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

[Tom Graves]

[LP] may have overstated the case against Bagley/Angleton. There were (and are?) plenty of people in the CIA skeptical about Nosenko.

FPR thinks a PhD'd former Marine Lieutenant during WW II whose father and two older brothers were Admirals, whose Great Uncle on his mother's side was Fleet Admiral Richard Leahy, who received a medal when he retired from the Agency, and whom Richard Helms said in so many words in his book was on the fast track to become Director of CIA until putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko defected to the U.S. -- was a scam artist.

FPR doesn't want to learn about said mole-protecting putative KGB staff officer / false defector-in-place in Geneva in June 1962 / false (or perhaps rogue) physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964 Yuri Nosenko because Nosenko isn't a "hoot" and because he intuits that if he did learn about him, he'd have to consider the possibility that the KGB* really DID install The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx") as our "president."

*Today's SVR and FSB

John Newman is a serious researcher, and he has posited Bruce Solie was a KGB mole and running LHO.

Dear "BC,"

Please remember to say, "Probable KGB mole Bruce Leonard Solie (look him up) in the mole-hunting Office of Security was father-figure-requiring James Angleton's confidant, mentor, and mole hunting superior."

-- "TG"

LHO spoke of assassinating JFK while in MC.

Correction:

The allegation that Oswald spoke in Mexico City of killing JFK comes from the two Russia-born "triple agents," Morris and Jack Childs, after egg-on-face gumshoe J. Edgar Hoover had sent them to Havana six months after the assassination to find out if Castro was involved in it.

Tom is roughly right that the KGB, or other Soviet assets, have been running disinformation campaigns in the US during the entire postwar era, and surely they often manipulated left-wing assets in doing so.

"Roughly right"?

Tom now contends Moscow is manipulating right-wing assets also. Tucker Carlson anyone?

The KGB* has been manipulating everyone for several decades, e.g., Oliver Stone AND us through his self-described mythological ("to counter for the myth of the Warren Report") movie (sic), "JFK."

*Today's SVR and FSB

I rather suspect John Simkin is deep into his dotage.

I rather suspect John Simkin is an aging Trotskyite.

[Benjamin Cole]

TG--Good points.

[Lance Payette]

BC -

I understand, you feel sorry for TG and want to show at least a bit of appreciation as he keeps embarrassing himself. I actually feel sorry for him, too, which is why I have edited many of my posts to remove my snarkier comments. Not sorry enough to read any more of his posts, but I am sympathetic to his mental plight.

LP-

You may have overstated the case against Bagley/Angleton. There were (and are?) plenty of people in the CIA skeptical about Nosenko.

"Skeptical about Nosenko" is one thing. "Skeptical about Nosenko" scarcely describes the Angleton/Bagley paranoia that came to be called the Monster Plot. "Skeptical about Nosenko" scarcely describes the breadth and depth of TG's KGB stuff insofar as the CIA is concerned. "Skeptical about Nosenko" greatly understates the reality.

Do we actually know there were and are "plenty" of people in the CIA (as opposed to the CT community) skeptical about Noskenko? Were there protests against the Hart Report or Royden's peer-reviewed article in Studies in Intelligence? One can certainly be skeptical that Nosenko was all he said he was and knew all he said he did without thinking he was a KGB-sponsored false defector. There was essentially no suspicion the Soviets were responsible for the JFKA, so why would the KGB and Nosenko himself undertake this fantastically risky mission - and why would Nosenko endure the ghastly treatment he received?

In addition, John Newman is a serious researcher, and he has posited Bruce Solie was a KGB mole and running LHO.

One thing I have been struck by, and was struck by yesterday when I reviewed all 405 "Bagley" posts at the Ed Forum, was how far Newman's stock seems to have fallen. A few years ago, folks were waiting breathlessly for him to bring his theories to Dealey Plaza and wrap it all up. Now, not so much. At least on the Bagley threads, his acceptance of Bagley's latter-day tales hook, line and sinker was viewed with surprising dismay by some fairly prominent participants.

