Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (30 page)

We have evidence that suggests the SR/6 soft file was already open by the time of the State Department's defector inquiry of October 25, 1960. It comes from the October 31, 1960, OS/SRS (Office of Security/Security Research Staff) memo on American defectors, written by Marguerite D. Stevens." This was the memo in which Stevens had indicated that the Deputy Chief of Security, Bannerman, had asked SRS for information on individuals other than Webster, Oswald, Ricciardelli, Sloboda, and Dutkanicz-the very defectors who were the subjects of the SR/6 soft file. In spite of these directions, Stevens's memo did mention a few things on some of these defectors, and gave file numbers belonging to five of them: "Robert Edward Webster, EE-18854; Lee Harvey Oswald, MS-11165; Libero Ricciardelli, MS-8295; Vladimir Sloboda, MS10565; and Joseph Dutkanicz, MS-10724."43

These file numbers are intriguing. Oswald's MS-11165 has so far appeared only on Stevens's memo. Why did four of the defectors have "MS" numbers and Webster have an "EE" number? Several former employees were unable to recall what "MS" or "EE" meant, although Ray Rocca, of Counterintelligence Research and Analysis, suggested (before he died in 1994) that MS might have been "miscellaneous security." This seems redundant because Oswald already had a security file-OS-351-164. A former Soviet Russia Division employee suggested Rocca might have been wrong about this because such important defectors as Ricciardelli, Dutkanicz, Sloboda, and Oswald were hardly miscellaneous cases. Another possibility is that the MS reflected the military service status of these other four men,4" while the EE might have reflected Webster's civilian status.45 On the other hand, EE-29229 was a CIA file number for Gerry Patrick Hemming, an ex-Marine. The CIA should explain to the public what these file designators meant.

Several of these defectors "have been of interest to CIA," Stevens said in the October 31, 1960, Security Research Staff memo, and she then listed each of them with a remark. Part of Stevens's memo is still classified, but one person on her list was Sloboda, another American serviceman who defected a month after Dutkanicz. "Sloboda is currently of interest to Security," she wrote, "in view of his assignment prior to his defection to the Soviet Union, via East Germany, on 3 August [1960]."1 Like Dutkanicz, Sloboda had been in Army Military Intelligence (MI) at the time he defected. Sloboda's rank had been specialist five, and he had worked as a translator-interrogator and document clerk with the Army's 513th MI Group, in Frankfurt, Germany.41

"He had contact with at least one representative of CIA," Stevens wrote of Sloboda's Army work in her 1960 memo, "and was in a position to [have] learned the identities of CIA personnel at the EGIS Center," presumably an intelligence center associated with Sloboda's Army unit."48 Again, like Dutkanicz, Sloboda had been recruited by the KGB prior to his defection. Here is what one CIA report said about it:

Sloboda's prior KGB involvement was confirmed by [redacted] as reported in [redacted]. See attached memorandum of 28 'March 1962 in regard to passage of this information to the Army. Further indications are the facts that Sloboda was a KGB resettlement case and that he later told an American Embassy Moscow official that he had been blackmailed and framed into going to the USSR. See Moscow Emb. tels A-572, 23 October 1962, and 851, 23 March 1962.49

The similarities between Dutkanicz and Sloboda were stunning. Both had been in Germany, in the Army, in Military Intelligence Branch, had defected within days of each other, and had been recruited by the KGB prior to their defections. The CIA's counterintelligence analysts even concluded that both defections were "precipitated" by the same circumstance: increased Army security measures.5o

The Sloboda case was nastier because his true past had been concealed from the U.S. intelligence and security checks that were conducted on him. Just how serious the case was can be seen from an October 12, 1960, memorandum from Scotty Miler, a deputy to Angleton on the Cl staff. Miler's memo contained this revelation:

1. On basis of report from Berlin [redacted] orally asked the Army for any information substantiating allegations that subject, prior to escaping to West and enlisting in the U.S. Army, had been a Staff Officer in Polish Intelligence. CUF records were negative. A copy of the ACSI [Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army] report concerning subject, dated 15 September 1960, was provided us through CI/Liaison but not formally transmitted to the Agency.

