REVIEW OF SELECTED ITEMS IN THE LEE HARVEY OSWALD FILE REGARDING ALLEGATIONS OF THE CASTRO CUBAN INVOLVEMENT IN THE JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION.
Originator: CIA
From: RAYMOND ROCCA
To: MEMORANDUM DC/OPS
Document date: 1975-05-23 00:00:00
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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Date: 03/22/05

JEK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM

IDENTIFICATION FORM

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : CIA

RECORD NUMBER

: 104-10429-10094

RECORD

SERIES

JEK

AGENCY FILE NUMBER

RUSS

HOLMES WORK FILE

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

AGENCY ORIGINATOR : CIA

FROM

TO

TITLE :

RAYMOND ROCCA

: MEMORANDUM DC/OPS

REVIEW OF SELECTED ITEMS IN THE LEE HARVEY OSWALD FILE

REGARDING ALLEGATIONS OF THE CASTRO CUBAN INVOLVEMENT

IN THE JOHN E. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION.

DATE : 05/23/1975

PAGES :

29

SUBJECTS

DAVID BELIN

ASSOCIATED PRES

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER

CLASSIFICATION

: SECRET

RESTRICTIONS

1B

CURRENT STATUS

RELEASED IN PART PUBLIC - RELEASED WITH DELETIONS

DATE OF LAST REVIEW

12/13/98

COMMENTS

: JEK-RH17 : F06 1998.12.13.11:24:09: 640108

Released under the John F. Kennedy

Assassination Records Collection Act of

1992 (44 USC 2107 Note). Case#:NW

55990 Date: 11-01-2021

[R] - ITEM IS RESTRICTED

104-10429-10094

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23 May 1975

LENORANDUM FOR:

DC/OPS

SUBJECT

Review of Selected Items in the

Lea Harvey OSWALD File Regarding

Allegations of the CASTRO Cuban

Involvement in the

John F. KENNEDY Assassination

1.

The attached review and sunmary was written at

the express reguest of Mr. David w. Balin as a follow-

up to Quastion 3 of his letter to the Agency of

15 April 1975.

2.

The results - as I have already told him - add

nuance,

of the Attachment.

There seared to be no reason

to

attach copleg of the casa reports from the file to this.

simary.

These can be made available promptly, however,

on request.

This

sunmary. does not deal sith press,

magazine and books that dealt with the subject during

the period after the assassination.

My recommendation is to do with this paper as

we did with the earlier one requested by Mr.. Belin on

the unidentified man:

let him read the entire gurnary

and then decide how much of it, if any, is pertinent

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[23 May 1975]

SUBJECT

REFERENCE :

Review of Selected Items in the

Lee Harvey OSWALD File Regarding Allega-

tions of CASTRO Cuban Involvement in the

John F. KENNEDY Assassination

Letter by David W. Belin to

Mr. E. Henry Knoche, 15 April 1975,

paragraph 3 (Regarding Public Statement

by CASTRO, etc.), attached

BACKGROUND

I. On Saturday evening, 7 September 1963,

Fidel CASTRO

appeared at

a Brazilian Embassy reception in

Havana; even more unusual, CASTRO submitted to an informal

interview by the Associated Press correspondent,

Daniel HARKER.

2. HARKER's interview reached New York on Sunday,

8 September, and was in print throughout the country on

Monday, 9 September. There can be no question from the

facts surrounding the CASTRO appearance, which had not been

expected, and his agreement to the interview, that this

event represented a more-than-ordinary attempt to get a

message on the record in the United States.

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3. CASTRO's statements to HARKER covered a range of

topics but dealt principally with American political

leadership, in particular President KENNEDY, whom he ex-

coriated in extraordinarily provocative fashion

(" ... KENNEDY is a cretin;" " ... the BATISTA of his

times

... the most opportunistic American President of

all time ...").

4. The interview also contained an uncomplimentary

reference to Senator GOLDWATER and Cuban delay in signing

the limited nuclear test ban. There were differences in

the replay by United States newspapers like the

New York Times and Washington papers, with a result that

CASTRO's "message" was significantly modulated.

