We have been watching three threads. First and foremost, we have been following the trails and intersections of Oswald’s labyrinthine CIA, FBI, State Department, and ONI files. In addition, we have kept up with the general outlines of his activities in the Soviet Union, as this is the context in which these files were developed. Finally, we have observed Cuban matters in order to set the stage for the drama we know will unfold upon Oswald’s return. In this regard, Oswald’s preparation for his return to America took place while the Agency was planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion and the assassination of Castro. His first three months back in the U.S. would unfold against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The pieces and pathways in Oswald’s intelligence files become more complex in 1961 simply because they continue. While much of the meaning of these files is as arcane as the intelligence world in which they were created, at the simplest level of analysis we are struck by the sheer amount of paper the intelligence agencies created on Oswald. This quantity of documents indicates a significant level of interest in him. When viewed together, the number of intelligence offices that watched Oswald, and the degree of field-level action on him, take on a meaning not available when these events are viewed in isolation.
Stimulated by Oswald’s decision to return to America, the activity among the low-level FBI, Navy, and State Department offices picked up in the first half of 1961. An act of Oswald’s during this period would provide an additional stimulus to the interest in him when discovered by the intelligence community. That was his marriage to a Soviet woman, Marina Prusakova. Oswald’s decision to bring a Soviet citizen back to America led to a new level of interest in the CIA, a subject to which we will return in Chapter Thirteen.
The Eisenhower administration’s last key policy meeting on Cuba occurred in the White House on August 18, 1960. In that meeting, CIA director Dulles reported on the progress of organizing the Cuban exiles for the overthrow of Castro. President Eisenhower, present at the meeting, authorized the invasion planning to proceed. The minutes show that Dulles described the situation in this way:
There has been developed a unified Cuban opposition outside of the country. This has been successful up to a point but the problem is that there is no real leader and 11 [sic] of the individuals are prima donnas. This unified opposition is known as the FRD [Frente Revolucionario Democratico] and has six prominent members, five of them representing groups in Cuba with the greatest potential. In response to a question from the President, Mr. Dulles said that all the names were favorably known in Cuba; that there were no Batista-ites among them and 11 of the names had been published except a recent joiner, Cardona. Their theme is to restore the revolution to its original concepts, recognizing that it is impossible to change all of the revolutionary trends.111
Dulles added, in response to a question from Eisenhower, that these Cuban leaders had all been identified with Castro since he assumed power. Dulles judged the CIA’s work with these leaders since May as “very satisfactory.”
The CIA training of the Cubans was discussed in some detail in this meeting. Dulles explained that while the FRD preferred being in the U.S., they had been persuaded to set up headquarters in Mexico. It was understood, Dulles added, “that there will be no ostensible military action directed from Mexico.”2 Eisenhower wanted to know why Mexico had been chosen. Mexico’s communications and travel facilities were part of the reason, but the fact was that some of the other Latin American countries would not agree to the FRD’s presence on their soil. Guatemala, however, did not present such a problem, and was already being used for training Cuban exiles.
The minutes of the White House meeting indicate that the Joint Chiefs “saw no problem” with Bissell’s request for American troops to train the Cubans. Dulles said that he hoped five hundred Cubans could be finished with their training by “the beginning of November,” a prediction possibly meant to fit with Nixon’s election schedule. Dulles then added this:
The FRD is acquiring some B-26s. The aircrews for these would be all Cubans. Mr. Bissell then said that it is possible that the initial para-military operations could be successful without any outside help. He pointed out that the first phase would be that of contacting local groups over a period of perhaps several months and in this period no air strikes would be undertaken. The plan would be to supply the local groups by air and also to infiltrate certain Cubans to stiffen local resistance.
If local resistance is unable to accomplish the mission and the operation should expand, then there may be a requirement for air action. The plan would be to take the Isle of Pines or another small island for an ostensible base for operations of the [less than 1 line not declassified] forces. It is hoped that this may not be needed but we must be prepared for it.3
Bissell added that eleven groups that had potential had been identified in Cuba. “We are in the process of sending radio communications to them at this time,” he said.4 The air attacks were a significant escalation of the U.S. role. At the meeting, no one asked what the military impact of such CIA-backed air attacks would have in Cuba, and what the cost would be if this were discovered by the press.
