But Did He Read Murder, Inc.?

       "Unlike some of his predecessors, Mr. Trump did not care about intelligence reports about U.F.O.s, but he would ask questions about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."  Trump's Taste in Intelligence, The New York Times, September 2, 2022.  

       I want to put a little humor in this blog.  The FBI inventory of the material seized at Mar-a-Lago included several unidentified books, so maybe Murder, Inc. is among them.  Now, I doubt this since Trump is not known to be much a reader. But in that case, why did he stash the books away with classified documents?  Anyway, an author can only hope.:)

       On a more serious note, the New York Times might have expanded on why Donald Trump is interested in the Kennedy assassination -- but not UFOs. And if he truly is interested in the assassination, why didn't he declassify the so-called "secret files" when he had the opportunity as president?

Search and seizure

      Some charge that the FBI photograph of the classified documents on a carpeted floor at Mar-a-Lago during its search and seizure there were staged to suggest improper handling.  

       But in fact, the usual procedure in search and seizures is to photograph the items seized individually and collectively.  The photographs below were taken of everything seized in Lee Harvey Oswald's room in Dallas after the assassination. When the Dallas police got to the rooming house where Oswald had been living and confirmed it was his room, they had to wait for a justice of the peace to drive to the house to issue a search warrant.  They then collected everything in the room that Oswald owned and took it to the police station where they had special camera arrangements to photograph items individually.  They also laid everything seized out on the floor and photographed it.  

      Although books on the assassination rarely talk about these photographs, I found them useful.  For one thing, it appears that about the only things Oswald had at the rooming house were the items he had taken with him to Mexico City. That stands to reason since he only lived with Marina at Mrs. Paine's for a few days after returning from Mexico City.  He moved out once he rented a room in Dallas and then moved again.  For another thing, the photograph shows various possessions of his that are talked about in the Warren Report, and this photograph lets you visualize how it got them. You will also notice that although the seizure was on November 22, this photograph wasn't taken until the next day.

      The two items that still pique my curiousity were the radio, which I discuss in Murder, Inc., and Oswald's shoes.  Note that the shoes seem to have been worn in the rain and have mud on them.  I checked the weather in Dallas the week of November 17.  There was a heavy rain on Wednesday, November 20. That would explain why the shoes look like they've gotten wet.  Oswald probably had walked through the rain on his way home that night, and they were too wet to wear the next day, November 21, when he went to work. Then he had spent that night with Marina at Mrs. Paine's.  The next morning he went straight from there to the book depository.  

        But how to explain the mud?  Walking through the rain on sidewalks doesn't get shoes muddy. It has always made me wonder if he had an outdoor antenna for his Turist radio to listen to Cuban radio and if he got his shoes muddy by going out in the yard on the night of November 20 to take the incriminating antenna down. Of course, no antenna wire was found in his room.

Disinformation on Classified Information

Some defenders of former President Trump’s taking classified documents with him after he left the White House are running a disinformation campaign.  They say there can’t be anything criminal in this because Trump declassified the documents. This is irrelevant under applicable criminal laws. 

Scott R. Anderson of Brookings Institute posted a good piece on LawFare about this, “Does It Matter What (If Anything) Trump Declassified?” https://www.lawfareblog.com/does-it-matter-what-if-anything-trump-declassified.  I thought it might be a good to review the law on this blog. In later posts, I will get into the declassification of the JFK records.

The criminal laws on disclosing national security information are not related to the security classification system, except for evidentiary purposes.  The criminal laws ask whether the disclosed information relates to the national defense. They are not geared to what might be stamped on the documents.  Those stamped classifications, like Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret, are creatures of Executive Orders. Government employees may be barred from having access to them, e.g., denied a security clearance, fired for mishandling them, or enjoined from making the information public.  But government employees may not be put in jail for violating the Executive Orders.

There is wisdom behind this result.  A joke told in Germany during WWII was of two men talking. The first whispered that they had to be careful because their friend Fritz had just been arrested for what he said.  “What was the charge?” the second man asked. “Disclosing state secrets,” the first answered.  “Fritz was a carpenter.  He didn’t know any state secrets. What did he say?”  the second asked.  The first man looked around to make sure no one overheard and whispered, “Hitler is a fool.”

The principle laws are these:  

• Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information. 18 U.S.C. 793.

• Gathering or delivering defense information to aid a foreign government. 18 U.S.C. 794.

• Disclosure of classified information. 18 U.S.C. 798.  Note however that the words “classified information” as used here do not refer to the security classifications established by executive order but rather to “communications intelligence,” such as “code, cipher, or cryptographic system.”  

