The Perfect Crime

People long have used games of one sort or another to amuse or advance themselves. These games may be simple or complex in nature and can embody a wide variety of forms. Despite whatever differences exist among individual games, all games share as an end or objective the separation of winners from losers as well as the fact that their playing is guided by a set of rules. Consequently, in playing a game, it is understood that if all of the contestants are to have a fair chance of winning they will be apprised of the rules of that particular game in advance of the contest and the rules will be applied equally and fairly.

For the purposes of this study of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an exercise which represents an attempt to place the murder in a context of "gaming," a "game" will be defined as "a procedure for gaining an end" as well as "a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other."

In the case of the assassination of JFK, certain members of America's intelligence services and representatives of other agencies of the United States government chose to play a deadly game, the rules of which remained hidden from all but themselves and a few others. This was only to be expected because, in the world of intelligence with its particular and peculiar covert nature, the theory and practice of gaming can exist in an entirely different context or dimension than they do for most people. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower once observed of the craft of intelligence, "These activities have their own rules and methods of concealment which seek to mislead and obscure."

Counter intelligence expert Melvin Beck also likened the craft of intelligence to a game in his book Secret Contenders:

Any case officer contemplating a double agent operation is convinced, or should be, that the opposition probably knows that he is an intelligence officer of the CIA. Indeed, there is always the tantalizing possibility that the walk-in agent is a "plant."...If so, that only heightens the competition. What ensues may be likened to a chess game, American Intelligence Service versus Russian Intelligence Service, in which moves and countermoves are studied, projected, and applied. That is probably the simplest description of what double agent operations are--games.

What is the purpose of those games? As Beck explains:

The course of a double agent operation is fairly well charted. It will wax or wane as the case officers on both sides assess the relative costs involved, or, put another way, the relative damage to the other side. Any move by the opposition through "his" agent to tie up the resources of the other side, to instigate costly investigations, to drain money, to pass along "deception" information, etc., is viewed with the suspicion it serves. The countering case officer will then try to turn the operation in a direction that will have the same effect on the opposing service.

In this closed world where all is fair and the end most certainly justifies the means, it is not surprising that the element of gamesmanship--"the art or practice of winning games by questionable expedients without actually violating the rules"--often becomes a major factor in conducting operations. What would be unscrupulous, repugnant, barbarous, and immoral to the rest of the world is merely business as usual to the black operators of intelligence. As Eric Amber observed in Light of Day:

If I were asked to single out one specific group of men, one type, one category, as being the most suspicious, unbelieving, unreasonable, petty, inhuman, sadistic, double-crossing set of bastards in any language, I would say without any hesitation--the people who run counter-espionage departments.

Put simply, the rules of the intelligence game are much different from those of the games most other people live their lives under or by. These rules of the intelligence game also allow and sometimes even encourage abnormal, abhorrent, amoral, and aberrant behavior.

In the end, this sort of mindset may be what allows intelligence operatives the means to justify and rationalize some of their actions and activities.

In the case of the plot against President John F. Kennedy, the object of the "game" was to assassinate the president by defeating those who would protect him and then to escape detection or prosecution through the manipulation of an agent's identity. In short, this was a game that was being played for the highest of stakes--the reins of government of the world's most powerful nation.

What ultimately emerges in the assassination of JFK is an operation that in the murky world of intelligence is an unqualified success--and one that was played according to the rules of that particular world--yet one which also represents a brutal and monstrous crime to that large portion of the world which adheres to a much different set of rules. Because of the way in which the plotters carried out JFK's murder, the game of the assassination is overlaid with a heavy sense of irony that borders on black humor. Viewed from this perspective, the assassination can be seen as a prank--a practical joke played on the president and Oswald as well as on some of the individuals and groups that the plotters enlisted or influenced to do their bidding.

What follows is an analysis of the elements of gaming and gamesmanship involved in the assassination of JFK as well as an examination of several of the bitter ironies embodied in the murder plot.

The first thread in the plot against the president (though it was not apparent at the time) was spun with the 1959 defection to the Soviet Union of an American Marine who either actually was or was purporting to be one "Lee Harvey Oswald" (LHO). Having announced his intention to defect to U.S Embassy personnel (who were, in reality, intelligence operatives) in Moscow, LHO, who had been a radar operator with at least a secret clearance at Atsugi, Japan, the CIA's top secret Far Eastern staging base for U-2 over flights of China and the Soviet Union, also threatened to reveal military secrets to the Soviets. (The United States military apparently took Oswald's threat seriously (or at least gave the appearance of taking it seriously), and, in California, where Oswald had last served, it changed aircraft call signals, codes, and radio and radar frequencies shortly after his defection.) At the time, the U-2 spy plane was one of the CIA's most important Cold War intelligence asset and tightly held secrets.

(Some people believe that LHO may have been sent to the Soviet Union specifically because of his knowledge of the U-2 to play a role in an intelligence operation designed to damage or destroy the scheduled peace talks between President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev. In fact, a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers, a contract agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, crashed because of mechanical difficulty while over the Soviet Union shortly before the peace talks. Interestingly, Oswald later spoke of having seen or encountered Powers in Moscow during the pilot's imprisonment and trial [although he supposedly was in Minsk at the time] and Powers later wrote of Oswald and his threat to disclose military secrets in his account of the event.

