December 6, 2023 • 34 mins
What did Oswald mean when he uttered the now-famous words “I’m just a Patsy!”, just hours before he was murdered? To begin to understand what those words mean, we step into the ‘Wilderness of Mirrors’ to see the world of counterintelligence through the eyes of James Jesus Angleton – a man known as “The Poet Spy.” In the Wilderness, confusion is a key weapon. We’ll trace Oswald’s steps from his return from the Soviet Union to his activities in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
In nineteen seventy four, just months after the Watergate scandal
ended with Richard Nixon's resignation, another man who for decades
had also helped shape America's place in the world was
quietly dismissed from his job. William Colby, who was then
the head of the CIA, fired spymaster James Jesus Angleton.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Colby made the decision after a front page expose in
The New York Times revealed that Angleton was running a
massive domestic spying program. The CIA was spying on ten
thousand Americans involved in the anti war movement and other
dissident groups.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Colby had been trying to get rid of Angleton for years,
but Angleton was a bit of a legend. He was
the head of counterintelligence for the CIA, and for better
or for worse, he was one of the agency's founding fathers.
Journalists who are hoping to be the next Woodward and
Bernstein were all over this story. They wanted to know why.
(01:10):
The buzz around Angleton's firing prompted the formation of a
special Senate committee headed up by Idaho Senator Frank Church,
and for the first time in the CIA's history, their
dirty laundry was about to be exposed.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The Church Committee published its final report in April of
nineteen seventy six. It revealed a trove of secret abuses
at the hands of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the IRS.
Before and after the Cold War. These agencies were involved
in global assassination conspiracies, infiltrating news programs, and conducting mind
(01:48):
control experiments through programs like mk Ultra. The Committee's revelations
shocked Americans.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
We'll get into all of that over the next few episodes,
but for now, what's important understand is that in the
nineteen sixties, James Jesus Angleton had control over a network
of spies, informants, and double agents that reached into the
farthest corners of the globe, and the events that would
be the cause of his dismissal were just getting underway.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This is who killed JFK. Sixty years later, What can
we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history?
And why does it still matter today? I'm your host,
Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Welcome to the counterintelligence world of James Jesus Angleton, a
world he referred to as the wilderness of mirrors.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
The term wilderness of mirrors points to the tactic of
deception and disinformation that both the CIA and the KGB
used against each other during the Cold War.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's a world where it's virtually impossible to tell what
his reality and what is merely a reflection of reality,
and our journey into the wilderness starts with Lee Harvey Oswald.
So let's recap. Oswald was a disenchanted young man who
found himself in the psychological study run by a doctor
(03:18):
with connections to the CIA. At age seventeen, he enlisted
in the Marines and was shipped to Japan, where he
received a security clearance to work as a radar operator
on U two spyplanes. Upon returning to the United States,
he spent time at a base in California and another
base in Nagshead, North Carolina, which focused on special operations. Then,
(03:42):
after learning Russian, he defected to the Soviet Union. Two
years later, he returned to the United States with his
Russian wife and baby, and was welcomed back with open arms.
He was never questioned why.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well Oswald didn't actually renown his US citizenship when he
was in Russia, even though he tried at the embassy,
So maybe they didn't take him all that seriously. Maybe
they saw him and thought, eh, that guy. You know,
he's all bark and no bite. There's this philosophical theory
I know, you know, called Ockham's razor, right, that says
the simplest answer is often the correct one. So if
(04:20):
you apply that here, what if he's just a communist sympathizer.
What if he just defected, He just came back to
the US and sort of slipped under the radar.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
It's possible, but don't forget. We are at the height
of the Cold War. The fear of nuclear annihilation is
hanging over our heads. Now. If you are willing to
enter that wilderness of mirrors with me, by the time
we exit, I think things will become clear. But I
have to warn you. Before things become clear, they will
(04:54):
become confusing. And in fact, confusion is the point. So
why don't we try to embrace the confusion and step
into the wilderness of mirrors. During World War II, America
had an intelligence gathering agency called the OSS the Office
(05:14):
of Strategic Services. The information that they were able to
gather help us win the war. The OSS was officially
disbanded nineteen forty five, but certain factions of their work continued.
America's biggest enemy at the time was the Soviet Union,
and for years they had been honing their skills of
covert intelligence operations, so in an effort to play catchup,
(05:38):
the OSS was revamped into a full blown intelligence gathering
agency in nineteen forty seven. It was called the CIA.
In the wake of its creation, President Harry Truman drafted
Directive ten slash two, which was a top secret memo
that gave the CIA the green light to engage in
(05:59):
different forms of warfare, including propaganda, sabotage, and deadly covert
operations against anyone it deemed quote hostile to the United States.
I think of the ten slash two memo as marching
orders into the dark arts of spycraft. And to protect
the president, the CIA developed a practice called plausible deniability.
(06:25):
If the President wasn't told about a particular secret plan,
then he could plausibly deny having anything to do with it.
Plausible deniability empowered the CIA to act without presidential approval.
They would carry out missions with no awareness outside the agency.
Accountability was intentionally clouded. Solidad Could you read this from me?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
The better you lied, and the more you betrayed, the
more likely you would be promoted. I did things that
in looking back on my life, I regret, but I
was part of it and I loved in it.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That is a quote from James Angleton. Now, if you
visualize a creepy secret agent from the fifties and sixties,
you will see Angleton.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I can confirm that pictures of him show a lanky
guy with thick glasses, hollow cheekbones, and translucent looking skin.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Angleton could do virtually anything he wanted under the name
of protecting America.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
He was the Chief of Counterintelligence, so he was in
charge of defending the CIA. But that position required him
enabled him to do anything, and so there was no
check on his power whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That's our old friend. Jefferson Morley, creator of jfkfax dot Org.
Morley wrote the book on Angleton called The Ghost. Why
do you call the book the Ghost?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Because he was this invisible presence in the US government
that nobody could see. I mean, I think President Kennedy
knew who Jim Angleton was, but not many people in
the US government knew what Angleton did.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Describe him, he was very.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Charismatic, intellectually. He had been an English major at Yale
with a literary bent.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
He was known as the Poet's spy. His friend, the
poet E. E. Cummings, said the following about Angleton, quote,
what a miracle of momentous complexity is the poet?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
He was the spy. As intellectual, he was a very
creative thinker. People who knew him in his prime were
very impressed and regarded him as really something of a genius.
