Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (58 page)

321
Note 7
: There was also potential for blaming the Soviets. The CIA would later note that Valery Kostikov, who told the author he met and took a gun away from Oswald, was a member of the KGB’s Department Thirteen, which specialized in sabotage and murder. (See refs. in John Newman,
op. cit.
, and in Peter Dale Scott,
Deep Politics and the Death of JFK
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.)

Azcue: statement, Havana public hearings on Kennedy case, July 29, 1978; Azcue testimony, HSCA, September 18, 1978; ints. Eusebio Azcue, Carmen Bilbao, Carmelle Azcue, by Robbyn Swan and Anthony Summers, 1993.

322
     Oswald height: XVII.285.

Azcue description: Havana statement July 29, 1978; HSCA III.152–; (belief) HSCA III.136; ints. Azcue family,
supra
.

Mirabal: HSCA III.174.

Azcue maintained: HSCA III.139.

Note 8
: Durán’s former husband, Horacio Durán Navarro, said in an interview with the author that the Mexican press carried only a poor wire-photo of the Oswald under arrest after the assassination.

Durán on
seeing film: ints. 1979, 1994 & corr. June 22, 1979.

323
     Durán on height, etc.: HSCA III.103.

Durán on hair/
“rubio”
: DDP, CIA to Director, November 29, 1963 & attached Mexican Police Interrogation report, November 23, 1963 (in Spanish), NARA 104-10209-10279; HSCA 111.69.

Note 9
: The omission of that detail from later CIA and Mexican official reports was noted by a footnote in the Assassinations Committee Report, “Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City,” prepared by Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, released with redactions, 1993. (Lopez & Hardway, Mexiso City Report,
supra
.,
p. 190, & notes section, p. 24n347).

Azcue “dark blond”: HSCA III.136.

“Light-brown”: CE 826.

Contreras: ints. 1978, 1993 & by Robbyn Swan 1993, HSCA Report, pp. 124, 125nl7.

324
Note 10
: According to Contreras, “Oswald” said he was a painter by occupation. The author failed to ask whether he understood “painter” to mean that “Oswald” had been employed as a house painter or whether he meant that he was an artist.

325
Note 11
: The Assassinations Committee failed to reach Contreras in 1978, but the author did not. Gerald Posner attempted in his book,
Case Closed
,
to cast doubt on Contreras’ statements. Claiming that the author had used a translator to speak with Contreras, he wondered how—since the authentic Oswald could not speak Spanish—Contreras and Oswald could have communicated. The author did not use a translator to speak with Contreras, but Contreras did bring along an English-speaking colleague to ensure that he was completely understood. But the point is moot. The “Oswald” Contreras described could not have been the authentic Oswald, so any details about the real Oswald’s Spanish-language ability are irrelevant. Posner (and subsequently author Vincent Bugliosi) have complained that, in a later interview with British TV producer Mark Redhead, Contreras said his meeting with
Oswald had not been in 1963 at all. The author was a consultant to Redhead, and interviewed Contreras in the flesh twice. Contreras, who became a senior journalist, knew perfectly well that President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and that his meeting with an “Oswald” was shortly before the assassination. When interviewed again in 1993, his story was exactly as recounted to the author in 1978. (Posner: , p. 191–; Bugliosi: , End Notes p. 607–).

Alcaraz: int. Alcaraz, 1993; CE 2121; and multiple FBI reports collated by the Assassination Archives and Research Center, Washington, DC;

Note 12
: Alcaraz named a friend, Hector Gastelo, as probably having been present with him during the restaurant encounter with Oswald. An alternative suggestion as to how the Mexico Oswald may have come to associate with students came from the Assassinations Committee. The Committee noted that Cuban consular aide Sylvia Durán recalled suggesting that “Oswald” locate a Mexican reference for his Cuban visa application. The Committee learned that the chairman of the university philosophy department sometimes held seminars at Durán’s home. This, the Committee speculated, might explain why “Oswald” made contact with Contreras—who mentioned that the encounter occurred following a discussion at the philosophy department. (HSCA Report. p. 124–.)

Kennan/Keenan: ints. Steve Kennan; “The Man on the Motorcycle in Mexico City” by Bill Kelly, http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.ie, also drawing on work by researchers Stu Wexler, Greg Parker, and Larry Hancock.

Note 13
: In a further twist, the CIA reportedly ran an agent in Mexico, code-named LICOZY-3, who was a student from Philadelphia. This according to former CIA Mexico City station officer Philip Agee, who resigned from the Agency in 1968 and took refuge in Cuba.

