In this final episode of Season 2, we continue working our way through the biggest questions that were covered this season in trying to answer the question Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald Really? We’ll pick up where we left off last time and look at issues 8 through 13 in Part 2 of Solving JFK Season 2 conclusions.
8. Did Oswald travel to Mexico City?
I genuinely do not know if Oswald went to Mexico City.
There are 5 witnesses who claim to have seen Oswald in Texas, at the same time when he was supposed to be in Mexico, according to the Warren Commission’s timeline.
Lee Dannelly, from Selective Service says she saw Oswald in Austin on Wednesday, September 25th when he was supposed to be en route from New Orleans to Houston.[1] Oswald was also seen by Henry McCluskey at the Texas Employment Commission in Dallas on either Wednesday the 25th or Thursday the 26th.
Oswald’s future landlord, Gladys Johnson, also said she saw him around this time. But, her statement is not exact. She says she saw him 3 weeks before he moved in, which would literally be Monday, the 23rd. That date is unlikely because Oswald cashed the check at Winn Dixie in New Orleans on the 25th. Still, if Johnson was ballparking and meant about 3 weeks, then it would have to be after he was no longer documented being in New Orleans.[2]
Finally, there is the story of single mother of 4, Cuban exile, Silvia Odio, who says that three men came to visit her to try to get her to raise money for their Cuban Exile group, JURE. Two of them were Cuban or Mexican. One of them was an American who was identified as Leon Oswald. Both Sylvia and her sister, Annie Odio, identified this man as Lee Harvey Oswald after they saw him on television as the accused assassin of President Kennedy. Odio was sure the date of this visit was either Thursday the 26th or Friday, the 27th. She knew that because it was right before she moved to a new apartment the following Monday. Odio’s story is also corroborated by her psychiatrist and by a letter sent to her father in a Cuban prison.[3]
So, there is a decent amount of evidence supporting the idea that Oswald was in Texas when he was supposed to be in Mexico City. The problem is that there is also fairly strong evidence for Oswald going to Mexico City, including: the bus ticket he bought from EP Hammett and Continental Trailways in Houston, the FM8 tourist card that shows him entering Mexico, the positive identifications of Oswald being on a bus in Mexico by Meryl and Dr. John McFarland and by Australians, Pamela Mumford and Patricia Winston, and records and recollections of a man named Lee Oswald staying at Hotel del Comercio in Mexico City.[4]
But, John Bowen, who sat next to the man the Australians described as Oswald, said that the man was not Oswald because that man, unlike Oswald, had blond hair, a dark complexion, and appeared to be of Mexican or Puerto Rican descent. And Oswald’s name was not on the list of people who were on the bus when it crossed the border at Nuevo Laredo.[5]
Two experts I spoke with on the podcast, John Newman and Larry Hancock, who are both Warren Report critics, are certain that Oswald did travel to Mexico City (and was also impersonated while he was there.) But, given the details of the Oswald sightings in Texas around the same time, especially the Sylvia Odio story, I can’t be sure that he did.
9. What did LBJ mean when he told Earl Warren about a little incident in Mexico City?
He meant that Oswald had visited the Soviet Consulate, which implied that he may have been working with the Soviets. As we will see, President Johnson used Mexico City to apply pressure to Richard Russell and Earl Warren to be on his Commission, but LBJ only told them part of the story.
