NODULE X7
OSWALD IN MINSK AND THE U2 DUMP: JANUARY 1960 TO FEBRUARY 1961
For the most up-to-date version of this Nodule go to
http://ajweberman.com/noduleX7.pdf
JANUARY 4, 1960
OSWALD:
December 31, 1959. New Years Eve, I spend in the company of Rosa Agafoneva at the Hotel Berlin, she has the duty. I sit with her until past midnight, she gives me a small "Boratin" clown, for a New Years present she is very nice. I found out only recently she is married, has a small son who was born crippled, that this is why she is so strangly tender and compeling.
January 1, 1959 to January 4, 1960. No change in routine."
On January 4, 1960, OVIR granted OSWALD a stateless passport, which required him to report to the Soviet Passport and Visa Department three times a year:
January 4, 1960 I am called to passport office and finilly given a Soviet document not the Soviet citizenship as I so wanted, only a residence document, not even for fourigners but a paper called "for those without citizenship." still I am happy. The offial says they are sending me to the city of "Minsk". I ask "is that in Siberia? He only laughes; he also tells me they have arranged for me to recive some money through the Red Cross. To pay my hotel bill and expensis. I thank the gentelmen and leave later in the afternoon. I see Remma "she asks are you happy" "yes". [CIA 646-265]
The CIA was unable to determine if it was unusual for OSWALD to be allowed to remain in the USSR: "Not knowing how many would-be defectors have been turned back, it is impossible to say whether the acceptance of OSWALD and five others is unusual. Acceptance of KGB agents is certainly not out of the ordinary." [CIA Les Roades draft]
January 5, 1960. I got to Red Cross in Moscow for money with interruptor (a new one). I recive 5000. Rubles. A hugh sum!! Later in Minsk I am to earn 70 Rubles a month at the factory.
January 7, 1960. I leave Moscow by train for Minsk, Belorussia. My hotel bill was 2200. Ruble and the train ticket to Minsk 150 Rubles so I have a lot of money & hope. I wrote my Brother and my Mother letters in which I said "I do not wish to every contact you again." I am begining a new life and I don't want any part of the old."
January 7, 1960. Arrive in Minsk, met by 2 women Red Cross workers. We go to Hotel Minsk. [located at 11 Leninsky Prospect] I take room and meet Rosa and Stellina, who persons from Intourist in hotel who speak English. Stellina is in 40's, nice, married, young child. Rosa about 23, blond, attractive unmarried excellant English, we attract each other at once.
The Historic Diary:
January 8, 1960 I meet the city mayor, Comrade Shrapof, who welcomes me to Minsk promises me a rent free apartment "soon" and warns me about "uncultured persons" who sometimes insult foriengers. My interputer: Roman Detkof, Head For. Tech. Instit. next door.
JANUARY 10, 1960
“January 10, 1960. The day to myself. I walk through city, very nice." Norman Mailer reported that in Minsk OSWALD'S case was assigned to KGB Officer Igor Ivanovitch Guzmin. Igor Ivanovitch Guzmin told Norman Mailer that it had been decided on the highest levels after the suicide attempt to let him stay, even though his suicide attempt may have been staged. Igor Ivanovitch Guzmin assigned Stepan Vasilyevich Gregorieff to OSWALD. Hundreds of pages later Norman Mailer told his readers these names were pseudonyms. Why not say it at the outset? Norman Mailer determined that the KGB watched OSWALD on January 9, 1969, January 10, 1960, January 13, 1960 and January 30, 1960.
THE MINSK RADIO PLANT JANUARY 12, 1960
Minsk was a center of science and technology. OSWALD received a position in the experimental division of the Minsk radio plant, an apartment, and a subsidy from the Soviet Red Cross. The CIA: "During this period he was also helped financially by various Russians in Moscow, but Marina Oswald did not know the extent of their aid (nor did she indicate she knew their identities)." [CIA Chron. LHO in USSR 1.24.64]
January 12, 1960 I vist Minsk Radio Factory where I shall work. There I meet Argentinian immigrant Alexander Zeger. Born a Polish Jew. immi to Argen. in 1933 and back to Polish homeland (now part of Belo.) in 1955. Speaks English with Amer. accent he worked for Amer. Com. in Argen. He is Head of a Dept. A quialified engenien. in late 40's, mild mannered, likable. He seems to want to tell me somet. I show him my tempor. docu. and say soon I shall have Russ. citiz.
In 1938 Alexander Ziger emigrated from Poland to Argentina where he worked for an American company. This is assuming that "Amer. Com. in Argen" stands for "American Company." (Another possible interpretation is "American Committee." The Office of Inter-American Affairs was known in South America as the "American Committees.") Alexander Ziger returned to Poland in 1956 "homesick for his native land and taken in by their propaganda." The CIA stated: "Available records show that the ship Salta, when leaving Buenos Aires, Argentina, for Odessa, USSR, on July 1, 1956, carried repatriates back to the Soviet Union. Among them were Alexander Ziger, Soviet, age 44, engineer. Ana Ziger, Soviet, age 46...A report of 1957 refers to Alejandro Ziger, a Pole, and radio-telephonic expert, 44 years old, married to Ana Dmitruk, a Pole, 47 years old." [Draft of 518-219] The Zigers native land was by then part of the USSR. The Zigers ended up living in Minsk. In 1957 Ziger applied for an exit visa at the Argentine Embassy, Moscow. He was refused. OSWALD wrote:
...In Minsk the capital of belorussia the ministry of Interia [Inertia?] became responsible in 1960 for determining the eligibility of aplicants for hard to get exit visas too leave the USSR formaly the official progrative of Moscow alone but now that this state ministry in Moscow has "withered away" it becomes all the more difficule to get an exit visa since now one had to go to the area, city and republican state capital commites of beaurocrats and on top of all that a last finial O.K. has to come from increadibly the Moscow ministry of foreign affairs!! [WCE 25 p10]
The CIA identified Alexander Ziger's friend Anatoliy as Anatol Kholodov, after the Warren Report was released. A check of unspecified Agency files on November 18, 1964, revealed "no identifiable information on Kholodov." The Warren Commission believed the Zigers were susceptible to persecution because of their association with OSWALD. Like Rimma Sherakova, the name "Ziger" was changed when Life Magazine printed excerpts from OSWALD'S Historic Diary. Dr. Alfred Goldberg, who wrote much of the Warren Report, "indicated that some of OSWALD'S references to the Zigers had been toned down to protect them." In 1977, Alexander Ziger lived in Minsk. Alexander Ziger died in the early 1990's possibly in Israel. [Slawson: Rankin with I.D. Levine-Transmittal 2-6.2.64, transcript pp. 14-16; WC Inventory & Evidence 3-6 Slawson; WC Rankin Memo 10.6.64; CIA 947-927; Conversation with telephone operator, Minsk, USSR] Jews comprised a large proportion of Soviet dissidents at this time.
OSWALD may have in touch with dissident Russians working for the CIA while he was in the Soviet Union. The name Kozlova was found in his address book:
Vneshtory Bank
Bank of Foreign Trade
Moscow
Neglinnaya Ul. 12
Kozlova (woman's surname)
K-03400 (telephone number)
(792) (possible telephone extension)
The CIA:
TO: Files
FROM: M.D. Stevens
2. The following notation appears on 29 of Oswald’s address book (page 12 of the FBI memo).
Kozlova (woman’s surname)
K-03400 (telephone number)
(792) (possible telephone extension)
3. Security Indices contain information on a number of women with the name Kozlova, none of whom can be identified as being the individual in question; but any of whom might be.
(1) Olympiada Kozlova, #MS-16332, is the aunt of Nikolai Vasilievich Kozlov #51048 - SSD who is currently employed as an agent by this agency. CI/SIG has information on Kozlov which makes reference to various female relatives of his by the name of Kozlova. Olympiada Kozlova, a professor, is the Director of the Moscow Institute of Engineering and Economics. She is active politically, often travels abroad, and in November 1961, was scheduled to travel to Washington, D.C., with a scientific group. It should be possible to obtain this woman's telephone number for comparison with that listed in OSWALD'S address book under the name Kozlova.
(2) One 'Valentina Kozlova, NSC,' was observed to arrive at the Soviet Mission in Tokyo on June 11, 1956, at 10:45 a.m. and to depart at 12:07 p.m. She was not further identified in our information.
(3) One Lyubov Nikolaevna Kozlova, (MS 9995) was an interpreter in the USSR Embassy in London from 1950 to 1953, and in the U.N. in New York City in 1954. [CIA 487, 470, 1299-470].
The 1962 Moscow Telephone Directory lists the telephone number K-03400 for the Ministry of Finance of the USSR located at Neglinnaya Ul. 12. (The number next to it was an extension or room number at the Ministry). The same source also gives the address of the Vneshtorg Bank as Neglinnaya Ul. 12.
The CIA could not or did not want to trace the telephone extension and find out who it went to. My vote goes to Olympiada Kozlova. A bank and economics are involved and one of her relatives had an SSD number which meant he worked for the CIA with ANGLETON at CI/SIG. The reason this SSD number was withheld was because it provides another link to OSWALD and CIA. When the document was declassified in its entirety it turned out I was right.
OSWALD - WORKER - JANUARY 13, 1960 TO APRIL 31, 1960
Jan. 13, 1960 - March 16, 1960 I work as a "checker" metal worker, pay: 700 Rubles a month, work very easy, I am learning Russian quickly now. Everyone is friendly and kind. I meet many young Russian workers my own age. They have varied personalities. All wish to know about me even offer to hold a mass meeting so I can say. I refuse politly. At night I take Rosa to the thearter, movie or operas almost every day I'm living big and am very satisfied. I recive a check from the Red Cross every 5th of the month "to help." The check is 700 Rubles. Therefore every month I make about 1400 R. about the same as the director of the factory! Zeger obseres me during this time. I don't like: picture of Lenin which watchs from its place of honour and phy. Traning at 11.-11.10 each morning (complusery) for all. (Shades of H.G. Wells)
March 16, 1960. I receive a small flat one room kitchen-bath near the factory (8 min. walk) with splendid view from 2 balconies of the river. Almost rent free (60. Rub. A month) it is a Russians dream.
OSWALD'S upstairs neighbor, Maya Gertzovich, reported that in the spring of 1960 the KGB asked her to vacate her apartment for a weekend; she presumed they had planted a listening device in OSWALD'S ceiling.
March 17, 1960 to April 31, 1960 - work, I have lost contact with Rosa after my housemoving. I meet Pavil Golovacha. A younge man my age friendly, very intelligent, a exalant radio tehniction his father is Gen. Golovacha, commander of Northwestern Siberia. Twice hero of USSR in W.W. 2
Pavel P. Golovachev [Ul. Kalinina, 24 Apartment 31, Minsk, Bylorussian Republic 220012, C.I.S. tel (0172) 669-815 home and The Radio Factory (work) (0172) 331-883] was the son of General Golovachev. In one CIA Name List with Traces, by ANGLETON [CIA CSCI 3/781,172 also CSCI - 3/779,817], Pavel P. Golovachev was ignored in favor of his father. In another, he had traces in the CIA's Office of Security of the CIA. Norman Mailer reported that he was considered to be "of a dissident nature." In November 1991 and May 1992, Pavel P. Golovachev was interviewed by a Canadian film crew. He said that shortly after he met OSWALD, a KGB officer approached him at his home. The officer requested that Pavel P. Golovachev meet with him every few months in a Minsk park and report on OSWALD'S activities. Pavel P. Golovachev said he acquiesced, because he believed, "It was entirely possible OSWALD was a CIA spy." In a 1992 article in Izvestia, the current version of the KGB stated that Pavel P. Golovachev was blackmailed into informing on OSWALD. Pavel P. Golovachev added that he reported to Alexander Feydorovich Kostyukov, and that he told OSWALD about his KGB contact in the Summer of 1961. Nevertheless, Pavel P. Golovachev remained in contact with the KGB until OSWALD departed.
OSWALD: MARCH 1960
In March 1960 Marguerite Oswald wrote to the State Department and asked it to contact her son. A cable went to Moscow suggesting a message be relayed to OSWALD. The American Embassy replied to Washington that no action had been taken, because OSWALD could not be located. [DOS prim. ser. 0056; WCE 12C file 294 DOS; SCS 261.1122]
A State Department Operations Memorandum dated MARCH 23, 1960, read:
TO: American Embassy, Moscow
FROM: The Department of State
SUBJECT: CITIZENSHIP AND PASSPORTS - LEE HARVEY OSWALD
Unless and until the Embassy comes into possession of information or evidence upon which to base the preparation of a certificate of loss of nationality in the name of LEE HARVEY OSWALD, there appears to be no further action possible in this case. An appropriate notice has been placed in the Passport Office's lookout card section in the event that Mr. OSWALD should apply for documentation at a post outside the Soviet Union.
PPT: B Waterman: Jn: March 25, 1960.
Reason for refusal: "May have been naturalized in the Soviet Union or otherwise have expatriated himself. Frances G. Knight. March 25, 1960.
A refusal sheet is prepared for insertion in the passport file when information is received which may affect the issuance of the passport. It is used primarily as a 'flag' and does not necessarily mean the person concerned should be denied passport facilities. It does indicate, however, that a lookout card for the named individual should have been prepared. The State Department reported: "The FEA card record shows as follows: March 13, 1960, case to BW (Bernice Waterman)...March 28, 1960, Refusal for Warning..."
The State Department reported:
The information from Moscow, beginning in October 1959, indicating that OSWALD desired to renounce his citizenship and to acquire Soviet citizenship, was sufficient basis for the preparation of a lookout card for use until the expatriation question was resolved. The passport file shows that a refusal sheet was prepared on March 25, 1960, at the same time an Operations Memorandum was drafted to the American Embassy at Moscow. The Operations Memo which was approved and mailed on March 28, 1960, stated in part: 'An appropriate notice has been placed in the lookout section of the Passport Office in the event that Mr. OSWALD should apply for documentation at a post outside the Soviet Union.' The refusal sheet should have led to the placement of a lookout card in the ordinary course of business. At that time, such cards were prepared in the Clearance Section of the Passport Office. A present review of the passport file tends to indicate that a lookout card may not have been prepared or filed. This opinion is based on the following grounds:
(1) No such card has been located.
(2) Under standard operating procedures in effect in March 1960, a file "130" should have been placed on the refusal sheet immediately preceding the name on the index line on the right margin of the sheet when the card had been made. No such file number appears on the sheet.
(3) The passport file contains a record stamp of a 'PT/RCL (Lookout Files)' search made on August 2, 1961, which reports 'No Lookout file record' located on that date.
There is no evidence or information contained in the file to indicate that any action was taken to remove from the lookout card file any card which may have been filed pursuant to the refusal sheet.
NOTES ON OSWALD'S FILE
The file shows refusal sheet prepared by Miss Waterman on March 25, 1960, - "May have been in the Soviet Union or otherwise expatriated himself." Immediately on top of this sheet is a File Request Form prepared by G. Masterton dated April 6, 1960, - PT/FEA. The Search Report on this form shows the following boxes checked
X Classified File
X File Attached
The Search Report is dated March 12, 1960.
The FEA card record shows as follows:
March 28, 1960, Refusal for Warning
April 6, 1960, Conference OM [Office Memo]
April 13, 1960, Same and case to BW
This sequence indicated that the file was sent to file after OM to Moscow was mailed. Then the file was returned to FEA on April 13, 1960, with search request form." [DOS FOIA 11-1-10004-10027; File Request Form G. Masterton April 11, 1960, - PT/FEA.Search Report dated April 12, 1960; NARA 11-1-10004-10027]
A lookout card is a small IBM card kept in a special file maintained in the Passport Office. Without a lookout card a refusal sheet is worthless because a lookout card is an index to numerous refusal sheets. It appears as if a lookout card was prepared for OSWALD then removed from OSWALD'S file. The employees concerned with the preparation of a lookout card on OSWALD were Bernice Waterman, Henry F. Kupiec and John T. White.
OSWALD: MAY 1, 1960
On the day that Francis Gary Powers was shot down, May 1, 1960, OSWALD attended a party at the home of the Zigers:
May Day came as my first holiday all factories ect. closer after spetacular military parage all workers parad past reviewed stand waving flags and pictures of Mr. K. ect. I follow Amer. custom of marking a holiday by sleeping in in morning. At night I vist with the Zegers daughters at an party thron by them about 40 people came many of Argentine origen we dance and play around and drink until 2 a.m. When party breaks up. Leonara Zeger oldest dau. 26 formally married, now divorced, a talanted singer. Anita Zeger so very gay, not so attractive but we hit it off. Her boy-friend Alfred is a Hungarian chap, silent and brooding, not at all like Anita. Zeger advises me to go back to U.S.A., its the first voice of dissention I have heard. I respect Zeger, he has seen the world. He say many and relats many things I do not know about the U.S.S.R. I begin to feel inside, its true!!
OSWALD applied for admission to Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. In May 1960 OSWALD was refused admission by the KGB:
Esteemed citizen HARVEY OSWALD! We ask you to pardon us for the delay in answering your application for studying at the University of the Friendship of Nations, named for Patrice Lumumba. It is evident to us that you desire to study at the University of Friendship of Nations, however, regretfully, we may not satisfy your request in view of the fact that the University was created exclusively for youth of underprivileged countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Concerning citizens of other countries, or stateless citizens, they may be accepted in any other institution of higher learning of the Soviet Union in accordance with existing regulations for them. P. Chikarev (Typewritten Signature) Voloshin (Handwritten signature).
CIA Traces on Voloshin:
1. As of July 1959, P.T. Voloshin was Deputy Chief of the Protocol Division of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR.
2. Pavel Trofimovich Voloshin, identified as a Soviet State Security officer since about 1940, was in the United States (visiting Los Angeles, California, as well as other American cities) with a Soviet dance group in July and August 1959. During September and October 1959 he visited the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City as "Chief Inspector of the Protocol Section of the Ministry of Culture." From July 1961 until January 1963 he was stationed at the Hague in the Netherlands as: "Inturist Representative to the Benelux countries." In view of a probable relationship between Patrice Lumumba Friendship University and the Ministry of Culture, Pavel Trofimovich Voloshin may be identical with the (fnu) Voloshin who signed for Chikarev.
The University of Friendship of Nations was established in February 1960. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated January 1961. In February 1961 it was re-named Patrice Lumumba University. The terrorist Carlos the Jackal studied at this university, along with guerrillas and revolutionaries from Latin America, Africa and Asia. Mahmoud Abbas was a graduate as was Ali Hoseyni Khāmenei supreme leader of Iran and one of the top ten enemies of the press and freedom of expression. OSWALD attempt to infiltrate Patrice Lumumba University was unsuccessful - so he began to take the necessary steps to return to the United States. [DOS Memo for files 11.17.59 Richard Snyder; WCE 72,32] On May 2, 1960, Marguerite Oswald was interviewed by FBI Special Agent John W. Fain. The title of this interview was, "Funds Transmitted to Residents of Russia." Marguerite Oswald had mailed LEE a money order for $25 on January 22, 1960, five months before FBI S.A. John W. Fain contacted her about it. She told S.A. John Fain that she was:
currently employed as a supply mother at the Methodist Orphans home in Waco, Texas, and that she had come to Fort Worth that day in as much as this was her day off...Mrs. OSWALD stated she has been very much upset and uneasy concerning her son LEE HARVEY OSWALD...She stated that following his discharge in September 1959, he came to Fort Worth for a visit of three days and thereafter left Fort Worth with the expressed intention of going to New Orleans, Louisiana. She stated that he indicated to her when he left Fort Worth that he planned to resume his employment with an import-export company at New Orleans...He had engaged in the import-export employment prior to his entry into the United States Marine Corps. She stated that he had mentioned something about his desire to travel and said something about the fact he might go to Cuba. Mrs. OSWALD stated that shortly after LEE arrived in New Orleans she received the following letter postmarked at New Orleans 'Dear Mother: Well I have booked passage on a ship to Europe. I would have had to sooner or later, and I think it is best that I do it now. Just remember above all else that my values are very different from Robert's or yours. It is difficult to tell you how I feel. Just remember this is what I must do. I did not tell you about my plans because you could hardly expected to understand. Lee.' Mrs. Oswald stated she was very much shocked and surprised later to learn that he had gone to Moscow, Russia. She stated she has no idea how he got there but she does know that he had saved up about $1,600 from his service in the Marines. She stated that he did not previously discuss with her any intention to go to Moscow. She stated he had never shown any proclivities for the ideologies of Communism. She stated that he had never expressed any sympathy for Russia or the Communistic system. She stated that he was always a studious type of individual and that he read books that were considered 'deep.' Mrs. Oswald stated that she would not have been surprised to learn that LEE had gone to South America or Cuba, but that it had never entered her mind that he might go to Russia or that he might try to become a citizen there...She stated she was greatly surprised and disappointed that he had taken this action. She stated that she has suffered a great deal of embarrassment as a result of inquiries from newspaper reporters concerning LEE.
Robert Oswald was also interviewed. He told the FBI that he "had never known LEE HARVEY OSWALD to have any sympathy for or connection with Communism before this occurred." On May 25, 190 J. Edgar Hoover sent a copy of this interview to Richard Helms. The CIA's Records Integration Group routed it to CI/SIG. The CIA reclassified this document from Confidential to Secret on May 25, 1960. [WCD 692] On May 25, 1960, CIA's Plans component generated an OSWALD index card that listed him as a Soviet citizen living in Moscow:
OSWALD, LEE HARVEY
SEX M DOB OCTOBER 18, 1939 074-500 DBF -49478
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA May 25, 1960 P7
CIT USSR
MOSCOW, USSR
Ex-U.S. Marine, who upon his discharge from the Marine Corps., September 1959 traveled to USSR to renounce his U.S. Citizenship.
The number 074-500 was a CIA file entitled "USSR Miscellaneous" and consisted of 43 CIA documents from 1948 to 1977. [Allen v. DOD 003387 1519; CIA 2-524] Why was this card filed under this category? Why wasn’t a 201 File opened?
MARGUERITE: MY SON HAS BEEN DOUBLED
The FBI reported that on or about January 26, 1961, Marguerite Oswald appeared at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. and advised that she had come to Washington to see what could be done to help her son.
Mrs. Oswald said she had come to Washington to see what further could be done to help her son, indicating that she did not feel that the Department had done as much as it should in his case. She also said she thought there was some possibility that her son had in fact gone to the Soviet Union as a United States secret agent, and if this were true she wished the appropriate authorities to know that she was destitute and should receive some compensation. Mrs. Oswald was assured that there was no evidence to suggest that her son had gone to the Soviet Union as an agent, and that she should dismiss any such idea.
