Why Was Oswald's Military Spy Plane Knowledge Considered Of No Value To USSR ?

[Watson Phillips]

I am going from memory only, so I could be mistaken. But I seem to remember that when the U.S. military learned of LHO's "defection" they changed all the friend/foe identification codes that aircraft used when approaching U.S. controlled air spaces. Those codes were supposedly considered the most sensitive information that LHO might be able to share with the Soviets. By changing those codes, they believed that they eliminated the main threat that LHO's defection posed. I would think it would be prudent to change those codes routinely every so often anyway, regardless of any potential leaks. So, I suspect this wasn't a big deal to them.

Thanks Charles,
It does seem odd the only two U2 planes ever shot down by Russia were only shot down after Oswald had defected.
From you have read about him does Oswald strike you as the type eager to be a person of importance and value in his new home?

[Tom Graves]

Yuri Nosenko said the Soviets didn't know he had any connection with the U-2 flights and apparently Oswald didn't admit to. However, I've also read that they did ask him about the U-2 and supposedly he gave them information they already knew. So who knows?

Mr. KLEIN. Who [Oswald] had been a radar operator and had worked on a base from which U-2 airplanes took off and landed, that he wasn't even interesting enough for the KGB to speak to him, to find out if he knew any of this information?
Mr. NOSENKO. Mr. Klein, I understand your position, but we didn't know that he had any connection with U-2 flights. That is one thing. And if you, Mr. Klein, are basing on what was written by Mr. Epstein in the book, it is a little bit from the air taken ideas. Mr. Epstein even telling that how important for KGB to know about such base that base. We knew it in the fifties when I worked in GRU at the Navy, in 1950, 1951, 1952. We knew every base and in Japan, at this Atsugi base, and we knew what kind of airplanes had been. We didn't know about U-2, no. Sure, it is very interesting, but when Oswald applied, requested to stay in the Soviet Union, we didn't know a word about his knowledge, anything concerning U-2 flights.
Mr. KLEIN. And you didn't ask him if he had any kind of information about that when he wanted to defect, is that correct ?
Mr. NOSENKO. No.

Dear Steve M.,

Putative KGB officer Yuri Nosenko, whom true defector Major Pyotr Deriabin determined in 1965 didn't know such basic KGB-officer things as how to send a cable, how many floors of the U.S. Embassy were dedicated to the CIA (3), and where the cafeteria was at KGB headquarters, was a false-defector-in-place in Geneva in June 1962, sent there by Gribanov's Department 14 in the Second Chief Directorate (today's FSB) to discredit what a recent true defector, Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, was telling James Angleton about possible penetrations of the CIA (can you say Richard Kovich, Bruce Leonard Solie, and Leonard V. McCoy?), and a rogue physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964 whose bona fides in the U.S. the KGB had no choice but to support (through Aleksei Kulak, Igor Kochnov, Boris Orekhov, and Vitaly Yurchenko, et al.) because he was telling the CIA and the FBI what it desperately wanted them to hear -- that the KGB had absolutely nothing to do with "abnormal" former Marine sharpshooter and U-2 radar operator Oswald during the two-and-one-half years he lived in the USSR.

BTW, the HSCA ended deeming Nosenko a liar.

I'm surprised that you, intelligent and well-read young man that you are, would lend Nosenko any credence at all. (Ditto Nechiporenko, if you do.)

Have you read Bagley's 2007 Yale University Press book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, and his 2014 follow-up article, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars"? Both are free to read -- just google "spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously and "ghosts of the spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously.

Regarding the theory that Nosenko was a rogue defector in 1964, I suggest that you read W. Alan Messer's fine paper, "In Pursuit of the Squared Circle: The Nosenko Theories Revisited," which you can read for free under my Substack banner, "How the KGB Zombified the CIA and the KGB."

Enjoy!

