JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Lance Payette on February 04, 2025, 05:41:13 PM
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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.
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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. After a scare about this suspected bomb they determined it was actually some sort of toy device and not a real one. Why Oswald would make a toy bomb is a complete mystery.
Here's Mailer's account (the "they" were the agents assigned to watching the Oswalds).
(https://www.drivehq.com/file/DFPublishFile.aspx/FileID12123127843/Keyeq8ax2h2y9b7/oswald bomb.JPG)
BTW, Mailer was told that all of Oswald's colleagues and friends had 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.
There's another more serious incident that belies the idea that Oswald was a CIA agent/asset (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. As with the toy bomb this is another stunning act by Oswald.
Here's the account.
(https://www.drivehq.com/file/DFPublishFile.aspx/FileID12123135859/Key5vccwbp1qrch/narcotics.JPG)
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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 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 — and that that Solie must have arranged said rerouting in advance with the Records Integration Division and the Office of Mail Logistics.
Factoid: 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 Oswald to Moscow in late 1959?
Answer: Newman thinks Solie sent (or duped his confidant, protege, and mole-hunting subordinate, James Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow as an OSTENSIBLE "dangle" in a planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole / Popov's Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the SRD -- which mole hunt lasted nine years, tore the SRD 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 the latter 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 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 mole-hunting mission for the CIA in 1959, but in reality was on a planned-to-fail mole hunt for the KGB-zombified Agency.
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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. After a scare about this suspected bomb they determined it was actually some sort of toy device and not a real one. Why Oswald would make a toy bomb is a complete mystery.
Here's Mailer's account (the "they" were the agents assigned to watching the Oswalds).
(https://www.drivehq.com/file/DFPublishFile.aspx/FileID12123127843/Keyeq8ax2h2y9b7/oswald bomb.JPG)
BTW, Mailer was told that all of Oswald's colleagues and friends had 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.
There's another more serious incident that belies the idea that Oswald was a CIA agent/asset (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. As with the toy bomb this is another stunning act by Oswald.
Here's the account.
(https://www.drivehq.com/file/DFPublishFile.aspx/FileID12123135859/Key5vccwbp1qrch/narcotics.JPG)
I read Mailer's book but didn't recall that incident. It is, however, definitely different from the one Titovets describes. In Titovets' account, there was definitely a discussion within the apartment as to how a bomb might be made from the tube. The tube itself was pretty distinctive and when Titovets later drew it, someone recogized it as part of an experimental radar device. Of course, every incident where Oswald did things that a sane false defector would never have done cuts decisively against the false defector nonsense.
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In his 2022 book, "Uncovering Popov's Mole," John M. Newman says 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 — and that that Solie must have arranged said rerouting in advance with the Records Integration Division and the Office of Mail Logistics.
To be blunt, I think Newman is basically a nutcase, so lost in a forest of his own creation that he'll never find his way out. It's all fascinating, I suppose, as long as you're willing to accept Oswald as The Most Interesting Man Who Ever Lived as opposed to the mixed-up goof he actually was. I was happy to see that in Hancock's and Boylan's new book on Oswald they give short shrift - no shrift, really - to Newman's nonsense. You are perhaps aware that Newman is also the author of a not-exactly-esteemed tome arguing that Jesus was actually a Yogi Master?
At The Education Forum, I dealt with the above topic at some length and felt that I had disposed of the 1959 stuff to my own satisfaction. Alas, I can't remember what all it involved, I deleted almost all of my posts, and all remaining ones are now labeled as "Guest." Sorry about that.
IMO the problem with every elaborate conspiracy theory, including Newman's, is that it's all plausible until you try to fit the Actual Oswald into it. Then it collapses. If there was a conspiracy, it has to have been one that sucked in the Actual Oswald pretty much at the last minute as Hancock and Boylan postulate; I don't even see that as likely, but I'm willing to entertain it.
Those who favor elaborate conspiracy theories, it always seems to me, are really less interested in what actually happened on 11-22-63 and more interested in fitting the JFKA into their personal political philosophy and vision of the dark forces that control our world.