Marguerite Oswald spoke with D. E. Boster, Edward J. Hickey and D. E. Boster. In May 1992 the CIA Historical Review Committee released the CIA's copy of the State Department's "Memorandum of Conversation" of this meeting. The CIA copy was stamped "Limited Use - For Background Only. Pro anus [illegible] thru OCR required for any use [illegible] CIA." In 1993 Boster stated: "At this point I don't remember precisely what she said but it certainly was that she suspected that at least that he might be an agent. I thought this was just totally crazy. Frankly, I don't think she knew what she was talking about." No matter what D. E. Boster told Marguerite Oswald she remained convinced her son was a CIA Agent. In early November 1963 Marguerite Oswald, a registered nurse, told a patient that her son was "a U.S. Government employee or agent." [FBI DL 89-43-1283, DL 89-43 11.22.63 Brown & Brown; CIA 261, 1122; OSWALD DOS File 1-2661, 1.26.61 serial 0075]
The Warren Commission noted that "Mrs. Oswald had introduced a statement to the effect that she suspected her son to be a CIA Agent." The Warren Commission asked Richard Helms, and David E. Murphy, if OSWALD had been a CIA agent: "Mr. Helms replied that he had not been. Mr. Willens then asked if there were any way of proving this. Mr. Helms remarked that in him and David E. Murphy, Chief, Soviet Russia Division, the Commission had the two Clandestine Service Officers who certainly would know whether or not OSWALD had been a CIA agent in the Soviet Union. He then said the Commission would have to take his word for the fact that OSWALD had not been an agent." [CIA 256] D.E. Boster had no idea OSWALD worked secretly for ANGLETON. David E. Murphy was unaware of OSWALD'S connection to ANGLETON. Richard Helms may or may not have known.
In June 1960 Marguerite Oswald told the FBI the actions of her son were so uncharacteristic, she believed he might have been kidnapped while on the way to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer College, and that an impostor could be using his identification. To substantiate her theory, she cited a letter from the college inquiring why he had not shown up for the fall semester. On June 3, 1960, J. Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum to the State Department: "There is a possibility that an impostor is using OSWALD'S birth certificate." J. Edgar Hoover wanted State Department documents on OSWALD. When OSWALD returned to the United States, OSWALD was asked if he had brought his birth certificate with him to Russia. He told the FBI he had not.
Marguerite Oswald was a hostile witness when she testified before the Warren Commission. In November 1966 J. Edgar Hoover recommended that the name of Marguerite Oswald be placed on the Protective Research List of the United States Secret Service "because background is potentially dangerous; Subversive; Evidence of emotional instability (including unstable residence and employment record) or irrational or suicidal behavior." Marguerite Oswald died on January 18, 1981, at age 73.
Davis Eugene Boster, (September 14, 1920 - July 7, 2005) of the Soviet Division of the Department of State, responded to J. Edgar Hoover. D. E. Boster was born on September 14, 1920. From 1939 to 1942 he worked as a newspaper reporter. He was in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1947. D. E. Boster was contacted in June 1993. He said that the Navy had trained him in the Russian language from 1946 to 1947, but he was never with the Office of Naval Intelligence. He became Attaché at the U.S. Embassy, Moscow, in July 1947. In 1949 he returned to Washington, became a Foreign Affairs Analyst and an International Relations Officer at State Department Headquarters and by January 1958, he was Special Assistant to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. In 1959 he was working as a Sovietologist for the Soviet Section (SOV), and was the Officer in Charge of Bilateral Political Relations, Office of Soviet Union Affairs. In the early 1960's, D. E. Boster was transferred to the American Embassy, Mexico City. He remained at this post until January 1964, when he went back to Washington to work in the Office of Inter-American Affairs. D. E. Boster informed J. Edgar Hoover that the State Department had no information on an OSWALD impostor. In 1993 D.E. Boster had no recollection of this correspondence.
J. Edgar Hoover cabled the Paris Legal Attaché and ordered him to investigate the possibility that OSWALD had been kidnapped. On July 27, 1960, September 27, 1960, October 12, 1960, and November 3, 1960, the FBI received information on OSWALD. These cables from the Paris Legal Attaché were highly deleted because they involved liaison with foreign police agencies. Other cables stated, "OSWALD was not in attendance at Albert Schweitzer College in Churwalden, Switzerland," and that there was no information on an OSWALD impostor. [FBI List A 105-82555 WFO; DOS serial 0070-7.11.60; FBI 105-82555-8,5-11.3.60, 9-9.27.60, 10-10.12.60; WCD 834 p9]
Marguerite Oswald's speculations stemmed from the fact that she knew her son LEE better than anyone else in the world. She had lived with him for 16 years on a day-to-day basis; she knew he was not a Communist. She knew that something was happening but she wasn't sure what it was. Hoover could not understand how someone who was supposed to go to Albert Schweitzer College ended up defecting in Moscow and took the OSWALD imposter theory seriously. On June 18, 1960, OSWALD was issued a hunting license. Combined with it was a registration of hunting weapons that listed a single-barreled 16-gauge shotgun belonging to OSWALD. Had OSWALD been allowed to purchase this weapon because he had furnished the KGB with information? Had he told the KGB he feared reprisals from the CIA, even in the Soviet Union? Marina Oswald recalled only one occasion when he went hunting. Pistols and rifles were prohibited by Soviet law. OSWALD reportedly was irritated because the Soviet Government did not allow him to own a pistol. [NYT 11.27.63] Peter Wronski reported that OSWALD told his girlfriend Ella German [Ella German Prohorchik Uritskovo Ul, 4, Apt 108, Minsk, Bylorussian Republic 220050 C.I.S. Tel. (0172) 333 018] that he was hunted in Moscow by Soviet agents. Ella German:
Alec said to me that he came to live in Minsk because it was more out of the way - in Moscow there was too much attention being paid to him. He said that in Moscow he was sort of 'famous' when he first arrived and that people from the U.S. Embassy tried to hunt him down to kill him. I didn't believe that Alec returned to the U.S. When people told me that I insisted, 'No, that could never be.' Because he had always told me that he was afraid to return to the United States because it was 'bang-bang' for him if he ever went back.
Ella German told Norman Mailer the same thing:
Once, after they first started going out, he was quite upset. It was when news came to Minsk that an American U-2 had been shot down over Soviet territory, and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had been captured. LEE asked her 'What do you think, Ella? Can it damage me because I'm American?' She told him not to worry personally, because no one can say you are responsible. She tried to calm him down and talked to him nicely. She wasn't really sure, but she did want to support him. It was their most emotional moment yet. LEE told Ella that when he lived in Moscow he was afraid of Americans more than Russians. In fact, he told her, the Soviet authorities had sent him to Minsk because he would be safe there. He even said, 'Here in Minsk I'm invisible. But when I came to Moscow I was really outstanding.' Americans had been very interested in him, he told her, and had been hunting him and wanted to kill him. She thought maybe he had offered some information to obtain a Soviet citizenship, information Americans didn't want given out. He said, 'If I go back to America, they'll kill me.' It made him more interesting, but she didn't believe it was real. She just thought they were passing remarks. [New Yorker 4.10.95]
OSWALD AND THE U-2 DUMP SPRING 1960
Evidence suggested that sometime in the spring of 1960 OSWALD gave the Soviets the information they needed in order to shoot down the CIA's U-2 spy plane, which was developed by Deputy Director/Plans Richard Bissell. OSWALD wrote: "After death of Stalin and peace reaction, then anti-Stalin reaction. A peace movement leading up to the Paris conference. The U-2 incident and its aftermath." In order to do this, OSWALD would have had to made contact with a Russian Intelligence Service.
OSWALD'S KGB POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS: SPRING OF 1960
ROSA KUZNETSOVA
7/18 Moscow, K31 (?), Ul. Zhdanova
(above is an address)
Minsk Ul. Karla Marksa No. 35
Kon. Narokhsov. (? Tel. 206311
Comrade Dyadev Room 279
(Illegible)
20575 Sharapov
Minsk
House No. 4 Apt. 24
Ul. Kalinina
Kuznetsova, Rosa
Intor. Hotel “Mink”
92-463
House 30 Apt 8
Ul. Kola Miskneva
Nel Norodovskvim
122 In of Foreign Languages
These entries for "Rosa" were in OSWALD'S address book:
(1) Kuznetsova, Rosa Inter. Hotel Minsk 9-2-463.
(2) Kuznetsova, Rosa Inter Hotel Minsk 9-2-463 House 30 Apt. 8 Ul. Kola Miskneva (?).
(3) Rosa House 130 Apt. 8.
(4) Rosa House 13 Apt. 8 Karla Oginkneta (Liebknecht?) Street (?).
(5) Rosa Karl Liebnecht Street 130, apartment 8. Telephone 9-2-463.
The CIA: "Traces: None on Kuznetsova or her address. The Minsk Telephone Directory gives 9-2-462 as the number of Inturist, Minsk Hotel. 9-24-463 is not listed." On January 28, 1964, a CIA staff employee, presumably from Counter-Intelligence, generated this document:
Rosa Kuznetsova, former wife of Augustin Trueba (Calvo), may be identical with the Rosa Kuznetsova who was shown in the address book as being with Intourist at the Hotel Minsk."
In 1993 the CIA released this document:
TO: Chief/Research Branch/OS/SRS
FROM: M. D. Stevens
SUBJECT: LEE HARVEY OSWALD
Address Book
Rosa Kuznetsova
2. According to information in a July 27, 1960, IRD report on a May 1960 interview with Augustin Trueba (Calvo), #110 066 Rosa Kuznetsova is the first wife of Augustin Trueba and at that time (May 1960) was living in Moscow with their daughter Ludmilla Kuznetsova.
3. Augustin Trueba was described as a 36-year-old married male who had been repatriated to Spain from the USSR in December 1956 after having left Spain to go to the Soviet Union in 1939 and having remained there. In October 1959 he walked into the Office of the Labor Attaché of the U.S. Embassy, Spain, and offered information about his work in the Soviet Union; he eventually was recruited to supply positive information. He was given the pseudonym of Sergei Petrovich Ivanov.
4. Augustin Trueba's polygraph in May 1960 reflected that he was withholding information regarding: helping or working for Soviet Intelligence and being sent to Spain by the Soviets, signing an agreement to work for Soviet Intelligence, information about Communist and Komsomol membership and other factors; and that he had discussed his CIA work with his wife and others. During his IRD interview, which was conducted in Spain, Augustin Trueba discussed the possible effect on his former wife, Rosa Kuznetsova, and their daughter should his association with CIA be discovered by the Soviets amd commented that he had caused his daughter enough trouble, suffering and punishment, in that she did not know who her father was and had not had the benefit of his guidance, etc. since he had left his wife when his daughter was quite young. He mentioned that on his way from “Magadan to Spain” (time not stated) he stopped in Moscow and while there visited Rosa Kuznetsova’s residence. She was not there, he said, but his daughter opened the door and talked with him while he waited for her to return. (It is not clear whether or not she did return while he was there. This could probably be resolved by asking Mr. Stoiaken who conducted the interrogation). He said that his daughter did not recognize him and did not know him to be her father. According to Trueba he did not correspond with his former wife or their child or with anyone in the USSR. His current wife, Felicia Calvo, he said, was corresponding with her sister who lived near Moscow. According to Trueba, he met Rosa Kuznetsova sometime in 1945 and married her later that year or in early 1946; He stated that at the time she work for GIK as an audio technician. The child he said was born November 20, 1946. He left her some time in 1947 and as he recalled he received a divorce from her in October 1947. He got a divorce he said, because she became physically unattractive to him and because he heard rumors that she had been having an affair with some other man at her place of employment. After giving a long detailed story regarding the divorce, its costs etc. TRUEBA admitted that he did not in fact receive a divorce and that there was only a separation. He added that his present wife had met Rosa Kuznetsova sometime during the period 1950 /1954 while both were attending the Moscow Juridical Institute. He said, in fact, that his present wife had also met his daughter, Ludmilla Kuznetsova, and that during the period they were awaiting repatriation to Spain, Ludmilla spent quite a bit of time with him and his present wife. During the IRD interview Augustin Trueba, who admitted that he had lied on various accounts, became uncooperative and bluntly refused to cooperate further. (Information concerning Rosa Kuznetsova is contained on pages 3, 6 and 7 of the July 27, 1960 IRD report. See copy attached.) Signed M. D. Stevens.
The IRD (Information Research Development) arm of British Intelligence used Media and 'Academic' fronts, often with the CIA, such as Encounter Magazine (1953, exposed as CIA front 1967). Trueba must have been a high value intellectual but I can find no traces on him except that Agustin Trueba Calvo was born in Santa ??? in 1923 and his wife Felisa was ... Trueba' s brother was shot by the Spanish Fascists and his mother spent 13... [Homage to Spanish Exiles Voices of the Spanish Civil War Nancy MacDonald]
On January 31, 1964, Birch D. O’Neal, Chief, CI-SIG signed a Memorandum for the Record in response to the document about Rosa Kuznetsova having been married to Augustin Trueba. Based on the description of Rosa Kuznetsova furnished by the Historic Diary, - lived in Minsk, blonde, 23, O’Neal concluded the two Rosa Kuznetsovas were not identical. After O’Neal spoke with Raymond Rocca, the latter ceased to conjecture:
The possibility of these two individuals being identical was discussed with Raymond G. Rocca of CI Staff and he expressed the opinion that based on his knowledge of the case it appeared quite clear to him that the Rosa Kuznetsova concerning whom entries were made in the address book was identical with the Rosa Kuznetsova referred to in the diary.
People with the same name are not necessarily the same person, however, the CIA found no traces in Minsk of a tourist guide, or anyone else named Rosa Kuznetsova, nor could it verify that 130 Karl Liebnecht Street was a valid Minsk address. How could CIA explain this away? OSWALD wrote: "I study russian elemantry and advanced grammas from text books with a English speaking Russian intourist teacher by the name of Rosa Agafonava, Minsk January to May 1960." The Warren Commission remarked: "Reference to 'Rosa Agafanova' probably should be to 'Rosa Kuznetsova'." [CIA 458, 1306-471, 1304-473, 1545-458 rel. 5.18.82; WR p833 fn 116 WCE 93 p340] Eric Titovitz, who knew OSWALD at this time, reported Rosa Kuznetsova died in January 1992 in Minsk. Eric Titovitz became a neurosurgeon and professor.
SHARAPOV
OSWALD'S address book same page as the entry for Rosa Kuznetsova:
7/18 Moscow K31 (?) Ul. Zhdanova
(above is an address)
Minks Ul. Karla Marksa No. 35
Kon. Narokhsov (?Tel 206311)
Comrade Dyadev Rom 279
(Illegible)
20575 Sharapov
Minsk
House No. 4. Apt
Minsk House No. 4. Apt 24
Ul. Kalinina
Kuznetsova, Rosa
Intor. (Intourist?) Hotel “Minsk”
92-463
House 30, Apt. 8
Ul. Kola Miskneva (?)
Nel Norodovskvim
112 In (Institute) of Foreign Languages
20575 Sharapov
Minsk House
No. 4, Apt. 24
UL. Kalinina.
From (deleted) To: Chief Research Branch SRS: According to the diary on January 8, 1960 OSWALD was met by the Mayor of Minsk Shrapov, who welcomed him to the city. The name SHARAPOV and the phone number 20575 were found on pages 45 and 81 of the address book, and the notation Comrade Sharapov 20525" was on a paper found in OSWALD'S possession by New Orleans Police in 1963.
Traces:
1. Vasili Ivanovich Shrapov has been Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Minsk City Council since June 1954.
2. The 1963 Minsk Telephone Directory lists the following office under the number 20575: The Receptionist of the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the City Council of Worker's Deputies. Address: Karla Marksa 12.
Minsk House No. 4, Apt. 24 UL. Kalinina was OSWALD'S address in Minsk. Warren Commission presumed "Shrapov" and "Sharapov" were identical. The CIA ran traces on Sharapov:
TO: Chief, Research Branch/SRS
FROM: M. D. Stevens
SUBJECT: LEE HARVEY OSWALD CASE (Address Book)
C. Sharapov could conceivably have referred to one of several persons by that name in Security Indices:
(1) Lt. Col. Nikolai Georgeiyevich Sharapov, who is described as an Russian Intelligence Service career officer, is an old time Chekist with interrogation experience. In 1942 he was chief of a small counter-espionage section in the Second Directorate of the NKVD [the predecessor to the KGB]. In 1942 he held the rank of Captain and sometime after February 1954 became the Chief of the Seventh Chief Directorate Section of the MVD [the domestic counterpart of the KGB]. He is said to have participated in the arrest of Beria. Nikolai Georgeiyevich Sharapov was born about 1909, was married, and as of 1954 had a 13-year-old son. He also had daughters, aged seven and three, by a mistress, Olga Khokhlova. It should be noted that Nikolai Georgeiyevich Sharapov has a son about OSWALD'S age. In a February 24, 1955 CIA information report, 'KGB Organizations, Functions and Personalities,' Nikolai Georgeiyevich Sharapov was listed as the KGB (X Directorate) Independent Section, Surveillance Section (NN), Sub-Section Chief.
(2) According to the 1930 testimony of E. Y. Belitskiy aka Yefim Belitskiy, the father of Boris Yefimovich Belitskiy, #175069-SSD, one P. I. Sharapov was at one time a director of the All-Russian Textile Syndicate in New York City, as he (E. Y. Belitskiy) also had been. The Syndicate, he said, was actually part of the Soviet Government and was controlled as such.
See attachment regarding Boris Y. Belitskiy.
(3) According to information furnished to the FBI in 1948 by Mikhail Ivanovich SAMARIN (aka Mr. Gregory) AI 116, one Lt. General Andrei Rodionovich SHARAPOV of the Soviet Military Staff Committee at the United Nations (as well as Lt. General Alexander Filippovich) was involved in Soviet espionage. According to SAMARIN he obtained this information during a discussion he had with Eugene Vasilievich GLAKHOV of the Soviet U.N. Delegation in about June 1948. According to SAMARIN, General Sharapov took over all the duties of General VASILIEV, Head of the First Department of Soviet Intelligence in the United States, when he later departed – apparently shortly before June 1948. [CIA 1296-469]
The document in the foregoing appeared contained the notation: “THIS IS OFFICE OF SECURITY INFO. MR. BRUCE SOLEY (SOLIE) OF SECURITY TOLD BIRCH O’NEAL C/CI/SIG THAT IS CAN BE RETAINED IN DD/P FILES. AED MARCH 17, 1964.
ATTACHMENT
According to several sources, Belitskiy is an associate of Aline Mosby, whose name appeared in OSWALD'S address book...She is also mentioned in CI/SIG's cover memorandum dated January 10, 1964.
According to Joseph Doyle SR/2/CE, #56948 SD & SSD, in September 1958, Aline Mosby was in direct contact with Boris Y. Belitskiy, a Russian official at the Brussels World's Fair, and "was the center of a great deal of activity for (him). Doyle stated that Belitskiy, who was the head of the British Division of Radio Moscow had been an interpreter for the Russians at the Brussels World Fair. He previously had been in the United States with his father who was with AMTORG in the late 1920's/ early 1930's. Joseph Doyle said that Belitskiy attended school in New York City and that the family returned to Russia in 1936 or 1937.
With further reference to Mosby Doyle noted that there was a direct relationship between Mosby, Koch (Carl Henry Koch #50001) and Volkoff (George Volkoff #152385 -SSD) - all of whom had been of interest with reference to Belitskiy.
Other whom Mosby knew included Alexander Dolberg, #165651 - SSD, to whom she was introduced by McKinney H. Russell #83853 - SSD, still another who was of interest in connection with Belitskiy. CI/SIG was advised in late 1958 regarding the above individuals and informed that CI/OA was also interested in them.
According to information furnished by Fitzgerald Curtis Smith, #176178 - SSD, during a debriefing in June 1959, Boris Y. Beitskiy, whom Smith knew in Moscow was in great fear of being purged "as was his father, a Russian Jew, who had once lived in New York." According to Smith, Belitskiy knew and trust no citizens in Moscow other than himself (Smith) and Aline Mosby, UPI correspondent in Moscow. Smith said Belitskiy met Aline Mosby at the Brussels World Fair in the summer of 1958, at the same time he met Smith. Smith said he subsequently contacted Belitskiy in Moscow in December 1958, through NBC Correspondent Irvine R. Levine.
Another who knows, or has known, Aline Mosby is former Agency employee George Winters, #55769. Winters stated in an interview in November / December 1960, when discussing Americans in Moscow who lived beyond their means, that newspaper man Harry Shapiro was a very heavy loser at poker – to the extent that “one got the impression that he was on the Soviet budget.” Shapiro, he said, had a Russian wife who was more aggressive than he. Winters added that newspaper woman Aline Mosby was in Shapiro’s office; and commented that she “stuck mostly to the foreign circuit rather than the Embassy circuit.” She said that she had been in the hospital on several occasions during the previous year, so that “one didn’t see too much of her” and added that according to gossip one hospitalization was occasioned by an abortion.
Another newspaperwoman in Moscow, whom Winters mentioned, was Priscilla Johnson #71589-DL. She has been mentioned in newspaper as one who recalled having come in contact with LEE HARVEY OSWALD in Moscow, where she interviewed (or talked) with him. Her name, like Mosby’s, was listed in his address book under her last name only.
Mosby was born on July 27, 1922 in Missoula, Montana; and graduated from the University of Montana in 1943. She was employed by United Press International in Seattle, Washington, from 1943 to 1945, and was Hollywood Correspondent for UP from 1945 to 1957. According to the UP Bureau Manager at Los Angeles, she resigned voluntarily in 1957 and her employment was satisfactory. According to confidential informant R-1, during an Agency investigation in the fall of 1958, she was dropped by UP when she was subpoenaed in connection with legal suits against Confidential Magazine, for which she had done re-write without the knowledge of UP. She went to the Brussels World's Fair as a stringer of the North American Newspaper Alliance. She was considered loyal by her associates during the above period; but was described as the co-existence type who associates with the Russians - plays footsie with the Russians. No informant questioned her loyalty
In January 1960, Mosby reportedly was introduced on the Dave Garroway show, “Today” as NBC News’ Correspondent; but in a State Department dispatch of December 12, 1960, which listed “Western Correspondents in Moscow” she was named as representing UPI.
