TRANSCRIPTS #134 TO 145 DCI MCCONE MTG. 7 MAY 64-24 JUNE 64.
Originator: CIA
Document date: 05/19/1964
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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2022 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

#138

Meeting between DCI and Mr. Sam Papich of the F BI

in DCI's office, 19 May 1964 - 1055-1125 hours.

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19 May 1964

DCI and 1 Guest

1055-1125 hours

DCI's Office

DCI: Hello, Sam.

GUEST: How are you, sir?

DCI: How are you?

GUEST: I'm just fine.

DCI: I'm glad to see you.

GUEST: Glad to see you.

I have three or four matters I wanted t o discuss with you.

No. 1, I wanted to give you this letter, which might create a little commotion

in the community -- I think it's (to) compromise material which the Soviets

already may have. Joe Carroll has told us that this is his preliminary

assessment of the situation, and we have to conclude that as far as he's con-

cerned this is a very serious loss ......

If true, the Russians know that we

have collected this knowledge concerning the location of their missile sites,

which are in the vicinity of their airfields, as I get it -- possessing this

information of course they're in a position to make a lot of changes and counter

our surveillance techniques, etc.

DCI: Well I'd have to get that document and see, and I'll do this.

TEST

Excladad ira menalic

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I'm inclined to believe that it's serious but it may be for a different reason

than you describe.

GUEST: I don't know enough about this thing myself. I only wanted

to call it to your attention and--

DCI: I appreciate it very much.

GUEST (Continuing): --and tell you that the source is a GRU pene-

tration and it has given us some very good information.

DCI: I think the most serious part of this is where it came from -

how they got it, you know.

GUEST: I haven't talked to you for some weeks, so I think I owe

it to you to let you know where the two agencies stand on the matter of

relations. I'm giving you my own assessment on the thing -- I don't think

there's anybody in a better position to see both sides -- I get deeply involved

with your people and with mine. First of all, I think relations from the

working level on up for the last few months have been excellent. We have

had any number of operational problems that have been resolved very satis-

factorily -- and I don't think I'm saying this with any bias - I don't think

they've been any better.

There are about four areas where potential problems could

arise, where we're both deeply involved, we both have headaches, and we're

going to continue having them. I thought I'd just cover those lightly for you

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194:

so you're aware of them. First of all, there's our friend (Mysenko). We've

had any number of conferences with your people -- we've exchanged infor-

mation. We in the Bureau are very much concerned and recognize that he

could be a plant. Neither of us so far have come up with the answer. We're

still exchanging information and we're running down leads, and where and how

either of us is going to find the answer, I don't know, but the machinery we

have for exchanging information is working very satisfactorily -- there are

no questions there and no problems.

DCI: Well let me ask you two questions. This concerns me very

much, because so many people feel that (Mysenko) was bona lide and that we

had gotten a great intelligence asset and resource when he came over, with

the attendant publicity, which was very unusual. I ve had exceedingly prominent

and knowledgeable people on the Hill, for instance, talk to me about it, and

I've been loathe to even indicate doubt, because I was afraid that if it was a

plant for a very subtle purpose and doubt was indicated then it would destroy

the game both from their side (and ours). He's given you some 50 or 60 leads

or more. Were any of them new?

GUEST: Some were new. Summing it up, in the new leads - we've

run them down and interviewed the people, and the information furnished by

him has been substantiated by the interviews -- in other words, his story has

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held up -- but the cases are peanuts - no real significance.

The other leads

that he gave us -- many of them were known to us -- we've handled our

investigation, interviewed the people, put the pieces together -- but no case

of any real significance. I would say there are about four or five that we are

still working on that might blossom into something, but if we gauge it by the

others I'd say no.

DCI: In other words, what he in effect did was give you a very

considerable amount of information that you already knew and he knew you

knew it.

GUEST: They have not suffered at all by what he's given us -

nothing. But what hit us in the beginning and is still affecting -- so many

people in our outfit that are not privy to the conferences and discussions

we've had with your people, they have not read your papers, and so on, and

we have people in our outfit that still believe that he's the best thing that came

down the pike. We've left it that way. But among the doubters you'll still

find a couple of our officials who can't believe that the Soviets would send

one of their staff officers on a mission of this type -- they don't think that

they would take such a risk. I will say that your people have put up an

excellent case to counter that -- the briefings that you've given us, the

evidence you've shown us, has impressed us very strongly.

DCI: I wonder why the President thinks that this fellow is bona fide.