In a historic decision remarkably like the one Kennedy would make after his inauguration, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead to proceed in Cuba, with a key condition attached. Eisenhower’s decision and his reasoning are preserved in this passage of the minutes:
The President said that he would go along so long as the Joint Chiefs, Defense, State and the CIA think we have a good chance of being successful. He wouldn’t care much about this kind of cost; indeed, he said he would defend this kind of action against all comers and that if we could be sure of freeing the Cubans from this incubus [less than 1 line not declassified] might be a small price to pay. The President concluded the meeting by saying that he would like to urge caution with respect to the danger of making false moves, with the result of starting something before we were ready for it.5
There can be no argument, then, that like Kennedy later, Eisenhower would approve the invasion plan only if the top U.S. military and civilian leaders would vouch for the plan’s chance of success. And so, as of August 18, 1960, the Bay of Pigs plan was set firmly into motion.
The other unspeakable part of the plan—the assassination of Castro—had taken a turn since the abortive CIA plot to arrange an accident for Castro’s brother in July. Nixon, having secured the Republican nomination for president, had sent his chief lieutenant, General Robert E. Cushman, into the working levels of the CIA that were concerned with Cuban operations. It is thus likely that Nixon knew some of the details about the CIA’s cooperation with the Mafia. Regarding the summer-autumn 1960 Bissell-Edwards conversation about assassinating Castro, the Church Committee report states: “Edwards recalled that Bissell asked him to locate someone who could assassinate Castro. Bissell confirmed that he requested Edwards to find someone to assassinate Castro and believed that Edwards raised the idea of contacting members of a gambling syndicate in Cuba.”6 As the Church Committee discovered, once again the Office of Security was at the center of operations, this time in the covert operations of Bissell’s Cuban task force.
The Church Committee report states how the idea of using the mob to kill Castro grew from Edwards’s idea of “contacting members of a gambling syndicate operating in Cuba.” The report explains:
Edwards assigned the mission to the Chief of the Operational Support Division of the Office of Security. The Support Chief [O’Connell] recalled that Edwards had said that he and Bissell were looking for someone to “eliminate” or “assassinate” Castro. Edwards and the Support Chief decided to rely on Robert A. Maheu to recruit someone “tough enough” to handle the job.7
At the time Maheu was a lawyer associated with billionaire Howard Hughes, and what followed was a story that mired the Agency in the swamp of organized crime. “Sometime in late August or early September 1960,” the report noted, O’Connell “approached Maheu about the proposed operation.” Former CIA Director William Colby testified to the Church Committee that CIA documents indicated that in August 1960, “Bissell asked Edwards to locate [an] asset to perform [a] gangster-type operation. Edwards contacted Maheu who contacted John Roselli on 9/14/60.”8
On the issue of who had thought of Roselli first, Maheu and O’Connell pointed the finger at each other. Maheu’s recollection was that O’Connell asked him to contact the underworld figure to ask if he would take part in a plan to “dispose” of Castro. O’Connell’s recollection is that it was Maheu that raised the idea of using Roselli.9 The CIA’s 1967 Inspector General’s Report struck this compromise: “Edwards and Maheu agreed that Maheu would approach Roselli as the representative of businessmen with interests in Cuba who saw the elimination of Castro as the first essential step to the recovery of their investments.”10
O’Connell testified that Maheu was told to offer money, probably $150,000, for Castro’s assassination.11 What happened next found its way into a memo by FBI Director Hoover, addressed to Plans Director Bissell in the CIA—the person supervising the assassination plan. The October 18, 1960, Hoover memorandum citing “a source whose reliability has not been tested,” reported this:
[D]uring recent conversations with several friends, [Sam] Giancana stated that Fidel Castro was to be done away with very shortly. When doubt was expressed regarding this statement, Giancana reportedly assured those present that Castro’s assassination would occur in November. Moreover, he allegedly indicated that he had already met with the assassin-to-be on three occasions. Giancana claimed that everything had been perfected for the killing of Castro, and that the “assassin” had arranged with a girl, not further described, to drop a “pill” in some drink or food of Castro’s. Memo, Hoover to DCI (Att: DDP, 10/18/60)12
The Church Committee showed this Hoover memorandum, on August 22, 1975, to Sam Papich, who was the FBI liaison to the CIA in 1960. Papich said, “anyone in the Bureau would know the significance of the mention of Giancana.” Papich did not further elaborate on this other than to say he would have discussed the matter with his FBI superior, Belmont, and with Edwards and Bannerman of the CIA’s Office of Security.13
Like all of the CIA-backed schemes to assassinate Castro, the mob’s poison-pill plot failed. This was right about the time Oswald changed his mind about staying in Russia. As Oswald began his eighteen-month quest to return to America, January 1961 ushered in a new twist to the CIA’s assassination plans for Castro: use of the Agency’s ZR/RIFLE project for a program to give the CIA an “executive action” (assassination) capability. When pressed by the Church Committee, William Harvey stated that Bissell had been pushed along on the Castro assassination plan, possibly by the Eisenhower White House.14
January 1961 also began in a deep freeze in U.S.-Cuban relations. Havana formally severed diplomatic relations with Washington on January 3.15 On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the thirty-fifth president of the United States, and tensions immediately erupted over general Cold War strategy and ongoing planning for U.S. military intervention in Laos and Cuba, both set to occur at roughly the same time. President Kennedy found himself in a situation not unlike President Clinton’s first year: a young Democratic president, after more than a decade of Repubican rule, perceived as too naive to handle the Communists.