According to House Un-American Activities Committee records, Aline Mosby did a motion picture type article for the Daily Worker in 1947; wrote an article for the Daily Worker at Laguna Beach, California, in 1947; and contributed a column to the Daily Worker on November 23, 1956.
M. D. Stevens
Was OSWALD referring to the Mayor of Minsk or was he trying to hide his contact with a someone else named Sharapov? Was Lt. General Andrei Rodionovich Sharapov a high-level KGB contact of OSWALD'S? Was he the man who OSWALD gave the information the Sovs needed to shoot down the U-2? Peter Deryabin revealed that Lt. Col. Nikolai Georgeiyevich Sharapov was "Colonel Sharapov who used to work at one time in the Counter-Intelligence Directorate of the KGB as the chief (or deputy) of one of the CIA Sections." [CIA 1007-951; 469]. When the CIA first released this document it withheld the Attachment on Mosby then eight and one-half blank pages followed, although two of them contained the handwritten date, March 9, 1954. [CIA 1296-469] Scott Malone: "Mosby was a commie-humper."
7/18 Moscow K31 (?) Ul. Zhdanova
(above is an address)
Minks Ul. Karla Marksa No. 35
Kon. Narokhsov (?Tel 206311)
Comrade Dyadev Rom 279
(Illegible)
20575 Sharapov
Minsk
House No. 4. Apt
Minsk House No. 4. Apt 24
Ul. Kalinina
Kuznetsova, Rosa
Intor. (Intourist?) Hotel “Minsk”
92-463
House 30, Apt. 8
Ul. Kola Miskneva (?)
Nel Norodovskvim
112 In (Institute) of Foreign Languages
On the same page with the names of the other suspected intelligence agents the name Dyadev appeared. The CIA:
Page 45 of the address book lists "Dyadev, room 279, Kon. Narokhsov (?) Tele. 26311," and a paper found in OSWALD'S possession in 1963 by New Orleans Police contained a reference to "Comrade Dyadev 279 Kon. Na Rokhsov (?). Traces: None on Dyadev. Phone number 26311 is listed in the 1963 Minsk phone directory as that of A. A. Chubb, Leninskiy Prospect 16, apartment 67.
The CIA:
Tel. number 26311, listed on page 45 of the address book, appears to be connected with DYADEV, (fnu) q.v. According to the 1963 Minsk telephone directory, this number is assigned to A. A. Chub of 16 Leninsky Prospect, apartment 67." Note: The KGB and MVD offices are at 15 and 17 Leninsky Prospect, Minsk. Traces: None.
Dyadev. Traces: As of 1954 a (fnu) Dyadev was reported to have been Deputy Minister of the Food Production Industry of the BSSR.
According to the Warren Commission "Vera Golevna (?) Alizberg" was listed as "German teacher consrv."
TO: The Record Date August 14, 1970.
From: Edna Mendoza
SUBJECT: OSWALD, Lee Harvey
Address Book - FBI Report December 31, 1963.
On page 11 of the above FBI report, showing listings in Subject address book on page 27 there appears the name "Alizberg, Vera V...." followed by a notation "illegible."
The files of OS contain no information identifiable with the name as listed above. In view of Subject's poor spelling, as evidenced in the address book, a possibility exists that the name was written phonetically. A possible correct spelling might be "Eliasberg" or "Eliazberg."
The following was found in the files of OS/Security Reseach Staff regarding Vera ELIASBERG.
Vera ELIASBERG #350923, was previously known as Vera FRANKE, or Erna Vera FRANKE. As Erna Franke she was listed in the “German Wanted List” for 1936 – 1938 with birth date indicated as December 21, 1910, at Leningrad in a section captioned Address Unknown.
As Erna FRANKE she was listed in the German Security Handbook of the USSR as follows:
Erna FRANKE 21.12.10 Leningrad Stenotypist in RSHA A 2 (a category described as “open terrorist attacks and forgery.”)
A reliable confidential informant of SRS has advised that Erna FRANKE was born in Russia of Jewish parents, who moved to Germany when she was a child. She was a member of the New Beginner group in Germany during the early 1930’s and as a result of her underground work she was arrested with others of the group and placed in a concentration camp. She escaped to Paris in 1935 and continued to work with Paul Hagan. She made her way to Spain or Portugal and eventually entered the United States at New York. In 1941 she was married to George Eliasberg, whom she had known in Germany at the time of their arrest by the Gestapo, although Eliasberg had been permitted to travel to Palestine, from which he later emigrated to the U.S. See additional information on Vera Eliasberg in file of her husband, George Eliasberg #341773 [CIA 1319-487]
Hagan worked with the OSS during WW II on the shadow war against Hitler. This from an anti-immigration website:
Soviet agents, front groups, and infiltration and espionage techniques composed a broad strategy to undermine the United States. Immigrants as well as traitorous natives played a role in the communist threat. For instance, German refugee Karl Frank, alias Paul Hagen, was investigated by the FBI in 1945. His internal security case confirmed that Hagen was a communist and active in a communist front group, New Beginning.
According to Herbert Romerstein who studied the Venona Files:
One [unsolved murder] involves the disappearance, in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, of Mark Rein, son of the exiled Russian Menshevik Rafail Abramovich. Rein was associated with Scandinavian social democracy when he vanished in wartime Catalonia. His case is one of a short list of unsolved atrocities alleged against the Soviet secret police on Spanish Republican territory. According to Romerstein, Rein may have been betrayed to Stalin's agents by a German leftist named Paul Hagen. A footnote discloses that sources on the Rein affair may be found in the German Communist Party Archives.
Most of this document was withheld until 1998 when it was “Released in Full” except for the component from which it originated. It was not a Warren Commission document. It indicated that OSWALD was in touch with a hardcore experienced KGB agent.
Perhaps the most intriguing document regarding OSWALD’s CIA connections is one dated April 1964 that deals with events as late as 1972 and may be predated by its author JAMES ANGLETON. It contains names that do not appear in the FBI Report (the Name List with Traces) that it refers to:
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD April 8, 1964
SUBJECT: Lee Harvey OSWALD
ADDRESS BOOK
FBI REPORT 12/31/63
Reference is made to previous memoranda concerning items found listed in Subject’s address book. The following additional information was noted from the files of OS:
MEMORANDUM TO FILES:
The following is the result of Office of Security file reviews on names #36 - #40:
#36 DAMMAN, Nansi (Nancy) USA
Otkryt s (open from) 11.2.71
According to the Biographic Register, Nancy DAMMAN, an employee of the State Department, was born on May 8, 1919 in Illinois. She has been assigned to several posts in the Far East and is currently in Manila.
#37 DZHONSON, Vil’yam 1907 USA
(JOHNSON, William)
William HE. JOHNSON
#289 217
#401625BB
Born September 10, 1907 in Washington, D.C.; from 1934 to 1939 did teaching a research in Europe, primarily in the USSR. JOHNSON was frequently mentioned in the Daily Worker and contributed articles to that publication on many occasions. During 1941 to 1947, JOHNSON and his wife were connected with cited organizations. Many of the close associates of Subject and his wife have been reported as members of the Communist Party or Communist sympathizers. It was alleged that Subject’s wife was a CP member. From 1943 to 1946, JOHNSON was Chief, Russia Political Section, US Military Intelligence; from 1947 to 1955, Carnegie Institute of Technology; and from 1955 at the University of Pittsburg. JOHNSON was doing research in the USSR / Poland / Czechoslovakia / Yugoslavia under Department of State sponsorship for five months and for six months in 1966/67; travelled in the USSR / Poland / Czechoslovakia / Yugoslavia under sponsorship Department of Education doing research. On November 12, 1953 JOHNSON was disapproved for any use by CIA; and in March 1967 was on interest to Domestic Contacts Section but should be approached with extreme caution and not be exposed to classified material.
#38 DZHONSON, Pristsilla 1928 USA
(JOHNSON, PRISCILLA)
#71589
Born July 19, 1928 in Glenn Cove, New York. JOHNSON knew Lee Harvey OSWALD in the USSR and also did some research work for John Kennedy in 1953. Lived in USSR 1958-1960 as reporter for NANA but her visa was cancelled when she wrote an unfavorable article about MIKOYAN. JOHNSON did translation for SVETLANA. JOHNSON was of interest to the Agency in 1953 but interest was cancelled because of extensive investigation required of friends; of interest in 1958 but interest again cancelled; of interest to SB (Soviet Bloc) in May 1963 for debriefing concerning her contacts in Soviet Union; now Priscilla Johnson McMILLAN.
#39 DZHONS, U. Persona Non Grata USA
No Record
#40 DZHEKOB, R. Persona Non Grata USA
Richard C. JACOB, #291 610, was born May 24, 1936 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. JACOB was a CIA employee from 1960 to 1969. He was p.n.g.’d as a result of the PENKOVSKY case. Clearance was issued for him for use as a spotter-assessor in March 1972. Is now a stock broker in New York City.
Nancy Dammann spent 17 years with USAID as a Communications Media Advisor in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. Richard C. Jacob, was a twenty-four-year-old CIA case officer from Egg Harbor, New Jersey, listed on the embassy rolls as an "archivist" who was assigned the task of picked up some intelligence information from Colonel Penkovsky at a dead drop: "The message has to be in a matchbox," Case Officer Paul Garbler stated, "Hold it in your hand until you get out on the street, and if you're jumped, drop it, try to drop it in the gutter, the sewer if you can. Don't have it." Jacob nodded, and Garbler went on, "They'll try to sweat you. Don't admit anything about clearing a drop. Demand to call the embassy." When Jacob arrived at the Pushkin Street drop, the KGB was waiting. He had walked straight into a trap, just as Garbler had feared. [Molehunt David Wise] No traces on the others, other than their names appeared on a Soviet visa blacklist. At this time this document is a conundrum for me. OSWALD'S KGB File (No. 31451) contained no indication that he supplied information to the Soviets.
There is one more interesting detail in his records. KGB insists, that it is not mentioned in the papers even once of the Soviet intelligence officials ever interrogating OSWALD. It is very strange because the fact that OSWALD arrived in the Soviet Union, and his further behavior, must have (and it did) caused strong suspicions of the KGB: it was not every day that American tourists in 1959 kept asking for political asylum so persistently...The KGB officials assure that he wasn't recruited by them. Though it is impossible to check this fact out, the thick file of records on OSWALD can be good proof that he had nothing to do with the KGB. Six volumes - this is too much for a file of a person who is working for the KGB. Usually they would keep a thin and absolutely secret folder.
OSWALD's KGB file indicated that OSWALD was never interviewed by the KGB. This in itself was strange. If a secret folder existed that linked OSWALD to the U-2 dump it would have been destroyed after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As of 1995 there was no KGB record that indicated OSWALD had any connection with the KGB, however, the KGB was a covert action arm of a totalitarian power. It did not keep records on everyone it killed or everyone who contacted it. Perhaps there were no written records to be destroyed.
On August 6, 1959, The New York Times reported: "Officials said that while the [recent] talks between President Eisenhower and the Soviet leader could possibly improve the atmosphere for a summit meeting, they were not to be regarded as automatically preliminary to a conference of heads of government." On September 26, 1959, Nikita Khrushchev and Dwight Eisenhower met at Camp David, Maryland. "The Spirit of Camp David" signified a break in the Cold War. While the two heads of state were discussing Berlin, John McCone, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, was meeting with his counterpart to discuss the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Vice President NIXON accompanied McCone to Camp David. On September 27, 1959 President Eisenhower took Premier Khrushchev to his Gettysburg farm for private talks. Khrushchev was given a 21 gun salute when he left, and French Prime Minister Charles DeGaulle was hopeful that a summit conference was near. A U.S.-Soviet Atom pact was foreseen. Discussions over nuclear cooperation had been underway for several months. At Camp David, a summit conference was scheduled for May 16, 1960, in Paris. President Eisenhower would then visit the Soviet Union. ANGLETON knew that there was going to be a summit conference as early as August 1959. OSWALD was dispatched to the Soviet Union in September 1959 to sabotage the summit conference and destroy the understanding between American and the Soviet Union that had come to be known as détente. ANGLETON believed: "Détente is a sham, a tactic." After he resigned from the CIA, ANGLETON told friends that he was done in by Henry Kissinger in retaliation for his outspoken doubts about the U.S. policy of détente with Russia and China. [Newsweek 1.6.75] Evidence suggested he was determined to prevent American/Soviet relations from warming up. In 1946 he wrote: "In practice a certain overlapping of Counter-Espionage and SI (positive intelligence) functions exists, particularly in this turbulent period before the peace conference when most secret political activities of foreign powers are conducted through intelligence service's contacts and networks." [The Secrets War NARA p237] ANGLETON gave OSWALD the info he needed to shoot down the U-2 spy plane then had OSWALD give the Soviets the information just before the summit, so that the summit would be destroyed. The national security of the United States would be undamaged by the sacrifice of the U-2. CORONA SPY SATELLITE:
By August 1960 the CIA had reconnaissance satellites in operation - such as the Discovery or Corona Spy satellites - which rendered the U-2 almost obsolete. These first spy satellites were launched after President Eisenhower approved the plan in February 1958. The Corona vehicle took photographs with a constant rotating stereo panoramic camera system and loaded the exposed photographic film on to recovery were de-orbited and recovered by Air Force C-119 aircraft while floating to earth on a parachute. The first attempt to launch a rocket designed to carry the Corona ended in failure on January 21, 1959. After numerous failures the first truly successful Corona mission to place on August 19, 1959. On August 31, 1959, President Eisenhower established the Office of Missile and Satellite Systems within the office of the Secretary of the Air Force. This became the cover for the National Reconnaissance Office. By December 10, 1959, the resolution of the Corona's camera was approaching that of the U-2. The Space Imaging Division of Lockheed, Martin-Marietta reported: "The first film capsule recovered from Corona yielded more data than all of the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union combined. And even from its earliest days, Corona was collecting imagery at a spacial resolution of roughly two meters." [Ambrose Eisenhower, Simon & Schuster p515; http://www.spaceimage.com/hom/corona.html] ANGLETON believed that President Eisenhower would enter into treaties and make concessions to the Soviets that would be far more dangerous than losing a U-2. William K. Harvey wrote: "JIM A. - contradestruct from U-2." As the Summit approached, President Eisenhower considered grounding the U-2 spy plane.
THE KGB: UNAWARE OF THE U-2 IN 1956
The U-2 began flights over Russia in 1956. On July 10, 1956, the USSR sent a note to the Department of State of the United States protesting violations of Soviet airspace by a "twin engine medium bomber" on July 4, 1956, July 5, 1956, and July 9, 1956.The CIA reported:
Summary of Initial Missions
In the period from June 20, 1956, to July 10, 1956, the Soviet Bloc air defense system was subjected to eight penetrations of an unprecedented nature, seven occurring within a period of only eight days. It must be remembered that (deleted) provides the only basis of judging the performance of the Soviet system. This is important because it is clear from (deleted as of 2010). However, some tentative conclusions may be drawn from these initial flights as follows:
1. In spite of the fact that these missions come as a surprise, none of them went undetected. This is clear evidence that their radar coverage extends above (deleted as of 2010) feet.
2. By July 5, 1956, the fourth flight, the USSR was aware of the purpose of the missions and was taking counter-action. One positive action was the stand down of civil flights while the mission aircraft was over the USSR, and a second action which is believed related is the moving of the MIG-19 aircraft into East Germany and Poland on July 7, 1956. Also MIG-19’s were moved into Hungary at about this time.
3. The performance of the Soviet System on the July 5 mission, 2014, was indeed curious. While the action evident from (deleted deleted as of 2010) is not clear an explanation which appears to fit the known facts is offered as follows: As a result of the previous missions, the Soviets had concluded the essential facts concerning the missions i. e., that they were for reconnaissance, that they flew about (deleted) feet, and that a penetration as deep as Moscow was possible. They probably surmised that the July 5 mission was headed for Moscow when the track appeared on a northeasterly heading.
4. By July 9, 1956 in addition to the evident recognition of the great height of the mission flights, tracking was better and in general the performance of the warning system was much improved.
5. The next day July 10, 1956 proved that the air defense warning system is deployed in depth. (deleted as of 2010).
6. The first eight missions proved (deleted as of 2010).
7. Confusion and track loss seemed to be related. (deleted as of 2010).
8. The question of radar for height finding. [CIA SC-02164-58]
On March 2, 1958, the Soviet detected a violation of their airspace by a "military jet aircraft." In March 1958 Model Airplane News published a story about the U-2, complete with drawings. The article observed: "An unconfirmed rumor says that U-2's are flying across the Iron Curtain taking aerial photographs." On April 21, 1958 the Soviets identified the aircraft as a Lockheed U-2 type. Soviet Aviation, the official newspaper of the Red Air Force, subsequently published articles about the U-2. On April 21, 1958, the Soviets issued a press release accusing an "American military reconnaissance aircraft of the Lockheed U-2 type, having appeared from the direction of the Sea of Japan" of having violated Russian airspace. U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers reported that in the fall of 1958:
There was no longer any doubt they knew about the overflights. Our evidence of this was of the most conclusive kind. Although none of the pilots had actually seen them, electronic equipment on returning U-2's indicated the Russian were now sending up rockets attempting to bring us down. At our altitude we weren't too worried about MIGs, but we were beginning to be concerned about SAMs, surface-to-air missiles. By this time a few of the unknowns were disappearing from the U-2 overflights. We now knew that the Russians were radar tracking at least some of our flights; it was possible that they had been doing so from the start. Equipment on board recorded their signals; from their strength it was possible to tell whether they were "painting," this is tracking the flight. However this could only be determined after returning to base and studying transcriptions. There was still no way, while in flight, to know for sure.
We also knew that SAM's were being fired at us, that some were uncomfortably close to our altitude. But we knew too that the Russians had a control problem in their guidance system. Because of the speed of the missile, and extremely thin atmosphere, it was impossible to make a correction. This did not eliminate the possibility of a lucky hit. In our navigation we were careful to ensure our routes circumvented known SAM bring us down.
The press reported that a U-2 landed in a Japanese rice paddy in September 1959. Knowing the Soviets were aware of the U-2 and were intent on shooting one down, President Eisenhower considered suspending the flights. He told his intelligence advisors during a February 2, 1960, meeting, "If one of these aircraft is lost when we are engaged in apparently sincere deliberations, it would be put on display in Moscow and ruin my effectiveness." The CIA was insistent that the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union be continued, even expanded, because they brought back invaluable data. President Eisenhower agreed to additional flights, but only at the rate of one a month. Francis Gary Powers recalled: "After a long pause, two flights were scheduled for the same month, April 1960."
THE SOVIETS ALMOST SHOOT DOWN A U-2
On April 9, 1960, the Russians tracked the U-2 by radar and made several attempts to down it with SAMs. They were getting closer. Why? Had the Soviet made any technological advances in radar that allowed them to defeat the primitive electronic warfare devices that made the U-2 impossible to shoot down? Or had they made advances in rocketry? The Soviets already had rockets that could reach the cruising altitude of the U-2; 68,000 feet. Were the SAMs too inaccurate even with this new hypothetical factor? For whatever reason, the U-2 returned to its base intact.
President Eisenhower authorized Richard Bissell to fly any day before May 1, 1960. Every day for the next two weeks the USSR was under a cloud cover and the mission had to be postponed. The U-2 needed near-perfect weather to get its photographs. On May 1, 1960, the weather cleared. That morning, CIA Plans contract employee Francis Gary Powers took off from an airfield in Adana, Turkey and headed for Bodo, Norway, his flight route taking him directly over the Soviet Union. While flying over Sverdlovsk, a Soviet SAM exploded several hundred feet away from the aircraft, knocking it out of the sky. The U-2 aircraft was equipped with a self-destruction device. Francis Gary Powers bailed out without pressing the plane's destruct button and survived.
I reached for the destruct switches, opening the safety covers, had my hand over them, and then changed my mind, deciding I had better see if I could get into position to use the ejection seat first. Under normal circumstances, there is only a small amount of clearance in ejecting. Thrown forward as I was, if I used the ejection seat the metal canopy overheard would cut off both my legs. I tried to pull my legs back, I couldn't...The ejection seat wasn't the only way to leave the plane. I could climb out. So intent I had been on one solution I had forgotten the other. Reaching up, not far, because I had been thrown upward as well as forward, with only the seat belt holding me down, I unlocked and released the canopy. It sailed into space. The plane was still spinning. I glanced at the altimeter. It had passed 34,000 feet and was unwinding very fast. Again I thought of the destruct switches but decided to release my seat belt first, before activating the unit. Seventy seconds is not a very long time. Immediately the centrifugal force threw me halfway out of the aircraft.
An intact destructor unit was recovered from the aircraft. At the show trial of Francis Gary Powers, an aeronautics expert testified that "it was impossible to establish the lag of the explosion since no timing mechanism was found in the wreckage." The CIA reported:
1. Frank Powers aircraft was equipped with a destructor unit made by Beckman and Whitley, Inc. Model Number G-175-10. Procedure for activating the device was a two step function. The pilot had to activate the system by throwing one switch, then commence the timing sequence by throwing a second. A 2 ½ pound charge of cyclonite would be ignited 60 seconds after the second switch was thrown. (In a statement before Congress, Powers indicated that the timing mechanism was set for a 70 second delay.)
2. The purpose of the destruction unit was to destroy the camera in the equipment bay. Because of the equipment bay's location underneath the cockpit, potential serious injury could occur to the pilot should the device fire while he was in the aircraft; hence the two step activation procedure was established to minimize accidental ignition.
3. The Russians, in displaying the U-2 wreckage, showed the destructor unit made by Beckman. Their inference was that it was a remote control destructor unit, and this point was noted in the translation of the transcript of Power's trial published by Translation World Publishers of Chicago in October 1960.
Powers feared that the 70 seconds before the plane exploded was nonexistent and that he would be blown to bits along with it. Francis Gary Powers was taken prisoner by the Russians who found a poison pin on his person that he was to use to commit suicide. Norman Mailer reported that the KGB watched OSWALD on May 1, 1960, and on May 2, 1960. The next reports cited by Norman Mailer were dated July 2, 1960, and July 3, 1960. Nothing even remotely suspicious was uncovered.
