The Kremlin, LBJ, and the JFK Assassination

The American Spectator ^ | 8 November 2017 | Paul Kengor

[GreyFriar]

Newly declassified documents confirm Moscow always knew to play the American left like a fiddle.

President Trump recently authorized a mass declassification of documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Among the material subsequently released, one document that instantly grabbed headlines was a December 1966 FBI memo reporting the reaction of Soviet and Communist Party USA officials to the Kennedy shooting. The document was headlined in (among other publications) the New York Post, which, in turn, was flagged at the top of the Drudge Report, which attracted a lot of readers. Old JFK conspiracy theorists picked up the torch and were off and running.

“The Soviet Union theorized that President Lyndon B. Johnson could have been behind JFK’s assassination,” began the New York Post, “and also learned Moscow could be blamed and attacked, according to documents in a major release of files related to Kennedy’s slaying.”

This sounds very intriguing, and very new. It isn’t new. And it also requires crucial historical context, especially as certain conspiracy theorists thump their chest in quasi-vindication. Here I’d like to offer that context before delving into the contents of the newly declassified FBI memo.

I provide the context in a book that was published in May. That book, A Pope and a President, focused on Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan, and deals at length with the Soviet role in the shooting of John Paul II, but also deals with the Soviet disinformation campaign launched in response to the Kennedy assassination.

[GreyFriar]

Dr. Kengor's article is worth reading about how the old Soviet KGB/GRU and current Russian FSB disinformation campaigns work. The following three paragraphs are worth special attention by the readers:

"As for Kalugin, he was the highest-ranking KGB officer to record his story. In November 1963, Kalugin was deputy station chief in Washington for the KGB. Kalugin notes that immediately after the disclosure that Oswald had Soviet connections (more on that in a moment), he and his fellow agents in Washington began receiving “frantic cables from KGB headquarters in Moscow, ordering us to do everything possible to dispel the notion that the Soviet Union was somehow behind the assassination” (which, to Kalugin’s knowledge, it was not). The Kremlin, he noted, was “clearly rattled by Oswald’s Soviet connection.” So, how to dispel that notion? Kalugin explained their orders: “We were told to put forward the line that Oswald could have been involved in a conspiracy with American reactionaries displeased with the president’s recent efforts to improve relations with Russia.” And so, said Kalugin, “I spoke with all my intelligence assets, including Russian correspondents and various U.N. employees, and told them to spread the official Soviet line. In the end, our campaign succeeded.”"

"It sure did. American liberals swallowed the Soviet line. They not only reflexively accepted Soviet innocence, but they heartily and happily pointed the finger at American conservatives — their preferred enemy."

"As for Ion Mihai Pacepa, he argues two primary points: 1) The KGB had a thorough, ongoing, and very successful disinformation campaign to blame the Kennedy assassination on domestic elements in the United States, from “right-wingers” and anti-communists to the CIA (as Kalugin affirmed); and 2) Picking up from his 2007 book, Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination, Pacepa believes (and I cannot confirm) that the Soviets were involved in the actual assassination, or at least in earlier steps leading toward or helping to precipitate the event."

[GreyFriar]

Background on the Soviet KGB disinformation campaign that “CIA/LBJ/US right wingers killed Kennedy” that the US liberals and leftists incorporated as part of their “truth.”

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[SkyDancer]

Reading a book titles “The Third Bullet” by Stephen Hunter. A Bob Lee Swagger novel. Interesting theories listed.

[HLPhat]

When we look at the history of the swamp...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse

...the line where the West really ended and the East really began, get’s a little fuzzy.

[Army Air Corps]

Ah, Marcuse, that sack of slime.

[HLPhat]

Ah, Marcuse, that sack of slime.

Uhuh.

"Marcuse worked in U.S. Government service for the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) where he criticized the Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958)"

Helped instigate the Cold War while subverting the Golden Calf from inside... so it'd be an easy slaughter.

Typical, evil, manipulative, social-engineer - who would've made Korah, Karl, and Co. proud.

"Two Hundred Years Together is a monumental work of historical scholarship by Soviet dissident and 1970 Nobel literature laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dealing with the relationship between Russians and..."

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/200_Years_Together

Jude 5-11

5 Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lordc delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home — these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

8 In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. 9 But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!" 10 Yet these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals — these are the very things that destroy them.

11 Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion.

NIV

[Army Air Corps]

If I recall correctly, Marcuse had a rather singular obsession with sex.

[HLPhat]

If I recall correctly, Marcuse had a rather singular obsession with sex.

