by J. W Lateer
South Africa gave a convicted KGB assassin asylum and…
March 6, 1984
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa gave a convicted KGB assassin asylum and an assumed identity in a secret deal with the West German Security Service, a former police commissioner said in an interview.
Gen. Mike Geldenhuys, who retired last year as chief of the South African police, told the Rand Daily Mail that former Soviet hit-man Bogdan Stashynsky was supplied with a false identity and a job and underwent cosmetic surgery to change his appearance when he arrived in South Africa in 1968.
Stashynsky defected to the West in September 1961 and was sentenced in West Germany to eight years for killing Ukranian exiles Dr. Lev Rebet and Stefan Bandera in 1957 and 1959, Geldenhuys said.
“In the meantime, we were approached by the West German Security Service and asked to give this man asylum in South Africa because they were convinced it was the only country where he would be comparatively safe from KGB agents,” Geldenhuys told the newspaper.
‘He was able to supply our intelligence service with a vast amount of invaluable information on the structure and operations of the Russian secret service,’ he said.
In 1964, Senator Dodd went to West Germany and interviewed Stashynsky. In the Spring of 1964, SISS held hearings on the Soviet “Murder, Inc.” The Senator held as a hammer or threat the fact that he could have held a press conference and claimed that Stashynsky knew Oswald in the USSR or that Stashynsky worked for the Soviets, thus blaming the Soviets for the JFK assassination. This implicit threat from Dodd was used as a basis for the fear of a nuclear war arising from these allegations against the Soviets. Under this theory, the Stashynsky facts, true or untrue, would have generated public outrage and war hysteria in the American public. At any time, Senator Dodd could have held a press conference and claimed that Stashynsky knew Oswald in the USSR, that Stashynsky was part of a JFK plot, that the Soviets were responsible for the assassination, etc. So Dodd had this issue to use as a shield against any honest investigation of the Kennedy assassination.
Analysis of the
Stashynsky Case: Starting Backwards
Analyzing the Stashynsky case is both necessary and crucial to understanding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And to do this analysis, we must start at the end of the story and work backward to the beginning.
Regarding Stashynsky, the last thing that happened before the JFK assassination was the mailing of the warning letters to the Kennedy brothers from former Congressman Charles Kersten. This happened on November 7, 1963. Whether these letters were actually sent is a moot point since they were reported in the press on November 26, 1963 as fact and Kersten must have told the press or somebody else on or before that date. Kersten also testified about these letters to Congress under threat of perjury so this must have happened as stated.
The next previous event in the story was the elaborate scheme to place Lee Harvey Oswald in the company of Valerie Kostikov, the Soviet supervisor of assassinations. This allegedly took place in September, 1963, just prior to the assassination. According to most assassination authors, this meeting was mentioned in a tape-recorded phone call, but it was someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald on the call. That means it was an attempt to frame the Soviets. Kostikov, however, was actually assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City where the supposed meeting took place, according to the CIA. (see cite Mary Ferrell.org in notes).
The next previous event was the attempt of Senator Thomas Dodd to travel to Germany and interview Stashynsky in person. Dodd was acting Chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. We will prove in later chapters that there is hardly any doubt whatsoever that Dodd and his Committee were involved with Oswald and others in the plot to kill JFK. Dodd even tried to get the German Supreme Court to travel to the U.S. and tell people about the Stashynsky case. This happened in mid-1963. (The German Supreme Court traveling the U.S.? Give me a break!).
The trial of Stashynsky began October 8, 1962. Unlike in America, under German law the family of a victim has a right to be represented by an attorney at the trial of the criminal, in this case the murderer of the son and husband of the Bandera family. The attorney for the Bandera family was former Congressman Charles Kersten, the same person who sent the letters to the Kennedys two weeks before the assassination. Kersten must have begun his legal relationship with the Bandera family some time before the trial, but after the West Germans decided when (or if) to bring Stashynsky up on charges. And in West German law at the time, the role of the lawyer for the victim’s family was on an equal plane with the state prosecutor and made all the same type of arguments prominently before the court and in the record. (see note, Raschhofer).
