Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics

by Peter Dale Scott

  10 16 WH 721; CE 270: Transcript of Secret Service Agent J.M. Howard interview 11/25/63 with "Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, mother of Harvey Lee (crossed out, replaced by "Lee Harvey") Oswald:" "This is an interview with Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, mother of Harvey Lee Oswald;" 16 WH 749; CE 270: Transcript of Secret Service Agent J.M. Howard interview 11/25/63 with "Robert Lee Oswald, brother of Harvey Lee (crossed out, replaced by "Lee Harvey") Oswald:" "This is an interview with Robert Lee Oswald, brother of Lee Harvey Oswald." (Both interviews refer to LHO as "Lee" [Marguerite] or "Lee Harvey" [Robert]).

  11 Robert Osw ald, Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967), 18.

  12 MEXI 7046 to DIR[ectorJ, 240419Z, CIA Document # 66-567.

  13 See Chapter V, "Oswald, Harvey Lee Oswald, and Oswald’s Communist Party Card."

  14 MEXI 7046 to DIR[ector], 240419Z, CIA Document # 66-567.

  15 XAAZ-35907, "Summary of Relevant Information on Lee Harvey Oswald at 0700 24 November 1963." CIA Document # 130-592, NARA #104-10015-10359.

  16 See also Chapter VII, "Oswald, Harvey Lee Oswald, and Oswald’s Communist Party Card."

  17 JKB Memo and attachment of 26 November, 1963, CIA Document #131-593.

  18 MEXI 7105 of November 27, 1963.

  19 DIR 85758 of 29 November 1963, CIA Document #223-647. A different translation of part of DFS-2 will be found in the Lopez Report, pp. 186-87, citing a Blind Memo of 26 November 1963, CIA #473. I have decided to relegate this version to a footnote as DFS-2A, because I can find no significant differences in content from DFS-2. Both DFS-2A and DFS-3 contain minor translation errors. Contrary to what the Lopez Report implies (p. 190), the text of DIR 85738 was transmitted by the CIA to the Warren Commission under cover of a memo of February 21, 1994.

  20 Warren Commission CE 2123, 24 WH 669-72. The Lopez Report, without supporting evidence, attributes the significant alterations in DFS-4 to the CIA (p. 190).

  21 24 WH 663-64.

  22 A long extract from this version (24 WH 565-66) had already been transmitted in a Mexican note of May 14 (24 WH 563-64); and three xerox copies of the full text had been given on May 22 to the Mexico City office of the FBI (FBI MC 105-3702-1A.80). This version (DFS-4A) was translated into English twice, by the State Department, and the FBI. See 24 WH 686-89 (State); 24 WH 587-90 = 25 WH 634-37 (FBI). There are differences of content between the translations, but I have found no serious ones. (The age of Durán is given correctly as "26" in the State version, as "25" by the FBI.) The interviews of the other witnesses in DFS-2, where the name "Harvey Lee Oswald" was given, follow the FBI version of DFS-4 A, using the name "Lee Harvey Oswald" (24 WH 591-93). The FBI claims to have received these subsidiary interviews in a report of November 25, 1963, which its source T-17 received on November 29 (24 WH 591). The latter date is that of CIA Cable 85758 to the FBI; but the JKB version it translated (DFS-2) was dated November 26.

  23 3 AH 83.

  24 The CIA also has some explaining to do. For example Headquarters cable DIR 84920 of 24 Nov 63 (241332Z), begins "After. . . reading the statement of Silvia Durán." Yet, according to the itemized file inventory and chronology supplied by the CIA, no full text of the Durán statement reached Headquarters until the JKB memo and attachment (DFS-2) were hand-carried to Langley on the night of November 26. A very terse account of her statement (DFS-1) had been forwarded in cable MEXI 7046 of 23 Nov 63 (240419Z). But the Headquarters cable does not refer to MEXI 7046, as would be the CIA practice when an earlier cable is being discussed.

