ASSASSIN OR AGENT? TRACING THE LINKS BETWEEN OSWALD AND THE SPOOKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100560003-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 27, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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y
THE BOSTON PHOENIX
27 MAY 1975
? ..
ssa~ssu1 or en .
~
. ~
~~~1
L~r~s evert ~
Tracin the
By Sid Blumenthal DO~~
and RD. Rosen ~ d the S
Eleven and a halj years ago, Presi, ~ p
'
dent John F. Kennedy was shot tq
Here Senator Richard Russell inter- Also- in March, former Uallas Police
death while riding in a motorcade! jects: "They have tried the case and
through the atreeti ojDallaa. ~, reached a verdict on every aspect." Chief -Jesse Curry called for a new inves-
Ten and a half years ago, the War-' In short, the FBI had already decided ligation after seeing the Zapruder film, ;
which convinced him that Kennedy had
ren Commission delwered ib judg-i thaL Oswald was a lone, demented gun- been killed by a shot from the front. (The
meet that Kennedy was assassinatedi man.
byaderangedLesllarveyOawald,whol ~yhatever its misgivings, the Warren ~~arren Commission concluded that Os-
acted alone, was not part of any con-I Commission in the end went along with wald -the- lone gunman -had fired i
. apiracy and woa not a member of any .this version -and never investigated the three shots at Kennedy -all from the
US intelligence ggency. ~ ~ re rt that Oswald had been an under- rear.) '
Today, 78 percent of the American; ~ Last month also brought statements ~
cover FBI agent and thus, perhaps, part of :from former Senator Ralph Yarborough of ~
people -according to national polls -j a conspiracy. Texas and Dallas District Attorney Hen- i
just don't believe tke Warren Commis-,~ Even Gerald Ford, who at least fora ;
aion. ! moment thought there was something ' ass agaensthOswald before the atteg was
In the jolbwing article, Sid Blumen-I amiss with this lone nut theory, went on
thal and R.D. Rosen eompils aubstan-~ to pen a book, Portrait o/ an-Assassin, gunned down by flack Ruby in the base-r
tial evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald I supporting the .Commission's findings ~ ~ ment of Da11as.Police' Headquarters) .that
was not only not a Ions oa8aaain, but that Oswald acted alone. they believed there .had been a conspir-
woa almost certainly a US intelligence ~ 1-acy to kill Kennedy.
operative. - ~ - The Doubters ~, ~ rctor biarchetti, a former CIA official ;
Two Commission members - Re ?; j and author of the CIA-censored The Clrt ~
. . . ,
"He [Oswald[ was playing ball -writ- i Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Sen. Rich- ; and the Cult of Intelligence, went further ,
ing letters - to both elements of the ~ and Russell -had doubts about the Com- !~ by saying in March: "The more I have 1
Communist party. I mean he's playing '' mission report. Boggs, who disappeared in ,learned, the more concerned I have ~be-
ball with the Trotakyites and the others. alight plane flying over Alaska in 1972, ~ come that the government was involved in
This was a stran a circumstance to me." the assassination of President John F. ~
g had wanted to issue a minority report. I 1
The voice on this transcri t of s War- Kennedy."
P pointing out errors in the majority's find-
ren Commission meeting -recently pro- tugs. Russell said in 1970: "I never be- This month, a retired Air Force Colon-
cured from the National-Archives b as- ' el who once acted as liaison between the
Y lieved that he [Oswald J did it without any i
sassination researcher Harold Weisberg consultation or encouragement whatso- I Air Force and the CIA said he now be-
~ lieves there was a conspiracy and urged
ld
ti
G
R
h
ve
era
epresenta
en-
- is that of t
ever. Too many things caused me to
Ford, a member of ,the Commission. doubt that he planned it all by himself." Congress to create a special, investigative : i
The date is January 22, 1964,'and the Texas Governor John Connally, .who {committee to reopen the case. _ Toy carry. ;
discussion pertains to a honed report re- g Y I out what was carried out in.Dallas, .said ~
P was wounded in the shootin ;-has alwa s ', Co1..L- .Fletcher Prouty:, "would have: re-
ceived by Commission counsel J. Lee disputed the Commission's verdict that - - ~
- , griired `more tfiap pne. individuat`operat- J
Rankin earlier in the day from the allot- ~ he had been wounded by the same bullet iii b hi 1 - - " -- ' - ` -(
nay general of Texas, WaggonerCarr; the that passed through Kennedy's throat. ~ Con smsman.Henry.Gonzalez`of Teals. ,
.report is that Oswald had been "an un- I And as one Commission lawyer reported- had alr~P.ady introduced aHouse. Reaolu-
? dercover agent" -for the FBI since S-ep- I ly said, "More shots meair more assas- ;lion calling. for a fulLCongressional probe.
tember of 1962 and had been paid $200 a ,sins ., - but early this month the resolution was !
month. - ~ In February, former Warren Commis- :buried- at least, temporarily - in the ~ ~
thish nformationr but unable t r look into ' sion attorney David Slawson, now a USC ~ ~ House Rules Committee. ~ y
i law professor, said that evidence of a man ~ * ?
of i is own bAnd sasrComraission m tuber i posing as Oswald on several occasions pri- ' Assassination researchers.invariably re-
or to the assassination had been withheld ; turn to grr examination of Lee Harvey.~s-?