5. In New Orleans, where Lee Harvey OSWALD resided

until the middle of September 1963, the HARKER story

appeared in the principal morning paper, the Times-Picayune,

on Monday, 9 September, page 7, under a three-column head-

line: "CASTRO Blasts Raids on Cuba. Says U.S. Leaders

Imperiled by Aid to Rebels." The story followed under the

HARKER by-line:

"Havana (AP) - Prime Minister

Fidel Castro said Saturday night: 'U.s.

leaders would be in danger if they helped

in any attempt to do away with leaders of

Cuba. '

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"Bitterly denouncing what he called

recent U.S. prompted raids on Cuban terri-

tory, Castro said:

'We are prepared to

fight them and answer in kind. U.S. leaders

should think that if they are aiding terror-

ist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they

themselves will not be safe.'

... World affairs ... seemed to be

entering

a more peaceful climate a few days

ago, but now this trend has changed with

attacks.

"The U.S. is always ready to negotiate

and make promises which later it will not honor.

This has happened to promises made during the

October crisis. They have been broken as can

be seen with new attacks.

"'But I warn this is leading to a very

dangerous situation

that could lead to a worse

crisis than October's

...'"

6. The New York Times, in its coverage on 9 September,

used a UPI wire service report which omitted any reference

to the warning and threat which gave the interview its real

significance.

The Washington Post did an abbreviated re-

write (9 September, page A-7) which, similarly, omitted

any reference to the main thrust of CASTRO's remarks.

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The Evening Star of Washington, D. C., printed the HARKER

story nearly in its entirety

in the second section of the

paper (9 September 1963, page B-4) and reworded the content

of the HARKER interview, placing the emphasis on the po-

litical aspects - in particular, highlighting the GOLDWATER

elements and burying CASTRO's warning to the United States

leadership in the middle of the piece.

7. There is no evidence in the files on the KENNEDY

assassination that this CASTRO interview was considered in

following up. leads or in dealings with the Warren Commission

and its staff although Mexico Station specifically directed

Headquarters attention to the AP story very

shortly after

the Dallas killing. More important, the interview appears

to have been forgotten in the contemporary political consid-

eration of relations with CASTRO's Cuba. There is no evidence

in the Agency records, either, that the Warren Commission

staff itself pursued the implication of the CASTRO interview

in dealing with the conspiracy hypothesis.

There is no

evidence in the files that anything along these lines

was

stated by any other Cuban leader before the

assassination.

8. The purpose of this review, undertaken at Mr. Belin's

request, is to reconsider Lee Harvey OSWALD's activity on the

assumption that

as an avid newspaper reader - which we know

from testimony of Marina OSWALD and others - he read the

CASTRO warning and threat

as reported above. The results

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"of the review, admittedly heavily using

the 20 - 20 quality

of hindsight, may be stipulated in summary:

a. There is no increment of credible

evidence, applying this phrase strictly, of

Soviet and/or Cuban political, intelligence

or security service involvement in the as~

sassination to what was developed and con-

sidered by the Warren Commission and its

staff. The Commission's finding that

Lee Harvey OSWALD was the killer of

President KENNEDY and Officer TIPPIT and did

them

in alone and of his own determination

stands.

b. "Credible evidence" that woula

upset or significantly

modify this judgement

did (and does) not exist

in Washington.

But

such evidence could exist in

MOSCOW

and/or

Havana, whose voluntary inputs to the Warren

Commission were minimal in quantity and

quality, designed to cover up any admissions

of knowledge of, or connection with, OSWALD

which might be related directly or indirectly

with the assassination. Therefore, the belief

that there was Soviet and/or Cuban

(KGB and/or

DGI) connection with OSWALD will persist

and

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--.-grow until there has been a full disclosure -

by these governments of all elements of

OSWALD's handling and stay in the Soviet Union

and his contacts in Mexico City. The

Warren Commission report should have left a

wider "window" for this contingency.

