Did The Mexico City Station Hide Oswald's Cuban Consulate Visits From The Home Office?

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

The below Nov 23rd 1963 document says the person doing the transcribing knew that the person who phoned the soviet embassy on Oct 1st speaking broken russian was the same person who had phoned the soviet embassy on Sept 28th from the cuban embassy speaking broken russian.

Therefore the transcriptionist knew Oswald had been to the cuban embassy.

 

I just read this Bill Simpich document:

https://aarclibrary.org/the-jfk-case-the-twelve-who-built-the-oswald-legend-part-10-nightmare-in-mexico-city/

It verifies that Boris Tarasoff did indeed recognize the broken Russian caller's voice to be the same in both the Sept. 28 and Oct. 1 calls.

In the Sept. 28 call, from the?Cuban Consulate to the Soviet Embassy, Duran hands the phone to Oswald and he speaks but doesn't give his name.

In the Oct. 1 call, to the Soviet Embassy, Oswald makes the call himself and this time he does leave his name. In this call he says that he had been to the Soviet Embassy earlier.

 

So the second call tells Boris right away that Lee Oswald had been to the Soviet Embassy. The voice is the same as that in the first call, which came from the Cuban Consulate. So Boris deduces that Lee Oswald had been to the Cuban Consulate as well!

BUT HERE'S THE RUB...

The first call, on Sept. 28 -- the one  initiated by Duran and handed over to Oswald -- could not have really been made from the Cuban Consulate because that was a Saturday and the consulate was closed on Saturday! In addition, Duran said that she did not make that call! (I believe she said she never even saw Oswald after Friday the 27th.)

So apparently that call was made by a woman who wasn't Duran, and it was made from a location that wasn't the Cuban Consulate!

 

So where does that leave us?

In a sense, we are back to where we started... there being no credible evidence in the phone calls indicating that Oswald had been to the Cuban Consulate. On the other hand, as far as the telephone intercept teams knew, Oswald had indeed been to both the Soviet Embassy AND the Cuban consulate!

Therefore, I believe we have to conclude that the CIA's Mexican Desk did indeed keep to themselves the information that Oswald had been to the Cuban Consulate.

And that is egg on my face.

 

[Jean Ceulemans]

Whatever informaton came from Mexico, it needed to be tripple checked. Like the  mystery man capture, first reported to be 10/1 later turned out to be captured on 10/2 when Oswald was  on his way home.  Even without a cover-up, a possible mole, talks of a shady money deal, pouches with transcripts or tapes, parties, an elderly woman with bad eyesight handling the observation camera,...  it sure was a messy bit..  Deliberate?

Cfr other topic, even Hoover was getting seriously confused and worried, it wouldn´t take much to spin out of control.

Edited April 26 by Jean Ceulemans

[Richard Bertolino]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I just read this Bill Simpich document:

https://aarclibrary.org/the-jfk-case-the-twelve-who-built-the-oswald-legend-part-10-nightmare-in-mexico-city/

It verifies that Boris Tarasoff did indeed recognize the broken Russian caller's voice to be the same in both the Sept. 28 and Oct. 1 calls.

In the Sept. 28 call, from the?Cuban Consulate to the Soviet Embassy, Duran hands the phone to Oswald and he speaks but doesn't give his name.

In the Oct. 1 call, to the Soviet Embassy, Oswald makes the call himself and this time he does leave his name. In this call he says that he had been to the Soviet Embassy earlier.

 

So the second call tells Boris right away that Lee Oswald had been to the Soviet Embassy. The voice is the same as that in the first call, which came from the Cuban Consulate. So Boris deduces that Lee Oswald had been to the Cuban Consulate as well!

BUT HERE'S THE RUB...

The first call, on Sept. 28 -- the one  initiated by Duran and handed over to Oswald -- could not have really been made from the Cuban Consulate because that was a Saturday and the consulate was closed on Saturday! In addition, Duran said that she did not make that call! (I believe she said she never even saw Oswald after Friday the 27th.)

So apparently that call was made by a woman who wasn't Duran, and it was made from a location that wasn't the Cuban Consulate!

 

So where does that leave us?

In a sense, we are back to where we started... there being no credible evidence in the phone calls indicating that Oswald had been to the Cuban Consulate. On the other hand, as far as the telephone intercept teams knew, Oswald had indeed been to both the Soviet Embassy AND the Cuban consulate!

