My Amazon review of John M. Newman's "Uncovering Popov's Mole"

[Tom Graves]

Professor Newman is a former high-level Army Intelligence analyst and executive assistant to a Director of the NSA. His book, "Uncovering Popov's Mole," is full of important information regarding how the KGB successfully carried out the Kremlin's 1959, Sun Tzu-inspired "Master Plan" to zombify the CIA and the FBI. Specifically, it lays out a compelling case that Bruce Leonard Solie, a high-level officer in CIA's Office of Security, was probably a KGB “mole,” who, knowing that he would have to conduct a search for the "mole" whom GRU Lt. Col. Pyotr Popov had told his handler, George Kisevalter, about in April of 1958, probably sent (or duped CIA's Counterintelligence chief, James Angleton, into sending) Lee Harvey Oswald to Moscow in late 1959 as a "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 lasted nine years, tore the Soviet Russia Division apart, and drove Angleton nuts.

Although I disagree with Professor Newman's conclusion that some high-level military officers killed JFK because he refused to nuke Moscow and Peking in 1963 and that they somehow got Oswald to incriminate himself, Khrushchev and Castro for the assassination, I think he's spot-on in his assessment that Solie was very probably a KGB mole and that he was instrumental in the sending of Oswald to Moscow.

In “Uncovering Popov’s Mole,” Newman tells us about he discovered some of Solie’s old travel documents on a genealogical website (which his publisher refused to publish in the book because they were too faint, but which can be viewed at Newman’s website). These travel docs show that Solie flew to Beirut in February of 1957, probably to meet with Kim Philby (who had moved there six months earlier) so he could learn from The Master how best to manipulate Angleton. These travel documents also tell us that a few months after KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn defected to the U.S. in December 1961, Solie flew to Paris twice within thirty days on very short visits. The first time was apparently to communicate to Nosenko’s boss, General Oleg Gribanov, via highly-placed KGB moles in French intelligence and a high-level KGB officer by the name of Mikhail Tsymbal -- who flew from Geneva to Paris precisely when Solie did -- what Golitsyn had been telling Angleton about possible KGB penetrations of the CIA, the FBI, and the intelligence services of our NATO allies (and which Angleton had naively shared with his confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior, Solie). Newman says Solie did this so that Gribanov could update Nosenko's “legend” for his upcoming Golitsyn-discrediting "walk in" in Geneva in June of 1962. The second time, about a month later, was evidently to tell those French moles and Tsymbal what he’d learned from Nosenko when he dropped in at the Geneva safe house during the fifth-and-final meeting between the putative KGB staff officer, Bagley and Kisevalter, to ostensibly ask Nosenko about the codenames that Golitsyn had told Angleton about. In his 2007 Yale University Press book, “Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games,” Bagley says Nosenko "drew a blank” on these codenames -- which, if one believes Nosenko was a false defector, isn’t surprising. One can almost hear the false defector's saying to himself, "Thanks for the heads-up, Comrade Solie!”

As to whether or not Solie was sufficiently high-level to make the decisions Newman attributes to him regarding Oswald's being sent to Moscow, he was Deputy Chief of the Office of Security's Security Research Staff and Chief of its mole-hunting Research Branch. Since the chief of SRS, Paul Gaynor, was busy working on projects Bluebird and Artichoke, Solie was free to arrange in advance with the Records Integration Division and the Office of Mail Logistics for the rerouting of the anticipated non-CIA cables regarding Oswald's upcoming defection to the SRS rather than to where they would normally go – the Soviet Russia Division. In his 1995/2008 book, “Oswald and the CIA,” Newman pointed out that these incoming cables disappeared into a “black hole” in the SRS didn’t resurface until at least six months later -- and that some of them didn’t show up until after the JFK assassination.

In his book, Newman points out that when his colleague, British JFK assassination researcher and National Archives habitué, Malcolm Blunt, showed Bagley some CIA documents in 2012 or so that Bagley hadn't been privy to in 1959-60, Bagley realized that Oswald had to have been a "witting defector," i.e., that Oswald was knowingly sent to Moscow by the CIA.

What Newman (who dedicated his book to Bagley) has shown us is that he probably wasn't sent there by the CIA proper, but by a KGB-controlled part of it.

There's lots more in “Uncovering Popov’s Mole” than this, but hopefully this will sufficiently pique your interest to buy the book and read it.

Fourteen people found my previous version of this review "helpful." I hope you find this more refined version at least equally helpful.

-- Thomas Graves

. . . . . . .

