Did Oswald Practice Tradecraft?

[William Kelly]

In his book Mole (Ballantine Books, 1982) William Hood wrote:

As we struggled to come to terms, the agency reminded me that the director of Central Intelligence is charged by law with safeguarding the agency's "sources and methods." I pointed out that in this instance the source had been arrested in 1958 and, according to Soviet authorities, put to death in 1959….There remained the question of methods.

The methods – called "tradecraft" – described in this book are not unique to CIA. Except for the Soviet proclivity for murder, kidnapping, and blackmail, there is not much difference in espionage methodology East or West. Tradecraft may seem mysterious to outsiders, but it is little more than a compound of commonsense, experience, and certainly universally accepted security practices. In the past eighty years newspaper accounts, informed novelists, and historians – particularly of World War II – have put considerable tradecraft into the public domain. In 1976 Senator Frank Church made an immense amount of data available to anyone willing to plow through the reports of his committee's investigating CIA.

The fact is that tradecraft is like arithmetic: it has been around for centuries. The basics are easy to learn and good texts can be found in any library. Although it is easy to make mistakes under pressure, only the advanced aspects – like multiplying fractions or manipulating double agents – are particularly complex.

The only significant changes in espionage in this century have resulted from the application of advanced technology to operational problems….. (p. xiv)

Contact men are assigned cover names….

By "plumbing," Helms meant the operational support structure – safe houses, surveillance agents, letter drops, and a technical section trained to make quick audio installations, handle clandestine photography, and provide reliable short-range radio communications. Safe houses – usually small apartments rented under a pretext – were used by case officers to meet and question, or as jargon had it, to "debrief" agents. (p. 10)

…When you score, remember to slug the cable "Blue-Bottle" and send it Eyes Only to me. We won't want many people in on the act. "Blue-Bottle" was an agency indicator used only on cables of the greatest secrecy. It meant that the message could be deciphered only by the chief of communications staff on duty when it arrived. Three copies were to be made, one for the chief of operations, one for the chief of the Operations Directorate, and another for Helms. They would be delivered by courier…. (p. 11)

One of the many myths pinned on secret intelligence by imaginative journalists is that no espionage service will accept a spy who volunteers his services. In the real world of secret operations, volunteers have produced some of the greatest coups. "It's the walk-in trade that keeps the shop open," is one of the first bits of operational wisdom impressed on newcomers to the business. (p. 15)

In any really productive operation, the spy's motives are of critical importance. (p. xv)

Most spies are mercenaries. No matter how much political gloss they daub on their motives, if money enters the picture at all, chances are overwhelming that money is the motive. (p. 31)

One of the biggest threats to a spy – certainly to a Russian working in place – is sudden and unexplained affluence. (p. 110)

Whatever his motives may be, the role of a spy is to betray trust.

A man who has volunteered, or been tapped, to commit treason cannot logically ever be trusted again. Every aspect of a spy's relationship with his case officer, or intelligence service, stems from this basic premise. (p. 29)

With a new agent, the case officer's first task is to maneuver him into a position where there is nothing that he can hold back – not the slightest scrap of information nor the most intimate detail of his personal life. Until this level of control has been achieved, the spy cannot be said to have been fully recruited. Only when the recruitment is completed can a "contact" or "source" (as they are sometimes called) be considered a spy, the creature of his case officer and the intelligence service he represents. (p.29)

As an outside man and a newcomer to operations, Alex had done a good job….Todd also briefed Alex on what he called a "one-shot." One-shotting has a particular appeal for imaginative amateurs who think they can make an anonymous, one-time transaction with an intelligence service – a packet of information for a wad of cash and no one the wiser. Grasping greenhorns have about as much chance of swinging a deal like this as the average football fan would have of surviving more than a few minutes in a Super Bowl game.

