Anyone but Tom understand what the "KGB stuff" is all about?

[Lance Payette]

Now that I think about it, this is the virtue of the LN narrative: It actually makes sense, from A to Z. It is quite easy to state in 200 or so words of plain English. The "problems" tend to be technical/forensic ones within the context of Dealey Plaza - the timing and number of shots, the holes in the clothing vis-a-vis the throat wound, the SBT, etc., etc. None of those is an absolute LN deal-breaker, and the overarching LN narrative simply makes sense, with the need for an absolute minimum of speculation, mental gyrations and implausible, non-real-world aspects. Even such cover-up as their actually was makes entire sense for reasons that do no damage to the LN narrative (an epiphany for which I must give credit to Larry Hancock).

Ditto with the LN+ narrative: It's merely the LN narrative with Oswald perhaps having been encouraged by or even having "conspired" with one or more fellow pro-Castroites. It makes as much sense (perhaps more) than the LN narrative, but the "conspiracy" aspects are pure speculatiion and probably always will be.

One step down is my Marcello/Mafia scenario with Oswald as a pro-Castro patsy. Tidy as this is, it EXPONENTIALLY increases the complexity and risk. It has VASTLY more problems than the LN scenario (and, of course, bumps its head on the very things that make the LN narrative most plausible).

EVERY OTHER conspiracy scenario, it seems to me, borders on science fiction: Utterly implausible in any real-world sense, filled with fantastic risks at every turn, and just simply not the way a Presidential assassination would ever have been carried out by anyone this side of the Three Stooges. These scenarios inevitably involve massive cover-up activities that are simply silly. Even a more limited scenario such as Larry Hancock apparently posits would have been exponentially more complex and risky than even my Mafia scenario, and it posits events in Dealey Plaza for which there is simply no good evidence.

To the extent I understand the KGB stuff at all, the JFKA doesn't really seem to have been a conspiracy per se. It was more just an LN cog in a Monster Plot dating back to long before the JFKA and extending to the election of Trump, with the entire 62-year JFKA "conspiracy" brouhaha likewise being mostly just a KGB-fueled cog in the Plot. As with many conspiracy theories, this more-or-less LN scenario strikes me as more in the vein of science fiction and simply not plausible.

Ergo, my little Bayesian probability analysis says something like LN = 60% probability; LN+ = 36%; Mafia = 4%; everything else, including the KGB stuff = fuggedaboudit.

[Lance Payette]

Once again quoting myself - the sincerist form of flattery - but I was struck by how apt this post from six months ago still is.

Ah, what a small world it is. Tom embarked on what eventually became his KGB mania in 2007, when Douglas Caddy posted at the Ed Forum a Washington Post review of Bagley’s book Spy Wars. "Interesting stuff!" Tom said back then. Ironically, the review concluded “Take a stroll with Bagley down paranoia lane …” Even more ironically, Caddy is the leading proponent of the theory that JFK knew the dark truth about UFOs and was killed because he was going to reveal the Alien Secret. But now Tom takes his little dig at my longtime interest in UFOs. And so it goes.

I know the rudiments of the Nosenko affair and the Angleton/Bagley KGB paranoia. I have no idea what Nosenko was all about and really don't care. My guess would be, a genuine defector who pretended to be more than he was. He certainly didn’t defect for any reason directly related to the JFKA.

Regardless of what, if anything, Nosenko actually knew about Oswald, what he had to say is surely pretty close to the truth even if he was operating on the basis of nothing more than common sense and guesswork. In the preparation of Oswald’s Tale, Norman Mailer spoke with KGB officers and viewed KGB files. The portrait of Oswald that emerged was entirely consistent with what Nosenko said and what common sense would tell us: The KGB quickly realized Oswald was a pathetic loser, of no conceivable intelligence use.

Certainly, the KGB would have assessed and monitored Oswald. Pretty much everyone from Rimma (his Intourist guide) on down had some KGB affiliation. Were there really no formal intelligence-type interviews, as Nosenko said? Quite possibly. Oswald had nothing to offer them about the U-2 program they didn’t already know; their only puzzle was how to reach, with aircraft or missiles, the height at which they knew the U-2 was flying. Apart from the U-2 stuff they already knew, Oswald had nothing to offer them. Indeed, he was such unlikely intelligence material that the KGB at one point speculated as to whether weirdos like him were some new CIA program (so obviously not intelligence material that he actually was intelligence material!).