Therefore, I believe we have to conclude that the CIA's Mexican Desk did indeed keep to themselves the information that Oswald had been to the Cuban Consulate.

And that is egg on my face.

 

It could be that the Mexico City office did realize that there was no credible evidence that Oswald had been to the Cuban consulate, and that's why they didn't say so. Or it could be that somebody in MC knew what was going on but did not tell Winston Scott. Or it could be that Scott understood what was going on but that it was too sensitive to put into normal communications. I don't think that a firm conclusion can be made here as a basis for a Mexico City explanation.

[Sandy Larsen]

15 hours ago, Richard Bertolino said:

It could be that the Mexico City office did realize that there was no credible evidence that Oswald had been to the Cuban consulate, and that's why they didn't say so. Or it could be that somebody in MC knew what was going on but did not tell Winston Scott. Or it could be that Scott understood what was going on but that it was too sensitive to put into normal communications. I don't think that a firm conclusion can be made here as a basis for a Mexico City explanation.

 

Richard,

I agree with al the points that you make here.

Even though I admitted to egg on my face, that was only to admit that Mexico City did indeed know about the Cuban Consulate visit but chose not to report it to headquarters. I never thought that there was was reason to believe there was a nefarious reason behind that decision. Including anything to do with a mole hunt.

 

[Richard Bertolino]

You can't avoid the egg on this topic, unless you never come to any conclusions. Just don't eat the egg; very bad for the cholesterol despite what Big Egg has been saying lately.

[Bill Simpich]

Let me share why I believe all references to Oswald and Cuba were stripped from the file...(from State Secret, Chapter 5)

...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 of Oswald and Duran on September 28 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 on September 28 (and again on October 1) 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”...

Agreement to strip Oswald’s biographical file of any pro-Cuban references before beginning the molehunt

The number one concern (after the impersonations of Oswald and Duran on 9/28 and 10/1) was that the LIENVOY operation had been discovered by Soviet or Cuban intelligence, blowing a highly valuable and sensitive asset of the United States. The impersonation could have been an effort by the Soviets or Cubans to rattle the Americans’ cage by letting them know that their tap operation had been found out, and then taking careful note of the American reaction.

However, the Mexico City station could not assume that the calls were an operation conducted by Soviet or Cuban intelligence. It was a live possibility that these calls were an inside job. Any analyst could easily deduce that American intelligence knew a lot more about Lee Oswald then the Soviets or the Cubans.

Due to the nature of the security problem, the logical prime suspects would be the CIA officers working in Cuban operations and the FBI’s double agents working with Bakulin. Also worthy of consideration were the Mexico City station and the domestic agencies responsible for handling Oswald – FBI, State, Navy. The immigration service also had a subsidiary role, as they were responsible for tracking Oswald’s wife Marina.

A decision was made for the Mexico City station to make no reference to Oswald’s visits to the Cuban consulate. All of Mexico City’s references to the Oswald case would use the LCIMPROVE indicator of an operation designed to counter the Soviets, rather than the TYPIC indicator that would refer to Cuban operations.

Oswald’s biographical file (known as his “201 file”) would be stripped of any reference to his pro-Cuban activities, as well as any reference to any attempt to obtain a visa. 

These documents were removed from the 201 file and placed inside Oswald’s FPCC 100-300-011 file tightly held by CI-SIG.[ 24 ]

Many documents still bear this original FPCC file number today, crossed out and replaced by the 201 number. This was done to create a plausible reason to prevent FitzGerald’s Cuban desk at HQ and Shackley’s Miami station from receiving any cables or dispatches about this molehunt. The Cuba operations officers had access to the August 1963 FBI report about Oswald based on his real name Lee Harvey Oswald, his actual slender build of “5 foot 9, 140 pounds”, and his current status as a US resident; as you will see, they would have known that the molehunt descriptions of Oswald were inaccurate.

The Miami station had been included in all of the memos about the related Azcue operation. The two joint agency anti-FPCC operations of that year (discussed in Chapter 3) included several officers with the Cuban division, including Tilton himself. It was reasonable to assume that the suspects for the Duran and Oswald impersonation would include people from Miami with intelligence connections.

The heart of the plan was for Mexico City to add some marked cards based on phony information into their memo to HQ. Then HQ would do the same. Then see where those cards ended up. Both of these feints are part of the time-honored molehunt technique that Jim Angleton specialized in. The phony information simply created a brighter trail to follow...