-- Tom

PS John M. Newman, author of the 1995/2008 book, "Oswald and the CIA," postulates in his 2022 book, Uncovering Popov's Mole -- which he dedicated to Bagley, btw -- that mole Solie in the mole-hunting Office of Security, upon hearing from (probable mole, imho) Kisevalter in April 1958 that Popov had told him in West Berlin that he'd recently overheard a drunken GRU colonel brag that the Kremlin had all of the top-secret specifications of the U-2 spy plane, sent (or duped his confidant, protégé, and mole-hunting subordinate, Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in late 1959 as an ostensible "dangle" in a (unbeknownst to Angleton and Oswald) planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division -- which mole hunt lasted nine years, tore the SRD apart, and drove Angleton nutty cakes.

[Charles Collins]

Thanks Charles,
It does seem odd the only two U2 planes ever shot down by Russia were only shot down after Oswald had defected.
From you have read about him does Oswald strike you as the type eager to be a person of importance and value in his new home?

My understanding of the explanation for Russia’s ability to shoot down U2 spy planes is that the development of their anti-aircraft missiles finally reached a point where their missiles could ascend to a high enough altitude. Before that, the U2 spy planes were simply out of their reach. I believe that due to the fact that this happened while LHO was in Russia is just another one of those “strange” coincidences that happened. I ask: what could LHO have possibly told them about the U2 that would have enabled their missiles to reach higher altitudes. I don’t believe LHO’s presence in Russia had anything at all to do with that development.

To try to answer your question, it appears to me that LHO was still extremely angry about his court martial and incarceration in the USMC. I believe that he therefore considered the U.S. to be his “enemy.” Some of the language in his letters to his brother Robert is evidence of this. I believe that LHO eventually realized, after spending some time in Russia, that it was not the utopia that he had envisioned before he went there. When he returned to the U.S. it appears to me that his hopes for a “utopian existence” turned towards Cuba.

JFK’s inaugural speech contained the following quote:

”And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Sadly, LHO appears to me to have believed the opposite of what JFK was saying. And even sadder, it appears to me that LHO was eager to use violence to try to change a system that he felt was “rigged against him.” I believe that LHO’s disillusionment  was due in large part to a lack of proper upbringing.

Parents have a huge responsibility to teach their children how to prosper not only physically but mentally, spiritually, and financially. I believe that the JFK assassination is an extreme example of what can happen when parents fail in their responsibilities.

[John Mytton]

My understanding of the explanation for Russia’s ability to shoot down U2 spy planes is that the development of their anti-aircraft missiles finally reached a point where their missiles could ascend to a high enough altitude. Before that, the U2 spy planes were simply out of their reach. I believe that due to the fact that this happened while LHO was in Russia is just another one of those “strange” coincidences that happened. I ask: what could LHO have possibly told them about the U2 that would have enabled their missiles to reach higher altitudes. I don’t believe LHO’s presence in Russia had anything at all to do with that development.

To try to answer your question, it appears to me that LHO was still extremely angry about his court martial and incarceration in the USMC. I believe that he therefore considered the U.S. to be his “enemy.” Some of the language in his letters to his brother Robert is evidence of this. I believe that LHO eventually realized, after spending some time in Russia, that it was not the utopia that he had envisioned before he went there. When he returned to the U.S. it appears to me that his hopes for a “utopian existence” turned towards Cuba.

JFK’s inaugural speech contained the following quote:

”And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Sadly, LHO appears to me to have believed the opposite of what JFK was saying. And even sadder, it appears to me that LHO was eager to use violence to try to change a system that he felt was “rigged against him.” I believe that LHO’s disillusionment  was due in large part to a lack of proper upbringing.

Parents have a huge responsibility to teach their children how to prosper not only physically but mentally, spiritually, and financially. I believe that the JFK assassination is an extreme example of what can happen when parents fail in their responsibilities.

I believe that he therefore considered the U.S. to be his “enemy.” Some of the language in his letters to his brother Robert is evidence of this.

A lot of people don't realize exactly how insane Oswald really was. In the following excerpt from a letter to Robert his brother, Oswald says and I'm paraphrasing here, Oswald would defend his new country by killing any American and then repeats and highlights -Any American-, clearly insinuating he would even kill his own brother!



