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The next voice you

hear is that of the accused assassin

of President John F. Kennedy, 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald.

I'd like some legal representation,

but these police officers have not allowed me to have any.

I don't know what this is all about.

Did you kill the president?

No, sir.

I didn't.

Sir?

Did you shoot the president?

I work in that building.

Were you in the building at the time?

Naturally if I work in that building.

Yes, sir.

Back up, man.

Did you kill the president?

No.

They're taking me in because of the fact

that I lived in the vicinity.

I'm just a pasty.

There is the prisoner.

Do you have anything to say in your defense?

Oswald has been shot.

- I - think my son was a patsy

and I think history will prove that.

I will be here to read about it.

I think history will not absolve Lee

Harvey Oswald of any involvement in the deaths

attributed to him.

Almost from the beginning,

the discussion of the assassination

has been dominated by, as I would put it, two churches.

If you belong to the church as the lone assassin,

then you are certain that both Oswald and Ruby

were lone nuts who did what they did

for entirely personal reasons.

Now, on the other side, we have the church

of the grand conspiracy, whose founder I suppose was Mark Lane

and whose high priest, really, is Oliver Stone.

And if you belong to the church of the grand conspiracy,

any discrepancies in the evidence... and in such a huge,

complex case, there are bound to be dozens of discrepancies...

Is proof of both a conspiracy and a cover-up.

Then in the middle, as I would put it,

there are a few people...

Including Bob Blakey, who was the counsel

to the House Assassinations Committee and myself...

Who feel that Oswald did it and that he fired,

certainly, all the shots that hit,

but that he did it as part of a conspiracy

put together by organized crime and specifically by Santo

Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, and John Martino,

the man who really did the field work on the ground.

Lee Harvey Oswald is

one of history's great enigmas.

There are so many things about him that don't add up.

I mean, here's a guy who enlists in the Marines

when he's young after studying the communist manuals before he

enlists.

He ends up in Japan at the Atsugi Naval Air Base

and monitoring U-2 spy craft, supposedly defects to Russia

with secrets about the U-2.

But then there are questions about,

what was that really all about?

Was Oswald dispatched on some kind of mission

by the CIA or military intelligence

to turn over certain secrets to the Russians

and then maybe see where that went?

Then he marries a Russian woman, he

comes back to the United States in the summer of '62,

is befriended by a man named George de Mohrenschildt, who

is another very mysterious and shady character who

is connected to the oil industry and to the CIA

and most likely debriefed Oswald for the CIA.

Oswald goes to work after he's been a defector to Russia

for a company called Jaggars Chiles Stovall, which

is involved in some kind of mapping

during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I mean, what's going on with this guy?

In the fall of '63 in late September,

Oswald shows up in Mexico City, goes

to the Cuban and Soviet consulates trying

to get a visa to get into Cuba.

But the photographs that the CIA eventually

has of this person who's shown up at those embassies

is not of Oswald, but maybe somebody impersonating him.

So it gets weirder still.

Oswald is definitely being watched

at that time very closely by the CIA's counterintelligence

people, James Angleton, and also by the special affairs staff

headed by Desmond Fitzgerald.

They've got all these marked card files on Oswald that

indicate they're watching him for a reason

because he's in touch with mysterious people

or they're following him for some strange reason

that we still don't know the answer to.

So very mysterious fellow.

Lee Harvey Oswald had been born in New Orleans in 1939.

He never knew his father, who died before he was born.

He was a somewhat troubled youth.

Norman Mailer discovered he was dyslexic, which probably caused

him a lot of trouble in school, even though he

was really quite intelligent.

His mother, I think, was pretty emotionally unstable.

I was born in New Orleans in 1939.

For a short length of time during my childhood,

I lived in Texas and in New York.

I remember

some of the conversation I had with Oswald

right from the beginning.

And Lee was remembering his young days in New Orleans.

When he was 12 or 13, he realized some injustices

of our segregationist ways and began

looking for other answers.

Where, I asked curiously.

In Marx's "The Capital," he said rather sullenly.

The exploitation of the poor by the rich, for one thing,

you can see it all over this country.

The strong will always win.

He had some interest in left wing political views

from quite an early age, we know,

which was pretty unusual at that time.

And he was an ornery kind of guy, very withdrawn

kind of guy, very good at hiding his thoughts and feelings.

One of the things that always bothers me the most about him

is he has no vices.

He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink,

he doesn't seem to care much about sex,

and he doesn't care about money.

Now, like many troubled young men in those days,

he wanted to get away from home and as soon as he turned 17,

he managed to get into the Marine Corps.

"My service in the Marine Corps

was a great influence on me," said Lee.

"I served because this was the only way

for me to see the world.

It's in Japan that Marxist ideas of equality for all

became clear to me.

