From 6b9b87227a50ccde13da1f0e6609ff727f3cab8d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "disinfo.zone" Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2026 20:25:28 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] vault backup: 2026-10-07 20:25:27 --- 00 - META/CHANGELOG.md | 16 +-- 10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nikita Khrushchev.md | 175 ++++++++++++++++++++++-- 10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert Kennedy.md | 179 ++++++++++++++++++++++++- 3 files changed, 347 insertions(+), 23 deletions(-) diff --git a/00 - META/CHANGELOG.md b/00 - META/CHANGELOG.md index 0e4441f5..69e80e76 100644 --- a/00 - META/CHANGELOG.md +++ b/00 - META/CHANGELOG.md @@ -1,3 +1,11 @@ +- 2026-10-07T1952 · [[_QUEUE]] +- 2026-10-07T1952 · [[_WAVE_C_REPORT]] +- 2026-10-07T1952 · [[Nikita Khrushchev]] +- 2026-10-07T1952 · [[Nikita Khrushchev]] +- 2026-10-07T1951 · [[_REVIEW_D3]] +- 2026-10-07T1951 · [[Robert Kennedy]] +- 2026-10-07T1951 · [[Robert Kennedy]] +- 2026-10-07T1951 · [[_REVIEW_D6]] - 2026-10-07T1947 · [[Willy Brandt]] - 2026-10-07T1947 · [[Willy Brandt]] - 2026-10-07T1947 · [[_REVIEW_D1]] @@ -7,7 +15,6 @@ - 2026-10-07T1943 · [[U.S. Navy]] - 2026-10-07T1943 · [[U.S. Navy]] - 2026-10-07T1943 · [[_REVIEW_D5]] -- 2026-10-07T1941 · [[_WAVE_C_REPORT]] - 2026-10-07T1941 · [[IBM]] - 2026-10-07T1941 · [[IBM]] - 2026-10-07T1940 · [[_REVIEW_D2]] @@ -20,7 +27,6 @@ - 2026-10-07T1935 · [[_RULES]] - 2026-10-07T1934 · [[_NOTES_D3]] - 2026-10-07T1934 · [[_FOIA_D3]] -- 2026-10-07T1933 · [[Nikita Khrushchev]] - 2026-10-07T1931 · [[_FOIA_D1]] - 2026-10-07T1931 · [[_FOIA_D7]] - 2026-10-07T1931 · [[_NOTES_D1]] @@ -31,10 +37,8 @@ - 2026-10-07T1928 · [[_FOIA_D6]] - 2026-10-07T1928 · [[_FOIA_D2]] - 2026-10-07T1928 · [[_NOTES_D2]] -- 2026-10-07T1928 · [[Robert Kennedy]] - 2026-10-07T1926 · [[_FOIA_D5]] - 2026-10-07T1926 · [[_NOTES_D5]] -- 2026-10-07T1911 · [[_QUEUE]] - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Richard Babayan]] - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Richard Babayan]] - 2026-10-07T1858 · [[Osirak bombing]] @@ -94,7 +98,3 @@ - 2026-10-07T1734 · [[_NOTES]] - 2026-10-07T1734 · [[draft]] - 2026-10-07T1734 · [[_NOTES]] -- 2026-10-07T1734 · [[_RUNLOG]] -- 2026-10-07T1733 · [[draft_self]] -- 2026-10-07T1733 · [[draft]] -- 2026-10-07T1731 · [[draft_self]] diff --git a/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nikita Khrushchev.md b/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nikita Khrushchev.md index 0a15e317..cab9c14b 100644 --- a/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nikita Khrushchev.md +++ b/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nikita Khrushchev.md @@ -1,6 +1,9 @@ --- aliases: - Nikita Khrushchev + - Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev + - Nikita S. Khrushchev + - N. S. Khrushchev - Khrushchev category: "Political Figure" tags: @@ -8,36 +11,186 @@ tags: - Soviet - ColdWar - Communist + - SecretSpeech + - CubanMissileCrisis + - U2Incident + - Penkovsky + - KhrushchevRemembers + - ViennaSummit + - Gittinger - 1950s - 1960s -summary: "Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, delivering the 1956 Secret Speech denouncing Stalin, authorizing the Berlin Wall's construction in 1961, navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis, and being removed in a 1964 Politburo coup." +summary: "Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, delivering the 1956 Secret Speech, authorizing the Berlin Wall, and navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis before his 1964 removal." born: 1894-04-15 died: 1971-09-11 location: "Moscow, Soviet Union" +created: 2026-05-01 +updated: 2026-10-07 +relations: + - type: head_of + with: "[[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]]" + role: "First Secretary" + start: 1953 + end: 1964 + fn: 1 + - type: head_of + with: "[[Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union]]" + role: "Premier" + start: 1958-03-27 + end: 1964-10-15 + fn: 2 + - type: participant_in + with: "[[Paris Summit Meeting]]" + role: "Soviet premier" + start: 1960-05-16 + end: 1960-05-17 + fn: 10 + - type: participant_in + with: "[[Cuban Missile Crisis]]" + role: "Soviet premier" + start: 1962-10-16 + end: 1962-10-28 + fn: 22 + - type: relative_of + with: "[[Aleksei Adzhubei]]" + role: "father-in-law" + fn: 32 --- -Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born April 15, 1894, in Kalinovka, [[Russia|Russian Empire]]. He rose through Communist Party ranks during the Stalin era, surviving the purges that killed most of his contemporaries in the party leadership. After [[Joseph Stalin]]'s death in March 1953 he outmaneuvered rivals including Georgy Malenkov and Lavrentiy Beria to consolidate leadership of the [[Soviet Union]]. He died September 11, 1971, in [[Moscow]], in relative obscurity following his removal from power.[^1] +Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born April 15, 1894, in Kalinovka, [[Russia|Russian Empire]]. He led the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] from 1953 and served as premier of the [[Soviet Union]] from March 1958 until October 1964, when the Politburo removed him from all posts. He died September 11, 1971, in [[Moscow]], in relative obscurity following his removal from power.[^1][^2] -### De-Stalinization +### Rise Under Stalin -In February 1956, Khrushchev delivered his "Secret Speech" to a closed session of the 20th Congress of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], denouncing Stalin's cult of personality, political murders, military failures, and deportations of entire peoples. The speech, leaked in its text to Western intelligence services within weeks, represented the most explicit official repudiation of Stalinist practices the Soviet system had yet produced. It triggered political crises in the Eastern bloc, including the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, suppressed by Soviet tanks. +Khrushchev rose through party ranks during the Stalin era and survived the purges that killed most of his contemporaries in the party leadership. After [[Joseph Stalin]]'s death in March 1953 he outmaneuvered rivals including [[Georgy Malenkov]] and [[Lavrentiy Beria]] to consolidate leadership.[^1] On March 27, 1958, he succeeded [[Nikolai Bulganin]] as Soviet premier.[^2] -The de-Stalinization policy created tensions with hardline Communist leaders who had built their authority on Stalinist foundations, including [[East Germany|East German]] leader [[Walter Ulbricht]], who resisted its implications for the GDR throughout the late 1950s and 1960s.[^1] +### De-Stalinization and the Secret Speech -### The Berlin Wall +The 20th Congress of the Communist Party convened in Moscow on February 14, 1956, and Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes in a closed session.[^2] The speech addressed Stalin's cult of personality, political murders, military failures, and deportations of entire peoples.[^1] Foreign delegates were ordered to leave the auditorium before he spoke. A few days after the congress the text was sent in seven copies, each of 58 pages in a red binder stamped "Top Secret", by military courier to the leaders of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, [[East Germany]], Hungary, [[Poland]] and Romania, with instructions that no copies be made.[^3] -The most consequential single decision involving [[East Germany]] and [[West Germany]] during Khrushchev's leadership was his authorization of the [[Berlin Wall]]'s construction. The mass emigration of East Germans through [[Berlin]]'s open crossing points - approximately three million since 1949, with the flow accelerating to tens of thousands per month in summer 1961 - threatened the GDR's survival. Ulbricht had been pressing Khrushchev for permission to seal the border for years. +[[Yossi Melman]] and [[Dan Raviv]] wrote that [[Allen Dulles]], at [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]'s order, appropriated about $1 million to procure the text and that agents in the European capitals failed to obtain it. In their account the Polish party chief [[Edward Ochab]] had copies made for his aides, and [[Victor Grayevski]], a Polish Jew who edited Soviet and satellite news at the Polish news agency PAP and had visited [[Israel]] in December 1955, persuaded a girlfriend with a senior job in the party secretariat to borrow the Russian text. A friend whom Grayevski has not named photographed the 58 pages and gave the film to Israeli diplomats. An Israeli intelligence officer in Warsaw flew to Vienna, and within days in April 1956 the text reached [[Amos Manor]], director of [[Shin Bet]], who had it translated into Hebrew and examined for authenticity. Manor took it to [[David Ben-Gurion]] on a Friday afternoon in early April. Ben-Gurion decided to give it to the United States, and an Israeli courier carried it to Washington, where Dulles discussed it with his brother [[John Foster Dulles]]. [[Ray Cline]], a former CIA deputy director, called the transfer "a first-class feat." On the Dulles brothers' recommendation Eisenhower decided that the text should be published, and it was leaked to American newspapers and wire services and broadcast in full, about 20,000 words, over [[Radio Free Europe]] and [[Radio Liberty]]. Melman and Raviv wrote that Dulles later described acquiring the speech as the outstanding achievement of his career, and that Grayevski emigrated to Israel in January 1957.