Lee Harvey Oswald spent a number of days in Helsinki in 1959 earlier than defecting to the Soviet Union
The Finnish Safety Intelligence Service (SUPO) has declassified a 60-year-old file detailing Lee Harvey Oswald’s mysterious go to to Helsinki earlier than he defected to the Soviet Union, and simply over 4 years earlier than the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963. .
The Warren Fee judged Oswald in September 1964 to be the lone gunman who fired the deadly pictures from the Texas Faculty Ebook Depository on Elm Road in downtown Dallas and who killed Kennedy the earlier November.
The day after Kennedy was killed – November 23, 1963 – SUPO wrote a memo about Oswald’s journey to Helsinki that paints a novel, if considerably incomplete, image of one of the vital iconic figures of the twentieth century.
Newly declassified information present that Oswald, a former US Marine, then 19, checked into Helsinki’s Torni Resort on October 10, 1959 for a five-night keep, however solely stayed for 2, native web site Yle Information reported Saturday. An utility for an American passport for Oswald confirmed that his said intention for the journey was to hunt training both in Switzerland or on the College of Turku in Finland.
Nonetheless, as Ell famous, Oswald’s utility to attend the Finnish college proved false and raised hypothesis about his true motives. Regardless of their efforts, the Finnish authorities had been unable to find extra details about his actions throughout this brief interval.
On October 12, 1959, Oswald utilized for a USSR visa on the Soviet embassy in Helsinki—an utility, the Warren Fee later famous, that was permitted with uncommon pace. Particulars relating to his arrival in Helsinki stay considerably imprecise. Uncertainty about his actual route has led to hypothesis that he arrived in Finland from England or Sweden.
Declassified information revealed that the SUPO investigation discovered that Oswald was more likely to have arrived through Stockholm both by airplane or boat. Finnish intelligence additionally decided that Oswald had been current whereas in Helsinki “Apparently ready for a visa.”
It additionally signifies that after leaving Helsinki, Oswald arrived in Moscow the place he nearly instantly expressed his want to acquire Soviet citizenship. Oswald spent about two and a half years within the Soviet Union, principally in Minsk, present-day Belarus, the place he labored as a lathe operator in an electronics manufacturing unit.
A separate set of paperwork associated to the Kennedy assassination launched by the US authorities final 12 months cited feedback from former KGB officers who stated that “At any time” Oswald was a KGB agent, and was thought-about one “Loopy and unpredictable” Throughout his Soviet years. The US authorities supply added that Oswald had been affected by despair and homesickness for many of his time in Belarus.
Oswald, who had not formally renounced his American citizenship, returned to america in the summertime of 1962. He was shot and killed in police custody by businessman Jack Ruby two days after the Kennedy assassination.
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