ARRB REQUEST: CIA-IR-33: FBIS-USR-92-112
Originator: ARRB
From: ARRB
To: CIA/HRG
Document date: 01/09/1997
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

## Page 1

1704-10336-10032

2022 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

CIA-IR-3}

SECRET

9 January 1997

MEMORANDUM FOR: J. Barry Harrelson, JEK Project Officer

FROM:

DS&T Information Management Officer

SUBJECT:

REFERENCE:

JFK Records

Assassination Records Review Board

Letter dtd 18 December 1997

1. This is in response to the latest inquiry from the

Assassination

Records Review Board. Specifically, DS&T

was.

tasked with the following items:

Date

CL: (0524507

CL Reason: 1.5 (c)

DECL On: Sources marked OADR

of Sources: Oct-Dec 1963; 7 April 1975

DRV FROM:

Intel Reports

and Memo

SECRET

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SECRET

f.

CIA IR-33

Request: 1.) What does FBIS do with this citation

"FBIS-USR-92-112"?

Is it filed and if so, under what filing

SECRET

leee eltereerleetlde-ld.. "49

........,!!!,."'!'.'!'"''.''

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SECRET

oswald references? eyes are any se

. that can

can search he i

references available in

the public domain?

. 3.) Are there any current files on

Oswald?

Results: 1.) Citation "FBIS-USR-92-112" would be

incorporated into an appropriate FBIS publication (JPRS or

FBIS Report). This particular citation also would be in

microfiche.

2.) The AFS (Automated FBIS System) would

also contain a copy of this citation; and thus, a keyword

search on "OSWALD" would be feasible. Effective June 1997,

microfiche was eliminated and replaced with a "soft" copy

contained in the AFS system. All unclassified FBIS products

are available to the public via NTIS (National Technical

Information Service.

3.)

FBIS does not keep any past or

current files on OSWALD.

2.

If you need additional explanations.on any of these

items, please call me on secure

• 76297.

Marsha A.

Hubbs

SECRET

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"IONS

‹article num=14>

‹pub>FBIS-USR-92-112

2000

‹ bktype ›

‹region) FBIS Report: Central Eurasia

‹date›2 September 1992</date)

‹ dv › RUSSIA

‹SV>POLITICAL AFFAIRS

‹h1>KGB Case No. 31451 on Lee Harvey Oswald</h1>

-

{51>924C2102A Moscow IZVESTIYA in Russian 7, 8, 11, 13 Aug 92

Morning Edition, 11 Aug 92 Evening Edition

<afsnum› 924C2102A

‹citysre> Moscow IZVESTIYA

< lang> Russian

rsb> Article by Sergey Mostovshchikov, IZVESTIYA correspondent:

"Case No. 31451: What Information Does the KGB Dossier on the

Man Known as the Murderer of U.S. President John Kennedy

the Has dorot arena

Contain?"]

8h3>[7 Aug p 7) 8/h3>

‹txt> (Text) Four years before the assassination of u.s.

President Kennedy the Soviet KGB began collecting information on

an American named Lee Harvey Oswald, a young man who on 22

November 1963 was

was indicted wor

most mysterious crime of the century. The dossier compiled by

the KGB consists of five thick volumes and a small file folder : :.

tied together with shoelaces. The documents appear to contain

detailed information on some rather strange years in Oswald's

life (October 1959 through June 1962), the period when he lived

in the USSR after requesting political

asylum for reasons

unknown.

‹ txt> The dossier, which has lain in Soviet intelligence archives

for the past 30 years marked "No. 31451," remains top secret,

with access to it virtually impossible.

However, state security

officers

have agreed to answer some questions about the files

remember many details from the life of the man whose named is

linked to the assassination.of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

<h3>I. Surfacing to Periscope Depths/h3>

stxt> The history of the Soviet dossier on Oswald is somewhat

reminiscent of the maneuver of surfacing to periscope depth, in

which a submarine.approaches the surface so that it can raise

its periscope

and

take a look around. In November 1991 the

Oswald case almost surfaced from the depths of the KGB. At that

time the whole world just missed by a matter of weeks finding

out virtually everything the six mysterious case files contained.

(txt› It was Vadim Bakatin, after taking over the chairman's

office at Lubyanka in the wake of the coup, who attempted that

experiment with top secret KGB information. The "Oswald file"

was hardly of fundamental importance to Bakatin; during his

slightly more than four months as KGB chairman he had many more

serious problems to deal with

as he attempted to reform the

structure of the Lubyanka empira. File No. 31451 most likely

occurred to him by chance: the latest anniversary of the Kennedy

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assassination was approaching, and once again the world was

talking about Oswald.

‹txt>On orders from Bakatin the dossier was retrieved from

the

archives. And then the new KGB chief, who subsequently admitted

that he did not fully comprehend the secret might of the machine

he was directing, attempted to make the documents public. He

wanted to do so because, as he put it, he had not found anything

in the "Oswald file" that was fundamentally secret, and nothing

that the KGB would have any point in keeping a secret any more.

of course, the names of the agents who conducted surveillance of

Oswald in

the USSR should not be named. Naturally the contents

of purely personal phone calls tapped by the committee or

intercepted personal letters should not be disclosed.

txt> The rest of the dossier, Vadim Bakatin asserts, simply

consists of interesting historical documents which, even if they

could reveal methods of Soviet counterintelligence

operations,

can only reveal methods from 30 years ago.

