I was just watching JFK: They mentioned something about Oswald being connected to Gary Powers in Russia?

Question

This was while he was overseas in Russia. Like he gave up secrets or something. Anyone ever heard anything about this?

Answer 1

From a blurb re: a book by Powers himself --

Francis Gary Powers,
Operation Overflight, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970, 1966, 5th printing, HB, 375p.,
"Gary Powers was the pilot of the U2 plane that was shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. He survived. This was his account, suppressed by the CIA for years. In this book, Powers suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald may have had something to do with the downing of his spy-plane. Oswald was, at the time, a defector residing in the Soviet Union who, coincidentally, had been a radar operator on a base where U2 flights originated in the late fifties."

From a blog by Kenn Thomas at Steamshovel Press.com:
"Oswald served at Atsugi where the U2s flew from; gave the Soviets the info they needed to shoot down Gary Powers' U2; worked at the photo firm that processed U2 film before he went to work at the repository -- he was a spy."

And an interesting book review regarding the Oswald-Gary Powers connection is found at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919345,00.html

From the review:
"The book, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, is the result of 2½ years of work by Reader's Digest editors and researchers, who acquired many FBI and CIA documents under the Freedom of Information Act and, in addition, covered some 150,000 miles in 26 states and nine nations to interview Oswald's former associates. It was written by Edward Jay Epstein, a careful academic researcher whose 1966 book, Inquest, first revealed the flaws in the Warren Commission's investigation but did not conjure up any wild conspiracy theories.
Epstein still refuses to draw flat conclusions. Yet he weaves a skein of circumstantial evidence suggesting that Oswald learned key performance data on the CIA's U-2 plane while serving as a Marine radar controller at Atsugi, Japan, in 1957, and that he provided information to the Soviets either then or upon his defection to Russia in 1959. Oswald's information, the book suggests, enabled the Soviets to redesign their rocket-guidance systems so as to knock CIA Pilot Gary Powers out of the air over the Soviet Union on May 1,1960.
Oswald's Marine specialty, radar controller, required above-average intelligence, and he ranked seventh in his training class in Biloxi, Miss. From visual, radio and radar observation at Atsugi, one base from which the U-2 operated, Oswald could have learned much about its speed, rate of climb and altitude."

Answer 2

Powers was always convinced that Lee Oswald had made possible his downing by giving secrets to the Soviets, but the KGB have always insisted Oswald had no secrets to give them. The Soviets made a big hulabuloo about shooting down the American plane, but there have always been rumours that either the U2 malfunctioned, or there was a bomb planted on board before the flight.

It is not impossible Lee Oswald could have heard something he could have told the Soviets, but it is very unlikely.

Answer 3

Oswald lived in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1962. Upon arrival, he was interviewed by KGB in hopes of extracting some valuable intelligence. When it became clear that Oswald did not have any valuable information to offer, he was told to leave the USSR. Oswald responded by attempting suicide. He was briefly kept in a psychiatric hospital for observation, then was told to go live in Minsk, where he was given a job a lathe operator and a studio apartment. In April 1961, Oswald married a young woman named Marina Prusakova. Their first child was born in February 1962. In June 1, 1962 the Oswald family left the Soviet Union for the United States.

Answer 4

The film, while entertaining, is absolute nonsense.

Oswald was a pathetic nobody his entire life, until he shot JFK of course. Read Gerald Posner's book "Case Closed" and know the truth.

Answer 5

That movie plays fast and loose with the facts to make better movie, don't take it all at face value.