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GUEST: I don't know what the President may have told you on

that, but I--

DCI: Well twice he's asked me -- he said, how about this fellow?

and I said, "Well, we're inclined to doubt him, but he hasn't broken so we

can't do anything other than build a case against him on a series of hypotheses."

He said, "I think he's okay -- I think he's given us a great deal of information."

The President said that to me twice.

GUEST: Well, I'll be very frank with you -- let's just assume --

I'm not going to pull any punches -- let's assume that Mr. Hoover may have

talked to him.

DCI: Does Mr. Hoover think he's bona fide?

GUEST: I can't see how Mr. Hoover could believe that he's the

real thing in view of what we've been furnishing him -- the briefings, the

information, etc. In the beginning he may have -- he may have had his own

ideas -- because so much of his information was so impressive. But after

we had been briefed by you people at our conferences and so on, we in turn

briefed the boss. And he has not questioned your findings in any way whatso-

ever, but he has given us clear-cut instructions "stay on top of this thing. "

He realizes it's so--

DCI: That's what I've done to our fellows.

GUEST: In the beginning now he may have had his own ideas then,

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but many weeks have gone by since we have gone on record -- we have not

concluded, but we have gone on record very clearly with him that this man

may be a plant, and we have outlined the reasons for it, and we have told

him that if so this is how we can be affected. We do have a large stake

ourselves in--

DCI: Oh yes, we both have. Well, then, you feel there's no

basic difference of opinion between Mr. Hoover and your people and me

and our people--

GUEST: No.

DCI (Continuing): --that, one, we're skeptical, and two, we

haven't proven the case one way or another.

GUEST: That's it -- that's right.

DCI: And three, we're going to keep on working on it.

GUEST: Right.

DCI: Fine.

GUEST: Now whether time will be in our favor or in his, I don't

know. So far it's working out all right. Neither you nor we are suffering

any real handicap -- it's taken up manpower and so on -- but we've all got

our guards up -- I don't think anybody is going to be suckered into anything.

DCI: All right. Fine. If that situation should change and if there

should be a divergence on this man's bona fide, where our people thought

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he was real and your people didn't, or vice versa, will you come to me?

GUEST: Definitely.

DCI: Okay, fine. Because this case is so important I want to

have complete understanding on the thing one way or the other. In other

words, I don't want to accept him as bona fide unless it's agreed with you,

and I don't want to reject him as a phony unless that's agreed too. I think

that there's enough professionalism in both organizations so that we ought

to come to an absolute agreement, or stay in absolute agreement on this.

GUEST: I think the conferences that we've had with your people

on this subject have probably been the best organized, the best handled, that

I've seen in many years in this business. There was a free exchange of

views and--

DCI: Well that's the instructions I've given our fellows, and I

know that you've been wonderful in your cooperation on it.

GUEST: Well, it's working out fine all right, but I've got to

admit that it's frustrating -- do you agree?

DCI: I should say so.

GUEST: The other area I want to mention is Cuba. Here at

headquarters we're working very closely with you, and very definitely at

Miami. The exchange is A-1. And I think a good illustration how well we're

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working together here, about three months ago we were running this one

Cuban intelligence agent in the country who was called back to Cuba. He

got in touch with your people, you spent about two months with him, de-

briefing him, training him, you have him back in Cuba now. He's actually

communicating with you by radio. If he returns this way we'll probably

handle him again - it all depends on what the situation is. But we do have

that type of agreement and arrangement on this. In fact, he's not the first

one but I'd say he's the best one that's come along. Your people in turn

have come up with a couple of excellent -- one good defector and one excellent

recruitment here in the last three weeks -- one's in Mexico and one you

brought in from Canada -- appear to be A-1 -- and their knowledge con-

cerning the Cuban intelligence headquarters set-up appears to be the best

that we've had since Castro moved in. It's an excellent break--

DCI: Their intelligence organization is improving all the time,

isn't it?

GUEST: For Latins it's amazing, Mr. McCone -- I've got to

take my hat off to them -- because no Latin American country has ever had

anything like this, I'll tell you that. And one of these recent defectors has

told your people that the so-called general intelligence directorate that they

have there has five Soviet advisors -- has had for some time -- and that

they're either KGB or GRU, or both.

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DCI: I must say this fellow Castro has put on an impressive

operation, hasn't he?

GUEST: If somebody had told me that an Latin American

country would have had the capability of establishing an intelligence organi-

zation with that sophistication and so on, I wouldn't have believed it three

years ago, five years ago.

