Yes. This startling fact emerges from declassified CIA records discovered by Bill Simpich, an attorney in San Francisco, and author of a new JFK book, State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald.
I’ve written about Simpich’s important book here and here.
Be prepared. This story of how and why Oswald was impersonated is complicated and often strange. But this is no theory. While murky in places, much of the story is very well documented and indisputably truthful.
What is certain is that top CIA and FBI officials in Mexico City were paying close attention to a man named Lee Oswald in October 1963, suspected someone had impersonated him, and tried to discover who was responsible.
Money quote:
“When President Kennedy was shot down in Dallas, the CIA and their colleagues at the FBI were effectively blackmailed. If their Oswald memos written prior to the assassination had been made public in the wake of JFK’s death, public reaction would have been furious. If the word got out that CIA officers knew that Oswald had been impersonated prior to the assassination, this would imply both that Oswald had been set up for the assassination (which was presumably carried out by others), and that the CIA could have prevented JFK’s death if it had reacted differently. The response would have been tectonic.”
State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald is being serialized online by Mary Ferrell Foundation. You can read the preface here and Chapter 1 here.
Why was lady bird johnson invited to the dedication of the jfk library if the kennedy family knew johnson was involved in the assassination of her husband.
There are many situations in this horrible matter that I do not understand. If kennefy knew Dallas was a dangerous place to go, why would he be in a motorcade with no top knowing he was open for an assassination.
First shot, why did he not duck down into the seat or his wife pull him down
In 1960 J.E. Hoover supposedly wrote a memo stating that someone was possibly impersonating Lee Oswald in Russia. If someone was impersonation Lee Oswald at that time, then it is very possible that someone was impersonating him in Mexico City in 1963.
Another zombie factoid: Marquerite told an FBI agent that Lee’s birth certificate was missing.
The FBI agent passed it up the chain of command, with the suggestion that somebody might be impersonating Oswald.
Hoover issued a memo mentioning that possibility.
ann gppdpasture made a copy of the Oswald tape before the original was reused ! ! !
Also there were several Oswald sightings in the Dallas are. For example
Sports Drome Rifle Range.
Albert Bogard’s Car Dealership
Irving Furniture Shop
These were quite likely impersonations.
I suppose that the guy who left his wedding ring and all of his money on his wife’s dresser was an imposter, too. Maybe the guy on the sixth floor 45 minutes before the shooting was an imposter. Maybe an Oswald imposter was shot by Ruby- oh, I forget- they actually dug him up to prove that he was an imposter, but unfortunately the teeth had dental work identical with Oswald’s. It looks like they dug up the imposter secretly and altered his dental work to conform to Oswald’s dental history before the exhumation.
Photon, you must have missed my question on an earlier thread. Why did Oswald take a wallet with him, but leave money and the ring?
Why wouldn’t he? What man goes to work without his wallet? Did Marina need a wallet? What exactly does that have to do with anything?
Photon, Your arguments have suggested that among the evidence against Oswald, you include the fact that he left all of his money and his wedding ring before leaving for work that morning; anyone following your logic must conclude that you believe that he was saying “goodbye” with that gesture. If it was a ‘goodbye,’ why not a full one, for any and all to grasp? Why leave the ring and the money, but not the wallet ? Did he want to make it easier for authorities to identify him so he took the wallet with him to the theatre? And if he was seeking notoriety for the assassination, why the Hidell I.D., an obscure one at that point in time?
… and Oswald wasn’t known to drive lol.
We all know that the CIA not only knew about the assassination but was the driving force behind it! Watch the scene in Oliver Stone’s JFK where Donald Sutherland’s character “MR X” (COL Fletcher Prouty) lays it all out for Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner). It is the closest depiction as to what REALLY took place!
Of course that scene never took place in real life, but hey, why spoil the movie with facts?
My basic gripe with that scene was the backdrop used: the area around the Lincoln Memorial. In 1963 and up until the late 1960’s, that area was covered with WW2-era “temporary buildings” which housed military and CIA personnel (not everyone was out at the new Langley offices back then). The film, typical of Hollyweird, took liberties with historical details, even if the gist of the story I think was right. Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” suffered the same kinds of historical inaccuracies in the showing of details, even as the general gist of the tale was correct about the invasion. Knowing a bit about military history however, it pains me to watch Spielberg’s movies with the wrong German tanks, the US soldiers walking out in the open in hedgerow country, talking out loud—they’d have been picked off doing that. Movies are a mix usually of fact and Hollyweird market-driven “entertainment.”