Does it make any rational sense that the Soviets would send a false defector, and that Nosenko would endure all he endured (dying as a U.S. citizen in 2008), to spread the tale that “We really had no interest in Oswald” when pretty much no one thought they did? Since Nosenko defected at just about the time the WC was getting rolling, I would assume he included his Oswald material because he knew ears would perk up.

When I first joined this forum several months ago, I and my especially my wife, who lived in Minsk for decades and was in a responsible position with the city until 2008, helped Tom identify the KGB school that Oswald supposedly lived near. It was a graduate-level training academy that began in Gomel in 1946 for those who wanted to join the KGB in any capacity. It was not a school for spies. There is a description of it beginning on page 20 of this document: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32989481.pdf.

My wife tells me it’s “invisible” in the sense that Minsk citizens like her never give it a thought (she didn’t even know what the building was until she started trying to help Tom!). Ernst Titovets said in a fairly recent interview that he had no awareness of it and that it had only been brought to his attention in connection with questions about Oswald. No one – Marina, Titovets or anyone else in Minsk – has ever suggested any connection whatsoever between Oswald and this school.

Yet, all over the internet, Tom continues to trumpet the fact that “Oswald lived within a half mile of a KGB school” as though this were some major smoking gun. The fact is, Oswald was given an extremely nice (by Soviet standards) apartment near the Svisloch River (yes, I’ve seen it). It’s in midtown Minsk. One walks from the apartment, across Victory Square (which is the center of Minsk), and either walks or takes the bus down the main street to the radio factory (two bus stops down the road but within easy walking distance). The KGB school is on the other side of the main street – i.e., separated from Oswald’s apartment by Victory Square.

This would be like saying that everyone living within a half mile of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington is somehow suspicious, with utterly no connection apart from the bare fact of this proximity. Or, as CTers are wont to do, like saying that someone whose distant second-cousin Shirley is a secretary in building maintenance at Langley has, on this basis alone, “suspicious CIA connections.”

Tom, I now realize, is in the grip of some obsessive KGB fixation that I was not aware of when I joined. This is a different Tom than I had encountered at the Ed Forum years ago, who was goofy but kind of fun (like me!). I find his KGB mania boring and slightly scary.

Here’s the school in its present incarnation as the National Security Academy. They even have a website: https://aml.university/en/uchastniki-aml/akademiya-nacional-noy-bezopasnosti-respubliki-belarus. If you visit, tell them Comrade Lance sent you.

[Charles Collins]

Now that I think about it, this is the virtue of the LN narrative: It actually makes sense, from A to Z. It is quite easy to state in 200 or so words of plain English. The "problems" tend to be technical/forensic ones within the context of Dealey Plaza - the timing and number of shots, the holes in the clothing vis-a-vis the throat wound, the SBT, etc., etc. None of those is an absolute LN deal-breaker, and the overarching LN narrative simply makes sense, with the need for an absolute minimum of speculation, mental gyrations and implausible, non-real-world aspects. Even such cover-up as their actually was makes entire sense for reasons that do no damage to the LN narrative (an epiphany for which I must give credit to Larry Hancock).

Ditto with the LN+ narrative: It's merely the LN narrative with Oswald perhaps having been encouraged by or even having "conspired" with one or more fellow pro-Castroites. It makes as much sense (perhaps more) than the LN narrative, but the "conspiracy" aspects are pure speculatiion and probably always will be.

One step down is my Marcello/Mafia scenario with Oswald as a pro-Castro patsy. Tidy as this is, it EXPONENTIALLY increases the complexity and risk. It has VASTLY more problems than the LN scenario (and, of course, bumps its head on the very things that make the LN narrative most plausible).

EVERY OTHER conspiracy scenario, it seems to me, borders on science fiction: Utterly implausible in any real-world sense, filled with fantastic risks at every turn, and just simply not the way a Presidential assassination would ever have been carried out by anyone this side of the Three Stooges. These scenarios inevitably involve massive cover-up activities that are simply silly. Even a more limited scenario such as Larry Hancock apparently posits would have been exponentially more complex and risky than even my Mafia scenario, and it posits events in Dealey Plaza for which there is simply no good evidence.

