Mexico City: A possible scenario of the 'little incident in Mexico City' as a counter-intelligence operation

[Anthony Mugan]

18 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Is there any evidence to suggest that the FPCC itself was tied to CIA, maybe not at first but later in its brief existence?

Hi Paul

Nothing I’m aware of...

Anthony

[Greg Doudna]

Anthony Mugan and Bill Simpich, I think I may have something. I have been reading a lot of documents to try to catch up with you on this. I erred; the voice of that Saturday Sept 28, 1963, 11:51 am Oswald/Cuban consulate call certainly is identified by the transcriber as the same voice as the Tue Oct 1 caller who self-identified as Oswald. BUT the Cuban consulate was closed so such a call cannot have come from the Cuban consulate. That led the Lopez report, John Newman, and all discussions to think it may have been an impersonator making that call on Saturday. But an impersonator is no more capable of having called from the Cuban consulate on that Saturday as the real Oswald or Silvia Duran. Consider the following better explanation: what is represented as that SATURDAY Sept 28 transcript actually happened on and is part of Friday's activity on Sept 27. That would remove all of the problems discussed at length in Newman and the Lopez report concerning that call being on Sat Sept 28. 

I have found a CIA document that shows the content of that phone call dated Fri Sept 27. 

The document: a rough draft (therefore from early prior to finished-copy and distributed versions of the same text), with many visible edits and corrections, of a text titled "Contacts between the Oswalds and Soviet citizens 13 June 1962 - 23 Nov". It is a timeline. According to the metadata it was filed in Oswald's file on 5/8/64. (Where was it held physically before then?). Here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96090#relPageId=19&tab=page. 

In that rough draft version, the critical portion transcript of the "Sat Sept 28" Oswald call is part of Fri Sept 27 activity. 

Here is the finished version of that document (the one that undoubtedly was put in Oswald's 201 file originally as the "marked card"). In this finished, edited version that portion of Fri Sept 27 transcript (in the rough draft) has now become a separate item at Sat Sept 28. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=109268#relPageId=2&tab=page.

The disrepancy is smoking-gun. There are only two possibilities: either the finished draft was correcting an earlier mistaken dating of an actual Sat Sept 28 phone intercept fragment in the rough draft version, or, the finished draft changed the correct date to a wrong date of Sat Sept 28. It is one or the other.

Since the Cuban consulate was not open Saturday; and Silvia Duran's testimony is adamant that she was not part of any Saturday phone call or further contact with Oswald after Friday; and since the content of that intercept makes no sense on Saturday (for all of the reasons brought out at length in Newman, Oswald and the CIA, chapter 18); but does make excellent sense on Friday; it is the rough draft, the earliest version, which has the date correct, and it is the finished version with the Saturday date which is incorrect. The finished draft which went into Oswald's file was a "marked card" with the erroneous Saturday date on that phone call.

And with this so much falls into place. All of the reasons why that Saturday call makes no sense on Saturday--seemingly so repetitious from what occurred Friday--as brought out by John Newman, are correct. But the conclusion drawn by Newman and the Lopez report et al. from that is the wrong one. It is not that an imposter Oswald (hired by CIA Mexico City?) started creating an Oswald phone call on Saturday and then on Tue Oct 1. No, it was all the same Oswald, Friday through Tuesday--only a misdating of a piece of a Friday intercept to Saturday, only the change in the date, was the specific creation of what you call a "marked card".     

When I found this at first I wondered if this was simply an early clerical mistake, but that did not seem right and then I wondered if this was somehow part of the LBJ/Hoover coverup of Cuban/Soviet contacts. But in light of the work each of you have done in further developing the marked card idea, was this "mistaken" dating of that portion of actual Friday Sept 27 intercept to Sat Sept 28--itself one more "marked card"--in which minor errors are planted in files and cables to check where they turn up on the other side and detect leaks. Anyone then who detected or got wind of a Sat Sept 28 phone call from inside the Cuban consulate could only have gotten it from the "marked card" from the US side, and could not have gotten it independently from the Cuban or the Soviet side, since though that Oswald call did happen, it did not happen on Saturday. 

I have not been able to find any original documents from the Tarasoff transcribers directly which would identify dates of phone calls in their original handiwork. All documents with transcripts of that phone call dated Saturday Sept 28 that I can find are secondary post-transcriber, to my knowledge. The Tarasoffs in their HSCA interview were not asked concerning this date issue and it did not come up in their testimony. 

The "marked card" of the intercept dated Sat Sept 28 is sent forth by CIA in this cable to the US ambassador to Mexico dated 16 Oct 1963: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40394#relPageId=65&tab=page, showing that the Sat Sept 28 date--the "marked card"--was being circulated by CIA that early.

With this, all argument for supposing more than one Oswald in these phone calls is gone. Since there is evidence Oswald was in Mexico City; in the Cuban consulate; independent accounts of Oswald's in-person visit to the Soviet embassy on Sat Sept 28 from Nechiporenko and Kostikov; and no reason to suppose more than one Oswald in the Oswald phone intercepts . . . it looks like it was Oswald and not CIA going to a lot of work to have someone else pretend to be Oswald. 

I conclude that the alleged Sat Sept 28 transcript is genuine intercept of a Silvia Duran and Oswald phone call from the Cuban embassy but that it actually occurred Fri Sept 27 (perhaps at 11:51 am as represented); there was only one Oswald in the Mexico City Oswald phone calls; the marked card was as simple as a change of a dating by one day to a date that was actually impossible (and therefore, if it turned up, could only have come from the marked card issuance); and all analyses of these Oswald Mexico City phone calls up to now have missed this.