Allen Dulles, the former CIA chief, tells ;from the Commission by the FBI or the wald, the man the`Warren Commission
his colleagues, one couldn't exactly ap- !State Department, and that there may ' claims-did all the shooting from awin- ~i
proach J. Edgar Hoover or the FBI di- have been ahigh-level government cover- dow of the Texas School Book Depository ~~ ',
rectly, since any intelligence officer who ;
happened to know of Oswald's affiliation ! up nn~he assase nation p~obe^~M^M` ^` bu~lding. Wh~le_ many researchers don ~
"Wouldn't tell under oath?" Justice
Earl Warren asks.
Dulles replies, "I wouldn't think he
would tell it under oath, no."
Besides, as Rankin says, "Part of our
difficulty in regard to it is that they [the
L+Di 1 L.--....-.......l.t....... TL.... 1........7.:,.:.7
ed it is Oswald who committed the assas- ' "' """"" `" ~,..,,.
sination. They have decided no one else
.-was involved. 't'hey have decided , , ,,."
view Oswald as a primary figure and an -
elusive one.
According to the Commission, Oswald
.was deranged and unable to "enter into
meaningful relationships with people."
This version reduced Oswald's alleged }
motivation to the psychological, since the
Commission could not find - or was un-
willing to find - a plausible political ex- '
planation. ... .- '
Continued
of ~'varren Commission critics T launch-
ed his own re-examination of the killing.
Even-thought he still supports the Com-
mission's findings, he is troubled by the
FBI's refusal to make ballistics evidence,
normally made public in criminal cases,
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VSWaI^ S nISLOry 18 InuCCU [ilurny. ~u~ i sari a+cac~:wvu
upon close study of the evidence, much of . Within a few months of his discharge,
it hidden in the Warren Report itself, the ? Oswald "defected" to the Soviet Union.
mystery? of Oswald becomes comprehen- i " " :Powers suspects that Oswald's "defec-
sible. _ lion" was linked to the fate of his U-2
He was almost certainly a US intelli- f 'flight. At that period in the Cold War, the
Bence operative. - j US and the USSR were regularly "defec-
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and CIA "; .ling" agents to each other.
Director John McCone both swore that ~ . Within two weeks of his arrival in the
Oswald had never been in their employ, ?_Soviet Union,.-Oswald presented himself
and the Warren Commission. emphasized , _ at the?Am"ericarr Embassy to declare .that
that "btiere was absolutely no type of in- : ~ he was renouncing his US citizenship `and
formant or undercover relationship be- :was going to turn over his knowledge of ra-
tweer. an a;ency of the US "government I ' dar'secrets .to,the. Soviets.
and l:ee Harvey-Oswe>td. at any time." - Did -Oswald also turn over U-2 ,infor-
One of the Coriitntssion'witnesses wh? ~ m a t i o n? O n e cannot b e
disputed this claim. was Oswald's mo- I sure, but it would have been a relatively
cheap way for him to buy credibility with
Vl
th
M
i
O
ld
Sh
er,
rs.
arguer
te
swa
.
e in-
sisted that her son was "an agent of the
government" but could onh+ presenf frag-.
mentary evidence,.. most of it from me-<
General of the American Friends,
of the Anti-Bolshevik Nations'
Inc. (AF-ABN ), an internation-
al organization with strong in-:
telligence connections.
Peter Dale Scott, a prpfessor+
at Berkeley and a highly respec-
ted researcher, suggests in his as
yet unpublished manuscript, -
The Dallas Conspiracy, that
"Raikin was himself ?some kind
of agent either For the FBI or,
some analogous agency such as;
the CIA or Anny Intelligence. If
he was not, then the contact'
and/or surveillance which one
would expect from the FBI had,
somehow been delegated to a!
the Soviets, for at that time very few U-2 member of a right-wing political E
flights were being. made. organization which was directly]
But after April, 1960, U-2s began, fly- engaged in a bitter polemic with!
in? over the Soviet Un' ~ again -And . ` the Kennedy administratinn_"
.,..cc wClu w lllaaly, lllilily 715GUVVl, gelr~; Another unanswered question /S whe- `~
tlemen," she testified. ther-Oswald, on orders. from hard-liners
IVtrs. Oswald was certain that her son, within the US intelligence apparatus, fur-.'
while a Marine, had been in Taiwan for ' nished U-2 data so that one of the spy -!
some kind of intelligence training or mis- planes could be shot down and thus wreck '
Sion, a claim the Warren Commission the Summit Conference between
brushed aside. ~ Khruschchev and Eisenhower. "Peaceful
A Defense Department memorandum co-existence" was anathema to hard-lin-
on Oswald's Manne service prepared for ers
the Commission notes that he indeed Newly declassified documents obtain-
"served with the Marine Air Control ed from the National Archives by resear- ':
Squadrons in Japan and Taiwan. - cher Harold Weisberg indicate that the
In 1959, Oswald received military train- Soviet secret police suspected Oswald of '
ing, supposedly in radar surveillance, being an undercover US intelligence op-
from John E. Donovan, who told the I erative or, as the documents state a
Commission that "our function at that ?`sleeper agent." .This information was
base where Oswald was stationed) was to i hoccr7 nn- FRT ;wfori,;na~.o- ...a1, o f .w. o.