Kennedy let stand the Cuban plan that Eisenhower had put in motion. On April 4, 1961, a major pre-invasion meeting took place in a State Department conference room. Kennedy, with his closest advisers attending, gave the go-ahead.16 The ill-fated confrontation on the beaches of Cuba erupted on April 16-17, 1961. The American-trained and sponsored brigade of Cuban exiles were humiliated at Playa Giron, a tragically appropriate Cuban name.17
As 1961 opened, Oswald was in Minsk trying to close the Russian chapter in his life.18 The KGB had the only copy of his December 1960 query about returning to the U.S. On January 4, the Soviet passport office in Minsk “summoned” Oswald and forced the issue. Oswald was asked point-blank if he still wanted to become a Soviet citizen, and this time his answer was no. Oswald asked instead that his identity card be extended for an additional year.19
As discussed in Chapter Nine, on January 26, 1961, Marguerite Oswald, having failed for a year to find her son by writing letters to the U.S. government, traveled to the nation’s capital and personally appeared at the State Department to demand that they do more to find him.20 When the CIA received its copy of the department’s notes of her appearance, someone placed it in Oswald’s 201 file and underlined parts of these two sentences in the notes:
She [Marguerite] also said that there was some possibility that her son had in fact gone to the Soviet Union as a US secret agent, and if this were true she wished the appropriate authorities to know that she was destitute and should receive some compensation.21
Whether she believed this or not, this tactic did not work, and Marguerite returned to Texas without compensation or information about Oswald’s location in Russia. The State Department did send a cable to the embassy in Moscow on the “welfare-whereabouts” of Oswald on February 1, 1961. The cable told the embassy about Marguerite’s visit and her concerns for her son’s “personal safety,” and asked that this be passed to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs.22 As it turned out, this diplomatic maneuver would not be necessary.
Oswald finally tired of waiting for the American Embassy to respond to his first letter, and on February 5 he decided to write again. We have discussed the first sentence of this letter in Chapter Eleven. Here is the rest of the text:
I am writing again asking that you consider my request for the return of my American passport. I desire to return to the United States, that is if we could come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any legal proceedings against me. If so, then I would be free to ask the Russian authorities to allow me to leave. If I could show them my American passport, I am of the opinion they would give me an exit visa. They have at no time insisted that I take Russian citizenship. I am living here with non-permanent type papers for a foreigner. I cannot leave Minsk without permission, therefore I am writing rather than calling in person.23
Oswald’s insistence about an “agreement” to drop “legal proceedings” was obviously his way of asking that he not be prosecuted for espionage. It shows he fully understood the nature of the threats he had made during his October 1959 meeting with Snyder. “I hope that in recalling the responsibility I have to America,” Oswald added, “that you remember yours in doing everything you can to help me since I am an American citizen.24 This sentence seems odd because it suggests that in returning to the U.S., Oswald considered his “responsibility” to America. Moreover, his use of the verb “recall” is strange: Had Oswald suddenly remembered his duty to America or had someone recalled him?
Snyder received Oswald’s second letter on February 13,25 and responded to it on February 28. After acknowledging Oswald’s request to go home and informing him that his December 1960 letter “does not appear to have been received at the Embassy,” Snyder offered this advice:
Inasmuch as the question of your present American citizenship status can be finally determined only on the basis of a personal interview, we suggest that you plan to appear at the Embassy at your convenience. The consular section of the Embassy is open from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Embassy was recently informed by the Department of State that it had received an inquiry from your mother in which she said that she had not heard from you since December, 1959 and was concerned about your whereabouts and welfare.26
Getting Oswald to come to the embassy was obviously Snyder’s objective, an idea repeated the same day in Snyder’s cable to the State Department. In that cable Snyder repeated the entire text of Oswald’s February 5 letter, and then added this:
The Embassy is writing to Oswald and suggesting that he come personally to the Embassy for an interview on which to base a decision concerning the status of his American citizenship. Oswald’s reference in his letter to his being unable to leave Minsk without permission may indicate that he desires to come to the Embassy, in which an invitation from the Embassy may facilitate his traveling to Moscow.27
Snyder said that he was prepared to give back Oswald his passport by mail, providing 1) that this was “a last resort”; 2) the State Department did not object; and 3) the embassy was “reasonably sure” that Oswald had not “committed an act” resulting in the loss of his American citizenship. Snyder also asked the department’s position on “whether Oswald is subject to prosecution on any grounds should he enter the jurisdiction of the United States and, if so, whether there is any objection in communicating this to him.”