The question of whether it was a coincidence that Powers' plane came down during the time LHO was in the Soviet Union certainly does beg an answer. In trying to answer that question, we need to consider whether the presence of LHO in the Soviet Union at this time and his threat to divulge secrets to the Soviets were a cover for the planned downing of a U-2 that many persons believe had been tampered with. The flight had been delayed several times--Powers' plane had a history of mechanical problems and a reputation as a "dog" among the pilots--and at the time the plane encountered mechanical difficulty it was flying at about 65,000 feet, well below its operational altitude of 90,000 feet. [The height at which it flew had been its protection against Soviet air defense systems.] We also need to ask whether there were elements in the American defense-intelligence community desperate enough to prevent the peace talks that they were willing even to sacrifice an intelligence asset of the magnitude of the U-2. In addition, we should examine whether these individuals may have been working in concert with Soviet counterparts who were of the same mind. In any event, this incident precipitated a crisis that effectively scuttled the talks. [Eisenhower learned a valuable lesson from this affair and belatedly offered the country a warning in his "Farewell Address."])

Once the Soviets had thoroughly interrogated LHO and gained all they believed they could from him, he was eliminated and a "look-a-like" (LAL) was substituted for him. Subsequently, the LAL, along with his Soviet-born wife, who had highly placed relatives in the NVD, an element of the Soviet domestic intelligence apparatus, "returned" to America.

(It should be pointed out that Oswald's mother and brother noted significant differences--hair texture, hairline, skin color, etc.--in his appearance after his return. By way of explanation, Oswald said the cold climate in Russia had made his hair fall out. His brother, Robert, is on record as saying the person who returned from the Soviet Union wasn't the same individual who went there. His half-brother, Edward Pic, also expressed doubts as to the LAL's identity and was insulted when the LAL referred to him as his "half-brother," something he had never done before. He had always just been his "brother." Some persons also maintain that the LAL spoke English as if he had learned it from a book and that his knowledge and appreciation of Soviet literature were far beyond what Oswald's could have been. In addition, shortly before his return home, Oswald asked his mother in a letter to send him old photographs of her and other members of the family. Why? Perhaps he wanted to make sure he recognized people he had never seen before when they came to greet him at the airport. There also were measurable and identifiable physiological differences between the Oswald who went to the Soviet Union and the one who returned. The LAL had lost about two inches in height from his Marine Corps days, shrinking to 5 foot 9 inches tall. [In one picture reportedly taken in the Soviet Union, he appears much shorter than that.] A mastoidectomy scar from his youth also disappeared.

The LAL described himself to police as "5 ft. 9, weigh 140 lb., have brown hair, blue-gray eyes, and have no tattoos or permanent scars." In the summer preceding the assassination, a State Department study that sought to determine whether American defectors, including Oswald, were genuine was suspended without explanation. Those conducting it were either fired from their positions or denied access to the study materials. It was almost as if someone did not want the LAL's true identity to be made known to another department of the government. It would have blown his and their covers. It's no wonder that Secret Service agents told the undertaker who prepared the LAL's body for burial: "We're not sure who it is that we're burying." In pondering the various manifestations and appearances of "Oswald," one often wonders just how many of them there really were.)

Once in America, the LAL assumed LHO's identity, picked up where LHO had left off, and began working in some capacity for the FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, or all or some combination of these agencies. One, some, or all of these agencies, knowing full well the true identity of the LAL, used him in the same fashion they would have used a bonafide agent. For by going along with the Soviets' ruse, they had much to gain in intelligence terms. Not only did they possess an asset they could use to gather intelligence as they did with any of their other agents--with the added advantage of having considerable leverage over the LAL should they need it--but they also could observe the LAL and his wife and see what and whom they were interested in, see whom their contacts were, and use them as a conduit to pass disinformation to the Soviets. (If they were being controlled by Soviet double agents in the American intelligence network, they also could be used to pass legitimate information back to the Soviets.)

Ultimately, in his work for these American agencies, the LAL received the assignment of infiltrating anti-Castro groups (Cuban Revolutionary Council, Cuban Student Directorate, Alpha 66, Friends of Democratic Cuba, Commandos L, etc.) in the New Orleans area. This assignment was part of the White House's crackdown on Operation Mongoose activities following the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Operation Mongoose was a clandestine anti-Castro program developed in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco that brought together the intelligence community, anti-Castro Cubans, the military, the Mafia, wealthy southern oil/businessmen, soldiers of fortune, and defense-related industries in a web of mutual interest--namely, the elimination of Castro and the "liberation" of Cuba.) To resolve the missile crisis, JFK had, in return for the removal of the Soviet missiles, promised to guarantee Cuba's sovereignty and to not interfere in Cuba's internal affairs. To do this, however, he had to stop the exile raids on Cuba, which is where the LAL comes into the story.

