Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/review/
Marina WAS kgb spy
Oswald was probably trained in DIY jihad to be a lone gunman
Review says marina warned kgb but kgb did not alert kennedy
Kgb knew ties to oswald ruby
Marina WAS kgb spy
Oswald was probably trained in DIY jihad to be a lone gunman
Review says marina warned kgb but kgb did not alert kennedy
Kgb knew ties to oswald ruby
Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination
http://www.amazon.com/review/
This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
Although this book pulls in some unrelated items and stretches to maintain its thesis, it is at least worthy of as much consideration as ANY of the "The CIA did it" tomes. There are five points that stand out in this book & its surounding issues:1) All assassinations in history have either been committed by a dedicated, suicidal assassin, or were the product of dumb luck. For example, no writer could have come up with a more improbable story than the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife.
2) There is no worse organization to achieve an assassination than a large, fractured governmental bureaucracy, constantly fighting turf wars and concerned with betrayal and oversight from exogenous personnel. The KGB did not qualify at the time as such an organization but the CIA did (and does today to an even greater extent.)
3) Only the PP department in the Agency (& only a few individuals within it) were severely impacted by the Bay of Pigs. Most of the ill-feelings in the Agency during the remainder of Kennedy's time as President were directed at Robert Kennedy, the inexperienced loose cannon bent on murdering Castro and who was micro-managing Agency operations to that effect.
4) The Cuban Missile Crisis eventually brought about Khruschev's fall, and as he was losing power, could readily have sought to assassinate the individual he blamed for his decline. Whether he did so and how, is central to this book.
5) For the benefit of other reviewers, it should be noted that the firing of the three shots have been reliably replicated, including the "magic bullet" shot. There remains no technical question as of this writing that those shots, although lucky, could have been made by Oswald from his putative firing point.
This books adds a valid point of discussion to the ever-lasting analysis of the Kennedy assassination. Like all such books, one must read it carefully and critically. Obviously, the criticisms are many and highly charged, and I leave them to the reader as affected by his own political viewpoint.
Politics by Assassination: Pacepa Makes a Strong Case, June 27, 2009
This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
Did the Kremlin order a hit on President John F. Kennedy in 1962? The former chief of Communist Romania's foreign intelligence service thinks so. And he lays out his case in a recently published book with the title Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, "all Soviet-bloc espionage services were identically organized and had an identical modus operandi." Pacepa also explained that, "Soviet espionage operations ... can easily be identified by their particular patterns, of you are familiar with them."Looking at the case of Lee Harvey Oswald, Pacepa sees a KGB pattern. In the mid-to-late 1950s the Soviet bloc intelligence services were ordered to recruit American servicemen. To this end, loose women were used as "spotters" at bars and nightclubs located near U.S. military bases in Germany and Japan. They were told to watch for U.S. servicemen sympathetic to left-liberal or Marxist ideas. Lee Harvey Oswald was not only an America serviceman stationed in Japan in 1957. He was fascinated by Marxism. As a Marine Corps radar operator Oswald also possessed clues to the flight altitude of the American U-2 spy plane. It was no accident, therefore, that the Soviet Union shot down a U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers on 1 May 1960.
It was noteworthy that Oswald seemed to live beyond his means while in Japan. He dated a hostess from one of the most expensive nightclubs, whose attentions for one night would cost a month's pay. How could he afford such a woman? The answer becomes obvious, says Pacepa, if we realize that Oswald had "Soviet spy" written all over him. When his work in Japan was finished, Oswald didn't want to be in the Marine Corps any longer. What he wanted was to live in the worker's paradise - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. So Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. After helping the Soviets to track and shoot down the U-2 spy plane, Oswald was trained by the KGB as an assassin and returned to the United States.
According to Pacepa, it was standard practice for an agent like Oswald to carry a fake diary (created by disinformation specialists) as part of his "legend." Oswald had such a diary, an obvious fabrication with British spellings and expressions (due to the fact that Russian special services were not trained in American English until 1964). Another standard practice was to pair recruited American agents with wives from Soviet bloc countries, so that the wives could keep watch on them. As it happens, Oswald returned to the United States with a Russian wife.
