404-10322-10009/-" -_—— e — et Orrice or THe Director Mr. David W. Belin 13 wa Executive Director _ Y. 1975 Commission on CIA Activities. . Within the United States = Dear Mr. Belin: EHKnoche:rrh:5/13/75: Iam attaching, per your request of 15 April, | | | j | background materials relating to certain questions relating to Oswald and the Warren Commission. =» __. ‘Tab A is a classified Secret memorandum a responsive to your request. Tab B is an unclassi- eal . ‘fied version,. . which you can use as you see fit = Ge '- in whatever report you are preparing on the subject. fy V Additional details are available in the Office = of the Inspector General should you wish to pursue this in. greater depth. . Faithfully yours, E. H. Knoche Assistant to the Director ae ~~ Attachment: a/s Distribution:. -.. Orig - Mr. Belin w/att ~ . 4 = OGC wo/att . p-IG wo/att 1 - Knoche Chrono wo/att 1- " Comm Correspondence wo /att 1l- Belin Letter Request 15 April w/fatt ()- Warren Commission
13-00000 > CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ee 4 : . Ago Orrice or THe Director ig > mney /s Mr. David W. Belin Executive Director Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States Dear Mr. Belin: Iam attaching, per your request of 15 April, background materials. relating to certain questions relating to Oswald and the Warren Commission. Tab A is a classified Secret memorandum responsive to your request. Tab'B is an unclassi- fied version, . which you can use as you see fit in whatever report you are preparing on the subject. _ Additional details are available in the Office of the Inspector General should you wish to pursue this in greater depth. Faithfully yours, E. H. Knoche _ _. Assistant to the Director Attachment: a/s | a eee EET ee te” EE ECS
13-00000 SECRET 2 May 1975 MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy Chief, Operations Staff SUBJECT . ': Review of Agency Holdings. regarding. : Photograph of Unidentified Individual “im Mexico City published. by the Warren Commission : -- REFERENCE : Letter dated 15 April 1975 by Mr. David W..Belin, Executive Director of the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, to * Mr.. E. Henry Knoche (copy attached to accompanying report) Le This - is further. to,. and in completion ot, my interim memorandum of a few weeks ago. - - Ze The: attachment _ isa detailed review in narrative, chronological: ‘order: - together with appropriate comment—. ary - of. our extensive holdings on the OSWALD case that -have a bearing on the matter of photographs taken by Mexico City Station on I, 4 and 15. October 1963 of an Unidentified. Individual. As. a consequence of a combina- tion: of. analytical error, misjudgement and under the stress of an urgent desire. to contribute to the develop- ment of the investigation of the assassination, a cropped version of one of the photographs. of the Unidentified Individual was introduced into the chain of evidence in. the OSWALD case on 23 November 1963 by an FBI representative in Dallas. The successive vicissi- tudes which have now made this event a cause celebre right down to the present moment are detailed in the -narrative.. SECRET ~ eh _IMPOrt et sy ST
moet 2 a ° a Be og SECRET 3. The attached report is not intended to be an answer to the Fensterwald/O'Toole article which Mr. Belin ‘attaches to his memorandum. (I have prepared a paragraph- by-paragraph refutation dnd comment on that article, which I believe is more appropriately handled by a sepa- rate memorandum to Mr. Belin, and I will prepare this as a memorandum if that is desired.) 4. The point of the ‘referenced memorandum is that consideration should be given now to "whether or\not the entire matter can be fully disclosed at this time." This submission is designed to make it possible for you, the IG and others whom you may desire to consult to make this decision. The narrative-interpretive summary has been put together in such a way that it. discloses no cyptonyms, pseudonyms or other CIA jargon. However, its contents. qo well beyond what has been released to the public thus far in the Warren Commission documentation. This point must be borne in mind in making a decision on Mr. Belin's question. To remove any question in anybody's mind about our good faith in this matter, the narrative is backed up by copies of actual documentation from our