The Kenin located in 2006 said he did not recall the Oswald encounter described by Alcaraz, and denied having had any involvement with U.S.
intelligence. (Philip Agee,
Inside the Company: CIA Diary
. New York: Bantam, 1976, pp. 545, 634; Kenin: int. Steve Kennan,
Temple
University News
, October 4 & November 20, 1960,
Motorcyclist
magazine, August 1963)

326
     Signature, etc.: HSCA III.172; HSCA Report, p. 251.

Pictures not taken: CE 2449, 2121, p. 39.

Durán not remember: ints. Durán, 1978, 1993; HSCA III.29–39, & see HSCA III.353.

Azcue on clothing: HSCA III.143 & ints. Azcue family, 1979, 1993.

Durán in Oswald book: XVI.54.

Marina denied: see
Note 3
,
supra
.—also for reference to Oswald later letter to Soviet Embassy in United States, discussed infra. in Chapter 20.

Note 14
: The record of Oswald’s interrogations is inconsistent on the matter of whether or not he visited Mexico City. So far as the author can see, police Captain Fritz—who was in charge of questioning—made no reference to Mexico in surviving handwritten notes. Both he and FBI agent James Hosty, however, were to recall that when Oswald was asked—prompted by Hosty—whether he had ever been to Mexico City, he denied it. According to Hosty, he said his only visit to Mexico had been years earlier to the border town of Tijuana, while serving in the Marines. Postal Inspector Harry Holmes, who was present at the final questioning on November 24, stated in his Warren Commission testimony that Oswald admitted that he had been in Mexico City and that he had tried to get clearance to travel to Cuba. Holmes, however, had made no reference to such an admission in his formal memorandum on the Oswald interview—a fact that led Warren Commission attorney David Belin to ask skeptically: “Is this something that you think you might have picked up from just reading the papers? …” (Fritz notes: Notes of Interrogation, www.maryferrell.org;
Fritz testimony: WC IV.210; Hosty: CE 832, James Hosty with Thomas Hosty,
Assignment: Oswald
, NY: Arcade, 1996, p. 25; Holmes Testimony: Testimony, April 2, 1964; Memo: CD 296).

327
     “Weight”: HSCA Report, p. 251.

Note 15
: Edwin Lopez, one of the two Committee investigators who concentrated most on the Mexico City episode and who coauthored the Committee’s study of that aspect of the case, differed. He and his colleague Dan Hardway, he said in a television appearance years later, “had no choice but to conclude that Oswald had not visited the embassies.” (Lopez speaking as sworn witness for the program
On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald
, Showtime, 1986)

Study: Lopez and Hardway, HSCA Mexico Report,
supra
. p. 250.

“Identified”: HSCA Report, p. 249.

Hensen: Newman,
op. cit.
, p. 362–, citing Mexico City 54408 to CIA, Action: C/WH 5, July 20, 1963, NARA, JFK files, CIA, January 1994 release (5 brown boxes) release: see Box 1, Folder 2.

328
     Standard operation: Bugliosi,
op. cit.
, End Notes, p. 600, citing Russo int. of Gunn.

October 8 request: Cable, LADILLINGER, October 8, 1963, NARA 104-10151-1007; & MEXI to DIR, October 9, 1963, HSCA CIA file cited at Morley,
op. cit.
, p. 187.

CIA cable, October 10: DIR to MEXI, October 10, 1963, NARA 104-10413-10146.

329
     “It is believed”: CIA to FBI, et.al., October 10, 1963, CIA 201-289248, reproduced at Newman,
op. cit.
, p. 513.

CIA on photograph: Report, p. 364; XI.469; CD 1287; CD 631; CD 1287; CD 674. David Phillips, (, p. 141) said there was no photograph of Oswald. See also document 948-927T, CIA internal memorandum dated May 5, 1967.

330
     CIA “did not have a known”: Rocca to Houston & attachment, May 12, 1967, CIA file no. 80T01357A, www.maryferrell.org.

Colby: int. for
The American Assassins
, Part 2, CBS-TV, November 26, 1975.

“Photographs of a certain”:
Scott to King, November 22, 1963, CIA file 80T01357A, www.maryferrell.org.

“Could be embarrassing”: CD 1287.

Note 16
: The House Assassinations Committee’s Mexico Report noted that there had been one speculative identification of the photos of the man who was not Oswald. This is a reference to a CIA source—identified only as UPSTREAM—who had said the unidentified man was “a KGB type by name of ‘Yuri’ whom he knew in Moscow in 1964.” A document suggests that “Yuri” might have been one and the same as a Soviet scientist with intelligence connections named Yuri Ivanovich Moskalev. This remains only a single, unconfirmed suggestion. (Lopez & Hardway, Mexico City Report,
supra
., p. 179, Hopkins memorandum, April 1977, NARA 104-10428-10010).

