Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Hardcover)

by Ion Mihai Pacepa (Author) "WHEN President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot to death on November 22, 1963, I was living in my native Bucharest, one of three deputy chiefs..." (more)
Key Phrases: secret trip, hit man, commo plan, Soviet Union, United States, Warren Commission (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Even those inclined to suspect a conspiracy was behind JFK's murder will likely remain unpersuaded by Pacepa's circumstantial, speculative case that the Soviet Union ordered Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate Kennedy. The author, who was head of Romania's secret security agency before defecting to the U.S. in 1978, maintains that Khrushchev plotted the assassination, only to have a change of heart, but Soviet agents were unable to deprogram Oswald. Pacepa's version of history gives the KGB months to prevent the assassination (and its potentially devastating blowback) by simply eliminating Oswald once his determination to kill Kennedy became clear. Pacepa relies heavily on the work of the Warren Commission, the House Committee on Assassinations and author Edward J. Epstein; his own experience of Romanian intelligence provides only anecdotes and what he calls an ability to recognize the Soviet fingerprint in the case. While there is reason to doubt that the former Soviet Union was fully forthcoming about Oswald's time there, this book offers no convincing Soviet motive for the assassination. (Sept. 14)
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Review
"A new book from General Ion Mihai Pacepa is cause for celebration....No novelist could have written a more exciting story, made all the more compelling because of Pacepa's first-hand involvement." -- Michael Ledeen, HumanEvents.com

"Answered many lingering questions lying around the JFK assassination landscape." -- Bernie Reeves, Raleigh Metro Magazine

"Mr. Pacepa's book is valuable...confirms what many of us have long believed." -- Joseph C. Goulden, Washington Times

"A wake-up call about the inherent evil of the KGB, whose former officers are now running Russia." -- Nestor Ratesh

"Fascinating and engrossing account, which should be required reading for the entire American intelligence community." -- Justin P. Liuba, Epoch Times

"Former `voice from within'....Tells us how lack of expertise made possible a profoundly incorrect reading of such clear facts." -- Dorin Tudoran

"Meticulously detailed....Covers all the bases left open by government investigations and the hundreds of book published on the assassination. " -- Arnaud de Borchgrave

"Pacepa has given us a new and very different view of the JFK assassination....The General's credibility continues to ring true." -- Wayne A. Barnes

A provocative book that will definitely change our understanding of one of the 20th century's most disturbing and puzzling episodes. -- Vladimir Tismaneanu

Every chapter tightens the noose around the culprit....The story lends perfectly to a non-fictional `whodunit' movie. -- Claude Matasa

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher (November 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566637619
• ISBN-13: 978-1566637619
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #614,965 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting & Thought-Provoking, August 22, 2008

By	David M. Dougherty (Arkansas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Although this book pulls in some unrelated items and stretches to maintain its thesis, it is at least worthy of as much consideration as ANY of the "The CIA did it" tomes. There are five points that stand out in this book & its surounding issues:

1) All assassinations in history have either been committed by a dedicated, suicidal assassin, or were the product of dumb luck. For example, no writer could have come up with a more improbable story than the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife.

2) There is no worse organization to achieve an assassination than a large, fractured governmental bureaucracy, constantly fighting turf wars and concerned with betrayal and oversight from exogenous personnel. The KGB did not qualify at the time as such an organization but the CIA did (and does today to an even greater extent.)

3) Only the PP department in the Agency (& only a few individuals within it) were severely impacted by the Bay of Pigs. Most of the ill-feelings in the Agency during the remainder of Kennedy's time as President were directed at Robert Kennedy, the inexperienced loose cannon bent on murdering Castro and who was micro-managing Agency operations to that effect.

4) The Cuban Missile Crisis eventually brought about Khruschev's fall, and as he was losing power, could readily have sought to assassinate the individual he blamed for his decline. Whether he did so and how, is central to this book.

5) For the benefit of other reviewers, it should be noted that the firing of the three shots have been reliably replicated, including the "magic bullet" shot. There remains no technical question as of this writing that those shots, although lucky, could have been made by Oswald from his putative firing point.

This books adds a valid point of discussion to the ever-lasting analysis of the Kennedy assassination. Like all such books, one must read it carefully and critically. Obviously, the criticisms are many and highly charged, and I leave them to the reader as affected by his own political viewpoint.

27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I apoligize but I just wanted to ask a question...., October 20, 2007

By	D. Moore (Cleveland Heights, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have ordered the book and, having read Pacepa's Red Horizons with profound interest, eagerly await it, but I just wanted to ask a question of the Universe: why the heck is Publisher's Weekly almost always the de facto official reviewer when their views are so partisan and generally devoid of neutral information about a book's contents? My question isn't limited to this book, which after all concerns one of the most controversial topics of the previous half century, but come on, half the books I look at have these awful, tendentious Publisher's Weekly comments - generally rhapsodic approval where a book reaches conclusions consonant with a "liberal" point of view, generally sneering and dismissive if non-liberal (yes, there are more than two political flavors, Virginia). This seems to me beneath a site like Amazon. Just my opinion.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars JFK Assassinated by Khrushchev via Oswald -- Yes, January 6, 2008

By	Marina "Hill" (VA) - See all my reviews

Pacepa's proofs that Lee Harvey Oswald was a Soviet agent, along with the standard KGB ploy of providing their nerdy recruits with a sexual-cookie wife, are irrefutable. Pacepa's speculation that the evil Khrushchev, Stalin's lickspittle, who hated the young and suave Kennedy, assisted the assassination plans by sponsoring Oswald's return to the US after rifle and spy training are also credible.

What is curious is Pacepa's exculpation of Yuriy Nosenko from having been sent deliberately by the USSR, after Kennedy's assassination, to defect with misinformation about the Soviet Union's involvement. Pacepa alleges that Nosenko, who was not in the KGB but the VGU, did not know Oswald's task because the VGU's files did not have all the pertinent information on Oswald. Nosenko however was the major reason that the US accepted the lie that the KGB was not involved in Oswald's plot. Is Pacepa making an honest mistake about Nosenko's phony defection? or is Pacepa creating what amounts to a legal brief for Nosenko's innocence? And if he is, why?

Welcome to the House of Mirrors that is spyworld. In most cases, only the very inside "players" ever get to know the whole truth. For more information on the circumstances surrounding Nosenko's highly suspicious defection and exculpation of the Soviet Union, read the book, "Spy Wars," by retired CIA agent, Tennent Bagley.