Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  When Oswald got into the Moscow train station, he was met by his Intourist guide Rimma Shirakova. She took him to the Hotel Berlin and gave him a tour of Moscow. Oswald made it a point to tell Rimma he was in possession of classified information about U.S. airplanes.141 He also said he wanted to apply for Soviet citizenship. She forwarded his request and told him he must write a letter to the Supreme Soviet142 which Oswald did on October 16.143 On October 21, Rimma relayed the news that Oswald’s request for citizenship had been turned down; therefore, he could be deported since his six-day visa would expire in a matter of hours. In his so-called Historic Diary, Oswald writes about an apparent suicide attempt and Rimma discovering him at 8:00 p.m. that night. This is all strange because Oswald was in the hospital at four that afternoon.144 This discrepancy—and others—have led many people to think that the Historic Diary is not really historic, or a diary. The doctor who examined Oswald at Botkinskaya Hospital called the attempt a “show suicide,” one made over his attempt at citizenship.145 The actual cut was about two inches in length and shallow.146 No major blood vessels had been severed so there was no massive loss of blood. In fact, no blood transfusion was necessary.147 In fact he had cut his wrist with Rimma waiting for him in the hotel lobby. So he probably suspected that she would come up and discover him.

  After this, Oswald was placed in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. During this seven-day stay in the hospital, Soviet intelligence authorities were in all likelihood reading reports from the hospital and from Intourist, debating about his fate, and deciding whether or not he was a genuine defector. This decision would come under the purview of the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB.148 When he was released, Oswald was moved to the Hotel Metropole. He then decided to make a bold move. He would go to the American Embassy in Moscow to renounce his citizenship.

  Richard Snyder was a former CIA employee who likely worked under diplomatic cover at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.149 He had long been on friendly terms with the Agency. For instance, in the mid-fifties while studying Russian at Harvard, he was used as a spotter for the CIA to recruit students into REDSKIN, a project designed to interview Russian speaking students and sign them up as legal travelers into the Soviet Union. Snyder was then working under Nelson Brickham in the Agency’s Soviet Russia Division.150 This background helps explain what Snyder did shortly before Oswald’s arrival. Three days before Oswald showed up to renounce his citizenship, Snyder wrote a letter to a fellow State Department employee on his experience with American “defectors.” Quotes are placed around that word because Snyder did so in this letter. And he was referring to the Webster case. He also writes about Webster violating Section 349 of the naturalization code, and this is how he lost his citizenship. Snyder writes that it is how thoroughly the renouncement of American citizenship is documented that is the key to losing one’s citizenship. Therefore, quoting Talleyrand, he exercises some practical foresight is these cases. When Oswald met with Snyder (and Officer John McVickar), as if he had read Snyder’s letter, he handed him his renouncement note based on Section 349.151 During this interview, Oswald made statements threatening to turn over radar secrets and information he had learned as a radar operator to the Soviets. He then added that he might know something of special interest,152 which may have referred to the U-2. This was probably done because he suspected the embassy was wired by the KGB, which it was.153 This disclosure would then give him a bargaining chip to stay in Russia. There is no other reason for him to say such a thing directly to American diplomatic officers. For he could have been detained and then charged for intending to give away military secrets. Or as Oswald’s Russian friend Ernst Titovets has written, considering the intensity and pitch of the Cold War, something worse could have happened.

  Neither Oswald’s verbal or written request were sufficient enough to renounce his American citizenship. To do that, one had to file a “Certificate of Loss of Nationality” according to the Expatriation Act of 1907. This document would then be forwarded to the State Department for final dispostion. Although Oswald asked for these papers, remembering his letter of seventy-two hours previous about “defectors,” Snyder did not give them to him. Snyder told Oswald to think it over and return in a couple of days. Because of Snyder’s maneuvering, Oswald never signed the papers.154 So he never officially renounced citizenship.

