DRAFT REPORT RE CIA KNOWLEDGE OF OSWALD PRIOR TO ASSASSINATION AND ACTION TAKEN AFTER THE ASSASSINATION
Originator: CIA
From: JOHN M. WHITTEN, C/WH/3
To: DDP
Document date: 12/01/1963
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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

UNCLASSIFIED

NOTIN

•SE ONLY

• CONDENTIAL.

SECRET

ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET

SUBJECT Optional

FROM:

John na

Whitten

с/wн/3

TO: (Officer designation, room number, and

building);

EXTENSION:

5613

NO:

DATE

DATE

OFFICER'S

INITIALS

RECEIVED

FORWARDED

DDP

2.

c/WH/ 3

3

7.

COMMENTS. (Number each comment to show from whon

to whom.

Drom a line across column after each

comment.)'

Attached Tor your inlermation,

comment, and correction 1s the

original, unexpurgated version

the report on GIFLOOR covering

OSWALD's stay in Mexico and 1n-

cludins sumertes of the telephone

Intercepts. Thie mey be useful to

your analysts who are processing

the rest of the material and te the

people preparing the final report.

In writing this us, I have made

certain comments and indulged in a

certain anount of analysis, because

the

naked facts seemed to call for

It." These thoughts are my own.

Feel free to make your own analysis

If you have any corrections to make

please write them on this draft and

return it to me.

I will return the

draft to you if you want it.

This report was written for interna

use only and was not meant to be

used outside the Agency.

9

10.

11.

J.M.

Whitten

C/WE/3

12.

13.

14.

15.

FORM

3-62

610 USE PREVIOUS

EDITIONS

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• CONFIDENTIAL

INTERNAL

USE ONLY

UNCLASSIFIED

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We Discover Lee OSWALD in Mexico City

CIA did produce one very significant piece of information on Lee

OSWALD before he shot President Kennedy. On 1 October 1963, our Mexico

City Station intercepted a telephone call Lee OSWALD made from someplace

in Nexico City to the Soviet Embassy there, using his own name. Speaking

broken Russian and using his true name, OSWALD was talking to the Embassy

guard, OBYEDKOY, who often answers the phone. OSWALD said he had visited

the Embassy the previous Saturday (28 September 1963) and spoken to a

consul whose name he had forgotten, and who had promised to send a tele-

gram for him to Washington. He wanted to know if there were "anything

new." The guard said if the consul was dark it was (Valerly Vladmirovich)

KOSTIKOY. The guard checked with someone else and said that the message

had gone out but no answer had been received. He then hung up.

This piece of information was produced from a telephone tap center

which we operate jointly with the office of the President of Mexico. It

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is highly secret and not known to Mexican security and law enforcement

officials, who have their own center. Our joint center produces great

masses of telephone intercepts which are transcribed and reviewed by our

small staff in Mexico City. By 9 October, the OSWALD telephone conversa-

tion of 1 October had been transcribed and a sunmary of it cabled to

Washington. The name Lee OSWALD meant nothing special to our Mexico

City Station, but in their report they did judge him to be an American

male.

The cabled report was received in Washington on 9 October and checked

In our files, where it was immediately noted that the Lee OSWALD phoning

the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City was probably the Lee OSWALD who had .....

defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and returned to the USA in 1962. On

10 October 1963, the day after the report from Mexico City, CIA Headquarters

sent out a cabled report about Lee OSWALD's phone call to the Soviet

Embassy; the report went to the FBI, the Department of State (because

OSWALD was a US citizen), and to the Navy Department (because he was &

former Marine.) The cabled report to these agencies highlighted the

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I1klihood that the Lee OSWALD mentioned was probably the former defector.

A copy of this same cable was delivered by hand to the Immigration and

Naturalization Service, with which we have no cable link. The same day

a long cable went out to Mexico City informing our Station of the back-

ground of defector Lee OSWALD and asking for more information. Our Station

was instructed to pass its information on the phone call to the Mexico

City offices of the FBI, the Embassy, the Naval Attache, and the Inmigra-

tion and Naturalization Service. This was done.