'". ~"` assn..?a`' ""` iva"`?lly''" "a"' ""`'" i KGB officer, Yuri NOSenko, whol ernmenL Lo arrange aelecLlons;
enlisted and officers for later assignment ' defected to the US in early 1964. I and the Texas oil "industry.
overseas." ~ These emigres sheltered the ;
Two years after Oswald's de-
Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of the U- fection, he showed up at the US' "Vlancist" Oswald, drove him to ;
1960V pevealedoindh snmemoirs that~the I Embassy in Moscow and ap- ~ pacts ado jobs, and donated
plied for a new US passport. Os-! about 100 dresses to his wife; all '
base to which Oswald was assigned was ~; wald -the defector and betray- ~ of this is documented in the '
the Atsugi, Japan; base for U-2s in the Far 1 er of US military secrets - was ~ Warren Re ? rt.
East: Powers made note of Warren Com- ~ given a new passport without; The two men who acted as the
mission Document 931 (dated May 13, - ~ question, plus several hundred i closest guardians of Oswald had
1964, CIA .National .Security; Classifica--~ dollars to get home.
lion Secret) entitled "Oswald's Access t - The granting of the passport in i ~ intimate ties with the intelli-
Information About the U-2." No details,of record time was approved by~he~ Bgence apparatus. George de
US Bureau of Securit Mohrenschildt, member of the
- what this document contains have eder y and Con-j Dallas- Petroleum Club and ~
been released. '.~ sular Affairs, a bastion of right- I ~
However; two of Oswald's Marine co~- Wing power within the State De-
leagues told the Commission that Os- partment. The Bureau had been
set up during the McCarthy era
wald had clearance and. access to classi- ?
Pied material. One testified that Oswald I to ferret out "communists and
`fellow travelers." By .1962, the
"must have had secret clearance ... be- uo,,,.o,i.. aa,..:..:~._...:.._ L_~ ~
for all of us." The other said "We all had I "?'" """"e" "` ?"?? scat=~lvuary ~ -lions with men fronting for the
group and Secretary ? of State '
secret clearance." Dean Rusk was moving quickly ~ Brown, president of the B own
It is also at Ataugi -one of the larger ~ to dismantle it. Foundation, a CIA_ conduit, and '
CIA staging areas in Asia -that Oswald ~ Yet the Bureau still exercised ~' ,John Mecom, founder of the San
learned Russian,. reportedly in his "spare ~ power when Oswald decided to
time." come home again. It would seem ' Jacinto Fund, another CIA con-
duit. De Mohrenschildt was a
In September, 1953, Oswald applied to_ ' that Oswald ought to have been '
the Marine Corps for a hardship dis- an obvious target for the Red- cosmopolitan consultant to oil j
hunters. companies (according to the
charge, ostensibly because his mother had ~ ~ Warren Report) and just hap- ~
been injured. Oswald's discharge was ? Oswald, however, encounter- ' pened to be in Guatemala?City,~
granted three days after his request, i ed no difficulties. Instead, on his ; the jumping-off point for the Bay
Many see an invisible hand in such a re- arrival in New York he was met ~ of Pigs invasion, during that par-?
cord-time release. by Spas T. Raikin, whom the ; ocular fiasco. ,- - _._.:j
E~?? Warren Commission identified '
merely as "a representative of ~
the Travelers' Aid Society." But
Spas T. Raikin was no ordinary
lII6 LJ18ll8s F.7cIleS
Oswald, who had returned 1
from the Soviet? Union with a
Russian wife -whose uncle was +
a member of the Soviet Secret
Police -settled in Dallas among i
a protective circle of f'rienda, vir- !
tually all of them anticommun-
ist, Russian exiles.
This transplanted commun-
ity congregated around three
main institutions: the Russian
Orthodox Church, which report-
edly received CIA-funding; the
Tolstoy Foundation, which, ac-
cording to the Warren Report,
received "as much as $400,000 a
year subsidy" from the US ?ov- ~
haps the most solicitous patron. !
An acquaintance of Jackie Keri-
nedy's family, he admitted to
having worked for French intel-
licence during World War II and
continued. .
