Speaker 1: On October twenty first, nineteen fifty nine, four years before
Speaker 1: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an next marine
Speaker 1: by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald sat alone in
Speaker 1: a hotel room in Moscow, the heart of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: just weeks shy of his twentieth birthday, Oswald was attempting
Speaker 1: to renounce his American citizenship and defect to the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: After a few days of waiting, he finally received a
Speaker 1: letter informing him that his request had been denied. A
Speaker 1: Soviet official was on the way to escort him out
Speaker 1: of the country. Disturbed by the news, Oswald made a decision.
Speaker 1: He walked into the bathroom ran himself a bath. As
Speaker 1: steam filled the room, he got into the tub, grabbed
Speaker 1: a razor, and proceeded to carefully cut into his wrist.
Speaker 1: As the bathwater turned red, Oswald closed his eyes and waited.
Speaker 2: This is who killed jfk Sixty years later? What can
Speaker 2: we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history?
Speaker 2: And why does it still matter today? I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we heard about how the Warren
Speaker 1: Commission had manipulated evidence in order to prove that Lee
Speaker 1: Harvey Oswald was the lone gun since they claimed that
Speaker 1: only three shots were fired from behind and one had missed.
Speaker 1: That left two shots. The third shot was the fatal
Speaker 1: shot to the President's head. The second shot came to
Speaker 1: be known as the single bullet theory. The Warren Commission
Speaker 1: claimed that this magic bullet entered the President's back, went
Speaker 1: up and out his throat, then hit Connolly in his armpit,
Speaker 1: then his ribs, then his wrist, and then his thigh.
Speaker 1: The majority of the Parkland doctors who tended to Kennedy
Speaker 1: contradicted this. They said that the President's wounds were a
Speaker 1: result of shots that came from the front, which clearly
Speaker 1: points to shooters in locations other than the sixth floor
Speaker 1: of the Texas school Book Depository, and that would mean
Speaker 1: that whatever Lee Harvey Oswald was doing that day, he
Speaker 1: wasn't doing it alone.
Speaker 2: Regardless, the record shows that on September twenty fourth, nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four, the Warren Commission presented their evidence and formally
Speaker 2: named Lee Harvey Oswald the lone Gunman, which is the
Speaker 2: story that persists today right.
Speaker 1: The Commission painted Oswald as a loaner a mentally ill
Speaker 1: Soviet empathizer, an ex marine with an agenda. Even before
Speaker 1: the Warren Commission report was released, the public was fed
Speaker 1: a steady diet of press stories about Oswald the deranged
Speaker 1: lone gunman.
Speaker 3: Less than forty eight hours after the shooting, Dallas District
Speaker 3: Attorney Henry Wade boasted that he had quote sent men
Speaker 3: to the electric chair with less evidence. He went even
Speaker 3: further to say the following about Oswald quote, I would
Speaker 3: say that without any doubt, he is the killer. There
Speaker 3: is no question that he was the killer of President Kennedy.
Speaker 3: And then on December tenth, less than three weeks after
Speaker 3: the murder, the New York Times headline read quote Oswald
Speaker 3: assassin beyond a doubt, FBI concludes.
Speaker 2: And here's where I think it's important to dig into
Speaker 2: this historic moment. The only other murder of a president
Speaker 2: that carries a similar historic weight is the murder of
Speaker 2: President Lincoln, almost one hundred years earlier. But with Lincoln,
Speaker 2: there were no TV cameras covering moment to moment updates
Speaker 2: like there were in the Kennedy assassination. There were no
Speaker 2: kids like Rob Reiner who were sent home from school
Speaker 2: and then sat glued to their TVs to watch the
Speaker 2: whole thing unfold. The public wanted answers, and in that vacuum,
Speaker 2: a story began to unfold.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until years later, after a great deal
Speaker 1: of investigating, that a much different story would unfold. And
Speaker 1: that story starts with the words of Lee Harvey.
Speaker 4: Oswell, I'm just a pat of President. I'm just a patsy.
