WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: Yuri Nosenko 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:14.800 Thinking sideways. I don't under see it. You never know 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:21.360 the stories of things. We simply don't know the answer too. Well. 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:25.640 Hi there, this is thinking sideways and I'm Joe and 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:31.600 joined us always buy Steve. There we go. Okay, we're 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.560 ready to solve the mystery. Okay, I know, no intro 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:39.599 straight into it. I like your way. Yeah. Yeah, so 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.720 this mystery, unfortunately, it's doesn't involve any bloodshed. There's no murders, 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:47.879 no supernatural stuff. I know. I'm kind of on a 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.880 no murder kick recently. H Yeah, so very true. Yeah, 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.400 this is non violent. This is a very cerebral mystery. 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:57.960 In early, very early in nineteen sixty four, about six 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.600 weeks after the assassination of John F. Ken, a KGB 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:04.440 agent who had been working for the CIA as an 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:09.200 agent for US as a as a double agent. No, well, 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:11.240 I guess if he's a KGB agent, he's sort of 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:13.280 a double agent. But then a double Asian is really 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.240 one who's a KGB agent is working for US, but 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:16.880 he's still a KGB agent loyal to they have and 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.000 passing disinformation to US. So he was working for US 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:22.600 as an Asian agent, but he really actually was a 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:25.160 double as although there's still controversy about that. That's one 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:27.400 of the mysteries we're going going to address tonight. How 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.560 much wood could it? Would? Chuck chuck chu chuck would 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:35.920 is what that sounded like. Okay, okay, So obviously this 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:37.920 is going to be a convoluted show and a little bit. 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:41.560 But here's here's the if you're worried about a long, long, 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:43.560 tedious show that grinds on forever. Now I'm going to 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:45.080 talk really really fast and we're going to get it 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:50.120 done with really fast. Okay, perfect, yeah, okay, all right, okay, 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:52.640 so let's go back to the beginning. Who is this guy? 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.160 His name was Urie A Sinko. Ury was part of 0:01:56.200 --> 0:02:00.280 a security attachment for a Soviet delegation to disarm It's 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:05.560 a disarmament conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Okay, so he's Russians. Yep, Yep, 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.280 he's a Russian. Okay, remember the kg B. When he 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.680 was in Geneva, he passed a note secretly, of course, 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:17.359 to a US diplomatic requesting a meeting with the US representative, 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:20.520 which wasn't that you know, it means a spy. There's 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.480 the man who was responsible for recruiting Soviet agents in 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:26.560 Switzerland was a guy named Tenant Bagley who went by 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:31.360 the name Pete. So Pete Bagley, Uh yeah, Tennant's got 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:33.320 of cool. But apparently I don't know, he decided to 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:35.800 go by Pete instead, don't I imagine that he probably 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:38.720 got ridiculed a lot in school and I just said, oh, 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:42.560 my name is Pete. Yeah, or it's just easier, or 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:44.480 maybe well the guy is a spy. Maybe that was 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:50.040 his like spy name, Yeah, Tenant, Pete. Yeah. They usually 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.399 give him names like you know, Albatross or by the way, 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:57.840 but in his case it was just Pete. Yeah. So anyway, 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:00.680 he was in charge of he and his team were 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:04.640 in charge of going after a diplomats, intelligence officers, military attachs, whatever, 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.960 and so he was notified. He flew to Geneva, he 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:10.520 wasn't there at the time, and arranged for a note 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:12.960 to be passed back to Nasenko which had a date, 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:16.079 time and address on it, especially by day and time. 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:20.080 He was waiting for Nasenko at a safe house and 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.040 Nasenko eventually showed up a little bit like claimed he 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:25.160 was trying to shake off a tail, so okay whatever, 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:28.239 and said that he wanted to get some money from 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:32.519 the CIA. Apparently he was part of the KGB delegation 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:38.280 and he had sort of sort of like drank up. 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:40.200 The story varies a little bit. One is that the 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:42.600 money was stolen from him by a prostitute. Another one 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:44.200 is he just drank and gambled it all the way. 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.800 But essentially he was he had taken some official KGB 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:50.160 funds and kind of lost it, and he needed funds. 