Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (37 page)

MM T-1, who has been connected with Cuban revolutionary activities for the past three years, and who has furnished reliable information in the past, on May 12, 1961, advised that between 30 and 40 Americans arrived in Miami from Texas on May 11, 1961. They were recruited by Allen Lushane, who temporarily resides at the Cuban Hotel, 35 Northwest 17th Court, Miami, Fla., and who previously made a trip to Texas to recruit Americans for some future military action against the Government of Cuba. The first training camp was established by Gerald Patrick Hemming with Dick Watley and Ed Colby running the camp.65

MM T-1 was a Miami FBI source whom Hemming believes might have been Justin Joseph "Steve" Wilson. "He had been an agent for Batista and Papa Doc,"6 Hemming states, reporting "through Clode in the Intelligence Division of the Dade County Sheriff's Department (now it is Metro Dade Police)."67 This source, whoever it was, would continue to provide informative reports on Hemming for years.

"Jesse Smith and Joe Murphy, owners of the Congress Inn Hotel, Lejeune Road, Miami, Fla., have donated three rooms in the hotel for the use of Henning [Hemming]'s group," the May 23 report continued, "and stated they will try to get political and financial backing for this group." The next day the same informant offered this additional note:

On May 13, 1961, MM T-I advised that C. F. Riker, 2610 MacGregor #2, Houston, Texas, phone number RI 7-6666, was in Miami and claimed to represent a group of assassins that operate exclusively against Communists. Riker is described as being well educated, and claims to have attended a number of Government schools having to do with arms, demolitions and languages. Riker claims he lived in Mexico during his youth, and speaks Spanish.'

The "Riker" story underlined the perilous nature of the Cuban exile community in Miami that Hemming was mixed up in. It also illustrated the usefulness of the FBI's Miami sources in keeping track of Cuban exile activities.

Meanwhile, documentation of Hemming's activities continued to build in the ONI's offices in the Pentagon and the Marine Corps G-2 [intelligence] offices in the Arlington Annex in Washington, D.C. on July 5, 1961, the ONI asked USMC Headquarters for information on Hemming,6' and on July 6 "ajd" in ONI's 921E office asked the FBI for information on Hemming.70 After a minor clarification sent on September 19, 1961 that they had nothing on "Hemming."" the Marine Corps came up with Hemming's old Los Angeles address, which "cn" of 921E then passed along to the FBI on October 23. "Any information which may become available concerning Hemming," ONI said, "will be of interest to this office in view of his membership in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve."'Z The analysts at ONI were beginning to have doubts about the Hemming's Marine Corps association. The same day, ONI wrote a letter to the Officer in Charge, District Intelligence Office (DIO), Sixth Naval District (6ND), asking for information on Hemming, "who allegedly has had U.S. Marine Corps status." This time the ONI had Hemming's "latest" address-the Blue Bay Motel in Miami Beach, Florida."

On November 3, 1961, DIO 6ND broadened its Hemming coverage by writing to the Director, Sixth Marine Corps Reserve and Recruitment District, in Atlanta, Georgia," and on December 5 sent these intriguing remarks to the DIO 11 ND:

2. The Director SIXTH Marine Corps Reserve and Recruitment District upon being informed of the foregoing advised DIO-6ND as follows: "There is no record of the subject named man having been nor is he now carried on the rolls of this District."

3. Obvious sources in Miami, Florida area were checked with negative results as to the Subject's present whereabouts.

4. In view of the above facts, no further action is contemplated in regard to reference (a), unless future developments warrant it.75

This was extraordinary news: The Marine Corps could not find any information on Hemming's reserve status. This only fueled ONI interest in Hemming's activities.

Hemming's old contacts in the Los Angeles field office of the CIA had no problem keeping informed about his Miami activities. Hemming took care of that by writing letters to an informant of that Agency field office. Analysts at the Office of Naval Intelligence spent their time preparing FBI reports for Navy files on Hemming. On August 8, 1961, a person named Carter in the 921E office of ONI prepared a July 12, 1961, FBI report, "Cuban Rebel Activities in Cuba," for eventual filing in M5 files. In filling out the accompanying Cross-Reference Sheet, Carter mentioned a few details in the "identifying data" space:

Damon also stated that one Jerry [Gerry] Patrick Hemming is now in Cuba and has as his mission the demolition of generator stations. Patrick at the present time is setting off about a pound of TNT nightly to create terror and confusion. When Patrick's mission is completed, he will receive $10,000.76

On August 10, 1961, the person with the initials "mlb" processed another FBI report for filing in "M-5 FF" (Finished Files), this providing the details of parachute jumps from a Cessna and Piper Colt by Hemming and three friends: Dick Watley, Frank Little, and Orlando Garcia."