At some point in this assignment, the LAL happened onto or was purposely and purposefully introduced to and drawn into a plot to assassinate JFK, which was being planned at the operational level, to some extent, and which would be coordinated and implemented by some of the individuals he was associating with in New Orleans. While it's possible that the idea of murdering the president initially developed independently among this group, by the time the LAL entered the picture, these individuals were being actively encouraged and supported in this enterprise by persons in levels above them in the intelligence and defense communities. Eventually, the LAL was drawn into the plot and given assignments in which he established a false identity as a pro-Castroite and a communist. With these actions, the process of setting up the LAL as the patsy for the impending assassination was begun.

(Ironically, one of these groups either included or knew of a second Oswald look-a-like [SO], who could, in fact, have been the original LHO. [Intelligence agent Richard C. Nagell says there were two--Leon Oswald, who was killed sometime in the early fall of 1963, and the SO.] J. Edgar Hoover had expressed concern over someone using LHO's passport while he was in the Soviet Union, and, during this same period, someone using Oswald's name inquired about the purchase of trucks in the name of the Friends of Democratic Cuba, a group in which Guy Banister and David Ferrie, with whom the LAL consorted in New Orleans, were extremely active. Banister, in fact, was listed on the group's articles of incorporation.)

Banister and Ferrie had a long history of involvement with America's intelligence community and various ultra-right causes and groups. In addition, Ferrie was Oswald's commander in the Civil Air Patrol when Oswald was a teenager in New Orleans and later was an employee of New Orleans Mafia don Carlos Marcello. There is some reason to believe that Oswald had Ferrie's library card in his possession when he was arrested although the official records do not indicate this.)

For several reasons, the LAL is the perfect patsy for the assassination. LHO's "identity" as a communist and defector, which the LAL has assumed and built upon through his pro-Castro activities and the LAL's true "identity" as a Soviet agent can and ultimately will be used to blunt an investigation into the crime. The beauty of the plot is that not only will the president be eliminated but a Soviet agent or asset also will be destroyed--a loss which no one would mourn--and his wife and colleague, who might have been a "sleeper agent," would be compromised. (In their assignment, Marina and Lee may have been much like Soviet defector Nick Shadrin and his Polish wife, Ewa. Maria Oden observed of this couple: "Who knows maybe Nick was sent from Poland...from Russia to meet some Polish girl and come with her and had a mission to live [with] her for twenty years...and it was time to go home.") In the eyes of the plotters, they see themselves as having the best interests of the country at heart and their actions as supremely patriotic.

(The beauty of the whole thing was that even if "Oswald" wasn't a Soviet agent, he would still suffice as a patsy because he would--or could be made to--appear to be working for the Soviets. In reality, he may have been working for the Soviets at the behest of the CIA or ONI or vice versa. In the secret world of intelligence it is appearances that count more than reality [which is truly a relative term in this context.])

The plotters, at least at the lower levels, were hoping to use the assassination to spur action on the part of the United States that would result in Castro's removal and Cuba's "liberation." In this scenario, the battle cry "Remember JFK" would be on the lips of the Marines as they stormed Cuba's beaches to avenge the president's murder at the hands of a known Castroite. It would be the Bay of Pigs all over again but done right this time. Ultimately, this is the reason for creating the pro-Castro veneer (his chairmanship of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee [he was the only member], passing out FPCC leaflets, his street brawl with anti-Castro activists, radio and television interviews in which he reiterates his commitment to Marxism, and trip to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City to secure a visa) for the LAL's identity.

The LAL's true identity as a Soviet agent, which was known at certain levels of the plot, is perceived as protection against a legitimate investigation following the president's murder. It is the plotters' insurance policy and a good one at that. For if it was to become known that a Soviet agent had "killed" the president of the United States--as the planted evidence was intended to show--it would have created the very real possibility of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union--something that no one on either side really wanted. Such disclosure also might possibly have compromised a number of CIA, FBI, ONI, or Army Intelligence operations. Finally, it might have embarrassed and damaged the credibility of these agencies beyond repair. At this point in the country's history, the existence of a permanent defense-intelligence establishment was new to the American experience--as President Eisenhower pointed out in his "Farewell Address." As a result, the American people were comparative political innocents and ignorant of the Byzantine and machiavellian nature of intelligence operations and operatives. In short, they simply could not and would not have understood why a Soviet agent was allowed the free run of the country to the extent that he was able to put himself in a position where he or others with whom he was associating could assassinate the president of the United States. The assassination would have been perceived by the American people as having occurred because of official laxness or ineptitude or, worse yet, criminal negligence. How could something like this have been explained away? Heads certainly would have rolled. That the American intelligence community could never afford to admit the LAL's true identity would, the plotters believed, effectively compromise any investigation into the crime.

(Ultimately, the threat of a nuclear war that would claim the lives of at least "40 million people" was the "stick" LBJ used to persuade Earl Warren--he was told just enough to scare him--to head the presidential commission Johnson had appointed to investigate the crime and then to compromise that body's investigation.)

