State_Secret_Chapter1......Bill Simpich

[Bernice Moore]

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.ph...t_Chapter1..................

State Secret Chapter1......Bill will be posting the further chapters on the MARY Ferrell site; Free of charge as they become available...many thanks Bill........b

[Bill Simpich]

Hi Bernice,

Thanks for posting the first chapter of my book, the second chapter is now up as well. All comments that might help me address or fix issues that come up are appreciated - that's the great thing about writing a serial.

My goal is to make the case for the impersonation of Oswald. I can't tell you how great it was to analyze the wiretap operations that went on down in Mexico City. After a long look, that piece of the puzzle makes a lot more sense.

I am putting the book on-line so that peopl it e can easily read the documents linked to the text. The preface really tells the story. If you like it, please post it on your facebook page or wherever else seems right, and ask your readers to post it as well. That's the best way to get it out there.

Thanks,

Bill

[Peter Lemkin]

Chapter 4 of Bill Simpich's book about Oswald.

Subject: 1963


This is what happened while the Mexico City CIA station was passing on the fruits of its wiretaps to the National Security Agency...


http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.ph...t_Chapter4

[Peter Lemkin]

by Bill Simpich
Chapter 5: The Mexico City Solution
Why Oswald's Cuba Connections Were Hidden Before the Assassination, Why the Assassination Was Covered Up And What May Be A Looking Glass Into 11/22/63


Did you ever read Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth? The power of Verne's story is summed up in the sighting of the signature that the hero finds as he goes deeper into the abyss. Sometimes it was a message from the first explorer, Arne Saknussemm. Sometimes it was simply his initials "AS". When you see where he left his mark, you know you are on the right course.


Studying the Mexico City story is like feeling your way through the dark. As you go down, you find yourself holding on to some cold walls. Remain confident in what you know about your path. Keep in mind the previous explorers. Sometimes you have to retrace your steps. Remember the central question you have to keep asking…


Before JFK was killed, why did the Mexico City station hide all the evidence of the Oswald visit to the Cuban consulate from CIA Headquarters, while admitting the visits to the Soviet consulate?


Or, to put it another way, why did Headquarters hide Oswald's return to the United States and subsequent history as a pro-Castro activist from the Mexico City station?


In other words, why was everything that might lead to a connection between Oswald and Cuba suppressed from the record before the assassination?


We've just finished a study on wiretapping in Mexico City. Now let me offer a hypothesis that provides what I call the Mexico City solution to the suppression of Oswald's connections to Cuba, why the assassination was covered up - and, just maybe, an important insight into the assassination itself. The reason for the suppression and the cover-up can be found by a long look at the impersonation of Lee Oswald in Mexico City less than two months before the assassination, and the disappearance of the wiretap tapes that documented this impersonation. The notion of Oswald being impersonated may seem fantastic to some. However, as discussed in Chapter 3, the CIA files reveal that impersonation is a tactic that the Mexico City station had used just two months prior to Oswald's visit.


After a great deal of reflection, I decided that it didn't make any sense to hide my conclusion on how these events are linked to the assassination of JFK. What is presented here will not answer all the questions, but it offers a working solution that is based on the facts that we know.


Researchers such as Peter Dale Scott, John Newman and Jefferson Morley confirm much of what is set forth here. The reader is invited to join in, contribute, and add to this body of research. There's more to learn, and I could be wrong, but I think I have the gist of it right.
My hypothesis of the Mexico City solution


It looks to me like CIA Cuba operations officers were among the prime suspects in an October 1963 investigation designed to figure out who impersonated Oswald and Cuban consulate secretary Sylvia Duran on the telephone call to the Soviet consulate on September 28. In this investigation, the CIA officers went to great pains to omit from their memos any reference to any Oswald visit to the Cuban consulate, any reference to Oswald's membership in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and any reference to his attempts to get a visa.


Why was any reference to Cuba omitted? I believe it was done to prevent the rank and file of the Cuba division of the CIA from knowing about the details of the investigation. If there was no reference to Cuba in this investigation of Oswald, then there would be no reason to include the Cuba division in the discussion. The Cuba division included both Harvey's successor Desmond FitzGerald and the Special Affairs Staff (SAS) at Headquarters, as well as the forward operating base in Miami for tactical operations on Cuba known as JMWAVE and run by Ted Shackley and David Morales.


Here's the center of the intrigue. It looks like someone in Cuba operations was a prime suspect in an investigation of the impersonation of Oswald. It had to be handled carefully, as SAS had several of its officers embedded at the Mexico City station under Scott's command. Another prime suspect was the Mexico City branch of the FBI. Even the CIA's Mexico City station itself could also have been the source of the mole.


It is important to note that not only the FBI, but the Navy and the State Department were also included in the investigation. This was because all three of them had responsibilities for Oswald, and hence all three of them had to be examined for signs of penetration by enemy spies.


Under the Delimitations Agreement, the FBI and the Navy were charged with investigating and tracking an ex-Marine like Oswald once he had returned to the United States, and the State Department had a potential interest as well.[ 1 ] Furthermore, the State Department had done this work while Oswald was in the Soviet Union. This meant that these agencies were in charge of any debriefing of Oswald after his return to the United States. I believe that John Fain's interviews with Oswald in 1962 constituted the actual debriefing. In the real world, these three agencies had continuing responsibility for Oswald during 1963.


I believe that the impersonation of Oswald was done to plant a poison pill within any attempt by the CIA or the FBI to investigate the role of Oswald in the assassination of the President. I believe that after Oswald was impersonated, CIA investigators tried to capture the perpetrator. After an unsuccessful attempt, would those investigators be willing to have their futile efforts become public knowledge in the wake of the assassination? No way. The investigators would be threatened with the loss of their jobs and livelihood.


I offer the hypothesis that the impersonation of Oswald was an inside job and a key aspect of a plan to assassinate President Kennedy. The plan was for the Oswald call to be picked up by the CIA's wiretaps in Mexico City. That alone would be a significant roadblock in any investigation of Oswald, as the CIA considered the Mexico City wiretap operation one of its crown jewels. The CIA hierarchy wanted as few people as possible in the CIA to know about this operation, let alone the FBI and other US agencies. The notion of unveiling the Mexico City wiretap operation to the general public was a nightmare.


Paul Garbler, CIA staffer:
"You know what CI-SIG was?
Find the mole. That's all they had to do."


This nightmare was heightened by using Oswald to entice the Agency to start a molehunt to find out who made the call. After all, a molehunt had been done with the Oswald file in the past, using Ann Egerter at Angleton's "office that spied on spies" at CI/SIG. Molehunts were standard operating procedure for CI/SIG its bread and butter. As Paul Garbler, the CIA's first station chief in Moscow, told a researcher: "You know what CI-SIG was? Find the mole. That's all they had to do."


