JFK Assassination Forum

Well, the source for this quote is a book printed in 1991 by Georgie Ann Geyer. So who knows?

Also curious that MC CIA Chief claimed photos of LHO had been taken in MC.

Nevertheless, an interesting article from the The Cuban Center for Strategic Studies:

President Johnson: “Fidel Castro Got Kennedy First”

Could President Kennedy’s assassination had been prevented if the CIA and the FBI had alerted the Secret Service and Dallas FBI office about Lee Harvey Oswald disturbing behavior at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City?

The answer given by FBI Director Clarence Kelly, is an emphatic YES!  Kelly asserted that if the FBI Dallas’ Office had been aware of what was known elsewhere in the FBI and CIA about Oswald, “without doubt, John F. Kennedy would not have died in Dallas on November 22, 1963.” [1]

What the CIA and the FBI Knew about Lee Harvey Oswald:

Emotionally disturbed person.
Was a former marine sharpshooter.
Prone to violent mood swings and sociopathic behavior.
A self-proclaimed Communist.
Nicknamed by his marine corpsmen as “Oswaldskovich.” [2]
With an obsessive admiration to Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union.
Faced two court-martials and suffered severe emotional breakdown.
Discharged from the Marines on September 11, 1959.
Took him five weeks to defect to the Soviet Union.
In September 1963, upon his return to the U.S., Oswald visited the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City.
Requested a transit visa to Russia via Cuba and was denied.
Turned violent and began screaming “I am going to kill Kennedy.”
Oswald Contact with Cuban Security Agents

Oswald made contact with Cuban intelligence officers while stationed at “El Toro” Marine Air Base in Santa Ana, California.
In response to the Warren Commission investigation, Nelson Delgado, a U.S. Marine friend of Oswald, testified that Oswald kept on asking him “how he could help Castro.”
Delgado recommended Oswald to get in touch with the Cuban Embassy.  “After a while he told me he was in contact with them.”[3]
Under oath, Delgado stated that “Oswald told him he was receiving mail from Cubans and had developed contact with Cuban government officials in Los Angeles.”[4]
Delgado recalled that Oswald met with an unknown visitor.  “It was a man…a civilian… and they spent about one and a half, two hours talking.”[5]
On October 16, 1959, Oswald defected to the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Security Agency, KGB, perceived Oswald as “mentally unstable.” [6]
On January 7, 1960, Oswald was sent to live in the Russian city of Minsk.
He was assigned to work at a radio and television factory.
Oswald dated several women and eventually married Marina Prusakova.  They had a baby girl.
In Minsk, Oswald was directed to enroll in the Foreign Language School in Ulyanov Street.
The school was adjacent to the KGB Academy, attended by Cuban security personnel.
Among the Cubans that participated in the KGB spying courses, was Fabian Escalante.[7]
Marina’s uncle, Ylia Prusakova, was a high-ranking executive of the KGB Academy.
During Marina’s interrogation after the Kennedy assassination, she testified that Oswald bragged that he had gotten close to some of the Cubans who were attending the KGB Academy.[8]
Marina remembered the Cubans with pleasant memories: “They were outgoing and joyful…. Often played the guitar…danced so well. They were such fun.”[9]
In June 1961, Oswald, Marina, and the baby, left Russia and settled in Dallas, Texas.
Fabian Escalante

Major General of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), a disciplined, low profile, intelligent and conniving secret agent, performed his first spying assignment  in Costa Rica (September 1960) at the age of 19, ordered by Manuel Piñeiro (Barbaroja) to find out information regarding the creation of Cuban exiles training facilities in the region.

In April 1961, Escalante was sent to the KGB Intelligence Academy in the Soviet Union City of Kiev, where he met with Oswald and his wife Marina in social gatherings, where Oswald was enthralled with his Cuban friends.

