Solving JFK

In the final installment of our Soviet Union series, we examine a cache of newly released Russian documents handed to Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna by the Russian Ambassador in October 2025. These 350 pages, prepared under the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, offer a rare behind-the-curtain look at Soviet decision-making around Lee Harvey Oswald's defection, the Warren Commission, and the aftermath of the assassination. We weigh why Moscow released the files now and what they reveal about Khrushchev's private suspicion of a conspiracy.
Along the way, we unpack some genuine bombshells: a candid 1964 exchange between Warren Commissioner John McCloy and Soviet UN representative Nikolai Fedorenko, a William Walton memo carrying a message from Bobby and Jackie Kennedy to Khrushchev calling the assassination "the result of a large political conspiracy," and the definitive solution to the long-debated "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter, now proven to be a KGB forgery.

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We wrap up the Cold War context by looking at Kennedy's push for peace with Khrushchev in the final months of his life, including the American University speech, the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and a secret Khrushchev letter proposing further cooperation that the State Department never even showed to the President. Then we stress-test former CIA Director James Woolsey's claim in "Operation Dragon" that Oswald killed Kennedy on Khrushchev's direct orders after meeting with Soviet assassination chief Valeriy Kostikov in Mexico City. The problem? FBI Director Hoover told LBJ the day after the assassination that the man at the Soviet Embassy was not Oswald. A suspicious letter to the Soviets contained information Oswald couldn't have known. And LBJ himself clearly didn't buy the Soviet conspiracy angle, but he used the threat of one to strong-arm Earl Warren into chairing the Commission and steering it toward the lone gunman conclusion.
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In Part 3 of our Soviet Union series, we dig into the Cold War spy games swirling around Lee Harvey Oswald and ask whether the KGB had a hand in JFK's assassination. The trail starts with Pyotr Popov, a Soviet military intelligence colonel who became a CIA defector-in-place in 1952 — and whose tip about a KGB mole hidden deep inside the CIA launched one of the most consequential mole hunts in Agency history. We trace how Popov was burned, how counterintelligence chief James Angleton became obsessed with finding "Popov's Mole," and how Oswald's strangely routed CIA file suggests he may have been used as "flypaper" by the Agency to smoke the mole out.
From there, we tackle the riddle of Yuri Nosenko, the KGB officer who defected just months after Dallas and conveniently insisted the Soviets had zero interest in Oswald. Was he a genuine defector — or a Soviet plant sent to clear Moscow of any role in Kennedy's murder? We walk through Pete Bagley's case against Nosenko, the bombshell 1994 admissions from former KGB chief Sergey Kondrashev, new evidence of real Soviet intelligence interest in Oswald, and Professor John Newman's startling theory about who Popov's Mole actually was — a man hiding in plain sight inside the CIA the entire time.
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In this bonus episode, Solving JFK reviews and critiques PBS Nova's JFK Cold Case documentary in response to a question from a listener. We'll be back with Part 3 on the Soviet Union series next week.
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The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to nuclear war—a thirteen-day period where decisions made in real time carried unimaginable consequences. In this episode, we break down how the crisis developed, why Khrushchev chose to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, and how American intelligence and leadership responded as the situation escalated. Inside the Kennedy administration, there was no consensus. Military leaders urged immediate force, while Kennedy weighed options that might avoid triggering a nuclear exchange. 
As the pressure intensified, miscommunications, near-misses, and rogue actions on both sides pushed the world closer to disaster than most people realized at the time. This episode examines the internal tensions within the U.S. government, the role of backchannel diplomacy, and the narrow margin by which catastrophe was avoided. It’s a look at leadership under extreme stress—and what this moment reveals about power, perception, and the risks that defined the Cold War.
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