IN SEARCH OF...LEE HARVEY OSWALD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404810010-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: August 8, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV RU-'UR 15, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20015 656-4058
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
In Search Of ... STATION W D C A TV
Lee Harvey Oswald Syndicated
August 8, 1981 6:30 PM
Washington, DC
NARRATOR: November 22nd, 1963. A lone figure walks
to a window in the Texas school book depository. In a matter
of seconds the President of the United States will be mortally
wounded.. And the name Lee Harvey Oswald will be etched in
history.
But did Oswald really kill President Kennedy? New
evidence points to the possibility that he did not.
The series presents information based in part on
theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest
some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones,
to the mysteries we will examine.
During the cold war era of the early 1960s President
John F. Kennedy is to become the most admired leader of the
Free World.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: There are many people in the world
who really don't understand or say they don't want what is the
great issue between the Free World and the communist world. Let
them come to Berlin.
NARRATOR: His attraction is magnetic. Seldom has
one man unified the people of so many democratic nations.
In October, 1962, President Kennedy learns of the build-
up of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and orders a blockade of Cuban
harbors. It results in one of the most humiliating political
defeats in Russian history.
Little more than a year later the leader of the Western
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world is assassinated. There are some who blame the Soviets, but
nothing can be proved.
Within hours Lee Harvey Oswald, ex-Marine, former
Russian defector, and, as we have come to believe, a distraught
and frustrated young man is in custody.
Before Oswald can tell his full story he is murdered
in front of millions of television viewers.
Almost a year later the Warren Commission delivers its
verdict on the Kennedy assassination. Lee Harvey Oswald acted
alone. He was not a part of a conspiracy.
LEONARD NIMOY: The Warren Commission concluded there
were three shots fired during the assassination, all of the,
coming from behind the President out of a Texas school book
depository window. But many witnesses to the assassination
claimed that at least one shot came from the grassy knoll situa-
ted to the right and front of the President's car. Inspite of
these contradictory accounts, the conclusions reached by the
Warren Commission would officially stand until startling new
evidence came to light.
NARRATOR: It was a recording that had been overlooked
for 15 years. The tape should never have existed at all.
At the time of the assassination the microphone on a
police motorcycle was jammed in the "ON" position, transmitting
sound to police headquarters, where it was recorded. When the
shots were fired in Dallas the microphone picked up those sounds.
But the tape, and you're listening to the actual sound now, was
seemingly indecipherable. If the sounds of gunshots were there
they were impossible to detect by the human ear.
In 1978 Dr. James Barger of the Acoustic Firm Bolt,
Beranek and Newman, attempted to find those gunshots.
DR. JAMES BARGER: We began our analysis by recording
the tape into the computer. We digitized its data and made a
file. Then we had the computer filter this file in order to
remove the sound of the motorcycle as much as we could. The
motorcycle noise is repetitive. The piston fires repetively.
The filter was taught to recognize that sound and
to eliminate it. We then had the computer make a long paper
picture of those filtered sounds. The picture was about 500
feet long. And it represented a pictorial view of the filtered
sound for the whole five and a half minutes that the motorcycle
microphone was stuck open.
We examined that entire 500 feet of acoustical wave
forms to see if there were any wave forms that looked like they
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might represent gunfire. In fact, we did find in six places where
sound bursts indicated the possibility of gun fire on the Dallas
police tape.
At this time we realized we needed a more careful,
a more stringent analysis technique, one that would definitely
determine whether these impulsive sounds were gunfire or whether
they were extraneous noise.
NARRATOR: Dr. Barger and his team returned to Dallas
to perform a sound recreation of the Kennedy assassination. Shots
were recorded at various places at the assassination site for later
comparison with the motorcycle tape.
DR. BARGER: At the end of our analysis we were able
to conclude that there had been at least four shots fired during
the assassination. Three of these had been fired from the Texas
school book depository and one from the grassy knoll.
NARRATOR: The Texas school book depository is located
next to the grassy knoll, along the parkway the President's
motorcade had traveled. Bob Groden, a photo-optics specialist,
attempted to synchronize an enhanced version of the motorcycle
tape with the famous Zapruder film, an 8MM home movie shot
by a motorcade observer. This synchronization, shown now for
the first time on nationwide television, reveals with shocking
clarity that at least two gunmen had to be involved, one firing
from behind the President, the other from the right front.
