Unraveling one of world history's biggest murder mysteries, former Amb. James Woolsey on Newsmax TV said President John K. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was trained by the KGB and inspired by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
"John Kennedy took a clever and effective stand — as did Robert [Kennedy] — during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Khrushchev hated them both for that," Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told Tuesday's "National Report." "He especially hated President Kennedy and he pounded his fist on the table — or maybe his shoe again, I don't know — and declared it was time for John Kennedy to die.
"It created a situation where [Khrushchev] was essentially demanding that someone kill JFK, and he did. That edict sat there for months, for years."
But once Oswald, who was lured into Soviet espionage and given a Soviet wife, was lined up as the assassin by the Soviet KGB, even a Khrushchev change of heart did not keep Oswald from seeking "to become a hero."
"Even Khrushchev was capable of rationality from time to time, and he essentially broke off his demand for JFK to be killed and moved away from that stance," Woolsey told host Emma Rechenberg.
"It turned out that was not a very good thing today to do, because Oswald never broke off his obligation. From his point of view, he was going to be a hero by killing John F. Kennedy."
It never mattered Khrushchev no longer wanted JFK to die, Woolsey said, because Oswald was determined to make his hero, Khrushchev, proud.
"If he didn't receive the message, it's because he had plugs in his ears," Woolsey said of a stand down message from the KGB. "This is not something that was sort of an accident."
The new details are outlined in Woolsey's new book released Tuesday, "Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin's Secret War on America."
"There is no doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was trained by the KGB to commit the assassination of President John F. Kennedy," authors Woolsey and the late Ion Mihai Pacepa wrote. "Even after the KGB ordered Oswald to stand down, Oswald stubbornly went ahead with what he considered his personal mission as bestowed upon him by his hero, Khrushchev."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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