iota 0g ‘ ¢ CONFIDENTIAL 18 fave MEMORANDUM FOR: Chief, CI Staff SUBJECT 3 Allegations of Lee Harvey OSWALD" 's ; ; Connection with the Agency , ' “REFERENCE  : Memorandum of Conversation, Dan Rather/Les Midgley and the DCI, Dated 6 September 1975 1. The referent memorandum | contains two points . ‘which require comments. The first point concerns  . '- allegations that were made shortly after the assassination | _ of President Kennedy. and that have crept up every so often since then. _In one form or another, the allegations are oo that Lee Harvey OSWALD had been connected with the Agency. ae | The allegations are. totally unfounded. . oS 2. The facts regarding this matter are as follows: os a.. On 27 ‘November 1963 I was ‘instructed by | =. “Mr. R.G.Rocca, my immediate superior at that time, to | fe! make a thorough check within the Agency at Headquarters ~~. -to determine whether Lee Harvey OSWALD had ever been: used. by the Agency or been corinected with it in: any - conceivable way.. He ordered me to make the checks ~~ directly and personally to the degree possible and not . to. accept statements of intermediaries. He also ex=0 re plained that he was following instructions from Mr. Ree Helms, who was then the DDP and served as one of) the - Agency's key contact officials with the _ Warren a '.. Commission. b. Although I had ‘already checked the Main Index of IP (then RID) on the night of the assassination, I.---:: rechecked the Main Index and found no record beyond | that which I had already obtained before (plus those | items which had been integrated into the records system _ since the assassination). There was nothing in the DDO- records which indicated any Agency connection with OSWALD. - Oo copy sent_t0 E red ” CONFIDENTIAL | ae
13-00000 CONFIDENTIAL c. The next component I checked was DCD.. There was no record in their Headquarters files. Arrangements were then made for me to check _. telephonically with each DCD base in the US. The chiefs of the bases then serached their records. and spoke with their officers. I was then advised by each of the chiefs or their designees individ- ually that there had been no contact with OSWALD. d. I then checked with Division D, SE Division, and LA Division's Cuban Operations Group (COG) for any informal desk. records. The results were like- — wise negative. _@. Through the Security Research Section ~~: (SRS) of the Office of Security I had the security _ files checked. There was no record of OSWALD. f. Although CRS keeps no records on Americans, I checked their Soviet, Mexican, and Cuban holdings... on the remote chance that they may have recorded something on OSWALD. There was no record in those . files. nn a g. In “my presence. the chief of the CI Staff's Administiative Office called the Office of Personnel and received the word that there was no record on an ... employee or an applicant for employment named Lee ys . Harvey OSWALD. he I also checked the Office of Medical ‘Services and found no record | on OSWALD. 5° Binalliy, I also checked the records of the CI Staff's Operational Approval Group (CT/OA) with negative results. k. My. checks were completed on 4 Decenbex 1964 and I then sent a brief informal note to Mr. Rocca ‘CONFIDENTIAL. i. The Covert Action Staff ‘also found | no record oS ‘on hin. ;
13-00000 ‘concerned at the time that OSWALD, as an American returning DCD, thus having established contact with the Agency. ‘reason for DCD's lack of interest in OSWALD at that time... ‘of that decade there were so many persons travelling to | CONFIDENTIAL specifying all the checks I had made and stating that the results showed that Lee Harvey OSWALD had never had any connection whatsoever with the Agency. Eventually a statement to this effect was communicated to the Warren Commission. 3. © Similar checks regarding use or employment | of OSWALD had been requested by the foreign divisions of their appropriate stations, I was told, and the results were negative. . . So OT 4. I recall very clearly that. we were extrenely. from the USSR, might have been routinely debriefed by The same point has now, quite understandably, been made. by the two CBS newsmen. Having some knowledge of this subject I have personally concluded that there is valid’ He would surely have been contacted and debriefed by DCD had he been to the USSR and returned to the US before a 1957/1958. Travel to the Soviet Union by Westerners, particularly by Americans, before that time was quite uncommon and we were hungry for eyewitness information in those days. The thaw began in about 1956 and by the end. and from the Soviet Union that DCD was incapable of talk- ing to all of them.. Therefore, a program of selectivity and specific target applicability was instituted. “In a light of the above, it seems to me that OSWALD-- if he. came to DCD's attention at all--would have easily been - by-passed, because he simply did not possess the type of . information that DCD was seeking at that time. DCD would surely have used its limited manpower on travellers who had had’ much greater access in the USSR. 5... It should be added that my above-described search in the Agency file holding produced no record or .. indication that any other US Government agency had used him.as a source or had considered him for recruitment. - -CONFIDENTIA