Can I get some feedback on "the cover-up chapter" of State Secret before I write the second edition? I will serialize the chapter here.

[Matt Cloud]

46 minutes ago, Bill Simpich said:

Matt,

Here's one analysis of the Soviets' concern of a right-wing takeover, from none other than Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as recently as 2017:

While the FBI was investigating possible involvement of the Soviet Union in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Soviet authorities were voicing suspicions that U.S. right-wing groups -- and even Kennedy's own vice president -- were behind the killing, newly released documents show.

The Soviet KGB claimed it had information tying Lyndon B. Johnson, who became president as a result of the assassination, to the killing, according to a 1966 letter to a presidential assistant from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that was released for the first time late on October 26.

The letter is among 2,800 previously classified Kennedy assassination documents that were released this week following an order by U.S. President Donald Trump. According to White House officials, Trump said in a memorandum that he had "no choice" but to keep some files secret because of national security concerns raised by the FBI and CIA.

The documents capture the frantic days after the November 22, 1963, assassination, during which federal agents madly chased after tips and sifted through leads worldwide.

But Kennedy scholars say the thousands of documents do not appear to contain any bombshell revelations about the killing that shocked the world.

The claim was contained in instructions from Moscow to the KGB residency in New York "to develop information" on Johnson, Hoover said in the letter, which cited an "FBI source" that had "furnished reliable information in the past."

Johnson has long been a focus of some conspiracy theorists, but no credible information has ever linked him to the assassination.

The documents show that the FBI's own chief suspect right after the assassination was the Soviet Union, with much attention given to assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's contact with "a member of the Soviet KGB Assassination Department" at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico, documents showed.

But Moscow believed Oswald was a "neurotic maniac" whose goal was to further a right-wing conspiracy trying to poison U.S.-Soviet relations, according to a just-released U.S. intelligence report issued days after the assassination.

Later, in May 1964, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev met influential Washington newspaper columnist Drew Pearson in Cairo, Egypt, and told him that he thought a right-wing conspiracy was behind the killing, according to another intelligence report.

Khrushchev told Pearson he could not believe the conclusion investigators had reached at that time: that both Oswald and Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who fatally shot Oswald, had acted alone.

"He did not believe that the American security services were this inept," according to a CIA report of the discussion.

Pearson "got the impression that Chairman Khrushchev had some dark thoughts about the American right-wing being behind this conspiracy" and rejected all arguments to the contrary, the report said.

Ah ... okay so Soviets say same thing as most in America do at that time.  If not the Lone Nut Oswald, then the Right-Wingers and if not them then Johnson -- or maybe all of them.  But not CIA.  Certainly not KGB.  What about actual strategic action?  Move to high-alert?  Not exactly, instead we see Kruschchev "resign" and Brezhnev comes in and detente begins as U.S. "withdraws" from Vietnam, which it "loses" and Soviets fill the void in the third-world in the 70s ... . Domestically, at home, US has cut deal over missile withdrawal and proceeds to usher in largest social change program in its history.  Vietnam War fractures Democratic party and the country as a whole.  Nixon is the last liberal president -- according to Dems in the 90s -- but has background in spy-hunting and the Red Scare and is forced to resign.  Throughout, Soviet military economy is said to be on rise, and many times the beneficiary of alleged espionage as well as other tech transfer programs.  Standard U.S. textbooks throughout the Cold War proclaim "crossover point" -- when command Soviet economy will outpace U.S. -- to be about 1987.  Maybe Golitsyn was on to something?  Hmmmm. 

[Matt Cloud]

2 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

Ah ... okay so Soviets say same thing as most in America do at that time.  If not the Lone Nut Oswald, then the Right-Wingers and if not them then Johnson -- or maybe all of them.  But not CIA.  Certainly not KGB.  What about actual strategic action?  Move to high-alert?  Not exactly, instead we see Kruschchev "resign" and Brezhnev comes in and detente begins as U.S. "withdraws" from Vietnam, which it "loses" and Soviets fill the void in the third-world in the 70s ... . Domestically, at home, US has cut deal over missile withdrawal and proceeds to usher in largest social change program in its history.  Vietnam War fractures Democratic party and the country as a whole.  Nixon is the last liberal president -- according to Dems in the 90s -- but has background in spy-hunting and the Red Scare and is forced to resign.  Throughout, Soviet military economy is said to be on rise, and many times the beneficiary of alleged espionage as well as other tech transfer programs.  Standard U.S. textbooks throughout the Cold War proclaim "crossover point" -- when command Soviet economy will outpace U.S. -- to be about 1987.  Maybe Golitsyn was on to something?  Hmmmm. 

