Tag: Yuri Nosenko

Was Yuri Nosenko a KGB mole?

A readeader asks:

Do you still believe Nosenko was a true defector, Jeff?

Have you read Tennent H. Bagley’s “Spy Wars,” or even his 35-page PDF “Ghosts of the Spy Wars”?

Yes, I did read Bagley’s Spy Wars. I also interviewed him. And yes, I do believe Nosenko was a true defector.

I think Bagley was wrong, for two reasons: lack of a plausible suspect and lack of damage to CIA operations.

Remember Angleton’s theory that Nosenko was a dispatched defector is inextricably bound up in the theory that Nosenko was dispatched to protect a mole already working inside the CIA as of January 1964.  So the  reader’s question is really two, was Nosenko a mole? And, if so, who was he protecting?

As I asked in THE GHOST

if there was a mole burrowed into the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s, as the Angletonians claimed, who the devil was it? And what damage did he do?

Beyond the smoking gun: The new JFK files fill in two holes in the assassination story

CIA SealI’ve been hearing from news reporters for major news organizations, who ask, “What’s in the new JFK files? Is there a smoking gun?”

The answer is no. There is no one piece of evidence in the 113,00 pages of JFK records scheduled to be released by October 26, 2017, that will change people’s minds about what happened long ago in Dallas.

But the new JFK files, if released in their entirety, will fill in the two key gaps in the JFK assassination story that have long been obscured by government misconduct, official secrecy, and lazy journalism.

Why did the CIA’s Angleton want to cut off questions about Oswald?

In response to my recent post on a declassified April 1972 CIA memo ordering that “no defector or source” be asked about Lee Harvey Oswald, a faithful reader asks:

Where is April 1972 in the Nosenko chronology? Was there a time at which saner CIA people simply told Angleton to back off from his Nosenko-KGB theories?

The answer is that Angleton was motivated both by his interest in Nosenko and his desire to block CIA people from questioning the dubious official story of Oswald as a lone assassin about whom the agency knew little.

In fact, as Angleton knew better than anyone, the CIA had monitored Oswald’s movements, politics, personal life, and foreign contacts for four years before JFK was killed.

The other relevant question is, “Where is April 1972 in the Oswald chronology?” …

Exclusive: What Angleton told JFK investigators about the mole at the CIA

On June 15, 1978,investigators from  the House Select Committee on Assassinations interviewed James Angleton, retired CIA counterintelligence chief about his handling of the JFK assassination investigation in 1963 and 1964.

The interview, which sheds new light on Angleton’s conspiracy theories about a mole in the ranks of the CIA, was never transcribed or made public–until now.

In a Web exclusive, JFK Facts is offering a downloadable PDF transcript of  Angleton’s closed-door HSCA interview.

JFK Most Wanted: the Yuri Nosenko files

Yuri Nosenko, KGB
Yuri Nosenko

Yuri Nosenko was an officer in the Soviet KGB who defected to the United States in April 1964, shortly after the assassination of JFK. Nosenko said that he had seen the files that the KGB compiled on accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in his two and a half year residence in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1962. The Soviet intelligence service had not recruited or used him as an agent, Nosenko said.

Deputy CIA Director Richard Helms told Chief Justice Earl Warren that he could not vouch for the accuracy of Nosenko’s claims exculpating the KGB. This left open the possibility that Nosenko was a false defector sent by the Soviet Union to obscure its role in JFK’s assassination.

Pete Bagley, CIA officer who probed JFK case, passes at 88

The Washington Post obituary for Tennent H. ‘Pete’ Bagley, noted CIA officer, recounts his central role in the CIA’s investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Bagley was the CIA handler of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the United States with information about accused presidential assassin Lee Harvery Oswald.

Fifty years later, the CIA’s files on Nosenko’s interrogation are among the Top 7 JFK files that the CIA still keeps secret.

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