Reclaiming History (299 page)

I would imagine that virtually the entire activist anti-Castro community in Miami showed up at the Orange Bowl on December 29, 1962, less than eleven months before the assassination. And for those who weren’t there, they undoubtedly knew everything about the event from Cuban-American radio and newspapers. They had to know, then, that brigade leaders San Román, Artime, and Oliva—who landed on the treacherous beaches of the Bay of Pigs, saw their comrades killed before their eyes, and were eventually captured (after hiding in the swamps for days, with little food or water) and imprisoned for a year and a half in Castro’s prisons—had made peace with Kennedy and stood by his side as the American and Cuban national anthems were played, even giving him the brigade flag for safekeeping. Knowing this, any anti-Castro militant, or militants, thinking about killing Kennedy would have had to realize that such an act would be going against their brigade leaders, who, along with their troops, were the legendary heroes and soul of the anti-Castro movement. For the thought of assassination to have gone beyond the above realization is not a likely thing.
¹⁸²

There is a piece of significant circumstantial evidence, in addition to the common sense of it all, that no anti-Castro group, or even individual members thereof, was complicit in the assassination. It is well known that both the
anti
-and the
pro
-Castro groups were heavily infiltrated by the other side. Bill Kelly, a retired FBI agent who worked in the Internal Security-Cuba section of the Miami field office, which investigated and monitored the two groups full-time during the early 1960s, told me that “half the anti-Castro groups were pro-Castro informants.” When I told him that sounded awfully high, he said, “Put it this way. A lot, a lot of pro-Castro informants infiltrated the anti-Castro groups. They were called ‘G-2 Agents.’ G-2 was the Cuban Intelligence Service. When we’d identify them, we’d arrest them for being in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which required them to register, which they never did, with the State Department. Because these were crimes committed on American soil, the FBI, not the CIA, had jurisdiction.” Kelly noted that “if pro-Castro agents were operating in any other country against the interests of the United States, then it would be CIA jurisdiction. However, not all of these informants were actually G-2 people being paid by Castro. There also were volunteers.”

I asked Kelly to estimate the likelihood that Castro, because of this infiltration, would know if any of the anti-Castro groups were behind the assassination. “With the level of infiltration he had, I can say he would have known with almost 100 percent metaphysical certitude,” he responded.
¹⁸³
In fact, FBI headquarters said it believed that there were “more than two hundred agents of Cuban G-2 in the Miami area, all targeted against the exile movement.”
¹⁸⁴
We know that when it was learned after the assassination that Oswald had a reverence for Castro and his revolution and even had a Fair Play for Cuba chapter in New Orleans, much suspicion focused on Castro’s possible involvement in the assassination. To a much lesser degree, that suspicion continues to this very day. As the HSCA said, if Castro learned that
anti
-Castro groups had killed Kennedy, he “would have had the highest incentive to report” this to American authorities “since it would have dispelled suspicions” of his involvement in the assassination.
¹⁸⁵
Yet no such information ever came from Castro, information he would almost undoubtedly have possessed if, indeed, anti-Castro Cuban exiles had been behind Kennedy’s assassination.

Sergio Arcacha, a New Orleans Cuban exile leader, told author Gus Russo, “Castro knew everything we were doing. He had people everywhere.” Russo goes on to write, “In truth, Castro didn’t need ‘people everywhere’ because the Cuban exiles were notorious for being their own worst enemies. Justin Gleichauf, the former chief of the CIA’s Miami office, has put it this way: ‘To a Cuban, a secret is something you tell to only a hundred people.’”
¹⁸⁶
Arcacha himself, just one week before the invasion, told a reporter in New Orleans that the invasion “could begin this afternoon, tomorrow, anytime. We are just waiting for the signal.”
¹⁸⁷
Cuban intelligence and infiltration of the exiles was such that, according to a January 12, 1961, report, which was among the documents declassified by the Cuban government in March of 2001, the Cubans had detailed knowledge of the CIA camps in Guatemala and Florida, where most of the anti-Castro invasion forces were being trained.
¹⁸⁸

A
s highly speculative as any possible umbilical cord was between anti-Castro Cubans and Oswald’s act of murder, I would come to believe after the London trial that the very remote possibility of anti-Castro Cuban exiles being involved with Oswald in the assassination, even if in the most tangential of ways, was the
only
conspiracy possibility in the entire case that had any merit. A possibility, I might add, that would never be capable of exciting conspiracy theorists and supporting a thriving cottage industry dealing with the facts and mythology of the assassination. It is not only more “sexy” for the CIA, organized crime, or the military-industrial complex, et cetera, to be involved in the assassination, as opposed to comparatively impotent anti-Castro Cuban exiles, but it is infinitely more grave and momentous if leading agencies of our own government, or powerful groups in our society, who felt Kennedy was implementing policies antithetical to their interests, decided to alter the course of American history by a bullet rather than the ballot box.

