The education of Lance Payette re: LHO and probable "mole" Bruce Solie, et al.

[Lance Payette]

Have you heard of KGB Major Pyotr Deriabin?

He defected to the U.S. in 1954 and went to work for the CIA.

Two days after the assassination, he wrote that Marina had to be at least a low-level KGB informant to be permitted to marry Oswald and leave the USSR with him.

Which reminds me -- in the early 1970s, CIA Counterintelligence analyst Clare Edward Petty determined by reading some WW II VENONA decrypts that George DeMohrenschildt was very probably a long-term KGB "illegal" because he matched the following descriptions:

1) He was born in "Poland" (he was born in Mazyr, Belarus, 300 miles from the Polish border).

2) He had emigrated to the U.S. before WW II.

3) He lived in Mexico (with his girlfriend Lilia Pardo Larin) during WW II.

4) He was a real "wheeler-dealer."

OK again, but this is a little like saying someone was a CIA informant when damn near every businessman and tourist who visited Russia during the Cold War was at least approached by the CIA. If Marina said "Sure, I'll keep my eyes open" to the KGB as the price of being allowed to leave, would this necessarily be of any significance? I have studied both Marina and de Mohrenschildt extensively and just don't see much basis for dark suspicion. It becomes a little like the "Seven Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon" thing - pretty much everyone in America has some remote connection with the CIA and everyone in Russia has some remote connection with the KGB. I once mentioned on the Ed Forum - truthfully but jokingly - that one of my relatives was Lorenzo Dow Baker, a founder of the (later) CIA-affiliated United Fruit Company, and that my wealthy grandmother was on good terms with the Dulles family. All of which has nothing to do with me or my life, but to a rabid CTer I would immediately become the object of dark suspicion (as I should be, but not for those reasons!).

[Tom Graves]

OK again, but this is a little like saying someone was a CIA informant when damn near every businessman and tourist who visited Russia during the Cold War was at least approached by the CIA. If Marina said "Sure, I'll keep my eyes open" to the KGB as the price of being allowed to leave, would this necessarily be of any significance? I have studied both Marina and de Mohrenschildt extensively and just don't see much basis for dark suspicion. It becomes a little like the "Seven Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon" thing - pretty much everyone in America has some remote connection with the CIA and everyone in Russia has some remote connection with the KGB. I once mentioned on the Ed Forum - truthfully but jokingly - that one of my relatives was Lorenzo Dow Baker, a founder of the (later) CIA-affiliated United Fruit Company, and that my wealthy grandmother was on good terms with the Dulles family. All of which has nothing to do with me or my life, but to a rabid CTer I would immediately become the object of dark suspicion (as I should be, but not for those reasons!).

That's one (rather Pollyannish) way to look at it, I guess.

Do you presume to know KGB protocol better than KGB Major Pyotr Deriabin did?

FWIW, Marina had allegedly been a KGB "swallow" in Leningrad, and, like my first girlfriend in Brno, she understood English a lot better than she let on.

https://oswaldsmother.blogspot.com/2009/10/from-marina-prusakova-with-love.html

[Lance Payette]

I just now did a little research and found out that the KGB Higher School in Minsk in 1982 was on Vayskavyy Proezd "near Victory Square."

Scroll down to page 20.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32989481.pdf

I believe my wife has solved the KGB Higher School mystery.

"Vayskavyy" is an old Belarusian/Polish word that translates simply as "military" or "army." The word is now Voyskovy.

"Proezd" describes a short connecting way between streets and translates simply as "passage" or "lane."

Hence, Vayskavvy Proezd would be something like "Military Lane."

This building is the only one that would meet the description of being about two blocks from Oswald's apartment, which it indeed is. In one photo, the building of Oswald's apartment is visible in the background. The idea that Oswald would ever have studied here is fundamentally absurd.

https://aml.university/en/uchastniki-aml/akademiya-nacional-noy-bezopasnosti-respubliki-belarus

This is translated from the Russian, so a bit awkward:

Minsk, Voyskovy Lane.
Nearby on the corner is the National Security Institute Minsk, Address: Zmitraka Biaduli Street, 2.
On December 27, 1946, by order of the Minister of State Security of the USSR No. 00563, a special school for training operational personnel for state security agencies was created in the city of Lvov. For a long time, the school was one of two educational institutions, along with the Higher School of the KGB of the USSR named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky, which trained personnel for territorial state security agencies. In December 1954, by decision of the government, the school was relocated to Mogilev.
In August 1961, the school was transferred to Minsk. According to the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated September 18, 1964, the Minsk Special School was transformed into the Higher Courses of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR for the training of operational workers for territorial state security agencies with a one-year training period. In accordance with the order of the Chairman of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated November 13, 1964 No. 0321, the Minsk Secondary Specialized School of the KGB (School No. 302 of the KGB) was reorganized into the Higher Courses of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR for the training of operational workers for local state security agencies.

Do you presume to know KGB protocol better than KGB Major Pyotr Deriabin did?

No, but I know a whole lot more about Marina. The effort to turn Marina into a Woman of Mystery, like the effort to turn Oswald into The Most Interesting Man Who Ever Lived, is (IMHO) conspiratorial, agenda-driven nonsense.

