Joseph Milteer, FBI Corruption, and Foreknowledge of the JFK Shooting

[Michael T. Griffith]

The negative replies in this thread provide a prime example of the strained, unserious way that lone-gunman theorists treat hard evidence of conspiracy. Here we have an actual police surveillance recording of a wealthy, well-connected right-wing extremist saying, less than two weeks before the assassination, that a plot to kill Kennedy was underway, that the hit would involve a rifle fired from a building, that the rifle could be disassembled to get it into the building, and that a patsy would be picked up by the police within hours of the shooting to mislead the public.

We also have confirmation from the FBI agent who tracked and interviewed Milteer after the assassination, Don Adams, that the Altgens photo does indeed show Milteer in Dealey Plaza during the shooting. Even the HSCA photographic experts, who were determined to deny that Milteer appears in the Altgens photo, admitted that the man in the photo “bears a strong resemblance to Joseph Adams Milteer,” that the man resembles Milteer "in age and general facial configuration," and that the man is even wearing eyeglasses similar to those worn by Milteer. Yeah, that's because the man is Milteer, as Adams confirmed.

The FBI later concocted an alibi for Milteer for 11/22, but Adams exposes the alibi as fraudulent, adding, "I am sure Milteer was not in Valdosta, nor was he in Quitman, Georgia, until five days after the assassination."

Moreover, a Secret Service report (CE 762) documents that the Secret Service received information from an FBI source that reinforced Milteer's taped prediction and that supported the Miami police informant's account. The report dealt with information that the Secret Service received from the FBI just seven days before the assassination. According to the report, an unnamed contact in the Ku Klux Klan said that during his travels around the country his sources had told him "that a militant group of the National States Rights Party plans to assassinate the President." The National States Rights Party had close links with anti-Castro Cubans, and Milteer was a leader in the party.

It is worth noting that the FBI submitted a lengthy report to the WC about Milteer but the Commission ignored it. The WC did not even publish the FBI report in its volumes. Part of the FBI report surfaced in 1971. The full report was not available until 1976.

Incredibly, the FBI report did not mention the Milteer tape, and the Secret Service did not tell the WC about the tape either. This does not excuse the WC's failure to investigate Milteer, but knowledge of the tape's existence might have made a difference. I suspect the FBI and the Secret Service feared that if they revealed the existence of the Milteer tape, at least some of the WC's members would insist on a thorough investigation into Milteer's connections and his whereabouts on the day of the shooting.

[Tom Graves]

The negative replies in this thread provide a prime example of the strained, unserious way that lone-gunman theorists treat hard evidence of conspiracy. Here we have an actual police surveillance recording of a wealthy, well-connected right-wing extremist saying, less than two weeks before the assassination, that a plot to kill Kennedy was underway, that the hit would involve a rifle fired from a building, that the rifle could be disassembled to get it into the building, and that a patsy would be picked up by the police within hours of the shooting to mislead the public.

We also have confirmation from the FBI agent who tracked and interviewed Milteer after the assassination, Don Adams, that the Altgens photo does indeed show Milteer in Dealey Plaza during the shooting. Even the HSCA photographic experts, who were determined to deny that Milteer appears in the Altgens photo, admitted that the man in the photo “bears a strong resemblance to Joseph Adams Milteer,” that the man resembles Milteer "in age and general facial configuration," and that the man is even wearing eyeglasses similar to those worn by Milteer. Yeah, that's because the man is Milteer, as Adams confirmed.

The FBI later concocted an alibi for Milteer for 11/22, but Adams exposes the alibi as fraudulent, adding, "I am sure Milteer was not in Valdosta, nor was he in Quitman, Georgia, until five days after the assassination."

Moreover, a Secret Service report (CE 762) documents that the Secret Service received information from an FBI source that reinforced Milteer's taped prediction and that supported the Miami police informant's account. The report dealt with information that the Secret Service received from the FBI just seven days before the assassination. According to the report, an unnamed contact in the Ku Klux Klan said that during his travels around the country his sources had told him "that a militant group of the National States Rights Party plans to assassinate the President." The National States Rights Party had close links with anti-Castro Cubans, and Milteer was a leader in the party.