At least four shots were fired. But it's the third,
the one from the front, the grassy knoll, that the motorcycle
tape, and Dr. Barger's testimony, eventually lead the United
States government's acknowledgement that the assassination of
John F. Kennedy was the probable result of a conspiracy. Where
did that conspiracy originate?
Less than two months after the assassination, Yuri
Ivanocich Nosenko, a high level Russian KGB. agent, defected to
the United Sttes. As recreated here for "in Search Of..."
Osenko told American CIA officers that as part of his duties
he had personally supervised the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald
while Oswald lived in Russia. Nosenko assured the Americans that
Oswald had no relations with Soviet intelligence and acted with-
out Soviet knowledge in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Many of the CIA officers found serious discrepancies in Nosenko's
story and suspected that Nosenko was sent here by the KGB to mis-
lead the Americans about Oswald's Soviet connections.
To prove his honesty Nosenko agreed to submit a lie
detector examination. The key questions: Did Nosenko supervise
the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald? And -- was Lee Harvey Oswald
involved in any way with the intelligence activities of the KGB?
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According to the results of the polygraph test Yuri
Ivanovich Nosenko was a liar.
Some sources close to the CIA claim that Nosenko was then
placed under "hostile" interrogation, treated more like a captured
spy than a defector. Nosenko was put through grueling, unrelent-
ing and abusive interrogation. As flawed as Nosenko's story was,
he refused to break, clinging instead to absurd and indefensible
explanations. Though Nosenko did not break, the CIA officers were
certain that when the Warren Commission questioned Nosenko It too
would find his story unbelievable. But the Warren Commission never
questioned Nosenko.
One man who thinks he knows why is Edward Epstein,
noted authority on the Warren Commission. Epstein believes
that the commission was misinformed by the FBI.
EDWARD EPSTEIN: The last thing J. Edgar Hoover wanted
was to open up the investigation into Lee Harvey Oswald's con-
nections with the Soviet Union. And-if the Warren Commission
began to question Nosenko it would lead exactly in that direction.
Remember, the FBI is in charge of internal security in
the United States. Here was Lee Harvey Oswald who came over
from Russia a defector, who had given out secrets of state to
the Russians. For the FBI should have been keeping a cloiser
eye on him.
If it suddenly turned out through the questioning of
Nosenko that Oswald was a Soviet agent, then the FBI would be
held responsible. For why weren't they keeping Oswald under
surveillance?
And that's the reason that J. Edgar Hoover did not
want to open up the questioning of Nosenko. He did not want
to get into the area of Oswald's connection with the Soviet Union.
NARRATOR: If Nosenko was part of a Russian plot did
it include the assassination of President Kennedy?
NARRATOR: Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans
in October, 1939. His father died two months before. His
childhood was marked by instability, moving with his mother
from house to house, city to city. By the time he was ten he
had attended six different public schools. While he was regarded
as friendly and likable, his teachers detected something hidden
within him, a certain tenseness.
When he was 17 Oswald fulfilled a longtime ambition
and joined the Marine Corps, where he served honorably for
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three years. Following his discharge in 1959 Oswald abruptly
renounced his American citizenship and defected to the Soviet
Union. It is the next two years that know the least about Oswald.
NIMOY: In 1961 Oswald returned to the United States,
reclaiming his American citizenship. With him he brought a
Russian wife, Marini, and a diary describing his life while in
Russia. The diary tells the story of a bitter young man becoming
increasingly disillusioned with the communist system. However, the
diary also contains some puzzling discrepancies.
NARRATOR: Could it be fake? Another attempt by the
Russians to mislead us. To find out we went to the National
Archives in Washington, DC to interview internationally known
handwriting analyst, Thea Stein Lewinson. Mrs. Lewinson had
spent more than four months working on the Oswald diary, putting
it through microscopic scrutiny before she arrived at her evalua-
tion.
