CIA FILES AND THE PRE-ASSASSINATION
FRAMING
OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD
by
Peter Dale Scott
This piece was originally published in:
Deep Politics II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico and Cuba
(Essay completed March, 1994)
Were CIA Files Manipulated to Prepare the Way for the
Warren Commission?
The U.S. media responded to the 30th anniversary of the John F.
Kennedy assassination by reviving the Warren Commission picture of
Lee Harvey Oswald as a neurotic frustrated by neglect, and "angered" (in
the words of Gerald Posner) "that others failed to recognize
the stature he thought he deserved." (1) The newly released government
files, we were assured, would add nothing to this picture.
In fact the recently released documents tell us a great deal that
is new, and important, not so much about Lee Oswald the man, who
remains mysterious, but about "Lee Oswald" the file subject. The man
may or may not have been neglected, but the file subject was the
focus of sustained governmental interest. This lasted from the time of
his alleged defection in 1959, and was particularly active in the crucial
eight weeks preceding the President's murder.
The clearest new picture of this sustained interest comes from the
files of the CIA, the fullest new release that we have to date. Although
the CIA had professedly no intelligence interest in Oswald the man,
incoming FBI documents on "Lee Oswald" the file
subject were always distributed to widely scattered sections of the CIA's
Counterintelligence Staff, from a minimum of four persons in different
sections, to as many as eleven. At least two FBI documents on "Lee
Harvey Oswald" were reviewed by SAS/CI/Control, in the
Counterintelligence section of the CIA's anti-Castro Special
Affairs Staff, on November 21, 1963, the day before the assassination.
These details by themselves prove nothing. More serious is the
evidence that the CIA files were being fed false information from
without, while in the same period CIA officers were further distorting
and falsifying the Oswald file with additional false information
from inside, both prior to the assassination and subsequent to it. (2) The
cover-up in this area can presumably be taken as an indication of some
important issue at stake.
With the new releases, the number of unanswered questions about
"Lee Oswald" the file subject is now greater, not less, than before.
However one hypothesis at the center seems
more and more reasonable. This is that the CIA's files were being both
fed and doctored in late 1963 to present a continuous flow of apparent
evidence, always plausible but never
conclusive, and above all never true, that Oswald was a possible agent
of
Soviet or Cuban intelligence.
This alleged evidence was never at any time strong enough to
justify an armed response against either the Soviet Union or Cuba. On
the other hand it was cumulatively enough
for Lyndon Johnson, by November 29, 1963, to persuade Chief Justice
Warren and other recalcitrant leaders of the need for a Warren
Commission. According to Warren, Johnson
spoke of the "rumors floating around the world" that "might lead us into
war," and possibly "a nuclear war." (3)
"Rumors floating around the world" were of course far less likely
to lead to war than apparent evidence in government files of Oswald's
involvement in KGB or Cuban assassination plots. I have called such
claims "phase one" stories, because their real
purpose may have been no more than to produce the desired "phase two"
hypothesis (no more true, but much less dangerous) that Oswald was a
lone assassin. Two of these "phase one"
stories particularly concern us because in each case the claim, inherently
flimsy, was actively promoted by individuals inside the U.S.
government.
The first, which we shall look at more closely, was that Oswald had
met in Mexico City with a Soviet KGB assassination operative, Valeriy
Vladimirovich Kostikov. As we shall see, this allegation had been
essentially stripped of its ominousness by November 27, 1963, when one
of its original proponents had acknowledged there was no strong
evidence of Kostikov's role as an assassin.
A Digression: The Timing and Consequences of the Alvarado "Phase
One" Story
By this time, however, a second "phase one" story had surfaced.
On November 25, 1963, a Nicaraguan double agent, Gilberto Alvarado,
told a Mexico City CIA officer that he had seen Oswald recruited to kill
Kennedy inside the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. The second story
had three points in common with the first one.
1. It had enthusiastic proponents within the government (in this case
U.S. Ambassador Thomas Mann and CIA officer David Phillips in
Mexico City).
2. It received apparent corroboration from other sources.
3. Nevertheless the story was inherently so flawed it was destined to
be discredited.
