Lee Harvey Oswald’s First Intelligence Assignment

Seventeen-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald began his first tentative steps into the intelligence milieu when he joined the Marines in late 1956 and obtained his qualifications as an aviation electronics operator. These credentials allowed him to perform basic radar functions, a post that requires above average IQ. For Oswald, with his spelling problems and a shaky education, this was a big deal. Keep in mind that Oswald may have been unwitting about some or all of the roles he would play for intelligence, although he seems to have been an agent in his own mind. He may have simply been manipulated for other purposes.

During 1957 and 1958, Oswald was stationed at the Atsugi naval air station in Japan, one of the major bases where the CIA flew secret U-2 reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union. The task of his unit was to use radar to direct aircraft to their targets.

At Atsugi, Oswald and the other radar operators tracked the radar-evading abilities of the U-2s as they flew at high altitudes, which was necessary in order to evade Soviet anti-aircraft fire. He and his unit also traveled to provide similar U-2 support at Cubi Point in the Philippines, where Oswald once tracked a U-2 flying over China and showed it to his commanding officer.

While Oswald was in Asia, Col. Pyotr Popov was a top double agent for the CIA, providing important Soviet military intelligence to legend maker #1 James Angleton’s CI/SIG under the code name ATTIC. In April, 1958, Popov heard a drunken colonel brag about the “technical details” that the KGB had on a new high-altitude spycraft that America was flying over the USSR. Popov concluded that the leak of such details came from within the U-2 project itself. While in Berlin, Popov passed this U-2 leak to the Agency and then returned to Moscow.

In September, 1959, Oswald received a dependency discharge from the Marines on the grounds that his mother was injured and needed his care. However, after a three day visit with her, he left for Europe. Supposedly, he was off to attend college for the first time at the Albert Schweitzer College in Zurich, Switzerland. Percival Brundage, the college president, was Eisenhower’s budget director and a staunch advocate of black budget financing for military and intelligence operations. Brundage is also known as one of the two owner-operators of Southern Air Transport, infamous as the “CIA’s airline” in the Caribbean and in Southeast Asia during the 60s and 70s.

Oswald never made it to Albert Schweitzer College. He changed direction once his freighter docked in France, avoiding the usual visa delays and zipping through to the Soviet Union in unheard-of time for an American at the height of the Cold War. After Oswald arrived in Helsinki on the 10th, he sought a visa on Tuesday the 13th, obtained it on the 14th, and had crossed the border into the Soviet Union by the 15th. How he did it is a highly revealing story.

The day before Oswald’s arrival to Helsinki, the CIA had just confirmed on October 9 that the Finnish city was the only known spot in the Soviet empire where someone could get an instant visa in a few minutes instead of at least a week and prior approval from Moscow. This confirmation came in the wake of an August 28 memo from vice consul/CIA officer William Costille, entitled REDCAP/LCIMPROVE.

Why this complicated arrangement? Something big was about to happen. What were REDCAP and LCIMPROVE?

More: http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/allposts/lee-harvey-oswalds-first-intelligence-assignment

On March 4, 1959, 5 days prior to be being promoted to Private 1st Class for the second time, Lee Harvey Oswald completed an application to attend the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland. The application was lodged on 19 of March, with a $25.00 registration fee being made on June 19. August 17 found him applying for a dependency discharge from the Marines which was duly granted on the 28th of that month. Exactly one week later, Lee applied for a passport, listing his occupation as "shipping export agent", and the purpose of his travel as attendance at the Albert Schweitzer College, Churwalden, Switzerland, and at the University of Turku in Finland. He also stated his intention to visit Cuba, the Dominican Republic, England, France, Germany and Russia as a tourist...

As history indicates, Oswald did not attend the Albert Schweitzer College, but instead, made his way to the Soviet Uniona where he was to stay for about two and half years.

What then, was the purpose of this college application?

How Oswald found out about this obscure little college has long been regarded as something of a mystery. Not even the Swiss authorities could locate it easily in 1960 after being contacted by the FBI. This contact was the result of Marguerite, Lee's pertinacious mother, contacting the State Department, concerned when mail for Lee had been returned undelivered.

The answer to the mystery may well be found in his relationship with Kerry Thornley. Thornley - a noted right-winger - was, at the time he and Oswald served together, attending the very left-wing church of Unitarian, Stephen Frichman (1)...