Someone claimimg to be LHO calls the Soviet Embassy on October 1 and says nothing about returning to the embassy.So Mexico City CIA pulls a photograph from October 2 and claims it shows LHO. And the same Mystery Man also visits the Cuban embassy,but CIA claims it doeesn’t know his identity.HSCA investigators find two CIA officers who remember seeing a Mexico City surveillance photograph of LHO-NOT the Mystery Man,but that photograph has never surfaced.Why not? It should just show the Lone Nut assassin in his quest for a visa,right?
Of course he was Impersonated.The mexico city incident proves this.
Official at soviet embressy claimed he did meet with Oswald so maybe
he was there but there is no evidance that was him at cuban embressy.
There are reports of second oswald In Dallas as well.
Did or did not Oswald go to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City in 1963?
If he did (and the evidence is overwhelming that he did) then the simple explanation for this whole line of theory is that the CIA had minimal real interest in Oswald and simply misidentified him.
That scenario has more to back it up than any of the extremely complex ( and unlikely) theories posted here.
The explanation that the CIA had “minimal real interest” in Oswald may be simple – but it is contradicted by fact. He was a military defector to the Soviet Union who threatened to disclose secrets. The CIA had a file on him. That file was opened and kept in irregular circumstances that suggested greater interest still. The CIA Mexico City Station actively tracked Americans who went to the Cuban embassy. When Oswald went there, it cabled CIA headquarters to find out who he was. Headquarters responded with a cable that was untrue; the preponderance of evidence suggests it was purposefully untrue. So one has to look for another explanation.
LHO more than likely visited the Cuban Embassy, but the evidence is not overwhelming. Azcue and Duran remember LHO as dark blonde, 30’s and very short (the height of Duran, 5’3″ or so). LHO had Duran’s phone number or address in his address book, but that does not overwhelming make.
It is the tapped phone call that is nearly certainly an impersonation.
Photon has all the real answers, it appears by his flood of comments in most of Jeff’s subject threads. Perhaps Jeff Morley needs to check with him before he posts any topics?
In a church or college setting a self-proclaimed ‘expert’ interrupting a sermon or college professor continuously with their version of “the evidence” is usually tossed out, sometimes after the law has been called.
Here in this subject thread, if one reads all of Photon’s comments, he’s more or less stating that Bill Simpich’s ‘State Secret’ is a waste of time to read because (according to Photon) Lee Oswald was never impersonated in Mexico City. By doing so he hijacks Jeff’s thread.
Jim DiEugenio has several essays online about several ‘self-proclaimed’ experts that go from website to website flooding the board or otherwise hijacking topics with their “I have all the answers’ attitude for those interested in who Photon probably is.
If Jim diEugenio isn’t a “self-proclaimed” expert I don’t know who is. Does he even have a college degree? I don’t claim to be an expert, but I do have an interest in the subject and an interest in the truth. There is so much disinformation and outright falsehood in the conspiracy camp that when facts are presented they don’t seem to matter, or else they are ignored. I can debunk some of the most ridiculous claims , then those claims can resurface as “facts” months later when it seems that nobody remembers that those facts have already been disproved.
Simpich’s exercise is a waste of time. He has already come to a conclusion that is not supported by facts, but is only supported by his belief that there has to be evidence for his conclusions “out there”, somewhere.
I don’t make a living from this topic,but alot of conspiracy theorists do.They have vested interests in keeping this discussion alive, not in accepting the facts .
Would you say that John McAdams, who has published a book which I presume he’s not giving away for free, is “making a bit of a living from this thing”? I know he’s a tenured professor as well, but for many people who sell books and host websites, they make about as much money as McAdams makes, and certainly not as much money as folks like Bugliosi and O’Reilly make.
Full disclaimer: I don’t make a dime off any of this. I’m just interested in American history. I think for many Americans who worry about too much power concentrated in one place (intelligence as Bamford asserts) it’s cause for concern. It’s okay to own a watch dog, but when the dog gets too cocky and attacks its owners, maybe it’s time to take the dog down to save the family? The Romans always had to worry about their military coming home after campaigns, so this isn’t anything new, certainly not to someone like you who I KNOW had read his classical history, right Paul?