Oswald received the embassy’s February 28 letter by March 5, 1961, and wrote back that day.28 “I see no reason for any preliminary inquiries,” he protested, “not to be put in the form of a questionnaire and sent to me.” He said he found it “inconvenient to come to Moscow for the sole purpose of an interview.” He asked that the embassy mail the questionnaire to him, as it is difficult for him to travel.29 Oswald’s diary entry for this period says this: “I now live in a state of expectation about going back to the U.S. I confided with Zeger [sic] he supports my judgment but warns me not to tell any Russians about my desire to reture [sic]. I understade [sic] now why.”30 Not long after Oswald began corresponding with the embassy, his monthly payments from the “Red Cross” were cut off;31 Snyder testified that the Soviet authorities had undoubtedly intercepted and read the correspondence between Oswald and the embassy and knew of his plans.32
The State Department took its time telling Oswald’s mother that they had found him. A copy of the letter they sent her is no longer extant, but her March 27, 1961, response was published in the Warren Commission’s twenty-six volumes, and it indicates that around the 27th she received this “most welcome news” about her son’s wish to come home.33
As more letters between Oswald and the embassy followed,34 the position of the embassy and the State Department remained firm: Oswald had to come to Moscow.35 Then, on April 13 came the answer to Oswald’s request for an “agreement” about dropping “legal proceedings” against him. The department refused to guarantee that Oswald would not be prosecuted.36 If Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to come back to America, he would have to take his chances.
It was at this time that Oswald met his wife-to-be, Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova. Although accounts vary slightly on the exact date and circumstances, they evidently met at a dance in early March 1961.37 When they first met, Oswald thought Marina was a dental technician—she was a pharmacist,38 and Marina thought Oswald was from the Baltics (“because of his accent”).39 Marina later explained that she and his other Russian friends called Oswald “Alex” because “Lee” was recognized as a Chinese name.40 Marina says she had not heard of Oswald before she met him, in spite of the fact that he was the only American living in Minsk.41
At the dance, Oswald noticed Marina and asked Yuriy Merazhinskiy, a friend of his and Marina’s, to introduce him to her. This accomplished, Oswald asked her to dance. Oswald wrote in his diary that they liked each other right away and that he got her phone number before she left the dance.42 The two met again at another dance a week later, at which they danced together for most of the evening.43 This time Oswald walked her home, and the two made another date, which Oswald missed due to an illness that required hospitalization.44
The hospital records indicate that Oswald was admitted to its ear, nose, and throat division, and stayed from March 30 until April 11, 1961, seemingly a long time to be in the hospital for an ear infection. 45 Oswald called Marina from the hospital and asked her to visit him there,46 which she did nearly every day until his release.47 Marina even wore her uniform in order to see him on Sundays—outside of the regular visiting hours. The first time she did this was on Easter Sunday, when she brought Oswald an Easter egg.48
During one of Marina’s visits to the hospital, he proposed that they become engaged, which she agreed to consider,49 and he continued to ask until she accepted his proposal on April 15.50 Marina lived with her aunt and uncle, who knew Oswald was an American and did not disapprove of his many visits to their apartment. On April 20, 1961, Oswald and Marina applied to get married.51 It normally took about a week for Soviet citizens to get permission to marry foreigners.52 In this case it took ten days, and they were married on April 30 in Minsk.53
For her part, Marina later testified that she clearly had not married Oswald as a way of getting to the U.S. because it was her understanding that he could not return.54 Oswald wrote in his diary that he married Marina in order to hurt Ella German, the girl who had refused his marriage proposals, but that in the end, “I find myself in love with Marina.” The May 1 entry in Oswald’s diary includes this passage:
The transition of changing full love from Ella to Marina was very painful esp. as I saw Ella almost every day at the factory but as the days & weeks went by I adjusted more and more [to] my wife mentally * * * She is madly in love with me from the very start. Boat rides on Lake walks through the park evening at home or at Aunt Valia’s place mark May.55
Oswald’s attachment to Marina grew quickly. A diary entry for June reads “A continuence of May, except that; we draw closer and closer, and I think very little now of Ella.”56
Oswald had been holding out on Marina. He had decided, probably in late 1960, and certainly no later than January 1961, to return to America, but he did not tell Marina. It was not until sometime in June that Oswald told Marina that he wanted to return home. An entry in his diary says that she was “startled” when he told her “in the last days” of June.57 On May 16, 1961, Oswald sent notification to the U.S. Embassy (which it received on May 25) of his marriage to Marina. He explained that they both intended to go to the United States.58 During June, the Oswalds made inquiries with the appropriate Soviet authorities about obtaining the proper exit visas.59 On June 1, 1961, Oswald wrote to his mother about his marriage “last month.”60 Oswald’s first daughter, June, was conceived in May 1961.61
When last we entered the labyrinth of the FBI and CIA files on Oswald, the FBI was bifurcating its Oswald material at the Bureau and in Dallas into two compartments at each locations. The material collected under the caption “Funds Transmitted to Russia” went into the 100 file at the Bureau and into the 105 file at Dallas; the rest of the Oswald material went into the 105 file at the Bureau and into the 100 file at Dallas. It is important to keep this detail in mind because this pattern, begun in 1960, persisted into 1961. With respect to his CIA files, 1960 witnessed the incremental involvement of the Soviet Russia Division, a trend that continued into 1961.
