Authors: John Newman
In April 1958, Popov had reported hearing a drunken colonel boast that the KGB had many technical details on a new highaltitude spycraft America was routing over the Soviet Union. Details of this revolutionary plane had been tightly held within the U.S. government; the leak could only have come from somewhere within the project itself.22
As discussed in Chapter Three, Oswald had been posted at several U-2 sites and knew quite a bit about the program. The Soviet reaction to Oswald could help confirm or deny Popov's intelligence tip. For example, if the Soviets showed no interest whatsoever in Oswald, it would help to confirm Popov's tip that they already had a high-level source on the project.
Popov had been in Berlin when he passed the U-2 leak to the CIA. He returned to Moscow for duty in November 1958. Then, on the very day that Oswald set foot in Moscow, October 16, 1959, Popov was arrested while riding on a bus and attempting to receive a note from his CIA contact, Russell Langelle. According to Angleton biographer Tom Mangold, this event accelerated Angleton's molehunt for an incorrect reason.
Popov could only have been betrayed by a mole buried deep within Soviet Division.... "The betrayal of Popov was the keythe key to our belief that we had been penetrated." ... Popov was actually lost to the Soviets because of a slipshod CIA operation; there was no treachery.23
Angleton thus erroneously believed that Popov-who was later executed-had been betrayed by a mole, an impression in which Golitsin, another Soviet who defected a year later, indulged the Counterintelligence Chief. Angleton's belief was reinforced in 1964, when another Soviet defector, Yuriy Nosenko, came over to the CIA.24
When he did defect, Golitsin told Angleton that back in May 1959 he and two thousand other Soviet intelligence officers attended a conference in Moscow, convened by the new KGB chief, Alexander Shelepin. Shelepin presented the KGB plan to "affect the fundamental reasoning power" of the U.S. government. According to Kim Philby-a British intelligence officer who became a mole for the KGB-biographer Anthony Brown:
As evidence that such a grand plan was already in effect, that the monster plot had begun, Golitsin stated that the split between Russia and China was a fake, meant in part to cause the United States to miscalculate militarily and politically. In due course he revealed more: to effect Shelepin's grand scheme, the KGB had placed a mole inside the Soviet Division of the CIA-an assertion that touched upon Angleton's greatest nightmare, that there was a Philby in the CIA.23
Golitsin reportedly had documents to back up his claims, among which was one describing Department D, a new KGB organization for disinformation, which was to implement the Soviet grand strat egy for winning without fighting.26 The Sino-Soviet split, however, was no fake. By 1961, relations between the two nation's leaders, Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev, had deteriorated beyond repair.
Yet a third series of events was in motion which suggested a mole in the CIA: a series of letters to the CIA written by another Soviet informant, Michal Goleniewski, beginning in 1959, under the name "Sniper." According to another of Angleton's molehunters, Clare Petty, this is why some people in the CIA began to suspect there was a mole:
This case was extremely closely held, as much as anything I can remember. Yet, within a matter of just a few weeks, the Soviets were aware that somebody had come to us with valuable information-and they knew the nature of it. This is an indicator, if you adopt my solution, as to where the penetration was. Eliminate everyone who didn't know about Goleniewski, and you end up with the fingers of one hand.27
Angleton was said to be suspicious of Goleniewski from the beginning, but he could not casually dismiss the argument that Goleniewski might have been manipulated by the KGB after being blown by the same alleged mole in the CIA he apparently warned against. Lewis Carroll would have appreciated this.
It was the Goleniewski episode that gave credence within the Agency to the idea of a mole, an idea Angleton would shortly turn into a crusade. David Martin's CIA chronicle, Wilderness of Mirrors, has this incisive comment:
Goleniewski, with or without the knowledge of the KGB, had planted a germ within the body of the CIA that would become a debilitating disease, all but paralyzing the Agency's clandestine operations against the Soviet Union. The germ was the suspicion that the CIA itself had been penetrated by the KGB, that a Soviet mole had burrowed to the Agency's core. "Goleniewski was the first and primary source on a mole," a CIA officer said.28
Could that germ from 1959, along with the U-2 compromise of the previous year, have led to a counterintelligence "dangle" of Oswald in the Soviet Union? We will return to this question in Chapter Eleven, when we examine Oswald's decision to return to America.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Early Cuban Connections
"Cuba interested him more than most other situations," said Oswald's former marine commander, John Donovan.' In his 1964 testimony before the Warren Commission, Donovan explained that Oswald "was fairly well informed about Batista." When speaking of Batista, Oswald talked about how he was opposed to atrocities in general and how he was opposed to Batista's sort of "dictatorship" in particular. Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar had been president of Cuba until January 1, 1959, when Castro seized power. Oswald's expressed support for Castro and his comment that "it was a godsend that somebody had overthrown Batista," did not alarm Donovan at the time because such sympathetic views of Castro were common in Time magazine and at Harvard.
