Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (18 page)

In view of the sparseness of information in CIA documents on Hemming's Marine Corps history, the above document is intriguing in its claim that Hemming, too, had served in a Marine Air Wing in Japan. This would open the possibility that both men were assigned together to Marine Air Squadron One (MACS-1) at Atsugi. However, this did not happen, according to Hemming, who should be familiar with his own service record. If he is right, when the Marine Corps and Navy release his entire service record, we will find he served with the Third Marine Air Wing in Hawaii, not the First Marine Air Wing, which was the only air wing in Japan.

This particular piece of incorrect information on Hemming-that Hemming had been assigned to Oswald's air wing in Japan-is arresting. It moves us to ask this question: What other incorrect information was in CIA files about Hemming? The answer is best illustrated by this 1976 CIA internal memo describing Hemming in this way:

Gerald Patrick Hemming is well known to this Agency, the Office of Security Miami Field Office, and JMWAVE. On numerous occasions since at least the early 1960's, Hemming had claimed Agency affiliation when in fact there had been none. The most recent incident wherein Hemming claimed such affiliation was in May 1975 when he volunteered his services to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Gerald Patrick Hemming is a long-time cohort of Frank Anthony Sturgis (SF#353459), aka Frank Fiorini, of Watergate notoriety who also has a long-time record of falsely claiming Agency affiliation. In the late 1950's Hemming and Sturgis, both former U.S. Marines, joined Fidel Castro in Cuba but returned shortly thereafter, claiming disillusionment with the Castro cause."

The problem with this is that Hemming had long been associated with the CIA, from Los Angeles to Costa Rica, Guantanamo, Cuba, and eventually Miami and New Orleans. "We do wish to call to your attention," said a 1967 CIA report, "that statement in the chart that there was no relationship between Subject [Hemming] and the Agency. This statement is not correct." Traces from a "review of Hemming's file," the Report said, "indicate that Gerald Patrick Hemming Jr. was probably telling the truth about furnishing reports to the Los Angeles office." While we do not have this chart, we do have the 1967 Report. It describes "other memoranda" in Hemming's CIA 201 file which discuss Hemming's early contact with the CIA and his move to Miami. According to the Report, the October 1960 "contact" alone produced "14 reports on Cuba."33

These extensive CIA debriefings of Hemming after his sojourn in Castro'a army and return to the U.S. included details of his February 1959 visit to the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles.34 A 1977 memo by the CIA's Security Office which described the October 11-21, 1960, debriefing sessions by the "Contact Division/Los Angeles Office," included this information:

Henning [Hemming] returned to California in October 1958.... He left for Cuba by air via Miami on or about 18 February 1959, arriving in Havana on 19 February 1959. He claimed to have contacted the officials in the Cuban Consul's office in Los Angeles prior to his departure.35

The 1977 CIA memo suggested that the importance of this and other escapades by Hemming was their possible relevance to Oswald's files. The memo described the intersection between Oswald's and Hemming's files in this way:

The pertinence of the foregoing is that Lee Harvey Oswald served with a U.S. Marine Air Wing in Japan, and when Oswald returned to the United States, he was assigned to Santa Ana, California (Los Angeles area). Extensive testimony contained in the Warren Commission hearings by Oswald's fellow Marines at Santa Ana contain the theme that Oswald was interested in going to Cuba to join Castro (upon his discharge) in early 1959 and that in early 1959 Oswald allegedly made some contact with the Cuban Consul's Office in Los Angeles.36

This document is strangely silent on a key question: Did Hemming corroborate Delgado's story about Oswald's contacts with the Cuban Consulate?

