THE ANTI-LATELL REPORT

Dr. Latell’s Involution in JFK Assassination Research

ARNALDO M. FERNANDEZ

Abstract

This study demonstrates how former CIA desk analyst and current scholar Dr.

Brian Latell has followed the trodden path of manipulation and deception beneath

intellectual veneer for transfiguring the JFK-assassination conspiracy theory

“Castro did it” into “Castro knew it.”

The more "findings" Dr. Latell puts together, the lesser good arguments are

available for explaining why Oswald was missed as a security risk unless the CIA

itself were plotting with Fidel Castro. That’s preposterous, but it’s the logical

conclusion under of Dr. Lattel’s “conspiracy of silence[:] Fidel knew Oswald's

intentions to shoot President Kennedy and did nothing to deter the act."1

The study provides six key counterarguments against Dr. Lattel’s hypothesis:

Oswald's contacts with Cuban officials in 1959 were irrelevant

The phone calls to Luisa Calderon at the Cuban Commercial Office in

Mexico City the very day of the assassination are not evidence at all for

proving Castro´s foreknowledge of Oswald

Cuban defector Vladimir Rodriguez-Lahera knew nothing useful on Oswald

Cuban consul Alfredo Mirabal-Diaz was speaking truth to power before the

House Select Committee on Assassinations

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover did not distort the information given by Castro

to FBI super spy Jack Childs in the mission SOLO 15.

The “Jaimanitas story” told by Cuban defector Florentino Aspillaga is

nonsensical and likely untrue

The study also refutes the hypothesis of Major Rolando Cubela as double agent

loyal to Castro and deals with the logic of the JFK assassination research.

Key words: JFK Assassination, conspiracy theory, Lee Harvey Oswald, Fidel

Castro, John F. Kennedy, Rolando Cubela, Mexico City, CIA, FBI, General

Directorate of Intelligence (DGI), Warren Commission (WC), House Select

Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).

1 Latell, Brian: Castro's Secrets, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p. 247.

Introduction

Jim DiEugenio has coined the term Shenonism2 for the deceitful tactic used by

former NYT investigative reporter Philip Shenon to tell his "secret history of the

Kennedy assassination."3 Shenon presents old things as new and conveys them to

the reader as important issues that the Warren Commission (WC) should have

known about. That's exactly what Dr. Brian Latell had done for involving Castro in

the JFK death through a "conspiracy of silence" on Oswald.4

Thusly, Dr. Latell supports the WC Report of a lone gunman who shot a magic

bullet5 with the oldest CIA backstop: Castro was somehow behind Oswald. That's

exactly what Shenon did. He dug up Mexican writer Elena Garro de Paz's long-ago

debunked story6 on Oswald at a "twist party" in Mexico City for twisting that party

into the occasion seized by Sylvia Duran —allegedly an agent of Castro's General

Directorate of Intelligence (DGI)— to put Oswald up to kill Kennedy.7

Dr. Latell changed the subtitle of his book Castro’s Secrets from The CIA and

Cuba's Intelligence Machine (2012) to Cuban Intelligence, the CIA, and the

Assassination of John F. Kennedy (2013). The latter has an additional primary

source: the unpublished memoirs of U.S. Ambassador (1961-63) in Mexico,

Thomas C. Mann, who believed "that the DGI used Oswald's hotel [in Mexico

City] foe intelligence purposes," although no shred of evidence was ever found.8

Dr. Latell is a senior research associate of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-

American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami (UM). For promoting his

book, he has been using an e-newsletter distributed by ICCAS as The Latell

Report.9 It’s officially intended to analyze "Cuba's contemporary domestic and

foreign policies," but three of the five 2013 issues were devoted to portray Castro

as the evil mastermind who jiggered Oswald for killing Kennedy.

According to Dr. Latell, the "indicators of Cuban regimen deception —and

apparent DGI engagement with Oswald— have never been properly evaluated:"10

2 “Philip Shenon's A Cruel and Shocking Act,” Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination (CTKA),

December 4, 2013 [http://www.ctka.net/reviews/shenon.html]

3 Shenon, Philip: A Cruel and Shocking Act, Henry Holt and Co., 2013.

4 See above note 1.

5 Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, United States

Government Printing Office, 1964 [http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/] 6 Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City [aka Lopez Report], House Select Committee on Assassination, 1978, Section

III.C, pp. 206-35. 7 Shenon, Philip: Op. cit., p. 556. 8 Mexico: Questions Raised by the Ambassador Mann File, April 2, 1964, p. 4. NARA Record Number:

1993.07.21.15:25:32:060280 [https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=79875] 9 ICCAS – UM Annual Report 2011-2012, pp. 3.4.21 [http://www6.miami.edu/iccas/Items/AnnualReport11-12.pdf] 10 Latell, Brian: Op. cit., p. xiii.

The 1959 Oswald's contacts with the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles were

overlooked by the FBI and the WC

The CIA did not inform the WC of Luisa Calderon's November 22,1963

phone conversations

DGI defector Vladimir Rodriguez-Lahera's knowledge that Castro had lied

on Oswald apparently was not shared with the WC

An incriminating error by Cuban consul Alfredo Mirabal-Diaz before the

House Special Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) went unnoticed

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover submitted to WC a report in June 1964 that

minimized and distorted the meaning of Operation SOLO for acquiring

information from Castro

DGI defector Florentino Aspillaga´s story was not publicly revealed until the

first edition of Castro’s Secrets (2012)

Latellism is the lightest version of "Castro did it" as "Castro knew it." The latter

approach thrives on claques of people who cannot think logically for many reasons

or will not think logically because they have a fanatical anti-Castro agenda.

Oswald as Person of Interest

Neither the FBI nor the WC overlooked the 1959 Oswald's contacts with the Cuban

consulate in Los Angeles. They were simply irrelevant.

Oswald was released by the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) at Air Station El Toro,

Southern California, on September 11, 1959.11 Even if he would have been

infatuated with the Castro revolution more than with the Russian language, which

he learned at fast pace by that time,12 Castro wouldn’t have driven him against the

U.S. The dispute between Washington and Havana hasn't publicly erupted yet. On

September 3-4, 1959, U.S. Ambassador Phillip Bonsal talked with Castro about

"serious concerns," but also expressed "the general sympathy with objectives of

Cuban revolution and similarity with many of our own aims and aspirations."13

The FBI interviewed 26 Marines acquainted with Oswald at El Toro. None of them

directly connected Oswald to Cuban officials. Dr. Latell lets slip "if the WC had

asked Nelson Delgado," but his testimony14 is far from useful for making the point

of an early Oswald's engagement with the budding Castro´s foreign intelligence.

11 Mary Ferrell Chronologies, Vol. 2 (a), p. 19

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=40396&relPageId=19] 12 Melanson, Philip H.: Spy Saga, Praeger Pub, 1990, p. 36 [http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/SpySaga.pdf] 13 Foreign Relations of The United States, 1958–1960, Volume VI, Cuba, Document 359

[https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d359] 14 On April 16, 1964, at the U.S. Courthouse, Foley Square, New York, taken by Mr. Wesley J. Liebeler, assistant

counsel of the WC. [http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/delgado.htm]

On the contrary, the only known witness on the spot, Gerald Patrick Hemming,

told Dick Russell in an exclusive interview: "I ran into Oswald in Los Angeles in

1959, when he showed up at the Cuban Consulate. The coordinator of the 26th of

July Movement [Castro's political group] called me aside and said a Marine officer

had showed up, intimating that he was prepared to desert and go to Cuba to

become a revolutionary. I met with the Marine (…) I thought he was a "penetrator'

[and] I told the 26th of July leadership to get rid of him."15

Notwithstanding, Dr. Latell speculates that a DGI file on Oswald was "probably"

opened when he contacted with Cuban officials in L.A. (1959), "transferred" as the

Cuban Consulate closed when the Cuba-U.S. diplomatic relations were severed

(1961), and then filled with "evidence of his militancy [and] conspicuous pro-

Castro activities in New Orleans" (1963).

