Authors: Lamar Waldron
numerous occasions, he observed Guy Banister, David Ferrie, various
anti-Castro Cubans, and agents of both the CIA and FBI” at the Schlum-
berger facility in Houma, Louisiana, sixty miles from New Orleans.
Schlumberger provided equipment for oil drilling, but according to
Johnson “it was an open secret among company employees that the
federal government was using the large facility for intelligence activi-
ties.” Johnson told Kurtz that “on at least two occasions in the summer of
1963, Lee Harvey Oswald accompanied Banister and Ferrie to Houma.”
The anti-Castro material that “Johnson saw [included] such supplies
as guns, ammunition, hand grenades, howitzers, bombs, landmines,
propellers . . . and much more. On several occasions, Cubans told him
that they were using the equipment for ‘training exercises for another
invasion of Cuba.’”
Until it was closed in early August 1963, Manuel Artime operated what
was essentially a minor-league exile training camp for the AMWORLD
operation near New Orleans, which Ferrie and Banister both reportedly
visited. Kurtz writes that “Hunter Leake verified Hamilton Johnson’s
story about Schlumberger. . . . He also confirmed that Banister, Ferrie,
and even Oswald visited the camp from time to time.”15
Oswald’s public activities in New Orleans in August 1963 are well
documented because of their extensive media coverage. Oswald first
tried to join the local chapter of the DRE, an anti-Castro group, claim-
ing he wanted to overthrow Fidel. Shortly after that, he very publicly
passed out pro-Castro leaflets on the street in New Orleans, an act that
provoked an attack by the local DRE head and two of his associates.
Oswald’s arrest led to newspaper coverage, as well as radio and TV
appearances in which he handled himself remarkably well. How could
Oswald generate so much publicity? That was a specialty of CIA propa-
ganda specialist David Atlee Phillips. Court records indicate that a “Mr.
Phillips . . . from Washington,” who was involved with US intelligence,
met with Banister in New Orleans, at Banister’s office, regarding an
anti-Castro TV appeal.16 Earlier, Phillips had run an operation against
the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and according to E. Howard Hunt’s
sworn testimony to Congressional investigators, David Phillips ran the
DRE for the CIA.17
CIA files confirm that Phillips was working on the AMWORLD part
of the coup plan, so it shouldn’t be surprising that shortly after Oswald’s
publicity blitz, Phillips met with Oswald in Dallas, along with anti-
Castro exile activist Antonio Veciana. Veciana and his Alpha 66 were
barred from the JFK-Almeida coup plan, though Veciana was partners
with Eloy Menoyo, an exile leader whom the Kennedys and Harry did
want. Veciana’s story of meeting Oswald and Phillips in the lobby of the
new Southland Building in Dallas has long been controversial, though
Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi concluded that such a meet-
ing did take place. Veciana hinted that Phillips used the name “Maurice
Bishop,” and CIA official Ross Crozier later confirmed that to Congres-
sional investigators. Kurtz got new confirmation, saying that “Hunter
Leake told me that David Atlee Phillips . . . used the alias [Maurice
Bishop].”18 Veciana revealed to us that he originally named his group
Alpha 66 after the Phillips 66 gas stations that were common in the early
1960s.19
David Atlee Phillips was from nearby Fort Worth, and by meeting
Oswald in public—in the lobby of Dallas’s newest glittering office
tower—Phillips must have realized he could have been seen with
Oswald by a relative or a high school classmate, or even photographed
by a tourist. Such behavior seems illogical, and inconsistent with Phil-
lips’s long intelligence experience, if Phillips knew that Oswald was
going to be any type of assassin or patsy for JFK’s assassination. Such a
meeting is much more consistent with Oswald’s being used as an intel-
ligence asset for an operation far from Dallas. Phillips appears to have
been focused on using Oswald in the CIA’s anti-Castro operations, as
one of the US assets they had to get into Cuba before the coup. Appar-
ently, Phillips hoped Oswald’s pro-Castro media blitz would help him
get into Cuba via Mexico City. Phillips was based in Mexico City, where
he headed anti-Castro operations.
Oswald’s trip to Mexico City in late September and early October
1963 has also been the subject of much controversy and Congressional
investigation. William Gaudet, a CIA asset long known to have received
the Mexican tourist card in New Orleans with the number just before
Oswald’s, told Kurtz that he was with Oswald in Mexico for the CIA.20
This helps to explain why a later report said that Oswald had trav-
eled one way to Mexico by car, though Oswald neither had a license
nor owned a car. As our Naval Intelligence source told us, Oswald was
under surveillance the whole time he was in Mexico City—something
later confirmed by Win Scott, who at the time was the Mexico City CIA
station chief.21
Oswald was not able to get into Cuba via Mexico City, especially after
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
someone called the Soviet embassy, impersonating him. CIA officials
found out about the impersonation because they had bugged the phones
at the Soviet and Cuban embassies. Just as Banister and Ferrie were in
a position to manipulate Oswald for Marcello while ostensibly help-
ing the CIA, Marcello’s Mafia associates also had ways to compromise
Oswald’s actions in Mexico City. Richard Cain, the high-level Chicago
law enforcement official who had worked with Trafficante and Rosselli
on the CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots, had bugged a communist
embassy in Mexico City the previous year. Monitoring the bugs for the
CIA was the DFS, a Mexican police agency so corrupt and tied to drugs
that it eventually had to be disbanded. The DFS was linked to the Mexico
City arm of Trafficante and Marcello’s French Connection drug ring with
Michel Victor Mertz.22
As for Oswald, he may have thought he was simply going to be a
US intelligence asset in Cuba, or that he was going to play a part in the
CIA-Mafia plot to assassinate Castro. Given Oswald’s long ties to intel-
ligence activities, his favorite uncle’s career as a bookie for Marcello,
and Oswald’s own brief work for Marcello as a runner, he probably
would have had little problem with an operation that combined intel-
ligence and the Mafia. However, Oswald would have been told as little
as possible about his mission by people like Guy Banister and David
Ferrie, whose real goal was to manipulate Oswald for Marcello and the
JFK plot.
