So far, we have covered the official store of Oswald’s journey to Mexico City, 5 witnesses who say Oswald was in Texas at the same time, and the actions that Oswald allegedly took at the Soviet and Cuban Consulates. We looked at whether there were any photos or audio tapes that existed of those visits. And we read the showstopping transcript from a call between J. Edgar Hoover and President Johnson the day after the assassination where Hoover says that Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City.
In this third and final episode in the Mexico City series, we look at what was going on behind the scenes at the CIA and FBI as it relates to Mexico City. We also cover the letter allegedly written by Oswald to the Soviet Embassy (where he references Mexico City), Marina’s statements about Lee in Mexico, and finally, we zoom out to look at why Mexico City matters in solving the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Why Did the Dog Not Bark?
According to the CIA, its Mexico City station witnessed Oswald enter and make phone calls to the Cuban and Soviet consulates. Given that this was the near-peak of the Cold War, and Oswald was a former attempted Soviet defector, who had spent August handing out Fair Play for Cuba flyers, one would think that the CIA would put two and two together and realize that the Oswald visiting the consulates in Mexico City was the same Oswald who visited Russia and supported Fair Play for Cuba. But, that’s not what happened. Why not?
On September 23, 1963, the Chief of Counterintelligence for the CIA, James Angleton, began to bifurcate Oswald’s CIA file. Specifically, the FBI reports from Oswald’s time in New Orleans about his activities with Fair Play for Cuba Committee and his arrest went in to a separate file – instead of Oswald’s normal 201 file, which is where all information about Oswald visiting the Soviet Consulate went.[1]
A few weeks later, on October 10, two cables went out from the CIA to the FBI, State Department, and the Navy describing Oswald as a 6 foot tall 35 year old with an athletic build.[2] The same day, another cable was sent from Langley by Angleton’s assistant, Anne Egerter, to the Mexico City station with the correct description of Oswald. It said that the latest information the CIA had on Oswald was a State Department memo from 1962. Because the file had been bifurcated by Angleton, none of the reports about Oswald’s time in New Orleans during the Summer of 1963 were sent to Mexico City.[3]
Since Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union in 1959, he had been given an FBI FLASH warning, which required any information that was learned about him to immediately be forwarded to the Espionage Section of the Domestic Intelligence Unit. This flash was canceled on October 9 - one day before the FBI cable arrived from the CIA.
Kostikov
On October 18, about a month before the assassination, the FBI sent a memo from Mexico City saying that Oswald met and spoke with Valeriy Kostikov, the senior consular officer who handled the issuance of visas.[4]
On November 22, the day of the assassination, a CIA after action report says that the FBI called the CIA when Oswald’s name was first mentioned on the radio. This call was passed on to Angleton’s office.[5] And, it was at this point, hours after President Kennedy was shot, that the FBI told the CIA for the first time that the person Oswald had met with at the Soviet Consulate, Valeriy Kostikov, was part of the Soviet KGB’s Department 13, which was responsible for assassinations in the Western Hemisphere.[6] To say that this was a colossal security failure to allow Oswald to be on the motorcade would be an understatement. But, the official story is that Oswald met with someone from the KGB assassinations unit just 7 weeks before President Kennedy was shot and the intelligence community did nothing to stop Oswald.[7]
On the other hand, Kostikov belonging to the assassinations unit, has not been definitively established. The FBI could not find any information to support that assertion, as noted by J. Edgar Hoover in a September 15, 1964 memo to the Director of the CIA.[8] Kostikov himself says that his interactions with Oswald were only in the course of his duties working at the Soviet Consulate.[9]
The Soviet Letter Ruth Paine Found
Fast forwarding into the future a bit, there is a significant piece of evidence that supports the idea that Oswald really did go to Mexico City. A typewritten letter dated November 9, 1963 (and mailed on November 12) was written in English from Lee Oswald to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC. The letter starts QUOTE “Dear sirs, This is to inform you of recent events since my meetings with comrade Kostin in the Embassy of the Soviet Union, Mexico City, Mexico.”[10]
So, right out of the gate, this letter makes clear that Oswald was in Mexico City. No one who works at the Soviet Consulate is named Kostin, but as we just discussed, there was a Kostikov, which is not too far off. The letter goes on to provide details of Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, and it makes it sound like Oswald is reporting back to the USSR about what he is up to, just weeks before he allegedly killed President Kennedy.
