Jefferson Morley Gets it Wrong, Once Again!
- Fred Litwin
- 7 hours ago
- 9 min read
Three weeks after President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in November 1963, his grieving brother Robert F. Kennedy sent a private message to the leadership of the Soviet Union asserting that the assassination “undoubtedly was the result of a large political conspiracy.”
A Kremlin document, dated December 9, 1963, is found in the Russian government’s recently released dossier on JFK’s assassination. The two-page memo shows the messenger was William Walton, an artist friend of JFK, who travelled to Moscow after the assassination.
There are only two paragraphs about the assassination:
The assassination of President Kennedy, Walton said, undoubtedly was the result of a large political conspiracy. Perhaps there was only one assassin, but there were certainly more accomplices to the president's murder.
Dallas, Walton continued, is the ideal place for such a crime. The murder of the President there could be blamed on racists, Birchers, anyone at all.
But was the conspiracy claim Robert Kennedy's belief or message? It sounds like it is Walton's conclusion.
Towards the end of the memo, there is indeed a message from Robert Kennedy:
I spoke with Robert Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy before leaving for the Soviet Union, Walton continued. Robert Kennedy asked me to convey to you his warm greetings. He said, "Go to Moscow and tell them that we, for our part, will do everything possible to ensure that the political course of the United States toward the USSR remains unchanged and that the country's leadership is in firm hands."
Morley references two books that contain the story about RFK conveying a message about conspiracy through Walton to Bolshakov.
Here is the relevant passage from "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964, by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali: (page 345)
Bolshakov and Walton met at the Sovietskaya restaurant. "Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime," Walton told the Soviet intelligence officer. "Perhaps there was only one assassin, but he did not act alone." Bolshakov, who had himself been deeply moved by assassination, listened intently as Walton explains that the Kennedy's believed there was a large political conspiracy behind Oswald's rifle. Despite Oswald's connections to the communist world, the Kennedy's believed that the president was felled by domestic opponents.
The footnote for this paragraph reads as follows:
Interview with Georgi Bolshakov, Jan. 28, 1989. At this interview, Bolshakov described the effect of both Kennedy assassinations on him.
The claim that RFK was conveying a message about conspiracy came from Bolshakov in 1989. Was this his real memory from the meeting in 1963, some twenty-five years earlier? Or was this an improved memory, perhaps influenced by his own views of conspiracy?
Morley says additional information about Walton's meeting, thanks to Walton's son, is in David Talbot's book, The Devil's Chessboard. But I can't find anything in that book about the meeting.
However, Talbot's book, Brothers, contains the story:
Now, in Moscow, Bobby Kennedy's representative was reporting that the attorney general's worst fears had come true. What Walton told Bolshakov over their meal at the Sovietskaya stunned the Russian. He said that Bobby and Jackie believed that the president had been killed by a large political conspiracy. "Perhaps there was only one assassin, but he did not act alone," Walton said, continuing the message from the Kennedys. There were others behind Lee Harvey Oswald's gun. J. Edgar Hoover had told both Bobby and Jackie that Oswald was a communist agent. But despite the alleged assassin's well-publicized defection to the Soviet Union and his attention-grabbing stunts on behalf of Fidel Castro, the Kennedys made it clear that they did not believe he was acting on foreign orders. They were convinced that JFK was the victim of U. S. opponents. And, Walton told Bolshakov, "Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime."
The footnote for this passage is revealing:
He said that Bobby and Jackie believed that the president had been killed by a large political conspiracy. Fursenko and Naftali, 345. Fursenko and Naftali based their account of the Walton-Bolshakov meeting on a memo that Bolshakov prepared for the GRU. Fursenko also interviewed Bolshakov in January 1989 before he died. In an interview for this book, Naftali observed, "It's possible that Bolshakov exaggerated what Walton said to him to remind his superiors how close he was to the Kennedys. Bolshakov clearly liked the fact that he had become a player, and it's possible he exaggerated a bit to get back into the inner circle. But I'd be surprised if he invented it out of whole cloth." The authors note in their book that "the GRU material on Bolshakov has been corroborated in other cases and some of the details in this document have been corroborated."
So, the only source for Robert Kennedy conveying a message about conspiracy to the Soviets is the Fursenko interview in 1989. Fursenko and Naftali did see the actual document, according to their footnotes -- but did they notice the limited attribution to RFK when Bolshakov showed them the memo?
Even so, Naftali believed that Bolshakov might have been exaggerating. And so while he was probably not exaggerating in the memo, he was most probably exaggerating in the interview.
The real story that Morley should have reported is that "Russian Memo Does Not Corroborate Walton-Bolshakov Story."
One last point. Robert Kennedy knew about the plots against Castro. That must have been weighing on his mind right after the assassination. And as we know, he never told the Warren Commission about the plots nor did he say a word about the CIA working withe Mafia.
In 1968, according to Bill Moyers, Robert Kennedy told him that "I have ... wondering at times if we did not pay a very great price for being more energetic than wise about a lot of things, especially Cuba."
I don't think Robert Kennedy was sharing his real opinions about the assassination back in 1963 - 1964.
Hat tip: Paul Hoch helped with the production and editing of this article.
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