The following articles appeared in Izvestia and were translated by the Russian Press Digest for publication outside the former Soviet Union. All are Copyright 1993 RUSSICA Information Inc. - RusData DiaLine Russian Press Digest The first article deals with the KGB's announcement that they declassified Lee Harvey Oswald's KGB file in November 1991. The next five articles ran as a series in August 1992 and deal with what was or was not revealed in the files themselves. The final article is a November 1993 interview of retired KGB Colonel Oleg Nechiporenko, who met with Oswald twice at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico shortly before the assassination. Nechiporenko is also the author of Passport to Assassination, Birch Lane Press, 1993. ------------------------------------------------------------ November 23, 1991 The KGB Intends to Declassify file on JFK's Assassin S. Mostovshchikov KGB to declassify file on JFK's assassin. ------------------------------------------------------------ On November 22, 1991, a KGB expert commission completed its study of the file on Lee Harvey Oswald, believed to have assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The dossier was compiled by the Soviet counterintelligence service during Oswald's stay in the USSR between October 1959 and May 1962. Early next week, the experts will report to KGB chief Vadim Bakatin on the results of their research, and he will decide which of the materials can be made public. According to Izvestia, the KGB will most certainly not disclose the transcript of Oswald's telephone conversations tapped by the KGB, nor the contents of his personal correspondence read by Soviet counterintelligence officers. The rest will be made public. While the CIA believed Oswald was a KGB man, writes the paper, the Soviet security service suspected him of working for the CIA or some other intelligence service. Their suspicions were further aroused when he resorted to slashing his wrists as a means of forcing the Soviet authorities to grant him citizenship. Moreover, judging by his file, KGB officers regarded his behavior as generally inadequate. This is borne out by materials in his file. In the USSR, Oswald divided his time between drinking parties, at one of which he met his future wife, Marina Prusakova. Incidentally, the KGB insists that Marina was not one of its agents. What is more or less certain is that Oswald was not a marksman: there are documents in the file recounting his numerous misses during hunting expeditions. Although Oswald's dossier does contain a lot of interesting material, the paper says its publication is unlikely to shed any light on the mystery of Kennedy's assassination. ------------------------------------------------------------ August 6, 1992 Agent Development Case No 31451 - part 1 of 5 Sergei Mostovshchikov Byelorussian security chief prepared to answer questions about KGB's Lee Harvey Oswald dossier. ------------------------------------------------------------ The chief of the Byelorussian security service has agreed to answer questions about the KGB dossier on Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin of President J.F. Kennedy. Interviewed by Izvestia, Eduard Shirkovsky flatly refused to arrange interviews with KGB agents who had been involved in the Oswald "development" effort but consented to interviews with officials who have "thorough" knowledge of the case. The Oswald dossier, No 31451, makes up five thick volumes and a small folder. It must contain "detailed information" about three "rather strange" years of Oswald's life, from October 1959 to June 1962, when he lived in the Soviet Union and asked for political asylum. The first attempt to make the Oswald records public was made by Vadim Bakatin in November 1991. He must have come across them "by chance" when the world again talked about Oswald on the anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. Bakatin found "no secrets" that the KGB should continue to keep. Except for the KGB agents' names and Oswald's private telephone conversations and letters, the dossier, as Bakatin saw it, contained "interesting historical documents" shedding light on the Soviet counter-intelligence activities of 30 years before. But KGB professionals resented Bakatin's intentions. Never before had they revealed their "agent activities." A KGB commission was set up to analyze the dossier and eventually put on Bakatin's table twelve "insignificant" documents they felt could be made public. Bakatin is said to have been angry and ordered another inquiry. In the meantime, the Byelorussian KGB chief Shirkovsky asked the Oswald dossier to be sent to Minsk for "a few days." Most of it had been collected by the Byelorussian KGB since Oswald had lived in Minsk. His request was not without good reason. A short while later Bakatin stepped down as KGB chief, and the Oswald papers have ever since remained in Minsk. Shirkovsky now says he will keep the dossier and will never make it public unless the Byelorussian Supreme Soviet decides otherwise. He is reported to have been offered 50 million dollars for it but refused. The Oswald dossier, which Shirkovsky says contains nothing very secret, must be seen by Byelorussian leaders as a symbol of independence from Moscow. Izvestia is to follow up on the