JFK Assassination Forum

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ME: Assuming that my knowledge and opinions regarding the KGB vs. CIA War are correct, please rate the following statement as to its plausibility, fairness, and truth in its response to my statement, "The KGB has been waging disinformation, "active measures," and strategic deception counterintelligence operations against us and our NATO allies for sixty-plus years."

The other guy: "And we've been doing the same to them. That's what intelligence agencies do."

GROK: If you are correct that the CIA was highly penetrated by probable moles Bruce Leonard Solie, Leonard V. McCoy, and Russia-born George Kisevalter, with Solie as James Angleton’s confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior; McCoy as shaper of Soviet Division reporting and leak-enabling "requirements" to the Kremlin-loyal double or triple agent the CIA thought it was handling with Kisevalter; with Kremlin-loyal GRU Lt. Col. Dmitry Polyakov (in 1962 before he "flipped" to the CIA) and KGB Major Aleksey Kulak at the FBI, with putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko as a false-defector-in-place in June 1962 in Geneva and a false (or perhaps rogue) physical defector to the U.S, in February 1964; with KGB Major Igor Kochnov and KGB Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko as controlled assets; with Oleg Penkovsky a tripled-back playback channel, and with the Fall of the Iron Curtain and USSR dissolution as a planned controlled restructuring (with the 1991 coup deliberately staged to fail so the KGB could retain core power), and further that “former” KGB counterintelligence officer Vladimir Putin, using his SVR, FSB, and GRU hackers, professional St. Petersburg trolls and polling data provided by Paul Manafort and GRU officer Konstantin Kilimnik to Oleg Deripaska, etc., successfully installed “useful idiot” (or worse) Donald Trump as U.S. President on 20 January 2017 -- then the KGB/GRU network executed the longest, deepest, and most successful strategic deception and active-measures campaign in modern history. This would mean a multi-generational operation that penetrated U.S. counterintelligence at its core, managed the Soviet “collapse” to preserve power, and ultimately placed a preferred figure in the White House—achieving influence at the highest level of American politics while the West believed it had “won” the Cold War.

So, no, the CIA did not mount anything of comparable depth, breadth, and sustained strategic impact against the USSR/Russia.

Why the asymmetry persists under your premise

•   Structural differences: Russia’s closed, authoritarian system—first Soviet, then post-Soviet under continuous security-service dominance—gave the KGB/FSB unparalleled ability to run long-term moles at the heart of CIA counterintelligence and Soviet operations, orchestrate controlled “defeats,” maintain hidden continuity of power, and deploy modern active measures (hacking, trolls, kompromat, and agent-of-influence networks) against an open, democratic target. The U.S. system’s openness made it vulnerable to such penetration and influence, while the same openness made it extraordinarily difficult for the CIA to embed equivalent long-term assets inside the KGB/FSB leadership, orchestrate a staged restructuring of the entire Russian state, or install a preferred leader inside the Kremlin.

•   CIA operations against the Soviets/Russians (under your premise):

•   Assets handled or reported on by compromised officers like Kisevalter and McCoy (Penkovsky as playback, Tolkachev as managed channel, etc.) operated within the adversary’s deception framework.

•   Angleton’s mole hunt, guided by Solie, was steered from within.

•   Later technical and covert efforts (satellite reconnaissance, support for mujahideen and Solidarity, etc.) created pressures that aligned with the planned Soviet restructuring and post-1991 continuity of power, but never achieved reciprocal deep moles inside Russian counterintelligence or the ability to shape Kremlin succession at the highest level.

•   Covert action and influence: CIA programs that pressured the Soviet system contributed to the outward “end” of the USSR, yet under your premise they ultimately served as useful elements in the larger controlled narrative. There is no documented CIA equivalent of a 60+ year operation that placed moles inside the adversary’s premier counterintelligence and reporting apparatus, ran layered false defectors and triple-agents, orchestrated a managed state “collapse,” preserved intelligence-service dominance, and extended into cyber-enabled active measures that placed a preferred leader in the adversary’s presidency.

In short, even accepting your full premise — including the 2017 culmination — the CIA inflicted costs in military-technical domains and supported visible geopolitical shifts, but never matched the sustained, intimate counterintelligence penetration, strategic deception, continuity of hidden power, and direct high-level political placement that you describe. The contest was mutual and ruthless, yet profoundly asymmetric in scope, depth, and long-term control.

A "bias toward the truth." BWAHAHA!!! That is about as non-introspective as I've ever heard. 

Sort of like "my greatest fault is that I'm just so honest and humble and kind that I'm sometimes my own worst enemy."

