Lee Harvey Oswald: Life in the military

In the army, Oswald receives average grades on tests, however his former squad members recalled Oswald as a poor shot. After completing basic training, Oswald was posted in Japan to monitor the U2 flights over China. Interviews with former marines that were stationed with Oswald (Legend, Epstein) provide a mixed picture of Oswald the marine. He is described as a “nerd” and an intellectual, depending on who was interviewed.

He is also reported to show an interest in classified material and is even reported to take photographs of military installations, such as radar equipment. Oswald was also seen in the company of an expensive call girl who was reported to be way out of his pay grade.

On the 27th of October 1958, Oswald’s unit was to transfer to the Philippines. The decision did not become Oswald, who “accidentally” shot himself with a .22 caliber automatic which he had acquired illegally.

The incident, kept Oswald in a hospital for three weeks but did not change the decision to transfer his unit, and on the 20th of November he was transferred from Japan.

For this offence and a staged fight with a fellow marine in June Oswald was sentenced to 28 days in the brig and a pay cut of $105. In the Philippines Oswald became more alienated from his platoon and frequently went to Tokyo where he fraternized with locals rather than his fellow Marines.

In November Oswald returned to America and was stationed in Santa Ana, California, where he again worked with radar control. On the 25th of November Oswald on his own initiative took a Russian language exam in the marines, and scored less than average. However, considering that he had received no known formal training, the results showed that he had mastered the basics of a very difficult language in an extremely short period of time (optionally Oswald secretly earned Russian in Japan).

Oswald, also started to overtly proclaim socialist sympathies and read communist literature, which he received through the naval mail in a time when actors were blacklisted for uncorroborated suspicions. Although reported by the mailroom officials, no action was taken against Oswald for this uncanny behavior.

During this time Oswald befriended fellow Marine Nelson Delgado, who thought Oswald Spanish and shared his interest in Cuba and particularly Fidel Castro. Oswald and Delgado traveled at one point to Mexico during which Oswald disappeared to meet “friends” which he refused to identify.

Towards the end of his tour Oswald, started to correspond with the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles and at the same time he started wearing a suit when not on duty. However at the time of his discharged Oswald gave Delgado the impression that he was planning to study in Europe and almost pretended that he had no knowledge of “what Delgado was talking about”.

Lee Harvey Oswald: Childhood

Lee Harvey Oswald was born on the 18th of October 1939, at the Old French Hospital in New Orleans to Marguerite and Robert E. Lee Oswald. Oswald’s father, an insurance collector, died two months before his birth leaving his family in dire straits.

Lee spent most of his childhood in and out of different public schools and on the move as his mother effortlessly tried to make ends meet. By the age of thirteen he had attended no less than seven public schools and his bothers were forced to join the army, as his mother could not longer care for them (1).

On, the 24th of October 1956, at the age of seventeen Oswald, with his mothers consent, joined the Marines where he endured boot camp, an ordeal that his fellow marine Sherman Cooley called “Holy Hell”.

(1) The only exception to his childhood misery, was in the short period when Marguerite was married to Edwin Ekdahl and the entire family was together in Dallas, TX

Nosenko in his own words

On the 30th of May 1978 (I) and on the 19th of June 1978 (II), Yuri Nosenko testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). He made the following statements:

1-The KGB did not bother to interview Oswald as it was deemed by doctors that he was a nut (not crazy just unstable) (I p 39, 68)

When shown the hospital records from the Botkin Hospital which indicated that the doctors had indicated that Oswald was of sound mind, Nosenko claimed that this was false information from the KGB and that it was fake ( II p 18-22)

2-The American exhibition in Moscow took a lot of time for the KGB and subsequently they did not have time to inteview an insignificant person as Oswald (I p 52,69-71)

When confronted by the fact that Oswald arrived on the 16th of October 1959, more than a month after the fair ended ( September 4th), Nosenko deflected the issue by saying that the Americans working on the fair were probalby in Moscow for more than a month after the end of the fair (? I p 11-12)

3-Did not know that Oswald had left the USSR until Oswald in 1963 visited Soviet Embassy in Mexico (I p 60)

4-Was personally responsible for handling Oswald case in the wake of the Kennedy assassination (I p 62)

Yet his name does not appear in any of the documents given by President Boris Yeltsin to President Clinton as part of the reconciliation between Russia and USA.

