LHO as KGB, G-2 Asset or Double Agent?

[Benjamin Cole]

MG--

Thanks for your collegial comments.

Adams told the WC she may have waited up to 30 seconds before leaving for the stairs. Even that is anough time for LHO to have preceded her down the stairs.

But in one interview, Styles said it was longer than that, that Adams, had, in effect, succumbed to the lure of drama.

Garner said what she said, but then witness statements (and I worked the courts for two years) are...well, very hit and miss. I have seen witnesses blithely recount internally impossible narratives on the stand. 

LHO likely, in advance, arranged the cubbyhole into which he dropped his rifle post-JFKA, as it was between the sniper's nest and the exit. It would have taken him one second to drop the rifle in.

LHO was 24, young and lithe, had made it through Marine Boot camp.

My best guess LHO was either a look-out for the JFKA, or himself fired three rounds off towards the JFK limo. In earnest or as intentional misses (replay of the Walker shooting), I dunno.

In your scenario, how did the "real" TSBD6 sniper window shooter escape unseen? If it was not LHO, then who?

As I say, my read on the Z-film shows Connally struck at Z-295 and JFK at Z-313, so a lone gunsel with a single-shot bolt-action rifle is ruled out.

That is puzzling about the boxes being moved post-JFKA. I have no explanation.

Another interesting question is why LHO moved the rifle from the sniper's nest to the cubbyhole. Why not leave the rifle in situ?

LHO's immediate post-JFKA action and behavior is that of a man who was complicit or believed he had been framed for the JFKA.

If LHO was totally innocent, why brandish a handgun inside the Texas Theater, after entering surreptitiously? Why tell the media "I am a patsy," instead of "Oh, this must be a simple case of mistaken identity. I must resemble a suspect." Indeed, LHO saying he had been made into a patsy...suggests he knew something of a plot (even a false flag plot), and who made him a patsy.

My take is LHO was in the JFKA up to his eyeballs. Not sure how. That does not rule out a conspiracy, but IMHO, likely a very small one, maybe just Alpha 66 splinter-group types. By reputation, those guys did not need permission from anyone.

But IMHO, and caveat emptor and draw your own conclusions.

BTW I have been banned again from EF-JFKA by the crackpot martinet.

[Tom Graves]

Bumping this to get the thread back on track.

Benjamin Cole posted:

Oswald as a KGB Asset or Double Agent?


There is an interesting footnote in “The Man Who Knew Too Much” a book largely about Richard Case Nagell, by JFKA researcher Dick Russell:

 “A May 15, 1973, memo in the files of researcher Richard Popkin recounts a conversation with former CIA official Victor Marchetti in which Marchetti reportedly offered "a theory he claimed to have heard that fits with his own picture of the chaos in the CIA; namely that the KGB has infiltrated the CIA and the CIA has infiltrated the KGB so it is impossible at the present stage to tell who is who (he mentioned a case of having been sent to meet somebody and being shown all sorts of identification and then being totally unable to tell whether he was dealing with a U.S. or Russian agent). Marchetti thinks it is the KGB branch of the CIA that killed Kennedy and that the U.S. CIA is too embarrassed to investigate and reveal the real state of affairs."     

This long-ago revelation of Marchetti’s, now more than five decades old, has been re-vivified in recent years by John Newman’s book, “Uncovering Popov’s Mole,” which posits that senior CIA’er Bruce Solie was a KGB asset, and was running LHO.

(For background on Marchetti, see https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmarchetti.htm. Some of you may have memories jogged: Richard Popkin authored “The Second Oswald” book in 1966.)

It is difficult to challenge Marchetti’s observations as the mere fluff of an armchair historian or conspiracy buff.

Marchetti first worked for Army Intelligence in 1951, attended college, and then joined the CIA in 1955, rising to senior positions before retiring in 1969, and thereafter, perhaps most famously, writing about the JFKA for the Liberty Lobby’s “The Spotlight” publication.

Marchetti’s also wrote the book “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence,” and appears to have bona fides as an earnest JFKA researcher, and one who had actual “street cred.”

Marchetti’s and Newman’s observations also resonate with the narrative of still-enigmatic Richard Case Nagell, who claimed to be a double-agent (US-Soviet) who was assigned to interdict LHO’s mission, on assignment from Moscow, to assassinate JFK.

In 1992, Carl Oglesby, the nearly iconic leftist and author of many books, including several on the JFKA, authored a forward to Russell’s book, in which he wrote, “We do not yet know for example, whether Oswald was being run by the CIA or KGB, by the ONI or GRU or some as of yet unknown bureau of the Cold War, one side of the other. Nor do we know for a fact who Oswald himself believed was running him. All we may guess at, according to Russell, is that what Oswald believed to be true and the actual truth might in fact have been two very different things.”

