Thomas Graves

BOB, And I suggest that you at least consider that exactly what people do (and how they remember it all later) while their spouse, who is sitting right next to them, is being shot from a distance by an unseen assailant, well, gosh, it must be all unpredictable in advance and, alas !, unexplainable and therefore highly suspect to some, in retrospect? --Tommy

That she had paid the snipers to "off" her husband but they screwed up and hit JFK, too? --Tommy

It's my understanding that the CIA used "civilians" to do its really dirty work. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mafia hit men are "civilians", aren't they? (I suppose Richard Cain would fall into his own special category...) James Jesus Angleton's working relationship with the Mafia, through his old Operation Gladio connections as well as via George White at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, comes to mind in this context. I believe I read somewhere that it might have had something to do with the CIA's general policy of "plausible deniability"... --Tommy

Robert, Do you think she was sending a prearranged secret signal to the snipers? --Tommy

...As for Guy Banister, he was a hot-head with a terrible temper. He was also an outspoken racist, and when he ran for public office in Lousiana, he openly ran on a racist ticket -- 'keep our schools lily white.' As such, Guy Banister had broken with the FBI..." Regards, --Paul Trejo What? Guy Banister had broken with the FBI? Let me guess-- Was it because the FBI was such a bastion of progressive thinking and positive action on civil rights? LOL ... --Tommy Paul "As-Pedantic-As-A-Professor" Trejo wrote: "Now, even if J. Edgar Hoover was personally sympathetic to these people [Edwin Walker, Guy Banister, and the White Citizens' Council], he would never dare to say so publicly." I never said that Hoover publicly supported them. You're trying to put words in my mouth. Again. "Although Guy Banister could (and did) publicly boast about this demand for all white schools, the FBI could not and wouldn't even dare to take that position." I never said that the FBI publicly took that position. "So -- yes, Tommy. Guy Banister broke with the FBI. That's a simple, historical fact." Fine, so Banister appeared to break from the FBI by formally "resigning" from it and going to work for an anti-organized crime section of the New Orleans Police Department and then later starting his own detective agency. But that doesn't mean that he didn't collaborate with Hoover (or the CIA's Angleton for that matter) on mutual projects like the anti-FPCC one that Oswald became ensnared in, thanks to Banister and / or Angleton and Hoover. "The foundation of Guy Banister's break with the FBI was simply the ideology of the John Birch Society." You seem to be saying that Banister "quit" the FBI because it was too liberal for his taste; it simply wasn't reactionary (e.g., racist) enough for him. Is that it? (BTW, someday you really should look up the difference in meaning between "reactionary" and "radical".) "Even if the FBI secretly opposed Earl Warren's decision, they publicly supported it. They might still harass the NAACP, and they might even spy on MLK more than any other person in the USA at the time (as I've read). But they would never dare to contradict Earl Warren on the basic foundations of the Brown Decision." How about Hoover's giving "ex"-agents like Banister some juicy information from time to time so that they could do some of The Bureau's dirty work? "So, you can LOL all you want, Tommy, but you're just mistaken about it because you overlooked these political nuances." LOL! --Tommy PS Here's an interesting blurb from the Wikipedia article on Banister: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Banister "[Only four years after Banister had joined the FBI in 1934,] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was impressed by Banister's work and, in 1938, he was promoted to run the FBI unit in Butte, Montana. He also served in Oklahoma City, Minneapolis and Chicago. In Chicago, he was the Special Agent in Charge for the FBI.[5] He retired from the FBI in 1954. Banister moved to Louisiana and, in January 1955, became Assistant Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, where he was given the task of investigating organized crime and corruption within the police force. It later emerged that he was also involved in looking at the role that left-wing political activists were playing in the struggle for civil rights in New Orleans.[6] On the campuses of Tulane University and Louisiana State University, he ran a network of informants collecting information on "communist" activities. He submitted reports on his findings to the FBI through contacts.[7] In March 1957, Banister was suspended after pulling a gun in public in a bar and threatening a waiter.[8] His suspension ended in June of that year. However, when he refused to be transferred to the N.O.P.D.'s Planning Department, he was dismissed from the force." [emphasis added by T. Graves] So, your Guy Banister didn't completely break from the FBI when he "resigned" from it, did he? Here's footnote [7] from above , but unfortunately it's not a live "link" as formatted here: "Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X & 1979 page 127." edited and bumped

