Article from newspaper about Lipka

 Article from the paper about Lipka

Richard Booth writes: Here is the text of a newspaper article about Lipka's bail hearing. You will note that everything from the bail hearing is covered in the Lipka book written by the FBI agent, whose attorney is Mark Zaid, except what he said about JFK and Castillo. 

Lipka says he knows name of JFK's killer

Spy suspect's attorney portrays him to be a braggart

March 22, 1996 | Patriot-News, The (Harrisburg, PA)

Author: Jack Sherzer | Page: A1 | Section: A SECTION

PHILADELPHIA - Wearing a prison-issued orange sweat suit, Robert Stephen

Lipka, accused of being a Soviet spy, calmly testified yesterday during a bail hearing that he had seen a classified file identifying John F. Kennedy's actual killer.

The Millersville resident also said he had seen a file identifying then Vice President Richard M. Nixon as a Russian spy while working for the Defense Department's National Security Agency in the late 1960s.

Lipka said he inadvertently saw an NSA teletype message carrying the identity of what he believed was Kennedy's true assassin: someone named Luis Angel Castillio. The message was cut off in mid-sentence and "I was talked to about it," he said. But Lipka claimed he lied when he told an undercover federal agent posing as a Russian spy that he had given Oliver North, an Iran-Contra figure, a briefcase full of gold in return for $500,000 in the middle of the Preakness horse race in Baltimore.

Two weeks ago, prosecutors used snippets of four taped 1993 conversations between Lipka and the undercover agent as further reason to deny him bail pending a trial. But in federal court yesterday, Lipka's attorney tried to use the government's own evidence against it.

Having Lipka testify about some of the outlandish-sounding claims he made to the agent, attorney Ronald Kidd Sr. portrayed his client as a braggart who "made up stories" to inflate his self-importance.

"These transcripts will demonstrate that he has made statements that are totally unbelievable," Kidd told Senior Judge Charles R. Weiner. "That includes being a Russian spy."

Weiner held off on deciding whether to release Lipka on bail, but did grant the government's motion for a 30-day psychiatric evaluation to determine if Lipka could stand trial. Prosecutors said they made the request because Lipka claimed to be suffering from memory loss and has recently accused undercover agents of hiding drugs in his jail cell.

Prosecutors claimed Lipka was a flight risk and potential danger to witnesses, pointing to one conversation in which he expressed a willingness to kill with a KGB cyanide spray gun to prevent someone from informing against him.

While prosecutors insisted they had other evidence that had not yet been declassified, Kidd succeeded in getting the FBI agent running the case to admit there was no independent verification that Lipka ever had a Russian radio or laundered money through his coin business as he claimed in the conversations.

Lipka, 50, faces a possible life sentence if convicted of stealing classified documents from the NSA, where he worked between 1964 and 1967 as a sergeant in a Fort Meade, Md., mailroom. Authorities say he was paid $27,000 by the Russians, to whom he continued selling material until 1974.

Jailed since his arrest last month, Lipka appeared upbeat in court, smiling often and giving a thumbs up to his second wife, Deborah.

On the stand, Lipka claimed to have realized the undercover FBI agent wasn't a real Russian agent almost immediately, but said he played along in part to get two payments of $5,000 from the agent.

Lipka blamed some of his penchant for telling tales on an accident he said he had in 1990, when a table fell on him and broke his back. While he collected more than $250,000 in a lawsuit, Lipka said the injury left him permanently disabled.

"When you're disabled, something happens to you, your ego gets destroyed alongwith your physicality," Lipka said. "People ask how you're doing, and instead of going through all your problems, you begin telling little fibs."