Peter Dale Scott documented that both CIA and FBI sources reported that "Oswald

was unknown to Cuban Government" when he visited the Cuban Consulate in

Mexico City on September 27, 1963.16 John Newman demonstrated that the CIA

closely and constantly tracked Oswald since his defection to the USSR in

Halloween 1959.17 Jim DiEugenio pinned down that in New Orleans, 1963, Oswald

was handing out the run-out 1961 edition of the pamphlet The Crimes against

Cuba, by Corliss Lamont, from which the CIA had ordered 45 copies.18 And

Jefferson Morley has reported how three CIA teams were watching Oswald all the

way down from Moscow (1960) to Dallas (1963): the Counterintelligence Special

Investigation Group (CI-SIG), the Counterintelligence Operation (CI-OPS), and

the Counter-Espionage unit of the Soviet Russia Division (CE-SR/6).19

The CIA did certainly have a thick file on Oswald and dealt him with three index

cards.20 The Covert Operations Desk created the first one on May 25, 1960.21 The

second one was attached to Oswald's personality file (201-289248),22 opened on

December 9, 1960. The third one was generated for the Fair Play for Cuba

Committee (FPCC) file (100-300-011) on October 25, 1963. 23

15 Argosy, Vol. 383, No. 3, April 1976 [http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/argosy-hemming.htm] 16 Scott, Peter D.: Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics, Skyhorse Publishing, 2013, p. 33. 17 Newman, John: Oswald and the CIA, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2008 [1995], p. 318. 18 DiEugenio, James: Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012 [1992], p. 219. 19 “The Oswald File: Tales of the Routing Slips,” The Washington Post, April 2, 1995, 20 Photocopy of DDO Index Cards on Oswald. NARA Record Number: 1993.07.06.19:04:04:560390

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=57388] 21 After FBI Special Agent John Fain interviewed Oswald's mother and brother about "Funds Transmitted to

Residents of Russia." NARA Record Number: 104-10196-10063

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=38921] 22 NARA Record Number: 104-10067-10200

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=32190] 23 Upon the report by FBI Special Agent Warren De Brueys about Oswald's membership in “the New Orleans

chapter of the FPCC.” NARA Record Number: 104-10079-10220

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=41065]

For having Castro involved in a conspiracy of silence on Oswald, Dr. Latell must

"concoct the dots," whilst a conspiracy of silence inside the Company emerged by

connecting the October 63 cable traffic between the CIA Station in Mexico City

[MEXI] and the CIA Headquarters in Langley [DIR].

MEXI 645324 concealed all intel to DIR on Oswald visiting the Cuban diplomatic

compound on September 27, while DIR 7483025 hid from MEXI all intel about

Oswald's pro Castro activism in Dallas and New Orleans, including his street

scuffle with Cuban exiles on August 9, 1963. DIR actually lowered Oswald's

security profile by quoting —as latest info available on him— a May 1962 memo

from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow: "Twenty months of realities of life in Soviet

Union had clearly had a maturing effect on Oswald."

DIR 7467326 went further by excluding Department of State, FBI and Navy from

the intel furnished by MEXI about an eventual contact between Oswald and KGB

officer Valeriy Kostikov at the Soviet Consulate. To cap it all, this cable forwarded

as Oswald's the description given by MEXI of an alleged American spotted at the

Soviet Embassy on October 1, 1963: "Approximately 35 years old, with an athletic

build, about 6 feet tall, with a receding hairline."

A liaison officer of the CIA Counterintelligence (CI) Staff, Jane Roman, signed off

on these cables. More than three decades later, John Newman asked her if this

cable traffic indicated some sort of operational interest in Oswald's file. Roman

flatly answered: "Well, to me, it's indicative of a keen interest in Oswald, held very

closely on the need-to-know basis."27

The FBI Headquarters also had opened a file (105-82555)28 and even issued a

FLASH warning on Oswald after the U.S. Embassy in Moscow reported his

defection. However, Oswald returned to the States with his wife and their 4-month-

old daughter on June 13, 1962, thanks to a $435.71 loan from the Department of

State.29 FBI Special Agent Fain debriefed him in Forth Worth twice. Oswald

"agreed to contact the FBI if at any time any individual made any contact of any

nature under suspicious circumstances with him."30

24 http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/201/104-10015-10304/html/ARRB_9-20-95_0131a.htm 25 http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/201/104-10015-10048/html/ARRB_9-20-95_0064a.htm 26 http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/201/104-10015-10052/html/ARRB_7-20-95_0025a.htm 27 On November 2, 1994. Transcribed by Mary Bose and corrected by Jefferson Morley [http://www.history-

matters.com/essays/frameup/WhatJaneRomanSaid/JaneRomanTranscript.htm] 28 http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/docset/getList.do?docSetId=1191 29 Mary Ferrell Chronologies, Vol. 2 (b), p. 51. 30 Fain dated his final report on August 30, 1962. See Commission Document (CD) 10, p. 6

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10411]

No wonder Oswald "was desirous of seeing an agent of the FBI" after being

arrested for the scuffle with Cuban exiles in New Orleans. Special Agent John

Lester Quigley satisfied such strange desire of a conspicuous pro Castro activist.31

Like other supporters of "Castro did it," Dr. Latell overlooks that an ex-Marine re-

defector from the USSR is an intelligence bonanza. Neither the CIA nor the FBI

could have missed him as security risk after visiting both the Soviet and the Cuban

diplomatic venues and eventually contacting KGB and DGI officers.

Much less if since September 10, 1963, the FBI in Dallas had reported Oswald as

"subscriber to The Worker, an East Coast communist newspaper, [who] was in

contact with the [FPCC], passed out pamphlets [and] had a plackard (sic) around

his neck reading, "Hands Off Cuba, Viva Fidel'."32

Even so, FBI Supervisor Marvin Gheesling canceled the FLASH on October 9,

1963.33 In view of the JFK visit to Texas, the Secret Service couldn't have then

enough intel about Oswald for putting him on the Security Index. Unless there was

a conspiracy of silence —not by Castro, but by the CIA and the FBI— Oswald

should have never been on the presidential motorcade route in Dallas.

Professor Melanson made clear that "it would be feckless for Cuban intelligence to

employ an assassin so publicly identified with Castro's cause."34 Dr. Latell suggests

a 1959 DGI file on Oswald —even before the DGI creation: 1961— for reckoning

"a fully prime soldier for Fidel" in 1963.

The Calderon’s Phone Conversations

The CIA did not inform the WC of Luisa Calderon's November 22, 1963, phone

conversations because —as its Office of the Legislative Counsel definitively stated

to HSCA— "the overall Calderon discussion is better fiction than professional fact

and analysis."35 Dr. Latell has recycled it for his non-fiction book.

On November 22, 1963, the CIA center LIENVOY intercepted a phone call36 at

5:30 pm to the Cuban Commercial Office in Mexico City. The first transcribed line

sparked brouhaha: "HF asks LUISA if she heard the latest news and LUISA, in a

joking tone says, "Yes, of course, I knew almost before KENNEDY'."

31 Commission Exhibit (CE) 826, p. 5. See Testimony of John Lester Quigley

[http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/quigley.htm] 32 CE 826, p. 1, 8 33 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Admin Folder – Q 10 (Oswald File Xerox), p. 12

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=117797&relPageId=12] 34 Melanson, Philip H.: Op. cit., p. 22 35 Memorandum dated on February 15, 1979, p. 3 in fine

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=59026&relPageId=3] 36 NARA Record Number: 104-10400-10162

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=2954&relPageId=1]

It was a mistranslation of her joke in Spanish: "Sí, claro, me enteré casi antes que

Kennedy." The right English version should have been: "Yes, of course, I found

out (or learned about it) almost before KENNEDY'."

Dr. Latell leaves the mistranslation to stand by itself and goes further to cull out

another "incriminating comment about Oswald" from the CIA transcript: "Oh, yes,

he knows Russian well, and also this fellow went with Fidel's forces into the

mountains, or wanted to go, something like that." Dr. Latell forgets that this

comment by the caller [HF] ended thusly: "Who knows how it was." And some

lines above, the CIA transcriber had written down: "LUISA interrupts and asks if it

was a gringo that killed him [Kennedy] and HF says yes."

If that wouldn't be enough for ruling out any foreknowledge, another Calderon's

phone call tapped by LIENVOY at 1:30 pm on the same day37 —and ignored by

Dr. Latell fifty years later— puts the issue at rest. According to the CIA transcript,

an "unidentified woman calls LUISA (inside the Cuban Embassy). Caller asks

LUISA if she knows about the news of Kennedy's death. LUISA is surprised" says

it is a lie and asks who? Caller [says] is an attempt in Texas. LUISA further

surprise and again asks if news is official and when did it occur."

Dr. Latell deemed "the mysterious Luisa Calderon" as key witness who "would

confirm what I know believe." What he now believes is an old story broke by the

late British journalist Comer Clark:38 Castro foreknowledge of Oswald.

On July 9, 1967, Clark flew to Havana for interviewing Castro. His request was

denied, but he reported that an impromptu interview had taken place on a sidewalk

at a pizzeria in front of a cheering crowd. Castro would have told him:

"Yes, I heard of Lee Harvey Oswald's plan to kill President Kennedy. It's possible I

could have saved him. I might have been able to, but I didn't. I never believed the

plan would be put into effect." Castro would have explained that Oswald visited

the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City twice; the last time "he said something like:

"Someone ought to shoot that President Kennedy'. Then Oswald said —and this

was exactly how it was reported to me— "May be I'll try to do it.' This was less

than two months before the U.S. President was assassinated."

It's implausible that Castro had given an interview about such a sensitive matter

before a crowd outside a pizzeria. "It's a lie from head to toe," Castro replied in an

interview conducted by an HSCA panel in Havana on April 3, 1978.39 It's just as

hard to swallow that Castro knew Oswald was going to shoot at Kennedy and

chose to remain silent.

37 Transcripts from Cuban Embassy and Cubana Airlines Conversations on 22 Nov 1963, p. 22

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=3217&relPageId=22] 38 "Fidel Castro Says He Knew of Oswald Threat to Kill JFK," (National Enquirer, October 15, 1967, pp. 4 f.). 39 HSCA Admin Folder – 04 (Interview of Fidel Castro), p. 61

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=291550]

Even the Soviet bloc’s diplomats in Havana were aware of Castro position on JFK.

