Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City

JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald spent 5 days in Mexico just weeks before the assassination.  Why?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to Mexico Unexplained, where we will explore the magic,
the mysteries, and the miracles of Mexico. This series presents
information based partly on theory and conjecture. The podcaster's purpose
is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the
only ones to the subjects we will examine. Here is
your host, Robert Viitto.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Welcome and movie bim beneathos to episode number six three
of Mexico Unexplained, where we examined the magic, the mysteries,
and the miracles of Mexico. I'm your host, Robert Biddow.
It is a tragic story familiar to most Americans and
to many around the world. The date was Friday, November

(01:17):
twenty second, nineteen sixty three. It was a sunny day
in Dallas when the motorcade of the thirty fifth President
of the United States, John F. Kennedy found itself in
Dealey Plaza near the Texas School Book Depository at twelve
thirty in the afternoon. Shots rang out and the young

(01:39):
American president was killed. Within hours, the Dallas police apprehended
Lee Harvey Oswald, a twenty four year old former US marine,
and later that Night charged him with the killing of
the president. On Sunday, November twenty four, while Oswald was
being transferred to the county jail, he was shot by

(02:01):
a man named Jack Ruby, who claimed he wanted to
spare Missus Kennedy from the horrors of a murder trial.
Oswald died an hour and a half later at Parkland
Memorial Hospital, the same medical facility that tried to treat Kennedy.
As Oswald would never stand trial, the public would never

(02:21):
know a complete picture of the Kennedy assassination, including why
Oswald did it, if he did do it, and if
he had help. Right before he was shot, Lee Harvey
Oswald declared publicly that he did not do it and
that he was set up as a patsy. The nation
in the world mourned the President's death, and sadness quickly

(02:44):
turned to questions. The Warrant Commission was formed by President
Lyndon Johnson on November twenty ninth, nineteen sixty three, less
than a week after the killing of Kennedy, to investigate
the assassination. The mission presented its eight hundred eighty eight
page report to President Johnson on September twenty fourth, nineteen

(03:07):
sixty four, and it was released to the public three
days later. The report concluded, without absolute proof, that Oswald
acted alone in killing President Kennedy and that Jack Ruby
acted alone in killing Oswald. The Warren Commission was not
the only government sponsored investigation into the JFK assassination. Because

(03:31):
of public skepticism of the Commission's findings and due to
increasing concern about the lack of transparency of certain government agencies,
in September of nineteen seventy six, the United States House
Select Committee on Assassinations was formed to look further into
both the assassination of John F. Kennedy and that of

(03:54):
doctor Martin Luther King Junior. After eighteen months of investigation,
the House commiss disagreed with the conclusions of the Warren
Commission that Oswald acted alone, stating that Kennedy was quote
probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy end quote.
The second investigation was not able to identify any individuals

(04:17):
or groups involved in the conspiracy. However, the House Select
Committee left the American public with even more questions, and
in the forty years since this last formal government investigation
into the JFK assassination, a whole cottage industry has sprung
up to look more closely at this major historical event.

(04:39):
There are thousands of books and articles written about this,
with hundreds upon hundreds of theories as to what really happened,
who was involved in the tragedy, and to what degree.
In fact, the very term conspiracy theory was popularized right
after the assassination, some say, to discredit the multitudes of

(05:02):
ideas spawned by this event. Speaking at a conference in
September of twenty fourteen titled the Warren Report in the
JFK Assassination five Decades of Significant Disclosures, Dan Hardaway, a
young law school student who is hired as a researcher
for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late

(05:24):
nineteen seventies, said this about conspiracies. If you're involved in
a conspiracy, one of the primary things you don't want
to happen is to have the people you are conspiring
against discover the conspiracy. The essence of a conspiracy is
that it stays secret. In the eventuality that information about

(05:47):
the conspiracy should come out. The alternative that you want
to do is to make it so confusing, to sow
so many red herrings, plant so many false trails to
create so much disinformation that no one could be absolutely
certain whether or not if there really was a conspiracy.