[^3] -Khrushchev provided authorization in the summer of 1961. The Wall's construction on the night of August 12-13, 1961, sealed the border and ended the emigration crisis. Khrushchev's calculation was that the Wall, while a propaganda embarrassment, was preferable to the collapse of the GDR as a viable Soviet client state. The Wall also eliminated the Western point that free movement between East and West Berlin represented a tacit concession of the failure of Soviet-style governance.[^1] +A different chain appears in a 2006 article by Melman in [[Haaretz]]. In that account [[Yaakov Barmor]], a Shin Bet agent who had helped arrange Grayevski's travel to Israel, photographed the transcript Grayevski brought him. [[Issar Harel]] told Ben-Gurion that if the speech was authentic it was an atomic bomb. The photographs went by diplomatic courier to [[Izzy Dorot]], the Israeli intelligence liaison in Washington, and only [[James Jesus Angleton]], head of counterintelligence at the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], was allowed to see them. The photographs reached Dulles by mid-April 1956, and after the CIA determined the text was authentic it sent the text to [[The New York Times]] in early June 1956.[^4] Matitiahu Mayzel, in the [[Journal of Israeli History]] in 2013, argued that the speech was never truly secret, that Israel was neither the only nor likely the first source to give the text to the West, and that Soviet political and intelligence agencies quietly made it known to Western intelligence and the press.[^5] + +A CIA briefing dated May 28, 1956, titled "Khrushchev's Secret Speech," opens with a section headed "Text obtained" and then outlines the speech's contents.[^6] In a February 1982 interview with the Israeli newspaper [[Maariv]], Harel confirmed that the [[Mossad]] had passed the details of the speech to US intelligence.[^7] Richard Pearson's obituary of Angleton in [[The Washington Post]] in May 1987 described obtaining the text as Angleton's best-known feat.[^8] + +The speech's aftermath reached the satellite states. On October 21, 1956, [[Wladyslaw Gomulka]] took over the Polish party leadership over Soviet objections. On October 23 and 24 a revolt broke out in Budapest during the [[Hungarian Revolution]], and Soviet military forces intervened. [[Imre Nagy]] was replaced on November 4.[^2] [[Walter Ulbricht]], the East German leader, resisted the implications of de-Stalinization for the GDR throughout the late 1950s and 1960s.[^1] + +### The 1959 Visit and the U-2 Affair + +Khrushchev visited the United States from September 15 to 27, 1959.[^2] Eisenhower declined to authorize further overflights of the Soviet Union in part because he did not wish to raise tension before the visit. Khrushchev stressed the success of the Soviet Luna 2 rocket, which reached the moon on September 12, 1959, when he arrived three days later, and boasted of Soviet missile progress in private conversations with Eisenhower.[^9] + +On May 1, 1960, a [[U-2]] flown by [[Francis Gary Powers]] was shot down over the Soviet Union.[^2] Khrushchev announced the downing to the [[Supreme Soviet]] on May 5 without mentioning the pilot. On May 7 he revealed that the pilot was alive and had admitted the mission. Khrushchev later wrote that releasing the information gradually was meant to confuse the government in Washington, which kept to its cover story while it believed the pilot dead.[^10] On May 11 Eisenhower assumed full responsibility for the flight in a statement to the press.[^10] + +[[Gregory Pedlow]] and [[Donald Welzenbach]] attribute the failure to [[Richard Bissell]] and the Development Projects Division, which they describe as overconfident after almost four years of successful flights.[^10] When the [[Paris Summit Meeting]] opened on May 16, Khrushchev insisted on speaking first, read a long protest, and demanded an apology from Eisenhower. Eisenhower stated that overflights had been suspended and would not be resumed, but he refused a formal apology, and the summit ended.[^10] + +### The Berlin Wall and Vienna + +Ulbricht had pressed Khrushchev for permission to seal the border for years, and Khrushchev authorized it in summer 1961. Emigration to [[West Germany]] through [[Berlin]]'s open crossing points had reached tens of thousands per month by summer 1961.[^11] The CIA's chronology records that the wall was erected between August 12 and 18, 1961, closing the borders of the GDR and stopping the largest outflow of refugees to the West since 1953.[^2] Chancellor [[Konrad Adenauer]] told [[John F. Kennedy]] on November 21, 1961, that more than 3 million refugees had fled to West Germany from the Soviet Zone since 1945.[^12] Khrushchev's calculation, as Taubman reconstructs it, was that the [[Berlin Wall]], while a propaganda embarrassment, was preferable to the collapse of the GDR as a viable Soviet client state, and the wall also ended the Western point that free movement between East and West Berlin represented a tacit concession of the failure of Soviet-style governance.[^1] + +At [[Vienna]] on June 4, 1961, Khrushchev told Kennedy that the Soviet Union would sign a peace treaty with the GDR in December if the United States refused an interim agreement, that access to Berlin would be subject to GDR control, and that force would be met by force. Kennedy ended the conversation by observing that it would be a cold winter.[^12] + +The CIA psychologist [[John Gittinger]], developer of the [[Personality Assessment System]], briefed Eisenhower before Khrushchev's 1959 visit to the United States and Kennedy before the Vienna meeting, and prepared "elite assessments" of the cultural and psychological makeup of foreign leaders.[^13] [[John Marks]] wrote that CIA officials used the [[Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology]] as cover when they traveled abroad to study the behavior of foreign leaders of interest to the Agency, including Khrushchev, and that during the Cuban missile crisis Gittinger was summoned to the [[White House]] to advise on how Khrushchev would react to American pressure.[^14] + +A separate correspondence ran through [[Georgi Bolshakov]]. Khrushchev's first letter to Kennedy in what became known as the Pen Pal Correspondence, dated September 29, 1961, was handed to [[Pierre Salinger]] by Bolshakov at the Carlyle Hotel in New York on September 30.[^15] Bolshakov delivered another Khrushchev letter, dated November 9, 1961, to Salinger at the White House on November 11.[^16] On January 30, 1962, Kennedy lunched at the White House with Khrushchev's son-in-law [[Aleksei Adzhubei]], then editor of [[Izvestia]], with Salinger and Bolshakov present.[^17] ### Cuban Missile Crisis -In October 1962, Khrushchev's decision to deploy Soviet nuclear missiles in [[Cuba]] - intended to compensate for American strategic nuclear superiority and to deter a U.S. invasion of Cuba following the failed [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion of 1961 - produced the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War. The thirteen-day [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] (October 16-28, 1962) brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear conflict before a compromise was reached: the Soviet Union would remove its missiles from Cuba in exchange for an American pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret undertaking to remove American Jupiter missiles from Turkey.[^1] +In October 1962 Khrushchev's decision to deploy Soviet nuclear missiles in [[Cuba]] was intended, in Taubman's account, to compensate for American strategic nuclear superiority and to deter a United States invasion following the failed [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion of 1961. The thirteen-day [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] (October 16 to 28, 1962) ended with a compromise: the Soviet Union would remove its missiles from Cuba in exchange for an American pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret undertaking to remove American [[Jupiter missile|Jupiter]] missiles from Turkey.[^1] + +On October 27, 1962, at the seventh meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, the President recalled that he had asked days earlier that consideration be given to withdrawing the missiles from Turkey. Under Secretary [[George Ball]] replied that the State Department had decided it could not raise the question with the Turks at that time for fear of a disastrous Turkish reaction, and that study was being given to whether any method could reassure the Turks if the United States offered to withdraw the Jupiter missiles.[^18] + +Back channels ran alongside the public exchange. An undated memorandum from the ABC correspondent [[John Scali]] to the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research describes a lunch at which the Soviet counselor [[Alexandr Fomin]] proposed a settlement in which the Cuban bases would be dismantled under United Nations supervision, in return for a United States pledge not to invade Cuba.[^19] Fomin also said that the Cuban delegate to the Security Council debate had asked for no-invasion assurances in return for dismantling, and Scali wrote that he could not recall any such remark. On October 26 at 7:45 p.m., Scali told Fomin that he had reason to believe the United States government saw real possibilities in the proposal, that time was very short, and that the message came from very high places. Fomin asked whether UN inspectors could also check United States bases in Florida and the Caribbean. The account of that meeting, recorded in a four-page paper in the Sorensen papers at the [[John F. Kennedy Presidential Library]], appears in the editorial note of the official record.