The Defectors

IGOR GOUZENKO

In earlier posts, we discussed the findings in Vassiliev's notes that Pavel Fedosimov was suspected of being about to betray the mother country, he had been recalled to Moscow and was due to board the Pobeda in New York on 31st July 1948.

I wondered just how the news of his recall was broken to him and then an article appeared that has given us an insight into just how these things were done. We won't be going into his defection in any great detail here. Our purpose is to look carefully at the process to see if we can glean anything of value that might give us a greater insight into the circumstances related to Pavel Fedosimov.

THE ARGUS

The following words appeared in a copy of The Argus, Melbourne dated 23rd December 1948, it  is from one of a series of articles 'The Iron Curtain'

'We all lived in constant fear of a recall to Moscow in the form of a telegram containing the standard phrase "he is required for other work." The "other work." we all realised, could mean penal servitude in Siberia.

We even suspected "friendly recalls" mentioning promotion in rank or service, because too frequently we had heard of the exalted ones "vanishing" im-mediately after arrival in Mos-cow. The reason could be some remark or indiscretion that the recalled one had long since forgotten. It could be for charges advanced by an enemy and to which the victim would be given no chance to reply.

This Soviet distrust of her own citizens presents one of the weakest, points of the system, as well as the most worrisome for one working in a position of so-called trust behind the Soviet "Iron Curtain."

Then, one afternoon in September 1944, it happened—like a bolt from the blue! Colonel Zabotin called me into his office. He was staring at a letter which had just arrived in the diplomatic mail from Moscow.

"For reasons unstated," Zabotin said, "the immediate recall of you and your family has been ordered by the Director.' 

Gouzenko put up some solid reasons why he shouldn't go back and he was listened to, his departure was delayed

Igor Gouzenko made his decision to defect to the West and did so on 5th September 1945, 3 days after the end of WW2. He went on to play a crucial role in breaking up the Soviet's largest spy ring in the United States. 

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22704639#

THE LESSON

What can be learned from this? Read through the excerpt carefully. At first glance, it just tells us that he received a notification from his superiors that he would be heading back to Moscow. But there's more than that, we learned a little of the machinations and of the underlying fear of what happened to those who were recalled.

It is safe to assume that Fedosimov would have had a similar briefing with his superior and no doubt he would have discussed it in detail with his wife as did Gouzenko. The decision was obvious for them, they needed to break free and do it as quickly as possible. Having managed to get a stay on the decision, Gouzenko set about organising his ultimate defection.

We don't know whether Fedosimov had a similar delay but we do know that his wife did not board the Pobeda, she wasn't even on the passenger list. In fact, there is no trace that we have been able to find that his wife, Vera Fedosimova, ever left the USA. None of the passengers on the list were certificated as having boarded the Pobeda so there is no evidence that Pavel left the USA.

It was common practice for the Soviets to use pseudonyms and to change identities even when moving from one city to another within North America. Despite extensive research, we have not been able to find another photograph of Pavel and in fact, we have no real evidence that the man in our photograph was Pavel Fedosinov apart from the fact that the note on the back of the photograph states that as his name. The same name turns up in the United Nations records but once again, no photographs exist.

The video clip that follows gives us a reason as to why there were no more photographs. It is an interview with Igor Gouzenko, 25 years after his defection. Had he changed his appearance? He believed he was under threat of death if his face was to be shown. Historically, such defectors were assassinated, was this the fate that befell the Somerton Man?

In closing, there are those that scoff and snear at the very idea that there could be two men called Pavel Fedosimov and with wives called Vera. That would be naive in the extreme, intelligence services of all sides practiced the fine art of tradecraft including that of changing identities at will. Everything about the Somerton Man case points to it being an espionage case To borrow some wise words from Churchill:

 The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, Ignorance may deride it 

but in the end, there it is.

The espionage scenario is the only one that has stood the tests of time and numerous attacks, I have never felt the need to attack the works of others except in direct defence. 

In the end, what I have said will be either proven to be right, part right or totally wrong. I accept that those are the only real outcomes.

I will close this post off with a question, there's something else that characterises both Gouzenko and Fedosimov cases. Can you spot it?