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uc.ngc uvwic, a w-ycur-viu ++a+v ++a~ a-~.: ---
t2ussian who aided Oswald's Upon his return to Dallas, Os- eluded that Oswald had gone
wife, Marina, in caring for her ~vald was apparently tracked by into the movie house to hide.
baby, was concerned that she the FBI. Or was he? FBI agent But George O'Toole, former
lived too far from his home for James Hosty of Dallas turned chief of the CIA's Problem An-
him to come promptly to her as- over to the Warren Commission alysis Branch and author of The
sistance, according to Warren a detailed dossier on Oswald's Assassination Tnpec, suggests an
Report testimony. The Com- "Connections with the Com- alternative scenario. O'Toole
mission didn't investigate the munist Party" which included points out that movie theaters
more intriguing information that this data: "On April 21, 1963, are common meeting places for
Bouhe was the personal ac- Dallas confidential informant T- intelligence operatives. If Os-
countant for Lewis MacNaugh- 2 advised that LEE H. OS- weld had been targeted as the
ton of DeGolyer and Mac- WALD of Dallas, Texas, was in fall guy for the conspirators who
Naughton, an oil ex~pploration contact with the Fair Play for actually carried out President
consulting firm. MacNaughton Cuba Committee in New York Kennedy's murder, then an al-
was also a. director of Republic City at which time he advised most deserted and darkened
National Gas and the Republic that he passed out pamphlets for theater would have been an ex-
National Bank -with Karl the Fair Play for Cuba Commit- cellent place for his elimination;
Hoblitzelle, whose Hoblitzelle tee. According to T-2, OS- this could have been effected
Foundation served for years as a WALD had a placard around his with a legttimate cover, since it
CIA conduit. Such links to the neck reading, 'Hands Off Cuba could be reported that he had re-
CIA and other intelligence agen- Viva Fidel. Hosty told the listed arrest.
Gies were wides read in wealthy Commission that this informs- "But something went wrong,"
assassination, the CIA notified
the FBI that one of its sources in .
Mexico had reported that on Oc- ~
tober 1 a man identifying him- ; 4
self as Lee Harvey Oswald had
entered the Soviet Embassy in
Mexico City inquiring about a
telegram that had been sent to'
Washington. The CIA said it be-
lieved the man was the same Lee
Harvey Oswald, a former US
Marine, who had defected to the
Soviet Union and had returned. I
The CIA source in Rlexico City ,
also described Lee Harvey Os-
wald as "approximately 35 years !
old, with an athletic build, about
six feet tall, with a receding hair- ~
line."
The real Oswald was, howev- ?
er, `l3 veers old, slender and of
In the Apri1:3, 1915, New York
Dallas circles. Oswald was more ,lion had come from the "FBI O'Toole writes. "There may,
than accepted by this elite; he 'field office in New York"; how- have been more patrons in the
was escorted in his social life and ever, J. Edgar Hoover's descrip- .theater than expected, the house
cultivated for no apparent rea- ,lion of the FBI Oswald file dis- lights may have been turned up
son. closes no such New York-to-Dal- too soon, or perhaps some of the
In the spring of 1963, Oswald las transmission. Agent T-2,. Police officers who responded to
left his modest Dallas home for; then, was aDallas-based infor- the report of a suspect at the
New Orleans, where he. estab- mar, probably the man who theater were not in on the game.i
lisped eons-man chapter of the wrote to the Fair Play Commit- In any case, chance bought Lee;
pro-Castro Pair Play for Cuba tee in New York on April 19, Haney Oswald forty-eight more
Committee. The address Os- 1963: "I stood yesterday for the -hours of life."
weld stamped on his leaflets, 544. first time in my life, with a plc- Among the lawmen who en-,
Camp Street, was actually the] card around my neck, passing' tared the Texas Theater to find,,
headquarters of a Cuban sails' out Fair Play for Cuba pam- Oswald was FBI agent Robert'
group; no Fair Play committee' phlets .... My home-made plc-; Barrett. There was no compel-
was lodged there. Incidentally, card said: HANDS OFF CUBA!. ! ling reason for the FBI to be in-
the name of the press secretary ~ VIVA FIDEL!" volved in the hunt for a suspect
of this anti-Castro organization, ~ 'I alleged at that time only to have;
Carlos Jose Briniguier, appear- i The author of this confession, killed a Dallas policeman. FBI
ed in Oswald's notebook. The ~ according to the Warren Com- . agent Barrett's name turns up in
Warren Commission interview- i mission, was none other than Os- ; the Warren Report as part of the'
ed Briniguier but did not in-1 Wald. But if Oswald was agent T- ! Bureau investigation of a pos-
quire into these suspicious coin-! 2 f'or the FBI, why did the Bur- sible conspiracy. Barrett, how-;
cidences. If Oswald was a. sup- eau build a file on his ells e ~ ever, was never called to testify
porter of Fidel, why was he also-~ ?'Communist" ties? The Wa ran Q~ his role was never explain-
c-atin with the Bay of Piga ~ Commission did not follow up on a, ed. again the ~Varrepn Commi y
`''^""t~ this, nor did it adequately ex- ;sion refused to robe an
Oswald swiftly establishedi plain why the name of FBI agent I FBI, CIA links to Oswald. ~
himself as a pro-Castmite dur-i James Hosty was written in Os- '
The Two Oswalds
O
,
ing his summer foray in New
r-~ weld's notebook. Host was the ; The Commission also did no-
leans by engaging Carlos Brini-; y
_...._ ., r..~.e., e..;te -? a,t,^w, t,oi FBI's Oswald expert, havinst in- :thing with the possibility that t
,.au ?u`?"' "'""""""" """?""" 22 1963, and durin the short
in a "fight." Oswald, according! time that Oswald was held b
to Bririiguier's Warren Commis-I the Dallas police. His testimony
sion testimony, stood on.a street; before the. Commission was su
corner and told him, "OK, Car- p-
tos, if yyou want to hit me, hit' posedly the most informed FBI,''
me." Briniguier chose not - to' report.