That,

indeed, was the opinion at the working level,

particularly in the counterintelligence com-

ponent in the CIA in 1964. As was indicated

by Mr. Helms in his testimony before the

Warren Commission, CIA would continue to

regard this aspect of the OSWALD case as

still open.I

c. In the absence of additional or new

elements of "credible" evidence, there

are

"nuances" in the record that emerge

as note-

worthy, in the light of other conclusions.

These are reviewed and summarized below, item-

by-item.

a. CASTRO's warning

and threat of

7 September 1963 - if OSWALD did indeed read

1

Investigation of the Assassination of President John F.

KENNEDY.

Hearings Before the President's Commission on the

Assassination of President KENNEDY (Washington, 1964),

hereafter cited as Hearings, Vol. v., pp. 120 - 129. See

especially p. 124 -"Mr. Helms:

'yes.

I would assume

the case could never be closed.'"

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it in New Orleans - must be considered of

great significance in the light of the

pathological evolution of OSWALD's passivel

aggressive makeup after his attempt to kill

General WALKER early in April 1963 and his

identification with Fidel CASTRO and the

Cuban revolution which is directly trace-

able as far back as his Marine Corps.

service in El Toro, California. CASTRO's

warning and threat, given to AP corres-

pondent HARKER, irrespective of whether

there was any formal mandate, or even

security service contact with OSWALD

by the Cubans or the Russians - was an act

of singular irresponsibility and under no

circumstances was excusable as retorsion

for what the Cuban emigres were doing during

the summer of 1963.

CUBAN CONTACT WITH LEE HARVEY OSWALD, SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA,

EARLY 1959 (?)

9. The testimony of Nelson DELGADO contains an assertion

of germinal significance to any review of the background of

Lee Harvey OSWALD's feeling toward and relations with

CASTRO's Cuba.

DELGADO was probably the closest peer group

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member to OSWALD during his specialist training period

at El Toro Marine Corps Base December

1958 - September 1959.

The Warren Commission Report takes note of this:

"OSWALD told DELGADO that he was in

touch with Cuban diplomatic officials in

this country, which DELGADO at first took

to be 'one of his lies, but later

believed. ' "2

10. Actually DELGADO's testimony says a lot more of

possible operational significance than is reflected by the

language of the report, and its implications do not

appear

to have been run down or developed by investigation.

Thus,

the record of the beginning of OSWALD's relationship with

the Cubans

starts with a question mark.

11. The period was

one of transition in U.S. - Cuban

relations after CASTRO's takeover. OSWALD, and DELGADO at

the outset, were CASTRO supporters, OSWALD being particu-

larly keen about how to get to the island.

DELGADO testi-

fied:

... I didn't know what to tell him, so

I told him the best thing that I know was to

Report to the President's Commission on the Assassination

of President John F.

KENNEDY (Washington, 1964), hereafter

cited as Report, p. 687.

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get in touch with a Cuban

Embassy, you know.

But at that time that I told him this - we

were on friendly terms with Cuba, you know,

so this wasn't no subversion or malintent,

you know. I didn't know what to answer him.

I told him to see them.

"After a while he told me he was in

contact with them ...

" ... I seen this envelope in his foot-

locker, wall-locker, and it was addressed to

him, and they had an official seal on it, and

as far as I could recollect that was mail from

Los Angeles, and he was telling me there was

a Cuban Consul. And just after he started

receiving these letters - you see, he would

never go out, but stay near the post

all the

time ...

... he had one visitor after he started

receiving letters he had one visitor. It was

a man, because I got the call from the MP

guard shack, and they gave me a call that

OSWALD had

a visitor at the front gate.

This

man had to be a civilian, otherwise they would

have let

him in. So I had to find somebody to

relieve OSWALD, who was on guard, to go down

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there to visit with this fellow, and they

spent

about

an hour and a half, two hours, talking,

I guess, and he came back. I don't know who the

man was or what they talked about, but he looked

nonchalant about the whole thing when he came

back.. He never mentioned who he was, nothing.

