Legacy of Secrecy (45 page)

had started sending the first of what would soon be a steady stream of

reports that tried to incriminate Oswald by essentially saying he was

working for Cuba or Russia. Since the United States hadn’t immediately

attacked Cuba after JFK’s murder and Oswald’s arrest, it was almost as

if some people had decided more was needed to prod LBJ along. How-

ever, all of these reports would later be discredited, and most originated

with or were promoted by associates of Morales, Artime, Trafficante,

and Rosselli.

Even though the allegations were false, they sounded alarms not only

during the weekend of November 23 and in the weeks that followed,

but also through much of 1964, again in 1965, once more in the 1970s,

and even later. The same long-discredited allegations would be raised

again as recently as 2005, in a German television documentary. The first

allegation has special resonance today because it led to US-sanctioned

torture during interrogations in a foreign country.

When reading about these rumors, it’s important to keep in mind

the basic story that Richard Helms concocted on November 23, which

remains the official CIA version of Oswald in Mexico City even today,

long after declassified files, testimony, and interviews have shown it to

be false: The Helms/CIA version claims the CIA didn’t realize until after

JFK’s assassination that Oswald had visited the Cuban embassy when

he was in Mexico City. Even though the CIA admits it photographed the

people visiting the Cuban and Soviet embassies, it claims that no photos

of Oswald were taken (the photos the CIA produced were of a much

older, heavy-set man who has never been identified). And even though

the CIA eventually confessed that it had tapped all the phone calls to and

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from each embassy with the help of the Mexican DFS (federal police),

it claims the tapes of Oswald’s calls were erased shortly after his visits,

and before JFK’s assassination.

Each of these assertions has been proven false by experts like former

Army Intelligence Major and historian Dr. John Newman. As he care-

fully documented from CIA files and interviews, continuing work begun

by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, the

official records reveal discrepancies about the number of visits Oswald

made to each embassy, and raise questions about whether some of the

visits were by someone impersonating Oswald. There are also differing

accounts regarding the number of phone calls, but CIA records confirm

that at least some, and probably all, of the phone calls were made by an

imposter. This claim is easy to verify because Oswald spoke good Rus-

sian and no Spanish, while one of the callers pretending to be Oswald

spoke Spanish and another spoke poor, broken Russian.1

Newman and other researchers have also established that, based on

the files that have been released, much information is missing—either

still withheld or destroyed. In the spring of 1964, two Warren Commis-

sion lawyers listened to the taped phone calls of “Oswald” that Helms

and Mexico City CIA officer David Atlee Phillips claimed had been

routinely erased before JFK’s murder. Their existence at that time was

also confirmed to
Vanity Fair
by the “senior CIA officer who had played

[the lawyers] the tapes.” We’ve noted that photos of the real Oswald in

Mexico City did exist, as verified by the CIA’s station chief there, Win

Scott, and our own Naval Intelligence source, who saw the photos.2

Congressional investigators received additional confirmation of Oswald

photos in Mexico City from Win Scott’s deputy and another CIA officer

who used the name Joseph Piccolo.3

Some of Helms’s cover-ups were based on legitimate national-

security reasons, while others weren’t. Helms and the CIA were initially

reluctant to let even other agencies know that they had tapped both

embassies’ phones, though they eventually admitted it to the Warren

Commission and Congress. We now know that the CIA also bugged

rooms in the embassies themselves, something the CIA still doesn’t offi-

cially confirm. (Cuban officials later discovered a bug in the arm of a

chair in the Cuban ambassador’s office.)4 There is a good chance that

rooms in the current Cuban and Soviet embassies are still being bugged

under the same type of program today, so the fact that the CIA wants

to conceal that tactic is somewhat understandable. On the other hand,

it’s important to keep in mind that information was available to at least

some CIA officials when they were trying to evaluate the false allega-

tions we’ll soon detail.

However, even more information was withheld from other agen-

cies (and from most parts of the CIA) starting on November 23 and for

decades thereafter. The House Select Committee would complain in

1979 that “there is a possibility [that] a US government agency requested

the Mexican government to refrain from aiding the Committee with this

aspect of its work.”5 (Helms, Phillips, and Morales were no longer with

the CIA at that time, though Shackley was still a high-level CIA official.)

Even today, many files relating to Oswald’s Mexico City visits are prob-

ably among the one million–plus CIA files related to JFK’s assassination

that are still being withheld, unless they were destroyed before Helms

left the CIA.

It’s significant that crucial information about Oswald and Mexico

City was kept secret from most people in the CIA. As Dr. Newman and

Jefferson Morley documented, some cables sent from CIA headquarters

to the CIA’s Mexico City office in the fall of 1963 contained accurate

information, while some CIA cables clearly contained false information

(for example, an inaccurate description of Oswald, or a statement that

the CIA had compiled no information at all about Oswald since May

1962, even before his return from Russia). Newman and Morley located

one former CIA official who signed off on both types of CIA cables. Years

later, when shown the cables, she admitted, “I’m signing off on some-

thing I know isn’t true.” But the CIA official explained that Desmond

FitzGerald’s “SAS group would have held all the information on Oswald

under their tight control.” This meant that “if you did a routine check”

on Oswald, some information “wouldn’t show up.” The CIA official

stated that it was “indicative of a keen interest in Oswald, held very

closely on a need-to-know basis.” The official added, “I wasn’t in on

any particular goings-on or hanky-panky as far as the Cuban situation

[went].”6 That may be true from an operations standpoint, but newly

declassified CIA memos show that during 1962 and 1963, this official

was also a liaison between the CIA and the FBI regarding reports of

criminal activity by CIA-backed Cuban exiles.7 However, the criminal

reports about exiles working for FitzGerald, like Manuel Artime’s work

with the Mafia, are missing and were probably under the same “tight

control” FitzGerald exercised over the Oswald information.