...As for Guy Banister, he was a hot-head with a terrible temper. He was also an outspoken racist, and when he ran for public office in Lousiana, he openly ran on a racist ticket -- 'keep our schools lily white.' As such, Guy Banister had broken with the FBI..." Regards, --Paul Trejo What? Guy Banister had broken with the FBI? Let me guess-- Was it because the FBI was such a bastion of progressive thinking and positive action on civil rights? LOL ... --Tommy Paul "As-Pedantic-As-A-Professor" Trejo wrote: "Now, even if J. Edgar Hoover was personally sympathetic to these people [Edwin Walker, Guy Banister, and the White Citizens' Council], he would never dare to say so publicly." I never said that Hoover publicly supported them. You're trying to put words in my mouth. Again. "Although Guy Banister could (and did) publicly boast about this demand for all white schools, the FBI could not and wouldn't even dare to take that position." I never said that the FBI publicly took that position. "So -- yes, Tommy. Guy Banister broke with the FBI. That's a simple, historical fact." Fine, so Banister appeared to break from the FBI by formally "resigning" from it and going to work for an anti-organized crime section of the New Orleans Police Department and then later starting his own detective agency. But that doesn't mean that he didn't continue to collaborate with Hoover (or the CIA's Angleton for that matter) on mutual projects like the anti-FPCC one that Oswald became embroiled in, thanks to Banister and / or Angleton and Hoover, in New Orleans and Mexico City. "The foundation of Guy Banister's break with the FBI was simply the ideology of the John Birch Society." Would you care to rephrase that? You seem to be saying that Banister "quit" the FBI because it simply wasn't reactionary (e.g., racist) enough for him. Is that it? (BTW, someday you really should look up the difference in meanings between "reactionary" and "radical".) "Even if the FBI secretly opposed Earl Warren's decision, they publicly supported it. They might still harass the NAACP, and they might even spy on MLK more than any other person in the USA at the time (as I've read). But they would never dare to contradict Earl Warren on the basic foundations of the Brown Decision." How about Hoover's giving "ex"-agents like Banister some juicy information from time to time so that they could do some of The Bureau's dirty work? "So, you can LOL all you want, Tommy, but you're just mistaken about it because you overlooked these political nuances." LOL! --Tommy PS Here's an interesting blurb from the Wikipedia article on Banister: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Banister "[Only four years after Banister had joined the FBI in 1934,] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was impressed by Banister's work and, in 1938, he was promoted to run the FBI unit in Butte, Montana. He also served in Oklahoma City, Minneapolis and Chicago. In Chicago, he was the Special Agent in Charge for the FBI.[5] He retired from the FBI in 1954. Banister moved to Louisiana and, in January 1955, became Assistant Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, where he was given the task of investigating organized crime and corruption within the police force. It later emerged that he was also involved in looking at the role that left-wing political activists were playing in the struggle for civil rights in New Orleans.[6] On the campuses of Tulane University and Louisiana State University, he ran a network of informants collecting information on "communist" activities. He submitted reports on his findings to the FBI through contacts.[7] In March 1957, Banister was suspended after pulling a gun in public in a bar and threatening a waiter.[8] His suspension ended in June of that year. However, when he refused to be transferred to the N.O.P.D.'s Planning Department, he was dismissed from the force." [emphasis added by T. Graves] So, "Professor" Trejo, Banister didn't completely break from the FBI when he "resigned" from it, did he? Here's footnote [7] from above , but unfortunately it's not a live "link" as formatted here: "Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X & 1979 page 127."

Evidence? What "utterly fascinating evidence"? Shouldn't Jimbo have said "utterly fascinating theory," instead? Regardless, it is all rather fascinating. --Tommy

Paul "As Pedantic As A Professor" Trejo wrote: "As for Guy Banister, he was a hot-head with a terrible temper. He was also an outspoken racist, and when he ran for public office in Lousiana, he openly ran on a racist ticket -- 'keep our schools lily white.' As such, Guy Banister had broken with the FBI." [emphasis added by T. Graves] What? Guy Banister had broken with the FBI? Let me guess-- Was it because the FBI was such a bastion of progressive thinking and positive action on civil rights? LOL Paul (As-Pedantic-As-A-Professor) Trejo also wrote: "Guy Banister was working directly with Mafia leader Carlos Marcello during the summer of 1963. I cannot find any connection linking Carlos Marcello to the FBI during the summer of 1963. I know enemies of Hoover claim that there were -- but those are politically motivated accusations. Therefore, I conclude that Guy Banister was acting ON HIS OWN when he set up his fake FPCC in New Orleans, with Lee Harvey Oswald at the helm. It was Guy's own work." [emphasis added by T. Graves] From the Spartacus webpage on Irving Davidson: [isaac Irving] Davidson was a close associate of Carlos Marcello and played an important role in the legal attempt to prevent Jimmy Hoffa from being sent to prison. According to Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics), in September, 1960, Davidson was at a meeting where a suitcase containing $500,000 was passed from Marcello to Hoffa for Richard Nixon. After the fall of Fulgencio Batista, Davidson developed a close relationship with those Cubans attempting to overthrow Fidel Castro. In 1963 Davidson met Roland Masferrer. Davidson also represented Clint Murchison and his oil company in Dallas. It is also alleged by John H. Davis (Mafia Kingfish) that Davidson was a specialist in "putting people together". This included Rafael Trujillo, J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, Bobby Baker, and Santos Trafficante. http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKdavidsonI.htm Irving Davidson and Clint Murchison were both associated with Carlos Marcello and J. Edgar Hoover. Many of the people who were "put together" by Davidson are mentioned in this youtube video featuring Clint Murchison and his Hotel Del Charro in my hometown of La Jolla, CA. Note that the speaker says that not only did J. Edgar Hoover and boyfriend Clyde Tolson stay there during summers for free, but also that "key lieutenants of Carlos Marcello used to vacation there" : Also see the lower part of page 4 of this article: http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/jan/05/cover-oil-politics-la-jolla/?page=4& --Tommy (No, the above post was not made by Steven Gaal. It just looks like it. LOL)

