The CIA's 'Witting Collaborator' Distorted Marina Oswald's Story

Priscilla Johnson McMillan's book bolstered the official narrative of the JFK assassination

Marina Oswald and Priscilla McMillan

[Editor’s Note: Tune in to the JFK Facts Podcast on Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 8 p.m. ET for a world exclusive interview, Marina Oswald Porter Has One Last Thing to Say. The interview has not previously been made public.]

One of the more intriguing revelations from the new JFK assassination files has been the exposure of critically acclaimed JFK author Priscilla Johnson McMillan as a CIA collaborator. While some may instinctively discount such a statement as a smear or a “conspiracy theory,” the Agency’s own declassified files released in recent years leave little doubt. McMillan was a “witting collaborator” of the clandestine service.

McMillan’s CIA connection was unknown in 1977 when her book “Marina and Lee” was published to rapturous reviews. The 659-page tome ratified the official story of a “lone gunman” by depicting Lee Oswald as a psychologically disturbed man who killed the president for reasons known only to himself, and Marina as his unsuspecting wife.

In interviews McMillan, identified as a journalist and “Cold War scholar,” defended the U.S. government’s – and CIA’s – account of JFK’s assassination against a rising tide of public skepticism. Coming at a time when Congress was re-opening the JFK investigation, “Marina and Lee” was influential because it was personal. McMillan incorporated material gleaned from seven months of conversations with Oswald’s widow, Marina Prusakova Oswald, in 1964, to argue that Lee’s unstable mental state prompted him to commit the crime.

The well-written book provided the reading public with what the Warren Commission did not: a motive for the assassination of JFK. Lee Oswald himself denied killing Kennedy before being killed in police custody, so the failure to find any motive was a significant weakness of its widely doubted “lone gunman” finding.