COMMENTS ON AN ASSOCIATED PRESS ARTICLE "EX-CIA AIDE DOUBTS OSWALD LINK TO CUBA," PUBLISHED IN THE WASHINGTON POST OF 17 MARCH 1977.
Agency: CIA
Originator: CIA
To: MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
Document date: 03/22/1977
Document type: PAPER-TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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(104-0065-10348]

janetsendi

22 March 1977

MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

SUBJECT: Comments on an Associated Press Article

"Ex-CIA Aide Doubts Oswald Link to Cuba"

Published in the Washington Post of 17 March

[a]

[b]

(c]

[a]

[e]

"The man who headed covert CIA operations in

Mexico City in 1963 says Lee Harvey Oswald neither

asked for nor received any aid from the Cubans or

Russians in assassinating President Kennedy.

"In fact, David Atlee Philips writes in 'The

Night Watch'

, none of the CIA personnel in Mexico

City had ever heard of Oswald, and were unaware that

he had defected to the Soviet Union, married a Russian,

and then returned to the United States.

"CIA surveillance, Philips wrote, showed that

Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy in an attempt to

return to Russia and wanted to go via Cuba.

"He said a file check with Washington normally

would have been instituted, but all the agents were so

busy they did not get around to it until the wife of

an agent took it upon

herself to compose the cable.

"Even then, he said, she mistook Oswald's middle

name as 'Henry' and relayed

tion of him.

saidy the

l. a faulty physical descrip-

[f]

"The reason for this, Phillips said, was that the

presumably from some clandestine source and was working

phonetically."

Overall comment:

The above article is based upon Phillips'

book, The Night Watch, and

apparently not on public state-

ments made by. Phillips.

The writer of the article has ex-

tracted certain details from the book and then put them to-

gether to fit his own fancy. Specific comments on each para-

graph follow.

008885°

06472

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Paragraph (a]: Phillips statement is somewhat strong.

So

far as we know Oswald did not seek any assistance from the

Soviets or the Cubans in setting up an assassination operation

against President Kennedy. Physical and technical surveil-

lance of personnel of the Cuban and Soviet Embassies revealed

no unusual contacts of operational interest; however, Oswald

himself was not under surveillance and he was in Mexico City

from the morning of 27 September until the morning of

2 October 1963.

An excerpt from a CI Staff study dated 2 May 1975 points

up the fact that Oswald's activities in Mexico City were not

lit should be pointed out that Oswald

was not under Agency investigation before the President's

What he did when not at the Cuban or Soviet

Consulates or calling them on the telephone remains unknown

to this day.

"From all credible evidence known to this time

(none, incidentally, added since the exhaustively

unique work of the Warren Commission), Lee Harvey

Oswald

spent tour (4) full days and two (2) partial

days - about 116 hours in all - in Mexico City from

about 10:00 a.m. 27 September 1963 to about 8:30 a.m.

2 October 1963.

His place of residence was a

commercial traveler hotel, not frequented by 'gringos' -

the Hotel Commercio

- where he was registered under alias.*

Exhaustive and

detailed interviews and interrogation

by the Mexican

authorities and the FBI, after the

assassination, established that in the recollection

all hotel personnel he left early and returned late

each day of his stay.

[* Oswald's last name appears as "Lee" in three places

in connection with his trip to Mexico City. His

tourist card was typed by the Mexican Consulate in

New Orleans,

signed both the

"Lee H. Oswald.,, "pplication and the card itself?

Oswald himself signed the register

at the

hotel in Mexico City as

"Lee, Harvey Oswald,"

but since the error is identical to

that on the

tourist card and since he revealed the remainder of

basemand, "harvey oswald," it lo possible that aswald

the comma to conform to the tourist card,

or that the earlier mistake suggested a new pseudonym

to Oswald which he decided to continue.

Warren Report, P. 314.1

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"Assuming, and allowing for the fact of late

arrival and

there remain some 78 hours of activity to be

accounted for.

