Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination (10 page)

Mark Lane and Edward J. Epstein, in their own ways, had a certain amount of credibility because they made us think about the subject in a certain manner; the general public wasn’t being pointed in that direction. The Warren Report, whether it was under the influence of Lyndon Johnson, certainly was pointing America in a certain direction. Mark Lane, whether you agree or disagree with his tactics, was very important. He made us reevaluate it. Edward J. Epstein, who was just a graduate student, wrote a book called
Inquest
that made us look at the details as we hadn’t before. Those two men and people like Penn Jones, Sylvia Meagher, and others who were critics of the Warren Report all had their place. The dialogue was very good for America. We should be forced to question and look at things and not accept the status quo. Whether in time one of these people or more than one of them will prove to be more correct than we think they are now, I don’t know. But I still believe that Oswald pulled the trigger alone.

I was on the second floor of the Dallas police station. I have a lot of pictures, including historic pictures of that gun. Oswald enjoyed being run up and down the hall. Oswald looked at that 16mm movie camera; he looked at that television camera at the end of the hall and smiled. He enjoyed those moments. I remember arriving at the police station, and my contact sheets show that he was run up and down the hall at least four times while I was there. Then you have Jack Ruby, who we later found out was all around there. He’s even in the corner of one of my pictures in the basement. The access was quite different than what we have today.

Jack Ruby was a nebbish. Many things say to me that he was not part of a conspiracy: his waiting in line at the Western Union station and not knowing how long the people in front of him are going to take to send a money-gram, nobody knowing
exactly when Oswald’s being brought down. They take his belt off, or they put his belt on. There were things that delayed his transfer. The meeting of these two men was, I think, just fate. Ruby at that moment wanted to be a star. He’s always wanted to be a star.

I knew Jim Garrison. I photographed him in Las Vegas with his Mafia connection and so forth. Clay Shaw wasn’t involved. I know exactly where Clay Shaw was. He was in San Francisco on a cruise boat. I was deeply involved in all the facts. Garrison, I think, was a little too much off base. Oliver Stone is a great filmmaker. He’s a friend of mine. He was at a benefit I had last year and gave a wonderful speech. He makes us think about things we should. I’m not saying we have to accept them, but I think he’s a great filmmaker.

John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy—I didn’t know the other brother [Teddy] at all—were two men who really related to everybody, and emotionally they were great men. At age seventy-six, I look back at those two men, both lives taken by people who had no idea of the effect of what they were going to do. Their acts were selfish. We were deprived, maybe not of a great president, but of an experience with John F. Kennedy, and America was deprived of an experience with Robert Kennedy. I had no comprehension at all of the magnitude of how it would affect me emotionally in years to come, and how it would change the course of American history.

Two hundred years from now, will we still be talking about this in the same way? Probably not. We talk about Lincoln so many years later because Lincoln changed the course of American history. I don’t think
John F. Kennedy’s presidency changed the course of American history. I don’t think we’ll be talking about it in the same way, but I think it’s good that we address the issues while we still have memories of it.

I don’t think about it every day, but it never leaves me. I always see an image, I always see something that reflects back into those years of the Kennedys. They were exciting years for young people. They gave us a view of what could be achieved and what should be achieved. And they gave us a view that anybody can obtain it.

Oleg Kalugin

In 1963 twenty-nine-year-old Oleg Kalugin was operating undercover in New York as chief of KGB operations in the United States. He was later assigned to Washington, DC, with a cover as deputy press officer for the Soviet Embassy, where he became one of the KGB’s top officers, playing a major role in the John Walker spy ring. As a result, he was promoted to general in 1974, the youngest in the institution’s history. He returned to KGB headquarters to head the foreign counterintelligence of the First Chief Directorate. He was also an elected member of the Soviet parliament during Gorbachev’s administration and was one of the first reformers of the KGB. Gorbachev signed a decree in 1990 stripping Kalugin of his rank, decorations, and pension, and he went into exile in the United States. In 1995 he accepted a teaching position at the Catholic University of America and has remained in America ever since, becoming a naturalized citizen in 2003 and writing a book about Cold War espionage that was published in 2008. He now works for the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies and sits on the advisory board for the International Spy Museum.

