Matt Cloud

Okay -- we will resume substantive discussion and analysis, then. Today gives me hope: Two comments at least that actually addressed the concept of mole-hunting generally, and whatever mole-hunt may have gone on here specifically. We were starting to cook with gas at last. Let's have more, I say.

Or, if you prefer, do Oswald's activities within/around the U-2 program, plus his defection to the USSR, set him up in the category of possible candidates?

No. This chronology misses entirely the origin of the mole-hunt in the first place. Perhaps I can offer some perspective and context. There are, generally speaking, suspicions about a mole in U.S. intelligence from at least 1958/59 via allegations made by Popov -- that the mole was in the U-2 program and had provided plans of the aircraft to the Soviets. These suspicions were further aroused by the defector Golitsyn who is said to have confirmed and added to Popov's claim. With this in mind, therefore, CIA counterintelligence is, we can assume, looking for possible mole candidates. Do Oswald's activities within/around the U-2 program, plus his defection to the USSR put him in the category of possible candidates? The information distributed to various departments that resulted from further monitoring of Oswald is not, I think, and as the comment above suggested, rightly, some bait offered in the hope that it may be leaked. No, it is simply what it purports to be: CIA counterintelligence is monitoring Oswald. It is keeping other interested agencies and departments informed.

A valuable point. Indeed, sending out the information -- whether disinfo, misinfo, or accurate info -- only entangles more and various departments in having at some level observed/monitored Oswald. Thus, when Oswald gets blamed, more departments have egg on their face, so to speak.

Well put. The fundamental difference, to address cursorily Sandy's rough allegation of my having imposed -- excuse me, merely "displayed" -- double-standards here, is that I am not rejecting data, not constraining the inputs, but rather incorporating any and all which survive scrutiny. The issue has been miscast from the start here as a choice whether to add a mole-hunt or not. But the issue is not one of adding a mole-hunt; it exists already, in the history, in the data. It's baked-in. (Intentionally I would add.) The issue over the mole-hunt arises problematically when one attempts to exclude it, to contort around it, to ignore it.

Noted! Twice!! Albeit that's not an accurate description of what has occurred, here on this thread, or on others. If you want to get into it, cite examples -- specific quotes -- and we can compare and contrast and analyze. It is of course up to you.

I’m happy to take the blows, such as they are. Allow me to wrap-up now, with a little more concision and precision. The Soviets’ internal cables to Amb. Dobrynin immediately after the assassination — but not released until 1998 (?) — state unequivocally that the CIA’s mail-opening program is, in the parlance, “blown.” The Kremlin instructs Dobrynin to be sure to say to his counterpart Secretary of State Rusk that the “Kostin letter,” dated November 9, 1963, was not received until November 17, even though the Soviets, according to their internal communications, already had it in their possession on the 9th.* November 17 happens to be the exact date that now declassified CIA documents indicate the HTLINGUAL program intercepted and opened the Kostin letter. These facts — first, the Kremlin’s instructions to state to the U.S. that the letter was received on the 17th and, second, the Kremlin’s statement that it already knows of the mail-opening program — indicate that HTLINGUAL is not merely blown (that’s the fact of the Kremlin’s knowledge) but that a mole with operational access to the day-to-day workings of the HTLINGUAL program has tipped-off the Soviets (that’s the fact the Kremlin instructs Dobrynin to say the letter was received specifically on the 17th). More. By including the Azcue timing problem — implicating that Oswald had information as to the Cuban consulate’s replacement having occurred before it in fact did occur — whoever wrote the letter gave the Soviets the upper-hand. Including the Azcue “error” gave the Soviets the opportunity to threaten the U.S. — as Dobrynin was specifically instructed to do, impliedly — with a public disclosure of the mail-opening program, which would humiliate the C.I.A. at very least, most especially Angleton’s counter-intelligence department, should the U.S. go ahead with making an issue of the forgery possibility. As it happened, in the event, the Warren Commission indeed dropped the enquiry altogether. Unless and until the issues wrapped-up in the Soviets’ own internal communications, which logically and impliedly confirm the existence of a mole with high-level, virtually real-time access to CIA’s counterintelligence activities, are addressed, the rest of the “Mexico City Shenanigans” are just that, just as they’ve been described here. Shenanigans. Smoke and mirrors. You see, Sandy, I can be reasonable. You are correct: The letter is a forgery and there were shenanigans afoot in Mexico City. But, as with the question of whose spy was Oswald, the question also must be who was the forger and whose Mexico City Shenanigans were they. ___ *The question of how the Soviets could have received already the Kostin letter on the 9th when that was only the day on which it was mailed is a good one. Some have commented here that this seeming incongruity establishes that the Soviets must be in error within their own internal communications, that they must then have received the Kostin letter at some other, later date, but before the 17th. This is premature as a conclusion for the simple fact -- nay, simple possibility -- that the letter may have been authored/forged inside the embassy itself, some time prior to the 9th. Or it could have been authored/forged by the mysterious mole and/or his associates, again, sometime before the 9th and a copy, perhaps hand-delivered (!) and walked right over, was given to the Soviet Embassy in Washington and then another copy, the “original,” mailed from whatever post-office region it was in fact mailed from and it was that copy, the original let’s say, which was intercepted on the 17th, with the Soviet embassy having a copy from the forgers already, all along, throughout the period of the letter’s existence.