In 1956, Brundage was made Director of the Bureau of the Budget. He retired in 1958, but continued with the Bureau in an "advisory" position for a further two years.

As Budget Director, he was involved in Project Vanguard (2) which was the result of NSC 5520 and "was intended to establish 'Freedom of Space'--the right to overfly foreign territory for future intelligence satellites. The initial estimate of its cost was $15-20 million, but by mid-1956 the program was already over budget and estimates of its total costs continued to grow."

$2.5 million of the budget for this project came from the CIA (3).

The "coincidence" of Brundage holding the purse strings for a program dealing with the hot issue of overflights and being heavily involved with the Albert Schweitzer College should be way too big for any reasonable person to swallow.

Brundage's real character, publicly so virtuous, was summed up by reporter, Eileen Shanahan in a 1992 oral history interview for the Washington Press Club Foundation:

"But I remember running into some real bigoted people with a background in business. I remember in particular Eisenhower's last budget director, a guy named Percival Brundage, who was an accountant. And I had a lot of
sources in what was then the Bureau of the Budget. And I got stories they wished I hadn't gotten. And I found out from one of my sources, that Brundage had actually-this was plainly illegal-a Secret Service man investigating me to see who I was sleeping with to get my stories."

The IARF was was not the only religious organization springing from the US to have set up a college in Switzerland in 1955.

The other one was called L'Abri. Unlike the Albert Schweitzer College, L'Abri seems to have grown, and now has colleges across Europe, Asia and the US.

The founder of this "fellowship" was Dr Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer's history is most revealing. Prior to starting his Swiss college, he had been very closely associated with the virulent anti-Communist, anti-Semitic Carl McIntire and his American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC). McIntire had studied at Princeton under J. Gresham Machen, in whose conservatism and orthodoxy, McIntire found much that he admired.

An article by Linda Minor provides another possible point of interest: according to the article, Schaeffer had been sent to Europe during WWII by the Presbyterian Church Foreign Missions Group,"mostly to different cantons in Switzerland--at the same time Allan Dulles was there."

Switzerland had been awash with intrigue during both WWII and the Cold War. As pointed out by researcher, Herbert Blenner, suspected Soviet spy, Noel Field, a former State Dept employee and friend of Alger Hiss, was also in Switzerland during this time period, doing relief work with refugees on behalf of the Unitarian Church.

Over time, Schaeffer through his book, A Christian Manifesto, has become the Poster Boy of the Christian Right. To him, the notion of separation of Church and State was preposterous; to him, and to those who have followed, there can be no separation of powers, because such separation only aids the enemy... and the enemy... is liberalism.

Coincidentally (given the reports on marijuana in the Albert Schweitzer College), Schaeffer claimed to have taken in youths who took drugs and occasionally wreaked havoc in his alpine retreat. His reason for putting up with this behavior? The students needed saving from the emptiness offered by the philosophers and writers they were all so familiar with... including one whose name appears in Oswald's note-book...that of the influential 19th century German philosopher, Hegel. If and/or how Oswald applied Hegelian philosophy may in fact be crucial in understanding some of the more puzzling aspects of his actions, especially in relation to any assistance provided. Consider the following quote from Encarta which attempts to explain Hegel's thoughts on politics and ethics: "At the level of morality, right and wrong is a matter of individual conscience. One must, however, move beyond this to the level of social ethics, for duty, according to Hegel, is not essentially the product of individual judgment. Individuals are complete only in the midst of social relationships; thus, the only context in which duty can truly exist is a social one. Hegel considered membership in the state one of the individual's highest duties. Ideally, the state is the manifestation of the general will, which is the highest expression of the ethical spirit. Obedience to this general will is the act of a free and rational individual. Hegel emerges as a conservative, but he should not be interpreted as sanctioning totalitarianism, for he also argued that the abridgment of freedom by any actual state is morally unacceptable."

The college application

In the section headed, Active Part Taken in Organizations, Oswald, wrote: "Student body movement in school for controll (sic) of Juvenile Delinquency.Member Y.M.C.A. and A.Y.A. associations."

The truth is though, that Oswald himself had been classified as a juvenile delinquent while living in New York City during 1953/54, resulting in his being sent to Youth House for psychiatric assessment. On April 27, 1953, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency was established. Hearings were held by the subcommittee in NYC on April 21, 22, and on June 4, 1954. These hearing centered on the impact of comic book violence on youth. Prior to the hearings, evidence was gathered from numerous sources such as courts, youth workers, police, social workers, and probation officers, as well as from the comic book industry itself (4)...