On the voice identification and the characterization of Oswald's Russian as poor in those phone calls: Boris Tarasoff, the likely source of that, told HSCA he would not write that kind of commentary or description in his work product which was solely transcription (the only thing he would add is identities of speakers if he could recognize them from their voices). Furthermore Tarasoff told HSCA he was never asked later about those phone calls, after he turned in his work product. (Curiously the transcriber of the Oswald phone calls is identified as "Douglas L. Feinglass" in this Nov. 23, 1963 cable from Mexico City CIA to Director: https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/russholmes/104-10413/104-10413-10159/html/104-10413-10159_0003a.htm; alias for Tarasoff?) In the rough draft of "Contacts between the Oswalds and Soviet Citizens" linked above in which the "Sat Oct 28" Oswald phone call is dated on Fri Oct 27, that same draft has this: "Speaking in what the [blacked-out about the space of a long word or name] later termed 'terrible, hardly recognizable Russian"--indicating the characterization was not from the original work product, though it could come from some hearsay of what Tarasoff had said. Since Russian was a second language to Oswald and Oswald could be presumed to speak with an accent, poor in comparison to the native-Russian speakers otherwise in the Russian Embassy, that is about all that I see as necessary to read into that, not that it was not Oswald. On the Hoover claim to LBJ that the Mexico City Oswald's voice had been heard by FBI and they did not believe it was Oswald, the existence of any Mexico City Oswald tape flown in to Dallas in the early morning hours of Nov 23, 1963 is disputed, and in any case has never been confirmed or verified as heard by any named person of FBI. Since this was in the exact time of the very rapid decision at LBJ/Hoover level to kill the idea of claiming a Soviet or Cuban hand in Oswald's actions, perhaps that top-level decision may be the explanatory context for that claim of Hoover.

Although this has been lengthy, I believe it may be significant in making better sense of at least that detail of Mexico City. My work in contributing this is intended as a measure of respect for the quality and calibre of the work each of you have already done and which I hope you will continue. 

[Anthony Mugan]

Hi Greg

At the moment I’m more inclined to the view that the author of the 1964 chronology got muddled up. We know that Duran phoned the Russian embassy late on the 27th during ‘Oswsld’s’ third visit that day (probably 5pm to 6pm) to check his claim that the Russians had granted him a visa.

I think the 28th Sept date for the caller in broken Russian talking about his address seems fairly well established. Yes, the consulate was close and the broken Russian is to me the most significant issue as the real Oswald was fluent.

Feinglass is indeed a psyeudonym for Boris Tarasoff. If you have a look at his 1978 HSCA testimony it does seem to me to resolve the issue around the ‘commentary’ on the transcripts you highlight.

Certainly a very complex situation and I’m very open to the possibility the the real Oswald was or wasn’t physically in Mexico City.

Cheers

Anthony

[Greg Doudna]

Hi Anthony M.-- on the poor Russian spoken by the Oswald speaker in the Mexico City intercepts as reason for supposing an imposter pretending to be Oswald--

That poor Russian spoken by Oswald is consistent with Oswald intentionally speaking poor Russian in Russia, according to the research in this article, James Norwood, "Oswald's Proficiency in the Russian Language": https://www.harveyandlee.net/Russian.html. In short, Oswald was as you note very proficient in Russian, but could turn it on and off, and did, from proficient to poor. Since the evidence in this article is compelling that Oswald intentionally varied his skill level in Russian, and since the broken Russian spoken by the Oswald caller to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City agrees with Oswald's poor Russian remembered during his period in Minsk, it seems to me this is a full and sufficient explanation for why Oswald in the Mexico City intercepts to the Soviet embassy was heard speaking poor Russian.

I became friends with a Polish emigre woman in a language class in Portland, Oregon (the class was biblical Aramaic). She was poor but educated and hard-working and raising children. She told me how when she had applied for residency in the U.S. I believe as a refugee ca. mid-1980s she was interviewed rather carefully by US authorities. She told me her application had been delayed by this: in order to make her application go more smoothly (she told me), she had answered a question on a written form asking whether she knew English (or was it Russian?) as "no". In fact she was proficient in both English and Russian. I do not remember the details of how, but savvy US immigration officials somehow had tricked her into revealing that she did know English (or was it Russian?). That discovery caused great scrutiny of her case and delay, though eventually she was able to convince her US interrogators that she was otherwise acceptable, and she was granted US residency. She told me the woman officer who had interrogated her told her at the end of this process when approving her entry into the US: "well, either you are not a spy, or you are a very good one". 

The James Norwood article has this:

"[T]he evidence of [Oswald's] fluency in Russian before he left America in 1959 is contrary to his lack of facility in learning the language during his stay in Minsk [...] When researcher and Oswald biographer John Armstrong traveled to Argentina and spoke with Ana Zieger in October 1998, he was interviewing an eyewitness who had been in close contact with Oswald during the entire duration of his stay in Minsk from early 1960 through May of 1962. Ana recalled that in all that time, Oswald's spoken Russian in his get-togethers with her family was virtually negligable: 'Nobody in our family could say anything to him because he spoke Russian poorly' [...] Whereas George de Mohrenschildt recalled that Oswald 'preferred to speak Russian than English any time' during their conversations when he returned from the Soviet Union, it was exactly the opposite in Oswald's interactions with the Zieger family while he was residing in Minsk. Ana Zieger even asserted that 'he didn't speak any Russian' in her presence over the course of thirty months. But almost immediately upon his return to the United States in 1962, Peter Gregory assessed Oswald's proficiency in Russian at the level of a professional translator-interpreter.

