Question for Tom Graves

[Jon Banks]

Do you subscribe to the theory that George de Mohrenschildt, a CIA asset in 1963, was also a Soviet spy?

I stumbled across this theory while reading his Wikipedia page:

"...Ion Mihai Pacepa, a high-level defector from Communist Romania and occasional CIA asset, has alleged that de Mohrenschildt, despite his claims to be a descendant of the Russian nobility and an anti-communist political refugee from the Red Terror, was in reality a KGB First Chief Directorate illegal field agent, who focused on collecting military intelligence and who acted as Oswald's Soviet intelligence handler."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt


Source:

Woolsey Jr., R. James; Pacepa, Ion Mihai (February 23, 2021). Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin's Secret War on America. Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1641771450. See chapters 6 and 11. The authors assert that George de Mohrenschildt, who was allegedly a PGU illegal officer that collected military intelligence, was the handler for the Oswalds who were both assets of Soviet intelligence and that Valery Kostikov, who was known to the Oswalds by the operational pseudonym "Comrade Kostin", supported the Oswalds efforts as a 13th Directorate officer that engaged in assassinations and subversive activities.

[Tom Graves]

Do you subscribe to the theory that George de Mohrenschildt, a CIA asset in 1963, was also a Soviet spy?

I stumbled across this theory while reading his Wikipedia page:

"...Ion Mihai Pacepa, a high-level defector from Communist Romania and occasional CIA asset, has alleged that de Mohrenschildt, despite his claims to be a descendant of the Russian nobility and an anti-communist political refugee from the Red Terror, was in reality a KGB First Chief Directorate illegal field agent, who focused on collecting military intelligence and who acted as Oswald's Soviet intelligence handler."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt


Source:

Woolsey Jr., R. James; Pacepa, Ion Mihai (February 23, 2021). Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin's Secret War on America. Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1641771450. See chapters 6 and 11. The authors assert that George de Mohrenschildt, who was allegedly a PGU illegal officer that collected military intelligence, was the handler for the Oswalds who were both assets of Soviet intelligence and that Valery Kostikov, who was known to the Oswalds by the operational pseudonym "Comrade Kostin", supported the Oswalds efforts as a 13th Directorate officer that engaged in assassinations and subversive activities.

All I know is that Richard Russell, in his book about Richard Case Nagell titled The Man Who Knew Too Much, wrote that CIA Counterintelligence analyst Clare Edward Petty read some WW II VENONA decrypts in the early 1970s and came to the conclusion that DeMohrenschildt was very probably a long-term KGB "illegal."

According to Russell, the VENONA cables that Petty read referred to a Kremlin-loyal agent who was probably from Poland, emigrated to the U.S. before WW II, lived in Mexico during the war, and was a real "wheeler-dealer."

1) DeMohrenschildt was born in Mazyr, Belarus, about 300 miles from the Polish border.

2) He and his brother, Dmitri, immigrated to the U.S. in 1938.

3) He and his girlfriend, Lilia Larin, lived in Mexico for a few months during WW II.

4) He was an insurance salesman, a movie producer, a sugar and oil speculator, and he marketed his own artwork.