THEA STEIN LEWINSON: This is not the spontaneous
writing. It is written very slowly and deliberately. One could
assume that possibly Oswald copied excerpts from his original
diary which were given to him by some representative of Soviet
intelligence. And that he then wrote very slowly in order to
comply with the demands. However, here and there one can see
that he gets irritated and especially at the end of the pages
he frequently gets quite fatigued.
NARRATOR: Mrs. Lewinson believes that fatigue in
Oswald's writing -- as shown here by lines that gradually run
downhill -- indicate that the complete diary was written in
two or three sessions, rather than day by day.
LEWINSON: I think that Oswald was supervised by
Soviet intelligence in order to -- in order to mislead the
Americans at his return to the United States.
NARRATOR: Edward Epstein.
EPSTEIN: When I went through Lee Harvey Oswald's diary
I found two anachronisms -- two things that were out of date. One
was on October 31, where he talked about the American consul McVicker
who wasn't yet to be consul for another year. The second thing was
he talked about rubles in terms of old rubles that were ten for
a dollar rather than new rubles that were one for a dollar.
This was not a genuine diary. It was a fake. It was
written after the fact to give Lee Harvey Oswald a legend so that
he could explain to the FBI and to other people in American what
he was doing in Russia for over two years. What was he supposed
to be doing In Russia, not what he was doing.
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NARRATOR: If Oswald's diary is in fact a fake and
if Nosenko only defected to mislead the Americans, it leads one
to ask what were the Russians trying to hide? What happened to
Oswald during his stay in the Soviet Union that the Russians don't
want us to know about? Could there have been a plot so bizarre
no one would have dared thought it possible?
On November 24th, 1963 medical examiners began an
autopsy on the individual assumed to be Lee Harvey Oswald. It
is recreated here for "In Search Of..." Their findings were to
create a public controversy that would surface 15 years later
when British lawyer, author and investigator Michael Eddowes
made public the results of his investigation of Lee Harvey
Oswald.
MICHAEL EDDOWES: This is the most terrifying story
you will ever hear -- and the Russians don't want you to hear
about it. The man who killed President Kennedy was not Lee
Harvey Oswald. He was a Soviet lookalike. His first name was
Alec, and he came to the United States as a member of the KGB
assassination squad for the direct purpose of killing Presi-
dent Kennedy.
NARRATOR: Eddowes says that the Dallas autopsy was
performed on an imposter. And points to a number of inconsis-
tencies to prove his point.
EDDOWES: The man who went to Russia was 511111 in
height; there is no question about this. There are eleven
recordings of this height. The length of the corpse of the
assassin was 5'9".
EDDOWES: The autopsy report records only two scars
on the upper left arm of the assassin.
PHYSICIAN: Over the left arm there's a quarter inch
transverse scar and a one and a quarter inch scar.
EDDOWES: Whereas the real Oswald had three scars on
the upper left arm, the autopsy report records a large scar on
the inner aspect of the left wrist. The real Oswald had no such
scar.
At the age of six the. real Oswald had a mastoidectomy
operation which left a one inch long scar behind his left ear
and over the mastoid bone. The part of the mastoid bone was
itself removed and at the operation a rubber dam drain was
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inserted so there was not only a scar, there was a depression
in the flesh and a hole in the head of about one dime in size.
NARRATOR: An examination of Oswald's Marine Corps
records confirms the existence of the mastoidectomy scar behind
Oswald's left year.
EDDOWES: Now the autopsy doctors, experienced path-
ologists, cut up over both mastoid areas to remove the scalp so
that they could take off the top of the head to examine the brain.
In doing this they could not have failed to have seen the one
inch scar and the hole in the head. The autopsy report does not
record the scar, does not record the depression, and although the
skull was X-rayed, does not disclose the hole in the skull.
NARRATOR: Eddowes requested that Terrant County
officials exhume the body buried under the name of Lee Harvey
Oswald. His request was rejected and Eddowes has since taken
legal action in state court.
Could there have been two-Oswalds? Eddowes claims
the picture on the right is the second Oswald, the Russian
impersonator.
Imposter or not the bigger mystery remains. Who
fired the shot from the grassy knoll?
NARRATOR: At a small cemetary outside of Fort Worth
a single grave lies alone, remote from all others. We have
always assumed this to be the grave of Lee Harvey Oswald. Is
it possible that we are wrong?
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