(06:10):
Lee Harvey Oswald, while never able to defend himself publicly
in a courtroom setting, has gotten the lion's share of
the scrutiny of all the complex characters involved in the
Kennedy killing, and there are many of the false trials
and red herrings mentioned by Hardaway to make investigating Oswald

(06:31):
very difficult and confusing. The days and months of Oswald's
life leading up to November twenty second, nineteen sixty three
have been examined in great detail, but remain cloudy at best.
Those familiar with the Kennedy assassination story and the cast
of characters involved might not know that in September and

(06:53):
October of nineteen sixty three, just weeks before that fateful
day in Dallas, Lee Harvey osne Hwald was in Mexico City.
What were his activities while in Mexico? Was he alone?
What role does Oswald's visit to Mexico City play in
the Kennedy assassination. Before looking into the particulars of Oswald's

(07:16):
time in Mexico, we must first examine the context. The
early nineteen sixties saw the United States on high alert
in Latin America. Cuba had just fallen to communism, and
the axis between Havana and Moscow had solidified. Numerous attempts
were made to dissuade or oust Fidel Castro, but he

(07:39):
held on to power, and as it seemed like he
would be head of state for good, the American government
began to fear the spread of communism in the Western hemisphere.
Mexico City in the early nineteen sixties may have well
been the center of Latin American Cold War intrigue. Using
the latest surveillance equipment, the American CIA and FBI monitored

(08:04):
the diplomatic compounds of a variety of communist countries, with
special emphasis on those of the Soviet Union in Cuba.
Across the street from the Cuban Embassy was the CIA
surveillance post in a third floor apartment. From here, an
agent photographed visitors entering and exiting the front door. The

(08:26):
door to the Cuban consulate on the side of the
Cuban Embassy was monitored by a pulse camera that snapped
photos of people coming and going. Based on movement. This
camera was installed on September twenty seventh, nineteen sixty three,
an important date to remember. The Soviet embassy was monitored

(08:46):
by manual cameras by CIA agents, focusing on three different locations,
one on a yard in the embassy and two on
the front entrance. Many of the phones at the Cuban
and so Soviet embassies were tapped. A total of thirty
wiretaps recorded incoming and outgoing calls from the embassies. Agents

(09:09):
at remote CIA listening posts would transcribe relevant phone conversations,
whether they be in Spanish, English or Russian, translate to
English if need be, and consolidate the transcripts in what
were called daily resumas. The rezuma from the previous day
would be on the desk of CIA Station Chief Winston

(09:32):
Scott by nine o'clock every morning. In addition to the
video and audio surveillance of the Soviet and Cuban diplomatic compounds,
there were what was termed penetration agents inside the embassies.
These penetration agents were covertly working for the CIA while

(09:52):
holding low level clerical jobs for the Cubans or Soviets. Oftentimes,
the identities of of these secret agents were only known
by the Station chief himself, who received regular reports and
updates from them. There was very little that could get
through this complex monitoring system down in Mexico City and

(10:15):
station chief when Scott was known throughout the agency for
running a tight ship. Lejarvy. Oswald's movements and activities in
Mexico were lightly touched upon in the original Warren Commission
report in nineteen sixty four, but further expanded in the
report generated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations some

(10:37):
fifteen years later. Oswald allegedly arrived by bus in Mexico
City's Central Camionea or Central Bus station, at ten a
m on Friday, September twenty seventh, nineteen sixty three, and
departed for Texas on Wednesday morning, October three, spending five

(10:57):
full days in Mexico. While in Mexico City, he made
contact with the Soviet in Cuban consulates by phone and
in person. His objective was to secure two travel visas,
one in transit visa to Cuba and then another visa
to his ultimate destination, the Soviet Union. Oswald had lived

(11:20):
in the Soviet Union before, after an honorable discharge from
the U S Marines. In nineteen fifty nine, he defected
to the US s R and settled in the city
of Minsk, where he married a Russian woman, Marina Nikolayevna Prusokhova.
He returned to the US with his Russian bride in

(11:40):
February of nineteen sixty two. He had special interest in
Cuba because not only was he an avowed Marxist, he
was also the New Orleans president of the Fair Play
for Cuba Committee, a left wing organization that supported the
new dictatorship of Fidel Castro. When Oswald arrived in Mexico

(12:02):
City on Friday, September twenty seventh, he immediately got down
to business. He secured a hotel room, and then, according
to the government investigations, made two phone calls to the
Soviet consulate, one at ten thirty a m. And one
at ten thirty seven am, asking routine questions having to

(12:23):
do with hours of operations and when the consul would
be available to process visas. The caller spoke perfect Spanish.
This is troublesome as Oswald did not know how to
speak Spanish. We will leave that for now and continue
with the timeline. At eleven o'clock on the same Friday morning,

