Disinformation in Oswald's CIA File - For molehunt purposes or for Oswald patsification purposes?

[Sandy Larsen]

22 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

You're either not grasping that there is an elephant in the room or you're ignoring it.

The Soviets, based on their cable to Dobrynin, evidently know the exact date they must say they received the letter even though they apparently received it much earlier.   The date they say they must say -- as you point out -- aligns precisely with the date the HTLINGUAL program intercepted it.  Pretty neat.  That may mean they -- the Soviets -- know about the mail-opening program down to the most minute operational details.  When I wrote before that the Dobrynin cable demonstrates that the mail-opening program is "blown" I didn't go far enough.  It was not merely blown it was rendered entirely susceptible to manipulation -- by the Soviets.  It was useless for Angleton, totally useful for Moscow.   

You have completely ignored the fundamental issue here again -- how the Soviets learned of the mail-opening program, except merely to say 

"Perhaps they had noticed signs of steam opening of letters from Americans."

 

If that is the basis of their understanding of the existence of the mail-opening program, it would not explain how they knew exactly when to say it was intercepted.  The "steam opening" offering is wanting, in light of their apparent knowledge as to the specific details of when it was opened. 

And here I would suggest consideration of the possibility that the letter was forged by the persons running the Oswald Project, neither wholly KGB or CIA, but a group privy to information within both organizations, setting the various factions at play against one another to prevent hardliners on either side from achieving the upper-hand.  This would be the strategy adopted throughout the Cold War.  By putting the Azcue timing issue in plan sight in the forged Oswald letter, both KGB and CIA are bound in certain respects.  KGB is bound because they are implicated by Oswald having inside info as to Soviet and Cuban embassies; CIA is bound for the same reason plus because the letter -- and the cable to Dobrynin -- indicates unequivocally that the mail-opening program is blown.  That's a blow to the "mole-hunt" if one accepts that terminology.  In place of "mole," I would offer "KGB interlocutor," an individual known and authorized (by a few) to steer management of the Cold War, the secrecy of whose existence must be protected whatever the cost.   

 

I much prefer my simple, innocent explanation to your overly elaborate, sinister one.

BTW, how is it that when I speculate or give a simple explanation, you criticize it as being non-responsive, only a conclusion, only an assumption, etc.? But when you do the vary same thing, you think it's okay? Especially given that your speculation is way more elaborate than mine. Your speculation is far more speculative than is mine.

 

[Matt Cloud]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

It's a pretty damn good conclusion. Why else would Scott want poor little secretary Silvia Duran AND a bunch of her associates taken in and questioned by the Mexican Police? Just because she spoke with Oswald?

I mean, please!

 

Explaining Winn Scott's orders to have Duran arrested and interrogated does not require -- and indeed no information supports -- your statement that he "suspected that the CIA plotters' plan that implicated Cuba and Russia might be true."  There's an alleged assassin of the president in Texas.  Some reports indicate he may have been in contact with Cuba consulate.  Therefore, Winn Scott wants to find out whom he talked to, and what was said.  Your comments as to what he suspected are without foundation. 

 

If you don't like my conclusion, fine. Think of it as reasoned speculation. It is a part of my hypothesis.

Speculation is a necessary part of hypotheses and theories.

I cannot think of it as "reasoned" speculation because it is not reasoned.  There are no reasons as such there are only assertions posing as reasons that have no support behind them.  And as you write: your conclusion is part of your hypothesis.  That's unsound, analytically.  Yes, speculation is important, and necessary, but it needs to be identified as such.  

Have you ever served on a jury, Sandy, in a criminal trial, where the burden of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt?"  If so, you should have received instructions from the judge, just before going into your deliberations to the effect that a "reasonable doubt" is one that can be articulated and explained based on evidence in the record.  It does not mean, in other words, that one juror can simply introduce another explanation out of the infinite and say that "well, it could have been this."  If for example, proof of robbing a bank turns on finger print I.D. of the person on trial matched to those acquired at the scene and a witness testifies that they do match, it is unacceptable for a jury to introduce sua sponte the mere possibility -- without something in the evidence -- that the fingerprints acquired at the scene were forged.  It's unacceptable in such situations because it is not, to repeat, "reasoned."  This forum, needless to say, is not a jury room, and other less stringent standards may apply -- and should apply because speculation IS important and necessary -- but announcing where you are making assumptions in a hypothesis -- and not stating them as given when they are not -- is equally, if not more so, an important part of research and would be something I think that would be encouraged here, esp by admins.  

