Attack by Assassination: The Soviet Hand Behind the Murder of JFK

Attack by Assassination: The Soviet Hand Behind the Murder of JFK
 
By Nevin Gussack*
 
           The assassination of President John F. Kennedy proved to be an enigmatic and tragic chapter in American history. Despite the “blame the CIA” theories, it is the Soviet Union and its allies that would have more to gain from the assassination of President Kennedy. His Administration was aggressively anti-communist in the areas of nation-building and covert operations. Kennedy also represented one of the last figures in the bi-partisan, anti-communist consensus between many Democrats and Republicans in Washington DC.
 
When he was deputy director of Romanian foreign intelligence in the early 1960s, Ion Mihai Pacepa, recalled that Khrushchev was livid at the American-led naval quarantine of Cuba in 1962. Pacepa wrote that Khrushchev’s “face was purple. He looked inquiringly at (KGB chief) Semichastny, and, when the terrified general nodded, Khrushchev ‘cursed like a bargeman’. Then he threw Semichastny’s cable on the floor and ground his heel into it. ‘That’s how I’m going to crush that viper (Kennedy),’ he cried…Goading himself on, Khrushchev grew increasingly hysterical, uttering violent threats against the ‘millionaire’s whore’ and his CIA masters.”[1] Fidel Castro thundered in September 1963, “U.S leaders who plan on eliminating Cuban leaders should not think that they are themselves safe! We are prepared to answer in kind!”[2] While the American government suppressed all knowledge and suggestions of a Soviet-Cuban conspiracy in the assassination, the USSR and its allies spread disinformation that the CIA and rightwing anti-communists were the real villains. The information below will provide the reader with another perspective on the roles of the USSR and Cuba in the assassination of President Kennedy.
 
Available evidence seemed to point in the direction of a combined Cuban/Soviet hand in the assassination of President Kennedy. There were indications that the highest levels of the American government were aware of this. In a discussion with journalist Howard K. Smith, President Lyndon Johnson admitted, “I’ll tell you something that will rock you…Kennedy tried to get Castro--but Castro got Kennedy first.”[3]

Top level communists and defectors confirmed connections between the Cubans and Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. When asked about the assassination of JFK, former East German foreign intelligence head Markus Wolf commented, “Don’t ask me -- ask Fidel Castro.”[4] According to Brian Latell, defecting Cuban intelligence major, Florentino Aspillaga was ordered by the communist commanders to “suspend all your efforts against the CIA and focus all your equipment, antennas and attention on Texas.” Aspillaga concluded, “They knew. Fidel knew about it.” According to Aspillaga, Oswald visited Cuba in September 1963 with the intention of fighting for “uncle Fidel,” as he called him.[5] Former Cuban agent Oscar Marino claimed that the KGB identified Oswald as a recruit suitable for Cuban intelligence.[6] Marino also alleged that Oswald met with Cuban officials in Mexico, who paid him $6,500 in 1963. According to Marino, Oswald was motivated to kill Kennedy on the account of his strident anti-Americanism.[7] Oswald met with Valery Kostikov, an officer of the KGB’s Thirteenth Department for “wet affairs” in Mexico City. [8] A US intelligence report also stated that Cuban intelligence (G-2) chief Fabian Escalante flew to Dallas on the day of Kennedy’s assassination and returned to Cuba the same day.[9] According to CIA Director of Counterintelligence, James Angleton, Oswald shot Kennedy from the fifth floor of the Texas Book Depository building with the assistance of three Cuban agents: Miguel Casas, Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, and possibly Fabian Escalante, Chief of Cuban Counterintelligence. Casas and Escalante then fled back to Cuba via Mexico, while Lopez killed Jack Ruby, whom Angleton alleged worked for the Cubans.[10]

According to Pacepa, Oswald maintained contacts with the Soviet KGB. In Programmed to Kill, Pacepa wrote, the “innocuous-sounding letters from Oswald and his Soviet wife to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. (made available to the Warren Commission) constituted veiled messages to the KGB. In them I found proof that Oswald was sent to the U.S. on a temporary mission, and that he planned to return to the inscrutable Soviet Union after accomplishing his task.”[11]

