Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Eddowes estimated to reporters that the multiyear effort on his part to get to what he perceived to be the truth in the assassination had cost him, since 1963, “more than $250,000.” Chastened by the medical findings, he told reporters, “Though surprised, I am in no way disappointed in the apparent disproving of my evidence of imposture. Rather, I have accomplished my objective in obtaining the exhumation.”108

  One would think that Eddowes’s bizarre theory was laid to rest with the reinterment of Oswald’s body, but believe it or not, some conspiracy theorists remain unsatisfied, arguing that the body of the real Lee Harvey Oswald may have been substituted for the body of the impersonator, who was originally buried in the grave.109 And just four years later, and undaunted by (in fact, totally ignoring) the 1981 findings, conspiracy theorist R. B. Cutler, for years the editor of the Grassy Knoll Gazette, and his fellow theorist W. R. Norris self-published their book Alek James Hidell, Alias Oswald, in which they allege that the person buried in Oswald’s grave is not, as Eddowes claimed, a KGB agent, but a CIA agent whose name was Alek James Hidell. “Oswald was not murdered by Ruby,” Cutler assertively declared in his letter to me of July 24, 1986. So we learn from Cutler and his coauthor that A. Hidell was not the alias we believed Oswald frequently used, one that his wife, Marina, knew to be “merely an altered Fidel”110 denoting Oswald’s reverence for Cuban premier Fidel Castro, but a real person who impersonated the real Oswald.

  Without a tad of evidence to support their crackpot theory, the authors surmised that Hidell was “a Russian student [in the United States] recruited by the CIA to be a spy in the Cold War.” They go on to say that “next to nothing is known about Hidell’s life,” which is remarkable since it suggests at least something, however little, is known about someone who never existed. They say it is a “reasonable guess” that Hidell was born in Riga, Russia, in February of 1938. The Russian CIA agent “substituted” himself for Oswald in 1958, the authors tell us, when Oswald was stationed in Japan. Like Eddowes, they say that it is “unknown” what ultimately happened to the real Oswald. According to the authors, the fake Oswald returns to the United States in 1962 under the name Lee Harvey Oswald, and like Eddowes’s fake Oswald, fools even the real Oswald’s mother and brother as to his true identity. The authors claim that Hidell was a “patsy” who was set up by his “handlers,” the CIA and FBI, and that four other men assassinated Kennedy, Hidell finally being murdered by Ruby.

  The two authors, who refer to themselves in their book in the third person, leading the reader to believe someone is writing about them, are so hopelessly confused that although they start their book claiming the CIA was behind the assassination, one of them (Norris), after finding a former CIA and FBI “operative” kneeling at Oswald’s (actually Hidell’s) grave with flowers (he knew “Oswald” from their days as CIA and FBI operatives and felt terrible for what happened to him), is convinced by the man that the John Birch Society, not the CIA and FBI, was behind Kennedy’s assassination. But Norris, without any explanation, later in the book returns to the fold in pointing the finger solely at U.S. intelligence.

  Cutler and Norris don’t seem to be concerned about the fact that at the time they say the CIA substituted their Russian-born agent for the real Oswald in 1958 as part of their master plot to assassinate Kennedy, Kennedy wasn’t even president. Eisenhower was, and Kennedy hadn’t yet even announced his intention to run for president. But hey, the CIA was clairvoyant. Nor do they seem concerned about the same problem Eddowes had, such as the real Oswald’s fingerprints, taken in 1956 (before the “substitution” of Hidell for Oswald in 1958), matching up with the fingerprints taken in 1963 of the man they say was a CIA agent.111 Now, if they can get around the fact that no two humans have the same fingerprints (more unique than DNA, since identical twins do have the same DNA), maybe they can keep their mad theory alive.