"One of Oswald's friends in Minsk was a medical student named Ernst Titovets, who acknowledged in his 2013 book Oswald: Russian Episode that Oswald spoke in a 'faltering Russian'. In JFK studies, Titovets was a Johnny-come-lately [...] After his book publication, Titovets has attempted to discredit John Armstrong's research into the period in which Oswald was in residence in Minsk. Using sleight-of-hand, specious arguments, and hearsay testimony, Titovets attempts to name individuals who heard Oswald speaking competent Russian during his stay in Minsk. Undoubtedly, Oswald gave the appearance of attempting to learn the native language over the course of his two-and-a-half years in the Soviet Union. But nowhere does Titovets provide an example of Oswald's unsurpassed command of the Russian language, as attested by those in America who appeared before the Warren Commission. About the best testimonial to Oswald's language competency while in the Soviet Union was given by Belarusian President Shuskevich, Oswald's former tutor in Minsk, who described Oswald's spoken Russian as 'passable'. [...]

"[A]ccording to Norman Mailer, who was granted access to the KGB files, Titovets also recorded conversations in which Oswald was attempting to speak in Russian: 'His [Titovets'] Russian-speaking tapes were also studied [by the KGB] to explore any possibility that he [Oswald] was concealing a better knowledge of their language than he pretended to have.' In other words, the KGB was concerned about the main point raised in this essay, namely, Oswald's intention of 'concealing' to his hosts his fluency in Russian. [...] [T]here is nowhere in Titovets' writings an instance of a laudatory comment about Oswald's fluency in Russian to compare with the superlative tributes given by Oswald's acquaintances in the United States. The question is: Why? [...]

"The composite evidence points to Oswald disguising his fluency in Russian language during his stay in the Soviet Union, giving the outward appearance that he was struggling to learn the language. The body of evidence of Oswald's skills in Russian points to a disconnect between the period spent in the Soviet Union, where he seemed ignorant of the language, and the times before and after the trip when he spoke fluent Russian. The most obvious explanation for the contradiction is that he was intentionally concealing his Russian language skills from the Soviet authorities because he was an intelligence asset of the United States."

Therefore, the poor Russian spoken in the phone call to the Russian embassy in Mexico City in 1963 by an actually highly-fluent-Russian-speaker Oswald is in keeping with Oswald's past behavior and might even be anticipated in this circumstance. 

On a separate point of detail, a handwritten (though crossed-out) note from the Mary Ferrell site (https://www.maryferrell.org/archive/docs/050/50273/images/img_50273_5_300.png) (unfortunately I cannot reconstruct metadata) refers to the source of the "poor Russian" characterization of Oswald as two unnamed "Mexican monitors" (= the Tarasoffs?). The note reads (my transcription): "Kessler--30 Nov 76--2. Comment: Both the Mexican Monitors (according to [AREHART]--outside Staff Agent) said caller who called himself Oswald) had difficulty making himself understood--both (as I recall) in Spanish and in Russian."

The broken Russian can only be an argument for an Oswald impersonator if it can be excluded that Oswald would have motive or prior precedent to purposely "dumb down" his fluency in Russian, when speaking to Soviet authorities. I believe the above reasonably removes the basis for that argument. 

Edited July 4, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[Anthony Mugan]

Hi Greg.

I don’t want to get too drawn into pre-62 stuff as that’s not been a recent focus for me, but a few thoughts...

I think we can all agree that O’s proficiency in Russian followed a trajectory of roughly:

1957 - next to nothing

late 1959 - low to moderate.

Early 1961 - good enough to pass as someone from the Baltic states on first meeting Marina.

1963 (and so probably by mid ‘62) - good enough to be a translator, or recommended as such..

In that context it seems clear he must have had plenty of practice speaking Russian, which is not evenly remotely surprising.

Would Anna Ziegler have memories, 36-38 years later, of O struggling with Russian? Obviously...particularly in the 1960 time period but even later, perhaps if the conversation was more specialised.

If I understand it correctly Mr Ziegler’s (or Zigler? The spelling seems to vary...) was fluent in several languages and O socialised with several people who where language students. It hardly seems strange to me that they would like to practice their English with O, so I have no problem with O speaking in English quite a bit with this group. He obviously wouldn’t be doing that much at work or in other every day situations. That could get you in bother with the authorities, as your friend found out, and impractical as most people wouldn’t have much English.

Other than the 1959 hospital incident I’m not aware of Soviet concerns about deception on O’s part around language. His language skills were developing in 59 which might be the answer to that particular incident...struggling to understand but having a good guess at the right answer...although he might also have been worried about what the Soviets were going to do with him and trying to pick things up. It is, however, a one off event and in highly unusual circumstances.

In general I see no convincing evidence that O deliberately pretended to be less proficient in Russian than he was beyond the 1959 hospital event, which seems easily understood in prosaic terms. There is no evidence of Soviet concern around anything like that, for example from 1960-62. The very old memories described also make sense in the context of Oswald evolving proficiency and the way memories distort rapidly.

In one sense it is always possible that an expert can pretend to be less skilled. In terms of Mexico City we have to ask the question of why on earth would he do that? The reason would have to fit consistently and coherently into the wider context of  at least one of O’s life, CIA operations or the conspirators’ plan. I don’t currently see a scenario for O himself doing that which works across the full ‘warp and weft’ of the data...which is why I’ve gone for the impersonation scenario, at least for the phone calls, with very high confidence.
 

cheers

Anthony

[Greg Doudna]

Hi Anthony M-- the Mexico City phone intercepts are difficult to make sense of but several additional points. On whether Oswald would intentionally speak poor Russian, it is not disputed that that is possible, nor is it disputed that Oswald lived in a world of continual low-level small lies, still poorly-understood intelligence/operative activities, and that he was highly intelligent.