Speaker 2: A patsy is a guy who takes the fall for
Speaker 2: somebody else's scheme, a person who's manipulated into a position
Speaker 2: that ultimately leaves them powerless.
Speaker 4: If you don't.
Speaker 1: Learn who Lee Harvey Oswell really was, there's no way
Speaker 1: you can understand what happened on that day.
Speaker 2: I'd like to understand more about who Oswald was, his child,
Speaker 2: what motivated him, But kind of like I guess I'm
Speaker 2: asking for pop psych one oh one on Oswald.
Speaker 3: Oswald grew up in a broken home.
Speaker 2: That's Dick Russell.
Speaker 3: He never knew his father, who had died before he
Speaker 3: was born in nineteen thirty nine. His mother, Marguerite, placed
Speaker 3: him at a very young age in New Orleans with
Speaker 3: his two older brothers, and so he spent time in
Speaker 3: Foster care when he was very young.
Speaker 2: Did he stay in New Orleans his entire childhood?
Speaker 3: He ends up kind of bouncing around with his mother
Speaker 3: between various places, and when he's thirteen years old, they
Speaker 3: moved to New York City. Well, according to the official
Speaker 3: Warren Commission record, he stayed away from school and there
Speaker 3: were truancy charges that came.
Speaker 4: Up against him.
Speaker 3: So in the spring of nineteen fifty three he was
Speaker 3: remanded to a place called the Youth House in New
Speaker 3: York for psychiatric observation, and the chief psychiatrist there was
Speaker 3: a man who would later testify before the Warren Committed.
Speaker 3: His name was doctor Renatus Hartogs.
Speaker 5: Hello, doctor Harthogs. Yeah, oh, yes, this is Dick Russell.
Speaker 5: I'm the writer who called you the other day. So
Speaker 5: tell me what's on your mind. Okay, I'm as I said.
Speaker 5: Doing some research.
Speaker 3: Into the Warrant Commission, a Heartthog said Oswald had a cold,
Speaker 3: detached outer attitude and viewed his life in sort of
Speaker 3: a non participating fashion. He had a vivid fantasy life
Speaker 3: and turning around topics of omnipotence and power. So Heartog
Speaker 3: said he had diagnosed the teenage Oswald as a kid
Speaker 3: with personality pattern disturbance, schizoid features, and passive aggressive tendencies.
Speaker 1: Hearthogs testified that Oswald's psyche was so abnormal that he
Speaker 1: wanted to continue to examine them, and he did so.
Speaker 1: He placed the teenage Oswald in a three week study.
Speaker 1: And here you have the beginning of a narrative that
Speaker 1: starts to develop.
Speaker 3: But that narrative, and really everything we hear from Heartthogs
Speaker 3: has to be understood through the lens of who Heartthogs
Speaker 3: actually was. So let's look deeper into his past and
Speaker 3: the people he associated with.
Speaker 5: Today's my eighty sixth birthday. So today is I'm an
Speaker 5: happy birthday. I'm an old man. So see, I'd also
Speaker 5: heard that you didn't you work in the fifties with
Speaker 5: doctor Malletts. Doctor who Sidney Malletts. No, I didn't know
Speaker 5: the name.
Speaker 4: Sounds familiar to me.
Speaker 5: But he worked at Columbia Presbyterian. Oh no, no, really not.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, what Heartogs was telling me was not true.
Speaker 3: Sydney Malletts, who was a professor of psychology at the time,
Speaker 3: was under contract for the CIA, and evidence shows that
Speaker 3: Hertogs worked closely with doctor Malletts on a hypnosis program
Speaker 3: that was highly classified. Our dogs would tell the Commission
Speaker 3: that he found Oswald's personality so intriguing that he chose
Speaker 3: him for a seminar subject.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by the.