The CIA had audio surveillance of both the Cuban and Soviet Consulate. There is a disputed issue about whether there was an recording of Oswald at the Soviet Consulate. On the day after the assassination, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called President Johnson. That call was recorded, however, it was intentionally erased.[6] 14 minutes of the call were never transcribed, but some of the call was. In the part that we have a record of Johnson asks Hoover about Oswald’s visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. Hoover responds that the incident is confusing because QUOTE:
We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet Embassy using Oswald’s name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy down there.[7]
Hoover claimed that FBI agents in Dallas who met with Oswald and heard his voice could not corroborate that it was the same person on the tape. He was sure about this because he followed up with a 5 page report to Johnson and a report to Secret Service Chief James Rowley.[8]
The CIA’s position[9] is that Hoover was mistaken and that the tape was destroyed before Dallas, making what the FBI agents in Dallas reported to Hoover impossible. The problem with this is that multiple other people are on the record saying that the Oswald audio recording existed after the assassination, including the CIA station chief in Mexico City, Winston Scott, and two Warren Commission investigators, William Slawson and David Coleman. Further, months later in January, Hoover was still saying that the Oswald’s trip to Mexico City was a QUOTE “false story” and accusing the CIA of “double dealing.”[10]
Let’s get back to how President Johnson used the information Hoover told him to convince Earl Warren and Richard Russell to serve on Johnson’s Commission on the assassination. Remember, Hoover told Johnson two things: 1) Oswald had visited the Soviet Embassy and 2) it wasn’t really Oswald. It was an impostor.
When Johnson talks to Russell and Warren, he only tells them the first part and leaves out the headline, which is that the FBI director doesn’t believe that it really was Oswald. Instead, Johnson uses the possibility that the Soviets could have been working with Oswald to convince Russell and Warren that they need to serve on the commission so that they can make sure they don’t reach the conclusion that there was a conspiracy between the Soviet Union and Oswald. This is important because it emphasizes the need to find that Oswald was the lone assassin. Otherwise, pursuing conspiracy leads could trace back to the Soviets and result in Nuclear war. Here’s Johnson telling Richard Russell about his conversation with Earl Warren.
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.”[11]
In summary, Lyndon Johnson lied to Richard Russell and Earl Warren by omitting the material fact that Hoover said Oswald was impersonated at the Soviet Consulate. We’ll leave the questions about why Johnson would do this for next season.
10. What was the role of Ruth and Michael Paine as it relates to Oswald?
There is no hard proof that either of the Paines were intelligence agents or assets, still, I find the totality of the activities and connections of Ruth and Michael Paine to be suspicious.
We covered the Paine’s in several episodes this season, and summarized much of the information related to them in Episode 57. The highlights of the reasons people have suspicions about the Paines are:[12]
1. Ruth’s pursuit of a relationship with Marina. Ruth initiated all of the early contacts in their relationship. She even invited Marina and her 2 year old daughter to move in with her after only knowing her for about a month. She took Marina to New Orleans when she moved back in with Lee and then came back to pick her up.
2. Marina living with Ruth meant that the extra belongings that the Oswald’s had would be stored in Ruth Paine’s garage. Ultimately, the following items were found in the Paine garage that were attributed to Oswald:
· the blanket that police said had the imprint of a rifle in it,
· the backyard photograph of Oswald with the rifle and the pistol,
· the photos of General Walker’s house, and
· the imperial reflex camera allegedly used to take the backyard photos and the pictures of Walker’s house.
On top of those items in the garage, Ruth also found a book that she turned over to the Secret Service that had an incriminating note that Oswald allegedly wrote to Marina after the General Walker shooting.
3. Ruth’s typewriter was used to type the incendiary letter that Oswald supposedly wrote to the Soviet Embassy that seems to confirm his Mexico City trip and imply that he is working for the Soviets. The FBI was not able to find any other documents that had been created using that typewriter.
4. Ruth is the one who got Lee the job at the School Book Depository Building. He was offered a higher paying job as a baggage handler for an airline. But, it appears from the record that Ruth did not pass on the message about the job to Oswald, even though the other job paid 30% more and was a permanent job unlike Oswald’s seasonal job at the Book Depository.