  But, perhaps the most important and revealing thing about this Saturday morning visit is not what transpired in Moscow, but what happened as a result of it in Washington. Quite naturally, once the newspaper reports came into the U.S. about Oswald’s defection, the FBI opened its file on November 2 for security purposes.155 There were three other points where the information on Oswald came into Washington: the State Department, Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Navy office at the Pentagon. The first—since it came from Snyder—and last carried information about Oswald’s threat to give up radar secrets. On November 3, the FBI found out about this threat also. Therefore, the Bureau now issued a FLASH warning on Oswald. That is, the FBI should stay on the lookout for Oswald’s reentry into the United States under a false name.156 All of this seems quite routine and normal. What is not routine or normal is what happened when the Navy memo got to the CIA.

  On all the other pieces of information we have mentioned, the documents contain names and dates that make them easy to track. Not so at CIA. When the Navy memo got to the Agency, it went into a kind of limbo. After it finally surfaced, it went to James Angleton’s CI/SIG unit—on December 6. Angleton was chief of counterintelligence. SIG was a kind of safeguard unit that protected the CIA from penetration agents. It was closely linked to the Office of Security in that regard. The question is: Where was it for the previous thirty-one days? Both this Navy document and Snyder’s State Department cable went into a kind of “black hole” somewhere. In fact, the very first file on Oswald was in the Office of Security, which is odd because the Oswald file should have gone to the Soviet Russia Division. It appears the black hole kept the documents from getting there when they should have.157

  Further, there is no evidence that the CIA did a security investigation about the dangers imposed by Oswald’s threat to give up radar secrets and something of “special interest.” What makes this odd is that, as mentioned previously, Oswald even knew the U-2 was flying over China. The combination of this information from Moscow, plus the fact Oswald was in Detachment C, these should have triggered a damage assessment investigation in 1959. And the reconnaissance program should have then been adjusted accordingly. But there is no trace of such a contemporaneous investigation in the newly declassified CIA files.158 What makes this hard to swallow is the fact that after Oswald defected, in May of 1960, the Gary Powers U-2 flight went down over Russia. Powers thought that “Oswald’s work with the new MPS 16 height-finding radar looms large” in that event.159 What is also surprising is that the Warren Commission never investigated this important subject. In fact, they avoided it. Because when called to testify, Oswald’s Marine colleagues were not questioned about the U-2. John Donovan, who knew Oswald in the Philippines and discussed the U-2 with him there, and was later his commander at El Toro, was ready to talk about the matter at length. But the Commission was not. In fact, Donovan was briefed in advance not to fall off topic. Donovan was actually stunned by the Commission’s avoidance of the subject. He asked his briefers afterwards, “Don’t you want to know anything about the U-2?” The reply was essentially, no they did not. Donovan asked a friend of his who had testified, “Did they ask you about the U-2?” The response was, no they did not. Which is remarkable considering that former CIA Director Allen Dulles was a very active member of the Commission, and the U-2 had originated on his watch. Donovan was not questioned by the CIA about the U-2 until December of 1963. But this was probably a counterintelligence strategy, to see whom he had talked to and what he had revealed. That is probable because, after Powers was shot down, the CIA closed its U-2 operations at Atsugi. Yet, Powers did not fly out of Atsugi. The only link betwe
en Powers and Atsugi was Oswald.160

  And this is not the end of the negative template at CIA about Oswald and his defection. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Oswald’s CIA files is this: His 201 file was not opened until over a year after his talk with Snyder and McVickar. That is on December 8, 1960. This gap seriously puzzled the HSCA. Their investigator Dan Hardway called Angleton’s employee Ann Egerter about the matter. She did not want to talk about it.161 According to the CIA, a 201 file is one of the most common files the Agency has. It is an information file on any person of interest to the Agency. This could be of operational interest, prospective operational interest, or of counterintelligence reporting.162 By these criteria, Oswald most certainly had to be a person of interest. At the very least, after his meeting with Snyder and McVickar. So the HSCA, with the CIA’s help, tried to neuter the issue by studying other defector cases. But this comparison is faulty since people like Webster and Petrulli did not imply a threat to surrender secrets about the U-2. In fact, when Egerter finally did open the 201 file, Oswald’s defection was noted, but his knowledge of the U-2 was not. The delay in opening the 201 file was so unusual that the HSCA asked retired CIA Director Richard Helms about it. His reply was, “I am amazed. Are you sure there wasn’t? … I can’t explain that.” When the HSCA asked where the Oswald documents were prior to the opening of the 201 file, the CIA replied they were never classified higher than Confidential and therefore were no longer in existence. This turned out to be a deception. Because many were classified as Secret, and author John Newman found most of them, since they were not destroyed. Further, the ones classified as Confidential were still around when the ARRB declassified them in the nineties.163

