Reclaiming History (300 page)

An earlier draft of the CIA report, dated December 13, 1963, noted that

Oswald’s dealing with KGB men like Obyedkov [a guard at the Soviet embassy Oswald spoke to on October 1, 1963] and Kostikov was nothing more than a grim coincidence, a coincidence due in part to the Soviet habit of placing intelligence men [KGB] in the Embassies in positions where they receive a large portion of the visitors and phone calls. All of the five Consular Officers in the Soviet Embassy [in Mexico City] are known or suspected intelligence officers. Certainly, if Oswald had been a Soviet agent in training for an assassination assignment or even for sabotage work, the Soviets would have stopped him from making open visits and phone calls to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City after he tried it a couple of times. Our experience in Mexico, studying the Soviet intelligence service at close range, indicates that they do make some mistakes and are sometime insecure in their methods, but that they do not persist in such glaring errors.
²²

In other words, if the KGB was preparing Oswald to be its assassin of Kennedy, it is virtually inconceivable that it would have him meet its agents at the Russian embassy, a place it had to know was under CIA surveillance.

H
osty has always believed that he, along with several other agents, should not have been disciplined by Hoover for their pre-assassination investigative failures. After all, the evidence seems to support Hosty’s position that he did not know of Kostikov’s true identity before the assassination, and he was not aware of anything Oswald did that should have led him to believe Oswald was a possible candidate to kill the president. Most of the agents merely got letters of censure. Hosty got that along with a thirty-day suspension of pay (which the bureau paid him when he retired in 1979) and was transferred to the Kansas City field office. He feels Hoover tried to make him the scapegoat for the assassination, and this is why he has an animus for his old boss, calling him an “SOB.” In the process of trying to settle a score with the bureau, Hosty, a good man but perhaps a little paranoid (understandably so) because of this incident, and perhaps because he unconsciously tried to increase the marketability of his book, ended up engaging in some groundless and sometimes wild speculation. He also regurgitated rumors that were not only improbable on their face but for which there was no credible evidence or support—for instance, that Oswald, in Mexico City, had told the Cuban consulate that he was “going to kill Kennedy”; that he had a “clandestine meeting with the KGB hit man Kostikov” in Mexico City; and that Oswald had maintained contact with one Vitaliy Gerosimov, an official at the Soviet embassy in Washington who Hosty says was the contact “for deep-cover Soviet espionage agents in the United States.”
²³

Although in his book Hosty made a great deal of who Kostikov allegedly was (“I find it more than disturbing that the day after Oswald offered to kill the president for the Cubans, he was seen meeting with the KGB’s chief assassination expert for the Western Hemisphere”),
²⁴
and testified for the defense at the London trial that Kostikov was in charge of assassinations for the KGB in the Western Hemisphere, he was much more subdued and realistic under my cross-examination of him. Among other things he said it was “my understanding” that Kostikov did
not
know who Oswald was when Oswald came to the Soviet embassy. In answer to my question as to whether it was “reasonably inferable” that Oswald only spoke to Kostikov about securing a visa, he answered, “Yes. It was concerning his request for he and his family to return to the Soviet Union.” When I asked him, “You’re certainly not suggesting to this jury that Kostikov—who at one time may or may not have been a member of any KGB assassination unit—you’re not suggesting that he had anything to do with the assassination. Is that correct?” Hosty responded, “There is no evidence to that effect.” Indeed, when I asked him why would the FBI or J. Edgar Hoover want to keep it “a secret from you that Kostikov was in the KGB?” he answered that “J. Edgar Hoover was not directly responsible. This was the Russian espionage section [of the FBI] who did that. We have an awful lot of special regulations…in counterintelligence, there are a lot of provisions that say don’t say this, don’t say that.” When I asked Hosty, “But you don’t know why FBI headquarters would not want you to know Kostikov was a member of the KGB?” he replied, “I don’t know why.” Ten years later, in his book, he claimed he did know why.

