Authors: John Newman
The importance that the head of CIA Counterintelligence attached to these two letters was lost when the Agency told the HSCA none of the HT/LINGUAL items was "of any significance." Although Angleton apparently did not know it, Oswald also went by the name Alex while he was in the Soviet Union.130
This Angleton memo is also helpful to researchers because it specifies the HT/LINGUAL numbers for two letters in which Oswald's Russian name "Alik" appears. A simple analysis of 63 A 24 W and 63 E 22 U indicates that these must mean letters of January 24, 1963 (item "W" for that day), and May 22, 1963 respectively. Thus these letters in Oswald's HT/LINGUAL file which connect to the alias spanned both the March 4 rifle order and Oswald's April 24 move to New Orleans. The two 1963 "Alik" letters, both to Marina, were listed in the 1964 summary of the Oswald LINGUAL file, but the descriptions for both of them lacked the insight that the Counterintelligence chief had passed on to Hoover in the wake of the assassination.
When Oswald ordered the weapon he used an alias that was similar to a nickname already in his HT/LINGUAL file."' The CIA claims it intercepted no Oswald mail of importance.'32 This obviously false claim raises the suspicion that another claim-that Oswald was not the subject of the mail program after May 1962-is also dubious. We know for a fact that three letters, one to Oswald and two to Marina, were opened when neither was on the Watch List. Maybe someone else with a steam iron had a different list.
Until the early 1990s release of documents, the public had no idea that a continuity between Oswald's Russian sojourn and the alleged murder weapon existed-or that the Agency's Counterintelligence chief would write about it, and that the project officer would use it as a showcase example. The Hidell alias story is fraught with problems. One such problem surfaced on the day of the assassination, when the U.S. Army knew, apparently too early, about an identification card in Oswald's possession with the infamous alias on it. We will return to the Hidell problem later.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Undercover in
New Orleans
Up to April 1963, the FBI had little trouble tracking Oswald's footsteps. His return to Texas in June 1962 had made things easier because the Dallas FBI office had begun investigating him soon after his defection in 1959. After Oswald's return, FBI field activity on him had been conducted by several offices, but principally by those in Dallas and New York, the former in whose district he lived and the latter where the FBI office spied on his mail to the Communist Party, the Worker, and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). Then something strange happened: The FBI lost track of Oswald for two months, from April 24, through June 26. These dates cover Oswald's move to New Orleans and his first month of FPCC activity there. The FBI maintains it did not discover that Oswald was in New Orleans until June 26. Moreover, the Bureau left the Warren Commission with the impression that Oswald's place of residence in New Orleans had not been "verified" until August 5. Five days later, from a cell in the jail of the First District Police Department of New Orleans, Oswald asked to speak with someone from the FBI.'
Oswald's August 9 arrest on Canal Street and the events that followed are the subject of Chapter Seventeen. The present chapter is a study of the period between his move to New Orleans and the time the FBI says that it confirmed his residence on Magazine Street. We open with an obvious question: Why couldn't the FBI find Oswald? As we will see, the FBI should have known about the move and the Magazine Street address by mid-May, not June 26 and August 5 respectively, as they assert. This prompts the question: What was Oswald doing during the period that the FBI files went blind? The answer is intriguing: He was organizing a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans.
Using his real name, Oswald wrote often about his plans and activities to FPCC national director Vincent Lee, who encouraged him to undertake organizational work in New Orleans. Lee advised Oswald not to open an office, advice that Oswald ignored. Lee lost interest in Oswald when he violated the bylaws of the FPCC by claiming charter status for his New Orleans "branch." While the FBI remained in the dark and Vincent Lee's interest in Oswald waned, curiosity about FPCC developments in New Orleans was growing in Army counterintelligence, whose agents began following the paper trail in New Orleans left by "A. J. Hidell." Unlike his letters to Vincent Lee, Oswald did not use his real name in the initial-undercover-stage of his FPCC activities in New Orleans. Oswald disappeared from the sights of the FBI Dallas office as A. J. Hidell entered the cross-hairs of Army surveillance, using a false New Orleans post office box and the address of 544 Camp Street.