This question really separated into two: Did Hemming meet Oswald? If so, what, if anything, did he tell the CIA about it in October 1960? If Hemming did speak about such a meeting with Oswald, the implications are quite interesting. For example, that might help us understand the sudden interest in defectors in October 1960, a subject to which we will return in Chapter Eleven. As we have seen, in the 1970s the CIA had some trouble coming to grips with Hemming's claims of association with the CIA, let alone his claims of having met Oswald. A 1977 routing sheet on Hemming said, "From a perusal of Agency files, which are meager, I have been unable to corroborate a possible relationship between Oswald and Hemming. A comparison of their (limited) records did not produce any matches."37

The Man at the Gate

Hemming's Agency association in early 1959 casts a shadow over the entire issue of whether he met with Oswald at that time. From elsewhere in the CIA's files come hints of links between Hemming and Oswald, such as in this sentence from a 1977 CIA Security Office memo:

[The] Office of Security file concerning Hemming which is replete with information possibly linking Hemming and his cohorts to Oswald was brought to the attention of Mr. John Leader and Mr. Scott Breckinridge, Inspector General, on 6 April 1977. Mr. Leader advised he would pursue the matter.38

This passage suggests there was more in Hemming's CIA files "possibly linking" him to Oswald than the 1959 story. As we will see in later chapters, this is indeed the case.

The story of an Oswald-Hemming meeting in the Cuban Consulate took a new turn in April 1976. An interview with Hemming, published that month in the magazine Argosy, contained the following account by Hemming of his encounter with Oswald:

ARGOSY: You've said you believe Oswald was a patsy. Did you ever have contact with Oswald?

HEMMING: I ran into Oswald in Los Angeles in 1959, when he showed up at the Cuban Consulate. The coordinator of the 26th of July Movement [a Cuban organization] called me aside and said a Marine officer had showed up, intimating that he was prepared to desert and go to Cuba to become a revolutionary. I met with the Marine and he told me he was a noncommissioned officer. He talked about being a radar operator and helping the Cubans out with everything he knew. He turned out to be Oswald.

ARGOSY: What was your impression of him? Was he sincere?

HEMMING: I thought he was a penetrator (of pro-Castro forces). I told the 26th of July leadership to get rid of him. I thought he was on the Naval Intelligence payroll at the time.39

Hemming should have been good at spotting penetrators because he was a penetrator himself. When he formed his own group in Miami in 1961, he named it Intercontinental Penetration Forces. "Hemming maintains that the U.S. should utilize a number of Special Forces types," said a CIA biographic summary of Hemming, who could "penetrate" revolutionary movements "at an early stage," gain influential positions, and then "channel" them into more "favorable areas. "°0

That was what Hemming had been doing in Cuba and in Miami. Moreover, he did so at a time when the Cuban problem became a crisis in the White House. Just before he left to penetrate Castro's army in February 1959, Hemming entered the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles. In a 1995 interview Hemming made an extraordinary claim which will be interesting to watch stand the test of time. This is the pertinent part of the exchange:

NEWMAN: Did you tell CIA in October 1960 about seeing Oswald in the Cuban Consulate?

HEMMING: Sure I did.

NEWMAN: Did you bring it up or did they?

HEMMING: I brought it up.

NEWMAN: Did they want to know other information about the consulate?

HEMMING: Yes. But when I saw Oswald in the Consulate I called up Jim Angleton and he passed me on to his number one guy. I was angry, I was mad at being stuck with him, wanted to know whether it was ONI or whoever put him on me. Oswald was like a rabbit. I figured these guys were putting snitches on me.41

Directly afterward, Hemming left for Cuba via Washington, D.C., he says, and departed from the airfield at El Toro. Oswald was stationed at El Toro at that time. In the same interview, Hemming explained what happened while he waited a few days to catch a military plane to Washington:

I was raising hell that I needed to get back into Cuba. I got back into my uniform, and packed up to go. The night before I went down to look for Oswald and told the guard, "I have some documents for PFC Oswald." It was really bothering me. In the Consulate Oswald had known who I was. He knew I was a marine, and he knew I had been in an air wing. So naturally I figured they had put a snitch on me or something. But I had just heard back from Washington there was no one that had been inserted on me, no backstop had been assigned or anything like that. So I had to straighten this thing out with Oswald. I thought maybe he was trying to set me up. I wanted to clear things up with him. Afterward, I went to the other side of El Toro that night and put my name on the list for a hop. I was there staying on fourth floor of the control tower for a couple of days waiting for the hop. Sam Bass, an old friend of mine, woke me up around four A.M. and said, "An R-4Y [2-star general's plane] is here to pick you up and take you back to Anacostia. What are you into?" This was a flight from El Toro to NAX Anacostia [Maryland], at the end of the first week of February 1959.42

In other words, Hemming now claims that he met Oswald in the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles and then confronted him about it outside the gate at El Toro. Hemming says he is the man at the gate to whom Delgado referred in his Warren Commission testimony.