Once in a while, just often enough to give intelligence officers a false sense of confidence, a secret operation goes almost according to plan. (p. 35)

Russian is not a language that lends itself to a simplified, pidgin form. Unlike German, Spanish or even French, there is no such thing as "speaking a little Russian." One knows the language or not. (p.39)

Captured German and Japanese documents yielded some information on Soviet espionage during the war. In Japan, the net established by Richard Sorge was brought under study, and in Europe, the German files were mined for data on the wide ranging networks partially exposed by the Gestapo, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and the Abwehr. Research into the most extensive of these reseaux – called the Rose Kapelle (Red Orchestra) by the Germans – kept a handful of analysts busy for almost a decade after the war. (p42)

Fortunately, one researcher uncovered a press clipping on Ismael Akhmedov, a GRU major who had defected from Soviet Military Intelligence in Turkey in 1944. Although he had been questioned at length on local matters, and later by the British on a broader scale, Akhmedov agreed to another debriefing….It was during this interrogation that Newbywas struck by the fact that each time he opened a new topic, Akhmedov would say, "But you must know this. I went over it in detail with the British." Philby, who had handled Akhmedov's interrogation for the British, had given SSU but a few scant pages of data from him. …How could so bright a chap as Philby was known to be have misjudged an important defector so badly? (p43)

Still in his stocking feet – to avoid unnecessary sound, everyone in the back room had removed his shoes – the trio came tumbling out. There was another rule. Never under any circumstances was there any drinking in the room with the tape recorders.

Although headquarters continued to swamp the station the station with requirements – intelligence jargon, questions for agents are known as "intelligence requirements," a pompous military phrase usually shortened to "requirements" or "RQMs" it was up to the station to balance headquarters enthusiasm for the intelligence product with the reality of agent handling. (p. 91)

The only agents that can be presumed to be clean – unsuspected by anyone – are those who have been thoroughly investigated but never used operationally. Some of these high-security support agents are recruited and given a small retainer against the day – usually night – they will be needed. Others are kept warm by case officers -…..When needed, they can be formally recruited. Many are used only once. (p182)

Now, he seemed more hurried than usual, as he strode briskly past the safe-house entrance for a hundred yards before abruptly whirling and retracing his steps – a routine maneuver to see if anyone was behind him. Satisfied that there was no one there, Popov stepped into the entrance. (p. 115)

By walking back along the route they had driven, Popov could satisfy himself there had been no surveillance behind them. (p. 208)

For centuries surveillance was practiced as an art, its techniques passed from one generation of gray men to another. It was not until the twentieth century that the shadowy craft became a science employing the most advanced – usually referred to by the technicians as "state-of-the-art" – forms of photography, electronics, radio, and all types of transportation. Today, the nondescript, gray men come like sorrows, not singly but in battalions.

New York is a pigeon's paradise. A "pigeon," or target, on the move in Manhatten can chose among subways, buses, taxis, rental cars, private vehicles, elevators, escalators, and stairways. He can scurry along crowded or empty sidewalks, duck into alleys, cross vacant lots, loiter in parks and prowl through as complex a variety of buildings, department stores, shops, museums, and churches as exist in any city.

When a tail-smart spy is trying to spot a possible surveillance, he may appear to act indecisively, even implausibly. Suddenly and without any apparent reason, he will whirl and double back on his tracks, looking into the faces of those behind him and making eye contact with as many of the crowd as he can. Any foot surveillant within a hundred feet of a clever spy who makes a series of these moves is likely to have to drop the chase. Another tactic is to seek sparsely traveled sidewalks, or open areas, where the spy can isolate himself and thus cut down the number of people he must scan if he is to glimpse a familiar silhouette or a face he has seen before.

After doubling, redoubling, and doubling his path again, an agent may board a subway at the last minute, step off at the next stop, walk slowly along the platform toward the street exit, and, at the last moment, jump back onto the train. Leaving the subway, he might enter a tall office building, take an express elevator to the first stop, step out and walk away as if headed for an office. The moment the elevator door closes behind him, he returns, pushes the button for another car, goes up two floors, steps out, and hurries to the emergency stairway. Then, he might walk ten floors down, take yet another elevator to the ground floor and adjacent subway. There he may repeat his on-again, off-again subway technique. For measure, he might stop for an hour of browsing in Macy's, Bloomingdale's, or any store with escalators, elevators, a good choice of exits, and easy access to a subway station.