In 1ts original report of 9 October, Mexico City had said it had a

photograph of an apparent American male leaving the Soviet Embassy on

1. October 1963, the day OSWALD phone there. A very sensitive operation...

in Mexico City provides us with secretly taken photographs of many but not

all visitors to the Soviet Embassy there, taken with telephoto lenses.

Accordingly, we cabled the Navy Department on 24 October 1963 asking for

a photograph of Lee OSWALD [rom his Marine Corps days so we could compare

photos. We had not received this photograph by 22 November 1963, but in

any event, it turned out that the man photographed outside the Soviet

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Embassy was not OSWALD anyway. As chance would have it, none of our

several photo obseration points in Mexico City had ever taken an identi-

fiable picture of Lee OSWALD.

Our Mexico City Station very often produces information like this

on US citizens contacting Soviet bloc embassies In Mexico City. Frequently

the information we get is extremely incriminating, and on one or two

occasions we have even been able to apprehend and return to the USA

American military personnel who are attempting to defect. In all such

cases, our Headquarters desk requests and obtains the special permission of

the Deputy Director for Plans to pass the derogatory Information on a US

citizen to other government agencies. Derogatory Information on Americans

is not treated routinely; in each case the DDP or his Assistant personally

scrutinize the information, make sure it is credible, and decide whether and

to whom it will be passed. Only in absolute emergencies is the Mexico City

Station authorized to pass such information directly to the FBI office in

the U.S. Embassy.

At this writing (13 December 1963) we do not know what action the FBI

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and other agencies may have taken based on our report. We surmise that the

FBI may have made local checks through Mexican authorities to see if

Lee OSWALD was actually In Mexico CIty on 1 October. Indeed, later 1n-

vestigation has confirmed all the details of his trip, where he stayed,

and what he did. To avoid crossing lines with the FBI, our Mexico Station

undertook no local investigation of its own. As we now know, OSWALD left

Mexico on 3 October and was no longer there when our report was put out.

Since this telephone tap operation is a joint one with the Mexican

Presidency, the Mexicans also had the 1 October intercept on Lee OSWAID,

but it apparently slumbered in their files until the assassination took

place.

22 November 1963

When word of the shooting of Fresident Kennedy reached the offices

of our operating divisions and staffs on the afternoon of Friday 22 Novem-

ber 1963, transistor radios were turned on everywhere to follow the

tragedy.

When the name of Lee OSWALD was heard, the effect was electric.

A phone message from the FBI came at about the same time, naming OSWALD

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as the possible assassin and asking for traces. The message was passed

on at once by the Chief CI, Mr. Angleton, to Mr. Birch O'Neal of his

Special Investigations Unit. Mrs. Betty Egeter of this Unit immediately

recognized the name of Lee OSWALD and went for his file. At the same

time, Mrs. Bustos of the Mexico Desk, who had written our first report on

OSWALD on 10 October recognized the name fron radio reports and went

after the same file. Mr. Reichhardt, Mexico Desk Chief, who was home on

leave, heard the news and phoned in a reminder that we had something on

OSWALD. While we were preparing a cable to Mexico City asking them for

more information on OSWALD, Mexico City Itself heard OSWALD's name on the

Voice of America broadcast and cabled to us a reminder of the information

the Station had sent in on him.

