Oswald at the Radio Factory in Minsk

[Lance Payette]

I mentioned this some years ago on The Education Forum, where it was predictably greeted with silence or goalpost-moving ("Never mind about that, what about this?"). It seems to me, however, that it is absolutely decisive against any notion that Oswald was a false defector to the USSR.

As it happens, my wife spent the first 53 years of her life in Minsk. Her sister and brother-in-law both worked at the Horizon Radio and TV factory at the same time as Oswald. In fact, they both worked in the department that produced military radar devices and whatnot. Their work was highly compartmentalized; they never had the full picture of what they were working on. Security was so tight that they could not even travel within the USSR without prior permission, and never outside the USSR.

Oswald was assigned to the Experimental Shop, which sounds more exotic than it was. It was simply where prototypes were built, whether of military devices or radios, TVs and other home appliances. Oswald was notorious both for his blatant laziness and his mocking attitude toward factory routine and the ubiquitous patriotic posters. One might expect a false defector to make a bit more effort at sincerity and fitting in - no?

What leaped out at me was the Oswald described in his close friend Ernst Titovets' book Oswald: Russian Episode. Titovets doesn't think Oswald was capable of the JFKA, but one incident in particular was very telling.

Oswald stole from the Experimental Shop a tube-shaped thing that Titovets didn't recognize at first but later learned was part of a sophisticated radar apparatus. In Oswald'a KGB-bugged apartment, Oswald engaged Titovets in an odd conversation as to how someone might go about making a pipe bomb from the tube. He then never mentioned it again.

When I say Oswald "stole" this, it's a certainty that he was allowed to steal it. Security was fantastically tight. Employees were searched every evening. Despite being an official with the City of Minsk, my wife was never allowed past a tiny vestibule where she could summon her sister by phone. It is impossible any employee could have stolen what Oswald did - and being caught would have been a one-way ticket to Siberia. Not exactly the conduct one would expect of a false defector - eh?

Oswald surely knew his apartment was bugged. The conversation with Titovets thus had to have been play-acting for his KGB audience. Still, rather a bizarre and risky course of conduct for a false defector - yes? No wonder the KGB decided he was essentially just a weirdo.

Titovets describes other incidents that are less spectacular but very odd for someone in Oswald's position (unless he had a wildly inflated opinion of himself) and surely out of character for any false defector. It seems to me that incidents like this put the nail in the coffin of the "CIA false defector" nonsense and, moreover, shed light on Oswald's character that may be relevant to the JFKA.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Norman Mailer mentions this bomb incident in his book "Oswald's Tale" (I assume it's the same incident although it was a box and not a tube). He went to Minsk shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and interviewed many of the Belarus KGB agents assigned to monitor Oswald. Something like two dozen. After a scare about this suspected bomb they determined it was actually some sort of toy device and not a real one. Here's his account (the "they" are the agents assigned to watching him).



BTW, Mailer was told that all of Oswald's colleagues and friends had all of their papers confiscated and destroyed by the KGB after the assassination. Everyone but Titovets. Why was he allowed to keep his papers, they asked themselves? Shorter: they suspected that he was working closely with the KGB and they allowed him to retain the documents.

Another more serious incident that belies the idea that he was a CIA agent/asset was this one (this too is from the Mailer book): Shortly before the Oswalds left for America he asked Marina to smuggle drugs from the pharmacy for him. She said he didn't say why but apparently it was for money. Marina said they knew they were being listened to so they would turn the radio up loud and go out onto the balcony and whisper to one another.

Here is the Mailer account about the narcotics/drugs.

[Tom Mahon]

I mentioned this some years ago on The Education Forum, where it was predictably greeted with silence or goalpost-moving ("Never mind about that, what about this?"). It seems to me, however, that it is absolutely decisive against any notion that Oswald was a false defector to the USSR.

As it happens, my wife spent the first 53 years of her life in Minsk. Her sister and brother-in-law both worked at the Horizon Radio and TV factory at the same time as Oswald. In fact, they both worked in the department that produced military radar devices and whatnot. Their work was highly compartmentalized; they never had the full picture of what they were working on. Security was so tight that they could not even travel within the USSR without prior permission, and never outside the USSR.

Oswald was assigned to the Experimental Shop, which sounds more exotic than it was. It was simply where prototypes were built, whether of military devices or radios, TVs and other home appliances. Oswald was notorious both for his blatant laziness and his mocking attitude toward factory routine and the ubiquitous patriotic posters. One might expect a false defector to make a bit more effort at sincerity and fitting in - no?

