Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics

by Peter Dale Scott

  Other military intelligence agencies may also have been involved. One day earlier, on November 21, Hosty and Coyle had met with Jack Revill, author of the memo claiming Hosty called Oswald a "member of the Communist Party." On November 22, according to his colleague V.J. Brian, Revill arrived at his meeting with Hosty in the Dallas Police basement in a car which had also carried "some type of. . . Army intelligence man," whether "a CIC agent or a CID or OSI" (5 WH 57). Revill has since identified him as an agent of OSI, the Office of Special Investigations of the U.S. Air Force.

  Like Army Intelligence and ONI (Navy), OSI had maintained a continuous dossier on Oswald (though probably not under his name), since Oswald’s defection in 1959. Their official ground for concern was that Oswald’s half-brother, John Edward Pic, was a member of the USAF.81 In fact OSI is the only military intelligence agency known to have consulted Oswald’s Office of Security Confidential file in the Washington Headquarters of the State Department.82

  As I have shown elsewhere, Army Intelligence Reserve also played a role in generating one other piece of evidence that Oswald acted in furtherance of an international Communist conspiracy: Marina’s affidavit suggesting that Oswald’s rifie in Dallas was one "which he used in Russia."83 Army Intelligence knew of Marina’s affidavit by 10:35 PM on November 22, 1963, before it was public knowledge.84 Finally there is the unexplained knowledge of Army Intelligence in San Antonio, as early as 3:15 CST on November 22, that Oswald was arrested "carrying a Selective Service card bearing the name of Alex Hidell.85 This was the FBI’s first knowledge of the card, indeed the first documented source from any agency.

  The second reason for suspecting military intelligence is the recurrence, otherwise unexplained, of the name "Harvey Lee Oswald," in Mexico City as in Dallas. Earlier I failed to mention one other respect in which the November 26 version of Durán’s statement, or JKB Memo attachment, was apparently rewritten. The ten-page attachment is a Report from a source (still redacted in the released version) who personally interviewed Durán and seven of her personal associates.86 In that report Oswald is mentioned by name a total of thirteen times. In the first half of the report, the important interviews of Durán and her husband, we find "Oswald" once, "Lee Oswald" once, and "Lee Harvey Oswald" a total of six times. But in the second half, the interviews of five minor witnesses, beginning with Durán’s brother-in-law, all end with variations of the same sentence: each person asserted that he did not know "Harvey Lee Oswald."87

  In the English translation of this Report, as we might expect, the anomaly has been corrected; and we hear only of "Lee Harvey Oswald."88 It seems likely that this rationalization of the text completes a task that in the Spanish text was done only for Durán and her husband, and not for the minor witnesses. In other words, whoever deleted the earlier reference to "Communist" (or "militant Communist") may have deleted references there to "Harvey Lee Oswald" as well. Thus there is a good chance that, as originally transcribed, Durán’s November 23 statement reported that Harvey Lee Oswald was a Communist (with or without a card).

  We are thus faced with an anomaly. In Mexico City as in Dallas and Miami, when we dig back to the root statement that Oswald was a Communist, we encounter another name: Harvey Lee Oswald. In fact the name "Harvey Lee Oswald" was used in many early assassination documents, from many different agencies. This anomaly suggests that there must be a hidden common source.

  This hidden source, or archetype, may have had to do with military intelligence. Relatively deep in the Mexico City FBI Oswald file is a cover sheet, dated 1-22-64, from an otherwise unidentified source called "Wesley." The document interests us not for its enclosure, which is not yet released, but for its file data. It now resides in the FBI Mexico City file, 105-3702, which was opened on October 18, 1963. But it was originally typed for a lower-numbered file (presumably opened some time earlier): "105-2137 (Harvey Lee Oswald)."89 Wesley has not been identified, but there are grounds for suspecting that he was a part of military intelligence.90

  Other sources on Oswald who actually or reportedly used the name "Harvey Lee Oswald" (such as New Orleans Police Lieutenant Francis Martello) are also figures in touch with military intelligence.91 The key example here is Jack Revill, who spent both November 21 and November 22 in the company of military intelligence agents. His phase-one memo about Hosty, as reproduced by the Warren Commission, gives Oswald’s normal name to an address where in fact he had never lived: "Lee Harvey Oswald 605 Elsbeth Street" (17 WH 509). However the list of employees compiled at the same time by and for Jack Revill at the School Book Depository (5 WH 34) has a different name at the head of the list: "HARVEY LEE OSWALD 605 ELSBETH" (24 WH 259).92

  If we are correct in our analysis of the evidence from Mexico, there is a good chance that the documented reports from there of a Harvey Lee Oswald had included the information that Oswald had presented himself as a card-carrying Communist, and that members of the Dallas police, including Revill, had in some way learned of this. If so the two federal interventions, in Dallas and in Mexico, may have been targeting the same problem.