P.S. Castro continues to stick around for another 40 years and the raids against "that imprisoned island nation" stop; Vietnam achieves self-determination as colonialism around the globe ends. 

 

Does this history sound like a right-wing coup took place?

[Sandy Larsen]

On 4/18/2024 at 12:47 AM, Bill Simpich said:

Paul, I think Newman is going in the right direction.  I don't see him as moving towards a Soviet plot to kill JFK.  I think he is right that Solie was a mole.   I am not an expert on Bagley, and I have been cautious about him in the past, but he appears to me at this point as one of the good guys.   He concluded, among other things, that LHO was a "witting" defector in the USSR.

 

Bill,

Tommy Graves replied to your comment, as follows:

When he said the above, Bagley didn't realize yet that Solie was a "mole" in the mole-hunting Office of Security, and that he had sent (or duped his confidant, protege, and mole-hunting superior, James Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow as an ostensible "dangle" in a planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" / "Popov's Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division.

In fact, Bagley didn't start to think Solie might be a "mole" until Malcolm Blunt showed him some CIA documents which suggested that in April of 1964 (i.e., just two months after the CIA had started seriously interrogating Nosenko), Solie had tried to talk the Warren Commission's David Slawson into believing Nosenko was a true defector, that his 1962 and 1964 contradictions and incorrect statements could be explained as being due to 'stress, poor memory, language difficulties and/or too much alcohol," and that he should be allowed to testify to the WC  (i.e., "the KGB had had nothing to do with Oswald in the USSR").

In other words, when Bagley (who died in 2014) said the above, he thought a "witting" Oswald had been sent to Moscow by the regular CIA as a "dangle" in a normal mole hunt.

He didn't realize that, as has been shown recently by John M. Newman, an unwitting(?) Oswald was sent by a KGB-controlled part of the CIA as an ostensible "dangle" in a planned-to-fail mole hunt.  

 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 4/7/2024 at 5:51 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

@Bill Simpich

 

Bill,

Researcher Thomas "Tommy" Graves wrote the following and sent it by e-mail to me. You might be interested in it.

The problem is, "Byetkov"/Obyedkov wasn't a U.S.-loyal double agent -- he was, as Angleton says in his 6 February 1976 Church Committee testimony (where he refers to "Byetkov"/Obyedkov as "the other hangnail"), a Kremlin-loyal triple agent (i.e., the CIA mistakenly thought it had successfully recruited him). I don't know if Angleton realized that *in 1963,* but he talks about it in his 1976 Church Committee testimony, and in retrospect it's very important for the simple reason that one shouldn't trust what a Kremlin-loyal triple agent tells one. Da?

Another problem is that Bill conflates "Byetkov"/Obyedkov with Boris Orekhov (SHAMROCK), another Kremlin-loyal triple agent, who duped J. Edgar Hoover in 1966 (iirc) into believing that the KGB had undertaken a six-month investigation (it hadn't) right after the assassination (not ostensibly "in 1967," as Bill seems to believe) and guess what? -- allegedly determined that the evil, evil Military Industrial Complex (or some-such thing) had killed JFK!!!  I seem to remember having found a document about SHAMROCK in this regard a few years ago at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website.

Yet another mistake that Bill keeps making is that alleged JFKA "cover up artist" wasn't Angleton, but, according to John Newman and British researcher Malcolm Blunt, KGB "mole" Bruce Solie in the mole-hunting Office of Security, who not only sent (or duped his confidant,  protégé, and mole-hunting subordinate, Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an ostensible "dangle" in a *planned-to-fail* hunt for "Popov's Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA, but hid OS documents on Oswald from the Church Committee and the Warren Commission and seems to have managed to lose Volume V of the OS files on Oswald in the late 1970s.

 

 

@Bill Simpich,

Tommy Graves said that he miswrote something in this. Where he wrote:

"...but hid OS documents on Oswald from the Church Committee and the Warren Commission..."

he meant to write:

"...but hid OS documents on Oswald from the Church Committee and the HSCA..."

The changed word is in bold (mine).

I will correct the original.

 

[Paul Brancato]

Simple question - if Angleton suspected someone of being a Soviet mole, would he necessarily expose him? Wouldn’t it have been more clever of Angleton to leave him in place? 

[Sandy Larsen]

46 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Simple question - if Angleton suspected someone of being a Soviet mole, would he necessarily expose him? Wouldn’t it have been more clever of Angleton to leave him in place? 

 

Makes sense to me. Use the mole to send disinformation.