Was A Mexico City KGB Operations Officer Eusebio Azcue's "Blond, Very Thin-Faced" Oswald"?

[Sandy Larsen]

15 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

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Angleton again mentioned the double agent to Mexico -- in complex with Leanovov (phonetic).  Angleton then mentioned the threat by Castro against the President.

http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1462#relPageId=80&tab=page

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My thoughts:

2 )  "double agent" = Angleton's description of Oswald, based on what "the major defector" Anatloiy Golitsyn had caused JJA to believe about LHO.

--  Tommy

Tommy,

I don't believe Angleton is referring to Oswald when he comments on the "double agent." Because the very next paragraph appears to be regarding that same agent. It states:

"[Angleton] told us that Des Fitzgerald would not have met the agent in Paris unless he had instructions to do so. As you will recall, Angleton told us that this agent returned to Cuba and never reappeared."

The "agent" referred to here seems to be the "double agent" mentioned in the prior paragraph... the one you colorfully quoted (above). If that's the case, he cannot be Oswald because -- according to the paragraph I just quoted -- the double agent "returned to Cuba and never reappeared."

The double agent referred to by Angleton may have been Rolando Cubela (AM/LASH), whom Des Fitzgerald met with in Paris in October 1963. Cubela was in a Cuban prison in 1975 when the Angleton memorandum was written. Which would explain why he "never reappeared." (Though he was eventually released in 1979 and now lives in Spain.)

 

Sources:

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKcubela.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolando_Cubela_Secades

 

[Thomas Graves]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 ...

Dear Sandy,

With all due respect, I'm afraid you're overlooking the fact that the complete phrase in that sentence is "... the double agent to Mexico ..."

-- Tommy

PS  I'm pretty familiar with the Cubella deal, so there's no need to give me a Trejo-like "lecture" about him.

Suffice it to say it seems to me that James Jesus Angleton was jumping from subject-to-subject throughout the whole interview, but that Leonov was one of his main topics. Like he was fixated on him or something, and it's a gosh-darned shame the writer didn't know how to spell Nikolai's last name.

Edited April 30, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Thomas Graves said:

With all due respect, I'm afraid you're overlooking the fact that the complete phrase in that sentence is "... the double agent to Mexico ..."

Tommy,

How is the phrase "the double agent to Mexico" incompatible with his being Rolando Cubela? (BTW... no, I did not overlook that phrase.)

As I said, the very next paragraph makes comments regarding an agent. If that agent is not the one mentioned in the prior paragraph, then to which agent could it be referring to? How many paragraphs back in the narrative is that particular agent introduced?

Speaking of "overlooking" a phrase, you seem to have missed an important one.

"Angleton again mentioned the double agent to Mexico -- in complex with Leanovov (phonetic)."

The key word of the phrase is "again." This phrase means that Angleton had already mentioned the double agent prior to that time. Where did he do so? I'll tell you... on paragraph 2 of page 81 (i.e. the prior page), where the writer states:

"Angleton commented on Des Fitzgerald's trip to Paris where he met with a Cuban agent who subsequently returned to Cuba. This agent was never heard from again."

Where do you believe Angleton mentioned the double agent the first time??

 

Given that you maintain Oswald is this double agent, then you could reply by saying that Oswald's name is mentioned multiple times prior to the paragraph in question. But that would lead me to ask the question, if Oswald were the double agent, why didn't the writer of the document just say so? Instead of referring to him only as "double agent."

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Thomas Graves]

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Speaking of "overlooking" a phrase, you seem to have missed an important one. -- "Angleton again mentioned the double agent to Mexico -- in complex with Leanovov (phonetic)."

[...]

Where do you believe Angleton mentioned the double agent the first time??

