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

[Sandy Larsen]

On 4/14/2024 at 6:46 AM, Michael Kalin said:

Juvenile sarcasm? Not so -- "HMFIC" would have been juvenile sarcasm.

 

Maybe I should have qualified my "do whatever you want" comment with "as long as it doesn't break forum rules."

You shouldn't have posted that.

 

[Matt Cloud]

17 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Maybe I should have qualified my "do whatever you want" comment with "as long as it doesn't break forum rules."

You shouldn't have posted that.

 

I gather from that that Michael Kalin has been placed now too in the penalty box, as I had, for misdemeanors I did not commit -- an allegation of "harassing" for the observation that editing posts weeks old, the content of which has become a material point of discussion in the thread, was "self-serving."  Wonderfully revealing, all.

 

In any case, I ask you, Sandy, by which I include all of those you include when you employ your "we" as you do so often here ("We believe [X]"), how do you square the Harvey & Lee thesis, and indeed the entire discussion going back years here relating to the anonymous call to the Tippits of Connecticut, where you explore the possibility of "militant commies" -- your words -- running the Harvey project, with your claim here that you see no reason to include the possibility of other intelligence organizations involvement?   On the one hand, you did, for a time at least, see the possibility apparently of the Communist Party running Harvey yet on the other hand, with respect to Mexico City, you see no such possibility.  Is that why you must hermetically-seal off the "Mexico City shenanigans" from a larger contextual understanding of what you yourself claim is a decades-long intelligence operation?  Is it KGB ran Harvey but CIA did Mexico CIty?  Elaborate, if you wouldn't mind, please.  

[Sandy Larsen]

4 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

I gather from that that Michael Kalin has been placed now too in the penalty box, as I had, for misdemeanors I did not commit -- an allegation of "harassing" for the observation that editing posts weeks old, the content of which has become a material point of discussion in the thread, was "self-serving."  Wonderfully revealing, all.

 

In any case, I ask you, Sandy, by which I include all of those you include when you employ your "we" as you do so often here ("We believe [X]"), how do you square the Harvey & Lee thesis, and indeed the entire discussion going back years here relating to the anonymous call to the Tippits of Connecticut, where you explore the possibility of "militant commies" -- your words -- running the Harvey project, with your claim here that you see no reason to include the possibility of other intelligence organizations involvement?   On the one hand, you did, for a time at least, see the possibility apparently of the Communist Party running Harvey yet on the other hand, with respect to Mexico City, you see no such possibility.  Is that why you must hermetically-seal off the "Mexico City shenanigans" from a larger contextual understanding of what you yourself claim is a decades-long intelligence operation?  Is it KGB ran Harvey but CIA did Mexico CIty?  Elaborate, if you wouldn't mind, please.  

 

Matt,

I've never thought that commies were running the Oswald Project, or even just the young boy being cared for by those militant commies. I DO believe that he would become HARVEY Oswald after breaking up with his caretakers.

We have very little knowledge to go by. But my guess is that the boy was a Russian speaking orphan who was somehow hooked with up the commies. I suppose they had high hopes for the boy also becoming a militant commie when he grew up.

 

[Matt Cloud]

15 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Matt,

I've never thought that commies were running the Oswald Project, or even just the young boy being cared for by those militant commies. I DO believe that he would become HARVEY Oswald after breaking up with his caretakers.

We have very little knowledge to go by. But my guess is that the boy was a Russian speaking orphan who was somehow hooked with up the commies. I suppose they had high hopes for the boy also becoming a militant commie when he grew up.

 

Okay -- so you don't know whether there was Soviet involvement in the Oswald Project, is that correct?  All we have here are your guesses -- that he was loosely affiliated with communists but then that relationship was severed?  Is that correct?

[Sandy Larsen]

13 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

Okay -- so you don't know whether there was Soviet involvement in the Oswald Project, is that correct? 

