Do You "Buy" Nosenko's Explanation For Why LHO Was Allowed To Stay In The USSR?

[Thomas Graves]

From David Wise's half-true book Molehunt:

Chapter 11: AEFOXTROT

[Probable mole per MWT] George Kisevalter had greased the line.

The address in Manhattan that he had given to Yuri Nosenko before they [Nosenko, Kisevalter, and Tennent H. Bagley] parted in Geneva in [June] 1962 belonged to an agency asset. If anything came in to that address from abroad, signed by "Alex," it would mean that Nosenko was trying to recontact the CIA.

But Kisevalter did not trust even the best communications arrangements. He tested the link from time to time. They might never again hear from Nosenko, but if he did send a cable, a postcard, or a letter to the Manhattan address, it had to work.

"We had the line greased. I would send a cable to COS, Copenhagen. 'Send cable to following address in New York.' I sent periodic messages from Copenhagen, Geneva, and other places to keep the line activated. And to time it -- how soon would we know the message had arrived?" The timing was important, because the CIA was to meet Nosenko, in whatever city he was, under the movie marquee beginning with the highest letter of the alphabet three days after he sent the cable to the New York address.

At Langley, there had been changes since Nosenko's first meeting with the CIA in June 1962. Howard Osborn, who had replaced Jack Maury as chief of the Soviet division, had in turn been succeeded [a few months later] in 1963 by David E. Murphy. In the fall of 1962, Pete Bagley had come back from Switzerland and joined the division as a counterintelligence officer. Having been shown the Golitsin file by Angleton, he was now persuaded that Nosenko was a plant, a dispatched agent of the KGB.

Late in January 1964, Yuri Nosenko returned to Geneva with the Soviet disarmament delegation. "A cable came in to New York," Kisevalter said. "I found out within hours. I flew to Geneva and Bagley flew in separately."

"Bagley met him [Nosenko] under the marquee of the movie theater in Geneva. He gave Nosenko a note with the address of the safe house. We went to a different safe house from the one we used in 1962."

And so the first of half a dozen meetings in the new safe house began. Nosenko did not know, of course, that one of the two CIA case officers he was meeting with -- Pete Bagley -- now believed him to be a Soviet plant.

It was only two months after the Kennedy assassination. Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, and the Warren Commission, which Johnson had appointed to investigate the murder of President Kennedy, was about to begin hearing the first of 552 witnesses.

The tragedy in Dallas was on everyone's mind, but what Nosenko now told Kisevalter and Bagley staggered the two CIA men. He had, he assured them, personally handled Lee Harvey Oswald's case [and his KGB file four times before and  after the assassination] when the former Marine arrived in Moscow and asked to [be allowed to] remain in the Soviet Union.

"Oswald came up almost immediately," Kisevalter recalled. "We questioned Nosenko about every detail on Oswald." What Nosenko told the two CIA men was that the KGB had decided it had no interest in Oswald. And Nosenko added that he was the official who ordered that Oswald be told he would have to leave when his visa expired.

When Oswald then attempted suicide, Nosenko continued, his decision to order Oswald to leave the Soviet Union was overruled by other officials outside the KGB who had decided it would be best, under the circumstances, to let Oswald stay. According to Kisevalter, when Nosenko was asked why the Soviets had reversed themselves, he replied: "Because he tried to commit suicide. There would only be adverse publicity if he tried it again." As Nosenko later explained it to a congressional committee, the Soviets concluded that if Oswald did succeed in killing himself, the reaction in the press would harm "the warming of Soviet-American relations."

LOL

If the Ruskies were so afraid Oswald would try to commit suicide again, why then didn't they just pronounce him Persona Non Grata, bundle him up, and take him to the American Embassy? Instead, they let the Marine Corps radar operator, who had monitored the U-2 spy plane and knew about the marines' new height-finding radar, etc, etc, stay there for two-and-a-half years ...

--  MWT 

[Jerry Freeman]

From David Wise's half-true book Molehunt:

So at least half of it is not true?

When Oswald then attempted suicide, Nosenko continued, his decision to order Oswald to leave the Soviet Union was overruled by other officials outside the KGB who had decided it would be best, under the circumstances, to let Oswald stay.  As Nosenko later explained it to a congressional committee, the Soviets concluded that if Oswald did succeed in killing himself, the reaction in the press would harm "the warming of Soviet-American relations."

