Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics
Page 22
According to my recollection, I myself, have made a transcript, an English transcript, of Lee Oswald talking to the Russian Consulate or whoever he was at that time, asking for financial aid. Now, that particular transcript does not appear here and whatever happened to it, I do not know, but it was a lengthy transcript and I personally did that transcript. It was a lengthy conversation between him and someone at the Russian Embassy.37
As for Oswald’s alleged threat to kill Kennedy, the verification of this by Castro, and the Cuban view of this as a provocation (elements #3, #4, and #5), the most authoritative available source (since their release in 1995) are the FBI Solo records. Similar accounts, all mentioning the assassination remarks, and between them adding the verification by Castro to an FBI informant, appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times?.38
Finally the authors of the House Committee Report confirmed that the substance of these allegations (as discussed in an unofficial, much less reputable version, a tabloid article by the British author Comer Clark) was "supported by highly confidential but reliable sources available to the U.S. Government" (a possible reference to the Solo records and CD 1359).39 Clark’s story had mentioned items #3, #4, and #5: the threat to kill, the verification by Castro, and Castro’s determination that this was a CIA provocation.40
Unfortunately the so-called Comer Clark version is almost completely lacking in credibility. No one now defends the article’s claim to be based on an actual interview with Castro, or disputes Tony Summers’ account that it was instead ghosted by Clark’s assistant Nina Gadd, allegedly on the basis of a report from a Latin American foreign minister.41 We shall see that the actual words attributed to Oswald by the falsified "Clark" story—"Someone ought to shoot that President Kennedy. . . .Maybe I’ll try to do it"—are suspiciously like those attributed to Oswald by another source, the admitted liar Gilberto Alvarado, a Mexico City CIA asset42 They are however quite different in tone from the version attributed to Castro in CD 1359—"I’m going to kill Kennedy for this."
I now suspect that all of these early stories were deliberate leaks, perhaps by the CIA. What they all have in common is a tendency to misrepresent the remark reported in CD 1359 ("I’m going to kill Kennedy for this") as a "plan," or an "offer," or "intentions," rather than what the transmitter of the remarks took them to be, the stormy response of "a real madman" to an unexpected frustration.43 This distortion fit the Washington Post’s gratuitous innuendos "about a possible involvement of the Castro government in the murder of Kennedy," the New York Times’s absurd allegation that, if true, Castro’s knowledge of Oswald’s "plan. . . would be the strongest evidence yet found that Mr. Oswald had had Cuban backing in his assassination attempt."44
This survey of the "authorities" behind the Oswald assassination threat forces us to reflect on what we mean by "authority." The dictionary distinguishes between authority which is "conclusive" or "evidentiary," because of its proximity to the claims being made, and authority which is "official" or "governmental." (To the latter category of "authority" we might also add the Washington Post and the New York Times.)
If we now look at the authoritative sources for the Oswald assassination threat, we see that nearly all are authorities in the second sense. But only those who corroborated the offer of information and request for assistance (items #1 and #2) can be called authorities because of their proximity to the evidence. There is in the public record no such authority for the threat to kill, and only the unsupported word of "Solo" (Jack Childs) for the verification of the threat by Castro.
Of all the various sources for the five elements of the Oswald assassination threat, the closest witness so far mentioned, and also the most interesting, is the Russian translator-typist for the Mexico City CIA station, Mrs. Tarasoff. Taken by itself, her detailed account of the phantom assistance transcript that we do not have is persuasive but not very illuminating. In the context of former FBI Director Kelley’s four startling allegations, it is most striking to learn from the sworn testimony of Mrs. Tarasoff (confirming the allegations of three other station members, including Win Scott and David Phillips) that one of them, the request for assistance, was known and documented before the assassination. If that document ever existed, it has now for some reason been systematically suppressed.