Camera intelligence has been described as organized paranoia. To catch spies,
you have to be very suspicious of everybody.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
He referred to his work as the wilderness of mirrors,
a phrase that he borrowed from TS. Eliot. There was information, disinformation,
secret agents, and double agents, anything to deceive the enemy,
hide the CIA's tracks, and create confusion. Confusion was his
weapon of choice, and that confusion came into play when
(09:06):
Oswald returned to the United States. Oswald, his Soviet wife Marina,
and their infant child June. They land on the docks
of Hoboken, New Jersey, on June thirteenth, nineteen sixty two.
There they're met by a man named spaz Rakin Racn
(09:26):
was a representative of the Traveler's Aid Society. Now I
want you to take a look at this through the
lens of James Angleton. Okay, spas Racan was not only
a representative of the Traveler's Aid Society, he was also
an official of the Anti Bolshevik Nations, a group with
deep ties to US intelligence, a fact that was totally
(09:50):
ignored by the Warrant Commission. Now understand that the Traveler's
Aid Society wasn't there to massage Oswald's feet after his
long trip. It was an anti communist organization that had
direct ties to the CIA.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Oh, so he's pretty much welcome backed by the CIA.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Right and again, if you look at this through Angleton's eyes,
Reken is the perfect person to meet Oswald in order
to make sure that his re entry into America goes smoothly.
Rakean was somebody they could trust and couldn't be tied
directly back to them. So Recn helps the Oswalds get
through customs and immigration, then sends them on their way
(10:31):
to Fort Worth, Texas. In Fort Worth, Oswald meets a
man named George de Moorenshield. Now I'm guessing that name
doesn't ring any bells.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
This is the first time you're hearing the name George
de Moornshield. He's key when we consider the movements of
Lee Harvey Oswald on his return to the United States.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
George de Moornscheld was a Russian speaker who worked for
oil companies looking for petroleum all over the world.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
That's Jefferson Morley again.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And so in nineteen sixty two he was living in
Dallas and he heard of this man who had returned
from the Soviet Union, Lee Harvey Oswald. So they become
good friends.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Don't you think it's odd that a wealthy, worldly, aerodype
and much older man would become good friends with Lee
Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
De Moornshield told the journalist Edward Epstein, quote, somebody gave
me Lee's address, and one afternoon I drove to Fort Worth,
about thirty miles from Dallas.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
De Moorinshield told Epstein that a CIA operative J. Walton
Moore was the person who gave him the address of
Lee Harvey Oswald and suggested that he meet him, that
he would be doing the CIA a favor.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
De Moornshield told Epstein that J. Walton Moore asked him
to find out about Oswald's time in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And for essentially babysitting, Oswald de Moornshield was awarded a
mineral contract from the Haitian government for three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
De Moornshield told Epstein that he assumed this was because
of the help De Moornshield had given to the CIA.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
When you think of people who work for the CIA,
you think of people who work directly with the agency.
But it's not that simple. There are also people who are,
for lack of a better term, CIA adjacent. They're assets,
and these assets will do favors for the CIA, and
sometimes they expect favors in return.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So that would describe George de Moornshield, Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And as part of his babysitting duties, De Moorinshield introduces
the Oswalts to a friend of his. This is a
woman named Ruth Paine, who was supposedly interested in learning Russian.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Hmm, that's convenient. Dick Russell interviewed Ruth Payne in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
The way that you first met the Oswalts was at
that party.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
It was at private party.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
What was it about the Oswalts that you liked?
Speaker 5 (13:10):
I was especially interested in Marina who's native in Russian,
and I didn't really talk to her much that evening,
but I did get the ads and visit it then
at their apartment in.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Nowas it's important to know who Ruth pain is. Her
sister was a CIA operative, although that was hidden and
then denied for decades. Her father was employed by the
United States Agency for International Development.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
For decades, there's been suspicion that the US Agency for
International Development was a Cold War policy tool created in
nineteen sixty one to implement CIA operations around the world.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Ruth Payne's husband and other family members had intelligence connections
as well. In nineteen sixty seven, when the District Attorney
for New Orleans, Jim Garrison, tried a case that questioned
the Warren Commission's findings, he tried to get the Pains
tax returns and he was told they were classified. Another
little tidbit, Ruth's best friend, Mary Bancroft, was Alan Dulles's mistress.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Because of her friendship with the Oswalts, Ruth Payne was
a key witness for the Warren Commission. In her testimony,
she was asked by Alan Dulles what she suspected Oswald's
motive might have been. She said that she always felt
that Oswald saw himself as a small person and that
he wanted to be greater and to be noticed. George
(14:39):
de Moornshield also testified to the Warren Commission and left
out many of the key details that he would share
later on in his life, details that may have caused
severe damage to the lone Gunman case that the Warren
Commission was trying to build.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
And during the time of his testimony and I w
miss saw De Moorenshield having private lunches with Alan Dulles.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
It's like Alan Dulles is everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yes, he was controlling the flow of information in and
out of the Warren Commission. So it should come as
no surprise that the Warren Report went out of its
way to conclude that the Moornshield had no connection to
the CIA. But three years later, in nineteen sixty seven,
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison interviewed De Moornshield and
(15:29):
discovered that not only was he connected to the CIA,
he was hired by them to look after Oswald, and
after talking with Garrison, De Moornshield started to change his
public stance.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
What's interesting about de Moornschield is that he testified to
the Warren Commission and really was influential in depicting Oswald
as a man who could have killed President Kennedy. De
Morenschild came to regret that later in life, and he
believed that he was mistaken and that Oswald did not.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Kill the President. Demornschild wrote about that in his book,
which was titled Lee Harvey Oswald As I Knew Him.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's one of the first books written by someone who
had a personal relationship with Oswald.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
After the book was published, De Mornshield started talking to
the press.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
I interviewed George de Mornshield twice in nineteen seventy six,
and I remember he said, of course, we know it
was a vast conspiracy, and his wife tried to shut
him up, and then he stood up started walking around
the room, saying, it's defiling a corpse. It's defiling a corpse.
