Oct. 13—CUMBERLAND, Md. — John M. Newman, a leading authority on Cold War history, recently published a book examining the geopolitical tensions occurring in the 1950s and 1960s that ultimately culminated in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Newman is a retired Army major who served 21 years in military intelligence. He was a military attache in China and served as an assistant to the director of the National Security Agency, Lt. General William E. Odom, from 1988 to 1990.

Newman's career as an author took off in 1992 with his book "JFK and Vietnam," followed by "Oswald and the CIA." After the 1992 book, Newman met John "Jay" Harvey of Cumberland, now a retired attorney from the Maryland Public Defender's Office, who has been a research associate with Newman for more than 30 years.

"I'm honored to work with him and call him a friend," Harvey said. "His new book is a shocking breakthrough in Cold War research that is going to surprise a lot of historians."

Titled "Uncovering Popov's Mole," the book is the fourth volume in a series of works that provide readers with an in-depth look at one of the tensest periods in history. The book examines the ongoing search that took place for an informant who had infiltrated the upper echelons of the CIA in those years.

Pyotr Popov, a Russian peasant who climbed the ranks of Soviet military intelligence, informed the CIA in April 1958 that a spy for the KGB Soviet intelligence was in their midst. Popov was subsequently captured by the KGB and executed in Moscow in 1960.

At that time, the USSR was desperate to learn the technical details of the CIA's top-secret high-altitude U-2 spy plane. According to Newman's new book, it is likely that a CIA officer who was a mole hunter in the Agency's Office of Security, Bruce Solie, was himself the mole for the KGB.

According to Newman, after Popov's tipoff, Solie was part of a false mole hunt pretending to trap the alleged mole by sending Lee Harvey Oswald to Moscow as a false defector. Before his defection in Moscow during 1959, Oswald had worked indirectly with the super-secret U-2 program in Atsugi, Japan.

Newman discovered previously unknown records about Solie's foreign travel that placed him at the right locations to mislead the chief of counterintelligence in the CIA, James Angleton, by convincing him that the mole was working in the CIA's Soviet Russia Division.

Newman also discusses the evidence that this was not the first occasion Angleton had been deceived by a mole. During the 1950s, Angleton had been deceived by a British intelligence officer working in MI-6 (the U.K.'s CIA), Kim Philby, who was secretly working for the KGB. Philby was caught, but he managed to flee to Moscow in 1963. Solie, who died in 1992, was never even suspected of spying for the KGB — let alone caught for it.

The uncovering of Popov's mole — 70 years after the fact — sheds new light on the crucial years of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s. The chaotic years of the Kennedy presidency, 1961-1963, lie at the heart of the Cold War conflict during which the assassination of JFK was followed by the full-fledged U.S. military intervention in Vietnam.

Early in JFK's presidency, the botched CIA Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961, designed to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro, was a disastrous defeat for the Kennedy administration. Violent suppression of Civil Rights protests was underway in the South while tensions with the Soviets over Berlin remained high in 1961. Americans feared nuclear conflict during 1962 as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded.

Kennedy found himself at odds with his hawkish generals such as Curtis LeMay and Lyman Lemnitzer. The Cold War continued to escalate after the assassination of President Kennedy. Newman is working on the remaining volumes of his series on the Kennedy presidency.

Newman said he will follow the course of his research in the next several years before forming any final judgments however, as of now, he does not believe the lone-nut explanation of the 1964 Warren Commission Report for explaining Oswald.

Newman's latest book can be found on Amazon.com. For more information, email Newman at his website, JFKJMN.com.

Greg Larry is a reporter at the Cumberland Times-News. To reach him, call 304-639-4951, email glarry@times-news.com and follow him on Twitter.