"MI. LIEBELER: How long did he talk to

him, do you remember?

"MIT. DELGADO: About an hour and half,

two hours ...

"MI. LIEBELER: You never asked OSWALD

who this fellow was that he talked to?

"MI. DELGADO: No. No ...

"Mr. LIEBELER: Did you connect this visit

that OSWALD had at that time with the Cuban

Consulate?

"Mr. DELGADO: I did; because I thought it

funny for him to be receiving a caller at such a

late date - time. Also, up to this time he

hardly ever received mail; in fact he seldom

received mail from home because I made it a

policy, I used to pick up the mail for our unit

and distribute it to the guys in there, and very

seldom did I ever see one for him.

But every so

often, after he started to get in contact with

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- these Cuban people, he started getting letter

pamphlets and newspapers

" ... and he also started receiving letters,

you know, and no books, maybe pamphlets, you

know, little-like church, things we get from

church, you know, but it wasn't a church.

"MX. LIEBELER: Were they written in

Spanish, any of them, do you know?

"MI. DELGADO: Not that I can

recall,

no.

"Mr. LIEBELER: Did you have any reason

to believe that these things came to OSWALD

from the Cuban Consulate?

"Mr. DELGADO : Well, I took it for granted

that they did after I seen the envelope, you

know ... something

like a Mexican eagle, with a

big, impressive seal, you know.

They had dif-

ferent colors on it,

red and white; almost

looked like our colors, you know. But I can't

recall the seal. I just knew

it was

in Latin,

United, something like that. I couldn't under-

stand.

It was Latin.

"Mr. LIEBELER: You don't know for sure

whether it was from the Cuban Consulate?

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"MI. DELGADO :

No.

But he had told

me

prior, just before I found that envelope in his

wall locker, that he was receiving mail from

them, and

one

time he offered to show it to me,

but I wasn't much interested because at

the

time we had work to do, and

I never

did ask

to see that paper again, you know.

"Mr. LIEBELER: Did he tell you what his

correspondence with the Cuban Consulate was

about?

"Mr. DELGADO: No, he didn't.

"ME. LIEBELER: Did he ever indicate to you

that it had to do with the conversations that

you had about going over to Cuba?

"Mr. DELGADO: No. . The only thing he

told me was that right after he had this con-

versation with the Cuban people was that he was

going to - once he got out of the service - he

was going

to switzerland….. "3

12. OSWALD's application to Albert Schweitzer College,

Churwalden, Switzerland, was dated 19 March 1959, and he

was presumably to report there on 20 April 1960.

Destined

for discharge from the Marines on 7 December 1959, OSWALD

3

Hearings, Volume VIII, PP. 241 - 243.

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accelerated his exit on grounds of family hardship in early

septerber 1959. On 27 September 1989 he was issued a

U.S. passport valid for travel - among other places to

Cuba and the USSR. He entered the Soviet Union from

Finland on 15 October 1959.

13. DELGADO's testimony has the cast of credibility.

Granting that, it is of basic importance to focus attention

on the male visitor who contacted OSWALD at El Toro Camp

and talked with him for between one and a half to two hours.

The event was unique in DELGADO's recollections, and actually

there is nothing like it - on the record - in everything else

we know about OSWALD's activity in the United States before

or after his return to the United States.

The record reflects

no identification of the El Toro contact.

DELGADO's presump-

tion is that he was from the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles.

Assuming that, the questions.

are:

Who was it, and was

there reporting from Los Angeles to Washington and Havana

that could, in effect, represent the opening of a Cuban

file on OSWALD?*

"PREDICTION" OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S DEMISE BY COMMUNIST

PARTY CELL LEADER MORSE BENITEZ ZABOLA, 1962

14. Guatemala Station forwarded to Headquarters on

9 January 1964 a duplicate copy of a raw report by a

U.S./Cuban diplomatic and consular relations were severed

on 3 January 1961.

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penetration dated 5 January 1962 describing events at the

yearly Communist Party cell meeting.

