Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (30 page)

“I was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald ... we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba ... I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president’s assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”
²⁵⁷

To a brilliant tactician like Phillips, every word was important. Therefore, the key phrase is:

“I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro.”
²⁵⁸

That’s highly indicative that an intelligence operation that had been planned against Castro was “hijacked” and redirected at President Kennedy. That would explain why alarm bells went off all over Washington the second that Oswald’s name was mentioned. That would explain the coverup and rush for closure and why Attorney General Robert Kennedy participated in it and at times even directed it. That would explain that there were actually two conspiracies:

1. The JFK murder with Oswald set-up as the patsy;

2. The massive government cover-up that was rushed into place when it seemed apparent that U.S. Intelligence had been completely compromised.

RFK registered immediate recognition of Oswald’s name. He immediately called the anti-Castro camp in Florida, dramatically shouting into the telephone: “One of your guys did it!”
²⁵⁹

That may very well have been the “dark beauty” of the hijacked “black op”:

It forced the victims into covering up the crime.

And then abracadabra—the enigma becomes clear.

Regarding much of the above information, see
Our Man in Mexico,page 238:

“The notion that David Phillips or Angleton and his Counterintelligence team ran a closely held operation involving Oswald in the weeks before Kennedy was killed has become less implausible as more records have come into public view. Phillips himself entertained such a scenario later in life. In addition to two nonfiction memoirs, Phillips also wrote novels of espionage. When he died in 1987, he left behind an outline for a novel about the Mexico City station in 1963, entitled “The AMLASH Legacy.” The leading characters were explicitly based on Win Scott, James Angleton, and David Phillips himself. The role of the Phillips character in the events of 1963 was described as follows:

“I was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald. After working to establish his Marxist bona fides, we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba. I helped him when he came to Mexico City to obtain a visa, and when he returned to Dallas to wait for it I saw him twice there. We rehearsed the plan many times: In Havana Oswald was to assassinate Castro with a sniper’s rifle from the upper floor window of a building on the route where Castro often drove in an open jeep. Whether Oswald was a double-agent or a psycho I’m not sure, and I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the President’s assassination but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”
²⁶⁰

Oswald’s role-playing may have also been related to the “Gary Powers incident.”

“On May 1, 1960, a U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down by the Soviets while photographing Soviet military installations. The United States first denied that it was on a spy mission but later conceded that it was. The major incident is curiously absent from Lee’s ‘historic diary,’ even though he had certainly been aware of and perhaps even involved in the missions in Atsugi. Powers, who survived the crash, believed that it was information from Lee that gave the Soviets the ability to find the U-2 and shoot it down.”
²⁶¹

INTELLIGENCE HISTORY OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD:

•
United States Marine Corps:
1956-1959;

•
Illusionary Warfare Training:
Propaganda, language instruction, false identities, maintenance of cover stories, etc.; Coun- terIntelligence training for ONI’s (Office of Naval Intelligence) False Defector Program at Nag’s Head, North Carolina. 1957 *1;

•
Military Intelligence operative:
Top Secret security clearance, Marine Air Control, Atsugi, Japan (main CIA base in Far East); activities related to U-2 spy plane missions; Assignments related to “hostesses” at Queen Bee Night Club, Tokyo *2, and the defection-targeting of Soviet Colonel Nikolai Eroshkin; 1957-1959 *3;

•
Calculated Duality:
Though extremely patriotic, Oswald carefully builds a reputation of spouting Communist beliefs and Marxist leanings: “So at this point in his life, Oswald has talked like a Communist, but what he really does is join ultra-patriotic American military organizations (such as David Ferrie’s Civil Air Patrol) and work on behalf of U.S Intelligence against communism. The next major step in his life, long before leaving the Marine Corps, is to make plans to go to Russia.” (Bob Harris, February 23, 2008); 1958-1959;

•
Advanced Russian:
1959; at U.S. Army Monterey School of Languages, or (more likely) Oswald’s Intelligence “double” was a native Russian speaker *4;

•
Constructs Intelligence
‘Legend’: 1959; Formally applies for early military discharge; methodically plans mission into Soviet Union; applies to Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland—“ Consider that coming fresh out of the Marine Corps, he needed a way to establish a cover as a legitimate seeker of knowledge rather than an agent of the United States. The materials that the Schweitzer College mailed back to him gave him something he could present, to at least give that appearance.” (Bob Harris, February 23, 2008);

•
Granted U.S. Marines Dependency Discharge:
Immediately prior to his Soviet “defection” because his “mother injured foot” (a minor injury which actually occurred six months prior to the discharge); applies for passport the very next day; then travels to Europe, determining Helsinki, Finland as easiest point of entry to Russia; gains entry to Moscow, via U.S.-friendly Helsinki entry point; 1959;