Stating your assumptions is not only intellectually honest, it is useful for at least two reasons.  First, it allows other researchers to understand how you go from point A to point B and then allows them to analyze that decision and determine whether it was the correct path or not.  Second, it protects you from charges that you are ignoring evidence in the record or have committed some sleight-of-hand.  It's really a win-win. 

The larger point here is one of language. It seems you rarely, unless pressed after numerous rounds back and forth, identify your assumptions or you speculations as such.  It would be more helpful if you incorporated phrases that let the reader know at which point in your comments you veering into the speculative.  

 

My theory is that it was an element of the CIA who were the assassination plotters. In Mexico City, they use Oswald impersonators to paint a fake story of Oswald negotiating with the Cubans and Russians to kill Kennedy.

I don't believe that Win Scott was involved in the plotting.

I believe that it appeared to Scott that Oswald might have been involved with the Cubans in assassinating Kennedy. (Which explains why he had Duran arrested.) And that belief only increased (naturally so!) when he got word of Gilberto Alvarado saying that, while in the Cuban Consulate, he overheard Oswald being paid $6500 to kill Kennedy.

Here alone, these two statements are in contradiction: 

First: "because [Winston Scott] suspected that the CIA plotters' plan that implicated Cuba and Russia might be true." 

Second: "it appeared to Scott that Oswald might have been involved with the Cubans in assassinating Kennedy."

Two totally different concepts tied up in those two sentences, as I have indicated previously.  You insert Scott's knowledge of "the Plotters' plan" in the first with Scott being unaware of any plan in the second and he being genuinely suspicious of possible Oswald's involvement with Cubans.  Very different.  You conflate the assumption -- the conclusion even -- into the question, the question being why Scott had Duran arrested.  A fair and good question.

 

Information to Excelsior might have been leaked by a corrupt police officer for profit.

I can't think of any reason why the CIA, the CIA plotters, the U.S. government, or the Mexican Police would intentionally leak the story.

Here again you contradict yourself in back-to-back sentences.  First you say information might have been leaked by corrupt Mexican police and the very next sentence you state that you cannot think of any reason why the Mexican police would intentionally leak the story.  

 

Which is it?

 

No, I accounted for it. With reasoned speculation.

It is you who have not accounted for it.

This is false.  I have accounted for the explanation as to how the information from the Cuban and Soviet Consulates ended up in Excelsior, insofar as I have stated that the evidence and analysis does not point in the direction of CIA, at least not in that department of the CIA which you evidently think the pot originates -- Angleton's department.

Let's walk through the issue here, again, analytically -- carefully, methodically.

We have a letter purportedly by Oswald to the Soviet Embassy wherein he reveals knowledge about the goings-on inside the Soviet Embassy.  That's the most important detail of this whole affair, I say -- the Soviet's decision to replace Azcue and how it makes its way into the letter.  The letter however indicates Azcue's replacement as having occurred earlier in time that it did in fact occur. 

The possible explanations for this knowledge about the Azcue replacement at all, as so far assembled, are these:

1. Oswald had a Soviet source, because the Soviets obviously know about the decision to replace Azcue, being the ones that made it.

2. Oswald had a CIA source, because the CIA also evidently knew about the decision to replace Azcue, because of their monitoring of the Soviet consulate.

Explanations 1 and 2 are a wash, they cancel each other out, and neither, without more, without introducing either an assumption or more fact, moves the needle one way or the other.   The needle is in equipoise as between the source of the information, Soviets on the one hand, CIA on the other.  So, does introduction of an assumption and/or fact help break the stalemate?  Like you, I am willing to assume the letter is a forgery.  Indeed, for reasons explained elsewhere, based on type face and signature and linguistic tells, this is not an unreasoned assumption.  Unlike you, I am not prepared to immediately jump from the introduction of the assumption of a possibility to the conclusion that that possibility is correct until a fuller consideration of the assumption and the inclusion of additional facts that may follow from the assumption. 

The assumption, the third possibility as to arriving at an explanation as to how the Azcue replacement made its way into the Oswald letter, is stated as follows:

3.  The letter is a forgery, written by someone to frame Oswald by explicitly indicating that he had inside knowledge of the Consulate's goings-on, the replacement of Azcue.  But -- and this will be important -- is there a reason, why whoever forged the letter also included the "mistake" of the date of the Azcue replacement?  They include in tother words, a detail that Oswald could not have known about.  A detail which the Warren Commission, as mentioned before, completely dropped from attempting to explain.