. . ...

‹ txt>Nevertheless Bakatin's efforts provoked incredible

resistance on the part of Lubyanka's professionals: the KGB had

never before disclosed information on the activities of any of

its agents. A commission established within the KGB to study the

matter

was virtually beyond the control of

its own chief. After

several weeks of work the experts selected

from the dossier only

12 insignificant documents from the dossier; these they proposed

that Bakatin make public. Judging by information in our

possession, he was extremely displeased with the results and

ordered

them to go over the dossier again. This time new players

unexpectedly entered the game.

‹ txt> Bakatin got a call from. Belarus KGB chairman Eduard

Shirkovskiy. He requested that the "Oswald file" be sent to

Minsk for a few days so that his agency could reach a decision

on it.

txt> Shirkovskiy's claim had some justification, because

there

was no question that the bulk of the dossier had been collected

by Belorussian counterintelligence agents - Oswald spent

virzually all his time in the USSR in Minsk. Yet after leaving

Moscow for only a few days the dossier did not return:..

txt>Very shortly thereafter Bakatin was relieved of his

position, and a majority of KGB personnel categorized all of his

reforms. as treason.

‹ txt> The Oswald file was re-registered. Assigned the number 226.

and a stamp on each file folder stating "Not to be released

without permission of the division chief," it was put in a light

brown safe in an office in the Belarus KGB building. Now the

only people who have access to the papers are Eduard Shirkovskiy

and a few of his subordinates.

‹txt› The chairman of the Belarus KGB, to give him his due, is

now making very firm statements about the possibility that the

dossier will be declassified and is not leaving any illusions on

the part of those interested in it. He has already been offered

$50 million

for

the

"Oswald file," yet Shirkovskiy refused

because he sees his position as a matter of principle: he will

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not transfer the case file anywhere outside of Minsk, and he

will make the documents public only it the Belarus supreme

Soviet passes a special decree declassifying all KGB archival

materials on which the statute of limitations has expired.

‹txt> The Oswald file, which incidentally according to

shirkovskiy does not

contain anything particularly secret, has

thus probably now become something of a symbol to the Belarusan

leadership, a symbol of new governmental thinking independent of

MOSCOW.

‹ txt›No one

knows how long this will go on.

txt> However, what Eduard Shirkovskiy did permit during an

interview with IZVESTIYA was definitely progress. While

categorically refusing to allow interviews with KGB agents who

worked on the Oswald case, the chief of Belarusan state security

nonetheless did have the file brought out of the safe and also

agreed. to interviews with some of his subordinates who are

thoroughly tamiliar with the documents. So we can thank the

chief of the Belarus KGB for his help with this investigation.

Thanks to the assistance of his subordinates we now have at

least a general idea of why Soviet intelligence services were

interested in Oswald and just how his "case"

was handled.

<h3>[8 Aug P 7)8/h3)

‹txt) [Text]:

‹h3>II. Red Trackersd/h3>

‹txt >The system for surveillance of Oswald in the USSR was to

all appearances maintained in the spirit of the latest advances

in early 1960's Soviet counterintelligence. Present-day experts

who have gone over the dossier note that at that time everything

was done very painstakingly and, most importantly, cleverly.

According to Eduard Shirkovskiy, chief of the Belarus KGB,

Oswald was under such tight surveillance that he was watched 24

hours a day. Virtually every method of gathering intelligence

information except for chemical substances and psychotropic

drugs were employed.

txt) "Well, maybe they did drop a few tablets in his glass, but

just the kind to make him let down his guard and be a little

more talkative," said the chief of the Belarus KGB.

‹txt> The dossier has another notable feature. The KGB claims

that there is

not a single indication in the case file that

Oswald was ever interrogated by Soviet intelligence agents. On

the one hand that is strange because the circumstances of

Oswald's appearance in the USSR and his subsequent behavior

should have prompted (and did in fact prompt!) the greatest

suspicion on the part of the KGB: in 1959 it was not just every

day that a tourist from America so stubbornly insisted on

political asylum.

‹tx*>Oswald arrived in Moscow as a tourist on 15 October 1959,

staying in Room 320 of the Berlin Hotel. The very next day he

went to the authorities to request political asylum and Soviet

citizenship - and was almost immediately refused. It was

reported to Oswald via the hotel's service bureau for foreigners

that his request had been denied, and that he must leave the

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USSR on 21 October.

‹txt›On 21 October, at 2:45 pm, U.S. citizen Lee Harvey Oswald

opened the veins in his left arm as a sign of protest against

his

treatment by Soviet authorities. He was taken to Botkinskaya

Hospital and his arm sewn up. A note written in English was

found on the table in his hotel room. It read: "Did I come here

just to find death? I love life."

‹txt› This life-loving foreigner

was so peculiar that he

petitioned the USSR Supreme Soviet several more times, asking

that it grant him political asylum, would under no circumstances

leave the USSR, and on 31 October 1959 made a

scene at the U.s.

Embassy, where

he allegedly publicly renounced his American

citizenship and went so far as to toss

his passport onto the

ambassador's desk.

txt›one would assume that it American intelligence services

encountered a Soviet citizen in the same situation they would

definitely. resort'to either a concealed or a direct.:

interrogation. The KGB claims we did not do so. Why not? We.'

probably had our own methods. The request by Oswald, who was

clever enough to attempt suicide to gain the attention of the

USSR'S leaders, was

finally granted. Anastas Mikoyan personally

gave orders to consider very carefully the American's request

for political asylum in a country for which, to all appearances,

he felt a great love.

