From The Mitrokhin Archive, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, 1999
. . . in 1959 Oswald had defected to Russia [i.e. U.S.S.R.], professing disgust with the American way of life and admiration for the Soviet system. Initially the KGB had suspected that he might have been sent on a secret mission by the CIA, but eventually concluded that he was an unstable nuisance and were glad to see the back of him when he returned to Texas with his Russian wife in 1962. After Oswald�s return the FBI at first similarly suspected that he might be a Soviet agent but then seems to have made the same jaundiced assessment of him as the Centre.13 KGB suspicions of Oswald revived, however, when he wrote to the CPUSA in August 1963 asking whether it might be better for him to continue the fight against �anti-progressive forces� as a member of the �underground� rather than as an open supporter of �Communist ideals.� Jack Childs (codenamed MARAT), an undeclared member of the CPUSA who acted as one of its main points of contact with the KGB, warned Moscow that Oswald�s letter �was viewed as an FBI provocation.� The fact that, unknown to the KGB, Childs was himself an FBI agent renders his warning unusually ironic. 14( pages 225-6 )
. . . The KGB, predictably, was anxious to lose no opportunity to promote active measures which supported the increasingly popular theory that the CIA was behind Kennedy�s assassination. Its chief target was the former CIA officer turned Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt (sometimes confused with the Texan oil millionaire H. L. Hunt) . . .
The centerpiece of the active measure against Howard Hunt, codenamed ARLINGTON, was a forged letter to him from Oswald, allegedly written a fortnight before the assassination. The letter used phrases and expressions taken from actual letters written by Oswald during his two years in the Soviet Union, was fabricated in a clever imitation of his handwriting.
Dear Mr. Hunt
[ etc. ] 34The implication, clearly, was that Oswald wanted to meet Hunt before going ahead with the assassination.
Before being used, the forger was twice checked for �authenticity� . . In 1975 photocopies of it were sent to three of the most active conspiracy buffs, together with covering letters from an anonymous wellwisher who claimed that he had given the original to the Director of the FBI . . . The Centre was doubtless disappointed that for almost two years its forgery received no publicity. In 1977, however, the letter was published by Penn Jones, the retired owner of a small Texas newspaper and self-published author of four books about the assassination. The New York Times reported that three handwriting experts had authenticated the letter. Oswald�s widow also identified her husband�s handwriting. 35. Experts summoned by the Hose Select Committee on Assassination in 1978 concluded more prudently that they were unable to reach a �firm conclusion� because of the absence of the original document. 36
The Centre was somewhat put out, however, by the fact that initial press reaction to its forgery centered chiefly on the likelihood of the letter being addressed to the late Texan oil millionaire H. L. Hunt . . . rather than the KGB�s current intended target, the Watergate conspirator Howard Hunt. Service A believed there had been a CIA plot to disrupt its own plot. . . . In April 1977, soon after the publication of the forged letter, the KGB informed the Central Committee that it was launching additional active measures to expose the supposed role of the �American special services� in the Kennedy assassination.37 By 1980 Howard Hunt was complaining that, �It�s become an article of faith that I had some role in the Kennedy assassination.� 38
By the late 1970s the KGB could fairly claim that far more Americans believed some version of its own conspiracy theory of the Kennedy assassination, involving a right-wing plot and the US intelligence community, than still accepted the main findings of the Warren Commission. Soviet active measures, however, had done less to influence American opinion than the Centre believed. By their initial cover-ups the CIA and the FBI had unwittingly probably done more than the KGB to encourage the . . . conspiracy theorists . . .
( pages 228-9 )
13. The best and fullest account of Oswald�s period in the Soviet Union is in Mailer, Oswald�s Tale. Mailer had access to many of the voluminous KGB files on Oswald, which include transcripts of conversations in his bugged flat in Minsk and surveillance reports from KGB personnel who followed him wherever he went, even spying on him and his wife through a peephole in the bedroom wall to record their �intimate moments.�
14. Childs�s warning about Oswald�s letter was cited in a report by KGB chairman Semichastny to the Central Committee on December 10, 1963, of which an extract appears in Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, appendix B, p. 307. Yeltsin identifies the CPUSA informant as �Brooks,� but does not reveal that this was the CPUSA alias of Jack Childs. For the text of Oswald�s letter to the CPUSA of August 28, 1963, see Mailer, Oswald�s Tale, pp. 594-5.34. vol. 6. ch. 14, part 3. Mitrokhin gives the text of the forged letter in Russian translation. For the original version, see Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, pp. 235-6. [etc]).
35. vol. 6, ch. 14, part 3.
36. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, p. 236. [etc]
37. vol. 6, ch. 14, part 3.
38. Lane, Plausible Denial, p. 187. [etc]( notes pages 615, 616 )
( notes on pages 639-40 )
New York : Basic Books, 1999.