On claims that the Oswald speaker in Mexico City was reported also to lack proficiency in English--from the handwritten Kessler note I posted above in its last line--that can be dispensed with. That Kessler note comes from transcribers' description of the early Sept 27 intercepts of the Spanish speaker wanting to go to Odessa, which was identified without evidence as being Oswald but then that identification was abandoned and I believe most researchers no longer claim those as relevant to the Oswald intercepts. Oswald did not know Spanish, that is plain and attested, but there is no need to suppose an impersonator of Oswald there because that Spanish speaker has nothing in that intercept to identify him as Oswald. But the Spanish transcribers (not the Tarasoffs who dealt with Russian) of those intercepts, at a time when CIA was listing those intercepts with the Oswald ones, wrote that that Spanish speaker "spoke in broken Spanish and English rather than Russian". That is entirely where the Kessler note of hearsay applying that to Oswald comes from, and it has nothing in fact to do with anything relevant to Oswald (is that why someone has crossed out that handwritten note [see image above]--they realized this very point?)

Back again to the claim of Hoover that FBI agents had heard a voice on a tape of the Mexico City Oswald different from the real Oswald: just because Hoover said it does not make that true. That claim, which continues with considerable persistence, seems put to rest here in the Lopez report, especially pp. 2-3 here: https://www.historymatters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt_2003/html/LopezRpt_0011a.htm. I know Newman says FBI's later retraction of that claim is a coverup of an original truth spoken by Hoover, but there is no evidence supporting the alleged original truth of Hoover in the first place. Hosty, who had spoken to Oswald at the Dallas Police station and would be the obvious FBI agent to do such a voice comparison, never spoke of having personally heard a different voice on a tape of Oswald. Perhaps the Hoover claim of an impersonated voice and of having a photo of an impersonator should be put to rest as a canard. The photo was not Oswald (but there is no evidence the man in the photo claimed to be Oswald). The only basis for the claim that the voice in the tapes is not Oswald is the broken Russian, within the capabilities and m.o. of the real Oswald. That is a very slender thread upon which researchers have developed gigantic and elaborate theories of impersonators doubling and shadowing the real Oswald in Mexico City for which there is no actual evidence.

Then there is the question which in all of the discussions I do not think I have seen ever addressed: how would such an impersonation work exactly? Both Newman and Simpich (in the State Secret series) suppose Silvia Duran may have been impersonated too. Now there are two impersonators! But the transcribers recognized voices and were fooled so the Silvia Duran impersonator was someone who had such a naturally identical voice or was such a good ventriloquist to fool the transcribers! Or were the Tarasoffs, the transcribers, in on the plot too? But they show no sign of that. And if so, why go to all that work of having forged tapes and impersonators when it would be simpler to just bypass the middlemen and forge a transcript on paper directly and be done with it? Especially since CIA either destroyed or deep-sixed the tapes anyway so that nobody could listen to them. And no insider has informed or confessed to, or document come to light showing, any impersonation operation--it is all imagined and reconstructive on the part of researchers ... and ironically starting in its origins from researchers' belief that J Edgar Hoover (of all people) could not have been mistaken or dissembling when he originated the impersonator idea at a time when that was a convenient truth! Why the need to propose such improbable and complex Rube Goldberg explanations when Oswald himself on those Mexico City tapes is just plain simpler by many orders of magnitude?

Now on how to interpret the intercepts themselves--issues of timeline and correspondence to witness testimony--that remains with issues, and I may not have had that right above. You could be right that in the discrepancy between rough draft and finished version of the same document cited above, that the error was in the rough draft. I am still struggling with that. In the interests of contributing toward possible insights on this, I offer the following tentatively:

Whether the Cuban and Soviet consulates were open Saturday for phone calls seems doubtful though not quite certainly excluded. Apparently both had people working on Saturdays, it was just closed to the public. Silvia Duran absolutely was definite and convincing that she remembered three visits of Oswald, all on the same day, Friday Sept 27, with none later. Yet she also said she sometimes worked on Saturdays, and that the final visit of Oswald and his ability to get through the guard at the door happened when the consulate was closed (Friday after 2 pm.). Yet, Silvia Duran's testimony of the third visit and the story of the scene and argument and Azcue throwing Oswald out of the building happening around 5 pm is corroborated by the intercepts which date the final visit of Oswald on Friday to about that time. That is, Silvia Duran's memory and timeline holds up as credible (and more trustworthy than Azcue's, even though they are in basic agreement apart from Azcue's insistence that the Oswald he remembered in the building was not the Oswald in the photo that secretary Silvia Duran had verified matched the applicant named Oswald standing in front of her, which she testified she always did and did in that case--and that photo is known and it is Oswald). Yet Silvia Duran's clear memory of the timeline is dissonant from the intercept transcript having her assisting Oswald with a call to the Soviet embassy on Saturday. On the Soviet side, "Nechiporenko also denied strenuously, on videotape, that there could have been any phone calls into the Soviet Embassy on [Saturday] September 28; because the switchboard was closed" (https://whowhatwhy.org/2015/11/25/the-cia-mafia-mexico-and-oswald-part-4/). [Unfortunately I am unable to find that video on Utube or verify it; and I have ordered but have not yet received Nechiporenko's book to see if this detail is discussed there.] As always, witness testimonies years after the event can be fallible. But documents also can be fallible. Yet one or the other of those lines of explanation makes much better sense than supposing neither of those can be fallible, therefore impersonators.

