by Jim Marrs
On February 1, 1961, less than a week after Mrs. Oswald’s Washington visit, the State Department sent a “Welfare-Whereabouts” memo to Moscow. On February 13, 1961, the US embassy in Moscow received a letter from Oswald dated February 5, stating, “I desire to return to the United States, that is if we could come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any legal proceedings against me.”
Secretary Snyder was understandably astonished that Oswald should write to him just after he had been asked to locate the ex-Marine. Mrs. Oswald saw the rapidity of the response from her son as an indication the US government was in contact with her son while in Russia.
The Warren Commission attributed Oswald’s sudden reappearance to mere coincidence, in light of the fact that routine queries about Oswald had not yet been initiated by the American embassy.
In his letter, Oswald again showed unusual knowledge of the legalities of citizenship. He pointed out that he had never “taken Russian citizenship” and added, “If I could show [the Soviets] my American passport, I am of the opinion they would give me an exit visa.”
Perhaps recalling Hoover’s memo of the previous summer, the State Department informed Snyder that Oswald’s passport was to be delivered in person.
On May 16, 1961, after some written sparring with the embassy, Oswald further complicated the entire matter by writing:
Since my last letter I have gotten married. . . . My wife is Russian, born in Leningrad, she has no parents living and is quite willing to leave the Soviet Union with me and live in the United States. . . . I would not leave here without my wife so arrangements would have to be made for her to leave at the same time I do.
Oswald was ready to return to the United States, but only with his new bride.
A Whirlwind Romance
A little more than a month after telling the American embassy that he wished to return home, Oswald met the Russian woman who would become his wife and a chief witness against him after the assassination.
Around March 17, 1961—nobody seems to be certain of the date, including Marina—Oswald attended a trade union dance at the Palace of Culture in Minsk. Here he met nineteen-year-old Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova, who was the hit of the party in a red brocade dress and hairstyle “à la Brigitte Bardot.” Oswald was introduced to her as “Alik” and soon they were dancing.
Marina said they spoke Russian and she believed “Alik” to be a Soviet citizen, but from the Baltic area—Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania—based on his accent. She was greatly surprised to learn this man was really an American named Lee Harvey Oswald.
After the dance, Oswald and Marina visited in the home of friends, where Oswald spoke up in defense of the United States, saying that while there were defects such as unemployment and discrimination, there still was “more democracy.”
Oswald wrote in his “diary,” We are going steady, and I decide I must have her, she puts me off, so on April 15 I propose, she accepts.”
They married on April 30, less than six weeks after first meeting.
In later years, Marina exhibited a strange memory loss about many aspects of their meeting, whirlwind romance, and wedding. She told varying stories as to who first introduced her to Oswald, and then finally stated she just couldn’t remember. She also told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that Oswald had proposed to her “a month and a half” before their wedding. This would mean Oswald proposed the first night they met. However, this was by no means the only inconsistency in Marina’s recollections.
Marina claimed to be born on July 17, 1941, in the northern seaside town of Molotovsk. A war baby, she never knew who her father was and took her mother’s name. In the book Marina and Lee, she suddenly revealed that she had found out that her father was a Soviet traitor named Nikolai Didenko. This may be a small matter, but it was never revealed to the Warren Commission. Her mother left her as an infant with elderly relatives in Arkhangelsk, where she grew up until rejoining her mother at age seven. By then her mother had married an electrical worker named Alexander Medvedev and by 1952, the family was living in Leningrad. Here Marina attended a pharmacist school.
Upon graduation in June 1959, she was assigned a job in a pharmaceutical warehouse, but quit after only one day and spent the rest of the summer on vacation. At the end of the summer, she went to Minsk to live with her maternal uncle, Colonel Ilya Vasilyevich Prusakov, a ranking officer in the MVD (the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, portions of which functioned as secret police), a leading citizen in Minsk, and a Communist Party member.
It was at her uncle’s urging that she attended the dance where she met Oswald. Marina’s uncle apparently never protested her marriage, although his position could have allowed him to study Oswald’s KGB file, which must have shown that Oswald had written to the American embassy about returning to the United States, since it is now known that the KGB was keeping him under surveillance.
Within a matter of days after their marriage, Oswald told Marina he wanted to return to the United States. Soon Marina began to apply for the documents necessary to leave the Soviet Union. Her exit visas appear to have been expedited even though there were several problems with her background information. She stated her name as “Marina Nikolaevna,” which indicated her father’s name was Nikolai. She insisted, however, that she never knew the name of her father. Her birth certificate identified her birthplace as Severodvinsk. This was the name given to Molotovsk, but not until 1957. Furthermore, since being a member of the Communist Party might cause problems in leaving Russia, she denied any membership. Actually, she was a member of the Komsomol, the Communist Party’s youth movement.
These discrepancies did not escape the notice of the CIA. Shortly after the assassination, a CIA memorandum noted:
At the time [the agency] was becoming increasingly interested in watching develop a pattern that we had discovered in the course of our bio[graphical] and research work: the number of Soviet women marrying foreigners, being permitted to leave the USSR, then eventually divorcing their spouses and settling down abroad without returning “home.” . . . We eventually turned up something like two dozen similar cases.
