Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  In July he was sent to the Marines Corps Air Station at El Toro, California. That August he was sent to Yokosuka, Japan. It is necessary here to point out how the Warren Report deals with this next crucial step in Oswald’s life. It reports that Oswald would now be “based at Atsugi, about 20 miles west of Tokyo. Oswald was a radar operator in MACS-1 …. Its function was to direct aircraft to their targets by radar, communicating with the pilots by radio.”56 Somehow, the Commission cannot bring itself to state two important pieces of information about Oswald’s new assignment. First, Atsugi was known not just as the home of the First Marine Air Wing, but as home of the “Joint Technical Advisory Group,” jargon for its being the main operational base in the Far East for the Central Intelligence Agency. It evolved into that in the early 1950s, for operations into China and Korea.57 The Agency’s influence there expanded in the mid-fifties when the high altitude reconnaissance plane, the U-2, which had just become operational, flew out of Atsugi. The CIA had developed the plane through Lockheed Aircraft. There were three units in operation at this time; two flew out of the Middle East, and one out of Atsugi.

  In the index of the Warren Report you will not find a reference to the U-2, or to Francis Gary Powers. Powers was the pilot of the U-2 that was reportedly shot down over Russia in May of 1960, while radar operator Oswald was there. It was this downing that fouled relations in advance between Eisenhower and Khrushchev for their summit meeting in mid-May. This was meant to be a momentous four-power summit between England, France, Russia, and the United States. Held in Paris and hosted by Premier Charles de Gaulle, Khrushchev disrupted it on May 16 by meeting separately with Harold Macmillan of England and de Gaulle before announcing a set of demands for Eisenhower to meet about the U-2 incident.58 Eisenhower did not meet them, since they included punishment for those involved with the flight. Therefore, Khrushchev left the meeting and withdrew his invitation to Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union after the summit. This is a meeting that Eisenhower had planned for many months in advance. In fact he and Khrushchev had met in the summer of 1959 and got along so well that they planned on negotiating things like a test ban treaty and the status of Berlin at the Paris summit.59 It was supposed to be the capstone to Eisenhower’s eight years in office.60 He had meant it to mark a thaw in East-West relations, an opening which his successor could then develop further. It is an established fact that Dulles and Bissell had found ways to authorize flights by working around Eisenhower’s instructions.61 There has been a debate ever since over whether or not this particular flight was authorized by Eisenhower. Afterwards, he cancelled all U-2 flights.62 Some have even speculated that it is this episode—the shoot-down and its scuttling of the summit—that caused Eisenhower’s famous warning about the military-industrial complex in his January 1961 Farewell Address. A speech that, in one draft, lamented his inability to achieve world peace.63

  As John Newman notes, and the Warren Report conceals, one of Oswald’s duties while in Japan was to actually guard the U-2 while in hangar. Oswald also used state-of-the-art radar equipment to track the plane.64 Other members of Oswald’s unit, MACS-1, recalled that they were stationed right next to the air strip where the U-2 would land. And they had special radar height finding technology, which could track the plane up to over 80,000 feet.65 Now, the U-2 program was classified as Top Secret. Yet, as previously noted, the Warren Report states that the highest security clearance Oswald was ever granted was Confidential, two classes below that. As Newman notes, this does not seem credible in light of the new document declassification by the ARRB. In fact, some of Oswald’s service pals have hinted that he did have a special security clearance.66 For Oswald appears to have been part of Detachment C, a special technical unit that seems to have been part of the U-2 program. Further, he knew something that virtually no one else did: the U-2 was flying not just over Russia, but over China.67 And this unit followed the U-2 as it went around the south Pacific to various trouble spots, like Taiwan and Indonesia. This is an important topic that we shall further discuss when Oswald defects to Russia.

