Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination

  Subsequent courtship and marriage: Report, p. 703; (proposal) XXII.750; XVIII.604; HSCA XII.354.

  157 Warren Commission doubt: transcript of proceedings of Executive Session of Warren Commission, January 27, 1964.

  Marina on husband’s innocence: Life magazine, November 29, 1963.

  “fateful rifle”: I.119—testimony of Marina Oswald.

  not sure husband’s gun: I.119 and V.611—testimony of Marina Oswald.

  Walker allegation: 1.16—testimony of Marina Oswald.

  Nixon allegation: V.387—testimony of Marina Oswald; see also Newman, op. cit., p. 349; Report, p. 189.

  “he is not guilty”: Ernst Titovets, Oswald Russian Episode, Minsk: MonLitera, 2010, pp. 417, 451n83.

  Russell: proceedings of Executive Session of Warren Commission, January 27, 1964.

  158 Redlich: HSCA XI.126 (reproduction of Warren Commission memo from Redlich to Chief Counsel Rankin, February 28, 1964).

  Introduction: XVI.102 (entry for March 17, 1961); (biography) McMillan, op. cit., p. 59; I.90–; XXII.745, 750, 267; XXIII. 402; HSCA XII.324, 351; HSCA II.208; and Warren I.88.

  Titovets remembered: Titovets, op. cit., 219–.

  159 Uncle: XXII.745 and I.90; (rank) HSCA XII.323. The uncle was Ilya Prusakov.

  Leaving first job: Report, p. 703; CIA doubts—Epstein, Legend, op. cit., p. 304.

  Marina at “Rest Home”: XXII.745.

  Name and address: CIA document 624-823 (Appendix C).

  Note 5: The other American defector was Robert Webster, who had interesting parallels to Oswald. See Chapter 9, Note 6. Research in 1993, when Russian became open to journalists, located the man who had lived at the Leningrad address in Marina’s address book. He said he did not remember Webster, but his brother—who still lived there—did recall the American. (Robbyn Swan ints., Russia, 1993).

  “Prostitution”: Titovets, p. 244–, 438n7 & see Norman Mailer, Oswald’s Tale, London: Little, Brown, 1995, p. 156, author’s conv. Mailer.

  160 “Bugged”: Titovets, p. 191–.

  Russian press: ibid., p. 195, citing Izvestia, August 8, 1992.

  Nosenko: WC documents 434 & 451, released in 1975, from related Commission memoranda and from HSCA Report, pp. 101–, HSCA II.436, 453, 499, 517, 525, III.624, HSCA XII.475, 585–. See also full-length study by Edward Epstein in Legend, op. cit; article by Jack Nelson in the Los Angeles Times, March 28,1976; and John Barron, op. cit., p. 452. The author also drew on his own conversations with James Angleton in 1976 and 1978, & lengthier reporting on Nosenko in the previous edition of this book (Marlowe, 1998). Additional background from Nosenko presentation of HSCA Chief Counsel Blakey, HSCA 11.436 (and attached documents); and HSCA XII.475–.

  161 Note 6: The other Soviet defector was Major Anatoli Golitsin. (see Nosenko sourcing above).

  Note 7: Defector Nosenko was closely confined and interrogated for years. He was over a period kept in a small windowless cell, deprived of sound and reading material. In one week in 1966, he had to submit to lie detector tests for 28½ hours. At last, in 1968, he was given a new name and paid some compensation.

  “staggering”: Richard Helms with William Hood, A Look Over My Shoulder. New York: Random House, 2003, p. 241.

  Rositzke: XVIII.128.

  Miler: int.by Edward Epstein, Legend, op. cit., pp. 30, 278; (deputy chief) HSCA XII.624.

  162 “odd”: Helms, op. cit., p. 241

  “Absolutely unthinkable”: John Hart (CIA-appointed witness to HSCA), HSCA II.487.

  U-2: see sourcing re U-2 in Chapter 8, supra.

  Note 8: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sverdlovsk has reverted to its pre-revolutionary name, Ekaterinburg.

  Powers had no doubt: The Times (London), April 20, 1971.

  Note 9: The former deputy chief of the CIA’s Soviet Bloc Division told the Assassinations Committee (HSCA XII.626) that it had not been proven Oswald knew much about the U-2. It has not been proven, yet this same witness agreed that Oswald worked with radar 500 yards from the U-2 runway, and his radar unit tracked the aircraft. Thus, said the witness, “certain things as to speed and altitude might have come to Oswald’s attention.” Those were exactly the details the Soviets were interested in at the time.