DCI: And not only an intelligence organization, he's built a pretty

damn sophisticated military organization, you know -- and also he's got a

good internal security organization -- all these people that we put in there

get rolled up -- and to me it's amazing.

been

GUEST: And one could say he's/just plain lucky, but I don't think

that's the answer. I think he--

DCI: I say to our people: how the hell is it he's got all the good

Cubans and we've got all the bad ones. (Laughter)

GUEST: I know.

The other subject I wanted to bring up was the nasty one of

Oswald. As far as the two agencies are concerned, no problems. We have

furnished you everything we've given the Commission, and we're continually

exchanging.

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DCI: Have you seen that ?

GUEST: I have not read the book myself but I've heard about

Buchanan and his writings. I've talked to our people about it. I think you

can punch holes in any part of his story, I understand. It's received con-

siderable attention in Europe.

DCI: Very much so. This is why I got it. I got six copies of this

and sent it over to the Commission. The reason I got it is that a friend of

mine was over here from London -- a woman that used to be married to

Gardner Cowles, who is the publisher of Look, and they separated and she

married a man named (Montague Myers), who is a very important industrialist

in London -- and she's quite a person - in close contact with all the higher

echelons. She brought--

Fleur

GUEST: This is Flora Cowles, isn't it?

Eleur

DCI: Flora Cowles, yes. So she brought this thing to my attention,

because she said that Buchanan, in addition to having written a book -- which

isn't such an awful good book, I understand - I haven't read it -- is a very

good, persuasive radio and television personality, and he has been on radio

and TV in Britain and in Europe with his story, and because he is a convincing

fellow he has everybody convinced that he's got the real dope. So she said

unless the Warren Commission disposes of his arguments, argument by

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argument, all Europe is going to look at the report as an absolute whitewash.

I told this to the Chief Justice -- the fact is I arranged for Flora Cowles to

go up and talk to the Chief Justice, which wasn't difficult to do because they're

old friends. But I'm very much concerned. Now they immediately thought -

well, we'll have to get Buchanan over here -- and Rankin called me up about

that, and I said - oh you want to be awful careful that he just doesn't use the

summons to come over here as a platform and he would sell about a million

copies of that book, because he'll have a press conference when he leaves

his hotel, he'll have a press conference at the airport, he'll have a press

conference when he arrives at Idlewild, and he'll have a press conference

when he arrives here, and by the time he walks into that meeting why he

would be surrounded by the whole Washington press corps. So I said you

want to be careful of that. This was not a new thought with them -- they were

worrying about the same thing. What they're doing is trying to consider the

issues and the points he makes to see whether they've got facts to dispose

of, and they may have to call him.

The other point that I want to be awfully sure about, that I've

asked our people to again go over, is that we have undercovered every

scintilla of evidence on what he did when he was in Russia, you know. Now

our file is pretty thin on this fellow prior to the assassination. When you

look at our file on Oswald it's that thick -- but there's just a very small

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amount of it that had to do with his life before the assassination.

GUEST: There wasn't a heck of a lot to ours either, as far as

that goes. We had been investigating, but as a case he was a minor one.

DCI: A minor case. I'm very concerned for fear that there

exists in the files of State someplace -- their counsellor service or their

people that handle personnel -- and they're not very good at keeping their

stuff in an orderly fashion, you know, so that you can find it -- something

that might be recalled later that would be damaging.

GUEST: Well, that's always possible. We've gone into all of that.

DCI: You have?

GUEST: With regard to his life in Russia, that's always going to

be a big question mark. Did the KGB interview him, and how much time did

they spend with him? Did they give any consideration to recruiting? All of

those are possibilities, but I don't think we're going to get the answers until

that source comes (out) .

DCI: Let me just make sure--

.... . .

DCI on intercom: Dick, I'm sitting here with Sam

and we're talking about Oswald. Have you access to those

papers that the KGB turned over to the State Department?

Are you going to get access to them? Well why the hell don't

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you translate them? You've got better translators than the

State Department has. Well, I think I'll do that -- at least

I'll offer some help, because we could put some of our

people on there, couldn't we? The second thing is that I

just want to be awful sure that there isn't hid away in the

disorderly files of the State Department some report, or some

counsellor's statement, or some damn thing, having to do

with Oswald's conduct over there that we don't know about,

and I'd like you to see whoever's working on this thing for

you, be awful sure that those files -- which are disorderly

files, you know, on matters of this kind -- are being

thoroughly and absolutely combed. Will you do that? And

I'll talk to the Secretary about this matter of translation and

see if our Foreign Document Divi sion can't help a little bit.