Noting that the birth certificate Marina brought to the United States was issued July 19, 1961, and that she had to have one to obtain a marriage license, author Edward Epstein concluded, “It thus seemed that new documents—and possibly a new identity—were furnished to Marina after it was decided that she would accompany Oswald to the United States.”
On July 8, 1961, Oswald had flown to Moscow to retrieve his passport at the American embassy. Since he had never technically defected, his passport was promptly returned, although the State Department cautioned the embassy to proceed carefully in Oswald’s “involved case” and to make sure “that the person in communication with the Embassy is . . . Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Accounts of Oswald’s time during this period are filled with inconsistencies. For example, in his diary he claims to have returned to Minsk from Moscow on July 14. However, on August 1, Rita Naman and two other tourists reported meeting a young American in Moscow and snapping his picture. Two photos made by these tourists were displayed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded the young American was Oswald.
With all their applications made, the Oswalds settled down to wait for approval to leave Russia.
To further complicate the situation, a baby girl—June Lee Oswald—was born to Marina on February 15, 1962. On May 10, the Oswalds heard from the American embassy that everything was in order and that they should come to Moscow to sign the final papers.
It was during this time that Marina noted a cooling in Oswald’s attitude toward her. He became reclusive and irritable. This coolness was to increase after they left Russia. “Lee changed,” Marina told the Warren Commission. “I did not know him as such a man in Russia.” It was almost as if he had made up the story of his love and instead was simply following some sort of orders in his courtship. Afterward, with his assignment comple
ted, he didn’t bother to act like his love was real.
On May 24, 1962, the Oswalds again were in Moscow to attend to the final details of their departure from Russia. On June 1, Oswald signed a promissory note at the American embassy for a repatriation loan of $435.71, the money needed for his return, and the couple boarded a train that same evening.
Their trip home also has nagging indications of intelligence handling. The Warren Commission said the couple crossed out of communist territory at Brest. Yet Marina’s passport was stamped at Helmstedt, one of the major checkpoints on the East German border. Intriguingly, Oswald’s passport shows no Helmstedt stamp at all, raising the possibility that he somehow traveled a different route from Marina.
Arriving in Amsterdam, the Oswalds stayed not in a hotel, but in a private establishment recommended by someone in the American embassy in Moscow, according to Marina. She described this place variously as a “private apartment” and as a “boardinghouse.” While the official record shows they stayed here only one night, after the assassination Marina recalled a three-day stay and she reacted with confusion when questioned about this by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. She did note that advance arrangements had been made at this place and that their hosts spoke English.
Many researchers suspect that Oswald, and perhaps Marina, were “debriefed” by US intelligence during their Dutch stopover. Even the chief counsel of the Warren Commission called the episode “unexplained.”
Furthermore, in a statement to the Secret Service just after the assassination, Marina gave a version of their trip from Russia that was totally different from that given in the Warren Report. She claimed they “then arrived in New York by air . . . stayed in some hotel in New York City for one day and then went by train to Texas.”
The Warren Commission, backed by tickets, documents, and Marina’s later testimony, stated that the couple arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey, on June 13, 1962, aboard the ship SS Maasdam. There they were met by Spas T. Raikin, a representative of the Traveler’s Aid Society, which had been notified of the Oswalds’ arrival by the State Department. Raikin helped whisk the Oswalds through customs and then found them a place to stay in New York. He later arranged contact with Lee’s brother, Robert, who sent the couple $200 for plane fare to Fort Worth, Texas.
According to BBC researcher and author Anthony Summers, Raikin was also an official with an anticommunist émigré group with links to both the FBI and US military intelligence as well as anticommunist groups in New Orleans “headquartered in the very building [544 Camp Street] where, in months to come, Oswald’s name was to be linked with CIA-backed anti-Castro activists.”
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) had approved the financial aid to Oswald upon urging from the State Department. In Dallas HEW records, it states that Oswald went to Russia “with State Department approval,” an allegation later repeated by Oswald himself on a New Orleans radio program.
When the Oswalds arrived in New York, they had seven suitcases. When they left by plane, they had only five. Asked about the dwindling number, Oswald stated he had sent them ahead by rail. However, when the couple arrived in Fort Worth, Robert stated they had only two suitcases.
The lost baggage may have something to do with their flight to Texas, which, although many direct flights were available, went by way of Atlanta. Atlanta was the home of Natasha Davison, the mother of Captain Davison, the US attaché with intelligence connections who had met with the Oswalds in Moscow.
Yet, with all this evidence suggesting that Marina may have been part of some unrevealed intelligence program, she was accepted publicly by the Warren Commission as “a simple, devoted housewife.” Privately, Commission members thought differently. At one point, they voiced the fear that she might be a KGB agent. Commission member Senator Richard Russell commented, “That will blow the lid if she testifies to that.” One Warren Commission lawyer described Marina as “a very different person [from her public image] . . . cold, calculating, avaricious.”
Some believe that Marina lied in many instances during her testimony to the Warren Commission. But keep in mind that the testimony of Oswald’s wife would not have been admissible had Oswald come to trial.