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, whether he was the assassin or a Patsy, Oswald practiced this "tradecraft" more than once.

If in fact he did descend the back TSBD stairs, he had to enter the second floor lunch room vestibule and make a right, through the south door while the west door shut completely and then reenter the second floor lunchroom vestibule in order to be seen by Officer Baker through the window of the closed door. This is the case because Truly didn't see Oswald or the door closing.

Then upon leaving the TSBD, Oswald is reported to have walked a number of blocks east, in the direction of the building where he reportedly met with David Atlee Phillips earlier that summer before going to Mexico City. Is that where he was going at first?

Then Oswald is said to have boarded a bus going back in the other direction.

When the bus got stuck in traffic, he got off and got a taxi, which he had drive three to five blocks PAST his rooming house, and he walked back to it.

After changing, and grabbing a jacket and pistol, Oswald was seen standing on the corner across the street and then not seen again until he was waltzing down 10th street towards Patton.

According to Dale Myers, it is his suspicion that Oswald made an abrupt move, whirled around and began walking in the other direction, a move that attracted the attention of Officer Tippit, and a move that is taught as part of the tradecraft of intelligence that he apprently used for the Fourth time within an hour of the assassination.

Whether the assassin, as Myers contend, or a Patsy, as the evidence suggests, it appears that Oswald was practicing standard operating tradecraft to determine if there was surveillance being conducted or if he was being followed or observed. And he was - by Tippit.

BK

Edited October 15, 2010 by William Kelly

[David Andrews]

Is it possible that Oz practiced that quick turnabout business and attracted Tippit's attention, but also attracted other conspirators that Oz was trying to avoid - who then shot Tippit? Did Tippit get out of the car because another man or men was approaching while he was questioning Oz?

Oz's progress and feints between TSBD and Texas Theater are the most frustrating logistical aspects of the assassination afternoon. Why are both the Tippit killing and the theater search necessary? Why not kill Oz at the Tippit scene? Why are police cars out looking for Oz on Tenth street and at his rooming houise? I have the feeling that there are several levels of operatives and plotters at work that day.

Some of them, if you believe Richard Case Nagell's intimations in Dick Russell's book, may have been Mexico City KGB out to stop Oz, whom they identified as either the designated patsy or the assigned shooter. They may have been pro-Castro Cubans enlisted by KGB.

Edited October 15, 2010 by David Andrews

[J. Raymond Carroll]

According to Dale Myers, ... it appears that Oswald was practicing standard operating tradecraft

BK

[/font][/size]

Mr. Kelly: Since Myers's theory is pure speculation, unsupported by even a shred of evidence, you will have to go back to the drawing board if you want to accuse Oz of being a spy.

[William Kelly]

According to Dale Myers, ... it appears that Oswald was practicing standard operating tradecraft

BK

[/font][/size]

Mr. Kelly: Since Myers's theory is pure speculation, unsupported by even a shred of evidence, you will have to go back to the drawing board if you want to accuse Oz of being a spy.

I'm not accusing him of being a spy.

As Mr. Hood so eloquently points out, a spy is someone who does something illegal and treasonous, while I don't know that Oswald did anything illegal, except perhaps slugging a cop and resisting arrest.

I am asking if he was practicing the tradecraft taught and described by William Hood, who by the way, is cc:d and routed copies of the CIA's Oswald in Mexico City documents.

Did Oswald intentionally, four times within the hour of the assassination, practice this particular tradecraft of backtracking, passing one's desination and going back to it from the opposite direction and quickly "wherl around" and change directions on more than one occassion in the hour after the assassination?

Thanks for reading my material and commenting on it JRC, your analysis is well respected and alwas appreciated,

BK

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Did Oswald intentionally, four times within the hour of the assassination, practice this particular tradecraft of backtracking, passing one's destination and going back to it from the opposite direction and quickly "whirl around" and change directions on more than one occasion in the hour after the assassination?