 

[The Architects of Western Decline:
A Study on the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism]
https://vid.me/UoQm#17m10s

Which is why it makes "Milo" notable in how he and his fans prop up a facade of being anti-Cultural Marxism... while BEING the personification of it.

Luke 17:1-4

7 Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. 2 It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. 3 So watch yourselves.

"If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. 4 If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him."

NIV

[SoCal Pubbie]

It truly saddens me how many Freepers have bought into the KGB sponsored lies spread by the likes of Mark Lane that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone nut commie killer who did in fact murder JFK without any help from the CIA, organized crime, or “extreme right wingers.”

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. US liberals and leftists still practice Soviet KGB style disinformation. Their media is full of it.

[Admin Moderator]

Knock it off with the spamming!

[Rockingham]

What the Soviets said about the Kennedy assassination for propaganda purposes, and what informed observers thought about it are not the same as what actually happened that day in Dallas — and there are enough loose ends, disputed facts, and peculiar circumstances to suggest conspiracy. Most notably, Robert Kennedy was convinced within days that Lyndon Johnson had his brother killed with the assistance of rogue CIA operatives.

[GreyFriar]

You commented: “Most notably, Robert Kennedy was convinced within days that Lyndon Johnson had his brother killed with the assistance of rogue CIA operatives.”

Which is the line the Soviets pushed beginning within 24 hours of JFK’s assassination. Oswald was a communist and even his former USMC unit members knew that. That however doesn’t mean, to me, that he was working on orders from the KGB.

[Rockingham]

If one sorts through the bad information, false claims, and goofy theories, there is much that indicates that Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy that originated with US domestic interests. Elements of the Mafia and CIA are both implicated, but it is implausible that they would participate in or facilitate or condone an assassination of a president without assurances that in doing so, they would be protected against the existential risk of discovery and prosecution. That in turn points toward LBJ, who wanted to become president and escape the Kennedy plan to remove him from the ticket and prosecute him for corruption.

As for why the Soviets believed as they did, one cannot exclude the possibility that their spies in the US intelligence community informed them of the truth.

[Genoa]

A very big trove released today, Nov. 9. More than 13,000 records.

[Genoa]

Link: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/2017-release

[otness_e]

I don’t know, there’s a few holes in that claim anyways. For starters, an internal memo from the CIA indicated that LBJ wasn’t even aware that LHO tried to kill JFK until roughly three days afterward. And then there’s the fact that he tried to get a passport for the USSR and Cuba a couple weeks earlier, also mentioned in the same memo.

I’m pretty sure that the Soviets were indeed involved. One of the FBI memos even indicated that a certain New York charter of the Communist Party was going overtime trying to denounce the whole thing as being a right-wing conspiracy and deny any involvement in the assassination or even that LHO was one of their own.

[Rockingham]

Soviet involvement in JFK's assassination seems definitively foreclosed by what we know through FBI spy Morris Childs. Although active and respected communists, Morris Childs and his brother Jack were sidelined in the late 1940s due to factional infighting. In the ensuing years, they became successful in business and turned into patriotic Americans who regretted their prior ideology and Communist activities.

As the Cold War intensified, Morris and Jack Childs were recruited by the FBI. Under the name Operation Solo, the FBI developed them into top level double agents who operated at the highest levels of the Communist Party in the US and internationally. The Soviets trusted and relied on Morris Childs so much that he was even allotted an apartment in Moscow.

Shrewdly, Hoover kept Operation Solo secret, even from the CIA and every President before Gerald Ford. As it happened, Morris Childs was in Moscow meeting with a key Soviet official when the news arrived of Kennedy's assassination. Covertly, Childs had learned to speak Russian and was privy to Soviet alarm at the possibility that Oswald had been one of their agents. A flurry of urgent consultations proved otherwise. Morris Childs was then told of that and to return to the US to make clear to the US Communist Party that Oswald was not a Soviet agent and to refute any such claims.

Of course, the possibility remains that Castro or a rogue element of the KGB or GRU might have encouraged or directed Oswald as an assassin. Alternatively, as part of a domestic conspiracy, rogue US intelligence officers might have created a false trail implicating the Russians or Cubans and thereby provided a compelling reason for the Warren Commission to avoid pursuing evidence of a conspiracy since doing so could have provoked a nuclear war.

The CIA station chief in Mexico City seems to have suspected something like that, and it has been reported that Kennedy loyalists in the CIA were told that Bobby Kennedy did not want any links to Cuban or Russia pursued. That fits with Bobby's supposed belief that LBJ was at the heart of the conspiracy that had his brother killed.

