Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (28 page)

Furthermore, in a statement to the Secret Service just after the assassina tion, Marina gave a version of their trip from Russia that was totally
different from that given in the Warren Report. She claimed they "then
arrived in New York by air . . . stayed in some hotel in New York City for
one day and then went by train to Texas."

The Warren Commission, backed by tickets, documents, and Marina's
later testimony, stated that the couple arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey, on
June 13, 1962 aboard the ship S.S. Maasdam. There they were met by
Spas T. Raikin, a representative of the Traveler's Aid Society, which had
been notified of the Oswald's arrival by the State Department. Raikin
helped whisk the Oswald's through customs and then found them a place
to stay in New York. He later arranged contact with Lee's brother, Robert,
who sent the couple two hundred dollars for plane fare to Fort Worth,
Texas.

According to BBC researcher and author Anthony Summers, Raikin was
also an official with an anticommunist emigre group with links to both the
FBI and U.S. military intelligence as well as anticommunist groups in
New Orleans "headquartered in the very building where, in months to
come, Oswald's name was to be linked with CIA-backed anti-Castro
activists."

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) had approved
the financial aid to Oswald upon urging from the State Department. In
Dallas HEW records, it states that Oswald went to Russia "with State
Department approval," an allegation later repeated by Oswald himself on
a New Orleans radio program.

When the Oswalds arrived in New York, they had seven suitcases.
When they left by plane, they only had five. Asked about the dwindling
number, Oswald stated he had sent them ahead by rail. However, when the
couple arrived in Fort Worth, Robert stated they had only two suitcases.

The lost baggage may have something to do with their flight to Texas,
which, although many direct flights were available, went by way of
Atlanta. Atlanta was the home of Natasha Davison, the mother of Captain
Davison, the U.S. attache with intelligence connections who had met with
the Oswalds in Moscow.

Yet, with all this evidence suggesting that Marina may have been part of
some unrevealed intelligence program, she was accepted publicly by the
Warren Commission as "a simple, devoted housewife . . ." Privately,
commission members thought differently. At one point, they voiced the
fear that she might be a KGB agent. Commission member Senator Richard
Russell commented: "That will blow the lid if she testifies to that." One
Warren Commission lawyer described Marina as "a very different person
[from her public image] ... cold, calculating, avaricious .. ...

Some believe that Marina lied in many instances during her testimony to
the Warren Commission. And, keep in mind the fact that as Oswald's
wife, her testimony would not have been admissible had Oswald come to
trial.

Despite all this, some of Marina's testimony proved very damaging to
Oswald. In the hours after the assassination, Marina was quoted as saying:
"Lee good man. Lee not shoot anyone." But after being held for weeks
by the federal authorities, her statements began to change. Instead of
telling what a good husband Oswald had been, she began saying he was
violent to her. After initially being unable to identify the MannlicherCarcano rifle as her husband's, she later described it as "the fateful rifle of
Lee Harvey Oswald." She also began to tell stories of other attempts at
assassination by Oswald-one against Richard Nixon and another against
Gen. Edwin Walker.

Today Marina has reversed her statements of 1963-64 and publicly
made several astounding admissions, including:

-How federal authorities forced her Warren Commission testimony by
threatening deportation and ordered her not to read or listen to
anything pertaining to the assassination.

-That today she believes a conspiracy resulted in Kennedy's death.

-Lee Harvey Oswald was an agent who "worked for the American
government" and was "caught between two powers-the government
and organized crime."

-Oswald was "killed to keep his mouth shut."

-That someone impersonated Oswald to incriminate him and "that's
no joke."

-Lee Harvey Oswald "adored" President Kennedy.

In a 1988 interview published in Ladies' Home Journal, Marina said:

When I was questioned by the Warren Commission, I was a blind
kitten. Their questioning left me only one way to go: guilty. I made Lee
guilty. He never had a fair chance . . . But I was only 22 then, and I've
matured since; I think differently.

By 1979, Marina-by then a mature woman with a good command of
English-had begun to doubt the official explanation of the assassination
and joined with British author Michael Eddowes in seeking to have
Oswald's body exhumed.

Considering the background of both Lee and Marina and the length of
time spent by Oswald in Russia, it seems inconceivable that they were
not interrogated by U.S. intelligence after their return. Yet the official
story is that no U.S. intelligence agency had any interest in this
ex-Marine.

Considering the Marine career of Oswald and the military information
available to him as a radar operator, it is equally unbelievable that the
Soviets did not interrogate Oswald at great length, especially if they found
out about his connections with the U-2 flights from Atsugi.

Yet, this is precisely what the Soviets claimed in what has to become
one of the most bizarre aspects of the Kennedy assassination-an aspect
kept from the American public by the Warren Commission.

The strange story of Yuri Nosenko began on January 20, 1964, just two
months after the events in Dallas.

Nosenko, an officer in the American Division of the KGB, had contacted the CIA initially on June 3, 1962, just two days after Oswald left
Russia for the United States. Nosenko offered to spy for the Americans.
However, nothing further had been heard from him and U.S. analysts were
highly suspicious of his offer.

Then on January 20, 1964, Nosenko landed in Geneva as part of a
Soviet disarmament delegation. He soon made his way to a telephone and
renewed his offer to American intelligence, but with a difference-this
time he wanted to defect.

The defection of Yuri Nosenko set in motion a chain of events that
would lead to bitter divisions between the CIA and FBI as well as within
the CIA itself.

Once he was in American hands, CIA officials were shocked to learn
that Nosenko claimed to have been the KGB official who had personally
handled the case of Lee Harvey Oswald during his stay in Russia. Nosenko
said-based on two mental examinations made of Oswald-the KGB
found the would-be defector not very bright and even "mentally unstable." And that the KGB had never debriefed Oswald about his military
background nor ever considered recruiting him as an agent.