Bringing Ann Egerter into a molehunt that relied on Oswald's biographical file meant that those trying to figure out who did the impersonation would use the Oswald legend in a paper trail that stretched into several US agencies and would be impossible to destroy later. It's hard to think of any reason to bring Ann Egerter back into the Oswald story in late 1963, other than to design a molehunt to find out if someone was trying to penetrate the CIA. That's how Egerter earned her salary as a CI/SIG analyst. That was the role of CI/SIG itself.


Whoever imitated Oswald on the telephone in Mexico City knew that such a paper trail would be a powerful way to blackmail the involved CIA and FBI officers after November 22 into deep-sixing any serious investigation of the assassination even an internal inquiry that could be hushed up on the grounds of "national security".


If it went public that these officers had used the Oswald legend for a molehunt prior to the assassination, the result would be not only embarrassment or a security breach, but suspicion that they were involved in the assassination itself. At a minimum, it would mean the end of the careers of these officers. The impact on their families and their agencies would be devastating.


What got me thinking about a Mexico City molehunt was Peter Dale Scott's analysis of molehunts conducted by Egerter and others, some of which I discussed in Chapter 1 of this book, the Double Dangle. The Mexico City station was a very powerful station, and its abilities should be acknowledged even though I am incensed by their deeds. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why the station would create a paper trail that made them look suspicious and incompetent at the same time.


I think I have figured out the answer. Due to the September 28 phone call and the calls that followed, the Mexico City Station was duped into embarking on a molehunt to find out who impersonated Oswald and Duran in the phone call. In the process of conducting that molehunt, the paper trail of memos that followed compromised both Headquarters and the Mexico City station, making an honest investigation impossible.


Of course, there's a number of possibilities of who knew enough inside ball to get the Station to play itself out of position. I lean towards David Sanchez Morales, the paramilitary chief at the CIA station in Miami. Morales had been the founder and the intelligence chief for the AMOTs. The AMOTs were the shadow intelligence service designed by the CIA to take over after Castro was overthrown. The AMOTs were highly trained intelligence officers whose primary language was Spanish.


As discussed below, the September 28 conversation was in Spanish, broken Russian, and probably broken English. The September 28 call was probably made by two Spanish speakers, and it wouldn't surprise me if one or both of them were AMOTs from the CIA's Miami station. CIA officer William Sturbitts testified that AMOTs often worked inside the listening posts of audio intercept stations. Whoever made the calls knew that the Mexico City station would be surprised by the call, and that a paper-driven molehunt was the logical response.


Morales had spent considerable time at the Mexico City station visiting David Phillips in the early sixties, and knew how Win Scott ran his shop. If Morales needed any help in knowing what it would take for the Mexico City station to convince Angleton's people to conduct a molehunt - a doubtful proposition - he would have picked up some tips from Bill Harvey. It's documented that Harvey knew how to run a molehunt, not to mention how to conduct an operation without writing anything down. As Harvey's executive officer said, "…you think I was tight lipped. He could run rings around me."


Morales, Roselli and Martino worked together for years in efforts to assassinate Castro. All three men made damaging admissions about their own involvement in the assassination of JFK, as detailed at length in Larry Hancock's Somebody Would Have Talked.


Harvey's people in CI and Staff D - Neill Prew, the Potockis, Lou DeSanti, "Thomas Urquhart" and the new staff D chief Alex MacMillan - hover over what I consider most of the important events. Some or all of these officers may have been unwitting, but they passed along reports that provided very important information about the wiretap system, key Cuban informants, and targets for disruption such as Cuban consul Eusebio Azcue and press attaché Teresa Proenza.


Someone wanted to use the Oswald tapes and the ensuing paper trail to blackmail the leading players in US intelligence after JFK was shot. They wanted a cover-up, and they got one.
There was a joint agency operation in place to embarrass the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, right when Oswald was planning to go to Mexico City and the Soviet Union.


I think the place to begin this study is with a hard look at the joint anti-FPCC operation set up by the CIA and the FBI.


During the second half of 1963, Lambert Anderson held down the Cuban desk for the FBI's Nationalities Intelligence division. Anderson and his fellow supervisor Marvin Gheesling knew that a man from Dallas named Lee Oswald had been arrested for publicizing the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) throughout New Orleans that summer, and the two men placed this information into Oswald's FBI security flash file. On August 21, the day Oswald was publicly outed in the New Orleans media as a former defector to the Soviet Union, Anderson sent memos out to Dallas and New Orleans that specifically asked the New Orleans FBI office if Oswald was engaged in activities that endangered US security.


On 9/13/63, FBI supervisor
Lambert Anderson received a note from
Agent Hosty saying that Oswald had a
subscription to the Communist Daily
Worker and was leafleting for the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee.


After a month of silence, Anderson received a response on Sept 13th from Dallas agent Jim Hosty, who was transferring the case to the New Orleans office. Hosty had a source inside the New York City FPCC office, almost certainly staff member Victor Vicente (see Chapter 3) who had been part of Anita Potocki and Lou de Santi's operation in July when this FPCC staffer was sent to Cuba to meet with Castro and Che Guevara. In two short paragraphs, Hosty said that Oswald was a subscriber to the Worker, New York's Communist newspaper, and that he had a track record of distributing pamphlets in Dallas on behalf of the aforementioned Fair Play for Cuba Committee.


The New Orleans FBI office was trying to figure out if Oswald was a good source, a troublesome character, or both. In the memo that transferred the Oswald file from Dallas to New Orleans, it's a mystery why Hosty didn't check the box that would have told New Orleans that Oswald had a security flash.
Oswald reveals himself as someone who can work with intelligence


Oswald himself had sought out the FBI office while he was in jail for the FPCC leafleting that had caused a scuffle with an anti-Castro organization and a resulting media splash. Oswald filled in the FBI agent on his political work in a friendly way and even told him about his new FPCC card. Oswald came across as someone who was not dangerous, and willing to work with the FBI on areas of mutual concern.


A few days later, Oswald wrote some notes that are highly revealing about his political views, the Communist Party, and US intelligence. These notes were created while preparing for a presentation he was making at the seminary attended by his cousin Eugene Murret. Because of the nature of this talk way out in the woods of Alabama, I think Oswald was preparing for a coming day when he would reveal his true identity to the world like a Marvel Comics superhero. He was a liberal ex-Marine not a radical that was loyal to the United States of America.
"A symbol of the American way, our liberal concession is the existence in our midst of a minority group whose influence and membership is very limited and whose dangerous tendencies are sufficiently controlled by special government agents.