2. The attached report appears to answer the question concerning Polish Intelligence, but, of course, raises additional questions concerning Soviet Intelligence not answered in the memorandum. Specifically, there was also an interest in attempting to determine if subject could have had any knowledge of the [redacted] case and, again, except by inference in para 7 [redacted], there is no positive answer. On the larger question of general knowledge of this Agency and Agency activities we presume [redacted] will provide answers.

3. We do not plan an immediate follow-up inquiry to ACSI about the attached, but if you have any questions you believe might be answered by ACSI, please let us know and we can arrange to have them forwarded."

When we combine the fact that Sloboda was a Polish or Soviet agent while he was working for the Army with the fact that Sloboda defected immediately after Dutkanicz, who was in the Army, it is natural to wonder whether the two cases were tied together in some sinister way. For example: Could Sloboda have been a spotter or Dutkanicz's control? How sure can we be about Sloboda's loyalties?

One of the last of the original group of defectors to return to the U.S. was Libero Ricciardelli. He came back in 1963, and was debriefed by the CIA on July 18, 1963, as this passage from a CIA Domestic Contacts Division memo makes clear:

1. This Division has no objection to your revealing to the FBI that Subject is a source of this Agency, provided the FBI does not disclose the source's identity outside the Bureau.

2. Subject, a former US citizen, who in 1958 defected to the USSR, and acquired Soviet citizenship in 1959, was interviewed by our field representative on 18 July 1963, at the house of Subject's father in Needham, Massachussetts. The results of our representative's first debriefing session with Subject are contained in the attached report, 00-A-3,269,779.52

It is hard not to wonder why these defectors seem to change their minds about the Soviet Union quickly and to such an extent that most were able and willing to provide the CIA with all the military and economic information they had learned while in the Communist superpower. Obviously these American defectors would be full of useful information to the CIA if they returned to the U.S.

We will later examine the possibility that Oswald might have been deliberately sent into Russia or manipulated into going there. For now, it is interesting to observe that SR/6 began files on these men at the time of their defections. Their own, even if somewhat limited, military backgrounds would facilitate observation of things military that civilian tourists might not notice. We should also observe that CI/SIG opened their 201 files later than was customary. In the intervening months, CI/OPS [Operations] displayed an interest in information on Oswald. And finally, we should note that the head of Cl, James Angleton, had begun his hunt for a mole in the Soviet Russia (SR) Division before Oswald's release from the Marines in September 1959.

Before considering what the CIA might have been able to learn about Oswald in Russia during the period he was lost in Minsk, we would be well served to ask this question: Is there any hard evidence that the CIA had roving human assets in the Soviet Union at this time? Not surprisingly, the answer is yes.

The "Clergyman" In Lvov

On July 28, 1960, the Soviet news agency Tass reported that "John Joseph Dutkanicz" had requested asylum in the U.S.S.R. On August 25, 1960, U.S. military authorities in West Berlin announced that Dutkanicz had been absent without leave since July 6, 1960, and added that "the Army had no confirmation of the report that he had defected to the Soviets, or that he was in Moscow."s' The CIA did know that Dutkanicz had defected, and they knew that he was not in Moscow, but in Lvov. This information, as well as much more about Dutkanicz and what the CIA really knew about him, was described in a memorandum responding to "questions" in late 1964, right after the publication of the Warren Report.

The subject of this memorandum, written on October 2, 1964, by Lee Wigren, Chief of "R" [research and analysis] in the Counterintelligence Branch of the Soviet Russia Division, was "Questions Concerning Defectors Joseph J. Dutkanicz (201-289236) and Vladimir O. Sloboda (201-287527)."1 With respect to Dutkanicz's Army assignment at time of his defection in July 1960, Wigren's memo said that although the Army Case Summary showed Dutkanicz was assigned to the 32nd Signal Battalion in Darmstadt, "his wife indicated that he had CIC [Counterintelligence Corps] connections." Mrs. Dutkanicz told State Department officials some intriguing details about her husband:

In an interview at the American Embassy Moscow on 5 December 1961 (cited in DBA-288, 24 January 1962), she indicated that their trip behind the iron curtain "had been made possible because her husband worked for the CIC [Counterintelligence Corps] and was allowed to do things an ordinary `GI' could not do.""