Speaker 3: CIA was working with troubled kids, finding troubled kids in
Speaker 3: various places and grooming them in different ways, and they
Speaker 3: would track them over the years to see if at
Speaker 3: some point they might be useful. Not too long before
Speaker 3: he died, I had a long interview with Sidney Gottlieb,
Speaker 3: who ran the CIA's Technical Services Division from the early
Speaker 3: fifties into the nineteen seventies. He told me about how
Speaker 3: the government experimented with LSD after it was introduced to
Speaker 3: the States in nineteen forty eight, so.
Speaker 6: It's factly nothing known about it at this time. We
Speaker 6: decided a group of people and myself that we needed
Speaker 6: simply to find out a lot about this material in
Speaker 6: a hurry, and that's what led.
Speaker 3: Kalpa Mkultra is a code name for an illegal human
Speaker 3: experimentation program designed by the CIA. The goal was to
Speaker 3: find a way to control the human mind, and they
Speaker 3: were experimenting also with so called brainwashing.
Speaker 6: So it's like most government programs. It took off and
Speaker 6: it got going, you know, and then it was hard
Speaker 6: to stop it.
Speaker 3: They gave LSD to the subjects without their consent, along
Speaker 3: with electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse,
Speaker 3: and other forms of torture. I ushed to muse a
Speaker 3: lot about boy, this is the only place you can
Speaker 3: do illegal things. Lee on in a way? Is this great?
Speaker 3: And you got the whole blessings of this puncil gufflement?
Speaker 2: So are you saying you think Lee Harvey Oswald might
Speaker 2: have been part of the MK ultra program.
Speaker 3: There's no way to know for certain, but it seems
Speaker 3: this was the backdrop against which Oswald and other young
Speaker 3: people were cultivated.
Speaker 1: What we know for sure is that Oswald had a
Speaker 1: troubled past, and after being studied by doctor Hartogs, at
Speaker 1: age sixteen, he tried to enlist in the Marines. He
Speaker 1: wanted to serve his country. He was turned down, and
Speaker 1: then the next year he tried again and this time
Speaker 1: he got in.
Speaker 2: Where's he sent?
Speaker 3: First September of nineteen fifty seven, He's assigned to the
Speaker 3: Atsugi Naval Air Base just outside Tokyo. In the years
Speaker 3: after World War Two, Japan became ground zero for Cold
Speaker 3: War espionage, and at Sugi was the American base in
Speaker 3: the area. It was a hotbed of activity. There were
Speaker 3: a number of intelligence groups operating out of Tokyo, including
Speaker 3: the CIA and a group known as Field Operations Intelligence
Speaker 3: or FOI. I'll get into FOI later. At Sugi is
Speaker 3: where U two spyplanes were stationed to fly secret missions
Speaker 3: over the Soviet Union. Oswald became a radar operator and
Speaker 3: would certainly have been privy to the fact that these
Speaker 3: U two planes were flying out of Atsugi and going
Speaker 3: on these missions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even though he's just a radar operator, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a low level guy. Oswald is hanging out
Speaker 1: at a place called the Queen Bee, which is one
Speaker 1: of the most expensive exclusive nightclubs in Tokyo.
Speaker 3: Oswald was earning less than eighty five dollars a month
Speaker 3: and take home pay. And typically you'd go to the
Speaker 3: Queen Bee and it would cost you sixty five to
Speaker 3: one hundred dollars for the night. Oswald he didn't have
Speaker 3: any of the money to do that. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was it was basically a night spot that catered to pilots,
Speaker 3: including the U two officers, not marine privates.
Speaker 1: So you have this young marine who didn't finish high school,
Speaker 1: this odd ball loaner, hanging out at an exclusive officers club.
Speaker 4: What is he doing there?
Speaker 2: What was he doing there?
Speaker 1: Well, one night, he's having a good time. I'm he's
Speaker 1: spending time with a beautiful Japanese woman when he is
Speaker 1: spotted by an intelligence officer named Richard case Nagel, someone
Speaker 1: that we're going to hear a lot.
Speaker 4: About throughout the podcast.