To the extent I understand the KGB stuff at all, the JFKA doesn't really seem to have been a conspiracy per se. It was more just an LN cog in a Monster Plot dating back to long before the JFKA and extending to the election of Trump, with the entire 62-year JFKA "conspiracy" brouhaha likewise being mostly just a KGB-fueled cog in the Plot. As with many conspiracy theories, this more-or-less LN scenario strikes me as more in the vein of science fiction and simply not plausible.

Ergo, my little Bayesian probability analysis says something like LN = 60% probability; LN+ = 26%; Mafia = 14%; everything else, including the KGB stuff = fuggedaboudit.

Trying to make the location selection of Dealey Plaza make sense seems problematic to me for anyone other than LHO to be involved. I doubt that anyone else would have chosen Dealey Plaza for a hit. There were way too many people and law enforcement officers present. However, since he worked there, it makes perfect sense for LHO. It just seems to have been a coincidence that everything essentially fell into LHO’s lap. I do give LHO credit for planning and executing an effective surprise ambush from behind and above.

[Benjamin Cole]

LP--

I admire TG's command of all things KGB, and he is a tonic to all the lefties that usually flood the JFKA zone.

I have refreshed my understanding of G2/KGB thanks to TG, reviewing Tennent Bagley, Gus Russo and John Newman, and TG's writing.

I still don't know who perped the JFKA, and I still suspect a very small conspiracy, literally three guys, including LHO. No one above them.

However, whereas before I tended to lean towards Alpha 66, I am now open to a G2-KGB (likely, lower level dudes) plot.

Interestingly, many Cuban exiles were thought to be double agents, including Rolando Cubela.

That leaves open the possibility of G2 assets, who appeared to anti-Castro exiles, linking up with LHO.

I advise TG to be more civil in his commentary, and avoid current-day politics, but there are far worse, such as the leftist anti-Semitic crackpots running the Education Forum.

I will take TG by a country mile over the Education Forum ghouls.

[Tom Graves]

I admire TG's command of all things KGB, and he is a tonic to all the lefties that usually flood the JFKA zone.

And all of the Far-Righties here who don't have the courage to contemplate the possibility that the KGB* (and the GRU) is so powerful that it could, in order to get us to tear ourselves apart, install The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx") as our "president."

(Sorry, "BC," I couldn't help it.)

*Today's SVR and FSB

[Lance Payette]

LP--

I admire TG's command of all things KGB, and he is a tonic to all the lefties that usually flood the JFKA zone.

I have refreshed my understanding of G2/KGB thanks to TG, reviewing Tennent Bagley, Gus Russo and John Newman, and TG's writing.

I still don't know who perped the JFKA, and I still suspect a very small conspiracy, literally three guys, including LHO. No one above them.

However, whereas before I tended to lean towards Alpha 66, I am now open to a G2-KGB (likely, lower level dudes) plot.

Interestingly, many Cuban exiles were thought to be double agents, including Rolando Cubela.

That leaves open the possibility of G2 assets, who appeared to anti-Castro exiles, linking up with LHO.

I advise TG to be more civil in his commentary, and avoid current-day politics, but there are far worse, such as the leftist anti-Semitic crackpots running the Education Forum.

I will take TG by a country mile over the Education Forum ghouls.

To paraphrase: You have no idea what he's talking about either.

TG's "grasp of all things KGB" is, of course, completely at odds with the CIA's own analyses in 1976 (Hart) and 2011 (Royden), as well as the many CIA colleagues who derided Angleton and Bagley's obsession with the imaginary "Monster Plot," and is derived almost entirely from the dubious sources he cites ad nauseam, which are rejected by the majority of intelligence scholars. I don't see that they add anything whatsoever to an analsysis of the JFKA.

Oswald was sent to Moscow to ferret out moles: Pure speculation. Oswald engaged heavily with the KGB in Russia: Pure speculation and at odds with all known facts. Oswald came back to the U.S. for some KGB-related purpose: Pure speculation. Marina was a KGB sleeper agent: Pure speculation and at odds with all known facts. The election of The Donald was somehow Putin-orchestrated and The Donald's presidency is in furtherance of some KGB objective extending back to the origin of the Monster Plot: Patent nonsense.