Stimulated by Oswald’s decision to come home, his paper trail during the first half of 1961 takes us down several paths, some familiar and some new. A channel opened between the Navy Intelligence field office at Algiers, Louisiana (near New Orleans), and the Dallas FBI field office. Lateral activity picked up between the FBI field offices in Dallas and New Orleans, and after an internal struggle, the Washington, D.C., FBI field office also got involved. These connections produced more intelligence on Oswald, culminating in important FBI and CIA actions in the summer of 1961, events we will discuss in the next chapter.
The FBI’s investigation of Oswald in 1959 and early 1960 had “involved the development of background information” concerning him, “and the taking of appropriate steps to insure our being advised of his return” the Bureau told the Warren Commission.62 “Our basic interest,” the FBI explained, “was to correlate information concerning him and to evaluate him as a security risk in the event he returned, in view of the possibility of his recruitment by the Soviet intelligence services.” Given this, Special Agent Kenneth J. Haser appeared overly eager when he tried to open a new file on Oswald at the Washington, D.C. field office (WFO) of the FBI in August 1960.
On August 9, Haser wrote a memorandum to the special agent in charge (SAC) of the FBI WFO on the subject of “Lee Harvey Oswald, Internal Security-Russia.”63 In the memo, Haser said he had gone over to the State Department passport office that day, where he had contacted Mrs. Verde Buckler, who gave him Oswald’s passport file “for appropriate review.” The Bureau had asked the State Department to provide “any current information available” on Oswald, Haser said, and “it is, therefore, recommended that a case be opened for the purpose of furnishing the Bureau and office of origin a summary of information in the passport file.”
The file number of the Haser memo was written by hand: “100-16597 SubL - 676 Newspaper Clipping.”64 The person writing it was probably named Carson and probably filed this memo at the Bureau. Carson crossed out the “OO - Dallas” indicator below the subject line. In the CIA “OO” was a symbol for the Contacts Division, but in the FBI “OO” was an acronym for “Office of Origin,” meaning the office responsible for a particular case. On September 12, 1960, Special Agent Dana Carson, following up on Haser’s August 9 memorandum on Oswald, wrote a new memorandum to the special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C., field office. Someone, probably Carson, had gone back over to the State Department passport office on September 9 and looked at Oswald’s file again.
Carson’s memo threw cold water on Haser’s hopes of opening a file for a State Department conduit to the FBI via his desk. Carson, starting from the defection, went down the list of pertinent memos and cables and then remarked: “From a review of this file, it would appear that the Bureau has been furnished all available information by State.”65 Carson recommended that WFO take no further action.66 Carson carried the day, but Haser would soon be back again asking to open a case file. Newspaper accounts and White House questions about American servicemen defecting to the Soviet Union breathed new life into FBI activity on Oswald. What happened inside the FBI became inextricably linked with the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).