With that in mind, the record shows a 4:05 pm phone call on Sept 27 from Silvia Duran to the Soviet embassy, corresponding to Silvia's account that Oswald had returned to the Cuban consulate a third time that day. Oswald had returned and (falsely) claimed the Soviets had given his visa and there was no problem, so the Cubans should give him his transit visa now. Silva calls the Soviet embassy to verify this somewhat questionable claim. Silvia asks Oswald who he talked to exactly at the Soviet Embassy who said that. Oswald says he does not remember. Silvia calls and explains to the Soviet Embassy and asks them to find out who Oswald had talked to, and to call her back. At 4:31 pm a Soviet official returns the call to Silvia and asks, "Is he still there?" Silvia says yes. The official and Silvia discuss and concur that neither embassy can issue visas without sending to their respective governments for approval, nor can they write letters of recommendation for Oswald to their governments since neither of them know him well enough to do that. Silvia Duran in her HSCA interview says the first red flag about this guy was he had all that seeming paper evidence of Communist credentials combined with being in a hurry, not like real party members behaved going to Cuba.

The claimed Sat. Sept 28 intercept transcript makes the best sense situated immediately following the 4:31 pm Sept 27 transcript, instead of on Saturday. This is just after the known transcript of Silvia Duran talking to the Soviet official about the Oswald case, and before the celebrated argument scene in which Azcue comes out and orders a distraught and shouting and crying Oswald to leave the building.

In this setting, after Silvia Duran finishes speaking to the Soviet official (presumably out of Oswald's hearing, though Oswald is present), Silvia then puts Oswald on the phone with the Soviet official. Oswald is on the spot--his lie has been caught. What is he going to say? 

/Please see the Spanish transcription/ WO [Woman Outside the Soviet Emb.] while waiting speaks in English to someone in the background: He said wait ... Do you speak Russian? Yes. Why don't you talk to him? ... I don't know ... /MO [Man Outside Soviet Emb] takes the phone and says in broken Russian I was in your Embassy and spoke to your consul. Just a minute. MI [Man Inside Soviet Emb.] takes the phone and asks MO in English what does he want?

Interrupt for comment here: this is not Tarasoff transcription. Tarasoff transcribed only Russian (also, done by his wife, English), but not Spanish. Spanish transcription was done first by Spanish transcribers, who would prepare their transcripts of that, then turn the tapes over to Tarasoff to transcribe the Russian parts, as explained in the Tarasoffs' HSCA testimony. The above, even though it is followed by Tarasoff transcription, combines the Spanish transcribers' work with Tarasoff's work on the Russian. Could these multiple transcribers going over the same sections of tape be a possible source of timeline reconstruction error? In any case, Tarasoff's transcription follows here:

 MO: /in Russian/ Please speak Russian.

Comment: not to be read as the speaker has difficulty with English--rather, as Oswald scrambles with his wits to deal with having his lie found out, seeks to have Silvia Duran, who is standing right there, understand less of his conversation with the Soviet official. (My reading of this.)

MI: What else do you want?

Comment: though we can only see the words and cannot hear the tone, sounds like a Soviet official speaking to a "problem case".

MO: I was just now at your Embassy and they took my address.

MI. I know that.

MO. /speaks terrible, hardly recognizable Russian/ I did not know it then. I went to the Cuban Embassy to ask them for my address, because they have it.

Comment: This is Oswald's extemporaneous alibi! This is his explanation for why he went back to the Cuban Embassy after the Soviets had actually turned him down earlier than afternoon! Oswald is just making it up--that that was his reason for returning to the Cuban consulate. Oswald is on the spot--he is making up this reason. 

MI: Why don't you come again and leave your address with us, it not far from the Cuban Embassy.

MO: Well, I'll be there right away.

Comment: Oswald thinks "whew, that went better than it could have". He avoided being asked directly why he had lied, even though that was clear though unspoken. This is followed by the scene described by Silvia Duran and Azcue of Oswald's meltdown and pleading for the transit visa and ejection from the building. As I interpret it, Oswald did not go to the Soviet Embassy "with his address" that evening, but fulfilled his "I'll be there right away" the next morning, Saturday morning, with his visit in person there. Silvia Duran was asked by HSCA if she remembered Oswald having any issue over being asked for an address and she said no; that is well explained by this exchange having occurred in Russian which Silvia did not understand.

This situating of the time of that transcript not only fits the context perfectly but is in exact agreement with the arguably earliest internal CIA situating of that transcript, on Friday in this setting. Why should such a manifestly sensible setting for this exchange which also has documentary support for being CIA's earliest written setting for this exchange, be assumed wrong, a non-sensible and improbable Saturday morning dating assumed, and since that creates many problems, propose Rube Goldberg impersonator hypotheses to solve the problems created by rejecting the sensible dating of this in the earliest CIA timeline? 

Well, the reason of course is that CIA documents thereafter did put it on Saturday. The problem is that makes no sense (on Saturday). But I suggest the solution to problems of this nature is either mistake in witness testimony or mistake in documents (or their interpretation), and not theories of impersonation which have no other evidence.

The figure in the Cuban and Soviet consulates behaves like Oswald; Silvia Duran matched the person she encountered with a photo of Oswald in Oswald's visa application; Oswald was seen on his way to Mexico City and talked about it on his return; Oswald wrote about his Mexico City trip to the Soviet embassy in D.C.; Azcue's claim that the person at the Cuban consulate was not the person of the photo turned in to his office with Oswald's visa application need require no more complicated explanation than that he simply erred in his perception and memory. 