The cell leader,

Morse BENITEZ Zabola, said that the Communist Party in

Guatamala should form a single new party;

"We need not

preoccupy ourselves over the politics of President KENNEDY

because we know, according to prognostications, that he

will die within the present year, 1962."

15. This report apparently had been discounted when

it was received and was not forwarded until the Station

re-reviewed all of its material after the assassination.

The file reflects no follow-up or formal dissemination

of the report.

ENIGMATIC THREATS BY CUBAN THIRD SECRETARY IN THE HAUGE,

7 NOVEMBER 1963

16. A sensitive liaison source, reporting after the

KENNEDY assassination, indicated that at the Soviet reception

on 7 November 1963, the Cuban Third Secretary,

Ricardo I. SANTOS Pesa,

discussed the recent refugee raids

on Cuba and their implications with

a host-country diplomat,

concluding with the admonition: "

Just wait and you

will see what we can do. It will happen soon."

Asked to

be more specific what would happen soon, SANTOS replied:

"Just wait, just wait."

17. These data

were passed to the Warren Commission

by memorandum, 31 March 1964. SANTOS was reported to have

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a history of medical instability and was summarily recalled

from The Hague reportedly for reasons related to that fact

in April 1966.

INTERCEPTED CONVERSATION OF CUBAN EMBASSY

EMPLOYEE,

LUISA CALDERON, AFTERNOON OF 22 NOVEMBER 1963

18. At 1730 Mexico City time, about five hours after the

KENNEDY assassination, a Cuban Embassy employee named

"Luisa" received

a telephone call in Spanish

from an uniden-

tified male outside.

19. The caller asked her if she had heard the latest

news. "Luisa" jokingly replied:

"Yes, of course, I knew

it almost before KENNEDY ... Imagine, one, two, three and

now, that makes three [she laughs], what barbarians!

..."

20. Both speakers agreed on the seriousness of the

assassination. "Luisa" also stated that the party at

Silvia DURAN's had been called off so it would not appear

that they were celebrating the death of KENNEDY, nor would

they have the party coincide with the burial. Finally she

said she planned to move that night into the house of a

doctor (a woman) friend.

21. Latin hyperbole? Boastful ex post facto suggestion

of foreknowledge? This is the only item in the intercept

coverage of the Cubans and Soviets after the assassination

that contains the suggestion of foreknowledge or expectation.

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22.

The tenuous, enigmatic character of the conversation

is sharply highlighted by the following facts:

a. "Luisa" was probably

identical with

Luisa CALDERON, a cadre worker of the Cuban

Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI).

She returned to Cuba in 1964 and was reported

to be working in DGI Headquarters.

b. The DGI element in Mexico City in the

fall of 1963 was headed by Alfredo MIRABEL Diaz

who had arrived on 2 September 1963, formally

as the replacement of the Consul Eusebio AZCUE

(departed IS November 1963). The deputy DGI

chief (and as of June 1964, MIRABEL's successor)

was Manuel Engenio VEGA Perez.

c. The "Silvia DURAN" named in Luisa's

conversation was the receptionist,

a Mexican

national, who dealt with OSWALD during his known

visits on 27 and 28 September to the Cuban

installation in connection with a Cuban visa

application for stay and/or transit.

Silvia DURAN is the sole live witness on the

record regarding OSWALD's activity in

Mexico City. Her testimony, however, in its

entirety was

taken and presented, solely, by the

Mexican Governmental authorities. A direct

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confrontation with her was requested by the

Warren Commission staff but rejected by the

Mexican authorities.

It is from Silvia DUrAN's

statements that it was learned that OSWALD

stalement

became engaged in a personal altercation on

27 September with Fusebio AZUE.

also frau

Han Cuban

d. Manuel Engenio VEGA Perez,

alias Marcos, and his DGI assistant,

Rogelis RODRIGUEZ Lopez, were positively

identified in February 1964 by two independent

sources as engaged in the active development

and facilitation of the training of Nicaraguan

agents for the purpose of assassinating

General Annstasio SOMOZA. VEGA, it is estab-

lished, was on post in Mexico City during

OSWALD's stay there 27 September - 2 October

1963.