Oswald had nothing to do with it. It was remarkable
to see him like this. He was really upset. He
was revealing something huge, and I wasn't the only person.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
He said that too.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
He was talking to Edward Epstein, a journalist who had
written about the Kennedy assassination.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That's Jefferson Morley.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Again, de morn Schild said that he was quite certain
Oswald did not kill the president and that he was
indeed what he said, he was a patsy.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
He also said, quote, I would never have contacted Oswald
in a million years if Moore had not sanctioned it.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
That's j Walton Moore, his CIA contact.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Right. He said he wouldn't have reached out to befriend
Oswald unless he was instructed to. Epstein's interview with demorn
Shield happened fourteen years after Kennedy's assassination, and it was
the final interview that demorn Shield would ever give.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
So let's set the stage because with all of these
moving parts, it gets very confusing.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Okay. So the first few months of nineteen sixty three
are very tough for Oswald.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
So he returns from the Soviet Union, he gets job,
he loses a job, having trouble with his wife, and
in April nineteen sixty three, he leaves Dallas and he
decides to go to New Orleans, where he had grown up.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
In New Orleans, he gets a job at a place
called the Riley Coffee Company.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Which is owned by William Riley, a supporter of CIA
efforts against Castro. Documents show us that Riley had a
relationship with the CIA for years.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So we're seeing the same pattern, the same kind of
thing we saw with Demor and Shield. In Dallas. Oswald
is secretly introduced to another CIA connected guy whose Riley
Coffee company is located right next to the local FBI, CIA, Naval, Intelligence,
and Secret Service offices. And it's here in New Orleans
(18:40):
where Oswald is about to get sheep dipped.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Sheep DiPT What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Sheep DiPT is a term of art in the intelligence
world that means coding someone to give them CIA operative status.
It's a tactic of deception. It gives the appearance that
a person is some one other than who he really is.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So how would that even work?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
By using assets of the agency to build a narrative
around that person, you're carefully led into a new identity
and it's all documented. You yourself, may not know where
this new identity will lead, but when it's finished, you'll
have the bona fides of someone to appear completely legitimate.
And the plan for Oswald in New Orleans was to
(19:28):
sheep dip him in order to make him look like
he was a pro Castro communist.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Couldn't he just be a pro Castro communist.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
If you think that the poet spy has succeeded.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
The poet spy. If you'll remember, is James Jesus Angleton,
head of CIA Counterintelligence, and the Wilderness of Mirrors were in.
It's the world he created.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
We know. Angleton's tactics employ CIA adjacent people, asset s
that have enough distance from the agency that they can
deny knowing them. Then send these people to look after
someone the agency is interested in, pick them up at
the airport, help them get a job, to manipulate this
person they're interested in without being traced back to what end.
(20:17):
Angleton was obsessed with Cuba. He wanted to take down Castro,
and this was not in line with the president's agenda.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
After the Cuban missile crisis, if you remember, Kennedy realized
taking a hard line against Cuba could lead to an
all out nuclear war, so he started back channel communications
with Khrushchev and Castro to find a packed peace.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
But Angleton didn't see that as an obstacle. He said,
and I am quoting here, it is inconceivable that a
secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with
all the overt orders of the government. He thought it
completely fair game that the CIA, the secret intelligence armor
of them the United States, could have their own set
(21:02):
of rules and directives.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
So, while Kennedy was trying to forge a path to peace,
the CIA was conducting major anti Castro operations out of
New Orleans and Miami. They sent boats to harassed Cuban ships.
They ran guns to exile groups. They even had training
camps where they were helping the exiles prepare to mount
another invasion. Bill Harvey, the CIA agent who had been
(21:29):
demoted and sent to Rome after the Cuban missile crisis,
played a big part in all of this.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Bill Harvey created and led something called ZR Rifle. This
was a CIA program designed to assassinate foreign leaders.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
It wouldn't be until the nineteen eighties that we learned
how the CIA had a hand in overthrowing governments in
the nineteen fifties and sixties, including Iran, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala,
the Congo. This often inclined gluted the assassination of the
leader in charge. This is some of the dirty laundry
we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
The CIA wanted to use that same force in an
attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, and Bill Harvey was at
the head of it. To understand Harvey's stance toward Cuba,
read a segment of this seventeen page memo that he
sent to Dick Helms, who was running covert operations for
the CIA at the time.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
It goes quote the assurance of no invasion and no
support of invasion will in effect constitute giving Castro and
his regime a certain degree of sanctuary.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
His belief was that every day that passed that we
didn't try to invade Cuba would make Castro grow stronger. Essentially,
he's saying, if you're not trying to kill him, you're
emboldening him. And in many people's minds, the one emboldening
him the most was President Kennedy.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
A declassified document reveals that Bill Harvey sent his memo
to the head of the CIA in November nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Six months later, in May of nineteen sixty three, Angleton
published a twenty seven page paper of his own on
the topic of Cuba.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
This was just about seven months before the assassination of
President Kennedy and within weeks of Oswald's decision to move
to New Orleans.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Engleton's paper was called Cuban Control and Action Capabilities. And
it's important to understand who received this paper. The Pentagon,
the CIA, the NSSA, the intelligence chiefs of the State Department, Army, Navy,
and Air Force, and the Justice Department.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And guess who didn't receive this paper.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
The President Bingo.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Angleton didn't send it to the White House, to his
National Security Council, or to the president's brother, Attorney General
Robert Kennedy. And there's one thing that becomes particularly interesting
in hindsight.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
The fair Play for Cuba Committee, The fair Play for
Cuba Committee is.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
The fair Play for Cuban Committee.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
If you're taking notes, put a big red circle around
the fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
The fair Play for Cuba Committee was a real organization.
They had chapters around the country with hundreds of members.
Their goal was to provide grassroots support for Cuba in America.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
In Angleton's eyes, members of the fair Play for Cuba
Committee were pro castro agents in the United States. This
is exactly what Angleton spent his career trying to protect
America against and so in order to better understand the
organization and hopefully stop them, he needed information, and Oswald.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Was about to be sent right into the thick of it.
Oswald arrived in New Orleans at almost the exact time
that Angleton sent out his Cuban paper. And one of
the first things that Oswald does is form a local
(25:00):
chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. And guess
how many members there were in this chapter one hundred
You're close one just one, just Oswald, nobody else.