I should underline that the aforementioned possibility is only a possibility. There is no evidence that the anti-Castro leadership, or even rogue members of any anti-Castro exile group, ever participated, in any way, in the assassination, and three separate investigations have so concluded. The Warren Commission found that the allegation of anti-Castro Cuban involvement in the assassination was “without any factual basis”;
¹⁸⁹
the HSCA, though saying it could “not preclude the possibility” (how could this
ever
be done?) that individual members of an anti-Castro group were involved, reported that “the evidence was sufficient to support the conclusion that anti-Castro groups…were not involved in the assassination”;
¹⁹⁰
and the Senate’s Church Committee said there was “no evidence” that any anti-Castro group was involved in Kennedy’s murder.
¹⁹¹

A refrain one constantly hears from the conspiracy theorists is that the CIA and FBI kept critical information from the Warren Commission. The unmistakable inference is that these two agencies withheld
many
things from the Commission, probably because one or both of them (particularly the CIA) were complicit in the assassination. But when the conspiracy theorists finally get around to setting forth just what was withheld, they only come up with the same, old, tired matters about the CIA not informing the Warren Commission about its plot to kill Castro, and the FBI tearing up Oswald’s note allegedly threatening to blow up the FBI building. Nothing more of any substance.

With respect to the FBI tearing up the note from Oswald (discussed earlier in book), it couldn’t be more obvious that this was just an attempt by the Dallas office of the FBI to protect itself from J. Edgar Hoover’s wrath. If the note surfaced, Hoover would know that many in the nation would blame him and the FBI’s negligence for not alerting the Secret Service or anyone else about Oswald before the president came to Dallas.
*
As J. Gordon Shanklin, the head of the Dallas FBI office who eventually had FBI agent James Hosty (to whom Oswald addressed the note) destroy the note, told Hosty when Hosty told him the note was “just your typical guff,” “What do you mean, ‘typical guff’? This note was written by Oswald, the probable assassin of the President, and Oswald brought this note into
this
office just ten days ago. What the hell do you think Hoover’s going to do if he finds out about this note?…He’s going to lose it.” Hosty, though having been opposed to destroying the note, went along with its destruction thereafter to the extent that he never brought it up in his testimony before the Warren Commission, relying on the explanation that the Commission hadn’t “asked me about the note.”
¹
As Bill Alexander, the Dallas assistant DA at the time, told author Gerald Posner, “I worked with those fellows at the FBI over many years. What they were doing with the Hosty situation is covering their asses…People like Shanklin were running for cover to make sure no one could point a finger and say, ‘You failed to spot Oswald as a threat.’”
²

Some have said that agents in the Dallas field office of the FBI also deleted Oswald’s reference to Hosty in his address book when the Dallas Police Department turned the book over to the field office, but they did not. The Hosty reference—his name, FBI address, phone number, license plate number—remained in the address book for the Warren Commission to see.
³
However, the Dallas office, in its December 23, 1963, report to the Warren Commission, made no reference to the entry in the address book,
⁴
though it referred to other entries of less significance. Why? Dallas FBI special agent Robert P. Gemberling, who was the Dallas field office’s “coordinator” of the investigation into the assassination of Kennedy, instructed Special Agent John T. Kesler to submit to him a list of all names and items in Oswald’s address book that were “leads” requiring “investigation attention.” Virtually all of the names and matters referred to in Kesler’s thirty-page report to Gemberling were previously “unknown” to the FBI. Inasmuch as the identity of Special Agent Hosty was known to both Kesler and himself, Gemberling did not consider the Hosty information a “lead” and hence did not include it in his own report of December 23, 1963, to the Warren Commission.
⁵

It should be noted, however, that the February 11, 1964, report from FBI headquarters to the Warren Commission that included nonleads as well as leads did specifically refer to the Hosty entry, and in an even earlier January 27, 1964, letter to the Warren Commission, the FBI notified the Commission of the Hosty reference in Oswald’s address book. The HSCA “concluded that there was no plan by the FBI to withhold the Hosty entry in Oswald’s address book for sinister reasons.”
⁶