It is worth noting that the FBI submitted a lengthy report to the WC about Milteer but the Commission ignored it. The WC did not even publish the FBI report in its volumes. Part of the FBI report surfaced in 1971. The full report was not available until 1976.

Incredibly, the FBI report did not mention the Milteer tape, and the Secret Service did not tell the WC about the tape either. This does not excuse the WC's failure to investigate Milteer, but knowledge of the tape's existence might have made a difference. I suspect the FBI and the Secret Service feared that if they revealed the existence of the Milteer tape, at least some of the WC's members would insist on a thorough investigation into Milteer's connections and his whereabouts on the day of the shooting.

Dear Comrade Griffith,

Please, please, please answer my question:

Does "former" KGB officer Vladimir Putin pay you, or do you do it for free?

-- Tom

[Michael T. Griffith]

Dear Comrade Griffith,

Please, please, please answer my question: Does "former" KGB officer Vladimir Putin pay you, or do you do it for free?-- Tom

How ironic that you would post such a silly, juvenile reply in response to my point that WC apologists treat hard evidence of conspiracy in an unserious, strained fashion. I guess I should thank you for proving my point.

Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look in constantly accusing those who disagree with you of being knowing tools of Vladimir Putin? Do you have any idea how immature and odd that makes you look?

Then again, you are the one who has stated several times in this forum that the West lost the Cold War and that Russia won it. That is akin to saying that George McGovern won the 1972 election. One could infer that your grip on reality is open to question.

[Tom Graves]

Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look in constantly accusing those who disagree with you of being knowing tools of Vladimir Putin?

Dear Comrade Griffith,

Where did I say that tinfoil-hat JFKA conspiracy theorists like you are necessarily "knowing tools" of "former" KGB counterintelligence officer Vladimir Putin?

Don't you know the definition of "useful idiot"?

Maybe you should look it up.

It's an old KGB expression.

Or . . . gasp . . . are you actually a knowing tool of his?

If so, please fess up!


Bottom line: Whether you realize it or not, you and Jim DiEugenio, et al. ad nauseam, are doing a bang-up job of fulfilling the 1959 21st Party Congress' goal of getting us to tear ourselves apart.


-- Tom

[Michael T. Griffith]

Dear Comrade Griffith, Where did I say that tinfoil-hat JFKA conspiracy theorists like you are necessarily "knowing tools" of "former" KGB counterintelligence officer Vladimir Putin? Don't you know the definition of "useful idiot"? Maybe you should look it up. It's an old KGB expression. Or . . . gasp . . . are you actually a knowing tool of his? If so, please fess up!

Your arguments sound like they come from a teenager and suggest a lack of knowledge of basic logic and English. When you ask if WC critics are being paid by Putin or if they're doing it for free, you are clearly arguing that they know they are doing Putin's bidding, whether for pay or for free.

Bottom line: Whether you realize it or not, you and Jim DiEugenio, et al. ad nauseam, are doing a bang-up job of fulfilling the 1959 21st Party Congress' goal of getting us to tear ourselves apart. -- Tom

Oh my goodness. This is just so bizarre and ridiculous. So anyone who disagrees with you on the JFK case is fulfilling the 1959 Soviet goal of getting us to tear ourselves apart? Uh-huh. Well, thanks for sharing.

Did it "tear ourselves apart" when the Iran-Contra conspiracy was exposed, a conspiracy that occurred on three continents, involved hundreds of participants (most of whom had no idea they were aiding a conspiracy), and reached up to the highest levels of our government? How about when Watergate was exposed? How about when the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro were exposed? Did exposing these conspiracies "tear ourselves apart"? Do you wish they had never been exposed?

Honestly, in your case these are rhetorical questions. I can only imagine the zany answer you will offer. I pose the questions mainly for the sake of others.

[Lance Payette]

All the Milteer stuff is nicely gathered here: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Predictions_of_Joseph_Milteer.html.

No one denies that Milteer's statements to Somersett were startling, especially the part about picking up a patsy within hours. So were some of JFK's own statements about the possibility of being assassinated. So is the bogus factoid of "Lee H. Oswald's" signature at the Museum of Atomic Energy. The article from McAdams' site that I linked puts some context on Milteer's statements that make them seem somewhat less startling - but they were indeed startling, no doubt about it.

