Bill writes:
“I am appreciating your insistence that Oswald was under surveillance, pursuant to LINGUAL, AMSPELL, and LIENVOY.”
“It occurred to me that there is a fourth source that should be considered – the CIA’s various counterintelligence officers,” Bill goes on.
“None of the programs you cite above cover the numerous CI memos where [Betty] Egerter, [Will] Potocki and [Bill] Bright are monitoring Oswald. Egerter was CI/SIG (Special Investigations Group), Potocki was CI/OPS (Operations.)
“Maybe both of them could be described generically as CI Staff, but Bright was a member of SR/CI, as was his boss Stephan Roll. So I think ‘various CIA counterintelligence officers’ is one way to describe surveillants is not encompassed by LINGUAL, AMSPELL, and LIENVOY.
“A fifth category could be those FBI, ONI, INS and other officers that had various duties regarding the Oswald files. The most notorious is FBI supervisor Marvin Gheesling, who had a “security flash” attached to the LHO file from 1959 until the day before the twin 10/10/63 cables — pursuant to a discussion with special agent Lambert Anderson over at Nationalities Intelligence.”
Response
Point well taken, Bill The FBI and CIA personnel you mention can all fairly be described as “surveillants.” A surveillant is the noun of surveillance, which is defined as “close watching.” Thus a surveillant is someone who does close watching. Betty Egerter, Will Potocki, Bill Bright, Marvin Gheesling and Lambert Anderson all qualify as surveillants of Oswald from 1959 to 1963. It was their job to watch him closely.
I think Gheesling is especially important. As the custodian of the FBI’s “security flash” list, he had to decide who would be subject of closer surveillance than others. He put Oswald on the list in 1959 and he took Oswald off the list in 1963. In short, he made decisions about the surveillance of Oswald.
Does anybody have a good photograph of Gheesling, Potocki, or Bright? If so, please let me know.