What leaped out at me was the Oswald described in his close friend Ernst Titovets' book Oswald: Russian Episode. Titovets doesn't think Oswald was capable of the JFKA, but one incident in particular was very telling.

Oswald stole from the Experimental Shop a tube-shaped thing that Titovets didn't recognize at first but later learned was part of a sophisticated radar apparatus. In Oswald'a KGB-bugged apartment, Oswald engaged Titovets in an odd conversation as to how someone might go about making a pipe bomb from the tube. He then never mentioned it again.

When I say Oswald "stole" this, it's a certainty that he was allowed to steal it. Security was fantastically tight. Employees were searched every evening. Despite being an official with the City of Minsk, my wife was never allowed past a tiny vestibule where she could summon her sister by phone. It is impossible any employee could have stolen what Oswald did - and being caught would have been a one-way ticket to Siberia. Not exactly the conduct one would expect of a false defector - eh?

Oswald surely knew his apartment was bugged. The conversation with Titovets thus had to have been play-acting for his KGB audience. Still, rather a bizarre and risky course of conduct for a false defector - yes? No wonder the KGB decided he was essentially just a weirdo.

Titovets describes other incidents that are less spectacular but very odd for someone in Oswald's position (unless he had a wildly inflated opinion of himself) and surely out of character for any false defector. It seems to me that incidents like this put the nail in the coffin of the "CIA false defector" nonsense and, moreover, shed light on Oswald's character that may be relevant to the JFKA.

In his 2022 book, "Uncovering Popov's Mole," John M. Newman says that the fact that the incoming non-CIA cables on Lee Harvey Oswald's 30 October 1959 defection to the USSR were routed to Bruce Solie's office in the Office of Security (and disappeared into a "black hole" for at least six weeks) rather than to where they would normally go -- the Soviet Russia Division -- indicates that Solie arranged for this in advance with the Records Integration Division and the Office of Mail Logistics.

Factoids: Solie "cleared" KGB false defector Yuri Nosenko in October 1968 through a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report, and he helped Leonard V. McCoy "lose" CIA's spy Nicholas Shadrin to KGB kidnappers in Vienna in 1975.

Regardless, why in the world would he send (or dupe his confidant, protégé, and mole-hunting subordinate, James Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in late 1959?

Answer: Newman thinks Solie sent (or duped Angleton into sending) Oswald to Moscow as an OSTENSIBLE "dangle" in a planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" (Solie) / "Popov's Mole" (ditto) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division -- which mole hunt lasted nine years, tore the Soviet Russia Division and Angleton's CI Staff apart, and drove Angleton nuts.

In support of his theory, Newman reminds us of several things in his book:

1) CIA's spy, GRU Colonel Pyotr Popov, told his CIA handler in West Berlin in April 1958 that he had heard a drunken GRU colonel brag that the Kremlin had all of the top-secret specifications of the U-2 spy plane, and that this intel would have caused Solie (who, in the Office of Security, had access to the U-2's secrets) and Angleton to initiate a hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole."

2) Former high-level Soviet Russia Division officer Tennent H. Bagley proved in his 2007 Yale University Press book, "Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games," that Popov had been betrayed in early 1957 by a traitor in the CIA (whom Bagley thought was Edward Ellis Smith, Popov's recently fired dead drop setter-upper in Moscow) who met with a high-level KGB officer, Vladislav Kovshuk, in DC movie houses.

3) Newman thinks it was not Smith, but Solie who met with Kovshuk in those movie houses, and that Smith and James McCord (yes, THAT James McCord) provided Solie and Kovshuk with logistical support.

4) Solie had "dropped in" on Bagley's and Kisevalter's final meeting with Nosenko in Geneva in June 1962 to ask him questions about possible “moles” in the CIA. (Bagley says Nosenko “drew a blank.”)

5) Solie inexplicably flew to Paris for two very short visits within a 30-day period, i.e., just before and just after his aforementioned dropping in on Bagley, Kisevalter, and Nosenko.

6) Newman says Solie probably did this in the first instance to tell high-level KGB officer Mikhail Tsymbal and some high-level KGB "moles" in French Intelligence what recent true defector Anatoliy Golitsyn was telling Angleton about possible KGB penetrations of the CIA, the FBI, and the intelligence services of our NATO allies (which intel Angleton was naively sharing with Solie), and in the second instance to inform them what he had learned from Bagley, Kisevalter, and Nosenko.

Bottom line:

Based on what Bagley and Newman have written, it seems as though the future assassin of JFK believed he was on a mission for the CIA in 1959, but in reality was unwittingly on a planned-to-fail one for a KGB-controlled part of the Agency.