As for the pre-assassination operations, one clue as to what is being concealed is the suppressed content in successive alterations of a single key document, the DFS account of Silvia Durán’s statement when arrested on November 23, 1963. There are at least four successive versions of this single document; and if we focus on what is being suppressed by these successive alterations, we arrive at a working hypothesis of what actually may have happened and has since been hidden.
Later in this chapter I shall argue that the anomalies help us to distinguish between two different pre-assassination operations involving Oswald. The first was an authorized intelligence operation (involving Oswald’s request for a visa), which aimed to discredit the Fair Play for Cuba Committee by linking Oswald to the American Communist Party. The second, which may have been part of the assassination plot, involved a simulated meeting between an Oswald impostor and Vladimir Kostikov, an alleged KGB assassination expen.5 It appears that the DFS, through its role in wire-tapping the Soviet and Cuban embassies for the CIA, played an important role in both operations, but especially the second.
One of the suppressed facts is that the DFS, in its first versions of the testimony gathered from Durán and her friends about Oswald, used the name "Harvey Lee Oswald." Those familiar with the Oswald documentation will be aware that this anomalous variant of his name is not unique to the DFS. We find more than twenty such references widely dispersed through the records of at least six government agencies in the U.S.: the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, the State Department, and the Dallas Police. They are supplemented by still other references to Oswald as "Harvey Lee Oswald," in the oral testimony of a wide range of witnesses to the Warren Commission and elsewhere.
All of the documentary references we now have to "Harvey Lee Oswald" are postassassination. I will speculate however that there are pre-assassination archetypes for some of these references, and that the reason these archetypes have not surfaced is because of their relevance to operations involving Oswald, specifically in Mexico City. In the first version we have of the DFS record of the interrogation of Silvia Durán, the name "Harvey Lee Oswald" occurs no less than five times.6
Not surprisingly, these anomalous references are suppressed in the CIA translation of the same document, and standardized to become "Lee Harvey Oswald."7 For this reason I shall refer to "Harvey Lee Oswald" as the suppressed name, and "Lee Harvey Oswald" as the public one.8 We find the same conversion or suppression of the name "Harvey Lee Oswald", and its replacement by "Lee Harvey Oswald," in a cable of November 29, 1963, from the FBI Legat in Bern, Switzerland,9 and again in documents from the Secret Service.10 So many scattered and unexplained references to "Harvey Lee Oswald" attest to at least one suppressed archetypal document we do not have. The FBI’s first question to Robert Oswald on November 22 was, "Is your brother’s name Lee Harvey Oswald or Harvey Lee Oswald?. . . We have it here as Harvey Lee."11 This suggests that one might begin to search for this lost archetype by interviewing Robert’s FBI interrogators.
The important fact here is that the suppression of the name "Harvey Lee Oswald" in the early version of the DFS documentation was paralleled by the simultaneous suppression of the name "Harvey Lee Oswald" across the border, in documents of the United States government. The same suppression happened to the one of the first details reported by the DFS about Durán’s version of Oswald’s visit to the Cuban Consulate: that Oswald said he was a Communist.12 As I have shown elsewhere, there were other witnesses, above all in Dallas, who first claimed Oswald had said he was a Communist, and then denied this allegation.13 It would appear, therefore, that suppressions in the content of Durán’s DFS statement were part of a wider suppression of evidence.
There were at least four successive versions of this single important piece of evidence, the original Mexican DFS report of Durán’s statement:
DFS-1) The "written statement" first given by the Mexicans to the CIA Station Chief on the night of November 23, and summarized in the Station’s cable MEXI 7046 of November 24,
1963. We do not have this statement. A CIA cable summarizing it reported that Oswald said lie was a "Communist and admirer of Castro."14 This information was then incorporated in Headquarters’ November 24 summary of its information about Oswald.15 As we shall see, what Headquarters knew on November 24 about Oswald’s self-professed Communism was soon effaced from memory.16
DFS-2) The Spanish-language version of Durán’s interview received on November 26 by the CIA from one of her DFS interrogators, and forwarded under a memo, still redacted, signed by a "JKB."17 This "JKB version" was then hand-carried to Washington on November 27 by a Headquarters CIA officer, John Horton.18 In it there is no reference to Oswald’s saying he was a Communist. In the reported statements of Durán’s friends, but not in her own, Oswald is referred to (five times in all) as "Harvey Lee Oswald."