JohnM

[Tom Graves]

A lot of people don't realize exactly how insane Oswald really was. In the following excerpt from a letter to Robert his brother, Oswald says and I'm paraphrasing here, Oswald would defend his new country by killing any American and then repeats and highlights -Any American-, clearly insinuating he would even kill his own brother!

He was a Marxist.

D'oh

[Charles Collins]

A lot of people don't realize exactly how insane Oswald really was. In the following excerpt from a letter to Robert his brother, Oswald says and I'm paraphrasing here, Oswald would defend his new country by killing any American and then repeats and highlights -Any American-, clearly insinuating he would even kill his own brother!



JohnM

The last sentence visible in that image of the letter to Robert Oswald probably best answers the question that Watson Phillips asked. LHO himself wrote that he wanted to lead a “normal happy and peaceful life” in the USSR.

[Watson Phillips]

My understanding of the explanation for Russia’s ability to shoot down U2 spy planes is that the development of their anti-aircraft missiles finally reached a point where their missiles could ascend to a high enough altitude. Before that, the U2 spy planes were simply out of their reach. I believe that due to the fact that this happened while LHO was in Russia is just another one of those “strange” coincidences that happened. I ask: what could LHO have possibly told them about the U2 that would have enabled their missiles to reach higher altitudes. I don’t believe LHO’s presence in Russia had anything at all to do with that development.

To try to answer your question, it appears to me that LHO was still extremely angry about his court martial and incarceration in the USMC. I believe that he therefore considered the U.S. to be his “enemy.” Some of the language in his letters to his brother Robert is evidence of this. I believe that LHO eventually realized, after spending some time in Russia, that it was not the utopia that he had envisioned before he went there. When he returned to the U.S. it appears to me that his hopes for a “utopian existence” turned towards Cuba.

JFK’s inaugural speech contained the following quote:

”And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Sadly, LHO appears to me to have believed the opposite of what JFK was saying. And even sadder, it appears to me that LHO was eager to use violence to try to change a system that he felt was “rigged against him.” I believe that LHO’s disillusionment  was due in large part to a lack of proper upbringing.

Parents have a huge responsibility to teach their children how to prosper not only physically but mentally, spiritually, and financially. I believe that the JFK assassination is an extreme example of what can happen when parents fail in their responsibilities.

n b

Thanks Charles,
Given his anger, His reported lifelong need to be a notable person of importance, in starting a brand new life in USSR do you find it more plausible that LHO either hoped to use his military security clearance as a card to play in impressing & gaining prominence with his new communist comrades , or he just decided to never mention a word of it.
I find it hard given what we know about his personality that he had no hopes of parlaying his military intelligence experience into a position of some importance in the communist party ?
Being advised from his new leaders that " we already know all that , now got to work in the factory "  would have been a very bitter pill for him to swallow given his fantasy of having his own office at the Kremlin.
Don't you think it possible that having pinned his grandiose  hopes of becoming a brand new person of political importance in the communist Party thru his military experience, but then being rejected and told to go work in a factory this could be a source of his disillusionment with USSR and be the source of his returning to home.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Thanks for both of the above replies Steve. That’s some good information.

The Epstein book "Legend" is, I think, greatly overlooked. Yes, he fell for Angelton's theory that Oswald was a KGB asset or agent but the book has a great deal of information about Oswald's time in the Marines especially at Atsugi. Epstein interviewed about 35 Marines who were in Oswald's unit (MACS-1), some at the same time he was there, and their description of the security is stunning. Essentially none. Many people on the base were aware of the flights; they didn't know where it went but some suspected they were flown over the USSR.

And as you mentioned before, several Marines said that when Oswald came out of the brig he was completely different. Very angry and distant. From their account the brig was a very tough experience for people to go through. Brutal.

As to the Soviets: I still don't know what they questioned him about. Nosenko said they didn't know about his U-2 knowledge (What? They didn't ask him about his Marine experience?) while others said they did but he didn't know anything that they already knew. I do think that after the attempted suicide they considered him too erratic and nutty to use for anything. Although on the other hand - there's always two or three of these in this, isn't there? - they did let him leave pretty easily. It took awhile to go through the Soviet and US bureaucracies but they essentially let him go with little opposition.