The 544 Camp Street address deepens the mystery, for this was the location where Guy Banister and the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) maintained their offices. The CRC was the successor to the Frente Revolutionario Democratico (FRD), set up by the CIA in Mexico during the last year of the Eisenhower administration to overthrow Castro by military force. As discussed in Chapter Eight, most of the FRD's military forces-Brigade 2506-had been trained by the U.S. Army at sites in southern Guatemala. In the early months of the Kennedy administration, the CRC was formed to coordinate FRD activities for the U.S. government. The Bay of Pigs fiasco resulted in centrifugal tendencies in the Cuban exile community, but the CRC remained the stable core among the various exile factions. Kennedy's support for the CRC was drastically reduced in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, and all government funding for the CRC was terminated on May 1, 1963.
Born in a Louisiana log cabin in 1901, Guy Banister had done work with Navy intelligence in World War II, and had developed deep associations within the FBI. He worked for the FBI for twenty years, rising to the position of special agent in charge of the Bureau's Chicago office. In 1955 he moved to New Orleans, where he left the FBI to serve as assistant superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department. His mission was to investigate police corruption, but Banister was forced into retirement in 1957 after threatening a waiter with a pistol in the Old Absinthe House. He then formed his own detective agency, Guy Banister Associates, which he threw into a crusade to root out Communists in New Orleans. In 1961 Banister played a role in the CRC activities associated with the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and he helped organize the Friends of Democratic Cuba, a fund-raising organ for the New Orleans branch of the CRC under Sergio Arcacha Smith. Banister continued to work for the CRC- or "AMBUD" as it was known in the Agency. He ran background investigations of local Cuban students who wanted to join Smith's group, in order to weed out potential pro-Castro sympathizers who might be infiltrators. It was Banister who arranged for the CRC's office space at 544 Camp Street. While hard evidence is lacking, Oswald's undercover pro-Castro activities may have been-whether Oswald was witting or not-associated with a CRC recruiting operation in New Orleans.
Oswald chose a propitious moment to enter the dark world of Guy Banister and the Cuban underground. The day-June 5-that Oswald picked up the FPCC application forms he would distribute in New Orleans, President Kennedy's trip to Dallas was announced in the newspapers.
"How and When Did the FBI Learn of Oswald's Move to New Orleans?"
A hefty slice of the FBI-including headquarters, and the Dallas, New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, and Washington field offices-had been watching Oswald. Add to this a wide array of the CIA's clandestine services, including the Soviet Russia Division, the Security Office, and the counterintelligence staff, then mix in the State Department's intelligence, security, passport, and Russian components, and then top it off with Navy intelligence, Marine Corps intelligence, Air Force intelligence, and possibly even Army intelligence. Given this level of watchfulness, one would be tempted to think that the FBI, which was actively investigating Oswald, would have known when he moved. This is reasonable because, immediately upon finding his place at Magazine Street, Oswald sent written notification to the Communist Party, the FPCC, the Soviet Embassy, and, most important, the Dallas post office. Much of Oswald's mail to these same organizations was being read surreptitiously by the FBI.
One thing readers of FBI documents quickly encounter is the Bureau's commendable precision about names, dates, and placesespecially the "hows" and "whens" with respect to the information it collects and reports. This precision vanishes on a crucial subject: the FBI's knowledge of Oswald's move to New Orleans. The lingering mystery surrounding the Bureau's ignorance of Oswald's move, as well as his early activities there, stands out as one of the Bureau's great failures-if their tale of neglect can be believed. This problem became apparent early during the Warren Commission inquest, when the FBI was asked to clarify the record. On April 6, 1964, the FBI responded to a series of questions concerning its investigation of Oswald. Question Number 9 on this list was answered as follows:
QUESTION: How and when did the FBI learn of Oswald's move to New Orleans?
ANSWER: A confidential source advised our New York Office on June 26, 1963, that one Lee H. Oswald, Post Office Box 30061, New Orleans, Louisiana, had directed a letter to "The Worker," New York City. Our New Orleans Office checked this post office box and determined it was rented to L. H. Oswald on June 3, 1963, residence 657 French Street, New Orleans. This was an incorrect address and further inquiries showed Oswald was residing at 4905 Magazine Street, New Orleans. Oswald's residence in New Orleans was verified on August 5, 1963, by Mrs. Jesse James Garner, 4909 Magazine Street, New Orleans. On the same date his employment at the William B. Reilly Coffee Company, 640 Magazine Street, New Orleans, was determined.'
This answer is not satisfactory. It does not explain when the New Orleans FBI office "determined" that on June 3 Oswald had rented P.O. Box 30061. Similarly, it fails to explain when the "further inquiries" were made that came up with 4909 Magazine, a wrong address. Most important, it fails to disclose the truth known to the FBI at the time of this response to the Warren Commission.