5- Investigation showed that Oswald was part of a hunting club in Minsk and that he was a poor shot (I p 65)

6- The KGB knew that Oswald was a former Marine but that this did not make him an interesting target (I p74)

7- That the KGB kept periodical surveillance over Oswald while he was in minsk (no contact was made) all was done covertly (I p 90)

When shown a transcript of an FBI interrogation from March 3rd & 4th 1964, during which Noenko had claimed that no physical surveillance of Oswald had ever taken place while he was in Minsk, Nosenko responded that the FBI did not ask the right questions !?! ( II p 25-29) which seems highly unlikely as he was asked the question directly ( II p 31)

8- In the period of 1955-1960 there were only 3 American defectors to the Soviet Union and yet Oswald was uninteresting, and the only explanation was that they thought he was nut and therefore uninteresting (II p 4-5)

Lee Harvey Oswald

Oswald was and is today the official assassin of President John F Kennedy (JFK). In the original inquest (Warren Commission) it was determined that Oswald acted alone, without the support of any third party or government. He was the lone assassin, a mad man driven by his communist disillusions.

Today most people believe that the state of the evidence points to a more complex answer that can not be explained by a simple lone gunman theory. (time between shots (Zapruder film), the rifle used (the Carcano rifle is possible the worst rifle in the world)

So who was Oswald then? A pawn in a larger game ? A patsy framed ? A government agent, possible ONI (former or active) ? An active participant in the assassination, who was later framed?

These are not easy question, with simple answers. What we do know is that he apparently “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, stayed there for 20 months and then returned to America with a Russian wife. The KGB officially claimed that they had no interest in him, a claim that was backed up by the “defector” Yuri Nosenko in early 1964. Nosenko who himself was most likely a dispatched KGB agent (who later in life probably became a genuine defector)

The idea that Oswald was allow to defect and then return with out any legal problems and the support from the KGB to the lone gunman theory points to some government connection and if so, does it help us answer the questions above?

Not really, except that it points to a sinister answer that Oswald was at least at some point involved with the ONI and that he was either used or willingly participated in the assassination and if he participated he was later abandoned by his co-conspirators.

To be continued……

Additional information on Nosenko

For those who wish to know more about the Nosenko case I can also recommend an excellent article on subject by American journalist Edward J Epstein, which is available on his website.

In his article he reveals that when he was researching information on Oswald for his book in the seventies both the KGB and CIA recommended Nosenko as the best source on Oswald’s stay in the Soviet Union.

It appears to me, very strange that the KGB would recommend the use of defector and that the CIA at this point saw him as completely reliable considering the facts that the relevant case officers still considered him to be a KGB plant.

The CIA regime that replaced Richard Helms in 1973 was quick to publicly declare Nosenko bona fide and to fire those who disagreed with this decision. Rumors were also spread that the decisions to have Nosenko undergo hostile interrogation was made by the former Counter Intelligence Chief, James Jesus Angleton and that there was no real basis for the interrogation.

Yet today it is known from documentation released under the foa act that there was serious faults and inconsistencies in the story told by Nosenko that was the decision to place him in solitary confinement. In addition information released by the CIA (as described in my last post) in 1993 proved that many of the statements made by Nosenko on Oswald were false.

In addition former CIA director Richard Helms told the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1993, that the reason for releasing Nosenko and paying him off was that it could not be determined whether he was a KGB plant or a genuine defector.

So why was there this cooperative action between the CIA and the KGB? What did the new regime at the CIA know about Nosenko or Oswald that made them accept his story without any scrutiny and why did the KGB support this action.

Could it be that the KGB was in fact running Nosenko as a false defector and that they wanted to keep him in place? This would seem logical and the KGB story on Oswald could very likely have been written to protect the Soviet Union against rash action by the USA, after all the defection came at a very convenient time.

The question that remains is why did the CIA accept it? Was Oswald an agent of some American agency that operated without the knowledge of the CIA, like the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence). This could explain why Helms & Co. did not know of the importance of Oswald and maybe the new regime at the CIA was privy to some secret background information?

So in summary

1. Was Nosenko dispatched by the KGB? Most likely
2. Did the Warren Commission accept Nosenko’s version of Oswald’s stay in Russia as it perfectly matched their version of him as a lone loon? Definitely
3. Was Oswald a government agent while staying in the Soviet Union? Unknown

Yuri Nosenko.

I want to start off by talking about a well-known defector and self proclaimed KGB Colonel Yuri Nosenko contacted the CIA in 1962 while he was visiting Geneva on a public relations mission. He walked in from the street and volunteered high quality information for petty cash, cash he claimed he needed as he had spent KGB money on booze and women.

