Judge Tunheim Recalls Oswald’s KGB File: ‘Five Feet Tall’

The Soviet intelligence service developed a massive file on accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald that has never been public, according to the recollections of federal judge John Tunheim in his featured speech at a CAPA conference March 16 at the National Press Club.

Tunheim, former chairman of the federal government’s declassification panel in the 1990s, said he reviewed the file in Moscow in 1994 on behalf of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), which declassified millions of pages of JFK documents.

“The KGB file stood five feet tall when you stacked all the boxes up,” Tunheim said, as quoted by fellow speaker Jefferson Morley, who reported the event on the site JFKFacts March 18 under the headline Judge Tunheim: I saw Oswald’s KGB file and it was five feet tall.

Tunheim said he was allowed to look at the records, which were in Russian. He was told that they related to the Soviet security services’ daily surveillance of Oswald (shown in a file photo), a former Marine who lived in the Soviet Union from October 1959 to May 1962.

“We came very close to getting it released,” Tunheim said. “But I didn’t get any help from the State Department, and, in the end, the KGB chose not to let it go.” Tunheim was the keynote speaker at a conference organized by Citizens Against Political Assassinations.

JFK theories involving the KGB have never been substantiated and are considered by historians to be among the less plausible scenarios behind the murder of the liberal president in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

CAPA Coverage of JFK Assassination Records Conference March 16 During Sunshine Week

Top Experts To Assess JFK Murder Records, Revelations March 16 In DC, March 8, 2017.  Federal judge John Tunheim, former chair of the congressionally appointed Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), will speak March 16 at a unique Sunshine Week press conference organized by CAPA to focus on this year’s deadline for disclosure of secret records about President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.

Experts Seek Compliance By Officials On JFK Records, March 10, 2017.  Leading former government officials and other JFK experts are among those who have called for full release by the National Archives of still-classified records regarding the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Speakers For March 16 CAPA Forum On JFK Records, March 11, 2017. To mark the 100th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s birth this spring, leaders in the JFK research community are convening at the National Press Club during “Sunshine Week” March 16.

CAPA Forum ‘JFK at 100’: ‘Cold Facts from Forensic Evidence’ Panel, March 21, 2017.  Lawrence Schnapf, a New York-based attorney and co-chair of the CAPA legal committee, outlined the organization’s fall planning at CAPA’s forum March 16 at the National Press Club during his panel with AARC President James Lesar.

Judge Tunheim Recalls Oswald’s KGB File: ‘Five Feet Tall,’ March 21, 2017.  The Soviet intelligence service developed a massive file on accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald that has never been public, according to the recollections of federal judge John Tunheim in his featured speech at a CAPA conference March 16 at the National Press Club.

At CAPA Forum, JFK Experts See Need, Momentum For Assassination Records Release, March 23, 2017.  Federal Judge John Tunheim, former chair of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), headlined an expert faculty March 16 in the nation’s capital advocating for compliance with the JFK Assassination Records Act’s deadline of release of President Kennedy’s death records.

Transcript of Judge John Tunheim’s Remarks On JFK Records Release At CAPA March 16 Forum, CAPA staff, with transcript by William Kelly via JFKCountercoup, March 24, 2017. Former Assassination Records Review Board Chairman John Tunheim shared his unique expertise to headline a news conference and forum on March 16 during the news industry’s Sunshine Week at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) organized the event.

CAPA (www.capa-hq.com) organized the news conference (which attracted at least two White House reporters and three camera crews) and forum. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) founded Sunshine Week to foster open government via events like this throughout the nation.

Pre-Event Announcements

• National Press Club announcement
• ASNE and RCFP Sunshine Week announcement