Ann (Betty) Egerter

By Bill Simpich [Originally published 12/27/2010]

After the downing of the U-2, Oswald’s usefulness as a dangle was ended. His case file could still be used to hunt for leaks to the Soviets.

On May 1, 1960, the U-2 went down. As discussed in Part 4, whatever role Lee Harvey Oswald had played as a “dangle” to entice the Soviets to watch him closely or speak with him about his knowledge of the U-2 was now completed. However, James Angleton, intelligence analyst Ann Egerter, and other officers in the counterintelligence division of the CIA continued to use the Oswald case file as a tool to look for leaks in the US security apparatus. If any information inside Oswald’s file fell into the wrong hands, that would provide a lead as to who was providing information to the Soviets. This technique was known as the molehunt – Angleton was an expert molehunter. Angleton and Egerter have been presented throughout this series as two of the twelve individuals that built the Oswald legend. (Legend Makers #1 and #5, respectively).

May 2, 1960 was the date given by FBI agent John Fain (Legend Maker #7) of an interview conducted five days earlier with Lee’s brother Robert Oswald. Fain said that Robert told him that after a three day visit upon his discharge from the Marines in September 1959, Lee had left Fort Worth for New Orleans and to resume his former employment in the import-export business. Robert said that the family was shocked when Oswald turned up in the USSR and sought Soviet citizenship.

May 3, 1960 was the date given by Fain of an interview conducted five days earlier with Lee’s mother Marguerite. Marguerite said that she was shaken because her letters to Lee in the Soviet Union were being returned and she didn’t know how he was doing. Lee had told her during his visit the previous September that he was thinking of going to Cuba. Mrs. Oswald had also just recently received a letter from the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland saying that they were expecting him on April 20, 1960. What had caused Lee to change all his plans?

To further the molehunt, the descriptions of Lee Oswald and Robert Webster were merged together

The clue may be in Marguerite’s supposed description of Lee to Fain: “5′ 10″, 165 lbs., light brown and wavy hair, blue eyes”.

Except for the hair color, the above is a description of Robert Edward Webster (seen in Part 2 of this series), not Oswald. Here’s Webster’s job application to the Rand Development Corporation in 1957: Five feet ten, 166, blond hair, blue eyes. It’s also well documented that Webster’s hair was slightly wavy. Oswald also had slightly wavy hair.

Oswald’s height was generally described as 5 feet, 9 inches, as seen in this photo, though Oswald exaggerated his height to 5 feet, 11 inches starting with the Switzerland college in March 1959 until his return from the Soviet Union. After his return, Oswald reported himself as 5 feet, 9 inches, except when dealing with government officials, probably to stay consistent with his earlier statements. Nowhere else is Oswald’s height described as 5′ 10″, except in a critical memo about an Oswald sighting in Mexico City shortly before the assassination with Egerter as co-author.

Oswald’s actual weight in the 1956-1963 period varied between 131-136 pounds. As late as 1963, when a young man of 23 would be expected to have “filled out”, Oswald exaggerated his weight at 140–150, which aided his chances for employment. When Oswald exaggerated his height to 5′ 11″ in March, 1959 to the Swiss college, he also exaggerated his weight to 160 on that one occasion, probably to create more flexibility in his legend.

No one ever estimated Oswald’s weight at greater than 150, except Fain and Egerter. When FBI agent John Quigley saw Oswald in jail in New Orleans in August, 1963, he estimated his weight at 140. Oswald reported his weight in Dallas at the time of his arrest as 140. Oswald’s body was weighed at 131 pounds the day after his death. Although the Warren Report tilts Oswald’s weight numbers to try to get closer to the 165 number, it remains consistent with this analysis.

Oswald described his eyes as grey, but government officials generally described Oswald’s eye color as blue in all documents I have seen except his recently obtained passport. During Oswald’s arrests in 1963 in New Orleans and Dallas, his eyes were described as blue-hazel and “blue-gray“. It seems like someone decided it was time to knit together the different threads of evidence.

As mentioned in Part 2, Oswald and Webster shared parallels and distinctions.

Lee Oswald/Robert Webster

These photos are particularly eerie. The only major difference was their hair color, something that’s easy to change. During this period, Oswald’s future wife Marina was routinely dating foreign visitors. She appeared to be doing it largely for fun and to take advantage of the more exciting life style offered by these visitors. Finally, Soviet security felt it was a problem and Marina was encouraged to move to Minsk. Minsk is where Lee and Marina met.

Robert Webster and Marina met at the American Exhibition held in Moscow during the summer of 1959, and they saw each other on several subsequent occasions. Curiously, Marina only spoke English to Webster, while she only spoke Russian when she came to the United States with Oswald. On one occasion, Marina even confused Webster with Oswald. Were Webster and Oswald being used wittingly or unwittingly in some kind of operation?

It looks like Webster was used as a dangle to find out about Soviet progress in plastics and fiberglass and the impact on the Soviet military program

Let’s take one more look at the events surrounding Oswald’s entry into the USSR discussed in Part 2, but this time we’ll include the events involving Webster taking us back to the days before the American Exhibition in Moscow ended in early September 1959. The American Exhibition was the locale for the famous “kitchen debate” between Nixon and Khrushchev, where the two leaders used the setting of a modern kitchen as the theatrical backdrop for a debate over which nation offered a better way of life.

Robert Webster was an employee of James H. Rand, III, president of the Rand Development Corporation that had a display at the Exhibition. Rand does not appear to be a CIA officer because he has a “201 number” that are used for foreign agents or other persons of interest, but he’s certainly a well-respected source with a special identifier – see this analysis report cover sheet Rand prepared for the Domestic Contacts division after Webster’s return.

The Assassination Records Review Board interviewed Joan Hallett in the 1990s, a temporary receptionist and the widow of the former naval attache. Hallett remembered seeing Oswald at the Embassy on September 5, right at the end of the American Exhibition, and no one could understand the discrepancy between her strong and clear and recollection and the September 5 date. The solution is simple – Hallett was mistaking Webster for Oswald. Webster disappeared on 9/10/59 – six days after the Exhibition ended. Oswald didn’t arrive in Moscow until October 16.

On September 4, Oswald filled out a passport application saying that he was leaving the US on 9/21/59 on a ship for four months to attend school at the Albert Schweitzer College and the University of Turku in Finland. He added that he would tour Russia, Cuba, and other countries, and make a second trip within a year. This was not quite right in any case, as Oswald was not scheduled to attend Albert Schweitzer until April 1960. Oswald’s statements were a red flag for any counterintelligence agent reviewing passport applications.

The day before Webster disappeared, he was told by the Soviets that he would be accepted as a citizen in exchange for teaching them how to make the Rand spray gun demonstrated at the American Exhibition. CI head Ray Rocca testified that Webster was regarded as a loss because of Soviet “interest in Webster’s knowledge about the “specifications of a nozzle that prepared plastic in a particular fashion”. Webster was having marital problems back at home, and enjoying the attentions of a Russian woman named Vera. Rand felt that the Soviets were using Vera to entice Webster to stay, “in order to gain his knowledge of (the) plastics and synthetics industry”.

Webster knew a lot about the technology that the Soviets wanted for their military and space programs, in order to fabricate their missiles and engines. I think what the US wanted was the inside baseball on the state of development of Soviet missiles and military hardware – Webster learned during his stay that “Soviet plastics technologies on a commercial and application basis are about ten years behind those of the US”.

FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Branigan discussed the Webster affair with Hoover aide Alan Belmont: “Subject does not have access to any classified data, but the Rand Development Corporation has expressed interest in his welfare because of his peculiar knowledge of the plastics and fiberglass industry. The U.S. is ahead of the Russians in the plastic and fiberglass field, and, therefore, the Soviets would have a logical interest in the subject’s remaining in the Soviet Union. We also know that the Soviets have requested information concerning fiberglass and plastics through our double agents.”

Oswald entered the Soviet Union while the Soviets were distracted by Webster. Oswald may have been considered as a possible “double” for Webster, and he certainly played a role as a dangle to test Soviet knowledge of the U-2 program

During this period of time, Lee Harvey Oswald received a dependency discharge based on his claim that he was going to take care of his mother, who was supposedly injured months earlier by a falling candy box, and arrived in Fort Worth on September 12, 1959. After visiting his mother for three days, he abruptly left her and arrived in New Orleans by the 16th. As mentioned above, his brother’s story was that Lee was going to resume work at an import-export business.

Webster was supposed to leave the USSR on 9/14/63. Instead, he got a 20 day visa for travel around the USSR. Air Force intelligence described it as a 20 day “Intourist” tour of Kiev, a tourism agency firmly in the hands of the KGB. Rand sent word for Webster to come home,

On September 16th, instead of returning to a day job, Oswald had obtained a ticket to go to Le Havre, France by freighter for the next day. Taking a slow boat was a good idea, as Webster’s whereabouts were not yet known. Travel by freighter was also a good way to avoid foreign intelligence from knowing that an American Marine had left American soil on a civilian airliner in an era where air travel was not as pervasive as it is now; Oswald’s immigration questionnaire says that he was a shipping export agent. Freeport Sulfur was one of the major corporations with Cuban interests that was ready to go to war with Castro. Was it coincidental that Oswald’s freighter left from Galveston, known for some of the largest sulfur terminals in the world with Freeport right next door, and was packed with sulfur in all hatches?

On September 18, at Rand’s request, Frederick Merrill of the East West Contacts, State Department sought information on Webster. Merrill had approved the work of Ruth Paine and her Quaker group to organize East-West exchanges in 1957-1958.

This was the same week that the Paine family moved to the suburban Dallas town of Irving and transferred their bank accounts , while Legend Maker #12 Michael Paine settled into his new job at the Bell Aircraft Company, soon to be better known as Bell Helicopter . The Paine family also became better known after the assassination, as Michael and Ruth Paine took the Oswalds under their care in the months before November 22.

On September 30, as the visa was about to expire, Webster wrote the American embassy and told them that he was staying in the USSR. On 10/6, Edward Freers at the embassy sent a memo to the State Department that Webster was defecting. This Freers report may have been ripped right out of the files of the National Archives – only two pages are contained in the document that is described by the National Archives as a six-page document. The missing four pages appears to be the Freers report itself.

Oswald disembarked in France on October 8 – Oswald was keeping his cards close to his chest.

By October 8, a memo from the Soviet Union division revealed that all components involved with the Webster affair were swearing up and down that he was not their agent.

By October 11, Rand flew to the USSR to visit Webster, who was in the hospital for reasons that are still unclear. “Jim” Rand could not get any information, and was so frustrated that he referred to Legend Maker #4, consul Richard Snyder, as a “jerk”.

Oswald made it through to Helsinki in record time (as described in Part 2) and arrives in Moscow on October 16

Rand is now labeling Webster’s defection as “industrial espionage”. A memo of Rand’s describes how The Big M – Mikoyan – allowed Rand, his assistant George Bookbinder, and consul Snyder to meet with Webster on 10/17 and asked him a lot of questions. I don’t see anything in the record about the reason for Webster’s hospital stay. At any rate, Webster filled out an affidavit renouncing his American citizenship, but Snyder refused to accept it.

On October 17, the New York Times runs a story on Webster’s defection on October 17 with Webster’s friend Ted “Korkycki” piously exclaiming that Webster is of no use to the Soviets. However, other memos refer to Webster as having the alias “Guide 223” and Ted “Korycki” using the alias “Lincoln Leeds”.

Based on the comments in one of these memos, it looks like Agency officials were self-critical for not having previously asked for a list of all of Rand’s employees in Moscow so that they could brief their people to avoid contacts with Webster and Korycki during their time in the USSR. The CIA probably suspected that the Soviets would attempt to create situations where people like Webster was interacting with others in order to spur conversation and obtain intelligence – while the US intelligence interest would be to keep such a person isolated.

Branigan’s letter to Belmont about how the US was leading the Soviets in the plastics industry was probably triggered by a UPI article about Webster on October 19. It sure looks like the work of the journalist Priscilla Johnson (Legend Maker #3, see Part 1). The UPI article describes Webster as a “good looking six footer”, with “blond hair and blue eyes”. A month later, Johnson describes Oswald as a “nice looking six footer”, with brown hair and gray eyes. Who but a spy agency is interested in the color of a defector’s eyes?

The next day, what I call “the NASA memo” was written based on phone conferences between the Cleveland field office and Robert Crowley, OSB/CI – the head of Domestic Contacts Division (Contacts Division/00)), Operational Support Branch, CI. Crowley and his colleague E. M. Ashcraft were both CIA counterintelligence chiefs on a par with one another and other divisional chiefs. E. M. Ashcraft was monitoring the Webster case and appears to have approved a debriefing of Oswald in 1962, although almost all of the documents are missing.

A major focus of the NASA memo is about the “NASA security man in Cleveland”, who had to be concerned about the impact of Webster’s defection on plastics and fiberglass products. NASA received a copy of this memo. Given the links between Oswald and Webster, the NASA connection explains why all the men who came in contact with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963 got vacuumed up into working for NASA – it was probably at the request of NASA’s Security Division and its allies, who wanted easy access to people with background information on Oswald.

The NASA memo also refers to a reporter who wrote a lead article on Webster for the Cleveland News. This reporter was also a source for the CIA chief of the Miami field office, Jay Gleichauf, who apparently was a “former member of the Fourth Estate”. Although the reporter’s name is redacted, it’s not too hard to figure out that she is Doris O’Donnell, still alive at 89 years old. Described as the “first female superstar reporter”, it is also said that no one had more sources than O’Donnell.

This same day, CI-SIG’s Ann Egerter (Legend Maker #5) was tipped off that when FBI liaison Sam Papich asked CIA liaison Jane Roman about the extent of Agency interest in Webster, he was told that “there was some back in May 1959, but not now”, and added that the Office of Security has no record of any security clearance for Webster. Curiously, Webster’s boss Jim Rand recounts that May 1959 was when Webster was in the midst of getting his security clearance, which was granted on June 5. That security clearance may have come from Air Force intelligence.

On October 22, Major Robert Cochran of the Office of Special Investigations contacted the CIA Cleveland field office and assured them that things were not as bad as initially feared. The word was that Webster had no access to any classified military information. Webster is obviously a big deal for the CIA, as he’s one of only ten out of 117 American defectors to the USSR that the CIA admits having contact with. Nonetheless, things settle down for Webster for awhile.

As discussed earlier, Oswald announced upon his arrival into the USSR that he was a radar operator with the Marines and he knew some “classified things” that he was going to give to the Soviets. Oswald was watched very quietly during his first year in the USSR. Although he was put on the Watchlist and his mail was opened pursuant to Angleton’s HT LINGUAL program, Egerter only opened up a 201 file on Oswald near the end of 1960 when the State Department starting asking pointed questions about defectors to the USSR.

The probable reason for Oswald’s arrival is that while Oswald was a radar operator in Asia, Col. Pyotr Popov was a top double agent for the CIA, providing important Soviet military intelligence to 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.

The thinking here is that Angleton and Egerter used Oswald himself in a dangle to observe how the Soviets responded to Oswald. Angleton’s biographer Tom Mangold wrote that the execution of Popov accelerated Angleton’s belief that “Popov could only have been betrayed by a mole buried deep within Soviet Division.”. Mangold found Angleton misguided, stating that “Popov was actually lost to the Soviets because of a slipshod CIA operation; there was no treachery.” David Robarge, in a very thoughtful piece that should be read in its entirety, agrees that Popov’s capture marked the time when Angleton became “fixed on the mole”.