I was in contact with revolutionary young people

there and I liked what they told me."

In the Marine Corps,

he was in a special unit, a radar unit,

tracking the whites of the U-2s.

We were worried about the Soviet missile program

and all the defectors we tried to send then were killed.

And so the U-2 came into being and the CIA

had three stations and Oswald worked in the one in Japan.

We had a mole, maybe more than one, in the KGB.

And this mole informed us that we

had a mole in our U-2 program.

So Oswald's trip to the Soviet Union immediately upon leaving

the Marines could have been expected

to draw the interest of the KGB to attempt to recruit him

or to ask him questions that might

have helped us discover the identity

of the mole in the U-2 program.

"September 11, 1959.

Today I begin my new life.

My mother is temporarily unable to work

so I apply for a hardship discharge to care for her.

I leave the base and return to Fort Worth, Texas with my new

passport.

I've been practicing Russian and will leave

soon for the Soviet Union."

He got, I believe, a hardship discharge based on the need

to support his mother.

And then out of nowhere, and again without telling anybody,

he takes a boat to Europe, he goes to Finland,

he gets into the Soviet Union in Moscow,

and he suddenly announces very loudly and publicly

that he is going to defect and that he's going to give away

radar secrets to the Soviets.

The most notable thing about Oswald's defection

is that he threatened to give up his radar

secrets to the Soviet Union.

From the moment he made the threat,

everybody was interested in him.

And over the course of the months that followed

that threat that he made, there may

have been as many as 30 divisions or branches

or offices of five or six different US

intelligence organizations keeping files on him.

Dear Robert.

Well, what should we talk about, the weather perhaps?

Surely you do not wish for me to speak about my decision

to remain in the Soviet Union and ask for citizenship

here, as I'm afraid you would not be

able to comprehend my reasons.

I received your telegram and was glad to hear from you.

Only one word bothered me, the word mistake.

It is not for you to tell me this.

You cannot understand my reasons for such a serious action.

I will never return to the United States,

which is a country I hate.

I will never speak to anyone from the United

States over the telephone since it

may be taped by the Americans.

Should you wish to correspond with me,

you can write the below address.

But I really don't see what we can talk about.

They were not interested in him

as it turns out, at least that's the story

and it appears to be true.

And they sent him off to a radio factory in Minsk

and tucked him away there where he couldn't make trouble.

And there he stayed until the spring of 1962.

This is the headquarters

of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United

States government.

As far as I know, we don't engage

in assassinations and kidnappings

and things of that kind.

As far as I know, we never have.

As far as we know, they have and have

done it quite consistently.

I spent 21 years in army intelligence,

much of it working in the National Security Agency.

And when the Stone film caused this massive release

of intelligence files, I felt like I

could do something with that.

I understood them and then that's

what really pulled me into writing

the book "Oswald and the CIA."

The question of the delay in the opening of the 201

file on Oswald is a major problem for the Central

Intelligence Agency.

This is a file that should be opened for intelligence

or counterintelligence purposes on anyone of interest

to the CIA.

And certainly, somebody who lights up the Christmas tree

by making a threat to commit an act of espionage

should have triggered that opening

from the very beginning.

So not to do so makes him stand out.

This is Senator John Kennedy, the Democratic nominee

for the presidency of the United States.

Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy,

Kennedy, Kennedy for me.

Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy.

More and more in many of the countries whose favor we must

seek if we were to maintain the balance of power

on the side of freedom, the younger men and women

who should be most attracted to us as a dynamic free society

are beginning to look in another direction,

to Castro and Latin America.

Havana, January 1, 1959.

Veintiseis de Julio, the 26th of July movement

led by Fidel Castro, had turned out tyrant Batista.

I have seen Cuba go to the communists,

I have seen communist influence and Castro influence

rise in Latin America.

Which system, communism or freedom,

will triumph in the next five or 10 years?

That's what should concern us.

By 1965 or 1970, will there be other Cubans in Latin America?

Who will dominate Asia in the next five to 10 years...

Communism, the Chinese, or will freedom?

April 1961.

In Cuba's Bay of Pigs, Castro's army repels

an invasion by 1,400 men.

The attackers are Cuban exiles equipped by the US

Central Intelligence Agency.

They hope to free their country.

They hope to inspire their countrymen to rise up

against the dictator.

But Castro knew in advance that they were coming.

He had arrested 100,000 Cubans who might have taken

action against his regime.

There is no rebellion.

The Bay of Pigs becomes a disaster for the Cuban exiles

and for the United States.

I know that many of you have further questions about Cuba.

I made a statement on that subject yesterday afternoon.

A good deal has been printed in the paper.

There's an old saying that victory has 100 fathers

and defeat is an orphan.

