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

[Tom Scully]

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

1) My hero, Tennent H. Bagley, ....

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 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 

I can think of no better versed, "MW" to ask about this segment of the wikipedia page devoted to Nosenko, than you.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko#Concerns_that_Nosenko_was_a_double_agent

Confining your consideration of, and reaction to only the segment I linked to, do you agree it is chock full of detail, but a difficult read?

What do you regard as the strengths and weaknesses of what is presented? The "ten minute, finger wiggling" particularly stood out, but is it vital  to overall understanding? As the former US Navy officer Bob Harward, who was a contender for Mike Flynn's NSA position after Mike suddenly could no longer come to the orifice, allegedly said, "this (job as Trump's NSA advisor) is a **** sandwich."

So, the dilemma seems to be the same as it ever was.... "I would not want to be a member of any club that would have me (as a member). Tom, have you had any direct influence on what is displayed in the section of the wiki page I linked to? What edits would you prefer to be attempted? Can and will you do them or would you be willing to direct me making the edits you believe would improve the readability and accuracy of that page segment? I'll request supporting links from you but I am willing to do it entirely your way. I will examine the pertinent history of prior edit suggestions and objections on that article's talk page and bring them to your attention, but again, I would be happy to edit entirely at your direction after advising you of what has been challenged in the past.

My motivation is to present a well supported reference segment on Nosenko and this will reflect on CIA and FBI, and to observe and gauge the source and insistence of pushback that changes to the Nosenko page might elicit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yuri_Nosenko

[Steve M. Galbraith]

I can think of no better versed, "MW" to ask about this segment of the wikipedia page devoted to Nosenko, than you.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko#Concerns_that_Nosenko_was_a_double_agent

Confining your consideration of, and reaction to only the segment I linked to, do you agree it is chock full of detail, but a difficult read?

What do you regard as the strengths and weaknesses of what is presented? The "ten minute, finger wiggling" particularly stood out, but is it vital  to overall understanding? As the former US Navy officer Bob Harward, who was a contender for Mike Flynn's NSA position after Mike suddenly could no longer come to the orifice, allegedly said, "this (job as Trump's NSA advisor) is a **** sandwich."

So, the dilemma seems to be the same as it ever was.... "I would not want to be a member of any club that would have me (as a member). Tom, have you had any direct influence on what is displayed in the section of the wiki page I linked to? What edits would you prefer to be attempted? Can and will you do them or would you be willing to direct me making the edits you believe would improve the readability and accuracy of that page segment? I'll request supporting links from you but I am willing to do it entirely your way. I will examine the pertinent history of prior edit suggestions and objections on that article's talk page and bring them to your attention, but again, I would be happy to edit entirely at your direction after advising you of what has been challenged in the past.

My motivation is to present a well supported reference segment on Nosenko and this will reflect on CIA and FBI, and to observe and gauge the source and insistence of pushback that changes to the Nosenko page might elicit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yuri_Nosenko

Tom, if all one reads about Nosenko is the Bagley account then you'll be convinced that he was a "fake" defector or triple agent (and he makes a persuasive case that he was). But if one reads the totality of evidence - the KGB files that Yeltsin gave to Clinton, the interviews that Mailer conducted with the KGB agents assigned to Oswald, and revelations by former KGB officers who defected - you'll get a fuller picture.

For example,  Oleg Kalugin was the top KGB officer in the United States - he was in charge of all operations - before defecting to the United States. Russia has a death sentence on his heard head - he's accused of treason - because he revealed a number of KGB operations that he ran. BTW, Kalugin says Putin is a war criminal and fascist and needs to be removed.

Kalugin wrote this about the Nosenko defection:

[Tom Scully]

Tom, if all one reads about Nosenko is the Bagley account then you'll be convinced that he was a "fake" defector or triple agent (and he makes a persuasive case that he was). But if one reads the totality of evidence - the KGB files that Yeltsin gave to Clinton, the interviews that Mailer conducted with the KGB agents assigned to Oswald, and revelations by former KGB officers who defected - you'll get a fuller picture.

For example,  Oleg Kalugin was the top KGB officer in the United States - he was in charge of all operations - before defecting to the United States. Russia has a death penalty over his heard - he's accused of treason - because he revealed a number of KGB operations that he ran. BTW, Kalugin says Putin is a war criminal and fascist and needs to be removed.

