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Soviets thought LBJ behind Kennedy assassination: document

By CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
New York Daily News
Oct 27th 2017 7:36AM

Soviet spies believed that President Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the death of the John F. Kennedy, according to an FBI document.

Sources told the American agency that officials in the U.S.S.R. “believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the ‘ultraright’” that led to the 1963 assassination, with later claims that there was evidence to show the vice president’s involvement.

The claim was part of a memo on the Soviet reaction to Kennedy’s death ( http://tinyurl.com/y9rhtzgr ) forwarded from then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to Johnson’s assistant Marvin Watson in 1966 and now published as part of the newly unveiled JFK archive.

“Our sources added that in instructions from Moscow, it was indicated that ‘now’ the KGB was in possession of data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy,” one part of the document reads, citing intelligence from 1965.

Gallery: President John F. Kennedy through the years (57 photos)

“KGB headquarters indicated that in view of this information, it was necessary for the Soviet Government to know the existing personal relationship between President Johnson and the Kennedy family, particularly that between President John and Robert and “Ted” Kennedy.”

Johnson's involvement in the assassination has been a persistent if less-common theory behind the killing, spurred on by a woman named Madeline Duncan Brown who says she was the vice president's lover.

Conspiracy theory Dave Perry told the Dallas Morning News ( http://tinyurl.com/ybfe4vme ) that Johnson could not have been at the party the night before the assassination where he allegedly whispered about the crime to follow the next day, as a string of photographs show him atending a rally

Soviet sentiment cited in the document also said that Lee Harvey Oswald, who authorities say acted alone in the assassination, was a “nutjob” who visited in the U.S.S.R. but was denied a longer stay because of perceived mental illness.

Documents unveiled Thursday night also include a memo from the FBI New Orleans office a month before the assassination saying that they were looking for Oswald in connection to his pro-Cuba activities.

Much of the counter-intelligence centered on Moscow’s attempts to discern what Johnson, the longtime Texas congressman, would mean for the Cold War, with fears that the assassination could lead to a rogue general launching a missile and turning the standoff hot.

Gallery: Kennedy assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald (12 photos)

For his part Johnson, sworn in as president on Air Force One following the killing, reportedly had other ideas about what was behind Oswald.

A released document from the 1970s Rockefeller Commission on CIA activities saw former CIA Director Richard Helms contend that Richard Nixon had beliefs that the agency was behind the killing of South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem.

Helms said the assertion was “heated by the fact that President Johnson used to go around saying that the reason President Kennedy was assassinated was that he had assassinated President Diem and this was just justice.”

In an odd omission, the document with Helms’s testimony ends as he is asked whether Oswald was in some way involved with the CIA.

More from New York Daily News:

JFK records likely to reveal plots to kill Castro, Oswald's trips http://tinyurl.com/y87y3tcj

Five JFK assassination theories that records could finally debunk http://tinyurl.com/ycgeaym4

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