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

[Benjamin Cole]

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 (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]

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. 

Dear Benjamin,

It's easy for me to identify people who despise father-figure-requiring* James Angleton -- they always say "James Jesus Angleton" instead of "James Angleton."

Factoid: He was given that name by his Mexican mother, he didn't like it, and he never used it.

You also need to realize that Angleton's post-Philby confidant and mentor (and mole-hunting superior, to boot), Bruce Leonard Solie (look him up), was very probably a KGB "mole."

You need to read Tennent H. Bagley's 2007 Yale University Press book, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, to see how scathingly he wrote about Solie, and you need to read Bagley's 2014 follow-up PDF, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars," to realize how scathingly he wrote about another Nosenko-lover, Leonard V. McCoy. I've already told you how you can read them for free.

Then you need to watch Bart Kamp's 10 September 2021 YouTube interview of (JFKA CT!!!) Malcolm Blunt and read (JFKA CT!!!) John M. Newman's 2022 book, Uncovering Popov's Mole, to realize that it very probably was Solie who betrayed CIA's spy, GRU Lt. Col. Pyotr Popov, to the Soviets in early 1957. By reading Bagley's book you'll also learn that Solie "cleared" false (or rogue?)  defector Nosenko in October 1968 via a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report.

I could go on and on, but that's enough for now.

Will they let you watch YouTube videos in Thailand?

-- Tom

*Philby was six years older than Angleton

[Benjamin Cole]

Thanks for your comments and suggested reading material. I do not despise James (Jesus) Angleton. To me, he is just an interesting figure. I used his three names as other authors did, sheer mimicry on my part.

I have no idea whether James Angleton played any role in the JFKA, though I doubt it. He may have stonewalled the WC.

My guess is a splinter group of Alpha 66, or perhaps KGB assets inside the CIA, effectively perped the JFKA. But who knows? I acknowledged in my post Newman's work on Solie as KGB mole.

My only other deduction is the number of witting perps in the JFKA was very small, as in two or three people.

Verily, we can watch Youtubes in Thailand.

As I always say, caveat emptor and draw your conclusions.

[Tom Graves]

Thanks for your comments and suggested reading material. I do not despise James (Jesus) Angleton. To me, he is just an interesting figure. I used his three names as other authors did, sheer mimicry on my part.

Tom Mangold's main source for his Angleton-and-Golitsyn-hating book, Cold Warrior, was probable "mole" Leonard V. McCoy (look him up). David Wise's main source for his book, Molehunt, was Russia-born probable "mole" George Kisevalter (look him up).

They really liked to throw Angleton's middle name in there.

I have no idea whether James Angleton played any role in the JFKA, though I doubt it. He may have stonewalled the WC.

Stonewalled the WC?

How and why?

Did you know that in April 1964, shortly after the CIA began its "hostile" (but non-tortuous) interrogations of Yuri "The KGB Had Absolutely Nothing To Do With Oswald In The USSR" Nosenko, Solie tried to talk W. David Slawson into letting the false defector-in-place-in-Geneva-in-June-1962 / false (or rogue) physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964 testify to the Warren Commission, arguing that Nosenko's contradictions were due to "language difficulties and stress"?

LOL!

My guess is a splinter group of Alpha 66, or perhaps KGB assets inside the CIA, effectively perped the JFKA.

Perped the JFKA?

Why can't you accept the fact that a self-described Marxist former Marine sharpshooter and U-2 radar operator killed JFK all by him widdle self?

The SBT?

The "back-and-to-the-left" business?

The "crummy Carcano" and "Maggie's Drawers"?

"No one could have shot three times and hit the target twice in six seconds"?

"The TSBD stairs and Vicki Adams & Sandra Styles / Roy Truly & Officer Baker / Lee Harvey Oswald"?

"I have a deep psychological need to believe it was a Deep State conspiracy"?

[fill in the blank]

My only other deduction is the number of witting perps in the JFKA was very small, as in two or three people.

SEE ABOVE.

Verily, we can watch Youtubes in Thailand.

Have you watched Bart "The-You-Know-What" Kamp's interview of (JFKA CT!!!) Malcolm Blunt yet?

It's very easy to find -- just google "malcolm blunt" and "nosenko" simultaneously.

As I always say, caveat emptor . . .

What are you selling?

. . . and draw your conclusions.

About what?

[Benjamin Cole]

TG-

Oh, I don't rule out LHO was a lone assassin. Maybe he was.

However, my layman's read of the Z-film is that Gov. Connally is "pushed forward" ~Z-295, and JFK shot at Z-313. Z-film moves at 18 frames a second.

Draw your own conclusions.

Connally's testimony WC/HSCA is that he was pushed forward by the slug that hit him. Given that the slug met resistance all the way through Connally (it was taking out a rib), this makes sense.

This also lines up with Connally's testimony about looking over his right shoulder, seeing nothing, and then beginning to look over his left shoulder, but getting struck. There is a small round hole in the back of Connally's assassination-day shirt, thus ruling out the tumbling bullet theory.

Connally's wife about said the same thing. There is more, but that's enough for now.

I think LHO simply went down the stairs before Adams/Styles.

As for deep psychological needs---who has larger ones, those who need to believe authority told them the truth about the JFKA (a Daddy complex), or those who see conspiracies under every bush? (Outside of my field, so I don't know why people believe in crackpot theories, such as Mossad bombed WTC on 9/11).

I am old now, but maybe a couple of decades of therapy and I can get normal, just before the graveyard calls me home. Or maybe not.

You can give it a try too!

I enjoy your snappy copy. You are obviously a smart guy.