As the LAL was drawn into and became more cognizant of the details of the plot (he probably was given a role to play), he attempted to warn authorities--specifically, the FBI as evidenced by the Walters' teletype and, perhaps, the Hosty note and the LAL's jail conversation with Special Agent Quigley in New Orleans--of the impending assassination attempt. He may even have tried to extricate himself from the plot by returning to the Soviet Union or traveling to Cuba but was unsuccessful. His lines of communication, however, either were not secure and word did not get through or, having gotten through, it fell on deaf ears.

(As the result of an assignment he believed to be from the KGB, albeit delivered to him by one "Bob," a CIA agent, Richard Case Nagell, a former Army Intelligence and CIA [double] agent who had become aware of--and reported to the FBI--a plot to assassinate JFK through his surveillance of two anti-Castro Cubans [Leopoldo and Angel] and the LAL, ws ordered to kill the LAL in Mexico City in order to eliminate "the essential part of the plot." Nagell chose not to follow through on this assignment for several reasons. [His "CIA" contact had been reassigned and could not be reached and Nagell felt less than secure in murdering someone at the behest of an unfriendly foreign government.] Instead, he went into a federally insured bank in El Paso and fired two shots into the wall so that he would be in federal custody when the assassination occurred in Dallas in November. [Nagell reports that there were several other plots against JFK during 1963 that did not come to fruition. He had been monitoring these plots as an assignment for the Soviets since October 1962.] He also was monitoring the LAL for the CIA and perhaps the FBI.

The actions of the KGB in regard to Nagell and the LAL show not only that the Soviets were aware of the plot--through the LAL perhaps or Nagell, who as a double agent admitted to working for the Soviets as well as the Americans--but also that they had learned of the role that the LAL was to play as the patsy in heading off any serious investigation of the crime and that his elimination would effectively neutralize the conspiracy. This episode also contributes much to our understanding of how the LAL was set up to be the patsy. As Jim Marrs, author of Crossfire, explained in a radio interview:

Richard Case Nagell may be the real Rosetta stone to understanding the assassination or, if not to understanding the assassination, certainly to understanding the role of Lee Harvey Oswald in this whole thing. Basically, Nagell was a decorated Korean War veteran who later became an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, and eventually claimed to have ended up being a double-agent working for the Soviet KGB. He said that in mid-1963, his KGB superiors contacted him and said that they had become aware of a plot to kill President Kennedy, and that they wanted him to work his way in there, find out what was going on, and put a stop to it because it could reflect very adversely on Russia and could make it look like the Communists were behind the thing. And they didn't want to run that kind of risk.

So, he was sent to New Orleans where he made contact with a man whom he claimed he had known from U.S. intelligence over in Japan. And that was Lee Harvey Oswald! They met in Jackson Square. And, of course, here's Nagell posing as a KGB agent, so he can't very well just say: " Hey, I'm really one of you," because he knows that Oswald is a guy whom he had know in Japan, but he hadn't known him that well. And besides, who knows what had gone on in the intervening years? So I'm sure he was probably still trying to maintain his cover. But he basically told Oswald that Oswald was in a very dangerous situation, and that he thought that Oswald thought he had penetrated a pro-Castro plot to kill the President. But, in reality, he was mixed up with anti-Castro Cubans who were posing as pro-Castro Cubans, and who were involving him in this plot to kill the President. He said that he got a very negative reaction from Oswald; kind of like: Oh, yeah? That's interesting; and a don't-call-me-I'll-call-you type of attitude.

Now, what's interesting here is that this gets into the whole issue of: Was the Oswald in New Orleans and the Oswald in Dallas -- was this the real Lee Harvey Oswald? And it gets into a bizarre series of situations. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of `63 and in Dallas later that fall was NOT the same Oswald who entered the Marines. And if that's the CASE -- assuming that that may be true -- this explains the whole situation with Nagell and Oswald.

Nagell is very circuitously trying to warn Oswald, believing that this is the same guy he knew in Japan, and that he would recognize him and realize that he was getting the information from U.S. intelligence. And yet, if it was NOT the same Oswald -- and there is MUCH evidence to suggest that this is so -- then Oswald in New Orleans didn't recognize Nagell, didn't know who he was, and only perhaps knew him as a KGB officer, and therefore, would be very hesitant to believe him or to act on his information.

So that's the Nagell story, and I think it pretty well pinpoints the role of Oswald. Oswald, as his mother and his wife had both publicly stated, was a U.S. Government agent. He was posing as a pro-Castroite and as a pro-Communist to infiltrate groups that he felt were pro-Communist groups. In this instance, I think he had been picked up by one of the more violent anti-Castro groups who played him along and helped set him up as the "patsy" in the assassination.)

The LAL's attempt to warn authorities of the impending murder attempt is the first of the several bitter ironies embedded in the assassination. Looked at from this perspective the Soviet agent who ultimately is branded as the assassin and who himself is murdered is, in truth, a martyred hero!

