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
Back in those days you could buy a 1903 Springfield from Sears for $50; war surplus from other countries was even cheaper.
Cuba recruiting a willing Oswald, sounds believable.
Yes, I have seen the recent specials on TV and seen these shots easily duplicated. But this and other myths, bolstered by Oliver Stone's movie, have contributed to the myht.
Simply not true. 3 shots through a scoped rifle in about 5 seconds (with the first shot at the first instant of that time) at a slow-moving target about 100 yards away is no big deal for a Marine-trained marksman.
No evidence of him receving $6500 has been shown. What did he do with the money?? Make a down payment on a 1959 Studebaker Lark??
This sounds dubious to me. If it were true, it would have more concrete evidence. I don't think LBJ was frightened of Fidel Castro, with all due respect.
and laying the pristine bullet on the gurney? LMAO
I qualified Expert while in the Marine Corps with a M-14 and I'm not sure I could have put three shots in the back of JFK's head & back while the open air limo was moving up the street using that POS bolt action rifle and scope that Oswald used...
nope, there were two and probably three snipers that day and you can bet your house they weren't using no 12 dollar rifles. LOL
About $38,000 in today's dollars.
I worked for a neurosurgeon who was a classmate of the doctor's who did JFK's surgery. He happens to be a history buff also and told me that when Jackie climbed on the back of the convertible she was retriving the back of the president's skull; that he could have been saved in surgery.
Remember the joke going around after a few years of the "Jimmy & Billy Show":
Q. What woman in the US has the biggest boobs?
A. Lillian Carter. She has Jimmy and Billy.
"at a slow-moving target about 100 yards away is no big deal for a Marine-trained marksman."
Have you ever qualified?
Well I have. Expert!
and I have actually been in combat and taken shots and I'm telling you that that POS rifle Oswald used was not the rifle that killed JFK! PERIOD!
All military surplus rifles were cheap in those days.
They still had the inherent accuracy that all military arms are made with though.
And we don't know how well Oswald could shoot.
Here is a great documentary on everything you wanted to know about Oswald . ..
I think he was a misfit, and didn't need any encouragement or help from Russia or Cuba. A lot of the KGB thought that Oswald was either a flake or double agent.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/
What did he do with all the money? Both him and his wife lived like paupers . .
The Mannlicher Carcano is a real sleazy cheap-o, OK. But, is is also a very fast bolt action, more than reasonably accurate, and fired a very useful 6.5MM round at a fairly high velocity. Further more the recoil is rather light, which is a big help in fast shooting.
The bullet, a long FMJ, has excellent penetration because of its sectional density. Many countries used similar rounds with similar ballistics as their military cartridge for years. Various 6.5s are excellent hunting cartridges, too.
Oswald's alleged shots would have been duck soup for any qualified Marine. They were all in enfilade, that is going practically straight ahead, and the range wasn't great. As far as the speed of fire, three in six seconds? Piece of cake, especially if the first one is in the chamber and you're cocked.
This shooting has been duplicated over and over. There simply is very little doubt about it, LHO had equipment that was up the task. Wasn't great equipment, but adequate.
As far as the main premise of this film, namely that Castro took advantage of a walk-in? Well OK? But doesn't anyone find it a teensy bit coincidental that this walk-in lived in the the Soviet Union for so long?
I think this may be disinformation to cover the KGB, whom I believe to have been in it up to their eyeballs, possibly supplying LHO to Fidel.
I personally have always been on the "Fidel Dunnit" conspiracy team. Hopefully this "documentary" will shed more light in a dark corner. And co-incidentally make the Fidelistas among us, who are also JFK idolaters, look pretty damn stupid.
I believe it. She is not acting like someone who is seeking cover from a hail of bullets. For that, she would have been ducking down into the foot-well of the back seat. The way "Jackie" was crawling, seemingly with purpose over the back of the convertible, lends credibility to your post.
Amen to that!!
Yassure, that's what they said. But none of them address the facts that Oswald lived like a king in the Soviet Union, that they had him create a fictitious bio, that he was married to Marina, who's family were big in security, etc.etc.
In fact, the KGB tried to float the story line that they had NO INTEREST in LHO. This, in an era in which every foreigner in the USSR had a KGB Surveillance Squad and was required to live in bugged quarters.
cf Lee Epstein's "Legend."
The bullets' condition after the shots, (even the one that hit the rib bone), was virtually in the exact same condition as the so called "pristine" bullet recovered from Parkland Hospital.
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