Subject: AP story: Voice on tape not Oswald - the story. Date: 22 Nov 1999 00:47:12 GMT From: garyag@ix.netcom.com(Gary Aguilar) Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk Tonight the AP's Deb Reichmann put out a couple of stories on the allegation, frequently denied by Warren loyalists, that CIA-taped recordings of an Oswald imposter calling the Russian and Cuban embassies in Mexico City 6 weeks before JFK's murder survived the assassination and were listened to by FBI agents who interviewed Oswald after his arrest in Dallas. The Warren Commission's depiction of Oswald as a disaffected loner who was of no interest to our intelligence agencies has been under constant debate. Since professor Philip Melanson's book "Spy Saga" appeared, it has made much more sense to view Oswald as, wittingly or no, a part of an American intelligence operation in Mexico City, and perhaps as well in his very odd perambulations in life prior to his mysterious trip to Mexico City. Despite the CIA's deceitful denials the recordings survived, and despite Warren loyalists defending the CIA's position, the evidence is now overwhelming that they did survive, that even Hoover knew that the person on the tape was NOT Oswald, and that, as James Lesar, Esq. discovered, Hoover himself was saying as of 11/24/63, after Oswald was murdered, it looked like a conspiracy to him. Shortly afterward, and with no clear evidence to suggest the evidence of conspiracy was invalid, an abrupt change occurred in the "official position." Officials began insisting, against the evidence, there was no conspiracy, no need to see the USSR/Cuba as behind the murders, and no need, absolutely NO NEED, to proceed in a confrontational direction that might lead to war. Of course it was known immediately by US intelligence agencies that Oswald didn't trace to the USSR or Cuba. But someone - and our intelligence agencies were those best positioned, means- and motive- wise - had laid a very clear path linking the President's alleged assassin to the USSR/Cuba by, among other things, having tape recordings of "Oswald" in calls to the enemy shortly before "Oswald" murdered JFK. And Oswald's links weren't to just low level commie bad guys, but to one comrade Kostikoff, the KGB man in charge of murder for the entire Western Hemisphere on the USSR's behalf! One must, therefore, not exclude out of hand the possibility that US intelligence agencies had themselves sought to link Oswald to our arch enemies - perhaps in the hopes that with the President's death the linkage would justify escalating policies that would break the olive branch JFK had extended thorough intermediaries Lisa Howard, William Atwood and others to Castro. (See Peter Kornbluh's excellent article in the October issue of "Cigar Aficionado" magazine for all the efforts JFK undertook to follow a second, peaceful track with Cuba, apparently in addition to the other, clandestinely tough line he was also following. Following two tracks like this, a version of the so-called "good cop-bad cop" approach, is pretty routine practice in such circs., though loyalists seem never to grasp it.) That the linkage might have precipitated war may have not been anticipated by whomever was impersonating Oswald. When reality finally struck with JFK's hit, the reality of the possible future horror may finally have dawned on the powers that were, and led to a change of course. This theory of an abrupt, realpolitical, shift in policy, which continues to gain ground as I write, is one that was first put forward by Peter Dale Scott. In "Phase One" - Oswald acting on the USSR/Cuba's behalf did it. After JFK's murder, when even Hoover was privately talking "conspiracy," things rapidly shifted to "Phase Two" - Oswald was a crazed loner who did it himself and he has no true links to the USSR/Cuba, except in his own imagination, and he has no confederates still at large. [Above not proof read.] Reichmann's stories follow, and are available at the AP website. Gary Aguilar NOVEMBER 21, 13:11 EST Tape: Call on JFK Wasn't Oswald By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Hours after President Kennedy was assassinated, FBI agents reportedly listened to a tape of a phone call that a man identifying himself as ``Lee Oswald'' had placed to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. They made a startling discovery: The voice on the tape was not Oswald's, government records say. This controversial tape has been a question mark in the assassination investigation since Kennedy was killed. The assassination occurred 36 years ago Monday and only now have new details about the tape come to light. The CIA said years ago that the tapes on which it recorded the call were erased. Documents released in recent years said otherwise. The latest and newest of declassified documents offer more evidence that the tapes survived. The discovery that the voice on the tape was someone other than Oswald was a ``disquieting discovery because the man who impersonated Oswald was still at large,'' said John Newman, an ex-military intelligence analyst, author and professor at the University of Maryland. Oswald was in Mexico City in September and October 1963. During his one-week stay, he contacted the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban consulate, inquiring about visas needed to go to the Soviet Union via Cuba. It is widely known that the CIA bugged telephones and took surveillance photos at both the embassy and consulate. But the agency maintained that it had routinely erased and reused tapes of the phone intercepts. A message from the CIA's Mexico City station to headquarters on Nov. 24, 1963, said: ``HQ has full transcripts all pertinent calls. Regret complete recheck shows tapes for this period already erased.'' It was also known that while he was in Mexico City, Oswald had contact with Valeriy Kostikov - a man that one CIA memo described as a ``case officer in an operation which is evidently sponsored by the KGB's 13th Department responsible for sabotage and assassination.'' It was the caller who is thought to have impersonated Oswald who links him to this Soviet spy unit known as Department 13. Newly declassified documents - some released in the past six months - say that after the president was shot, a Navy plane carried a top-secret package from Mexico City to Dallas and landed there about 4 a.m. EST the day after the murder. Former FBI Agent Eldon Rudd, later a Republican congressman from Arizona, was aboard the plane. ``There were no