Larry Hancock Tips His Hat To KGB Suspects

[Benjamin Cole]

Larry Hancock and David Boylan are intelligent, circumspect and diligent researchers, with decades of research and document-hunting under their belts.

In general, the many leads the pair have uncovered track back to the Cuban exile community and related American mercs, or possibly related CIA'ers. The Miami Station-JMWAVE, etc.

But Hancock is also broad-minded enough to know he does not know what is unknowable, a rare perspective in the otherwise omnicient JFKA research community.

So it is only a mild but pleasant surprise when Hancock tipped his hat, so to speak, to the Russian possibility in his excellent blog, I think partially in response to some of my questions.

---30---

https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2026/05/06/soviet-suspects/

Anyone interested in the assassination of President Kennedy will have come across the idea that the Soviets were behind his assassination. His successor was perhaps the first to quickly float that suspicion – and that fear – ostensibly not because he believed it, but that simply the idea might force a devastating nuclear exchange. LBJ used that fear with Earl Warren, and with others. He leveraged it, and the issue of national security, to drive attention solely towards a ‘lone nut’ assassin rather than allowing Oswald to be positioned as a Soviet agent or under Russian influence in the attack.

History has also shown the Russians to have been seriously concerned about such suspicions. Quick denials of any relationship with Oswald were made and in later years Soviet embassy personnel related being assigned to carry out a telephone call and meeting campaign with everyone they could influence to push the message of non-involvement – urgently, beginning the night of the assassination.

The simple fact that Johnson used the threat of war with such force (even talking with the head of the Atomic Energy Commission to get a number to quote in terms of forecast deaths from atomic warfare to use in his conversations) has tended to lean most JFK research away from the Soviets as true suspects. Yet Oswald had been in Russia, he certainly could have been under Soviet influence and Premier Khrushchev and the Russian military had been deeply embarrassed by the events of the Cuban missile crisis the previous year. On the face of it risking nuclear war over a motive as simple as personal revenge seems highly unlikely, but with high emotions some might have settled on that as an understandable motive, especially with the Cold War being at its height.

I’ve not explored the ‘Russia did it’ suspicion in my own work but recently Matt Crumpton asked me to come on his Solving JFK show and give it a deep dive based on David and my work on Lee Harvey Oswald. Matt asks great questions and led us into areas not often discussed these days. If it sounds of interest you can find his show here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/recap-rebuttals-part-20-ep-90-94-soviet-union-with/id1652334113?i=1000766370682

---30---

And here are my comments.

Certainly, in comparison to narratives that have somewhat become canon, that is the “CIA and/or Mossad did it,” the narrative that assets related to the KGB or G2 might have manipulated or helped LHO perp the JFKA have been less researched.

The nutshell-story is that LBJ didn’t want a nuke war with Russia, and told Warren/WC as much, thus the LN CT was born. (John Newman says this was tricky CIA’ers at work, planting the WWIII virus, so any JFKA investigation would be stunted. This is further complicated by Newman’s later belief that CIA’er Bruce Solie, a KGB asset, was manipulating LHO. Are you following this?)

Notable: The US Ambassador to Mexico, Thomas Mann, and a well-regarded State Department staffer, Charles William Thomas, both lost their jobs for merely wanting to pursue LHO-Cuba leads.

The KGB chief in Minsk regarded LHO as an asset, though perhaps not after LHO departed Russia.

Of course, LHO in September visited three KGB’ers in MC, including wet-works boss Kostikov. They all met LHO on a Saturday.

This was about the same time Castro publicly warned the Kennedy brothers that assassination attempts could go both ways. In a different time and place with different standards, the Kennedys tried to have Castro assassinated several times, and Castro knew it.

—

I contend LHO likely had two accomplices or manipulators on 11.22, someone at the GK (the smoke and bang show) and another shooter behind JFK. (That is my read on the Z-film and doctor testimony, another topic.)

I doubt the JFKA conspiracy-plot was much more than that, and could have been two lower-level hotheads associated with G2 or Alpha 66, keeping in mind Alpha 66 was penetrated by G2. In other words, no instructions from above in Havana, Moscow or Washington.

What representations the Alpha 66’ers, G2’ers made to LHO—who knows?