Since multiple re-posts get lost in this website's fold-up of extended message exchanges, I am re-posting in full what I posted above. 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said: It's a pretty damn good conclusion. Why else would Scott want poor little secretary Silvia Duran AND a bunch of her associates taken in and questioned by the Mexican Police? Just because she spoke with Oswald? I mean, please! Explaining Winn Scott's orders to have Duran arrested and interrogated does not require -- and indeed no information supports -- your statement that he "suspected that the CIA plotters' plan that implicated Cuba and Russia might be true." There's an alleged assassin of the president in Texas. Some reports indicate he may have been in contact with Cuba consulate. Therefore, Winn Scott wants to find out whom he talked to, and what was said. Your comments as to what he suspected are without foundation. 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said: If you don't like my conclusion, fine. Think of it as reasoned speculation. It is a part of my hypothesis. Speculation is a necessary part of hypotheses and theories. I cannot think of it as "reasoned" speculation because it is not reasoned. There are no reasons as such there are only assertions posing as reasons that have no support behind them. And as you write: your conclusion is part of your hypothesis. That's unsound, analytically. Yes, speculation is important, and necessary, but it needs to be identified as such. Have you ever served on a jury, Sandy, in a criminal trial, where the burden of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt?" If so, you should have received instructions from the judge, just before going into your deliberations to the effect that a "reasonable doubt" is one that can be articulated and explained based on evidence in the record. It does not mean, in other words, that one juror can simply introduce another explanation out of the infinite and say that "well, it could have been this." If for example, proof of robbing a bank turns on finger print I.D. of the person on trial matched to those acquired at the scene and a witness testifies that they do match, it is unacceptable for a jury to introduce sua sponte the mere possibility -- without something in the evidence -- that the fingerprints acquired at the scene were forged. It's unacceptable in such situations because it is not, to repeat, "reasoned." This forum, needless to say, is not a jury room, and other less stringent standards may apply -- and should apply because speculation IS important and necessary -- but announcing where you are making assumptions in a hypothesis -- and not stating them as given when they are not -- is equally, if not more so, an important part of research and would be something I think that would be encouraged here, esp by admins. Stating your assumptions is not only intellectually honest, it is useful for at least two reasons. First, it allows other researchers to understand how you go from point A to point B and then allows them to analyze that decision and determine whether it was the correct path or not. Second, it protects you from charges that you are ignoring evidence in the record or have committed some sleight-of-hand. It's really a win-win. The larger point here is one of language. It seems you rarely, unless pressed after numerous rounds back and forth, identify your assumptions or you speculations as such. It would be more helpful if you incorporated phrases that let the reader know at which point in your comments you veering into the speculative. 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said: My theory is that it was an element of the CIA who were the assassination plotters. In Mexico City, they use Oswald impersonators to paint a fake story of Oswald negotiating with the Cubans and Russians to kill Kennedy. I don't believe that Win Scott was involved in the plotting. I believe that it appeared to Scott that Oswald might have been involved with the Cubans in assassinating Kennedy. (Which explains why he had Duran arrested.) And that belief only increased (naturally so!) when he got word of Gilberto Alvarado saying that, while in the Cuban Consulate, he overheard Oswald being paid $6500 to kill Kennedy. Here alone, these two statements are in contradiction: First: "because [Winston Scott] suspected that the CIA plotters' plan that implicated Cuba and Russia might be true." Second: "it appeared to Scott that Oswald might have been involved with the Cubans in assassinating Kennedy." Two totally different concepts tied up in those two sentences, as I have indicated previously. You insert Scott's knowledge of "the Plotters' plan" in the first with Scott being unaware of any plan in the second and he being genuinely suspicious of possible Oswald's involvement with Cubans. Very different. You conflate the assumption -- the conclusion even -- into the question, the question being why Scott had Duran arrested. A fair and good question. 