For the next week, a dozen people in the Agency were continuously

engaged in handling incoming messages on the case, writing reports to be

cabled out, tracing the names mentioned, and researching files. Within a

week, 27 cabled reports had gone out to the White House, the State Depart-

ment,

and the FBI. Many cables of guidance and inquiry had been sent to

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our overseas stations, and many pieces of information on OSWALD and his

wife had been received back. The Mexico City Station researched its

telephone taps very thoroughly and came up with several more conversations

probably involving OSWALD, but not actually mentioning this name; these

connected him also to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. Several Mexicans

were arrested and questioned about his activities, giving a good picture

of what he was really up to. Many conferences were held with the FBI

liaison officer who asked us for certain actions and passed us information

from the FBI investigation. On the minus side, a host of fabricators,

sone anonymous, bombarded overseas embassies with spurous tips on the case,

most of which we investigated. All of these are soon discredited, but they

are still coming in.

During this phase of our work, we served primarily in support of the

FBI, which was entrusted by the President with the major responsibility for

the investigation. The FBI was too busy to supply us with much of its

own information, but answers were given to specific questions we posed to

assist our investigation.

The Department of State did photograph its entire

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file on OSWALD and pass them to us, and the FBI gave us a copy of the

Soviet Consular file on OSWALD which had been publicly given by the Soviet

Ambassador to the Secretary of State. On Friday 6 December 1963, Deputy

Attorney General Katzenbach invited us to review the FBI's comprehensive

report on the case to make sure our sources were not jeopardized and that

our Information was correctly quoted. We found the report highly

Interesting and no threat to our security, as long as it was read only

by the authorized Investigative bodies.

After the first few days, the CIA Investigation of the case was

handled at Headquarters by a small staff usually charged with Investigation

and analysis of the most Important security cases, and by a few officers

and analysts of our Western Hemisphere Division.

Reports From Mexico

As soon as our Mexico City Station realized that Lee OSWALD was the

prime suspect, it began re-screening all the written telephone transcripts

In its files covering the Soviet. Embassy for the pertinent period. The

actual tapes were also reviewed, but many of them had been erased after the

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normal two weeks wait. Several calls believed to involve OSWALD were

discovered and their contents cabled to Washington, where they were

disseminated to the White House, the State Department, the Federal

Bureau of Investigation.

OSWALD's name was not actually mentioned in these additional calls,

but similarity of speech and various plain points of content link them

to him. These calls are summarized below in chronological order.

They cover the period from 27 September 1963 to 3 October 1963, the whole

span of OSWALD's visit to Mexico City as later learned from travel records.

27 September - A man phones the Soviet Military Attache and

says he needs a visa to go to Odessa. Man answering says he should call

15-60-55 and ask for the Consul. Caller asks for the address, and it 1s

given to him. (There 1s no special reason for linking this call to OSWALD.)

27 September, 4:05 PM - The Cuban Consulate phoned the Soviet

Consulate. Silvia Duran, Mexican national clerk of the Cuban Consulate

talked to a Soviet official, saying that a male American citizen was at the

Cuban Consulate asking for a transit visa to pass through Cuba on his way

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to the Soviet Union. She wants to know to whom he talked in the Soviet

Consulate and who told him he would have no problem about it. If & Soviet

visa is assured, the Cuban Consulate can grant him a transit visa and

simply notify Cuban Imigration authorities. The Soviet first asks her

to wait, and then she has to explain the whole thing over again to another

Soviet official, who takes her telephone number and promises to call her

back. Silvia DURAN concludes this call by telling the Soviet she herself

has moved and gives her new address for the Soviet Embassy bulletin. He

asks her to phone (Sergey Semenovich) KUKHARENKO (Second Secretary who puts

out the Bulletin) to give him the new address and he asks who the Cuban

Cultural Attache 15. Silvia DURAN gives the Attache's name as Teresa

PROENZA and adds her telephone number.

27 September, 4:26 PM - A Soviet official calls Silvia DURAN

back and tells her that the "American" had been to see the Soviet's and

shown them a letter from the Soviet Consulate in Washington indicating that

he had been waiting for visas for himself and his wife to jo to the Soviet

Union for a long time, but that no answer had come from Washington, adding

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that the walt was sometimes four or five months. The "American" had

shown the Soviets a letter showing he was a member of an organization in

Lavor of Cuba and had claimed that the Cubans could not give him a visa

without a Russian visa. Silvia DURAN rejoins that they have the same

problem; the "American" is still at the Consulate; they cannot give him a

transit visa unless he is assured of a Soviet visa, even though he just

wants to go to Cuba to Wait there for his Soviet visa to be granted. He

does not know anyone in Cuba. They end the conversation on this note.