He left Mexico City on 3 November 1963

for Havana. It was reliably reported about

VEGA that all individuals going to Cuba, legally

or illegally, had to pass through him first.. He

took the biographical data and

sent it to Cuba

for name checking, a procedure which normally

took fifteen days.5

5

For example, VEGA would have handled the details of the

visa action

and facilitation of the

trip to Cuba via

Mexico City from 28 December 1962 - 21 January 1963 that

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23. There is no evidence in the OSWALD case file that

Silvia DURAN

was subjected to a systematic elicitative

interrogation that would have related her dealings with

OSWALD, known or confirmed by intercept, with the data held

on the Cuban DGI, its personalities and methods, in

Mexico City. Was it normal for a case like OSWALD's,

considering the fuss he allegedly made with AZCUE, for the

applications to be handled solely by a local employee and

a lame duck like AZCUE whose slot had been taken by the

DGI chief?

Whatever the answer to these questions, they

were not asked at the time.

And there remains the more

fundamental question:

accepting the DURAN story on its

face, could it have happened without the knowledge and

participation of the DGI personnel above cited?

This

seems unlikely especially because VEGA is later cited by

a Cuban DGI defector as having stated he was aware OSWALD

made several visits to the Cuban Consulate. It is clear

CASTRO's overseas intelligence and security service could

have more in its files than was surfaced in the DURAN

was taken by Vincent Theodore LEE, the organizer of the

Fair Play Committee for Cuba, with which OSWALD established

relations from Dallas during

the period 19 April -

2 November 1963.

There is an overlap between LEE's and

VEGA's travels to Havana during that period: VEGA

departed Mexico City on 6 January for Havana and returned

on 13 February 1963.

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statements.. Coming back to the beginning:

"Luisa" -

Luisa CALDERON - as a member of the DGI unit in Mexico City -

could very

well have known something that would make what

she said to her unidentified caller less a matter of

boastful self-indulgence than was assumed at the time.

SILVIA DURAN, SUBSTANTIAL AMPLIFICATION OF ADMISSION OF

ALLEGED PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH LEE HARVEY OSWALD, 1967

24. The defects viewed in hindsight of the Silvia DURAN

testimony already have been suggested above.

(In that

context of criticism it would also be relevant to reconsider

the implications of the two intercepted telephone conversations

on 26 November 1963 between the Cuban President, DORTICOS,

and his Ambassador to Mexico, Joaquim Hernandez ARMAS,

because the thrust of the conversation dealt with the ques-

tion whether Silvia DURAN had been asked

about for been

offered?] money payments by her Mexican

interrogators.)

25. As of September 1964 Silvia DURAN gave up her

Cuban Embassy job. In the spring of 1967 Silvia DURAN

was reported by

a reliable and sensitive source to have

cut all relations with Cubans. Her account, in 1967, of

how she had been taken into custody and had been interrogated

after the assassination repeated what was already

known.

She added, under circumstances that did not permit the

source to challenge or elicit corroborative detail, that

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she had gone out with OSWALD during his stay

in Mexico City

and claimed she had sexual relations with him.

ALLEGATIONS OF CONSPIRATORIAL CONTACT BETWEEN OSWALD AND

CUBAN GOVERNMENT AGENTS WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO

ALLEGATIONS OF (A) ELENA GARRO DE PRAZ AND

(B) OSCAR CONTRERAS

26. As the Warren Commission reported, "Literally

dozens of allegations of a conspiratorial contact between

OSWALD and agents of the Cuban Government have been

investigated….."6 Among these cases, which consumed

hundreds of CIA man-hours in Headquarters and abroad -

and similarly the FBI in the United States - was the

Nicaraguan walkin in Mexico City, 26 November 1963,

Gilberto ALVARADO Ugarte.

27. The ALVARADO case is taken up in detail by the

Warren Commission under the cryptograph "D."?