strike Oswald and both were, * *
promptly arrested. Charges] Virtually all Warren Commis-~
against Briniguier were dropped
and Oswald was fined $10, but
not before he requested to see the
FBI and "somebody went to the
First District" police station to
t71e an affidavit in his behalf, ac-
cording to Marina Oswald. The
~b'arren Commission never bo-
thered to find out who this
"somebody" was; Briniguier tes-
tified that two FBI agents show-.! oi'ficer J.D. Tippit was shot to
ed up and took Oswald aside for death in another part of the city.
a discussion. i Within 75 minutes of the ass~s-
sination, Oswald was arrested
while sitting in a movie house a
few blocks from where Tippit
was itself used by persons un-
known to frame. the real Os-
wald. On November 9, 1963, a
Lee Harvey Oswald was in a Dal-
las car dealership making ?ar-
rangements to test=drive a car.;
However, the Warren Commis-'
sion says that on that day the
real Oswald was in Irving, Tex-
as, writing a letter to the Soviet;
Embassy -and for another
thing, Oswald did not drive. On
September 23, 1963, Oswald, ac-,
cording to the Commission, was:
on a bus to Mexico City; the!
same day, a man calling himself
Lee Harvey Oswald went to the
Selective Service OfTice in Aus-
tin, Texas, asking about his mi-
litary discharge.
The most intriguing element
of the "Two Oswald" theory,
however, concerns the move- ,
ments of yet another Oswald, in
was slain. ~ Mexico City. _ __ _ _ .
sion critics advance the theory'
that Oswald 'was set up as the
fall guy to al}ow the conspiracy
to escape detection.
Immediately after the Kenna-'
dy killing, police questioned ev-
eryone -including Oswald - in i
the Texas School Bvok Deposi-
tory building. Within an hour of
Reuiew of Books, George O'Toole
and Bernard Fensterwafd of thei
Committee to Investigate As-
sassinations disclosed photos of
the Mexico City Oswald. The i
photos had been taken by CIA
surveillance agents in Mexico
and were released to O'Toole and I
Fensterwald after a Freedom of
Information Act suit.
The CIA photos show an Os-1
weld that looks like John Havli-
~~ek more than the alleged assas-
sin of.President Kennedy.
George O'Toole told the Phoe-
nix that an intelligence contacu
of his knew who this mystery)
man was, and that if O'Toole!
were given subpoena power hei
would produce him and prove;
that this Oswald vas a profes-
sional assassin.
* * *
A few months before Lyndon
Johnson died, his former aide,
Lev Janos, paid a visit to the
LBJ Ranch and brought up the
subject of Kennedy's murder. "I
never believed Oswald acted
alone;" Johnson told him. John-
son also called the Warren Ke-,
port into question in a converse
lion with Walter Cronkite,1
shown on television only last)
month. In his talk wtih Cron-
kite, Johnson asserted that there
was a conspiracy behind the kil-
ling of Kennedy. He suspected
that perhaps the Cuban govern-~
ment was retaliating against theey~
"iVlurder, Inc." he said the USI
operated in the Caribbean.
Recent disclosures about the
CIA indicate that LBJ was nob
melodramatic in his character~+
izat.ion of the government's eft
fors to assas.inate forei;n lead
ers. '!';sere ~.vere numerous. C:A,
attempts on Fidel Castro's life?
all obviously failures. Castro
himself sayv that he possesses;
concrete evidence of about. 100?
tries. But the conduct of the CIA+
does not prove that Fidel at-I
tempted to exact retribution. [n
fact, the V1'arren Cummissiona
emphatically ruled out the thev-+
n' that the revolutionary Cu-i
' ? confimued
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bans had stalked JFK. Such a ( Kusn to ~uagemenc, ,aoe-ea vre-~, -4
gory's assertions about the pic-;
th
ld h
b
n
f
eory wou
ave
ee
easy
or
the Warren Commission to lets lure "irresponsible" and a "great.!