story. ------------------------------------------------------------ August 7, 1992 Agent Development Case No 31451 - part 2 of 5 Sergei Mostovshchikov KGB claims it never recruited Lee Harvey Oswald. The KGB claims it never recruited Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin of President John Kennedy. There is no way to prove it, says Izvestia, but one fact appears to support the KGB assertion - the thick dossier it collected on him. Six volumes would be a bit too much for a KGB recruit. The usual outcome in the latter case would be a "thin and absolutely secret folder." The system of Oswald surveillance appears to have been built "in a spirit of the latest achievements of Soviet counter-intelligence of the early 1960s model." Experts who have studied the dossier say everything was done "very thoroughly" and "cleverly." Eduard Shirkovsky, the present chief of the Byelorussian KGB, says Oswald was watched 24 hours a day. The KGB used every means to garner up information, "except for chemicals and psychotropic drugs." Though, admits Shirkovsky, "some tablets might have been dropped in his glass... but only to make him relax and talk more." The dossier is said to contain no evidence that the KGB ever questioned Oswald. This would appear strange, considering the manner in which Oswald came to stay in the Soviet Union: "it was not every day that American tourists in 1959 so stubbornly insisted on being granted political asylum in the USSR." Oswald arrived in Moscow as a tourist on October 15, 1959. The next day he applied for political asylum and Soviet citizenship. His request was turned down, and he was told to leave the country on October 21. That day he cut open the veins in his left hand in protest and was taken to hospital. He asked the Supreme Soviet for political asylum several more times, and on October 31 was said to have thrown up a row in the American Embassy, publicly renouncing his U.S. citizenship and slapping his passport down on e ambassador's table. In November 1959 Oswald was granted a temporary residence permit in Minsk. The KGB must have thought Minsk a better place to screen him. If he were a spy, he would be easier to figure out. Byelorussian counter-intelligence officers say he was suspected of working for foreign secret services. The KGB dossier, titled "an agent development case," was built on that premise. In January 1960 Oswald moved to Minsk, followed by the KGB dossier. This included a transcript of a conversation with the hospital doctor who had mended his veins (he said the man was "unpredictable"), surveillance reports which referred to Oswald as Nalim, and other papers. The Byelorussian KGB gave him another code-name, Likhoi (apparently a take-off on his full name, Lee Harvey Oswald), and started a "zealous" effort to "develop" him. A highly place counter-intelligence officer is quoted as saying only one man or two in the Minsk KGB had access to the full information culled on him. Several teams were set up to keep tabs on Oswald, and none of these knew what the others were doing. The KGB is said to have recruited 20 agents to work on the Oswald case. One of the recruits was Pavel Golovachev. He met Oswald at the Gorizont radio factory where the American got a job as an assembly worker of the lowest grade. Two weeks later, in January 1960, Golovachev was stopped in the street by a man who identified himself as Alexander Kostyukov of the KGB. The man told him it was a bad thing to dabble in fartsovka [buying goods from foreigners and selling them for profit], being the son of wartime pilot Pavel Golovachev, two times Hero of the Soviet Union. The intimidation piece brought home, he suggested that Golovachev meet with "certain people" several times a week and tell them everything he had learned from Oswald. He doesn't say now if he agreed to collaborate but he appears to "dislike" the KGB. In 1963 when Oswald was killed on his way to prison, Golovachev wrote his wife, Marina Prusakova, a letter of condolences. A short while later the KGB came to his place and took away all photographs of Oswald and his wife, and Oswald's letters from America. Golovachev was taken to the KGB, threatened with prison, and told to keep his mouth shut. He was instructed to write to the Moscow Post Office to recall his letter of condolences, which the KGB had kept for some time. Oswald's apartment in Minsk is said to have been heavily bugged. Izvestia quotes "sources in Minsk" as saying one day the KGB "asked" his neighbors living on the floor above to vacate their apartment for a couple of days. Another tactic the KGB used to "develop" Oswald was by planting provocateurs who claimed to possess classified information or would try "anti-Soviet talk" on him. People who knew Oswald say he "would seldom open his heart." In general, he lived a secluded life. The KGB also tried to ferret out Oswald's attitude to the classics of Marxism. It took note of the fact that he was not too keen on "political self-education" and often absented himself from the "numerous union meetings and cultural events." His behavior made the KGB even more suspicious because in his request for political asylum Oswald had described himself as "a communist to the marrow." Oswald's friends and acquaintances in Minsk are convinced he was aware of being