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said: Information to Excelsior might have been leaked by a corrupt police officer for profit. I can't think of any reason why the CIA, the CIA plotters, the U.S. government, or the Mexican Police would intentionally leak the story. Here again you contradict yourself in back-to-back sentences. First you say information might have been leaked by corrupt Mexican police and the very next sentence you state that you cannot think of any reason why the Mexican police would intentionally leak the story. Which is it? No, I accounted for it. With reasoned speculation. It is you who have not accounted for it. This is false. I have accounted for the explanation as to how the information from the Cuban and Soviet Consulates ended up in Excelsior, insofar as I have stated that the evidence and analysis does not point in the direction of CIA, at least not in that department of the CIA which you evidently think the pot originates -- Angleton's department. Let's walk through the issue here, again, analytically -- carefully, methodically. We have a letter purportedly by Oswald to the Soviet Embassy wherein he reveals knowledge about the goings-on inside the Soviet Embassy. That's the most important detail of this whole affair, I say -- the Soviet's decision to replace Azcue and how it makes its way into the letter. The letter however indicates Azcue's replacement as having occurred earlier in time that it did in fact occur. The possible explanations for this knowledge about the Azcue replacement at all, as so far assembled, are these: 1. Oswald had a Soviet source, because the Soviets obviously know about the decision to replace Azcue, being the ones that made it. 2. Oswald had a CIA source, because the CIA also evidently knew about the decision to replace Azcue, because of their monitoring of the Soviet consulate. Explanations 1 and 2 are a wash, they cancel each other out, and neither, without more, without introducing either an assumption or more fact, moves the needle one way or the other. The needle is in equipoise as between the source of the information, Soviets on the one hand, CIA on the other. So, does introduction of an assumption and/or fact help break the stalemate? Like you, I am willing to assume the letter is a forgery. Indeed, for reasons explained elsewhere, based on type face and signature and linguistic tells, this is not an unreasoned assumption. Unlike you, I am not prepared to immediately jump from the introduction of the assumption of a possibility to the conclusion that that possibility is correct until a fuller consideration of the assumption and the inclusion of additional facts that may follow from the assumption. The assumption, the third possibility as to arriving at an explanation as to how the Azcue replacement made its way into the Oswald letter, is stated as follows: 3. The letter is a forgery, written by someone to frame Oswald by explicitly indicating that he had inside knowledge of the Consulate's goings-on, the replacement of Azcue. But -- and this will be important -- is there a reason, why whoever forged the letter also included the "mistake" of the date of the Azcue replacement? They include in tother words, a detail that Oswald could not have known about. A detail which the Warren Commission, as mentioned before, completely dropped from attempting to explain. Let's now work through the candidates as to responsibility for the forgery (our assumption). Candidates include at least CIA, KGB, or, as as I have offered for consideration, a mix of both. This latter possibility, this group, my "Plotters," would include persons who ran the Oswald Project in the first place (going back to the '40s), with access to both CIA information and KGB information, as a long-term operation to insert a mole into U.S. intelligence to steer management of the Cold War, just as the defector Golitsyn said was happening in 1962. (I can name names.) As I wrote in response to you yesterday, but you completely ignore it in your response today, I will re-insert: "And here I would suggest consideration of the possibility that the letter was forged by the persons running the Oswald Project, neither wholly KGB or CIA, but a group privy to information within both organizations, setting the various factions at play against one another to prevent hardliners on