Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (35 page)

The FBI had been waiting for the day that Oswald might try to return. On May 23, 1961, the special agent in charge of the FBI Washington field office sent a memorandum to the director of the FBI, summarizing the contacts made by the Oswalds (Marguerite and Lee Harvey) to government agencies since January 1961.96 Special Agent Vincent P. Dunn had visited the State Department passport office on May 9, where he was able to read various memoranda and cables about Marguerite's January visit, Oswald's decision to come home, and his wish "to come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any legal proceedings against me."

The SAC WFO said he was passing his memorandum to "the Dallas Division for information as they are the division covering the subject's permanent residence." When the memo arrived at the Bureau, someone with the initials F.L.J. wrote this on the right margin: "put cc in 100-353496."97 That was the special file at headquarters into which Fain's 1960 handiwork on Oswald had been placed.

On May 25, 1961, Emery J. Adams of the State Department's Office of Security replied to Hoover's February 27 request for information on Lee Harvey Oswald. The State Department relayed information provided by its passport office regarding the status of his passport and his contact with the American Embassy at Moscow.98 Adams reported this:

The Passport Office (PPT) of the Department has advised that Mr. Oswald has been in communication with the American Embassy at Moscow, and, at this time, there is no information that he has renounced his nationality of the United States. If Mr. Oswald has not expatriated himself in any way, and when he makes satisfactory arrangements to depart from the USSR, the Embassy is prepared to furnish him with the necessary passport facilities for travel to the United States. PPT further advises that the Subject's passport file is being periodically reviewed by a representative of your Bureau.'

The FBI and several of its field offices were now engaged in collecting what they could on Oswald, and preparing for his return home. At this point, the paper trail on Oswald leads us back into the CIA, to which we must now turn our attention.

The details are an intelligence geography lesson. It provides the map that guides us through an intersection which is a major turning point in our story.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Operational Intelligence
Interest"

Along the dimly lit, mute paths that run through Oswald's CIA files we occasionally encounter surprises, like the flat statement by the Chief of SR/6, the "Soviet Realities" branch in the Soviet Russia Division, that "we showed operational intelligence interest" in Oswald. This claim stands against the official position whereby the Agency denies ever having used Oswald for any reason. In addition to the possibility, discussed in Chapter Eleven, of an Oswald dangle in the Soviet Union, we can conclude-based on other circumstances explored in Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen-that the Agency has not been forthcoming about the information it possessed on Oswald before the assassination.

By 1961 there were already two reasons for the Agency's interest in Oswald: his decision to marry a Soviet citizen and his cumulative experience in the Soviet Union. Either of these facts alone was enough to have guaranteed an operational interest in Oswald. We will revisit the CIA's sensitive mail-intercept program and the way it was used on Oswald in 1961, for it provides tantalizing clues on the issue of counterintelligence interest in Oswald.

We will cover Oswald's efforts to return to the U.S., and update developments in the Cuban exile world, through the vehicle of Gerry Hemming, a CIA informant, back in the U.S. from a stint in Castro's army, fully debriefed by the CIA, who begins infiltrating every antiCastro exile group he can find.

Labyrinth III: Hunter and Project

"Hunter is the CIA's sensitive project involving the review of mail," said a March 10, 1961, FBI memorandum written by D. E. Moore, and the "CIA makes available to us results of their analysis to this project." Moore's memo reported important news from a meeting the day before with CIA's Counterintelligence Chief, James Angleton, concerning "illegal espionage activities":

... We were advised that CIA has now established a laboratory in New York in connection with this project which can examine correspondence for secret writing, micro dots and possibly codes. He said the laboratory is fully equipped and they would be glad to make its facilities available to us if at any time we desire an examination of this nature to be made in NYC and time was of the essence and would not permit the material to be brought to our Laboratory in Washington, D. C. We expressed our appreciation for the offer and said that in the event we desired to utilize their laboratory, we would contact them.'

Beneath this Hoover inscribed this happy comment: "Another inroad!" Beneath his writing, still another note said optimistically that "Hunter material will increase about 20% since NY lab now established. 4/21/61."