5. The Paines had an abnormal amount of connections to the CIA. Ruth’s dad worked for USAID, which was a CIA cut out. Her brother in law also worked at USAID. Her sister was an employee of the CIA. Michael Paine’s step dad was the inventor of Bell Helicopter, a large military contractor, who would go on to supply helicopters for the Vietnam War. Michael’s mother’s close friend, Mary Bancroft, was a former mistress and lifelong friend of Allen Dulles. The father of a character witness for the Paines, Frederick Osborn, Jr., was Dulles’ close friend at Princeton.[13]
6. The Paines were Quakers – a religion that regularly worked with intelligence agencies after World War 1. In fact, the practice of Quakers working with intelligence was so common that by 1960, all Quaker and Unitarian welfare agencies were placed under suspicion by the KGB.[14]
7. There is an FBI report about a potentially incriminating phone call between Michael’s employer Bell Helicopter and the Paine residence about 30 minutes after the assassination where Michael allegedly said that Oswald killed the president, but he wasn’t responsible. And the male voice added, QUOTE “We both know who was responsible.” The statements in this story are all over the place. So, take it with a grain of salt.
8. On the day of the assassination, when the police arrived, Ruth told them “We’ve been expecting you.” Ruth knew the president had been shot and that the shots may have come from the Book Depository. But, she didn’t articulate a reason for why she would think Oswald was the shooter. Michael Paine, who was separated from Marina, left his job, 40 minutes away in Fort Worth, and arrived at the house, shortly after the police did. He said he knew they would need his help as soon as he heard what happened. But, how could he know that? Especially to get to the house in Irving from Bell Helicopter’s office that fast.
9. Michael Paine is the first person to connect Oswald to the General Walker shooting, which he did on the day after the assassination in the Houston Post.
10. Jim Garrison claims that he subpoenaed the federal tax returns of Ruth and Michael Paine and was told that he could not access them due to national security. During that same trial, Marina said that she was told by Secret Service agents not to hang out with Ruth Paine because Paine was affiliated with the CIA.
11. Buddy Walther wrote that he found filing cabinets containing records that appeared to be the names and activities of Cuban sympathizers. There is also an FBI report that says that Micheal Paine was going around talking to random people about Cuba near Southern Methodist University.[15]
I’ve just listed out 11 reasons that Ruth and Michael Paine are persons of interest in the assassination.[16] The problem is for most these 11 points when you zoom in, there are possible innocent explanations. It’s the combination of all of these things together that looks bad for the Paines.
There’s also a letter from J. Edgar Hoover urging the Warren Commission to not disclose documents related to the Paines and de Mohrenschildts. Hoover says QUOTE “I particularly desire to point out those reports and memoranda dealing with Michael and Ruth Paine and George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt and the personal lives of these people. Making the contents of such documents available to the public could cause serious repercussions to the Commission.”[17] At first it looks like Hoover is worried about privacy for the Paines and de Mohrenschildts. But when he talks about “serious repercussions to the Commission” if the documents are made public, that doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with their privacy. The only reasonable way to interpret this is that there is something that would undermine the Warren Report related to the Paines and de Mohrenschildts.
There is no smoking gun when it comes to the Paines. But, I can’t rule out that they played some sort of role in setting up Oswald as a patsy. For me, the Paine’s role is inconclusive, leaning towards suspicious.
11. Did Oswald have intelligence connections? 21:21
Yes. Without a doubt, Lee Harvey Oswald had intelligence connections.
When we looked at whether Oswald was a false defector, we covered the story of how legendary CIA officer Pete Bagley said that the documents establish that Oswald was a witting false defector who was sent to the Soviet Union as part of a false mole hunt led by, Bruce Solie, who, it turned out, was himself, the mole.
We also previously mentioned the anomalies with the opening of Oswald’s 201 file, which was opened in the division that spied on spies. We discussed the routing of documents to Oswald’s 201 file to the Office of Security instead of to the Soviet Russia Division. But, on top of the issues with the opening of the 201 file and routing of documents, Oswald’s CIA file was bifurcated into one file that was available within CIA (which was last updated in 1961) and another file that was only available to the Cuban Affairs Staff so that if a routine check was done on Oswald, that file would not show up.