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:52.520 He didn't want to get caught. Yeah, his hand in 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:54.600 the till. He needed to replace the fund so he 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:58.960 offered to sell a manual to a KGB manual for 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.760 nine hundreds was Friends, which detailed how to follow how 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:07.480 the Soviets were able to follow US diplomats in Moscow 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.760 and other Russian places. Well, and that that was correct 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:12.520 me if I'm wrong, Joe. But that was kind of 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:15.520 a big problem for us when we were over there, 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.359 is our guys kept getting popped left, right and center 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:22.400 because the KGB operated differently and we kept falling for 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.839 their tricks. Well, yeah, exactly, we were. We were evidently 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:30.440 pretty easy to find. Uh yeah, and they they you mean, 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:34.520 Americans in Russia were easy to find. That's that's the 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:36.880 whole thing is it's so much easier for them to 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:39.440 go about their business in our society because we're a free, 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:43.760 open society whereas a closed totalitarian society, and so we 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:45.800 stick out obviously like a sort thung. We're very easy 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:49.159 to follow around and h And also on top of that, 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:51.800 they've proved to be very they proved to be very 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:53.960 very good at just spoofing us and and and like 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:58.320 you know, sending false false agents our direction and just 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.760 pumping us full of disinformation. And we've been every time 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:05.360 on the line exactly, yeah, we have. Yeah. And then 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.960 you know, along came along came James Angleton, who was 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:11.080 more of a skeptic in that regard. He was he 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.640 was a lot more, a lot more skeptical about all 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:17.080 these wonderful intelligence coups and everything. That made him less 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:19.760 than popular with the intelligence gathering arm of the CIA, 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:21.719 because you know, they just wanted to bring in lots 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.039 of good intel and get promotions out of it. But anyway, 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.960 I'm getting way ahead of myself. So Pete Bagley asked 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:29.560 Nasenko a standard list of questions. Number one, and of 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.520 course it's a Soviet union about to attack the US. Answer, No, 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:34.640 that's that's the one they're supposed to ask. First. Second 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.479 one asked, he asked if he wants to defect, and 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.520 the answer was no, because Nasenko said to their family 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:43.000 and kids in Moscow, he just wanted to get that 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:45.240 money so he could stay out of trouble. Bagley then 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:46.719 asked him if he wanted to work for the CIA 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:49.560 and make lots of money, and Nasenko said he'd think 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.480 about it. So anyway, the meeting when I heard about 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.360 two hours and then they parted ways. Two days later 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:57.480 they got together again, and this time the CENCO had 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.200 the KGB manual, which detailed how they followed our guys 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:04.000 in Moscow, and he had thought about it and decided 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.000 to be our agent. He returned to Moscow several days later. 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:10.840 He'd been given a code name super cool and code 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:13.440 name and like a secret password. And what was his 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:18.920 code name? A E foxtrot? Oh yeah, great name. I okay, 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:23.040 Well it's better than Pete got on one hand, on 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:30.080 the other like a fox trot, like a E f E. Yeah. 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:32.159 I have no idea where they call it that. I've 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:34.320 heard that said that all these these names they come 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:37.279 up with for they just have a randomly generated list, 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:38.919 and you just you know, when your name when you 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:40.640 come up, then you grab the next one off the top. 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.360 It's all random, so there's no connection to you that 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.680 can be drawn, all right, I guess that's fair. Yeah, okay. 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.760 So anyway, he returned with some KGB documents and he 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.120 agreed that just the spy and then eventually went back 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.880 to Moscow. Pete Bagley went back to Washington to report 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:58.960 on all this. He was quite excited about the whole thing. 