Was Oswald Trained by the CIA?

[Guest Rich Pope]

Many people find it difficult to believe that Oswald was trained by the CIA.  I'm not talking about the silly two Oswald theory that claims two kids were trained from an extremely early age to be spies.  I'm referring to a United States Government Memorandum to Mr. James J. Rowley Chief, U.S. Secret Service from Mr. John McCone, Director, Central Intelligence Agency dated March 3, 1964

"Oswald subject was trained by this agency, under cover of Office of Naval Intelligence, for Soviet assignments.  During preliminary training, in 1957, the subject was active in aerial preliminary training, in 1957, the subject was active in aerial reconnaissance of mainland China and maintained a security clearance up to the "confidential" level.  His military records during this period are open to your agency and I have directed they be forwarded to the Commission.  Subject received additional indoctrination at our own Camp Peary site from September 8 to October 17, 1958, and participated in a few relatively minor assignments until arrangements were made for his entry into the Soviet Union in September 1959."

Oswald participated, along with other young men in a false defector program to the USSR.

[John Butler]

Three Oswalds?

Rich,

Your statement of “the silly two Oswald theory” gets even “sillier” if you believe this memo.

During the time mentioned in the memo when Oswald was at Camp Peary, September 6 to Oct.17, 1958 there were two other Oswalds out and about.

1. Lee Oswald- was at Atsugi, Japan during this period

2. Harvey Oswald-  beginning on September 14, 1958, Harvey was on the USS Skagit en route to Taiwan.  He was at Ping Tung, Taiwan for a short period of time.  From about October 6, 1958, he was stationed at Iwakuni, Japan for a short period of time.  Depending on how he returned to the US and appeared at Santa Ana, CA on October 29, 1958, he could have been on board a naval transport en route to Santa Ana on October 17, 1958.

3. The third Oswald, if this memo is true (most people think otherwise) was at Camp Peary, the CIA training institute.

I have a notion that there is a third Oswald, but have little evidence to support that notion.  I don’t consider the memo above factual.  It is an anonymous piece that is almost certainly a fraud.  I don’t consider it evidence for a third Oswald.

Early on, from 2004, there has been discussion of this memo.

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by John Butler

[Jim Hargrove]

John,

That document is a hoax.

[Guest Rich Pope]

3 hours ago, John Butler said:

Three Oswalds?

Rich,

Your statement of “the silly two Oswald theory” gets even “sillier” if you believe this memo.

During the time mentioned in the memo when Oswald was at Camp Peary, September 6 to Oct.17, 1958 there were two other Oswalds out and about.

1. Lee Oswald- was at Atsugi, Japan during this period

2. Harvey Oswald-  beginning on September 14, 1958, Harvey was on the USS Skagit en route to Taiwan.  He was at Ping Tung, Taiwan for a short period of time.  From about October 6, 1958, he was stationed at Iwakuni, Japan for a short period of time.  Depending on how he returned to the US and appeared at Santa Ana, CA on October 29, 1958, he could have been on board a naval transport en route to Santa Ana on October 17, 1958.

3. The third Oswald, if this memo is true (most people think otherwise) was at Camp Peary, the CIA training institute.

I have a notion that there is a third Oswald, but have little evidence to support that notion.  I don’t consider the memo above factual.  It is an anonymous piece that is almost certainly a fraud.  I don’t consider it evidence for a third Oswald.

Early on, from 2004, there has been discussion of this memo.

 

Good catch.  The Oswald Project was a CIA project where several young men used the same name.  Just FYI...The CIA opened a 201 file on Oswald when he began his false defection to the USSR.  I misspoke when I said the two Oswald theory was silly.  What I meant to focus on was the idea that the CIA recruited and trained very young kids for use in future operations.  I can't remember who, but I remember reading on one of the threads that the CIA recruited young kids which of course, we did not do nor have we EVER done it.  

Edited October 2, 2019 by Rich Pope

[Guest Rich Pope]

On 10/2/2019 at 9:26 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

John,

That document is a hoax.

So let me see if I understand this.  If someone produces a document, like John did, and you don't like the contents of the document, it's automatically a hoax?  How much experience do you have with government classified documents?

[Jim Hargrove]

You seriously think the Director of the CIA sent a memo to the Chief of the Secret Service stating that "Oswald subject was trained by this agency...."? 

Seriously?

Below is another thread from this forum discussing this memo.  Every single person who participated agreed it was a hoax.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/20024-supposed-cia-memo-lho-was-trained-by-this-agency/

[Jim Hargrove]

How 'bout some REAL evidence that "Oswald" was CIA?  I've been working on this list for several years.

