Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (61 page)

358
Note 13
: Silvia Odio has explained that she suffered from blackouts at various periods of her life. The cause has been diagnosed medically since 1963. Her apparent shock on the day of the assassination does not, against that background, seem far-fetched. There were many, perhaps thousands, who wept openly when they heard the traumatic news of the President’s assassination. With Odio’s recent visitation and disturbing phone call about “Oswald,” her reaction seems understandable enough. There is no doubt she did pass out, and she was hospitalized. The way the Odio incident emerged is highly complex and the result of a series of conversations for which her sister Sarita was originally responsible. In the event, the FBI became interested because of information about Jack Ruby, not Odio. (For full exposition, see HSCA X.24.) The person with whom Silvia Odio discussed the incident before the assassination was Dr. Burton Einspruch, her psychiatrist. There is no suggestion that Odio’s reliability was diminished because she was visiting a psychiatrist. Dr. Einspruch explains that Odio was a young woman of wealthy birth, transferred abruptly from affluence in Cuba to hard times as an exile. She had been deserted by her husband and left with young children to raise and other family members to help. She came to him, as would so many in America, to talk out her problems. Dr. Einspruch has said, from the start, that he has “great faith in Mrs. Odio’s story of having met Lee Harvey Oswald.” (ints. Silvia Odio, and HSCA X.29.)

359
     Letter to
father: XX.690–. (Odio’s own letter, sent to her father on October 27, 1963, did not survive. She clearly did write one because we have her father’s reply, written at Christmas.)

Slawson “has been checked”: HSCA. XI.165.

Liebeler: HSCA XI.237.

360
     Slawson “the most significant”:
Saturday Evening Post
, March 1976.

Rankin: XXVI.834.

Hoover information on Hall: XXVI.834; collapse of Hall story: CD.1553; HSCA XI.600; Sylvia Meagher,
op. cit.
, p. 386.

Odio first conversation: CD 205.644.

361
     Kaiser suggested: Kaiser,
op. cit.
, p. 257–, & corr. David Kaiser.

Oswald arriving back: Report, p. 736.

Hotel records: int. of Hilda Giser, October 8, 1964,
re
Lawnview Motel registration cards, FBI DL 100-10461, in Oswald HQ file, 105-82555, Section 222, courtesy of Jerry Shinley.

Press reported:
Dallas Morning News
, September 26, 1963.

Hall: 1967 interview for article in
National Enquirer
, September 1, 1968; Hall & HSCA:
Washington Post
, May 21, 1977; (immunized testimony) cited at HSCA X.22 and HSCA staff notes, and notes from tapes, released 1993.

362
     “fabrication”: HSCA Report, p. 138.

Hall career: HSCA refs. cited
supra
; Jaffe interview of Hall in author’s collection, July 23, 1975;
The Village Voice
, October 3, 1977; Dick Russell,
The Man Who Knew Too Much
, New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992, pp. 480–, 777.

Intelligence training: Jaffe interview,
supra
.

Exile training: memo of researcher Scott Malone to HSCA chief investigator C. Fenton, June 3, 1977.

Trafficante: HSCA sources
supra
; Hall int. by Harold Weisberg, p. 92; HSCA X.22; & Weisberg,
op. cit.
, pp. 161, 273–; Malone memo
supra
; and memo by researcher Mark Allen to HSCA staffer Donovan Gay, June 2, 1977.

CIA “debriefing”: FBI file no. 81-0351D0647, memo for Chief of Security Analysis, September 10, 1975.

Hall’s son:
Dallas Morning News
, September 13, 1989.

HSCA conclusion: HSCA Report, p. 139.

“a situation that indicates”: HSCA X.32.

363
     HSCA speculated: HSCA Report, p. 140.

Note 14
: A rider to that theory is that this was a deliberate ploy to link JURE, a left-wing exile group, with the assassination. Odio’s visitors posed as JURE members, and the Odio family supported its aims. In prison in Cuba, Silvia Odio’s father responded in alarm on receiving a letter from his daughter about the visit from “Leopoldo.” “Tell me who this is who says he is my friend,” he wrote back, “Be careful. I do not have any friend who might be here, through Dallas, so reject his friendship until you give me his name.” Later, at liberty following his long imprisonment in Cuba, Señor Odio said he was sure the visitors had had no real connection to him. JURE leaders in the United States were also nonplussed. It was a fact, though, that rightist exiles thought JURE supporters little better than Communists—they were potentially targets of a setup.

