Disinformation in Oswald's CIA File - For molehunt purposes or for Oswald patsification purposes?

[Sandy Larsen]

Certain CIA officials filed Oswald's 201 file in Angleton's Special Investigations Group (CI/SIG) office, where the CIA "spied on spies." In addition, CIA officials inserted disinformation into Lee Harvey Oswald's file regarding his identification. For example, the middle name Henry instead of Harvey.

Furthermore, cables with this disinformation were sent to various departments of the Federal Government on October 10, 1963.

Some researchers believe that the purpose for doing these things was to identify moles inside the CIA. As I understand it, only a mole would relay such information back to Moscow, and he could be identified that way.

Other researchers believe that the purpose for doing these things was to lower Oswald's profile so that he would not be identified as a potential threat against President Kennedy during his Dallas visit. And thereby he could be made the Patsy.

I'm hoping that proponents of both sides will debate this issue on this thread.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

While I am quite familiar with the patsification side of this issue (and superficially aware of the molehunt side), I am no expert and therefore cannot debate this myself. But I am definitely interested in following the topic.

Having said that, I do have one comment I wish to make. From what I've seen, it seems to me that the approach taken by the molehunt side was to first accept that Oswald was being used in a molehunt, and then to search for evidence supporting that idea. In contrast, the approach taken by the other, patsification side was to first consider the evidence, and based on that search for a solution explaining it. I generally believe that the latter line of reasoning is superior to the former.

 

[Steve Thomas]

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Certain CIA officials filed Oswald's 201 file in Angleton's Special Investigations Group (CI/SIG) office, where the CIA "spied on spies." In addition, CIA officials inserted disinformation into Lee Harvey Oswald's file regarding his identification. For example, the middle name Henry instead of Harvey.

Sandy,

I am convinced that the Harvey Lee Oswald dossier is mixed in there somewhere, but I don't know how, and I don't know why.

Steve Thomas

[Ron Bulman]

Is the 5' 10", 165 Lbs. bit Bill Simpich mentioned part of the mole hunt?  I know it plays on elsewhere, FBI, 1st announcement about the suspect.  But didn't what he mentioned say Ann Ergeter (?) of the CIA Counter Intelligence office have Oswald listed as such in 1960?  If so, I suspect they would have access to his true height and weight from his Marine Corp records through ONI. 

[Bill Simpich]

Jim Hargrove posed this question:

"Is it your honest opinion that all the FBI/CIA  disinfo about “Lee Harvey/Henry Oswald” on Oct. 10, 1963 was about a “mole hunt?” Or ….

Wasn’t it more likely about turning off the federal spotlights on LHO and setting him up a patsy for the JFK assassination?"

 

Let me start off by asking the reader to note that there were two Oct. 10, 1963 letters written by CIA Mexican desk officer Charlotte Bustos - relying on information from Ann Egerter and her colleagues at CI-SIG.   One of these letters described Oswald as 5 foot 10/165 pounds (identical to the description of Navy defector Robert Webster) and the other letter described Oswald as "6 feet, athletic build" (identical to the description of the Mystery Man in Mexico).  Oswald had a slight build.  He was 5 foot 9, 140 pounds. 

How could the same author, relying on the same sources, send two letters on the same day with such different descriptions?  One went to the higher-ups, the other went to the ground troops.  It was guaranteed to spark discussion.

Let me offer my hypothesis of the Mexico City solution.

When CIA chiefs discovered that Oswald had been impersonated in Mexico City (at a minimum, on the phone calls of Sept 28 and Oct. 1), they conducted a molehunt to try to figure out who was responsible;

- which in turn created a paper trail that tied the key investigative agencies firmly to the Oswald story in the last weeks before 11/22;

- which in turn created a "poison pill" causing these agencies to reflexively engage in a cover-up that successfully hid the key "Oswald in Mexico City" documents from the Warren Commission and the world.  No one wanted to expose their jobs, their families, and even their agencies to the devastating fallout.  Nor did we know about the roles of Jim Angleton, Win Scott, Ann Egerter, Charlotte Bustos and many others in this until the late 90s.  From Chapter 5 of my book State Secret.    