THE RUSSIAN'S RESPONSE
Premier Khrushchev made a speech to the Soviets on May 5, 1960, in which he reported his Air Force had downed an American spy plane, but made no mention that Francis Gary Powers had been captured and the wreckage of the plane found. The speech suggested an element in the American Government was at work without the President's knowledge: "Even KGB often carries on activities I do not know about." In a later statement the Soviet Government claimed the "flight had been sent to wreck the Summit talks...the CIA knew Powers would be shot down, thus setting the stage for the Summit's collapse." At first, the State Department insisted the Russians had shot down one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's U-2 meteorological research planes. On May 7, 1960, Premier Khrushchev reported to the Supreme Soviet that "we have plane parts and we also have the pilot." The Eisenhower Administration was caught red-handed in a lie. Khrushchev would announce he was about to attack the U-2's bases. President Eisenhower canceled his trip to the USSR. On May 14, 1960, President Eisenhower flew to the Summit Conference in Paris. Premier Khrushchev demanded an apology for the overflights, and President Eisenhower promised him that no further flights would be sent over Russia. The Summit meeting collapsed, over before it had even started and détente with it. The Soviets had previously failed to shoot down the U-2 for two reasons: It carried a granger and flew at an altitude of over 60,000 feet.
FACTOR ONE: THE GRANGER
Powers:
As a defense against air-to-air missiles, those fired from another aircraft, a new piece of equipment called a 'granger' was installed in the tail. As explained to us, should an aircraft lock onto a U-2 with his radar and launch a missile, the granger would send out a faulty signal to break the radar lock. Whether it actually did this or not we had no way of knowing, since we had never been threatened by aircraft.
The Soviets reported:
Expert findings on the tape recorder and its tape have shown that the signals recorded by Powers came from surface radar systems insuring the anti-aircraft defense of the Soviet Union. Special equipment had been installed in Power's aircraft to counteract and interfere with interception radar stations and fighter plane direction.Experts have established that the U-2 aircraft was equipped with a special radar scrambler to create interference for radar stations intercepting and directing fighter aircraft.
DID THE GRANGER WORK AGAINST GROUND LAUNCHED MISSILES?
Francis Gary Powers believed the granger protected the U-2 only from air-to-air missiles and not surface-to-air (SAM) missiles:
Francis Gary Powers said that a special device to jam radar and signals given by fighter planes and rockets was activated on the plane before his May 1, 1960 take-off, and throughout his flight over the Soviet Union. In reply to a question by a people's assessor, Powers explained that he meant air-to-air rockets.
When Francis Gary Powers was captured by the Soviets, "there followed an attempt to make me verify that the granger was supposed to deflect SAM missiles as well as air-to-air missiles."
FACTOR TWO: 68,000 FEET CRUISING ALTITUDE
Francis Gary Powers told his KGB interrogators his flight was terminated "at maximum altitude for the plane, 68,000 feet." In his book OPERATION OVERFLIGHT, Francis Gary Powers claimed 68,000 feet was a figure invented to protect his fellow pilots in the event the flights resumed. According to Francis Gary Powers,
I was stuck with the 68,000 foot figure. However, maybe I could use that advantageously. If given the chance, I decided to stress that I had been hit at "maximum altitude, 68,000 feet, hoping the CIA would realize by "maximum altitude" I meant I was flying exactly where I was supposed to when the explosion occurred. For me to say I was flying at my "assigned altitude" would imply the plane could fly higher, which was true. If I could get that message across, the trial, for all its propaganda value, would have served one positive purpose. It could be the means for saving lives of other pilots. I knew by May 7, 1960, the day on which Khrushchev announced my capture and details of my flight, my interrogators had bought my story, believed I was telling the truth, even to altitude, Khrushchev use of 20,000 meters (65,600 feet) being the closest approximation to the 68,000 feet figure I had used. It was a dangerous gamble. It was possible their intelligence had already ferreted out the exact altitude. I was inclined to doubt this: this was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the U-2. Even more dangerous were their radar plots. Everything depended on their accuracy, or rather, lack of it. Previously we had felt their height finding was inaccurate at the altitudes at which we were flying. If we were wrong, they would quickly pinpoint the lie...I withheld the most important information in my possession.
Francis Gary Powers stated that when the KGB had scientists extrapolate his altitude from various radar readings, they happened to verify his arbitrary figure:
As they read the figures, I began to disbelieve them. Surely this was some cruel hoax, designed to throw me off guard. No one could be so lucky. Not only was their height-finding radar off...some were actually at 68,000!
During the show trial of Francis Gary Powers in Moscow in August 1960, the Soviets insisted they shot down the U-2 at its cruising altitude of 68,000 feet. Francis Gary Powers was asked repeatedly, "At what altitude was your aircraft struck?" and he answered, "It was the maximum altitude, 68,000 feet." Major Voronov, whose rocket unit shot down the U-2, testified: "As the plane entered the firing range at an altitude of 68,000 feet one rocket was fired and its explosion destroyed the target." In 1978 the CIA claimed: "The Soviets knew perhaps even more accurately than even the U-2 altimeters showed, what the height was." [CIA OLC #78-2469 - SD Breckinridge meeting with HSCA investigators] The key to shooting down the U-2 was not so much in defeating its granger as it was having accurate information as to its cruising altitude. Francis Gary Powers tried to cover up the fact that he gave the Soviets accurate information about the altitude of the U-2. Francis Gary Powers had been instructed that "if captured be cooperative and try to answer questions to which the Soviets appeared already to have knowledge." Powers did not know it, but the Soviets already had knowledge of the altitude of the U-2 from OSWALD. OSWALD had learned it at Atsugi or from ANGLETON. (The Soviets thought he had learned it while stationed at Atsugi). ANGLETON had sabotaged the Summit and changed history.
The back flyleaf of OSWALD'S address book contained the words “New Hite Special" however Angleton transcribed it as “From Mrs. Hail N. White Special.”
OSWALD'S friend, Michael Paine, commented:
I could well believe that he would give some information. That he'd like to be valuable to the Russians. He didn't feel a loyalty to the United States. He wanted to change the system here. If he had some information he thought he could sell, he might have done it. That's enough explanation. If he gave the Russians the information to sabotage the summit, it would have had to happen at the right instance. OSWALD wasn't what you called a 'world class' person. If I were recruiting somebody to do that, I would like someone with a little more mental acumen. He wasn't stupid, but neither was he smart. If I were trying to find someone for a role like that, I wouldn't have picked LEE.
This researcher told Michael Paine that the most unrecognizable spy is the most dangerous. Michael Paine agreed, "Yeah, I'll go along with that. But OSWALD was pipsqueak." HEMMING told this researcher:
He wasn't a world class operator. He was just involved in world class deals. What are you going to do? Put a Rudolph Abel in on the U-2 dump? OSWALD'S in there because he was a turkey fucking patsy. Most of us are in there because we were on the turkey fucking way. When it's all over, it really don't make a difference, does it?
Marina Oswald told this researcher in 1994:
Maybe he supplied them with false information, and somebody else give the real information. Maybe they want to make a patsy out of him? I think somebody else sabotage U-2 plane, not LEE HARVEY OSWALD.
RICHARD E. SNYDER MEETS WITH
FRANCIS GARY POWERS FAMILY
EVIDENCE OF ANGLETON'S INVOLVEMENT IN THE U-2 DUMP
The U-2 was downed. Had the Soviets made advancements in their radar capabilities? Or had the CIA been penetrated? Or had a leak emanated from elsewhere? Logic dictated that CI/SIG and the Office of Security would lead the investigation into the U-2 flap, and that any honest CIA investigation would have had OSWALD as a suspect. The FBI reported:
No one knows what he told the Soviets about American radar. We know that when he tried to renounce his American citizenship in Moscow he stated he had volunteered to give the Soviets any information he had concerning the Marine Corps, intimating he might know something special. Later when he was applying in Moscow to reenter the United States, he said he had not given the Soviets any information about the Marines, but this was self-serving. He indicated to our Agents in an interview in 1962 that he never gave the Soviets information concerning his Marine Corps specialty in radar. [FBI 105082555-5640] ‘
OSWALD informed Richard E. Snyder that he had offered the Soviets radar information "including the specialty that he possessed." Edward Freers included this in his report on OSWALD that he cabled to Washington. As a result, State Department Headquarters sent the FBI a report on OSWALD, and the Bureau opened an inactive file on him. As stated, the same report was sent to the Office of Security of the CIA.
THE UNASKED QUESTIONS
In May 1960 the questions that ANGLETON and CI Staff should have asked were: "Has there been a report of anyone with access to the U-2's altitude offering this information to the Soviets?" ANGLETON could access his defector files in 1960; by that year all CIA files had been microfilmed and placed in an IBM computer specially-designed for CI. It was a machine records system. When a CIA agent wanted a particular item, he fed in 25 key words about the subject. The computer found the correct microfilmed document and photographed it with ultraviolet light. The tiny photograph was then projected on an Intellofax viewing machine; the whole thing took five seconds. The CIA microfilmed Richard E. Snyder's initial dispatch concerning OSWALD. Once it located OSWALD'S threat about radar, the next question to ask would have been, "Did he have access to the altitude of the U-2?" A simple check with the Navy would have indicated that, as a radar operator at Atsugi, he very well might have. Edward Petty reported that there was no CI/SIG file about the U-2 incident, yet after Francis Gary Powers returned to the U.S. a CIA Counter-Intelligence Officer was a witness at a Board of Inquiry hearing into the U-2 Affair. Why was there was no investigation by CI/SIG and ANGLETON? After the Kennedy assassination CI/SIG commented: "CIA does not investigate U.S. citizens abroad unless we are specifically requested to do so by some other government security agency. No such request was made in this case." [First Draft of Initial Report on OSWALD case Attachment to TX-1889] ANGLETON would never had waited for a green like from the investigative agency the CIA termed ODENVY before initiating and investigation, even of his own grandmother. HEMMING asked this researcher:
Where was damage control? The Soviets couldn't obtain this intelligence information, this means someone handed it to them. OS, and one other element, had across the board need-to-know about everything. Who's the top guy who can go anywhere and stick his nose into anything he wants to? ANGLETON. He would have insisted, 'We just got our damage control estimate. We just got our assessment. I don't think it's complete. I want to know about anyone on the periphery, mechanic, guard. I want everybody's name who saw the U-2, heard its sounds.' An enormous undertaking. Under that process people would have been on the lists who worked the radar sites. The trail leads right back to somebody who intentionally dumped the U-2, tried to cover it up.
OSWALD'S ACCESS TO U-2 INFORMATION
EUGENE J. HOBBS
FROM: S/A Berlin March 10, 1964
TO: OSI
SUBJECT: Eugene J. Hobbs, HMC, USN, Incident Report
At 12:40 p.m. this date Hobbs who serves as hospital corpsman in the USS Stone County (LST-1141) (San Diego based) visited the Pearl Harbor Branch Office to report information which he thought might be of interest to us, as follows.
Hobbs was stationed at the dispensary at Atsugi, Japan, NAS from 1956 to December 1957 or January 1956. According to a Life Magazine story recently printed, LEE HARVEY OSWALD, alleged assassin of our late President, was also stationed there at the same time. The magazine continued that OSWALD visited Russia in 1959. Atsugi is a closed base and at the time, was the base for the Joint Technical Advisory Group, which maintained and flew recon U-2 flights. Hobbs noted that one year after OSWALD visited Russia, Powers was captured. Hobbs stated it was gossip around the base that the U-2's were making reconnaissance flights over Russia. Sometime during 1957, a Naval Commander came into the dispensary and talked to some of the HMC's at the Master of Arms shack. The Commander stated he wanted an HMC to volunteer to join a group he was commanding which will be stationed in Bangkok and will make reconnaissance flights over China. One of the HMC's, name unknown, a short blonde headed Chief, eventually went with the unit to Bangkok and was there three months. The Commander stated that the flights would be the same as the ones the U-2's are making over Russia. Since it was common knowledge around the base that the U-2's were being utilized for recon flights, Hobbs now believes that OSWALD could have given that information to Russia. Stone County will be in this area for approximately two more months. [FBI 105-82555-3262]
THE FBI EXAMINES OSWALD'S MILITARY RECORD
The Navy sent Hobb's report to the FBI:
A review of OSWALD'S Marine Corps files discloses that in 1957 and 1958 he was stationed in Japan and had the address of Marine Air Control Squadron 1, Marine Air Group 11, First Marine Air Wing, FMF c/o FPO San Francisco, California. His weapons firing record discloses that in May 1958 he fired two courses on two different days at NAS, Atsugi, Japan.
One of OSWALD'S Marine Corps associates has advised that in August 1957 he and OSWALD were part of a 120 man overseas draft and OSWALD went to a Marine Corps base at Atsugi, Japan. Another of his former Marine Corps associates has stated that OSWALD was stationed at Atsugi, Japan, sometime in 1957 and 1958. Still another of OSWALD'S Marine Corps associates recalled that they left the United States on August 15, 1957, for Japan and OSWALD was assigned to Marine Air Control Squadron 1, Atsugi, Japan. In January 1958 this Squadron was at Cubi Point, Philippine Islands. This individual remembered that the gear of the Squadron was housed there in an airplane hanger which he says he now knows was the hanger for the U-2 airplane. A former Marine Corp Officer [also confirmed OSWALD'S presence at Atsugi].
As you know, OSWALD was discharged from the Marine Corps in September 1959, and shortly thereafter went to Russia, arriving there in October 1959. You may well wish to analyze Hobbs' information in the enclosure as well as that set forth above and conduct such further inquiry as you deem appropriate to determine what data about the U-2 program may have been available to OSWALD was a result of his Marine Corps assignments abroad. This Bureau would appreciate being advised of the results of your analysis and inquiry.
NOTE FOR SAC, DALLAS:
There is enclosed one copy of referenced ONI memo. This is being furnished for your information.
NOTE:
Letter is classified Confidential because it contains information about the U-2 program, including some from the enclosure which was so classified. Former Marines furnishing information about OSWALD'S assignments abroad were Owen Delanovich, Donald Peter Camarata, Donald Patrick Powers and William K. Trail. Since the U-2 program was primarily managed by the CIA, it is the proper Agency to handle this. Of course, even if it turns out OSWALD was assigned to a base from which U-2 airplanes were flying reconnaissance missions in 1957 and 1958 and could have had knowledge of this, which he may have given the Soviets when he went to Russia in October 1959, it is believed the Russians were aware of the U-2 flights several years before. Nevertheless, it should be run out. It is not felt it would be worthwhile to re-interview Hobbs since he possessed no direct information about OSWALD and since the information he furnished regarding the base at Atsugi was from 'gossip' he heard while stationed there. [FBI 105-82555-3262]
Owen Dejanovich, who became a professional football player, was contacted in 1993. He said he was with OSWALD at El Toro, Jacksonville and Biloxi, Mississippi, but not at Atsugi. The only other thing he would say was "I gave the FBI no information about the U-2." Owen Dejanovich told Frontline a different story:
There was a small business section across one bridge. We were allowed, as Americans, to go into that sector of the residential portion of Iwakuni. The other sector was considered to be communist, Japanese communists and it was an off-limits area.
Owen Dejanovich claimed OSWALD made pro-Communist remarks and was seen with a beautiful White Russian. Why didn't he report the presence of a subversive in the ranks of the Marine Corps to his commanding officer?
JOHN E. DONOVAN'S FAKE U-2 REPORT
ANGLETON ASSURES FBI OSWALD HAD NO ACCESS TO U-2 DATA
ANGLETON or members of his Staff drafted a reply to the FBI inquiry regarding OSWALD'S access to information regarding the U-2 and had Richard Helms sign it. [CSCI - 3/781,351] It assured the FBI OSWALD had no access to information on the U-2:
2. The Atsugi Naval Air Station is located approximately 35 miles south and west of Tokyo, Japan. At the time in question, Atsugi was a closed base in the sense that American and indigenous personnel entering the Station were required to possess official identification cards. Within the Station the flight line areas were restricted, as is the case of all such Stations, and certain hanger areas were further restricted for the performance of classified functions.
3. The Joint Technical Advisory Group occupied an area within the Station, consisting of 20 to 25 individual residences, two dormitories, an office area, a power plant, several Butler-type warehouses, and a club building used for recreation and a bachelor officer's mess. The Joint Technical Advisory Group area was not closed, but it was located about 400 yards from the main Station area and there was no occasion for the regularly assigned Station personnel to visit the Joint Technical Advisory Group area. The club was open only to Joint Technical Advisory Group personnel and their guests. Two of the living quarters were occupied by the Navy Commanding officer and his deputy because the quarters of Joint Technical Advisory Group were of better quality than the housing accommodations provided at the Station.
4. Joint Technical Advisory Group air activities were conducted from a classified hanger area at one end of the flight line. OSWALD did not have access to this area. Prior to the time in question, the Joint Technical Advisory Group had been publicized by Radio Peking as being a headquarters for American intelligence activity. For this reason, and because the Joint Technical Advisory Group was obviously not part of the Naval Station complement, there were rumors and gossip regarding the unit and its activities regarding the unit and its activities. This condition was regarded as normal under such circumstances. Being there at that time, OSWALD could have heard such gossip; however, there is no information to indicate, nor is there reason to believe, that he obtained factual knowledge regarding the Joint Technical Advisory Group and its mission. (For your information, an incident involving the landing of a U-2 in a rice paddy in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, was reported in the press and aroused some public interest. That incident, however, occurred in December 1959, which was some time after OSWALD left Japan).
5. There were no Navy personnel assigned to the Joint Technical Advisory Group. Moreover, the Joint Technical Advisory Group did not participate in, or transfer any of its activities to a Station in Bangkok. Regarding the statement by Hobbs that a Navy Commander was recruiting Navy Personnel for an assignment in Bangkok, it is noted that the Navy at that time was conducting certain air reconnaissance activity from Atsugi using other types of aircraft.
6. The following should be considered with respect to your source's assertions that OSWALD'S squadron was in Cubi Point, Philippines Islands, in January 1958 where it kept its gear in what the source now knows to have been a hanger for a U-2 airplane; and that the squadron was back in Atsugi, Japan in May 1958. The term "U-2" was not known publicly and did not gain worldwide notoriety until the ill-fated Powers mission some two years later. Therefore it is highly unlikely that the term "U-2" would have meant anything to OSWALD, even if he had heard it and had been able to identify the term with any aircraft at Cubi Point, at Atsugi or anywhere else.
7. To summarize: There is no evidence or indication that OSWALD had any association with or access to, the Joint Technical Advisory Group operation or its program in Japan. This applies also to information regarding the U-2 or its mission. Even if OSWALD has seen a U-2 aircraft at Atsugi or elsewhere, this fact would not have been considered unusual nor have constituted a breach of security. Limited public exposure of the craft itself -- but not of its nomenclature or mission -- was accepted as a necessary risk. It is most unlikely that OSWALD had the necessary prerequisites to differentiate between the U-2 and other aircraft engaged in classified missions which were similarly visible at Atsugi at the same time. [FBI 105-82555-3831]
The CIA assumed that OSWALD had some sort of physical contact with the U-2. The CIA admitted he was within close proximity of the Joint Technical Advisory Group at Atsugi. The CIA, however, did not address itself to the possibility that OSWALD became aware of the U-2 as a blip on a radar screen. But even if OSWALD did not have this contact he could have gotten the information he needed from ANGLETON and told the Russians it was from his experience as a radar operator. Not only was there evidence that OSWALD was aware of the U-2 at Atsugi, there was evidence that OSWALD observed Powers at Vladimis Prison.
EVIDENCE: THE LETTER TO ROBERT EDWARD OSWALD
OSWALD'S Historic Diary noted:
January 15, 1962 to February 15, 1962. Days of cold Russian winter. But we feel fine. Marina is supposed to have baby on March 1, 1962. Feb 15, 1962. Dawn. Marina wakes me up. Its her time. At 9:00 a.m. we arrive at the hospital. I leave her in care of nurses and leave to go to work. 10:00 a.m. Marina has a baby girl. When I vist hospital at 500 after work, I am given news. We both wanted a boy. Marina feels well, baby girl, O.K. February 23, 1962. Marina leaves hospital I see June for first time.
On February 15, 1962, OSWALD wrote this to Robert Edward Oswald, as see above: "I heard over the Voice of America that they released Francis Gary Powers the U-2 spy plane fellow. that's big news where you are, I suppose. He seemed to be a nice, bright, American-type fellow, when I saw him in Moscow."
The CIA commented:
The only period during which it would have been reasonably possible for OSWALD to have seen Francis Gary Powers in Moscow in person was between August 17, 1960 and August 19, 1960, when Francis Gary Powers was in Moscow, undergoing trial. There are no other indications that OSWALD was in Moscow after January 1960, so OSWALD'S statements remain unclarified.
If OSWALD did, in fact, see Francis Gary Powers during the trial, why had he waited almost 18 months before writing to his brother about it? Why hadn't OSWALD mentioned attending the Francis Gary Powers trial in his Historic Diary? [CIA 285] OSWALD'S remarked "he seemed to be a nice bright American-type fellow." This indicated OSWALD had observed Powers personally.
OSWALD WROTE LETTER AFTER POWERS VISITED MOSCOW
Another CIA document revealed:
Francis Gary Powers was in Moscow from May 1, 1960, to September 9, 1960, and again for less than a day on February 8, 1962, and February 9, 1962, just before his release. [OSWALD'S letter was postmarked February 15, 1962.] The most likely time for OSWALD to have seen Powers in person would have been during the period August 17, 1960 to August 19, 1960 when Powers was on public view during his trial and in the course of being transported to and from trial sessions. On February 8, 1962, Francis Gary Powers was brought into Moscow without publicity, and departed early the next morning. Since OSWALD is not known to have been in Moscow in August 1960, or February 1962, his statement that he saw Powers may have referred to a television or newsreel appearance. [CIA 285 2.15.62]
A third CIA document noted:
Francis Gary Powers was in Moscow...for less than a day on February 8, 1962 to February 9, 1962, just before his release. If OSWALD did see him and is not making up this story, or referring to a television appearance, he must have made another trip to Moscow which is completely unknown to us. The period from May 2 to May 19 the more likely, since Powers was not on public view (illegible) to and from trial sessions, whereas in February 1962 he [Powers] entered the city without fanfare and departed very early that next morning.
In another CIA document it was detailed:
February 8, 1962: At about 1:00 p.m., Powers arrived in Moscow from Vladimis Prison by train en route to his release. He was taken for the night to the prison in which he had been held in 1960. February 9, 1962: Powers left the prison in the early morning for an airfield (apparently a military field) whence he departed Moscow for Berlin and the U.S.