They look like excellent conferences, Greg. Thanks for the head's up. I'm particularly interested in what Bill Simpich will say in his "Another Look at the Tippit Murder" and "Mexico City" presentations Hopefully transcripts of the proceedings will be available online at some point. --Tommy

Here's a photo taken in April of 1964 showing 124-126 Exchange Alley in New Orleans. Note the bar on the right. Marguerite and Lee lived above this bar in 1955-1956. It was called the Vieux Carre Saloon. Some scenes from Elvis Presley's 1958 film "King Creole" were shot there. The owner of the toy store, R.H. Rohmer, told the Warren Commission he didn't remember Marguerite or Lee. http://www.hnoc.org/vcs/property_info.php?lot=11193 http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/jfk9/hscv9b.htm#res --Tommy

It's implicit, Tommy, in your suggestion that Oswald "snitched" on the JFK Kill Team to the USSR, so that he could go live in the USSR and escape the American right-wing. That's obvious to many of us, I'm sure -- not just to me. Regards, --Paul Trejo Dear As-Pedantic-As-A-Professor Trejo, Oswald probably wanted to "get out of Dodge," and maybe that's why he went to Mexico City-- to try to trade information about "The Plot" for financial assistance and free, quick passage to Cuba or Russia. Does that necessarily make young, naiive, emotional (your words) Lee Harvey Oswald a Communist? I don't think so. Heck, young, naiive, emotional "I-Led-Three-Lives" Oswald might even have imagined himself back in Russia doing some more spying for the good ol' U.S.A.! --Tommy

It's implicit, Tommy, in your suggestion that Oswald "snitched" on the JFK Kill Team to the USSR, so that he could go live in the USSR and escape the American right-wing. That's obvious to many of us, I'm sure -- not just to me. Regards, --Paul Trejo Dear Pedantic-As-A-Professor Trejo, I think Oswald probably wanted to "get out of Dodge," and maybe that's why he went to Mexico City-- to try to trade information about "The Plot" for financial assistance and free, quick passage to Cuba or Russia. Does that necessarily make young, naiive, emotional (your words) Lee Harvey Oswald a Communist? I don't think so. --Tommy

Dear Pedantic-Like-A-Professor, Where did I say I thought Oswald was a Communist? --Tommy

Well, Tommy, if Lee Harvey Oswald snitched out Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw to the USSR when he was in Mexico City, then why didn't he move to the USSR immediately? Also, if Oswald snitched out the JFK conspirators, then why did JFK still get murdered? No -- Oswald didn't snitch out anybody -- [...] I didn't say he had snitched anybody out. Maybe he didn't snitch anyone out because the Russians wouldn't "play ball" with him. Or maybe he did tell them but they refused to give him an "instant visa" or send him to Russia for free, and for whatever reason they did nothing to prevent the assassination. --Tommy

Steven, Did President Kennedy actually approve this attack on Guantanamo Naval Base? Thanks, --Tommy

