These details by themselves prove nothing. More serious is the evidence that the CIA files were being fed false information from without, while in the same period CIA officers were further distorting and falsifying the Oswald file with additional false information from inside, both prior to the assassination and subsequent to it.2 The cover-up in this area can presumably be taken as an indication of some important issue at stake.
With the new releases, the number of unanswered questions about "Lee Oswald" the file subject is now greater, not less, than before. However one hypothesis at the center seems more and more reasonable. This is that the CIA’s files were being both fed and doctored in late 1963 to present a continuous flow of apparent evidence, always plausible but never conclusive, and above all never true, that Oswald was a possible agent of Soviet or Cuban intelligence.
This alleged evidence was never at any time strong enough to justify an armed response against either the Soviet Union or Cuba. On the other hand it was cumulatively enough for Lyndon Johnson, by November 29, 1963, to persuade Chief Justice Warren and other recalcitrant leaders of the need for a Warren Commission. According to Warren, Johnson spoke of the "rumors floating around the world" that "might lead us into war," and possibly "a nuclear war."3
"Rumors floating around the world" were of course far less likely to lead to war than apparent evidence in government files of Oswald’s involvement in KGB or Cuban assassination plots. I have called such claims "phase one" stories, because their real purpose may have been no more than to produce the desired "phase two" hypothesis (no more true, but much less dangerous) that Oswald was a lone assassin. Two of these "phase one" stories particularly concern us because in each case the claim, inherently flimsy, was actively promoted by individuals inside the U.S. government.
The first, which we shall look at more closely, was that Oswald had met in Mexico City with a Soviet KGB assassination operative, Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov. As we shall see, this allegation had been essentially stripped of its ominousness by November 27, 1963, when one of its original proponents had acknowledged there was no strong evidence of Kostikov’s role as an assassin.
A Digression: The Timing and Consequences of the Alvarado "Phase One" Story
By this time, however, a second "phase one" story had surfaced. On November 25, 1963, a Nicaraguan double agent, Gilberto Alvarado, told a Mexico City CIA officer that he had seen Oswald recruited to kill Kennedy inside the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. The second story had three points in common with the first one.
1. It had enthusiastic proponents within the government (in this case U.S. Ambassador Thomas Mann and CIA officer David Phillips in Mexico City).
2. It received apparent corroboration from other sources.
3. Nevertheless the story was inherently so flawed it was destined to be discredited.
The fatal weakness of the Alvarado story was his claim to have seen Oswald in the Cuban Consulate on September 18, 1963, at a time when Oswald had not yet left New Orleans. Faced with this problem, Alvarado retracted his story on November 30. We do not yet know if CIA Director McCone told President Johnson this when he discussed Alvarado with him on November 30 and December 1.4 No matter: by November 29 Lyndon Johnson had announced the formation of the Warren Commission. (It would appear that the Alvarado story delayed the FBI’s official report on the assassination, originally scheduled for November 29, until December 5.)5
Lyndon Johnson’s conversation with Congressman Charles Halleck the same day gives the clearest picture of the role played by false "phase one" allegations: "This thing is getting pretty serious and our folks are worried about it. . . it has some foreign implications. . . CIA and other things. . . and I’m going to try to get the Chief Justice on it." Johnson added that "we can’t have Congress, FBI and others saying that Khrushchev or Castro ordered the assassination:" "This thing is so touchy from an international standpoint. . . .This is a question that could involve our losing 39 million people."6
Johnson drew particular attention to the plans which Senator Eastland had revealed to him the previous day, of holding hearings before his Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Speaking to House Speaker John McCormack, Johnson explained that he had to announce the Warren Commission quickly: "I better get him [Senator Eastland] to call off his investigation." He added that some Dallas official would testify that Khrushchev planned the assassination.7 This last detail is supported by the recurring reports that Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, and his Assistant, William Alexander, had been preparing to charge Oswald with murdering the President as part of an international Communist conspiracy.8
But the Eastland Committee may have got wind of the still secret Alvarado allegation as well. Their staff person A1 Tarabochia, a Cuban exile, claimed to "know someone who has access to confidential information about the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City."9 Although Committee Counsel Julien Sourwine refused to reveal the identity of this informant, the thrust of the Eastland inquiry would seem to suggest that he was someone conversant with the Alvarado allegations.10
As far as we know, support within the CIA for the Alvarado "phase one" story was confined to the Mexico City Station. The Kostikov story, although short-lived, was potentially more serious. Not only did it have high-level proponents at Headquarters, it would appear that the Oswald-Kostikov contact had been reported by CIA officers in such a way as to ensure that its potential significance would not be realized at the time.
