‘Nightline’ Gets a Peek at KGB Oswald Files

ABC’s “Nightline” special tonight on the KGB’s secret files on Lee Harvey Oswald may represent a coup competitively but it was a frustration journalistically, according to the show’s executive producer, Tom Bettag.

ABC will report on the 11:30 p.m. broadcast that the Soviets at first suspected Oswald of being a U.S. agent when he defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, but they rejected the idea after extensive surveillance of him during his 2 1/2 years in the country.

KGB officials also concluded that Oswald was incapable of having acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy, as the Warren Commission said he did.

After weeks of negotiations with new KGB chief Vadim Bakatin that began just after the failed Soviet coup attempt last August, ABC correspondent Forrest Sawyer finally hit pay dirt.

ABC’s competitors--reportedly including CNN, NBC and at least one independent producer--were simultaneously bargaining for access to the same 10-inch-thick pile of documents, enclosed in what Bettag described as “ratty-looking, cardboard file folders.”

The KGB suddenly withdrew its permission, having allowed Sawyer and a translator only two lengthy sessions with the files, Bettag said.

He said it was time enough to merely “scratch the surface” of the lore contained in the files, which included reports from field agents and informants in Minsk, where Oswald lived and worked; correspondence to and from Oswald intercepted by the KGB, and transcripts of bugged conversations in Oswald’s apartment between Oswald and his future wife, Marina, and other acquaintances.

ABC is treating the files “with due skepticism” since it was unable to spend the time it needed to transcribe them fully and then try to authenticate them through other sources, Bettag said.

Nevertheless, the ABC team was able to interview KGB officers who had studied the files at length as well as people who had known Oswald in Minsk.

One discovery from the files is that Oswald was allowed to join a hunting club associated with the factory where he worked and that the KGB monitored his riflery.

Bettag said he thought ABC’s access was withdrawn because of the objections of KGB bureaucrats who argued that if the documents were to be opened, equal access should be granted to all news organizations, Soviet included.

“They still say at some point they will release the files,” Bettag said, “but there’s some confusion about whether they’ll release an expunged copy.”

Bettag said that no money changed hands between ABC and the KGB. He said Bakatin stated emphatically that his agency would not charge a fee for access.