After Oswald failed to get into Cuba, he apparently had—or thought
he had—a role to play for US intelligence. After a brief stint living at
the Dallas YMCA, by November 1963, Oswald was living in a rooming
house in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, seeing his wife only on
the weekends. He tried to find work at several businesses in downtown
Dallas, which would later turn out to be near JFK’s motorcade route,
before finally settling on the Texas School Book Depository. However,
for years others had determined Oswald’s actions, and there is no reason
to think his choice of work location deviated from that pattern. Even
before JFK’s final motorcade route through Dallas was announced, it
was almost certain that the President would take a downtown route
through Dealey Plaza, just as JFK had during his visits to Dallas in 1960
and 1961. Oswald was in the Soviet Union at those times, but JFK’s visits
would have been well known to a downtown Dallas businessman like
Jack Ruby.
Oswald’s starting salary at the Depository was small, yet evidence
shows he was thinking of buying an expensive car: He told a car salesman
on November 9, 1963, that he would be getting “a lot of money in the next
two or three weeks.”23 Among Oswald’s notes preserved—but appar-
ently overlooked—by the Warren Commission are remarks apparently
intended for a speech he would make after he finally emerged from his
years of undercover work. Its tone and content are totally at odds with
the pro-Marxist remarks he made on radio and TV in New Orleans.
Oswald maintains that he hates communism, writing that “there are pos-
sibly few other Americans born in the US who [have] as many personal
reasons to know—and therefore hate and mistrust—Communism.” He
says the US and Russia “have too much to offer to each other to be tear-
ing at each other’s throats in an endless cold war. Both countries have
major shortcomings and advantages, but only in ours is the voice of
dissent allowed opportunity of expression.”24
By 1963, America had become a far different country than it had been
during the McCarthy era, when Oswald loved
I Led Three Lives,
based
on the true story of Herbert Philbrick, who pretended to be a commu-
nist for years before emerging to acclaim, Congressional thanks, and a
long career as an author and popular speaker. Oswald’s notes mention
Philbrick and make it clear that he intended to surpass him in some way,
apparently because of his role in the upcoming US operation against
Cuba.25
Oswald’s intelligence status had to be very closely held to remain
secret, meaning that few federal agents in the field could be told about
it. Oswald had been worried that a local Dallas FBI agent was going to
blow his cover, which he had worked so hard to maintain for so many
years, hoping he could make it pay off. FBI agent James Hosty had vis-
ited Oswald’s wife on November 1 and again on November 5, and after
Oswald heard about it, he wrote a note to Hosty warning him away, and
Oswald personally dropped it off at the Dallas FBI office.
It’s hard to tell where Oswald’s legitimate US intelligence activities
end and his manipulation by Mafia associates begins, given the true
loyalty of US assets like Banister and Ferrie to Marcello, and the hatred
of the Kennedys they shared with CIA officers like Morales and his good
friend Rosselli. Any of Oswald’s unusual actions during 1963 can be
explained by three possibilities: 1. It could have been for legitimate intel-
ligence purposes; 2. It could have been a legitimate intelligence purpose
that was also furthering Marcello’s goals; or 3. Oswald only thought he
was acting for a legitimate intelligence purpose, but in reality he was
being manipulated by Marcello’s men. Imagine how difficult it must
have been for officials from various agencies to sort through Oswald’s
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
actions after JFK’s death, as they tried to figure out (in secret, and often
not talking to other agencies) what Oswald was really up to.
In the weeks and months before Dallas, Oswald, or someone pretend-
ing to be Oswald, was reportly near Chicago prior to JFK’s planned
motorcade there, and in Tampa the day before JFK’s motorcade there.26
Since officials had uncovered assassination plots in each city before JFK
arrived, that meant Oswald could have taken the fall if JFK had been
shot in either of those two cities.
On Thursday, November 21, Lee Oswald went home a day early to see
Marina and his children, who were living with Ruth Paine. When he
awoke, he left $175 and his wedding ring for his wife. As he rode into
work with Wesley Frazier on the morning of November 22, 1963, Frazier
and his sister saw Oswald hold a package cupped in his hand and tucked
under his armpit. It could not have been a disassembled Mannlicher-
Carcano rifle, as the Warren Commission later asserted, because a disas-
sembled Mannlicher was too long to be carried that way. Oswald told
Frazier it was curtain rods, but it could have been almost anything—
including an item Oswald had been told to bring to work (or the park-
ing lot) that day by whoever he thought was his intelligence handler.
According to Warren Commission testimony, Oswald did not have the
package when he entered the Depository that morning. (One uncon-
firmed source linked to the deaths of two Artime associates claimed it
could have been a pro-Castro banner, passed to a confederate who sup-
posedly planned to unfurl it from a Book Depository window during
JFK’s motorcade. If Oswald went to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City
and took credit for such a stunt, he might have thought he would surely
be allowed into Cuba.) A Warren Commission counsel later outlined
evidence, omitted from their Final Report, that Oswald may well have
been preparing to go to Mexico that day.27
John Martino indicated that Oswald was supposed to leave work on
the afternoon of November 22 to meet what he thought was an intel-
ligence contact at the Texas Theater. In David Atlee Phillips’s auto-
biography,
The Night Watch
(a completely different book from Phillips’s
autobiographical novel outline cited earlier), Phillips wrote about his