On August 25, 1961, a person by the name of Pierce in 921E processed a July 31, 1961, FBI report but his comment, "see report for details," was not as thoughtful as Carter and "mlb" had been on previous reports. This was unfortunate, for the subject of this FBI report was Gerald Hemming and his Interpen organization." Just what Interpen was up to became apparent from a few clues Hemming put in a letter he sent to a CIA Los Angeles field office (LAFO) source, Dave Burt, who turned the letter over to the LAFO on October 4. Hemming said he needed parachutes and that his group was "really overworked with the Cuban problem." He said that "CBS and NBC have been bothering the hell out of us to go along" on their runs, but he could not allow this in order to "comply with security."79

"Did you get my letter last week?" Hemming wrote in a followup letter to Burt which was passed to the Agency LAFO on October 16. This time Hemming gave a lot more of the picture:

At present "InterPen" boys are working their fingers to the bone. We are working as the military coordinators for Major Evelio Duque (Escambray mountains), Major Eloy Menoya (Escambray), Major Nino Diam (Oriente & Camagney Provinces), and other Captains that were leaders of guerrilla units in the mountains in Cuba up to about a month ago. As you probably read, there are three guerrilla units operating in the Escambray right now, they are being commanded by Majors Thorndyke, Ramires, and Campito.80

Hemming added that he might travel to the West Coast in the "near future," and enclosed a brochure published by the "Beachhead Brigade."

The fall of 1961 saw more interesting Hemming material. On September 5, 1961, MM T-1, who had been involved in Cuban revolutionary activities during the past four years and who had furnished reliable information in the past, advised that Saul Sage, an American, had been seen frequenting the hangouts of Cuban revolutionists in Miami. MM T-1 said that Sage belonged to the wouldbe organization of Gerald Patrick Hemming, an American soldier of fortune who was previously a member of the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force.BO

"This Individual Looks Odd"

During the year following Oswald's decision to return home, some of the trails we have been following since his defection suddenly take peculiar turns. Oswald "the file" becomes a supplicatory pro-American character who has "matured." As discussed in Chap ter Eleven, Oswald offered a revealing explanation for his earlier anti-American remarks: "it was necessary to make this propaganda because at the time he had wanted to live in Russia."" He had begged the American Consulate in Moscow to let him out of the Soviet Union. In much the same way he would later beg the Soviet Consulate in Mexico City to let him back in.

We encounter another curve in the Agency's disingenuous discourse about how Oswald's HT/LINGUAL file was insignificant. The record, as released, presents a puzzle: They did not open any of his letters when he was on the Watch List but did open one after he had been taken off it. Two clues suggest an answer. One comes from the memo mentioned in the introduction to this chapter in which the Soviet Realities Branch Chief explained that the pattern that existed of Russian women entering America through marriage and then working for the KGB was one of the reasons for operational interest in Oswald. To that piece we add this one: The date the single letter was opened in New York was July 8, 1961. Earlier that same day in Moscow, Oswald surfaced out of the blue, entered the embassy, and called Snyder on the house phone and then used a public phone to call Marina in Minsk with instructions to join him. The events in Moscow may well have triggered the intercept in New York.

"I remember that Oswald's unusual behavior in the U.S.S.R. had struck me from the moment I had read the first State dispatch on him," wrote a CIA employee whose initials were T.B.C. on November 25, 1963. T.B.C.'s full name is still classified, even though the Agency has released his initials.B2 The fact that he remembered the first Snyder dispatch and its shocking impact is significant. Oswald "the file" as he looked to the author of this memo, was summed up with this phrase: "this individual looks odd."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Oswald Returns

While Oswald prepared to return to the U.S., distant groups were at work in the CIA and in New Orleans shaping the context of the forces that would engulf and eventually destroy him. In New Orleans, currents shifted among the anti-Castro Cuban exiles. This movement provides a useful contextual background against which we watch Oswald extricate himself, and his family, from the Soviet Union. That backdrop also brings to our story key characters whose paths would cross and double-cross Oswald's, including the irrepressible Gerald Hemming.

