Tag: Mexico City

Our Man in Mexico: ‘Really great’

Rob writes: “I just finished Our Man in Mexico and wanted to tell you it was really great.”

Our Man in Mexico“Excellent on Win Scott’s FBI to OSS to CIA history; excellent on the Kennedy assassination issues; and just a really enjoyable bio. You have some of the most succinct and informative expositions of the various facets of the story that I have come across. So, kudos!”

Rob is right, and that’s not my bias speaking. Here’s what the Wall Street Journal said about Our Man in Mexico.

You can order the book in hardcover or paperback here.

CIA may still have photos of Oswald in Mexico City

One mystery of JFK assassination story is why accused assassin Lee Oswald was not photographed when he visited the Embassy of the Soviet Union in Mexico City two months before President Kennedy was killed in Dallas.

Mexico City mystery man
The CIA thought he was Lee H. Oswald.

The CIA had three photographic surveillance bases to take pictures of visitors to the Embassy. Oswald visited the Embassy at least twice in an unsuccessful effort to obtain a visa. But the CIA says no photograph of Oswald was taken.

The photo to the right, which CIA personnel in Mexico City mistakenly linked to Oswald, depicted a man who was never conclusively identified.

In 1978 investigators from the House Select Committee on Assassinations …

Phil Shenon’s cruel and shocking misinterpretation

Phil Shenon
Phil Shenon,

Phil Shenon and I agree on at least a few things. In any resolution of the mysteries surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Mexico City will undoubtedly be important. The investigation into what happened there in 1963 was, for some reason, seriously curtailed by the U.S. government. The government has, since then, fought tooth and nail to keep the full story about what happened there secret.

While I have never met Shenon, I have spoken with him several times by telephone. I first heard from him when he called me around 2011. He introduced himself as a reporter for Newsweek Magazine. He said he was working well in advance on an article for that magazine for the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder. He wondered whether I would be willing to talk about the HSCA’s investigation in Mexico City. I agreed to speak with him. …

Six weeks before Dallas, these CIA officers wrote two misleading memos about Lee Harvey Oswald

Oswald in Custody
Oswald, target of CIA attention

Why would senior CIA officers circulate two inaccurate descriptions of Lee Harvey Oswald with various government agencies six weeks before he allegedly shot and killed President John F. Kennedy?

The answer to the question is elusive. The CIA has never formally offered an explanation, another reason why all of the government’s assassination-related documents need to be released. Presently, key documents about the death of the 35th president will not be released until October 2017 at the earliest. Other documents now found in the National Archives are riddled with redactions hiding key names, dates, words and phrases.

Where has this shameful secrecy taken us? To a place of confusion and suspicion.

Ray Rocca: ‘There was an earlier cable’

“It is my impression that there were earlier cables, that there was an earlier cable.”

– Raymond Rocca, aide to Counterintelligence Staff chief James Angleton, testifying under oath to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, about CIA cables from Mexico City. The CI staff monitored Oswald’s travels, politics, and personal life  from October 1959 to November 1963.

Nov 23 1963: The aftermath and a curious phone call

LBJ on the phoneIn the wee hours the day following JFK’s assassination, the confusion-clouded military autopsy of the slain president was concluded and the body delivered to the White House. In Dallas Lee Harvey Oswald remained in policy custody, undergoing interrogations of which no recordings were made. President Johnson began his first day as the new President.

In his first phone call with famed and feared FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Johnson received some surprising news. As “curious history” noted on another post this morning, “Hoover clearly states that the man in Mexico didn’t look like Oswald nor did the voice match. He states that it is a “different man”.

“Curious history” asks: “What do you make of that? The transcript is part of the LBJ library and seems as a credible source.”

Indeed, it is a credible source. The transcript of the call contains the following exchange: …

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