JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Michael T. Griffith on January 06, 2026, 07:43:21 PM
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One of the oddest, most illogical arguments against the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination is the argument that those who posit a conspiracy do so because they find it too troubling to believe that a U.S. president could be killed by a lone-nut gunman, that those who posit a conspiracy feel a psychological and emotional need to believe that JFK was killed by a plot because they just can't accept that such a popular and powerful American president such as JFK could be killed by some crazy guy firing from an open window with a WWII-era bolt-action rifle.
This is utter nonsense and gibberish. I would much rather believe that JFK was killed by some lone nut than believe that he was killed by a powerful conspiracy. The lone-gunman theory is far, far less troubling than the conspiracy theory. Which would you rather believe: that your mother died because some crazy man shot her to get attention, or that your mother was killed by a group of influential people who viewed her as a threat to their power? It would far more comforting and far less disturbing to believe in the lone-nut explanation than in the conspiracy explanation.
Moreover, many people who posit a conspiracy in JFK's death initially accepted the lone-gunman explanation and only changed their minds after they read the other side. I am one of those people. Until the 1991 movie JFK caused me to start researching the JFK case, I believed in the Warren Commission's version of the shooting. I thought the case was open and shut. I only went to see Oliver Stone's JFK movie out of raw curiosity, not because I had any doubts about Oswald's guilt.
If anyone seems to have a psychological and emotional need to believe in their version of the JFK case, it is lone-gunman theorists. The idea that a powerful plot killed JFK severely threatens their beliefs about America and the American government, and it challenges their very understanding of reality.
I actually wish that the lone-gunman theory were true, that there had been no conspiracy and no massive cover-up, just a troubled lone nut who got astonishingly lucky with two of his three shots.
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Well, what's the alternative? The mafia did it? The Cubans did it? LBJ did it? What's the alternative to the SBT? How many shooters - 2, 3, 4 or 5? CTers don't offer a coherent alternative to the lone gunman theory.
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Well, what's the alternative? The mafia did it? The Cubans did it? LBJ did it? What's the alternative to the SBT? How many shooters - 2, 3, 4 or 5? CTers don't offer a coherent alternative to the lone gunman theory.
All they know is what their beloved KGB* and Comrade Oliver Stone have told them: Former Marine sharpshooter and U-2 radar operator Lee Harvey Oswald was a "patsy," and JFK was killed by the evil, evil, Military Industrial Intelligence-Community Complex!!!
*Today's SVR and FSB
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The earth must have tilted on its axis, because I must agree with Michael here. I have certainly seen the "psychological explanation" that CTers require an assassination worthy of JFK, but I haven’t seen it often and not much recently. While there may be some grain of truth, it surely can’t be a prime motivating factor.
I really think there are a handful of primary motivations common to both CTers and LNers:
1. Some tiny percentage of folks are simply interested in historical truth, let the chips fall where they may. These folks are rare birds on either side of the JFKA research community. They may have reached a CT or LN conviction, but they will at least listen to and consider the countervailing evidence and arguments. Naturally, almost everyone thinks he or she is within this category, when in fact close to no one actually is.
2. Every area of weirdness, be it the JFKA or Bigfoot, attracts a fair number of ego-driven characters who want to be big fish in these tiny ponds – which is far easier than being a big fish in a big pond. Start a website, write a book, host a podcast, etc., etc., and soon you’re a big deal to the tiny segment of the populace that really cares anything about the JFKA or Bigfoot. I believe this pretty well explains virtually all of the “names” on both the CT and LN sides. It’s mostly about “Look at me!” It’s kind of comical because these are truly tiny ponds. I know several of the big names in the UFO field and, believe me, they aren't buying mansions with the earnings from those efforts.
3. Every area of weirdness, and especially the JFKA, has a significant segment for whom the subject matter is secondary to promoting an ideological agenda. It’s not really about the JFKA per se, but about what these folks think the JFKA tells us (or should tell us) about our country, our government, the world in which we live. Their theory of the JFKA is derived heavily from what they think about these other things. Here as well, I think, we see this very obviously on both the CT and LN sides.
