FROM: M. Duke Lane, 76004,2356 TO: Anthony Marsh [J], 72127,2301 DATE: 4/13/95 8:51 AM Re: News you can't use (#3) Oswald-New Yorker AP US & World 04/03/95 6:14 a EST Copyright 1995 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.@bThe information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of the Associated Press. NEW YORK (AP) -- Soviet agents spied on Lee Harvey Oswald through a hole in the wall and considered him a klutz who couldn't shoot straight, according to an article on President Kennedy's assassin in The New Yorker. Norman Mailer, writing in the magazine's April 10 issue, says the Soviets suspected defector Oswald of being a U.S. agent and kept him under surveillance when he lived there for 2 1/2 years. Oswald returned to the United States in 1962, a year before President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The former deputy chief of counterintelligence told Mailer that even though the KGB had "no data" that could have foretold the Kennedy assassination, it was "the worst moment of my life." "Everybody blames me for this! It was as if I knew he would shoot," said the officer, who was assigned a pseudonym by Mailer. "You could not find one single person from Minsk who would say, `Yes, Oswald had these intentions to go back to America and cause all this trouble." Mailer's article is adapted from his upcoming book, "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery," and is based on six months of research and interviews in the former Soviet Union. Mailer's account corresponds to material in a three-part series on Oswald published in 1992 by the Moscow-based Izvestia newspaper. The newspaper cited security officials as saying the KGB kept Oswald under a 24-hour watch, suspecting he was a foreign spy, but never tried to recruit him as an agent. Izvestia reported that only one or two people in the state KGB knew full details about the surveillance operation, which involved about 20 agents. The New Yorker account says Soviet agents watched Oswald and his Russian wife Marina through a peephole in the wall of their state-assigned apartment. It also includes partial KGB transcripts of their conversations, mostly mundane bickering about dishes and laundry, and entries from Oswald's diary. Among those interviewed in Minsk was one of Oswald's fellow workers in a radio factory, who said he was asked to test Oswald's interest in information about the Soviet Air Force. "The friend also remembers that Oswald couldn't figure out how to put film in a simple Soviet camera," the article says. "The KGB noted with great interest that Oswald, a former Marine, never seemed to hit anything when he went hunting and that he didn't know how to operate a shortwave radio set." Mailer also interviewed Marina Oswald, who says she still does not understand her late husband but remains "definitely sure he didn't do it." Oswald was arrested shortly after the Nov. 22, 1963 Kennedy assassination. He denied any involvement and was shot to death by Jack Ruby before he could be tried. Mailer traces Oswald's Soviet years in New Yorker Reuters North America 04/02/95 5:55 EST Copyright 1995 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.@bThe following news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of Reuters Ltd. NEW YORK (Reuter) - Author Norman Mailer, writing for the New Yorker, interviewed KGB officials who spied on Lee Harvey Oswald during his 31-month stay in the former Soviet Union and recalled that the former Marine couldn't hit anything when hunting. The KGB officials also said that Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John Kennedy, didn't know how to operate a shortwave radio set. A former friend of Oswald's who worked with him in a Soviet radio factory told the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author that Oswald couldn't even figure out how to put film in a simple camera. Mailer reports in the April 10 issue of the New Yorker magazine that the KGB suspected Oswald of being an American spy immediately after he arrived in 1959 and began monitoring his movements. But the KGB officials denied having known that Oswald planned to kill the U.S. president, who was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963. Oswald lived in Moscow and Minsk before returning to the United States in 1962 with his Soviet-born wife, Marina Prusakova, whom he had married during his mystery-shrouded visit. Former KGB officials interviewed by Mailer deny having recruited Oswald -- who the Warren Commission found was the lone assassin using a rifle -- or of having had prior knowledge of his intention to kill the young president. Using a peephole to peer into Oswald's Minsk apartment, KGB agents observed the Oswalds and transcribed their arguments and conversations with friends and families. His wife argued bitterly against moving with Oswald to America, according to the transcribed tapes, telling him, "You can go to your America without me, and I hope you die on the way." She eventually relented and still lives in the United States, in Texas. The article was adapted from Mailer's new book, "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery," to be published by Random House in May. Mailer and colleague Lawrence Schiller spent six months researching in Moscow and Minsk, where they won exclusive access to KGB files, according to the New Yorker. Mailer has won Pulitzer Prizes for two previous books, "Armies of the Night" and "The Executioner's Song." Kennedy Assassination AP US & World 03/30/95 7:54 EST Copyright 1995 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.