Yes, Oswald was an Intelligence agent

[Al Fordiani]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements

18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device[ , ] a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry

shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or,

Seriously, Mr. Trejo,

I find many of the things that you write to be interesting.  But you do have a tendency to ignore inconvenient facts and questions and resort to debating tricks rather than just being straightforward.  Marina lied over and over; admit it.  You can pick and choose whether lying to one group was ok and lying to another was not if you so desire.  Clearly Marina was afraid.  But Mr. Hargrove is correct:  she lied and it is a crime to lie to the FBI.  It is not perjury, but it is still a crime.  

Your arguments would be much stronger if you were more straightforward.  Splitting the ridiculous hairs that you do doesn't strengthen your arguments. My $0.22

 

[Sandy Larsen]

10 hours ago, Al Fordiani said:

.... My $0.22

 

OMG, opinionation inflation! 

[Jim Hargrove]

Megathanks to Al Fordiani for putting the “Was Marina Honest?” debate out of its misery.

Let’s get back to work on "Lee Harvey Oswald's" relationship to the CIA.

Can anyone here shed light on the following document?  Does it offer a description of “LHO’s” CIA-sponsored adventure in the USSR?
 

 

[Jim Hargrove]

CIA agent George Joannides was given a medal for his work covering up Agency officials’ knowledge of “Lee Harvey Oswald.”

 

 

As Jefferson Morley writes at JFKFacts.org:

The language of the citation seems innocuous if you don’t know the details of Joannides’ undercover work.

Joannides’ only assignment in the “domestic field” in his 28 year career was his tenure as chief of the psychological warfare branch of the CIA’s Miami station in 1962-64

A declassified version of Joannides’ ‘Fitness Evaluation’ of July 31, 1963 shows he was praised for his handling of the Cuban Student Directorate. Within weeks of the evaluation, members of the group publicized the pro-Castro activities of Lee Harvey Oswald. After JFK was killed, Joannides’ Cuban agents published the first JFK conspiracy theory, claiming Oswald and Castro were the “presumed assassins.”

Fifteen years later, Joannides’ “diverse assignments of increasing responsibility” culminated in his assignment  in 1978 as CIA liaison to the HSCA. In this position, Joannides concealed from Blakey and the HSCA what he knew about the events of 1963.

In short,  Joannides was honored for concealing material facts from JFK investigators. This fact does not benefit the CIA but it does benefit the American public. It tells us the JFK assassination cover-up was officially sanctioned by the CIA.

For more from Mr. Morley, see:

http://jfkfacts.org/cia-officer-received-a-medal-for-his-role-in-jfk-cover-up/

[Paul Trejo]

On ‎11‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 9:18 AM, Al Fordiani said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements

18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device[ , ] a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry

shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or,

Seriously, Mr. Trejo,

I find many of the things that you write to be interesting.  But you do have a tendency to ignore inconvenient facts and questions and resort to debating tricks rather than just being straightforward.  Marina lied over and over; admit it.  You can pick and choose whether lying to one group was ok and lying to another was not if you so desire.  Clearly Marina was afraid.  But Mr. Hargrove is correct:  she lied and it is a crime to lie to the FBI.  It is not perjury, but it is still a crime.  

Your arguments would be much stronger if you were more straightforward.  Splitting the ridiculous hairs that you do doesn't strengthen your arguments. My $0.22

 

Al,

Your argumentation is one-sided.  I provided sworn testimony from Assistant FBI Director Alan Belmont that contradicts your citation.  You did not respond to Alan Belmont, Al, and you should have.

The main point, however, is whether Marina Oswald lied while under oath.

You know this, and Jim knows this.  Jim hopes past hope that the "Marina lied" debate is closed, because he has no answer to my question.

Here is the same question for you, Al.  Did Marina Oswald lie when under oath to the Warren Commission?  If you think she did, are you willing to post ONE SINGLE INCIDENT that you have in mind?   Jim and Sandy have been evading this question for a solid week now.  Will you?

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

Edited November 14, 2016 by Paul Trejo
typos

[Ray Mitcham]

Edited

 

Edited November 14, 2016 by Ray Mitcham

[James DiEugenio]

Do you believe Trejo? This is why I don't talk t him.

 

I guess he does not know about Marina's first interview with the Secret Service.

