According to the authors, the Soviets recruited Oswald in 1957, when he was a US Marine serving in Japan. After working clandestine missions for them for several years — including providing the information that allowed them to shoot down American pilot Gary Powers in 1960 — he was assigned in 1962, possibly by Khrushchev himself, to begin preparations to assassinate President Kennedy.
“Although Oswald wished to remain in the Soviet Union, he was eventually persuaded to return to the US to assassinate President Kennedy, whom Khrushchev had come to despise,” they write. “Oswald was … given a Soviet wife and sent back to the US in June 1962.”
According to the authors, sometime between that June and April 1963, the Soviets changed their minds, and recalled the assignment. Oswald, though, was too gung-ho, and was set on seeing it through.
“Oswald knew that Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of Oswald’s paradise and new home, the Soviet Union, had entrusted him with that task, and he was confident he could pull it off,” the authors write. “By this time, however, the KGB and [the country’s] leaders realized that Khrushchev’s crazy ideas were giving their country a terrible reputation . . . another false step by the hot-headed Khrushchev, and there might be nuclear war.”
The authors offer no evidence of an assassination order, or of any order to reverse course.