Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics

by Peter Dale Scott

  Scott’s choice of words ("fact," "extent") is indicative of earlier events involving Durán that have not hitherto been publicly reported.

  In fact Scott had both misrepresented what the informant apparently said (reporting sexual relations with Oswald, but not "on several occasions"), and suppressed its most important revelation, that she had been tortured by the DFS until she "admitted that she had had an affair with Oswald:"

  [Long redaction] XXXX continued that Silvia Durán informed XXXX that she had first met Oswald when he applied for a visa and gone out with him several times since she liked him from the start. She admitted that she had sexual relations with him but insisted that she had no idea of his plans. When the news of the assassination broke she stated that she was immediately taken into custody by the Mexican police and interrogated thoroughly and beaten until she admitted that she had had an affair with Oswald.31

  It is noteworthy that Scott, far from rebutting the torture allegation, apparently accepted it as a fact, and one not worth commenting on.

  The Lopez Report, in transmitting this interview, commented that "Silvia Durán admitted that the Mexican police had questioned her on this point but denied that she had had an affair with Oswald."32 This account is confirmed by its cited source, Silvia Durán’s interview of June 6, 1978.

  Cornwell: Did the officers from the Securidad Department ever suggest to you during the questioning that they had information that you and Oswald had been lovers?

  Tirado [Durán]: Yes, and also that we were Communists and that we were planning the Revolution and uh, a lot of false things.33

  Curious as to why Ms. Durán had not been asked about the torture, I contacted Edwin Lopez, who had translated at the interview. He confirmed that, off the record, Ms. Durán had said that she was tortured badly, and that indeed in recalling this she had broken down and wept. She had however declined to say anything about the torture on the record because, as a citizen and resident of Mexico, she feared reprisal.

  One hesitates now to make any revelation that would put Ms. Duràn at risk. The issue however is an important one. According to the account which Scott accepted as "fact," she was not only tortured on the matter of the liaison, but coerced into admitting it. If Scott’s blasé comment is true (this "adds little to the OSWALD case"), then the accounts of her confession have probably been altered, to convert a suppressed "phase one" story of a sexual liaison into the innocuous "phase two" version published by the Warren Commission.34 Lending credence to this hypothesis is the known fact that the published version was censored and rewritten (by the CIA, according to the Lopez Report) on at least one other point, Duràn’s original description of Oswald as "blonde and short".35

  Were Mann and Scott Backed in Their Defiance of Official instructions?

  All this lends dramatic urgency to the question of whether or not Scott and Mann were "acting alone" in their defiant recommendation, against earlier official instructions from Headquarters, that Durán be rearrested by the DFS, and coerced into corroborating the Alvarado story.

  One interpretation of the known facts is to postulate a real division within the Administration, between "phase one" enthusiasts like Scott and Mann (who wanted to ask the DFS "to go all out") and "phase two" pragmatists like Karamessines, who struggled in vain to prevent the arrest and rearrest from taking place.

  The chief problem with this analysis is that Scott and Mann drew no disapprobation for their course of action. Scott remained in his post as Chief of Station until his retirement six years later. Mann, far from being rebuked, was swiftly promoted by the new President, Lyndon Johnson, on December 14, 1963, to become the new Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affairs. (Mann’s promotion was the more dramatic because unexpected; he had earlier announced, under Kennedy, his plans to retire at the end of the year.)36

  A second interpretation of the facts is that beneath the apparent contest of opposing forces, "phase one" and "phase two," a higher authority was manipulating the Alvarado story, backed as it was by Scott and Mann, towards the desired "phase two" outcome of the Warren Commission and Report. I truly do not know whether or not such a higher authority existed. If it did, however, it almost certainly involved Lyndon Johnson.