  Theories about Oswald and the shootdown of the U-2 have proliferated over the past half century: that the plane was not—as long believed—at its high operating altitude when shot down, which might make information from Oswald irrelevant; that Oswald was manipulated into defecting because CIA Counterintelligence, suspecting the existence of a mole within the Agency, wished to gauge Soviet knowledge of the program; and, in the London Times in 2010, the suggestion that—whatever the circumstances of the U-2 shootdown—U.S. interpretation of the event was fogged by the accidental downing of a Soviet interceptor airplane. A recent article, which speculates that Oswald’s 1959 defection was orchestrated by U.S. intelligence, cites information suggesting that the CIA knew the U-2 was vulnerable to shootdown and was planning to replace it. (See New York, Marlowe, edition of this book, 1998, p. 137–, The Times (London), May 1, 2010, Mark Prior,“Oswald and the U-2 Program, www.ctka.net/2012/LHO_U2_Mark_Prior.html.) Oswald’s letter home: XVI.871—Oswald to brother Robert, February 1962.

  163 May Day party: XVI.100—“Historic Diary.”

  Oswald reference to Moscow visit: X.203—Ofstein testimony; and CD 205.473.

  Note 10: The later acquaintance was Dennis Ofstein, a later fellow employee in Dallas.

  Soviets behind assassination?: (Warren) Report, pp. 21, 655–; (HSCA finding) HSCA Report, p. 108.

  Semichastny: “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald,” transcript, Frontline, November 16, 1993, www.pbs.org, & author’s int. 1993.

  11. An “Intelligence Matter”

  165 Eisenhower: quoted by Wise and Ross, op. cit., 287.

  Note 1: Oswald referred in his letter to an earlier one, along the same lines, that he said he had sent in December. The Embassy, in the shape of Consul Snyder, replied saying the earlier letter had never arrived.(Report, p. 701, HSCA XII.455).

  166 Oswald “learned”: XVIII.380; XVI.705, XVIII.137, 158.

  Passport returned: V.284; XVIII.160–.

  Lookout card: Report, pp. 722, 750.

  Note 2: More astonishing, Oswald was to be issued a passport within twenty-four hours as late as 1963, when he applied for a new passport for yet more travel to Communist countries. (Report, p. 774.)

  Strict control by FBI and State: Meagher, op. cit., p. 335.

  167 Johnson: (“thin line”) John Newman, op. cit., pp. 72, 78; (NANA/continuing interest) ibid., p. 61–, 538–, VF, December 1994, HSCA Report, p. 214, CIA documents April 5, 9 & 12, 1957; May 5, 1958; February 8, 1961; October 25, 1962; December 2, 1965; (“he hoped”) XI.463, John Newman, op. cit., p. 73–; (“I think”) CIA Contact Report, December 11, 1962, www.maryferrell.org; (“Witting Collaborator”) CIA documents, January 1975—released 1993; interviews by Robbyn Swan, 1994; (“official business”) memo, Rosen to Belmont, November 23, 1963, FBI no. 105-82555.

  Note 3: Interviewed on behalf of this author in 1994, Johnson—by then long since known by her married name, Priscilla Johnson McMillan—said: “My bottom line is that I never worked for the CIA… . I don’t know what was in the mind of the person who put me down as a Witting Collaborator … [In Moscow] I had no way of knowing who in the American Embassy, say, worked for the CIA and who didn’t.” McMillan never knowingly discussed Oswald with the CIA, she maintained. (int. Robbyn Swan, 1994) In 1963, soon after the assassination, McMillan had early access to Marina Oswald and—after years of delay—published Marina and Lee, a book that portrayed Oswald as the lone assassin. (See Bibliography.)

  Navy message: XVIII.116, 367; John Newman, op. cit. p. 446.

  Minsk photographs:
Report, p. 267–, XX.474 (Kramer Exhibits 1 & 2); XX.474; XI.212; II.212–; CIA document 614-261, March 20, 1964; CIA 948-927T; CD 859; CD 1022; CD 871; HSCA Report, pp. 198, 206, 630, HSCA XII.639; int. Rita Naman, June 1979; CD 859a, Dallas to Seattle, April 13, 1964, FBI 105-82555, www.maryferrell.org.

  168 Note 4: According to the Oswald “Historic Diary,” the defector returned to Minsk—following a visit to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow—on July 14, 1961, three weeks before the date of the tourists’ first encounter with him in Moscow, which Naman said occurred on August 1. That day, according to Oswald’s written account, he was in Minsk. Naman, however, was sure of her dates. This is an anomaly that, while it may be further evidence that the Oswald “Historic Diary” is bogus, does nothing to detract from the impression that Oswald’s encounters with the tourists were not chance but planned (“Historic Diary”: HSCA VIII.290).

  169 Note 5: An hour before the meeting with Oswald in Minsk, Naman said, she was intensively questioned by an official in plain clothes who demanded to know the true purpose of the women’s visit to Russia. While in Moscow, the women had given a copy of Newsweek to a man who told them he was a student—and the official accused Naman of speading anti-Soviet propaganda. Later, on crossing the Soviet border into Poland, the same official questioned the trio again. The women’s car, Naman said, was “virtually taken apart” in a thorough search, and the women figured the searchers were looking for documents. This Soviet interest in the women may not be relevant to the Oswald story.