PS Something that I forgot to include in my review is that Newman is not only convinced that Nosenko was a false defector-in-place in Geneva in June 1962, but is thankful to Bagley for writing in his 2007 book, Spy Wars, that Solie "cleared" Nosenko in October 1968 via a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report.

[Benjamin Cole]

"Professor Newman's conclusion that some high-level military officers killed JFK"

Could you amplify this sentence? What does Newman believe?

I live in Thailand and cannot get copies of Newman's work

I have also been wondering about LHO being run by KGB.

From Victor Marchetti long time ago---


 “A May 15, 1973, memo in the files of researcher Richard Popkin recounts a conversation with former CIA official Victor Marchetti in which Marchetti reportedly offered "a theory he claimed to have heard that fits with his own picture of the chaos in the CIA; namely that the KGB has infiltrated the CIA and the CIA has infiltrated the KGB so it is impossible at the present stage to tell who is who (he mentioned a case of having been sent to meet somebody and being shown all sorts of identification and then being totally unable to tell whether he was dealing with a U.S. or Russian agent). Marchetti thinks it is the KGB branch of the CIA that killed Kennedy and that the U.S. CIA is too embarrassed to investigate and reveal the real state of affairs."      

[Tom Graves]

"Professor Newman's conclusion that some high-level military officers killed JFK"

Could you amplify this sentence? What does Newman believe?

I live in Thailand and cannot get copies of Newman's work

I have also been wondering about LHO being run by KGB.

From Victor Marchetti long time ago---


 “A May 15, 1973, memo in the files of researcher Richard Popkin recounts a conversation with former CIA official Victor Marchetti in which Marchetti reportedly offered "a theory he claimed to have heard that fits with his own picture of the chaos in the CIA; namely that the KGB has infiltrated the CIA and the CIA has infiltrated the KGB so it is impossible at the present stage to tell who is who (he mentioned a case of having been sent to meet somebody and being shown all sorts of identification and then being totally unable to tell whether he was dealing with a U.S. or Russian agent). Marchetti thinks it is the KGB branch of the CIA that killed Kennedy and that the U.S. CIA is too embarrassed to investigate and reveal the real state of affairs."

As I understand "Uncovering Popov's Mole," Newman seems to think that some evil high-level military guys (with help from some evil high-level CIA guys) who wanted the U.S. to nuke Moscow and Peking in November of 1963 (because they believed that the USSR and China would soon be overtaking the U.S. in nuclear weapons), took advantage of Solie's false mole hunt to get rid of JFK in such a way as to implicate Oswald and thereby implicate Khrushchev and Castro for the assassination.

Regardless, I know one thing for sure -- Newman relies on what I consider to be a bogus source -- KGB "defector" Sergei Papushin -- for his conclusion that Oswald was effectively an agent of the Byelorussian KGB while he was in Minsk (he mistakenly says "Ukrainian KGB" in the book).

One problem I have with Newman's theory that Bruce Solie sent (or duped his confidant, mentor, 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 is that the reason for Solie's doing that -- Popov's telling (imho probable "mole" Kisevalter) in West Berlin in April 1958 -- a year-and-a-half before Oswald left active duty -- that he'd recently heard a drunken GRU Colonel brag that the Kremlin had all of the top-secret specifications of the U-2. In short, I wonder if Solie would have taken a year-and-a-half to send Oswald (or anyone else who was connected to the U-2 program) to Moscow to help save Solie's hide from being uncovered. Newman says Oswald had to learn the Russian language first, but I wonder if that was really necessary if all he had to do was go to the American Embassy late on a Saturday morning, "try" to renounce his citizenship, and state to (probable CIA officer) Richard Snyder and the hidden KGB microphones that he planned to give the Soviets "something of special interest."

Why can't you get Newman's book in Thailand?

[Tom Graves]

"Professor Newman's conclusion that some high-level military officers killed JFK"

Could you amplify this sentence? What does Newman believe?

I live in Thailand and cannot get copies of Newman's work

I have also been wondering about LHO being run by KGB.

From Victor Marchetti long time ago---


 “A May 15, 1973, memo in the files of researcher Richard Popkin recounts a conversation with former CIA official Victor Marchetti in which Marchetti reportedly offered "a theory he claimed to have heard that fits with his own picture of the chaos in the CIA; namely that the KGB has infiltrated the CIA and the CIA has infiltrated the KGB so it is impossible at the present stage to tell who is who (he mentioned a case of having been sent to meet somebody and being shown all sorts of identification and then being totally unable to tell whether he was dealing with a U.S. or Russian agent). Marchetti thinks it is the KGB branch of the CIA that killed Kennedy and that the U.S. CIA is too embarrassed to investigate and reveal the real state of affairs."