4. Then we have the vast hordes, including myself, for whom puzzling areas of weirdness, from the JFKA to Bigfoot to UFOs to the Shroud of Turin, are mostly just hobbies and amusements and even quasi-religions. Wrestling with the issues and arguments and all the evidential minutiae and bonding and debating with others is just kind of entertaining and fun.
On the CT side of this horde, there are well-known psychological factors, which I share, that contribute to a conspiracy-prone mindset and thus are likely to attract someone to the CT perspective. Ditto for the LN perspective. I don’t think these are controlling factors – I’m a conspiracist in some areas and not in others, and I have waffled between a CT and LN position in my JFKA journey – but they do have an influence. The key is to know yourself and recognize these propensities and biases before they do take control.
For most people in the vast horde, however, I think the JFKA is mostly just a puzzle-solving hobby or game with little in the way of a psychological “need” for a particular theory to be true. Once someone’s convictions harden and he or she becomes heavily invested in a particular theory and bonds with others who share that theory, however, then it can become more like a religion and critical thinking tends to fly out the window.
For myself, I recognize a lifelong strong attraction to many areas of weirdness – the JFKA, UFOs, NDEs, the Shroud of Turin, many anomalous phenomena, etc., etc. I would love for the JFKA to have a weird, multi-faceted, jaw-dropping solution just for the sheer “Wow!” factor. I admit that I really cared nothing about JFK and don’t really care how he died apart from this aspect of vaguely hoping it was something fascinating. I don’t think the JFKA tells me much or has the potential to tell me much of anything at all about our country, our government or the world in which we live. I have actively resisted trying to become a big fish in the JFKA pond (or cesspool, as the case may be); my ego simply doesn’t require it. I admit that my interest is simply that of a puzzle-playing hobbyist who thinks the entire exercise is entertaining and intellectually stimulating at some level but fundamentally absurd because there will simply never be any clear answer or even consensus. The JFKA has never become, and never will become, a quasi-religion for me, nor do I think I have lost my rationality or ability to think critically insofar as the JFK or UFOs or anything else is concerned.
Oops, I did omit a fifth category:
5. In the above categories, there is a fair amount of genuine mental illness. Simply having a conspiracy-prone mindset or strong confirmation bias one way or the other is not a mental illness. In categories 2, 3 and 4, however, I do believe there is a very significant percentage of folks whose cognitive faculties are not operating properly (to put it politely). This seems screamingly obvious to me and perhaps to you. Alas, internet forums in particular attract a disproportionate number of these folks.
If you recognize and accept this, however, it can be part of the fun. This is why I have always said that the psychology and dynamics of internet forums are more interesting to me than whatever subject is being discussed. I actually participated for a long time on a theological forum where seemingly intelligent people were adamant that the earth is flat and the moon landings were faked. The discussions were absurd, but the people and group dynamics were fascinating. Ditto for much of the JFKA stuff, mostly CT but not entirely. Some foaming-at-the-mouth LNers are as curious to me as any CTer – almost, to get back to Michael’s original post, as though there is some deep need for the LN narrative to be correct.
Actually, I guess, a foaming-at-the-mouth LNer is more puzzling to me than a CTer. If you really think the LN narrative is correct - well, that's the verdict of history, so let it go. These LNers create the same puzzlement for me as the atheists on religion forums. If you really think there is no god and religion is foolishness, why do you spend so incredibly much time ranting against the Bible and all the various doctrines? It almost has to be, it seems to me, some level of insecurity about the truth of what you proclaim. Eek, did I just agree with Michael again? WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?
Oh, well, on it goes.
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LP--
You are a little tough on JFKA researchers, but you make a lot of good points.
I thought you overlooked one aspect of JFKA research: Ideology.
The ideology drives the agenda, and the agenda drives the narrative.
Devout left-wingers have developed elaborate JFKA narratives (Vincent Salandria and others) that insist the JFKA was a plot involving dozens, if not more, and reached into highest levels of US government and capitalism. Not only that, elements of the CIA, the Pentagon, the Secret Service, the FBI, the Navy autopsists, the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas Sheriffs and DA, all played bit parts in the narrative. There have been even more participants that I have forgotten about. The media was totally onboard.