Oswald’s record confirmed that he was anti-American to the core. In October 1959, after a two-year tour as a radar operator for the US Marines in Japan, Oswald defected to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, he delivered a letter which stated, “I affirm that my allegiance is to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” He told a US Consul that he had data of “special interest” for the Soviets. While residing in Moscow, Oswald wrote a letter to his brother, which stated in part, “In the event of war I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the American Government.”[12] He was tied to the domestic communist movement in America. Oswald wrote the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA asking for advice as to whether he could work against “anti-progressive forces…above ground” or “always remain in the background, i.e. underground.”[13] He was member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which was the main support network for Cuba in the early years of the Castro revolution. After the assassination, Oswald attempted to reach CPUSA attorney John Abt, while efforts were made by the communists to destroy any records of Lee Harvey Oswald in Fair Play for Cuba Committee offices.[14] What did they have to hide? It should be pointed out the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was funded by the Cuban UN Mission in New York City, according to one of its founders, Dr, Charles Santos-Buch.[15] (AS AN ASIDE: Edward Jay Epstein believed that Oswald was allowed to return to the US as a result of a “State Department eager to demonstrate that it could win back a defector from the Soviets.”[16] Didn’t the State Department conduct a proper security check to see whether Oswald was a recruited agent of the KGB or not? Didn’t they smell a rat once Oswald started working for communist groups in the US?)
 
The Federal government was none too eager to highlight a conscious international communist connection to the assassination of President Kennedy. There were grave concerns that if word got out about the Soviet-Cuban connection to Kennedy’s death, there would be a public outcry and a probable demand for war against Cuba and/or the Soviet Union. In order to avoid a catastrophic war, a lid had to be placed on the Soviet/Cuban connection. Some highly placed Federal officials admitted this point. When General Alexander Haig read a secret report which pointed to Cuban involvement in the assassination of JFK, he “felt a sense of physical shock, a rising of the hair on the back of my neck…I walked the report over to my superiors and watched their faces go ashen.” Haig was told by his superiors, “From this moment, Al, you will forget you ever read this piece of paper, or that it ever existed.”[17] Haig recalled President Johnson saying, “…we simply must not allow the American people to believe that Fidel Castro could have killed our president.’ And the reason was that there would be a Right-wing uprising in America, which would keep the Democratic Party out of power for two generations.”[18] Congress denied Soviet involvement as well. The Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives (1979) alleged, “…the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination” of President Kennedy. The Committee elaborated, “there is no evidence that the Soviet Government had any interest in removing President Kennedy, nor is there any evidence that it planned to take advantage of the President's death before it happened or attempted to capitalize on it after it occurred. In fact, the reaction of the Soviet Government as well as the Soviet people seemed to be one of genuine shock and sincere grief. The committee believed, therefore, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination.”[19] The cover-up of the Soviet/Cuban role in the assassination of Kennedy also had the unintended effect of creating a fertile ground for anti-CIA, leftwing conspiracy theories to flourish, which damaged the credibility of our intelligence community.
 
The Soviets sought to counter speculation that the KGB and/or the Cubans were involved in Kennedy’s death. It appeared that they:
 

• Planted disinformation in friendly newspapers and magazines. It appeared that even Oliver Stone’s inspiration for producing his movie JFK may have been an active measures operation. Stone received a copy of New Orleans District Attorney (DA) Jim Garrison’s memoirs while at a 1988 film festival in Havana. Stone received Garrison’s book from Ellen Ray, the publisher of Philip Agee’s Covert Action Information Bulletin.[20] (It is important to point out that Agee was a CIA defector who became an agent of Cuba and the Soviet Union). Garrison’s memoirs incorporated the disinformation published by the Italian Communist publication Paesa Sera.[21] Moscow praised Garrison. For example, a 1984 Soviet propaganda booklet based on interviews with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison noted “There is something in him from those heroes of the past which only remain on the screen of American cinemas -- the strolling Don Quixote’s, the American Wild West, fighting for the weak and for the poor against insidious and pitiless mercenaries.”[22]

