JFK docs offer colorful details of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life in USSR, shed light on U.S. intel ops

The release of over 60,000 pages of documentation so far related to the investigation of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy revealed little new information about the incident itself but filled in some colorful details about infamous assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as well as American intelligence operations across the globe, specifically in Latin America. 

One document shows that a Central Intelligence Agency source, also an American professor, said a senior KGB official named only as “Nikonov” described in 1991 his intelligence agency’s efforts to monitor Oswald while he lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962, shortly before the Kennedy assassination. 

The professor, who was a long-time friend of the Russian, was interested to know whether the KGB had records of Oswald working for them. Oswald’s brief residency in the Soviet Union, where he attempted to defect from the United States and revoke his citizenship, has been the subject of scrutiny for years and gave rise to suggestions the assassin was working for Soviet intelligence. 

For his part, Nikonov, who, according to the memo, was the grandson of famed Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, did not believe that Oswald was an agent of the intelligence service. “Nikonov is confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB,” the 1991 CIA memo reads, but said that the intelligence agency had “watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.” 

Oswald's personality, relationship with his wife, firearm skills

Nikanov reportedly reviewed “five thick volumes” the KGB had assembled on Oswald during his stay, which allegedly provided interesting details into his personality, relationship with his wife, and skills with a firearm. 

“From the description in the files he doubted that anyone could control Oswald,” the memo reads. “He commented that Oswald had a stormy relationship with his Soviet wife, who rode him incessantly.” 

The memo continues to say, “The file also reflected that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the USSR.” 

You can read the CIA memo below: 

Oswald on CIA’s radar 

Oswald’s stay in the Soviet Union also raised alarms at the Central Intelligence Agency as early as the fall of 1959, which, much like its Soviet counterpart, monitored the American’s movements after he attempted to defect, according to a memo released last year. 

“Lee Harvey OSWALD first came to CIA’s attention upon receipt of AIRGRAM no. 1301, dated 31 October 1959, from the United States Embassy in Moscow, in which it was stated that OSWALD had appeared at the Embassy on 31 October to renounce his American citizenship,” the memo reads. 

“Because of the counterintelligence implications of OSWALD’s action, the Counter Intelligence Staff opened an official file on Lee Harvey OSWALD to accommodate biographic information developed by the Agency in response to a Department of State inquiry, dated 25 October 1960, on a list of American defectors in the Soviet Bloc countries. OSWALD’s name was one of those appearing on the list,” the file continued. 

You can read that file here: 

Oswald’s visits to Cuban and Soviet embassies

The document dump contained other documents fully unredacted for the first time showing Oswald’s affinity for communism and interactions with Soviet and Cuban embassies in Latin America in the months leading up to the assassination as part of an effort to gain a visa for travel back to the Soviet Union. 

According to one memo, Oswald visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City on September 26, 1963, just two months before the assassination in Dallas.

“‘Oswald’ is described [sic] as 5'6" tall, blond hair, sunken cheeks, very thin, aquiline nose, very straight eyebrows, approximately 35 years old and wearing a light blue Prince of Wales suit,” reads a memo titled “Chronology of Oswald’s Visits to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies.” 

“He was said to look very cold with a hard face and penetrating cunning way of looking at you,” it continued. During his initial visit to the Cuban embassy, Oswald purportedly displayed documents that showed his membership in the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" and the American Communist Party.

The timeline lays out more than 10 visits or communications by Oswald with the Soviet and Cuban embassies in the city as he attempted to secure his travel visa, which appears to have been ultimately unsuccessful. Oswald left Mexico on or after October 2. 

You can read the timeline below: 

Intel & military operations against Cuba

The documents also shed some light on extensive U.S. government planning to undermine and eventually overthrow the new Communist regime in Cuba headed by the revolutionary Fidel Castro. The plan was called "Operation Mongoose." 

Oswald’s visits to the Cuban embassy in Mexico and membership in a pro-Castro association raised questions about whether the regime was involved in Kennedy’s assassination. Ultimately, the Warren Commission found that Oswald acted alone. A later 1979 Select Committee on Assassinations investigation found that “anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved.”

One January 1962 memo details the tasks assigned to the CIA by General Edward Landsdale, head of Pentagon operations targeting Castro. It shows the extent of U.S. government planning to usurp the Castro regime through the cultivation of friendly rebels and sabotage operations. 

“By 1 February CIA will submit an operational schedule for the initiation of an organized resistance movement inside Cuba,” the CIA memo reads. The document shows the agency had begun to assess more than 100 individuals who could return to Cuba disguised as students, but also cautioned that no analysis had yet uncovered any top-level officials in the Cuban government that would be willing to accept defection. 

The agency had also begun planning for “inducing the failure of crops” that would be submitted by 15 February. 

“These plans will envisage both the use of controlled assets who can be infiltrated and exfiltrated and the provision of encouragement and guidance to the resistance, so that it will undertake acts of sabotage, some of which are to be directed against crops, particularly rice,” reads the document. 

The CIA also planned to submit an “operational schedule” detailing plans to sabotage: “(1) shipping in Cuban waters and harbors; (2) Cuban transport facilities; (3) communications facilities; (4) equipment for the refining of petroleum; (5) facilities for producing and distributing power; (6) industry, (7) food supplies, (8) key military and police installations and matériel.” 

You can read that memo below: 

Castro targeted for assassination

The files also provide fresh and additional evidence that the Kennedys wanted Cuban dictator Fidel Castro assassinated. One of the files included unredacted testimony from a CIA official related to potential efforts to assassinate the communist dictator, Just the News reported on Tuesday.

CIA official William Sturbitts claimed to the Rockefeller Commission in 1975 that he had overheard CIA discussions in October or November 1963 — just before President John F. Kennedy's assassination — about potential efforts to kill the Cuban strongman. 

Another formerly top secret document contains memos from the “Special Group” assigned to oversee Operation Mongoose that detail plans for an assassination attempt utilizing the resources of the American mob. 

“In discussing the possible methods of accomplishing the mission, Sam Gold suggested that they not resort to firearms, but that if he could be furnished with some type of potent pill that could be placed in Castro’s food or drink,” reads one internal CIA memorandum from September 1961. Gold was an American mobster from Chicago recruited by the CIA to plan assassination attempts against Castro.

Although not definitively proven, there is ample evidence for speculation that "Sam Gold" was an alias used by notorious crime boss Sam Giancana. 

You can read the memos below: 

Watergate burglar

The name of one of the Watergate burglars is also found in the new files, James McCord, an ex-CIA agent who went to work for the Republican National Committee after his stint at the agency. The files shed light on McCord's work at the intelligence agency before his involvement in the Watergate scandal. One memo recommends that McCord be awarded a “certificate of distinction” for his agency work with technology, which included one experiment for a listening device tracker that was considered a "major breakthrough." 

After his work for the agency, McCord joined the Republican National Committee and President Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President. He was arrested on the night of June 17, 1972, after he and four accomplices, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis, were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Washington, D.C. Watergate Hotel. The former CIA agent was ultimately convicted on charges of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping and served four months of a one-to-five-year sentence. 

More documents to release

So far, the National Archives and Records Administration said that it has released roughly 60,000 of the total 80,000 promised documents related to the investigations of the JFK assassination. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who is supervising the release pursuant to President Trump’s executive order, promised “transparency” and that the full batch of documents would be released.