Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics
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We shall see that the notorious David Phillips, and others in his milieu, were important in the dissemination of the assassination-threat story. I shall argue that undoubtedly Phillips lied on the matter of Oswald’s assassination remarks. Phillips however was not necessarily lying because he was (in the usual sense) a co-conspirator. We must consider that he may have been no more than a good soldier, lying, as so many CIA officers have felt themselves duty-bound to do, to protect what he believed was an unrelated intelligence operation.
To state the situation from the Agency’s own perspective, we should not necessarily impart "sinister motives to the Agency’s desire to uphold the law relative to the protection of sources and methods."10
The CIA’s Oswald Secret: Was It a Threat in Mexico to Assassinate Kennedy?
In my book Deep Politics I presented a two-phase dialectic behind the Warren Commission finding that Oswald was a "lone assassin." I argued that in pre-assassination CIA and FBI files a false legend about Oswald was planted, which after the assassination made him falsely appear to be a possible Soviet assassination agent. This "phase-one" story was then supplemented by a false second post-assassination story that he might have been a Castro assassination agent. The two "phase-one" stories created a "case" for the risk of a nuclear war; the new President, Lyndon Johnson, used this risk to justify the creation of the Warren Commission, which moved to validate the "phase-two" story that Oswald acted alone.
The pre-assassination Oswald-KGB legend I focused on was not pure fiction; it was based on real, if deceptive, events in Mexico City, linking Oswald to an alleged KGB assassination expert by the name of Valeriy Kostikov. On October 1, 1963, someone telephoned the Soviet Consulate in Mexico City, identified himself as Lee Oswald, and indicated that he had talked earlier to someone by the name of Kostikov (identified in FBI and CIA files as a KGB agent and possible expert on assassination).
Further pre-assassination investigation established that Oswald had also visited the Cuban consulate in connection with a visa application. The CIA Station in Mexico Headquarters notified Headquarters about the visit to the Soviet Consulate.11 According to the available record, the visit to the Cuban consulate was not communicated until after the assassination. That record however may not be complete.12
The recently declassified documents have helped clarify some issues of fact about the CIA performance here. It is now clear that CIA Headquarters’ response to the alleged Soviet visit, in a cable sent to the FBI and State Department, was falsified by CIA Counterintelligence personnel. (By "falsified," I do not mean wholly invented, but deliberately contaminated with error, possibly as part of the search then current for a KGB mole inside the CIA. For the purpose of this falsification may have been to create a tracer, or "barium meal," to determine if the falsified information from this unique source was passing back to the Soviets.)13 Oswald’s name was falsified (as "Lee Henry Oswald"), the important detail about Kostikov was initially suppressed, as was information already known to the CIA about Lee Harvey Oswald’s interest in Cuba, as exemplified by his arrest with two Cubans on August 9.14
The result of this biased reporting, or Big October Lie, was to focus the Oswald preassassination 201 file on his Soviet connections, to the exclusion of his Cuban ones. This exclusion was persistent, and probably deliberate. We find it again in a Mexico City CIA memo of October 16, 1963, whose author knew by this time of Oswald’s visits to the Cuban Embassy.15 We find it in the first post-assassination cables which we have from the CIA station in Mexico City.
