Bill Simpich

Richard, no, I don’t want to attack you, I want to appeal to your sense of humor and collegiality. i didn’t mean to spread “disinformation” about downloading. Can’t you copy and paste the content on the screen?

Richard - I wrote both of my books up there for researchers, and I put them up there for free. You get several free click throughs a day, and you can download everything you click on. Disinformation artists? Or challenging your beliefs? Annoying? Maybe, if your belief system is challenged. Sadistic? Maybe, if you read too much JFK material.

I would respectfully suggest not including de Mohrenschildt for the reasons stated and more. The facts are contested. I think if you limit it to six people or something like to start with - Koethe, Hunter, Kilgallen, Pritchett Smith, Giancana and Rosselli - you will obtain a very positive result.

Silvia Duran was impersonated as well as Oswald on 9/28/63. She has repearedly denied ever seeing Oswald after 9/27/63, despite the CIA transcript documenting that she and Duran were together at the Cuban consulate on 9/28 about noon time. Did the American agencies provide a reaction to this impersonation? Immediately after the Oswald-Duran impersonation, a strong thread of evidence emerges on 10/2/63 about the CIA's concern about the "danger that the FBI's field office in Mexico City had been penetrated". See the cryptonym LAROB, and this in particular: 10/3/63 cable from HQ to Mexico City, DIR 73144 PBRAMPART: "Urgent. Private meeting (illegible)." Next page: "On October 2, a memo went out from CIA headquarters discussing the danger that the FBI's field office in Mexico City had been penetrated. "Re coordination of FBI (oper?)ations in MEXI, -__ in liaison with ODENVY (note: FBI) is still delicate matter which ___ AMDEAD at HDQS 0-- directives foresee that certain types of operations may be coordinated at HDQS rather than in the field. on the whole our relations with FBI on world-wide and PBPRIME and CE (note: US and counter-espionage) matters are extremely productive and still improving and we do not wish at present time to raise new issues in Mexico...FBI has agreed and has instructed its MEXI rep to discuss with you pertinent details of such Russian CE ops as LAROB case." Here's my analysis of the LAROB evidence in Chapter 5: 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 Valentin 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 (note: after the Oswald figure spoke in person with Yatskov earlier that day) 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.

David, my belief is that the 10/10/63 memos were a ploy to smoke out the Oswald imposters of 9/28 and 10/1. It's not impossible that these memos are part of an ongoing hunt for a Soviet bloc mole as well - but I would need evidence of that - which I haven't seen.

Paul and Jean, I do have an update on LITAMIL-3. New releases show that LITAMIL-3 is 201-290894, and that 201-290894 is Ricardo Vidal Dominguez. We have created a pseudonym page for him at MFF. He was an informant within the Cuban diplomatic corps. Jean, I am moving more towards the belief that Oswald was at least trying to get himself in the FBI's orbit in the last three months of his life. I can't get over the .way he sought out FBI agent John Quigley after his New Orleans arrest of 8/9/63 and put himself out there as a source of information. Oswald then seemed to pick up on Jim Hosty's 9/10/63 report about Oswald's long-distance mail relationship with the CPUSA and the FPCC, and then the Oswald figure shows up in the Cuban consulate later that month brandishing membership cards in both the CPUSA and the FPCC. I believe that Oswald himself wrote the Nov. 9 letter to the Soviet embassy complaining about the FBI (and knowing the FBI would intercept it!) and appeared at the Dallas FBI office in mid-November with a note complaining about Jim Hosty "bothering his wife". Matt, I agree that Fedora and Golitsyn are very important personages - Mary Ferrell created a decent index on Fedora and we created a good page on Golitsyn based on his cryptonyms DS-2137 and AELADLE - but I haven't seen any indication that Fedora or Golitsyn were involved in the Mexico City events of Sept-Oct. 1963.