Speaker 3: I interviewed Nagel throughout the nineteen seventies, eighties, and nineties,
Speaker 3: and I eventually wrote a book about him called The
Speaker 3: Man Who Knew Too Much For Now. All you need
Speaker 3: to know is that in the late fifties he was
Speaker 3: working for an intelligence group called Field Operations Intelligence, operating
Speaker 3: out of Tokyo. Nagel told me that both he and
Speaker 3: Oswald later became part of an operation that tried to
Speaker 3: convince a Soviet colonel named Nikolai Erashkin to defect to
Speaker 3: the United States. It was an intelligence priority to try
Speaker 3: to get high level Soviets to defect, and Oswald was
Speaker 3: part of this. Were they successful, No, But Oswald was
Speaker 3: doing more than just trying to meet women at the
Speaker 3: Queen Bee. His odd tenure in the Marines was just
Speaker 3: getting started.
Speaker 4: After a SUGI, didn't he go back to the United
Speaker 4: States for a little while.
Speaker 3: He goes home shortly before Christmas on nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: and he spends a month's leave with his mother and
Speaker 3: then he reports to Marine Air Control Squadron number nine
Speaker 3: in Santa Ana, California. The Marines who served with him
Speaker 3: there said that they often called him Comrade Oswaldkovich because
Speaker 3: he would you start talking about the wonders of Karl Marx.
Speaker 3: Another Marine who was stationed with him by named David Bucknell,
Speaker 3: said that Oswald told him he was going to be
Speaker 3: discharged and he was going to Russia to go to
Speaker 3: work on an assignment for American intelligence.
Speaker 4: And then there's Tosh Plumley.
Speaker 2: Tosh Plumley worked for the US Army and Military Intelligence
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties. In the sixties he became a
Speaker 2: CIA operative. He was a mercenary pilot.
Speaker 7: Nineteen fifty nine was the beginning of NIXA at North Carolina.
Speaker 7: That was propaganda training operations, illusionary warfare training, and the
Speaker 7: object there was training us to take over communication sites
Speaker 7: and a spread propaganda.
Speaker 4: Was that the first time you met Oswald.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's when I first run into Lee.
Speaker 4: And at that point you knew that you were an
Speaker 4: operative for the CIA.
Speaker 7: I knew I was in special ops, but I wasn't
Speaker 7: sure I knew something something funny was going on. Of course,
Speaker 7: in those days, you got to take into account that
Speaker 7: we figured whatever the government told us and whatever military
Speaker 7: told us, and whatever was printed in the media was
Speaker 7: gospel truth.
Speaker 4: Was Oswald part of that.
Speaker 7: I was under the impression that Lee he was an
Speaker 7: operative and he was being trained for a specific operation.
Speaker 7: I was under the impression at that point that this man,
Speaker 7: this kid that I met my age, was part of
Speaker 7: the old original recruitment of young teenagers getting in trouble.
Speaker 3: Now, it wasn't only Plumbley who said this, Victor Marquetti,
Speaker 3: who was a CIA official who then wrote a very
Speaker 3: well known book in the nineteen seventies that exposed a
Speaker 3: lot of things as CIA didn't want out.
Speaker 2: The book is called The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.
Speaker 2: It refers to itself as quote the first book the
Speaker 2: US government ever went to court to censor before publication.
Speaker 1: The program in North Carolina was designed to leave the
Speaker 1: impression that these young, troubled men had become Communist sympathizers
Speaker 1: to make them appear to be disenchanted with the American system.
Speaker 2: Marquetti's book alleges that in nineteen fifty nine, the US
Speaker 2: was struggling to get information out of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: so they ran this operation out of Nag's head on
Speaker 2: about forty young men.
Speaker 1: The CIA was trying to gain an advantage against the Soviets.
Speaker 1: They wanted to have a group of young men under
Speaker 1: their control to be thought of as read so they
Speaker 1: cultivated these young men to look like legitimate commune and
Speaker 1: as sympathizers for potential use in covert operations.
