The Three Barons

by J. W Lateer

  We now know that when Soviet Communism finally collapsed of its own weight in 1991, democracy was attempted, but it is an open question whether it was achieved in 1991 or since. And we have to keep one important thing in mind. It was a huge mistake to admit White Russians like Alexandra Tolstoy, George de Mohrenschildt, Dimitri de Mohrenschildt or Count Konstantin Maydell to the U.S. given their fanatical political beliefs. They had so little use for democracy that they formed a major part of the backbone of the plot to murder America’s elected President. That was their thanks to the U.S. for giving them asylum. And he wasn’t even President of their country. To the day they died, their country was Russia. Maybe the JFK assassination can serve as a bad example – don’t let people into the U.S. unless they sincerely believe in the Constitution – believe in America and believe in American values.

  So what about Bogdan Stashynsky? The Stashynsky case was the next big case where SMERSH was blamed for murder. Unlike the case of Dr. Linse, the Stashynsky case formed part of the plot in either the assassination or the attempted assassination of the Presidents of two Western countries. Americans are blind to the plotting and machinations of those who believe in either fascism, titled nobility or non-Constitutional monarchies. But as the assassination of JFK and the attempts to assassinate de Gaulle show, neither the French Revolution nor the American Revolutions are finished. It’s no accident that George Washington proudly displayed the key to the Bastille at Mount Vernon, where it hangs today. This history and the American Revolution are reasons enough that every American should be told who it was that murdered John F. Kennedy.

  Bogdan Stashynsky was an ethnic Ukrainian by birth, born in 1931 in a village near modern day Lvov. His home village of Borshtshevice, however, was part of Poland at the time of his birth. His father managed a farm, worked as a carpenter and the family was a practicing Christian family, but their religious affiliation is unclear.

  Prior to World War I, the village was part of the Austrian empire.

  In 1939, when Stashynsky was eight, the fourth partition of Poland took place and as a result, his village became part of Russia. Two years later, when Stashynsky was ten, the Germans overran his home area and it came under the control of Hitler. So that change increased the number to five countries (Austria, Russia, Poland, Ukraine and now Germany) under whose rule some of the oldest residents of Borshtshevice would have lived.

  Under Hitler, the Ukrainian state (for the first time in millennia) became independent. The pro-Nazi leader of Ukraine at that time was Jarowslav Stetzko. When the Russians prevailed over the Germans at Stalingrad and moved west into Ukraine, the family of Stashynsky became part of an anti-Russian underground. Logically, this would place the sympathies of Stashynsky with the former Nazi’s who fought under Hitler against Stalin. Since Stashynsky was raised with a normal family and childhood, there is no obvious reason he would have turned against his family and village, except for unusual exigencies or circumstances.

  Having studied in Lvov from 1945 to 1948, Stashynsky began his college work in 1948 studying mathematics. Stashynsky suffered some bad luck when he was riding the train between his home village and Lvov without a ticket in the summer of 1950. He was supposedly detained by the police for not having a ticket

  According to his story, he was taken to a police station of the KGB. There he was confronted with the fact that his family had been helping the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Stashynsky had supposedly been brainwashed by the Russians as a youth and had been told the leaders of the OUN were in the pay of the Americans. The Soviets made threats against both his family and his plan to pursue his college education. In the face of these threats he signed on to work for the KGB, the mortal enemies of his family back in Borshtshevice.

  In 1949, Stashynsky infiltrated into the OUN. His family found this out and cut off his college money. Thus, he became a full-time employee of the KGB. He went into training as a spy in Kiev in 1952; since he was being taught German, he knew his future spy work would be in West Germany. According to the story that has emerged about Stashynsky, he was required to assume a false identity of a Polish man named Josef Lehmann. He was sent to Dresden in East Germany. His first actual assignment (in January 1956) in the West was to make contact with a Ukrainian spy living in Munich. Six months later, his next assignment was to meet up with an unknown man and find out facts about an upcoming Khrushchev visit to London and its relationship to the Ukrainian nationalists. He was also asked to find out if the OUN had any contact with German or American intelligence. Stashynsky worked with this “Mr. X” well into 1957 as he tried to mend the relationship between X and the KGB by using bribes and threats involving X’s wife.

