The Spy Who Would Be Tsar

by Kevin Coogan

Michal Goleniewski was one of the Cold War’s most important spies but has been overlooked in the vast literature on the intelligence battles between the Western Powers and the Soviet Bloc. Renowned investigative journalist Kevin Coogan reveals Goleniewski's extraordinary story for the first time in this biography. Goleniewski rose to be a senior officer in the Polish intelligence service, a position which gave him access to both Polish and Russian secrets. Disillusioned with the Soviet Bloc, he made contact with the CIA, sending them letters containing significant intelligence. He then decided to defect and fled to America in 1961 via an elaborate escape plan in Berlin. His revelations led to the exposure of several important Soviet spies in the West including the Portland spy ring in the UK, the MI6 traitor George Blake, and a spy high up in the West German intelligence service. Despite these hugely important contributions to the Cold War, Goleniewski would later be abandoned by the CIA after he made the outrageous claim that he was actually Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia – the last remaining member of the Romanov Russian royal family and therefore entitled to the lost treasures of the Tsar. Goleniewski's increasingly fantastical claims led to him becoming embroiled in a bizarre demi-monde of Russian exiles, anti-communist fanatics, right-wing extremists and chivalric orders with deep historical roots in America's racist and antisemitic underground. This fascinating and revelatory biography will be of interest to students and researchers of the Cold War, intelligence history and right-wing extremism as well as general readers with an interest in these intriguing subjects.

Genres: Conspiracy Theories, Nonfiction

378 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2021

About the author

American investigative journalist. He is best known for the biography Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International.

Coogan's work has appeared in The Village Voice, Mother Jones, Hit List, and The Nation. He has been interviewed a number of times on Dave Emory's For the Record radio show.

Coogan published some writings about the Larouche Movement online under the pseudonym Hylozoic Hedgehog.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

just not nearly as good as the yockey book - goleniewski is a bizarre and fairly interesting figure but he doesn't function nearly as well as a central thread to arrange a narrative around as yockey did, so you're left with rundowns of various strange right wing groupings or spies somehow connected to his defection. there's probably some interesting jumping off points for further research here(coogan's research and digging up of obscure sources is good as always) but as a stand alone book i found it somewhat lacking. imo he also gives way too much credence to the idea, propagated by mostly western spies or eastern bloc defectors, that the soviets had infiltrated postwar nazi groups to the extent of actually controlling them. this mostly seems to have been propagated by guys who were either bircher types who thought the cia was too left wing, or people connected to gladio, sometimes both at the same time, which makes their reasons for propagating such a narrative pretty suspect.

[Tomasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The scope of this book goes way beyond what the title would suggest - Mr. Coogan cast a deep and wide net, and came up with lots of wild stuff. This one is both a decent summation of the Goleniewski case and a fascinating demonstration of the monarchist fringe movements in the US, even a bit unbalanced towards the latter. However, Mr. Coogan died without finishing the job, and it shows, the writing quality stumbles sometimes, the ending comes up somewhat abruptly.
Unfortunately what keeps me from giving this book five stars is its editorial shoddiness. The first part, covering Goleniewski's life before and immediately after his defection, is also the battlefield where the author valiantly struggled with the Polish language and history, only to be soundly trounced. And in this day and age, with so many well-educated Polish expats (AND THE BLOODY INTERNET, TOO), there's no excuse for the publisher not to have somebody knowledgeable look at the text before publication, as many of the mistakes herein are actually laughable.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Table of Contents

Introduction: Labyrinth

PART ONE: SNIPER
1. Grave Secrets
2. Tightrope Walk
3. Crossing Over
4. ‘Sick Think’
5. Saving Six

PART TWO: HACKE
6. Red Swastika
7. The Search for ‘Gestapo’ Müller

PART THREE: KING OF QUEENS
8. Washington Merry-Go-Round
9. Tsar Wars
10. Hating Henry Kissinger

PART FOUR: KNIGHTS OF MALTA
11. Shickshinny Shenanigans
12. White Russians in Manhattan
13. Plots and Protocols
14. Uncle Sam and the Knights

Conclusion: Imaginary Castle

.........

Description

Michal Goleniewski was one of the Cold War’s most important spies but has been overlooked in the vast literature on the intelligence battles between the Western Powers and the Soviet Bloc. Renowned investigative journalist Kevin Coogan reveals Goleniewski's extraordinary story for the first time in this biography.

Goleniewski rose to be a senior officer in the Polish intelligence service, a position which gave him access to both Polish and Russian secrets. Disillusioned with the Soviet Bloc, he made contact with the CIA, sending them letters containing significant intelligence. He then decided to defect and fled to America in 1961 via an elaborate escape plan in Berlin. His revelations led to the exposure of several important Soviet spies in the West including the Portland spy ring in the UK, the MI6 traitor George Blake, and a spy high up in the West German intelligence service.