When Powers was first arrested he "noticed a cover over the outside of the peephole to my cell. The guards could look in whenever they chose; I couldn't look out." [Overflight pg. 107]
How did OSWALD know that Francis Gary Powers stopped in Moscow before he left the Soviet Union in February 1962? Marina Oswald told this researcher: "Number one, he would hear it on the Voice of America. LEE did not make secret journey if I was married to him. Only time, was I married to him then? February 1962. He did not make any secret journeys then. He was home everyday. Cause our daughter was born on February 15, 1962. So we stayed close everyday. He did not make secret journey to Moscow. I was in the hospital for a week until the 23rd. So I do not know, I cannot guess, if I wasn't home I cannot verify that. LEE was restricted to travel." Had KGB agents arranged for OSWALD to make a secret trip to Moscow to see the pilot he almost killed because he had supplied the information needed to shot down a U-2? Did OSWALD observe Powers through one-way glass in Vladimis Prison? The KGB knew OSWALD was going to re-defect, and wanted OSWALD to observe that Francis Gary Powers had been well-treated. They did not want OSWALD to denounce the Soviet Union after he left. Other re-defectors were forced to sign statements that they would not engage in anti-Soviet propaganda. [HSCA V12 p441; CIA 285, 300; Powers, B. Spy Wife Pyramid Books; Sanche de Gramont The Secret War Since WWII Putnam 1962 Ch. 9] Richard E. Snyder commented on this letter:
I can't imagine how he possibly could have...The only thing that comes to mind is that it this was a lot of hot air. No one from the Embassy ever saw Francis Gary Powers. They never let us have any contact with him. The only people who saw him at the time were his mother, father and wife. I don't think the lawyer got to see him.
EVIDENCE OF THE U-2 DUMP: OSWALD'S FEAR OF PROSECUTION
In February 1961 OSWALD wrote to the American Embassy, Moscow, about repatriation:
Dear Sir; since I have not received a reply to my letter of 1960, I am writing again asking that you consider my request for the return of my American passport. I desire to return to the United States that is if we could come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any legal proceedings against me. If so then I would be free to ask the Russian authorities to allow me to leave. If I could show them my American passport I am of the opinion they would give me an exit visa. They have at no time insisted that I take Russian citizenship.
With each subsequent letter to the Embassy, he reiterated this fear and demanded "full guarantees that I shall not, under any circumstances, be persecuted for any act pertaining to this case."
May 1961
In regard to your letter of March 24. I understand the reasons for the necessity of a personal interview at the Embassy, however, I wish to make it clear that I am asking not only for the right to return to the United States, but also for full guarantees that I shall not, under any circumstances, be persecuted for any act pertaining to this case. I made that clear from my first letter, although nothing has been said, even vaguely, concerning this in my correspondence with the Embassy. Unless you honestly think this condition can be met, I see no reason for continuance of our correspondence, instead I shall endeavor to use my relatives in the United States, to see about getting something done in Washington.
He repeated the theme to his brother on May 31, 1961, and wrote:
I can’t say wether I will ever get back to the States of not, if I can get the government to drop charges against me, and get the Russians to let me out with my then maybe I’ll be seeing you again. But" you know it is not simple for either of those two things. I am in touch with the American Embassy in Moscow so if anything comes up I’ll know.
In his next letter to Robert Edward Oswald, June 26, 1961 he wrote: "I assume the government must have a few charge's against me, since my coming here like that is illigle. But I really don't know exacly what charges."
On July 11, 1961 Snyder wrote this about his interview with OSWALD:
Oswald indicated some anxiety as to whether, should he return to the United States, he would face possible lengthy imprisonment for his act of remaining in the Soviet Union. Oswald was told informally that the Embassy did not perceive, on the basis of information in its possession, on what grounds he might be subject to conviction leading to punishment of such severity as he apparently had in mind. It was clearly stated to him, however, that the Embassy could give him no assurance as to whether upon his desired return to the United States he might be liable for prosecution for offenses committed in violation of laws of the United States or any of its States. Oswald said he understood this, He had simply felt that in his own interest he could not go back to the United States if it meant returning to a number of years in prison, and had delayed approaching the Soviet authorities concerning departing from the Soviet Union until he “had this end of the thing straightened out.”
In yet another letter he wrote in January 1962 he asked his brother: "You once said that you asked around about weather or not the U.S. government had any charges against me, you said at that time 'no', maybe you should ask around again, its possible now that the government knows I'm coming and will have something waiting." [ltr. 1.30.62]
BORIS KLOSSON
When OSWALD was interviewed at the American Embassy, Moscow, on July 11, 1961, Boris Klosson (born January 21, 1919; died 1990) questioned him about the statement "which he had made to the interviewing officer at the time of his first appearance at the Embassy on October 31, 1959, to the effect that he would willingly make available to the Soviet Union such information as he had acquired as a radar operator in the Marine Corps." OSWALD stated:
…he was never in fact subjected to any questioning or briefing by Soviet authorities concerning his life experiences prior to entering the Soviet Union and never provided such information to any Soviet organization. He stated he doubted in fact that he would have given such information if requested despite his statements made at the Embassy. OSWALD indicated some anxiety as to whether, should he return to the United States, he would face possible lengthy imprisonment for his act of remaining in the Soviet Union. OSWALD was told informally that the Embassy did not perceive, on the basis of the information in its possession, on what grounds he might be subject to conviction leading to punishment of such severity as he apparently had in mind. It was clearly stated to him, however, that the Embassy could give him no assurance as to whether upon his desire to return to the United States he might be liable to prosecution for offenses committed in violation of laws of the United States or any of its States. OSWALD said he understood this. He had simply felt that in his own interest he could not go back to the United States if it meant returning to a number of years in prison, and had delayed approaching Soviet authorities concerning departing from the Soviet Union until he "had this end of the thing straightened out. [WR p75; DOS 5.26.61 Ex. 19 294j; ltr. Lee to Robert 5.31.61, 6.26.61; For. Service Dispatch 7.11.61 - Klosson]
In 1943 the name and address of Boris Hansen Klosson appeared in the address book of Louise Morley, a suspected Soviet intelligence agent. During this time, Boris Klosson was attending a Russian language course "at a school being handled by the Office of Naval Intelligence." Boris Klosson survived the McCarthy era and in 1954 was State Department, Deputy Chief, Division of Research for USSR and Eastern Europe. In 1956 Boris Klosson became a Political Officer at the American Embassy, Moscow. He was not listed in Who's Who in the CIA. On September 8, 1964, Yuri Nosenko reviewed the entire Moscow Diplomatic List for 1959: "Klosson, Boris H. Source has reported earlier concerning Klosson; that he was considered to have been the CIA resident. The case officer working against him was Valentin Mikraylov."
OSWALD was afraid he was going to be prosecuted for giving the Soviets the information they needed to shoot down the U-2. OSWALD had been given a little speech by ANGLETON that the CIA would not come to his aid if his deed were exposed. It would deny any connection with him. OSWALD thought Justice Department might go after OSWALD because it was unaware of his connection to ANGLETON and the Central Intelligence Agency.
EVIDENCE: APPLICATION FOR RENEWAL OF PASSPORT
THE STATE DEPARTMENT
THE HAVES and HAVE-NOTS
On July 10, 1961, while he was at the American Embassy, Moscow, OSWALD signed an Application for Renewal of Passport which contained a printed statement whereby, by crossing out either the word 'have' or the words 'have not,' the applicant could indicate whether he had committed one or more or the disloyal or possibly expatriating acts listed. The printed statement also provided that if the applicant indicates that he committed one or more of these acts, a supplementary statement under oath explaining the circumstances is to be attached to the application. By crossing out the appropriate words, LEE HARVEY OSWALD stated under oath that he had committed one or more of the disloyal or possibly expatriating acts listed on the application.
RICHARD E. SNYDER
The Warren Commission questioned Richard E. Snyder about this:
Coleman: This is the application for the passport renewal which OSWALD signed -
Dulles: For the American passport to return to the United States?
Snyder: It says, "I have - have not - been naturalized as a citizen of a foreign state; taken an oath or made an affirmation or other declaration of allegiance to a foreign state; entered or served in the armed forces of a foreign state; accepted, served in or performed the duties of, any office, post or employment under the government of foreign state or political subdivision thereof; voted in a political election in a foreign state or participated in an election or plebiscite to determine the sovereignty over foreign territory; made a formal renunciation of nationality, either in the United States or before or before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state; been convicted by court martial of deserting the military, air or navel service of the United States in time of war or of committing any act of treason against, or of attempting by force to overthrow, or of bearing arms against the United States; or departed or remained outside the jurisdiction of the United States for the purpose of evading or avoiding training and service in the military, air or naval forces of the United States. If any of the above acts are or conditions are applicable to the applicant's case, or to the case of any person included in this application, a supplementary statement under oath should be attached and made a part hereof."
Coleman: Mr. Snyder, as I read the application, what you did was to cross out the "have not" which means that OSWALD was stating that he had done one of those acts which you have read, is that correct?
Snyder: This is what it would mean.
Coleman: Which one of the various acts that you have read was it your impression that OSWALD was admitting that he had done?
Snyder: Well, there are two possibilities here. One possibility is that the crossing out of "have not" is a clerical error, and that he did not intend to do this.
Coleman: How could that be a possibility? Don't you pretty much negate that possibility by the fact that you did require him to fill out the questionnaire which only has to be filled out if he admits he has done one of the various acts?
Snyder: No; the questionnaire is filled out routinely in Moscow in any kind of problem case.
Coleman: Even though the citizen has done none of the acts which are set forth in the passport renewal application?
Snyder: Yes; well I say in a problem case. I don't mean an American citizen coming in to get his passport renewed, on whom there is no presumption of any problem at all. But a person who has resided in the Soviet Union -
Coleman: Is it your testimony this is only a typographical error?
Snyder: This is one possibility. The other possibility is that he may have said, "I have taken an oath or made an affirmation or formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state." He had, on several occasions, you know, stated that his allegiance was to the Soviet Union. He may have put this down - that is he may have said "have," having that act in mind, knowing that I knew it, and that there was no need to attempt to hide the fact. This is possible.
Coleman: Do you now recall what reaction you had in mind when you received the application that had been crossed out in such a way that indicated that he was admitting that he had done one of the various acts which are set forth on the form?
Snyder: No, I don't. Of course what I would have been concerned with at the time in more detail really is the questionnaire, which is an expansion of this paragraph and is much more meaningful. So I would have been concerned both with what he said on the questionnaire and with the facts of his case whether he thought he committed one of these acts is not material to the fact of whether he had committed it or whether he lost his citizenship thereby. At any rate, my attention would have been directed to the expanded questionnaire in which he had to fill out individual paragraphs concerning each one of these things, and to a determination of the facts in the case.
Dulles: Do recall whether or not that striking out was noted at the time the passport application or extension was considered?
Snyder: I do not Mr. Dulles, no.
THE WARREN REPORT
The renewal application contained a printed statement which set forth, in the disjunctive, a series of acts, which, if committed by the applicant, would either automatically disqualify him from receiving a passport on the ground that he had lost his American citizenship, or would raise a question whether he might be so disqualified. The printed statement was preceded by two phrases, 'have' and 'have not,' the first phrase being printed directly above the second. One carbon copy of the application indicates OSWALD signed the document after the second phrase, 'have not' had been typed over, thereby apparently admitting that he had committed one of more of the acts which would a least raise a question as to whether he had expatriated himself. Snyder was not able to remember with certainty to which of the acts listed on the statement OSWALD'S mark was intended to refer, but believed it may have been 'swearing allegiance to a foreign state.' He points out the strike out of 'have not' may also have been a clerical error. On the actual signed copy of the application kept in the files of the Moscow Embassy, which is not a carbon copy of the copy sent to the State Department, the strike out is slightly above the 'have;' therefore, since the 'have' is itself printed above the 'have not,' the strikeout may have been intended to obliterate the 'have.' In any event, OSWALD filled out the supplementary questionnaire which was required to be completed if the applicant admitted he had performed one or more of the expatriating acts. He signed the questionnaire under oath.
POSNER
Some question why Snyder approved OSWALD based upon his answers on the carbon copy of the questionnaire. At the bottom of the form, four acts were listed that would indicate a person had forfeited his American citizenship. All were prohibitions related to actions in a foreign state, including swearing allegiance, serving in the armed forces or government, or voting in an election. Next to these prohibitions were the words have or have not. On OSWALD's form, have not was apparently stricken, indicating he had committed one or more of the prescribed (sic) acts. In approving OSWALD, therefore, it appeared that Snyder had bent the rules. The real explanation is more mundane - a typing error. On the original, the strikeout is between the have and have not, and only on the carbon is it directly over the have not (WC Vol. V, pp. 359 -360). But in any case, Snyder had OSWALD fill out a supplementary questionnaire and his more detailed answers showed that he had not violated any of the disqualifications.
THE WARREN REPORT V. POSNER
The Warren Report: "On the actual signed copy of the application kept in the files of the Moscow Embassy, which is not a carbon copy of the copy sent to the State Department, the strike out is slightly above the 'have;' therefore, since the 'have' is itself printed above the 'have not,' the strikeout may have been intended to obliterate the 'have.'"
Posner: "On the original, the strikeout is between the have and have not, and only on the carbon is it directly over the have not."
This is Warren Commission Exhibit CE 947.
OSWALD believed he went to Russia on a mission approved by the CIA and committed "treason" at the behest of that Agency. OSWALD believed he, in one sense, had committed treason, but in another sense he had performed a patriotic act on behalf of his country. OSWALD had expressed fear that he would be prosecuted in the United States for acts connected with his defection. The section that OSWALD had in mind dealt with treason, not his declaration of allegiance to the Soviet Union: OSWALD knew that he had never formally renounced his American citizenship in front of a State Department Consular official nor had he filled out the State Department's official form which was required in these cases, so that he could not be disqualified from renewing his passport because of having made "a formal renunciation of nationality, either in the United States or before or before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state." Snyder thought OSWALD'S having told him he had committed an act which would disqualify him from renewing his passport had to do with OSWALD'S informal pledge of loyalty to the Soviet Union - a statement that clearly fell within the bounds of free speech. Snyder knew that OSWALD never returned to the Embassy to sign the formal renunciation papers. He knew that OSWALD knew this too. Then why didn't Snyder make it a point to ask OSWALD which act OSWALD believed he had committed so he could make a notation of it on the form?
By the time OSWALD filled out the questionnaire he realized if he wished to return to the United States he would have to explain to Snyder about his CIA connections or he would have to commit perjury. His response to this question changed. This should have further alerted Snyder.
As to where the XXX's were on the original form versus the carbon - this was irrelevant because Snyder was typing up the form as he was asking OSWALD the various questions. It was not OSWALD who typed the form. And Snyder heard OSWALD say "have" and Snyder typed it in and then Snyder asked OSWALD to fill out a supplementary questionnaire, because he heard the word "have" and remembered it no matter where the XXX's were on the application.
Richard E. Snyder commented,
Defection is really a loaded word. Any American citizen can leave his country for any other country. You do not need anyone's permission. There's no crime committed there. I presume he just didn't know. He may have had reason in his own mind to be worried about the statement that he would make available to the Soviets what he learned of radar. That I could imagine. It may have disturbed him that he didn't know what the law was and he might have imagined that he would be held for it.
It was suggested to Richard E. Snyder that the only way he would be worried was if, in fact, he had given the Soviets secret information. He commented: "Yes, but I have no idea what the law is on that."
EVIDENCE: OSWALD'S RUSSIAN DICTIONARY
The Miami Herald reported: "The only possession of LEE HARVEY OSWALD not confiscated by government agents at the John F. Kennedy assassination was an English, Russian dictionary in which numerous words were marked or copied including a phrase meaning "to hit or kill at a distance." It hasn't been checked out for microdots, or anything," said former sheriff's chief Deputy John Cullins. He was given the book by OSWALD'S widow, Marina Porter. Marina confirmed the dictionary belonged to her late husband and that the handwriting and markings in the book were his. She said she could not understand why government agents did not notice it when they descended upon the couple’s residence after the assassination. She said she did not look in the book or notice the emphasized or hand-written practice words until Cullins asked her to translate them. Among the emphasized words were "radar" and "range" "eject" and "razor." "Radar locator" is written in OSWALD'S handwriting and a definition of "range" is underlined before being rewritten in Russian. The Russian phrase, Marina said, means: "To beat, hit kill at a definite distance." Another translation means to kill or slaughter, like an animal. Cullins said, "I think it was a resume or information on his part that he was preparing to give up to someone who spoke or read Russian. I see no other reason he would look things up in English and practice them in Russian." [Miami Herald 8.9.81] Marina Oswald told this researcher in 1994: "I gave the dictionary to John Cullins who tried to make money off the whole thing. This was the only time he was friend."
EVIDENCE: OSWALD'S CRYPTIC NOTE
During OSWALD'S voyage to the United States in 1962, he made the following notation:
as for the fee of $_________I was supposed to recive for this________I refuse it. I made pretense to except it only because otherwise I would have been considered a crack pot and not allowed to appear to express my views. after all who would refuse money?!?
OSWALD deliberately left the blank spaces, indicated by pen strokes. The first blank was difficult to fill in. How much money OSWALD received was a mystery; however, the dollar sign indicated the payment had not been made in rubles. Since OSWALD'S Red Cross subsidy was paid to him in rubles, this paragraph referred to another payment. OSWALD:
Whene I first went to Russia I the winter of 1959 my funds were very limited, so after a certain time, after the Russians had assured themselfs that I was really the naive american who beliyved in communism, they arranged for me to recive a certain amount of money every month. OK it came technically through the Red Cross as finical help to a Roos polical immigrate but it was arranged by the M.V.D.. I told myself it was simply because I was broke and everybody knew it. I accepted the money because I was hungry and there were several inches of snow on the ground in Moscow at the time but what it really was payment for my denuciation of the U.S. in Moscow in November 1956 and a clear promise that for as long as I lived in the USSR life would be very good I didn't relize all this, of course, for almost two years. [WCE 25]
The second blank made sense when the word "information" was placed in it. [WCE 25 p2B p122 of Vol.] Note that when Yuri Nosenko first approached the American Embassy, Geneva, he offered to sell information to the CIA for 900 Swiss francs. Later he admitted inventing this story; "He said he feared that an offer to give away information would be rejected as a provocation..." [Wise, Molehunt p68] Marina Oswald told this interviewer: "Maybe he make blank line because he forget amount."
EVIDENCE: POWERS BELIEVED OSWALD WAS RESPONSIBLE
In 1970 Francis Gary Powers wrote in Overflight that he believed OSWALD'S defection was related to his being shot down: "OSWALD'S familiarity with MPS 16 height-finding radar gear and radio codes (the latter were changed following his defection) are mentioned in the testimony of John E. Donovan a former first lieutenant assigned to the same El Toro radar unit as OSWALD on page 298 of Volume 8 of the Warren Commission Hearings. According to Donovan:
OSWALD has access to the location of all bases in the west coast area, all radio frequencies for all squadrons, all tactical call signs, and the relative strength of all squadrons, number and type of aircraft in each squadron, who was the commanding officer, the authentification code of entering and exiting the ADIZ, which stands for Air Defense Identification Zone. He knew the range of our radar. He knew the range of our radio. And he knew the range of the surrounding unit's radio and radar. OSWALD'S conversation with Snyder is mentioned at least three times in the Warren Report: "OSWALD told [Snyder] that he had already offered a Soviet official what he had learned as a radar operator in the Marines. [Overflight pg. 358]
The FBI reported: "News media report Powers has theorized LEE HARVEY OSWALD gave the Soviets radar secrets and information as to U-2's altitude capacity."
EVIDENCE: VLADIMIR SEMICHASTNY
Vladimir Semichastny told Frontline: "There were conversations, but this was such outdated information, the kind we say the sparrows have already chirped to the entire world, and now OSWALD tells us about it. Not the kind of information that would interest such a high level organization such as ours." Scott Malone confirmed that this information dealt with the U-2, but claimed that OSWALD supplied it after the U-2 had been shot down. Vladimir Semichastny: "We already had better sources of information. We had the plane and the pilot." [Interview with W. S. Malone]
FRANCIS GARY POWERS’ RELEASE
Francis Gary Powers was given a ten-year prison sentence by the Soviets. The name of the prosecutor at Powers' trial was Roman Andreyevich Rudenko. The name Aleksandr Rudenchek was found in OSWALD'S address book with the notation, teacher, next to it. Francis Gary Powers could have received the death penalty. He was well treated in prison. Eventually, former OSS General Counsel James B. Donovan (died January 20, 1970), who had defended GRU Colonel Rudolph Abel, arranged for Francis Gary Powers to be exchanged for Rudolph Abel. Rudolf Abel had been an illegal agent stationed in the United States. ANGLETON had helped develop the trail that led to Rudolf Abel. This was a poor trade for America - a master spy exchanged for a mere CIA contractual employee. United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy opposed the trade. He anticipated that when Francis Gary Powers returned to the United States he would be tried for treason. Francis Gary Powers' behavior in the Soviet Union became the focus of much criticism. The CIA set up a board of inquiry headed by retired Federal Appeals Court Judge E. Barrett Prettyman. In the summer of 1962 James B. Donovan and E. Barrett Prettyman negotiated with the Castro Government for the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners. Hearings were held in CIA Headquarters, and Francis Gary Powers was cleared of any wrongdoing.
The only evidence received by the Board which directly conflicted with Powers' account was part of a report based on (deleted). Some of these (deleted) indicated that the Soviets thought the flight of the U-2 had continued at the same altitude beyond the point where Francis Gary Powers claimed it fell, that it then descended to a lower altitude, and then it charged its course by turning in a broad circle back to the neighborhood of Sverdlovsk and disappeared from the observation of the trackers sine 35 minutes later. The activities which culminate in a (deleted). In the course of the presentation of the evidence to the Board the obvious possibility of confusion and error was pointed out; indeed at least one dramatic incident of error due to confusion was explained to the Board in detail. Of course this operation of the American intelligence system is invaluable. But the Board is of the opinion that it cannot make a flat assumption of accuracy in these (Deleted) so as to invalidate all other evidence concerning the occurrence of the incident. It is the conclusion of the Board that the evidence establishes overwhelmingly that Power's account was a truthful account.
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles, personally congratulated Francis Gary Powers. Francis Gary Powers divorced his wife, who had once been the Subject of a complaint by Richard Bissell, and he married a CIA psychologist. He was hired as a test pilot for Lockheed Aviation, which produced the U-2. In June 1977 an attempt was made by this researcher to locate Francis Gary Powers.