DFS-3) The CIA’s English-language translation of DFS-2, in which the five references to "Harvey Lee Oswald" are replaced by the now standard "Lee Harvey Oswald."19 We shall also discuss another point on which this "translation" differs from its Spanish original: an unsupported reference to the Cuban Consul phoning the Soviet Consulate.
DFS-4) The Warren Commission version of Durán’s statement, dated "November 23," and attested to and signed by Captain Femando Gutiérrez Barrios, then Deputy Federal Director of Security.20 A photostat of this Spanish-language version, certified on May 7, 1964, was transmitted by the Mexican Government to the State Department in a note of June 9, 1964.21 As we shall see, the several minor changes introduced into the DFS-4 version all have the effect of eliminating conflicts between the earlier versions and the body of evidence which by May 1964 supported the "phase two" official story of Oswald as a lone assassin. I would tentatively date the DFS-4 version from about May 1964.22
Clearly it is time to request from the Mexican Government all surviving documentation which the DFS collected on the Kennedy assassination. In the case of the Durán interview, it is possible that they still have a copy of the contemporary stenographic record which (according to Durán) was made of her DFS interrogation.23
The Mexican government records on the JFK assassination case may help us understand what the CIA and FBI were hiding in this matter. The FBI, for example, appears to have understood completely that the three earlier DFS versions of Durán’s statement (which it had received either directly or through the CIA) were for some reason to be replaced by the spuriously altered DFS-4 of May 1964. Thus, when on May 18, 1964, it finally transmitted to the Warren Commission the results of the DFS interviews of the eight Mexicans arrested with Silvia Durán, the seven other interviews were taken from the JKB memo attachment of November 26, 1963, which originally included the DFS-2 version of Silvia Durán’s statement. Instead of the DFS-2 version, however, the FBI provided the more convenient ("phase two") DFS-4 version of Silvia’s alleged interview "on November 23." This artificially contrived amaigam, Commission Document 1084(e) of 5/18/64, was then published as Commission Exhibit 2121 by the Warren Commission (24 WH 587-93).24
What Were the Rewrites of the Durán DFS Statement Trying To Hide?
The suppression of "Harvey Lee Oswald" is not the only change made to the first available version (DFS-2) of the Durán statement. Her description of him as "rubio, bajo, vestido no elegante" was transmitted in the initial CIA translation ("blond, short, poorly dressed"); but this anomalous characterization of Oswald was suppressed in the final version of her statement (DFS-4) published by the Warren Commission.25 The JKB version (DFS-2) and original CIA translation (DFS-3) contain the significant statement that Oswald "never called again" after Durán gave him her telephone number on Friday, September 27 (which as John Newman has shown appears to invalidate an alleged telephone call made by Durán and Oswald together on the next day).26 In the Warren Commission version of the same statement (DFS-4) this important clue has been robbed of its significance: "she does not recall whether Oswald subsequently calle
d her or not."27
There were further revisions of the original DFS version of Durán’s statement. According to the first summary report by the Mexico City CIA Station of the DFS version of Durán’s statement about Oswald, she reportedly "said he Communist and admirer of Castro."28 This is what we would expect from Durán’s testimony in 1978 to the House Committee ("He said he was a member of the Party, of the Communist Party"), and above all from Durán’s observation typed on Oswald’s visa application, according to which Oswald stated "he is a member of the American Communist Party," and "displayed documents in proof."29 But the significant statement, "said he Communist," is missing from the JKB version now in CIA files (DFS-2), as well as from the CIA cable translating it (DFS-3). It is however echoed in the Warren Commission version of her DFS statement (DFS-4), again robbed of its evidentiary significance: "she does not remember whether or not he said that he was a member of the Communist Party."30