  The most significant alleged Oswald impersonation took place during Oswald’s trip to Mexico City in late September and early October of 1963. The evidence could hardly be more overwhelming that Oswald (not an impersonator) did, in fact, go to the Cuban consulate and Soviet embassy for the purpose of securing an in-transit visa to Cuba ostensibly to be used by Oswald on his way to the Soviet Union. Yet conspiracy theorists have persisted in claiming, against a tide of irresistible evidence, that it wasn’t the real Oswald who did these things. Jim Garrison refers to the alleged imposture in Mexico City as “the most significant of [all the Oswald] impersonations.”112

  As we saw earlier in this book, Oswald crossed the border into Mexico at the city of Nuevo Laredo at around 2:00 p.m. on September 26, 1963.113 Records of the Flecha Roja bus line show that Oswald arrived in Mexico City around 10:00 a.m., September 27, 1963.114 He checked into the Hotel del Comercio, per the owner and manager, sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m., and paid for five nights’ lodging (at the peso equivalent of $1.28 in U.S. currency per night) at the subject hotel for the evening of September 27 through the evening of October 1, 1963.115 Oswald left Mexico City for Laredo, Texas, on the Transportes del Norte bus line at 8:30 on the morning of October 2,116 and crossed the International Bridge from Nuevo Laredo into Texas at about 1:35 a.m. on October 3.117

  Señora Silvia Tirado de Duran, a twenty-six-year-old native of Mexico who worked in the visa section of the Cuban consulate of the Cuban embassy, processed Oswald’s request for his visa on September 27, 1963. In a statement to Mexico’s Federal Security Police the day after the assassination, she positively identified Oswald and related the facts of his visit to the consulate.118 Virtually the sole basis for the allegation of imposture comes from Eusebio Azcue, the former Cuban consul in Mexico City. As we saw earlier in the book, Oswald had told Duran he was a friend of the Cuban Revolution, and felt the documents he presented to her (documents showing he lived and worked in Russia, marriage certificate to a Russian citizen, membership in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, letters to the American Communist Party, etc.) should entitle him to a visa. When Duran, herself a Marxist and sympathetic with Oswald’s objective, told him nonetheless that she could not grant him an immediate Cuban visa, that he would first have to get a Russian one and this would take some time, Oswald became very angry, causing Duran to call for Azcue’s assistance.119 Coming out of his office, Azcue listened to Oswald’s request and told Oswald the same thing: it would take time, perhaps ten to twenty days. Azcue testified before the HSCA that the first time he saw Oswald in connection with the assassination was about two months after the incident at the consulate, when he saw the film of Oswald being killed by Ruby. Azcue said he was certain the person in the film was not the same man he saw at the consulate. The man at the consulate, he said, was “over 30 years of age and very thin, very thin-faced. And the individual I saw in the movie was a young man, considerably younger, and [had] a fuller face.” Of course, Oswald is only shown for a second or two on the film before his face is contorted almost beyond recognition with shock and pain. And Azcue conceded “that the conditions under which I had seen him in the film at the time he was killed, with distorted features as a result of the pain, it is conceivable that I might be mistaken.”

  When HSCA counsel showed Azcue the photograph of Oswald attached to the visa application, he said the man in the film more closely resembled the man in the photograph than the man he saw at the consulate. Though he testified that “fifteen years [have] gone by so it is very difficult for me to be in a position to guarantee it in a categorical form,” he nonetheless believed that the man in the photograph “is not the person or the individual who went to the consulate.”

  Azcue did not testify before the Warren Commission, and a full ten years before his HSCA testimony on September 18, 1978, he may have been influenced by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s pronouncements in 1967–1969 that there was an Oswald impersonator in Mexico City, though Azcue told the HSCA that Garrison merely “reaffirmed [his] view” that the man at the consulate was not Oswald.120

  If Azcue’s opinion were all
one had to go on, it would be entitled to great weight. But all of the other evidence conclusively establishes that the real Oswald was at the consulate:

  1. Silvia Duran spent much more time with Oswald than Azcue did, and upon seeing Oswald’s photograph in the Mexico City morning newspaper El Dia the day after the assassination, she immediately recognized and identified the person in the photo as being the same person who had come to the consulate.121 Although later, to the HSCA, she described the American at the consulate as being around five feet six inches and 125 pounds with light blonde hair,122* a description that doesn’t precisely match that of Oswald, she has never wavered in her belief that it was Oswald.123