THE DEATH OF FRANCIS GARY POWERS
On August 1, 1977, Francis Gary Powers was killed when the traffic helicopter he was flying for a Los Angeles radio station ran out of fuel. The New York Times reported: "The 47 year old aviator, who had survived the downing of his U-2 over the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk on May 1, 1960, died when he Bell Jet Ranger helicopter crashed near a Little League baseball field in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Encino. George Spears, a cameraman for the television station KNBC, also died. The initial indications were that the helicopter had run out of fuel. James Turner, an official of the Federal Aviation Administration control tower at Van Nuys had received a message from an unidentified helicopter pilot at 12:36. The pilot said he was low on fuel and was granted approval for an expedited, direct approach to the airport. Francis Gary Powers crashed at 12:38 p.m. An official of KNBC checked in by radio with his supervisors at the station at about 12:25 p.m. said he was returning to Van Nys for fuel and asked what his next assignment would be. He was told he would probably be assigned to cover another brush fire near Los Angeles this afternoon. Station officials said he mentioned nothing about being short of fuel. One witness told a fireman that the tail rotor of the helicopter fell off before the crash, but this was not immediately confirmed." Powers had worked for KNBC for nine months. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the crash, and determined that it was a case of too long a flight with too little fuel, because it found the tank and fuel lines totally empty. The National Transportation Safety Board never examined the instruments (which were largely intact) to determine whether the readings they registered to Francis Gary Powers were accurate. [NTSB Powers Rep.; NYT 8.2.77; Ross & Wise Inv. Gov. p226]
There was something suspicious about the death of Francis Gary Powers. For someone who criss-crossed the Soviet Union numerous times to die in a helicopter crash of this nature strains my credulity.
YURI NOSENKO, OSWALD AND THE U-2
In 1964 Yuri Nosenko was asked: "Wouldn't you have connected OSWALD'S coming from Finland with Anatoliy Golitsyn?"
A. No, no. It is not unusual.
Q. Why didn't the KGB fully debrief OSWALD on the U.S. Marine Corps, and particularly such things as American radar installations in Japan?
A. I think they didn't even know that he had been in Japan.
Q. Why didn't they find out? Ask him?
A. Nobody will go to speak to a person who is not normal. The KGB is frightened.
Q. What do you mean, frightened? That is the job of the KGB.
A. I don't mean frightened that way. The KGB is frightened because to talk to somebody like this, to get involved with him, will result in a big headache
Q. Didn't anybody ever sit down with this man and get his full biographic data? Ask him to write his life history, every place he ever lived, worked, everything he has done. If he was in the military service, when, what, where, everything?
A. Never. Nobody did.
Q. I can't believe it...This man could have spent five years of his life working for American intelligence. Maybe all the time he was in the Marines he was working with intelligence. And the KGB wouldn't know about it?
A. It wasn't done. He was never spoken to by any KGB officer in Moscow or Minsk.
The HSCA asked Yuri Nosenko: “Would the Soviet Union be interested in someone who was in the military and worked with radar equipment?"
A. It depends. If he was a corporal, private, no big interest. If he was an officer maybe they be interested.
Q. The fact that he worked with the equipment wouldn't be enough; they would want to know what his rank was?
A. No sir, it is not enough because they had sources.
Q. And in 1959 would the Soviet Union have been interested in someone who served as a radar operator on an air base where the U-2's took off and landed?
A. Yes, sir, it would be very interested.
Q. Is it your testimony that LEE HARVEY OSWALD, who had been a radar operator, and had worked on base from where the U-2 took off and landed, that he wasn't even interesting enough for the KGB to speak to him, to find out if he knew any of this information?
A. Mr. Klein, I understand your position, but we didn't know he had any connection with the U-2 flights. That is one thing.
The HSCA questioned Soviet Russia Division Chief, David Murphy, about Yuri Nosenko:
I did not believe that it would be possible for the Soviet Intelligence Services to have remained indifferent to the arrival in 1959 in Moscow of a former Marine radar operator who had served at what was an active U-2 operational base. I found that to be strange.
Defector Peter Deryabin opined:
It is evident in the supplementary materials that even in his early meetings with U.S. Embassy personnel, OSWALD was ready to give any information on the Marines, etc. (including some 'special' type of information) to the Soviets; then why does the [CIA's] chronology apparently try to whitewash OSWALD by saying: 'When asked about his statement on October 1959 to the effect that he would willingly make available to the USSR that he had acquired as a radar operator for the Marine Corps, OSWALD replied that he had never been questioned and doubted he would have given such information if asked...It is the opinion of the undersigned that this whole paper was written in OSWALD'S defense.
THE NOSENKO INCUBUS
One of the most puzzling mysteries surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy revolved around the question of Yuri Nosenko's defection and bona fides. A CIA Staff member commented: “Once Nosenko is exposed as a KGB plant there will arise the danger that his information will be mirror read." Edward Petty:
The only time OSWALD became of really serious interest to CI/SIG was after the assassination. Nosenko came over claiming that he had seen the KGB's OSWALD file. He came over at precisely the right time, he defected within about 60 days of the Kennedy assassination. And so here you have a really fascinating coincidence; a KGBnik coming in with precisely the information needed about OSWALD at that particular time.
Yuri Nosenko claimed OSWALD had no connection or contact with the KGB. Had Nosenko been dispatched by Moscow to cover up OSWALD'S contact with the KGB during the U-2 dump? Or was he bona fide and telling what he knew about OSWALD? Was he bona fide and lying about OSWALD? Or, as Edward Petty suggested, was he exposed to limited information on OSWALD then spooked into defecting?
GENEVA
Yuri Nosenko was born in the USSR in 1927, to Bolshevik parents. His father would become Nikita Khrushchev's Minister of Shipbuilding. Yuri Nosenko was a dedicated Communist. At age 18 he entered the International Relations Institute in Moscow. Upon graduation in 1951, he claimed he joined Soviet Naval Intelligence. By 1953 he was a KGB agent. On June 5, 1962, while serving as a KGB Security Officer in Geneva, Yuri Nosenko approached the CIA for money and agreed to act as an agent-in-place. The CIA:
A current review of [Nosenko's] statements and remarks during his five contacts in 1962 indicate that his many errors, exaggerations, and actual lies were quite likely typical of a braggadocio element in the personality of Nosenko...Nosenko, during his five contacts in Geneva, made many statements which, in retrospect, were impossible and the investigation of which could only have raised certain questions concerning Nosenko:
(A) Nosenko claimed he personally was with Oleg M. Gribanov, Chief of SCD, during the recruitment pitch to (deleted). This was a lie and an interview with (deleted) with display of photograph would have disclosed that Nosenko did not participate.
(B) Nosenko was involved in the recruitment approach to Russell Langelle. This was a lie and Langelle was available for interview.
(C) Nosenko said he recruited (deleted) in Bulgaria. Actually Nosenko never met (deleted)."
NOSENKO VERSUS GOLITSYN
The CIA went on to list four other examples of Nosenko's lies, then stated: "In 1962 to 1963 a number of similarities were noted between information furnished by Nosenko and information which had been furnished by Anatoliy Golitsyn prior to June 1962. These similarities were quite striking and gave rise to certain suspicions of Nosenko because he provided information which the KGB already considered compromised as a result of the defection of Anatoliy Golitsyn. Certain of the similarities at the time could only be explained in terms of Nosenko being a dispatched agent. (A) Both furnished information in regard to (deleted)." The CIA supplied four more examples of KGB operations compromised by Anatoliy Golitsyn and mentioned by Nosenko. One of these dealt with the audio operations against the American Embassy. Anatoliy Golitsyn had previously supplied the CIA with this information.
Certain information supplied by Yuri Nosenko conflicted with information supplied by Anatoliy Golitsyn. For example, Anatoliy Golitsyn mentioned the attempted recruitment of an American Embassy, Moscow, code clerk during a train ride to Helsinki: "Yuri Nosenko, as Deputy Chief of the First Section specifically charged with work against code clerks, should have been aware of the November 1960 trip of Kosolapov to and from Helsinki. His lack of knowledge may or may not be explainable in terms of his other activities such as his trip to Cuba in November to December 1960."
Yuri Nosenko returned to the USSR, but being in the Second Chief Directorate, he said he knew the degree of coverage there was in Moscow and refused to have contact with the CIA there. He was sent back to Geneva in January 1964 for another disarmament conference. There, he told the CIA he wanted to defect to the West because he had received a recall telegram from Moscow. He later retracted this, and said that he invented it, because he was afraid the CIA would not let him defect. [Nosenko interview with Posner] Edward Petty: "I think Bagley got him to admit that he never got such a telegram."
YURI NOSENKO'S 1964 OSWALD STORY
Yuri Nosenko told the CIA he had helped manage the 1959 OSWALD defection case, when he was Deputy Chief of the Tourist Department and that OSWALD'S visa application in Helsinki was handled by Pereletov who had been in "the KGB's 2nd Department in Leningrad, and there he was dealing with tourists." Yuri Nosenko then stated: “KGB had no interest in OSWALD...OSWALD was regarded as mentally unstable." This was based on a report furnished to him and his associate Krupnov (Kim Georgiyevich) by Rimma Sherakova "who was an agent or operational contact of his." Yuri Nosenko mentioned Chelnokov, Gribanov, Bobkov, Sergey Mikhaylovich and Konstantin Nikitovich in connection with the OSWALD case. Yuri Nosenko:
There was no personal interview of OSWALD by KGB and no further attempt to establish his bona fides...No consideration was given to his possible KGB operational potential...There was, of course, the consideration that OSWALD might be an American Intelligence Agent, but no unusual measures were taken to investigate this possibility...without referral to higher authority, I decreed OSWALD should not be allowed to stay in Soviet Union.
Yuri Nosenko implied that the request was not referred to the "CPSU or to any other Soviet Government agency." Yuri Nosenko stated that OSWALD had been advised at 9:00 a.m. on the morning of his suicide attempt that he would have to leave Russia:
Then he slashes his wrist at 10:00 a.m. The people at the hotel broke down the door to OSWALD'S hotel room and found him bleeding to death. And it is decided this kind of man would not be used by American intelligence. The KGB washed its hands of him...The KGB didn't want him in the Soviet Union and considered OSWALD as being not completely normal and not really very intelligent...After the suicide attempt, there was no attempt to debrief OSWALD because he was not an interesting person and was not normal...he was such a low level person that it was not thought that he would have information of value.
Then the Soviet authorities decided to allow him to stay. The KGB had no choice. They must look on him. We didn't ask the 1st Department or the FCD because he is not an interesting person and is not normal. There were no microphones in any of OSWALD'S hotel rooms. It was not felt that he was of sufficient importance to justify the use of such techniques against him...We were getting no information. There were no such reports in the file...there was no record in the file that OSWALD had ever offered to give information on the U.S. Marine Corps or any matters to the Soviets...There was no physical or technical surveillance of OSWALD while he lived in Minsk. The OSWALD'S mail was monitored, but revealed nothing of interest." After the assassination, Yuri Nosenko, still in Moscow, was read a summary of OSWALD'S KGB file that concluded with the statement that in Minsk the KGB had attempted "to influence OSWALD in the right direction.
Yuri Nosenko had also been present when OSWALD'S September 1963 request for a visa to the Soviet Union was denied, along with Turalin, Alekseyev, Chelnokov and Kovalenko. After the assassination, all KGB files from Minsk about OSWALD were flown to Moscow where it was discovered by Yuri Nosenko that the Minsk KGB had not taken any action with respect to OSWALD contrary to instructions from headquarters. Yuri Nosenko claimed repeatedly that the KGB had no contact with OSWALD whatsoever. OSWALD was never questioned about his past nor asked to write an autobiography.
THE CASE FOR YURI NOSENKO BEING DISPATCHED
TENNENT BAGLEY
In the U.S., Yuri Nosenko was handled by Tennent Harrington Bagley who discovered lies in Yuri Nosenko's story. Tennent Bagley was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on November 11, 1925, and came from a prominent Navy family. He served in World War II for three years in the U.S. Marine Corps then attended the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he received a doctorate in political science. He served in the CIA from 1950 on, where he specialized in Soviet operations. After serving as a Case Officer in Austria, he was assigned to Switzerland in 1960. He'd known ANGLETON since 1961. From 1960 to 1962 Tennent Bagley was Deputy Chief, Soviet Russia, Clandestine Activities Section. Tennent Bagley, 37, held this position at the time of Yuri Nosenko's first Agency-contact in Geneva in 1962. In 1962 he became head of a section responsible for counter-intelligence against the Soviet intelligence services. In 1965 or 1966, he became Deputy Chief, Soviet Russia Division. He went to Europe as Brussels Chief of Station in 1967, and retired there in 1972. The HSCA called him as a witness. Tennent Bagley was convinced Yuri Nosenko was bogus for the following reasons:
(1) The CIA was unbelievably lucky to have found him. Tennent Bagley added, "the key word in that last sentence is 'unbelievably.'"
(2) There were contradictions in Yuri Nosenko's testimony that could not be explained by Yuri Nosenko's personality flaws or memory. According to Tennent Bagley, when he reviewed OSWALD'S KGB file, "Nosenko was already a willing secret collaborator of the CIA. Therefore he must have been alert when dealing with this matter of such obvious importance to the United States and to his own country...Nosenko told us some of these events only 10 weeks after they happened, so there wasn't time for them to become dim in his memory."
(3) "Ten years removed from this case I can still remember at least 20 clear cases of Nosenko's lying about KGB activity and about the career which gave him authority to tell of it..."
(4) The cases Nosenko revealed for the first time were useless.
Tennent Bagley believed that the KGB had interviewed OSWALD:
(5) Here was a young American, LEE HARVEY OSWALD, just out of the Marine Corps, already inside the USSR and going to great lengths to stay there and become a citizen. The KGB never bothered to talk to him, not even once, not even to get an idea whether he might be a CIA plant. Can this be true? Could we all be wrong in what we've heard about rigid Soviet security precautions and about their strict procedures and disciplines...? Of course not.
(6) Yuri Nosenko gave the CIA the location of several microphones in the American Embassy, Moscow. Tennent Bagley stated Anatoliy Golitsyn had given CIA the same information six months previous. Yuri Nosenko produced a list of microphones in the American Embassy, Moscow, from 1960 to 1961. He said, at great risk, he kept this document in a KGB safe he shared with two subordinates. Yuri Nosenko never plausibly explained the circumstances which prompted his retention of this list until 1964, when he produced it for the CIA in Geneva.
Anatoliy Golitsyn had provided, in the first months after his defection, information that led to: "the final uncovering of Kim Philby; to the first detection of several important penetrations of European governments; and pointers to serious penetrations of the United States Government.
Tennent Bagley stated that Yuri Nosenko's information had all been previously compromised, citing the case of William John Vassall, an exposed KGB agent in the British Admiralty. Yuri Nosenko:
The KGB has now (1962) an agent in a high government position in London who provides most valuable information, some from NATO intelligence service conferences. The agent was recruited in Moscow in 1956 or 1957 on the basis of a homosexual compromise. After leaving Moscow he became an assistant to the Minister, or something like that, in the Admiralty. Yuri Nosenko learned of the agent's existence, not his identity. Anatoliy Golitsyn had earlier provided a lead to a KGB agent who was the source of Admiralty documents which Anatoliy Golitsyn had reviewed in KGB Headquarters. On the basis of that lead, British security authorities on June 11, 1962, passed to CIA a list of 20 suspects, including William John Vassall.
The Chief of Soviet Research, Counter-Intelligence, commented:
Yuri Nosenko is a KGB plant and may be publicly exposed as such sometime. The Agency's greatest contribution to the resolution of the questions at hand would be to break Yuri Nosenko and get the full story of how and why he was told to tell the story he did about OSWALD. [CIA FOIA 02911 7.28.64]
Tennent Bagley described himself as the principal opponent of Yuri Nosenko. The CIA produced "some penciled jotting...left carelessly in a highly secret file folder" in Tennent Bagley's handwriting which suggested "liquidation, drugging, or confinement in mental institutions" as means of breaking Yuri Nosenko. Tennent Bagley: "The fact that 'liquidation' was included revealed that they [the notes] were theoretical." In a lengthy, top secret report released in 1994, [CIA TS No. 197124] Tennent Bagley stated:
Yuri Nosenko did not serve in the Naval RU in any of the capacities or at the places and times he claimed. Yuri Nosenko did not enter the KGB in the manner or at the time he claimed. Yuri Nosenko did not serve in the American Embassy Section throughout the 1953 to 1955 period as he claimed. During the period 1955 to 1960 he was neither a senior case officer in, nor Deputy Chief of, the Seventh Department, American/British Commonwealth Section. Yuri Nosenko was neither Deputy Chief of the American Embassy Section, nor a senior officer or supervisor in the Section during the period 1961 to 1962. The contradictions in Yuri Nosenko's accounts of his life and KGB service are so extensive as to make his claims as a whole unacceptable. Given the conclusion that Nosenko is not a bona fide defector, it is necessary to attempt to determine his true motives for contacting American Intelligence and for providing the information he has given..." Reasonable explanations advanced for Nosenko's misrepresentations ranged from "swindler posing as former KGB agent" to "mental case" to "dispatched KGB agent."
Tennent Bagley: "Nosenko is a KGB officer who served in at least some of the components for some or all of the time periods that he claims, but who greatly exaggerated his positions, rank and access to information, to achieve greater status with American Intelligence. Because none of the above explanations is consistent with the data developed in interrogations and investigations, we are left with the hypothesis that Nosenko was dispatched by the KGB. While this explanation does not reconcile all these anomalies, none of them renders it untenable."
ANGLETON believed Nosenko was dispatched. He knew Nosenko was lying about OSWALD'S KGB connection, because he had used OSWALD in the U-2 dump, and he knew the KGB officers with whom OSWALD had contact. ANGLETON stated: "This agency has no information that would corroborate or disprove Nosenko's statements regarding OSWALD." [CIA Memo: ANGLETON to Hoover 4.28.64] Other CIA staffers, who were unaware of OSWALD'S connection to ANGLETON, concluded, for different reasons, that if Yuri Nosenko was dispatched, it must have been to accomplish or further a KGB purpose or mission…
…the nature of which has been, and continues to be, unknown...The theory has also been considered that Nosenko could have been dispatched to confuse and divert American Intelligence and thus protect an important KGB penetration or penetrations of the United States Government, particularly the CIA. This is a theory which has been given full consideration, but it is not possible to factually substantiate or refute this theory in the absence of specific information that high-level KGB penetrations do, or do not, exist.
PRIMARY FACTORS INDICATING NOSKENO DISPATCHED
Yuri Nosenko was a liar. Yuri Nosenko admitted lying about needing money and about the recall cable. Yuri Nosenko claimed he was a KGB Lieutenant Colonel. The CIA could not verify this. In 1992 Yuri Nosenko told Gerald Posner that "his appointment was still in the process of being approved, yet his travel document did say he was a lieutenant colonel." [Case Closed, p39]
Oleg Nechiporenko named different people than Yuri Nosenko in relation to OSWALD in 1959: Aleksandr Perepelitsyn, V. Vysotin. He also said different people handled OSWALD'S September 1963, visa request: Dryakhlov, Vlasov, Bannikov. Yuri Nosenko said OSWALD had no KGB contact, Oleg Nechiporenko said he did. Nonetheless, Oleg Nechiporenko stated that Yuri Nosenko was genuine, and the KGB had sentenced him to death.
Yuri Nosenko had the time of OSWALD'S suicide wrong. Yuri Nosenko said OSWALD'S hotel room was not bugged. Not only was it bugged, there was a camera in it. Yuri Nosenko said there was no technical surveillance on OSWALD in Minsk. There was, as reported by his neighbor. In fact, a 1992 Izvestia article entitled, KGB File No. 31451, stated that OSWALD was under constant surveillance. The article went on to say that OSWALD was suspected of seeking out people with access to secret information, and so was put in touch with people who pretended to have this access. He was lured into anti-Soviet conversations. When he went hunting, KGB agents followed him. OSWALD was drugged and watched by 20 agents. Yet Gerald Posner wrote that this article "both supplements and confirms the information from Yuri Nosenko."
ADDITIONAL CONTRADICTIONS
Yuri Nosenko stated that although the KGB recognized that OSWALD may have been an American agent, no unusual measures were taken to check on this possibility, since it already had been decided not to let him stay in the USSR. Was the KGB only interested in spies who stayed in the USSR for more than a week? Yuri Nosenko said the KGB did not consider recruiting Marina Oswald to report on OSWALD "because she was his wife and it was considered dangerous to recruit a wife to report on her husband." The KGB would recruit children to spy on their parents.
Yuri Nosenko repeatedly referred to the KGB's recognition that OSWALD was not normal as the reason for the KGB's failure to take various steps which it could normally be expected to take against a foreigner like OSWALD. In other words, a lack of normality, and the KGB's recognition of it, provided the peg for the whole story of the KGB's handling of OSWALD. Yuri Nosenko stated Marina Oswald had no difficulty leaving the country, because she was married to an American. This reasoning seems to overlook the fact that OSWALD had already declared his intention (through mail to the U.S. Embassy) to leave the USSR before he married her. If this fact were known to the KGB, as presumably it was, Marina Oswald's marriage request would have been closely scrutinized. [CIA Memo Wigren to C/SR 7.8.64]
Reporter Sam Jaffe was one of the American citizens wrongly exposed by Yuri Nosenko. Samuel Adason Jaffe was born in San Francisco. He served in the Merchant Marine in World War II and then the Navy Reserves. He was a Marine combat correspondent in Korea during the war there. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, and the New School for Social Research. He worked for the old International News Service in San Francisco. He worked briefly for the U.N. in the early 1950's and then joined Life Magazine, where he was a reporter from 1952 to 1955. In 1955, as a freelancer, he covered a conference of Third World countries at Bandung, Indonesia, and interviewed the late Chou En-lai of China. As a correspondent for CBS from 1955 to 1961 he covered the United Nations and Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev's visit to this country in 1959. Victor Marchetti wrote:
In 1955 Sam Jaffe applied for a job with CBS news. While he was waiting for his application to be processed, a CIA official who Jaffe identifies himself as Jerry Rubins visited his house in California and told him, 'If you are willing to work for us, you are going to Moscow' with CBS. Jaffe was flabbergasted, since he did not even know at that point if CBS would hire him, and he assumes that someone at CBS was in on the arrangement or otherwise the Agency would never had known he had applied for work. Moreover, it would have been highly unusual to send a new young reporter to such an important overseas post. Rubins told Jaffe that the Agency was willing to release 'certain top secret information to you in order that you try and obtain certain information for us.' Jaffe refused and was later hired by CBS for a domestic assignment. [Cult, page 335]
In 1960 Jaffe went to Moscow for CBS to cover the trial of Francis Gary Powers. In 1961 Jaffe joined ABC and went to Moscow to open its first bureau there. He was among the first to report the ouster of Khrushchev from politics on the night of October 14, 1964. In 1965 he was expelled from the Soviet Union because of a report ABC carried from Washington saying that another shake up in the Soviet leadership was imminent. By then Jaffe had already been assigned to take over ABC's Hong Kong Bureau. As the war in Vietnam deepened he was sent there and for his coverage he won a prize from the overseas press club. In 1968 he was reassigned to the United States and moved to Washington. The following year he resigned from ABC.