  But the oddities about the CIA and Oswald are not yet ended. Although no 201 file was opened until December of 1960, Oswald was placed on the Watch List in November of 1959.164 This list was part of the CIA’s illegal HT/ LINGUAL mail intercept program, and only about 300 people were on it. It was supervised by Angleton.165 This was at a time when Oswald’s file was in limbo. It was not possible to find a paper trail on him until the next month. How could Oswald be, simultaneously, so inconsequential as not to have a 201 file, yet so important as to be on the exclusive Watch List? It is so odd as to be unexplainable. Unless the lack of a 201 file was deliberate. Because, clearly, someone in CIA knew who Oswald was and felt he was important enough to have his mail intercepted. When this writer asked author and former intelligence analyst John Newman how one could explain this in light of the fact that Oswald’s first file was opened at CI/SIG, he replied that one possibility was Oswald was being run as an off-the-books agent by James Angleton.166 In light of all the declassified information we have learned of in this section, this author knows of no better way to explain this dichotomy. Through these new discoveries, it would appear that either when Oswald was at Atsugi, or perhaps, as related by David Bucknell, during his interview with CID, he was recruited by the CIA. And since Angleton’s principal (but not only) domain was counter-intelligence versus Russia, Oswald’s Russian language training, his questionable hardship discharge, his Albert Schweitzer ruse, and his choice of Helsinki as an entry point, all appear planned for his Agency mission as part of the mushrooming false defector program to Moscow. This was a program that Snyder seemed all too familiar with—so much so that he made it easy for Oswald to regain his American citizenship.

  Minsk and the KGB

  In early January of 1960, Oswald was called to the passport office and given a Residence document, which was not the same as a grant of citizenship. He was given 5000 rubles and told he was going to Minsk.167 Escorted by two new Intourist guides, he arrived there on January 7. And by January 13, he was at work there in a radio factory. His fellow workers could not translate his first name so they called him Alik.168 (This is the first name Oswald would later use as an alias.) Further, he was granted a rent free apartment by the Mayor of Minsk, and given a rather generous salary of 700 rubles per month. This was supplemented with a Red Cross stipend of the same amount. In March, he was moved to a 60 ruble per month apartment overlooking a river which he called “a Russian Dream.”169

  Oswald had given interviews to American newspaper reporters Aline Mosby and Priscilla Johnson in which he clearly played up his attitude as a disillusioned expatriate. Consider some examples: “One way or another I’d lose in the United States. In my own mind, even if I’d be exploiting other workers. That’s why I chose Marxist ideology.”170 And also this: “I could not live under a capitalist system …. I will live now under a system where no individual capitalist will be able to exploit the workers. The forces of communism are growing. I believe capitalism will disappear as feudalism disappeared.”171 And this: “I started to study Marxist economic theories. I could see the impoverishment of the workers before my own eyes in my own mother, and I could see the capitalists.”172 Besides these B movie banalities, he also said he became interested in communism at age fifteen when, “an old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs.”173 The KGB likely had Oswald’s room at the Metropole Hotel wired, since it was outfitted with an infra-red camera.174 Once they heard this last, they must have arched their eyebrows in wonder. Oswald has to be talking here about his stay in the liberal New York City. But in 1954, when he turned fifteen, he was in New Orleans. And why would anyone be distributing literature on saving the Rosenbergs at that time? They had been executed in June of the previous year. Naturally, it appears that the KGB had reservations about Oswald as a genuine defector. They therefore shipped him out of Moscow to Minsk, about 450 miles southeast. Once he arrived there, he was a guest of the state so that he could be observed by them.175 In fact, when the Minsk KGB chief received the Oswald file from Moscow, the first suspicion given as to his threat potential was that his former service in the Marines was alarming. For the KGB saw the U.S. military as a recruiting ground for intelligence agents. As hinted at above, they also thought his grasp of Marxist-Leninist theory was poor. They also felt that he spoke much better Russian than he let on.176 Which as we saw with Rosaleen Quinn, he did. It appears he feigned not speaking fluent Russian so as not to reveal that he had been trained in the language for a mission. Also, if those around him did not know he was fluent in the language, they would not suspect he was surveilling them.177