Let's now work through the candidates as to responsibility for the forgery (our assumption).   Candidates include at least CIA, KGB, or, as as I have offered for consideration, a mix of both.  This latter possibility, this group, my "Plotters," would include persons who ran the Oswald Project in the first place (going back to the '40s), with access to both CIA information and KGB information, as a long-term operation to insert a mole into U.S. intelligence to steer management of the Cold War, just as the defector Golitsyn said was happening in 1962.  (I can name names.)

As I wrote in response to you yesterday, but you completely ignore it in your response today, I will re-insert:

"And here I would suggest consideration of the possibility that the letter was forged by the persons running the Oswald Project, neither wholly KGB or CIA, but a group privy to information within both organizations, setting the various factions at play against one another to prevent hardliners on either side from achieving the upper-hand.  This would be the strategy adopted throughout the Cold War.  By putting the Azcue timing issue in plan sight in the forged Oswald letter, both KGB and CIA are bound in certain respects.  KGB is bound because they are implicated by Oswald having inside info as to Soviet and Cuban embassies; CIA is bound for the same reason plus because the letter -- and the cable to Dobrynin -- indicates unequivocally that the mail-opening program is blown.  That's a blow to the "mole-hunt" if one accepts that terminology.  In place of "mole," I would offer "KGB interlocutor," an individual known and authorized (by a few) to steer management of the Cold War, the secrecy of whose existence must be protected whatever the cost."

To add, the above by me IS the claim made by Atonally Golitsyn in his 1962 warning (to RFK and others) about a mole in US intelligence -- the issue of this thread.

You on the other hand, offer this:

"in my theory the mention of Azcue's replacement in the Kostin Letter does NOT blow the cover on the CIA's monitoring operation of the Cuban Consulate, or of Eusebio Azcue.

According to my theory, yes the letter was written by the CIA plotters... BUT the only thing the Soviets would think when they received the letter was that it was OSWALD who was aware of Azcue's replacement. Not the CIA. (Of course, Oswald was oblivious to the whole thing.)"

This has to be repeated: "the only thing the Soviets would think when they received the letter was that it was OSWALD who was aware of Azcue's replacement. Not the CIA."  Really!?  That assumption is unfounded, and does not withstand scrutiny.  Wouldn't the Soviets want to know HOW Oswald learned of the Azcue replacement?  Since your theory says they would not have thought it was CIA, then they have to consider that either Azcue or someone else inside the Embassy or somewhere within Soviet intelligence is leaking inside information to an American double defector.  Azcue would certainly be a likely source since he is already a target of CIA recruitment.  If Soviet intelligence finds out Azcue is leaking such info without authorization, he has signed his own death warrant.  The Soviets would have to be concerned that they had a massive intelligence leak, just as U.S. intelligence is at the same time, that is, whether they each have a mole of their own inside somewhere.  Your analysis, excuse me, your theory, completely ignores this logical reality.

More, your theory ignores the facts contained in the Dobrynin cable, wherein it states: "either [the letter] was a forgery or was sent as a deliberate provocation."  So, plainly the Soviets did not do what your theory says they did -- merely assume without more that Oswald knew of Azcue's replacement -- and, on that basis, your theory seems to fail.  Now, perhaps having realized the position the letter puts the Soviets in, the Soviets in a later cable do adopt at least portions of your theory when they state, "this letter was clearly a provocation: it gives the impression we had close ties with Oswald and were using him for some purposes of our own."  (You and they share that point, at least.) But, like the Warren Commission, the Soviets make no attempt apparently at resolving the question how Oswald knew of the Azcue replacement.  That question goes unanswered by them so far as publicly-available documents to date indicate.

If the letter was a forgery by CIA as you allege, it either, then, blows the mail-opening and embassy monitoring by CIA OR it tells the Soviets they have a traitor in their midst, notwithstanding your bare assertion that "in my theory the mention of Azcue's replacement in the Kostin Letter does NOT blow the cover on the CIA's monitoring operation of the Cuban Consulate, or of Eusebio Azcue."  It either blows the CIA's monitoring or it tells the Soviets that they have a mole.  It's one or the other.  