• Communication of restricted data.  42 U.S.C, 2274.  “Restricted data” is data concerning (1) design, manufacture, or utilization of atomic weapons; (2) the production of special nuclear material; or (3) the use of special nuclear material in the production of energy.  Communication of such information with intent or reason to believe it will injure the United States or secure an advantage for a foreign government is a crime.

• Receipt of restricted data. 42 U.S.C. 2275. This essentially criminalizes spying to get atomic secrets and requires intent.

• Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources. 50 U.S.C. 3121.  Criminalizes disclosure of the identity of covert agents. 

Several hypotheticals illustrate how these work.  I’ll start with the strictest, restricted data. An independent researcher who has never worked for the government or read a classified document on atomic bombs nevertheless publishes accurate information on how to make one.  42 U.S.C.  2274 makes it a crime if he publishes his paper with intent to injure the United States or to help a foreign government.

18 U.S.C. 798 is basically aimed at communications codes. Disclosing information about the cryptographic systems of the United States. is a crime. If such information falls into your lap, say you’re a reporter, and you publish it, you have violated the law. Atomic energy information and communications intelligence are considered dangerous genies. Once they are let out of the bottle, the government can’t put them back.  

50 U.S.C. 3121 on disclosing agent identities is odd in several respects.  First, it applies only to the identities of agents that are obtained from “classified information.”  However, it does not define that term.  It seems likely that it was intended to apply to information that was classified under an Executive Order, but since it doesn’t define the term, who knows what it means. Presumably, if the agent himself tells someone that he is working for the government, the person receiving that information is free to disclose it.  This is an odd result.  Second, although the title says it applies to “sources,” it apparently only applies to human sources.  It does not apply to disclosures about how powerful a spy satellite's telescope might be.  Third, although the title says it applies to undercover intelligence officers, the text only applies to “covert agents.”  The CIA, for one, assiduously distinguishes between “case officers,” who are employees, and “agents,” who are not employees. As I recall, this law was amended as a result of the assassination of a CIA station chief after his name was published.  But the text of the law wouldn’t seem to apply to that assassination.

The two most frequently used national security laws are 18 U.S.C. 793 and 794.  The second law is aimed at what everyone thinks of as spying.  It is a crime to gather national defense information to aid a foreign government or injure the United States.  For example, it is November 1941, and two people are taking pictures of the naval ships at Pearl Harbor.  One is a tourist who takes the pictures to show his friends back in Iowa.  The second photographer will send his photographs to those in Japan who are planning the December 7 attack.  In neither case is classified information involved. The first man has done nothing wrong.  The second has committed a crime.

Section 793(a), (b), and (c) overlap with Section 794.   Section 793(d) applies to someone with lawful access to defense information who passes it to someone not authorized to have it. The section also applies to someone with lawful possession of such information who refuses to return it when asked.  Subparagraph (e) applies to someone who leaks information.  And subparagraph (f) applies to a person who, through gross negligence, lets someone else acquire national defense information and to any person who fails to report such a loss.  

The bottom line is that declassifying a document doesn’t mean the document is no longer subject to the criminal laws.  Take the hypothetical of a person who doesn’t know the document was declassified and who delivers it to a foreign power.  He has the requisite criminal intent.  The document is stamped Top Secret.  If the information in the document aids the foreign power or if the United States is harmed by its being passed on, why shouldn’t the person be charged as a spy?  With respect to the boxes of classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago, the claim that Trump had standing orders to declassify any document that left the White House is no defense if those documents in fact contain national defense information. 

Beware the Golden Rule of Assassination

     I wrote this as an op ed on January 3, 2020 and submitted it to several publications.  None was interested. I chalked it up to how little editors understand history.  However, now with the arrest of an Iranian on suspicion that he planned to assassinate John Bolton in retaliation for Soeleimani's killing, I wanted to publish it somewhere. This blog seemed appropriate.

 Beware the Golden Rule of Assassination 

            Qasem Soleimani of Iran was assassinated in a drone strike in Baghdad.  The White House has indicated that President Trump himself gave the order.  Was this wise?  Iran has vowed “severe revenge.” 

            This is the first time in history that the United States has so openly stated that it assassinated someone and that the president ordered it.  This is contrary to an executive order against assassination that Republican president Gerald Ford signed.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this prohibition against assassination was the work of bleeding-heart liberals, or that it was because murder violates most people’s moral principles.  There are good, practical, hard-hearted reasons for not assassinating people.  These might be summed up as the “Golden Rule” of assassination:  Others will do unto you what you did to them.  Assassination invites retaliation.