I include a link below to Peter Dale Scott's wonderful "The Hunt for Popov's Mole" - for any of you who want more descriptions of molehunts in this case & in history.

I can include more later, but I don't want to overwhelm the reader.  Here's my thinking on this.

My hypothesis of the Mexico City solution

It looks to me like CIA Cuba operations officers were among the prime suspects in an October 1963 investigation designed to figure out who impersonated Oswald and Cuban consulate secretary Sylvia Duran on the telephone call to the Soviet consulate on September 28. In this investigation, the CIA officers went to great pains to omit from their memos any reference to any Oswald visit to the Cuban consulate, any reference to Oswald’s membership in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and any reference to his attempts to get a visa.

Why was any reference to Cuba omitted? I believe it was done to prevent the rank and file of the Cuba division of the CIA from knowing about the details of the investigation. If there was no reference to Cuba in this investigation of Oswald, then there would be no reason to include the Cuba division in the discussion. The Cuba division included both Harvey’s successor Desmond FitzGerald and the Special Affairs Staff (SAS) at Headquarters, as well as the forward operating base in Miami for tactical operations on Cuba known as JMWAVE and run by Ted Shackley and David Morales.

Here’s the center of the intrigue. It looks like someone in Cuba operations was a prime suspect in an investigation of the impersonation of Oswald. It had to be handled carefully, as SAS had several of its officers embedded at the Mexico City station under Scott’s command. Another prime suspect was the Mexico City branch of the FBI. Even the CIA’s Mexico City station itself could also have been the source of the mole.

It is important to note that not only the FBI, but the Navy and the State Department were also included in the investigation. This was because all three of them had responsibilities for Oswald, and hence all three of them had to be examined for signs of penetration by enemy spies.

Under the Delimitations Agreement, the FBI and the Navy were charged with investigating and tracking an ex-Marine like Oswald once he had returned to the United States, and the State Department had a potential interest as well.[ 1 ] Furthermore, the State Department had done this work while Oswald was in the Soviet Union. This meant that these agencies were in charge of any debriefing of Oswald after his return to the United States. I believe that John Fain’s interviews with Oswald in 1962 constituted the actual debriefing. In the real world, these three agencies had continuing responsibility for Oswald during 1963.

I believe that the impersonation of Oswald was done to plant a poison pill within any attempt by the CIA or the FBI to investigate the role of Oswald in the assassination of the President. I believe that after Oswald was impersonated, CIA investigators tried to capture the perpetrator. After an unsuccessful attempt, would those investigators be willing to have their futile efforts become public knowledge in the wake of the assassination? No way. The investigators would be threatened with the loss of their jobs and livelihood.

I offer the hypothesis that the impersonation of Oswald was an inside job and a key aspect of a plan to assassinate President Kennedy. The plan was for the Oswald call to be picked up by the CIA’s wiretaps in Mexico City. That alone would be a significant roadblock in any investigation of Oswald, as the CIA considered the Mexico City wiretap operation one of its crown jewels. The CIA hierarchy wanted as few people as possible in the CIA to know about this operation, let alone the FBI and other US agencies. The notion of unveiling the Mexico City wiretap operation to the general public was a nightmare.

Paul Garbler, CIA staffer:
"You know what CI-SIG was?
Find the mole. That's all they had to do."

This nightmare was heightened by using Oswald to entice the Agency to start a molehunt to find out who made the call. After all, a molehunt had been done with the Oswald file in the past, using Ann Egerter at Angleton’s “office that spied on spies” at CI/SIG. Molehunts were standard operating procedure for CI/SIG – its bread and butter. As Paul Garbler, the CIA’s first station chief in Moscow, told a researcher: “You know what CI-SIG was? Find the mole. That’s all they had to do.”