The next previous event was the press conference where the Soviet Ukrainian defector claimed that Stashynsky was not who he said he was, but rather a Ukrainian provocateur. This was April 2, 1962. This press conference raises a question. If the Stashynsky defection was fake and the product of horse-trading between the KGB, the West German BND and the CIA, would the Soviets have held such a press conference? The other defector besides Stashynsky at the press conference, Osyp Werhun claimed, that Stashynsky was really a specially-trained member of the OUN. Because the Soviets were apparently co-operating in the release of “defector” Stashynsky, this does raise the possibility the Soviets were somehow complicit in the assassination. The Soviets either had foreknowledge of the assassination attempts on Kennedy or they did not. Other than the release of Stashynsky, there is no other evidence that they were involved, so the point may be moot. One could assume that there were at least some officials in the USSR that would have welcomed the disruption of the US government that would have ensued. We will only know that if there is new information released in the years to come.
Stashynsky must have actually been living in the Soviet Union for most or almost all of the time between his alleged affiliation with the KGB in 1950 and his defection on August 12, 1961. The question is, was he living in Moscow or elsewhere or was he actually living all along with his parents in or around Lvov? The Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The only people with access to events within the Soviet Union who could inform westerners on that question would be the Soviets or the Ukrainian OUN.
Western reporters could not go into Russia and start asking people questions.
From 1950 to 1953, Stashynsky was an infiltrator into the OUN and acted as an informant to the KGB. Only in 1953 did the KGB begin to train him as a full-time regular agent. So he could easily have actually been a member of the OUN infiltrating the KGB instead of a KGB man infiltrating the OUN. Given his family background in the OUN, one would at least expect a double-agent relationship of some kind.
An online source reports that when Bandera’s body was discovered and an autopsy was performed, cyanide was found in his stomach. The gas gun was supposedly used to give a foolproof result in an autopsy which would indicate a heart attack. That ruse didn’t work as planned.
Stepan Bandera probably had more people with a motive to murder him than anyone alive. He was controversial, a turncoat, and he was involved with every spy agency in Europe and the U.S. In 1959, a man named Albert Norden published a claim that Bandera was murdered by his assistant during World War II, Theodore Oberlander. Author Norden had some accurate information about Oberlander, specifically that he was the political commander of the “Nightingales,” a unit which fought side-by-side with Hitler. According to Norden, Oberlander murdered Bandera because Bandera was ready to tell people about Oberlander’s Nazi past. As previously mentioned, this imformation about Oberlander, who was a high West German official, could have been released in a trial which was going on behind the Iron Curtain).
Let’s list the problems that author Seth finds with the official “biography” of Stashynsky only found in the legal papers and opinion of the West German Supreme Court:
1. According to the Court, the body of Bandera was found to have glass splinters on it from the gas gun
used by Stashynsky, even though the gun had been filtered to avoid just such a problem.
2. How could Stashynsky have been guilt-wracked young man and also a professional assassin for the KGB (and an up-and-coming agent) for 7 years?
3. Why would the KGB allow Stashynsky to marry someone not well vetted, especially a girl who was, in fact, anti-Communist in her beliefs?
4. Why did Stashynsky supposedly not understand why the Russians would want to murder Bandera and thus come to believe they intended something much bigger? The murder of Bandera would be a huge event. This hinting about an even bigger caper smacks of prior knowledge about the murder of a Western President, i.e.de Gaulle or JFK.
5. Why was Stashynsky not able to recall if he took the elevator in Bandera’s apartment when he went up to murder him? This sounds similar to the shoddy reconstruction of the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas Book Depository.
