Why Was Oswald's Military Spy Plane Knowledge Considered Of No Value To USSR ?

[Watson Phillips]

My understanding of the explanation for Russia’s ability to shoot down U2 spy planes is that the development of their anti-aircraft missiles finally reached a point where their missiles could ascend to a high enough altitude. Before that, the U2 spy planes were simply out of their reach. I believe that due to the fact that this happened while LHO was in Russia is just another one of those “strange” coincidences that happened. I ask: what could LHO have possibly told them about the U2 that would have enabled their missiles to reach higher altitudes. I don’t believe LHO’s presence in Russia had anything at all to do with that development.

To try to answer your question, it appears to me that LHO was still extremely angry about his court martial and incarceration in the USMC. I believe that he therefore considered the U.S. to be his “enemy.” Some of the language in his letters to his brother Robert is evidence of this. I believe that LHO eventually realized, after spending some time in Russia, that it was not the utopia that he had envisioned before he went there. When he returned to the U.S. it appears to me that his hopes for a “utopian existence” turned towards Cuba.

JFK’s inaugural speech contained the following quote:

”And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Sadly, LHO appears to me to have believed the opposite of what JFK was saying. And even sadder, it appears to me that LHO was eager to use violence to try to change a system that he felt was “rigged against him.” I believe that LHO’s disillusionment  was due in large part to a lack of proper upbringing.

Parents have a huge responsibility to teach their children how to prosper not only physically but mentally, spiritually, and financially. I believe that the JFK assassination is an extreme example of what can happen when parents fail in their responsibilities.

n b

Thanks Charles,
Given his anger, His reported lifelong need to be a notable person of importance, in starting a brand new life in USSR do you find it more plausible that LHO either hoped to use his military security clearance as a card to play in impressing & gaining prominence with his new communist comrades , or he just decided to never mention a word of it.
I find it hard given what we know about his personality that he had no hopes of parlaying his military intelligence experience into a position of some importance in the communist party ?
Being advised from his new leaders that " we already know all that , now got to work in the factory "  would have been a very bitter pill for him to swallow given his fantasy of having his own office at the Kremlin.
Don't you think it possible that having pinned his grandiose  hopes of becoming a brand new person of political importance in the communist Party thru his military experience, but then being rejected and told to go work in a factory this could be a source of his disillusionment with USSR and be the source of his returning to home.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Thanks for both of the above replies Steve. That’s some good information.

The Epstein book "Legend" is, I think, greatly overlooked. Yes, he fell for Angelton's theory that Oswald was a KGB asset or agent but the book has a great deal of information about Oswald's time in the Marines especially at Atsugi. Epstein interviewed about 35 Marines who were in Oswald's unit (MACS-1), some at the same time he was there, and their description of the security is stunning. Essentially none. Many people on the base were aware of the flights; they didn't know where it went but some suspected they were flown over the USSR.

And as you mentioned before, several Marines said that when Oswald came out of the brig he was completely different. Very angry and distant. From their account the brig was a very tough experience for people to go through. Brutal.

As to the Soviets: I still don't know what they questioned him about. Nosenko said they didn't know about his U-2 knowledge (What? They didn't ask him about his Marine experience?) while others said they did but he didn't know anything that they already knew. I do think that after the attempted suicide they considered him too erratic and nutty to use for anything. Although on the other hand - there's always two or three of these in this, isn't there? - they did let him leave pretty easily. It took awhile to go through the Soviet and US bureaucracies but they essentially let him go with little opposition.

[Charles Collins]

n b

Thanks Charles,
Given his anger, His reported lifelong need to be a notable person of importance, in starting a brand new life in USSR do you find it more plausible that LHO either hoped to use his military security clearance as a card to play in impressing & gaining prominence with his new communist comrades , or he just decided to never mention a word of it.
I find it hard given what we know about his personality that he had no hopes of parlaying his military intelligence experience into a position of some importance in the communist party ?
Being advised from his new leaders that " we already know all that , now got to work in the factory "  would have been a very bitter pill for him to swallow given his fantasy of having his own office at the Kremlin.
Don't you think it possible that having pinned his grandiose  hopes of becoming a brand new person of political importance in the communist Party thru his military experience, but then being rejected and told to go work in a factory this could be a source of his disillusionment with USSR and be the source of his returning to home.

Most of us cannot fathom what must have been going through the mind of someone cowardly enough to take a high powered rifle and shoot (ambush) an unarmed man from behind. There are a lot of contradictions in what we do have evidence of. He writes in the same letter of “killing Americans in uniform,” and also of living a normal happy and peaceful life in the USSR. Frankly I do not believe that he had any experience or information that would be of much interest the Soviet intelligence community. And I suspect that LHO also knew that. So, I disagree with your idea.