On March 31, 1963, for instance, Hungarian Ambassador János Beck reported it to

Budapest: "Among the possible presidents at present, Kennedy is the best".40

On September 20, President Kennedy authorized William Attwood to contact with

Cuban Ambassador to the U.N. Carlos Lechuga. The first U.S.-Cuba talks on

accommodation took place in a corner of ABC News reporter Lisa Howard's

apartment in Park Avenue (New York). On November 19, while his secret envoy

Jean Daniel was already in talks with Castro, Kennedy was waiting for an agenda

proposal from Castro to "decide what to say [and] what we should do next." 41

Castro has clearly summed up his ethical pragmatism: "Ethics is not a simple

moral issue (…) It produces results."42 If he would have had foreknowledge of

Oswald's criminal intention, he would have reacted as in 1984 with the worse U.S.

President for him by that time. Castro was advised about an extreme right-wind

conspiracy to kill Ronald Reagan. Castro ordered the DGI to furnish all the

information to the U.S. Security Chief at United Nations, Robert Muller, and the

FBI proceeded to dismantle the plot in North Carolina.43

Dr. Latell claims that Castro "feared Kennedy" and wanted him dead, because in

Castro's mind, "he was probably acting in self-defense." However, Dr. Latell adds

that Castro warned the Kennedy Brothers and everyone else with an advertising

piece of his "personal bailiwick" before Oswald promised to DGI in Mexico City

“to shoot Kennedy to prove his revolutionary credentials."

On September 7, 1963, Castro attended a reception at the Brazilian Embassy in

Havana. He talked with Associated Press correspondent Dan Harker, who quoted

Castro saying: "U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to

eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe".44

According to Dr. Latell, Castro not only wanted Kennedy death as an act of self

defense, but also broadcasted his intention through Harker to the whole world. In

fact, Kennedy had expressed the same idea on November 1961. After meeting with

reporter Tad Szulc, who noted him "under terrific pressure from advisors (…) to

okay a Castro murder," Kennedy discussed the issue with his aide Richard

Goodwin and remarked: "If we get into that kind of thing, we'll all be targets".45

40 Cold War History Research Center Budapest [http://www.coldwar.hu]. Document obtained from Magyar

Országos Levéltár (MOL) [Hungarian National Archives] Budapest, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Top Secret

Documents, XIX-J-1-jD; with the support of the Cold War International History Project, Washington D.C. 41 Kornbluh, Peter.: “JFK and Castro,” Cigar Aficionado, September - October 1999, pp. 3 ff.

[http://www.cigaraficionado.com/webfeatures/show/id/JFK-and-Castro_7300/p/1] 42 Castro, Fidel: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 2008, p. 211. 43 “Fidel Castro 'saved' Ronald Reagan's life,” The Telegraph, April 13, 2007. 44 "Castro Blasts Raids on Cuba," New Orleans Times-Picayune, September 9, 1963. 45 Mahoney, Richard: JFK: Ordeal in Africa, Oxford University Press, 1983, p.135.

Shortly after JFK was killed, Cuban exile Dr. Emilio Nuñez, former diplomat of

the Batista administration (1952-58), enlarged and sharpened Harker’s quote: "Let

Kennedy and his brother Robert take care of themselves since they too can be the

victims of an attempt which will cause their death."46

Ironically, Harker also quoted Castro saying: "Kennedy is the Batista of our time."

Castro started his revolution against Batista dictatorship by attacking the Moncada

Barracks on July 26, 1953. The same day, Batista was attending a regatta festivity

at Varadero Beach. Professor Dr. Antonio de la Cova related that some rebels

insisted on blending in with the spectators and killing Batista there, but Castro

chose to attack the barracks.47

Castro even disapproved the attempt against Batista by the Student Revolutionary

Directorate on March 13, 1957. He simply reasoned: "It would have been easier to

kill Batista than wage two years of guerrilla war, but it would not have changed the

system"48 Dr. Latell didn't get it. His approach to Calderon's foreknowledge is the

continuation in peaceful times of the fact-free analysis that determined the CIA

failures in the dirty war against Castro. No wonder Dr. Latell even falls into the

morass of DGI defectors.

AMMUG-1’s Knowledge and Ignorance

Dr. Latell's asserts that DGI defector Vladimir Rodriguez-Lahera knew that Castro

had lied on Oswald, but his testimony “apparently was not shared with the WC."

Actually, Rodriguez-Lahera did not have any significant knowledge on the issue.

He defected from DGI in Canada around April 21, 1964, and was codenamed

AMMUG-1. His initial debriefing included "that the only possible fabrication

known by the source was the specific denial by Fidel Castro, on a television

program [November 23, 1963], of any Cuban knowledge of Oswald."49

Dr. Latell surreptitiously turns the "possible fabrication" into knowledge worthy of

being conveyed to the WC. The day after the assassination, Castro referred to

Oswald thusly: "We never in our life heard of the existence of this person."50 Dr.

Latell ascertains that AMMUG-1 "was convinced that Fidel had lied" and told it to

"his handlers in May 1964."

46 "John Kennedy and his brother can be victims of an assassination attempt, Castro threatened," El Universal

[Mexico City], November 25, 1963. 47 De la Cova, Antonio: The Moncada Attack, University of South Carolina Press, 2007, pp. 50, 80, 252. 48 CBS, June 10, 1977.

49 Debriefing of AMMUG-1 (The Oswald Case)

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=27696&relPageId=1] 50 Castro, Fidel.: Speech-Comment Concerning the Facts and Consequences of the Tragic Death of President John

F. Kennedy, November 23, 1963 [http://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/HWNAU/FC112363.html]

Dr. Latell omits that the handler himself, Harold Swenson, dismissed as irrelevant

the "explanations and comments" given by AMMUG-1:51

I have no personal knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald or his activities

and I do not know that Oswald was an agent of the [DGI] or any other

directorate or department of the Cuban Government

I first heard of Oswald after the assassination (…) Personnel in the DGI

first commented about the case, so far as I can recall, one day after

lunch when a group of officers, of whom I was one, were chatting

Manuel Vega-Perez previously had been assigned to Mexico in the

Cuban Consulate, where he was the principal intelligence officer of the

DGI. Vega mentioned that Oswald had gone to the Cuban Consulate

two or three times in connection with a visa application during the time

that Vega was in Mexico.

I gathered, although I do not know that Vega made any specific

statement to this effect, that Vega personally had seen Oswald. I well

could have reached this conclusion because normally Vega and his

assistant in Mexico for the DGI, Rogelio Rodriguez-Lopez, would see

personas applying for a visa to go to Cuba.

This is because DGI officers are charged with expediting the granting

of visas of agents of the DGI. Such agents, on appearing at the

Consulate, use a special phrase to indicate their relationship with the

DGI (I do not know the particular phrase used in every case).

The DGI officers at a Consulate interview visa applicants to find out if

they are agents. If the visa applicant does not use one of the indicate

phrases, the DGI officers, instead of granting the visa immediately, tell

the applicant to return in a few days. The officer then notifies Havana

and requests authority for the visa.

I cannot recall if Vega even made the statement that he had requested

permission to issue a visa to Oswald, but I feel sure that he would have

done so because Vega has said that Oswald had returned several times

and this would be the usual procedure.

I believe that Rogelio Rodriguez-Lopez also would have seen Oswald

because he worked with Vega and also would have screened visa

applicants.

I thought that Luis Calderon might have had contact with Oswald

because I learned about 17 March 1964, shortly before I made a trip to

Mexico, that she had been involved with an American in Mexico.

51 See Debriefing of AMMUG-1 (The Oswald Case)

The information to which I refer was told to me by a DGI case officer

named Norberto Hernandez. I had commented to Hernandez that it

seemed strange that Luisa Calderon was receiving a salary from the

DGI although she apparently did not do any work for the service.

Hernandez told me that hers was a peculiar case and that he himself

believed that she had been recruited in Mexico by the [CIA] although

Manuel Piñeiro, the Head of the DGI, did not agree.

As I recall, Hernandez had investigated Luisa Calderon. This was

because, during the time she was in Mexico, the DGI had intercepted a

letter to her by an American who signed his name as Ower (phonetic)

or something similar (…) It could have been Howard or something

different. As I understood the matter, the letter from the American was

a love letter, but indicated that there was a clandestine-professional

relationship between the writer and Luisa Calderon.

I also understood from Hernandez that after the interception of the

letter she had been followed and seen in the company of an American. I

do not know if this could have been Oswald.

Swanson concluded: AMMUG-1 did not have "any significant information." His

guesswork —"I gathered, although I do not know;" "I well could have reached this

conclusion," "I cannot recall (…), but I fell sure;" "I believe," "I thought""—

turned significant for Dr. Latell because it fits his purpose-built book on Castro’s

involvement in the JFK assassination.

More than four decades after being debriefed, AMMUG-1 provided Dr. Latell with

an unheard-of argument: the most routine matters at the Cuban diplomatic venue in

Mexico City were reported directly to Castro. Neither Castro nor any other Head of

Government has time for being informed about ordinary people applying for visas.