And I wouldn't be surprised if information

is poured into you in regard to all the recent activities.

What particular event in your life

made you decide that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

had the correct answer about Cuba and US relations?

We cut off aid

to Batista just before the revolution, just before.

We were just rats leaving a sinking ship, you saying.

Castro's Cuba, even after the revolution,

was a one-crop economy basing its economy on sugar.

When we slashed the Cuban sugar quota, of course,

we cut their throat.

They had to turn to some other country.

Without all that meddling, with a little bit different

humanitarian handling of the situation,

Cuba would not be the problem it is today.

- I - remember that he especially

expressed his respect for Che Guevara and for Fidel Castro

without hiding his sympathies with the revolutionary movement

of the world.

Did he speak about the invasion at all?

Yes, he talked about that.

He mentioned that it was a disaster, that we should not

have helped the Cuban refugees.

But he was not violent about it, never

expressed any particular hatred for Kennedy because of that.

He said he was wrong and he said that the Cuban refugees

paid for it with their lives, which they did.

"I work in a radio factory.

As my Russian improves, I become increasingly

conscious of just what sort of society I live in...

Mass gymnastics, compulsory after work meetings,

and sending the entire shop collective... except me...

To pick potatoes on a Sunday at a state collective farm,

a patriotic duty to bring in the harvest.

The unspoken opinion of the workers

is that it's a great pain in the neck.

January 4, 1961.

One year after I received my residency document,

I am asked if I want Russian citizenship.

I say no, simply extending my residential passport

for another year.

I'm starting to reconsider my desire about staying.

The work is drab and I can't spend the money

I get anywhere...

No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation

except trade union dances.

I have had enough."

Oswald defected.

He lived in Minsk, he married Marina,

and then after being in the Soviet Union for a year or two,

he announced that he wanted to come home.

Oswald's decision to come back home

may have not been his decision at all.

If he's actually there on a mission,

he would have been told, it's time to come back home.

The whole time his files were maintained

in the counterintelligence area of the CIA...

In fact, the mole hunting unit.

So the story that they had no interest in him,

they were contacted and didn't know anything about him

doesn't add up from A to Z.

I'm gonna lock myself in a fallout shelter,

get away from you.

When Oswald returns, his handling by the government

is to me a little odd.

The oddest thing is that no one, as far as I can tell...

Not the FBI, not the CIA...

Attempts seriously to investigate his claim

when he got to Moscow that he was going

to give away radar secrets.

He's never specifically asked about that.

He is interviewed a couple of times in Dallas by FBI agents

and he is somewhat hostile.

He refuses to discuss the reasons that he went to Moscow.

And then John Thain, who was the lead agent

and who was close to retirement, dropped it.

Now, Agent Hosty, who becomes a big player in the case,

remains interested, but he's much more concerned

about Marina because he thinks the Soviets have

a program of marrying KGB agents to foreigners

as a means of infiltrating them into the West.

And he picks up the trail late in 1962,

I think, but he always seems to be one step behind Oswald

and he does not succeed in catching

up to him before Oswald leaves for New Orleans in May.

Mr. De Mohrenschildt, do

you feel that he was a friend or an enemy of President Kennedy?

Well, he definitely was not an enemy.

He was an admirer of President Kennedy.

From his point of view was an excellent president

and his ideas corresponded very well to President

Kennedy's ideas and vise versa.

When Oswald returns from the Soviet Union,

there's George de Mohrenschildt, who was sent by Jay Walton

Moore of CIA to go visit this defector, Lee Harvey Oswald,

who has come to Dallas and Fort Worth

to live with his Russian wife, Marina.

Suddenly, he's befriending this nondescript, impoverished,

scruffy, down at the heels ex-Marine, Lee Oswald,

who was a defector no less, supposedly,

to the Soviet Union.

At the beginning

of my acquaintanceship with Lee, I became somewhat alarmed

by his extremist views and by the fact of his having

denounced his citizenship.

And that's why at the time, I asked the fellow connected

either with FBI or CIA...

I do not remember... what did you think of Harvey Lee Oswald?

A harmless lunatic, he said.

And after the assassination, he appeared to us as a patsy

because he was a harmless lunatic.

If he actually did it, he would have been probably proud of it

because it was an important act, the most

important act in this century.

But he denied it till the last moment.

And the last words he uttered were, I am a patsy.

As it stands now, Oswald was a lunatic who killed President

Kennedy; Ruby was another lunatic who killed the lunatic

who killed the president; and now we

have the third lunatic supposedly, Garrison, who tries

to investigate this whole case.

I think it's extremely insulting for the United

States, this assumption that there

are so many lunatics here.

General Edwin Walker had been relieved of command

of a division in Germany by President Kennedy in the fall

of 1961 because he had been handing

out literature to his troops from the John Birch Society.