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:03.200 One of the things about Nosenko's he worked, according to him, 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.480 at least he worked in the second chief director to 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.760 the KGB. This is a part of the KGB the 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:10.720 CIA had not even been aware of until a few 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:12.800 years before, and they knew nothing about it, and so 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:14.800 they were quite excited at it to have an agent 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.720 right in the heart of this whole thing. So Bagley 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:21.440 and his boss were very, very excited about the whole thing. Anyway, 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:23.240 let me take a quite quick side trip here. So 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:26.760 the CIA Soviet Russia division of which Pete Bagley was 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.680 a part, was the most important branch of their intelligence 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:34.240 collection department. So they've got various departments. The main most 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.040 important part of part of course, it's the part that 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:39.040 goes out and gets intelligence. And then they had like 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:42.440 the counterintelligence side, et cetera, et cetera. But of the 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:45.760 intelligence gathering part, the Soviet Russia division at that time 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:49.360 was the most important division the CIA. Sure it had 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:52.880 its own counterintelligence branch also, and eventually Pete Bagley wanted 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.640 up being ahead of the counterintelligence branch with that. And 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:59.240 there's another counterintelligence branch which is CIA Counterintelligence, which was 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:02.440 headed by James Jesus Angleton, who I'm sure you guys 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:09.320 have all heard of christ Hits, Yeah exactly, yeah, so yeah, 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:12.200 So what they focus on is preventing penetration of the 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:16.240 organization by foreign intelligence services. And also another one of 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.400 their jobs is to sort out information from disinformation. And 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.480 this leads to and so in other words, because foreign 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.520 intelligence services are constantly going to be trying to feed 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:30.360 you lies and manipulate your perception of what they're up to, 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:33.240 then you have to find a way to sort out 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.560 the validity of these people that come present themselves and 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:41.960 want to be your agent. So anyway, badly, as I 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:44.199 was saying, was back in Washington, he got a message 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:47.839 from Angleton requesting to have a meeting with him. I've 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:49.959 already told you who he is. James Jesus Angleton was 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:54.840 the head of CIA counter Intelligence. So Angleton in his office, 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:58.240 Angleton hands him a file about a Soviet defector, and 0:08:58.600 --> 0:08:59.960 the account that I read of this, it didn't say 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.640 who the defector was, but I presume it's Anatotly Delitsen, 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.599 who was an actual autentic Soviet defector who defected a 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:09.079 few years before Nosenko. The high points of Nosenka's story 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:12.880 were basically identical to the other file stories. So in 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.560 other words, it was it became kind of obvious that 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.680 Nosenka was probably just a dangle. He was just somebody 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:21.160 that had been dangled in front of our guys and 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.440 we took the bait and so and so he was probably, 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:29.520 in Angleton's opinion, he was almost certainly a double Asian 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:31.240 and not for real. So he was just going to 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.560 pass us dense information. So he's basically just regurgitating a 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.400 story that they'd used on us, or somebody had told 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:40.959 us before. Then. Yeah, because you know, it's like it's like, 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:43.480 as one guy put it, it's like fly fishing, you know, 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:46.080 you know, you try a lure and you send it 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:47.839 out there. If it doesn't work, you change lures and 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:49.840 you just keep going like that until the fish bites. 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:52.040 And you know you've got a good lure, so let's 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:53.679 start using that lure a lot. And that's what they do. 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:55.559 And so, yeah, one of the one of the interesting 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:57.560 things is like one of the things that the KGB 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.440 knows that we like to see is an agentist got 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.040 a little bit of a problem with either you know, 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:04.719 Booze or women or something like that, some weakness. It's 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.000 going to make him spend too much money or whatever. 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:09.199 And then of course he's going to need to turn 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:12.320 to us for money in terms for secrets and stuff 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:14.280 like that. And so that was definitely a part of 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:18.280 Nasenko's story, Booze, the women, the whole thing. Pete Bagley 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:21.680 was very disappointed because he was very excited about landing 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.480 this big fish. Angleton, on the other hand, felt like, well, 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:26.480 you know, we can he's still useful. We could pass 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:28.760 we could pass a little misinformation back through him to 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:31.240 the KGB. So it's not all it's not all bad. 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:34.000 That's where the story leaves out. For the time being, 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:37.120 they kept him on a payroll, but they labeled his 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:39.800 information as untrustworthy. Of course, of course they didn't go 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:41.840 tell him that. They made him believe that they still 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:46.199 believed his story. But anyway, he was back in Russia. 