Right on ! I agree totally. It’s cultish too.
Thank you Hans Trayne for your needed comment. I come to this site for new information and dialogue and not for the constant “look at me” posts of some. Yeah, yeah, we get it–some believe the WR and the lone nut; good for them.
For those of us who have followed the case and are convinced that we were not told the truth, posts are important as a way to understand that mendacity. Having a little know-it-all pop up and spout the devil’s advocate at every post gets tiring and boring.
Also,Jim DiEugenio is not a “self-proclaimed” anything. People have acclaimed him for good reason–he is an historian, a good writer and thinker and author of a seminal book on the case as well as editor & co-author of some of the most penetrating essays on the 1960’s political murders.If our troll had a tenth of his intelligence or his output, maybe we would listen.Thus far on this site, nothing approaching that has been offered.
Is it possible that the CIA Mexico City station, having learned through wiretaps that someone *like* Oswald had visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies, staged the calls first to identify Oswald, and then to learn more about the purpose of his visit, all in a way that wouldn’t compromise their sources? David Kaiser makes this hypothesis in “The Road to Dallas.”
This would mean that the impersonations were made for a non-assassination reason, and have nothing to do with the flurry of far weaker “multiple Oswald” stories. It would also not be inconsistent with the other data linking Oswald to David Phillips and the DRE: as I take “Our Man in Mexico” to argue, Win Scott and his colleagues did not always know what Phillips was doing.
Machinations involving the identity of Oswald in the months leading to the assassination are pertinent Only if one asserts that the assassination was planned (at the very least) months in advance.
And to leap from the Mexico City facts, New Orleans facts, Soviet Union facts, Dallas facts relating to Oswald to the contained conclusion that the CIA simply failed to ‘stop the assassination’ perpetrated by someone they “knew,” defies logic.
It does not follow logically that those involved in impersonating Oswald on September 28 must have been involved in the assassination. They may have been, but they may not have been, either. Whether there is a connection between the impersonation and the assassination depends on the motive for the impersonation, which is unknown.
Kaiser presented a logical motive: the CIA learned through electronic surveillance that an unknown American had visited two hostile embassies, and they wanted to find out who he was, without compromising their sources. Kaiser even turned up an example of a similar operation involving a different Texan who visited Mexico City in July 1963 and called the Cuban embassy. After listening in on his call, the CIA had a contact pretend to be a Cuban embassy official and go to his hotel room, to find out what he wanted.
Maybe that was the motive, and maybe it wasn’t. But it passes Occam’s Razor: it is the simpler explanation, and therefore more likely to be true.
Kaiser make a great case for the impersonated phone call being a harmless exercise in intelligence collection about some Communist kid. Pretend to be him in a phone call to the Soviet Embassy and figure out what they’ve been talking about.
If Kaiser were more aware of the work of Jefferson Morley, John Newman, David Talbot, Bill Simpich, Phillip Melanson, Larry Hancock, et all he would see that the hands of US intelligence were on this kid before and after Mexico City and nearly certainly on the assassination as well.
Quoting the article:
“this would imply both that Oswald had been set up for the assassination (which was presumably carried out by others), and that the CIA could have prevented JFK’s death if it had reacted differently.”
It would imply that the CIA orchestrated the assassination. I’m convinced that many insiders including RFK and Burkley suspected this from the beginning. Hence the cover-up began immediately with the autopsy . . . and shifted into overdrive with Katzenbach’s memo.
Hoover and LBJ knew about the impersonation less than twenty-four hours after the assassination. They knew exactly what it meant.
Within seventy-two hours the civilian government blocked the hunt for conspirators and cleared Castro and the Soviets . . . well before a full, honest investigation could have resolved those issues. This makes no sense at all. If the Kremlin or Castro were responsible, this would have been extremely dangerous and worthy of retaliation. If Oswald’s ‘story’ was no threat to the government, why the instantaneous need to steamroll Americans with the Lone Nut scenario?
The cover-up prevented the MIC’s commie conspiracy narrative from stampeding gullible Americans into a nuclear war that could kill forty million of them.
I’m enjoying Simpich’s research. Chapter Two is now up at Mary Ferrell. Was Oswald’s impersonation a mole-hunting exercise? I think it was simply a set up for the assassination.