According to the CIA investigation, on November 22, 1963 early in the morning, Fabian Escalante flew from Havana to Mexico’s airport, and there he transferred to another plane that immediately took off for Dallas, Texas.  Later that evening, the same plane returned from Dallas and Escalante transferred to a Cuban aircraft that flew back to Havana.  In 1976, Escalante was appointed as head of the Department of Security. [10]  In 1993 Escalante was appointed Director of Cuba’s Institute of Security Studies.

Oswald Visit to The Cuban Consulate in Mexico City

In April 1963, Oswald briefly moved to New Orleans, where he became a militant advocate of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”  The FPCC was a Communist front that supported the Castro’s Marxist-Leninist revolution.  While distributing pro-Castro propaganda he had a confrontation with Cuban exiles that was reported by the city police.

On September 27, 1963, Oswald traveled by bus to Mexico City, and visited the Cuban and the nearby Soviet Consulate several times (the Cuban Consulate was located within the fenced Cuban Embassy).  It was the frequency of Oswald walking back and forth that caught the CIA agents’ attention in their surveillance facility across the street from the Cuban Consulate.

Winston Scott, the chief of the CIA station in Mexico (1956-1969), wrote in his unpublished autobiography Foul Foe: “Lee Harvey Oswald became a person of great interest to us during the September 27 to October 2, 1963 period….  Every piece of information concerning Oswald was reported immediately after it was received.  These reports were made on all his contacts, with both the Cuban Consulate and the Soviets…Persons watching these embassies photographed Oswald as he entered and left; and clocked the time he spent on each visit.”[11]

In March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson, who was deeply disturbed by the confusing information on Oswald’s visit to the Cuban consulate in Mexico City, requested from his close associate Marty Underwood to meet with Winton Scott in Mexico City.[12]

The timing was excellent.  One month earlier, Scott and his assistant Anne G. Goodpasture had completed an exhaustive nine-month review of Oswald’ stay in Mexico City, as ordered by the CIA director Richard Helms (1966-1973). In their investigation a startling event was uncovered.  A solo passenger that flew from Havana to Dallas via Mexico City.  They are referring to Fabian Escalante.

With the largest and efficient operational personnel in the Americas and state-of-the-art spaying equipment, the capability of the Mexico City CIA station had a hard-won reputation for knowing everything about the Cuban and Soviet Embassies.  Its operation was designed to ensure that every phone line was tapped, and every visitor photographed.[13]

State Department: “Do Not Implicate Cuba”

 What happened to the CIA files on Oswald’s visits to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City?  Why was it marginally mentioned in the Warren Commission Assassination Report?

Thomas Mann has the answer.  The former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico (April 18, 1961-December 22, 1963) stated to the House investigating officers that he was personally ordered by the State Department, a few days after Oswald murdered President Kennedy, to shut down any investigation that would implicate Cuba’s involvement in the assassination. [14]

Fidel Castro Vs. John F. Kennedy

They were the political antithesis of each other. Kennedy, the youngest president of the United States was to become the champion of civil rights and individual freedom, while Fidel Castro was the essence of the “Orwellian Big Brother” totalitarian state. The clash was unavoidable.

President John F. Kennedy receives the Brigade 2506 flag from Bay of pig veterans Manuel Artimes y Erneido Oliva at the Orange Bowl stadium in Miami in Dec. 29, 1962

On December 24, 1962, the Brigade 2506 was released from Castro’s prison and flew to Miami. On December 29, 1962, John and Jacqueline Kennedy met at the Orange Bowl with the veteran fighters of the Bay of Pigs, and over 40,000 Cuban exiles.  On that day the returning veterans gave Kennedy the flag of the Brigade and the President sworn a spontaneous oath that the Brigade flag was to “fly again in a free Havana.”[15]

From that day on, Castro went on a rampage of vituperations against John F. Kennedy.  The mutual antagonism had escalated.  It was a personal fight to the end.

Rolando Cubela Secade: The Double Agent Choice to Kill Fidel Castro

 Rolando Cubela, emotionally unstable and courageous warrior, was a founder member of the Directorio Revolucionario (DR), and later a leader of the DR guerrilla forces fighting Batista’s regime in the Escambray Mountains in Central Cuba.  He was wounded leading the rebel forces in the capture of Santa Clara, capital of Las Villas province, where he fought side by side with “Che” Guevara.