The communist party U.S.A. bears little resemblance to their Russian counterparts, but by allowing them to operate and even supporting their right to speak, we maintain a tremendous sign of our strength and liberalism; harassment of their party newspaper, their leaders, and advocates is treachery to our basic principles of freedom of speech and press.


Their views no matter how misguided, no matter how much the Russians take advantage of them, must be allowed to be aired. After all, communist U.S.A. have existed for 40 years and they are still a pitiful group of radical. (sic).[ 2 ]
Hosty's observations about Oswald in Dallas turned into membership cards in Mexico City


Keep in mind that Hosty told Anderson on September 13 that Oswald had a subscription to the newspaper of the Communist Party, USA, and that he had a background of leafleting on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. We see the follow-up three days later, on September 16, when John Tilton of the CIA's Cuban operations in Miami asked Anderson to put together a joint agency operation designed to "plant deceptive information which might embarrass the (FPCC) in areas where it does have some support".[ 3 ] We will see that Oswald planted some deceptive information in Mexico City - he showed both his authentic FPCC membership card and his fake Communist Party card to Cuban consulate secretary Silvia Duran.


On the 16th, FBI records indicate that Oswald's security flash file with the FBI's Identification Division was reviewed, with Anderson's name written alongside.[ 4 ] On the 16th, Anderson's name is written on Oswald's security flash although no document entered the file, it appears to be related to Tilton's request for help that same day. Tilton had been involved with the DRE just days earlier and may have heard from Anderson about Oswald's arrest.


On the 26th, Anderson confirmed that the anti-FPCC project was going forward, with plans to distribute "propaganda in the name of the committee". This joint agency operation was launched right during the Cuba division's project to recruit Cuban consul Azcue in Mexico City. As Azcue seemed sympathetic to Cuban exiles, he seemed like he might be ripe for recruitment. The problem was that Azcue was due to return to Cuba in a matter of days.


As discussed in Chapter 3, the plan to recruit Azcue had originated with Bill Harvey, the former head of the Cuban division. Harvey's successor Desmond FitzGerald renewed Harvey's call to recruit Azcue during the summer of 1963. The joint agency operation, in turn, was a follow-up from an initial joint operation based in New York City two months earlier, when Harvey aide Anita Potocki and Lou de Santi worked with the FBI to get New York FPCC staffer (and FBI agent) Victor Vicente into Havana, where he met with Castro and Che Guevara.[ 5 ]


Bill Harvey himself was still in the mix during late 1963. Although Harvey had turned over the reins to the top-secret NSA-CIA liaison office Staff D as well as the Cuban desk in early 1963, Harvey continued to serve as the head of ZRRIFLE, the get-Castro assassination program tucked inside Staff D. Harvey continued to meet with Johnny Roselli on a regular basis right up to his departure for Rome in June 1963. Harvey worked at Staff D under his pseudonym "Daniel Presland" until at least October 11, 1963. A Staff D memo a few days earlier said that a personnel change was imminent. This means that during the Oswald visit, Harvey continued to have access to cables and wiretaps from all over the world, including Mexico City.


Remember in Chapter 3, how CIA Central American chief Jack Whitten found out that CIA agent LITAMIL-3 was unsuccessful in his attempt to recruit Azcue? Whitten commented that it was a good moment to step back and "let's wait for further developments". Mexico City chief Win Scott had talked just days earlier about using LITAMIL-3 as part of a "one-two punch" to recruit Azcue. As of September 20, the "number two" punch had not yet landed.


The CIA Mexico City station was housed within the American embassy, and its officers were referred to as political attachés. As Jack Whitten said, "I do not know whether you informed yourself about the magnitude of our political action program at the time - absolutely enormous… the thrust of the Station's effort was to recruit Soviet, Cuban and satellite people."
Hosty's observations about Oswald got clever minds thinking about how to use this redefector


To understand what happens next, it's useful to follow the paper trail of the Hosty memo. As we discussed earlier, FBI officer Anderson learned about Oswald's connections with the FPCC and the Communist Party from Hosty on September 13. Anderson probably tipped off CIA officer Tilton by the 16th. It had to be an attractive prospect here was a very rare re-defector, hoping to go to Cuba and then return once again to the Soviet Union.


The Hosty memo was received by the CIA's Jane Roman on the 23rd. As the liaison to CIA counterintelligence, it was Roman's job to pass it on to the person who needed to know about it. She gave it to Harvey's man CI/OPS Will Potocki on the 25th, the very day that Oswald left for Mexico City. Potocki in turn passed it on to Cal Tenney at the CI/International Communism desk unfortunately, it's not dated, so we don't know when Tenney actually received it.


John Newman suggests that the Tilton/Anderson anti-FPCC operation was "CI/OPS-inspired". [ 6 ] Whether or not Potocki was working with Tilton is not the end of it for me. I think that someone got wind of the anti-FPCC operation and piggy-backed a new operation on top of it that included the impersonation of Oswald.


The piggy-backers could have obtained access to the Oswald information from Potocki, Roman, Egerter, Anderson, or anyone else who could provide access to the file, or knew about the plans to fabricate documents to make the FPCC lose credibility. This kind of deception was known as a counter-intelligence program or "COINTELPRO". Richard Cotter at the FBI, a Cuban specialist, knew about the Tilton/Anderson operation.[ 7 ] Cotter said that they had successfully run a COINTELPRO operation against the FPCC in the past.


The Hosty memo did not go into Oswald's 201 file. Instead, it went into file 100-300-011, the CIA's FPCC file. As the custodian of the 201 file, Egerter probably removed it based on her own volition or the request of her bosses Angleton and CI-SIG chief Birch O'Neal. But, in any case, Potocki had access to it.
Oswald's visa requests were bound to fail, whether he knew it or not


Researchers have long debated if the real Lee Oswald went to Mexico City at all, and I remain agnostic on that subject. The journalist Jack Anderson reported in the Washington Post that the HSCA investigators wondered if "the CIA concocted the whole Oswald adventure in Mexico City in an attempt to conceal his real activities in Dallas". There are reports that Oswald visited the anti-Castro activist Sylvia Odio in Dallas right about the same time, and even an unconfirmed report that he made a threat about killing the President at the Cuban Embassy.[ 8 ]


To keep things simple, I will assume that the real Oswald went to Mexico City, regardless of whether the person Duran spoke with was really him or an imposter. My focus is on the manipulation of the reports contained in Oswald's file, not on Oswald the person.


Ostensibly, it looks like Oswald left for Mexico City after kissing his wife Marina goodbye in New Orleans on September 23. The lure may have been a little extra money at an opportune time. Oswald had experience in requesting money and favors. He had successfully obtained an instant visa to enter the Soviet Union when he defected four years earlier, getting it done in record time for an American at the height of the Cold War.


