How a JFKA CT "God" came to be disowned by the JFKA CT crowd

[Michael T. Griffith]

The following is an excerpt from a long article that Paul Bleau wrote about Newman's book, Uncovering Popov's Mole, at DiEugenio's "Kennedys and King website:

In the introduction, Newman passes on his valuable knowledge on the importance of human intelligence penetration in espionage and the potential damage caused by even a staff level leaker if he has access to strategic information. The reader is also introduced to Pete Bagley, a veteran in the analysis of double-agents and a key source for Newman who he met through Malcolm Blunt. Bagley revealed how a mole hunt in 1956 helped uncover Edward Ellis Smith who became a deep cover KGB operative after being compromised in a sex trap. The key to uncovering Ellis: travel records. If one can believe it, Solie's travel records, obtained in 2010 trough Ancestry.com, became a key piece of evidence for Newman.

Problem is, that's not what Bagley wrote in his 2007 book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, nor is it what Newman wrote in his 2020 book, Uncovering Popov's Mole (which he dedicated to Bagley, btw).

In a nutshell (pardon the pun), Mr. Bleau has conflated the mole Edward Ellis Smith with the mole Bruce Leonard Solie.

Neither was uncovered by a "mole hunt."

Smith was the "One-Man CIA Station" at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow who had been sent there in 1953 to serve as dead drop setter-upper for CIA's spy, GRU Colonel Pyotr Popov upon Popov's anticipated return from Vienna in 1955, and who was . . . wouldn't you know . . .  honey-trapped by his beautiful KGB maid!

After he was honey-trapped, he met with the KGB twice at the KGB's "suggestion."

About a week later, he belatedly reported his being honey-trapped to the U.S. Ambassador -- who didn't know he was CIA -- but lied to him when he said he'd met with the KGB only once and that he had "turned them down."

Within a couple of days, Smith was escorted by the Office of Security's James McCord (of future Watergate notoriety) back to CIA headquarters where he was interrogated and fired.

Bagley wrote in Spy Wars, that he thought Smith had met with a high-level KGB officer by the name of Vladislav Kovshuk who had come to Washington to reestablish contact with him, and that Smith betrayed Popov to Kovshuk in Washington, D.C., movie houses in early 1957.

Newman, on the other hand, says in Uncovering Popov's Mole that it was Solie who betrayed Popov in those movie houses, and that Smith and McCord (who secretly arranged for Smith to be retained by the CIA and given a gig at the Hoover Institution) provided Solie with logistical support.

The "travel records" that Newman found at geneaology.com around 2001 were not Edward Ellis Smith's travel records, but Bruce Solie's travel records which showed that he had flown to Beirut, Lebanon (where Kim Philby had moved into his father's secluded house six months earlier) in February 1957, and that in mid-1962, he visited Paris twice within 30 days (for very short stays) -- which visits tie in with Newman's theory that Solie communicated with a high-level KGB officer by the name of Mikhail Tsymbal in Paris to tell him what naive Angleton had shared with him about what Anatoliy Golitsyn was telling him, and also to tell him about Bagley's and (probable mole) George Kisevalter's interviews of Nosenko in the Geneva safe house, which safe house Solie unexpectedly visited on 15 June 1962 -- between his two stops in Paris -- to "ask Nosenko about some names that Golitsyn had mentioned." (Bagley says in Spy Wars that Nosenko "drew a blank."

Bottom line: Why should anyone care what the likes of "great researchers" like DiEugenio, Bleau, and [fill in the blank] say about what Newman says about Solie, Bagley and Nosenko, et al, in Uncovering Popov's Mole when the story is evidently too complicated for them to understand? LOL!

You are avoiding the fact that you were clearly wrong when you said Newman has become a pariah among JFK assassination conspiracy theorists. He has not. Most WC critics still think highly of him and cite and recommend his research.

I think most of his research is accurate and important, but I think his research on the Vietnam War and JFK's Vietnam policy is badly flawed, if not fringe.

[Tom Graves]

Most JFK assassination conspiracy theorists still think highly of Newman.

How do most JFKA CTs feel about Newman's claim that

1) Oswald, mistakenly believing he was on a mission for a non-KGB-controlled CIA, was sent to Moscow by a KGB "mole" in the CIA's mole-hunting Office of Security to unwittingly protect that mole from being uncovered and to tear the Soviet Russia Division apart, and

2) Evil, evil, evil James Angleton didn't mastermind the assassination after all?