Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (59 page)

Cobb does remember how the story with Elena turned out. It all ended abruptly one night in late September or early October 1964, when Bobby Kennedy arrived in Mexico City, possibly in connection with his own investigation of his brother's murder.

Robert Kennedy came to Mexico that night. And the Garros had a crush on Kennedy, and so they went out to the airport to see him arrive. The word got around that he was coming, but I was sick and did not go to the airport. I stayed home in my bed with my humidifier, but they went to the airport. They had some yellow roses they wanted to give to Kennedy.83

This trip to Mexico City by Bobby Kennedy is not widely known, but there is documentary evidence that supports Cobb's recollection. On November 25, 1964, CIA station chief Win Scott wrote under his pseudonym Willard C. Curtis a "memo for the files."B4 "Paz tried to talk to Robert Kennedy when he was here," Scott wrote, and added, "She wanted to tell him she had personally met Lee Harvey Oswald when he was here in Mexico City. She said she met him and two friends (Cubans) at the home of Horacio (and Silvia) Duran."

In a recent interview. Dallas FBI agent Hosty recalled that the CIA assistant deputy director for Plans, Thomas Karamessines, went down to Mexico City to "call off the investigation," and that Ambassador Mann obliged by halting it. "When the CIA agents in Mexico City heard that Bobby Kennedy wanted the probe to stop," says Hosty, "they in fact stopped it."85 If Hosty is correct, it is possible that Bobby Kennedy's trip may have been an attempt to lay the matter to rest. If so, he did not succeed.

"Suddenly Elena and her daughter came home from the airport," Cobb remembers, "and soon there was a lot of raised voices about her cat and what had happened to it." Cobb could not understand how harm had come to the poor cat. "They stayed up all night long," Cobb says, "and decided I had broken the cat's legs. By the time I woke up it was over. I moved out to a hotel the next day."' By the time this story made it into Win Scott's memo, Cobb had also "smashed the ribs" of the cat.B7 Another memo or two and the cat would not have had any bones left to break.

After Cobb's infamous but still secret report, the next piece in this documentary trail is an October 12, 1964, CIA memo for the record from the Mexico City station's chief of covert action Jim Flannery." The Flannery memo states that Elena had told her story to Eunice Odio; the HSCA investigation was unable "to determine if Elena Garro told Ms. Odio the story personally or if Ms. Cobb related the story to Ms. Odio who relayed it to [redacted.]"89 Cobb says that Elena probably told her own story to Eunice.90 According to the Lopez Report, the next piece of the story came on November 24, 1964, when a CIA agent reported information derived from an "asset." This was the slanderous memo about Cobb, previously discussed. The agent erroneously characterized Cobb as a "American Communist" who had rented a room from Garro, and that Garro had also told her story to a U.S. Embassy official "who claimed to represent the Warren Commission."" June Cobb was not a Communist.

Charles Thomas's first discussion with Elena Garro de Paz about Oswald occurred on December 10, 1965, more than two years after the assassination. Charles Thomas, a career Foreign Service officer, was the political officer at the American Embassy at the time. There was something odd about him which we will return to at the end of this chapter. He wrote a memorandum about his conversation with Elena that, according to the Lopez Report, had "more details" than the story as told to Cobb more than a year earlier. Elena repeated the story of the twist party, but according to Thomas's memo, one of the new "details" was Elena's charge that Silvia Duran "was Oswald's mistress while he was there."92 According to the Lopez Report, this Thomas memo was also filed in the Oswald chronological file Wx-7241:

A note by this entry in Wx-7241 says, "How did Elena Garro know about Silvia being the mistress of Oswald? This is 1965." The Mexico City Station did not hear about the Oswald-Duran "affair" until July 1967 when a CIA asset, [redacted] reported it.93

This almost certainly indicates that the October 5 Cobb report did not contain the story of the Oswald-Duran affair. It would also mean that Charles Thomas did not pass this information to the CIA station in Mexico City when he learned it in 1965. However, the Lopez Report also notes that Thomas circulated his memorandum in the embassy and the CIA's Mexico City station.

