The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (34 page)

CIA OFFICER DAVID Atlee Phillips met with Oswald in Dallas in late August or early September 1963, apparently to debrief him after his New Orleans media appearances. Oswald had built a public and documented record as firmly pro-Castro and had handled a variety of situations well. Phillips was ready to prepare him for his next assignment: to be one of the US assets going to Mexico City to obtain Cuban permission to fly to Havana. While the United States could use speedboats to sneak assets and agents into Cuba at night, those people couldn’t travel freely or openly talk to lower-level officials and the public and thus could not gauge the level of public support for the coup. Since the United States had no embassy or diplomatic relations with Cuba, and since travel to the island was severely restricted, the United States needed a number of assets who could travel openly. As a former defector to Russia, someone like Oswald was especially valuable because if he ever got into trouble, the United States could claim that the Russians were behind his activities.

Phillips’s meeting with Oswald was unusual for two reasons: It occurred openly, in a public place in Dallas, and it involved Cuban exile leader Antonio Veciana of the CIA-backed exile group Alpha 66. Veciana and his Alpha 66 group were barred from the JFK–Almeida coup plan because of their earlier attack on a Russian ship in Cuban waters. However, Veciana was also very close partners with Eloy
Menoyo, one of the exile leaders the Kennedys and Harry Williams wanted to participate in the JFK–Almeida coup plan.

Veciana’s story of meeting Oswald and Phillips in the lobby of the new Southland Building in Dallas has been controversial, though Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi concluded that such a meeting did take place. Veciana hinted that Phillips used the name Maurice Bishop, and CIA official Ross Crozier later confirmed that to Congressional investigators. Kurtz found new confirmation, saying that “Hunter Leake told me that David Atlee Phillips . . . used the alias [Maurice Bishop].” Veciana revealed to my researcher, Thom Hartmann, that he originally named his group Alpha 66 after the Phillips 66 gas stations that were common in the early 1960s.

David Atlee Phillips came from nearby Fort Worth, and by meeting Oswald in public—in the lobby of Dallas’s newest glittering office tower—Phillips must have realized he could have been seen with Oswald by someone who knew him. Such behavior seems illogical and inconsistent with Phillips’s long intelligence experience, unless Oswald was being used as an intelligence asset for an operation far from Dallas. In addition, it’s hard to believe a veteran CIA officer like Phillips would be in public with Oswald in Dallas if he knew that Oswald was going to be an assassin or a patsy for JFK’s assassination in that same city.

The Phillips–Oswald–Veciana meeting makes sense if Phillips was using Oswald in the CIA’s anti-Castro operations as one of the US assets the Agency planned to move into Cuba before the coup. Apparently, Phillips hoped Oswald’s pro-Castro media blitz would help him get into Cuba via Mexico City. Phillips was based in Mexico City, where he headed anti-Castro operations. In addition, Phillips played a major role in the CIA’s Cuban operations based in the United States, ranging from being a part of the JFK–Almeida coup plan to
handling Cuban exile groups like the DRE and Alpha 66, as well as generating anti-Castro propaganda and working against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Some of Phillips’s most sensitive anti-Castro operations—for Washington CIA officials Richard Helms and Desmond FitzGerald—were kept secret from most others in the CIA, including Winston “Win” Scott, the CIA Chief of Station in Mexico City.

Antonio Veciana said that Phillips had summoned him from Miami to the Dallas meeting so they could “discuss plans . . . to kill Castro.” Veciana also claimed that at the Dallas meeting, Oswald and Phillips were “talking about something that we can do to kill Castro.” Gaeton Fonzi notes that David Morales also worked closely with Phillips. He wrote that “Morales was away from the [Miami CIA] Station a lot” in 1963, “usually . . . on trips to Mexico City.” That close relationship between Morales and Phillips also meant that Johnny Rosselli could learn from his close friend Morales what Phillips was working on. In 1963 David Morales—who admitted helping to assassinate JFK—still outranked David Atlee Phillips and could easily have proposed to Phillips that he meet Oswald in public and that Veciana be allowed to see Oswald for some reason.

