The St. Ruthie and St. Michael "We both know" call

[Mark Knight]

13 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Performing an illegal wire tap at an office, home, motel room is one thing but if you want to install one on the line inside a Bell Tel Central Office - as this apparently was - you are going to need some legal clout. Easy enough for the FBI but even back then somebody did not just walk in and connect a tape recorder to a line distribution frame.

Exactly my point.

[Larry Hancock]

Mark, I definitely agree, personally I think this is just a part of a much larger FBI subversive operation that targeted Marina and Lee but also had extended the surveillance to other places where Lee simply have showed up, including the House on Harlandale.  They had informants there before his arrival.  Its stuff Hosty would not necessarily have been involved in and some of it directed against the exile community and gun running was in play well before he showed up in Dallas that fall.  There are inconsistencies all over the place in regard to how the FBI handled Oswald that would be explained if indeed there was a serious subversive investigation in place that had to be "disconnected" and removed from sight afterwards.  The real slip was that Hosty would have heard about it and revealed it to the SS agent Sat. morning, that was his really big blunder but of course there was no reason he should not have told the truth at that time....

[James DiEugenio]

What do you mean by that Larry, the Revill conversation?

[Larry Hancock]

It was the conversation with the Secret Service agent William Patterson (who was first to interview Marina Oswald later) Sat morning at police headquarters in which Hosty told him Oswald had been seen two weeks before with known subversives and that a classified security report had been filed.  Hosty expressed a belief that the classified file would be handed over but it never was.   Paterson was not interviewed by the WC.  Patterson prepared an SS memo on the conversation but was never questioned further about it.  (see SWHT 2020 p198 - 199)

The exchange with Revill was another, separate incident and would seem to confirm that at point in time Hosty was very well aware of a subversive file related to Oswald and assumed it would become part of the investigation.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Where is Patterson's memo?  And where is the subversive file?

[Chris Newton]

Wasn't a home on 5th street "unoccupied", (Hosty claimed to have parked his car in front of the unoccupied home)?  Could this have been used for surveillance as well?

[Larry Hancock]

Jim, the book reference I gave  you was from a summary discussion, I'll look for the actual report citation when I have more time.  As to the subversive file,  beats me, either classified or destroyed....would you really expect it to ever see the light of day?  I asked Hosty about this exchange myself and showed him a Patterson document ...he had been very cooperative on all my other questions but simply declined to comment about this. I've written and blogged about this many times previously but I certainly can carry it no further than Patterson's remarks. 

I'm thinking of wrapping all this up for a Lancer conference presentation, but that's a couple of months off.  It won't be until then that I dig back into it including document citations.

 

Edited July 24, 2017 by Larry Hancock

[Steve Thomas]

20 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

It was the conversation with the Secret Service agent William Patterson (who was first to interview Marina Oswald later) Sat morning at police headquarters in which Hosty told him Oswald had been seen two weeks before with known subversives and that a classified security report had been filed.  Hosty expressed a belief that the classified file would be handed over but it never was.   Paterson was not interviewed by the WC.  Patterson prepared an SS memo on the conversation but was never questioned further about it.  (see SWHT 2020 p198 - 199)

The exchange with Revill was another, separate incident and would seem to confirm that at point in time Hosty was very well aware of a subversive file related to Oswald and assumed it would become part of the investigation.

 

Larry,

 

I can't speak to the question of a memo, but Patterson's account of his conversation with Hosty appears on page 18 of his (Patterson's) testimony before the Church Committee on 11/21/1975.  see here:

 

http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1431&search="William_Patterson"#relPageId=18&tab=page

 

One thing I have never been able to satisfactorily answer for myself is whether Hosty told Patterson that Oswald had been seen with two "subversives", or two "subversive agents".

In his testimony, Patterson said that Hosty was on the "Subversive Desk", and then immediately goes on to say, "He (Hosty) stated that Oswald had contacted two known subversive agents about 15 days before the shooting, but the entire information was top secret and he couldn't tell me any more..."

 

Did Hosty mean that Oswald had contacted two known subversives, or that he had contacted two agents on the "Subvesrive Desk"?

This would have been right around the time of the destroyed "Hosty note."

