Reclaiming History (294 page)

If Oswald did not leave Dallas for Houston with his two Cuban friends on the evening of September 25, or get there by some other means earlier in the day, then how did he get to Houston from New Orleans in time for him to board the Houston-to-Laredo bus at 2:35 on the morning of September 26? The Warren Commission believed that on September 25, Oswald probably took the 12:30 p.m. bus out of New Orleans, arriving in Houston at 10:50 p.m.
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However, as indicated, although the Warren Commission checked all public modes of transportation from New Orleans to Houston on September 25, it could not come up with any evidence from witnesses or records (passenger manifest, ticket reservation or sale, listing Oswald’s name or any alias of his) of his being on any plane, train, or bus from New Orleans to Houston that day.
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The relevance of this (at least with respect to buses, the most likely mode of transportation Oswald would have used given the sorry state of his finances, and the mode we know he did use from Houston to Mexico City) is that, as author Jean Davison points out in her book,
Oswald’s Game
, this is “an unusual circumstance, since there were passengers who had seen [Oswald] on every other leg of his bus trip to Mexico City and back to Dallas.”
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The very
absence
of any witness or record that Oswald used commercial transportation out of New Orleans is itself at least some circumstantial evidence that he did not do so and goes in the direction of supporting the conclusion that Oswald left New Orleans with the two Latins, and was at Odio’s door on the evening of September 24 or 25, 1963.

I
f, as I believe it appears, Oswald did visit Odio with the two Cubans, what conclusion should be drawn from the incident? The HSCA candidly stated that “it was unable to reach firm conclusions as to the meaning or significance of the Odio incident to the President’s assassination.”
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A few have suggested that the American at Odio’s door was an Oswald imposter. This whole question of identification gives rise to the so-called Second Oswald issue so popular among conspiracy theorists, which was discussed earlier in this book. If it was not Oswald at Odio’s door, says Warren Commission critic and conspiracy theorist Mark Lane, “few alternatives present themselves save that someone impersonated him—perhaps in an effort to frame him nearly two months before the assassination.”
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There is no limit on the scenarios imagined by conspiracy theorists. The Second Oswald theory is but an example of their fecund imagination.

The theory of an Oswald imposter at Odio’s door (a theory that neither the Warren Commission nor the HSCA considered) is based on the argument that it was the anti-Castro movement that was seeking to frame Oswald by the Odio incident, Leopoldo introducing the American with him as Leon Oswald and telling Odio the following day that he was an ex-marine.
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Since Oswald’s pro-Castro sentiments were out in the open and known to many, the thinking goes that if the assassination could be blamed on anyone associated with Castro, this might very well induce a U.S. invasion to overthrow him, the never-ending dream of anti-Castro Cuban exiles. This theory seems wholly implausible. If we’re to ascribe such a sophisticated conspiracy to the two Cubans (and any who were behind them), since they were aware of many details about Odio’s father, we can assume they made it their business to know about Odio’s substantial emotional problems and her recourse to psychiatric help. Why would they choose Odio, of all people, to be the best person they could find whom the authorities would believe?

Indeed, why would they even think Odio would inform the authorities? As we have seen, she did not. Odio’s friend Lucille Connell told the FBI about the incident. Not being able to foresee the action of someone like Lucille Connell, the conspirators would have to realize that if Odio didn’t notify the authorities, their whole plan to frame Oswald would die, since the Odio incident is the only one that has ever surfaced where Oswald allegedly mentioned the name
Kennedy
and the word
assassination
in the same sentence. But why in the world would the conspirators put all their eggs in Sylvia Odio’s flimsy basket? It doesn’t make sense.
*

Moreover, even if anti-Castro conspirators foresaw Odio coming forward with the information Leopoldo gave her,
†
as Jean Davison points out in her insightful book, although Oswald might be implicated in the president’s assassination, wouldn’t the Cubans automatically fear that the anti-Castro movement might also be, since two supposed representatives of the movement were
with
Oswald? Such a result, obviously, would never serve any purpose of theirs.
⁹⁵

Finally, and most conclusively, the intent to frame Oswald would presuppose that it was the framers (anti-Castro Cuban exiles) who ultimately killed Kennedy. Since we know, beyond all doubt, that it was Oswald who killed Kennedy, this eliminates the possibility of a frame-up as the motivation for the Odio incident. As stated earlier, you frame innocent people, not guilty ones.