A few years later Oswald was interviewed by Aline Mosby in Russia. He related to her how his interest in Marxism dated back to when he was living in New York. The catalyst, he told the unimpressed reporter, had been when an old lady handed him a pamphlet about the Rosenbergs, though he also confessed he did not know why he remembered the incident.

John Carro contacted Lee's school on November 19 and was advised that Lee's behavior had improved dramatically, that he was now saluting the flag, and that he no longer presented as a problem. Within two months, he was back in the city of his birth. If his conversion to Marxism did happen in NYC, then it had to have been within the last couple of months before leaving, and there would also likely be some noticeable marker for it. There is none.

His aforementioned sudden improvement in behavior followed a court ordered contact with the Protestant Big Brothers and other religion-based community services. Members of the SISS tended to be of the Christian Right. Robert Morris for example, was closely aligned with Fred Schwartz's Protestant dominated group, Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. It has to be borne in mind that these NY contacts with religious groups may have been the start of a pattern which saw Lee go on to join the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) where he met with David Ferrie ... who had failed hopes of priesthood.... but who would eventually take the title anyway, after having his nomination withdrawn by Bishop George A Hyde of the Old Catholic Church... a church closely associated with those favoured by certain White Russians under whose influence Lee and Marina would one day fall. It was also associated by virtue of common roots and IARF membership with the Quakers and the Unitarians. Hyde, as some will no doubt recognize, was Quaker Ruth Paine's maiden name...

More: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=880

ONI has a particular interest to me since anonymously and unconfirmed a statement was made that Harry was ONI.
Since then anything to do with ONI switches the bulb on. Anyway, back at the ranch, or mine anyway, well, actually it's a half acre bushblock surrounded by farms, this is also interesting as a careful (reread : careful) read of Katzenbachs memo might be of interest.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=756877

Lee Harvey Oswald---a U.S. Intelligence Agent: The Evidence

From a presentation by Hal Verb

EXCERPT...

"Now, the obvious implication is that Oswald was on a mission," Verb stated, "as an agent of the ONI. Now, like I say, I tracked down that person---and that's one of the reasons---that's my personal experience with showing that he is an agent."

In testimony before the ARRB (the presidential Assassination Records and Review Board) in Dallas, November 1994, I cited this particular 1966 call and urged the Board to review this matter and interview not only those in the CID but also the ONI as well. I pointed out that if Oswald were briefed by the CID it could not escape the notice and attention of the ONI. To date (July 1995) there is no indication or prospect that the ARRB has or will look into this but, at least, now it is a matter of historical record. (Note: The ARRB is not an investigative body---Ed.)

The second (personal) reason noted above deals with an event in 1965. A friend, knowing of my deep interest in the JFK case, gave me a record he found at a record store. This record, which I still own, is extremely rare (I've seen only one other copy) and was made around 1964. It is called The President's Assassin Speaks, and has Oswald's actual voice during a radio debate he had with Ed Butler (and others) in New Orleans, August 21, 1963. Produced by "Key Records" in Los Angeles, it is an anti-communist propaganda production of Dr. Billy James Hargis, founder and director of "The Christian Crusade." Naming Oswald as the assassin, the record strives mightily to link Owald with an (implied) communist conspiracy. If you listen to this record, the back of the record assures us, "you will be able to decide for yourself who gave the orders to Oswald to take the life of President Kennedy."

My interest in this record, however, was not the propaganda content but rather in a discovery I made of a "slip" Oswald made on that tape while defending his stay in Russia as a "defector." Oswald "slipped" and stated he "was under the protection of the American government," quickly recovering from his "slip" and then saying he was "not under" that protection.

"When I heard that record, I went ballistic. Of course, in those days you didn't use the term 'ballistic.' But I did go ballistic. I said, my God! The guy has slipped and made an admission---to me---which represents that he is representing the U.S. Government!...

"So I immediately went to the (Warren Commission) volumes...and they left out the part where he says 'I was under the protection of---' and they leave in the 'I was not under the protection of.'

CONTINUED...

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/07th_Issue/copa_lho.html

Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?

Joan Mellen

EXCERPT...

