Legacy of Secrecy (20 page)

numerous occasions, he observed Guy Banister, David Ferrie, various

anti-Castro Cubans, and agents of both the CIA and FBI” at the Schlum-

berger facility in Houma, Louisiana, sixty miles from New Orleans.

Schlumberger provided equipment for oil drilling, but according to

Johnson “it was an open secret among company employees that the

federal government was using the large facility for intelligence activi-

ties.” Johnson told Kurtz that “on at least two occasions in the summer of

1963, Lee Harvey Oswald accompanied Banister and Ferrie to Houma.”

The anti-Castro material that “Johnson saw [included] such supplies

as guns, ammunition, hand grenades, howitzers, bombs, landmines,

propellers . . . and much more. On several occasions, Cubans told him

that they were using the equipment for ‘training exercises for another

invasion of Cuba.’”

Until it was closed in early August 1963, Manuel Artime operated what

was essentially a minor-league exile training camp for the AMWORLD

operation near New Orleans, which Ferrie and Banister both reportedly

visited. Kurtz writes that “Hunter Leake verified Hamilton Johnson’s

story about Schlumberger. . . . He also confirmed that Banister, Ferrie,

and even Oswald visited the camp from time to time.”15

Oswald’s public activities in New Orleans in August 1963 are well

documented because of their extensive media coverage. Oswald first

tried to join the local chapter of the DRE, an anti-Castro group, claim-

ing he wanted to overthrow Fidel. Shortly after that, he very publicly

passed out pro-Castro leaflets on the street in New Orleans, an act that

provoked an attack by the local DRE head and two of his associates.

Oswald’s arrest led to newspaper coverage, as well as radio and TV

appearances in which he handled himself remarkably well. How could

Oswald generate so much publicity? That was a specialty of CIA propa-

ganda specialist David Atlee Phillips. Court records indicate that a “Mr.

Phillips . . . from Washington,” who was involved with US intelligence,

met with Banister in New Orleans, at Banister’s office, regarding an

anti-Castro TV appeal.16 Earlier, Phillips had run an operation against

the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and according to E. Howard Hunt’s

sworn testimony to Congressional investigators, David Phillips ran the

DRE for the CIA.17

CIA files confirm that Phillips was working on the AMWORLD part

of the coup plan, so it shouldn’t be surprising that shortly after Oswald’s

publicity blitz, Phillips met with Oswald in Dallas, along with anti-

Castro exile activist Antonio Veciana. Veciana and his Alpha 66 were

barred from the JFK-Almeida coup plan, though Veciana was partners

with Eloy Menoyo, an exile leader whom the Kennedys and Harry did

want. Veciana’s story of meeting Oswald and Phillips in the lobby of the

new Southland Building in Dallas has long been controversial, though

Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi concluded that such a meet-

ing did take place. Veciana hinted that Phillips used the name “Maurice

Bishop,” and CIA official Ross Crozier later confirmed that to Congres-

sional investigators. Kurtz got new confirmation, saying that “Hunter

Leake told me that David Atlee Phillips . . . used the alias [Maurice

Bishop].”18 Veciana revealed to us that he originally named his group

Alpha 66 after the Phillips 66 gas stations that were common in the early

1960s.19

David Atlee Phillips was from nearby Fort Worth, and by meeting

Oswald in public—in the lobby of Dallas’s newest glittering office

tower—Phillips must have realized he could have been seen with

Oswald by a relative or a high school classmate, or even photographed

by a tourist. Such behavior seems illogical, and inconsistent with Phil-

lips’s long intelligence experience, if Phillips knew that Oswald was

going to be any type of assassin or patsy for JFK’s assassination. Such a

meeting is much more consistent with Oswald’s being used as an intel-

ligence asset for an operation far from Dallas. Phillips appears to have

been focused on using Oswald in the CIA’s anti-Castro operations, as

one of the US assets they had to get into Cuba before the coup. Appar-

ently, Phillips hoped Oswald’s pro-Castro media blitz would help him

get into Cuba via Mexico City. Phillips was based in Mexico City, where

he headed anti-Castro operations.

Oswald’s trip to Mexico City in late September and early October

1963 has also been the subject of much controversy and Congressional

investigation. William Gaudet, a CIA asset long known to have received

the Mexican tourist card in New Orleans with the number just before

Oswald’s, told Kurtz that he was with Oswald in Mexico for the CIA.20

This helps to explain why a later report said that Oswald had trav-

eled one way to Mexico by car, though Oswald neither had a license

nor owned a car. As our Naval Intelligence source told us, Oswald was

under surveillance the whole time he was in Mexico City—something

later confirmed by Win Scott, who at the time was the Mexico City CIA

station chief.21

Oswald was not able to get into Cuba via Mexico City, especially after

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

someone called the Soviet embassy, impersonating him. CIA officials

found out about the impersonation because they had bugged the phones

at the Soviet and Cuban embassies. Just as Banister and Ferrie were in

a position to manipulate Oswald for Marcello while ostensibly help-

ing the CIA, Marcello’s Mafia associates also had ways to compromise

Oswald’s actions in Mexico City. Richard Cain, the high-level Chicago

law enforcement official who had worked with Trafficante and Rosselli

on the CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots, had bugged a communist

embassy in Mexico City the previous year. Monitoring the bugs for the

CIA was the DFS, a Mexican police agency so corrupt and tied to drugs

that it eventually had to be disbanded. The DFS was linked to the Mexico

City arm of Trafficante and Marcello’s French Connection drug ring with

Michel Victor Mertz.22

As for Oswald, he may have thought he was simply going to be a

US intelligence asset in Cuba, or that he was going to play a part in the

CIA-Mafia plot to assassinate Castro. Given Oswald’s long ties to intel-

ligence activities, his favorite uncle’s career as a bookie for Marcello,

and Oswald’s own brief work for Marcello as a runner, he probably

would have had little problem with an operation that combined intel-

ligence and the Mafia. However, Oswald would have been told as little

as possible about his mission by people like Guy Banister and David

Ferrie, whose real goal was to manipulate Oswald for Marcello and the

JFK plot.

