UNCOVERING POPOV'S MOLE: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY VOLUME IV Paperback – 18 Oct. 2022

Excellent jounalism. Feel like I am living through the material time of the events reported.

There are many unanswered questions surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. For example, was Oswald a genuine defector to the USSR in October 1959 or part of a CIA intelligence operation? What was he really up to when living in Minsk? Was he also being handled by the KGB during his two and a half year stay in the capital city of Belarus? What was Marina’s role, if any? Can we join the dots to understand Oswald’s trip to Mexico City just a matter of weeks before the assassination on 22nd November 1963?Dr John Newman, and his excellent team of research associates, have gone a long way to answering these vital questions (and more) in the new book, “Uncovering Popov’s Mole - The Assassination of President Kennedy (Volume IV).” We are transported deep inside the Cold War machinations of the 1950s onwards as the CIA, MI6 and KGB tried to outwit one another with double agents, espionage, counterespionage and much more. We are introduced to Pyotr Popov, a Soviet Military Intelligence Agent who sold secrets to the West from late 1952 until his detection and then arrest in Moscow in 1959. He was later executed by firing squad in June 1960. Popov had earlier warned the CIA in 1958 that there was a high-level KGB mole in their organisation. The resulting mole-hunt was the reason why Oswald was sent to the USSR by US intelligence agencies – he was “dangled” (as the author puts it) to try and bring the mole to the surface. Oswald’s knowledge of secret U2 spy flights, obtained when he was a radar operator stationed at the Atsugi Naval Air Base in Japan, was key to him being given this assignment as the mole was leaking technical details of the spy plane to the KGB. We also learn of Sergei Papushin who defected to the West in 1981 but whose story was only learned by the Assassination Records Review Board a few weeks before their mandate expired in September 1998. This provides a fresh insight into Oswald’s time in Minsk and who was monitoring his activities at that time. I also found it interesting that CIA agents met with another defector (Yuri Nosenko) inside a movie theatre in Geneva in 1964. A movie theatre was of course the place where Oswald was arrested in Dallas shortly after JFK's murder. Is this a common location where spies meet? What makes this book even more significant is Dr Newman’s honest and courageous reappraisal of his own previous conclusions in light of new research and evidence. This led to a fresh understanding of the KGB mole-hunt and realisation that we had been deceived, and that the person who ran the mole-hunt was the actual KGB mole himself. This was in reality a cunning and false investigation which diverted attention and helped keep the mole’s identity secret for many years - until Dr Newman discloses in the book who he feels it was. The author’s curiosity and attention to detail is to be welcomed. This is a complicated story of Cold War politics with many complex and flawed characters. It is ultimately, though, a very rewarding experience for the reader, as the truth about Lee Oswald and these spy games is revealed. We go back and forth in time. The book is skilfully edited and includes many helpful sub-chapters within larger chapters and story recaps as we go along. This all helps the reader keep pace with the narrative.There is no need to buy any fictionalised spy thriller novels this Christmas. "Uncovering Popov's Mole" demonstrates that truth really is stranger than fiction, as it shines a fresh light on a very clandestine but important period in our history.

Well, at long last it looks as though the long search for the CIA mole is uncovered. John M Newman makes a convincing case that Bruce Solie, a very senior officer in the CIA is the culprit. Unfortunately, it shows that Jim Angleton was wrong, yet again, in his search for defectors -first Philby in MI6 and then Solie in the CIA.The big minus in this book; is that it really need of a good editor. There are many mentions, past statements and paragraphs in previous chapters, which tends to make the overall narrative somewhat confusing.Nonetheless, the general conclusion(s) ring true and I expect more books on the subject - hopefully they will be better written, whilst coming to the same conclusion.

I love Newman's research but this is something of a let down. Unless you are an obsessive, which I am, you will find this book largely impenetrable. The author makes plain that this will not be a normal book but its endless repetitions do not in the end lend themselves to illumination. In addition, the chronic chronology and shifting scenes just add to the confusion. Some basic context and background is missing. It is rather strange to read an account of Golitsyn that is so glowing and fails to mention the absurd oddities of much of the supposed information he had to impart. It is still mad to me the idea that an intelligence agency would consider handing over live files to a recent defector. Whilst it is probable that there was, indeed, a mole, the proof really isn't there to identify him. That the idea of searching for the mole was a part of the Oswald is entirely plausible but the dots are not joined here, so we are still left with possibilities rather than genuine breakthroughs. I'll still keeping his material though.