  25 JKB memo. p. 5; CIA Cable 85758 of 29 November. 1963, p. 6; Warren Commission CE 2120, 24 WH 589. Cf. Lopez Report, 186-91.

  26 JKB memo, p. 6 ("jamas volvió a llamar"); CIA Cable 85758 of 29 November, 1963, p. 7; Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 407-09.

  27 24 WH 590; cf. 688; Lopez Report, 190.

  28 MEXI 7046 of 24 November 1963, CIA Doc. #66-567. At the time both the leading Mexico City newspaper and the New York Times also reponed that Oswald said he was a Communist. See Excelsior, November 25, 1963, in Mexico City Oswald FBI file at serial 105-3702-30; New York Times, December 3, 1963, reprinted at 24 WH 585.

  29 3 AH 34; WarTen Commission CE 2564, 25 WH 814-15.

  30 24 WH 589; cf. 688.

  31 WR 303; 25 WH 814-15. Durán later confirmed writing the words: 3 AH 29, 38, 40; cf. 3 AH 137, 142.

  32 She unambiguously confirmed this in 1978: "I went to the Consulate and I look in the Archivos and I saw the application, I saw that it was the man and I went to the Embassy and I talked to the Ambassador.." (3 AH 79).

  33 24 WH 671, 688.

  34 3 AH 69-70.

  35 3 AH 25, 31, 49-51; cf. 3 AH 114. In all of these details Tirado, interviewed in Mexico City, was corroborated by former Consul Eusebio Azcue, testifying in Washington, except that Azcue speculated that Oswald’s third visit could have occurred on September 28 (3 AH 130-33, 136, 151).

  36 3 AH 34; cf. 33.

  37 Lopez Report, 192, citing Durán testimony, p. 28.

  38 3 AH 33 (Duran testimony, p. 28): "He show me letters to the Communist Party, the American Communist Party, his labor card. . . his uh, marriage pact. . . and a card saying he was a member of the Fair Play for Cuba."

  39 3 AH 130-31, 142 (Azcue); 3 AH 176 (Mirabal).

  40 3 AH 176.

  41 3 AH 34, 35, 57, 58.

  42 Mentioned in MEXI 7068 of 26 November 1963, p. 2. It is probable that the Ambassador had sent an earlier report after Durán went to him with information about Oswald on November 23.

  43 English translation of intercept transmitted in MEXI 7068 of 26 November 1963.

  44 3 AH 86; cf. Lopez Report, 254.

  45 CIA Document #133-594, translation of pan of Donicos-Hemández Armas phone conversation of November 26, 1963.

  46 Memo of 26 May 1967, "Meeting with LIRING-3." forwarded under HMMA-32243 of 13 June 1967; CIA Document #1225-1129, cf. #1084-965.

  47 Washington Post, November 26, 1976, A7; 3 AH 34 (1978).

  48 Lopez Repon, 192, citing Durán testimony, p. 28.

  49 3 AH 33 (Duran testimony, p. 28).

  50 Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 368; cf. Summers. Conspiracy, 582.

  51 The HSCA may possibly have been motivated (in this and other details of decorum) out of desire to protect Tirado, who unlike the other witnesses still lived in México and indeed worked for the Mexican Government. To say this is not to explain away the initial sensitivity of the CP card issue.

  52 Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 364-68.

  53 Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 365-66. Newman considers it "improbable" (p. 368) that the third voice speaking from the Soviet Consulate "was also an impostor." However in the preceding sentence he invokes the claim of former Soviet Consul (and KGB member) Oleg Nechiporenko, that "the call could not have gone through because [on Saturday] the switchboard was closed." Quite clearly, if we accept Nechiporenko’s statement, the whole of the alleged Saturday transcript has to be an artefact (fabrication).

  54 Lopez Report, 78, 171.

  55 MEXI 7033 of 23 November 1963. 232246Z, CIA Document # 55-546.

  56 MEXI 7023 of 23 November 1963, 231659Z, CIA Document # 49-545. Transcript reprinted in Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 364.