 

Other than Harvey fake defecting to the Soviet Union, I don't know of any Soviet involvement. And I see no reason to believe there was such an involvement.

 

13 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

All we have here are your guesses -- ...

 

Yes, of course. That's all anybody has to offer... their guesses.

 

13 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

...that he was loosely affiliated with communists but then that relationship was severed?  Is that correct?

 

Yes.

(Unless I'm forgetting something. Or if I missed something somebody posted.)

 

[Matt Cloud]

2 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Other than Harvey fake defecting to the Soviet Union, I don't know of any Soviet involvement. And I see no reason to believe there was such an involvement.

 

 

Yes, of course. That's all anybody has to offer... their guesses.

 

 

Yes.

(Unless I'm forgetting something. Or if I missed something somebody posted.)

 

This is not sounding nearly as tight as you had once -- and quite recently -- proclaimed.  

 

I'll be back later today perhaps with some details about the Mexico City shenanigans that I think will be ... probative.

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

36 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

This is not sounding nearly as tight as you had once -- and quite recently -- proclaimed.  

 

I'd be greatly surprised if you found my saying something much more than what I said above.

 

[Matt Cloud]

4 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I'd be greatly surprised if you found my saying something much more than what I said above.

 

Perhaps then you just re-summarize here for us what it is "you've said above?"  A copy and paste will do.  

[Sandy Larsen]

21 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

28 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I'd be greatly surprised if you found my saying something much more than what I said above.

Perhaps then you just re-summarize here for us what it is "you've said above?"  A copy and paste will do.

 

Oh, I meant just this:

I've never thought that commies were running the Oswald Project, or even just the young boy being cared for by those militant commies. I DO believe that he would become HARVEY Oswald after breaking up with his caretakers.

We have very little knowledge to go by. But my guess is that the boy was a Russian speaking orphan who was somehow hooked with up the commies. I suppose they had high hopes for the boy also becoming a militant commie when he grew up.

 

Sorry about my ambiguity in referring to it.

 

[Matt Cloud]

5 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Oh, I meant just this:

I've never thought that commies were running the Oswald Project, or even just the young boy being cared for by those militant commies. I DO believe that he would become HARVEY Oswald after breaking up with his caretakers.

We have very little knowledge to go by. But my guess is that the boy was a Russian speaking orphan who was somehow hooked with up the commies. I suppose they had high hopes for the boy also becoming a militant commie when he grew up.

 

Sorry about my ambiguity in referring to it.

 

No, I'm going to be talking about Mexico City now, at this thread.  Thus, I'm asking for a statement by you as to you seeing "no other intelligence organization" involvement there.  Again -- a copy and paste will do.  

 

If you want to talk about the Oswald Project and the evidence which I introduced but which you ignored regarding the Gardos having gone from Hungary to Moscow at the exact time as Oswald's defection, or that Weinstock carried info pertaining to Powers' U-2 shoot-down -- all things which do in fact point to involvement by someone(s) outside the CIA proper, let's resume that discussion over at that thread, notwithstanding my having declared it "dead," which was of course based in light of the inability/unwillingness by participants there to discuss those facts, as introduced by me.   

 

So, here, what we want now is your statement, be it based on your belief or guess or, preferably, reasoned analysis, as to why you see no reason for non-CIA involvement in the Mexico City shenanigans.

 

 

[Matt Cloud]

1 hour ago, Matt Cloud said:

No, I'm going to be talking about Mexico City now, at this thread.  Thus, I'm asking for a statement by you as to you seeing "no other intelligence organization" involvement there.  Again -- a copy and paste will do.  

 

If you want to talk about the Oswald Project and the evidence which I introduced but which you ignored regarding the Gardos having gone from Hungary to Moscow at the exact time as Oswald's defection, or that Weinstock carried info pertaining to Powers' U-2 shoot-down -- all things which do in fact point to involvement by someone(s) outside the CIA proper, let's resume that discussion over at that thread, notwithstanding my having declared it "dead," which was of course based in light of the inability/unwillingness by participants there to discuss those facts, as introduced by me.   