"the warming of Soviet-American relations."   "Suicide"--- another red herring [no pun intended]

[Thomas Graves]

"... the warming of Soviet-American relations." 

"Suicide"--- another red herring

Freeman,

You're all for the warming of Russia - U.S. relations, aren't you?

Kinda like Michael McFaul was in 2009, even though the former had waged all-out cyber war on Estonia in 2007, and had invaded West-leaning Georgia in 2008?

--  MWT 

PS  Your reply was a bit mysterioso, as usual. You do believe, don't you (oh gullible JFK Assassination Researcher, you) that false-defector Yuri Nosenko was telling the truth when he said the Politburo decided to let U-2 radar operator Oswald stay because they were afraid that if they didn't, he'd embarrass them by killing himself?

LOL

You do believe, don't  you (oh gullible JFK Assassination Researcher, you), that false defector Yuri Nosenko was telling the truth when he said the KGB didn't even interview U-2 radar operator Oswald?

LOL

[Jerry Freeman]

You're all for the warming of Russia - U.S. relations, aren't you?

Oh..I have done my part Tommy. 20 yrs ago I married a Russian speaking lady [from the former Soviet Union] The only 'relation' I give a crap about anymore.

 Now you do remember wannabe Queen Hillary? She won't ever go away it seems.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

From David Wise's half-true book Molehunt:

Chapter 11: AEFOXTROT

[Probable mole per MWT] George Kisevalter had greased the line.

The address in Manhattan that he had given to Yuri Nosenko before they [Nosenko, Kisevalter, and Tennent H. Bagley] parted in Geneva in [June] 1962 belonged to an agency asset. If anything came in to that address from abroad, signed by "Alex," it would mean that Nosenko was trying to recontact the CIA.

But Kisevalter did not trust even the best communications arrangements. He tested the link from time to time. They might never again hear from Nosenko, but if he did send a cable, a postcard, or a letter to the Manhattan address, it had to work.

"We had the line greased. I would send a cable to COS, Copenhagen. 'Send cable to following address in New York.' I sent periodic messages from Copenhagen, Geneva, and other places to keep the line activated. And to time it -- how soon would we know the message had arrived?" The timing was important, because the CIA was to meet Nosenko, in whatever city he was, under the movie marquee beginning with the highest letter of the alphabet three days after he sent the cable to the New York address.

At Langley, there had been changes since Nosenko's first meeting with the CIA in June 1962. Howard Osborn, who had replaced Jack Maury as chief of the Soviet division, had in turn been succeeded [a few months later] in 1963 by David E. Murphy. In the fall of 1962, Pete Bagley had come back from Switzerland and joined the division as a counterintelligence officer. Having been shown the Golitsin file by Angleton, he was now persuaded that Nosenko was a plant, a dispatched agent of the KGB.

Late in January 1964, Yuri Nosenko returned to Geneva with the Soviet disarmament delegation. "A cable came in to New York," Kisevalter said. "I found out within hours. I flew to Geneva and Bagley flew in separately."

"Bagley met him [Nosenko] under the marquee of the movie theater in Geneva. He gave Nosenko a note with the address of the safe house. We went to a different safe house from the one we used in 1962."

And so the first of half a dozen meetings in the new safe house began. Nosenko did not know, of course, that one of the two CIA case officers he was meeting with -- Pete Bagley -- now believed him to be a Soviet plant.

It was only two months after the Kennedy assassination. Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, and the Warren Commission, which Johnson had appointed to investigate the murder of President Kennedy, was about to begin hearing the first of 552 witnesses.

The tragedy in Dallas was on everyone's mind, but what Nosenko now told Kisevalter and Bagley staggered the two CIA men. He had, he assured them, personally handled Lee Harvey Oswald's case [and his KGB file four times before and  after the assassination] when the former Marine arrived in Moscow and asked to [be allowed to] remain in the Soviet Union.

"Oswald came up almost immediately," Kisevalter recalled. "We questioned Nosenko about every detail on Oswald." What Nosenko told the two CIA men was that the KGB had decided it had no interest in Oswald. And Nosenko added that he was the official who ordered that Oswald be told he would have to leave when his visa expired.