Further corroboration that the CIA Soviet Russia Division, Soviet Realities, SR6, in the person of Eleanor Reed, debriefed false defectors, is contained in a document I have just discovered and that CIA released "as sanitized" in 1998. The document resides in Robert Webster's file, is dated 17 August 1962, and is telling for several reasons; the cases of Oswald and Webster are so similar that we can await, with some expectation, that the parallel document of Oswald's debriefing by Reed (with perhaps her frequent debriefing partner Rudy ("Valentino") Balaban), may well surface. This document demonstrates beyond doubt Reed ("Anderson") was an SR6 debriefer; I copy it here in full ed. note: see 104-10182-10074:

TO: Eleanor Reed
FROM: (03) IR/CR
SUBJECT: Appraisal of Interrogation

1. The eagerness of the subject to help and his repeated expressions of regret for having neglected opportunities for more detailed observations left me with mixed reactions. In my opinion this attitude detracted from his otherwise seemingly genuine manner and at least for me it “watered down” his attempt to generate a repentant impression.

2. The subject readily answered questions and was extremely friendly during both periods of interrogation. Plottings and data, however, by the subject on a blank town plan left him for homework later proved disoriented. . The subject discovered his error during our second meeting and volunteered corrections.

3. As far as substantive intelligence gained is concerned, the interrogation provided data on a plant previously described as possibly in the electronics business as a probable radar storage and repair area. A hitherto unknown naval installation was also identified and located in an area other than the one previously assumed.

4. It can be said that if the subject’s bona fides are definitely established, positive intelligence gathered from him is of real value.

(03)
GROUP 1
Excluded from automatic downgrading and declassification.

Sometimes Soviet Russia Counter Intelligence was called in at the briefings. So the mystery of Oswald in the Soviet Union unravels. The above trajectory offers further evidence that Oswald was a creature of the CIA, worked for the CIA, and, quite understandably, was debriefed by them upon his return.

Additional evidence that CIA debriefed Oswald after his return from the Soviet Union resides in the unredacted version CIA document 435-173A, dated 25 November 1963, by the same Thomas B. Casasin.

This document is familiar because we have long had a redacted version of Casasin’s 25 November 1963 memo to Walter P. Haltigan, whom Casasin subsequently revealed to be one “Jim Flint.” Flint was part of SR9, the operations part of the Soviet Division and was Casasin’s “normal contact” in Paris where Casasin arrived in September 1962.

CONTINUED...

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Who_Was_Lee_Harvey_Oswald

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AND THE CURRENT POLITICAL MOMENT

by Joan Mellen

EXCERPT...

To summarize: George Bush is linked in April 1963, seven months before the Kennedy assassination, to a CIA project involving Lee Oswald's handler, Count Sergei Georges de Mohrenschildt through his own CIA partner, Thomas Devine. Bush and Devine later traveled to Vietnam together, a trip for which the Department of Defense issued Devine an interim “Top Secret” clearance. No surprise there: Devine obviously had never left the Agency.

On the day Gaeton Fonzi was to interview de Mohrenschildt for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, de Mohrenschildt was shot, his death ruled a suicide. Fonzi's card was in his pocket. Let me refer you as well to Joseph McBride's “Nation” magazine article where he exposed how George H. W. Bush was debriefed by the FBI about the Kennedy assassination on November 23 rd . The inadvertently released document refers to “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.” It was a different George Bush, George William Bush, who worked for the Agency, Bush claimed. But it wasn't so. George William came forward to say he was never debriefed by anyone.

Every road leads to the assassination of President Kennedy. What should also give us pause is that these documents about Zapata Offshore, which had offices on several continents, but never did much business, as the CENTRO MONDIALE COMERCIALE in Rome, on whose board of director's Garrison suspect Clay Shaw served, did little trade, and George Bush's CIA partner, were released under the JFK Act as Kennedy assassination documents. So it is the Agency itself, not the dreaded “conspiracy theorists,” that links George H. W. Bush with the Kennedy assassination. Or: it's the government that is the ultimate “conspiracy theorist.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.joanmellen.net/truth.html

The JFK Case; the Office that Spied on its Own Spies

EXCERPT (page 3)...

5. "Harvey Lee Oswald" has a list of approximately a hundred documents attributed to him. Many of them have been destroyed or cannot be found, including an entire FBI file under that name.

In the intelligence practice of having two or more files on a subject, the regular name is used for material that is meant for the public domain, while the transposed or misspelled name is for covert information. In that manner, an agency can tell the "truth" about the contents of their overt file, and hide its covert information in the covert file with the transposed or misspelled name.