[^20] + +On November 19, 1962, Attorney General [[Robert F. Kennedy]] met with Bolshakov, who was ostensibly press attaché of the Soviet Union but reputedly one of the leading KGB officials in Washington and a direct link to Khrushchev. Kennedy warned him that unless the Soviet Union withdrew its bombers from Cuba, the United States was prepared to resume low-level reconnaissance of Cuba.[^21] Kennedy's December 14, 1962, letter to Khrushchev referred to "exchanges with and through" Bolshakov and said he was sorry to learn that Bolshakov was returning to Moscow. The letter described the private exchanges as an effort to improve communications between the two governments.[^22] + +### Penkovsky + +[[Oleg Penkovsky]], a Soviet colonel, met British and American intelligence officers in London. A CIA debriefing record of Meeting No. 15 with Penkovsky, held in London on May 4, 1961, survives in the CIA reading room.[^23] Penkovsky and the British businessman [[Greville Wynne]] were tried publicly in Moscow in May 1963. Penkovsky was executed on May 16, 1963, and Wynne received an eight-year sentence.[^2] + +In an interview datelined New York, November 13, 1965, Wynne said that Penkovsky's disclosures to British and American intelligence of Khrushchev's intentions during the 1961 Berlin crisis and the 1962 Cuban crisis reflected the feelings of many highly placed Soviet officials against the former leader. Wynne said there was "a very strong connection" between Khrushchev's ouster and the Penkovsky case, and that others inside the Kremlin were providing the West with the same kind of service.[^24] ### Removal -In October 1964, while Khrushchev was on vacation, the Politburo convened and voted to remove him from all positions. The coup was led by [[Leonid Brezhnev]] and [[Alexei Kosygin]], who had grown increasingly concerned about Khrushchev's impulsive decision-making, his reorganization of the party apparatus, and the international humiliation of the Cuban Missile Crisis outcome. Unlike Stalin's victims, Khrushchev was allowed to retire quietly. He spent the remainder of his life under effective house arrest, dictating memoirs that were smuggled to the West and published.[^1] +On October 15, 1964, the Politburo relieved Khrushchev of all posts in the Soviet Union while he was on vacation. [[Leonid Brezhnev]] became party first secretary and [[Alexei Kosygin]] became premier. [[Pravda]] denounced Khrushchev on October 16.[^2] The coup was led by Brezhnev and Kosygin, who had grown increasingly concerned about Khrushchev's impulsive decision-making, his reorganization of the party apparatus, and the international humiliation of the Cuban Missile Crisis outcome. Khrushchev was allowed to retire quietly. He spent the remainder of his life under effective house arrest, dictating memoirs that were smuggled to the West and published.[^1] + +### Scalar Weapons, Psi and Soviet Science + +On January 14, 1960, Khrushchev addressed the Supreme Soviet on Soviet missile capabilities.[^25] The 1984 paper "STAR WARS Now!" by [[Tom Bearden]] argued that the Soviet Union had been weaponizing scalar electromagnetics for nearly three decades. Bearden cited a Khrushchev statement from 1960 and a later announcement of a "fantastic" weapon. The paper dates that announcement to 1968 in its text, and its notes cite a January 1966 New York Times report on it.[^26] + +At the Twenty-second Congress of the Communist Party in 1961, the congress at which Khrushchev again denounced Stalin, the delegate [[Darya Lazurkina]] told the assembly that she had consulted Lenin the previous day and that Lenin had said it was unpleasant for him to lie next to Stalin in the Mausoleum.[^27] [[Sheila Ostrander]] and [[Lynn Schroeder]] wrote that two Czech scientists told them Khrushchev had said, "We've already used ESP in space."[^28] + +### Khrushchev Remembers + +Khrushchev dictated reminiscences at his dacha at Dalneye on the outskirts of Moscow. Many of the tapes were smuggled to the West, where [[Little, Brown and Company]] published the first volume as Khrushchev Remembers in 1970 and the second as Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament in 1974.[^29] The memoirs were serialized in [[Life]] in four installments before the book appeared.[^30] + +In January 1971 about thirty experts on Soviet affairs, including the former ambassadors to Moscow [[Llewellyn Thompson]] and [[George Kennan]], met at the State Department under the chairmanship of Ray Cline, director of the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and concluded that the memoirs were authentic and had been released to the West without the approval of the Soviet leadership. The panel concluded that the material had been compiled from speeches, taped reminiscences, and other sources, and one participant described it as an echo of the 1956 secret speech. The specialists tended to doubt the theory that the memoirs were passed to the West under the sponsorship of a ranking Soviet official and the secret police. The reporter [[Terence Smith]] noted that [[Time, Inc.]], which acquired the material, had refused to shed light on how it reached the West.[^31] + +The columnist [[Stewart Alsop]] wrote in late December 1970 that Khrushchev's daughter Rada and her husband, Adzhubei, had recorded the reminiscences, that the [[KGB]] learned of the project probably in 1969, and that the Moscow correspondent [[Victor Louis]] then entered the picture. Alsop called Louis an agent of the KGB with no doubt at all and wrote that Louis had carried out several KGB missions, including a trip to Formosa to contact the Chinese Nationalists. Alsop wrote that Louis negotiated the sale to [[Time-Life]] for a sum on the order of $600,000, that the deal was signed and sealed at a meeting between Louis and the Life executive [[Murray Gart]] in a Copenhagen hotel room in August, and that it included the deposit of a large sum in a Swiss bank in the name of the Khrushchev family. Alsop also wrote that Louis had sold a version of [[Svetlana Alliluyeva]]'s memoirs in the West and had negotiated the Western publication of the confessions of [[Gordon Lonsdale]]. From the Kremlinologists he consulted, Alsop concluded that a figure strong enough to defy Brezhnev must exist, and he named Politburo member [[Aleksandr Shelepin]], a former head of the KGB, whom he described as having played the key role in the deposition of Khrushchev.[^32] + +An unsigned intelligence commentary in the CIA reading room, written while the Life installments were appearing, held that the material could not have reached a mass magazine without some official connivance. It placed the negotiations for the material at the Hotel d'Angleterre in Copenhagen, and it found evidence that Louis was the salesman in the deal while stating that the circumstances were obscure. It reported that Khrushchev had officially denied passing any memoirs along.[^30] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Taubman, William. *Khrushchev: The Man and His Era.* W.W. Norton, 2003 (Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, the definitive English-language account). Khrushchev, Sergei. *Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower.* Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000 (his son's account). Taylor, Frederick. *The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989.* HarperCollins, 2006 (on Khrushchev's authorization of the Wall). +[^1]: Taubman, William. *Khrushchev: The Man and His Era.* W.W. Norton, 2003. Khrushchev, Sergei. *Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower.* Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Taylor, Frederick. *The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989.* HarperCollins, 2006 (on Khrushchev's authorization of the Wall). + +[^2]: Central Intelligence Agency, "CIA Historical Staff Chronology 1946-65, Volume II, 1956-65," CIA-RDP85B00803R000200050003-5, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp85b00803r000200050003-5. Entries cited: February 14, 1956 (Congress convenes, Khrushchev denounces Stalin); March 27, 1958 (Khrushchev succeeds Bulganin as Soviet premier); October 1956 (Poland, Budapest, Nagy replaced November 4); August 12-18, 1961 (Berlin wall); September 15-27, 1959 (visit to the United States); May 1960 (U-2 shot down, Paris conference); May 7 and May 16, 1963 (Penkovsky and Wynne trial, Penkovsky executed); October 15-16, 1964 (removal, Pravda denunciation). + +[^3]: Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, "The Leak of the Century," The Washington Post, March 27, 1994 (adapted from their *Friends in Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance*, Hyperion, 1994), https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/03/27/the-leak-of-the-century/2c3a48ca-5212-442b-a3a8-52e7703d4b26/. Sole source for the Grayevski, photographer, Manor, Ben-Gurion, courier, Dulles and publication details and for the $1 million appropriation, as reported by the cited authors, who credit Grayevski's and Manor's own confirmation. + +[^4]: Middle East Quarterly, article on Israeli intelligence and the great powers in the Cold War, https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/israel-and-the-great-powers-cold-war-role, citing