But back to the plot. In fulfillment of his role as the patsy, the LAL is tied to the crime through:

His employment at the Texas School Book Depository, which was arranged by Ruth Paine, an individual with strong ties to the intelligence community, and which is along the motorcade route. (Had JFK's speech been held in the Women's Building, where the president's staff and the Secret Service wanted it, instead of the Dallas Trade Mart, which LBJ and Connally preferred, the motorcade would not have gone past the TSBD. It has been reported that the Trade Mart faction deliberately held up sales of tickets to the luncheon to force the White House to decide in its favor.)

His supposed purchase by mail of a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, which ostensibly is the weapon used to murder JFK, under the assumed name of Alek J. Hidell. (It appears that the LAL only used this name when ordering weapons or having communist-oriented literature printed although it supposedly appeared on an armed forces identification card.) The use of the name of "Alek" by or for the LAL is, I believe, the second major irony in the assassination. It is my belief that Alek is the LAL's real (Soviet) name! The name "Hidell" was derived from the acronym for the South Korean CIA--HID--and the last three letters of Richard C. Nagell's name, according to author Richard Russell, who derived the information from Nagell.

Remember that when Marina was introduced to Oswald in the Soviet Union, he was using the name "Alik." She also said he spoke Russian so well--and with no trace of an accent--that she was surprised to find out he was an American. Remember, too, the LAL's letter to the Soviet Embassy in which he talked about having to use his "real name" as well as his statement to the Dallas Police that "Now everyone will know who I am." Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, who was present when the LAL made that remark, said it was delivered in a dispirited and resigned tone and not with the bravado some would read into it. The government attempted to explain this alias away by claiming it had something to do with one of Oswald's former Marine buddies named "Heindell" or that it rhymed with "Fidel."

Interestingly, Army Intelligence had a file on someone named A.J. Hidell, an alias also used by Richard C. Nagell, prior to the assassination. This file cross-indexed to Lee Harvey Oswald. Unfortunately, that file was destroyed in the 1970s.

His purchase by mail order, under the same assumed name, of a pistol, which ostensibly was the weapon used to kill Officer J.D. Tippit. His supposed murder of Tippit is the reason for the LAL's arrest and the incident is used to show him as a violent person, in general, and a vicious killer, in particular.

(I personally don't think the LAL ordered either of these weapons himself--despite what the handwriting "experts" and Marina later said. [He told police that he didn't own a rifle.] They probably were ordered by or on behalf of the plotters--aren't compartmentalization and "need to know" wonderful things?--and then either planted at the site, in the case of the rifle, or supplied to Oswald, in the case of the pistol. When Oswald learned, after he had been taken into custody, that the weapons had been ordered under the name "A.J. Hidell," it served to provide notice to him that the plotters knew who he really was and that defending himself would be next to impossible. His "game" was over so to speak. Interestingly, Richard Nagell had in his possession when arrested a forged military services identification card for Oswald and other samples of Oswald's signature that suggested he--or someone else--was practicing Oswald's signature.)

The (fake) backyard photos that show someone holding a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle without a scope--thank you Life magazine for airbrushing in the scope when you printed one of the photos on your cover shortly after the assassination--as well as a pistol and leftist literature. The LAL's head was then superimposed onto this body. One of the cutouts that was used to accomplish this was discovered among the Dallas Police Department files almost 30 years after the assassination. There are indications that the body in the photos actually belonged to Roscoe White, a former CIA agent and photographic expert who was working for the DPD at the time of the assassination.

The "magic" bullet (CE 399) which was found on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital under a mattress. The stretcher belonged to neither JFK nor Connally and the bullet was probably planted by Jack Ruby, whom two people independently testified they saw in the hospital. (One of those individuals was a Scripps-Howard White House correspondent who knew Ruby from an earlier stint as a reporter in Dallas.) This bullet ballistically tied the LAL's Mannlicher-Carcano to the assassination. There remains some question, however, as to whether CE 399 was actually the bullet found on the stretcher. The individual who discovered the bullet described it as having a pointed tip. CE 399 has a rounded tip.

A palm print belonging to the LAL which was found on the underside of the barrel of the Mannlicher-Carcano several days after the shooting and after the LAL's corpse had been repeatedly fingerprinted. Original examinations of the rifle by the Dallas Police and the FBI yielded no prints on the rifle. Interestingly, the print that is found on the rifle would have had to have been put there while the weapon was disassembled. This fact, I believe, would have provided the authorities with an explanation as to why their original examinations of the rifle missed this print. The undertaker who prepared the LAL's body for burial has remarked that he allowed agents of one kind or another into the morgue where they proceeded, in private, to take fingerprints and palm prints from the corpse. The undertaker complained about the mess they made of the LAL's hands and how hard it was for him to remove the ink.

Cartridge shells that had been fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano were found on the sixth floor of the TSBD. The shells, when originally found numbered only two and were laying neatly in a row and not in random positions on the floor as would have been the case had they been ejected from a rifle--as they were later when they were photographed.

The substitution of unmarked shells that had been fired from the LAL's pistol for ones (which were from an automatic weapon and thus bore different markings) that had been found and marked at the Tippit shooting site by a Dallas Police Officer. This switch occurred after the officer had turned in the shells he had found at scene. In addition, a revolver does not eject spent shells. The LAL would have had to have made a point of emptying the cylinder in his weapon as he fled from the scene.