Oswald's apparent interest in Castro began while he was still in the armed forces and continued during the two and a half years he was in Russia. By this time, the United States had launched a covert war against Cuba and, in particular, against Castro. Shortly after Oswald left the marines, the CIA began to seriously consider how to assassinate Castro. By the time Oswald returned from Russia, the CIA had hired Mafia boss Sam Giancana to do the deed.
Oswald's Cuban capers in New Orleans and Mexico City in the summer of 1963 occurred during a particularly dangerous episode of the Cold War. The Lee Harvey Oswald who emerges in these newly released files was under FBI and CIA surveillance as he walked into a deadly web of deceit, woven from the anti-Castro Cuban underworld, organized crime interests, and the clandestine side of the CIA. It behooves us, therefore, to retrace the Cuban trails along which Oswald and the CIA traveled to their inevitable collision in the weeks before the Kennedy assassination. These trails take us back to the very time we have been considering: 1959 to 1960. What evidence is there of Oswald's interest in Cuba and Castro then, and what was the nature of the CIA's Cuban operations at that time?
The Warren Commission's 1964 investigation into the Kennedy assassination failed to consider the CIA's anti-Castro operations in any capacity at all. In the many controversies surrounding other shortcomings of the Warren Commission's work, this particular failure is often overlooked. There could be no more profound omission to any study of Oswald's activities in the months before the murder of Kennedy than that of the CIA's anti-Cuban operations.
The Warren Commission's aversion to examining espionage leads in Oswald's past was alluded to in a 1975 secret CIA report. Written by Angleton subordinate Ray Rocca, the report focused on the testimony of a marine associate of Oswald's, Nelson Delgado. Delgado had told the Warren Commission that Oswald had been in contact with Cuban diplomats while he was still in the Marine Corps and stationed at El Toro. The commission was not interested. The "implications do not appear to have been run down or developed by investigation," Rocca's report said. This was more than a veiled criticism of the Warren Commission; Rocca is pointing the finger of blame in the Kennedy assassination at Fidel Castro. "The beginning of Oswald's relationship with the Cubans," Rocca's report declared darkly, "starts with a question mark."
There were many Cuban question marks in 1959 and 1960 from Havana to Miami and the White House.
In Fort Worth and Minsk
Oswald's interest in Cuba was well documented in his early FBI and CIA files. Reporting on Oswald that contained information about statements by Oswald hinting at this interest reached the CIA as early as May 1960. When he visited his mother, Marguerite, on his way to the Soviet Union, Oswald reportedly said he wanted to go to Cuba. Six months later Marguerite told an FBI agent that Lee "had mentioned something about his desire to travel and said something about the fact that he might go to Cuba." The FBI man, Dallas special agent John Fain, put the details of this and more in a report. Fain also said, "Mrs. Oswald stated she would not have been surprised to learn that Lee had gone to say South America or Cuba, but that it never crossed her mind that he might go to Russia or that he might try to become a citizen there."2
The Oswald we see in the newspapers behaves the same way as the Oswald that develops in the CIA's files. Oswald's 1959 comments to his relatives about his interest in the Cuban revolution were well documented in the press at the time. Wire service coverage the day after Oswald's October 31, 1959, defection reported that "His [Oswald's] sister-in-law in Fort Worth said: `He said he wanted to travel a lot and talked about going to Cuba.' "' Over two and a half years later, after Oswald returned to America, his 1959 comments again surfaced. "When he visited his family shortly after his release from the marines," a 1962 Fort Worth newspaper recalled of Oswald's 1959 visit with his family, "he talked optimistically about the future. Some of his plans had included going to college, writing a book, or joining Castro's Cuban army."4
Oswald's oral and written remarks refer to interest in Cuba and Cubans during his stay in Minsk. In his diary, Oswald wrote that Anita Ziger had a "Hungarian chap for a boyfriend named `Alferd.' (Alfred)"5 Oswald had met him, but Alfred might have been a Cuban. Anita did know a Hungarian chap, but his name was Frederick. After Oswald returned to America, Anita wrote a letter to him about how the relationship ended. "Concerning my love life," Anita said disappointedly, "nothing nice is happening. I was telling you about Alfred from Cuba. They sent him to Moscow to study." Anita recalled the "very nice" time she had spent vacationing with Alfred in Odessa, but lamented, "happiness cannot be extended for as long as one likes."6 Anita also mentioned she had told Alfred about her friend named Frederick, but added that "it doesn't affect him."
