How did Hosty expect to talk to Marina?

[Paul Trejo]

David,

I specifically asked you for an example from Marina Oswald's Warren Commission testimony -- and you again failed to.deliver.

Like most other CIA-did-it CTers, you go directly to the week of the JFK Assassination, when Marina was picked up by the FBI and SS who terrified her, when she simply denied everything.   And you pretend to call that 'dishonesty.'

The previous answer on this thread went all the way to the HSCA hearings 15 years later, and hammered Marina's memory of minutiae.   And they pretend to call that 'dishonesty.'

What's dishonest is evading an example from Marina Oswald's Warren Commission testimony, as requested.

Also, David, when you say, "Take a hike," all this means to me is that you know you have no good answers, and you'd rather not be reminded of the fact.    You are left with the FACT that Marina Oswald told the truth under oath to the Warren Commission.

You got nothin'.

Sincerely,
--Paul Trejo

Edited March 1, 2018 by Paul Trejo

[David Josephs]

 

[Gene Kelly]

Pamela

I too agree with you and Steve ... and I think you have pointed out something significant and insightful.   I'm fast coming to the realization that the KGB/Soviets were "on" to the plot to kill JFK (see the Nosenko threads) and Marina may have been inserted as another means to thwart the plot.   That scenario makes sense to me.

Gene

[Paul Trejo]

It seems to me that the Walker-did-it CT -- which seeks to investigate Dallas officials for the JFK Assassination -- has finally weakened the CIA-did-it scenario so much that hardcore CIA-did-it CTers are falling back to nonsense from Probe Magazine (1991-1998) like "Harvey & Lee," while the rest are now moving on to a KGB-did-it CT.

The KGB-did-it CT is not new -- it is one of the oldest CT's in the past 55 years.   General Walker himself promoted the KGB-did-it CT, even to the Warren Commission.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

Edited March 3, 2018 by Paul Trejo

[Pamela Brown]

On 2/28/2018 at 10:23 AM, Steve Thomas said:

Pamela,

 

I hate saying, "me too", but in this case, I'm going to say it.

 

Steve Thomas

:-)

[Ron Bulman]

On ‎3‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 2:18 PM, David Josephs said:

 

Let's hold a wake and celebrate.

[Ron Bulman]

On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 8:57 PM, Gene Kelly said:

Pamela

I too agree with you and Steve ... and I think you have pointed out something significant and insightful.   I'm fast coming to the realization that the KGB/Soviets were "on" to the plot to kill JFK (see the Nosenko threads) and Marina may have been inserted as another means to thwart the plot.   That scenario makes sense to me.

Gene

Not to distract from Marina here but as to the KGB/Soviets being on to the plot...  It's been a long time since I read The Man Who Knew Too Much, which I realize some have discounted over the years, but isn't that part of what Richard Case Nagell's story was about?   Was he not a double agent?  He was supposed to stop Oswald/the plot, Oswald from being used in the plot???  But f he did so he would probably be killed by those organizing the plot and using Oswald???  So he fired A shot in the roof of a El Paso bank and went to jail instead.  I know, another nutty theory.  That's what I get for trying to brainstorm from time to time.

[Gene Kelly]

Ron:

This strays far from Steve's original question in this thread.  Nagell's story does seem far-fetched, but there's obviously something to it.  His story has all the makings of a great mystery movie, where real life is stranger than fiction.  What makes it credible (imho) is the author's reputation and experience. Here is what Dick Russell said about Nagell's bonafides in 2006: 

My basic approach to writing about "secret history" is, at first, to believe just about everybody. By that, I mean I don't prejudge someone I'm interviewing or dismiss even a "fantastic" story out-of-hand. It's only as I came to know a great deal about the Kennedy assassination, for example, that I was able to realize that quite a few - indeed, the majority - of the strange folks I'd interviewed were probably not telling the truth. Some may have been intentionally planting disinformation. Ultimately, I came to believe Richard Nagell - and Antonio Veciana, for example - because I gained a strong sense of their personal integrity. And, I guess, because there were things they WOULDN'T say, to my frustration. After awhile, an investigative journalist starts to draw conclusions by finding as many sources for verification as possible.  It's time-consuming.  As for getting ahold of documents, it used to be a lot easier to use the FOIA, before the Bush Administration ..." 