Catty of me, but I always feel an obligation to remind folks that Newman is also the author of QUEST FOR THE KINGDOM: THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF JESUS IN LIGHT OF YOGIC MYSTICISM. Written in his capacity as a yoga master, it was published in 2011 - so it isn't some dissertation from his days as 20-year-old hippie (if he in fact was). I have bought and read it - or at least 75%. Far from what you might expect, it is EXTREMELY scholarly. Newman knows his New Testament and his Hindu scriptures inside and out. PRECISELY in the way his JFKA stuff is fascinating, it's fascinating. Also like his JFKA stuff, it's clearly the product of an obsessive mind that sees too much that isn't there and makes connections that no one else sees. If anyone cares to read it, it provides valuable insights into the way Newman's mind works. It caused nary a ripple - literally nary a ripple - among Christian scholars. (One of the few reviews on Amazon - not by me - noted that it is a classic example of "conspiracy" thinking.)

There was a KGB'er in Minsk who said he was running LHO, but stopped once LHO returned to the US, and that yes, Marina was a "swallow." She lso stopped being of service upon departing the SU.

"A KGB'er?" Not one friend, romantic partner or coworker has ever suggested such a thing, then or now. The KGB files do not reflect this. All of these wacky theories require Oswald to have had about 72 hours in a day, because we have a pretty good idea what he was doing in Minsk with the 24 hours available to the rest of us. Peter Vronsky, who went over there with the idea of making a documentary that would expose the WC fraud once and for all, and who spoke to lots and lots of people who knew Oswald, abandoned the documentary and told me he came back believing "the WC basically got it right."

LHO contacted not only KGB, but G2 assets in Mexico City. LHO spoke of assassinating JFK while in MC. Castro spoke of revenge assassination attempts on the Kennedy brothers, in September of 1963.

Your first two statements are supported by thin gruel. Obviously there were KGB folks in the Soviet Embassy, but what basis is there for thinking Oswald even understood he was talking to KGB folks? Is that how they introduced themselves to this frantic, whacked-out American with a handgun? Oswald speaking of assassinating JFK is supported, insofar as I know, by virtually nothing. Lastly, yes, Castro spoke of revenge assassination and that was published in American newspapers immediately before Oswald left for MC. I have no problem with thinking Oswald may have believed he was doing Castro a favor, or even with him being encouraged to believe that. The KGB? No way, makes no sense at all.

TG is roughly right that the KGB, or other Soviet assets, have been running disinformation campaigns in the US during the entire postwar era, and surely they often manipulated left-wing assets in doing so.

Again, you vastly understate what TG is claiming. What you are describing is nothing more than what intelligence agencies, including the CIA and Mossad and M16, do every day. This is not the Monster Plot. This is not the deconstruction of America. This is not the election of KGB stooges to the Presidency.

I rather suspect John Simkin is in his dotage....like deep into his dotage....

He's only a few years older than I, so let's hope he's not "deep" into his dotage!  Almost everyone but my wife agrees I'm still in the wading end of the dotage pool.

[Tom Graves]

"Skeptical about Nosenko" is one thing. "Skeptical about Nosenko" scarcely describes the Angleton/Bagley paranoia that came to be called the Monster Plot. "Skeptical about Nosenko" scarcely describes the breadth and depth of TG's KGB stuff insofar as the CIA is concerned. "Skeptical about Nosenko" greatly understates the reality. Do we actually know there were and are "plenty" of people in the CIA (as opposed to the CT community) skeptical about Noskenko [sic]? Were there protests against the Hart Report or Royden's peer-reviewed article in Studies in Intelligence? One can certainly be skeptical that Nosenko was all he said he was and knew all he said he did without thinking he was a KGB-sponsored false defector. There was essentially no suspicion the Soviets were responsible for the JFKA, so why would the KGB and Nosenko himself undertake this fantastically risky mission - and why would Nosenko endure the ghastly treatment he received? (emphasis added by T.G.)