Author and professor Peter Dale Scott cites many of the errors discussed above (and more) in his groundbreaking essay Oswald and the Hunt for Popov's Mole. Most of these errors were committed by highly educated agents like Egerter, whose careers depend on getting names right and accurately spelling the names of relevant parties.

Scott suggests that these errors are wholly deliberate, and that this pattern is one of the essential methods used by the CIA in a "molehunt" looking for Soviet spies that might be trying to penetrate the CIA itself. If a spy without proper clearances to the document were to repeat the misspelled name to another party, this "marked card" would point to the errant spy. Scott has written:

"In the game of molehunting, of course, the distinction between targeter and targeted is not a secure one. The situation is something like the parlor game of Murder, in which the culprit is"likely to be one of the investigators."

Egerter's boss James Angleton was the head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton used CI/SIG in a ruthless manner, destroying the lives of innocent officers and anyone else who stood in the way of his hunt for Soviet agents supposedly penetrating the CIA. By the time Angleton was fired in the midst of the Watergate era, he was accused of being a Soviet mole himself. By 1980, Congress was forced to pass a bill to compensate the unfairly accused officers in what became known as the "Mole Relief Act".

LCIMPROVE documents focus on when Oswald was trying to get a Cuban visa prior to the 1963 JFK assassination

The first document, dated October 8, 1963 from LADILLINGER, mentions a phone tap on the Soviet embassy in Mexico City that supposedly picked up a call from Lee Oswald on October 1 in "broken Russian". It also states that Oswald's photo was taken by a hidden camera outside the embassy on the same day and described him as "apparent age 35, athletic build". This 10/8/63 message can be seen here.

CONTINUED...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/THE-JFK-CASE--THE-OFFICE-by-Bill-Simpich-100310-266.html

THE JFK CASE: THE TWELVE WHO BUILT THE OSWALD LEGEND

(Part One: Mother, Meyer, and the Spotters)

EXCERPT...

One important clue revealed in the documents is that the CIA consciously used Lee Harvey Oswald's visa requests for espionage purposes before JFK was assassinated. A CIA office used Oswald as "bait" while simultaneously trying to recruit Soviet officers and hunt for Soviet penetrators of the CIA itself.

Several CIA officials got Oswald got into the Soviet Union in 1959 with an "instant visa" after sweetening up the Soviet consul in Helsinki. Otherwise this Marine would have never got past Moscow's border officials.

Oswald tried this again when trying to re-enter the Soviet Union through Mexico City. This time, he got used as part of a counter-espionage game aimed at the Soviets and the Cubans. The story of these instant visa searches is in my essay The Office that Spied on Its Own Spies.

During Sunshine Week in Washington DC (March 14-20), a number of researchers and concerned citizens called on the House Oversight Committee to campaign for hearings that will bring more documents and the living witnesses into the daylight. A new MLK Act, based on the JFK Act, is also under discussion for immediate release of the King case documents, presently locked up until 2029.

It's not well known that most CIA employees sign a secrecy oath saying they will go to prison if they provide classified information. This oath made it impossible for many people to tell everything they knew. There is still time to get it right. The head of the House Select Committee of Assassinations investigation in the 1970s no longer believes that the CIA cooperated with their two year probe into the JFK and MLK cases. A copy of the 1963 version of this secrecy oath can be viewed here.

CONTINUED...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-JFK-CASE--OSWALD-AND-by-Bill-Simpich-100315-5.html

The Last Words of Lee Harvey Oswald

EXCERPT...

1:10 - 1:30 P.M. Lee Harvey Oswald Visited by Mother, Marguerite Oswald, and Wife, Marina Oswald

(To his Mother.) "No, there is nothing you can do. Everything is fine. I know my rights, and I will have an attorney. I already requested to get in touch with Attorney Abt, I think is his name. Don't worry about a thing."

(To his Wife.) "Oh, no, they have not been beating me. They are treating me fine. . . . You're not to worry about that. Did you bring June and Rachel? . . . Of course we can speak about absolutely anything at all. . . . It's a mistake. I'm not guilty. There are people who will help me. There is a lawyer in New York on whom I am counting for help. . . . Don't cry. There is nothing to cry about. Try not to think about it. . . . Everything is going to be all right. If they ask you anything, you have a right not to answer. You have a right to refuse. Do you understand? . . . You are not to worry. You have friends. They'll help you. If it comes to that, you can ask the Red Cross for help. You mustn't worry about me. Kiss Junie and Rachel for me. I love you. . . . Be sure to buy shoes for June."