 

• Beamed propaganda to the Free World which blamed the CIA, the military-industrial complex, and American anti-communists in the US for Kennedy’s death. There was a belief in some quarters that JFK sought to end the Cold War and embark on complete détente with the USSR. (This was of course not true since Kennedy gave a speech which warned about the Domino Theory in the event South Vietnam fell to the communists. He also authorized the American Embassy in Saigon and the CIA to overthrow President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was suspected of ineffectively prosecuting the war against the VC and secretly negotiating a peace with North Vietnam.[23]) Such materials were picked up by more credible political and journalistic channels (e.g. Garrison, who was a District Attorney). Johann W. Rush, a journalist and propaganda specialist, reported that officials at the New York Bureau of TASS Vitaly Petrusenko and Sergei Losev, “contributed much conspiracy material to Soviet and Eastern bloc newspapers. Eventually they made direct contact with Garrison and with other conspiracy writers.”[24]

 

• Dispatched a false KGB “defector” Yuri Nosenko to mislead the American intelligence community with the notion that Oswald was not intimately connected to the Soviets or an agent of any kind. In fact, Soviet diplomat Igor Agou specifically cited Nosenko as a source for information on Lee Harvey Oswald to journalist Edward Jay Epstein. Agou stated verbatim, “Just between us…there is no need for you to go to Russia. The best source on Oswald’s visit there is in America…Yuri Nosenko.”[25]

Soviet attempts (some of which were successful) to move the narrative away from its involvement with the Kennedy assassination started immediately after the death of our president. A letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union dated November 23, 1963 and signed by KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny, recommended publishing in a “progressive paper in one of the Western countries” an article “exposing the attempt by reactionary circles in the USA to remove the responsibility for the murder of Kennedy from the real criminals, (i.e.,) the racists and ultra-right elements guilty of the spread and growth of violence and terror in the United States.” Semichastny’s request was approved. Two months later, R. Palme Dutt, the editor of the communist-controlled British journal Labour Monthly, published an article which raised the specter of CIA involvement.[26] A former German Communist Joachim Joesten disseminated disinformation on the JFK assassination in Germany and the United States with his book, Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy (Die Verschwörung von Dallas). His book was published in the United States by Carl Marzani’s communist publishing firm and reviewed by Soviet spy and CPUSA official Victor Perlo in the Soviet publication, New Times.[27] According to the defecting SVR archivist Vassili Mitrokhin, the publication of Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? was masterminded by the KGB. [28] Thomas Buchanan, a CPUSA member who was fired by the Washington Evening Star in 1948, wrote the book Who Killed Kennedy? with the assistance of a friend who was affiliated with the French Communist Party. [29] Paese Sera, the Italian Communist Party newspaper l’Unita, the newspaper of the French Communist Party l’Humanite, and Canadian and Greek leftist newspapers published articles which linked New Orleans businessman and CIA asset Clay Shaw to the JFK assassination. The Paese Sera article was then quoted in the New Orleans press and became a central feature in the investigation into the JFK assassination by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. A CIA internal memo noted that Garrison “attacked CIA more vehemently, viciously and mendaciously than has any other American official or private citizen whose comments have come to our attention. In fact, he (has) outstripped the foreign Communist press, which is now quoting him delightedly.” Ray Rocca of CIA Counter-Intelligence observed in a March 1968 memo, “Garrison has now reached the ultimate point in the logic of his public statements…. This is by and large the Moscow line.”[30]
 