  The vehemence of the Washington response is even more credible if we credit the Excelsior version of Oswald’s self-presentation: that he was a "militant Communist." That clue is supported by the backyard photograph of Oswald, holding a rifle in one hand, and in the other copies of the "Worker" and the ‘‘Militant".93

  If we credit for the moment that Oswald arranged for this photo and had it in his possession, three questions present themselves. First, what purpose could the photo have served, other than precisely to present himself as a "militant Communist?" Second, what viewership did he have in mind for this photo, if not the consulates of Cuba and the Soviet Union in Mexico City? Third, given his desire to demonstrate his Communist affiliations to the Cuban consulate, why would he not have availed himself of this photograph, whatever its original purpose?

  But if Oswald, or Harvey Lee Oswald, did present himself as a militant Communist, the relevance of his Mexico performance to the assassination becomes even greater. It leads us to look again at old but authoritative allegations, from high levels in the FBI and the CIA, that Oswald in the Cuban embassy actually offered to assassinate President Kennedy.94

  1 U.S. Army Cable 480587 from Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to U.S. Strike Command, McDill AFB, Florida, 230405Z (Nov. 22, 10:05 CST).

  2 Gerald Posner, Case Closed, 348n; citing Alexander interview of March 6, 1992.

  3 Memo to Moyers from Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, 11/25/63, 3 AH 567-68; cf. Walter Jenkins memo of 11/24/63 reporting phone call by J. Edgar Hoover, 3 AH 472: "Fritz. . . is giving much information to the press. Since we now think it involves a conspiracy charge. . . we want them to shut up. . . .The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach. is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."

  4 LBJ telephonic transcripts: conversation at 18:30 11/29/63.

  5 LBJ telephonic transcripts: conversation at 16:55 11/29/63.

  6 Warren Commission staff memorandum of March 27, 1964 from W. David Slawson to J. Lee Rankin, reproduced at 11 AH 176; cf. 11 AH 65, 175, WCD 351. Wairen Commission Document 351, which discussed this matter, also revealed that the Staff of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee had been in touch with Ed Butler (see below).

  7 Julien Sourwine was involved in other CIA-supported covert operations that may have had a bearing on the Kennedy assassination and cover-up. See Scott, Deep Politics, 116; cf. 215-16, 260, 262, 264-66.

  8 FBI memo from DeLoach to Mohr, 11/26/63, furnishing copy of Butler’s Executive Session testimony; FBI memo from W.R. Wannall to W.C Sullivan. Cf. Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Cover-Up (Santa Barbara: Prevailing Winds Research, 1993), 53.

  9 5 WH 104. Earlier, Hoover had hinted at an Oswald conspiracy. Filing a friend’s opinion that "the whole situation becomes logical when you fit it into the ACLU viewpoint," Hoover added that "Oswald. . . had a very bad background; and that the first lawy
er he wanted was John Abt who appears in all the communist cases we have" (Hoover Memo of 11/29/63, FBI HQ 105-82555-93).

  10 Wade testified that on November 22 he heard from both State Attorney General Waggoner Carr and U.S. Attorney Barefoot Sanders: "one said, ‘Well, David Johnston, the J.P. has said this,’ and the other has said, ‘Bill Alexander. . . said it’" (5 WH 240).

  11 The HSCA, alerted to Bill Alexander’s importance in the events of November 22, did not investigate him. It even suppressed the well-witnessed meeting of Alexander with Jack Ruby on November 21 from its extensive chronology of Jack Ruby’s movements and contacts (9 AH 1099). Thus it is not yet known if Alexander did deny saying this (making him a liar either then or to Posner), or did not deny it (making Wade an apparent liar). Carr spoke briefly about the White House telephone call (5 WH 259-60), but not about what had given rise to it.