I simply raised two commonsense questions: (1) If someone actually had foreknowledge about an impending assassination of the POTUS, would he be likely to speak freely about it to a character like Somersett, and (2) would he be standing in full view at the scene of the crime? You are free to answer yes, but I tend to think probably not.

Let's apply some additional common sense:

Milteer was a high-profile, right-wing racist. He was a member of the notoriously violent Dixie faction of the KKK. He was active and prominent in the right-wing, racist Congress of Freedom, National States Rights Party and Constitution Party. As a member of the latter's board of directors, he had helped formulate plans "to put an end to the Kennedy, King, Khrushchev dictatorship over our nation.” Somersett described him as "the most violent man I know."

1. If you were planning an assassination of JFK, does Milteer sound like the sort of character you would bring into the loop and trust with your plans? Your kitchen-sink conspiracy theory at the Ed Forum has LBJ, the Secret Service, the Mafia, rogue elements of the CIA, and rogue elements of the military as participants - do you seriously think they'd bring Milteer into the loop?

2. If you think Milteer was actually front-and-center in the assassination planning, doesn't this pretty well lock you into a conspiracy theory quite different from LBJ, the Secret Service, the Mafia, rogue elements of the CIA, and rogue elements of the military?

What I notice about CTers is they never seem to care if their conspiracy nuggets hang together or make any coherent sense. Milteer is just "proof of a conspiracy" in some generic, free-floating way. Try to fit him plausibly into an actual conspiracy theory and you hit a brick wall.

Because there actually were rumors of an attempt on JFK in Miami, my guess is that Milteer may have been plugged into those but that this simply had nothing to do with the JFKA. I always have in the back of my mind Gerry Patrick Hemming's statement, "I know for a fact plans to kill JFK were in the works. Maybe Oswald just beat 'em to it." (A paraphrase - he said something pretty close to that.)

[Tom Graves]

Did it "tear ourselves apart" when the Iran-Contra conspiracy was exposed, a conspiracy that occurred on three continents, involved hundreds of participants (most of whom had no idea they were aiding a conspiracy), and reached up to the highest levels of our government? How about when Watergate was exposed? How about when the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro were exposed? Did exposing these conspiracies "tear ourselves apart"? Do you wish they had never been exposed?

Honestly, in your case these are rhetorical questions. I can only imagine the zany answer you will offer. I pose the questions mainly for the sake of others.

You're right, Comrade Griffith.

The KGB* is a world-class humanitarian organization compared to the evil, evil CIA.

*Today's SVR and FSB

The following is an excerpt from Edward J. Epstein’s 1989 book, Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA.

My comments are in brackets.

. . . . . . .

[Expounding on the probability that the Sino-Soviet Split was a ruse, as KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn had tried to warn U.S. Intelligence, Angleton said,] “We started using a kind of a ‘barium test’ in which intelligence was especially concocted so that it could be traced as it was passed from one intelligence service to another, and the CIA had been able to determine that the Soviets passed messages they intercepted through their Pacific signals satellite concerning the location of American ships in Korean waters to North Korean intelligence. This sort of cooperation had continued, according to Angleton's sources, up until the shrine bombing. ‘Remember, the North Koreans needed, and got, very exact communication intelligence.’" Angleton then abruptly changed the subject to EDWIN WILSON [emphasis added], the former CIA officer who had been arrested for diverting American technology to Libya. It was less of a digression from the subject at hand than it initially seemed. Wilson, lured by the prospect of making tens of millions of dollars, had gone to work for the Libyans in the early 1970s. Among other matters, he undertook to help organize covert activities for the Libyan intelligence service. To this end, he used his CIA contacts to buy the instruments of assassination, including a special CIA mixture of plastic explosives called "C-4," miniaturized timers used by the CIA, and unregistered weapons stolen from special forces arsenals, and then smuggle them into Libya. He even imported an entire sophisticated bomb factory, which had previously been used exclusively by the CIA to manufacture booby-trapped ashtrays that could innocently sit on a table for months until the target arrived and then be detonated from a remote location. He also recruited ex-CIA assassins, explosive experts, and couriers to work for him in Libya, leading them to believe that they were still working for the CIA when in fact they were working for the Libyan intelligence service. The first three targets of Wilson's assassins were Libyan exiles living in Egypt and France.