Upon his return to the Escuela de Medicina at the University of Havana, Cubela, with the support of Raul Castro, ran for president of the University of Havana Student Federation.  Despite a bitter election, Cubela won and became a popular leader, with the top rank of “comandante” of the revolution.

By 1961, Cubela portrayed himself as betrayed by Castro’s communist trend.  It was through his friend Carlos Tepedino, a CIA operative, that Cubela established a link with the CIA (August 2, 1962) that was to develop into a controversial, and at the time perceived as the most valuable asset of the Agency in their main objective to kill Fidel Castro.  Cubela cryptonym at the CIA was AM/LASH.[16]

In August 1965, Carlos Tepedino admitted to the CIA that Cubela “had strong connections with Cuban intelligence…working with them closely. It can be said unequivocally that he (Cubela) conspired with Fidel.”[17]

On September 5, 1963, the CIA officer Nestor Sanchez met with Cubela in Porto Alegre, Brazil.  In the meeting Cubela requested for him and his military conspirators a high-level American assurance.[18]

The same day that Cubela was meeting with the CIA in Brazil, Fidel Castro spoke at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana with Daniel Harker a Colombian Associated Press reporter.  In his usual commanding voice, within earshot of other journalists, Castro stated: “Kennedy is a cretin…the Batista of our time… If U.S. leaders are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.  [19]

The Cuban Exile Clandestine Operations

True to his commitment to get rid of Fidel Castro, the President had placed his brother Robert, the Attorney General, in charge of the plan led by Manuel Artime, a charismatic Cuban exile leader and Bay of Pigs veteran. In January 1963 (10 months before Kennedy was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald), Robert Kennedy met privately with Artime, at his Hickory Hill Estate in Virginia to implement the clandestine operations against the communist regime that included the execution of Fidel Castro.

President Kennedy had ordered the creation of a well-funded Special Operation Division (SOD) led by “Ted” Shackley and Graystone Lynch, two outstanding CIA war veterans of exceptional courage and operational experience.  Over two thousand young Cuban exiles fought with extraordinary courage and patriotism.  The SOD recorded 2,126 clandestine operations of which 113 were conducted by commando groups.[20]  The main headquarter was located in the area that is now the Miami Zoo.[21]

The SOD mission was to provide support for a Cuban army uprising and for the execution of Fidel Castro.  This plan covered everything from commando raids to the insertion of Cuban fighters and the Maritime supply to resistance forces in the island. It was a clandestine war waged by the Kennedy’s White House.  The initial order to begin operation contained the words “Set Cuba a Flamed.”[22]

“Listen to Communications from Texas”

The Cuban Directorio General de Inteligencia (DGI) established a large operation to fight back.  Among the best DGI agents was Florentino Aspillaga Lombard.  His task was to pinpoint the location of the CIA underground communication agents with their bases in Florida including their maritime operation.  Years later, in June 6, 1987, Aspillaga, working as a diplomatic intelligence officer in the Cuban Embassy in Prague, Czechoslovakia, crossed the Austrian frontier and defected from Castro’s communist regime, becoming “the most knowledgeable Cuban defector ever to change sides.”[23]

Back in 1963, Aspillaga, working from Jaimanitas coastal hamlet, was assigned to track the electronic transmissions from the courageous underground fighters and exile infiltration teams, launched from swift boats bases in South Florida.

On Friday morning, November 22, 1963, Aspillaga received precise orders: “The leadership wants you to stop all your CIA work, (repeat), All your CIA work,” [24] and listen to communications from Texas.  Around 1:30 (Havana time), “I began hearing broadcast on amateur radio bands about the shooting of President Kennedy in Dallas.”[25]  It is evident that Cuba had advanced notice that Kennedy would be shot.

