The Annals of Unsolved Crime (36 page)

He made arrangements for Marina and his daughter to return to Dallas, and for a tourist card to go to Mexico City, which was the nearest city with a Cuban embassy.

Paris, France. September 14, 1963.

On September 14, 1963, Cubela arrived in Paris. He was there ostensibly to study French at the Alliance Française. At least, that is what he told the CIA. But, as he was acting under the control of the Cuban DGI, his likely purpose was to continue his “dangle” operation in a city in which the Cubans had an embassy and could conduct counter-surveillance. The CIA accommodated Cubela by arranging a safe house for his meetings with the CIA.

Dallas, Texas. September 25, 1963.

On the night of September 25, in Dallas, Oswald and two dark-skinned men came to the home of Sylvia Odio, a young Cuban refugee. Her father had been involved in a plot to kill Castro the year before—a plot in which Cubela had also been involved. Unlike Cubela, however, her father had been captured in Cuba and was still imprisoned there. The visitors related to her “details about where they saw her father and what activities he was in,” as she later told the Warren Commission investigators. Oswald, who was introduced as “Leon Oswald,” was described to her in Spanish by one of the men as an ex-Marine and expert shot. Odio abruptly ended the conversation when they started discussing the Cuban underground because, as she later told me, she became “highly suspicious” of them. The next day, she received a call from them saying that they were on their way to Mexico.

Later that same day, Oswald crossed the border into Mexico at Nuevo Laredo, Texas, on a Continental Trailways bus.

Mexico City, Mexico. September 27, 1963.

On September 27, at 10:00 a.m. Oswald arrived by bus in Mexico City. He registered at the Hotel Comercio under the alias O. H. Lee. To get to Cuba, he believed that he also would need a visa from the Soviet Union—then Cuba’s closest ally—so he first visited the Soviet embassy, which was only a block away from the Cuban embassy compound. He then walked to the Cuban Embassy, where he was interviewed by Silvia Tirado de Duran, who had been hired there months earlier to be part of the consular section. Oswald told her that he was “a friend of the Cuban revolution” and presented the documentary evidence of his pro-Castro activities in New Orleans.

Silvia Duran strongly supported Castro, although she was a Mexican citizen, and wrote on his visa application: “The
applicant states that he is a member of the American Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He displayed documents in proof of his membership in the two aforementioned organizations.” Meanwhile, Oswald, after again going to the Soviet embassy, returned in the afternoon to the Cuban embassy and asked to see a higher-ranking Cuban official, Eusebio Azque. According to witnesses, they engaged in a heated exchange about what Oswald could do to help Cuba. Oswald returned the next day, even though it was Saturday and the embassy was officially closed, and a number of other times in the next three days. He also met Silvia Duran and possibly other embassy employees outside the embassy—and beyond the range of the CIA’s surveillance of it. Pedro Gutierrez, a credit investigator for a Mexican department store, later stated that he saw Oswald leaving the Cuban embassy that same Tuesday in the company of a tall Cuban, and that both got into a car. Early the next morning, Oswald checked out of the hotel and boarded the 8:30 a.m. Transporte del Norte bus headed for Texas.

Paris, France. October 3–13, 1963.

Nestor Sanchez arrived in Paris on October 3, 1963. Accompanied by two other CIA officers, he immediately went to the safe house to complete the recruitment of AMLASH. The mission now had been fully approved by CIA headquarters at Langley.

Cubela, however, had a surprise for the CIA. Before he would go ahead with the plan to eliminate Castro (which he had himself proposed in Brazil), he wanted some sort of personal assurance or “signal” from Attorney General Kennedy that the Kennedy Administration would actively support him in this endeavor. On October 11, Sanchez cabled his superiors at CIA headquarters that “Cubela was insistent upon meeting with a senior U.S. official, preferably Robert F. Kennedy, for
assurances of U.S. moral support for any activity Cubela undertook in Cuba.” He further suggested that the “highest and profound consideration be given” to Cubela’s request. The assessment of those in contact with Cubela “is that he is determined to attempt op[eration] against Castro with or without U.S. support.” Sanchez received a cable in reply that ordered him to return to the United States via London “before entering final round discussions with AMLASH.”