Kalugin wrote this about the Nosenko defection:

Steve, thank you for presenting details I was unaware of. until reading your post. Despite taking into consideration the CIA is "a hall of mirrors," my opinion has been based on taking details in Nosenko's obituary at face value. About a month before he died, several CIA officers visited Nosenko at the direction of the DCI and presented him with an award for his sacrifice and service to the U.S. I won't rule out that the CIA position is the opposite, and the visit and long overdue praise of Nosenko was actually intended to send a disinfo message to perceived adversaries, but it seems at that late date, highly unlikely.

[Thomas Graves]

Tom, if all one reads about Nosenko is the Bagley account then you'll be convinced that he was a "fake" defector or triple agent (and he makes a persuasive case that he was). But if one reads the totality of evidence - the KGB files that Yeltsin gave to Clinton, the interviews that Mailer conducted with the KGB agents assigned to Oswald, and revelations by former KGB officers who defected - you'll get a fuller picture.

For example,  Oleg Kalugin was the top KGB officer in the United States - he was in charge of all operations - before defecting to the United States. Russia has a death penalty over his heard - he's accused of treason - because he revealed a number of KGB operations that he ran. BTW, Kalugin says Putin is a war criminal and fascist and needs to be removed.

Kalugin wrote this about the Nosenko defection:

Steve M.,

Haven't you read about how the Kremlin created a top-secret "KGB within the KGB" in 1959 (conservative Department D in the First Chief Directorate and risk-taking Department 14 of the Second Chief Directorate) and charged it with waging Sun Tzu-like "strategic deception counterintelligence operations" against us and our allies, and haven't you read about false-defector Yuri Nosenko and his supporting cast of triple-agents Aleksei Kulak (Fedora), Dimitri Polyakov (Top Hat), and Igor Yurchenko (Kitty Hawk), et al., in Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 book Spy Wars, and in Mark Riebling's 1994 book Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA, and, to a lesser extent, in Bagleys 2014 35-page PDF Ghosts of the Spy Wars?

It makes no sense for a highly intelligent lad like you to be so ignorant about the KGB, so why don't you read them?

Too many Russian names?

Too complicated?

Clashes too much with what you may have read in books like Mangold's Cold Warrior and Wise's Molehunter?

LOL

(Please don't run away now like you almost always do.)

https://archive.org/details/SpyWarsMolesMysteriesAndDeadlyGames

https://archive.org/details/WedgeFromPearlHarborTo911HowTheSecretWarBetweenTheFBIAndCIAHasEndangeredNationalSecurity

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362

Your boy, Kalugin, was in the First Chief Directorate and had no need to know what was going on in Department 14 of the Second Chief Directorate, the counterintelligence department that sent the above-mentioned characters to us.

Bottom line:  Any "former" KGB person who claims Nosenko was a true defector was either intentionally misinformed by the KGB, simply never knew, or ... gasp ... is a "post" Cold War triple-agent.

Oleg Kalugin and Oleg Gordievsky come to mind.

--  MWT 

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Tom, if you read the Bagley book it's difficult not to conclude that Nosenko was more than he said he was. Or less. That is he was, a ruse, a fake sent by the KGB for whatever reason; probably primarily to show they didn't recruit Oswald and therefore they were not connected to the assassination.

The Bagley book is here: https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/government_information/intelligence_and_espionage/Spy.Wars.pdf

For example (this is in the book), the CIA interrogators, including a KGB officer who had defected and was working with them, asked Nosenko to write a cable to KGB headquarters to show that he knew the simple basics of his job. As in: "Show us how you'd write a cable, please". According to Bagley he didn't even know these basics - the format, how to address it, et cetera, something any agent would know. And when asked to describe KGB headquarters - where his office was, where the main cafeteria was, how to get to it - he couldn't give any details.  There were numerous other examples of his failure to explain how an agent would do simple tasks.

Then, of course, when he said the KGB never formally questioned Oswald - when the CIA knew that other American defectors were closely interrogated - alarms went off.

So there is strong evidence that he wasn't who he said he was.

But one has to include this other evidence: the KGB files given to Clinton, the interviews with Belarus KGB agents who monitored Oswald, the reports of other KGB agents who later defected - like Kalugin - who say Nosenko was a real defector that caused problems for the KGB. I think if you look at the totality of evidence you'd have to conclude that he was genuine and not a fake. Probably, as Kalugin said, an incompetent KGB agent, a drunk, a womanizer but an authentic one.

[Thomas Graves]

Tom, if you read the Bagley book it's difficult not to conclude that Nosenko was more than he said he was. Or less. That is he was, a ruse, a fake sent by the KGB for whatever reason; probably primarily to show they didn't recruit Oswald and therefore they were not connected to the assassination.