The trouble with it "all being interconnected," folks, is that it becomes chaotic, like a spaghetti-vegetable soup. Everybody is a suspect -- including their parents and in-laws, their children and their adopted children. It's fruitless, yet we're plagued with conspiracy thinkers who take their cues from the John Birch Society (e.g. the CFR, the Bilderbergers, and the Trilateral Commission are undermining the USA via the Federal Reserve Bank -- yes, that argument is also a half-century old, first taught by the JBS). Other conspiracists won't let go of their Nazi paranoia 70 years after the Fall of the Third Reich. Yet as Jim Garrison said -- this is a murder case -- pure and simple. When he started out, Jim Garrison didn't claim that the CIA killed JFK -- he claimed that some right-wing knuckleheads killed JFK -- and he could name some of them -- Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Jack S. Martin, Fred Crisman and Thomas Edward Beckley. It was only after Jim Garrison hit the brick wall of FBI resistance to his case against Clay Shaw that Jim Garrison finally threw up his hands in despair, and realized he was out-numbered. But instead of blaming the FBI (perhaps because Jim Garrison was once an FBI agent) Jim Garrison ended by blaming the CIA. But that was the end-game for Garrison -- not the starting point. I say that Jim Garrison was closer to solving the JFK murder nearer to the start of his investigation. Why did we stop our focus on the New Orleans ground-crew? Just because there is not one single CIA Officer in the bunch? It's time to get back to Jim Garrison's early case work. And remember -- Jim Garrison began by reading all 26 volumes of the Warren Commission's report. Best regards, --Paul Trejo I believe that Oswald might have been sent to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City as part of a collaboration between the FBI and the CIA to discredit the FPCC, as well as to test the Cuban and Russian "instant visa" protocols and to even possibly "feel out" Sylvia Duran and Eusebio Azcue for defecting to the U.S. or collaborating with the CIA. But these may have been only "cover operations", worthy in their own right, and designed to manipulate not only the Mexicans, the Cubans, and the Russians, but also to manipulate Lee Harvey Oswald himself into acting like a perfect "dangle". In this view it's likely that Oswald was sent to Mexico City to participate, unwittingly, in James Jesus Angleton's grand Mole Hunt, but an "insider" found out about it and used it to set up Oswald as the patsy in such a way as to preclude the CIA from doing anything to prevent said patsification. If not, then perhaps Oswald went to Mexico City to try to extricate himself from the conspiracy to kill JFK in which he'd found himself inmeshed, but was impersonated there and ended up being the topic of conversation in a mole hunt. If I remember correctly, Mrs. Tarasoff, Winn Scott, and David Atlee Phillips all said (at one time or another) that while he was in Mexico City, "Oswald" offered to give "information" to the Russians in exchange for financial support or free passage to Russia. I'm thinking that if this "Oswald" was the Real Deal and not an impostor, then maybe the information he wanted to "sell" them was that there was a plot in the works to assassinate JFK, that the conspirators planned to set Oswald up as the patsy, and that if it was successful it would reflect very poorly on Russia due to the fact that Oswald had lived there and had taken a Russian wife. In other words, maybe Oswald was trying to prevent the assassination of JFK and save his own neck. After all, after snitching out the conspirators it probably would have been a good idea to move back to Russia. --Tommy

Well then, maybe Anikeeff was the mole Angleton was looking for.... --Tommy

It's just all interconnected, isn't it Steven? --Tommy

David, You're right of course. According to Dick Russell, Nagell didn't threaten Oswald but simply tried to get him to extricate himself from the plot to assassinate JFK. Maybe Oswald took his "the hint" and tried to get to Cuba by either getting an "instant visa" or by hijacking a small plane. In so doing, maybe Oswald was just trying to "get out of Dodge," metaphorically speaking. This might explain why Oswald, when refused an instant visa by the Russians, yelled out, "This is not my case! For me, it's all going to end in tragedy!" This is what Russell says in an article he wrote: Oswald was brought into the conspiracy in July 1963, deceived into thinking he was working for Castro. Soviet intelligence ordered Nagell either to convince Oswald he was being set up to take the rap--or to kill him in Mexico City before the assassination could transpire. While both U S and Soviet intelligence agencies were aware of the conspiracy, it was the KGB--not the CIA or FBI--that attempted to prevent it. The Soviets, who had reached a growing accommodation with Kennedy after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, were also afraid that the assassination would falsely be blamed upon them or the Cubans. http://www.assassinationweb.com/russell2.htm Note that Russell says nothing about Nagell's actually treatening Oswald, but I think we can assume that Oswald was clever enough to "read between the lines." --Tommy