Bill,
If that’s the case, specific dates relating to pre-planning of the assassination (action item: impersonate LHO in MC) should, by natural order, come into focus; from there, the dates of decision and authorization would follow (or precede as it were). Someone had to decide and authorize the “mole-hunting” operation and the impersonation(s). Some entity had an agenda, utilizing a number (or hundreds of numbers) of individuals on behalf of unknown forces for purposes not yet determined.
What tipped the balance in deciding to assassinate Kennedy? Was it Cuba, something of greater political, economic and ideological substance, or a combination thereof? Disgruntled CIA agents including all those named in current efforts to release CIA documents – aligned with Cuban patriots – could not have authorized a hit on the President of the United States, and covered it up.
If those same agents were aligned with a much more sinister agenda, I can understand the significance of pursuing them.
It’s time to differentiate between factions within the CIA, and I propose loosely that there were three separate allegiances at work within the agency, with occasional overlap: those with a commitment to preserving democracy and the Constitution of the US; those with a more radical, philosophical agenda that insisted their mandate applied to the international battle against communism; and those aligned with corporate, commercial interests of US and foreign industrialists that benefited from a symbiosis with the military – a private CIA using credentials of the US Government.
With just about everyone who could conceivably been involved now deceased,it seems useless to speculate about motives.
And yet we assign motive to Oswald who died within 3 days of the assassination? Motive is central to the investigation, cold case or not.
Why didn’t the top CIA brass concerned with the Lee Oswald impersonator in Mexico City set up a simple sting operation to get their hands on the person? Something along the lines of telling the impersonator to meet them somewhere outside the Cuban/USSR embassies to pick up the visas?
Even small town police use simple sting operations to nab those engaging in unlawful activities, why didn’t the CIA use it on this Lee Oswald charade?
Is it because concerned officials already knew who the impersonator was? Was it an Agency operative?
Because there was no impersonator.
If Photon is correct in his assessment it means Bill Simpich & other JFK researchers/authors are wrong in their interpretations that someone impersonated Lee Oswald in Mexico City (and also Sylvia Duran)intent on obtaining immediate visas to Cuba/USSR via identity theft. Both assessments can be wrong but only one can be right.
Realizing that humans make mistakes, can be notoriously incompetent; sometimes corrupt I’ll reserve my judgment of the topic until I absorb more expert opinions now & in the future.
If Photon is correct, a disillusioned, dejected Lee Oswald realizing he wasn’t welcome in either the USSR or Cuba & thus returning to Dallas to unsecure, minimum paying jobs while the FBI tailed him around does seem to make a reasonable motive for lashing out at President Kennedy as he has been accused of doing from day one.
My question will continue to be, ‘if Oswald was that unhappy with his life, why didn’t he simply jump out of the sniper’s nest to the street below it & leave JFK & John Connally alone?’
Ever hear of “suicide by cop”?
Interesting question, Photon.
I recall an intense online debate on that possibility a few years back & the general consensus was Lee Oswald would have made a grab for Officer Marion Baker’s pistol (possibly punched him or made a run for it out of the lunchroom)if he was seeking suicide by cop.
An even better option would have been to remain on the 6th floor, rifle in hand & fire his last bullet at investigators entering the 6th floor from the stairs or freight elevators.
It seems unlikely he was seeking suicide by cop from the fact Dealey Plaza & the TSBD flooded with law enforcement officials seeking JFK’s assassin & Lee Oswald avoided any confrontation with any of them.
One obvious thing can be said: the 13 bucks & odd change on his person wasn’t going to get him very far out of Dallas & Oak Cliff.
If you know the area to the north and west of the depository building, you understand why Oswald’s trajectory to the east, to catch a bus or taxi is so curious. There was ample opportunity for him to hide out for hours, particularly given the fact that no one appeared to be scouring the vicinity.
Who is to say that once he was successful his entire outlook couldn’t have changed? Once he got out of the TSBD he may have thought that he might get away with it after all. Or at least gone down fighting.
LBJ: Have you established any more about the visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico in September?
Hoover: No, that’s one angle that’s very confusing, for this reason—we have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet embassy, using Oswald’s name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there.
Notice that Hoover said there was a “second person” in Mexico, not “an impostor.” He’s referring to the CIA photo showing someone else who has never been connected to Oswald.