  Note 6: This was a time when the CIA was running what it called its American Visitors Program, which enlisted the “cooperation, for limited purposes, of carefully selected persons traveling in the Soviet Union.” In large part, the aim was to get information and photographs of Soviet places and installations. It seems possible, though, that the program was also used to make contact with human targets like defector Oswald.

  Other vestigial evidence may indicate that someone in the United States, identity unknown, was in touch with Oswald while he was in the Soviet Union. One of his Minsk girlfriends, Ella German, recalled him having said in 1960 that he had been getting letters from “a cousin,” who had sent him books. There was a cousin, Marilyn Murret, who was to be quoted in a 1964 newspaper as saying she knew in advance about Oswald’s trip to Europe. Murret would tell the Assassinations Committee that, contrary to rumors to the contrary, she had never had links to the CIA nor, to her knowledge, ever worked for a government agency.

  Ernst Titovets, the Minsk acquaintance cited in Chapter 11, kept two books Oswald had given him—as a farewell gift before leaving for home in 1962—which he said had been mailed to him by someone in the United States. The books were The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale, and As A Man Thinketh, by James Allen. Both had been inscribed on the flyleaf in longhand, but Oswald snipped out the inscriptions with a razor blade before giving the books to Titovets. (Visitors Program: HSCA Report, p. 198, Rositzke, op. cit., p. 58; Murret: HSCA records on Marilyn Murret, released 1994, including January 16, 1978, report of Robert Buras, and transcript of the November 6, 1978, Murret deposition for HSCA; also FBI documents, including letter from Director to J. Lee Rankin of May 19,1964, Justice Department summary of May 7 and 22, 1964; Department of the Air Force report of contact with John Pic, dated [month unclear] 16, 1962; Warren Commission testimony of Murret, May 6, 1964; and syndicated column of Paul Scott, as published in the Knoxville [Tennessee] Journal, April 11, 1977; books: ints. Ernst Titovetz, 1993–1994; and see Newman, op. cit., p. 193–, Titovets, op.cit., pp. 163, 322, XVI.155).

  Colby: int. for CBS News, The American Assassins, November 26, 1975.

  170 Davison expelled: HSCA Report, p. 215–; David Wise, Molehunt, New York: Random House, 1992, pp. 60, 120n; The Penkovskiy Papers, New York: Avon Books, 1966, p. 381.

  Davison in address book/Davison comments: CIA 1281-1024; CD 87; CD 235; CD 409; CD 1115; CD 11; XIII.103; Wise & Ross, op. cit., p. 268 (see Bibliography), CIA report, file no. 61-01-04, HSCA, Record no.180-10147-10166.

  Note 7: Penkovsky, who had spied for the CIA and Britain’s MI6, was executed by the Soviets in 1963. The address Dr. Davison gave the Oswalds was in Atlanta, Georgia, where his mother Natasha lived. Davison told the Assassinations Committee his mother would welcome the Oswalds should they travel via Atlanta on their way to Texas. Though at the time they met Davison, there were apparently no plans for the Oswalds to travel through Atlanta, their flight was in fact to make a stopover there en route to Texas. It appears to have been a brief stop, however, allowing no time to leave the airport to visit anyone. The author knows of no other information linking the Oswalds to Atlanta. Oddly, though, George de Mohrenschildt, Oswald’s later mentor in Dallas, was to write after the assassination that the Warren Commission skimped full investigation of “Lee’s activities in Atlanta [author’s emphasis], New Orleans, and Mexico City.”

  Another scrawled note in Oswald’s address book, also presumably written in Moscow, reads: “K-42000, 384, 1-2 DINNER, Jelisavcic.” Jelisavcic, research indicates, was Mikhailo Jelisavcic, the manager of American Express in Moscow. “K-42000” was his telephone number and “384” the number of the room at the Hotel Metropol that was his office. Oswald, of course, had reason to visit American Express—in connection with the imminent journey back to the West. Though American Express had reportedly been used as cover by U.S. intelligence in earlier years, and though documents suggest Jelisavcic was on good terms with U.S. Embassy officials, and though the FBI would years later probe the “possible compromise of Jelisavcic by Soviet intelligence,” there is no basis for the notion that he worked for either U.S. or Soviet intelligence—as some have claimed. Oswald’s scrawled “1-2 DINNER” may merely refer to the hour at which Jelisavcic would be absent from his office. Oswald’s notebook also reflects contact with the Rotterdam American Express office during his forthcoming travel through Holland. (Atlanta route: XVI.616; XVIII.16; Davison’s mother: XVI.37; XVI.50; brief stop?: I.330; Tilley v. Delta Airlines, February 1, 1966, http://sc.findacase.com (re. schedule of Delta flight); skimped: HSCA XII.250; Jelisavcic: CD 1115; Memorandum re addresses in Oswald address book, FBI file 62-117290 HSCA HQ Bulky file 456x6; SAC New York to Director, December 17, 1968, FBI Airtel, John Armstrong papers, Box 16, Book 2, Tab 20, Baylor University Archives; CIA Appendix C to Chron. of Oswald in USSR, Mary 26, 1964, p. 55; CD 680; Director to SAC New York, January 8, 1965, FBI 105-82555, Oswald HQ file, Section 224; American Express intelligence: AP, July 29, 2010, “The CIA’s Temporarily Unavailable Records,” National Security Archive, June 6, 2012)