Speaker 4: And Lee Harvey Oswald was.
Speaker 7: There primarily he was recruited I think at that point
Speaker 7: in time to be a defector, disgruntled person to go
Speaker 7: to Russia. And I think that you too, assignment was
Speaker 7: a cover in order to get him into Russia.
Speaker 2: So two different people who knew him and the Marines
Speaker 2: say the same thing that Oswald was preparing to defect
Speaker 2: to the USSR as a fake defector. So how exactly
Speaker 2: does the U two assignment factor into that?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Having information about the United States top secret spy plane
Speaker 1: establishes him as a potential high value asset to the KGB.
Speaker 1: Now you combine that with the fact that he's learning Russian,
Speaker 1: he's preaching Mars, and he appears to be unhappy with America.
Speaker 1: Oswald then requests a dependency discharge to take care of
Speaker 1: his mother, where they grant the discharge to him three
Speaker 1: months ahead of when he's scheduled to be released from
Speaker 1: the Marines. And what does he do on the day
Speaker 1: he's discharged from the Marines. Does he go to take
Speaker 1: care of his mother. No, he picks up a new passport.
Speaker 2: So he's about to go to Russia, yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1: On September tenth, nineteen fifty nine, Oswald sails from New
Speaker 1: Orleans to London and then he catches a flight from
Speaker 1: London to Helsinki, Finland. After waiting five days for his
Speaker 1: passport to arrive, he takes a train from Finland to Moscow.
Speaker 3: When Oswald leaves the US, he's got a bank account
Speaker 3: that has a little more than two hundred dollars and
Speaker 3: the trip is going to cost at least fifteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: So is the assumption here that US intelligence is actually
Speaker 2: secretly footing the bill.
Speaker 1: Not only footing the bill, but guiding him on where
Speaker 1: to go, how to cross the border, and he.
Speaker 4: Seemed to know exactly what route to take.
Speaker 2: According to people like David Talbot, all of this starts
Speaker 2: to paint a clear picture.
Speaker 8: He was inserted, I believe as a spy. He was
Speaker 8: a false de factor. There's actual proof that Oswald was
Speaker 8: a spy.
Speaker 5: You were told by people in the Tokyo station that
Speaker 5: Oswald had been sent to Russia on a CIA mission.
Speaker 9: When I first heard this, I didn't really believe it,
Speaker 9: uh huh, And then I started getting curious.
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventy six, I interviewed CIA officer James Wilcott at
Speaker 3: the time Oswald was there. He worked in the finance
Speaker 3: department of the CIA stationed in Tokyo. He issued checks
Speaker 3: to secret agents, although they were all listed under code
Speaker 3: names under oath. He told the House Select Committee on
Speaker 3: Assassinations that he was aware that Oswald was a paid
Speaker 3: agent for the CIA.
Speaker 9: I paid out fun for Oswald over some period of
Speaker 9: time for the Oshald project, and the story I got
Speaker 9: was that he was sent to the Soviet Union as
Speaker 9: a double agent.
Speaker 2: So there are marines saying Oswald told them he was
Speaker 2: going to be a fake defector and now a CIA accountant,
Speaker 2: saying he actually paid Oswald if Oswald was employed by
Speaker 2: the CIA, something they denied for decades. How was that
Speaker 2: not headline news?
Speaker 9: The New York Time really really distorted and wanted my
Speaker 9: testimony that I gave before the House Cooler Committee.
Speaker 2: The New York Times says that there are quote several
Speaker 2: discrepancies in the recollections of mister Wilcott. It describes Wilcott
Speaker 2: as quote support staff, a low level worker. It says
Speaker 2: he cracked Oswald's code name as a result of hearsay
Speaker 2: at the agency months after the assassination. It is a
Speaker 2: brutal write up.
Speaker 1: The CIA immediately denied Wilcott's accusation, and after his testimony,
Speaker 1: Wilcott was put under surveillance and harassed. His tires were slashed,
Speaker 1: sugar was poured into his gas tank. He got a
Speaker 1: new job, and then his new employer fired him because
Speaker 1: even he was getting harassed, all to discredit him.
