"...[ LBJ] and J. Edgar
Hoover have a telephone conversation. 10:01 a.m. EST, and
it's very interesting. This is 10 o'clock in the morning, Saturday,
less than 24 hours have gone by, and what does Johnson ask Hoover?
'Have you established any more about the visit to the Soviet
embassy in Mexico in September?' [See p. 520 of Oswald and the CIA. Also President Johnson telephone conversation with FBI director Hoover, November 23, 1963. Note: November 23rd audiotape is not available, only the transcript.  LBJ and Hoover:
LBJ tapes, November 29, 1963 (Real Audio 19:51 minutes) Second
conversation between LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover (Director, FBI).
] "I will endeavor to prove to you today that that was the prime concern and had been since sometime the previous afternoon. And here Johnson the moment he gets out of bed the first conversation he has with the FBI Director, the first chance he gets to ask a question and this is what he wants to know about. He wants to know about Mexico City, and the Soviet Embassy down there. And then Hoover's answer is classic, 'No. That's one angle that's very confusing.' "How many people in this room have ever seen a document where Mr. Hoover said he was confused about something? (laughter.) "It's rare. But, he is. Because he said, 'We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet embassy using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice nor to his appearance. In other words it appears there was a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there.' "And shortly after that Mr. Hoover wrote a memo to the head of the Secret Service,  James Rowley.
This is Hoover now writing to Rowley. 'The Central Intelligence
Agency advised that on 1 October, 1963 an extremely sensitive
source,' this is the LIENVOY, the telephone taping system that
they had in place down there 'reported that an individual identified
himself as Lee Oswald who contacted the Soviet embassy in Mexico
City inquiring,' and so on and so forth, 'Special Agents of this
Bureau who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas have observed
photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened
to a recording of his voice. Special Agents are of the opinion
that it was not Oswald...'"So, now we've brought the head of the Secret Service online. Now, about an hour and 50 minutes later we see two things that have happened. Basically, Belmont who writes this memo, and this is a portion, this is out of the back of the Lopez Report, Eddie Lopez excerpted this stuff here. I actually found it in the archives. I am going to show it to you right now, found the real thing. It was quite exciting to get it. So, we have two things that go on. First of all a phone conversation between Shanklin here and Belmont about this, and then Belmont actually writes Tolson. Belmont is number three guy in the FBI and Clyde Tolson is Hoover's gay lover, the number two guy in the FBI, and that's what you're looking at here. And what it says is, 'Inasmuch as the Dallas agents who listened to the tape of the conversation allegedly,' this is good lawyer talk here, 'of Oswald from the Cuban embassy to the Russian embassy,' that's the 9/28 call, and if we go back one you will see that the Rowley memo discusses the 1 October tape, and if you recall the Johnson-Hoover conversation it was the 1 October, and here we have a very clear description of the phone call from the Cuban embassy to the Soviet embassy that was on 9/28. "So, what are we to deduce from this? There are two tapes that they are listening to, that Belmont, Tolson, Shanklin, Hoover and Rowley are all discussing, or writing memoranda, or receiving memoranda about. And of course it's the same thing, the tape is not Oswald. "Now, here it is. I found this three weeks ago. In any event, this part we saw and the Lopez report is not blacked out, it talks about the call from the Cuban consulate to the Soviet embassy. This is very intriguing to me up here. I can't figure it out, for the entire plane trip here, trust me, I had my ruler and my pencil out trying to work on this cause you can see some of the letters underneath here. And this is quite intriguing because here is the reference to the 11:50 phone call from Shanklin. This is the memo from Belmont to Tolson, that Eddie Lopez discovered, discussing the Dallas agents listening to the tape here and it's not Oswald. But, there's also, before he wrote this memo he talked to Shanklin about it at 11:50 a.m. And this first paragraph is hiding something, I think very significant because you see the sentence says, 'He said he was unable to remain over 15 days in Mexico due to Mexican restrictions and would have to use his real name if he went back. Dallas will see that this check is made.' That's Oswald. He said that down in Mexico somewhere. "So, whatever's going on here Shanklin and Belmont are talking about the content of a tape. Or if it's not a tape the content of a report based upon an informant inside one of those embassies down there and that would be even better. "So, I would really like to know what is underneath here but in any event the main purpose of this right now is to reinforce what's in the documentary record on the tapes survivng and it's not Oswald's voice. "And that pretty much brings us down to this part of our graphic here. We are now down this far. We have had no references at all, we are over 24 hours into, you know, post-assassination and we have had all of these references. Now begins phase two. "This is Mexi 7023, Eddie Lopez informs us that Ann Goodpasture wrote this. Ann Goodpasture worked for David Atlee Phillips in the Cuban section of the CIA station in Mexico City. It's a rather lengthy cable and I've blown up the portion that is relevant over here and you can see, 'In view Oswald in Soviet... subject paragraph probably Oswald...station,' meaning the CIA station in Mexico City is, 'unable to compare voice as first tape erased prior to receipt second call.' [  See Document # 104-10015-10124
in the 8th batch is another one page cable. It is from Mexico
City to CIA director. It is dated November 23, 1963. Some of
the text from the Sept 28 intercept is given. They believe that
the unidentified person is Oswald but the tape is reported erased
prior to receipt of the second call. This was sent to "Scelso".
