Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

46  Spas Raikin's complete report


Spas Raikin, a former case worker with the Travelers Aid Society, met Lee Harvey Oswald on the dock in Hoboken in 1962. Oswald was returning from the Soviet Union with his Russian wife and their infant daughter The family sailed in on a transatlantic cruise. On a rainy Wednesday afternoon during the spring of 1962, Spas Raikin waited at the Fifth Street pier in Hoboken for a cruise liner sailing in from Rotterdam.

(...)

“I wondered why there weren’t any government officials to meet him,” said Raikin, 91, a retired Bulgarian-American scholar and anti-communist activist. He now lives in Stroudsburg, Pa., with his wife. Raikin said, “In my mind, there was the idea he could be a spy, and God knows what instructions he may have received from the Soviets if he’s in their service. I had suspicion, but I did not want to get further involved into this thing.”

(...)

Raikin said, “I was trying to figure out how I could get to the authorities to tell them my connection with this man. Eventually, at about 11 p.m., I was able to get in contact with an agent of the FBI. I told him that my report of this man is in the office. They went right away.”

(Lisa Rose, Retired scholar looks back on his meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald, NEW JERSEY REAL-TIME NEWS, Nov. 2013)


Raikin explained to [FBI agent Wilfred] Goodwin that "he made a complete report at the time" and "that this report would be on file at the Travelers Aid office," but that "the reports are normally destroyed after one year except in special cases." Raikin believed, according to Goodwin, "that this report was that type of case since it was referred to Travelers Aid by the Health, Education, and Welfare Department." (Raikin's report was never located and presumed destroyed.)

(H.B. Albarelli Jr., A Secret Order, p. 195, 2013)


Spas Raikin in Bulgaria, 1946

Neither the FBI nor the U.S. Department of Justice, nor any other federal group, including the Warren Commission, made any mention that Spas Raikin was a contract employee for the CIA. Raikin's covert employment by the CIA would remain a closely held secret for decades.

(H.B. Albarelli Jr., A Secret Order, p. 208, 2013)


The SS Maasdam took the Oswalds from Rotterdam to Hoboken where they were awaited by CIA-asset Raikin.


Erasing the Past...Discussions

48 The handwritten draft of the 'Comrade Kostin' letter to the Soviet Embassy


Erasing the Past...Discussions

More framework:
174 Ruth Paine's handwritten copy of handwritten draft of the 'Comrade Kostin' letter
196 The missing Mexico City transcript

    "The FBI is not now interested in my activities."

"The Kostikov name, mentioned only in passing in one phone call, was connected to Oswald in another way.
Just a few days prior to the assassination, a letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington was intercepted.
Purportedly written by Oswald, this letter referred to "my meetings with comrade Kostin" and noted that 
"had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had
time to complete our business."

Mysteries surround both the phone calls and the letter - there are indications that both may have been part
of a frame-up of Oswald. There are strong indications that an imposter used Oswald's name in tapped phone
calls. The letter, while apparently signed by Oswald, is typed and thus not amenable to a fuller authenticity
test. A handwritten draft subsequently entered the record, but the story of its origins is raises further
questions."

(Mary Ferrell website)


The typewritten letter (CE15) sent on November 9, 1963, was held and studied
by the FBI for a couple of days, and arrived at the Soviet Embassy on November
18, 1963.

Mrs. PAINE - That is one incident. Another refers to a rough draft of a letter that Lee wrote and left this rough
draft on my secretary desk. 

Mr. JENNER - Would you describe the incident? In the meantime, I will obtain the rough draft here among my
notes. 
Mrs. PAINE - All right. This was on the morning of November 9, Saturday. He asked to use my typewriter, and I
said he might. 

