Posted today over at Instapundit, a new book claims the KGB was in on the Kennedy assassination, by steering Oswald. As conspiracy theories go, this one was always a bit better than most, because as Reynolds points out, the KGB actually did do this sort of thing. I would add that this particular conspiracy only requires a few people to be in the know, which is where most of the others become entirely implausible. ("You think that hundreds of people involved in the building of the World Trade Center years ago...")
It still remains implausible, but it did put me in mind of something else on the topic. Ion Mihai Pacepa, former head of the Romanian secret police and highest-ranking defector of the Cold War, has long claimed that the KGB claimed the deed was theirs. Just because they claimed it doesn't make it so - groups looking for status and intimidation might very well claim credit without it being remotely true. ("Kennedy assassination? Yeah, that was totally us. We did that.") Pacepa found the claim credible, in much the same way as described here: that it was a side operation that sort of fell into their laps when this crazy American showed up and looked willing. This wasn't a master plan, but opportunism. In that context, I suppose it could be so.
Here's an important takeaway that keeps getting left out of the popular record though, but is quite clear here. Lee Harvey Oswald was not some odd, politically unclassifiable aberration. He was a man of the left. The obfuscation of this comes from emotive, rather than logical places - but gee, he was a Marine, and...he had guns...and it was in Texas... those are all conservative things and therefore a mixed picture. Breaking those down one by one, they're pretty weak.
I have bought some books about the Cold War for $1 at a local bookstore, which make for good reading.
ReplyDeleteRed Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S tells the story of a Soviet sub that sunk in April 1968 off the coast of Hawaii. The Glomar Explorer later recovered the sunken sub. The author presents a plausible case that the sub sank in the process of a failed attempt to launch a nuclear-bomb equipped missile at Honolulu. The intent was to make this appear to be a Chinese operation. This was a rogue attempt involving Mikhail Suslov, the behind the scenes ideologue, and Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB. Suslov was one of the movers and shakers- perhaps the main one- in deposing Khrushchev in 1964.
Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin is the story of Morris Childs, an ex-Communist who was the CPUSA's main liaison with the hierarchy in the USSR - after the FBI recruited him in the 1950s. Morris Childs, a.k.a. Agent 58, made numerous trips to the USSR in that capacity, interacting with such people as Mikhail Suslov and Brezhnev. Suslov had been Morris Child's instructor in a training course Childs took at the Lenin School in Moscow in the early years of the Depression.
After the assassination of Kennedy, Soviet bigwigs told Morris Childs in no uncertain terms that the USSR had not been involved in his assassination. As Childs was fluent in Russian- a skill he had successfully hidden from the Soviets beginning with his time at the Lenin School- he was able to understand the Soviet conversations- which were consistent with his being told in English that the Soviets had nothing to do with Kennedy's death.
Given what I have read in these two books, I consider it plausible that a rogue KGB operation was responsible for killing JFK. Note the common thread of Yuri Andropov. Given Suslov's apparent involvement in the rogue submarine, I would suspect that he would also have been involved with the JFK affair.
My opinion over the years is that JFK's death was Castro's doing, as revenge for all the failed attempts to kill Castro.
correct to
ReplyDelete"Given what I have read in these two books, I consider it possible that a rogue KGB operation was responsible for killing JFK."
A leftie friend lent me a book 10-12 years ago that said it was a SS agent with an M-16 who accidentally pulled the trigger as the limo lurched--but then I'm pretty sure the slug would have come out and left a big hole in JFK's skull.
ReplyDeleteIn 1963, it wasn't a "conservative" thing to be a Marine, have guns, or be a Texan. It's weak as a whole; no need to break it down.
ReplyDeleteSam L - I have also heard that theory, from Bill James's book on popular crime, though I don't recall the gun specified.
ReplyDeleteGringo - my oldest son was assigned the book Operation Solo in college and brought it back for me. Loved it.
Donna B - true for the general population. But for the new journalistic class, who were prominent in shaping the narrative, those things were indications of political unreliability from a leftie POV.