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To be blunt, I think Newman is basically a nutcase, so lost in a forest of his own creation that he'll never find his way out. It's all fascinating, I suppose, as long as you're willing to accept Oswald as The Most Interesting Man Who Ever Lived as opposed to the mixed-up goof he actually was. I was happy to see that in Hancock's and Boylan's new book on Oswald they give short shrift - no shrift, really - to Newman's nonsense. You are perhaps aware that Newman is also the author of a not-exactly-esteemed tome arguing that Jesus was actually a Yogi Master?
At The Education Forum, I dealt with the above topic at some length and felt that I had disposed of the 1959 stuff to my own satisfaction. Alas, I can't remember what all it involved, I deleted almost all of my posts, and all remaining ones are now labeled as "Guest." Sorry about that.
IMO the problem with every elaborate conspiracy theory, including Newman's, is that it's all plausible until you try to fit the Actual Oswald into it. Then it collapses. If there was a conspiracy, it has to have been one that sucked in the Actual Oswald pretty much at the last minute as Hancock and Boylan postulate; I don't even see that as likely, but I'm willing to entertain it.
Those who favor elaborate conspiracy theories, it always seems to me, are really less interested in what actually happened on 11-22-63 and more interested in fitting the JFKA into their personal political philosophy and vision of the dark forces that control our world.
1) Oswald probably killed JFK without encouragement or logistical support from the Khruschev's KGB, Castro's DGI, or the "evil, evil" CIA.
Happy now?
2) Former high-level Army Intelligence Analyst and NSA officer Newman IS a "nut case" -- for believing that Sergei Papushin was a true defector (he wasn't), that Oswald was a Ukrainian (sic) KGB agent in Minsk, and that some high-level Army officers killed JFK because he refused to nuke Moscow and Peking in 1963.
Happy now?
3) But in 1995, Newman did discover that the non-CIA cables about Oswald's defection (which I referred to in my previous post) hadn't been routed to where they should have gone (the Soviet Russia Division), but to the Office of Security (Where Bruce Leonard Solie* in the Security Research Staff's Branch Research section was the primary "mole" hunter for the entire Agency), and therefore that Solie must have known in advance that Oswald was going to defect to Moscow.
Bummer, huh?
4) Around 2015 (iirc), Newman read the 2007 Yale University Press book, "Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games," by Nosenko's former CIA case officer, Tennent H. Bagley, PhD, and became convinced that Nosenko had been a false defector sent to the CIA in Geneva in 1962 to discredit what recent true defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn, was telling James Angleton about possible KGB penetrations of the CIA, the FBI, and the intelligence services of our NATO allies. Newman's colleague, Malcolm Blunt, had become friends with Bagley at the 2008 Raleigh Spy Conference, and a couple of years later, Blunt, a habitue of the National Archives, showed Bagley some CIA documents that he hadn't been privy to in 1959-60. These documents led Bagley to conclude that Oswald must have been a "witting" defector, i.e., that the CIA had sent him to Moscow to defect. What Newman has shown since then is that Solie sent (or duped his confidant, protege, and mole-hunting subordinate, Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an ostensible (i.e., fake-fake) "dangle" in a planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" / "Popov's Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division. Why would Solie have done such a thing? Answer: So that no one would look for a KGB "mole" in the Office of Security and so the Soviet Russia Division would be torn apart by the ensuing nine-year mole-hunt.
I think it's pretty good for a "nut case" like Newman to be sufficiently openminded to new evidence to be able to change his theory from "evil, evil James JESUS Angleton sent Oswald to Moscow on an evil, evil Deep State CIA mission" to "the KGB sent Oswald to Moscow so that he could unwittingly help prevent its mole in the CIA, Bruce Solie, from being uncovered."
*Bruce Solie -- the dude who "cleared" KGB false defector Yuri Nosenko through a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report in 1968, the guy who betrayed CIA's spy, GRU Colonel Popov, to the Soviets and gave them the top-secret specifications of the U-2 spy plane, and the guy who helped another probable "mole," Leonard V. McCoy, "lose" CIA's spy Nicholas Shadrin to KGB kidnappers in Vienna in 1975.
PS You can read Bagley's book for free by googling "spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously. Ditto his 2014 follow-up article "Ghosts of the Spy Wars" by googling "ghosts of the spy war" and "archive" simultaneously.