  12 In 1967 author William Manchester wrote that Alexander "prepared to charge Oswald with murdering the President ‘as part of an international Communist conspiracy’" (Manchester, The Death of a President, [New York: Harper and Row, 1967], 326). This I suspect is close to the truth. Alexander’s intended move would explain the conflicts in testimony with respect to Oswald’s alleged arraignment on the charge of murdering the President. These conflicts led Sylvia Meagher to raise the possibility in 1967, with good reason, that the murder indictment we now have is a "retroactive completion." See Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (New York: Random House, 1976), 305-09. Other documents, which Meagher never saw, corroborate her charge that there was no second arraignment at all (e.g. Mexico City FBI serial 105-3702-170).

  13 "I never go up there. . . .I have been in that building probably once every two years" (5 WH 241).

  14 24 WH 827. Under oath, Wade told the Warren Commission that "there was an inspector of the FBI [i.e. in Washington] who called me two or three times" (5 WH 226), in addition to the calls from Washington to Carr, Sanders, and Wade’s assistant Jim Bowie (5 WH 229).

  15 Kelley, Kelley, 288-89, 293. Cf. FBI HQ serial 105-82555-50L.

  16 Kelley, Kelley, 293-94. Both Henry Wade (5 WH 251, 254) and Waggoner Carr (5 WH 259) talked about their phone calls from the White House, the former specifying that he thought it was from Johnson’s staff aide Cliff Carter. [ZZ cite from Alan Rogers]

  17 Kelley, Kelley, 290.

  18 Memo of November 24, 1963 from Belmont to Tolson, 3 AH 666; cf. Schweiker-Hart Report, 33.

  19 Hoover-Johnson telephone call, November 22, 1963 (LBJ Library); Nixon, Memoirs, (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), 252; quoted in Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets (New York: Penguin, 1992), 542. Revill later told the Warren Commission Hosty said that "a Communist killed President Kennedy" (5 WH 34). Hoover’s response to Nixon’s question ("What happened?") was similar: "It was a Communist."

  20 See Appendix I. Both these quotations are from Michael Paine’s friend Frank Krystinik, the first to the FBI on November 25 (SAC Dallas to DIR, 12/3/63, FBI HQ 105-82555-158), and the second to the Warren Commission (9 WH 466).

  21 SAC Cincinnati to DIR, 12/3/63, FBI HQ 105-82555-146.

  22 See Appendix I.

  23 Ruth Paine, a veritable font of phase-two correctness, denied vigorously that she had.

  24 What adds to the intrigue is that Paine himself had been to both meetings, a revelation about which both he and the Warren Commission were somewhat evasive (2 WH 388, 403; WR 463).

  25 For this double role of Oswald in New Orleans, see Scott, Deep Politics, 80-86, 248-53.

  26 Dallas Morning News, November 24, 1963.

  27 24 WH 754-55. As if reading from a piece of paper, Curry repeated no less than five times versions of the statement, "I do not know if and when the FBI has interviewed this man." See also the TV interview of November 24. where Wade said (falsely), "I have heard nothing from any of the—from Washington or any of the officials in this country on this matter" (24 WH 827).

  28 FBI HQ 62-109060-211, 217 (O’Leary-Curry); Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, 100 (O’Leary-FBI): "When O’Leary wrote a ‘hard-hitting review’ of a book by an author Edgar regarded as an enemy, the FBI distributed thousands of copies around the country. For his part, according to the file, O’Leary once even helped the FBI when it was trying to identify another reporter’s sources. He also submitted an article for review, and according to the file, ‘any changes we desired.’"

  29 Washington Post, August 7, 1994.

  30 24 WH 195-404; originally submitted as WCD 81b.

  31 DPD pages 159-60, 173-76, 255-56; at 24 WH 284, 290, 329.

  32 Significantly, the evidence does not include Oswald’s two membership cards in the FPCC, one issued by V.T. Lee, and the other signed "A.J.Hidell"—i.e. by himself, even though these are supposed to have been found in Oswald’s wallet by the police at the time of his arrest, and then given by Homicide Detective Fritz to the FBI on November 24 (24 WH 17). We shall return to these cards, one of which played a major role in Oswald’s visit to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City.