There are other murky details linking Lee Harvey Oswald to the KGB, especially the Russian intel agency in Minsk, where LHO lived for two years while in the Soviet Union.

A KGB officer there said that he “ran” LHO, and that Marina Oswald has been a KGB asset, but that she snapped her ties to the spy agency after marrying LHO and going to the US.

From CIA files:

“IJDECANTER [Sergei Papushin] (a CIA asset) knew Yurshak as Belorussian KGB in Minsk in the early 1980s. Yurshak was in his late 50s then. When asked if Yurshak was bragging, he said, "no...I think that 100 percent he was involved in this Oswald case...He was stuck to his one point of view. First, never had any kind of task for Oswald to kill Kennedy. Second, that he was actually recruited and he ran him. And third, Marina was our swallow and then she rejected cooperation.”

Of course, just as one might suspect the CIA would scrub its files of connections to LHO, so one would expect the KGB or Belarus agencies to do the same.

Gimlet-eyed fans and critics of the “limited hangout” defense-tactic might believe this KGB admission that it was running LHO, but not involved in the JFKA, was in that category of dissembling.   

Add to the bubbling stew the more-recent book “Operation Dragon” written by former CIA Director James Woolsey in 2021, along former Romanian intel officer Ion Mihai Pacepa. The pair posit that LHO was KGB asset, had been brainwashed in Russia to perp the JFKA. Curiously, Woolsey and Pacepa echo Nagell’s narrative, that officials in Moscow wanted to recall LHO, but could not.

Of course, one could dismiss Woolsey’s book as written with a Cold War agenda in mind; indeed, it is the reverse mirror image of the Old Guard Left Wing and present-day MAGA-Moscow narratives of the JFKA, that blame the CIA and globalist cabals for the president’s murder.

In JFKA-land, too often the ideology writes the agenda, and the agenda writes the narrative.

But there is more on LHO as a KGB asset: During his visit to Mexico City in late September 1963, LHO met Valerie Kostikov, senior KGB’er said to be in charge of “wet work’ in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, that includes assassinations. (There were two other KGB’ers who met with LHO at the same time, all were filmed and recorded for a 1993 PBS special, in which they confirmed they met the real LHO).

Not only that, it is now known that Kostikov had assets in the US, assets that Kostikov also met down in Mexico.

“Kostikov himself was a known Soviet intelligence agent, suspected of contact with covert Soviet assets, including Americans, operating inside the United States. He had been under CIA observation and surveillance in Mexico City, as well as during his travels in Mexico, and was known to have met with a Soviet asset (designated as “Tumbleweed”/a European then living in the United States) that the FBI was monitoring inside the United States. As recently as September 1963, Kostikov had even been placed under surveillance while traveling in northern Mexico,” report Larry Hancock and David Boylan in their recent superb book, “The Oswald Puzzle.”

(It should be noted that Alan Dale recently related, within the Education Foundation-JFK assassination forum, that Newman does not suspect LHO of a role in the JFKA. Additionally Hancock and Boylan do not regard LHO as a suspect in the JFKA, although he may have been manipulated in surrounding events.)

A circumspect JFKA assassination buff does not blithely challenge Newman, nor Hancock and Boylan, the latter two who contend LHO was not a CIA asset, but only a misfit and a Marxist who wanted transit to Cuba. All three are serious researchers, intelligent, earnest and non-partisan, and appear lacking in agendas—the best investigators we have, IMHO.

And yet—how it is possible to understand the JFKA without explaining LHO’s involvement in the JFKA? And after 60 years of researchers hunting for a CIA operational connection to LHO or the JFKA, why has nobody found one?

One might also ponder why does the pub crawler, returning to home at night, look for his lost keys under the street lamps? That’s where the light is. But perhaps not where the keys are.

JFKA researchers pursue leads under the CIA street lamp—because  there is no light under the KGB street lamp, or that of G-2, the Cuban intel service said to have infiltrated the Cuban exile community with agents (or double agents). But the keys could be there, in the dark.

Even Marchetti, embedded with the CIA during the very years that, some contend, elements with the agency had plotted JFK’s demise, was unsure if the CIA had been involved in the JFKA, or CIA assets working for the KGB.

The HSCA

Many dismiss the WC, and justifiably so. It strikes me as more of a prosecution than an investigation.

That said the HSCA, full of smart and skeptical staffers, concluded it was LHO who fired the lethal shots on 11/22, and that there was likely a second gunman, on the GK, who either missed or fired a diversionary shot.

