The Girl on the Stairs

by Barry Ernest

  What leads were missed—what clues were overlooked—as a result?

  The CIA’s Battle Plan

  The CIA was even worse.

  The super sleuths had their own conduit sitting right at the Warren Commission’s table—former CIA director Allen Dulles. He had been head of that agency during the critical period of 1953 through 1961. Dulles took his Commission job seriously, attending the testimony of nearly two-thirds of all the witnesses summoned.

  But like any good spy, he worked both sides. According to an internal agency document, for example, Dulles spent a slow Saturday in April 1964 talking shop with an unknown individual (that name being “sanitized” from the document) at the CIA. Dulles’s purpose was to alert his contact to questions the Commission intended to ask Richard M. Helms, deputy director for CIA planning, when Helms appeared the following month.31

  Dulles also relayed advice on how those queries should be answered. Of utmost concern, according to Dulles, was a potential query on whether Oswald had been a CIA agent.

  “Mr. Dulles felt the reply should be straightforward and to the point,” this contact wrote in a follow-up memo to Helms. “He thought language which made it clear that Lee Harvey Oswald was never an employee or agent of CIA would suffice. We should also state that neither CIA nor anyone acting on CIA’s behalf was ever in contact or communication with Oswald.”32

  Helms also was instructed not to volunteer information regarding the agency’s method for selecting and handling agents since, even though “it would have been unlikely for Oswald to have been chosen as a CIA agent to enter Russia,” there were “always exceptions to every rule and this might be misunderstood by members of the Commission with little background in activity of this sort.”33

  The contact then offered his own advice to Helms. “I agreed with him that a carefully phrased denial [author’s emphasis] of the charges of involvement with Oswald seemed most appropriate.”34

  Helms appeared before the Commission on May 14, 1964. As predicted, one of the first questions he was asked concerned whether a relationship had existed between his agency and Oswald. His reply was a “carefully phrased denial”:

  I had all of our records searched to see if there had been any contacts at any time prior to President Kennedy’s assassination by anyone in the Central Intelligence Agency with Lee Harvey Oswald. We checked our card files and our personnel files and all our records.

  Now, this check turned out to be negative. In addition, I got in touch with those officers who were in positions of responsibility at the times in question to see if anybody had any recollection of any contact having even been suggested with this man. This also turned out to be negative, so there is no material in the Central Intelligence Agency, either in the records or in the mind of any of the individuals, that there was any contact had or even contemplated with him.35

  In March 1964, prior to Helms’ appearance, Rankin had sent a letter to the CIA requesting some routine information. What was being sought was not remarkable. How the CIA reacted was.

  In typical fashion, an unnamed person drafted an internal memo advising an unnamed recipient:

  We have a problem here for your determination.36

  This is responsive to paragraph 3 of Rankin’s letter. Staff officer does not desire to respond directly to paragraph 2 of that letter which made a levy for our material which had gotten into the hands of the Secret Service since 23 November.37

  Unless you feel otherwise, staff officer would prefer to wait out the Commission on the matter covered by paragraph 2.38

  In other words, the CIA wanted to delay its response, trusting that the Commission would close up shop before the request was renewed.

  Similar guidance was provided to then-director of the CIA John McCone prior to his own appearance before the Commission. In eighteen pages of written briefing material, McCone was advised of several touchy areas that might be raised during his testimony. Recommended responses were provided, including what to say if McCone was “challenged by anyone on the Commission” regarding his affidavit that said Oswald was not a CIA agent.39 McCone was also advised to “not respond on the record to queries” involving Oswald’s activities while he was in Mexico in September 1963 or his possible relationship with the “Cuban Intelligence Service.”40

  If the CIA was reluctant to offer assistance during the Commission’s existence, it certainly had no problem lending support to the Commission’s ultimate conclusion that Oswald was the sole assassin.

  The CIA’s in-house newsletter, “Propaganda Notes,” announced on September 22, 1964, that “the long awaited Warren Commission Report, on its exhaustive investigation into the assassination,” would soon be presented to the public.41 Included was the warning that “Communist regimes” would use the Report to “denigrate American society.”42

  “Covert assets should explain the tragedy wherever it is genuinely misunderstood, and counter all efforts to misconstrue it intentionally—provided the depth of impact warrants such action.”43

  In an April 1, 1967, dispatch to “Chiefs, Certain Stations and Bases,” the CIA termed itself at “war” with critics of the government’s version of the crime.44 Titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report,” recipients were advised of several options in its battle with the disbelievers. One in particular asked them “to discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition.”45

  Another option was “to employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics.” The dispatch continued:

  Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories.46

  Along those lines, the CIA’s battle plan suggested that if “friendly” book reviewers were doing their job, they “might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the [Warren] Report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.”47

  By no means, the dispatch warned, should agents initiate commentary about “the assassination question” where it was not already being discussed.