  171 Train journey: XVI.137, 144.

  Helmstedt: XVIII.168; XVI.144, 147; research contributed by Sidney A. Martin; http://oswaldinholland.weblog.nl; Perry Vermeulen, Lee Harvey Oswald, via Rotterdam naar Dallas, Holland: Tirion Sport, 2008.

  172 Accomodation: XVIII.615; I.101 (testimonies, U.S. Embassy staff); Marina—HSCA 11.289, 310; HSCA XII.369 (Marina alternately spoken of Amsterdam and Rotterdam).

  Executive session: transcript of proceedings of Warren Commission, January 27, 1964.

  Holland research: author’s 1993, drawing on CE 18, pp. 51, 42, 47; Vermeulen, op. cit., http://oswaldinholland.weblog.nl.

  173 Maasdam crossing: 1.101, (testimony, Marina Oswald); Report, p. 712; http://oswaldinholland.weblog.nl.

  Note 8: The Oswalds were listed on the Maasdam’s passenger list, though the Commission found no one who recalled having seen them on board. Oddly, Marina is on record as having said they “arrived in New York by air [author’s emphasis] … stayed in some hotel in New York City for one day and then went by train to Texas [author’s emphasis].” Though Marina spoke in the presence of two qualified translators, the anomaly—the author guesses—was probably the result of an error in translation. (ship’s manifest, obtained by author, 1993; “by air”: XXIII.407–Secret Service report of Marina Interviews, November 26–28, 1963)


  174 Raikin: Report, p. 173.

  American Friends: “From Dallas to Watergate” by Peter Dale Scott, Ramparts, November 1973.

  Oswald & anti-Castro exiles: The reference is to 544 Camp Street, New Orleans. See Chapter 17, “Blind Man’s Bluff in New Orleans.”

  Form Oswald signed: XIX.680.

  175 ONI no action: John Newman, op. cit., p. 264.

  Not placed on list: XVII.801.

  FBI security case: Report, p. 434.

  FBI asked Oswald: Report, p. 434.

  Declined polygraph: Dallas FBI office memorandum to HQ, July 10, 1962, Sen. Int. Cttee., Performance of Intelligence Agencies, p. 88.

  case closed: Report, p. 435.

  Note 9: There would be further contacts between Oswald and the FBI in the period leading up to the assassination, and the nature of his relationship with the Bureau—to be covered later in these pages—is clouded.

  Fox: Epstein, Legend, op. cit., p. 312.

  176 Note 10: Webster has appeared earlier in these pages, in Chapter 9: Note 6 and Chapter 10: Note 5. Other returning defectors questioned were Libero Ricciardelli, a World War II Air Force hero who returned from Russia with his family in 1963, and Bruce Davis, a soldier who had deserted from the U.S. Army in Germany. The Assassinations Committee Report found, however, that the CIA did not automatically contact returning defectors. Indeed, an Assassinations Committee study found that of twenty-two returnee defectors who returned in the relevant timeframe (out of an original list of 380) only four were interviewed by the CIA. (Ricciardelli/Davis: HSCA, XII.437, John Newman, op. cit., p. 184; not automatically: HSCA Report, p. 209).

  “Laying on interviews”:Casasin to Haltigan, November 25, 1963, CIA, HSCA Record no. 104-10059-10181.

  “REDWOOD”/ “KUJUMP”: Research Aid: Cryptonyms and terms in Declassified CIA Files, www.nara.gov.

  Note 11: Having previously been released with redactions, Casasin’s memo was in released virtually in full in 1996. “Thomas Casasin” is a pseudonym, not a real name. The sense makes clear that the timeframe of the discussion by CIA officers was mid-1962—the Assassinations Committee accepted that a reference in the memo to “1960” was incorrect. Committee interviews located no other CIA employee who recalled the discussion, and found no evidence of Agency contact with Oswald. (redactions: HSCA IV.210; not real name: Memo for the Record, June 29, 1978, HSCA Record no. 104-10066-10201; not “1960”/no other: HSCA Report, p. 208)