[otness_e]

Actually, Pacepa gives a pretty good idea of the Soviets actually knowing all along that Childs wasn't actually with the Communists, but simply played along for propaganda purposes:

""When I was working for Nicolae Ceaușescu , I always tried to find a way to help him reach a decision on his own, rather than telling him directly what I thought he should do about something. That way, both of us were happy. From our KGB advisors, I had learned that the best way to put over a deception was to let the target see something for himself, with his own eyes. Not surprisingly, there are two cleverly executed and spectacularly successful examples of this tactic that turn up as part of the KGB disinformation operation connected with the Kennedy assassination.

"In November 1963, Morris Childs, the number two man in the American Communist Party (which he had joined in 1919!), was on his annual visit to Moscow for the purpose of requesting money and receiving policy instructions. On November 22, as news of the assassination broke, Morris was summoned to the office of Boris Ponomarev, the powerful chairman of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The two men had just begun discussing how the American party should react when a couple of party underlings burst in, their faces ashen. In Russian, which Morris had never admitted to understanding, they breathlessly briefed Ponomarev on Oswald's arrest, blurting out that he was a former US Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union, but that after he had attempted suicide, Soviet psychiatrists had concluded he was unbalanced, so the Soviets were glad to be rid of him when he asked to go back to the United States. The storytellers excitedly added that the KGB had just sworn to the Kremlin that it never had any operational relationship with him.

"Suddenly the storytellers noticed Morris--"the American"--and asked what he should be told. Ponomarev vouched for him and said he should be told the truth. The talented actors then retold the same story, which was relayed to Morris through an interpreter. The Soviets beseeched Moris to believe they had nothing to do with the assassination.

"In fact, since 1951, Morris Childs had been a very sensitive FBI agent, whose reporting was considered to be completely reliable and whose identity was never revealed to anyone until 1995 when John Brannon received permission to publish Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin, from which the above account is taken.

"In 1993, before the publication of Solo, my wife and I had enjoyed a long lunch with John Barron, hosted by Alfred Regnery, who had published my book Red Horizons and had just read the outline of a book on the Kennedy assassination I was writing. At lunch, the discussion centered around Morris's diary, which Barron had just obtained from Morris's widow, and around Al Regnery's intention to publish it as a book. During that lunch, I learned that Morris's information was regularly and anonymously distributed to top members of the US government on an "eyes only" basis. Barron's book, published in 1995, contains convincing evidence that Morris was a very trusted FBI agent and that the information he provided to the FBI played a decisive role in the decision of the Warren Commission--and later, of the House Committee on Assassinations--not to consider any Soviet bloc hand in President Kennedy's assassination.

"There is no question that Morris Childs, as well as his brother Jack, who had both once been loyal members of the American Communist Party, were by 1951 and for the rest of their lives absolutely reliable and devoted FBI sources. Morris was mainly involved with policy guidelines and Jack with funds, both of which commodities they obtained from the Soviet Communist Party and passed on to its American subsidiary. Even after 1963, both brothers continued to meet with their communist contacts and both remained confident the Soviets trusted them.[19]

"According to the Mitrokhin Archive, however, in 1974, the KGB component responsible for operations in the United State became suspicious of Morris Childs because of certain anomalies in his background. Jack, then, also fell under suspicion for similar reasons. Both brothers had been leading figures in the American party since its ealry days and both had switched their allegiance to the FBI in 1951. (Morris was the number two man in the overt party and Jack an important member of the underground party, who picked up the funds for the party through clandestine meetings with KGB officers. By the 1970s, the working-level KGB officers responsible for espionage in the United States had wondered if the brothers might be reporting to the FBI, especially because the brothers had experienced no ill effects from the anticommunist "witch-hunts" of the 1950s.)

"Although in the 1970s the working level of the KGB periodically recommended that the party replace both workers, the party dragged its feet and took no action for various reasons, mostly saying the head of the party in the United States was happy with them. Morris finally retired from his party position in 1981 and Jack died that same year. Both brothers had been highly decorated by the Soviets in the 1970s--in 1977 the party even threw a special birthday party for Morris, attended by KGB chairman Andropov, party International Department chairman Ponomarev, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and about half the Politburo. Brezhnev pinned the Order of the Red Banner, a high onor, on Morris's lapel. (At the same time, Jack was given the same award, which he would receive the next time he went to Moscow.)[20]

"Putting all of the above information on the Childs brothers together, we must inevitably conclude that the top levels for both the KGB and the Soviet Communist Party had long understood--since at least 1963 and probably much earlier--that Morris and Jack Childs were reporting to the FBI. Instead of dumping or even arresting them, the KGB and party leadership realized they could use the brothers as unwitting conduits for disinformation. The brothers would not only pass the Kremlin's political messages to the American party, but they would also ac as superbly credible sources for the disinformation the Kremlin wished to convey to the American government. When the incredible happened and Oswald did succeed in killing President Kennedy, the Kremlin went into overdrive to conince both Childs brothers separately that the Soviets had nothing to do with it.

