Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK

751 Pages·2008·14.2 MB·English

by  John Newman

OSWALD AND THE CIA
ALSO BY JOHN NEWMAN
JFK and Vietnam
OSWALD
AND THE CIA
The Documented Truth A bout the Unknown
Relationship Between the U.S. Government
and the Alleged Killer of'JFK
John Newman
To the men and women who served the CIA with distinction and made possible
the Agency's greatest accomplishments; and to the courageous citizens who
dared to investigate the Agency's greatest failures.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, especially
the staff, which went out of their way to ensure that I was informed of the latest
releases, no matter how small. I enjoyed meeting and speaking with some of the
staff as they set about the daunting task of studying the large bureaucracies
whose documents they would be working with. My manuscript and all my files
have been available to the staff from early on. I hope this work will assist the
board in the difficult choices it faces in prioritizing its work.
How is it that we suddenly have so much to study? The reason that the case has
survived so long is the same reason that Congress finally decided to declassify it:
lack of trust. American citizens have worked tirelessly to free the documents in
the government's possession. Erroneously ridiculed by the national media as the
lunatic fringe, most of these people are mainstream Americans who have always
understood the wisdom of working within the system. Many of them spent years
using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to pry loose documents. Harold
Weisberg, Mark Allen, Gary Shaw, Paul Hoch, Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., James
Lesar, Gordon Winslow, and Bill Adams are a few among many who have
worked within the lethargic constraints of the FOIA over the past several
decades. Eventually their efforts and the efforts of many more people resulted in
the bipartisan passage of the 1992 JFK Records Act.
Some thanks to specific researchers are in order. First of all to Mary Ferrell. I
sent her many thousands of pages of new documents which she added to her
database, which I then used as the crossgrid between the new releases and prior
government investigations. Mary has always been a tireless and selfless research
assistant for everyone who has asked her help. A special thanks also to Scott
Malone, whose contacts and comments aided greatly in the early phases of this
work. Scott also made his documents and interview notes available, materials I
found useful further down the line. A special thanks is also due to David Lifton.
I had the benefit of David's early thinking on several issues important to this
book-as he did to my early views and documents. For the most part, however,
our two projects have been conducted separately, and it will be interesting to see
the result. Norman Mailer and I spoke twice briefly as his book was finished and
this book entered the final chapters. Norman suggested then that we were staking
out "base camps on opposite sides of the mountain."
Thanks also go to Larry Haapanen, who has been a "reliable and highly sensitive
source" in Idaho. Larry helped on several points and made available his
valuable.documentary collection. Paul Hoch also made his documents available,
along with his prolific notes and correspondence. Bill Adams, Peter Vea, Bill
Davy, Jim Di Eugenio, Steve Vetter, Lamar Waldron, and Mike Willman made
available hundreds of documents, rare manuscripts, and other materials that were
used in this book.
Peter Dale Scott gave generous amounts of time and energy to document
acquisition, processing, cross-referencing, and analysis and discussion. I am
especially grateful to Anthony and Robbyn Summers for the generous assistance
they gave on several occasions, including the interview with Silvia Duran.
Several volunteers from the community and interns from the University of
Maryland helped in the long and tedious assembling and cross-filing of data
necessary for a work like this. Debbie Drucker, Suzanne Adamko, Nassir Khan,
David Vivian, Tracy Vaughn, and Adrienne Freda permitted far more ground to
be covered than would otherwise have been possible. John Taylor and John
Harvey, in particular, spent many nights copying and filing documents. Without
their efforts this book would not have been possible. Melissa Burneston was
particularly helpful in the preparation of the footnotes.
To Richard Helms, Jane Roman, June Cobb, Ray Rocca, Scotty Miler, Russell
Holmes, Robert Bannerman, Paul Garbler, Otto Otepka, Richard Snyder, John
McVickar, Priscilla Johnson, Ned Kenan, Silvia Duran, Gerry Hemming, James
Hosty, Larry Keenan, Nicholas Anikeeff, and the many others with whom I
conducted formal interviews or background discussion, I thank you for taking
the time to run yet another gauntlet of questions.

