Listen to True Spies Podcasts: The Oswald Project Part 1 & Part 2
Listen to The Oswald Project Part 1: From Russia With Love & Part 2
CIA spy Reuben Efron
Two curious revelations are buried in a batch of more than 1,000 John F. Kennedy assassination files unsealed in mid-2023: first, that Reuben Efron - a lawyer working for the CIA - was monitoring Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail more than a year before Oswald’s death; and second, that an excerpt from a US Air Force cable cites Efron as one of three Americans who saw ‘flying saucers’ during a VIP trip to the Soviet Union in 1955.
Perhaps even more intriguing is that the CIA withheld Reuben Efron’s name from the unsealed JFK files for 30 years - even after Efron died at 82 in 1993.
CIA Spy Reuben Efron
"They [the CIA] are not protecting the name of a living person. They're protecting the operational activity that he was engaged in, which was reading Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail," according to journalist Jefferson Morley, a guest on True Spies podcast The Oswald Project Part 1 & Part 2. "The CIA was running some kind of intelligence operation. We don't know exactly what, around Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, while President Kennedy was still alive."
Despite CIA protestations at the time, the spy agency - and Reuben - were watching Oswald closely in the months leading up to November 22, 1963, when gunfire pierced the calm of Dealey Plaza and President John F. Kennedy was shot dead.
“People in the CIA were far, far, far more interested in Lee Harvey Oswald than they ever told the Warren Commission,” Morley told True Spies.
Oswald, 24, called himself a ‘patsy’ and denied shooting JFK before his own death in police custody
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Listen to True Spies Podcasts: The Oswald Project Part 1 & Part 2
Listen to The Oswald Project Part 1: From Russia With Love & Part 2
CIA spy Reuben Efron
Two curious revelations are buried in a batch of more than 1,000 John F. Kennedy assassination files unsealed in mid-2023: first, that Reuben Efron - a lawyer working for the CIA - was monitoring Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail more than a year before Oswald’s death; and second, that an excerpt from a US Air Force cable cites Efron as one of three Americans who saw ‘flying saucers’ during a VIP trip to the Soviet Union in 1955.
Perhaps even more intriguing is that the CIA withheld Reuben Efron’s name from the unsealed JFK files for 30 years - even after Efron died at 82 in 1993.
CIA Spy Reuben Efron
"They [the CIA] are not protecting the name of a living person. They're protecting the operational activity that he was engaged in, which was reading Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail," according to journalist Jefferson Morley, a guest on True Spies podcast The Oswald Project Part 1 & Part 2. "The CIA was running some kind of intelligence operation. We don't know exactly what, around Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, while President Kennedy was still alive."
Despite CIA protestations at the time, the spy agency - and Reuben - were watching Oswald closely in the months leading up to November 22, 1963, when gunfire pierced the calm of Dealey Plaza and President John F. Kennedy was shot dead.
“People in the CIA were far, far, far more interested in Lee Harvey Oswald than they ever told the Warren Commission,” Morley told True Spies.
Oswald, 24, called himself a ‘patsy’ and denied shooting JFK before his own death in police custody
The CIA’s operative was a Lithuanian-born lawyer and member of the bar in Georgia, D.C., and Israel as well as being a Soviet expert who served in the US Air Force as a WWII translator, according to his obituary. Reuben was fluent in Russian, German, Lithuanian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. He arrived in the US via Cuba in 1939, the New York Times reported, describing him as a 5-foot-3, 135-pound merchant salesman.
Lee Harvey Oswald, meanwhile, was 24, a New Orleans-born US Marine honorably released from active duty who defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. He married a Russian woman, Marina, and taught himself Russian. Within two years, Oswald returned to the US to settle in Dallas, Texas where JFK took his last breath. The CIA was tracking Oswald's movements during this period.
In a June 22, 1962 memo - finally released 61 years later - Reuben Efron wrote to the CIA (17 months before Kennedy’s assassination) and cited a news story about Oswald's return from the USSR to America. Reuben mentions reading a letter from Oswald's mother and notes the information would be of interest to Elizabeth Ann Egerter in the CIA Special Investigations Group, aka CI/SIG counterintelligence.
Efron’s 1962 memo reveals for the first time that the international lawyer was working for the CIA and that the Agency had more than a passing interest in Oswald while he was living abroad.
The CIA file reveals Efron’s name and describes a UFO sighting in the USSR
Reuben's flying saucer adventure
Bizarrely, Reuben’s brush with UFOs also came during a VIP trip to the Soviet Union with two high-powered men - US Senator Richard Russell, and Lt. Col. Hathaway.
The three traveled between Soviet Atjaty and Adzhijabu in early October 1955 and later told US authorities about their sighting of “two mound and circular unconventional aircraft" resembling flying discs or flying saucers that were seen “taking off almost vertically”. The document describes the craft revolving and shooting 'sparks or flames' before passing over their train.
They reportedly saw two searchlights, pointing almost vertically about one to two miles south of the rail line. “After the sighting, Soviet train men became excited and lowered curtains and refused permission to look out windows,” the document said, adding that “US observers firmly believe these unconventional aircraft are flying saucers or disc aircraft.”
When the Los Angeles Examiner tried to nail down the details, Russell told him: “I have discussed this matter with the affected agencies and they are of the opinion that it is not wise to publicize this matter at this time.”
John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie
Was Oswald: a patsy for JFK's murder?
In another bizarre link, Senator Russell later sat on the Warren Commission, tasked with investigating Kennedy’s assassination, and Reuben sat in on the questioning of Oswald’s Russian-born widow. The commissioners found that Oswald acted alone.
Oswald had denied shooting JFK and referred to himself as a ‘patsy’ before he too was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby while in police custody. Five government investigations concluded Oswald was the killer but the irregularities in the investigation and the slow drip of JFK intelligence documents have kept Kennedy conspiracy theorists busy for decades.
To hear more from journalist Jefferson Morley and the full True Spies Podcasts listen to The Oswald Project Part 1 & Part 2.
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