The fatal weakness of the Alvarado story was his claim to have
seen Oswald in the Cuban Consulate on September 18, 1963, at a time
when Oswald had not yet left New Orleans. Faced with this problem,
Alvarado retracted his story on November 30. We do not yet know if
CIA Director McCone told President Johnson this when he discussed
Alvarado with him on November 30 and December 1. (4) No matter: by
November 29 Lyndon Johnson had announced the formation of the
Warren Commission. (It would appear that the Alvarado story delayed
the FBI's official report on the assassination, originally scheduled for
November 29, until December 5.) (5)
Lyndon Johnson's conversation with Congressman Charles Halleck
the same day gives the clearest picture of the role played by false "phase
one" allegations: "This thing is getting pretty serious and our folks are
worried about it ... it has some foreign implications ... CIA and other
things ... and I'm going to try to get the Chief Justice on it." Johnson
added that "we can't have Congress, FBI and others saying that
Khrushchev or Castro ordered the assassination:" "This thing is so
touchy from an international standpoint .... This is a question that could
involve our losing 39 million people." (6)
Johnson drew particular attention to the plans which Senator
Eastland had revealed to him the previous day, of holding hearings
before his Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Speaking to House
Speaker John McCormack, Johnson explained that he had to announce
the Warren Commission quickly: "I better get him [Senator Eastland] to
call off his investigation." He added that some Dallas official would
testify that Khrushchev planned the assassinations. (7) This last detail is
supported by the recurring reports that Dallas District Attorney Henry
Wade, and his Assistant, William Alexander, had been preparing to
charge Oswald with murdering the President as part of an international
Communist conspiracy. (8)
But the Eastland Committee may have got wind of the still-secret
Alvarado allegation as well. Their staff person Al Tarabochia, a Cuban
exile, claimed to "know someone who has access to confidential
information about the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City." (9) Although
Committee Counsel Julien Sourwine refused to reveal the identity of
this informant, the thrust of the Eastland inquiry would seem to suggest
that he was someone conversant with the Alvarado allegations. (10)
As far as we know, support within the CIA for the Alvarado "phase
one" story was confined to the Mexico City Station. The Kostikov story,
although short-lived, was potentially more serious. Not only did it have
high-level proponents at Headquarters, it would appear that the
Oswald-Kostikov contact had been reported by CIA officers in such
a way as to ensure that its potential significance would not be realized at
the time.
In short the key to the Kostikov story, as to the Alvarado story,
would appear to have been its timing. Just as the Alvarado story
contained a fatal flaw that led to its timely disposal, so the key explosive
element in the Kostikov story (his KGB status and alleged assassination
activity) would appear to have been suppressed, with the result that no
alarms went off until after the assassination.
The Kostikov Story and Falsifications in the CIA Documentary
Record
for October 1963
In October 1963, the month before the President's murder,
the CIA produced five documents on Oswald: three cables, a teletype,
and a memo. In late November the cumulative effect of these was to is
give investigators the impression, superficially provocative but in
fact misleading, that Lee Harvey Oswald, the leading suspect in the
assassination, had met in Mexico City with KGB agent Valeriy Kostikov,
a suspected Soviet assassinations operative. (11)
1. The Mexico City Station Cable of October 8, 1963
Of these five documents, at least three show signs of CIA
doctoring; and the first, which does not, was nevertheless so misleading
as to be possibly dishonest. This was a cable to CIA Headquarters from
the Mexico City Station on October 8, 1963, reporting that
on October 1, an individual, who "identified himself as Lee Oswald,"
had
been overheard telling the Soviet Embassy that three days earlier, on
September 28, he had been at the Soviet Embassy when he "spoke with
Consul whom he believed to be Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov." (12)
This cable has been the subject of much speculation since the
belated release in 1975 of an FBI memorandum, saying that FBI agents
in
Dallas who had spoken to Oswald had "listened to a recording" of the
voice of this individual, and were of the opinion that
he "was not Lee Harvey Oswald." (13) The House Committee's devious
treatment of this memo in their Report reflects their suspicion that the
individual was in fact not Oswald but an impostor. (14)
This impression of an impostor was further complicated by the
second paragraph of the cable:
Have photos male appears be American entering SovEmb 1216
hours, leaving 1222 on 1 Oct. Apparent age 35, athletic build, circa 6
feet, receding hairline, balding top. Wore khakis and sport shirt.
This 35-year old visitor to the Soviet Embassy was not the 24-year old
Oswald. But neither (we now suspect) was he the individual who
identified himself as Lee Oswald.