Sez Trump-loving Fancy Pants Rants, who evidently doesn't have the gonads or the horse sense to read Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 Yale University Press book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, or even his 2014 follow-up article, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars," but would rather take KGB-and-Trump-approved cheap shots at Bagley, Angleton, and Golitsyn from the Fancy Pants Peanut Gallery.

https://archive.org/details/SpyWarsMolesMysteriesAndDeadlyGames

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362

(It's funny that Fancy Pants keeps referencing HSCA perjurer John L. Hart, even after I showed him Bagley's 170-page HSCA testimony in which he ripped Hart the proverbial new one. Here it is again: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32273600.pdf )

As I said in a previous post,

FPR thinks Bagley, a PhD'd former Marine Lieutenant during WW II whose father and two older brothers were Admirals, whose Great Uncle on his mother's side was Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, who received a medal when he retired from the Agency, and whom Richard Helms said, in so many words, was on the fast track to become Director of CIA until putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko physically defected to the U.S. -- was a scam artist.

Perhaps FPL is a scam artist, himself, and projects his defective character onto anyone, dead or alive, who appears to him to challenge the legitimacy of The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx")?

FPR doesn't want to learn about said mole-protecting putative KGB staff officer / false defector-in-place in Geneva in June 1962 / false (or perhaps rogue) physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964 Yuri Nosenko because Nosenko isn't a "hoot," and because he intuits that if he did learn about him, he'd have to consider the possibility that the KGB* really DID install The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx") as our "president."

*Today's SVR and FSB


Bagley wrote the following in Spy Wars:


There is no indication that CIA ever answered the extraordinary and unprecedented number of questions that arose about the defector Yuri Nosenko. Here is a sample of thirty of them, with references to the pages where they are discussed in Spy Wars.

Nosenko claimed that through the entire years 1960-61 he was deputy chief of the American-Embassy section of the American department of the Second Chief Directorate (SCD) of the KGB. It was this post (especially his claim to have there personally supervised all KGB work against the embassy's code clerks and security officer) that gave him access to all the most important information he gave CIA.

1. Why then, while supervising this top-priority work, was Nosenko performing low-level tasks for a different department? (Spy Wars pp. 94-95, 160-62, 235, 250, 280)

[He himself described his activity during this period, handling street-level homosexual provocateurs of the Tourist Department, recruiting homosexual tourists (one as far away as Sofia), helping the Tourist Department chief in meeting a visiting American travel agent, and traveling abroad repeatedly as watchdog for Soviet industrial delegations.]

2. Why did at least three KGB insiders later state that Nosenko never held that position? [They included i) a visitor to that section at the time, ii) a former member of the section itself, and iii) a former head of foreign counterintelligence, Oleg Kalugin.

3. How does one explain Nosenko's many changes of stories about his KGB career, even about when and how he entered service, and the evidence that the stories were false? (pp. 93, 160-62, 235, 248-50) .[Not a single KGB source during or after the Cold War, even among those who insisted that Nosenko genuinely defected, has confirmed the dates and assignments of his claimed KGB career.]

4. How does one explain Nosenko's authoritative claim that, up to the time he defected, the KGB did not recruit any American Embassy code clerk? (pp. 156-59, 241-42)

[in fact that section of the KGB recruited at least one code clerk and there were compelling signs that Nosenko was hiding the truth about two others.]

5. Why was Nosenko unaware of the operational mission to Helsinki during that period of his direct subordinate Kosolapov as part of a promising attempt to recruit an American Embassy cipher clerk? (pp. 157-60, 242)

6. How could Nosenko err by an entire year - and thus destroy his story about holding this job - by reporting i) that under his supervision KGB surveillants had spotted the American Embassy security officer visiting a certain dead drop site in late 1960 and ii) that for many weeks thereafter, as supervisor, he had received regular reports on the KGB's stakeout of that site. (pp. 88-89, 147-50, 186, 203-4)

[The visit actually happened in late 1961, so any stakeout would have been conducted after Nosenko left the job.]

7. Why did Nosenko fail to mention that dead drop visit when he was telling CIA in 1962 about his coverage of the security officer? (pp. 16, 147, 203)

8. If Nosenko was personally watching over the American Embassy's security officer, why did he not know that the officer traveled from Moscow to his ancestral homeland, Armenia? (Nosenko himself recognized that his failure to answer this question undermined his whole life story.) (pp. 186-87)

Nosenko preserved and brought to Geneva in 1964 the KGB's authorization for his travel in December 1963 to search for a fleeing KGB officer, Vladimir Cherepanov. (pp. 87, 167-68, 250-51)

9. How did he keep this document and why did he bring it to Geneva, whereas KGB regulations - as Nosenko agreed -- required that it be turned in before the next payday and before any further official travel could be authorized?