Silvia DURAN says that she will note this on his "card," and the Soviet

concludes by saying, "Besides he is not known." He excuses himself for the

inconvenience he has caused and Silvia DURAN says it 1s all right.

28 September - Silvia DURAN calls the Soviet Embassy from the

Cuban Consulate. She says that she has the American with her again. The

Soviet answering asks her to wait. When another Soviet takes up the phone,.

Silvia puts the American on. The American tries to talk Russian to the

Soviet who answers in English. The American aks him to speak Russian. The

American says that he had been in the Soviet Embassy and spoken with the

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Consul, and that they had taken his address. The Soviet replies that he

knows that.

The American then says, somewhat enigmatically: "I did not

know it then. I went to the Cuban Embassy to ask them for my address

because they have it." The Soviet Invites him to stop by again and give

them the address, and the American agrees to do so. (In this conversation,

the American was speaking hardly recognizable Russian.)

As far as our records show, OSWALD did not phone the Soviet or Cuban

Embassies again until Tuesday I October 1963. The Intervening days were a

Sunday and a Monday. The contents of his later calls seem to show be

did not contact the Soviets on those days.

1 October, 10:31 AM - A man calls the Soviet Military Attache in

broken Russian and says he had been at their place the previous Saturday

(28 September) and talked to their Consul. They had said they would send

a telegram to Washington, and he wanted to know if there were anything new.

The Soviets ask him to call another phone number and gives him 15-60-55, say-

ing to ask for a Consul.

1 October 10:45 AM - (This is the phone call in which OSWALD

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used his true name and which was therefore cabled to Washington on 9

October 1963.) Lee OSWALD called the Soviet Embassy and announced his

own name, saying be had visited them the previous Saturday and spoken

with a Consul. They had said they would send a telegram to Washington,

and he wanted to know if there were anything new. He did not remember

the name of the Consul. The Soviet, who was Embassy guard OBYEDKOV

replied: "KOSTIKOV; he is dark." OSWALD replied: "Yes, my name 15

OSWALD." The Soviet excused himself for a minute and then said they

hadn't received anything yet. OSWALD asked if they hadn't done anything

and the guard replied they had sent a request but that nothing had been

received as yet." OSWALD started to say: "And what...", but the Soviet....

hung up.

3 October 1963 - A man speaking broken Spanish at first and then

English phoned the Soviet Military Attache and asked about a visa. The

Attache's office referred him to the consulate, giving the number 15-60-55.

The caller wrote it down. The attache official shrugged off another

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question about whether the caller could get a visa, and the conversation

ended. (There is no special reason to tie this in with OSWALD, who 1s now

known to have re-entered the US at Laredo the same day.)

Since the operation through which we tap the Soviet. Embassy phones

In Mexico City is managed jointly with the office of the President of

Mexico, the Information on Lee OSWALD also came to the attention of

President LOFEZ, Mateos after 22 November. The next day, 23 November, he

called it to the attention of our Chief of Station, who was already

working feverishly on the case. Similarly, the Mexicans noticed the

Involvement of Cuban Consular employee Silvia DURAN, & Mexican national.

Our Station suggested that she be arrested and interrogated about OSWALD.

The Mexican authorities had the same idea and she and her husband were

arrested on 23 November 1963, In the midst of a party at their home. All

the guests were soon released but Silvia and her husband were questioned

and released on 25 November 1963.