There was quite a volume of stuff, wasn't there? Okay.

Goodbye.

GUEST: It's amazing what comes out in this case, a story--

...... DCI on intercom: Get the Secretary of State on the

phone for me ......

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BLONG

GUEST (Continuing): --even our original information has

changed some -- as an example, the original information we received

from the doctor -- this was in Bethesda, after the body of the President

was brought up here -- that one bullet had just slightly penetrated his

body -- they found a hole here - I think it was right up high in his chest -

which never was clearly explained. But to make a long story short, one

of those bullets hit him here, and went through him and through Connolly,

and then dropped on the floor of the car, believe it or not.

DCI: It dia, huh?

GUEST: That's the final conclusion of the doctors in Bethesda.

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DCI: That was where he went like this.

That's very interesting.

GUEST: Yes. Apparently this came about during the time that

either Mr. Belmont or Mr. Hoover were called before the Commission,

because our original report, quoting the medicals, differed with the final

finding -- it went through both bodies -- and we found - when they brought

one of the stretchers into the hospital there was a bullet on the stretcher,

and it was assumed that that bullet had bounced off the President, but that

had gone - the diagnosis was it went through the President, through

Connolly, and then dropped. That shooting, of course, also ties in with

Buchanan's story.

He makes a big point of the broken windshield. I think

he presents one theory, as I understand, that there was somebody else

shooting from the front.

DCI: From the front, that's right -- and that's why--

GUEST: Our laboratory conducted an examination of the shield,

and that glass could not have been pierced from the front, it had to be

from the rear, which is .

elementary examination.

DCI: Those are the kind of things you have to dispose of.

GUEST: That's right.

One other matter, sir, is a very important one that's taking

up much of my time these days but as far as I'm concerned it's all very

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worthwhile, and this pertains to the DDP operations in the United States.

Your people are more operational than ever in the U.S. right now, and by

agreement and through I think very good coordination -- in other words,

you are recruiting people, you're making recruitment assessments like

never before -- not only in the Bloc field but also the (non-side) of the Bloc.

You have really worked out an arrangement where you have a target in this

country, we get together, and either you hit them or we hit them, it all

depends on who has the best ammunition.

DCI: So it's completely coordinated.

GUEST: Right.

DCI: And there's no intrusion of your area of responsibility?

GUEST: No. And either you or we make the recruitments. Say

that your people do -- he might be an African, and you would have a long-

range interest in him -- the fellow might be here for two years fin the U. N

and then he's going back to Mali or somewhere -- you will periodically

advise us what kind of information he's furnishing, who he's contacting,

and we look at that, because it gives us an idea of what field he's covering,

where he's moving, and so on, and he might be of some assistance to us.

So we work out arrangements where we either see him together, or through

you, depending upon the individual -- each case varies.

It's working out

very fine so far.

It has required damn close coordination -- because if

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one of your people in the field is trying to recruit Ivan so and so, and he

hasn't told his own superiors or us, and we in turn are hitting him, we're

going to have a circus -- it's that type of thing.

But it's a delicate

field, and so far so well. Tracey Barne's shop is the one that's handling

that.

DCI: Well here again I just keep after our fellows not to operate

here in a way that is confusing to you -- where they can, assist you -- to

realize always that the FBI has the primary responsibility, and where we

can help, as you outline, we want to do it, but we don't want to--

GUEST: Well, if it doesn't work, sir, it largely will be my fault,

because I've pushed this harder than anybody else. It's taken me I would

say some years to really establish this mechanism. But I long ago came

to the conclusion that the Agency has any number of assets in the United

States that have been going to waste as far as both of us are concerned.

In other words, if one of your people has been assigned (to an Embassy in

Africa or in Italy, and he meets certain people, and his contacts are now

in the United States, he has the natural entree to that man for assessing him

and so on, and it's just almost tragic to let that go to waste -- it can be

useful to you or to us. But as long as we coordinate there shouldn't be

any problem. And your people--

DCI: Let's (be careful), and let's keep that under surveillance --

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it would be awful easy, you know, awful easy to have some little thing--

GUEST: Well, Mr. Hoover has made it very clear to me: (this

better work), or else. (Laughing)

DCI: Well, that's fine.

GUEST: So that's the way it will have to be.

You're looking well.

DCI: I'm feeling fine.

They've been giving me the barium test

today, so I'm a little -- you know how that is.

GUEST: I understand.

Well, I'll keep in touch with you in these particular areas.

DCI: Okay, fine, Sam. Thanks very much for coming in.

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