Hoover got many things wrong in those early phone calls. He was getting information secondhand and things sometimes got garbled. One example was his idea that Dallas agents had heard a CIA tape. He was corrected on this almost immediately by the Dallas FBI’s Shanklin and the FBI Legat in Mexico City, who both told him right away that no tapes were sent, only transcripts. Their messages were quoted in the HSCA Final Report.
Someone listened to a tape since he refers to
a”voice” of someone calling himself “Oswald.”
Lucky for us that Oswald’s surname wasn’t “Smith.”
Hoover was mistaken about many issues when he made the statement about the tape, but that does not explain why Coleman and Slawson claimed to hear the tape.
Mr. Morley,
Could you please quote or point me to the declassified CIA records that show Oswald was impersonated and that the CIA or FBI tried to discover who was responsible?
This fact (set of facts) about Oswald being impersonated PROVES that he was 1) not operating alone and in a vacuum as the Warren Commission and its defenders would have us believe; and 2) proves that CIA knew more about Lee Harvey Oswald than they have let the public (and subsequent investigators like the HSCA) know.
So what does this all mean? It means that Oswald DID NOT ACT ALONE. It means that there was a CONSPIRACY INVOLVING OSWALD. This is no “theory”. This is fact-based. It’s time for historians and those in the media who report on this case to re-open the case, to reconsider any pre-conceived biases they might have had about the Kennedy assassination.
What facts are you revealing that he was impersonated? There are NONE- only speculation based not on evidence, but on the chance that confidential information might reveal something that might conform to that theory. The fact that Oswald never got the visas that he wanted blows this whole Mexico City cloak and dagger fantasy out of the water. Nothing happened.
You can’t deny that a photo was taken of a man claimed to be “Oswald” but who doesn’t match visually the Lee Harvey taken into custody in Dallas on Nov. 22.
The transcripts released under FOIA and ARRB show that a tape existed which J. Edgar Hoover said was NOT Lee Harvey Oswald but the person on the tape claimed to be him.
From the Associated Press:
By The Associated Press
Excerpts from declassified documents that say a man impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald called the Soviet embassy in Mexico City just weeks before President Kennedy was assassinated, and that investigators listened to a tape of the call.
Memo Nov. 23, 1963 from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to Secret Service Chief James Rowley:
“The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on Oct. 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identifed himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages.
“Special Agents of this bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened to a recording of his voice. These Special Agents are of the opinion that the above-referred-to individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Memo written Nov. 23, 1963 from Alan Belmont, third in command at FBI Headquarters, to Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s right-hand man.
“The Dallas agents who listened to the tape of the conversation allegedly of Oswald from the Cuban Embassy to the Russian Embassy in Mexico and examined the photographs of the visitor to the Embassy in Mexico … were of the opinion that neither the tape nor the photograph pertained to Oswald.”
Internal FBI memo written Nov. 24, 1963 by Hoover:
“Oswald made a phone call to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, which we intercepted. It was only about a visa, however. He also wrote a letter to the Soviet Embassy here in Washington, which we intercepted, read and resealed. This letter referred to the fact that the FBI had questioned his activities on the Fair Play to Cuba Committee and also asked about extension of his wife’s visa.
“That letter from Oswald was addressed to the man in the Soviet Embassy who is in charge of assassinations and similar activities on the part of the Soviet government. To have that drawn into a public hearing would muddy the waters internationally.
AP-NY-11-21-99 1246EST
The evidence the Saturday LHO phone call from the Cuban Embassy to Soviet Embassy was faked is thus:
1. The employees at the Cuban Embassy say no such call occurred.
2. The Cuban Embassy was not even open to the public on Saturday’s and LHO was told to get the hell out by Azcue previously.
3. The Soviet Embassy employees said the call never occurred.
4. The CIA transcribers said the American spoke “broken, almost unintelligible Russian”, while no one disputes LHO spoke fluent Russian.
5. The CIA transcribers said LHO spoke a little Spanish. LHO did not know Spanish.
6. Hoover wrote that his agents compared the voice of the man on the tapped call and it was not the same as the man in custody in Dallas. He could have been mistaken, but probably was not, as two WC staffers wrote that they heard the tape. And one refused to answer the ARRB’s questions about this issue.
What evidence is there that this phone call was placed by LHO?
1. The CIA says so. (Don’t forget that their man, David A. Phillips, was accused of perjury by the HSCA)
What does this tell us? The Mexico City Station at the very least could’ve wanted to know what this kid was doing at the Soviet Embassy and impersonated the phone call. This meant they were interested in LHO two months before the assassination. This is a problem.