T
he largest number of Soviet sources inside any Western country was in the United States. I will give you some statistics, which are not classified anymore but not known generally. In 1953 the Soviets supervised nearly three hundred assets in the United States. The US intelligence services did not have a single one in the USSR, so the score was three hundred to zero until, I believe, May of ’53, when a Russian lieutenant colonel from military intelligence who was stationed in Austria was acquired by the United States. In 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for
president, then 1961, the Soviets had about thirty-five Americans working for them. Kennedy had every right at that time to be suspicious—the Soviets were trying to spread this gospel of Communism across the world. We succeeded more or less in parts of Europe, but only because of the Soviet military.

Castro came to power without Soviet support. That was a self-made revolution. Putting the missiles in Cuba was part of Soviet solidarity with pro-Communist reformers who would inevitably at some point be allies of the USSR. Once Fidel revealed that he was also leaning toward Communist ways of thinking and solutions, the Soviets immediately took advantage and brought intermediate-range missiles to Cuba. That was one of the first Soviet gestures of trust to Cuban leadership. Second, it was a reminder to the United States that they better not try again, or the Bay of Pigs would be just a tale of humor. You will meet a serious challenge, and our missiles are just a matter of fact you have to face.

I lived in and worked in the United States at the time, and as it [the Cuban Missile Crisis] played out, I thought that common sense would prevail on both sides. I knew the Kennedy administration, as I saw it from my Russian standpoint, as reasonable enough, and though I knew Khrushchev was a very emotional guy, he would also stop at some point, somewhere. That’s exactly what happened.

It would be a nuclear war, and both sides understood that a nuclear war would mean no victory for anyone. It would be the end of humanity perhaps. I had been watching all these developments from an early age, and now fortunately the United States and Russia have found a way to live together despite differences, and there is no threat of war between the
two countries. But the fear has moved to the Middle East—Iran, Israel—that complex world. It is truly something we have to be fearful about and try whatever we can to stop a confrontation.

Actually I think I’m worried now more than in the old days because I was a representative of a great nation that suffered so much from war. We lost, according to the latest statement made by President Putin, twenty-six million people. I knew other figures, but that’s the latest: twenty-six million people. That was in World War II, and a nuclear war would be total destruction of the world. The stress internationally and militarily have moved down south. If that confrontation takes place, it will truly be not the end of humanity but something terrible. In my own way, as much as I can, I’m trying to state that we have to find ways to get rid of that threat to the world.

When Kennedy was elected, I was stationed in the United States as a Radio Moscow correspondent at the United Nations as my KGB cover. I was even elected vice president of the Correspondents Association at the United Nations. That was a great honor. I was young man and in New York City, and then I appeared in the
New York Times
when I was a Fulbright scholar in ’59.

I thought highly of Kennedy. I thought he was a likable personality, a shrewd man, attractive. The Bay of Pigs, his unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Castro, in many ways ruined his reputation. I was involved in the post–Bay of Pigs events as a Radio Moscow correspondent, undercover. I traveled to Florida with my colleague from the KGB. He worked for TASS News Agency as his cover. We both traveled to the Miami area and came to the headquarters of the Cuban émigré anti-Castro organization. We introduced ourselves as members of NATO countries. I said I was from Norway, and my colleague, Armenian by birth, said he was from Turkey. We said to the Cuban senior émigré that we officials in NATO and in Europe were disgusted with the lack of action against the Castro regime.

What happened? They were a little shocked by our honest statements, but one of them, the leader of that Cuban émigré organization, said,
“Listen, we would do it at any moment. We are ready, but those guys in the White House would not let us do it.” For us it was crucial information, which we reported back to Moscow immediately. The Cuban émigrés are willing. They’re ready, anxious to, but the White House, the government of the United States, would not support them in another military venture against Cuba. That was our report to Moscow. That’s when I thought of Kennedy much better, because he understood that another invasion might lead to a major confrontation with the Soviet Union.