He was an extreme right-winger.

He moved to Dallas, he started agitating against civil rights.

And in fact, he went to Oxford, Mississippi in September 1962

to try to help stop the admission

of James Meredith, the first Negro in the University

of Mississippi.

I don't really know what other role

they would expect the president of the United States to play.

The court made up of seven judges determined that it was

according to the Constitution that Mr. Meredith go

to University of Mississippi.

The governor of Mississippi opposed it

and there was rioting against Mr. Meredith

which endangered his life.

We sent in marshals, and after all,

150 or 160 marshals were wounded one way

or another out of 400 or 500.

And at least 3/4 of the marshals are from the South themselves.

And then we send in troops when it appeared that the marshals

were going to be overrun.

I don't think that anybody who looks at the situation

would think we could possibly do anything else... we could

possibly do anything else.

But on the other hand, I recognize

that it's caused a lot of bitterness

against me and against the national government

of Mississippi and other parts.

I think that was good cause for the action that we took.

I think that was good cause for him

having a mental examination.

He took a long trip to Oxford, Mississippi;

he appeared on the campus during the course of the riot.

There was a good deal of testimony

about him leading charges against the United States

marshals.

This is a former general of the United States.

I think that was probably a legitimate question

whether he had all his faculties when

he took that kind of action.

We could not in all conscience have tried him if he

was not mentally competent.

In early April... the first few days of April 1963...

Oswald apparently, with his Mannlicher Carcano rifle

that he acquired sometime earlier,

took a shot at Walker when he was sitting in his house.

General, will you describe for us

what happened last night?

Well, the police from the city came in

to investigate a rifle shot that was fired into the house,

fired through the west window and hit the sill

and hit the wall across the room and went

through the wall over the desk at which I was sitting.

This happened at 9:00 last night.

He missed.

And apparently, after firing one shot, he fled.

If Oswald had attempted to kill Walker

with the same determination that he later

decided to kill President Kennedy,

Walker would have been dead.

There was some belief among people

who knew Walker that he had staged

it to get good publicity.

What also I find rather striking is

that it was only a few weeks earlier that Oswald had had

Marina take the pictures of him outside their house standing

with his recently acquired rifle, his recently acquired

pistol, and copies of "The Worker," the Communist Party

magazine and "The Militant," the Socialist Workers

Party bi-weekly, I think.

Had Oswald been caught, Walker would, indeed,

have been able to claim that attempt

had been made on his life by an obvious communist

and Trotskyite.

But in fact, he was not caught and instead, very shortly

thereafter, he moved Marina and their child

to his hometown in New Orleans.

After Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union

and all the things that happened in connection with that,

I think the most outstanding piece

of his history or his story is when

he goes Cuban in early 1963.

He's still in Dallas, Texas and then develops over the summer

as he moves to New Orleans.

In New Orleans again,

and he establishes a chapter of the so-called Fair

Play for Cuba Committee.

Carrying in his pocket a Fair Play for Cuba membership card,

he begins to distribute the organization's literature.

And the real question

is, why did he do that?

This is a major decision point in his life.

The question is, did he do that on his own?

Is he suddenly in love with Castro,

or did somebody who was handling him in a plot which

by this time would have been fairly well developed to

kill the President of the United States?

It's in New Orleans that Oswald's apparent leftist

activism really takes off.

Oswald gets several hundred leaflets printed up

and he starts handing out leaflets.

And he hands out a lot of leaflets.

There is no evidence that he made even

a single convert to his cause.

However, there may have been other reasons for doing this.

Now, what we didn't know until relatively recently is

that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee,

along with the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers

Party, was a major target of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which

was a counterintelligence program started

in the '50s designed to disrupt and embarrass

these organizations by infiltrating them by starting

feuds inside them and by getting derogatory information

about them into the press.

This is a story, a fantastically true story,

from the files of Herbert A. Philbrick,

for nine frightening years did lead three lives...

Citizen, communist, counterspy.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Herbert A. Philbrick.

The communists are past masters

at getting other people to do their dirty work for them.

They take over organization after organization in America

and just two steps, infiltration and agitation.

It's an international criminal conspiracy.

In August, after he's been doing this for months,

things go into a new phase.

He makes contact with an anti-Castro Cuban group,

the DRE, and particularly with a young DRE

man named Carolis Bringuier.

Mr. Oswald came to my office

here in the city of New Orleans and offered me his service.

As ex-Marine of the United States,

he can show us how to fight because he has

guerrilla training and he would like

to see Cuba free from Castro.

And then a few days later, some Cubans reportedly run

into Bringuier's store and tell him

there's a guy handing out pro-Castro

leaflets around the corner.

And they run around and there's Oswald handing out leaflets.