ALVARADO

claimed that he had seen an American, whom he identified

as OSWALD, receive money some time in mid-September 1963

in a meeting in a patio of the Cuban Consulate in

6

7

See Report, p. 305 ff.

Some of the others were the cases

of Ylario ROJAS Villenueve in Cozumel and Guadaloupe,

the allegations of Enrique Ruedolo GONGORA in New York City.

the claims of Robert Edward GALLANT, Santa Clara Prison

Farm, California, and the allegations of Ray DOBKIN's..

See Report, pp. 307 - 308.

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Mexico city. ALVARADO's story was ultimately broken by the

use of the polygraph, on which ALVARADO showed evidences of

deception, and by bringing ALVARADO's former Nicaraguan

security

service control into the case.

28. The ALVARADO story is a particularly acute repre-

sentation of the difficulties

that beset the evaluation of

observed evidence: certain elements of the story persist

despite the impeachment of its major premises. ALVARADO,

whose account did not become public until the release of

the Warren Report in October 1964, talked consistently of

the presence in

the Cuban Consulate transaction of a Negro

with red-dyed hair.

29. Elena GARRO de Paz is a mecurial, articulate and

socially prominent Mexican writer, married, but separated

from a high-ranking Mexican foreign service official. She

is also the cousin of Horacio DURAN, the husband of

Silvia DURAN, cited above.

There is a strong personal

antipathy between the two women descending from

Elena GARRO's trenchant anti-Communism.

30.

From October 1964 until his retirement in the fall

of 1969, a U.S. Embassy officer, Charles THOMAS, persistently

kept up a stream of reports and memoranda reflecting GARRO's

account of what had actually gone on between OSWALD, the

Cubans

and in particular Silvia DURAN in September 1963,

including a repeated reference to a Negro with red-dyed hair.

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31. The first reference to the GARRO story was

noted

in

a Mexico Station Memorandum of Record dated 12 October 1964:

"Elena GARRO (said] that she and her

daughter were invited to a party at the Cuban

Embassy during the period she now finds out

that OSWALD was here in Mexico prior to the

assassination. She was invited by a Mexican

secretary in the Cuban Embassy whose husband

is a cousin of the GARRO family (Horacio DURAN).

At the party she saw three Gringos, not

drinking, not mixing and more or less just

standing around together like three bumps on a

10g. They were so obviously out of place that

she asked someone in the Cuban Embassy about

them and was told that 'they were just passing

through.' She claims that on the way

these

three Gringos stood out she took a good look

at them as did her daughter. When the

assassination occurred and OSWALD's picture was

spread

into the newspapers, both Elena and

her daughter immediately said that he was one

of the three Gringos 'without a doubt' at the

party. "

32.

GARRO repeated her story to Me. Charles William

THOMAS, an Embassy political officer on 10 December 1965:

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In September 1963 after her return from abroad, she went.

to a party, accompanied by her daughter, at the home of

Ruben DURAN (emphasis added). Ruben is one of the two

brothers of Horacio DURAN, who married her cousin. She

met OSWALD and two other young Americans. At the party

she was

discouraged from talking with him. Other guests

were the Cuban Consul AZCUE, General Clark FLORES,

Silvia DURAN, who she later learned was OSWALD's mistress

while he was here, Emilio CARBALLIDO and a Latin American

Negro man with red hair (emphasis added]. In November 1963

when the identity of the assassin became known, she and

her daughter went to the Cuban Embassy and shouted

"assassins" and other insults at the staff there.? shortly

afterward, she and her daughter were visited by a friend,

Manuel CARVILLO [or CALVILLO], then an official in the

Secretariat of the Gobernacion and were told he had orders

to escort them to a small and obscure hotel in

the center

of town. They were kept there for eight

days under pretext

that they were in danger.

When she told

CARVILLO

she wanted

to go to the American Embassy and explain what she knew of

OSWALD, she was told that the American Embassy was full of

Communist spies.

33. On 25 December 1965 and 9 January 1966 in further

interviews with THOMAS, GARRO and her daughter elaborated and

8

These particulars were not

confirmed by independent observers

at the time.