  33 New York Times, November 27, 1963.

  34 UPI story from Seth Kantor of Fort Worth Press, 11/26/63; FBI HQ 105-82555-261; cf. SAC New York to DIR FBI, 11/26/63; FBI HQ 105-82555-17th no. 50.

  35 What is intriguing about Alexander’s characterization of the letters is that it is quite consistent with Oswald’s letters to the Communist Party (20 WH 262-63, 22 WH 168). But Alexander could not have seen these out-going letters, unless Oswald had (as an undercover agent) supplied copies to Dallas law enforcement.

  36 One can however ask why the two FPCC letters were reproduced by the DPD directly, while the two CP letters were copied from a microfilm prepared when the exhibits were turned over to the FBI on November 26 (24 WH 274-76). It would appear that the FPCC letters were reproduced before this date, the published CP letters afterwards (which is to say, after the phase-one leaks to the press).

  37 24 WH 273; column by Fulton Lewis, Jr., in Dallas Morning News (?), December 12 (or 19), 1963. From the index to the DPD report, as well as the interpolated page numbers, it appears that the "Letters to Oswald from Johnson and Lee," as well as the Fulton Lewis column, are a belated insertion into the report after it had been compiled (24 WH 197). The interpolated page numbers appear to run from 143A to 143G, though there is some confusion (24 WH 273-76).

  38 24 WH 760. 778; cf. WR 233. In one supposedly complete inventory of photos, the rifle photo is omitted (24 WH 278). We are asked to believe that the photo was included by Detective Stovall under the rubric "miscellaneous photographs and maps" (24 WH 348; cf. 21 WH 598, 7 WH 194).

  39 24 WH 250 ("picture of defendant holding a rifle"); 24 WH 290 ("two snapshots and negatives showing Oswald holding the rifle"); 24 WH 348 ("miscellaneous photographs"). Fritz’s reticent description of the photograph ("the picture. . . of him holding a rifle," 24 WH 268, WR 607), can be contrasted with Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley’s account of the same Oswald interview ("photographs taken of Oswald holding a rifle in one hand and holding up a copy of a paper called the Militant and ‘The Worker’ in the other," WR 628), which is the version one might have expected. Nor does the DPD Report refer to much more sinister, but false, "evidence" that Oswald was a Soviet spy—notably a book in Russian from which certain letters had been excised, suggesting a codebook (16 WH 481-82). One can believe the ultimate finding of the National Security Agency, that it is "most unlikely that this process of letter removal has any cryptographic implication" (26 WH 155). However it is hard to believe Marina’s attempt at an innocent explanation, that Oswald had cut the letters "to form her name, MARINA NIKOLAEVNA OS WALD. . . to place over the bell at the Elsbeth Street address" (23 WH 519). (The letter, which had been excised, does not appear in Marina’s Russian name.) The book is prima facie evidence of a conspiracy: not a conspiracy involving Oswald, but one targeting him. The published DPD Report, thankfully, ignored it, referring to it only as "Book, ‘Sofia’ dated
1962" (24 WH 277; cf. 23 WH 519).

  40 For the document of November 22, falsely claiming that Marina "presumed" that her husband’s rifle in Texas was one "that Lee Harvey Oswald. . . used in Russia about two years ago" (23 WH 383), see discussion in Scott, Deep Politics, 267-70. This document is an FBI paraphrase of Marina’s police affidavit of November 22 (24 WH 219). But in the published DPD affidavit the offensive identification of the two weapons is missing.

  41 24 WH 778-79.

  42 WCE 709, 24 WH 495.

  43 Clarence Kelley, Kelley (Kansas City: Andrews, McMeel, and Parker, 1987), 290.

  44 Kelley, 290. If this is true, one has to ask if the information was part of the telephone call in which Alan Belmont, special assistant to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, instructed Dallas FBI Chief Gordon Shanldin to have Hosty interview Oswald. (It was this phone call, at about 2:00 PM, which explained Hosty’s presence in the Dallas police station; Kelley, 288-89.)

  45 Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, 549n.

  46 4 WH 462 (Hosty testimony): "It apparently arrived on the afternoon of the 21st. I got it for the first time after the assassination."