It is hard to justify the mention of this so-called "mystery man"
in the cable. The intercepted telephone conversation had taken place at
10:45 A.M. that day; in it the man identifying himself as Oswald had
spoken of a visit on September 28 only. There was nothing to suggest
that he intended to visit the Embassy on October 1. (15)
The author of the cable's second paragraph, Ann Goodpasture, was
an assistant to Station Chief Winston Scott, who supervised the work of
three photo bases operating against the Soviet Embassy. (16) Her
explanation to the House Select Committee (supported in part by other
Station officers) was that, out of the four or five day period of Oswald's
visit, this "was the only non-Latin appearing person's photograph that we
found that we could not identify as somebody else." (17)
For various reasons Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, the authors of
the House Committee's staff report on "Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA,
and Mexico City," found this explanation "implausible." One of these
reasons was that the photo, allegedly taken on October 1, was in fact
taken one day later. They also found it suspect that this alleged mistake
was not discovered until 1976, even though CIA Headquarters, the day
after the assassination, had told MEXI (the Mexico City station)
that the "mystery man" was not Oswald, and added, "Presume MEXI has
double-checked dates of these photos." (18)
If Ms. Goodpasture's testimony was accurate, then the photo
surveillance of the Soviet Embassy failed to turn up any photos of the
Lee Harvey Oswald arrested in Dallas. The House Committee was
however unable to confirm this; the CIA declined to make the photo
take from the Soviet Embassy available for review. (19)
2. The Headquarters Cable and Teletype of October 10 about
Lee
Henry Oswald
However suspicious we find the first cable's description of an
irrelevant "mystery man," the Mexico City CIA Station's role in
transmitting this information seems relatively innocuous, compared to
the devious Headquarters response to it. Two messages were sent
out within two hours of each other on October 10, a cable to Mexico
City
and a disseminating teletype to the FBI, Navy, and State Department.
Although (according to one of the authors) "the cable and the teletype
had been prepared simultaneously by three
knowledgeable people, " (20) the two messages contained falsified
information and were mutually incompatible. While the teletype
transmitted the misleading description of the 35-year-old mystery man,
the cable informed Mexico City of the age and height of the 24-year-old
former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. Not by this name however: both
outgoing messages misidentified the "Lee Oswald" in Mexico City with
a "Lee Henry Oswald" who had since 1960 existed in CIA files and
documents and nowhere else. (21)
CIA counterintelligence officer Ann Egerter, one of these "three
knowledgeable people," had invented the name "Lee Henry Oswald"
back in November 1960, when information about Lee Harvey Oswald
was collected in response to a request from the State Department's
Director of Intelligence and Research. In December 1960 Ms. Egerter
then opened a 201 file on "Lee Henry Oswald," which then became the
repository for information on Lee Harvey Oswald, plus her lone
misleading report on Lee Henry Oswald. (22)
This falsification in 1960 appears to have been deliberate. In her
report for the State Department, Ms. Egerter also altered an FBI account
from Oswald's mother of Oswald's coming "to Fort Worth for a visit of
about three days" into a visit to "his mother in Waco, Texas for about
three days." (23) The effect of the two alterations was to make "Lee
Henry Oswald" much harder to trace. (24)
I will show in a moment that the falsification and distortion in
the two messages of October 10, 1963, was in fact far worse than the
supplying of two incompatible physical descriptions for a man with an
invented name; and that it was possibly concerted (I suspect) so as to
create an impression of KGB intrigue that would only surface after the
assassination. But let us first dispense with the standard CIA
explanation
that the confusions in the cables are attributable to Murphy's Law, and
the inattention of those drafting the cables. Ann Egerter told the House
Committee that Oswald's "contact with Kostikov" "caused a lot of
excitement" at Langley; and that Oswald "had to be up to something
bad." Another of the officers drafting the messages (whom we shall call
Ms. A) thought it possible that Oswald "really was working for the
Soviets." The key to this excitement was the "contact with Kostikov;"
yet Kostikov's KGB identity and allegedly sinister reputation were,
inexplicably, not mentioned in either cable. (25)
These two employees should have to explain why, if the Kostikov
contact excited them so much, they chose not to mention it to the FBI.
It can safely be said that, if they had, the reaction of the FBI to their
teletype would have been very different, and with it American history.
The FBI already had a file on Kostikov, and knew him to be at the
least a KGB agent. Thus Oswald would very likely have been
interviewed, and possibly put under surveillance. If he had, he would
probably not have been in a position to be, or be fingered as, the
assassin.
What was left out of the two messages in fact created a far greater
distortion than the misinformation included. What most strikes us about
the two messages is not the falsification of Oswald's name (as Henry
rather than Harvey) and of his wife's (as Pusakova rather than
Prusakova); it is the staggeringly false claim in the cable that the "latest
headquarters info" was a State Department report "dated May 1962:"
Latest HDQS info was [State] report dated May 1962 saying [State]
had determined Oswald is still US citizen and both he and his Soviet
wife have exit permits and Dept State had given approval for their travel
with their infant child to USA. (26)
There is no hint in either message that, as the CIA was well
informed, Oswald had been back in the United States since June of
1962. On the contrary, both messages created the impression that
Oswald, when last heard of, was still in the Soviet Union. (Thus the
October 10 cable to Mexico City was summarized in a later file
document as "Attempts of Lee Oswald and wife to reenter U.S.") (27)
By suppressing from the cable what it knew about Oswald since
May of 1962, CIA
Headquarters concealed a, key fact which, if transmitted, should have
resulted in Oswald's case being handled much more actively, and
(perhaps even more importantly) by different
people inside the Agency. This key fact was Oswald's arrest in New
Orleans on August 9, 1963, in connection with his Fair Play for Cuba
activities on behalf of Fidel Castro.
