Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (32 page)

Oswald's Communist credentials come across in the files as superficial, and his decision to return to the U.S. after just one year seems transparent, underlining all the more the superficiality of Oswald's entire Soviet sojourn. The evidence that he had a contact outside the Soviet Union is sufficient that we should, at least, take the possibility seriously, although-as in the case of the missing lettera document or good copy of one would constitute more convincing evidence. Attention is drawn to Oswald's anomolous behavior in connection with this murky contact, especially the high probability that he was lying about who this person was, and also his action of slicing out a dedication page in a book as he gave it to Titovits. Both the credibility of these witnesses and Oswald's evasiveness establish this as a lead to be followed to its outcome. Presumably the KGB, itself a regular reader of the mails, had some answers at one time, and the present Russian government might be disposed to assist the American effort to open up all files related to the case.

Our study of Leo Setyaev, who was known to U.S. intelligence and being watched by them, is also a weak but still intriguing potential piece of the puzzle. Setyaev, by the Agency's own reasoning, was of interest to the CIA because his name appeared in Oswald's address book, but that statement does not say why they would be opening his mail in 1960. The LINGUAL documents released prove that the CIA was interested in Setyaev while Oswald was in Minsk. Setyaev would not raise suspicions by walking around corridors of hotels. After all, his job as a Radio Moscow correspondent was to seek out and interview westerners. The only question is: For whom was Setyaev really working?

The Setyaev story grows more interesting as time goes by. In his 1991 interview with Peter Wronski, Setyaev said Oswald "asked him to help write a letter to the Presidium, asking to be granted citizenship, and that he [Setyaev] refused."78 The June 1960 CIA HT/LINGUAL intercept on Setyaev indicated he was involved in the translation and dissemination of documents which foreigners needed to become Soviet citizens.79 Could it have been Setyaev or someone like him who coached Oswald during his defection?

In Chapter Six, we encountered a "Memo for the Files" by an American Consulate official, John McVickar, which contained information on Soviet plans for Oswald for which we have no source. Peter Wronski's analysis of his interview with Setyaev contains this comment: "Setyaev at first claimed he did not see Oswald again and that he gave Oswald his home address over the telephone when Oswald called him to tell him he was moving to Minsk."B0 Setyaev did see Oswald again. And it seems that Setyaev was the person to talk to about Oswald.

All of this said, however, the process of releasing new documents is still not complete, and likely will continue through 1997 and beyond. The hypothesis advanced in the chapter is an early impression that may change radically or remain nearly the same. Time will tell.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Turning Point

We have been watching three threads. First and foremost, we have been following the trails and intersections of Oswald's labyrinthine CIA, FBI, State Department, and ONI files. In addition, we have kept up with the general outlines of his activities in the Soviet Union, as this is the context in which these files were developed. Finally, we have observed Cuban matters in order to set the stage for the drama we know will unfold upon Oswald's return. In this regard, Oswald's preparation for his return to America took place while the Agency was planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion and the assassination of Castro. His first three months back in the U.S. would unfold against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The pieces and pathways in Oswald's intelligence files become more complex in 1961 simply because they continue. While much of the meaning of these files is as arcane as the intelligence world in which they were created, at the simplest level of analysis we are struck by the sheer amount of paper the intelligence agencies created on Oswald. This quantity of documents indicates a significant level of interest in him. When viewed together, the number of intelligence offices that watched Oswald, and the degree of field-level action on him, take on a meaning not available when these events are viewed in isolation.

Stimulated by Oswald's decision to return to America, the activity among the low-level FBI, Navy, and State Department offices picked up in the first half of 1961. An act of Oswald's during this period would provide an additional stimulus to the interest in him when discovered by the intelligence community. That was his marriage to a Soviet woman, Marina Prusakova. Oswald's decision to bring a Soviet citizen back to America led to a new level of interest in the CIA, a subject to which we will return in Chapter Thirteen.