Marina knew about Frederick and Alfred. She described the latter to the FBI as "a young man from Cuba who is apparently an admirer of Anita Ziger, who is a member of the Ziger family from Argentina who were friends of the Oswalds in Minsk." Alfred and Anita, Marina recalled, "both spoke Spanish."' On another occasion Marina provided the FBI with additional details about Alfred. Dallas FBI Special Agent Wallace B. Heitman wrote this afterward:
Marina stated "Alfred," whose last name she did not know, is a Cuban citizen and a resident of Cuba who for some time has been studying in Russia. He studied at the University of Minsk for about six months and later studied at the University of Moscow, where he is believed to presently be studying. Marina said "Alfred's" parents have visited him in Russia both in Minsk and Moscow. She said although she did not personally know "Alfred," Lee Harvey Oswald had known him as he had met "Alfred" at Minsk through Anita Ziger on one occasion when they visited at the University of Minsk to attend some social or scholastic affair. Marina also related "Alfred" had wanted to marry Anita but the latter had not wanted to marry him.
"Frederick," Marina told Special Agent Heitman, was a young man whom Oswald had met in the radio factory where they both worked. "Frederick," Marina added, "is a Hungarian."8
When he was serving as a member of the Warren Commission, former CIA Director Allen Dulles felt it was noteworthy that Oswald and Marina had "Cuban friends" in Minsk. "Marina told me about them," Dulles said. "They played the guitar."9 In her testimony to the commission, Marina said that there were Cuban students studying in Minsk, and mentioned that one was a boyfriend of "this Argentinean girl," meaning Anita Ziger. "Do you know where the Cuban students were studying, what particular school?" Dulles asked Marina. "They study in various educational institutions in Minsk" and elsewhere, Marina replied. Marina then added this comment:
From what I could tell from what Lee said, many of these Cuban students were not satisfied with life in the Soviet Union, and this Argentinean girl told me the same thing. Many of them thought that, they were not satisfied with the conditions in the Soviet Union and thought if Castro were to be in power that the conditions in Cuba would become similar to those in the Soviet Union and they were not satisfied with this. They said it wasn't worthwhile carrying out a revolution just to have the kind of life that these people in the Soviet Union had.10
Representative Ford asked Marina how many Cubans were in school in Minsk. "I heard the figure of 300," Marina replied, "but I never knew even a single one."
Whether Alfred was a Cuban or Soviet national, it is noteworthy that Allan Dulles, and probably the CIA, thought Alfred was a Cuban. In that view, Alfred might easily have been the son of a Cuban diplomat serving in the Soviet Union. On the other hand, after FBI reports and Warren Commission testimony had decided that Frederick, not Alfred, was the Hungarian, the Warren Report published a photo of Oswald and Alfred with the caption describing Alfred as "a Hungarian friend" of Anita Ziger's." At a minimum, this is sloppiness. At the same time, such mistakes often serve as guideposts, especially where they concern Oswald's contacts with Cubans. Marina had said Oswald knew a "Cuban family" in the Soviet Union. Is it possible that Alfred, or Frederick may have been the son of Carlos Olivares or Faure Chomon? Both had been Cuban diplomats in the Soviet Union during the period when Oswald knew Alfred in Minsk. An anti-Castro Cuban academic, Dr. Herminio Portell-Vila, told the FBI that he had heard through the Cuban underground that these Cuban diplomats had a file on Oswald in Moscow which they turned over to the "Castro brothers" two days after the Kennedy assassination."