 

Steve Thomas

[Larry Hancock]

Steve, I think that is the only documentation we have on that, only Patterson's story of the remarks by Hosty - clearly it made a strong impression on him.  Can't say that is surprising. 

As to subversives vs. subversive agents, I can say that Heitman was in the midst of an investigation of an individual living at the House on Harlandale who was suspected of being a Castro agent so that might qualify.  If Oswald was there that would give you one suspect.  I gather from the research I've done that there were suspicions Alpha 66 and DRE were being penetrated by other agents so that could explain a second suspect. 

Another option is that the FBI was tasked with breaking up any weapons buys, especially those associated with weapons to be used in attacks on Cuba - Oswald crossing paths with anyone buying weapons might have been thought of in the context of subversive agents - and we know there were folks in Dallas and folks in Dallas from Miami all looking for weapons.

The thing is this sounds pretty personal, not like Oswald was in some larger meeting with suspects but actually had personal contact.  We could get wild and crazy and say was Sylvia Odio and her little sister who was going to college and hanging with some known radical DRE types who were hunting weapons...but I'm not ready to go there yet.

I don't think Oswald contact two FBI agents handling subversive tasks would classify as Top Secret - unless it revealed Oswald was an active FBI informant.  I can only repeat what I said before, the remarks by Patterson were something that Hosty totally refused to discuss with me, otherwise he was very open and even discussed some pretty strong assertions such as Oswald being under FBI surveillance in MC.  He was very much a gentleman about it all though, and was well received when he agreed to speak at the Lancer conference one year.

 

 

 

 

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Steve, I think that is the only documentation we have on that, only Patterson's story of the remarks by Hosty - clearly it made a strong impression on him.  Can't say that is surprising. 

As to subversives vs. subversive agents, I can say that Heitman was in the midst of an investigation of an individual living at the House on Harlandale who was suspected of being a Castro agent so that might qualify.  If Oswald was there that would give you one suspect.  I gather from the research I've done that there were suspicions Alpha 66 and DRE were being penetrated by other agents so that could explain a second suspect.

The thing is this sounds pretty personal, not like Oswald was in some larger meeting with suspects but actually had personal contact.  We could get wild and crazy and say was Sylvia Odio and her little sister who was going to college and hanging with some known radical DRE types who were hunting weapons...but I'm not ready to go there yet.

I don't think Oswald contact two FBI agents handling subversive tasks would classify as Top Secret - unless it revealed Oswald was an active FBI informant.  I can only repeat what I said before, the remarks by Patterson were something that Hosty totally refused to discuss with me, otherwise he was very open and even discussed some pretty strong assertions such as Oswald being under FBI surveillance in MC.  He was very much a gentleman about it all though, and was well received when he agreed to speak at the Lancer conference one year.

 

Larry,,

 

I spent some time a while back assembling notes about the men being sent from Cuba to Mexico to be trained as "crop duster pilots", who later defected to the U.S.

Raul Castro and Juan Quintana, SNFE/Alpha 66 officers of the Dallas Chapter were two of those.

 

You are more, um, generous of Odio than I am. I think she had more of an interest in gun running than people have given her credit for.

Commission Document 946 - SS Aragon Report of 5 May 1964 re: Sylvia Odio, Rogelio Cisneros Diaz page 3

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11342&search=%22Juan_Martin%22#relPageId=4&tab=page

 

On May 4, 1964 in an interview in his home with SS Agent Ernest I. Aragon, Cisneros told Aragon that:

 

Rogelio Cisneros, a JURE member in Miami, went to Dallas alone, by plane in June, 1963 for the specific purpose of meeting Sylvia Odio who was supposed to introduce Cisneros to a Uruguayan named Juan Martin, who was interested in selling small arms to JURE.

 

The JURE office in Dallas was already in operation, having been established in May, 1963. He only contacted Sylvia Odio once.

Cisneros is interested in buying guns. Juan or Johnny Martin is interested in selling guns. They use Sylvia Odio as the middle man - or middle woman.

The three guys who came to visit Sylvia Odio supposedly came to get a letter translated so they could raise money to buy guns.