Years later Phillips wrote a never-published autobiographical manuscript, part fact and part fiction, which has been quoted in
Vanity Fair
and other publications. In it Phillips confirmed that Oswald was part of the CIA’s effort to assassinate Fidel Castro. He added that President Kennedy was shot using “precisely the plan we had devised against Castro.” Phillips wrote that the plan involved using “a sniper’s rifle from an upper floor window of a building on the route where Castro often drove in an open jeep.” In some ways, that confirms something indicated in later AMWORLD memos: The CIA planned to have Fidel shot in his open jeep as he drove into Varadero Beach.

On the other hand, Phillips built a long and decorated CIA career as a propagandist using half-truths, distortions, and lies, so what he wrote must be taken with a grain of salt. It was also probably designed as damage control in case files or testimony emerged that could harm the reputation of Phillips or the CIA. While there is probably some truth in what he wrote, Oswald was not an experienced assassin, and the CIA would have no more trusted him to murder Fidel than the Mafia would have used the inexperienced Oswald to shoot JFK. However, as with JFK’s murder, Oswald did have the proper background to be an excellent patsy to take the blame for Castro’s death. If Phillips had no knowing role in JFK’s murder, it’s also possible that someone like David Morales manipulated things so that Phillips—and Richard Helms—believed Oswald was a “bad apple” who used “the plan we had devised against Castro” to kill JFK. The result would have been—and was—that Helms and Phillips would withhold substantial amounts of crucial information from the press, the public, their superiors, and other agencies.

Based on the statements of both Phillips and Veciana, Oswald appears to have been involved in the CIA’s attempts to kill Fidel Castro. That perhaps casts the meeting between Oswald and Marcello in a different light, since the godfather was also part of the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Fidel. Essentially, they were on the same side and doing work for the same agency.

AS FOR OSWALD, his recent flurry of activity and upcoming attempt to get to Cuba through Mexico City no doubt made him think his years of undercover toil were about to pay off in a big way. The FBI found telling notes that Oswald wrote and that the Warren Commission left out of its Report because they clashed with the Commission’s view of
Oswald as an ardent Communist. Instead, they were included only in the Warren Commission’s rarely seen twenty-six volumes of supporting material. In the notes, Oswald wrote that the United States and Russia “have too much to offer to each other to be tearing at each other’s throats in an endless cold war. Both countries have major shortcomings and advantages, but only in ours is the voice of dissent allowed opportunity of expression.”

Oswald makes it clear in these notes that he still hates Communism, writing, “[T]here are possibly few other Americans born in the US who [have] as many personal reasons to know—and therefore hate and mistrust—Communism.” According to the Warren Commission, Oswald wrote these “Notes for a speech by Lee Harvey Oswald” but never delivered the speech. It was the kind of oration Oswald could have given only after he was no longer undercover and had been revealed as a US asset, perhaps scoring a lucrative book and television deal like his childhood idol from
I Led Three Lives
.

After meeting Phillips, but before going to Mexico City, Oswald apparently traveled from New Orleans to Dallas. There, someone—most likely someone working with the Mafia such as Martino, Banister, or Morales—manipulated Oswald into visiting Silvia Odio, thus linking him to both JFK’s assassination and another of the exile groups in the JFK–Almeida coup plan. Oswald’s Odio visit and the exile’s follow-up phone call don’t appear to have involved David Atlee Phillips because they seem to undermine what he was trying to do with Oswald. By connecting Oswald to several parts of the JFK–Almeida coup plan, those working for Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli could ensure that when Oswald surfaced as the main suspect, the CIA and other agencies would have to cover up much information to protect the coup plan—which is exactly what happened.

HISTORIAN JOHN NEWMAN, a twenty-year veteran of military intelligence, posed the question, “Why did Oswald come into contact with so many people with CIA connections in August and September 1963?” He named five individuals, but more have since emerged, including John Martino (whom the CIA admits was a CIA asset), David Ferrie, and David Atlee Phillips. One of those Newman named was William Gaudet, a CIA asset who worked for INCA’s founder. It’s now clear that Gaudet was part of the “tight” surveillance of Oswald mentioned earlier.

A former Senate investigator wrote that “before his death in 1981, Gaudet admitted witnessing Oswald’s distribution of pro-Castro leaflets in” New Orleans. Historian Richard Mahoney says that when “Oswald applied for and received a Mexican tourist card (FM 824085) in New Orleans on September 17 (1963), the individual who received the tourist card with the previous number (FM 824084) was William George Gaudet . . . who had close ties to the local office of the CIA. Gaudet later admitted under oath that he had seen Oswald one day ‘in deep conversation with [Banister] on Camp Street . . . they were leaning over and talking and it was an earnest conversation.’ Gaudet said his impression was that Banister was asking Oswald to do something for him.”