followed. Despite his professed love of the Soviet Union, Oswald appears to have come to resent his new life. In June 1962 when he was leaving for America, he said to a neighbor: "You go on building your communism by yourselves. You can't even smile like human beings here." It was eventually written in the Oswald dossier that Likhoi was not spying for foreign secret services and was of no interest to the KGB whatsoever. But to conclude that, "the KGB had, day in, day out, kept an open eye... on every move by the American, who was conducting a socialist enough way of life." Izvestia will follow up on the story. ----------------------------------------------------------- August 10, 1992 Agent Development Case No. 31451 - part 3 of 5 Sergei Mostovshchikov KGB watched Lee Harvey Oswald 24 hours a day while he lived in USSR. ------------------------------------------------------------ While the KGB continued to build up its thick dossier on Lee Harvey Oswald, the future acknowledged assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy immersed himself in a "normal" Soviet life, Izvestia writes. In January 1960, this American citizen was given permission to reside in Minsk, and for the first time he went to work - to participate in building the world's first state of workers and peasants. Taking into account his past (service in the U.S. Marine Corps at various bases), the local Minsk authorities gave Oswald a job at the Gorizont radio factory as a metal worker of the lowest grade with a salary of 761 rubles a month, along with a 40 percent bonus rate. Why Oswald was given a job at that radio factory had always raised questions in the minds of researchers, the paper continues. Department No. 25, where Oswald was given a rasp file, a hammer and some nails, was considered an "experimental" [secret] shop, so why should an American, and all the more so, a suspect, be placed in such an environment? Although there are now claims that Department 25 became a "secret" shop after Oswald had left, even so, the KGB had a wonderful opportunity, without taking any chances, to see how the American would behave in such circumstances. If anything - Oswald would be caught red-handed. However, it never came to that. Not only did Oswald show no interest in what was being manufactured at the factory, but judging by everything he was not even interested in his own job. His former workmate, Konstantin Yalak, recalls that Oswald began shirking on the job and complaining that his pay was not enough to make ends meet. The American's colleagues at work thought Oswald was "just putting on an act" if anyone, he had no right to complain - he was living not only on his salary. As a "living example of the socialist way of life," the local authorities peeled off approximately another 800 rubles a month to him, supposedly from the Red Cross (as humanitarian aid). He continued to receive such grants right up until he informed the authorities of his intention to return to America. After that, this extra funding was stopped. But financing was not all. Oswald was given a one-bedroom apartment unbelievably fast. He took up his job at the radio factory in January, and in March he already was living in his downtown apartment at No. 4 Kalinin Street (today it is No. 2 Communist Street). Usually, ordinary Soviet citizens had to wait for years before they could improve their housing conditions. Oswald's neighbors, Maya and Semyon Gertsovich, who lived on the floor above him recall their first encounter with the American when they accidentally flooded his apartment. Although Oswald spoke Russian very poorly, he raised a scandal and threatened to tell the factory authorities about the incident. For a long time, Oswald was not on speaking terms with his neighbors, but later on when he married Marina Prusakova, they made up. It was during that period, the paper writes, that Oswald calmed down somewhat and began to brush up his Russian. The Gertsovich couple who dropped into the newly-weds now and then recall that Oswald and his wife lived "very poorly" - some old furniture that the factory had given them, a bookcase, a kitchen table, two stools...the impression was that of an orphanage. Ernst Titovetz, one of Lee Harvey's closest friends, explains that Oswald practically bought nothing for the home. Right from the beginning, from his first months in Minsk, the paper writes, it was clear that the American was not planning to stay long in the USSR. Titovetz, as he says, had no doubts about this, and that is why he was not surprised at all when Oswald decided to return to the United States... At the factory, his workmates did not shed any tears when they learned about the American's intention to go back to the U.S. Actually, they forgot about Oswald quite soon. But they remembered him in November 1963, when the name of the former metal worker of the Gorizont radio factory became known to the whole world. In Department 25, everyone could only shake their heads and shrug their shoulders in bewilderment: how could an ordinary guy (in their opinion, a very clumsy worker) like Oswald go off and assassinate President Kennedy himself?! And there was even more talk in the workshop when Oswald was shot dead by Jack Ruby. But the radio factory workers did not shake their heads for long. People from the KGB