teecade Pade Dig ta tetebah deere sd 4 4 | - 42 - Murphy continued: “It was agreed an effort would be made to find such we language if Mr. Dulles is again unsuccessful in persuading his colleagues to eliminate any reference ke to the Nosenko information from the report. To attempt this, however, we would have to know precisely in what tt context the Warren Commission intended to make use of the Nosenko information. This, Mr. Dulles will have to jb» determine from Mr. Rankin. He will do this as soon as possible. He knows that I am leaving this week and pe therefore, will contact you as soon as he has the informa- tion he needs from Mr. Rankin." Whether by design or as an unintended result, the ; quoted language indicates that Mr. Dulles, as a member of the P Warren Commission, was prepared to compromise his position | with the Commission in order to supply the CIA, specifically oben? Gy. a | Murphy and Richard Helms, with sensitive information cuemma@ammiuagy c the Commission's attitudes towards the Nosenko case. euestf. appears that the AGency had communicated=4 28 July 1964. “use of Nosenko's -in the discussion upog#®hich the memorandum was based included oe Rankin, David Slawson of the Commission,
ates Led be inhader o~ A cache. newer OM roe Pe Approximately five hours after President Kennedy's VIII. Luisa carson, assassination, a Cuban government employee in Mexico City named “Luisa" received a telephone call from an unidentified man speaking Spanish. © (MEXI 7105, 27 Nov. 63, FOIA 173-615, attach- ment) This call had ve bere ee ee by the CIA's Mexico City Station as the result of ifs Pe ) { op cit) The Mexico City Station identified the -\ , Luisa of the conversation as Luisa Calderon, who was then employed in the Commercial Attache's office at the Cuban Consulate. During the course of the conversation, the unidentified - caller asked Luisa if she had heard the latest news. Luisa replied in a joking tone: “Yes, of course, I knew almost before Kennedy." we The callerwent on to tell Luisa that the person ie apprehended for Kennedy's slaying was the "President of one of the Committees of the Fair Play for Cuba." Luisa replied that she knew this also. Luisa inquired whether the person being held for the killing was a gringo. The unidentified caller replied, “yes." Luisa told her caller that she had learned nothing else about the assassination; that she had learned about the assassination only a little while ago. The unidentified caller commented:
Luisa responded: We think that if it had been or had seemed...public or had been one of the segregationists or against intergration who had killed Kennedy, then there was, let's say, the possibility that a sort of civil war would arise in the United States; that contradictions would be sharpened...who knows Imagine, one two, three and now, that makes ) three. (She laughs. Raymond Rocca, “in response to a 1975 Rockefeller Commission request for information on a possible Cuban conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy wrote regarding Calderon's comments: at contains oO rs fo 23 May 1975, p. 15) ¢ation. Nevertheless, as will be discusse Committee has determined that Luisa Calderon's case Latin hyperbole? Boastful ex post facto suggestion of foreknowledge. This is the only item in the intercept coverage of the Cubans Soviets after the assassination e suggestion of “forekn We (ood Standing by itself, Luisa Calderon's cryptic com- * ments do not merit serious attention. Her words may in- deed indicate foreknowledge of the assassination but may also equally be interpreted without such a sinister impli- merit serious attention in the months following the assas- Sination. However, Calderon's comments were not reported to the Warren Commission, Giperently an agency oversight, en pls a> ohio
- 45 - } i is In connection with the assassination, Luisa Calderon's name first surfaced on November 27, 1964 in a cable sent by then Ambassador, Many eG the State Department. (DIR 85573 | KU BP oherevhec re PL REFLEC WH, FBI and CIA). — ad ee adele ft Nebotonth Qtkaieosereien gt Yu State Dept tritratt, £Cbi 0s bit echt rele petit Caeser reg UT. _-~ Information was reported to the CIA during May 1964, tewxrreT Cal aeree ae from a Cuban defector) tying Luisa Calderon to the Cuban Intelligence apparatus. The defector, AMMUG-1, was him- self a Cuban Intelligence Officer who supplied valuable and. highly reliable information to the CIA regarding Cuban Intelligence operations. Calderon's ties to Cuban Contalac intelligence were reported to the Warren Commission or\Sune is, Med ron 2 oe (Did the State Department supply the cable to the Warren Commission? Have we reviewed their’ Mann file?) However, Ktarnits File revi ts the Committee has determined that the CIA did not provide Calderon's conversation to the Warren Commission, thus, even though the Warren Commission was aware that Calderon had connections to intelligence work, as did other Cuban Embassy officers, the vital link between her background and her comments was never established for the Warren Com- mission by the CIA. The Agency's oversight in this re- gard may have forecb&sed the Commission from actively pursing a lead of great significance. his "4 . In that cable Mann stated: ..-Washington should urgently consider feasi- bility of requesting Mexican authorities to arrest for interrogation: Eusebio Azcue, Luisa Calderon and Alfredo Mirabal. The two men are Cuban national and Cuban consular officers. Luisa Calderon is a secretary in Cuban