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.160 Time goes by, and as I said earlier, about six 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.240 weeks century JFK is assassinated. He send he sends a 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:55.480 message wanted, requesting a meeting again in Geneva, and when 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:59.240 he meets with Bagley this time, he wants to defect. Okay, 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.880 so how how long is that after like our first encounter, 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:05.640 about a year and a half, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:06.920 I don't know. Oh yeah, you know, I don't think 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:08.400 I said what the day it was the day it 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.080 was like June nineteen sixty two when he first made 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:15.000 contact with us. Oh okay, So I'm glad you clarified that. 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:17.480 For some reason, to me, it was a much shorter 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.760 time span. And I think it's just because everything starts 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:23.400 up about where you're you're at right now, and yeah, 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:25.920 some of the details I think I go over. Yeah. Yeah, 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.520 so now he'd been in our employee feeding sbs for 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:30.199 about you know, a year and a half, and we've 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:32.959 been feeding mbs. Oh yeah, of course, yeah, And that's 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:34.600 there's great ways you can do that. You know, if 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:36.120 you know this guy's at double you can do you 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:40.520 can do things like request information about this, about that, 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:43.800 and say you're like super interested exactly so to give 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.120 them an idea of of you know, of what we're 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:51.280 wondering about your military grade beatles. Uhh exactly. Yeah, we'd 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.760 like to know about ice fishing off your eastern coast. Uh, 0:11:55.040 --> 0:12:00.480 you just ran how many information about that? Oh? You 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:04.720 do so one of the yeah, and the spy. In 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:08.320 the spy business, every little, every teeny little tidbit gets 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:10.920 gets considered, so you know, and so any little piece 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:13.720 of BS that you can feed him is valuable. So 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:17.600 he says he wants to defect, and so he cabled 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.480 back to vaguely cable back to CIA headquarters and and 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.080 even though this guy was obviously a double Asian, they 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:26.359 had and they sad, he said, leting him defect. Unfortunately, 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:28.360 oh you know, I left out the most important part. 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:30.040 Let me get let me go back here for a sec. 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.920 He said he wanted to defect, and he said that 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:35.640 the reason he wanted to defect is that he was 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:38.599 that he had come into suspicion and even more importantly, 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:41.760 he said that he knew something about Lee Harvey Oswald, Right, 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.760 that's right, Okay, the assassination connections, that's right. So yeah, 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:48.960 so the department that he worked for, uh, in the 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.600 in that department, subdepartment within that is what's called the 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:54.640 Tourist Bureau. And what they're and their job is there, 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:59.360 it's a counterintelligence thing. And underneath that counterintelligence division, they 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.920 there are agents in their own departments who just follow 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:07.800 around journalists and the Western diplomats and tourists who are 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.640 in actually in the Soviet Union, trying to recruit them 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.160 and been also basically spying on them. So since Oswald 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:16.960 wasn't an American in Russia, he would have fallen into 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:20.040 the purview of this guy's buried department. And and so 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:22.800 that made it must have made him stand out even more, 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:25.840 is you know, curiosity to them. Yeah, and you know 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:30.080 somebody a potentially valuable recruit, perhaps, you know, assassin who 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:35.160 knows the Senko says that he was actually assigned to 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.199 watch Oswald wile Oswald was there. And then after the assassination, 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:41.880 Oswald of course by the time obviously had left the 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:46.840 Soviet Union. Yeah, yeah, quite obviously a couple months. Yeah, yeah, 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:49.679 And so after the assassination, he was apparently assigned to 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:52.480 go through all of his KGB files and interview interview 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:55.320 everybody and you know, just find out precisely, you know, 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:57.720 who talked to him and what then, and who had 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:00.920 made contact with him, and if if there really was 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:05.440 any sort of KGB control over this guy over Oswald. Sure, 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:08.000 and of course he reported absolutely not well, and that 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:10.160 would that would be really important for them to know 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:14.880 because if they are some way responsible for the assassination 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:17.240 of an American president at a time where we were 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:20.480 always ready with the thumb on the big red button, Yeah, 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.000 there's another world going on. That's not something you want 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.280 to have happened or have anybody find out about. Yeah. 