Despite these hugely important contributions to the Cold War, Goleniewski would later be abandoned by the CIA after he made the outrageous claim that he was actually Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia – the last remaining member of the Romanov Russian royal family and therefore entitled to the lost treasures of the Tsar.

Goleniewski's increasingly fantastical claims led to him becoming embroiled in a bizarre demi-monde of Russian exiles, anti-communist fanatics, right-wing extremists and chivalric orders with deep historical roots in America's racist and antisemitic underground.

This fascinating and revelatory biography will be of interest to students and researchers of the Cold War, intelligence history and right-wing extremism as well as general readers with an interest in these intriguing subjects.

---

Mary Ferrell Foundation

Cryptonym: BEVISION
Definition: Project using the Polish defector Michal Goleniewski
Status: Unknown

Discussion: Author John Newman believes that Goleniewski was the one who initially spurred Angleton to begin his molehunts.

..........

Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (University of California, 1996), pp. 214-215

1963-1964: "Phase one stories linking Oswald and Ruby to Communists were circulated by (Major General Charles) Willoughby's associates Philip J. Corso, a veteran of army intelligence who had retired by 1963 to work for the segregationist Strom Thurmond, and Cuban exile Salvador Diaz Verson/AMPALM-26, a former chief of Cuban military intelligence.

Corso, the army intelligence veteran, was like Willoughby a foe of the CIA from the right, having tangled with the Agency in his years under C.D. Jackson as a member of Eisenhower's Operations Control Board.

In 1963-64 Corso and Willoughby were part of a secret right-wing group, the 'Shickshinny Knights of Malta' (so called after their headquarters in Shickshinny, PA, to distinguish them from the more famous Roman Catholic Sovereign Military Order of Malta based in Rome).

The group provided a home to dissident retired military officers dissatisfied with the CIA's internationalism, many of them, like Willoughby and General Bonner Fellers, veterans of the old Hunt-MacArthur-Pawley coalition of the early 1950s.

By 1963 the group's leading asset in their anti-CIA propaganda was a Polish intelligence defector, Michal Goleniewski, who had claimed to audiences inside and outside the CIA that the Agency was penetrated by the KGB at a high level."

......

John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p. 89

1959: "(Events)...suggested a mole in the CIA: a series of letters to the CIA written by a Soviet informant, Michal Goleniewski, beginning in 1959, under the name 'Sniper'.

According to another of Angleton's molehunters, Clare Petty, this is why some people in the CIA began to suspect there was a mole...Angleton was said to be suspicious of Goleniewski from the beginning...It was the Goleniewski episode that gave credence within the Agency to the idea of a mole, an idea Angleton would shortly turn into a crusade.

David Martin's CIA chronicle, Wilderness of Mirrors, has this incisive comment: 'Goleniewski, with or without the knowledge of the KGB, had planted a germ within the body of the CIA that would become a debilitating disease, all but paralyzing the Agency's clandestine operations against the Soviet Union.

The germ was the suspicion that the CIA itself had been penetrated by the KGB, that a Soivet mole had burrowed to the Agency's core.

"Goleniewski was the first and primary source on a mole," a CIA officer said.' (Newman asks) Could that germ from 1959, along with the U-2 compromise of the previous year, have led to a counterintelligence 'dangle' of Oswald in the Soviet Union?"

......


Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies

In Dec 1960 BEVISION defected to West Berlin.
104-10250-10061: SUBJECT: MCDONALD, HUGH C KIMSEY, HERMAN E

4/12/61: Herman Kimsey was chief of the Analysis and Research Section, Graphic Aids Reproduction Branch (GARB), Technical Services Division.

By 5/18/61, Kimsey received $380,000 from Colonel Edwards (note: Chief of Office of Security). Kimsey resigned 7/16/62. Died 1/26/71.

Also see 1993.08.13.17:03:02:090059 - 11/22/74 memo - Colonel Philip Corso was active in Goleniewski (BEVISION) case during 1963.

As late as 1969, Kimsey was alerting the CIA about the explosive mind of Goleniewski, who he believed had caused the deaths of Soviet and American military leaders.

4/27/61: Hugh C. McDonald alleged that on this date he met "Saul", the assassin-to-be, in the office of Herman Kimsey and that Kimsey later told McDonald of the complicity of 'Saul' in the JFK assassination...

From 1955 to circa 1961 Mr. McDonald, as an independent contractor, assisted Technical Services Division/Authentication Division/DDP in the development of the 'Identikit', a system for the graphic reproduction of the facial features of an individual.

During this period Mr. McDonald did have contacts with Herman Kimsey who was terminated in July 1962 and died in January 1971...all that can be said is that Mr. Kimsey is deceased but he is known to have exaggerated and fabricated considerably at times..." (Director of Security Robert Gambino, August 1976)