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Significant Milestone

…a condolence message to Jacqueline Kennedy, sent both in his own name and on behalf of his wife, which was a new precedent in Soviet diplomatic protocol.

While funeral texts were being prepared in nighttime Moscow, the Soviet Embassy in Washington sent condolences to Jacqueline Kennedy, the president’s brother Robert Kennedy, and Dean Rusk. Dobrynin awaited further instructions from the Center when, at 4 p.m., the Associated Press news agency reported the arrest of Lee H. Oswald, a former serviceman, supporter of communist Cuba, who had previously lived in the USSR and was married to a Soviet citizen, on suspicion of Kennedy’s assassination. This news alarmed the Kremlin and greatly disturbed Dobrynin. In his memoirs, he later wrote: “The situation began to take on an alarming character, as the question of Soviet involvement in the events related to Kennedy’s assassination arose. The memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis was still fresh in everyone’s minds. Anti-Soviet sentiments could flare up with renewed intensity. Potentially, this could lead to a new serious conflict. All these troubling thoughts gave me no peace. Of course, I was confident that we were not involved in this drama. However, I had serious concerns that our special services might have some connections with Oswald”¹⁶.

Disturbed by this news, Dobrynin held an urgent meeting with the head of the Soviet intelligence residency in Washington. The latter confirmed that neither the KGB nor the GRU had any connections with Lee H. Oswald. The surviving correspondence with Lee Harvey was conducted through regular mail and was likely already known to U.S. authorities. The only peculiarity was Oswald’s last letter to the Soviet Embassy, dated November 9, 1963, which reached Soviet diplomats only on November 18. The message was typed, unlike all of Oswald’s previous handwritten letters, and contained several unclear points. In the letter, Lee Harvey recounted that, while in Mexico, he had approached the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban Consulate with a request for visas for himself and his family to visit the USSR and Cuba but was refused. Oswald wrote about surveillance by the FBI and mentioned a proposal from one of the federal agents to his wife Marina to “betray” the Soviet Union and remain under U.S. protection. The KGB resident in the United States, who sent a coded telegram to Moscow with a translation of this letter, considered the document suspicious and provocative¹⁷.

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Footnotes:

¹⁶ Dobrynin, *In Confidence*..., p. 96.
¹⁷ See Document No. 23.