JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Tom Graves on May 12, 2026, 10:40:26 AM
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The following is the verbatim text of a June 1964 FBI document that was uncovered a few years ago by Malcolm Blunt at the National Archives. It’s viewable by clicking on a link in Bart Kamp’s recent YouTube interview of Blunt regarding Lee Harvey Oswald’s alleged stay (and his implausibly quick acquisition of a Russian tourist visa) in Helsinki.
The document is about West Virginia-born Edward Ellis Smith, a former Army Major and the former one-man CIA Station at the American Embassy in Moscow who, as GRU Lt. Col. Pyotr Popov’s incompetent dead drop setter-upper, was honey-trapped by his beautiful KGB maid and ostensibly fired by the Agency in late 1956. It seems to suggest that Smith virtually confessed during a speech to a group of former FBI agents to knowing the truth about Oswald’s “defection” to the USSR in October 1959.
Which makes sense if you believe, as John M. Newman and I do, that the CIA’s primary mole hunter, Bruce Solie in the Office of Security, betrayed Popov and the U-2 spy plane’s specifications to the KGB in D.C. movie houses in January 1957, and that in October of 1959 he sent Oswald to Moscow as an ostensible “dangle” in a (unbeknownst to James Angleton and Oswald) planned-to-fail hunt for “Popov’s U-2 Mole” (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA — the Soviet Russia Division.
Note: Tennent H. Bagley tells us in his 2007 book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, that Smith almost certainly betrayed Popov in those movie houses, but Newman (who dedicated his 2022 book, Uncovering Popov’s Mole, to Bagley) and I believe it was Solie who did the betraying, and that Smith “just” provided logistical support.
Here’s the document:
Airtel
6-22-64
To: SAC, San Francisco (105-152460)
From: Director, FBI (105-82555)
Enclosed are two Xerox copies of page 33 of the May, 1964, issue of “The Grapevine” containing an article captioned “Oswald Case Topic of Address Before Palo Alto Chapter.”
Bureau desires that Edward Ellis Smith, Palo Alto, California, be interviewed regarding allegations made by him that Oswald was a Soviet agent who was unable to be properly controlled by his Soviet masters. Question him to determine if he has any evidence to support the thesis that Oswald was a Soviet agent. In the course of the interview, ask him about the book he is writing and whether his conclusion in it will be based on any facts. In the event he should during the interview offer you a copy of his manuscript of this book, you may accept it; however, in doing so be certain Smith understands that by accepting it the FBI in no way is endorsing it. (It is noted he previously furnished you a copy of the manuscript he had written in collaboration with Stefan T. Possony; see your airtel 1-20-64 regarding Oswald.)
As you know, Smith served in Moscow as Assistant Military Attache from 1948 to 1950 and as Department of State Security Officer from 1954 -1956. He was compromised by the Soviets as a result of his illicit relations with a Russian girl who was his maid during 1954 and 1955. He reported the Soviet recruitment attempt and investigation revealed no evidence of any compromise of information. However, he lost his position with the Department of State. Recently he has been active in behalf of Senator Goldwater’s Presidential […]
100-10461
. . . . . . .
My comment:
Bagley wrote short biographical sketches of about fifty of the people he writes about in Spy Wars.
This is what he said about Smith:
Smith, Edward Ellis: CIA operative in the American Embassy in Moscow who was supporting CIA’s contact inside Russia with Pyotr Popov. Vladislav
Kovshuk compromised Smith and tried to recruit him in the fall of 1956, at which time CIA recalled and fired him because of his delay in reporting and
because it disbelieved his account. Yuri Nosenko claimed in 1962 to have participated with Kovshuk in approaching Smith, then in 1964 denied any
knowledge of the affair. A Russian book on the KGB in 2000 listed Smith as the KGB’s first successful recruitment of a CIA officer.
PS It's interesting to note that Smith died in a semi-mysterious hit-and-run-accident while he was walking one night in 1982 in Redwood City.