On November 10, 1960, a week after the CIA answered a State Department request on a list of these defectors, including Oswald, someone in the Office of Naval Intelligence signed out the May 1960 FBI report by Fain on “Funds Transmitted to Residents of Russia.”67 On the routing slip sending the report, a person whose initials look like “WB” commented on the previous transmittal of the Fain report to the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO), Ninth Naval District (9ND). It is worth adding that the Marine Corps commandant had requested that the 9ND commander “be apprised of the intelligence documentation on Oswald on a priority basis.”68
When “WB” of 921E2 (the Programs section of the Counterintelligence Branch) signed out the Fain report on November 10, however, he had a different Naval District (ND)—the Eighth—in mind. Throughout 1960, the 9ND DIO had been involved in the Navy’s handling of the Oswald case to provide support to the commander of the Marine Air Reserve Training Command, U.S. Naval Air Station, Glenview, Illinois, who processed Oswald’s Undesirable Discharge. The 8ND District Intelligence Office was a long way away—in Building 255 of U.S. Naval Station, New Orleans, Louisiana. 8ND intelligence records were also kept at U.S. Naval Station, Algiers, Louisiana, which was probably also the location for one of the CIA’s covert training bases near New Orleans, specifically the base referred to within the CIA as the “Old Algiers Ammo Dump.”69 On November 15, 1960, five days after “WB” checked out the Fain report, someone from that same ONI office, 921E2, sent a confidential letter to the “Officer in Charge, District Intelligence Office, Eight Naval District.”70
ONI also sent a copy of the November 15, 921E2 letter to the 9ND, to whom these instructions in the last paragraph applied: “By copy of this letter, the District Intelligence Office of the Ninth Naval District is requested to forward the intelligence documentation concerning Oswald to the District Intelligence Office, Eighth Naval District.” This information was forwarded by DIO 9ND two weeks later, comprising fourteen documents “which represent subject’s intelligence file” to DIO 8ND on November 30, 1960.71 As of that date, about one week before the CIA opened its 201 file on Oswald, the ONI changed the Navy field intelligence unit watching the case from Glenview, Illinois, to Algiers, Louisiana.
The officer in charge of the DIO 8ND was Navy captain F.O.C. Fletcher, and on January 11, 1961, he sent a letter to the Dallas field office of the FBI, opening up a potentially important lateral interagency channel on Oswald.72 The Dallas FBI field office copy of this letter has a handwritten number after Oswald’s name: 105-976—the Dallas Oswald file which ensued from Fain’s “Funds Transmitted to Residents of Russia” report of May 1960. This handwritten file number also included the extension “-1, p. 17,” meaning page 17 of document number one in that file.73 This is strange because Fain’s report, which was supposedly document number one, was just seven pages long. On the bottom of the letter is Fain’s writing, and a new Dallas file number for Oswald: 100-10461. This 8ND letter to the Dallas FBI field office became the first document in Oswald’s Dallas 100 file.
In the letter Fletcher reported that Oswald, who had been a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, had been given an undesirable discharge on August 17, 1960. Fletcher also pointed out that Oswald’s last known home of record (as of July 20, 1959) was 3124 West 5th Street, Fort Worth, Texas. An information copy was sent to the director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), OP921 section D, where it was received on January 16, 1961, and to 921E (counterintelligence) on January 17.74
On February 27, 1961, FBI director Hoover sent a letter to the State Department Office of Security about Oswald, announcing a dead end in its search for an Oswald impostor in Europe.75 There was no impostor there, as the FBI’s sources in Switzerland found out for themselves: no one calling himself Oswald had shown up at the Albert Schweitzer College. The February 27 Hoover letter mentioned Oswald’s August 17, 1960, undesirable discharge from the Marines, his old Fort Worth address, and asked “that any additional information contained in the files of the Department of State regarding subject be furnished to this Bureau.”76
On February 28, 1961, the special agent in charge at FBI-Dallas wrote a memorandum to the special agent in charge at FBI-New Orleans on the subject of Lee Harvey Oswald, to follow up on the January 11 DIO 8ND letter from New Orleans.77 Fain’s memo discussed the largely unproductive checks he had made since Captain Fletcher’s January 11 letter which had mentioned Oswald’s old Fort Worth address. A February 2, 1960, check with the Retail Merchants Association netted only Marguerite C. Oswald’s 1957 address at 3830 West Sixth Street, Fort Worth, along with the address of Oswald’s brother, Robert, at 7300 Davenport Street, Fort Worth. There was “no record” on Oswald.78 A February 25 check with “Dallas Confidential Informants” showed only that Oswald had never been known to be a member of the Communist Party at Fort Worth.
Fain then asked the New Orleans FBI office to review the files of 8ND District Intelligence Office of the Eighth Naval District, “for background information available on subject [Oswald] and any information available concerning CP [Communist Party] activities and attempted defection to Russia, and forward same to Dallas Office.” 79 It is worth noting that while adding this as the third document in Oswald’s new Dallas file, 100-10461, Fain still filed a copy of his memo in the old Dallas 105-976.