SOMERTON MAN: ERMAKOV VICTOR ANDREEVICH

  

Ermakov Victor Andreevich

Image From Yandex Face Matching

This image kindly sent in anonymously, many thanks, Ermakov Viktor Andreevich is all we have at this time. The person ran an image of Fedosimov through the Yandex face matching site and this was amongst the results. There are many images in the results but this one stood out.

If it is the man we know as Fedosimov in younger years, then we may have something of value. Hopefully, we will be able to track more information on this man and as and when information comes to hand it will be published.

On an aside, the 'halo' effect around Fedosimov's nose and mouth, we think we now know where it came from, will post shortly on that.

THE SUSPECTS PART 2. NAMES & Sherbakov found?

SUSPECTS NAMED

This blog has been a an experience, a long, long road to hoe. With diversions and rabbit holes we nevertheless have kept going and kept the focus. Who was the man on the beach on December 1st 1948? How did he die? Who killed him? 

Without wasting any further time, let's get on with the job:

WHO WAS HE?

Note 'facemask' shadowing around the nose and mouth in the center image. It is not a 'saddle nose' it is a shadow

          Note: For more information on images and lighting effects see this October 2019 post

In May 2017 we published a name, that name was Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov, more to the point though, we published a photograph. I was able to obtain an original 'hard copy' photograph from a US based site. It showed Pavel Fedosimov at La Guardia airport in New York alongside Nikolai Novikov, Soviet Consul to the US.  'Pavel Fedosimov' was a known NKVD man, a colonel and has numerous cables accredited to him in the Venona files. He operated under the codename STEPAN.

Let me stress that Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov is the name that the man in the photograph was given by the press agency and it is believed that this was a pseudonym. According to Vassiliev's notes, Pavel Fedosimov was recalled to Russia because he was suspected of being about to defect. He was due to board the POBEDA in New York on 31st July 1948 but none of the boarding documents were certificated, there is no proof that he was on board when the ship sailed. The headmaster of the Soviet school in New York, Michael Samarin, his wife and 3 children along with Oksana Kasenkina a teacher from the school, also booked to travel to Odessa, did not board and in fact asked for asylum, they all defected.

(The voyage of the Pobeda was marred as it approached Odessa, its final destination. There was a large explosion on board, 40 passengers and two crew were killed. On hearing of the incident, Stalin flew into a rage and blamed US spies for the disaster.)

The bottom line is that there was no proof that Fedosimov boarded the Pobeda, the photograph I have is the only photograph of this man known to be in existence. A person of this name was recorded as being a Soviet envoy at the UN for a number of years from the late 1940s through to 1965, however, no photographs exist of this man either. Clive Turner requested photographs and file details of Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov from the CIA and the last response he had was 'We can neither confirm nor deny that Pavel Fedosimov had any dealings with the CIA'  

A comparison overlay video of the image you see here showed a marked resemblance to the Somerton Man.

In the absence of any photographs of this man after 1947 and any photographs of the man of the same name attached to the UN, I am led to believe that the man in this photograph was a Soviet defector and may well be the Somerton Man.

It was and probably still is common practice for Russian agents to use pseudonyms. In fact, later in this post we talk of a Bogdan Stashinky, he spoke of the list of pseudonyms he had for use in various locations.

HOW DID HE DIE?

As per the previous post and its comments, I believe that the man was assassinated, that a sophisticated 'vapour' gun was likely used to carry out the killing. 

Much discussion regarding the drug Digitalis, has resulted in an understanding that it was a drug if taken in a heavy dose can kill within seconds and this was substantiated with a copy of an autopsy report of a man who had ended his life in this way. We also know that Digitalis can be delivered by syringe and by default it could be delivered in a vapour form. This conforms to the opinions expressed at the 1949 autopsy and the Phillips document in 1994.

Importantly, no trace of the drug was found in the body, which is believed to have been a conscious decision by the assassin to deliberately cover up the nature of the death and make it look like a suicide. 

This was a stated method used by the NKVD, to use their phraseology, 'Anyone can commit murder but it takes an artist to commit a natural death'

WHO KILLED HIM?

