Posted on 01/05/2006 10:03:10 AM PST by Kenny Bunk
BERLIN (Jan. 4) - Cuba lay behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald and its agents provided the gunman with money and support, an award-winning German director says in a new documentary film.
Wilfried Huismann spent three years researching "Rendezvous with Death," based on interviews with former Cuban secret agents, U.S. officials and a Russian intelligence source, and on research in Mexican security archives.
The film, shown to journalists in Berlin on Wednesday, says Oswald traveled to Mexico City by bus in September 1963, seven weeks before the Kennedy shooting, and met agents at the Cuban embassy there who paid him $6,500.
Oscar Marino, a former Cuban agent and a key source for the documentary, told Huismann that Oswald himself had volunteered for the assassination mission and Havana had exploited him.
He was so full of hate, he had the idea. We used him...He was a tool."
He said he knew with certainty that the assassination was an operation of the Cuban secret service G-2, but would not say if it was ordered by President Fidel Castro.
Oswald was shot dead by Jack Ruby two days after killing Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
The film argues Cuba wanted to eliminate Kennedy as the chief enemy of its Communist revolution, and portrays him and Castro as dueling opponents each trying to assassinate the other first.
What They Said:
''Oswald was a dissident. He hated his country... Oswald offered to kill Kennedy. ...We used him.''
Oscar Marino, a former Cuban agent, speaking in the documentary
Former CIA official Sam Halpern told Huismann: "He (Castro) beat us. He bested us. He came out on top, and we lost."
FBI PROBE ABORTED
Laurence Keenan, an officer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who was sent to Mexico City immediately after Kennedy's death to investigate a possible Cuban connection, said he was recalled after just three days and the probe was aborted.
"This was perhaps the worst investigation the FBI was ever involved in," Keenan said. "I realized that I was used. I felt ashamed. We missed a moment in history."
Keenan, 81, said he was convinced Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, blocked further investigation because proof of a Cuban link would put him under irresistible pressure to invade the island, a year after the Cuban missile crisis had brought the United States and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.
"Most likely there would have been an invasion of Cuba which could have had unknown consequences for the whole world," he told journalists at the screening, saying that was why Johnson preferred to accept Oswald was "a crazed lone Marxist assassin."
Interviewed for the film, Alexander Haig, then a U.S. military adviser and later secretary of state, quoted Johnson as saying "we simply must not allow the American people to believe that Fidel Castro could have killed our president."
"And the reason was that there would be a right-wing uprising in America, which would keep the Democratic party out of power for two generations," Haig said.
He added that Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the assassinated president and attorney general in his administration, had personally ordered eight attempts on the life of Castro, who is still in power to this day.
Cuban and Russian sources interviewed in the film say the KGB alerted the Cubans to Oswald in mid-1962 after he left the Soviet Union, where he had lived for three years, and returned to the United States with his Soviet wife and their daughter.
Cuban intelligence first made contact with Oswald in November 1962, according to the film.
Huismann also unearthed a U.S. intelligence report shown to Johnson which said Cuban secret service chief Fabian Escalante flew via Mexico City to Dallas on the day of Kennedy's assassination, and back again the same day.
Tracked down by the film maker, Escalante denied he had been in Dallas and evaded questions about Cuba's alleged role. "What is truth, what are lies?" he said, smiling
Hmmm. Reported by al-Reuters. I hope it gets some play so all the Cuba/Castro lovers on the left can 'splain' their affinity for the killer of their idol, JFK...
Nice of Al Haig to keep this to himself for 40 years.
Maybe this is something we should known about.
Just like the attack on the USS Liberty or the Tolkin Gulf lie.
LBJ the worst president ever.
Wouldn't surprise me.
AKA Farenheit 11-22.
No, Carter was worse.
Carter betrayed the Shah of Iran, which gave root to the muslim mess we are in today.
they may have paid Oswald to go to work that day with that Mickey Mouse rifle in hand but to "shoot JFK"...never...they haven't been able to duplicate those shots with an identical rifle from the school book depository yet!!
Why couldn't LHO buy a decent rifle?
"they haven't been able to duplicate those shots with an identical rifle from the school book depository yet!!"
Actually, "Myth Busters" (or equivalent TV show) just did, replete with spinning "magic" bullet losing velocity and bruising, but not puncturing the third person beside the pres.
Heck yeah, Billy made beer. That is an honest and positive contribution to society. Then there's Jimmah. Where does one start with his, ahem, contributions...
LBJ and Hoover had it done through Mafia hitmen. The crime of the century HAS been solved, nobody knows because the MSM is still covering their butts. Cronkite, Huntley-Brinkley, the folks at ABC and CNN have been covering for years. To admit the truth now would be hugely embarrassing.
I remember seeing a show on famous guns on one of the cable channels, and of course they featured oswald's. As I remember it was a pretty cheap rifle.
Fine. Let's kill Castro just in case he's right.
Nonsense. I saw an 80 year old man demonstrate it on TV.
The only thing is that Castro denied killing Kennedy because it would be a stupid thing to do. The US would invade Cuba in a New York minute if Castro did order this hit and he knows that.
I think the problem was just that it was a simulation of a human body and not the real thing. Even if you had the real thing you'd have to set up everything exactly the same. The demonstration proved pretty well the path of the bullet.
Perhaps, but Carter didn't draft me, as did LBJ, to fight a war in Southeast Asia so the Democrats could keep the White House in 1968 (which they didn't anyway).
Re: See remarks by Alexander Haig. Cuba AND Vietnam were the Democrats foreign policy political vulnerabilities in the 1960's.
AAMOF, foreign policy is still the Democrats political vulnerability. They want peace, but they aren't willing to fight for it. War, for the Democrats, is like welfare, they only do it for the votes.
Why is this just now coming out?
Can't help but be suspicious.
Possibility one, he's guilty, the people involved are getting old and want to claim their piece of history before they die.
Possibility two, he's guilty, and we're preparing the justification to take him out, Saddam/Noriega style.
Possibility three, he's guilty, Bush is worried about the upcoming election, and has decided to go for the "nuclear option" that makes those few remaining Reagan Democrats leave the DNC in disgust once and for all.
Possibility four, he's guilty, his crime was covered up by FBI, CIA, and DNC perfidy, and after Bush's last five years of being pounded and betrayed by traitors in the CIA and the DNC, he's decided to expose them for what they are.
Possibility five, he's partly guilty, he's not long for this world, and the other guilty parties are going to make sure he gets the blame, and not them.
Possibility six, he's not guilty at all, and the guilty parties have decided to make him take their guilt to the grave. It may also provide justification to take him out anyway, which is still a beneficial side-effect. We could look around for those missing WMD while we're at it. Castro could swap stories with Noriega and Saddam.
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