Speaker 6 (25:12):
Oswald's behavior with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is
kind of strange. In his time in New Orleans, he
doesn't spend any time with people who support Gastro.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
This is Oswald being sheep dipped. A narrative is being
created around him.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And what does Oswald know at this point?
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Probably very little. I mean, he knows he's connected to
an intelligence community for some purpose. But I would bet
anything that if Lee Harvey Oswald were alive today and
you asked him that at that moment, what did he
think he was part of? I don't think he would
even know.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
After he started his chapter of the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee, Oswald visited a man named Carlos spring Gear,
who ran an anti Castro group called the Cuban Student Directorate.
Memos have served the show this group was organized and
funded by the CIA.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
What did Oswald want with him?
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Oswald told Carlos Springier that he was an ex marine
who despised communism and was willing to help train Cuban exiles.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
So wait a minute, Oswald is starting the pro Castro
fair Play for Cuba Committee and at the same time
he's offering help in training anti Castro exiles. Didn't you
say the New Orleans branch of the fair Play for
Cuba Committee was funded by the CIA?
Speaker 1 (26:35):
I did, But remember, so was Carlos Bringier's student group.
And his group was not only funded by the CIA,
it was run by George Joanedes. Remember him. Joann Edes
was the former CIA agent who sabotaged the investigation led
by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
After meeting with Brgier, Oswald goes to a very anti
Castro area of New Orleans and starts handing out leaflets
for the fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
There are photos of this. In some of those photos
you can actually see a known CIA operative in the background.
Here's a guy who's standing on a street corner in
New Orleans handing out leaflets for the fair Play for
Cuba Committee, And who's filming that? And why is that
even being filmed. If you want the public to know
something about something, you have to create some kind of
(27:28):
event that would make news. So while handing out these
pro Castro leaflets.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Four members of the Cuban Student Director confronted him, grabbed
his pamphlets, threw him in the air, started shouting at him,
and was about to be a fight, and two cops
came in and arrested them all.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The local radio station WDSU jumped all over it.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
The reporter, a guy named William Kurt Stuckey from WDSU,
named the fair Play for Cuba Committee in his report
and named Lee Harvey Oswald. So what would be the
implication of that.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
They're staging this? How else would the public know that
Oswald was pro castro unless it was picked up by
the press. It had to be documented.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Oswald was getting sheep dipped as a pro Castro agent,
and at the same time, the fair Play for Cuba
Committee was being made to look weak.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
Oswald and the Cubans are all arrested, they're taken into
the police station. Oswald the first thing he does is
ask for an FBI age. Why would a leftist supporter
of Fidel Castro ask to see an FBI.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Agent Because it was all theater and Oswald was in
the lead role.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
To this day, the CIA denies their connection to Oswald
despite everything we know, some of which we've covered so
far in this series. They claim to have had very
minimal awareness of Oswald and no direct connection. In June
twenty twenty three, Peter Baker of The New York Times
published a story revealing new details about the CIA and
(29:03):
their relationship with Oswald. The story covered a CIA memo
from June of nineteen sixty two that summarized the contents
of a letter between Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
This letter was intercepted and read by the CIA when
it was originally sent. So right there we have another
piece of documentation of the fact that the CIA was
fully aware and tracking Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Now, apparently the existence of this CIA memo wasn't news
assassination researchers have known that this memo existed for decades.
The news that the New York Times was breaking in
their story was about the author of this memo, which
strikes me as odd that it was more important to
the CIA to hide the identity of the person who
(29:50):
wrote the memo than the existence of the memo itself.
But now that we have a basic understanding of the
wilderness of mirrors and the fact that thing in this
world are often not what they seem, I wanted to
talk to someone that could help me understand what the
CIA was up to and the significance of the name
that The Times uncovered. So we asked Jefferson Morley to
(30:13):
join us once again. So, jeff who was the CIA
agent who was reading Oswald's mail and who was he
sending these summaries to?
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Ruben e.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
Fhron was a CIA analyst and translator. He's worked for
the CIA for since nineteen fifty five. He was in
charge of reading the mail of people who were picked
by James Angleton. So Angleton had a list of about
two hundred people whose mail he opened, copied, filed, and
(30:43):
Oswald was one of those people, starting from the week
he went to the Soviet Union in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
So it was known that mister Efron's role was to
surveil the mail of people that Angleton had on this
select list. What is about this memo that stands out?
Speaker 6 (31:03):
The time story showed that not only was the CIA
reading Oswald's mail while he was in the Soviet Union.
When Oswald comes home, Ephron writes a memo which he
sends to his boss, which says, missus editor in CI
SIG will be interested.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
CI SIG is the Counterintelligence Special Investigations Group.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
CI SIG was so secret that almost nobody in the
CIA other than Dulles Angleton and the people that worked
in SIGG knew it even existed.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
The fact that Oswald's file is controlled at that highest
level of the CIA is extremely noteworthy. So what the
time story shows is that not only were they reading
his mail, but after he returned to the United States,
they were paying close attention to.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Him, and that they would be the poet's spy.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Angleton knew all about Oswald, and if you start to
connect the dots, when Angleton needed someone in nineteen sixty
three to play a role in his efforts to take
down Castro, he taps someone he knows, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Next episode on Who Killed JFK, we meet Richard K.
S Nakel, also known as the Man who Knew too Much.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
By sure accident.
Speaker 7 (32:24):
He's struggled on the fact that there was an assassination here.
Good plan, and then it is preliminary hearing and he says, well,
I'm glad you caught me. He says, I really don't
want to be in Dallas, and I says, well, what
do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (32:39):
And he says, you'll want to know.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Who killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
solid At O'Brien and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner,
Michelle Reiner, Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and me
Soldad O'Brien. Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by
Dick Russell. Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pignero.
(33:05):
Our senior producer is Julie Pinneo. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Tristan Nash, Julie Pigneto, and Marcus de Lauro. Our project
manager is Carol Klein. Archival audio in this episode thanks
to Dick Russell. Our Associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,
(33:31):
mastering and sound design by Ben La Julie. Music by APM,
Research and fact checking by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros.
Business affairs by him Nan Nadea and Jonathan Furman. Consulting
producer is Razanne Galliini. Recorded in part at CDM Studio
and Fourth Street Recording Studio. Show logo by Lucy Kintanilla.