FWIW, Marina had allegedly been a KGB "swallow" in Leningrad, and, like my first girlfriend in Brno, she understood English a lot better than she let on.

Marina came from a difficult childhood and was a tough, smart, ambitious cookie. As for understanding English, she acknowledged she understood it better than she could speak it. This is a fascinating article with photos most people have never seen about a Michigan church bringing Marina to the University of Michigan to study English in late 1964: https://heritage.umich.edu/stories/the-assassins-widow/. The professor says he was surprised at her aptitude: "'I’m sure Mrs. Oswald could conquer English in any school in America. The reason she is here is that we can teach her more in a shorter period of time,' said Catford, the Institute’s director. He said he was 'frankly surprised' at her command of English."

When I met my wife, she didn't know ten words of English - literally not ten. And she was 54 years old, not 21. Nevertheless, I was astonished at how quickly she reached a functioning level of English with no formal schooling whatsoever.

[Tom Graves]

The effort to turn Marina into a Woman of Mystery, like the effort to turn Oswald into The Most Interesting Man Who Ever Lived, is (IMHO) conspiratorial, agenda-driven nonsense. She came from a difficult childhood and was a tough, smart, ambitious cookie.

Why do you think the Soviets described her as being "stupid and a bad Communist; we were happy to get rid of both of them"?

[Lance Payette]

Why do you think the Soviets described her as being "stupid and a bad Communist; we were happy to get rid of them both"?

Stupid? She was working in a pharmacy and is anything but stupid. I would assume the Soviets' statement was for the same reason that The Donald dismisses everyone who leaves his administration as an incompetent idiot he never should have appointed in the first place. Marina's enthusiasm for leaving the USSR was a black eye to the myth of a Soviet Utopia.

[Tom Graves]

Stupid? She was working in a pharmacy and is anything but stupid. I would assume the Soviets' statement was for the same reason that The Donald dismisses everyone who leaves his administration as an incompetent idiot he never should have appointed in the first place. Marina's enthusiasm for leaving the USSR was a black eye to the myth of a Soviet Utopia.

Didn't she have to receive permission from the government to marry her Handsome Prince Charming and leave The Worker's Paradise with him?

[Lance Payette]

Didn't she have to receive permission from the government to marry her Handsome Princ Charming and leave The Worker's Paradise with him?

Certainly. I believe the Soviets wisely decided it was better to have Lee and Marina out of their hair than pouting and potentially stirring up the masses. What possible good could come to the Soviets from Lee and Marina remaining, and Lee had said he wouldn't leave without her. Where you see "KGB mystery" I see nothing but "Good riddance" on the part of the Soviets. "She was a loser anyway" was the explanation for the masses. No mystery to me at all.

[Tom Graves]

Certainly. I believe the Soviets wisely decided it was better to have Lee and Marina out of their hair than pouting and potentially stirring up the masses. What possible good could come to the Soviets from Lee and Marina remaining, and Lee had said he wouldn't leave without her. Where you see "KGB mystery" I see nothing but "Good riddance" on the part of the Soviets. "She was a loser anyway" was the explanation for the masses. No mystery to me at all.

Dear Lance,

I think you're naive as all get out (pardon the pun).

Questions:

Do you think the KGB and the CIA were equally devious, evil, and efficient during the Cold War?

Do you think . . . gasp . . . maybe the CIA was worse?

Do you really think the Soviets let Marina leave because Oswald pouted, "I refuse to leave without her!!!"?

Why did they let her marry the sharpshooting U-2 radar operator in the first place?  Hmm?

Why not bundle Oswald up and drop him off at the American Embassy with a note pinned to his shirt saying, "He's your problem, not ours"?

Do you believe Yuri Nosenko when he said that he, as Oswald's KGB case officer (really?), wanted to expel Oswald after his "suicide attempt," but the most powerful woman in the USSR, Yekaterina Furtseva, demanded that he be allowed to stay and that he NOT be recruited by the KGB because [I forget her lame reason . . . I'll look it up and fill it in later.].

The following is what former CIA officer and probable KGB "mole" Leonard V. McCoy wrote in his review of Edward J. Epstein's 1977 book, "Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald."

My comments are in brackets.

In his extensive coverage of Oswald's biography, especially his military service, as an argument as to why the KGB should have been interested in his background, Epstein is following the thinking of Nosenko's [evil, evil] handlers. While he mentions the fact of Oswald's suicide attempt in Moscow as possibly causing KGB doubts as to his reliability, there is no mention of the fact that Khrushchev's close friend, Minister of Culture Furtseva , with her reputed strong influence over the KGB, had [allegedly] forbidden their interviewing Oswald.

[Interestingly, Furtseva’s KGB officer son-in-law, Igor Kochnov, contacted the FBI in 1965 and then, without the FBI’s or Kochnov’s informing the CIA of the relationship between himself and the Bureau, called new CIA Director Richard Helms at home in June 1966 and offered to “work with” the CIA – which nine year on-again-off-again “collaboration” ended in disaster when Leonard V. McCoy and probable KGB "mole" Bruce Leonard Solie managed to “lose” CIA’s spy and former GRU defector, Nicholas Shadrin, to KGB kidnappers in Vienna in 1975.]

-- Tom