"It was a clever enough false flag recruitment," Angleton continued, with a glint of admiration for the opposition. Behind Wilson's bogus CIA flag was the Libyan intelligence service, which was paying Wilson; and behind this Libyan flag of convenience, whether or not Wilson entirely realized it, was an old KGB hand, Karl Hanesch, whose career Angleton had closely followed. Hanesch had been working for the KGB on deception projects for over a quarter of a century and had specialized in arranging politically embarrassing false flag assassinations in Germany. When Qaddafi came to power in 1966, Hanesch was transferred from the East German intelligence service to the Libyan intelligence service, where he became their key security adviser. It was, according to communication intercepts, a part of the Soviet bloc arrangement to provide intelligence aid to Libya. Hanesch wasted little time in developing Wilson as a plausible "flag" for compromising others in American intelligence.

One of his first recruits was Waldo H. Dubberstein, a top-level CIA analyst who transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he prepared the daily intelligence briefing for the Secretary of Defense. Dubberstein, who sold Wilson documents that were of interest to Soviet as well as Libyan intelligence — and who committed suicide in 1980 after being exposed — further demonstrated the coordination between the KGB and the Libyan service. Then, through Wilson's CIA connections, Hanesch was able to assemble all the necessary components for assassinating targets with CIA personnel and materials. But why go to the expense and risk of smuggling them in from the United States? These tools of terrorism were readily available in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, or the Soviet Union at a fraction of the price, and they were just as effective. Angleton's answer was that there could be only one plausible purpose for assembling this extraordinary American-equipped apparatus: "To ghost murder trails leading to the doorstep of the CIA." The unique value of Wilson's C-4 explosives, timers, detonators, and ashtrays was their "signatures." They would indicate to investigators that the assassinations carried out with these devices were the work of the CIA. In addition, in the event that Wilson's ex-CIA operatives were apprehended, they would further implicate the CIA (especially since they believed that they were still employed by the CIA). It would be a no-win situation for the Agency if the investigation became public. Even if the CIA could successfully exonerate itself from the assassination charges by showing it had been framed, it would have to explain manufacturing exploding ashtrays and employing free-lance assassins, which could prove almost as embarrassing.

Angleton's fascination with this complex case, and his point, was that the Wilson Affair was not exclusively the work of the Libyans. It was the product of well-orchestrated and solid coordination between the KGB, the East German security services, and Qaddafi's intelligence services. The purpose of this coordination, in his view, was for the Soviets to use the Libyans, who were perceived as fanatic and wild, as a front in case the assassinations went wrong. It was now clear what he was driving at. Had there been the same sort of coordination at the shrine in Burma? Had his counterintelligence staff been able to establish through barium tests, marked cards, double agents, or other means the extent of this relationship?

He did not answer directly. Instead, he said elliptically, "It's too complicated to get into," which was his way of saying he did not want to discuss a subject. Then, to my surprise, he added, with some weariness in his voice: "It is a shame you never got those questions answered." It took a few minutes before I realized that he was referring to the questions he had dictated in 1976 for me to ask Nosenko. When I returned to New York the next day, I searched for and found his thirteen questions. They were scrawled on 3 by 5 cards in my Nosenko file. I recalled that Angleton had reeled them off after many brandies and, at the time, they seemed to make little sense. Now, as I rearranged them, I could see the thread running through them.

ANGLETON’S QUESTIONS FOR NOSENKO

1) What happened to Rumyanstev when he tried to defect to the U.S. in 1959? Why did you omit this in your debriefing in 1964?

2) Is there rivalry between the KGB's First and Second Chief Directorates?

3) To what extent did the Second Chief Directorate know the operations of the Thirteenth Department of the First Chief Directorate?

4) What would Department Thirteen have known regarding Oswald's defection?Would General Rodin have known?

5) What happens when the Second Chief Directorate recruits an agent who returned to the West? Is he jointly handled?

6) Is an agent recruited by the Second Chief Directorate who is of value prepared to be handled by a stranger? Would this be true of an ideological agent as well as a mercenary agent?

7) To what extent do the First and Second Directorates coordinate the activities of foreign services?

8 ) Why was a KGB officer named S-h-i-t-o-v sent to Cuba as the first Soviet Ambassador, under the pseudonym Alexiev?