What AMMUG-1 thought in 1964 about Calderon and Oswald makes no sense

either. Her presumed American lover who signed "Ower or something similar"

could have been Oscar Cower, who called Rodriguez-Lopez from L.A. on

November 7, 1963. 52 "It could have been Howard" or somebody else, but never

Lee Harvey Oswald, because he would have been detected by the CIA.

Calderon was the secretary of the Commercial Office and the Cuba Desk officer at

the CIA Station, Bob Shaw [Lawrence Baker], had her under tight surveillance at

least since July 19, 1963, when LIENVOY intercepted the phone call from Texas

cattleman Eldon Hensen contacting her to do business with the Castro regimen.53

52 The CIA tapped this call. See NARA Record Number: 104-10093-10351

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=28001] 53 A CIA agent impersonated a Cuban official and met Hensen, who ended up being arrested by the FBI. See NARA

Record Number: 104-10132-10243 [http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=49131]

What AMMUG-1 believed in 1964 about Rodriguez-Lopez and felt sure about

Vega-Perez inevitably falls down like a house of cards. Oswald was not told "to

return in a few days." Unlike "the usual procedure," he came three times on the

same day —September 27, 1963— to the Cuban Consulate.

The secretary Sylvia Duran personally took care of Oswald and asked the outgoing

consul Eusebio Azcue-Lopez for help. The latter spoke English and was training

the incoming consul Alfredo Mirabal-Diaz, who didn’t, but was also the incoming

"Chief of Intel.”54 Thus, no extra DGI officer was needed for "granting of visas."

AMMUG-1 didn't hear "any specific statement [that Vega-Perez] personally had

seen Oswald," because neither Vega-Perez nor Rodriguez-Lopez were at the spot.

Oswald applied for an in-transit visa to Cuba on his way to Russia. He wished to

travel next Monday, September 30, and to stay in Havana one or two weeks. He

didn’t bring photos and left the Cuban Consulate to get them in a commercial

facility. He returned with them and produced some documents for proving his

membership in both the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Fair Play for

Cuba Committee (FPCC), his previous stay in Russia and his marriage with a

Soviet citizen. Duran made up the form and Oswald signed it in her presence.

Oswald was clearly told that the in-transit visa couldn’t be granted before the entry

visa from Russia. He left for the Soviet Consulate and returned saying there wasn't

any problem with the Russian visa. It was denied by the Soviet consul when the

Cubans called to discuss the case. Oswald tried then to have the Cuban visa

granted anyway, and it led to an altercation with Azcue-Lopez, who finally asked

him out of the office. The eyewitnesses were Duran; Mirabal-Diaz, who got the

application from Azcue-Lopez for processing; Antonio Garcia-Lara, who went

downstairs from the Commercial Office as he heard the dispute and saw Oswald

leaving the Consulate; and Commercial Attaché, Guillermo Ruiz, who was going

to the office when Azcue-Lopez asked him —since Ruiz spoke better English— to

explain the American applicant again why the Cuban visa couldn't be granted.55

Mirabal-Diaz’s Report

Dr. Latell crosses the lines between "the Center chief" and the consul positions for

claiming that an "incriminating error went unnoticed" when Alfredo Mirabal-Diaz,

"inadvertently revealed in 1978 [to HSCA] that in September 1963 he had

informed headquarters about Oswald."

54 HSCA CIA Collection, Reel 13, Folder C

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=52232] 55 TV Documentary ZR RIFLE (1993), Transcription in Cuban Information Archives, Document 0025 [http://cuban-

exile.com/doc_001-025/doc0025.html]

Which headquarters? The June 2012 issue of The Latell Report clarifies: "In an

oddly unguarded moment, he admitted that he had prepared a report on Oswald for

DGI headquarters." The latter is a prosthesis implanted by Dr. Latell. In his

testimony before HSCA,56 Mirabal-Diaz alluded to "report" only once:

"It was my colleague, [Eusebio Azcue-Lopez], who brought all these documents

and all this information to my desk for my report (sic). It is then that I talked with

the Soviet consul, and when I mentioned this to him, he told me that Oswald had in

fact requested a visa for the Soviet Union but that he had been told that it would

take about 4 months to obtain a response, and that is the reason that I included that

information in the footnote that was to be sent to Havana."

Mirabal-Diaz was obviously testifying about his mandatory consular report to the

Cuban Foreign Ministry [known by its acronym in Spanish: MINREX] regarding

the in-transit visa application filed by Oswald on September 27, 1963. Both the

applicant and the consul signed it, and it appears together with the more than

obvious official response from Havana to Mirabal-Diaz: the in-transit visa could

not be granted without an entry visa for the country of destination [URSS]. 57

The CIA itself admitted to HSCA Chief Counsel Richard Sprague that there wasn't

"any evidence that Oswald's contacts with personnel of the Cuban Consulate had

any other motive than to obtain a transit visa for Cuba."58 Dr. Latell tries to fill the

gap with anti-Castro imagination.

Just as the DGI file on Oswald opened in 1959 at the Cuban Consulate in L.A., Dr.

Latell made-up that "an intelligence officer under consular cover prepared a report

on Oswald" in 1963 at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. It would have been

"cabled" to DGI Head Manuel "Red Beard" Piñeiro. However, the CIA itself

furnished conclusive evidence of Oswald's consular process: the transcripts59 of two

calls tapped by LIENVOY on September 27, 1963.

Around 4:05 pm, a female caller from the Cuban Consulate said that a present

American citizen had asked for an in-transit visa en route to the URSS. She wanted

to know whom the American had spoken to at the Soviet Consulate, because he

returned telling her that Soviet official had said there was no problem at all, but he

couldn't identify that official. She explained having sent the American with the

notice that if he gets the entry visa in the Soviet Union, the Cuban visa will be

immediately granted. Her Soviet interlocutor passed the call to another one.

56 On September 18, 1978, accompanied by an interpreter from the State Department. See HSCA Report, Vol. III, p.

173-78 [http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=954&relPageId=177] 57 CE 2564 [http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1141&relPageId=843] 58 Notes for Briefing of Sprague et all, November 24, 1976

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=60888] 59 NARA Record Number: 104-10147-10323, pp. 3 ff.

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=30409]

The female caller introduced herself as Sylvia Duran, from the Cuban Consulate,

and retold the story. The new Soviet official asked for her telephone number and

promised to call back.

At 4:26 pm, a caller from the Soviet Consulate asked Sylvia Duran if an American

had been there. She replied that he was still on the spot, and the Soviet official told

her that he wanted to go to the URSS for staying long time with his Russian wife,

but the requested answer from the Soviet Embassy in Washington had not come

yet. The process would last 4 or 5 months.

The caller added the American had showed him a membership letter of a pro Cuba

organization and advised him that the Cuban visa couldn't be granted without the

Russian one, but the Soviet Consulate will proceed in accordance with the rules

and wait for Washington. Duran said that she will make this remark in the Cuban

form for the visa application and that she can't give any letter of recommendation

to the American because he is not known.

On the transcript of this call, the Chief of Station (COS) Win Scott wrote down:

"It's possible to identify? Surprisingly, it wasn't “until 22 November 1963, when

the station initiated a review of all transcripts of telephone calls to the Soviet

Embassy that the station learned that Oswald's call to [it] on 1 October 1963 was in

connection with his request for a visa to the USSR. Because he wanted to travel to

the USSR by way of Cuba, Oswald had also visited the Cuban Embassy.”60

That’s the official history given in 1977 by the CIA Inspector General John H.

Waller, who thusly was lying to the HSCA and got involved in a conspiracy of

silence inside the Company, since Scott himself, despite his handwritten question,

included only a contact of "operational interest" with the Soviet Embassy in his

September 1963 report on LIENVOY61: "a Russian speaking female" who

identified herself as "a professor from New Orleans". The two Oswald-related

September 27 calls weren't reported, although an American in contact with both the

Soviet and the Cuban Embassies was an ipso facto person of interest.

Scott did mention that Orville Horsfall [Boris Tarasoff] was a "staff agent working

on LIENVOY transcripts". Tarasoff transcribed the October 1 call and wrote down

that the caller "Lee Oswald" was "the same person who phoned a day or so ago and

spoke in broken Russian." Tarasoff realized that "Lee Oswald" was the same caller

who in "terrible, hardly recognizable Russian" had encouraged an unknown Soviet

official to "speak Russian" on September 28. Oswald was reportedly in Mexico

City from September 27 to October 2, but he spoke fluent Russian after staying

more than two and a half years in the URSS.

60 Lopez Report, p. 123 [http://www.history-

matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt_2003/pdf/LopezRpt_2003_4_Reconstruction.pdf] 61 NARA Record Number: 104-10052-10083, p. 4.

Oswald married Marina Pusakova in April 1961. At their first encounter, she

thought Oswald came from the Baltic States because his accent was good. He

returned to the States in June 1962 and passed a test given by Peter Gregory, a

Siberia-born Russian teacher at Fort Worth, who found him "capable of being an

interpreter or a translator."