Another alleged FBI cover-up (“The whole thing cries cover-up from the very outset,” conspiracy theorist Bernard Fensterwald wrote Congressman Thomas Downing of the HSCA on March 8, 1976) turned out to be much to do about nothing when the FBI documents pertaining to the allegation were subsequently declassified. On November 26, 1963, Captain Paul Barger of the Irving Police Department told FBI special agent Robert C. Lish that an informant told him that on November 23, 1963, he had overheard a telephone conversation between telephone number BL-31628 in Irving, Texas (Ruth Paine’s residence, though the phone number was still listed in the name of her husband, Michael), and CR-55211 in Arlington (Bell Helicopter, Michael Paine’s workplace) in which the male voice said that he felt sure Lee Harvey Oswald had killed the president but he did not feel Oswald was responsible, adding, “We both know who is responsible.” Barger said he was extremely busy at the time and could not remember who his informant had been. But the real problem is that when Lish asked Barger for his written record of the conversation he had with his informant and Barger furnished the notes, there was no reference to the words “We both know who is responsible.” The only words on the notes were “Oswald wouldn’t have any reason to do it, but when you get right down to it, the only guilty person it [is?] that bastard himself.” So obviously, Barger had orally given Agent Lish incorrect information, and he conceded as much when he said that when he told Lish what his informant told him, he did not have his notes on hand and was speaking from memory.
⁷

In any event, both Michael Paine and Ruth Paine were interviewed by the FBI, and though each acknowledged speaking over the phone about Oswald on the day after the assassination, Michael Paine said he never made the statement “We both know who is responsible” at any place, at any time, or under any circumstances. With respect to the other remark, he said he stated on numerous occasions that Oswald “wouldn’t have had any reason” to do it; however, although he believed Oswald did, in fact, kill Kennedy, the words “the only guilty person [is] that bastard himself” did not sound to him like his statement.
⁸
Ruth Paine also told the FBI that her husband never told her, “We both know who is responsible.” About the other (“bastard”) remark, she said she could not recall her husband using those exact words, but the meaning of the words would be “compatible” with his feelings on November 23, 1963.
⁹
Regarding this alleged November 23, 1963, telephone conversation with her husband while he allegedly was
at his place of work
, Paine added to me, “Michael
never
worked on Saturdays.”
¹⁰
November 23 was a Saturday.

The 1976 Church Committee Report said, “The evidence suggests that during the Warren Commission investigation, top FBI officials were continually concerned with protecting the Bureau’s reputation and avoiding any criticism for not fulfilling investigative responsibilities.” This paranoia primarily originated with the FBI director himself who, the Senate Select Committee said, had a “known hostility to criticism or embarrassment of the Bureau.”
¹¹
Indeed, even without Hoover knowing of Oswald’s threatening note to Hosty, the day after the assassination Hoover ordered an internal investigation to determine whether the FBI had adequately investigated Oswald’s potential for subversive actions or violence and whether he should have been listed on the FBI’s security index.
¹²
On December 10, 1963, the report by the bureau’s Inspection Division found numerous deficiencies in the pre-assassination investigation and recommended various forms of discipline, such as censure, probation, and transfer for seventeen members of the FBI, including four supervisors at headquarters and one assistant director.
¹³
A representative example of a cited deficiency: “Special Agent [name deleted] advised that New York [field office of FBI] did not report Oswald’s 4-21-63 Fair Play For Cuba contact to Dallas [field office] until letter sent 6-27-63, and Dallas did not feel it necessary to report it to Bureau [headquarters] until 9-10-63. [Deleted agent’s name] admits it ‘possibly’ would have been better to have reported on the matter earlier.”
¹⁴
Hoover subsequently carried out most of the disciplinary actions recommended.
¹⁵
One could only imagine what the bureau’s Inspection Division and particularly Hoover would have done to Shanklin, even Hosty, if they had learned about Oswald’s note and the destruction of it.