After Oswald failed to get into Cuba, he apparently had—or thought

he had—a role to play for US intelligence. After a brief stint living at

the Dallas YMCA, by November 1963, Oswald was living in a rooming

house in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, seeing his wife only on

the weekends. He tried to find work at several businesses in downtown

Dallas, which would later turn out to be near JFK’s motorcade route,

before finally settling on the Texas School Book Depository. However,

for years others had determined Oswald’s actions, and there is no reason

to think his choice of work location deviated from that pattern. Even

before JFK’s final motorcade route through Dallas was announced, it

was almost certain that the President would take a downtown route

through Dealey Plaza, just as JFK had during his visits to Dallas in 1960

and 1961. Oswald was in the Soviet Union at those times, but JFK’s visits

would have been well known to a downtown Dallas businessman like

Jack Ruby.

Oswald’s starting salary at the Depository was small, yet evidence

shows he was thinking of buying an expensive car: He told a car salesman

on November 9, 1963, that he would be getting “a lot of money in the next

two or three weeks.”23 Among Oswald’s notes preserved—but appar-

ently overlooked—by the Warren Commission are remarks apparently

intended for a speech he would make after he finally emerged from his

years of undercover work. Its tone and content are totally at odds with

the pro-Marxist remarks he made on radio and TV in New Orleans.

Oswald maintains that he hates communism, writing that “there are pos-

sibly few other Americans born in the US who [have] as many personal

reasons to know—and therefore hate and mistrust—Communism.” He

says the US and Russia “have too much to offer to each other to be tear-

ing at each other’s throats in an endless cold war. Both countries have

major shortcomings and advantages, but only in ours is the voice of

dissent allowed opportunity of expression.”24

By 1963, America had become a far different country than it had been

during the McCarthy era, when Oswald loved
I Led Three Lives,
based

on the true story of Herbert Philbrick, who pretended to be a commu-

nist for years before emerging to acclaim, Congressional thanks, and a

long career as an author and popular speaker. Oswald’s notes mention

Philbrick and make it clear that he intended to surpass him in some way,

apparently because of his role in the upcoming US operation against

Cuba.25

Oswald’s intelligence status had to be very closely held to remain

secret, meaning that few federal agents in the field could be told about

it. Oswald had been worried that a local Dallas FBI agent was going to

blow his cover, which he had worked so hard to maintain for so many

years, hoping he could make it pay off. FBI agent James Hosty had vis-

ited Oswald’s wife on November 1 and again on November 5, and after

Oswald heard about it, he wrote a note to Hosty warning him away, and

Oswald personally dropped it off at the Dallas FBI office.

It’s hard to tell where Oswald’s legitimate US intelligence activities

end and his manipulation by Mafia associates begins, given the true

loyalty of US assets like Banister and Ferrie to Marcello, and the hatred

of the Kennedys they shared with CIA officers like Morales and his good

friend Rosselli. Any of Oswald’s unusual actions during 1963 can be

explained by three possibilities: 1. It could have been for legitimate intel-

ligence purposes; 2. It could have been a legitimate intelligence purpose

that was also furthering Marcello’s goals; or 3. Oswald only thought he

was acting for a legitimate intelligence purpose, but in reality he was

being manipulated by Marcello’s men. Imagine how difficult it must

have been for officials from various agencies to sort through Oswald’s

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actions after JFK’s death, as they tried to figure out (in secret, and often

not talking to other agencies) what Oswald was really up to.

In the weeks and months before Dallas, Oswald, or someone pretend-

ing to be Oswald, was reportly near Chicago prior to JFK’s planned

motorcade there, and in Tampa the day before JFK’s motorcade there.26

Since officials had uncovered assassination plots in each city before JFK

arrived, that meant Oswald could have taken the fall if JFK had been

shot in either of those two cities.

On Thursday, November 21, Lee Oswald went home a day early to see

Marina and his children, who were living with Ruth Paine. When he

awoke, he left $175 and his wedding ring for his wife. As he rode into

work with Wesley Frazier on the morning of November 22, 1963, Frazier

and his sister saw Oswald hold a package cupped in his hand and tucked

under his armpit. It could not have been a disassembled Mannlicher-

Carcano rifle, as the Warren Commission later asserted, because a disas-

sembled Mannlicher was too long to be carried that way. Oswald told

Frazier it was curtain rods, but it could have been almost anything—

including an item Oswald had been told to bring to work (or the park-

ing lot) that day by whoever he thought was his intelligence handler.

According to Warren Commission testimony, Oswald did not have the

package when he entered the Depository that morning. (One uncon-

firmed source linked to the deaths of two Artime associates claimed it

could have been a pro-Castro banner, passed to a confederate who sup-

posedly planned to unfurl it from a Book Depository window during

JFK’s motorcade. If Oswald went to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City

and took credit for such a stunt, he might have thought he would surely

be allowed into Cuba.) A Warren Commission counsel later outlined

evidence, omitted from their Final Report, that Oswald may well have

been preparing to go to Mexico that day.27

John Martino indicated that Oswald was supposed to leave work on

the afternoon of November 22 to meet what he thought was an intel-

ligence contact at the Texas Theater. In David Atlee Phillips’s auto-

biography,
The Night Watch
(a completely different book from Phillips’s

autobiographical novel outline cited earlier), Phillips wrote about his