Was Oswald an Intelligence Agent?

[Larry Hancock]

Jon, Nagell was a CIC officer in the Army, that is not simply a possibility but a matter of record, disclosed extensively in his released filed. And actually Nagell talked very sparingly about his assignments and what he did say was after he had been badly handled by the American justice system...that's a story unto itself. Its impossible to understand his comments other than against a chronology of his entire story, which is why I said it was situational. To expand on that point, I don't recall him providing Dick any information at all in the areas you noted - and he never positioned Oswald as an agent of any sort, simply an individual he monitored in Japan - primarily due to Oswald's appearance and interest in the Soviet embassy there.

Actually what I intended to say was that Nagell had contact with CIA officers after his discharge, in no sense would he have been classified in an official agent relationship.

One thing that I do note is that your view of intelligence is a very structured one and I can understand that. However, we have learned through documented examples as well as statements from former CIA officers that vest pocket and off the books operations were often run by certain field personnel with little documentation and outside the normal reporting scheme. Soft files and other techniques were used to ensure that certain activities were specifically not reported to headquarters or in official files, a type of operational deniablity in and of itself. Indeed officers are on record as saying that they were ordered to obfuscate or literally lie in their official reports as a means of both deniablity and security; verbal directions in meetings were sometimes in direct contrast to what was being noted in written headquarters communication. I tried to capture a sense of that in my book Shadow Warfare, the best that I can offer you is that in certain instances real world CIA practices were very different not only from military intelligence practice but I suspect very different from their own official practices....and we have documented evidence of case after case in which real world practices were in contrast to CIA office security practices and indeed flew in the face of Office of Security recommendations and warnings.

[David Andrews]

[Nagell] never positioned Oswald as an agent of any sort, simply an individual he monitored in Japan - primarily due to Oswald's appearance and interest in the Soviet embassy there.

Isn't it Russell's thesis that Nagell ran Oswald in Japan in ops against a well-placed Japanese communist and against the Soviet official Eroshkin? I'm dashing this off, but my memory is that those involvements occur in Russell's second edition.

[Larry Hancock]

David, I don't have that edition handy, I do recall Nagell stating that he knew of Oswald and that he "monitored" his contacts in Japan, trying to find out what Oswald was really up to. I thought it was Nagell himself who talked about his own contact with the Soviets and Eroshkin. What Nagell might or might not have been doing with Eroshkin clearly would fall outside any normal CIC activity as far as I can see....but my memory is not at all good enough to discuss this without diving back into Russell's writing. ...it would also be very important to separate any thesis he came up with from specifically what Nagell told him about the subject.

I'll have to leave this to someone with the time to dig back into the details... Larry

[David Andrews]

Russell claims to have surprised and flustered Nagell with the guess that the Hidell alias - which Nagell claimed he and Oswald had invented together - was inspired by the South Korean HID intel service, for which he and Oswald ran an op, I believe against the Japanese communist I mentioned above.

The reason I go on so is that it would be good for Nagell to be scrutinized by people expert in covert ops. I would love to hear opinions on Russell's findings, and on the Reitzes-McAdams detractions available online.

[Tom Hume]

Maybe Richard Nagell initially plucked "HIDELL" right out of his own name. "Richard Case Nagell" can anagram to:

"A RCN GRACES 'A HIDELL'"

"'A HIDELL' GRACES A 'RCN'"

"11-22 ARRANGES 'A HIDEL'"

"A RCN SCAR, e.g. 'A HIDELL'"

"'CS' ARRANGE 'A HIDELL'. C"

See my post #24 on "The Oswald Code" thread for an explanation of "CS" - "Capitalistic Swine". And post #15 has my brief takes on many of "Hidell" aliases (lots of work yet to be done here).

And here's an interesting anagram of "A HIDELL" that I'm not sure I have posted before:

"'HD', A LIE. L"

"HD" here would stand for "Historic Diary"

Tom

(A=0)(B=1)(C=2)(D=3)(E=4)(F=5)(G=6)(H=7)(I=8)(J=9)(K=10)(L=11)(M=12)(N=13)(O=14)(P=15)(Q=16)(R=17)(S=18)(T=19)(U=20)(V=21)(W=22)(X=23)(Y=24)(Z=25)

Edited December 30, 2014 by Tom Hume

[Jon G. Tidd]

Larry Hancock @ post #136:

It would have been natural for Nagell as a CIC officer in Japan to have performed work involving Oswald. CIC would have had a natural interest in Oswald if he visited the Soviet embassy. ONI would have had a greater interest, I imagine. Nagell's work could have involved, for example, surreptitiously observing Oswald to ascertain the persons with whom Oswald had dealings. This work would be performed under cover, and Oswald would be unaware of it. The only reason I can imagine for Nagell to deal directly (face-to-face) with Oswald would be to interview him.

