!

It was infuriating because it was and still is properly organized at NARA. It was organized to begin with. It's like the Tasmanian Devil became a researcher.  HIs memories and stories would be so much more powerful if every time, boom, there's the doc, there's the RIF#, there, you can read it yourself and see he's telling you the truth, there, this document is really important.  See? 

If we could match his memory with a RIF# we'd be so much better off, we'd be so much further along in the research.  

So, we get these interviews of Malcolm, and he remembers this and that, but it's nearly impossible to reverse engineer what he did and when.  It's very difficult to match up his memory with the specific document he's talking about because he didn't copy the RIF page, and keep his stuff properly organized.  You can do it some of the time but not all the time.  

So, we don't have a date for when Bagley came over.  We don't have any documentation, not even a fax or email between Bagley and the ARRB. We don't have a government voucher for his hotel, plane trip, nothing, if he did come over.  If those records exist they are in the ARRB's internal files. 

And making things worse is the ARRB's internal records do not have RIFs ( they oddly seem to be exempt from the whole RIF system ) and they are not 100% open and declassified for us to search through. None of it is online. You have to be in Archives II to access them. 

So, I'm not 100% convinced they did talk with Bagley with a formal interview that would have been recorded on audiotape, and that every trace of it disappeared.  

Malcolm was going through stuff as it came into NARA while NARA was processing it.  So, sometimes that's great as Malcolm might get something free and clear, open in full before the spook boys and girls try and redact it and put a withdrawal form in the folder / box.  Sometimes Malcolm would be there too early or too late to get anything. Sometimes if Malcolm was there a few days earlier, or a few later, it would be there no problem.  There was no way to tell and schedule when best to be there. It was a bit chaotic in the 1990's, especially when the "interfiling" was goin on.  

Oh, and in 1993 the CIA docs had their own funky number, what I call the 1993 numbers. For example, a document titled "REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ON SOVIET PERSONALITIES" had the CIA's own internal number - 1993.05.17.13:51:03:000088.  Many CIA docs didn't have a RIF number until years later.  

So, it needs some proper research by someone being physically present in Archives II by someone properly anal enough to take meticulous notes as to what he's going through and when, what box #, what folder #, which ARRB staff person's files, to see if there is a record, any record or a tape of an ARRB interview with Bagley.  Maybe there's some indication they talked.  Who knows?

Joe

Many thanks Joe!  That's a quite concise summation of things relating to Malcolm's work & CIA files.

It's a world I don't inhabit but fascinating none the less.  I'll stick to just reading books.

So, one more question.  Are you of the opinion that Oswald (a willing defector) was Solie's man in his being sent to USSR?

I've always thought Angleton was handling Oswald as well as driving the mole hunt, but it now seems that Solie was playing Angleton like a puppet master.

 

 

[Joseph Backes]

No.  

Oswald was not Solie's man, nor, Angleton's.  I don't think Oswald had any idea who is sending him or why.  He just thinks he's going to be a big hero, which is one reason why he was called "a useful idiot."  

Oswald is being used as a dangle to find a mole.  The idea was that if the KGB bites what Oswald is offering about his knowledge of the U-2 then Angleton et. al. can discover where there is a security leak, and where the mole is.  Meanwhile, the mole is who Angleton is reporting to back home in the U.S., inside CIA, inside the OS, Mr. Bruce Solie.  

[Pete Mellor]

5 hours ago, Joseph Backes said:

No.  

Oswald was not Solie's man, nor, Angleton's.  I don't think Oswald had any idea who is sending him or why.  He just thinks he's going to be a big hero, which is one reason why he was called "a useful idiot."  

Oswald is being used as a dangle to find a mole.  The idea was that if the KGB bites what Oswald is offering about his knowledge of the U-2 then Angleton et. al. can discover where there is a security leak, and where the mole is.  Meanwhile, the mole is who Angleton is reporting to back home in the U.S., inside CIA, inside the OS, Mr. Bruce Solie.  

Well, clearly we are in the territory of 'hypotheticaland' here.  However, I can't see Oswald having no idea who was behind his defection.  Simply because of his route through Finland.  I'm not saying CIA or ONI, but it does appear to me his journey into USSR was too clever for some ex-marine private, not to mention the financial aspect.  So I lean towards some kind of intelligence backing.  Who was it called him "a useful idiot?"  I can't recall off the top of my old head.

As for your 2nd paragraph, I more or less concur.  However, Popov had informed CIA that KGB had the full specifications of U2's technical data long before Oswald defected.  Would KGB be that interested in a mere radar operator?  They weren't as it turned out. To me, it fits Solie,  to keep Oswald files away from SR & convincing Angleton that the mole was hidden in that department. 

“‘Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange,—stranger than fiction”  John Byrom

[Jonathan Cohen]

34 minutes ago, Pete Mellor said:

Well, clearly we are in the territory of 'hypotheticaland' here.  However, I can't see Oswald having no idea who was behind his defection.  Simply because of his route through Finland.  I'm not saying CIA or ONI, but it does appear to me his journey into USSR was too clever for some ex-marine private, not to mention the financial aspect.  So I lean towards some kind of intelligence backing.

Again, hypothetically speaking ... let's assume Oswald did have "intelligence backing" for his trip to Russia. Are we then to assume that when Oswald marched into their office to renounce his citizenship, U.S. Embassy officials Richard Snyder and John McVickar were on the receiving end of an intelligence operation by their own government? Or were they in on the scheme from the beginning too? In my opinion, Oswald's behavior, despite whatever odd means by which he made it to the Soviet Union in the first place, shows no evidence of stemming from or being a part of an intelligence-backed operation.