[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

unlikely for American counter-intelligence to overlook a Marxist Marine at the Atsugi air
base in Japan where U-2 spy planes flew out of in the late 1950’s.
Pacepa believed that Oswald must have given the KGB secrets about the
American spy plane before he defected to the Soviet Union. He claimed that the KGB
probably allowed Oswald to visit Moscow as a reward for his intelligence information.
However, the committed idealist Oswald wanted to stay in the Soviet Union, apparently
slashing his wrist in protest to being ordered back to the United States. Pacepa alleged
that the KGB must have decided to allow Oswald to stay for the time being, but to
“program” him for an assignment in the West: to kill Kennedy as revenge for
Khrushchev’s humiliation in the Berlin Crisis. Pacepa described the Soviet premier as a
“crude, boorish peasant” who referred to Kennedy as “the Pig” and ordered the
assassination of his arch rival. 259 However, the Soviets tried to prevent Oswald from
carrying out his mission in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the West
German trial of a KGB assassin in 1962 and 1963. According to Pacepa, Khrushchev
could not afford another international crisis if Kennedy was killed and Oswald’s ties to
the Soviets became known. Oswald carried out his mission despite the Soviet entreaties,
because even though he was a Marxist, he was also a “headstrong, individualistic
American who had never shown much respect for authority.” 260
Pacepa claimed that the KGB ordered all its allies, including Romania, to carry
out a disinformation campaign to blame the assassination on the right-wing in the United
259 Pacepa, xxi, 78.
260 Pacepa, 187.
119