either side from achieving the upper-hand. This would be the strategy adopted throughout the Cold War. By putting the Azcue timing issue in plan sight in the forged Oswald letter, both KGB and CIA are bound in certain respects. KGB is bound because they are implicated by Oswald having inside info as to Soviet and Cuban embassies; CIA is bound for the same reason plus because the letter -- and the cable to Dobrynin -- indicates unequivocally that the mail-opening program is blown. That's a blow to the "mole-hunt" if one accepts that terminology. In place of "mole," I would offer "KGB interlocutor," an individual known and authorized (by a few) to steer management of the Cold War, the secrecy of whose existence must be protected whatever the cost." To add, the above by me IS the claim made by Atonally Golitsyn in his 1962 warning (to RFK and others) about a mole in US intelligence -- the issue of this thread. You on the other hand, offer this: "in my theory the mention of Azcue's replacement in the Kostin Letter does NOT blow the cover on the CIA's monitoring operation of the Cuban Consulate, or of Eusebio Azcue. According to my theory, yes the letter was written by the CIA plotters... BUT the only thing the Soviets would think when they received the letter was that it was OSWALD who was aware of Azcue's replacement. Not the CIA. (Of course, Oswald was oblivious to the whole thing.)" This has to be repeated: "the only thing the Soviets would think when they received the letter was that it was OSWALD who was aware of Azcue's replacement. Not the CIA." Really!? That assumption is unfounded, and does not withstand scrutiny. Wouldn't the Soviets want to know HOW Oswald learned of the Azcue replacement? Since your theory says they would not have thought it was CIA, then they have to consider that either Azcue or someone else inside the Embassy or somewhere within Soviet intelligence is leaking inside information to an American double defector. Azcue would certainly be a likely source since he is already a target of CIA recruitment. If Soviet intelligence finds out Azcue is leaking such info without authorization, he has signed his own death warrant. The Soviets would have to be concerned that they had a massive intelligence leak, just as U.S. intelligence is at the same time, that is, whether they each have a mole of their own inside somewhere. Your analysis, excuse me, your theory, completely ignores this logical reality. More, your theory ignores the facts contained in the Dobrynin cable, wherein it states: "either [the letter] was a forgery or was sent as a deliberate provocation." So, plainly the Soviets did not do what your theory says they did -- merely assume without more that Oswald knew of Azcue's replacement -- and, on that basis, your theory seems to fail. Now, perhaps having realized the position the letter puts the Soviets in, the Soviets in a later cable do adopt at least portions of your theory when they state, "this letter was clearly a provocation: it gives the impression we had close ties with Oswald and were using him for some purposes of our own." (You and they share that point, at least.) But, like the Warren Commission, the Soviets make no attempt apparently at resolving the question how Oswald knew of the Azcue replacement. That question goes unanswered by them so far as publicly-available documents to date indicate. If the letter was a forgery by CIA as you allege, it either, then, blows the mail-opening and embassy monitoring by CIA OR it tells the Soviets they have a traitor in their midst, notwithstanding your bare assertion that "in my theory the mention of Azcue's replacement in the Kostin Letter does NOT blow the cover on the CIA's monitoring operation of the Cuban Consulate, or of Eusebio Azcue." It either blows the CIA's monitoring or it tells the Soviets that they have a mole. It's one or the other. Moreover, it is a fact -- an undeniable fact -- that both the mail-opening program and the surveillance of the Soviet Embassy -- are in fact blown, as the Dobrynin cables explicitly state, in several instances. It's not clear where or how these programs were blown, that is when the Soviets learned of them. It was clearly sometime before 11/22/63. This fact hurts your theory that the plotters came from U.S. counterintelligence. That department is weakened in this whole ordeal. With that understanding, then, how the existence of mail-opening and embassy monitoring was blown is central to the question of this thread -- whether there is a mole inside U.S. intelligence, a thread which you started to ostensibly explore that question and the merits of which you do not engage. You simply talk around them.