Dallas, Texas. October 17, 1963.

After Mexico, Oswald moved to a rooming house on North Beckley Street in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas under the alias “O. H. Lee.” He had moved his wife Marina and young daughter June to the home of a friend, Ruth Paine, in Irving, Texas. He had also stowed his rifle there in the Paine garage. Acting as if he were on a secret mission, he forbade his wife to tell anyone where he was living or working. On October 17, he had gotten a job paying a $1.25 an hour filling orders for textbooks at the Texas School Book Depository. The building, in downtown Dallas, overlooked at least one of the possible routes that a presidential motorcade would likely take en route to the airport.

Washington, D.C. Mid-October 1963.

Overruling objections by his own unit’s counterintelligence officer, FitzGerald decided to meet with Cubela himself as a “personal representative” of the president’s brother. The risk of possibly compromising the president was apparently outweighed in his opinion by the gains in advancing the Kennedy Administration’s goal of a coup d’état in Cuba. The contact plan for the meeting stated: “FitzGerald will represent himself as personal representative of Robert F. Kennedy who traveled
to [Paris] for specific purpose of meeting AMLASH and giving him assurances of full support with the change of the present government.”

Meanwhile, the CIA counterintelligence staff notified the FBI, the Department of State, and Naval intelligence of Oswald’s contact with the Cuban and Soviet embassies. Since the CIA was then restricted from investigating U.S. citizens in the absence of a “special request,” it “did nothing further on the case,” according to its own files on Oswald, except to request on October 23 a photograph of Oswald from the Navy to check against its files.

Havana, Cuba. Mid-October, 1963.

On October 15, 1963, Oswald’s visa was processed in Havana. Castro would later claim that Oswald had acted crazily in his visits to the embassy, talking wildly about taking action to “free Cuba from American imperialism.” But that assessment did not prevent the Cuban Foreign Ministry from approving his application. Three days later the Ministry notified the Cuban embassy in Mexico that it could issue Oswald his Cuban visa, provided that he showed proof that he had obtained a Soviet entry visa. If Oswald had still been in contact with Duran or other Cuban Embassy employees, he would have learned that he had been provided with a way of getting to Cuba.

Paris, France. October 29, 1963.

FitzGerald met with Cubela at the safe house—this time a hotel suite—on October 29, 1963, using the alias “James Clark.”

Cubela said he wanted confirmation from a senior U.S. official, not a member of the CIA. FitzGerald assured Cubela that once the coup had succeeded and Castro had been removed from power, the Kennedy Administration would be fully
prepared to aid and support the new government. Cubela asked for the delivery of a specific weapon—a rifle with telescopic sights capable of killing Castro from a distance.

Although FitzGerald did not use his real name, he was a well-known figure in Washington, and, if Cubela were debriefed on this meeting, FitzGerald would have been readily identifiable to Cuban intelligence from Cubela’s description. Castro would then have further proof that the plotters in Paris were no rogue group in the CIA.

New York City. November 14, 1963.

The CIA was informed by one of its agents that Cubela was not at all happy that he was denied by the CIA “certain small pieces of equipment which promised a final solution to the problem.” Presumably, this referred to the high-powered rifle with telescopic sight that he had specifically requested from the man representing himself as Kennedy’s personal emissary.

Miami. November 18, 1963.

FitzGerald arranged a further “signal” for Cubela. He wrote a section of the speech that President Kennedy was to deliver in Miami on November 18. It described the Castro government as a “small band of conspirators” that, “once removed,” would ensure United States assistance to the Cuban nation.

The day after Kennedy delivered this “signal,” FitzGerald ordered Sanchez to arrange another meeting with Cubela, one in which the specifics would be discussed. The memorandum for the CIA files notes: “C/SAS (FitzGerald) approved telling Cubela he would be given a cache inside Cuba. Cache could, if he requested it, include … high power rifles w/ scopes … C/SAS requested written reports on AMLASH operation be kept to a minimum.”

Cubela agreed to postpone his scheduled return to Cuba for a meeting in Paris. He expected that by the time of the meeting the CIA would already have delivered the high-powered rifle with the telescopic sight to Cuba. As he was in fact working for Cuban intelligence, the CIA weapon could be intercepted by Cuban authorities and used as proof of a plot. The date agreed on for the Paris meeting was November 22.