(Edited)

As I understand "Uncovering Popov's Mole," Newman seems to think that some evil high-level military guys (with help from some evil high-level CIA guys) who wanted the U.S. to nuke Moscow and Peking in November of 1963 (because they believed that the USSR and China would soon be overtaking the U.S. in nuclear weapons), took advantage of Solie's false mole hunt to get rid of JFK in such a way as to implicate Oswald and thereby implicate Khrushchev and Castro for the assassination.

Regardless, I know one thing for sure -- Newman relies on what I consider to be a bogus source -- KGB "defector" Sergei Papushin -- for his conclusion that Oswald was effectively an agent of the Byelorussian KGB while he was in Minsk (he mistakenly says "Ukrainian KGB" in the book).

One problem I have with Newman's theory that Bruce Solie sent (or duped his confidant, mentor, 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 is that the reason for Solie's doing that -- Popov's telling (imho probable "mole" Kisevalter) in West Berlin in April 1958 -- a year-and-a-half before Oswald left active duty -- that he'd recently heard a drunken GRU Colonel brag that the Kremlin had all of the top-secret specifications of the U-2. In short, I wonder if Solie would have taken a year-and-a-half to send Oswald (or anyone else who was connected to the U-2 program) to Moscow to help save Solie's hide from being uncovered. Newman says Oswald had to learn the Russian language first, but I wonder if that was really necessary if all he had to do was go to the American Embassy late on a Saturday morning, "try" to renounce his citizenship, and state to (probable CIA officer) Richard Snyder and the hidden KGB microphones that he planned to give the Soviets "something of special interest."

Newman makes a big deal out of Vice Consul John McVickar's finding out two months before Oswald did that he would be sent to the electronics factory in Minsk, and his (apparently falsely) attributing that bit of intel to what Patricia Johnson had learned during her 16 November interview of Oswald and had failed to share with him that evening during dinner, but had allegedly told him about at some point between the 16th and the 19th. Newman says McVickar's source must have been a Ruskie.

Hmm . . . One wonders if McVickar was the target of a KGB or a KGB-controlled CIA barium meal?

It's also interesting to note that in November 1956, Priscilla was in contact with a KGB "mole" in the CIA by the name of Army Major Alexander Sogolow (who, ironically, was the boss of Golitsyn's mole SASHA -- Igor Orlov / Alexander Kopatzky / Franz Koischwitz -- in the 1950s) in Frankfurt while she was on her way to Moscow the first(?) time.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/180-10143-10230.pdf

Why can't you get Newman's book in Thailand?

[Benjamin Cole]

Long story short, I am a pensioner, and recently Thai-US governments took away mobile banking capacities from pensioners.

The concern (I think) is that pensioners have died, and relatives/people are still collecting the money. I  have to physically visit my bank, show passport, to withdraw funds. And so on.

[Tom Graves]

Long story short, I am a pensioner, and recently Thai-US governments took away mobile banking capacities from pensioners.

The concern (I think) is that pensioners have died, and relatives/people are still collecting the money. I  have to physically visit my bank, show passport, to withdraw funds. And so on.

I guess I won't be relocating to Thailand, then.

I just now reedited my post a bit as regards Priscilla Johnson, so you may want to reread it.

[Tom Graves]

From Victor Marchetti long time ago:

“A May 15, 1973, memo in the files of researcher Richard Popkin recounts a conversation with former CIA official Victor Marchetti in which Marchetti reportedly offered "a theory he claimed to have heard that fits with his own picture of the chaos in the CIA; namely that the KGB has infiltrated the CIA and the CIA has infiltrated the KGB so it is impossible at the present stage to tell who is who (he mentioned a case of having been sent to meet somebody and being shown all sorts of identification and then being totally unable to tell whether he was dealing with a U.S. or Russian agent). Marchetti thinks it is the KGB branch of the CIA that killed Kennedy and that the U.S. CIA is too embarrassed to investigate and reveal the real state of affairs."

Me: Is it true that Victor Marchetti thought that a KGB-controlled part of the CIA killed JFK and that the regular CIA was too embarrassed to investigate and reveal the true state of affairs?
       
ChatGPT said:

Victor Marchetti — who had been an executive assistant to CIA Deputy Director Rufus Taylor before resigning in 1969 and later becoming a public critic of the Agency — did indeed suggest that the Kennedy assassination might have been tied to a KGB penetration of the CIA.

My comment: Rufus Tayor, the DDCI who chose probable KGB mole Bruce Solie to "review" the Nosenko case?

That Rufus Taylor?