Edited November 14, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Jim Hargrove]

20 Facts Indicating “Lee Harvey Oswald” was a CIA Agent

(New entries in red)

1. CIA accountant James Wilcott said he made payments to an encrypted account 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. A 1978 CIA memo indicates that a CIA operations officer “had run an agent into the USSR, that man having met a Russian girl and eventually marrying her,” a case very similar to Oswald’s and clearly indicating that the Agency ran a “false defector” program in the 1950s.

4. 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.

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

6. 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.

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

8. 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.

9. For his achievements, Joannides was given a medal by the CIA.

10. 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.

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

12. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots.

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

14. 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.

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

16. 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.

17. 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….

18. After he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, bragging to U.S. embassy personnel in Moscow that he would tell the Russians everything he knew about U.S. military secrets, he returns to the U.S. without punishment and is then in 1963 given the OK to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union again!

19. Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by JFK, and the Warren Commission clearly wanted the truth hidden from the public to protect sources and methods of intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Earl Warren said, “Full disclosure was not possible for reasons of national security.”

20. President Kennedy and the CIA clearly were at war with each other in the weeks immediately before his assassination, and “Oswald” was the CIA’s pawn.

 

 

 

[Paul Trejo]

Jim,

I have already responded to your weak 15 points.  You are only repeating yourself now. 

I gather you have nothing further to say -- and you are backing down about accusing Marina Oswald of perjury.

So I will summarize:

1. Lee Harvey Oswald was a high-school dropout.
2. He could not drive a car.
3. His spelling was terrible.
4. He was still 19 when he entered the USSR.
5. When he exited the USSR at 22, he had trouble getting a job in the USA.
6. He quit his first job about three months.
7. He was fired from his second job after six months.
8. He befriended George DeMohrenschildt, who hated General Walker.
9. He tried to shoot General Walker.
10. He fled to New Orleans.
11. In New Orleans, he got a job at Reilly Coffee.
12. He was fired from this third job after three months.
13. By September 1963, Marina Oswald was eight months pregnant, no health insurance, and had not seen a doctor yet.
14. Marina was desperate, and called out to Ruth Paine for help.

What part of that sounds like a CIA agent to you, Jim?

Or to any reasonable person?

One might reasonably argue that LHO entered the USSR as part of an ONI "dangle" program, for beginner spies, as argued by former CIA Agent Victor Marchetti.  That's plausible, and it helps to explain LHO's obsession with spy toys and spy photographs and so on. 

But the rest of LHO's biography is the biography of a right-wing political mercenary who fell into the clutches of Guy Banister, a hard-drinking politician in New Orleans, with his hunchback minion, David Ferrie at his side.  General Walker would get his revenge on JFK and on LHO at one and the same time.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

Edited November 15, 2016 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Brancato]

Paul - bearing in mind how futile it is to argue with you, your insistence that someone show even one place where Marina lied to the WC is a cop out on your part. It's immaterial whether she was under oath or not. Come on, you imagine that all the testimony taken my the WC under oath was truthful? Do you allow yourself to decide what is truthful and what is not? Do you admit that she  changed her story and that commissioners were concerned about her veracity? It's a moot point Paul what you think is true or not. But you hang your hat on her testimony under oath and ignore the rest.

[Jim Hargrove]

1 hour ago, Paul Trejo said:

Jim,

I have already responded to your weak 15 points.  You are only repeating yourself now. 

I gather you have nothing further to say -- and you are backing down about accusing Marina Oswald of perjury.

 

If you will recall, Paul, I responded to your 15 inaccurate responses to my 15 points and then you ran away and started demanding all sorts of answers about Marina's truthiness or lack thereof.

This is a thread about "Lee Harvey Oswald" and the CIA.  Why don't you try answering the issues you keep dodging by trying to change the subject to Marina and General Walker. Here are your original responses.  My replies are in red.  Still waiting for your replies.

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

(My responses are in red.)

 

1. CIA accountant James Wilcott admitted that his opinion was based on rumors by field agents. James just took their word for it. He was not a field agent, and knew nothing other than what the field agents told him -- and they teased him.

 

Mr. Wilcott testified just the opposite to what you say above:

 

Mr. Preyer. That was shop talk, speculation, I gather;

people were saying that the CIA is somehow connected with it.

 

Mr. Wilcott. Well, I believed it to be a little more

than speculation, that the source at least of this kind of

talk was, I believe, to be something more serious than

speculation.