In 1994, John Newman and then Washington Post reporter, Jefferson Morley, went to ask some questions about these files to former CIA official, Jane Roman. Roman was one of very few people who had personal knowledge of the bifurcation of Oswald’s CIA file.[18] Newman asked her how she could sign off on telling the Mexico City liaison that the file he was sending to Mexico City station was the most current information when she knew that wasn’t true. Roman admitted that when she said that she was QUOTE “signing off on something I know isn’t true.” When Newman followed up about why she would lie and what that meant for the file, Roman said there was QUOTE “a keen interest in Oswald held very closely on the need to know basis.”[19]
In episode 33, we covered what Oswald’s fellow Marine, David Bucknell, said that Oswald shared with him. He said Oswald told him that he had been asked to participate in an operation to provide false information to a Japanese woman who Oswald regularly saw at a bar near the Atsugi base, the Queen Bee. Bucknell also said that, in 1959, he and Oswald were both ordered to participate in an intelligence operation related to Cuba. Later, Oswald told Bucknell that he would be going to the Soviet Union on assignment and would return in 1961.[20] Bucknell’s statements were also supported by a fellow Marine who was serving at the Santa Ana base in 1959, James Batelho, who would go on to become a judge in California.[21] We should also recall that Oswald applied to the tiny and unknown Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland while he was in the Marines in Santa Ana. The president of the group responsible for fundraising for the college was Percival Brundage, a man whom the New York Times said was linked to 4 CIA front companies.
So, Oswald most likely gets involved with the CIA while he is in Atsugi. And then, things heat up when he returns to Santa Ana. This is consistent with Oswald ramping up his interest in all things Soviet and still not getting in trouble with his leaders in Santa Ana.
Once Oswald returned from the Soviet Union, his behavior continues to be consistent with someone who was a CIA asset. We already covered what Oswald was doing in New Orleans. Let us not forget that he was being paid $25 per day to hand out the pro-Cuba flyers. Also, when Oswald is eventually arrested for disturbing the peace, he asks for an FBI agent to come visit him in jail. William Walter, whom the HSCA did not believe, confirmed that Oswald was an FBI informant.[22] Further, in episode 49 we listed all of the people who were surrounding Oswald at the time the photos and film were taken of him handing out Fair Play for Cuba literature. At least 7 people associated with Oswald’s scuffle with Carlos Bringuier and the subsequent press that Oswald generated from it were either FBI informants or CIA assets.[23]
William Kent was the chief of psychological warfare at the JM/Wave CIA station in Miami until August of 1963. When HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Kent’s daughter, she told him that her dad said that Oswald had been a useful idiot. When she asked her dad who killed JFK, he told her QUOTE “It’s better you don’t know.”[24]
There’s also the strong possibility that Oswald had a minox camera in his possession when the police inventoried his belongings from the Paine residence. A minox camera was about the size of a pack of cigarettes and was very expensive. It was used by both sides as a spy camera in world war 2.[25]
The minox camera is listed in the initial Dallas police report.[26] This is supported by a page from the Dallas police logbook showing that they turned the minox camera over to the FBI as item number 375 as well as 2 rolls of undeveloped Minox film marked as Item 377.[27] The FBI then prepared its own inventory list and the minox camera was replaced by a Minox light meter. The problem with this is that, it doesn’t make a ton of sense for Oswald to have two rolls of undeveloped Minox film and a light meter, if there is no actual camera.