It would appear from this history of alterations to the same statement that the fourth version (DFS-4), though still falsely dated November 23, 1963, has been revised to fit with the Warren Report version of Oswald as an isolated lone assassin. It is particularly unlikely that Durán on November 23 did not remember "whether or not [Oswald] said that he was a member of the Communist Party." Only a few hours before she had pulled the Oswald file, with the visa application on which she herself had typed, six weeks earlier, the following observations:
The applicant [Oswald] states that he is a member of the American Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. . . .He displayed documents in proof of his membership in the two aforementioned organizations and a marriage certificate.31
The equivocations in the DFS-4 version are devious and dishonest. DFS-2 and DFS-3 transmit the significant fact that in November Durán had just checked Oswald’s file (chequeo sus datos; checked his data).32 DFS-4 replaces this statement, which would have made her alleged memory lapses even less credible, by the innocuous one that in September she "took all his data" (tomó todos sus datos) to fill out the application.33 We can assume that Durán had not forgotten a few hours later Oswald’s claim to be a Communist, which she had no trouble recalling in 1978. Thus the missing first version of the same statement ("said he Communist") is probably the most credible one. The Review Board should try to obtain it.
I conclude that these successive alterations to the "November 23" DFS text were deliberate, and designed to suppress the following facts:
1) Durán’s original description of him (as a short, poorly dressed blond) did not resemble that of the Dallas Lee Harvey Oswald.
2) Oswald’s visa business in the Cuban Consulate began and ended on September 27, 1963, meaning that an alleged third visit the next day did not actually occur.
3) Either from this visit or some earlier event, the visitor to the Embassy was known to authorities as "Harvey Lee Oswald."
4) The visitor said he was a Communist.
The corroboration of the suppressed testimony by the original visa application suggests that a fifth fact was also being suppressed:
5) The visitor supported his visa application with an American Communist Party card.
Other Sources for the Suppressed Testimony of Silvia Tirado de Durán.
Much of this suppressed material was recovered (and augmented) by Silvia Tirado de Durán (by now remarried as Silvia Tirado de Bazan) in her 1978 interview with three members of the HSCA Staff. In this interview she again said that the visitor’s hair had been blond (rubio)?4 She now said that Oswald had visited the Embassy three times (rather than twice, as in all the DFS versions). She was emphatic, however, that all of Oswald’s visits were on the same day, September 27, that he did not return the next day (when the Consulate was closed), and that she did not phone the Soviet Embassy on the next day, Saturday September 28, as one of the supposed Oswald telephone transcripts alleged.35
Silvia Tirado further testified that Oswald said he was a member of the Communist Party ("He said he was a member of the Party, of the Communist Party, the American").36 According to the Lopez Report, Silvia testified further that Oswald showed her the following supporting documents: his Russian labor card, his marriage certificate, "his American Communist Party membership card, and his ‘Fair Play for Cuba’ membership card."37 When however we turn to the same testimony as published by the HSCA, the reference to the Communist Party card is missing from the list.38
Having reflected much about this, I have concluded that Silvia did mention the Communist Party card in 1978, just as she had on the application in 1963. If so, the HSCA must have responded to Silvia’s testimony about Oswald’s professed Communism in the same way as the DFS, by altering, and in effect suppressing, this detail.
