BOSTON—A new book by a former communist insider brings a new and unexpected twist to the already sizable library devoted to John F. Kennedy's assassination, stirring new passions in the circles that have never truly accepted the Warren Commission's findings.
Although the Soviet implication in the assassination was rumored and even mentioned in some previous works by other authors, the volume Programmed to Kill, subtitled Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB and the Kennedy assassination by Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking defector from a communist intelligence service organization, states for the first time that Oswald, instructed and programmed by the Soviet highest echelons to assassinate JFK, single-handedly and deliberately, in spite of an order to abort, pulled the trigger of his Carcano carbine, killing the president and wounding Texas Governor John Connolly.
By his defection, Pacepa, a former general in the Directia Informatii Externe (DIE), the branch of the Romanian intelligence covering foreign countries, which entertained "sisterly" relations with the KGB, pulled the rug from under his former associates, uncovering not only certain aspects of KGB's modus operandi, but also a list of communist agents in the West.
Since then, Pacepa lives with a new identify in the U.S., avoiding the revenge of his former colleagues. Well informed and familiar with the events surrounding the assassination, he succeeds in making a strong case for his theory. He does not provide a smoking gun or recognizable hard proof, but relies only on circumstantial evidence. Lest we forget, people have been executed on circumstantial evidence.
Pacepa also suggests that Marina Oswald, the innocent wife, was in reality a tool of the KGB, recruited, and trained to provide the Oswald couple an air respectability. Such arrangements were, and still are, standard procedure for the KGB branch specializing in foreign intelligence. In a period when Soviet intelligence agencies were plagued by defections, a wife and child could assure loyalty to Moscow.
"That will tie him to us for all eternity," was the slogan. In this context, Pacepa mentions a Soviet agent married to a Czechoslovak woman, who together with their son, arrived in Montreal in 1961 carrying through customs "a toy truck in which the KGB has concealed cipher pads, microdots with communications instruction, a microdot reader and a Minox camera." The author asks whether at his return from the USSR to the U.S. with his Soviet wife and baby, couldn't Oswald have staged a similar performance?
The author notes that Marina, like other women in similar positions, only pretended to cooperate with the U.S. investigation, due to the mortal fear installed in her by her handlers. Moscow's involvement in the assassination was to be erased, denied, and deflected by all available means. The book presents a surprising but credible picture of the workings of the KGB, its thinking, methodology and operations, analyzing facts and events through the eyes of an intelligence insider who is convinced of Moscow's involvement in the crime.
Based not only on his research of the vast available literature on the subject, but also on his personal experience as a high-ranking officer in the Romanian DIE, which received direct orders from Moscow, his story should probably complement if not substitute the standard manuals on the KGB used by American intelligence services. Considering the numerous failures of U.S. intelligence agencies, one wonders whether any of the high-ranking communist defectors succeeded in presenting such sagacity the workings of Soviet foreign operations.
Concerning Oswald's assassination by Jack Ruby, Pacepa's opinion differs from that of the Warren Commission. Eventually, the jailed assassin's killer was himself executed, conveniently dying of a most likely induced rapid lung cancer on January 3, 1967. At his turn, Oswald's Soviet handler in the U.S., a shady character of European aristocratic extraction, privy to deadly secrets, was silenced in 1977 in Florida, having allegedly committed suicide.
At the end of his fascinating and engrossing account, which should be required reading for the entire American intelligence community, Pacepa presents a chapter that point by point, logically, methodically and inexorably presents the trajectory of the events, persuading the reader of its plausibility. Even if his explanations don't cover everything that occurred on that fateful day in Dallas, his theory gives the reader pause.
Considering the situation in a Russia that is now led by a former KGB officer and autocrat, whose increased espionage activities in the West were uncovered by the murder of Litvinenko in London, Pacepa's book sends a storm warning that no one interested in foreign affairs or JFK's assassination can afford to ignore.
Justin P. Liuba is a free-lance journalist, former Romanian bureau chief of Radio Free Europe and president of the Romania Relief Foundation. Contact him at veliuba@at.net. Programmed to Kill—Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB and the Kennedy Assassination by Ion Mihai Pacepa is published by Ivan R. Dee.
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