I do not know the mechanism of how an Oswald intercept which actually occurred Friday could become changed to Saturday but I withdraw or downgrade the "marked card" idea to no better than one speculative possibility. I can see no meaningful or sinister advantage to moving that really innocuous exchange from Friday to Saturday, and in default of knowing exactly what happened, consider the leading possibility to be simple confusion or error.

Oswald as an operative remains a puzzle. His behavior in Mexico City--the meltdown on Friday afternoon, the sobbing and pulling out his pistol in the Soviet embassy on Saturday--does have the appearance of a provocation--or was Oswald actually that desperate to get into Cuba immediately instead of returning to the US for some reason? If Oswald was an operative, why is he so poor? And for who? And does he tell Marina? But if he is not, that does not explain what he was doing trying to infiltrate Bringueir, or associating with Bannister. But of all the uncertainties regarding Oswald there is one thing I personally am convinced is certain: he was no right-winger. Ideologically he was left-anarchist or democratic socialist, supportive of the civil rights movement. That was not an elaborate charade; that was the real Oswald.

I do not know whether any researchers have directly explored this, but did the original Hoover-LBJ idea of pinning the JFK assassination on Oswald alone, formed that first weekend, in its earliest stage involve a brief attempt to deny or cover up the existence of an Oswald Mexico City trip altogether? And when it soon became clear that was untenable, then to at least deny that the Soviet and Cuban embassy contacts were done by Oswald and float the idea of an imposter? A final question: when Hoover told LBJ that it was an impersonator rather than Oswald who had been in contact with the Soviet Embassy immediately prior to the assassination of JFK, did Hoover--Hoover who Hale Boggs, Jr. famously said "lied his eyes out" to the Warren Commission--did Hoover believe what he was telling LBJ? In light of LBJ's private "nuclear blackmail" pressure on Warren Commission appointees concerning Mexico City Soviet embassy visits, did LBJ believe that it had been an imposter? But it was a convenient truth. The pinning of the whole thing on the dead Oswald prevented investigation which, if it had run its course, probably would have ended up with some form of false-flag hit of JFK blamed on Castro, done by quasi-independent actors with nod and wink and permission and encouragement and sponsorship by factions of the power structure which had decided JFK needed to go but would keep their own personal fingerprints off the deed. Nobody much knew how it happened exactly, but it was done. "The day they blew out the brains of the king/ Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing, It happened so quickly, so quick by surprise/ Right there in front of everyone's eyes"--Bob Dylan, Murder Most Foul.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[Anthony Mugan]

Hi Greg

If you don't mind I'd prefer not to go too far away from the focus on the original paper at the moment. You raise many interesting topics but they are slightly outside my main focus at the moment and in many cases open to various interpretations...we could end up producing a small (or, well, actually quite a large) book on all that. One very specific point. My take on the sequence of events after 22/11 is basically that apparent links to Castro and to the Russians scared the administration into closing down a serious investigation very quickly, and in the process missing the links to the anti-Castro groups. The exact motivations behind all that are open to debate, of course, but the sequence you alude to, with Hoover initially discussing what seems to be the actual events in Mexico City (more or less...bear in mind their understanding of the facts was evolving in real time and was not the same as we now have from our perspective). An example within that is the voice on the tapes (at least one copy of which we now know existed into 1964) and then that all very quickly reversing direction and that all seems to be part of that process. That could all be entirely honorable, or perhaps not for some individuals - that is one of the big open questions.

In terms of the telephone calls I suppose it boils down to the relative weight we place on the primary documentary evidence (or physical evidence in other areas where that exists) which I tend to give a high weighting to and only go away from that if I'm really forced to by other evidence. I suspect we may just have to cordially agree to disagree on the balance of evidence on that specific question.

The main thing I'm trying to outline in the paper is a scenario for why the 10th Oct memos were produced which works 'end to end' with the documentary evidence. That takes to me to suggest a link to a CI operation around concern of a 'high level of penetration' of the FBI that was occurring concurrently in Mexico City and it appears to be around the apparent test of LAROB by Bakulin back in July 1963. That may be entirely separate from the assassination conspiracy or it may not be. That's really the key proposal I'm putting forward.

 

Regards

Anthony

[David Josephs]

What a spectacularly rich thread we have here...  and I do not wish to derail it....  I simply would like to add that placing our Oswald in Mexico is akin to placing him in the Sniper's Nest....
Makes for a good legend and conviction, but is simply not the fact.

Thank you all for voicing yourselves on both sides of the discussion.  While I choose not to comment on the details of the mole-hunt or any other operation not specific to connecting Oswald to Cuba/Russia...  there are a few key points along the way which convince me Oswald was nowhere near Mexico...  Hoover himself wrote it in a note:

As you may know, I've tried to stay away from this area since so many are doing such great work following the leads.
I've concentrated on the constructed trips to and from... and the mountains of FBI evidence trying to convince you he took the trip and was actually there... 
when there simply is no evidence beyond the transcripts, the listened to tape, and the physical evidence created by an FBI asset at the GOBERNACION.

In the discussions above I see little about Phillip's arrival on the 8th of Oct after having spent time at JMWAVE.
Quite a lot happens between Oct 8 and the 15th....  with Phillips and Goodpasture in the middle of it.

Here is the Oct 8th Summary report for LIENVOY.  I added some parts of the report which explain what they did with LIENVOY info and did you mention LEVISTER?
I'd have to go back and look again....   Those dates for LEVISTER - CIA HQ officer is at the Mexico City CIA station at the perfect time to discuss the writing of a report "as an example".

The numerous calls on the 27th and 28th of Sept are nowhere to be found.