  In addition to this assignment, Stashynsky was also asked to perform reconnaissance on American troop concentrations and to get information about a school for CIA agents in Upper Bavaria. In the Spring of 1957, he was transferred from his regular KGB assignment to the Soviet murder agency called SMERSH. In SMERSH, he was assigned to collect information about Ukrainian leader Lev Rebet, who was living in Munich. In September, 1957, he was summoned to the Soviet police headquarters at Karlhorst, Germany and was told his assignment would be to murder Lev Rebet.

  At this meeting, Stashynsky was shown a new invention, a “gun” which was a tube which, according to Ronald Seth, sprayed a chemical called prussic acid. To protect himself from the effects of this weapon, the would-be assassination had to take both sodium thio-sulphate and, later, amyl-intrate. Stashynsky claimed to have tried out this weapon on a dog under instructions from his superiors. The dog died immediately.

  On October 9, 1957 he flew to Munich. The plan was for him to use the gas weapon to murder Rebet. He stalked Rebet in his office building in Munich. As Rebet was ascending the stairway in his office building, Stashynsky descended the stairs. Meeting Rebet, he sprayed Rebet with the poison gun. Rebet, dead, sprawled on the stairs. Stashynsky then ran and covered a fairly long distance before he was able to throw the murder weapon into a creek known as the Kogelmuhlbach. The autopsy of Rebet was done 48 hours after the murder and the cause of death was determined to be a heart attack.

  Ronald Seth relates the story about how Stashynsky supposedly began to experience guilt. Seth raises the question as to how Stashynsky could feel so guilty since he was a KGB agent of seven years’ experience. The explanation for this is offered, that in April, 1957 Stashynsky had met a woman named Inge Pohl in East Berlin. Pohl lived in East Berlin, but worked as a hairdresser in West Berlin. Pohl was an anit-Communist but Stashynsky was willing to overlook this fact because he had fallen in love with Pohl.

  After the alleged murder of Rebet, Stashynsky went back to being an errand boy for SMERSH and assigned to compile a list of all the writings of Ukrainian writer Stefan Popel. But in 1959, he was given a false identity, that of a German national named Hans Joachim Budeit of Dortmund. He then used his new papers to travel to Munich and spy on the home of Stepan Bandera.

  In April 1959, Stashynsky became engaged to Inge Pohl. Seth (who is a renowned expert on SMERSH) questions how the KGB could have allowed this to take place? A prior murderer-agent named Nikolai Khokhlov had also been engaged and married under similar circumstances and then defected. The Khokhlov defection had caused major problems for the Soviets, so Seth wonders why they would take such a chance again. How could a murder-agent be allowed to marry an anti-Communist? Seth points out that SMERSH had files whereby they would have known the politics of every girlfriend of every foreign agent.

  In Moscow, Stashynsky met with a high-ranking KGB officer who told him that his next assignment would be to murder Bandera. The method would be the same as that used to murder Rebet.

  Seth raises another question. Stashynsky was having pangs of guilt and didn’t understand why the Soviets would want to murder Bandera. Stashynsky was reportedly speculating that the Soviets might have been planning something much bigger than the Bandera murder but they weren’t yet telling Styshynsky about this bigger ope
ration.

  Next, Stashynsky went on a trip which was part of the plan to murder Bandera. Trying to gain entry to Bandera’s residence, Stashynsky had difficulties with the key to Bandera’s house. On the next trip, he was asked to observe the lock on the door of Ukrainian leader Jarowslav Stetzko. Much later, when Stashynsky was interviewed and interrogated by Western authorities, he claimed that the Soviets had told him that Ukrainian history had been made by only four men. These were two men named Konovalec and Melnik and also Bandera and Stetzko, who were alive and known to Stashynsky. Stashynsky claimed that the murders of Bandera and Stetzko were desired in order to demoralize the Ukrainian people in their desire for independence. That was presented to him as the Soviet motive in the murders of the Ukrainians.

