| JFK Main Site | clintbradford.com |

BACKGROUND: At the economic summit in Cologne, Germany, on Sunday, June 20, 1999, Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly handed President Clinton approximately 80 pages of documents relating to Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of President Kennedy.

President Clinton's national security advisors at first issued a statement that they would consider relasing "documents of interest." Within 24 hours of that statement, the President's advisors advised that all the documents would be released - pending their translation.

The article that appears above was written by Maxim Zhukov of the Russian newspaper, Commersant (Issue 106, June 22, 1999). This is a daily Russian newspaper, featuring mostly sensational and/or provocative news of Russian political and social life. It also covers Moscow criminal trials.

Zhukov obtained three of the documents:

• a letter from Oswald;

• a Foreign Ministry document discussing the Soviet reaction to the assassination; and

• a document describing plans for attendance at the Kennedy funeral.

According to Zhukov, "The 80 pages can be divided into two parts: One about the time Oswald spent here; the other, Soviet documents about official reaction to the killing of Kennedy." He said the documents might also include transcripts of meetings with Oswald.

Retired KGB colonel Mikhail Lyubimov told Echo Moscow radio station that the assassination of President Kennedy sent Soviet leaders into shock and left Moscow fearful that it would be blamed for the murder.

"(Nikita) Khrushchev rushed in terror to the U.S. ambassador to say we were not involved," Lyubimov said of the then Soviet leader.

"The only sensation that will hit the world (following release of the latest documents) is that we (the Soviet Union) had nothing to do with the assassination of Kennedy," he said.

"I rule it out 100 percent. Even under Stalin we didn't assassinate foreigners and after his (Stalin's) death the politburo banned terrorist acts," Lyubimov said.

He dismissed suggestions that a rogue KGB unit could have gone in alone and carried out the operation, saying "the KGB was strictly under the control of the politburo and the party leadership."