A number of people would fall into the category of suspects with a suspect being someone who either carried out the deed or was involved in its planning.

This list is not exhaustive, it is focused on people who either had a history of such killings in their credits or who, by circumstance, could well have been involved in the event.

1. SHERBAKOV, arrived in Darwin around 26th November 1948 with the Russian delegation to the Lapstone conference due to start on December 1st 1948. Sherbakov was never seen or heard of again after his brief appearance in Darwin

UPDATE. Photograph of Sherbakov found:

An Olympic Boxer, extremely fit, born 1919. Ex Special Forces with experience in WW2.

2. BOGOTYREVA. A secretary to the delegation leader, a Miss Bogotyreva, Miss Bogotyreva was never heard of or seen again along with Sherbakov

3. PAVEL SUDOPLATOV, a senior NKVD man with a record of involvement in assassinations including that of LEON TROTSKY and the use of specialised poisons. Interestingly, Pavel worked in the same battle area as Feosimov in the years 42 to 35 and in a similar role. He worked closely with Mairanovski, (see the next point below), on the development of secret assassination weapons and planning. It was in this laboratory that the single barrel and later double-barrel vapour guns were developed and issued to various assassins. 

4. NIKOLAI EVGENEVIECH KHOKHLOV..
Defected to the US in 1954 amidst a fanfare of press
and public, Nikolai was a trained assassin, a Captain in the KGB at the time of his defection, he had been active within the NKVD through WW2 and the id to late 40s. Not much is known of his activities but he was a known Soviet agent with assassination skills. He himself was subject to an assassination attempt in 1957, it was the first time that the Soviets had used a radioactive substance, Thallium, for this purpose.

5. GRIGORY MAIRANOVSKY, head of Department No.1, he headed up the laboratory focused on the development of secret poisons for the NKVD. He was personally involved in the assassination of Isiah Oggins, a US-born soviet spy.

Mairanovsky tested his poisons on living subjects. It was this man who, in the late 1950s supplied Bodhan Stashinsky with the single barrel vapour gun that he used to assassinate Leb Revet in 1957 and the double barreled version of the same weapon with which assassinated Stepan Banderra in 1959.

(This story was used in the making of the James Bond Film, The Man With The Golden Gun. In that film, Bond was brainwashed into attempting to kill his boss using a secret gas gun.)

Stashinsky was later to tell his US saviours that the weapon he used to kill Revet was a single barrel 8 inch long cylinder. He had it rolled into a newspaper he was carrying, he pointed the weapon into Revet's face and 'pop', the man immediately keeled over.

An excerpt from the book 'The Man With The Poison Gun', describes the speed and ease with which the assassination was carried out:

There are two other possible suspects and as information comes to hand it will be published.

You will no doubt note that the Lapstone conference was due to start on Monday 30th November, that's the day that a man was seen on the beach at Somerton. The very next morning the Somerton Man was found dead.

The question of why was the man left on the beach, perhaps its answered by the timing coincidence with the Lapstone conference. A message was being sent.

Why are no other persons of note mentioned here? I think that Jess's involvement was incidental, I don't think she took part in the planning but I do think she may have seen him a day or before he died

I will be adding more information on each of the suspects over the coming days.

THE SUSPECTS, PART 1.

FACELESS MEN

'All of this points in one direction and one direction only, the Somerton Man was assassinated but the question remains, by whom?'

Is it too early to be talking about real suspects? I think not.

Over the years many people have been branded as suspects but based mainly on total guesswork, many are those who have leapt in with wild, unsubstantiated and poorly researched conclusions. Mostly they indicated a member of the nurses family or a serviceman or two because they had  dubious service records and once served with Alf Boxall. Ludicrous.

We've taken a different approach. We have looked long and hard at the physical evidence and three other aspects as you will read. 

The Evidence

I don't intend to list everything here because most will be very familiar with the various items that comprised the physical evidence, lists abound! We have the Somerton Man's body, we have his clothing and his possessions found with or on the body. There have been discussions regarding what he was wearing and when and whether or not the matches were with him on the beach or added later. An inconsistency in the pattern of the man's trousers is yet another example. Then, of course, we have the suitcase found later at the Adelaide Railway Station, it was filled with a variety of clothes, tools and personal items and, conveniently, a name tag or two. We must not forget the torn piece from a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and the book from which, they say, it came.