Hiring the Mob for the Job

The Eisenhower administration's last key policy meeting on Cuba occurred in the White House on August 18, 1960. In that meeting, CIA director Dulles reported on the progress of organizing the Cuban exiles for the overthrow of Castro. President Eisenhower, present at the meeting, authorized the invasion planning to proceed. The minutes show that Dulles described the situation in this way:

There has been developed a unified Cuban opposition outside of the country. This has been successful up to a point but the problem is that there is no real leader and 11 [sic] of the individuals are prima donnas. This unified opposition is known as the FRD [Frente Revolucionario Democratico] and has six prominent members, five of them representing groups in Cuba with the greatest potential. In response to a question from the President, Mr. Dulles said that all the names were favorably known in Cuba; that there were no Batista-ites among them and 11 of the names had been published except a recent joiner, Cardona. Their theme is to restore the revolution to its original concepts, recognizing that it is impossible to change all of the revolutionary trends."

Dulles added, in response to a question from Eisenhower, that these Cuban leaders had all been identified with Castro since he assumed power. Dulles judged the CIA's work with these leaders since May as "very satisfactory."

The CIA training of the Cubans was discussed in some detail in this meeting. Dulles explained that while the FRD preferred being in the U.S., they had been persuaded to set up headquarters in Mexico. It was understood, Dulles added, "that there will be no ostensible military action directed from Mexico."2 Eisenhower wanted to know why Mexico had been chosen. Mexico's communications and travel facilities were part of the reason, but the fact was that some of the other Latin American countries would not agree to the FRD's presence on their soil. Guatemala, however, did not pres ent such a problem, and was already being used for training Cuban exiles.

The minutes of the White House meeting indicate that the Joint Chiefs "saw no problem" with Bissell's request for American troops to train the Cubans. Dulles said that he hoped five hundred Cubans could be finished with their training by "the beginning of November," a prediction possibly meant to fit with Nixon's election schedule. Dulles then added this:

The FRD is acquiring some B-26s. The aircrews for these would be all Cubans. Mr. Bissell then said that it is possible that the initial para-military operations could be successful without any outside help. He pointed out that the first phase would be that of contacting local groups over a period of perhaps several months and in this period no air strikes would be undertaken. The plan would be to supply the local groups by air and also to infiltrate certain Cubans to stiffen local resistance.

If local resistance is unable to accomplish the mission and the operation should expand, then there may be a requirement for air action. The plan would be to take the Isle of Pines or another small island for an ostensible base for operations of the [less than I line not declassified] forces. It is hoped that this may not be needed but we must be prepared for it.'

Bissell added that eleven groups that had potential had been identified in Cuba. "We are in the process of sending radio communications to them at this time," he said.' The air attacks were a significant escalation of the U.S. role. At the meeting, no one asked what the military impact of such CIA-backed air attacks would have in Cuba, and what the cost would be if this were discovered by the press.

In a historic decision remarkably like the one Kennedy would make after his inauguration, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead to proceed in Cuba, with a key condition attached. Eisenhower's decision and his reasoning are preserved in this passage of the minutes:

The President said that he would go along so long as the Joint Chiefs, Defense, State and the CIA think we have a good chance of being successful. He wouldn't care much about this kind of cost; indeed, he said he would defend this kind of action against all comers and that if we could be sure of freeing the Cubans from this incubus [less than 1 line not declassified] might be a small price to pay. The President concluded the meeting by saying that he would like to urge caution with respect to the danger of making false moves, with the result of starting something before we were ready for it.5

There can be no argument, then, that like Kennedy later, Eisenhower would approve the invasion plan only if the top U.S. military and civilian leaders would vouch for the plan's chance of success. And so, as of August 18, 1960, the Bay of Pigs plan was set firmly into motion.

The other unspeakable part of the plan-the assassination of Castro-had taken a turn since the abortive CIA plot to arrange an accident for Castro's brother in July. Nixon, having secured the Republican nomination for president, had sent his chief lieutenant, General Robert E. Cushman, into the working levels of the CIA that were concerned with Cuban operations. It is thus likely that Nixon knew some of the details about the CIA's cooperation with the Mafia. Regarding the summer-autumn 1960 Bissell-Edwards conversation about assassinating Castro, the Church Committee report states: "Edwards recalled that Bissell asked him to locate someone who could assassinate Castro. Bissell confirmed that he requested Edwards to find someone to assassinate Castro and believed that Edwards raised the idea of contacting members of a gambling syndicate in Cuba."6 As the Church Committee discovered, once again the Office of Security was at the center of operations, this time in the covert operations of Bissell's Cuban task force.