 

Mr. Preyer. It was your conclusion from that talk that

some of these people might have knowledge that he was a CIA

agent rather than that they were speculating about it?

 

Mr. Wilcott. Yes, sir.

 

Mr. Preyer. And you did mention the case officer who

came in and told you that the money he had drawn out a few

weeks earlier was drawn out for Oswald?

 

Mr. Wilcott. Yes, sir.

 

Mr. Preyer. He stated that as a fact and not that he

believed it was drawn out for Oswald or it could have been or

something like that?

 

Mr. Wilcott. It was stated as a fact -- Oswald or the

Oswald project.

 

2. Antonio Veciana did see LHO in a meeting with CIA’s Maurice Bishop/David Atlee Phillips in Dallas in August 1963 -- in the context of killing Fidel Castro. That's what Alpha-66 was set up to do. They had no other purpose. David Atlee Phillips describes this Kill-Fidel project and LHO's involvement in his 1988 manuscript, "The AMLASH Legacy."

 

Only you would believe anything Phillips had to say. Soon after the Phillips/Oswald meeting, the framing of the “Oswald” killed by Jack Ruby began in earnest in and around Dallas. The Phillips/Oswald meeting is further proof that Oswald was an agent.

 

3. Robert Webster and LHO were only two of scores of fake defectors to the USSR in 1959. This was revealed by former CIA Agent Victor Marchetti, who said it was an ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) "dangle" operation. It was for beginners. When LHO was recruited for this beginner's mission, he was still 19 years old (and a high-school dropout, and could not drive a car, and could hardly spell). LHO was being "tested."

 

I did a quick web search and found several CIA-affiliated people who were with the Agency by the age of 20. You should have no trouble doing the same thing. By your account David Atlee Phillips was impressed enough with “Oswald’s” test to meet with him in Dallas in 1963.

 

4. All of the HSCA leaders, including Richard Sprague, Richard Schweiker, and CIA agents Donald Norton and Joseph Newbrough had nothing but their opinions to offer. They were not allowed to see the thousands of JFK documents that the US Government kept secret in the 1970's. All they could do was guess. Their opinion was no more valid than the average Congressman – useless.

 

That’s your opinion. I believe the men listed above were far closer to the actual events being discussed here than you were.

 

5. Donald Deneslya read a lot of things. As Marchetti said, there were scores of fake defectors to the USSR in that program. It is certainly possible that many of them got married in Russia. They worked all over Russia. Donald made no positive identification.

 

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. Are you suggesting there was a different 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, worked for Collins Radio -- and some people try to force this into a CIA plot. Porter fell in love with Marina Oswald -- and some people try to make this into a CIA plot. It's naked fiction -- intended to sell books.

 

Sure… Here’s what one those books written to tell the truth says:

 

Collins Radio was located at 1200 North Alma Road in Richardson, Texas and held major communications contracts for the military and CIA, including the installation of communications towers in Vietnam. On November 1, 1963 the New York Times published a photo of a ship named the "Rex"and a story involving commandos that were sent ashore from the ship in Cuba on October 22-23, 1963. The Commandos were captured on a Cuban beach with high-powered sniper rifles and admitted they had been trained by the CIA to kill Cuban leaders. The "Rex" was leased to Collins Radio of Richardson, Texas. (Harvey and Lee, pp. 872-873.)

 

7. George Joannides, case officer and paymaster for DRE (which LHO had attempted to infiltrate) was hired by the CIA to lie to the HSCA. Big deal -- *everybody* in the US Government lied to the HSCA. This is because the HSCA was merely Congress, and it was a Presidential mandate by LBJ in 1964 (along with Earl Warren, J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles) that the true JFK Records be sealed for 75 years. No act of Congress could change that. The Cold War with the USSR was still raging.

 

Hey, you’re like the guy who gets pulled over for speeding and then tells the cop, “but everyone else was speeding too.” Do you expect that defense to work better here than in traffic court? The fact remains that the CIA put a fellow in charge of lying to the HSCA who had specialized knowledge—that he kept to himself—about “Lee Harvey Oswald.”

 

8. FBI took Oswald off the watch list in 1962, and so did the State Department. Hosty tried to put LHO back on the FBI watch list in early 1963, and failed. It was LHO himself who put himself back on in August 1963 in New Orleans in connection with the FPCC. But as Hoover and Belmont testified to the Warren Commission -- LHO never at any time showed any signs of political violence. Because of that crucial fact, the FBI took LHO off of their watch list in October. The CIA had nothing to do with it. Any shenannigans belonged to James Hosty alone.