IV. THE DAY OF THE ASSASSINS

On November 22, 1963, shortly before 7:00 a.m. in the suburb of Irving, Texas, Oswald slipped off his wedding ring and left it, along with $170 of his savings, in a dresser drawer at the Paine home. It was for Marina. She had lived there, along with his rifle, since he had gone to Mexico. He then walked over to the home of Buell Wesley Frazier, a fellow worker at the Texas Book Depository, who lived on the same block as Ruth Paine. The night before, Oswald had hitched a ride with him to Irving. As there would be traffic because of the president’s announced visit to Dallas that Friday, Oswald and Frazier had to leave early to be back in Dallas in time for work at the Book Depository. Oswald carried with him an oblong package wrapped in coarse brown paper. When Frazier saw it, he assumed it contained the curtain rods that Oswald had told him he needed to get from Irving. Just before 8:00 a.m., they arrived at the Book Depository, and Oswald walked quickly into the building, his package tucked under one arm.

Air Force One landed at Love Field in Dallas at 11:40 that morning and taxied to a terminal building usually used for international arrivals. President Kennedy stepped out onto the top step of the ramp, and he then helped his wife Jackie into their waiting Lincoln limousine. Texas Governor John Connally got into the jump seats in front of the president and his wife. It
was a clear November day, and the president decided against using the transparent bubble top for the motorcade through Dallas. By noon, the fifteen-car procession had left Love Field.

At noon in Paris, Nestor Sanchez kept his appointment with Cubela at the CIA’s safe house. As he had been instructed by FitzGerald, he referred Cubela to the lines in the speech that President Kennedy had made four days earlier, lines that were intended to signal to Cubela American support of an anti-Communist government in Cuba once Castro was “removed” from power. FitzGerald had also authorized Sanchez to supply Cubela with a weapon that Dr. Edward Gunn at the CIA lab had hastily devised. It was a Paper Mate ballpoint pen with one hidden enhancement: a tiny needle engineered to release a lethal toxin. The poison for it, Blackleaf 40, could be either injected into a beverage Castro might drink or, as it was transdermal, it could be put on an object that Castro might touch. According to the CIA plan, Cubela would surreptitiously administer the poison and casually discard the pen. At the meeting, Sanchez showed Cubela the almost-invisible needle that shot out from an otherwise innocent-looking ball point pen. Cubela ridiculed the pen and expressed dismay that the weapon promised to him, a high-powered rifle fitted with telescopic sights, had not been delivered to his associate in Cuba. In the midst of the discussion, another CIA officer rushed into the room to inform Sanchez that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. The assassin had used a rifle with a telescopic sight.

The president, taken to Dallas’s Parkland Hospital, was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. By this time, police had found a rifle with a telescopic sight on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository. Near it were three spent shells. Boxes had been arranged to create a makeshift sniper’s nest. From it, an assassin could see the three main streets of Dallas—Elm, Main, and Commerce—converge in the plaza below before they reached
the elevated expressways that carried traffic out of town. In checking employees on the six floor, it was found that Oswald was missing.

After walking seven blocks up Elm Street, Oswald caught a bus going in the exact opposite direction. He stayed on it for only two blocks, then, after walking another few blocks, hailed a taxi. He told the driver to take him to Neely Street in Oak Cliff, only a block from his rooming house on North Beckley Street, where he lived under a false name. He then went to his room, put on his grey zippered jacket, and took from the closet his snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver. According to his landlady, he left about 1:00 p.m.

Shortly afterward, in Oak Cliff, a Dallas police officer, J. D. Tippit, was found bleeding to death next to his radio car. Witnesses at the scene said he had been shot repeatedly by a man in a grey jacket. The description matched that of Oswald.

In Paris, late that night, Sanchez received, as he recalled, an urgent cable from FitzGerald telling him that “everything was off.” He was ordered to return to Washington immediately. Meanwhile, Cubela was heading back to Havana via Prague, where presumably he would be debriefed by his controlling officers in Cuban intelligence.