The Bagley book is here: https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/government_information/intelligence_and_espionage/Spy.Wars.pdf

For example (this is in the book), the CIA interrogators, including a KGB officer who had defected and was working with them, asked Nosenko to write a cable to KGB headquarters to show that he knew the simple basics of his job. As in: "Show us how you'd write a cable, please". According to Bagley he didn't even know these basics - the format, how to address it, et cetera, something any agent would know. And when asked to describe KGB headquarters - where his office was, where the main cafeteria was, how to get to it - he couldn't give any details.  There were numerous other examples of his failure to explain how an agent would do simple tasks.

Then, of course, when he said the KGB never formally questioned Oswald - when the CIA knew that other American defectors were closely interrogated - alarms went off.

So there is strong evidence that he wasn't who he said he was.

But one has to include this other evidence: the KGB files given to Clinton, the interviews with Belarus KGB agents who monitored Oswald, the reports of other KGB agents who later defected - like Kalugin - who say Nosenko was a real defector that caused problems for the KGB. I think if you look at the totality of evidence you'd have to conclude that he was genuine and not a fake. Probably, as Kalugin said, an incompetent KGB agent, a drunk, a womanizer but an authentic one.

Steve M.,

LOL

Have you actually read Bagley's Spy Wars?

It doesn't sound like it.

Facts:

In 1962, Angleton (for whom Bagley did NOT work) asked Bagley (who at that time still believed Nosenko was a true quasi-defector) to read Anatoliy Golitsyn's top-secret file. Golitsyn had defected to the U.S. on December 15, 1961, about six months before Nosenko "walked in" in Geneva.  When he did read it, Bagley realized that everything Nosenko had just told him and (probable mole, imho) George Kisevalter in Geneva not only implausibly overlapped what Golitsyn had told CIA, but CONTRADICTED it ... and therefore Nosenko must be a false defector.

And he was right.

Bagley trusted Anatoliy Golitsyn.

So do I, and I'll tell you why if you really, really want me to. (Hint: I has to do with Golitsyn's "production," i.e., his uncovering of KGB moles and triple-agents, mostly in OTHER countries like France and Britain.)

(I say "quasi defector" because Nosenko told Bagley and Kisevalter in Geneva that under no circumstances was he going to defect to the U.S., that he was going back to his wife and daughter in Moscow, "and please, please, please don't try to contact me there -- maybe I'll contact YOU at some point in the future.")

Golitsyn predicted that the USSR would break up, and said it would do so intentionally in order make us drop our guard.

I give you the ill-advised (by Michael McFaul) 2009 "Reset," Anna Chapman and the Eleven Dwarfs Spy Ring (finally rolled up in 2010), Marina Butina and her U.S.-based handlers, Brexit, the GRU's hacking of DNC's emails and distribution of same through Putin's agent Julian Assange, and "useful idiot" (or worse) President Donald John Trump, etc.

With very few exceptions, the adage "Once in the KGB, always in the KGB" is spot on.

Why in the world would you trust what some "former" KGB dude in Belarus said about anything, or what Nechiporenko, Kostikov, Yatskov and Leonov said about "Oswald" in Mexico City?

Yep. Leonov, Nikolai. The KGB lieutenant colonel (and mentor to Raul Castro and Che) whose diplomatic cover was "Third Secretary and Assistant Cultural Attache" at the Soviet embassy (not the consulate) who claimed in the 1990s that Oswald had showed up at the embassy on SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 when they were already playing a volleyball game, and that he got all emotional and brandished a revolver as they were talking one-on-one in Leonov's office ... one day after "Oswald" had supposedly done exactly the same thing at the consulate.

LOL

Read Riebling's book and Bagley's PDF as well, lad.

--  MWT 

PS  Please remember that Nosenko originally claimed that the KGB not only didn't interview the Marine Corps radar operator, it didn't MONITOR him, either.

Question:  How much drinking did Nosenko do during the three years or so he was subjected to "harsh, solitary-confinement interrogation" (at the insistence of Soviet Russia chief David Murphy, not Bagley or Angleton)?

Answer: None.

Bagley said Nosenko did drink heavily in Geneva in 1962, and for a few months in the U.S. before he was "incarcerated," but that he never slurred his more-than- adequate English and never appeared to him to be drunk. Their six meetings in Geneva were tape recorded, btw ...

[Thomas Graves]

Steve, thank you for presenting details I was unaware of. until reading your post. Despite taking into consideration the CIA is "a hall of mirrors," my opinion has been based on taking details in Nosenko's obituary at face value. About a month before he died, several CIA officers visited Nosenko at the direction of the DCI and presented him with an award for his sacrifice and service to the U.S. I won't rule out that the CIA position is the opposite, and the visit and long overdue praise of Nosenko was actually intended to send a disinfo message to perceived adversaries, but it seems at that late date, highly unlikely.

sigh ...Tom, Tom, Tom ,

Aren't you ever going to read that book, Spy Wars, by  (Lone Nutter) Tennent H. Bagley I told you about?