Yossi Melman, "Trade Secrets," Haaretz, March 9, 2006. Sole source for the Barmor, Harel, Dorot, Angleton, mid-April and early June details, as summarized by the Middle East Quarterly. + +[^5]: Matitiahu Mayzel, "Israeli Intelligence and the Leakage of Khrushchev's 'Secret Speech,'" Journal of Israeli History, vol. 32, no. 2 (2013), pp. 257-283, https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2013.822730 (abstract at https://cris.tau.ac.il/en/publications/israeli-intelligence-and-the-leakage-of-khrushchevs-secret-speech/). + +[^6]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Khrushchev's Secret Speech," WSC briefing, May 28, 1956, CIA-RDP79R00890A000700050035-7, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp79r00890a000700050035-7. The first section heading is "Text obtained." + +[^7]: "Former Chief of Israel's Intelligence Services Confirms Passing on to the U.S. Details of Khrushchev's Famous 1956 Speech," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 8, 1982, reproduced at Center for Online Judaic Studies, https://cojs.org/?p=5755. The statement was made in a weekend interview with Issa Harel in Maariv. + +[^8]: Richard Pearson, "James J. Angleton, Ex-Chief of Counterintelligence, Dies," The Washington Post, May 12, 1987, CIA-RDP90-00965R000604970001-8, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp90-00965r000604970001-8. + +[^9]: Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, *The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974* (Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998), chapter 4, pages 163-164, DTIC ADA355539, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA355539. The passage cites Andrew J. Goodpaster memoranda of July 7 and 8, 1959. + +[^10]: Pedlow and Welzenbach, *The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974*, chapter 4, "The Aftermath of the U-2 Downing," pages 178-179, DTIC ADA355539, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA355539. The passage quotes Khrushchev, *Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament* (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), page 507. + +[^11]: Taylor, Frederick. *The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989.* HarperCollins, 2006. The pressure from Ulbricht, the authorization and the emigration figures are attributed to this book. + +[^12]: Memorandum of Conversation, Vienna, June 4, 1961, 3:15 p.m., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume XIV, Berlin Crisis 1961-1962, Document 33, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v14/d33; Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, November 21, 1961, Kennedy and Adenauer, Document 219, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v14/d219 (the 3 million figure is Adenauer's statement). + +[^13]: Pat Lewis Copeland, "The CIA man," Tulsa Tribune, February 12, 1986, CIA-RDP91-00587R000100020015-5, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp91-00587r000100020015-5. Sole source for the briefings of Eisenhower and Kennedy, which the profile states in its own voice. + +[^14]: John Marks, *The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control* (New York: Times Books, 1979), page 161 (the Society and foreign leaders including Khrushchev) and page 164 (Gittinger summoned to the White House during the Cuban missile crisis). Sole source for the White House summons. + +[^15]: Letter From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, Moscow, September 29, 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume VI, Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges, Document 21, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d21. The editorial note cites Salinger, *With Kennedy*, page 198, and states that a Russian text dated September 28 was also given to Salinger on September 30. + +[^16]: Letter From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, Moscow, November 9, 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume VI, Document 23, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d23. The note states the text was delivered to Salinger at 12:15 p.m. on November 11 by Georgi Bolshakov, editor of USSR magazine. + +[^17]: Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, January 30, 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume V, Soviet Union, Document 150, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v05/d150. + +[^18]: "Summary Record of the Seventh Meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, October 27, 1962," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume XI, Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, Document 90, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d90. + +[^19]: Memorandum from ABC Correspondent John Scali to the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hilsman), undated, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume XI, Document 80, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d80. Sole source for Fomin's settlement proposal and his claim about the Cuban delegate, as reported by Scali. + +[^20]: Editorial Note, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume XI, Document 85, citing a four-page paper in the Sorensen papers, Classified Subject Files, Cuba, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d85. Records Scali's statement to Fomin at 7:45 p.m. on October 26, 1962. + +[^21]: Editorial Note, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume XI, Document 194, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d194. The note cites a memorandum by Robert F. Kennedy dated November 30, 1962, in the Robert Kennedy Papers, Kennedy Library, as cited in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., *Robert Kennedy and His Times* (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), page 550. The papers are closed to researchers other than Schlesinger, according to the note. + +[^22]: Message From President Kennedy to Chairman Khrushchev, Washington, December 14, 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume XI, Document 247, citing Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, USSR, Khrushchev Correspondence (Cuba), Vol. II, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d247. + +[^23]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Meeting No. 15, London, England, 4 May 1961, with Penkovsky," CIA Reading Room, document 0000012403, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0000012403. + +[^24]: Milt Freudenheim, "Ouster of K Linked to Discovery of Spy," Chicago Daily News Service, New York dateline, November 13, 1965, CIA-RDP75-00149R000600250041-7, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp75-00149r000600250041-7. The connection drawn is Greville Wynne's. Sole source for the link between the ouster and the Penkovsky case. + +[^25]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Current Intelligence Weekly Summary," January 21, 1960, CIA-RDP79-00927A002600020001-2, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp79-00927a002600020001-2. The item "Khrushchev's Latest Statement on Soviet Missile Capabilities" describes the speech at the opening of the USSR Supreme Soviet on January 14. + +[^26]: Thomas E. Bearden, "STAR WARS Now! The Bohm-Aharonov Effect, Scalar Interferometry, and Soviet Weaponization," April 24, 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001900680014-4, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001900680014-4. Sole source for the scalar weapons passage. The notes cite Max Frankel, "Khrushchev Says Soviet Will Cut Forces a Third; Sees 'Fantastic' Weapon," The New York Times, January 15, 1966. + +[^27]: Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, *Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain* (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), page 53. Sole source for Lazurkina's statement as the authors relate it. + +[^28]: Ostrander and Schroeder, *Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain*, page 91. The authors introduce the remark with "Supposedly." Sole source for the attribution to Khrushchev, as told to the authors by the two Czech scientists. + +[^29]: Jerrold L. Schecter, "Khrushchev's Secret Tapes," Time, October 1, 1990, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,971265-1,00.html. The excerpt is translated by Schecter and describes the reminiscences as dictated at Dalneye. + +[^30]: Unsigned intelligence commentary, "Did KGB Help to Sell K's Memoirs," undated, written while the Life installments were appearing, CIA-RDP88-01314R000300180019-4, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp88-01314r000300180019-4. Sole source for the characterization of the material's route to Life and for Khrushchev's denial. + +[^31]: Terence Smith, "U.S. Experts on Soviet Find Khrushchev Memoirs," Washington dispatch dated January 20, 1971, CIA-RDP88-01314R000300180017-6, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp88-01314r000300180017-6. The clipping gives the Little, Brown publication date as December 21, 1970. + +[^32]: Stewart Alsop, "Who Is Moscow's Mr. X?," column, CIA-RDP88-01314R000300180018-5, CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp88-01314r000300180018-5. The column is dated by its references to the removal of Gomulka "last week," Adzhubei's interview "in late November," and a party congress "next March." Sole source for Louis's KGB affiliation, the Time-Life price and the Swiss bank provision as stated by Alsop, and for Alsop's