What was Oswald doing in the Cuban Embassy? Here the recently declassified documents do very little to resolve the issue. On the contrary, they reinforce the sense that more went on during the Oswald visits than the Warren Report was allowed to record. One can say only that the documents, including the declassified Lopez Report and FBI Solo records, strongly corroborate an old but explosive allegation, suggested earlier by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, in Warren Commission Document 1359 (Hoover’s letter of June 17, 1964 to the Warren Commission), and corroborated in 1987 by his successor Clarence Kelley. This is that Oswald (or someone who identified himself as Oswald) talked in the Cuban Embassy (according to Kelley, in both the Soviet and Cuban Embassies) about assassination, even about assassinating President Kennedy.16
A preliminary word about the degree of resistance that has surrounded this entire topic. It is not, on the face of it, proof that we have found an important clue to the Kennedy assassination. On the contrary, Warren CD 1359 carried the national security classification of Top Secret for the obvious reason that the report came from a highly-placed intelligence source. FBI Director Kelley correctly identified that source as "Solo," i.e. the Communist Party double-agents Morris and Jack Childs.17 The Childs brothers have been described as possibly "the most successful double agents in American history;" they became the crucial link by which about one million dollars a year from Soviet funds reached the American Communist Party.18
In 1995 the release of the FBI’s "Solo" assassination records, including CD 1359, confirmed that the FBI’s source was indeed Jack Childs. These records also made it clear that what Castro attributed to Oswald in the Cuban Embassy was not an offer to kill Kennedy (as reported by Kelley), but an angry threat, in response to being denied a visa. This was clear even in the account of Jack Childs’ interview of Castro transmitted by Hoover in CD 1359:
According to our source [Childs], Castro recently is reported to have said, "Our people in Mexico gave us the details in a full report of how he (Oswald) acted when he came to Mexico to their embassy (uncertain whether he means Cuban or Russian Embassy)." Castro further related, "First of all, nobody ever goes that way for a visa. Second, it costs money to go that distance. He (Oswald) stormed into the embassy, demanded the visa, and when it was refused to him, headed out saying, Tm going to kill Kennedy for this.’" Castro is alleged to have continued and asked, "What is your government doing to catch the other assassins?" and speculated, "It took about three people."19
When we compare Childs’ actual report of Castro’s comments to his discussion of it with the FBI, we see that in fact it was unambiguously the Cuban Embassy where the meeting took place. We see also that Oswald’s assassination remark was apparently a spontaneous one, and not (as later reported) a considered "offer" or "plan." Jack Childs’ ("Solo"’s) own written statement supplied the initial account of what Castro had to say to him about Oswald, which occupied one paragraph in a report of eight pages:
His next question was do you think that Oswald killed President Kennedy? Before I could answer, he said he could not have been in it alone. I’m sure of that. It was at least 2 or 3 men who did it. Most likely 3. He said soon after the President was assassinated, he and a number of his sharp shooters got similar rifles with telescopic sights and shot at the target under the same conditions, same distance, same height and after this shooting, he came to the conclusion it was impossible for one man to have shot the President. . . .He said Oswald was involved. Our people in Mexico gave us a full report of how he acted when he came to Mexico to their embassy. He said first of all nobody ever goes that way for a visa. Second, it costs money to go that distance. He stormed into the embassy, demanded the visa and when it was refused to him headed out saying I’m going to kill Kennedy for this.20
At the time Childs also told the FBI in New York that Castro was sober when he spoke. Moreover, he "treated the question as a very serious matter and indicated that this was something he must have asked about and talked about with many people."
Although Castro spoke to NY 694-S* [Childs‷ informant number] in broken English, without benefit of translation, there is no question as to the accuracy of what he said for the informant indicated that he had made notes at the time Castro was talking. . . . NY 694-S* is of the opinion that the Cuban Embassy people must have told Oswald something to the effect that they were sorry they did not let Americans into Cuba because the U.S. Government stopped Cuba from letting them in and that is w
hen Oswald shouted out the statement about killing President Kennedy.
Childs and another witness present concluded that the Embassy personnel who dealt with Oswald "apparently had made a full, detailed report to Castro after President Kennedy was assassinated."21
Castro’s general remarks about Oswald’s stormy behavior are consistent with the later testimony of Consular officials Silvia Durán and Eusebio Azcue, about Oswald getting "angry" (3 AH 47) and slamming the door (3 AH 133). Azcue further confirmed talking to his Ministry in Havana after the assassination (3 AH 157).