  In August, 1959, Stashynsky was allowed his annual visit to see his parents. On October 14, 1959 he was again in Munich, stalking Bandera. He went to Bandera’s apartment building and a woman walked by him who could have remembered his face. He was next to an elevator in the building but could not remember whether he had walked upstairs or took the elevator. Seth questions this lapse of memory.

  Seeing Bandera trying to open his door, Stashynsky walked up to him and squirted him with the gas gun. Unlike the killing of Rebet, Bandera survived the attack but died soon afterward. Because both the deaths of Rebet and Bandera were premature and unexpected, authorities investigated the death of Bandera more closely. The cause of death was ruled poisoning by prussic acid. Glass splinters on the body were discovered (despite the addition of a filter on the murder weapon by the Soviets to prevent glass splinters). However, by then, Bogdan Stashynsky had made a successful escape back to East Berlin.

  Although Stashynsky received the highest honors from the KGB, he had made up his mind to escape to the West. He later claimed that he attended the movies and a newsreel showed a picture of Bandera in his coffin, which pierced him with guilt. Stashynsky started to spend more time with his fiancée Inge Pohl. The KGB did not approve of the relationship and told him he would have to break up with the girl. Seth again questions why the relationship was still continuing despite Stashynsky’s continued role as an assassin. He told his boss Alexei Alexeyevich to his face that he refused to break up with Inge. He was then interviewed by Alexander Shelepin, head of KGB. Shelepin was a V.I.P. who had once been considered to lead the entire Soviet government.

  Stashynsky was then supposedly given an award called the Order of the Red Banner. This award allegedly bore the signatures of Marshal Voroshilov, Chairman of the Soviet Presidium and of its Secretary, Michail Georgadse. Stashynsky would claim that Shelepin, the would-be head of the USSR, had discussed with him his romance with Inge Pohl. He allegedly told Shelepin that Inge Pohl was a true believer in Communism (when she was the opposite). Shelepin then, according to Stashynsky, gave his consent for the marriage on the condition that Inge Pohl should visit Moscow. Another condition was that he should tell Inge Pohl that he worked for the KGB. Stashynsky visited Inge in East Berlin and went against orders by visiting West Berlin with Pohl. At that point, she suggested they should both defect to the West.

  When Inge eventually visited Moscow from January to March, 1960, the couple was able to fool the KGB into believing Inge was an enthusiastic Communist. The two were married on April 23, 1960 in a Protestant religious service. Then they became residents of Moscow where Stashynsky continued his training in both espionage and English. Inge became pregnant but the authorities told the couple that their choices were abortion or adoption. Next, Bogdan and Inge discovered electronic eavesdropping devices in their apartment.

  Author Seth points out that since a prior Soviet murderer had defected, it is inexplicable that the Soviets would have planned on using Stashynsky for even more missions of murder. He suggests that normally, in such a situation, both Stashynsky and his new bride would have been liquidated to avoid any further problems such as a defection. Next, he confessed to Inge that he was a double murderer, which supposedly just increased her loyalty to her new husband.

  Stashynsky was able to get Soviet permission for Inge to visit her parents in East Germany. At this time, Stashynsky was studying at the First Moscow State Pedagogical Institute for Foreign Languages and the instructors at the Institute knew he was an agent. Seth raises another question in this regard. Drawing on his great knowledge of the tactics of espionage, author Seth questions why the KGB would allow all the people at the Institute to know of Stashynsky’s role as a KGB agent? Such knowledge is usually strictly limited to as few people as possible, even concerning people’s knowledge inside the KGB. And further, writes Seth, for the first time in his KGB career, Stashynsky carried identification papers bearing his actual name, Bogdan Stashynsky.

  Inge was able to prolong her stay with her parents in East Germany long enough to give birth to a son, Peter. Stashynsky asked for permission to visit her in East Germany but this was refused. Next, the baby Peter died. Due to this event, his boss at the KGB granted Stashynsky permission to visit his wife in East Berlin, in part out of fear she would reveal to someone her husband’s history as a KGB hit man. The KGB, per Stashynsky, suspected that his baby could have been poisoned by the Americans. This theory held that the Americans could foresee the results of the poisoning, i.e. Stashynsky’s visit to East Berlin and there they could kidnap him.