Bringing Ann Egerter into a molehunt that relied on Oswald’s biographical file meant that those trying to figure out who did the impersonation would use the Oswald legend in a paper trail that stretched into several US agencies and would be impossible to destroy later. It’s hard to think of any reason to bring Ann Egerter back into the Oswald story in late 1963, other than to design a molehunt to find out if someone was trying to penetrate the CIA. That’s how Egerter earned her salary as a CI/SIG analyst. That was the role of CI/SIG itself.

Whoever imitated Oswald on the telephone in Mexico City knew that such a paper trail would be a powerful way to blackmail the involved CIA and FBI officers after November 22 into deep-sixing any serious investigation of the assassination – even an internal inquiry that could be hushed up on the grounds of “national security”.

If it went public that these officers had used the Oswald legend for a molehunt prior to the assassination, the result would be not only embarrassment or a security breach, but suspicion that they were involved in the assassination itself. At a minimum, it would mean the end of the careers of these officers. The impact on their families and their agencies would be devastating.

What got me thinking about a Mexico City molehunt was Peter Dale Scott’s analysis of molehunts conducted by Egerter and others, some of which I discussed in Chapter 1 of this book, the Double Dangle. The Mexico City station was a very powerful station, and its abilities should be acknowledged even though I am incensed by their deeds. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why the station would create a paper trail that made them look suspicious and incompetent at the same time.

I think I have figured out the answer. Due to the September 28 phone call and the calls that followed, the Mexico City Station was duped into embarking on a molehunt to find out who impersonated Oswald and Duran in the phone call. In the process of conducting that molehunt, the paper trail of memos that followed compromised both Headquarters and the Mexico City station, making an honest investigation impossible.

Of course, there's a number of possibilities of who knew enough inside ball to get the Station to play itself out of position. I lean towards David Sanchez Morales, the paramilitary chief at the CIA station in Miami. Morales had been the founder and the intelligence chief for the AMOTs. The AMOTs were the shadow intelligence service designed by the CIA to take over after Castro was overthrown. The AMOTs were highly trained intelligence officers whose primary language was Spanish.

As discussed below, the September 28 conversation was in Spanish, broken Russian, and probably broken English. The September 28 call was probably made by two Spanish speakers, and it wouldn't surprise me if one or both of them were AMOTs from the CIA's Miami station. CIA officer William Sturbitts testified that AMOTs often worked inside the listening posts of audio intercept stations. Whoever made the calls knew that the Mexico City station would be surprised by the call, and that a paper-driven molehunt was the logical response.

Morales had spent considerable time at the Mexico City station visiting David Phillips in the early sixties, and knew how Win Scott ran his shop. If Morales needed any help in knowing what it would take for the Mexico City station to convince Angleton’s people to conduct a molehunt - a doubtful proposition - he would have picked up some tips from Bill Harvey. It’s documented that Harvey knew how to run a molehunt, not to mention how to conduct an operation without writing anything down. As Harvey’s executive officer said, “…you think I was tight lipped. He could run rings around me.”

Morales, Roselli and Martino worked together for years in efforts to assassinate Castro. All three men made damaging admissions about their own involvement in the assassination of JFK, as detailed at length in Larry Hancock’s Somebody Would Have Talked.

Harvey's people in CI and Staff D - Neill Prew, the Potockis, Lou DeSanti, "Thomas Urquhart" (the possible pseudonym of the new staff D chief Alex MacMillan) - hover over what I consider most of the important events. Some or all of these officers may have been unwitting, but they passed along reports that provided very important information about the wiretap system, key Cuban informants, and targets for disruption such as Cuban consul Eusebio Azcue and press attaché Teresa Proenza.

Someone wanted to use the Oswald tapes and the ensuing paper trail to blackmail the leading players in US intelligence after JFK was shot. They wanted a cover-up, and they got one.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Bill Simpich said:

 

Let me start off by asking the reader to note that there were two Oct. 10, 1963 letters written by CIA Mexican desk officer Charlotte Bustos - relying on information from Ann Egerter and her colleagues at CI-SIG.   One of these letters described Oswald as 5 foot 10/165 pounds (identical to the description of Navy defector Robert Webster) and the other letter described Oswald as "6 feet, athletic build" (identical to the description of the Mystery Man in Mexico).  Oswald had a slight build.  He was 5 foot 9, 140 pounds. 