As previously discussed, Dutkanicz's 201 file was 201-289236, just twelve numbers away from Oswald's-201-289248. The CIA personnel who had been handling Dutkanicz's 201 had left handwritten clues indicating that Mrs. Dutkanicz was right. "There are also penciled notations in the [Dutkanicz] 201 file," Wigren said, "suggesting that his Army assignment may have included intelligence functions of some kind."57

The Cl Staff summary for the State Department in November 1960, marked "secret," said, "We are informed that Dutkanicz has had difficulties with his wife and that she reported that he had relatives in the USSR and that he admitted that he was a Communist and that he had associated with German Nationals who were Communists.""

As Wigren looked deeper into the files of these two U.S. Army defectors, he noticed that both men had had connections to the KGB. Again, the Army Case Summary was Wigren's source document:

Dutkanicz himself told American Embassy officials in Moscow that he had been approached by KGB representatives in a bar near Darmstadt in 1958 and had accepted recruitment as a result of their threats and inducements. He claimed to have given them minimum cooperation from then until his defection, although the Army considered it probable that he had done more than he admitted. A further indication of his KGB involvement before defection is the fact that the special decree granting him Soviet citizenship was enacted three months before his arrival in the U.S.S.R."

The cause of Dutkanicz's defection had been the Army's security investigations itself. He "told American Embassy Moscow officials that he had informed his KGB handler that he was under investigation for security reasons. He defected soon after, in accord with a KGB suggestion that he do so."60

No sooner than he had defected, however, Dutkanicz was talking with a CIA informant inside the Soviet Union. From the JFK files released by the CIA in 1994 comes the startling news that on July 10, 1960, Dutkanicz met a "clergyman" in the lobby of the Intourist Hotel in Lvov. The "clergyman" submitted this account of his encounter with Dutkanicz to the CIA that same July:

1. On the morning of Monday, 10 July 1960, at about 0930-1000 hours I chanced to meet one Joseph Dutkanych, [sic] allegedly a defected US citizen, in the lobby of the Intourist Hotel in the city of Lvov, USSR.

2. I was recognized and approached by Mr. Dutkanych while making my way up the hotel stairway toward my hotel room. After the customary greetings, I suggested he accompany me to my room where we remained for not more than ten minutes. Since I had arranged that morning for a private conducted tour of Lvov our conversation dealt primarily with the points of interest I was scheduled to see.b'

The two men arranged to have dinner together that evening, but the clergyman in Lvov said, "I never saw him again as he failed to keep his appointment." Thus the CIA did have at least one interesting and capable informant in the Soviet Union whose timely reporting concerned the American defector in Lvov. Which brings us to Oswald, who was supposed to be lost in Minsk. Indeed, he was in Minsk, but was he lost?

A Clandestine Soviet Source on Oswald?

The CIA has overtly maintained that Oswald's 201 file was opened as a result of his name appearing on a list of defectors from the State Department. Yet that list was sent to the CIA on October 25, 1960, more than six weeks before Ann Egerter opened the 201 file on December 9. Is there a possibility that Oswald's desire to return home was known by December 1960: As we have seen, fragmentary but solid evidence has slowly accumulated over the years that suggests the Agency might have had ways of finding out about Oswald's activities in Russia.

In the present chapter we have already taken some tentative steps to explore the hypothesis that Oswald's 201 file was opened, at least in part, due to his query about coming home. When did Oswald actually begin to talk about coming home? The first signs of his disillusionment with life in Russia appeared as early as May 1960, but grew in the fall. In an entry for May 1, 1960, in his diary, Oswald wrote that he felt "uneasy inside" after his friend Ziger advised him to return to the United States.62 In a diary entry for "August-September" 1960, Oswald wrote that he was becoming "increasingly conscious" of the "sort" of a society he lived in.63

After returning to the United States, Oswald often commented on life in Russia. On the positive side, he would point to the Soviet systems of public education and medical care, the fact that everyone "was trained to do something," and the system of regular wage and salary increases. His negative comments focused on the general low quality of life, the lack of freedom, and the scarcity of food products. In this regard, he was especially critical of the contrast between ordinary workers and Communist Party members.