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To be blunt, I think Newman is basically a nutcase, so lost in a forest of his own creation that he'll never find his way out. It's all fascinating, I suppose, as long as you're willing to accept Oswald as The Most Interesting Man Who Ever Lived as opposed to the mixed-up goof he actually was. I was happy to see that in Hancock's and Boylan's new book on Oswald they give short shrift - no shrift, really - to Newman's nonsense. You are perhaps aware that Newman is also the author of a not-exactly-esteemed tome arguing that Jesus was actually a Yogi Master?
At The Education Forum, I dealt with the above topic at some length and felt that I had disposed of the 1959 stuff to my own satisfaction. Alas, I can't remember what all it involved, I deleted almost all of my posts, and all remaining ones are now labeled as "Guest." Sorry about that.
IMO the problem with every elaborate conspiracy theory, including Newman's, is that it's all plausible until you try to fit the Actual Oswald into it. Then it collapses. If there was a conspiracy, it has to have been one that sucked in the Actual Oswald pretty much at the last minute as Hancock and Boylan postulate; I don't even see that as likely, but I'm willing to entertain it.
Those who favor elaborate conspiracy theories, it always seems to me, are really less interested in what actually happened on 11-22-63 and more interested in fitting the JFKA into their personal political philosophy and vision of the dark forces that control our world.
I don't know who first said it but they were right: the JFK assassination is a Rohrschacht test, a mirror, a reflection. What one sees in it tells us more about them then it does about the actual event. So we have people with axes to grind, with grievances, with complaints who use the event to go after the source of those grievances. It's why the major conspiracy advocates have been people who think the Cold War was due to the US, to our policies. The Chomsky/Zinn view. Now it's migrated to the Right who think the CIA got JFK like they tried to get Trump. Put the mirror down, please.
No, JFK was not going to end the Cold War, or get us out of Vietnam, or make nice with Castro. He was a moderate Democrat who believed that communism was an existential threat to the West. Yes, he wanted to prevent a nuclear war, a direct US/Soviet conflict. In some ways he was neither a Hawk or Dove but an Owl. But trying to prevent a nuclear war was not the same as abandoning our Cold War policies against Moscow.
On Newman: his last claim that I know of is that the Pentagon - Lansdale and Lemnitzer as leaders - killed JFK because he said no to a nuclear first strike against the USSR and PRC. There's nuts and then there's this level of nuttery. Tracy Parnell goes over it here: https://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2024/02/newman-talks-to-danny-jones-about.html
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On Newman: his last claim that I know of is that the Pentagon - Lansdale and Lemnitzer as leaders - killed JFK because he said no to a nuclear first strike against the USSR and PRC. There's nuts and then there's this level of nuttery.
Former high-level Army Intelligence Analyst and NSA officer Newman IS a "nut case" for believing that Sergei Papushin was a true defector (he wasn't), that Oswald was a Ukrainian (sic) KGB agent in Minsk, and that some high-level Army officers killed JFK because he refused to nuke Moscow and Peking in 1963. Regardless, in 1995, Newman discovered that the non-CIA cables about Oswald's defection (which I referred to in a recent post on this thread) hadn't been routed to where they should have gone (the Soviet Russia Division), but to the Office of Security (Where Bruce Leonard Solie* in the Security Research Staff's Branch Research section was the primary "mole" hunter for the entire Agency), and therefore that Solie must have known in advance that Oswald was going to defect to Moscow.
Around 2015 (iirc), Newman read the 2007 Yale University Press book, "Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games," by Nosenko's former CIA case officer, Tennent H. Bagley, PhD, and became convinced that Nosenko had been a false defector sent to the CIA in Geneva in 1962 to discredit what recent true defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn, was telling James Angleton about possible KGB penetrations of the CIA, the FBI, and the intelligence services of our NATO allies. Newman's colleague, Malcolm Blunt, had become friends with Bagley at the 2008 Raleigh Spy Conference, and a couple of years later, Blunt, a habitue of the National Archives, showed Bagley some CIA documents that he hadn't been privy to in 1959-60. These documents led Bagley to conclude that Oswald must have been a "witting" defector, i.e., that the CIA had sent him to Moscow. What Newman has shown since then is that Solie sent (or duped his confidant, protege, and mole-hunting subordinate, Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an ostensible (i.e., fake-fake) "dangle" in a planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" / "Popov's Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division. Why would Solie have done such a thing? Answer: So that no one would look for a KGB "mole" in the Office of Security and so the Soviet Russia Division would be torn apart by the ensuing nine-year mole-hunt.
