On August 22, 1957, Lee Harvey Oswald departed from San Diego for Japan aboard the USS Bexar.
In September, he was assigned to Marine Air Control Squadron 1 (MACS-1) at the top-secret underground base at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, where he worked with classified radar equipment.
Atsugi was also the base from which the highly secret Lockheed U-2 spy plane operated on missions over Soviet territory.
Only the most capable recruits were assigned to Atsugi, and as a consequence of his position there, Oswald received a security clearance—an authorization granting access to military areas containing classified information.
According to the author, this and other facts call into question portrayals of Oswald as an unintelligent failure.
In testimony before the Warren Commission, Oswald’s former commanding officer at Atsugi, John Donovan, described him as competent in all areas.¹
Donovan also stated that he and Oswald often played chess and that Oswald frequently defeated him, despite Donovan being the base champion.²
The Commission further asked about Oswald’s security status.
Donovan’s answer was unequivocal:
“He must have had a security clearance to work in the radar center, because that was a minimum requirement for all of us.”³
At this point, one question inevitably arises:
If Oswald was a loner and an odd individual who considered communism to be the best system in the world, would the U.S. Marine Corps then place him at a top-secret base overseas with a high-level security clearance where he would handle radar duties related to highly classified aerial reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union?
James Wilcott, who had been recruited by the CIA in the 1950s and later worked at its Tokyo office, testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which investigated the Kennedy assassination in the late 1970s. Wilcott stated that he had heard from several people within the CIA that Oswald worked for them while serving in the Marine Corps4 and that he had been recruited through the military as a double agent with a specific focus on the Soviet Union.5
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1978, Wilcott claimed “that it was common knowledge at the CIA’s Tokyo office that Oswald worked for the Company (CIA).”6 Wilcott’s wife Elsie, who had also been recruited, confirmed the same thing: “That’s true. Right after the President had been killed, people at the Tokyo office openly talked about Oswald having gone to Russia for the CIA,” she explained. “Everyone wondered how the authorities would be able to cover up Oswald’s role, but I suppose they did.”7
When Oswald arrived at Atsugi, he became acquainted with a Marine named Zack Stout. Armstrong interviewed Stout and asked him whether Oswald studied Russian during the time they served together.
Stout stated that Oswald did not attend any Russian lessons, did not read Russian books, and did not listen to Russian-language records. He also explained that Oswald could not have kept such materials there without the others knowing about it.
“We slept in the same barracks and most of the time we worked on the same radar crew,” Stout explained. “The idea that Oswald studied Russian in Japan is ridiculous—it simply did not happen.”8
The question then becomes:
Was there another Oswald in Japan besides the one who claimed to admire the Soviet Union and spoke Russian?
Armstrong argues that this was indeed the case, and that the Russian-speaking Oswald, whom he calls “Harvey,” was in New Orleans working at Pfisterer’s Dental Laboratory, while the other, whom Armstrong calls “Lee,” was stationed in Japan until November 1958.
In 1959, Oswald “defected” to the Soviet Union. There he met Marina Prusakova, a young pharmacist who lived with an uncle named Ilya Prusakov, an officer in the MVD intelligence organization. After only six weeks, Oswald and Marina were married. He subsequently worked at a radio factory in Minsk and was, of course, closely monitored by the KGB.
John Armstrong pointed out that in both Russian medical records and memoranda from the State Department, the CIA, and the FBI, Oswald was referred to as “Harvey” between 1959 and 1962, not “Lee Harvey.”9 The reason, Armstrong argues, is that while Harvey was operating as an agent in Russia, Lee was working with CIA agents in New Orleans, Texas, and Florida.
In May 1961, Robert Taber, a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, was in Havana together with an alleged weapons expert known as “Lieutenant Oswald.” There they met a doctor named Enrique Luaces to discuss an arms deal.
After the shots in Dallas, Luaces stated that he was certain the Oswald he had met in 1961 and the Oswald he had seen on television after the assassination were the same person.
The problem is that in May 1961, Lee Harvey Oswald was still in the Soviet Union.
In May 1962, Oswald applied for permission to return to the United States, which was granted. After his return, the authorities took no action against him despite the fact that he had stated that he intended to reveal military secrets to the Russians.
Shortly after returning, Oswald and Marina became acquainted with Ruth and Michael Paine, a Quaker couple in Texas with a decidedly unusual background. Some assassination researchers suspect a link between former CIA director Allen Dulles and the Paines.10
Michael’s father, Lyman Paine, had helped found the Trotskyist Party in the United States, and when Michael’s mother, Ruth, divorced him, she married Arthur Young, the creator of the successful Bell Helicopter company, which conducted business with the military and the CIA. Michael Paine therefore held a high-level security clearance.