6. An online source says that Stashynsky got a glimpse of Bandera’s face turning suddenly purple and black. Another website says the victim may appear purple or red as with carbon monoxide poisoning (see notes, Brightview). If the prior victim of Stashynsky, Lev Rebet were poisoned by the same gun, wouldn’t his murder have been obvious because he had turned purple?
7. Had the Soviets practiced with the cyanide gun on humans? If they had, Stashynsky would have been told about it. This would have made the Soviets seem even worse. He probably would have informed Western intelligence, but he didn’t. This is a major hole in his story.
8. Why would the top men in the Kremlin put their signatures on an award certificate given to a tawdry murderer like Stashynsky. This would put their names in the record for their complicity in his murders. This sounds gratuitous. It would serve no good purpose for these high officials.
9. Why would Stashynsky be studying languages at a Moscow language Institute where the faculty and students knew him to be a KGB agent? Per Seth, this went totally against their policy of secrecy about the nature of the employment of their agents.
10. When Stashynsky defected, why would he still be in possession of false papers which had long ago been superseded? How many different sets of papers would the KGB allow him just to keep around for no apparent reason?
11. Probably most ridiculous claim is the assertion that the Soviets suspected that American intelligence might have murdered his baby in order to lure him into a kidnapping? The CIA was not known to either murder babies or kidnap people. What would the CIA do with him after they kidnapped him? Why would they kidnap him? This claim goes against everything we know about our own American intelligence. This claim alone proves the false nature of Stashynsky’s story.
12. Why did Stashynsky just happen to defect the night before the Berlin Wall went up? Why would a mere operative like him (who was being watched by the KGB around the clock) be warned that the wall was going up? Was it just a coincidence? Did Stashynsky and his wife just get lucky?
13. Why did the KGB blow the surveillance and allow Stashynsky and his wife to disappear into woods behind an apartment? The theory that her parents did not have enough room for them seems very convenient in light of the fact that they wound up staying in a place with woods behind it. Even more convenient was the fact that beyond the woods was a totally secluded wooded avenue which led, essentially, all the way to West Berlin.
15. Was Stashynsky, in the longer term, in the custody of U.S. or West German intelligence? According to one source, he fled to the U.S. following prison, but another source says West German intelligence found him cover in South Africa.
16. If this cyanide gun works as advertised in this case, why haven’t we ever heard about it being used elsewhere, either before or since?
The legal case and the written legal opinion of the West German Supreme Court are even more problematic than the alleged facts. The main problems are as follows:
1. Why was the case brought in the West German Supreme Court? For reasons of practicality if nothing else, our own Supreme Court is not the place where a murder case can be initially filed. There are so many murders, that a Supreme Court would be buried in murder cases. Why was the Stashynsky case special?
2. Why did the West German court, according to Seth, depart from their normal practice of avoiding the naming of foreign governments in criminal cases? Courts everywhere have to be following precedents. Why not here?
3. Since Stashynsky had confessed, why was there even a trial or court case? Why wouldn’t Stashynsky just issue a guilty plea based on a criminal complaint and appear for sentencing?
4. As asked by Seth, why did the Court describe Stashynsky in such overly favorable terms. We have discussed the fact that the Court was, in part, using the “Nazi” defense, i.e. that a dictatorship had ordered the murder, hence clemency should be exercised. But this did not require the Court to describe Stashynsky as a nice guy who had just made a mistake and was repentant.
So what can we conclude by putting all these facts on the table? These are the inevitable conclusions:
1. The defection took place August 13, 1961. The obviously false part of the story occurred at that same time. The most fallacious part was the inexplicable granting of Stashynsky the privilege of visiting his in-laws near the border. It also includes the preposterous claim that the CIA may have poisoned the baby. And finally, it also includes the blowing of the surveillance of Stashynsky by the KGB on August 13, 1961.
2. Stashynsky was a member of OUN but he was apparently also working for the KGB. This is born out because no one has claimed that he had any other employment from 1950 to 1961. From 1950 to 1953, he had been a working member of the OUN and also an informant for the KGB, so this implies some sort of double agent status.