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in certain particulars significantly modified her earlier

account. She also acknowledged that she and her daughter

had been interviewed by Embassy officers to whom she claimed

they did not give a very complete story because the

Embassy officers did not appear to give much credence to

anything they said.

34. It developed that GARRO and daughter had been

interviewed by the Legal Attache on 17 and 24 November

1964.

Her information had been similar to what she claimed in her

account to THOMAS but had not been substantiated by inquiries.

The FBI representative therefore considered the matter closed

and reaffirmed his disengagement from the matter to the CIA

Chief of Station on 27 December 1964 and to the Ambassador

on 25 February 1965.

35. The Embassy Political Officer, however, persisted in

his interviews and reporting. In a memorandum of conversation,

13 July 1966, GARRO identified the place to which she had

been

taken by CALVILLO as the Hotel Vermont. (This detail checked

out affirmatively. GARRO was at the Hotel 23 - 24, 25 - 27

and 28 - 30 November 1963.) In another, on 7 February 1967,

GARRO's continuing vicissitudes with the Cubans are set out.

And finally, upon THOMAS's retirement from U.S. Government

service, the Department of State, at his request,

28 August 1969, disseminated to CIA and FBI a compilation of

his reporting of the Elena GARRO interviews.

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36.

There the matter rests. GARRO's chronology of the

events she described

as having occurred in the Mexican capital

in September

1963 never coincided with the confirmed data

of OSWALD's presence there.

Her story, however, had two

points congruant with allegations by others regarding

OSWALD:

a. ALVARADO's allegations regarding the

Negro with the red-dyed hair (this detail coula,

however, have been gleaned from the

Warren Commission's published account of the

"D" case]

and

b.

Silvia DURAN's later claim of

intimate personal contacts with OSWALD.

37. Beginning in March and amplified in May 1967, the

American Consul, Benjamin J. RUYLE, in Tampico developed

contact with a local Mexican journalist,

Oscar CONTRERAS Lartigue, who claimed to have encountered

OSWALD with other pro-CASTRO students at the

University of Mexico campus in September 1963.

38.

In June 1969 CONTRERAS was interviewed by a CIA

officer:

He studied law at the University

of Mexico

for three years, approximately 1960 - 1964. He

belonged to a clandestine pro-CASTRO revolutionary

group at the University.

Regarding the OSWALD

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case he was extremely cautious and although he

. was not able or willing to give dates and

names, he said OSWALD visited the University

of Mexico campus shortly after the Cuban

Embassy refused him a visa to visit Cuba.

OSWALD made inquiries regarding pro-Cuban

revolutionary groups at the University and

was directed to CONTRERAS and his friend.

OSWALD met CONTRERAS and four other persons

as they came out of a round-table discussion

held in the faculty of Philosophy. OSWALD

told the group it was urgent that he visit

Cuba and the Cuban Embassy had denied him a

visa. He requested aid from CONTRERAS' group.

CONTRERAS and others mistrusted OSWALD because

they felt he was a CIA provocation. The group

allowed OSWALD to accompany them the

rest of the

day, that night and part of the next

day. OSWALD

was very introverted and appeared to be slightly

crazy. OSWALD made no mention of an assassination

plot but kept bringing up the point he had to

travel to Cuba immediately.

39. At this point, with FBI knowledge, the matter was

turned over to the Mexican authorities who determined that

CONTRERAS was indeed at the University of Mexico but only

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for the years 1959 - 1960 and that he had been publicly

associated in protest activity for the Student Revolutionary

BloC (BER) in January 1961. However, the group ceased

functioning as such in the middle of 1962, and

Oscar CONTRERAS was never one of its leaders. No further

work is reflected

in the files on the CONTRERAS allegations.

Apart from the unsustained claims made by CONTRERAS about

his own presence at the University, there is an additional

element that undermines the credibility of his account:

OSWALD's Spanish, which was barely adequate to get him meals

near the hotel, seems hardly likely to have permitted him to

carry on for an extended period with a University student

group.

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