Russell's personal interviews with Nagell spanned a 17-year period (until Nagell's death in 1995) and portray an unstable nature to Nagell's character (see George Bailey's May 2012 review of Russell's "The Man That Knew Too Much" in the blog Oswald's Mother).  Bailey characterized Nagell as "a fringe character with a offbeat story that most researchers don't include in the overall analysis of what happened ...  a tangent too far".  There are several Education Forum threads on Nagell (e.g. see John Simkin thread started August 2005) - with cogent comments by Lee Foreman, Larry Hancock, and Russell himself - describing  letters written in 1967 by Nagell (from prison) describing his knowledge of the plot.  Nagell had been in Leavenworth since 1964 serving a ten-year sentence for “attempted bank robbery”.  In April 1967, a Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that “the evidence introduced by the Government is not sufficient to maintain conviction” and he was released after serving four years . Upon his release, Nagell flew to New York and met twice with Jim Garrison in Central Park.  Nagell then flew to Zurich, Switzerland.  According to Russell, he was in Zurich the day of the RFK killing, and arrested 3-4 days later by East German police, where he remained incarcerated until October 1968. 

This is all hard to make up.  As the story goes, Nagell was playing a double-agent role (code name Laredo).  He used the alias Hidell, had connections with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and had a copy of Oswald's military ID in his possession when arrested two months before the assassination.  On January 18, 1964 a Secret Service Agent questioned Marina Oswald about Richard Case Nagell for two hours.  Coincidentally, on January 20, 1964, KGB agent Yuri Nosenko defects to the US after landing in Geneva as part of a Soviet disarmament delegation. He claims to have been the KGB official who had personally handled the case of Oswald during his stay in Russia, and claims that the KGB found never debriefed Oswald about his military background nor ever considered recruiting him as an agent. Nosenko subsequently underwent hostile interrogation at the hands of the CIA and was kept in solitary confinement for 1,277 days.  On January 27, 1964, the El Paso Times reported that Nagell had been questioned by the FBI and SS in connection with Oswald; and, that Assistant US District Attorney Fred Morton made a motion to put Nagell in a federal institution in Springfield, Missouri for psychiatric examination. On March 20, 1964, Nagell wrote the Warren Commission from the El Paso county jail concerning his attempt to alert authorities about the assassination.  In May 1964, Nagell is found guilty by a jury of intent to rob a bank, and sentenced by Judge Homer Thornberry (an LBJ crony) to ten years "with the provision that he may be released at any time the US Bureau of Paroles decides."  Then there is a 2009 Deep Politics thread where it lays out how Nagell became aware of the plot.  Nagell, Oswald, Herminio Diaz Garcia are in Mexico City during July of 1963. All three then come back into the United States via Miami. The operation was handled by one Jorge Volsky, who reports directly to Manuel Mendez (aka David Morales).  Volsky also is the eyes and ears for Nagell into the Cuban community.  Plus, Volsky is the apparently guy who sets up the Sylvia Odio visit by Oswald, Leopoldo and Angel. Nagell becomes aware of all of this and gets wind of Dallas plot (see James Richards comments in the "Nagell - More than meets the eye" thread).  As Alice cried in Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass: “Curiouser and curiouser!” 