The Paris Meeting: Assurance of American Support

Fully engaged in the clandestine war, Robert Kennedy ordered Des Fitzgerald, Head of the Cuban Task Force and in charge of the AM/LASH operation, to speed up the physical elimination of Fidel Castro and to arrange a meeting with Cubela in Paris.[26]  This was a controversial meeting.  Finally, on October 29, 1963, Fitzgerald and Nestor D. Sanchez met with Cubela in Paris.  Twenty-two day later, John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.

In the Paris meeting, Cubela demanded “Robert Kennedy’s personal assurance of American support for any activity he undertakes” against Castro. [27]

On November 18, 1963, at a Gala dinner for the Interamerican Press Association in Miami Beach, President Kennedy delivered a firebrand speech stating that Castro “had betrayed the original goals of the Revolution.”  In fact, Kennedy was openly calling for a military rebellion to topple Fidel Castro.  In his speech, the President unequivocally said that “the revolution stripped the Cuban people of their freedom…”  “This and this alone divides us…Once this barrier is removed, we will be anxious to work with the Cuban people.”  [28] This was Kennedy’s assurance of support for Cubela’s plan.

But Cubela was a fake conspirator. Carlos Tepedino said that “a group as such was nonexistent.” [29].  The army upraising was a farse.

The DGI Manipulated Oswald’s Violent Outburst at The Cuban Consulate in Mexico City?

 Oswald requested at the Cuban Consulate in the City of Mexico a transit visa to Russia via Cuba and was denied, Oswald turned violent and began screaming “I am going to kill Kennedy.”[30]  Was this outrageous behavior and  Cuba’s refusal to authorize Oswald’s visa a deliberated, premediated show for future denial of complicity?

Cuban intelligence had been in contact with Oswald since the Minsk encounters and they knew that the sophisticated CIA surveillance equipment operating inside and around the Cuban embassy was listening and recording Oswald in real time. It seems that Oswald’s visit to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City was a calculated performance for Castro’s future disinformation campaign.

According to Brian Latell, the distinguished CIA officer and scholar: “Seven weeks before he fired the shots that killed President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald loitered in Mexico City for five days and nights.  The visits have remained the most tantalizing of the unresolved mysteries surrounding the assassination.  Yet, evidence that has accumulated since 1963, indicates that Oswald’s engagement with Cuban intelligence agents and assets in the Aztec capital was more extensive than previously known.”[31]

Vladimir Rodriguez Lahera, a top-ranking Cuban intelligence agent, defected in April 1964 in Ottawa, Canada.  He requested asylum in the U.S.   He turned to be a motherload of information.   On the specific question if Castro’s agents had any previous connection with Oswald, the answer was yes.  Oswald was in contact with Cuban agents before his trip to Mexico City on September 27, 1963.  He had maintained contact with them after he returned to the U.S.[32]  Rodriguez Lahera also stated that Oswald contacts in the Cuban Consulate included Luisa Calderon, a DGI officer on the secretarial staff at the Embassy.  She was rushed into seclusion immediately after Kennedy’s assassination.  She was not allowed to testify for the Warren Commission.  In 1997 Luisa Calderon was reported working for a government radio station as an English language editor.[33]

In 2005, Oscar Marino an intelligence Cuban defector, detailed what he knew of Oswald’s visit to the Cuban diplomatic mission in Mexico City. Marino stated that “Oswald volunteered to kill Kennedy and that Cuban diplomats in Mexico City had advanced knowledge of Oswald’s assassination plan.” “He adopted our plans as his own- his idea was a natural project of our wish. He was an instrument of the G2 (Cuban Intelligence).  It makes no difference whether he volunteered or was used. It ends up the same.”[34]

As soon as John F. Kennedy was murdered, Fidel Castro began a disinformation campaign, implicating the Mafia who owned gambling casinos in pre-Castro Cuba, the teamster Union (Hoffa), and Cuban exiles.  Castro claimed that he knew nothing of Oswald existence before the Dallas’ assassination and that he was never informed on Oswald’s threatening remarks against Kennedy in the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City.  These outrageous lies were part of a premediated deniability perfidy.

