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Posted on 04/27/2005 10:24:04 PM PDT by churchillbuff
Did Oswald train at Camp Peary?
By Paul Aron The Virginia Gazette
A purported CIA memo circulating on the Internet says flatly that Lee Harvey Oswald was trained at Camp Peary in 1958, five years before he assassinated President Kennedy. The document is probably fake.
“This is one of those cases where if it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” said assassination expert Jim Marrs in an e-mail to the Gazette. Marrs is the author of the 1990 book, “Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy.”
The document, dated March 3, 1964, purports to be written by CIA director John McCone to Secret Service Chief James Rowley.
“I have no way at this point in time of determining if this document is authentic or not,” Marrs said. “As always, there is considerable controversy even among the experts.”
He added, “The significance of this document, if proven authentic, cannot be underestimated. The implication, namely that Lee Harvey Oswald was being used operationally by the CIA prior to the assassination of President Kennedy, is staggering. This means the assassination was not only a conspiracy, but a coup d'etat in this nation in 1963.”
According to the document, “Oswald subject was trained by this agency, under cover of the Office of Naval Intelligence, for Soviet assignments.” In 1957, Oswald allegedly was “active in aerial reconnaissance of mainland China and maintained a security clearance up to the ‘confidential' level.”
The document goes on to say: “Subject received additional indoctrination at our own Camp Peary site from September 8 to October 17, 1958.”
The mention of Camp Peary prompted a reader to e-mail a copy of the document to the Gazette. While it looks official and has the keystrokes of a 1960s-era typewriter, the image is impossible to authenticate without the original.
Most historians have placed Oswald en route to Taiwan with his Marine unit in September 1958, in which case he couldn't have been here then.
A CIA spokesman at Langley headquarters outside Washington would not comment on the document, other than to suggest a reporter “steer away from it.”
The CIA has always maintained it had no relationship with Oswald. Testifying before the Warren Commission in 1964, McCone stated, “Oswald was not an agent, employee or informant of the Central Intelligence Agency. The agency never contacted him, interviewed him, talked with him, or solicited any reports or information from him, or communicated with him indirectly or in any other manner.”
The Warren Commission's report, released 10 months after Kennedy's death, offered a clear and simple answer to the question of who killed the president: Oswald did it, alone.
Though the document is probably a fake, a number of researchers have previously suggested links between Oswald and the CIA.
Among the early critics of the Warren Report was Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney. He undertook his own investigation in 1966. Garrison was convinced that Oswald was connected with two New Orleans figures, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw. According to Garrison, all three worked for the CIA, which was behind the plot to kill Kennedy.
Garrison's theory proved unfounded, despite generating new attention in Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, “JFK.”
John Newman's 1995 book, “Oswald and the CIA,” concluded he was not an agent, but that the “agency appears to have had a serious operational interest in Oswald and there probably was a relationship, though not that of an ‘agent' or ‘informant.'”
Newman argued that, “while Oswald wasn't James Bond, it is increasingly apparent that the agency's operational interest may have led to his use or manipulation.”
One claim that Oswald was indeed an agent came from James Wilcott, a CIA finance officer. In 1978, Wilcott told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that “Oswald was a CIA agent who had received financial disbursements under an assigned cryptonym.”
Wilcott cited informal conversations with co-workers. The House Committee concluded that his “allegation was not worthy of belief.”
Marrs' e-mail cites numerous ties between the CIA and Oswald. “Even if the document proves unauthentic,” Marrs wrote, “it is nevertheless true.”
Many historians have embraced Gerald Posner's 1993 book, “Case Closed.” Posner refuted much of the evidence conspiracy theorists had gathered over the previous 30 years.
More than any technical evidence, what has undermined many conspiracy theories are flaws in the logic.
The case against the CIA has generally been that the agency had proven itself willing to assassinate, having tried to kill Castro during the early 1960s. The motive for killing Kennedy might have been a fear that the president, embarrassed by the CIA's bungling of the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, might try to interfere with the other CIA operations and curtail the agency's independence.
Oswald was in a position to act as a spy, since he spent two years in Russia, after having been twice court-martialed by the Marines. A number of historians have proposed he may have been recruited by the CIA while he was a Marine stationed in Japan.
One problem with the theory that the CIA killed Kennedy is that Oswald appeared to be a committed Marxist. Another has to do with the agency's motive.
It was Kennedy who approved the CIA's plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He also brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis, and it was he who escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
So, JFK was hardly a president likely to close down the Cold War or the CIA.
