C.A.A. Savastano's Blog, page 7

Fear, Disgust, and Status w/ C.A.A. Savastano

C.A.A. Savastano joined the Ochelli Effect to review a few of the powerful origins of human violence via the emotions of fear and disgust. They discuss and debate the roles of biology and environment from our time in the womb and expanding to the greater world and interactions with other people. They consider the transformation of some defensive strategies into nearly ceaseless violence under the right circumstances and what can be done to stop these biologically derived inclinations. These are just a few of the topics appearing in the upcoming book “Human Time Bomb: The Violence Within Our Nature” that will be released on February 17, 2020.

September 29 and The Blond Man

The Wall Street Window Podcast returns! Join your host Mike Swanson and his guest Carmine Savastano as they review new information regarding the JFK assassination timeline and a KGB figure that was suppressed by officials likely due to the questions his behavior and statements created.

September 29th and Another Man in Mexico City

Join historian Larry Hancock, author Carmine Savastano, and your host Chuck Ochelli as they discuss new research, evidence, and KGB officer Nikolai Leonov who has offered a dramatic story involving Lee Harvey Oswald, a gun, and the Soviet Embassy on a day the CIA lacked photo coverage. The same KGB officer additionally closely resembles the description of a yet unknown figure that seemingly caused Oswald enough trouble to prevent him from traveling and could have resulted in his arrest.

Other Men In Mexico City

Soviet Embassy 3rd Secretary, Asst. Cultural Attaché, and KGB Staff Officer Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov

Despite the extensive reviews of governments, legal experts, researchers, and members of the public some controversial topics of discussion still lay entangled within historical shadows. The scene and occurrence of the crime is of primary concern but in some cases the crucial related events span not just a given time and place but great distances that add further problems to discerning verifiable facts. A different nation, different cultures, and languages can provide almost insurmountable challenges to investigators who are unprepared for them. In some cases, it may be that certain groups and leaders counted on this fact to occlude a complete accounting and spare mistakes or deception from being revealed. While officials might currently discount and reproach members of the public for spurring on myths or rumors, these lies are within the very tools of the intelligence trade. Such means were repeatedly utilized by several intelligence groups and in Mexico City during the nineteen sixties and some of those deceptions persist.

Among the largest Central Intelligence Agency holding in the Americas was Mexico City Station, the Central Intelligence Agency base within Mexico which served as the primary intelligence hub of its operations. Dozens of CIA officers, agents, staff, and sources continuously undertook a huge web of operations extending throughout Mexico that include round the clock surveillance operations targeting several Communist embassy compounds in Mexico City. Station Chief Winston Scott, an experienced and demanding officer, led a cadre of some of the most notable and infamous Agency employees during that period and his domain was the grounds for more than one historical controversy. Among these are enduring questions about the circumstances of a traveler named Lee Harvey Oswald, that according to official files visited the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in the months before the death of President Kennedy in November.

However, several factors challenge the allegations offered by American leaders that would infer it was either not Lee Harvey Oswald who made all these visits or the person who did was connected to Oswald. Seeking to assure a lone gunman scenario, some officials tried to suppress these other strange figures in that period within Mexico City without concern for their investigation. We must consider who did the information’s removal help beyond the obvious attempts to secure peripheral intelligence operations, what possible unknown agenda might be protected or best served with its obfuscation, why after nearly sixty years are there unidentified figures in this episode, and how can we identify one or more of them?

Aspiring student Gerald Peterson ventured to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City during November nineteen sixty-three to inquire about studying in “the Soviet Union”. During the course of this visit he encountered Soviet official Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov, whom Peterson believed was just the cultural attaché of the embassy. Unknown to the average person is that embassies for every nation invariably use members of their staff and employees for intelligence purposes. As Peterson learned of the extensive requirements to study abroad, he and Leonov had repeated meetings at cafes from November of nineteen sixty-three until March of nineteen sixty-four. Leonov questioned Peterson regarding the extremist group the John Birch Society, requested literature about them, and he also had Peterson write “a brief paper describing the Society, it aims and purposes.” Clearly Leonov was gathering intelligence on this anti-Communist group that might offer potential dangers to Soviet operations and might be ripe for infiltration. Leonov even threw Peterson a small farewell party when the American decided to leave and would later offer Peterson to join him on a fishing trip. However, Peterson grew suspicious of these repeated unsolicited invitations and cut off contact with Leonov before deciding to report his experience to officials.i ii Of course Peterson was not the only aspiring traveler Leonov encountered during that fall season.