The stripping of Oswald’s 201 file

Oswald’s 201 file at CIA HQ was stripped of all references to his FPCC background, and placed inside the Agency’s FPCC file, or in a casual, working file in Egerter’s possession commonly known as a soft file. The purpose was to conceal this information from anyone who had access to Oswald’s 201 file. The procedure was that there was no way anyone was going to see the contents of a 201 file without the express consent of the CI-SIG officer in charge. Ann Egerter, the senior analyst and custodian of Oswald’s 201 file, was a learned lady.

Starting on September 23, Hosty’s report on Oswald went into the FPCC file, with the FPCC number 100-300-011 written on it.[ 27 ] Other pre-assassination FBI reports about Oswald, Cuba and the FPCC were directed to this file as well. It stayed in there until March 1964, after the assassination.

This insulated anyone else from learning about Oswald’s history as a pro-Castro activist. CI-SIG held the FPCC 100-300-011 file tightly in its possession, and the routing sheet shows that the first document went straight to Will Potocki, and then other members of Angleton’s CI division.[ 28 ]

Why was the Hosty memo inserted in the FPCC file on September 23, even before Oswald left for Mexico? I think it was to mislead other CIA officers about who Oswald was. I do not know why, but my hunch is that John Tilton and Lambert Anderson wanted to conceal their use of Oswald and his pro-Cuban background. The only people that saw the Hosty memo before the assassination were CIA counterintelligence officers.

If my hunch is right, this strategy drove the decisions that were made afterwards. After Oswald was impersonated, an internal investigation began within the CIA. That investigation decided to maintain Tilton's original approach - do not reveal Oswald's full history to other members of the Agency. The best way to do that was to eliminate any reference of his visits to the Cuban consulate.

By early October, the 201 biographical file was stripped of almost all of its documents. The purpose of this stripping was to make sure that the file “lied” to Bustos, who read it outside of CI-SIG and used it to prepare the twin October 10 memos. The stripping ensured compartmentalization, so that Bustos and others with no need-to-know did not know about Egerter’s molehunt. Although the CIA’s pioneering computer system would inform an inquirer that documents were missing from the file, there was no way of knowing their contents until the documents were in one’s hands.

Charlotte Bustos at the Mexico desk at Headquarters had access to the 201 file. A note from the CIA’s document file expert Paul Hartman reveals that at the time of the assassination there were only five documents physically located in the 201 file.[ 29 ]

Two were State Department documents, one was a Navy document, and the other two were FBI documents, all of them dating back to Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union.[ 30 ] The other documents were missing from the file when it was reviewed in February 1964. A March 1964 memo to the Warren Commission from chief Richard Helms restored the missing documents to the 201 file.

Thirty-seven of the forty-two documents that made up Oswald’s 201 file in October 1963 had been removed and placed into a separate file supposedly held by Bustos before the assassination. Bustos claimed that she wasn’t even sure what file she was given, despite her reputation of having an excellent memory. CIA’s Paul Hartman, formidable in his knowledge on how to bird-dog documents, claimed that these 37 documents were removed because they dealt with “sensitive matters such as wiretaps and surveillance”.[ 31 ] You can bet that Bustos had the 201 file with five documents left in it.

Most of these documents had nothing to do with wiretaps and surveillance – the only thing sensitive about them was that they would reveal Oswald’s biography, which was the actual state secret. Virtually none of the 37 documents dealt with wiretaps and surveillance. Take a look at this chart, which illustrates that most of the documents were restored to the file after the assassination.

Paul Hartman, a well-respected document analyst for the Agency, put great emphasis on a red herring. Hartman insisted that the computer list of the documents in Oswald’s 201 file was always available during this time period. Hartman ignored that most of the documents in the 201 file were unavailable for reviewers such as Bustos, who had to rely on information given to her by Egerter when composing her letters.

Jeff Morley recounts a footrace between Egerter and Bustos to retrieve the 201 file after CIA HQ learned that JFK had been shot.[ 32 ] Egerter won the footrace, because she had the full file. Bustos did not.