More often than not, Oswald has struck me as what the CIA called an "unwitting co-optee". Such a person is someone who unwittingly takes action due to the initiative of the CIA. Oswald had a good reason to go to Mexico City. He wrote in his June 1963 passport application that he was planning to travel to Europe and the USSR later in the year. I think he was lured to go to Mexico City.


As the spy capital of the Western Hemisphere, Mexico City was a good place to negotiate with the Soviets for a visa to the USSR. Both Lee and his wife Marina had been stalled for months in their efforts with the Soviet embassy in Washington to return to the Soviet Union before the arrival of their second baby in October. Marina was seeking permanent residence. Oswald was more flexible, asking the Soviets to give her request priority. Once someone in US intelligence learned that Oswald hoped to travel overseas probably by the issuance of his new passport in June - they may have taken action to grease the wheels. Money is a great way to do that.


Oswald may have even made some kind of handshake agreement to shake up Azcue and seeing how he responded to Oswald's request for an instant visa. Any such deal may have included a visit to Valeriy Kostikov at the Soviet consulate, who had joined Khrushchev's entourage as a diplomat during his visit to the US in 1959.[ 9 ] Kostikov was the senior of the five officers who dealt with visas and related matters. Given the depth of his inside knowledge into the Soviet government, it makes sense that Kostikov was noted on Sept. 27 as a REDCAP target for US intelligence to probe as a possible future defector.[ 10 ]


Some have suggested that Oswald's real goal was to get to Cuba, and not the Soviet Union. Oswald had expressed interest in visiting on Cuba on several occasions over the years. However, if Oswald really thought that he was going to successfully get into Cuba during this visit, he's not as smart as I thought he was.


The Cuban consulate secretary Sylvia Duran made it clear that the tried-and-true manner to get to Cuba was to have a US communist party member negotiate directly with representative of the Cuban communist party. Oswald showed up in Mexico City with no Soviet or Cuban sponsor on Friday, Sept. 27th.


As mentioned above, Oswald had a track record of success in obtaining an instant visa when he sought entry into the USSR in 1959. This time, he arrived at the Cuban consulate on a Friday, demanding an instant visa to get into Cuba by the following Monday. He went so far as to make up a yarn that the Soviet embassy in Mexico City had approved his visa to the USSR. In short, Oswald's mission was probably bound to fail, whether he knew it or not.


Oswald's effort in shuttle diplomacy between the Soviet and Cuban consulates did him no good. The Cubans, Mexicans, Russians, and Americans all pretty much agree that he visited the Cuban consulate three times and the Soviet consulate once on Friday the 27th. He told the Cubans he got the visa OK from the Soviets, and told the Soviets that he already had a Cuban visa. Consulate secretary Sylvia Duran talked to the Soviets, and both sides determined that Oswald was lying.


After Oswald had no luck with Duran, he went over her head and pitched his story to Duran's boss Azcue, but it didn't change anything. Duran's rapport with Azcue was good. Both Azcue and Sylvia's husband Horacio were architects and knew each other professionally.


The Cuban consuls were stunned by Oswald's
Communist Party card. They had never seen a
Communist Party card as a form of ID.


Oswald's display of his brand-new FPCC and CPUSA cards seem like they came right out of the Dallas FBI report two weeks earlier, which identified Oswald as a communist and a Fair Play for Cuba Committee organizer. The Cuban consuls had never seen a Communist Party card used as a form of ID. Azcue was convinced that Oswald was a provocateur. They got into a shouting match that ended with Azcue kicking Oswald out of the consulate.

Here's the verified events for September 28


The Mexico City station's procedure for wiretaps was to get a typed version of the audiotape in the hands of Mexico City Station case officer, Ann Goodpasture, by 8 am the next business day. After her review, she would have had it on the desk of station chief Win Scott by 9 am. Win Scott looked at the wiretap transcript of Duran describing Oswald, wrote on the margin: "Is it possible to identify?", and sent it back to Goodpasture. Win Scott ran a tight ship. It's safe to say that Goodpasture was right on it.


At about 9:45 am on Saturday the 28th, Oswald returned to the Soviet consulate and made a final pitch for an instant visa. He displayed his pistol, laid it down on the desk, said he was being harassed by the FBI, and started to weep. The Soviets emptied the bullets from the pistol, commiserated, and ushered him out at 10:30. Oswald was told that nothing more could be done but wait for the word from their embassy in Washington DC. The Soviet consulate officers all said that they never heard from Oswald again.
Both Oswald and Duran were impersonated in the call of the 28th


An hour after Oswald left the Soviet consulate on the 28th, we have a wiretap transcript of a call on the Soviet line made by Duran from the Cuban consulate to the Soviet consulate. When Duran put Oswald on the line, he said that he had given the Soviet consulate the wrong address, and that he had returned to the Cuban consulate to obtain the proper address that he had left with them because he had forgotten it. The Soviet officer invited him to come back over and give them the right address. Oswald said that he would. Again, the Soviets said that he did not return. This call is a fake. Let's view it from several vantage points.
This was the only call of the day placed by an outsider to the Soviet consulate


The English transcript of the September 28 calls
reveals that this is the only conversation of the
day where the translator was not able to identify
any of the speakers.


The Soviets say that the switchboard was closed that day. A review of the transcripts of the 28th reveals that this call was the only call that was not placed by a colleague, relative or a friend of someone at the consulate. The calls for that day concerned social affairs like going on a picnic, grappling with the grippe, and taking care of the children and the chickens. In other words, this was the only call of the day placed by an outsider to the Soviet consulate.
Documents have been tampered with to make it appear that Duran admitted seeing Oswald after the 27th


The Mexican reports about this September 28 call are intriguing. Sylvia Duran, a Mexican national, told the DFS officers who arrested her after the assassination that she never saw Oswald again after the 27th. Her family members said she told them the same thing. Peter Dale Scott wrote a stinging article exposing how Duran's statements to the Mexican police after the assassination were routinely mis-translated. Scott explains that her original statement given immediately after JFK's assassination has never been released, and that even the original transcript of her interrogation may still be in the hands of the Mexican government. [ 11 ]


What we do have is a February 1964 translation where Duran says that after September 27th "he never called again". The Mexico City station's Cuba desk chief David Phillips arranged for the translation of Duran's statements at interrogation, and the final translation of the same statement is outrageous. Created in May 1964 and used as a Warren Commission exhibit, the final translation has Duran stating that "she does not recall whether Oswald subsequently called her or not." A review of these translations reveals that they differ in many other striking ways.[ 12 ]


Let's put it this way. The CIA admitted that the only hard evidence they had of the Oswald visit to Duran on the 28th was the wiretap. That meant that no one at the consulate was able to verify Oswald's visit, including Duran herself. Her denial is the best available evidence. As we will see later on, there is evidence that the tape of the September 28 call survived the assassination.