inference about Shelepin. The column names Rada and her husband Aleksei Adzhubei as having recorded the reminiscences. diff --git a/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert Kennedy.md b/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert Kennedy.md index 33289b67..ecc10057 100644 --- a/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert Kennedy.md +++ b/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert Kennedy.md @@ -1,20 +1,191 @@ ---- +--- aliases: + - "Robert Kennedy" - "Robert F. Kennedy" + - "Robert Francis Kennedy" - "RFK" + - "Bobby Kennedy" category: "Political Figure" tags: - Person - JFK + - McClellanCommittee - OrganizedCrime -summary: "Robert Kennedy was an American politician who served as Attorney General during his brother John F." + - OperationMongoose + - CIA + - MLKWiretaps + - CubanMissileCrisis + - Bolshakov + - MarilynMonroe + - SirhanSirhan + - Assassination +created: 2026-10-07 +updated: 2026-10-07 +summary: "Robert F. Kennedy was chief counsel of the McClellan Committee, Attorney General under John F. Kennedy, and a United States senator and presidential candidate shot in Los Angeles in 1968." born: 1925-11-20 died: 1968-06-06 location: "Brookline, Massachusetts, USA" +relations: + - type: employed_by + with: "[[Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field]]" + start: 1957 + role: "chief counsel" + fn: 1 + - type: employed_by + with: "[[United States Department of Justice]]" + start: 1961 + role: "Attorney General" + fn: 2 + - type: investigated + with: "[[Jimmy Hoffa]]" + start: 1957-08-20 + role: "chief counsel examining Hoffa in committee hearings" + fn: 5 + - type: informant_for + with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]" + role: "voluntary informant, per CIA file 201-211732" + fn: 7 + - type: participant_in + with: "[[Operation Mongoose]]" + start: 1961-11 + role: "member, Special Group (Augmented)" + fn: 10 + - type: relative_of + with: "[[John F. Kennedy]]" + role: "brother" + fn: 10 --- -Robert Kennedy was an American politician who served as Attorney General during his brother [[John F. Kennedy]]'s presidency. In an interview published in 1988 by the [[John F. Kennedy Library]], he expressed a cynical view of [[Myer Feldman]], noting that while his older brother valued Feldman's work, Feldman's major interest was [[Israel]] rather than the [[United States]].[^1] +Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925 to June 6, 1968) was chief counsel of the [[Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field]], known as the [[McClellan Committee]], and served as [[Attorney General of the United States]] under his brother [[John F. Kennedy]] from 1961.[^1][^2] As a United States senator and candidate for president he was shot in [[Los Angeles]] on June 5, 1968.[^3] + +[[Seymour Hersh]] writes that in an interview published in 1988 by the [[John F. Kennedy Library]], Kennedy said of [[Myer Feldman]] that his older brother had valued Feldman's work, but that Feldman's major interest was [[Israel]] rather than the [[United States]].[^4] + +### McClellan Committee and the Hoffa hearings + +Kennedy joined the McClellan Committee as chief counsel in 1957, under the committee chairman, [[John L. McClellan]]; Senator John F. Kennedy was among its members.[^1] At the hearing that opened July 31, 1957, McClellan's opening statement said the committee expected evidence that [[Jimmy Hoffa]], "through the help of racketeers," had supported [[John O'Rourke]] in obtaining control of joint council No. 16 of New York, and that Hoffa was going to tie up with the [[International Longshoremen's Association]]. "Hoffa would have a stranglehold over the port of New York," the statement said. Kennedy then explained the committee's charts to the members.[^1] + +Hoffa was sworn on August 20, 1957, with the attorney [[George S. Fitzgerald]] at his side. After reading a prepared statement reserving the right to review the transcript and to decline questions outside the committee's authority, Hoffa answered Kennedy's examination, which began with his career in the [[International Brotherhood of Teamsters]] since about 1932 and his presidency of a Detroit local. Kennedy asked about a federal antitrust charge arising from a wastepaper organizing drive (Hoffa said it ended in a nolo contendere plea and a $1,000 fine), a 1946 extortion indictment (Hoffa said it was reduced to a misdemeanor under a Michigan statute), and the J & H Sales Co. Kennedy told the witness: "I am not saying whether you are guilty or not guilty."[^5] + +Hoffa returned as president of the Teamsters on August 5, 1958, with the attorneys [[Edward Bennett Williams]], Fitzgerald and [[David Previant]], and was examined by Kennedy again in the August 13 to 20 and September 11 to November 17, 1958 sessions and in June and July 1959.[^6] + +### Central Intelligence Agency personality file, 1958 to 1964 + +The [[Central Intelligence Agency]] opened a personality file on Kennedy on January 7, 1958, when he was counsel to the Senate investigations subcommittee. The file's summary lists documents on his 1955 trip to the [[Soviet Union]] with Justice [[William O. Douglas]], a list of questions on which the Soviet Russia Division wanted information ("Requirements for US Citizens Travelling in South Central Asia"), reports of agency contacts with Kennedy or Douglas, and "Information Reports" based on information Kennedy supplied on his return, published by the Office of Operations from January to April 1956. A July 20, 1955 field dispatch (NITA-4680) reports a contact with Kennedy in Tehran by station personnel.[^7] + +On March 16, 1964, Branch 4 of the Covert Action Staff requested covert security approval for Kennedy to serve on the Planning and Guidance Committee for the [[Practical Politics Institute]] under Project ORSENSE, which was designed to train U.S. trade unionists being sent overseas to work with foreign trade unionists. The request form states that Kennedy "will be witting of Agency interest in the Institute and will know the students to be employed by the Agency," and the summary says it was planned for him to be "a lecturer and 'front' man" for the institute. The summary adds that the institute was apparently never established and that there is no record that the approval was granted or that a formal relationship with him existed. Its closing sentence reads: "In short this file reflects only that Mr. Kennedy served the Agency as a voluntary informant."[^7] + +### Attorney General, Marcello and Operation Mongoose + +A [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] deportation sent [[Carlos Marcello]] to [[Guatemala]] on April 4, 1961. A May 24, 1961 [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] memorandum from R. O. Lallier to A. H. Belmont, reporting a May 12 interview in Guatemala City, records the account of [[Paul Loeb]], chief of the CIA station there. Loeb said it was his understanding that Attorney General Kennedy had conferred with [[Allen Dulles]] and asked for the CIA director's help in making certain Guatemala accepted Marcello as a citizen, and that he received instructions from headquarters to give the matter special handling. Loeb said he then approached President [[Miguel Ydigoras]], who insisted that the matter be handled quietly, and that he was at the airport when Marcello arrived on a U.S. Border Patrol plane to find 15 to 20 reporters waiting. According to the memorandum, Marcello was to be returned to the United States on or about May 10 but did not appear at the airport, and Loeb was convinced he was living on a farm in the interior of Guatemala.[^8] + +On November 1, 1961, the White House aide [[Richard Goodwin]] wrote to President Kennedy that "the Attorney General would be the most effective commander" of a "command operation" for Cuba. After a White House meeting on November 3, 1961 on a new program against [[Fidel Castro]], Kennedy's handwritten notes read: "My idea is to stir things up on island with espionage, sabotage, general disorder, run & operated by Cubans themselves with every group but Batistaites & Communists." A presidential memorandum of November 22 assigned the direction of the program to the Attorney General, with [[Edward Lansdale]] as his chief of operations; the version issued on November 30 placed the program "under the general guidance of General Lansdale, acting as Chief of Operations," and assigned the Attorney General no direction role.[^9] + +The program, [[Operation Mongoose]], was overseen by a group called the Special Group (Augmented) ([[NSC Special Group|Special Group (Augmented)]]), consisting of the regular Special Group members ([[McGeorge Bundy]], [[U. Alexis Johnson]], [[Roswell Gilpatric]], [[John McCone]] and [[Lyman Lemnitzer]]) augmented by Robert Kennedy and General [[Maxwell Taylor]]. President Kennedy appointed Taylor chairman of the group. The State Department editors of the Foreign Relations series wrote that Robert Kennedy "was the principal motive force within the group and the informal link between the group and the President," and the [[Church Committee]] wrote that Kennedy "played an active role in the MONGOOSE Operation, a role unrelated to his position as Attorney General."[^9][^10] The Church Committee also records Goodwin's proposal that Kennedy head Mongoose and the President's decision to give Lansdale the coordinating task instead.