  2. Alfredo Mirabal Diaz, one of only three people—along with Duran and Azcue—to see the man identifying himself as Oswald at the consulate,124 and who was in training at the time to replace Azcue as Cuban consul, also identified Oswald as the person seeking the visa.125

  3. As indicated, Oswald arrived in Mexico City from the states around 10:00 on the morning of September 27, 1963. The working hours of the Cuban consulate were 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and the American seeking the visa first came to the consulate on the morning of the twenty-seventh.126 Oswald’s visa application also bears the date September 27, 1963.127 And on the fourth line of the application, the date September 27, 1963, in Spanish, is typed.128

  4. A photograph of Oswald is stapled to the visa application.129 And, indeed, Duran testified that she told Oswald he would have to have a photograph of himself to attach to his visa application and she referred him to a few places near the consulate. Oswald left the consulate and returned “in the afternoon” that same day, September 27, with photos of himself, which she checked to make sure they matched up with the man before her.130

  5. Handwriting experts from the CIA concluded that the signature “Lee Harvey Oswald” affixed to the visa application is the signature of Lee Harvey Oswald.131 The HSCA, discovering that the name “Lee H. Oswald” was also signed on a copy of the application, had its own handwriting experts examine each signature. Their conclusion was that both signatures belonged to Oswald.132

  6. As if the above weren’t more than enough, the American seeking the visa acted exactly as Oswald so often did—angry, persistent, and intense. In her statement to the Mexican Federal Security Police, Duran said that when Oswald was informed of the fact that he could not get an immediate visa to Cuba, “he became highly agitated and angry.”133 She told the HSCA, “He was red and he was almost crying, and uh, he was insisting and insisting…[Azcue] opened the door and told Oswald to go away…I was feeling pity for him because he looked desperate.”134 And Azcue testified before the HSCA that the man “was very anxious we grant him the visa…We never had any individual that was so insistent or persistent…He was never friendly…He accused us of being bureaucrats, and in a very discourteous manner.”135

  Common sense dictates that someone trying to physically pass himself off as Oswald would draw as little attention to himself as possible. By creating such a scene and ruckus at the consulate, he would be immeasurably increasing the likelihood that the personnel at the consulate would get a much better look at his face and overall physical appearance and, hence, be able to recollect that he was not Oswald.

  7. The fact that we know Oswald was in Mexico City at the very same time that someone claiming to be Oswald was at the Cuban consulate and Russian embassy is just further evidence that it was indeed he at the consulate and embassy. Handwriting experts for the Warren Commission and HSCA concluded that the signature “Lee Harvey Oswald” on the register of the Hotel del Comercio on September 27, 1963, was Oswald’s signature.136 Oswald stayed in room 18 at the hotel for, as indicated, five nights. Both the owner-manager of the hotel, Guillermo Garcia Luna, and the maid, Matilde Garnica, identified Oswald to the CIA as being at the hotel, Garnica adding that she clearly remembered Oswald because so few Americans stayed there. The desk clerk, Sebastian Perez Hernandez, and the watchman, Pedro Rodriguez Ledesma, who sought out a taxi for Oswald on the morning when Oswald departed the hotel for the states, also clearly identified Oswald. And Dolores Ramirez de Barreiro, the owner, manager, and sometimes cook of the small restaurant immediately adjacent to the hotel, identified Oswald as the young American who had eaten several meals at her restaurant in the late afternoon during Oswald’s stay in Mexico City. All five of the above witnesses said that whenever they saw Oswald, he was alone.137

  8. As conclusive as the above evidence is, none of it is even necessary, since Oswald himself has told us it was he at the Cuban consulate. In his November 9, 1963, letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., he recounts the trouble he had at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City and alludes to Azcue by saying that he was “glad the [Cuban consul] has since been replaced.”138 Though Azcue did not, in fact, leave the consulate until November 18, 1963, which was after Oswald wrote his letter, he testified that “since the month of September of 1963 I had started to turn over affairs to the new consul who was to replace me, Mr. Alfredo Mirabal.”139 It appears that Oswald, during his visits to the consulate, had somehow become aware of this fact.