  57 DIR 84915 of 23 November 1963, 2322002, CIA Document # 45-17.

  58 SX-25550, Memo from Tennant H. Bagley, Chief, SR/CI, 23 November 1963. The Review Board should ascertain when the CIA and FBI first linked Kostikov to Department 13 and assassinations. One reason may be the very circumstantial argument presented in DIR 82312 of 17 November 1963, that an individual who had met Kostikov in February 1963 had met three months later in New York with Oleg D. Brykin "of Thirteenth Department of First Chief Directorate of KGB."

  59 Memo of 16 October 1963 for the Ambassador from [redacted]. Subject: Lee Oswald/Contact with the Soviet Embassy. CIA Document #9-5; filed in the Mexico City FBI Oswald file as 105-3702-1.

  60 Lopez Report, 171; quoted in Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 367. "They" here clearly refers to
the Mexico City Ambassador and FBI, the recipients of the memo. Newman for some, unexplained reason equates "They" with "the HSCA investigators" some fifteen years later.

  61 DIR 85758 of 29 November 1963, p. 6.

  62 Attachment to JKB memo of 26 November 1963, p. 5.

  63 24 WH 688.

  64 3 AH 99. Durán also objected to the sentence in DFS-4 that Azcue said to Oswald, "‘people like you, instead of helping the Cuban Revolution, only do it harm,’ it being understood that in their argument, they were referring to the Russian Socialist Revolution and not the Cuban Revolution" (24 WH 688, cf. 590, WR 302). Her response to this sentence was that the Azcue-Oswald conversation "was exclusively with the Cuban Revolution" (3 AH 100-01).

  65 Oswald visa application, 3 AH 129; cf. 137, 25 WH 814: "Nosotros llámenos al Consulado de la URSS y nos contestaron que ellos tenían esperar la autorización de Moscú para dar la visa y que tarderia alrededor de 4 meses."

  66 Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 388, reporting what FBI SA Larry Keenan heard from the Mexico City Legal Attaché, Clark Anderson. A newly released note from David Phillips to Win Scott might seem to imply that Durán was provisionally considered for recruitment, but not after the assassination made her notorious ("She doesn’t seem to me to have any target potential now, if she ever did, with all the confusion surrounding her;" hand-written note, date-stamped November 24, 1963, appended to MEXI copy of DIR 84921 of 24 November 1963; duplicate of CIA #68-554). But. given Phillips’ record of phase-two prevarication, one could just as easily argue the opposite: that this note is yet another Phillips cover-up, intended to deceive.

  67 3 AH 176.

  68 3 AH 132; cf. 142.

  69 3 AH 132, 142.

  70 CIA transcript from Soviet Embassy, September 27, 1963, 4:26 P.M., Oswald Box 15b, folder 56, CIA 1/94 release. Cf. MEXI 7033 of 23 November 1963.

  71 DIR 85758 of 29 November 1963, p. 5.

  72 24 WH 687. For the extensive revision of testimony from many witnesses about Oswald’s self-professed Communism," see Chapter VII, "Oswald, Harvey Lee Oswald, and Oswald’s Communist Party Card."

  73 MEXI 7068 of 26 November 1963.

  74 3 AH 86, 91; cf. Lopez Report, 254. In other words, this particular revision in DFS-4, unlike the others, was closer to what in all probability Durán actually said. At the same time, it significantly altered what the DFS November 23 statement originally reported.

  75 MEXI 7104 of 27 November 1963, CIA Document #174-616, p. 5.

  76 MEXI 7072 of 26 November 1963, CIA Document #128-590; see Chapter IV. Cuban Ambassador Hernández Armas had already described, in the conversation overheard and transmitted by the CIA, the bruises which the DFS had inflicted on Durán in her first interrogation (MEXI 7068 of 26 November 1963, p. 4).

  77 Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 454.