And they have a big public confrontation,

almost demanding to a fight.

The police are called, three of them are arrested,

and it gets into the newspapers.

The news department part of a New Orleans radio

and television station, WDSU TV, brings to the public

the opposing views of the thousands of Cuban refugees

who have settled in New Orleans and the Fair Play

for Cuba Committee, represented by Lee Harvey Oswald.

I think that the red herring and so

forth is rather ridiculous to toss into this conversation.

And are you a Marxist?

Well, I have studied Marxist philosophy, yes, sir,

and also other philosophers.

But are you a Marxist?

I think you did admit on an earlier radio interview

that you consider yourself a Marxist.

I would very definitely say that I

am a Marxist, that is correct.

But that does not mean, however, that I am a communist.

In your work with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee,

what are you advocating?

We advocate restoration of diplomatic, trade, and tourist

relations with Cuba.

Arrangements are made to present on the station's

conversation carte blanche program

a debate between Oswald and an official of INCA...

I-N-C-A... the Information Council of the Americas.

I would like to know exactly the name of the organization

that you represent here in the city

because I have some confusion.

Is it Fair Play for Cuba Committee or Fair

Play for Russia Committee?

Well, that is,

of course, very provocative, and I don't

think it requires an answer.

I'm curious to know how you supported

yourself during the three years that you

lived in the Soviet Union.

Did you have a government subsidy?

I worked in Russia.

I was under the protection of the...

That is to say I was not under the protection

of the American government, but that is I was at all times

considered an American citizen.

The fact that I did live for a time in the Soviet Union

gives me excellent qualifications to repudiate

charges in Cuba and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

is communist controlled.

This is a known communist front organization

and a major target of the FBI.

And here is a guy claiming to have started a chapter.

And yet they don't seem to be very

curious about the whole thing at all.

I certainly get the feeling looking at the paper record

the FBI knows that this guy, Oswald, is not someone

to worry about as a genuine subversive.

What was Oswald's motivation, what made him tick?

It is my belief that Oswald staged

the whole Fair Play for Cuba Committee episode

as part of COINTELPRO.

I don't think he was working for the FBI directly.

A lot of COINTELPRO was subcontracted to the American

Legion and various other right wing groups, including

the one Ed Butler worked for, the Information

Council of the Americas.

Must we mobilize a vast private army of secret agents

to compete with communism?

So when Oswald first arrives in New Orleans,

what does he do?

He goes to 544 Camp Street or 531 Lafayette,

depending on which door you go in,

and he goes into the office of Guy Bannister,

former special agent in charge of the FBI field

office in Chicago, now running a detective

agency in New Orleans and a CIA operative of high level.

And he asks for a job.

And one day, the secretary I think said to Guy Bannister,

look, there's your friend Oswald giving out

pro-Castro leaflets downstairs.

And Guy Bannister brushed that aside and said,

he's one of ours.

So Oswald was doing his best to keep up his cover.

The CIA had a plan to blame Castro for the assassination

and to make Oswald the agent of Fidel Castro,

in particular the great propaganda specialist of CIA

David Atlee Phillips, who was also Oswald's handler, as we

know from Antonio Veciana, who testified

he saw Oswald with his own handler,

whose name was Morris Bishop.

So do you think Bishop was

involved in the assassination?

Really I don't know.

But I think, according to the investigators,

that there was a conspiracy.

The people that worked for the CIA at that time,

they were angry with the president of the United States.

Having played out the string in New Orleans,

he arranges for Ruth Paine, who had befriended Marina,

to come and pick up Marina and the baby

and take them back to Dallas.

And he decides to go to Mexico City to try to get into Cuba.

There's a slight gap in his movements between about

the 23rd of September and the early morning of the 26th

of September, when he does turn up on a bus south of Houston

on the way to Mexico.

And here again, we find the same pattern

because he goes to the Cuban Council

and he meets a Mexican woman, Sylvia Duran, who

is working for the consulate and whose

job is to hand out these visas.

I'm a friend of the Cuban revolution.

I lived in Russia for three years and have a Russian wife

and I was the delegate for the Fair Play

for Cuba Committee in New Orleans

and a member of the Communist Party.

Oswald has brought his dossier as a friend of Fidel...

The clipping about his arrest in New Orleans

and some of his Fair Play for Cuba Committee

stuff and his membership card.

And as she explained years later,

this just doesn't look right.

A genuine FPCC person, a genuine sympathizer

goes to the headquarters of the Communist Party in New York

or contacts them; gets vetted; they write a letter to her;

and she's all set.

But him, she's never heard of.

When do you intend to go to Cuba?

On Monday for two weeks and then onto Russia.

For a transit visa, first you need

a visa from the Soviet Union.