20 Facts Indicating the Oswald Project Was Run by the CIA

1. CIA accountant James Wilcott testified that he made payments to an encrypted account for “Oswald or the Oswald Project.”  Contemporaneous HSCA notes indicate Wilcott told staffers, but wasn't allowed to say in Executive session, that the cryptonym for the CIA's "Oswald Project" was RX-ZIM.

2. 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.

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 "contact" 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 probably 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. For his achievements, Joannides was given a medal by the CIA.

9. 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.

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

11. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots.

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

13. 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.

14. CIA's Richard Case Nagell clearly knew about the plot to assassinate JFK and LHO’s relation to it, and he said that the CIA and the FBI ignored his warnings.

15. 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.

16. 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….

17. 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!

18. 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.”

19. CIA's Ann Egerter, who worked for J.J. Angleton's Counterintelligence Special Interest Group (CI/SIG), opened a "201" file on Oswald on December 9, 1960.  Egerter testified to the HSCA: "We were charged with the investigation of Agency personnel....”  When asked if the purpose was to "investigate Agency employees," she answered, "That is correct."  When asked, "Would there be any other reason for opening up a file?" she answered, "No, I can't think of one."

20. President Kennedy and the CIA clearly were at war with each other in the weeks immediately before his assassination, as evidenced by Arthur Krock's infamous defense of the Agency in the Oct. 3, 1963 New York Times. “Oswald” was the CIA’s pawn.

[John Butler]

Jim,

You might think about "How did Oswald know so many intelligence people if he wasn't connected to an intelligence agency like the CIA?"   Some where in my records I have a list of about 30 in the Marines, New Orleans, and Texas I put together just from memory.

[John Butler]

From an article by:

Barry Seal, the Dallas get-away plane, and the JFK assassination

By

Daniel Hopsicker

-

November 22, 2013

 

• David Atlee Phillips, Antonio Veciana, Lee Oswald and David Ferrie were seen on film by the deputy legal counsel of the HSCA at a training camp north of Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana?

• David Atlee Phillips was in charge of the CIA disinformation campaign against the Fair Play For Cuba Committee (Oswald’s one man committee) through the CIA’s George Joannides.

I have read recently about Vecianna's book in which he said that David Atlee Phillips' was his handler and also Oswald's handler.

More from the same article:

"From Researcher Jim DiEugenio:

Watergate “ Burglar” James McCord and David Atlee Phillips.

Interestingly, John Newman later revealed in Oswald and the CIA that the CIA had an anti-FPCC program ongoing at the time. It was run by Phillips and Hunt’s friend, James McCord.[29]"

Edited October 5, 2019 by John Butler

[John Butler]

A few points taken from:

Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History

Saturday, 29 July 2017 06:00

Written by Paul Bleau

Paul Bleau offers an exhaustive review of sixty-four individuals with whom Oswald came in contact, and who had either plausible, probable, or definite intelligence links –– something that Bob Baer seems almost entirely to have missed in the “Tracking Oswald” series.  Here are some of these:

1. In early 1956, Oswald joined Gerard Tujague’s shipping company. Tujague was also vice-president of the Friends of Democratic Cuba (FDC).

2. An Oswald also worked at J. R. Michels in the same building and business as Tujaques.

3. In a strange incident in 1961 while Oswald was in Russia, the FDC used Oswald’s name in an attempt to buy 10 Ford pick-up trucks at the Bolton Ford lot in New Orleans.

4. While in Atsugi, Japan, Oswald met up with Army Intel agent Richard Case Nagell for the first time. Nagell began a CIA career in 1955-56.

5. Friends of Democratic Cuba (FDC) which is believed to be a CIA and FBI front that was largely created by Guy Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith, and was also linked to Clay Shaw. In a strange incident in 1961 while Oswald was in Russia, the FDC used Oswald’s name in an attempt to buy 10 Ford pick-up trucks at the Bolton Ford lot in New Orleans.

6. An FBI memo states that Thornley and Oswald went to Mexico together.

7. And despite preliminary denials,Thornley eventually admitted links to David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Carlos Bringuier and Ed Butler –– all intelligence-connected persons of interest.

8. Gerry P. Hemming also spent some time in Atsugi. Though the CIA has denied any relationship with Hemming and Sturgis, this has been contradicted by files that show that Hemming frequently interacted with the CIA. Frank Sturgis’ later association with CIA’s E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, along with Cuban exiles, during the Watergate scandal, further contradicts this claim.

9. Researcher Mae Brussell argued that Oswald’s mission in Russia was to help the Russians bring down Gary Powers’ U2 flight over Russia and therefore sabotage Eisenhower’s attempt at rapprochement with the Russians at an upcoming summit meeting. Others have pointed to those who were convinced Oswald was a spy, including Marines Oswald served with, Gerry Patrick Hemming, Oswald’s mother and others

10. According to author and intelligence specialist John Newman, a CIA propaganda associate of David Phillips, William Kent, intimated to his daughter at a family Thanksgiving gathering: “Oswald was a useful idiot.” 