Some have suggested it was Oswald who was seeking to do the framing for the assassination of Kennedy he himself intended to commit. But this theory also seems entirely implausible. Although Oswald may have uttered statements that Kennedy should have been assassinated for the Bay of Pigs invasion (an idle observation undoubtedly made by many), there is no compelling evidence or reason to believe that as early as September 25, 1963, he was already actually planning to kill the president. And the theory that he was seeking to frame anti-Castro Cuban exiles for the assassination at the time of the Odio incident necessarily presupposes that his decision to kill Kennedy had already been made. But if that were true, why would he be in Mexico City just a few days later desperately seeking a visa to go to Cuba? Second, Oswald never made any reference to the assassination to Odio, and would have had no way of knowing that Leopoldo would do so the following day.

Since we know Oswald’s Marxist pedigree is beyond dispute, and his infiltration of anti-Communist groups had already been established by the Carlos Bringuier incident in New Orleans just the previous month, it should be noted that his association with anti-Castro Cubans in the Odio incident, if it indeed took place, would therefore not be remarkable. And there are similarities to the two incidents beyond mere infiltration. In both cases, Oswald made much of his experience in the Marines: in the Bringuier incident speaking of his training in guerrilla warfare which would enable him to train anti-Castro forces; in the Odio situation, telling Leopoldo he was an expert rifleman in the Marines and willing to kill Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs. The similarity of the incidents even extends to the fact that Oswald was apparently not too convincing in his effort to portray himself as anti-Castro. Odio told FBI agent Hosty that Leopoldo told her Oswald did not appear sincere to him.
⁹⁶
And Bringuier told the Warren Commission that after his first meeting with Oswald in the retail clothing store where Bringuier was a salesman, “I didn’t know what was inside of me, but I had some feeling that I could not trust him.”
⁹⁷

If Oswald, by posing as an anti-Castroite, had any motivation beyond infiltration, what it was is impossible to say. However, his motive for infiltration may not have been any more arcane than the obvious—to report to Castro or his people (whom we know he was on his way to try to meet with within a matter of days by way of Mexico City) what the anti-Castro movement was up to in this country, including, if he were lucky enough to become privy to it, the extremely important information of specific death plots against Castro, which would make his contribution to Castro immense. In fact, this pedestrian motivation to tell the political Left what the political Right was up to was demonstrated by Oswald in late October of 1963, the very next month, when he stood up at an ACLU meeting he attended with Ruth Paine’s husband, Michael, and, per Michael, “reported what had happened at the meeting of the Far Right which had occurred at Convention Hall the day before, U.N. Day.”
⁹⁸

As to the ostensible motivation behind the visit by the two Cubans—to solicit Odio’s help, by way of a written petition, in raising funds for the anti-Castro movement—as referred to earlier, other anti-Castro Cuban exiles had previously come to her door seeking the identical help from her.
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And as to what was said, although Leopoldo told Odio about Oswald’s assertion that Kennedy should have been assassinated by anti-Castro Cubans after the Bay of Pigs debacle, Odio’s recollection of the conversation contains no indication that Leopoldo was sympathetic to this thought. Indeed, when it came to the subject of assassination, Leopoldo’s interest seemed to be in Castro’s death, not Kennedy’s. Odio testified that Leopoldo “wanted me to introduce this man [Oswald]. He thought that I had something to do with the underground…and I could get men into Cuba.” Leopoldo went on to tell Odio that Oswald would be “the kind of man” to enter Cuba by way of the underground and kill Castro.
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But even if Leopoldo did in fact have an interest in murdering Kennedy (and there’s no evidence of this), we still are left with his statement to Odio that “we probably won’t have anything to do with him. He is kind of loco,” a statement which obviously goes in a direction
away
from a conspiracy.