(33:56):
Production assistants by Rocco Del Prior and Grace Baron. Special
thanks to Johonenig Rose Arsay and Dan Storper. If you're
enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review on
your favorite podcast platform. Who Killed JFK as a production
of Solidad O'Brien Productions and iHeart Podcasts
In nineteen seventy four, just months after the Watergate scandal
ended with Richard Nixon's resignation, another man who for decades
had also helped shape America's place in the world was
quietly dismissed from his job. William Colby, who was then
the head of the CIA, fired spymaster James Jesus Angleton.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Colby made the decision after a front page expose in
The New York Times revealed that Angleton was running a
massive domestic spying program. The CIA was spying on ten
thousand Americans involved in the anti war movement and other
dissident groups.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Colby had been trying to get rid of Angleton for years,
but Angleton was a bit of a legend. He was
the head of counterintelligence for the CIA, and for better
or for worse, he was one of the agency's founding fathers.
Journalists who are hoping to be the next Woodward and
Bernstein were all over this story. They wanted to know why.
(01:10):
The buzz around Angleton's firing prompted the formation of a
special Senate committee headed up by Idaho Senator Frank Church,
and for the first time in the CIA's history, their
dirty laundry was about to be exposed.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The Church Committee published its final report in April of
nineteen seventy six. It revealed a trove of secret abuses
at the hands of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the IRS.
Before and after the Cold War. These agencies were involved
in global assassination conspiracies, infiltrating news programs, and conducting mind
(01:48):
control experiments through programs like mk Ultra. The Committee's revelations
shocked Americans.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
We'll get into all of that over the next few episodes,
but for now, what's important understand is that in the
nineteen sixties, James Jesus Angleton had control over a network
of spies, informants, and double agents that reached into the
farthest corners of the globe, and the events that would
be the cause of his dismissal were just getting underway.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This is who killed JFK. Sixty years later, What can
we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history?
And why does it still matter today? I'm your host,
Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Welcome to the counterintelligence world of James Jesus Angleton, a
world he referred to as the wilderness of mirrors.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
The term wilderness of mirrors points to the tactic of
deception and disinformation that both the CIA and the KGB
used against each other during the Cold War.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's a world where it's virtually impossible to tell what
his reality and what is merely a reflection of reality,
and our journey into the wilderness starts with Lee Harvey Oswald.
So let's recap. Oswald was a disenchanted young man who
found himself in the psychological study run by a doctor
(03:18):
with connections to the CIA. At age seventeen, he enlisted
in the Marines and was shipped to Japan, where he
received a security clearance to work as a radar operator
on U two spyplanes. Upon returning to the United States,
he spent time at a base in California and another
base in Nagshead, North Carolina, which focused on special operations. Then,
(03:42):
after learning Russian, he defected to the Soviet Union. Two
years later, he returned to the United States with his
Russian wife and baby, and was welcomed back with open arms.
He was never questioned why.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well Oswald didn't actually renown his US citizenship when he
was in Russia, even though he tried at the embassy,
So maybe they didn't take him all that seriously. Maybe
they saw him and thought, eh, that guy. You know,
he's all bark and no bite. There's this philosophical theory
I know, you know, called Ockham's razor, right, that says
the simplest answer is often the correct one. So if
(04:20):
you apply that here, what if he's just a communist sympathizer.
What if he just defected, He just came back to
the US and sort of slipped under the radar.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
It's possible, but don't forget. We are at the height
of the Cold War. The fear of nuclear annihilation is
hanging over our heads. Now. If you are willing to
enter that wilderness of mirrors with me, by the time
we exit, I think things will become clear. But I
have to warn you. Before things become clear, they will
(04:54):
become confusing. And in fact, confusion is the point. So
why don't we try to embrace the confusion and step
into the wilderness of mirrors. During World War II, America
had an intelligence gathering agency called the OSS the Office
(05:14):
of Strategic Services. The information that they were able to
gather help us win the war. The OSS was officially
disbanded nineteen forty five, but certain factions of their work continued.
America's biggest enemy at the time was the Soviet Union,
and for years they had been honing their skills of
covert intelligence operations, so in an effort to play catchup,
(05:38):
the OSS was revamped into a full blown intelligence gathering
agency in nineteen forty seven. It was called the CIA.
In the wake of its creation, President Harry Truman drafted
Directive ten slash two, which was a top secret memo
that gave the CIA the green light to engage in
(05:59):
different forms of warfare, including propaganda, sabotage, and deadly covert
operations against anyone it deemed quote hostile to the United States.
I think of the ten slash two memo as marching
orders into the dark arts of spycraft. And to protect
the president, the CIA developed a practice called plausible deniability.
(06:25):
If the President wasn't told about a particular secret plan,
then he could plausibly deny having anything to do with it.
Plausible deniability empowered the CIA to act without presidential approval.
They would carry out missions with no awareness outside the agency.
Accountability was intentionally clouded. Solidad Could you read this from me?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
The better you lied, and the more you betrayed, the
more likely you would be promoted. I did things that
in looking back on my life, I regret, but I
was part of it and I loved in it.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That is a quote from James Angleton. Now, if you
visualize a creepy secret agent from the fifties and sixties,
you will see Angleton.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I can confirm that pictures of him show a lanky
guy with thick glasses, hollow cheekbones, and translucent looking skin.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Angleton could do virtually anything he wanted under the name
of protecting America.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
He was the Chief of Counterintelligence, so he was in
charge of defending the CIA. But that position required him
enabled him to do anything, and so there was no
check on his power whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That's our old friend. Jefferson Morley, creator of jfkfax dot Org.
Morley wrote the book on Angleton called The Ghost. Why
do you call the book the Ghost?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Because he was this invisible presence in the US government
that nobody could see. I mean, I think President Kennedy
knew who Jim Angleton was, but not many people in
the US government knew what Angleton did.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Describe him, he was very.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Charismatic, intellectually. He had been an English major at Yale
with a literary bent.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
He was known as the Poet's spy. His friend, the
poet E. E. Cummings, said the following about Angleton, quote,
what a miracle of momentous complexity is the poet?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
He was the spy. As intellectual, he was a very
creative thinker. People who knew him in his prime were
very impressed and regarded him as really something of a genius.