Fidel Castro Got Kennedy First

In an extraordinary revelation, President Lyndon Johnson, with access to top secret information, stated that Castro was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination.  In a TV interview with Howard K.  Smith, President Johnson stated: “Well, Kennedy tried to get Fidel Castro, but Fidel Castro got Kennedy first.[35]

* Pedro Roig is Executive Director of the Cuban Studies Institute. Roig is an attorney and historian that has written several books, including the Death of a Dream: A History of Cuba. He is a veteran of the Brigade 2506.

_______________________

[1] Philip Shenon, “A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.” Holts, Henry & Company Publishers, New York, 2013., p. 542.

[2] Gus Russo and Stephen Molton “Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys; the Castros, and the Politics of Murder” Bloomsbury USA, New York, NY, 2008, p.51.

[3] Nelson Delgado, Warren Commission testimony, April 16, 1964, Vol. VIII, p. 240-242.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Declassified Items of Oswald Links to the KGB. (2017) United States Department of Justice-FBI-Washington, D.C. 20535. December 1, 1966.

[7] Russo, op cit. P.67.

[8] Ibid. p.70

[9] Ibid. p69

[10] Russo and Molton, p. 455.

[11] The U.S. House Select Committee on Assassination-Mexico City Report, p.125.

[12] Russo & Molton, p. 454.

[13] Jefferson Morley, “Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA.” University Press of Kansas, 2006, p.178.

[14] Shenon, op cit. p. 561.

[15] Russo & Molton,;.238

[16] Brian Latell, “Castro’s Secrets,” eBook, MacMillan Corporate.  First published in hardcover in 2012 by Palgrave MacMillan in the U.S..451

[17] Latell, p.534

[18] Latell, p.473

[19] Associated Press and New Orleans Times-Picayune, September 9, 1963.

[20] Graystone Lynch, “Decision for Disaster,” Potomac Books, 200, p.480

[21] Lynch, op cit, p.477

[22] Lynch op cit p.480.

[23] Latell, p.9.

[24] Latell, p.314

[25] Latell, p.315

[26] Russo & Molton, p,295.

[27] Latell, p. 516

[28] Vincent Bugliois, “Reclaiming History.” New York: Norton, 2007, p.783

[29] Latell, p. 535.

[30] Russo, op cit, p.310

[31] The Latell Report, Cuban Transition Project, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, December 2013.

[32] Russo and Molton, p. 405.

[33] Latell, p.616

[34] Russo and Molton, p.405

[35] Georgie Ann Geyer, “Guerrilla Prince.”  Little Brown and Company, Boston, 1991. P.299

TWENTY UNAVOIDABLE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE [YURI "THE KGB HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH FORMER MARINE SHARPSHOOTER AND U-2 RADAR OPERATOR OSWALD"] NOSENKO CASE

by Tennent “Pete” H. Bagley

There are reasons to believe that the KGB officer Yuri Nosenko genuinely defected in 1964. Here are some that are cited by those who believe it:

a) As every intelligence professional is aware, neither the KGB nor any other intelligence service would, all other things being equal, send one of its own genuine
staff officers as a false defector into enemy hands.  The risk would be too great that he might be influenced or pressured there to tell the important secrets he knows and to expose the very things his deception operation was intended to hide. 

b) The Soviet regime sentenced Nosenko to death in absentia and several KGB sources have said that the KGB was looking for him with the intent to assassinate him.

c) Real KGB staffers suffered real punishment as a result of his defection or as a result of misbehavior uncovered by the KGB’s investigation of the defection.

d) After he was cleared of CIA’s suspicions, Nosenko remained the rest of his life in the United States, became an American citizen, and long helped Western operations against the KGB -- things hardly compatible with a motive to deceive.
 
e) Later defectors from the KGB have testified to the genuineness of his defection and its damage to the Soviet regime. 

f) Repeated CIA reviews and analyses of the case over thirty years have again and again cleared Nosenko of all suspicion.   

g) CIA insiders have stated under oath that Nosenko has told only the truth – with only occasional, normal human errors or exaggerations-- and that he has neither said nor done anything contrary to KGB practices as reported by other genuine defectors.

h) Nosenko named a lot of KGB SCD officers and exposed many “cases.”

