The JFK Files
Oswald met KGB chief before Kennedy’s murder Papers claim killer did not act alone in shooting Marilyn Monroe death plot ‘to look like suicide’
LEE Harvey Oswald met a ruthless KGB agent just weeks before John F Kennedy’s 1963 murder.
Newly released papers reveal the killer went to Mexico City for talks with a Russian assassination chief.
One document said of JFK’s death: “It was not the deed of one man.”
FBI sources believed Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone when he shot dead John F Kennedy, newly released papers show.
And the former US marine met with a KGB assassination chief weeks before the US president was killed in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963 – but was never interrogated about it.
The declassified documents also reveal FBI head J. Edgar Hoover insisted on trying to convince Americans that communist Oswald – who had lived in Russia and had a Soviet wife – was the sole assassin.
Russia has this week denied any role in JFK’s assassination and the Soviet Union at the time feared the US would launch a nuclear strike on Moscow if officials believed it aided Oswald.
The killer, who was being tracked by American agents, met KGB agent Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov in Mexico City’s Soviet embassy eight weeks before the shooting.
The FBI was later grilled about its failure to interview him after the trip.
According to details from the 2,891 released papers, one FBI agent told a senator that Oswald had written “to me in early 1962 to help expedite a visa for his wife”. The couple were in Russia at the time.
The politician replied: “He even goes to Mexico City [in September 1963], 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, their assassination and sabotage squad. In any event, he then returns to the United States, is never again interviewed by the FBI.”
The papers reveal it was believed by an FBI source that JFK’s 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”.
One memo dated the day after JFK was killed recounted Oswald’s visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. It said he spoke “terrible, hardly recognisable Russian”, but refused to accept the guards’ pleas for him to speak English.
According to the files, Oswald was also heard during an intercepted call to the embassy speaking in “broken Russian” on October 1, 1963. He asked the guard who answered the phone if there was “anything new concerning the telegram to Washington”.
The papers revealed the Soviets feared they were going to get blamed for putting up “neurotic maniac” Oswald as an assassin.
They also noted that Moscow officials were fearful that in the wake of the murder “without leadership, some irresponsible general in the United States might launch a missile at the Soviet Union”.
And the papers said Moscow concluded only “maniacs would think the ‘left’ forces in the United States, as represented by the Communist Party, USA, would assassinate Kennedy, especially in view of the abuse the party has taken from the ‘ultra left’ as a result of its support for the peaceful coexistence and disarmament policies of the Kennedy administration”.
Russia also tried to suggest JFK’s
death was part of a right-wing plot to stage a coup. One of the papers says: “According to our source, officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organised conspiracy on the part of the ‘ultra right’ in the United States to effect a ‘coup’.”
A memorandum dated July 1969 also reveals Oswald, who was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after Kennedy died, was seen at a party in Mexico with two other Americans in late September 1963.
It was hosted by Mexican playwright Elena Garro de Paz who was interviewed after JFK’s death.
But the interrogation was said to be “entirely unsatisfactory”. The FBI discounted de Paz’s accounts, yet the CIA was “disturbed” by them.
The papers also reveal their failure to properly investigate Paz’s story could have “damaged” the Warren Report into the president’s murder. That concluded Oswald acted alone.
But the reports said “the credibility of the Warren Report would be damaged all the more if it were learned these allegations were known and never adequately investigated by American authorities”.
After JFK’s death, the Cuban communist ambassador to the UN and his staff reacted with “happy delight”, the papers reveal.
It was revealed Oswald, who was said to be a “good shot”, had connections to Fair Play for Cuba, a grassroots movement to support Fidel Castro’s revolution in the Caribbean country. The papers also reveal the FBI had warned that Oswald’s life was in danger after his arrest – but Ruby still managed to kill him while he was in police custody.
In one of the first documents to be unearthed, Hoover wrote on November 24, 1963: “Last night we received a call in our Dallas office from a man talking in a calm voice and saying he was a member of a committee organised to kill Oswald.
“We at once notified the chief of police and he assured us Oswald would be given sufficient protection. This morning we called the chief of police again warning of the possibility of some effort against Oswald and again he assured us adequate protection would be given. However, this was not done.
“There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.” Hoover admitted he did not have “firm” information about Ruby, but he elaborated on him anyway. He said his real name was Rubenstein and he noted there were rumours of “underworld activity” surrounding him.
The US government released the documents on Thursday, but Donald Trump delayed the release of others for a further 180 days.
He said he had “no choice” but to consider “national security, law enforcement and foreign affairs concerns” mostly raised by officials from the FBI and CIA.
The 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, signed by President George W Bush, set a 25-year timetable for declassification of assassination records dealing with President Kennedy which expired yesterday.