An FBI document dated December 3, 1963, shows that a Frederick Osborne Jr. vouched that Ruth Paine had no special knowledge of the Kennedy assassination. Osborne’s father had been a longtime friend and associate of Allen Dulles.
Ruth later arranged a job for Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository, located at the assassination site, by calling the manager, Roy Truly. This was despite the fact that Oswald had been offered a better-paying position elsewhere.
Ruth claimed that her neighbor, Linnie Mae Randle, had informed her of an opening at the Depository, but when Randle testified before the Commission, she denied this. The only thing she had said was that Lee might try applying for work at the warehouse.
At the same time, Robert Adams of the Texas Employment Commission called Ruth to offer Oswald a permanent position as a baggage handler with Trans Texas Airways for $310 per month. This was $100 more than Oswald would earn at the Depository.
When Ruth informed Adams that Oswald was not there, Adams left a message asking Oswald to contact him. When Adams heard nothing from Oswald, he called Ruth again the following day, at which point she claimed that Oswald had already found employment elsewhere.
When Adams later testified before the Warren Commission, he stated that he did not believe Ruth had informed Oswald about the job he had offered.11
When Ruth was questioned by the Commission about the matter, she initially denied any knowledge of another job offer. A little later, she claimed to vaguely remember the conversation. Ruth stated that Oswald had gone into town with hopes raised by the employment office, but that he later told her the position had already been filled. There is no evidence that this was true.
A former employee of the Texas School Book Depository, Edward Shields, testified before the HSCA that eight employees had been laid off the day before Oswald was hired. In light of this, it seems strange that Truly suddenly found it necessary to hire the stranger Oswald the very next day.
In August 1963, Oswald participated in a radio debate on Bill Stuckey’s radio show Conversation Carte Blanche. Stuckey and his colleague Bill Slater had invited Carlos Bringuier and Ed Butler, from the organization INCA, whose purpose was to prevent communist revolutions in Latin America, to debate Oswald.
The radio program is interesting for several reasons. First, it demonstrates that Oswald was a highly articulate person. Second, it makes clear that he was well informed on political and foreign-policy issues. It is also important because it shows that Oswald, for obvious reasons, refused to disclose the number of members in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans (after all, there was only one—himself). It also reveals that he did not even know the name of the chairman of the parent organization, which seems extremely odd if he had been a serious supporter.
Most interesting of all, however, is that during the debate Oswald accidentally made a revealing slip of the tongue. When Stuckey asked how Oswald had supported himself in the Soviet Union and whether he had received any financial assistance from the United States while living there, Oswald replied:
”… Uh, I worked in Russia. I was under… uh… the protection of… of… I was… I mean… I was not under the protection of the American government, but was regarded as an American citizen the entire time. I did not lose my American citizenship.”12
When the Warren Commission later reproduced this statement in its volumes, it appeared as follows:
“I worked in Russia. I was not under the protection of—that is, I was not under the protection of the American government, but since I was considered an American citizen the entire time, I did not lose my American citizenship.”13
The Warren Commission had thus altered Oswald’s statement and inserted the word not at the beginning of the sentence so that the slip of the tongue would not be noticed, despite the fact that Oswald had first said that he had been under the protection of the United States, and only after correcting himself did he claim that he had not been under the protection of the U.S. government.
The Commission likely hoped that no one would discover this, and it was far from the only time that statements were altered in its report to fit its own theories.
Later in the interview, Slater asked Oswald whether he had ever wanted to renounce his American citizenship. Oswald first replied that citizenship was granted very rarely in the Soviet Union and then explained that he had never at any point given up his American citizenship or severed contact with the American embassy.
One of the testimonies that the Warren Commission found most troublesome came from Sylvia Odio, a young woman in Dallas whose family had emigrated from Cuba. The Commission’s counsel, J. Lee Rankin, was reportedly very frustrated by the suggestion that Odio’s story should be investigated:
“We should be closing doors, not opening them,”14 he complained to one of the Commission’s attorneys.
In late September 1963, Odio and her sister Annie received a visit from two Cubans who identified themselves as “Leopoldo” and “Angelo.” Accompanying them was an American whom they introduced as “Leon Oswald.”
Odio’s father was a former political prisoner who had earned the respect of Cuban exiles, and the men claimed to belong to an underground group that needed assistance with a fundraising letter for the Cuban exile organization JURE.
