The Mystery of Marina Oswald

Stratfor ^ | 24 November 2003 | Dr. George Friedman

[Kenny Bunk]

Let's add one more improbability to the excellent and rational post you provided: The defector Nosenko claimed the "KGB had NO INTEREST in LHO."

Add the LHO file to the other real KGB files I would love to see: Bill Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, Strobe Talbot, Al Gore Sr. and Jr. and a couple of hundred others!

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Dr. Friedman, for those of you in Cen- Tex, can be heard on 590 KLBJ every Monday morning at 8:30

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Dr. Friedman, for those of you in Cen- Tex, can be heard on 590 KLBJ every Monday morning at 8:30

[spyone]

What happened to Marina?

[FreedomCalls]

I believe she is still alive as is her and Lee's two children.

[Bobibutu]

"Add the LHO file to the other real KGB files I would love to see: Bill Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, Strobe Talbot, Al Gore Sr. and Jr. and a couple of hundred others!"

You may just get your wish ...


Scientists 'unshredding' files of East German secret police
November 22, 2003

BY KATE CONNOLLY

BERLIN -- It is the most complex jigsaw puzzle in the world, 600 million shreds of paper that contain the secrets of decades of communist espionage.

Now German scientists have developed a highly sophisticated machine that will "unshred" the files of the East German secret police, the Stasi. All could be revealed within five years.

The E-Puzzler, developed by Berlin's Fraunhofer Institute for Design Technology, will seek to rebuild the spy records that were shredded by hand into 16,000 sacks during the final days of the communist regime after shredding machines broke down.

For the past eight years, 15 workers -- a mix of ex-Stasi employees and clerks from a defunct asylum seekers' center -- have been painstakingly sticking paper shreds together with tape and tweezers.

Working at a rate of around 10 documents a day, 500,000 pages -- 250 sacks -- have been manually reconstructed since 1995. Experts estimated it would take them 400 years to complete the thankless task.

The E-Puzzler is set to reduce that to around half a decade at an annual cost of nearly $12 million, if the government approves. Its software works by identifying the characteristics of the paper scraps and grouping them together.

Once pieced together, the documents, largely the records on the 174,000 unofficial employees of the Stasi and the estimated 6 million they spied on in the 1970s and 1980s, are expected to be of huge significance.

Historians say they are likely to reveal everything from the crimes committed by the secret police to love affairs between agents. They will probably tarnish a number of reputations in the process.

Daily Telegraph

[Dog Gone]

The problem with any conspiracy theory is that nobody in their right mind would choose a flake like Lee Harvey Oswald to pull off a stunt like this. Especially not the Soviets.

Try again, Stratfor.

[Dante3]

It is my understanding tht she remained in this country. Scary, if true.

[LouD]

She's now 61, and living near Dallas, according to this recent article:

http://tampatrib.com/News/MGA2VLZ9BND.html

[ambrose]

People like to come up with wild conspiracy theories because they simply cannot accept that one lone loser nutjob has the power to literally change the world with one pump of his index finger.

[Allan]

Bump

[_Jim]

However, the facts of the case make it clear that the Soviet government wanted Marina Prusakova and Oswald together in the United States.

THIS is in direct contradiction as the interview with a KGB head recalled on the Frontline program ...

OSWALD was identified as being of little use, and if INDEED there to 'spy' "this would have been a poor reflection CIA and FBI" ...

[FReepaholic]

>>...nobody in their right mind would choose a flake like Lee Harvey Oswald to pull off a stunt like this...<<

At least not by himself.

[_Jim]

for those of you in Cen- Tex, can be heard on 590 KLBJ

KLBJ can be heard up here in Nor-Tex on a car radio easily - if you're in McKinney some adjacent channel splatter can be expected from KMCK/620 ...

[19th LA Inf]

Some time in the mid or late 60s Marina married a Texas Instruments electronic technician. It was a minor news story because they eloped to a small nearby town to dodge the press. I have no idea if they are still married.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Yeah. We sometimes visit family in OK. We can hear 590 up to the border. In fact, last year, at the beginning of the college football season, I picked up WOAI San Antonio up in Enid.

[Dog Gone]

At least not by himself.