Dallas police officer Gus Rose told the HSCA that he was sure that it was a minox camera and not a light meter that he found. Rose told the HSCA that he opened the camera up and it had a roll of film in it. He says that he even initialed the camera.[28] Dallas district attorney, Bill Alexander, also confirmed that it was a minox camera, and not a light meter.[29]
The matter of whether this was a minox spy camera or whether it was a light meter is still intensely disputed. The arguments for why it is a light meter are that there is a light meter currently in evidence today and that everyone who said it was a camera is wrong. But, there is a 1978 Dallas Morning News article by Earl Golz that published a photo taken by Oswald’s camera, which was one of 25 images developed. This seems to settle the issue that Oswald at least had a minox camera at some point. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have photos that were from a minox camera. Oswald’s apparent ownership of this spy camera, is one more data point indicating that he was some sort of intelligence asset.
Finally, as discussed in Episode 25 of Season 1, there is the phone call that Oswald tried to make to John Hurt. According to switchboard operator Alveeta Treon, when Oswald was in jail, he tried to place a call to a man in North Carolina. But when he did, there were two men in suits in the switchboard room who demanded to listen in on the call. Treon says that her co-worker, Louise Sweeney, unplugged and disconnected Oswald’s attempted call to North Carolina. But, Sweeney wrote down the numbers Oswald had asked to connect to. She threw away the paper with those numbers, which Alveeta Treon later took out of the trash can to keep as a souvenir.[30]
This slip of paper says QUOTE “John Hurt in Raleigh, North Carolina, 419-834-7430 or 833-1253”. We know that the first number was for a John David Hurt. The second was for John William Hurt.
While there is nothing particularly notable about John William Hurt, Warren Report critics point out that John David Hurt served as a US army counterintelligence special agent during World War 2. HSCA lawyer, Surell Brady, who was in charge of investigating the Raleigh call for the HSCA, said the fact that Hurt had been in the counterintelligence service was QUOTE “provocative.[31]
Victor Marchetti, former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, says Oswald was following the standard intelligence practice of contacting a cut out – a clean intermediary with no direct involvement in the operation – when he contacted John Hurt. When you zoom in to the details, you’ll find that John David Hurt was a disabled alcoholic veteran at the time of Oswald’s attempted call. So, it’s not a slam dunk that Oswald was calling him as his intelligence contact. Still, no one has ever offered a plausible explanation of why Oswald would be calling the name John Hurt, aside from a last ditch effort to reach his handler through a cutout.
Senator Richard Schweiker, who served on the Church Committee, said QUOTE “We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him there are fingerprints of intelligence.”[32]
I agree with Senator Schweiker. Despite the CIA’s denial of a relationship with Oswald, all of the material we have covered makes it absolutely clear that Lee Harvey Oswald was an intelligence asset.
12. Was Oswald impersonated?
Yes. Lee Harvey Oswald was impersonated on at least 27 documented occasions. Some of these Oswald sightings are more credible than others. When we talk about an Oswald impersonation, that doesn’t mean a mere sighting of someone who looked like Oswald. It means that the person looked like Oswald combined with a few other facts that make it clear that this person is assuming Oswald’s identity.
For Warren Report defenders, they already know Oswald acted alone. So, this entire conversation about impersonations is just nonsense that is not for serious people. Still, almost all of the instances I’m about to mention come from FBI reports or other official documents. If we are to thoroughly cover the case, we can’t just dismiss this idea.
I’m going to go through the most compelling instances of Oswald being documented in two places at the same time. But, there are many more than just the ones I am listing.
First, we have all of the evidentiary anamolies from Oswald’s childhood. I’m not prepared to call these “impersonations”, but they are at a minimum, unanswered questions.