I happen to disagree with the HSCA. Nased upon my layman's review of the Z film, I think Gov. Connally was shot a Z-295 and JFK at Z-313...less than one second apart. Both from behind. Draw your own conclusions.

Angleton

As noted by many, James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s counterintelligence chief and putative mole-hunter, was the WC’s main contact or source of information at the agency. This has raised suspicions, but also makes sense in light of the observations of Newman and Marchetti.

If LHO was being run by KGB moles inside the CIA, then it would be Angleton who could best find that out, and massage information flowing to the WC to hide that reality—as suggested by Marchetti.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, there are many captivating versions of the JFKA, both LN and CT, but none compelling.

The problem started on 11/22, when LHO’s confederates were not apprehended, and the problem was compounded on 11/24, when LHO was shot dead.

The WC was a posthumous prosecution, although the HSCA tended to confirm many of the WC findings.

As a result, the only JFKA suspect known beyond reasonable doubt to be in Dealey Plaza on 11/22 was LHO, so this leaves open speculation as to the ID of his co-conspirators or manipulators.

Serious researchers have ventured LHO’s confederates or handlers on 11/22 were Mafia, CIA, KGB, G-2, working for LBJ, anti-Castro exiles, splinter groups such as Alpha 66, or former spook Ed Lansdale on a revenge mission for the Diem assassinations.

After 60 years of reading about the JFKA, and maybe a dozen years reading primary documents, I have never reached a conclusion.

But the fact that CIA files are open, but not those of the KGB or G-2, should merit caution.

. . . . . . . . .

Tom Graves replied:

A few rando comments:

1) Sergei Papushin (IJDECANTER) was probably a false defector. Even "useful idiots" Milton Beardon and Sanda Grimes suggest as much in their respective books, The Main Enemy and Circle of Treason.

2) In addition to his "clearing" a false (or rogue) physical defector to the U.S., putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko, via a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report, his hiding Office of Security files on Oswald from the Church Committee, and his helping probable "mole" Leonard V. McCoy "lose" Nicholas Shadrin to KGB kidnappers in Vienna in 1975, a reason for believing Bruce Solie was a KGB "mole" is the fact that he told the FBI's liaison to the CIA, Sam Papich, on 4 November 1959 that the CIA knew nothing about Oswald's defection when in fact it had already received at least one cable about it (from the Navy Department), and it was probably Solie who arranged in-advance with the Records Integration Division and the Office of Mail Logistics for all of the anticipated incoming non-CIA cables on Oswald's future defection to be sent to the Office of Security's Security Research Staff (where he was Deputy Chief) rather that to where they would normally go --- the Soviet Russia Division.

3) TUMBLEWEED / AEBURBLE was Guenter Heinz Schulz, a German national crop duster from Snyder, Oklahoma, who had been a recon pilot for Hitler, captured and interred by the British, recruited by the NKVD, released by the Brits, ostensibly "flipped" by the CIA, and shared with the FBI. He was sent to Mexico City by the FBI/CIA to gain information on the operations of his ostensible (or actual???) boss, KGB Colonel Valeriy Kostikov, who was suspected by the CIA and FBI of being the Western Hemisphere head of Department 13* for only one reason -- because Kremlin-loyal triple agent KGB Major Aleksei Kulak (J. Edgar Hoover's shielded-from-CIA FEDORA) at the FBI's NYC field office had told the FBI in 1962 that Kostikov's charge (pardon the pun) at the U.N., Igor Brykin, was Department 13.

4) MFF's statement, "AEBURBLE (TUMBLEWEED)'s information was what made the connection between Valeriy Kostikov and the KGB's 'Department 13'" is incorrect. See above. All Schulz did was identify Kostikov from a photo.

5) In 2013, the CIA's official historian, David Robarge, wrote that the Agency never did determine whether or not Kostikov was Department 13.


*Assassinations and Sabotage department of the KGB's First Chief Directorate (today's SVR)


To be continued . . .

[Benjamin Cole]

So, what is the upshot of Bruce Solie as putative KGB asset, in relation to the JFKA?

None at all? LHO acted alone?

Are you sure there is no G-2 connections to LHO?

No Alpha 66 connections?

[Michael T. Griffith]

MG--Thanks for your collegial comments.

Adams told the WC she may have waited up to 30 seconds before leaving for the stairs. Even that is anough time for LHO to have preceded her down the stairs.

   

I don't see how, given what we know just from the WC's very rigged reenactment of Oswald's alleged movements, and given how carefully the rifle was hidden (see below).