Hoover was being corrected by the Dallas FBI on the very same day of the memo. There were no voice recordings for the Dallas office to listen to.
The HSCA found that the memo about voice recordings of Oswald was just plain wrong.
That would be correct, if two Warren Commission Staffers didn’t say they heard the tape as well (Coleman and Slawson).
That is corroboration.
What more evidence do you need that he was impersonated? There was a recording of a person that claimed to be Oswald, which the FBI listened to, and they said it was not Oswald.
The fact that Oswald didn’t get the visas isn’t relevant. For all we know, getting the visas wasn’t his intent. For a person with his experience in getting visas to the USSR, he probably knew in advance his mission would fail.
You could perhaps try and come up with an innocent explanation, like the CIA was impersonating him to try and gain information about Oswald’s intentions, but the fact that he was impersonated is beyond much doubt.
It was not relevant that “Lee Oswald” did not get the visas as you have pointed out. It was to implicate Lee Oswald and connect him to communism in accordance with the scenarios of people claiming they saw Mr. Oswald in and around places in Dallas when he was known to be elsewhere.
The most obvious question hanging in the air begging to be asked here is ‘Did Lee Oswald know he was being impersonated in Mexico City & the identity thief was attempting to obtain immediate visas to Cuba & the USSR?
This opens up more questions: if Lee Oswald knew was he cooperating with the impersonation effort or not. Is that what the note Oswald gave to the FBI shortly before the assassination that Hosty destroyed all about; was Lee Oswald complaining that he was the victim of Identity theft to the FBI?
A really big question I hope Bill Simpich can answer for me is: what was supposed to happen to Oswald once the Cuban/USSR visas had been obtained? Was he supposed to disappear & someone else get into Cuba/USSR with the visas, leaving the USA with the impression JFK’s accused killer had slipped into either country? Is this why Officer Tippit was murdered?
If Oswald had gotten the Cuban visas he would have gone to Cuba and JFK would not have been assassinated on November 22, 1963. Tippit would not have been shot on November 22, 1963.
Oswald would probably have gotten the visas without the intervention of Soviet objections.
When all is said and done a more simple explanation would be that the people monitoring the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City simply made a mistake and identified the wrong person as Oswald.
This does not hold water. There is strong evidence that someone impersonated Oswald on the phone later in the Oswald visit (and identified himself as Oswald on the call(s)). This someone was caught on tape and the tape was listened to by the FBI who confirmed that it was not Oswald’s voice. This is prima facie evidence that Oswald was framed and that the assassination was carried out by others.
Your explanation could conceivably be correct on the photo, but I doubt it.
The impersonation is the smoking gun in this affair.
It is absolutely correct on the photo.
There are a number of possible explanations for the photo, the “molehunt” hypothesis being one. Responding in absolutes is a big flaw of both sides concerning this affair.
That’s merely conjecture. The best way to prove whether your theory holds up is to release everything related to this event still being held in secret by CIA. The facts are that somebody was photographed and identified as “Oswald” and the same different person or another person was taped in a phone conversation identified as “Oswald” whose voice didn’t match that of Lee H. Oswald taken into captivity and charged with assassination on Nov. 22 in Dallas.
Meanwhile, Sylvia Odio says that a man looking and sounding just like Lee Harvey Oswald (identified at that time as “Leon Oswald”) showed up at her Dallas apartment with two other Cuban or Latin men, at the same time as Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to be down in Mexico City. I’ll make a simple explanation of my own: Oswald was never in Mexico City but impersonators using his name were, to set him up with incrimination “pro-Castro” and “pro-Soviet” bona fides.
Sylvia Odio has never furnished any evidence to corroborate her story. She also has a history of psychiatric issues.
I think you dismiss her (as did the WC which NEVER took her testimony seriously because what she said contradicted their Mexico City theory).
But here’s why I think Ms. Odio may have been telling the truth:
1) Her sister, Annie, who was staying with Silvia at the time of the visit, saw the men and independently recognized Oswald when she saw him on television after the assassination.
2) Before the assassination, Silvia Odio had written about the episode to her father. A letter from him refers to Silvia’s letter and to an unknown person who claimed to be his friend.