Just after the JFK assassination, the October 1 LIENVOY tapes and a photograph

were allegedly sent from the CIA station in Mexico City to the FBI in Dallas. In a

November 23, 1963 memo to Associate Director Clyde A. Tolson, FBI Director

Assistant for Investigative Work, Alan H. Belmont, was obliged to report that

neither the voice not the photo was Oswald’s.62 After all, the CIA never provided a

photo of Oswald in Mexico City, despite his visits to both the Soviet and the

Cuban diplomatic compounds, which were respectively covered by the photo

surveillance programs LIEMPTY and LIONION.

Oswald’s Threat and Castro’s Foreknowledge

In 1976 it came to light63 a plausible version of the old Comer Clark allegation: that

Castro admitted Oswald had uttered a threat to kill Kennedy during his visit to the

Cuban diplomatic compound in Mexico City on September 27, 1963.64

The primary source was a top secret letter dated on June 17, 1964, by FBI Director

J. Edgar Hoover to WC General Counsel J. Lee Rankin.65 It advised of statements

made by Castro to FBI super spy Jakob "Jack" Childs: "Our people in Mexico gave

us the details in a full report of how he [Oswald] acted (…) Nobody ever goes that

way for a visa. [He] stormed into the embassy, demanded the visa and when it was

refused to him, headed out saying, "I'm going to kill Kennedy for this.'"

Jack and his brother Morris ran the FBI Operation SOLO (1958-77) to infiltrate the

Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The SOLO file — more than 6,900 pages in 45

volumes— began to be released on August 2011. By January 2012, the SOLO

Mission 15 was declassified. Jack Childs flew from Moscow to "the beach" [Cuba]

on May 20, 1964. He spent ten days there, was able to talk with Castro about the

JFK assassination. Jack Childs reported in essence: "Castro said "I was told this by

my people in the Embassy exactly how he (Oswald) stalked in and walked in and

ran out. That in itself was a suspicious movement, because nobody comes to an

Embassy for a visa (they go to a Consulate).”

62 Baylor University - Poage Library.: Research Papers of John Armstrong, Book 1, Notebook 2, pp. 38-39 63 "Oswald Reportedly Told Cubans of Plan to Kill JFK," Washington Post, November 13, 1976. 64 Peter Dale Scott addressed the issue in an updated revision of his paper at the 1994 Conference of the Coalition on

Political Assassinations (COPA). His analysis is a kind of Porphyrian tree for displaying the research hypothesis.

See Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics, Skyhorse Publishing, 2013, pp. 13-38. 65 WC Document 1359 [https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=11754]

Castro explained “that when Oswald was refused his visa at the Cuban Embassy in

Mexico City, he acted like a madman and started yelling and shouting on his way

out, "I'm going to kill this bastard. I'm going to kill Kennedy' [Castro]was speaking

on the basis of facts given to him by his embassy personnel, who dealt with

Oswald, and apparently had made a full, detailed report to Castro after President

Kennedy was assassinated.”66

From the “detailed report to Castro,” Dr. Latell trimmed the actual time —“after

President Kennedy was assassinated”— in order to foist "a conspiracy of silence."

Dr. Latell must set back the clock to a pre-assassination report to Castro for

claiming that he was lying on Oswald with the well-known statement the day after

the assassination: "We never in our life heard of the existence of this person."

Jefferson Morley has remarked: "The argument that Castro sanctioned political

assassination is as factually unfounded as the suggestion that [he] was behind

Oswald."67 Dr. Latell concocts a Castroit Oswald at work in Mexico City with a

Castro prone to react to a CIA assassination plot against him (AM/LASH) in the

western spaghetti manner summed up by Lyndon B. Johnson on TV to Howard K.

Smith: "Kennedy was trying to get Castro, but Castro got to him first."68

Dr. Latell squares the circle by relocating Oswald's threat from the Embassy —as

Castro told Jack Childs— to the Consulate, because the latter was the only place

where defector AMMUG-1 guessed some Castro's intelligence officers were in

contact with Oswald. Dr. Latell added they would have given Oswald "plenty of

propaganda and indoctrination" and even dared to wind him up in such a way that

"when he left the consulate and shouted his intent to kill Kennedy, it must have

been as the war cry of a fully primed soldier for Fidel."

Dr. Latell exacerbated Oswald's outburst as outcome of DGI tradecraft, although

Castro emphasized that Oswald had made the "suspicious movement" of going for

a visa to the Embassy, instead of the Consulate, and uttered the threat "on his way

out" from the Embassy, not from the Consulate.

Indeed, both the outgoing (Azcue-Lopez) and incoming (Mirabal-Diaz) Cuban

consuls testified before HSCA that they did not hear Oswald threatening Kennedy's

life.69 Neither did the Mexican employee Duran, who was consistent about it in

both her interview by HSCA70 and her interrogation by Mexican Police.71

66 FBI Records: The Vault- SOLO [http://vault.fbi.gov/solo],Part 63, pp. 58 f. 67 “Assassination in the struggle for power in Cuba,” JFKFacts, April 10, 2013

[http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/assassination-in-the-struggle-for-power-in-cuba/] 68 ABC News, June 24, 1976. 69 HSCA Report, Volume III, pp. 127-58 and173-78, respectively. 70 JFK Exhibit F-440A

[https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=74772] 71 NARA 1993-05-17-18.01.09.000020

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=95849]

John Newman concluded: "Cuban Consulate employees such as Azcue and Duran

claim they heard no such threat, and so it remains a mystery,"72 but the Lopez

Report has deciphered it: the Consulate "was in a separate building from the

Embassy."73 In 1963, the Cuban diplomatic compound in Mexico City was located

at Francisco Marquez Street (Colonia Condesa) with two main entrances: one to

the Embassy, on the corner of Tacubaya Alley, and the other to the Consulate, on

the corner of Zamora Street. No wonder the CIA surveillance post in a third-floor

apartment across Francisco Marquez Street employed an agent —Cesar Rodriguez

Gallegos— at one window for photographing the visitors to the Embassy, while

from another window a pulse camera covered those entering the Consulate.

Jack Childs himself reasonably explained to J. Edgar Hoover that "the Cuban

Embassy people must have told Oswald something to the effect that they were

sorry that they did not let Americans into Cuba because the U.S. government

stopped Cubans from letting them in, and that is when Oswald shouted out the

statement about killing President Kennedy."

It goes without saying that Oswald was told to apply anyway for a visa at the

proper place: the Consulate. He must have entered the compound at the corner of

Tacubaya Alley shortly after arriving in Mexico City on September 27, 1963. He

surely didn't have to exit the compound for being around 11:00 am before Silvia

Duran, who will attend him two more times the same day.74 The consular process is

undoubtedly established by the phone calls tapped by the CIA this very Friday. In

contrast, Dr. Latell has not a shred of evidence of DGI officers indoctrinating and

winding Oswald up for anything.

The Comer Clark allegation seemed implausible because the British journalist

attributed it to an impromptu interview with Castro, surrounding by a cheering

crowd, on a sidewalk at a pizzeria in Havana. To make it worse, Clark’s assistant

Nina Gadd claimed later that she gave the information to Clark after getting it from

a friend who was the foreign minister of a Central American country.75

The HSCA pursued the allegation of foreknowledge since "the substance" of a

story broke by Clark had been independently reported to the U.S. Government by a

highly confidential and reliable source, who happened to be FBI informant Jack

Childs. Unaware of his report beyond the Hoover's summary to Rankin, the HSCA

"did not believe that Oswald voice a threat to Cuban officials" and found the then

unknown FBI reliable source "to be in error in this instance."76

72 Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing, 2008, p. 428. 73 Lopez Report, pp. 26 f. [http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt_2003/html/LopezRpt_0025a.htm] 74 Overview of Mexico City Photo Ops with Chronology, NARA 104-10413-10000, p. 27

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=5668&relPageId=27]. 75 Dorill, Steve: "Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico: New Leads," Lobster, Issue 6, November 1984, p. 16. 76 HSCA Final Report, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979, pp. 122 f.

In fact, an "absent-minded" American trying to travel illegally to Cuba must have

never passed through the Embassy reception. On January 1964, FBI Special Agent

Nathan L. Ferris was advised by Mexican informants that Elizabeth Mora [almost

certain the American-born Mexican artist Elizabeth Catlett-Mora] had spilled the

beans about a conversation with Cuban Cultural Attaché Teresa Proenza, who

confided to Mora "that Oswald walked in "cold' to the Cuban Embassy and [she]

was the first person he talked to." Proenza didn't speak English and "turned him

over the nearest person higher in rank and who spoke English." She added that

Oswald's had come to the Embassy for "a visa to go to Russia."77

The Cuban officials at the Embassy weren’t obliged to inform Castro about

Oswald’s outburst until he made the news on November 22, 1963. The HSCA

provided a logically and circumstantially justified interpretation: "Nothing in the

evidence indicated that the threat should have been taken seriously, if it had

occurred, since Oswald had behaved in an argumentative and obnoxious fashion

during his visit to the Consulate."78

Without any quantum of proof, Dr. Latell states that "it would have been logical

for [DGI officers] to have stoked Oswald's loathing," but it isn’t. The DGI would

have dared to wind Oswald up for killing Kennedy. The DGI would have never

"planted the seed" in an absent-minded American who tried to travel illegally to

Cuba, forgot the photos for the visa, showed a CPUSA credential without making

any previous contact with the Cuban brother party, and blatantly lied about having

no problem with the Russian visa.

