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61
Tom explained it but I still don't understand it.

fred
62
Obviously, the "KGB stuff" makes sense to TG, which is not to say that it makes sense to anyone else. My question is: Does it?

We could expand the discussion - if there is to be any discussion - to the larger topic of what percentage of posts by the most active members of this forum strike you as literally making no sense at all? 70%, 80%, higher? (If you'd like to increase the percentage by including my posts, be my guest.)
63
Is anyone other than Tom able to follow the logic of what I lovingly call the “KGB stuff?" It quickly loses me. (Don’t bother, TG. You’re on Eternal Ignore. I now wear a COVID mask to avoid being exposed to even the tiniest micro-nuttiness from your invisible posts. I’m just wondering if anyone else can actually follow whatever it is TG is talking about.)

As I understand it (while not pretending to actually understand it) ...

LHO is dispatched to the USSR, apparently unwittingly, to ferret out moles (I love saying that!  :D). While there, he attends the mysterious “KGB school” in Minsk and is somehow trained for an eventual mission (what mission?) in the U.S., even though those closest to him have absolutely no clue that this is going on. He returns to the U.S., presumably at the behest of his KGB masters, with his KGB-indoctrinated wife Marina (indoctrinated when and for what purpose?), and they proceed to live pretty much like impoverished bums (their KGB cover?).

LHO then engages in activities and writes things that are hard to square with any KBG mission (proof of just how clever the KGB is?). The time finally arrives for LHO to assassinate JFK (for what KGB-related purpose?), and Marina then lives the next 60+ years in pretty thorough Texas-housewife obscurity (for what KGB-related purpose?), evolving from a veritable LNer to a CTer (for what KGB-related purpose? was this her KGB mission?).

The supermen of the KGB then spend the next 50+ years destroying America from within via their infiltration of the CIA, the proverbial “long march through the institutions” and whatnot (and having rather astonishing success as far as I can tell). The chaotic Monty Python skit that calls itself the “JFKA research community” is apparently part of this dastardly plot (how? why?).

In 2016, the KGB, or at least KGB guy Putin, then causes Kremlin stooge The Donald to defeat Hillary Clinton, even though Hillary is a card-carrying "Rules for Radicals" sort of leftie and The Donald’s platform consists mostly of promises to unravel all that the KGB has accomplished over the past 50+ years (how does that work?). But wait, then Putin and the supermen of the KGB fumble the ball and Team Biden is somehow elected in 2020 (what the heck?). Team Biden, which apparently doesn't grasp the KGB's new Trumpian agenda, then does its best to restore the long march through the institutions, doing quite an excellent job of it, and Team Kamala promises to pretty well finish off the destruction of America (why would Putin and the supermen of the KGB not want this?).

But, no, Vladimir and the gang once again step in and cause their stooge The Donald to be elected in 2024, even though The Donald is now even more hellbent to stop the long march through the institutions and restore America to its former glory as a chest-thumping, war-mongering capitalist state and may be slightly unhinged to boot (the KGB wants this – why?).

Perhaps I’m just not seeing the Big Picture. Or perhaps I'm actually an unwitting KGB stooge, sent here to ferret out moles! I have literally no idea what the “KGB stuff” is all about or how it makes any sense at all. Anyone seeing it more clearly than I am?

Dear FPR,

All you've got to do is read Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 Yale University Press book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, his 2014 follow-up article, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars," and John M. Newman's 2022 book, Uncovering Popov's Mole (but disregard the part where he says high-level military officers killed JFK because he refused to nuke Peking and Moscow in 1963).

https://archive.org/details/SpyWarsMolesMysteriesAndDeadlyGames

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

Newman and I believe that James Angleton's confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior in the mole-hunting Office of Security, Bruce Leonard Solie, instead of recently-fired-by-CIA Edward Ellis Smith, was the mole who betrayed CIA's spy, GRU Lt. Col. Pyotr Popov, to KGB General Vladislav Kovshuk (aka Vladimir Komarov) in early 1957 in D.C. movie houses. Newman believes Smith (who went on to become a scholar at the Hoover Institution and a San Francisco banker) and James McCord (of future Watergate notoriety) provided logistical support to Solie.

Factoid: False defector-in-place in Geneva in June 1962 Yuri Nosenko, a putative KGB staff officer, said to Bagley during their first meeting that the most important thing he could tell him was that his putative boss, Kovshuk, had made a special two-week trip to the U.S. in early 1957 to "reestablish contact with 'Andrey,'" a cipher machine mechanic he'd recruited in Moscow in "1949 or 1950." Problem is, it turns out that Kovshuk was in Washington (as a "diplomat" on a two-year gig) for ten months and waited until the ninth one to visit "Andrey" -- burnt out Army Seargent Dayle W. Smith -- whose phone number and address were in the phone book and who never did have access to the cipher machines' rotors or any other classified information.