  Lyndon Johnson was a close personal friend of the soon-to-be-elected Mexican President Gustavo Díaz Ordáz, who has been described as the most right-wing (and pro-American) President since Miguel Aleman in the early 1950s. Just as Díaz Ordáz maintained tight control over the DFS (along with his good friend Win Scott), so Johnson was the friend and hope of those in the CIA who thought that Kennedy had been wrong to dismiss Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

  As Johnson barely spoke Spanish, he relied in his meetings with Díaz Ordáz on the translating ability of a fellow Texan, Thomas Mann. As Mann later told author Dick Russell,

  Lyndon Johnson had lines into Mexico that I knew nothing about. He was an amazing man. He didn’t speak Spanish, but he was a good friend of [Gustavo] Dfaz Ordáz, who became President of Mexico. He used to come down and see Johnson at the ranch several times, and Johnson would have me down to translate.37

  (For what it is worth, former KGB Colonel Oleg Nechiporenko reports that his DFS contact told him that "many in the DFS felt that Lyndon Johnson was responsible" for the assassination.)38

  Johnson was not particularly close to the CIA as an Agency. His lack of interest in intelligence estimates has been cited as a reason for the resignation of CIA Director John McCone in 1965, and Johnson’s replacement of him by an inept outsider, Admiral William Rabom.39 In 1966 Johnson did however give the CIA its first Director who was also a career officer, Richard Helms, and Helms had been close to Dulles since their days together in Germany with OSS.40 (Helms later revealed that Johnson had explained to him in 1965 that Rabom was a "temporary measure," and that Johnson would appoint Helms when he had proved himself as Deputy Director.)41

  What remains unknown is the extent of the new President’s knowledge of the "phase one" rumors which, as he informed Earl Warren, were "floating around." If he had any intimate knowledge of either the Kostikov story or the Alvarado story, he must have known that a true investigation of the case would have to be at arms length from the CIA. Instead Johnson named Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission. Dulles’ strategic location was to play an important role in the CIA cover-up that ensued. If there was a conspiracy to ensure such a cover-up, then the naming of Dulles to his new post was almost certainly part of it42

  However important the personal connection between Johnson, Díaz Ordáz, and Thomas Mann, it could never, however, have explained the strange falsifications of CIA messages that occured at CIA Headquarters. To explain that phenomenon we must look inside the Agency itself.

  Such a program of falsification and subsequent cover-up could have been co-ordinated, I shall suggest, by those who were closest to former Director Allen Dulles.

  The Dulles-Angleton-Hunt-Phillips "Agency-Within-the-Agency"

  In 1963 the "responsible" press, the New York Times and the Washington Post never commented critically on Johnson’s choice of Allen Dulles, the most important official fired by John F. Kennedy, to serve on the Commission investigating the President’s murder.

  Even though one would never expect them to play this critical role, they should have, for Allen Dulles was perhaps the Kennedy s’ most powerful enemy in the U.S., arguably more powerful even than the new President. Dulles had resented his being made to take the blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco: "He thought other people should be resigning before he did, and made it clear that he was thinking of one person in particular, Robert Kennedy."43

  Before the assassination, Dulles had fought back in the media, leaking his resentment against the Kennedys to the sympathetic ears of Charles J.V. Murphy of Fortune magazine, part of Henry Luce’s Time-Life empire. Murphy’s pro-Dulles apologia, "Cuba: The Record Set Straight," was simultaneously a piece lobbying for escalated U.S. involvement in Indochina, just before Kennedy’s fi
rst major Vietnam decision.44 In this counter-attack, Dulles had Agency support. Dulles asked to have one of his CIA proteges, E. Howard Hunt, go over Murphy’s article in detail; and Hunt was accordingly instructed to do so.45

  If Hunt was close to Dulles, he was even closer to his own protege, David Atlee Phillips. In fact it was probably through Hunt that Phillips became "an active player in a small clique within the CIA hierarchy who were almost autonomous in their operational capabilities," an OSS brotherhood of whom Allen Dulles, inside the Agency or out, was the acknowledged leader.46 What merits further investigation is that members of this brotherhood played key roles on both sides of the Oswald "phase one"-"phase two" dialectic.

