Yes, Oswald was an Intelligence agent

[Sandy Larsen]

Oh I see. The FBI would ignore a warning from the CIA that the President was to be assassinated. And that would earn the FBI a larger operating budget. Dead president means more money for FBI. Yeah, that makes sense.

Not! The problem, of course, is that you are equating a threat to the President of the United States to ordinary every-day events. You believe that CIA and FBI officials wouldn't think about their careers when confronted with a death threat to the President, and instead would insist on following standard operating procedures.

LOL. No, that is just crazy talk.

Sandy,

Whatever it is, it isn't crazy. Have you read J. Edgar Hoover's testimony to the Warren Commission?

Hoover had to explain why the FBI failed to cooperate with the Secret Service in dealing with threats to JFK in Dallas. Hoover's explanation was that they had a big pile of threats to JFK on their desks, but they had to assess whether they were from screwballs or were legitimate.

Hoover said that the FBI finally decided that none -- literally none -- of the threats to JFK in Dallas were legitimate. And the FBI went through a lot of them.

So, the FBI dropped the ball.

Certainly I said nothing about J. Edgar Hoover getting JFK killed to get a bigger budget -- that was your sense of humor -- however, in J. Edgar Hoover's testimony to the Warren Commission he did -- in fact -- raise the topic of the FBI budget!

Did you know that?

In point of historical fact, the Warren Commission testimony of J. Edgar Hoover, Alan Belmont, James Rowley, and all the FBI men and all the Secret Service men who testified -- all claimed that they were following SOP.

You should read it sometime. It's not me who's talking crazy.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Paul,

If the CIA and FBI took actionable death threats to the U.S. President as cavalierly as what you describe, I don't believe any president would have survived his term.

Given that most president have survived their terms, I thinks it's obvious that you are wrong regarding this.

And so if General Walker was the brains behind the JFK assassination, the CIA and FBI would have acted on the warnings Ricard Case Nagell sent them, especially the CIA given that Nagell was one of their own and would have been trusted. Unless of course the CIA or FBI wanted to see the President dead. But even then, I doubt very much they would put their careers on the line by ignoring Nagell's warnings.

[Paul Trejo]

Paul,

If the CIA and FBI took actionable death threats to the U.S. President as cavalierly as what you describe, I don't believe any president would have survived his term.

Given that most president have survived their terms, I thinks it's obvious that you are wrong regarding this.

And so if General Walker was the brains behind the JFK assassination, the CIA and FBI would have acted on the warnings Ricard Case Nagell sent them, especially the CIA given that Nagell was one of their own and would have been trusted. Unless of course the CIA or FBI wanted to see the President dead. But even then, I doubt very much they would put their careers on the line by ignoring Nagell's warnings.

Sandy,

I've recently made a very careful study of the Washington DC witnesses for the Warren Commission. I include in that number the very high officials of the FBI and Secret Service, as well the FBI and Secret Service men who were in or near Dealey Plaza when JFK was murdered.

The central theme running throughout all of their testimony is this -- that the FBI failed the Secret Service "Protective Research Section" (PRS) with the Dallas trip.

The PRS has one and only one request of all agencies of Government at all levels, namely, to supply a list of dangerous people in every city in which the President will visit in the next few weeks.

That's it. That's all. That procedure had been in place for most of the 20th century, and it never, ever failed -- except in Dallas.

All of them admitted that. The Secret Service men were especially bitter about this. When it came to Dallas, the FBI openly and repeatedly told them -- "We have nobody in Dallas to report."

I realize that James Hosty gives a different story in his 1996 book, Assignment Oswald, but the fact is that even J. Edgar Hoover and Alan Belmont admitted that the FBI repeatedly told the Secret Service, "We have nobody in Dallas to report."

The trouble was that the PRS had come to depend on the FBI so much, and the FBI had never let the PRS down before -- never in their whole 20th century existence. Except in Dallas. Only Dallas. I myself came away with the belief that Dallas FBI James Hosty knew exactly what he was doing. He was supporting General Walker.

Hosty knew that Robert Alan Surrey was the author of the WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK handbills that had circulated not only in 11/22/1963, but also on 10/24/1963, when Adlai Stevenson was humiliated in Dallas. Hosty knew that because it was common knowledge. Even Bernard Weissman knew that, as he told the Warren Commission. (Read Robert Alan Surrey's WC testimony sometime.)