P.S. Castro continues to stick around for another 40 years and the raids against "that imprisoned island nation" stop; Vietnam achieves self-determination as colonialism around the globe ends. Does this history sound like a right-wing coup took place?

Ah ... okay so Soviets say same thing as most in America do at that time. If not the Lone Nut Oswald, then the Right-Wingers and if not them then Johnson -- or maybe all of them. But not CIA. Certainly not KGB. What about actual strategic action? Move to high-alert? Not exactly, instead we see Kruschchev "resign" and Brezhnev comes in and detente begins as U.S. "withdraws" from Vietnam, which it "loses" and Soviets fill the void in the third-world in the 70s ... . Domestically, at home, US has cut deal over missile withdrawal and proceeds to usher in largest social change program in its history. Vietnam War fractures Democratic party and the country as a whole. Nixon is the last liberal president -- according to Dems in the 90s -- but has background in spy-hunting and the Red Scare and is forced to resign. Throughout, Soviet military economy is said to be on rise, and many times the beneficiary of alleged espionage as well as other tech transfer programs. Standard U.S. textbooks throughout the Cold War proclaim "crossover point" -- when command Soviet economy will outpace U.S. -- to be about 1987. Maybe Golitsyn was on to something? Hmmmm.

My suggestion would be to study the deaths less (seemingly) obviously related, as sometimes working around a subject can lead to a greater understanding of the place in the jigsaw puzzle that you are focused on. For example: Harold Talbott's wife., Margaret Talbott (d. 1962). He had been Secretary of the Air Force who gave away some say responsibility for overhead reconnaissance to CIA in the 50s. (U-2 and CORONA.) A target of RFK and the McClellan committee. William Cotter's wife, Virginia Alicia McMahon (d. 1962). He ran the mail-opening program; she had been a VENONA code-breaker in the 40s. Her brother became Deputy Director of CIA in 1982, having been in the U-2 program in the 50s, then CORONA, then brought in Nosenko as Stan Turner's DDO in the 70s when the CI staff was gutted and CIA went even more heavy into satellite recon. He had also debriefed Powers after his U-2 shoot-down as well as Golitsyn and Nosenko. Phil Graham, owner/publisher of the Washington Post, d. 1963. He had been read into VENONA during the Truman years and was becoming pro-McCarthy evidently in the 50s. Kennedy appointed him to COMSAT the privatization of CORONA, and had Clark Clifford allegedly spying on him to make sure he didn't spill secrets he learned. John Paisley, CIA (d. 1979) He had been tied up in the Nosenko affair, Team B, and The Hart Report on Angleton's Monster Plot. That's a gold mine. J.D. Tippit's son, the J.D. Tippit of Connecticut (d. 1980), whose son married another Air Force family (Kendrick), with ties to the Jupiter missiles at issue during Cuban Missile Crisis and NASA and the Paperclip Nazis. Killed by shots fired from distance at a Texas gas station. Anybody wants his name, just ask. Don't have it handy at the moment. William Colby ... Game developer for Activision when he dies, along with Oleg Kalugin. Something there? If there's foul play to be found in these, it will give a much better bird's eye perspective than most others.

Thanks, Bill. Sovietology may be out of your wheelhouse, but are there any indications as to any Soviet concern that a right-wing takeover was occurring in the U.S. during and after the assassination? Or were they just happy not to be blamed? If so, that would represent a failure in Cold War understanding would it not - that what happens on one side of its algebraic equation has to also happen on the other side? Did Soviets reciprocate, as the logic would dictate they must, with a hard-left takeover?

Or at least which direction it points away from.

Unfortunately, Newman's analysis ends where it begins -- with Solie. Any defensible discussion of Popov's allegations -- that there was a mole in the U-2 program -- would seem to require beginning with a round-up of potential candidates who would have access to this information. Newman does not provide this in his work and, again, ends his search with the same suspect that he begins it with. Solie. Simultaneously, however, yes, he also indicates Solie is working on instruction of James McCord, but why that doesn't make McCord the mole is hard to follow by Newman. Perhaps that is indeed where he is going. However the case, any thorough investigation of Popov's claim must include an individual Newman makes no mention of at all -- John N. McMahon, who had executive responsibilities in the U-2 program in 1959, and would debrief Francis Gary Powers after his shoot-down, as well as defectors Golitsyn and Nosenko, among others. In John Hart's 1976 study of Angleton's Monster Plot, McMahon's name is completely removed from Bagley's (?) draft of the report. What was submitted before Congress and HSCA, that is, contains no explicit McMahon reference whatsoever. Curious.