Intelligence work is carried out within a structure according to protocols. Assassination, government overthrow, warfare, and the like are not intelligence activities. Such activities have been carried out by the CIA, but they are not aimed at producing intelligence and are not properly part of the role of an intelligence service.

No intelligence activity is "off the books." It might be buried under deep cover, but there are always reports of debriefings and always compensation paid for information. Records exist. Illegitimate activities, illegal activities, might be "off the books." But these are not intel activities.

One might ask whether torture for the purpose of gaining information is intelligence work. The answer is no, because information so gathered is unreliable and generally cannot be corroborated. Carrots generally work far better than sticks in intelligence work, even though sticks (e.g., blackmail) are employed sometimes.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Jon G. Tidd

[Thomas Graves]

David, I don't have that edition handy, I do recall Nagell stating that he knew of Oswald and that he "monitored" his contacts in Japan, trying to find out what Oswald was really up to. I thought it was Nagell himself who talked about his own contact with the Soviets and Eroshkin. What Nagell might or might not have been doing with Eroshkin clearly would fall outside any normal CIC activity as far as I can see....but my memory is not at all good enough to discuss this without diving back into Russell's writing. ...it would also be very important to separate any thesis he came up with from specifically what Nagell told him about the subject.

I'll have to leave this to someone with the time to dig back into the details... Larry

From the EF's "History and Political Books" page, Larry Hancock: Someone Would Have Talked thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=693&page=18#entry293961

Comments on both John and Steve's posts.

First, John, I think you captured a very important point about Nagell. Nagell was the ultimate in focus - as we know from his Korean war and later Japan intel assignments, he was hugely singleminded and would do whatever it took to gain his goal regardless of personal risk. I think there is a very good case that he made exile introductions to both Marlowe and Oswald in order to gain access to the exiles and leverage with them. That's the only thing that explains the speed of his penetrations in New York, Miami and indeed New Orleans. If that meant helping them with their assassination concept, so be it. Russell speculates that Nagell actually picked up Marlowe from his LAPD contacts and gave him to the exiles; I concur and suspect he may have given them Oswald too. However when all that got very real in September and he couldn't break Oswald from them, that was another story.

Second, Steve, I also think it's safe to say that all of Nagell's tasks in Mexico were "counter intelligence", that brings him much more under the purvue of CI and CI/SIG (who were playing games with Oswald in Mexico City) much more than Plans/Ops with Fitzgerald. Problem is we (or I for sure) have almost no insight into how Angleton really operated, his reports, how he reached beyond Washington D.C. (we know he personally did black bag jobs and bugging in D.C. but surely he must have had agency assets elsewhere). I'd love to get educated on how Angleton really worked - I expect David Phillips could have told us. But if Nagell was being manipulated by somebody I myself would suspect the CI side of things vs. Fitzgerald.

-- Larry

[emphasis added by T Graves]

Didn't these exiles pretend to be pro-Castro (except, of course, to Silvia Odio; maybe they told Oswald they were trying to penetrate JURE for Castro)?

I wonder if Oswald thought that he (Oswald) was monitoring pro-Castro "subversives"?

That might explain why Nagell was unable to get Oswald to break away from them.

--Tommy

--------------------------------------------------------------------

PS "Don't worry, kid. We want ya to pretend to be pro-Castro and monitor these here two Cuban Communists for us. See, rumor is they wanna kill JFK from a buildin' in Chicago or Washington, D.C., or even Dallas. We're gonna get you a job at that buildin' so you can keep an eye on 'em. Don't you worry a bit, kid, jus' play along with 'em and keep reportin' to us-- we're gonna arrest 'em at the last minute and you're gonna be a gosh darn hero!"