@bThe information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of the Associated Press. By KIM I. MILLS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro conducted his own ballistics tests and decided "it took about three people" to assassinate President Kennedy, according to an informant cited in FBI documents. Castro, who considered himself a sharpshooter, attempted to recreate the shooting, using a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight, says a memo to the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from the special agent in charge in New York. The Warren Commission concluded that the shooting was the act of one man, Lee Harvey Oswald. In the memo, dated June 12, 1964, the agent quoted an unnamed FBI informant as reporting that "conducting the tests was Castro's own personal idea to prove to himself that it could not be done and that when Castro and his men could not do it, Castro concluded Oswald must have had help." Castro, based on his findings, speculated that the assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, was probably the work of three people, Hoover wrote in a 1964 letter to J. Lee Rankin, general counsel for the Warren Commission. His letter and the agent's memo were among more than 10,000 pages of previously secret documents released Thursday under a 1992 law mandating the opening of government files related to the Kennedy assassination. The materials were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration. A fraction of the documents -- 149 pages -- were from the FBI's "SOLO" operation, focusing on the activities of the Communist Party in the United States and the former Soviet Union's influence of that organization. The bulk of the documents released Thursday were investigative files regarding organized crime figures Sam Giancana and Gus Alex that were reviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 and 1979. According to Hoover, Castro also said that when Oswald was refused a visa at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City several weeks before the assassination, he left saying, "I'm going to kill Kennedy for this." Oswald was arrested shortly after the shooting in Dallas. He denied any involvement and was shot to death by Jack Ruby before he could be tried. Cuba has long maintained that Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA. But some in the United States believe Castro ordered Oswald to kill Kennedy after discovering a CIA-mob plot to assassinate him. Existence of the Hoover letter and some of its contents have been known since the mid-1970s. However, this was the first time the paragraphs recounting Castro's statements have been made public. The letter was based on information gleaned by an FBI informant in Cuba; his name was not included in the letter. "Castro is said to have expressed the conclusion that Oswald could not have fired three times in succession and hit the target with the telescopic sight in the available time, that he would have needed two other men in order for the three shots to have been fired in the time interval," Hoover wrote. "The source commented that on the basis of Castro's remarks, it was clear that his beliefs were based on theory as a result of Cuban experiments and not on any firsthand information in Castro's possession." The FBI's own tests, using the same gun as Oswald, determined that three shots could have been fired by one person within the five to six seconds it took. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy with a rifle from a sixth-floor window at the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas. Since then, however, numerous conspiracy theories have surfaced, revolving around whether Oswald was the lone gunman and, if he was, whether he might have been acting at others' behest. The documents released Thursday concerned whether Oswald had connections to the Cuban or Soviet governments. Both governments thought Oswald was unstable, the documents indicated. For example, Soviet officials acknowledged to FBI informants that Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union but said he was never given citizenship and that he belonged to no Soviet organizations. They described him as "a neurotic maniac who was disloyal to his own country and everything else." Soviet officials also believed the assassination was not the work of one man, and felt that Oswald was under the influence of "ultraright" elements, the documents indicate. Other documents revealed "panic" within the Communist Party of the United States that Oswald's connections to it would come out. Oswald had corresponded with several party leaders. The party hired its own liberal detectives to investigate the assassination, according to the FBI. FBI releases papers on JFK assassination UPI US & World 03/30/95 1:21 EST By MICHAEL KIRKLAND WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- The FBI released more than 10,000 pages of documents Thursday from its investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, part of a continuing series of disclosures required by federal law. The bureau also released documents, declassified by Attorney General Janet Reno, on an operation codenamed "SOLO" which deals with the reactions to the assassination by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Soviet officials. The formerly classified documents were transferred to a National Archives and Records Administration facility in College Park, Md. A Justice Department official, speaking on background, said some of the papers recount an apparent experiment by Castro in which he personally re-enacted the shooting and concluded there must have been a second gunman, other than Lee Harvey Oswald, in order for three shots to have been fired in the amount of time allowed. Castro had a replica of Dallas' Dealy Plaza, the scene of the assassination, reconstructed for the experiment, the official said. Meanwhile, the FBI issued a statement on the release of the documents, which recounted comments made by Castro during a 1964 meeting with officials of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. "Castro recounted an incident of Oswald becoming angry when he was refused a visa (to enter Cuba) at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City," the statement said, quoting from the declassified documents. "Castro stated that when Oswald was refused a visa...