  But other games were being played as well. In August 1975, several well-known critics, including Weisberg and Jones, opened their mailboxes to find a mysterious letter, postmarked Mexico City, which contained a copy of a note supposedly handwritten by Lee Oswald on November 8, 1963. In its entirety, that note read:

  Dear Mr. Hunt,

  I would like information concerning my position.

  I am asking only for information. I am suggesting that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else.

  Thank you.

  Lee Harvey Oswald.

  Written two weeks before the assassination, the wording held sinister implications. Jones thought “Mr. Hunt” was Dallas billionaire H. L. Hunt, whose “association” with Oswald implicated the superrich, rightwing element in the crime. Others felt “Mr. Hunt” was E. Howard Hunt, a CIA agent whose name was current dinner talk as a result of the mushrooming Watergate fiasco.

  Weisberg thought the whole thing fishy.48 “I think there is little doubt—this is a fake,” he wrote to attorney and friend Jim Lesar. “Of course the FBI is going to decline comment. They want all the nonsensical stuff to receive all the attention possible. This is an essential of the continuing disinformation operations.”49

  The solution surfaced in 1999 in documents accompanying a KGB archivist who defected from Russia. Accord
ing to those papers, the KGB had deliberately concocted the “Hunt” letter, forging Oswald’s handwriting and signature so well that even HSCA experts couldn’t tell the difference.50

  The “Mr. Hunt” reference was intended all along to be E. Howard Hunt. The KGB designed the note solely as a prank to implicate the CIA in Kennedy’s murder.51 The episode was nothing more than another example of Cold War capers.

  CHAPTER 20

  May-June 1999

  It is a “sordid situation,” Earl Warren bemoaned. He was not referring to the KGB’s “Hunt” escapades. Warren uttered that remark in front of his Commission’s personnel on December 5, 1963, the first of several behind-closed-doors, members-only meetings. He was commenting on the terribleness of that Dallas day two weeks earlier and the duty that now confronted them all.

  “Reviewing these details . . . is really sickening to me.”1

  Knowing what the HSCA said years later, I found it fascinating to read now the once-secret but recently released transcripts of the thirteen Executive Session meetings of the Warren Commission. It was a revealing study of the chronological thought processes of the men at the taproot.

  During that initial gathering, Warren had a vision. He felt that the Commission’s job should be “essentially one for the evaluation of evidence as distinguished from being one of gathering evidence.”2 He was under the mistaken assumption “that we can rely upon the reports of the various agencies that have been engaged in investigating the matter,” and he felt there would be no need “for a staff of investigators.”3

  “If we can’t rely on them,” Warren commented, referring to the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service, “I couldn’t think of any investigators we can get to do it anyway. So I would hope that we could hold our meetings and take any evidence or any statements that we want in camera, and eventually make our report without any great fanfare throughout the country.”4

  Warren’s dream was actually delusion. Commission members came to grips with that fact by December 16, at the third Executive Session meeting.

  “Everyone has all kinds of questions,” Hale Boggs announced. “Reading that FBI report [FBI Summary Report of December 9, 1963] leaves a million questions.”5

  Even J. Lee Rankin, the just-hired general counsel, had to agree. He told those present that he may call upon them “for some investigative help, too, to examine special situations, because we might not get all we needed by just going back to the FBI and other agencies because the [FBI Summary] report has so many holes in it.” He continued, “Anybody can look at it and see that it just doesn’t seem like they’re looking for things that this Commission has to look for in order to get the answers that it wants and it’s entitled to.”6

  There were other concerns, too, such as who was releasing tidbits of the FBI’s Summary Report to the press. It hindered the Commission’s work. And what about the touchy situation of interviewing Mrs. Kennedy—“that little woman,” as Warren would call her?7 Members also began asking about seeing the film taken by Abraham Zapruder.

  “We’ve got to put this show on the road,” Warren declared.8

  By January 1964, deadlines had been set. Rankin proposed that a final report be completed by mid-May, four months hence. He wanted it handed to President Johnson by June 1.9

  Commenting on the “tremendous mass” of files expected to be examined in such a short period of time, Allen Dulles suggested the staff save energy and simply “pick out what they think is essential,” with the option that “we can browse around if we have time.”10

  Then, things hit the proverbial fan.

  “This is a serious thing,” Boggs lamented at a hastily called meeting on January 22.11 The focus was the scintillating message from Waggoner Carr, district attorney of Texas, who informed the Commission “that the word had come out . . . that Oswald was acting as an FBI undercover agent.”12

  “It is going to be very difficult for us to be able to establish the fact in it,” Rankin admitted to his hushed audience.13 “I am confident that the FBI would never admit it, and I presume their records will never show it, or if their records do show anything, I would think their records would show some kind of a number that could be assigned to a dozen different people according to how they wanted to describe them.”