Following up on my previous post...Here's my take on why Oswald was taken off the security watch list the day before the 10/10/63 memos went out. From Chapter 5 of State Secret: The day before the 10/10 twin memos were created, Gheesling took Oswald off the security watch list after talking with Lambert Anderson. Both Gheesling and Anderson had signed off on a watch list document placed in Oswald’s file on August 13 after Oswald was arrested in New Orleans for breach of the peace while leafleting for the FPCC. Gheesling wrote that once he learned that Oswald was arrested, he told Anderson that Oswald should be taken off the security watch list because he had inadvertently forgot to remove his name after Oswald’s return from the Soviet Union.[ 38 ] Anderson confirmed that someone had told him that the security flash had been removed because it was no longer necessary once Oswald had returned to the United States. One immediate problem with both of their stories is that their boss Bill Branigan wrote on 11/22/63 that the very reason Oswald was put on the watch list was to ensure that “any subsequent arrest in the U.S. was brought to our attention”. So why take him off the list after he was arrested? An even more intriguing problem, with Gheesling’s story in particular, is that he wrote that he removed Oswald’s name from the security watch list on October 9 right after he learned about Oswald’s arrest. Gheesling’s explanation flies in the face of the aforementioned watch list document showing that both Gheesling and Anderson knew about Oswald’s arrest around August 13. Gheesling’s name and initials “wmg” are also on other memos discussing Oswald and his arrest dated August 21 and August 23. The probable solution is that Anderson got wind of a tip. On October 8 Anderson received a Sept. 24 report of Oswald’s arrest, which revealed Oswald’s request to speak with an FBI agent and share quite a bit of information while in jail.[ 39 ] My conclusion is that on the 9th the two men came to some kind of mutual understanding that Oswald was helpful to the FBI, and saw no reason to keep him on the security watch list. “Anderson” of “Nat. Int.” is written on the watch list file, underneath the date of October 10. As a result, no alarms went off at the FBI when the 10/8/63 memo about Oswald being in Mexico City and trying to contact Kostikov arrived on the 10th. Any alarm that might have sounded about Oswald being a security risk appears to have been deliberately turned off by Gheesling and Anderson. The intriguing question is whether Gheesling and Anderson took Oswald off the security watch list based solely on the report about Oswald's cooperation with the FBI, or whether they had also been tipped off that a molehunt was about to begin with Oswald's file. It's not impossible that both factors may have been in play - but my current thinking is that FBI men Gheesling and Anderson didn't know about the CIA's molehunt.

Jean and Gerry, take a look at what happened when the security flash was still on in September, 1963... Hosty’s observations about Oswald in Dallas turned into membership cards in Mexico City "Keep in mind that (FBI agent Jim Hosty, in charge of Oswald's file) told (Lambert Anderson of the FBI's Nationalities Intelligence division) 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 at JMWAVE 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." What happened the next day, on Sept. 27, is that the "Oswald figure" appeared before Azcue and tried to get him to bend the rules to give him an "instant visa" to Cuba, similar to his successful attempt at getting an "instant visa" from consul Richard Snyder at the American embassy in Moscow back in 1959. I believe that the "Oswald figure" showed his FPCC credentials to Azcue in an effort to provoke Azcue to see how he would respond - keep in mind that LITAMIL-3, an American agent, had just tried days earlier to convince Azcue to defect to the Americans. I believe one objective was to get the Cubans to talk over their phone lines and in their offices that were bugged by the Americans. The bigger objective may have been to assist Tilton and Anderson in their "joint agency operation designed to “plant deceptive information which might embarrass the (FPCC) in areas where it does have some support”. Or maybe someone got wind of the anti-FPCC operation and piggy-backed a new operation on top of it that included the impersonation of Oswald. What "areas" did the FPCC have "some support"? Here, among the Cubans in Mexico. The Oswald figure's provocative behavior with Azcue, which got him thrown out of the office, had to give the FPCC a black eye in the eyes of the employees at the Cuban consulate. The Oswald figure was an attractive prospect – he represented a very rare re-defector, hoping to go to Cuba and then return once again to the Soviet Union. His activities and contacts were a counterintelligence bonanza. So Tilton and Anderson have got a deceptive anti-FPCC operation going, which appears to have been piggy-backed on top of the events that brought the Oswald figure down to Mexico. Doesn't it make sense that if Tilton and Anderson wanted to keep their deceptive anti-FPCC operation going, they may have wanted to dim the attention on Oswald? Gheesling was a major supervisor, one of a handful that answered directly to Hoover. Gheesling had the power to turn off the flash, which he OK'd with Anderson on October 9. Gheesling was suspended by Hoover after 11/22 for turning off the flash. But why did he do it? I will offer my thinking in the next post.

Matt, I appreciate you engaging me on the topic, but I have to ask - have you read my book State Secret? Chapter 5 centers on what I call the Mexico City molehunt of 1963, chapters 3 and 4 set the context, and the last two chapters touch on the aftermath. I would ask you to at least read Chapters 3-5. I do want feedback! If you've read it, great, but I don't think there's anything "oblique" about what I wrote. Also, I'm very sensitive to not taking over other people's threads. Jean and Sandy's instincts are good about setting up a new thread on the setting up and removal of the FBI flash, which arguably is related to the molehunt but deserves its own analysis. McCord also deserves his own thread. John Newman has not finished his analysis of McCord, has written almost nothing on the subject, and I think it's best not to speculate on his views until he weighs in on the topic.

