MF: CONTACT OF LEE OSWALD WITH A MEMBER OF SOVIET KGB ASSASSINATION DEPARTMENT
Agency: CIA
Originator: CIA
From: ACTING CHIEF, SR DIVISION
To: ASSISTANT DEPUTY DIRECTOR, PLANS
Document date: 11/23/1963
Document type: PAPER-TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

## Page 1

104-10431-10069

5-5958

23 November 1963

8X-25550

MEMORANDUM FOR: Assistant Deputy Director, Plans

FROM:

SUBJECT:

Acting Chief, SR DIvIsion S

Contact of Lee OSWALD with a member of Soviet KGB

Assassination Department

I. According to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Lee OSWALD

was at the Soviet Embassy there on 28 September 1963 and spoke with the

Consul, Valerly Vladimirovich KOSTIKOV. This was learned when OSWALD called

the Soviet Imbassy on 1 October, Identifying himself by name and speaking

broken Russian, stating the above and asking the guard who answered the phone

whether there was "anything new concerning the telegram to Washington.".

The guard checked and then told OSWALD that a request had been sent, but

nothing had as yet been received. (MEXI 6453, 9 October 1963) The FBI Liaison

officer, Mr. Pappich, told me on 23 November that the Bureau has reason to

belleve that OSWALD's visit was to get Soviet support for & U.S. passport or

visa matter [erhaps the new passport mentioned in the press articles.

2. KOSTIKOV is an identified KGB officer.

He was a case officer in an

operation which is evidently sponsored by the KGB's 13th Department (responsible

for sabotage and assassination) This operation, which is controlled by the

FBI under the cryptonym TUMBLEWEED, involved a German-national resident of

(Oklahoma/who was recruited in Europe, and met this year with KOSTIKOV in Mexico

City and shortly thereafter with a known 13th Department officer, Oleg BRYKIN,

In New York. The instructions given TUMBLEWEED by the two officers, (pinpointing

objectives for sabotage) and the circumstances of their involvement in the case,

left no doubt that both of them were working for the same KGB component, the

13th.

3.

Of course it is not usual for & KGB agent on a sensitive mission to

have such overt contact with a Soviet Embassy. However, we have top secret

Soviet intelligence documents, describing Military Intelligence doctrine, which

show that very Important agents can be met in official Installations using as

cover for their presence there some sort of open business:

Vice Admiral

SCEN FRESSAN

Document Number

for FOIA Review on

RECORD COPY

-538

APR 1975

CLASSIFICATION REVIEW

CONDUCTED ON.

76 APR 1976

EZ IMPDET CL BY 213365

23700663

201-289248

---

## Page 2

13-00000

= 2.

!.. BEKRENEV, In a top secret lecture to a Soviet Military Intelligence course

at Military-Diplomatic Academy, 1960, said,

"Case officers who use as cover, let us say, the Soviet Trade

Representation, TASS or Sovinformburo, can use their cover

assignments as backstopping for non-clandestine meetings with

certain gents whose particular activities officially associate

them with the previously mentioned Soviet institutions. Howevery

such non-clandestine meetings within a legal residency should be

restricted to a minimum both as to place and time. Meetings of

this type should be carried out only in exceptional cases with

tested and reliable agents in order to avoid provocation by the

local counterintelligence service against the Soviet Installation

being used as cover. Such meetings are held as a rule in the work

offices of the case

officer or of the agent during working hours.

It is necessary that such meetings be conducted naturally, that

they do not attract the attention of outsiders, and that the receipt

and transmittal of intelligence matters, properly camouflaged, be

carried out discreetly. In setting up such meetings, measures against

tapping must be taken. One must bear in mind that a meeting with

persons outside official premises and during non vorking hours usually

signifies a relationship between the two parties that is above and

beyond official matters."