When Oswald then attempted suicide, Nosenko continued, his decision to order Oswald to leave the Soviet Union was overruled by other officials outside the KGB who had decided it would be best, under the circumstances, to let Oswald stay. According to Kisevalter, when Nosenko was asked why the Soviets had reversed themselves, he replied: "Because he tried to commit suicide. There would only be adverse publicity if he tried it again." As Nosenko later explained it to a congressional committee, the Soviets concluded that if Oswald did succeed in killing himself, the reaction in the press would harm "the warming of Soviet-American relations."

LOL

If the Ruskies were so afraid Oswald would try to commit suicide again, why then didn't they just pronounce him Persona Non Grata, bundle him up, and take him to the American Embassy? Instead, they let the Marine Corps radar operator, who had monitored the U-2 spy plane and knew about the marines' new height-finding radar, etc, etc, stay there for two-and-a-half years ...

--  MWT 

The KGB senior officials ordered that he be sent him to Minsk, away from Moscow, where he could be monitored - they suspected early on at that time he was might be some sort of intelligence agent - and watched while being kept AWAY from the western press. If Oswald tried to kill himself or harm others the story could be contained and suppressed.

While he was in Minsk working on his book, "Oswald's Tale", Norman Mailer's he interviewed numerous KGB agents and officials (over two dozen KGB agents who were assigned to monitor Oswald in Minsk) and pointed out that many had gone through the Stalin era where it was dangerous to draw attention to oneself. These officials learned to follow orders and keep quiet. And all of them said that Oswald was considered an oddball and that they wanted nothing to do with him. He was a useless nuisance that they had to spend time on watching. By the way, these interviews were all done well before Putin came to power and when the Soviet system had utterly collapsed.

But like the "CIA killed JFK" conspiracy believers you will just say these were all Soviet lies (even though Mailer's interviews were done after the collapse of the Soviet Union). Conspiracists will do what conspiracists do: believe that up is down and down is up and everything indicates their conspiracy is true.

[Thomas Graves]

The KGB senior officials ordered that he be sent him to Minsk, away from Moscow, where he could be monitored - they suspected early on at that time he was might be some sort of intelligence agent - and watched while being kept AWAY from the western press. If Oswald tried to kill himself or harm others the story could be contained and suppressed.

While he was in Minsk working on his book, "Oswald's Tale", Norman Mailer interviewed numerous KGB agents and officials (over two dozen KGB agents who were assigned to monitor Oswald in Minsk) and pointed out that many had gone through the Stalin era where it was dangerous to draw attention to oneself. These officials learned to follow orders and keep quiet. And all of them said that Oswald was considered an oddball and that they wanted nothing to do with him. He was a useless nuisance that they had to spend time on watching. By the way, these interviews were all done well before Putin came to power and when the Soviet system had utterly collapsed.

But like the "CIA killed JFK" conspiracy believers you will just say these were all Soviet lies (even though Mailer's interviews were done after the collapse of the Soviet Union). Conspiracists will do what conspiracists do: believe that up is down and down is up and everything indicates their conspiracy is true.

Steve M.,

Have you read Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 book Spy Wars, yet?

If you had, then you'd know that from 1959 on, many KGB officers who weren't in the brand new, top-secret departments known as Department D of the First Chief Directorate and Department 14 of the Second Chief Directorate were fed false information so that they could unwittingly help those two "deception"-based departments accomplish their operations against U.S. counterintelligence in particular.

What's more and in regards to your preaching that "the USSR was totally collapsed" when Mailer was there, one must remember that said "collapse" was predicted by true-defector Anatoliy Golitsyn (who had helped the Politburo and/or the KGB devise its long term strategies when he was working at the KGB "think tank" in Moscow) who said that it was a ruse to get the West to lower its guard.

(Fast-forwarding a bit, you do remember the "Anna Chapman and the Eleven Dwarfs" spy ring that was uncovered in 2010?  Marina Butina and the Ruskie dude who was handling her?  How about the GRU's hacking of the DNC's emails and feeding them to Putin's agent, Julian Assange, to distribute at critical points during the campaign? Paul Manfort's business partner, GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik, who whispered in Manafort's ear that it was really the Ukrainians who had hacked the DNC's server, so that it could blame it on Russia or some-such thing? Etcetera, ad nauseam ...)

LOL

Wake up, Neo.

