Oswald’s Bulgarian Connection: The Spas Raikin Papers

[Douglas Caddy]

Oswald’s Bulgarian Connection: The Spas Raikin Papers

https://www.hoover.org/news/oswalds-bulgarian-connection-spas-raikin-papers

[Thomas Graves]

Thanks for posting this, Douglas.

How ironic that Raikin's works are housed at the same scholarly research facility as are those of the man who was very probably "Popov's Mole" -- Edward Ellis Smith.

Here's part of Smith's (corrected-by-me) biography from the Hoover Institution's website:

"Edward Ellis Smith was a historian, writer, foreign service officer, and CIA agent. After graduating from West Virginia University in 1939, he was deployed to Germany to serve in World War II. Following the end of the war, he was chosen to attend Naval Language School, where he became fluent in Russian. From 1946 until 1947, he attended Strategic Intelligence School at the Pentagon and Counter Intelligence School at Camp Holabird. Smith began work at the American Embassy in Moscow after graduation, serving as the assistant military and economic attaché. In 1950 he was appointed by United States Army Intelligence to serve as Section Chief, managing the Soviet economic and political section and analyzing policies on Soviet affairs. Towards the end of 1953, he resigned to become an intelligence officer for the CIA and completed various missions [not very successfully] throughout Moscow [in an attempt to set up "dead drops" for the soon-to-be-returning-from-his-GRU-post-in-Vienna, Pryor Popov, but was honey-trapped by his beautiful KGB maid, successfully recruited by the KGB, recalled to Washington in 1956 and fired from the CIA (but unfortunately not prosecuted), recontacted in Washington by the very high KGB officer who had originally recruited him in Moscow, and, for 'cover' became an Ohrana/Young-Stalin scholar, and, ironically, a bank vice president before dying in a mysterious hit-and-run accident in 1982 ..." 

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt8p303667/entire_text/

 

--  Tommy 

 

Question:  Not wanting to hijack your thread, Douglas, I suppose I should pose a Raikin-related question.

 

Okay, "Was Spas working for the CIA, or for the KGB?"

 

Just wondering.  LOL

Edited March 8, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Chuck Schwartz]

The CIA, per Bill Kelly's blog,  "Eventually arriving in New York with his Russian wife and child, Oswald and his family were met by Spas T. Raiken of Traveler’s Aid. Raiken was also the secretary-treasurer of the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshvik Block of Nations, a CIA front group, part of the World Anti-Communist League and an arm of Operation WRINGER, and paraphrasing Bill Kelly, WRINGER was coordinated by g. gelhlen, a former high-ranking member of nazi intelligence gathering key people from Eastern Europe to fight Communism (for the CIA/ A. Dulles).

[Chuck Schwartz]

And this is what John Simkin said on this website about Spas Raiken" ... (Oswald ) he was met bySpas T. Raikin. He also provided Oswald with money to get him to Fort Worth. Officially,Raiken was working on behalf of the New York Travelers Aid Society. It is possible that he was really a CIA contract agent. Raikin later testified that Oswald did tell him some information about.."

[Thomas Graves]

 

https://www.scribd.com/document/183837066/SPAS-T-RAIKIN

 

--  Tommy