In the 1950's and 1960's Jaffe had a brilliant run as a newspaper and broadcast journalist, however, in 1969 allegations circulated regarding Jaffe's connection with the KGB based on information supplied by Nosenko. The FBI reported:
1. Sam Jaffe’s relationship with the Agency predates his assignment to Moscow as an ABC correspondent. During the period 1958 to 1960 while in New York, Jaffe was an FBI confidential informant on his Soviet contacts. In addition, he had several meetings with the Domestic Contacts Division New York office. While in Moscow with ABC, Jaffe felt he was the Subject of a KGB recruitment attempt in 1962. He recounted his story to the Regional Security Officer at the American Embassy, Moscow, copies of which went to both the CIA and FBI. Jaffe covered the trial of Gary Powers for the ABC Television Network, and flew on the same plane from New York to Moscow with Barbara Powers' party. Prior to that trip, he was briefed by a CIA psychologist on ways to observe Power's behavior and demeanor. Jaffe was mever “ordered” to cover the Powers’ trial, but simply acting as an enterprising newspaperman befriending Barbara Powers while her party was enroute and in the Soviet Union.
2. During the latter part of his time in Moscow, Jaffe was in contact with a KGB Officer, Kuvkov, and this relationship is a matter of record with the FBI. Jaffe has given his version of his dealings with the KGB in a lengthy interview with the FBI in 1969. Yuri Nosenko provided information on Jaffe's relationship with the KGB in 1964. However, as time went on, further debriefings of Yuri Nosenko indicated Yuri Nosenko was not as sure about Jaffe's relationship as he had been originally. By 1968 Yuri Nosenko was positive only that Kuvkov had been in touch with Jaffe, but Yuri Nosenko was not certain that Jaffe was a paid witting KGB agent.
4. During Jaffe’s tour in Hong Kong and subsequently in Washington, he was in touch with CIA officers. He provided good information on a (deleted 24 as of 2010) and he was helpful to the Agency in reporting on a (deleted 11) organization, (deleted 08 as of 2010). All (deleted 28 as of 2010) contact with Jaffe ended in 1971.
5. Central to Jaffe’s charges about CIA, which he has made public many times, is Jaffe’s belief that the CIA passed derogatory information about him to his employers. Attached is a November 24, 1975 letter from Mr. Colby to Jaffe which states categorically that no information in the CIA files had ever been passed outside of official channels. In addition to this letter Jaffe has been reassured on this point verbally on at least four other occasions. The CIA is positive that Jaffe's recall from Hong Kong in 1968, and subsequent dismissal by ABC, are not related to any action taken by the CIA.
6. In discussions with Jaffe he frequently recounts a conversation he had with Mr. (deleted 06, 08 as of 2010) in Hong Kong. According to Jaffe (deleted as of 2010) told him he had a “security problem” but this problem would clear up in due course. A close check of our files cannot elucidate what (deleted as of 2010) was talking about. It is possible of course that (deleted as of 2010) was alluding to the Nosenko allegations as (deleted as of 2010) were given much of the Nosenko debriefings. The record is unclear on this point. However, based on information available to this Agency, we feel we have tried to pacify Jaffe with the statement contained in the Colby letter that we have no evidence he has ever been an agent of any foreign intelligence service.
Sam Jaffe said that the CIA attempted to get him to act as an agent and obtain information from Chinese Communist contacts. Mr. Jaffe said that while he was stationed in Hong Kong he was prepared to make contact with a Chinese official for the CIA, but he said that ABC recalled him from his assignment before the contact could be made. [NYT 2.9.76] Sam Jaffe wanted to locate Yuri Nosenko and confront him. He contacted John Gittinger and Chief, CI/R&A, Leonard McCoy. Sam Jaffe was told the KGB wanted to kill Yuri Nosenko and a meeting was impossible. [CIA Dempsey Memo on Jaffe 12.8.75] Jaffe had regular conversations with ANGLETON. Covert Action reported:
Apparently, ANGLETON had come to befriend Jaffe because of his conviction that he was the target of a KGB defamation attempt. A Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko, interrogated ruthlessly by ANGLETON, hinted that Jaffe was a KGB agent. Since ANGELTON was convinced that Nosenko was a KGB double agent sent to sow disinformation and confusion, Jaffe had to be okay. [CA No. 29 (Winter 1988)]
YURI NOSENKO'S OTHER INFORMATION DID NOT CHECK OUT
Yuri Nosenko claimed with certainty that the KGB recruited no American Embassy personnel between 1953 and his defection in 1964 with two exceptions:
The first was that of Sergeant Dayle W. Smith who served in Moscow from April 1951 to July 1953. Smith agreed to work for the KGB abroad, but not in the U.S., however, when Smith returned home, he was approached by the KGB. Smith worked for the KGB in the U.S. until September 1962. After denying involvement with the KGB in interviews with the FBI in 1964 and 1965, Smith admitted that he had been approached by the KGB in Moscow in late 1953, that he had been offered a large sum of cash and gems in exchange for classified information concerning Embassy cipher systems and that he had provided the KGB with a mock code machine rotor. The KGB officer who compromised Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, Reino Hayhanen, who defected in Paris in May 1957, also provided information leading to the arrest of Smith.
The second exception concerned a counter-intelligence officer at the American Embassy who had been sleeping with his KGB Agent Russian housemaid. Yuri Nosenko said the KGB subsequently sent him pornographic photo montages. The KGB concluded that the American would not succumb to ordinary blackmail and consequently the maid was instructed to confess to him that she had been recruited by the KGB against her will and would be arrested if she did not fulfill her KGB tasks. The American agreed to help her. This man met with Gribanov on one occasion, then went to Ambassador Bohlen. Anatoliy Golitsyn had already provided the CIA with a similar story. Yuri Nosenko consistently asserted that, had there been other recruitments, he would have learned some of the details. He discounted the fact that he was not always in the First Department, which was responsible for Embassy recruitment.
THE CASE FOR YURI NOSENKO BEING BONA FIDE
In 1976 John L. Hart was brought out of retirement to conduct a study of the Yuri Nosenko case. Hart testified before the HSCA in 1978. That year, Leonard McCoy, AC/CI, released this statement:
Yuri Nosenko was probably the most valuable source of counter-intelligence information that the U.S. Government has ever had....He identified some 2,000 KGB officers and 300 Soviets who were acting as KGB agents. He provided information on 238 Americans in whom the KGB had displayed some interest, including many who had been recruited. For example, one of his identifications led to the trial, and a sentence of 25 years, for U.S. Army Sergeant Robert Lee Johnson. Nosenko also provided information on some 200 foreign nationals in 36 countries in whom the KGB had taken an active interest...the British were able, on the basis of Nosenko's information, to identify William John Vassall, a high official of the British Admiralty, as a KGB agent, and sentence him to 18 years.
Gerald Posner was granted an interview with Yuri Nosenko. Yuri Nosenko explained that his appearance in Geneva in January 1964 was arbitrary: "Disarmament negotiations were postponed twice in 1963. 'If there had been a meeting as scheduled in the Spring of 1963, I would have defected then...'"
Many other defectors said Yuri Nosenko was bona fide including, Fedora, who worked in the Soviet Union's Mission to the United Nations. Gerald Posner listed nine other similar defectors who believed Yuri Nosenko was authentic, but failed to state how they knew this, and where they made their statements. Additionally, questions have been raised regarding some of these men:
(1) Yuri Loginov (1961). Yuri Loginov was a KGBnik who went to the American Embassy, Helsinki, in 1961 and offered to act as an agent-in-place. He did so for six years, undetected by the Soviets. In 1967 he was arrested by the South Africans for spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. ANGLETON betrayed him because his case officer, Richard Kovitch, was suspected of being a mole, due to ambiguous information supplied by Anatoliy Golitsyn. Yuri Loginov was sent back to the Soviet Union in a spy trade. His fate there remains unclear.
(2) Igor Kochnov (1966).
(3) Obscure Soviet trade delegate Oleg Lyalin, 34, who defected to Britain early September 1971. He was 27 years old when he had knowledge of Yuri Nosenko. As a result of his defection, 90 Soviet delegates were PNGed from London. Oleg Lyalin revealed the Soviet's intent to sabotage military installations. He was a double-agent for six months before he defected. Oleg Lyalin was a bona fide defector - he blew too many other agents cover not to be so.
(4) Rudolph Albert Herrmann studied in East Germany then went to the United States in 1968. He was rolled over in 1977.
(5) Ilya Grigorevich Dzhirkvelov was a KGB officer with a history of alcoholism. He worked in the Soviet media from 1958 to 1965. He defected after a car accident in 1980.
(6) Vladimir Andreyevich Kuzichkin joined the KGB in 1975. He was a senior KGB officer in Tehran, who defected to the British, in June 1982. Vladimir Kuzichkin produced a list of Soviet agents in Iran. Many of them were executed.
(7) Viktor Gundarev (1985).
(8) Vitaliy Yurchenko (1985). Vitaliy Yurchenko was a senior intelligence official who defected to the West in 1985, and redefected in November 1985. Before he returned to the United States he said he had been kidnapped, drugged and tortured by the CIA. Yurchenko provided information to the CIA on Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who worked for the KGB. Howard fled the United States after he was exposed by Yurchenko. This indicates that Yurchenko was a bona fide defector. Yurchenko passed the CIA's lie detector tests. Yurchenko probably re-defected after his lover refused to defect with him. [NYT 11.8.85] Just who this lover was is unclear. The New York Times reported: "The woman in Toronto, Svetlana Dedkov, 48 years old, fell to her death from the 27th floor of a 35-story apartment building in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. Her husband, Boris Dedkov, worked for Stan-Canada, a Soviet machine tool trading company in Toronto." The Canadian police stated that they found a suicide note. Her suicide took place the morning after the defector said he was going home. The New York Times reported: "The sources here linked Mr. Yurchenko to a Soviet diplomat's wife in Ottawa, who they would not identify. One official said that he heard that the Soviet Embassy might have flown her back to Moscow on Thursday to get her out of the way...After defecting, officials said, Yurchenko visited a woman in Canada with whom he had been involved with while stationed at the Soviet Embassy here from 1975 to 1980. But she sent him away, the Americans, said." [NYT 11.6.85] The Canadian government would not confirm or deny that Yurchenko visited Canada. What is Vitaliy Yurchenko doing in Russia today? Where did Yurchenko release the information that Nosenko was bona fide.
(9) Oleg Gordievskiy, 46, a Soviet Consul in London, was U.K. KGB Chief. He defected in September, 1985. Twenty-five Soviet nationals were expelled as a result of his collaboration with the British. Oleg Gordievskiy joined the KGB in 1962, where he worked in Department S of First Directorate, which concerned itself with illegals in the West. Oleg Gordievskiy claimed that the Soviet Union believed the United States was going to attack in early 1981. Former CIA/DD George Carver labeled this disinformation. Twenty five Soviet nationals are a lot of people to burn in any operation. Gordievskiy was bona fide. Again it was not stated where Gordievskiy said Nosenko was bona fide.
Many respected authors like David Wise and Tom Mangold were convinced Yuri Nosenko was genuine. Edward Petty: "The Bureau, as far as I know, considered him to have been a really good source. He was real, as far as being a Second Chief Directorate officer." The CIA:
If Yuri Nosenko was dispatched, it is felt that he, during his 1962 contacts, would have been very carefully briefed and that his remarks or statements would have not been of a nature that would have caused any suspicion in regard to the bona fides of Yuri Nosenko." The CIA explained why Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko furnished the same information: they were both in the same section of the KGB. The CIA explained Yuri Nosenko's lack of knowledge concerning the trip that Kosolapov made to Helsinki in November 1960: "It cannot be interpreted as evidence Yuri Nosenko was dispatched by the KGB since, if he had been, he would have been briefed on the trip, as this was an event the KGB knew Golitsyn was aware of.
THE MIDDLE GROUND
Did Yuri Nosenko lie because he had been exposed to false or limited information, then allowed to, or was spooked into, defecting? Edward Petty: "The facts and timing with respect to Yuri Nosenko's defection and his provision to the CIA of information about OSWALD in the Soviet Union make it virtually certain that the KGB knew that he was going to defect, and expected him to provide the CIA with the extent of his knowledge concerning OSWALD. Various information, including much of Yuri Nosenko's own conduct, has subsequently provided the basis to accept that Yuri Nosenko is personally genuine. There is no other conclusion but that the KGB allowed him, or motivated him, to defect without his realizing that to have been the case. Just such a technique had been used successfully by the KGB in the Goleniewski case only four years earlier."
"SNIPER"
In March 1958 "Sniper" (Michael Goleniewski, a renegade Polish Intelligence officer) contacted the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, by mail and offered information about communist espionage activities. Howard Roman studied the contents of the letters and determined that they were written by a German speaking Pole. The information was evaluated in Project BEVISION. "Sniper" led the CIA to KGBniks Gordon Lonsdale (Russian Colon Molody) and George Blake, who had compromised the Berlin Tunnel. He exposed an Israeli citizen named Israel Beers as a KGB mole. "Sniper" defected in December 1960. Evidence existed that the KGB had false information planted on him before his defection, then spooked him into defecting. Michael Goleniewski remembered having been told by a KGBnik that Stafan Bandera, an anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalist living in Munich, had been murdered on the night of October 15, 1959, by the man with whom he was having supper, German intelligence service (BND) agent Heinz Danko Herre. The CIA later learned Heinz Danko Herre was innocent:
The Legal Attaché in Bonn in June 1962, reviewed information furnished to the Germans by Bogdan Stashinsky, which indicated that he was recruited by the KGB in 1952...in 1958 he was told that because he had proved himself, he would be given an important mission against Ukrainian émigré groups in the West. This mission turned out to be the assassination of Dr. Lev Rebet and Stafan Bandera, émigré leaders in Munich. He murdered Lev Rebet in 1958 and Stafan Bandera in 1959...by spaying poison in his victim's face which made death appear to be from a heart attack." [FBI 62-109090-NR 1.24.64 Sullivan to Branigan]
The Soviets had deliberately planted the Heinz Danko Herre story on Michael Goleniewski to make trouble between the CIA and BND. Michael Goleniewski was told that Henry Kissinger had been recruited by the Soviets in the aftermath of World War II. No evidence of this has surfaced to date. Edward Petty:
The Soviets had details of the Goleniewski case as it was going on. They therefore had a clear-cut penetration. A penetration of that level had also to know the Nosenko case. Ergo, if you accept that hypothesis, then they knew about Nosenko. The key is that Nosenko himself was quite genuine. Nosenko was in the Second Chief Directorate and handled OSWALD material in the normal course of events. So he was perfectly willing to tell what he knew. The material was true as far as the Second Chief Directorate was concerned. If you accept the evidence from Nosenko himself that he personally is genuine, that does not mean that he is genuine as far as an unwitting control is concerned. ANGLETON was doing exactly what they wanted to happen.
The second part of the Nosenko affair dealt with KGB penetration of CIA and the Golitsyn case. Golitsyn had predicted Nosenko's appearance and that he would try to discredit his bona fides as a defector. ANGLETON was always saying the Nosenko was going to destroy Golitsyn's leads and therefore he would destroy Golitsyn. Nosenko was a pawn in whatever play was going on involving ANGLETON and Golitsyn.
When they ultimately gave him polygraph tests that were not rigged, Nosenko came out perfectly all right. The Soviets let him out. He didn't know he was playing their role. What they did to make him run, I don't know. That's the reason they never broke him.
Edward Petty pointed out that Nosenko was never asked,
Think about it fellow, are there any facts which would cause you to believe that the Soviets were putting pressure on you to leave?' Whether he would tell anybody such a thing at this point is something else. The CIA in that sense was inclined to look at things as either black or white. Either he was 'Okay' or he was a dispatched agent. They didn't understand that there could be a middle ground.
Cleveland Cram stated:
At that time ANGLETON foolishly did not believe Nosenko, not because of OSWALD and the assassination, but because of Golitsyn having denounced him. I believe Nosenko was bona fide.
Cleveland Cram was asked if Yuri Nosenko could have unwittingly been given false information then spooked into defecting. He stated:
If you had a big conspiracy in the Soviet Union he might have been shown false stuff and reported that. It was looked into. With the evidence we have now from the Soviets, we know that is not true. Nosenko saw what the KGB had, and he reported what he saw. The problem was that JIM was so screwed up in his thinking because of Bagley and Golitsyn he did not want to accept Nosenko, who was the only person who really had first hand information on OSWALD in the West, available to us. ANGLETON didn't have the brains to run OSWALD as vestpocket operation. That's ridiculous. OSWALD was too unreliable. All you guys in this conspiracy shit should do something else. Like the JFK movie. It's just not true.
Cram was asked if there could have been a middle ground:
His information was very accurate about all the important things. He had access to the OSWALD file after the assassination. I know the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Nosenko was a genuine defector. It is firmly established now. Former Soviet Generals will tell you this. I'm not sure that Goleniewski had any false information planted on him before his defection. That's a theory cooked-up by nut cases like JIM ANGLETON, who never could prove it. ANGLETON was trying to prove some of his goofy theories, and that's how it got started. Goleniewski says it isn't true.
ANALYSIS OF MIDDLE GROUND THEORY
OSWALD did not supply the Soviets with strategic information until April 1960. His report could have been placed in a RESTRICTED file. Yuri Nosenko might have been exposed to the non-sensitive OSWALD file and was assigned to Geneva then provoked into defecting. Or he might have defected on his own. Either way he would have been genuinely convinced the KGB had no connection with OSWALD. As for the contradictions in his story about OSWALD and the KGB, Scott Malone believed: "He was a drunk and a lair. He lied - because he was a liar." Did he lie because he was trying to exaggerate his importance to the CIA? The CIA explored something akin to "a middle ground" when it asked:
Is there evidence of a political or any other type objective which could justify a dispatch of Yuri Nosenko by the KGB with permission to speak freely to CIA concerning his knowledge of the KGB and without Yuri Nosenko being given a specific mission? The above possibility has been given consideration, even though the ultimate ramifications are practically incalculable. The conclusion is that as regards Nosenko, with the single exception detailed below, there is no evidence of a political type objective which could be considered of sufficient importance by the KGB to warrant the dispatch of a KGB officer with the knowledge of Nosenko to speak freely with the CIA without his being given a specific mission, or missions, by the KGB...The only area touched upon in any way by Nosenko which might meet the above requirements is the assassination of President Kennedy.
The CIA also asked: "Is there any evidence that the contacts of Nosenko in 1962 or in 1964 with the CIA were known to the KGB prior to his defection?" The CIA:
It is recognized that since positive factual confirmation such as the KGB file on Nosenko is not available, any conclusion concerning whether Nosenko was, or was not, dispatched by the KGB can only be based on a full review of available information from Nosenko...One of the particular areas considered was his apparent behavior during his contacts with the CIA in June 1962 and the conclusion was that it was incomprehensible that he could have been under KGB control at the time.
The CIA reasoned that had Nosenko been under KGB control, he would not have expressed considerable concern over his personal security, but it had to admit: "It is recognized that the above indicated concern is not substantial evidence that Nosenko was not under KGB control." The CIA also dismissed the possibility that the Soviets discovered that the documents Yuri Nosenko had stolen were missing. It cited the fact Yuri Nosenko lied about his rank as further proof of his bone fides: no dispatched KGB agent would be that stupid. The possibility that Yuri Nosenko was discovered, then "spooked" into defecting, was not covered in this report.
YURI NOSENKO AND THE WARREN COMMISSION
Yuri Nosenko offered to testify before the Warren Commission. The CIA never allowed him to do this, nor was he mentioned in the Report or Twenty-Six Volumes. Interviews with Yuri Nosenko were included in the documents of the Warren Commission. Edward Petty commented, "While the CIA considered Nosenko to be a dispatched agent from the word go, actually from before he ever arrived, the CIA could not hold back word of what Nosenko had to say about OSWALD from the Warren Commission." The CIA told the HSCA: "CIA was unable to resolve satisfactorily the question of his bona fides until well after the Warren Commission had completed its work. The point is that CIA, per se, did not reach an agreed position on Mr. Nosenko until late 1968." Former President Gerry Ford was Yuri Nosenko's foremost opponent:
Ford: I have been led to believe, by people who I believe know, that there is a grave question about the reliability of Nosenko being a bona fide defector...I feel so strongly about this that I just think the Commission has got to make a decision on it.
Warren: I am allergic to defectors...So I think exactly as you do, Gerry.
Dulles: I concur in what you said. Over the weekend I had an opportunity to discuss the Nosenko matter in some detail with my former colleagues...
