The Newly Released Files, Part 2

      The process for releasing the JFK files is like a slow leak. The information comes out drip by changed drip. The same document may have been released previously, but the new one will have a deletion, such as someone’s name, removed and replaced by the name. Nothing is dramatically new in any individual document. Collectively, however, they are adding to the story of a shoddy investigation of the assassination in 1963 and 1964, lackadaisical attitudes on the part of the intelligence agencies since, and a repeated lack of forthrightness to the public and to our elected representatives in Congress.

1.  Richard Helms and Nestor Sanchez meet with DRE leaders.  On November 13, 1962, as the Cuban Missile Crisis wound down, Helms and Sanchez met with Luis Rocha and Jose Lasa of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE). Helms was Deputy Director for Plans, the #2 job, at the CIA. Sanchez was a case officer (he handled agents) in what was then called Task Force W, run by Bill Harvey. It would be renamed the Special Affairs Staff when Desmond FitzGerald took over a short time later.  The meeting was held in Helms's office at CIA. Helms used his real name; Sanchez used an alias. Helms outlined the purpose of the meeting was first to gain information on the status of the Soviet missiles in Cuba and second to discuss the CIA/DRE relationship. This memorandum of the meeting gives a good feel for how the CIA did business in those days, but this isn't what is important about the document.

     Rather, the important thing is what would happen later. Sanchez would go on to become the CIA's case officer dealing with Rolando Cubela in a plot to overthrow/assassinate Fidel Castro.  Just over a year later, November 22, 1963, the two men would meet in a safehouse in Paris. At the meeting, Sanchez promised Cubela rifles with telescopic sights and a poison pen (or a dart pen).  This later meeting would end abruptly upon word of the President's death. That Sanchez would be the case officer both for DRE and Cubela might make sense because Cubela had led the DRE in Cuba during the Revolution. 

     I was unaware of Sanchez's connection to the DRE when I was on the Church Committee. I don't know if others on the committee were aware of this.  I never saw it mentioned in the documents. The bottom line is that the CIA was in a ticklish position dealing with the Church Committee. If it were forthright and told the committee that Sanchez had served as case officer to the DRE, the committee would surely have delved deeper into DRE and Oswald.

     The Warren Commission was interested in the DRE because Lee Harvey Oswald had a street confrontation with members in New Orleans in August 1963 and a debate on radio with one member.  At the time, Oswald was pro-Castro while the U.S. branch of DRE was anti-Castro.  The bottom line is that CIA had been in the same ticklish position with the Warren Commission. If it told the commission about its own ties to DRE, the commission might have been led to Sanchez and thus have learned about the CIA's plot to kill Castro.

2.  Recruitment of Esebio AZCUE Lopez. Azcue was the Cuban consul in Mexico City with whom Oswald met and argued during his visit there in September-October 1963. Oswald wanted a visa to Cuba. Azcue supposedly didn't like Oswald and told him he was giving the Cuban Revolution a bad name. Azcue would leave his post in Mexico and return to Cuba on November 18, 1963, four days before Kennedy was murdered.  The CIA assured the Warren Commission that Azcue's replacement had been announced well in advance, thus presumably demonstrating there was nothing sinister in his seemingly hightailing it back to Cuba before the assassination.  However, again the CIA wasn't forthright. It didn't tell the commission that it had given the green light to Azcue's recruitment -- although it didn't think he would be amenable.  Notably, the commission didn't get confirmation about Azcue's reason for leaving Mexico until a week before its report was publicly released. He was finally questioned about his encounter with Oswald by the House Assassinations Committee more than twenty years later. His testimony stuck to what was in the Warren Report.

3. Gilberto Policarpo Lopez. His story may be found in earlier posts on this blog, but the new releases merit revisiting his tale. Lopez crossed (fled?) from Texas into Mexico about twelve hours after the assassination. He arrived in Mexico City on November 25 and stayed in a hotel until flying to Havana as the only passenger on a regularly scheduled Cubana Airlines flight with a crew of nine.  CIA surveillance cameras at the Mexico City airport took a picture of him about to board the plane. He wore sunglasses. It was 7:00 pm.  The sunglasses hinder identification and suggest he had been warned about the surveillance.  