It's fascinating that, according to your theory, in order to kill Castro, Oswald would consider infiltrating himself into Cuba by hijacking an airplane. I'm just wondering if he was going to do this before or after he got that "instant visa" from Sylvia Duran. --Tommy Forum members -- Here's an interesting article by Dick Russell. Note that Russell says that Oswald thought he was working for Castro... http://www.assassinationweb.com/russell2.htm Oswald and the CIA by Dick Russell [Emphasis added by T. Graves] One day after receiving a letter from the Assassination Records Review Board, a key witness in the murder of JFK was found dead in his home in California. Meanwhile, new evidence continues to pile up regarding Lee Harvey Oswald's connections to the CIA. At 9 PM last November 1, the landlord of a house in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles unsuccessfully tried the locks, then pried open a window and forced his way inside. Robert Lavelle had been alerted by a neighbor that his tenant, 65-year-old Richard Case Nagell, had not been seen for several days. Lavelle discovered the already-decomposing body of Nagell in the bathroom, and immediately alerted the police. Only the morning before, in Washington, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB)--mandated by Congress under the JFK Records Act of 1992 to review for public release all still-secret files on the John F. Kennedy assassination--had mailed Richard Nagell a letter. The board was seeking access to documentation he claimed to possess about a conspiracy to murder the 35th President of the United States. Although an autopsy performed by the L.A. County Coroner's office determined that Nagell had died of a heart attack, the timing triggered alarm inside the ARRB. More than a month earlier, based upon testimony of this writer at a public hearing in Boston, ARRB executives had decided to pursue Nagell's private files and use their subpoena power to call him to testify. Upon hearing of his sudden death, the ARRB issued a subpoena for any records he may have kept in his house and flew an investigator to Los Angeles. What may surface next remains an open and very provocative question. As outlined in my 1992 book about Nagell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York), the ex-military intelligence and CIA operative said he had made arrangements for certain "smoking guns" to be divulged in the event of his death. These are likely to include a tape recording done surreptitiously by Nagell in the late summer of 1963, where at least four individuals--himself, Lee Harvey Oswald and two Cuban exiles--plotted the assassination of President Kennedy. A photograph of Nagell and Oswald, which Nagell had a vendor take in New Orleans' Jackson Square, was said to be stashed in a bank vault in Zurich, Switzerland. In summary, what Nagell has chosen to reveal about his role in the conspiracy goes like this: Under contract to the CIA, he undertook an assignment as a "double agent" who would cooperate with Soviet intelligence beginning in the autumn of 1962. Under KGB instructions from Mexico City, for a year he monitored discussions among a group of embittered Cuban exiles who were seeking to assassinate Kennedy and make it look as though Fidel Castro's Cuba was behind it. He was simultaneously asked to keep an eye on Lee Harvey Oswald, recently returned to America after his alleged "defection" to the USSR. Oswald was brought into the conspiracy in July 1963, deceived into thinking he was working for Castro. Soviet intelligence ordered Nagell either to convince Oswald he was being set up to take the rap--or to kill him in Mexico City before the assassination could transpire. While both U S and Soviet intelligence agencies were aware of the conspiracy, it was the KGB--not the CIA or FBI--that attempted to prevent it. The Soviets, who had reached a growing accommodation with Kennedy after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, were also afraid that the assassination would falsely be blamed upon them or the Cubans. Nagell, instead of carrying out his assignment, sent a registered letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (which he also served as a confidential informant) more than two months before the tragedy in Dallas, providing enough information to warrant the arrest of Oswald and two Cuban exiles. While the bureau says it cannot locate any such letter in its files, it is likely that Nagell kept a copy and the registered-mail receipt among his effects. Also alerting CIA officials of the plot, Nagell then walked into a bank in El Paso, Texas, on September 20, 1963, fired two shots into the wall and intentionally had himself placed in federal custody. He hinted to me in a series of meetings that right-wing extremists, including wealthy Texas oil interests and CIA renegades, were ultimately behind the assassination. Considerable documentation, including a notebook seized by the FBI upon Nagell's arrest that contained listings remarkably similar to Oswald's own notebook, already lends credibility to his story. Yet he was ignored by both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The new ARRB thus became the first official government body to express an interest in what he might be able to reveal. And, like Oswald's friend George deMohrenschildt--who allegedly committed suicide hours before a House Select Committee investigator was to see him in 1977--suddenly, Nagell was dead. Previously unavailable files released so far through the ARRB's process have already raised more questions about a high-level cover-up surrounding Nagell. After his arrest in El Paso, he was held without a trial for nine months in a county jail, where the FBI and Secret Service visited him on several occasions after the assassination. Although no mention is made of Nagell in the Warren Commission's 26 volumes, FBI reports from December 1963 clearly state that he talked of having known Oswald in Texas and Mexico City. Transcripts of assassination-related telephone conversations with President Lyndon Johnson show that his friend Homer Thornberry, a federal judge who had been a Texas Congressman, was in touch with LBJ twice in the weeks following the assassination. Then, late in January 1964, Thornberry suddenly stepped in as the new judge in the Nagell case--where court transcripts indicated a concerted effort to suppress Nagell's efforts to describe his true motive for his alleged "attempted bank robbery." Thornberry handed down the maximum sentence upon Nagell's conviction in June 1964, a conviction that was later overturned on appeal. Nagell was released from prison in the spring of 1968, flying to Europe shortly thereafter, where he was arrested on a train by East German authorities and held for four months behind the then-"Iron Curtain" before being released to US authorities at the Berlin border. Long before this, according to a just-declassified March 20, 1964 CIA file, the agency was pursuing the significance of six names of CIA employees found in the Nagell notebook taken by the FBI in September 1963. Another CIA memorandum, dated July 20, 1963 out of its Mexico City station, tells of an American using the name Eldon Hensen who wanted to establish contact with the Cuban Embassy there. Having picked up this information via a telephone tap, the CIA then dispatched someone posing as a Cuban Embassy officer to lure Hensen to a hotel restaurant. The file describes Hensen's expressed willingness to "help Castro government in US, willing travel, has many good contacts in States, can 'move things from one place to another' "--which carries overtones of Nagell's own "double" role. Author John Newman, in Oswald And The CIA, his 1995 book based on the recently released files, uses this incident to highlight the CIA's capability "to enter surreptitiously into someone's life to control or manipulate it," a scenario Newman cites as a precursor to the agency's shenanigans when Oswald paid visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City two months later. What Newman fails to mention is the significance of the CIA file's stating that Hensen "agreed accept phone call with key word 'Laredo' as call from [deleted] contact." In one of my interviews with Nagell in 1978, he discussed his own use of the same code name, "Laredo," when making contact with Soviet intelligence. When I last spoke with Nagell in April 1994 and gave him Hensen's physical description, he said only: "That fits somebody I'd run into at the time." Asked why he chose not to mention Nagell in his book, Newman responded: "My methodology made that impossible. If it wasn't in the new documents, it didn't make it into my manuscript. I wanted to keep everything focused on the CIA's internal paper trail. I still don't know what to make of the Nagell story; if it's true, it's dynamite." What Newman sets down about the CIA's "paper trail" does, in fact, add credence to the Nagell revelations. Here, for example, is the author's summary analysis of the three months preceding the assassination: "The CIA was far more interested in Oswald than they have ever admitted to publicly. At some time before the Kennedy assassination, the Cuban Affairs offices at the CIA developed a keen operational interest in him. Oswald's visit to Mexico City may have had some connection to the FBI or CIA. It appears that the Mexico City station wrapped its own operation around Oswald's consular visits there. Whether or not Oswald understood what was going on is less clear than the probability that something operational was happening in conjugation with his visit." Noting the possibility of a CIA "renegade faction" manipulating Oswald, Newman concludes: "We can finally say with some authority that the CIA was spinning a web of deception about Oswald weeks before the President's murder," based upon an exhaustive survey of now-visible files that were denied to previous official investigations. This dovetails with Nagell's earlier statements