So he says, OK, and he hustles over to the Soviet embassy

and he sees someone there.

All visa matters must be handled

by the embassy in your country of residence, Mr. Oswald.

I already sent them a letter and they turned me down.

The FBI could arrest me for even contacting your embassy

in Washington so I decided to come

to Mexico to apply again here.

Well, if you want to fill out the papers,

I can make an exception for you and send

them directly to Moscow.

But the answer will be sent to your permanent residence

and will take at least four months.

This won't do for me.

This is not my case.

For me, it's all going to end in tragedy.

Now, typically, he goes right back to Duran

and he bluffs.

They approved my visa.

Can you show me the papers, please.

I don't have them with me.

So she calls them.

And thank heaven, we have the tape of that call.

And the tape of that call was probably

the biggest single factor in not allowing

this to lead to war with Cuba or the Soviet Union or whatever.

It's clear they don't trust Oswald,

he's not working for Oswald, and he

he's not going to get the visa.

We have to wait for Washington.

It may take four to five months.

I went to jail in New Orleans for the Cuban revolution.

I deserve a visa.

My Mexican visa expires on Monday.

I can't wait that long.

And he keeps trying

to get the Russian visa for a few days, but it doesn't work.

The Soviet embassy in Mexico City

was one of the two centers of Soviet espionage

in the Western hemisphere.

It was very closely watched by the CIA, which was tapping

its phones, and by the FBI.

We also have clear evidence that the CIA would

use clandestine techniques to try to identify people who had

called the Soviet embassy or the Cuban embassy

without identifying themselves.

And it seems the CIA used an operative...

Two operatives, actually... on Saturday

to call the Soviet embassy to impersonate

this mysterious American and Sylvia Duran.

Now, I think somehow the CIA did learn

that it was Lee Harvey Oswald who had been in the consulate.

So they have somebody call a couple of days

later, early in the next week, and say, this is Lee Oswald.

And at that point, they can send the cable to Washington, which

the FBI is always delighted to get, saying that Lee

Oswald called the Soviet embassy on such and such a date

and asked about his visa.

The story of Oswald in Mexico City

is one of the most difficult and arcane stories

in the Kennedy assassination.

Somebody down there, either Oswald or somebody

impersonating him, had an experience that's very,

very difficult to explain.

My explanation is that the story reflects a failure

in the primary mission, which was that Oswald

or the Oswald character was supposed

to be able to get to Cuba...

Ostensibly on his way to the Soviet Union,

but to get to Cuba to help cement this story that they

were putting in the files that Oswald was connected to Castro,

working for Castro when he killed Kennedy.

When that failed, ostensibly because he couldn't get

the visas from the Soviets or from the Cubans to do it,

they had to come up with a plan B.

And this was the phone conversations where he says

his name on the phone, he mentions

the name of the Soviet assassinations guy, Kostikov.

And it's been one of the most closely guarded secrets

all these years at the Central Intelligence Agency.

I don't think this was just Oswald's idea.

I think it was somebody else's, a handler.

And of all the characters that I can

think of likely to have done that,

it would be David Atlee Philips.

At some time just prior to Oswald's trip to Mexico City,

Phillips becomes head of Cuban operations.

He had been in charge of covert action down there,

but at the time that Oswald shows up six weeks

before the murder of the president,

there's David Atlee Philips, chief of Cuban operations.

And he takes a TDY to headquarters

of the CIA at exactly the time that the station in Mexico City

is discussing with headquarters those telephone calls,

those activities of Oswald in Mexico City.

Those files were manipulated as part of a story

to set him up linking him to Castro.

And again, I'm looking at David Atlee Phillips.

After Hosty learned that Oswald

had spoken to the Soviets in Mexico City,

he discovered that Marina...

At any rate... was living with Ruth

Paine, who was also separated from her husband.

And he finds out that Oswald is now

working at the Texas School Book Depository

and then he drops it.

On about November 12, Oswald presents

himself at the FBI office in Dallas with a note for Hosty.

And it essentially orders Hosty to stop bothering my wife

and if you do this again, I will blow up the FBI.

- I - was Fidel Castro's

first American prisoner.

On July 23, 1959, I was arrested with my son, Edward,

who at that time was 13 years of age.

He was released after being held five

days while I spent 14 months in Castro's communist dungeons.

John Martino was an associate of Santo Trafficante whose

specialty was making gambling equipment that could

be used to cheat the customers.

He had worked in the Havana casinos.

In 1959 after Castro's takeover, he

had gone to Havana apparently to help smuggle some money out,

which is a big problem for the mob at that point,

and he was arrested and tried and given

a long prison sentence.

He managed to secure his release in 1962

and he came back, resettled in Florida,

and immediately got involved in the anti-Castro activities.

The Martino family were news junkies,

and at some point one of those commentators...