Oswald’s arrival was on the same date as Popov’s arrest. Although Angleton and his men probably knew that Popov was compromised, the date of Oswald’s arrival may have been a simple coincidence. Based on the extremely odd manner of Oswald’s method of arriving into Moscow, it does appear that Oswald’s arrival may have been sped up due of the ongoing drama involving Webster.

On March 30, 1960, R. Travis at the Domestic Contacts division writes to Rocca, chief of CI research and analysis (CIRA), asking if his division had any interest in Webster. Rocca then sends a note to Soviet Division/9 asking “any interest”?

Over the next six months, Webster made it clear that he wanted to return home but the Soviets will not let him. On April 15, 1960 the CIA got word that Webster was going to be in Moscow for the May Day parade and was hoping to visit the American embassy during that time. That would be a possible way of defection, but a long and complicated affair to get him out of the country.

On April 26, 1960, Rand called the CIA Cleveland field office and told them that he and Bookbinder were heading to Moscow in the next ten days to try to get Webster out.

On April 28, 1960, the CIA Miami chief Gleichauf gets word that Henry Rand, his associate George Bookbinder, and their colleague Dan Tyler Moore are heading for Moscow. Like Rand and Bookbinder, Moore is ex-OSS. Moore is also Drew Pearson’s brother-in-law, and may try to smuggle Robert Webster into Rand’s car and out of the USSR. Gleichauf ends by saying that he wanted to give “some warning that an accident may be on its way to happen”.

On May 1, 1960, the U-2 is shot down. The USSR shut down Rand’s company. Rand lost contact with Webster, and thus the plan to get him out of the USSR never materialized.

Fain passed on three key items of false information

On May 12, 1960, Fain sent off a memo with several items of false information. As mentioned in Part 3 of this series, the most immediately explosive item was the false claim that Oswald had renounced his citizenship, which resulted in Oswald’s undesirable discharge from the Navy three months later during this period where Oswald was incommunicado. By August, 1961, the FBI was forced to agree that Oswald had never renounced his citizenship, but the Navy refused to budge.

On the same day as Fain’s memo, Egerter sent a letter under Angleton’s name to FBI liaison Papich hinting about Rand’s plan to bust Webster out of the Soviet Union. An accompanying routing slip indicates that Angleton reviewed Egerter’s work a week later and signed off on it. Next to Angleton’s name, the routing slip includes a careful reference to “Webster, Robert Edward”. Angleton’s office at headquarters maintained its interest in Webster, and Egerter continued to watch Webster while he was stuck in the USSR for another two years, finally emerging within a week of the Oswald family.

A second false item in Fain’s 5/12/60 memo is when he refers to Lee Oswald’s father as “Edward Lee Oswald”, and his mother as “Mrs. Edward Lee Oswald“. The real name was “Robert E. Lee Oswald”, spelled out as “Robert Edward Lee Oswald”. Webster’s full name was “Robert Edward Webster”. The phrase “Edward Lee Oswald” was a marked card designed to find out who had wrongfully obtained access to the set of files dealing with Oswald and Webster, and the Fain memo in particular.

The most important story that emerges from Fain’s 5/12/60 memo is Marguerite’s supposed description of her son: Five feet ten, 165 , hair is light brown and wavy, eyes blue.

Again, Webster filled out an employment form back in 1957: Five feet ten, 166, hair is blond, eyes blue.

During May 1962, Webster fills out a questionnaire for the CIA upon his return: Five feet 9 1/2, 165, hair is blond and slightly wavy, age 33, apparent age 30, eyes blue.

On July 16, 1962, Robert Webster provides a more formal Personal History Statement to the CIA: Five feet 9 1/2, 165, hair is blond, age 33, eyes blue.

On October 10, 1963, Egerter and Charlotte Bustos co-authored two memos describing “Lee Henry Oswald”, after the Cuban consulate events that supposedly involved a blond Oswald. Both memos inaccurately describe Oswald – Memo 1 is just more subtle. Five feet ten, 165, hair is light brown and wavy, eyes blue. (Memo 1, directed to Mexico City)

Six feet, receding hairline, age 35, athletic build. (Memo 2, directed to the headquarters of the FBI, State Dept., and Navy – and note that Webster was now 35 years old.)

By way of contrast, here’s the FBI’s description of Oswald after his August 1963 arrest in New Orleans: Five feet nine, 140, hair is light brown, eyes blue-hazel, slender build.

And, most ominously, on November 22, 1963, a 12:40 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of the alleged assassin on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository based on a citizen’s report. J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the description came from an “unidentified citizen”. This is a very strong piece of evidence that Oswald was framed by someone with access to this intelligence information. Five feet ten, 165, (nothing about hair), age 30.

Conclusion

The only logical conclusion is that Webster was being used in a very simple technical dangle, designed to ensure that US defense capabilities were not being undercut by the Soviets in the plastics and fiberglass fields. What the US learned from the Webster operation was peace of mind, knowing that the US was ten years ahead in these areas.

After the downing of the U-2, the Oswald dangle had served its purpose. Was there any other way to use Oswald? With US-Soviet relations in flux, the coincidence in their descriptions was noted and used in a mole hunt exercise by altering Oswald’s physical description and by referring to Oswald’s parents as “Edward Lee Oswald” and “Mrs. Edward Lee Oswald”. By embedding false statements within Oswald’s file, and tracking who had access to the file information, Egerter could determine if this information had surfaced elsewhere, and that would be evidence of unauthorized access. Angleton told the Church Committee that the role of CI/SIG was to prevent the penetration of spies into the CIA and the government, and that the “historical penetration cases are recruitment of U.S. officials in positions -” code clerks.”

Angleton’s biographer Edward Epstein revealed that Angleton was known for using marked cards. On one occasion, Angleton worked with the CIA’s Office of Security to prepare “selected bits of information about planned CIA operations passed out, one at a time, to different units of the Division to see which, if any, leak to the enemy. The ‘marked card’ in the initial test revealed that an effort would be made to recruit a particular Soviet diplomat in Canada. The Office of Security agents, watching the diplomat from a discreet distance, observed the KGB putting their own surveillance on him on the day of the planned contact, realized that the ‘marked card’ had gotten to the KGB.”

During this period of time in 1960, the New York FBI field office took a look at Oswald’s file and realized that there were strange things going on. Oswald’s mother Marguerite was having her letters returned undelivered. On June 3, 1960, J. Edgar Hoover himself reviewed Fain’s memo and noticed that not only did Marguerite not know where her son was, but Oswald had brought his birth certificate with him to the Soviet Union. Even Hoover couldn’t get a straight answer from the CIA at that point as to Oswald’s whereabouts. Hoover was sufficiently unnerved to write a famous memo where he warned that an imposter may be using Oswald’s birth certificate.

Marguerite kept knocking on the doors of government officials trying to find out if her son was alive or dead. She finally decided to see if she could get any action from the new administration in Washington. On January 23, 1961, three days after JFK was sworn in, Marguerite boarded a train to Washington, DC. Upon her arrival, she met with Edward Hickey at the State Department. Marguerite asked if her son was an agent of the US government. A few weeks later, after a year of silence, the government finally told Marguerite that her son Lee was alive in the USSR and had an actual address.

Finally, in the words of Peter Dale Scott, Oswald now had “a legend with an ambiguous U.S.-Soviet background, whose citizenship and whose ideological alignment were now both in question…The documentary record on Oswald, beginning with the UPI story on the weekend of his defection, was salted with references to his interest in going to Cuba…in 1963 the products of the Oswald (marked card) operation were used to double for a propaganda operation whose purpose was to neutralize the Fair Play for Cuba Committee”.

Part 6: After Oswald finally makes it back to Texas, he mixes it up with the White Russians

(Thanks and a tip of the hat to Peter Dale Scott, Larry Hancock, Greg Parker, Stewart Wexler, and many others for their research that made this article possible.)

On one occasion, Marina even confused Webster with Oswald: Report of James Hosty and Jack Pedden re interview with Katya Ford, 11/24/63, p. 2; Commission Document 5, p. 259.

Rand has a “201 number”: Memo by Ann Egerter, 5/12/60, Reel 17, Folder U – Robert Edward Webster, p. 47, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 1994.05.09.11:03:47:690005.

Analysis report cover sheet Rand prepared for the Domestic Contacts division after Webster’s return : Analysis report filed by James H. Rand, 7/19/62, Reel 17, Folder S – Robert Edward Webster, p. 35, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 1994.05.09.11:02:28:290005.

Hallett was mistaking Webster for Oswald: Assassination Records Review Board final report, 1999, p. 86.

Webster disappeared on 9/10/59: CIA memo re Robert Edward Webster, 6/20/75, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 50 , NARA Record Number: 1993.08.14.09:37:45:870028.

On September 4, Oswald filled out a passport application saying that he was leaving the US on 9/21/59: Oswald’s passport application, 9/4/59, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 17, p. 78. Exhibit 1114.

The Rand spray gun demonstrated at the American Exhibition: Johanna Smith, rough notes, staff summary of Webster, 3/16/79, p. 2; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (staff notes) / NARA Record Number: 180-10142-10469.

CI head Ray Rocca testified that Webster was regarded as a loss: HSCA Interview of Raymond G. Rocca, 17 July 1978, p. 216.

Rand felt that the Soviets were using Vera to entice Webster to stay, “in order to gain his knowledge of (the) plastics and synthetics industry”: FBI memo from F. A. Frohbose to Alan Belmont, 10/15/59, NARA Record Number: 124-10210-10359.

Webster learned during his stay that “Soviet plastics technologies on a commercial and application basis are about ten years behind those of the US”: Report from Domestic Contacts Divsion, Office of Origin, Case No. 38246, 8/14/62; Reel 17, Folder S – Robert Edward Webster, p. 73, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 1994.05.09.11:02:28:290005.

We also know that the Soviets have requested information concerning fiberglass and plastics through our double agents: SSA William Branigan, chief of Espionage section to Assistant Director Alan Belmont, 10/19//59, FBI – HSCA Subject Files, W – X / FBI – HSCA Subject File: Robert Edward Webster / NARA Record Number: 124-10210-10362.

After visiting his mother for three days, he abruptly left her and arrived in New Orleans by the 16th: Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 1, testimony of Marguerite Oswald, p. 201 .

Webster got a 20 day visa for travel around the USSR: Memo from “LAB” at New York FBI office to Director, FBI, 9/15/59, FBI – HSCA Subject Files, W – X / FBI – HSCA Subject File: Robert Edward Webster / NARA Record Number: 124-10210-10354.

Air Force intelligence described it as a 20 day “Intourist” tour of Kiev, a tourism agency firmly in the hands of the KGB. Rand sent word for Webster to come home : Memo from SA P. H. Fields to F. A. Frohbose, 9/21/59, FBI – HSCA Subject Files, W – X / FBI – HSCA Subject File: Robert Edward Webster / NARA Record Number: 124-10210-10354.

Oswald had obtained a ticket to go to Le Havre, France by freighter for the next day. Memoranda of SA J. Dawson Van Epps, 12/3/63 and 12/4/63, Warren Commission Exhibit 2673; also see

Oswald’s immigration questionnaire says that he was a shipping export agent: Immigration questionnaire, 9/16/59, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 23,
p. 747, Exhibit 1948.

Freeport Sulfur was one of the major corporations with Cuban interests that was ready to go to war with Castro: Official History of the Bay of Pigs, Volume III, p. 182; Miscellaneous CIA Series / NARA Record Number: 104-10301-10004.

Galveston is known for some of the largest sulfur terminals in the world: Chicago Talks, “Plan Commission Paves Way for Chicago’s First Sulfur Factory”, 11/5/10.

Oswald’s freighter was packed with sulfur in all hatches: Memo by SA J. Dawson Van Eps, 12/3/63; Commission Document 6 – FBI De Brueys Report of 8 Dec 1963 re: Oswald, p. 311.

On September 18, at Rand’s request, Frederick Merrill of the East West Contacts, State Department sought information on Webster: Memorandum for the Record by SR/COP/FI about Robert Edward Webster, Project (Redacted), 10/8/59; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 104-10181-10128.

Merrill had approved the work of Ruth Paine and her Quaker group to organize East-West exchanges in 1957-1958: “CIEE History, Part I: 1947-1960”, p. 12. Also see George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance, p. 245.

This was the same week that the Paine family moved to the suburban Dallas town of Irving and transferred their bank accounts, while Legend Maker #12 Michael Paine settled into his new job at the Bell Aircraft Company, soon to be better known as Bell Helicopter: Move to Irving: Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, 3/18/64, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 2, page 432, 434; Bell Helicopter: Commission Document 261 – FBI Lewis Report of 26 Dec 1963 re: Michael Paine , Interview of Mrs. Arthur Young by SA John Wineberg and SA Mason Smith, 12/24/63, p. 3.

On 10/6, Edward Freers at the embassy sent a memo to the State Department that Webster was defecting. This Freers report may have been ripped right out of the files of the National Archives – only two pages are contained in the document that is described by the National Archives as a six-page document: The NARA form states that it is a six page document from Freers to the State Department, but only two pages are contained and the Freers document appears to be missing altogether.

Oswald disembarked in France on October 8: Memo by SA J. Dawson Van Eps, 12/3/63; Commission Document 6 – FBI De Brueys Report of 8 Dec 1963 re: Oswald, p. 311.

By October 8, a memo from the Soviet Union division revealed that all components involved with the Webster affair were swearing up and down that he was not their agent: Memorandum for the Record by SR/COP/FI about Robert Edward Webster, Project (Redacted), 10/8/59; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 104-10181-10128.

By October 11, Rand flew to the USSR to visit Webster, who was in the hospital for reasons that are still unclear: FBI – HSCA Subject Files, W – X / FBI – HSCA Subject File: Robert Edward Webster / NARA Record Number: 124-10210-10358.

A memo of Rand’s describes how The Big M – Mikoyan – allowed Rand, his assistant George Bookbinder, and consul Snyder to meet with Webster on 10/17 : Memo by James Rand, p. 3, 10/28/59;
Reel 17, Folder U – Robert Edward Webster, p. 67, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm) / HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 1994.05.09.11:03:47:690005.

Webster filled out an affidavit renouncing his American citizenship, but Snyder refused to accept it: Johanna Smith, rough notes, staff summary of Webster, 3/16/79, p. 2; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (staff notes) / NARA Record Number: 180-10142-10469.

On October 17, t he New York Times runs a story on Webster’s defection on October 17 with Webster’s friend Ted “Korkycki” piously exclaiming that Webster is of no use to the Soviets: Osgood Caruthers, “American Picks Life In the Soviet”, New York Times, 10/17/59; Reel 17, Folder U – Robert Edward Webster, p. 109, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 1994.05.09.11:03:47:690005

Other memos refer to Webster as having the alias “Guide 223” and Ted “Korycki” using the alias “Lincoln Leeds”: Guide 223: Memo from E. S. Rittenburg to Acting Chief, Support Branch (Travis) re “Robert Webster, Guide 223”, 4/18/60, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 104-10181-10120. Lincoln Leeds: Memo from E. S. Rittenburg to Chief, Contact Division, Attn: Support (Crowley), 10/20/59; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 104-10181-10100.