Moreover, it is a fact -- an undeniable fact -- that both the mail-opening program and the surveillance of the Soviet Embassy -- are in fact blown, as the Dobrynin cables explicitly state, in several instances.  It's not clear where or how these programs were blown, that is when the Soviets learned of them.  It was clearly sometime before 11/22/63.  This fact hurts your theory that the plotters came from U.S. counterintelligence.  That department is weakened in this whole ordeal.  With that understanding, then, how the existence of mail-opening and embassy monitoring was blown is central to the question of this thread -- whether there is a mole inside U.S. intelligence, a thread which you started to ostensibly explore that question and the merits of which you do not engage.  You simply talk around them.

 

 

 

[Matt Cloud]

Since multiple re-posts get lost in this website's fold-up of extended message exchanges, I am re-posting in full what I posted above.

 

 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

It's a pretty damn good conclusion. Why else would Scott want poor little secretary Silvia Duran AND a bunch of her associates taken in and questioned by the Mexican Police? Just because she spoke with Oswald?

I mean, please!

 

Explaining Winn Scott's orders to have Duran arrested and interrogated does not require -- and indeed no information supports -- your statement that he "suspected that the CIA plotters' plan that implicated Cuba and Russia might be true."  There's an alleged assassin of the president in Texas.  Some reports indicate he may have been in contact with Cuba consulate.  Therefore, Winn Scott wants to find out whom he talked to, and what was said.  Your comments as to what he suspected are without foundation. 

 

 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

If you don't like my conclusion, fine. Think of it as reasoned speculation. It is a part of my hypothesis.

Speculation is a necessary part of hypotheses and theories.

I cannot think of it as "reasoned" speculation because it is not reasoned.  There are no reasons as such there are only assertions posing as reasons that have no support behind them.  And as you write: your conclusion is part of your hypothesis.  That's unsound, analytically.  Yes, speculation is important, and necessary, but it needs to be identified as such.  

Have you ever served on a jury, Sandy, in a criminal trial, where the burden of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt?"  If so, you should have received instructions from the judge, just before going into your deliberations to the effect that a "reasonable doubt" is one that can be articulated and explained based on evidence in the record.  It does not mean, in other words, that one juror can simply introduce another explanation out of the infinite and say that "well, it could have been this."  If for example, proof of robbing a bank turns on finger print I.D. of the person on trial matched to those acquired at the scene and a witness testifies that they do match, it is unacceptable for a jury to introduce sua sponte the mere possibility -- without something in the evidence -- that the fingerprints acquired at the scene were forged.  It's unacceptable in such situations because it is not, to repeat, "reasoned."  This forum, needless to say, is not a jury room, and other less stringent standards may apply -- and should apply because speculation IS important and necessary -- but announcing where you are making assumptions in a hypothesis -- and not stating them as given when they are not -- is equally, if not more so, an important part of research and would be something I think that would be encouraged here, esp by admins.  

Stating your assumptions is not only intellectually honest, it is useful for at least two reasons.  First, it allows other researchers to understand how you go from point A to point B and then allows them to analyze that decision and determine whether it was the correct path or not.  Second, it protects you from charges that you are ignoring evidence in the record or have committed some sleight-of-hand.  It's really a win-win. 

The larger point here is one of language. It seems you rarely, unless pressed after numerous rounds back and forth, identify your assumptions or you speculations as such.  It would be more helpful if you incorporated phrases that let the reader know at which point in your comments you veering into the speculative.  

 

 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

My theory is that it was an element of the CIA who were the assassination plotters. In Mexico City, they use Oswald impersonators to paint a fake story of Oswald negotiating with the Cubans and Russians to kill Kennedy.

I don't believe that Win Scott was involved in the plotting.

I believe that it appeared to Scott that Oswald might have been involved with the Cubans in assassinating Kennedy. (Which explains why he had Duran arrested.) And that belief only increased (naturally so!) when he got word of Gilberto Alvarado saying that, while in the Cuban Consulate, he overheard Oswald being paid $6500 to kill Kennedy.

Here alone, these two statements are in contradiction: 

First: "because [Winston Scott] suspected that the CIA plotters' plan that implicated Cuba and Russia might be true." 

Second: "it appeared to Scott that Oswald might have been involved with the Cubans in assassinating Kennedy."