Did that document exist, and if so where is it now? Perhaps the Review Board can resolve these questions. At a minimum they can give us all the House Committee testimony of David Phillips, Mrs. Tarasoff, and her husband. Mr. Tarasoff added the important and possibly relevant detail that the name of Lee Oswald was known to the CIA station ("they were very hot about the whole thing") before he transcribed the October 1 telephone conversation of "someone who identified himself as Lee Oswald."45
Assessment of the Oswald Assassination Threat: Evidence and Counter-Evidence
Before assessing whether there ever was in fact anything like the alleged Oswald assassination threat, we must acknowledge the many different levels at which "it" might have happened. Normally an allegation presents a maximum of two levels of verification: a) did the source allege it? and b) did the alleged event occur? Like other aspects of Oswald’s alleged career, the story of the assassination threat presents many more levels at which issues of verification occur. For this reason we should perhaps refer to it as a meta-allegation (an allegation where issues of verification occur at more than two levels).
A high percentage of the apparent data about Oswald in the Warren Report dissolve on analysis to meta-allegations. We read for example in the Warren Report that "Marina said that the officials at the Soviet Embassy [in Mexico City] ‘refused to have anything to do with [her husband]."46 In fact Marina Oswald claimed to have heard this from Lee (1 WH 28). Thus we need to verify this meta-allegation on three levels: 1) Did Marina say this? 2) Did Lee say this? 3) Was Lee telling the truth?
An extreme instance is perhaps CD 1359, as originally reconstructed by Daniel Schorr. Schorr’s meta-allegation had more layers than an onion: he claimed that Hoover told the Warren Commission that a reliable FBI informant had said that Castro had heard from the Cuban Ambassador in Mexico that Oswald had threatened to kill President Kennedy. As Paul Hoch wrote some years ago, "This issue gets very complicated very fast. If the source says Fidel said it, did Fidel say it? If Fidel said it, did Oswald say it? If Oswald said it, what does that imply—premeditation, a provocation, or what?"47 To which we can add one more issue: if someone calling himself Oswald said it, was this person the man arrested in Dallas?
The abundance of corroboration suggests the same conclusion reached by Robert Blakey and Richard Billings, the two authors of the House Committee Report: that there was indeed a preassassination event, in the environment of the Cuban Consulate, that gave rise to the story of the Oswald assassination threat. For what it is worth, I suspect that both Castro and the Cuban Ambassador may have heard this report, though what gave rise to it is of course unclear and perhaps unverifiable. As I argued earlier, this is an important issue, and one purpose of this paper is to persuade the Review Board of its importance.
Such a conclusion is a tenuous one. There is counter-evidence, and the affirmative corroboration, though authoritative, is also shaky.
The strongest rebuttal evidence to the story of the assassination threat, as reported through CD 1359, is that Castro himself denied a falsified variant of the story (the Daniel Schorr account of the alleged Comer Clark interview) to the House Committee: "I didn’t say that. . . . It has been invented from the beginning until the end."48 But as we have seen the alleged assassination remarks in the "Clark" story ("Someone ought to shoot that President Kennedy") are quite different from the "Solo" report. There were obvious political considerations constraining both Castro and his questioners. Castro, as the Committee noted, was clearly concerned that failure to have reported what the "Clark" story spoke of (an intention or "plan to kill President Kennedy") might be taken to "implicate" Cuba in the assassination.49 Such an impli
cation, however debatable logically, was a legitimate Cuban political concern, based on their reading of the contemporary U.S. press.50
But political considerations constrained the House Committee also. Blakey at least knew of CD 1359 and believed it; his book (despite the Castro interview) argued later that "the threat probably did occur."51 Yet, even though armed with Daniel Schorr’s book Clearing the Air, the Committee interviewer steered away from Schorr’s summary of CD 1359 in his questioning of Castro. Instead he asked Castro to respond to Schorr’s summary of the falsified "Comer Clark" tabloid article, fatally misrepresented as a Castro-Clark interview which we now know never occurred.
Thus, when Castro answered, "I didn’t say that," he was clearly saying, truly, that he never the words attributed to his interview with Comer Clark.52 What Castro might have responded to the CD 1359 meta-allegation (that he said something to an FBI informant) is not yet known. Castro might well have denied this also, but so far as we know he was not asked.
I know of no other comparable counter-evidence. The silence of other Consulate witnesses such as Silvia Durán tells us nothing, for we do not know to what audience the threat was allegedly made.
The closest to independent authoritative corroboration is Kelley’s carefully worded suggestion that "It is possible to assume that at the Soviet Embassy he [Oswald] offered to kill President Kennedy." To my knowledge, no other authoritative source has made this claim; it stands alone. (We shall deal with other, discreditable sources later.)