I understand of course the CIA is monitoring Soviet activity in Mexico and Azcue in particular, whom CIA would like to recruit although they state he is not a likely target for such. No mystery there. This understanding however does nothing towards clarifying why CIA would blow it's own monitoring operation by including information in a forged Oswald letter that would reveal the existence of the monitoring. (Or why same would appear in the newspaper in Excelsior.) Indeed, it rather does suggest, in the other way, that someone or someones opposed to the monitoring by CIA would blow the operation by including details that Oswald could not have known about but for his linkage with intelligence, one way or the other. The letter -- which again I think is forged -- hurts CIA monitoring of the Soviets. It exposes it. You should then be able to gather in which direction that understanding points in terms of authorship of the letter.

You're either not grasping that there is an elephant in the room or you're ignoring it. The Soviets, based on their cable to Dobrynin, evidently know the exact date they must say they received the letter even though they apparently received it much earlier. The date they say they must say -- as you point out -- aligns precisely with the date the HTLINGUAL program intercepted it. Pretty neat. That may mean they -- the Soviets -- know about the mail-opening program down to the most minute operational details. When I wrote before that the Dobrynin cable demonstrates that the mail-opening program is "blown" I didn't go far enough. It was not merely blown it was rendered entirely susceptible to manipulation -- by the Soviets. It was useless for Angleton, totally useful for Moscow. You have completely ignored the fundamental issue here again -- how the Soviets learned of the mail-opening program, except merely to say "Perhaps they had noticed signs of steam opening of letters from Americans." If that is the basis of their understanding of the existence of the mail-opening program, it would not explain how they knew exactly when to say it was intercepted. The "steam opening" offering is wanting, in light of their apparent knowledge as to the specific details of when it was opened. And here I would suggest consideration of the possibility that the letter was forged by the persons running the Oswald Project, neither wholly KGB or CIA, but a group privy to information within both organizations, setting the various factions at play against one another to prevent hardliners on either side from achieving the upper-hand. This would be the strategy adopted throughout the Cold War. By putting the Azcue timing issue in plan sight in the forged Oswald letter, both KGB and CIA are bound in certain respects. KGB is bound because they are implicated by Oswald having inside info as to Soviet and Cuban embassies; CIA is bound for the same reason plus because the letter -- and the cable to Dobrynin -- indicates unequivocally that the mail-opening program is blown. That's a blow to the "mole-hunt" if one accepts that terminology. In place of "mole," I would offer "KGB interlocutor," an individual known and authorized (by a few) to steer management of the Cold War, the secrecy of whose existence must be protected whatever the cost.

Okay, we'll go around again. You wrote: "The CIA must have known about Azcue's replacement, or planned replacement." I replied: That IS the issue I raised. Simply stating that you have reached a conclusion as to the question is non-responsive, without explanation as to how you can justify that conclusion. Now you wrote the same thing. "Since the letter commented on Azcue being replaced, the writer of the letter -- a CIA employee -- had to have known about the Azcue replacement." It's entirely a speculative possibility offered by you, as to authorship. Got it. Thanks for clarifying. It is one possibility, and it's still conclusory. You have assumed the answer. Assuming the answer fails definitionally to meet the definition of reasoned. You haven't established how this CIA employee knew that, let alone who that employee was. And I fully assume -- and have reason to believe -- that CIA does know the goings-on inside both embassies. But so do the Soviets. And including that knowledge in the letter hurts the CIA. It blows their monitoring operation. Deciding it favor of of the one over the other requires you to ignore that.