How could the same author, relying on the same sources, send two letters on the same day with such different descriptions?  One went to the higher-ups, the other went to the ground troops.  It was guaranteed to spark discussion.

 

I don't find the difference in those two cables surprising. One was an internal cable, sent to the CIA's Mexico City station. The other was sent to government agencies outside the CIA... the State Department, FBI, INS, and the Department of Navy. The one sent internally was more certain about the identity of the "Lee Oswald" photographed at the Soviet Embassy being the same person as the Lee Oswald who had defected to Russia. In contrast, the cable sent to other agencies was more cautious, stating that the person MAY be the same as the one who had defected. That cable therefore didn't go into detail as to height and weight.

I will give more detail in a post to follow.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

Following are descriptions of the two October 10 cables currently under scrutiny, as well as the October 8 cable from Mexico City that triggered them. (See the original cables at the end of the post.)

 

October 8, 1963 Cable from Mexico City to CIA Headquarters

On October 8, 1963, the CIA's Mexico City station sent a cable to the Director of the CIA stating that a Lee Oswald had apparently visited with Valeriy Kostikov at the Soviet Embassy. The cable described him as being age 35, athletic build, 6 ft, receding hairline.

Sounds like Mystery Man, the man photographed at the Soviet Embassy.:

 

October 10, 1963 Cable from CIA Headquarters to Mexico City

On October 10, 1963, CIA Headquarters sent a cable to the CIA's Mexico City station stating that Lee Oswald is PROBABLY the same person as Lee Henry Oswald, who had defected to Russia in 1959. The cable stated that Lee Henry Oswald was 5 ft 10 in and 165 lb.

(The cable also ordered that copies be sent to the local (Mexico City) representatives of the State Department, FBI, INS, and the Department of Navy.)

 

October 10, 1963 Cable from CIA Headquarters to Other Departments

On October 10, 1963, CIA Headquarters sent a cable to the State Department, FBI, and the Department of Navy stating that Lee Oswald MAY be the same person as Lee Henry Oswald, who had defected to Russia in 1959. The cable stated that Lee Oswald (NOT Lee Henry Oswald) had been described as being age 35, athletic build, 6 ft, receding hairline.

 

Discussion

There is nothing inconsistent between the two October 10 cables. They are composed differently because they are for different audiences. The one sent to the CIA's Mexico City station is an internal CIA report, and it is confident that the Lee Oswald who visited the Soviet Embassy was the same person as the Lee Henry Oswald who had defected to Russia. (I will address the "Henry" part in a moment.) It therefore reported the known height and weight of Lee Henry Oswald. In contrast, the cable sent to the outside departments is more cautious identifying Lee Oswald, stating that he MAY be the same person as Lee Henry Oswald. It therefore didn't reported the known height and weight of Lee Henry Oswald

Having said that, there are two unusual pieces of data that Headquarters sent to everybody (both internal and external). First, that the name of the person who defected to Russia was Lee Henry Oswald, which of course should have been Lee Harvey Oswald. Second, the reported weight of Lee Harvey Oswald is a little high. (The reported height of 5 ft 10 in is okay, given that Oswald's height was measured at 5 ft 9 in and 5 ft 11 in when in the Marine Corps.) Oswald's weight when he left the Marine Corps was 150 lb, 15 lb lighter that the reported 165 lb.

 

Conclusions

The only things unusual in these three cables are as follows:

1. CIA Headquarters reported Oswald's name as Lee Henry Oswald.
2. CIA Headquarters reported a weight for Oswald that was about 15 lb heavier than his known, measured weight at the time of his departure from the Marine Corps.

Note that the info in the October 8 cable from the Mexico City station was probably fabricated, a part of the CIA's plot to implicate Russia in the assassination. But that's a topic for another thread.