The phony armed forces identification card for A.J. Hidell that supposedly was found in the LAL's wallet by Dallas Police during the ride to the police station following his arrest at the Texas Theater. Its presence, however, was not immediately noted or reported. By identifying the holder as one A.J. Hidell, the card linked the LAL to the purchase of the rifle and the pistol. The picture on the card, however, clearly depicts an individual who is not the LAL. Others of these cards along with a number of signatures of Oswald's--as if someone had been practicing them--were discovered in Richard C. Nagell's car after his arrest in Texas.

Also consider alleged sightings of the SO in compromising or incriminating situations at or by:

A Dallas rifle range where he fired an Italian-made rifle, which emitted a ball of flame, into other people's targets, thus drawing attention to himself. The LAL was at work at the TSBD at the time.

A Dallas car dealership where the SO talked about going back to Russia and having money after November 22. Although the LAL could not drive, the SO test drove a Mercury at high speeds on a freeway.

Silvia Odio, a member of the moderate anti-Castro group JURE, who met one "Leon Oswald" in the company of two anti-Castroites--the Angel and Leopoldo that Nagell had been tracking--at a time when the LAL was supposedly in transit to or in Mexico City visiting the Cuban and Soviet embassies. One of the anti-Castroites characterized "Leon" as "crazy" and quoted him as saying that the Cubans lacked guts for not killing JFK for selling them out at the Bay of Pigs and that this was something that could easily be done. Odio fainted when she saw the LAL on television following the assassination. Her sister, Annie, also identified the man on television as one of their visitors that night.

A field near Mrs. Lovell Penn's home outside Dallas where the SO and some Cubans were observed firing rifles. A 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano shell was recovered from the field and disappeared once in federal hands. The bullet had been fired from a different rifle than the one that Oswald supposedly used.

The Selective Service Office in Austin where the SO sought to have his dishonorable discharge upgraded. There is no record of the LAL ever having been in Austin.

The incident in Morgan's Gunshop in which someone who looked like Oswald acted rude and impertinent and drew attention to himself when buying rifle ammunition.

Allright Parking Systems, where he was ostensibly looking for a job and asked how high the Southland Building was and whether it commanded a good view of Dallas.

Redbird Airport, outside Dallas, where the SO and several other people inquired about renting a plane for a flight to Mexico.

The Dallas furniture store, where the SO, who drove a car and was accompanied by a foreign-speaking pregnant woman and a girl child (the same as the LAL had), was directed to a gunshop where it was discovered after the assassination that an "Oswald" had a scope mounted on a Mannlicher-Carcano. However, the bill was for drilling three holes and the LAL's rifle had only two. The LAL was at work at the TSBD at the time and couldn't drive anyway.o A Treasury Department agent named Ellsworth reported arresting an Oswald look-a-like named Robert Masen (an "absolute dead ringer" in his words) on a firearms charge in Dallas in the weeks preceding the assassination. This individual, who was an expert gunsmith, was an associate of Minutemen and other ultra-rightists in the Dallas area. He also dealt in 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, one of only two persons in the Dallas area who did.

The front of the TSBD immediately following the assassination, where Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig saw Oswald run down an embankment, get into a Rambler station wagon, which was driven by a dark-complected man, and speed away from the scene. (Craig's account, dismissed by the Warren Commission, was later corroborated by another eyewitness. Marvin Robinson's FBI report was filed the day after the assassination but was omitted from the WC Report and suppport volumes of exhibits and testimony; it surfaced years later in the National Archives.)

(To further complicate matters, in many of these sightings of the SO it is noted by witnesses that the man was extremely short as was the Oswald pictured in at least one photograph reportedly taken with Marina in the Soviet Union.)

In order to further implicate or incriminate the LAL in the assassination and as a way of helping them accomplish their post-assassination goals, his intelligence handlers may have been dangling him in front of Cuban and Soviet intelligence in a double agent operation. (This may have been the purpose of the visits made to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City by the LAL or someone purporting to be him in September 1963.) By taking a Soviet agent and then making him appear to be overtly working for the Cubans and the Soviets, the LAL's handlers were further enmeshing him a web from which there would be no escape. There would be no doubt that the LAL was a "communist" agent. Nothing was to be left to chance.

According to the original assassination plan, the LAL was to have been murdered by Dallas Police during his arrest in the Texas Theater, where he had gone by prearrangement to meet a contact of one sort or another. (Sources have placed Jack Ruby in the theater. They also have placed him in Dealey Plaza in the hours before the shooting and then again immediately after the assassination.) Instead of allowing himself to be executed by the police, the LAL, thinking quickly, proclaimed to all in the theater that he was not "resisting arrest" and so had to be taken into custody. Needless to say, this created a major problem for the plotters. Interestingly, when the police arrested the LAL, they made comments such as "Shoot the president, will you." Officially, Oswald was pursued and arrested for the murder of Patrolman J.D. Tippit. He was not charged with the president's murder until early in the morning of November 23 (after the autopsy of JFK's altered body had been completed). This was something he made clear to newsmen on Friday evening when he was asked if he had shot the president and he replied:

...I really don't know what the situation is about...Nobody has told me anything except that I am accused of murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that, and I do request someone to come forward to give me legal assistance...No. I have not been charged with that [murdering the president]. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question...I did not do it...I did not do it...I did not shoot anyone.