3) Silvia Odio had mentioned the incident before the assassination to her psychiatrist, Dr Burton Einspruch, who considered her a reliable witness.
4) Silvia and Annie Odio were reluctant to publicize their stories. The episode became known only by chance.
Odio to my knowledge never made a dime off her story. She in fact was afraid for her life, as many witnesses died after speaking out.
You claim that she was “mentally unstable”. Okay, PROVE IT.
The statement was that she had psychiatric issues-which is a matter of public record.
I think if someone knew truthful and disturbing aspects about the assassination contrary to the official view, and were afraid for their life as a result, they couldn’t be blamed for seeking help from a psychiatrist.
I don’t think she can be quickly dismissed.
(Frankly, I think believing in the SBT and Ruby’s sympathy excuse for killing Oswald, are kooky beliefs).
THat’s pretty dismissive. She was experiencing a vast amount of stress and would faint. Big deal. That is in no way relevant to her ability to remember her visit and phone call.
What evidence would you want her to present? An audio recording of her phone call? A photograph with her visitors? That is a transparently invalid argument.
What is much more important to ask is, why would she make this up? Did she achieve fame? Nope. Make any money? Nope. There is no reason. Her story isn’t even interesting. It is completely unlike the crazy post assassination stories.
In reality, her revelations would be troubling to any individual’s reputation with the authorities, as it seems.
There’s no incentive for her to fabricate her story.
Photon is simply borrowing a technique from the CIA’s memo (note that it’s labelled PSYCH for psychological operations/warfare aka disinformation) to discredit those who talk about conspiracy.
http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=53510#relPageId=2
Lots of people have psychiatric issues, that is just a cheap smear and is not relevant at all. It’s not Odio’s job to provide corroboration, that would be the job of a real investigation. She gave her testimony, and a lot of people that talked to her found it credible.
“Why would she make this up?”
Yes, why would a psychiatric patient make anything up, particularly something that would make her famous? That never happens, particularly claims that can’t be proved.
Famous? Beyond the rarefied world of JFK assassination interest I’d be surprised if anyone would recognize Odio’s name. What’s more, she has been reluctant to talk about the matter since her testimony. Not exactly the behavior of a publicity hound.
Transparent, again, Photon. She had to be sought out by authors. She is no Beverly Oliver. Not a chance.
And, again, if I have Anxiety, Depression, Bipolar Disorder, I cannot remember a conversation? Or stop myself from lying?
That is just childish. The Lone Nut Interpretation cannot handle the Odio Incident with honesty and integrity.
Sure Mitch, psychiatric patients make great witnesses. I don’t recall making any comment about her memory; nor any implication that she had any organic brain syndrome.
Her shrink said she was telling the truth about this.
(She probably couldn’t believe what she saw and had to talk to a shrink to affirm her beliefs).
However, Warren Commission Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin determined late in its “investigation” that Silvia Odio’s story was “credible.” The anecdote was not pursued because Rankin said, “At this point, we should be closing doors, not opening them.”
If Odio’s story was a fabrication she made a pretty good guess of when it happened. Oswald was traveling from New Orleans to Houston around the time Odio claimed the visit happened. Traveling by car(driven by someone else) he would have had plenty of time to stop in Dallas before arriving in Houston.
Most false Oswald sightings can easily be dismissed by evidence that Oswald was somewhere else at the time. The Odio story can’t be dismissed because we don’t know how Oswald traveled from New Orleans to Houston. There’s no evidence that he took a bus or traveled alone so it can’t be ruled out that he was driven to Texas by someone. Odio also mentioned other things that gave legs to her story.
Your suggestion that Odio was psychotic doesn’t refute any of the facts of her testimony.
So what. Even paranoid people have enemies.
There is no evidence for this whatsoever. When you add the conflicting witness descriptions of embassy employees, it all points unmistakeably to some kind of funny business. Then there’s his attempt to get in touch with Kostikov who just happened to be the KGB officer in charge of assassinations in the Western hemisphere. Oswald – the ‘lone nut’ with no intelligence connections – could never have known the significance of such a person. Again, the only explanation is funny business.
Even the CIA’s own memo or dispatch said something about someone calling himself Oswald who spoke terrible Russian.
Lol. Doesn’t sound like Oswald now does it?
Lets remember that the issue of someone impersonating Oswald started as far back as his time in the Soviet Union, a Hoover memo as well as one from the State Dept, attests to this.