Steer Be AIRE ta a aE nL races Bene Sy = ‘AG oo -Consulate here." This cable does not state the basis for arresting Calderon. However, the CIA's copy of this cable bears a handwritten notation on its routing page. That notation states: "Info from Amb Mann Se? Seg Rush re: ...persons involved with Oswald in Cuban Embassy. Mann went on to state in urgent terms: "They may quickly be returned to Havana in order to eliminate any possibility that Mexican govern- ment could use them as witnesses." According to CIA files, Calderon returned to Havana on December 16, 1963, less than four weeks after the as- sassination. Calderon, Azcue and Mirabal were not arrested nor detained for questioning by the Mexican federal police. However, Silvia Duran, a friend and associate of Calderon's and the one person believed to have had repeated contact with Oswald while he was in Mexico City, was arrested and questioned by the Mexican police on two separate occasions (Cites). During her reinterrogation, Duran was questioned __ i Ae iene regarding her association with Calderon. No explanation is ty Lak given in this report for the question$concerning Calderon eb tuo (Cites). The information regarding Duran's interrogation 4? — pmen was passed to the Warren Commission on February 21, 1964 py bad (DDP4-0940), more than two months after Calderon had re~- pyp* ; turned to Cuba. { “ges rn Lo LA lt 147
- 47 - Calderon's 201 file reveals that she arrived in Mexico City from Havana on January 16, 1964, carrying Cuban Passport E/63/7. Her date of birth was believed to be 1940 (Dispatch, a 1612) Calderon's presence in Mexico City was first reported by the CIA on July 15, 1963 in a dispatch from the CIA's Miami field office to the CIA's Mexico City s&Stion and to the Chief of the CIA's Special Affairs Staff (for Cuban operations). That dis- patch had attached to it a report containg biographic data on personnel then assigned to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. At page three of the attached report Luisa Calderon was listed as Secretary of the Cuban Embassy's commercial office. The notation indicated that a report was pending on Calderon. The Agency has attempted, without success, to locate the report. On September 1, 1963, a dispatch was sent from the Chief of the Special Affairs Staff to the Chief of . oe need peé Station in Mexico City (Dispatei{ 1935). Luisa Calderon's association with the’ Cuban DGI was first reported by the CIA on May 5, 1964. At that time, ») chiet of Counterintelligence for the Special Affairs Staff, recorded the results of his de- briefing of the Cuban defector, AMMUG-1. The memorandum states that AMMUG had no direct knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald or his activities but was able to provide items of interest based upon the comments of certain Cuban In- RR This Aispete A Ce pra Cte, WAG: Co Je vr) “>
- 48 - telligence Service officers. Specifically, AMMUG-1 had been asked if Oswald was known to the Cuban intelligence services before November 23, 1963. AMMUG-1 told Swenson, as recorder in the May 5 memorandum that "Prior to October 1963, Oswald visited the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City on two or three occasions. Before, during and after these visits, Oswald was in contact with the Direccion General De Intelligencia (DGI), specifically with Luisa Calderon, Manuel Vega Perez, and Rogelio Rodriguez Lopez. jenereatter wrote that Calderon's precise ' relattonship to the DGI was not clear. As a comment to this statement he set forth the CIA cable and dispatch © traffic which recorded her arrival in Mexico and departure, d4m%93. pec lotr p 164 for Cuba . On May 7, 196€, _ recorded additional informa- tion he had elicited from amubc-1 regarding Oswald's possible contact with the DGI. Paragraph 3 of this memoran- dum stated in part: “a. Luisa Calderon, since she returned to Cuba, has been paid a regular salary by the DGI even though she has not per- formed any services. Her home is in the Vedado section where the rents are . high. b. Source (AMMUG) has known Calderon for several years. Before going to Mexico, she worked in the Ministry of Exterior Commerce in the department which was known as the “Empress Transimport." Her title was Secretary General of the Communist Youth in the department named in the previous sentence.