  The key to Dulles’ "agency-within-the-Agency," as Aarons and Loftus have called it, was the power Dulles had conferred on his close friend Jim Angleton.47 As Counterintelligence Chief Angleton was authorized to spy on the rest of the CIA, and maintain a CI network of assets in other branches. The close connection between Dulles and Angleton endured well beyond Dulles’ departure from the Agency.48

  One sign of in-house CIA intrigue over the assassination is that those responsible for falsifying the Oswald-Kostikov story were not punished, or even distanced from the investigation of Kennedy’s murder. On the contrary, John "Scelso" of WH/3, the Mexico desk, and Birch D. O’Neal, the head of CI/SIG, both involved in the falsified October messages from Headquarters, were assigned after the assassination to key roles in the CIA investigation and resulting liaison with the FBI.49

  The man responsible for these assignments was Deputy Director of Plans Richard Helms, another Dulles loyalist and OSS brother. It is not clear that Helms’ role was conspiratorial. On the contrary, while "Scelso" may have encouraged the proliferation of "phase one" Oswald stories, Helms appears to have constrained them.50 What remains tp be explored is whether these two apparently opposing efforts were actually part of a single co-ordinated scenario.

  Helms’s assignment of "Scelso" and O’Neal to the investigation made the same kind of sense as Johnson’s putting Dulles on the Warren Commission. On the Commission, it is generally conceded, Dulles actively covered up the CIA involvement in the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro.51 The House Committee, in an Appendix to its Report, concluded that Helms himself, "though the main contact with the Commission, apparently did not inform it of the CIA plots to assassinate Castro," and found a further "indication that his testimony before the Commission was misleading."52

  Helms and Angleton designated Angleton’s Chief of Research and Analysis, Ray Rocca, to be the CIA’s point of contact with the Commission.53 Angleton clearly hoped by doing so to prevent a number of highly relevant counterintelligence operations from being exposed, such as the CIA’s illegal HT/LINGUAL mail-opening program (overseen by Birch D. O’Neal), and the photographic and electronic surveillance of the Soviet and Cuban Embassies in Mexico City.54

  Angleton also visited Dulles on instructions from Helms, in order to learn and prepare for the questions which Dulles thought the Commission might put to the CIA.55 Angleton’s consistent approach was, in Rocca’s words, "to wait out the Commission."56 One might have expected as much from the man who would later tell the Church Committee, "It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the Government has to comply with all the overt orders of the Government."57

  Having observed how closely the Dulles-Helms-Angleton network controlled the Warren Commission after the assassination, one is moved to ask about certain pre-assassination personnel movements, presumably authorized by Helms, which affected the Oswald-Kostikov story. One crucial move was the recall in 1963 of Tennant Bagley from Berne to Langley, where he was rapidly promoted to chief of the Counterintelligence Branch of the Soviet Division" (C/SR/CI).58 This promotion came in time for him to suppress mention of Kostikov in the October messages, and then sound the assassination alarm about Kostikov on November 23.

  Another move at this time was the temporary duty assignment of David Phillips, the Chief of Cuban Operations and Covert Action at the Mexico City Station, to Washington and Miami, "from at least late September to October 9, 1963."59 In view of allegations about Hunt’s Counterintelligence activities at this time (see below), it is relevant that while in Washington Phillips appears to have been attached to the Counterintelligence Staff of the Fitzgerald’s Special Activities Staff devoted to anti-Castro operations.

  Then there is the much disputed question of whether, as Tad Szulc has alleged, Howard Hunt was assigned to temporary duty in Mexico City for the period of August and September 1963, at the time of Oswald’s alleged visit there.60 Both Hunt and the CIA have strongly denied this claim. It is however supported by the sworn testimony of David Phillips in a libel suit, that he had seen Hunt in Mexico City at the time Hunt denied being there.61 In a 1973 House Watergate Hearing, Hunt testified how a retired CIA agent "had during the Cuban operation been my inside man in the Embassy when I was outside in Mexico operating as part of the Cuban task force.62

  An even more dramatic allegation, also strongly disputed, is that Hunt was in Dallas on November 22, 1963, at the time of the assassination. According to reporter Joseph Trento, a secret CIA memo of 1966, said to have been initialed by Angleton and Helms, emphasized the importance of keeping Hunt’s presence there a secret, and suggested a cover story to provide Hunt with an alibi.63 According to author Dick Russell, Trento later told him that Angleton himself was the source of the story, and arranged for a copy of the internal CIA memo to be delivered to him, as well as the House Committee.64 If this is true, Angleton’s role is sinister, and apparently part of a cover-up, whether the memo is real (and Hunt was in Dallas), or whether it was disinformation (and Hunt was not).