I tried to summarize my feeling about the entire Kostikov matter for the jury in London by asking Hosty, “The charge has been made…that Oswald was a dangerous enough person for you to have alerted the Secret Service about him before President Kennedy came to Dallas?”

“That charge has been made,” Hosty answered.

Question: “I know this is going to be a hard question for you to answer, Mr. Hosty, but since you have been criticized for your handling of the case…isn’t this the main reason you place so much emphasis on Kostikov and your not knowing he was a KGB agent, because the Kostikov matter enables you to make the argument that if you had known, you would have handled the Oswald matter differently?”

Hosty: “I
would
have handled it differently.”
²⁵

W
ith respect to the CIA, during testimony before the HSCA on September 22, 1978, House Representative Christopher J. Dodd asked former CIA director Richard Helms, “Other than the anti-Castro assassination plots, was there any other information pertaining to [the assassination of] the president that you are aware of and that the Warren Commission was not told about?
*
…Are there other things that you can recall that might have had relevancy—things of importance to the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination of [Kennedy]?”

Helms: “Well, I don’t know of any others. I can’t think of what they might have been…None come readily to mind.”
²⁶

The 1976 Church Committee found that “between 1960 and early 1963 the CIA attempted to use underworld figures for [Castro’s] assassination. By May 1962, the FBI knew of such plots and in June 1963 learned of their termination…Neither the CIA nor the FBI told the Warren Commission about the CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.”
²⁷
†
The CIA itself has admitted its plot to assassinate Castro. When Helms was asked in his testimony before the Church Committee if he had been part of the CIA’s “assassination plot against Castro,” he responded, “I was aware that there had been efforts made to get rid of him.”
²⁸
The CIA has also acknowledged that it involved the Mafia in its goal of killing Castro. When G. Robert Blakey, the HSCA chief counsel, asked Helms during his September 22, 1978, appearance before the committee, “Let me ask you a moral question…Would you tell me and the members of this committee and…the American people what possibly could have been the moral justification for the CIA entering into an alliance with the Mafia to execute the president of a foreign country?” Helms could only respond, “There was none. I have apologized for this. I can’t do any more than apologize on public television that it was an error in judgment…For my part in this and to the extent I had anything to do with it, I am heart sorry.”
²⁹

During the Church Committee hearings in 1975, Helms gave several reasons for his not telling the Warren Commission about these plots. He testified, “I was instructed to reply to inquiries from the Warren Commission for information from the Agency. I was not asked to initiate any particular thing.”

Question: “In other words, if you weren’t asked for it, you didn’t give it?”

Helms: “That’s right, sir.”
³⁰
Helms also told the committee, “My recollection at the time was that it was
public knowledge
that the United States was trying to get rid of Castro.”
³¹
Further deflecting responsibility from himself, he pointed out that “Mr. Allen Dulles was a member of the Warren Commission. And the first [CIA-mob] assassination plot happened during his time as director [Dulles was the CIA director from February 26, 1953 to November 29, 1961, when he was succeeded by John McCone]…He was sitting right there in [the Warren Commission’s] deliberations and knew about this.”
³²
‡

Though Helms spoke categorically of Dulles’s knowledge, it is not clear whether Helms assumed this or he was speaking from personal knowledge. The pipe-smoking Dulles, who was the longest-serving CIA director ever, certainly had never acknowledged that he knew of the CIA-mob plot to kill Castro, and the available record is not entirely clear that he did, though one could draw that inference. The Church Committee and the HSCA learned that in September of 1960, Richard Bissell, CIA deputy director for plans, and Colonel Sheffield Edwards, chief of the CIA’s Office of Security, briefed Dulles and his deputy, General Charles Cabell, “on the existence of a plan involving members of the syndicate. The discussion was circumspect; Edwards deliberately avoided the use of any ‘bad words.’ The descriptive term used was ‘an intelligence operation.’ Edwards is quite sure that [Dulles and Cabell] clearly understood the nature of the operation he was discussing…Edwards recalls that Mr. Dulles merely nodded, presumably in understanding and approval.”
³³
And Bissell testified before the Church Committee, “I can only say that I am quite sure I came away from that meeting…convinced that he knew the nature of the operation.”
³⁴
Not overly convincing at all.