Dr. Latell acknowledges there is no "evidence that Oswald remained in contact

with [DGI] after he left Mexico," but surpasses the obstacle with ease: "A call from

Dallas pay booth could have been all that was necessary for the DGI to learn of his

plan." Since Oswald's pocket address book had only Duran’s phone number, given

to him because he should inquire later about his visa, Dr. Latell speculates: "I

might have been Luisa Calderon who received Oswald's call" and Oswald only had

to say: "On Friday [November 22, 1963], I'm going to do what I told you."

Jack Childs commented to Hoover that Castro "had nothing to do with the

assassination." WC staffer William Coleman drew the same conclusion after

holding a secret meeting with Castro in 1964.79 The old sleuth Hoover finalized his

letter to Rankin on Mission SOLO 15 thusly: "No further action is contemplated by

this Bureau." About half a century later, Dr. Latell twisted the alibi furnished by

Jacks Childs into a smoking gun of Castro foreknowledge.

77 NARA Record Number: 124-10003-10386

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=61273] 78 HSCA Final Report, p. 122. 79 “Why Castro met with the Warren Commission,” JFKFacts, October 28, 2013

[http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/why-castro-met-with-the-warren-commission/]

The Jaimanitas Story

DGI defector Major Florentino Aspillaga — codenamed TOUCHDOWN— also

argues Castro “had advance knowledge of the [JFK] assassination." Dr. Latell

heard the story in 2007, but Aspillaga affirms the CIA learned it two decades

before, while debriefing him.

After 25 years and 13 medals in the DGI, Aspillaga defected from his third-rate

post in Bratislava [Slovakia] to Vienna in early June 1987. The COS in Vienna,

James Olson, judged him as a "let's cut a deal kind of guy."80 In return for handing

over documents stolen from the DGI Station in Prague and being squeezed by CIA

debriefers, Aspillaga got a deluxe package of resettlement in the U.S.

He furnished the key information that, if not all, most of the Cubans recruits by the

CIA from 1960 onward were double agents working for Castro. That's enough for

putting at rest the LBJ western spaghetti approach to JFK assassination. Instead of

an idle move for getting Kennedy first, Castro dodged the attempts to kill him by

penetrating both the CIA and the Cuban exile with agents who told him right back

what his enemies were up to. He would have never risked everything to gain

nothing else than a successor at the White House who offered no promise of more

favorable U.S. policies toward Cuba.

Aspillaga s revelations were profusely reported, except "the Jaimanitas story."

During a June 1988 radio interview with WQBA anchorman Tomas Regalado in

Miami, Aspillaga referred to Castro 69 times, but not even once to Kennedy.81

Aspillaga also bit his tongue when Georgie Anne Geyer interviewed him in

Washington, on April 14, 1988, for her book about "the untold story" of Castro.82

And the CIA didn't bring him to the Assassination Records Review Board

(ARRB), although one of its experts, Dr. Michael Kurtz, Professor of History at

Southeastern Louisiana University, was still asking for digging around "the so-

called Cuban connection."83

The ARRB was created by law 1992 for speedily declassifying the assassination

records. More than four million pages were released, but not a single one from

Aspillaga. Twenty years after his debriefing, Aspillaga let slip an anecdote la carte

for Dr. Latell’s book on Castro’s secrets.

On November 22, 1963, the hardly 16 year old Aspillaga was busy monitoring CIA

communications from a listening post at Jaimanitas, a small beach town alongside

to Marina Hemingway and near Castro's main residence, dubbed as Point Zero,

seven miles to the west of Havana down town.

80 Olson, James: Fair Play, Potomac Books, 2006, pp. 241 f. 81 In Spanish [http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/azpillaga.pdf] 82 Geyer, G.A.: Guerrilla Prince, Little, Brown and Company, 1991. 83 Testimony of Michael Kurtz, New Orleans, June 28, 1995 [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/arrb/index28.htm]

Around 9:30 am (EST) the teenage counterintelligence rookie received the order

"to stop all CIA work" and redirect the antennas "toward Texas." He must report

back "if anything important occurs." A few hours later, he "began hearing

broadcasts on amateur radio bands about the shooting of President Kennedy in

Dallas." Aspillaga drew the conclusion that "Castro knew."

The "Jaimanitas story" is a suspicious narrative about electronic intelligence

(ELINT) used to learn "anything important" that would be instantly available as

breaking news. The radio amateurs allegedly heard by Aspillaga were at most

chattering on what the media have already reported.

On November 18, 2013, Dr. Latell was the main speaker of the lecture "Castro and

the Kennedy Assassination" at the ICCAS. He feels sure about "Aspillaga’s most

sensational revelation" because he had read it in both the English and Spanish

versions of Aspillaga’s unpublished memoirs. Dr. Latell did not realize that a

source (talking) is a source (writing in English) is a source (writing in Spanish).

A confirmation was at hand just by requesting Aspillaga’s debriefing under the

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but Dr. Latell abstained from applying to a

DGI defector the Reagan Rule "Trust, but verify." Ironically the CIA chose to

engage in a conspiracy of silence instead of taking the road to clarification. The

Agency Release Panel responded to a FOIA request by a third party on June 28,

2013, that "the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence" of

JFK-related records in Aspillaga’s debriefing.

Neither Aspillaga nor TOUCHDOWN brings any result by searching one after

another, or both, at the National Archives web site.84 By entering "JFK

Assassination" in the search box, the first relevant result would be “About JFK

Assassination Records Collection.”85 By clicking on it, then on “JFK Assassination

Records Collection Database”, and finally on “Standard Search”, a "Kennedy

Assassination Collection Simple Search Form" appears. After entering the terms

"Aspillaga" (first line) OR "Touchdown" (second line), no hit will be retrieved.

However, if the sequence is repeated for the DGI defector Vladimir Rodriguez-

Lahera [AMMUG-1], 9 hits will be retrieved, one of them "Withheld."

Aspillaga, "the most valuable [DGI] officer ever to change sides," is not to be

found at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), where

"approximately 1,100 documents are located in [its] protected collection and will

be released in 2017 unless the CIA appeals to the President," according to Delores

Nelson, Chief of the Public Information Programs Division at the CIA.86

84 http://www.archives.gov/ 85 http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/about.html 86 JFKcountercoup, March 21, 2010 [http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/03/1100-cia-jfk-assassination-

records.html]

Dr Latell covers up the real problem —what the CIA knew about Oswald— by

posing what Castro knew about an imaginary Oswald who "felt a compelling need

to help protect the bearded man he worshiped."

The Riddle of AM/LASH

Dr. Latell also poses the neither logically nor circumstantially justified retaliation

hypothesis that Senator Robert Morgan (D / N.C.) put forward at the Church

Committee (CC): "JFK was assassinated by Fidel Castro or someone under his

influence in retaliation for our efforts to assassinate him [and] this fellow [Major

Rolando Cubela] was nothing but a double agent."87

The CIA Operation AM/LASH began on March 9, 1961, by recruiting Cubela in

Mexico City, but turned into a plot to kill Castro. On July 16, 1976, the State

Security Department reported to Castro that “counterrevolutionary inmate” Cubela

was the CIA agent AMLASH who had surfaced at CC.

Before CC, the CIA moved to transfigure Cubela into a double agent, even a

provocateur, as part of its cover-up after the JFK assassination by deflecting the

attention to Castro. A 1973 watch list per reference88 described Cubela as DGI

agent to hide the CIA shortcoming of having recruit a heavy-drinking, big mouth,

too close to insanity, third-range Castro official who would unwittingly provide a

double agent equivalent service to DGI.

On March 1, 1966, the Cuban official newspaper Granma broke the news that

Cubela and Major Ramon Guin had been arrested "due to counterrevolutionary

activities in connection with the CIA." The coverage followed with a communiqué

of the Interior Ministry (MININT): "The traitors Cubela and Guin were plotting an

attempt against Fidel" (March 5), the announcement of their confession (March 8),

the trial (March 9 and 10), and the sentence (March 11).89

On March 9, Castro made public his letter asking the prosecutor Jorge Serguera for

sparing the life of the defendants because "the revolution is strong and there is

nothing to fear." The same day Castro “burned” DGI officer Juan Felaifel as "the

Cuban agent who infiltrated the CIA" in 1963 and came back "three years later

with dramatic revelations." Felaifel had "disappeared" off the Cuban coast during

an infiltration mission on February 24, 1966, and reappeared as prosecutor witness

at the trail against Cubela and Guin.

87 “Committee to get documents on CIA plots,” Washington, AP, in Biloxi Daily Herald, May 21, 1976, p. 10. 88 NARA Record Number: 1993.08.02.19:23:48:810033

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=65036&relPageId=8] 89 See Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC): Granma Archives Index

[http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/granma/]

Felaifel testified he was told of a plot "by CIA agent Anis, my brother, who at the

time was also the intelligence chief of the counterrevolutionary organization

directed by [Manuel] Artime." The latter had initially met Cubela in Madrid around

December 27-30, 1964, and again in February 1965.