I think it's pretty impressive that a "nut case" like Newman can be sufficiently openminded to new evidence to be able to change his theory from "evil, evil James JESUS Angleton sent Oswald to Moscow on an evil, evil Deep State mission" to "the KGB sent Oswald to Moscow so that he could unwittingly help prevent its mole in the CIA, Bruce Solie, from being uncovered."
*Bruce Solie -- the dude who "cleared" KGB false defector Yuri Nosenko through a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report in 1968, the guy who betrayed CIA's spy, GRU Colonel Popov, to the Soviets and gave them the top-secret specifications of the U-2 spy plane, and the guy who helped another probable "mole," Leonard V. McCoy, "lose" CIA's spy Nicholas Shadrin to KGB kidnappers in Vienna in 1975.
PS You can read Bagley's book for free by googling "spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously. Ditto his 2014 follow-up article "Ghosts of the Spy Wars" by googling "ghosts of the spy war" and "archive" simultaneously.
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I don't know who first said it but they were right: the JFK assassination is a Rohrschacht test, a mirror, a reflection. What one sees in it tells us more about them then it does about the actual event. So we have people with axes to grind, with grievances, with complaints who use the event to go after the source of those grievances. It's why the major conspiracy advocates have been people who think the Cold War was due to the US, to our policies. The Chomsky/Zinn view. Now it's migrated to the Right who think the CIA got JFK like they tried to get Trump. Put the mirror down, please.
Even for a dyed-in-the-wool Lone Nutter, which I'm really not, it does have enough twists and turns and genuine anomalies to be one of the more interesting historical events. Oswald. even if he was just the Actual Oswald I believe him to have been, was a fascinating character. If one can approach the JFKA as just another hobby, as I try to do, I think one can maintain some sort of rational perspective. It's the foaming-at-the-mouth emotional involvement on the part of many, Lone Nutters and CTers alike, that puzzles me; truly, those who have a near-religious fanaticism for the Lone Nut perspective are as puzzling to me as their conspiracy counterparts. I try to keep abreast of the discussions, but I'd be equally interested if the Truth could be conclusively proven to have been the most elaborate conspiracy imaginable - that would be absolutely fascinating. Like Fred Litwin, I once thought the Lone Nut perspective was inconceivable. The more I learned, the more I realized quite the opposite was true. In my modest forays into JFKA Research, I have tracked down perhaps 10 or 15 little factoids of Conspiracy Gospel uttered by such conspiracy Gods as Armstrong, Newman and DiEugenio. Every damn one failed to stand up to scrutiny, but the proponents just yawned, moved the goalposts and went their merry way. My bottom line is, I haven't seen the conspiracy theory yet that can accommodate the Actual Oswald. I haven't yet finished Hancock's and Boylan's new book, The Oswald Puzzle, but I'm now only a couple of months from 11-22 and so far their Oswald has been exactly who I believe him to have been.
"Nutcase" was probably too harsh a term for Newman. He has shown some flexibility. Anyone who has read extensively in the UFO debate or particularly the Who Wrote Shakespeare? debate has encountered the Newman Type, who eventually becomes more comical than anything. I do think his book on Jesus the Yogi Master provides an interesting insight into his mindset.
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I read Mailer's book but didn't recall that incident. It is, however, definitely different from the one Titovets describes. In Titovets' account, there was definitely a discussion within the apartment as to how a bomb might be made from the tube. The tube itself was pretty distinctive and when Titovets later drew it, someone recogized it as part of an experimental radar device. Of course, every incident where Oswald did things that a sane false defector would never have done cuts decisively against the false defector nonsense.
Hmm, two different bomb incidents? Seems more likely that people are misremembering details of a single one. If Titovets *was* working for the KGB and keeping track of Oswald for them (as I strongly believe) then I find it hard to imagine he didn't report this second "bomb" incident to them. And they to Mailer. It sounds to me like the Rashomon effect. Be helpful to see the actual KGB files on the monitoring of Oswald in Minsk. That would clear up a lot of questions, e.g., about Nosenko, this, et cetera.
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"Nutcase" was probably too harsh a term for Newman. He has shown some flexibility. Anyone who has read extensively in the UFO debate or particularly the Who Wrote Shakespeare? debate has encountered the Newman Type, who eventually becomes more comical than anything.