It looks like Agency officials were self-critical for not having previously asked for a list of all of Rand’s employees in Moscow so that they could brief their people to avoid contacts with Webster and Korycki during their time in the USSR: Id., Rittenburg to Crowley, 10/20/59.

The UPI article describes Webster as a “good looking six footer”, with “blond hair and blue eyes”. Uncredited UPI article, “ Yank At Our Moscow Fair Runs Out On U.S.”, 10/19/59, FBI – HSCA Subject Files, W – X / FBI – HSCA Subject File: Robert Edward Webster / NARA Record Number: 124-10197-10415.

A month later, Johnson describes Oswald as a “nice looking six footer”, with brown hair and gray eyes: Priscilla Johnson, “US Defector to Reds Turned to Marx at 15”, 11/26/59; “Security File On Priscilla Johnson MacMillan”, p. 43, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43 / NARA Record Number: 1993.08.13.18:14:26:210059.

“The NASA memo” was written based on phone conferences between the Cleveland field office and Robert Crowley, OSB/CI – the head of Domestic Contacts Division (Contacts Division/00)), Operational Support Branch, CI: Joan Mellen, “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?”, 2008.

E. M. Ashcraft was monitoring the Webster case and appears to have approved a debriefing of Oswald in 1962, although almost all of the documents are missing:
On monitoring: Memo from Ashcraft to Jane Roman, 3/14/62; Reel 18, Folder C – Webster, Robert Edward, p. 195; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 18: Webster – WIROGUE) / NARA Record Number: 1994.03.18.11:03:09:150005; on debriefing, see Joan Mellen, “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?”, 2008.

A major focus of the NASA memo is about the “NASA security man in Cleveland”, who had to be concerned about the impact of Webster’s defection on plastics and fiberglass products: From E. S. Rittenburg to Chief, Contact Division, Attn: Support (Crowley), 10/20/59; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 104-10181-10100.

This reporter was also a source for the CIA chief of the Miami field office, Jay Gleishauf, who apparently was a “former member of the Fourth Estate”: Jay Gleishauf; see Id., 10/20/59 memo; Fourth Estate: See Eugene S. Rittenburg memo re Robert Webster’s defection to Robert Crowley, 6/20/62; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 18: Webster – WIROGUE) / NARA Record Number: 104-10182-10299.

Described as the “first female superstar reporter”, it is also said that no one had more sources than O’Donnell: Brent Larkin, “Cleveland’s Doris O’Donnell Was a Femme Fatale With a Reporter’s Notebook”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 12/27/09. http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/12/clevelands_doris_odonnell_was.html

CI-SIG’s Ann Egerter (Legend Maker #5) was tipped off that when FBI liaison Sam Papich asked CIA liaison Jane Roman about the extent of Agency interest in Webster, he was told that “there was some back in May 1959, but not now”, and added that the Office of Security has no record of any security clearance for Webster: Memorandum for the Record by Bruce Solie, OS/SRS, 10/20/59 ; Reel 17, Folder U – Robert Edward Webster, p. 81; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 1994.05.09.11:03:47:690005.

Webster’s boss Jim Rand recounts that May 1959 was when Webster was in the midst of getting his security clearance, which was granted on June 5: Memo by James Rand, p. 1, 10/28/59; Reel 17, Folder U – Robert Edward Webster, p. 65, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm) / HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 17: Ruiz – Webster) / NARA Record Number: 1994.05.09.11:03:47:690005.

Webster is obviously a big deal for the CIA, as he’s one of only ten out of 117 American defectors to the USSR that the CIA admits having contact with: Undated memo by CIA CI staff, Russ Holmes Work File / NARA Record Number: 104-10406-10141.

(August 1963, New Orleans arrest) – Five feet nine, 140, hair is light brown, eyes blue-hazel, slender build: Memo of SA John Quigley, p. 5, 8/15/63;
Oswald 201 File, Vol 1, Folder 2

(November 22, 1963, dispatcher’s report, 12:45 pm) – Five feet ten, 165 , (nothing about hair), age 30: FBI report of 8/11/64 re Dallas dispatcher transcript of 11/22/63, p. 28; Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 23, p. 845; Exhibit 1974.

“Historical penetration cases are recruitment of U.S. officials in positions -” code clerks.“: Deposition of James Angleton, 9/17/75, p.17; Church Committee Boxed Files / NARA Record Number: 157-10014-10007.

Angleton’s biographer Edward Epstein revealed that Angleton was known for using marked cards: Edward Jay Epstein, “Through the Looking Glass – Part 2”, http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/looking2.htm

Hoover warns that an imposter may be using Oswald’s birth certificate: Memo by J. Edgar Hoover to Office of Security, Department of State, 6/3/60, Warren Commission Document 1114, p. 835.

Marguerite asked if her son was an agent of the US government: Testimony of Marguerite Oswald, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume I, p. 206

The government finally told Marguerite that her son Lee was alive in the USSR and had an actual address: Id., at p. 207.

The documentary record on Oswald, beginning with the UPI story on the weekend of his defection, was salted with references to his interest in going to Cuba: Peter Dale Scott tracks this history in “The Search for Popov’s Mole”, Fourth Decade, Vol. 3, Issue 3 (March 1996), an article which stretches out and digs into the depth of the molehunt. Footnote 136 cites a Washington Post story, 11/1/59, where Oswald’s sister-in-law says, “He said he wanted to travel a lot and talked about going to Cuba.”; the aforementioned Fain report of 5/12/60 that quotes Marguerite as saying that Oswald told her the previous September that he was thinking of going to Cuba; and how Cuba was the first country mentioned on Oswald’s 1959 passport application.

By Bill Simpich [Originally published 11/16/2010]

Oswald meets Don Alejandro, a White Russian in the Soviet Union

When Oswald began working in Minsk at the Radio and TV factory as one of 5000 employees, he noticed that he was “being observed” by his supervisor. The supervisor was chief engineer Alexander Romanovich Ziger, a Polish Jew in his late forties who had supposedly relocated to Argentina in 1938 and returned to Belarus around 1955 or 1956. Mr. Ziger spoke English with an American accent, while his family spoke no English. Ziger claimed he had worked for an American company in Argentina.

Sources describe Ziger as Alejandro or as Aleksandr. Oswald called himself “Alec” or “Alik” while in the USSR, and even obtained a hunting license under the name “Aleksey Harvey Oswald”. Although the story is that “Lee” is difficult for Russians to pronounce, I suspect that his friendship with Don Alejandro was a major factor. Between 1959-1962, Oswald and “Don Alejandro” spent six days a week together at the factory and three or four nights at the Ziger home speaking in English over tea and cakes. Oswald enjoyed many Sunday drives into the country with the family. Don Alejandro is Legend Maker #8.

Oswald on the left, Don Alejandro Ziger on the right

Most of the CIA’s file cards and forms spell Alejandro’s surname as “Zeger”. The Moscow phone book spells it as “Ziger”. The Warren Commission is partial to “Zieger”. We do see a note stating that “Alexander Zeger…is probably identical with Alejandro Ziger, a Polish engineer and radiotelephonic expert. As his homeland was in a contested border region claimed by both Poland and the Ukraine, Ziger was what is known as a White Russian. Ziger had allegedly been taken in by Soviet propaganda, greatly disappointed with what he found in the USSR, while his family was living. The story is that by January 1957, Ziger had already applied at the Argentine Embassy in Moscow to return to Argentina.

Among the twelve who built the Oswald legend, Ziger is the one who we know the least about. This CIA document indicates that Ziger may have been an agent” and an “ardent Communist officer” born in 1908. Ziger not only spoke several languages (Russian, Polish, Spanish, and English), but he appears to be a man with leadership skills. It is apparent that he was a voice listened to at the sheet metal plant.

At a minimum, it looks like Ziger had a family member involved in CIA counterintelligence. There is a reference in Oswald’s phone book to a “Debovy or Debooy”. CIA analyst Marguerite Stevens wondered if it might be a reference to “David DeBoey Sagier“. Born in 1908, David Zagier’s memoir Botchki describes growing up in Poland and his work with the OSS and the CIA. David D. Zagier wrote an OSS paper on the devaluation of the Finnish mark. “D. Zagier” can be found among a list of the CIA’s most famous counterintelligence officers of the 1960s.

Similarly, the history of Zeger’s family is very odd. Alejandro Ziger’s daughter “Lenora Zeger” is described as divorced and a singer. Lenora and Lee used to like to flirt together. The CIA’s traces indicate that Lenora’s birthdate is supposedly “1923”. This would make Lenora old enough to be Lee’s mother. Oswald’s diary estimates that Lenora was born in 1934. The CIA’s traces for the younger sister Anita indicate that her birth year is supposedly “1929”. Regarding Mrs. Zeger, her traces are run for her apparent name, “Ana Dmitruk”. The odds are strong that Ana is related to Pavel Dymitruk, whose ex-wife Lydia took in Marina Oswald after the Oswalds left the USSR and arrived in Texas virtually penniless.

An alleged ship manifest says that Ziger and his family left Argentina for the USSR in 1956, but the birth years don’t track what we have previously seen – his birth year as approximately 1912, his wife Ana’s as 1910, daughter Leonor as 1935, and daughter Anita as 1941.

While in the Soviet Union, Oswald spoke very little Russian in public

In recent years, an astonishing revelation about Oswald has emerged. Oswald pretended to understand almost no Russian during his entire time in the Soviet Union. Author John Armstrong went to Argentina in 1998 and interviewed Anita Zeger. To Armstrong’s astonishment, Anita Zeger told him that Oswald “didn’t speak any Russian at all”. She amended her statement to say “not much”.

For spying purposes, an operative is much more valuable if people say things around him assuming that the operative does not understand what is being said. Zeger knew English, but the rest of his family did not. Oswald’s male friends spoke English, and his female companions were from the foreign language institute who spoke English.

His Intourist guide Rimma Shirokova recalled that “he didn’t seem to know a single word in Russian” when he arrived in the USSR. Angleton’s aide Ray Rocca told the Church Committee that Shirakova was a KGB agent. Stanislav Shushkevich, who taught Oswald Russian, reported that Oswald found Russian difficult, but he eventually was able to understand with the aid of gestures, written notes, and a dictionary.

When Oswald was hospitalized for his alleged suicide attempt, the authorities thought that he understood the Russian spoken to him despite his verbal denials. “Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what he was asked”.

Oswald’s Russian was considered good enough in the United States to qualify him as a professional translator, and for his wife Marina to mistake him as a native-born Russian with a Baltic accent when they first met. Russian is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn. No one can master Russian during the less than three years that Oswald was in the Soviet Union, particularly when that someone refuses to use Russian in most public settings. Credible witnesses say that Oswald mastered Russian before his trip to the USSR. He probably picked up the Baltic accent during his time with the Zegers.

The story behind the shootdown of the U-2, and how it played into Oswald’s decision to return to the USA

An NSA agent named Jack Dunlap now enters our story in a most dramatic fashion. “An extremely sensitive and reliable source” is quoted in an FBI letterhead memo that “Dunlap gave the Soviets important information regarding the U-2 flights over the USSR and that Dunlap’s information provided the Soviet Union with the capability of shooting down the Powers U-2 aircraft…as a result of Dunlap’s information, the Soviets were well aware of when the U-2 planes crossed over the Soviet Union. The Soviets always had their anti-aircraft guns trained on those planes.” This source was known as TOPHAT. TOPHAT was Lt. General Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, exposed by Aldrich Ames – a real mole inside the CIA – whose motivation was money and not ideology.

The FBI memo that recounts TOPHAT’s story then adds that “Khrushchev held back from allowing them to shoot down the planes, waiting for an appropriate political time to do this. Khrushchev eventually “gave the okay” to shoot down the Powers U-2 aircraft at a time when he thought it would do the most good for Soviet prestige and at a time when he was being pressed by China to show their hand.” From the wording of the memo, it’s unclear if TOPHAT was the source referring to Khrushchev’s actions.

Dunlap succeeded in his mission even though CI chief James Angleton realized that Dunlap was a mole in 1959, a year before what is known as the U-2 affair. After Dunlap committed suicide in July 1963, and numerous classified documents turned up in his possession, his widow admitted to the FBI on August 20, 1963 that Dunlap told her before his suicide that he had been selling secrets to the Soviets.

Another piece of the puzzle is that Moscow had just recently obtained the ability to shoot down the U-2 with the development of the SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missiles. By 1960, these missiles were installed around big cities and sensitive locations. All of the sites on Francis Gary Powers’ flight path were protected by SA-2 missile sites.

When a U-2 flight was conducted on April 9, 1960, the plane’s electronic intelligence (ELINT) collection unit indicated that the Soviets were tracking them early on. The CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans Bissell was warned that “penetration without detection” was now a problem. When Powers went on that fateful flight on May 1, 1960, the CIA knew that he was in danger. There is no record that the CIA warned Eisenhower that the peace summit might blow up in his face.

DDP Bissell has said that the photographic capabilities of the U-2s provided “more than ninety percent of all its hard intelligence about the Soviet Union.” during that era. During the early “60s, military surveillance satellites were in their infancy. Until the first satellite launch in August, 1960, the U-2 was the only way to obtain overhead photos of military test sites and similar sensitive installations.

Throughout the 1950s, the U-2 was able to defeat Soviet air defenses for two reasons: It could fly beyond the range of their missiles to an altitude of 90,000 feet, and it had ultra-secret radar-jamming equipment. Kelly Johnson, the legendary research engineer for Lockheed, designed the U-2 and many key US military planes at the largely autonomous “Lockheed Advanced Development Projects” (better known as the “Skunk Works”) in Burbank, California, delivering the first U-2 in 1955 to the infamous top-secret base Area 51. Johnson said that the Soviets were “somehow able to isolate the (U-2’s) radar-jamming signals and use their beams to guide the anti-aircraft missile…(this meant) either a penetration by Soviet intelligence of United States radar countermeasures or, by some other means, the ability to take precise measurements of the U-2’s radar signals.”

The U-2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, wrote in his book Operation Overflight that he believed Oswald’s defection was related to his being shot down: “Oswald’s familiarity with MPS 16 height-finding radar gear and radio codes…are mentioned in the testimony of John E. Donovan, a former first lieutenant assigned to the same El Toro radar unit as OSWALD.”

Lt. John Emmett Donovan had been Oswald’s commanding officer in 1959, and had discussed more than radar gear and codes: “OSWALD has access to the location of all bases in the west coast area, all radio frequencies for all squadrons, all tactical call signs, and the relative strength of all squadrons, number and type of aircraft in each squadron, who was the commanding officer, the authentification code of entering and exiting the ADIZ, which stands for Air Defense Identification Zone. He knew the range of our radar. He knew the range of our radio. And he knew the range of the surrounding unit’s radio and radar.”

Donovan was an FBI agent from 1953-1956, and was a recent graduate from Georgetown University’s Foreign Service school when interviewed by the Secret Service during December 1963. On the same day as this Secret Service interview, Donovan was contacted by Evening Star reporter Jeremiah O’Leary who was “also a Marine reservist”. Donovan told the Warren Commission that the Marines spent thousands of hours changing all the tactical frequencies and verifying the destruction of codes.

No question that Oswald made the US government’s security much more vulnerable by his threat to talk to the Soviets. But whether or not he did it, Oswald didn’t know anything about how to unjam the U-2’s radar-jamming signals, which was the Soviets’ core problem as it made it very difficult for the Soviets to even find an overflying U-2. Nor was Oswald’s knowledge of the height-finding radar gear all that helpful, if the U-2 could fly higher than the Soviet air defenses could reach and simultaneously jam Soviet radar.