Agency did have pictures: CD 692; CIA document 590-252, March 6, 1964 (memo to Warren Commission).

331
Note 17
: CIA files also contained the two Oswald photos that had been taken in 1961 in the Soviet Union by American tourists visiting Minsk. The CIA claimed they were taken fortuitously, selected for reasons having nothing to do with Oswald, and that Oswald’s presence in the pictures was not noticed until after the assassination. See discussion in Chapter 11. (CIA document 614-261, March 20, 1964; XX.474)

CIA and “wait out”: HSCA IV.215; HSCA XI.63, 491, Rankin to McCone, February 12, 1964, NARA 104-10423-10078, Rocca to Helms, March 5, 1964, CIA 201-289248, www.maryferrell.org.

Note 18
: Richard Helms, who in 1963 had been the CIA Deputy Director for Plans, told the Assassinations Committee in 1978 that the factor governing whether information could be provided to the Commission was the need “to be careful about our sources and methods.” “John Scelso” (real name John Whitten), who had been chief of covert operations for Mexico and Central America, said the CIA did not tell the Commission the origin of the photo because it was “not authorized, at first, to reveal all our [sensitive] operations.” (Helms: HSCA.IV.12; Scelso/
Whitten:
Washington Monthly
, December 2003; “not authorized”: HSCA XI.491)

Liebeler: Epstein,
Chronicles
,
op. cit.
, p. 107, citing int. Liebeler.

CIA denied: Lopez & Hardway, HSCA Mexico Report,
supra
. pp. 9, 90–, 114–.

Cameras not used weekends: (Sov) CIA doc.
re
LILYRIC basehouse, April 30, 1964, NARA Record 104-10414-10091, (Cuban) corr. Jeff Morley, 2012, Morley,
op. cit.
, p. 179.

332
     Camera broke down: Morley,
op. cit.
, p. 181, 325n, citing testimony of David Phillips.

New camera:
ibid
., pp. 179, 324

Dozen pictures: CIA documents 929–, 939, 927A–K (CIA Document Deposition Index); (October 1) CIA document 948-927T.

Five visits: Lopez & Hardway, Mexico City Report,
supra
., pp. 6, 91–.

Scott ms.: Winston Scott,
Foul Foe
(ms.), Chapter XXIV, p. 273, www.maryferrell.org.

Officers say CIA got Oswald photo: Rex Bradford unpub. ms,
Not a Shred …
,
supra
., p. 10–, Lopez & Hardway, Mexico City Report,
supra
., p. 97, Morley,
op. cit.
, p. 179–.

“Photographs of Oswald”: HSCA Report, p. 125n.

333
     AARB “CIA reports”: AARB Report, p. 87–.

Colby: int for,
The American Assassins
, CBS-TV, November 26, 1975.

Agency tapped/CIA record: Lopez & Hardway, Mexico City Report,
supra
., p. 117–, Morley, op.cit., p. 325, CD 1084d.5; CD 1084d.4–; and Ambassador Mann to Sec. State, November 28, 1963.

“Very poor Russian”: Legat Mexico City to Director, November 25, 1963, NARA 104-10400-10026

“Terrible, hardly recognizable”: David Slawson memo for record, NARA 104-10087-10116, HSCA Report, p. 251

334
     Oswald’s Russian: HSCA Report, p. 251, int. Marina Oswald, 1993.

Durán: HSCA III.114

Transcribers/”Usually”: reported by Ron Kessler,
Washington Post
, November 26, 1976.

Scott: Winston Scott,
Foul Foe
(ms.), Chapter XXIV, p. 186, www.maryferrell.org.

“destroyed tape[s]: AARB Report, p. 88.

Note 19
: The known comments of Mexico City CIA personnel do indicate that the
routine
was to wipe and reuse insignificant tapes. That seems to be what Station Chief Scott at least initially believed had been the fate of the Oswald recording of September 28. He reported: “Station unable compare voice as first tape erased prior to receipt of second call.” David Phillips, who was running anti-Castro operations out of Mexico in 1963, told a Senate Committee that a search for the tapes on November 23 confirmed that they had been erased. (David Phillips,
The Night Watch
, New York: Atheneum, 1977, p. 125, File Summary, David Phillips, NARA 180-10143-10126, HSCA X.46, Morley,
op. cit.
, p. 209. But see Fonzi,
op. cit.
, p. 285–).