 

 

Dear Sandy,

My best guess is that Angleton first mentioned to the guys that he thought the reason Oswald "went to Mexico City" was because "he was a gosh-darned no-good low-down stinkin' double agent" was while they all were taking turns pounding the heck out of the gosh-darned Coke-Cola [sic] machine down the hall, tryin' to get free Dr Peppers out of it, or, more likely, that he mentioned it while describing that second photograph.  You know, the one that apparently had Leninoff or Leanovov or Real-Bad-Coff (phonetic) in it with at least one of the Castro boys and God-knows-who-else!, the description of which appears, intriguingly, to have been, .... uhh ... redacted?

But you're probably right.  Angleton, being an avid fisherman, probably threw in the little tidbit that Cubela had been spotted just one week earlier while he was a-sneakin' out of Cuba (or Paris) to go trout fishing in the Sierra Madre mountains of ..... Mexico.

--  Tommy

Edited April 30, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Brancato]

I thought we were trying to get the big picture. That's what I'm doing. What about you? 

[Thomas Graves]

9 hours ago, Chris Newton said:

It seems that way, to me.

On the first page of that document about 3/4 of the way down there's an interesting notation:

"Angleton believes that Miboutou's assassination in Kenya was by the KGB."

Now, "Miboutou" (phonetic, I assume for "Mobutu") was from Zaire and he died of natural causes in Morocco (and I have no idea who in Kenya was assassinated by the KGB).

Angelton may have been suggesting he thought Lumumba of the Congo was assassinated by the KGB. We now highly suspect the CIA for that "executive action", no?

I think it throws the whole document into suspicion. Was this an error on the person taking notes or is JJA suffering from Alzhiemers? How much about Kostin/Kostikov was revealed in 1975? I think all those cables we have were released by the ARRB no?

Just raises questions for me.

What kind of suspicion, Chris?

The whole darn thing is "disinfo" from the evil, evil CIA?

--  Tommy

[Thomas Graves]

52 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

I thought we were trying to get the big picture. That's what I'm doing. What about you? 

Dear Paul,

What about me?  Well, I've been working on it off and on since about 1991 (the biggest gap was the seven years I taught English in the Czech Republic), and I'm ashamed to say that haven't solved it yet.

You?

What about James DiEugenio? Has he narrowed it down at all from "The Whole National Security State" yet?

Et al.?

-- Tommy

[Thomas Graves]

6 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

Dear Sandy,

My best guess is that the first time Angleton told the guys the reason Oswald "went to Mexico City because he was a gosh-darned no-good low-down stinkin' double agent rat" was while they all were taking turns pounding the heck out of the Coke-Cola [sic] machine down the hall, tryin' to get three free Dr Peppers each out of it, or, more likely, that he mentioned it while describing that second photograph.  You know, the one that apparently had Leninoff or Leanovov or Real-Bad-Coff (phonetic) in it with at least one of the Castro boys in the photo, too, and God-knows-who-else!, the description of which appears, intriguingly, to have been, .... uhh ... redacted?

But you're probably right.  Angleton, being an avid fisherman, probably threw in the little tidbit that Cubela, a Cuban, had been spotted just one week earlier while he was a-sneakin' out of Habana (or Paris) to go ....... yep ....... trout fishing ......... in the Sierra Madre mountains of ..... Mexico.

--  Tommy

why not

great song 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

Sandy,

Given the fact that in the memo there are a couple of very similar, short, phonetically-spelled, Russian-looking names, both of which start with a "L" and end with an "-OV / -OFF" , would you agree with me that, if the writer is struggling with the correct spelling of the name "Leonov", and that this sentence fragment -- "a photo found by the Mexican police of Leninoff (phonetic), a Mexican KGB agent"

could and should have been written --  "a photo found by the Mexican police of Leonov, a Mexico City-based KGB officer"  ?

 

--  Tommy

Edited April 30, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

2 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

Sandy,

Given the fact that in the memo there are a couple of very similar, short, phonetically-spelled, Russian-looking names, both of which start with a "L" and end with an "-OV / -OFF" , would you agree with me that, since the writer is (clearly to me) struggling with the correct spelling of the name "Leonov", this sentence fragment -- "a photo found by the Mexican police of Leninoff (phonetic), a Mexican KGB agent"

could and should have been written --  "a photo found by the Mexican police of Leonov, a Mexico City-based KGB officer"  ?

