The Mitrokhin Archive and the JFK Assassination

[John Simkin]

The Mitrokhin Archive is collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate. When he defected to Great Britain, he brought the Archive with him. A book, The Sword and the Shield, co-written with Christopher Andrew, a close friend of the British intelligence services, was published in 1992.

The book argues that the KGB was involved in a disinformation campaign against the United States. This included:

* Promotion of false John F. Kennedy assassination theories, using writer Mark Lane.

* Forged a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald to E. Howard Hunt attempting to incriminate Hunt in the Kennedy Assassination.

* Discrediting the CIA by using former officers such as Philip Agee.

* Spreading rumors that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual.

* Attempts to discredit Martin Luther King, Jr. by placing publications portraying him as an "Uncle Tom" who was secretly receiving government subsidies.

* Stirring up racial tensions in the United States by mailing bogus letters from the Ku Klux Klan, by placing an explosive package in "the Negro section of New York" (operation PANDORA), and by spreading conspiracy theories that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination had been planned by the US government.

* Fabrication of the story that the AIDS virus was manufactured by US scientists at the US Army research station at Fort Detrick; the story was spread by Russian-born biologist Jakob Segal.

It seems to me that either Vasili Mitrokhin told the authorities what they wanted to hear or the book had been written by the CIA.

[William Kelly]

The Mitrokhin Archive is collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate. When he defected to Great Britain, he brought the Archive with him. A book, The Sword and the Shield, co-written with Christopher Andrew, a close friend of the British intelligence services, was published in 1992.

The book argues that the KGB was involved in a disinformation campaign against the United States. This included:

* Promotion of false John F. Kennedy assassination theories, using writer Mark Lane.

* Forged a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald to E. Howard Hunt attempting to incriminate Hunt in the Kennedy Assassination.

* Discrediting the CIA by using former officers such as Philip Agee.

* Spreading rumors that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual.

* Attempts to discredit Martin Luther King, Jr. by placing publications portraying him as an "Uncle Tom" who was secretly receiving government subsidies.

* Stirring up racial tensions in the United States by mailing bogus letters from the Ku Klux Klan, by placing an explosive package in "the Negro section of New York" (operation PANDORA), and by spreading conspiracy theories that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination had been planned by the US government.

* Fabrication of the story that the AIDS virus was manufactured by US scientists at the US Army research station at Fort Detrick; the story was spread by Russian-born biologist Jakob Segal.

It seems to me that either Vasili Mitrokhin told the authorities what they wanted to hear or the book had been written by the CIA.

John,

Why the CIA?

Mitrokhin was in the hands of the British, why not MI5 or MI6?

I talked with Mary Ferrell about Mitrokhin's on the JFK Assassination and she believes the Dear Mr. Hunt letter was written by Oswald, but not to E. Howard Hunt.

Mitrokhin only provided fodder for the likes of Gus Russo and Max Holland, who swallowed everything Mitrokhin says, hook, line and sinker.

Mitrokhin is the archtypcal "red herring."

The biggest fish that Mitrokhin fried was an American who had at one time worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) as a technician, and who handed the Russians reams of NSA records, then left the NSA and became a school teacher. When Mitrokhin mentioned this guy, the FBI went after him, and he confessed.

At his court hearing, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer heard him say that among the NSA records he saw and turned over to the Russians was one document that named JFK's assassin, not Lee Harvey Oswald. When the reporter asked him who was named on the document. "Louis Angel Castillo," he replied.

Turning this guy in was one of the ways that Mitrokhin established his bonifides with the British.

Mitrokhin's chief British benefector was/is a Cambridge Univeristy professor.

The CIA were approached before the British, but apparently declined to accept Mitrokhin as a defector.

There was a thread on here on Louis Angel Castillo, but I can't find it.

Here's my article about it:

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01...l-castillo.html

Bill Kelly

Edited April 10, 2009 by William Kelly

[Pamela Brown]

The issue with this book and also the Nicheporenko book on LHO in MC is really what were the agendas of the KGB in regard to the JFK assassination? The Soviets are very sophisticated and always have an agenda. So is it with their books; they are pushing something that works to their advantage, and, in this case, to the detriment of the credibility of such valuable researchers as Mark Lane.

An even larger question is what was the KGB involvement in the assassination and subsequent cover-up? That they would have been on the hook simply because of LHO's connection to the USSR may account for some of the frenzy it seems they were in, but there may be more to it than that.

Many of the records regarding LHO and his trip to the USSR are still not released; we can only guess what they may contain.