  9. Not only do we know that it was Oswald at the Cuban consulate, but we know it was Oswald who, on the afternoon of September 27, 1963, and the morning of September 28, 1963, entered the Russian embassy and met with KGB members of the embassy staff (Colonel Oleg Maximovich Nechiporenko and Valeriy Kostikov on both days and Pavel Yatskov on September 28) seeking a visa to Russia. When Oswald appeared on television following his arrest in Dallas on November 23, 1963, Nechiporenko, Kostikov, and Yatskov all remembered and identified Oswald as being the person they had spoken to at their embassy.140

  10. Oswald had told his wife, Marina, earlier about his plans to go to Cuba by way of Mexico City and later about his trip to Mexico City, his trouble at the “two embassies,” and that because of all the “red tape” he got nowhere with the “bureaucrats” there in his effort to get to Cuba. Oswald told Marina he was in Mexico City “about a week,” which the documentary record confirms.141

  11. After his arrest, Oswald told his interrogators about his Mexico City trip. Postal Inspector Harry Holmes, one of Oswald’s interrogators, testified that “he [Oswald] went to the Mexican consulate or embassy or something and wanted to get permission, or whatever it took to get to Cuba. They refused him and he became angry and he said he burst out of there.”142

  12. And Oswald’s own possessions reveal that he was at the Cuban consulate. Silvia Duran said that even though she was unable to give Oswald the immediate visa he wanted, she wanted to be helpful to him so she gave him a piece of paper with her name on it, as well as the telephone number of the consulate, which was 11-28-47.143 Silvia Duran’s name and the consulate’s phone number were found on a piece of paper among Oswald’s possessions after his arrest.144 That same piece of paper contained the phone numbers of both the Soviet embassy in Mexico City (15-61-55) and the Soviet Department of Consular Affairs (15-60-55).145

  13. The linchpin for the allegation that there was an Oswald imposter at the Cuban consulate is that this imposter was the same one who impersonated Oswald at the Russian embassy. This is so because the alleged imposture not only occurred during the same, precise period of time, but the contact by “Oswald” with the Soviet embassy is inextricably connected with his contact with the Cuban consulate. For instance, Consul Azcue told Oswald that the one way he could issue him an immediate in-transit visa to Cuba without the waiting period and protocol of prior consultation with Cuba would be for Oswald to secure a final destination visa to the Soviet Union from the Soviet embassy. Oswald proceeded to the Soviet embassy just two blocks away and attempted to obtain such a visa, but he was unsuccessful. Azcue testified that either the same day he sent Oswald to the embassy (September 27) or the next day, he spoke over the phone to “the consulate of the Soviet Union” at the Soviet embassy and was told that the documents Oswald produced attesting to his residence in the Soviet Union and his marriage
to a Soviet citizen (both of which Oswald had previously shown to Duran and Azcue) were apparently valid, but a visa could not be issued without authorization from Moscow, and that would take approximately four months.146 And Silvia Duran also said she spoke to the “Russian consul” on the same day they sent Oswald there and was told he had been there and that Oswald was informed he’d have to wait for four months.147

  Since we know that the real Oswald was at the Cuban consulate, we know, then, that the real Oswald was also at the Soviet embassy. To believe otherwise demands answers to the following questions: How would the bogus Oswald know to go to the Soviet embassy around the very time the real Oswald was sent there, and for the identical purpose? Did he have the real Oswald and the Cuban consulate bugged? But even if he did, how would that prevent the real Oswald from going to the Russian embassy too? And if so, why didn’t Azcue and Duran say that in their contacts with the Soviet embassy they were told that two people claiming to be Lee Harvey Oswald had come to the embassy seeking a final destination visa to the Soviet Union? John Davis, author of Mafia Kingfish, has no trouble with such folly. He writes, “As it turned out, Oswald, or his impostor, or both, spent six days in Mexico.”148 In Conspiracy, Anthony Summers writes, “It should be remembered that the real Oswald almost certainly was in Mexico City at the relevant time, even if it was somebody else who visited the embassies.”149 Such is the infinitely silly world of the conspiracy theorists in the Kennedy assassination.