So that's two men, or groups of men who were interested in buying or selling guns who go to Sylvia Odio.

Makes me go, hmmm.

 

Steve Thomas

[Larry Hancock]

Well I was being a bit coy Steve, actually I think there is a reasonable chance that Odio was being monitored and I would not be terribly surprised if Oswald had been either asking about her or in contact with her or for that matter if the "visit" was a diversion after the fact.  Problem is I just see no way to know for sure.

However, since we know that residents of the Harlandale house were being investigated and that the FBI even had an informant in that group, I think chances are probably best in that direction as far as what Hosty was talking about - I especially feel that way since we got a photo of Masen and I don't see the faintest resemblance to Oswald.  I just don't know what made Dick Russell even think that.  My bet is that Oswald was a visitor and that he was described in a surveillance report...

 

[James DiEugenio]

Steve:

You don't really believe that the two guys with either Oswald or an imposter at Odio's door were there for that purpose do you?

Its pretty obvious to almost anyone who has studied that incident that this was clearly a pretext.

[Steve Thomas]

7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Steve:

You don't really believe that the two guys with either Oswald or an imposter at Odio's door were there for that purpose do you?

Its pretty obvious to almost anyone who has studied that incident that this was clearly a pretext.

Jim,

 

No. That's why I used the word "supposedly".

You don't travel eight hours or so in the wrong direction to get a letter translated.

 

"Supposedly" (again), when the three guys showed up at Sylvia's door, they were looking for Sarita. I've often wondered if Sarita was working with either Manuel Rodriguez Orcarberro or this "George Parrell) ala Frank Ellsworth's information. This "George Parrell" and Sarita were both students at the Dallas City College. (See page three of this SS Agent Rowley's April, 1964 memo: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11250#relPageId=2&tab=page

Frank Ellsworth told the Secret Service that John Thomas Masen had told him (Ellsworth) that Manuel Rodriguuez Orcarberro had tried to buy bazookas, machine guns, and other heavy equipment from him (Masen).

The word, "bazookas" picqued my interest. Wasn't Veciana involved in a failed bazooka attack on Castro that led him to hide out on the Odio farm?

In my mind anyway, bazookas are a step up from the "small arms" that Juan Martin was supposedly trying to sell.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

[Steve Thomas]

8 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Well I was being a bit coy Steve, actually I think there is a reasonable chance that Odio was being monitored and I would not be terribly surprised if Oswald had been either asking about her or in contact with her or for that matter if the "visit" was a diversion after the fact.  Problem is I just see no way to know for sure.

However, since we know that residents of the Harlandale house were being investigated and that the FBI even had an informant in that group, I think chances are probably best in that direction as far as what Hosty was talking about - I especially feel that way since we got a photo of Masen and I don't see the faintest resemblance to Oswald.  I just don't know what made Dick Russell even think that.  My bet is that Oswald was a visitor and that he was described in a surveillance report...

 

Larry,

 

I had been going on the assumption that Raul Castro and Juan Quintana were double agents, sent to Mexico ostensibly to train as crop dusters and then told to defect to the U.S. and infiltrate the anti-Castro Cuban exile community. They talked the talk, and went to anti-Castro rallies. Attended the Stevenson rally where he got bonked on the head. Bought a John Birch Society bumper sticker for their car that read, “Kan the Kennedy Klan” that they changed to “Kill the Kennedy Klan”.They were discovered by the exiles as Castro agents however, and the Rambler that Raoul Castro owned had a part to play in the JFK assassination, and they became patsies to blame the murder on Castro?

 

Your comments now have me speculating on the possibility that as false defectors, they had been discovered and had beed turned by the FBI. It's like that old Mad Magazine, Spy vs. Spy series isn't it?

 

Steve Thomas

[Larry Hancock]

Michael is concerned by a thread diversion here but I need to offer one more possibility.....this is just from memory but I think the two crop duster types attended the same meeting (DRE) that Oswald was reportedly sighted at.  That never was confirmed but it would have been SOP for the FBI to be monitoring such meetings and if they were aware of both Oswald and had the crop duster pilots as suspected infiltrators it could well explain Hosty's comments.  Again, just from memory but worth pondering.