Sylvia and her sister became suspicious and were reluctant to help the men, who then left.
The following day, “Leopoldo” called Odio and claimed that “Leon Oswald” was an expert marksman who believed that Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs invasion.
“Leopoldo” also hinted that “Oswald” was somewhat unstable.
When President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas two months later and Sylvia saw pictures of Oswald on the television news, she fainted. Sylvia recognized him as the Leon whom the unknown Cubans had brought with them when they visited her.
Odio’s story, which was corroborated by her sister, soon reached the FBI and the Warren Commission.
Since the Warren Commission’s own records showed that Oswald was riding a bus on his way to Mexico at the time of the visit to Odio, they found themselves in a dilemma and chose to dismiss Odio’s account. In other words, this constitutes yet another indication of two Lee Harvey Oswalds.
When Odio was interviewed by HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi in the 1970s, she recounted a strange incident that had occurred when Warren Commission staff member Wesley Liebeler invited her to a restaurant.
They were not alone, Odio explained; someone she believed was Marina Oswald’s attorney was also present.
“I thought there might be something behind it, that there was some kind of double game being played at the table between the attorney and him,” Odio explained. She was not sure whether they wanted her to overhear their conversation or whether they were trying to convince her of something.
“But one thing he said has always troubled me. He said to this other gentleman, ‘Well, you know that if we discover this is a conspiracy, we have orders from Chief Justice Warren to conceal it.’”15
Fonzi was astonished.
“Did Liebeler say that?” he exclaimed.
“Yes, sir, I can swear to that,” Odio replied.
It was then that she realized that the Warren Commission did not want to know the truth.
In its final report, the HSCA criticized the Warren Commission’s reasons for dismissing Odio’s account and stated that “The Committee is inclined to believe Silvia Odio.”16
For Gaeton Fonzi, this was one of the pivotal elements in the entire Kennedy case.
“One of the conclusions I came to is that the issue of a conspiracy cannot be challenged,” he later said. “The evidence of a conspiracy was overwhelming.”17
Michael Delavante, The Assassination of President Kennedy – Part 7
Also read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6
Källor:
- Warren Commission Hearings: Vol. VII, Testimony of John E. Donovan, (page 291)
- Warren Commission Hearings: Vol. VII, Testimony of John E. Donovan, (page 300)
- Warren Commission Hearings: Vol. VII, Testimony of John E. Donovan, (page 300)
- EXECUTIVE SESSION ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 1978 , House of Representatives, John F. Kennedy Subcommittee of the Select Committee on Assassinations, Washington, D. C. https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/FalseMystery/JamesWilcottTestimony032278.html
Se även: OSWALD LINK TO C.I.A. REPORTED AT INQUIRY, By Nicholas M. Horrock Special to The New York Times, March 27, 1978
- Jim Douglass, JFK and The Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
Orbis Books, (New York: Simon and Schuster, (page 147) - OSWALD LINK TO C.I.A. REPORTED AT INQUIRY, By Nicholas M. Horrock Special to The New York Times, March 27, 1978
- Jim Douglass, JFK and The Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
Orbis Books, Simon and Schuster 2010, (page 421-422) - John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald, Quasar ltd, 2003, (page 5)
- John Armstrong’s University of Minnesota Speech, Minneapolis, May 15, 1999.
Se även: Warren Commission Hearings: Vol 9, (page 389-90)
10.Who Are the Paines? Martin Haye, The Mysteries of Dealy Plaza, Monday, 9 August 2010.
- Warren Commission Hearings: Vol. XI, (page 480-81)
- LEE HARVEY OSWALD ON THE RADIO (AUGUST 1963) (TWO COMPLETE PROGRAMS) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_mg5-KCjRU
- Warren Commission, Volume XXI: Stuckey Ex 3, https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_Stuckey_Ex_3.pdf
- Edward Jay Epstein, Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth,
Viking Adult; Second edition, 1966, (page 25)
- The Final Assassinations: Report. United States. Congress. House. Select Committee on Assassinations, Bantam Books, 1979, (page 166) Se även: The Odio Incident. http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/The_Odio_Incident
- Gaeton Fonzi Interview, 26 April 1996 with Steve Bochan, http://www.cuban-exile.com/doc_001-025/doc0007.html Also see: Sylvia Odio vs. Liebeler & the La Fontaines Written by James DiEugenio, kennedysandking.com, Tuesday, 15 October 1996
- Good-Bye To All That. Dr. James R. Black. Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr.Spectator Magazine, November 1995