The 201 file was stripped to hide not just Oswald’s pro-Cuban background, but almost everything about Oswald’s biography. In other words, Oswald would come across to Bustos as pretty much of a “nobody”, a schlep of so little consequence that no one knew or cared if he had even returned to the United States after the last date in the file, May 1962.[ 33 ]

[Richard Bertolino]

9 hours ago, Bill Simpich said:

Let me share why I believe all references to Oswald and Cuba were stripped from the file...(from State Secret, Chapter 5)

...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 of Oswald and Duran on September 28 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 on September 28 (and again on October 1) 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”...

Agreement to strip Oswald’s biographical file of any pro-Cuban references before beginning the molehunt

The number one concern (after the impersonations of Oswald and Duran on 9/28 and 10/1) was that the LIENVOY operation had been discovered by Soviet or Cuban intelligence, blowing a highly valuable and sensitive asset of the United States. The impersonation could have been an effort by the Soviets or Cubans to rattle the Americans’ cage by letting them know that their tap operation had been found out, and then taking careful note of the American reaction.

However, the Mexico City station could not assume that the calls were an operation conducted by Soviet or Cuban intelligence. It was a live possibility that these calls were an inside job. Any analyst could easily deduce that American intelligence knew a lot more about Lee Oswald then the Soviets or the Cubans.

Due to the nature of the security problem, the logical prime suspects would be the CIA officers working in Cuban operations and the FBI’s double agents working with Bakulin. Also worthy of consideration were the Mexico City station and the domestic agencies responsible for handling Oswald – FBI, State, Navy. The immigration service also had a subsidiary role, as they were responsible for tracking Oswald’s wife Marina.

A decision was made for the Mexico City station to make no reference to Oswald’s visits to the Cuban consulate. All of Mexico City’s references to the Oswald case would use the LCIMPROVE indicator of an operation designed to counter the Soviets, rather than the TYPIC indicator that would refer to Cuban operations.

Oswald’s biographical file (known as his “201 file”) would be stripped of any reference to his pro-Cuban activities, as well as any reference to any attempt to obtain a visa. 

These documents were removed from the 201 file and placed inside Oswald’s FPCC 100-300-011 file tightly held by CI-SIG.[ 24 ]

Many documents still bear this original FPCC file number today, crossed out and replaced by the 201 number. This was done to create a plausible reason to prevent FitzGerald’s Cuban desk at HQ and Shackley’s Miami station from receiving any cables or dispatches about this molehunt. The Cuba operations officers had access to the August 1963 FBI report about Oswald based on his real name Lee Harvey Oswald, his actual slender build of “5 foot 9, 140 pounds”, and his current status as a US resident; as you will see, they would have known that the molehunt descriptions of Oswald were inaccurate.

The Miami station had been included in all of the memos about the related Azcue operation. The two joint agency anti-FPCC operations of that year (discussed in Chapter 3) included several officers with the Cuban division, including Tilton himself. It was reasonable to assume that the suspects for the Duran and Oswald impersonation would include people from Miami with intelligence connections.

The heart of the plan was for Mexico City to add some marked cards based on phony information into their memo to HQ. Then HQ would do the same. Then see where those cards ended up. Both of these feints are part of the time-honored molehunt technique that Jim Angleton specialized in. The phony information simply created a brighter trail to follow...

The stripping of Oswald’s 201 file

Oswald’s 201 file at CIA HQ was stripped of all references to his FPCC background, and placed inside the Agency’s FPCC file, or in a casual, working file in Egerter’s possession commonly known as a soft file. The purpose was to conceal this information from anyone who had access to Oswald’s 201 file. The procedure was that there was no way anyone was going to see the contents of a 201 file without the express consent of the CI-SIG officer in charge. Ann Egerter, the senior analyst and custodian of Oswald’s 201 file, was a learned lady.

Starting on September 23, Hosty’s report on Oswald went into the FPCC file, with the FPCC number 100-300-011 written on it.[ 27 ] Other pre-assassination FBI reports about Oswald, Cuba and the FPCC were directed to this file as well. It stayed in there until March 1964, after the assassination.

This insulated anyone else from learning about Oswald’s history as a pro-Castro activist. CI-SIG held the FPCC 100-300-011 file tightly in its possession, and the routing sheet shows that the first document went straight to Will Potocki, and then other members of Angleton’s CI division.[ 28 ]

Why was the Hosty memo inserted in the FPCC file on September 23, even before Oswald left for Mexico? I think it was to mislead other CIA officers about who Oswald was. I do not know why, but my hunch is that John Tilton and Lambert Anderson wanted to conceal their use of Oswald and his pro-Cuban background. The only people that saw the Hosty memo before the assassination were CIA counterintelligence officers.

