The Strange Anti-Conspiracy Argument about Which View Is Less Troubling

[Tom Graves]

"My best estimate is that your KGB stuff never had even a kernel of truth." (paraphrased)

Dear FPR,

I doubt that you could accurately explain what my "KGB stuff' is from my point of view.

So, here it is so you can study it and maybe even learn something. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Please bear in mind that most of what I know comes from Tennent H. Bagley's three writings: his 2007 Yale University Press book, Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, his 2014 follow-up article, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars," and his 2013 book with Sergey Kondrashev, Spymaster.

You can read the first two for free by googling "spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously and "ghosts of the spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously.

Five hints:

1) Bagley was from an illustrious Navy family. (Google USS Bagley.) His father and his two older brothers were Admirals.

2) Bagley was a Marine Lieutenant during WW II.

3) Bagley earned a PhD in political science at the University of Geneva.

4) Bagley didn't work for James JESUS Angleton.

5) Bagley was on the fast track to become Director of CIA before putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko, either as a false defector or a rogue one using his Oswald "intel" as his ticket to The Land of Milk and Honey, physically defected to the U.S. in February 1964.


Here we go:

I believe that the KGB, in all its different names over the years, has done the following things:

In the 1920s, it very successfully waged a six-year, Sun Tzu-like deception-based operation against Russian emigres and dissidents called Operation Trust. Look it up.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, it very successfully waged a deception-based operation against anti-Soviet elements in Poland called WiN, the acronym in Polish for "Freedom and Independence." Look it up.

In 1953, the CIA, knowing that it's Vienna-posted spy, Pyotr Popov, would probably be reposted to Moscow in 1955 when the division of Vienna into Soviet, British and American zones was expected to end, sent Russian-speaking Army Major Edward Ellis Smith to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to serve, without Ambassador Charles Bohlen's knowledge, as a one-man CIA Station in which his primary task was to set up "dead drops" for the returning Popov. However, Smith was not only incompetent in doing so but was "honey-trapped" by his beautiful KGB maid in late 1956 and met with KGB officers about it twice. He procrastinated for two or three days in telling Bohlen that he'd been compromised, and CIA Security officer James McCord (of future Watergate notoriety), of all people, came to Moscow and escorted Smith to CIA headquarters where he was polygraphed and summarily fired. Fast-forwarding a bit, in June 1962 in Geneva, false-defector-in-place putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko, when asked during their first meeting by his primary case officer, Tennent H. Bagley, what was the most important thing he could tell him, Nosenko said, "'Andrey,' the most important American spy we ever recruited in Moscow, and whom my boss, General Kovshuk in the American Embassy part of the SCD, traveled to Washington for a couple of weeks in early 1957 so that he could reestablish contact with him."

In his 2007 book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, Bagley posited, with oodles and gob of circumstantial evidence, that Kovshuk, who was sent to the U.S. on a two-year gig as a "diplomat" at the Soviet Embassy but returned to Moscow after only ten months, hadn't come to the U.S. to reestablish contact with "Andrey" (with whom he did meet after being in Washington for nine-and-a-half months even though the phone number and address of "Andrey" -- burnt-out Army code machine mechanic Dayle Wayne Smith -- were in the phone book), but to meet with the aforementioned Edward Ellis Smith in D.C. movie houses so that Smith could betray Popov to him.

Two bits of that oodles and gobs of circumstantial evidence I alluded to: 1) the FBI had seen Kovshuk in the company of two other KGB types (Guk and "Kislov") so often near D.C. movie houses that it started referring to them as "The Three Musketeers," and 2) when recently-fired Smith was asked by a CIA friend what he was doing these days, Smith said, "Waiting for a job to open up in California (at the Hoover Institution) and watching a lot of movies."

Author John M. Newman agrees with Bagley that the KGB uncovered Popov in early 1957, and in the interest of "source protection," allowed him to continue spying for the U.S. until December 1958, at which time he was secretly arrested and "played back" against the CIA, but he thinks the betrayer of Popov was Bruce Leonard Solie of the Office of Security, and that Smith and McCord gave Solie logistical support.

Speaking of Newman, he believes with reason that it was Solie who told the Soviets the specifications of the U-2 Spy Plane -- which leak was implied by Popov's relating to (probable mole) George Kisevalter in April 1958 that he'd overheard a drunken GRU Colonel brag at a New Year's Eve Party that the Kremlin had all of the top-secret details of the U-2.

FWIW, Newman also believes that Solie sent 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. The only problem I have with Newman's theory is that there were seventeen months between Popov's telling Kisevalter about the leak and Oswald's departing for Moscow. Newman explains that long period of time by saying Oswald had to be screened, recruited, and be taught Russian first, but I wonder if all Oswald had to do was walk in to the office of the (probable CIA agent) Consul Richard Snyder, toss his passport on the desk, say he wanted to renounce his citizenship, and announce to him (and to the all-important hidden microphones in the walls) that he planned to commit espionage, "including something of special interest," against the U.S.?