            It is never clear who will pay the price of assassination, but a price will surely be paid.  I make an historical case-in-point in my book, Murder, Inc., The CIA under John F. Kennedy.  The title comes from something former president Lyndon Johnson said to a reporter.  When asked about President Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson said he thought Cuba’s Fidel Castro had retaliated for CIA attempts to kill him.  After all, Johnson continued, Kennedy was running “a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean.”

            The parallels between recent events with respect to Iran and those in 1963 with respect to Cuba are instructive.  Kennedy wanted the CIA to get rid of Castro and the Communist regime in Cuba.  The CIA tried first by having Cuban exiles invade at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. That failed.  The CIA turned to Operation Mongoose in 1962 to create discontent in Cuba with raids and sabotage, but this operation was shut down after the Cuban Missile Crisis.  In 1963, the CIA decided to orchestrate a coup.  But when it first met with the high-level Cuban that it wanted to lead the coup, he insisted Castro’s assassination was the only way to do it.  Castro seemed instantly to know what was going on because that very same day he warned through a reporter “United States leaders should be mindful that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” 

            The National Security Council analyzed Castro’s threat and concluded that he might order the sabotage of an American oil refinery in Latin America or the assassination of an American businessman or diplomat there.  However, it did not know the CIA was involved in a possible assassination plot against Castro.  Thus, it did not take his threat literally.  It did not think he would try to assassinate the president, and it did not warn the FBI or Secret Service.          

            The CIA’s assassination plot against Castro continued.  It was meeting with the assassin, offering him a poison pen and promising him sniper rifles, at the very moment President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

            Murder, Inc. concludes that President Kennedy authorized the CIA plot and that President Johnson approved the CIA’s covering it up from the Warren Commission.  The intelligence professionals at the CIA had opposed the assassination aspects of the planned coup but were apparently overruled by the White House.  In Senate hearings in 1975, Senator Frank Church asked Richard Helms, deputy director of CIA in 1963: “If we reserve to ourselves the prerogative to assassinate foreign leaders, we may invite reciprocal action from foreign governments… wouldn’t you agree?” Helms answered simply: “Yes sir.”

            That is the point of the Golden Rule of assassination.  If our government does it, we invite retaliation.  Indeed, by taking credit for the assassination of Soleimani, President Trump seems to be daring Iran.  Hopefully, that doesn’t prove as unwise as it seems at the moment.    

The Red Scare

             Earl Warren clearly did not want his commission to stray into the subject of Communism.  But his reasons for this are not so clear.

            In an earlier post, I pointed out that author Philip Shenon wrote in his book that Silvia Duran agreed to come to the United States to testify to the commission under oath, but Chief Justice Earl Warren vetoed the idea because "she was a communist and we [the Commission] don't talk to communists."  In my book, I quote the lawyer John Abt, who represented Vincent Lee when he testified before the commission:  “It quickly became obvious that neither the FBI nor the Warren Commission were really interested in digging into the case, to really discover if there was a conspiracy.  They certainly weren’t interested in trying to show the Communists were a party to the matter.” And then there is CIA historian David Robage’s characterization of his agency’s investigation of the assassination as “passive.”

            Why was this?  Warren and other members of the commission had the unpleasant experience of “Red-baiting” during the McCarthy era with claims that Communists had  infiltrated government. Naturally, those commission members would not want to be accused of doing the same thing in investigating Kennedy’s assassination, at least not without good reason. 

            On the other hand, the introduction of the Warren Report does seem to parrot Nicholas Katzenbach’s memorandum to the White House on November 26, 1963 – which he later called badly worded – saying speculation about Oswald’s “motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting the thought that this was a Communist conspiracy.” 

            I’ve not seen any books or articles address this question in depth.

Radio interview

      Dale Johnson of KFOR-FM in Lincoln, Nebraska, interviewed me recently. He was particularly fascinated by my books account of what the CIA was doing with respect to Cuba in the last week of Kennedy's life.  You can listen to the interview on the station's website for the next several weeks.

November 18 in Tampa

            My earlier installments on the files from the National Archives of Mexico prompted me to take a second look at Vincent T. Lee and Gilberto Policarpo Lopez.

            Several articles on Vincent Lee in the Tampa Times caught my eye.  He got his start in Tampa, where Ybor City, started around 1890 by a cigar manufacturer, was the center of a vibrant Cuban community.  In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, an article in the November 26, 1963 edition of the paper said “in 1959 it was no secret that Castro was a popular figure among Latins and Anglos.”  But after Castro took power, tensions between pro and anti-Castro forces started building. Lee took the lead with pro-Castro elements. He founded the Tampa chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, drawing 250 people to its first meeting in early 1961.  He rose quickly to become head of the national FPCC in New York.