  The KGB chief picked a case officer to handle the Oswald case. The case officer then chose a network of informants with whom to surround Oswald. One of them was Pavel Golovachev, a co-worker at the Minsk radio plant who Oswald helped with his English. Pavel met with the KGB three or four times and they gave him assignments to do saying, “Try this out on him and see what he says.”178 This was supplemented by photographic and electronic surveillance.179 Oswald realized that the KGB was suspicious. In fact, one day he and his friend Ernst Titovets started looking for electronic listening devices in his apartment.180 He also realized that from Minsk, little of value could be adduced by him. But he did what he could with what he had. Since there was some radar instrumentation going on at the plant, he appears to have absconded with a radar detection device.181 He wrote a very detailed summary of the radio factory, which former CIA agent Bill Boxley called “a beautiful example of an intelligence agent’s casing report on the electronics factory in Minsk.”182 And in fact, according to former CIA employee Donald Deneselya, when Oswald was debriefed on his return to America, he gave a vivid description of this place, since the Agency was interested in maintaining files on all things technical and scientific in Russia.183 (Of course the official CIA line is that Oswald was not debriefed.)

  By 1961, Oswald began to exhibit the same disillusion with Russia as he had with America.184 He complained about the similarity of the food at different cafes, and that it reminded him of the stuff he ate in the Marines. He also said that he was becoming increasingly conscious of just what sort of society he lived in. He talked about the constant state of fear the Soviets lived in and how this inhibited a girl he knew, Ella German, from loving him.185 In o
ne year, Oswald had reversed himself about becoming a Russian citizen. When called before the passport office in January of 1961, he was asked if he still wished to become a Soviet citizen. Surprisingly, he replied no he did not. But he wanted his residence permit extended for one year.186 The next month, Snyder got a letter from Oswald asking for the return of his passport and saying he wished to return home to the USA. He reminded Snyder that he was still an American citizen, therefore he expected him to do all he could to help him get back home.

  There was one major event left for Oswald in Russia. That was his meeting and whirlwind romance with Robert Webster’s Leningrad-Moscow acquaintance, the rather mysterious Marina Prusakova. FBI agent James Hosty found out some interesting facts about Prusakova. Marina was born out of wedlock. She then acquired a stepfather who treated her harshly and favored his own children. She went to pharmacy school at age thirteen. Her mother died two years later, and life with her stepfather now became oppressive. She was kicked out of the pharmacy school, but they accepted her back, and she acquired her diploma at about age eighteen. In August of 1959 her stepfather forced her to leave their home in Leningrad. So she went to Minsk to live with her uncle Ilya. Ilya was a high ranking member of the Communist party and a Colonel in the MVD. This was an internal secret police roughly the equivalent of the FBI, and it worked closely with the KGB. In fact, both intelligence agencies were directed by the same people. Ilya’s apartment was in a complex set aside for ranking members of the KGB and MVD. It was located across the street from the Surorov Military Academy. One of the building’s tenants was the chief of the Belorussian Communist party. Marina became a pharmacist at a Minsk hospital. She also joined the Komsomol, or Communist Youth Party.187