One other alleged attempt on the part of the FBI to withhold key information from the Warren Commission comes not so much from the conspiracy theorists but from a quasi-conspiracy soul mate of theirs, former FBI agent James Hosty himself. In his book
Assignment: Oswald
, Hosty says that shortly before his testimony before the Warren Commission, someone removed “two key items” (both had been sent from FBI headquarters) from his file on Oswald in his Dallas office. One was an October 18, 1963, communiqué from the CIA to the FBI stating that while Oswald was in Mexico City he was in contact with the Russian embassy and had probably spoken to one Valeriy Kostikov at the embassy. The second document contained a reference to the November 9, 1963, letter Oswald had written to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., in which he refers to speaking to a “Comrade Kostin” (believed to be Kostikov) at the Russian embassy in Mexico City. Based on these two documents, Hosty said he figured Kostikov “was just a simple administrative officer at the Embassy.”

But Hosty says he later learned that Kostikov was a KGB agent in Department 13, the department of the KGB that dealt in sabotage and assassination. Hosty suggests that the reason the FBI (who he correctly presumes knew this fact)
*
kept this information from him is that the bureau, in league with the CIA, the Warren Commission, and President Johnson himself, didn’t want him to introduce this information into the public record when he testified before the Warren Commission, for fear, Hosty says, that it could precipitate a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
¹⁶

One immediate problem with Hosty’s thinking is this: Hosty said he read both documents before they disappeared from his files. Obviously, neither contained a reference to Kostikov being a KGB agent. Indeed, this is the predicate for Hosty’s whole argument. Since the documents did not contain a reference to Kostikov being a KGB agent, how in the world would their removal from his file, which he felt was highly suspicious, prevent him from knowing Kostikov was a KGB agent? It obviously makes no sense at all. Moreover, if the documents had contained a reference to Kostikov’s KGB status, since Hosty had already read both documents, he could have testified to their essential content before the Warren Commission even if he did not have them in his physical possession.

It is also noteworthy that unlike his published book, his earlier 1986 manuscript of the book pointed out (page 20) that right after the assassination, when he located his Oswald file, the two subject documents were “right on top” of the file. Obviously, they were important, and just as obviously, his supervising agents had a right, without his permission, to look into the file (and remove any documents they deemed important) on someone who had just been identified as the president’s assassin. Indeed, one such supervising agent, Kenneth Howe, testified to this being routine procedure in
any
case.
¹⁷
Hosty goes on to say in his published book, however, that when he returned to Dallas after testifying before the Warren Commission in Washington, the two subject documents had been placed back in the file, suggesting again, he says, that his superiors didn’t want him to have access to these documents prior to his testimony.
¹⁸
But this is ludicrous since his superiors would have to assume that since these two documents had been in his file, he had read them and knew the contents anyway.

Hosty asserts that when he referred to the two documents in a pre-testimony session with a Warren Commission staffer in May of 1964,
A
ssistant FBI Director Alan Belmont muttered in Hosty’s ear, “Damn it, I thought I told them not to let you see that one from the Washington field office” (he was referring to the October 18, 1963, CIA communiqué to FBI headquarters advising the FBI of Oswald’s probable contact in Mexico City with Kostikov at the Soviet embassy).
¹⁹
This incident seems highly unlikely to have occurred. What could possibly have been in that document that the FBI did not want Hosty to see? Nothing. All the good stuff—about Kostikov being a KGB agent—was never, per Hosty himself, in either document.

It should be mentioned that the Warren Commission, before Hosty’s testimony on May 5, 1964,
already knew
that Kostikov was a KGB agent who was a member of Department 13. In a memo to the Warren Commission on January 31, 1964, the CIA informed the Commission that “Kostikov is believed to work for Department Thirteen of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. It is the Department responsible for executive action, including sabotage and assassination. These functions of the KGB are known within the Service itself as ‘Wet Affairs’ (mokryye dela).”
²⁰

Though not directly relevant to the Hosty issue, on December 20, 1963, before the CIA sent its memo to the Warren Commission, a CIA report titled “CIA Work on Lee Oswald and the Assassination of President Kennedy” said that “Kostikov is
believed
to work for Department 13 of the KGB, the department responsible for sabotage and assassination. This
belief
is based on the fact that Kostikov once was responsible for a Soviet agent whose mission was sabotage and whom Kostikov passed on to another KGB officer who was positively known to work for Department 13.
Almost
invariably, sabotage agents are handled only by Department 13 officers…The files of our Mexico City station were reviewed in the three or four days after the assassination to see if anything in Kostikov’s past activities incriminated him. No clue was found linking him to the assassination or to anything remotely related to it.” The report said that even on the day of the assassination, nothing suspicious was noted at the Russian embassy in Mexico City, with Soviet officials, including Kostikov, coming and going “as usual.”
²¹
*