Pieces of the Jigsaw:
Glimpses of the Real Lee Harvey Oswald
Part Two of a Series
by Martin Shackelford (mshack@juno.com)
Special to Review Magazine
Over the past several years, thanks to the JFK Assassination
Records Act passed in 1992, we have seen more documents released from the
secret files than at any time in the previous thirty years. Document
summaries compiled by researcher Joe Backes provide a useful guide to the
new evidence.
Topics include Oswald's CIA "201" file, his return trip from
the Soviet Union, his visit to Mexico City, the FBI's investigation of
the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the CIA investigation of Oswald,
anti-Castro groups, Jack Ruby and the formation of the Warren Commission.
What have these documents told us so far? What information
have the FBI, the CIA and other agencies made such an effort to conceal
from us for all these years? What has initially been squeezed out of the
classified dark corners of the covert world? It is time to sum up the
progress to date, as well as some clues as to what remains hidden.
John Newman summed it up nicely in his 1995 book Oswald and
the CIA: "The [Central Intelligence] Agency appears to have had a serious
operational interest in Oswald" which "may have led to his use or
manipulation." This contradicts everything we have been told about
Oswald by the 1964 President's Commission on the Assassination (Warren
Report) and the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations, as well as
other government sources.
The key to the puzzle proved to be the CIA's own cover
sheets, which recorded the internal dissemination of records. Nearly
every document generated in the government about Oswald was being
circulated to six different divisions of the CIA.
Even his origins have proven more mysterious than expected.
As greater documentation emerges about his life before 1959, two separate
and distinct biographies become apparent. In one, he moves directly from
New York to New Orleans; in the other, to North Dakota for the summer; in
one, he remains in New Orleans, working a series of jobs; in the other,
he moves to Fort Worth and joins the Marines. Researcher John Armstrong
is pursuing these rival data streams. Documents on Oswald also appear
under the variations Lee Henry Oswald and Harvey Lee Oswald.
Upon his discharge from the Marine Corps in September 1959,
he wasn't given the usual identification card. Instead, he was given an
unlaminated DD 1173. The only other person known to have had such a card
was CIA employee Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy plane was shot down
while Oswald was in the Soviet Union.
Even the discharge itself raises questions. It is now clear
that the Marine Corps knew beforehand that Oswald planned to go to the
Soviet Union, and his superior officer, Capt. Ayers, signed an affidavit
in support of the passport application which clearly stated this.
When he went to Moscow in October 1959, he attempted suicide
when refused permission to remain. We now know that he was interrogated
by the KGB, which he mentioned to the FBI in 1962, a reference which was
ignored. The KGB closely monitored him after that; placing him in a hotel
room which contained an infrared camera. Some later KGB surveillance
photos were published in a book by KGB retiree Oleg Nechiporenko.
First, however, Oswald showed up at the U.S. Embassy in
Moscow on October 31, Halloween, wearing white dress gloves, attempting
to renounce his U.S. citizenship. The FBI opened an espionage and
counterintelligence file on him that month, but a Navy cable at the time
indicated this was not the first report, noting "CONTINUING INTEREST OF
HQ, MARINE CORPS, AND US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES; 'INTELLIGENCE MATTER'."
The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) branch near New Orleans opened
what became a comprehensive file on Oswald.
The FBI's liaison man with the CIA promptly contacted the
Counterintelligence division, headed by legendary mole-chaser James
Angleton. When the CIA opened its file on Oswald has not been determined,
as the agency intentionally obscured its pre-assassination history. It
even lied to its own employees regarding what it knew about Oswald.
The most we can determine at this point is that a file existed
in the CIA's Security Office, though it may have originated elsewhere.
Oswald was quickly put on the exclusive Watch List, 300 people whose mail
the CIA monitored and opened. The program's head recalls intercepting
more of Oswald's mail than the CIA has officially admitted. The CIA
division that wasn't informed about Oswald was Soviet Russia, which
received its first Oswald report in June, 1960.
Priscilla Johnson, reporter for a news organization with CIA
connections, had worked for the Office of Special Operations during World
War Two, applied in 1952 to work for the CIA, worked for Senator John F.
Kennedy, and was described by the CIA in 1956 as being of "operational
interest." (The day after the assassination, the FBI interviewed her "as
a suspect.")
The U.S. Embassy sent her to interview Oswald. He told her that
someone had spent two years preparing him for his entry into the Soviet
Union, but he wouldn't say who that was. He learned enough to enter the
Soviet Union through Helsinki, Finland, the border with the fewest
delays, despite having only one Soviet consular official. Even there, he
got approval in record time, two days instead of seven to fourteen.
Oswald had highly classified knowledge of the CIA's top secret
U-2 spy plane program, and seven months later the Soviets downed Gary
Powers' U-2; as a result, the CIA shut down its operations at Atsugi,
where Oswald had been stationed. An investigation had taken place in
November at El Toro Marine Base in California, but no agency has yet
admitted having conducted it. The most likely suspect is Angleton's
Counterintelligence division. The Warren Commission avoided asking about
the U-2.
After moving to Minsk, Oswald met a student from Cuba named
Alfred, who shared his dissatisfaction with life there. The Warren
Commission mislabeled him as Hungarian. Cuban diplomats in Minsk
reportedly kept a file on Oswald. Oswald had been in touch with Cuban
diplomats in California before his discharge from the Marine Corps,
suspected then of being with Naval Intelligence. Another ex-Marine
sympathetic to Cuba, Gerry Patrick Hemming, secretly met with Oswald
outside the gate at El Toro base; Hemming worked for the CIA.
In February 1960, the FBI opened a second file on Oswald.
The file which the CIA later admitted to having on Oswald was
finally opened in December 1960. This was about the time it launched a
counterintelligence operation (including James McCord, of Watergate, and
David Atlee Phillips, whose operatives later tried to link Oswald to
Castro) against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a group which became
publicly associated with Oswald. It was also the time when Vice President
Richard Nixon and the CIA began planning assassination attempts against
Fidel Castro, which soon involved the Mob. Among the CIA personnel were
E. Howard Hunt (Watergate) and, again, David Atlee Phillips.
Former CIA director Richard Helms almost gave the game away in
his 1978 House testimony when he asked his questioner: "had they not
opened a file a lot earlier?" The testimony of other CIA employees on the
subject remains classified.
We now know that the CIA was receiving information about Oswald
and other defectors from a source in the Soviet Union, probably inside
the KGB. Oswald received packages in the Soviet Union, though his family
sent none.
In May 1961, the FBI, like the CIA, began a
counterintelligence operation against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
By early 1962, Lee Oswald was preparing to return to the United States.
KGB surveillance transcripts indicate that his wife Marina was having
second thoughts, and he feared that if he left first, she might not join
him later. When Oswald requested permission to leave, said then KGB chief
Vladimir Semichastny, he thought "Thank God!," and "Immediately we sent a
note to the Ministry of Internal Affairs saying let him out."
Also, Oswald made unsuccessful attempts by mail to have his
undesirable Marine discharge reversed, as detailed in his military record
(released in full, 1992). Before his departure, he allegedly tried to
make two bombs, but finally gave up and threw away the casings, KGB
reports indicated.
The Oswalds left Russia in June 1962. Fearful of being charged
with espionage by the Soviets, he had discarded his diary and notes; on
the ship to America, he reconstructed them as best he could into the
document he called his "Historic Diary."
In Part Three, the real Lee Harvey Oswald, entangled in a
secret world.