We even see that the CIA told the Warren Commission that "we deduce" that Oswald visited the Cuban consulate on September 28, but added "we cannot be certain of this conclusion".[ 13 ] Why wouldn't the CIA trust its own evidence that Oswald called the Soviet consulate? Such a statement hardly inspires confidence.


The last time Goodpasture was interrogated about this phone call, her interrogator referred to the caller on September 28 as "Oswald or an Oswald substitute". Goodpasture didn't even argue with him. She herself had referred in the past to "the man calling himself Oswald", and "the alleged' Oswald".
The American translators of the tapes were not interviewed for 13 years after the assassination


The Americans report that an audiotape of the September 28 call was delivered to the CIA's Boris and Anna Tarasoff. This wiretapped call contained three different languages as Boris translated Russian and Anna translated English while the monitors provided a Spanish translation, they worked on it together. Boris Tarasoff testified fifteen years later that he thought the Russian speaker as probably an officer named Konstantinov - although the Mexico City station prided itself as identifying all callers whenever possible, no intelligence officer or Warren staffer ever sought the identity of the Russian who spoke with Duran and Oswald.


This flat refusal to identify which Soviet spoke with Oswald falls into the same category as the Agency's failure to question Duran or the Tarasoffs. The only reasonable explanation is that they knew what would they would find out and they didn't want to know. Media consultant Brian Litman interviewed all of the Soviet officers, and by the end of this year we may know if a Soviet officer ever reported receiving this call. Stunningly, as we will see, neither of the Tarasoffs were never interviewed by anyone about their transcriptions of Oswald until thirteen years after the assassination, even though Boris' transcription - under his pseudonym of "Douglas Feinglass" - was presented as authoritative evidence to CIA headquarters on November 23, 1963.
No American ever interviewed Sylvia Duran for 13 years after the assassination


Of the numerous officers interviewed after the assassination, I don't recall any of them ever identified either Duran or Oswald as the speakers in the 28th call on the record, under penalty of perjury. Nor do I recall any of the monitors or translators identifying Duran or Oswald's voices on the 28th. This is remarkable in Duran's case, as she had been working at the consulate all summer and was identified in the photo logs back in 1962, on August 7, 1963, and as recently as September 30, 1963. We call her Duran simply because the transcriber identified her as Silvia Duran.


The transcripts are very strange. The original transcript in Spanish is mysteriously faint right in the area of the Duran-Oswald conversation and is essentially illegible. The English version of this transcript does not identify Duran, although all the other conversations are identified by speaker. A stand-alone version of this transcript identifies Duran as the speaker on the 28th, but it is not confirmed by the Mexico City officers. This is important because a stand-alone version of the transcript for the 27th identifies Duran, and is later confirmed ("Duran") by one of the Mexico City officers.


"we do not want any Americans to confront
Silvia Duran or be in contact with her"


CIA HQ went so far as to write that "we do not want any Americans to confront Silvia Duran or be in contact with her". CIA HQ did not want it to get out that Duran never met with Oswald on the 28th. Mexico City station made sure on November 23rd that Duran was seized and held incommunicado until they learned how to handle her story. Although Duran was "perfectly willing" to come to the United States and answer the Warren Commission questions, it never happened. Duran, one of the most important witnesses in any JFK assassination investigation, was never questioned by Americans until her interview with Ron Kessler of the Washington Post in 1976.[ 14 ]


The September LIENVOY report written by station chief Win Scott on 10/8/63 mentions that there were "two leads from LIENVOY of operational interest in September 1963", a woman professor from New Orleans contacting the Soviet embassy, and an unidentified Czech woman contacting the Czech embassy. Neither of these calls mention this critical Sept 28 LIENVOY wiretapped call from "Duran and Oswald" to the Soviet consulate, even though CIA regulations mandated reports on all US citizens that visited the Soviet consulate.
The phone caller spoke broken Russian and broken English, and knew that Oswald was in transition but not that he was moving away from his family


It was reported that two of the monitors said that the American in the Sept 28 call spoke broken Russian and broken English. My hunch is that these "monitors" were probably the Tarasoffs. The mystery phone caller may have been a Spanish speaker, possibly even an AMOT. There is testimony that AMOTs worked in foreign listening posts as monitors. The Mexico City monitoring station would have been a logical place for someone like AMOT chief David Morales to embed one of his people, or to elicit an informant from within the staff of Mexican monitors.


Oswald's Russian was very good. Dallas translator Peter Gregory had written a recommendation for Oswald months earlier, verifying that Oswald was qualified to be a Russian translator and an interpreter. Gregory's skills were considerable, and he was used by the Secret Service after the assassination.


On the Cuban side of this call, there was no LIENVOY wiretap set up on the Cuban consulate line. Because the records of the locations of the LIFEAT tapes are missing, there is no way to verify the source of what (if anything) was picked up on the Soviet tap. All hands say that the Cuban consulate was closed to visitors on Saturday the 28th. It's well-documented that a Cuban exile named Manuel Porras Rivera was turned away by security when he tried to visit the Cuban consulate that day. Why would it be any different for Oswald, particularly after he was essentially banished from the consulate the day before?
Even if Duran's testimony is considered not to be totally reliable, the testimony of the Tarasoffs and other factors indicate that Oswald was impersonated on the phone on September 28


The biggest argument against an impersonation of Oswald is that Duran may not be telling the truth. A recent book by Philip Shenon claims that Duran went to a twist party in Mexico City with Oswald during his visit. If Duran lied about "never seeing Oswald after the 27th" in this regard, it obviously calls her testimony about not seeing Oswald on the 28th in question.


I can't and don't rely on Duran's testimony alone. Although the Warren Commission found "no significant inaccuracies" in her statements to the DFS, such a finding is not sufficient evidence to treat her testimony as basically trustworthy. What is more intriguing is that Duran provided the best evidence that she could in the face of DFS' forcible interrogation techniques. They hurt her, left her with black and blue marks, and mis-translated what she said, but she did not back down.


Another reason why I remain convinced about Duran is telling the truth when she says Oswald did not come to the Cuban consulate on the 28th is that the circumstances of the revelation of her testimony jibes with the testimony provided by the Tarasoffs. Like Duran, the Tarasoffs make it very clear that no one questioned them about their transcription of the Oswald tapes until 1976. Not only did the Tarasoffs and Duran have to wait thirteen years before they were able to tell their stories under oath, but they were probably the three most important witnesses about Oswald's visit to Mexico City. It makes no sense that they would all be insulated from questioning.