(he said) 'I'm going to kill Kennedy for this.' "Furthermore, Castro expressed the belief that Oswald did not act alone," the FBI statement said. "The sources advised that Castro's speculation was based on experiments Castro and 'his men' had conducted with rifles similar to that used by Oswald and not on any firsthand information." The FBI statement also quotes documents dealing with the reaction of Soviet officials, who told a source that Oswald "was never given Soviet citizenship and...belonged to no Soviet organizations." The Soviet officials described Oswald "as a neurotic maniac who was disloyal to his own country and everything else," the FBI statement said. "Soviet officials believed the assassination was not the deed of one man and was the work of 'ultraright' elements." Most of the documents transferred Thursday dealt with Chicago organized crime figures Sam Giancana and Gus Alex, according to the FBI. The Giancana-Alex documents were reviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 and 1979. The FBI said it also will ask court permission to make public grand jury material, ordinarily secret, from the Giancana-Alex files, the bureau said. With Thursday's release the FBI has now transferred more than 590,000 pages of documents to the National Archives, including files on the JFK assassination and probes into the lives of Lee Harvey Oswald and the man who killed the assassin, Jack Ruby. The FBI said it will continue to transfer batches of the remaining 250,000 pages of documents. The transfers are being coordinated by the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board. Release of the documents is required under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Copyright 1995 The United Press International JFK Assassination AP US & World 03/07/95 2:03 a EST Copyright 1995 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in this news report may not be republished or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. By MELISSA B. ROBINSON Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hoping to dispel notions that the government is concealing information about President Kennedy's assassination, an independent panel is gearing up to launch a nationwide search for records. "We may debunk certain conspiracy theories because the records aren't there to support those theories, or we might create new possibilities," said John Tunheim, Minnesota's chief deputy attorney general and chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board. "At least we will have gotten to the point where the federal government no longer is hiding information from the public," Tunheim said in a recent interview. "That's an issue of trust." After a slow start, the board, with a 1995 budget of $2.15 million and $2.4 million proposed for 1996, is beginning its work of seeking out new materials related to the assassination and reviewing records that government agencies would rather keep secret. To uncover materials that might be in the hands of private citizens, it is counting on getting leads from experts, documents and a series of public meetings. "I'm prepared to see anything," Tunheim said. "What I'm trying to do is to organize a very systematic and very detailed process of finding every scrap of paper, every photograph, every film. Whatever exists." Created by Congress in 1992 in the hopes of squelching any public unease that the government has not divulged all it knows about the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, the board was not appointed until President Clinton took office. Five members, four from universities and Tunheim, were confirmed by the Senate and sworn in in April 1994. On Tuesday, the board is scheduled to hold its third public meeting, in Washington. It met last November in Dallas, and plans a trip to Boston to visit the John F. Kennedy Library later this month. The board is considering trips to New Orleans, Miami and Los Angeles, and is in the middle of defining an assassination record to help set parameters for its work. In 1992, responding to renewed public interest created by Oliver Stone's film "JFK," which portrayed an elaborate conspiracy, Congress voted to compel the release of virtually all assassination-related documents to the National Archives. So far, the Archives have indexed 120,000 records, with an additional 60,000 pending for addition to the data base. After a CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald was made public in 1993, 2,000 research requests were logged in under three months. One of the board's main jobs is to review records that government agencies do not want released, possibly for national security or privacy concerns. It can delay release, but only until 2017, the deadline set by law. Ultimately, the goal is to have all the records available to the public at the archives, or possibly by computer. "But our focus is really on the records themselves," Tunheim said, "to get them available to the public so that they can read them and try to understand them for themselves."