Robert E. Lee was the Confederate general whose surrender of his army is usually considered as the end of the U.S. Civil War of 1861-65. The Confederacy never actually surrendered. Robert E. Lee was a general, in the Eastern Theater of the war, and not a political leader with the authority to surrender the Confederacy as a whole. The Confederate President was Jefferson Davis.
A hundred years later, two of the most infamous American names of the Cold War, Lee Harvey Oswald and Robert Lee Johnson, were both named for Robert E. Lee. This should be called "The Revenge Of Robert E. Lee".
Lee Harvey Oswald is the best-known of the two. His brother was named Robert, so that they were Robert and Lee. He is a former U.S. Marine that, upon completion of his military service, defected to the Soviet Union. He ended up living in Minsk for about two and a half years, before deciding to return to the U.S. with his Belarusian wife. Just over a year after his return he assassinated president John F. Kennedy with a sniper rifle.
Oswald attempted to escape but was captured the same day. Two days later Oswald was being transferred from one police station to another. Reporters were waiting in the police station parking ramp. A man who had pretended to be a reporter to get in, Jack Ruby, suddenly shot and killed Oswald.
Robert Lee Johnson was a U.S. Army sergeant who resented his lack of promotion in the army. While stationed in West Berlin he decided to get revenge on his country, and it's army, by defecting to the Soviets. He got a meeting set up with the KGB in East Berlin.
The KGB didn't take long to evaluate Johnson as an amoral loser with a grandiose sense of his own importance, hardly the kind of person who would be of much use to them. They persuaded him to stay in the U.S. Army and send them whatever documents with sensitive information that he could. The KGB would pay Johnson a salary and set him up with contacts.
For a long time most of the information that he sent to the KGB was of minimal value but then, just by chance, Robert Lee Johnson would become the most damaging spy against America of the Cold War.
At Orly Airport in Paris was a building where the U.S. military stored top secret documents about NATO forces in Europe. Documents were kept there while in transit. The building was very heavily guarded and the documents were kept in a vault. No one was ever allowed in the vault alone and to get in one had to get through three locks, one of which had a key.
The KGB knew about the building. It held all manner of documents with information about weapons and troop strengths in Europe, knowledge about the militaries of the East Bloc nations, and plans in the event of war in Europe. The KGB had not had any way to get inside the vault. But then Robert Lee Johnson found himself transferred to night guard duty at the building, sometimes he was the only one there.
Under careful guidance from KGB handlers Johnson first ascertained that there was no alarm system in the building. He managed to make a mold of the key that opened the one lock. From a scrap of paper in the garbage he got the combination to open the second lock.
For the combination lock on the vault itself Johnson was given a compact radioactive X-ray device. He was to position the device over the lock, activate it and leave it for a period of time. The device would X-ray the innards of the lock. Johnson returned the device to his contacts and, a few weeks later, was given a piece of paper with the combination to open the lock.
On the nights that Robert Lee Johnson was on guard duty alone a KGB contact would meet him. Johnson would give him envelopes full of documents that would be photocopied, the envelopes resealed, and then returned to Johnson to be put back in the vault. The plan worked perfectly.
The KGB was extremely cautious. They were gaining a great amount of valuable information but it's value depended on America not knowing about it. If the U.S. Army knew, or even suspected, that documents in the vault had been compromised, the value of the information would be greatly diminished. One night Johnson apparently fell asleep, and missed meeting his contact. The KGB immediately ceased contact with him, and didn't resume until it was sure it was safe.
Robert Lee Johnson eventually left the army and ended up in Las Vegas. The KGB got back in contact with him. They wanted him to join the U.S. Air Force, but he was turned down. He was able to rejoin the army and provided information about the NIKE missile sites that the U.S. used to have all over the country. There was one near where this is being written but they were to shoot down bombers and became irrelevant when missiles became predominant.
Robert Lee Johnson was eventually caught, apparently turned in by his wife. The life stories of Lee Harvey Oswald and Robert Lee Johnson bear a similarity. Even their deaths have a similarity.
I remember the news when I was a child that a spy in prison had been murdered by his own son. Robert Lee Johnson had a son, who had served the military in the Vietnam War. After returning home he went to visit his father in prison. Without saying a word he plunged a knife into his father, which killed him.
But Robert E. Lee had gotten his revenge through his namesakes.
Another side story of the John F. Kennedy Assassination that I have never seen referred to anywhere, but have referred to here, is that not far from the site of the assassination, in Dallas, lived an eight-year-old boy. The boy's name was John Hinckley Jr. Someday he would attempt a presidential assassination himself, against Ronald Reagan. The method of his assassination attempt would very much resemble not the killing of Kennedy, with a sniper rifle, but Jack Ruby's killing of Lee Harvey Oswald, by waiting in the crowd for him to walk past.
The U.S. Civil War has long since finished, at least the military phase. But Walmart is based in the former Confederacy and is taking over everywhere, putting other stores out of business. Have you ever noticed how the logo of Walmart resembles the flag of the Confederacy?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart#/media/File%3AWalmart_logo.svg
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