9) What was his role, if any, in coordinating Soviet and Cuban intelligence operations?

10. Oswald was issued an entrance visa to Cuba from Havana after he returned to the United States. Would this require the prior approval of the Second Chief Directorate?

11 . If so, would it be arranged in Moscow or Havana? If the latter, would a Second Chief Directorate officer be called on to participate in the decision?

12. [CIA traitor] Philip Agee went to Cuba under aliases four times while writing his book. Would he have seen Soviet intelligence in Moscow? Would these meetings be coordinated with the KGB? Why was Colonel Semenov, who knew Agee in Uruguay, there during Agee's trips?

13. What was Korovin [General Rodin] doing in London in 1961?

. . . . . . .

The first question was no more than a trap question. Rumyanstev had been a KGB officer in the Second Chief Directorate in 1959 who attempted to defect to the CIA at the American Exhibition in Moscow but was caught because he approached a KGB officer at the exhibition who spoke fluent English and was masquerading as an American official. He was executed in 1960 (although the CIA only learned about the aborted defection from another defector in 1963). Since Nosenko claimed to have worked on the Oswald case in the same small unit of the KGB's Second Chief Directorate as Rumyanstev in1959, he would have been well aware of what had happened. Yet he had not mentioned the incident to the CIA when he was debriefed in either 1962 or 1964. Angleton wanted to know how Nosenko explained this gap.

The purpose of the next question had been explained to me by Golitsyn. It would have been standard procedure in the KGB for the First Chief Directorate's Department Thirteen [in charge of assassinations and sabotage abroad] to consult with Nosenko's Second Chief Directorate Department if Oswald had approached one of its officers [e.g., Valery Kostikov at the Mexico City Consulate, who may or may not have been an officer in Department 13]. Nosenko claimed, after all, that his department had originally handled the Oswald case in Moscow, and, two months before the assassination of President Kennedy, the CIA had intercepted a telephone call in Mexico City in which Oswald was making contact with Sergei Kostikov, an officer in Department Thirteen. Angleton's questions were thus designed to force Nosenko to acknowledge that he and his department would have to have been aware of any relationship between Oswald that had developed, since Oswald would have been jointly handled.

The next three questions appeared aimed at focusing

Nosenko on Department Thirteen, and specifically on assassinations. As Stephen de Mowbray had explained to me in London, a defector from Department Thirteen had told British intelligence that its job was conducting "wet affairs," which was a euphemism for assassinations and sabotage. Angleton had been interested in the KGB's capacity for organizing assassinations since the explosion experts in the CIA's Scientific and Technical Division traced the explosive used to destroy the airplane that flew UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold from Africa to East Germany in 1961. The sixth question was Angleton' s key to the relationship he sought. Before and after Oswald had contacted the Soviet Embassy, he had contacted Cuban Embassy officials in Mexico, who would have been considered "strangers." Golitsyn had insisted that if Oswald had been recruited by the Second Chief Directorate, especially as an ideological agent, it would not turn him over to be handled by Cuban "strangers" — ^unless it had a role in the activity. Angleton evidently believed Oswald's shuttling between the Cubans and Soviets in Mexico City required cooperation, especially since Oswald was eventually telegraphed a visa by the Cuban Foreign Ministry in Havana.

His next five questions aimed at further exploring the coordination that would be necessary between the KGB and the Cuban intelligence service for this to happen. His twelfth question apparently was meant to prod Nosenko into talking about Soviet coordination of Communist intelligence services. Angleton believed that Philip Agee was a case in point, as he told me on another occasion. According to Angleton's view, Agee had been initially recruited by the KGB while he was serving with the CIA in Montevideo, Uruguay. His recruiter was Colonel Semenov, the Soviet military attache in Uruguay. After Agee was forced out of the CIA, the KGB used him to embarrass the CIA by publishing exposes. But so as to afford itself "a modicum of distance," as Angleton put it, the KGB worked through the DGI, the Cuban intelligence service. Even so, whenever Agee made his visits to the DGI in Havana, Semenov was sent to Havana to oversee the joint operation. Angleton's final question about the 1961 activities of "Korovin" addressed the same pattern. "Korovin" was the pseudonym General Rodin used on his diplomatic passport during his tour of duty in Britain in the early 1960s. Rodin, as head of the London station of the Thirteenth Department of the First Chief Directorate, was directly responsible for the operations of Kostikov in Mexico, and therefore would have had to authorize any contacts Kostikov had with Oswald. And Nosenko had claimed to have examined the relevant file after Oswald had contacted Kostikov in 1963. Rodin's London station was apparently of great interest to Angleton. According to a 1971 defector, Rodin insulated the Soviet Union from blame in Britain and Germany by employing the Bulgarian intelligence service or other cooperative intelligence services to carry out the actual murders. Angleton no doubt wanted through this line of questioning to lead Nosenko to describe how Department Thirteen arranged these joint operations.