            In December 27, 1963, the Tampa paper reported that Lee had resigned from the FPCC. It added, without referencing its source, that the committee was “financed originally by the Castro Cuban delegation to the United Nations.”  In Murder, Inc., I point out that the FPCC and several other, left-wing organizations that Lee Harvey Oswald corresponded with were located in a small section of Greenwich Village in New York and were certainly accessible to the Cuban delegation at the UN.  I also noted that when the FBI broke into the FPCC’s New York headquarters, it acquired the Committee’s foreign mailing list, which included Fidel Castro himself in Havana.

            There is nothing in the Tampa paper about Gilberto Lopez, nor would one expect there would be. He had only moved there in June 1963.  Before that, he had lived and worked in Key West.  The FBI investigation of him found that the men he knew in Key West were anti-Castro whereas Lopez seemed pro-Castro. Perhaps he moved to Tampa to find a more congenial political atmosphere.

            John Kennedy visited Tampa on Monday, November 18, 1963.  It was a rather brief visit with the usual focus on politics.  Thus, he spoke to a crowd at the baseball stadium, then to the Chamber of Commerce, and finally to a union gathering.

            What was unusual about the visit, however, was that he spent almost an equal amount of time at a military facility, MacDill Air Force Base. Kennedy rarely wasted time on military bases. His charisma paid far better dividends when he was exposed to civilian crowds. But MacDill was headquarters of the U.S. Strike Command.  Its quick reaction forces might be needed if the CIA pulled off its planned coup in Cuba.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was surprised to learn that the military didn’t have a quick reaction force.  He was told it would take eighteen days to have a force large enough to go into Cuba. So the visit to MacDill seemed designed for Kennedy to see how much progress had been made and whether it was ready to go to Cuba if needed.

            The White House had been worried about demonstrations by pro and anti- Castro elements in Tampa, but Kennedy’s visit went off without a hitch. FBI agent Moses Aleman, who would later do the investigation into Lopez’s activities, and his fellow agents received commendations from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover for their work in providing security for Kennedy’s visit.

            However, in the same November 26, 1963, edition of the Tampa Times that carried the story on Lee, there was a second article reporting a rumor that Lee Harvey Oswald had been in Tampa during Kennedy’s visit. The article quoted the chief of police saying the rumor wasn’t true, and of course it wasn’t.  Besides, ominous, pre-assassination sightings of Oswald were as common as those of Bigfoot. Nonetheless, one wonders if the rumor was based on a grain of truth that it was Lopez who was up to no good. I am sorry that I didn’t know about this newspaper article in my conversations with Moses Aleman.  But then I doubt that he heard or remembered any such rumor or else he would have volunteered it in our discussions.

            The point is the same that I make in Murder, Inc.  With few exceptions, the investigation of Kennedy's assassination veered away from leads suggesting a foreign conspiracy. 

A Second Look at the Files from the National Archives of Mexico - Part III

     A single page in the Duran files hints that the files of the Direccion Federal de Seguridad (DFS or Federal Security Directorate) once held more provocative information that has not been made public. It is page 43 and shown at the bottom left of this posting. It is a redacted photograph that is labeled "Alvarado Ugarte" but is in fact Gilberto Policarpo Lopez.  As will be explained, Gilberto ALVARADO Ugarte was thoroughly investigated, and his claim was deemed a fabrication. (Spanish convention puts the surname second and the mother's name last. To avoid confusion, American intelligence services put the surname in all capital letters. By American convention his name was Gilberto Ugarte Alvarado). In  contrast, suspicions about Gilberto Lopez were never investigated by American intelligence or the Warren Commission. However, this one page suggests Mexican authorities may have investigated him. 

     The story of Alvarado is legend.   He showed up at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City on November 25, 1963, with a wild tale of being in the Cuban consulate on September 18, 1963, and seeing a Cuban pay Oswald to kill Kennedy. Despite the fact that the FBI and CIA knew Oswald was in New Orleans on September 18, President Lyndon Johnson received in-person briefings from CIA Director John McCone on the latest developments on the Alvarado matter for several days. Later, Alvarado retracted the allegation and even later retracted the retraction. Nonetheless, the allegation consumed a great deal of CIA and FBI time and resources in the days after the assassination.