  78 See discussion above in Chapter VII, "Oswald. . . and Oswald’s Party Card," 71-72.

  79 See Chapter IV; Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 377-91. Newman writes (p. 391) of the "unsavory possibility" that "the story may have been invented after the Warren Commission investigation to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the Kennedy assassination." The record unambiguously shows that Durán was interrogated about this story by the DFS on November 23, 1963 (3 AH 86), and that this interrogation and accompanying abuse were discussed by Cuban Ambassador Hernández Armas three days later (MEXI 7068 of 26 November 1963). In 1967 she told a CIA station asset, LIRING-3, that in her DFS interview she had been "interviewed thoroughly and beaten until she admitted that she had an affair with Oswald" (Memo of 26 May 1967, "Meeting with LIRING-3," forwarded under HMMA-32243 of 13 June 1967; CIA Document #1225-1129, cf. #1084-965).

  80 Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 394; quoting from FBI memo in Schweiker-Hart Repon, 65.

  81 Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 364-68.

  82 Scott, Deep Politics, 104-05, 142.

  83 U.S. Army Cable 480587 from Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to U.S. Strike Command, McDill AFB, Florida, 230405Z (Nov. 22, 10:05 CST): "Following is additional information on Oswald, Harvey Lee. . . . Don Stringfellow, Intelligence Section. Dallas Police Dept., notified 112th lntc Gp, this HQ, that information obtained from Oswald revealed he had defected to Cuba in 1959 and is card carrying member of Communist Party."

  84 Mexico City FBI file 105-3702 on Lee Harvey Oswald (opened 10/18/63): Serial-254, information from Wesley." At bottom: "File 105-2137 (Harvey Lee Oswald)" [file # crossed out and changed to 3702].

  85 Gutiérrez’s signed statement begins, "At 6 p.m. on November 23, 1963. . . I, the undersigned, Captain Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios. . . certify that Mrs. Silvia Tirado de Durán. . . drew up this instrument" (24 WH 686, cf. 669). Ms. Tirado testified in 1978 that she was arrested at lunch time on November 23 (3 AH 80-81), that she was interviewed until past midnight (3 AH 85-86, 101-02), that the DFS made a stenographic machine record (3 AH 83). Above all she took strong issue with the Warren Commission version of her statement, and denied making some of the statements in it attributed to her (8 AH 99-102). Specifically, she denied that she had admitted exceeding her duties in phoning the Soviet Consulate (3 AH 99; WR 302, 24 WH 589, 688) and that Azcue had reproached Oswald in the name of the Russian (as opposed to the Cuban) revolution (3 AH 101; 24 WH 589, 688).

  86 Wall Street Journal, March 16, 1989, Al.

  87 Among the CIA documents are lists of questions which the CIA Station prepared for Silvia’s interrogation. See Mexico Station Dispatch of 13 November 1963 and attachments. CIA Document #404-750; also CIA Document #103(?)-42.

  88 Elaine Shannon. Desperados (New York: Viking, 1988), 180: The DFS passed along photographs and wiretapped conversations of suspected intelligence officers and provocateurs stationed in the large Soviet and Cuban missions in Mexico City."

  89 Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, 613, 532. Agee further claims that Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, a "close collaborator of the Mexico City station," received the cryptonym LIENVOY-2 (p. 614). Although Lopez Mateos was witting of the LIENVOY operation, recent CIA releases suggest that his cryptonym may have been different (Dir 85245 of 27 Nov 63, CIA Document #176-619).