Silvia's husband, Horacio DURAN Navarro, an Industrial designer,

said under police interrogation that wher OSWALD was named as the assassin

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of Fresident Kennedy, his wife had recognized the name and recalled she

had waited on OSWALD when he came to apply for a Cuban transit visa;

he remembered she had said she dealt with the Soviet Consulate as well

to find out whether he had a Soviet visa.

Horacio DURAN recalled his wife

had sald OSWALD became angry and she had to call out the Cuban Consul,

Eusebio AZCUE, to quiet him.

Silvia DURAN told the same story. She was a leftist sympathizer with

Tuba and had worked for the Mexican-Cuban Institute of Cultural Relations.

She recalled OSWALD well, described him accurately, related how he had

wanted a Cuban visa but could not get one without the assurance of a Soviet

visa, and remembered his tiff with the Consul. She admitted she had phoned

the Soviet Embassy about him.

The sum total of the statements of Silvia DURAN and her husband was

to confirm that OSWALD was in Mexico to get a Cuban visa so he could wait

in Cuba for his Soviet visa. The Soviet Consular file passed to the State

Department in Washington by the Soviet Embassy confirms a long exchange

between first, Mrs. Marina OSWALD, and later her husband, and the Soviet

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Consulate in Washington about their requests for permission to return to

the Soviet Union. OSWALD was still writing to the Soviets in Washington

about this as late as 9 November 1963.

Silvia DURAN was arrested again on 27 November and held until 29

November. She told essentially the same story over again.

Well-placed sources within the Cuban Embassy In Mexico City stated

that when Silvia DURAN was released from police arrest the first time on

25 November, she was quite pleased with herself. She told her colleagues

the same story set out above, adding only that the Mexican police had

threatened to extradite her to the United States to confront Lee Harvey

OSWAID. The reaction within the Cuban Embassy to the news of President.....

Kennedy's death was sombre. To date, there is not credible information in

CIA files which would appear to link Lee OSWALD with the Cuban government

or the Cuban Intelligence service.

The whole question of whether Lee OSWALD had any secret connection

with the Soviets or Cubans in Mexico cannot yet be answered, but certain

parts of the evidence indicate to the contrary. Silvia DURAN and the

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Soviet Consular officials spoke of him as a man with "no friends in Cuba"

on the one hand, and as a man not "known" in the Soviet Embassy, on the

other. The very openness of his visits and the phone calls speak against any

secret role.

His trip to Mexico was not itself a secret act; he traveled

under his real name or a close variant of it, lived openly in Mexican

hotels, and corresponded with the Soviets through the open mails about

It when he got back to the US. His trip to Mexico was apparently made

necessary because it was the nearest Cuban diplomatic installation where

he could apply for a visa.

A perplexing aspect of OSWALD's trafficking with the Cubans and

Soviets in Mexico City is his assertion in his call of 28 September that he

did not know his address when he was at the Soviet Consulate and came to

the Cuban Consulate because they had it. It is hard to explain just what

he meant, but it should be remembered that he was talking in Russian, a

language he could not manage, and that when he came to Mexico he was in the

process of moving from New Orleans to Texas. He may not have memorized

his new address in Texas, whatever it was, and may not have been able to

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lay hands on it when he was in the Soviet Consulate that day. Perhaps

he had earlier given the address to Silvia DURAN and wanted to lo0k 1t

up on her card.

A particularly sinister aspect of OSWALD's dealings with the Soviets

In Mexico City arises from the liklihood that he met with Soviet Consul

Valeriy Vladimirovich KOSTIKOV. In his 1 October phone call to the

Soviet Embassy, the guard OBYEDKOY suggests that the Consul OSWALD had

talked to was KOSTIKOV if he was dark. OSWALD seems to agree with this,

but the identification is very casual. In his 9 November letter to the

Soviet Consulate In Washington, OSWALD gives the name of the man he dealt

with as "KOSTIN," but there is no person of that exact name in the Soviet.