"The show put on Morris on November 22, 1963, was unquestionably a farce, deliberately staged as part of the Kennedy assassination disinformation operation. The Soviets certainly knew that Morris spoke Russian as he had spent the first nine years of his life in tsaris Russia, and later three years at the Communist Party's Lenin School for Moscow, where he had even been recruited by the KGB predecessor as an informant. Moreover, it is incredible that any party flunkies would have dared bto break into Ponomarev's meeting with an American, to say nothing of their having spoken freely about such extremely sensitive matters as Oswald's background or KGB file records.

"As a marvelous bonus, the Mitrokhin Archive completes the picture. Although the First (US) Department of the KGB's foreign directorate spotted weak points in the backgrounds of the Childs brothers and kept urging the party to drop them, the top KGB and party leaders knew perfectly well that the brothers were reporting to the FBI. The interruption of Ponomarev's meeting with Morris on November 22, was clearly planned deliberately, so that he would convince the FBI (and thus also the top level of the American government) of the lie that the Soviets had had absolutely nothing to do with Kennedy's assassination."

"Remarkably, another staged performance took place in Cuba on that very same day on November 22, 1963--an "amazing coincidence," as Fidel Castro would call what happened. On that afternoon, Fidel hosted a luncheon at his Varadero beach house outside of Havana, to honor Jean Daniel, the distinguished French correspondent of the Parisian weekly L'Express. The latter had been visiting Cuba for several weeks and hd already spent a couple of days with Castro. About a dozen people--Castro, Danil and his wife, and nine or ten other Cubans--were sitting around a table, when Cuba's figurehead president called on the telephone with preliminary news of the Kennedy assassination attempt. Fidel took the call in the presence of his guests, who heard him in astonishment: "¿Como? ¿Un atentado?" (What? An assassination attempt?). Fidel seemed genuinely shocked, but he had the presence of mind to ask immediately who the vice president was. When it was shortly thereafter llearned that the president was dead, Castro expressed alarm, saying "They will have to find the assassin quickly, otherwise you watch and see, they will try to blame us." Brian Latell, after reporting the above story in his book, perceptively points out that Castro may have had an ulterior motive for arranging that luncheon with such care, "and with the expectation that Jean Daniel would write one or more widely circulated articles." Indeed, two articles by Daniel soon appeared inn the New Republic articles describing the above scene. Because Daniel was a journalist of impeccable reputation, no one would ever question where Castro was when he heard the news, or his surprise over it.[21] But why did Fidel worry about who the vice president was, even before the president was reportedly mortally wounded? And why was he afraid people would blame Cuba, before anyone knew who the assassin was? In any case, it seems clear that Fidel Castro was doing his best to support the KGB's disinformation operation by denying any Cuban involvement in the assassination and by trying to peddle some of the KGB's suggested solutions to the crime."

"Jack Childs also played a role in the disinformation operation mounted after the assassination. The Communist Party had introduced Jack to Fidel Castro in May 1963, during the latter's first visit to Moscow. The two seemed to get along well together, so in May 1964, the Soviet Communist Party sent Jack from Moscow to Havana, after coaching him in how to deal with Castro, who allegedly needed someone to talk to. After cooling his heels for nine days, on the tenth day Jack was finally summoned by Fidel. They were discussing party relations between the United States and Cuba, when out of the blue Fidel asked: "Do you think Oswald killed President Kennedy?" Castro then answered his own question, saying his people had experimented with a gun similar to the one Oswald had used, and they had concluded it was impossible for one person to have fired the three reported shots in such short succession--it had to have been a conspiracy. He also told Jack Childs that Oswald had stormed out of the Cuban Embassy after being refused a visa, saying "I'm going to kill Kennedy for thhis." Jack, of course, reported this back not only to the American party, but especially to the FBI, which did give it to the Warren Commission, although FBI director Hoover trivialized it, convinced there had been no conspiracy.[22]

"Now we can understand why Morris and Jack Childs were both awarded the Order of the RedBanner with great ceremony at the Kremlin in 1977."

The sources are as follows:

19. John Barron, Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin (Washington: Regnery, 1995), passim. 20. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 287-289. 21. (Brian) Latell (Castro's Secrets (New York: Palrave Macmillan, 2012)), 204-205. 22. Ibid., 141-144."

This was from the book Disinformation, incidentally by the same authors as this article. Make of that what you will.