That was exactly what many people in the CIA and on the Warren
Commission wanted to hear. However, there were others in the agency
who were immediately suspicious of this man. After all, it appeared
Nosenko had forever left a ranking position and his family simply to assure
the U.S. government that the man accused of killing the President was not
a Soviet agent.

CIA chief of counterintelligence James Jesus Angleton was particularly
wary of Nosenko. He observed that most of the information provided by
Nosenko revealing Soviet agents and operations was already known to the
CIA prior to his defection.

Furthermore, shortly after bringing Nosenko to the United States, CIA
interrogators began to find errors and gaps in his testimony. For example,
there was the question of Nosenko's rank. He initially told the CIA he was
a lieutenant colonel in the KGB. But another KGB defector, Maj. Anatoli
Golitsin, stated he had been in close contact with the KGB departments
described by Nosenko but had never run across the man. Under pressure,
Nosenko admitted that he had exaggerated his rank to make himself more attractive to the CIA. However, detailed KGB documents provided by
Nosenko refer to him as a lieutenant colonel, the senior rank he had
repudiated. This caused CIA officials severe concern because it appeared
that this defector was being aided in his cover story by the KGB.

To make matters worse, Nosenko's story was corroborated by one of the
FBI's deepest secrets-their own Soviet KGB defector referred to only by
his code name Fedora. Thus, if Nosenko was lying, then Fedora, too,
became suspect.

In a remarkable attempt to resolve the issue, Nosenko underwent "hostile interrogation." He was kept in solitary confinement for 1,277 days
under intense physical and psychological pressure.

He was put on a diet of weak tea, macaroni, and porridge, given nothing
to read, a light was left burning in his unheated cell twenty-four hours a
day, and his guards were forbidden to speak with him or even smile. His
isolation was so complete that Nosenko eventually began to hallucinate,
according to CIA testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Toward the end of this ordeal, Nosenko was given at least two
lie detector tests by the CIA. He failed both. But Nosenko did not crack.

The believers of Nosenko, headed by the CIA's Richard Helms and J.
Edgar Hoover, took his intransigence to mean that he was telling the truth
about the KGB having no interest in Oswald.

But doubts remained. So at the CIA's request, the Warren Commission
obligingly made no reference to Nosenko.

Angleton retired from the CIA and later wrote:

The . . . exoneration or official decision that Nosenko is/was bona fide
is a travesty. It is an indictment of the CIA and, if the FBI subscribes to
it, of that bureau too. The ramifications for the U.S. intelligence
community, and specifically the CIA, are tragic.

The counterintelligence faction, led by Angleton, still believes that
Nosenko's defection was contrived by the KGB for two purposes: to allay
suspicions that the Soviets had anything to do with the JFK assassination
and to cover for Soviet "moles," or agents deep within U.S. intelligence.

Today, Nosenko continues to be an adviser on Soviet intelligence to the
CIA and the FBI at a salary of more than $35,000 a year. He has been
given a new identity as well as more than $150,000 as payment for his
ordeal.

But questions remain. No researcher seriously believes the Soviets failed
to question Oswald about his Marine background. When they learned that
he served as a radar operator at the base where U-2 flights were launched,
he must have undergone intense interrogation.

Furthermore, there appears to be evidence that Oswald continued to
keep in touch with Soviet officials almost up until the time of Kennedy's
assassination. According to CIA documents, Oswald visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City on September 23, 1963, and met with Valery
Vladimirovich Kostikov, who was described as "function[ing] overtly as a
consul ..." However, the CIA memorandum added: "[Kostikov] . . . is
also known to be a staff officer of the KGB. He is connected with the
Thirteenth, or `liquid affairs' department, whose responsibilities include
assassination and sabotage."

Of course, Oswald's contact with this man, who was operating as a
normal member of the Soviet embassy, may have been coincidental.
However, it is significant that the Warren Commission, aware of the
implication of this contact, failed to pursue the matter or include this
information in their report.

Years later, FBI agent James Hosty, who was connected to Oswald prior
to the assassination, said he was unhappy with the revelation about Kostikov's
KGB ties and that, had he been made aware of this connection by the CIA,
he would have placed Oswald's name on the Bureau's "Security Index."

Two theories have emerged:

One, Oswald was recruited by the KGB while serving in Japan and
encouraged to defect to Russia, then sent back to the U.S. to kill President
Kennedy. This theory is rejected by most students of the subject, including
author Edward Jay Epstein, whose book Legend studies the Oswald-Soviet
connections in detail. Epstein reasons: "I think that the fact that Oswald
traces so clearly back to the Russians makes it extremely unlikely that they
would have recruited him as an assassin."

Second, that Oswald was recruited into U.S. intelligence as a spy and
sent to Russia. There, the KGB attempted to turn him into their agent and
sent him back to the United States, unaware that he would be blamed for
Kennedy's death. This would explain the extraordinary lengths gone to by
the Soviets to disavow any connection with Oswald.

In the overall view, it is probable that Oswald was mixed up in some
sort of intelligence work. And, while it is likely that the Soviets would
recruit this lowly Marine would-be defector, it is highly unlikely that they
would consider using him in something so dangerous as assassinating the
U.S. president. In murdering Kennedy, the Soviets would have been
risking all. World War III would be the likely result should a Soviet
assassination plot be uncovered. And what would they have gained by
killing Kennedy? Virtually nothing except Lyndon Johnson as president, a
man with far better anticommunist credentials than Kennedy and a man with
closer ties to the military-industrial complex most feared by the Soviets.