Newman is, of course, really off in right field (no pun intended) on the assassination, but I think that he, with input from former Chief of CIA's Soviet Russia Division Counterintelligence, Tennent H. Bagley (via his writings and through Bagley's friendship with Malcolm Blunt), is spot-on regarding the reason putative KGB officer Yuri Nosenko was sent to the CIA in Geneva in 1962 -- to protect "mole" Bruce Solie from being uncovered by true defector Anatoliy Golitsyn -- and that he's probably correct in saying Solie sent (or duped his confidant, protégé, and mole-hunting subordinate, James Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an ostensible "dangle" in the hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" / "Popov's Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA.
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Lance, you love to throw around the word "decisive". "False defector" and "weirdo" are not mutually exclusive.
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Hmm, two different bomb incidents? Seems more likely that people are misremembering details of a single one. If Titovets *was* working for the KGB and keeping track of Oswald for them (as I strongly believe) then I find it hard to imagine he didn't report this second "bomb" incident to them. And they to Mailer. It sounds to me like the Rashomon effect. Be helpful to see the actual KGB files on the monitoring of Oswald in Minsk. That would clear up a lot of questions, e.g., about Nosenko, this, et cetera.
I don't believe Titovets was aligned with the KGB. Moreover, the incident took place in Oswald's KGB-bugged apartment (hence no need for reporting) and Titovets was astounded by the whole discussion. I don't think he took Oswald seriously; his astonishment was at the foolhardiness of the discussion. In his book, the focus is on what he later learned about the curious tube being part of a classified radar device. Based on what I know about the factory, my belief is that the whole thing was a KGB set-up just to see what Oswald would do if afforded an opportunity to "steal" the tube.
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Newman is, of course, really off in right field (no pun intended) on the assassination, but I think that he, with input from former Chief of CIA's Soviet Russia Division Counterintelligence, Tennent H. Bagley (via his writings and through Bagley's friendship with Malcolm Blunt), is spot-on regarding the reason putative KGB officer Yuri Nosenko was sent to the CIA in Geneva in 1962 -- to protect "mole" Bruce Solie from being uncovered by true defector Anatoliy Golitsyn -- and that he's probably correct in saying Solie sent (or duped his confidant, protégé, and mole-hunting subordinate, James Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an ostensible "dangle" in the hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" / "Popov's Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA.
FWIW, authors Hancock and Boylan in The Oswald Puzzle do a very thorough analysis of all this and conclude that (1) Oswald was not a false defector or a witting participant in any intelligence activities but (2) may well have been an unwitting tool in one of Angleton's mole hunts. In other words, he wasn't "sent" at all, but his "going" may have served a mole-hunt purpose of which he was completely unaware.
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Lance, you love to throw around the word "decisive". "False defector" and "weirdo" are not mutually exclusive.
Fair enough, but: To again refer to The Oswald Puzzle, Hancock and Boylan do a very thorough job of discussing the various aspects of the false defector program, the careful screening of potential participants, and what knowledge and skills characterized those who were chosen. Oswald just didn't fit the profile at all, and they conclude he was the genuine defector he appeared to be. I find it inconceivable - yes, decisively inconceivable! :) - that a false defector would thumb his nose at his new country at every opportunity and engage in insanely risky conduct that could result in a long stint in Siberia. The conspiracy answer, of course, would be: "That's just how damn clever he was! He was such a canny false defector he did stuff no sane false defector would have done."
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Hancock and Boylan do a very thorough job of discussing the various aspects of the false defector program, the careful screening of potential participants, and what knowledge and skills characterized those who were chosen. Oswald just didn't fit the profile at all, and they conclude he was the genuine defector he appeared to be.
Ask Larry if Oswald would have "fit the profile" (i.e., disgruntled American, Marxist, former Marine U-2 radar operator) of someone a KGB mole in the CIA would send to Moscow as an ostensible (i.e., mistakenly believing he was on a mission for the CIA) "dangle" in a planned-to-fail hunt for said "mole" who had, at some point around April 1958 given the Soviets the top-secret specifications of the U-2 -- especially since all he would be required to do is walk into the American Embassy, say he wanted to defect, and tell the Consul (and the sure-to-be-hidden KGB microphones) that he was a Marine radar operator and that he was planning to tell (or had already told?) the Soviets everything he knew about Marine Corps radar operations and . . . gasp . . . something of "special interest."