Embassy In Mexico City. KOSTIKOV is accredited as a Consular Attache and

does actually do a lot of consular work, but he 1s believed to be a

Soviet KGB officer, and it is believed that he works for Department 13 of

the KGB, the Department charged with sabotage and assassinations. The

suspicion that KOSTIKOV. is a KGB officer arose from his work habits, and

his association with other KGB officers. It was hardened when it was

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found that he handled a Soviet agent who was trained to do sabotage

work and that he turned this agent over to another KGB officer who is

definitely known to work for the 13th Department. It is generally true

In KGB work that sabotage agents are handled only by 13"Departnent

officers.

Embassy guard Ivan Ivanovich OBYEDKOV is himself believed to be a

KGB man fron previous assignments as a bodyguard and sureillant. But

unless some direct evidence of Soviet complicity is discovered, It 1s

most likely that OSWALD's dealing with KGB men OBYEDKOY and KOSTIKOY was

nothing more than a grim coincidence, a coincidence due in part to the

Soviet habit of placing Intelligence men in the Embassies in positions...

where they receive a large portion of the visitors and phone calls. All

of the live consular officers in the Soviet Embassy are known or suspected

intelligence officers. Certainly If OSWALD had been a Soviet agent in

training for an assassination assignment or even for sabotage work, the

Soviets would have stopped him from making open visits and phone calls to

the Soviet Embassy in Mexico after he tried 1t a couple of times. Our

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experience in Mexico, studying the Soviet Intelligence service at close

range, Indicates that they do make some mistakes and are sometimes insecure

In their methods, but that they do not persist in such glaring errors.

Some insight on the Cuban attitude toward the arrest of Silvia DURAN

and the involvement of the Cuban Consulate in the OSWALD case can be

gained from two intercepted phone calls made between Cuban Fresident

Osvaldo DORTICOS and Cuban Ambassador to Mexico Joaquin HERNANDEZ Armas on

26 November 1963, the day after Silvia DURAN was released from her first

arrest. At 09:40 AM that morning, President DORTICOS phoned the Ambassador

from Havana and asked him several questions about a report which the

Ambassador had sent in on the arrest of Silvia DURAN and the Lee OSWALD ....

case. The whole conversation is consistent with the theory that OSWALD

merely wanted a visa. The Ambassador did mention the altercation which

OSWALD had with Consul AZCUE, and he says that Mexican police bruised

Silvia DURAN's arms & little shaking her to impress her with the importance

of their questions. They had asked her if she had been intimate with

OSWALD and she had denied it. President DORTICOS twice asked Ambassador

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HERNANDEZ whether the Mexican police had asked SIlvia DURAN questions

about "money," and the President apparently wanted to know whether the

Mexicans thought the Cubans had paid OSWALD money. HSRNANDEZ Insisted

the Mexicans had not offered Silvia DURAN money, and DORTICOS gave

us trying to put across his point. President DORTICOS Instructed

HERNANDEZ to keep on questioning Silvia DURAN and to phone him back.

At 7:39 PM that evening Ambassador HERNANDEZ dia call President

DORTICOS back, saying he had questioned "that person" again and she has

nothing new to add. President DORTICOS returns to the issue of whether

"they had threatened her so that she would make a statement that the

Consulate had given money to the man-"that American." But Ambassador.

HERNANDEZ persists in misunderstanding DORTICOS, answes in the negative,

and says: "Absolutely nothing was given to her." DORTICOS seems to give

up, and the conversation dies out after a few nore general remarks..

We do not know for sure what made President DORTICOS press for Informa-

tion about Cuban money passed to OSWALD, but rumors were current in Mexico

and even, we understand, in the USA, that OSWALD had returned from Mexico

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City with about $5,000. Perhaps DORTICOS was trying to learn whether

the Mexican police believed that the Cubans had financed OSWALD. In any

event, the Cuban Government sent the Mexicans a stiff note of protest

over the arrest and detention of Silvia DURAN, but the Mexicans

rejected the note.

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