Hemming says he told his 1960 CIA debriefers in Los Angeles that he had met Oswald in the Cuban Consulate. When Ray Rocca wrote his 1975 memo about Oswald's Cuban question mark, presumably he had access to Hemming's debriefs.

We have taken time to acquaint ourselves with Oswald's interest in Castro and the Cuban Revolution because we know that he is destined to be swallowed up in their politics during the eight months before President Kennedy's death. During the HSCA investigation, information surfaced about this involvement, some of which concerned an intriguing informant: June Cobb. Because her path crosses the Oswald paper trail, we get to look into her CIA files. The result is extraordinary because of who June Cobb was, and because it illuminates a section or two of our journey along the Oswald trail.

June Cobb, Castro, and the CIA

"On May 24, 25, and 26, the undersigned located and met June Cobb," wrote Harry Hermsdorf, "an American woman employed at the Ministry Office of Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba."' In 1960 Hermsdorf worked in WH/4, which handled Cuban matters, and he was writing about the biggest catch of his CIA career:

On 3 June Miss June Cobb, Aide to Fidel Castro in the Prime Minister's office, will arrive in New York City ostensibly for medical treatment. Money for her trip was given to her by the undersigned in Havana on 27 May 1960. No mention of [2-3 words redacted] intelligence implication was made to her, although I have felt that she is probably aware that my purpose for talking with her in New York goes a little beyond normal routine employment."'

It was rare that the CIA was able to arrange a meeting with someone who worked directly for Castro. And, at this time, the CIA department in which Hermsdorf worked was involved in plans to invade Cuba and assassinate Castro.

In one of his Cuban trip reports, Hermsdorf boasted how he had flattered and bribed the bell captain at the Havana Hilton Hotel into giving up June Cobb's address, how he then visited and "aroused her curiosity in me" by mentioning the names of her friends in New York, and how he then pitched her with the line that "she had been highly recommended to me by a person in New York and I was giving thought to the use of her services for an interesting, long-range employment project that I had in mind."' Cobb had accepted his offer for a talk outside of Cuba. They settled on New York, where she had a legitimate excuse to go for medical treatment. "I will hold a series of meetings with her in New York," Hermsdorf announced, "and [2-3 words redacted] I will evaluate her motivations and potential usefulness in a little greater detail." Hermsdorf also commented that Cobb needed "a little more indoctrination." She needed convincing that Castro was involved in "Communist intrigue.""

June Cobb went to New York via Washington, D.C. On June 6, 1960, a CIA officer-whose identity is still classified-working in the counterintelligence staff, arranged for the surveillance of her hotel room. The surveillance was thorough, as the following CIA memo makes clear:

[redacted material] surveillance was established in three rooms of the Raleigh Hotel in Washington D.C., on 6 June 1960 and also included monitoring of a polygraph of subject[Cobbl. From 21 to 29 September [redacted material] coverage was maintained on Subject at her hotel in New York City. This coverage included a [redacted]. Also at least one surreptitious entry into Subject's hotel room was conducted during this time. Physical surveillance was conducted on Subject during the period 10 to 13 October 1960 when she was in Boston, Massachusetts, as well as [redacted] coverage of a second polygraph in Boston.48

From another memo we know the name of the counterintelligence officer who requested this surveillance: William P. Curtin, and also that he made the request on behalf of Joseph P. Langan, security officer for WH/4.49

Curtin's memo indicated that WH/4 had a keen operational interest in Cobb:

At first Mr. Langan requested that we determine our potential for conducting a "black bag" job on the Subject's hotel room at the Blackstone during the time that she was to be FLUTTERED [given a lie detector test]. This was explored with the SAC/WFO [special agent in charge/Washington field office] who indicated that he could accomplish this task but that the operation would have to be completed by 4 p.m. since his contact left the hotel at that time.""

This "black bag job" (generic term for illegal operations) was canceled, but, as previously mentioned, Cobb was subjected to such "a job" in September in New York. Obviously the Agency was going to do whatever it felt necessary to get the information it wanted.