(12:44):
Oswald showed up at the Cuban Consulate, which is located
in the Cuban Embassy compound, requesting an intransit visa to
travel through Cuba on the way to the USSR. His
contact at the Cuban Consulate was a twenty six year old,
very attractive Mexican national named Sylvia Duran. Oswald showed Doran

(13:08):
various documents to complete the visa application, but none of
the documents had a passport type photo that was required
for the Cuban paperwork. One of the documents Oswald proudly
showed to Duran was his fair play for Cuba ID
card and declared himself to be a communist. Sylvia Duran

(13:29):
thought this strange, as it was routine for the American
Communist Party to send its members down to the Cuban
Consulate in Mexico City to get immediate visas they had
a special deal with the Cuban Communist Party for properly
vetted Communists to have a hassle free paperwork experience for

(13:49):
their travel to Cuba. The man before Duran was going
about this the hard way, she thought, or something else
was going on, as he didn't have the proper photographs.
Oswald left the Cuban consulate and came back with the
appropriate pictures at about twelve fifteen in the afternoon. He

(14:10):
filled out all of the paperwork in Duran's presence, and
then she explained to him that he needed to get
a Soviet travel visa first before the Cuban consulate would
issue the intransit visa to get him to Cuba. On
this Oswald walked to the Soviet Consulate and arrived at
around twelve thirty. On arrival, he met with embassy worker

(14:33):
Valeri Kostekov, who had long been watched by the CIA
as a possible KGB agent. Kostekov handed oswaldof to a
man named Oleg Netcheporenko. Netchuporenko explained to Oswald that all
travel matters to the Soviet Union are handled by the

(14:54):
embassy of the country of the traveler's origin. Since Oswald
was not a Mech citizen, the Soviet offices in Mexico
could not help him. He would have to go to
the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC. Oswald explained that he
didn't want the FBI to arrest him for establishing contact

(15:15):
with the Soviets, so he figured that getting a visa
through Mexico was a better option, and is previously mentioned,
he wanted to make a stop over in Cuba. Netchuporenko
explained to Oswald that they could make a special exception
in his case, but the paperwork would take four months
to process. This made Oswald very angry, so much so

(15:38):
that Netchuporenko ended the meeting and escorted the American off
the premises with no visa paperwork filled out. At around
four pm that afternoon, Oswald returned to the Cuban Consulate
and spoke again with Sylvia Duran. He lied to her
and told her that there were no problems with his

(15:58):
Soviet visa apple location and that they could proceed with
his Cuban paperwork. Duran called the Soviet Consulate to verify
Oswald's story, and in about twenty minutes they called her back,
confirming that they had not processed any paperwork for him
and that a visa to the Soviet Union would take
about four months to get. Sylvia Duran put down the

(16:22):
phone and explained the situation to a very unhappy Lee
Harvey Oswald. The tirade drew the attention of the other
Cuban staff members, including the consul himself, a man named
Eusebio Ask You, Ask You, explained to Oswald that Cuba
had to be very careful as to who it led
into the country, and that he was obviously not a

(16:45):
man of the revolution if he could not understand that.
Oswald received an escort out of the building and never
returned to the Cuban Consulate. He did, however, return to
the Soviet Consulate the next morning, Saturday, September twenty eighth,
to try one more time to get a visa to
the USSR. This time, Oswald was calm and faced with

(17:08):
the reality that he was not going to get a
quick visa, he left the Soviet compound and didn't even
take the visa paperwork that was offered to him. It
is the next event on the Oswald Mexico City timeline
that makes little sense. According to the House Select Committee report,
a call recorded and transcribed by the CIA came into

(17:31):
the Soviet Consulate from the Cuban Consulate that same Saturday
morning at eleven fifty one a m. About an hour
and a half after Oswalt left the Soviet compound. On
the line to the Soviets was who had been identified
as both Sylvia Duran and Lee Harvey Oswalt. The purpose

(17:51):
of the call, it seems, was to clarify details of
the visa paperwork. The call is strange for a few reasons. First,
the Cuban Consulate was closed on Saturdays. For Sylvia Durand
to be working that day, she would have had to
have been called in for special situation. Second, by reading

(18:13):
the transcript of this call, it seems like the people
who are doing the talking are fishing for information and
are not really sure of the sequence of events that
had already happened. Third, the person identified as Oswald spoke broken,
almost incomprehensible Russian. Oswald was a fluent speaker of that language.