A seven-page FBI memo on this arrest, dated September 24, 1963,
had in fact been received by the Agency on October 3. It was then seen
by two of the authors of the cables:
Ann Egerter of the Counterintelligence/Special Investigations Group,
and Jane Roman of Counterintelligence/Liaison (on October 4). It thus
should have been fresh in their memories when drafting the October 10
messages a few days later. Yet they both suppressed any reference to it.
(28)
3. The falsification of Oswald's 201 File
The CIA later misled the Warren Commission about its knowledge
of Oswald's arrest by October 3, 1963; and individual CIA officers may
have broken the law in doing so. When the CIA belatedly submitted
Oswald's 201 file to the Warren Commission (as Commission Document
692), the September 24 memorandum had been relocated to a later
position in the file, making it appear (falsely) that it had been received
after the October 10 cables had been drafted. (29)
Here it becomes relevant that it is a felony, under Section 1001 of
the US Criminal Code, knowingly and willingly to falsify, conceal, or
cover up facts within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the
United States. What we have just discussed is cover-up of material facts
after the assassination to the Warren Commission. This pattern of
cover-up is however consistent with other concealment, prior to the
assassination, within the Agency.
Another apparent sign of cover up is that the May 1962 report on
Oswald, summarized in the October 10 cable, was reportedly not in the
201 file, and thus never submitted by CIA to the Warren Commission.
A copy of this State Department document was indeed sent to CIA in
May 1962. If it was not in the 201 file, where was it filed, and why was
this file not submitted to the Warren Commission? (30)
4. The Falsification in the October 16 Mexico City Memo
Just as Headquarters suppressed all references to Cuba in their
pre-assassination messages, so, astonishingly, did the CIA station in
Mexico City. One might argue that by October 8, the date of their
Oswald-Kostikov cable, they had not yet established that Oswald had
also visited the Cuban Embassy. But Oswald's efforts to obtain a visa at
the Cuban Consulate were certainly known by
October 16, when a "counterintelligence type" in the Mexico City
station (whom we shall call Ms. B) drafted a memo on Oswald. (31)
This memo was given to the FBI Attache in the Embassy; and by this
channel FBI Headquarters finally learned, belatedly on October 18, that
Oswald had not only visited the Soviet Embassy but had allegedly
spoken with the KGB Agent Kostikov.
The October 16 CIA memo was apparently compiled after comparing
the voice heard on October I (claiming to be Lee Oswald) with an earlier
voice or voices on the telephone from the Cuban Embassy inquiring
about a visa. Yet the memo mentioned neither the Cuban Embassy nor
the exculpating fact that the alleged conversation with Kostikov was
apparently about a visa.
Instead Ms. B's memo contained the following sentence (which would
later prove to be a provocative one, when matched with the alleged
assassination background of Kostikov):
This officer determined that Oswald had been at the Soviet
Embassy on 28 September 1963 and had talked with Valeriy
Vladimirovoch [sic, i.e. Vladimirovich] Kostikov, a member of the
Consular Section, in order to learn if the Soviet Embassy had received a
reply from Washington concerning his request. We have no clarifying
information with regard to this request. (32)
The House Committee learned from the author of this memo that
she had used
the word "determined" after rechecking the transcripts of the various
conversations (from both embassies). By this time the station had
linked to Oswald at least four apparently related transcripts between
September 27 and October 1, and of these two related unambiguously to
a request for a visa from Washington. Yet the station officer, who had
seen these transcripts, chose to write that there was "no clarifying
information."
When asked why the 10/16 memo said that there was no clarifying
information on Oswald's "request" when it was known by this time that
he was seeking a visa, [she] said that "They had no need to know all
these other details." (33)
Another slight departure from the facts, which would also prove to
be provocative after November 22, was the false statement in the memo
that "Oswald" had been at the Embassy on September 28 "in order to
learn if the Soviet Embassy had received a reply from Washington
concerning his request." In fact this inquiry was made on October 2 as a
follow-up to the alleged meeting of September 28. The mis-dated
inquiry was later cited as evidence that Oswald
had made a significant, but unclarified, request to the Soviet
Embassy in Washington, prior to his arrival in Mexico City. (34)
How These Falsifications Prepared for the "Phase One" Hypothesis: an
Oswald-KGB Plot
On November 23, one day after the assassination, Bagley
submitted a memo describing Kostikov as "an identified KGB officer ...
in an operation which is evidently sponsored
by the KGB's 13th Department (responsible for sabotage and
assassination)." The remainder
of this provocative paragraph remains redacted. (35) It may well have been
explosive.