Edited January 1, 2015 by Thomas Graves

[Larry Hancock]

Well the good news is that we know a great deal more about what was going on with Angleton, Phillips, Fitzgerald and virtually everything pertaining to Mexico City than I did when making those posts way back in 2004, much of it due to actual documents and most recently due to Bill Simpich's research.

What has not changed is my agreement with the suspicion that Oswald was not simply being either stubborn or naive in regard to breaking contact with the Cuban exiles and that Nagell himself had little idea of everything that was going on with and around Oswald. And as long as I'm commenting on this I should point out that Nagell independently commented on Oswald's recruitment by those false agents for something in the DC area in September. If was years later that Oswald's correspondence with SWP and CPUSA confirmed his intended move back to the East Coast in that time frame...a move that never happened because the plan apparently aborted....likely due to concerns over Nagell appearing on the scene in New Orleans.

[David Boylan]

Anyone have a copy of Nagell's address book?

[Jon G. Tidd]

According to what I've read, Nagell claimed to have foreknowledge of the assassination. II don't know how he made this claim or when he made it. If he made the claim after the assassination, the claim isn't worth anything. Likewise the claim of intersecting with Oswald in Japan is possibly true but lacks credence in my estimation.

I don't know why Nagell left the army in 1959. I've read he left the army as a second lieutenant. That's the lowest officer rank. Not especially distinguished for soldier who had been given a battlefield promotion to captain. I'm not alleging incompetence on Nagell's part, but it's pretty clear he was having difficulties.

The army awarded him a 50-percent disability pension when he left active duty. That's a big deal. It says he had some significant service-related problems.

Nagell appears to have struggled with a couple of civilian security jobs in the very early 1960s and was hospitalized after losing the second job for what I've read was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. It was some time after being discharged from the hospital that, according to Nagell, he began working for the CIA.

To put this latter claim in perspective, Nagell as a CIC officer in Japan might have crossed paths with CIA employees; perhaps have gotten to know one or more CIA employees on a friendly basis; perhaps have traded bits of information with CIA employees. So he could have left the army with some knowledge of how the CIA did business. Army intelligence is different from the CIA, but their areas of interest can and do overlap. For sure, however, few army intelligence officers have any occasion to deal with CIA employees. Such dealing occurs only as necessary.

Nagell fired a shot or shots into the ceiling of an El Paso bank. According to Nagell, from what I've read, he did this to take himself out of some plot involving Oswald and the JFK assassination. To me this story, this explanation, does not hold up. If Nagell's brain was working on all cylinders, and he wanted out of some operation, he could have exited in a low-key way. Getting sent to jail -- he did after all commit a federal crime by shooting into the ceiling of a federal reserve bank (if that's what the bank was) -- was a poor choice, a very poor choice. Not the sort of choice of a well-functioning mind.

Nagell seems to me, based on what I've read about him, to have led a disorganized life after leaving the army in 1959. It's difficult for me, therefore, to assign reality to any of the claims he made. I think an intelligence service would find far more reliable and predictable persons, and more useful persons, to recruit than Richard Case Nagell in the time period 1959-63.

[Malcolm Ward]

Who was Richard Case Nagell? A decorated Korean War veteran, Nagell was in a plane crash in 1954 which left him in a coma for weeks. Despite this, he was subsequently granted a Top Secret clearance and served for several years in CounterIntelligence in the Army. Was Nagell's later strange behavior a sign of brain damage or psychological difficulties, or was he "sheep dipped" for a role in undercover work?

The Nagell story is truly one of the weirdest in the JFK assassination literature, and critics of it point to Nagell's many inconsistencies, his failure to ever come up with the hidden-away evidence he claimed he had, and his tendency to "let out" information just at a time where he might have acquired it through public channels. But some of his knowledge remains unexplained. The FBI inquired of the CIA about seven names found in a notebook in Nagell's possession at the time of his arrest. A review determined that all of them were involved in intelligence, and the CIA wrote back to the FBI asking "how the above names came into the possession of Nagell." The question was never answered.

A perhaps fitting if tragic denouement to the story occurred when the Assassination Records Review Board decided to contact Nagell. The ARRB sent a registered letter on October 31, 1995. One day after the letter was mailed, Nagell was found dead in his apartment, victim of an apparent heart attack.

