JFK FILEs rEVEaL soVIEt FEars, CUba’s gLEE, FbI warNINg oN LEE oswaLD
On Thursday, 2,891 of previously classified files on John F. Kennedy’s assassination were released by US.
The National Archives of the United States released on Thursday 2,891 of previously classified files to “unveil” the secrets behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th US President, in November 1963. Released on orders from President Donald J. Trump, hundreds of documents are still withheld by the government as US intelligence agencies believe they are sensitive even after so many years of the assassination. The newly released documents reveal, among other things, how FBI had warned the Dallas police about a threat to kill Lee Harvey Oswald, how Soviet officials feared an “irresponsible” US general could launch a missile at the Soviet Union, and how Cuba was delighted on Kennedy’s assassination.
Kennedy was shot on 22 November 1963 while travelling through Dallas in an open-topped limousine with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy. After a year of the assassination, the Warren Commission, set up by Kennedy’s successor President Lyndon Johnson, concluded that he was killed by a 24-year-old former Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, by firing fatal shots from the Texas School Book Depository building. On 24 November 1963, Jack Ruby, the owner of a nightclub in Texas, shot Oswald dead when he was in police custody. Ruby died in prison on 3 January 1967.
The Warren Commission concluded that there was “no evidence that either Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign”.
The latest release of the new records on the National Archives’ website comes after 3,810 files were released on 24 July 2017. However, for the complete government data on the assassination, the public will have to wait until 26 April 2018, the new deadline set by US President Donald Trump, after which intelligence agencies will have to release the withheld data. The memos dated from the assassination investigations in the 1960s reveal that the FBI staff was grilled by a Senate Committee about failing to stop Lee Harvey Oswald after his six-day visit to Mexico City in September 1963, where another memo reveals he called the Cuban embassy there and sought a Russian visa. In two other memos, it was said that the FBI was trying to monitor Oswald before the assassination. It was found that Oswald was vocal about his plan to assassinate President Kennedy during his trip. An FBI agent testified: “Oswald wrote to me in early 1962 to help expedite an exit visa for his wife. Why in the world would he tell a plopper like that?” Oswald had defected to the Soviet Russia in 1959 and was married to a Russian, Marina. Both of them received their exit visas from the Soviets.
To the FBI agent’s testimony, a Senator replied, “In any event, he told what the agent knew was lies, and what I am trying to get at is there was no analysis within the bureau of any of this. He even goes to Mexico City, contacts the Cuban consulate and the Soviet embassy, happens to be in contact—we don’t know if there is anything sinister about it—with an agent who is known to be KGB by the FBI and by the CIA, and suspected of being Department 13, which is their assassination and sabotage squad. In any event, he then returns to the United States, is never again interviewed by the FBI.”
In two other memos, it was said that the FBI was trying to monitor Oswald before the assassination. In another memo dated from 25 October 1963, an agent with FBI in the New Orleans division wrote that agents had lost track of Oswald and the agency was looking for him, especially in the Dallas area. According to a memo dated 24 November 1963, written by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, around 45 minutes after the death of Lee Harvey Oswald, the agency had received a call from a man saying he was a member of the committee organised to kill Oswald. After the call, the FBI informed the chief of police, who assured them that Oswald would be given sufficient protection.
Hoover began by saying, “There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.” He further wrote in the memo: “They brought him out of the city jail and were taking him to the County jail when a man stepped out and shot him in the stomach...Immediately after the shooting, he (Oswald) was moved to Parkland hospital and died about 45 minutes ago.”
However, Hoover said that they had stationed an agent to get last minute confession from him, but he didn’t get any. The murderer goes under the name of Jack Ruby, “but his real name is Roben- stein”. Ruby ran two night clubs in Dallas and was a homosexual. Hoover also noted rumours of “underworld activity in Chicago”.
Talking about Ruby, Hoover wrote, “Ruby says no one was associated with him and denied having made a telephone call to our Dallas office last night. He said he bought the gun three years ago and that he guessed his grief over the killing of the President made him insane.” Hoover described this as a “pretty smart move” as this gave Ruby the chance to plead insanity later.
The FBI director shared his concerns with Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. They feared the spread of rumours and conspiracy theories about Oswald’s death. He also pointed out that Oswald had visited Mexico City, called the Cuban embassy there, and sent a letter to the Soviet embassy about a visa.
“The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr Katzenbach, is having something issued so that we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin,” Hoover wrote. He shared that Katzenbach thought about making “Presidential commission of three outstanding citizens to make a determination” while he suggested to “make an investigative report to the Attorney General, who will then make the report and the President can then decide to make it public or not.” He also expressed his concern over the “inexcusable” death of Oswald. An FBI memo reveals the reaction of the Soviet Union and Communist Party of- ficials to the assassination. The memo says that the news was greeted with “great shock and consternation and church bells were tolled in the memory of President Kennedy”.