     Lopez's story is different.  He came to the DFS's attention at about the same time as the sole passenger on a commercial flight to Cuba on November 27, but the flap over Alvarado may have distracted American and Mexican authorities from investigating Lopez more aggressively.  He had been raised in Cuba but was an American citizen. He moved to Florida as an adult and was living in Tampa on November 18, 1963, when John Kennedy visited.  Two days later, he  obtained a tourist visa from the Mexican consulate in Tampa and headed west. 

     The border between Texas and Mexico was closed upon word of Kennedy's assassination on November 22. When it reopened around midnight, Mexican authorities recorded that Lopez entered Mexico as a passenger in private car.  They would later give the FBI a list of the drivers of those cars together with their make and engine number. (While engine numbers are harder to change, they are not as useful for investigators as license plates). Nothing was ever done with this information.  The FBI made no attempt to determine who drove Lopez across the border that night.

    Lopez arrived in Mexico City in the late afternoon of November 25, the same day that Alvarado showed up at the U.S. embassy.  Two days later, on the evening of November 27, Lopez flew to Havana as the only passenger on a Cubana airlines flight with a crew of nine. The CIA and FBI first learned about Lopez on December 3, and on December 5 Mexican authorities gave the CIA a  photograph of him as he was about to board the Havana flight.

     Inexplicably, except for a check of U.S. files on Lopez, the CIA and FBI let the matter drop. Mexican authorities seemed concerned however.  The very purpose of closing the border on the afternoon of November 22 was to prevent Kennedy's assassin and any accomplices from escaping to Mexico. For this reason, Lopez's entry that night aroused suspicions. Mexican authorities also reported to the CIA that they had "lost" track of him between the time he entered from Texas and his appearance at the airport five days later. 

     In late February 1964, Mexican federal police (not DFS)  told the CIA that Lopez had been "involved" in Kennedy's assassination.  Strange at it seems, the CIA did not ask for details.  However, it finally began asking the FBI to investigate Lopez's life in Florida.  Among other things, the FBI learned that Lopez had been at the house of the head of the Tampa Fair Play for Cuba Committee on November 17, the day before Kennedy's visit to the city, waiting for a phone call from Cuba that would give him the go ahead to return. FBI investigators were not told the reason for the investigation, i.e., Lopez's possible connection to the Kennedy assassination.

       This brings us to page 43 of the Mexican Archives' file on Silva Duran. That page is below on the left. It reads Alvarado Ugarte and Gilbert. It shows a man in a shirt or jacket with a checked pattern and hands on a counter. His face has been redacted.  The CIA photograph of Gilberto Policarpo Lopez taken before he boarded the flight to Havana on the night of November 27 is on the right.  Comparing the checked pattern of the shirt and the collar line reveals the two images to be the same.  The CIA image has simply been cropped from the original.  The question is what more do DFS files in Mexico contain on Lopez that has not been made public.  Did DFS save the passenger manifest of the flight?  It usually did.  Did the CIA tell DFS that Mexican police said Lopez was involved?  Did DFS investigate?

Mexican Archives Redacted

CIA Gilberto Policarpo Lopez 

       

     

A Second Look at the Files from the National Archives of Mexico - Part II

      The signed statement of Silvia Duran in the files is interesting, if for no other reason, because it has been unavailable for so many years.  When the Warren Commission staff went to Mexico City in April 1964, Duran was the prime witness it wanted to interview.  Commission staff lawyer David Slawson says this repeatedly in his notes on the staff trip.  He wrote that the staff did review the "interrogation" (singular).  However, because of difficulties in finding an acceptable way of taking Duran's testimony under oath in Mexico, the staff planned to fly her to the United States to testify.  This never happened.  According to author Philip Shenon, Duran agreed to it, but Chief Justice Earl Warren vetoed the idea because "she was a communist and we [the Commission] don't talk to communists."  This wasn't quite true though.  The Commission heard from Vincent Lee of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He might not have been a card-carrying communist, but he obviously supported Fidel Castro, and the FPCC was taken over by the Communist Party after Lee resigned.

     The importance of Duran's testimony to the Warren Commission was that she talked to Oswald on his visit to the Cuban consulate in Mexico, filled out a visa application for him, and gave him her telephone number. But those facts were eventually established from other sources.  Plus, the notion that Duran, a Mexican national who was the ambassador's secretary, would have been given the nefarious assignment of dealing with Oswald for assassination is preposterous. The Warren Commission's staff's interest in interviewing her stemmed from a lawyerly concern for authenticating evidence about what Oswald said at the Cuban consulate. Indeed, the CIA later told the Commission that only in the most exceptional case would KGB-trained case officers meet with clandestine agents in an embassy.  That was not a very clandestine way of running a spy operation.

