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"And I didn't think of that. The way I was looking at
it and I think correctly is that the impersonators don't understand
exactly what had gone on inside these consulates so they couldn't;
the lines are not perfect. They are imperfect for that reason.
But, there is something more here. They are trying to draw a
link between Oswald, Kostikov, and the Cubans, all at once, and
that is the interpretation that is drawn here, which is very
sinister. I mean it's, it's getting worse as the day goes on.
We've got a Castro-Kremlin directed plot now, is what's happening
here.
"Once you have a paradigm for these things it's really interesting,
because if you don't they're very disparate and difficult, but
I think that that is the idea here. I think they got it. I think
the station received the message here and passed it on to Washington.
"Oswald wrote a letter to the Soviet embassy here in Washington,
D.C. I told you about it earlier, Comrade Kostin, and all that.
Now we want to look a little bit at the audit trail of what happens
on the 23rd because of course they find out about it then. In
fact, put up the Hoover-Johnson thing back up. I put it in there
again for another reason, because besides telling him about the
impersonation in Mexico City, Hoover also tells Johnson about
this letter.
"Again, we are at 10 o'clock in the morning on Saturday.
'We do have a copy,' this is Hoover, this is my handwriting here,
I have extracted this to make it a little bit easier to read
here. 'We do have a copy of a letter which was written by Oswald
to the Soviet embassy here in Washington inquiring and complaining
about harassment of his wife, and questioning of his wife by
the FBI. Now of course the letter information, we process all
mail that goes to the Soviet embassy. It is a very secret operation.
No mail is delivered to the embassy without being opened and
examined by us so that we know what they receive. Such letter
was sent to the embassy by this man Oswald, making a complaint,'
and so on and so forth.
"You can see they immediately go to work on this. They are
going to send this to the lab. They are going to try to verify
the signature, and so on and so forth.
"This is the letter. It is actually an exhibit in the Warren
Commission, I forget what CE it is, but I have it in my book.
The FBI actually goes to the trouble to put it into better English.
This is the FBI redo of it. [ Warren
Commission Exhibit 15]
"This is the morning after the assassination. They are playing
with this letter now. I mean this fits. And this is why, because
it's Comrade Kostin, he's writing about having met with Comrade
Kostin down in Mexico City, so you see all of the pieces are
starting to come in. All on the 23rd. They are getting hit with
about 5 or 6 of these Kostikov pieces.
"This is a few hours later, but it's interesting. When they
find the magic bullet on the stretcher, at about the same time
this is good, if, you know, you've been doing the medical stuff
and the bullet stuff, just a few minutes ago, about the time
that they find the bullet on the stretcher, right here is when
they verify that [signature], in fact, was the true Oswald's
signature on that letter to the Soviet embassy.
"O n the 24th we have a rather
extraordinary internal FBI memo that pops up early in the morning.
It's from Hoover to everybody in the FBI. And it starts off of
course you know, 'Nothing is new here except Oswald is now dead.'
(laughter)
"This is the first line here, 'There is nothing further
on the Oswald case except that he is dead.'
(laughter)
'Last night we received a call at our Dallas office from a man
talking in a calm voice and saying he was a member of a committee
organized to kill Oswald. We at once notified the chief of police
and he assured us Oswald would be given sufficient protection.
'This morning we called the chief of police again, warning him
to attend to the possibility of some effort against Oswald. And
he again assured us that adequate protection would be given.
However this was not done..'
"Now, here is the part I like, you know, Oswald's dead,
right? 'But the thing I am concerned about,' he said, 'the thing
that I am concerned about isn't that he's dead, and so is Mr.
Katzenbach,' and you know Mr. Katzenbach is Bobby Kennedy's deputy,
the deputy Attorney General, 'is having something issued so we
can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin. Mr.
Katzenbach thinks that the President might appoint a presidential
commission of three outstanding citizens to make a determination.'
"This is the 24th, now. You've got the whole plan unfolding
right here.
'I countered with the suggestion we make the investigation,'
and so on and so forth, then the Attorney General can do thus
and such, and thus and such.
'I felt this was better because there are several aspects which
would complicate our foreign relations, for instance, Oswald
made a phone call to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City,' and so
on and so forth.
"So, we keep talking about this foreign policy problem.
Why? Because of this thing unfolding out of Mexico City.
"And now on the 25th, this is choice here.  This is Katzenbach. This
memo is actually an FBI memo, from Evans to Belmont, saying
'Katzenbach called this morning.' And what do you think? He gave
them the text of a memo he was writing, that Katzenbach wrote
for Bill Moyers, who is, at least for a considerable number of
weeks, Johnson's closest advisor, for awhile anyway.
'The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, that
he did not have confederates...'
"This is the Deputy Attorney General on Monday.
'Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and
we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was
a Communist conspiracy, or a right-wing conspiracy to blame it
on the Communists.'
Paraphrasing, 'We don't want either of those. We want a lone
nut, without confederates.' Monday morning. Katzenbach.
"Tuesday, the 26th. I've got a blow up of this. Katzenbach
noted of course that it is more difficult to prove that some
things did not occur, then to prove what actually happened, as
a consequence it is his belief that there might have to be some
so called, 'editorial interpretation.'
"Yeah. Well, what does that mean ladies and gentlemen?
Someone from the audience, "Cover-up."
"Yeah, we are going to cover-up the truth and we are going
to monkey around with it a little bit too to make it look like
Oswald did it alone with no confederates.