As for Pacepa's sensational assertion about Khrushchev dispatching Oswald to kill Kennedy, the following points are offered by the former Soviet bloc insider: First, Pacepa's superiors in Romanian intelligence thought that Khrushchev intended to kill JFK. What was Khrushchev's motive? First there was the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which earned Kennedy the KGB codename "Pig." Hoping for a weak liberal in the White House, Khrushchev was seriously disappointed. Instead of a willing dupe, Kennedy proved to be a strong anti-Communist. Khrushchev angrily told his colleagues that Kennedy was an "arrogant millionaire" and a "warmongering fanatic manipulated by the CIA."
Bolstered by the CIA's failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Khrushchev decided to force the Americans to give up West Berlin. "If Kennedy wanted war," explained Pacepa, "that was his problem - the Soviet Union would have no choice but to accept his challenge." Kennedy called Khrushchev's bluff, however. "We cannot and will not permit the Communists to drive us out of Berlin, either gradually or by force," said Kennedy. According to Pacepa, Romanian intelligence found that Kennedy had ordered "contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union" should the crisis escalate.
Khrushchev knew only too well that he had few if any ways to reach the United States with Soviet nuclear weapons." Most Soviet missiles weren't able to fly as far as the United States in those days. What was the Kremlin's solution? Khrushchev decided to secretly deploy more than 50,000 Soviet troops to Cuba along with nuclear-tipped missiles that could threaten Washington and New York - allowing Khrushchev to resume his push against West Berlin. Once again, Kennedy opposed the Soviet leader with a blockade of Cuba. As a result, Khrushchev removed the missiles from Cuba. But Khrushchev would not forgive Kennedy. According to Pacepa, the leader of Communist Romania returned from a trip to Moscow and said, "The lunatic [Khrushchev] is so furious at Kennedy that he's ready to tear him limb from limb with his bare teeth!"
In terms of Khrushchev's character, and his readiness to order a hit on the American president, Pacepa wrote: "Today people remember Khrushchev as a down-to-earth peasant who corrected the evils of Stalin. But he was not. The Khrushchev I knew was a compulsive political chatterbox who had no objective appreciation of facts, and who had gotten a taste for the simple criminal solution because of his close association with Stalin's mass killings."
It is well known that Stalin and Khrushchev both dispatched assassins to the West. In the late 1930s Stalin called for the head of his former colleague, Leon Trotsky. As history records, Ramón Mercader fatally stabbed Trotsky with an ice pick in Mexico. Not only did Stalin reward the assassin's mother with the Order of Lenin; but in 1961 Khrushchev rewarded Mercader with the highest decoration the Kremlin could offer, Hero of the Soviet Union.
As for Khrushchev's assassination exploits, they were exposed in the case of Bogdan Stashinsky who confessed to a West German court that he had assassinated two "enemies of the Soviet Union" on Khrushchev's orders. There is also the case of Nikolai Khokhlov who defected to the West in the midst of an assassination mission. According to Pacepa, Khrushchev wanted to liquidate President Kennedy. There is no doubt he had a motive. In Oswald he found the means.
It is, of course, a fact that many Americans believe the CIA assassinated President Kennedy. After Kennedy's death this idea was propagated on orders from Moscow to divert attention away from the Kremlin. This propaganda effort is described by Pacepa, and has been documented in the work of former KGB archive specialist Vasili Mitrokhin.
Rather than accepting the KGB disinformation line about the Kennedy assassination, American's should read Pacepa's book and judge for themselves.
22 of 30 people found the following review helpful
The Truth is in the General`s Details, October 27, 2007
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This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
General Ion Mihai Pacepa has given us a new and very different point of view of the JFK assassination, clarifying what has been the conspiracy theorists' haven in the 20th century. In the FBI we taught that 'the truth is in the details,' and the General exquisitely reveals the truth-with verifiable, consistent, meshing-together, and incontrovertible facts about the involvement of the Soviet leadership and the KGB in this tragedy from start to finish, and even afterward in covering up their malfeasance. The General's credibility-from the time of his initial debriefings and to the present-continues to ring true. He speaks the 'language of intelligence' and admirably translates it for those who lived through that time but were unaware of how to interpret what the plethora of facts really meant. A younger generation can now also profit from the General's insight to see this historic event clearly.