Camera intelligence has been described as organized paranoia. To catch spies,
you have to be very suspicious of everybody.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
He referred to his work as the wilderness of mirrors,
a phrase that he borrowed from TS. Eliot. There was information, disinformation,
secret agents, and double agents, anything to deceive the enemy,
hide the CIA's tracks, and create confusion. Confusion was his
weapon of choice, and that confusion came into play when
(09:06):
Oswald returned to the United States. Oswald, his Soviet wife Marina,
and their infant child June. They land on the docks
of Hoboken, New Jersey, on June thirteenth, nineteen sixty two.
There they're met by a man named spaz Rakin Racn
(09:26):
was a representative of the Traveler's Aid Society. Now I
want you to take a look at this through the
lens of James Angleton. Okay, spas Racan was not only
a representative of the Traveler's Aid Society, he was also
an official of the Anti Bolshevik Nations, a group with
deep ties to US intelligence, a fact that was totally
(09:50):
ignored by the Warrant Commission. Now understand that the Traveler's
Aid Society wasn't there to massage Oswald's feet after his
long trip. It was an anti communist organization that had
direct ties to the CIA.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Oh, so he's pretty much welcome backed by the CIA.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Right and again, if you look at this through Angleton's eyes,
Reken is the perfect person to meet Oswald in order
to make sure that his re entry into America goes smoothly.
Rakean was somebody they could trust and couldn't be tied
directly back to them. So Recn helps the Oswalds get
through customs and immigration, then sends them on their way
(10:31):
to Fort Worth, Texas. In Fort Worth, Oswald meets a
man named George de Moorenshield. Now I'm guessing that name
doesn't ring any bells.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
This is the first time you're hearing the name George
de Moornshield. He's key when we consider the movements of
Lee Harvey Oswald on his return to the United States.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
George de Moornscheld was a Russian speaker who worked for
oil companies looking for petroleum all over the world.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
That's Jefferson Morley again.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And so in nineteen sixty two he was living in
Dallas and he heard of this man who had returned
from the Soviet Union, Lee Harvey Oswald. So they become
good friends.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Don't you think it's odd that a wealthy, worldly, aerodype
and much older man would become good friends with Lee
Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
De Moornshield told the journalist Edward Epstein, quote, somebody gave
me Lee's address, and one afternoon I drove to Fort Worth,
about thirty miles from Dallas.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
De Moorinshield told Epstein that a CIA operative J. Walton
Moore was the person who gave him the address of
Lee Harvey Oswald and suggested that he meet him, that
he would be doing the CIA a favor.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
De Moornshield told Epstein that J. Walton Moore asked him
to find out about Oswald's time in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And for essentially babysitting, Oswald de Moornshield was awarded a
mineral contract from the Haitian government for three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
De Moornshield told Epstein that he assumed this was because
of the help De Moornshield had given to the CIA.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
When you think of people who work for the CIA,
you think of people who work directly with the agency.
But it's not that simple. There are also people who are,
for lack of a better term, CIA adjacent. They're assets,
and these assets will do favors for the CIA, and
sometimes they expect favors in return.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So that would describe George de Moornshield, Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And as part of his babysitting duties, De Moorinshield introduces
the Oswalts to a friend of his. This is a
woman named Ruth Paine, who was supposedly interested in learning Russian.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Hmm, that's convenient. Dick Russell interviewed Ruth Payne in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
The way that you first met the Oswalts was at
that party.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
It was at private party.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
What was it about the Oswalts that you liked?
Speaker 5 (13:10):
I was especially interested in Marina who's native in Russian,
and I didn't really talk to her much that evening,
but I did get the ads and visit it then
at their apartment in.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Nowas it's important to know who Ruth pain is. Her
sister was a CIA operative, although that was hidden and
then denied for decades. Her father was employed by the
United States Agency for International Development.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
For decades, there's been suspicion that the US Agency for
International Development was a Cold War policy tool created in
nineteen sixty one to implement CIA operations around the world.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Ruth Payne's husband and other family members had intelligence connections
as well. In nineteen sixty seven, when the District Attorney
for New Orleans, Jim Garrison, tried a case that questioned
the Warren Commission's findings, he tried to get the Pains
tax returns and he was told they were classified. Another
little tidbit, Ruth's best friend, Mary Bancroft, was Alan Dulles's mistress.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Because of her friendship with the Oswalts, Ruth Payne was
a key witness for the Warren Commission. In her testimony,
she was asked by Alan Dulles what she suspected Oswald's
motive might have been. She said that she always felt
that Oswald saw himself as a small person and that
he wanted to be greater and to be noticed. George
(14:39):
de Moornshield also testified to the Warren Commission and left
out many of the key details that he would share
later on in his life, details that may have caused
severe damage to the lone Gunman case that the Warren
Commission was trying to build.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
And during the time of his testimony and I w
miss saw De Moorenshield having private lunches with Alan Dulles.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
It's like Alan Dulles is everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yes, he was controlling the flow of information in and
out of the Warren Commission. So it should come as
no surprise that the Warren Report went out of its
way to conclude that the Moornshield had no connection to
the CIA. But three years later, in nineteen sixty seven,
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison interviewed De Moornshield and
(15:29):
discovered that not only was he connected to the CIA,
he was hired by them to look after Oswald, and
after talking with Garrison, De Moornshield started to change his
public stance.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
What's interesting about de Moornschield is that he testified to
the Warren Commission and really was influential in depicting Oswald
as a man who could have killed President Kennedy. De
Morenschild came to regret that later in life, and he
believed that he was mistaken and that Oswald did not.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Kill the President. Demornschild wrote about that in his book,
which was titled Lee Harvey Oswald As I Knew Him.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's one of the first books written by someone who
had a personal relationship with Oswald.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
After the book was published, De Mornshield started talking to
the press.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
I interviewed George de Mornshield twice in nineteen seventy six,
and I remember he said, of course, we know it
was a vast conspiracy, and his wife tried to shut
him up, and then he stood up started walking around
the room, saying, it's defiling a corpse. It's defiling a corpse.
