From JFK Lancer, a recording of radio program broadcast by WDSU radio in New Orleans on August 20, 1963.
▶ Lee H. Oswald debates the Cuba issue with anti-communist activist Ed Butler, and anti-Castro militant Carlos Bringuier of Cuban Student Directorate (DRE).
CLICK HERE TO GET A BOOK SIGNED BY JEFFERSON MORLEY
Bringuier is an important witness. The CIA-sponsored DRE, is significant. But Ed Butler is key.
1) While JFK was still alive, Butler presciently saw propaganda value in Oswald’s radio appearance.
Butler made a tape of the WDSU debate and gave a copy to the FBI within days. He also save a copy for himself. That tape wound up playing an important role in the first day news coverage of JFK’s assassination.
When Oswald was named a suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, Butler hit the jackpot. He gave a copy of the tape to the news media and soon it was playing on the national radio and TV networks. Butler’s tape provided proof that the Kennedy’s suspected killer was a self-proclaimed Marxist.
2) Like the DRE, INCA had a collaborative relationship with the CIA.
The agency, “did not fund this organization,” wrote one CIA official about INCA, “though we had contacts with some of its members.” In other words, the agency could count on cooperation.
3) Butler, professional propagandist for the anti-communist cause, made the Oswald tape into a compelling piece of propaganda, as a long-playing vinyl record entitled “Self-Portrait in Red.”
4) Despite his key role in noticing and publicizing Oswald’s pro-Castro politics, Butler was not called to testify to the Warren Commission. That seems like a deliberate omission but perhaps there is some other explanation.
5) Butler was defensive about the CIA’s role in the JFK story. John Simkin’s Spartacus profile of Butler has this nugget:
“Butler wrote a book in 1968 entitled Revolution is My Profession in which he attacked as communist infiltrators those whose tactics have “been to try to link the CIA with all sorts of crime, especially President Kennedy’s assassination.”
—————
TAKE ME TO JFK STORY #6: When Oswald traveled to Mexico City in September 1963, CIA counterintelligence was paying close attention.
CLICK HERE TO GET A BOOK SIGNED BY JEFFERSON MORLEY