Even if the CIA didn't conspire with Oswald, there remains the possibility of a conspiracy between Oswald and unknown disaffected amateurs, some of whom may have had connections with the CIA, anti-Castro Cubans, or the mafia.
Against the illogic of most conspiracy theories is the logic, albeit twisted, of Oswald's own mind. Norman Mailer's 1995 book, “Oswald's Tale,” portrayed a man clearly capable of shooting the president by himself.
I've not listened to DK but I do get a laugh out of seeing that pic. But what's with that pickguard on the Tele? I've never seen one like that.
Click here
Great montage....was that little twit only 5 feet tall? (picture with the "yardstick")
It may be a relic of the photoshopping process, most likely from editing out the original player's hand. FWIW, I'm 95% sure that that Tele is taken from a picture of Albert Collins and flipped left-for-right - note the humbucker neck pickup, capo, and strap over one shoulder only.
What was the point of the capo? I know he liked different tunings, but the capo seems like a crutch to me, but I don't play guitar too much.
Looks like 5' 9" is at the top of his head.
The capo lets you use open chords and open strings in higher positions. This is not a substitute for barre chords; they sound fundamentally different - try playing an open G chord, and then a 3rd fret barre G.
I think I get it now.
Ooooh, that is really pretty devolve. Sexy but pretty, lol.
Colonel Prouty maintains that the latter memo was prepared PRIOR to JFK being whacked.
I have been able to dig from my records a most important and fascinating collection of copies of the McGeorge Bundy drafts of what became NSAM 273, dated Nov. 21, Nov. 24, and Nov. 26. The Draft coding indicates that Mac Bundy sent copies to no less than 9 key Kennedy people. In the process it was modified several times by various other offices; and the Final, Nov. 26th, LBJ copy is very different from the original JFK draft by Mac Bundy.
JFK's NSAM 263 began the withdrawal to be complete by the 64 election, but the whole plan was to be concealed. The day after his burial NSAM 273 reflects an earlier draft dated 21 Nov 63.
11/21/63
DRAFT
TOP SECRET
NATIONAL SECURITY ACTION MEMORANDUM NO.
LBJ didn't do any clandestine withdrawal by the 64 election--he was running against my guy, Barry Goldwater, hence had to appear tough.
LBJ Nov 65 refused the joint chiefs' request to bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong, handcuffing the military to defeatist political meddling.
Old enough to have known people who were actually there-- some were stalwarts in our community. Essentially, he was in a storm of gunfire.
My parents were diehard Kennedy lovers therefore I was exposed to quite a bit of what happened then. In Life magazine, I believe, but could have been Look, two young black men who appeared to be looking from a window on a lower floor of the Book Depository, were screaming at that cameraman and pointing down and to their right which could have been the street, or the grassy knoll. IMO they believed they saw something and were pointing to where.
In one of those two magazines, on the viaduct over Commerce, Main and Elm streets a man in a business suit was standing in what I remember as a Parade Rest position with a rifle. Which in theory would have been an ideal location for a shooter.
Dozens of men ran up the grassy knoll chasing something. Either MacNeil or Leherer[sp?] was there and chased and was filmed.
The original reports of capture was of three men in Ft. Worth. Then reports of Oswald. Then the men in Ft. Worth. And that sorta drifted away to Oswald only.
An old man who has passed on and was there told me "they shot that [blanking] Kennedy from behind that fence [grassy knoll], from the highway[??? maybe that viaduct??], and from that tall building[not the Book Depository]."
IIRC that man was never threatened, but the Oswald story came out so fast and strong that even before 1964 people "knew what had happened" so he and perhaps others were told they were wrong and enjoyed demonstrating how smart they were by shouting he and others who were there down how Oswald did it alone.=-)
The question is, did Posner act alone....
IMHO, the real *smoking gun* of such docs would be one showing not that Oswald was at Peary or Harvey Point, but that the mentally disturbed former Marine in Chicago who was planning to shoot JFK from an upper-story apartment window en route to a ball game there in early November 1963 [about the time that Premier Diem of Vietnam went through a *regime change.*] had been at the *farm* at Peary at the same time
Right off hand I can't recall the name of the Chicago shooter, but I reckon a search for framed USSS agent Abe Bolden would turn it up.
Show me THAT in crusty old documents and I'll be more interested. The real question here should be just who is dangling the papers, forged or not.
Indeed. Thanks for the ping!
Dang...those Rolands have been around a while.
To me, it looks like an inertial effect resulting from his sudden jumping / leaning back out of the line of fire...
check out the picture in post #16.
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