The calls of Sept 27 and 28 are not reported on any summary of activity report from Mexico city
The October Summary reports of surveillance do not mention Oswald despite previous months mentioning Americans specifically.
The Oct/Nov summary reports on the taps on Russian consulate officer's homes turns up not one conversation about this mysterious AMERICAN visitor 
 trying to get into a compound closed on Saturdays.
The Nov reports do not come out until January 64

The Houston evidence is TWIFORD and the Houston bus terminal ticket salesman... the problem here, like at every stop along the way... instead of buying the cheaper 2-3- or 4-part ticket to Mexico and Back... a ticket is supposedly purchased at every single stop... without record.

The initial FBI investigation turns up only 2 buses from New Orleans to Mexico City and neither gets him to the destination when he needs to...
So the go back to Continental and find a bus to HOUSTON which can get him there for the TWIFORD 10pm call ....  cause it's the only one... not cause Oswald was found to be on it.

Then there is the entire episode in Austin and the handful of witnesses who claim Oswald was there...

"To avoid corroborating her story we find the FBI once again trying to discredit witnesses.  While they all give Mrs. Dannelly (and Jesse Skrivanek) the benefit of the doubt, they determine that two more people could not be right.  One of these witnesses, a waitress who claims to have served Oswald stated she has Wednesdays off.  Sept 25^th was a Wednesday and the day Mrs. Dannelly sees Oswald, so by process of elimination Mrs. Norman could not have seen Oswald.    When shown a photo of HARVEY, both Ronnie Dugger and Mrs. Stella Norman claim the person they met was “identical with Oswald”.   "   https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-evidence-is-the-conspiracy-index   

(There are a number of chapters...  and initially I felt LEE may have come down from Dallas on his way to Mexico... but I do not find that the case.  In fact, it is possible that no Oswald existed in this story at all...  consider those who claim to have SEEN him and their validity...  MANN at State was in bed with and pushing the CASTRO angle from the start with Phillips and the CIA.... whereas the I&NS/FBI were not so easily convinced.

All I am getting at here is that the time has come to stop even pretending that the man Ruby killed went to Mexico in Sept/Oct

Case in point....  When the alphabetized FM-11 is provided by our FBI man OCHOA...  Mr. H.O. LEE is mysteriously set under "O" and not "L"
(We can also prove Oswald was not at the Mexican Consulate with GAUDET on Sept 17)

I will continue to read with great interest as y'all unravel what was happening down there...  I spent a few years and wandered thru thousands of docs seeing the same thing... the FBI/CIA finding virtually every single person via the records available... and many of them tell easily proven falsehoods about the trip and meeting this man.... yet not Oswald.

For a second take Oswald completely out of the picture... other than in the knowledge of David Atlee Phillips... (Teresa Proenza even claims that Oswald bumps into her and talks to her before anyone!)  Making a phone call appear it is coming from one place when it comes from another... intelligence agency capability you think?

What if the calls where all faked from JMWAVE... I don't believe DURAN ever listened to her voice on those tapes... right?
LITAMIL-9 and -7 both support there not being any Oswald in Mexico - at ANY time....

And then of course.... where was E H Hunt at the time? and what do you supposed he was doing?

[David Josephs]

For the entire month of Nov the FBI looked for any sign of Oswald. (see composite of reports at bottom of post)

And when a list of FBI reports is compiled... these PECK & CRAWFORD reports are not listed...

Seems to me the FBI is deferring to the CIA transcripts as the only evidence of Oswald's trip... while hiding the facts as they learned them.

So why perform this CI activity the same weekend Oswald is with Cubans in Dallas, is seen by Odio and is at a shooting range also in Dallas?
Leaves Hoover very little room to wiggle if Ozzie is acting the informant/agent, getting paid and traveling with Cubans...  

Libeler: The Commission had information to the effect that sometime during November 1963, you saw a gentleman at the rifle range whom you subsequently came to believe was LEE HARVEY OSWALD?
Price: That's right. The first time I saw this person was in September, the last week, the last Saturday of September, and that was the afternoon they opened the rifle range.
Libeler: On the last Saturday of September? That would be Saturday, September 28, 1963?
Price: Yes.

 

 

[Anthony Mugan]

2 hours ago, David Josephs said:

For the entire month of Nov the FBI looked for any sign of Oswald. (see composite of reports at bottom of post)

And when a list of FBI reports is compiled... these PECK & CRAWFORD reports are not listed...

Seems to me the FBI is deferring to the CIA transcripts as the only evidence of Oswald's trip... while hiding the facts as they learned them.

So why perform this CI activity the same weekend Oswald is with Cubans in Dallas, is seen by Odio and is at a shooting range also in Dallas?
Leaves Hoover very little room to wiggle if Ozzie is acting the informant/agent, getting paid and traveling with Cubans...  

Libeler: The Commission had information to the effect that sometime during November 1963, you saw a gentleman at the rifle range whom you subsequently came to believe was LEE HARVEY OSWALD?
Price: That's right. The first time I saw this person was in September, the last week, the last Saturday of September, and that was the afternoon they opened the rifle range.
Libeler: On the last Saturday of September? That would be Saturday, September 28, 1963?
Price: Yes.

 

 

Hi David

It is a really interesting question and your work has made me change my mind (from our previous conversation) from assuming Oswald was physically there for at least some of it to being very undecided about it to say the least.

Perhaps the key piece of evidence that keeps me agnostic on it is that Cuban visa application photo. That is clearly LHO and I can’t think of a scenario in which Duran wouldn’t spot that wasn’t the person in front of her and hard to see how either the USA could fake it without Cuba leaking the real version at some point in the last half century plus.

