Did the Soviets Try to Warn the US About the Kennedy Assassination?

Included in the recently released documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are letters written by a man who claimed he warned an American official in Bulgaria that Lee Harvey Oswald would assassinate Kennedy three months before it happened. There's no hard evidence that he did, but there was enough detail in the files about his claims to spark widespread speculation online.

American Warning: Sergyj Czornonoh, an apparent U.S. citizen living in Sacramento at the time, wrote letters in 1978 to a Sacramento district attorney and Russian and British ambassadors in D.C. In them, he claimed an official named Vasilev working at the Soviet embassy in Bulgaria instructed him in August 1963 to tell the U.S. government that Oswald would kill Kennedy. Czornonoh said he told American Vice Consul Blackshire at Sofia airport on August 15. 

British Warning: In the 1978 letters, Czornonoh claimed he also warned a British immigration officer, who apprehended him in London in July 1963. Czornonoh was asking the British embassy “to help to find the truth” and forward the record of his claim to then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

For Context: Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 before moving back to the U.S. in 1961 with a wife whose uncle was a colonel in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. The recent document dump also included a U.S. intelligence report that said the KGB watched Oswald “closely and constantly while he was in the U.S.S.R.”

Other Key Claims: In his letter to the Sacramento district attorney, Czornonoh alleged the FBI, which he described as “right wing,” harassed and tortured him in 1976, attempting to get him to assassinate Democratic Presidential candidate and former Kennedy administration official Sargent Shriver.

How The Media Covered It: Czornonoh’s letters were not widely covered by mainstream outlets, but The Washington Times (Lean Right bias), Daily Mail (Right), The Independent (Lean Left), and The Sun (Center) covered them. There was significant dialogue surrounding the letters on X.

Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Support our mission. Suggest improvements to this summary.