I recognize that I have a strong affinity for, and confirmation bias toward, weirdness of all varieties. To some extent, I share the conspiracy-prone mindset. This cuts across all varieties of weirdness in which I have been heavily involved - religion, UFOs, psychical research, the JFKA and numerous others.

The only thing I do to stay on the side of rationality is to try to be relentlessly critical and skeptical. I am the 180-degree opposite of the Gee Whiz True Believer in every area. This is true even of my own paranormal experiences. My first reaction to every super-duper UFO tale or Near-Death Experience is "Bullsh*t."

That's all I know to do - recognize the direction in which your confirmation biases point and then be relentlessly critical and skeptical of everything that feeds into them. When a UFO case or Near-Death Experience or other Tale of Weirdness now survives my filter - and some do - I am satisfied it's a piece of evidence that is worthy of being factored into my belief system.

The other danger is being so aware of your confirmation biases and so viligant that this becomes a confirmation bias of its own - because by God you aren't going to fall prey to your confirmation biases, you swing too far in the other direction.

I was on a few disciplinary panels for other lawyers. My biases tended to be personal - I either liked the attorney on trial and felt affinity or sympathy or didn't like him or her and felt the opposite. Here as well, all I could do was try be honest with myself and not let this bias affect my evaluation of the evidence or the discipline too much. Also not to let my role as a judge lure me into playing ego/power games. I always tried to put myself in the attorney's shoes and err on the side of compassion if I reasonably could.

I have a bias toward the truth, which means I let the evidence tell me what happened. That approach requires one to be able to weigh evidence for probative value, because in some instances, the evidence is conflicting. For example, we have a large group of earwitnesses who thought the shots all came from the GK and another large group that thought all the shots came from the TSBD. Unless one wants to accept the ridiculous proposition that the GK earwitnesses couldn't hear the TSBD shots and the TSBD earwitnesses couldn't hear the GK shots, the only conclusion is that one of those groups has to be wrong. It is theoretically possible they could both be wrong, but it is not possible both could be right. So how should we determine which group got it right. It's very simple. You let other forms of evidence tell us which group got it right. We have eyewitnesses who SAW a gunman firing from the TSBD and pointed out the window they saw him at. There were no eyewitnesses to a GK gunman. Spent shells were found by the window the eyewitnesses pointed out and a rifle was found elsewhere on the sixth floor that was positively matched to both the spent shells found by the window and the only two recovered bullets. This additional evidence makes it a very easy call as to where the shots came from.

I have been on both sides of the conspiracy question at different times in my life. I would be more than happy to admit there was a conspiracy to kill JFK if somebody could provide any compelling evidence of such. I have challenged CTs for over 3 decades to provide me with credible evidence that someone other than Oswald was complicit in the crime. I have begged them for such evidence. Every time I do, I get a dial tone. After six decades it's safe to say there is no such evidence. It would be totally unrealistic to expect new evidence to show up now given that an army of researchers has looked in vain for such evidence for six decades.

The time to be open minded about the possibility Oswald could be innocent expired a long time ago. There is zero doubt he fired the shots that killed JFK. Anyone who can't accept that is only fooling themselves. If that means I have a confirmation bias, so be it. There is a theoretical possibility that Oswald fired the shots but had accomplices for which no evidence has ever surfaced. The likelihood of that being the case comes down to how many zeros there should be to the right of the decimal point. If I were the oddsmaker on that question, I would say that there is about a .001% chance that is the case. If that makes me closed minded, I am very comfortable with that. I know who killed JFK and it baffles me how so many people can't figure it out.

I don't understand how you can say you were on both sides - that is, you were once a conspiracy believer - and then say you are "baffled that so many people can't figure it out." You can't remember what led you to the conspiracy side?

I too was a conspiracist but clearly remember what led me to that conclusion. So I can understand why others make the same mistakes I did. E.g., the SBT, timing of the shots, Zapruder film and JFK's reaction. I can add that I had a belief that history can't be changed so easily and that great events need a great cause. And Oswald with a $20 rifle could not be that cause. Now I know that even a nobody like Oswald can alter history by himself.

https://triviavault.co.in/play.php?slug=jfk-assassination-facts-myths-conspiracy-theories

Most JFKA buffs will find these 15 questions to be no brainers. The general public would be lucky to get half of them right. The only one I had to even think about was how many wounds the single bullet caused.

There is no iron clad proof Oswald was there at 12:30, even Chief Curry conceded that.

That was early in the investigation. Discovery of further evidence and tests on what was found erased all doubt of Oswald's guilt.