One must approach this topic with methodical caution. In the first place the allegation of an assassination remark has been made recurrently from other sources (such as the Nicaraguan intelligence agent Gilberto Alvarado) who were almost certainly lying. Furthermore, even if shown to be true, the allegation that Oswald (or someone who identified himself as Oswald) talked of killing the President would by itself prove almost nothing, either about Oswald’s actual involvement, or (even less) about Cuba’s. The reported reaction of Fidel Castro to these alleged remarks—that it was nothing more than a CIA provocation—can be shown to be plausible, at least as plausible as the alternative that the threat was a sincere one from an arrogant and frustrated lone nut.
The fact is that, even if we dispense with debatable sources like Alvarado, there remain a number of authoritative sources which collectively corroborate the idea of an Oswald assassination threat, or offer. As reported in his memoirs by FBI Director Clarence Kelley, this assassination story had four separate elements:
1) an offer of "information on a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro."
2) this offer in exchange for assistance from the Soviet and Cuban consulates, in obtaining "Soviet and Cuban visas" (other sources speak of travel assistance, or cash).
3) additional remarks about killing President Kennedy, which Kelley characterized as an "offer."
4) Castro "verified" the remarks about killing Kennedy and shared this knowledge after the assassination with "Solo," one of the FBI’s top Communist informants.22
There is also a fifth ingredient to the full account of the alleged Oswald assassination remark. The fifth ingredient is that the Cubans, including Castro, treated the remark as a "deliberate provocation. " This fifth ingredient, not mentioned by Kelley, is erroneously attributed by the journalist Daniel Schorr to CD 1359.23 It is however consistent with what Jack Childs told the FBI about Castro’s alleged account of Oswald’s assassination threat: that "Castro was trying to imply that the assassination was a deliberate and conscientious plot to involve Cuba as well as the Soviet Union."24 Despite their bizarre and implausible character, there exists recurring corroboration for all five of these distinct ingredients to the alleged Oswald assassination threat story.
Let me at the outset point out the importance of the story, whether true or false. Paradoxically, one can argue that the greater the number of falsehoods in the story, the greater the potential evidentiary importance.
1) If the threat was made sincerely by Marina’s husband, this would immediately become the best available evidence for the latter’s murderous intent to kill Kennedy.
2) If the threat were made by the same person, but insincerely as an organized provocation, it would increase the chances of organized involvement in the murder of the President.
3) If the threat were made by someone who identified himself as Lee Oswald, who was demonstrably not the man we know as the husband of Marina, we would have prima facie proof of conspiracy.
4) If the Oswald assassination threat was in fact never made at all, but merely reported by a well-placed source to the Cuban and American authorities, that source is implicated in a conspiratorial act This could be part of a cover-up or some other irrelevant conspiracy, if the report (like that of the Nicaraguan intelligence agent Gilberto Alvarado) post-dates the assassination.
5) If there are (or were) documented pre-assassination reports of an Oswald assassination threat, that in fact was never made, we have isolated a central ingredient in a dialectical conspiracy to assassinate the President.
There are still other possibilities. We should consider, for example, whether Jack Childs was lying, and (if so) for what reason. It seems unlikely that Childs would have invented this story on behalf of the FBI, which was committed to the portrait of Oswald as a lone assassin, and (as we shall see) had already helped suppress the version of Oswald’s assassination remarks floated by the admitted liar Gilberto Alvarado. It is easier to imagine that Childs might have lied in this way on behalf of the CIA, but no one to date has suggested that either of the Childs brothers was a CIA asset. If they were, it would be important to learn who controlled them (see below). Whatever the facts, it is incumbent upon the Review Board to review, and if possible release, all of the documentation dealing with the five ingredients of the alleged Oswald assassination threat.