A third reason is that the comments of the Oswald caller reveal that he does not know that the efforts for a visa have come to a dead end. The caller is forced to elicit Kostikov's name from the Russian. The "Cubans have my address" business is provocative and untrue.


A fourth reason is based on an admission by Goodpasture that she erred in her Mexico City history by claiming that Oswald contacted the embassies on September 26 and October 6. She admitted that she believed the actual dates of Oswald's visits to the embassies were September 27 and October 1. That admission illustrates that she believed that there were only two dates when Oswald contacted the embassies, and that neither one of those dates were September 28.


Besides these four reasons, I can come up with a quick summary of at least ten other reasons discussed in this chapter:
1. The Cuban consulate was closed on Saturday, and it is well-documented that they turned away the anti-Castro activist Manuel Porras Rivera. Meanwhile, the Soviet consulate's switchboard was closed other than Duran's call, the only calls that are recorded on the transcript from that day are insider calls from people who had friends or family at the consulate.


2. No one to my knowledge ever testified under penalty of perjury that it was Oswald or Duran's voices on the tape of the 28th.


3. Boris Tarasoff believed that the person who identified himself as Oswald on the 1st was the same person who was on the tape of the 28th. Despite that identification, the Mexico City station took no action reporting this US visitor to the Soviet consulate.


4. However, Win Scott reported Oswald's presence to CIA HQ regarding the October 1 phone call, but not the call of the 28th, even though he had a mandatory duty to do so. Another factor in this failure is that the October 1 call had no reference to Cuba, while the September 28 call was allegedly placed from the Cuban consulate.


5. CIA HQ went so far as to write that "we do not want any Americans to confront Silvia Duran or be in contact with her".


6. A CIA statement actually said that the Agency was not certain if Oswald was at the consulate on the 28th. Goodpasture identified the man as "the man calling himself Oswald", and "the alleged' Oswald", and voiced no objection when a questioner referred to "Oswald or the Oswald substitute."


7. We have evidence that documents were tampered with, changing Duran's testimony that she never spoke to Oswald again after the 27th.


8. The Oswald character in the September 28 and October 1 calls spoke broken Russian, and possibly even broken English. Oswald's Russian was very good.


Immediately after the assassination, Goodpasture
reported to Headquarters that the September 28 tape
was destroyed before the October 1 tape was
obtained. But the protocol was to hold on to tapes
for 14 days - and tapes from the Cuban consulate
for 30 days.


9. Goodpasture claimed that the tape of the 28th was destroyed by the 1st. That claim is not credible, as the protocol was to save tapes for 14 days and the Cuban tapes for 30 days.


10. Last, but not least, the stripping of all references to Cuba from Oswald's biographical file, and the placement of these references in the file for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. This was a crucial aspect of hiding any supposed link of Oswald to the Cuban consulate.
Meanwhile, Kennedy and Castro were testing to see if peace was possible


There was a political reason, incidentally, to make Sylvia Duran look bad. As seen in this FBI memo, it had been well-known among intelligence throughout 1963 that Sylvia Duran had been not only the secretary but also the paramour of Carlos Lechuga, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations. It was reported in Feb 1963 that Lechuga had offered to marry Duran.


Here's a memo showing Bill Harvey's long-time aides Neill Prew and Anita Potocki (Harvey's assistant at Staff D) and Lou DeSanti copied on a memo in January 1963, showing them watching Sylvia Duran very carefully during her affair with Lechuga. These officers are kept in the loop repeatedly in the following weeks while monitoring Proenza and other attachés. Prew is copied again right before the attempt to recruit Azcue in September 1963.


During the week leading up to the Oswald visit to Mexico in September 1963, Lechuga was one of the two principal men on the Cuban side coordinating back channel negotiations between Castro and JFK to reach rapprochement. On Sept. 23, Lechuga met with Kennedy aide William Attwood at the New York apartment of reporter Lisa Howard, who had met with Castro and brokered this attempt to re-establish diplomatic relations in the last months of Kennedy's life, and continued to try to keep it going during the first year of LBJ's tenure.


The CIA's top officials had been at the meetings where this policy shift towards rapprochement was under discussion throughout the year and right into the autumn. The CIA hierarchy gave orders that channels of communication to Castro had to be kept secret from the general public. The CIA chiefs knew that if word got out to the public, the anti-Castro forces would consider it a "stab in the back." I'm sure that men like Morales did take it as a stab in the back. JFK was letting Castro know that peace was possible.
It is not credible that the tape of the 28th call was destroyed in three days


The Sept 28th call got the desired response from the Mexico City station. Based on their aforementioned practices, chief Win Scott would have had the transcript of the 28th call by the 29th, or the 30th at the latest. A copy of the transcript would also be routed to the hands of David Phillips. Like Harvey, Phillips wore more than one hat. Not only was Phillips the station's head of covert action, but he was also the head of Mexico City's Cuban operations.[ 15 ]


Phillips left on the 30th on a nine-day trip. His first stop was the CIA headquarters outside Washington, DC. On any such trip, he would generally meet with his boss, covert action chief Richard Helms. It stands to reason that he would spend some time with the head of Cuban operations, Desmond FitzGerald. As this was a counterintelligence matter, such a discussion would also have to include Jim Angleton or someone from his office. Assuming he met with his superiors, the four of them would have decided what action to take about the phone call of the 28th.


For this crowd, impersonations were old hat. Just two months earlier, the Mexico City station had interrupted some business of a pro-Castro American cattleman by impersonating his contact, the commercial attaché Luisa Calderon of the Cuban consulate. This time, the station's trick had been turned back onto the station.


The officers at the Mexico City station told Congress years later that having an American visit the Soviet consulate was unusual. Win Scott only reported three such visits by Americans during the second half of 1963: The "Oswald" call of October 1, a New Orleans professor, and a drunk shouting in the middle of the night. There are no pre-Nov. 22 reports discussing Oswald visiting both the Soviet and Cuban consulates. It was extremely unusual to have an American speaking Russian, much less speaking on the telephone directly from the Cuban consulate.


Years later, Jim Angleton was confronted by Senator Richard Schweiker on this very question. Schweiker reminded Angleton that Oswald's own wife thought that Oswald was from the Baltic states when they first met because his accent was so good, and suggested that since the Oswald on the telephone spoke Russian very poorly "you just wonder if they're the same person." Angleton did everything that he could to change the subject.