On May 8 - Jurther disclosed AMMUG's know- ledge of the Oswald case. ( araphrasea AMMUG's knowledge of Calderon as follows: . ; _ I.thought that Luisa Calderon might have had contact with Oswald because I learned about 17 March 1964, shortly before I made a trip to Mexico, that she had been involved with an American in Mexico. The information to which I refer was told to me by a DGI case officer... I had commented to (him) that it seemed strange that Luisa Calderon was receiving a salary from the DGI althought she apparently did not do any work for the Service. (The case officer) told me that hers was a peculiar case and: that he himself believed that she had been recruited in Mexico by the Central Intelligence Agency al- though Manuel Pineiro, the Head of the DGI, did not agree. As I recall, (the case officer) had investigated Luisa Calderon. This was because, during the time she was in Mexico, the DGI had intercepted a letter to her by an American who signed his name OWER (phonetic) or something similar. As you know, the pronunciation of Anglo-Saxon names is difficult in Spanish so I am not sure of how the name mentioned by Hernan- dez should be spelled. It could have been "Howard" or something different. As I understand the matter, the letter from the American was a love letter but indicated that there was a clandestine- professional relationship between the writer and Luisa Calderon. I also understand from (the case officer) that after the interception of the letter she had been followed and. seen in the company of an Americaéii. I do not know if this could have been Oswald... On May ll, Raymond Rocca wrote a memorandum \ to Director Richard Helms regarding the informatio” had elicited from AMMUG. Rocca proposed that “the DDP in person or via a designee, preferably the former, dis- cuss the AMMUG/1 sitaution on a very restricted basis with Mr. Rankin at his earliest convenience either at the Agency or at the Commission headquarters. Until this
hy ~ « & - 50 - takes place, it is not desirable to put anything in writ-. ing. (11 May 64, Rocca memo, FOLA6 87-295 with/4 attachments). On May 15, 1964, Helms wrote Rankin regarding_ AMMUG's information about the DGI, indicating its sensi- tivity and operational significance. Attached to Helms' communication was a paraphrased accounting of May 5 memorandum. (Helm's memo, May 15, 1964, FOIA 697-294). In that attachment the intelligence associations of Manuel Vega Perez and Rogelio Rodriguez Lopez axe set ree’ forth. However, that attachment makes no reference what- soever to Luisa Calderon. Howard Willens of the Warren Commission, requested as a follow-up to the May 15 memorandum, questions used i BR cease pe tow beek—-et the nterrogation of AMMUG. memo to Rocca, 19. June 1964 FOIA 739-310). (Dooley On June 18, 1964 Arthur Dooley of Rocca's counterintelligence research Willens savy and analysis group took the questions and AMMUG's responses to the Warren Commission's officers for Willen's review. ay 5-memorandum. The only mention of aeideron was as follows: "The precise relationship of \ Luisa Calderon to the DGI is not clear. “ She spent about six months in Mexico from which she returned to Cuba early vl in 1964. However, Willens was not shown th dum of May 7 and May 8, 1964 which containe fromorane much more detailed information on Luisa Calderon, including her possible
association with Lee Harvey Oswald and/or American intel=- ligence. It should be noted that these memoranda of May 5, 7, 8, 11 and June 19 with attachments, are not referenced in the Calderon 201 file. Their existence was determined by the Committee's independent review of other agency files. Thus, the Warren Commission he&as of 19 June 64, PmA little if no reason to pursue the Luisa Calderon lead. ay It had effectively been denied significant background information which may have impeded or prevented its pur- suit of Calderon's potential relationship to Oswald and the assassination of President Kennedy. | UO nfo mu nately, SIR in Ore—must—keep—ti-mindthet~even if the Warren Com- mission had been apprised of Calderon's background and possible contact with Oswald it still was denied the one significant piece of information that might have arorsed Chg rh re, poss ble & Conbier cormplice hain whe & ET ATT, its investigative efforts™to a more serious evel. The Warren Conmission Sever wadleo1g about Calderon's conver- 5 hoe On is CO pe Sach aes Is ast a Feree od sone sation, of November 22, 196 or Cam ~ ot ee REG rent Bie 18s ous ege aes Adler aaa leg rh orn : ~ Her ele Eetaits of how we know not reported cite “ a ‘ wf / testimony of F@ankin,. Slawson; give section * possible motive for not telling of detailed information on Luisa (mentions CIA association; site the dispatch close out with vo Rankin quotes.) Ke Lore oe mt Aron F yy \, Alte bfacragn fet 0 (+@ Dn ulry/ bt.