 

The fact remains that the FBI and the CIA—at exactly the same time just weeks before the assassination—made clear efforts to diminish Federal monitoring of “Lee Harvey Oswald.” And you, apparently, find nothing suspicious about this.

 

9. Oswald’s lengthy “Lives of Russian Workers” essay is dry writing, and he probably didn't write it alone. He usually had at least one misspelled word for each sentence, and the spelling in this essay is very good -- so somebody else helped him. LHO was a CIA wannabe. He was trying like mad to get their attention -- but he just wasn't smart enough. Proof: LHO became a Patsy.

 

I agree someone helped him. After all, English wasn’t Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald’s primary language. But it is a fine report, and was surely of considerable interest for intelligence agencies at the time who wanted to learn more about the life of Russian workers.

 

10. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots because like a fool he included the word, "microdots" in his diary and personal papers. Nothing was found.

 

If memory serves, there were some individual letters cut out of some of “Oswald’s” writings. Perhaps to remove microdots? Your lack of suspicion about “Oswald” as an intelligence agent is stunning!

 

11. Oswald owned an expensive Minox spy camera; like many Private Detectives and other spy wannabes. The FBI mucked with all JFK evidence, starting on 11/22/1963, because of J. Edgar Hoover's order that everything must fit a "Lone Nut" scenario. This was for National Security purposes. Nobody denies that anymore.

 

But the fact remains that owning a “spy camera” is hardly an indication that you are not a spy, eh?

 

12. The official cover story of LHO was explained fully by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti. LHO was a trainee "dangle" in the USSR.

 

Amazing, then, that the CIA worked so hard to distance itself from him, and that David Atlee Phillips met with him a few weeks before the assassination, and that George Joannides, a CIA agent who should have had specialized knowledge about “Oswald,” was hired by the CIA to lie to the HSCA and hide his specialized knowledge of Oswald, and on and on.

 

13. CIA agent Richard Case Nagell was a double-agent and was neurotic as they come. Anything he said had to be taken with a grain of salt. Everybody who ever interviewed him admitted that -- even Dick Russell.

 

That’s all irrelevant. All you have to do was look at the verifiable evidence of his case.

14. LHO was always poor as a church mouse in the USA. In the USSR however, in addition to his low radio factory salary, he got an equal amount from the Red Cross -- so that his salary was the same as a manager's salary. Also, LHO was allowed to stay in a new apartment complex in Minsk, which was reserved for privileged people. This was one reason Marina fell in love with LHO. In the spring of 1962, the State Department called LHO's mother and demanded that she search for funds to pay LHO's way back to the USA. Marguerite Oswald made a sweeping fund raising tour to beg for money. She came up empty-handed. The State Department, out of compassion, loaned the cash to LHO. Back in the USA, LHO again became as poor as a church-mouse.

 

Wrong. LHO was staying at first class hotels on the way to Moscow and during his first days in Moscow. He also hired expensive private tourist guides at the very beginning of his stay.

 

15. It simply isn't the CIA standard operating procedure to bypass the State Department. LHO never defected. LHO never became a USSR citizen. Naturally, then, LHO could never join the KGB. The State Department grilled LHO for that, and gave him a clean bill of health. Also, when LHO returned to the USA, the FBI took charge of LHO, and debriefed LHO two times, and gave him a clean bill of health. You make it sound like the CIA had nothing better to do in the Cold War than to watch LHO. There were already enough people watching LHO. It's a fact.

 

You sure talk as if you know a lot about the CIA. Why didn’t you know about the “family jewels?”

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….

 

[Paul Trejo]

Jim,

OK, that's a lot of material to work with.  So, I'll just start with your statement that David Atlee Phillips was impressed with LHO. 

That in itself is no argument that LHO was a CIA agent.  Actually, the CIA had lots of flunkies and what they call "assets" among the Cuban Exile community, and these various Anticommunist training camps, like the one near Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, on land owned by Carlos Marcello, and managed by David Ferrie and Guy Banister.

There were lots of "assets" that the CIA hoped would be useful in killing Fidel Castro.  That does not make them CIA Agents.   That only makes them "mercenaries."   And actually, many did not get paid at all -- they were happy with room and board and a rifle.

That is not a CIA Agent.  That is an "asset."  They might get a little money here and there for some temporary job -- but they never got a salary.