 

--  Tommy

improved and bumped

Edited April 30, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Sandy Larsen]

3 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

Sandy,

 

Do you agree with me that, if the writer had known how to spell the "KGB agent's" last name, this sentence fragment -- a photo found by the Mexican police of Leninoff (phonetic), a Mexican KGB agent

could and should have been written -- a photo found by the Mexican police of Leonov, a Mexico City-based KGB officer  ?

 

--  Tommy

Tommy,

I don't believe that Leninoff/Leninov is even a Russian name. So yes, I certainly think it is reasonable to believe that the name was really Leonoff/Leonov. When said quickly, Leonoff/Leonov could have sounded to an American like the familiar Russian name Lenin with an equally familiar Russian suffix -off/-ov added to it.

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Sandy Larsen]

35 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I don't believe that Leninoff/Leninov is even a Russian name.

 

To see if Leninoff/Leninov is a Russian name, I went to the Russian Wikipedia and searched for entries on anybody (or anything) with that name. The correct transliteration is the form ending in -ov, though the -off ending is very popular. I checked both, "just in case."

So I searched on:

Ленинов and ЛениноФФ. Also ЛениноФ, which is Leninof (one f).

There are no such entries in the Russian Wikipedia. So whoever wrote that phonetic form of the name definitely got it wrong.

 

 

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Thomas Graves]

On 4/30/2017 at 5:59 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

To see if Leninoff/Leninov is a Russian name, I went to the Russian Wikipedia and searched for entries on anybody (or anything) with that name. The correct transliteration is the form ending in -ov, though the -off ending is very popular. I checked both, "just in case."

So I searched on:

Ленинов and ЛениноФФ. Also ЛениноФ, which is Leninof (one f).

There are no such entries in the Russian Wikipedia. So whoever wrote that phonetic form of the name definitely got it wrong.

 

 

I would think that that kind of result is to be expected with words and names labeled in a text as having been "phonetically-spelled".

Regarding the 1975 Church Committee memo we've been talking about, I think it's reasonable to assume that: 1 ) the author was getting his information from Angleton, 2 ) JJA was telling the guys about things that had happened some twelve years earlier, 3 ) Angleton might not have been able to perfectly remember the Russian dude's name by that time, because 4 ) Angleton might even have had a martini or two a little earlier that day.

Or, ..... Angleton did remember Leonov's name, and enunciated it clearly to the guys, but the writer of the memo was either too darn lazy or embarrassed to ask JJA to spell it out for him.

LOL

 

 

FWIW, I just now found this article on the website JFK Facts:

 

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.

Later that year Leonov was assigned to the KGB Station in the Soviet Embassy in  Mexico City. In October 1963, he was immediately informed when a man named Lee Harvey Oswald called the Embassy seeking a visa to travel to Cuba.

Leonov recalled this encounter in his memoirs (Likholetye [The Troubled Years], 2005). The relevant passage was translated by Mark Hackard for his digital page Espionage History Archive. Here is an extract.

 