Also, Hosty's main duty in Dallas was to track the Radical Right in Dallas. This is what he himself said in chapter one of his book, Assignment Oswald (1996). Yet Hosty openly told the Secret Service that he had no idea who the handbill author was.

So -- there was nothing cavalier about the relationship between the FBI and the Secret Service or any other Government agency -- it worked like clockwork, as long as everybody followed SOP.

The real trouble came when people close to General Walker and Robert Alan Surrey -- like James Hosty -- refused to follow Government SOP. That's all right there in the Warren Commission testimonies.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited November 1, 2016 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Brancato]

Jim - is, or was there really an FBI division 5?

[Paul Brancato]

Is there any evidence that Hoover knew about LHO before the assassination?

Is there any evidence that Marvin Gheesling was following orders when he removed LHO from the FBI watch list?

Paul T - is it your contention that Hosty worked for Walker while in his official FBI capacity he was supposed to be watching him and others? Where does the blame fall, in your opinion, for leaving LHO in place without any suspicion, Hosty, or Gheesling, or both?

To turn this on its head a bit, if we assume LHO was innocent, and a patsy set up by someone, what difference does it make what Hosty or Gheesling did about LHO other than to possibly help set him up? In this scenario. Whatever either of them did or didn't do, it had the effect, intentional or not, of keeping him in place as a patsy, not as a marksman. I think that matters a lot.

[Paul Brancato]

I should add that I'm not absolving the CIA in regards to warnings about LHO in Dallas.

[Paul Trejo]

Is there any evidence that Hoover knew about LHO before the assassination?

Is there any evidence that Marvin Gheesling was following orders when he removed LHO from the FBI watch list?

Paul T - is it your contention that Hosty worked for Walker while in his official FBI capacity he was supposed to be watching him and others?

Where does the blame fall, in your opinion, for leaving LHO in place without any suspicion, Hosty, or Gheesling, or both?

To turn this on its head a bit, if we assume LHO was innocent, and a patsy set up by someone, what difference does it make what Hosty or Gheesling did about LHO other than to possibly help set him up? In this scenario. Whatever either of them did or didn't do, it had the effect, intentional or not, of keeping him in place as a patsy, not as a marksman. I think that matters a lot.

...I should add that I'm not absolving the CIA in regards to warnings about LHO in Dallas.

Paul B.,

By the numbers:

(1.0) Yes, there is plenty of evidence that Hoover knew about LHO before the assassination, and we can find that evidence in Hoover's WC testimony, as well as in Alan Belmont's testimony.

(1.1) Hoover had a big, fat file on LHO, and knew for a fact that LHO was not a Communist and was not an FPCC officer. This is what Hoover himself told the WC.

(1.2) Hoover and Belmont both reviewed the file on LHO made by FBI agent John Fain in 1962. When John Fain closed that FBI file, Hoover and Belmont both approved.

(2.0) The FBI orders to remove LHO from the FBI watch list in 1962 came from the top. Here is what FBI Assistant Director Alan Belmont himself said:

------ BEGIN EXTRACT OF ALAN BELMONT'S WC TESTIMONY -- May 6, 1964 --------

Mr. DULLES: ...With regard to the situation in Dallas...after the case was marked closed in Dallas...if you could clear that up for us I think it would be helpful.

Mr. BELMONT: The agent, Fain at the time, who handled the case, closed the case after two interviews with Oswald, arriving at the conclusion that the purpose of our investigation of Oswald which was to determine whether he had been given an assignment by Soviet intelligence, had been served. He closed the case, as he felt there was no further action to be taken. The purpose had been satisfied. Headquarters agreed...

------ END EXTRACT OF ALAN BELMONT'S WC TESTIMONY -- May 6, 1964 --------

(2.1) As for FBI agent Marvin Gheesling's removal of Oswald from the FLASH list in October 1963 -- that is indeed suspicious, but I will suspend judgment unless I can link Gheesling to Hosty or Walker more directly.

(2.2) The benign explanation is that Gheeling merely goofed by presuming that by going back to the USSR, that Oswald was now the CIA's problem.

(3.0) It is my current opinion that FBI agent James Hosty secretly worked for General Walker while he was an FBI agent in Dallas. My evidence comes from the contradictions between Hosty's book, Assignment Oswald (1996) and many WC witnesses, including Hoover and Belmont.

(3.1) The main core of that contradiction is that James Hosty kept blaming the FBI, the Secret Service, the US Government, the CIA -- for concealing Oswald's "secret" relationship with KGB assassin Valerie Kostikov. That is, actually, the key theme of his book.