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I don't believe Titovets was aligned with the KGB. Moreover, the incident took place in Oswald's KGB-bugged apartment (hence no need for reporting) and Titovets was astounded by the whole discussion. I don't think he took Oswald seriously; his astonishment was at the foolhardiness of the discussion. In his book, the focus is on what he later learned about the curious tube being part of a classified radar device. Based on what I know about the factory, my belief is that the whole thing was a KGB set-up just to see what Oswald would do if afforded an opportunity to "steal" the tube.
When Oswald first arrived in Minsk the KGB in Belarus watched him 24/7, very intensely, like he was Trotsky returned. After all, that's why they sent him there, away from Moscow to a more isolated area. They didn't know who he was, whether an agent or an oddball who tried to commit suicide but knew they had to monitor him. Many of the people who associated with Oswald said the KGB later talked to them, debriefed them on what they knew. This was both before and after the assassination (they were all ordered after the assassination to never talk to anyone about Oswald). They were terrified about the KGB; look up "Kurapaty Forest" for details of how the people of Minsk experienced "The Great Terror". It was only later that the surveillance was less intense. They grew tired of him, wanted him to go away.
Given all this I can't believe that the KGB wouldn't question someone close to Oswald like Titovets. Does that make sense given the other coverage they did? Granted, the Mailer book doesn't mention any such relationship. But Mailer said he asked Titovets seven times for an interview and was turned down each time.
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FWIW, authors Hancock and Boylan in The Oswald Puzzle do a very thorough analysis of all this and conclude that (1) Oswald was not a false defector or a witting participant in any intelligence activities but (2) may well have been an unwitting tool in one of Angleton's mole hunts. In other words, he wasn't "sent" at all, but his "going" may have served a mole-hunt purpose of which he was completely unaware.
We know that Angleton was duped by the British traitor Kim Philby, yes?
Well, Newman says father-figure-requiring Angleton was also duped by his mole-hunting superior, Bruce Solie, and that Solie very probably visited Philby -- to learn from The Master how best to manipulate Angleton -- in Beirut in February 1957, as indicated by some old travel documents which were published on geneology.com in 2010 and found by Newman around 2017.
Factoids: We know that Solie "cleared" KGB false defector Yuri Nosenko in October of 1968, that he helped another probable mole by the name of Leonard V. McCoy "lose" former defector Nicholas Shadrin to KGB kidnappers in Vienna in 1975, and that, according to British researcher and National Archives habitue Malcolm Blunt, he was "all over the Kennedy investigation and all over Clay Shaw for Jim Garrison" Read Tennent H. Bagley's Spy Wars for the details for the first two and watch Blunt's 10 September YouTube interview on Yuri Nosenko for the latter.
Oh yeah, and that Solie hid Office of Security documents on Oswald from the Church Committee and the HSCA.
Heck, even Joan Mellen writes about that, but blames it on Angleton of course.
Rhetorical question: Can you not countenance the possibility that Angleton's confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior, Bruce Solie in the mole-hunting Office of Security, was a KGB mole, and that he sent (or duped Angleton into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an OSTENSIBLE "dangle" in what Angleton thought was a "normal" CIA mole hunt -- for "Popov's U-2 Mole" / "Popov's Mole" -- but which was really a planned-to-fail "mole hunt" controlled by the KGB with the two-fold goal of 1) protecting the mole (Bruce Solie), and 2) tearing the Soviet Russia Division apart?
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When Oswald first arrived in Minsk the KGB in Belarus watched him 24/7, very intensely, like he was Trotsky returned. After all, that's why they sent him there, away from Moscow to a more isolated area. They didn't know who he was, whether an agent or an oddball who tried to commit suicide but knew they had to monitor him. Many of the people who associated with Oswald said the KGB later talked to them, debriefed them on what they knew. This was both before and after the assassination (they were all ordered after the assassination to never talk to anyone about Oswald). They were terrified about the KGB; look up "Kurapaty Forest" for details of how the people of Minsk experienced "The Great Terror". It was only later that the surveillance was less intense. They grew tired of him, wanted him to go away.
Given all this I can't believe that the KGB wouldn't question someone close to Oswald like Titovets. Does that make sense given the other coverage they did? Granted, the Mailer book doesn't mention any such relationship. But Mailer said he asked Titovets seven times for an interview and was turned down each time.