disservice to serious as'sass,na-I
stand; blaming communists) lion research. "The Rockefeller None of this should surprise,
seems always to be an easy me-~ Commission wants to prove those familiar with the com osi-
:hod of explaining complicated p
? political events. But in order for?. there wasn't env conspiracy in, lion of the Rockefeller Commis- j
the Commission to establish Os- the assassin~ti~m. 1'he way they lion anil? n,w-ii ~ia~?cai?ried out
weld as a solitary killer, it had to `Fill do it tsiil be to seize on irre- its work. Over half of the :nem-
refute conspiracy theories of spunsihle statements like Gre- her. have had direct links t~~ the
o.,r.a~'c t-tn }. .~~ uia~nn ft~om f ha ~n w , _ _ _ _ _ __
both the left. and right. The
Commission, therefore, dismis-
sed the argument advanced by
the right that Oswald, as an;
agent of the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee (and by extension an~
agent of Castro), committed the
deed out.of communist convic-
tion. Neither the FBI nor th
CIA produced ~ any substantial
evidence to support the anti-
communist claim, and the Wa=_~
ren Report noted this.
What the Warren Commis-
lion neglected to investigate, o
course, were the right-wing links-
to the assassination.
The Rockefeller Probe
It is unlike)y, too, that the
Rockefeller Commission --
which was formed to investigate
the CIA -has been looking very
deeply into possible CIA in--
volvement ,in the Kennedy as-
sassination. Formed as it waa
merely to chide, the CIA for mi-_
nor infractions and assure the ci:
tizenry that all is well, the Roc-;
kefeller Commission is a latter-
day Warren Commission. It will:
deal with the JFK assassinatiotu
in a familiar way.
Already, virtually, all of its
findings have been leaked to the
press. The two exhibits known-ta
have been considered by -the
Commission in its inquiry into a
possible conspiracy area pic-;
cure of three tramps being esp.
coned by police from the scene
of Kennedy's murde_ r, and the
lamed Zapruder film. The
tramps photograph was brought,
to the attention of the Rockefel-
ler Commission by Dick ?Gre=
gory, who?had it brought to hiss
atteition by erstwhile "Dylan-~
ologist" A.J. Weberman of Newi'
Fork. Gregory and Weberman'
Via=
contend that two of the
_
.
grants bear uncanny "cesem-+ ed that the Rockefeller Com-,
blances to? E. Howard Hunt and. mission doctors did not see cru-'
Frank Sturgis of Watergate
fame; the Commission has tum-
-ed the picture over to FBI pho-
tographic experts for examtn-
Tempting as such a photo is,
drawing past and present con-
spiracies neatly to,ether, many
' Kennedy assassinati~~n theorists
have discounted it. Assassina-~
lion researchers are simply un-
certain about who the unidenti-'
fled tramps really are, and are)
unwilling to stake the credibili-
ty of their entire effort on one
poSSibly dubious, photo. Mar
Lane,. author of one of the first.
critioues of the Warren Report,J unwilling to ~o against the find-
- ings of their colleagues.
opportun}tc u, t~nore the Hera
evidence," Lane charged.
Carl Ugle:by, a member of the.
Cambridge-bayed Assassination
Information Bureau and author
of the forthcoming book, Yan-
kees and Cou?bn~:s (Sheed and
Ward), termed the tramps pic-
ture "a red herring" that will beey~
used ?''to discredit the 1Varrenl
Report critics."
~'Ianv other assassination re-
searchers are leery of the role
pplayed in this affair by A.J. `i?'e-
berman, the founder and leader
of a ragtag band of Greenwich
Villagers called the Dylan Li-
beration Fmnt. The group was
dedicated to setting Bob Dylan
back on the revolutionary road
from which he had ostensibly
strayed after his near-fatal mo-
torcycle accident and marriage.
Weberman conducted endless vi-.
gils in front of Dvian's Bleecker
Street residence, sifting through.
his garbage to discover dirt:
about D~?lan's reclusive domes-~
ticity.
The Zapruder Shot '
The other piece of evidence
the Commi:~ion has assessed is
the film of JFK's killing taken by
Dallas dress manufacturer;
Abraham Zapruder. The Zapru-
der film shows Kenneday thrust
violently backward by the ap-
parent impact of a bullet com-
ing from the front. Five physici-
ans. gathered by the Rockefeller
Commission analyzed the su;
topsy report, saw the film, and
announced that JFK was reac
ling spastically to a shot fiom
behind.
Cyril H. `Vecht, coroner of AI-}
legheny County, Pennsylvania
and a Warren Report critic, slat-I
cial evidence: "They did not exa-
mine ? the brain itself [which,'
oddly, i~ missing from the Na-.
tional ArchivesJ, nor the micro-
scopic autopsy slides or neutron,
activation analysis of bullet frag-
ments which would further aid in
determining their origin." The
five physicians admitted to
Wecht's charge, but maintained
that this material was unneces-
sary. Wecht pointed out that all
five have personal or profession- '
al ties to doctors who conducted
a similar review in 19Fi8, or to the '
doctors who performed the 1903 i
autopsy -and thus might be
hired by the Commi;sion; onle
IR weeks were allotted f,~r prob?'
ing: and testimc,m? was heard on-
ly IS times. Uesliite this record, ~
the Commission did hear Frank!
