A Spy Like No Other: The Cuban Missile Crisis, The KGB and the Kennedy Assassination

by Robert Holmes

The arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States was the most dangerous confrontation in the history of the world. Nikita Khrushchev's decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, and John F. Kennedy's willingness to call his bluff, brought the Soviet Union and the West to the edge of a cataclysmic nuclear war. Kennedy's confidence in his brinkmanship hung on evidence provided by Oleg Penkovsky, the MI6/CIA agent inside Soviet military intelligence. While researching Penkovsky's story, Robert Holmes stumbled upon an astonishing chain of intrigue, betrayal, and revenge that suggested a group of maverick Soviet intelligence officers had plotted the crime of the century. When Penkovsky's treachery was discovered he was executed and his boss, General Ivan Serov (the head of Soviet military intelligence) was humiliated. In this extraordinary study, Holmes suggests Serov's anger at America's victory in Cuba and his resentment at the treachery of his protégé turned into an obsessive determination to gain revenge—and reveals the opportunity he had to do so by working with KGB rogue officers to enlist a young American loner, Lee Harvey Oswald, to assassinate the President. Robert Holmes was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was a British diplomat for more than thirty years, serving in a number of foreign capitals including Moscow, Russia, and Budapest, Hungary, during the depths of the Cold War.

Genres: Nonfiction

324 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2012

Reviews

[Lee Tracy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The theory that the "Reds killed JFK" has been trotted out periodically since 1963 (especially by British author Michael Eddowes in the 1970s). It is one of the least credible theories imaginable. No one would have hired Oswald to shoot the broad side of a barn. When he belonged to a hunting club in the USSR, he was such a poor shot, his colleagues had to share their game with him because he couldn't hit anything. His Marine buddies almost universally remembered Oswald as being a mediocre-to-bad shot on the rifle range. Oswald was simply a decoy, set up to look like the shooter and take the blame, while the real (professional) shooters got away. And JFK was killed by his domestic enemies, not foreign ones.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a let down! It was all going along so well, a le Carre Cold War, MI6-CIA-KGB, all trilby hats and white raincoats.
'A Spy Like No Other', the author an ex member of the British Diplomatic Service, takes us under cover following the footsteps of the Rosenbergs, Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blunt, Lonsdale and Blake.
Shaken, not stirred in Moscow, London and Berlin we enter Soviet military intelligence through the MI6-CIA agent Oleg Penkovsky.
Unfortunately, tacked onto the end of this interesting double agent narrative, and without any believable evidence, Mr Holmes serves up the spy who came in from the cold war, the famous 'patsy' Lee Harvey Oswald. In covering the Mexico City, New Orleans and Dallas trails this author in his ignorance follows much of the Warren Commission/FBI fictions to persuade us that the JFK hit was an ex KGB (General Ivan Serov) act of revenge for the Cuban Missile Crisis.
So, Mr Holmes...that is why Jack Ruby shot Oswald. (Described in the photo section as 'Nightclub owner Jack Ruby:very much his own man. He shot Oswald for killing the President of the United States.) Oh really!
So, Mr Holmes...that is why U.S. military covered up the medical evidence at JFK's autopsy, just hours after the shooting, to cover for the KGB?
So, Mr Holmes...that is why on the 22nd Nov.'63 the FBI took illegal jurisdiction from the DPD, & closed the case stating no conspiracy, the lone nut guilty with evidence full of holes, to cover for the KGB?
No, Mr Holmes...while pointing your finger to the East, your back is facing the West.