A broad view of FBI operations suggests that the FBI learned that Oswald had moved to Magazine Street no later than a few days after the move took place. The Washington and New York field offices played key roles not accounted for in the FBI response to the Warren Commission. On July 5, 1963, SAC (Special Agent in Charge) New York sent SAC New Orleans a copy of Oswald's June 10, letter to the Worker, along with the envelope bearing Oswald's P.O. address in New Orleans.' Three days later the New York office discovered something better: Oswald was on 4907 Magazine Street in New Orleans. New York source "48 S" had intercepted a change-of-address card Oswald mailed to the Worker, revising his mailing address from Magazine Street to P.O. Box 30061.°
It seems likely that New York informed the Bureau soon after, but an administrative glitch' prevents an authoritative statement about the date this card was placed in Oswald's headquarters file. At the same time, it is likely that the FBI's Washington field office had already reported Oswald's Magazine Street address to headquarters, probably May 17-18, after intercepting Oswald's May 16 change-of-address card to the Soviet Embassy.' We will return to this card and the Washington field office intercept program shortly. There are no FBI interoffice memoranda showing that the New York office or headquarters told the New Orleans or Dallas offices about the change-of-address card intercepted on July 8 in New York. The record shows that not until July 17 did New York share this card with New Orleans. Could New Orleans already have known?
A missing piece from New Orleans was provided in an October 31, 1963 New Orleans FBI report that disclosed that when Oswald sent his July 8 change-of-address card to the Worker, New Orleans informant T-1 reported it. The surviving New Orleans documents are missing the paperwork for this claim, but it likely was informant T-1 in the New Orleans post office. If true, this would mean that Oswald's Magazine Street address was known on or shortly after July 8 in the New Orleans, New York, and Washington field offices, and at FBI headquarters, and that none of them informed Dallas. Perhaps Dallas was informed by telephone, but there is no record of Oswald's Magazine Street address being shared with Dallas. The record looks odd: It shows it was not until July 17 that New Orleans informed Dallas of Oswald's new post office box.'
The foregoing makes it appear that much of the FBI system was derelict for not reporting Oswald's locations to the agent responsible for keeping track of him, James P. Hosty. Could it be that they presumed Hosty knew of Oswald's various addresses in New Orleans? Since Oswald had sent change-of-address cards to virtually everyone else, New York and Washington might have assumed that he had obtained the address from the Dallas post office. The July 17 New Orleans memo to Dallas exudes a hint of exasperation with the state of affairs. After pointing out an obsolete letter concerning Oswald, the memo continued:
By letter dated 7/5/63 the New York Office furnished information to the effect that one Lee H. Oswald has an address of P.O. Box 30061, New Orleans, Louisiana.
It is believed possible this person is identical with Lee Harvey Oswald, subject in captioned case.
Since New Orleans has received no information subsequent to referenced letter, Dallas is requested to advise New Orleans of the status of Dallas case captioned above.
New Orleans is instituting inquiries to determine residence address of holder of P.O. Box 30061, New Orleans, Louisiana."
If we accept the October 31 FBI claim that New Orleans knew of the change-of-address card on July 8, then the above July 17 memo is evidence that New Orleans withheld Oswald's Magazine Street address from Dallas.
While New Orleans was passing Oswald's post office box number to Dallas, the New York office was discussing Oswald's Magazine Street address in a letter to the New Orleans office.' It appears that New Orleans received a copy of the card from New York on July 20,10 and that Dallas was not informed at the time. The knowledge levels of the various FBI offices are important to compare. New York appeared to be in possession of all the pieces except the May 16 Oswald letter to the Soviet Embassy. On July 1 New York sent Dallas an Oswald letter with the Dallas post office box address; on July 5 New York sent New Orleans the letter to the Worker with the New Orleans post office box address''; and on July 8 New Orleans and New York learned of Oswald's Magazine Street residence and said nothing about it to the Dallas office. Dallas appears to have been fast asleep, and was startled on July 17 by the news from New Orleans that Oswald had a post office box there. 12 Still sluggish, it took Dallas twelve days just to say the case on Oswald and Marina was "pending," that Dallas was looking for them, and that the last residence they knew about was the Neely Street address which the Oswalds "left, giving no forwarding address.""