I educate self-described J6 participant / Patrick Moynihan-hater Matt Cloud

[Tom Graves]

Matt Cloud, a self-described J6 participant who served as an assistant to Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and now believes hated Democrat Moynihan and Deputy Director of CIA, John N. McMahon, were KGB “moles,” posted the following in response to my recent Substack article on Edward Ellis Smith.

Cloud’s reply has been paraphrased by me into intelligible English:

CIA officer Edward Ellis Smith was compromised in Moscow in 1956 by Norman Borodin and false-defector Yuri Nosenko. Rhetorical question: Was the June-July 1964 rehabilitation of Norman Borodin’s father, Mikhail Borodin (which rehabilitation caused Nosenko-handler John McMahon’s documented panic) due to the younger Borodin’s and Yuri Nosenko’s successful operation against Edward Ellis Smith?

. . . . . . . .

My reply:

Dear Grasshopper,

Just because false-defector-in-place in Geneva in June 1962 / false (or perhaps rogue) physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964 Yuri Nosenko said in June 1962 that he had been Deputy Chief of the Second Chief Division’s American Embassy section until the beginning of 1962 and that he had helped its Chief, General Vladislav Kovshuk, compromise putative American Embassy diplomat Edward Ellis Smith doesn’t necessarily mean that he did.

It’s interesting to note, Grasshopper, that in 1964 Nosenko denied having ever heard of Edward Ellis Smith. It’s also interesting that a true defector, KGB Major Pyotr Deriabin, determined, by interviewing Nosenko for two weeks in 1965, that he couldn’t have been a KGB officer — much less a Major Lieutenant Colonel Captain — as evidenced by the fact that he didn’t know:

1) How many of the Embassy’s floors were dedicated to the CIA (three),

2) How to send a cable,

3) Whether his secretary was dedicated to him or rotated to him from a “pool,”

4) Where the heck the cafeteria was at KGB headquarters,

5) etc., etc., etc.

You must remember, Grasshopper, that Nosenko was sent to the CIA in Geneva in June 1962 by the Second Chief Directorate’s General Oleg Gribanov — who, six months earlier, had sent Dmitry Polyakov and Aleksey Kulak to the FBI’s NYC field office — to protect a mole or two or three (can you say Bruce Leonard Solie, Leonard V. McCoy, and Russia-born George Kisevalter?) from being uncovered due to true-defector Anatoly Golitsyn’s recent revelations.

By claiming in June 1962 to have recently been Deputy Chief of the Second Chief Directorate’s American Embassy section, Nosenko was “speaking with authority” when he volunteered that his former boss, Kovshuk, had made a special two-week trip to Washington to reactivate an American Embassy Army sergeant cipher machine mechanic codenamed “Andrey” when in fact Kovshuk, under the name “Vladimir Komarov,” had gone to Washington in late 1962 as an ostensible diplomat who was just beginning a two-year gig at the Soviet Embassy.

Factoids:

1) “Komarov” / Kovshuk was seen so often near D.C. movie houses in the company of two other KGB officers that the FBI began referring to them as “The Three Musketeers.”

2) “Komarov” / Kovshuk waited nine-and-a-half months to contact “Andrey” (now-worthless-to-KGB cipher machine mechanic Dayle W. Smith), whose address was in the phone book.

3) ”Komarov” / Kovshuk didn’t serve as a “diplomat” at the Soviet Embassy for the agreed-upon two years. Instead, he returned to his waiting-for-him job at KGB headquarters after only ten months.

4) Recently fired by CIA Smith encountered a CIA friend (who knew of Smith’s firing) in Washington in early 1957. The friend asked him what he’d been up to, and Smith replied, as memorialized in a note that the friend gave to the CIA, “Nothing much, just killing time, waiting to go out to California [to his new job at the Hoover Institution]. Spending a lot of time in the movies.”

5) When Nosenko recontacted Tennent H. Bagley and probable mole George Kisevalter in late January 1964 in Geneva, he told them that he’d recently been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB’s American Tourist Department and had read the KGB's file on American tourist Lee Harvey Oswald four times — two times before and two times after the assassination of JFK. He also dropped the bomb that he’d just received a “return to Moscow immediately" telegram from KGB headquarters. (That’s why the CIA, although strongly suspecting that Nosenko was fake, let him physically defect to the U.S.)

6) The aforementioned Kulak (J. Edgar Hoover’s shielded-from-CIA FEDORA) “confirmed” that Nosenko was now a Lieutenant Colonel and had received a “return to Moscow immediately” telegram in Geneva in early-February 1964 but lamely backtracked on those two “confirmations” when Nosenko later admitted under (non-tortuous) interrogation to have made them up.

Your mentor,

— Tom

PS You may enjoy this excerpt from Bagley’s 2007 book, Spy Wars.

The impossible circumstances of Nosenko ’s rapid promotions in the KGB hierarchy — neither having accomplished any verifiable professional successes nor for the last two promotions having even been in Moscow most of the time — led us to probe his claims.

Here Nosenko cracked and admitted that he had lied. He was not now a lieutenant colonel, nor had he been a major as he had claimed when meeting us in Geneva in 1962. He was and had remained a captain — though he insisted on his rapid advance in the hierarchy to first-deputy department chief.

Asked to explain, then, how his travel authorization for the Cherepanov search in October 1963 had been made out to “Lieutenant Colonel Nosenko,” he said it had been a clerk’s error. Then why had General Gribanov signed off on this error? No explanation. (And later, questioned again on the discrepancy, he attributed the error to a careless duty officer, not to a careless clerk.)

“You defected because a telegram was recalling you to Moscow just after you had arrived in Geneva?”

“Yes. I was afraid they had found out about our contact.”

“We have analyzed all the radio traffic during that period. The Soviet representation in Geneva received no telegram from Moscow in those two days.”

After his initial insistence before becoming convinced of our facts, Nosenko admitted he had lied. “I was afraid, and wanted to get out as fast as possible. I invented the telegram because you would have insisted that I stay in place.” 4

“You told us in 1962 that you participated with Kovshuk in the recruitment approach to Edward Smith, the Embassy security officer. But this happened in 1956. How come you were there? You have said and written that you transferred to the Tourist Department in 1955.”

Nosenko looked at the interrogator blankly. “Who? I never heard that name. I could not have told you that.”

Our interrogator sighed in frustration and called for a tape recorder and played back for Nosenko a clear recording of his statements in the Geneva safe house.

Nosenko thought for minutes, then said in a low voice, “Mr. Bagley was making me drunk then.” 5 Again he sank into morose silence, his lips tight, unwilling to say a word.

The interrogator, aware that drink does not grant second sight, and having just heard Nosenko’s voice on the tape giving firsthand details, recognized this excuse as ludicrous. But he had no choice but to move on with his questioning.