1. These are only generalities, of course, and even if they were all fully pertinent to this particular case (which they are not), no generality could ever dispel the specific questions that arise in a counterintelligence investigation.  (It is in errors of detail that deception operations betray themselves.) One might suppose that CIA — given its faith in Nosenko -- has considered and found satisfactory and mutually compatible answers to each and every one of these questions (although no evidence of this has ever appeared in public print). If CIA has not, its faith in Nosenko rests on shaky ground. No objective observer with a grain of skepticism could endorse that faith without clarifying these points of doubt. 

2. Among the questions that must be answered are the following twenty, with reference to the pages where they are discussed in the 2007 book Spy Wars.

(Should these find satisfactory and consistent answers, another twenty will follow.)

1. Nosenko claimed that through the entire years 1960-61 he was deputy chief of the American-Embassy section of the American department of the Second Chief Directorate (SCD) of the KGB – the job which gave him access to all the most important information he gave CIA, especially because he there personally supervised all work against the Embassy’s code clerks and security officer (John Abidian). Then:

a) Why, during that period, was Nosenko performing low-level tasks for the Tourist department, as he himself described and as was independently confirmed in at least one case (“F”)?  While supposedly supervising the SCD’s top-priority work against the American Embassy, Nosenko was handling street-level homosexual provocateurs, recruiting homosexual tourists (one as far away as Sofia), helping the Tourist Department chief in a meeting with an American travel agent, and going abroad as watchdog for Soviet delegations.  (Spy Wars, pp. 94-95, 160-62, 235, 250, 280)   

b) Why did KGB insiders, including one former member of that section and Oleg Kalugin, later deny that he ever held that position? (pp. 160, 210, 235-36)
 
2. How and why did Nosenko preserve and bring to Geneva in 1964 his KGB authorization for travel, in December 1963, to search for the fleeing KGB officer
Cherepanov?  (pp. 87, 167-68, 250) Sub-questions:

a) If he was not deputy chief of the SCD’s American-Embassy section (Question No. 1, above), why was he sent to search for Cherepanov? (pp. 87, 167-68, 250)

b) Why was the authorization (signed by the SCD chief Gribanov) made out to “Lt. Col. Nosenko”, a rank which he had claimed to CIA, whereas under detailed
questioning he admitted he was only being a captain?  Is it only coincidence that he had already falsely asserted in 1962 that he was then a major? (pp. 250-51)

3. Why was Nosenko ignorant of the operational mission to Helsinki of his direct subordinate Kosolapov, as part of an operation to recruit an American Embassy
cipher clerk?  (pp. 157-60, 242)

4. Why did Nosenko fail to tell CIA in 1962 about his surveillants’ recent spotting of American Embassy Security Officer Abidian visiting Penkovsky’s dead drop?  (pp. 16, 147, 203)

5. Why, in 1964, did Nosenko err by a full year – in a manner directly contradicting his career story — about the date of Abidian’s visit to that dead drop?  (p. 88-89, 147-50, 186, 203-4) 

6. If Nosenko had the specific task of watching over Abidian, how does one explain his ignorance of Abidian’s trip from Moscow to his ancestral homeland Armenia? (When Nosenko himself could not answer this question, he felt it threatened his whole life history.) (pp. 186-87)

7. Why did Nosenko in 1962 give false information about (and not know the circumstances of) his boss Kovshuk’s trip to the United States five years earlier, a trip which was actually connected with a penetration of CIA? (pp. 67-71, 185) Is it mere coincidence that while telling CIA of this trip, Nosenko’s two closest associates in Geneva, Guk and Kislov, were precisely the two KGB operatives who had worked with Kovshuk on that trip?  And that Nosenko, having read Kislov’s KGB file, certified that Kislov had no connection with the KGB? (pp. 65-67)

