Comrade Oswald: Agent or Defector?

There is no shortage of material on Lee Harvey Oswald's journey to the Soviet Union at the peak of the Cold War. As I wrote before, John Newman's Oswald and the CIA is on my to-do list, though I probably won't get to it anytime soon. Jim Marrs does discuss Oswald's trek into the heart of communism and the strange details about his entry, life, and return home.

For the years leading up to his defection, Oswald was a low-level Marine who, despite openly professing a support of the United States' greatest enemy, worked on a base in Japan where top secret U2 spy plane operations were underway. Oswald returned home in September of 1959, and by 1960 he was beginning his new life in Moscow. To this day, what Oswald was doing remains a mystery. Marrs points out that US intelligence, which by this point may have already recruited Oswald in some capacity, was running a "false defector" program. This program, as the name surely gives away, would plant US agents posing as communist sympathizers in an effort to gain valuable information on the inside. Was Oswald a part of this program? While we may never know for sure, let's examine the actions of the young defector.

The Kill Zone: Reactions (Part 1 of 4)

The first chapter of Crossfire is entitled "The Kill Zone" and, as you would expect, it deals with the events that took place within the confines of Dealey Plaza (Note: there is a link on the right-hand side that will show a map of Dealey Plaza for reference) before, during, and after the assassination. The main points that I wanted to focus on while reading this chapter are nothing new; they are the same questions that people have been asking since the first shot was fired. How many shots were there? Where did they come from? Who pulled the trigger?

With those thoughts in mind, my initial reactions are after the jump...