Photo of Silvia Duran Following her 1963 Arrest By Mexican Authorities
(Credit TO: Mary Ferrell Foundation)

Included within the assumed visits and calls of “Lee Harvey Oswald” are particularly strange episodes in which a person using the name Oswald but of varying appearance was proven to have visited the Cuban embassy, a fact the CIA first attempted to suppress. Cuban consulate official Silvia Duran told American investigators a short, red-faced, blonde haired man calling himself Oswald paid her visits at the embassy. This same person used biographic information matching the actual Lee Harvey Oswald including claiming membership in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and marriage to a Russian woman. Yet in addition he supposedly produced a Communist party membership card, despite that Oswald was never a member even while in Russia and membership was illegal in Mexico according to Duran. This also varied from the normal procedure in which the “American Communist Party would arrange visa matter for their members”. The blonde “Oswald” further engaged in a heated argument with the Cuban Ambassador Eusebio Azcue, who also described a person that did not match Lee Harvey Oswald’s appearance.

At first the Agency tried to minimize this conflicting description by deleting it from later versions of the original account, but Duran described Lee Harvey Oswald as “approximately five feet six, with sparse blond hair, weighing about 125 pounds.” Consul Azcue stated the man’s “nose was more aquiline, his eyelashes were straighter, his hair was blonde, his height was between five feet six and five feet seven; he was between 35 and 37 years of age; his cheeks were sunken; and, he had a cold look in his eyes.”iii iv v Oswald in fact was five foot nine barefoot, had thinning but not sparse brown hair, and weighed at least ten pounds more than whomever the person calling themselves Oswald did. Now some might claim it may be confusion, but the description was consistent among two independent witnesses and was removed from public versions of the earlier documentation. Duran was later arrested by Mexican officials at the request of a US diplomatic leader but she was never interviewed by the President’s Commission. Further notable is that photographic surveillance according to one document “was stopped” hours before it was scheduled to cease on the Cuban embassy before one of these visits.vi The Agency ascribed this failure to faulty equipment, yet it did function in the same period during other times.

CIA Officer DAvid Atlee Phillips Discussed Mexico City Station’s POssible Interest in Recruiting Silvia Duran and Obtaining Possible Leverage against her (Credit TO: JFK Facts)

Later investigating Select Committee officials would learn that from Mexico City Covert Action Chief David Atlee Phillips that Duran had been inspected for possible recruitment by the Agency station in Mexico City. Advice emerged from a CIA double agent and Cuban cultural attaché Luis Alberu Souto (LITAMIL-9), who had told Agency officials during the period of interest if they wanted to recruit Duran “get a blond haired, blue-eyed, American in bed with her.” Congressional investigators also were given an unconfirmed report that Oswald was in the company of a “tall, thin, blond haired man while in Mexico…If true, it is possible that this same individual may on occasion have used Oswald’s name in dealing with the Cuban and Soviet Consulates. The man’s name, if there is such a man, is not known.”vii

Photo of CIA Mexico City SOurce Carlos Jurado-DELMAR During A 2009 Interview
(Credit TO: El Heraldo de Chiapas)

Agency source Carlos Jurado-Delmar (LIRING-3) allegedly became romantically involved with Duran and would claim in nineteen sixty-seven that she told him that Oswald and she had been lovers. Yet similar to the prior statements about her these claims are unproven and emerge from sources inclined to attack her for contending testimony. Some in the public have insisted these rumors are truth but no definitive evidence is offered to support them, the Agency’s rumors have unknowingly been repeated by some the public seeking to prove a greater plot.viii These stories deviate and distract from the original reporting of events and feasibly seek to compromise Duran’s credibility. All the later stories neglect the blond-haired man present in the original evidence because they feasibly wish to erase him from the record. Yet there is a certain gaunt and blonde-haired man that did show up on CIA surveillance of the Soviet embassy in Mexico City because he worked there.