According to Ed Martino...

Referred to President Kennedy's forthcoming trip to Dallas.

And John Martino said, if he goes to Dallas,

they're going to kill him.

Friday, 10 minutes before noon.

The motorcade begins the 11-mile mile ride

to the Dallas Trade Mart, where the president

is to deliver a major address.

On the morning of the 22nd at breakfast,

Martina looked over at her son, Ed, and said, Edward,

I don't think you look very well today.

I think you ought to stay home from school.

Keep your eye on the news.

I'm going to be on the garage doing some work there

and if there's any news, come out and tell me about it.

In a downtown building,

a gunman waits at a sixth floor window, a high powered rifle

by his side.

The president's car is now turning onto Elm Street

and it will be only a matter of minutes

before he arrives at the Trade Mart.

It appears as though something has happened

in the motorcade route.

Something, I repeat, has happened

in the motorcade route.

There's numerous people running up

the hill alongside Elm Street there by the Stemmons Freeway.

Several police officers are rushing up

the hill at this time.

Stand by just a moment, please.

Parkland Hospital has been advised to stand

by for a severe gunshot wound.

The president's car is now going past me.

The limousine is now traveling at very high

rate of speed, Secret Service men

standing up in the limousine.

They are armed with sub machine guns.

It appears as though someone in the limousine

might have been hit by the gunfire.

The presidential car coming up now.

We know it's the presidential car.

You can see Mrs. Kennedy's pink suit.

There's a Secret Service man spread

eagle over the top of the car.

We can't see who has been hit, if anybody's been hit,

but apparently something is wrong here.

Something is terribly wrong.

President Kennedy has been assassinated.

It's official now, the president is dead.

Women here in shock, some have fainted.

Grown men, Secret Service men, standing

by the emergency room, tears streaming down their face.

It's official.

As of just a few months ago, the President of the United States

is dead.

Martino's son, Ed, who was a high school senior at the time,

did come out and tell him that the president had been shot.

His father took the news quietly,

then his father came back into the house

and began working the phones trying

to link Oswald to Fidel Castro.

Late word just in from Dallas.

Homicide Detective Leavelle told WBAP newsman James Kerr

in Dallas a few minutes ago they have little doubt

that 24-year-old Lee Oswald of Dallas

is the man who shot and killed Dallas Police Officer JD

Tippit shortly after President Kennedy was

shot to death this afternoon.

Oswald was pulled screaming and shouting from the Texas Theater

by officers who had gone there on a tip that Oswald was there.

He brandished a pistol, which officers took

away from him after a struggle.

Oswald was quoted as saying, it's all over now.

A large crowd had congregated around the theater and police

had to hold back the crowd because they

were of the impression that the man

was the president's assassin.

The coincidence in the case is that Oswald worked as a stock

man at the Texas Book Depository,

the building from which the sniper shot President Kennedy.

Dallas police have declined to say

whether they think Oswald is connected

with the assassination.

This is the part of the plot that went awry.

In my opinion, Oswald was supposed to have a rendezvous

after the assassination, at which point

he would have been murdered and his body

would have disappeared.

Then rumors would have spread of a mysterious private plane

flying from Texas into Mexico City just in time

to catch the plane to Havana, triggering an invasion of Cuba.

Now, in fact, Lyndon Johnson, we now know,

was very concerned that he was going to be forced

into war by the assassination.

Oswald's presence in the Cuban consul and the Soviet embassy

was enough to set off alarm bells.

But instead, he appointed the Warren Commission

to reassure the American people that there

was nothing more to this.

Martino did confess his role in the assassination

to at least two people.

One was a newspaper reporter for "Newsday," I believe,

named John Cummings.

Cummings told me actually he once met

Santo Trafficante in Martino's kitchen in Miami and Martino

had told him that he had helped put the assassination together.

And he also told him that Oswald was

supposed to be meeting another conspirator

in the Texas Theater.

The plan was to eliminate Oswald and that Oswald

would disappear.

Has he made any admissions

at all about the shooting to the police officer?

No. He denies everything.

Why do you think the police officer

went to him in the street?

- I - think he suspected

him because of a description that

had been put out on the radio.

These people have

given me a hearing without legal representation or anything.

Did you shoot the president?

I didn't shoot anybody, no sir.

The suspect is coming down the aisle

and into the identification room.

I positively know nothing about this situation here.

I would like to have legal representation.

I was questioned by a judge.

However, I protested at that time

that I was not allowed legal representation during that very

short and sweet hearing.

I really don't know what was the situation is about.

Nobody has told me anything except that I'm accused

of murdering a policeman.

I know nothing more than and I do

request someone to come forth to give me legal assistance.

Did you kill the president?

No. I've not been charged with that.

