Growing up, John Smith knew his grandfather as a serious academic — a bespectacled professor at the University of Maryland who wrote books on pre-Civil War presidents. He also knew E.B. Smith had traveled the world in his younger years.
What he didn’t know until this week is that his grandfather had once been a U.S. government asset, feeding Soviet-era intelligence to the CIA.
The Trump administration’s release of more than 77,000 pages related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy has thus far shed little new light on the killing. But the unmasking of many previously redacted names has revealed the identities of people who worked with the clandestine services, roles that in many cases were hidden for decades even from close family members.
Some families are learning for the first time how parents, grandfathers or spouses participated in American spycraft — as a CIA informant gathering intelligence on Fidel Castro’s supporters, a field agent planting bugs at a Chinese agency, a scholar extracting morsels of intelligence from a Soviet official.
For John Smith, the news of his grandfather’s work came in the form of two short pages that could easily be missed amid this week’s avalanche of papers: A newly unredacted account from 1991 of E.B. Smith pressing a KGB official for Soviet intelligence related to Kennedy’s killing.
“Sure, it’s surprising,” said John Smith, 45, after learning from a Washington Post reporter of his grandfather’s appearance in the files. But in hindsight it made sense. His grandfather was an outgoing guy who had once lived in the Soviet Union and maintained connections there even after he moved back to the United States.
E.B. Smith had gone to the Soviet Union as a Fulbright professor at Moscow State University in 1976, where he struck up a friendship with a student named Vyacheslav “Slava” Nikonov. Nikonov was from a storied Soviet family — his grandfather was Joseph Stalin’s foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, the namesake of the molotov cocktail.
The two kept in touch. By 1991, when Smith took a trip to Moscow, Nikonov was a high-ranking KGB official who had been tasked with helping to thaw relations between the KGB and CIA, according to the newly unredacted document. The memo describes Smith’s efforts to learn from him about the Soviets’ ties to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Nikonov, who had become a deputy to the KGB’s director Vadim Bakatin, told Smith he had “personally reviewed” five thick volumes of files about Oswald to determine if he had been a Soviet agent, according to the November 1991 teletype marked “destroy after use.” Nikonov relayed that he was “confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB. From the description of Oswald in the files he doubted that anyone could control Oswald.”
Nikonov said the KGB agents had watched Oswald “closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.” One tidbit from their surveillance: “The file also reflected that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the U.S.S.R.”
Smith “volunteered” what he had learned in scrupulous detail to a U.S. intelligence officer, according to the document. The file does not include what the CIA thought of his assessment.
After John Smith’s grandfather died in 2013, at 92, Smith bought his grandfather’s old cottage outside of Annapolis. From the unredacted files, he learned that Nikonov had once slept in the same house.
Nikonov, now 68, is currently a member of Russia’s parliament and was placed under sanctions by the U.S. government in 2022 related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
One heirloom that is particularly cherished by John Smith’s family is a photo of his grandfather — who was active in the Democratic Party — sitting with Kennedy in the Oval Office. After learning of his grandfather’s role collecting intelligence about Kennedy’s assassination, Smith said the picture holds even more meaning.
A photo of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the day of his assassination.
Dorothy North, 76, of California, learned this week that her late husband had also been an intelligence asset for the CIA after a reporter reached out to his family. One file described him as a “longtime source of exceptional value.”
“It is a shock,” she said. He never mentioned — before or after they married in 1977 — that he had previously worked alongside the CIA. He died in 2002.
By day, Robert North taught at Stanford University, training the next generation of political scientists, pioneering the use of computers to analyze international relations and writing books on how people’s attitudes can influence the behavior of organizations and countries.
But outside the classroom, North fed U.S. officials intelligence he gleaned from geopolitical research. A CIA memo dated Oct. 24, 1962 — in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis — recounts how North traveled to Miami and spoke with 25 former supporters of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. North told U.S. intelligence officials that several of those Cubans suspected one man — Manuel Ray — of being a “possible Communist sleeper” — an undercover operative ordered to remain dormant until activated for a mission. Ray died in 2013.
Dorothy North described her late husband as easygoing, empathetic and gentle. The only inkling she had of his intelligence dealings was that the FBI often dropped by to interview him after he traveled for research.
She said she hopes the revelation doesn’t change how people view her husband. He was a World War II veteran who fought Japanese soldiers in the 1944 Battle of Saipan.
He was a patriot, Dorothy said, and probably saw his work for U.S. intelligence officials as a way to help his country.
As a child in the 1960s, Mark Mills knew his dad worked for the U.S. government. His job kept their family moving through Thailand, Vietnam, Canada and Taiwan.
If anyone asked, his mom carefully coached him and his three siblings to say their father worked for the State Department.
It wasn’t until he was 18 that Mark knew with certainty that his dad, Bryan Mills, was a CIA agent. On that day, his father called and asked Mark to bring jumper cables to his office because his car battery had died.
Mark recalled driving through checkpoint gates in Northern Virginia until he arrived at a parking lot for CIA employees. Even then, his dad never said a word about his work.
In the years since, Mark, 67, has learned tidbits here and there — after his dad’s retirement and later at a memorial service for him at Langley headquarters.
But it wasn’t until this week that Mark learned from a Post reporter that his father had engaged in sensitive spycraft in Cuba.
His name appears newly unredacted on a memo to the director of Central Intelligence detailing a surveillance operation gone wrong.
In 1959, after the Cuban revolution, Chinese state media had opened an office in Havana. The CIA lost no time bugging it. A year later, Bryan Mills was sent to expand the operation by renting an apartment directly above the Chinese agency to install more equipment, according to the memo.
But after Mills left Cuba, things went sideways. Cuban authorities arrested three technicians — posing as tourists — whose real mission was to install surveillance in the apartment Mills had rented.
“Initial information indicated that the three technicians would be charged with espionage ‘against the people of China,’” the memo reads. The file ends on an ominous note: “The technicians’ wives are telling their neighbors that their husbands are on a trip. This story will be adjusted depending on what course of action the Cuban government takes.”
Mark said his dad never mentioned going to Cuba.
“But I knew he had gone through hairy situations,” he said. As a child during the early 1960s, his dad would leave for Vietnam and the family wouldn’t hear from him for a month or two. He saw the constant worry on his mom’s face.
“He never talked about any of it though,” Mark said. “To me he was just Dad.”
Kelsey Ables, Kim Bellware, Sarah Cahlan, Kelly Kasulis Cho, Alice Crites, Chris Dehghanpoor, Alec Dent, Jonathan Edwards, Kelley French, Gene Fynes, Michelle Gaps, Elana Gordon, Aaron Gregg, Evan Hill, Vivian Ho, Meghan Hoyer, Tom Jackman, Sally Jenkins, Andrew Jeong, Anumita Kaur, HyoJung Kim, Sabrina Malhi, Niha Masih, Kyle Melnick, Joseph Menn, Clara Ence Morse, Razzan Nakhlawi, Danielle Newman, Caroline O’Donovan, Alexandra Tirado Oropeza, Ben Pauker, Azi Paybarah, Hari Raj, Tobi Raji, Kyle Rempfer, Jorge Ribas, Anthony J. Rivera, Leo Sands, Aaron Schaffer, Ian Shapira, Beck Snyder, Rachel Weiner, Sammy Westfall, Daniel Wu and Jada Yuan contributed to this report.