14 of 20 people found the following review helpful
KGB archives support Pacepa's assumptions., July 7, 2009
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This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
American readers probably missed the fact that four months after Pacepa's book came out Ludvik Zifcak, the former intelligence officer in Czechoslovakia, published his book "We Killed Kennedy" (Zabili jsme Kennedyho, Nakladatelstvi ELLF). In this book Zifcak, using records from KGB archives in Moscow, fills in essential information supporting Pacepa's hypothesis. See for yourself:Page 14: "The Soviet intelligence service mobilized all active agents and `sleepers' in the USA including those in the highest level in the US government. On November 15 they intercepted important information that preparation for the assassination of the President in the United States has began. Top secret information was delivered the same day to Khrushchev..."
Page 48: "As the President's trip to Dallas was approaching the activity in the Soviet Embassy was rising. The Soviet intelligence supplied new information about Kennedy's trip, all of them alarming. In the morning of November 20, 1963 Embassy sent to Moscow last top-secret message: "The assassination will take place probably in Dallas and the forces behind it will use it against the Soviet Union."
The Chairman of KGB Semicastnyj received the message the same day at 2PM and immediately contacted Khrushchev. The conversation like this followed:
"Hallo Nikita Sergejevjc. Excuse me but I have a very important message from Washington regarding president Kennedy. May I come over?"
"OK, come over Vladimir Jefrenovic, but as soon as possible please."
When Semicastnyj explained to Khrushchev the content of the message from Washington Nikita Sergejevic was silent for a while. "And what should we do about it now Vladimir Jefremovic?" Khrushchev asked.
"We could warn the President directly, Nikita Sergejevic," Semicastnyj offered immediately.
"It doesn't look like the best solution to me," Khrushchev replied. "President was briefed about our information already by CIA and I don't think Vladimir Jefrenovic we should be more forthcoming to Americans any more. On the other hand what guarantee we have that this information is not just a provocation against us?" Khrushchev went silent for a while and then he added: "Personally, I believe we should wait what will happen, Vladimir Jefremovic..."
Page 146: "...when speculations about possible involvement of Cuban G2 in the Kennedy's assassination surfaced Khrushchev a couple of times said: "If the Cuban involvement in the assassination of the President of the United States would be confirmed the Soviet Union wouldn't be able to support the international terrorism."
Page 157: "...At the same time KGB assigned the agent Marina Nikolajevna Prusakova on Oswald. Her assignment was to find out Oswald's objectives in the Soviet Union and to develop the position for the later relocation in the United States and establishing her position there. KGB was doing everything to make this happen including the plan of traveling the US as Oswald's wife. Regardless of Prusakova's cover job in the health sector she was actually the personal office clerk in the 1st Department of GRU. Marina was from the family of Soviet Interior Ministry colonel Prusakov and she was trained, during Seljepin leadership, for covert operation in the US or Canada. For her age she was relatively highly educated, spoke other languages and, following the script written by KGB, she quickly fall in love with Oswald. Following the same script the Soviets announced to Oswald on October 21, 1959 that his visa has expired and he must leave Moscow within 2 hours. Oswald responded by staging suicide attempt cutting his arteries on the left hand. He was hospitalized in the hospital where Prusakova has free access to him purposefully building their relationship.....After detailed debriefing where KGB focused on military information, Soviet intelligence decided leave Oswald in the Soviet Union but don't grant him the citizenship. For a good reason. As the Soviet citizen Oswald would have no value for KGB. The objective was to get him and agent Prusakova back to the USA."
Page 158: "After their return to the United States Oswald and his wife Marina attracted attention of CIA and FBI. It is clear from KGB documents that she was in close touch with the Soviet intelligence all the time informing them about the preparation for the assassination. Her activity prevented later indictment of the Soviet Union and Cuba in the assassination plot. Based on Marina's information both countries refused to give visa to Oswald shortly before the assassination. It became clear later that information sent by Marina to the Soviet intelligence probably prevented the war because American intelligence services wanted to blame Soviet Union and Castro's regime for Kennedy's assassination."