One confusing thing about this letter is that it says QUOTE “Of course, the Soviet Embassy was not at fault, they were, as I say, unprepared. The Cuban Consulate was guilty of a gross breach of regulations. I am glad he has since been replaced.”[11] It appears that the letter was referencing Cuban Consul, Eusebio Azque, who was transferred out of Mexico City for Cuba on November 18th. But, unless Oswald was told by some sort of inside source at least a week before it happened, Oswald would have no way of knowing that Azque was about to leave his position at the time he sent the letter.[12]
A declassified document release that Russian president Boris Yeltsin provided to president Bill Clinton in 1999 shed some light on what the Soviets thought bout this letter. One document said that the Soviets thought this letter from Oswald was forged to try to frame him. Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin wrote in an internal memo QUOTE “This letter was clearly a provocation. It gives the impression we had close ties with Oswald and were using him for some purposes of our own.”[13] He goes on to say QUOTE “One gets the definite impression that the letter was concocted by those who, judging from everything, are involved in the president’s assassination.”[14]
A handwritten draft of the final typed letter was found by Ruth Paine in her home around November 10th.[15] Paine told the Warren Commission that she never saw the typed letter and that she made a copy of it in her own handwriting.[16]But, Ruth Paine did not tell Marina about the letter.[17] Marina didn’t find out about it until the FBI showed it to her on January 22.[18] One would think that if Ruth was close enough to Marina to help her with her infant child and allow her to live at her house, then she would have wanted to let Marina know that Lee was writing to the Soviet Embassy about being in Mexico City. But for whatever reason, that did not happen.
What Did Marina Say?
One obvious question we have not yet looked at is what did Marina Oswald say about whether or not Lee went to Mexico City? We’ve seen that Marina’s testimony is somewhat inconsistent when it comes to the backyard photos, the General Walker shooting, and Oswald’s rifle ownership. Still, it is useful to know what she said on the record.
The Warren Report points out accurately that Marina Oswald admitted that Lee went to Mexico City.[19] But, what the report doesn’t tell us is that before Marina said Lee DID go to Mexico City, she had previously denied knowing anything about him going to Mexico City on 8 different occasions.
Immediately after the assassination, the Secret Service asked Marina if Lee came back with her from New Orleans. She responded QUOTE “No, he did not come back with me. He remained in New Orleans for another two weeks in hopes that he would find another job, and then he came to Dallas.”[20]
On November 29, five days after her husband had been killed, Marina reiterated to FBI agents Heitman and Boguslav that Oswald had planned to remain in New Orleans to find work. Marina then volunteered the information that that to her knowledge Oswald had never been in Mexico because she figured the FBI was interested in knowing that because she saw it mentioned on TV.[21]
On December 5, Marina said that Lee never mentioned that he was making plans to go to Cuba. And he said nothing to her about going to Mexico or Cuba when she and June left New Orleans with Ruth Paine in September.[22]
On December 10, Secret Service Agent Leon Gopadze interviewed Marina and wrote the following in his report QUOTE “Concerning Lee Oswald’s being in Mexico City…Marina Oswald stated that she had no prior knowledge of him going to Mexico City…”[23] The next day, December 11, Marina was again interviewed by the Secret Service and again for the fifth time confirmed that she had no prior knowledge of her husband going to Mexico City.[24]
On January 16th, 1964, Marina told FBI agents Heitman and Boguslav once again that she did not know that Oswald had been to Mexico before he came to Dallas.[25] The next day, January 17th, Marina told the same FBI agents that QUOTE “Oswald had not told her anything whatsoever about any intentions on his part to go to Mexico.” Marina also said that Oswald didn’t tell her that he had been in Mexico City and that she found out about him going there QUOTE “from television programs at Dallas immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy.”[26]
On January 22, 1964, Marina said that she had seen an English/Spanish dictionary at Ruth Paine’s house that belonged to Lee, and that Lee gave her a coin with a hole in it that had Spanish writing on it. Of course, both of those items, while highly circumstantial, would point to Oswald potentially being in Mexico. But, Marina, still maintained that she did not know Lee had been to Mexico.[27]
Then, on February 3, 1964, Marina Oswald’s answers about whether she knew anything about her husband’s alleged trip to Mexico City suddenly changed. On that day she told the Warren Commission, QUOTE “I knew that Lee would go to Mexico City. But, of course, I didn’t tell Mrs. Paine about it.”[28] She said that Oswald had discussed in advance with her that he was going to Mexico, adding QUOTE “from Mexico City, he wanted to go to Cuba – perhaps through the Russian Embassy in Mexico somehow he would be able to get to Cuba.”[29]
When the Warren Commission asked Marina to explain her about face on the topic of her husband in Mexico City, she said QUOTE
Most of these questions were put to me by the FBI. I do not like them too much. I didn't want to be too sincere with them. Though I was quite sincere and answered most of their questions. They questioned me a great deal, and I was very tired of them, and I thought that, well, whether I knew about it or didn't know about it didn't change matters at all, it didn't help anything, because the fact that Lee had been there was already known, and whether or not I knew about it didn't make any difference.[30]
Something else happened around the time when Marina changed her story regarding her husband’s trip to Mexico City. Some time in February of 1964, Marina finalized a deal with Texi-Italia Films for the rights to her life story, for which she was paid $75,000 (the equivalent of about $750,000 today).[31] The film rights were never used. I couldn’t find much on Texi-Italia, other than what Baylor University has online in the John Armstrong Collection. It looks like the Company was kicked out of their offices in February of 1964 for failure to pay rent after having rented a space there for exactly one year.[32]
But, there is no smoking gun of this payment being a bribe to get Marina to change her tune. People buy the rights for movies that don’t get made all the time. Still, it would be great to learn more about the people behind Texi-Italia to be able to rule out that the contract was not legit. I’d also like to know how they could afford the money to buy the rights from Marina Oswald at the same time that they could not afford to pay the rent at their office.
