Author and researcher Larry Hancock returns to Solving JFK for his second Recap and Rebuttals episode, this time helping us pressure-test our five-part series on the Soviet Union as a potential culprit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We dig into Kennedy and Khrushchev's evolving relationship through Vienna, Berlin, and the tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie; the brink of nuclear war drama of the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Cold War spy games surrounding Popov's Mole and Oswald's manipulated CIA file; JFK's late move toward peace and the limits of former CIA Director James Woolsey's theory that Khrushchev ordered the hit; and the newly released 350-page Russian document handed to Congresswoman Anna Paulina-Luna — including the bombshell that the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter was a KGB forgery and the message Bobby and Jackie Kennedy sent to Khrushchev in December 1963 saying they believed the assassination was the result of a large political conspiracy.

Larry brings his document-grounded perspective to the question that runs through the whole series: did the Soviet Union have a hand in killing John F. Kennedy?

In the final installment of our Soviet Union series, we examine a cache of newly released Russian documents handed to Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna by the Russian Ambassador in October 2025. These 350 pages, prepared under the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, offer a rare behind-the-curtain look at Soviet decision-making around Lee Harvey Oswald's defection, the Warren Commission, and the aftermath of the assassination. We weigh why Moscow released the files now and what they reveal about Khrushchev's private suspicion of a conspiracy.

Along the way, we unpack some genuine bombshells: a candid 1964 exchange between Warren Commissioner John McCloy and Soviet UN representative Nikolai Fedorenko, a William Walton memo carrying a message from Bobby and Jackie Kennedy to Khrushchev calling the assassination "the result of a large political conspiracy," and the definitive solution to the long-debated "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter, now proven to be a KGB forgery.

We wrap up the Cold War context by looking at Kennedy's push for peace with Khrushchev in the final months of his life, including the American University speech, the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and a secret Khrushchev letter proposing further cooperation that the State Department never even showed to the President. Then we stress-test former CIA Director James Woolsey's claim in "Operation Dragon" that Oswald killed Kennedy on Khrushchev's direct orders after meeting with Soviet assassination chief Valeriy Kostikov in Mexico City. The problem? FBI Director Hoover told LBJ the day after the assassination that the man at the Soviet Embassy was not Oswald. A suspicious letter to the Soviets contained information Oswald couldn't have known. And LBJ himself clearly didn't buy the Soviet conspiracy angle, but he used the threat of one to strong-arm Earl Warren into chairing the Commission and steering it toward the lone gunman conclusion.

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