Customer Reviews

Passport to Assassination: The Never-Before-Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him

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This fascinating account of Oswald's attempt to go to Cuba can be told by no other writer. Oswald went to Mexico City 7 weeks before the JFK assassination and tried to get a visa to go to Cuba. The Cuban Consulate said they could not issue such a visa on such short notice and suggested he go to the Russia Consulate. He did and had an encounter with Comrade Oleg Nechiporenko that explains Oswald's attempts to manipulate authorities. Oswald tried to solve his feelings of insignificance by coaxing Russian authorities to let him have a visa to go to Russia via Cuba and tried to demonstrate his affiliation with communism. He also pulled a gun and explained that he had to carry it because of persecution by the FBI. Nechiporenko recounts Oswald's manipulations, instability, and desperation in a way that no other person has ever done. This book should be re-issued for the general public to understand Oswald.

This is one of the worst non-fiction, history books I have read in years, certainly the worse on Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination. I fully agree with the review of Mr Hilliard of Toronto, Canada. Nechiporenko's book is tedious, dull, and does not reveal anything that we do not already know in the "facts" department.

Usually these books, by former spies, reveal something of interest. This book does not. The first part of his book about "facts" was written to show that the KGB had nothing to do with Lee Harvey Oswald, as they found him unsuitable for KGB intelligence work. The author used boring, bureaucratese narrative to reveal and explain archival documents that exonerate the KGB from having had anything to do with President Kennedy's assassination. From thereafter, Parts 2 and 3 dealing with speculative, conspiracy theories, the book rapidly deteriorates! Col. Oleg Nechiporenko's main source seemed to have been about about right-wing conspiracies: Jim Garrison, the New Orleans prosecutor; Jim Marrs' "Crossfire," "JFK," the movie by Oliver Stone (all of whom he quotes in footnotes, but to his credit, he also read the Warren Commission and was aware of Edward J. Epstein's book, "legend").

As a "loyal"ex-KGB officer, he wrote the book (with the assistance and permission of Russia's Intelligence services), it seems, to squelch any doubts as to the KGB's non-involvement in the Kennedy's assassination, as well as to point fingers elsewhere: A grand conspiracy of the CIA, FBI, anti-Castro-Cubans, the Military-Industrial complex, using Lee H. Oswald as a "patsy"... I don't know if I will be able to finish part 3- and not finishing a book, once I start is extremely rare for me. I usually plow to the bitter end !

If you want to read informative, intriguing, and suspenseful books on this subject, I recommend, 1) "Legend" by Edward J. Epstein (1978), which as written from the "right" side of the political spectrum, and 2) "Oswald's Tale" (1995) by Norman Mailer (from the left side of politics). The book does have illustrations, particularly of its author and an index, but these are worth neither the read nor the price of the book. I am sorry to say!

Written by Dr Miguel A. Faria, author of Cuba in Revolution - Escape from a Lost Paradise (2002)

I think that when the curtain came down on the good old Soviet Union the author looked around and decided he would make a little money with a book. Unfortunate for him the spy tell all books were coming out of Russia faster then one could count. The author must have then decided well lets milk the JFK assignation market. There are interesting bits about how the KGB worked and what good old Henry did in the USSR, but overall a bit of a dull, less then built up book. The author took a 15 page magazine article and made a 300-page book out of it. If you are interested in this topic go straight to the tour de force of the group - Crossfire by Jim Marrs.