Granted that it might take Solie three or four months to screen for and recruit someone like Oswald (with a U-2 radar operator history), but would an ostensible U-2 mole-detecting mission really be put off for a year in order for said recruit to become semi-fluent in Russian?

Returning to the larger picture, in 1959 the Kremlin, realizing that the USSR and the Warsaw Pact couldn't defeat the U.S. and NATO militarily, set up deception-based Department D in the First Chief Directorate (todays SVR) to wage disinformation, "active measures," and mole-based strategic deception counterintelligence operations against us and our NATO allies. Risk-taking General Oleg Gribanov in the Second Chief Directorate (today's FSB), not to be outdone, set up his own deception-based Department 14 in the SCD, and as soon as he had created a scenario in which GRU Lt. Col. Oleg Penkovsky could be arrested without revealing the mole in U.S. or British Intelligence who had betrayed him seventeen months earlier (google "Zepp Incident"), sent GRU Lt. Col. Dmitry Polyakov and KGB Major Aleksei Kulak to the FBI's NYC field office to "volunteer" to spy for it at the UN.

Polyakov, who fed the FBI disinformation for a year before returning to Moscow, contacted said field office in late 1961, and Kulak, who fed the Bureau disinformation for fifteen or so years and formed a FBI-and-CIA-controlling feedback loop with a mole or two in the Agency, literally "walked in" to the field office in broad daylight in early 1962 (and immediately set it off on a multi-year wild goose chase looking for "UNSUB Dick," a non-existent mole in the FBI whom Kulak told the gullible gumshoes that all of his KGB colleagues in NYC were meeting about right then, so it was perfectly safe for him to physically walk into the field office the way that he had.

LOL!

After leaving the U.S. in late 1962, Polyakov was reposted in Moscow, Rangoon, and New Delhi, and in the latter city he eventually "flipped" to his CIA case officer. Tennent H. Bagley was told by his friend, former KGB General Sergey Kondrashev, in 1994 that Polyakov was uncovered by the KGB because "he was telling you more than he was supposed to" -- which begs the question: Who in the CIA knew what Polyakov was telling his case officer?  I suggest that it was Leonard V. McCoy in the Soviet Russia Division's Reports and Requirements department. More on him later.

That's the tip of the iceberg, FPR.

I haven't even mentioned Igor Brykin at the U.N., nor Valery Kostikov, Oleg Nechiporenko, Pavel Yatskov, Ivan Obyedkov, and Nikolai "The Blond Oswald in Mexico City" Leonov in Mexico City, nor Igor Kochnov, nor Igor Orlov (aka Alexander "Sasha" Kopatzky") nor his CIA boss in Germany, Alexander "Sasha" Sogolow (whom journalist Pricilla Johnson contacted in Frankfurt in 1956 while on her way to Moscow), and who confessed to spying for the KGB but wasn't prosecuted because he was "played back" against your beloved Ruskies, nor Guenter Heinz Shulz (aka AEBURBLE), nor Boris Orekhov, nor SOLO, nor Vitaly "Homesick" Yurchenko, nor Richard Kovich, nor [fill in the blank], nor . . .  gasp . . . how the KGB* installed Donald J. Trump as our "president" in 2017 and 2025.

*Today's SVR and FSB

-- Tom
 

[Michael T. Griffith]

No one wants to believe that high-ranking government officials plotted to kill a U.S. president and then engaged in a massive cover-up to conceal their crime. No one wants to believe that the police department of a major U.S. city cooperated with certain corrupt federal officials to plant and fake evidence and to allow a Mafia-connected thug to murder the only suspect before he could receive a trial. No one wants to believe that the FBI suppressed evidence that pointed to multiple gunmen. No one wants to believe that a presidential commission chaired by the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ignored key evidence, knowingly made numerous false claims about the shooting, and even refused to acknowledge that three of the seven commission members rejected key conclusions presented in the commission's report.

No one wants to believe these things because they come with disturbing implications about our elected officials, our law enforcement agencies, our intelligence agencies, and our news media. In contrast, the lone-gunman theory comes with no disturbing implications about anything, except perhaps the need for better presidential protection.

It is far more soothing and far less troubling to believe that some disturbed malcontent shot JFK than to believe that powerful domestic forces engineered JFK's murder and then covered it up.

[Tom Graves]

No one wants to believe that high-ranking government officials plotted to kill a U.S. president and then engaged in a massive cover-up to conceal their crime. No one wants to believe that the police department of a major U.S. city cooperated with certain corrupt federal officials to plant and fake evidence and to allow a Mafia-connected thug to murder the only suspect before he could receive a trial. No one wants to believe that the FBI suppressed evidence that pointed to multiple gunmen. No one wants to believe that a presidential commission chaired by the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ignored key evidence, knowingly made numerous false claims about the shooting, and even refused to acknowledge that three of the seven commission members rejected key conclusions presented in the commission's report.