Sturgis conE'ess that he had par-'
ticipated in CIA assassination
plots in Cuba, the Dominican j
Republic, Guatemala, Haiti and
Panama. Still, C. Douglas Uil-~
lon, Commission vice-chairman,
and Chase `'lanhattan Bank di-
recror, said that "tvithoneortwo
major exceptions, everything the
CIA. did was peripherally con-
nected .with legitimate work."
This judgment has not exact-
Iv stood the test of time, even
though it was made only nvo.
weeks ago. "CIA probers in Con-
l;ress threaten to embarrass Roc-
kefeller," reports The tVall
Street Journal. "Senator
Church's special subcommittee
is out to dig tip any dirt that the
report "next month by Rocky's
commission won't reveal;
charges of whitewash would au-
tery, a Rockefeller Commission
whitewash would serve only to
aggravate public skepticism
about official explanations -
skepticism that has been height-
ened by the Vietnam War and
Watergate. It remains to be seen
whether the Church Senate com-
mittee -which starts hearings
in July -will be able to appre-
hend atruth that has been at
large for over a decade.
continued
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 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for
The CIA and Mission I rn possi ble
By Sid Blumenthal
and R.D. Rosen
George O'Toole is a former computer
specialist who worked as chief of the
CIA's Problem Analysis Branch from
March, 1966, to January 19, 1969. Since
then he has written a spy novel with an
occult twist called An Agent on the Oth-
er Side (David McKay); more import-
antly, O'Toole has been trained in the
use of the Psychological Stress Eval-
uator (PSE)? and applied it in his re-
search into the John F. Kennedy assas-
sination, recently published in The As-
sassination Tapes (Penthouse Press).
The PSE, brainchild of three retired
Army intelligence officers who formed a
company in 1970 to manufacture anti-
bugging equipment for private clients in
their war against industrial espionage,
can determine through the electronic
analysis of recorded voices whether a
subject is telling the truth. The key to
the PSE's effectiveness is a natural
physiological tremor in the human voice
that subtly vibrates 10 times a second
and disappears to a lesser or greater ex-
...tent under-conditions of stress: Al-
though the PSE is still controversial,
.'particularly in~the eyes of the American
Polygraph Association, it is now used by
19 American law enforcement agencies
and 13 foreign countries:
O'Toole ran through the PSE extant
tape recordings of Lee Harvey Oswald
claiming that he had not shot anyone.
His denial showed no stress at all, forc-
ing the conclusion that Oswald was tell-
ing the truth when he responded to a
newsman's question on November 22,
1963: "I didn't shoot anybody, no sir."
O'Toole's findings were examined and
cohfirmed by three polygraph and PSE
experts, one of whom, the .highly es-
teemed and now retired army poly-
graph expert, L.H. Hitchcock, was cou-
rageous enough to confirm Oswald's in-
nocence in a letter to O"Toole that reads
in part: "My PSE analysis of these re-
cordings indicates very clearly that Os-
wald believed he was telling the truth
when he denied killing the President.
Assuming?that he was z;ot suffering from
a psychopathological condition that
made him ignorant of his own actions, I
can state, beyond a reasonable doubt,
that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill Pre-
sident Kennedy and did not shoot any-
one else."
In the guise of a magazine journalist,
O'Toole went to Dallas and was able to
record private and phone conversations
with several key figures in the Kennedy
killing and its aftermath, including
members and former members of the
Dallas police department who lied, ac-.i
cording to O'Toole's PSE analyses, a
about events surrounding the asses- i
sination. ~ .. - 1
In general, The Assassination Tapes
contributes powerful scientific evidence
that Oswald was innocent and that Dal-
las police officers, 11 years after the fact,
are still lying to protect, wittingly or not,
~ the actual conspirators. On the basis of,
his new PSE evidence and his familiar-
ity with intelligence operations, O'Toole
formulates a scenario for Oswald's
movements in Dallas and his victimize-
. tion as a "patsy." (See accompanying
story.)
i O'Toole was in Boston recently and
spoke to the Phoenix about his own ex- i
perience in the CIA and about the agen- '~
cy's possible connection with the Dallas
gunplay of November,, 1963: "While
working out here at Hanscom Field for a
little outfit called The System Develop-
ment Corporation, as a computer spe-
cialist, I did things that were well
thought of and; the._CIA approached me '
right here in Boston in 1964. But we
couldn't get together on what grade I
would come in at and I refused them.