BK

Bill: If Lee Oswald was a spy, as you seem to be suggesting, there would be some evidence. In Norman Mailer's book, which I am sure you have read, the KGB who monitored his every move were constantly amazed by his wanderings around Minsk. He would stop at a shop window, then turn around, then turn around again, with no apparent destination in mind. He was not evading the KGB, because they were easily able to keep track of him, but he was a peripatetic individual. If he was a spy, he would have been paid for his work.

I am not a Warren Commission defender, but I do believe that David Lifton's friend Wesley Liebeler was an honest man, and Liebeler tracked down every dime that Oz made & spent, and found no evidence that Oz had income that was unaccounted for. THe idea that was a secret agent for anyone is simply unsupported by any credible evidence. His meanderings were no more suspicious than my own.

[Harry J.Dean]

The above discussion is unbelievable in this day and age. And it shows how Mr. Carroll has not gotten over his old tricks.

Its actually a surprising exchange since other people who should know better are actually entertaining this absurdity.

The idea that somehow Oswald was not some kind of espionage agent is today, beyond the pale to contemplate. That is with the work of John Newman, John Armstrong and Philip Melanson, to me there should be no argument.

And for Carroll to seriously use the work of two thoroughly compromised and discredited authors in the field--Mailer and Liebeler--well this shows us that he is still in league with those who were best pals with the likes of Mark Zaid back in the nineties.

If Oswald was not an espionage agent, then please explain to me why Otto Otepka was put through the ordeal he was when he tried to find out if he was a genuine or fake defector? Why was his office bugged, his trash gone through,his car followed, speeches made against him in Congress? All this over a guy who had been a fine employee for years. He is then removed from his job THREE WEEKS before the assassination! Coincidence? Phooey.

If Oswald was not an espionage agent, then why was he trying to call (former?) military intelligence officer John Hurt from the Dallas jail on Saturday night? Maybe because the giant Nags Head navy base was nearby? The place that according to VIctor Marchetti housed the fake Navy defector program? Why was this call not allowed to go through? Why was it then covered up? Try and find it mentioned in the Warren Commission. I have an idea as to why. It has to do with what happened the next morning--Ruby's murder of Oswald. As Marchetti said, that call sealed the intelligence operative's fate.

If Oswald was not an intelligence operative, how the heck do you explain the stuff he was up to in New Orleans? Was it just a coincidence that at the time he is making the FPCC look foolish by leafleting on main streets in New Orleans at rush hour, that both the FBI and CIA have such a program in operation? And that Davdid Phillips is one of the managers of it? And that the group he would end up in violent street conflict with--the DRE--was beign run by Phillips? (According to Howard Hunt at least.)

What is the payoff of the New Orleans charade? The Butler interview. Where Oswald slipped up and admitted he was sponsored by the State Department in Russia.

And the End Game of all this FPCC playing around is Mexico CIty. Where Oswald's image and voice will be manipulated by Anne Goodpasture into makign it seem as if he is in cahoots with Valery Kostikov, KGB assassination agent. And I supposed that its another coincidence that the lying Goodasture was Phillips' right arm in Mexico City.

Mr Carroll must really miss his cohort Dennis Ford these days. In this preposterous discussion of Oswald's identity and role in the plot, he sounds more and more like the guy the late Gene Case threw out of his house with the words: "I don't know what your goal is, but it sure is not ours."

The lowly recruit or volunteer Intelligence asset labors mostly in sewers of Intelligence gathering. Such asset need not be and usually is not

an equal in any way to his/her skilled federal agent contact/controller.

The asset's willingness, availability and idealism serve both regular agent, the asset the case and cause. I cannot forget the sewers and danger

of dealing with Cuba then US. {FPCC/FBI entanglements often fearful near death experiences.

Oswald from 1962 onward to his death followed the exact pattern in detail.