     Still, two things do stand out in DFS (the Mexican security service) files on Duran's interrogation.  First, in a list of questions to be asked during the interrogation, DFS notes that Duran had had a romantic affair with Carlos Lechuga when he was Castro's ambassador in Mexico.  The DFS note says that the affair led Lechuga's wife to file for divorce. The affair presumably ended when Castro moved Lechuga to New York in 1962 where he became the Cuban representative at the United Nations. 

     (As an aside, according to the New York Times of November 15, 1962, Lechuga means "lettuce" in Spanish.  This once led the Guatemalan ambassador to the O.A.S. in a fit of undiplomatic pique to express disdain for the Cuban's communism: "You are not a lettuce, you are a beet, brown on the outside and red on the inside.")

       The relationship may nonetheless have been a potential diplomatic embarrassment if Duran was arrested in connection with the assassination. For one thing, John Kennedy had been following a so-called two-track policy that fall. On the one hand, the CIA was plotting to overthrow Castro in a coup. On the other hand, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., William Attwood, was secretly exploring rapprochement with Castro through Lechuga.  The U.S. wouldn't want to risk exposure of this secret in an interrogation of Duran. The CIA's Thomas Karamessines cabled the station chief in Mexico to stop Duran's arrest although this was not his claimed reason. He testified he feared Duran might reveal the Soviets and/or Cubans were behind the assassination.  He said he wanted to buy time before such news hit the press.  Documents in the DFS file also suggest that Lechuga himself tried to block the interrogation, but then his reasons may have been more personal.

      A final puzzle raised by the interrogation is that Duran seems to deny the romantic relationship with Lechuga.  She says they were just friends. But if this is what she was saying, DFS didn't believe it. According to David Slawson, the Commission staff was told the affair was a fact. If the DFS had proof of the affair and if Duran was denying it, much more attention should have been paid to the discrepancy.  Was Duran lying to protect Lechuga and her own reputation?  Probably.  But, if she would lie about that, why believe what she said on the far more significant subject of the assassination of the President of the United States? The DFS did not seem to realize this.

      In the end, although the DFS files on Duran don't alter the Warren Commission's narrative of Oswald's actions in Mexico City, they do shed light on the quality and limits of its investigation.

     

A Second Look at the Files from the National Archives of Mexico - Part I

 

             A second look at the files on the Kennedy assassination at the National Archives of Mexico reveals documents that deserve scrutiny.  These will be discussed in a series of posts.

            At the outset, it is noted that the two files, one labeled the John Kennedy file  and the other the Silvia Duran file, contain duplicates.  In some instances, documents in the Kennedy file have redactions while those in the Duran file are reproduced without redactions. Passenger manifests are an example. In addition, the documents that have been made public hint of the existence of others that Mexico has not made public.

            This post deals only with the documents on Vincent Theodore Lee. He had been the head of the national office of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York City. He and Lee Harvey Oswald had exchanged correspondence in May and August 1963. 

            Lee is the subject of documents at pages 31-36 (the handwritten numbers at the bottom right of the pages) and relate to his trip to Cuba from December 29, 1962 to January 21, 1963 for celebration of the fourth anniversary of Fidel Castro’s taking power.  Lee, whose face is redacted from a photograph, is described as a writer from New York who corresponded with Oswald.  The passenger manifest for the flight to Cuba shows French and Russians who presumably were also going to Cuba for the celebration. The return manifest is less legible.

            The records of Lee’s flights from New York to Mexico to Cuba and back are accompanied by a document dated December 10, 1963, which is presumably when the records on Lee were retrieved and given to DFS.

            I don’t know if DFS gave these documents to the CIA or FBI in 1963 although presumably it did. Nor do I know if they are in the JFK collection at the U.S. National Archives.  If not, then this is a small example of how other countries may possess documents related to the Kennedy that are not in the National Archives’ collection. (If any reader knows they are in the collection, please leave a comment).

            However, the main takeaway as far as my book Murder, Inc. is concerned is that the FBI had wrapped up its own report on the assassination on December 5, 1963, five days before these became available to DFS. 