that the CIA's Cuban Task Force, then run by Desmond FitzGerald, as well as the agency's Mexico City station, were deeply embroiled in the Oswald affair. It also backs up his claim that Oswald did not know who was pulling his strings. Newman devotes considerable attention, too, to Gerry Patrick Hemming, whose CIA files bear curious parallels to Oswald's. A former Marine who filed reports to the agency, Hemming claimed to have met with Oswald near the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles early in 1959. Hemming's trail into the Cuban exile community seems to have been followed by two CIA employees in Los Angeles, Joseph DaVanon and Ernest Liebacher. Both of their names appear in the notebook seized from Nagell by the FBI in September 1963, under the heading "C.I.A." Also pertinent is Newman's tracing of earlier CIA interest in Oswald, from the moment the ex-Marine showed up at the American Embassy in Moscow trying to renounce his citizenship in October 1959. "I was particularly interested,"Newman says, "in trying to marshal evidence for Oswald having been a counterintelligence dangle. In other words, the CIA would have been using him to ferret out a 'mole,' who was first thought to be in the U-2 program before the focus very quickly changed to their own Soviet Russia Division." (A "mole" is a hidden asset of the KGB, such as Aldrich Ames; observing the then top-secret U-2 spy-plane program was part of Oswald's mission while a Marine in Japan.) Newman observes that the "most pronounced fingerprints" on Oswald emanated from the CIA's mole-hunting unit, CI/SIG, run by the late superspook James Jesus Angleton. The existence of Soviet moles inside the CIA was among Nagell's key points about the assassination. He indicated that John Paisley, who was in charge of a CIA unit overseeing Soviet electronics at the time Oswald was employed in a radio-electronics factory in Minsk--and who died mysteriously in 1978--was one such mole. Nagell also hinted that his own case officer inside the Mexico City station had nefarious ties to Soviet intelligence, which he himself did not discover until the late summer of 1963. This is not to say that the Soviets were behind the assassination, a theory that Nagell adamantly repudiated, but rather that the CIA hierarchy's cover-up of its relations with Oswald related to its ultra-secret mole hunt. Norman Mailer, whose 1995 book Oswald's Tale offers fresh insights into Oswald's time in the USSR, conducted numerous interviews with ex-KGB agents there. After reading Newman's book, Mailer says: "I redid a little my thinking on what the KGB told us. They were very consistent, which made me suspicious as it made me confident. They said over and over they were not interested in Oswald because they had better information on the U-2. What is he, some kind of exotic dangle? they wondered. Did the CIA send him over here as just someone who they [CIA] could observe what's done to him? So we don't do anything to him, we won't debrief him overtly, we don't want to tip our hand." I accepted that, when I got to know the KGB and how conservative they were, how terrified of making a mistake. The KGB is seen in America as a tremendous evil, adventurers. Yeah, they had a wing of 100 guys who were daredevils, like the CIA, but generally the outfit was exceptionally conservative. But reading Newman, I began to think they were afraid that the CIA was after a mole who was telling the KGB about the U-2. This is something I didn't think of while we were over there, I wish we had. We didn't see all the KGB files, no question. They didn't reveal a lot to us, saying they were protecting their sources, and there's no question we received an edited version of their files." Taking up residence for three months in Russia, Mailer was granted access to much information gathered by the KGB during Oswald's tenure in the USSR, which his book quotes at length and proves that Soviet intelligence bugged Oswald's Minsk apartment and maintained constant surveillance of his activities. Mailer believes the KGB "never would have used Oswald. They had too much petty stuff on him. Once you've seen a man losing arguments and being stupid with his wife, it's very hard to pick him to go out and kill a President. In fact, their first fear was that the assassination was a provocation by the United States to start a nuclear war. But I used to quiz the KGB very hard about whether they didn't keep up with Oswald when he came back to the USA. Finally what they confessed was, they didn't have the resources. It was very difficult because their every move here was being watched." This, of course, does not take into account whether the KGB could have utilized an American "double agent," like Nagell, to keep tabs on Oswald. On the US side, Mailer thinks the CIA/FBI cover-up was "to protect other things. They had a lot more relations with Oswald than they have allowed. This may have gone as far as [the FBI's] COINTELPRO, and even people inside the [CIA's anti-Castro] JM/WAVE operation knowing of his potential as a killer." Mailer's book has been taken to task by conspiracy theorists as a sellout, as his research led him to offer a 75 percent conclusion that Oswald probably acted alone. "But I'm not totally convinced [of that]." Mailer says. "If somebody came along with exciting evidence, I'd be willing to chase down another direction. I don't feel the case is closed for me at all." Mailer and Newman were scheduled for a debate at the Coalition for Political Assassinations conference in Washington last October, until certain preconditions set by Mailer were turned down by the coalition's chief organizer. This led Newman, a retired military-intelligence analyst, to take Mailer to task at the conference, especially over his failure to study the latest batches of CIA files. For his part, Mailer says he figured, "What's the point? We could only do a slipshod job on the new files and they'll be digestible for years to come." As for Newman's work, Mailer adds: "I think the service he performed was to lay out what the intelligence agencies had not been wanting to give us. It's almost as if they were providing the outer husk of the onion, and we're going to have to keep fighting to get layer after layer after layer. But I'd have been much happier if Newman had used his knowledge of intelligence to give us a fighting chance at some idea of how the routing [of CIA/FBI internal information] really works." While each of these latest books on the assassination unearths some new ground--particularly Newman's sometimes ponderous, but meticulous, scrutiny of the CIA's all-too-evident operational interest in Oswald long before November 22, 1963--the real breakthroughs are likely to follow in the coming months from the Assassination Records Review Board. The ARRB ran up against FBI stonewalling last August, after voting for full release of 15 records which the bureau then appealed directly to President Clinton to continue to withhold on "national security" grounds. The ARRB has come under fire from some assassination researchers for complying with FBI and CIA requests to keep back certain files "relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods." Still, what's been publicly released so far--with the promise of much more to come before the ARRB mandate expires late in 1997--has given additional fuel to conspiracy researchers. We now know, for example, that David Phillips, the CIA's covert-action chief in Mexico City, was in Washington on October 1, 1963, waiting to pick up "bulk materials." These probably included transcripts of conversations between Oswald and Moscow's Soviet Embassy, some of which appear to have involved an Oswald impostor. We also know that, as early as February 1961, Phillips was supervising a CIA operation against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a one-man chapter of which Oswald established in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. Phillips was working in tandem with James McCord, a CIA agent later involved in the Watergate scandal. As far back as 1976, both Phillips and McCord were cited in cryptic comments by Richard Nagell as having played some role in the CIA's relationship with Oswald. Until a CIA file release by the ARRB last September, the CIA had always refused to acknowledge its use of double agents against the Soviets. However, a November 29, 1963 cable relating to its Mexico City operations states that CIA "double agents have not had meetings with Sovs [soviets] since assassination." This is further substantiation for the agency's utilization of operatives like Nagell. According to Noel Twyman, a San Diego researcher who was able to speak to Nagell twice over the telephone in the months before his death, he expressed renewed fear for his life but said his private files were in safekeeping. Nagell added that there are individuals still alive who would be greatly "embarrassed" in the event his materials should come to light. Two police officers entering Nagell's residence after his body was discovered found no evidence of anything having been disturbed. A number of weapons were inventoried and the house was sealed off by the L.A. Coroner's office, pending the arrival of an executor named by Nagell for his estate. An LAPD officer was said to be watching the house to make sure that nobody broke in. Meantime, a curious message went from the coroner's office to the L.A. Public Administrator, which is in charge of estate arrangements. "When entering the house, beware of traps or pitfalls, due to deceased's CIA background connections," it said. Clearly, L.A. officials realized this was no ordinary case. Richard Case Nagell died as he lived, alone and holding his cards close to his vest. The Assassination Records Review Board did make contact with his executor, but what transpired next is being held closely by Washington. Will the world soon know the full story of "the man who knew too much?" For now, it is a waiting game.