Do you (or anyone) have a view on that photo? 
 

cheers

Anthony

 

 

[David Josephs]

5 hours ago, Anthony Mugan said:

Do you (or anyone) have a view on that photo?

First off - thanks for the open mind.... and second, thx for reading the work.  

I've written about those photos quite a bit....    this is the WCR official photo of the application as supposedly received from CUBA.

The version with staples is from the HSCA.  This version has no CUBAN Stamp by the signature and an obviously different signature.
Kinda like the signatures in Helsinki ...  below those is the signature of the man Ruby killed...  Long post.... take your time...
DJ

First, Duran was never shown the application of photos AFTER 11/22
2nd, the supposed CARBON COPY has no staple in  it

Third - AZCUE's statement has him there by 9/26 and as early as 9/25... Azcue also said it was not the man Ruby killed.

4th...  the signatures are not the same on the 2 copies

 

5th... the CIA dispatch confirming the WC was not going to show DURAN that application or photo

6th - there were multiple copies and different sizes of the famed photo..
The WC didn't know from where the photo originated?

 

6

 

7th there is DURAN herself testifying at the HSCA....her job was to assist applicants... she recommended a few places for these photos... probably within walking distance for convenience?

CORNWELL - So, from all the circumstances, did it appear to your that he just went somewhere locally and had the pictures made?
TIRADO - Yeah. I think that I already explained (to) him where he could take the photographs.
CORNWELL - You told him some locations in town where ge could go? Were there some right in the neighborhood of the Consulate there?
TIRADO - That I don't remember.

CORNWELL - Did you have it twice or did you type one and make two copies?
TIRADO - Only one.
CORNWELL - And made two?
TIRADO - Yes.

And finally, the applications themselves reveal an interesting anomaly, DURAN says above that one typing made 2 copies... a carbon copy
yet when you superimpose them and line up the form's lettering and lines, the applications are horribly askew

 

And when you line up the Application # at the top:  the further down you go, the more offset it gets.... and those signatures.... 

Edited July 8, 2020 by David Josephs

[Ron Bulman]

57 minutes ago, David Josephs said:

First off - thanks for the open mind.... and second, thx for reading the work.  

I've written about those photos quite a bit....    this is the WCR official photo of the application as supposedly received from CUBA.

The version with staples is from the HSCA.  This version has no CUBAN Stamp by the signature and an obviously different signature.
Kinda like the signatures in Helsinki ...  below those is the signature of the man Ruby killed...  Long post.... take your time...
DJ

First, Duran was never shown the application of photos AFTER 11/22
2nd, the supposed CARBON COPY has no staple in  it

Third - AZCUE's statement has him there by 9/26 and as early as 9/25... Azcue also said it was not the man Ruby killed.

4th...  the signatures are not the same on the 2 copies

 

5th... the CIA dispatch confirming the WC was not going to show DURAN that application or photo

6th - there were multiple copies and different sizes of the famed photo..
The WC didn't know from where the photo originated?

 

6

 

7th there is DURAN herself testifying at the HSCA....her job was to assist applicants... she recommended a few places for these photos... probably within walking distance for convenience?

CORNWELL - So, from all the circumstances, did it appear to your that he just went somewhere locally and had the pictures made?
TIRADO - Yeah. I think that I already explained (to) him where he could take the photographs.
CORNWELL - You told him some locations in town where ge could go? Were there some right in the neighborhood of the Consulate there?
TIRADO - That I don't remember.

CORNWELL - Did you have it twice or did you type one and make two copies?
TIRADO - Only one.
CORNWELL - And made two?
TIRADO - Yes.

And finally, the applications themselves reveal an interesting anomaly, DURAN says above that one typing made 2 copies... a carbon copy
yet when you superimpose them and line up the form's lettering and lines, the applications are horribly askew

 

And when you line up the Application # at the top:  the further down you go, the more offset it gets.... and those signatures.... 

DJ, Mr. Joseph's.  You really should put all this together in a book for the sake of history.  It might not make you rich in your old age given the NYT likely wouldn't review it but it would be important.  Even just putting all the articles at K & K together in book form as say a set of essays with maybe a little more tying them together for context would be a nugget for future researchers and historians to mine.  jmho, Regards, Ron.

[David Josephs]

11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

DJ, Mr. Joseph's.  You really should put all this together in a book for the sake of history.  It might not make you rich in your old age given the NYT likely wouldn't review it but it would be important.  Even just putting all the articles at K & K together in book form as say a set of essays with maybe a little more tying them together for context would be a nugget for future researchers and historians to mine.  jmho, Regards, Ron.

Well...  i sure appreciate the vote of confidence...   and I retire in a couple years.  If there are still beaches in Atlantic City I'll be editing my essays for such a book.

Is there a way to get a download of ALL my posts and content here?  I wonder....

And if one was to do something like that... a book?  a website?   Slide show?  maybe all three....

That a some Day Trading and I'll be busy...  got a nice pension as well as a few other income flows... 

It's just a matter of focus and effort... and that passion which hits us and drives us to do those kind of projects..

Your kind words are most motivational I must say...  

[John Butler]

On ‎7‎/‎7‎/‎2020 at 12:30 PM, David Josephs said:

What a spectacularly rich thread we have here...  and I do not wish to derail it....  I simply would like to add that placing our Oswald in Mexico is akin to placing him in the Sniper's Nest....
Makes for a good legend and conviction, but is simply not the fact.

Welcome back.  I've missed reading your posts.  A great way to return with a great evidence summary backing up what I have always felt. 

To my point.  Are you saying the passport application is as phony as the photo?  Or, am I misreading?

[David Boylan]

It is good to have David back!