Overall, CIA's information can

account solely for very

brief periods during 27,

28 September and 1 October. All coverage by CIA

during

the entire period was technical.

The Station

had no live source (living agent) coverage (either

unilateral or from Mexican Ifaison."

2 May 1975

from Raymond G. Rocca; Subject:

Agency Holdings regarding photograph of Unidentified Indivi-

dual in Mexico City published by the Warren Commission.J

Paragraph [b]: This statement is accurate. The station had

known nothing about Oswald until his name appeared in the

1 October 1963 intercept of a telephone call to the Soviet

Consulate in which the caller identified himself as "Lee

Oswald."

Paragraph [c]: This paragraph is misleading. Having already

said that "none of the CIA personnel in Mexico City had ever

heard of Oswald," how is it that "CIA surveillance showed

that Oswald visited (emphasis added) the soviet Embassy in an

attempt to retürn to Russia and wanted to go via Cuba?"

This

statement would appear to imply that the Station had set up

a physical

surveillance of Oswald during his stay in Mexico

Instead of making reference to "CIA surveillance"

Phillips would have served the Agency better by referring to

Silvia Duran's testimony as given in the Warren Report.

The Agency is left with trying to explain how we could

have

a surveillance on Oswald when the Station did not know who

Oswald was until it received a cable from Headquarters giving

them

the information [DIR 74830, 10 October 1963.]

Paragraphs_ [d] and lel: The following information is taker

from

the

C1 Study of 2 May 1975 (cited above):

". . . the voice intercept and photographic coverage

was not (and normally is not) processed in 'real

time!

The means of acquisition and the volume of

information precludes anything but the spot reporting

of items judged by the monitor

to be more than ordinary

interest

and, therefore, noted in summary logs.

Full

texts of selected items require consultation of the

tape and either a

• full transcription or

full transla-

tion or both. . . One of the

'triggers' that normally

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wact

operates to focus and accelerate more speedy review

and reporting of this kind of raw intelligence is

the mention of a name. This was precisely what

occurred in the second of two conversations on 1

October with the Soviet Embassy, during which the

speaker said he was 'Lee Oswald.' It was this infor.

mation reported by the Station to Headquarters in

its first indication on Oswald on

8 October 1963.

"The Mexico Station did one more thing in its

8 October voice intercepts: it coupled the data

with descriptive information it had acquired from a

sensitive collateral source - a photograph of a male

individual, apparently, an American (emphasis added),

who was observed entering the Soviet Embassy on

1 October.

The Station reported this detail on the

8th as a matter of coincident fact.

The Station did

not assert or suggest that the data deduced from the

photograph was in fact Oswald, or indeed, was in any

way related to Oswald."

Mexico Station reported to Headquarters on 8 October (re-

ceived in Headquarters at 0043Z 9 October) the following

initial information on Oswald.

(1) On 1 October 1963, an American male who spoke

Russian and said his name Lee Oswald (phonetic),

stated he was at SovEmb on 28 September when he

spoke with a consul whom he believed to be Valeriy

Vladimirovich Kostikov.

Subject asked the Soviet

guard [Ivan] Obyedkov, who answered, if there was

anything new regarding a telegram to Washington.

Obyedkov upon checking said nothing had been received

yet, but the request had been sent.

(2) Mexico Station said it had photos of a male

who appeared (emphasis added) to be an American

entering

the

Soviet Embassy at 1216 hours, leaving

1222 on l October.

Apparent age 35, athletic build,

circa 6 feet, receding hairline, balding top.

Wore

khakis and sport shirt.

(3) No local dissemination was being made by the

Station.

[Cablese has been rendered here into readable English, with-

out substantive changes or omissions.]