  Trento told Russell he understood from Angleton that Hunt was in Dallas because "of a serious counterintelligence problem with the [CIA] Cubans," some of whom were known to be "penetrated by Castro’s intelligence."65 Far-fetched as an explanation to justify Hunt’s presence in Dallas, it would make sense of his temporary detachment to Mexico City, where a number of JURE Cubans, suspected by Hunt and Angleton for their left-leaning politics, were preparing to take part in a Bobby Kennedy-backed operation against Castro. It would indeed have been characteristic of Angleton to use a CIA officer like Hunt, not nominally part of the Counterintelligence Staff, to spy on left-leaning CIA-sanctioned operations. And Hunt’s animosity against the Cuban Manuel Ray of JURE, conceded by Hunt himself in his memoir Give Us This Day, was well-known throughout the Agency.

  The CIA itself has said that Hunt’s title at this time was Chief of Covert Operations for the Domestic Operations Division headed by Dulles’ old friend Tracy Barnes.66 Szulc however has written that Hunt was asked to assist Dulles in writing a book, The Craft of Intelligence, that Dulles wrote following his involuntary retirement in 1961.67 Just how long it took to complete the book is not clear; it was however published in 1963. Certainly the book would have given Hunt the opportunity to spend many long hours (presumably on Company time) with Dulles, his former boss.

  A third person who would presumably have been present would have been Howard E. Roman, Dulles’ close friend and alleged collaborator on the book.68 Another member of the OSS "Old Boy" brotherhood in the CIA, Roman resigned in 1962 before taking up the book-writing job with Dulles (and possibly Hunt). Roman went on to write a total of two books (and two more edited volumes) with Dulles. In that capacity he was with Dulles at the moment, on November 22, 1963, when Dulles heard of the President’s murder.69

  Roman’s post-war career had been with Soviet matters, but I know nothing to connect him officially with the Lee Harvey Oswald files. The same cannot however be said of his wife, Jane Roman. A CIA official herself, it was Jane Roman who, as noted earlier, was the releasing officer on the falsified CIA cable to Mexico City on October 10, 1963.

  Conclusion: The "Phase One" Stories Affected History

  Assuredly the new President was not prevaricating, or being over-cautious, when he spoke to Chief Justice Warren of
the risk of war. "Phase one stories" were not just street rumors, they were being promoted energetically, and almost conspiratorially, on at least the Ambassadorial level.

  We need to insist that the promotion of such stories, per se, does nothing to link the proponents to the assassination. It is hardly surprising that opponents of Castro within the Government, along with anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, should seize this opportunity to reverse what they saw, rightly or wrongly, as the Kennedy policy of prolonged inaction.

  With the pre-assassination Kostikov story, on the other hand, we can be more specific. Unlike the Alvarado and other false stories, the Kostikov story was never exploited to achieve a policy change. It remained a secret in government files, and those who spoke publicly of KGB involvement never referred to it.

  To say that the falsifications of the October 1963 CIA messages had something to do with the plot to kill the President does not tell us anything about the motives of those falsifying the cables. As said above, they may have been illegal conspirators, or they may have been responding to a potential embarrassment created for them by these conspirators.

  One can reach one simple conclusion about these two alternative ways of reading the facts: The public has both the right and the need to know which of these alternatives is the true one.

  The first person one would have wanted to interrogate under oath about these falsifications, and about other falsehoods in his own earlier testimony, would have been David Atlee Phillips. Mr. Phillips unfortunately has since died, as have Win Scott and other relevant witnesses. This only adds to the urgency of securing testimony under oath from those who survive.

  1 Lopez Report, 242-50; MEXI 6453 of 8 October 1963. According to the full transcript, the name of Kostikov was actually raised by "Oswald"’s interlocutor, the Soviet Embassy guard Obyedkov, rather than by Oswald (Lopez Report, 79).