Service A of the KGB was tasked to launch a more sustained disinformation drive, which blamed the American military-industrial complex, American anti-communists, and the CIA for the assassination of JFK.[31] According to Pacepa, this campaign was code-named Operation Dragon.[32] Soviet agent Carl Aldo Marzani (codenamed NORD) was used to disseminate this disinformation in the United States. The KGB also disbursed $15,000 to Marzani’s Liberty Book Club to publish this disinformation. The KGB described Marzani as an “extremely energetic person and is quite devoted to his task.” The KGB also funded leftwing author Mark Lane in his research efforts on the JFK assassination. Lane was given $1,500 by the KGB through intermediaries like Genrikh Borovik. The KGB New York Residency described Lane as a person “with close ties to Democratic Party circles in the US. He holds liberal views on a number of current American political problems and has undertaken to conduct his own private investigation of the circumstances surrounding the murder of J. Kennedy.” CPUSA leaders visiting Moscow in 1971 described Lane’s book on the JFK assassination, Rush to Judgment, as “advantageous to the Communists.” The KGB’s OTU (operational technical) Directorate also forged a letter which implicated rightwing Texas oil millionaire H.L. Hunt in connections with Oswald and the JFK assassination. In April 1977, the KGB informed the Central Committee that it launched additional active measures to expose the supposed role of the “American special services” in the Kennedy assassination.[33] Even after the “fall” of the Soviet Union, the KGB, rechristened the SVR and FSB, continued to peddle disinformation which exonerated the USSR of any involvement in the Kennedy assassination. In fact, Russian leaders and the SVR published Passport to Assassination: the Never-Before-Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him in 1993, which absolved the KGB of any involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald. [34]
 
In conclusion, Constitutional American Nationalists consider the crime and cover-up in the death of Kennedy to be a national travesty in the sense that a hostile foreign power murdered one of our Presidents. If indeed true, this would constitute an act of war. Admittedly, American leaders were caught in a dilemma of “to tell or not to tell.” Telling the truth about the circumstances behind the assassination would have likely brought about a global war, while a cover-up ceded the ground to the pro-Soviet, anti-American far leftist forces. The end result was less respect and trust for the intelligence community, which in turn emboldened our enemies. While Constitutional American Nationalists demand accountability from our intelligence services and oppose their chicanery and support for undemocratic leaders, we veer away from the far left who seek to damage our ability to resist our enemies abroad. We recommend the following measures:
 

• Declassification of all files associated with the Kennedy assassination, including the ones covering Lee Harvey Oswald’s ties to foreign intelligence agencies and domestic extremist groups.

 

• A possible reconvening of a Congressional Committee to reexplore the circumstances of the assassination on the account of new evidence brought to the public domain.

 

• Publication of a counternarrative, if appropriate, that would challenge the views of Oliver Stone, Jim Garrison, and others who blame the CIA, anti-communists, and the military-industrial complex for the murder.

 
 
* Gussack is the author of Turning the Page: My Evolution from Conservative to Civic Nationalism.
 


[1] Ion Mihai Pacepa, Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Ivan R. Dee, 2007) page 185.

[2] Cliff Kincaid “Why the Communists Killed Kennedy” Accuracy in Media Report, November 19, 2013 Accessed From: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/why-the-communists-killed-kennedy/

[3] Vincent Bugliosi Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007) page 1282.

[4] Montaner, Carlos Alberto. “Castro, Jacqueline y la Muerte de Kennedy” El Nuevo Herald, August 27, 1999

[5] “New Book Claims Fidel Castro Knew About Kennedy Assassination” Latin American Herald Tribune Accessed From: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14510&ArticleId=512960

[6] Hugh Williamson “Film: Cuban secret service organized JFK’s murder” The Miami Herald, January 7, 2006 Accessed From: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/marino.htm

[7] “Cubans to blame for Kennedy killing, film claims” Irish Times January 5, 2006 Accessed From: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/cubans-to-blame-for-kennedy-killing-film-claims-1.997894

[8] Jamie Glazov “Programmed to Kill” Frontpagemag, October 3, 2007 Accessed From: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28335

[9] “Cubans to blame for Kennedy killing, film claims” Irish Times January 5, 2006 Accessed From: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/cubans-to-blame-for-kennedy-killing-film-claims-1.997894