Speaker 3: The CIA has been doing this kind of stuff for years.
Speaker 3: People like James Angleton made their way up the CIA
Speaker 3: organizational chart by mastering the art of disinformation, So discrediting
Speaker 3: Wilcott was just another flavor of the same manipulation that
Speaker 3: they used on Oswald.
Speaker 9: He was just when he excited, he was a fancy.
Speaker 2: What's Oswald's first move when he gets to Russia.
Speaker 3: He goes into the American embassy and he throws down
Speaker 3: his passport and he says, I want to dissolve my
Speaker 3: American citizenship. So he's directed to a man named Richard Snyder,
Speaker 3: who is a consular official in the embassy who used
Speaker 3: to work for the CIA.
Speaker 1: Snyder testified to the Warren Commission that something was off
Speaker 1: about Oswald.
Speaker 3: Oswald Hans Snyder a note affirming that his allegiances to
Speaker 3: the Union of Soviet Socialist republics.
Speaker 1: Then Oswald makes this very public proclamation that he wanted
Speaker 1: to defect and that he had top secret information about
Speaker 1: the U two spy plane to offer to the Soviets,
Speaker 1: And Snyder says, and this is a quote he would
Speaker 1: make available to the Soviet Union, such knowledge as he
Speaker 1: had acquired while in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 4: Concerning his specialty.
Speaker 3: Snyder said that quote this was part of a scene
Speaker 3: he had rehearsed before coming into the embassy. It was
Speaker 3: a pre planned speech. And it wasn't just Snyder who
Speaker 3: thought it was weird. There was another official there named
Speaker 3: John McVicker who testified to the Warren Commission that he
Speaker 3: thought Oswald was following a pattern of behavior in which
Speaker 3: he had been tutored by a person or person's unknown.
Speaker 4: This is a pivotal moment.
Speaker 1: One of the first things the American public was told
Speaker 1: about Oswald after the assassination was that he was an
Speaker 1: ex marine that had defected to the Soviet Union. It
Speaker 1: was a huge part of the narrative. The Warren Commission
Speaker 1: said that Oswald defected to the Soviet Union because he
Speaker 1: was a troubled young man. They never reported the fact
Speaker 1: that the CIA had a program to cultivate fake defectors.
Speaker 1: This wasn't known until the Church Committee revealed it in
Speaker 1: the mid seventies.
Speaker 4: So you have two competing narratives.
Speaker 1: One Oswald was interested in becoming a Soviet citizen, was
Speaker 1: willing to betray America and become I'm a trader, Or
Speaker 1: two he was instructed by the CIA as part of
Speaker 1: an intelligence operation.
Speaker 2: I want to know how the embassy officials Snyder and
Speaker 2: nick Vicker respond to Oswald.
Speaker 3: Snyder tries to talk Oswald out of renouncing a citizenship,
Speaker 3: and then he sends a confidential telegram to the State Department,
Speaker 3: which is forwarded to the CIA.
Speaker 1: You see, Oswald knows that US intelligence is going to
Speaker 1: be made aware if he starts offering secrets and speaking
Speaker 1: out loud like this to the Soviets.
Speaker 4: He's putting on a show.
Speaker 10: Those reports reached Engleton's office in early November nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2: That's Jefferson Morley again, creator of jfkfax dot Org.
Speaker 10: Angleton opens the CIA's first file in Oswald. He was
Speaker 10: of interest to the highest counterintelligence officer in the CIA
Speaker 10: for four years before President Kent he was killed.
Speaker 4: Did they track all of his movements during that period? Yes,
Speaker 4: they did.
Speaker 10: All of his communications through the State Department were immediately
Speaker 10: passed to the CIA.
Speaker 5: The FBI and j.
Speaker 10: Edgar Hoover had an interest in Oswald. All of their
Speaker 10: paperwork on Oswald was forwarded to Engleton's people.