In fact, nobody has said that to me yet.

The first thing I heard about it was

when the newspaper reporters in the hall

asked me that question.

Here comes Oswald down the hall again.

Did you fire that rifle?

- I - don't you

people have been given, by I emphatically

deny these charges.

The original plan by the conspirators

was to have Oswald meet someone after the assassination

and be killed.

Now he's in custody and this is very dangerous

because he might talk.

Jack Ruby had been involved in mob control enterprises

all his life.

Ruby is a man the mob knows and he's

a man who can do the job of eliminating him

because of his access to the police station.

There is an underlying tension here in Dallas.

There is talk here in the press room

of the pros and cons of possible mob action against Oswald.

Someone said there are strong feelings

in the state in that direction.

There the prisoner.

Do you have anything to say in your defense?

Oswald has been shot.

Here are some police officials.

Who was it?

Jack Ruby is the name.

Jack Ruby?

So we understand he has shot Oswald,

one of the most sensational developments

in this already fantastic case.

Oswald expired at 1:07 PM.

The memorandum and the note in question and he

handed them to me and he said, in effect, Oswald's dead now.

There can be no trial.

Here, get rid of this.

I then proceeded to tear it up in his presence.

He said, no, get it out of here.

I don't even want it in this office.

Get rid of it.

I then took it out and destroyed it.

And how did you destroy it?

I took it into the washroom and flushed it down the drain.

Well, how many agents in the Dallas

field office knew about it?

I understand about 30.

There are indications, particularly regarding

the FBI's handling of the Mexico trip,

that they were not treating Oswald

as a suspicious subversive and that they

knew he was something else.

From the standpoint of J. Edgar Hoover,

you have this Marine who defected,

who came back and was now trying to defect again, apparently.

It's hard to imagine anybody more suspicious than that,

and yet he's not being handled that way.

The issue of whether the tapes of these phone

calls in Mexico City were sent to Dallas is debated,

but I think the evidence is pretty

overwhelming that they were.

It must have been embarrassing for Hoover.

And actually, he even discussed it with President Johnson

the next morning.

He actually told Johnson that we'd listened to the tape

and it wasn't Oswald's voice.

And so for someone who is not Oswald to use Oswald's name

in a manner that would link him to Castro and the Kremlin six

weeks before the president's murder means somebody else

was involved in the president's murder in my book.

It is very interesting that David Atlee Phillips, who

was a key CIA agent in Mexico City at that time,

did a treatment for a screenplay.

After I retired,

I wrote several novels loosely based

on what I had learned over the many years

in covert operations.

And one outline revolved around the Kennedy assassination,

central McGovern, the confessions

of the CIA's head of Latin American covert operations

to his son.

I was one of the two case officers

who handled Lee Harvey Oswald.

After working to establish his Marxist bona fide,

we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba.

I helped him when he came to Mexico City to get his visa

and when he returned to Dallas to wait for it.

I saw him twice there.

We rehearsed the plan many times.

In Havana, Oswald was to assassinate Castro using

a sniper's rifle from an upper floor

window overlooking a road that Castro used

to drive by in an open Jeep.

Whether Oswald was a double agent or a psycho,

I'm not sure.

And I don't know why he assassinated Kennedy.

But what I do know is he used exactly the same plan that we

had practiced against Castro.

Therefore, the CIA did not anticipate

the assassination of the president

but were responsible for it.

I share that guilt.

Now, there are two official verdicts on record.

Let's not forget that.

The Warren Commission said it was a lone assassin,

the House Committee said the president was probably

assassinated as result of a conspiracy involving

organized crime figures.

I think lots of respectable historians and journalists

are scared of it and don't want to be

tagged as conspiracy nuts.

They prefer to take the easy way out and just say, well,

if there were a conspiracy, it would have

been brought to light by now.

Well, actually, it has been brought

to light by now if you're willing to take

the trouble to look.

The influence of a president is still

substantial in his second term.

Though I haven't had a second term, I think it is.

Kennedy had refused to get into the Vietnam

War and most likely would have refused

to have done so had he lived, and it

would not have taken place.

And that obviously would have had fantastic consequences.

The United States, as the world knows,

will never start a war.

We do not want a war, we do not now expect a war.

This generation of Americans has already had enough

of war and hate and oppression.

Confident and unafraid, we must labor on

not towards a strategy of annihilation,

but towards a strategy of peace.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link

is that we all inhabit this small planet,

we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our childrens'

futures, and we are all mortal.

We were on the verge of a tremendous change

in American life having to do with the coming

of age of the boom generation.

Had Kennedy survived, had he avoided the Vietnam War,

Kennedy might have managed to keep the confidence

of the younger generation to an extent

that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon certainly could not

and the United States might be a measurably different place

today.