Oswald had nothing to do with it. It was remarkable
to see him like this. He was really upset. He
was revealing something huge, and I wasn't the only person.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
He said that too.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
He was talking to Edward Epstein, a journalist who had
written about the Kennedy assassination.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That's Jefferson Morley.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Again, de morn Schild said that he was quite certain
Oswald did not kill the president and that he was
indeed what he said, he was a patsy.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
He also said, quote, I would never have contacted Oswald
in a million years if Moore had not sanctioned it.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
That's j Walton Moore, his CIA contact.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Right. He said he wouldn't have reached out to befriend
Oswald unless he was instructed to. Epstein's interview with demorn
Shield happened fourteen years after Kennedy's assassination, and it was
the final interview that demorn Shield would ever give.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
So let's set the stage because with all of these
moving parts, it gets very confusing.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Okay. So the first few months of nineteen sixty three
are very tough for Oswald.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
So he returns from the Soviet Union, he gets job,
he loses a job, having trouble with his wife, and
in April nineteen sixty three, he leaves Dallas and he
decides to go to New Orleans, where he had grown up.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
In New Orleans, he gets a job at a place
called the Riley Coffee Company.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Which is owned by William Riley, a supporter of CIA
efforts against Castro. Documents show us that Riley had a
relationship with the CIA for years.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So we're seeing the same pattern, the same kind of
thing we saw with Demor and Shield. In Dallas. Oswald
is secretly introduced to another CIA connected guy whose Riley
Coffee company is located right next to the local FBI, CIA, Naval, Intelligence,
and Secret Service offices. And it's here in New Orleans
(18:40):
where Oswald is about to get sheep dipped.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Sheep DiPT What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Sheep DiPT is a term of art in the intelligence
world that means coding someone to give them CIA operative status.
It's a tactic of deception. It gives the appearance that
a person is some one other than who he really is.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So how would that even work?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
By using assets of the agency to build a narrative
around that person, you're carefully led into a new identity
and it's all documented. You yourself, may not know where
this new identity will lead, but when it's finished, you'll
have the bona fides of someone to appear completely legitimate.
And the plan for Oswald in New Orleans was to
(19:28):
sheep dip him in order to make him look like
he was a pro Castro communist.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Couldn't he just be a pro Castro communist.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
If you think that the poet spy has succeeded.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
The poet spy. If you'll remember, is James Jesus Angleton,
head of CIA Counterintelligence, and the Wilderness of Mirrors were in.
It's the world he created.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
We know. Angleton's tactics employ CIA adjacent people, asset s
that have enough distance from the agency that they can
deny knowing them. Then send these people to look after
someone the agency is interested in, pick them up at
the airport, help them get a job, to manipulate this
person they're interested in without being traced back to what end.
(20:17):
Angleton was obsessed with Cuba. He wanted to take down Castro,
and this was not in line with the president's agenda.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
After the Cuban missile crisis, if you remember, Kennedy realized
taking a hard line against Cuba could lead to an
all out nuclear war, so he started back channel communications
with Khrushchev and Castro to find a packed peace.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
But Angleton didn't see that as an obstacle. He said,
and I am quoting here, it is inconceivable that a
secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with
all the overt orders of the government. He thought it
completely fair game that the CIA, the secret intelligence armor
of them the United States, could have their own set
(21:02):
of rules and directives.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
So, while Kennedy was trying to forge a path to peace,
the CIA was conducting major anti Castro operations out of
New Orleans and Miami. They sent boats to harassed Cuban ships.
They ran guns to exile groups. They even had training
camps where they were helping the exiles prepare to mount
another invasion. Bill Harvey, the CIA agent who had been
(21:29):
demoted and sent to Rome after the Cuban missile crisis,
played a big part in all of this.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Bill Harvey created and led something called ZR Rifle. This
was a CIA program designed to assassinate foreign leaders.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
It wouldn't be until the nineteen eighties that we learned
how the CIA had a hand in overthrowing governments in
the nineteen fifties and sixties, including Iran, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala,
the Congo. This often inclined gluted the assassination of the
leader in charge. This is some of the dirty laundry
we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
The CIA wanted to use that same force in an
attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, and Bill Harvey was at
the head of it. To understand Harvey's stance toward Cuba,
read a segment of this seventeen page memo that he
sent to Dick Helms, who was running covert operations for
the CIA at the time.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
It goes quote the assurance of no invasion and no
support of invasion will in effect constitute giving Castro and
his regime a certain degree of sanctuary.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
His belief was that every day that passed that we
didn't try to invade Cuba would make Castro grow stronger. Essentially,
he's saying, if you're not trying to kill him, you're
emboldening him. And in many people's minds, the one emboldening
him the most was President Kennedy.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
A declassified document reveals that Bill Harvey sent his memo
to the head of the CIA in November nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Six months later, in May of nineteen sixty three, Angleton
published a twenty seven page paper of his own on
the topic of Cuba.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
This was just about seven months before the assassination of
President Kennedy and within weeks of Oswald's decision to move
to New Orleans.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Engleton's paper was called Cuban Control and Action Capabilities. And
it's important to understand who received this paper. The Pentagon,
the CIA, the NSSA, the intelligence chiefs of the State Department, Army, Navy,
and Air Force, and the Justice Department.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And guess who didn't receive this paper.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
The President Bingo.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Angleton didn't send it to the White House, to his
National Security Council, or to the president's brother, Attorney General
Robert Kennedy. And there's one thing that becomes particularly interesting
in hindsight.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
The fair Play for Cuba Committee, The fair Play for
Cuba Committee is.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
The fair Play for Cuban Committee.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
If you're taking notes, put a big red circle around
the fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
The fair Play for Cuba Committee was a real organization.
They had chapters around the country with hundreds of members.
Their goal was to provide grassroots support for Cuba in America.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
In Angleton's eyes, members of the fair Play for Cuba
Committee were pro castro agents in the United States. This
is exactly what Angleton spent his career trying to protect
America against and so in order to better understand the
organization and hopefully stop them, he needed information, and Oswald.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Was about to be sent right into the thick of it.
Oswald arrived in New Orleans at almost the exact time
that Angleton sent out his Cuban paper. And one of
the first things that Oswald does is form a local
(25:00):
chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. And guess
how many members there were in this chapter one hundred
You're close one just one, just Oswald, nobody else.
Speaker 6 (25:12):
Oswald's behavior with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is
kind of strange. In his time in New Orleans, he
doesn't spend any time with people who support Gastro.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
This is Oswald being sheep dipped. A narrative is being
created around him.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And what does Oswald know at this point?