While there seems to be a lot of confusion from Marina about her husband in Mexico City, the phone number for the Cuban Consulate was found in Oswald’s address book, as was the number for the Soviet Military Attache and Silvia Duran.[33] A Mexican coin and English/Spanish dictionary were also found. Not to mention the aforementioned letter that Oswald allegedly wrote to the Soviet Embassy in November.
So, there isn’t an innocent misunderstanding here. Either Oswald really did go to Mexico City and he was impersonated by someone in Texas, or Oswald did not go to Mexico City and he was impersonated there. Either way, the 5 sightings of Oswald in Texas when he should have been in Mexico, as we discussed in the first part of this series, proves that there was someone intentionally impersonating Oswald somewhere.
There is conflicting evidence about what Oswald himself said regarding Mexico City. Harry Holmes, the Dallas postal inspector and FBI confidential informant who was present at the Sunday morning interrogations said that Oswald didadmit going to Mexico City.[34] Also, Dallas Detective LC Graves said QUOTE “I believe Oswald did admit going to Mexico.”[35] Still, Captain Fritz’s report tells a different story. He says that Oswald told interrogators that he had notbeen to Mexico City when they asked him.[36]
The Ordeal of Silvia Duran
Silvia Duran, the woman who Oswald interacted with at the Cuban Consulate provided a 10 page statement that was given to the CIA, who gave it to the Warren Commission in May of 1964.[37] The story of how that statement originated calls its veracity into question.
While Duran did eventually admit that she saw Lee Harvey Oswald at the Cuban Consulate, that statement was the result of Duran being arrested on November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination, and then being beaten and tortured by the Mexican Secret Police. A declassified HSCA memorandum on Silvia Duran says QUOTE
“The Central Intelligence Agency determined that it would ask the Mexican government, whom it had a good relationship with, to arrest Silvia Duran because she might shed some light on the circumstances surrounding the assassination…. The [CIA’s] Mexico City Station sent a note to Luis Echeverria [the Minister of the Interior] requesting that he arrest Silvia Duran immediately.”[38]
The CIA then made it easy for the Mexican government to find Duran by giving Echeverria her address, her mother’s address, her brother’s address, her license plate number, her home phone number, and her place of work.[39] This request to arrest Duran was not authorized by Langley. Headquarters asked the Mexico City station to not have Duran arrested, but Station Chief, Win Scott, sent a wire that said it was too late.[40]
The Mexican Secret Police tried to pressure Duran into admitting that she had an affair with Oswald.[41] They probably asked her that because the Monday after President Kennedy was killed, Gilberto Alvarado Ugarte, claimed that he saw a man in the Cuban Consulate hand Lee Harvey Oswald $6,500 cash. He then heard the man with the money say “I want to kill the man.” And he heard Oswald respond “You’re not man enough. I can do it.”[42]
The Embassy employees turned this man over to the CIA. When they did, Alvarado told the CIA that he saw Silvia Duran embrace Oswald and give him her home phone number.[43] So, that’s where the questions about the affair with Oswald came from.
It turns out that Alvarado was not telling the truth about seeing Oswald with Duran because the day he was in the Cuban Embassy was September 18th, when Oswald was still in New Orleans. Alvarado admitted this after the FBI confronted him about why he failed the polygraph exam so badly. It turns out, Alvarado was an FBI informant who was also a Nicaraguan intelligence agent.