Possibly drawing on either FBI or CIA information, Dallas FBI Agent
James Hosty later
wrote of Kostikov as the KGB "officer-in-charge for Western
Hemisphere terrorist
activities -- including and especially assassination... the most dangerous
KGB terrorist
assigned to this hemisphere." (36)
At the same time, Bagley's reference to the 13th Department was
apparently ill-founded. His clarification of it in a subsequent CIA blind
memo of November 27 is so tentative as to be worthless. (37)
It will be seen that many of the falsifications and distortions in the
CIA's Oswald
documents had the same result: creating the appearance of evidence for
a "phase one" hypothesis that would however not go off prematurely,
before the assassination. Consider the examples of falsification:
1) Suppression of Kostikov from the October 10 teletype:
James Hosty, the principal FBI
agent on the Oswald case, has complained that he only learned of this
contact with
Kostikov, who was described to him only as a "Vice-Consul," not KGB,
by accident in late
October. Former FBI Director Clarence Kelley, transmitting Hosty's
complaint, blames the
pre-assassination failure to identify Kostikov as a KGB agent as the
major reason why
Oswald was not put under surveillance on November 22. (38) The FBI's
failure to intensify
investigation of Oswald in response to the October 10 teletype in this
fashion earned a
reprimand for an FBI Headquarters agent. (39)
2) " Latest HDQS info was ... report dated May 1962: " This
too suggested an inactive matter, rather than what was in fact an
active FBI investigation. (This
language reached the FBI via Mexico City; the falsehood- might have
caught
someone's eye& if it had been transmitted. directly to FBI Headquarters,
where
at least three and probably four FBI reports on Lee Harvey Oswald had
been
transmitted to CIA between May 1962 and October 3, 1963.)
3) The suppression of what was known about Oswald's visa
request: One could
hardly have raised the specter of nuclear war against the Soviet Union
(as it was
raised in the days after November 22) if it had been clearly transmitted
that Oswald's "request" to the Soviet Embassy in Washington was in fact
about a visa.
4) Suppression of the links between Oswald and Cuba: A
link (via Oswald)
between the FPCC and the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City could hardly
have lain
dormant in CIA and FBI files until after the assassination on November
22. Both
the CIA and the FBI had mounted offensive operations against the
FPCC,
hoping
precisely to prove that it was receiving its orders from abroad.
5) "Lee Henry Oswald" and "Marina Pusakova ": Even these
apparently trivial
falsifications may have had the effect of postponing an FBI response to
the October 10 teletype. Before October 10, all but one of the numerous
documents
in the CIA's "Lee Henry Oswald" file were in fact about Lee Harvey
Oswald. By
supplying Oswald's vital statistics to the FBI under a falsified name, the
CIA
effectively delayed for two days the moment of truth when FBI agents
charged with
investigating Lee Harvey Oswald learned about the apparently
provocative contact
with Kostikov. Following receipt of an incoming FBI cable from
Mexico
City on
October 18, Oswald's FBI file contains a fruitless name search for "Lee
Henry
Oswald" on October 19. (40) Even though the incoming cable was
answered on October
22, FBI Assistant Director Gale later found this delay grounds for a
censure of
the Headquarters agent responsible. (41)
But the suppression of Cuba from the CIA's pre-assassination
Oswald records
(both in Langley and in Mexico City) may have been much more
important for
another consequence. This was to keep the responsibility for the
misleading
October 10 messages solidly in the hands of Soviet counterintelligence
personnel,
the chief of whom was Tennant Bagley, Chief of SR/CI (Soviet
Counterintelligence). Because the FPCC was an active CIA matter,
mention of Oswald's
arrest in the October 10 cables would have meant expanding the small
cabal of
drafters to include people charged with Cuban affairs (presumably
working for
Desmond FitzGerald, one of the more outspoken critics in the Agency of
James
Angleton's Counterintelligence staff). (42)
Instead, by restricting the October 10 cables to Oswald's career in
the
Soviet Union, only one area section cleared the drafts of each of them.