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Probably very little. I mean, he knows he's connected to
an intelligence community for some purpose. But I would bet
anything that if Lee Harvey Oswald were alive today and
you asked him that at that moment, what did he
think he was part of? I don't think he would
even know.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
After he started his chapter of the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee, Oswald visited a man named Carlos spring Gear,
who ran an anti Castro group called the Cuban Student Directorate.
Memos have served the show this group was organized and
funded by the CIA.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
What did Oswald want with him?
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Oswald told Carlos Springier that he was an ex marine
who despised communism and was willing to help train Cuban exiles.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
So wait a minute, Oswald is starting the pro Castro
fair Play for Cuba Committee and at the same time
he's offering help in training anti Castro exiles. Didn't you
say the New Orleans branch of the fair Play for
Cuba Committee was funded by the CIA?
Speaker 1 (26:35):
I did, But remember, so was Carlos Bringier's student group.
And his group was not only funded by the CIA,
it was run by George Joanedes. Remember him. Joann Edes
was the former CIA agent who sabotaged the investigation led
by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
After meeting with Brgier, Oswald goes to a very anti
Castro area of New Orleans and starts handing out leaflets
for the fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
There are photos of this. In some of those photos
you can actually see a known CIA operative in the background.
Here's a guy who's standing on a street corner in
New Orleans handing out leaflets for the fair Play for
Cuba Committee, And who's filming that? And why is that
even being filmed. If you want the public to know
something about something, you have to create some kind of
(27:28):
event that would make news. So while handing out these
pro Castro leaflets.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Four members of the Cuban Student Director confronted him, grabbed
his pamphlets, threw him in the air, started shouting at him,
and was about to be a fight, and two cops
came in and arrested them all.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The local radio station WDSU jumped all over it.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
The reporter, a guy named William Kurt Stuckey from WDSU,
named the fair Play for Cuba Committee in his report
and named Lee Harvey Oswald. So what would be the
implication of that.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
They're staging this? How else would the public know that
Oswald was pro castro unless it was picked up by
the press. It had to be documented.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Oswald was getting sheep dipped as a pro Castro agent,
and at the same time, the fair Play for Cuba
Committee was being made to look weak.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
Oswald and the Cubans are all arrested, they're taken into
the police station. Oswald the first thing he does is
ask for an FBI age. Why would a leftist supporter
of Fidel Castro ask to see an FBI.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Agent Because it was all theater and Oswald was in
the lead role.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
To this day, the CIA denies their connection to Oswald
despite everything we know, some of which we've covered so
far in this series. They claim to have had very
minimal awareness of Oswald and no direct connection. In June
twenty twenty three, Peter Baker of The New York Times
published a story revealing new details about the CIA and
(29:03):
their relationship with Oswald. The story covered a CIA memo
from June of nineteen sixty two that summarized the contents
of a letter between Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
This letter was intercepted and read by the CIA when
it was originally sent. So right there we have another
piece of documentation of the fact that the CIA was
fully aware and tracking Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Now, apparently the existence of this CIA memo wasn't news
assassination researchers have known that this memo existed for decades.
The news that the New York Times was breaking in
their story was about the author of this memo, which
strikes me as odd that it was more important to
the CIA to hide the identity of the person who
(29:50):
wrote the memo than the existence of the memo itself.
But now that we have a basic understanding of the
wilderness of mirrors and the fact that thing in this
world are often not what they seem, I wanted to
talk to someone that could help me understand what the
CIA was up to and the significance of the name
that The Times uncovered. So we asked Jefferson Morley to
(30:13):
join us once again. So, jeff who was the CIA
agent who was reading Oswald's mail and who was he
sending these summaries to?
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Ruben e.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
Fhron was a CIA analyst and translator. He's worked for
the CIA for since nineteen fifty five. He was in
charge of reading the mail of people who were picked
by James Angleton. So Angleton had a list of about
two hundred people whose mail he opened, copied, filed, and
(30:43):
Oswald was one of those people, starting from the week
he went to the Soviet Union in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
So it was known that mister Efron's role was to
surveil the mail of people that Angleton had on this
select list. What is about this memo that stands out?
Speaker 6 (31:03):
The time story showed that not only was the CIA
reading Oswald's mail while he was in the Soviet Union.
When Oswald comes home, Ephron writes a memo which he
sends to his boss, which says, missus editor in CI
SIG will be interested.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
CI SIG is the Counterintelligence Special Investigations Group.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
CI SIG was so secret that almost nobody in the
CIA other than Dulles Angleton and the people that worked
in SIGG knew it even existed.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
The fact that Oswald's file is controlled at that highest
level of the CIA is extremely noteworthy. So what the
time story shows is that not only were they reading
his mail, but after he returned to the United States,
they were paying close attention to.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Him, and that they would be the poet's spy.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Angleton knew all about Oswald, and if you start to
connect the dots, when Angleton needed someone in nineteen sixty
three to play a role in his efforts to take
down Castro, he taps someone he knows, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Next episode on Who Killed JFK, we meet Richard K.
S Nakel, also known as the Man who Knew too Much.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
By sure accident.
Speaker 7 (32:24):
He's struggled on the fact that there was an assassination here.
Good plan, and then it is preliminary hearing and he says, well,
I'm glad you caught me. He says, I really don't
want to be in Dallas, and I says, well, what
do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (32:39):
And he says, you'll want to know.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Who killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
solid At O'Brien and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner,
Michelle Reiner, Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and me
Soldad O'Brien. Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by
Dick Russell. Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pignero.
(33:05):
Our senior producer is Julie Pinneo. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Tristan Nash, Julie Pigneto, and Marcus de Lauro. Our project
manager is Carol Klein. Archival audio in this episode thanks
to Dick Russell. Our Associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,
(33:31):
mastering and sound design by Ben La Julie. Music by APM,
Research and fact checking by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros.
Business affairs by him Nan Nadea and Jonathan Furman. Consulting
producer is Razanne Galliini. Recorded in part at CDM Studio
and Fourth Street Recording Studio. Show logo by Lucy Kintanilla.
(33:56):
Production assistants by Rocco Del Prior and Grace Baron. Special
thanks to Johonenig Rose Arsay and Dan Storper. If you're
enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review on
your favorite podcast platform. Who Killed JFK as a production
of Solidad O'Brien Productions and iHeart Podcasts
Hosts And Creators
Soledad O’Brien
Rob Reiner
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