What is fascinating is that there is no investigation in the CIA or FBI files dedicated to whether Oswald was handing U-2 information over to the Soviets. Nor is there anything in the military files that I am aware of, other than this complaint by his own lieutenant John Donovan. Incredibly, the Warren Commission did not ask Donovan or any of Oswald’s military colleagues a single question about the U-2, even though the shootdown incident happened on the second overflight after Oswald’s arrival to the USSR. Donovan said that “he did not know whether Oswald had actually turned over secrets to the Russians. But for security’s sake it had to be assumed that he did”.

Eight days after Donovan testified to the Warren Commission, Richard Helms wrote a memo to the Warren Commission entitled, “Oswald’s Access to Information About the U-2”, which was classified as “Commission Document 931” and not released for thirty years. Francis Gary Powers discussed it at length in his book, as he really wanted to know what it said. Powers died in 1978. When Helms’ memo was released in 1993, this was its conclusion:

“To summarize: There is no evidence or indication that OSWALD had any association with, or access to, the JTAG (Joint Technical Advisors Group) operation or its program in Japan. This applies also to information regarding the U-2 or its mission.”

The gap between Helms’ version and Donovan’s version is vast. Donovan talks about how his unit provided U-2 support at Cubi Point in the Philippines, where Oswald once tracked a U-2 flying over China and showed it to him.

Whether or not Oswald actually provided U-2 secrets to the Soviets, it was certainly part of the legend created on his behalf. The best tip-off is right in Oswald’s own diary, where he says that Don Alejandro advised him to go back to the USA on the night of May 1, 1960, the night that the Soviets shot down Powers’ U-2.

“It’s the first voice of opposition I have heard. I respect Ziger, he has seen the world. He says many things, and relates many things I do not know about the USSR. I begin to feel uneasy inside, it’s true!”

The CIA’s memo says that Ziger “cautioned Oswald not to tell any Russians” .

Oswald’s work in the Soviet Union was done. Both sides would take a long look at him, saying: “Whose man is he?”

Part 5: Oswald returns home to join the White Russians in Texas

Endnotes:

The CIA cited Oswald’s estimate of 5000 employees at the factory:
Oswald 201 file, Vol. 24, p. 143.

He noticed that he was “being observed” by his supervisor: Oswald 201 File, Vol 24 Bulky, Oswald Chronology Part 2 to Name Trace Appendix Draft, p. 26.

The supervisor was chief engineer Alexander Romanovich Ziger, a Polish Jew in his late forties who had supposedly relocated to Argentina in 1938 and returned to Belarus around 1955 or 1956: Oswald 201 File, Vol 38B/NARA Record Number: 1993.06.10.15:01:04:030000, Chronology of Oswald in the USSR.

Mr. Zeger spoke English with an American accent, while his family spoke no English. Zeger claimed he had worked for an American company in Argentina. Sources describe him as Alejandro or as Alexsandr: ARRB 1996 Releases/NARA Record Number: 104-10009-10068, Revised and Updated Version of List Forwarded to WC re Names. Also see John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 288 (interview with daughter Ana Evelina Ziger, 1998)

Oswald called himself “Alec” or “Alik” while in the USSR, and even obtained a hunting license under the name “Aleksey Harvey Oswald”: Oswald 201 File, Volume 24, p. 8.

Oswald’s diary states that he enjoyed many Sunday drives during 1960 with the Ziger family: Oswald 201 File, Vol 24 Bulky, Oswald Chronology Part 2 to Name Trace Appendix Draft, p. 32.

Tea and cakes with Don Alejandro: John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 287 (interview with daughter Anita Evelina Ziger, 1998) Photo of Don Alejandro: Warren Commission Exhibit 2624.

Most of the CIA’s file cards spell Alejandro’s surname as “Zeger”: Name Check Request – Alexsandr Ziger, ARRB 1996 Releases/NARA Record Number: 104-10006-10226

The Moscow phone book has the listing as “Ziger”:Commission Document 680 – CIA Appendix C to Chronology of Oswald in USSR, , p. 193.

The Warren Commission is partial to “Zieger”. J. Lee Rankin memo to J. Edgar Hoover, 9/5/64, FBI Warren Commission Liaison File (62-109090), FBI 62-109090 Warren Commission HQ File, Section 19, p. 239.

We do see a note stating that “Alexander Zeger…is probably identical with Alejandro Ziger, a Polish engineer and radiotelephonic expert…: Oswald 201 File, Vol 24 Bulky, Oswald Chronology Part 2 to Name Trace Appendix Draft, 4/16/64 draft of “Chronology of Oswald in the USSR”, CIA document. See p. 160. Background notes on this draft: Chronology of Oswald in the USSR, cover and opening page.

This CIA document indicates that Ziger may have been an agent” and an “ardent Communist officer” born in 1908: Name Check Request – Alexsandr Ziger, p.3, ARRB 1996 Releases/NARA Record Number: 104-10006-10226

There is a reference in Oswald’s phone book to a “Debovy or Debooy”. CIA analyst Marguerite Stevens wondered if it might be a reference to “David DeBoey Sagier“: Memo by M.D. Stevens to Chief, Research Branch SRS/OS, 2/3/64, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 47/NARA Record Number: 1993.07.24.10:25:23:530550

Born in 1908, David Zagier’s memoir Botchki describes growing up in Poland and his work with the OSS and the CIA: David Zagier, Botchki (George Braziller, 2001)

David D. Zagier wrote an OSS paper on the devaluation of the Finnish mark: OSS Secret Intelligence/Special Funds Records, 1942-46, p. 214.

“D. Zagier” can be found among a list of the CIA’s most famous counterintelligence officers of the 1960s: CIA File Card Review, p. 2; HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 35/NARA Record Number: 104-10096-10321.

Alejandro Ziger’s daughter “Lenora Zeger” is described as divorced and a singer. Lenora and Lee used to like to flirt together. The CIA’s traces indicate that Lenora’s birthdate is supposedly “1923”: Name Check Request – Lenora Zeger, Oswald 201 File (201-289248)/NARA Record Number: 104-10006-10227

Oswald’s diary estimates that Lenora was born in 1934: Revised and Updated Version of List Forwarded to Warren Commission Re Names, p. 204, ARRB 1996 Releases/NARA Record Number: 104-10009-10068

The CIA’s traces for the younger sister Anita indicate that her birth year is supposedly “1929”: Name Check Request – Anita Zeger, Oswald 201 File, Vol 53B/NARA Record Number: 104-10006-10228

Regarding Mrs. Zeger, her traces are run for her apparent maiden name,“Ana Dmitruk”: Name Check Request – Ana Dmitruk, Oswald 201 File (201-289248)/NARA Record Number: 104-10006-10114. Note that the attached documents identify a woman who was born in the 1880s and couldn’t have been Ana. The identified woman may have been Ana’s mother.

The odds are strong that Ana is related to Pavel Dymitruk, whose ex-wife Lydia took in Marina Oswald after the Oswalds left the USSR and arrived in Texas virtually penniless: Memo from James Angleton to Director of Naval Intelligence, 5/19/64, Russ Holmes Work File/NARA Record Number: 104-10423-10255. Although unsigned by Angleton, the format and typeface reveals it as an Angleton memorandum; see this 2/14/64 Angleton memo for comparison.

An alleged ship manifest says that Ziger and his family left Argentina for the USSR with his family in 1956, but the birth years don’t track what we have previously seen – his birth year as approximately 1912, his wife Ana’s as 1910, daughter Leonor as 1935, and daughter Anita as 1941: “Chronology of Oswald in the USSR”, for date January 12, 1960; Oswald 201 File, Vol 38B/NARA Record Number: 1993.06.10.15:01:04:030000

Author John Armstrong went to Argentina in 1998 and interviewed Ana Zeger. To Armstrong’s astonishment, Ana Zeger told him that Oswald “didn’t speak any Russian at all”…: John Armstrong interview with Ana Ziger, October 1998. See Armstrong’s Harvey and Lee, (Quasar, Ltd., Arlington, Texas 2003), p. 336.

Oswald’s male friends spoke English, and his female companions were from the foreign language institute who spoke English: Norman Mailer, Oswald’s Tale, pp. 108, 122-123 (Erich Titovets), Inna Pasenko, other girls at the Foreign Languages Institute, pp. 123-126. Pavel Golovachev’s letters to Oswald are all in English.

When Oswald was hospitalized for his alleged suicide attempt, the authorities thought that he understood the Russian spoken to him despite his verbal denials. “Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what he was asked”. Soviet hospital medical notes, Warren Commission Exhibit 985.

His Intourist guide Rimma Shirokova recalled that “he didn’t seem to know a single word in Russian” when he arrived in the USSR: Norman Mailer, Oswald’s Tale, p. 43.

Angleton’s aide Ray Rocca told the Church Committee that Shirakova was a KGB agent: Memorandum for the Record by AC/CI/OG Robert Wall re Ray Rocca meeting with Senate Select Committee staff, 11/13/75, Russ Holmes Work File/NARA Record Number: 104-10423-10002.

Oswald’s Russian was considered good enough in the United States to qualify him as a professional translator…: Testimony of Paul Gregory, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 2, p. 338.

…and for his wife Marina to mistake him as a native-born Russian with a Baltic accent when they first met: Testimony of Paul Gregory, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 9, p. 146.

As a result of Dunlap’s information, the Soviets were well aware of when the U-2 planes crossed over the Soviet Union: FBI letterhead memo, “Jack Edward Dunlap”, 4/21/66, LA Division Work File/NARA Record Number: 104-10309-10022

An extremely sensitive and reliable source, the source known as TOPHAT: William Sullivan to Alan Belmont, 12/4/63, FBI-HSCA Subject Files, C-D/FBI-SCA Subject File: Church Committee, NARA Record Number: 124-10287-10185

Tophat was Lt. General Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, exposed by Aldrich Ames – the real mole inside the CIA – whose motivation was money and not ideology:Elaine Shannon, Time Magazine, “Death of the Perfect Spy”, 8/8/94.

Scott Van Wynsberghe, Third Decade, Jan.-Mar. 1992, “Stray Shots VIII”, p. 21: “In 1978, Epstein exploited his contacts with the Angleton crowd to reveal the existence of one traitor in the Soviet U.N. delegation. Epstein apparently thought this individual, Dmitri Polyakov to be another fake, but Mangold says Polyakov, too, was genuine. In fact, he was executed in 1988.” Also see Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior, pp. 205-214.

For more on TOPHAT, see Mangold, Cold Warrior, pp. 227-236; David Wise, Molehunt, pp. 153-154.

Khrushchev eventually “gave the okay” to shoot down the Powers U-2 aircraft at a time when he thought it would do the most good for Soviet prestige: William Sullivan to Alan Belmont, 12/4/63, FBI-HSCA Subject Files, C-D/FBI-SCA Subject File: Church Committee, NARA Record Number: 124-10287-10185.

His widow admitted to the FBI that Dunlap told her before his suicide that he had been selling secrets to the Soviets: No Title, FBI memo from William Sullivan to Alan Belmont, 12/4/63, FBI – HSCA Subject File: Church Committee/RIF#: 124-10287-10185.

By 1960…all of the sites on Francis Gary Powers’ flight path were protected by SA-2 missile sites: Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust (University Press of Kansas, 2005), p. 440, citing Dino A. Brugoni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Random House, 1991), pp. 43-44.

When Powers went on that fateful flight on May 1, 1960, the CIA knew that he was in danger: Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The CIA and the U-2, 1954-1974, (Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1999) p. 170, servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gbpprorg/mil/radar/u2.pdf

On details surrounding the U-2″sources such as Richard Helms and Richard Bissell. Bissell: U-2s provided “more than ninety percent of all its hard intelligence about the Soviet Union.”: Edward Jay Epstein, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald (Reader’s Digest Press, 1978) p. 119.

Kelly Johnson designed the U-2: Press Release, “Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works Celebrates Diamond Anniversary”. www.lockheedmartin.com/news/press_releases/2003/LockheedMartinSSkunkWorksCelebrates.html

Delivering in 1955 the first U-2 to the infamous top-secret base Area 51: Jeffrey Richelson, Wizards of Langley (Westview Press, 2002), p. 14.

Johnson: The Soviets either penetrated US radar countermeasures, or, by some other means, the ability to take precise measurements of the U-2’s radar signals: Epstein, Legend, at p. 119.

Powers: “Oswald’s familiarity with MPS 16 height-finding radar gear and radio codes…are mentioned in the testimony of John E. Donovan, a former first lieutenant assigned to the same El Toro radar unit as OSWALD.”: Francis Gary Powers, Operation Overflight (Brassey’s Inc., paperback version 2004), pp. 304-305.

Lt. John Emmett Donovan was Oswald’s commanding officer in 1959, and had discussed more than radar gear and codes: “(Oswald) had the access to the location of all bases in the west coast area, all radio frequencies for all squadrons…: Testimony of John E. Donovan, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 8, p. 298.

Donovan was Oswald’s commanding officer in 1959: Incident Report Re. John E. Donovan’s Acquaintance with Lee Harvey Oswald, 12/1/63, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 41/RIF# 104-10113-10241

On the same day of this Secret Service interview, Donovan was contacted by Evening Star reporter Jeremiah O’Leary who was also a Marine reservist: Remarks on routing slip re John E. Donovan, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 47/RIF#: 104-10132-10126

Incredibly, the Warren Commission did not ask Donovan or any of Oswald’s military colleagues a single question about the U-2, even though the shootdown incident happened on the second overflight after Oswald’s arrival to the USSR: Powers, Operation Overflight, p. 305

Donovan said that “he did not know whether Oswald had actually turned over secrets to the Russians. But for security’s sake it had to be assumed that he did”: New York Journal American, “Oswald in Russia: Did He Tell Our Military Secrets?”, quoting John Donovan, 12/2/63.

The gap between Helms’ version and Donovan’s version is vast. Donovan talks about how his unit provided U-2 support at Cubi Point in the Philippines, where Oswald once tracked a U-2 flying over China and showed it to him: Interview by John Newman with James Donovan, 7/19/94, in Newman’s Oswald and the CIA, p. 32.

“To summarize: There is no evidence or indication that OSWALD had any association with, or access to, the JTAG (Joint Technical Advisors Group) operation or its program in Japan. This applies also to information regarding the U-2 or its mission.” Warren Commission Document 931, Richard Helms memo re Oswald’s access to the U-2, final page.

In Oswald’s diary, he indicates on May 1, 1960 Don Alejandro advised him to go back to the USA…: “Historic Diary from Oct. 16, 1959 Arrival”, p. 9, Russ Holmes Work File/NARA Record Number: 104-10418-10355.

The CIA’s memo says that Ziger “cautioned Oswald not to tell any Russians”: Oswald 201 File, Vol 24 Bulky, Oswald Chronology Part 2, Name List with Traces, p. 29.

By Bill Simpich [Originally published 12/7/2010]

Oswald threatened to reveal military secrets to the Soviets

The Warren Commission wrote many pages on Lee Harvey Oswald’s visit to the American embassy in Moscow shortly after his defection to the USSR. However, the Warren Report says nothing about the U-2, much less about Oswald’s work for the U-2 project as an aviation electronics operator.