We should note that the "Solo" records partially discredit, as well as partially confirm, what Kelley had to say about them. Childs clearly reported a spontaneous threat, where Kelley wrote that Oswald "definitely offered to kill President Kennedy, speculating that Oswald "may. . . have been influenced by Castro’s public threat on September 9 [sic, i.e. 7] against American leaders."25 This last speculation, repeated in many places, cannot be based on what we are told Jack Childs reported.26
There are other reasons to be skeptical of Kelley’s claims. Not only is his account of the "Solo" report fallible, he must have come late to knowledge of it: in 1963 he was chief of the Kansas City Police Department, where he remained until returning to the FBI as Director in 1973. For at least some of his information he appears to have relied on his friend James Hosty, who clearly would not be a good source for what happened in Mexico City. FBI sources have since allegedly claimed that the entire chapter is written by Hosty, which if true would weaken the chapter’s authority on material at FBI Headquarters.27
On the other hand, the newly released account of Jack Childs’ interview with Castro makes it more rather than less likely that Oswald (or someone claiming to be him) did talk in the Cuban Embassy of killing President Kennedy. (It also makes us look again at the claim of former KGB colonel Oleg Nechiporenko that Oswald, the next day, showed great agitation in the Soviet Embassy, displayed a revolver, and said that if "they" didn’t leave him alone on his return to the U.S., he was going to "defend" himself.)28
The Childs report raises the question of whether this information was picked up by U.S. HUMINT or electronic sources at the time. Director Kelley himself claimed that "some very highly placed [CIA] informants within the [Soviet] embassy," whose existence has not yet been officially confirmed, contributed to his knowledge of Oswald’s activities there.29 House Committee investigator Edwin Lopez has since revealed that the CIA had two or more well-placed informants (or what the trade calls HUMINT sources) in the Cuban Embassy as well.30 The presence of at least one such informant, identified by John Newman as Luis Alberu Soto, is further corroborated by contemporary cables.31
Normally one would accede to maintaining the highest degree of protection to such HUMINT sources, whose safety and perhaps life would otherwise be placed at risk. However such protection should not be automatically extended to a HUMINT source if it can be shown they transmitted a false or misleading story of an Oswald assassination threat, prior to the assassination.
Authoritative Corroboration of the Oswald Assassination Threat
There is repeated authoritative corroboration for all four ingredients of the Oswald assassination remark as reported by Kelley, as well as for the fifth ingredient (that the Cubans interpreted the remark as a "deliberate provocation," or "deliberate and conscientious plot to involve Cuba").
In brief, the claim that Oswald offered "unspecified information" to the Soviet Consulate in exchange for assistance or pay (elements #1 and #2 of the Kelley story) was attributed to three sources in the Mexico City CIA station by the Washington Post in 1976. These included David Phillips, who in
1963 was simultaneously the CIA Station’s Chief of Cuban Operations and of Covert Action (including propaganda), and an unnamed "typist" who was said to have typed the transcript of the message on which this offer was made. (If this transcript ever existed, there is no public record of it today.)32
Phillips apparently repeated the story about Oswald’s request for assistance (but not the offer of information) in his testimony under oath to the Committee (and not yet released) the next day.33 Nor did Phillips mention the information offer in his book written the same year. On the contrary, Phillips wrote categorically that "I know of no evidence to suggest that. . . any aspect of the Mexico City trip was any more ominous than reported by the Warren Commission."34 This was a remarkable turnaround for a man who (we shall soon see) had in 1963 been a vigorous supporter of the story that Oswald had threatened in the Cuban Embassy to kill Kennedy, and also been paid to do so.35
The House Committee later learned that the story of Oswald’s assistance request (from both Embassies) had been told earlier by Winston Scott, the Chief of the Mexico City CIA Station, in a letter which Scott wrote in 1970, after his retirement from the CIA:
During my thirteen years in Mexico, I had many experiences, some of which I can write in detail. One of these pertains to Lee Harvey Oswald and what I know [emphasis in original] of his activities from the moment he arrived in Mexico, his contacts by telephone and his visits to both the Soviet and Cuban Embassies and his requests for assistance from these two Embassies in trying to get to the Crimea with his wife and baby [emphasis added]. During his conversations he cited a promise from the Soviet Embassy in Washington that they would notify their Embassy in Mexico of Oswald’s plan to ask them for assistance.36
The House Committee received further corroboration of the assistance request from Mrs. Tarasoff, the translator-typist who had been reported in Ronald Kessler’s article as a source for the information offer.