LETTER:I AM ATTACHING, PER YOUR REQUEST OF 15 APRIL BACKGROUND MATERIALS
Agency: CIA
Originator: CIA
From: BELIN, DAVID. COMM ON CIA ACTIVITIE
To: KNOCHE. ASST. TO THE DIRECTOR
Document date: 05/13/1975
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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Date: 03/08/05

JFK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM

IDENTIFICATION FORM

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : CIA

RECORD NUMBER : 104-10322-10279

RECORD

SERIES

: JFK

AGENCY FILE NUMBER

: CIA-EXEC REG FILES

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

Released under the John

• Kennedy

Assassination Records

Collection Act of 1992

144 USC 2107 Notel.

Case#:NW 53217 Date:

Đ6-22-2017

AGENCY ORIGINATOR : CIA

FROM : KNOCHE. ASST. TO THE DIRECTOR

TO : BELIN,

DAVID. COMM ON CIA ACTIVITIE

TITLE : LETTER: I AM ATTACHING, PER YOUR REQUEST OF 15 APRIL

BACKGROUND MATERIALS

DATE :

05/13/1975

PAGES : 6

SUBJECTS : WARREN COMM.

BELIN,

DAVID

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER

CLASSIFICATION SECRET

RESTRICTIONS

CURRENT STATUS : RELEASED IN PART PUBLIC - RELEASED WITH DELETIONS

DATE OF LAST REVIEW

COMMENTS

:03k-M-13

JFK-M-13 : F10: 1999.03.29.09:47:49:390120: INCLUDES

2 COPIES OF LETTER, TAB A ATTACHMENT AND COVER MEMC

FORM. FOLDER TITLE: WARREN COMMISSION/NEW ASSASSINATION

RECORD

(OSWALD).

[R] - ITEM IS RESTRICTED

104-10322-10279

HW 53217

DocId: 32403833

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MEMORANDUM FOR:

Inspector General

Don:

I am returning this to you for at least

temporary safe-keeping. Please

see a copy

of my letter of this date to David Belin in

which I invite him to check with us if he wants

further details.

I have this book in mind.

E.

H. Knoche

Attachments: a/s

13 May 1975

(DATE)

FORM. NO..

1 AUG 54

REPLACES FORM 10-101

1O1" WHICH MAY BE USED.

(47)

53217

DocId: 32403833

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CENTRAL INTELLIG "E AGENCY

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR

Mr. David W. Belin

Executive Director

Commission on CIA Activities

Within the United States

1 3 MAY 1975

Dear Mr. Belin:

I am attaching, per your request of 15 April,

background materials relating to certain questions

relating to Oswald and the Warren Commission.

Tab A is a classified Secret memorandum

responsive to your request. Tab B is an unclassi-

fied version,: which you can use as you see fit

in whatever report you are preparing on the subject.

Additional details are available in the Office

of the Inspector General should you wish to pursue

this in greater depth.

dong

Faithfully yours,

Estivacke

E. H. Knoche

Assistant to the Director

Attachment: a/s

EHKnoche:rrh:5/13/75

Distribution:

Orig - Mr. Belin w/att

1 - OGC

•wo/att

1 - IG

wo/att

1 - Knoche Chrono wo/att

1' - " Comm Correspondence

1 - Belin Letter Request 15 April

- Warren Commission

wo/att

w/att

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR

13 may's

Mr. David W. Belin

Executive Director

Commission on CIA Activities

Within the United States

Dear Mr. Belin:

I am attaching, per your request of 15 April,

background materials relating to certain questions

relating to Oswald and the Warren Commission.

Tao A is a classified Secret memorandum

responsive to your request. Tab B is an unclassi-

fied version, which you can use as you see fit

in whatever report you are preparing on the subject.

Additional details are available in the Office

of the Inspector General should you wish

to pursue

this in greater depth.

Faithfully yours,

Estivache

E. H. Knoche

Assistant to the Director

Attachment: a/s

NW 53217 DocId: 32403833

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CRET

2 May 1975

MEMORANDUM FOR:

Deputy Chief, Operations Staff

SUBJECT

Review of Agency Holdings regarding.

Photograph of Unidentified Individual

in Mexico City published by the

Warren Commission

REFERENCE

Letter dated 15 April 1975 by

MI. David W. Belin, Executive Director

of the Commission on CIA Activities

within the United States, to

MI. E. Henry Knoche (copy attached to

accompanying. report)

1.

This is further to, and in completion of, my

interim memorandum of a few weeks ago.

2.

