Completing the Story of the Assassination

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Category: In 1963

What a senior KGB officer said about Lee Harvey Oswald

Arnaldo M. Fernandez September 28, 2018
Nikolai Leonov
Insider: Fidel Castro, Nikolai Leonov, and Nikita Khrushchev

Nikolai S. Leonov has an interesting perspective on the story of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Leonov joined the KGB in 1958 and retired in 1991 with the rank of Lieutenant General. In the spring of 1963, his fluency in Spanish gained him the job as the Russian interpreter for Cuba president Fidel Castro during his first visit to the USSR in the spring of 1963, In the photo above he is the man standing between and behind Castro and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. …

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Sept. 27, 1963: Oswald arrives in Mexico City

Jefferson Morley September 27, 2018

On this day 55 years ago, a strange American visitor appeared at the Soviet and Cuban consulates in Mexico City. His name would soon be world famous: Lee Harvey Oswald. Within 24 hours, a joint US-Mexico intelligence gathering operation received wiretap reports on his unusual actions.

The story of what happened next is told in Bill Simpich’s groundbreaking new book, “State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald,” which is being serialized by MaryFerrell.org.

In a season of JFK sotries distinguished by ill-informed experts, bogus revelations, and a Fox News fibber, Simpich’s book qualifies as the most important piece of JFK scholarship to be published this year.

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The political movie that JFK wanted Hollywood to make 

Jefferson Morley September 25, 2018

When it was released in 1964, the movie’s chilling message about the fragility of American democracy and the danger of far-Right paranoia was underscored by a real-life backstory that was just as disturbing. Frankenheimer made Seven Days in May at the personal urging of President John F. Kennedy, who’d clashed with an Army general with extremist views early in his administration, and apparently feared such a cabal really was possible. Sadly, JFK did not live to see the film he helped bring to the screen

Source: The Movie That JFK Wanted Made, But Didn’t Live to See | Boundary Stones: WETA’s Washington DC History Blog (h/t Marshal)

June 11, 1963: Kennedy emerges on civil rights

Jefferson Morley September 24, 2018

President Kennedy’s growth as a leader in June 1963 is a key to understanding his life and death.

As Arms Control Today documented last year, JFK’s June 10 speech at American University would influence the arms control vision all of the U.S. presidents who followed him. And as this New York Times column notes, his often-overlooked nationally televised address on June 11, 1963, signaled his evolution as a civil rights leader.

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What was extraordinary about JFK’s plan for U.S.-Soviet moon flight

Jefferson Morley September 22, 2018

A faithful reader sends along the headline that accompanied JFK’s bold proposal on September 20 1963 for a joint U.S.-Soviet space project.

JFK Joint Moon Plan

While JFK’s proposal has been forgotten in popular memory and sometimes overlooked by historians, it was understood as highly significant at the time. Kennedy was pushing, not just a scientific endeavor, but a peaceful end to the Cold War.

You can read JFK’s speech here.

Did JFK propose a joint U.S.-Soviet flight to the moon?

Jefferson Morley September 21, 2018
JFK speaks to the UN on Sept. 20, 1963. (UN photo credit, Teddy Chen.)

 

Yes. It happened on September 20, 1963, according to History.com. It is one of the lesser known but more important events in the last months of President Kennedy’s life and presidency.

In the fall of 1963, JFK was on a political roll. His approval ratings had climbed. He had overcome the grumbling of the Pentagon and all but secured Senate ratification of the popular Limited Test Ban Treaty, banning nuclear explosions in space. Then he went to New York to say something daring.

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Did Castro figure out the JFK case in just five days?

Arnaldo M. Fernandez August 29, 2018

Under the suggestive title “Castro Figured Out The JFK Case in Five Days”, an English version of his speech at the University of Havana on November 27, 1963, is available from CTKA.

In due course, the Warren Commission was provided with a slightly different version, but its members feared and rejected Castro’s line of argument depicting JFK’s assassination as part of a broader “plan against peace, against Cuba, against the Soviet Union, against humanity, against progressive and even liberal sectors of the United States.”

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How did Gen. Maxwell Taylor, JCS chairman, react to the death of JFK?

Jefferson Morley August 9, 2018
Gen. Maxwell Taylor
Gen. Maxwell Taylor with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, left, and JFK. (Credit: Robert Knudsen/JFK  Library)

 

I ask because I don’t know the answer. In a crisis like a presidential assassination, the role of the nation’s top soldier is worth understanding. But I don’t know how Taylor responded Can any help me out here?

I known Taylor testified to the Church Committee but only about the plots to kill Castro.

Taylor was known in CIA traffic as GPPHOTO, perhaps in recognition of his manly photogenic style. Robert Kennedy named one of his sons after him, a measure of the personal affection the Kennedys had for the general.

 

Tour the White House with Jackie Kennedy

Jefferson Morley November 10, 2017

On Feb. 14, 1962, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took CBS News and a national television audience on a tour of the newly remodeled White House.
Let’s tag along.

Technical assistance courtesy of the Mary Ferrell Foundation | Designed by iWebResults

 
 
 
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