If my hunch is right, this strategy drove the decisions that were made afterwards. After Oswald was impersonated, an internal investigation began within the CIA. That investigation decided to maintain Tilton's original approach - do not reveal Oswald's full history to other members of the Agency. The best way to do that was to eliminate any reference of his visits to the Cuban consulate.

By early October, the 201 biographical file was stripped of almost all of its documents. The purpose of this stripping was to make sure that the file “lied” to Bustos, who read it outside of CI-SIG and used it to prepare the twin October 10 memos. The stripping ensured compartmentalization, so that Bustos and others with no need-to-know did not know about Egerter’s molehunt. Although the CIA’s pioneering computer system would inform an inquirer that documents were missing from the file, there was no way of knowing their contents until the documents were in one’s hands.

Charlotte Bustos at the Mexico desk at Headquarters had access to the 201 file. A note from the CIA’s document file expert Paul Hartman reveals that at the time of the assassination there were only five documents physically located in the 201 file.[ 29 ]

Two were State Department documents, one was a Navy document, and the other two were FBI documents, all of them dating back to Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union.[ 30 ] The other documents were missing from the file when it was reviewed in February 1964. A March 1964 memo to the Warren Commission from chief Richard Helms restored the missing documents to the 201 file.

Thirty-seven of the forty-two documents that made up Oswald’s 201 file in October 1963 had been removed and placed into a separate file supposedly held by Bustos before the assassination. Bustos claimed that she wasn’t even sure what file she was given, despite her reputation of having an excellent memory. CIA’s Paul Hartman, formidable in his knowledge on how to bird-dog documents, claimed that these 37 documents were removed because they dealt with “sensitive matters such as wiretaps and surveillance”.[ 31 ] You can bet that Bustos had the 201 file with five documents left in it.

Most of these documents had nothing to do with wiretaps and surveillance – the only thing sensitive about them was that they would reveal Oswald’s biography, which was the actual state secret. Virtually none of the 37 documents dealt with wiretaps and surveillance. Take a look at this chart, which illustrates that most of the documents were restored to the file after the assassination.

Paul Hartman, a well-respected document analyst for the Agency, put great emphasis on a red herring. Hartman insisted that the computer list of the documents in Oswald’s 201 file was always available during this time period. Hartman ignored that most of the documents in the 201 file were unavailable for reviewers such as Bustos, who had to rely on information given to her by Egerter when composing her letters.

Jeff Morley recounts a footrace between Egerter and Bustos to retrieve the 201 file after CIA HQ learned that JFK had been shot.[ 32 ] Egerter won the footrace, because she had the full file. Bustos did not.

The 201 file was stripped to hide not just Oswald’s pro-Cuban background, but almost everything about Oswald’s biography. In other words, Oswald would come across to Bustos as pretty much of a “nobody”, a schlep of so little consequence that no one knew or cared if he had even returned to the United States after the last date in the file, May 1962.[ 33 ]

The Tarasoffs remembered just 2 Oswald conversations; the one where he gave his name, which would be on October 1, and the other where he was asking for money. We don't now have a transcript of Oswald asking for money. So perhaps the call in which Oswald and Duran were impersonated was never heard by the Tarasoffs and was created after the fact, the point being to redefine Oswald's relationship with the Soviets, that is, to hide the fact that Oswald had a working relationship with the KGB. This might also explain the Mystery Man photographed as Oswald as being a Soviet operation intended to hide Oswald from the CIA.

[Matt Cloud]

19 hours ago, Bill Simpich said:

 

Whoever imitated Oswald on the telephone in Mexico City on September 28 (and again on October 1) 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”...

 

This is exactly correct.  But how did whoever this person or persons was or were know that, in your loose terminology, because "a molehunt had been done with the Oswald file in the past,' if Oswald were to be blamed for the assassination it would deep-six any serious investigation, lest the "mole-hunters" be blamed for not having caught the mole in time before the assassination.  The person or persons must either be within CI/SIG itself -- which may be your view --  or there must be a leak from CI-SIG to the person or persons indicating that CI-SIG has bitten on Oswald, the "poisoned dwarf," rendering themselves impotent.  The source of the leak could be a double-agent or indeed even the alleged Mole himself.  (And those are two different things by the way -- double-agent as against mole.)

 

That's the required analysis.