But you don't understand, Paul. That's what he told Marina and then later he wept ! --Tommy

Trejo replied: " In my theory, Tommy, the reason Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to go to Cuba in 1963 was to take some part in the assassination of Fidel Castro. According to Marina Oswald, when he was planning to travel to Cuba in mid-1963, Lee Oswald even considered hi-jacking an airplane to get there. (Possibly this was because Richard Case Nagell threatened Oswald that if he succeeded in getting passage to Cuba from Mexico City, that Nagell would shoot him dead.) " [emphasis added by T. Graves] It's my understanding that triple-agent Nagell was told by his KGB controller to kill Oswald if he couldn't dissuade him from participating in a plot to kill Kennedy, a plot designed to implicate Russia in the assassination. I don't remember Nagell's threatening to kill Oswald "if he succeeded in getting passage to Cuba from Mexico City." Nor do I remember reading that Nagell suspected that Oswald wanted to get into Cuba "to take some part in the assassination of Fidel Castro". How did you come up with those two doozies? Maybe you know something that the rest of us don't know. But I rather doubt it. Instead of saying "Possibly this [Oswald's telling Marina he was thinking about hijacking an airplane to Cuba] was because Richard Case Nagell [had] threatened Oswald that he would shoot him if he succeeded in getting passage to Cuba from Mexico City" , you should have said, "Maybe Nagell told Oswald..." But even if you had said it that way, it still wouldn't make sense because it's hard to imagine how the hijacker of a plane to Cuba could "participate" in the assassination of Castro. Do you think Oswald was planning to kill Castro when Castro invited him to his headquarters to thank him for hijacking the plane? LOL Maybe Oswald was a little naiive, but he certainly wasn't stupid. --Tommy