Two totally different concepts tied up in those two sentences, as I have indicated previously.  You insert Scott's knowledge of "the Plotters' plan" in the first with Scott being unaware of any plan in the second and he being genuinely suspicious of possible Oswald's involvement with Cubans.  Very different.  You conflate the assumption -- the conclusion even -- into the question, the question being why Scott had Duran arrested.  A fair and good question.

 

 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Information to Excelsior might have been leaked by a corrupt police officer for profit.

I can't think of any reason why the CIA, the CIA plotters, the U.S. government, or the Mexican Police would intentionally leak the story.

Here again you contradict yourself in back-to-back sentences.  First you say information might have been leaked by corrupt Mexican police and the very next sentence you state that you cannot think of any reason why the Mexican police would intentionally leak the story.  

 

Which is it?

 

No, I accounted for it. With reasoned speculation.

It is you who have not accounted for it.

This is false.  I have accounted for the explanation as to how the information from the Cuban and Soviet Consulates ended up in Excelsior, insofar as I have stated that the evidence and analysis does not point in the direction of CIA, at least not in that department of the CIA which you evidently think the pot originates -- Angleton's department.

Let's walk through the issue here, again, analytically -- carefully, methodically.

We have a letter purportedly by Oswald to the Soviet Embassy wherein he reveals knowledge about the goings-on inside the Soviet Embassy.  That's the most important detail of this whole affair, I say -- the Soviet's decision to replace Azcue and how it makes its way into the letter.  The letter however indicates Azcue's replacement as having occurred earlier in time that it did in fact occur. 

The possible explanations for this knowledge about the Azcue replacement at all, as so far assembled, are these:

1. Oswald had a Soviet source, because the Soviets obviously know about the decision to replace Azcue, being the ones that made it.

2. Oswald had a CIA source, because the CIA also evidently knew about the decision to replace Azcue, because of their monitoring of the Soviet consulate.

Explanations 1 and 2 are a wash, they cancel each other out, and neither, without more, without introducing either an assumption or more fact, moves the needle one way or the other.   The needle is in equipoise as between the source of the information, Soviets on the one hand, CIA on the other.  So, does introduction of an assumption and/or fact help break the stalemate?  Like you, I am willing to assume the letter is a forgery.  Indeed, for reasons explained elsewhere, based on type face and signature and linguistic tells, this is not an unreasoned assumption.  Unlike you, I am not prepared to immediately jump from the introduction of the assumption of a possibility to the conclusion that that possibility is correct until a fuller consideration of the assumption and the inclusion of additional facts that may follow from the assumption. 

The assumption, the third possibility as to arriving at an explanation as to how the Azcue replacement made its way into the Oswald letter, is stated as follows:

3.  The letter is a forgery, written by someone to frame Oswald by explicitly indicating that he had inside knowledge of the Consulate's goings-on, the replacement of Azcue.  But -- and this will be important -- is there a reason, why whoever forged the letter also included the "mistake" of the date of the Azcue replacement?  They include in tother words, a detail that Oswald could not have known about.  A detail which the Warren Commission, as mentioned before, completely dropped from attempting to explain.

Let's now work through the candidates as to responsibility for the forgery (our assumption).   Candidates include at least CIA, KGB, or, as as I have offered for consideration, a mix of both.  This latter possibility, this group, my "Plotters," would include persons who ran the Oswald Project in the first place (going back to the '40s), with access to both CIA information and KGB information, as a long-term operation to insert a mole into U.S. intelligence to steer management of the Cold War, just as the defector Golitsyn said was happening in 1962.  (I can name names.)

As I wrote in response to you yesterday, but you completely ignore it in your response today, I will re-insert:

"And here I would suggest consideration of the possibility that the letter was forged by the persons running the Oswald Project, neither wholly KGB or CIA, but a group privy to information within both organizations, setting the various factions at play against one another to prevent hardliners on either side from achieving the upper-hand.  This would be the strategy adopted throughout the Cold War.  By putting the Azcue timing issue in plan sight in the forged Oswald letter, both KGB and CIA are bound in certain respects.  KGB is bound because they are implicated by Oswald having inside info as to Soviet and Cuban embassies; CIA is bound for the same reason plus because the letter -- and the cable to Dobrynin -- indicates unequivocally that the mail-opening program is blown.  That's a blow to the "mole-hunt" if one accepts that terminology.  In place of "mole," I would offer "KGB interlocutor," an individual known and authorized (by a few) to steer management of the Cold War, the secrecy of whose existence must be protected whatever the cost."

