SOMERTON MAN: CIA & FEDOSIMOV PHOTOGRAPHS

CIA, PAVEL IVANOVICH FEDOSIMOV
RECORDS SEARCH

As you can see, the CIA have responded to a request from Clive for any and all images of Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov.

They make it quite clear that they searched for all relevant documents amongst their files with a negative result, no images were found.

We are therefore in a position where the UN, IAEA, FBI and CIA files have been searched with none of these organisations finding any photographs of Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov.

This does not mean that we will stop searching and in fact, we contacted other agencies and sources and are awaiting their responses.

But what does this mean? What we know for certain is that the man in our Pravda photograph was named as Pavel Fedosimov and, from Harry Gold's description, he matches the appearance of the man he met in the Earle Cinema in New York on December 26th 1946, he had introduced himself as 'Paul' according to the book ATOM SPIES referred to by Senator Cavanagh.

We also know that Pavel Fedosimov was an NKVD officer at the New York Rezidentura with the code name STEPAN.

Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov left the US on July 31st, 1948 on the SS Pobeda bound for Russia. Whilst a man of the same name turns up on numerous occasions through until 1959 at both UN and IAEA meetings, no photographs of him have appeared at any time.

This second photograph has been added on 4th December 2018, it is a close up of Pavel's teeth in particular:

The image I managed to find and now possess being the original hard copy photograph of Pavel and Novikov. It is noted that the FBI showed Harry Gold images of various people and he picked out a photo of Fedosimov in October 1950 this means that the FBI had photos at that time. We do not know how old those photographs were at the time and we do not know if they are of the same man as the man in our photograph.

Recently Clive found confirmation of the fact that it was common practice for Russian Intelligence operators to use false names and documentation as it was indeed for Russian diplomats. This is both a concern and possibly our opportunity to discover more.

The situation, therefore, is that we have no photographs, no confirmation and no way to prove that the man Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov who turns up in post-1948 documentation was the same man as in our photo.

Will update this as more information comes to hand.

SOMERTON MAN: THE NOVIKOV QUESTION

AT THE AIRPORT?

It is a valid question, were they at the airport? One of the commenters on the original post,  someone very knowledgeable in the art of photography, suggests otherwise, the thoughts raised were that this was a studio shot or shots that were later superimposed onto the airfield image. Shot or shots simply means that there were two individual images of the men which were then superimposed together onto the main shot. There is maybe a clue to that in what appears to be a second reference date of 6 03 47 shown in one reference on the back of this photograph. (RSE 47603)

The question raised other thoughts about the basis of the story of Fedosimov, the question is best posed by asking, how do we know that the man to the right of this image is Novikov? Think about that for a moment. and here's another question. How do we know that the man to the left of the image is Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov?

Answer 1, NOVIKOV
We know that the man on the right is Novikov not because we have dozens if not hundreds of newspaper articles or mentions in FBI files on the man but because what we have is dozens if not hundreds of photographs that link the name directly to them. It's the photographs that provide the proof.

Answer 2, FEDOSIMOV

We know that the man on the left of this picture is Pavel Fedosimov because the good people at Pravda told us so. Full stop. There are no known images of Fedosimov from either before or after the main date shown on the image of April 25th, 1947.

In other words, we don't really know if the man shown is Pavel Fedosimov, we have no collaborative evidence to support that being the case apart from the mention by Pravda.

What we do have is evidence that suggests that Pavel left the USA bound for Russia in August 1948.

No Lightweight

Far from being a lightweight player in the spy game in those times, Pavel was a one-time handler for Klaus Fuchs and regularly mixed with his host country's senior Government officials including Harry Dexter White, code-named JURIST in the Venona files. Harry Dexter White also departed the USA in August 1948 but not for Russia, he died on August 16th. 1948. Apparently, he died of an overdose of Digitalis, the medication he was taking for an ongoing heart condition. His death occurred two days after the HUAC hearings whilst he was preparing to give further evidence to that inquiry.

Followers of the Somerton Man case will know that Digitalis poisoning was long considered to have been the likely cause of death for SM.

So, the bottom line is that it's essential that we find photographs of the man in this image known as Pavel Fedosimov and dated after November 1948 in order to show whether or not he was, in fact, the Somerton Man. Words alone cannot suffice.

SOMERTON MAN: MR. TOM KEANE OF HAMILTON

TOM KEANE

With many thanks to the good people at the Ansett Museum in Hamilton, Victoria. They very kindly carried out some valuable research and found this newspaper article on Mr. Keane including his photo. I can seriously recommend the Museum and its staff to anyone needing to fill out their knowledge on the Ansett Bus and Airline business.

Clive has also been busy and he was able to uncover some more facts on Mr. Keane. It seems he worked extraordinarily hard through the war years and kept his fleet of 30 buses up to scratch and always running. A good man and a valued member of his community. Following the war, Tom took up a teaching position at the local technical college and again acquitted himself with distinction.

We have almost run our course with this lead and I wanted to especially thank Clive for his ongoing input and also special thanks to Misca, it was her efforts that gave us Mr. Keanes original information on his place and date of birth, St Peters, Marrickville, and where he lived, Union Street Marrickville.