This was
SR/CI, the counterintelligence staff of the Soviet Russia section, headed
(as we
have seen) by Tennant Bagley. (43)
One is particularly struck by the fact that in October SR/Cl had
nothing to
say about Kostikov, and acquiesced in two messages which found
Oswald more worth
discussing than the KGB agent he had met. Yet on November 23, one
day after the
assassination, Bagley submitted a memo describing Kostikov as "an
identified KGB
officer ... in an operation which is evidently sponsored by the KGB's
13th
Department (responsible for sabotage and assassination)." (44) It is hard
to pin
down precisely when Bagley acquired this alleged information about Kostikov.
According to
Edward Jay Epstein, however, Kostikov "had been identified for some
time [prior
to October 1963] as an intelligence officer for the KGB, who specialized
in
handling Soviet agents operating under deep cover- within the United
States." (45)
Why would SR/CI withhold from the FBI the information that
Oswald (whom the
CIA knew to be the subject of current and extended FBI intelligence
reports) had
just met in Mexico City with "an identified KGB officer"? The most
sinister
explanation would be that they only wanted this information to become
known
after November 22, so that Oswald would be left free until this time and
then
picked up, to be identified as Kennedy's assassin. This possibility of
conspiracy, however remote, is so serious that those apparently
responsible for
this message - including Bagley, Egerter, and Jane Roman, should be
questioned under oath.
A far more likely explanation, for which there is some evidence, is
that the
Oswald-Soviet contact in Mexico City was handled anomalously,
because it was part
of, or somehow impinged upon, a U.S. intelligence operation.
Notes
1. Gerald Posner, Case Closed (New York: Random
House, 1993), 220.
2. By falsification I mean, not complete fabrication, but
contamination of true information with details that are clearly false
(such as replacing the name "Lee Harvey Oswald" in files with the false
name "Lee Henry Oswald" that the CIA originated back in 1960).
3. Earl Warren, Memoirs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1977), 357-58; quoted at 11 AH 7. Cf. Peter Dale Scott,
Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press), 113.
4. Schweiker-Hart Report, 103. An LBJ-McCone telephone
transcript at 3:14 PM November 30 is withheld on grounds of national
security.
5. AR 244; Scott, Deep Politics , 38.
6. LBJ telephonic transcripts: conversation at 18:30, 11/29/63.
7. LBJ telephonic transcripts: conversation at 16:55, 11/29/63.
8. Scott, Deep Politics , 270.
9. Warren Commission staff memorandum of March 27, 1964
from
W. David Slawson to J. Lee Rankin, reproduced at 11 AH 176; cf. 11 AH
65, 175, WCD 351. Warren Commission Document 351, which
discussed this matter, also revealed that the Staff of the Senate Internal
Security Subcommittee had been in touch with Ed Butler, whose
right-wing propaganda organization INCA managed the Oswald radio
debate in New Orleans. Cf. Peter Dale Scott,
Crime and Cover-Up (Santa Barbara: Prevailing Winds
Research, 1993), 53.
10. Julien Sourwine was involved in other CIA-supported covert
operations that may have had a bearing on the
Kennedy assassination and cover-up. See Scott, Deep Politics,
116; cf.
215-16, 260, 262, 264-66.
11. Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics, 39-44.
12. MEXI 6453 of 8 October 1963; Incoming 36017 of 9
October,
CIA Document #5-1A, text in Lopez Report, 136-37.
13. FBI Letterhead Memorandum of February 23, 1963, reprinted
in
AR 249-50; Scott, Deep Politics, 41-42.
14. AR 250. The Report says that the CIA Headquarters, "never
received a recording of Oswald's voice," leaving room for the possibility
that they received a recording of someone else impersonating Oswald.
This evasive language ("recording of Oswald's voice") is used three
times: see Peter Dale Scott, "The Lopez Report and the CIA's Oswald
Counterintelligence Secrets, in Oswald in Mexico: A Research
Document Compendium, Book Three: The Lopez Report (Evanston,
IL: Rogra Research, 1994), 11-14.
15. Lopez Report, 78-79.
.
16. Lopez Report, 47-48, 136-37.
17. Ann Goodpasture Testimony to House Select Committee on
Assassinations, 4/13/78; reproduced in Lopez Report, 138.
18. DIR 84888 of 23 Nov 1963; Lopez Report, 139-41.
19. Lopez Report, 139; telephone interview with Edwin Lopez,
10/4/93.
20. Lopez Report, 149.
21. CIA teletype 74673 of 10 Oct 1963; CIA cable 74830 of 10
Oct. 1963; both reproduced in Lopez Report, 144-46.