Mr. JENNER - Excuse me. Would you please. state to the Commission why you are reasonably firm that it was
the morning of November 9? What arrests your attention to that particular date? 
Mrs. PAINE - Because I remember the weekend that this note or rough draft remained on my secretary desk. He
spent the weekend on it. And the weekend was close and its residence on that desk was stopped also on the
evening of Sunday, the 10th, when I moved everything in the living room around; the whole arrangement of the
furniture was changed, so that I am very clear in my mind as to what weekend this was. 

Mr. JENNER - All right, go ahead. 
Mrs. PAINE - He was using the typewriter. I came and put June in her high-chair near him at the table where he
was typing, and he moved something over what he was typing from, which aroused my curiosity. 

Mr. JENNER - Why did that arouse your curiosity? 
Mrs. PAINE - It appeared he didn't want me to see what he was writing or to whom he was writing. I didn't
know why he had covered it. If I had peered around him, I could have looked at the typewriter and the page
in it, but I didn't. 

Mr. JENNER - It did make you curious? 
Mrs. PAINE - It did make me curious. Then, later that day, I noticed a scrawling handwriting on a piece of paper
on the corner at the top of my secretary desk in the living room. It remained there.
Sunday morning I was the first one up. I took a closer look at this, a folded sheet of paper folded at the middle.

(...)

Mrs. PAINE - At the top of what I could see of the paper. In other words, it was just below the fold. It said,
"The FBI is not now interested in my activities."

Mr. JENNER - Is that what arrested your attention?
Mrs. PAINE - Yes.
Mr. JENNER - What did you do?
Mrs. PAINE - I then proceeded to read the whole note, wondering, knowing this to be false, wondering why he
was saying it. I was irritated to have him writing a falsehood on my typewriter, I may say, too. I felt I had
some cause to look at it.

(...)

Mr. JENNER - And you made a copy of the document?
Mrs. PAINE - And I made a copy of the document which should be among your papers, because they have that
too. And after having made it, while the shower was running, I am not used to subterfuge in any way, but then
I put it back where it had been and it lay the rest of Sunday on my desk top, and of course I observed this too.

(Warren Commission testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine)


In March 1964, four months after the Soviet Embassy turned over the letter to the United States, identifying
it as a forgery or a deliberate provocation, Ruth Paine testified that on Saturday, November 9, 1963, she had
seen Oswald type the letter in her home on her typewriter. Besides giving an eyewitness account of Oswald
actually writing the letter, her testimony placed on record a different version of the letter from the one the
Soviets had received. The new, U.S.-government preferred version of the letter came, in Paine's testimony,
in the form of a rough draft that she said Oswald left accidentally on her secretary desk.

(...)

By reading the typed letter in terms of its very different draft, the Warren Commission tried to reduce the
explosive ,meaning of the letter sent to the Soviet Embassy to nothing more than an Oswald ego-trip. What
could be seen as a probably fraudulent, dangerously revealing letter was explained away in retrospect by
another probably fraudulent, also revealing draft of the same letter.

The equally suspicious, "original" handwritten note to the Soviet Embassy then became accessible to only one
person. The members of the Warren Commission decided to give the original document, supposedly written by
Oswald, back to Ruth Paine, at her request. They did so in May 1964, four months before they issued their
official report drawing on that same document as key evidence.

(James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 233, 234)

For some incredible reason, by April 1964, the Warren Commission had accepted a Ruth Paine request to have
Oswald’s draft returned. However, when the Dallas FBI did return it to her, she decided to send it back to the
Commission, because, finally, she felt it would be more proper for it to be kept in the public archives, but would
take it in the event it would not be archived. Hoover said with finality that the Commission would not hold onto
it and, by May 1964, had the original sent back to Ruth Paine, which escaped further examination as to its
authenticity.

(JFK and the Unspeakable, p.443)

50. The Harper fragment



According to some, the Harper fragment was found in a location behind the limousine with JFK during the headshot.
According to others, it was in front of the limo. According to some, the fragment is a part of the occipital bone, so
from where witnesses placed a hole in JFK's head. According to others, it was a part of the parietal bone, so from
the part where the Warren Commission concluded JFK's skull was damaged.