Assassination Records from the National Archives of Mexico

     The National Archives of Mexico furnished me these PDFs of two files from the Direccion Federal de Seguridad,  DFS or Federal Security Directorate, related to the assassination of President Kennedy.  The first is a file labeled John F. Kennedy. I've uploaded it here:  John Kennedy file The second is the DFS file on Silvia Duran, a Mexican employed at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. I've uploaded it here: Silvia Duran file  The documents raise more questions than they answer. The passenger manifests for Eastern Airlines flights from Mexico City to New Orleans on November 23, 1963m are an example. It isn't clear why the DFS connected these with the assassination. Moreover, the names of the passengers are deleted in the John Kennedy file but not in the Silvia Duran file.  However, maybe crowdsourcing the documents can produce answers.

     A Spanish-speaker has furnished this description of the John Kennedy file:  

1. There is no analysis. It's mostly memorandums of interviews of people of interest to the authorities on November 23rd, a few before that day and some after.

2. Memos have many illegible pages, but specially the November 23rd ones read like a ‘round-up the usual suspects’, ask them a set of 39 questions (‘you and who else killed Kennedy, how much were you paid? etc.), and release them with thanks for their time.

3. There are also bus travel manifestos, including the Oswald October 2nd return.

4. There is the 40 page long hand written account of the ‘Protection of the President of the US’ going back to the XIX century which is in the Lee Oswald file that Gus Russo obtained and made public.

5. The files begins with a table with justifications for deletions, and finishes with news paper clips of President Kennedy’s life and obituaries.

      Note.  The faint typing on many of the documents makes it impossible to use Google Translate for translating the documents. But if you find something of interest, please let me know by commenting. 

Assassination Records at the National Archives of Mexico

    Murder, Inc. notes that the Warren Commission staff drafted a letter for the State Department to send the Government of Mexico, asking for copies of its records related to Oswald's trip there earlier in the fall of 1963. While the staff's memorandum about this, including a draft of the letter, is in the JFK Collection at the U.S. National Archives, there is no record that the State Department even sent the letter or asked the Mexican Government for its files. The failure is curious, suggesting either that the Warren Commission had second thoughts about sending the letter or that someone in the government vetoed the idea. 

    Among the reasons this is important is the fact that the CIA had received a report from Mexican police, saying that Gilberto Lopez was "involved" in Kennedy's assassination. Lopez was the man who had been living in Tampa, Florida, but had left there two days after Kennedy's visit. He crossed from Texas into Mexico the night of the assassination. A few days later, he was the only passenger a on a flight from Mexico City to Havana. 

    The Warren Commission never learned of this. Indeed, when Commission staff visited Mexico City a few weeks later and talked to the CIA there, CIA officers assured the staff it had received nothing to suggest that anyone but Oswald was involved.

     Here is the email that I sent to the National Archives of Mexico on December 16, 2021.  It has not answered as yet.

      Le escribo para preguntar qué hay disponible en los Archivos sobre los registros e informes de las fuerzas de seguridad Mexicanas sobre el asesinato del presidente Kennedy y el presunto asesino Lee Harvey Oswald.

      Envié un correo electrónico a la Embajada del Gobierno de México en Washington el verano pasado acerca de los registros y me respondieron: “Estamos solicitando orientación al Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) de México sobre cómo proceder. Tengo entendido que todos los archivos de la antigua Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) entre 1929 y 1985, que anteriormente estaban bajo la custodia del Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, ahora están disponibles para consulta pública en el AGN. Le haré saber cómo solicitar los archivos (en caso de que estén disponibles en formato digital) o el proceso para solicitar un permiso para obtener acceso físico a los documentos ”. He hecho seguimiento con la Embajada, pero no he recibido comunicación adicional. 

       Mucho agradeceré si puede informarme si los Archivos tienen algún archivo especial del DFS sobre el asesinato de Kennedy o un informe interno del DFS de una investigación del asesinato. Adicionalmente si puede decirme qué otra cosa podría estar disponible sobre este tema en los Archivos y cómo podría tener acceso a copias.

       Soy escritor en Washington, D.C. Mi libro, Murder, Inc., The CIA under John F. Kennedy, fue publicado por University of Nebraska Press en tapa dura en 2019 y será reeditado en tapa blanda la próxima primavera. El libro trata sobre la relación entre los complots de la CIA para asesinar a Fidel Castro y el asesinato del presidente Kennedy, incluida la investigación de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia de Estados Unidos y el Buró Federal de Investigaciones sobre el viaje de Oswald a la Ciudad de México dos meses antes del asesinato del presidente.

       Le agradecería mucho cualquier ayuda que pueda brindarme. Gracias.