 

So, here, what we want now is your statement, be it based on your belief or guess or, preferably, reasoned analysis, as to why you see no reason for non-CIA involvement in the Mexico City shenanigans.

 

 

I'm going to be working off of this understanding by you Sandy, unless you feel the need to revise -- which you are of course free to do.  It's an excerpted compilation from at least two of your posts here.  

 

Sandy writes:

 

“In a nutshell, what I believe is that Oswald was never in Mexico City, and that the whole MC escapade was a CIA operation designed to make it appear to post-assassination investigators (the FBI) that Oswald and some of his associates drove to MC to finalize plans with the Cubans and Soviets to have Oswald's team assassinate Kennedy.

There is plenty of (planted/fake) evidence supporting this theory: Oswald meeting with KGB assassinations chief Valeriy Kostikov (a.k.a. Kostin); Oswald's affair with Cuban Consulate employee Silvia Duran; Oswald's relationship with dignitaries at  Duran hosted party; the $6500 down payment paid to Oswald in the Cuban Consulate for the kill; the arrest of Duran and her associates immediately after the assassination.

For this plan to work, the CIA plotters needed to have a way for the FBI to discover the (fake) Oswald trip to MC. (Otherwise they would have never discovered the (fake) Cuban and Soviet involvement.) This was accomplished by the Oswald impersonator at the Cuban Consulate making the phone call to the Russian Embassy, and giving out his name, Lee Oswald. Which, of course, was recorded by American surveillance phone taps.

Furthermore, for the FBI to later discover this, the CIA had to report this call to the various agencies, as was their duty. The problem with reporting the call is that it could raise a red flag on Oswald on October 10, which would ruin the assassination plan. The CIA solved this problem by inserting disinformation into the cables... that is to say, the wrong description. 

…

When I said that [Peter Dale Scott] shared the same theory as mine, I wasn't referring to the theory explaining the Oct. 10 disinformation. I was referring to the main theory I explained in the post that you (Michael Kalin) replied to. The theory explaining all the Mexico City shenanigans designed to make it look like Oswald was arranging to kill Kennedy for Cuba and Russia. … I personally don't see any reason to think there was any other intelligence agency involved in the whole Mexico City affair, other than the CIA. The whole thing makes perfect sense to me without adding any other agency and without adding a mole hunt.”

[Matt Cloud]

With above in mind, here are some details, now, regarding the “Mexico City shenanigans” as you put it.

One of the as yet unexplained details is the origin of the story of Oswald going to the Soviet Consulate in the first place.  The claim first appeared in public, in print, in the Mexican newspaper Excelsior on November 25, and picked up on that day by U.S. wire service U.P.I.

According to U.P.I., dateline November 25, 1963:

“The newspaper Excelsior said today Lee Harvey Oswald spent several days in Mexico City in late September, calling on consulates of the Soviet Union and Cuba.

…

Excelsior said the Cuban consulate told Oswald it could not issue the visa without talking to the United States government  and that would take 10 or 12 days.  [Oswald had evidently been there on September 27, 1963.]  The paper said Oswald left the office in a huff and slammed the door as he went.

The next day [presumably September 28] he appeared at the office of the soviet consul and asked for a visa directly to the Soviet Union.

[Excelsior] said Oswald supported his argument for the visa by saying his wife was a soviet citizen, that he was a Communist, and that he had lived in Russia for three years. 

Told of Long Wait

The soviet consul told him the normal time to process such a request would be about three months.  Oswald again left in a huff, [Excelsior] said.

[Excelsior] said there was no indication Oswald talked to any important officials of the soviet or Cuban embassies, other than the respective consuls.”

Now, certainly one question that immediately pops out after reading this report is where the newspaper Excelsior got its information.  The Excelsior was a worker cooperative, anti-imperialist, and not presumably an organ of the CIA.  So how did they get their information?  Would CIA leak to Excelsior and thus betray the secret (their “sources & methods”) that they had taps on the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City?  That’s a question, to you.