Nikolai Leonov served in various capacities within Mexico City since nineteen fifty-three and would three years later according to official reports become a Staff Officer of the “Fifth (Latin American) Department of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate”. During nineteen sixty-three he occupied the post of Third Secretary and was the Assistant Cultural Officer for the Soviet embassy. When he took leave to Kiev in May of the same year he served as the interpreter for visiting Cuban leader Fidel Castro and returned to Mexico City by summertime with his family. Leonov is noted by CIA officials to be of above average intelligence, possessed a biting sense of humor, and displayed superb Russian language skills, “speaks excellent Spanish, good English, some French and little German”.ix His “first love is chess” and officials further observed him taking “interest in meeting Americans, presumably for intelligence purposes”. Within a couple years Leonov was in daily contact with Marxist writers, weekly spoke with aligned newspapers, and by the late nineteen sixties was a “personal friend” of Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Che Guevara.x xi During the next decade he rose to the second highest position in the KGB and would later become a reported intelligence mentor of his subordinate Vladimir Putin. Following the dissolution of the KGB Leonov was not content to be idle and was elected to the Russian Federation’s Duma legislative body.  

Nevertheless, Leonov also would create disparaging stories and rumors about fellow Soviet intelligence employees and superiors. Officials surmise that Leonov likely had an inferiority complex “due to his slender build”, claims of visiting brothels, was cheap, his family believed he lacked any “consideration for his wife or their daughter Irina”, and Leonov “displays outbursts of ill temper especially in treatment of his wife.”xii In one such episode Leonov played Soviet Embassy Consul Sergey Konstantinov in a game of chess and he would not come to the phone to speak with his wife despite her tears or demands. Leonov’s wife “usually calls him ‘my devil’, ‘my ogre’ or ‘my Satan’, while he in turn uses such expressions as ‘old witch’, ‘hag’, and describes her to others as the ‘skinny one’.” His unhappy family life, excessive lifestyle, sporting activities, and his intelligence work is noted to have severely aged Leonov just a few years following these events.

A Modern Photo of KGB Officer and Author Nikolai S. Leonov
Credit TO: Molodaya Gvardiya

According to a Russian media interview with Leonov during two thousand and five the KGB officer states he was interrupted from a weekend volleyball game in the fall of nineteen sixty-three by an embassy duty officer. The officer appeared agitated while inquiring if Leonov would receive an American inquiring about visa information. Leonov was annoyed by the interruption because it was not a workday and hoped to rebuff the visitor until the next week began, based on supporting documentation the date of this supposed encounter would be on Sunday September 29, 1963. Leonov claimed a desperate pale young man with a revolver stood before him named Lee Harvey Oswald and that he “wanted to return immediately to the USSR, where he had earlier worked in Minsk, and be delivered from the constant fear for his life and for the fate of his family.” Investigating officials claimed to have little information about this specific day but versions of this quite dramatic episode were parroted by the supporters of Oswald’s guilt. Yet the person seemingly key to that story was Leonov, he states having received Oswald and if true, American officials would have overlooked the very man this purported visit relied upon..xiii

It appears that Leonov’s personality of biting sarcasm, making up stories, a slight inferiority complex perhaps also based on never knowing his father, and outbursts of emotion when challenged by women are similar to a couple of individuals who allegedly visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. His asserted interaction with frantic Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly brandishing a gun further adds the possibility of Leonov intentionally misrepresenting the events at the Soviet embassy. During nineteen sixty-three Leonov is described as a having blonde hair “sometimes worn in a crewcut”, stands five feet five inches, had “blue eyes”, was “quite slender”, is thirty-five years old, and wore dull clothing.xiv xv Leonov also speaks English and Spanish, the latter is the language a caller alleged to be Oswald spoke when phoning the Soviet embassy but the actual Lee Harvey Oswald had no knowledge of Spanish.

Could it be in seeking to hamper this possible attempt by a known defector to regain access once again to the Soviet Union spurred Leonov into defensive action heedless of the future consequences? Is it possible this unpredictable KGB staff officer decided to manipulate the situation for other yet unknown reasons? At the very least Leonov certainly is a quite similar physical and behavioral match for the man calling himself Oswald and having an outburst in the Cuban embassy. He allegedly interacted with Oswald at the Soviet embassy in highly strange episode and might be the same figure the CIA tried to repeatedly suppress because he represents contending and unknown portions of the official timeline.
Sincerely,
C.A.A. Savastano

