COMMENTS ON AN ASSOCIATED PRESS ARTICLE "EX-CIA AID DOUBTS OSWALD LINK TO CUBA", PUBLISHED IN THE WASHINGTON POST OF 17 MARCH 1977.
Agency: CIA
Originator: CIA
From: HOLMES, RUSSELL B.
To: MFR
Document date: 03/22/1977
Document type: PAPER-TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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104-10095-10087

UINCLASSIFIED

INTERNAL

USE ONLY:

ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET

Co IDENTIAL

XI SECRET

SUBJECT A (Optional)

FROM:

Russell B. Holmes

SCL/0604

TOp Oficer

büilding i

designation,

room, number,

253

OFFICERISI

INITIALS!

DATE

29 March: 1977

to. whom:

RDED

Inspector General

2B.244

gre fi HSC file

'FORM"

3-62

610 USE PROVOUS

EDITIONS

SECRET

CONFIDENTIAL

INTERNAL

USE ONLY

E UNCLASSIFIED

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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

1977.

[a)

"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.

[b]

"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.

[c] •

"CIA surveillance, Philips wrote, showed that

Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy in an attempt to

return to Russia and wanted to go via Cuba.

[d]

"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 1t until the wife of

an agent took it upon herself to compose the cable.

(e]

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

name as

'Henry'

and relayed a faulty physical descrip-

tion of him.

[f]

"The reason for this, Phillips said,

was that the

wife had not read about Oswald but 'heard' about him

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.

SERG..:

0088851

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## Page 3

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

covered completely. It should be pointed out that Oswald

was not under Agency investigation before the President's

assassination.] 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 four (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 small

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

of 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

courist card was typed by the Mexican Consulate in

Yew Orleans, "Lee, Harvey Oswald."

seems to have been a clerical error, since oswal comma

signed both the

"Lee H. Oswald olicad on and the ced it 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

his name, "Harvey Oswald," it is possible that Oswald

inserted

the comma to conform to the tourist card

or that the earlier mistake suggested

a new pseudonym

to Oswald which he decided to continue. Source:

Warren Report, p. 314.]

2

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"Assuming, and allowing for the fact of late

arrival and early departure; that he slept one-

third of the time of his stay (38 or 39 hours),

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

2 May 1975,

from Raymond G. Rocca; Subject:

Agency Holdings regarding photograph of Unidentified Indivi-

dual in Mexico City published by the Warren Commission.]

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 return 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

City.

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 (dj and (e]: The following information is

taken

from the CI 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

3

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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

Speaker with the Soviet sass duringas tch 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

I October.

The Station reported this detail on the

8th as

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 1 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.]

4

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14-00000

[MEXI-6453 (IN 36017), 9 October 1963. This cable was

originated

in the field by Barbara Murphy. Manell (whose

pseudonym appears

on the copy of the cable in the Mexico

Station's file on lee Harvey Oswald), the wite of cherpert

Manel,

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.) His 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

that the writer of the article is responsible for

using it.

On 10 October 1963 at 20127 time the WH Division responsible

for action disseminated this report to the Department of

State,

the FBI, and the Navy Department by routine electrical

transmissionile review:

adding some collateral details drawn from a

preliminary

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 been

sent to Washington.

The American was described

approximately 35 years old, with

athletic build,

about 6 feet tall, with

"receding" hairline.

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

Lee Henry [sic] Oswald,

born on 18 October 1939 in

New Orleans, Louisiana,

a former U.S. Marine who de-

fected to the Soviet Union in October 1959 and latel

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.

Any

further information

received on this subject will be

furnished you.

This information is being made avail-

able to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

5

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## Page 7

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

Harvey.®

The reason for this mistake is simplicity

itself. The sheet opening the file on Oswald 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: "Pusahova"

for Prusakova.

Neither of these errors are significant (though they persist

in the Headquarters communications throughout the month).

It should also be pointed out that for some un-

reason, the desk did not disseminate the informa-

had indicated in his telephone call to the

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

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

mation locally to the Legal Attache, et al.]

More important was:

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

dealt with a concurrent, but separate, phenomenon, the

description of an individual observed

going into and

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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## Page 8

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 ClA 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 18 October 1939,

former radar operator in

New Orleans, Louisian who defected to USSR in October

United States Marines

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.

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

research shop. Oswald was married on 30 April 1961 to

Marina Nikolaevna Pusakova [sic], a dental technician

born 17 July 1941, USSR.

No Headquarters traces.

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.

7

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## Page 9

(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 lits & 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.

and IGNS.

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

of the unidentified male, to 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. • •

soon as possible two copies of the most recent

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.

both instances, the 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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## Page 10

Conclusion: The article as well as that portion of

The Night Watch dealing with Oswald in Mexico is misleading

and inaccurate.

Phillips, for reasons known only to himself,

is trying to reconstruct from memory an event which happened

almost tourteen years ago without benefit of documentar

evidence held in Agency files.

I am told that Phillips" bool

was reviewed here in the Agency before it was published;

phillipwhoever reviewed the section on Oswald knew less than

P.13 dalmet

Russell B. Holmes

CC:

Mr. Fendig, SA/DDO

Mr. Friedlander, AC/CI/ 0G

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