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:29.560 Even though he was untrusted, he didn't really have a 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:33.080 lot of value to us as a defector. Uh. And 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.280 this one clear up to the CA director Richard Hilmes, 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:38.960 he was a director at the time, he authorized the 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.080 affection because otherwise they could have been accused of suppressing 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:47.600 information relevant to the assassinationw So, so they smuggled him, 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:51.840 smuggled them out of Switzerland on a military plane, got 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:53.840 them back to the States, and at this point they 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:55.800 were wondering exactly what to do with them, so they 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:58.200 did the obvious thing. They had locked him up, Yeah, 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:05.800 having a dungeons. Yeah yeah. They built a little special 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.000 cell forum in the basement of a house in Washington 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.360 suburbs and basically locked him up and interrogated him for 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:13.960 about three and a half years. Wow. Yeah, Yeah, they 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:18.400 went after him quite a bit. It's a long interrogation. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:20.920 especially for somebody who came to you and said, hey, 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:24.680 we I want to defect to America because I have 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:29.280 this information. Well there's some issues though, and I don't 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:30.800 know if you were going to get to this, Joe, 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:34.400 But one of the things that I know really prompted 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:36.920 them to go ahead and lock him up initially was 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:41.400 the fact that his reason for wanting to defect was 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.200 he had gotten correct me if I'm wrong here, is 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:48.080 that he had gotten a cable saying come back to Moscow, 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:50.840 at which point he was worried they'd figured out he 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.040 was playing the game and he was going to be killed. 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:58.240 But when we had everybody look into it, there was 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:02.480 no record of the request this cable. Yeah, it took 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:04.840 it took a little while to sort that out. I think, 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:07.920 I guess, yeah, I guess it's just the three years 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:10.840 is like a really long time. Yeah, it's a long time. Yeah. 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.800 Oh yeah, it's definitely above and beyond. Yeah, it sounds like, 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:15.600 you know, and and I don't think we're ever going 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:17.720 to get to the bottom quite exactly why he was 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.160 locked up and interrogated for quite that long of a time. 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:22.160 They did catch him out in a couple of them, 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.400 a couple of significant lives, actually more than a couple. 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:29.120 One was one was about the cable, the telegram recalling him, 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.080 and another significant aside about that is that the FBI 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.400 had a major source called Fedora, and he was a 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.200 he was a Soviet diplomat in New York and that 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.440 was his code named Fedora. That's not his Russian name. 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:45.280 But so they'd been this this guy, Fedora was a 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:47.920 double agent also and they didn't know it, of course, 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:52.880 and he'd been feeding them disinformation for years. Yeah, so Fedora. 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.840 So Fedora comes along and they're they're asking him if 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:59.240 he knows anything about Nosenko, and he's saying, well, you know, 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:04.760 the the chief of the KGB KGB office in New 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.440 York had called a meeting in a bunch of kg 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.639 KGB agents and also Fedora, who was a diplomat but 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:12.719 still a high level Russian so he was in on 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:16.800 this and and spelled out a few details, a lot 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.240 of relevant details actually, like his rank and the KGB 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:21.960 lieutenant colonel, which it later turned out he'd been lying about. 