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. 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).



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.

[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 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.

[Lance Payette]

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).



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.

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.

[Lance Payette]

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.

[Tom Mahon]

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.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

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

[Tom Mahon]

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.