Clearly, these claims cannot all be true: If the CIA "asset" did not bring the story to the station's attention until 1967, Charles Thomas could not have circulated the story in 1965. This issue is resolved by Win Scott's marginalia on the Thomas memo:

The COS wrote a note on the memo: "What an imagination she [Elena] has!?! Should we send to Headquarters?" The Officer replied, on the memo, "Suggest sending. There have been stories around town about all this, and Thomas is not the only person she has talked to ... If memory serves me, didn't [redacted] refer to Oswald and the local leftists and Cubans in one of her Squibs?"'

The name behind the redaction is probably Cobb. The CIA station cabled the information in Thomas's memo to CIA headquarters, and Win Scott wrote on the cable, "Please ask Charles Thomas if he'll `follow up.' Get questions from Ann G[oodpasture]. Please let's discuss. Thanks." Scott called a meeting with Thomas and asked him "to get a more detailed account of Ms. Garro's story."

Thomas obliged, and met again with Garro on December 25, 1965, after which he wrote a new memo about the Garro allegations. This time Elena's story about the twist party was "much more detailed," and she explained that she had earlier held back part of her story because "the Embassy officers did not give much credence to anything she and Elenita said." According to Thomas's December 25, 1965, memo,

Elena stated that it was "common knowledge" that Silvia had been Oswald's mistress. When asked who could verify the allegation, she could only remember one person who had told her this. Elena claimed that person was Victor Rica Galan, a "pro-Castro

Elena wasn't holding back any longer. Thomas gave his memo to the CIA station "to aid in its investigation" of the assassination. On the first page of the memo Scott wrote: "Shouldn't we send to Headquarters?" Someone responded: "Of course." The Mexico City station did send a cable to headquarters on December 12, 1965, reporting that it was "following up" the story and would send the results in another cable.

On December 27, 1965, the embassy legal attache, Nathan Ferris, wrote a memo to the ambassador reporting the results of his interviews on November 17 and 24 with Elena and her daughter. According to Ferris, Elena told substantially the same story as she had to Thomas. The Ferris memo further stated this:

... Inquiries conducted at that time (November 1964), however, failed to substantiate the allegations made by Mrs. Garro de Paz and her daughter. In view of the fact that Mrs. Garro de Paz' allegations have been previously checked out without substantiation, no further action is being taken concerning her recent repetition of those allegations.

Ferris, obviously not interested in Elena's allegations, sent a copy of the memorandum to the CIA station. Goodpasture summarized the interview, including Ferris's "failure to substantiate Elena's story," in a cable to headquarters on December 29.

The cable promised to keep Headquarters advised if any further information was to [be] developed.... A note stapled to this cable by [redacted] stated, "I don't know what FBI did in November 1964, but the Garros have been talking about this for a long time and she is said to be extremely bright." Anne Goodpasture wrote that the FBI had found Elena's allegations unsubstantiated but that "we will try to confirm or refute Ms. Garro de Paz' information and follow up." Win Scott wrote, "She is also nuts."97

In the Duran interview with Summers for this work she again adamantly denied having had a sexual relationship with Oswald: "No, no, no. Of course not. I had a relation with someone in the embassy, but not with Oswald ... he was somebody you couldn't pay attention to."9B As we saw in Chapter Fourteen, Duran admitted having had the affair with Lechuga, and was willing to discuss these important, if embarrassing, contacts. While her candor about Lechuga and "someone in the embassy" does not make her denial about Oswald true, it does add to her credibility.

On June 18, 1967, the CIA station in Mexico City sent a dispatch to the chief, Western Hemisphere Division, J. C. King. It included this passage:

Headquarters attention is called to paragraphs 3 through 5 of [redacted] report dated 26 May. The fact that Silvia Duran had sexual intercourse with Lee Harvey Oswald on several occasions when the latter was in Mexico City is probably new, but adds little to the Oswald case. The Mexican police did not report the extent of the Duran-Oswald relationship to this Station.99

Duran owed her job in the Cultural Institute to the Cuban cultural attache, Teresa Proenza. The above report was from an agent familiar with Silvia Duran and Teresa Proenza, a telltale sign that it was the handiwork of Luis Alberu, whose name fits perfectly in the corresponding redacted space in the Lopez Report which also describes the contents of the May 26, 1967, report.10° The news from Alberu represented, for the first time, independent corroboration of Elena's 1965 version of the story to Charles Thomas, in which the Oswald-Duran affair had been added to what had been a twist party in her earlier version to Cobb."'

