David Belin Papers, City & Greyhound Bus Routes, Dallas to Mexico

[Steve M. Galbraith]

John M. Newman and others have said that the person who called the Soviet Embassy on 10/1/63 wasn't Oswald, but an Oswald impersonator who didn't know the details of what had happened during real-deal Oswald's visits to the Soviet and Cuban Consulates, and that the mentioning of the Department 13-radioactive* name "Kostikov" by Obyedkov during the 10/1/63 tapped-by-CIA phone call effectively planted a CIA-protecting WW III virus in Oswald's CIA file.

*The name "Kostikov" was made Department 13 radioactive in 1962 when Kremlin-loyal Aleksei Kulak (J. Edgar Hoover's shielded-from-CIA FEDORA) at the FBI's NYC field office told the FBI that Kostikov's charge at the U.N., Igor Brykin, was a Department 13 agent or officer.

If you read the transcript of that phone call (I linked to it above) there's nothing for me indicating ignorance about what the real Oswald did. He's simply asking about the status of his visa request. Yes, he didn't remember Kostikov's name but again that's not, to me, surprising. He talked to three agents. So he got their names mixed up. If the goal was to plant a virus linking him to Kostikov and stop an investigation out of a fear of nuclear war then why not explicitly say, "I met Kostikov?" Really connect him. According to the Soviet Embassy/KGB people he met in person he asked them to cable Washington about the status of his visa request. He needed one to get a Cuban transit visa that he desperately wanted. That's what he is asking about in the call. So, how would a Oswald impersonator know about that cable/telegram/visa status request?

Newman is a very able researcher; he finds things that most people miss. But he takes those dots and makes connections with them that I simply don't think warrant it. He's not as bad as Morley but he's close. BTW, he thinks the Pentagon led by Landsdale Lansdale and Lemnitzer killed JFK (a sort of Operation Northwoods false flag plan) because he refused to send troops to Laos and to order an invasion of Cuba. Of course, LBJ didn't do this either; in fact LBJ essentially ended that covert war on Cuba. That was driven by the Kennedys. So why didn't they kill LBJ too? He was softer on Castro than JFK was.

Look, as I said above, people see KGB and CIA and spies and all of that nasty Cold War intrigue surrounding this and try to put Oswald into it, place him as an actor in that play. But I don't think he fits. He was what we've thought for decades: an angry disgruntled man who simply struck back at the world. Maybe there were other reasons; a mixture of politics and personal ones. But I don't see larger forces behind this.

[Tom Mahon]

If you read the transcript of that phone call (I linked to it above) there's nothing for me indicating ignorance about what the real Oswald did. He's simply asking about the status of his visa request. Yes, he didn't remember Kostikov's name but again that's not, to me, surprising. He talked to three agents. So he got their names mixed up. If the goal was to plant a virus linking him to Kostikov and stop an investigation out of a fear of nuclear war then why not explicitly say, "I met Kostikov?" Really connect him. According to the Soviet Embassy/KGB people he met in person he asked them to cable Washington about the status of his visa request. He needed one to get a Cuban transit visa that he desperately wanted. That's what he is asking about in the call. So, how would a Oswald impersonator know about that cable/telegram/visa status request?

Newman is a very able researcher; he finds things that most people miss. But he takes those dots and makes connections with them that I simply don't think warrant it. He's not as bad as Morley but he's close. BTW, he thinks the Pentagon led by Landsdale and Lemnitzer killed JFK (a sort of Operation Northwoods false flag plan) because he refused to send troops to Laos and to order an invasion of Cuba. Of course, LBJ didn't do this either; in fact LBJ essentially ended that covert war on Cuba. That was driven by the Kennedys. So why didn't they kill LBJ too? He was softer on Castro than JFK was.

Look, as I said above, people see KGB and CIA and spies and all of that nasty Cold War intrigue surrounding this and try to put Oswald into it, place him as an actor in that play. But I don't think he fits. He was what we've thought for decades: an angry disgruntled man who simply struck back at the world. Maybe there were other reasons; a mixture of politics and personal ones. But I don't see larger forces behind this.

The voice of the male who spoke (without identifying himself) over the phone with Kostikov from the Cuban Consulate on Saturday September 28 was matched later by the CIA transcriber as being the same voice of the man who identified himself over the phone as Lee Oswald to Kremlin-loyal triple agent Ivan Obyedkov on Tuesday October 1, 1963. Newman analyzed the 9/28/63 and 10/1/63 conversations and concluded that neither the "Oswald" in the Cuban Consulate on 9/28 nor the "Oswald" who called the Soviet Embassy on 10/1 seemed to know what real-deal Oswald had said and done in the Soviet Consulate on Friday September 27, 1963.

I think Newman's a bit paranoiac to believe some high-level military officers killed JFK because he refused to nuke Moskow and Peking in 1963, but that he's right in saying a KGB "mole" in the CIA's mole-hunting Office of Security by the name of Bruce Solie sent (or duped his confidant, protégé, and mole-hunting subordinate, James Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in October 1959 as an ostensible "dangle" in a planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division.

The mole hunt lasted nine years, tore the Soviet Russia Division apart, tore the Counterintelligence Staff apart, and drove Angleton nuttycakes.