To add, the above by me IS the claim made by Atonally Golitsyn in his 1962 warning (to RFK and others) about a mole in US intelligence -- the issue of this thread.

You on the other hand, offer this:

"in my theory the mention of Azcue's replacement in the Kostin Letter does NOT blow the cover on the CIA's monitoring operation of the Cuban Consulate, or of Eusebio Azcue.

According to my theory, yes the letter was written by the CIA plotters... BUT the only thing the Soviets would think when they received the letter was that it was OSWALD who was aware of Azcue's replacement. Not the CIA. (Of course, Oswald was oblivious to the whole thing.)"

This has to be repeated: "the only thing the Soviets would think when they received the letter was that it was OSWALD who was aware of Azcue's replacement. Not the CIA."  Really!?  That assumption is unfounded, and does not withstand scrutiny.  Wouldn't the Soviets want to know HOW Oswald learned of the Azcue replacement?  Since your theory says they would not have thought it was CIA, then they have to consider that either Azcue or someone else inside the Embassy or somewhere within Soviet intelligence is leaking inside information to an American double defector.  Azcue would certainly be a likely source since he is already a target of CIA recruitment.  If Soviet intelligence finds out Azcue is leaking such info without authorization, he has signed his own death warrant.  The Soviets would have to be concerned that they had a massive intelligence leak, just as U.S. intelligence is at the same time, that is, whether they each have a mole of their own inside somewhere.  Your analysis, excuse me, your theory, completely ignores this logical reality.

More, your theory ignores the facts contained in the Dobrynin cable, wherein it states: "either [the letter] was a forgery or was sent as a deliberate provocation."  So, plainly the Soviets did not do what your theory says they did -- merely assume without more that Oswald knew of Azcue's replacement -- and, on that basis, your theory seems to fail.  Now, perhaps having realized the position the letter puts the Soviets in, the Soviets in a later cable do adopt at least portions of your theory when they state, "this letter was clearly a provocation: it gives the impression we had close ties with Oswald and were using him for some purposes of our own."  (You and they share that point, at least.) But, like the Warren Commission, the Soviets make no attempt apparently at resolving the question how Oswald knew of the Azcue replacement.  That question goes unanswered by them so far as publicly-available documents to date indicate.

If the letter was a forgery by CIA as you allege, it either, then, blows the mail-opening and embassy monitoring by CIA OR it tells the Soviets they have a traitor in their midst, notwithstanding your bare assertion that "in my theory the mention of Azcue's replacement in the Kostin Letter does NOT blow the cover on the CIA's monitoring operation of the Cuban Consulate, or of Eusebio Azcue."  It either blows the CIA's monitoring or it tells the Soviets that they have a mole.  It's one or the other.  

Moreover, it is a fact -- an undeniable fact -- that both the mail-opening program and the surveillance of the Soviet Embassy -- are in fact blown, as the Dobrynin cables explicitly state, in several instances.  It's not clear where or how these programs were blown, that is when the Soviets learned of them.  It was clearly sometime before 11/22/63.  This fact hurts your theory that the plotters came from U.S. counterintelligence.  That department is weakened in this whole ordeal.  With that understanding, then, how the existence of mail-opening and embassy monitoring was blown is central to the question of this thread -- whether there is a mole inside U.S. intelligence, a thread which you started to ostensibly explore that question and the merits of which you do not engage.  You simply talk around them.

[Sandy Larsen]

@Matt Cloud,

I've come to the conclusion that you cannot be reasoned with.

 

[Michael Kalin]

22 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

@Matt Cloud,

I've come to the conclusion that you cannot be reasoned with.

 

When all else fails resort to an ad hominem attack.

Is this a rules violation? If not, it should be.

[Sandy Larsen]

49 minutes ago, Michael Kalin said:

When all else fails resort to an ad hominem attack.

 

Pot meet kettle. With a dose of sour grapes.

 

49 minutes ago, Michael Kalin said:

Is this a rules violation? If not, it should be.

 

So report yourself.

 

[Matt Cloud]

3 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

 

When all else fails resort to an ad hominem attack.

Is this a rules violation? If not, it should be.

I’m happy to take the blows, such as they are.  

 

Allow me to wrap-up now, with a little more concision and precision. 

 

The Soviets’ internal cables to Amb. Dobrynin immediately after the assassination — but not released until 1998 (?) — state unequivocally that the CIA’s mail-opening program is, in the parlance, “blown.”  