The paragraph John is quoting from is 'In view Oswald in Sov
Union and fact he claimed on 1 October LIENVOY to have visited
Sov Emb 28 Sept, subject para one probably Oswald. Station unable
compare voice as first tape erased prior receipt second call.']"Let me put that in plain English. The Mexico City CIA station was unable to compare the voices between the September 28th call and the 1 October call because the 28 September tape was erased before they got the 1 October call. So, that would mean it would have had to have been erased within a few days. That doesn't make sense. They don't erase things in a few days. They wait at least two weeks before they start recycling tapes. But, that is not the only thing wrong with this, even if they made an exception and somebody dropped the tape into the degaussing pile by accident, this statement that station is unable to compare voice is wrong. This, by the way, this particular cable is written by Ann Goodpasture again. She is questioned about it under oath. I'm going to show you why this doesn't work. "In 1964, this little document pops into the record, in October, 1964. It's actually a Washington Post article about CIA withholding intelligence from the Warren Commission. And there's some handwriting. See? You know who's handwriting that is? It's Ann Goodpasture's. Now isn't that something? And when we blow it up what does it say? 'The caller from the Cuban embassy was unidentified until headquarters sent traces on Oswald and voices compared by Feinglass.' [ See Document # 104-10125-10001
from The Third Batch.]"Thank you Ann. She just told us, let's go back. Why are we looking at this? Here it says 'station unable to compare voices,' here it says 'voices compared.' Feinglass is actually the cover name for Mr. Tarasoff, Mr and Mrs. Tarasoff are transcribers that work for the CIA station down there. You will find them covered extensively in my book and also Eddie Lopez ad nauseam interviewed both of these individuals about these tapes. So, there was a voice comparison done, by the transcriber 'Feinglass,' Mr. Tarasoff was the original transcriber at the time these things took place. [Author's note, Mr and Mrs. Tarasoff are only identified as Mr and Mrs. T in Oswald and the CIA, see pages 369-375. Their full name is given in Peter Dale Scott's Deep Politics II, see pages 98-99. Scott noticed, "Mr. Tarasoff added the important and possibly relevant detail that the name of Lee Oswald was known to the CIA station ("they were very hot about the whole thing") before he transcribed the 1 October telephone conversation of "someone who identified himself as Lee Oswald. (See Lopez Report, p. 85, Newman p. 371; quoted in Scott p.99)] "This is Eddie Lopez, who is very suspicious of that cable asking her, you know, the transcript says, 'Oswald was identical to the person,' in other words here he is asking, he is pointing out to her, this is in the Lopez report, he is pointing out to Ann Goodpasture this business here and he asks her whose handwriting is that?" 'It's mine,' [says Goodpasture] Lopez, 'Oh, it indicates the caller; would you please read it.' She read, 'the caller...' Anyway, the point of all of this is she admits it, that the voices were compared and when, she gives a date. She says 18 October. It must have been on 10 October. Here she's under oath. "So, where are we now? We now have an intrusion into the record alleging that one tape had been erased. And the time is 11:59 in the morning on Saturday. It is just about noon. We have gone almost 24 hours when the first mention of any erasure enters the record. And as I've said it's not credible for a lot of reasons. Number one, they would not have erased that soon. Number two, the whole story about no voice comparisons does not stack with her sworn testimony or with the other records. "Furthermore, there is another document I may or may not show it later on written on the 25th of November, 1963 from the DDP at CIA, the Deputy Director for Plans to the FBI Director saying 'voices have been compared.' So, we have other, you know, aspects of the record, as well as sworn testimony from CIA people on this. So, what I am trying to do is to impeach the first reference in the record to an erasure story here bearing in mind of course that it's a technical one. We are saying one tape was erased prior to the second call. "In fact, here it is. [ See Document # 104-10004-10257
from the 5th batch.] "Here is the 25 November, '63 a document that I'm talking about. I think I blew it up. Yeah, here it is. And it talks about lots of tapes. They found new phone calls of 27 September, that would have been Friday the day Oswald arrived, there's the 1 October, and the 3 October, which can't really be him. Anyway, 'voices compared indicated,' so on and so forth. [In the actual document it reads, "voice comparisons indicated."] "It was the same guy. So, my case rests there. There is enough evidence in the documentary record, as well as, the sworn testimony I think to suggest, it's a reasonable thing for me to say that voices were actually compared, and that therefore that first cable from Mexico City mentioning erasure is very suspect. "Now, at this point things are really starting to get tense in Washington, over all of this. This is a little bit later, and a couple of hours later, 4:45 EST, Curtis from Knight, Knight is the cover name for Dick Helms, the DDP, and basically it is extremely urgent that we get, as soon as possible all of these transcripts and other tape, all this stuff, 'in cabling your highly valuable information which is being read and processed around the clock here,' okay? In other words we are really fixated on this, on this stuff coming out of Mexico City. "Oh yeah, here's one more, here's Feinglass doing, saying that two of these tapes are the same. That's here, and this one here. So, there is another reference, really to voice comparisons going on, which I am going to blow through right here. "Now, this is phase three of our tape story. This is now around 6 o'clock at night on the 23rd and this is Mexico City 7054. [ See Document # 104-10015-10082
from the 5th batch. Also, Document # 104-10015-10290, a duplicate
copy in the 8th batch. Of note is that once upon a time the document
was released with a redaction, the black ink was over the phrase
'with Mexi 7933 HQ has full transcripts all pertinent calls.
Regret complete recheck shows tapes from this period already
erased.'] "And now we have the statement that, 'regret complete recheck shows tapes from this period already erased.' And this is the only other contemporaneous CIA reference to tape erasure at all. And it is very suspect for the following reasons. I'm probably going to just skip through this so I can save a little bit of time here. "It's interesting because this one here is sent, [ See RIF# 104-10015-10114,
3rd batch of ARRB released documents.] let's see, let's
take a look at it, it's sent 1837 Zulu, that's going to be minus
5, 13, This is 1:37 p.m. in the afternoon on the 24th, this is
Sunday, around 1:30 in the afternoon and then about an hour and
a half later it's like they didn't even hear it at headquarters. |
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