Because the LAL knew too much about too many things, including the plot, and because he was who he was--a Soviet agent--he had to be done away with before he could talk.

Enter Jack Ruby (again), who had been stalking the LAL in police headquarters throughout the weekend--he was present at a news conference on Friday night where he corrected the Dallas District Attorney as to Oswald's Cuban affiliations. Henry Wade had mistakenly aligned the LAL with the Free Cuba Committee, an anti-Castro organization to which Angel and Leopoldo probably had some allegiance; Ruby, however, interjected: "That's Fair Play for Cuba, Henry." (Ask yourself: How could he have known?) He also attempts to gain access to an office where the LAL is being questioned by police. ("You can't go in there, Jack," he is told by a police guard.) On Sunday morning, Ruby, who is let into the basement of Dallas Police headquarters by one of his contacts in the DPD, shoots and kills the LAL during the latter's abortive transfer to the County Jail. With this act, the case is effectively closed and the LAL can now safely be identified for history as the "lone assassin" of JFK.

The final irony in this scenario is that the Operation Mongoose personnel who functioned at the operational and mechanic levels of the plot were manipulated (albeit, willingly) by those above them in the plot into believing that the assassination, ultimately, would result in the realization of their goals of destroying Castro and "freeing" Cuba.

What these individuals did not know, however, is that Cuba was no longer the jewel in the eyes of their masters that it had once been. Its place had, in fact, been taken by Vietnam with its promise of greater opportunity and rewards for all concerned. In the process, the lower-level plotters had become an anachronism. History had passed them by. As a result, once the assassination had taken place, the lines that had been so carefully ghosted to Cuba were not followed and that part of the plot was "turned off" as attention was immediately shifted to Vietnam, where JFK had announced a troop withdrawal by the end of 1965. (Perhaps the memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis were still too fresh and the risk of nuclear war with the Soviets over Cuba still too real. Or perhaps Cuba just didn't matter anymore to those who were in positions of real power.) The assassination provided an opportunity to reverse JFK's policy of disengagement and withdrawal from Vietnam that had been outlined in National Security Action Memorandum 263 in October 1963 and to begin to lay the foundation for the military build-up that was presaged in National Security Action Memorandum 273, which was amended from its early draft for JFK and signed only days after the assassination. (In fact, McGeorge Bundy, JFK's national security adviser, made revisions to NSAM 273 on November 21, 1963, that made the document conform more to what would ultimately become Johnson's Vietnam policy than that which Kennedy had outlined in NSAM 263. These revisions had not been commissioned by JFK.) All that remained was to get Johnson re-elected the following year and some justification for enlarging the war, which came in the form of phony reports of an attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the American destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin and the resultant Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which granted wide war-making powers to LBJ.

With JFK now dead, all of the major players got what they wanted:

The military and the intelligence agencies got Vietnam as a playground. These agencies also benefited from the removal of a liberal, reformist leader in the White House who had forced a nuclear test ban treaty down the armed forces' collective throat and was making noises about cutting the defense budget and who had threatened to "break the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."

LBJ got the presidency and insulation from prosecution in the Billy Sol Estes and Bobby Baker affairs. He probably would have been ignominiously dropped from the Democratic ticket in 1964 and left to his fate had JFK lived. (As JFK had said, "We don't wound crooks, we kill them.") Even Richard Nixon, who left Dallas on the morning of the assassination although he later forgot this fact, speculated in the Dallas papers on the morning of the assassination that LBJ would be dropped from the Democratic ticket.

J. Edgar Hoover essentially became FBI director for life and with that security came the freedom and power he needed to pursue his COINTELPRO program and effectively muzzle and destroy liberal centrist and reformist and dissident elements in American society.

The Mafia got a source of (hard) drugs in Southeast Asia to replace Cuba and a transportation system for the goods via Air America, the CIA's airline. The mob also benefited from the declawing of RFK's Justice Department that resulted from the assassination as the investigations and prosecutions of mob figures were allowed to dwindle to next to nothing during LBJ's presidency under a resurgent J. Edgar Hoover. Bob Kennedy was "just another lawyer" as Jimmy Hoffa put it so succinctly at the time. His attempt to become something more than that in 1968 was what got him killed. (Two days before his murder he told an audience of college students in California, "Only the powers of the presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother's death.") But that's another story.

The country's defense-related industries, many of which were longtime backers of LBJ, got the unlimited economic opportunities that Vietnam presented as it became necessary to provide the equipment and facilities to fight a major ground and air war in Indochina.

The oil companies no longer had to worry about an end to the oil depletion allowance and the tax advantages it provided them with. They also had the South China Seas opened to them for exploration.