Wildest of all were the aforementioned reports that "Oswald" spoke both broken English and broken Russian. This tip was so sensitive that it was obtained by reporter Ron Kessler second-hand from "two monitors" (who may have been the Tarasoffs). But Kessler had an excellent primary source - Charles Flick (aka "Arnold Arehart"), the technician who kept custody of the Mexico City tapes. Corroborating evidence was provided by Dallas FBI chief Gordon Shanklin, who reported that after the assassination his FBI agents listened to a copy of a Mexico City tape purported to be Oswald. What they heard was a voice speaking in broken English who was not Oswald. (See http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm.../786/rec/1, and go to p. 39)


On Tuesday, October 1, there were two more calls to the Soviet consulate by a man speaking broken Russian. He said he had called on Saturday the 28th and wanted to know the status of his visa request. He said that he had been speaking with Soviet consul Valeriy Kostikov, and that his name was Lee Oswald. This is a ridiculous statement. The Soviets in Mexico had told him "no", clearly and emphatically.


These October 1 calls went directly to Boris Tarasoff on a rush basis. When a call came in about an American trying to contact the Soviet compound, there was a procedure in place to contact Goodpasture within fifteen minutes, to arrange an immediate handoff of the tape, and to deliver it to the Tarasoffs with orders to transcribe it on the same day.


Boris Tarasoff had a special skill. Like the monitors at the intercept base, he had memorized the voices of many of the speakers that he had heard in calls to the Soviet compound. This skill was essential to the work of the station, which depended on identifying target persons and others picked up by the wiretaps. When he heard Oswald's voice in the October 1 call, he matched it immediately with his recollection of the voice he heard on September 28.[ 16 ]


When Boris and his wife Anna picked up Oswald's name on tape, he gave the tape to his contact Bill Bright. As discussed earlier, Bright was a new addition to the station, and had formerly been the man in charge of Oswald's 201 file for the Soviet division's biographical section. When he told Bright that the caller had identified himself as Lee Oswald, Bright became very interested and excited. Tarasoff said in 1976 that no one ever asked him after the assassination any questions about the Oswald tapes or transcripts. Tarasoff is one of the most important witnesses in the JFK case. But CIA HQ didn't want Tarasoff's story to be known.


Immediately after the assassination, Goodpasture reported to Headquarters that the September 28 tape was destroyed before the October 1 tape was obtained. This was an outright lie. The Mexico City station procedure was to hold on to tapes for two weeks. For tapes that emanated from the Cuban consulate, they held on to them for 30 days. There was even a special rack that the technical adviser had arranged to hold on to the Cuban tapes in chronological order. There is no way that a tape of this sensitivity was routinely destroyed in three days. Goodpasture had to lie about the September 28 tape, because this was a state secret.
David Phillips, the missing "third transcript" of Oswald, and the need for a plan


Once the station found out that the man who made the 9/28 call and the 10/1 calls identified himself as Lee Oswald, Phillips needed to know about it. The station would not want to leave a paper trail regarding this sensitive penetration matter that might be read by a CIA penetrator. On the night of October 1, a pouch was sent to Phillips at Headquarters. The CIA procedure at the time was that these pouched transmittals left no paper trail, other than to say that the items had been sent from point A to point B.


The pouch probably contained a transcript of the October 1 calls from the man calling himself Oswald. You have to wonder if it also contained a copy of the tape.


Many years later, Phillips told a very elaborate lie, claiming that he was in Mexico City working with the Soviet desk in preparing the draft of a response to the October 1 phone calls. He also claimed that the Soviet desk officer was lazy. That didn't happen even Goodpasture said Phillips' story was not true. It is well-documented that Phillips was away from the Mexico City station at CIA HQ in Washington and then JMWAVE station in Miami between September 30 to October 9. When this documentation was brought to light, Phillips was forced to backtrack and fall back to a weak excuse that his memory was mistaken, and that he had not played any role in preparing this draft memo.


Phillips' initial testimony to the HSCA was amazing. Phillips testified that he recalled a record of Oswald calling the Soviet consulate and asking for financial aid. Phillips had embellished this story the day before by telling reporter Ron Kessler that Oswald asked for money in exchange for information, and was forced to concede during the deposition that "the information part" was made up. Phillips, however, insisted that the "financial aid part" was correct. There is no transcript supporting Phillips' testimony.


However, translator Anna Tarasoff testified that there was such a transcript, with Oswald identifying himself by name and asking for financial aid. Boris' specialty was in Russian to English translations, which is why Anna did the work. Both Boris and Anna said it was a "long one", that it was in English, that it was transcribed by Anna, who handled English speakers, and that they turned it in immediately. This specific sequence of events is why it stands out in their minds; as Boris said, "well, that's it".


Despite a search, such a transcript has never been found. Because of the discrepancy between the translators' memory and the transcripts, the Tarasoffs provided to the HSCA their original Royal portable typewriter so that the type could be compared with the type on the transcripts. The Royal typewriter, in a brown case, is sitting in the National Archives today. The comparison is still waiting to be done.


I believe that this missing "third transcript" of a call from Oswald on a date other than Sept. 28 and Oct. 1 probably did exist. Phillips' admission about Oswald seeking financial aid, made at the beginning of the HSCA investigation, made it clear that he needed to avoid telling too many whoppers on the record, given that the "third transcript" might turn up in the investigation. From then on, the CIA took a much tougher attitude to the HSCA. Phillips provided no new startling revelations when recalled in 1978.


Meanwhile, during the first days of October immediately following the October 1 phone calls, two posts went back and forth between the Mexico City station and CIA HQ. Mexico City expressed concern about trusting the local FBI office with any sensitive information they were concerned that the FBI had been penetrated. HQ's response was to tell Mexico City to take no immediate action on the "high level of penetration" while they figured out how to best work with the FBI. The concern, of course, was to avoid any damage to their relations.


Phillips' next stop was to JMWAVE, the CIA's Cuba operations base in Miami. Upon his arrival on the 7th, Phillips was greeted by John Tilton. To recap, Tilton was the CIA Cuba affairs officer who worked with the FBI's Cuba affairs officer Lambert Anderson to put together the joint agency anti-FPCC operation that used Oswald in some way. The purpose of Phillips' visit was for two days of consultations.[ 17 ]


It seems reasonable to assume that Phillips met with Ted Shackley, the chief of the Miami base for Cuban operations, and that he passed on to them some version of his previous discussions with their colleagues at Langley. Did Phillips tell Shackley specifically about the Oswald impersonation? Or the molehunt? We don't know, but let's assume that he did and swore him to secrecy. After this meeting, the plan was completed.
A summary of what the Sept. 28 callers knew


Here's what I think happened next, based on my review of the documents from we have been looking at. I conclude that a plan went into effect on October 8. The goal was to smoke out the identity of the September 28 callers that pretended to be Duran and Oswald.


The person who was the titular head of this operation was analyst Ann Egerter. She had done the main handling of Oswald's file since 1960, reporting to her bosses Jim Angleton and Birch O'Neal. Egerter's group, CI/SIG, was known as the molehunting unit. She called CI/SIG "the office that spied on spies". For more background, see my article on CI/SIG.