James H. Johnston

www.jameshjohnston.com

Letter to Embassy of Mexico for Records

       Although Lee Harvey Oswald spent eight days in Mexico two months before President Kennedy's assassination and although the government of Mexico had records of his visit and its own investigation after the assassination, those records have never been made public.  The Warren Commission asked but didn't get them.  The Assassination Records Review Board asked but didn't get them.  Since declassification of the still-classified U.S. records are to be reviewed for release this fall, I decided to ask again for the records from Mexico.  Here is my letter:

Attachments:   Gilberto Lopez

                         Cable Mentioning Lopez

                         Trip to Mexico City
 

A Tribute to Moses Aleman

 

            Moses “Moe” Aleman passed away on Friday, November 27, 2020, from complications of COVID-19.  Moe took the photograph of John F. Kennedy that is on the cover of the book.  Moe was an FBI agent in the Tampa field office when Kennedy visited the city on November 18, 1963, four days before he was assassinated in Dallas.  Agents from the FBI’s Tampa office were assigned to assist the Secret Service in providing security for Kennedy’s speech at the baseball stadium, Al Lopez Field.  They were told to bring their cameras and film and take pictures of any Ku Klux Klan or anti-Castro demonstrators.  When none showed up, Moe trained his camera on the President as he went by in a limousine.  Moe said it was the same car in which Kennedy was killed and had the same driver.  Moe was proud of the photograph and its historic significance.  He readily gave me permission to use it on the book’s cover.  It is a bit ominous though.  In hindsight, Kennedy’s careless exposure to the unseen crowd seems to portend the coming tragedy.

            Moses Aleman was born in Texas to immigrants from Mexico.  He was proud of growing up in a bilingual environment.  He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and served in the Air Force where he got to know several FBI agents.  They encouraged him to join the bureau.  An influx of Latino immigrants, particularly those fleeing Cuba after the Castro revolution, created a need for FBI agents who could speak Spanish.  Moe loved to tell the story of taking the FBI’s admission test.  He was given two newspapers, one in English and the other in Spanish.  The test was to translate an article from the English paper into Spanish and the Spanish paper into English.  Moe was not allowed to use an English-Spanish dictionary.  He was ushered into a testing room and given an hour to do the job.  Moe would laugh at this point in telling the story and explain:  “I was completely bilingual.  I finished the test in five minutes.”

            Moe later discovered that the FBI was not to his liking and left for a career in security for the Federal Aviation Administration.  Yet he always remembered that day in November 1963 when he helped protect the President of the United States and took his picture.  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself signed letters of commendation to Moe and other FBI agents in Tampa for their work.  Perhaps Hoover felt that if they had been in the FBI’s Dallas field office, John Kennedy might have survived his trip to that city, or perhaps he wanted to deflect criticism of the FBI’s failures in Dallas. 

            Because Moe was such an interesting person and because his life story was so exceptional, I wanted to write more about him in Murder, Inc., but that would have been off topic.   He made a small but important contribution to the theme though.  A CIA source in Mexico City had told the agency that a Cuban American from Tampa had been “involved” somehow in Kennedy’s assassination along with Lee Harvey Oswald.  The individual had left Tampa for Texas a few days before Kennedy was killed and then crossed the border into Mexico the night of the assassination.  This raised the possibility that he was fleeing the United States.  And indeed five days later, he seemed to flee again as the only passenger on a flight from Mexico City to Havana. This was all that was known about the individual.

            The CIA asked the FBI to run an investigation in Tampa on him.  Moe got the assignment.  He was never told the reason for the investigation, however.  He first learned that from me.  I sent him his old reports, which had been declassified and put in the National Archives collection on Kennedy’s assassination. 

           Moe’s work is relevant to my book because the FBI never told the Warren Commission about the Cuban American, his suspicious travel, or the allegation that he was involved in the assassination.   The Warren Commission never saw Moe’s reports.  These were facts that the CIA and FBI didn’t want the Warren Commission to have.  They didn’t fit with the narrative of Oswald as acting alone that the Warren Commission planned to lay out to the public.  Did the two agencies act with the implicit or explicit approval of the White House?  Probably.  That is, in plainer terms, the episode suggests a cover up to avoid disclosing Kennedy’s own attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.  He was, as President Lyndon Johnson would later say, running a “Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean.” 

            And this brings me to a final reason that Moses Aleman’s story was important to my narrative.  He typified most of the FBI and CIA officers I encountered personally or through their reports in researching the book.  They were competent and professional.  They did not withhold or destroy documents, as some did, or distort disquieting information to protect careers or reputations.  Moses Aleman did his duty in the highest traditions of government service.

Interview on BYU Radio

     Marcus Smith did this interview that was aired on BYU Radio on November 6, 2020.  The interview is particularly interesting because Mr. Smith had read the book in detail.