So, what are the other aspects?

1. A timeline
2. The Inquest Documents, in particular, the findings thereof
3. The Modus Operandi and yes, there is one.

The Timeline

This case has that many timelines, they seem to breed. The focus for this post is the timeline that relates to the period between the time at which the man was first seen on the beach, around 7.30 pm on 30th November, by Mr. Lyons and his good lady wife and a young Gordon Strapps and his lady friend, Olive Neill, and the time he was pronounced dead at the Hospital by Dr. Bennet. 9.40 am on the 1st of December 1948.

He was alive when observed by the Lyons' and by the young couple and not just because he was seen to move. (See next paragraph on The Inquest) The very last time he was seen by any witness was that evening around 8pm when the young couple left. Interestingly, a man wearing a coat and hat was seen by the couple leaning against a railing at the top of the steps leading down to the beach, he appeared to be watching the man. This man never came forward and was never identified.

No one apparently saw the Somerton man appear on the beach and no one saw him after 8 pm that night. The next time he was seen was the next morning, at around 6.30 am on the 1st of December. So far so good?

The Inquest Papers.

Lots of statements given and recorded in the inquest papers some of which were later contradicted in the Littlemore papers and most of which have been variously misinterpreted or outright condemned by those who weren't there at the time but it seemed to fit their storylines better to do just that.

The most important points raised in the inquest are to be found in the Inquest Findings, read it carefully:

The Coroner, Mr. Cleland, gives us the date and place of death. He cannot give tell us how he died or what the cause of death was. He made 4 very important points.

1. He died right there on the foreshore, not elsewhere

2. He died on the 1st December, not the previous evening. That tells us that the coroner accepted the evidence of Dr. Bennet, and the evidence puts the time of death no earlier than 8 hours before the time he examined the body which was 9.40 am on 1st December 1948. That means he died at between 1.30 am and 2 am that morning. That information, in turn, means that the potato that was found in the man's stomach would have been eaten between 12 midnight and the time of death  Potato taking 1 hour to digest. There is an argument that says, dependent on the poison administered, he may have eaten a few hours earlier.  The questions are: Where did he get the food from? Where was he when he ate it?

3. Mr. Cleland was unable to say how the man died

4. He was unable to say what caused his death

In 1994, Chief Justice of Victoria, John Haber Phillips, concluded that, from the evidence that the poison used was digitalis.

The Modus Operandi

Roughly translated, this describes a method of operation from which a pattern may be detected. How can we establish a Mous Operandi for the Somerton Man case? 

Normally, an MO is discussed as it relates to references to previous cases. In a previous life, we would look for patterns in criminal behaviours, a burglar would always strike between 11pm and 11.30 pm, he would always choose a corner house in expensive suburbs, he would always break in via the ground floor window next to the rear door of the property etc. In this way, we could narrow down a list of suspects and sometimes even down to the actual perpetrator.

But, in the Somerton Man case, we have no previous similar offences to refer to, but do we? Maybe we should qualify that with these words, 'That we know of'.

If we look at cases for the following years, we will find quite a few examples and some we may never be able to trace.

I will give some examples in the next post when we look at various names but for now, the Modus Operandi for the Somerton Man case is as follows:

1. There was no readily identifiable cause of death

2. It looked like it could have been a suicide

3. There were physical objects and belongings but nothing that would identify the owner

4. Labels had been removed from the clothing the man was wearing at the time

5. His body was left in an open and public space

6. A possible clue lies with the torn piece of paper that was carefully folded up and found secreted in a hard to find waistband fob pocket of the trousers the man was wearing when his body was discovered. This piece was later matched to a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that was found months later about 2 kilometres away from the scene in the back seat of a parked car.

All of this points in one direction and one direction only, the Somerton Man was assassinated but the question remains, by whom?

More to follow including names.

WAS THIS THE WEAPON USED?

SOVIET VAPOUR GUN?