OTOH, former CIA Chief James Woolsey authored a book blaming the KGB for the JFKA.
The Education Forum is dominated by left-wing ideologues and crackpots who have all but snuffed out other points of view.
But there are other points of view.
My guess: Alpha 66, or KGB and G2 assets embedded in the Cuban community and the US intel community.
A very small plot, perhaps only three people, and that includes LHO.
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LP--
You are a little tough on JFKA researchers, but you make a lot of good points.
I thought you overlooked one aspect of JFKA research: Ideology.
The ideology drives the agenda, and the agenda drives the narrative.
Devout left-wingers have developed elaborate JFKA narratives (Vincent Salandria and others) that insist the JFKA was a plot involving dozens, if not more, and reached into highest levels of US government and capitalism. Not only that, elements of the CIA, the Pentagon, the Secret Service, the FBI, the Navy autopsists, the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas Sheriffs and DA, all played bit parts in the narrative. There have been even more participants that I have forgotten about. The media was totally onboard.
OTOH, former CIA Chief James Woolsey authored a book blaming the KGB for the JFKA.
The Education Forum is dominated by left-wing ideologues and crackpots who have all but snuffed out other points of view.
But there are other points of view.
My guess: Alpha 66, or KGB and G2 assets embedded in the Cuban community and the US intel community.
A very small plot, perhaps only three people, and that includes LHO.
Those motivated primarily by ideology are my category #3 above. I noticed this early-on at the Ed Forum and started a highly unpopular thread about it. I have to agree with Michael, however, that I think there is a strong ideological component to the fanatical LN defense community as well.
Your guess sounds considerably more elaborate than the small-scale conspiracy I thought you were suggesting. I could at least entertain either:
1. Oswald is influenced and perhaps made promises by some fellow pro-Castro types in New Orleans or Mexico City, but Dealey Plaza is pretty much the LN scenario.
2. Same as #1, but there is another pro-Castro gunman in the Dal Tex or County Records building.
3. Oswald makes a spectacle of himself in New Orleans to the extent that Marcello's folks recognize a made-to-order patsy. Oswald is induced to think he's part of a pro-Castro operation but in fact is part of a Mafia operation with a Mafia pro in the Dal Tex or County Records building.
I think there are LN objections to all three scenarios, but they are at least within the realm of possibility. Once we get into anything more elaborate or that requires Oswald to be anything other than the Castro-admiring Marxist he actually was, it seems to me that things quickly fall apart.
I see now that you posit perhaps only three people including LHO. It was the term "assets" that threw me.
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Those motivated primarily by ideology are my category #3 above. I noticed this early-on at the Ed Forum and started a highly unpopular thread about it. I have to agree with Michael, however, that I think there is a strong ideological component to the fanatical LN defense community as well.
Your guess sounds considerably more elaborate than the small-scale conspiracy I thought you were suggesting. I could at least entertain either:
1. Oswald is influenced and perhaps made promises by some fellow pro-Castro types in New Orleans or Mexico City, but Dealey Plaza is pretty much the LN scenario.
2. Same as #1, but there is another pro-Castro gunman in the Dal Tex or County Records building.
3. Oswald makes a spectacle of himself in New Orleans to the extent that Marcello's folks recognize a made-to-order patsy. Oswald is induced to think he's part of a pro-Castro operation but in fact is part of a Mafia operation with a Mafia pro in the Dal Tex or County Records building.
I think there are LN objections to all three scenarios, but they are at least within the realm of possibility. Once we get into anything more elaborate or that requires Oswald to be anything other than the Castro-admiring Marxist he actually was, it seems to me that things quickly fall apart.
I see now that you posit perhaps only three people including LHO. It was the term "assets" that threw me.
Dear FPR,
You forgot to mention that a big difference between Lone Gunman Advocates and KGB-encouraged, tinfoil-hat Conspiracy Theorists is that the latter require oodles and gobs of evil, evil "Deep State" bad guys for the planning, the "patsy-ing," the planting of evidence, the shooting, the getting-away, the altering of all of the Dealey Plaza films and photos, the altering of all of the Bethesda photos and x-rays, and the all-important (and evidently ongoing!!!) cover up.
