Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK Read Free Page A

intelligence files before the Kennedy assassination. What was the nature of their interest in Oswald? Who in the CIA had access to Oswald's files? What were their operations?
    The official CIA position on its relationship with Oswald has always been that there was no relationship of "any kind." That is what the Agency told the Warren Commission in 1964, and it is what they told the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978. CIA director John A. McCone stated this in his 1964 testimony to the Warren Commission:
    Oswald was not an agent, employee, or informant of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Agency never contacted him, interviewed him, talked with him, or solicited any reports or information from him, or communicated with him indirectly or in any other manner. Oswald was never associated or connected directly or indirectly in any way whatsoever with the Agency.'
    According to the HSCA Report, "The record reflects that once these assurances had been received, no further efforts were made by the Warren Commission to pursue the matter."3
    A diametrically opposing view of Oswald and the CIA came from James Wilcott, who served as a CIA finance officer in Japan at the time Oswald served there in the Marines. Wilcott claimed that a CIA case officer told him-the day after Kennedy was assassinated-that Oswald was an agent. In 1978 Wilcott told the HSCA that "Oswald was a CIA agent who had received financial disbursements under an assigned cryptonym." Wilcott could only cite informal conversations as evidence, and after talking with Wilcott's coworkers, the HSCA "concluded that Wilcott's allegation was not worthy of belief."4
    The record suggests that neither the Agency's official story nor Wilcott's characterization is accurate. The truth lies in between. The Agency appears to have had serious operational interest in Oswald and there probably was a relationship, though not that of an "agent" or "informant." While Oswald wasn't James Bond, it is increasingly apparent that the Agency's operational interest may have led to his use or manipulation. For its part, the HSCA Report accepted the CIA official position:

    There was no indication in Oswald's CIA file that he had ever had contact with the Agency.... This finding, however, must be placed in context, for the institutional characteristics-in terms of the Agency's strict compartmentalization and the complexity of its enormous filing system-that are designed to prevent penetration by foreign powers have the simultaneous effect of making congressional inquiry difficult.'
    The HSCA said they tried to overcome "the Agency's securityoriented institutional obstacles that potentially impede effective scrutiny of the CIA." But the CIA withheld an important key to Oswald's CIA files: the internal dissemination records for those files. In the absence of those records, the HSCA was unable to resolve the most glaring deficiencies in the Agency's account of the Oswald files.'
    We have those internal dissemination records and other information not shared with the Warren Commission, Church Committee, or HSCA investigations. This information indicates, at the least, that Oswald was probably involved in CIA operations. No attempt is made in this book to evaluate this material with respect to any conspiracy theory. Beyond the scope of this book, that discussion is already under way with several new works, such as Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (New York: Random House, 1995); Ray and Mary La Fontaine's Oswald Talked: The New Evidence in the JFK Assassination (New Orleans: Pelican, scheduled for publication in 1995); and David Lifton's Oswald (New York: Dutton, scheduled for publication in 1995).
    Some useful information has been drawn from previous government investigations, but the vast majority of research for this work was conducted in the newly released files, especially those made available in 1993 through 1995. The two million pages that have been added to