In addition to the allegation by some conspiracy theorists that one side was trying to frame the other in the Odio incident, many conspiracy theorists have simply asserted that the incident proves the existence of a conspiracy in the assassination between Oswald and others. Conspiracy doyenne Sylvia Meagher says that the Odio incident is “Proof of the Plot” and that it demolishes the “proposition that Oswald was a
lone
assassin.” It poses, she said, “the outlines of a plot implicating Cubans of some denomination, perhaps with non-Cuban backers, joined in a conspiracy against the life of the President of the United States.”
¹⁰¹
In
Conspiracy
, author Anthony Summers refers to the Odio affair as “the most compelling human evidence of conspiracy” in the JFK assassination.
¹⁰²
While admittedly the incident does raise suspicions that go in that direction, the suspicions seem to be spontaneous and visceral in nature. A more sober analysis of what actually transpired and what was said would seem to substantially diminish the virility of the conspiracy conclusion.

However, although the Odio incident certainly is no proof, nor even significant evidence of a conspiracy to kill the president, it cannot be treated dismissively either. Leopoldo and Angelo are shadowy (never having been identified) figures whose personal agenda, if we are to believe Odio,
included murder
(of Castro). Their association with Oswald, the known killer of Kennedy, less than two months before the assassination emits a troubling aroma of possible conspiratorial intrigue. A reasonable possibility of the scope and nature of this possible intrigue was set forth by W. David Slawson and William Coleman, assistant counsels for the Warren Commission whose area of investigation was foreign conspiracy. In a June 1964 memorandum to the Commission titled “Oswald’s Foreign Activities: Summary of Evidence Which Might Be Said to Show That There Was Foreign Involvement in the Assassination of President Kennedy,” they postulated a scenario that might constitute a conspiracy in a law school examination, but might fall short of a chargeable conspiracy in the real world. They wrote that anti-Castro Cubans in New Orleans, aware of Oswald’s pro-Castro sympathies, and realizing that if anything happened the public at large would also learn of them, and perhaps sensing Oswald’s penchant for violence, “encouraged” Oswald to kill the president when he came to Dallas, perhaps even deceiving him into believing they might assist him afterward in his escape. As with those who would have framed Oswald, the motive, Slawson and Coleman point out, would be the expectation that the public “would then blame the assassination on the Castro Government, and the call for its forceful overthrow would be irresistible. A second Bay of Pigs invasion would begin; this time, hopefully, to end successfully.” Slawson and Coleman acknowledged that this scenario was only “wild speculation” on their part, but one that warranted additional investigation.
¹⁰³

I
t is important to note that as opposed to all the other fantastic (as in fantasy) and preposterous conspiracy theories, which are irrational on their face, with anti-Castro Cuban exiles we’re talking about men whose fathers, children, and brothers, members of Brigade 2506 (the invasion force), were slaughtered on the sands of the Bay of Pigs, with many of the exiles blaming Kennedy for what happened to their loved ones. The CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba on April 17–19, 1961, was originally scheduled to take place at Trinidad on the southern coast of Cuba. The invasion site was changed to the Bay of Pigs a few weeks before April 17. Its original code name, Operation Pluto, was later changed to Operation Zapata, the Bay of Pigs being on the Zapata Peninsula. Of the 1,390 Cuban exiles who constituted the invasion force, 114 were killed, 97 escaped,
*
and 1,179 were captured, including José Miro Torra, the son of Dr. José Miro Cardona, the president of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the main Cuban exile group. After a four-day trial in their prison courtyard in late March and early April of 1962, in which even their defense attorney denounced them as traitors and cowards, they were convicted of treason and sentenced by a Cuban tribunal to thirty years of hard labor. Castro told José (Pepe) Pérez San Román, the Brigade 2506 commander, “To prove that we are truly generous, we are not going to kill you.”
¹⁰⁴
This decision had been made by Castro a year earlier. During a long harangue against the captured brigade prisoners in Havana’s Sports Palace that started at 11:30 p.m. on April 26, 1961, and continued to 3:00 the next morning, he told them he had every reason to shoot them all, but his revolution would be kind to them and would spare their lives. Some in the brigade “cheered him wildly.”
¹⁰⁵
Just three days earlier, speaking on Havana TV in his customary green fatigues, Castro had said he would not consider clemency for the captured rebels unless the United States halted aid to all anti-Cuban rebels.
¹⁰⁶