"Then on the 27th, Katzenbach calls and he's all bent out
of shape because the Ambassador down in Mexico City is quite
'lively.' This
is Ambassador Mann. Ambassador Mann is convinced it's a Communist
conspiracy. And he is sending cables everywhere, and jerking
people around, says he's in charge of the investigation. And
like I said, I love Hoover's handwriting on these things, Hoover
says, 'Okay, so the Ambassador in Mexico is acting like a Sherlock
Holmes, but so what?'
(laughter)
"Now, it's at this time that these cover stories are all
put together. I am showing you the 'editorial interpretation'
now. And we've already handled one piece earlier this evening,
to wit, all the tapes from Mexico City had been routinely erased
before the assassination. Point #2, on November 22nd, 1963 after
the news of the assassination reached Mexico City, [they] reviewed
the transcripts, they discover all this other stuff, and then
'although the information relating to Oswald's contacts by telephone
to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City on 1 October was reported
to headquarters on 8 October,' here it is, take a deep breath,
'the information relating to the several contacts Oswald had
had with both the Soviet and Cuban embassies did not surface
until after the president's assassination.'
John paraphrases what the CIA wants the world to believe, 'We
didn't know he was in the Cuban consulate. We didn't have any
idea, until after the assassination.'
"Here in January of '64 is
Mr. Helms passing this cover story on
over to the Warren Commission. I have selected it out for you.
'After the assassination of President Kennedy, and the arrest
of Lee Harvey Oswald an intensive review of all available sources
was undertaken in Mexico City to determine the purpose of Oswald's
visits, it was learned Oswald had also visited....,' and so on
'after the assassination."
"Now, this is a very interesting little, this was page one,
headline in the Los Angeles Times, 1 January 1977. 'CIA withheld
data on Oswald' by Norman Kempster. [Author's
Note: I'm quoting more than
what John read aloud.]
'Dateline Washington. The CIA withheld from the FBI for almost
two months in 1963 information that Lee Harvey Oswald had talked
with the Cuban and Soviet officials about his desires to visit
these countries, a House committee report on Friday.
'The Select Committee on Assassinations indicated in a report
to the full House that it's investigation of the murder of President
John F. Kennedy would focus early in 1977 on a trip Oswald made
to Mexico City in October, 1963.
'Chief Counsel Richard A. Sprague said that the Committee staff
had learned that a CIA message describing Oswald's activities
in Mexico to federal agencies such as the FBI had been rewritten
to eliminate any mention of his requests for Cuban and Soviet
visas. The message was sent in October, more than a month before
the Nov. 22nd, 1963 assassination.'
[p. 510a
p. 510b of Oswald
and the CIA.
"Of course, Richard Sprague was himself rewritten right
out of the HSCA about 6 weeks later. But, I find it very interesting
that the first Chief Counsel for the HSCA would make such an
allegation. Now, that would, of course, completely conflict with
this, wouldn't it? That would meant not only did they know he
was in the Cuban consulate at the time that it happened, but
it would also mean that they had sent a cable to headquarters
about it, that they had informed headquarters and that the House
Select Committee had discovered the whole game.
"So, it is a two part problem here. You have to really try
to understand two things. Did they know, and did they rewrite
the record to hide the fact that they knew?
"Let us consider this passage in the Lopez report. David Atlee Phillips.
Who's he? He's head of Cuban operations in the Mexico City station.
He said that the cable came to him for his signature because
it spoke about Cuban matters. I showed you the cable earlier
tonight. It doesn't speak of Cuban matters.
"We have to at least consider the possibility that Phillips
is telling the truth. He's under oath. If he's telling the truth,
what does it mean? It means Richard Sprague is right. The original
cable did mention Cuban matters and was rewritten.
"The problem is the date/time group on that cable doesn't
work for Phillips. I showed you the cables tonight on Phillips'
movements. He doesn't get back until the 9th, that cable leaves
the night before.
"Here's the cable. Just a reminder. 'An American male spoke
broken Russian called the Soviet embassy.' There's no Cuba anywhere
in here.
"Okay, this is another employee who's name is still being
protected, and I mean still, this is the last version that the
Review Board gave us, and they did a great job.
(To Doug Horne) "By the way, I was just thrilled listening
to your presentation tonight about Cuba and everything. It just,
it was wonderful, all the work you guys did. I've been in the
Archives and I can tell you, the whole Collection, not just on
the stuff I'm interested in but just on everything you can imagine,
there's new stuff everywhere in the Collection. Anyway, for some
reason they still don't want us to know her name, but this is
an employee of the CIA Mexico City station. And what does she
say? She is certain the second cable reporting Oswald's contacts
with the Cuban embassy had been sent to headquarters.
'I did not see it but I know another cable was sent. I didn't
send it.
'Eddie Lopez: Another cable concerning Oswald was sent?
'I think so.'
'Where is the whole file? Wasn't there a cable saying that he
was in touch with the Cuban embassy? We have not seen that one,'
says Lopez.
'I'm pretty sure there was.'
'Did you send that cable.'
'No. I did not send the cable. When I found out about it I remembered
this. I said how come?'
"So, now we have David Atlee Phillips and a woman who worked
for him both talking about a cable mentioning Oswald's visit
to the Cuban consulate having been sent at the time.
"But it gets better. Here's a guy (Win Scott) writing that
'on page 777 of the Warren Report is the erroneous statement
that it was not known that Oswald visited the Cuban embassy until
after the assassination!'
'Every piece of information concerning Lee Harvey Oswald was
reported immediately after it was received to: U.S. Ambassador
Thomas Mann by memo, the FBI chief in Mexico by memo and to my
headquarters by cable.'
And this happens to be the Chief of Station down there by the
name of Win Scott.
[See p. 515 Oswald and the CIA
]
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