Howard Hunt was a CIA Agent.  He owned a home and drove a nice car.  The same with David Morales.  The same with James Jesus Angleton.  The same with David Atlee Phillips.  These were not poverty-stricken mercenaries like Gerry Patrick Hemming, Loran Hall, Larry Howard or Lee Harvey Oswald.

This is perhaps the weakest point in the CIA-did-it arguments of Jim Garrison and Joan Mellen -- that they would confuse David Ferrie, Jack S. Martin, Fred Crisman and Tommy Beckham with CIA Agents.  They were no such thing.

It is true that David Atlee Phillips hoped that many of the mercenaries at 544 Camp Street would help him to assassinate Fidel Castro.   Phillips certainly wanted Alpha 66 and Antonio Veciana to help him assassinate Fidel Castro.  That was the context of the very real meeting of Phillips, Veciana and Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963.  I accept that as historical fact.

Yet that hardly makes Lee Harvey Oswald into a CIA Agent.  At the very most LHO was one more "asset" in a vast collection of assets.  In this case, Phillips hoped that LHO could sneak into Cuba through Mexico City, with his Fake Resume that "proved" he was an FPCC Officer.   Nobody at the Cuban or Soviet Consulates in Mexico City bought that silly Fake Resume (cf. The Lopez Report).   LHO failed in his mission to get into Havana.  LHO failed as an "asset."

Soon, LHO would become the Patsy for a very different plot.  The CIA wasn't watching because LHO failed in Mexico City, and LHO wasn't a CIA Agent anyway -- he was just one more asset.

Now, people like David Morales -- gone rogue -- did try to help Guy Banister frame LHO as a Communist there in Mexico City -- so that the CIA would link LHO with KGB assassin Valerie Kostikov.   James Hosty was aware of this action, as he accidentally reveals in his 1996 biography, Assignment Oswald.  But those were rogue activities.  The CIA was taken by surprise by this, as proved clearly by Bill Simpich in his great eBook, State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City (2014).

Bill Simpich's book alone shows that LHO was never a CIA Agent.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

Edited November 16, 2016 by Paul Trejo
Mellen

[Chris Newton]

2 minutes ago, Paul Trejo said:

Howard Hunt was a CIA Agent.

 

In a word: NO!

E. Howard Hunt was a CIA Officer.

Please stop making things up.

[Jim Hargrove]

21 hours ago, Paul Trejo said:

So I will summarize:

1. Lee Harvey Oswald was a high-school dropout.
2. He could not drive a car.
3. His spelling was terrible.
4. He was still 19 when he entered the USSR.
5. When he exited the USSR at 22, he had trouble getting a job in the USA.
6. He quit his first job about three months.
7. He was fired from his second job after six months.
8. He befriended George DeMohrenschildt, who hated General Walker.
9. He tried to shoot General Walker.
10. He fled to New Orleans.
11. In New Orleans, he got a job at Reilly Coffee.
12. He was fired from this third job after three months.
13. By September 1963, Marina Oswald was eight months pregnant, no health insurance, and had not seen a doctor yet.
14. Marina was desperate, and called out to Ruth Paine for help.

What part of that sounds like a CIA agent to you, Jim?

Or to any reasonable person?

Well, Paul, I don’t pretend to know everything about secret CIA operations at the height of the Cold War, and so I can only speculate based on the evidence available.  To me, though, the points you make above sound entirely consistent with someone posing as a disaffected American youth dissatisfied with our economic system trying to assimilate his disgruntled self into a Communist society.  He might easily accept his meager lifestyle between foreign assignments if, as Sandy Larsen suggested, a deferred payoff was promised after his spy work was completed.

As for his English grammar skills, they have always seemed consistent to me with someone who was as comfortable—or more so--speaking and writing Russian as English.  See all those Russian-language writings of his scattered around the WC volumes.   And see the considerable evidence, including the broad outlines of the Official Story®, suggesting he was just what he seemed to be--a CIA agent.

And by the way, the only real evidence that "Oswald" shot at General Walker was supplied by Marina and Ruth Paine, both highly suspect for most CTers--except you!  
 