In short the key to the Kostikov story, as to the Alvarado story, would appear to have been its timing. Just as the Alvarado story contained a fatal flaw that led to its timely disposal, so the key explosive element in the Kostikov story (his KGB status and alleged assassination activity) would appear to have been suppressed, with the result that no alarms went off until after the assassination.
The Kostikov Story and Falsifications in the CIA Documentary Record for October 1963
In October 1963, the month before the President’s murder, the CIA produced five documents on Oswald: three cables, a teletype, and a memo. In late November the cumulative effect of these was to give investigators the impression, superficially provocative but in fact misleading, that Lee Harvey Oswald, the leading suspect in the assassination, had met in Mexico City with KGB agent Valeriy Kostikov, a suspected Soviet assassinations operative.11
1. The Mexico City Station Cable of October 8, 1963
Of these five documents, at least three show signs of CIA doctoring; and the first, which does not, was nevertheless so misleading as to be possibly dishonest. This was a cable to CIA Headquarters from the Mexico City Station on October 8, 1963, reporting that on October 1, an individual, who "identified himself as Lee Oswald," had been overheard telling the Soviet Embassy that three days earlier, on September 28, he had been at the Soviet Embassy when he "spoke with Consul whom he believed to be Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov."12
This cable has been the subject of much speculation since the belated release in 1975 of an FBI memorandum, saying that FBI agents in Dallas who had spoken to Oswald had "listened to a recording" of the voice of this individual, and were of the opinion that he "was not Lee Harvey Oswald."13 The House Committee’s devious treatment of this memo in their Report reflects their suspicion that the individual was in fact not Oswald but an impostor.14
This impression of an impostor was further complicated by the second paragraph of the cable:
Have photos male appears be American entering SovEmb 1216 hours, leaving 1222 on 1 Oct. Apparent age 35, athletic build, circa 6 feet, receding hairline, balding top. Wore khakis and sport shirt.
This 35-year old visitor to the Soviet Embassy was not the 24-year old Oswald. But neither (we now suspect) was he the individual who identified himself as Lee Oswald.
It is hard to justify the mention of this so-called "mystery man" in the cable. The intercepted telephone conversation had taken place at 10:45 A.M. that day; in it the man identifying himself as Oswald had spoken of a visit on September 28 only. T
here was nothing to suggest that he intended to visit the Embassy on October l.15
The author of the cable’s second paragraph, Ann Goodpasture, was an assistant to Station Chief Winston Scott, who supervised the work of three photo bases operating against the Soviet Embassy.16 Her explanation to the House Select Committee (supported in part by other Station officers) was that, out of the four or five day period of Oswald’s visit, this "was the only non-Latin appearing person’s photograph that we found that we could not identify as somebody else."17
For various reasons Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, the authors of the House Committee’s staff report on "Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City," found this explanation "implausible." One of these reasons was that the photo, allegedly taken on October 1, was in fact taken one day later. They also found it suspect that this alleged mistake was not discovered until 1976, even though CIA Headquarters, the day after the assassination, had told MEXI (the Mexico City station) that the "mystery man" was not Oswald, and added, "Presume MEXI has double-checked dates of these photos."18
If Ms. Goodpasture’s testimony was accurate, then the photo surveillance of the Soviet Embassy failed to turn up any photos of the Lee Harvey Oswald arrested in Dallas. The House Committee was however unable to confirm this; the CIA declined to make the photo take from the Soviet Embassy available for review.19
2. The Headquarters Cable and Teletype of October 10 about Lee Henry Oswald