The Commissioners were informed by CIA deputy director Richard Helms that Oswald only worked near the U-2 hangar in Japan, tap-danced around Oswald’s access to the U-2 in the Philippines, and concluded that Oswald had no “information regarding the U-2 or its mission.”

The Warren Report does mention that Oswald told legend maker #4 consul Richard Snyder that he had “already offered to tell a Soviet official what he had learned as a radar operator in the Marines” (p. 693). However, the Commission concluded that since neither the FBI or the Navy prosecuted Oswald, the State Department had no basis to conclude that Oswald’s statement was “anything more than rash talk”. (p. 775)

The CIA knew about Oswald’s treasonous offer. In a memo written shortly after JFK’s death, CIA officer John Whitten states that a list of “American defectors to the USSR list” was put together in November 1960. “From then on, we received a number of FBI and State Department reports on Oswald, detailing “his defiant threat to reveal to the Soviets all he knew about Navy radar installations in the Pacific.”

Whitten makes it sound like the CIA heard about these threats after the U-2 went down on May 1, 1960. In fact, Snyder’s report and Navy reports in early November 1959 describe Oswald’s threat to provide radar secrets to the Soviets, and the CIA had copies of these reports in their files right after Oswald left the American embassy on October 31.

The CIA’s position was that “Since Oswald was a former Marine and a U.S. citizen, his defection was of primary interest to the State Department, the FBI, and the Navy Department. CIA does not investigate U.S. citizens abroad unless we are specifically requested to do so by some other Government security agency. No such request was made in this case.”

One CIA officer, however, shows extraordinary interest in Oswald.

This CIA officer is Ann Egerter, an analyst at the small, super-secret Counterintelligence Special Investigations Group (CI/SIG). Egerter called CI/SIG “the office that spied on spies”. Her boss, legend maker #1 CI chief James Angleton, admitted that one of CI/SIG’s purposes was to monitor defectors.

An FBI officer is also playing close attention – Marvin Gheesling, a supervisor at FBI Headquarters.

Oswald and the Moles

The October 31 and November 2 memos prepared by Snyder and his colleague Ed Freers about Oswald’s defection are used by Ann Egerter, legend maker #5 , to fill Oswald’s file with items of false information known as “marked cards”. “Marked cards” are designed to capture a mole who spreads the information to unauthorized individuals.

The “marked card” technique has been around for a long time. Peter Wright in Spycatcher refers to this method as a “barium meal”. Tom Clancy in Patriot Games calls this trick a “canary trap”. Author Peter Dale Scott mentions that the “marked card” was one of the methods used to try to catch the infamous CIA mole Aldrich Ames during the 1990s. The marked card didn’t work because Ames himself was the chief of the CIA’s Soviet Russia counterintelligence staff.

Freers and Snyder mentioned in their initial October 31 note about Oswald’s visit that Oswald’s mother’s last address was at 4936 “Collinwood St.”. Not only had Mrs. Oswald not lived on Collingwood since May 1957, but her address on September 4, 1959 was 3124 West Fifth Street, the very address Oswald had used on his passport application.

Keep in mind that when Snyder prepared his reports, he was a trained observer and reporter of minutiae that the average person would not notice. This “Collinwood St.” entry was just one of several misspellings and errors that were purposeful and not accidental. This deliberate error was a “marked card” to see if a mole leaked this information elsewhere.

Two days later, the November 2 dispatch prepared by Freers and Snyder adds three more marked cards to the deck. One was that Oswald was “discharged” from the service. Another was that Oswald’s highest grade was corporal. The third was that Oswald applied for his passport in San Francisco.

Peter Dale Scott, the author of the highly revealing essay “Oswald and the Search for Popov’s Mole”, carefully examined each of these marked cards. Oswald was not discharged, but received a dependency release and placed in the reserves with duties to perform until 1962. Oswald’s highest grade was not corporal, but private first class. Finally, Oswald’s passport states that it was issued in Los Angeles, not in San Francisco.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s 1959 passport

Scott focuses on the importance of these anomalies that fill Oswald’s CIA file, stating that they are evidence of “a significant, sophisticated multi-agency counterintelligence operation.” Scott advances the thesis that “Oswald himself was a low-level part of a CI search for a leak or mole”, and that Oswald’s unexplained talk of espionage right in front of the KGB microphones (the KGB had the US embassy thoroughly bugged) is a very poor way to convince the KGB of his bona fides but “makes perfect sense as a test for leaks in response to Popov’s arrest fifteen days earlier”.

The American and Soviet embassies have long and famous histories for placing bugs in each other’s embassies, tapping each other’s phones, and reading each other’s mail. The KGB confirmed in 1959 that Freers was not CIA, and that the KGB maintained a microphone in Freers’ office.

In “Popov’s Mole”, Scott points out that the errors detailed above, and others that we will soon discuss, was repeatedly circulated in the documentary history of Oswald’s files by Jim Angleton’s colleague Ann Egerter and other CI/SIG officials. By embedding these false statements within Oswald’s file, and tracking who had access to the file information, Egerter could determine if this information had surfaced elsewhere, and that would be evidence of unauthorized access.

Angleton told the Church Committee that the role of CI/SIG was to prevent the penetration of spies into the CIA and the government, and that the “historical penetration cases are recruitment of U.S. officials in positions (of) code clerks.” Angleton’s search for a mole turned the CIA upside down by the time he was fired in 1974. Dozens of CIA officers were fired. By 1980, Congress was forced to pass a “Mole Relief Act” to compensate the unfairly accused victims.

Egerter used Oswald himself in what is called a “dangle”. Angleton’s biographer Tom Mangold wrote that the execution of Popov accelerated Angleton’s belief that “Popov could only have been betrayed by a mole buried deep within Soviet Division.”. Mangold found Angleton misguided, stating that “Popov was actually lost to the Soviets because of a slipshod CIA operation; there was no treachery.” David Robarge, in a very thoughtful piece that should be read in its entirety, agrees that Popov’s capture marked the time when Angleton became “fixed on the mole”. Oswald’s arrival was on the same date as Popov’s arrest.

Nonetheless, if Angleton was convinced that there was a mole in the Soviet Division, it’s a good bet that he believed that radar operator Oswald’s sudden entry into the Soviet Union on the same day was no accident.

What is curious is that Egerter opened no 201 file for Oswald at this point. A 201 file is a CIA file that is created to profile any person “of active operational interest”. For whatever reason, she did not want to admit that the CIA had any operational interest in Oswald.

The FBI had operational interest in Oswald, and let everybody know it. Headquarters supervisor Marvin Gheesling is described as having “considerable experience in espionage, intelligence and counterintelligence operations.” Gheesling, legend maker #6 , promptly opened a “watch list” file on Oswald within a week of his visit to the Embassy in late 1959 by creating what is called a FLASH card. As John Newman muses, “This combination of being on the Watch List without a 201 file makes Oswald special. Perhaps not unique, but certainly peculiar. It was as if someone wanted Oswald watched quietly.”

At the same time, Oswald was added to the HT LINGUAL list, Angleton was effectively in charge of HT LINGUAL, a joint project of the CIA, FBI and US Postal Service in which Angleton was the titular head. Oswald was now one of the 300 Americans whose letters would be secretly opened as part of HT LINGUAL project monitoring mail coming from the USSR.

A quick glance at what happened three years later: Gheesling’s role turned ominous when he took Oswald off the watch list in the month before the assassination. Gheesling’s action took place just hours before Egerter helped write two separate messages that provided two different descriptions of Oswald. One message sent to third party agencies referred to him specifically as “Lee Henry Oswald”, with an inaccurate physical description, apparently designed to mislead the national leadership of these agencies. The in-house message provided a more accurate description of Oswald – as we’ll see later, still containing subtle mistakes – going only to the local agencies. These are further indications of the molehunt.

Gheesling’s decision to take Oswald off the watch list effectively dimmed the lights around Oswald. It meant that Oswald would not be watched in Dallas with close scrutiny in situations involving national security, such as when JFK came to town in a motorcade. If Gheesling had waited another day, Oswald would have been in the spotlight. Dallas agents would have been on him like white on rice.

After Egerter passes Oswald’s marked cards to FBI’s John Fain, Fain joins the molehunt

Going back to 1960…the marked cards begin to multiply a few months later. In February 1960, Oswald’s mother is worrying about him. Marguerite told the Secret Service that SA John Fain recommends that she write Secretary of State Christian Herter and Congressmen Sam Rayburn and Jim Wright. Curiously, the FBI has no public paper trail of meeting with Fain at this early date. FBI files in 1959-60 and Oswald’s Marine records remain classified and should be released.

Mrs. Oswald then sends one letter to Congressman Wright telling him that “according to the UPI Moscow press, he appeared at the US embassy renouncing his citizenship“. The next day, she wrote Secretary Herter a letter saying that Oswald had not renounced his citizenship and “is still a U.S. citizen”.

Why Mrs. Oswald would say two different things in two different letters one day apart is a longer discussion. Nonetheless, these two totally contradictory documents are a central part of this case. The inaccurate statement that Oswald had “renounced his citizenship” was central to SA Fain’s report of May 12, 1960. This report also had the marked card of “Edward Lee Oswald” for the name of Oswald’s deceased father, rather than his correct name of Robert Edward Lee Oswald.

Fain’s inaccurate report about renunciation was the direct cause of Oswald’s dishonorable discharge by the Marines on August 17, 1960. Oswald wrote the Secretary of the Navy trying to get this dishonorable discharge changed, not realizing that John Connally had resigned as navy secretary to run for Governor of Texas in 1962. Connally wrote back and said that he had forwarded Oswald’s letter to the new secretary. John Fain is legend maker #7 .

At a minimum, Ann Egerter’s use of the Lee Oswald’s file enabled CI to engage in some very clever molehunting, particularly when she decided to name his 201 file “Lee Henry Oswald”. She claimed years later that “Henry” wasn’t in her handwriting. Take a look for yourself. The name of the file itself was a “marked card”. If anyone else referred to Lee Henry Oswald, a bright trail would be left behind. Egerter’s form includes the terms “defected to the USSR” and “radar operator”, but says nothing about Oswald’s threat to pass “classified things” to the Soviets.

Part 4: When the U-2 Goes Down, Oswald is Ready to Return

Endnotes:

The Commissioners were informed by CIA deputy director Richard Helms… Richard Helms memo to Director, FBI; Warren Commission Document 931, 5/13/64.

The Warren Report does mention that Oswald told legend maker #4 consul Richard Snyder that he had “already offered to tell a Soviet official what he had learned as a radar operator in the Marines”. Warren Report, p. 693.

However, the Commission concluded that since neither the FBI or the Navy prosecuted Oswald, the State Department had no basis to conclude that Oswald’s statement was “anything more than rash talk”. Warren Report, p. 775.

CIA officer John Whitten states in a memo written shortly after JFK’s death that after an American defectors to the USSR list was put together in November 1960 “from then on, we received a number of FBI and State Department reports on Oswald, detailing”his defiant threat to reveal to the Soviets all he knew about Navy radar installations in the Pacific.” memo by CIA officer John Whitten, “CIA Work on Lee Oswald and the Assassination of President Kennedy”, p. 3, 12/20/63, Oswald 201 File, Vol 10B, NARA Record Number: 1993.06.14.15:56:02:000000

Angleton’s search for a mole turned the CIA upside down by the time he was fired in 1974: See generally David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, (Guilford, CT, Lyons Press: revised edition, 2003) .

Angleton admitted that one of CI/SIG’s purposes was to monitor defectors: HSCA Security Classified Testimony , Angleton deposition, 10/5/78, p. 150.

The October 31 and November 2 memos of Snyder and Freers are used by Ann Egerter, Legend maker #5, to fill Oswald’s file with items of false information known as “marked cards”: Ed Freers memo to State Dept., 10/31/59; Warren Commission Exhibit 908, Snyder’s report to State Department of 11/2/59, p. 2 (see fourth paragraph)

Author Peter Dale Scott mentions that the “marked card” was one of the methods used to catch the infamous CIA mole Aldrich Ames during the 1990s. The marked card trick didn’t work because Ames himself was the chief of the Soviet Russia counterintelligence staff: Peter Dale Scott, “The Hunt for Popov’s Mole”, Fourth Decade, March 1996, p. 4.

Oswald’s mother had not lived on Collinwood since May 1957: “Collingwood since May 1957”, see Warren Commission Exhibit 822, SA John Fain’s report of 7/3/61, p. 2. Also see Peter Dale Scott, The Hunt for Popov’s Mole, p. 6.

The passport application: See Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 22, p. 77:

Freers’ dispatch states that Oswald was “discharged” from the service, that the highest grade achieved was that of a corporal, and that he applied for his passport in San Francisco: Warren Commission Exhibit 908, Vol. 18, p. 97, Foreign Service dispatch from the American Embassy in Moscow to the Department of State, 11/2/59. Freers signs document, Snyder signs first page as the reporter:

Oswald received a “dependency release”, with obligated service up until 1962, not a discharge. See Warren Commission Document 1, 12/6/63, p. 23,

Oswald was not discharged, but released from active duty: Warren Commission Document 1114, Navy message 22257, From: CNO To: ALUSNA, Moscow, 11/4/59.

His highest grade was not corporal, but private first class: Warren Report 687, 688; Warren Commission Exhibit 3099, Certificate of True Copies of Original Pay Records from 10/24/96 to 9/11/59 for PFC Oswald, dated 9/15/64, prepared by Major E.J. Rowe.

Also see: Warren Commission Document 1114, Navy message 22257, From: CNO To: ALUSNA, Moscow, 11/4/59.

The passport, which was not only examined by Snyder but retained by him:

Oswald had given his passport to Snyder at the Embassy when he said he wanted to renounce his American citizenship: Testimony of Richard Snyder, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 5, p. 269.

The passport indicates clearly that it was issued not in San Francisco, but in Los Angeles: Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 18, p. 162, Warren Commission Exhibit 946, passport of Lee Harvey Oswald, issued September 10, 1959.

The KGB confirmed in 1959 that Freers was not CIA, and that the KGB had a microphone in his office: Diplomatic List, Moscow, 1 January 1959 (information obtained from defector Yuri Nosenko), HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 14/NARA Record Number: 104-10070-10150

Historical penetration cases are recruitment of U.S. officials in positions code clerks: Deposition of James Angleton, 9/17/75, Church Committee, p. 17.

Angleton’s search for a mole is well-known for having turned the CIA upside down by the time he was fired in 1974: See generally David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, (Guilford, CT, Lyons Press: revised edition, 2003).

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: David Wise, Molehunt, Chapter 18

Popov was actually lost due to a slipshod CIA operation there was no treachery. John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 87-88

David Robarge, in a very thoughtful piece that should be read in its entirety, agrees that Popov’s capture marked the time when Angleton became “fixed on the mole”: David Robarge, Moles, Defectors and Deceptions: James Angleton and CIA Counterintelligence, p. 36.

A 201 file is a CIA file on any person “of active operational interest”: Clandestine Services Handbook, 43-1-1, February 15, 1960, Chapter III, Annex B, “Personalities – 201 and IDN Numbers”, RIF# 104-10213-10202. Cited by John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995) at p. 47 and 537, note 2.

Headquarters supervisor Marvin Gheesling is described as having “considerable experience in espionage, intelligence and counterintelligence operations”: HSCA Report, Volume XII, p. 566.