came around and advised them "to stop wagging their tongues" and, in general, forget that an American ever worked there. After that, at the factory library, the KGB men took Oswald's library card listing the books that he had taken to read. And when the world learned that the man charged with assassinating Kennedy had lived in the USSR and was probably a Soviet agent, the KGB returned to Oswald's dossier and began filling it with newspaper clippings from all over the world about the investigation of "the murder of the century." And it was only later, when the noise abated, that the Oswald "case" in Minsk was closed and placed in the archives - a "case" that contained not only specific KGB secrets, but also a huge amount of most interesting details about the life of the man accused of assassinating Kennedy. ------------------------------------------------------------ August 11, 1992 Agent Development Case No. 31451 - part 4 of 5 Sergei Mostovshchikov Lee Harvey Oswald was certainly no sharpshooter, according to KGB. ------------------------------------------------------------ The KGB dossier on Lee Harvey Oswald became known to the public at large only after approximately 30 years, the author continues. And it is not only journalists and researchers who are interested in this dossier, but certain friends and acquaintances of Oswald in Minsk as well. The latter consider they have the right to know what kind of information the dossier contains about them. One would have to think that the KGB kept tabs on those people who mixed with Oswald in any way, so quite naturally their names would be in the file. The author gives the names of people close to Oswald in Minsk: Pavel Golovachev, Oswald's agemate; medical student Eric Titovetz; and Alexander Ziger, who worked with Oswald at the radio factory. Ziger's life story is also quite interesting. As a promising technician, he was sent abroad for training. When World War II broke out, Ziger traveled to Argentina to escape persecution as a Jew. After the war, he returned to the USSR. But the main thing is Ziger was quite fluent in English. Titovetz recalls that it was very important for Oswald to be able to converse with someone in his native language, for he was never very good at learning Russian. Titovetz, too, was quite eager to speak English to a real American, so they saw a lot of each other. In fact, Titovetz viewed Oswald as a "talking machine" or an "English language textbook on legs." He even recorded Oswald's voice on tape in order to listen and analyze the American way of speaking. Incidentally, Izvestia continues, these tape recordings and letters from Oswald in America are still in Titovetz's possession - for some reason the KGB never got around to them. Understandably, the author goes on, Titovetz and Oswald did not only direct their attention to the English language - both were 20 at that time and there were a lot of nice-looking girls in Minsk. So, it was clear what these two comrades could be up to. The two men were seen quite often at dances and parties. What else did Oswald go in for in his spare time? He bought himself a camera, but he never did learn how to take pictures properly. He also bought a radio to listen to the Voice of America which was not jammed by the Soviets at that time. Incidentally, being a U.S. Marine electronics specialist, Oswald never did prove himself to be a handyman because when his radio went on the blink, he was unable to fix it himself. His friends did it for him, by simply bending back a thin plate. (Incidentally, Izvestia continues, all these facts are recorded in the KGB dossier - and the Soviet counter-intelligence apparently drew the conclusion that Oswald knew nothing about simple radio equipment and, consequently, he had received no special intelligence training.) In general, the Byelorussian KGB built most unbelievable assumptions as to Oswald. They became very excited when in August, 1960, Oswald joined the hunter's club at the factory and bought himself a single- barrel shotgun. It was only later, after Kennedy's assassination, that specialists built far-reaching versions and assumptions based on his purchasing the gun. The KGB at that time, of course, could not even imagine how important to the whole world would be each and every detail about Oswald's contacts with guns. The local counter-intelligence, when it found out that Oswald had purchased a shotgun, formed its own version: under the pretext of hunting, Oswald wanted to "nose around" secret military installations. Of course, the KGB knew everything about Oswald whenever he went "hunting." However, nothing criminal could be pinned on him. He did not look for missile silos, nor did he crawl under barbed wire entanglements. However, a very curious detail did come to light during that period: the American who, if one believes the official version, was Kennedy's assassin and a super marksman, actually was a poor shot. A very poor shot... This is confirmed by the former PT instructor at the radio factory, David Zvagelsky. One day, the factory held a shooting contest. The factory had just received several new pistols and everyone was sent to the shooting gallery "to be prepared for labor and defense." Zvagelsky remembers Oswald very well on that day - he was wearing a yellow leather jacket. Oswald