LOL!


Here’s the relevant outline of what Marchetti said:

In interviews during the 1970s, Marchetti speculated that the CIA had been penetrated by the KGB at a very high level, and that this penetration might have played a role in the Kennedy assassination.

He suggested that if a KGB-controlled faction inside the CIA was responsible for JFK’s murder, the "regular" CIA would have had an overwhelming institutional interest in covering it up.

Marchetti argued that the CIA’s subsequent failures to fully investigate (or its tendency to suppress inconvenient lines of inquiry) stemmed less from direct culpability than from fear of exposure of how badly compromised the Agency might have been.

His public comments came in the broader context of the Angleton molehunt, Golitsyn’s warnings, and later debates about Yuri Nosenko — all tied to the possibility that Soviet intelligence had manipulated the CIA at crucial moments in the early 1960s.

So, yes — it is accurate that Marchetti floated the idea that a KGB-directed element inside CIA engineered the assassination, and that the rest of CIA, rather than confront the possibility, “looked the other way” out of embarrassment and institutional self-preservation.

Would you like me to pull together direct citations from Marchetti’s writings/interviews (e.g., The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, his Spotlight interview, and later HSCA-related commentary) so you can see exactly how he phrased it?

You said:

Yes, please.

ChatGPT said:

Here’s what I found regarding Victor Marchetti’s public claims about a possible KGB-influenced faction within the CIA being responsible for JFK’s assassination, and whether he suggested the CIA covered it up due to embarrassment.

What Victor Marchetti Actually Said
1. Article in The Spotlight (1978)

In August 1978, Marchetti published an article in The Spotlight (a publication of the Liberty Lobby) focusing on the JFK assassination.

He claimed that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had obtained a 1966 CIA memo that implicated CIA operatives—specifically E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and Gerry Patrick Hemming—in plotting the assassination. Marchetti also cited Marita Lorenz’s supposed sworn testimony supporting this claim.


The HSCA publicly stated it had not received any such memo and officially rejected theories that Hunt or those individuals were involved.
Wikipedia
Spartacus Educational

In 1981, Hunt sued Marchetti (and The Spotlight) for defamation and was awarded $650,000.
Wikipedia

In 1985, Marchetti admitted that significant parts of the article were based on unverified rumors he heard from Penthouse columnist Bill Corson, and that he had no independent corroboration.
Wikipedia

2. No Public Evidence of “KGB-Controlled CIA” or Internal Embarrassment Theory

I could not find any credible record of Marchetti making the specific claim that a KGB-controlled faction within the CIA killed JFK, nor that the "regular" CIA suppressed an investigation out of embarrassment over that infiltration.

His more prominent and documented theories revolved around organized crime, CIA operatives, and unverified documents—none of which involve a purported Soviet takeover of a CIA faction.

3. Relevant Context from Broader Research

KGB “active measures” included spreading conspiracy theories that the CIA was behind the assassination, but this refers to Soviet disinformation campaigns—not Marchetti’s own argument that the KGB penetrated the CIA.

Independent historical investigations (e.g., the Warren Commission and HSCA) found no credible evidence of a KGB penetration of that magnitude or a CIA faction involved in JFK’s death. These remain fringe or unsubstantiated theories.

Summary Table

Marchetti claimed a KGB-controlled CIA faction killed JFK   Not supported by sources found   No such statement found in his published writings or interviews.

Marchetti said “regular” CIA was too embarrassed to investigate   Not supported by sources found   No evidence he linked CIA embarrassment to suppressing investigation.

Marchetti claimed HSCA had memo naming CIA agents. Published in The Spotlight (1978), later retracted/unverified.

Marchetti based article on rumors from Bill Corson.   Admitted lack of corroboration in 1985.

Final Thoughts

Victor Marchetti did promote conspiracy theories involving CIA operatives and unverified documents regarding JFK’s assassination. However:

There's no reliable source showing he presented a theory about a KGB-controlled part of the CIA carrying out the assassination.

There’s also no indication he claimed the rest of the CIA covered it up due to embarrassment.

Most of Marchetti’s JFK-related claims were legally challenged, based on hearsay, and remain highly speculative.

[Tom Graves]

Good afternoon,

Fourteen out of how many? Is that going to be a static number do you suppose? Is your review biased in any way? I am thinking about getting the book. Have you read it through thoroughly? What did you think of it? Details. Discuss.

I already have.

Read the review a few more times and follow this thread if you want to.

You might to warm up, though, by reading Bagley's book "Spy Wars" and his follow-up article, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars," for free by googling "spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously and "ghosts of the spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously.