Subject: The Sword and the Shield--and a new article Date: 15 Sep 1999 17:52:06 PDT From: Martin Shackelford Organization: Concentric Internet Services Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk I picked up the Mitrokhin book today. There are about seven pages on Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. Here is a summary, with my own comments occasionally included. When the assassination occurred, the KGB's deputy chief told the Central Committee that "A reliable source" of the Polish intelligence services, "an American entrepreneur and owner of a number of firms closely connected to the petroleum circles of the South, reported in late November that the instigators of this criminal deed were three leading oil magnates from the South of the USA--Richardson, Murchison and Hunt, all owners of major petroleum reserves in the southern states who have long been connected to pro-fascist and racist organizations in the South." Apparently, this is what the KGB believed had happened. Author Christopher Andrew notes Hunt's claim that there were more pro-Bolsheviks in the U.S. in 1963 than there were in Russia in 1917; Bunker Hunt's payment for the anti-Kennedy ad in the Dallas Morning News' and Jack Ruby's visit to the Hunt offices shortly before the assassination. The KGB was told be a Baltimore Sun reporter that Ruby, working for Texas financiers and industrialists headed by Hunt, had offered Oswald a large sum of money to kill Kennedy, then killed him to prevent revealing the plot. The KGB convinced Khrushchev that right-wing conspirators had killed Kennedy to intensify the Cold War and "strengthen the reactionary and aggressive elements of American foreign policy." Oswald, they believed, was picked to cast suspicion on the Soviets. They had initially suspected Oswald of being CIA, but had later dismissed him as a nuisance. Their analysis paralleled that of the FBI. When Oswald wrote to the U.S. Communist party in August 1963, FBI mole Jack Childs reported to the KGB that the letter was viewed by the party as an FBI provocation. Childs was simultaneously working for the FBI, and was also the CPUSA contact with the KGB. Following the creation of the Warren Commission, Service A contacted publisher Carl Marzani, believed to have been recruited by the Soviets prior to World War Two. The KGB subsidized his publishing house, giving him $80,000 in 1960-61. As a young KGB official in New York, Oleg Kalugin used to attend Marzani's parties. [Marzani's books included Cuba vs. the CIA, co-authored by Marzani and published in 1961, The Yahoos, a study of the Far Right published in 1964, and two others in 1964, Joachim Joesten's Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy--the only assasination book published under the Merlin Press label, and a collection of articles co-edited by Marzani called Critical Reactions to the Warren Report.] Marzani published the Joesten book within five weeks of receiving the manuscript. Joesten's thesis was similar to that believed by the KGB. He labeled Oswald "an FBI agent provocateur with a CIA background," who had been judged expendable. This was the first time the theme of CIA involvement came into the story. The two elements of Joesten's book, a right-wing plot and CIA involvement, were adopted for KGB propaganda efforts for the next thirty years. Publication of the Warren Report, and publicity given to Joesten's Communist background swamped the already limited impact of the book. Mark Lane, who had begun challenging official theories in the case in December 1963, was identified by the KGB as the most talented of the emerging first-wave community of conspiracy theorists. Joesten praised him as "brilliant and courageous," and had dedicated his book to him. Lane founded the Citizen's Commission of Inquiry. The KGB avoided supporting him directly, but arranged a donation of $1500 through a friend of his, then became nervous that Lane or the FBI might guess the money's source. Later in 1964, however, again through the friend, they donated $500 to help with Lane's European lecture tour [cheaper and more effective than mounting their own operation]. They panicked when Lane asked to come to Moscow and discuss some of his findings [that combined with the risk of exposure of their donations could eliminate his value to them as an independent critic, his credibility going the way of Joesten's]. The KGB declined to OK the visit, but began to use Soviet journalists to encourage him in his research. Rush to Judgement followed. CPUSA leaders conceded that Lane's book was "advantageous to the Communists," but didn't consider him an ally, saying his "main motive was his own self-aggrandizement." When Watergate and word of CIA assassination plots revived JFK conspiracy theories, the KGB resumed pushing the theme of CIA involvement, focusing on E. Howard Hunt. Using letters written by Oswald during his two years in the Soviet Union, the KGB created a forged letter to "Dear Mr. Hunt," allegedly written in early November 1963[which convinced some handwriting experts, though the HSCA later concluded it had probably been patched together, though without the original they couldn't reach a conclusive finding]. The KGB technical division conducted a series of tests to make sure the letter would pass as authentic. In 1975, photocopies of the letter [an original never surfaced] were sent with cover letters to three critics [Penn Jones Jr., Bud Fensterwald, and Harold Weisberg. Jones gave a copy of his copy to the Dallas FBI office]. The cover letter claimed that the original had been given to FBI Director Clarence Kelley, but that Kelley had suppressed it. Jones approached the letter with caution, to the KGB's unhappiness, and didn't publish it until 1977. The New York Times reported it had been authenticated by handwriting experts [arranged by Dallas reporter Earl Golz]. Marina Oswald also authenticated the handwriting. The KGB was also very unhappy that the addressee was identified by the press as H.L. Hunt, rather than E. Howard Hunt, even though H.L. had figured centrally in the conspiracy theory the KGB itself believed. They believed their had been a CIA plot to disrupt the KGB plot, using an orchestrated U.S. media campaign. The KGB took further steps to shift the focus to E. Howard Hunt, who was complaining by 1980 that "It's become an article of faith that I had some role in the Kennedy assassination." [Some might suspect that the Michael Canfield/A.J. Weberman book Coup D'Etat in America was part of this effort, but it was published by an independent artist publisher, Third Press, in 1975, well before the KGB realized the Hunt letter wasn't having the intended effect. Some suspected involvement by E. Howard Hunt prior to the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter, resulting in debate over which "Mr. Hunt" the letter was intended for.] By 1980, the public was more inclined to [unknowingly] believe the KGB version than the Warren Commission version. This was less due to KGB activities, however, than to the tendency of both the FBI and the CIA to refuse to release documents on the case, and to their initial cover-up activities, whatever the motivation, withholding information from the Warren Commission. The public had by then learned of the Castro assassination plots, and of the FBI destruction of the Oswald note shortly before the assassination. In 1994, Boris Yeltsin's memoir The View from the Kremlin incorporated information from the KGB (by then re-named the SVR) that Oswald had been selected as the assassin by "a group of Texas financiers and industrialists headed by millionaire Hunt." for the purpose of "a widespread propaganda campaign" against the Soviets. He added that "Ruby and the real instigators of Kennedy's murder did not take into account the fact that Oswald suffered from psychiatric illness. When Ruby realized that after a prolonged interrogation Oswald was capable of confessing everything, Ruby immediately liquidated Oswald." [In the end, the only thing the Warren Commission and the KGB agreed on was that Oswald did it.] Another Note: The 25th Anniversary Issue of High Times Magazine, which has published articles by Dick Russell, and other pieces on the JFK assassination in the past, contains the article "Top 10 Conspiracies," which includes features on Carl Oglesby's "Yankee-Cowboy War" theory of the assassination, the Gehlen Org, Richard Case Nagell, and MKULTRA mind control. Martin -- Martin Shackelford "You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." -Obi-Wan Kenobi "You must unlearn what you have learned." --Yoda