Page 171: "Embassy in Washington sent following information to Moscow: "Dallas Court is hiding the information about the contact between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Rubby. According to the court's records both men met on October 4, 1963. During the meeting they discussed options of the President's assassination and it's financing..."
According to the information from the Soviet agent the assassination was discussed 50 days in advance."
Anyway, Pacepa's book "Programmed to Kill" is an excellent reading for everyone interested in the mystery of Kennedy's assassination. With Zifcak co-incidentally supporting Pacepa's picture this book shines new light on the case, the light nobody else would dare to turn on.
Robert Buchar
14 of 20 people found the following review helpful
JFK Assassinated by Khrushchev via Oswald -- Yes, January 6, 2008
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Marina "Hill" (VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
Lee Harvey Oswald was given the standard KGB sex-puppet wife Marina to take home with him. The KGB spotted Oswald as a CIA plant early on and played along. The KGB gave Oswald Marina, niece of an officer in the GRU, as their eyes on the CIA. The CIA's incompetence disillusioned Oswald. After Oswald got home, he thought things over. . . there is some evidence that Oswald was spying on the CIA's Cuban machinations for RFK. The CIA was insubordinate to JFK -- who had nixed the CIA's plan to trigger a fullscale invasion of Cuba, when their small invasion force failed. Kennedy's failure to take the bait made Kennedy a traitor in the eyes of the Cubans, whose anger was exploited by Dulles and Company.The USSR sent Yuriy Nosenko deliberately to the US, after Kennedy's assassination, to ensure that the US Agency-regicides did not try to evade their responsibility for the murder by hanging it on the USSR and letting millions die in the WWIII that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were longing to unleash. Nosenko's information was the major reason that the US was forced to acknowledge that the KGB was not involved in Oswald's plot -- even though James Jesus Angleton, acting for Richard Helms, committed every torture on Nosenko to get the latter to admit the USSR's involvement.
The inside players have kept their secrets. Pacepa lends some clues.
11 of 16 people found the following review helpful
A fascinating and convincing book, March 12, 2009
By
Michael Ledeen (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
A new book from General Ion Mihai Pacepa is cause for celebration, because he is among a tiny handful of people who know a lot about the intelligence services of the Soviet Empire, and because he writes about it with rare lucidity, always with an eye to helping us understand our world. His first book, "Red Horizons," is indubitably the most brilliant portrait of a Communist regime I've ever read. "Programmed to Kill" is equally fascinating, not least because it contains both a convincing theory about the Kennedy Assassination and scores of enlightening stories about Pacepa's own life, many of which I had never heard before.Pacepa was unique in the Cold War: the highest ranking intelligence officer to defect from the Soviet bloc. He was Ceausescu's top strategic adviser, and the acting chief of the Romanian secret intelligence service. His defection resulted in the total shutdown of the Romanians' clandestine activities, making him unique in the history of modern espionage. Moreover, his many intimate working relations with Soviet intelligence officials made him an invaluable source of information and understanding of our major enemy.
He arrived in Washington back in 1978 with two blockbuster messages: first, that the presentation of Ceausescu as an "independent Communist" with whom the United States could work, was a deliberate deception. And second, that Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John F. Kennedy, was an agent of the KGB, programmed to kill JFK, and did so despite frantic Soviet efforts to stop him.
American officials hated both of those messages, because they were in direct conflict with what the U.S. Intelligence Community had been telling successive presidents, and challenged the bases of much of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. Both the Intelligence Community and the State Department had assured the White House that Ceausescu was genuinely independent, and `we could work with him.' Pacepa showed that Ceausescu worked in lockstep with the Soviets, and, for example, was tricking the United States into selling advanced technology to Romania that went directly to Moscow. For a while some of the spooks were so upset with what Pacepa had to say that they threatened to send him back to Romania, and certain death, a testament to the lengths to which some bureaucrats will go to silence someone who has "bad news" they don't want heard.