As stated above, we can be skeptical of Kelley’s claims. The fact remains that Kelley is now partially corroborated by the recent release of CD 1359. Furthermore Kelley alleges that the curious claim to know what happened inside both Consulates is based on information "gathered through informants, wiretaps, surveillance cameras, and other types of foreign intelligence techniques" (presumably bugs planted within the embassies).53
The information that Oswald talked to Kostikov at the Russian Embassy was obtained variously. One method was through CIA wiretaps of the embassy’s phone in Mexico City. Oswald’s call from the Cuban to the Russian Embassy, for instance, was tapped by our government. The Soviet Embassy was also being watched by ultrasensitive CIA surveillance cameras. What’s more, the agency had some very highly placed informants within the embassy itself. Thus, the fact that Oswald met with this particularly dangerous KGB official is certain. . . . It appeared that Oswald confided to the Soviets and the Cubans that he had information on a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. He would, he promised, provide all of this highly classified information in exchange for Soviet and Cuban visas for his family and himself respectively. It is possible to assume that at the Soviet Embassy he offered to kill President Kennedy. . . .Oswald. . . told the Cuban Embassy officials much the same. But here he definitely offered to kill President Kennedy.54
In other words the FBI Director told the world in 1987 of far more credible sources than "Solo;" CIA HUMINT sources inside the Soviet Embassy, along with unspecified "other types of foreign intelligence techniques." This resolves to a much simpler meta-allegation than Solo’s in CD 1359, with the following issues: a) Were there such informants and other sources? b) Did they report an Oswald assassination remark? c) Was the report honest? d) If so, were the remarks genuine or a provocation? e) Last but not least, was this Oswald the man arrested in Dallas?55
Kelley’s account refers to HUMINT sources (double agents) at the Soviet Embassy only, evading the question of whether they were also at the Cuban Consulate, where he is so much more definite about Oswald’s assassination remarks. But in 1967 an internal high-level FBI memorandum also acknowledged special knowledge of what went on in the Cuban Embassy:
Sensitive and reliable sources of the Bureau and CIA reported Oswald was unknown to Cuban government officials when he visited the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City on 9/27/63, and attempted, without success, to get a visa for travel to Cuba.56
These reports themselves are not to be found in the CIA’s pre-assassination 201 file on Oswald, nor the FBI Headquarters file. There is no sign that they ever reached either the Warren Commission or the House Committee. The Review Board should search for them, since they are surely assassination-related.
In 1994 we learned from HSCA investigator Edwin Lopez that there were at least two CIA HUMINT sources in the Cuban Embassy, and he himself has pointed to the importance of what they could tell with respect to what they saw and heard about Oswald there, both before and after the assassination.57
Edwin Lopez chose his words carefully. Apparently he himself spoke to two of these double agents in Mexico City in 1978, without CIA approval. From them he learned that in the opinion of embassy officials after the assassination, the "Oswald" who visited the Cuban Consulate was not the Oswald arrested in Dallas. The double agents told Lopez
that the consensus among employees within the Cuban Consulate after the Kennedy assassination was that it wasn’t Oswald who had been there. The assets said that they reported that to the Agency but there were no documents in the CIA file noting that fact.58
If it is true that the CIA suppressed this report, it is only one more indication that the "Oswald" visit to the Cuban Embassy involved a sensitive Agency secret.
It will not be easy for the Review Board to resolve questions about HUMINT resources. If the informants performed honestly, their cover will not and perhaps should not be broken. But if by any chance we were to learn that the informants invented or transmitted a false report about Oswald, then considerations of national security would seem to demand their interrogation.
This possibility remains hypothetical, and problematic. Even if informants in the Cuban Embassy transmitted the assassination threat story, this still would not explain the "Solo" report in CD 1359. For this they would have had to report the assassination remarks, not just to the Americans, but to the Cubans as well.
But we have now to consider that, in addition to the authoritative sources for the Oswald assassination offer or threat, there are other sources, much less credible. Of these discreditable sources, one at least (Gilberto Alvarado) soon confessed he was lying.
Even lies, when we know their sources, can tell us something. We shall see that there is a common denominator to the discreditable sources: their common links to the Mexico City CIA station, and above all to the propaganda networks of David Phillips.