SOMERTON MAN: MINIATURE WRITING, CODES & PAVEL FEDOSIMOV

THE STORY THUS FAR:
MINIATURE WRITING & CODES,
FEDOSIMOV

A Clandestine message from WW2 written in pen on rice paper on both sides. More to follow on this.

(More mages will be added to this post in the coming days)

This blog was originally set up to show how the letters on the Somerton Man code page were in fact carriers of almost hidden miniature code letters and numbers. That was back in 2013, since then I have posted many articles with images and supporting references that clearly show the presence of this miniature writing and have demonstrated exactly how it was done. Extensive research then backed up these assertions with the discovery of the use of miniature writing throughout the ages as both a message tool and an art form. The messaging aspect becoming known as 'clandestine communications'. In 2014 a WW2 SOE manual which described the technique known as INK H was declassified.

What INK H was/is, is a method of concealing secret messages either in clear or in code within the larger letters of a handwritten letter or poem.

During this time, the keen-eyed Clive discovered a small article in The Advertiser newspaper that announced the finding of the body of a man in a Hindley Street, Adelaide Hotel two weeks to the day following the finding of the body of the Somerton Man just 25 minutes drive away from Hindley Street. Further digging uncovered the fact that this second man, Tibor Kaldor, was an ex-internee, a 'Dunera Boy' in fact. He was one of approximately 2500 German, mostly Jewish, men and boys who had been arrested and deported to Australia from the UK in 1940. Other men were sent to Canada and, interestingly a number of spies were eventually found amongst them not the least of whom was Klaus Fuchs, the atom spy. Kalus used miniature writing in his reports to hi handler, Harry Gold.

Clive and I worked extensively at the leads that had been found which, amongst other things, showed that the internees had, in the first few months, early 1941, of their internment at Hay in New South Wales, designed and had printed a range of bank notes for use within the camp. The designer, George A. Teltscher, had produced three denominations of the notes being Sixpence, One Shilling and Two Shillings. The detail was amazing, each note had been individually signed by members of his team and the decoration included miniature writing and a concealed message read 'We are here because we ar here because we are here' (sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne), in the form of the barbed wire decoration on the front of each note. On the rear of each note were 25 sheep, one for each hut in the Hay camp, each animal had the name of the individual hut leader hidden but in plain sight. These notes were a cause of great concern to the authorities supposedly on the basis that they might be mistaken for real money and used outside the confines of the camp, the reality is that the biggest concern is that the design could easily be used to transmit clandestine messages. We produced images that showed the presence of miniature writing in the design and in the signatures.

Mr. Teltscher along with his fellow internees was released later in 1941 and he opted to return home. In his case, he traveled via the Panama Canal. That travel in itself was unusual because the US had made a rule that no internee should pass anywhere near mainland USA. Nonetheless, travel he did and he safely reached the UK where he dropped out of site for some 4 years; to this time we do not know just where he went or what job he had during that time. Coincidentally, it was in 1942 that the SOE developed the Ink H method.

The Dunera/ Tibor Kaldor story does not stop there, amongst the belongings found with the body of Tibor Kaldor was a last letter supposedly a suicide note. This note was transcribed from the original handwritten piece and entered into an online acrostic decoder, this rules-based tool was designed to uncover any hidden messages that conformed to those rules. In this case, the decoder identified the name DANETTA. The output from this first pass was passed through a second time and it now revealed the message, 'AND SEE DANETTA AND SUITCASE DANETTA DANETTA DANETTA DANETTA.' Tibor had left two suitcases but no record has been found of there contents.

So, we have the Somerton Man body, a code found and associated with him, miniature writing, INK H, signatures on the Hay Banknotes apparently containing code, a second body found with a 'suicide' note that contains a coded name and message and to top it off, we have a poem said to have been written by Jestyn, the nurse, that also contains miniature writing within its handwritten letters.

Running in parallel to the above research, a follower of this blog sent me a link to a Hansard entry that covered the statement made by a Senator Cavanagh, the statement was devoted to the Somerton Man and the code page. He railed against the use of Australia as a dumping ground for dead spies and pointed to a specific book, 'The Atom Spies' which had been written in the 50s. Amongst other things it described a meeting between a Harry Gold, a spy/cut out, and a Russian diplomat, Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov. The description of Fedosimov was close to the description of the Somerton Man. Fedosimov left the USA in August 1948. I was fortunate to obtain the only known photograph of Pavel and there are similarities between him and SM. Harry Gold had described Pavel as being a big man who walked on his toes and in his view he was around 6' 3" tall. We know that SM, when measured on the slab, was 5' 11". The difference in height was at first an issue but the factors that need to be taken into account are that Gold was not a tall man, Pavel was described as wearing a hat and that SMs body was in a complete relaxed state and was measured without shoes. It is reasonable to assume that SM if alive and standing would have appeared to be 6' 1" and possibly more, then consider how tall he would have looked when walking on his toes and wearing a hat.

As stated there is only the one known photograph of Pavel and whilst there have been mentions of a Pavel Fedosimov in the years following 1948, there are no known photographs. This may change in September, this came about by virtue of Clive having contacted the CIA and requesting any photographs and files on Pavel. The response was that the CIA will be releasing images in September 2018. It is only then that we will be able to find out one way or the other whether my assertion that Pavel could be SM is right or wrong. I remain confident that what I have said is correct, if I am wrong then it was a good learning experience and if I am right then all to the good.