Eventually, after multiple arrests and interrogations, Duran signed a 10 page statement where she said that the same Lee Harvey Oswald who killed President Kennedy visited her in the Cuban embassy. But, when researcher Anthony Summers interviewed Duran in the late 1970s, she told him QUOTE “I was not sure if it was Oswald or not… the man on the film is not like the man I saw here in Mexico City.”[44]
To underline the extent to which the CIA encouraged the Mexican Secret Police to extract a statement from Duran, the Mexico City CIA station sent a cable to Langley on November 27 that said QUOTE “Given the apparent character of Silvia Duran there would appear to be good chance of her cracking when confronted with details of reported deal [the alleged $6500 bribe] between Oswald, and [the Cuban Consulate officials, as reported by Alvarado]. If she did break under interrogation – and we suggest Mexicans should be asked to go all out in seeking that she does – we and Mexicans would have needed corroboration of statement of [Alvarado].”[45] This quote makes it clear that Duran really was under duress, which, as it turned out was being applied by the CIA.
Oswald In Mexico City After All?
If Oswald did go to Mexico City, is there any other reason for him to go there aside from wanting to sight see in Cuba for 2 weeks before going to the Soviet Union? (where he could already go with his travel visa he had.) Declassified CIA documents point to that possibility.
On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI in a memo that it was QUOTE “giving consideration to countering Fair Play for Cuba” in foreign countries. Could Oswald’s goal have been to further discredit the Fair Play for Cuba Committee as he had been doing in New Orleans? Maybe it is just a coincidence that someone named Oswald showed Fair Play for Cuba credentials in Mexico City 9 days after a memo saying the CIA would try to discredit the FPCC in foreign countries.[46] After all, Oswald showed his FPCC card at the Cuban Consulate. If not Oswald 9 days later, who else could be discrediting the FPCC abroad?
To further complicate matters, a document was mistakenly disclosed by the CIA in 1985. The document stated that on September 17, 1963, the day after the memo about the CIA countering FPCC in foreign countries, Oswald got a Mexican tourist card in New Orleans. The person who was directly in front of Oswald in line was CIA agent William Gaudet.[47]But, perhaps it was just a coincidence that Oswald stood in line behind a CIA agent to get his Mexican tourist card the day after the memo about countering Fair Play for Cuba abroad was written by the CIA.
We Aren’t Sure How Oswald Got Back to The US
The Warren Report says that Oswald left Mexico City by bus on the morning of October 2nd and arrived in Dallas around 2:20 on October 3rd.[48] But there was some uncertainty on the exact details.
On Feb 12, 1964, J. Lee Rankin of the Warren Commission wrote a letter to FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, that said QUOTE “although Mexican Immigration Service records both show that he entered Mexico at Nuevo Laredo on September 26 and left Mexico on October 3, neither the list of persons entering Mexico on September 26th (FM-11) nor the list of persons departing Mexico on October 3rd shows name. Yet both lists are purportedly complete.”[49] So, there is a list of people coming and going into Mexico, but Oswald is not on the list for the days he came and went.
Or maybe he didn’t go by bus at all, because the list that Oswald was not on only included people who departed by bus that day. A March 12, 1964 memo from J Edgar Hoover to the Legal Attache, Mexico City says “Until we can prove Oswald was on a bus, this possibility will always exist that he left by automobile as indicated in Mexican Immigration records.”[50]
Why Mexico City Matters
When it comes to Lee Harvey Oswald and Mexico City, there are basically two camps: those who believe Oswald was impersonated and did not go to Mexico City, and those who believe Oswald was meeting with someone who handled assassinations on behalf of the Soviet Union. If either one of these scenarios is true, it’s a big deal. An Oswald impersonation would mean that he was being set up by the CIA, most likely, and an Oswald visit with Kostikov would potentially point the finger at the Soviet Union for the assassination of President Kennedy. And if the Soviet Union was involved in killing the American president, it would require a nuclear strike from the United States, which would result in the Soviets responding in kind, and the loss of tens of millions of American lives. Basically, a nuclear Armageddon.
After being notified of the supposed Oswald visits to the Soviet and Cuban consulates in Mexico City, and after being told by Hoover that Oswald was being impersonated, President Johnson still used Oswald’s supposed Mexico City consulate meetings as a pre-text to get some of the Warren Commissioners to join the commission, most notably Senator Richard Russell and Chief Justice Earl Warren.