22. File Request for "Lee Henry Oswald" reproduced at 4 AH 206.
Without being directly named, Ann Egerter is identified by a reference
in the House Committee Assassination Report (AR 201) to the
individual who "responded to the [State Department] inquiry and then
opened a 201 file on each defector [including 'Lee Henry Oswald']
involved." The footnote cites an interview of May 17, 1978 (JFK
Classified Document 014731) which is identified in
the Lopez Report (142-43, footnote 570 at A-39) as that of Ann
Egerter. This identification has been confirmed to me.
23. CIA Document # 596-252F (copy of #1371-447); Attachment
to letter of 21 Nov 1960 to Hugh S. Cumming, Jr., Director of
Intelligence and Research, State Department, from Richard M. Bissell,
Jr., CIA Deputy Director (Plans); submitted for signature by S. H.
Horton, Acting Chief, Counter Intelligence Staff; CIA Document #
596-252F. Cf. FBI Interview of Marguerite Oswald, 4/23/60; in Fain
Report of 5/12/60, "Funds Transmitted to Residents of Russia," 3; 17
WH 702.
24. Marguerite Oswald lived and worked in Waco at the time of
her FBI interview in April 1960 (17 WH 708), but not when Lee visited
her in Fort Worth in September 1959. Other false or dubious statements
in this brief 1960 report (e.g. that Oswald "renounced his U.S.
citizenship") are traceable to sources outside the CIA: chiefly
Marguerite Oswald's interview with the FBI, and a news story about
Oswald by Priscilla Johnson (CIA Doc. #594-252D).
25. Lopez Report, 143.
26 DIR 74830 of October 10, 1963; 4 AH 217. The CIA's 201 file
on Oswald, as submitted to the Warren Commission (WCD 692), and as
released to the public in 1992, contained at least three subsequent FBI
reports on Lee Harvey Oswald: the Fain Report from Dallas of August
30, 1962 (after Oswald's return to Texas), the Hosty Report from Dallas
of September 13, 1963 (linking Oswald to the Communist Party and the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee); and a Letterhead Memo from New
Orleans (see below) of September 24, 1963 (concerning Oswald's arrest
on August 9). It is difficult however to speak with confidence of the
contents of Oswald's 201 file. An internal CIA memo of 20 February
1964 reported that "37 documents which should be in the 201 file are
not available in it" (4 AH 208). A machine listing of the documents in
the 201 file was attached to this memo, but was missing by 1978 (AR
203-04). The House Committee deposed the author of the memorandum
(unidentified) and learned that, because of back-up in the CIA computer
system, "physical placement of the document in the file was not always
necessary" (AR 204). WCD 692, the version of the pre-assassination
201 file supplied to the Warren Commission, was available for years to
the public at the National Archive under conditions of minimal security.
The best we can do is take the CIA's own release of 1992 as their
version of what the 201 was supposed to contain.
27 CIA Cable MEXI 6534 of 15 Oct 1963 (incoming 40357); file copy
in WCD 692, Oswald's 201 file. To add to the mystery, the May 1962
State Department report, referred to in the October 10 cable, is not
included in Oswald's 201 file as we have it, while several
FBI reports following his return are included.
28. To believe the CIA, this latest piece of information on Oswald
should also have been at the top of the 201-file that was apparently
consulted in the preparation of the October
10 messages. It is possible however that the 24 September memo may
have been initially filed in two other files (100/300/11 and 200/300/12)
that apparently dealt with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee; and that it
only found its proper place in Oswald's 201 file at
a later time. This delay would only make more conspiratorial the
behavior of Ann Egerter, who was the first to see the memo and was
also responsible for Oswald's 201 file (Lopez Report, 142; Scott, "Lopez
Report," 21).
29. The two dated pages of the September 24 memo are placed in
WCD 692 after an FBI transmittal form of November 8, 1963, and an
FBI memo (the so-called Kaack report) of October 31, 1963 (which had
been covered by the November 8 transmittal form). However
the two dated pages were originally accompanied by five undated pages
of text and Appendix, on "Lee Harvey Oswald," "Fair Play for Cuba
Committee," "Corliss Lamont," and "Emergency Civil Liberties
Committee." In the 1992 release of the CIA's 201 file these
five pages are attached, falsely, to an FBI report from James Hosty,
dated September 10, 1963. They clearly do not belong there. The
two-page Hosty report ends on p. 2; the Appendix likewise begins on p.
2, rather than p. 3. This elaborate dispersal and
concealment of the seven-page memo of September 24 can hardly have
been accidental, or by inadvertence. (In the published Rector Press
edition of WCD 692, the scattered pages of the September 24 memo
will be found at pp. 71-75 (five undated pages], 113-14 (dated
memo]).