Retired KGB official Nikolai Leonov

"Once on a Sunday in the autumn of 1963, several weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I was playing volleyball with my colleagues at the embassy’s athletic field. Suddenly a somewhat agitated duty officer appeared and began to ask me to receive an American visitor and speak with him. Swearing under my breath, I ran over in my track suit, hoping that I could get off with a request for him to come on a workday. Entering the reception room for foreigners, I saw a young man with an unusually pale face. A revolver lay on the table, its cylinder loaded with bullets. I say nearby and asked him how I could be of assistance. The young man said his name was Lee Oswald, that he was an American, and that he was currently under constant surveillance and wanted to return immediately to the USSR, where he had earlier lived and worked in Minsk, and be delivered from the constant fear for his life and for the fate of his family. It was clear that behind the table sat a man with an overstimulated nervous system that was on the verge of breakdown. There was no purpose to speaking with a person who was in such a state. The question of restoring citizenship was extremely complicated. One had to write a well-founded request to the USSR Supreme Council Presidium and then wait without any great hope for a long time. And if a positive decision came, then bureaucratic red tape would a lot of time. With the softest, most calming tone I could use, I informed our unusual visitor of this. He began to write a request, but his hands were trembling strongly. Suddenly he set the pen aside and firmly stated: 'I’ll shoot them all today. In the hotel everyone is following me: the manager, the maid, the doorman…' “His eyes shone feverishly, and his voice became unsteady. Images and scenes unknown to me had obviously set upon him. It was clear that behind the table sat a man with an overstimulated nervous system that was on the verge of breakdown. There was no purpose to speaking with a person who was in such a state. We had only to calm Lee Oswald down as much as possible, try to convince him not to do anything that could hinder a positive resolution to his question of restoring USSR citizenship, and accompany him out of the embassy. I let the embassy consular department know of what had occurred.

After November 22

“When some time later I learned that namely Lee Oswald was accused of assassinating US President John Kennedy, I saw on television the moment of his murder in a Dallas jail. It was a murder camouflaged as a random assassination, and it became clear to me that he was an obvious scapegoat. Never could a man with such a shaken nervous system, whose fingers couldn’t steadily hold a pen, calculatingly and in cold blood produce the fatal shots accurately from long distance. I say this firmly and with conviction, because in my youth, as a student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), I was involved in sport shooting and steadily passed the requirements for a marksman. I was even a member of the Moscow shooting team. Many times I had to shoot from a combat rifle in competitions, and I know that the foundation of success lies most of all in a trained and forged nervous system. And I recall that in his conversation with me, Oswald not once spoke negatively of the president or US government. All his fears were tied to someone from nearby, although he couldn’t definitively explain who was after him and why. It’s a pity for such people hounded through life and made the victims of a greater political game.'”

 

--  Tommy  

 

PS  Here's the 1993 National Enquirer magazine article about the same incident: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/P Disk/Passport to Assassination/Item 01.pdf

.....................................

 

Edited May 2, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

On 5/1/2017 at 1:52 AM, Thomas Graves said:

 

I would think that that kind of result is to be expected with words and names labeled in a text as having been "phonetically-spelled".

Regarding the 1975 Church Committee memo we've been talking about, I think it's reasonable to assume that: 1 ) the author was getting his information from Angleton, 2 ) JJA was telling the guys about things that had happened some twelve years earlier, 3 ) Angleton might not have been able to perfectly remember the Russian dude's name by that time, and 4 ) Angleton might even have had a martini or two a little earlier that day.

Or, ..... Angleton did remember Leonov's name, and enunciated it clearly to the guys, but the writer of the memo was either too darn lazy or embarrassed to ask JJA to spell it out for him.

LOL

 

 

FWIW, I just now found this article on the website JFK Facts:

 

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.

Later that year Leonov was assigned to the KGB Station in the Soviet Embassy in  Mexico City. In October 1963, he was immediately informed when a man named Lee Harvey Oswald called the Embassy seeking a visa to travel to Cuba.

Leonov recalled this encounter in his memoirs (Likholetye [The Troubled Years], 2005). The relevant passage was translated by Mark Hackard for his digital page Espionage History Archive. Here is an extract.

 

