by Barry Krusch
Having created a cover for agents of this nature, the government would then, if questioned, write a letter similar to the affidavit above signed by McCone and deny any connection, even to the extent of not paying individuals for the covert operations in those cases when the lawsuit would reveal the identity of the covert operative, preserving the intelligence community Holy Grail of “plausible deniability.”
We think of this spycraft as a modern phenomenon, but it’s as least as old as the 19th century. We know this because a case on just this point went to the Supreme Court in . . . 1875!
In that case, Totten v. United States (92 U.S. 105), Enoch Totten claimed to have been hired by President Lincoln for a “secret service” (the word “covert” not in vogue at the time) at the then-whopping salary of $200 per month for a military intelligence mission.
This case established the precedent that an intelligence agent could not compel the government by court action to pay for covert actions rendered. For our purposes, what we learn from the case is that government will always deny the existence of covert operations. As the Court stated, 8
The service stipulated by the contract was a secret service; the information sought was to be obtained clandestinely, and was to be communicated privately; the employment and the service were to be equally concealed. Both employer and agent must have understood that the lips of the other were to be forever sealed respecting the relation of either to the matter. This condition of the engagement was implied from the nature of the employment, and is implied in all secret employments of the government in time of war or upon matters affecting our foreign relations where a disclosure of the service might compromise or embarrass our government in its public duties . . .
So, if anyone expects the CIA to reveal that Oswald was an agent of the CIA (if he was), don’t hold your breath.
But if Dulles wouldn’t talk, others would. A former finance officer for the CIA, Jim Woolcott, claimed that Oswald was a CIA double agent to the Soviet Union. Woolcott had issued the paychecks for a counterespionage project in which Oswald was involved (JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 366).
Wilcott provided an interview in March 22, 1978 for the HSCA. In that interview, Wilcott not only linked Oswald to the CIA, but also the CIA to the assassination, provocatively suggesting as a possibility Warren Commissioner Dulles’ involvement in the murder (Wilcott interview, p. 12; JFK Record Number 180-10116-10096): 9
Coming from a CIA insider, this is information that can’t be ignored. Furthermore, we know Wilcott was privy to insider information.
Take a look at the second paragraph in the screen capture below, where Wilcott predicts an operation similar to Operation Northwoods. This is extremely significant, because the Wilcott statement was prepared in 1978, over 20 years before anyone knew the Northwoods memo existed! (Wilcott interview, p. 15) 10
Willcott also said that several CIA personnel — “at least six or seven” — knew that Oswald had been a CIA agent (Wilcott interview Executive Session, p. 8; this screen capture is from the original transcript): 11
Wilcott was not the only CIA insider to connect the CIA to the assassination. Several members of the CIA participated in a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, according to a deathbed confession by E. Howard Hunt which was given most likely in January 2007, a confession which has still not been reported in the major media as of April 10, 2012 (based on a Nexis search by the author [only one story found in the Eureka Times Standard]), in an operation which Hunt referred to as “the big event,” which reads in pertinent part as follows (names of CIA personnel in bold italic): 12
I heard from Frank [BK: Sturgis] that LBJ had designated Cord Meyer Jr. to undertake a larger organization while keeping it totally secret. Cord Meyer himself was a rather favorite member of the Eastern aristocracy. . . .
As for Dave Philips, I knew him pretty well at one time. He worked for me during the Guatemala project. He made himself useful to the agency in Santiago, Chile where he was an American businessman. In any case, his actions, whatever they were, came to the attention of the Santiago station chief and when his resume became known to people in the Western Hemisphere division he was brought in to work on Guatemalan operations.
Sturgis and Morales and people of that ilk, stayed in apartment houses during preparations for the big event. Their addresses were very subject to change so that where a fellow like Morales had been one day, you’d not necessarily associated with that address the following day. In short it was a very mobile experience. . . .
What is important in the story is that we backtrack the chain of command up through Cord Meyer and laying the doings at the doorstep of LBJ. He in my opinion, had an almost maniacal urge to become President. He regarded JFK, as he was in fact, an obstacle to achieving that. He could have waited for JFK to finish out his term and then undoubtedly a second term. So that would have put LBJ at the head of a long list of people who were waiting for some change in the executive branch.
Of course, this maps on perfectly to the prediction in the Times we saw earlier that any coup d’état in the United States would be CIA-driven: 13
This article is especially significant, because it was written by a reporter so close to Kennedy that he helped Kennedy edit Profiles In Coverage, and therefore had excellent access to Kennedy, which could have meant that this story originated from Kennedy himself (for even more background on this relationship, see the post-1992 edition of Mark Lane’s Rush To Judgment, p. viii-x).