Adams did not believe she waited 30 seconds, but she was pressured into saying she may HAVE waited up to 30 seconds. She discerned early on that WC attorneys were quite hostile toward her account. When she spoke with Barry Ernest, she insisted she left almost immediately after the shots ended.

But, even assuming she waited 30 seconds, given that she was starting from the fourth floor and thus had a two-floor headstart on anyone coming down from the sixth floor, I still don't see how Oswald could have beaten her so far down the stairs that she did not even hear him on the stairs, even though the stairs were noisy.

I suggest you read Ernest's book The Girl on the Stairs, partly to get a better understanding of how the WC's attorneys pressured Adams and misrepresented her.

But in one interview, Styles said it was longer than that, that Adams, had, in effect, succumbed to the lure of drama.

Or so the interview summary claimed. When Ernest interviewed Styles, she said no such thing but ardently supported Adams' and Garner's accounts.

Keep in mind, too, that Jack Dougherty, who was working on the fifth floor near the stairway, said he heard no one coming down the stairs.

As I mentioned earlier, no one has yet explained how Oswald could have gone through the second-floor foyer door in time to be seen by Baker just beyond the door and with the door closed or almost closed without first being seen by Truly, who was running well ahead of Baker.

Garner said what she said, but then witness statements (and I worked the courts for two years) are...well, very hit and miss. I have seen witnesses blithely recount internally impossible narratives on the stand.

 

Garner's account was corroborated by Adams and Styles, and her account is consistent with the timing indicated by the WC's own rigged reenactment.

LHO likely, in advance, arranged the cubbyhole into which he dropped his rifle post-JFKA, as it was between the sniper's nest and the exit. It would have taken him one second to drop the rifle in.

Even assuming the gunman set up the hiding in advance, he still would have had to take at least 15 seconds to hide. Consider these facts:

The rifle was hidden inside a square of chest-high boxes, i.e., stacked at least 5 feet high. To get to the spot where the rifle lay, the gunman would have had to scale those boxes twice, once to get in and again to get out. Furthermore, inside that wall of boxes, the rifle was squeezed between two boxes and was standing on the tip of its upper butt with the upper tip of its muzzle leaning against one of the boxes. Moreover, the rifle was covered with paper and was under two overlapping boxes piled one on the other. So there's no way the rifle could have been merely dropped into its hiding spot.

The WC ignored all this and pretended that the gunman merely dropped the rifle into its hiding place, when in fact he would have had to climb over boxes, slide the rifle in between two of the boxes, then put paper over it, and then climb back over the boxes.

As I said, hiding the rifle would have taken a bare minimum of 15 seconds.

My best guess LHO was either a look-out for the JFKA, or himself fired three rounds off towards the JFK limo. In earnest or as intentional misses (replay of the Walker shooting), I dunno.

I think the evidence shows he was on the first and second floor during the shooting and that he briefly watched the motorcade. I don't think he had anything to do with the shooting, which explains why the NAA testing of his right-cheek paraffin cast found no traces of nitrates, and why VSA polygraph analysis of his statement that he didn't shoot anybody indicates he was telling the truth.

In your scenario, how did the "real" TSBD6 sniper window shooter escape unseen? If it was not LHO, then who?

I can think of a number of ways the two men on the sixth floor could have escaped. They may well have been the two nicely dressed men whom Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney encountered coming down the stairs when Mooney was heading up the stairs at around 12:45/12:50. Mooney assumed they were plain clothes deputy sheriffs. Incredibly, the WC made no effort to identify these men.

The two phony Secret Service agents whom Officer Harkness encountered in the rear of the TSBD could have helped the two men escape or may have been the two men.

No law officer was on the stairs between 12:33 and 12:45.

As I say, my read on the Z-film shows Connally struck at Z-295 and JFK at Z-313, so a lone gunsel with a single-shot bolt-action rifle is ruled out.

 

I agree.

That is puzzling about the boxes being moved post-JFKA. I have no explanation.

I think the explanation is that Mrs. Mooneyham saw the two men on the sixth floor at a time when Oswald could not have been there, and that another witness saw boxes being moved around in the sixth-floor window when Oswald could not have been there. 

Another interesting question is why LHO moved the rifle from the sniper's nest to the cubbyhole. Why not leave the rifle in situ?

I don't believe that Oswald was on the sixth floor after 12:05 or 12:10.

Why not leave the rifle in situ? Because that would have seemed too pat, too unbelievable, too convenient. It was bad enough that they left the bullet shells in plain view to be easily found, which should cause logical people to wonder why the gunman would have bothered to so carefully hide the rifle but not hide the much smaller shells.