Retired KGB official Nikolai Leonov

"Once on a Sunday in the autumn of 1963, several weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I was playing volleyball with my colleagues at the embassy’s athletic field. Suddenly a somewhat agitated duty officer appeared and began to ask me to receive an American visitor and speak with him. Swearing under my breath, I ran over in my track suit, hoping that I could get off with a request for him to come on a workday. Entering the reception room for foreigners, I saw a young man with an unusually pale face. A revolver lay on the table, its cylinder loaded with bullets. I say nearby and asked him how I could be of assistance. The young man said his name was Lee Oswald, that he was an American, and that he was currently under constant surveillance and wanted to return immediately to the USSR, where he had earlier lived and worked in Minsk, and be delivered from the constant fear for his life and for the fate of his family. It was clear that behind the table sat a man with an overstimulated nervous system that was on the verge of breakdown. There was no purpose to speaking with a person who was in such a state. The question of restoring citizenship was extremely complicated. One had to write a well-founded request to the USSR Supreme Council Presidium and then wait without any great hope for a long time. And if a positive decision came, then bureaucratic red tape would a lot of time. With the softest, most calming tone I could use, I informed our unusual visitor of this. He began to write a request, but his hands were trembling strongly. Suddenly he set the pen aside and firmly stated: 'I’ll shoot them all today. In the hotel everyone is following me: the manager, the maid, the doorman…' “His eyes shone feverishly, and his voice became unsteady. Images and scenes unknown to me had obviously set upon him. It was clear that behind the table sat a man with an overstimulated nervous system that was on the verge of breakdown. There was no purpose to speaking with a person who was in such a state. We had only to calm Lee Oswald down as much as possible, try to convince him not to do anything that could hinder a positive resolution to his question of restoring USSR citizenship, and accompany him out of the embassy. I let the embassy consular department know of what had occurred.

After November 22

“When some time later I learned that namely Lee Oswald was accused of assassinating US President John Kennedy, I saw on television the moment of his murder in a Dallas jail. It was a murder camouflaged as a random assassination, and it became clear to me that he was an obvious scapegoat. Never could a man with such a shaken nervous system, whose fingers couldn’t steadily hold a pen, calculatingly and in cold blood produce the fatal shots accurately from long distance. I say this firmly and with conviction, because in my youth, as a student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), I was involved in sport shooting and steadily passed the requirements for a marksman. I was even a member of the Moscow shooting team. Many times I had to shoot from a combat rifle in competitions, and I know that the foundation of success lies most of all in a trained and forged nervous system. And I recall that in his conversation with me, Oswald not once spoke negatively of the president or US government. All his fears were tied to someone from nearby, although he couldn’t definitively explain who was after him and why. It’s a pity for such people hounded through life and made the victims of a greater political game.'”

 

--  Tommy  

 

PS  Here's the 1993 National Enquirer magazine article about the same incident: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/P Disk/Passport to Assassination/Item 01.pdf

.....................................

 

Gotta bump it for Sandy

[Sandy Larsen]

16 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

On 5/1/2017 at 2:52 AM, Thomas Graves said:

 

I would think that that kind of result is to be expected with words and names labeled in a text as having been "phonetically-spelled".

Regarding the 1975 Church Committee memo we've been talking about, I think it's reasonable to assume that: 1 ) the author was getting his information from Angleton, 2 ) JJA was telling the guys about things that had happened some twelve years earlier, 3 ) Angleton might not have been able to perfectly remember the Russian dude's name by that time, and 4 ) Angleton might even have had a martini or two a little earlier that day.

Or, ..... Angleton did remember Leonov's name, and enunciated it clearly to the guys, but the writer of the memo was either too darn lazy or embarrassed to ask JJA to spell it out for him.

LOL

 

 

FWIW, I just now found this article on the website JFK Facts:

 

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.

Later that year Leonov was assigned to the KGB Station in the Soviet Embassy in  Mexico City. In October 1963, he was immediately informed when a man named Lee Harvey Oswald called the Embassy seeking a visa to travel to Cuba.

Leonov recalled this encounter in his memoirs (Likholetye [The Troubled Years], 2005). The relevant passage was translated by Mark Hackard for his digital page Espionage History Archive. Here is an extract.