The CC official record states that the CIA "contrived to put B-1 [Artime] and

AMLASH together in such a way that neither of them knew that the contact had

been engineered by CIA. The thought was that B-1 needed a man inside and

AMLASH wanted a silenced weapon, which CIA was unwilling to furnish to him

directly. By putting the two together, B-1 might get its man inside Cuba and

AMLASH might get his silenced weapon from B-1."90

For Castro —and many others— the CIA stood behind any Airtime's deed against

the Cuban revolution. He had been the political chief of the Brigade 2506 at Bay of

Pigs, and his Revolutionary Recovery Movement (known by its Spanish acronym:

MRR) continued the war against Castro through CIA-sponsored "autonomous

operations" from bases in Central America.

An HCSA panel interviewed Cubela at the Riviera Hotel in Havana on August 28,

1978. He denied having given "the Cuban government any information that would

have led it to believe that the CIA was involved in a plot [AM/LASH] on Castro's

life in 1963." The HSCA took into account the possible influence of confinement

upon this testimony, but on August 2, 1978, before an agitprop tribunal set up by

Castro at the XI World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, Cubela made his

point: "It is absurd to think that a double agent would have spent 12 years in jail."91

Dr. Latell risks too much by embellishing Cubela's jail time: “He served 12 years

as the prison's doctor, living in comfortable quarters, and was often seen outside,

driving the streets.”92 It's normal that Cubela, a physician, worked as prison's doctor

and even that he enjoyed better living conditions, since he was reported as an

"informant."93 However, Cubela driving the streets is going over the top without a

single witness worth mentioning, since he was even transferred to a penitentiary in

Oriente province after the jailbreak in Havana’s Castle del Principe.94

The last straw was the CIA asking the CC not to disclose Cubela as AMLASH,

because alerting DGI to his role in earlier plots against Castro would expose him to

reprisals. The elementary mental hygiene suggested that DGI analysts will be able

enough to identify Cubela as soon as they read the CC Report.

90 Church Committee Interim Report: Cuba, pp. 89 f.

[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/ir/pdf/ChurchIR_3B_Cuba.pdf] 91 “The Cuban Youth Tribunal,” Cuban Information Archives, Document 0020 [http://cuban-exile.com/doc_001-

025/doc0020.html] 92 "New book claims Castro knew Kennedy would be assassinated,” The Miami Herald, March 19, 2012. 93 NARA Record Number: 1994.05.16.14:15:16:250005, Reel 51, Folder J — Rolando Cubela, p. 8

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=55439&relPageId=8] 94 Ibidem, p. 96.

After serving half of his jail term and testifying against the CIA at both the Castro's

agitprop tribunal and the HSCA panel, Cubela was released and went into exile in

Spain. On October 10, 2005, he was seen outside — at the Spanish Chancellery in

Madrid— picketing against Castro.

The JFK Assassination Logic

Professor John Mcadams has written a book for trying to teach "how to think about

claims of conspiracy."95 The underlying intention is to reject all the claims of

conspiracy and to confirm the WC Report on a lone gunman who shot a magic

bullet. Thusly, Professor Mcadams has devised his logic on the basis of the classic

Only Game in Town (OGT) fallacy. Even if it weren't available a better account

than the WC Report, nobody is obliged to accept it in default, because there is

always an alternative: to find a more plausible explanation.

All the JFK assassination researchers face the same logical problem of finding

evidence that strongly discriminates between two competing hypotheses:

H1: The deed of a lone gunman

H2: The result of a conspiracy

The research community must proceed under the single coercion of the better

argument that relates true premisses in the right way to conclusions. For this kind

of reasoning, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce coined the term

abduction, but it rather suggests kidnapping nowadays. We can use instead

"inference to the best explanation" for what Pierce meant. And he actually meant

that an observation O strongly favors one hypothesis (let's say H2) over another

(H1) if the following conditions are satisfied at once:

If H2 were true, O is to be expected (unsurprising)

If H1 were true, O would have been unexpected (surprising)

The No Surprise / Surprise Principle rules the inference to the best explanation. It

applies not only to the whole set of facts regarding the JFK assassination, but also

for every single fact in dispute.

Professor Mcadams has dismissed as factoid that a tape of a call allegedly made by

Oswald to the Soviet Embassy was provided by the CIA station in Mexico City

and listened by FBI agents in Dallas. Belmont reported to Tolson96 what Dallas FBI

Special Agent in Charge Gordon Shanklin had told him at 9:15 AM on November

23, 1963: the voice on tape —speaking in broken English— wasn’t Oswald’s.

95 The JFK Assassination Logic, Potomac Books, 2011. 96 See above note 61.

If it wouldn’t be true, it's surprising that, after calling Shanklin again at 11:50 AM,

Belmont kept on reporting to Tolson:97 "Inasmuch as the Dallas agents who listened

to the tape of the conversation allegedly of Oswald from the Cuban Embassy to the

Russian Embassy in Mexico and examined the photographs of the visitor to the

Embassy in Mexico and were of the opinion that neither the tape or the photograph

pertained to Oswald, I requested Shanklin to immediately send a photograph of

Oswald to our Legal Attaché [in Mexico City]."

However, the very agent who had flown from Mexico City with CIA materials for

the FBI in Dallas, Eldon Rudd, memoed: "CIA has advised that these tapes have

been erased and are not available for review."98 The HSCA concluded: "A review

of relevant FBI cable traffic established that at 7:23 p.m. (CST) on November 23,

1963, Dallas Special Agent-in-Charge Shanklin advised Director Hoover that only

a report of this conversation was available, not an actual tape recording."99

The well-established fact is then that the tapes were erased and it is surprising in

itself, since the CIA station must have preserved the taped phone conversations

involving an American citizen who had visited both the Cuban and the Soviet

diplomatic compounds in Mexico City. Instead of going deeper into this fact for

inferring to the best explanation, Professor Mcadams simply used it as evidence

against Oswald's impersonation in Mexico City.

The CIA Station in Mexico City refers itself as "the best in WH [Western

Hemisphere] and possibly one of the best in the Agency. [Its] technical facilities

and capabilities were described as extraordinary and impressive." (…) Its two

phone tap operations were LIENVOY and LIFEAT. The former focused on the

Soviet bloc's and Cuban diplomatic compounds.100 Its 1963 protocol for exploiting

info reads thus: "The outside staff agent, Arnold AREHART [Charles Flick], has

instructions to alert the Station immediately if a U.S. citizen or English speaking

person tries to contact any of the target installations [by] a telephone call from

outside the tap center at a pay phone to Robert B. RIGGS [Anne Goodpasture]

inside the Station (…) RIGGS meets AREHART within fifteen minutes at a pre-

arranged downtown location and receive the reel with an extract of the pertinent

conversation. This reel is then taken to the Station and given to the case officer

responsible for the target the person was trying to contact.” Headquarters is

notified by cable of the action taken."101

97 NARA Record Number: 157-10014-10168

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1465&relPageId=14] 98 [http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/fbi/105-3702/124-10230-10430/html/124-10230-10430_0002a.htm] 99 HSCA Final Report, p. 250. 100 Mexico City Station History [Excerpts], NARA Record Number: 104-10414-10124, pp. 45. 104 ff.

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=5874] 101 NARA Record Number: 104-10413-10271

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=63476]

By the time of Oswald's visit to Mexico City, the CIA had intercepted three Cuban

and five Soviet lines. LIENVOY recorded the dialed digits and audio for outgoing

calls and just audio for incoming calls. The transcripts [mostly in Spanish] from

September 27 to October 1, 1963, show five taped calls linked to Oswald.102

Page 4. September 27, 16:00 hours. Phone number: 15-60-55. The Soviet

Consulate received a call from the Cuban Consulate (Sylvia DURAN) who

said she had there a U.S. citizen who had requested a transit visa to Cuba

because he is going to URSS (…) [A] Soviet tells her to leave her telephone

(number) and her name and someone will return the call. DURAN gives her

name and phone number 11-28-47.

Page 17. September 27, 16:26 hours. Phone number: 15-61-55. A Soviet

calls from the Soviet Embassy Chancery to the Cuban Consulate and asks

for Sylvia DURAN. He asks DURAN if the American has been there.

DURAN: Yes, he is still here.

SOVIET: According to the letters that he showed them from the (Soviet)

Consulate in Washington, he wants to go the URSS to stay a long time

with his wife, who is Russian, but also the answer had not been received.

This man (the American) showed him a letter in which he (the American) is

a member of an organization in favor of Cuba and said that the Cubans

could not give him the visa without the Russian visa"

DURAN: [H]e doesn't know anyone in Cuba and in that case it is very

difficult to give him a visa [and] neither can (the Cubans) give him a letter

because they do not know if the visa will be approved

SOVIET: Neither can I give him any letter of recommendation because I

don't know him."

On the second call's Spanish transcript, COS Win Scott noted: "Is it possible to

identify?" This reaction is to be expected under normal circumstances. However,

Scott's next move reinforces the alternate hypothesis of anomaly. On October 10,

Scott wrote the LIENVOY operational report for September 1963 and referred

only "two leads of operational interest:" a female professor from New Orleans

calling the Soviet Embassy, and a Czech woman calling the Czech embassy.