picked up the pistol in both hands and, stretching his arms out in cowboy style, started aiming at a target 25 meters away. When Oswald was told they don't shoot that way in this country, he replied: "That's the way they shoot in my country." Zvagelsky recalls that Oswald fired two or three times. He rated shooting as only "fair". There were much better sharpshooters at the factory than Oswald. After that contest, Oswald was never again seen in the shooting gallery. As for his shotgun, it did not stay long with him. After going into the forest several times, Oswald sold the weapon to a second-hand shop for 18 rubles. This fact, too, Izvestia writes, is recorded in the KGB dossier, just as other details about the American's pastimes. At all the dances and parties attended by the American, there were always people from the KGB. And it is quite possible that Oswald even talked to them, danced with them and drank with them without knowing that each step he took was carefully recorded in his dossier. So, Oswald could not know that when he and his friend Eric Titovetz went to a dance at the Medical Institute in the evening of March 17, 1961, all the details of that evening would be described in the KGB file. That is when the name of a 19-year-old drug-store employee, Marina Prusakova, is first mentioned in the dossier. It was on that evening that Oswald met this woman, who in a matter of two months was destined to become his wife. However, how that marriage came about is the subject of a separate story ------------------------------------------------------------ August 12, 1992 Agent Development Case No. 31451 - part 5 of 5 Sergei Mostovshchikov KGB believed Lee Harvey Oswald could not have prepared and carried Kennedy assassination operation all by himself. ------------------------------------------------------------ The Minsk drug store employee, Marina Prusakova, who entered history thanks to her husband, still raises many questions in the minds of Kennedy assassination researchers, Izvestia writes. For example, was Oswald's wife a KGB agent? If she was not, then why was her patronymic in certain documents recorded as Nikolayevna, while in others, she was registered as Alexandrovna? And why, in general, did Oswald marry a Russian national? And lastly, could Oswald have had an assignment to simply live in the USSR for some time, then get married to the first Russian woman he met so as, in the final count, to discredit the USSR after the assassination of President Kennedy? People acquainted with Oswald's dossier, Izvestia writes, swear Marina Prusakova "did not work for the KGB. "The strange thing about her patronymic is also easily explained: she really is Nikolayevna by her real father [Nikolai], however, after she was born, her mother married a second time, and her stepfather's name was Alexander Medvedev -- hence the mix up with her patronymics. At first, Marina's life was not so simple. When her mother died, her stepfather married another woman, so she was a complete "stranger" in the home. She then moved to Minsk to live with an uncle and aunt, and that is when she found a job in a drug store. However, fate had in store for her by far not a drug store life. After Oswald and Marina became acquainted at a dance in March 1961, Oswald came down with an ear cold and had to be hospitalized. Marina started visiting him in hospital. And in less than two months, the Leninsky District Registry Office issued the couple Marriage License No. 416. The swiftness of their marriage registration could only be envied, given the fact that it was a mixed marriage. It usually takes three months after a marriage application is filed for the official wedding ceremony to be held. And that was in the 1960s, and marrying an American, so swiftly -- all this seemed more than strange. But on the other hand, the explanation could be primitively simple. Although there was a kind of thaw in our relations with America at that time, we still pointed our fingers at Americans, calling them "capitalists." But here was an American who found asylum in the USSR, and had fallen in love with a Russian girl - why not pull off a propaganda stunt? Yet the new family was kind of strange, the author continues. In moments of frankness, Marina confessed to Maya Gertsovich that her husband was a tyrant and scandalmonger, he practically gave her no money, although he demanded "steak and wine" for supper. And in general, Marina confided, he did not love her at all - that was probably his assignment to marry her. And when it became clear that Oswald was returning to the United States, Marina said she would not go to America "for anything in the world." Marina told her neighbor that Lee was teaching her English, but that she had no intention to speak that language. Her neighbors tried to talk Marina into leaving for America together with her husband, motivating their reasoning by the fact that "Oswald's mother might be better natured," and that here in Minsk, they had practically no furniture at home. Lee Harvey's first daughter was born in 1962, and instead of a crib, the baby slept in a small washtub. What kind of a life was that? But Marina told her neighbors: "America is an alien country to me." But judging by Oswald's Minsk friends, everything looked quite differently. Marina Prusakova