10. Why was that travel authorization (signed by the SCD chief Gribanov) made out to "Lt. Col. Nosenko", the rank he claimed, whereas under detailed questioning he admitted having been only a captain (as even the KGB now confirms)?

11. Is it mere coincidence that in 1962, long before this erroneous travel authorization, he was already lying about his rank, then calling himself a major,?

12. Why was it "Colonel" Nosenko's story that a Soviet official journalist tried to peddle to the Western press shortly after Nosenko's defection in 1964? (page 163)

13. And why would Nosenko be sent out to search for Cherepanov if, as suggested in questions 1-7 above, Nosenko was not deputy chief of the SCD's American-Embassy section?

Nosenko in 1962 volunteered information that his boss Kovshuk had traveled to the United States five years earlier to restore contact with a KGB-recruited American cipher-machine mechanic codenamed "Andrey." [it became evident that the real reason for Kovshuk's travel was to exploit the KGB recruitment of a CIA officer.] (pp. 67-71, 185)

14. Is it mere coincidence that just when Nosenko was telling CIA about Kovshuk's trip, the two KGB officers closest to him in Geneva, his sole KGB companion there, Yuri Guk, and his hotel roommate Kislov, were precisely the two KGB operatives who had worked with Kovshuk on that trip?

15. Why did Nosenko, having read Kislov's KGB file, certify to CIA that Kislov had no connection with the KGB? (pp. 65-67)

16. Why did Nosenko in 1962 say (and repeat) that "Andrey" was recruited in "1949¬1950" but later, in 1964, report that he himself had been in the KGB (entered 1953) while "Andrey" was still in Moscow?

17. Nosenko told CIA in 1962 that he had personally participated in the KGB Moscow attempt to recruit CIA officer Edward Ellis Smith. Why then did he in 1964 deny any knowledge of the name or the case? (p. 188)

Other questions:

18. Why did he refer in 1962 to KGB relations with the Finnish president, but then in 1964 deny any knowledge of it? (p. 186)

19. How does one explain Nosenko's mention in 1962 of the name "Zepp" - which at that moment was of intense interest to KGB counterintelligence - and his failure to recognize the name by early 1964? (pp. 15-16, 150-55, 162, 203)

20. If Nosenko was really in Geneva in 1962 and 1964 as the security watchdog of a Soviet conference delegation, as he claimed, why did even his KGB bosses say, after the Cold War, that he had gone there for other, "serious operational purposes"? (pp. 5, 237, 253)

21. How does one explain Nosenko's inability to describe even the most routine KGB procedures? (pp. 83-86, 191-92, 251-55)

22. How come this eleven-year veteran of KGB CI operations was unable to disclose to the U.S. a single KGB spy who at the time of uncovering, i) was still active and ii) had current access to US or NATO-country official secrets and iii) had previously been unsuspected by Western counterintelligence?

23. Is it true, as Nosenko authoritatively reported, having heard it from three different KGB authorities directly involved, that it was by chance Moscow surveillance of British diplomats that the KGB first learned of the treason of CIA's great spy Oleg Penkovsky? [KGB authorities have since denied it and suggested that the source was a mole.] (pp. 2I-22, 86-87, 235, 243)

Nosenko highlighted to CIA in 1962 that the KGB first uncovered Pyotr Popov, CIA's spy in the GRU (Military Intelligence) by chance surveillance of an American diplomat mailing a letter in Moscow in late January 1959. (pp. 11-12, 16-17, 24, 68¬75, 189, 241-43)

24. How does one equate this with the KGB's later admission that the GRU chief was fired from his post as a result of Popov's treason, almost two months before the letter mailing?

25. Or with the fact that KGB surveillants spotted Popov meeting CIA twice, at least two weeks before the letter mailing?