“This combination of being on the Watch List without a 201 file makes Oswald special. Perhaps not unique, but certainly peculiar. It was as if someone wanted Oswald watched quietly.” John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p. 422.

At the same time, Oswald was added to the HT LINGUAL list”: John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p. 56.

Egerter helped prepare two totally conflicting documents. One was a teletype to third party agencies such as the FBI, State Department and the Navy inaccurately describing Oswald as “approximately 35 years old, with an athletic build, about six feet tall, with receding hairline…believed that Oswald was identical to Lee Henry Oswald”: CIA teletype 74673 to FBI, State Department, and Navy, October 10, 1963; NARA, JFK files, CIA 201 file on Oswald.

The in-house version with the more accurate description went only to the local agencies:
CIA headquarters teletype 74830 to Mexico City CIA station, p. 3, October 10, 1963; NARA Record Number: 104-10015-10048

SA John Fain recommends that she write Secretary of State Christian Herter and Congressmen Sam Rayburn and Jim Wright : “Popov’s Mole”, p. 8: 16 Warren Commission Hearings, p. 729.

Mrs. Oswald then sends one letter to Congressman Rayburn telling him that “according to the UPI Moscow press, he appeared at the US embassy renouncing his citizenship”: Marguerite Oswald letter to Congressman Jim Wright, 3/6/60, Warren Commission Document 1115, p. 51

The next day, she wrote Secretary Herter a letter saying that Oswald had not renounced his citizenship: “All I know is what I read in the newspapers. He went to the U.S. Ambassy (sic) there and wanted to turn in his U.S. citizenship and had applied for Soviet citizenship. However the Russians refused his request but said he could remain in their country as a Resident Alien. As far as I know he is still a U.S. citizen.” Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 16, pp. 594-595; Commission Exhibit 206.

The statement that Oswald had renounced his citizenship was picked up in SA Fain’s report of May 12, 1960: FBI report of 5/12/60 by SA John Fain; 17 Warren Commission Hearings 700, 702; Exhibit 821, p. 3.

Because Fain printed this inaccurate information about renunciation in his report, the result was Oswald’s dishonorable discharge by the Marines on August 17, 1960: John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 212-213

Oswald even wrote John Connally from the USSR, not realizing that Connally had quit his job as Secretary of the Navy to run for governor of Texas in 1962: Memo by FBI SA James Hosty, 11/25/63, p. 2, Commission Document 75 – FBI DeBrueys Report of 02 Dec 1963 re: Oswald/Russia, p. 701,

“Edward Lee Oswald”: John Fain’s report, 6/12/60, p. 3 , 17 Warren Commission Hearings 700, 702, Exhibit 821 .

“Robert Edward Lee Oswald”: FBI report of Donald C. Steinmeyer, 4/1/64, re marriage records for Robert Edward Lee Oswald; 11/27/63 report by SA Joseph G. Engelhardt re sister of Robert Edward Lee Oswald.

The 201 opening form filled out by Egerter includes the terms “defected to the USSR” and “radar operator” but says nothing about Oswald’s threat to pass “classified things” about his work to the Soviets: 201 file request by Ann Egerter, 12/9/60, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 7 / NARA Record Number: 104-10054-10204

By Bill Simpich [Originally published 9/2/2010]

Oswald’s ties with US intelligence began as a radar operator for the U-2

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?

Background on REDCAP and REDSKIN

Throughout 1959, Costille had been meeting with his Soviet counterpart Gregoriy Golub, cordially swapping unimportant items of information and feeling each other out. During this time, the memos about the Costille-Golub meetings were directed to the CIA division heads for the Soviet Union and Western Europe, bearing the subject line of REDCAP.

REDCAP was originally designed in 1952 to deal with the results of uprisings in the Soviet satellites, with a special focus on defectors and refugees. In the words of former CIA Soviet chief David Murphy:

“First priority went to efforts to recruit Soviets as sources or, as the Redcap sloganeers put it, to encourage them to ‘defect in place’. Failing that, those who insisted on defecting outright would be brought to the West, where their intelligence knowledge could be tapped.”

In July, a REDCAP memo reveals that Golub was sweetened up by spending time with REDSKIN student-travelers PAWNEE/3 and PAWNEE/5. (REDSKIN was a legal program using student travelers and those similarly situated to report what they observed. As seen in the previous article, JFK himself recommended legend maker #3 Priscilla Johnson for entry into a REDSKIN program.) This indicates an ongoing attempt to persuade Golub to defect. However, REDCAP or REDSKIN may have also been used as a means of using Lee Harvey Oswald.

This is illustrated by a crucial memo written by Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell on 9/2/59, just days before Oswald left the United States. In this memo, Bissell said that it was time to expand the effort by Clandestine Services against the Soviets, and that it must be done in two ways. One was “to monitor the activities of Soviet personnel and installations (REDCAP) and to negate (their) activities” outside of the USSR, and the other was all the operations aimed inside the USSR itself, including REDSKIN.

Oswald could have qualified as a REDSKIN traveler. The State Department described him as a “tourist” on the defector list. Or, given the presence of only about twenty REDCAP agents actually inside the Soviet Russia in the late fifties, REDCAP could have been a convenient spot to tuck in someone like Oswald who related to the USSR but wanted to keep his option to “defect in in place” or re-defect to the West.

Background on LCIMPROVE

LCIMPROVE has been described by the CIA as “counter-espionage involving Soviet intelligence services worldwide”. LCIMPROVE is a counterintelligence technique used around visas and travel. It’s often seen in conjunction with programs such as REDCAP or REDSKIN.

A CIA Helsinki memo in May, 1959 comments on how Golub and a fellow officer are conducting a “Soviet Cultural Offensive in Helsinki” by inviting younger Western diplomatic and consular corps to lunch and Soviet movies. A REDCAP memo of August 14 states that “arrangements (were) made for a night on the town this Saturday with Costille and date and Golub and a trusted Finnish girl we are certain will give Golub a run for his money.”

A REDCAP/LCIMPROVE memo dated 8/28/59 has Costille discussing how he set up the date for Golub with the trusted Finnish girl – there was a lot of alcohol and flirtation, but no actual sex. The central focus of this memo was that Soviet consul Gregory Golub would issue visas immediately and without Moscow approval. “As long as the Americans had made travel arrangements through a local travel bureau, as well as hotel reservations, (Golub) said he had no objections to giving them a visa in a matter of minutes.”

A crucial memo is dated October 9, with the subject line of “REDCAP, Costille-Pawnee/5-Golub Contact”. Costille reports that during early September, “(t)wo Americans were in the Soviet Consulate at the time and were applying for Soviet visas through Golub”. Golub phoned Costille to state that he would give them their visas as soon as they made advance Intourist reservations. When they did this, Golub immediately gave them the visas.”

Throughout 1959, Costille was gently trying to encourage Golub to defect. Costille learned in June about Golub’s estranged marriage. The Western Europe chief told Costille he was convinced that any hope of the “jilted husband” Golub defecting to the West was becoming more remote, and thought that Golub might be on to Costille’s game.

The next report offers strong evidence that Oswald immediately made good use of Costille’s tip about coming through Helsinki. Oswald arrived in Helsinki late Saturday night on October 10 and submitted his visa request on Tuesday the 13th.

Much of the memo discusses a quick lunch requested by Golub with Costille on the morning of the 13th, which the two men managed to swing that same day. Like the earlier memo, this memo’s subject line is also REDWOOD/REDSKIN/REDCAP/LCIMPROVE. Golub expresses his gratitude to Costille for the two tickets he gave him to see Leonard Bernstein on the 4th. Leonard Bernstein may be the reason that Oswald got into the Soviet Union at all.

After the Costille-Golub lunch on the 13th, Oswald obtained his visa on the 14th, was in the USSR by the 15th, and arrived in Moscow on the 16th. After Oswald’s defection, Golub told a wild story about how one of his American dates spent the night. He gave her his wife’s pajamas. He came back in the room, and she was standing there nude. He went to sleep in another bedroom and never called her back. Golub’s wife “returned to Helsinki on 7 November and surprised him after an absence of four months. (Redacted) states that the relationship appears to be the same as it was before Mrs. G left, and Golub was glad to have her back.” The days of wine and roses were over.

I suggest that Golub, Costille, and the these two CIA division chiefs were central to the plan to get Oswald into the Soviet Union, as part of the LCIMPROVE technique to encourage counter-espionage opportunities aimed at the Soviet intelligence services. We see LCIMPROVE again four years later when someone claiming to be Oswald and trying to get an instant visa to Cuba and the USSR telephones the Soviet embassy in Mexico City shortly before the JFK assassination.

The Marine arrives in Moscow ready to give U-2 secrets to the Soviets

On October 16, 1959, the very day that Oswald arrived in Moscow, Popov was arrested while on a bus and trying to obtain a note from Russell Langelle, his CIA contact from the American Embassy. Langelle was expelled from the Soviet Union. Popov was executed. Popov’s information on the KGB’s knowledge of the U-2 made him one of the most important double agents the US has ever had. Counterintelligence chief James Angleton never recovered from the loss of Popov. Angleton took it as a signal that a Soviet mole had penetrated the Central Intelligence Agency, and was learning all of the Agency’s secrets. He had to act.

The next day, October 17, American Robert Webster went to the US embassy and announced that he was defecting to the Soviet Union. Webster had a strong physical resemblance to Oswald, as can be seen by the pictures here

(Image by unknown)

and here.

Webster remembered meeting Oswald’s future wife Marina Oswald on several occasions. Although Marina claimed that she didn’t remember Webster, she confused her own husband with Webster on one occasion by claiming that she had met Oswald at the World Trade exhibition in Moscow in 1959 before he defected. Angleton claimed to be surprised in 1967 to find out that the address of Webster’s apartment building was in Marina’s address book.

On that Saturday, Webster met with Richard Snyder while in the company of his two bosses at the Rand Development Corporation, Henry Rand and George Bookbinder, both former OSS agents and in town with Webster for the World Trade Exhibition in Moscow. Legend maker #4 Richard Snyder had a current clearance to work with CIA officials. Since 95% of the Americans at this event could speak Russian, this particular exhibition was described by Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko as a field day for counterintelligence activities.

Upon arrival, Oswald announced that he was a radar operator with the Marines and he knew some “classified things” that he was going to give to the Soviets. Oswald had also brought with him a handwritten statement renouncing his American citizenship that he wanted the Embassy to accept so that he could seek Soviet citizenship.

Why did the American Embassy officials protect Oswald?

Oswald arrived at the American Embassy in Moscow at 11 am on a Saturday, about an hour before its weekend closing time at 12 am. As Saturday was barely a working day, very few people were in the embassy besides Snyder that morning. We last saw Snyder at Harvard in 1957, working as a spotter for Russian students to recruit into the REDSKIN program.

Oswald had done everything needed to properly renounce his citizenship. For a renunciation to be official, all that was required was for the renunciation to be made in person, in front of a consular officer, reduced to writing, and four copies made. Given Oswald’s threat to turn classified information over to the Soviets, one would think that Snyder would detain him and strip him of his citizenship.

In what some of a skeptical bent have called a “Saturday defection strategy” designed to make it impossible for anyone to renounce their citizenship if they came to the embassy on Saturday, Snyder rescued Oswald that day. Webster had defected two Saturdays earlier, and Nicholas Petrulli had defected on the first Saturday of September.

In the Petrulli case, Petrulli was allowed to renounce his citizenship, and then he immediately turned around and said that he wanted to return to the US. Petrulli was permitted re-entry, as he was supposedly “mentally ill”. This may have been an intelligence gambit by an intelligence agency – Americans or Soviets – to see how the State Department would respond. Curiously, Petrulli is cited in the body of the Warren Report, but not Webster.

After the prolonged drama involving Petrulli, Snyder cited the Petrulli incident as why he would no longer accept a renunciation without a cooling-off period to allow for further investigation and consultation. Webster got a cooling-off period. Snyder, a former CIA officer, was filled with excuses as to why he wouldn’t take Oswald’s citizenship away that day, a man who threatened in his office to turn military secrets over to the Soviet Union.

Instead, Snyder made sure that he got Oswald to hand over his passport to him. I believe that Snyder insisted on obtaining possession so that no other government official could get their hands on it. As we will see, Snyder was also responsible for Oswald ultimately getting his passport back and making sure that he could return to the United States.

Who forewarned Oswald that Snyder would lean on him?

Snyder asked Oswald, “why do you want to defect to the Soviet Union?” Oswald told him that it was because he was a Marxist. Snyder knew that Karl Marx’s philosophies did not play a major role in the bureaucratic USSR, mocking Oswald that “life will be lonely as a Marxist.” Snyder admitted in a three page telegram he sent right after the assassination that Oswald told him that he “had been forewarned I would try (to) talk him out of decision”.

Who, indeed, forewarned Oswald? Was it the Soviets, or the Americans? Consider the Warren Commission hearing where former CIA chief Allen Dulles tried to get Snyder to read this 3-page telegram into the record. Dulles insisted that the telegram was “very short and quite significant”, while Snyder repeatedly claimed there was a “problem of classification” until he convinced the Commission to go off the record.

What was going on was that Snyder was waving his arms and begging his interrogators for a time out so that he could get Dulles to change the subject. Dulles wanted to argue that the Soviets forewarned Oswald. Snyder knew all too well that it was probably the Americans.

At the embassy with Snyder during Oswald’s visit inside the Embassy was a graduate student named Ned Keenan. Keenan was a Harvard student at the time Snyder was a spotter for REDSKIN. Keenan was among the first students to study in the Soviet Union between 1959-1961 as part of the new Student Exchange Program coordinated by the State Department. Like Popov’s contact Russ Langelle, Keenan was eventually declared persona non grata and expelled from the Soviet Union. Keenan is now a historian of Russian history, and a past director of Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks museum and research center in Washington D.C.. He should contribute what he knows under oath.

After Oswald left, Snyder and his colleague Ed Freers prepared the short October 31 report on Oswald’s visit to the State Department, with copies to the Navy and many other agencies, they included a reference to Oswald’s U-2 experience without using the dreaded word “U-2”. They wrote:

“(Oswald) says has offered Soviets any information he has acquired as enlisted radar operator. In view Petrulli case we propose delay executing renunciation until Soviet action known or dept. advises.”

After receiving this note, the naval attache at the Embassy wrote a note about the defections of Oswald and Webster The reference to Webster was whited out for many years until the recent releases. Webster’s name was hidden from the American public to hide Webster from public scrutiny.

Consul John McVickar recruits Johnson to help Oswald

On November 15, consul John McVickar had a chat with Johnson in the mail room at the American embassy. He told her about Oswald, commenting that he wouldn’t talk to “any of us”, but might talk to Johnson because she was a woman. At Johnson was leaving, McVickar added, “Remember that you’re an American.”

On November 16, Priscilla Johnson interviewed Oswald for about five hours. Oswald told her that the Soviets were “investigating possibilities of my continuing my education at a Soviet institute.”

Johnson also admitted to the Warren Commission that Oswald told her “he felt he had something he could give them, something that would hurt his country in a way, or could, and that was the one thing that was quite negative, that he was holding out some kind of bait.”

The next day, Johnson went out to a cafeteria-style lamb dinner with John McVickar. Johnson said that “we talked about Oswald’s personality and how the Embassy had handled him. John and I, out of sympathy for Oswald, were talking about how Snyder had goaded Oswald.”

