Duh DiEugenio

[Tom Graves]

A hard-core JFKA conspiracy theorist by the name of James DiEugenio (Comrade Oliver Stone’s JFKA guru) not only testified recently at Anna Paulina Luna’s loony Congressional committee hearing on the assassination, but a few years ago wrote a review of fellow CT Alan Dale’s 2014 book, The Devil is in the Details. The following is an excerpt from said review. My comments are in brackets.

. . . . . . . .

An important part of the book deals with [British researcher Malcolm Blunt’s] friendship with CIA officer Tennent ”Pete” Bagley. Bagley worked out of [he was the head of it, actually] the Counterintelligence unit in the Soviet Russia division; he also [became Deputy Chief of the Soviet Russia Division, itself, and] worked in Europe at, among other stations, Bern and Brussels, where he was chief of station. Malcolm met him [in 2008] after he was retired and living in Brussels. In retirement, Bagley was writing books about his career. They largely focused on the CIA’s battles with the KGB, for example, on whether or not Yuri Nosenko was a plant or a real defector. Bagley thought he was the former. While putting together Betsy Wolf’s discoveries about the odd nature of the opening of Oswald’s files at CIA HQ, Malcolm decided to talk to Bagley about it. He told him how his old Soviet Russia division was zeroed out of information about Oswald’s defection for 13 months—even though, at times, the CIA was getting 15 copies of an Oswald document. (pp. 344–45) Malcolm then drew the routing scheme up as he had deciphered the entry path from Betsy’s work. Bagley looked at the illustration of the routing path. He then looked up at Malcolm and asked him something like: OK, was Oswald witting or unwitting? Malcolm did not want to answer the question, but Bagley badgered him. He blurted out, “Unwitting.” Bagley firmly replied: Nope. He had to be witting and knowledgeable about how the CIA was using him and, therefore, he was working for them in some capacity.

. . . . . . . .

My comment: The above is classic Jim “I hate the CIA” DiEugenio in that he gets the most important part wrong (intentionally, imho). To wit: Bagley, upon reading the late-1959 CIA documents that Blunt had given to him, said that former sharpshooting Marine radar operator Lee Harvey Oswald had to have been “witting," i.e., a witting false defector to the USSR -- he didn’t say “he had to be knowledgeable about how the CIA was using him.”

This is critical because, based on what John M. Newman wrote in his 2022 book, Uncovering Popov’s Mole, it now looks as though a probable mole in the CIA’s mole-hunting Office of Security, Bruce 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 a unbeknownst to Angleton and Oswald planned-to-fail hunt for “Popov’s U-2 Mole” (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA.

Which mole hunt:

1) lasted nine years

2) prevented Solie from being uncovered

3) tore the SRD apart

4) drove Angleton nuts

[Duncan MacRae]

The DiEugenio Formula ( For Everything )

A Knew B + B Knew C = C Knew A 

[Mitch Todd]

The DiEugenio Formula ( For Everything )

A Knew B + B Knew C = C Knew A 

Maybe you're not giving Jim D enough credit here? He's more ambitious than that! I figure he'd at least put "D" and maybe "E" in the chain.