-- Tom
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TG-
Yes, you did mention ideologies. We think alike!
I find your scenarios plausible.
I suspect a second gunsel on Nov. 22, due to the cadence of shots that struck JFK and JBC. (Z-295 and Z-313).
The GK smoke-and-bang show suggests another participant as well.
The recent Kirk assassination, and the incredible close-miss Trump assassination attempt, destroy suggestions that only a skilled marksman could hit JFK on Nov. 22. Rank amateurs are dangerous, and from greater distances than seen in Dealey Plaza.
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Yes, you did mention ideologies. We think alike!
I did?
I suspect a second gunsel on Nov. 22, due to the cadence of shots that struck JFK and JBC. (Z-295 and Z-313). The GK smoke-and-bang show suggests another participant as well. The recent Kirk assassination, and the incredible close-miss Trump assassination attempt, destroy suggestions that only a skilled marksman could hit JFK on Nov. 22. Rank amateurs are dangerous, and from greater distances than seen in Dealey Plaza.
We know ad nauseam what you suspect.
Flash-bang and dorsal side of the wrist.
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Dear FPR,
You forgot to mention that a big difference between Lone Gunman Advocates and KGB-encouraged, tinfoil-hat Conspiracy Theorists is that the latter require oodles and gobs of evil, evil "Deep State" bad guys for the planning, the "patsy-ing," the planting of evidence, the shooting, the getting-away, the altering of all of the Dealey Plaza films and photos, the altering of all of the Bethesda photos and x-rays, and the all-important (and evidently ongoing!!!) cover up.
-- Tom
Why would I have mentioned that? It's not what the thread is about. I can understand why YOU would mention that, because you are one-note broken record whose psychology spans several of my five categories.
Those who favor elaborate conspiracy theories are inevitably either in category #3, and thus need certain conspirators in order for the JFKA to have the monumental historical and ideological significance they attach to it, or category #4, and thus favor an elaborate, multi-faceted conspiracy because it's simply more fun as a jigsaw puzzle. In both cases, of course, there is considerable overlap with my category #5 - but this is usually fairly obvious and makes those in categories #3 and 4 somewhat more entertaining than they would otherwise be.
I have several little axioms I have developed over the years that guide my forays into the various species of weirdness. One I developed after extensive interactions with Young Earth Creationists, who insist the creation is approximately 6,500 years old. My axiom is, "You don't REALLY believe that. An assortment of social and psychological pressures may have caused you to say you believe that, and at some superficial level you may have even have convinced yourself you believe that, but you don't REALLY believe that. Sorry, but no sane person REALLY believes that." Another, closely related, which I've stated previously here, is, "Just because someone is intelligent, educated, articulate, successful, and seems reasonable about most things, do not assume that there is not some corner of his mind where he is almost COMPLETELY WHACKED and capable of convincing himself he believes utter nonsense about some pet topic." I have other useful axioms I could share with you - indeed, you in particular - but I am saving them for the forthcoming The Sayings of Chairman Lance.
What is kind of depressing to me about the JFKA research community is that pretty much no one seems to have any fun. It's all so grimly serious - very reminiscent of religious debates. Believe me, the Catholics, Southern Baptists, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses do not regard each other with benign tolerance and realize that the whole enterprise of attempting to explain a deity in human terms is fundamentally absurd and, well ... a hoot. Ditto with the JFKA, or at least that's how it should be. At this stage, there's never going to be a breakthrough, something that changes the verdict of history. There just isn't. That's the reality. There will always be the LN narrative and 5,000 "Where the hell does THIS fit?" puzzle pieces that don't mesh perfectly. Your KGB* stuff, even if it once had a kernel of truth (which my best estimate is that it didn't), has become a comical obsession that has turned you into a tedious crank. Fortunately for you, there are those of us, good-natured and guided by our little axioms, who can see this and find it just part and parcel of what is the goofy Monty Python skit called "JFKA research."
*Now the SVR/FSB. BWAHAHA! :D
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Why would I have mentioned that? It's not what the thread is about. I can understand why YOU would mention that, because you are one-note broken record whose psychology spans several of my five categories.