tapes to my knowledge,'' Rudd said in a telephone interview. ``I brought the pictures up (from Mexico) and it was my understanding that it was just pictures.'' Documents contradict Rudd's understanding. A newly released memo dated Nov. 27, 1963, from FBI headquarters to its office in Mexico City, stated: ``If tapes covering any contacts subject (Oswald) with Soviet or Cuban embassies available, forward to bureau for laboratory examination and analysis together with transcript. Include tapes previously reviewed Dallas if they were returned to you.'' And a transcript of a telephone call FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made to President Johnson just six hours after the plane arrived in Dallas supports the belief that FBI agents listened to a tape that suggested an impersonation. ``We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet embassy using Oswald's name,'' Hoover told Johnson, according to a transcript of that call released in 1993. ``That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there.'' While they would not speculate about the identity of the caller, several assassination researchers privately offered some explanations: Oswald could have been impersonated by a CIA officer who called the Soviet Embassy simply to fish for details about what Oswald was doing in Mexico City. Or, maybe someone was trying to link Oswald to the KGB's assassination unit before Kennedy's murder. Whatever the answer, there was plenty of reason for worry in Washington about any evidence pointing to Soviets or Cubans as somehow involved in the assassination. Relations with the former Soviet Union were icy. Both sides were armed with nuclear weapons. The Cuban missile crisis was still very much on America's mind. ``The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large,'' Nicholas Katzenbach, then deputy attorney general, wrote in a memo on Nov. 25, 1963. ``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 or ... a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the communists.'' In a telephone interview last week, Katzenbach said he does not know anything about the FBI listening to a tape in Dallas. ``Whether I knew anything about it at the time, or what I knew about it at the time, I don't recall,'' he said. Oswald's trip to Mexico City was only briefly addressed by the Warren Commission, which concluded in 1964 that Oswald was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy. His activities in Mexico City were investigated vigorously by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which re-investigated the Kennedy murder in the 1970s. The committee then raised the possibility of an Oswald impersonation but said there was not sufficient evidence to ``firmly'' conclude that it happened. Many more details about the trip, however, have surfaced in CIA and FBI documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board. The board, set up by Congress to amass all assassination-related records, opened tens of thousands of pages before it closed down in 1998. Gus Russo, author of a book about the foreign policy implications of Kennedy's assassination, said he is skeptical that FBI agents listened to actual tapes. He cited a Nov. 25, 1963, memo from the FBI office in Mexico City to headquarters that said ``there appears to be some confusion in that no tapes were taken to Dallas, only typewritten reports were supplied.'' Newman said he has seen that memo and others that say the tapes were erased, but he said a pattern has emerged in the documents. ``For the first 24 hours after the assassination, there is no mention of erasures, only detailed discussions about listening to tapes,'' Newman said. ``Then we go from one tape being erased to all tapes being erased. This is designed to protect very sensitive U.S. intelligence sources and methods and American relations with Mexico.'' The CIA's phone intercepts in Mexico City have been an unanswered question in the assassination case for decades, says T. Jeremy Gunn, former director and general counsel of the review board. However, he said two assistant counsels on the Warren Commission, William T. Coleman Jr. and W. David Slawson, told the review board that they had gone to Mexico City and not only read transcripts, but listened to recordings. ``We tried to find the tape,'' Gunn said of the review board's effort. ``We were unsuccessful. We tried to get everything we could and we end up with question marks.'' NOVEMBER 21, 12:46 EST Excerpts From JFK Documents By The Associated Press Excerpts from declassified documents that say a man impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald called the Soviet embassy in Mexico City just weeks before President Kennedy was assassinated, and that investigators listened to a tape of the call. Memo Nov. 23, 1963 from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to Secret Service Chief James Rowley: ``The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on Oct. 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identifed himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. ``Special Agents of this bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened to a recording of his voice. These Special Agents are of the opinion that the above-referred-to individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald.'' --- Memo written Nov. 23, 1963 from Alan Belmont, third in command at FBI Headquarters, to Clyde Tolson, Hoover's right-hand man. ``The Dallas agents who listened to the tape of the conversation allegedly of Oswald from the Cuban Embassy to the Russian Embassy in Mexico and examined the photographs of the visitor to the Embassy in Mexico ... were of the opinion that neither the tape nor the photograph pertained to Oswald.'' --- Internal FBI memo written Nov. 24, 1963 by Hoover: ``Oswald made a phone call to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, which we intercepted. It was only about a visa, however. He also wrote a letter to the Soviet Embassy here in Washington, which we intercepted, read and resealed. This letter referred to the fact that the FBI had questioned his activities on the Fair Play to Cuba Committee and also asked about extension of his wife's visa. ``That letter from Oswald was addressed to the man in the Soviet Embassy who is in charge of assassinations and similar activities on the part of the Soviet government. To have that drawn into a public hearing would muddy the waters internationally.'' It certainly conducted by our own intelligence agencies