‹txt›In November 1959 this troublesome individual was granted

the right to live in the USSR temporarily, with a residence in

Minsk, a city where the KGB was obviously counting on being able

to observe the American in calm surroundings. At least it was a

long way from the embassy, and he would associate mainly with

Soviets. If he did make any espionage contacts they would be

more obvious. in Minsk.

‹txt> According to information from Belarusan counterintelligence

personnel, that was in fact the main suspicion in regard to the

American - that he was working for foreign intelligence

agencies. The KGB's main effort to answer this question focused

on the dossier, which subsequently grew quite fat. The dossier

was marked "Case for agent processing." It is said that that is

a term previously used in counterintelligence to mean that the

client in question was being "felt out" with the help of a

network of agents..

‹txt)...In January 1960 Oswald moved to the capital of

Belorussia and Moscow handed the case over to Minsk, leaving in

the file applications from Oswald received by the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs and the USSR Supreme Soviet, a transcript of a

conservation with the doctor at Botkinskaya Hospital who sewed

up Oswald's slashed arm and who reported to the KGB that in his

opinion the American was capable of irrational acts, reports

proton the amashed a vas

from the external surveillance service in which Oswald is given

the code name

"Nalim," and apparently some other initial

documents as well.

‹txt›In Belorussia intelligence agents gave the new client

another code name -- Likhoy [Russian: "valiant" or "dashing"]

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(apparently

a plan on the name Lee Harvey) and set to work on

his case painstakingly and diligently. According to a

high-ranking counterintelligence officer, only one or two people

in the republic KGB had full information about the operation.

Several teams were set up, with none of them knowing what the

others were doing. According to some

sources the Oswald case

involved up to 20 agents recruited by the KGB.

‹txt) You can get an idea of how those agents were hired from the

recollections of one of Oswald's closest friends in the USSR:

Pavel Golovachev. He worked with the American in an experimental

shop at the Gorizont Radio Plant in Minsk, where Oswald had been

assigned to work as a

metalworker at the

lowest skills level.

‹txt›In January 1960, literally about two weeks after Golovachev

made the acquaintance of the foreigner who had unexpectedly

Fedorovich Kostyukov. At his home 18-year-old Pasha Golovachev

was shown photographs of some people that the agent called

criminals and was told that it was not good to deal on the black

market since he was the son of the pilot Pavel Golovachev, who

had been twice awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal.

Obviously the KGB was counting on the sheer mass of the

information to intimidate Pasha and make an informer out of him

by "clipping his wings." Finally it was proposed that Golovachev

meet with certain people several times a week and tell them

everything about Oswald.

‹txt>Pavel Golovachev will

not say whether he agreed to work for

the KGB, but judging by what he say it is clear that he has no

great love for that organization today, to put it mildly. In

1963, when Oswald was killed while being transferred to jail,

Golovachev wrote a letter to Lee Harvey's widow in America --

Marina Prusakova -- expressing his condolences. Subsequently he

was visited at home by KGB agents, who seized-all photographs of

Oswald and his wife, along with letters that Oswald sent to

Minsk after returning to the United States. Then Golovachev was

taken to KGB

headquarters, where according

to him

he was first

threatened with prison and then advised to keep a low-profile

and not say too much. Before, they let him go they for some

reason forced him to write a

request to the Main Post Office

asking for his letter back, even though it was

long since in the

hands of the KGB.

‹ txt>Then Pavel Golovachev was allowed to go home. He assumes

that all letters from Oswald addressed to him as well as the

negatives of the photographs which have become famous around the

world and were included in the Warren Commission's report are

still in the KGB archives.

‹tx*>Judging by what other friends of Oswald have said, the KGB

dossier must contain stacks of transcripts from the bugging of

Lee Harvey's apartment in Minsk. It has been

suggested that the

apartment was absolutely full of bugging equipment. Some sources

in Minsk claim that once the KGB "asked" Oswald's neighbors who

lived in the apartment directly above him to leave for two days.

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txt> It was probably at that time that everything was put in

slace. If you look at Oswald's apartment from the street,

then

it is obvious that the balcony of the apartment one story higher

is many times smaller than the balcony of Oswald's apartment.

consequently even a child could climb down into the American's

home, much less the KGB. So most likely everything that Oswald

said and did in his leisure time was recorded or at least

carefully listened to.

‹txt›In addition to the surveillance, the bugging and agents'

kon do one surved.

reports, the KGB made good use of various "plants," as

counterintelligence agents call them.

‹txt›For example, judging from certain hints, the dossier

contains a large number of documents

filed in the course of work

on the scenario that Oswald was possibly seeking contacts with

people who had access to classified information. It is likely

thät he was repeatedly put in contact with people who allegedly

possessed confidential information and was observed to gauge his

reaction. On another occasion someone tried to engage him in

• anti-soviet conversations. But according to his acquaintances

Oswald rarely made that sort of disclosure. All in all he

remained very aloof while living in the USSR, and his friends

generally tried not to take any interest in the American's past

or his plans for the future.