Meanwhile, on March 2, 1961, Emery J. Adams of the State Security Office (SY/E) requested several offices to “advise if the FBI is receiving information about Harvey [Oswald] on a continuing basis. If not, please furnish this Office with the information which has not been provided the FBI so that it may be forwarded to them.”80 Presumably, Adams meant that these offices should look at the attached February 27, 1961, FBI memo and then determine if anything was missing. On the bottom of this document is a handwritten note of March 20 from the Soviet Desk which advised that no information had been sent to date, but added, “all future [information] will be forwarded to SY [Security Office] for transmittal.”
On March 31, 1961, Edward J. Hickey sent a memorandum to John T. White, both of the State Department’s passport office. This memo addressed the question of giving back Oswald his passport, and Hickey’s point was that the mails could not be trusted. He said:
In view of the fact that this file contains information first, which indicates that mail from the mother of this boy is not being delivered to him and second, that it has been stated that there is an impostor using Oswald’s identification data and that no doubt the Soviets would love to get hold of his valid passport, it is my opinion that the passport should be delivered to him only on a personal basis and after the Embassy is assured, to its complete satisfaction, that he is returning to the United States.81
No one had definitely said there was an Oswald impostor—it had merely been suggested because of the confusion surrounding Oswald’s application to the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland. By the time of Hickey’s memo, the impostor issue was dead. Very much alive were the surreptitious readers of Oswald’s mail. “It’s hard for me to know whether you get all my letters,” Oswald wrote to his brother later that year, “they have a lot of censorship here.”82 The KGB was not the only clandestine reader of Oswald’s mail. As we will shortly see, the CIA was too.
On April 13, 1961, the State Department sent a strongly worded set of instructions to the embassy in Moscow on how to deal with Oswald.83 The instructions boiled down to three things: Thoroughly interrogate Oswald, make no promises about legal proceedings, and report all developments promptly to Washington.84 With respect to Oswald’s demand that he receive guarantees that all “legal proceedings” be dropped, the State Department had this to say:
The Department is not in a position to advise Mr. Oswald whether upon his desired return to the United States he may be amenable to prosecution for any possible offenses committed in violation of the laws of the United States [or] of the laws of any of its States. The developments in the case of Mr. Oswald should be promptly reported. In particular, a report of his travel data should be submitted when the Embassy receives confirmation of his travel plans.85
The seriousness of this rebuff was mitigated somewhat by the afterthought at the end of the cable. “It may be added that Mrs. Marguerite Oswald has been informed of the address given by Mr. Oswald,” the State Department said. On the other hand, there was a by-now-familiar handwritten inscription on the bottom right-hand corner of the page: “U.S. Defector.”
The January 11 letter from the 8th Naval District to Dallas FBI office, Hoover’s February 27 request to the State Department, and new activity between the State Department and the Moscow Embassy concerning Oswald’s decision to return to America were new ammunition for FBI Special Agent Haser, of the Washington, D.C. field office. His plan to open a WFO case on Oswald had been shot down the previous September by his colleague, Special Agent Carson. On April 20, 1961, Haser wrote a new memorandum to the WFO SAC, reporting his visit that day to the State Department passport office:
This passport file of captioned subject was made available to the writer on this date by Mr. Henry Kupiec, Foreign Adjudications Division, Passport Office, Department of State, inasmuch as the file contains information subsequent to the date on which the file was last reviewed by WFO. It appears that the subject is still in the Soviet Union.
It is, therefore, recommended that this case be reopened to bring up to date a review of subject’s file for notification to the Bureau and interested offices. No flimsy [a sheet that enables mimeograph copies of a document to be made] is required.86
Within a month, Haser’s recommendation was put into effect, and a channel of Oswald information between WFO and the Dallas FBI field office opened.
Meanwhile, the Dallas FBI request that the New Orleans FBI office read 8ND Navy records had borne fruit. “I had, as a result of a request of the Dallas office,” New Orleans FBI Special Agent John L. Quigley recalled, “checked the Office of Naval Intelligence records at the U.S. Naval Station at Algiers.”87 Quigley had reviewed Oswald’s file at Algiers on April 18, and the results were forwarded to the Dallas FBI office on April 27, 1961. On that date the special agent in charge of the New Orleans FBI office responded formally with a memorandum to the SAC in Dallas detailing SA Quigley’s review of the “ONI 8th Naval District Records United States Naval Station, Algiers, Louisiana, on April 18, 1961.”88
The Oswald Navy file at Algiers was comprehensive, covering most of the salient points of his history since his defection. For example, it included the January 27, 1960, report on Oswald’s brother, John Edward Pic by Special Agent John T. Cox of the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI).89 The New Orleans FBI memorandum, probably written by Special Agent John L. Quigley, erroneously referred to Cox’s OSI report as an “ONI” report. Otherwise, Quigley was meticulous, noting such tiny details as a “Control Number 20261”—apparently assigned by ONI—for the first embassy cable from Moscow (#1304) which reported Oswald’s defection and his threat to give up radar secrets.
