MEMO:ALLEGATIONS OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD'S CONNECTION WITH THE AGENCY
Originator: CIA
From: HARTMAN, PAUL
To: CHIEF, CI STAFF
Document date: 09/18/1975
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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2023 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

CONFIDENTIAL

181071

MEMORANDUM FOR: Chief, CI Staff

SUBJECT

: Allegations of Lee Harvey OSWALD's

Connection with the Agency

REFERENCE

Memorandum of Conversation, Dan

Rather/Les Midgley and

the

DCI,

Dated 6 September 1975

1.

The referent memorandum contains two points

which require comments.

The first point concerns

allegations that were made shortly after the assassination

of President Kennedy and that have crept up every so often

since then. In one form or another, the allegations are

that Lee Harvey OSWALD had been connected with the Agency-

The allegations are totally unfounded.

2. The facts regarding this matter are as

follows:

a..

On 27 November 1963 I was instructed by

Mr. R.G. Rocca, my immediate superior at that time, to

make a thorough check within the Agency at Headquarters

to determine whether Lee Harvey OSWALD had ever been

used by the Agency or been connected with it in any

conceivable way..

He ordered me to make the checks

directly and personally to the degree possible and not

to accept statements of intermediaries.

He also ex-

plained that he was following instructions from Mr. R.

Helms, who was then the DDP and served as one of the.:

Agency's key contact officials with the Warren

Commission.

Although I had already checked the Main Index

of IP (then RID) on the night of the assassination, I

rechecked the Main Index and found no record beyond

that which I had already obtained before (plus those

items which had been integrated into the records system

since the assassination).

There was nothing in the dDo

records which indicated any Agency connection with

OSWALD.

copy sent

to

Mr.

Pechous,

EA/DDO,

18 Sept 75:

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C.

The next component I checked was DD.

There was no record in their Headquarters files.

Arrangements were then made for me to check

telephonically with each DCD base in the US.

The

chiefs of the bases then serached their records

and spoke with their officers.

I was then advised

by each of the chiefs or their designees individ-

ually that there had been no contact with OSWALD.

d.

I then checked with Division D, SE Division,

and LA Division's Cuban Operations Group (COG) for

any informal desk records. The results were like-

wise negative.

e.

Through the Security Research Section

(SRS) of the Office of Security I had the security

files checked. There was no record of OSWALD.

f.

Although CRS keeps no records on Americans,

I checked their Soviet, Mexican, and Cuban holdings

on the remote chance that they may have recorded

something on OSWALD. There was no record in those

files.

In my presence the chief of the CI Staff's

Administrative Office called the Office of Personnel

ive office crate

and received the word that there was no record on an

employee or an applicant for employment named Lee

Harvey OSWALD.

h.

I also checked the Office of Medical

Services and found no record on OSWALD.

i.

on him.

The Covert Action Staff also found no record

j.

Finally, I also checked the records of the

CI Staff's Operational Approval Group (CI/OA) with

negative results.

k.

My checks were completed on 4 December 1963

and I then sent a brief informal note to Mr. Rocca

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specifying all the checks I had made and stating

that the results showed that Lee Harvey OSWALD

had never had any connection whatsoever with the

Agency.

Eventually a statement to this effect

was communicated to the Warren Commission.

3.

Similar checks regarding use or employment

of OSWALD had been requested by the foreign divisions

of their appropriate stations, I was told, and

the

results were negative.

I recall very clearly that we were extremely:

concerned at the time that OSWALD, as an American returning

from the USSR, might have been routinely debriefed by

DCD, thus having established contact with the Agency:

The

same point has now, quite understandably, been made

by the two CBS newsmen. Having some knowledge of this

subject I have personally concluded that there is valid

reason for DCD's lack of interest in OSWALD at that time.

He would surely have been contacted and debriefed by DCD

had he been to the USSR and returned to the US before

1957/1958.

Travel to the Soviet Union by Westerners,

particularly by Americans, before that time was quite

uncommon and we were hungry for eyewitness information in

those days.

The thaw began in about 1956 and by the end

of that decade there were so many persons travelling to

and from the Soviet Union that DCD was incapable of talk-

ing

to all of them. Therefore, a program of selectivity

and

specific target applicability was instituted.

In

light of the above, it seems to me that OSWALD-- if he

came to DCD's attention at all--would have easily been."

by-passed, because he simply did not possess the type of

information that DCD was seeking at that time. DCD would

surely have used its limited manpower on

travellers who

had had much greater access in the USSR.

5.

It should be added that my above-described

search in the Agency file holding produced no record or

indication that any other US Government agency had used

him as a source or had considered hin for recruitment.

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6. The second point in the referent memorandum

concerns the papers that were available at Headquarters

on Oswald before the day of the assassination.

Specif-

ically, there were five documents which had been sent to

the Agency before the assassination.

Two of the documents

had been sent to us by the FBI, two by the Department of

State, and one by the US Navy.

A 201 file (201-289248)

had been opened on 9 December

• 1960 on the basis of the

receipt of the first of these five documents.

The 201

file contained no records that had been originated by

any Agency

component.

The Mexico City station's reporting

of the monitoring of Oswald's activities in Mexico had not

as yet been included in the 201 file.

The pertinent cables

from Mexico City were held at the Mexico branch at Head-

quarters, while the data contained in them had been

disseminated to the FBI upon receipt. The cables were

incorporated into the file following the assassination -

and were, of course, made available to all concerned,

including the Warren Commission.

7. It should

be noted that no particularly great

urgency was attached to the handling of the records

regarding Oswald before the assassination because Oswald's

name had no particular meaning before that fateful event.

8. The facts regarding the records we possessed

before the assassination as well as the make up of our

computerized records system were explained to Chief Justice

WaITen,

members of his Commission, and a group of the

Commission's staff members when they visited Headquarters

in about March 1964 for the express purpose of viewing the

methods and controls we employed in our records keeping

activities. Our 201 file on Oswald was also shown to them

at the time.

From all I have heard regarding this visit,

the visitors were satisfied with our records system and

the manner in which we kept our records.

Paul liartnan

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