Hoover Marginalia RE: Mexico City?

[Tom Gram]

I stumbled on this FBI memo from 12/11/63 discussing a story received from the CIA about a diplomat alleging that the assassination was a joint Chinese-Cuban conspiracy. At the bottom of the memo is what looks like a handwritten note from Hoover, which states: 

I hope McCone doesn’t spread this story as he did the Mexico City angle before definitely proving it.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=145501#relPageId=110

Based on the subject matter, this memo seems to support the theory that the more famous Hoover marginalia mentioning the CIA’s “double dealing” was in reference to the Gilberto Alvarado story as opposed to the Oswald voice/photo discrepancy. Thoughts? 

[Paul Brancato]

3 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I stumbled on this FBI memo from 12/11/63 discussing a story received from the CIA about a diplomat alleging that the assassination was a joint Chinese-Cuban conspiracy. At the bottom of the memo is what looks like a handwritten note from Hoover, which states: 

I hope McCone doesn’t spread this story as he did the Mexico City angle before definitely proving it.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=145501#relPageId=110

Based on the subject matter, this memo seems to support the theory that the more famous Hoover marginalia mentioning the CIA’s “double dealing” was in reference to the Gilberto Alvarado story as opposed to the Oswald voice/photo discrepancy. Thoughts? 

Tom - could you explain why you favor one reference over the other? Where is the more famous Hoover marginalia? 

[Tom Gram]

2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Tom - could you explain why you favor one reference over the other? Where is the more famous Hoover marginalia? 

The more famous Hoover marginalia from a Jan ‘64 memo is the following: 

OK, but I hope you are not being taken in.  I can’t forget the CIA withholding the French espionage activities in USA nor the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, only to mention two of their instances of double-dealing.

This has been widely accepted as a reference to the early reports of FBI agents seeing a photo and listening to a tape of Oswald in MC that wasn’t Oswald. Here is an interesting article that discusses this theory a bit: 

https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/FourteenMinuteGap/FourteenMinuteGap.htm

Others have suggested that the “false story” Hoover was complaining about was actually the Gilberto Alvarado fiasco, where the CIA widely reported false intel that Oswald received $6k or something from a red-headed Cuban in MC to kill JFK. 

The memo I posted discusses dubious intel about the assassination being a communist conspiracy from a single CIA source - a very similar situation to the Alvarado story. Hoover criticizing McCone for spreading a story about MC before it was definitely proven in this context is thus almost certainly a reference to Alvarado. 

So a month or so later, Hoover complains again about false story from the CIA regarding Oswald in MC in the margins of a memo from the exact same people: Sullivan and Brennan.

Basically, this Dec. ‘63 memo seems to support the theory that Hoover was talking about Alvarado instead of the Oswald impersonation issue in the more famous Jan ‘64 memo. 

Edited April 4, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Gerry Down]

"Double dealing" is quiet a strong term though. It suggests some kind of malevolence rather than making a mistake such as thinking the Alvarado story was real. Unless Hoover thought the CIA were knowingly trying to push the Alvarado story and knew it to be false when pushing it.

But I don't think McCone would knowingly push a story if he believed it to be false.

[Tom Gram]

42 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

"Double dealing" is quiet a strong term though. It suggests some kind of malevolence rather than making a mistake such as thinking the Alvarado story was real. Unless Hoover thought the CIA were knowingly trying to push the Alvarado story and knew it to be false when pushing it.

But I don't think McCone would knowingly push a story if he believed it to be false.

That’s what I thought too, and I think I used that same argument on this forum at one point to dispute that Hoover was talking about Alvarado in the Jan ‘64 memo. Now I’m not so sure.

Maybe Hoover was just upset over McCone  spreading the Alvarado story “before definitely proving it”? 

[Gerry Down]

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

That’s what I thought too, and I think I used that same argument on this forum at one point to dispute that Hoover was talking about Alvarado in the Jan ‘64 memo. Now I’m not so sure.

Maybe Hoover was just upset over McCone  spreading the Alvarado story “before definitely proving it”? 

If I remember correctly, I think Larry Hancock mentioned in a recent podcast, could be the Ochelli effect, that McCone was pushing early on that the Cubans were involved. Perhaps that was referring to McCone pushing the Alvarado story. 

McCone though would hardly push the story on his own. Someone must have suggested there might be truth to the story. I wonder if David Phillips was pushing the story and so McCone assumed there might be something to it. Though in his book "The Night Watch" Phillips makes it sound like the Alvarado story was obviously fake from the get go.

I wonder what made McCone ever think the Alvarado story might be true. LBJ seemed to think early on it was just some chancer trying to kick the US into a war with Cuba. And that's why he needed Earl Warren on the Commission, to stop more chancers coming forward like Alvarado making up stories. So I wonder why McCone thought there was something to the story.

Update: It seems ambassador Thomas Mann was the one pushing the story.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Gerry Down

[Benjamin Cole]

I always had the impression the David Phillips pushed the red-haired Cuban story. 

From Spartacus Educational:

On 25th November, Gilberto Alvarado, a 23 year-old Nicaraguan man, contacted the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and said he had some important information about Lee Harvey Oswald. The U.S. ambassador, Thomas C. Mann, passed the information onto Winston Scott and the following morning, Scott's deputy, Alan White and another CIA officer interviewed Avarado. He claimed that during a visit to the Cuban Embassy he overheard a man he now recognised as Oswald, talking to a red-haired Negro man. According to Avarado, Oswald said something about being man enough to kill someone. He also claimed that he saw money changing hands. He reported the information at the time to the U.S. Embassy but they replied: "Quit wasting our time. We are working here, not playing."

Winston Scott told Phillips about what Gilberto Alvarado had said to Alan White. On 26th November, Phillips had a meeting with Alvarado in a safe-house. Alvarado told Phillips that the red-haired black man had given Oswald $1,500 for expenses and $5,500 as an advance. Although he was not sure of the date, he thought it was about 18th September.

Thomas C. Mann and Phillips believed Alvarado but Scott was not so sure. He argued that there was an "outside possibility" that it might be a set-up by the right-wing government in Nicaragua who wanted the United States to invade Cuba. However, as Jefferson Morley pointed out in Our Man in Mexico: "The unstated message emanating from the White House was by now clear to Win----though not to Mann. Speculation about Oswald's motives was to be cut off, not pursued."

---30---

It is curious that on Nov. 25 (very hot on the JFKA) Mann would learn of the red-haired man's LHO story...but waited until next morning to pass the info to Scott, CIA top guy in MC. 

Not a phone call ASAP? Huh?  La-de-dah, I will pass this info to Scott tomorrow.  Manana, we are in Mexico! 

One wonders if either Mann or Phillips believed the red-haired man's confection, but thought it a story worthy for consumption by useful idiots. 

[Paul Brancato]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but since Tom mentioned the later Hoover memo which states that he was pissed at CIA also for withholding info in French espionage activities, why is it that we keep ignoring that part of the memo? It’s Hoover’s FBI that ultimately communicates to French authorities the confusion around Souetre in Dallas with other names - Roux and Mertz. According to Larry that satisfied the French that Souetre wasn’t in Dallas. To me it seems more like the FBI covering for CIA after Hoover’s complaint. 

[Gerry Down]

There was a cover up regarding the Mexico city tape. The CIA seem to have led it, LBJ went along with it and so did the Warren Commission. Hoover might be mad that he was forced to go along with it too. I wonder if LBJ told Hoover to go along with it, Hoover therefore had no choice and so this is the "double dealing" Hoover was referring to in Jan 1964. He was being dragged into the CIAs cover up.