In addition, the actions of Marina both before and after the assassination need to be scrutinized objectively. Was she a sleeper spy when she married LHO, and did she marry him for some other reason than love? After the assassination Marina was sequestered until after her testimony to the WC was given. She was threatened with deportation and coerced into making statements against LHO. Marina was also the source for most of the more damning information against LHO. She maintained for years that she thought LHO was guilty, and then, in the 80's changed her mind. Was her revelation that LHO was innocent after all sincere, or was that also scripted, and, if so, why?

Edited April 10, 2009 by Pamela McElwain-Brown

[John Simkin]

John,

Why the CIA?

Mitrokhin was in the hands of the British, why not MI5 or MI6?

Little of the information involved MI5/MI6. Nor did it add anything to what we really know. One interesting bit of information concerned Tom Driberg, a leading British politician, who, according to Mitrokhin, was photographed in a sexual act while in Moscow in 1956. He was visiting his old friend and fellow homosexual Guy Burgess at the time. Mitrokhin claims that the KGB used these photographs to blackmail Driberg into becoming a Soviet spy. However, we now know that Driberg had been working for MI5 since the 1930s. Maxwell Knight, head of B5b, a unit that conducted the monitoring of political subversion, recruited Driberg as an agent when he was a member of the British Communist Party. In 1941 Anthony Blunt informed Harry Pollitt that Driberg was an informer and he was expelled from the party. Knight now suspected that his unit had been infiltrated by the KGB but it was not until after the war that MI5 discovered that Blunt was responsible for exposing Driberg.

Driberg was not in a position to provide the Soviets with any useful information. Mitrokhin accepts this but claims that the KGB made the mistake of thinking that his role as chairman of the Labour Party was the same as being leader of the Labour Party. Even the KGB was not that daft.

The information about the USA is equally daft. The one I like best is that the KGB was spreading rumors that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual.

[Pat Speer]

I found The Sword and the Shield credible. We can feel fairly certain that there were KGB plots to manipulate American opinion, just as there were CIA plots to manipulate Russian opinion. What those on the right who claim the Mitrrokhin papers prove that the early CT movement, particularly Mark Lane, was under the thumb of the KGB, miss, is that the papers suggest the opposite. The Sword and The Shield is explicit in that, while the KGB tried to influence the early critics, they had virtually no success, as the critics had minds of their own. The money the KGB gave Lane was marginal, and filtered through other organizations so that Lane would have no idea where it was coming from. The Hunt letter was supposed to implicate Howard Hunt, but many of the critics thought it implicated H.L. Hunt, and so on...

If the Mitrokhin papers were a CIA-backed fraud, I suspect they'd have done a better job of implicating the early critics, and, in particular, Jim Garrison. Richard Helms expressed the opinion, in his posthumous autobiography, that Garrison had been co-opted by a KGB disinformation campaign. If I recall, there was nothing like this mentioned in the Mitrokhin papers.

As far as Nechiporenko, I found his book credible as well. As I recall, he concludes that there were plots to kill Kennedy, but that Oswald beat them to it. He bases this largely on Oswald's behavior, and relationship with Marina. I think he missed that a lot of what we've been told about Marina and Lee's love life has been sculpted by the WC and by Priscilla Johnson, both of whom were trying to sell that Oswald acted alone, and neither of whom was particularly credible. If he'd been sponsored by the CIA, as many suspect, I think he'd have made a much more convincing case for Oswald's sole guilt.

Edited April 11, 2009 by Pat Speer

[William Kelly]

I think one must keep in mind that while former 'enemy' intelligence agencies, the successor to the KGB and the CIA [and its offspring and friends] now work together on many things and/or trade 'I'll tell this lie about X if you will tell this lie about Y'. Russian intel lost my vote on believing anything they said when they claimed to have no interest in LHO - yeah, right!!!! A lie only equaled by the CIA lie of the same wording. Something rotten in Denmark and Moscow and D.C. While the Russian Intelligence and American intelligence certainly spy on one another still [as in cold-war days] they also do lots of cooperative ventures. I once asked a KGB man I met who was then working in the CIA what the difference was between the to two agencies. He thought for a long time and said, 'the language they work in in the office and a preference for tea in one and coffee in the other.' I think that captures it. They both are in the business of lying....one with a samovar of tea and one with a Mr. Coffee. Both with a Coke machine somewhere near.

Peter,

On the same note, it should be pointed out that with the passage of the JFK Act, the NSA did not release their records related to the assassination that refer to Louis Angel Castillo as the assassin, so the Russians have the records related to the assassination that the NSA refuses to release to the American public, the citizens who pay their NSA salries.

BK

[Terry Mauro]

Peter,

French Intelligence did issue a 1967 report on the matter of repeated assassination attempts on the life of French President Charles De Gaulle.. In the report they identified "Permindex" as the organization responsible for the attempts on President Charles De Gaulle's life.

Permindex was headed up by British (SOE) and Divsion Five(counter espionage division within the FBI) operative "Louis Mortimer Bloomfield."