When Oswald was in the custody of Youth House in New York for his failure to attend school, Officer Felicia Shpritzer, picked up a young boy named Lee Harvey Oswald and charged him with Truancy. Of course, Oswald couldn’t be in Youth House and out wandering the streets at the same time.[33]
When Oswald is supposed to be in New Orleans attending Beauregard Junior High School, there are 4 witnesses who say that he was also attending Stripling Junior High in Fort Worth for about 6 weeks. According to the Assistant Vice Principal at the time, Frank Kudlaty, he met the FBI at the school on the day after the assassination and gave them Oswald’s files from Stripling. Kudlaty is supported by Franzetta Schubert, Doug Gann, and Bobby Pitts, all of whom claim that Oswald briefly attended Stripling in the Fall of 1954, at a time when Oswald had 0 absences noted on his report card from Beauregard Junior High in New Orleans.[34]
There’s also the story of Palmer McBride, Oswald’s co-worker at the Pfisterer Dental lab. McBride said that he worked there with Oswald from December of 1957 until April or May of 1958. But, this isn’t possible because Oswald was in Japan serving in the Marines from September of 1957 through December of 1958.[35]McBride’s timeline is compelling because there are multiple other witnesses who corroborate it, including co-worker Paul Fiorello, Amelda Smith, James Vance, William Gehrke, and William Wulf. Those people tether their recollection of Oswald to events that happened around when McBride said he worked with Oswald, most of which related to the space race between the US and the Soviet Union.[36]
The phenomenon of Oswald being in two places at the same time continues when Oswald joins the Marines.
When the Warren Commission interviewed Oswald’s direct superior at Keesler Air Force Base, Daniel Powers, Powers brought his travel orders documentation with him to the deposition. Powers then read into the transcript a few key identifying numbers: 3383rd Student Squadron, Course Number AB27037, Class 08057, and Military Occupational Specialty 6747. But these numbers that Powers read to the Commission do not match the same numbers for Lee Harvey Oswald for his time at Keesler that are in the Warren Commission volumes as Folsom Exhibit 1.[37]
The second instance is when Oswald was supposed to be in Taiwan, where he allegedly freaked out and shot into the woods while on guard duty, there are medical records that show that Oswald was actually in Atsugi receiving treatment for Gonorrhea. When the HSCA asked the Department of Defense to clarify its position of where Oswald was at the time, they said that Oswald never left for Taiwan in the first place. This leaves us to wonder, who was the guy freaking out and shooting into the woods?[38]
Later, when Oswald was in the Soviet Union, J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo on June 3, 1960 saying QUOTE “there is a possibility that an impostor is using Oswald’s birth certificate.”[39] To further support that possibility, Army intelligence colonel Phillip Corso told Warren Commissioner Richard Russell that there were two passports issued to Oswald and they had been used by two different people.[40]
In January of 1961, while Oswald was in Minsk, a man who said his name was Lee Oswald bought ten trucks at Bolton Ford in New Orleans on behalf of the Friends of Democratic Cuba, an organization formed by Guy Banister and one of Oswald’s old bosses, Gerard Tujague. This man left his name as Lee Oswald, and the name Oswald was written on the bid form.[41]
There are 19 instances of Oswald being impersonated that were covered in depth in episode 59. This does not count any of the 12 instances where Oswald was seen with Jack Ruby because those instances are not sufficiently corroborated by additional facts other than the man looking like Oswald. There’s also the Mexico City saga where Oswald was clearly impersonated.
Finally, at a time when we know Oswald was on a bus leaving Dealey Plaza, there are five witnesses who saw a man run out of the back of the School Book Depository Building and down the hill in Dealey Plaza to get into a light green Nash Rambler. Marvin Robinson and Roy Cooper saw the man. But, Helen Forrest, James Pennington, and Sheriff Roger Craig also saw the man and identified him as Lee Harvey Oswald.[42]
When we add these 19 documented instances of impersonations in the Fall of 1963 to the eight ones that I just mentioned, that’s a total of 27 instances of Oswald being impersonated. Only one or two of these impersonations need to be credible for the official lone gunman story to be seriously undermined.
I’d like to quickly address the Harvey and Lee theory from author John Armstrong. Armstrong believes that there were two Oswalds from a pretty young age. His theory is that the one that we know from history was a Hungarian orphan who was a native Russian speaker.[43] This orphan was paired with a caretaker - the version of Oswalds’ mom, Marguerite Oswald - that we know from history. The idea was that there would be two Lee Harvey Oswalds so that one of them could be doing Cold War spy shenanigans while the other provided an alibi.