Newman believes Solie also gave the Soviets the U-2's top-secret specifications in those D.C. movie houses, and that when Popov told his handler in West Berlin in April 1958 that he'd heard a drunken GRU colonel brag at a New Years Eve party that the Kremlin had the U-2's secrets, Solie decided to send someone like (unwitting as to the true nature of the mission) Oswald to Moscow as an ostensible "dangle" in a planned to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division.

The only problem I have with that part of Newman's theory is that there's an eighteen month gap between the betrayal of Popov and Oswald's arrival in Moscow (ironically(?) on the same day that Popov was publicly arrested after being "played back" against the CIA for a year) where all he had to do was toss his passport on Richard Snyder's desk, announce that he wanted to renounce his American citizenship, become a USSR citizen, and declare to Snyder and the microphones in the walls that he planned to commit espionage against the U.S. -- including telling the Soviets "something of special interest." Newman's reasoning for such a long hiatus is that Solie first had to screen for and recruit Oswald and then Oswald had to learn Russian, but I don't see how being fluent in Russian was a prerequisite for the simple tasks I mentioned above.

Unless, perhaps, Solie intended Oswald to stay in The Worker's Paradise for an extended period of time.

Perhaps . . . gasp . . . within half-a-mile of a KGB school in Minsk.


-- Tom
64
     I wanted to thank a frequent poster here, Alex Harris aka "The JFK Theorist". "The JFK Theorist" routinely provides outside of the norm JFK Assassination information and film footage on You Tube. I have found 11/22/63 film footage that Theorist has posted which further Proves my declaration that the Motorcycle Cop inside the railroad yard on the Darnell/Martin Films is NOT Officer Haygood. I will soon be posting a thread specifically addressing this additional corroboration, but beforehand I wanted to specifically thank "The JFK Theorist" for this evidence and all that he does.   ............Stay Tuned ..........     
65
Is anyone other than Tom able to follow the logic of what I lovingly call the “KGB stuff?" It quickly loses me.

As I understand it (while not pretending to actually understand it) ...

LHO is dispatched to the USSR, apparently unwittingly, to ferret out moles (I love saying that!  :D). While there, he attends the mysterious “KGB school” in Minsk and is somehow trained for an eventual mission (what mission?) in the U.S., even though those closest to him have absolutely no clue that this is going on. He returns to the U.S., presumably at the behest of his KGB masters, with his KGB-indoctrinated wife Marina (indoctrinated when and for what purpose?), and they proceed to live pretty much like impoverished bums (their KGB cover?).

LHO then engages in activities and writes things that are hard to square with any KBG mission (proof of just how clever the KGB is?). The time finally arrives for LHO to assassinate JFK (for what KGB-related purpose?), and Marina then lives the next 60+ years in pretty thorough Texas-housewife obscurity (for what KGB-related purpose?), evolving from a veritable LNer to a CTer (for what KGB-related purpose? was this her KGB mission?).

The supermen of the KGB then spend the next 50+ years destroying America from within via their infiltration of the CIA, the proverbial “long march through the institutions” and whatnot (and having rather astonishing success as far as I can tell). The chaotic Monty Python skit that calls itself the “JFKA research community” is apparently part of this dastardly plot (how? why?).

In 2016, the KGB, or at least KGB guy Putin, then causes Kremlin stooge The Donald to defeat Hillary Clinton, even though Hillary is a card-carrying "Rules for Radicals" sort of leftie and The Donald’s platform consists mostly of promises to unravel all that the KGB has accomplished over the past 50+ years (how does that work?). But wait, then Putin and the supermen of the KGB fumble the ball and Team Biden is somehow elected in 2020 (what the heck?). Team Biden, which apparently doesn't grasp the KGB's new Trumpian agenda, then does its best to restore the long march through the institutions, doing quite an excellent job of it, and Team Kamala promises to pretty well finish off the destruction of America (why would Putin and the supermen of the KGB not want this?).

But, no, Vladimir and the gang once again step in and cause their stooge The Donald to be elected in 2024, even though The Donald is now even more hellbent to stop the long march through the institutions and restore America to its former glory as a chest-thumping, war-mongering capitalist state and may be slightly unhinged to boot (the KGB wants this – why?).

Perhaps I’m just not seeing the Big Picture. Or perhaps I'm actually an unwitting KGB stooge, sent here to ferret out moles! I have literally no idea what the “KGB stuff” is all about or how it makes any sense at all. Anyone seeing it more clearly than I am?
66
LE--

Well, you, me and everyone else has wondered the same thing.