Speaker 3: The CIA had this pretty thick file on Oswald. This
Speaker 3: is a fact that the CIA would spend decades denying.
Speaker 3: It was only in nineteen seventy six when one of
Speaker 3: Angleton's staff members revealed to the House Committee that she
Speaker 3: was instructed to open a file on Oswald.
Speaker 1: They were watching him for four years before the assassination,
Speaker 1: and there can only be two reasons for this. Either
Speaker 1: he was in the Soviet Union on a mission or
Speaker 1: he was a bona fide defector that had offered to
Speaker 1: give the Soviet top secret information.
Speaker 3: Obviously, the Russians suspect something is going on with this.
Speaker 3: The Russian authorities tell him your visa has expired and
Speaker 3: you've got to leave Moscow right away.
Speaker 4: So what does he do.
Speaker 1: He goes into his hotel room and he fakes a
Speaker 1: suicide attempt and creates an incident.
Speaker 2: You think he faked his suicide in order to force
Speaker 2: the Soviets to keep him there.
Speaker 5: I do.
Speaker 1: He's a low level marine on assignment and he just failed.
Speaker 1: He's got to do something drastic in order to stay
Speaker 1: in the country.
Speaker 3: They rush him into a psychiatric hospital for observation and
Speaker 3: he stays there for a week. I was told that
Speaker 3: the KGB thought that he fit the profile for psychologically
Speaker 3: conditioned agents. They decided to study him further so he
Speaker 3: didn't have to leave.
Speaker 4: And they say, all right, you can stay and we'll
Speaker 4: just keep an eye on you because they don't want
Speaker 4: this international incident to be on their watch.
Speaker 3: And then he drops out of sight in December, and
Speaker 3: nobody in the US here's from him for over a year,
Speaker 3: which starts to raise concerns for a certain person. Oswald's mother, Marguerite,
Speaker 3: goes to see Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State in
Speaker 3: the US. Somehow gets in to see him. This is
Speaker 3: all on record too, and shouts that her son was
Speaker 3: a government agent. And how comes she hasn't heard from
Speaker 3: him in almost a year.
Speaker 2: How does Oswald's mom just get in to see Dean Rusk?
Speaker 3: Like Marv Williams, I've wondered that too.
Speaker 2: Who gets access to Rusk like that? Does Rusk do anything?
Speaker 2: Does Oswald know about this?
Speaker 3: Word gets back to him somehow in the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: that mom is worried about it. Two days later, Oswald
Speaker 3: writes her a letter.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, he was living pretty comfortably in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union for the last year by Communist standards.
Speaker 3: Anyway, they sent him to Minsk, a whole different part
Speaker 3: of the Soviet Union, where he's greeted by the mayor personally,
Speaker 3: and they promise him a free apartment while he works
Speaker 3: at a radio TV factory where he earns as much
Speaker 3: money as the director.
Speaker 1: In Minsk, he meets a teenager named Marina. Her uncle
Speaker 1: is a colonel in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which
Speaker 1: is basically the Soviet version of the FBI. They work
Speaker 1: closely with the KGB.
Speaker 2: So wait a minute, her uncle is a colonel in
Speaker 2: their FBI. That's the girl that Oswald just happens to meet.
Speaker 3: He meets Marina at this dance. He introduces himself as Alec.
Speaker 3: She thinks he's a Russian citizen because he speaks Russian
Speaker 3: so well.
Speaker 4: It is suspected that Marina's uncle encouraged her to go
Speaker 4: to the dance that night.
Speaker 2: Here's journalist David Talbot again.
Speaker 8: That was basically an espionage operation. It was a way
Speaker 8: to keep tabs on him. So I think the Soviet
Speaker 8: authorities were onto him right away and watch him very carefully.
Speaker 3: After only a few weeks of knowing Marina, he proposes
Speaker 3: to her.
Speaker 2: So now Oswald finds himself married into the network of
Speaker 2: the KGB.