For the CIA station chief Win Scott, Alberu's report had established the Oswald-Duran affair as a "fact." HSCA investigator Ed Lopez agreed that the Alberu report "confirmed" Elena Garro's story that "Silvia Duran had been Oswald's mistress while he was in Mexico City."102 According to the May 26 report, Alberu had explained to his case officer that "he was doing his best to keep active certain contacts he had had in the past that were on the periphery of the official Cuban circle." This suggests that Alberu had been away from Mexico, perhaps for as long as three years, and had recently returned to the embassy in Mexico City. Alberu's case officer explained:

He [Alberu] mentioned specifically the case of Silvia and Horacio Duran that then explained the background of the relationship with them. He related that Silvia Duran worked as a receptionist at the Consulate in 1959-64 and was on duty when Lee Harvey Oswald applied for a visa. She had been recommended to the Cubans by Teresa Proenza, the Press Attache from 1959 until 1962. [Redacted] described Teresa Proenza as a Cuban woman aged about 52, a lesbian, and a member of the Communist Party of Cuba, who was currently in jail in Cuba as a result of a conviction for espionage on behalf of CIA.103

The CIA station in Mexico City knew the real reason that Proenza had been jailed. Proenza had been used in a pernicious and successful CIA "political action" deception of which she and her longtime friend, the Cuban vice minister of defense, were the targets.

We need to briefly summarize this story of Proenza's arrest because it illuminates the nature and success of the Agency's anti Cuban operations that were connected with the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. This helps us to understand how sensitive the Oswald Mexico City story is, and the Agency's dogged resistance to our efforts to find out more.

The CIA saw to it that false papers had been planted on Proenza, documents that made the vice minister of defense look like a CIA agent who had betrayed the Soviet missile buildup in Cuba to the Americans. Actually, this official was a highly placed and extreme pro-Moscow Communist-and was probably the KGB's chief agent in the Cuban government. The CIA hoped that Moscow would jump to the vice minister's defense and that a collision would result between Moscow and Havana. The Proenza deception was associated with the Agency's AMTRUNK and AMROD anti-Cuban operations, part of a general CIA strategy to "split the Castro regime" and sour relations between Moscow and Havana. Proenza, the vice minister, the vice minister's wife, and a subordinate of the vice minister were all arrested, tried for treason, and jailed for various terms. They were all innocent.

The CIA refused to turn over the Proenza file to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, arguing that

The story would make dramatic headlines if it became publicly known, especially in the present moralistic environment. The fact that several persons were deprived of their freedom as a result of the operation would attract further attention. Furthermore, this operation laid the basis for other operations of a similar nature that were successfully mounted against Cuban and other hostile targets. In short, this file is a Pandora's box the opening of which would not only expose the cryptonyms of other operations of this type but would attract unfavorable publicity for the Agency in certain quarters and would expose hitherto secret techniques and assets.

From the records so far released we cannot determine whether Alberu knew the full truth behind Proenza's fate. He did tell his case officer that while in Havana the person from whom he had learned the story of her arrest also told Alberu that "in the event he was asked, he deny that he had known Teresa Proenza or had had anything to do with her.""

As previously discussed, Alberu was the key to the Oswald-Duran sex story. Elena Garro was anti-Communist and had an ax to grind with her cousin's wife, Silvia Duran. These factors reduce her credibility, while Alberu's position inside the Cuban Embassy presumably makes his account more authoritative. After his return to Mexico City in 1967, Alberu reestablished his relationship with Silvia Duran. Some of what he learned from or about Duran is still classified, including one-third of a page in the May 26 report written by his case officer. The Agency has decided, however, that this passage from that report may now be revealed:

[Alberu] continued that Silvia Duran [redacted] had first met Oswald when he applied for a visa and had gone out with him several times since she liked him from the start. She admitted that she had sexual relations with him but insisted that she had no idea of his plans. When the news of the assassination broke she stated that she was immediately taken into custody by the Mexican police and interrogated thoroughly and beaten until she admitted that she had had an affair with Oswald.'°5