Programmed to kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy assassination

378 Pages·2007·7.887 MB·English

by  Pacepa, Ion Mihai

PROGRAMMED
TO KILL

PROGRAMMED
TO KILL
Lee Harvey Oswald,
the Soviet KGB, and
the Kennedy Assassination
ION MIHAI PACEPA
rat
IVAN R. DEE
CHICAGO 2007
PROGRAMMED TO KILL. Copyright © 2007 by Ion Mihai Pacepa. All rights
reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any
form. For information, address: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1332 North Halsted Street,
Chicago 60622. Manufactured in the United States of America and printed on
acid-free paper.
www.ivanrdee.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Pacepa, Jon Mihai, 1928-
Programmed to kill : Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy
assassination / Ion Mihai Pacepa.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-56663-761-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-56663-761-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963—Assassination. 2. Oswald,
Lee Harvey. 3. Soviet Union. Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti.
4. Espionage, Soviet—United States—History. I. Title.
E842.9.P33 2007
364.152'4092—dc22
2007011654
In memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No ADEQUATE WORDS can express my gratitude to the Ameri-
can government for granting me political asylum and giving
me an opportunity to begin my life over again from scratch. This
new existence has opened my eyes to the reality of the dictatorship
I left behind, and allowed me to see my Communist-intelligence
past through American eyes. Without this experience I could never
have written this book.
My wife, Mary Lou, has introduced me to the marvels of Amer-
ican democracy and of the English language. She has also spent
years of her life helping me document the knowledge I brought with
me about Moscow’s secret involvement in the assassination of Pres-
ident Kennedy. Without her help this book would never even have
been conceived.
Assassination researcher Edward Jay Epstein—who interviewed
some four hundred people who had been associated with Oswald,
most of whom had never been interviewed by the FBI or the War-
ren Commission—uncovered a wealth of raw facts confirming my
own information about the Soviet manipulation of Oswald. With-
out the evidence he obtained, mostly from people now long dead,
my analysis of the Soviet hand in the assassination would not have
been as well documented.
My good friends Dr. Radu Ioanid, director of International
Archival Projects at the United States Holocaust Memorial Mu-
seum, and Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, director of the Center
for the Study of Post-Communist Societies at the University of
Vil
Vill Acknowledgments
Maryland, have given me invaluable help in verifying the historical
facts of Soviet-bloc communism. This book would have suffered
without their meticulous research and attention to detail.
Last but not least, my editor and publisher Ivan Dee deserves my
warm thanks for understanding the complicated intelligence story I
was trying to tell and for putting it into attractive language accessi-
ble to the average American reader. Without his interest this book
would quite simply never have seen the light of day.
I. M. P.
April 2007
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments Vil
Preface Xl
Principal Figures in the Book XVil
Kennedy Killed by a “Serzhant”
HK
Moscow’s Operation Dragon 11
ON
First Hard Evidence of the PGU’s Hand 18
A
Recruiting a Serzhant 26
hk
A “Defector” 51
n
a
n Recruitment in Japan 36
o
An Ideal Agent 43
t
n
o Working for the PGU 50
c
oO A Secret Trip to Moscow 56
Soviet Citizenship Denied 64
O&O
Bogus Documents 71
FF
Khrushchev Declares War on Kennedy 76
O
N
May Day in Moscow 82

N
W Assassination Becomes a Tool of Foreign Policy 91
P
Io Testing the Waters 98
Prelude to Repatriation 103
ana
eo n Marina 112
o A Foothold in Texas 120
aw
The Commo Plan 126
en Oo
eN oOo Oswald’s Best Friend 133