Anyone interested in the assassination of President Kennedy will have come across the idea that the Soviets were behind his assassination. His successor was perhaps the first to quickly float that suspicion – and that fear – ostensibly not because he believed it, but that simply the idea might force a devastating nuclear exchange. LBJ used that fear with Earl Warren, and with others. He leveraged it, and the issue of national security, to drive attention solely towards a ‘lone nut’ assassin rather than allowing Oswald to be positioned as a Soviet agent or under Russian influence in the attack.

History has also shown the Russians to have been seriously concerned about such suspicions. Quick denials of any relationship with Oswald were made and in later years Soviet embassy personnel related being assigned to carry out a telephone call and meeting campaign with everyone they could influence to push the message of non-involvement – urgently, beginning the night of the assassination.

The simple fact that Johnson used the threat of war with such force (even talking with the head of the Atomic Energy Commission to get a number to quote in terms of forecast deaths from atomic warfare to use in his conversations) has tended to lean most JFK research away from the Soviets as true suspects. Yet Oswald had been in Russia, he certainly could have been under Soviet influence and Premier Khrushchev and the Russian military had been deeply embarrassed by the events of the Cuban missile crisis the previous year. On the face of it risking nuclear war over a motive as simple as personal revenge seems highly unlikely, but with high emotions some might have settled on that as an understandable motive, especially with the Cold War being at its height.

I’ve not explored the ‘Russia did it’ suspicion in my own work but recently Matt Crumpton asked me to come on his Solving JFK show and give it a deep dive based on David and my work on Lee Harvey Oswald. Matt asks great questions and led us into areas not often discussed these days. If it sounds of interest you can find his show here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/recap-rebuttals-part-20-ep-90-94-soviet-union-with/id1652334113?i=1000766370682