“In reviewing this file,” SA Quigley said, “it appears that much of the above material has been furnished to ONI 8th Naval District by ONI 9th Naval District.” He ended the memo with a suggestion:
Since New Orleans does not have any background information with regards to this investigation, nor is aware of what investigation is contemplated, no leads are being set forth in this communication, other than it is suggested that Dallas and Fort Worth may desire to review ONI’s files at Carswell Air Force Base concerning subject.90
Quigley’s review of the ONI’s 8th Naval District file considerably broadened the database on Oswald at both the Dallas and New Orleans FBI offices. For example, these field offices now had the October 26, 1959, ONI memorandum on Robert Edward Webster who, Quigley said, “appears to have defected to the Russians at about the same time as Oswald.” The 1959 Webster memo was assigned ONI “Control Number 1178.”91
On April 28, 1961, SAC Dallas sent a memorandum to SAC New Orleans relaying the information acquired since the previous Dallas memorandum on February 28.92 This new information came from a phone call to Special Agent Fain made by Oswald’s mother. Marguerite told Fain her son wanted to come home.93
On 4/10/61 [10 April], Mrs. Marguerite C. Oswald, aka Mrs. Edward Lee Oswald, telephonically contacted SA John W. Fain at the Fort Worth RA and stated that she is currently residing at 1612 Hurley Street, Fort Worth. She advised that she had returned to Fort Worth about the first of April 1961 to live . . . Mrs. Oswald also volunteered the information that she made a trip to Washington, D.C., during January 1961, for the purpose of contacting the Secretary of State’s office for information concerning her son, Lee Harvey Oswald. . . . She stated that during the following month or after a lapse of about four weeks, she had learned that subject [Oswald] was at Minsk, Russia.94
SAC Dallas noted that when Fain had interviewed Marguerite on April 28, 1960, she had given him a photograph of Oswald with the description: “Race: White; Sex: Male; Age: 20; Birth data: 10/18/39, New Orleans, Louisiana; Height: 5’10”; Weight: 165 lbs.; Eyes: Blue; Hair: Light brown, wavy.” SAC Dallas asked SAC New Orleans “to expedite [the] investigation so that this matter can be brought to a successful conclusion.” In New Orleans, Special Agent Quigley filed this memo as the third in Oswald’s file there: 100-16601.95
The FBI had been waiting for the day that Oswald might try to return. On May 23, 1961, the special agent in charge of the FBI Washington field office sent a memorandum to the director of the FBI, summarizing the contacts made by the Oswalds (Marguerite and Lee Harvey) to government agencies since January 1961.96 Special Agent Vincent P. Dunn had visited the State Department passport office on May 9, where he was able to read various memoranda and cables about Marguerite’s January visit, Oswald’s decision to come home, and his wish “to come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any legal proceedings against me.”
The SAC WFO said he was passing his memorandum to “the Dallas Division for information as they are the division covering the subject’s permanent residence.” When the memo arrived at the Bureau, someone with the initials F.L.J. wrote this on the right margin: “put cc in 100-353496.”97 That was the special file at headquarters into which Fain’s 1960 handiwork on Oswald had been placed.
On May 25, 1961, Emery J. Adams of the State Department’s Office of Security replied to Hoover’s February 27 request for information on Lee Harvey Oswald. The State Department relayed information provided by its passport office regarding the status of his passport and his contact with the American Embassy at Moscow.98 Adams reported this:
The Passport Office (PPT) of the Department has advised that Mr. Oswald has been in communication with the American Embassy at Moscow, and, at this time, there is no information that he has renounced his nationality of the United States. If Mr. Oswald has not expatriated himself in any way, and when he makes satisfactory arrangements to depart from the USSR, the Embassy is prepared to furnish him with the necessary passport facilities for travel to the United States. PPT further advises that the Subject’s passport file is being periodically reviewed by a representative of your Bureau.99
The FBI and several of its field offices were now engaged in collecting what they could on Oswald, and preparing for his return home. At this point, the paper trail on Oswald leads us back into the CIA, to which we must now turn our attention.
The details are an intelligence geography lesson. It provides the map that guides us through an intersection which is a major turning point in our story.