(18:36):
The fourth strange aspect of the call is that there
was no need for it to have been made in
the first place. If Oswald left the Soviet Consulate that
morning and had resigned himself to the fact that getting
a quick visa was hopeless, why would there be any
need for a follow up telephone call. The House Select

(18:57):
Committee theorized that this Oswald made have been an impostor.
It was not uncommon for the CIA station itself or
other intelligence agencies to impersonate people successfully. For whatever ends,
This voice impostor would make perfect sense. On Tuesday, October first,

(19:18):
the day before Oswald left Mexico, two more calls came
into the Soviet consulate, one made at ten thirty one
and the other at ten forty five. The people transcribing
the calls noted that it was the same person who
was on the Saturday morning call to the Soviets. The
man on the line identified himself as Oswald by name.

(19:41):
He spoke poor Russian and was checking on the status
of his visa. Again, this makes no sense because there
was no visa to check and the speaker's Russian was bad.
There can be very little doubt that the person who
made the two calls on Tuesday and the one on
Saturday was some sort of voice double for Oswald. The

(20:03):
story does not end here, and nor does it get
any less complicated. After Lee Harvey Oswald left the Soviet
diplomatic compound on Saturday morning, we have a few days
the rest of Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday that are
not properly accounted for in the original Warren Commission report.

(20:26):
There is next to nothing about what he was doing
on these missing days. It was after the Commission published
its findings that rumors began to circulate about Oswald's whereabouts
in Mexico from September twenty eighth to October third, nineteen
sixty three. The two big rumors that ended up being

(20:46):
investigated by the House Select Committee in the late nineteen
seventies had to do with Oswald's involvement with a leftist
student group and Oswald being spotted at a party in
a private home. The House Committee eventually tracked down a
man named Oscot Contreras, who was part of a pro
Castro student group at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

(21:11):
or UNAM Sylvia. Duran from the Cuban consulate allegedly told
Oswald that getting a solid recommendation from a pro Cuban
source might expedite his visa paperwork, and so this was
the reason why he made the university visit. Contreras and
other Mexican students interacted with Oswald at a lecture at

(21:35):
UNAM's School of Philosophy. Besides Contreras, no other students from
the group were ever identified or found. No photographs or
other physical proof that Oswald was at the university have
ever surfaced. In the course of an investigation undertaken by
Jim Garrison, the district attorney from New Orleans, Contreras was

(22:00):
interviewed and provided vague details of his interaction with Oswald.
Contreras never spoke to the House Committee. Another rumor that
Oswald had been spotted at a party either Monday or
Tuesday night comes from a very interesting source, the wife
of Mexican poet and diplomat Octavio pas. This woman, a

(22:24):
poet in her own right, was Elena Garro. Goro was
at this party, which was being held at the home
of Ruben Duran Navarro, the brother in law of Sylvia Duran,
the Mexican employee at the Cuban Consulate. Ruben was Elena's cousin.
Goro claimed that she saw Oswald at the party with

(22:45):
two other young, quote beat nick looking unquote American men.
No one at the party spoke to the three Americans,
and after the assassination, the Durans stated that Oswald was
ever at any of their parties. Elena Garro claimed to
see Oswald and the other two Americans the next day

(23:08):
on Abenida de los in Sorgentes, one of the main
boulevards of the Mexican capital. No photographs of the party exist,
and there are no other witnesses to Oswald at the party.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations tried to get a
statement from Elena Goro in the late nineteen seventies, but

(23:29):
could not. Goro was also responsible in part for perpetuating
another rumor that Sylvia Duran, the Mexican employ at the
Cuban consulate who supposedly helped Oswald with his visa issues,
was having an intimate relationship with Oswald while he was
in Mexico. This allegation deserves further investigation. In the mid

(23:53):
nineteen sixties, when rumors initiated or perpetuated by Elena Garro
began to swarm around Mexico City, Goro was already being
discredited from being a reliable source for information. She didn't
like the Cubans, and she didn't like her cousin's sister
in law, Sylvia Doran. After the assassination of Kennedy, Elena

(24:17):
Garro had her own personal reasons for connecting the alleged
assassin to Doran and the Cubans. Cia Station chief Winston
Scott was aware of Elena Goro's allegations and dismissed her
as being quote nuts end quote. A very interesting figure
connected to Lee Harvey Oswald's time in Mexico City and

(24:41):
who keeps popping up in the research was Sylvia Doran,
the attractive twenty six year old Mexican employee at the
Cuban consulate who helped Oswald initially and was accused by
the rumor mill of having an affair with him. Perhaps
Sylvia was an easy target to victimize because it it
was well known around the diplomatic circles in Mexico City