McVickar wrote a memo after dinner: “I said that if someone could persuade Oswald at least to delay before taking the final plunge on his American citizenship, or for that matter on Soviet citizenship, they would be doing him a favor and doubtless the USA as well. She seemed to understand this point. I believe that she is going to try and write a story on what prompts a man to do such a thing.”

MacVickar wrote a postscript a couple days later adding that Johnson had told him that Oswald “will be trained in electronics“. Newman said that McMillan was troubled when she learned that McVickar attributed this to her, or that he wrote any report about their dinner. When asked point blank by Newman if she remembered discussing Oswald’s threat to provide radar secrets to the Soviets, McMillan’s long-winded response boiled down to “I can’t remember.”

Johnson wrote up an article based on this interview that was picked up by the intelligence-driven North American News Alliance (see Part One) and printed on November 26, 1959 in the Washington Evening Star. Johnson pitched Oswald as a “nice-looking six-footer” and a “serious, soft-spoken Southern boy” with some different ideas. She suppressed any hint of Oswald’s threat to expose military secrets to the Soviet Union. When interviewer John Newman asked her why she had not written about Oswald’s threat, Johnson responded: “I know, that it is terrible…that is so unprofessional.”

What the devil happened to Mr. Webster?

Someone at the Warren Commission was shaken by Johnson’s reference to Robert E. Webster in the Evening Star article, and they did not want his story to be compared with Oswald’s. The solution was to suppress the Evening Star article as an exhibit. Instead, the Commission used Johnson’s nearly-identical original manuscript with Robert E. Webster’s first name deleted but not his last name – the entire name missing would be too obvious. This deletion had nothing to do with “national security”. The only conceivable reason was to try to insulate Webster from future investigation.

This stratagem was largely successful. Webster was not in the body of the Warren Report, and his full identity was erased from the exhibits. No government agency ever interviewed the now-deceased Webster, or compared the photos of Webster and Oswald.

Oswald/Webster (Image by unknown)

To my knowledge, the CIA-linked Robert Webster was not part of the dialogue of the assassination until the spadework done by the HSCA fifteen years later. Here is the Evening Star article discussing Webster – here is the manuscript with his first name whited out. The whited-out version was published by the Warren Commission, hiding Webster’s identity from the public.

What was the reaction from the State Department and other US agencies about Oswald’s act of treason? No statements of outrage, or even significant concern. Close to total silence…but not, as we will see, from the counterintelligence divisions of the CIA and the FBI.

Part 3: Counterintelligence goes molehunting with Oswald’s file

Endnotes:

A tip of the hat goes to Professor John Newman. Some of the analysis here comes from his book Oswald and the CIA, recommended for anyone who wants to go deeper into the issues in this chapter. Many thanks also to researchers Greg Parker and Bill Kelly for sharing their work on Edward Keenan, REDSKIN and REDCAP. As this story progresses, I will acknowledge other researchers and authors as much as possible. Much credit to the efforts of everyone who has moved this case forward with well-vetted evidence.

This series of articles needs vetting – it’s still a work in progress. Suggestions and criticism regarding the state of the documentary evidence and the best approach for a JFK Preservation of Evidence Act are appreciated.

Oswald was an aviation electronics operator: Warren Commission Document 1114, Navy message 22257, From: CNO To: ALUSNA, Moscow, 11/4/59.

Oswald once tracked a U-2 flying over China and showed it to his commanding officer: Interview with James Donovan by John Newman, 7/19/94, in Newman’s Oswald and the CIA, p. 32.

While Oswald was in Asia: Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior, p. 250; Newman, p. 87.

In April 1958, Popov heard a drunken colonel brag, and concluded that the leak came from within the project itself: Mark Riebling, Wedge (Touchstone, 1994), p. 155, quoted in Newman, p. 87.

While in Berlin, Popov passed this U-2 leak…: Newman, pp. 87-88.

In September, 1959, Oswald received a dependency discharge…: McVickar’s Memorandum to the Files, 11/17/59, CE 911, Volume 18, p. 106. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1135&relPageId=120

After a three day visit with his mother…: See Mary Ferrell Chronologies, Volume 2 (a) – 1959, pp. 19-20. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=40396&relPageId=19
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=40396&relPageId=20

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…: George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance (Xlibris, 2006), pp. 216-226 (on background of Brundage, the budget, and SAT); Victor Marchetti, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (Knopf, 1974), pp. re ownership of SAT, see Flight/Global Archive, www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1975/1975%20-%200565.html
The CIA admits owning SAT until 1973. See
Washington Post, 10/30/86

(Possible use of Oswald by REDCAP/REDSKIN) illustrated by memo by Richard Bissell, DDP, 9/2/59: www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=12684&relPageId=2
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=12684&relPageId=3

Former CIA Soviet Division chief David Murphy wrote a book in 1997 describing REDCAP as a “defector inducement program”. David Murphy, Sergei K and Bailey, Battleground Berlin (1997), p. 238 (can viewed online at google)

July REDCAP memo about Golub and PAWNEE/3 and /5:
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=18383&relPageId=3
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=18383&relPageId=4
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=18383&relPageId=5

Oswald changed direction once his freighter docked in France on October 8: Warren Commission Document 1, page 49. FBI Summary Report, 12/1/63 www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10402&relPageId=60 (passport stamped in LaHavre); Warren Commission Document 6, page 311. FBI report by SA J. Dawson Van Eps, 12/3/63. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10407&relPageId=310

LCIMPROVE: The meaning of LCIMPROVE is revealed by putting together two different documents (questions posed the CIA by HSCA staffers and the CIA’s responses). LCIMPROVE was described as “Counter-espionage involving Soviet intelligence services worldwide”: The request for the definition of LCIMPROVE by government staffers to the CIA is at www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=423713. The CIA’s response is at www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=26341&relPageId=23

A REDCAP memo of August 14 states that “arrangements (were) made for a night on the town this Saturday with Costille and date and Golub and a trusted Finnish girl we are certain will give Golub a run for his money.”: Memo from Chief of Station, 8/14/59, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm)/HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 8: Golitsyn – Hernandez)/NARA Record Number: 104-10172-10297. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=399637

The Western Europe chief told Costille that defection by the “jilted husband” Golub was becoming more remote: Memo from CIA Western European chief Eric Timm to Helsinki CIA chief of station, 9/21/59, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 5/NARA Record Number: 104-10051-10196, www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=27338&relPageId=3

Definition of REDWOOD: www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=53277&relPageId=3

Oswald made good use of Costille’s tip…and submitted his visa request on Tuesday the 13th: www.russianbooks.org/oswald/journey.htm

A quick Costille-Golub lunch on the 13th: www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=18377&relPageId=3

After the Costille-Golub lunch on the 13th, Oswald obtained the visa on the 14th, and had crossed the border into the Soviet Union by the 15th: HSCA Final Report, p. 211. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=69279

After Oswald’s defection, Golub told a wild story about how one of his American dates spent the night: REDWOOD/REDSKIN/REDCAP/ Gregory Golub, 10/22/59, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 8: Golitsyn – Hernandez)/ NARA Record Number: 104-10172-10291
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=18377&relPageId=3

Golub’s wife returns: Personal Information Data, Gregory Golub, p. 10, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm – reel 8: Golitsyn – Hernandez)/NARA Record Number: 104-10172-10283 www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=17797&relPageId=10

We see LCIMPROVE again four years later when someone claiming to be Oswald is trying to get an instant visa to Cuba and the USSR just weeks before the JFK assassination: IN 36017, memo from Mexico City to Headquarters, 10/9/63, Oswald 201 File (201-289248)/NARA Record Number: 104-10015-10047 “Cable Concerning Telephone Call to USSR Embassy From American Male Who Spoke Broken Russian”. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=53277&relPageId=3

Oswald arrived in Moscow on the same day as Popov’s arrest: John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), pp. 87-88; Time Magazine, 10/26/59, “Foreign Relations – Prefabricated Agent”, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,864959,00.html#ixzz0bxInX5N6

Langelle was a CIA agent at the American embassy in Moscow: Genzman interview with Langelle, 5/4/76, page 4, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (staff notes)/NARA Record Number: 180-10143-10233, www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=34085&relPageId=4

Webster had a definite physical resemblance to Oswald: Here’s photos of Webster and Oswald side-by-side: www.jfkresearch.com/Gallery_15/pages/Oswald-Webster.htm. Here’s a solo picture from an AP story and wirephoto, 5/17/62:
mffprodos5.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=48688&relPageId=60

Although Marina claimed that she didn’t remember Webster, she confused her own husband with Webster on one occasion by claiming that she had met Oswald at the World Trade exhibition in Moscow in 1959: FBI interview by James Hosty with Katya Ford, 11/24/63, Warren Commission Document 5, page 259. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10406&relPageId=265

Webster met Snyder while in the company of his two bosses at the Rand Development Corporation, Henry Rand and George Bookbinder, both former OSS agents and in town for the World Trade Exhibition in Moscow: Johanna Smith, Rough Notes, Staff Summary of Webster, p. 3. NARA Record Number: 180-10142-10469;
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=49620&relPageId=5 For more on the OSS backgrounds of Rand and Bookbinder: Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Intelligence Agency, (Lyons Press, 2005, p. 362 (OSS background of Bookbinder) Also see Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, (Paragon House, 1989 edition) pp. 147-148

Snyder had a current clearance to work with CIA officials: HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 46; NARA No. 104-10130-10039; Request for Approval: Richard Snyder www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=442961

Since 95% of the Americans at this event could speak Russian, this particular exhibition was described by Soviet defector Yuri Nesenko as a field day for counterintelligence activities: HSCA Interview of Yuri Ivanovitch Nosenko, 30 May 1978, p. 6. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=252&relPageId=10

…Oswald announced to Richard Snyder that he was a radar operator with the Marines and he knew some “classified things” that he was going to give to the Soviets: Testimony of John McVickar, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 5, p. 301; www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=40&relPageId=311

Oswald had prepared a handwritten renunciation of citizenship: Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 18, p. 109; Warren Commission Exhibit 913. www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0062a.htm

Oswald had arrived at the American Embassy in Moscow at 11 am on a Saturday, about an hour before its weekend closing time at 12 am: John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p. 1. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=946&relPageId=772

For a renunciation to be official, all that was required was for the renunciation to be made in person and in front of a consular officer, reduced to writing, and four copies made.: Testimony of Richard Snyder, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 5, p. 273.
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=40&relPageId=283

In the Petrulli case, Petrulli was allowed to renounce his citizenship…: Warren Report, p. 748
www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=946&relPageId=772

Curiously, Petrulli is cited in the body of the Warren Report, but not Webster: www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=74172

Here is the Evening Star article that contains Webster’s full name: November 26, 1959, Washington Evening Star, Security File of Priscilla Johnson McMillan, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43/NARA Record Number: 1993.08.13.18:14:26:210059, www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=103934&relPageId=43

Compare this Evening Star article to the manuscript provided at the Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 20, Johnson Ex. 2, p. 288 www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1137&relPageId=308

Oswald had been forewarned I would try to talk him out of decision: From Tokyo to Secretary of State, 11/27/63, Russ Holmes Work File, 104-10434-10370, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 18, p. 101, Exhibit 909. www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0058a.htm

Snyder repeatedly claimed there was a “problem of classification” until he convinced the Commission to go off the record: Testimony of Richard Snyder, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 5, p. 266. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=40&relPageId=276

Keenan was a Harvard student at the time Snyder was a spotter for REDSKIN. Keenan was among the first students to study in the Soviet Union between 1959-1961 as part of the new Student Exchange Program coordinated by the State Department. Keenan was eventually declared persona non grata and forced to leave the Soviet Union during 1961. Keenan is now a historian of Russian history, and a past director of Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks museum and research center in Washington D.C.. He should contribute what he knows under oath: See Newman, pp. 1-2, 6; also see webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Lo6Q3-_1cqoJ:en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/8997789+dumbarton+%22edward+keenan%22&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Like Russ Langelle, Keenan was eventually declared persona non grata and expelled from the Soviet Union: HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm, Reel 54); NARA Record Number: 104-10219-10202, Cable: Mr. Edward Louis Keenan, Student Recently Expelled From. www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=48643&relPageId=2
Also see Newman, pp. 87-88, 160.

When Snyder and his colleague Ed Freers prepared the short October 31 report on Oswald’s visit to the State Department, with copies to the Navy and many other agencies, they included a reference to Oswald’s U-2 experience without using the dreaded word “U-2”. They wrote:

“(Oswald) says has offered Soviets any information he has acquired as enlisted radar operator. In view Petrulli case we propose delay executing renunciation until Soviet action known or dept. advises.” www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0060a.htm

Here is the note from the Naval attache hiding Webster’s name: www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1135&relPageId=129

Here is the unredacted note revealing Webster’s name: www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=363283

By Bill Simpich [Originally published 8/22/2010]

If you appreciate gazing into the darkness, that’s all the more reason to gather around the fire. This is a story about ghosts and spooks that haunt the United States of America. When it’s over, I’m going to suggest that we talk to the people in Washington who can help us make sure we can get the end of the story right. Some of the last chapters are written down and sitting in cold, unlit basements. And though this story is filled with ghosts, some of the spooks are still alive and can still talk.

With millions of documents released in the years since the JFK Act was passed in the nineties, the intelligence backgrounds of the twelve who built the Oswald legend have come into focus. A legend maker can range from a “babysitter” who just keeps an eye on the subject to someone handing out unequivocal orders. I count twelve of them, and I’ll tell you about them here in this series of essays.

Many of these legend makers did not know each other, and some of them know nothing about the JFK assassination itself, but their stories when put together can solve important puzzles. A couple of them are integral to the plot. Now is the moment to sum up what we have, demand the rest, and ask the right questions to those still alive.Although we may never know who fired the shots at JFK, you may agree that the new documents reveal who called the shots.

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 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.

This is about how badly the US wanted Soviet secrets during the Cold War. The USSR was not well understood in the postwar era. The American people were extremely naïve about the role of intelligence agencies. This is a story about how fear of the unknown was twisted into the drive to build an American empire.This is the story of the twelve legend makers of Lee Harvey Oswald.

The story will keep returning to Legend Maker #1

The story begins with a man called “Mother”. In every sense of the word, he is Legend Maker #1. Always in other people’s business, he was a fisherman, a mad genius, and in a category by himself.

James Angleton was the chief of CIA counter-intelligence between 1954 and 1974.During the first days of the CIA, his British intelligence friend Kim Philby dubbed Angleton “the driving force of OSO” the CIA’s Office of Special Operations. He got the keys to the kingdom after the bitter end of the Korean War when the Cold War began in earnest.

One of the first things Angleton did was to set up a small super-secret group known as CI/SIG, pronounced see-eye-sig, an acronym for the Counter-Intelligence Special Investigations Group. CI/SIG was the CIA of the CIA. CI/SIG’s mission was to hunt within the CIA for enemy agents that might try to infiltrate the Agency. The preferred word was “penetrate”, rather than “infiltrate”. The preferred term was not “infiltrators”, but “moles”.

Angleton surrounded himself with other cagey mole hunters that will pop up as we sit around the fire telling this story, such as his personal assistant Ann Egerter who controlled Oswald files, his chief of CI/SIG Birch O’Neil, and his trusted compatriot Ray Rocca who helped him direct the cover-up as a liaison to the Warren Commission.