26. Or with the KGB's admission, in a book published in Moscow in 2000, that it had earlier recruited Edward Ellis Smith, the CIA officer who had supported the Popov case in Moscow?

Nosenko claimed inside knowledge about Lee Harvey Oswald in the Soviet Union, having participated in early decisions when Oswald defected to the USSR and later having read the KGB file on Oswald. Later, the KGB chairman at the time and other KGB veterans denied it and stated that Nosenko was lying about this. (So too did the House Select Committee on Assassinations after interviewing Nosenko many times in 1977-78.) (pp. 83-86, 95-96, 191, 210, 249)

27. If Nosenko did not have his claimed access to the Oswald case and did not really study the KGB's file, where did he get his information? And why does he continue to make that claim to this day?

After the Cold War much was learned about a previously unknown SCD department for operational deception, which was actively handing false sources to Western intelligence services to mislead them. It was learned that this department was closely supervised by Nosenko's sponsor General Oleg Gribanov. And that among its officers were Nosenko's friend Yuri Guk, who was meeting Nosenko before and after each CIA meeting in Geneva in 1962 (pp. 6, 9, 66, 236); Aleksandr Kislov, who was rooming with Nosenko in Geneva in 1962 (p. 7, 66, 70-71, 235, 236); and Vladimir Chelnokov, who took him along on an operational mission to Odessa in 1960 (p. 235).

28. Why did Nosenko not report on the existence of this department?

29. Why did Nosenko not tell that his close KGB associates at various times were members of it?

30. Is it mere coincidence that Nosenko replayed to CIA in 1962 each of these specific cases that six months earlier had been compromised to the Americans by KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn?

i) Vassall (pp. 14, 24, 97, 179, 187, 189, 206, 261)

ii) Preisfreund (pp. 25, 28, 158-59)

iii) Belitsky (pp. 17, 25, 179)

iv) Kovshuk's "trip" to Washington (pp. 24, 65-66, 69, 75-78)

v) Nine others including a Canadian and a French ambassador and a French businessman (pp. 4, 14, 25, 165, 206).

While an objective observer tries to answer each of these thirty questions in a manner consistent with his answers to the other questions, a thirty-first question will have occurred to him. How could so many questions - even a fraction of this number - have arisen about any genuine defector?

[Lance Payette]

I suppose I could be accused of a fallacious appeal to authority here, but wouldn't most folks agree that Larry Hancock is solidly in the sane wing of CTers? Wouldn't most folks agree that he is among the most thorough, thoughtful and respected of CTers and of JFKA researchers in general?

Almost a year ago, I started a thread about Larry and David Boylan's latest book, THE OSWALD PUZZLE: https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,4162.8.html.

Larry described at the Ed Forum the intense work that went into this book. The book is, absolutely, the LN narrative right up to the events in Dealey Plaza. Oswald was simply who the LN narrative says he was. Then it goes off the deep end, IMO: Oswald knew nothing about the assassination and was a complete patsy of anti-Castro types. Alas, the book really just doesn't deal with how this would have worked and all the (to me) unanswerable questions it raises. But that's OK - Larry and David will surely flesh it all out at some point.

My point here is that they COMPLETELY REJECT all the CIA/KGB intrigue stuff. Oswald was simply who and what I believe he obviously was: Just a garden-variety defector who quickly became as disillusioned with the USSR as he had been with America. Neither CIA material, witting or unwitting, nor KGB material by a long shot.

Look, the CIA/KGB stuff is fun, way more fun than the LN narrative. Spy stuff in general is fun - "Mission Impossible" and all that. Opportuniies for speculation are endless: Oswald was on the CIA payroll; no, wait, he was an unwitting dangle; no, wait, he was a witting dangle; no, wait, he was a patriotic ultra-right-winger; no, wait, yada yada. It's fun, but NONE OF IT really fits the facts.

I am struck by how much conspiracy theorizing requires Oswald to be the EXACT OPPOSITE of who he was, 180 degrees removed from the real man. Ditto for other people and events connected with the JFKA - conspiracy theorizing requires them to be the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the evidence tells us. This is perhaps the most bizarre aspect of conspiracy thinking - i.e., its fondness for up being down, white being black, and absolutely nothing being the way common sense and the evidence tells us it is.