[^10] + +In October 1962 the CIA project officer for Mongoose, [[William Harvey]], asked Lansdale to put before the Special Group (Augmented) a request for policy approval to sabotage Cuban-owned vessels "wherever and whenever secure access to them can be attained," normally in non-Bloc ports, as "targets of opportunity."[^11] At the group's meeting on October 4, 1962, Kennedy stated that the President "is concerned about progress on the MONGOOSE program and feels that more priority should be given to trying to mount sabotage operations," and urged "massive activity"; the group decided that "considerably more sabotage" should be undertaken.[^12] At the group's meeting of October 26, 1962, with the Attorney General present, it was agreed that agent-team dispatches be suspended and that no major acts of sabotage be undertaken for the time being.[^13] The Church Committee records that on October 30, 1962 the group ordered a halt to all sabotage operations, and its chronology lists November 1962 as the end of Mongoose.[^12] On January 4, 1963 Bundy wrote to the President that "there is well nigh universal agreement that Mongoose is at a dead end" and proposed that the Mongoose office be disbanded, naming [[Nicholas Katzenbach]] as the Attorney General's delegate to the interdepartmental group that had drafted the reorganization.[^14] + +In October 1963 [[Desmond FitzGerald]] met the Cuban official [[AM/LASH]] and represented himself as Robert Kennedy's personal representative; the contact plan stated that FitzGerald "will represent self as personal representative of Robert F. Kennedy." The Inspector General's report states that, according to FitzGerald, [[Richard Helms]] decided "it was not necessary to seek approval from Robert Kennedy for Fitzgerald to speak in his name." Helms testified that he did not recall such a discussion and that he "felt so sure that if I went to see Mr. Kennedy that he would have said yes, that I don't think there was any need to." The case officer present, identified as Case Officer 2, "did not recall whether Robert Kennedy's name was used."[^15] + +### The May 7, 1962 briefing on the Giancana and Maheu operation + +On May 7, 1962, [[Sheffield Edwards]], the agency's director of security, and its general counsel, [[Lawrence Houston]], briefed Kennedy on the operation that had used [[Johnny Roselli]], [[Sam Giancana]] and [[Robert Maheu]] against Castro. The agency wanted the prosecution of Maheu's wiretappers in [[Las Vegas]] dropped. The Attorney General's calendar for that day lists a 1:00 meeting with Helms and a 4:00 meeting, and Helms testified that he did not recall meeting the Attorney General on May 7.[^16] + +Edwards wrote a memorandum to the Attorney General dated May 14, 1962. On April 24, 1962, [[Herbert J. Miller]], Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, had advised that the "national interest" would preclude prosecution based on the tap. After the CIA briefing, a decision was made not to prosecute.[^16] + +[[J. Edgar Hoover]] recorded a May 9, 1962 meeting with Kennedy in a memorandum dated May 10. In it the Attorney General is quoted as saying that the CIA had assisted Maheu in the installation and that the agency "could not afford to have any action taken against Giancana and Maheu." Hoover also recorded Kennedy's awareness that the "gutter gossip" linked the failure to act against Giancana to Giancana's relationship with [[Frank Sinatra]].[^16] + +Houston testified: "If you have seen Mr. Kennedy's eyes get steely and his jaw set and his voice get low and precise, you get a definite feeling of unhappiness." Edwards testified that Kennedy said at the end of the briefing, "I want you to let me know about these things," or words to that effect.[^16] The agency's Inspector General concluded that the Attorney General "was not told that the gambling syndicate operation had already been reactivated," and was never told that the CIA had a continuing involvement with gangster elements.[^16] + +### Bolshakov channel and the Cuban Missile Crisis + +A Khrushchev letter of September 29, 1961 reached the White House through [[Georgi Bolshakov]], who handed it to [[Pierre Salinger]] at the Carlyle Hotel in New York on September 30.[^17] A second Khrushchev letter, dated November 9, 1961, was delivered to Salinger by Bolshakov, identified as editor of the magazine USSR, on November 11.[^18] + +[[Justin Chandler]] writes that the New York Daily News correspondent [[Frank Holeman]], a friend of Bolshakov, asked him on April 29, 1961 whether it would be better to meet Robert Kennedy directly; that Bolshakov, whom Chandler describes as a member of the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate, met Kennedy outside the Justice Department gate on May 9, 1961; and that they met repeatedly afterward, including at the Kennedy home in Hickory Hill. Kennedy said in an oral history interview that "most of the major matters dealing with the Soviet Union in the United States were discussed," and that "arrangements were made, really, between Georgi Bolshakov and myself. He was Khrushchev's representative."[^19] The Foreign Relations editorial note on a later meeting describes Bolshakov as "ostensibly Press Attache of the Soviet Union but reputedly one of the leading KGB officials in Washington and a direct link to Chairman Khrushchev."[^20] + +Chandler writes that on October 22, 1962 Khrushchev sent a message through Bolshakov saying "no missile capable of reaching the United States would be placed in Cuba," that Robert Kennedy was "reported to say" of Bolshakov, "that son of a bitch has got to go," and that there is no evidence Bolshakov knew the exact nature of the weapons in Cuba. Chandler attributes the first passage to [[Richard Ned Lebow]] and [[Janice Gross Stein]] and the second to [[Dino Brugioni]].[^21] + +At 9:30 p.m. on October 23, 1962 Kennedy met the Soviet ambassador [[Anatoly Dobrynin]] on the third floor of the Soviet embassy. His memorandum to the President of October 24 states that he told the ambassador he was there "on my own and not on the instructions of the President," and that "the duplicity of the Russians had been a major contributing factor." He recorded Dobrynin's answer that he had told Kennedy no missiles were in Cuba, that Khrushchev had given similar assurances through [[TASS]], and that as far as Dobrynin knew there were still none.[^2] + +On the afternoon of November 19, 1962 Kennedy met Bolshakov and warned that unless the Soviet Union withdrew its IL-28 bombers from Cuba the United States was prepared to resume low-level reconnaissance; the Foreign Relations editorial note states that the Robert Kennedy Papers were not open to its historians and cites [[Arthur Schlesinger Jr.]]'s biography for the meeting.[^20] On December 14, 1962 President Kennedy wrote to Khrushchev that "we have been very glad to have opportunities for private exchanges with and through Mr. Bolshakov, and I am sorry to learn that he is returning to Moscow."[^22] + +### Wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr. + +In September 1963 Assistant Director William Sullivan recommended to Hoover wiretaps on [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]'s home and the offices of the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]]; a note by Associate Director [[Clyde Tolson]] on the memorandum observed that the Attorney General "turned down a similar recommendation on July 22, 1963." On October 7, 1963, citing "possible communist influence in the racial situation," Hoover requested the Attorney General's permission for a wiretap "on King at his current address or at any future address to which he may move" and on the SCLC office in New York. Kennedy signed the request on October 10 and on October 21 approved coverage of the SCLC office in Atlanta.[^23] + +Two memoranda by [[Courtney Evans]] describe the Attorney General's reaction. On October 10 he summoned Evans and, according to Evans, "noted that the last thing we could afford to have would be a discovery of a wiretap on King's residence," then said the FBI should go ahead "on a trial basis." Evans's second memorandum records that Kennedy was "apparently still vacillating" and asked that the coverage be evaluated after thirty days. Wiretaps were installed on the SCLC's New York office on October 24, 1963 and on King's home and the SCLC's Atlanta office on November 8, 1963.[^23] + +The Church Committee wrote that it was not able to ascertain why Kennedy approved in October 1963 a request he had refused in July. [[Burke Marshall]] testified that he had assumed Kennedy authorized the tap because King had not kept a commitment to cease communication with a person the committee calls Adviser A.[^24] [[Edwin Guthman]], Kennedy's press chief at the Justice Department, testified that Kennedy told him in 1968 that his "clear recollection" was that Kennedy's "feeling was that if he did not do it, Mr. Hoover would move to impede or block the passage of the civil rights bill," and that Kennedy felt he might as well settle whether Adviser A had the influence on King the FBI contended.[^25] + +### Marilyn Monroe + +An FBI report on [[Marilyn Monroe]]'s February 1962 stay in Mexico, relaying accounts from sources, states that she "reportedly spent some time with" Kennedy at the Hollywood home of [[Peter Lawford]], and that she "reportedly challenged Mr. Kennedy on some points proposed to her by" [[Arthur Miller]].