But it is indisputable LHO’s rifle was found near the TSBD6 window, and LHO was invisible when shots rang out. A slender light-skinned male was seen in the TSBD6 window by Brennan, when shots were fired.

LHO acted like someone who was guilty, or thought he had been framed, in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA. LHO is a reasonable suspect as the TSBD6 sniper, maybe even the best suspect.

The JFKA research community has largely tried to totally exonerate LHO in the assassination, but that may be the wrong tack, and one rooted in ideological biases.

It is also possible LHO was part of a very small JFKA CT.

That’s my best guess.

---30---

Also worth noting–

While perhaps the bulk of US documents regarding the JFKA have been made public, and excellent researchers such as Hancock and Boylan have perused such, we have no assurance regarding documents in Havana or Moscow; indeed both capitals are run by extremely autocratic and repressive successor regimes.

If there are bona fide JFKA documents in those capitals, they are likely sequestered.
It may be much of what the KGB and G2 were doing in 1963 was never put on paper anyway.
We can be assured that Havana and Moscow will only release documents, fabricated or otherwise, that reflect poorly on Washington, but not on Havana and Moscow.
In other words, in assessing the possible role of the G2 or KGB in the JFKA, we face an opaque scrim when it comes to Havana and Moscow.










 [/i]

[Tom Graves]

Larry Hancock and David Boylan are intelligent, circumspect and diligent researchers, with decades of research and document-hunting under their belts.

In general, the many leads the pair have uncovered track back to the Cuban exile community and related American mercs, or possibly related CIA'ers. The Miami Station-JMWAVE, etc.

But Hancock is also broad-minded enough to know he does not know what is unknowable, a rare perspective in the otherwise omnicient JFKA research community.

So it is only a mild but pleasant surprise when Hancock tipped his hat, so to speak, to the Russian possibility in his excellent blog, I think partially in response to some of my questions.

---30---

https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2026/05/06/soviet-suspects/

Anyone interested in the assassination of President Kennedy will have come across the idea that the Soviets were behind his assassination. His successor was perhaps the first to quickly float that suspicion – and that fear – ostensibly not because he believed it, but that simply the idea might force a devastating nuclear exchange. LBJ used that fear with Earl Warren, and with others. He leveraged it, and the issue of national security, to drive attention solely towards a ‘lone nut’ assassin rather than allowing Oswald to be positioned as a Soviet agent or under Russian influence in the attack.

History has also shown the Russians to have been seriously concerned about such suspicions. Quick denials of any relationship with Oswald were made and in later years Soviet embassy personnel related being assigned to carry out a telephone call and meeting campaign with everyone they could influence to push the message of non-involvement – urgently, beginning the night of the assassination.

The simple fact that Johnson used the threat of war with such force (even talking with the head of the Atomic Energy Commission to get a number to quote in terms of forecast deaths from atomic warfare to use in his conversations) has tended to lean most JFK research away from the Soviets as true suspects. Yet Oswald had been in Russia, he certainly could have been under Soviet influence and Premier Khrushchev and the Russian military had been deeply embarrassed by the events of the Cuban missile crisis the previous year. On the face of it risking nuclear war over a motive as simple as personal revenge seems highly unlikely, but with high emotions some might have settled on that as an understandable motive, especially with the Cold War being at its height.

I’ve not explored the ‘Russia did it’ suspicion in my own work but recently Matt Crumpton asked me to come on his Solving JFK show and give it a deep dive based on David and my work on Lee Harvey Oswald. Matt asks great questions and led us into areas not often discussed these days. If it sounds of interest you can find his show here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/recap-rebuttals-part-20-ep-90-94-soviet-union-with/id1652334113?i=1000766370682

---30---

And here are my comments.

Certainly, in comparison to narratives that have somewhat become canon, that is the “CIA and/or Mossad did it,” the narrative that assets related to the KGB or G2 might have manipulated or helped LHO perp the JFKA have been less researched.

The nutshell-story is that LBJ didn’t want a nuke war with Russia, and told Warren/WC as much, thus the LN CT was born. (John Newman says this was tricky CIA’ers at work, planting the WWIII virus, so any JFKA investigation would be stunted. This is further complicated by Newman’s later belief that CIA’er Bruce Solie, a KGB asset, was manipulating LHO. Are you following this?)