Some people have a tendency to go way overboard with their political beliefs. Take for example Eric Rudolph who apparently felt it was necessary for him to plant bombs and kill innocent people (including the totally unrelated Olympics venue in Atlanta). Supposedly, all because he was apparently upset about the abortion clinics. I put LHO in a similar category. We are talking about fanatical people and actions that cannot be easily explained by reason. There are quite a few choices that we could try to attribute to LHO’s motive. And all of them could potentially be partially correct. It might have been a combination of those possible motives plus the fact that the opportunity to take a few shots at JFK was too tempting for him to resist. But trying to make the assassination a logical choice is something that I think is probably impossible for most of us to grasp.

[Charles Collins]

The Epstein book "Legend" is, I think, greatly overlooked. Yes, he fell for Angelton's theory that Oswald was a KGB asset or agent but the book has a great deal of information about Oswald's time in the Marines especially at Atsugi. Epstein interviewed about 35 Marines who were in Oswald's unit (MACS-1), some at the same time he was there, and their description of the security is stunning. Essentially none. Many people on the base were aware of the flights; they didn't know where it went but some suspected they were flown over the USSR.

And as you mentioned before, several Marines said that when Oswald came out of the brig he was completely different. Very angry and distant. From their account the brig was a very tough experience for people to go through. Brutal.

As to the Soviets: I still don't know what they questioned him about. Nosenko said they didn't know about his U-2 knowledge (What? They didn't ask him about his Marine experience?) while others said they did but he didn't know anything that they already knew. I do think that after the attempted suicide they considered him to erratic and nutty to really use.

Thanks Steve, I will put that book on my list. Yes, the brig was reportedly brutal. Plus I think that LHO’s ego just wasn’t able to cope with the situation.

[Watson Phillips]

Most of us cannot fathom what must have been going through the mind of someone cowardly enough to take a high powered rifle and shoot (ambush) an unarmed man from behind. There are a lot of contradictions in what we do have evidence of. He writes in the same letter of “killing Americans in uniform,” and also of living a normal happy and peaceful life in the USSR. Frankly I do not believe that khe had any experience or information that would be of much interest the Soviet intelligence community. And I suspect that LHO also knew that. So, I disagree with your idea.

 So you think Oswald felt that his military security clearance background would hopefully merit him a menial labor factory job in his new, decidedly militaristic, country ?
That being the case He should have been quite happy then with that sort of normal happy menial labor factory job he dreamed of & was graciously awarded with then ?
Yes?
 Or do you think HE had greater expectations for what professional position the communists would consider he merited based on his background ?
 Remember , we are talking here about what Oswald dreamed of & for himself , not the low regard  with which the communists actually esteemed him .

[Charles Collins]

So you think Oswald felt that his military security clearance background would hopefully merit him a menial labor factory job in his new, decidedly militaristic, country ?
That being the case He should have been quite happy then with that sort of normal happy menial labor factory job he dreamed of & was graciously awarded with then ?
Yes?
 Or do you think HE had greater expectations for what professional position the communists would consider he merited based on his background ?
 Remember , we are talking here about what Oswald dreamed of & for himself , not the low regard  with which the communists actually esteemed him .

In my opinion, LHO mostly just wanted to “moon” the U.S. I don’t think that he had thought a whole lot about what he thought he might be doing in the USSR. I doubt that LHO would have been happy for very long regardless of where he was or what he was doing.

I am not trying to make a comparison. But do you think that Adolph Hitler would have been happy if he had been able to conquer the entire world?

[Watson Phillips]

A Soviet military intelligence officer and double agent, Pyotr Popov, told the CIA in 1958 that the Soviets had acquired operational details of the U2. According to the accounts when the CIA was told about it they were stunned. If you do a search for: "Pyotr Popov and U-2" you'll get the details.

Short version: Oswald didn't have any information that the Soviets already knew.

And if you read the Epstein book "Legend", you'll learn that Oswald didn't know much about the U2 that the other Marines in his unit didn't know. They - Oswald and his fellow radar operators - watched the U2 take off on their screens and then land. Soviet radar operators could see much of this too (except for the landing/taking off).

Thanks Steve,
But Why would any of that prevent a disturbed individual like Oswald from believing he knew more than all the rest, and therefore had more to offer than all the rest.
Not talking about reality here, we are talking about what the grandiose imaginations of an obviously mentally disturbed individual were
In fact did not Oswald have history of considering himself to be more knowledgeable than those around him?
I came across this report that Oswald even brought up the fact of o his military  security knowledge at the Embassy before he was even granted admission .
Do you consider this to be an erroneous report about what he was saying to gain soviet citizenship ?


The Incredible, Amazing, Disturbing, Mysterious Story of Lee Harvey Oswald

Phillip BartlingPhillip Bartling
Phillip Bartling
Owner/Editor @The Philthy Times--If you want to know, read the book. "Lessons From a Nuclear War" It's cheap! Shareable e-book is just $4.95 on Amazon!
Published Apr 2, 2022
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At first, Oswald was denied Soviet Citizenship and ordered to leave Russia, but he attempted suicide by cutting his wrist, and he was held in a psychiatric hospital for a time, after which he appeared at the US Embassy in front of both American and Russian officials, and during that meeting Oswald revealed that he was a former Marine who’d possessed a top secret security clearance and that he was willing to give the Russians “radar secrets.”