files. It seems to me necessary, in reply to Mr. Belin, that he or his representative. review the documentation that backs up the narrative. The documentation has not been keyed into the narrative presentation, but it follows the chronologi- cal order of presentation from 9 October into the latest developments in the matter, and there is an overall index ‘to facilitate reference to individual items. [NB: There is only one £opy of this collection; this is. it-] 5. As noted above, one of the photographs taken in Mexico City .on.4 October 1963 was introduced into the Warren Commission ‘public record.” . However, .it was. .intro- duced .into.that..record in two cropped versions. The ‘Warren Commission and its staff were made fully aware in the course of their. inquiry. at Headquarters and in ' Mexico City of the origins of the photograph, the fact that we had additional photographs of the same individual taken at different times in Mexico City and on the basis of full knowledge of these facts reached their own con- clusions regarding the irrelevance of the photograph to OSWALD and the assassination. 6. In fact, we actually hold twelve different photo- .graphs of the Unidentified Individual. Each of these Age /S ' reproduced in the collected documentation backing up the narrative report (see Items 25 - 27). Chief, LA Division, 2 SECRET ee Peas Lon i yy ee
13-00000 ae oa va a v SECRET had indicated in writing to DC/oPS Staff, that he has no objection for Mr. Belin to do whatever is desired with these photographs at this time. It should be noted that Mr. Fensterwald in 1971 - 1972 was actually shown, by Mr. Houston during a visit to the Agency, two of the twelve photographs, other than the one already published in the Warren Commission report. (It is these two that he has published in The New York Review of Books article which Mr. Belin attaches to his mémorandum.) - t 7. It seems to me that whoever makes a decision on whether the entire matter can be fully disclosed at this . time should bear in.mind that a subsidiary decision must “-also be made,’ i.e., whether to crop or otherwise fuzz up “' the background of the photographs or, alternatively, to . publish. the entire run of the photographs. for the first _ time without taking out the background. Obviously, none of these questions apply to the passage of this material | to Mc. Belin and the Rockefeller commission itself. I think they should see the entire documentation as it ‘stands. Perhaps after that, the question of what could be discussed and the question of “how?" and “how much?” could be taken up with Mr. Belin himself. My personal recommendation is that the more we can say about this matter in.a fully open and final manner, the better off we will be as an Agency. But it is my understanding that there are still sensitive aspects deriving from the fact that the operation which produced the photographs was jointly run with Mexican Tiaison “and as a consequencet publication at this time would create additional.problems lat that level_in Mexico“ Also, it.should be notéd that the Ambassador,. according to Win Scott's memorandum to J.C. King om'2Z November 1963 (see. Ftem 8 in the backup documentation), allegedly played a direct role in the - decision to put the photographs into the hands of the FBI in Dallas laterally from the Field. As far as I know, there has notbeen anything published about this aspect at any time.in the past nor have we had any discussions “with the State Department about that asyect of the matter. Raymond G. Rocca Attachments: as stated
13-00000 MEMORANDUM FOR: Inspector General Don: Iam returning this to you for at least . temporary safe-keeping.. Please see a copy » of my letter of this date to David Belin. in which I invite him to. check with. us. if he wants further details. . I have.this book in mind. . E, Pe Attachments: a/s - 13 Ma 1975, FORM NO. “101 REPLACES FORM 10-101 : t AUG 54 “WHICH MAY BE USED. (a7)
UL. ONLY . “ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET - > [J°conF: NTIAL =~ B@. SECRET 20.43: : {Officer designation, room* * building}. mond: Gs Rocca’ TPP extension T xo. 7 _. | DATE -" : : 1054 2 fee 2 May. 1975 — _ Drow “OFFICER'S” | (COMMENTS (Number each. comment to show: from whom. . line’ across column after each comment.) HTD Metis” go secRET ©] CONFIDENTIAL Use k = (] UNCLASSIFIER