Question:  If the KGB thought Oswald was a "dangle," why then didn't it interview him to see what he had to say, and to get a feel for whether or not he was "turnable"?

Why did Nosenko claim the KGB didn't even interview the Marine Corps radar operator?  How plausible do you think that is, Steve M?

And why did Nosenko tell his CIA interviewers/interrogators that the reason the Politburo let him stay was because "... uhh, it was afraid that if we told him again that he was gonna hafta leave, that he would try to kill himself, again, and that would hurt our warming relations with America!" ?

LOL

Don't run away, now, like you always do, Steve M.

https://archive.org/details/SpyWarsMolesMysteriesAndDeadlyGames/page/n3

--  MWT 

[Steve M. Galbraith]

From Posner's book we have this account by Nosenko (and other Soviet officials) on why they decided to allow Oswald to stay:

Nosenko: "The Foreign Ministry decision on what to do with Oswald was really influenced by the larger political climate," says Nosenko. On September 26 and 27, when Oswald had traveled to Europe for his defection, President Eisenhower and Khrushchev were meeting in the Maryland woods in what became known as "the spirit of Camp David."  After Khrushchev's return, the Soviets were acutely aware of how the treatment of visiting Americans might affect the new relationship between the countries. Because of his suicide attempt, Oswald gained the attention of the USSR's leaders. His KGB file shows that senior Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan personally gave order that Oswald's request for asylum be given careful consideration.

Nosenko again: "By telling Oswald that he had to leave he was so unstable he might try and succeed in killing himself.  Then we would be criticized for a KGB murder of an American tourist. If we forced him onto a plane for deportation, there would still be the image of a student being manhandled by Soviet security forces. Considering the options, we decided to let him stay. We could decide where he worked and lived, and maintain surveillance over him to ensure he did not cause any trouble or was not an American sleeper agent."

Some of that sounds questionable to me. But the idea of forcing Oswald to return to the US - against his will - must have been of concern for the Soviets.

[Thomas Graves]

In regards to my last post, let me say three things:

1) My hero, Tennent H. Bagley, who wrote the eye-opening book Spy Wars and the 35-page PDF Ghosts of the Spy Wars and the book Spymaster (about former KGB officer Sergey Kondrachev), was a "Lone Nutter" regarding the JFK assassination, i.e., he didn't believe the Ruskies had anything to do with it

2) Edward Ellis Smith (look him up) and some unknown person in CIA's Soviet Russia Division's Operations Department or it's Reports and Requirements Department whom he had probably helped KGB to recruit in 1957, were two never-uncovered-in -their-lifetimes Ruskie spies in U.S. intelligence.

3)  Why did false-defector Yuri Nosenko claim in Geneva in January, 1964, that he had been in charge of Oswald's case when he arrived in the USSR as a tourist, and astoundingly claim that he'd been in charge of Oswald's file four times before and after the assassination?

My theory: Although Angleton and Bagley and Helms already knew Nosenko was fake, given the circumstances -- Nosenko shows up again in Geneva about seven weeks after the assassination and wants to leave "his family" behind in Russia and defect to the U.S. -- Helms had no choice but to let him in to see what he would say about the assassination, thereby giving Nosenko an opportunity to discredit everything true-defector Anatoliy Golitsyn was telling CIA and trying to tell the heavilly penetrated FBI about moles and triple-agents in the U.S.'s and in several of our allies' intelligence agencies and governments.

In other words, Nosenko's "information" about Oswald was just an intriguing "icebreaker," if you will, that let him get his false-defector feet "in the door" so that an "inside man/outside man" game could be played, with devastating results, against CIA counterintligence.

And, Wa-Lah, I give you oodles and gobs of tinfoil hat conspiracy theories like, "That evil James Angleton sent Oswald to the USSR as a "dangle" to help uncover "Popov's Mole" (ironically, Edward Ellis Smith and/or the CIA officer he probably helped the KGB to recruit) and then had the gall to use him as a patsy in the JFK assassination!," and ... and ... and ..."THERE WERE TWO OSWALDS AND TWO MARGUERITES, I TELL YOU!", and ...

And I give you the implausibly long-running moles Aldrich Ames in CIA, and Robert Hanssen in the FBI.

And I give you a dumbed-down, paranoiac body politic.

And last but not least, I give you KGB-boy Putin's "useful idiot" ... Donald Trump!

--  MWT