A quick overview of what the Sept 28 callers knew:


1. Oswald was a Russian-speaker;
2. Oswald had previously met with Duran;
3. Oswald had just left the Soviet embassy earlier that morning on the 28th;
4. Oswald wanted to know on the 1st if his Soviet visa had been granted because the September 28 callers made this call as well!
5. On October 1, the caller identified himself as Oswald, saying that he had called previously on the 28th. He then coaxed the Soviet officer who picked up the phone to provide Kostikov's name, claiming that his previous conversation had been with that man. A linkage between Kostikov and Oswald was now created.




Concern grew on Oct. 1 that the FBI office in Mexico City was penetrated


Keep in mind that right after the calls of Sept 28 and Oct 1, the station had immediately responded with a report to HQ admitting its fear that the local FBI field office had been penetrated.


On October 1, Bill Bright's defection target Bakulin who was handling the double agents LAROB and LINEB-1 for the Soviets, as seen in Chapter 3 - was seen talking to Yatskov outside the Soviet Embassy.[ 18 ] Yatskov was the consul assumed to be in close communication with Oswald, as seen in a contact sheet for Oswald. This referenced list of contacts makes it clear that the CIA was convinced by October 1st that "Y talked to O" on September 28.[ 19 ]


At this point, CIA complaints surface about the FBI's operation. I believe the concern was that someone from the LAROB or the LINEB-1 operations might have obtained access to LIENVOY, and impersonated Oswald and Duran on the telephone.


Bakulin and LINEB-1 met on October 1. Bakulin told LINEB-1 he had no money for him that day. Things had heated up. After the meeting, Bakulin was put on continuous physical surveillance by the CIA's Mexico City station unit known as LIEMBRACE.[ 20 ]


The next day, October 2, a memo went out from CIA headquarters discussing the danger that the FBI's field office in Mexico City had been penetrated, and that any coordination with that FBI office was "a delicate matter" that should be dealt with at the headquarters level rather than in the field.


The memo also said that the FBI leadership "instructed its Mexi rep to discuss with you pertinent details of such Russian CE ops (note: counter-espionage operations) as LAROB case". LAROB was a double agent handled by both Soviet officer Valentin Bakulin and the FBI in Mexico City. Bill Bright had been tracking this story, as discussed in Chapter 3. Although there was a danger that the FBI's relationship with LAROB might have compromised its own security, HQ valued its relationship with the FBI and told the Mexico City station that "we do not wish at present time to raise new issues in Mexico."[ 21 ]


On October 5, the Mexico City station reported that "HQs was deferring discussion of the high level of penetration, but would take it up after hearing results of closer liaison between (the Mexico City station and the FBI) in Mexico City."[ 22 ]


On October 7, twenty sets of reports about double agent LAROB were sent from the FBI to the Mexico City station and Headquarters.[ 23 ] Why were they sent? Because both the Station and Headquarters were worried that LAROB was insecure. This double agent or his contacts could have impersonated Duran and Oswald on September 28 and October 1. LAROB and his contacts were logical suspects.


If the local FBI field office had been subjected to a high level of penetration, then the Mexico City station could have been penetrated as well. The station itself had to be treated as a suspect in the molehunt.
Agreement to strip Oswald's biographical file of any pro-Cuban references before beginning the molehunt


The number one concern was that the LIENVOY operation had been discovered by Soviet or Cuban intelligence, blowing a highly valuable and sensitive asset of the United States. The impersonation could have been an effort by the Soviets or Cubans to rattle the Americans' cage by letting them know that their tap operation had been found out, and then taking careful note of the American reaction.


However, the Mexico City station could not assume that the calls were an operation conducted by Soviet or Cuban intelligence. It was a live possibility that these calls were an inside job. Any analyst could easily deduce that American intelligence knew a lot more about Lee Oswald then the Soviets or the Cubans.


Due to the nature of the security problem, the logical prime suspects would be the CIA officers working in Cuban operations and the FBI's double agents working with Bakulin. Also worthy of consideration were the Mexico City station and the domestic agencies responsible for handling Oswald FBI, State, Navy. The immigration service also had a subsidiary role, as they were responsible for tracking Oswald's wife Marina.


A decision was made for the Mexico City station to make no reference to Oswald's visits to the Cuban consulate. All of Mexico City's references to the Oswald case would use the LCIMPROVE indicator of an operation designed to counter the Soviets, rather than the TYPIC indicator that would refer to Cuban operations.


Oswald's biographical file (known as his "201 file") would be stripped of any reference to his pro-Cuban activities, as well as any reference to any attempt to obtain a visa. These documents were removed from the 201 file and placed inside Oswald's FPCC 100-300-011 file tightly held by CI-SIG.[ 24 ]


Many documents still bear this original FPCC file number today, crossed out and replaced by the 201 number. This was done to create a plausible reason to prevent FitzGerald's Cuban desk at HQ and Shackley's Miami station from receiving any cables or dispatches about this molehunt. The Cuba operations officers had access to the August 1963 FBI report about Oswald based on his real name Lee Harvey Oswald, his actual slender build of "5 foot 9, 140 pounds", and his current status as a US resident; as you will see, they would have known that the molehunt descriptions of Oswald were inaccurate.


The Miami station had been included in all of the memos about the related Azcue operation. The two joint agency anti-FPCC operations of that year (discussed in Chapter 3) included several officers with the Cuban division, including Tilton himself. It was reasonable to assume that the suspects for the Duran and Oswald impersonation would include people from Miami with intelligence connections.


The heart of the plan was for Mexico City to add some marked cards based on phony information into their memo to HQ. Then HQ would do the same. Then see where those cards ended up. Both of these feints are part of the time-honored molehunt technique that Jim Angleton specialized in. The phony information simply created a brighter trail to follow.
Angleton believed Oswald was tied in with the Soviets


Although the Miami station was cut out of the chase, it may well be that Angleton refused to believe that Miami had anything to do with the Oswald phone calls. Angleton not only assumed that the Soviets were constantly trying to penetrate the CIA, but he also assumed that they knew that their compound was tapped in Mexico City.


As I've said, molehunts were Jim Angleton's specialty. Goodpasture had served for years previously in the CI staff with Jim Angleton. Angleton and Harvey were not only close friends, but also at the mountaintop of top-secret CIA operations. No divisions were more sacrosanct than the CI division and Staff D. The role of CI/SIG within CI may have been the most sacrosanct of all, as it spied on CIA officers themselves and had to hide their role in order to remain effective. When Angleton heard about the Sept 28 phone call by "Lee Oswald" in Mexico City, it must have brought him right back to the hunt for Popov's mole on the day that Lee Os