8. How does one explain Nosenko’s telling CIA in 1962 that he knew details of and even participated in the KGB attempt to recruit CIA officer Edward Ellis Smith, and his denial in 1964 of any knowledge of the name or the case?  (p. 188) Or, similarly, his knowing in 1962 and forgetting eighteen months later about KGB relations with the Finnish president? (p. 186)

9. How does one explain Nosenko’s mention in 1962 of the name “Zepp” – which at that moment was of intense interest to KGB counterintelligence – and then forgetting it by early 1964?  (pp. 15-16, 150-55, 162, 203)

10. Was Nosenko really in Geneva in 1962 and 1964 as the security watchdog of a Soviet conference delegation, as he claimed, contrary to expert testimony and contrary to later statements by his KGB bosses?  (pp. 5, 237, 253)

11. How does one explain Nosenko’s many changes of stories about his KGB career, even his date of entry, and the later evidence that the stories were false?   (pp. 93, 160-62, 235, 248-50)

12. How does one explain Nosenko’s inability (or unwillingness?) to describe even the most routine KGB procedures? (pp. 83-86, 191-92, 251-55)

13. Is it true, as Nosenko authoritatively reported, that the KGB first uncovered Oleg Penkovsky, CIA’s great spy, in late 1961 or early 1962 by chance Moscow
surveillance of a British diplomat?  (pp. 21-22, 86-87, 235, 243)

14. Is it true, as Nosenko highlighted to CIA in 1962, that the KGB first uncovered Pyotr Popov, CIA’s great spy in the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence), by chance surveillance of an American diplomat mailing a letter in Moscow in late January 1959?  (pp. 11-12, 24, 68-75, 242-43) How does one equate this with the KGB’s later admissions:

1) that the GRU chief was fired from his post as a result of Popov’s treason, almost two months before the letter mailing, 

2) that KGB surveillants spotted Popov meeting CIA twice, at least two weeks before the letter mailing, and 

3) that it had earlier recruited Edward Ellis Smith, the CIA officer who had supported the Popov case in Moscow?  (p. 16-17, 70-71, 189, 241-43)

15. Did Nosenko really have his claimed inside knowledge about Lee Harvey Oswald in the Soviet Union – despite later contradiction by a KGB chairman and other KGB veterans including Oleg Kalugin? (pp. 83-86, 95-96, 191, 210, 249) If not, where did he get his information?  And why does he continue to make that claim to this day?

16. Did the KGB recruit in Moscow any American Embassy code clerk prior to Nosenko’s defection?  (pp. 156-59, 241-42)  If so, how does one explain Nosenko’s
authoritative claim to the contrary?

17. How does one explain that this ten-year KGB CI operations officer was unable to disclose to the U.S. a single KGB spy who at the time of uncovering, a) was still active, and b) had current access to US or NATO-country official secrets and previously been unsuspected by Western counterintelligence?

18. Why was Nosenko unaware, or not telling, that his close KGB associates at various times were members of the SCD’s department for operational deception? (And why did Nosenko not report on the existence of this department?)  For example,

a) His friend Yuri Guk meeting Nosenko before and after each CIA meeting in Geneva in 1962 (pp. 6, 9, 66, 236); 

b) Aleksandr Kislov rooming with Nosenko in Geneva in 1962 (p. 7, 66, 70-71, 235, 236); 

c) Vladimir Chelnokov taking him on an operational mission to Odessa in 1960 (p. 235).

19. Is it mere coincidence that Nosenko replayed to CIA in 1962 each of these specific cases that had just been compromised to the Americans six months earlier by Anatoly Golitsyn?

a) Preisfreund (pp. 25, 28, 158-59)

b) Vassall (pp. 14, 24, 97, 179, 187, 189, 206, 261)

a) Belitsky (pp. 17, 25, 179)

b) Kovshuk’s “trip” to Washington (pp. 24, 65-66, 69, 75-78)

c) Nine others including a Canadian and a French ambassador and a French businessman (pp. 4, 14, 25, 165, 206).

