Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 24, 1993 TAG: 9308240126
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Hundreds of thousands of government documents made public for the first time chronicle the effort by the CIA in the months after Kennedy was killed to determine if there was foreign involvement.
They also provide details of efforts by the Warren Commission, which investigated the killing, the followup Rockefeller Commission in 1975, the FBI and others to answer persistent questions in the decades that followed.
For instance, 15 years after the assassination an FBI agent interviewed a Russian emigre who recalled nearly verbatim a conversation with a friend, Pavel Golovachev, who had spoken with Oswald in 1962 in Russia.
A former Marine, Oswald defected to the Soviet Union for a period and then returned to the United States before Kennedy was killed.
The Sept. 19, 1977, classified memo to then-FBI Director Clarence Kelley said the emigre's friend had worked with Oswald at a radio factory in Minsk and had heard Oswald boast "he would have lots of money in America."
" `For example, I will kill the president,' " the memo quotes the emigre as saying, recounting Golovachev's recollection of Oswald's words.
"Golovachev, who assumed Oswald was joking, also pointed out that he would be arrested and asked what he expected to be paid," the memo said.
"Oswald responded, `You don't know America. If I manage this, my wife will become rich.' He said this quietly, but with an angry expression, and sounded serious," it added.
Many of the newly released documents revealed similar secondhand information or speculation by U.S. intelligence employees trying to make sense of the assassination.
For instance, a Soviet defector working for the CIA speculated in a Nov. 27, 1963, memo that the murder was instigated by the KGB to relieve internal pressures on Nikita Khrushchev, then the leader of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was deposed in October 1964.
"Our president's death . . . effectively diverts the Soviets' attention from their internal problems. It directly affects Khrushchev's longevity," wrote Peter Deryabin in an eight-page, single-spaced typed memo.
Deryabin was a Soviet KGB agent who defected to the West in 1954. He served as a consultant to the U.S. government, including the CIA, and wrote several books. He died about a year ago.
by CNB