[William Kelly]

Did Oswald intentionally, four times within the hour of the assassination, practice this particular tradecraft of backtracking, passing one's destination and going back to it from the opposite direction and quickly "whirl around" and change directions on more than one occasion in the hour after the assassination?

BK

Bill: If Lee Oswald was a spy, as you seem to be suggesting, there would be some evidence.

Hey Ray, I am not suggesting Oswald was a spy, which is a very particular type of animal. I am suggesting that he was not a loner nor was he nuts. If not psychologically deranged, what was his motive for doing things? Certainly not money. If he didn't do things because he was nuts, and therefore unexplainable, then he did things for a reason, and his behavior is explainable. If his motive was ideological, then a new pattern emerges, and he now can plausibly be fit into a new category - other than psycho-deranged, and ideological motivation is the motive of the patriot, the warrior, the terrorits and the assassin. Whether Oswald was the assassin or a patsy, the evidence does not indicate he was crazy, as the Lone-Nut hypothesis requires, so I am looking at a new, different hypothesis, and one that can explain all of Oswald's actions and behavior.

In Norman Mailer's book, which I am sure you have read, the KGB who monitored his every move were constantly amazed by his wanderings around Minsk. He would stop at a shop window, then turn around, then turn around again, with no apparent destination in mind. He was not evading the KGB, because they were easily able to keep track of him, but he was a peripatetic individual.

Ray, Mailer says he traced Oswald's activities in USSR, but he didn't. He may have stayed in Oswald's room and slept in his bed, but he didn't find out what Al Zegler was all about, and he didn't find out how Oswald could be in Moscow one day and Minsk a few weeks later with the same three women who were traveling about Russia without an Intourist guide and whose photos, some of which included Oswald, ended up in CIA files before the assassination, and Mailer didn't find out if Oswald or Marina met with the Americans passing through Minsk on the San Fransciso to Moscow Peace Walk. Nor did Mailer learn anything about the other two Americans who were in the hospital while he was there after feneigning suicide (which he did by the book). Mailer is not a good source for anything as far as I'm concerned, though he's a totally interesting character and fun to drink with. That Oswald, according to KGB files, practiced surveillance avoidance on them is pretty funny when you think about it. He did have a sense of humor and played them as the Keystone Cops. Peripathetic isn't the word either.

If he was a spy, he would have been paid for his work.

And indeed he was, just enough, just what he needed, and he was very frugal. Money was not the motive for the anti-Castro Cubans, and money was not Oswald's motive for doing things, like defecting, Walker, FPCC, Mexico City or Dealey Plaza, regardless of what you think or believe he did. As Harry Dean notes, there are other motives besides money and greed.

I am not a Warren Commission defender, but I do believe that David Lifton's friend Wesley Liebeler was an honest man, and Liebeler tracked down every dime that Oz made & spent, and found no evidence that Oz had income that was unaccounted for.

You are wrong on this count. Yes, much of the money can be accounted for - and where it came from - the checks from Leslie Welding - the checks from Jaggers/Chiles/Stoval, and the unemployment checks from working at those places, which he had sent to him in New Orleans, his checks from Riley Coffee, and the cash he got from TSBD. Besides that, he also received money orders at Western Union, as the clerk there reported, and there was a check for an odd amount of money - over a hundred dollars, that he tried to cash at an Irving grocrey store a week before the assassination. That store owner positively identified Oswald and said he handled the check made out to Oswald, but couldn't cash it. And neither Liebeler nor anyone ever determined where Oswald did cash that check, or where it came from. So Oswald did have unaccounted for money, and always seemed to have enough to take care of things.

THe idea that was a secret agent for anyone is simply unsupported by any credible evidence.

Now Secret Agent is yet another, different and very specificly defined animal. And unlike the Lone-Nut or the spy, that Oswald was acting as a covert agent of someone else is supported by some credible evidence, including the fact that, if you believe Adele Edisen (and I do), a military Colonel in Washington DC knew where Oswald was going to live in New Orleans and the phone number there a week before Oswald himself knew. To me, that indicates someone is pulling Oswald's strings. And as for not being a Loner, almost all of his "friends" upon his return from USSR had intelligence connections, both in Dallas and New Orleans, so the opportunities are there, either for him to be recruited into a network, or for a network to simply monitor him. They don't have to control him in order to frame him as the Patsy, they just have to know where he is, or even where he works.