After reviewing these curious questions for nearly a week, and the bits and pieces that seemed to fill in the gaps, I telephoned Angleton. As he had done many times in the past, he refused to talk about Oswald. When I began to tell him my interpretation of the questions, he abruptly cut me off, saying they were "water over the dam" and that I should "forget them" — as if I could. I never understood whether his questions were really intended for Nosenko or me, or whether they were merely an inebriated outburst.

[Lance Payette]

You're right, Comrade Griffith.

The KGB* is a world-class humanitarian organization compared to the evil, evil CIA.

*Today's SVR and FSB

The following is an excerpt from Edward J. Epstein’s 1989 book, Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA.

My comments are in brackets.

. . . . . . .

[Expounding on the probability that the Sino-Soviet Split was a ruse, as KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn had tried to warn U.S. Intelligence, Angleton said,] “We started using a kind of a ‘barium test’ in which intelligence was especially concocted so that it could be traced as it was passed from one intelligence service to another, and the CIA had been able to determine that the Soviets passed messages they intercepted through their Pacific signals satellite concerning the location of American ships in Korean waters to North Korean intelligence. This sort of cooperation had continued, according to Angleton's sources, up until the shrine bombing. ‘Remember, the North Koreans needed, and got, very exact communication intelligence.’" Angleton then abruptly changed the subject to EDWIN WILSON [emphasis added], the former CIA officer who had been arrested for diverting American technology to Libya. It was less of a digression from the subject at hand than it initially seemed. Wilson, lured by the prospect of making tens of millions of dollars, had gone to work for the Libyans in the early 1970s. Among other matters, he undertook to help organize covert activities for the Libyan intelligence service. To this end, he used his CIA contacts to buy the instruments of assassination, including a special CIA mixture of plastic explosives called "C-4," miniaturized timers used by the CIA, and unregistered weapons stolen from special forces arsenals, and then smuggle them into Libya. He even imported an entire sophisticated bomb factory, which had previously been used exclusively by the CIA to manufacture booby-trapped ashtrays that could innocently sit on a table for months until the target arrived and then be detonated from a remote location. He also recruited ex-CIA assassins, explosive experts, and couriers to work for him in Libya, leading them to believe that they were still working for the CIA when in fact they were working for the Libyan intelligence service. The first three targets of Wilson's assassins were Libyan exiles living in Egypt and France.

"It was a clever enough false flag recruitment," Angleton continued, with a glint of admiration for the opposition. Behind Wilson's bogus CIA flag was the Libyan intelligence service, which was paying Wilson; and behind this Libyan flag of convenience, whether or not Wilson entirely realized it, was an old KGB hand, Karl Hanesch, whose career Angleton had closely followed. Hanesch had been working for the KGB on deception projects for over a quarter of a century and had specialized in arranging politically embarrassing false flag assassinations in Germany. When Qaddafi came to power in 1966, Hanesch was transferred from the East German intelligence service to the Libyan intelligence service, where he became their key security adviser. It was, according to communication intercepts, a part of the Soviet bloc arrangement to provide intelligence aid to Libya. Hanesch wasted little time in developing Wilson as a plausible "flag" for compromising others in American intelligence.