‹txt> Simultaneously the KGB attempted to determine Oswald's

attitude toward works by the founders of Marxism. According to

some

sources it was noted that the American not only had no

interest in political self-improvement, but also generally

shirked things like the frequent trade union meetings and mass

cultural events. That evidently aroused further suspicion,

because when he requested citizenship Oswald claimed that

he was

a communist to the core...

‹txt> Naturally the KGB attempted to carry out all these

undertakings as unnoticed as possible. Yet Oswald's friends and

acquaintances are convinced that he was well aware that he was

under surveillance.

‹txt> The American's upstairs neighbors - Semen Samuzlovich and

Mayya Abramovna Gertsovich - recall that Lee Harvey (Alik, as

they called him) and his wife Marina Prusakova warned them and

asked them to be more careful.

‹txt) "Marina once said to me

something like 'don't socialize

with us - that could cause unpleasantness'

Gertsovich.

," recalls Mayya

‹ txt ›Ernst Titovets,

a close friend of Oswald's in Minsk who is

today a professor

and a department head at the Belarusan

Scientific Research Institute for Neurology, Neurosurgery and

Physical Therapy, says that Lee Harvey clearly sensed ( and

perhaps actually knew?) that every step he took in the USsR and

his life after his return to

the United States would be

carefully scrutinized later. For example, there is

a curious

detail in the Soviet diary allegedly kept by Oswald in the USSR

and later published in the west, a diary that he is presumed to

have written after his return to the United States. The American

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describes Titovets as an active Komsomol member. The professor

says that may well be, but that he was never particularly noted

for his Komsomol

activism, and that Oswald was well aware of

that. Most likely, Titovets feels, that sentence was written in

order to protect his triend in Minsk it the fact that ha keot a

diary became known in the USSR), who could have been compromised

in the eyes of the Soviet authorities by his friendship with

foreigner.

txt> But the most interesting thing is that Oswald was not

actually overly fond of those authorities, despite all his

claims to the contrary. In any event, when he left for America

in June 1962 he handed his neighbor Mayya Gertsovich the

following text in the stairwell of their building:

‹txt>"Build communism by yourselves! You do not even know how to

smile like human beings here!"

stxt>The real builders of communism were in fact not smiling,

but rather trying very seriously to determine for what purposes

the American Lee Harvey Oswald came to the USSR.

•stxt>Today one can draw the following conclusions:

‹txt>1. The "Likhoy" described in the dossier did not carry

out

any intelligence assignments for foreign intelligence agencies

and was not of any interest to the KGB.

‹txt>2. Likewise, KGB representatives flatly deny that he was

ever recruited to work for Soviet intelligence. Since there is

no one someet veg

absolutely no way to confirm that at the present time, there is

volumes is too much for a person who had been recruited by the

KGB. In such cases all that would be compiled would be one thin,

top secret folder...

txt ›But in order

to arrive at the first conclusion the KGB

spent years watching relentlessly. Day after day the committee

shadowed every step by the American, who incidentally led

a very

socialist life style...

8h3> [11 Aug p 3)8/h3>

‹txt› [Text)

‹h3>III. A Metalworker's Job for a Metalworker ‹/h3>

‹txt>While the KGB

was filling its fat folders Oswald led a

normal Soviet life.

‹ txt›In January 1960 the American citizen, after receiving

permission to reside in Minsk, got his first job -- helping to

build the first workers' and peasants' state in the world. In

view of his past - as a U.S. Marine he was stationed at various

bases and serviced communications equipment - the authorities

assigned Oswald to the Gorizont Radio Plant as a metalworker

with the lowest salary of all -- R761 (rubles) per month (in

very old rubles). Plus a 40-percent progressive piece-rate wage.

- Pars of

‹txt›Researchers have always been puzzled by the choice of that

particular job. The problem is that Shop Number 25, where Oswald

a file, hammer, nails and other tools, was called an

"experimental" shop and until just recently was considered a

restricted

area. By no means everybody who worked at the plant

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was allowed to enter it. So why was an American, and a

suspect

one at that, immediately given a job at an off-limits facility?

txt> However, according to Mikhail Sychev, current deputy plant

director for

security, the plant was not secret at all in the

early 1960's: Shop Number 25 became a restricted area about two

years after Oswald

went back to the United States. True, other

people have claimed that supposedly some "secret"

prototypes

were made in the shop while Oswald worked there. But even if

that is true, that was not really all that illogical. On the

contrary, the KGB would have a splendid opportunity, without any

risk, to see how the American would behave.

txt›If something happened he could be picked up with ease.

stxt>But he did not have to be picked up. Oswald not only showed

no interest in what the plant was manufacturing, to all

appearances he was not even terribly interested

in his own job.

‹Ext>A. former co-worker, Konstantin Yalak, recalls that

initially the American was fairly good about performing

his

simple duties, which consisted of nothing more than basic sawing

and screwing in screws. But then metalworker Oswald began to

tighten fewer screws and spend more time with his feet up on the

table, complaining that he was not getting paid enough. It was

not enough to

live on!

‹txt> The foreign metalworker's co-workers felt that the American

was just complaining for the sake of complaining. Some people

might be having a hard time, but not him. Oswald did not just

As a living specimen of the supremacy of the :

socialist way of life he received an extra bonus from the Soviet

authorities. Each month Oswald was paid approximately R800 by

the Red Cross (obviously under the guise of humanitarian aid).