Another unexplained detail involves the letter that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly wrote to the Soviets on November 9, 1963, and reprinted in the Warren Commission as CE 15.  In the letter, Oswald writes,

“… the Cuban consulate [sic] was guilty of a gross breach of regulations, I am glad he has since been replaced.”

Evidently indeed, the Cuban consul, Eusebio Azcue, was replaced, as Oswald had noted in his November 9 letter.  The problem is Azcue was not replaced until November 18, more than a week after Oswald’s letter.

This date problem in the Oswald letter to the Soviets raises a few possibilities:

1. Oswald had a very good source in U.S. intel, who kept an eye on Mexico City comings and goings, after Oswald’s return to the U.S.;

2. Oswald had a very good source in Soviet and/or Cuban intel, who kept an eye on Mexico City comings and goings, after Oswald’s return to the U.S.; or

3. The letter is a forgery, written to put more Oswald-Soviet connections out there for investigators after the assassination, albeit with the Azcue timing problem in plain sight.

I expect you, Sandy, will agree with scenario number 3, that the letter is a forgery.  I would agree.  But I expect further you will say the forgery was by C.I.A.  And there is a problem.  

First, according to Richard Helms, in a letter to Lee Rankin of the Warren Commission dated February 2, 1964, Helms states:

“We do not know who might have told Oswald that Azcue or any other Cuban had been or was to be replaced, but we speculate that Silvia Duran or some Soviet official might have mentioned it if Oswald complained about Azcue’s altercations with him.”

This would be the Sylvia Duran that had described Oswald “as a blonde.”

In 1967, columnists Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott, who had been targets of RFK’s “Mockingbird Operation,” the wiretapping of various journalists in the early ‘60s who seemed to be getting unusually good information, wrote:

“After receiving this reply from the CIA [Helms], the Warren Commission’s staff made no further inquiry on the Azcue reference, but centered their probe on the circumstances under which the letter was prepared and later discovered.”

And now I hear you Sandy saying “but of course Helms said that; He’s one of the plotters!”  I hear you.  I hear you.  But you’re not out of the woods.  The problem grows deeper you see.  Because in the late 1990s Boris Yeltsin of Russia presented to Bill Clinton some Soviet documents related to their monitoring of the Oswald situation.  

One document in that collection is a cable written shortly after the assassination on November 22, 1963, from Moscow to the Soviet ambassador in Washington.  In it, the Kremlin instructs ambassador Dobrynin to share with Secretary of State Rusk photocopies of correspondence between their embassy and Oswald but he specifically adds: 

“When sending the photocopies, say that the letter of November 9 [discussed above] was not received by the embassy until November 18, obviously it had been held up somewhere.”

Later in the cable, the point is more explicit: 

“The U.S. authorities are aware of this final correspondence, since it was conducted through official mail.”

See https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/other/yeltsin/html/Yeltsin_0091a.htm

This is hugely significant.  It indicates a couple of things.  One is that the Soviets knew of problems with the timing of the Azcue letter.  Second, it instructs Dobrynin to tell Rusk, impliedly, that the Soviets also knew of the U.S. mail-opening program, run then by William J Cotter.  (William J. Cotter, btw, who ran the mail-opening program, was the brother-in-law of John N. McMahon, who in 1962-63, back even in 1959, was an executive in the Agency’s COMOR operations — that has to do with overhead surveillance matters including the U-2 and CORONA satellite programs.  His sister, William Cotter's wife, Virginia Alicia Cotter nee McMahon, died young, in her 40s, in 1962.  She had been a VENONA codebreaker, BTW, in the 1940s, and is buried in Arlington.)  