"Hunter" was the FBI term for the CIA's HT/LINGUAL project which, as discussed in Chapter Two, was used to monitor Lee Harvey Oswald. The expansion of the HT/LINGUAL program in April 1961 came as the FBI entered a new active phase of intelligence gathering on Oswald triggered by his decision to return to America. The CIA has officially maintained that among the millions of letters it intercepted, only one directly pertained to Oswald. That letter was written by his mother in Fort Worth on July 6 and opened by the CIA in New York on July 8, 1961.

The timing was perfect: On July 3 the FBI's Dallas field office had just finished sending out the largest report it had ever compiled on Oswald. The main body of the report was ten pages, written by Special Agent Fain. According to the CIA's public statements, the secret opening of Marguerite's letter to Oswald five days later was curiously overlooked. In 1975 the Agency said the letter was "dated 8 July 1961 but discovered only on review triggered by press publicity following the Oswalds' return to the U.S. in June 1962."' On the surface, this story seems ridiculous: The only Oswald letter the CIA ever intercepted had been lost for a year and found after a newspaper drew attention to Oswald's return.

"Since Oswald was known to have sent or received more than 50 communications during his stay in the Soviet Union," the House Select Committee on Assassinations said in its 1978 report, "the committee also questioned why the Agency ostensibly had just one letter in its possession directly related to Oswald."3 The Agency's response to the committee's question and use of the word "ostensibly" was defensive. "HT/LINGUAL only operated 4 days a week," was the reply, "even then, proceeded on a sampling basis." We will troll the CIA's files shortly for evidence contrary to this story of the one-letter LINGUAL file on Oswald. First, however, we will inspect the documents connected to the letter the CIA says it "discovered" a year after opening it, and then examine the documents and reports surrounding the letter in Oswald's secret files.

The word "discovered" in the Agency's statement was misleading. "Rediscovered" would have been more appropriate. A June 22, 1962, CIA memo mentioning Washington Post coverage of Oswald's return to the U.S. said this: "A search of the Project [HT/ LINGUAL] files revealed that the attached subject item was sent to subject by his mother on 8 July 1961."' This memo does not say, let alone prove, that Marguerite's letter was discovered for the first time in June 1962. In view of the fact that the person using the steam iron that opened her letter was working for the CIA, their story justifiably prompts this joke: How many CIA agents does it take to read a letter? The answer: That depends on their security clearances.

There has been a startling new development in the story of Marguerite's letter since the new release of JFK documents in 1993 to 1994. A better copy of a mail intercept index card on Oswald offers, for the first time, a clear view of a handwritten note heretofore too faded to read. The note "Delete 15/3/60" indicates that Oswald had been deleted from HT/LINGUAL coverage on March 15, 1960.' This means Oswald's name was not on the Watch List when the CIA opened Marguerite's letter to him. Worse still, CI/SIG's Ann Egerter put Oswald's name back on the list on August 7, 1961.6 Thus, the CIA opened Oswald's mail when he was not on the list and then couldn't find the letter after putting him back on the list.

More than Marguerite's letter was missing from Oswald's CIA files. On May 25, the embassy had received a letter mailed in Minsk about ten days before, in which Oswald asked for assurances that he would not be prosecuted and divulged a new dimension to his travel plans. On May 26, Snyder sent a dispatch to the State Department containing this description of the events:

The Embassy received on May 25, 1961, an undated letter from Lee Harvey Oswald postmarked Minsk, May 16, 1961, in which he states in part that he is asking "full guarantees that I shall not, under any circumstances, he persecuted for any act pertaining to this case" should he return to the United States, that if this "condition" cannot be met he will "endeavor to use relatives in the United States to see about getting something done in Washington." According to the letter, Oswald is married to a Russian woman who would want to accompany him to the United States.'

