Was Nosenko Married to Solie's Sister-in-Law?

Photo: George (Yuri Nosenko) and Louise Rosnek. Photo credit-Jefferson Morley

Last Edited 2-19-24: Don't ask me why, but I recently picked up John Newman's Popov's Mole and thereby started a trip down a deep rabbit-hole. In fact, out of the myriad issues related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the subject of Yuri (sometimes spelled Yuriy) Nosenko and the search for Popov's mole may be the most complex of all which is saying something. So, how far down that rabbit-hole I am willing to travel remains to be seen. But I did stumble on one matter that is immediately debunkable.

First, some background. Newman believes that Nosenko was a false defector designed to divert attention from the KGB and their mole in the CIA. The identity of the mole? None other than Bruce Solie of the CIA's Office of Security. This concept is very convenient for Newman and other supporters of his work. That is because Solie was the person largely responsible for Nosenko being cleared of suspicion and declared a true defector by the CIA. So, if you say Solie was the mole, the rest of your analysis benefits from that assertion. But I digress.

Newman and supporters, which include researcher Malcolm Blunt, base their theory on the work of Tennent "Pete" Bagley, a CIA officer who originally handled the Nosenko case. Bagley vehemently argued that Nosenko was false and wrote a book about it called Spy Wars. Blunt had conversations with Bagley and the epigraph of Popov's Mole is taken from one of those talks that occured in 2011. Bagley is quoted as saying:

That Solie provided rock-like protection to Nosenko, there is no doubt. Why, is the question. The bond was sealed by Nosenko's marrying Solie's wife's sister. Let's add Solie to the short list.

The obvious answer to Bagley's question is that Solie may have helped Nosenko because he felt an injustice had been done in his case. Setting that aside, I assumed that the assertion that Nosenko married into the family could be checked out with a little Internet research. And I was right. Bruce Solie had only one wife. She was Mary Elizabeth Matthews whom he married on February 22, 1944. The couple were together until Bruce's death in 1992. Mary had two sisters. One died in infancy and the other sister was Helen Louise Matthews. Since Bruce Solie had only one wife and his wife had only one living sister, in order for Bagley's claim that Nosenko married "Solie's wife's sister" to be true Nosenko must have married Helen Louise Matthews. He did not.

Helen Louis Matthews married Orlin Hudson Shires and was married to him for 64 years (the couple lived in California) until his death in 2007 which puts the date of their union at circa 1943. Since Nosenko was still alive in 2007 and theoretically could have married Helen Louise at that point even though both were elderly, let's look at what Nosenko was doing to be sure.

Nosenko (who used the name George Martin Rosnek after his release from CIA custody) evidently married in November of 1969 after gaining his freedom in April of that year. This document from September of that year tells of his desire to gain a divorce from his then Russian wife so he could marry and some of the legal challenges he faced because of his unique situation. This first US wife's (he may have been married three times in Russia) name was Ruby F. Rosnek. Nosenko and Ruby relocated from the Maryland-Virginia DC suburbs to Oriental, North Carolina after fearing that the KGB had located them.

After the move to North Carolina, Ruby died in 1982. Nosenko then (date unclear) married Frances Warren who was formerly married to Stephen C. Morris who died in 1981. Nosenko and Frances remained married and lived in Oriental, North Carolina until his death in 2008. So as any reasonable person can see, short of a conspiracy theory involving doubles there is zero chance that he married "Solie's wife's sister."

Does any of this really matter? It seems strange to me that Newman would choose a quote for the epigraph of his book that contains verifiably false information. Sure, I had to do a little digging to find the truth but it wasn't that difficult. It seems like Newman and his team want to make Solie and Nosenko look as friendly as they can even if it means using information they didn't properly evaluate. Or maybe they are so entrenched in Bagley's thesis that they can't imagine anything he says might be wrong.

An interesting sidenote to all of this is Bagley's apparent belief that Solie could be the mole. He told Blunt "Let's add Solie to the short list [of mole suspects]." But according to the 2022 book The Spy Who Knew Too Much by Howard Blum, Bagley believed that John Paisley and not Solie was the "master spy that Nosenko was sent to protect." If Blum is to be believed then, Bagley (assuming he was quoted accurately) could have been simply telling Blunt what he wanted to hear about Solie.