Released files show Russia feared they would be blamed and bombed for JFK assassination

CONSPIRACY theories. What the government might have known and still won’t say about Lee Harvey Oswald. 

Now that is set to all be revealed after President Donald Trump confirmed he would allow the release of “ALL” of the files linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“After strict consultation with General Kelly, the CIA and other agencies, I will be releasing ALL JFK files other than the names and addresses of any mentioned person who is still living,” Trump wrote in a tweet yesterday.

“I am doing this for reasons of full disclosure, transparency and in order to put any and all conspiracy theories to rest.”

#JFKFiles pic.twitter.com/AnPBSJFh3J

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2017

The news comes after the release of the first set of files revealed the KGB dispatched its own agents to try and solve the mystery surrounding the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy fearing his slaying could prompt America into launching a nuclear war.

That’s what is revealed in one of the more than 2800 files surrounding the November 22, 1963 assassination of the president as his motorcade passed through downtown Dallas released by the US Government following a 1992 White House pledge to end the conspiracies and doubt.

But debate over just who killed JFK and why is likely to continue with the files only adding to the conspiracies with a whole new raft of titillating memos referencing spies, plots and sleeze particularly in how the CIA operated at the time.

One new document revealed the man who was ultimately accused of the assassination Harvey Lee Oswald, had written a letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington — which the FBI intercepted read and resealed — in which he referenced wanting to speak with an embassy officials “in charge of assassinations”.

As revealed yesterday, he followed that message up with a visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, one week before the slaying, and did in fact speak with an official, Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov, a known KGB agent working for the “13th Division” renowned for sabotage and assassinations.

Memos now reveal FBI chief J Edgar Hoover feared this side plot, including the letter and visit and another innocuous call to the embassy could suggest Oswald, who spent a decade in Russia and had a Russian wife, was a Russian spy or subversive. But it was also investigated whether he was a possible CIA agent.

Hoover thwarted moves to have a full presidential commission to investigate the JFK death fearing the public fallout and instead suggested private reports be made for JFK’s successor President Lyndon B. Johnson instead.

“I felt this was better because there are several aspects which would complicate our foreign relations,” Hoover wrote.

He referenced the Oswald letter to the embassy directed at those “in charge of assassinations and similar activities on the part of the Soviet government. To have that drawn into a public hearing would muddy the waters internationally”.

After Oswald was shot, Hoover dispatched an agent to the hospital hoping for a death bed confession but none was issued which prompted Hoover to write that now then was the time to “convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”

For their part, the KGB — being tapped by the FBI both in the US and Russia — feared they would be fingered for the crime.

They believed Oswald was not capable of such an act and worried it was a bigger conspiracy by the ultra-right in America to launch an internal coup or even LBJ was behind the killing.

But their greatest fear was that now a rogue US general would launch a missile strike against the Soviet Union as a misconceived act of patriotism.

Some Soviets feared there were “some interested in (utilising) the assassination and playing on anti-communist sentiments in the US.”

It will take scholars months to pour through the documents and missives to create a more detailed picture of the days leading up to and after the world famous public assassination.