  Also, a strange but notable coincidence occurred that may be just ships passing in the night. Oswald arrived in the Tokyo area, just a few months after it appears Howard Hunt had left the area. Further, Hunt left Japan to at least partly work on the U-2 flights in Europe.68

  As mentioned in Chapter 5, another notable point about Oswald in Japan is his meeting with Richard Case Nagell. Oswald had been seen outside the Tokyo Soviet Embassy by the National Police. He was walking outside the gate but then turned and went inside. Nagell knew it was Oswald since a friend of his on the force showed him the young man’s picture.69 Nagell then arranged to meet Oswald under an assumed name. He found out that Oswald’s ostensible purpose at the embassy was to have some coins identified. But Nagell also found out that Oswald had also met with Colonel Nikolai Eroshkin. Eroshkin was under embassy cover but was actually a GRU agent. In America this would make him a military intelligence agent. Nagell states that the Soviets suspected Oswald of being some kind of surveillance agent almost immediately. What makes this even more interesting is that the CIA was involved in an attempt to get Eroshkin to defect to the American side.70

  Another point that should be made about Oswald’s stay in the Marines was his training in the infantry for marksmanship. Oswald was tested twice, once in December of 1956 and once in May of 1959. To put it mildly, he did not do very well either time. There are three classifications in the Marines. From highest to lowest, they are expert, sharpshooter, and marksman. On his first test in 1956, Oswald scored 212, which was two points above the minimum to qualify as a sharpshooter. In other words, he was in the lower ranges of the middle slot. In 1959, Oswald scored 191, which was 1 point over the minimum ranking for marksman. In other words, he almost completely slipped off the bottom of the scale.71 The Commission realized it had a problem here and so they called in Marine Corps Major Eugene D. Anderson to try and explain why Oswald did so poorly in 1959. Anderson said that, “It might well have been a bad day for firing the rifle—windy, rainy, dark.” Mark Lane looked up the true weather conditions that day. Like most days in Southern California, it was sunny and bright with no rain. The temperature ranged from 72–79 degrees.72

  What makes this even worse is the observation by some of his colleagues in the service as to Oswald’s general aptitude with a rifle. Henry Hurt interviewed dozens of Oswald’s Marine Corps acquaintances. They all agreed that Oswald could not shoot. For instance, Sherman Cooley said, “I saw that man shoot. There’s no way he could have ever learned to shoot well enough to do what they accused him of doing in Dallas.” James Person, who later became a bank president, recalled the lack of physical coordination that contributed to Oswald being a poor shot on the rifle range.73 In fact, Hurt did enough investigating on this point to learn that Oswald was actually called a “shitbird.” That is someone who repeatedly failed his test and had to do it over and over. In fact, Hurt interviewed some Marines who said Oswald never did pass the test. But he was given a final qualifying mark so that he and the unit could continue with basic training.74

  There is no way around describing what the Warren Report does with the above information. To show how candid and painstaking they were in their pursuit of the facts, as a way to disguise Oswald’s poor performance before leaving the service, they actually repeated Anderson’s fib about the bad weather on Oswald’s scoring round in 1959.75 They then quote two military men as saying that Oswald was an above average shot for a Marine, and an excellent shot compared to a civilian.76 As Hurt demonstrated, Oswald was somewhat of a joke in this regard to his fellow Marines. Like many statements in the report it was made not because of the evidence, but in spite of it.

  On October 27, when Oswald opened his locker, a derringer dropped out, discharged, and the bullet hit him in the left elbow. He was taken to a nearby hospital for two weeks and then, in April of 1958, he was court-martialed for having an unregistered weapon.77 He was sentenced to twenty day
s in the brig, fined 50 dollars and was reduced in rank. He was given a suspended sentence on the twenty days confinement, which was to be remitted in six months. In June of that year, Oswald was again court martialed for getting in a verbal altercation with an officer and pouring a drink on him.78 He was again sentenced to the brig and fined. But because of the repeat offense, this time he had to serve his former suspended sentence.