  Dulles, no stranger to this topic, explained, “I mean when they hire somebody they hire somebody for a purpose. It is either . . . Was it to penetrate the Fair Play for Cuba Committee? That is the only thing I can think of where they might have used this man [Oswald].”14

  Rankin expressed deeper thoughts.

  Secondly, there is this factor . . . that is somewhat an issue in this case, and I suppose you are all aware of it. That is that the FBI is very explicit that Oswald is the assassin or was the assassin, and they are very explicit that there was no conspiracy, and they are also saying in the same place that they are continuing their investigation. Now in my experience of almost nine years, in the first place it is hard to get them to say when you think you have got a case tight enough to convict somebody, that that is the person that committed the crime. In my experience with the FBI they don’t do that. They claim that they don’t evaluate, and it is uniform prior experience that they don’t do that.15

  The question was asked why, if the FBI traditionally remains neutral, it broke the mold and took such an adamant stance against Oswald as early as the agency did in its investigation. One member said he didn’t have a clue. Rankin, however, did.

  “They would like to have us fold up and quit . . . ,” he suggested. “They found the man. There is nothing more to do. The Commission supports their conclusions, and we can go on home and that is the end of it.”16

  “[The] implications of this are fantastic, don’t you think so?” Boggs chimed in.17

  “Terrific,” Rankin replied.

  “I think this record ought to be destroyed,” Dulles opined. “Do you think we need a record of this?”18

  At the January 27 Executive Session five days later, discussion of Oswald’s possible intelligence connections continued.

  Boggs inquired about the method of hiring government agents, especially if there were no “signed contract” to prove actual employment.

  Boggs: The man who recruited him would know, wouldn’t he?

  Dulles: Yes, but he wouldn’t tell.

  Chairman Warren: Wouldn’t tell it under oath?

  Dulles: I wouldn’t think he would tell it under oath, no.

  Chairman Warren: Why?

  Dulles: He ought not tell it under oath. Maybe not tell it [sic] to his own government but wouldn’t tell it any other way.

  McCloy: Wouldn’t he tell it to his own chief?

  Dulles: He might or might not. If he was a bad one then he wouldn’t.19

  Dulles labeled Oswald “a stupid fellow,” a most unlikely candidate for intelligence work.20 This was from the head of an agency whose plots to kill Castro read like the pranks of a renegade fraternity house. There was the CIA’s idea of placing a bomb in Castro’s cigar, triggered to ignite when his stogie was lit. Or an underwater device lodged in a seashell and timed to explode should Castro be enticed by its beauty during one of his routine swims. Or a powder to be spilled on Castro that would quickly dissolve his beard, rendering him so foolish looking he would be dethroned in shame. Or an offshore Fourth of July fireworks display so grand it would signal to credulous Cubans the Second Coming of Christ, who was pre-portrayed by the CIA as being a devout anti-Castroite.

  Several Commission members then began to put two and two together. Why, for instance, since Oswald had once lived in a Communist country, didn’t the Secret Service consider him a possible threat when Kennedy visited Dallas?

  “If he was on the payroll of the FBI,” John McCloy ventured, “they would think he was all right, they would not think of his being a defector.”21

  Next was this exchange:

  Rankin: Part of our difficulty in regard to it is that they have no problem. They have decided that it is Oswa
ld who committed the assassination, they have decided that no one else was involved, they have decided—

  Russell: They have tried the case and reached a verdict on every aspect.

  Boggs: You have put your finger on it.22

  Doubts then arose over whether the FBI had forwarded to the Commission everything it had on Oswald. “That has always been a queer thing to me before this rumor came up,” Russell said. “I couldn’t understand why they went to Mrs. Payne [sic] and Mrs. Oswald, but didn’t go to him.”23

  Along those lines, Rankin cited a “two-hour” meeting between Oswald and the FBI in August 1962, the results of which had been submitted to the Commission in a mere two-page report.24 “We don’t have any report that would cover anything like a two hour conversation,” he said. “It is a relatively short report. Now, what occupied the rest of the time?”25

  He had additional concerns. “Then there is a great range of material in regard to the wounds, and the autopsy and this point of exit or entrance of the bullet in the front of the neck, and that all has to be developed much more than we have at the present time. We have an explanation there in the autopsy that probably a fragment came out the front of the neck, but with the elevation the shot must have come from, and the angle, it seems quite apparent now, since we have the picture of where the bullet entered in the back, that the bullet entered below the shoulder blade to the right of the backbone, which is below the place where the picture shows the bullet came out in the neckband of the shirt in front.”26

  Russell offered two possible solutions. “One is we can just accept the FBI’s report and go on and write the report based on their findings and supported by the raw materials they have given us, or else we can go and try to run down some of these collateral rumors that have just not been dealt with directly in this raw material that we have.”27

  “The plot thickens, doesn’t it?” McCloy noted.28