Despite all this, some of Marina’s testimony proved very damaging to Oswald. In the hours after the assassination, Marina was quoted as saying, “Lee good man. Lee not shoot anyone.” But after she was held for weeks by the federal authorities, her statements began to change. Instead of describing what a good husband Oswald had been, she began saying he was violent to her. After initially being unable to identify the Carcano rifle as her husband’s, she later described it as “the fateful rifle of Lee Harvey Oswald.” She also began to tell stories of other attempts at assassination by Oswald—one against Richard Nixon and another against General Edwin Walker.
Today Marina has reversed her statements of 1963–1964. More mature, with a good command of English, she has publicly made several astounding admissions, including:
—How federal authorities forced her Warren Commission testimony by threatening deportation and ordered her not to read or listen to anything pertaining to the assassination.
—That today she believes a conspiracy resulted in Kennedy’s death.
—Lee Harvey Oswald was an agent who “worked for the American government” and was “caught between two powers—the government and organized crime.”
—Oswald was “killed to keep his mouth shut.”
—That someone impersonated Oswald to incriminate him and “that’s no joke.”
—Lee Harvey Oswald “adored” President Kennedy.
In a 1988 interview published in Ladies’ Home Journal, Marina said:
When I was questioned by the Warren Commission, I was a blind kitten. Their questioning left me only one way to go: guilty. I made Lee guilty. He never had a fair chance. . . . But I was only 22 then, and I’ve matured since; I think differently.
By 1979, Marina had begun to doubt the official explanation of the assassination and even joined in efforts to have Oswald’s body exhumed due to serious questions concerning its identity. More on that later.
Considering the background of both Lee and Marina and the length of time Oswald spent in Russia, it seems inconceivable that they were not interrogated by US intelligence after their return. Yet the official story is that no US intelligence agency had any interest in this ex-Marine.
Considering the Marine career of Oswald and the military information available to him as a radar operator, it is equally unbelievable that the Soviets did not interrogate Oswald at great length, especially if they found out about his connections with the U-2 flights from Atsugi.
Yet, this is precisely what the Soviets claimed in what has to be one of the most bizarre aspects of the Kennedy assassination—an aspect kept from the American public by the Warren Commission.
A Soviet Defector’s Story
The strange story of Yuri Nosenko began on January 20, 1964, just two months after the events in Dallas.
Nosenko, an officer in the American Division of the KGB, had contacted the CIA initially on June 3, 1962, just two days after Oswald left Russia for the United States. Nosenko offered to spy for the Americans. However, nothing further had been heard from him and US analysts were highly suspicious of his offer.
Then on January 20, 1964, Nosenko landed in Geneva as part of a Soviet disarmament delegation. He soon made his way to a telephone and renewed his offer to American intelligence, but with a difference—this time he wanted to defect. His defection set in motion a chain of events that would lead to bitter divisions between the CIA and FBI as well as within the CIA itself.
Once he was in American hands, CIA officials were shocked to learn that Nosenko claimed to have been the KGB official who had personally handled the case of Lee Harvey Oswald during his stay in Russia. Nosenko said—based on two mental examinations made of Oswald—the KGB found the would-be defector not very bright and even “mentally unstable.”
and that the KGB had never debriefed Oswald about his military background or ever considered recruiting him as an agent.
That was exactly what many people in the CIA and on the Warren Commission wanted to hear. However, others in the agency were immediately suspicious of this man. After all, it appeared Nosenko had forever left a ranking position and his family simply to assure the US government that the man accused of killing the president was not a Soviet agent.
CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton was particularly wary of Nosenko. He observed that most of the information Nosenko provided revealing Soviet agents and operations was already known to the CIA prior to his defection. Furthermore, shortly after bringing Nosenko to the United States, CIA interrogators began to find errors and gaps in his testimony.
To make matters worse, Nosenko’s story was corroborated by one of the FBI’s deepest secrets—their own Soviet KGB defector referred to only by his code name, Fedora. Thus, if Nosenko was lying, then Fedora, too, became suspect.
In a remarkable attempt to resolve the issue, Nosenko underwent “hostile interrogation,” nothing new since 9/11 but shocking back then. He was kept in solitary confinement for 1,277 days under intense physical and psychological pressure. He was put on a diet of weak tea, macaroni, and porridge, he was given nothing to read, a light was left burning in his unheated cell twenty-four hours a day, and his guards were forbidden to speak with him or even smile. Toward the end of this ordeal, Nosenko was given at least two lie detector tests by the CIA. He failed both. But Nosenko did not crack.
The believers of Nosenko, headed by the CIA’s Richard Helms and J. Edgar Hoover, took his intransigence to mean that he was telling the truth about the KGB’s having no interest in Oswald. But doubts remained. So at the CIA’s request, the Warren Commission obligingly made no reference to Nosenko.
The counterintelligence faction, led by Angleton, still believed that the KGB contrived Nosenko’s defection for two purposes: to allay suspicions that the Soviets had anything to do with the JFK assassination and to cover for Soviet “moles,” or agents deep within US intelligence.