These payments continued until "Likhoy" wrote to the authorities

announcing his intention of returning to America.

‹txt›After that he ceased to receive financial assistance.

< txt)Financial support was not all he received. Oswald obtained

a one-room apartment on the fourth floor of a plant-owned

building in the very heart of downtown at 4 Kalinin St. (now 2

Kommunisticheskaya St.) with amazing speed. He arrived at the

plant in January 1960 and by March already

had something that

soviet citizens had to mainer nose

‹ txt> As Oswald's neighbors

Semen Gertsovich, who lived

on the fifth floor, recall it, there was a large family living

directly beneath them in Apartment 24. Those people had been

requesting larger. living quarters for a long time, yet their

requests had repeatedly been denied.

‹ txt> Then one fine day they were given a two-room apartment and

asked to move as quickly as possible. Repairs began at once on

the now-vacant apartment, and the repairs were done so quickly

and-so well that it was like nothing that had ever been seen in

that building before.

‹txt ›Then the American arrived. Mayya Gertsovich recalls that

she made Oswald's acquaintance by coincidence. Once there was no

not water in his apartment and she went out, leaving the tap

open. The water suddenly started flowing again and began running

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down into the apartment of a future suspect in the assassination

of the President of the United States. He came upstairs and made

a row, threatening to complain to the

plant. He spoke Russian

poorly, and it was hard to understand him.

< txt> They resolved the conflict. But the belligerent foreigner

did not greet his neighbors for

a long time afterwards...

‹txt > They got to know each other better when Oswald married a

woman from Minsk, Marina Prusakova. During that period he became

somewhat calmer, and by then he could speak Russian better.

txt> The Gertsoviches visited him at home and recall that Oswald

and his wife lived in very poor circumstances. They had some

give them: a

bookshelf, a kitchen table, two stools... In short, the. place

made a dismal impression.

‹txt›Ernst Titovets,

one of Oswald's best friends, states on

that point that oswald bought virtually nothing for the home.

From the very start, from the very first months of his life in

Minsk, it was somehow obvious that he did not plan on staying in

then of nie the inn

the USSR very long. Titovets claims he had no doubts about that

at all, and so was not surprised when Oswald decided to go back

to the United States...

txt>At the plant his co-workers reacted to Oswald's departure

without any particular sadness or regret. Oswald was pretty soon

forgotten. Naturally they remembered him in November 1963, when

the name

of the former metalworker from the Gorizont Plant

became famous around the world.

txt>In the experimental shop everyone shook their heads in

wonder at how such an ordinary and unremarkable person (and in

their opinion a poor worker) could go and kill President

Kennedy. There was even more talk when Oswald himself was shot

point-blank by Jack Ruby, the owner of a seedy bar, while being

secretly escorted to jail without security measures.

‹txt>But they did not shake their heads over"it for long: soon

afterwards KGB men came to the plant and advised them not to

engage

idle speculation. And generally to forget the fact that

an American had ever been there. Whereupon they went-and removed

from the local library a form containing a list of books that

Oswald had read.

Itxt> And then they went away.

<txt>While the whole world was saying that the man accused of

killing Kennedy had lived in the USSR and probably was

a Soviet

agent, the KGB went back to its dossier and began carefully

filing away newspaper clippings from around the world on the

progress of the murder investigation of the century.

txt>Later, after the furor had died down a bit, Oswald's Minsk

file was finally closed and relegated to the archives. Not only

specifically KGB data but also a tremendous amount of extremely

interesting information about the habits of the man accused of

murdering Kennedy were classified top secret.

<h3>[11 Aug p 818/h3>

‹ txt › [Text]

‹h3>IV. He Was Never a Sharpshooter‹/h3>

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<txt>Only after 30 years had passed did the existence of

Soviet dossier on Oswald become

public knowledge. And it is

understandable that the information contained in those KGB file

folders is of interest not only to journalists aduled her in

but also to some of Oswald's former friends

txt> They feel that they have a right to see the materials in

the file that concern them personally. One can only assume

that

the KGB had the people who came into contact with the American

checked out through its own channels. Anyone who had close

relations with the American undoubtedly appears somewhere in the

dossier.

‹txt›It

is not hard to imagine today who those people were: the

American who worked at the Gorizont Plant had a fairly limited

circle of friends. He had a buddy from the shop where he worked

-- Pasha Golovachev, the son of the pilot Golovachev who was

twize awarded the Hero of the Seviet Union medal. He became

friends with a man his own age, Erik [Ernst] Titovets, a student

at a medical institute, who was introduced to Lee Harvey by a

female interpreter. He also socialized with a man named

Aleksandr Romanovich Enger, who at the time worked at Gorizont

in the radio receiver division. Enger had had an interesting

life: as a skilled specialist he was sent abroad

to study, then

during the war Aleksandr Enger went to Argentina to escape the

• persecution of the Jews. From there he returned to the USSR. In

addition to an interesting life he also had two interesting

daughters -- Eleonora and Anita-Evelin. Most importantly, Enger

spoke English.