However suspicious we find the first cable’s description of an irrelevant "mystery man," the Mexico City CIA Station’s role in transmitting this information seems relatively innocuous, compared to the devious Headquarters response to it. Two messages were sent out within two hours of each other on October 10, a cable to Mexico City and a disseminating teletype to the FBI, Navy, and State Department. Although (according to one of the authors) "the cable and the teletype had been prepared simultaneously by three knowledgable people,"20 the two messages contained falsified information and were mutually incompatible. While the teletype transmitted the misleading description of the 35-year-old mystery man, the cable informed Mexico City of the age and height of the 24-year-old former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. Not by this name however: both outgoing messages misidentified the "Lee Oswald" in Mexico City with a "Lee Henry Oswald" who had since 1960 existed in CIA files and documents and nowhere else.21
CIA counterintelligence officer Ann Egerter, one of these "three knowledgable people," had invented the name "Lee Henry Oswald" back in November 1960, when information about Lee Harvey Oswald was collected in response to a request from the State Department’s Director of Intelligence and Research. In December 1960 Ms. Egerter then opened a 201 file on "Lee Henry Oswald," which then became the repository for information on Lee Harvey Oswald, plus her lone misleading report on Lee Henry Oswald.22
This falsification in 1960 appears to have been deliberate. In her report for the State Department, Ms. Egerter also altered an FBI account from Oswald’s mother of Oswald’s coming "to Fort Worth for a visit of about three days" into a visit to "his mother in Waco, Texas for about three days."23 The effect of the two alterations was to make "Lee Henry Oswald" much harder to trace.24
I will show in a moment that the falsification and distortion in the two messages of October 10, 1963, was in fact far worse than the supplying of two incompatible physical descriptions for a man with an invented name; and that it was possibly concerted (I suspect) so as to create an impression of KGB intrigue that would only surface after the assassination. But let us first dispense with the standard CIA explanation that the confusions in the cables are attributable to Murphy’s Law, and the inattention of those drafting the cables. Ann Egerter told the House Committee that Oswald’s "contact with Kostikov" "caused a lot of excitement" at Langley; and that Oswald "had to be up to something bad." Another of the officers drafting the messages (whom we shall call Ms. A) thought it possible that Oswald "really was working for the Soviets." The key to this excitement was the "contact with Kostikov;" yet Kostikov’s KGB identity and allegedly sinister reputation were, inexplicably, not mentioned in either cable.25
These two employees should have to explain why, if the Kostikov contact excited them so much, they chose not to mention it to the FBI. It can safely be said that, if they had, the reaction of the FBI to their teletype would have been very different; and with it American history. The FBI already had a file on Kostikov, and knew him to be at the least a KGB agent. Thus Oswald would very likely have been interviewed, and possibly put under surveillance. If he had, he would probably not have been in a position to be, or be fingered as, the assassin.
What was left out of the two messages in fact created a far greater distortion than the misinformation included. What most strikes us about the two messages is not the falsification of Oswald’s name (as Henry rather than Harvey) and of his wife’s (as Pusakova rather than Prusakova); it is the staggeringly false claim in the cable that the "latest headquarters info" was a State Department report "dated May 1962:"
Latest HDQS info was [State] report dated May 1962 saying [State] had determined Oswald is still US citizen and both he and his Soviet wife have exit permits and Dept State had given approval for their travel with their infant child to USA.26
There is no hint in either message that, as the CIA was well informed, Oswald had been back in the United States since June of 1962. On the contrary, both messages created the impression that Oswald, when last heard of, was still in the Soviet Union. (Thus the October 10 cable to Mexico City was summarized in a later file document as "Attempts of Lee Oswald and wife to reenter U.S.")27
By suppressing from the cable what it knew about Oswald since May of 1962, CIA Headquarters concealed a key fact which, if transmitted, should have resulted in Oswald’s case being handled much more actively, and (perhaps even more importantly) by different people inside the Agency. This key fact was Oswald’s arrest in New Orleans on August 9, 1963, in connection with his Fair Play for Cuba activities on behalf of Fidel Castro.