  In December, Oswald was transferred stateside to Marine Air Control Squadron No. 9 back in Santa Ana, California. There, headed by Lieutenant John E. Donovan, he was part of a ten-man crew engaged in aircraft surveil-lance.79 And for the first time, the report now states that Oswald may have had a clearance higher than confidential. Which is surprising. Because the report is now about to describe something quite unusual. That is a marine whose “thoughts were occupied increasingly with Russia and the Russian way of life.”80 Yet, as Philip Melanson noted, his access now did not appear to become restricted. Even as he did things like study the Russian language and read Russian books for hours at a time. He also subscribed to the famous Russian newspaper Pravda. He even played Russian records so loudly that they could be heard throughout his barracks.81 Oswald openly discussed Soviet politics and talked in Russian to his fellow Marines. His friends now began to kid him by calling him “Oswaldskovich.” He kidded back by calling them “comrade.” He now began to call Soviet communism “the best system in the world.”82

  This was in 1958—ten years after the fall of China to communism, five years after the close of the Korean War, and just four years after the McCarthy witch hunts. The Rosenbergs had been executed in 1953. Yet, there was no action taken against Oswald for any of this. Mail-room workers dutifully reported his leftwing mail. Nothing was done. Then in February of 1959, he did something that caused Jim Garrison to drop his pipe when he read about it in the Warren Commission volumes: Oswald took a mastery test in Russian.83 As the DA described it, he had been on active or reserve duty for over two decades. Neither he, nor anyone he knew, had ever taken a test in Russian. Further, as Garrison then commented, why would a radar operator need to educate himself in the Russian language? The Warren Report tries to minimize the impact of this startling examination by saying that he did not do very well on the test. But Oswald kept up his studies and improved drastically. One of Oswald’s colleagues arranged a meeting for him with his aunt, Rosaleen Quinn, who was also studying Russian. Except she had been tutored in the language for over a year in preparation for a State Department exam. Quinn was quite impressed that Oswald now spoke Russian at least as well as she did.84 Oswald tried to explain his marked improvement by saying he listened to Radio Moscow. Any language expert will tell you that one does not learn a language as difficult as Russian by listening to distant voices speak the language rapidly. One has to work at it slowly, piece by piece, so that one understands words and phrases enough to build context for both comprehension and spoken mastery. In other words, like Quinn, one must construct a controlled environment, perhaps with a tutor. Or perhaps in a classroom.

  The latter appears to be what Oswald did. The report does not tell us this, but the Commission knew about it. In 1974, researcher Harold Weisberg finally received the transcript of the January 27, 1964 Warren Commission executive session meeting. Most of this session was spent discussing the issue of whether or not Oswald was a secret agent, since reports had already been circulating in the press about this possibility. During the meeting, Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin mentioned that the Commission was trying “to find out what he [Oswald] studied at the Monterey School of the Army in the way of languages.”85 As Rankin phrased it, there is no question in his mind that Oswald was there. (And so was Richard Case Nagell.86) This may explain how Oswald improved his proficiency in a matter of months. Further, when the author interviewed Dan Campbell in New Orleans, he told me that he was part of a marksmanship team that would tour military facilities giving instructions and exhibitions. He gave one once at the same California base Oswald was at. He recalled it because the host officer had him sleep in Oswald’s bunk since, as he told Dan, Oswald was hardly there at the time.87