No, because you don't want to be confused by the facts? 

You fervently want to believe the CIA was evil, evil, evil and the KGB was a virtual humanitarian organization by comparison?

Too many Russian names?

Okay then, how about reading his 2014 35-page PDF, Ghosts of the Spy Wars, in which he exposes one of those wishful-thinking Nosenko-lovers (or perhaps KGB mole?), Leonard "I Have No Experience In Counterintelligence" McCoy?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362

--  MWT 

[Thomas Graves]

Steve M.,

Have you actually read Bagley's Spy Wars?

It doesn't sound like it.

Facts:

In 1962, James Angleton (for whom Tennent H. Bagley did not work) asked Bagley (who at that time still believed KGB "lieutenant colonel" Yuri Nosenko was a true defector) to read Anatoliy Golitsyn's top-secret file.

Golitsyn had defected to the U.S. on December 15, 1961, about six months before Nosenko "walked in" in Geneva.

When he read it, Bagley realized that everything Nosenko had just told him and (probable mole, imho) George Kisevalter in Geneva not only implausibly overlapped what Golitsyn had already told CIA, but CONTRADICTED it ... and therefore, and especially in light of the fact that Golitsyn had already given Angleton some good leads on moles both here and abroad (U.S.: Army code clerk "Jack" as well as Edward Ellis Smith and someone in the Soviet Russia Division SMITH had helped the KGB to recruit in 1957) and triple-agents here and abroad (U.S.: Kulak and Polyakov) ... Bagley realized that Nosenko MUST be a false defector.

Interestingly, Bagley convinced Angleton of this, not the other way around.

And he was right.

Angleton and Bagley trusted Anatoliy Golitsyn.

So do I, and I'll tell you why if you really, really want to know (hint: I has to do with what I alluded to, above -- Golitsyn's "production" -- his uncovering of KGB moles and triple-agents, some in the U.S. but mostly in other countries ... like France and Britain.)

(In Geneva, Nosenko told Bagley and Kisevalter in that under no circumstances was he going to defect to the U.S. -- he was going back to his loving "wife" and "ill daughter" in Moscow, "and please, please, please -- don't try to contact me there -- maybe I'll contact YOU at some point in the future if you tell me how to do it.")

Factoid: Golitsyn predicted that the USSR would break up, and said it would do so intentionally in order make us drop our guard.

I give you the ill-advised (by Michael McFaul) 2009 "Reset," Anna Chapman and the Eleven Dwarfs Spy Ring (finally rolled up in 2010), Marina Butina and her U.S.-based handlers, Brexit, the GRU's hacking of DNC's emails and distribution of same through Putin's agent Julian Assange, and "useful idiot" (or worse) President Donald John Trump, etc.

With very few exceptions, the adage "Once in the KGB, always in the KGB" is spot on.

Why in the world would you trust what some "former" KGB dude in Belarus said about anything, or what Nechiporenko, Kostikov, Yatskov and Leonov said about "Oswald" in Mexico City?

Yep. Leonov, Nikolai. The KGB lieutenant colonel (and mentor to Raul Castro and Che) whose diplomatic cover was "Third Secretary and Assistant Cultural Attache" at the Soviet embassy (not the consulate) who claimed in the 1990s that Oswald had showed up at the embassy on SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 when they were already playing a volleyball game, and that he got all emotional and brandished a revolver as they were talking one-on-one in Leonov's office ... one day after "Oswald" had supposedly done exactly the same thing at the consulate.

LOL

Read Riebling's book and Bagley's PDF as well, lad.

--  MWT 

PS  Please remember that Nosenko originally claimed that the KGB not only didn't interview the Marine Corps radar operator, it didn't MONITOR him, either.

Question:  How much drinking did Nosenko do during the three years or so he was subjected to "harsh, solitary-confinement interrogation" (not at the insistence of Angleton or Bagley, but of Soviet Russia Division's chief, David Murphy)?

Answer: None.

Bagley said Nosenko did drink heavily in Geneva in 1962, and for a few months in the U.S. before he was "incarcerated," but that he never slurred his more-than- adequate English and never appeared to him to be drunk. Their six meetings in Geneva were tape recorded, btw ...

Steve M.,

It's been a couple of hours, now.

Have you run away yet again?

Are you afraid to debate?

Are you afraid you might learn something?

LOL

--  MWT