There is a guy named Pat Speer who wrote a lot about this.

https://www.patspeer.com/
Pat Speer's extensive work on the head wounds begins at Chapter 13 and continues through Chapter 15: https://www.patspeer.com/chapter13solvingthegreatheadwoundmyster. Like the Prayer Man site, Pat's site is a goldmine even if one disagrees with him.
67
Many people certainly described the face as appearing untouched. The "pristine" autopsy photos pretty clearly have the flap pulled back into place. If anyone actually described the rear of the head as intact, he needs to have his own head examined.

(Deleted the photo I had previously described as "hauntingly creepy" because it is, in fact, hauntingly creepy. If there is popular outcry to repost it - probably not, huh? - I shall do so.)
68
I would add, while my wife is making the oatmeal: The JFKA debate is essentially a religious debate. There will NEVER be a definitive answer. There will ALWAYS be uncertainty and ambiguity. The LN narrative has X% probability of being correct. Each one of the myriad conspiracy theories has X% probability of being correct. You simply have to go through your own little Bayesian analysis and reach some level of conviction: OK, I my conviction is that the LN narrative (i.e., my version of it) has a 60% probability of being correct, while Oswald and some tiny cadre of fellow Castroites has a 26% probability and a Mafia hit with Oswald as a participating patsy has 14% probabilty. Then you study to revise these percentages as best you can and live with the inevitable uncertainty and ambiguity.

In any religious debate, what drives the Gee-Whiz True Believers (of every stripe) absolutely mad is the suggestion that there can be any uncertainty and ambiguity: No, we KNOW the LN narrative is correct! No, we KNOW the CIA did it! And we will shout you down if you believe otherwise because the LN or CT narrative defines who we are and how we view the world. Been there, done that.

Apologies to Sai Baba. I confused him with the Most Interesting Man in the World.

"Stay thirsty, my friends."

69
Do we ever reach the end of the trail?  :D :D :D
70


Do you think that there is a way for folks to try to separate the JFKA from their worldview, make it a “less critical cog” in their thinking. Perhaps they could try to just consider the JFKA an arbitrary abnormality. I know that when I simply opened my mind and thought that maybe there was a chance that the investigators, etc actually involved in the investigation and reporting got it (mostly) right, I began to consider things differently and eventually converted from believing that there “must have been a conspiracy” to seeing that there really doesn’t appear to be any credible evidence of a conspiracy. But I believe that I do remain open to being able to objectively consider any new evidence of a conspiracy that might arise.
At the risk of sounding like an insufferable know-it-all - which I am, of course, but I hate to sound like one  :D - I think it's virtually impossible in this day and age. These days, it's a combination of (1) strong confirmation bias combined with (2) the ability to live in an echo chamber of folks who continually reinforce that confirmation bias thanks to the internet and all forms of social media. Across the entire spectrum of political, religious and weirdness beliefs, huge numbers of people are essentially cultists. They would literally have to be deprogrammed the way someone is deprogrammed out of the Moonies or Scientology - no easy task. The cult comes to define these individuals and serves as a very comforting substitute family.

I started out my religious journey in a fundie organization that many people would describe as cult-like, to the extent of entering a graduate seminary. I dropped out after a year because the light bulb went on that fast: No one in his right mind could believe this stuff. We're all just pretending in order to fit in. Why did I have that epiphany? I really don't know. Maybe I've been blessed or cursed with the "ultra-rational gene." That epiphany didn't cause me to abandon the entire enterprise but launched me on a l-o-n-g quest for what I actually could and did believe. So now, like any rational person, I worship a little plastic figurine of Sai Baba that I keep on the dashboard of my car.  :D

I truly have no answers. Across the entire spectrum of political, religious and weirdness beliefs, I have somehow deprogrammed myself (or at least kid myself that I have) through intense study and thought and the good old rational gene eventually kicking in. I have no real clue as to what is going on with someone like Michael or his LN-fanatic counterpart. But these days there are Michaels everywhere, not just the JFKA community by any means. As a veteran of perhaps 40 internet forums - eventually banned from all of them and proud of it, by God!  :D - I've been down this road again and again with Gee-Whiz True Believers of every stripe. (The Ed Forum, to its credit, was the only one from which I self-banned to wild applause.)

Ones like Michael are the most puzzling because he is clearly very intelligent, very educated and capable of rational and non-wacky thought in other areas. But when it comes to the JFKA, he posts stuff that is literally the equivalent of "The earth is flat" or "King Charles is a reptilian alien." When he is called out on this, he just digs in his heels even deeper. When his absurdities are factually exposed, he just moves on to the next absurdity without missing a beat. Maybe it's some combination of conspiracy-prone mindset, confirmation bias, huge ego, self-amusment and hidden agenda that has hardened into a one-man MTG Cult. Those whose minds are simply not tracking in the channels of normality are more obvious and not nearly as interesting.

"Stay thirsty, my friends."

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