Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (41 page)

Then there are the questions concerning a CIA "201 " file on Oswald
discovered only in 1977. The existence of this file came to light after a
Freedom of Information Act request was pressed by assassination research ers. Many persons knowledgeable about the Agency equate a 201 file with
a personnel file, implying Oswald had worked for the CIA. CIA officials
told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the Agency's file
on Oswald was nothing unusual and merely reflected that Oswald had
"potential intelligence or counterintelligence significance." However, at
least three former CIA officers have stated publicly that the mere existence
of a 201 file on Oswald indicated a relationship between the ex-Marine and
the Agency.

Victor Marchetti, formerly an executive assistant to the CIA's deputy
director, said: "Basically, if Oswald had a `201' file, he was an agent."

Bradley E. Ayers, a CIA officer who trained anti-Castro Cubans: "[A
201 file meant Oswald was] ... either a contract agent, working for them
full time, or he was on some kind of assignment for the CIA."

Former CIA agent Patrick McGarvey: "If a guy has a `201' file, that
means he's a professional staff employee of the organization."

The CIA went to great lengths to convince the House Committee that its
having a 201 file on Oswald-and the fact that this information was kept
secret for nearly fifteen years-was in no way suspicious.

The Committee, however, found many problems with the Oswald 201
file. For example, Oswald's file reportedly was opened on December 9,
1960, yet a confidential State Department telegram reporting Oswald's
attempted defection to Russia-cause enough to open a file on him-was
sent to the CIA back on October 31, 1959.

Other problems with the Oswald file are that one CIA employee gave a
reason for an "AG" code on the file that was at variance with the official
Agency explanation; the 201 file was under the name "Lee Henry Oswald"
leading the Committee to wonder if dual files were kept (a suspicion the
CIA denied); and one CIA memo indicated as many as thirty-seven
documents were missing from the Oswald file, although Agency officials
later claimed they were only missing at the time the memo was written.

Further, a recently obtained CIA document states that Oswald's 201 file
filled "two four-drawer safes," yet the House Committee was given a
virtually empty folder.

The whole question of Oswald's connection to U.S. intelligence is so
full of claims and counterclaims, deceit and misinformation, it is unlikely
the whole truth of the matter will ever be known.

What is known-or at least believed by most people who have studied
the issue at any depth-is that the weight of the evidence suggests it is
likely Oswald was in some way connected with U.S. intelligence work.

Even the FBI apparently believed that Oswald may have been involved
in spy work.

In a report dealing with Oswald's possessions taken from the Paine
home in Irving, FBI laboratory personnel listed the items-which included
shoes, socks, a pair of cotton gloves, towels, shirts, soap, office supplies, and toiletries-then stated: "Nothing was noted . . . which would indicate
that these specimens would be particularly useful in the field of espionage." The report went on to state that all of the items were checked
carefully, but unsuccessfully, for microdots.

There has been no explanation of why the Bureau was so concerned
about such spy methods at a time when its official position was that
Oswald was only a discontented loner.

While at the time of the JFK assassination, the official story was that
no U.S. government agency had been interested in Oswald or knew of his
whereabouts, it is now known that both the CIA and the FBI were keeping
a close watch on the ex-Marine's activities. Oswald's alleged trip to
Mexico City between September 26 and October 3, 1963, is a case in
point. According to the Warren Commission, Oswald was in Mexico City
for the purpose of visiting the Soviet and Cuban embassies. Proof of these
visits were in the form of the statement of a Cuban embassy employee,
Silvia Duran, and from CIA operatives monitoring the Soviet embassy.

On October 10, 1963, more than a month before the JFK assassination,
the CIA sent a teletype to the State Department, the FBI, immigration
authorities, and the Department of the Navy regarding the "possible
presence of Subject [Oswald] in Mexico City":

On October 1, 1963, a reliable and sensitive source in Mexico reported
that an American male, who identified himself as Lee Oswald, contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City . . . The American was
described as approximately 35 years old, with an athletic build, about
six feet tall, with a receding hairline . . . It is believed that Oswald may
be identical to Lee Harvey Oswald, born on 18 October 1939 in New
Orleans, Louisiana.

Obviously this description did not match that of the twenty-three-year-old,
five-foot-nine, slenderly built Oswald in Dallas.

The Warren Commission, seriously concerned about the ties between
Oswald and the Soviets and Cubans in Mexico City, asked the CIA for
documentation of Oswald's activities. After months of foot-dragging, the
Agency could only provide the unsupported statement of Duran as proof
that Oswald was at the Cuban embassy.

Then on January 22, 1964, the CIA leaked to Commission members that
Oswald had contact with a KGB officer, Valery Kostikov, while in the
Soviet embassy. The Agency said Kostikov's responsibilities included
"assassination and sabotage." This possible link between Oswald and a
KGB assassination plot so frightened Commission members that they were
content to take the CIA's word for Oswald's Mexico activities.

Not shown to the Warren Commission was a cable sent by the director
of the CIA to its station in Mexico City urging the secret arrest of Silvia
Duran on the day after the assassination. Duran, a twenty-six-year-old Mexican national, had been employed at the Cuban embassy only one
month before Oswald allegedly arrived in Mexico. Her predecessor had
been killed in an automobile accident. The CIA cable regarding Duran's
arrest, only declassified in recent years, stated:

Arrest of Silvia Duran is extremely serious matter which could prejudice
U.S. freedom of action on entire question of Cuban responsibility .. .
With full regard for Mexican interests, request you ensure that her arrest
is kept absolutely secret, that no information from her is published or
leaked, that all such info is cabled to us, and that fact of her arrest and
her statements are not spread to leftist or disloyal circles in the Mexican
government.