The Church Committee report states how the idea of using the mob to kill Castro grew from Edwards's idea of "contacting members of a gambling syndicate operating in Cuba." The report explains:

Edwards assigned the mission to the Chief of the Operational Support Division of the Office of Security. The Support Chief [O'Connell] recalled that Edwards had said that he and Bissell were looking for someone to "eliminate" or "assassinate" Castro. Edwards and the Support Chief decided to rely on Robert A. Maheu to recruit someone "tough enough" to handle the job.'

At the time Maheu was a lawyer associated with billionaire Howard Hughes, and what followed was a story that mired the Agency in the swamp of organized crime. "Sometime in late August or early September 1960," the report noted, O'Connell "approached Maheu about the proposed operation." Former CIA Director William Colby testified to the Church Committee that CIA documents indicated that in August 1960, "Bissell asked Edwards to locate [an] asset to perform [a] gangster-type operation. Edwards contacted Maheu who contacted John Roselli on 9/14/60."g

On the issue of who had thought of Roselli first, Maheu and O'Connell pointed the finger at each other. Maheu's recollection was that O'Connell asked him to contact the underworld figure to ask if he would take part in a plan to "dispose" of Castro. O'Con- nell's recollection is that it was Maheu that raised the idea of using Roselli.9 The CIA's 1967 Inspector General's Report struck this compromise: "Edwards and Maheu agreed that Maheu would approach Roselli as the representative of businessmen with interests in Cuba who saw the elimination of Castro as the first essential step to the recovery of their investments."10

O'Connell testified that Maheu was told to offer money, probably $150,000, for Castro's assassination." What happened next found its way into a memo by FBI Director Hoover, addressed to Plans Director Bissell in the CIA-the person supervising the assassination plan. The October 18, 1960, Hoover memorandum citing "a source whose reliability has not been tested," reported this:

[D]uring recent conversations with several friends, [Sam] Giancana stated that Fidel Castro was to be done away with very shortly. When doubt was expressed regarding this statement, Giancana reportedly assured those present that Castro's assassination would occur in November. Moreover, he allegedly indicated that he had already met with the assassin-to-be on three occasions. Giancana claimed that everything had been perfected for the killing of Castro, and that the "assassin" had arranged with a girl, not further described, to drop a "pill" in some drink or food of Castro's. Memo, Hoover to DCI (Att: DDP, 10/18/60)12

The Church Committee showed this Hoover memorandum, on August 22, 1975, to Sam Papich, who was the FBI liaison to the CIA in 1960. Papich said, "anyone in the Bureau would know the significance of the mention of Giancana." Papich did not further elaborate on this other than to say he would have discussed the matter with his FBI superior, Belmont, and with Edwards and Bannerman of the CIA's Office of Security."

Like all of the CIA-backed schemes to assassinate Castro, the mob's poison-pill plot failed. This was right about the time Oswald changed his mind about staying in Russia. As Oswald began his eighteen-month quest to return to America, January 1961 ushered in a new twist to the CIA's assassination plans for Castro: use of the Agency's ZR/RIFLE project for a program to give the CIA an "executive action" (assassination) capability. When pressed by the Church Committee, William Harvey stated that Bissell had been pushed along on the Castro assassination plan, possibly by the Eisenhower White House."

January 1961 also began in a deep freeze in U.S.-Cuban relations. Havana formally severed diplomatic relations with Washington on January 3.15 On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the thirty-fifth president of the United States, and tensions immediately erupted over general Cold War strategy and ongoing planning for U.S. military intervention in Laos and Cuba, both set to occur at roughly the same time. President Kennedy found himself in a situation not unlike President Clinton's first year: a young Democratic president, after more than a decade of Repubican rule, perceived as too naive to handle the Communists.