A seven-page FBI memo on this arrest, dated September 24, 1963, had in fact been received by the Agency on October 3. It was then seen by two of the authors of the cables: Ann Egerter of the Counterintelligence/Special Investigations Group, and Jane Roman of Counterintelligence/Liaison (on October 4). It thus should have been fresh in their memories when drafting the October 10 messages a few days later. Yet they both suppressed any reference to it.28
3. The falsification of Oswald’s 201 File
The CIA later misled the Warren Commission about its knowledge of Oswald’s arrest by October 3, 1963; and individual CIA officers may have broken the law in doing so. When the CIA belatedly submitted Oswald’s 201 file to the Warren Commission (as Commission Document 692), the September 24 memorandum had been relocated to a later position in the file, making it appear (falsely) that it had been received after the October 10 cables had been drafted.29
Here it becomes relevant that it is a felony, under Section 1001 of the US Criminal Code, knowingly and willingly to falsify, conceal, or cover up facts within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States. What we have just discussed is cover-up of material facts after the assassination to the Warren Commission. This pattern of cover-up is however consistent with other concealments, prior to the assassination, within the Agency.
Another apparent sign of cover up is that the May 1962 report on Oswald, summarized in the October 10 cable, was reportedly not in the 201 file, and thus never submitted by CIA to the Warren Commission. A copy of this State Department document was indeed sent to CIA in May 1962. If it was not in the 201 file, where was it filed, and why was this file not submitted to the Warren Commission?30
4. The Falsification in the October 16 Mexico City Memo
Just as Headquarters suppressed all references to Cuba in their pre-assassination messages, so, astonishingly, did the CIA station in Mexico City. One might argue that by October 8, the date of their Oswald-Kostikov cable, they had not yet estab
lished that Oswald had also visited the Cuban Embassy. But Oswald’s efforts to obtain a visa at the Cuban Consulate were certainly known by October 16, when a "counterintelligence type" in the Mexico City station (whom we shall call Ms. B) drafted a memo on Oswald.31 This memo was given to the FBI Attache in the Embassy; and by this channel FBI Headquarters finally learned, belatedly on October 18, that Oswald had not only visited the Soviet Embassy but had allegedly spoken with the KGB Agent Kostikov.
The October 16 CIA memo was apparently compiled after comparing the voice heard on October 1 (claiming to be Lee Oswald) with an earlier voice or voices on the telephone from the Cuban Embassy inquiring about a visa. Yet the memo mentioned neither the Cuban Embassy nor the exculpating fact that the alleged conversation with Kostikov was apparently about a visa.
Instead Ms. B’s memo contained the following sentence (which would later prove to be a provocative one, when matched with the alleged assassination background of Kostikov):
This officer determined that Oswald had been at the Soviet Embassy on 28 September 1963 and had talked with Valeriy Vladimirivoch [sic, i.e. Vladimirovich] Kostikov, a member of the Consular Section, in order to learn if the Soviet Embassy had received a reply from Washington concerning his request. We have no clarifying information with regard to this request.32
The House Committee learned from the author of this memo that she had used the word "determined" after rechecking the transcripts of the various conversations (from both embassies). By this time the station had linked to Oswald at least four apparently related transcripts between September 27 and October 1, and of these two related unambiguously to a request for a visa from Washington. Yet the station officer, who had seen these transcripts, chose to write that there was "no clarifying information."
When asked why the 10/16 memo said that there was no clarifying information on Oswald’s "request" when it was known by this time that he was seeking a visa, [she] said that "They had no need to know all these other details."33
Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics Page 6