"On November 23, Mexico City CIA station chief Winston Scott asked the president of Mexico to arrest Silvia Duran." No argument as yet, until we get to your "because he suspected that the CIA plotters' plan that implicated Cuba and Russia might be true." This is conclusory. Again, you mix in the unknown as if it were known, along with the speculative. You immediately incorporate your conclusion into an explanation without establishing any of it. How do you know what he suspected? Who are the Plotters? Do you mean Scott suspected that Oswald might be involved with the Soviets and/or Cubans -- a reasonable suspicion given what information he received -- or do you mean that he suspected that there was a plot to falsely frame Oswald's involvement with Cubans and Soviets? Two very different concepts and you conflate them all and tie a bow around all of it as if any of it were established or establish-able, or even coherent. When I acknowledged that it was possible, theoretically, that the information as to the Cuban consulate in Excelsior came from Duran, as you had offered, I was being exceedingly generous in your favor, for argument's sake. As you wrote, Duran was held for days, tortured and beaten evidently. It makes little sense why statements by someone suspected of being involved with Oswald would be thrown around so liberally, so quickly, if they could even have been obtained at all by then. Who knows where things might lead in the interrogation that would cause what was released from it on day 1 to have to be altered on day 6? In any case, suspects under arrest and interrogation becoming anonymous sources to newspapers during their arrest is a new one to me, and exceedingly week as an explanation, notwithstanding my having granted it theoretical possibility status. Scott apparently told the Mexicans to keep her incommunicado. That means don't let her talk to anyone outside the interrogation room. Why they would follow his instructions on the one hand -- arrest her -- but disobey them on the other -- leak her story -- is unaccounted for by you. Again -- Excelsior is a leftist paper; it's printing information that further entangles Oswald wth Soviets and Cubans. That fact needs to be massaged a bit more, I suggest, so that its full ramifications can percolate to the surface.

To add a further point to this, if I'm Rusk, and I receive that message from Dobrynin, I could very easily interpret his not-so-subtle hint that the Soviets know of the mail-opening program as a threat. That is, don't do anything that disrupts our mole, lest we will blow Angleton's mail-opening program and your CIA will be humiliated. By Dobrynin's message alone, the Soviets are indicating to the U.S. that they have the leverage here.

As immediately above, "details" refers to the timing issue -- why Soviets feel need to say it arrived at a date later than it did -- and the existence of the mail-opening program. "The CIA knew that Azcue was going to be replaced." No, again, that is only assumed. "So why wouldn't the Soviets have not also known that?" They did know it. They might have been the only ones who knew it. There's no evidence anyone else did. That's the point. "With the Azcue replacement date in hand, and the Kostin letter in hand, the Soviets had all the details that you've pointed out. No mole needed to get it for them." Those are not the details that a mole provided. Yes, the Soviets do not need to be told a decision (azcue's replacement) they themselves have made. The detail most at issue here that appears to have come from CIA to KGB is the existence of the mail-opening program. That is information a mole could have provided. That is what indicates a security breach.

The instructions to Dobrynin indicate that the Kremlin is aware of some issue with regard to the timing of the letter. The Soviets apparently don't want to say they received the letter when they in did (the 9th evidently) and for some reason feel the need to state to the U.S. that it was received on a later date (the 18th). Why? The instructions don't resolve the timing issue, whether "in the Americans' eyes" or other. Indeed they perpetuate it. More however, what the instructions do is inform the Americans that there counter-intelligence program is blown -- that it's useless. How did the Soviets learn of the mail-opening program? How did they know to tell the U.S. that there could be delays in its delivery? That is the question.

Helms says he doesn't know how Oswald learned of the Azcue replacement. You believe Oswald's knowledge of Azcue's replacement is irrelevant because Oswald didn't write the letter in the first place. I agree. Helms' statement provides no information either way as to the outstanding question: how did the author of the letter know about Azcue's replacement? You simply say the CIA "must have known.". You can only get to the "must" if you assume CIA wrote the letter. Nothing you've written establishes that. It is merely an assumption.

You write "The CIA must have known about Azcue's replacement, or planned replacement." That IS the issue I raised. Simply stating that you have reached a conclusion as to the question is non-responsive, without explanation as to how you can justify that conclusion. And whether Azcue was in fact replaced or whether merely the decision to replace had been made, you have not answered the question as to how the author of the letter, whoever that might have been, knew either of those scenarios.

Well, Duran was apparently arrested at CIA instructions sent on the 23rd along with instructions that she be held incommunicado. The leak to the paper would seem to violate that second instruction. But it is a possibility that information obtained during her interrogation could have been a source for the goings-on inside the Cuban embassy -- albeit a very fast turnaround to get it into the paper on the 25th -- but that doesn't account for the paper's information as to the goings-on inside the Soviet embassy.