The (Fake) Reaction of Soviet and Communist Party Officials to the JFKA

[Benjamin Cole]

SMG:

There was a KGB officer in Minsk who said he had run LHO, and that his wife Marina was a swallow, but that he had nor connection to the JFKA.

G2 assets were in touch with LHO in New Orleans, and he met with KGB'ers in Mexico City.

Here is a post on LHO as possible G2/KGB asset:

Oswald as a KGB Asset or Double Agent?

(Due to recent stories that the Mexican government conducted a contemporary JFKA investigation, and concluded LHO had been a Cuban asset, I have bumped this thread forward. That investigation is evidently being withheld).

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 (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]

From CIA files:

“IJDECANTER (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.”

I have some bad news for you and John Newman.

IJDECANTER (Sergey Papushin) was a false defector, as indicated even by "useful idiots" like Milton Bearden in his book, The Main Enemy, and Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille in their book, Circle of Treason.

Bearden, page 438-39

Langley, August 16, 1990. During his sober moments, Papushin was clearly frustrated by the fact that he was largely being ignored by the CIA and FBI. So he did something he knew was guaranteed to once again grab attention: he gave one of his handlers an urgent message to be taken immediately to the top levels of the CIA. There is a mole in your there is a mole in the agency, Papushin declared. The KGB has one of your people. The CIA now gave Papushin their full attention and listened carefully to his story. He said that the KGB had a penetration of the CIA in Moscow. He had friends in the American department of the Second Chief Directorate, and he'd overheard enough from his colleagues to conclude that they had an agent in the CIA station. But as he was questioned further, it became apparent that he was scrambling with a fabricated story. Nothing he told his debriefers checked out, and eventually we concluded that he had come up with this story out of desperation. Another dead end in the search for an answer, any answer, to the problems five years earlier.

Grimes and Vertefeuille, page 210:

At one point in this phase, we became seriously sidetracked for a while. We received a report from an officer in one of our overseas stations that he had been in contact with a KGB officer and that this KGB officer had told him that the KGB was running a mole inside the CIA. As the story was told to us, the mole was an ethnic Russian who had served in Moscow. Based on this report, we began to concentrate on CIA employees who fit the parameters of this lead, although we did not discontinue examining information on employees, like Rick Ames, who did not. Eventually we discovered that there were major flaws in this story, and that it was probably a total fabrication. During this same period, we also received some misleading reporting from Sergey Papushin, the defector from the KGB's internal counterintelligence component [i.e., the Second Chief Directorate], to the effect that this component was running a CIA officer who had been assigned to Moscow. In other words, there was some similarity between populations statements and those recounted in the above statement. Unfortunately, Papushin had a severe alcohol problem which shortly thereafter caused his death. We ultimately decided that his reporting could not be relied upon. We then started to refocus on our shortlist as originally compiled. However, we had lost valuable time.