The embassy sent this dispatch, Number 806, via "air pouch" to the State Department where, on June 3, the distribution center sent fifteen copies to the CIA.8 On a CIA copy of this dispatch is a somewhat indistinct list of fifteen organizational elements, including parts of TSD (Technical Services Division), OO/C (Domestic Contacts Division), ORR (Office of Research in the Intelligence Directorate) and SR (Soviet Russia) division, all clearly CIA offices,' and constituting a peculiar combination which might be associated with the mail intercept program. For example, ORR regularly received HT/LINGUAL reports, and the laboratory at the mail intercept site was run by TSD.10 Whether these observations are correct or not, this crude hand-drawn distribution list was unlike any that appears in all of the CIA cover sheets on Oswald. Missing from this list were any of the counterintelligence sections normally included on Oswald documents, such as CI/STAFF, CUOPS, and CI/SIG.

The 610a CIA routing and record sheet attached to the publicly released copy of Moscow Embassy dispatch 806 only further adds to this mystery: It is from November 1961, five months after the fact. This routing sheet probably does not reflect the original internal CIA distribution for this Foreign Service dispatch. Was there something special about it? Indeed there was: It was the first document the CIA received that revealed that Oswald was planning to bring a Soviet citizen home as his wife.

A check of the calendar suggests that the circulation of dispatch 806-with its original routing sheet-was in progress at the precise time the Agency opened but did not "discover" the letter to Oswald. Where was dispatch 806 inside the CIA at this time? Can we determine who might have seen it? The answer is yes. It probably circulated among the same CIA offices that examined the next Oswald document received at the CIA: The July 3, 1961, Fain report on Oswald. We have the original cover sheet for the Fain report, and it shows that the Fain report went to nine offices in the Soviet Russia Division and four offices in counterintelligence, including Ann Egerter in CI/SIG. The Fain report circulated among these fourteen offices between July 24 and August 14. Dispatch 806 began its rounds-probably to these same fourteen offices-on or about June 3, and on July 8, Marguerite's letter was steamed open at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

Was there an important event which might have been connected to or have caused the July 8 secret opening of Marguerite's letter? Again, the answer is yes. An obvious place to look for clues is the Soviet Union, where, indeed, a portentous sequence of events began on July 8. Oswald suddenly surfaced in Moscow on July 8 and phoned Marina in Minsk, instructing her to proceed immediately to Moscow." More important, on that date Oswald, for the first time since his defection in 1959, entered the U.S. Embassy. Inside he used the telephone.

Impatient because he had not heard anything since March about the return of his passport," Oswald had taken decisive action by traveling to Moscow and showing up without warning at the American Embassy. The offices were closed," prompting Oswald's use of the house telephone to reach Snyder. The two men met, talked briefly, and agreed to meet the following Monday. By this time the Oswald "Banjo" (a term the CIA used for pieces of mail they opened) was back in its envelope and on its way to Russia.

The Meaning of Freedom

When Oswald first visited the embassy on a Saturday in 1959, he declined Snyder's invitation to return the following Monday. Oswald did things differently this time. On July 10, he and Snyder initiated the application for return to America while Marina waited outside. 14 Snyder, meanwhile, asked Oswald questions about the details of his life in Russia and asked for his Soviet papers.

The American consul had to make a far-reaching determination: Had Oswald expatriated himself? Had he become a Soviet citizen? This is Snyder's account of the discussion right after it happened:

Oswald stated that he was not a citizen of the Soviet Union and had never formally applied for citizenship, that he had never taken an oath of allegiance to the Soviet Union, and that he was not a member of the factory trade union organization. He said that he had never given Soviet officials any confidential information that he had learned in the Marines, had never been asked to give such information, and "doubted" that he would have done so had he been asked."

The Warren Commission later rightly concluded that some of Oswald's statements during the interview were "undoubtedly false." The Warren Report pointed out that Oswald "had almost certainly applied for citizenship in the Soviet Union,"" and had been disappointed when he was turned down." "He possessed a membership card in the union organization,"" the report noted, and then declared that Oswald's "assertion to Snyder that he had never been questioned by Soviet authorities concerning his life in the United States is simply unbelievable.""