One of his first recruits was Waldo H. Dubberstein, a top-level CIA analyst who transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he prepared the daily intelligence briefing for the Secretary of Defense. Dubberstein, who sold Wilson documents that were of interest to Soviet as well as Libyan intelligence — and who committed suicide in 1980 after being exposed — further demonstrated the coordination between the KGB and the Libyan service. Then, through Wilson's CIA connections, Hanesch was able to assemble all the necessary components for assassinating targets with CIA personnel and materials. But why go to the expense and risk of smuggling them in from the United States? These tools of terrorism were readily available in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, or the Soviet Union at a fraction of the price, and they were just as effective. Angleton's answer was that there could be only one plausible purpose for assembling this extraordinary American-equipped apparatus: "To ghost murder trails leading to the doorstep of the CIA." The unique value of Wilson's C-4 explosives, timers, detonators, and ashtrays was their "signatures." They would indicate to investigators that the assassinations carried out with these devices were the work of the CIA. In addition, in the event that Wilson's ex-CIA operatives were apprehended, they would further implicate the CIA (especially since they believed that they were still employed by the CIA). It would be a no-win situation for the Agency if the investigation became public. Even if the CIA could successfully exonerate itself from the assassination charges by showing it had been framed, it would have to explain manufacturing exploding ashtrays and employing free-lance assassins, which could prove almost as embarrassing.

Angleton's fascination with this complex case, and his point, was that the Wilson Affair was not exclusively the work of the Libyans. It was the product of well-orchestrated and solid coordination between the KGB, the East German security services, and Qaddafi's intelligence services. The purpose of this coordination, in his view, was for the Soviets to use the Libyans, who were perceived as fanatic and wild, as a front in case the assassinations went wrong. It was now clear what he was driving at. Had there been the same sort of coordination at the shrine in Burma? Had his counterintelligence staff been able to establish through barium tests, marked cards, double agents, or other means the extent of this relationship?

He did not answer directly. Instead, he said elliptically, "It's too complicated to get into," which was his way of saying he did not want to discuss a subject. Then, to my surprise, he added, with some weariness in his voice: "It is a shame you never got those questions answered." It took a few minutes before I realized that he was referring to the questions he had dictated in 1976 for me to ask Nosenko. When I returned to New York the next day, I searched for and found his thirteen questions. They were scrawled on 3 by 5 cards in my Nosenko file. I recalled that Angleton had reeled them off after many brandies and, at the time, they seemed to make little sense. Now, as I rearranged them, I could see the thread running through them.

ANGLETON’S QUESTIONS FOR NOSENKO

1) What happened to Rumyanstev when he tried to defect to the U.S. in 1959? Why did you omit this in your debriefing in 1964?

2) Is there rivalry between the KGB's First and Second Chief Directorates?

3) To what extent did the Second Chief Directorate know the operations of the Thirteenth Department of the First Chief Directorate?

4) What would Department Thirteen have known regarding Oswald's defection?Would General Rodin have known?

5) What happens when the Second Chief Directorate recruits an agent who returned to the West? Is he jointly handled?

6) Is an agent recruited by the Second Chief Directorate who is of value prepared to be handled by a stranger? Would this be true of an ideological agent as well as a mercenary agent?

7) To what extent do the First and Second Directorates coordinate the activities of foreign services?

Why was a KGB officer named spombleprofglidnoctobunsov sent to Cuba as the first Soviet Ambassador, under the pseudonym Alexiev?

9) What was his role, if any, in coordinating Soviet and Cuban intelligence operations?

10. Oswald was issued an entrance visa to Cuba from Havana after he returned to the United States. Would this require the prior approval of the Second Chief Directorate?

11 . If so, would it be arranged in Moscow or Havana? If the latter, would a Second Chief Directorate officer be called on to participate in the decision?

12. [CIA traitor] Philip Agee went to Cuba under aliases four times while writing his book. Would he have seen Soviet intelligence in Moscow? Would these meetings be coordinated with the KGB? Why was Colonel Semenov, who knew Agee in Uruguay, there during Agee's trips?

13. What was Korovin [General Rodin] doing in London in 1961?

. . . . . . .

The first question was no more than a trap question. Rumyanstev had been a KGB officer in the Second Chief Directorate in 1959 who attempted to defect to the CIA at the American Exhibition in Moscow but was caught because he approached a KGB officer at the exhibition who spoke fluent English and was masquerading as an American official. He was executed in 1960 (although the CIA only learned about the aborted defection from another defector in 1963). Since Nosenko claimed to have worked on the Oswald case in the same small unit of the KGB's Second Chief Directorate as Rumyanstev in1959, he would have been well aware of what had happened. Yet he had not mentioned the incident to the CIA when he was debriefed in either 1962 or 1964. Angleton wanted to know how Nosenko explained this gap.

