(2 of 2)
Much of the book centers on the intrigue between the CIA and the FBI over Nosenko's credibility. Disinclined to believe him, the CIA drew up 44 questions that it wanted the FBI, which was debriefing Nosenko, to ask him. The FBI'S J. Edgar Hoover refused to permit such questioning. The reason, according to Epstein, was that Hoover took pride in the information he was getting from another alleged KGB defector, called Fedora. Fedora had verified some portions of Nosenko's story—and if Nosenko had been shown to be a false defector, that would have meant that Hoover's source too was a KGB-planted double agent. Eventually, the CIA put aside its suspicions.
In retracing Oswald's movements after he returned to the U.S., the book is less persuasive in implying that he remained a KGB informant. It cites his temporary employment at a typesetting company in Dallas, where he gained access to Soviet and Cuban place names that the U.S. Army had contracted to strip into classified maps. The only KGB contact suggested in the book is the mysterious oil geologist George de Mohrenschildt, who befriended the Oswalds in the Dallas area. He is portrayed as exaggerating the Oswalds' marital problems in order to provide a reason for Oswald to move away from Marina. De Mohrenschildt, whose clouded past included contacts with various intelligence agencies, killed himself in 1977—two hours after being interviewed by Epstein for Legend.
Epstein claims that Oswald's pro-Cuba activities in the U.S. were designed to convince Havana officials that he was trustworthy enough to be admitted to Cuba in another planned defection from the U.S. The book traces Oswald's movements in Mexico City, and includes U.S.-monitored telephone conversations to the Soviet and Cuban embassies. Oswald's last known call in Mexico City was to make an appointment to see a Soviet official, described in the book as a member of the KGB department in charge of foreign espionage and assassinations. Oswald then returned to Dallas.
Yet several stubborn facts block any implication that Oswald was directed by foreign agents to hunt down Kennedy in Texas. He found his job in the Texas School Book Depository building by chance, and long before it was known that Kennedy planned to ride in a motorcade past the building. If the killing actually was planned by foreign agents, Oswald was the luckiest assassin in history. It is far more likely that he saw his unexpected opportunity—and took it. -