Another provocative statement linking the CIA to the assassination was uttered by another CIA insider, James Angleton (chief of the CIA’s counterintelligence (CI) staff from 1954 to 1975), who made a curious statement in some parting remarks (after resigning) to The New York Times on December 25th, 1974: 14
Another CIA insider who linked Oswald to the CIA was former executive assistant to the Deputy Director, Victor Marchetti. In the book JFK And The Unspeakable, James Douglass described Marchetti’s theory about a phone call placed by Oswald from prison to a “John Hurt” in Raleigh, North Carolina. There were two John Hurts in Raleigh. One of them had a military intelligence background: John David Hurt served as U.S. Army counterintelligence Special Agent. Marchetti explained why (JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 365):
Marchetti said he thought Oswald was following the standard intelligence practice of trying to contact his case officer through a “cut-out,” a “clean” intermediary with no direct involvement in an operation. As to why Oswald’s call was made to North Carolina, Marchetti pointed out that the Office of Naval Intelligence had an operations center in Nags Head, North Carolina, for agents who had been sent as fake expatriates to the Soviet Union — corresponding to Oswald’s background.
In an interview, Marchetti said, “[Oswald] was probably calling his cutout. He was calling somebody who could put him in touch with his case officer. He couldn’t go beyond that person. There’s no way he could. He just had to depend on this person to say, ‘Okay, I’ll deliver the message.’ Now, if the cut-out has already been alerted to cut him off and ignore him, then . . .”
However, contacting this “cutout,” if that is indeed what happened, would have been an extremely risky business, if he was the wrong person to contact.
One indication is a Termination Secrecy Oath CIA personnel were required to sign in the early ‘60’s. Here is one example from August, 1963, an oath signed by Ross Crozier. Notice what it says: "in the event I am called upon . . . to testify or provide information which I am pledged hereby not disclose, I will notify the Organization immediately.” Note that violation would have exposed the person signing the oath to prosecution under espionage laws: 14a
Any CIA personnel threatening to expose the relationship to the wrong individual could have been killed for doing that, and Marchetti had no problem admitting that he himself would do the killing! (JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 366)
INTERVIEWER: “Okay, if someone were an agent, and they were involved in something, and nobody believes they are an agent. He i
s arrested, and trying to communicate, let’s say, and he is one of you guys. What is the procedure?”
MARCHETTI: “I’d kill him.”
INTERVIEWER: “If I were an agent for the Agency, and I was involved in something involving the law domestically and the FBI, would I have a contact to call?”
MARCHETTI: “Yes.”
INTERVIEWER: “A verification contact?”
MARCHETTI: “Yes, you would.”
INTERVIEWER: “Would I be dead?”
MARCHETTI: “It would all depend on the situation. If you get into bad trouble, we’re not going to verify you. No how, no way.”
INTERVIEWER: “But there is a call mechanism set up.”
MARCHETTI: “Yes.”
INTERVIEWER: “So it is conceivable that Lee Harvey Oswald was . . . “
MARCHETTI: “That’s what he was doing. He was trying to call in and say, ‘Tell them I’m all right.’ “
INTERVIEWER: “Was that his death warrant?”
MARCHETTI: “You betcha. Because this time he went over the dam, whether he knew it or not, or whether they set him up or not. It doesn’t matter. He was over the dam. At that point it was executive action.”
So, we have four CIA personnel — Wilcott, Angleton, Hunt, and Marchetti — indicating, in one way or another, Oswald’s connection to the CIA, and a CIA connection to the assassination!
If these statements by CIA insiders weren’t enough, there is also evidence in this December 2, 1963 FBI memo that connects the bullets said to have been used in the assassination with the CIA: 15
In case that is too difficult to read, let us zoom in on the key paragraphs here:
We also have the following memo related to Oswald’s intelligence history, which looks like an answer to this Zen Koan: “what memo tells nothing, while at the same time tells everything?” (Searching the Shadows, p. 213):
Building from evidence like what we have seen above, Craig Roberts, a former police officer and a trained sniper with extensive combat experience (he was part of the first Marine battalion landing team to see action in Vietnam), summarized the line of research developed in this area (Kill Zone, pp. 69-70; footnotes omitted):
Entire books have been written describing Oswald’s past and links to the intelligence community. Some say he was recruited by the CIA, others the FBI and still others, the KGB. The most logical assumption is that Oswald was originally ONI — Office of Naval Intelligence. He was recruited while stationed at Atsugi, Japan, as a Marine radar operator working air traffic control. Atsugi was an operational center for “spook” operations such as the U-2 spy planes that overflew China and Russia. Sometime during his tour he, along with Roscoe White, was recruited by the intelligence community, and sometime later — probably just before “defecting” to Russia — he became a shared asset. [90 days after Oswald defected to Russia, an obsolete SAM-2 missile shot CIA U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers out of the sky over Russian territory. This incident effectively cancelled the arms summit between Eisenhower and Kruschev scheduled to occur in Switzerland. In the past, the SAM-2 could not knock down the U-2s because the Russians did not know what altitude the Lockheed spy planes flew at.]