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[MEXI-6453 (IN 36017), 9 October 1905. This cable was

originated in the field by Barbara Murphy Manell (whose

pseudonym appears on the copy of the cable in the Mexico

van in 3 state ampo yea

(Station's file on Lee Harvey Oswald), the wife of Herbert

Manell, a staff employee, and, in October 1963, was

chief of Soviet operations in

Mexico City. (Manell's

tour of duty in Mexico was from about May 1959 until

early 1964.)

l1s wife, at the time, was a contract employee

of the Station; before

that she had

been a desk officer in

the Soviet Division.

The use of

the term "agent" is inappropriate in this

article; however, since Phillips does not use such a term

to describe an Agency employee in his book, it must be as-

sumed

that the writer of the article is responsible for

using it.

On 10 October 1963 at 2012Z time the WH Division responsible

for action disseminated this report to the Department of

State,

the FBI, and the Navy Department by routine electrical

transmission,

adding some collateral details drawn from a

preliminary file review:

(1)

On 1 October 1963 a reliable sensitive

source in

Mexico reported that an American male, who identified

himself as Lee Oswald, contacted the Soviet Embassy...

in Mexico City inquiring whether the Embassy had re-

ceived any news concerning a telegram which had

sent to Washington.

The American was described as

approximately 35 years old receding" hairline.

athletic build,

about 6 feet tall, with a

(2) It is believed that Oswald may be identical to

Lee Henry [sic] Oswald, born on 18 October 1939 in

New Orleans, Louisiana,

fected to the Soviet Union in October 1959 and later

made arrangements through the United States Embassy

in Moscow to return to the United States with his

Russian-born wife, Marina Nikolaevna Pusakova [sic]

and their child.

(3) The information in paragraph (1) is being dissemi-

nated to your representatives in Mexico City.

further information received on this subject will be

furnished you.

This information is being made avail-

able to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

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Although the reaction of the Headquarters desk was "by the

book" and in good time, there were a number of errors in

this advisory to the departments which, on the record, were

concerned with the Oswald case:

a. Oswald's middle name was misgiven: "Henry" for

The reason for this mistake is simplicity

Harvey: The sheet opening the file on Oswabd on

9 December 1960 had been

erroneously inscribed "Oswald,

Lee Henry."

That sheet - unchanged except for the

notation of the error - is still the first sheet in

the Oswald file.

[Comment: It is evident from this information that "the

wife of

an agent"

•mistook Oswald's middle name as

'Henry', as Phillips explains it, is inaccurate. The mistake

was made in Headquarters in 1960.]

b.

His wife's maiden name was mispelled: "Pushova"

for prusakova.

Neither of these errors are significant (though they persist

in the Headquarters communications throughout the month.

[Comment: It should also be pointed out that for some un-

explained reason, the desk did not disseminate the

informa-

tion that Oswald

had indicated in his telephone call to the

Soviet Embassy that he had been to the Embassy on 28 Septem-

ber.

The Mexico City Station, however, did pass this infor-

mation locally to the Legal Attache, et al.]

More important was:

C.

Paragraph (2)) of the Mexico Station's report, which

but separate, phenomenon, the

out of the Soviet Embassy,

had been locked on to Lee

Oswald as an alleged descriptive fact.

The Station's

qualification,

"appeared to be an

American," was trans-

formed in the

flat designation of the unidentified in-

dividual as "The American."

There can be no question that

this misreading of the Mexico

Station report was an analyst's error which escaped detec-

tion

in the coordination before release:

the descriptive

details attributed to Oswald were

so far off the mark

as to

be immediately recognizable as such by the recipients in

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Headquarters, among whom both the Navy and FBI had photo-

graphs of Oswald.

(In partial explanation, if not excul-

pation, be it recalled that

as of that moment CIA had no

photograph of Oswald in Headquarters or in Mexico City to

refer to.)