They came back a year later with an of-
fer I wasn't inclined to refuse and
started work in March of 1966, working '
mainly as chief of their Problems Anal-
ysis Branch in the Intelligence Directo-
rate [one of the four CIA directorates -
the other three being the Plans Direc-
torate, the Support Directorate and the
Directorate of Science and Technol-
i ogy~. I did computer analyses of raw in-
telligence information towards produc-
ing finished analytic intelligence, using
j the computer as an aid to drawing con- ,
elusions and often statistical probabil-
ities. The Intelligence Directorate is like
a big newspaper, but the amount of da-
to coming in daily is several orders of I
magnitude greater than what comes
across the wire services at a paper. We'd
get this together to figure out, for exam-
ple, who's likely to have the power in
Saudi Arabia now that Faisal is dead.
Most of what I worked on related to
Eastern Europe, the Soviet union and
mainland China. That's the kind of elec-
tronic detective work we were doing. I
didn't own a trenchcoat.
"We had no request for domestic in-
telligence work, but that doesn't mean
they weren't doing it. The Records Inte-
gration Division was the operational
people's equivalent of the Intelligence
Directorate's office of Central Refer-
ence, where my branch was. So these are
guys who, because it w?as all so super-
sensitive, would do all their own com-
puter-pmc?essing and had their own
computer and we couldn't rt en?et into
the room. It was completely separate.
This was where Sy Hersh's 10,000 files
"I knew about these people be-'
cause they were always bugging
me about things. These are the
folks who put together the :~fis-
siun Impossible devices. As a
matter of fact, they would send
old tapes of Mission Impassible
shows to CIA stations in Liber-
ia, for example, for morale pur-
poses. `uw, one of these guys
from the Recvrds Integration Di- -
vision took me on a tour - of
course, they didn't shvw me
everything - but they showed
me cameras that didn't make a
sound when the shutter closed,
and they're experts on audio sur-
veillance. Anyway, this guy was
saying that the agents in the
field see Mission Impossible and
say, '~vhy can't we have that?'
And the next thing they knew
they were getting formal re-
quests at RID for something they
saw on the show. I thought that
was kind of jolly.
"1~Ve11, several years later, af- ~
ter I was working with Colonel
Bell, one of the inventors of the
Psychological Stress Evaluator,
and my work with it was wel!-
known, Iwas home and a friend
of mine called me and he said,
`Turn on channel ~ right now -
Mission Impossible's got a Psy-
chological Stress Evaluator on
continued
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 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100560003-0 -
6
Schorr had learned = tffat the;
Rocky panel had learned that,
the CIA withheld evidence it had!
turned up in the course of the.
Warren investigation -that evi- j
dence being that apparently in=
formation from Soviet sources
which .the .CIA .decided was
about?' This was a rerun of Mi~-
lion Impossible, since it had
been off' the air for several years,
and I turned on the television
and sure enough, there was PSE
-- physically -being used by;
the Mission Impossible team.l
What the devil is this? So I call-;
ed Colonel Bell and told him'
about it and he said, 'Yeah, of-,
ter I left the Army I was techni-,
cal adviser f'or the show.' " ?
O'Toole? turned to a discus-!'
lion of the CIA, the Rockefeller'
panel and the Kennedy assas-'.
sination in Dallas: "If the CIA
was involved in this -and I'm'
beginning to wonder if they
weren't - they've of.course got a
very big stake in keeping it from!
all coming out.
"Did you see the interview the!
other night with Daniel Schorr
talking to Rockefeller on CBS?
When he asked Rocky?`Are youi
going to look into the JFK ash
sassination?', Rockefeller wasj
extremely careful in _his state-'
menu, but he said in effect thaLi .
if? the CIA was involved, it was ai
domestic operation and ob-
viously that comes under our',
charter, and we would look into]
it. Then Schorr later said that'
.CBS had learned ? - meaning.
it.'Ts`aia?'What are you talking ~? planted evidence and therefore
determined .on its own should
not be shown to the Commis- ` ~
sion._ i
? "The thing that worries me is
that the Rockefeller panel will
look at the evidence and say, `We
looked at it and brought Mr. Col-
by in. and he. swore to tell the
truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, and said .~
h
h
t
ey
ad nothing to do with the
assassination,' and that.'ll be it.'
Now,. this is inevitably going, to
Ko on the agenda of the Church !
committee in the Senate, which
is certainly less likely to be in-
volved in a whitewash. Now we
all know that the Rockefeller
committee is a whitewash, Lhat
they hired. David Belin [former?
Warren Commission counsel and
an :apologist for its report) to
lead the-pack. What we have to
do is just press for a joint Con-
gressional committee that is go-
ing to do nothingbut look at the
assassination, armed with the
power of subpoena and the pow-
er to grant immunity selectively
in exchange for testimony.
"A two-pmnged effort is re-
quired: first, to get people in
Middle America interested and
dissatisfied with the official si=
tuation and, second, to put pres-
sure on Congress and educate
Congressmen to tell the differ-
ence between fuzzy photographs
that might be Hunt and Sturgis
and the ineluctable conclusions
regarding the ballistics of a bul-
let and the evidence in the Zap-
ruder film." -
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