SINGLE BARREL VAPOUR GUN

In the last post on Soviet Assassins, we discussed the use of a close-range weapon that was developed by the Soviets sometime in the 1940s. Its first iteration was a single-barreled version, similar to the image shown above, we took the detail from their later developed double-barreled weapon.

The weapon was quite small when made ready for action, it measured around 160 mm in length, it was handheld. It was a very short range, about half a metre and it had to be fired directly into the face of the intended victim. Different poisons could be used including crushed cyanide or Atropine, a Digitalis variant. It was untraceable. A similar weapon was known to have been used in 2 assassinations in the 1950s and whilst poison was suspected in one of them, both events recorded death by heart failure. It was only later when the assassin defected that the truth was known.

The weapon was developed in the Soviets Poisons lab which was active from 1938 to 1953 and was tested on prisoners and defectors.

Further to the comments below, here is a copy of an autopsy carried out on a man who ended his life using a massive overdose of digitalis:

CYANIDE

In the comments below, you will see a reference to cyanide. My belief is that a gas gun similar to the one shown in this post may well have been used and it was loaded with a cyanide capsule, the assassin STASHINSKY, defected to the US and confirmed that he had used such a weapon in the assassinations of two opponents of the Soviets, Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera in the late 1950s.  Both men were initially thought to have died of a heart attack.

In 1954, KGB man Nikolai Khoklov was given the brief to assassinate Georgi Okolovich, the leader of a Russian anti-communist group. He was to have used a special pistol disguised as a packet of cigarettes, it fired cyanide rounds. The assassination was called off when Mikolai defected to the USA.

In 1994, The CJ PHILLIPS Brief  made mention of the possibility of cyanide being used in the death of the Somerton Man, here's a clip from that document:

Note the way that Cyanide was discounted, no bottle was found and no smell of cyanide detected. If a weapon as described in this post had been used, there would be no bottle and the vapour would have been long gone along with any wetting of the face. This 'gun' was fired at a very close range, less than 1 metre and the victim died within seconds.


However, this weapon and cyanide alone would not have caused the heart to stop in Systole, that is the heart was contracted having squeezed the blood out from its chambers. Digitalis does that but it does not mean that Digitalis was used by itself. CIA documents specifically mention that KGB and NKVD operatives would and did use more than one poison simultaneously. It is quite possible that this is what happened in the case of the Somerton Man.

The timeline given by Dr. Dwyer was the food, (Potato) found in the mans stomach would have been there for 3 to 4 hours. The examining Doctor, Dr. Bennett, said at 9.40 am when pronouncing the man dead, that he had been dead for no more than 8 hours. That puts his death at around 2 am. Now subtract the 3 to 4 hours given by Dr Dwyer and we have the food being consumed between 10 pm and 11 pm on the 30th November. I think it possible that the dose of Digitalis may have been given along with the food. There is, however, as always an alternative.

Digitalis can be dissolved in a range of different liquids, and, as described in the Autopsy document earlier in this post, a massive dose of digitalis can kill in seconds as it did in the case of the Dr. on whom the autopsy was performed. In his case though, he had numerous tablets and traces were found in the stomach contents. There were no traces of tablets in SMs stomach contents. The alternative then, and as alluded to in the CIA documents, is that it was digitalis dissolved in a liquid form that could have been fired from a special weapon. Death would have occurred in seconds and the heart would have stopped in Systole as was the case with the Somerton Man. It is understood that Stashinsky used his vapour gun in the late 1950s and that could mean that it wasn't available in 1948. Stashinsky says that the model he used was based n a WW2 German vapour gun meaning that there was a weapon available.

There we have the means, we have the evidence of the body and the likely cause of death together with a strong case that Digitalis was used. All we need now are some names and they are on the way.

I will finish this post with a link to a 1975 video of the proceedings of the Church Committee in the USA. They discuss the use of a special weapon developed we think by the CIA, this weapon fired a tiny poison dart, the dart was smothered in a special poison that was undetectable, the dart itself dissolved in the body and there was no trace apart from a tiny red dot on the body which may not have been visible or seen. To all appearances, the victim died of a heart attack.

https://www.military.com/video/guns/pistols/cias-secret-heart-attack-gun/2555371072001