More so is the December 11, 1959, memorandum by J. C. King, head of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, to Dulles that contained four “Recommended Actions,” one of which was that “thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro,” which Dulles approved of in writing.
³⁵
But again, the word
elimination
is not unequivocal, nor could the HSCA uncover any evidence that Dulles became aware that steps were later taken to actually carry out (though unsuccessfully) the subject “recommended” action. And the Church Committee was equally confused, saying, “Certain…evidence before the Committee suggests that Dulles and Cabell did know about the assassination plots; other evidence suggests they did not.”
³⁶

One piece of evidence indicating that Dulles did not know that an actual
decision
had been made to kill Castro, and if he did, he did not approve, is a cable sent on July 21, 1960, from CIA headquarters to its Havana station stating that “possible removal of top three [Cuban] leaders is
receiving serious consideration
at HQ’S.” But the duty officer (not identified by name by the Church Committee) testified that the very next day he sent a countermanding cable to the Havana station, and that “to the best of my knowledge, my memory is that the director [Dulles], not the deputy director [Bissell]…had countermanded the cable and had directed that—had indicated that assassination was not to be considered.”
³⁷
Although the Church Committee said that “the evidence as to whether Allen Dulles, CIA Director during the Eisenhower Administration, was informed of the Castro assassination operation is not clear,” it ultimately concluded that it was “likely” that “Dulles knew about and authorized the actual plots [to kill Castro] that occurred during his tenure.”
³⁸
The committee could not take Dulles’s testimony on the matter, Dulles being deceased.

W
hen Helms testified before the Rockefeller Commission and was asked about the possibility that Castro had retaliated against Kennedy because of CIA attempts against him, I somehow believe Helms when he answered, “I don’t recall the thought ever having occurred to me at the time. The first time I ever heard such a theory…was in a peculiar way by President Johnson.”
³⁹
But whether the thought occurred to Helms or not, surely someone at the CIA had to know that even if there was no known connection between the Castro plots and Kennedy’s assassination, they had a duty to inform the Warren Commission of these plots. This is particularly true when the CIA knew that the Commission was investigating the possible involvement of Castro in Kennedy’s death. Certainly the plots against Castro would be
relevant
to the issue of Castro’s motive.

A
s opposed to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Robert Kennedy was deeply involved in Operation Mongoose, the U.S. effort to remove Castro from power. In a June 11, 1964, letter from Chief Justice Earl Warren to RFK, Warren asked if RFK was “aware of any additional information relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy” that his Justice Department had not made available to the Commission, particularly in the area of a “foreign conspiracy.” Although one can see why RFK would not, in response, mention the U.S. effort to
oust
Castro, since this was common knowledge and he could rightfully assume the Warren Commission already knew about it, he also had learned (see endnote discussion) of the CIA’s attempt to
murder
Castro, which was not a matter of common knowledge and which, in terms of a motive by a foreign country to kill President Kennedy, would be information “relating to the assassination.” Yet in RFK’s August 4, 1964, response (seven weeks after Warren’s request, which, in terms of protocol alone, was an improper delay), RFK, who never testified before the Warren Commission though he volunteered to do so, said his Department of Justice had furnished the Commission “all information relating in any way to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”
⁴⁰
So if Allen Dulles knew of the CIA plot to murder Castro and kept this fact from the Warren Commission, it clearly appears that RFK was also covering up this nation’s effort to murder Castro.
*
Exposure of the effort would have been damaging to his and his brother’s reputation and legacy (even though it has never been established that either Kennedy brother had approved of the assassination effort [see endnote discussion]), and the Kennedy family, not surprisingly, was always protective of the aura of Camelot.