I submit that absolutely no one can actually articulate a version of TG's narrative, from the Angleton years through the Trump presidency, that comes close to making sense. If someone can, go for it! That's the challenge posed by this thread.

The KGB folks were and are rather nasty specimens: Sure, no breaking news there. They would have loved to, and surely did, plant moles in the CIA: Sure. They attempted to ferret out CIA moles in their organization: Sure. They made use of events like the JFKA to foment unrest and plant disinformation that served their purposes: Undoubtedly.

I see no substantive difference between the CIA and KGB in respect to these things, and it is absurd to think the KGB had "10 feet tall" superhuman abilities that the CIA lacked.

I see nothing in TG's posts that actually has anything at all to do with Oswald or the JFKA, except in the most tangential sense (e.g., the "Dear Mr. Hunt" KGB ploy). TG's posts seem to me virtually NOTHING but expressions of his TDS. A not-completely-irrational description of his KGB stuff might have been possible if he had focused his wrath on Clinton, Obama, Biden and Harris as examples of the KGB's efforts, but to try to fit Trump into this narrative seems just flat-out nutty. He must do this, however, because his TDS is his overriding motivation; everything else flows backwards from that. (All IMHO, of course, and I invite anyone who cares to dispute it to do so.)

At the Ed Forum this morning, Sean Coleman (a devout CTer, as I recall) posted the following - which, thanks to TG, is equally apt here:

This is not JFK.
This is political pie throwing.
It’s left wing spouting. Soap box shouting.
Opinionated bluff.
If we want this tripe we’ll watch the news, read the papers, catch up on our devices.

John [Simkin], this is your doing. Since you returned to comment you have strayed from the wonders of the assassination and gone all non relevant massively left wing biased political. I suppose this is your site though.
 
Again, I mention “Theories on the assassination” is parked in the waiting room, all Trump/Epstein crap gets centre stage!!?? Wrong way round innit!!
 
I think I’ve donated 150 to 250 clams to this site over the years because of its awesomeness. Which has gone.
 
Ps. My political views span both L & R. I subscribe to neither. More logical realist than rabid politico.

[Lance Payette]

Trying to make the location selection of Dealey Plaza make sense seems problematic to me for anyone other than LHO to be involved. I doubt that anyone else would have chosen Dealey Plaza for a hit. There were way too many people and law enforcement officers present. However, since he worked there, it makes perfect sense for LHO. It just seems to have been a coincidence that everything essentially fell into LHO’s lap. I do give LHO credit for planning and executing an effective surprise ambush from behind and above.

Charles, you underestimate the KGB's abilities! They chose Dealey Plaza precisely BECAUSE it was so unlikely!  (See what I did there? Of course, you do - because it's what CTers do with every inconvenient fact.)

If I put on my CT propeller beanie, it would have to be some plan (we'll say Mafia) where Oswald was on the radar screen by virtue of his activities in New Orleans, the plan started to come together after his employment at the TSBD and the announcement of JFK's trip to Texas, and the plan crystallized at the last minute when it became clear JFK would pass directly in front of the TSBD. Then, Dealey Plaza with Oswald in the TSBD and a pro in the Dal Tex or County Records building wouldn't be too bad.

Alas, the obstacles in trying to make that scenario plausible are near-insurmountable. It really just doesn't work, which requires CTers to expand the scenario to Oswald being "planted" in the TSBD, JFK's motorcade route being "manipulated" to pass in front of the TSBD, yada yada. John Orr cleverly avoids most obstacles by having Oswald being in active cooperation with the Mafia - but this itself is (to me) an insurmountable obstacle. Moreover, I really can't think of ANY plausible CT scenario that has Oswald going to Ruth Paine's with Frazier to retrieve his rifle the evening before the assassination (hence CTer's enthusiasm for the curtain rods tale - which then requires Oswald to be a completely unknowing patsy, and off we go).

Always, always, always, the fly in the CT ointment is the actual man Lee Harvey Oswald. He really just doesn't "work" as either a conspirator or a patsy, with the exception of a small, genuinely pro-Castro plot (LN+, as I call it). Pro-Castro incitement actually makes sense; KGB incitement, even in isolation completely apart from TG's grand narrative, simply does not.