 

The Kremlin instructs Dobrynin to be sure to say to his counterpart Secretary of State Rusk that the “Kostin letter,” dated November 9, 1963, was not received until November 17, even though the Soviets, according to their internal communications, already had it in their possession on the 9th.*  November 17 happens to be the exact date that now declassified CIA documents indicate the HTLINGUAL program intercepted and opened the Kostin letter.

 

These facts — first, the Kremlin’s instructions to state to the U.S. that the letter was received on the 17th and, second, the Kremlin’s statement that it already knows of the mail-opening program — indicate that HTLINGUAL is not merely blown (that’s the fact of the Kremlin’s knowledge) but that a mole with operational access to the day-to-day workings of the HTLINGUAL program has tipped-off the Soviets (that’s the fact the Kremlin instructs Dobrynin to say the letter was received specifically on the 17th).  

 

More.  By including the Azcue timing problem — implicating that Oswald had information as to the Cuban consulate’s replacement having occurred before it in fact did occur — whoever wrote the letter gave the Soviets the upper-hand.  Including the Azcue “error” gave the Soviets the opportunity to threaten the U.S. — as Dobrynin was specifically instructed to do, impliedly — with a public disclosure of the mail-opening program, which would humiliate the C.I.A. at very least, most especially Angleton’s counter-intelligence department, should the U.S. go ahead with making an issue of the forgery possibility.  As it happened, in the event, the Warren Commission indeed dropped the enquiry altogether.

 

Unless and until the issues wrapped-up in the Soviets’ own internal communications, which logically and impliedly confirm the existence of a mole with high-level, virtually real-time access to CIA’s counterintelligence activities, are addressed, the rest of the “Mexico City Shenanigans” are just that, just as they’ve been described here.  Shenanigans.  Smoke and mirrors.  

 

You see, Sandy, I can be reasonable.  You are correct: The letter is a forgery and there were shenanigans afoot in Mexico City. 

 

But, as with the question of whose spy was Oswald, the question also must be who was the forger and whose Mexico City Shenanigans were they.

 

 

 

___

 

*The question of how the Soviets could have received already the Kostin letter on the 9th when that was only the day on which it was mailed is a good one.  Some have commented here that this seeming incongruity establishes that the Soviets must be in error within their own internal communications, that they must then have received the Kostin letter at some other, later date, but before the 17th.  This is premature as a conclusion for the simple fact -- nay, simple possibility -- that the letter may have been authored/forged inside the embassy itself, some time prior to the 9th.  Or it could have been authored/forged by the mysterious mole and/or his associates, again, sometime before the 9th and a copy, perhaps hand-delivered (!) and walked right over, was given to the Soviet Embassy in Washington and then another copy, the “original,” mailed from whatever post-office region it was in fact mailed from and it was that copy, the original let’s say, which was intercepted on the 17th, with the Soviet embassy having a copy from the forgers already, all along, throughout the period of the letter’s existence.  

Edited April 21 by Matt Cloud

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Matt Cloud said:

You see, Sandy, I can be reasonable.

 

Matt,

I don't have a problem with the fact that your opinion varies from mine.

What I do have a problem with is a double-standard you display in your disagreements with me. Specifically this: If I speculate something in order to form a hypothesis, you call me out on it as if there is something wrong with speculating. But when you do the very same thing -- speculate in order to form a hypothesis -- you act as if everything is okay.

Speculation is a necessary part of hypothesizing. So it is unreasonable for you to expect me not to speculate, especially in light of the fact that you do the very same thing yourself. And it is unreasonable for you double down on your accusation against me rather than accepting the obvious fact that you're employing a double-standard.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Matt Cloud said:

You see, Sandy, I can be reasonable.

 

Matt,

I don't have a problem with the fact that your opinion varies from mine.

What I do have a problem with is a double-standard you display in your disagreements with me. Specifically this: If I speculate something in order to form a hypothesis, you call me out on it as if there is something wrong with speculating. But when you do the very same thing -- speculate in order to form a hypothesis -- you act as if everything is okay.

Speculation is a necessary part of hypothesizing. So it is unreasonable for you to expect me not to speculate, especially in light of the fact that you do the very same thing yourself. And it is unreasonable for you double down on your accusation against me rather than accepting the obvious fact that you're employing a double-standard.