(3.2) Yet only the insiders of the JFK assassination even knew about Valerie Kostikov -- as proved by Bill Simpich in his landmark study, State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City (2014). Even the CIA high-command didn't know who was trying to link Oswald with Kostikov. Well -- now we know -- James Hosty was one of those people.

(4.0) The blame falls on James Hosty, almost entirely, IMHO. Gheesling, IMHO, was just following orders from FBI headquarters, as Alan Belmont (and also J. Edgar Hoover) testified to the WC.

(5.0) IMHO, we cannot say that LHO was innocent, insofar as LHO played right into the hands of General Walker to paint himself Red in NOLA, and then to hand over his rifle to Gerry Patrick Hemming. LHO was fooled -- but he was running with the JFK Kill-Team. He had a few moments to name them to the world newspapers, but he chose to trust his accomplices to "come forward and give me legal assistance". He figured out way too late that he had played the fool and became their Patsy.

(6.0) Since LHO was inside the USA, the SOP duty fell on the FBI -- not the CIA -- to warn the Secret Service. That's my take on it.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited November 2, 2016 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Brancato]

i recall reading somewhere that Kostikov wasn't connected to the KBG assassinations at all. I cannot figure out where I read this, but the implication was that his scary bonafides were planted not real.

. Gheesling was ordered to remove Oswald from the flash list by headquarters. Who exactly? How is that different from the watch list? Very confusing indeed.

[Paul Trejo]

i recall reading somewhere that Kostikov wasn't connected to the KBG assassinations at all. I cannot figure out where I read this, but the implication was that his scary bonafides were planted not real.

. Gheesling was ordered to remove Oswald from the flash list by headquarters. Who exactly? How is that different from the watch list? Very confusing indeed.

Paul B.,

It doesn't really matter if Kostikov really was or wasn't connected to KGB assassinations -- what matters is that the CIA suspected it in 1963.

It also matters what Bill Simpich wrote in 2014. Simpich practically cracked the JFK case single-handedly. Whoever was trying to link LHO with Kostikov in Mexico City was part of the plot to frame LHO as a Communist Patsy.

Period.

Only the CIA gave a damn about Kostikov's identity, so this had to be an inside job of the CIA -- as Bill Simpich ably showed. However, the CIA high-command had no clue who had done this!

That is why the CIA started a Mole Hunt in 1963. Bill Simpich provides conclusive evidence that this is a historical fact.

It doesn't matter if Kostikov was a KGB assassin or the tooth fairy. What matters is that the CIA started a Mole-Hunt in September 1963 to try to learn who was trying to link Lee Harvey Oswald to Kostikov.

With his own book, Assignment Oswald (1996) we find one of the culprits -- FBI Agent James Hosty himself. The very theme of his book was to link LHO with Kostikov. Even in 1996 the JFK research community didn't get the connection. Only after Bill Simpich could all this become crystal clear.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited November 2, 2016 by Paul Trejo

[Jim Hargrove]

Jim - is, or was there really an FBI division 5?

Sure. It's mentioned twice on the Wanted Notice Card.

[Jim Hargrove]

At the very same time the FBI was taking “Lee Harvey Oswald” off the watch list, the CIA was giving “Lee Henry Oswald” (biographical data exactly matching LHO’s) a clean bill of political health in the infamous cable of 10/10/63 (see post #254 above). It was now no longer officially necessary for the FBI to monitor “Oswald’s” activities in Dallas. And the Secret Service would no longer be expected to investigate him prior to a presidential visit to Dallas.

Although “Lee Harvey Oswald” had been arrested for a supposedly violent confrontation in support of Fidel Castro in New Orleans just two months earlier, the entire National Security apparatus of our Federal government now seemed to just stop worrying about him. What happened next, of course, has been documented by scores of writers and filmmakers for more than half a century.

“Lee Harvey Oswald,” or more likely someone who looked like him, began making all kinds of appearances in and around Dallas. These appearances were clearly designed to attract attention. Here are just some:

“Oswald” visits the Sports Drome Rifle Range on Oct. 26, Nov. 9, Nov. 10, and again on Nov. 17, several times creating a scene and once shooting at another guy's target;

On Nov. 2 “Oswald” visits Morgan's Gun Shop in Fort Worth.