Angleton’s mole hunts became more and more frequent, at least partially because the CIA was always trying to penetrate other agencies. His focus became an obsession during the fifties when he learned that his old friend Kim Philby from British intelligence was probably an agent of the Soviet Union. Before he fell into disgrace, Philby was nearing the top of the hierarchy of British intelligence. (In January, 1963, Philby defected and made it official.)

Two other British intelligence officials that were colleagues of Angelton and Philby had previously defected, but Angleton never imagined that Philby would become “The Third Man”. The already famous 1949 film noir penned by Graham Greene was a cautionary tale. For Angleton, it was a humiliation that changed his life forever.

Angleton used CI/SIG in a ruthless manner, destroying the lives of innocent CIA agents and anyone else in the cross-fire. By the time Angleton was fired in the midst of the Watergate era, he was accused of being a Soviet mole himself.

The CIA was eager for ways to see inside the Soviet Union, which had closed itself off from many aspects of Western society. One way was to cultivate contacts that spoke the Russian language. That led inquiring minds to Harvard University, its Russian department, and a Radcliffe graduate student in the department named Priscilla Johnson.

A wealthy and attractive Long Islander whose father was in the textile trade, Priscilla Johnson, Bryn Mawr ’50, was a catch. Internationally minded, she was a member of the United World Federalists and other liberal groups. She applied for a job with the CIA in late 1952 as graduation beckoned the following spring. Just when it seemed that Johnson had successfully jumped through all the hoops, her application was rejected in March 1953 because of her membership in the United World Federalists, the League of Industrial Democracy, and her questionable associates.

Johnson landed on her feet. In April, she joined the research staff of the new senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. In fact, she withdrew her application before the rejection came in. Johnson may have nailed the JFK post thanks to the aid of her mentor and Long Island neighbor the CIA’s chief of International Operations, Cord Meyer, Legend Maker #2. Johnson told military historian John Newman that she thought Meyer “was waiting for me to grow up”.

In 1947, Meyer was one of the founders of the United World Federalists, a group hoping to stop the spread of atomic weapons and to build a stronger United Nations.He was engaged in postgraduate studies at Harvard while building the movement. However, the tides of history were working against Meyer. In 1948, the Soviets threw up a blockade around Berlin that lasted for months. In 1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb. In 1950, a devastating war broke out on the Korean peninsula, taking millions of lives. Meyer saw his hopes for arms control wane, and his frame of mind steadily became more anti-communist. He left Harvard and joined the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), headed by Frank Wisner.

By 1953, Meyer’s duties included shepherding Operation MOCKINGBIRD, an infamous program where the CIA used the American news media “like a mighty Wurlitzer”. Many reporters did the CIA’s bidding and basically churned out stories as unpaid shills for the Agency. It was a great way to develop sources and advance one’s career. MOCKINGBIRD established a pattern of a media/intelligence alliance that many believe has only accelerated to the present day. Johnson was willing to sing like a mockingbird, and built her career on it. She was to become Legend Maker #3.

The CIA wanted spotters at Harvard

Claiming that her passion was the oxymoron known as “Soviet law”, Johnson made her way to the USSR in December 1955 for a four month trip. The highlight of her stay was landing a temporary paycheck as an “emergency” translator with the State Department, covering the historic Soviet Party Congress where Khrushchev denounced the legacy of Joseph Stalin. Johnson also picked up work at the New York Times office during her Moscow stay.

Upon her return to Boston, the records indicate that Johnson was then vetted by the CIA to work as a “legal traveler into USSR – spotter“. Johnson denies knowing anything about this application to use her as a spotter. Without taking Johnson at her word, it’s fair to say that the CIA may have used her or planned to use in ways that she did not know about, and the events surrounding her should be analyzed with that in mind.

The CIA’s consideration of Johnson as a possible spotter marks an opening gambit in REDSKIN, a program designed to look at Russian-speaking students and recruit them into the legal travelers program to the USSR.

It’s been a matter of record for some time who actually was a spotter of Russian-speaking students at Harvard during 1956-57 –Richard Snyder, the consul at the American Embassy who met with Oswald at the time of his defection in 1959. Snyder was to become Legend Maker #4.

Although Snyder was a CIA officer between 1949-1950, he went so far as to deny on the record that he had any relationship with the CIA after 1950. This hurt Snyder’s credibility with the House Select Committee of Assassinations (HSCA), the body that reviewed the JFK case in the late seventies. The HSCA unsuccessfully tried to repair the damage done by the Warren Commission’s irresponsible investigation immediately after the assassination.

The HSCA was displeased by Snyder’s denial of any CIA relationship after 1950, as it was documented that he was a spotter at Harvard while studying Russian, and had access to students that might be going to the Soviet Union. Snyder was working for Nelson Brickham of the Soviet Russia division within the Directorate of Plans. Brickham was responsible for running black propaganda, false flag recruitments and the gathering of information on Soviet missile silos.

“Black propaganda” consists of statements that blame one side for the actions actually committed by the other side. Similarly, a “false flag” recruitment means that a recruiter is not telling the truth about the purpose for the recruitment. It seems apparent that Brickham and Snyder were recruiting Harvard students into what was known as Project REDSKIN.

Three Priscillas?

Johnson was identified with a different number in this 1956 CIA application (52373) than in her 1952 application (71589). The response from Security in 1956 is odd, stating “she was apparently born 23 September 1922 in Stockholm, Sweden, rather than 19 July 1928 at Glen Cove, New York.” Did someone try to slip Johnson by CIA management by another number? This puzzle only deepens.

This 1956 application was withdrawn a few months later, but emerged again in 1958. On April 10, Cord Meyer sent a cable to Western Europe expressing interest in Johnson, right after Johnson applied for a Soviet visa in Paris. A couple weeks later, a request went out seeking approval for Johnson to become a “REDSKIN traveler and informant”, and that “SR/2 (Soviet Russia Division #2) will have primary responsibility of handling agent.”

Other memos, one sent by “SR/RED/O’Connell”, illustrate that three Priscillas have now emerged: Besides the original Priscilla Mary Post Johnson, we now also see the names “Priscilla McClure Johnson, Priscilla McCoy.” It’s still uncertain what this means, other than two months of apparent confusion and very poorly redacted forms between April-June 1958.

Johnson was supposedly rejected in June 1958 because her “past activity in USSR, insistence return and indefinite plans inside likely draw Sov suspicions”. Nonetheless, she decided to return to Moscow and study Soviet law under a fellowship grant from either Columbia or Harvard universities.

JFK recommended Priscilla Johnson as a member of a travel group to the Soviet Union

Three months later, the chairman of the “Inter-University Travel Group”, David C. Munford, sought and obtained a recommendation from Senator John F. Kennedy for Johnson to be accepted as a member of his group traveling to the Soviet Union. It’s unclear to me why such a recommendation was necessary, but it is fascinating that JFK tried to get Johnson into a group that was the focus of REDSKIN.

As fate would have it, Munford had been too successful in his recruitment efforts. Munford had to tell JFK that there wasn’t room for Johnson in the group, but assured him that she could still join if someone dropped out. Munford wrote Johnson and remarked, “I gather I will go on hearing echoes of your serious intent in this matter.”

Three weeks later, Munford wrote her another letter of congratulations for landing work as a journalist in the Soviet Union: “Some people make their own luck and you are one of them.” In both letters between Munford and Johnson, both before and after one of the couples dropped out of the program, any participation by Johnson in the program seemed to be irrelevant and went unmentioned.

Johnson denies having any relationship with the CIA during this time, and denies ever being a CIA employee. Ironically, these letters are in the files because they were intercepted by the CIA pursuant to a mail intercept program set up by Legend Maker #1 Angleton to read the mail of Americans in the Soviet Union. These letters surfaced when Johnson filed a Freedom of Information Act request years later asking for all records “indicating my employment in your agency”.

Johnson worked for NANA, an intelligence-linked news agency

At this point, Johnson had been accepted by the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) in Moscow. For good reasons, NANA has a bad reputation as a hotbed of intelligence.

Ernest Cuneo purchased NANA in the mid-1950s and was its owner and president until 1963. Cuneo started out as an aide to a World War I veteran, New York progressive mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who served in World War I. Cuneo served with the OSS during World War II and was its liaison to the White House, State Department, FBI, and British intelligence. NANA’s vice president was the well-known author Ian Fleming. Fleming later credited Cuneo with more than half the plot for Goldfinger and all of the basic plot for Thunderball. The dedication page in Goldfinger reads, “To Ernest Cuneo, Muse.”

After Cuneo’s death, Sidney Goldberg became NANA’s president, the husband of Lucianne Goldberg. Goldberg was part of Nixon’s “dirty tricks” operation that stalked McGovern during 1972, looking for “real dirty stuff”who was sleeping with whom, what the Secret Service men were doing with the stewardesses, who was smoking pot on the plane”that sort of thing.” Goldberg’s team succeeded in the outing of Democratic vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton for electroshock treatments, effectively destroying any chance the McGovern campaign had to overtake Nixon’s re-election machine. Goldberg suggested to Linda Tripp that she should tape all of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky. After the tapes were made, Goldberg urged Tripp to take the tapes to Kenneth Starr and also tipped the lawyers on the Paula Jones case.

After Bill Clinton left a telltale mark on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress, Goldberg was the one who tipped Tripp to convince Lewinsky not to launder the dress in order to trap Clinton. Although NANA folded in 1980, Goldberg maintains a news agency at her website, while her son Jonah Goldberg is the editor-at-large for the right-wing National Review Online.

Priscilla Johnson was about to see life from the center of an intelligence cyclone. We have a safe vantage point to watch this twisted tale as it sucks in even more spooks and destroys more lives. At this point,there’s no point in cursing the darkness. Instead, we can add some more fuel to the fire.

Part 2: An Instant Visa Gets the Marine Into Moscow

ENDNOTES:

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: Frontline, Interview, G. Robert Blakey. See 2003 Addendum at end of interview.

A copy of the 1963 version of this secrecy oath can be viewed here: Termination secrecy oath of Ross Crozier, August 30, 1963, NARA Record Number: 104-10012-10194.

During the first days of the CIA, his British intelligence friend Kim Philby dubbed Angleton “the driving force of OSO” the CIA’s Office of Special Operations: David Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, (Guilford, Connecticut, Lyons Press: 2003 ed.) pp. 55-56.

Johnson’s application was rejected in March 1953 because of her membership in the United World Federalists, the League of Industrial Democracy, and her questionable associates: Memo from Deputy Chief, Security Research Staff/OS to the Deputy Director of Security, 3/10/64 NARA Record Number: 104-10119-10253

Priscilla told military historian John Newman that she thought Meyer “was waiting for me to grow up”: John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, (Carroll & Graf, New York: 1995), pp. 64-65.

Johnson obtained a temporary job with the State Department as a translator”and also picked up work at the New York Times: 10/25/63 FBI memo from SAC, WFO to Director, FBI, NARA Record Number: 124-10279-10217.

8/6/56 Approval request from Chief, CI/Operational Approval and Support Division to Deputy Director of Security Mr. Rice for 52373 “Legal Traveler Into USSR Spotter stamped POA expedite initialed WMO (William Osborne?) NARA Record Number: 104-10120-10446

“Between 1956-57, Snyder was used as a spotter of students that might be going to the Soviet Union at Harvard by Nelson Brickham of the Soviet Russian Division within the Directorate of Plans. The apparent purpose was to recruit them into what was known as Project Redskin: Oswald 201 file, Volume 31, NARA No.: 104-10001-10138, Comment Regarding Article Alleging Oswald was Interviewed by CIA Employees.

Brickham was responsible for running black propaganda, false flag recruitments and the gathering of information on Soviet missile silos: Douglas Valentine, “Documents from the Phoenix Program”.

On April 10, Cord Meyer sent a cable to Western Europe expressing interest in Johnson, right after Johnson applied for a visa in Paris: John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, (Carroll & Graf, New York, 1995), p. 65. Includes a copy of Meyer’s cable.

Shortly after Cord Meyer expressed interest in her, a request went out on 4/28 seeking approval for Johnson to become a “REDSKIN traveler and informant… “SR/2 will have primary responsibility of handling agent”: Request for Investigation and Approval, 4/28/63, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection microfilm – reel 9, NARA Record Number: 104-10173-10145.

At this point, three Priscillas have emerged, Priscilla Mary Post Johnson, Priscilla McLure Johnson, and Priscilla McCoy: “three Priscilla Johnsons”: All three names are spelled out (apparent error by the redaction team)

It’s still uncertain what this means, other than two months of apparent confusion and very poorly redacted forms between April-June 1958: For this sequence of events, see the entire forty-page RIF#: 1994.04.07.11:53:41:840005(5/0/1958)CIA#: 80T01357A

Johnson was rejected in June 1958 because her “past activity in USSR, insistence return and indefinite plans inside likely draw Sov suspicions”: RIF#: 104-10119-10287 (06/19/58)

She decided to return to Moscow and study Soviet law under a fellowship grant from either Columbia or Harvard universities: FBI memo, 10/5/63, p. 2, from SAC/WFO to Director, NARA Record Number: 124-10279-10217

The chairman of the “Inter-University Travel Group” travel group sought and obtained a recommendation from Senator John F. Kennedy for Johnson to be accepted as a member. This is the type of legal travelers group that was the focus of REDSKIN: Letters to Senator Kennedy and Johnson, September 1958, NARA Record Number: 1993.07.12.17:05:59:680440

Three weeks later, Munford wrote her another letter of congratulations on her activities in the Soviet Union: 10/16/58 letter from Mumford to Johnson, NARA Record Number: 1993.07.12.17:38:30:180440.

Johnson filed an FOIA on 8/24/76 asking for all records “indicating my employment in your agency”: NARA Record Number: 124-10279-10205.

Cuneo served with the OSS during World War II and was its liaison to the White House, the FBI, and British intelligence: Obituary, Ernest L. Cuneo, New York Times, 3/5/88.

NANA’s vice president was the well-known author Ian Fleming: FDR Library, Records of Ernest Cuneo.

A former president of NANA was Sidney Goldberg, whose wife was Lucianne Goldberg. Goldberg was part of Nixon’s “dirty tricks” operation that stalked McGovern during 1972, looking for “real dirty stuff…”: Goldberg’s interview with J. Anthony Lukas in his book Nightmare, p. 161. Recounted by Peter Dale Scott, 1/26/98, “Some Familiar Faces Reappear in MonicaGate”.

Goldberg’s team succeeded in the outing of Democratic vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton for electroshock treatments: Steve Weissman, Big Brother and the Holding Company (Palo Alto, CA: 1974), p. 42.

Goldberg suggested to Linda Tripp that she should tape all of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky: US News and World Report, “The Monica Lewinsky Tapes”, Feb. 2, 1998, V. 124, n. 4, p. 23.

After the tapes were made, Goldberg urged Tripp to take the tapes toKenneth Starr and also tipped the lawyers on the Paula Jones case:

Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff. Newsweek, November 9, 1998.

Goldberg was the one who tipped Linda Tripp to tape her phone calls with Lewinsky and to urge her not to launder the dress for blackmail purposes: Frank Greve, “Svengali of Scandal”, Spokesman-Review, October 2, 1998.

Jonah Goldberg is now the editor-at-large for the right-wing National Review Online: See his current bio.

Lucianne Goldberg’s news agency is at http://lucianne.com