As we’ve indicated, and documented in detail in
Ultimate Sacrifice,

Oswald’s trip to Mexico City in September 1963 was probably his attempt

to enter Cuba, as one of the assets the CIA was tasked with getting

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into Cuba for the upcoming JFK-Almeida coup plan.8 That’s what all of

his pro-Castro publicity had been for in August 1963, and it was prob-

ably the subject of his meeting with David Atlee Phillips in Dallas a few

weeks before his trip to Mexico. Oswald even took with him to Mexico

an amazingly well-organized and detailed resume, which (aside from

some misspellings) should have made him look like an attractive “catch”

to the Cubans.9 As we mentioned earlier, two other young men also

linked to Artime associates went to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City

around the same time, possibly as part of the same operation as Oswald.

This type of operation would have been run by Phillips for Desmond

FitzGerald, who reported to Helms. In addition to his regular duties

for the CIA in Mexico City for Station Chief Win Scott, Phillips had

additional assignments related to Cuba (like AMWORLD), for which

he reported directly to FitzGerald. CIA Director John McCone would

have been generally aware of this type of operation, since getting assets

into Cuba prior to the coup had been the CIA’s job since early summer

1963.

However, Oswald was impersonated in most, if not all, of his phone

calls (and possibly his visit to one of the consulates) as part of an effort

to both keep him from getting into Cuba and incriminate him after JFK’s

assassination. Mafia bosses like Rosselli and Trafficante were in a perfect

position to carry out this plan. Their associate Richard Cain, a surveil-

lance expert, had bugged a communist embassy in Mexico City the pre-

vious year for the CIA.10 The Mexican federal police, the DFS, monitored

the phone taps of the Cuban and Russian embassies for the CIA. The

DFS was involved in drug trafficking with associates of Trafficante and

Michel Victor Mertz, whose partners operated a heroin ring through

Mexico City. Also, the DFS was involved in some of the interrogations

that began on November 23, which included torture and allegations that

were later shown to be false.

The first of these concerned Silvia Duran, whom Dr. Newman

describes as “the secretary working in the Cuban consulate at the time

of Oswald’s visit to Mexico City.”11 On November 23, David Atlee Phil-

lips (using one of his cover identities, Lawrence F. Barker) sent a memo

saying that “in January 1962, Silvia Duran [was] seen in two cars with

Texas plates. . . . Another Ford car [with] Texas plates . . . [was] seen

in front of [the] residence [of her] brothers.”12 This memo would be

followed by ever more incredible accusations that would eventually

include Duran’s entertaining Oswald at a “twist” party, having a tor-

rid affair with Oswald, and working with Oswald on a plot to kill JFK.

In conjunction with other wild allegations that would start flowing on

November 23 and continue in the following days, the stories not only

were meant to emphasize Oswald’s guilt, but also to pressure President

Johnson to order an invasion of Cuba.

The CIA’s Mexico City station asked the Mexicans to arrest Silvia

Duran, who was a Mexican citizen; it’s not clear whether this was Win

Scott’s idea, or if he was acting on behalf of David Atlee Phillips. The

exact origin of all the accusations against Duran is still murky. The CIA

memo said, “It is suggested that she be arrested as soon as possible by

the Mexican authorities and held incommunicado until she can be ques-

tioned on the matter.”13 The CIA went on to “request [that] you ensure

that her arrest is kept absolutely secret, that no information from her is

published or leaked, that all such info is cabled to us.”14

Richard Helms was caught off guard by Duran’s arrest, and he wasn’t

part of whatever game was going on involving the wild accusations

against her. According to a CIA report by Whitten, Helms’s deputy

immediately “ordered us to phone Mexi[co] and tell them not to [arrest

Duran].” Helms’s deputy ordered a cable to be sent to Win Scott in

Mexico City, saying that the “arrest of Sylvia Duran is [an] extremely

serious matter which could prejudice US freedom of action on [the]

entire question of Cuban responsibility” for JFK’s assassination. Helms

did not want anything else coming out that could pressure the US to

invade Cuba, and he probably knew enough about Oswald’s closely

watched trip to Mexico to know that there was nothing to the Duran

allegations. However, the cable wasn’t sent, because Win Scott told CIA

headquarters it was already “too late to call off the arrest.”15

The memo Phillips had sent about Duran’s being seen in cars with

Texas plates was “for possible use in connection [with the] interrogation

[of] Duran,” and her interrogation by the Mexican authorities turned

out to be a nightmare.16 Several years later, Duran told a trusted CIA

informant that on November 23, 1963, during her interrogation, she was

“beaten until she admitted that she had an affair with Oswald.”17 In a

phone call bugged by the CIA a few days later, the Cuban ambassador

to Mexico told Cuban president Dorticos that Duran “has black and

blue marks on her arms, which she said she got during the interroga-

tion process.” A later CIA report of that conversation tried to soften the

Cuban ambassador’s remarks, translating them as saying that “Mexican

police bruised Silvia Duran’s arms a little [by] shaking her to impress

her with the importance of his questions.”18

Duran told Congressional investigators more of what her Mexican

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interrogators had asked and told her: “They tell me that I was a

Communist . . . and they insisted that I was a very important person for . . .