 

Pertinent Parts of Original Cables:

Quote

October 8, 1963 Cable from Mexico City station to CIA Headquarters:

ACC (DELE TED) 1 OC T 63, AMERICAN MALE WHO SPOKE BROKEN
RUSSIAN SAID HIS NAME LEE OSWALD, S TATED HE AT
SOVEMB ON 28 SEPT WHEN SPOKE WITH CONSUL WHOM HE BELIEVED
RE VALERIY VLADIMIROVICH KOS TIKOV. SUBJ ASKED
SOV GUARD IVAN OBYEDKOV IF THERE ANY THING NEW RE
TELEGRAM TO WASHING TON. OBYEDKOV UPON CHECKING
SAID NOTHING RECEIVED YE T, BUT REQUES T HAD BEEN SENT.
HAVE PHOTOS MALE APPEARS BE AMERICAN EN TERING
SOVEMB 1216 HOURS, LEAVING 1222 ON 1 OCT. APl>AREN T AGE 35,
ATHLE TIC BUILD, CIRCA 6 FEE T, RECEDING HAIRLINE, BALDING
TOP, WORE KHAKIS AND SPORT SHIRT.

 

Quote

October 10, 1963 Cable from CIA Headquarters to CIA Mexico City station:  (Source)

LEE OSWALD WHO CONTACTED SOVEMB 1 OCT PROBABLY
IDENTICAL LEE HENRY OSWALD (201-289248) BORN 18 OCT 1939,
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, FORMER RADAR OPERATOR IN
UNITED STATES MARINES WHO DEFECTED TO USSR IN OCT
1959. OSWALD IS FIVE FEET TEN INCHES, ONE HUNDRED SIXTY
FIVE POUNDS, LIGHT BROWN WAVY HAIR, BLUE EYES.
LATEST HDQS INFOR WAS REPORT DATED MAY 1962 SAYING HAD
DETERMINED OSWALD IS STILL US CITIZEN AND BOTH HE AND
HIS SOVIET W IFE HAVE EXIT PERMITS AND DEPT STATE HAD
GIVEN APPROVAL FOR THEIR TRAVEL W ITH THEIR INFAN.T
CHILD TO USA.

 

Quote

October 10, 1963 Cable from CIA Headquarters to the State Department, FBI, and the Department of Navy:  (Source)

ON 1 OCTOBER 1963 A RELIABLE AND SENSITIVE SOURCE IN
MEXICO REPORTED THAT AN AMERICAN MALE, WHO IDENTIFIED
HIMSELF AS LEE OSWALD, CONTACTED THE SOVIET EMBASSY
IN MEXICO CITY INQUIRING WHETHER THE EMBASSY
HAD RECEIVED ANY NEWS CONCERNING A TELEGRAM WHICH
HAD BEEN SENT TO WASHINGTON. THE AMERICAN WAS DESCRIBED
AS APPROXIMATELY 35 YEARS OLD, WITH AN ATHLETIC
BUILD, ABOUT SIX FEET TALL, WITH A RECEDING HAIRLINE. IT
IS BELIEVED THAT OSWALD MAY BE IDENTICAL TO LEE HENRY
OSWALD, BORN ON 18 OCTOBER 1939 IN NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA,
A FORMER US MARINE WHO DEFECTED TO THE SOVIET
UNION IN OCTOBER 1959 .....

 

[Sandy Larsen]

Just now, Sandy Larsen said:

Following are descriptions of the two October 10 cables currently under scrutiny, as well as the October 8 cable from Mexico City that triggered them. (See the original cables at the end of the post.)

 

So, why is it that the CIA's October 10, 1963 cable to the State Department, FBI, INS, and Department of Navy did the following:

1. Gave the wrong name, Lee HENRY Oswald, for the man who had visited (KGB Assassination chief) Valeriy Kostikov?
2. Gave a completely wrong description for the man who had visited Kostikov?
3. Made it sound like the CIA was unsure of the identity of the man who had visited Kostikov?

I believe that the answer is that the CIA didn't want to raise any red flags regarding Lee HARVEY Oswald, who would be working in a tall building located along the future path of President Kennedy's motorcade.

At the same time, the existence of the cable would show everyone that the CIA had done its job in reporting Oswald's visit the the Soviet Embassy.