 

Retired KGB official Nikolai Leonov

"Once on a Sunday in the autumn of 1963, several weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I was playing volleyball with my colleagues at the embassy’s athletic field. Suddenly a somewhat agitated duty officer appeared and began to ask me to receive an American visitor and speak with him. Swearing under my breath, I ran over in my track suit, hoping that I could get off with a request for him to come on a workday. Entering the reception room for foreigners, I saw a young man with an unusually pale face. A revolver lay on the table, its cylinder loaded with bullets. I say nearby and asked him how I could be of assistance. The young man said his name was Lee Oswald, that he was an American, and that he was currently under constant surveillance and wanted to return immediately to the USSR, where he had earlier lived and worked in Minsk, and be delivered from the constant fear for his life and for the fate of his family. It was clear that behind the table sat a man with an overstimulated nervous system that was on the verge of breakdown. There was no purpose to speaking with a person who was in such a state. The question of restoring citizenship was extremely complicated. One had to write a well-founded request to the USSR Supreme Council Presidium and then wait without any great hope for a long time. And if a positive decision came, then bureaucratic red tape would a lot of time. With the softest, most calming tone I could use, I informed our unusual visitor of this. He began to write a request, but his hands were trembling strongly. Suddenly he set the pen aside and firmly stated: 'I’ll shoot them all today. In the hotel everyone is following me: the manager, the maid, the doorman…' “His eyes shone feverishly, and his voice became unsteady. Images and scenes unknown to me had obviously set upon him. It was clear that behind the table sat a man with an overstimulated nervous system that was on the verge of breakdown. There was no purpose to speaking with a person who was in such a state. We had only to calm Lee Oswald down as much as possible, try to convince him not to do anything that could hinder a positive resolution to his question of restoring USSR citizenship, and accompany him out of the embassy. I let the embassy consular department know of what had occurred.

After November 22

“When some time later I learned that namely Lee Oswald was accused of assassinating US President John Kennedy, I saw on television the moment of his murder in a Dallas jail. It was a murder camouflaged as a random assassination, and it became clear to me that he was an obvious scapegoat. Never could a man with such a shaken nervous system, whose fingers couldn’t steadily hold a pen, calculatingly and in cold blood produce the fatal shots accurately from long distance. I say this firmly and with conviction, because in my youth, as a student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), I was involved in sport shooting and steadily passed the requirements for a marksman. I was even a member of the Moscow shooting team. Many times I had to shoot from a combat rifle in competitions, and I know that the foundation of success lies most of all in a trained and forged nervous system. And I recall that in his conversation with me, Oswald not once spoke negatively of the president or US government. All his fears were tied to someone from nearby, although he couldn’t definitively explain who was after him and why. It’s a pity for such people hounded through life and made the victims of a greater political game.'”

 

--  Tommy  

 

PS  Here's the 1993 National Enquirer magazine article about the same incident: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/P Disk/Passport to Assassination/Item 01.pdf

.....................................

 

Gotta bump it for Sandy

 

Thanks Tommy.

I could change my mind, but my gut tells me that Oswald was never in Mexico City. Which means Leonov is making up that story. (Which I wouldn't believe anyway. And which happens to be very similar to the one told by the Russian author of that book David Lifton has recently posted about. BTW, DSL does believe that version of the story.)

I tend to believe Sylvia Duran... when she's not under pressure. (Well, reportedly she told a friend she had dated Oswald while he was in MC. Which I don't believe. But I think it is her friend who is fibbing, not Duran.) Anyway, Duran told the HSCA that the Oswald she saw was blond and had blue or green eyes. Azcue, of course, said much the same thing.

(Let me Azcue a question... did you like my play on words?  hehe, sorry. Moving on...)

Your hypothesis that Leonov was the blond Oswald seems quite possible to me. If the Oswald character was indeed Leonov, maybe he used the fabricated story you quoted (above) in an attempt to remove himself from consideration as the blond Oswald. (Coincidentally and ironically, to throw Thomas Graves off his tail !  Did it work?)

Another possibility explaining the Oswald-putting-his-gun-on-the-table story is that perhaps the KGB or Russians adopted its use for some reason. Maybe to show others that Oswald was a crackpot that they would never trust for any job.

Or maybe an Oswald impersonator did put the gun down and act all nervous and everything, and this is where the Russians got the story.