No one wants to believe these things because they come with disturbing implications about our elected officials, our law enforcement agencies, our intelligence agencies, and our news media. In contrast, the lone-gunman theory comes with no disturbing implications about anything, except perhaps the need for better presidential protection.

It is far more soothing and far less troubling to believe that some disturbed malcontent shot JFK than to believe that powerful domestic forces engineered JFK's murder and then covered it up.

Rational people don't believe those things because they know that in order to believe them, they'd have to paranoically believe that oodles and gobs of evil, evil "Deep State" operatives were involved.

[Michael T. Griffith]

It's worth repeating the fact that every opinion survey done on the JFK case in the U.S. and Europe in the last 40 years, including ones done in the last five to 10 years, has found that 2/3 to 3/4 of the respondents have said they believe JFK was killed by a conspiracy and do not believe the assassination was the act of only one man.

The percentage of people who still believe in the lone-gunman theory is not very much higher than the percentage of people who believe in the 9/11 Truther conspiracy theories.

Belief in the conspiracy view cuts across political party and ideological lines. Quite a few conservatives reject the lone-gunman theory. Henry Hurt, author of one of the best and most sober pro-conspiracy books ever written, Reasonable Doubt, was a staunch conservative. G. Robert Blakey, the HSCA chief counsel, was a conservative professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. Senator Richard Russell, an ardent Southern conservative and a member of the WC, rejected the single-bullet theory and did not believe that only one man was responsible for the assassination. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a conservative Republican from Florida, has been chairing the Luna Committee hearings on the JFK Records Act and firmly believes JFK was killed by a conspiracy. Many more examples could be cited.

[Tom Graves]

It's worth repeating the fact that every opinion survey done on the JFK case in the U.S. and Europe in the last 40 years, including ones done in the last five to 10 years, has found that 2/3 to 3/4 of the respondents have said they believe JFK was killed by a conspiracy and do not believe the assassination was the act of only one man.

What do you expect after sixty-two years of KGB disinformation, including Oliver Stone's self-described mythological ("to counter the myth of the Warren Report") "JFK," which was largely based on Jim Garrison's book, "On the Trail of the Assassins," which in turn was based on a KGB article published in a communist-owned Italian newspaper?

Belief in the conspiracy view [...]

THE conspiracy view?

LOL!

Which one?

[...] cuts across political party and ideological lines. Quite a few conservatives reject the lone-gunman theory. Henry Hurt, author of one of the best and most sober pro-conspiracy books ever written, Reasonable Doubt, was a staunch conservative. G. Robert Blakey, the HSCA chief counsel, was a conservative professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. Senator Richard Russell, an ardent Southern conservative and a member of the WC, rejected the single-bullet theory and did not believe that only one man was responsible for the assassination. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a conservative Republican from Florida, has been chairing the Luna Committee hearings on the JFK Records Act and firmly believes JFK was killed by a conspiracy. Many more examples could be cited.

There are gullible people on both sides of the political spectrum, Comrade Griffith.

[Michael T. Griffith]

What do you expect after sixty-two years of KGB disinformation, including Oliver Stone's self-described mythological ("to counter the myth of the Warren Report") "JFK," which was largely based on Jim Garrison's book, "On the Trail of the Assassins," which in turn was based on a KGB article published in a communist-owned Italian newspaper?

Oh, so your view is a decidedly minority view because of the KGB! Yeah, okay. Thanks for sharing.

THE conspiracy view? LOL! Which one?

This is juvenile nit-picking. There are plenty of differing versions of the lone-gunman theory (e.g., Jim Moore vs. Gerald Posner, Larry Sturdivan vs. most other lone-gunman theorists, Lattimer vs. most other lone-gunman theorists, the autopsy doctors vs. the HSCA medical panel, etc., etc.). Apparently you could not tell that I was speaking generally. "The conspiracy view" refers to the basic position that JFK's death was not merely the work of one man but involved a number of people.

There are a fair number of people who posit a non-conspiracy view that has Oswald only firing two shots and has a Secret Service agent accidentally firing the head shot.

There are gullible people on both sides of the political spectrum, Comrade Griffith.

"Comrade"? No sane person who knows anything about my politics would refer to me in this manner.

Frankly, I'm surprised the moderators allow you to keep spewing your crazy KGB obsessions in this forum to such a degree. You are unserious and immune to persuasion.

[Tommy Shanks]

You are unserious and immune to persuasion.

And you believe every long-debunked conspiracy theory about the medical evidence...

[Steve M. Galbraith]

And you believe every long-debunked conspiracy theory about the medical evidence...

And, among other items, he keeps repeating the claim that Sirhan *never* admitted to shooting RFK. Even though Sirhan admitted to it in his trial and in multiple interviews.

The idea that Michael Griffith can credibly accuse another person of being closed minded is risible.