Notable: The US Ambassador to Mexico, Thomas Mann, and a well-regarded State Department staffer, Charles William Thomas, both lost their jobs for merely wanting to pursue LHO-Cuba leads.

The KGB chief in Minsk regarded LHO as an asset, though perhaps not after LHO departed Russia.

Of course, LHO in September visited three KGB’ers in MC, including wet-works boss Kostikov. They all met LHO on a Saturday.

This was about the same time Castro publicly warned the Kennedy brothers that assassination attempts could go both ways. In a different time and place with different standards, the Kennedys tried to have Castro assassinated several times, and Castro knew it.

—

I contend LHO likely had two accomplices or manipulators on 11.22, someone at the GK (the smoke and bang show) and another shooter behind JFK. (That is my read on the Z-film and doctor testimony, another topic.)

I doubt the JFKA conspiracy-plot was much more than that, and could have been two lower-level hotheads associated with G2 or Alpha 66, keeping in mind Alpha 66 was penetrated by G2. In other words, no instructions from above in Havana, Moscow or Washington.

What representations the Alpha 66’ers, G2’ers made to LHO—who knows?

But it is indisputable LHO’s rifle was found near the TSBD6 window, and LHO was invisible when shots rang out. A slender light-skinned male was seen in the TSBD6 window by Brennan, when shots were fired.

LHO acted like someone who was guilty, or thought he had been framed, in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA. LHO is a reasonable suspect as the TSBD6 sniper, maybe even the best suspect.

The JFKA research community has largely tried to totally exonerate LHO in the assassination, but that may be the wrong tack, and one rooted in ideological biases.

It is also possible LHO was part of a very small JFKA CT.

That’s my best guess.

---30---

Also worth noting–

While perhaps the bulk of US documents regarding the JFKA have been made public, and excellent researchers such as Hancock and Boylan have perused such, we have no assurance regarding documents in Havana or Moscow; indeed both capitals are run by extremely autocratic and repressive successor regimes.

If there are bona fide JFKA documents in those capitals, they are likely sequestered.
It may be much of what the KGB and G2 were doing in 1963 was never put on paper anyway.
We can be assured that Havana and Moscow will only release documents, fabricated or otherwise, that reflect poorly on Washington, but not on Havana and Moscow.
In other words, in assessing the possible role of the G2 or KGB in the JFKA, we face an opaque scrim when it comes to Havana and Moscow.

LOL!

Although probable KGB mole Bruce Solie may have duped James Angleton into sending former Marine sharpshooter and U-2 radar operator Lee Harvey Oswald to Moscow in October 1959 as an ostensible "dangle" in a (unbeknownst to Angleton and Oswald) planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA, and although Oswald lived half-a-mile from a KGB school in Minsk for two-and-a-half years, he very likely killed JFK all by him widdle Marxist self by firing three shots at him (at hypothetical "Z-124," Z-222, and Z-313) in the echo chamber known as Dealey Plaza.

As if that wasn't a big enough tragedy for our country and the world, the KGB has been "making hay" out of the anomaly-replete assassination ever since, as evidenced by Joachim Joesten's "Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?," the works of Mark "KGB" Lane, the KGB's placing an anti-Clay Shaw / anti-CIA article in a Communist-owned Italian newspaper (Paese Sera) three days after overly ambitious, scandal-plagued, and revengeful Jim Garrison had arrested Shaw on suspicion of having masterminded a homosexual thrill-kill assassination, by Oliver Stone's 1991 self-described mythological ("to counter the myth of the Warren Report") film, "JFK," by Jimmy DiEugenio's and Comrade Stone's box-office-bombing sequel a few years ago, and by Democrat-hating ROGER Stone's "LBJ Did It!!!" book a few years ago, too, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

[Lance Payette]

I think kindly Larry H. would say “Well, it could be” to virtually any conspiracy theory, so I hardly consider that much of an endorsement. (Unfortunately, the "many leads" that Hancock and Boylan have uncovered don't lead very convincingly to Oswald or Dealey Plaza.)

Here in the real world, I just don’t think the KGB-did-it scenario survives the threshold test.

1. Yes, Russian hardliners regarded the Cuban missile crisis (CMC) as a humiliation. However, Khruschev remained in power for nearly a full year after the JFKA.