It's very surprising that a U.S. citizen at the Cuban Consulate, who had requested a

transit visa to go on to URSS and showed to the Soviets a letter of membership to a

pro Cuba organization , was neither reported as operational lead nor notified to

Headquarters in flagrant violation of the own CIA protocol. The hypothesis of

anomaly becomes stronger due to the next call.

102 NARA Record Number 104-10413-10074

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=5742]

Page 26. September 28, ca. 12:00 hours. Phone number 15-60-55. T he

Soviet Embassy Consulate receives a call from Sylvia DURAN of the Cuban

Consulate. She says that here in the Consulate there is an American that

was just at the Soviet Embassy. A Soviet says to wait a minute.

DURAN: While waiting speaks to someone in background: Do you speak

Russian? Yes, why don't you talk to him? I don't know.' Then back to

Spanish, DURAN says they installed a telephone for APARICIO and

take down the number as 14-12-99 (…) About this U.S. citizen, he is

going to talk with you.'

AMERICAN: Speaking in broken Russian, "I was in your Embassy and

spoke to your consul" just a minute.'

SOVIET: Asks the American in English what does he want?

AMERICAN: In Russian, "Please speak Russian.'

SOVIET: What else do you want?

AMERICAN: I was just now at your Embassy and they took my address.

SOVIET: I know that.

AMERICAN: [Translator comment: speaks terrible, hardly recognizable

Russian] I did not know it then. I went to the Cuban Embassy to ask

them for my address, because they have it.

SOVIET: Why don't you come again and leave your address with us. It

is not far from the Cuban Embassy.

AMERICAN: Well, I'll be there right away".

If the hypothesis of Oswald in Mexico City for visa were true, it's to be expected

that he would have gone right away to the Soviet Embassy. He didn't, and he will

neither come nor call again, according to Soviet officials Valeriy Kostikov and

Oleg Nechiporenko, who dealt with him before noon at the Soviet Consulate.

They also claimed that no outsider could have placed that call, because the

switchboard was closed.103 The transcripts corroborate that all the callers that

Saturday, except "Duran," were people with friends or relatives at the Soviet

Consulate. Furthermore Sylvia Duran (née Tirado), a Mexican employee at the

Cuban Consulate, consistently denied having made such a call.

She was arrested and harshly interrogated by the Mexican Police on November 23

and November 28. The info taken from her104 included that "she had no fear [of]

extradition to the United States to face Oswald." Surprisingly, the CIA had fear

[of] "any Americans to confront Silvia DURAN or to be in contact with her."

Neither the eyewitness [Duran] nor the earwitnesses [CIA transcribers Boris and

Anna Tarasoff] were ever questioned about the call by the WC.

103 Nechiporenko, Oleg: Passport to Assassination, Birch Lane-Carol, 1993, pp. 75-81. 104 [http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=31669]

The info developed by CIA105 barely stated: "We deduce (sic) that OSWALD

visited the Cuban Consulate [again] on September 1963 (…) This may (sic) well

have been 28 September, but we cannot be certain of this conclusion." It's

surprising that the CIA didn't trust its own LIENVOY evidence and such critical

wiretapped call by "Duran and Oswald" was omitted in the September LIENVOY

Report, even though COS Scott wrote it after having notified the intriguing

October 1 call to Headquarters. To cap it all, the CIA officially stated that "the

Station went onto say that it was unable to compare the voices in the two

conversations because the tape of the first conversation (September 28) had been

erased before the second call (1 October) had been received."106

Page 38. October 1, 10:31 hours. To phone number 15-69-87. A man outside

(MO) calls the Soviet Military Attaché Office speaking in broken Russian.

MO: "Hello, I was at your place last Saturday and talked to your

Consul. They said they'd send a telegram to Washington and I wanted to ask

you if there is anything new.

SOVIET: I'd like to ask you to call another phone number.

MO: Please.

SOVIET: Please write it down; 15-60-55 and ask for a Consul.

MO: Thank you.

SOVIET: Please"

Page 44. October 1, 10:35 hours. To phone number 15-60-55. A man [MO]

described by the translator as the same person who had called a day or so

ago and spoken in broken Russian, called the Soviet Embassy Consulate

and spoke with the Soviet guard on duty:

MO: Hello, this LEE OSWALD speaking. I was at your place last

Saturday and spoke to a Consul, and they say that they'd send a telegram

to Washington, so I wanted to find out if you have anything new? But I don't

remember the name of that Consul.

SOVIET: KOSTIKOV. He is dark?

MO: Yes. My name is OSWALD.

SOVIET: Just a minute. I'll find out. They said that they haven't

received anything yet.

MO: Have they done anything?

SOVIET: Yes, they say that a request has been sent out bur nothing

has been received as yet.

MO: And what (SOVIET hangs up).

105 [http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=109132] 106 "Responses to Questions Raised by [HSCA] to Richard Sprague," p. 33

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=41049]

The CIA transcriber Boris Tarasoff remarked that "Lee Oswald" was the same

person who had called before speaking "in broken Russian." Jane Davidson argues

that, after returning to the U.S. in June 1962, Oswald "was no longer forced to

speak Russian almost exclusively [and] his Russian gradually got worse according

to Marina. To a professional translator, maybe he sounded awful."107 However, it

isn’t plausible that Oswald, fluent a Russian at his arrival in the U.S., would have

reached in less than one and a half year the extreme noted by Tarasoff: "hardly

recognizable Russian."

The LIENVOY Report for October and the related CIA cable traffic bring more

valuable observations that strongly favor the Oswald’s impersonation hypothesis.

The report mentions that "MEXI-6453 reported a contact by an English-speaking

man with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. This was forwarded to Headquarters

(HDQS) for further dissemination."108 Surprisingly, the unequivocal link between

this contact and the "Duran-Oswald" call was omitted. The so-called October

cables109 between the Station (MEXI) and HDQS (DIR) are even more surprising.

October 8. MEXI 6453 reported to HDQS that "an American male who

spoke broken Russian" had said his name was "Lee Oswald." He was at the

Soviet Embassy on September 28 and spoke with Consul Vareliy Kostikov.

This cable also provided a description of a presumed American male who

had entered the Soviet Embassy at 12:16 hours on October 1, but his photo

was actually taken on October 2.

October 10. DIR 74830 replied that Lee Oswald "probably" was "Lee Henry

Oswald." The cable provided an inaccurate description [5 ft 10 in / 165 lb]

and specified: "Latest HDQS info was ODACID [State Department] report

dated May 1962" on Oswald as "still US citizen [returning] with his Soviet

wife [and] their infant child to USA." Surprisingly, HDQS omitted two 1963

FBI reports from Dallas (September 24) and New Orleans (October 4) on

Oswald's leftist activism, his militancy in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

(FPCC) and his scuffle with Cuban exiles. Instead, HDQS quoted from a

1962 report by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow: "Twenty months of realities of

life in Soviet Union had clearly had maturing effect on Oswald."

October 10. DIR 74673 disseminated to ODACID, ODENVY (FBI), and

ODOATH (Navy) the description provided in MEXI 6453 for the presumed

American male and omitted the hint that Oswald had spoken with Soviet

Consul Valeriy Kostikov.

107 See above notes 23-25. 108 NARA Record Number: 104-10413-10263

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=63470] 109 See above, notes 24-26.

If the hypothesis of the lone gunman were true, it's not to be expected that the CIA

concealed and even falsified Oswald's data before the assassination. However, the

CIA Inspector General blatantly lied: "It was not until 22 November 1963 [that the]

Station learned (") Oswald had also visited the Cuban Embassy."110

By dismissing the "tapes of not Oswald" with "no tapes of Oswald," Professor

Mcadams has actually paved the way to the hypothesis of conspiracy, since no

"recording of Oswald's voice" or any “erasing of Oswald’s tapes” adds up to no

photo taken by the CIA during his three visits to the Cubans and two visits to the

Soviets in Mexico City.

Both the CIA Station and Langley hid from each other their respective knowledge

of Oswald's contacts with Cuba. Bill Simpich has inferred to the best explanation

by connecting “leftist Lee at work” in New Orleans with “Castroit Oswald” in

Mexico City. His conclusion is that the tapes "were treated as a dark state secret"111

since the exposure of Oswald impersonation would have led to the exposure of the

Mexico City wiretap operations. Simpich also unveils two other circles of intrigue:

a CIA-FBI joint operation against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) and a

molehunt embedded within the CIA cables traffic in October 1963.

Conclusion

Fifty years and zero evidence after the JFK assassination, the Angletonian mania of

Castro behind Oswald has been recycled by former CIA desk analyst Dr. Brian

Latell for mudding the waters and deflecting the attention from a body of evidence

that unequivocally indicates both the CIA keen operational interest in Oswald

before the JFK assassination and the Oswald’s impersonation in Mexico City.

110 See above note 59. 111 Simpich, Bill: State Secret, Mary Ferrell Foundation, 2013-14

[http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Featured_State_Secret_Conclusion]