Why would he have to learn Russian?

[Tom Graves]

If it’s true, as John Newman asserts in his 2022 book, Uncovering Popov’s Mole, that the Office of Security’s Bruce Solie was a mole, and that he sent future JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to Moscow as an ostensible “dangle” in a (unbeknownst to Oswald) planned-to-fail hunt for “Popov’s U-2 Mole” (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA, Newman was ironically correct in his 1995 book, Oswald and the CIA, that the reason a 201 file wasn’t opened on Oswald until December 1960, fourteen months after he’d defected, was because he was on a top-secret mission "for the CIA" (the KGB-controlled CIA).

The only problem I have with Newman’s theory is that after CIA officer (and probable mole) George Kisevalter told the CIA in April 1958 that Lt. Col. Popov had told him in Berlin about the U-2 leak, it took Solie eighteen whole months to screen for Oswald, recruit him, teach Russian to him, and send him on his way.

But why would former Marine U-2 radar operator Oswald need to speak Russian, anyway, if all he had to do was toss his passport onto Consul (and probable CIA officer) Richard Snyder’s desk, say he wanted to renounce his citizenship, and mention to him (and to the KGB microphones in the walls) that he planned to commit espionage against the U.S., including “something of special interest”?

If what I’ve said above is true (and there are plenty of reasons for believing Solie and Kisevalter were moles), then the only thing I can think of is that Solie wanted Oswald to stay in the USSR for a while – which is what he did for two-and-a-half years when he lived half-a-mile from a KGB school in Minsk.

[Michael T. Griffith]

If it’s true, as John Newman asserts in his 2022 book, Uncovering Popov’s Mole, that the Office of Security’s Bruce Solie was a mole, and that he sent future JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to Moscow as an ostensible “dangle” in a (unbeknownst to Oswald) planned-to-fail hunt for “Popov’s U-2 Mole” (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA, Newman was ironically correct in his 1995 book, Oswald and the CIA, that the reason a 201 file wasn’t opened on Oswald until December 1960, fourteen months after he’d defected, was because he was on a top-secret mission "for the CIA" (the KGB-controlled CIA).

The only problem I have with Newman’s theory is that after CIA officer (and probable mole) George Kisevalter told the CIA in April 1958 that Lt. Col. Popov had told him in Berlin about the U-2 leak, it took Solie eighteen whole months to screen for Oswald, recruit him, teach Russian to him, and send him on his way.

But why would former Marine U-2 radar operator Oswald need to speak Russian, anyway, if all he had to do was toss his passport onto Consul (and probable CIA officer) Richard Snyder’s desk, say he wanted to renounce his citizenship, and mention to him (and to the KGB microphones in the walls) that he planned to commit espionage against the U.S., including “something of special interest”?

A better question is, How do you explain the evidence that Oswald was fluent in Russian before he went to the Soviet Union?

I recommend you read Alaric Rosman's section titled "The Enigma of Oswald and the Russian Language" in the book JFK: Echoes from Elm Street, edited by Mark Bridger and Barry Keane (pp. 318-340). After documenting that Oswald spoke fluent Russian before he went to the Soviet Union, Rosman devotes several pages to refuting Bugliosi's false claim that Oswald's Russian language proficiency was mediocre at best.

Some of the evidence that Rosman presents is discussed in James Norwood's article "Oswald's Proficiency in the Russian Language," available online at https://harveyandlee.net/Russian.html.

I am agnostic about Armstrong's "Harvey and Lee" theory, but the evidence in Norwood's article and in Rosman's segment in JFK: Echoes from Elm Street is compelling.