Certainly, the KGB would have questioned Titovets extensively, and I assume he would have cooperated even while maintaining his friendship with Oswald. I thought you were suggesting something more official in the relationship. Believe me, since my wife is a native Belarusian with family roots going back to the Revolution, I know all about the NKVD and KGB. Belarusians still live in terror of what remains of the KGB. I've been warned every time I've visited and always assumed I had no privacy anywhere.
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We know that Angleton was duped by the British traitor Kim Philby, yes?
Well, Newman says father-figure-requiring Angleton was also duped by his mole-hunting superior, Bruce Solie, and that Solie very probably visited Philby -- to learn from The Master how best to manipulate Angleton -- in Beirut in February 1957, as indicated by some old travel documents which were published on geneology.com in 2010 and found by Newman around 2017.
Factoids: We know that Solie "cleared" KGB false defector Yuri Nosenko in October of 1968, that he helped another probable mole by the name of Leonard V. McCoy "lose" former defector Nicholas Shadrin to KGB kidnappers in Vienna in 1975, and that, according to British researcher and National Archives habitue Malcolm Blunt, he was "all over the Kennedy investigation and all over Clay Shaw for Jim Garrison" Read Tennent H. Bagley's Spy Wars for the details for the first two and watch Blunt's 10 September YouTube interview on Yuri Nosenko for the latter.
Oh yeah, and that Solie hid Office of Security documents on Oswald from the Church Committee and the HSCA.
Heck, even Joan Mellen writes about that, but blames it on Angleton of course.
Rhetorical question: Can you not countenance the possibility that Angleton's confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior, Bruce Solie in the mole-hunting Office of Security, was a KGB mole, and that he sent (or duped Angleton into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an OSTENSIBLE "dangle" in what Angleton thought was a "normal" CIA mole hunt -- for "Popov's U-2 Mole" / "Popov's Mole" -- but which was really a planned-to-fail "mole hunt" controlled by the KGB with the two-fold goal of 1) protecting the mole (Bruce Solie), and 2) tearing the Soviet Russia Division apart?
Sure, I can "countenance the possibility" of almost anything. From all evidence known to me, however, I regard the possibility as pretty much zilch. I was gratified that Hancock and Boylan, who are surely among the premier researchers, seem to as well.
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Sure, I can "countenance the possibility" of almost anything. From all evidence known to me, however, I regard the possibility as pretty much zilch. I was gratified that Hancock and Boylan, who are surely among the premier researchers, seem to as well.
Do you think Yuri Nosenko was a true defector-in-place when he "walked in" to the CIA (Bagley and probable mole George Kisevalter) in Geneva in late May, 1962?
If so, you should read Bagley's 2007 book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games. You can read it for free by googling "spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously.
Understanding what Nosenko did and said is the lynchpin to realizing Solie was a mole.
Then, if you read the parts about Solie, Angleton, Nosenko, and Kovshuk, et al., in Newman's 2022 book, Uncovering Popov's Mole (which he dedicated to Bagley), you'll realize that Newman is probably right -- KGB "mole" Solie sent (or duped Angleton into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an ostensible "dangle" in a (unbeknownst to Angleton) planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division.
Does the fact that the KGB interviewed Oswald at least twice in Moscow and that he lived two blocks from a KGB school in Minsk for two-and-one-half years necessarily mean that he killed JFK for the KGB?
No, it doesn't.
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Is "Tom Mahon" a sock-puppet of Tom Graves? Just curious.
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Sure, I can "countenance the possibility" of almost anything. From all evidence known to me, however, I regard the possibility as pretty much zilch. I was gratified that Hancock and Boylan, who are surely among the premier researchers, seem to as well.
What do you know about what Yuri Nosenko told Tennent H. Bagley and (probable mole) George Kisevalter in Geneva in May-June, 1962? (Read Bagley's 2007 book, Spy Wars, to find out.)
What do you know about "dour, plodding, risk-averse" Bruce Solie who worked in the Office of Security during his 28-year CIA career and who "cleared" Nosenko in 1968 via a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report and hid OS files on Oswald from the Church Committee and the HSCA?