Also on Nov. 2 “Oswald” visits the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership where he test drives a car at wrecklessly high speeds saying he would soon come into enough money to buy a new car.

On Nov. 6 or 7 “Oswald” visits the Irving Furniture Mart for a gun part and is referred to the shop where Dial Ryder works.

On Nov. 15, “Oswald” goes to the Southland Hotel parking garage (Allright Parking Systems) and applies for a job and asks how high the Southland Building is and if it had a good view of downtown Dallas.

On Nov. 20 “Oswald” hitch-hikes on the R.L. Thornton Expressway while carrying a 4 foot long package wrapped in brown paper and introduces himself to Ralph Yates as “Lee Harvey Oswald,” discusses the President's visit, and asks to be dropped across the street from the Texas School Book Depository (where Russian-speaking “Lee Harvey Oswald” is already working).

The set-up of “Lee Harvey Oswald” was almost complete. How could this possibly have been accomplished if the FBI and the Secret Service hadn’t been put to sleep just a few weeks earlier?

[Paul Trejo]

Actually, Bill Simpich's landmark work, State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City (2014) explains why the CIA 201 file had named LHO as "Lee Henry Oswald."

It was part of a Mole-Hunt operation, attempting to find out which CIA rogue had impersonated LHO in Mexico City, calling from the Cuban Consulate telephone to the USSR Embassy (the most wire-tapped phone on earth at that time) and asking for suspected KGB assassin Valerie Kostikov.

Trying to smoke out this Mole, the CIA altered LHO's 201 file -- changing his photograph to this big Russian dude, and changing his middle name to "Henry," and other changes. Only the CIA top-level people knew about this.

After the JFK assassination, the low-level CIA staff started working with Lee Harvey Oswald's 201 file -- and started spreading these erroneous data about LHO -- without knowing it. That was the risk of any CIA Mole Hunt.

As for all those other so-called sightings of Oswald that Jim listed -- they were all cases of "mistaken identity." There are many, many more. It's John Armstrong's famous work of fiction to twist them all into a CIA plot.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited November 2, 2016 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Brancato]

Jim - thanks for the document. I wonder whether Mae Brussell had more than this? She mentioned Division 5 often.

Paul - it does matter who Kostikov was, because if he wasn't the scary dude he was portrayed as, it wouldn't matter what ties LHO had with him. Then it would be important to know who created that legend. I've tried finding out more but hit a brick wall. Does anyone have proof that he was, or wasn't KGB head of assassinations?

Paul - there is another way to read the CIA actions leading up to Nov 22, 1963. The effect of what Simpich refers to as the mole hunt, combined with Gheesling's removal of LHO, enabled the plotters to have Oswald in place at the TSBD for whatever purpose they had in mind, and regardless of whether he was an actual part of the plot, which as you know we disagree on. I've read Simpich, and read your interpretations of it many times as well. You overstate his case consistently, and seem to elevate his work to a status alone at the top of researchers who have studied Mexico City in detail, because your interpretation of his book dovetails with your personal theory. Before that book David Sánchez Morales was no where in your theory, and when it became obvious to you that leaving him out was a mistake, you then incorporated him into your theory as a 'rogue', using Simpich as proof that he couldn't possibly be working within some CIA chain of command, and completely and conveniently absolving Phillips, Shackley, Angleton, Helms, Dulles in the process. Since then you have been on a rampage against what you call the CIA did it researchers.

What the mole hunt definitely proves is that Angleton and Goodpasture were up to something. It does not prove, and I wish you and others would think about this more clearly, that the aforementioned CIA brass were in the dark about the Oswald impersonations. It remains only one possibility for the deliberate obfuscations of Angleton and Goodpasture that enabled the plot to move forward. There are others. I remain open to Simpich, but also think that Newman has done incredible work in this area, and he has a lot more of a resume than Simpich.

Jim DEugenio - you have many years of experience, and have studied Ann Goodpasture extensively. What is your reading of her actions after the Mexico City visits of whoever that was, Oswald or not? Did you ever dig into the Kostikov story?

Edited November 2, 2016 by Paul Brancato

[Jim Hargrove]

6 hours ago, Paul Trejo said:

Actually, Bill Simpich's landmark work, State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City (2014) explains why the CIA 201 file had named LHO as "Lee Henry Oswald."

It was part of a Mole-Hunt operation, attempting to find out which CIA rogue had impersonated LHO in Mexico City, calling from the Cuban Consulate telephone to the USSR Embassy (the most wire-tapped phone on earth at that time) and asking for suspected KGB assassin Valerie Kostikov.