The attachment is a detailed review in narrative,

chronological order - together with appropriate comment-

ary - of our extensive holdings on the OSWALD case that

naive hoteing on

have a bearing on the matter of photographs taken by

Mexico: City Station on 1, 4 and 15 October 1963 of an

Unidentified Individual.

As a consequence.of a combina-

tion of analytical error, misjudgement and under the

stress of an urgent desire to contribute to the develop-

ment of the investigation of the assassination, a

cropped version of one of the photographs. of the

Unidentified Individual was introduced into the chain of

evidence in the OSWALD case on 23 November 1963 by an

FBI representative in Dallas.

The successive vicissi-

tudes which have now made this event a cause celebre

right down to the present moment are detailed in the

• narrative.'

SECRET

E. 2 IMPOET EE BY_

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3.

The attached report

is not intended to be an

answer. to the Fensterwald/O'Toole article which Mr. Belin

attaches to his memorandum. (I have prepared a paragraph-

by-paragraph refutation and comment on that article,

which I believe is more appropriately handled by a sepa-

rate memorandum to Mr. Belin, and I will prepare this as

a memorandum if that is desired.)

4.

The point of the referenced memorandum is that

consideration should be given now to "whether or not the

entire matter can be fully disclosed at this time."

This

submission is designed to make it possible for you, the

IG and others whom you may desire to consult to make this

decision.. The narrative-interpretive summary has been

put together in such a way that it discloses no cyptonyms.

pseudonyms or other CIA jargon.

However, its contents. co

well beyond what has been released to the public thus far

in the Warren Commission documentation. This point must

be borne in mind in making a decision on Mr.

Belin's

question.

To remove any question in anybody's mind

about

by copies of actual documentation from our files.

his representative review the documentation that backs up

the narrative.

The documentation has not been keyed into

the narrative presentation, but it follows the chronologi-

cal order of presentation from 9 October into the latest

developments in the matter, and there is an overall index

to facilitate reference to

individual items.

[NB: There

is only one copy of this collection; this is it.

5. : As noted above, one of the photographs taken in

Mexico City on 4 October 1963 was introduced into the

Warren Commission public record.: However, it was intro-

duced into that record in two cropped versions. The

Warren Commission and its staff were made fully aware in

the course of their inquiry at Headquarters and in

Mexico City of the origins of the photograph, the

fact

that we had additional photographs of the same individual

at different times in Mexico City and on the basis

of full knowledge of these

facts reached their own con-

clusions regarding the irrelevance of the photograph to

OSWALD and the assassination.

6.. In fact,

we actually hold twelve different photo-

graphs of the Unidentified Individual.

Each of these to 15

reproduced in the collected documentation backing up the

narrative report (see Items 25 - 27). Chief, LA Division,

2

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S

CRET

had indicated in writing to DC/OPS Staff, that he has no

objection for Mr. Belin to do whatever is desired with

these photographs at this time.

i go hat

It should be noted that

MI. Fensterwald in 1971 - 1972 was actually shown, by

Mr.

Houston during a visit to the Agency, two of the

twelve photographs, other than the one already published

in the Warren Commission report.

(It is these two that:

he has published in The New. York Review of Books article

which Mr. Belin attaches to his memorandum.)

7. It seems to me that whoever makes a decision on

whether the entire matter can be fully disclosed at this

time. should bear in mind that a subsidiary decision must

also be made,. i.e., whether to crop or otherwise fuzz up

the background of the photographs of, alternatively, to

publish the entire run of the photographs for the first

time without taking out the background. Obviously, none

of these questions apply to the passage of this material

to Mc. Belin and the Rockefeller Commission itself.

think they should

see the entire documentation as it

stands. Perhaps after that, the question of what could

be discussed and the question of "how?" and "how much?"

could be taken up with Mr. Belin himself.

My personal

recommendation is that the more we can say about this

matter in a fully open and final manner, the better off

we will be as an Agency.

But it is my.

understanding

that there are still sensitive aspects deriving from

the

fact that the operation which produced the photographs

was jointly run with Mexican liaison and as a consequence

publication at this time would create additional problems

at that level in Mexico. Also, it should be noted that

the Ambassador, according to Win Scott's memorandum to

J.C. King on 22 November 1963 (see Item 8 in the backup

documentation), allegedly played a direct role in the

decision to put the photographs into the hands of the FBI

in Dallas

laterally from the Field. As far as I know,

there has not been anything published about this aspect

at any time in the past nor have we had any discussions

with the State Department about that aspect of the matter.

espacen

Raymond G. Rocca

Attachments:

as

stated

3

SECRET

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