[10] “The assassination of president Kennedy, the KGB and the Cuban DGI: an alternate version”
 Univision.com November 25, 2013 Accessed From: http://www.univision.com/miami/the-assassination-of-president-kennedy-the-kgb-and-the-cuban-dgi-an-alternate-version

[11] Jamie Glazov “Programmed to Kill” Frontpagemag, October 3, 2007 Accessed From: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28335

[12] Edward Jay Epstein “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald” Wall Street Journal November 22, 1983

[13] Edward Jay Epstein “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald” Wall Street Journal November 22, 1983

[14] Cliff Kincaid “Why the Communists Killed Kennedy” Accuracy in Media Report, November 19, 2013 Accessed From: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/why-the-communists-killed-kennedy/

[15] “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” Congressional Record December 4, 1963 Accessed From: https://archive.org/stream/CIA-RDP65B00383R000200240072-7/CIA-RDP65B00383R000200240072-7_djvu.txt

[16] Edward Jay Epstein “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald” Wall Street Journal November 22, 1983

[17] Haig, Alexander Inner Circles (Warner Books, 1992) 

[18] Kate Connolly “Did the Cubans assassinate Kennedy?” Daily Telegraph January 4, 2006 Accessed From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1506967/Did-the-Cubans-assassinate-Kennedy.html

[19] Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives 1979 Accessed From: https://archive.org/stream/HouseSelectCommitteeOnAssassinations/House%20Select%20Committee%20on%20Assassinations%20Final%20Report_djvu.txt

[20] Robert Scheer “Oliver Stone Builds His Own Myths” Los Angeles Times December 15, 1991 Accessed From: http://articles.latimes.com/1991-12-15/entertainment/ca-926_1_oliver-stone-builds/5

[21] Max Holland “How the KGB Duped Oliver Stone” Daily Beast April 29, 2017 Accessed From: https://www.thedailybeast.com/was-russia-behind-cia-killed-jfk

[22] “Stone’s JFK: A Masterpiece of Lies” Accuracy in Media Report January A 1992 Accessed From: http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/1992/01a.html

[23] “Stone’s JFK: A Masterpiece of Lies” Accuracy in Media Report January A 1992 Accessed From: http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/1992/01a.html

[24] “Stone’s JFK: A Masterpiece of Lies” Accuracy in Media Report January A 1992 Accessed From: http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/1992/01a.html

[25] Edward Jay Epstein, Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA (Simon & Schuster, 1989) page 13.

[26] Ion Pacepa Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom Attacking Religion and Promoting Terrorism (WND Books) Accessed From: https://archive.org/stream/DisinformationFormerSpyChiefRevealsSecretStrategiesForUnderminingFreedomAttackin/Disinformation%20-%20Former%20Spy%20Chief%20Reveals%20Secret%20Strategies%20for%20Undermining%20Freedom,%20Attacking%20Religion,%20and%20Promoting%20Terrorism_djvu.txt

[27] Armand Moss, Disinformation, Misinformation, and the “Conspiracy” to Kill JFK Exposed (Archon Books, 1987) page 93.

[28] Jamie Glazov “Programmed to Kill” Frontpagemag, October 3, 2007 Accessed From: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28335

[29] Armand Moss, Disinformation, Misinformation, and the “Conspiracy” to Kill JFK Exposed (Archon Books, 1987) pages 29-30.

[30] Max Holland “The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination” Studies in Intelligence Fall Winter 2001 Accessed From: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/fall_winter_2001/article02.html

[31] Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin The Sword and the Shield (Basic Books 2000) page 226.     

[32] Jamie Glazov “Programmed to Kill” Frontpagemag, October 3, 2007 Accessed From: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28335

[33] Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin The Sword and the Shield (Basic Books 2000) page 226.     

[34] Jamie Glazov “Programmed to Kill” Frontpagemag, October 3, 2007 Accessed From: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28335