Did you know that James Angleton told (true defector) Anatoliy Golitsyn, David Murphy and Ray Rocca on 29 June 1964 that Golitsyn should continue working with Solie because his office (the mole-hunting "Research Branch" in the "Security Research Staff") in the Office of Security was the only one he knew for a fact wasn't penetrated by the KGB?
LOL!
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What do you know about what Yuri Nosenko told Tennent H. Bagley and (probable mole) George Kisevalter in Geneva in May-June, 1962? (Read Bagley's 2007 book, Spy Wars, to find out.)
What do you know about "dour, plodding, risk-averse" Bruce Solie who worked in the Office of Security during his 28-year CIA career and who "cleared" Nosenko in 1968 via a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report and hid OS files on Oswald from the Church Committee and the HSCA?
Did you know that James Angleton told (true defector) Anatoliy Golitsyn, David Murphy and Ray Rocca on 29 June 1964 that Golitsyn should continue working with Solie because his office (the mole-hunting "Research Branch" in the "Security Research Staff") in the Office of Security was the only one he knew for a fact wasn't penetrated by the KGB?
LOL!
Eek, you ARE Tommy Graves! https://thomasgraves.substack.com/p/my-draft-article-on-bruce-solie-that?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
What a hoot! I remember you well from the Ed Forum, but you're off on a tangent here that just doesn't interest me.
Why aren't you still Tommy Graves, if one may ask?
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You're off on a tangent here that just doesn't interest me.
Why doesn't the KGB's* sabotaging of our Constitutional Federal Democracy via disinformation campaigns, penetrations of the CIA-FBI (at least as recently as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen), and 60-plus years of body politic-rendering conspiracy theories (including JFKA conspiracy theories) "interest" you?
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Why doesn't the KGB's* sabotaging of our Constitutional Federal Democracy via disinformation campaigns, penetrations of the CIA-FBI (at least as recently as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen), and 60-plus years of body politic-rendering conspiracy theories (including JFKA conspiracy theories) "interest" you?
In terms of the JFKA, it doesn't interest me because (1) I do not believe the KGB had anything to do with the assassination and (2) I do not believe Oswald was a false defector or tool of the KGB. In the abstract, it doesn't interest me because I simply have little interest in the whole Cold War Spy Game thing. #'s (1) and (2) have been relegated so far into the corners of my mind that only the most ironclad, no-question-about-it evidence would pique my interest. I think this is the game of Newman, Morley and others - they dazzle their followers with so many names, acronyms and dubious "smoking gun" documents and so much dark speculation that the followers fail to notice that nothing but the dark speculation really has anything to do with Oswald or the JFKA. My eyes just glaze over. Just my $0.02 worth - if you enjoy following this path, go for it.
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I do not believe Oswald was a false defector or tool of the KGB.
Whether or not Oswald killed JFK for the KGB, wouldn't his being sent to Moscow (thinking he was on a mission for the CIA) to unwittingly protect the KGB mole in the CIA who had sent him make him a tool of the KGB?
I think this is the game of Newman, Morley and others - they dazzle their followers with so many names, acronyms and dubious "smoking gun" documents and so much dark speculation that the followers fail to notice that nothing but the dark speculation really has anything to do with Oswald or the JFKA.
It seems to me that Newman's and Morley's and DiEugenio's, et al. ad nauseam, "dark speculations" about the CIA's (or the Army's) putative use of Oswald in the JFKA are based on their gullible acceptance of KGB disinformation and their concomitant hatred of "The Deep State" / 'National Security State."
What's not based on KGB disinformation is 1) Newman's realizing way back in 1995 that the incoming non-CIA cables about Oswald's defection didn't go to where they should have gone in the Agency -- the Soviet Russia Division -- but to the mole-hunting Office of Security (where naive Angleton's confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior, Bruce Solie, was the CIA's principal mole hunter), 2) his learning from Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 Yale University Press book, Spy Wars, that Yuri Nosenko (who was eventually "cleared" by Solie in 1968) was a false defector sent to the CIA in Geneva in 1962 to divert attention away from the "mole" (Solie) who had betrayed Popov way back in early 1957, and 3) his finding Solie's travel documents on genealogy.com -- which show his highly unusual trip to Beirut in February 1957 and his two trips to Paris within 30 days in mid-1962.
For these discoveries / realizations, John "Nut Case" Newman is to be commended, IMHO.