How the Soviets knew any of these details, Sandy, is a another question put to you along with the suggestion that the Soviets’ knowledge of these activities points yet again in the direction of a mole, or at very least a U.S. KGB interlocutor, who was keeping them abreast.  This supports the view that what is being targeted here — again by someone or someones, CIA, KGB, a mix of both? — is Angleton’s counterintelligence efforts, his “mole-hunt.”  

Edited April 16 by Matt Cloud

[Jim Hargrove]

20 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Matt,

I've never thought that commies were running the Oswald Project, or even just the young boy being cared for by those militant commies. I DO believe that he would become HARVEY Oswald after breaking up with his caretakers.

We have very little knowledge to go by. But my guess is that the boy was a Russian speaking orphan who was somehow hooked with up the commies. I suppose they had high hopes for the boy also becoming a militant commie when he grew up.

Interesting that this should come up, because I’ve always wondered why we argue about the detail of whether LHO was being dangled in a mole hunt and ignore the OBVIOUS evidence that Oswald was a spy working for U.S. intelligence.

As I’ve said before, even the cover story for the 1959 “defection” shows Oswald was a spy.  But the circumstances around the 1963 passport is just more evidence that he worked for U.S. intelligence. 

On June 24, 1963, Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald (the same LHO who “defected” to Russia in 1959) appeared at the U.S. Passport Office in New Orleans and applied for a passport.  The new passport was issued the very next day, despite the fact Oswald indicated on the application he was going to visit the USSR and then-Communist Poland.

Sheesh.  This obvious traitor, who should have already been prosecuted, was given the OK by State Department to possibly defect again!  CLICK HERE to see the application and, in the document at the upper right, the evidence that Oswald stated he would, again, go to the USSR.

Starting on page 773, the Warren Report includes an elaborate discussion of why the State Department simply HAD to issue Oswald a new passport in 1963, and I don’t believe a word of it.  No doubt some people will say they do believe it, but I doubt anyone critical of the Warren findings would be so sanguine.

 

[Matt Cloud]

12 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Interesting that this should come up, because I’ve always wondered why we argue about the detail of whether LHO was being dangled in a mole hunt and ignore the OBVIOUS evidence that Oswald was a spy working for U.S. intelligence.

As I’ve said before, even the cover story for the 1959 “defection” shows Oswald was a spy.  But the circumstances around the 1963 passport is just more evidence that he worked for U.S. intelligence. 

On June 24, 1963, Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald (the same LHO who “defected” to Russia in 1959) appeared at the U.S. Passport Office in New Orleans and applied for a passport.  The new passport was issued the very next day, despite the fact Oswald indicated on the application he was going to visit the USSR and then-Communist Poland.

Sheesh.  This obvious traitor, who should have already been prosecuted, was given the OK by State Department to possibly defect again!  CLICK HERE to see the application and, in the document at the upper right, the evidence that Oswald stated he would, again, go to the USSR.

Starting on page 773, the Warren Report includes an elaborate discussion of why the State Department simply HAD to issue Oswald a new passport in 1963, and I don’t believe a word of it.  No doubt some people will say they do believe it, but I doubt anyone critical of the Warren findings would be so sanguine.

 

Perhaps you could direct me to where "we argue about the detail of whether LHO was being dangled in a mole hunt."  That has actually, so far as I am aware, not been a significant topic of discussion within the context of the Kennedy assassination over the course of the 60+ year history.  And it's not obvious he was a spy working for U.S. intelligence, no matter how many times you repeat that claim.  It's not clear who he thinks he works for, who he in fact works for, who is running him, if anyone at all.  Perhaps it would be helpful to acknowledge the basic fact of mole penetrations: they are intended to get the host to do things contrary to their interest, things which they would not normally do.  Your dissatisfaction with the Warren Commission's explanation as to whether the state department was justified or not in 1963 in issuing him a passport skips right past that.   

 

[Michael Kalin]

Matt, not likely this complicated topic will receive the careful analysis you contemplate from pontificators who refuse to study the source material.

Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice, but spared the name;
No individual could resent
Where thousands equally were meant.