The information was like a god sent and the CIA was thrilled by the idea. The information later turned out to be contracting information given by Golitsyn, a defector who was believed to be genuine. The most striking fact was however that two different defectors would have access to near identical information (albeit with different conclusions, as the KGB operated on a strict need to know basis.

These crossovers worried the CIA, and so when Nosenko suddenly decided to defect in January 1964 it was mixed feelings about his real intentions, that is was he genuine (bona fide in spy terminology) or dispatched by the KGB.

When Nosenko was debriefed in Washington the inquisitors at the CIA noticed deep discrepancies from what he had said in 1962 and that he had near identical information to that given by Golitsyn with the exception of the facts:

For instance Nosenko claimed that the KGB never managed to recruit a code clerk from the CIA in Moscow, yet evidence pointed to the contrary.

Nosenko also seemed to have completely forgotten about the safety of his family, while in 1962 it was a reason for him to stay in the Soviet Union.

The list of faults in his story were to many to be written in this note, however there is an excellent account of the numerous false information provided by Nosenko in the autobiography of the agent who handled him from the first meeting in Geneva (Spy Wars by Tennent H. Bagley)

Nosenko later went through a long period of illegal detention and interrogation before being cleared by officials who never bothered with the details of his inconsistencies. Both the officials who handled him and the late Richard Helms who was CIA director during the period today question his innocence (as stated in his self-biography: A look over my shoulder by Richard Helms

The question of Nosenko’s innocence was never proven definitely, however it is clear that he was not the man he claimed to be and that he delivered false information to the American intelligence services.

So, what does a suspected KGB mole have to do with the greater conspiracy theories in the 20th centcury, Well nothing really. What is interesting is that Nosenko defected less than two months after the assassination of President Kennedy and he offered staggering information that he had seen the entire KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald. What was more staggering was that the file indicated that the KGB had no contact with Oswald during his stay in Russia and that it was originally claimed that he should be deported as he was considered mentally instable.

At a time when the Warren commission was searching the intelligence world for scraps on Oswald and particularly his Soviet bloc connections. This was again information that was too good to be true and in fact to good to be ignored.

The best part of the information was that it supported the official theory that Oswald was a crazy loon who did the deed on his own.

The information provided by Nosenko on Oswald has later been proven to be false. The main source for the claim that Nosenko was lying about Oswald can be found in a 1993 report from KGB Colonel Nechiporento, which revealed that:

1- The KGB did interview Oswald
2- The KGB suspected that Oswald might have been a CIA agent
3- Correspondence between Oswald and the American Embassy in Moscow was intercepted by the KGB

Nechiporento came to the conclusion that Nosenko never did see the Oswald file as he would not have had access to it and that he was providing information completely inconsistent with what was actually in the Oswald file.

Additionally material given to President Bill Clinton by Boris Yeltsin in 1993 indicated that the KGB was scared that they would be falsely implicated in the assassination of Kennedy and this may be a reason for sending Nosenko on a false flag operation to the CIA, in order to divert attention away from the Soviet Union a mission if true succeed as it was early concluded that Oswald acted alone.

What is more interestingly is that the KGB suspected that Oswald was himself dispatched by the CIA and was working in the Soviet Union as an American intelligence agent.

The information from Nosenko, and his timely defection was a clear factor in diverting attention away from any Soviet involvement in the assassination, The possibility of Oswald’s involvement with the CIA is not proven in any documents and the KGB probably suspected that all Americans were CIA agents, however not all Americans could give up their citizenship as Oswald did, and then a few later get a free travel back the USA with a new Russian wife without a the smallest hassle.

The reason for the Soviet disinformation could simply be self-preservation to avoid an open conflict with USA and the KGB’s suspicions of Oswald’s involvement could be a result of Cold War paranoia.

However there is the clear possibility that Oswald was employed by the CIA or less plausible the KGB

Is the truth out there?

Probably. But what is the truth? My experience is that when you ask a question today the government gives you a hundred different answers. They release hundreds of documents to a simple question. Why? Because the most effective way to hide something is to place it in the open where no one will look. This is why the foa act request always results in overwhelming information that no one has the capacity to analyze. This most excellent method of disinformation can be seen in the Warren report which was released without an index thus making it impossible to read while giving people too much information.

This is my small contribution to the truth and those who seek to expose those who abuse their Power. So welcome to my site!