I think this speaks to the issue of trust, Tommy. It seems to me that Lee Oswald could only become the PATSY of a plot to murder JFK if he trusted his framers fully, and truly believed that they were his friends, and that they were all going for the same gold. It seems reasonable to me that Lee Oswald believed he was part of Operation Mongoose, and that all of his accomplices were actually plotting to murder Fidel Castro. Remember that Lee Oswald let himself be framed as the officer of the New Orleans FPCC (a chapter which had only one member, Oswald himself) and then take that publicity with him to Mexico City and demand (foolishly) an Instant Visa into Cuba based on his alleged high-status in the FPCC. That took months to prepare. Why did Lee Oswald do it? Because, IMHO, he really and truly believed his framers when they told him that officers in the FPCC get "instant passage" in to Cuba. There's really no other satisfactory explanation for Lee Oswald making a complete fool of himself in Mexico City that day. We must conclude that Lee Oswald BELIEVED HIS FRAMERS. They were probably laughing their heads off at the time. Lee Oswald NEVER suspected that he was the Patsy for the JFK murder. It NEVER occurred to him until AFTER THE FACT. Then it was too late. Regards, --Paul Trejo [emphasis added by T. Graves] Do you think Oswald honestly believed his alleged Operation Mongoose "buddies" would use his Mannlicher-Carcano to kill Castro? Regarding your theory that Oswald allowed himself to be "framed" as an officer of the New Orleans FPCC in order to get into Cuba, why in the world would he have desired to go to Cuba in 1963? The only reasons I can think of are 1) as part of a CIA operation to test the Cuban and Russian Mexico City authorities and, if able to get into Cuba, to possibly do some CIA dirty work there, or 2) To go to Cuba and then possibly Russia after informing them of the upcoming JFK assassination. --Tommy bumped because Trejo always seems to respond to my posts before I've finished editing them

I think this speaks to the issue of trust, Tommy. It seems to me that Lee Oswald could only become the PATSY of a plot to murder JFK if he trusted his framers fully, and truly believed that they were his friends, and that they were all going for the same gold. It seems reasonable to me that Lee Oswald believed he was part of Operation Mongoose, and that all of his accomplices were actually plotting to murder Fidel Castro. Remember that Lee Oswald let himself be framed as the officer of the New Orleans FPCC (a chapter which had only one member, Oswald himself) and then take that publicity with him to Mexico City and demand (foolishly) an Instant Visa into Cuba based on his alleged high-status in the FPCC. That took months to prepare. Why did Lee Oswald do it? Because, IMHO, he really and truly believed his framers when they told him that officers in the FPCC get "instant passage" in to Cuba. There's really no other satisfactory explanation for Lee Oswald making a complete fool of himself in Mexico City that day. We must conclude that Lee Oswald BELIEVED HIS FRAMERS. They were probably laughing their heads off at the time. Lee Oswald NEVER suspected that he was the Patsy for the JFK murder. It NEVER occurred to him until AFTER THE FACT. Then it was too late. Regards, --Paul Trejo Do you think Oswald honestly believed his alleged Operation Mongoose "buddies" would use his Mannlicher-Carcano to kill Castro? Regarding your theory tha Oswald allowed himself to be "framed" as an officer of the New Orleans FPCC in order to get into Cuba, why in the world would he have desired to go to Cuba in 1963? --Tommy