What about Helms?
Helms?
You didn't know he signed off on ol' Yuri just as a matter of expediency, and that in his HSCA testimony he called 'em a liar?
Nope, Helms distrusted Nosenko until the day he died.
He wasn't perfect, though.
In fact, one of Helms' biggest mistakes was following official procedure and turning the Peter Karlow serial over to JEH on January 9, 1962 -- three weeks after true-defector Golitsyn had defected to the U.S. -- and then, of course, some gumshoe FBI agents messed up the surveillance of the former "Easy Chair" chief.
Who was the FBI genius who thought of sending some agents to his house to ask him if they could use his basement to listen in on some his neighbors who were suspected by the FBI "of being German spies"?
Karlow says "okay," and the next morning, being a tech-guy, himself, easily realizes that they've tapped
his phone, instead!
Oh yeah, and who was the genius in the FBI who had a "chimney sweeper" knock on his door and offer to clean his chimney ... for free?
And so he grows suspicious and makes a mysterious trip to Philly with a box, goes into a building with the box and comes out without the box, and later tells his interrogators that it was his "extra prosthetic leg" that he'd taken in for "some repairs," and ... and ... and ... JEH gets frustrated with all this unproductive surveillance xxxx and, instead of "playing him" to see who else he might secretly contact, they haul his xxx in for five days of harsh interrorgation?
LOL
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if he transported top-secret CIA docs to his KGB handler (in Philly?) inside his prosthetic leg, in a box, or not in a box.
Look it up in Mark Riebling's
Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA. (It's free-to-read on the Internet.)
Cheers!
-- MWT