  90 Dir 85245 of 27 Nov 63, CIA Document #176-619, NARA #104-10015-10188, PDS 62-116. Cf. XAAZ-35907, "Summary of Relevant Information on Lee Harvey Oswald at 0700 24 November 1963:" "Mexican authorities, [redaction dealing with sensitive sources and methods] and who had noticed the name of Lee OSWALD in it, arrested Silvia Durán" (CIA Document # 130-592, NARA #104-10015-10359, PDS 62-137). It was of course the DFS who arrested and interrogated Silvia Durán. Cf. also NARA #104-10004-10199, PDS 62-13,22; NARA #104-10018-10040, pp. 3, 10, PDS 62-144,151. Redacted references in these two documents to "the 1 October intercept on Lee Oswald" raise the possibility that although the station copy of this tape was indeed destroyed (as reported in MEXI 7054 of 11/24/63), the LIENVOY center manned by the Mexicans then supplied a duplicate copy (the one which was subsequently listened to by Warren Commission counsels Coleman and Slawson).

  91 MEXI 7041, 24 Nov 63, CIA Document # 74-555, NARA Record # 104-10015-10070. Earlier, in MEXI 7029 of 23 Nov 63, the Station reported to Headquarters that they had suggested to a Mexican official (Echeverría?) that Durán be arrested immediately and held incommunicado. The cable noted that the official "can say D.F.S. coverage revealed call to him if he needs to explain."

  92 Cf. Deep Politics, 41, where I write of "a CIA recording of the alleged Lee Oswald’s voice." See also Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 355: "This call was recorded by the CIA’s Mexico City station." The CIA itself is the source of this false impression: e.g. "On I October 1963, our Mexico City Station intercepted a telephone call Lee OSWALD made" (Headquarters CIA Report of about 13 Dec 1963, NARA # 104-10004-10199, p. 1).

  93 See e.g. handwritten appendix to NARA # 104-10095-10001, PDS 62-197: "The Mexican monitors (according to [redaction], outside Staff Agent) said caller (who called himself Oswald) had difficulty making himself understood both (as I recall) in English
and in Russian."

  94 Memo of 23 (?) November 1963, TX-1939, NARA # 104-10015-10061, PDS 62-69. Of course the CIA may have had some other reason for not using LIENVOY that day. It is striking that the same memo says nothing about surveillance of the Cubans.

  95 CIA memo to Chief, SRS, from M.D. Stevens, 9 October 1967, Subject: CAIN, Richard S., p. 2. Cf. Memo for Chief, LEOB/SRS, 11 December 1967, Subject: New York Times article of 6 December 1967 (on Abraham Bolden), p. 3.

  96 10 AH 172. The HSCA listed Cain’s employer’s name in 1950 as William "Buenz." It is more likely that this was the William J. Bums Detective Agency, the firm for whom he worked at this time in Dallas and Chicago (Chicago Tribune, December 21, 1973).

  97 Chicago Tribune, December 28, 1973, p. 16.

  98 Memo for Director of Security, 19 December 1969, Subject: CAIN, Richard Scully. . . #272 141, pp. 1-2.

  99 Memo for Chief, LEOB/SRS, 11 December 1967. Subject: New York Times article of 6 December 1967 (on Abraham Bolden), p. 3.

  100 Ibid. Cf. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 635 (Bolden); Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics, 89-91, 329-30, 371; 3 AH 371-89 (Sierra). At least one of these eight reports produced a CIA name search for Arturo Olivers, one of the DRE’s Chicago members (cf. CD 1085D3.2).

  101 Memo for Director of Security, 19 December 1969, Subject: CAIN, Richard Scully. . . #272 141, p. 1.

  102 Ibid.

  103 Chicago Tribune, December 28, 1973, p. 16.

  104 Chicago Tribune, December 31, 1973, p. 10.

  105 Memo for Director of Security, 19 December 1969, Subject: CAIN. Richard Scully. . . #272 141, p. 3.

  106 Time, June 16, 1975; quoted in Hinckle and Turner, The Fish Is Red, 78.

  107 10 AH 173; FBI files HQ 105-93264 and Chicago 139-1403; cf 92-12846, all on subject: Cain. The Review Board should obtain these files. Cain told the FBI he was in touch with Manuel Antonio de Varona, who was (as ZR/RIFLE-2) involved in the 1960-61 CIA-Mafia assassination plots.

  108 See Scott, Deep Politics, 113-20.