Not even with professional help. For something as important as a planned killing of a US President by a cunning adversary, nobody like Oswald would be the centerpiece.

He wouldn't be reliable, for one. And there was no guarantee that Jack Ruby would have gotten a fatal shot in.

The way the story unfolded definitely feeds the conspiracy theories, but only in hindsight.

[buffyt]

Excellent article, BOOKMARKED, for future reference, too!

[brityank]

Something else to add:

Marina Oswald Porter's
04/96 Letter to the ARRB

Assassination Records Review Board Hearing in 
Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA - September 17, 1996 --- The 
Assassination Records Review Board was given 17 
boxes of never-before-seen documents belonging
to the late J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel for 
the Warren Commission, by his son this week.

Testifying before the ARRB in a Public Hearing
in Los Angeles, James Rankin, the son of J. Lee
Rankin, said his family found the boxes about 
six months ago.

These documents and other materials were offered
to the ARRB, a federal commission established 
to collect documents on the JFK assassination.

The ARRB also made public a request from Marina
Oswald Porter, widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, asking
the board to investigate his involvement with 
the FBI. (Reprinted below.)

"I definitely think that Lee Oswald did not kill 
President Kennedy," she wrote. "I think he was 
given up to pacify people as a patsy...I believe
that the documents I have requested will be 
eye-openers."

Also testifying this week were:

- David Belin, former Assistant Counsel to the 
  Warren Commission;

- James DiEugenio, author of DESTINY BETRAYED: 
  JFK, CUBA AND THE GARRISON CASE;

- Eric Hamburg, co-Producer of the Oliver Stone 
  film, NIXON, and a Congressional staff assistant
  involved in the passage of the President John 
  F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection
  Act of 1992;

- Wesley Liebeler, former Assistant Counsel to 
  the Warren Commission;

- David Lifton, author of BEST EVIDENCE: DISGUISE 
  AND DECEPTION IN THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. 
  KENNEDY; 

- Robert Tanenbaum, former Deputy Counsel for the 
  House Select Committee on Assassinations and 
  author of CORRUPTION OF BLOOD; and 

- Steven Tilley, who oversees the JFK Collection 
  at the National Archives.

ARRB Board Chair John Tunheim and Board Members 
William L. Joyce, Dr. Anna K. Nelson, and Kermit 
L. Hall were present (Board Member Henry Graff 
was unable to attend), as were ARRB Executive 
Director David G. Marwell, Press & Public Affairs 
Officer Tom Samoluk, Press & Public Affairs 
Assistant Eileen Sullivan, and Administration 
Officer Tracy Shycoff.  - Clint Bradford


===============================================
Marina Oswald Porter's 04/96 Letter to the ARRB
===============================================

April 19, 1996

Mr. John Tunheim, Chairman
JFK Assassination Records Review Board
600 E Street N.W., Second Floor
Washington, D.C. 20530
(Certified Mail No. P 271 942 632)

Dear Mr. Tunheim:

I am writing to you regarding the release of still 
classified documents related to the assassination 
of President Kennedy and to my former husband, 
Lee Harvey Oswald.

Specifically, I am writing to ask about documents 
I have learned of from a recent book and from a 
story in the Washington Post by the authors of the
same book (as well as other documents they have
described to me).  The book reviews Dallas police, 
FBI, and CIA files released since 1992, and 
places them in the context of previously known 
information.  I would like to know what the Review
Board is doing to obtain the following:

1. The Dallas field office and headquarters FBI 
reports on the arrests of Donnell D. Whitter and
Lawrence R. Miller in Dallas on November 18, 1963
with a carload of stolen U.S. army weapons.  I  
believe that Lee Oswald was the FBI informant who
made these arrests possible.  I would also like 
to know what your board has done to obtain the 
reports of the U.S. Marshal and the U.S. Army on 
the same arrests, and the burglary these men were
suspected of.

2. The records of the FBI interrogations of John 
Franklin Elrod, John Forrester Gedney and Harold
Doyle (the latter men were previously known as 
two of the "three tramps") in the Dallas jail
November 22-24, 1963.  All of these men have 
stated that they were interrogated during that
time by the FBI.