LHO's immediate post-JFKA action and behavior is that of a man who was complicit or believed he had been framed for the JFKA.

I think it's clear that he realized he had been set up. 

If LHO was totally innocent, why brandish a handgun inside the Texas Theater, after entering surreptitiously?

He didn't enter without paying. He paid for a movie ticket and was in the theater by 1:07.

We have only the DPD's word that he brandished a handgun and tried to shoot one of the officers. The FBI lab started the myth that the handgun misfired due to a faulty primer. However,
FBI firearms expert Cortlandt Cunningham apparently didn't get the memo on this false talking point, because he told the WC that the revolver never once misfired when the FBI fired over 100 bullets from it (3 H 463). This indicates that the arresting DPD officers lied when they claimed that Oswald tried to shoot them in the theater.

Witnesses heard Oswald cry out that he was not resisting arrest, so it makes no sense that he would have tried to shoot one of the officers.

Why tell the media "I am a patsy," instead of "Oh, this must be a simple case of mistaken identity. I must resemble a suspect." Indeed, LHO saying he had been made into a patsy...suggests he knew something of a plot (even a false flag plot), and who made him a patsy.

You're forgetting that Oswald also emphatically denied the charges and publicly insisted that he didn't shoot anybody, and his claim has been verified by VSA.

My take is LHO was in the JFKA up to his eyeballs. Not sure how. That does not rule out a conspiracy, but IMHO, likely a very small one, maybe just Alpha 66 splinter-group types. By reputation, those guys did not need permission from anyone.

Keep in mind that several cars scouted the area behind the grassy knoll 15-20 minutes before the shooting. Remember that at least three phony Secret Service agents were in Dealey Plaza. Keep in mind that a wealthy, well-connected right-wing extremist with ties to anti-Castro Cubans, Joseph Milteer, was heard on a surveillance tape weeks before the assassination revealing that knew that a plot to kill JFK was in the works. Keep in mind the considerable evidence--both physical evidence and eyewitness accounts--that a gunman was firing from the grassy knoll.

This is just some of the evidence that the plot was not very small.

BTW I have been banned again from EF-JFKA by the crackpot martinet.

Oh my goodness! That's just crazy. Yesterday I sent a private message to James Gordon asking him to do something about Niederhut and telling him about the bogus bans imposed on you and me. So far he has not replied.

[Benjamin Cole]

MG-

Again, thanks for your collegial comments. It is great to have conversations about the JFKA, without rancor.

We are on different pages on where was LHO during the JFKA---I suspect strongly he was the figure seen firing a rifle in TSBD6 sniper window.  I will discuss this at greater length later, in a separate thread, if you wish. 

I started this thread to puzzle over over Bruce Solie possibly running LHO, and Woolsey's narrative that LHO was a KGB asset, and Richard Case Nagell's commentary that both he and LHO were double agents. This on top of Marchetti's musing that the CIA was so infiltrated with KGB'ers it was hard to know who, de facto, was running what. LHO's meeting with Kostikov. LHO's Marxism, which Hancock says was genuine.

Marchetti suggested the reason for the JFKA cover-up was to hide this infiltration, and the possible result: the JFKA.

A very small plot of witting participants could include the guy who did the GK smoke-and-bang show. 

One shooter with LHO on TSBD6 and one guy on the GK, as a diversion. Three total. No paperwork, no bosses, just Herminio Diaz and Eladio Del Valle, both dead by 1966-7.

But back on thread: Do you think it was possible that Solie was running LHO?

As usual, just IMHO, caveat emptor, and draw our own conclusions.

[Tom Graves]

A very small plot of witting participants could include the guy who did the GK smoke-and-bang show.

"The guy who did the GK smoke-and-bang show"

LOL

I seriously doubt that there was a "smoke and bang" diversion from the Grassy Knoll, but if there was, my choice would be Gilberto Policarpo Lopez.

[Tom Graves]

So, what is the upshot of Bruce Solie as putative KGB asset, in relation to the JFKA?

None at all? LHO acted alone?

Are you sure there is no G-2 connections to LHO?

No Alpha 66 connections?

The upshot (it was three down shots, actually) is that, if Newman and I are right about Bruce Leonard Solie, Leonard V. McCoy, and FEDORA, et al. ad nauseam, whether or not the self-described Marxist and former Marine sharpshooter / U-2 radar operator known as Lee Harvey Oswald received encouragement and/or logistical support from the KGB, the GRU, or the DGI, the aforementioned Bruce Leonard Solie, Leonard V. McCoy, and FEDORA, et al. ad nauseum, zombified the CIA and the FBI.