Anyway, TG's KGB stuff is just fun (up to a point) and entertaining (up to a point) goofiness. That's all. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

I leave TG and you (as far as this thread is concerned, anyway) with a quotation from Senator William J. Fulbright, ironically enough from a book published in 1963:

The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace - not so much because of what it has done,
but because of the excuses it has provided us for our own failures.

[Tom Graves]

[...]

FPR posted while I was editing and expanding my previous post, so here it is again:

Here's an excerpt from what FPR had posted:

"Skeptical about Nosenko" is one thing. "Skeptical about Nosenko" scarcely describes the Angleton/Bagley paranoia that came to be called the Monster Plot. "Skeptical about Nosenko" scarcely describes the breadth and depth of TG's KGB stuff insofar as the CIA is concerned. "Skeptical about Nosenko" greatly understates the reality. Do we actually know there were and are "plenty" of people in the CIA (as opposed to the CT community) skeptical about Noskenko [sic]? Were there protests against the Hart Report or Royden's peer-reviewed article in Studies in Intelligence? One can certainly be skeptical that Nosenko was all he said he was and knew all he said he did without thinking he was a KGB-sponsored false defector. There was essentially no suspicion the Soviets were responsible for the JFKA, so why would the KGB and Nosenko himself undertake this fantastically risky mission - and why would Nosenko endure the ghastly treatment he received? (emphasis added by T.G.)


Here's my edited-and-expanded reply:

Sez Trump-loving Fancy Pants Rants, who evidently doesn't have the gonads or the horse sense to read Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 Yale University Press book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, or even his 2014 follow-up article, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars," but would rather take KGB-and-Trump-approved cheap shots at Bagley, Angleton, and Golitsyn from the Fancy Pants Rants Peanut Gallery.


https://archive.org/details/SpyWarsMolesMysteriesAndDeadlyGames

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2014.962362


It's funny that Fancy Pants keeps referencing HSCA perjurer John L. Hart, even after I showed him Bagley's 170-page HSCA testimony in which he ripped Hart the proverbial new one.

Here it is again.

Note: "Mr. X" is KGB true defector Anatoliy Golitsyn.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32273600.pdf


As I said in a previous post,

FPR thinks Bagley, a PhD'd former Marine Lieutenant during WW II whose father and two older brothers were Admirals, whose Great Uncle on his mother's side was Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, who received a medal when he retired from the Agency, and whom Richard Helms said, in so many words, was on the fast track to become Director of CIA until putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko physically defected to the U.S. -- was a scam artist.

Perhaps FPL is a scam artist, himself, and projects his defective character onto anyone, dead or alive, who appears to him to challenge the legitimacy of The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx")?

FPR doesn't want to learn about said mole-protecting putative KGB staff officer / false defector-in-place in Geneva in June 1962 / false (or perhaps rogue) physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964 Yuri Nosenko because Nosenko isn't a "hoot," and because he intuits that if he did learn about him, he'd have to consider the possibility that the KGB* really DID install The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx") as our "president."

*Today's SVR and FSB


Bagley wrote the following in Spy Wars:


There is no indication that CIA ever answered the extraordinary and unprecedented number of questions that arose about the defector Yuri Nosenko. Here is a sample of thirty of them, with references to the pages where they are discussed in Spy Wars.

Nosenko claimed that through the entire years 1960-61 he was deputy chief of the American-Embassy section of the American department of the Second Chief Directorate (SCD) of the KGB. It was this post (especially his claim to have there personally supervised all KGB work against the embassy's code clerks and security officer) that gave him access to all the most important information he gave CIA.

1. Why then, while supervising this top-priority work, was Nosenko performing low-level tasks for a different department? (Spy Wars pp. 94-95, 160-62, 235, 250, 280)

[He himself described his activity during this period, handling street-level homosexual provocateurs of the Tourist Department, recruiting homosexual tourists (one as far away as Sofia), helping the Tourist Department chief in meeting a visiting American travel agent, and traveling abroad repeatedly as watchdog for Soviet industrial delegations.]