•
CounterIntelligence Operative:
In an obvious infiltration effort, Oswald applies to Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, a notorious terrorist incubation center and a high value target to U.S. Intelligence (Carlos ‘The Jackal’ and other revolutionaries and guerrillas were trained there); KGB (Soviet equivalent of CIA) is highly dubious of Oswald’s bonafides; his application to Patrice Lumumba University is formally denied and Oswald is faced with deportation; on the day that he has been ordered to exit the country, he dramatically slits his wrist at precisely the time he is to meet Rimma Shirakova, his “guide”—who has been instructed by KGB to have Oswald on the 3:00 pm train back to Helsinki; when Oswald fails to appear in the lobby at the arranged time, Shirakova has his hotel door broken down; after the perceived suicide attempt, Oswald is granted permission to remain in Soviet Union 1959

•
CounterIntelligence Operative:
1959-1962; Participant in the False Defector Program of U.S. Intelligence; “defected” to the Soviet Union, as an orchestrated Intelligence maneuver; Oswald is one of several false defectors—Americans with constructed legends who are feigning Russian sympathy and Marxist ideology; Oswald “offered to give up radar secrets along with ‘something of special interest’” *5; Top-secret U-2 flight of Gary Powers is shot down while Oswald is in the Soviet Union; the incident literally changes history, torpedoing scheduled plan for a Big Four Summit Meeting (U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain & France), the effect of which is a very expensive continuation of the Cold War (Powers later expressed his belief that Oswald gave Soviets info for the shoot-down); “There is a very strong likelihood that Lee’s defection was designed to provide the fertilizer to allow the Soviets an excuse to end the talks. This is exactly what did happen. On May 17, 1960, the peace talks fell apart. Khrushchev cited the U-2 incident and referred to America’s ‘aggressive actions.’ If this was Lee Oswald’s mission, it succeeded.” (Robert Groden, 1995);

•
Admitted, U.S. Customs:
Re-entry to the United States was granted to Oswald and his young Russian bride without being detained or questioned, despite his defection to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War and his formal attempt to renounce his U.S. citizenship; his return trip to the United States was financed by the U.S. government (as the U.S. State Department confirmed in its June 7, 1962 letter to Oswald’s mother), just as the trip to Moscow had been financed; 1962;

•
Intelligence Debriefing:
Oswald is then debriefed by U.S. Intelligence, even though the CIA later lied about it, saying that the debriefing never took place (a former CIA officer confirmed his viewing of the CIA debriefing report of Oswald); 1962
(Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald
? November 20, 2003, Frontline, PBS)

•
CounterIntelligence Operative:
Simultaneously pro-Castro/ anti-Castro; Infiltration of Fair Play for Cuba Committee and possible penetration of anti-Castro group planning assassination of President Kennedy; Operational with ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) at Hensley Field in Grand Prairie, Texas and ONI facility at Bachman’s Lake, near Love Field, Dallas, Texas; Involved with Alpha 66 anti-Castro Cubans at CIA “safe houses” in Dallas and government-sanctioned gunrunning operations; 1962-1963 *6;

•
Covert Operations:
It has been proved that two different individuals—”Lee Oswald” and “Harvey Oswald”—were melded into the single Intelligence profile of “Lee Harvey Oswald” as a specific intelligence function of covert operations. *7;

•
CIA assumed Marina Prusakova (Marina Oswald) was KGB:
Several facts caused the CIA to conclude that Oswald’s bride was KGB (Soviet Intelligence). Chief among them: At the height of the Cold War, how was it possible that a teenage Soviet girl managed to meet the 2
^nd
and 3
^nd
U.S. defectors to the Soviet Union, in cities hundreds of miles apart, speak to them in English, and marry one of them (Oswald) within days of their first meeting, and then leave the Soviet Union with him a year later, without any exit difficulties, at the height of the Cold War?—that wasn’t simply rare, it was virtually unheard of at that time—it wasn’t known as the Iron Curtain without reason and people didn’t come and go as they do today: If you were in, you stayed in—that’s why it was called the Iron Curtain. *8 Additionally, Marina’s uncle was Ilya Prusakova, a Colonel in the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs, a.k.a. Soviet Secret Police), who reportedly approved the very sudden marriage between his niece and the American defector. Thus, in the cat-and-mouse culture of Counterintelligence, it then became a question of “Who’s playing whom?” U.S. Intelligence then utilized George de Mohrenschildt, a Russian emigre and CIA asset who befriended Oswald in Dallas, to attempt to keep track of the Oswald-Marina Prusakova situation;

1. The False Defector Program at Nag’s Head and Oswald’s presence there have been confirmed independently by former CIA officer Victor Marchetti and former Military Intelligence operative William “Tosh” Plumlee, respectively.

2. “A curious entry in Oswald’s Marine medical records for Sept. 16, 1958 states that he was being treated for gonorrhea and that the ailment originated ‘[i]n the line of duty, not due to his own misconduct’”
(The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald,
Robert Groden, 1995). Note that the prostitutes with whom Oswald was associating were suspected by U.S. Intelligence of passing the secrets they acquired from American soldiers on to the Communists. Oswald’s assignment was obviously linked to that, and that mission’s expenses were also the only way he could have afforded the very expensive prostitutes at the club.