  (Did you notice? Our story is getting more and more far-fetched)?

  At the home of Inge’s parents, there had been no room for their daughter so she was living in a nearby apartment. When Stashynsky was visiting at this location, the couple slipped into some woods behind the apartment. Next, they walked to a place called Falkensee and took a taxi to East Berlin. Stashynsky showed authorities his identification with the false name Lehmann, which the Soviets had forgotten to take from him previously. Thence, they took a train to West Berlin and asked some friends to take them to American authorities. They went first to Berlin police headquarters and after claiming asylum, they were taken by the Germans to the custody of the Americans.

  After 13 months in prison, Stashynsky was put on trial before the West German Supreme Court on October 8, 1962. He was sentenced to 8 years penal servitude for “aiding and abetting murder” and also treason. Per author Ronald Seth, the opinion of the court was almost unique in this case:

  It named the Soviet Union as the country which was a party to the murder when the usual practice is only to name “a foreign power.”

  2. Seth uses the word “avuncular” to describe the way the court writes about Stashynsky as an individual. The reader is reminded of the definition of avuncular which is “suggestive of kindness or geniality.” In their written legal opinion,the German high court seems to be saying “boys will be boys” and that Stashynsky was contrite. Contrition is not usually very important in a case of two premeditated murders.

  Seth readily admits he has based his rendition of the facts on the information repeated by the German Supreme Court. When one reads the opinion in its original form, it is more complicated than presented by Seth. The fact that Stashynsky was given a very light sentence and received a ridiculous degree of clemency for a double-murder was heavily influenced by the recent history of West Germany. The court attached overwhelming weight to the fact that Stashynsky had been living in a totalitarian State and had been ordered by that State to commit the two murders. This is the “Nazi” defense which was undoubtedly very popular in West Germany at that time. The Auschwitz trial was just around the corner as were other potential trials of important German war criminals.

  In a book on Soviet espionage written by U.S. News and World Report, the following information was reported about Stepan Bandera: 1) following World War II, the main enemies of the Soviet Union in European clandestine activities were the Ukrainian OUN and the Russian NTS; 2) Stepan Bandera had begun to work toward an independent Ukraine as early as the time of the Russian Revolution; 3) during World War II, Bandera served in French and British Intelligence; 4) after World War II he worked for U.S. Intelli
gence and for the Gehlen Organizion, which had first been under the CIA then became the West German BND; 5) Bandera had agents that worked in Ukraine, East Germany and Hungary. (Cited in notes as Famous Soviet Spies, Lowry ed.).

  On April 3, 1962, after the defection of Stashynsky, the Soviets called a news conference where they presented a Ukrainian defector who had “gone East.” The defector addressed the assembled journalists. His name was Osyp Werhun. Werhun had formerly lived in Munich, West Germany. Werhun stated that many Ukrainians were serving in the West German intelligence services. He said the Ukrainians were being used [by Germany] in spying on the United States, France, Austria and other Western Countries. He alleged that a Dr. Roman Hanlinger-Grau, working for the Ost-Europa Institute in Munich was running the spies in Austria. He also listed the names of other agents and intelligence organizations which were involved in similar activities. The one which is most interesting to our analysis of the Stashynsky case is “The American Committee for Liberation.” In archives that have been opened at some point well after 1962, it has come to light that this agency had a CIA code name AMCOMLIB and was funded by the CIA from 1950 to 1971. Most importantly, Werhun said that Bogdan Stashynsky was a specially trained OUN member and that Stashynsky’s story about the Rebet and Bandera murders was not fact, but was a “provocation.” This represents the Soviet side of events in the Stashynsky case, which is very different from that of the U.S. and the West German side, which accepted the story of Stashynsky at face value.

  According to an online website, (see notes), Stashynsky went to America under cover after his release from prison in 1968. Other information says he went to Panama. Another theory was that Stashynsky was given cover by South Africa in 1968 as described in the following new story (see notes for citation):