‹txt>As Titovets recollects, a chance to speak his native

language was important to Oswald - the American spoke Russian

poorly. At the time

Titovets himself was very interested in

English, and since in the 1960's it was difficult to find

someone

to talk with who was fluent in the language he attempted

to spend as much time as possible with Oswald. Ernst Petrovich

[Titovets] now recalls that at first he regarded the American as

something of a talking machine or a walking textboak= He

tape-recorded Oswald's voice, and then with the studiousness of

a future professor analyzed, the features of his pronunciation,

his vocabulary, and so on. Incidentally, Titovets still has

those tapes, along with many letters written from America by

Oswald, at his home - for some reason the KGB did not seize

them.

txt) Naturally Oswald and Titovets did not just speak English

together at the time. They were 20 years old, and there were

plenty of attractive girls in Minsk. So the two buddies probably

had

something to keep them occupied.

‹txt> The pair were regulars at dances and in groups of young

people.

txt›It is difficult to say what elsa Lee Harvey did while he

was in Minsk... It appears that he never did anything for very

long. For instance, he bought a camera, but then never learned

to take pictures very well.

10

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txt› He bought a radio so he could listen to Voice of America,

which at that time was not being

jammed here. Incidentally, that

radio once broke and Oswald -- a

U.S. Marine who had specialized

in electronics -- could not repair it. His friends helped him

out - all he would have had to do was straighten out a little

plate. (Incidentally, even that incident is recorded-in the

dossier - counterintelligence obviously concluded that Oswald

could not grasp even the simplest radio devices, and therefore

had not undergone any special intelligence training).

{txt>Generally speaking the Balorussian KGB came up with the

wildest notions. For instance, counterintelligence was very

upset when in August 1960 Oswald joined the plant hunting club

are the plane hunting cdub

and bought a single-barreled TOZ [Tulskiy oruzheynyy zavod --

Tula Weapons Plant] hunting rifle. Later, after Kennedy was

killed, it was that rifle that gave rise to the widely

circulated stories and speculation that Oswald had always been

crazy about weapons and never missed a chance to practice

shooting. His wife Marina Prusakova, in her memoirs published in

the West, also pointedly focused on this hunting toy, which

Oswald allegedly made a great fuss over.

txt> Naturally at the time the KGB was not aware of how

important every detail of Lee Harvey's relationship with weapons

would be to the world.

txt>When counterintelligence found out about the TOZ it came up

with its own version:

"Likhoy" wanted to use hunting as an

excuse to wander around in the vicinity of secret facilities.

‹txt>Of course the KGB received a detailed report on every trip

to the woods. True, it did not discover anything criminal -

Oswald was not looking for missile silos and did not take any

strolls under barbed wire. But in this connection a very

interesting detail did come out: the American who, according to

the official version of Kannedy's assassination, was a

super-sniper actually shot very poorly. Very poorly...

txt> That is confirmed by David Zvagelskiy, formerly head of the

Gorizont Plant's physical culture club. According to him

shooting match

was once held at the plant. On that oecasion

everyone was given a Margolin pistol and herded onto the

shooting range -- to prepare "for labor and defense," as the

saying went.

‹txt>Zvagelskiy remembers Oswald well. He arrived at the match

in a yellow leather jacket. He held the pistol in two hands,

draw it cowboy-style and took aim. They tried to explain to him

that here in the USSR that was not the way people shot. To which

Oswald replied that, well, that was they way they did it over

there. He proceeded

to fire two or three shots at a fairly large

he would give the results a

target from a distance of 25 mirers. David Zvagelskiy says that

- there were other people

at the plant who were much better shots.

txt> After the match Oswald was not seen at the shooting range

again.

ítxt>As

for the TOZ, the metalworker with the code name "Likhoy"

did not keep it very long: after a few trips into the woods

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Oswald sold it to a second-hand store. For 18 rubles. A fact.

which, incidentally, is also racorded in the KGB dossier, along

with

all the rest of the American's leisure time activities.

txts People in the employ of the KGB were present at every

eat or the door thake

dance, party or festival attended by the U.S. citizen while he

was in Minsk. Maybe he danced with them, had a drink with them

or talked with them, never realizing that every step he took was

being recorded and filed away in those secret cardboard files.

txt) Just as Oswald could

sual a cout a nor haven

not have guessed that the evening of

17 March 1961 when he and

Erik Titovets went to a dance on the

medical institute's evening at the Palace of Trade Unions would

also be painstakingly described.

< txt> The dossier mentions the fact that that was the day he made

the acquaintance of a 19-year-old Minsk pharmacy worker named

Marina Prusakova, the woman who two months later would become

his wife.

‹Ext> The story of that. marriage is a topic in itself.

8h3> [13 Aug p 6]8/h3>

‹txt > [Text]

5h3>V. In Love by His Own Choice? 1/13>

‹txt›Minsk pharmacy employee Marina Prusakova, who has gone down

in history thanks to her spouse, still prompts many questions

and hypotheses among students of the Kennedy assassination.

‹txt›For exampla: was Oswald's Soviet wife a KGB agent? If not,

then why is she listed in some documents as Marina Nikolayevna

and in others as Marina Aleksandrovna? Why should Oswald have •

married a Russian woman at all? Could he have come to the USSR

with the prior intention of simply living here for a short time

and finding the first female citizen who came his way in order

eventing the first, Pe

orivat, Penale souls

to eventually compromise the Soviet Union after a brilliantly

planned and executed FBI/CIA assassination of Kennedy?

txt> The latter version is currently the most actively discussed

around the world, and many people are inclined to consider it

the most likely. History will probably judge who is right and

who is wrong. The facts tell us the following.