 

[Benjamin Cole]

Maybe neither.

The LHO 201 file was on a CIA asset, of which there thousands in the US at the time, due to the Cuban exile/mercs situation. 

My guess is a group from CIA-Miami station did the JFKA deed, very tight-knit, perhaps even combat buddies. They felt betrayed by JFK for the BoP and later promises for a "Free Havana" on which JFK (they believed) failed to deliver. 

They hoodwinked LHO into participating in the JFKA. 

The CIA may have been planning to use LHO in a false flag op and have him disappear afterwards. Hence the biography build on LHO. 

But the CIA kept dozens of useful somewhat unhinged or oddball people on the string, who would do a deed that the CIA could then plausibly deny. After all, if a fellow like LHO or Richard Case Nagell or a David Ferrie says "I work for the CIA" they sound like a nut. 

BTW, it was John Newman that wrote the book on Popov's Mole. Did Peter Dale Scott also write a book? 

I will have to someday read Newman's vast tomes on the JFKA, which morph into treatises on the entire Cold War.  Newman sure has done a lot of serious research, and it is hard to dismiss anything he says. 

 

[Michael Kalin]

7 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

BTW, it was John Newman that wrote the book on Popov's Mole. Did Peter Dale Scott also write a book? 

Affirmative. Dallas '63 The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House.

See Section 3. Oswald, the CIA, and the Hunt for Popov’s Mole. Unfortunately there are no page numbers.

Warning -- heavy duty spook stuff -- postprandial ingestion is recommended, following a barium meal.

Edited March 18 by Michael Kalin

[Benjamin Cole]

9 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Affirmative. Dallas '63 The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House.

See Section 3. Oswald, the CIA, and the Hunt for Popov’s Mole. Unfortunately there are no page numbers.

Warning -- heavy duty spook stuff -- postprandial ingestion is recommended, following a barium meal.

Barium but not barium acetate. 

BTW Google "murders and barium acetate."

If you want to murder, say, Guy Banister....

[Jim Hargrove]

On 3/17/2024 at 11:04 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Having said that, there are two unusual pieces of data that Headquarters sent to everybody (both internal and external). First, that the name of the person who defected to Russia was Lee Henry Oswald, which of course should have been Lee Harvey Oswald. Second, the reported weight of Lee Harvey Oswald is a little high. (The reported height of 5 ft 10 in is okay, given that Oswald's height was measured at 5 ft 9 in and 5 ft 11 in when in the Marine Corps.) Oswald's weight when he left the Marine Corps was 150 lb, 15 lb lighter that the reported 165 lb.

The 5 foot 10 inch Lee Henry Oswald described in the infamous CIA cable of 10/10/1963 to Mexico City always seemed to me to have been a compromise initiated by someone who knew there were two different Lee Harvey Oswalds, one measuring 5 toot 9 inches tall, and the other 5 foot 11.

Here is the discharge paperwork for American-born Lee Harvey Oswald indicating his height was 71 inches (5 ft 11 inches).

And here, on Earl Rose’s autopsy report, the Oswald killed by Jack Ruby measured 5 ft 9 inches tall.

Both were measurements above were made by professional medical personnel.

Other than on the Mexico City version of the Agency cable, there were few 5’ 10” heights recorded for LHO.

Note how many of the measurements above cluster at 5'9" and 5'11".

Way back when, Jim Garrison’s staff was so perplexed by the differing height measurements some of them suspected in at least one written report that there were two different LHOs.  The best bet to me is that the CIA cable was fashioned to cover, and therefore take the federal spotlight, off both men.  The evidence for that?

At the very same time the Agency was giving Oswald a clean bill of political health against all the recent evidence from New Orleans, the FBI cancelled the security watch for Lee Harvey Oswald.  What a stunning coincidence!

[Michael Kalin]

It was my goal to come up with a serious response to the question that is the subject of this thread, but I can't do it as my impressions are so vague as to be worthless. The material is too extensive & dense to assimilate in one pass.