3. The Soviet “double defector” Osyp Werhun claimed that Stashynsky was a specially trained OUN agent. This is consistent with the above narrative.
4. The KGB and the West German BND would have certainly had conduits through whom they could exchange information. This is universal intelligence practice, both in the World War II era and since. Stashynsky may have been such a conduit.
5. The information from author Albert Norden which claimed that the Nazi Oberlander had murdered Bandera would have damaged West German credibility in the eyes of the Ukrainians. According to author T. H. Tetens, ex-Nazis were in effective control of West Germany in 1961. Certainly, the head of West German intelligence, General Reinhard Gehlen was an admitted ex-Nazi. If Stashynsky confesses, this cloud is gone. Oberlander was a member of the Bundestag for most of the period 1953 to 1965 and had been held a ministry under Adenauer.
6. West German intelligence (BND) apparently colluded with the KGB to allow Stashynsky to defect and to tell his story. This helped the BND because it removed the idea that an ex-Nazi had murdered Bandera. It helped the Soviets because they knew the BND was possibly going to use Stashynsky to create a cover story for the murder of JFK and/or de Gaulle. This would sew chaos in the Western countries.
7. Former Congressman Charles Kersten became the attorney for the family of Stepan Bandera about this time. We will find out in the chapter following this one that Kersten had worked in “psychological warfare” in Eisenhower’s National Security Council. Kersten was the preeminent American in public-private involvement with Eastern European covert activities. He was totally involved in Eastern Europe from 1946 to 1963 and probably beyond. He was prominently featured in “Anti-Bolshevik Nations” and Ukrainian publications during this entire period. His involvement represents U.S. involvement in the Stashynsky scheme.
8. Since Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was closely involved in all of these operational issues, there could have been many diplomatic favors running from the Germans to the Soviets in payment for their co-operation in the Stashynsky defection. We will never know what they might have been if they in fact went into effect. Some issues on the table at the time were German re-unification, recognition of East Germany by the West, recognition of the Oder-Neisse eastern boundary for Germany and many other issu
es.
With our analysis of the impending frame-up of the Soviets complete, we can move on to analyze the role of people like Charles Kersten, Reinhard Gehlen, Metropolitan Anastasy, Judge Robert Morris and others who we have already encountered.
In our chapter on factor analysis, we will also prove that between 25% and 30% of all evidence published about the assassination from the Warren Commission forward has been evidence which attempted to frame the Soviets for the JFK murder. Despite this fact, not one single assassination author has implicated the Soviets as a serious theory of the JFK assassination.
Notes:
For the place to find the above headlines and article see: Ukrainian Bulletin (January, 1964), p.2, also cited in Scott “Dallas Conspiracy,” p. II-31.
The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell, p. 594. (TMWKTM).
The Executioners: The Story of SMERSH, by Ronald Seth, passim.
Famous Soviet Spies-The Kremlin’s Secret Weapon, by U.S. News and World Report and DeWitt Copp, edited by Judy Lowry, p. 98.
Ukrainian Bulletin, Vol. 15, Numbers 9-10, May 15, 1962 to May 15, 1962, p.35.
The citation for the South African newspaper article is: http://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/03/06/South-Africa-gave-a-convicted-KGB-assassin-asylum-and/8880447397200/, accessed 10-17-2016.
The citation for the Kostikov information is: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Valeriy_Kostikov_and_Comrade_Kostin.html
Political Assassination; The Legal Background of the Oberlander and Stashinsky Cases (1964), by Hermann Raschhofer.
For article by Norden about Oberlander, see: http://www.brightreview.co.uk/ARTICLE-Bandera.html
On Stashynsky’s face turning purple see: http://www.iwp.edu/news_publications/detail/divide-and-conquer-the-kgb-disinformation-campaign-against-ukrainians-and-jews and also on the issue of turning purple, see: brightview.co.uk.