Soviet File Given to Luna Proves a KGB Operation
- Fred Litwin
- 11 hours ago
- 3 min read
Hat tip: Randy Owen published this on Facebook, and Paul Hoch sent me additional information.
The recent release of a Soviet Union file regarding the JFK assassination that was released by Congresswoman Luna solves two JFK mysteries.
Included in the file was this letter by Lee Harvey Oswald to the American Embassy. It is described in the listing as:
Letter from L. H. Oswald to the Consular Section of the US Embassy with a request to be informed about his possible return to the USA. December 1960//Central Archives of the Republic of Belarus.
The first paragraph is the same including the same misspelling of the word "concerning."
Paul Hoch notes that "the second paragraph of the Hunt letter, with strange language which had some of us wondering what the forger was trying to imply (an allusion to an assassination operation?), turns out to be verbatim from Oswald."
So, this is confirmation that the Dear Mr. Hunt letter was indeed a KGB operation.
The ‘Oswald Letter’
The recently declassified CIA documents mentioned above details another interesting KGB operation (also described in the Mitrokhin archive). In 1975, copies of a note that purported to be from Lee Harvey Oswald were sent from Mexico to three American conspiracy theorists. The letter, dated November 8, 1963, was addressed to a Mr. Hunt and said, “I would like information regarding my position” and “am suggesting that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else.”
The note, however, was part of a Russian intelligence operation codenamed ‘Arlington.’ It was a Soviet forgery designed, the CIA document explains, to exploit “an assassination theory that was widespread in the US, according to which theory Howard HUNT, a former CIA employee, who was convicted in 1974 in connection with the Watergate affair, participated in 1963 in organizing a plot, the victim of which was President KENNEDY.” The KGB wrote the note using “individual phrases and expressions taken from letters written by Oswald during his stay in the USSR” on “a scrap of writing paper that OSWALD used in Texas.” Furthermore, “the note was on two occasions subjected to graphological and chronological examination ‘for authenticity’ by the Third Section of the KGB’s OUT (Operational-Technical Directorate).”
The note was then sent to assassination theorists Harold Weisberg, Penn Jones, and Howard Roffman. It was accompanied by another note saying that the document had been sent to FBI director Kelly and that he “has to date not done anything with this document.” The idea was to have the researchers ask the FBI to “produce the original note” and when Kelly denied he had received it, “this would encourage the investigator even more to obtain the desired document.” The operation was “carried out in such a way as to fuel [the flames of suspicion] with fresh news and to expose the participation of the American special services in the liquidation of KENNEDY.”
The problem for the KGB was that the conspiracy theorists tended to assume that the Oswald letter was intended for H.L. Hunt, the Texas oil billionaire, rather than for E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA operative. The first references to the document appeared in 1977, and the New York Times noted its possible authenticity.
Amusingly, the CIA document notes that “the FCD’s disinformation service believed that OSWALD’s connection with HUNT the millionaire, rather than with HUNT, the CIA officer, was purposely played up in the American press in order to divert public attention from OSWALD’s contacts with the special services.” The Oswald letter was later investigated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations which concluded that the letter was “much more precisely and much more carefully written” than other writings of Lee Harvey Oswald. They also professd themselves puzzled that Oswald’s middle name was misspelled—something he was not known to do—and were thus uncertain as to whether it was an authentic document. We now know that it was simply another operation designed to sow distrust and confusion.