As I’ve said many times on this podcast, John Armstrong is a top notch researcher. He puts forth a few specific cases that I’ve noted in this section, which show that Oswald may have been impersonated from a young age – or that there were at least anomalies in Oswald’s record which have not been explained. And when Armstrong zooms in on the competing Marguerite Oswalds theory, I agree that there are photos of Marguerite Oswald that don’t seem to match up, as well as issues with her employment record.
I have ruled out a few specific claims from Armstrong, like the North Dakota story and the Beauregard report card story, but there are others that I just can’t rule out. I’m not endorsing the Harvey and Lee theory. I think it is possible that there were multiple people impersonating Oswald on different occasions. Still, Armstrong has so much voluminous evidence that he has compiled, that I leave the door open to the idea that there could be one person, who resembles Oswald, who is doing most of the impersonating. By no means am I sure about this or am I relying on it. I just can’t rule it out.
What I can say with absolute certainty is that Lee Harvey Oswald was impersonated on dozens of occasions.
13. What was Oswald’s ultimate purpose?
This is the big question: Who was Lee Harvey Oswald, really? I am giving you my best guess as to what was going on with Oswald in this section. So, take this with a grain of salt because it calls for speculation. The most succinct answer is that he was a ne’er do well, fatherless, high school drop out, who moved to new schools all the time. He had an interest in Marxism starting in high school.
He joined the Marines and likely was recruited to work with the CIA starting in Atsugi, Japan, just like Oswald told David Bucknell. Oswald and Bucknell were both recruited by the CIA in Santa Ana. It was most likely around that time that Oswald began to prepare for his mission to go the Soviet Union. According to John Newman and CIA counterintelligence legend, Pete Bagley, Oswald was sent to the USSR as part of a Soviet mole hunt as a witting false defector.
When Oswald returned to the US, he continued to be involved with intelligence agencies as shown by his time in New Orleans working with Guy Banister. Later, Oswald may or may not have gone to Mexico City. Either way, he was absolutely impersonated while he was there.
Oswald’s undeniable association with the CIA and the FBI, and all of these Oswald impersonations, combined with what we learned in Season 1, makes it clear to me that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone to kill President Kennedy. He was a low level intelligence asset who believed he was being used in high stakes Cold War spy games. And ultimately, Oswald was exactly what he said he was – a patsy.
This leaves us with a new question to answer, which we’ll begin exploring in Season 3 of this podcast – If Oswald didn’t kill President Kennedy, then who did?
[3] https://www.solvingjfkpodcast.com/post/ep-53-oswald-in-mexico-city-part-1 (The FBI at first said that they knew who the 3 mysterious visitors were, and Oswald was not one of them. But, then all of the statements previously made by the were denied or retracted.)
[10] Probe, Vol 6, No. 6, at 29; https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/oswald-the-cia-and-mexico-city/#return16
[15] Id.
[21] https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60177#relPageId=8&search=hustler_mark%20lane; James DiEugenio et al, The JFK Assassination Chokeholds, at 100.
[24] The JFK Assassination Chokeholds at 128.
[25]http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/O%20Disk/Oswald%20Lee%20Harvey/Cameras/Item%2018.pdf
[26] https://jfk.boards.net/post/2738 (this is the best version I could find. The authenticity of this document is not disputed.) CE 2003 at 278
[27] http://www.geocities.ws/jfkresearch/minox.htm (for the proposition only that there is an image of the logbook)
[28] HSCA testimony of Gus Rose.
[29] Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, page 202; http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files%20Original/M%20Disk/Melanson%20Philip/Item%2052.pdf
[31] Id.
[32] Senator Richard Schweiker, The Village Voice, 1975.
[39] Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Office of Security, State Department, June 3, 1960.
[41] The JFK Assassination Chokeholds at 159.
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