Scientia Press

New evidence and analysis suggest that Nikita Khrushchev ordered the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the KGB arranged it.

Official investigations have discounted the likelihood of a Soviet hand in the assassination, and few outside investigators have pursued this line of inquiry.  But some observers have always considered the Soviets a likely suspect (Lyndon Johnson and other US Government officials evidently did, causing them to suppress any hint of a KGB conspiracy for fear that an outraged public would demand retaliation that would lead to war). The Soviets had a palpable, powerful motive: to gain revenge for the humiliation of Khrushchev and the USSR in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Certainly, the idiosyncratic odyssey of Lee Harvey Oswald into the Soviet Union and a Russian marriage as well as his contacts with Soviet diplomatic offices preceding the assassination afforded the KGB many opportunities to interact with him. In a sense, therefore, the KGB is the elephant in the living room of suspects in this case. Yet repeated investigations have failed to turn up specific evidence that would implicate the KGB.

There are good reasons to think that the KGB arranged the murders of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as of other Americans. Note:  “good reasons”, not definitive proof.  Given the paucity of evidence, we might never obtain such proof.  Rather, in each case, I will argue that We must consider the KGB the leading suspect.  That is a useful finding, and it can guide further investigation that could result in the more definitive finding that It was all the KGB.

First, I will explain how the KGB has emerged as the prime suspect in the JFK assassination.  Not only was this the most important and best-known case; new evidence and interpretation point to the KGB and have implications for the other murders.  Second, I will treat each of ten cases in summary fashion.  Third, I will touch on factors that have hampered resolution of these cases for many decades.  Fourth, I will compare the cases and identify characteristics of the KGB’s art of deniable murder.  Fifth, I will draw some conclusions.

*****

1. The KGB and JFK

On October 12, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer was murdered on the canal towpath in Georgetown1. A divorced artist from a prominent family, Meyer was known by insiders to have been President John F. Kennedy’s senior female consort during his White House years, though the story never leaked to the public.

Her murder and the ensuing trial of Raymond Crump, Jr., an African-American laborer found by the police in the vicinity of the murder, drew a good deal of attention at the time. Crump had been identified by a gas station attendant helping start a car on a road overlooking the canal. Hearing cries of “Somebody help me. Somebody help me” and two shots, the attendant ran to look.

Sometimes a storyteller misses the real meaning of the story.

By all accounts, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dangerous episode of the Cold War.  The United States and the Soviet Union came frighteningly close to launching nuclear attacks at each other.  Only fear, luck, and occasionally inspired negotiating moved them onto the path of resolving the crisis−via a humiliating Soviet withdrawal in the face of U.S. nuclear superiority.

Historians have identified many motives for the initial Soviet decision to place missiles in Cuba. 

April 4, 1968.  Civil rights leader Martin Luther King was killed by a single bullet as he stood on the second floor balcony outside his hotel room in Memphis.1   The shot came from high on his right, not on a horizontal trajectory from the rooming house behind the hotel of the alleged assassin, James Earl Ray.  Ray, a mediocre shot, would have needed to stand on the edge of the common bathroom tub to see out the window, and a wall (since conveniently removed) would have kept him from aligning the rifle.  Ballistics, forensics, and medical evidence all rule him out.  The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there had been a conspiracy, with Ray as the patsy.

Critical researchers have argued that the federal government, especially FBI or perhaps CIA, carried out the assassination

June 8, 1968.  Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the crowded “pantry” (actually, a food preparation area) of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after his primary election victory.1   His alleged killer, 24-year old Palestinian-American Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, never got close to Kennedy.  He fired shots that hit five bystanders as Kennedy supporters struggled to subdue him; but none of his shots hit Kennedy.  The fatal shot behind Kennedy’s ear came from just 1-3 inches away, according to Thomas Noguchi MD, who performed the autopsy.

August 4, 1962.  Celebrity actress Marilyn Monroe died in her bedroom in Los Angeles (or in the guest house near her house, from which she was carried back to her bedroom).1

On April 27, 1996, 76-year old William Colby, former director of the CIA, disappeared from his vacation home on the water at Rocky Point, Maryland.  Colby had spent the day at a marina fixing his sloop.  He returned home after 6 pm, phoned his wife, who was visiting her mother in Texas, and told her he was tired and would eat supper, then go to bed.  He watered his trees, met with his gardener and his visiting sister around 7:15 pm (sunset was at 7:57), and fixed himself a meal.  The next day there was no sign of him.  Eventually, a neighbor phoned the police.  They found his supper half-eaten.  The computer and radio were on.  His canoe was missing.1

By the next day a full-scale search with helicopters and divers was under way.

Unfinished business in a nation’s history can undermine citizens’ trust in government and sense of participating in a meaningful collective life.