20. Why did it take the KGB five years, after his partial exposure in the U. S. press, to uncover as an FBI spy the KGB New York officer Aleksey Kulak (“Fedora”), who had confirmed some of Nosenko’s (false) stories?  And then only after Kulak had died of cancer? How does this equate with CIA’s claim that its own analysts previously unaware of the case had managed to identify Kulak in less than one hour using the same published information and obviously having less file information than the KGB about Soviet personnel in New York?  (p. 163-65, 170)

While an objective observer seeks facts or rationalizations to answer each of these twenty questions (in a manner consistent with his answers to the other questions), a twenty-first question will have occurred to him, early on. How and why could so many questions – even any two or three of them -- have arisen about any genuine defector? The questions alone suggest that Nosenko was hiding important KGB operations, including its breaking of American secret ciphers (via recruited American code clerks) and KGB penetration of the staff of CIA. 
                                   
END

https://archive.org/details/SpyWarsMolesMysteriesAndDeadlyGames

If one is foolish enough to consult AI - which I am not, but my bmboficated research assistant Cuddles LaFong is  - it appears that my guess of a disociative state may be in the ballpark. AI says "Yes, violent criminals are sometimes extremely calm after committing their acts. While public perception often assumes a perpetrator would be frantic, panicked, or guilt-ridden, forensic psychologists, criminologists, and law enforcement officers frequently document intense post-crime composure." AI says lots more, but I will spare you. I suppose that after deciding the JFKA was what he was going to do and that he would probably die in the aftermath, Oswald could have been in something like a disociative state even during his visit to Irving.

Is there a CT'er who has a better answer than “He was completely innocent and really had no idea what was going on?”--Lp

Yes, LHO was part of a quickly formed, low-budget conspiracy, around the (bad) luck that the JFK motorcade (revealed publicly on Nov. 19) would make a hairpin turn right in front the TSBD, with its largely empty upper floors, and clear view to a kill.

A perfect set-up. The best place in Dallas to perp the JFKA, and LHO already "had an in."

LHO had a proclivity for shooting at major public figures---see the Walker shooting. He needed convincing?

In fact, LHO had worked out a reasonable escape plan from the immediate TSBD premises, and did escape from there. So good enough on that score.

As for longer-term LHO plans, everything is speculation. In my layman's view, LHO was mentally ill.

Perhaps G-2 had promised LHO passage to Cuba, but actually planned to wax LHO.

LHO was "left holding the bag." Maybe. LHO planned to write his manifesto in Cuba?

A post JFKA-ride was promised to LHO, but fell through---possibly.

The 1,800-mile border to Mexico was wide-open back then, and boats left for Cuba from Mexico daily.

Who knows?

You are pointedly ignoring the subject of this thread. I'm not looking for conspiracy theories. I can weave those all day long. I'm looking for how Oswald's seemingly out-of-character preternatural composure before and after the JFKA is explained in the context of a conspiracy theory (or the LN narrative, for that matter).

Is there a CT'er who has a better answer than “He was completely innocent and really had no idea what was going on?”--Lp

Yes, LHO was part of a quickly formed, low-budget conspiracy, around the (bad) luck that the JFK motorcade (revealed publicly on Nov. 19) would make a hairpin turn right in front the TSBD, with its largely empty upper floors, and clear view to a kill.

A perfect set-up. The best place in Dallas to perp the JFKA, and LHO already "had an in."

LHO had a proclivity for shooting at major public figures---see the Walker shooting. He needed convincing?

In fact, LHO had worked out a reasonable escape plan from the immediate TSBD premises, and did escape from there. So good enough on that score.

As for longer-term LHO plans, everything is speculation. In my layman's view, LHO was mentally ill.

Perhaps G-2 had promised LHO passage to Cuba, but actually planned to wax LHO.

LHO was "left holding the bag." Maybe. LHO planned to write his manifesto in Cuba?

A post JFKA-ride was promised to LHO, but fell through---possibly.

The 1,800-mile border to Mexico was wide-open back then, and boats left for Cuba from Mexico daily.

Who knows?