My superiors in Moscow, they liked Kennedy, as a matter of fact. He was a personable man, an individual who was liked by many people, and he was a smart man, unlike some of his predecessors. He would play the rules of the Cold War in a gentler way. That’s why he was viewed as a guy we could make a deal with. Khrushchev was very tough on him, and Kennedy was the first to admit that. Khrushchev by nature was that kind of a man. He was rough and tough and rude to many people in power, and that was what eventually led to his early political demise. He was practically thrown out of power in ’64 because he insulted so many people. He just didn’t deal correctly with the military or with the security services. In fact, Khrushchev made a historic speech at the Communist Party Twentieth Congress, his secret speech denouncing Stalin’s crimes. In my view—and I’m sure the view maintained by millions of people around the world and in Russia—that was the end of the illusion about Communism. I was an ardent, dedicated Communist, but after Khrushchev’s speech I realized that you cannot build the future of humanity on the corpses of millions of people. That was what Khrushchev revealed in his anti-Stalinist speech, talking about the crimes committed by Stalin.

The Russians would not abandon Cuba. It was a matter of Russian ideology, national pride, and military strategic interest. The US government had its own agenda, also understandable, regarding a Communist state just ninety miles away from the United States. That was also difficult to swallow. During the Cold War, the Soviet expansion westward, with the occupation of part of Europe after World War II, was a constant reminder that the Soviet expansion may go further, and Cuba was a specific example. The Soviets tried to take advantage of events in Argentina and Chile, but they failed in the long run. The Soviets were sort
of internationalist in the sense of spreading their ideals of Communism, not in theory but in practice, and supporting all sorts of revolutionary moments that in one way or another were in line with the Soviet foreign and ideological policies.

I was in New York at that time representing Radio Moscow; that was my KGB cover. When I heard that Kennedy had been assassinated, I was terrified. My immediate reaction was that there would definitely be a public linkage of Lee Harvey Oswald to Russia, and Russia would be figured as a country that may have been involved. I had learned very quickly—because Moscow headquarters was very quick in providing us with the information—that Lee Harvey Oswald indeed had been in Russia. As an American, Oswald was viewed as a potential recruit for the Russian Security and Intelligence, and they planted a lady who would work with him, trying eventually to make him a resource for Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence. At some point the Russians understood that he was a misfit. He was not a guy who would be useful. Our view was, in fact, better get rid of him. When Oswald left with his Russian wife, the Russians were happy to get rid of him. That’s how it happened.

Marina was planted just to find information. The Russians always suspect that every foreigner, particularly Americans coming on diplomatic missions or otherwise, does some work for the CIA or whatever. Everyone was a suspect. Later the KGB made a deal with her that if she came here to the United States—she was recruited; let’s put it that way. But she didn’t perform the mission. She was actually thrown out of the Russian network of sources—totally useless.

The Russian version is that the right-wing forces of the United States were behind the assassination. That’s it. But Oswald was kind of a misfit. It reminds me of the more recent case in Boston, the two Chechens, the Tsarnaevs.

On that same day in 1963, we received a cable from KGB headquarters: “Meet as many Americans as you
can, official, unofficial, whomever. Tell them we are very sorry. Russia liked Kennedy. We do not stand behind anything. We are with the American people and give condolences.” We tried to impress the Americans because there were some stories. In fact, there was a story made up in Russia by our special Active Measures Department that behind the assassination was the right-wing circles of the United States—those who hated Kennedy for his progressive, forward-looking, democratic way of solving things. These are the guys, the neo-fascists; they killed him. That’s when the Soviet propaganda centered on right-wing society, whatever they were called at that time. Some of the guys from federal agencies like the CIA and DIA were also unhappy with President Kennedy, so that was a part of the Soviet propaganda campaign to convince the world that the American right-wing forces were behind the murder of President Kennedy.