For example, keeping track of the activities & connections described in Scott's extraordinary "Oswald, the CIA, and the Hunt for Popov’s Mole" is a daunting task, and this molehunt is separate and distinct from the subliminal Mexico City molehunt. Identifying & following the marked cards relative to each in a conclusive way is arduous.

It's worth noting that an item absent from his earlier Fourth Decade article is the APPENDIX: CIA PERSONNEL AND ANOMALIES IN THE OSWALD FILE. This guide to the players with brief descriptions of the nature of their involvement appears just before the footnotes.

I'm hoping this thread does not fade away before I can produce an argument, or even a sensible criticism, but it isn't likely. Too much work remains to be done. The source material is vast.

[Jim Hargrove]

Are we all talking about the same 10/10/63 Agency document(s)? 

I’ve stored the following copy of one on my home computer and the Harvey and Lee web server for many years.  Note that, just before paragraph #3 on the second page, it says, “US EMB MOSCOW STATED TWENTY MONTHS OF REALITIES OF LIFE IN SOVIET UNION HAD CLEARLY HAD MATURING EFFECT ON OSWALD.  This cable was issued on the same day the FBI cancelled the security watch on Oswald.  Here’s the document I’ve saved for years, which, for some reason, I can’t seem to find on the Mary Ferrell site, though it was an admittedly quick search using the search phrase “Lee Henry Oswald”.

 

\

[Matt Cloud]

On 3/17/2024 at 8:37 PM, Bill Simpich said:

 

This nightmare was heightened by using Oswald to entice the Agency to start a molehunt to find out who made the call. After all, a molehunt had been done with the Oswald file in the past, using Ann Egerter at Angleton’s “office that spied on spies” at CI/SIG. Molehunts were standard operating procedure for CI/SIG – its bread and butter. As Paul Garbler, the CIA’s first station chief in Moscow, told a researcher: “You know what CI-SIG was? Find the mole. That’s all they had to do.”

Bringing Ann Egerter into a molehunt that relied on Oswald’s biographical file meant that those trying to figure out who did the impersonation would use the Oswald legend in a paper trail that stretched into several US agencies and would be impossible to destroy later. It’s hard to think of any reason to bring Ann Egerter back into the Oswald story in late 1963, other than to design a molehunt to find out if someone was trying to penetrate the CIA. That’s how Egerter earned her salary as a CI/SIG analyst. That was the role of CI/SIG itself.

Whoever imitated Oswald on the telephone in Mexico City knew that such a paper trail would be a powerful way to blackmail the involved CIA and FBI officers after November 22 into deep-sixing any serious investigation of the assassination – even an internal inquiry that could be hushed up on the grounds of “national security”.

If it went public that these officers had used the Oswald legend for a molehunt prior to the assassination, the result would be not only embarrassment or a security breach, but suspicion that they were involved in the assassination itself. At a minimum, it would mean the end of the careers of these officers. The impact on their families and their agencies would be devastating.

 

 

This is good.  Consider: The persons who ran the Oswald Project were themselves the persons who created -- who enticed -- the mole hunt, by sending over, or causing to have sent over, defectors alleging the existence of a mole.  Popov and the U-2 plans, then Golitsyn out of Helsinki (Frank Friberg) where Oswald had also recently passed through, Nosenko out of Geneva denying the mole, and so on.  By getting CI/SIG to bite on Oswald -- something which the Soviets didn't do, or knew not to do it seems -- and then having him blamed for the assassination, the mole hunt was paralyzed.  Indeed, there was mutual interest all around in having Oswald take the blame, including from the White House and DOJ.  "The Mole" you see is not a mole in the spy novel sense; he was rather a KGB interlocutor, a backchannel between Washington and Moscow, known in both places at the highest levels.  But revealing his existence would be a difficult explanation to the American people, to put it mildly.  And it would terminate its purpose moreover.  In any case, tying the mole hunt to the assassination foreclosed serious investigation into the assassination as well as the matter that had started the affair off in the first place -- the U-2 plans getting into the hands of the Soviets.

Edited March 20 by Matt Cloud