Warren Commission attorneys Slawson and Coleman, who focused on possible foreign conspiracy, mulled the thought that anti-Castro Cubans “encouraged” Oswald to assassinate Kennedy, perhaps tricked him in some way. The author Jean Davison made the point that—even if the “leftist” Oswald was blamed for the assassination—his presence at the Odios’ home with “Leopoldo” and “Angelo” would still leave the anti-Castro side vulnerable to suspicion. The author Vincent Bugliosi has offered a lengthy summary of possible explanations of the Odio episode. Interestingly, though usually a fierce opponent of anything that smacks of conspiracy theory, even he conceded that the Odio episode holds water evidentially and must be taken seriously. (JURE: XXVI.839; HSCA X.31; Father’s letter: XX.690; HSCA X.29).

Coleman/Slawson: Coleman & Slawson to WC, June 1964, “Oswald’s Foreign Activities, Summary of Evidence Which May Be Said to Show Foreign Involvement in the Assassination of President Kennedy,” www.history-matters.com.

Davison: Jean Davison,
Oswald’s Game
, New York: Norton, 1988, p. 192–; Bugliosi: , p.1309

“As it stands”: HSCA notes
supra
, and note donated to Assassination Archives and Research Center by William Scott Malone, citing A. J. Weberman int. of Hall, 1977.

21. Countdown

364
     Attwood
episode: ints. William Attwood, 1978–1979 (with access to diary), Mrs. Attwood, 1994, Arthur Schlesinger, 1978; William Attwood,
The Reds and the Blacks
, New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 142–, William Attwood,
The Twilight Struggle: Tales of the Cold War
, New York: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 257–, Schlesinger,
Robert F. Kennedy
,
op. cit.
, p. 550–; Sen. Int. Cttee.
Assassination Plots
, p. 173-; HSCA Report, p. 127, Richard Tomlinson (London Weekend TV) corr. & memo of Attwood conv., January 29, 1986; “Kennedy Sought Dialogue with Cuba,” National Security Archive paper & linked Attwood and White House memoranda & November 5, 1963 White House tape recording, www.gwu.edu.

365
     “go-ahead”: Schlesinger,
Robert F. Kennedy
,
op. cit.
, p. 552.

Note 1
: U.S. intelligence files indicate that Lechuga had in the recent past been the lover of Sylvia Durán, the aide who in late September 1963 dealt with the Oswald visa request in Mexico City. Durán herself confirmed to the author that there had been an affair. There is no evidence in the context of the assassination story, however, that the relationship was more than a coincidence, a quirk of history. (John Newman,
op. cit.
, p. 279–, int. Durán, 1994)

Vietnam withdrawal: Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days
,
op. cit.
, p. 908;
JFK Public Papers
, 1963, p. 760 (for detailed study of Kennedy policy on Vietnam, see Schlesinger,
Robert F. Kennedy
,
op. cit.
, p. 712–).

CIA: Peter
Dale Scott in
The Pentagon Papers
(Senator Gravel, ed.; Boston: 1971), vol. 5, p. 215–; John Newman,
JFK and Vietnam
, New York: Warner Books, 1992;
New Republic
, December 11, 1965, article by Harry Rowe Ransom.

Howard & Castro: int. Gore Vidal, 1994; unpublished 1995 ms. by William E. Kelly; Attwood memo, November 8, 1963, www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk.

366
     Daniel: int. William Attwood, 1978;
L’Express
(Paris), December 6, 1963;
New Republic
, December 7 & 14, 1963.

367
     November 5 Recording:
Guardian
[UK], November 26, 2003, citing Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive.

Note 2
: See
supra
, end Chapter 13.

Cubela meetings/weapons: Sen. Int. Cttee.,
Performance of Intelligence Agencies
, p. 16–;
Sen. Int. Cttee.,
Assassination Plots
, pp. 86–, 174-; HSCA Report, p. 112-; HSCA X.157–, 162–, Lattell,
op. cit.
, pp. 171–, 193–.