‹txt> People who are familiar with the Soviet dossier on Oswald

swear that Marina Prusakova was not working for the KGB. The

irregularities in connection with her patronymic are purely a

family matter. Her father was in fact named Nikolay, and thus

she was Nikolayevna. But her mother remarried after her daughter

was

born, and her second husband was named Aleksandr Medvedev.

Obviously the patronymic Aleksandrovna showed up in some places

because of her stepfather -- merely the result of a mistake.

‹ txt›Marina's early life was a difficult one. Her mother died,

her stepfather. married another woman, and she was a complete

stranger in

the new woman's house. Then she moved to Minsk,

where she lived with relatives

a maternal uncle named Ilya

Vasilyevich Prusakov and his wife Valentina Guryevna Prusakova.

There she got a job in a pharmacy.

‹txt›Fate was preparing a future

for her anywhere but in a

pharmacy.

txt›In early March 1961 she met Oswald at a dance at the Place

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...

of Trade Unions. After that evenirig he almost immediately became

ill with an ear infection.

itxt› The American was sent

to the hospital, and Marina

began to

visit him. Less than two months later, on

31 April 1961, the

marriage of citizen Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, Russian, born

1941 in the city of Molotovsk, Arkhangelsk Oblast, and U.s.

citizen Lee Harvey Oswald, born 1939 in New Orleans, was

racorded by the state ragistry office in Minsk's Leninskiy Rayon

as file No. 416.

txt) The speed with which prusakova's marriage to the foreigner

was registered is enviable, since nowadays

about three

months batwaan

the time one submits a marriage application and

the actual marriage. How could it be that the marriage of an

American was approved so rapidly, and in the 1960's at that?!

That seems strange -- more than a

little strange. On the other

hard, the explanation could be quite simple: though we were

• experiencing a thaw with America, we still continued to

paternalistically chide it for its capitalism, and suddenly here

was this propaganda tidbit. One of their people had defected to

us, and fallen in love with

a Soviet citizen to boot. Why not?

‹txt > The coincidence just seemed a bit strange.

‹txt ›In moments of

openness Marina Prusakova complained to her

neighbor Mayya Gertsovich that her husband was a tyrant and was

always making a row about something, that he brought virtually

no money home; and that he demanded rare steak and wine for

breakfast. He really did not love her at all, and that was

probably his assignment -- to marry her. When it suddenly became

clear that Oswald was preparing to leave for the United States,

Marina said that there was no way that she would go to America,

and that her husband was teaching her English but that she had

no desire to speak that language.

{txt›Once her neighbors aven tried to. convinca her. to go to

America. They argued that Oswald's mother lived there, so maybe

things would be easier for them there. In Minsk there was

virtually no furniture in their home.

‹txt>Lee Harvey's first daughter, whom he named June-Marina, was

born in 1962 and slept in a washtub. What kind of life was that?

‹txt>But Marina told her neighbors that America was not for her.

‹txt > To hear Oswald's friends in Minsk tell it, things were a

bit different. Citizen Prusakova had a reputation in Minsk as a

woman who was

a little fickle, to put it mildly. According to

information from several sources, in America Oswald once even

hit Marina when he accidentally discovered that she was writing

to some man in Minsk: a latter was returned because

Marina had

not put enough. postage on it.

‹txt>Oswald's friend Ernst Titovets is convinced that Prusakova,

being a very practical woman, was the one who sought out an

American to marry. Oswald was dating and had proposed to another

woman, who was working

as an assembler in the same shop where he

worked

as a metalworker. But she rejected the American, who

appeared to have actually loved her.

ítxt›Nevertheless, Lee Harvay's marriage to Marina in no way

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changed his ideas on the sacredness of the institution of

marriage. Ernst Titovets claims that Oswald literally worshipped

the family, and after the birth of his daughter was a very

changed

man. He was the one

who washed and ironed his daughter's

diapers and looked aftaï her. Marina, in the opinion of Titovets

and Pavel Golovachev, another close friend of Oswald's, was a

sly young woman, and all her protestations that she did not want

ovache, at nervote

to go to America

were most likely aither coquatiy or pretence.

By the time she left for the United States she was making

derogatory remarks about the socialist system as wall as any

American could have done.

txt> In response Oswald told her something approximately like

this: "No matter what happens to you

in the future, never say

anything bad about the Soviet Union."

txt>Which, incidentally, did not keep Oswald on the day of his

departure from Minsk, while standing in the stairwell of their

building with Marina, a suitcase, a backpack and a

three-month-old daughter in his arms, from telling his neighbor

to go on building communism herself, without any help from him.

‹txt>That farewell to his neighbor took a minute, maybe less.

Yet according to several

sources it took Oswald more than a

year-and-a-half to say those words.

‹txt>There is evidence that he first declared his intention to

return to the United States as early as December 1960, when he

had only lived in the USSR for a little over a year. What about

the superiority of the socialist way of life? Who would flee

from a country where universal happiness prevailed?

txt›It is said that attempts were even made to prevent the

American from leaving. Pavel Golovachev, one of Oswald's

friends, relates how once Lee Harvey signed up for an excursion

to Moscow with other plant workers. But he was told that the

excursion had been cancalled, even

though it actually took

place. Some of

Oswald's former colleagues repeatedly told me

about rumors circulating at the time that once Oswald triad to

go to Moscow by train but was taken off the train and sent home

- supposed because mourne

was sprictly regulate evement of foreigners within the. country

txt)Yet, on the other hand, what point was there in working so

persistently to hold on to him? The KGB had already written him

off when it came to the

conclusion that he was hopelessly

uninteresting to the Soviet intelligence services. Furthermore,

Lee Harvey Oswald was still an American citizen; he did not hold

a passport with the hammer-and-sickle cover at all. (There was

story that he allegedly threw his American passport on a desk in

the embassy and left it there. In fact he kept his U.s. passport.