In a 1978 article, Mark Lane concluded:

This almost incredible cable reveals the extent of CIA control over
Mexican police officials, many of whom had been trained by the CIA,
and many of whom were engaged by the CIA while they ostensibly
worked for the Mexican government. The CIA's willingness to order
Mexican police officials to make false statements to their own superiors
and to mislead the "circles in the Mexican government" provides an
insight into the CIA's desperation to secure some evidence to prove .. .
that Oswald had gone to the Cuban Embassy.

Apparently the statements that Duran gave to the Mexican authorities
were not to their liking. She was not released for several days and only
then after she had identified Oswald as the man who visited the embassy.

Once free, Duran began to speak of her experience. This prompted yet
another CIA cable, which ordered CIA personnel to have Duran rearrested,
but to conceal who was behind the action. A portion of this cable stated:

... to be certain that there is no misunderstanding between us, we want
to insure that Silvia Duran gets no impression that Americans are behind
her rearrest. In other words we want Mexican authorities to take responsibility for the whole affair.

Duran was rearrested and did not speak of her experiences afterward.
She was never interviewed nor called as a witness by the Warren Commission, which never learned of her two arrests.

Since the Oswald in the Cuban embassy apparently made quite a scene
when told he could not get a visa to Cuba in three days-he shouted and
called the embassy personnel "bureaucrats"-he should have been well
remembered by Duran and others there. But in 1978, Cuban consul
Eusebio Azcue told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he
was convinced the man who visited the embassy in 1963 was not the Oswald arrested in Dallas. After viewing photos of Oswald, Azcue stated:
"My belief is that this gentleman was not, is not, the person or the
individual who went to the consulate."

Silvia Duran-perhaps due to her experience in the hands of the policehas maintained over the years that the man was Oswald. However, in
1979, author Anthony Summers arranged for her to watch films of Lee
Harvey Oswald. Duran, who admitted that her identification of Oswald
was more from the name than from the fuzzy newspaper photos printed at
the time, watched the Oswald films and concluded: "I was not sure if it
was Oswald or not . . . the man on the film is not like the man I saw here
in Mexico City." To add to Duran's confusion, she recalled the man who
visited the consulate was short, no more than five feet six inches in
height-far shorter than the five-foot-nine Dallas Oswald.

While the CIA stated that both the Cuban and Soviet embassies were
under photographic surveillance during Oswald's visits, they could offer
no proof. Lamely, CIA officials explained to the Warren Commission that
the camera at the Soviet embassy was turned off on Saturdays (the day
Oswald supposedly was there) and that the camera at the Cuban embassy
just happened to break down the day Oswald was there. However, the day
of the assassination, CIA officials sent photos taken outside the Soviet
embassy in Mexico City to the FBI, claiming they were of Oswald. They
are obviously of someone else. This someone appears to be about thirtyfive years old, six feet tall, with an athletic build.

Questioning the photos, the FBI reportedly showed one of them to
Oswald's mother, who said she had never seen the man depicted before.
Later she claimed the photo was that of Jack Ruby.

CIA officials admitted there had been a "mix-up" on the photos.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations noted that Oswald
allegedly made at least five trips to the two embassies and found it hard to
believe that he was not photographed even once. The committee expressed
the belief that "photographs of Oswald might have been taken and subsequently lost or destroyed."

The absence of any photos of Oswald at the embassies raises suspicion
that an imposter was posing as Oswald during these embassy visits.
Further evidence of this comes from an episode involving tape recordings.
In 1976, at the onset of the House assassinations investigation, CIA officer
David A. Phillips, one of the Bay of Pigs organizers who at the time of
Oswald's alleged visit was stationed in Mexico City, told the House
Committee's general counsel that the CIA had tape-recorded conversations
between Oswald and the Soviet embassy but had not so informed the
Warren Commission. When pressed on why the tapes, clear proof of
Oswald's Mexican visits, had not been given to the Commission, Phillips
said they had been routinely destroyed about a week later since prior to the
assassination Oswald was not considered important.

However, long after his 1976 testimony, a five-page FBI document dated November 23, 1963, became public and threw doubt on Phillips's
story. According to this report, which was not seen by the Warren Commission, FBI agents who were questioning Oswald in Dallas were informed by CIA officers that Oswald had contacted the Soviet embassy in
Mexico City. The report went on to state:

Special agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in
Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to
above and have listened to a recording of his voice. These special agents
are of the opinion that the above-referred-to individual was not Lee
Harvey Oswald.

If this FBI report is correct, then the CIA wiretap tape of Oswald was not
destroyed in October but was available to Bureau agents the day after the
assassination. When then were the tapes destroyed and by whom?

One disturbing aspect of this is that either the CIA notified other
agencies in October that Oswald was in Mexico City not knowing the man
was an impostor, then failed to follow up on their mistake later. Or-more
ominously-the Agency knowingly participated in a scheme to place
Oswald in Mexico City at that time-nearly two months before the
assassination!

It is equally disturbing that the House Select Committee on Assassinations made a three-hundred-page report on these mysterious happenings in
Mexico City, then failed to put it into its published report claiming it was
withheld to protect "sensitive sources and methods" of the CIA.

Another Mexico incident, which has been misreported for years, concerns a note from Oswald to a "Mr. Hunt."