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:27.520 Nasenko admitted that under interrogation, and also he confirmed that yes, 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.520 there had indeed been a telegram recalling him. He'd heard 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:33.240 about that also, you know, and of course this was 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.640 like later like sort of you know, backfart of Fedora 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:39.439 a little bit, because it sort of, you know, after 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.040 Nosenko confessed that he'd been lying about this stuff, suddenly 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.080 people are looking at Fedora and thinking, gee, gosh, why 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.639 exactly are you telling us this stuff which corroborates his 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:52.320 story when we know specifically that this stuff was a 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:54.320 lot because he admitted it. And that's and and the 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.439 fact that Fedora eventually was proven to be a double 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.760 agent who was trying to back up his story sort 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.560 of as another nail and uring Cenko's coffin. Yeah, Fodor 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:08.200 was obviously a spy, so that that makes that makes 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:12.920 the CENCO a double as two, I know, all right. 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.600 So anyway, so they interrogated in for three and a 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:19.280 half years. And by the way, this was not done, 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:23.240 h not done just like unauthorized or anything like that. 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.480 Richard Helms, again director of the CIA, went to the 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:29.040 Department of Justice, which was headed by Robert F. Kennedy, 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:32.480 JFK's brother, and got permission to lock this guy up 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:34.719 and detain him for as long as need be to 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:38.360 try to ring any information out of him. They were 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:42.600 accused later on of withholding information from the FBI and 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:45.720 from the Warren Commission, which was investigating the JFK assassination, 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.160 but Helms had actually met with Chief Justice Earl Warren 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.960 explained to him the reason why because Warren had heard 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:54.640 about the CENCO and was thinking about how calling him 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:57.199 to testify and explain to him why he would not 0:18:57.240 --> 0:19:00.280 be a reliable witness. And so but nonetheless, I mean 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:02.359 still to this day there's there's people who accuse the 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:06.200 CIA of imprisoning him specifically to keep him from the FBI, 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.080 the Commission. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, because you know, 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.280 people love a good conspiracy theory, especially concerning GfK. Yeah. 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:17.280 JFK is one of the longest running I feel conspiracy theory. 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.000 Oh god, yeah, oh yeah, I didn't get into that. 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:23.320 His assassinate that's another mystery we need to solve, by 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.920 the way, real quickly. GfK assassination. He was assassinated by 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:31.600 Lee Harvey Oswald. Lee Harvey Oswald was a hardcore communist 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:36.160 and the devote of Fidel Castro, and you know, probably 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:38.760 not quite too straight in the head. But what about 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:44.560 the woman in the babushka, what about the four shooters? Yeah, 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:46.960 this is one area where the second may have been 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:49.800 telling the truth. And he was asked about about whether 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.680 the kgb A contacted Oswald tried to recruit him, and 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.840 what he said was that he had been had been watched, obviously, 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.800 and it had been decided that he was not quite 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:03.560 smart enough and too unstable to really be good effective 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:07.159 as so sure, and that's fair. That's yeah, that sounds 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:11.360 plausible to me. Probably accurate. Yeah, it's it's pretty probably 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.040 accurate assessment. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, okay, and 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.240 now we sell the JFK assassination. Let's get back to 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:18.680 this thing. Let me go to the next one. I know, 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:22.159 I know who else was assassinated and Nko. Eventually, as 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.679 I said, confessed had lied about certain things, but he 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:29.240 never completely recanned his entire story. Eventually he was released. 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:30.879 He was given a large sum of money and a 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:35.119 new identity and relocated. And the most mysterious or one 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:37.200 of the mysterious, most mysterious parts of this whole thing 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:41.160 is he was quote unquote rehabilitated by the CIA, which 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.960 is like and I've got and I've heard some declassified 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:47.880 documents like I've got I've got some memos from Angleton 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:52.560 to the FBI, for example, detailing and great detail, all 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:57.520 the many many reasons why no sinko and it should 0:20:57.560 --> 0:20:59.960 not be believed when you look at it. It's pretty dumb, 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.359 stated is to Nasenko's case. And actually, if if our 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.159 listeners are lucky, I'll post a couple of those on 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.320 our websites. Yeah, they'red of it's kind of funny there. 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:10.640 They're kind of old and smudgie. They were just recently 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:12.800 the classified, old and smudgie with a lot of markings 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:15.120 all over them and stuff. But there some of them 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:18.680 are pretty interesting and eye opening. But anyway, I guess 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:21.240 you know, if you have somebody in the basement locked 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:23.199