Also, such contact in official installations may be caused by the agent's own

carelessness. Again Admiral BEKRENEV speaks:

"Some agents, because of inexperience or because of deliberate

violation of the rules of security through peculiar personal

rashness, •••*

nor the rushed

approached our case officers at places not stipulated

as operational meeting sites, others telephoned the case officer at

his Soviet installation and discussed personal contact arrangements,

while others still showed up personally at the soviet Installation in

order to contact the case officer. "

Icalled the above connections to the attention of Mr. Pappich by

phone to his FBI office at 1030 hours on 23 November.

---

## Page 3

13-00000

5. I am attaching

1) a summary of our information on KOSTIKOV; and

2) all valid background information now available on the work

of. the 13th Department of the Foreign Intelligence of the KGB:

Service. KGB)

Action,

date et Use I an and Assass1nation -- Executive

Soviet Strategic Executive Action, dated October 1961.

Tennent

Chief, SR/CI

---

## Page 4

13-00000

SUBJECT: Valeriy Vladimirovich KOSTIKOV

KOSTIKOV, who was born on IT March 1933 in Moscow, was

assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City as Vice Consul

on 19 September 1961-

A fluent Spanish speaker, he had travelled abroad at least

three times before this permanent assignment; moreover, in 1959

KOSTIKOV applied for a visa to accompany Premier Nikita Sergeye

vich KHRUSHCHEV's party to the United States as an official of

the Soviet Ministry. of Foreign Affairs, but we have no record

of his having come to this country at that time.

KOSTIKOV

served as an interpreter at international conferences at Madrid

and Barcelona in 1958 and 1959. In late 1959 and early 1960

he attended Soviet exhibitions in Mexico City and Havana; he

is known to have been in Cuba from 6. January to Y March 1960.

The physical description of KOSTIKOV quite accurately fits

that of a Soviet case officer who nearly a year ago met in

Mexico an FBI-controlled double agent.

This double agent's

Soviet case officer in the United States has been Oleg Danile-

vich BRYKIN of the Thirteenth Department, KGB First Chief

Directorate, occupying the overt position of translator-trainee,

U.N. Secretariat, New York City.

BRYKIN was stationed in New

York City from December 1960 to July of this

year.

Since arriving in Mexico, KOSTIKOV is known to have travelled

three times outside the capital: In March 1963 and again for the

first two weeks of September he

went to Tijuana, Ensenada, and

Mexicali, ostensibly for the purpose of purchasing cotton.. The

U.S. Department of State, however, has reported that during

these trips KOSTIKOV met local representatives of Movimento

Liberation National and Central Compesina Independienta, both

large Communist front organizations:

In addition,

according to

FBI sources, KOSTIKOV was accompanied on the September trip by

Ivan Gavrilovich ALFERYEV, and he contacted in Ensenada several

persons including Communist sympathizers who previously had been

associated with Soviet officials stationed in Mexico City:

ALFERYEV, & PRAVDA correspondent in Mexico, was

in close

contact with

Cuban diplomats

and local Communist leaders during

a February 1962 visit to Quito.

---

## Page 5

13-00000

Wife: Rosa Aleksandrovna, born 2 March 1932 Arkhangel Oblast.

Daughter:

Svetlana Valerievna born: 1959, Moscow:

Wife and daughter accompanied Subject to Mexico.

Graduate of Foreign Language Institute and/or Institute of

Foreign Affairs; Moscow.

From 30 June to 10 July 1959 was at the Electrotechnical

Congress

in Madrid; attended a conference in Madrid

and Barcelona in 1958.

November 1959

to 6 January 1960 - Soviet Exposition

Mexico City.

Contacts

in Ensenada, Baja, California, September 1963:

1. Daily with Isaak Karlos. CHAPLUK (201-229418)

and with CHAPLUK'S SOn.

2. Y September, stayed. 45 minutes at Nuna SIMANOVKA's

Curio Shop.

3. Y September, dinner with Miguel POPOFF (201-286055)

Note that ALFEREV claimed that he was a guest of the party of

Eva Samano de

Lopez MATEOS, wife of the President of Mexiço,

Adolfo Lopez MATEOS.:

On the

trip

to Baja, California; Mrs.

Lopez was attending a Congress of the National Institute for

the Protection of Children.

201-289248

---