JFK MURDER DECLASSIFIED
Oswald’s Soviet rendezvous before assassination seen in new CIA files
LEE Harvey Oswald met with a KGB agent just two months before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, according to newly unsealed confidential documents stemming from JFK’s murder.
The CIA memos, part of a trove of nearly 1,500 documents released Wednesday by the National Archives and Records Administration, also disclose that an anonymous tipster warned US embassy officials in Australia a year earlier that Kennedy would be assassinated by the Soviet Union for a $100,000 bounty.
The tip was never passed on to the CIA.
“Cabled to [Australian capital] Canberra asking full details of the telephone conversation of 23 November and the call made 15 October 1962, a 1964 memo said.
“It should be noted that CIA had not previously known of the 1962 telephone call.”
The records include newly revealed details of Kennedy’s death — but fall short of resolving decades-old speculation about the notorious case.
Dialing up the KGB
Among the revelations was a meeting and follow-up phone call between Oswald and a Soviet operative before JFK was shot in Dallas.
“According to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Lee Oswald was in the Soviet Embassy there on 23 September and spoke with Consul Valeriy Vladimirovich,” the document said.
“Oswald called the Soviet Embassy in 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 concerning the telegram to Washington,’ ” according to the memo penned by then-acting CIA Chief Tennent Bagley.
The documents include a transcript of the Oct. 1 call.
“Hello, this [is] Lee Oswald speaking,” he said.
“I was at your place last Saturday and spoke to a consul, and they said that they’d send a telegram to Washington, so I wanted to find out if you anything new. But I don’t remember the name of that consul.”
After a brief exchange, KGB officer Valery Kostikov answered, “Just a minute. I’ll find out. They say that they haven’t received anything yet.”
“Have they done anything?” Oswald asked.
“Yes, they say that a request has been sent out, but nothing has been received yet,” Kostikov answers before hanging up.
Bagley’s memo about the call was dated Nov. 23, 1963, one day after Oswald was charged with killing Kennedy.
Two days after the assassination, the records said, another tipster called the US Naval attaché in Australia — identifying himself as a Polish driver for the US embassy in Canberra.
It is unclear from the records if it was the same tipster from a year earlier, but the earlier call was referenced and the new caller reiterated that the Soviets were behind the assassination.
“This individual, while discussing several matters of intelligence interest, touched on the possibility that the Soviet Government had financed the assassination of President Kennedy,” a May 22, 1964, memo said.
RFK Jr.: ‘It’s an outrage’
The newly released documents were collected during a five-year review of the Kennedy assassination that wrapped up in 1997 — but thousands of records remained under seal.
President Biden had promised that the trove of records would be released by October, but later delayed the move and blamed the pandemic.
Even now, the Biden administration said it would withhold many of the files and keep them under wraps until December 2022.
“It’s an outrage,” JFK nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fumed, “It’s an outrage against American democracy.
“We’re not supposed to have secret governments within the government,” he said.
Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, also railed against the limited release of the records.
“I think for the good of the country, everything has to be put out there so there’s greater understanding of our history,” he said.
The newly released records were collected under a 1992 act of Congress, with widespread public opinion polls showing that most Americans do not believe the official findings of the Warren Commission.
The commission’s report, released in 1964, concluded that Oswald, a former US Marine, acted alone in Kennedy’s assassination.
More than 10,000 records related to the Kennedy assassination remain hidden from public view, according to CNN.
Conspiracy-theory fuel
Historians and JFK experts also said the newly released documents also offer little in new information, and include documents previously available for review — save with earlier redactions removed.
“It’s always ‘the next time,’ ” Larry Sabato, a leading expert on the assassination with the University of Virginia, griped to CNN.
“The reason it’s so important is not so much that we’re going to find a smoking gun that changes the entire theory of who killed Kennedy,” he said.
“The lack of transparency and the fact that getting these documents after 58 years is like pulling a whole mouthful of teeth,” Sabato said. “It tells you why we have so many conspiracy theories.”
The Kennedy assassination has long been the subject of widespread speculation and conspiracy theories — and continues to be surrounded by mystery.
JFK and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy were riding in the back of a limousine convertible on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza in Dallas when the president was shot and mortally wounded.
Oswald was arrested after the shooting but was himself shot and killed by Dallas bar owner Jack Ruby just two days after the arrest.