30. The document in question is a communication of May 17, 1962
with attachment from John Noonan, Chief of the State Department's
Office of Security, to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, "Subject:
American Defectors: Status of in the U.S.S.R." This document has since
been released by the FBI as part of Oswald's FBI file (WCE 834, Item
36; unrecorded copy in Oswald Headquarters FBI File 105-82555, after
serial -24; original in file 100-362196-423).
There are other apparent falsifications of the pre-assassination Oswald
201 file (WCD 692). A State Department Memo of Conversation of
January 26, 1961 (an apparent source for the words "attempted to
renounce" in the October 10 cable), is in fact a copy of an internal State
Department memo that was not sent to CIA (so far as we know) until
after the assassination. An FBI Report from John Fain in Dallas on July
3, 1961 was the source for the cable's reference to "an undated
letter from Oswald postmarked Minsk on five Feb 1961." This FBI
Report was submitted to the Warren Commission as part of Oswald's
201 file, and again to the public in 1992. We now learn from the 1993
release that this report, although charged to the 201 file, "was not in the
201," when a copy "provided us by the National Archives" was added to
it after the assassination. See the note on the last page of DBF-82181
(Fain report of July 3, 1961) under the cover sheet: "DBF- 82181 7-3-61
(July 3 61) is part of Commission Document (CD-692) and is available
to the public in this form. (A copy of DBF-82181 was not in the 201,
although IP/Files has it charged to it. This copy was made from CD-692
provided us by the National Archives. It is also #18 on list of
attachments to XAAZ-22595 [CD-692, CIA Document #509-803] which
is list of documents which existed on Oswald in the file before Nov. 22,
1963.)"
31. Lopez Report, 170-71; cf. 101.
32. Lopez Report, 170-71.
33. Lopez Report, 170, 171. Eventually the station had a sequence
of nine apparently related transcripts between September 27 and
October 3, of which five concerned a visa request. After the
assassination, the CIA decided that three of the nine calls were not by
Oswald: two on September 27 (in Spanish, a language Oswald was not
known to speak), and one on October 3 (when Oswald,
according to the FBI and Warren Commission, was already on a bus
back to the United States). Cf. Lopez Report, 73-80.
34. Rocca memo ZZ
35. Memo of 23 November 1963 from Acting Chief, SR Division,
signed by Tennant Bagley, "Chief, SR/Cl." CIA Document #34-538.
36. Clarence M. Kelley, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director
(Kansas City: Andrews, McMeel & Parker, 1987), 268.
37. Blind memo of 27 November 1963, prepared by Birch D.
O'Neal, C/CUSIG, for Mr. Papich of the FBI Liaison Office (according
to O'Neal's routing slip, "Mr. Bagley of SR prepared
the portion responding to the question concerning any information we
have 'pinpointing' KOSTIKOV as being in the 13th Department)":
"KOSTIKOV's involvement in [redacted] is our only reason to believe
that he is connected with the 13th Department. KOSTIKOV was in
clandestine contact with [redacted] (as definitely confirmed by
[redacted]'s photo identification) and arranged (redacted]'s contact in the
U.S. with a KGB colleague of Kostikov's. This colleague was identified
by [redacted] from photos as Oleg BRYKIN, who has definitely been
identified, by an FBI source in a position to know, as a member of
the 13th Department." Hardly a very solid foundation for Bagley's
"phase one" claim that had a significant impact on how the President's
murder was investigated!
38. Kelley, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director , 272-74.
39. Memorandum from FBI Inspector James H. Gale of 12/10/63;
as reported in Schweiker-Hart Report, 92, cf. 3 AH 518; Scott, Deep
Politics, 63.
40. Oswald Headquarters FBI file, 105-82555, after serial -42.
41. Memo of December 10, 1963; 3 AH 518, 522.
42. FitzGerald once remarked that Angleton's CI men were holed
up in a small office, scrutinizing the entrails of chickens.
43. The teletype to the FBI, Navy, and State was cleared in draft
with just two sections: CI/SIG (where Ann Egerter worked and retained
custody of the Oswald 201 file) and SR/CI (where Tennant Bagley was
Chief). The cable to Mexico City was cleared in draft with three:
SR/CI/A, CI/Liaison/Jane Roman (who was the releasing officer on the
teletype), and CI/SPG (presumably the same as CI/SIG).
44. Memo of 23 November 1963 from Acting Chief, SR
Division, signed by Tennant Bagley, "Chief, SR/CI." CIA Document #
34-538.
45. Edward Jay Epstein, Legend (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1978), 237. Epstein, though not reliable on all matters, had excellent
relations with members of Angleton's CIA Counterintelligence Staff,
and does not hesitate to supply restricted information about their
responses and files.