The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union

Savodnik desperately wants to convince us that the Warren Commission got it right in their conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. To support this presumption, Sadvodnik employs the same conformation bias of guilt that historically leads to wrongful convictions – a bias that singles out the accused, ignores all other forensic evidence to the contrary, and then paints a psychological profile to support the prosecution’s case.

Savodnik comes highly qualified to document Oswald’s stay in the former U.S.S.R., particularly Moscow where Savodnik was formerly based. His descriptions of Cold War Russia under Khrushchev bring to life the crusty reports of Oswald’s adventure into the Soviet world. He even raises the suspicion that Nosenko’s defection shortly after JFK’s assassination was the KGB’s effort to assure the USA that the USSR had nothing to do with Oswald’s involvement.

Rather than ask, “Who really killed JFK?” Sadvodnik wants us to accept his conclusion that this highly volatile product of a dysfunctional family possessed the wherewithal to do it all by himself. Left unexplained are myriads of other bits of evidence that leave me unconvinced.