From the JFK files

Huffington Post - Authorities had eyes on the ex-Marine the month before the shooting, according to memos that the FBI’s New Orleans division sent to its Dallas branch. Oswald was of interest, according to “Cuban sources.” A 1964 memo denied that Oswald was an FBI informant.

Speculation surrounding Oswald and the CIA has abounded for years. It was previously known, for instance, that he tried to defect to the Soviet Union and asked to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

The trove of documents reveals there was speculation Oswald was a CIA operative. A 1975 presidential Commission on CIA Activities deposition shows that Richard Helms, who had served as CIA director, asked David Belin, an attorney for the commission, whether “the CIA was in some way conspiratorially involved with the assassination of President Kennedy.”

“Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or agent …” Helms inquired.

The rest of the document is cut off.

If the answer was yes, it would stoke even more confusion about a document that says Oswald made contact with Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov, an officer from the Soviet KGB, while at Mexico City’s Soviet embassy on Sept. 28, 1963. Oswald called the embassy several days later and asked, in broken Russian, whether there was “anything new concerning the telegram to Washington.”

Soviet officials denied any affiliations with Oswald. They described him as “a neurotic maniac who was disloyal to his own country and everything else.”

... The documents also contain unsubstantiated tips, including claims of a second shooter and reports of Oswald having prior contact with Ruby.

Whether there was an agency or group behind the killing is not something the new documents clear up.

Hoover said in the 1963 memo that his concern “is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”

He didn’t expand on this, so it’s not known whether Hoover believed there were more people involved and didn’t want the public to know, or whether he merely thought he would have a hard time convincing the public that the assassin was a lone wolf.

Soviet leadership assumed the killing was the result of an “ultraright” coup intended to “stop negotiations with the Soviet Union, attack Cuba and thereafter spread the war,” according to a 1966 document detailing Soviet reactions to Kennedy’s death from a source who was in Russia.

“They seemed convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part,” the file said. Soviet leaders were concerned that an “irresponsible general” in the U.S. would launch a missile at them in response.

Guardian - A reporter on the UK’s Cambridge Evening News received an anonymous call telling him to ring the US embassy for some big news, 25 minutes before the assassination of JFK, according to a memo from a deputy director of the CIA to the director of the FBI. “The caller said only that the Cambridge News reporter should call the American embassy in London for some big news and then hung up. After the word of the president’s death was received the reporter informed the Cambridge police of the anonymous call and the police informed MI5. “The important point is that the call was made according to MI5 calculations, about 25 minutes before the president was shot.”

Oswald’s killer “had a B-girl operation where drinks were pushed heavily with no interference from the police department”, according to an FBI informant in a memo dated days after Ruby shot the suspect dead.