Those who favor elaborate conspiracy theories are inevitably either in category #3, and thus need certain conspirators in order for the JFKA to have the monumental historical and ideological significance they attach to it, or category #4, and thus favor an elaborate, multi-faceted conspiracy because it's simply more fun as a jigsaw puzzle. In both cases, of course, there is considerable overlap with my category #5 - but this is usually fairly obvious and makes those in categories #3 and 4 somewhat more entertaining than they would otherwise be.
I have several little axioms I have developed over the years that guide my forays into the various species of weirdness. One I developed after extensive interactions with Young Earth Creationists, who insist the creation is approximately 6,500 years old. My axiom is, "You don't REALLY believe that. An assortment of social and psychological pressures may have caused you to say you believe that, and at some superficial level you may have even have convinced yourself you believe that, but you don't REALLY believe that. Sorry, but no sane person REALLY believes that." Another, closely related, which I've stated previously here, is, "Just because someone is intelligent, educated, articulate, successful, and seems reasonable about most things, do not assume that there is not some corner of his mind where he is almost COMPLETELY WHACKED and capable of convincing himself he believes utter nonsense about some pet topic." I have other useful axioms I could share with you - indeed, you in particular - but I am saving them for the forthcoming The Sayings of Chairman Lance.
What is kind of depressing to me about the JFKA research community is that pretty much no one seems to have any fun. It's all so grimly serious - very reminiscent of religious debates. Believe me, the Catholics, Southern Baptists, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses do not regard each other with benign tolerance and realize that the whole enterprise of attempting to explain a deity in human terms is fundamentally absurd and, well ... a hoot. Ditto with the JFKA, or at least that's how it should be. At this stage, there's never going to be a breakthrough, something that changes the verdict of history. There just isn't. That's the reality. There will always be the LN narrative and 5,000 "Where the hell does THIS fit?" puzzle pieces that don't mesh perfectly. Your KGB* stuff, even if it once had a kernel of truth (which my best estimate is that it didn't), has become a comical obsession that has turned you into a tedious crank. Fortunately for you, there are those of us, good-natured and guided by our little axioms, who can see this and find it just part and parcel of what is the goofy Monty Python skit called "JFKA research."
*Now the SVR/FSB. BWAHAHA! :D
Dear FPR,
What's so "fun" about learning how your "impotent KGB* in benign USSR / Russia" made disinformation hay** from the anomaly-replete JFKA, and in so doing, helped set up the conditions for its installing The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx") as our "president" in 2017 and 2025, and . . . gag me with a KGB spoon . . . being surrounded by oodles and gobs of highly intelligent but nevertheless zombified by Mark Lane and Oliver Stone and James DiEugenio "useful idiots" in the process?
*Today's SVR and FSB :D
**You know, like "We live in an evil, evil Military Industrial Intelligence-Community Complex Deep State" -- that sort of thing? (Of course we do now, with The Traitorous Orange Bird -- rhymes with "Xxxx" -- and Stephen Miller and his ilk in power.)
-- Tom
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If I actually thought the KGB were capable of all you believe, I would salute them, brush up on my pigeon Russian, and await their complete takeover with unbridled enthusiasm. Alas, my experiences in Belarus more strongly suggest they are pretty much the same bureaucratic clucks one finds at every level of government everywhere. They apparently have been successful, however, in convincing some folks like you that they are Super Boogeymen. Oh, well, I suppose there are folks in Russia who think the same about the CIA. Just the crap I have to go through with Langley to receive my paltry monthly stipend tells me any Super Boogeymen are long gone. I actually had to send an email directly to The Donald last week after Langley shorted me $50 without explanation.
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If I actually thought the KGB were capable of all you believe, I would salute them, brush up on my pigeon Russian, and await their complete takeover with unbridled enthusiasm. Alas, my experiences in Belarus more strongly suggest they are pretty much the same bureaucratic clucks one finds at every level of government everywhere. They apparently have been successful, however, in convincing some folks like you that they are Super Boogeymen. Oh, well, I suppose there are folks in Russia who think the same about the CIA. Just the crap I have to go through with Langley to receive my paltry monthly stipend tells me any Super Boogeymen are long gone. I actually had to send an email directly to The Donald last week after Langley shorted me $50 without explanation.