Ford: It is my best recollection that he was actually a defector some time in December, at a disarmament meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. And the original press releases were to the effect that he was a highly significant catch as far as we were concerned...There was a great mystery about his particular defection, because the Soviet Union made such a protest - they went to the Swiss Government and raised the devil about it. Now subsequent information has developed that he doesn't appear to be quite as big a catch, if any, as far as we were concerned. Having absolutely no faith in what the Soviet Union tries to do in these cases, he might have been dangled for one reason two or three months before the assassination, but pumped last th (illegible) the assassination, and a man that was as high as he allegedly is, with the mental capacity he is supposed to have, could very well be filled with all the information which he is now giving us in reference to the OSWALD case. As I say, I am a complete and total skeptic and cynic about these kinds of people, and there would be no better way for the Soviet Union to try and clean its own skirts than to have a high ranking defector come and discount OSWALD'S importance, OSWALD'S significance while in the Soviet Union." [WC Proceedings 6.23.64]
BRANIGAN'S DOUBTS ABOUT NOSENKO
William Branigan pointed this out to William Sullivan:
With respect to the points that are to be elaborated on, Nosenko stated that he next heard about OSWALD two hours after the assassination of President Kennedy when he was summoned to the KGB center in Moscow. The time element of two hours is highly unlikely. Elsewhere, Nosenko states that when OSWALD appeared at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB at Moscow was advised of his interest in returning to Russia and the First Directorate consulted the Second Directorate. This could only have occurred in late September or early in October 1963, but then Nosenko says following the assassination no file on OSWALD could be located at the KGB center in Moscow. This seems unlikley. [NARA FBI 124-10169-10063]
YURI NOSENKO'S IMPRISONMENT
ANGLETON knew for a fact that no matter how you cut it, Nosenko was not for real. The CIA kept Yuri Nosenko locked up for five years under prison-like circumstances. He was tortured and deprived of basic human necessities. Helms commented: "One of the first problems we had with him in the United States was he liked to drink and carouse. One of the reasons to hold him in confinement was to get him away from booze..." Yuri Nosenko undertook numerous polygraph tests. One of these tests, according to Helms, "was designed as sort of a psychological trick on Nosenko to indicate that he wasn't telling the truth." He was administered LSD. Some in the Bureau were convinced Yuri Nosenko was real:
The FBI perceived Nosenko's statements about OSWALD, depending upon a subsequent, definitive resolution of Nosenko's bona fides, to be the most authoritative information available, indicative of a lack of Soviet Governmental involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. The FBI found no substantial basis to conclude that Nosenko was not a bona fide defector...
YURI NOSENKO'S REHABILITATION
In 1967 Bruce Solie, of the CIA's Office of Security, wrote a critique of a lengthy report Tennent Bagley had prepared on Yuri Nosenko. Bruce Solie determined that Yuri Nosenko had not been dispatched. During the tenure of the HSCA, Bruce Solie, Chief of the Security Analysis Group, supplied the Committee with many of its documents. In 1968 the FBI issued a Top-Secret Nosenko Report.
It is noted that a brief chronology of events is set forth in the preface to the WFO paper. It is indicated therein that Sammy is considered by CIA as a part of a large scale KGB deceptive operation. In addition to those comments, it is noted that a paper prepared in December 1964 by CIA as an agenda for proposed CIA-FBI conference, concluded that Nosenko was dispatched by the KGB in March 1962, as one part of a broad provocation effort conceived as early as 1959 and set in motion in the latter part of 1961. It was stated, “We believe the major figures in this provocation include at least three defectors, and at one time or another more than eight Soviet officials in-place as American Intelligence Service (AIS) agents. They are supported by a large number of staged incidents and purposefully handled agents known by the KGB to be under Western control. NOSENKO (SAMMY) is but one of these figures, a pivotal one and the one offering us the greatest insight into the larger operation."
The paper went on to say that the provocation was directed by a group of highly experienced KGB officers probably working directly under the Chairman of the KGB or one of his deputies. It was also stated, "We have been able to discern how NOSENKO was briefed and trained and his legend shaped, and have been able to identify tentatively the specific KGB officers running this operation.”
The December, 1964, paper also made proposals for the disposal of SAMMY. In the event his full confession and cooperation were not obtained, it was proposed that he be removed from U. S. territory for controlled detention abroad followed by a public statement identifying him as a confessed provocateur.
(This is close to what happened to EYEBALL in 1967.) It was stated that preparation should be made for action against sources "whom we believe to be suspect or related to the NOSENKO case," to be coincidental with action against SAMMY.
The December, 1964, paper and others emanating from CIA which conclude that SAMMY is a plant and that all other defectors or defectors in place who support him are likewise plants, attempt to discredit Bureau sources as well as SAMMY. They illustrate the subject of defector interrogation and exploitation is clearly within the interests of the Bureau.
SAMMY has been under almost daily interrogation by Mr. BRUCE SOLIE of the Office of Security of CIA from October 30, 1967, to date. SOLIE's technique has been to question SAMMY in such a manner that he will volunteer information and only in rare instances has he challenged SAMMY's statements or become involved in arguments about what SAMMY did or did not furnish previously. The theory was to get SAMMY to volunteer information without reference to previous interrogations. This technique has been effective.
The current interrogations have not exhausted SAMMY's knowledge of Soviet Intelligence but thousands of pages have been recorded covering his career, cases known to him, and general as well as specific, data regarding KGB. The transcripts have been made available to WFO and have been thoroughly reviewed by three WFO Agents who have collectively more than 50 years of experience in Soviet counterintelligence work.
Based upon the review of this voluminous material and the results of some collateral investigation it has been concluded, contrary of some collateral investigation in the 1968 paper, that SAMMY is what he says he is, that he is knowledgeable in the areas and to the extent that he should be, and he has a logical explanation for his acquisition of information which normally would not have been accessible to him in his claimed positions. It is believed impossible that he developed this detailed knowledge by KGB briefings only. The consistency between previous and current interviews is substantial proof of this. If he was dispatched by KGB he was given a "green light" to tell everything he knew. This is believed incredible, particularly because of his connections with ranking KGB officers and because his information is closely related to that furnished by various other sources. Collectively these sources have seriously damaged SIS operations and have rendered valuable assistance to Western Counterintelligence. They have supplied the key to practically all successful counterintelligence operations during the past five years. To hold that they are all "Plants" is preposterous. While SAMMY admittedly during previous interrogations, exaggerated and in some instances lied about his KGB rank and his personal involvement in some cases, there is no reasonable basis for now doubting his bona fides.
The current interrogation of SAMMY by SOLIE is being handled as indicated in number six above and has been productive. Based upon the results summarized in the attached paper, the conclusion is inescapable that the persons who handled previous interrogations and evaluations of SAMMY were either incompetent or for reasons of their own persisted in the attempt to prove the February, 1964, conclusion that he was not bona fide. There was a definite failure to take elementary steps to clarify questioned matters. A good example is the insistence that KGB could not have placed "metka" (powder) on the clothing of JOHN V. ABIDIAN because he did not employ a Soviet maid until 16 months after his arrival in Moscow. The current interrogation of SAMMY developed that KGB was aware that ABIDIAN had an American girl friend who sent her maid to clean ABIDIAN's apartment. Recent interview of ABIDIAN by SOLIE confirmed this; the maid therefore could have had access to his clothing beginning 6 months after his arrival in Moscow. Other examples of inadequate interrogation and collateral investigation are set forth in the attached paper:
RECOMMENDATIONS
WFO believes that SAMMY is a bona fide defector and that his isolation and detention re based on erroneous conclusions and unsound grounds and are incompatible with the American system of justice.
Yuri Nosenko was freed in April 1969. He was put on the CIA payroll as an independent contractor.
YURI NOSENKO'S HSCA TESTIMONY
In 1979 the HSCA questioned Yuri Nosenko about why the Soviets allowed OSWALD to remain in Russia. He said two psychiatrists determined he was insane, and if they tried to deport him he might commit suicide: "Simply a mentally unstable person, they didn't want to go it on any such action." Yuri Nosenko declared that, although extensive KGB resources were devoted to physical and technical surveillance of OSWALD, the KGB never interviewed him. In 1964 Yuri Nosenko had supplied different information to the FBI: OSWALD was put under
…passive observation to make sure he was not an American intelligence agent temporarily dormant...in view of instructions from KGB, Moscow, no active interest in OSWALD could be taken in Minsk without obtaining prior approval from KGB, Moscow. No such approval was ever requested or granted and based on his experience, he opined that the only OSWALD coverage during his stay in Minsk consisted of periodic checks at his place of employment, inquiry of neighbors and review of his mail.
Yuri Nosenko explained: "Well I told them there was work done against OSWALD; it was ordered, passive work, it's called passive. Whenever it's ordered not to make an approachment, not to make a contact, not to make a recruitment, this is passive."
THE YURI NOSENKO INCUBUS
When ANGLETON was deposed in HUNT v. WEBERMAN in 1979, he stated:
Well, I will simply say that during my tenure the [Nosenko] case had never been resolved...and, Mr. Helms, in his testimony before the assassination committee recently, had words to the effect that the problems of Nosenko were still an incubus that hung over our heads...I have never in a, as a matter of policy and as a matter of professional judgement, come to any conclusion other than the case was unresolved. That was the official position and I can speak to my tenure. That was the official position of the former Deputy Director of Operations, i.e., the Clandestine Services, Thomas Karamessines. It was reflected in the FBI disseminations of his reports to the effect that they were from a defector whose bona fides had not been resolved...There were many speculations that the so-called methodology that Nosenko alleged was the methodology of the KGB was inaccurate, but that was in the realm of speculation based on very thorough analysis of Nosenko's testimonies. As I said earlier, the incubus was still hanging over our head. There was no quotation, no determination.
Helms told the HSCA: "To this very day no person familiar with the facts, of whom I am aware, finds Mr. Nosenko's comments about OSWALD and the KGB to be credible. That still hangs in the air like an incubus." Nosenko was dispatched by the Soviets to disassociate OSWALD from the KGB. He had to remain in America and he could never redefect. He would be condemned as a traitor by the Russian Intelligence Service and sentenced to death. It was unlikely the death sentence could be carried out within the United States. He was an extremely strong-willed person, and could not be broken by torture. He may have supplied the CIA with a lot of good information, but his information about OSWALD and others was a lie. Nosenko's real mission was to prevent World War III by supplying the CIA with information which disassociated OSWALD from the KGB. ANGLETON knew first hand Nosenko was full of shit because ANGLETON had run OSWALD in the Soviet Union.
OSWALD: JULY 1960 TO NOVEMBER 1960
July summer months of green beauty, pine forest, very deep. I enjoy many days in the enviorments of Minsk with the Zegers who have a car "Mosivich". I always goes along with Anita. Leonara seems to have no Sov-friend, many admirirs. She has a beauiful Spanish figure, long black hair, like Anita. I pay much attention to her shes too old for me she seems to dislike my lack of ambition for some reason. She is high strung. I have become habituated to a small cafe which is where I dine in the evening the food is generally poor and always strictly the same, menue in any cafe, at any point in the city. The food is cheap and I don't really care about quiality after three years in the U.S.M.C.
By September 1960, OSWALD was becoming openly critical of Soviet society:
As my Russian improves I become increasingly concious of just what kind of a sociaty I live in. Mass gymnastics, complusory afterwork meeting. Complusary attendance at lectures and the sending the entire shop collective except me) to pick potatoes on a Sunday, at a state collective farm. A "patroict duty" to bring in the harvest. The opions of the workers (unvoiced) are that its a great pain in the neck. They don't seem to be esspicialy enthusia about any of the "collective" duties. I am increasingly aware of the presence, in all things, of Lebizen, shop party secretary, fat, fortyish and jovial on the outside. He is a no-nonsense party regular.
October 1960. The coming of Fall, my dread of a new Russian winter are mellowed in splendid golds and reds of fall in Belorussia. Plums pearch appricots and cherrys abound for these last fall weeks. I am healthy brown color and stuffed with fresh fruit. (at other times of the year unobtainable)
ELLA GERMAN
ELLA GERMAN on the right
October 18, 1960. My 21st birthday see's Rosa, Pavil, Ella at a small party at my place. Ella a very attractive Russian Jew I have been going walking with latly, works at the radio factory also. Rosa and Ella are jelous of each other it brings a warm feeling to me. Both are at my place for the first time. Ellas and Pavil both give ash-tray's (I don't smoke) we have a laugh.
November 1960. Finds the approch of winter now. A growing lonliness overtakes me in spite of my conquest of Ennatachina, a girl from Riga, studing at the music conservatory in Minsk. After an affair which lasts a few weeks we part.
November 15, 1960. In Nov. I make aquiataces of four girls roomming at the For. lan. Dormitory in room 212. Nell is very interesting, so is Tomka, Tomis and Alta. I usually go to the institute domatory with a friend of mine who speaks English very well, Eraich Titov 22: is in the forth year at medical insitute. Very bright fellow. At domatory we sit and talk for hours in English.
December 1960. I am having a light affair with Nell Korobka."
The Warren Commission named Eric Titovyets as OSWALD'S oldest existing acquaintance. In his Historic Diary, OSWALD reflected he did not trust Eric, who was a loyal Communist Party member, and did not tell him he was returning to the United States until one day before his departure. [CIA 1295-482, 1295-482]
OSWALD: JANUARY 1961
January 1, 1961 - New Years I spend at home of Ella Germain. I think I am in love with her. She has refused my more dishonourable advances, we drink and eat in the presence of her family in a very hospitable atmosphere. Later I go home drunk and happy. Passing the river homewards, I decide to propose to Ella.
January 2, 1961. After a pleasent hand-in-hand walk to the local cinima we come home, standing on the doorstep I propose's. She hesitates than refuses, my love is real but she has none for me. Her reason besides lack of love: I am american and someday simply might be arrested simply because of that example Polish Intervention in 20's led to the arrest of poeple in the Soviet Union of Polish origin "you understand the world situation there is too much against you and you don't even know it." I am stunned she snickers at my awkarness, in turning to go (I am too stunned tothink!) I realize she was never serious with me but only expolited my being an american, in order to get the envy of the other girls who consider me different from the Russian Boys. I am misarable.
January 3, 1961. I am misarable about Ella. I lover her but what can I do? It is the state of fear which was always in the Soviet Union.
Priscilla Johnson related that LEE told Marina Oswald "Being American, German thought I was a spy." He confided that he "loved Ella with all his heart," and "her only fault was that at 24 she was still a virgin, due entirely to her own desire...Our last formal date was in February 1961 after which I stopped seeing her." [Johnson Lee & Marina p401: CIA Name List with Traces] Was Ella German reporting back to the KGB? The CIA's Name List With Traces: "An American visitor in Moscow on 19(??) reported being assigned an interpreter named Ella Herman (also spelt German) who was described as single, Jewish and in her early 30's with an excellent command of English including a good vocabulary in thermodynamics. She claimed to have two years of experience translating for a chemical institute. Ella Herman was furnished by the Moscow Energetics Institute and was reportedly attached to the English chair of the Institute." Vladimir Semichastny said OSWALD'S primary interest was womanizing.
OSWALD OFFERED SOVIET CITIZENSHIP
January 4, 1961 One year after I received the residence document I am called in to the passport office and asked if I want citizenship (Russian) I say no simply extend my residental passport to agree and my document is extended untill Jan 4, 1962.
January 4, 1961 to January 31, 1961. I am stating to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab that money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling allys no place of recreation acept the trade union dances. I have had enough.
On January 12, 1961, S.A. John W. Fain was still assigned to the OSWALD case and was under the supervision of ASAC W. David Breen and SAC Curtis O. Lynum.
February 1, 1961. I made my first request to American Embassy, Moscow, for reconsidering my position, I stated "I would like to go back to the U.S.
On February 1, 1961, the State Department sent Airgram A-127 via diplomatic pouch to the American Embassy, Moscow, which requested that the American Embassy inform the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Marguerite Oswald was worried about her son. Delivery time for such pouches was from three to ten days. On February 5, 1961, before the American Embassy passed this message to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, OSWALD mailed a letter dated February 1, 1961 to the American Embassy, which the American Embassy received on February 13, 1961. In this letter, he expressed his interest in returning to the United States. American Embassy officials stated this was the first time they had heard from, or about, OSWALD, since November 16, 1959. Marguerite Oswald's letter and OSWALD'S decision to leave the Soviet Union were unrelated. His mission had ended and he was not admitted to Patrice Lumumba University. The Warren Commission concluded: "The simultaneity of the two events was apparently coincidental. The request from Marguerite Oswald went from Washington to Moscow by sealed diplomatic pouch and there was no evidence that the seal had been tampered with." [WR p275] Richard E. Snyder: "All we could do in cases like that would be to forward a letter to the Foreign Office with a request that they forward it. We could not contact the individual himself."
REFERENCE TO LETTER U.S. EMBASSY NEVER RECEIVED
OSWALD'S February 5, 1961, letter to the American Embassy, Moscow, contained a reference to a December 1960 letter allegedly mailed to the American Embassy from Minsk, which the American Embassy never received: "Since I have not received a reply to my letter of December 1960 I am writing again asking that you consider my request for the return of my American passport." The CIA reported:
There is no indication in the diary or elsewhere in OSWALD'S papers of his having written to the Embassy in December 1960 as mentioned in the letter as set forth above. Furthermore, the diary refers to his February 1, 1961, letter as his first request concerning return to the United States. One possible explanation for reference to a spurious letter may be that OSWALD wished to give the Embassy the impression that he had initiated the correspondence regarding repatriation before having renewed his identity document on January 4, 1961.
OSWALD'S letter may have been intercepted by the KGB and not delivered to the American Embassy in order to give him time to reconsider his decision to re-defect.
D. E. BOSTER
D. E. Boster suggested the American Embassy, Moscow, mail him his passport directly. Secretary of State Dean Rusk vetoed this: "If the Embassy is fully satisfied that he has not expatriated himself in any manner...his passport may be delivered to him on a personal basis only, after being [illegible] valid for direct return to the United States. For security reasons, the Department does not consider that it would be prudent for the Embassy to forward OSWALD'S passport to him by mail." [DOS A-273, 4.13.61] In August 1961 a State Department passport analyst wrote a Memorandum for the Record in which he expressed incredulity that the decisions regarding OSWALD'S passport had been "routed to D. E. Boster of SOV." [DOS Memo Johnson to White 3.31.61; WCE 24A]
MICHAEL JELISAVCIC
The letters "AM EX" appeared at least six times in OSWALD'S address book; he also had the telephone number of the American Express office in Moscow. Next to it, the name "Jelisvacic" (the office manager, according to the phone book at the American Embassy and the words "one-two Di-ner" appeared. OSWALD mentioned nothing about this in his Historic Diary. Another document revealed that the CIA's Office of Security had a file on Michael Jelisavcic. [Mader CIA 500 East Berlin FRD - AMEX; CIS/RRC Bulletin Lib. Cong. #JX1295-H45-A5; CIA 1298-477]
Address Book Page 28 (A2)
A. Ex.
K-4200
384
1 – 2 Dinner
Room 384
Jelisavcic
1. The Telephone Directory of the American Embassy Moscow lists the American Express Company Room 384, Hotel Metropol telephone 942000; manager Mr.
Micheal JELISAVCIC.
2. The initial number 9 and letter K are interchangeable in the Moscow telephone system
3. The nationality of JELISAVCIC is unknown. No further traces.
On December 17, 1968, the New York Office of the FBI sent this wire to the Director:
Enclosed herein for the Chicago Office are 14 copies of various communications relating to the investigation of Michael Jelisavcic. Also enclosed for Chicago is one photograph of Jelisavcic and one photograph of 'Sammy' for possible use during interrogation of Jelisavcic.
For the information of the Chicago Office, Michael Jelisavcic, currently employed as an American Express Company representative, Moscow, USSR and is visiting US on home leave. It was ascertained, this date, that Jelisavcic departed from the New York City area on December 11, 1968, en route to Chicago. Raymond V. Stormes, American Express Company Representative, New York City, advised that Jelisavcic can be reached at the following address: 150-41 Morgan Street, Harvey, Ill. Tel. # 312- ED-1-3085. Jelisavcic can be reached through the above address until January 1, 1969, when he is scheduled to depart from Chicago with connecting flights at New York direct to Moscow, USSR.
The Bureau is requested to authorize Chicago to immediately interview Jelisavcic in an effort to resolve all facts concerning possible compromise of Jelisavcic by Soviet intelligence during his employment within the USSR.
The enclosures for the Chicago Office contain all pertinent information re Jelisavcic in the possession of the New York Office. Chicago's attention is directed particularly to Bureau letter, dated January 8, 1965, in captioned matter wherein Jelisavcic’s name and room number were in possession of OSWALD. During interview he should be questioned concerning all circumstances surrounding any possible association with or knowledge of OSWALD and this information should be set out in Letter Head Memorandum form suitable for dissemination under OSWALD caption. All other pertinent information re Jelisavcic's connection with Soviets in USSR and possible compromise by Soviet Intelligence should be set out in a form suitable for dissemination under Subject's caption." [FBI 62-109060- 1ST NR 6626 12.17.68; NARA FBI 124-10060-10199]
On October 30, 1969 the New York Times reported,
A U.S. Travel Agent Expelled by Soviet Moscow: The manager of the American Express Company here said tonight that he had been ordered to leave the Soviet Union “as soon as possible.” He is Michael S. Jelisavcic, a United States citizen who was born in Yugoslavia and who has been in Moscow for nine years. Mr. Jelisavcic said that the order for his departure had been relayed to him by officials of the United States Embassy. He said in an interview that the apparent reason for his expulsion order was his involvement of August 6 in an automobile accident. The accident, Mr. Jelisavcic said, occurred when an apparently intoxicated Soviet citizen walked in front of the automobile he was driving. Mr. Jelisavcic said that his wife was vacationing in France and his son was a student in New York.
To: SAC New York City, Chicago
MICHAEL JELISAVCIC- ESPIONAGE, RUSSIA
Re: SAC New York, airtel, December 17, 1968.
Classified SECRET, exemption category, 2, 3,
Date of Automatic Declassification: INDEFINTE.
Bufile 65-69127 Division 9 / Civil Rights
An article from the Moscow United States Embassy website finally revealed who Michael Jelisavcic really was and which side he was on:
Remarks at the Opening of Conference on the Role of Exchanges in the U.S.-Russian Relationship
Spaso House
July 9, 2009
Distinguished Guests; Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am very pleased to open today’s conference on the role of exchanges in the U.S.-Russian relationship. I want to thank those of you have come here today to share your memories of the past and your ideas for the future. I would like to thank Olga Borisovna Pokrovskaya, Editor-in-chief of America magazine, who provided rare photos for the photo exhibit at the conference. I’d like to thank Vladimir Meletin, who has made a remarkable new film of the 1959 exhibition, which he is presenting to participants today. My special thanks to Aleksey Fominykh and Michael Jelisavcic, for providing material from the original comment books Russian visitors signed at the exhibition.
[http://moscow.usembassy.gov/beyrlerem070909.html]
How did Michael end-up with this guest book if all he did was work from American Express? Why did he have dinner with OSWALD?
cia asset
fbi informant
Oswald paid back the State Dept. Loan pretty quickly.
Where in hell did the money come from? ? ?
Contact Information tomnln@cox.net