Edited November 16, 2016 by Jim Hargrove

[Paul Trejo]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Well, Paul, I don’t pretend to know everything about secret CIA operations at the height of the Cold War, and so I can only speculate based on the evidence available.  To me, though, the points you make above sound entirely consistent with someone posing as a disaffected American youth dissatisfied with our economic system trying to assimilate his disgruntled self into a Communist society.  He might easily accept his meager lifestyle between foreign assignments if, as Sandy Larsen suggested, a deferred payoff was promised after his spy work was completed.

As for his English grammar skills, they have always seemed consistent to me with someone who was as comfortable—or more so--speaking and writing Russian as English.  See all those Russian-language writings of his scattered around the WC volumes.   And see the considerable evidence, including the broad outlines of the Official Story®, suggesting he was just what he seemed to be--a CIA agent.

And by the way, the only real evidence that "Oswald" shot at General Walker was supplied by Marina and Ruth Paine, both highly suspect for most CTers--except you!  
 

Jim,

The main thing to remember about CIA operations during the Cold War is that the FBI and the CIA spent much of their time trying to avoid stepping on each others' toes.  It's a legal question of jurisdiction.

There is a tacit mythology in CT literature that the FBI reports to the CIA, which is higher somehow.  That's  incorrect.  Both agencies fight crime.  But the FBI fights crime on an Interstate level (leaving State matters to the local police) while the CIA fights crime on the International level. 

They make a firm line to keep off each other's toes.  Mistakes are made.  The Cold War confused things very much.  The Communist threat was both International and Interstate.  This is what confused everybody.

The FBI kept a fat file on every Communist in the USA.  They would not share this with the CIA, however, except on a "need to know" basis.  The CIA kept fat files on Communists in foreign countries who were known to be violent.  Again, they would not share this with the FBI, except on a "need to know" basis.

There was a lot of bitterness between both agencies whenever a blunder was made -- lots of finger pointing.  This was also the case with Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination.  A scapegoat was urgently needed.

Now, as for Oswald being a Communist sympathizer -- that is what is most doubtful.  Certainly there were many disaffected Americans in the 1960's who sympathized with Communism, but they show a pattern -- they joined some group.

Lee Harvey Oswald never joined the Communist Party.  LHO never really joined the FPCC.  The FPCC told LHO not to start a chapter in New Orleans, but he started one anyway.  Then he lied about the membership.  That's not joining the group; that's a different operation.  Even J. Edgar Hoover knew that LHO was doing that for Guy Banister there at 544 Camp Street.

LHO never associated with Communists.  That's the key.  LHO never associated with real FPCC members.  Sure, LHO would use the post office to send them letters -- but he knew that would leave a paper-trail that the FBI could trace.  LHO deliberately tried to portray himself as Red in newspapers, radio and TV, although LHO never was truly Red a day in his life.

Now, if LHO was promised a payoff at the end of his mission, as Sandy suggested, then this is further proof that LHO wasn't a CIA Agent, but at most a mercenary. The most likely scenario for a payoff, anyway, would be one from Guy Banister after Fidel Castro was dead.  After all, that FPCC was at 544 Camp Street, where Banister's offices were.  Even J. Edgar Hoover knew that.  Since LHO wasn't really Red, then we must identify his group; the answer is clear -- the folks at 544 Camp Street -- the Radical Right. 

Again -- all this is inconsistent with CIA Agents, who already had nice salaries and middle-class values.  LHO lived like a mercenary. This is the case made by Dr. Jeff Caufield in his recent book, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: the Extensive New Evidence of a Radical Right Conspiracy (2015).

Now, just because Lee was smart enough to teach himself Russian, this doesn't make him a CIA Agent, either.  Lee had many talents -- but he just didn't have enough talent.  That was always his problem.
 
Finally, the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald shot at General Walker was sworn to by Marina Oswald, with sworn support from Ruth Paine, George De Mohrenschildt and Jeanne DeMohrenschildt.  I am not the only person who believes them -- there is also Dr. Jeff Caufield, as one can see in his recent book above.  Most CTers have been mistaken about this for 50 years.  But they never could tie up the loose ends.

Also, there is another piece of hard evidence showing LHO as the Walker shooter, which is this FRONTLINE video on YouTube, in which Volkmar Schmidt admits that he personally talked LHO into the shooting. 

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAB5C0A7nL4]

Start at minute 55:30 and watch for about two minutes to hear this confession by Volkmar Schmidt.  It is confirmed, by the way, in George De Mohrenschildt's manuscript, I'm a Patsy! I'm a Patsy! (1977).

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

Edited November 16, 2016 by Paul Trejo
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