Dear FPR,
The proof is staring you in the face every time Donald J. Trump looks into the camera.
Do you agree with him that the Democrats are to blame for Jan 6?
-- Tom
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Dear FPR,
The proof is staring you in the face every time Donald J. Trump looks into the camera.
-- Tom
I suppose he does have that "KGB stooge look" about him, although I thought it was just too many carrots in his diet.
If I haven't previously, I'll share my first experience with the Belarusian KGB (which my wife says is still called the KGB) in 2007: My brother-in-law, who has a Tom Graves-type perspective on the KGB, had filled me full of horror stories and the need to be ultra-careful - to the extent of warning me that KGB super-miscrophones would pick up everything I said in the family car on the Minsk streets. I got off the plane at the Minsk airport and walked through a security gate with my laptop slung over my shoulder, only to encounter a woman in uniform. Attempting to show how cooperative I was, I took the initiative and asked, "Do you want to look at my laptop?" She shook her head and said, "You don't have anything on there I need to see, do you?" - clearly communicating "Just say no, stupid, because I really don't want to go through this silly exercise." That pretty much told me all I needed to know about the KGB. On four subsequent trips, I never gave a thought to the KGB, pretty much acted as though I were on vacation in Illinois, and never had the slightest problem. You do have to register with the Interior Ministry within 24 hours after your arrival, but even that was always much ado about nothing.
Since you are "on to" the KGB and make no bones about it, TG, it's kind of surprising you're still alive. Shouldn't you be a mystery death or something by now? If we hear you suddenly suffered a bad case of spontaneous combustion, I'll take a closer look at this stuff.
The Mysterious Disappearance of Tom Graves. ("Natural causes. Sometimes people just explode." - Agent Rogerz, Repo Man, possibly the greatest movie ever made.)
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Personally, I would be totally fine with believing that Oswald was one of the gunmen. After I began researching the case, I entertained the idea that Oswald was one of the shooters. If the evidence pointed to Oswald as the sixth-floor gunman, I would have no problem putting him in the window during the shooting. I just do not buy the case against him. Every single item of so-called "evidence" against him is fraught with problems and smells to high heaven of having been planted.
I think the weight of the evidence shows that Oswald was not on the sixth floor during the shooting. I think any objective analysis of the alleged shooting feat shows that the feat would have been extremely difficult, virtually impossible, even for a world-class rifleman, and that the feat was far beyond Oswald's meager rifle skills.
There is also the fact that the ammo that hit JFK's head behaved nothing like the ammo that Oswald supposedly used.
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Dear FPR,
Do you agree with President Trump and FBI Director Patel, respectively, that the Democrats and the FBI are to blame for Jan 6?
Regardless, speaking of the KGB's* ability to eavesdrop back in the day, we know from what Greville Wynne told his British debriefers after he was released from a Soviet prison for his involvement with the CIA's and MI6's spy, GRU Lt. Col. Oleg Penkovsky, that your beloved humanitarian organization placed such a hi-tech vase-or-ashtray-ensconced "bug" on his and Penkovsky's Moscow restaurant table two weeks after the latter's April 1961 recruitment in London that it was able to pick up, without any background noise, Penkovsky's asking Wynne (or perhaps the other way around) about "Zeph" (short for Stephanie, a London bargirl with whom Penkovsky had been smitten two weeks earlier), and which the Soviets mistook for "Zepp," a possible mole or double-agent penetration of your beloved world-class (pardon the pun) organization.
The interesting thing is that false-defector-in-place in June 1962 in Geneva / false (or perhaps rogue) physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964, Yuri "The KGB Had Nothing to Do with Lee Harvey Oswald in the USSR" Nosenko, asked his primary case officer -- Tennent H. Bagley -- and (probable mole) George Kisevalter about "Zepp" in June 1962 at that CIA safehouse in Geneva.
You can read more about "The Zepp Incident" in my Wikipedia article on Tennent H. Bagley.
*Today's SVR and FSB :D
-- Tom
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"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
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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.
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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 to believe them would necessitate paranoically believing that oodles and gobs of evil, evil Deep State operatives were involved.