  It was in this time period, 1959, that another introduction is made to Oswald. He met another Marine recruit named Kerry Thornley. Although Thornley lived on another part of the base, and he only knew Oswald for a period of about two to three months, Thornley would become an important witness for the Warren Commission.88 Whereas other soldiers acknowledged that Oswald was studying the Russian language, was interested is Russian culture, and was cognizant of the Russian governmental system, it is hard to find anyone who actually said Oswald was a communist. For instance, Jim Botelho was friends with Oswald and even took him home to meet his parents once. Botelho once told Mark Lane that he was quite conservative at that time: “Oswald was not a Communist or a Marxist. If he was I would have taken violent action against him and so would many of the Marines in the unit.”89 Marine David Bucknell told Lane that during 1959 Oswald and others, including himself, made a visit to the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) at El Toro. There they were pitched on becoming part of an intelligence operation against communists. Oswald made a few more such visits. He told Bucknell that the civilian recruiter those later times was his same intelligence contact at Atsugi. He then told Bucknell that after he was discharged, he would go to Russia as part of an American intelligence mission, and would return to America as a hero in 1961. Botelho later revealed his reaction to Oswald’s journey to Russia. He said it was the talk of the base by all of Oswald’s pals. Botelho said that none of the radio codes at the base were altered, even though Oswald knew all of them. Since Botelho knew Oswald was actually anti-Soviet, he suspected there would be no real investigation at the base. Two civilians later arrived. They asked a few questions, took no written statements, and did not tape record any interviews. Botelho concluded it was a CYA investigation: one done so the Marines could say there was an inquiry. When this occurred, Botelho said, “I knew then what I know now: Oswald was on an assignment in Russia for American intelligence.”90 If this suspicion was as widespread among Oswald’s cohorts as Botelho implies, it may be why most of their statements collected in the Warren Commission are rather brief. In fact, many of them are perhaps a half page long. Most of them were not even heard by the Commission.

  But of the ones who were heard, Kerry Thornley probably testified the longest. And he was the one who portrayed Oswald as an ideological Marxist. Consider this as possible motivation for the assassination: “This gets back to emotional instability and why did it occur. I do believe, to begin with, Oswald, how long ago he had acquired the idea … it was almost a certainty that the world would end up under a totalitarian government.” And later, “I think he accepted Orwell’s premise in this that there was no fighting it. That sooner or later you were going to have to love Big Brother … this was the central thing that disturbed him … he wanted to be on the winning side for one thing, and therefore, the great interest in communism.”91 And then, as the Commission does, Thornley says that although he was convinced Oswald was a Marxist, he could never have predicted his defection.92 Thornley was also used as an amateur psychologist to portray Oswald as being a bit eccentric. For instance, he described Oswald as walking around with the bill of his cap down so he would not have to look at anything around him: “This is just an attempt … on his part, to blot out the military so he wouldn’t have to look at it: he wouldn’t have to think about it. In fact he made a comment to that effect at one time … he didn’t like what he had to look at.”93 Thornley’s testimony, more than any other Marine cohort, set the profile for the Commission’s portrayal of Oswald as a Marxist misfit and helped provide them with a reason for Oswald to murder President Kennedy. We will return to Thornley in our discussion of Jim Garrison’s inquiry.

  Let us close out our discussion of Oswald’s military service with two fascinating and revealing episodes, which need to be examined in light of the declassification process. They are Oswald’s application for
entry into Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland and his hardship discharge.

  In mid-March of 1959, Oswald somehow picked up an application to attend Albert Schweitzer College (ASC). He applied for the spring term of 1960. As some commentators have noted, Schweitzer was a college in name only, since it offered no degrees.94 It began as a lecture series by one Hans Casparis. Casparis then expanded the offerings with help from various individuals from the USA and also the Unitarian Church, which also played a part in its administration. In 1953, because of this financial outreach, Casparis purchased the former Hotel Krone in Churwalden, a five story, thirty-room building and announced the opening of the “college.”95 The location of ASC was odd. It was high in the Swiss Alps, fifteen miles from the industrial town of Chur. There was only one main road winding through the town and into the Alps. The school accommodated only thirty students, yet Schweitzer listed sixty-eight individuals as representatives and references of the college.96 There was no bus or railway service to the village and no library, hospital, fire department, or police station. The college officially opened to students in the fall of 1955. Yet in the entering class of thirty, none were from Switzerland. This may have been deliberate, in order not to have to register or be accredited with the Swiss government. As we shall see the college was virtually unknown to Swiss authorities. In fact, when the FBI tried to find the place, it transferred the request to agents in Paris. Even they had never heard of it, so they contacted the Swiss police. It took the Swiss police two months to find Albert Schweitzer. If the idea was to keep a low profile, it was achieved.97