I should add that the molehunt was conducted after Oswald was impersonated on 9/28 and 10/1. Silvia Duran was also impersonated on 9/28 in the same taped phone conversation as "Oswald", which supposedly happened at the Cuban consulate, which was closed on Saturday, 9/28. Duran made it clear that she never saw Oswald after 9/27. There would naturally be a big reaction after the impersonation of Oswald and Duran. Note the absence of any notes about Oswald until October 8 and then the twin messages of 10/10, both filled with different descriptions of Oswald guaranteed to get people talking. What happened in the interim between 9/28 and 10/8? 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. On October 7, Phillips consulted with key people from the CIA's forward base on Cuba office like John Tilton, who triggered this whole situation as the architect of a joint agency anti-FPCC operation aimed at Mexico in September 1963. The molehunt was a direct result of the impersonation of Oswald and Duran. The CIA needed to see if it could smoke out how these fake phone calls were set up. 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 that was issued on October 8. The October 8 memo set the stage for the October 10 twin memos.

The whole point was to create a paper trail entangling CIA, FBI, ONI, and State Dept with a lot of knowledge about Oswald shortly before 11/22. Then, after the assassination, the employees of these agencies would go into a reflexive cover-up to protect their agencies, their careers, and the paycheck that takes care of their families. How much of the actual Mexico City documents made it to the Warren Commission? Very few of them. What they got were paraphrases. The actual documents were not made public until after the JFK Records Act forced them out in the 90s - and the JFK Records Act would never have passed without Oliver Stone's movie JFK!

Greg Doudna wrote: "In that interpretation that Givens was a real witness to a 6th floor shooter at the time of the shots, at 12:30 pm, how and when in that interpretation does Givens make his exit from the TSBD without anyone seeing him? At the point the building was sealed by officers minutes later Givens is not in the building." Greg, look at TSBD employee Edward Shields' testimony to the Warren Commission: "Did you see the motorcade?" "I sure did." "Where were you when you saw it?" "I was just standing right around there at Mullendorf's Cafe." "At what address?" "At Record and Main." "Who was with you?" "Givens". "Did you hear the shots?" "Yes, I heard the shots." Shields said that Givens had been there with him since about noon time that day. Givens' story matched with Shields.

Richard, Thayer Waldo is an extremely strong case about a journalist who was driven out of the USA - you ignored his case because you wanted to tout your case about Eddie Piper and the girl on the stairs, an important story that belongs on another thread. Even though you wrote that you agreed with me about Charles Givens, you used this thread to make your case about Eddie Piper. I was reluctant to join this thread because I wanted to avoid hijacking this thread. William is protective of his thread and I understand that. I suggest that we treat each other with respect and agree to disagree.

William, My apologies if I came across the wrong way, let alone giving Pat the plaudits instead of you. No one has ever accused me of being sagacious, and I don't like anyone who acts like a big shot. I didn't want to hijack your thread, and almost started my own. I am a big fan of Belzer, and I was avoiding being critical of his book or your thread. My thinking is that it is best to lead with 5-10 strong and illustrative cases. Most of us cannot track more than 10 stories. I agree with what Pat said at the beginning of this thread - citing a few strong cases is far better than stringing together a lot of uncertain ones. I would put George deM's "suicide" in the uncertain category as well as many of the cases in Belzer's book even though most of them appeal to me emotionally. I think the manner of the journalist deaths between 1963-1965 offers strong evidence. Similarly, I think the Giancana and Rosselli deaths are strong evidence because of the manner of their deaths and the events surrounding it. My two cents: If we analyzed the other 40 cases in Belzer's book on this thread, we would sink into a sea of uncertainty simply because of the weight of the details. Each of these cases has to be analyzed on its own merits, and that takes a long time. Reasonable people disagree on the weight of evidence. I suggest a path that reduces the number of ambiguities. If you want to convince someone, lead with your strongest approach.

I think the journalists like Koethe, Hunter, Waldo, Kilgallen and Smith who were effectively "taken out" of this case deserve the highest level of scrutiny. Disagreeing about the importance of witnesses is inevitable, and this is where Belzer's book "Hit LIst" encounters the greatest difficulty - in achieving even a rough consensus about the important witnesses that were taken out of the JFK case. Besides the focus on journalists, Belzer's list offers a second valuable thread when it focuses on witnesses who were violently killed when they were about to testify - as Pat Speer pointed out at the beginning of this thread, people like Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli. I would add Gary Underhill and Bill Sullivan to this list - I don't think anyone ever looked at the killing of Sullivan hard enough - it would be interesting to interview the young boy who shot Sullivan at this late date if he is still alive. Pat mentioned that he heard Senator Gary Hart "speak on the assassination.... he stressed the point that the members of the Church Committee were on the fence as to whether JFK's death was a conspiracy until their witnesses started dying. And then they knew. So, in short, a mysterious deaths list is interesting, and potentially valuable, but only to the extent it's been edited." These two threads - journalists that have been "taken out" of the JFK case, and witnesses who die violent deaths at the verge of providing testimony - appear to be the most valuable paths to make a major priority.