Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK by John Newman Page A
Authors: John Newman
Ads: Link
in the immediate wake of Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union.
We must begin with what we have previously labeled the docu mentary "black hole" in the CIA's Oswald files, the period from November 4 to December 6, 1959. During this time, the arrival and movement of all incoming documents on Oswald--even news clippings-are seemingly impossible to trace. To this day, the Agency has not properly accounted for the internal distribution of these documents. We now know that these documents entered the CIA, and we have fragmentary but growing evidence of early files that were both substantial and intriguing. At the end of this chapter we will offer additional specific examples of these files. Now we will focus on one such file and pick up the trail where three documents told a troublesome story about Oswald, a story the public would not learn about until after JFK's death.
These three documents are the two Moscow cables, one from Snyder on October 31 and one from the Navy Liaison on November 2, which told of Oswald's intent to reveal radar secrets. The third is the November 2 dispatch from Snyder that included the additional detail about "something of special interest." How can we find out how the Agency reacted to these startling cables? Remarkably, answers are in the newly released JFK files. In spite of the obstacles presented by the CIA's record-keeping on Oswald, we can now reconstruct the path these crucial documents took inside the Agency. Moreover, what we find in these documents is not only the classified story of Oswald's threat to commit espionage, but also what the CIA decided to do about it.
Here is the sequence from the time of the defection. The CIA acknowledged it received the Snyder cable, probably on Wednesday, November 4, because that is when the State Department also sent it to the FBI. The CIA acknowledges it received the Navy Liaison cable, and it is likely this also happened on November 4, because we know from Navy records that is the date the Navy sent it. The CIA's records show it received the "something of special interest" dispatch and we know that it was received on Friday, November 1312 probably by chief mole-hunter Birch O'Neal, whose signature is on the dispatch. These documents must therefore have formed a file with identifying numbers or letters, at least in CI/SIG. Evidence of these files is still accumulating, and we will return to them in a later section of this chapter, where we will examine some of Oswald's early Security and Counterintelligence records.
For the moment, we need to focus on what the CIA actually did after Oswald defected and threatened to commit espionage. What the documents show is hard evidence of keen CIA interest in Oswald during the November 4 to December 6 "black hole" period. A single document which has emerged is significant. The CIA did not share this document with the Warren Commission in 1964, possibly because its existence suggests that the Agency's projection of only trivial preassassination interest was misleading. This document shows that on Monday, November 9, 1959, someone in the CIA put Lee Harvey Oswald on the "Watch List:" meaning that as of that date the CIA authorized the illegal opening of his mail."
"SECRET EYES ONLY," someone in a supersecret compartment of James Angleton's counterintelligence staff wrote on the notecard which put Oswald on the Watch List. In 1975, the CIA explained to the Senate the criteria for putting someone on this list:
Individuals or organizations of particular intelligence interest [one should also add counter-intelligence] interest [sic] were specified in Watch Lists provided to the mail project by the Counterintelligence Staff, by other CIA components, and the FBI. The total number of names on the Watch List varied, from time to time, but on the average, the list included approximately 300 names including about 100 furnished by the FBI. The Watch List included the names of foreigners and of United States citizens."
We must begin with what we have previously labeled the docu mentary "black hole" in the CIA's Oswald files, the period from November 4 to December 6, 1959. During this time, the arrival and movement of all incoming documents on Oswald--even news clippings-are seemingly impossible to trace. To this day, the Agency has not properly accounted for the internal distribution of these documents. We now know that these documents entered the CIA, and we have fragmentary but growing evidence of early files that were both substantial and intriguing. At the end of this chapter we will offer additional specific examples of these files. Now we will focus on one such file and pick up the trail where three documents told a troublesome story about Oswald, a story the public would not learn about until after JFK's death.
These three documents are the two Moscow cables, one from Snyder on October 31 and one from the Navy Liaison on November 2, which told of Oswald's intent to reveal radar secrets. The third is the November 2 dispatch from Snyder that included the additional detail about "something of special interest." How can we find out how the Agency reacted to these startling cables? Remarkably, answers are in the newly released JFK files. In spite of the obstacles presented by the CIA's record-keeping on Oswald, we can now reconstruct the path these crucial documents took inside the Agency. Moreover, what we find in these documents is not only the classified story of Oswald's threat to commit espionage, but also what the CIA decided to do about it.
Here is the sequence from the time of the defection. The CIA acknowledged it received the Snyder cable, probably on Wednesday, November 4, because that is when the State Department also sent it to the FBI. The CIA acknowledges it received the Navy Liaison cable, and it is likely this also happened on November 4, because we know from Navy records that is the date the Navy sent it. The CIA's records show it received the "something of special interest" dispatch and we know that it was received on Friday, November 1312 probably by chief mole-hunter Birch O'Neal, whose signature is on the dispatch. These documents must therefore have formed a file with identifying numbers or letters, at least in CI/SIG. Evidence of these files is still accumulating, and we will return to them in a later section of this chapter, where we will examine some of Oswald's early Security and Counterintelligence records.
For the moment, we need to focus on what the CIA actually did after Oswald defected and threatened to commit espionage. What the documents show is hard evidence of keen CIA interest in Oswald during the November 4 to December 6 "black hole" period. A single document which has emerged is significant. The CIA did not share this document with the Warren Commission in 1964, possibly because its existence suggests that the Agency's projection of only trivial preassassination interest was misleading. This document shows that on Monday, November 9, 1959, someone in the CIA put Lee Harvey Oswald on the "Watch List:" meaning that as of that date the CIA authorized the illegal opening of his mail."
"SECRET EYES ONLY," someone in a supersecret compartment of James Angleton's counterintelligence staff wrote on the notecard which put Oswald on the Watch List. In 1975, the CIA explained to the Senate the criteria for putting someone on this list:
Individuals or organizations of particular intelligence interest [one should also add counter-intelligence] interest [sic] were specified in Watch Lists provided to the mail project by the Counterintelligence Staff, by other CIA components, and the FBI. The total number of names on the Watch List varied, from time to time, but on the average, the list included approximately 300 names including about 100 furnished by the FBI. The Watch List included the names of foreigners and of United States citizens."
Similar Books