Nagell first publically surfaced during the Garrison investigation.  He was ignored by the Warren Commission, and no record exists of interaction with the HSCA (although rumors exist of an aborted contact).  The January 1968 edition of Ramparts magazine marked the first national awareness of the story, wherein author William Turner cited a registered letter (never found or made public) that Nagell purportedly sent to FBI Director Hoover, warning of the plot.  Nagell sent a letter to Jim Garrison in early 1967 from the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.  Nagell was subsequently interviewed by Garrison investigator William Martin, and alleged that ‘certain interests’ wanted him out of the country, so that he could not be subpoenaed to appear in Garrison's Clay Shaw trial.  Nagell also revealed to Martin that two Cuban exiles were manipulating Oswald ... Sergio Arcacha Smith, and another with a last name beginning with "Q" (possibly Carlos Quiroga).  Nagell claimed he had recorded their incriminating talks with Oswald on tape; he concurred that Garrison was "on the right track", and referred to this taped conversation with these Cuban exiles as validation.  Nagell later discovered Martin's duplicity (as a CIA plant in Garrison's office) and refused any more interviews.  In 1975, on the eve of the HSCA, Jim Garrison stated, "Richard Nagell is the most important witness there is" and he is included in Garrison's memoir On the Trail of the Assassins.  Notably, he remained under-investigated (officially). There is no record of the Warren Commission ever having interviewed Nagell, despite his letters to the Commission telling them he had knowledge of both Oswald and the conspiracy. What's less clear is how Robert Blakey and the HSCA approached Nagell, who apparently had ignored him. To date, no HSCA records of contacts with Nagell have been declassified by the ARRB or National Archives. (see Jim DiEugenio's account of "The Life and Death of Richard Case Nagell" in December 1995). 

More recently (and adding to the intrigue), a January 10, 2018 article by Russell - "Update on Richard Case Nagell: The New Files" - in WhoWhatWhy describes recently released CIA files connected with the CIA's Office of Security concerning Nagell (e.g. a CIA “transmittal slip” to “Mr. Murphy” — possibly David Murphy of the Soviet Russia Division — dated October 6, 1969).   Another of the Nagell-related releases among the new files is a State Department Telegram from the US Consulate in Berlin in October 1968, with a handwritten notation to “send copies to Solie.” Bruce Solie was the CIA security officer who had conducted an investigation in 1968 exonerating Yuri Nosenko as a suspicious KGB defector. Russell points out that certain individuals  involved in the CIA’s Oswald paper trail (and controversial 201 file) — Jane Roman, Bruce Solie and David Murphy — overlapped with the Nagell story.  It appears that the Agency was keeping tabs on where Nagell was and who he was talking to, when he fled the country and ended up in East Berlin.  Nagell also alleged to have knowledge of the infamous "KGB moles" within the CIA's Soviet Russia Division, casting suspicion upon John Paisley (who dies mysteriously in 1978) as well as an unnamed case officer in the CIA's Mexico City station. 

Nagell was later found dead in his Los Angeles apartment in November 1995, after an alleged heart attack at age 65 ... the same day that a subpoena from the Assassination Records Review Board arrived at his post office box, requesting his testimony and papers (which never surfaced).  Dick Russell's 1992 book  quotes Nagell as asserting  that he had made arrangements for certain "smoking guns" to be divulged - in the event of his death (i.e. as 'life insurance') - allegedly damning information stored in a Geneva bank vault.   The AARB did contact Nagell's executor after his death, but its unknown what (if anything) transpired.  As Bailey summarizes: "His claimed cache of documents, audio tapes, photos, and whatever - that could blow the whole thing wide open - vanish upon his demise like they always do–if they ever existed at all".

 Gene

[Jeff Carter]

As Russell noted in his book, in January 1964 a Secret Service officer interviewed Marina for two hours on the subject "Richard Case Nagell".

see Commission Document 379, p6

[Gene Kelly]

... and two days later, Yuri Nosenko defects

Lots of dots to connect here

[Rob Couteau]

Regarding Richard Case Nagell, as Ron said, Nagell claimed that the KGB got wind of a domestic JFK assassination plot and wanted to stop it. Nagell never claimed it was originally a Soviet plot. Nagell also felt that he was being frozen out by his CIA contact and feared that he might be getting set up as a patsy himself, which is why he got himself arrested.

Edited March 24, 2018 by Rob Couteau

[Gene Kelly]

Connecting the dots.  Assuming that the Soviets (and KGB) were competent and understood what was being played out, this puts a lot of things into a more believable perspective.  All of a sudden, Nosenko begins to make sense.  And so does Marina and Nagell.  If Nosenko is somehow connected to Paisley, and his dispatch is timed with Oswald's movements ... no wonder Angleton and friends kept him under wraps for 3-4 years.  And - back to the original question in this thread - how/why did Hosty expect to talk to Marina? 

This also brings to  mind the suspicious deaths of John Paisley, William Sullivan and William Colby ... which also seem somehow linked.