Quoting sources, the FBI memo says that the officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed it to be a conspiracy “on the part of the “ultraright” in the US for the purpose of a “coup”. They were convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that “it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part”.
In its memo, the FBI also quoted a source to say, “Soviet officials were fearful that without leadership, some irresponsible general in the United States might launch a missile at the Soviet Union. It was the further opinion of the Soviet officials that only maniacs would think that the ‘Left’ forces in the United States, as represented by the Communist Party, USA, would assassinate President Kennedy, especially in view of the abuse the Communist Party, USA, has taken from the ‘ultraleft’ as a result of its support for the peaceful coexistence and the disarmament policies of the Kennedy administration.”
The Soviets also declared Lee Harvey Oswald to be a “neurotic maniac who was disloyal to his own country and everything else”. They also noted that Oswald never belonged to any Soviet organisation and was never given any Soviet citizenship. The Soviets were also unsure about the new President Lyndon Johnson and the steps he would take towards Soviet Union.
In 1965, a source told the FBI that the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) had “data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination”. It seems at least some in Soviet Russia believed of a conspiracy years after Oswald’s death and the Warren Commission. Another memo from a CIA division chief regarding Lee Harvey Oswald’s contacts with the Soviet Embassy on his visit to Mexico City in September 1963, stated: “Ac- cording to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Lee Oswald was at the Soviet embassy there on 28 September 1963 and spoke with the consul, Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov. This was learned when Oswald called the Soviet embassy on 1 October, identifying himself by name and speaking broken Russian, stating the above and asking the guard who answered the phone whether there was ‘anything new concerning the telegram to Washington.’ The guard checked and told Oswald that a request had been sent, but nothing had as yet been received. The FBI liaison officer, Mr Pappich, told me on 23 November that the Bureau has reason to believe that Oswald’s identified Kostikov as a KGB officer and a member of Department 13, a unit responsible for sabotage and assassination.”
He added, quoting a Soviet admiral, that such overt meetings by intelligence officers could also be carelessness. The CIA then passed this information to a FBI liaison. In a memo dated 27 November 1963, the CIA said that the first reaction of the Cuban ambassador Cruz and his staff on the assassination was of “happy delight”.
“After information of Oswald’s connections with Fair play for Cuba committee, there was some apprehension concerning possible US reaction.” It was after an official “ROA”, that Ambassador Cruz attended a requiem mass for Kennedy, “as official representative of his government”. The ROA had ordered the ambassador and his staff to govern their actions by official attitude of the government, to which they accredited. Then the ambassador instructed his staff and Cuban consulates and trade offices Toronto and Montreal to “cease looking happy in public”.
It was in 1978, that several members of the House Committee, while reinvestigating the assassination, visited Cuba, discussing Oswald’s attempt to get a visa and Jack Ruby’s visits to Cuba in 1959. Before leaving, the committee members met “President Fidel Castro who assured the committee that neither he nor his government had any involvement in the assas- sination of President John F. Kennedy”. According to a CIA memo dated 26 November 1963 to the director of the FBI, a reporter at the UK’s Cambridge News got an anonymous call, where the caller told him that he “should call the American embassy in London for some big news and hung up.”
“After the word of the President’s death was received, the reporter informed the Cambridge police of the anonymous call and the police informed MI5. The important point is that the call was made according to MI5 calculations, about 25 minutes before the President was shot.” According to a 1975 memo of “summary of facts”, the CIA tried to assassinate some foreign leaders, most frequently Castro, while also considering killing Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba and Indonesian president Sukarno.
The memo said: “The commission has determined that agents of the CIA were involved in planning in this country with certain citizens and others to seek to assassinate [Cuban] Premier [Fidel] Castro. The commission has also determined that the CIA was involved in shipping arms from this country to persons in the Dominican Republic, who sought to assassinate Generalissimo Trujillo (who himself had been involved in an attempt to assassinate the President of Venezuela.)
“The commission has not found evidence of any other attempts to assassinate any other foreign leader which had significant overt activities within the United States. However, the nature of the activity and the degree of secrecy and compartmentation within the agency is such that it is difficult to find evidence of this kind unless specific facts are brought to the attention of an investigating body.”
From various receipts and financial accounts for clandestine projects it was also revealed that huge amounts were spent for anti-Communist activities, supplies, and weapons, directed at Cuba, and at others in the Dominican Republic, Congo, and North and South Vietnam.