[^26] + +A 1973 FBI memorandum in file 105-40018 summarizes [[Norman Mailer]]'s book on Monroe. It records rumors that Monroe was having an affair with the then Attorney General and that her death was related to a plot, and says these allegations "were branded false and no factual support existed for them." It records Mailer's suggestion that "'right-wing' FBI and CIA Agents had a 'huge motivation' to murder Marilyn Monroe in order to embarrass the Kennedy family," and notes that the rumors had been repeated in a July 1964 book by [[Frank Capell]].[^27] + +### The 1968 shooting and the investigation files + +A Department of State telegram drafted June 5, 1968 and sent to the American embassy in Amman and other posts reported that the "Person currently held by Los Angeles police connection Kennedy shooting" was "now tentatively identified as Sharif Bishary Sirhan," born in Jordan on March 19, 1944 and admitted at New York on January 12, 1957. The telegram instructed all posts to "institute maximum security precautions" and to refrain from comment.[^28] + +Governor [[Gavin Newsom]]'s 2022 decision states that [[Sirhan Sirhan]] shot Kennedy at close range in the [[Ambassador Hotel]] and wounded five bystanders (Elizabeth Evans, Ira Goldstein, Paul Schrade, Irwin Stroll and William Weisel); that a jury convicted him of first degree murder and five counts of assault with a deadly weapon; and that he was condemned to death on May 22, 1969, a sentence modified in 1972 to life with the possibility of parole.[^3] + +A June 14, 1968 CIA memorandum for the record concerns a June 12 meeting with [[John Joseph Boles]], political adviser to the executive officers of [[Occidental Petroleum]]. Boles, who held a doctorate in economics and had twenty years' experience as an area specialist on the Arab Middle East, was convinced that the assassination was the product of a Palestinian group and listed it among fifteen or more political assassinations he attributed to Al-Fateh. The memorandum describes the information as consisting largely of impressions and as inconclusive, and Boles promised to bring back supporting facts after a Middle East trip in early July 1968.[^29] + +A July 23, 1968 memorandum to the FBI, captioned "Sirhan Investigation," reports that a usually reliable source told the agency's Beirut representative that on June 22, 1968 [[Salim Lawzi]], publisher of the Beirut newspaper Hawadith, told [[Anwar Jamal]], press counselor of the United Arab Republic, that he had met Lebanese figures to study and organize Sirhan's defense. Lawzi said he had received promises of 10,000 Lebanese pounds from [[Kamil Abd al-Rahman]] and 5,000 from [[Hani Salem]] and expected to collect 200,000 to 300,000 Lebanese pounds in Lebanon. The memorandum adds that, according to a reliable source, the United Arab Republic considers Lawzi a strong pro-Nasserist, although he "sometimes strays for opportunistic reasons."[^30] + +A July 1968 memorandum to the FBI on [[Moshe Yaacov Eldar]] records that Eldar, in correspondence with [[Mordechai Stein]], wrote that he had been "summoned" as a witness in the Robert Kennedy murder trial; the agency had no record of him in its central files.[^31] + +The [[Los Angeles Police Department]]'s investigation was conducted by [[Special Unit Senator]]. Its records, estimated at 50,000 pages with a card index of over 8,200 entries, over 4,800 interviews and 155 items of physical evidence, passed to the [[California State Archives]] in August 1987; the finding aid records that the investigation consumed over 6,400 personnel hours over thirteen months and cost in excess of $289,000, and that the collection includes re-investigative files of 1974 to 1978 on "second-gun" theories and records of the Wolfer Board, an internal police inquiry into allegations against the ballistics examiner [[DeWayne Wolfer]]. The finding aid's index lists interview files for Thane Cesar and for [[Stus Pruszynski]].[^32] + +[[Philip M. Van Praag]] presented a 2008 paper to the [[American Academy of Forensic Sciences]] on a "recently re-discovered audio recording (the only known recording of the actual shots)" made during the shooting. His abstract says that some of the original evidence "suggested the presence of a second gun," that the second gun "could not be proven" because of premature destruction of evidence, and that the recording "reveals the presence of two guns as a result of a unique forensic analysis methodology."[^33] + +The writer [[Dan Moldea]] wrote that eyewitnesses saw the security guard [[Thane Eugene Cesar]] with his gun drawn, that Cesar told police he was carrying a .38-caliber revolver, that he stood directly behind Kennedy, and that he had owned a .22 which he sold after the shooting and which disappeared. Moldea wrote that Cesar answered "No" when asked in a March 27, 1987 interview whether he had shot Kennedy, and that Cesar passed a polygraph examination administered by [[Edward Gelb]]; Moldea wrote that he then accepted Cesar's innocence.[^34] [[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]] wrote on December 14, 2021: "I believe Cesar killed my father," and that "Three witnesses saw him draw his gun" and that "one saw him fire it."[^35] + +An Associated Press report of February 28, 2011, by Linda Deutsch, says that [[William F. Pepper]], Sirhan's attorney, had Sirhan examined several times by the psychologist [[Daniel P. Brown]] of Harvard University, "an expert in hypnosis of trauma victims." The report quotes Pepper: "There have been substantial breakthroughs." Pepper would not disclose what was accomplished in the sessions and said of Sirhan's memory: "There is no doubt he does not remember the critical events."[^36] + +The Director of National Intelligence released more than 60,000 pages on the case on May 7, 2025, including audio recordings of Los Angeles Police Department interviews with Sirhan and recordings of eyewitness interviews. The release states that some of the files had previously been released by the Los Angeles Police Department or to individuals under the Freedom of Information Act.[^37] + +### Sirhan parole decisions + +The Board of Parole Hearings found Sirhan suitable for parole in 1975 and rescinded the grant; it found him unsuitable at fifteen subsequent hearings. On August 27, 2021, at the sixteenth hearing, it found him suitable. On January 13, 2022, Newsom reversed that decision, writing that Sirhan "currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison" and "has failed to develop the insight necessary to mitigate his current dangerousness."[^3] The governor's press release cited his "refusal to accept responsibility for his crime" and "lack of insight and accountability required to support his safe release."[^38] On March 1, 2023, a new board denied parole and set the next hearing for three years later, stating that Sirhan "still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot the senator and presidential candidate in 1968." His attorney, [[Angela Berry]], said: "I do feel the board bent to the political whim of the governor."[^39] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 8. \ No newline at end of file +[^1]: "Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field," Hearings before the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, 85th Cong., Part 10, July 31 to August 6, 1957, pp. 3591-3593 (members present, including Senator John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, chief counsel; Chairman McClellan's opening statement; Kennedy's explanation of the charts follows). https://archive.org/details/investigationofi10unit +[^2]: _Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963_, vol. XI, Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, doc. 53, Memorandum From Attorney General Kennedy to President Kennedy, October 24, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d53 +[^3]: Governor Gavin Newsom, Indeterminate Sentence Parole Release Review, Sirhan Sirhan, B-21014, decision of January 13, 2022 (statement of facts; board hearings of 1975 and August 27, 2021). https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/1.13.22-Sirhan-Reverse-Decision.pdf +[^4]: Hersh, Seymour M. _The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy_. Random House, 1991, chapter 8, pp. 99-100. Sole source for the passage on the 1988 interview. +[^5]: "Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field," Hearings, Part 13, August 20-23, 1957, testimony of James R. Hoffa, pp. 4927-4937 (oath, p. 4927; prepared statement, pp. 4929-4930; examination by Kennedy begins p. 4930; antitrust, extortion and nolo contendere exchange, pp. 4931-4932). https://archive.org/details/investigationofi13unit +[^6]: Hearings, Part 36 (August 5, 6, 7, 8 and 12, 1958; Hoffa sworn as president of the Teamsters, p. 13278); Part 37 (August 13-20, 1958); Part 40 (September 11-November 17, 1958); Part 54 (June 25-30, 1959); Part 56 (July 10, 13 and 14, 1959; Hoffa "Resumed" with counsel Edward Bennett Williams, pp. 19693 ff.). https://archive.org/details/investigationofi36unit and the corresponding items investigationofi37unit, investigationofi40unit, investigationofi54unit and investigationofi56unit. +[^7]: CIA Reading Room, "Summary of DDO File on Robert F. Kennedy, 201-211732," with the request for approval of March 16, 1964 (Project ORSENSE), CIA Reading Room document 07164990. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-07164990 +[^8]: FBI memorandum, R. O. Lallier to A. H. Belmont, May 24, 1961, file 92-2713-175,176, NARA record 124-10210-10327 (JFK release), reporting Paul Loeb's account of a May 12, 1961 interview by Agent Papich in Guatemala City. Sole source for Loeb's account of Kennedy's request to Dulles. The April 4, 1961 deportation date is from the report of Blakey, Cornwell and Ewing on Carlos Marcello, House Select Committee on Assassinations, _Report_, vol. IX, pp. 69-75, as summarized by Laura Denk, Assassination Records Review Board, file 4.0.1.3. https://documents3.theblackvault.com/documents/jfkfiles/jfk2022/124-10210-10327.pdf and https://documents3.theblackvault.com/documents/jfkfiles/NARA-Oct2017/ARRB/LDENK/WP-DOCS/ORGCRIME/MARCELLO.RTP.PDF +[^9]: _FRUS 1961-1963_, vol. X, Cuba, January 1961-September 1962, doc. 269 (Goodwin to President Kennedy, November 1, 1961), doc. 270 (editorial note: November 3, 1961 meeting; Robert Kennedy's handwritten notes of 11/7/61; the Special Group (Augmented)), and doc. 278 (memorandum of November 30, 1961, and editorial note on the November 22 version). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d270 +[^10]: Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, _Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report_ (1975), p. 140 (Special Group (Augmented); Taylor named chairman; Goodwin's proposal; Robert Kennedy's role). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit +[^11]: _FRUS 1961-1963_, vol. XI, doc. 10, Memorandum From the CIA Project Officer for Operation Mongoose (Harvey) to the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), October 8, 1962, "Sabotage of Cuban-Owned Ship." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d10 +[^12]: Church Committee interim report (1975), pp. 147-148 (Special Group (Augmented) meeting of October 4, 1962, citing the minutes of the meeting; halt of sabotage ordered October 30, 1962, citing Lansdale's memorandum for the record) and chronology, pp. 293-294 ("November: Operation MONGOOSE ends"). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit +[^13]: _FRUS 1961-1963_, vol. XI, doc. 82, Minutes of Meeting of the Special Group (Augmented) on Operation Mongoose, October 26, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d82 +[^14]: _FRUS 1961-1963_, vol. XI, doc. 261, Memorandum From the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Kennedy, January 4, 1963. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d261 +[^15]: Church Committee interim report (1975), p. 87 n. 3 (contact plan; Case Officer 2 testimony of August 1, 1975, p. 60) and pp. 174-175 (Inspector General's Report, pp. 88-89; Helms testimony of June 13, 1975, pp. 117-118 and 132). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit +[^16]: Church Committee interim report (1975), section on the May 7, 1962 briefing of the Attorney General, pp. 131-134, citing Houston testimony of June 2, 1975, p. 14; Edwards testimony of May 30, 1975, p. 17; Edwards memorandum to the Attorney General, May 14, 1962; Hoover memorandum, May 10, 1962; Miller memorandum, April 24, 1962; Helms testimony of September 16, 1975, p. 8; and the Inspector General's Report, pp. 65 and 118. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit +[^17]: _FRUS 1961-1963_, vol. VI, Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges, doc. 21, Letter From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, September 29, 1961, editorial note on delivery by Bolshakov to Salinger, September 30. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d21 +[^18]: _FRUS 1961-1963_, vol. VI, doc. 23, Letter From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, November 9, 1961, editorial note on delivery by Bolshakov to Salinger, November 11. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d23 +[^19]: Justin Chandler, "'Thank God for Bobby': Robert Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis," Air University, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, June 2017, pp. 95-96 (citing Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, _One Hell of a Gamble_ (1997), pp. 110-113; Larry Tye, _Bobby Kennedy_ (2016), p. 247; and the Robert F. Kennedy oral history for the John F. Kennedy Library, as cited there). Sole source for the oral history quotation is Chandler's citation. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD1047161 +[^20]: _FRUS 1961-1963_, vol. XI, doc. 194, Editorial Note (meeting of November 19, 1962, citing Memorandum by Robert Kennedy, November 30, as cited in Schlesinger, _Robert Kennedy and His Times_, p. 550). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d194 +[^21]: Chandler, "Thank God for Bobby," pp. 98-101 (citing Lebow and Stein, _We All Lost the Cold War_ (1994), p. 68; Brugioni, _Eyeball to Eyeball_, p. 178; and Fursenko and Naftali, _One Hell of a Gamble_, pp. 194 and 197). The Kennedy remark rests on Brugioni as cited by Chandler. Sole source. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD1047161 +[^22]: _FRUS 1961-1963_, vol. XI, doc. 247, Message From President Kennedy to Chairman Khrushchev, December 14, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d247 +[^23]: Church Committee, _Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans_ (Book III, 1976), Section IV.B, "Wiretap Surveillance of Dr. King and the SCLC: October 1963-June 1966," pp. 115-116, citing Bland to Sullivan memorandum of 9/6/63, Hoover to the Attorney General of 10/7/63 and 10/18/63, and Evans to Belmont memoranda of 10/10/63 and 10/21/63; installation table, p. 116. https://archive.org/details/ChurchCommittee +[^24]: Church Committee, Book III (1976), p. 117, citing Burke Marshall testimony of March 3, 1976, pp. 20 and 55. https://archive.org/details/ChurchCommittee +[^25]: Church Committee, Book III (1976), pp. 117-118, citing Edwin O. Guthman testimony of March 16, 1976, pp. 5 and 15-17. Sole source for Guthman's account of what Kennedy told him in 1968. https://archive.org/details/ChurchCommittee +[^26]: FBI, Marilyn Monroe file, Mexico City report covering her February 1962 visit to Mexico (text dated February 21 and 23, 1962), in the Marilyn Monroe FBI Files. Sole source for the Kennedy meeting. https://archive.org/details/MarilynMonroeFBI +[^27]: FBI memorandum, stamped August 1, 1973, file 105-40018 (Marilyn Monroe), concerning Norman Mailer's book on Monroe, in the Marilyn Monroe FBI Files. https://archive.org/details/MarilynMonroeFBI +[^28]: Department of State outgoing telegram to American embassy Amman and other posts, drafted by NEA (Lucius D. Battle) June 5, 1968, CIA Reading Room document 05161067. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-05161067 +[^29]: CIA Reading Room document 07169750, memorandum for the record, "Suspicion of 'Palestinian' Conspiracy Behind Kennedy Assassination," June 14, 1968. The archived OCR is partly illegible at the passage naming the group, so that wording is a paraphrase. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-07169750 +[^30]: CIA Reading Room document 07169746, Deputy Director to FBI, "Sirhan Investigation," July 23, 1968. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-07169746 +[^31]: CIA Reading Room document 07169734, memorandum to the FBI Director regarding Moshe Yaacov Eldar, July 1968. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-07169734 +[^32]: California State Archives, Los Angeles Police Department Records of the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Investigation, ca. 1968-1978 (collection rfkguide), finding aid, Online Archive of California, scope and content and index of interviewees (Cesar, Thane: CSA-K7, K8, K24; Pruszynski, Stus: CSA-K123). https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf387002h3/ +[^33]: Philip M. Van Praag, "Acoustic Analysis of Gunshot Recordings Utilizing Frequency Selective Integrated Loudness Envelope Evaluation," American Academy of Forensic Sciences, Engineering Sciences Section, abstract C20, 2008. Sole source for the second-gun claim is Van Praag's abstract. https://www.aafs.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/AAFS-2008-C20.pdf +[^34]: Dan E. Moldea, account of his investigation, excerpted from _Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer_ (chapters on Gene Cesar and the polygraph) and his 1987 _Regardie's_ article; Moldea's own statements are the sole source for the interview, the polygraph and his conclusion. http://www.moldea.com/DEM-on-RFK.pdf +[^35]: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "Governor Newsom Should Not Block," Substack, December 14, 2021. Sole source for his statements. https://robertfkennedyjr.substack.com/p/governor-newsom-should-not-block +[^36]: Linda Deutsch, Associated Press, February 28, 2011, report on Sirhan's parole hearing, as reprinted by Salon. Sole source for Pepper's statements. https://www.salon.com/2011/02/28/assassin_can_t_remember_shooting_robert_kennedy/ +[^37]: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, News Release No. 11-25, "DNI Gabbard Releases More Than 60,000 Additional Pages Related to Senator Robert F. Kennedy Assassination," May 7, 2025. https://www.odni.gov/3532/pr-11-25/ +[^38]: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, "Governor Newsom Grants Executive Clemency, Reverses Parole Decision for Sirhan Sirhan," press release, January 2022. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/01/13/governor-newsom-grants-executive-clemency-reverses-parole-decision-for-sirhan-sirhan/ +[^39]: "California board denies parole for RFK killer Sirhan Sirhan," KTVU, March 1, 2023. https://www.ktvu.com/news/california-board-denies-parole-for-rfk-killer-sirhan-sirhan