JFK Assassination Forum

Matt Cloud, a self-described J6 participant who served as an assistant to 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.

This laughable, nonsensical, surrealistically absurd thread has 325 replies and 68,346 views. How is this possible??? Maybe I'll just kill myself.

   Some of You are doing a "Baghdad Bob" with respect to this New Evidence of a "getaway" car. If you believe I am wrong, just show me where that car is on the Wiegman Film. It flat-out is Not there. And the kicker is that the DPD were all over this car. They did suspect that this car parked in a clearly posted, "NO PARKING At Any Time" zone was involved in the JFK Assassination.   

I have one question for everyone who is fretting about whether LHO was acting on behalf of the Cubans, Soviets, CIA, Mafia, etc. How did any of these entities know in advance that Oswald would end up working in a building overlooking a motorcade route that had not even been planned when he was hired. If you can't answer that simple question, I have no idea why any of you would want to go down any of those rabbit holes.

Before applying for the TSBD job, Oswald applied and was rejected for several jobs which were nowhere near the motorcade. In fact the only reason Oswald ended up applying for the TSBD job was because Buell Wesley Frazier worked there and during a meeting of local ladies including Linnie Mae, Frazier's sister, the topic of Oswald's unemployment was mentioned so Ruth Paine rang the TSBD to see if Oswald could get a job. Ruth Paine is often accused by the clueless CT community of being part of the conspiracy but as just seen, the amount of random events that needed to coincide ensures that Ruth was just being helpful.



JohnM

Plain Luck or Circumstance Played a Role in the JFKA

For years, left-wing ideologue CT'ers have concocted elaborate explanations ("the Deep State in action") of how LHO ended up in the TSBD on 11.22. None really hold water. Likely it was just circumstance.

But there is blame all around. The US right-wing largely went down the LN theory-rabbit-hole with the release of the WC report in 1964. In the right-wing of that era, there was a near-reflexive reverence for authority, and the WC represented authority.

In addition, the WC in 1964 struck exactly the tone the right-wing wanted to hear: a soured Marxist leftie-loser lone-nut perped the horrid JFKA, but not on instructions from Havana of Moscow. No nuke war with Russia needed (see LBJ's instructions to the Earl Warren and Richard Russell).

The modern-day right-wing is a different animal, and sometimes reflexively rejects authority, and so you get a different knee-jerk reaction to official JFKA theorizing, with just as much justification as the 1960's right-wingers.

The agenda writes the narrative. Mossad is the new JFKA villain in many crackpot quarters, left-wing and right-wing.

But...keep in mind you have former CIA Director James Woolsey's book, Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin's Secret War on America, presenting the view that LHO was a Russian operative. Woolsey was a CIA director, and a right-winger.

Woolsey is a deeply knowledgable fellow when it comes to spy work. Participants in online forums are admitted hobbyists next to Woolsey.

So I defer to Woolsey...or online hobbyists? 

As for LHO being in the TSBD, almost surely that was luck or circumstance, as was the decision to have the JFK limo make a hairpin turn in front of the TSBD.

CT'ers make the obviously baseless assumption that a JFKA CT required the knowing placement of LHO in the TSBD in preparation for the motorcade.

Rather, LHO was there by chance, and G2'ers or KGB'ers took advantage of that situation.

IMHO, there was no elaborate JFKAC. Just some guys with guns.

There was no dragnet or roadblocks after the JFKA. The bad guys got away, except for LHO, who didn't even have a bicycle to his name.

Keep in mind, at anytime in the 1960s, the KGB and G2 had hundreds, maybe even thousands, of assets, plants, double-agents, agents, and informants in the US. It is legend how thoroughly Castro had infiltrated the Cuban exile community.

Moreover, some serious JFKA researchers posit the KGB had thoroughly penetrated the CIA. If true, that means all those CIA eyes and ears were also de facto KGB eyes and ears. LHO popped up on the radar when JFK's plan for a Dallas visit became generally known.

LHO appears to have been one of those G2-KGB assets, and by chance he had a job in the TSBD. So he was utilized.

    Try and confine your "observations" to 29:30. People want to swear by the JFK Assassination "Images", until they don't. As Detective Joe Friday used to say when questioning an eyewitness, "Just the FACTS, just the FACTS". What do you See on your frame-by-frame examination of 29:30?

I see the "face" that you want to see as Lamb Chop. Compare that "face" with the actual Lamb Chop. There is simply no resemblance. This is just pareidolia. I would refer you to the Face On Mars, which by God did look like a face until it was proven to actually look nothing like a face. I would refer you to my bedroom paneling, where I sometimes amuse myself by finding faces in the knots and ridges. Do you seriously think that if there HAD been a Lamb Chop in the limousine it would not have been duly noted and preserved? Give it up, willya?

"Pareidolia strikes deep, into your heart it will creep" - Buffalo Springfield, or maybe not