References:
i. House Select Committee on Assassinations, Segregated CIA file, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming-Lorenz, Bio Information-Contact No. 57—Gerald Leroy Peterson and Contact No. 75 Gloria Villarreal Sepulveda, (n.d.), p. 2-3, National Archives and Records Administration Identification Number: 104-10218-10354
ii. Ibid, Reel 53, Folder H, Nikolay Sergeyev Leonov, p. 21
iii. HSCA, Lee Harvey Oswald, The CIA, And Mexico City, pp. 94-95, NARA ID: 180-10110-10484
iv. Ibid, pp. 190-192, 199
v. Ibid, Sylvia Duran’s previous statements RE: LHO’S visit to the Cuban Consul, (n.d.), p. 23, NARA ID: 180-10142-10133
vi. Central Intelligence Agency, Russ Holmes Work file, Overview of Mexico City Photo Ops with Chronology, 27 September 1963 (Friday), p. 1, NARA ID: 104-10413-10000
vii. HSCA, Lee Harvey Oswald, The CIA, And Mexico City, p. 7
viii. Ibid, p. 195
ix. HSCA, CIA Seg. File, Box 8, Biographic Profile of Nikolay Sergeyevich Leonov, p. 2, NARA ID: 1993.07.10.11:07:49:620340   
x. HSCA, CIA Seg file, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming- Lorenz, Reel 53: Nikolay Sergeyev Leonov., Psychological Assessment, p. 2, NARA ID: 1994.04.25.08:44:28:850005
xi. HSCA, CIA Seg file, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming- Lorenz, Reel 53: Nikolay Sergeyev Leonov., SPR, p. 6, NARA ID: 1994.04.25.08:44:28:850005
xii. Ibid, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming- Lorenz, Dispatch: Redblock- Nikolay Sergeyevich Leonov, Personality Sketch, pp. 2, 3, NARA ID: 104-10218-10249
xiii. Mark Hackard, December 19, 2015, OSWALD & THE KGB IN MEXICO, Espionage History Archive, espionagehistory.com  
xiv. Ibid, Nikolay Sergeyevich Leonov transcript, p. 1
xv. Ibid, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming- Lorenz, Folder H – Nikolay Sergeyev Leonov, October 4, 1967, pp. 1, 3, 6, 9, NARA ID: 1994.04.25.08:44:28:850005

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How the Disgust Mechanism creates Violence

Join the Wall Street Window Podcast to inspect the power of disgust over human behavior with your host Mike Swanson and author C.A.A. Savastano. They review the subtle and overt effects our biological defenses play in dealing with other people and how uncontrolled disgust can lead to violence.

Fear and the Origins of Violence

The Wall Street Window Podcast returns with your host Mike Swanson and his guest Carmine Savastano to discuss how fear plays a role in significant amounts of violence. They review some responses to violence that can subtly drive human behavior in both useful and destructive ways.

Conflict, Hope, and Progress

As the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination passes, the woefully incomplete government release of assassination files years prior weighs against the heartening work by those who are searching the evidence. However, past differences and the current political climate at times has a tendency to bleed into the research community and if we gaze unflinchingly, we can observe related turmoil is rooted in tribalism. There are some serious identity issues cloaked behind worldviews and matters of historical importance and this causes some people to focus on politics or group identity to the detriment of their own arguments. It unfortunately can devolve into blindly serving ideology without concern to all the facts that might disagree and such an environment quickly can inspire people deep in their very being to eventually hate those who oppose them and seek out unnecessary conflict. The related tribe demands you suit up, join the fight, stand up for their “truth”, and remember anyone who disagrees is “wrong”.

However, there are many practical individuals who have poured over the files and work both alone and in groups together to move progress forward to offer the most verifiably correct history possible. These people appear to have realized that our arguments while sharpened on genuine productive debate can become dull and useless if wasted upon endless hyperbole. In the heat of rancorous fighting, it can often escape some that most of our debates can incite and fuel other even less reasonable conflicts that are often publicly observed. This often can turn away possible supporters because they witness the obvious consequences of becoming involved and while those who desire the case to be decided in the image of their beliefs shall likely never fully abate, the absolute truth is something no one can yet provide with certainty. We too face mythmakers and those who act in bad faith to see credible work marginalized and credible researchers attacked, but the tides have been turning as many prominent charlatans have come under greater legal and public scrutiny. Ignore the hype, demand the evidence.

Let us not overlook the long tradition of legal obstruction, public derision, and suppression that government actors have verifiably undertaken over decades to prevent the release of related legal files despite congressional assurances. Are the endless smears and personal attacks by even the very people charged with rendering a just decision to be forgotten? Unfortunately, we must contend with errors, myths, government intervention, and deeper internal conflicts within the research community as well. The human need for competition and status has often rendered even those whose view of case is quite alike to become enemies when minor details cause the actual disagreement. Guiding convictions and rational debate are being weighed down through senseless backbiting and the refusal of some to evolve with the proven evidence. It may be that some brief reflection upon the likelihood that it shall take most people from all sides of the case to solve it might be in order.