2. I just read a long, Harvard-published, almost hour-by-hour piece about the CMC by Marvin Kalb, who was CBS’s chief Moscow correspondent at the time. He says that Berlin, not Cuba, was Khruschev’s real obsession and that the prevailing sentiment was that Cuba was too far away and too unimportant to allow it to become a line in the sand.

3. Thanks to the behind-the-scenes agreement to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey, the CMC was less a humiliation for Russia than those who weren’t in the know might have thought. In some ways, moreover, it made the Russians appear pragmatic and even reasonable.

4. The negotiations made pretty clear that JFK was not eager for any kind of actual confrontation that posed the threat of war. He was someone the Russians could work with. KGB intelligence presumably would have known that the Joint Chiefs were itching for nuclear war and had told JFK that 40,000,000 American deaths would be an acceptable cost. Would the Russians really have wanted to replace JFK?

5. Could the Russians have known what they would have with LBJ as President? Had he ever said or done anything that would have given them comfort that they would fare better with him than with JFK?

6. In all of the various KGB file releases, smuggled documents, defectors, former KGB officers, etc., has there been any solid indication that the KGB was behind or even encouraged the JFKA? I don’t believe there has.

7. Unless the KGB was being run by Curly, Larry and Moe, would they seriously have recruited an erratic former defector with in-your-face Cuban and Marxist sympathies to carry out this revenge hit? Isn’t this self-evidently ridiculous? Oswald with his M-C and Dealey Plaza were the best the supermen of the KGB could do?

It just makes no sense at all – does it? LBJ (as well as RFK and Jackie) didn't suspect the Russians were behind the JFKA. He knew people would make this connection, and the Joint Chiefs would encourage it, for precisely the reasons set forth in #7.

As always, it seems to me, this theory takes a handful of known facts – Oswald had defected to Russia, Oswald went to the Soviet Embassy in MC, Oswald was a Marxist, Oswald was obsessed with Cuba – and weaves them into a completely speculative “coulda happened” but pretty much preposterous KGB-did-it theory.

For that matter, what did the KGB supposedly DO? Plant Oswald in the TSBD? Put all the facts together on 11-21 or thereabouts and suggest it would helpful if he shot JFK? Tell him in MC they certainly wouldn’t be unhappy if shot JFK? I really just don’t even understand what those who think the KGB was behind the JFKA are even talking about in terms of WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED in this theory.

This is one of my absolute favorite Russian movies from 1967: "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style." You can quickly see how slavishly the Russians copied the Three Stooges. In fact, Russian movies of the era 1950-1975 in general are SO FAR from what you probably picture as grim Soviet propaganda that it's jaw-dropping. The Three Stooges make their appearance at 16:12 and dominate the rest of the movie.

[Benjamin Cole]

LP-

Sure, official KGB and Khruschev may not have been involved in the JFKA (although James Woolsey, a former CIA director, thinks they were. You do not. Woolsey has street cred up the wazoo.)

Setting aside Woolsey...there are always lower-level factions at work in any large organization.

I lean more to G2 involvement.

Obviously, LHO was capable of the JFKA---see LNT theorizing, much of which holds water.

So why wouldn't G2'ers graft LHO into an ad hoc, informal JFKA plan?

They got lucky. JFK was coming to Dallas, to ride in a motorcade in front of LHO's perch.

At bottom, there is no way a lone gunsel armed with a single-shot-per-bolt-action rifle got a shot off at Z-295, and then one at Z-313. Let alone the GK smoke-and-bang show.

Who were LHO's most likely confederates?

[Tom Graves]

Who were LHO's most likely confederates?

What makes you think Oswald needed confederates?

"Flash-bang in the bushes?"

"JBC was hit 30 seconds after JFK"?

"JBC's hand couldn't have clamped onto his hat in a paralyzed state"?

[Benjamin Cole]

TG-

We have different takes on the timing of shots during the JFKA.

I have reasonable doubts about the WC narrative, and your narrative.

My narrative is what it is, and I concede I am a layman and amateur. Just IMHO.

Caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

[Tom Graves]

TG-

We have different takes on the timing of shots during the JFKA.

I have reasonable doubts about the WC narrative, and your narrative.

My narrative is what it is, and I concede I am a layman and amateur. Just IMHO.

You have your doubts, all right, but they aren't reasonable.