While the controversy remains, the item itself has vanished. The FBI blames JFK's White House physician Dr. George
Burkley, while Burkley blames the FBI.

A photograph of the fragment remains:




Late in the afternoon of November 23 Billy Harper, a student at Texas Christian University,
was taking photographs of the assassination site when he found a piece of bone in the grass on the south side
of Elm Street (Archives, CD 5). The exact location where Harper found the bone is somewhat ambiguous:
the FBI report notes only that it was found "approximately 25 feet south of the spot where President
Kennedy was shot" (Archives, CD 5). Harper took the bone to his uncle, Dr. Jack C. Harper, who identified
it as human skull bone and then took it to Methodist Hospital where it was photographed and examined
by the chief pathologist. On November 26 it was turned over to the FBI, and the following day was
delivered to Admiral Burkley at the White House.

The crucial fact may be found in the report of the pathologist who examined it. Dr. A. B. Cairns, chief
pathologist at Methodist Hospital, told the FBI his examination disclosed that "the bone specimen
looked like it came from the occipital [rear] region of the skull" (Archives, CD 5). It is difficult to understand
how a shot from the rear could drive a piece of the occipital bone 25 feet to the left of the vehicle's
path. It is not so difficult to understand how a shot from the right front exploding through the rear
of the skull could produce precisely that effect.

(Josiah Thompson, Six seconds in Dallas, p. 101, 1967)

"Regarding the skull fragments, DR. BURKLEY said the one which was found on the street had been given to
the FBI. He said he'd received a letter from the uncle (presumably DR. HARPER) and that the fragment came
to him at the White House and he then gave it to the FBI. Regarding these three skull fragments which were
used to reconstruct the defect in the skull and the autopsy, they were not saved. He believes they were
put back in with the body. DR. BURKLEY does not recall who he gave the single skull fragment to (associated
with the FBI), but remembers having it taken to the FBI"

(HSCA report on a 8/17/1977 interview with Burkley)


"Approximately 25 feet south of the spot where President Kennedy was shot" doesn't tell 
you much about the exact location, only that it was on the grass south of Elm Street.

52.  An accurate account of the Zapruder film's time in the governments hands


See also:
51 National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) records related to the assassination

Erasing the Past...Discussions

Alexandra is the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder, who took the most famous home movie of all time, a
26 second - 486 frame film of the assassination of President Kennedy. And she is the daughter of Henry, a
Harvard-Oxford educated lawyer who served in the Kennedy Justice Department and oversaw the copyright
fight for the film. 

(...)


[T]his book is not a history of the film itself, it is personal account from the family’s point of view, and the film’s
impact on culture and society, while neglecting its political and historic implications.

After filming the murder, Abe – aka “Mr. Zee,” returned to his nearby office in the Dal-Tex building, placed the
camera in his safe and called his son Henry to tell him the president was dead. Henry said he was shot but not
yet reported dead, but Abraham knew better and set his son straight, explaining what he saw as the motorcade
came into the camera’s picture frame: “As it came in line with my camera, I heard a shot. I saw the president
lean over to Jacqueline. I didn’t realize what happened. And then I realized – I saw his head open up and I
started yelling, ‘They killed him! They killed him!’ The president is dead. I saw the president’s head explode.
How could this happen in America?”

(...)

Alexandra castigates Josiah Thompson and Robert Groden for theft, accusing them of acknowledging their
unauthorized copying of the film in order to promote their conspiracy theories. While she also seems annoyed
that bootleg copies were printed, and doesn’t seem bothered at all that there is no precisely accurate account
for the film’s time in the government’s hands. She expresses the opinion that Life’s suppression of the film was
essentially in good taste.

(William Kelly, Twenty-Six Seconds - A Personal History of the Zapruder Film Reviewed)