After Senator Russell told President Johnson that he did not want to serve on the commission with Earl Warren, Johnson said this to him in a recorded phone call:
Dick, it’s already been announced. And you can serve with anybody for the good of America. And this is a question that has a good many more ramifications than on the surface. We’ve got to take this out of the arena where they’re testifying that Kruschev and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour. You put on your uniform in a minute![51]
When Johnson says ‘You put on your uniform in a minute,’ to me, it sounds like what he means is, “do what your president is telling you to do to serve your country and to reach the outcome that will keep us out of nuclear war.” Johnson explained the nature of the work he would be doing to Senator Russell:
All you’re going to do is evaluate a Hoover report that has already been made. We won’t move any faster than you want to move. But, you’re gonna lend your name to this thing because you are head of the CIA committee in the Senate.[52]
I’m not clear on why Senator Russell being the head of the CIA committee has anything to do with Oswald killing President Kennedy. But, after Russell continued to protest the idea of Earl Warren being on the committee, President Johnson said this:
You want me to tell you the truth? You know what happened? Bobby and them went up to see him today. And he turned them down cold and said no. 2 hours later, I called him and ordered him down here and he didn’t want to come. I insisted he come and he told me no twice.
And I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City and I said now, I don’t want Mr. Kruschev to be testifying before a camera that he killed this fella or that Castro killed him. And all I want you to do is look at the facts and bring any other facts you want in here and determine who killed the president. I think you’d put your uniform on, as fat as you are, and do anything you could to save one American life. Now, I’m surprised that you, the chief justice of the United States would turn me down. And he started crying and he said, well, I won’t turn you down. I’ll just do whatever you say.”[53]
What is telling about President Johnson’s conversations with Senator Russell and Chief Justice Warren is that he only shared a portion of the story about what Hoover told him, the part about Oswald visiting with the Soviet and Cuban consulates. But, conspicuously absent from Johnson’s retelling about what Hoover told him about Mexico City, is any mention at all of Oswald being impersonated and the man on the tape and in the photos not matching Oswald.
At a minimum, the fact that Johnson failed to mention that Hoover told him Oswald was being impersonated in Mexico City when Johnson used Hoover’s name to drive home the idea that Oswald could have been connected to the Soviets or Cubans requires an explanation. That’s a startling omission that suggests that President Johnson was deceiving Chief Justice Warren and Senator Russell.
NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We’ll have a recap and rebuttals episode for Mexico City, before moving on to Oswald’s return to Dallas in the Fall of 1963.
[1] John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, at 393.
[2] Id. at 398.
[3] Id. at 636.
[4] John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, at 631.
[5] CIA Summary Report of December 13, 1963, prepared by John Whitten.
[6] Newman, Probe, at 29.
[9] https://www.rferl.org/a/us-ussr-kennedy-assassination-oswald-kgb-contact-mexico-assassinations-officer/28819941.html
[14] Id.
[17] CE 1823
[18] Id.
[19] Warren Report at 730.
[20] Commission Document 344, at 18; Secret Service Report of Marina Oswald.
[21] CE 1781; Memo to SAC Shanklin, 11/29/63.
[22] CE 1401.
[23] Secret Service Report of Leon Gopadze, 12/10/63.
[24] Armstrong at 699.
[28] Marina Oswald Warren Commission Testimony; https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/oswald_m1.htm
[31] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP75-00149R000600170036-2.pdf; https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/cia-mind-control-tex-italia-films/695182?item=695199
[32] https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/cia-mind-control-tex-italia-films/695182?item=695199
[33] Armstrong at 638-640.
[34] CE 1152, 7H 303.
[35] 7H 257
[36] Nov 22, 63, Captain Fritz Report, Appendix XI, Warren Report) - https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/pdf/WR_A11_ReportsDPD.pdf
[37] Armstrong at 646.
[39] Id.
[41] HSCA, 3 AH 86.
[42] CE 2121, at 154-56; https://www.historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/pdf/WH24_CE_2121.pdf
[43] Armstrong at 674.
[44] Id.
[45] CIA document #128-590, cable from Mexico City to Headquarters, 11/26/63. (The Warren Commission lawyers David Slawson and William Coleman tried to interview Duran but were told that the Mexican government wouldn’t allow it. The Warren Report said QUOTE “The Commission has been advised by the CIA and FBI that secret and reliable sources corroborate the statements of Senora Duran in all material respects.” In other words, we didn’t talk to her, but we are taking the CIA and Mexican Secret police at their word.[45] It is notable that the Mexican Secret Police would not cooperate with the Warren Commission, given the CIA memo about the good relationship it had with the Mexican government.)
[46] Armstrong at 674; James Douglass, JFK & the Unspeakable.
[48] Warren Report at 736.
[49] Feb 12, 1964, J. Lee Rankin Memo
[50] Armstrong at 683.
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