I don't think anyone can read "Programmed to Kill" and still believe that Oswald had no working relationship with the KGB. Pacepa painstakingly takes us through the documentary evidence, including invaluable material on Soviet bloc cyphers that throws new light on Oswald's letters to KGB officers in Washington and Mexico City. And he argues convincingly that the KGB had assigned a case officer to Oswald, about which I will say no more except that his secrets were on the verge of becoming public, whereupon he blew his brains out.
No novelist could have written a more exciting story, made all the more compelling because of Pacepa's first-hand involvement in the Russians' efforts to hide their Oswald connection. He spent many hours writing the language that disinformation agents were to use with their Western friends, and he recognizes his words in some of the articles and books that purported to tell the true story of the Kennedy Assassination.
Why were the Soviets so desperate to stop Oswald? Surely not because they had suddenly developed moral qualms about assassination, and least of all because Khrushchev -- who had ordered the operation in the first place- -- ad decided Kennedy was a good guy. Khrushchev didn't just call off Oswald's operation, he cancelled all assassinations after a KGB agent had been caught in West Germany in the course of a similar operation. The Soviet dictator decided it was best to lie low for a while, and several murderous plots were put on hold. This, too, was part of Pacepa's work.
Finally there is the fascinating question of Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer. Pacepa is not convinced by Ruby's claim that he killed Oswald out of rage. Pacepa thinks he acted at the behest of the Cuban regime, and was later poisoned in order to silence him.
It's a complicated tale, because, Pacepa argues, you need to know a great deal about Soviet intelligence methods in order to understand the evidence. To that end, he provides a long supplement at the end of "Programmed to Kill," entitled "Connecting the Dots." He goes through the evidentiary trail bit by bit, including his own experiences that help understand the "dots."
It's entirely appropriate, for Pacepa's own life is the key to understanding that terrible moment in November, 1963, from which so much of the contemporary world took shape.
Michael Ledeen
This review was also posted in "Human Events".
One of the Author's best!!, October 18, 2013
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This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
I found this book to be a fascinating and informative experience, Coupled with "Disinformation," one can become much more aware of what President Reagan best described as, "An evil empire." The highly successful manipulative and deceptive activity employed by Soviet intelligence organizations against the West often incite disgust, This read will provide an insight that extends to events of the present.
11 of 17 people found the following review helpful
A Thought Provoking Book Concerning the Kennedy Assassination, November 22, 2007
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This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
Ion Mihai Pacepa has yet to convince me that the former Soviet Union was directly behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy on this very date, forty-four years ago. I do, however, take him seriously and will do further research on the matter. It is plausible, but would the Russians take such a risk? How might they possibly know for sure the American Left would eagerly contend that right-wing American fanatics were somehow behind the murder? But the author is probably right on target in saying the following:"With respect to the assassination, the interests of Lyndon Johnson, the new president, happened to coincide with Khrushchev's. President Johnson faced elections in less than a year, and any conclusion implicating the Soviet Union would have forced him to take unwanted political and even military action." It is indeed quite safe to assume that Johnson, on a gut level, would prefer to run from reality. The man already had enough on his plate with our growing Vietnam involvement. Also, the leftists within his own political party were sure to throw constant roadblocks in his way. There is another book that readily compliments Pacepa's work. It is James Piereson's Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism.
9 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Excellent analysis, June 11, 2008
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This review is from: Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)
I have read a great deal about the Kenendy assassination, but I have never seen anything with such a unique perspective about Oswald's motives. No one has bothered to look at the situation from his viewpoint, which is odd, considering that Oswald is the only one to date who has been formally accused of the crime.Of course it is based on existing evidence, but Pacepa's position inside the Soviet intelligence machine gives him far more credibility than your average conspiracy researcher. This book does not end the debate, of course, but it competently addresses the most seldom-investigated theory in the canon -- that of Soviet involvement.
The CIA is the organization everyone loves to hate in this conspiracy, but isn't it possible that this was deliberate disinformation fueled by the KGB, as found in the Mitrokhin archive?
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