3. The official explanation of why the arrest 
records for Mr. Elrod, Mr. Gedney and Mr. Doyle,
as well as for Daniel Wayne Douglas and Gus
Abrams were placed "under federal seal" in the 
Dallas Police Records Division for 26 years as 
described by Dallas City Archives supervisor
Laura McGhee to the FBI in 1992.

4. The FULL records of the interrogation of Lee 
Harvey Oswald, including his interrogation in 
the presence of John Franklin Elrod as described
by Elrod in an FBI report dated August 11, 1964.

5. The reports of army intelligence agent Ed J.
Coyle on his investigation of Captain George 
Nonte, John Thomas Masen, Donnell D. Whitter, 
Lawrence R. Miller, and/or Jack Ruby.  I am also 
requesting that you obtain agent Coyle's reports
as army liason for presidential protection on 
November 22, 1963 (as described by Coyle's 
commanding officer Col. Robert Jones in sworn 
testimony to the House Select Committee on 
Assassinations).  If the army does not 
immediately produce these documents, they 
should be required to produce agent Coyle to
explain what happened to his reports.

6. Secret Service reports and tapes of that 
agency's investigation of Father Walter 
Machann and Silvia Odio in 1963-64.

7. Reports of the FBI investigation of Cuban 
exiles in Dallas, to include known but still 
classified documents on Fermin de Goicochea
Sanchez, Father Walter Machann and the Dallas 
Diocese Catholic Cuban Relocation Committee.
These would include informant files for Father
Machann and/or reports of interviews of Father
Machann by Dallas FBI agent W. Heitman.

8. The full particulars and original of the 
teletype received by Mr. William Walter in the
New Orleans FBI office on the  morning of
November 17, 1963, warning of a possible 
assassination attempt on President Kennedy in
Dallas.  I now believe that my former husband
met with the Dallas FBI on November 16, 1963, 
and provided informant information on which 
this teletype was based.

9. A full report of Lee Harvey Oswald's visit 
to the Dallas FBI office on November 16, 1963.

10. A full account of FBI agent James P. 
Hosty's claim (in his recent book, ASSIGNMENT:
OSWALD) that Lee Harvey Oswald knew of a planned
"paramilitary invasion of Cuba" by "a group of 
right wing Cuban exiles in outlying areas of New
Orleans."  We now know that such an invasion
was indeed planned by a Cuban group operating on 
CIA payroll in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas--
the same group infiltrated by Lee Oswald.  We
know this information ONLY from documents 
released since 1992, as described in the book I
have mentioned.  On what basis did agent Hosty
believe Lee "had learned" of these plans, unless 
Lee himself told him this?  I am therefore 
specifically requesting the release of the 
informant report that Lee Oswald provided to 
agent Hosty and/or other FBI personnel on this 
intelligence information.

The time for the Review Board to obtain and 
release the most important documents related to 
the assassination of President Kennedy is running
out.  At the time of the assassination of this 
great president whom I loved, I was misled by 
the "evidence" presented to me by government
authorities and I assisted in the conviction of 
Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin.  From the new
information now available, I am now convinced 
that he was an FBI informant and believe that he 
did not kill President Kennedy.  It is time for 
Americans to know their full history.  On this 
day when I and all Americans are grieving for the
victims of Oklahoma City, I am also thinking of my 
children and grandchildren, and of all American 
children, when I insist that your board give the 
highest priority to the release of the documents 
I have listed.  This is the duty you were charged 
with by law.  Anything else is unacceptable -- 
not just to me, but to all patriotic Americans.

Please be advised that this is an open letter, 
and I intend to make it available to anyone who
wishes to see it.  The time for secrecy in 
government is over.  I ask that you respond to 
me in writing within two weeks, and will take 
no further action until then.

Thank you for your attention to my requests.

Sincerely,

Marina Porter (signed)

cc: Rep. John Conyers Jr.
    Rep. Newt Gingrich
    Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez
    Rep. Lee H. Hamilton
    Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy
    Sen. William S. Cohen
    Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
    Sen. Bob Kerrey
    Sen. John Kerry
    Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan
    Sen. Arlen Specter

--end--

Marina's 09/96 Statement and 04/96 Letter