Scientia Press

There are good reasons to think that the KGB arranged the murders of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as of other Americans. Note:  “good reasons”, not definitive proof.  In each case, I will argue that We must consider the KGB the leading suspect (except that the KGB and the Mafia collaborated on the JFK assassination).  This perception can guide further investigation that can result in the more definitive finding that the KGB arranged these and related murders.

First, I will explain how the KGB and Mafia have emerged as the prime suspects in the JFK assassination.  Not only was this the most important and best-known case.  New evidence and interpretation point to the KGB’s role in particular and have implications for the other murders.  Second, I will treat each of ten KGB murders in summary fashion.  Third, I will touch on factors that have hampered resolution of these cases for many decades.  Fourth, comparing the cases, I will identify characteristics of the KGB’s art of deniable murder.  Fifth, I will draw some conclusions.

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1. The KGB and JFK

Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) was a noted historian, polymath, and theorist of the evolution of civilizations.

Born and raised in Boston, Quigley planned to pursue a career in biochemistry. But he soon shifted to history, to which he brought an analytical, scientific approach and a questing spirit. After receiving a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D in history from Harvard University,1 he taught at Princeton and Harvard. In 1941 Quigley joined the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he came to teach a highly regarded course, “Development of Civilization”.

New evidence and analysis suggest that Nikita Khrushchev and the KGB were behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Official investigations have discounted the likelihood of a Soviet hand in the assassination, and few outside investigators have pursued this line of inquiry.  But some observers have always considered the Soviets a likely suspect (Lyndon Johnson and other US Government officials evidently did, causing them to suppress any hint of a KGB conspiracy for fear that an outraged public would demand retaliation that would lead to war). The Soviets had a palpable, powerful motive: to gain revenge for the humiliation of Khrushchev and the USSR in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Certainly, the idiosyncratic odyssey of Lee Harvey Oswald into the Soviet Union and a Russian marriage as well as his contacts with Soviet diplomatic offices preceding the assassination afforded the KGB many opportunities to interact with him. In a sense, therefore, the KGB is the elephant in the living room of suspects in this case. Yet repeated investigations have failed to turn up specific evidence that would implicate the KGB.

On October 12, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer was murdered on the canal towpath in Georgetown1. A divorced artist from a prominent family, Meyer was known by insiders to have been President John F. Kennedy’s senior female consort during his White House years, though the story never leaked to the public.

Her murder and the ensuing trial of Raymond Crump, Jr., an African-American laborer found by the police in the vicinity of the murder, drew a good deal of attention at the time. Crump had been identified by a gas station attendant helping start a car on a road overlooking the canal. Hearing cries of “Somebody help me. Somebody help me” and two shots, the attendant ran to look.

The apparent misdeeds and cover-ups of the administration of George W. Bush related to the terrorist attacks of 2001 remain in historical limbo.  Neither presidents, nor the Congress, nor the media have gotten to the bottom of these tragic events.  The 9/11 Commission Report, while providing hundreds of useful details, egregiously and unpardonably failed to examine the doings of senior government officials in the run-up to 9/11 and so must be considered a cover-up.  As a result, the American public has not come to closure on the 9/11 attacks or on the anthrax mailings of 2001, nor is there a shared understanding of such a critical issue as the real reasons that the US attacked Iraq in 2003.

These failures have left the field open to wild speculations regarding these events, generally termed “conspiracy theories”, though this term obscures the crucial distinction between elaborate prospective plots involving many actors (silly in the context of an open society) and retrospective cover-ups that government officials who have made embarrassing mistakes are all too prone to engage in (very realistic and plausible).  However, it is also true that simple prospective plots involving two or three individuals can occur.

Failure to reach a full, shared understanding of major events that led to interminable wars and occupations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia as well as to the undermining of civil liberties has helped to alienate Americans from their government and media, a  triumph for America’s enemies.  So we must make every effort to establish a clear common interpretation of what actually happened.

The 9/11/2001 attacks ushered in an era of endless wars, fear of terrorism, antipathy to immigrants, and domestic surveillance.  Arguably the most important issue regarding 9/11 is the doings of senior government officials in the run-up to the attacks.  Yet both the media and the 9/11 Commission report have refused to discuss it.  This refusal must raise the suspicion that there was indeed wrongdoing.