     In March 1964, the CIA received a report from Mexican police saying Lopez had been "involved in the assassination."  The CIA did nothing to investigate this report, nor did it tell the Warren Commission. In fact, it did just the opposite. When the Warren Commission staff visited Mexico City in April, the CIA station assured them that it had received nothing to suggest a conspiracy even though it had received the report on Lopez a month earlier.  Later FBI reports established that Lopez had been living in Tampa, but the FBI did not tell the agent doing the investigation of the allegation that Lopez was involved in the assassination. The agent reported that on November 17 Lopez was at a meeting of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee awaiting a phone call from Cuba for the go-ahead to return to the island (he had visited before).  There was no phone call.  The next day, President Kennedy visited Tampa.  This was the same day Azcue left Mexico. The same open-air convertible that ferried Kennedy around Tampa would be used in Dallas four days later.  And Lopez would leave for Texas on November 20, the same day the CIA signaled Cubela that it would provide him assassination weapons, and the same day Lee Harvey Oswald must have made the decision to kill Kennedy.

     The Church Committee's report was the first public mention of Lopez's possible connection to Kennedy's assassination.  With its mandate expiring, it recommended the newly-formed House Assassinations Committee continue the investigation.  However, because I wasn't satisfied that we had left no stone unturned, I went to the Secret Service to see if perhaps it had investigated Lopez.  After all, the Mexican police had claimed he was involved in Kennedy's assassination, and so I thought the Secret Service might have followed up as part of its protection of future presidents. I had experience in the Army intelligence with "watch lists" of possible threats to visiting bigwigs. For this reason, I went to Secret Service headquarters where I gave an agent identifying information on Lopez. After entering that information into his computer, he announced that the Secret Service had no file on Lopez.  "What is he alleged to have done?" the agent asked.  "Assassinate John Kennedy," I answered.  "Check with the CIA." The CIA may not have been of much help.  According to a document in the 2017 releases, the CIA Office of Security didn't have Lopez in its database before the Church Committee began investigating.

The new releases show the CIA was still casual about Lopez.  It wasn't until December 1976, six months after the Church Committee report was made public, that the agency prepared its own chronology.  Someone highligted in the margin that Lopez was alleged to have been involved in Kennedy's assassination.  Yet there is no evidence of any further investigation except in 1977, presumably for the House Assassinations Committee investigation, the CIA asked an officer who had been in the Mexico City station in 1964 if he remembered the Mexican police report that Lopez was involved in the assassination. The officer did not remember. However, he suggested a retired officer may have handled the report. There is no evidence the CIA contacted the retired officer.

     In the end, while the House Assassinations Committee report chided the CIA for its derelictions in 1963 and 1964, it did not investigate on its own.  Instead, it ventured that the Mexican police allegation about Lopez was probably wrong. However, since the House report does not mention President Kennedy's visit to Tampa on November 18, it didn't seem to understand how sinister the known facts about Lopez were and remain. Johnny Roselli was part of the underworld that the CIA recruited to assassinate Castro in the 1960-1962 time frame. He had contacts in Cuba who were close enough to Castro to kill him. In 1967, Roselli's lawyer suggested to the FBI that Castro had dispatched "teams" to several different cities to kill Kennedy.  Roselli had no memory of any of this when he testifed to the Church Committee.  He was murdered six months later. The question remains: Was Lopez on a team in Tampa?

4. AMTHUG is a sitting duck. A previously released document deserves mention on the matter of forthrightness. AMTHUG was the cryptonym for Fidel Castro, a combination of "AM" for Cuban-related matters and "Thug," which was, in the CIA's way of thinking, a mneomic device. This cable from the CIA station in Mexico to headquarters is dated November 10, 1963. "DEGRIP," a businessman who traveled to Cuba, told the CIA that Castro had resumed eating at the Montecatini restaurant in Havana. (It is still there). Castro arrived with only one security car as escort. He waited in the line outside just like a regular patron. Then he would enter with two companions, leaving his security detail outside. The other patrons were not disturbed or ejected. Castro would go into the kitchen alone to chat with the employees. The businessman provided this information, remarking "you can draw own conclusion on possibilities." He also commented that Castro "is a sitting duck."

In other words, twelve days before Kennedy was assassinated by the pro-Castro Oswald, the CIA station in Mexico City, which would soon be overwhelmed by demands from headquarters related to the President's assassination, was telling headquarters how Castro could be assassinated. Now the layman might think this happened all the time, and that might be true. However, during the Church Committee investigation of assassination plots against foreign leaders, the CIA repeatedly argued that John McCone, who was director in those days, was a Catholic and morally opposed to assassination. Everyone at CIA understood, supposedly, that McCone would not contenance assassination. It is, therefore, interesting to say the least that despite McCone's alleged injunctions against assassination, the Mexico station had no compunction against relaying information about how to assassinate Castro.