2. Why did at least three KGB insiders later state that Nosenko never held that position? [They included i) a visitor to that section at the time, ii) a former member of the section itself, and iii) a former head of foreign counterintelligence, Oleg Kalugin.

3. How does one explain Nosenko's many changes of stories about his KGB career, even about when and how he entered service, and the evidence that the stories were false? (pp. 93, 160-62, 235, 248-50) .[Not a single KGB source during or after the Cold War, even among those who insisted that Nosenko genuinely defected, has confirmed the dates and assignments of his claimed KGB career.]

4. How does one explain Nosenko's authoritative claim that, up to the time he defected, the KGB did not recruit any American Embassy code clerk? (pp. 156-59, 241-42)

[in fact that section of the KGB recruited at least one code clerk and there were compelling signs that Nosenko was hiding the truth about two others.]

5. Why was Nosenko unaware of the operational mission to Helsinki during that period of his direct subordinate Kosolapov as part of a promising attempt to recruit an American Embassy cipher clerk? (pp. 157-60, 242)

6. How could Nosenko err by an entire year - and thus destroy his story about holding this job - by reporting i) that under his supervision KGB surveillants had spotted the American Embassy security officer visiting a certain dead drop site in late 1960 and ii) that for many weeks thereafter, as supervisor, he had received regular reports on the KGB's stakeout of that site. (pp. 88-89, 147-50, 186, 203-4)

[The visit actually happened in late 1961, so any stakeout would have been conducted after Nosenko left the job.]

7. Why did Nosenko fail to mention that dead drop visit when he was telling CIA in 1962 about his coverage of the security officer? (pp. 16, 147, 203)

8. If Nosenko was personally watching over the American Embassy's security officer, why did he not know that the officer traveled from Moscow to his ancestral homeland, Armenia? (Nosenko himself recognized that his failure to answer this question undermined his whole life story.) (pp. 186-87)

Nosenko preserved and brought to Geneva in 1964 the KGB's authorization for his travel in December 1963 to search for a fleeing KGB officer, Vladimir Cherepanov. (pp. 87, 167-68, 250-51)

9. How did he keep this document and why did he bring it to Geneva, whereas KGB regulations - as Nosenko agreed -- required that it be turned in before the next payday and before any further official travel could be authorized?

10. Why was that travel authorization (signed by the SCD chief Gribanov) made out to "Lt. Col. Nosenko", the rank he claimed, whereas under detailed questioning he admitted having been only a captain (as even the KGB now confirms)?

11. Is it mere coincidence that in 1962, long before this erroneous travel authorization, he was already lying about his rank, then calling himself a major,?

12. Why was it "Colonel" Nosenko's story that a Soviet official journalist tried to peddle to the Western press shortly after Nosenko's defection in 1964? (page 163)

13. And why would Nosenko be sent out to search for Cherepanov if, as suggested in questions 1-7 above, Nosenko was not deputy chief of the SCD's American-Embassy section?

Nosenko in 1962 volunteered information that his boss Kovshuk had traveled to the United States five years earlier to restore contact with a KGB-recruited American cipher-machine mechanic codenamed "Andrey." [it became evident that the real reason for Kovshuk's travel was to exploit the KGB recruitment of a CIA officer.] (pp. 67-71, 185)

14. Is it mere coincidence that just when Nosenko was telling CIA about Kovshuk's trip, the two KGB officers closest to him in Geneva, his sole KGB companion there, Yuri Guk, and his hotel roommate Kislov, were precisely the two KGB operatives who had worked with Kovshuk on that trip?

15. Why did Nosenko, having read Kislov's KGB file, certify to CIA that Kislov had no connection with the KGB? (pp. 65-67)

16. Why did Nosenko in 1962 say (and repeat) that "Andrey" was recruited in "1949¬1950" but later, in 1964, report that he himself had been in the KGB (entered 1953) while "Andrey" was still in Moscow?

