Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (92 page)

Besides the president's need for Oswald's voice to be on the tapes, the CIA had its own problem with them. As previously mentioned, HQS launched another cover story at this time-that the Agency had not realized that Oswald had visited the Cuban consulate. A voice comparison in October using the call from the Cuban consulate would blow this cover story. But Goodpasture's cable only ruled out a voice comparison at the time, and left unresolved the issue of what tapes had survived. For the president to effectively use the WWIII card the story had to be that no tapes had survived at all. At 2:37 EST the following day, Sunday 24 November, Goodpasture sent another cable saying all the tapes had been erased.;'

Whether these cables were inserted or altered after the fact no longer matters. They constitute the extant record and they are not true. Ms. Goodpasture's erasure cables are contradicted by her own 1995 deposition to the JFK Assassination Records Review Board in which she testified that a tape dub had been hand-carried to the Texas border the night of the assassination, and that a copy of the tape had been made at the CIA telephone tap center. She added that she was sure a copy of the tape would have been sent up to Washington as soon as it had been made.'
Furthermore, the Assassination Records Review Board also verified that, in 1964, two Warren Commission attorneys, Coleman and Slawson, had traveled to the Mexico City station and listened to the tapes. Obviously, there could be no mention of this in either the Warren Commission's 26 volumes or its final report.

The tape that Coleman and Slawson listened to was locked up in Win Scott's safe-along with the photos of Oswald. Angered by the cover story that the station had missed Oswald's visits to the Cuban Consulate, Scott kept the tape and the photos in his safe as insurance to prove they had known about it. Scott did something else that is noteworthy: he made his own personal voice comparison. He purchased a copy of Oswald's August 1963 New Orleans radio debate so that he could listen to both the voice on the tape and the voice from the debate."

The CIA's erasure story could not work without the cooperation of the FBI. FBI headquarters in Washington was still asking on the Monday after the assassination for the CIA tapes that had been sent from Mexico City to Dallas early Saturday."
The FBI office in Mexico City provided the cover on that same afternoon, sending a cable to headquarters saying that the tapes had been destroyed."
When FBI Director Hoover learned of this lie, he was not amused. Eighteen days after the assassination, he censured, demoted, or transferred everyone in the FBI that had been touched by the Mexico City story. Hoover was still fuming about it in January 1964, when his subordinates sent him a memo on illegal CIA operations in the U.S. which stated that the CIA had promised to keep the Bureau informed. Hoover pulled out his pen and, in his characteristic large, thick handwriting scrawled, "OK, but I hope you are not being taken in. I can't forget CIA withholding the French espionage activities in U.S.A. nor the false story re Oswald's trip to Mexico City only to mention two of their instances of double dealing.""

Who Designed the Plot?

By Monday 25 November, Oswald was dead and the tapes-along with the voice of the impersonator-had disappeared. The cables from Mexico about Oswald's visits to the Cuban Consulate were gone too and, along with them, a CIA operation in Mexico involving the alleged assassin of the president. Johnson was now free to head off any congressional investigations with his WWIII trump card and impose a cover story on the American people saying that Oswald, alone, had pulled off the crime. Meanwhile, at the TOP SECRET level, memos were circulating about Oswald's contact with KGB assassination operations, and respected leaders like Senator Richard Russell and Chief Justice Earl Warren fell in line to prevent the assassination of JFK, as the new president put it, "from kicking us into a war that can kill forty million Americans in an hour."

So who had the means and the insight to design such a plot? Here I offer my own speculation on the answer to that question, knowing that I might be wrong, or a little wrong, or, perhaps right. I believe I have an obligation to offer my views on this and the obligation to admit that I might be wrong.

It is now apparent that the WWIII pretext for a national security cover-up was built into the fabric of the plot to assassinate President Kennedy. The plot required that Oswald be maneuvered into place in Mexico City and his activities there carefully monitored, controlled, and, if necessary, embellished and choreographed. The plot required that, prior to 22 November, Oswald's protile at CIA HQS and the Mexico station be lowered; his 201 file had to be manipulated and restricted from incoming traffic on his Cuban activities. The plot required that, when the story from Mexico City arrived at HQS, its significance would not be understood by those responsible for reacting to it. Finally, the plot required that, on 22 November, Oswald's CIA files would establish his connection to Castro and the Kremlin.

The person who designed this plot had to have access to all of the information on Oswald at CIA HQS. The person who designed this plot had to have the authority to alter how information on Oswald was kept at CIA HQS. The person who designed this plot had to have access to project TUMBLEWEED, the sensitive joint agency operation against the KGB assassin, Valery Kostikov. The person who designed this plot had the authority to instigate a counterintelligence operation in the Cuban affairs staff (SAS) at CIA HQS. In my view, there is only one person whose hands fit into these gloves: James Jesus Angleton, Chief of CIA's Counterintelligence Staff.

Angleton and his molehunters had always held Oswald's tiles very close to the vest-from the time of the young Marine's defection in October 1959 and his offer to provide classified radar information to the Soviets. That offer had lit up the counterintelligence circuits in Washington, D.C., like a Christmas tree. Angleton was the only person who knew-except for perhaps one of his direct subordinatesboth the Cuban and Soviet parts of Oswald's story. He was the only one in the Counterintelligence Staff with enough authority to instigate a counterintelligence operation in the SAS against the FPCC.

In my view, whoever Oswald's direct handler or handlers were, we must now seriously consider the possibility that Angleton was probably their general manager. No one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot. No one else had the means necessary to plant the WWIII virus in Oswald's files and keep it dormant for six weeks until the president's assassination. Whoever those who were ultimately responsible for the decision to kill Kennedy were, their reach extended into the national intelligence apparatus to such a degree that they could call upon a person who knew its inner secrets and workings so well that he could design a failsafe mechanism into the fabric of the plot. The only person who could ensure that a national security cover-up of an apparent counterintelligence nightmare was the head of counterintelligence.

Winn Scott died in April 197 1. Shortly afterward, James Angleton flew to Mexico City to go through Winn Scott's records. Angleton removed three cartons and four suitcases of materials, including the contents of Win Scott's safe."

Appendix to the
2008 Edition

10-1-63 Impersonation of Oswald

10/8/63 Mexico City CIA Station Cable Linking Oswald to Kostikov

11/22/63 Hoover to RFK: Oswald Went to Cuba

9/28/63 Impersonation of Oswald at Cuban Consulate

CIA Request for FBI Support on Counter-FPCC Operation

CIA Routing Sheet for 9/10/63 Dallas FBI Report on Oswald