There was one major exception to all of this, however. The Cubans and their handlers who had done so much of the legwork and dirty work in setting up the LAL and pulling off the assassination, were left holding the bag. In short, they got screwed again by their "friends."

(It is a misperception that the invasion at the Bay of Pigs failed because JFK would not provide air cover by United States planes for the forces on the beach. In reality, the success of the invasion hinged on knocking out Castro's air force while still on the ground--that is how the project was "sold" to the president by the CIA. Much of the Cuban Air Force was destroyed prior to the landings by an initial air strike by Exile Brigade/CIA B-25 bombers flying from bases in Central America. Three armed T-33 trainers were left undamaged, however. Castro hid these planes, but they were located by U-2 over flights of the island. Subsequently, JFK approved a second air strike by the B-25's prior to the landings for the purpose of destroying these remaining aircraft while still on the ground. This air strike never happened. Indications are that it was called off or otherwise caused not to happen by McGeorge Bundy. It makes one wonder if there were individuals who wished the invasion to fail for the purpose of having political leverage to use on JFK or sending him a message that he was not really in charge--that power ultimately resided elsewhere. Kennedy took the blame for the failure as the responsible officer of the government, but he had learned a valuable and important lesson in the process and in the days that were left to him made several moves to curb the powers of the CIA so that another Bay of Pigs "fiasco' would not be possible. Sadly, these actions helped lead to the president's murder.)

What's surprising is that these people didn't seem to realize it (and still don't even to this day). And perhaps that's the ultimate irony of the assassination. The anti-Castro Operation Mongoose people were encouraged and allowed to kill JFK, the man they fervently believed had betrayed them at the Bay of Pigs and in the Missile Crisis, but they didn't really gain anything from that act except a dead body. Maybe in the end that was enough, however.

They had gotten their revenge.

They had been led to believe, by their handlers, that things would be different now as far as Cuba was concerned, but somehow, once again, defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory by those whom they believed to be their allies in the fight. In point of fact, it was never intended to let things with Cuba go as far as the anti-Castroites had been led to believe they would. Instead, the high-level plotters were simply looking for someone to use to advance their own agenda, and, if they had to take advantage of a few people to do it, well then so be it; that was the name of the game and those involved should realize it. After all, you do have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, and this is the president of the United States we are talking about killing here and first things first. So the Cubans were set up to be taken advantage of just as they had set up the LAL. The fix was in, and the double cross was the order of the day. As a result, the Cubans and their sympathizers emerged from all of this with nothing more to show for it than more frustration and misdirected anger as they watched Castro further solidify his hold on their homeland. Almost 30 years later he remains in power while Alpha 66 is still sending saboteurs to the island--and Castro is still capturing and imprisoning and executing them.

To this day, these people don't seem to bear any grudges and are available to their masters for any assignment such as the burglaries of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist and Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate. All it took was a call from "Eduardo"--E. Howard Hunt's "war name" from the days of the Brigade and the Bay of Pigs--and they were happy to help in the Nixon White House's fight against communism.

(Many people think that Hunt himself was present in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination and that he was photographed following the crime, along with two other "tramps" after they were pulled from a freight car and arrested in the railroad yard behind the grassy knoll. Hunt had plastic surgery done to his ears so he wouldn't be as recognizable as the person in the photo. Mark Lane proved to a jury in Florida that Hunt was lying about his whereabouts on November 22, 1963. Hunt got caught in his own alibis.)

It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for these people if they weren't such reprehensible creatures themselves. Just ask Batista, if you don't believe me. Anyway, that's what you get when you lay down with intelligence operatives. You make your bed and you sleep in it. But you really should pick your bedmates more wisely. As for the outcome of the game of the assassination, subsequent events have shown that, although the plotters may have won in the short run, over the long term the country suffered a bitter defeat from which it has yet to recover.

Postscript: As if the thought that the president's murder was the act of America's intelligence community isn't frightening enough, the possibility that the operation was a joint undertaking of elements of American and Soviet intelligence is even more horrifying to contemplate. [Such operations are and have been undertaken. In fact, one of them could have been Powers' abortive U-2 mission.] In fact, CIA Director Allen Dulles once confided to one of his Soviet counterparts that both the CIA and the KGB could save some money by pooling their resources. It seems that both intelligence services used the same people, who at any given time had no idea who they were really working for, and that if they combined operations, as Dulles suggested, only one payment would have to be made to these people.

Consider that removing Kennedy and replacing him with the more hard-line Johnson left no one for the fairly moderate Khrushchev to deal with and you can see how hard-line elements on both sides of the Cold War would have benefited from this arrangement. Johnson's record on detente with the Soviets, in truth, was woeful and Khrushchev himself was soon out of power and replaced with a hardliner. Stranger things have happened. Remember, these people are playing the game by their rules and not yours.

Remember, too, that in counterespionage operations, reality becomes turned in upon itself so many times that agents can become not only doubled, but tripled, quadrupled, quintupled, and so on until no one is sure who they are really working for or even who they themselves are for that matter. It's much like the proverbial hall of mirrors in which an image is reflected infinitely until one cannot distinguish the real from the false. In short, the possibilities are endless.

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