William Gaudet later saw Oswald in Mexico City, as he explained to Michael Kurtz. Gaudet’s testimony is further proof that Oswald was involved in US intelligence activity in 1963. It also helps explain why he was never placed on the FBI’s Security Index before Dallas. Yet Gaudet’s observations are further proof that Oswald was working with Guy Banister, who was part of Carlos Marcello’s plot to kill JFK.

WHOLE BOOKS AND a massive Congressional report have been written about the unusual aspects of Oswald’s trip to Mexico City
in late September 1963, when he apparently visited both the Cuban and Soviet embassies. However, for JFK’s assassination, only a few facts are key. First is that Oswald visited the Cuban Embassy on the same day as two other unusual young men, and all three tried to get Cuban entry visas. One turned out later to be working for intelligence in Nicaragua, one of the countries where Manuel Artime had an AMWORLD base and worked with the intelligence service. Summers says the third young man “behaved as though he was on some sort of undercover mission in Mexico, and [his] movements ran parallel to Oswald’s.” This young man worked for intelligence in Costa Rica, which was the other country where Artime had an AMWORLD base. Thus all three young men appear linked to Manuel Artime. The CIA was clearly attempting to slip multiple assets into Cuba through Mexico City at the same time in the hope that some might get through.

Oswald was under surveillance by US intelligence in Mexico City, according to Win Scott, the CIA’s Mexico City Station Chief. Scott said the CIA’s hidden cameras photographed Oswald at the embassy, and he saw photos of Oswald there. The House Select Committee on Assassinations found additional evidence of the existence of photos of Oswald in Mexico City. However, only unrelated photos of someone else (who looked nothing like Oswald) would be furnished to the Warren Commission and eventually made public. That’s probably because the CIA’s photo surveillance operation in Mexico City was under the control of David Atlee Phillips, who was no doubt acting on orders from Richard Helms. One reason for withholding the Oswald–Mexico photos—and denying the CIA had known Oswald was in Mexico—would be that Oswald was involved in a highly sensitive, covert operation run by Phillips and Helms.

It was important for JFK’s murder that someone didn’t want Oswald to actually get to Cuba. We know that because five phony calls claiming to be from Oswald were made to the Russian and Cuban embassies while the real Oswald was in Mexico City. We know these calls, monitored for the CIA, weren’t really from Oswald because the person (or persons) making them spoke broken Russian (in which Oswald was fluent) and excellent Spanish (a language Oswald didn’t speak). The Mafia had the connections to ensure that he never got to Cuba. A Mexican police agency involved with Trafficante’s heroin network monitored the Cuban and Russian embassy calls for the CIA while mobster (and active CIA asset) Richard Cain had formerly bugged a Communist embassy in Mexico City.

At the time of Oswald’s visit, a flurry of odd cables flowed between the Mexico City CIA station and CIA headquarters in Washington along two different paths. One path carried accurate information about Oswald to Desmond FitzGerald and Richard Helms, while the other conveyed inaccurate information about him.
Washington Post
reporter Jefferson Morley interviewed a former CIA official who told him that “CIA records suggested that members of [FitzGerald’s staff] seemed to be carefully guarding information about Oswald in the weeks before Kennedy was killed.” The person managing both the accurate and the inaccurate information about Oswald was Richard Helms’s assistant. After JFK’s murder, and for almost three decades later, Helms maintained that before the assassination the CIA hadn’t even noticed Oswald’s embassy visits. Declassified files now show that claim to be completely false, as documented by historian and retired Major John Newman.

The actions of Oswald and the CIA are consistent with Oswald’s being one of several US intelligence assets the CIA was trying to get
into Cuba openly. In fact, a Warren Commission memo, left out of its Final Report, showed exactly how Oswald could have been planning to travel to Mexico City again, and on to Cuba, on November 22, 1963. As an American with a pro-Castro persona, Oswald could have openly walked the streets of Havana or Varadero Beach talking to Cubans and low-level officials.