The purpose of the next question had been explained to me by Golitsyn. It would have been standard procedure in the KGB for the First Chief Directorate's Department Thirteen [in charge of assassinations and sabotage abroad] to consult with Nosenko's Second Chief Directorate Department if Oswald had approached one of its officers [e.g., Valery Kostikov at the Mexico City Consulate, who may or may not have been an officer in Department 13]. Nosenko claimed, after all, that his department had originally handled the Oswald case in Moscow, and, two months before the assassination of President Kennedy, the CIA had intercepted a telephone call in Mexico City in which Oswald was making contact with Sergei Kostikov, an officer in Department Thirteen. Angleton's questions were thus designed to force Nosenko to acknowledge that he and his department would have to have been aware of any relationship between Oswald that had developed, since Oswald would have been jointly handled.

The next three questions appeared aimed at focusing

Nosenko on Department Thirteen, and specifically on assassinations. As Stephen de Mowbray had explained to me in London, a defector from Department Thirteen had told British intelligence that its job was conducting "wet affairs," which was a euphemism for assassinations and sabotage. Angleton had been interested in the KGB's capacity for organizing assassinations since the explosion experts in the CIA's Scientific and Technical Division traced the explosive used to destroy the airplane that flew UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold from Africa to East Germany in 1961. The sixth question was Angleton' s key to the relationship he sought. Before and after Oswald had contacted the Soviet Embassy, he had contacted Cuban Embassy officials in Mexico, who would have been considered "strangers." Golitsyn had insisted that if Oswald had been recruited by the Second Chief Directorate, especially as an ideological agent, it would not turn him over to be handled by Cuban "strangers" — ^unless it had a role in the activity. Angleton evidently believed Oswald's shuttling between the Cubans and Soviets in Mexico City required cooperation, especially since Oswald was eventually telegraphed a visa by the Cuban Foreign Ministry in Havana.

His next five questions aimed at further exploring the coordination that would be necessary between the KGB and the Cuban intelligence service for this to happen. His twelfth question apparently was meant to prod Nosenko into talking about Soviet coordination of Communist intelligence services. Angleton believed that Philip Agee was a case in point, as he told me on another occasion. According to Angleton's view, Agee had been initially recruited by the KGB while he was serving with the CIA in Montevideo, Uruguay. His recruiter was Colonel Semenov, the Soviet military attache in Uruguay. After Agee was forced out of the CIA, the KGB used him to embarrass the CIA by publishing exposes. But so as to afford itself "a modicum of distance," as Angleton put it, the KGB worked through the DGI, the Cuban intelligence service. Even so, whenever Agee made his visits to the DGI in Havana, Semenov was sent to Havana to oversee the joint operation. Angleton's final question about the 1961 activities of "Korovin" addressed the same pattern. "Korovin" was the pseudonym General Rodin used on his diplomatic passport during his tour of duty in Britain in the early 1960s. Rodin, as head of the London station of the Thirteenth Department of the First Chief Directorate, was directly responsible for the operations of Kostikov in Mexico, and therefore would have had to authorize any contacts Kostikov had with Oswald. And Nosenko had claimed to have examined the relevant file after Oswald had contacted Kostikov in 1963. Rodin's London station was apparently of great interest to Angleton. According to a 1971 defector, Rodin insulated the Soviet Union from blame in Britain and Germany by employing the Bulgarian intelligence service or other cooperative intelligence services to carry out the actual murders. Angleton no doubt wanted through this line of questioning to lead Nosenko to describe how Department Thirteen arranged these joint operations.

After reviewing these curious questions for nearly a week, and the bits and pieces that seemed to fill in the gaps, I telephoned Angleton. As he had done many times in the past, he refused to talk about Oswald. When I began to tell him my interpretation of the questions, he abruptly cut me off, saying they were "water over the dam" and that I should "forget them" — as if I could. I never understood whether his questions were really intended for Nosenko or me, or whether they were merely an inebriated outburst.

I must agree with Michael as to how tiresome this becomes. Give it a rest.