Note 3
: When interviewed by the author in jail in 1978, Cubela insisted it had all along been the CIA—not he—who proposed assassination.Cubela was to be arrested in 1966, tried on charges of plotting against Castro, and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to a jail term within days, however—and the author and others were permitted access to Cubela toward the end of his imprisonment. Far from being harshly treated, the supposed traitor was allowed special privileges and released in 1979. The mild conditions of his confinement play to the credibility of the theory that Cubela was all along a double agent reporting all the CIA’s approaches to Castro. (int. Cubela, Havana, 1978; Latell, p.198,
Miami News
, December 13, 1979)

368
Note 4
: Richard Helms told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he believed he had such authority to deal with Cubela regarding a “change in government.” He found it “so central to the whole theme of everything we had been trying to do, that [I found] it totally unnecessary to ask Robert Kennedy at that point [whether] we should go ahead with this. This is obviously what he had been pushing.” In his 2012 book, which covers the
Cubela case extensively, former CIA analyst Brian Latell notes that Robert Kennedy and Desmond FitzGerald spoke on the phone on October 11. Case officer Sanchez has testified that he “assumed” Kennedy had been informed of progress with Cubela. (believed: Sen. Int. Cttee.,
Assassination Plots
, p. 174–; spoke on phone/“assumed”: Latell,
op. cit.
, p. 184)

Note 5
: The information on plans for a coup using another supposed traitor has appeared in books published by authors Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann since 2005. Documents aside, the books drew on interviews with former U.S. officials including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Press Secretary Pierre Salinger. It relied—most notably—on interviews with Enrique “Harry” Ruiz-Williams, a Cuban exile whom Robert Kennedy had taken into his confidence. The Waldron-Hartmann account suggests that the putative coup would have taken place on December 1, 1963. According to the coauthors, the spring 1963 clamp-down on “freelance raids was designed to placate the Soviet Union in the short term and rein in exile extremists, while planning how to replace the Castro regime with an American-style democratic form of government.” The coup was to have been led by a senior army commander in Castro’s inner circle, Juan Almeida Bosque. In spite of his name being published in this context in 2006, however, it is noteworthy that the Cuban regime continued to treat Almeida as an honored revolutionary hero until his death in 2009. Author Waldron has reasoned that—in the wake of Fidel Castro’s own grave illness and handover of power—it was seen as pointless to pursue another national hero, the octogenarian Almeida, for alleged treachery. It is also conceivable that Almeida’s status as a high-flying member of the black minority may have precluded action against him or his reputation.

In connection with this episode, this author himself interviewed Alexander Butterfield, McGeorge Bundy, William Geoghegan,
Roswell Gilpatrick, Richard Goodwin, Walt Rostow, and Haynes Johnson.

The Waldron/Hartmann thesis has been faulted by other authors on the case. It “valuably fleshes out [the] portrait of RFK’s secret campaign to oust Castro,” wrote Jefferson Morley, but “their theory about how that ties into the assassination itself is conjectural.” Gus Russo said the language of the documents cited in the Waldron/Hartmann books refers to “strikes” in Cuba, not a coup. “While their thesis is provocative,” wrote David Talbot, “it is not convincing … there is no compelling evidence that the coup/invasion plan was as imminent as the authors contend.” (coup reporting: Lamar Waldron & Thom Hartmann,
Ultimate Sacrifice
, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005 & 2006, Lamar Waldron & Thomas Hartmann,
Legacy of Secrecy
, New York: Counterpoint, 2009, Liz Smith columns,
New York Post
, September 22, 2006 & January 6, 2009,
Daily Telegraph
(UK), September 18, 2009, Lamar Waldron int. for “Unredacted—Ultimate Sacrifice, Almeida and the Kennedys, www.maryferrell.org, author’s conversations with Waldron and Hartmann & author’s reporting in
VF
, December 1994; Morley:
WP
, November 27 2005; Russo: email January 5, 2006 cited at Bugliosi,
op. cit.
, Endnotes, p. 760;
Talbot: cited in “Enrique Ruiz-Williams,” www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk).

Rusk: int. Dean Rusk, 1994.

November 5 call:
Guardian
[UK], November 26, 1963, citing Peter Kornbluth of the National Security Archive.

Howard discussed: www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk; CIA debriefing of Howard, May 1, 1963.

369
Note 6
: Former CIA officers and other sources confirmed to the author that calls to Cuba were monitored, along with other communications systems. (See also Sen. Int. Cttee.
Supp
.
Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans
, Report, 94-755, Book III.145).