Now the assassin(s) who really did kill JFK, I have no doubt they were covert agents for somebody, somebody within the government, somebody who was part of the party that took over the government.

His meanderings were no more suspicious than my own.

Since Oswald was the Patsy, his meanderings are not suspicious to me at all, and because he wasn't crazy, but ideologically motivated, they can be understood.

I don't know about your meanderings though, Ray. Don't meander too far.

Edited October 16, 2010 by William Kelly

[John Dolva]

Perhaps a look at past patterns of evasion can help.

BTW this and the other three topics, BK, are very interesting imo ( I like outside the box stuff. One never knows where it may end up)

. I understand he exhibited other 'tradecraft' behaviours at other times.

When one is an activist of whatever sort in a potentially hostile environment sometimes one develops these patterns over time. Sometimes it can be used not to shake a tail, but to let the tail know it is noted. It can be sufficient in some cases. I had a very amusing experience once when I suspected a tail where some fast incomprehensible moves isolated the tail and funnily enough I ended up following. There are so many ways to do this and one need not be trained to adopt them. No doubt Oswald was aware of his position and habitually used rudimentary tactics. What I find interesting is you noting him doing so in this instance. An interpretation of it could fall a number of ways imo.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

The idea that somehow Oswald was not some kind of espionage agent is today, beyond the pale to contemplate. That is with the work of John Newman, John Armstrong and Philip Melanson, to me there should be no argument.

Of the three authors mentioned, John Newman is by far the most significant. I defy you to show where John Newman accuses Oz of being a spy or secret agent. Newman demonstrates that Oz was the target or victim of operations instigated by Angleton & Co., not that Oz himself was a spy.

And for Carroll to seriously use the work of two thoroughly compromised and discredited authors in the field--Mailer and Liebeler--well this shows us that he is still in league with those who were best pals with the likes of Mark Zaid back in the nineties.

My reference to Mailer is limited to his quotes from the KGB files. I have not seen the KGB files in question, but as far as I know, no one has claimed that Mailer misrepresented what is in those files.

If Oswald was not an espionage agent, then please explain to me why Otto Otepka was put through the ordeal he was when he tried to find out if he was a genuine or fake defector?

According to your fellow Garrison admirer Joan Mellon, Otepka was the victim of Robert Kennedy, as she outlined on this forum. Unfortunately, I gather that everything on the forum older than one year has been deleted, so I cannot point you to the thread. Again, this operation appears to be the work of Angleton & Co. who were no friends of Oz (just as Garrison & yourself are no friends of Oz.)

ugh? If Oswald was not an espionage agent, then why was he trying to call (former?) military intelligence officer John Hurt from the Dallas jail on Saturday night? .... As Marchetti said, that call sealed the intelligence operative's fate.

Marchetti was a phoney, and a CLOSE friend of Richard Helms, one of the principals in the plot against JFK. You, on the other hand are simply a sucker.

If Oswald was not an intelligence operative, how the heck do you explain the stuff he was up to in New Orleans? Was it just a coincidence that at the time he is making the FPCC look foolish by leafleting on main streets in New Orleans at rush hour, that both the FBI and CIA have such a program in operation?

Lee Oswald believed in FAIR PLAY FOR CUBA, and so do I. You got a problem with that?

And the End Game of all this FPCC playing around is Mexico CIty. Where Oswald's image and voice will be manipulated by Anne Goodpasture into makign it seem as if he is in cahoots with Valery Kostikov, KGB assassination agent.

Well it is rather obvious again that Oz was a target, not a participant.

Mr Carroll must really miss his cohort Dennis Ford these days. In this preposterous discussion of Oswald's identity and role in the plot, he sounds more and more like the guy the late Gene Case threw out of his house with the words: "I don't know what your goal is, but it sure is not ours."

