One of the 19,045 CIA and FBI documents on President John F. Kennedy's Nov. 22, 1963, assassination released Thursday revealed the "KGB handler" of gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.
According to McClatchy, the documents fill in some blanks about a Soviet Embassy official in Mexico City who met with Oswald weeks before the assassination.
Over the decades, Oswald's meetings in Mexico City with the Cuban and Soviet embassies, purportedly to get a visa to Cuba in hopes of returning to the Soviet Union, have gradually been revealed, McClatchy reported.
But the Thursday release revealed one of the Soviets he had contact with was Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov.
McClatchy reported the CIA confirmed to the original assassination investigators that Kostikov was likely part of the Department 13 assassination unit of the Soviet spy agency, the KGB.
It is now known Oswald had phone conversations while in Mexico with Kostikov — and among the further-released documents Thursday were references to Kostikov being "Oswald's KGB handler."
It is found in a May 1982 memo from what appears to be an unidentified foreign intelligence agency or U.S. asset in the Middle East asking longtime CIA Soviet Division leader David Blee about Kostikov.
The questioner notes the Soviets were behind increased harassment of foreign embassies in Beirut – less than a year before a truck bomb leveled the U.S. embassy there, killing 241 U.S. marines and military personnel.
"The reason for our interest in KOSTIKOV will be obvious," writes the official to Blee.
That document was one of more than 15,000 that Thursday were left with some form of partial redaction.
Another document released Thursday revealed a memo dated Sept. 30, 1963, revealing FBI field agent James Hosty Jr. had sent word back to headquarters on the activities of Oswald.
The document makes clear Hosty did tell FBI bosses Oswald was violent and had been living and working as a maintenance man in New Orleans before moving to Dallas in the spring of 1963. And it confirms Oswald was under surveillance at the time of the assassination.
The agencies have until Oct. 26, 2021, to fully lift the veil of secrecy on the documents about the assassination – almost 58 years after the events in Dallas.
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