Source:

https://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Richard_Case_Nagell_-_The_Man_Who_Knew_Too_Much

[David Andrews]

According to what I've read, Nagell claimed to have foreknowledge of the assassination. II don't know how he made this claim or when he made it. If he made the claim after the assassination, the claim isn't worth anything. Likewise the claim of intersecting with Oswald in Japan is possibly true but lacks credence in my estimation.

I don't know why Nagell left the army in 1959. I've read he left the army as a second lieutenant. That's the lowest officer rank. Not especially distinguished for soldier who had been given a battlefield promotion to captain. I'm not alleging incompetence on Nagell's part, but it's pretty clear he was having difficulties.

The army awarded him a 50-percent disability pension when he left active duty. That's a big deal. It says he had some significant service-related problems.

Nagell appears to have struggled with a couple of civilian security jobs in the very early 1960s and was hospitalized after losing the second job for what I've read was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. It was some time after being discharged from the hospital that, according to Nagell, he began working for the CIA.

To put this latter claim in perspective, Nagell as a CIC officer in Japan might have crossed paths with CIA employees; perhaps have gotten to know one or more CIA employees on a friendly basis; perhaps have traded bits of information with CIA employees. So he could have left the army with some knowledge of how the CIA did business. Army intelligence is different from the CIA, but their areas of interest can and do overlap. For sure, however, few army intelligence officers have any occasion to deal with CIA employees. Such dealing occurs only as necessary.

Nagell fired a shot or shots into the ceiling of an El Paso bank. According to Nagell, from what I've read, he did this to take himself out of some plot involving Oswald and the JFK assassination. To me this story, this explanation, does not hold up. If Nagell's brain was working on all cylinders, and he wanted out of some operation, he could have exited in a low-key way. Getting sent to jail -- he did after all commit a federal crime by shooting into the ceiling of a federal reserve bank (if that's what the bank was) -- was a poor choice, a very poor choice. Not the sort of choice of a well-functioning mind.

Nagell seems to me, based on what I've read about him, to have led a disorganized life after leaving the army in 1959. It's difficult for me, therefore, to assign reality to any of the claims he made. I think an intelligence service would find far more reliable and predictable persons, and more useful persons, to recruit than Richard Case Nagell in the time period 1959-63.

Please read Dick Russell's second edition and Larry's collection of Nagell documents to get a more accurate purview.

Why did a discredited ex-con like RCN end up in East Germany after his release?

What research do you base your opinions on, if you haven't read the Russell book?

Edited January 2, 2015 by David Andrews

[Larry Hancock]

David, it appears Jon has made up his mind based on what he has already read - before going to the source material....I'm sorry to hear that. Jon, I think you have made some great points about the role of "intelligence", intelligence officer's jobs and how they formally handle them. Honestly I have to say that in regard to CIA operations (not intelligence and analysis), I don't think matters were nearly as structured nor do I think covert officers always operated in as "controlled" a fashion as you describe for military intelligence - or for that matter the CIA's own intelligence staff. But its taken me years and a lot of study to reach that conclusion.

[Douglas Caddy]

Dick Russell about Richard Case Nagell

[Jon G. Tidd]

David Andrews @ post #147:

Larry Hancock @ post #148:

Where am I wrong in my understanding of the verifiable facts about Nagell? Where am I wrong in my interpretation of such facts?

Larry, I've checked out some documents concerning Nagell that I understand you posted on line. They don't enlighten me as to Nagell beyond what I've read about him elsewhere. They do tell me Nagell came to the attention of the CIA, that he was involved in some lawsuit, that he suffered some sort of wound to the head in the late 1960s, that he claimed to have stashed documents in Switzerland. Nothing of particular interest I can see.

David, what is there in particular that I'm missing about Nagell, in terms of verifiable fact, that I'm missing because I haven't read Dick Russell's book on Nagell?

As I listen to the clip Douglas Caddy has provided at post #129, and listen for why Russell puts credence in what Nagell told him, I find three bases: [1] Nagell got himself arrested for shooting into a bank ceiling and spent time in prison. [2] After leaving prison Nagell wound up in East Germany, where he was held for 4(+) months. [3] Nagell told the cop who arrested him that he didn't intend to rob the bank and was glad not to be in Dallas. David and Larry, what if anything do these facts signify to you? Do these facts make you more inclined or less inclined to believe Nagell's story about working for the CIA and the KGB, about being assigned by the KGB to kill Oswald, about any other aspect the story Nagell told Russell?