Isn't Gene Case the guy who worked with Lyndon Johnson on the notorious and despicable atom bomb advertisement?

[David Andrews]

Jim - of course Oswald is a spook. I'm trying to figure out what a whole load of loose spooks and bad cops, maybe groups of such with different masters, are doing in regard to Oswald (and "Oswald") between the TSBD, Tenth and Patton, and Texas Theater.

Like I said - one of the things that needs understanding is why both the Tippit murder and the Texas Theater apprehension happened. If we believe Oz was going to a rendezvous at Texas Theater - looking for an escape in a place where he could be captured or killed Dillinger style - then why is the Tippit scene necessary? A "unified theory," or competing theories, of post-assassination November 22nd would be useful things to read.

Someday, I'm going to put up a list of the most needed book-length investigations on JFK topics. Anybody who wants to ought to run with one of them.

Edited October 16, 2010 by David Andrews

[J. Raymond Carroll]

In my discussion of the reissue of Newman's "Oswald and the CIA" I relate that John told me that he believes that Angleton was running Oswald as an off the books agent.

When is the last time you talked to John?

Actually I have never talked to John Newman, though I have heard him speak at conferences, and of course I have read his book. Nowhere in his book or in his PUBLIC statements has Newman ever accused Oz of being a spy, and his book contains NO EVIDENCE to support that accusation.

It is all very well to say that John privately believes that ("suspects" might be a better word), but until he is willing to PUBLISH that belief AND SUPPORT IT WITH EVIDENCE, then Newman cannot be used as authority for the proposition that Oz was a spy.

Newman also believes, according to his book, that Oz was carrying a rifle that day, and that is the one issue where he & I disagree. There is NO EVIDENCE that Lee Oswald touched a rifle on 11/22/63. Jim Garrison & Earl Warren both made the same accusation, but Garrison was laughed out of court and Earl Warren..... well what can I say!

Otepka's query was addressed through DIck Bissell to James Angleton. I didn't know Angleton and RFK were close.

You have completely lost me there, old sport. I have no idea what you are trying to say.

The rest of your post is your usual wind and hooey.

You've been Looking in the mirror again, haven't you?

You do about as much real research on JFK as Ann Coulter does for her books.

This is just a form of name-calling, a poor substitute for evidence. I say again that -- like Dale Myers & all the rest -- you have no EVIDENCE to support your accusations against Lee Oswald.

[Len Colby]

The idea that somehow Oswald was not some kind of espionage agent is today, beyond the pale to contemplate. That is with the work of John Newman, John Armstrong and Philip Melanson, to me there should be no argument.

Are you really citing John "Harvey and Lee"/Two Oswalds Armstrong as a reliable source. Please link your CTKA essays referencing Newman's and Melanson's work on the subject. Simultaneously affirming that a) LHO was a CIA asset and had nothing to do with the assassination was little sense.

Edited October 16, 2010 by Len Colby

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Are you really citing John "Harvey and Lee"/Two Oswalds Armstrong as a reliable source. Please link your CTKA essays referencing Newman's and Melanson's work on the subject. Simultaneously affirming that a) LHO was a CIA asset and had nothing to do with the assassination was [did you mean MAKES?] little sense.

Len: I know your post is directed to Jim, but please allow me to interject. As I understand it, Jim Di Eugenio is not asserting that Lee Oswald had nothing to do with the assassination. He will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand Jim to be a Garrison acolyte, and it is no secret that Garrison formally accused Oz of the felony crime of conspiracy to murder JFK.

I am the one claiming that

A/ Oz was not an agent or spy for anyone,

& B/ That Oz had nothing whatsoever to do with the assassination.

[David Andrews]

Ray, how do we explain Oswald's whole career, from the Marine Corps through his death, except as that of a spook?

[Len Colby]

Ray, how do we explain Oswald's whole career, from the Marine Corps through his death, except as that of a spook?

??? You mean his string of menial jobs which barely allowed him to pay the rent?