Testifying later in Cuba, two other witnesses, Consul Eusebio Azcue and his successor Alfredo Mirabal Díaz, both had no trouble recalling the Communist Party card.39 Mirabal’s testimony was particularly vivid, reinforced as it was by a very sensible skepticism which Silvia shared:
I noticed that he presented a card or credentials as belonging to the Communist Party of the United States. . . .I was surprised by the fact that the card seemed to be a new card. I must say that I also have been a Communist for a number of years and that generally we do not use credentials or a card to identify ourselves as members of the party.40
Silvia Durán also communicated very similar suspicions:
When he said he was a member of the Party, of the Communist Party, the American, I said why don’t they arrange, the Party, your Party with the Cuban Party, and he said that he didn’t have the time to do it. . . .It was strange. I mean because if you are a Communist and you’re coming from a country where the Communist Party is not very well seen, and in Mexico City that the Communist Party was not legal at that moment—crossing the border with all of his paper, it was not logical. I mean, if you’re really Communist, you go with anything, I mean just nothing, just your passport, that’s all. . . . it was strange, travelling with all of his documents just to prove one thing. . . .He said that he was a Communist. That was strange. Because it would be really easy for him to get the visa through the Communist Party.41
If the visitor did present a card, and if Edwin Lopez (who was present) is correct in saying that Tirado testified to this in 1978, then we have a parallel cover-up in successive alterations of Tirado’s statements outside the DFS, analogous to the successive alterations of the "November 23" DFS statement.
It would seem appropriate therefore for the Review Board to seek and review all the successive reports of Tirado’s statements and testimony. Some of these documents are currently in Cuba and have never been published in the United States. Known documents include:
ST-1. Cuban Embassy Confidential Report 125. Sent from Cuban Ambassador Hernández Armas to Havana after interviewing Durán on November 25, after her first DFS arrest and interrogation [Not seen].42
ST-2. Telephone conversation of 26 November between Ambassador Hernández Armas and Cuban President Dorticos. Having spoken to Durán, Hernández told Dorticos that the DFS asked her concretely "if she had personal relations and even if she had intimate [i.e. sexual] relations with him. She denied all that." He also spoke of the bruises inflicted on her by the DFS.43 This aggressive line of DFS questioning was later confirmed by Silvia to the HSCA.44
ST-3. Statement prepared by Durán in response to request from Ambassador on November 26 [Not seen].45
ST-4. Durán’s interview with a CIA Mexico City station asset, LIRING-3, on May 26, 1967. She told LIRING-3 that in her DFS interrogation she had been "interviewed thoroughly and beaten until she admitted that she had an affair with Oswald".46
ST-5. Tirado’s first American press interview, with Ron Kessler of the Washington Post. In this interview she said that Oswald "claimed to be a member of the American Communist Party."47
ST-6. Tirado’s HSCA interview, as summarized by Edward Lopez in the Lopez Report (according to which Silvia testified that O
swald showed her "his American Communist Party membership card").48
ST-7. Tirado’s HSCA interview, as published by the HSCA, in which the reference to the Communist Party card is missing 49
ST-8. Tirado’s interviews with Anthony Summers, 1978, May 13, 1979, and January 31, 1995. In 1995 she was adamant that Oswald did not return to the Consulate on September 28, when it was closed.50
This fragmentary review of what we have of these non-DFS Tirado records is enough to cast further doubt on the version of her "November 23" statement (DFS-4) published by the Warren Commission. It also strengthens the impression that the subject of the Communist Party card was an extremely sensitive matter, possibly an intelligence matter, being protected by government censorship as late as 1978.51
The two series of records taken together (the DFS series and the ST series) suggest that some members and/or employees of the CIA Mexico City station, acting in concert with some members of the Mexican DFS, were guilty of falsifying the facts concerning Oswald’s visit, and above all that this falsification antedated the assassination.
Conflicts between Durán’s Statements and the Alleged CIA Intercepts
In particular these documents raise questions about the CIA’s intercepted telephone conversations concerning Oswald from September 27 to October 1, 1963. The authenticity of the alleged September 28 conversation has already been challenged on these and other grounds by John Newman. A transcript prepared at the time by the CIA claims that Dur£n and someone, whom CIA Station employees later "determined" to be Oswald, phoned from the Cuban consulate to the Russian consulate on Saturday, September 28 (when both consulates were closed).52 But according to the consensus of documents in both sets of the Durán records (DFS-2, DFS-3, ST-6, ST-7), Durán’s position is that Oswald did not return after September 27, and specifically not on September 28. DFS-4, the Warren Commission version, is not credible in its revised language, that "she could not remember."
Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics Page 27