17. Nosenko told CIA in 1962 that he had personally participated in the KGB Moscow attempt to recruit CIA officer Edward Ellis Smith. Why then did he in 1964 deny any knowledge of the name or the case? (p. 188)

Other questions:

18. Why did he refer in 1962 to KGB relations with the Finnish president, but then in 1964 deny any knowledge of it? (p. 186)

19. How does one explain Nosenko's mention in 1962 of the name "Zepp" - which at that moment was of intense interest to KGB counterintelligence - and his failure to recognize the name by early 1964? (pp. 15-16, 150-55, 162, 203)

20. If Nosenko was really in Geneva in 1962 and 1964 as the security watchdog of a Soviet conference delegation, as he claimed, why did even his KGB bosses say, after the Cold War, that he had gone there for other, "serious operational purposes"? (pp. 5, 237, 253)

21. How does one explain Nosenko's inability to describe even the most routine KGB procedures? (pp. 83-86, 191-92, 251-55)

22. How come this eleven-year veteran of KGB CI operations was unable to disclose to the U.S. a single KGB spy who at the time of uncovering, i) was still active and ii) had current access to US or NATO-country official secrets and iii) had previously been unsuspected by Western counterintelligence?

23. Is it true, as Nosenko authoritatively reported, having heard it from three different KGB authorities directly involved, that it was by chance Moscow surveillance of British diplomats that the KGB first learned of the treason of CIA's great spy Oleg Penkovsky? [KGB authorities have since denied it and suggested that the source was a mole.] (pp. 2I-22, 86-87, 235, 243)

Nosenko highlighted to CIA in 1962 that the KGB first uncovered Pyotr Popov, CIA's spy in the GRU (Military Intelligence) by chance surveillance of an American diplomat mailing a letter in Moscow in late January 1959. (pp. 11-12, 16-17, 24, 68¬75, 189, 241-43)

24. How does one equate this with the KGB's later admission that the GRU chief was fired from his post as a result of Popov's treason, almost two months before the letter mailing?

25. Or with the fact that KGB surveillants spotted Popov meeting CIA twice, at least two weeks before the letter mailing?

26. Or with the KGB's admission, in a book published in Moscow in 2000, that it had earlier recruited Edward Ellis Smith, the CIA officer who had supported the Popov case in Moscow?

Nosenko claimed inside knowledge about Lee Harvey Oswald in the Soviet Union, having participated in early decisions when Oswald defected to the USSR and later having read the KGB file on Oswald. Later, the KGB chairman at the time and other KGB veterans denied it and stated that Nosenko was lying about this. (So too did the House Select Committee on Assassinations after interviewing Nosenko many times in 1977-78.) (pp. 83-86, 95-96, 191, 210, 249)

27. If Nosenko did not have his claimed access to the Oswald case and did not really study the KGB's file, where did he get his information? And why does he continue to make that claim to this day?

After the Cold War much was learned about a previously unknown SCD department for operational deception, which was actively handing false sources to Western intelligence services to mislead them. It was learned that this department was closely supervised by Nosenko's sponsor General Oleg Gribanov. And that among its officers were Nosenko's friend Yuri Guk, who was meeting Nosenko before and after each CIA meeting in Geneva in 1962 (pp. 6, 9, 66, 236); Aleksandr Kislov, who was rooming with Nosenko in Geneva in 1962 (p. 7, 66, 70-71, 235, 236); and Vladimir Chelnokov, who took him along on an operational mission to Odessa in 1960 (p. 235).

28. Why did Nosenko not report on the existence of this department?

29. Why did Nosenko not tell that his close KGB associates at various times were members of it?

30. Is it mere coincidence that Nosenko replayed to CIA in 1962 each of these specific cases that six months earlier had been compromised to the Americans by KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn?

i) Vassall (pp. 14, 24, 97, 179, 187, 189, 206, 261)

ii) Preisfreund (pp. 25, 28, 158-59)

iii) Belitsky (pp. 17, 25, 179)

iv) Kovshuk's "trip" to Washington (pp. 24, 65-66, 69, 75-78)

v) Nine others including a Canadian and a French ambassador and a French businessman (pp. 4, 14, 25, 165, 206).

While an objective observer tries to answer each of these thirty questions in a manner consistent with his answers to the other questions, a thirty-first question will have occurred to him. How could so many questions - even a fraction of this number - have arisen about any genuine defector?