A special thanks to Ed Jeunovitch, whose many decades of experience in the
CIA's Clandestine Services made him uniquely qualified to discuss some of the
tougher issues these documents raise. Ed earned my admiration for his openness,
honesty, and willingness to engage in genuine give-and-take discussion. I do not
mean to imply that anything in this book has Ed's approval or reflects his views,
but his persuasiveness and his willingness to give credit where it is due went a
long way in convincing me that many among the Agency's mainstream have no
desire to stand in the way of the truth.
To all of the dedicated National Archives employees who put up with the
researchers and the national media, I take my hat off. Especially to Steve Tilley,
who took time from the heavy demands of his schedule to go the extra mile in
giving support to this project. Two of the largest logistical problems recently
faced by the Archives occurred back to back: the quick processing of an
enormous volume of new JFK documents and then the move of the entire
collection to the new Archives II location in College Park, Maryland. The
discipline and organization of the Archives staff made it possible to keep the
records open nearly the entire time before and after the move.
During the work on this, my second book, my family once again made great
sacrifices. Ally, my daughter, a science student at the University of Maryland,
did several independent research projects in support of this work. My wife, Sue,
filled in on all sorts of tasks, from typing to proofreading and editing, and
endless discussions about the content. She was a constant source of strength. I
want to acknowledge the care and support of my parents, who have always been
an inspiration for my work. Thanks also to my children, Mary and John, who
pitched in wherever they could. I would also like to thank my friend and
colleague Dick Thornton, whose incisive writings on American foreign policy
have for years served as my guideposts.
To Jennifer Prior, Henry Lincoln, Janet, Failey, and others at my publisher,
Carroll & Graf, thanks for bearing with me. Thanks to Herman Graf, who
managed to keep me (more or less) on schedule, and especially to Kent Carroll,
from whom I learned more about direct writing and active voice than I did when
I was in the Army. Kent's contribution to this text was invaluable. Thanks also to
Abby Bardi, who gave up many evenings and weekends to edit much of this
book. To Rich, Lou, and Krystal, thanks for being good listeners.

To my many friends and former colleagues in the National Security Agency, the
Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army
Intelligence and Security Command, and you know who you are: Thanks for
your words of encouragment or constructive criticism, whatever they happened
to be. Buck, Tom, and Bill, I wish I could put your comments in a book and ship
it to everyone in the research community so that they might see the wide range
of opinions but nevertheless intense interest in these matters that exists in the
federal workforce-especially in the intelligence agencies. To Pete, Ray, and
Cookie from the "keyhole," who spent many lunches working over specific
problems: Some of those points turned out to be key indicators, such as the
espionage element in Oswald's defection and the anomalous aspects of his
Cuban activities.
To the faculty and students at the University of MarylandCollege Park and
University College-I hope this work will stimulate greater use of the amazing
resource that has moved to our campus: the National Archives. There can be no
greater acknowledgment than that to the American tradition which produced
these archives. It is up to us to use them.
The mistakes in this book are mine alone.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii PREFAUF X111
FOREWORD XV11
INTRODUCTION XIX
1. Dc fection in Moscow 1
2. Paper Trail in Washington 16
3. Top Secret Eider Chess 29
4. "1 Am Aniazed " 47
5. The American Girls in Moscow 60
6. The Thin Line of Duty 77
7. Early Cuban Connections 90
8. Nixon, Dulles, and American Policy in Cuba in 1960 113
9. Lost in Minsk 133
l0. Journey into the Labyrinth 150
11. The Riddle of Oswalds 201 File 168
12. Turning Point 199
13 "Operational lntellis,'ence Interest" 219
14. Oswald Returns 236
15. The Unworthy Oswald 262
/6. Undercover in New Orleans 288