11. John Newman is one of the researchers who did the most work in analyzing intelligence files on Oswald, and has uncovered, along with Malcolm Blunt, content and patterns that can only be explained by Oswald being used for intel purposes. This includes the very late opening of a standard CIA 201 file that would have been normally immediately opened upon a defection.

12. A clue to Oswald’s real loyalties came during a televised interview he gave in August 1963 with a revealing Freudian slip he made when he said he was (while in Russia) “under the protection of the government,” which he quickly corrected –– but it was too late.   The “Hands Off Cuba” flyers that he distributed with the now infamous Camp Street address represented a major gaffe, as it placed him directly in the presence of his anti-Castro friends and blew his cover to people willing to investigate this like Jim Garrison and Senator Schweiker.

13. Oswald’s first Intel connection is one of the most important for confirming Schweiker’s assertion. David Ferrie plays an important role in Oswald’s fate during two phases of Oswald’s short life. In 1955, both Ferrie and Oswald were members of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol.

14. During the summer of 1963, Ferrie and Oswald link up once again at 544 Camp Street. This location was an address on some of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba literature. The building was a hub for right-wing, anti-Castro activities centered around the office of FBI- and CIA-connected Guy Banister, as well as intelligence-backed Cuban exiles. During this period, Ferrie was frequently seen in the building and elsewhere, in the company of Banister, CIA agent Clay Shaw, CIA-connected Sergio Arcacha Smith, Oswald and others of this ilk who became key suspects in the Garrison investigation, which was sabotaged by special interest groups. The HSCA and ARRB findings clearly confirm as much. Ferrie confessed a lot about the assassination to Garrison’s investigator Louis Ivon, but died mysteriously before he could be taken to trial.

15. In 1962, he served as a double agent in Mexico City. He hinted to a friend that he knew the CIA’s David Phillips who, as we will see, became a key suspect for many researchers with respect to the Oswald sheep-dipping operations. By October 1962, the Soviets advised him that the violent Cuban exile group Alpha 66 was plotting to assassinate Kennedy. They thought this would be blamed on them. So they hired him to investigate, and possibly abort the plot. His investigations allowed him to identify Arcacha Smith, Ferrie, Carlos Quiroga, Tony Cuesta and a Leopoldo as possible conspirators. In 1963, he tried to convince Oswald he was being set up to be the fall guy. He failed. Nagell eventually faked a bank robbery so as to be in jail when the assassination took place.   His interviews with researcher Dick Russell, his material links to Oswald when he was arrested, and his pre-assassination warnings go a long way in proving his credibility.

16. According to what Nagell told Russell, while Oswald was in Atsugi, he met with GRU agent Colonel Eroshkin: a CIA defection target.

17. Gerry P. Hemming claims that Oswald bumped into him at the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles and inquired about joining up with him. Hemming thought of him as a snitch and later met him at the base gate where he confronted him. He says he relayed this information to James Angleton. There is some corroboration of these meetings to be found in CIA files, and from Nelson Delgado, who confirmed that Oswald was at the Cuban consulate for discussions about their project and met a civilian for almost two hours at the base gate at the times Hemming states these took place.

18. HSCA Report Findings on the Issue of Oswald's Visa:  In an effort to resolve this issue, the committee reviewed classified information pertaining to Gregory Golub, who was the Soviet consul in Helsinki when Oswald was issued his tourist visa. This review revealed that, in addition to his consular activities, Golub was suspected of having been an officer of the Soviet KGB. Two American Embassy dispatches concerning Golub were of particular significance with regard to the time necessary for issuance of visas to Americans for travel into the Soviet Union.

19. According to John Newman, Oswald had a name he could contact while he was in Russia if he needed anything. Leo Setyaev is a name that appears in Oswald's address book, and, according to Marina, is who Oswald intended to call in 1961 when visiting the American embassy. She also stated that he had met Oswald in the Hotel Metropole in Moscow shortly after his arrival and had helped Oswald get on a Radio Moscow show, where he criticized the U.S. for a Russian audience. The FBI and CIA had files on Setyaev, who was quite possibly an informant for the CIA.

20. Marina’s uncle worked for the Russian version of the FBI. Her interactions with both Oswald and Webster and the ease by which she was allowed to leave Russia are among the reasons that some researchers believe Marina was intelligence-linked, and that Oswald’s and Webster’s suspected false defector roles are why she was made to cross paths with them in the first place.

These are just a few of the possible connections of an Oswald to the CIA.