 

[Matt Cloud]

50 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Matt,

I don't have a problem with the fact that your opinion varies from mine.

What I do have a problem with is a double-standard you display in your disagreements with me. Specifically this: If I speculate something in order to form a hypothesis, you call me out on it as if there is something wrong with speculating. But when you do the very same thing -- speculate in order to form a hypothesis -- you act as if everything is okay.

Speculation is a necessary part of hypothesizing. So it is unreasonable for you to expect me not to speculate, especially in light of the fact that you do the very same thing yourself. And it is unreasonable for you double down on your accusation against me rather than accepting the obvious fact that you're employing a double-standard.

 

Noted!  Twice!!  Albeit that's not an accurate description of what has occurred, here on this thread, or on others. 

If you want to get into it, cite examples -- specific quotes -- and we can compare and contrast and analyze.  It is of course up to you.  

Edited April 21 by Matt Cloud

[Michael Kalin]

20 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

So report yourself.

Reporting an aversion to procrustean outputs from a faux blackbox constrained by speculative inputs.

Mencken's proverb is on point --

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

[Matt Cloud]

37 minutes ago, Michael Kalin said:

Reporting an aversion to procrustean outputs from a faux blackbox constrained by speculative inputs.

Mencken's proverb is on point --

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Well put.  The fundamental difference, to address cursorily Sandy's rough allegation of my having imposed -- excuse me, merely "displayed" -- double-standards here, is that I am not rejecting data, not constraining the inputs, but rather incorporating any and all which survive scrutiny.  The issue has been miscast from the start here as a choice whether to add a mole-hunt or not.  But the issue is not one of adding a mole-hunt; it exists already, in the history, in the data.  It's baked-in.  (Intentionally I would add.)  The issue over the mole-hunt arises problematically when one attempts to exclude it, to contort around it, to ignore it. 

Edited April 22 by Matt Cloud

[Jean Ceulemans]

On 3/17/2024 at 3:00 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Furthermore, cables with this disinformation were sent to various departments of the Federal Government on October 10, 1963.

Some researchers believe that the purpose for doing these things was to identify moles inside the CIA. As I understand it, only a mole would relay such information back to Moscow, and he could be identified that way.

Personally, I don't see how they would catch a mole in sending this disinformation to various departments.  

To - at least - locate a spy you need to send different sets of information to different departments, each set a little different from the other, even sending it out on different dates.

To catch a high-level/HQ mole you could only make it seem like the information was distributed, but in fact didn't. You need a very limited amount of people knowing about it anyhow. 

So actually sending out identical disinformation to various departments ? Just don't see it working.

And with different disinformation a high-level mole would see they are out on a fishing expedition...

The pretended distribution system however, could work, under very strict conditions that is.

From how-to-catch-a-mole basics : 

 

"Construct k𝑘 different fabricated pieces of information which are clearly distinct, all plausible and closely related to a true sensitive piece of information. Your own people must buy these stories, so make them believable."

Edited April 22 by Jean Ceulemans

[Matt Cloud]

18 minutes ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

Personally, I don't see how they would catch a mole in sending this disinformation to various departments.  

To - at least - locate a spy you need to send different sets of information to different departments, each set a little different from the other, even sending it out on different dates.

To catch a high-level/HQ mole you could only make it seem like the information was distributed, but in fact didn't. You need a very limited amount of people knowing about it anyhow. 

So actually sending out identical disinformation to various departments ? Just don't see it working.

And with different disinformation a high-level mole would see they are out on a fishing expedition...

The pretended distribution system however, could work, under very strict conditions that is.

A valuable point.  Indeed, sending out the information -- whether disinfo, misinfo, or accurate info -- only entangles more and various departments in having at some level observed/monitored Oswald.  Thus, when Oswald gets blamed, more departments have egg on their face, so to speak.   

[Bill Simpich]

The whole point was to create a paper trail entangling CIA, FBI, ONI, and State Dept with a lot of knowledge about Oswald shortly before 11/22.

Then, after the assassination, the employees of these agencies would go into a reflexive cover-up to protect their agencies, their careers, and the paycheck that takes care of their families.

How much of the actual Mexico City documents made it to the Warren Commission?   Very few of them.  What they got were paraphrases.  The actual documents were not made public until after the JFK Records Act forced them out in the 90s - and the JFK Records Act would never have passed without Oliver Stone's movie JFK!