Confirmation of this judgment is provided by the con-

tents of the cable composed by the same analyst and sent as

of 2209z. time (two hours later) to Mexico Station, referencing

its 8 October cable:

(1) Lee Oswald who called SovEmb 1 October probably

identical Lee henry (sic Oswald born lo October 1959,

New Orleans, Louisiana, former radar operator in

United States Marines who defected to USSR in October

1959.

Oswald is five feet ten inches, one hundred

sixty-five pounds, light brown wavy hair, blue eyes.

(2)

On 31 October 1959 he attempted to renounce his

United States citizenship to the United States Embassy

in Moscow, indicating he had applied for Soviet citizen-

ship.

On 13 February the US Embassy Moscow received an

undated letter from Oswald postmarked Minsk on 5 February

1961 in which subject indicated he desired the return of

his US passport as he wished to return to USA if "we could

come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any

legal proceedings against me." On 8 July on his own

initiative he

appeared at the Embassy with his wife to

see about his return to States.

Subject stated that

he actually had never applied for Soviet citizenship

and that his application at that time had been to re-

main in USSR and for a temporary extension of his tourist

visa pending outcome of his request.

This application,

according to Oswald, contained no reference to Soviet

citizenship. Oswald stated that he had been employed

since 13 January 1960 in Belorussian radio and TV

factory in Minsk where he worked as a metal worker in

Oswald was married on 30 April 1961 to

Marina Nikolaevna Pusakova (sicl, a dental technician

born 17 July 1941, USSR.

No Headquarters traces.

• He

attempted to arrange for his wife to join him in Moscow

so she could appear at Embassy for visa interview.

His American passport was returned to him.

US Embassy

Moscow stated twenty months of realities of life in

Soviet Union had clearly had a maturing effect on

Oswald.

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(3) Latest Headquarters information was an FBI

report dated May 1962 saying the FBI had determined

Oswald is still a US citizen and both he and his

Soviet wife have exit permits and Department of

State had given approval for their travel with their

infant child to USA.

(4) The Station should pass the information of refer:

ence [its 8 October cable] and paragraph (1) above to

the Embassy, the FBI, the Navy, and

IGNS locally.

The

information

given above as paragraphs (2) and (3)

originated with the FBI.

(5) Reference and possible identification being

and IgNS.

and a least de meetes suased davy,

Please keep Headquarters

any further

contacts or positive identification

of Oswald.

Headquarters feedback to Mexico City of Oswald's cor-

rect description should have been sufficient, in view of

the

incongruities with the details deduced from the photograph

unidentified male,

keep

these two matters apart as

investigative facts.. But things did not work out that way.

Mexico Station on 15 October 1963 asked Headquarters

to "please pouch a photo of Oswald."

Headquarters electric-

ally delivered to the Department of the Navy the following

message on 24 October 1963:

"Lee Henry [sic] Oswald. . .

"It is requested that you forward to this office as

soon as possible two copies of

the most recent

photograph you have of subject.

We will forward

them to our representative in Mexico, who will

attempt to determine if the Lee Oswald in

Mexico

City and subject are the same individual."

No photograph had been received by CIA by 22 November

1963.

Paragraph [f]: "The wife of an agent" had not made a mis-

take when

she prepared the 8 October cable to Headquarters.

She was working from a transcript of the 1 October telephone

call or from a resume of the telephone conversation.

In

both instances,

caller to the Soviet Embassy identified

himself only as "Lee Oswald" without, apparently, giving his

middle name.

The transcribers spelled out the name noting,

in parentheses, that the spelling

was phonetic.

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Conclusion: The article as well as that portion of

The Night Watch dealing with Oswald in Mexico is misleading

and inaccurate.

hislips, for reasons known only to himselt,

is trying to reconstruct from memory an event which happened

almost fourteen years ago without benefit of documentary

evidence held in Agency

files.

I am told that Phillies'

book

was reviewed here in the Agency before it was published;

Phillipshoever reviewed the section on Oswald knew less than

Russia mens.

Holme

CC :

Inspector General

Mr. Friedlander

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