Perhaps the reliable examples of prior work being lost to endless acrimony should be considered and if that legacy will be damaged and buried under the conflicts that dominate some online spaces between those who support and contend the official narrative. Some might think on what their end game is beyond wasting time and preventing others from making progress and perhaps for some that might be the precise reason they act in such a manner. The facts support that no matter what someone genuinely believes about the case it does not make you a bad person, it might render some incorrect, but those with a genuine interest wish to see measurable progress. Most are decent people who desire historical accuracy on behalf of a President who was murdered under verifiably suspicious circumstances. As new evidence completes the historical puzzles that eluded us for so long, we can gaze upon new leads and facts that disrupt the myths and legends crafted to deceive researchers. All the prior credible work of both sides must not be set aside for pleasing but incorrect popular speculations because we share this case for better or worse.

There has been significant modern progress achieved in the release of millions of files despite legal obstruction that continues, admissions by several official of “benign” suppression, and subsequently exposed assassination plots targeting foreign leaders in the time preceding, during, and following President Kennedy’s death. Officials such as Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly lied to the public and even several other national officials to protect their own illegal programs. The decades have further revealed Lee Harvey Oswald to have been a constant source of attention for intelligence officials, despite past denials and concealment, and at least one American CIA official considered using him as a source of information. Huge portions of government and public legends were overturned by later evidence and the false reassurances of past leaders too has faded over time. While there is no definitive answer yet to be had by the public, the work of correcting official mistakes has taken some time and has progressed successfully in several instances with the evidence and hard work of those in the research community.

There are many living and gone who deserve thanks and present new evidence that challenges past assumptions, and while shoddy work falls to established facts, those seeking facts shall welcome evidentiary progress no matter what side it supports. From luminaries of research to people that are just recently diving into the files everyone that will help in a reasonable way toward progress must welcome new facts despite what they believe and those who cannot be reasonable enough to accept contending evidence should be corrected with because they seek attention and not progress. The humbling workload undertaken by many respectable people and groups is greater than any official effort concerning the same historical evidence and devoted volunteers offer days, months, and years of their life to benefit the pursuit of historical knowledge. Despite the acrimony in some corners and endless fights, most admirably spend significant time, resources, and endure public arguments or harassment to present facts without expecting compensation. It is this often-selfless work that defines much of what quietly transpires amid the constant spectacles of greater conflict.

A generous nature is one of many admirable features of the many in the research community which can shine beyond the fighting, because most are people who care when they discuss important historical truths and questions. The one unifying link between such opposing historical narratives has allowed a growing number of people from all sides of the political assassination community to work together despite the past disdain for undertaking joint projects. The research community with all its flaws still embodies the eternal quest for seeking greater evidence and establishing verifiable truth and we must ask hard questions, demand greater answers, and hold every related person historically responsible who substantial evidence implicates. Many collaborate on these complex historical matters because they know it is a subject of significant value to ourselves and those who shall take up the cause of historical inquiry after us. Within the current political culture, it matters more than ever that we press on and use cooperation not insults to achieve progress that can benefit all related people seeking to reveal more of the legal record and pursue historical facts.   

Sincerely,
Larry Hancock, Jacob M. Carter, and C.A.A. Savastano

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Motivations For Violent Behavior (New TPAAK Research Section)

Introducing the “Motivations For Violent Behavior” a new section to the TPAAK Primary Evidence Collections that presents the often hidden motivators that incite targeting competitors and enemies with aggression. It features research, scientific studies, and media that support there are universal emotions and instincts that can drive violent behavior.

Human Time Bomb: The Violence Within Our Nature

“Human Time Bomb: The Violence Within Our Nature” reviews the past and modern effects of violence within humanity's nature and environment. It dissects our common aggression, propensity for nepotism, and inherent self-interest that guide our decision-making and inspects a combination of factors will overcome some people in a natural desire to judge others and enrich themselves. A marked loss of useful competition in favor of more destructive social conflict that some technology assists has further created a growing detachment among several people. The book seeks to identify some of the connections between all these growing problems and offer some ideas how to counteract them.

Wall Street Window Podcast goes "Undercover"

Join your host Mike Swanson and author C.A.A. Savastano to discuss a spy training film directed by Hollywood notable John Ford and created by the US Office of Strategic Services that provided some necessary guidance to future agents.