- No. 1733242 -- the whole time he lived in the USSR, and that

is confirmed by KGB information.)

‹txt>Clearly, too much pressure on "Likhoy" could turn into a

scandal.

‹txt> Furthermore, the U.S. Embassy, which Oswald did eventually

reach, obviously took an interest in him as well. Buying tickets

to Ameriça took money. According

to some sources about $400.

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## Page 18

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There was nowhere a matalworker could have gotten that amount...

txt)Yet nevertheless he left with his wife and child. His

mother wrota to him that she could not send him the monay for

the trip bacause she was

saving up to halp get the family

settled when they arrived. So it must be assumed that Oswald got

help from the embassy.

itxt It was in connection with the departure of Lee Harvey

Oswald and Marina that the KGB added an additional volume -. the

sixth - to the dossier. That volume contained materials

gathered in the course of a special investigation conducted

prior to their departura.

‹txt›It is said that this was a customary procedure in such

cases. Questionnaires, permission to exit, questioning of

relatives, affidavits, forms on knowledge of military secrets

and state secrets, information on loyalty to the socialist

system... It appears that nothing serious was found, since the

sixth folder is the smallest of

all the volumes in the dossier,

and probably contains only a few documents.

txt>of course, no one knows what kind of documents they are.

‹txt>But it is

interesting to note that one fine day, after

gathering up his things, Oswald went to the Minst train station.

There to see him off were the Engers - a family he was friends

with -- and his friend Pavel Golovachev. Ernst Titovets, cited

in all the sources as Oswald's best friend, did not come to see

his friend off, later explaining that he could not because he

was busy. Golovacher took a pictura of the young couple saying

goodbye from the window of the train as it pulled out of the

station. That train carried away from Minsk the mystery of Lee

Harvey Oswald, the main accused of killing Kennedy.:

‹txt›Fact: not a single one of the people I interviawed in Minsk

believed for a second that the American they knew 30 years ago

was capable of. killing the President of the United States.

< txt>Speaking separately they all repeated thé same thing:

Oswald was merely set up to take the fall. He got involved in a

plot in which he was used as bait by the very major forces which

actually carried out the assassination.

stxt›Ernst Titovets is even writing a book on this subject,

investigating the moral aspects of sacrificing an individual

human life for political purposes...

< txt>KGB representatives who ara familiar with the contents of

dossier No. 31451 are also convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was

not independently.capable of preparing and carrying out an

undertaking as major as Kennedy's assassination. It appears that

to counterintelligance officers

in this country this is a matter

of some sort of strange professional jealousy. How could it be,

they reason, that we could write him off as a person absolutely

unstited to

carry out any serious assignments, as an ordinary

and unremarkable individual, and then that less than one year

after laaving the USSR for the United States he could kill the

President of the United States?! Does that mean that the

round-the-clock surveillance, the tricks and traps, the

scenarios and suppositions, in short, all the KGB work that is

15

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being kept secrat to this very day, were simply worthless?

<txt)KG8 personnel are clearly not fond of such conclusions.

some of them cling to the theory that oswald was just a link in

a very major operation, one in which he was simply assigned a

role, with no concept of the overall scala of the operation. And

12222

even that was more than Minsk knew...

'txt)...Hera the reaction to the news of Kennady's assassination

was unique. On 23 November 1963, one day after the tragedy, what

had happened was broadcast on talavision, along with a

photograph of the man arrested for assassinating the President

of the United statas.

<txt>It was Lea Harvey Oswald.

‹ txt) "Good lord, that's our Alik! That can't be!" exclaimed

Mayya Gertsovich, who had once tried to explain to the future

suspect in the Kennedy assassination that she had accidentally

let water run down into his apartment, and that it was not worth

complaining to the

plant about.

‹/article›

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dele

-SCTIONS

7 April 1998

MEMORANDUM FOR:

T. Jeremy Gunn

Executive

Director, ARRB

FROM;

J. Barry Harrelson

JFK Project Officer

Historical Review Program

SUBJECT:

ARRB Request No. CIA-IR-33,

FBIS Files On Assassination

1. The following is responsive to subject request.

2. The ARRB requested information on how FBIS-USR-92-

112. was filed; if the FBIS database may be searched by name;

guested tabase may

and, if FBIS has any files on Oswald.

3. UR-92-112 is the translation of several articles in

Izvestiya about Oswald while he was in the USSR which was

found on the Internet.

These articles within USR-92-112

-would be incorporated into an appropriate FBIS publication

(JPRS or FBIS Report) • Unclassified FBIS reports are

Information Service.

The USR-92-112 articles would also be

included in the AFS (Automated FBIS System), thus a keyword

search on "OSWALD" would be feasible. FBIS

does not keep

any past or current files on Oswald.

4. If you require anything further in this regard,

please advise.

Bey are for

---