[Tom Graves]

My layman's read of the Z-film is that Gov. Connally is "pushed forward" ~Z-295. Connally's testimony WC/HSCA is that he was pushed forward by the slug that hit him. Given that the slug met resistance all the way through Connally (it was taking out a rib), this makes sense.

Connally's fifth rib was struck tangentially by CE-399 after it had passed through JFK.

This also lines up with Connally's testimony about looking over his right shoulder, seeing nothing, and then beginning to look over his left shoulder, but getting struck. Connally's wife about said the same thing.

Around Z-165, i.e., about two seconds after Oswald's first, missing-everything shot at "Z-124," Connally, having already exhibited a startle reaction and recognizing the sound as a high-powered rifle shot, started turning to his right to look over his shoulder and catch a glimpse of JFK to see if he was okay. By Z-185, however, JFK's face was turned far to his right, and his right forearm was raised in the act of waving back to the folks who were waving to him, and this combination unfortunately prevented Connally from discerning JFK's face. Failing to "see" JFK, Connally had started turning back the other way to try to see if he could catch a glimpse of JFK over his left shoulder when both JFK and he were hit by CE-399.

https://assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/

As for deep psychological needs---who has larger ones, those who need to believe authority told them the truth about the JFKA (a Daddy complex), or those who see conspiracies under every bush?

Your peculiar framing of the question not only answers it but does so in the way I expected you to. 

I am old now, but maybe a couple of decades of therapy and I can get normal.

Miracles never cease.

Having seen (and understood) JFK give a commencement address five months before he died, I'm probably older than you are. Regardless, I started becoming normal, JFKA-wise, about nine years ago when I realized that it didn't make sense that oodles and gobs of bad guys planned the assassination, "patsied" Oswald, shot JFK, planted false evidence, got away, altered oodles and gobs of films, photos, x-rays and documents, and have been covering up their sinister 11/22/63 actions for sixty-two years now.

I enjoy your snappy copy. You are obviously a smart guy.

Thanks.

[Michael T. Griffith]

I think LHO simply went down the stairs before Adams/Styles.

That's impossible, for a number of reasons.

One, Adams and Styles--and Garner--were on the stairs no more than 30 seconds after the last shot, and they were coming from the fourth floor. The Stroud memo proves that Adams went down the stairs before Garner saw Truly and Baker coming up the stairs, keeping in mind that Garner was about 20 feet behind Adams and Styles on the stairs. Both Styles and Garner confirmed that Adams and Styles headed down the stairs "within a matter of moments" after the shooting; indeed, Styles said they headed down the stairs right after they saw Clint Hill climb onto the back of the limo. There is just no way Oswald could have been on the stairs before Adams and Styles were.

Two, hiding the rifle would not have been a quick action but would have taken at least 15 seconds, bare minimum.

Three, even in the WC's royally rigged reenactment, the stand-in took at least 75 seconds to get from the sixth-floor window to the second-floor lunchroom.

Four, Truly was running well ahead of Baker and was already heading up the stairs to the third floor when Baker allegedly spotted Oswald walking into the second-floor lunchroom through the closed or nearly closed foyer door. No one has yet explained how Oswald could have gone through the foyer door in time to be seen by Baker without first being seen by Truly.

If Oswald had gone through the second-floor foyer door before Truly reached the top of the second-floor stairs, he would have been several feet beyond the door by the time Baker reached the landing, and thus would not have been visible to Baker through the window (and keep in mind that in an earlier statement, Baker said that when he first saw Oswald, Oswald was already standing in the lunchroom). But, if Oswald had entered the foyer door "only a second or two" before Baker reached the second-floor landing, per Baker's revised story, then Truly could not have missed seeing Oswald approaching the foyer door. The answer is simple: Oswald did not come down the stairs after the shooting because he left the sixth floor 20-25 minutes before the shooting.

Five, significantly, James Jarman, who watched the motorcade from the fifth-floor window directly under the sixth-floor sniper's nest, said he heard no movement above him after the shots were fired. This is important because Jarman said he could hear bullet shells hitting the floor above him during the shooting. Yet, he heard no sounds of movement immediately after the shooting. This makes complete sense if we assume the man in the window was not Oswald. The man stayed in the window for several minutes and did not begin moving boxes around until at least 30 seconds after the shooting.

Four, Mrs. Lillian Mooneyham was a law clerk who worked in the Criminal Courts Building. She told the FBI soon after the assassination that she saw a man standing in the sixth-floor window four to five minutes after the shots had been fired. From her position at the window on the west side of the County Courts Building, Mrs. Mooneyham had an excellent view of the TSBD. She was a highly credible witness who reported what she had seen in a straightforward, matter-of-fact manner. The Commission made no effort to refute her account, nor did it attack her credibility nor claim she could not have seen what she said she had seen. So, what did the Commission do with this credible and important account? Nothing. The Commission simply ignored it. The man Mrs. Mooneyham saw could not have been Oswald.

In 1968 David Lifton obtained an FBI report from the National Archives which said that a witness at a window on an upper floor of a nearby building had told a Dallas lawyer that she saw "some boxes moving" in the sixth-floor window soon after the shooting. In 1979 the HSCA's photographic experts determined from photographs of the sixth-floor window taken seconds after the shooting and about two minutes after the shooting that boxes were being rearranged "within 2 minutes after the last shot was fired at President Kennedy" (6 HSCA 109). Obviously, Oswald could not have been moving boxes around in the window less than 2 minutes after the shooting, nor could he have been the man seen by Mrs. Mooneyham.

[Tom Graves]

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 (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.

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" putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko via a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report in October 1968, his hiding Office of Security files on Oswald from the Church Committee and the HSCA, 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. In February 1963, Schulz 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. Kostikov was suspected by the CIA and FBI of being the Western Hemisphere head of Department 13*, but 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 . . .