Trying to smoke out this Mole, the CIA altered LHO's 201 file -- changing his photograph to this big Russian dude, and changing his middle name to "Henry," and other changes. Only the CIA top-level people knew about this.

After the JFK assassination, the low-level CIA staff started working with Lee Harvey Oswald's 201 file -- and started spreading these erroneous data about LHO -- without knowing it. That was the risk of any CIA Mole Hunt.

As for all those other so-called sightings of Oswald that Jim listed -- they were all cases of "mistaken identity." There are many, many more. It's John Armstrong's famous work of fiction to twist them all into a CIA plot.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

 

 

Are you really this uninformed about the history of Warren Commission criticism?

 

In 1967, Sylvia Meagher published Accessories After the Fact, still highly regarded today. Her chapter entitled “No Conspiracy?” covers most of the impersonations I listed above and a number of others. Here is page 359 from that chapter.

 

 

The 1973 Hollywood motion picture “Executive Action” featuring Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan presented a fictionalized account of these impersonations.

 

The impersonations in my list above have been a mainstay of WC criticism for more than half a century, but now you all are so desperate to discredit John Armstrong’s work that you pretend he invented all of them. How pitiful!

 

And by the way, play all the whack-a-mole games you want, the effect of that CIA cable was to give "Oswald" a clean bill of political health. Amazing, isn't it, that it happened at the exact same time the FBI cancelled the FLASH watch on Oswald.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Jim Hargrove

[Paul Brancato]

Good post Jim. It is amazing that CIA and FBI were on the same page leading up to Nov. 22. Conventional wisdom has, for decades, said that the intelligence agencies are so engaged in turf battles that they cannot coordinate. In reality the distance between Dulles and Hoover is a phone call. And if Hoover's agents, like Gheesling and Hosty and the SAC in New Orleans, whose name escapes me, do the incomprehensible things they did, it's Hoover, a hands on FBI director, that we should question. We know he was integral to the coverup, but want to absolve him for the actions of his agents. And I should add ex agents like Banister.

[Jim Hargrove]

                15 Facts Indicating “Lee Harvey Oswald” was an Intelligence Agent

 

1. CIA accountant James Wilcott said he made payments to an encrypted account--code name RX ZIM--for “Oswald or the Oswald Project.”

2. Antonio Veciana said he saw LHO meeting with CIA’s Maurice Bishop/David Atlee Phillips in Dallas in August 1963.

3. Robert Webster and LHO "defected" a few months apart in 1959, both tried to "defect" on a Saturday, both possessed "sensitive" information of possible value to the Russians, both were befriended by Marina Prusakova, and both returned to the United States in the spring of 1962.

4. Richard Sprague, Richard Schweiker, and CIA agents Donald Norton and Joseph Newbrough all said LHO was associated with the CIA. 

5. CIA employee Donald Deneslya said he read reports of a CIA agent who had worked at a radio factory in Minsk and returned to the US with a Russian wife and child.

6. Kenneth Porter, employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, left his family to marry (and no doubt monitor) Marina Oswald after LHO’s death.

7. George Joannides, case officer and paymaster for DRE (which LHO had attempted to infiltrate) was put in charge of lying to the HSCA and never told them of his relationship to DRE.  

8.  FBI took Oswald off the watch list at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, weeks after Oswald’s New Orleans arrest and less than two months before the assassination.

9.  Oswald’s lengthy “Lives of Russian Workers” essay reads like a pretty good intelligence report.

10. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots.

11. Oswald owned an expensive Minox spy camera, which the FBI tried to make disappear.

12. Even the official cover story of the radar operator near American U-2 planes defecting to Russia, saying he would give away all his secrets, and returning home without penalty smells like a spy story.

13. CIA Richard Case Nagell clearly knew about the plot to assassinate JFK and LHO’s relation to it, but the CIA ignored his warnings.

14.  LHO always seemed poor as a church mouse, until it was time to go “on assignment.”  For his Russian adventure, we’re to believe he saved all the money he needed for first class European hotels and private tour guides in Moscow from the non-convertible USMC script he saved.  In the summer of 1963, he once again seemed to have enough money to travel abroad to Communist nations.

15.  To this day, the CIA claims it never interacted with Oswald, that it didn’t even bother debriefing him after the “defection.”  What utter bs….

More to come ….