Meanwhile, CIA security and propaganda elements were at work. Oswald was destined to collide with CIA operations against Cuba, especially those against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) which produced a long and tantalizing Agency security-propaganda thread involving two important CIA officers: James McCord and David Phillips. This thread begins when McCord and Phillips launched a domestic operation against the FPCC-outside the Agency's jurisdiction. At the other end of this thread-in fall 1963we find Phillips again, this time running the CIA's anti-Cuban operations in Mexico. Mexico City is a subject to which we will return in the final chapters. Now we will turn our attention to the events that unfolded during Oswald's return from the Soviet Union.

McCord, Phillips, and CIA-FBI Operations Against the FPCC, 1961

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) emerged at the same time that the Agency began serious operations against Castro. A July 15, 1960, Hoover memo to the State Department Office of Security tied-with the help of a fertile imagination-the pam- phleting activities of the FPCC at the Los Angeles Sports Arena to a Cuban government radio broadcast that "announced that Mexico should join Cuba in a revolution and reclaim Texas and New Mexico which rightfully belonged to Mexico."' CIA interest in the FPCC and the chief of its New York chapter, Richard Gibson, was underscored by Gibson's active involvement with Patrice Lumumba, the premier of newly independent Congo. Lumumba was "viewed with alarm by United States policymakers because of what they perceived as his magnetic public appeal and his leanings toward the Soviet Union."' Gibson's support of Castro and Lumumba put him in a special category at the CIA: Both of these leaders had been targeted for assassination.'

Gibson spoke to June Cobb about the work "his group" was doing for Lumumba, according to the notes she wrote the morning after their conversation. The previous evening, Gibson had paid a visit to Cobb's hotel room for a chat. Before long, he had consumed half a bottle of scotch, and their dialogue reflected it. Cobb's notes contain this entry:

At every possible opportunity he sought to turn the conversation to sex, particularly involving sex between Negroes and whites, for example: that Swedish girls are not kept satisfied by Swedish men since Swedish men are so often homosexual and that therefore there is a colony of Negroes and Italian[s] in Sweden to satisfy the erotic craving of the Swedish girls.'

But Gibson talked about more than Swedish cravings. He spoke about FPCC leaders, such as Bob Taber, and about the FPCC's relationship with American Communists. Presumably, Gibson did not know that June Cobb's hotel room was part of a carefully prepared CIA surveillance operation, with CIA technicians in the next room, eavesdropping. Cobb's notes of this encounter, preserved in her CIA 201 file, undoubtedly were not the only material produced, and must have supplemented tapes, transcripts, and surveillance logs filled out by the surveillance team.

The CIA's analysis of these materials is often entertaining reading, but for the individuals involved-Gibson, Cobb, and the surveil lance technician on the other side of the wall-these were serious moments. Cuba had become part of the Cold War. A great deal was at stake. It was in the wake of Castro's and Lumumba's sudden emergence that Vice President Nixon had declared a crisis. It is not surprising that the CIA was interested in the FPCC and Richard Gibson. Ironically, their connection was destined to change: a few years after the Kennedy assassination, Gibson became an informant for the CIA. In 1960 and 1961, however, the CIA had its eyes on Gibson. Take, for example, this passage from a CIA report:

On the 27th [October 1960], Richard Gibson of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), spent the evening with Cobb (drank half bottle of scotch), and talked rather freely about the [FPCC] Committee. Said they "want to destroy the world." In the beginning they received $15,000 from the Cuban government. Their expenses amounted to about $1500 per month-always feast or famine-trying to get money from Cuba. Once had to sit down with Dorticos and Fidel Castro to get $5000 the Committee needed. Gibson works closely with Raul Roa and little Raulwanted Gibson to be Public Relations Officer for the Cuban Mission to the UN.S

Cobb was a valuable asset to the CIA because of her extensive knowledge about Latin American affairs and her personal relationships with many of the players and leaders. In this case, Gibson, already an intelligence target, seemed personally interested in Cobb, a weakness that had been turned to the advantage of the Agency. "As far as I'm concerned," Gibson said to Cobb on the telephone the day after his visit, "I'm always awkward around pretty girls." Cobb filed this remark on October 26, 1960.