Speaker 4: And all while the CIA is watching him.
Speaker 2: So with all these interests converging on him, this guy's
Speaker 2: got some baggage.
Speaker 4: Which is why his next move is pretty shocking.
Speaker 3: He writes to the American Embassy asking for arrangements to
Speaker 3: be made for him to return to the United States
Speaker 3: with Marina.
Speaker 2: Isn't it weird that he's coming back to the US,
Speaker 2: given that he defected and denounced the US, I asked
Speaker 2: David Talbot, So what happened when he left the Soviet Union?
Speaker 8: He came home to the US with great ease. He
Speaker 8: was not molested by the authorities when he came here.
Speaker 8: In fact, he was given a loan by the State
Speaker 8: Department to come back from Russia.
Speaker 2: Wait, they gave him money.
Speaker 1: The I S even offered Marina an exemption from the
Speaker 1: standard immigration quotas, so she came with him, along with
Speaker 1: their baby daughter June.
Speaker 3: Well, they never asked him anything about, you know, but
Speaker 3: what he might have been involved in over there, or
Speaker 3: did he give secrets away? What about the U two?
Speaker 3: None of these things came up.
Speaker 8: Anyone who claimed to be a defector said he was
Speaker 8: going to give military secrets to the Union height of
Speaker 8: the Cold War would have been clamped in irons unless
Speaker 8: they knew he was an espionage agent.
Speaker 2: All right, So Rob, I'm going to need you to
Speaker 2: speak very slowly and very clearly, what the hell is
Speaker 2: going on?
Speaker 4: I'll try to make it as simple as that can.
Speaker 1: First, as a misfit kid, he's welcomed into the Marines,
Speaker 1: and then he shipped to Japan, where he gets a
Speaker 1: security clearance to be a radar plane operator on the
Speaker 1: U two spy plane. He learns Russian. He defects to Russia.
Speaker 1: Then after two years, he turns to the US with
Speaker 1: his Russian wife and is welcomed with open arms. The
Speaker 1: obvious explanation this is all done on behalf of the CIA,
Speaker 1: and in less.
Speaker 2: Than eighteen months of his return to the United States,
Speaker 2: he'll take a job at the Texas school Book Depository
Speaker 2: in Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 4: Right, But a lot would happen in those eighteen months.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of Who Killed JFK? We uncover
Speaker 2: secrets in a place known as the Wilderness of Mirrors.
Speaker 2: What does sheep dipping mean?
Speaker 3: It's somebody who is inserted into an operation to make
Speaker 3: it look like they're part of it, but they may
Speaker 3: not even know why what's happened to them.
Speaker 2: We follow Oswald through the eyes of those who are
Speaker 2: watching him, Like Richard K. S Nagel.
Speaker 3: He tried to warn Oswald that he was being used
Speaker 3: that people he thinks or his friends are not.
Speaker 7: By sure Ecient struggled on the fact that it was
Speaker 7: an assassination.
Speaker 4: Sits a plan, and because of that knowledge he was in.
Speaker 2: Jeffardy Who Killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and
Speaker 2: Me Solidad O'Brien and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner,
Speaker 2: Michelle Reiner, Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and me
Speaker 2: Solidad O'Brien. Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by
Speaker 2: Dick Russell. Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pinneto.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Julie Pinneto. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Speaker 2: Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Speaker 2: Tristan Nash, Julie Pinneto, and Marcus de Laudo. Our project
Speaker 2: manager is Carol Klein. Archival audio in this episode thanks
Speaker 2: to Getty Images Dick Russell and Rob Reiner. Our associate
Speaker 2: producer is emilse Kios. Sing mastering and sound design by
Speaker 2: Ben la Julier, Music by APM, Research and fact checking
Speaker 2: by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros. Business affairs by Hennan
Speaker 2: Nadea and Jonathan Furman. Our consulting producer is Razanne Gallillini.
Speaker 2: Record it in part at CDM Studio and Fourth Street
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