Was the story of the Oswald assassination remark (whether or not Oswald actually made it) a propaganda operation from the outset? If it were, then we cannot rule out that CIA resources in the two Consulates were part of that operation.
Discreditable Sources: The Oswald Assassination Remark and the Network of David Phillips
Kelley was not the first to claim publicly that Oswald made remarks about assassinating Kennedy in the Cuban Embassy. We have seen that a similar claim appeared in the National Enquirer in 1967, under the name of Comer Clark, but actually ghosted by his assistant Nina Gadd on the basis of a report from a Latin American foreign minister.59
A similar claim was put forward in 1975 by a prominent anti-Castro Cuban, Ernesto Rodriguez, who said he was a former CIA contract agent in Mexico City. According to a 1975 news account of Rodriguez’ story, "‘Oswald’ told both the Soviets and Cubans that he had information on a new CIA attempt to kill Fidel Castro. Oswald offered more information, said Rodriguez, in exchange for a Cuban entry visa."60 Rodriguez’ account, however, was implausible: he claimed that Oswald had talked about this on the telephone, to local reporters, and even with Fair Play for Cuba Committee members in Mexico City.61
We learn less from the content of this story than from its sources. If Ernesto Rodriguez was truly a former CIA contract agent in Mexico City, then he presumably worked under the Mexico City Station’s Chief of Cuban Operations, who in 1963 was the noted propaganda expert David Phillips. Meanwhile the author who broke the Rodriguez story was Charles Ashman, who before being disbarred had been the lawyer and publicist for the anti-Castro activities of Sam Ben
ton and Gerry Patrick Hemming.62 Thus Ashman was not at arm’s length from the strange narrative of Oswald’s life: both Hemming and Benton were associated with the Lake Pontchartrain arms cache and training camp which Oswald apparently attempted to penetrate in August 1963.63
Ashman’s story, at best a dubious one, does not stand alone. At noon on November 25, 1963, three days after the assassination, a full and detailed account of an offer by Oswald in the Cuban Consulate to assassinate Kennedy was provided to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City by an alleged eyewitness. (The timing is important, since Oswald’s visit to Mexico did not become public knowledge before the evening edition of the Mexican newspaper Excelsior on November 24. If the story was a spur-of-the-moment low-level fabrication, as is often assumed, the fabricator must have acted swiftly.)
The alleged eyewitness was a Nicaraguan, Gilberto Alvarado, who was later identified in a belatedly published Warren Commission memorandum as "a 23-year-old Nicaraguan secret agent."64 (Contemporary FBI documents refer to Alvarado as a "source of CIA’s" or "CIA source.")65 Chronologically Alvarado is in fact the first known published source for two of the ingredients of the Oswald assassination offer as narrated by Kelley: he offered to kill Kennedy inside the Cuban Consulate, and he did so in exchange for something: not visas (as Kelley claimed) but cash. In Alvarado’s account, a Cuban in the consulate passed some money to "a tall, this Negro with reddish hair. . . .The Negro then allegedly said to Oswald in English, ‘I want to kill the man.’ Oswald replied, ‘You’re not man enough, I can do it.’. . . The Negro then gave Oswald $6,500 in large-denomination American bills."66
David Phillips admitted in his book that he was one of the two CIA agents assigned to interrogate Alvarado, and he added, deceptively, that "It was soon apparent that he was lying."67 It was certainly not apparent in the CIA Station cables that we have (some are still withheld) and that David Phillips presumably drafted (the other interviewer, Eldridge Snight, was the Embassy Security Officer). One cable described Alvarado as a "well-known Nicaraguan Communist underground member" (when in fact he was anti-Communist).68 A second cable on November 27, by which time Alvarado had "admitted he really on penetration mission for Nicaraguan secret service," still described Alvarado as a "quiet, very serious person, who speaks with conviction."69 A third cable called him "completely cooperative."70 A fourth cable reported that the CIA officer interviewing Alvarado "was impressed. . . wealth of detail Alvarado gives is striking."71 As late as November 29, a station officer, described by his chief as "very intelligent," was inclined to believe "Alvarado telling truth in general outline," but "mixed up on dates."72