had a reputation of being "a bit loose," to put it mildly. From various sources, it is reported that while already in America, Oswald struck her when he learned she was writing to a man in Minsk: the letter was returned by the post office because it did not have enough stamps. Oswald's friend, Titovetz, is convinced that being a "very practical woman," Prusakova compelled Oswald to marry her. Titovetz claims that Oswald "worshipped" the family, and after the birth of his first daughter, changed immensely. He washed and ironed the diapers himself, and derived pleasure looking after his firstling. Pavel Golovachev, another close acquaintance, believes Marina was "a woman who could look after herself," and all her talk about not wanting to go to America was either coquetry or a put-on. And just before her departure, the author writes, what she said about the socialist system echoed what any American could say about it then. However, Oswald is reported to have told Marina approximately the following: "No matter what happens in the future, never speak badly about the Soviet Union." That did not prevent him, however, from saying to his neighbor on leaving their apartment together with Marina that he should "continue building communism without his [Oswald's] help." The author notes that it probably took less than a minute to say these parting words, but it took Oswald more than a year and a half to come to the point when he uttered them. There is information that Oswald first announced his intention to return to America in December 1960, after having lived in the USSR for just over a year. Izvestia writes that obstacles were set up in Oswald's way to prevent his going back to America. At his factory, he signed up for an excursion to Moscow, but he was told the excursion had been canceled, although that was not the case at all. Oswald's friends in Minsk told the author that several times Lee Harvey was removed from the train going to Moscow, and was told that there were restrictions on foreigners traveling in this country. But on the other hand, what was the point of trying to hold him back? the author queries. After all, the KGB "had given up" with Oswald, coming to the conclusion that the American was of "no interest whatsoever" to the secret service. Moreover, Oswald remained an American citizen. In spite of the version that he had slapped down his U.S. passport on a desk in his Embassy in Moscow, Oswald had his passport No.1733242 with him all the time he lived in the USSR - this too is confirmed in the KGB dossier. Judging by everything, the author continues, the U.S. Embassy which he finally did manage to reach never lost sight of him. He did not have the 400-odd dollars required to purchase return tickets to America. The metal worker did not have that kind of money... But even so, he and his wife and child left. Oswald's mother wrote him she could not afford the return fare because she was saving to help them get settled down when they arrive. "So," the author writes, "it is assumed that the Embassy helped him." In connection with Oswald's and Marina's departure, the KGB started another (sixth) file, containing information on their pre-departure special check-ups. It is reported that this file is the thinnest since it holds routine material ordinarily collected on a person leaving the USSR. However, the real nature of the documents in File Six is still unknown. But it is known that one fine day, having packed their meager belongings, Oswald turned up at the Minsk Rail Terminal together with his wife and child. Seeing them off were the Zigers and Pavel Golovachev, who photographed the couple in the coach window. Eric Titovetz who is referred to as Oswald's closest friend in Minsk was not at the station that day because he was "too busy." The author makes the following point: "Not one of the persons with whom I talked in Minsk believes, even for a single second, that the American they knew 30 years ago could have killed the U.S. President." Speaking independently of each other, all these people said the same thing - Oswald was simply a "put up" job. They believe he got tangled up in some shady deal in which "some very serious forces" who actually assassinated the President used him as "bait." KGB people who are acquainted with the contents of Dossier No. 31451, Izvestia writes, also are of the opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald was incapable of preparing and executing an operation such as the Kennedy assassination all by himself. Judging by everything, the author maintains, for the Soviet counter- intelligence this question [was Oswald a loner?] can be viewed as an object of professional jealousy. How is it that we [KGB] "gave up" on this man as being absolutely useless for carrying out some special assignment, as being an ordinary individual, and then just a little over a year after leaving the USSR, this man goes out and assassinates the U.S. President?! Does this mean that around-the-clock tailing, all the tricks of the cloak-and-dagger trade, all the versions and assumptions, all that is still kept a secret of the KGB's "modus operandi" are simply no good for anything? Obviously, the KGB men are not attracted by such a train of thought, the author goes on. Some of them adhere to a theory in which Oswald was only a "link" in some very serious operation in which he was given a role, the true scope of which "he could not even imagine." So what else can be said about the Minsk period in Oswald's life? In general, the author writes, the people in Minsk reacted in quite a peculiar way when President Kennedy was shot on November 23, 1963. On the day after the tragedy, the local TV showed a photograph of the man suspected of assassinating the President. That man was Lee Harvey Oswald. "Oh, my God! That's our Alik! That can't be true!" exclaimed Maya Gertsovich, who in her time tried to convince the future suspected assassin of President Kennedy that she had flooded his apartment by accident. ------------------------------------------------------------ November 16, 1993 Last Steps To Dallas Alexander Shalnev Retired KGB Colonel remembers his encounters with Lee Harvey Oswald in Soviet Embassy in Mexico eight weeks before President John F. Kennedy's assassination. ------------------------------------------------------------ Izvestia carries an interview with a retired KGB Colonel, Oleg Nechiporenko, who had two encounters with President John F. Kennedy's future assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, in the Soviet Embassy in Mexico eight weeks before the assassination. Nechiporenko and his colleagues, Valery Kostikov and Pavel Yatskov (all KGB officers then working under the cover of "consulate staff"), were the last Soviet people who met Oswald, the paper says. The future assassin first came to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico on Friday, September 27, to get an entry visa: he wanted to get back to the Soviet Union and thus escape the constant surveillance and harassment on the part of the FBI. At that time, Oswald's appearance did not stir any emotions at the Embassy, because the KGB had by then lost all interest in him. Nechiporenko quotes a memo sent by the then KGB Chief Vladimir Semichastny to the CPSU Central Committee, where he wrote: "During his stay in the Soviet Union, as well as during the period after he had left this country, the KGB was not interested in him." This is borne out by the fact, Nechiporenko says, that "our consulate workers, who received Oswald and who were carrier intelligence officers, did not even send a cipher communication to Moscow." Interestingly, Nechiporenko notes, the CIA agents, who had constantly been watching the Soviet Embassy's entrance, making pictures of all those who went through it, failed to record Oswald's visit to the Embassy: they were off duty. It was only by chance that the CIA had ever got to know about those visits: its agents overheard a short telephone conversation between a clerk in the Cuban Embassy (where Oswald was sent to apply for a Cuban visa instead) and the Soviet Consul, who confirmed that Oswald did apply for a Soviet visa. It was only after Oswald came again on September 28, Nechiporenko recalls, did they send a cipher cable to Moscow - one to the Foreign Ministry, the other to the KGB headquarters. Mysteriously, the second cable has disappeared: Nechiporenko could not find it in the KGB archives, although he had rummaged through all the KGB files related to Oswald. On the basis of the numerous materials he had studied and his personal encounters with Oswald, Nechiporenko has arrived at this conclusion: "Lee Harvey Oswald was the man who killed John F. Kennedy, and he acted in Dallas alone. By shooting at Kennedy, Oswald was shooting at himself. That was an act of suicide," the former KGB Colonel asserts. This view, the paper says, contradicts the opinion of many American investigators and most American citizens who still believe that John F. Kennedy fell victim to a large-scale plot and that Oswald was framed up by the plotters. But the lone-killer theory, Izvestia notes, is also borne out by a "unique investigation carried out here, in Russia." Chief expert of the Ballistic Laboratory of the Criminal Expertise Division of the Moscow City Police Department, Nikolai Martynnikov, analyzed thoroughly all the relevant evidence and came to the conclusion that "the fire-arm injuries were most probably made by two bullets as a result of shots fired from behind, from somewhere above the right side." Nechiporenko recalls that just a few hours after the assassination, the Soviet Embassy in Mexico was literally besieged by reporters who quickly learned that Oswald had come there twice before. "We did not know what to say," he remembers. "So, we sent a cable to the Center asking them for instructions: what should we do and what line should we follow? The reply which came on Sunday, November 24, drove us mad: the Center advised that we should be 'guided by AP reports.' Period." Thirty years have passed since the assassination of the American President, the paper concludes, but attempts to establish any connection between the assassin and the KGB still continue. "On April 16, 1964, Lieutenant-General Oleg Gribanov, Head of the KGB Second Chief Directorate (counter-intelligence), confirmed in his circular that the documents from Oswald's file were of great historical value and as such should be kept in the special fund of the KGB Archives Department. It was only recently that they began to emerge from there..." ------------------------------------------------------------