According to Victor Marchetti, Deputy Assistant to the Director of the CIA, Richard Helms, “Oswald was likely a ‘dangle,’ an American intelligence agent put out there for the Soviets to recruit in the hope that he could penetrate the Soviet intelligence network. [He probably worked for] the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Navy’s CIA.”
Regarding Oswald’s status at the time of his defection to Russia, Marchetti said, “I believe Oswald was working with Naval Intelligence, but the FBI was coordinating on the operation, as was the CIA when he was in Russia.”
What is known is this: Oswald had a CIA “201” file. A 201 file is a personnel file which contains all records regarding an employee. In Oswald’s case, his 201 file took up two entire file drawers. He also had an FBI registered informant number, S-179, and drew a monthly paycheck from the Bureau of $200.00.
Marchetti and others say that Oswald was a CIA agent, and there is some evidence that the CIA was involved in the assassination. On the surface, that looks bad for Oswald, but before we automatically jump to the conclusion that Oswald, a CIA agent, was part of a CIA-led conspiracy, we need to dig a little deeper.
Assume for the moment that some employees of the CIA were implicated in the assassination of Kennedy, and that Oswald worked for the CIA, either with or without some foreknowledge of the assassination.
Would that have automatically made Oswald guilty from the perspective of vicarious liability? Not necessarily. To make that determination, we would have to know the answer to the following absolutely key question:
“Prior to the assassination, what were Oswald’s orders?”
The whole case would rest on this missing piece of information, because there are a whole host of possibilities that do not involve Oswald in the assassination as a witting participant, but might involve him as an unwitting participant, one directed to take actions A, B, and C by his superiors, actions which seemed innocent enough to Oswald enough at the time (given his undercover role), but which in retrospect laid down a trail of evidence designed to anchor his “legend” as a future assassin.
Let us take one simple example. In New Orleans on August 9, 1963, Oswald was passing out pro-Cuba pamphlets in front of the International Trade Mart, and a television camera just happened to be around to record that activity. Perhaps Oswald was told that, as an undercover agent, he should pass out the pamphlets so that the television camera could record people taking the pamphlets, so that they could later be tracked by the FBI as potential Communists.
If this was the case, Oswald would have thought he was playing the role of the good mole, but in fact the real purpose of the episode would have been to capture his activities on film so that he could be linked after the assassination not only as a communist, but also a supporter of Castro.
The orders to enact this COINTELPRO-like scheme could have originated at the highest levels, and only those at the highest levels would have known the true purpose of the orders, getting lower-echelon levels involved in the conspiracy without their knowledge.
As we consider the universe of possibilities, there is no end to scenarios that could exonerate Oswald. According to one hypothesis related to Oswald’s role as an undercover agent, Oswald could even have been informed of plans to assassinate President Kennedy, but only because he was simultaneously told that he was part of a CIA “abort team” that would attempt to stop the assassination, and he might have been asked to carry a rifle into the building for the purpose of handing it off to someone else who would try to stop the assassination.
This is not to say that the evidence shows that Oswald was carrying a rifle into the building, only that even if he was, if Proposition One was not proven true beyond a reasonable doubt, that action could be explained in a way that would not implicate him as a guilty party in the assassination (an explanation that would be unavailable if Proposition One were true). 16
This is because if that scenario were true, Oswald obviously lacked the intent necessary for the crime of murder, as can be easily seen in the following hypothetical situation:
Suppose someone asks you to deliver a package for them to an attorney’s office because their car has run out of gas. Being the good Samaritan, you do that. 30 minutes after you deliver the package, it explodes.
A crime has been committed. Arguably, by a conspiracy. But are you part of the conspiracy? No: you lack the intent to commit the crime.
The same would be true in Oswald’s case, for exactly the same reasons. Consequently, evidence regarding Oswald’s possible background as an undercover agent, if indeed he was one, would have to have been explored and developed to discover his intent and foreknowledge of the assassination (if any). Without this key evidence establishing his intent and foreknowledge, a case against him could not move forward.
Here is yet another sc
enario in which Oswald would not be implicated, mentioned by Walt Brown in his book Treachery In Dallas, a scenario again developed from evidence indicating that Oswald had been an undercover agent, specifically, that as a marine, Oswald was also an “asset” stationed at the Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan, working for the Office of Naval Intelligence or the CIA, or both, in an undercover role as a “communist” (developing the credibility that would enable him to infiltrate Castro’s Cuba in lines with his earlier “defection” to the Soviet Union).