CONTINUED...

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/LHO.html

Ruth Paine

When I was at University of Dayton, in 1970-71, I took a class at Antioch on the history of Vietnam, taught by a former Saigon CIA Chief of Station.

A few years later I was enrolled in the graduate program at Antioch Center for Social Research and Action in Baltimore, directed by a professor who was active in the Polish union (counter Soviet) activities at the time. Another professor arranged for us to use a special frequency radio at Bathesda Naval hospital to talk with other educators in the South Pacific and China.

The Antioch professors were very good – and Connected.

An old school, founded by Horace Mann, Antioch went co-ed, did away with grades and developed work-study programs decades before such things became popular.

When Ruth Paine was working with Quakers in Nicaragua in the 1980s, she traveled and attended Quaker meetings with a student or someone affiliated with Antioch, who made others suspicious of them (for keeping notes and taking names), so she maintained her college connections.

Antioch College at the moment is in dire financial straits; maybe they lost their CIA support?

I’m sure Antioch, as it did with Ruth Paine, had a major effect on Rod Serling’s outlook on life.

As for the USIA, under JFK it was run by former CBS reporter Edward R. Morrow, a legend in his own time, who advised JFK to call off a CIA leafleting operation after it had been given preliminary approval and was ready to go, which illustrates the tight leash JFK wanted to hold on the CIA’s Covert Ops against Cuba in 1963...

More » http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/allposts/antioch-college-connections-to-the-cia-ruth-paine-the-john-kennedy-murder

Ruth Paine was born in 1932. She was educated at Swarthmore College. A committed Quaker, she was an active member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ruth married and settled in Irving, Texas. Her husband, Michael Paine, found employment as a research engineer with the Bell Helicopter Company, whereas Ruth was employed as a part-time teacher of the Russian language at St. Marks School in Dallas.

In 1963 Michael Paine left the family home. According to the author Jim Bishop (The Day Kennedy Was Shot), it was a "friendly estrangement". Ruth continued to live in Irving and at a party in February, 1963 she was introduced to Marina Oswald and Lee Harvey Oswald by George De Mohrenschildt. On 24th April, 1963, Marina and her daughter went to live with Ruth Paine. Lee Harvey Oswald rented a room in Dallas but stored some of his possessions in Ruth Paine’s garage. Ruth also helped Oswald to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository...

Buddy Walthers took part in the search of the home of Ruth Paine. Walthers told Eric Tagg that they "found six or seven metal filing cabinets full of letters, maps, records and index cards with names of pro-Castro sympathizers." James DiEugenio has argued that this "cinches the case that the Paines were domestic surveillance agents in the Cold War against communism."

Ruth Paine was a key witnesses for the Warren Commission and provided detailed information on the activities of Marina Oswald and Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination. Jim Garrison later suggested that Ruth Paine might have been involved in setting Oswald up as the "patsy". Garrison points out that Paine's father " had been employed by the Agency for International Development, regarded by many as a source of cover for the C.I.A. Her brother-in-law was employed by the same agency in the Washington, D.C. area." He also claims that he had tried to "examine the income tax returns of Ruth and Michael Paine, but I was told that they had been classified as secret.... What was so special about this particular family that made the federal government so protective of it?"

More at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpaine.htm

An assistant DA then asked, "In other words, you were left with the distinct impression that she was in some way connected with the CIA?" Marina replied simply, "Yes."..

Falls Church adjoins Langley, which was then the new headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, a prized project of Allen Dulles. It was from Falls Church that Ruth Paine journeyed to New Orleans to pick up Marina Oswald, who she had been introduced to by George DeMohrenschildt. After she picked Marina up, she deposited her in her home in Irving, Texas. Thereby separating Marina from Lee at the time of the assassination.

