Paula Botan

From what I understand the book never came out in English oddly enough. I believe it was only released out in Belarus. I never would have found out about it at all if Dr. Titovets had not told me about it. By the way, why are they always surprised when confronted about the agency ties of family? Is there a class they take on this at Langley?

So true. I don't like to sound paranoid, but sometimes it feels as though they have these "Oswald did it" books ready to go. The timing can be very suspicious. I still remember when Dr. Titovets and I finally published his book back in 2010, two books specifically about Oswald's time in the USSR were already in the pipeline--Peter Savodnik's The Interloper and Alexander Lukashuk's The Trace of the Butterfly. Lukashuk worked for Radio Liberty (major spook vibes there) and his book tried to undermine Titovets' account as well as call into question his connection to the KGB. As if anyone who got within two feet of Oswald wasn't compromised in some way (including Marina).

Nice article. Funny how they pull out the psychobabble when they can no longer argue the evidence. That's really all they have left. The insistence and desperation with which they do it is pretty astonishing though. And revealing as well.

No such luck.

Just wanted to share this as I haven't seen anything mentioned about it in the forums. It's from 2016 and features interviews with Dr. Ernst Titovets as well as the elderly pensioner that currently lives at Oswald's old Minsk apartment. It is worth the price of admission just to see Lee's old bathroom. Enjoy.

I have never found the Paines to be credible. The reason is quite simple. My late mother-in-law was an executive secretary for a defense contractor for much of her career. As such, she told me that she had a security clearance and had been thoroughly investigated by the FBI. In 2009, Ernst Titovets invited me to visit Minsk as a thank you for helping with his book. When I applied for my passport I was denied. I literally had to get my congressman involved to ensure that I could resolve the problem. Thankfully it was resolved. I have no idea why I would have been denied a passport other than that I was communicating with someone who let's just say was or is "connected" and I was the daughter-in-law of a woman who still worked for a defense contractor. I'm actually grateful it happened. In retrospect it showed me how the system is supposed to work. How is it possible that Michael Paine had a security clearance AND was spending his free time with a Russian defector?! And he never gets a visit by the FBI or fired from his job at Bell Helicopter? Does anybody really believe this stuff?

I completely agree with you Jim.

Educated guess is I would go with the "some entity" was financing him. He did tell me at one point that he had got or was getting funding from Howard Schultz the Starbucks dude. Weird since I've never heard anything about Schultz's interest in the Kennedy assassination. Also, Schultz is from all indications a raging neoliberal who never saw an intervention he didn't like. Not exactly JFK.

I think your first suggestion, that she somehow learned he was under special scrutiny is plausible. I do know at this point her English instruction lessons were being given exclusively to Minsk VIPs who certainly may have let something slip in her presence. Your latter suggestion however is naive at best. From what Ernst told me, opting out of this sort of forced surveillance was not a luxury anyone had. And additionally, from what Ernst told me, Mary had been fired from The Foreign Language Institute in Minsk where she worked during Stalin's reign under the phony pretense that her Russian wasn't adequate to teach the students. Yet later on apparently it was perfectly adequate to teach the Minsk elite! What would she have done had she lost that too? It does seem very strange that the KGB (as far as we know) never forced her hand and made her meet with Oswald. If they thought his Russian was never very adequate or that he was holding something back, might he have been more loose tongued around a fellow American? Any thoughts?

I agree that this is a mostly rational explanation for her reluctance but what to make of the fact that she ROUTINELY entertains visiting Americans any or all of whom might be suspect to the authorities?

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Erich is Ernst. Sorry if I was unclear. I don't know why she refused to meet him other than that she may have suspected he was a spy.

Mary was a defector if I recall correctly in the 1930s. A Jewish New York radical and a graduate of Hunter College. She was married twice and had two sons. She passed away in the 1990s and is buried in MInsk. She was teaching out there in MInsk at the time Oswald was there and Erich apparently was receiving English lessons from her. What was interesting to me is that he said she routinely would invite visiting Americans to her apartment to chat and socialize, but apparently Oswald was the one exception. She absolutely refused to meet him. Why? What did she know or suspect? He told me she had a sister and a best friend who lived in New York that she wrote to so I thought that Angleton must have been intercepting her letters as well. I talked to Jim Lesar many years ago and asked if any CIA records on Mary might fall under the JFK Records Act but he said that while they might, litigation with the agency is very expensive and the agency always wins. I ran this by Erich at the time but he thought she would have been too smart to have written anything about Oswald to her connections in New York. It remains very intriguing to me though. What do you think?

Hi Gary. Thanks for your comments. I guess I'm not alone.

I know he seemed to think that there was shooting in the car and that a secret service agent was killed as a result. That was kind of a breaking point for me. Did he really think that? I don't know. I'm not sure I would have liked either answer to that question.