(25:04):
that a few years before she had had an affair
with the then Cuban ambassador to Mexico. At some point
after the Kennedy assassination, Silvia Duran was picked up for
questioning by the Mexican police and possibly tortured. While the
full contents of the Duran interrogation were not made available

(25:26):
to the Americans, it was made public that Duran confessed
to having intimate relations with Oswald. This piece of information
was also reported in the Mexican newspapers. The House Select
Committee on Assassinations could not verify the veracity of Duran's testimony,
and in its final reports speculated that Sylvia Duran could

(25:50):
have been a penetration agent placed in the Cuban embassy,
either by the American Cia or by the Mexicans, hence
the reason why the Mexicans apprehended her and coerced a
statement out of her. Sylvia Doran's role in all of
this could be pivotal, especially in light of the great
doubt that later researchers have placed on the possibility that

(26:13):
the Lee Harvey Oswalt was never even in Mexico. Researchers
who allege that the real Lee Harvey Oswalt was never
in Mexico City cite several anomalous pieces of information to
strengthen their case. As previously mentioned, the House Select Committee
believed that three calls allegedly made by Oswald were fake,

(26:38):
including the last call from the Cuban Consulate to the
Soviet Consulate, which supposedly involved Sylvia Douran. The man calling
himself Oswalt spoke incomprehensible Russian, while the real Oswald was
fluent in that language. But what do we know of
the other visits and calls? What tangible proof exists? That

(27:00):
Oswald was really there. It was well known that the
Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City were under heavy scrutiny.
The CIA, as well as intelligence agencies from other governments,
closely monitored the comings and goings of the people there
and all the photographs that were taken during the highly

(27:22):
scrutinized time of Oswalt's visit. Not a single photograph of
Lee Harvey Oswalt has surfaced, even after two government investigations.
During a trip taken to Havana, Cuba, to investigate this case,
investigators of the House Select Committee on Assassinations met with

(27:43):
Castro representatives who shared their own surveillance materials from the
Cuban embassy and consulate from late September and early October
of nineteen sixty three. The Cubans had books of photographs
taken outside their own diplomatic compound, and those photos showed
everyone coming and going. Oswald was not to be seen

(28:05):
among the pictures. In addition to this lack of photographic evidence,
we also have conflicting statements made by eyewitnesses who were
in the presence of the man claiming to be Oswald
at the Cuban consulate. These witnesses reported that he was blonde, muscular,

(28:25):
and almost thirty years old. The real Oswald was twenty four, skinny,
and no more than five foot six. Wire tapping and
recording device evidence of Oswald's time in Mexico City is
also nonexistent. Either tapes were erased, misfiled, or destroyed. All

(28:46):
we have left are transcripts. Speaking of transcripts, a curious
transcript of a phone conversation between President Lyndon Johnson and
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was uncovered by by intrepid
jfk Assassination researchers. It starts with President Johnson asking, quote,

(29:08):
have you established any more about the Oswald visit to
the Soviet embassy in Mexico in September end quote? The
FBI director replies, quote No, that's one angle that's very confusing.
For this reason, we have up here the tape and
the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet

(29:29):
embassy using Oswald's name. The picture and the tape do
not correspond to the man's voice nor to his appearance.
In other words, it appears that there is a second
person who was at the Soviet embassy end quote, So
was Oswald even in Mexico. Some researchers believe that the

(29:51):
real Oswald had information about plots to kill Cuban President
Fidel Castro and that he was really working for the CEA.
Castro stated publicly that he felt like he was being
set up to take the fall for the Kennedy assassination.
Did some sort of blame the Cuban's plot get thwarted

(30:13):
and Oswald was sacrificed. Could missing photos and conflicting reports
of various Oswald's in Mexico City be part of what
Dan Hardaway from the Select Committee said about conspiracies. Has
all of this been part of the red herrings, false trails,
and disinformation that Hardaway was talking about. There are many

(30:36):
JFK related documents that still have not been released to
the public, but even after their release, we may never
know the full story of Lee Harvey Oswald's five days
in Mexico. Thank you once again for listening to another
episode of Mexico Unexplained. Remember to like and subscribe to

(30:59):
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Once again, until next time, Thank you and gracias.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Thank you, but listening to another episode of Mexico Unexplained
with host Robert Bitto. For show summary, relevant links, and commentary.
Please check out our website at Mexicoanexplained dot com. Like
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