Some later discoveries made Ruth's itinerary in September quite interesting. It turned out that John Hoke, Sylvia's husband, also worked for AID. And her sister Sylvia worked directly for the CIA itself. By the time of Ruth's visit, Sylvia had been employed by the Agency for eight years. In regards to this interestingly timed visit to her sister, Jim Garrison asked Ruth some pointed questions when she appeared before a grand jury in 1968. He first asked her if she knew her sister had a file that was classified at that time in the National Archives. Ruth replied she did not. In fact, she was not aware of any classification matter at all. When the DA asked her if she had any idea why it was being kept secret, Ruth replied that she didn't. Then Garrison asked Ruth if she knew which government agency Sylvia worked for. The uninquiring Ruth said she did not know. (p. 171) This is the same woman who was seen at the National Archives pouring through her files in 1976, when the House Select Committee was gearing up.

When Marina Oswald was called before the same grand jury, a citizen asked her if she still associated with Ruth Paine. Marina replied that she didn't. When asked why not, Marina stated that it was upon the advice of the Secret Service. She then elaborated on this by explaining that they had told her it would look bad if the public found out the "connection between me and Ruth and CIA." An assistant DA then asked, "In other words, you were left with the distinct impression that she was in some way connected with the CIA?" Marina replied simply, "Yes."...

Testimony of Phillip Melanson

Hearing of 3/24/95 -- Boston, Massachusetts

EXCERPT...

I and other researchers have focused on this anti-Castro Cuban group in Dallas, ALPHA-66, and without going into theory, which I know is not the Commission's bailiwick, let me just say about this group that it's a terrorist group created by the CIA.

It detested President Kennedy, by its own statements. It was in Dallas. It was illegally well-armed. CIA case officers were meeting with the meetings there. The CIA failed to report this group to the Secret Service, as protective procedure required.

The head of this group was mistaken for Lee Harvey Oswald in two incidents that we reported, one by the FBI, one by the Dallas police.

The point is that -- I don't need to go further to say that this is the subject of suspicion, if not intrigue.

The Rockefeller Commission asked the agency to respond about this, and their response was, in part, that they couldn't find such a book in the 1963 Dallas telephone book.

Their second response was that the street on which the group held its meetings could not be found in a Dallas street map, but that's sort of like saying that Beacon Street outside, you know, can't be found in Boston.

My point is that the agency has been terribly unresponsive to previous official investigations and that this is an area of suspicion.

CONTINUED...

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/arrb/index3.htm

LEE HARVEY OSWALD AT AGE 62

Published in Flagpole Magazine, p. 6 (November 21, 2001).
Author: Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law.

EXCERPT...

Three early books provide an arsenal of facts on Oswald: Leo Sauvage, The Oswald Affair (1966); Harold Weisberg, Oswald in New Orleans (1967); and Jim Garrison, A Heritage of Stone (1970).

Other authoritative books on Oswald include: Edward Epstein, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald (1978); Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins (1988); Philip Melanson, Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U. S. Intelligence (1990); John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (1995); and Robert Groden, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald (1995). Seth Kantor's book, Who Was Jack Ruby? (1978), furnishes the best account of Oswald's murder.

Based on the information now available, we now know that there never were good reasons for thinking Oswald mentally deranged. An updated, more realistic evaluation is given by Melanson: Oswald was "a poised, rather resourceful political manipulator who surely lived one of the most eventful, intrigue-filled lives imaginable--albeit a very short one."

We also now know that Oswald was no loner; he was often in the company of other persons, including numerous persons with intelligence connections. Indeed, it is almost certain that Oswald was an intelligence agent. As Melanson observes, to deny that Oswald was a spy "is to believe that his life was structured by endless coincidences" and that "his frequent and unusual interactions with government agencies lacked any overarching significance." Furthermore, to believe that Oswald was a spy for Russia or Cuba, rather than an American intelligence agent, requires us, as Melanson notes, to "posit that virtually all the agencies of U. S. intelligence and law enforcement were so completely ineffective when it came to Oswald that they must be imagined not just to be incompetent but comatose."

We also can now see that Oswald's supposed affiliations with the political left were part of what is known in the world of spies as a "legend"--a cover story used to conceal clandestine activities. Oswald's pro-Communist, pro-Castro activities in the months preceding the assassination were a hollow facade; they were the result of what in the lingo of spooks is called "sheepdipping"--manipulated behavior intended to create a desired image. The men Oswald actually associated with on a daily basis were far-rightists with intelligence and law enforcement backgrounds, including the mysterious George DeMohrenschildt (CIA), the violence-prone Guy Banister (FBI), and the sinister David Ferrie (CIA), described by someone who knew him as "a dangerous individual capable of almost anything."

CONTINUED...

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