Smoking Doc. #3 - The Casasin Memo Unredacted

                                                                                                                       25 November 1963

SUBJECT:  Mr. Lee Harvey Oswald  

TO : Walter P. HALTIGAN

-          1. It makes little difference now, but REDWOOD had at one time an OI interest in Oswald. As soon as I heard Oswald’s name, I recalled that as Chief of the 6 Branch I had discussed - - sometime in Summer 1960 – with the then Chief and Deputy Chief of the 6 Research Section the laying on of interview(s) through KUJUMP or other suitable channels. At the moment I don’t recall if this was discussed while Oswald and his family were en route to our country or if it was after their arrival.

22. I remember that Oswald’s unusual behavior in the USSR had struck me from the moment I had read the first ODACID dispatch on him, and I told my subordinates something amounting to “Don’t push too hard to get the information we need, because this individual looks odd.” We were particularly interested in the OI Oswald might provide on the Minsk factory in which he had been employed, on certain sections of the city itself, and of course we sought the usual BI that might help develop target personality dossiers.

-          3. I was phasing into my LPOVER cover assignment, and out of KUDOVE, at the time. Thus, I would have left our country shortly after Oswald’s arrival. I do not know what action developed thereafter.

Thomas B. Casasin

Addendum

4. As an afterthought, I recall also that at the time I was becoming increasingly interested in watching develop a pattern that we had discovered in the course of our bio and research work in -6: the number of Soviet women marrying foreigners, being permitted to leave the USSR, then eventually divorcing their spouses and settling down abroad without returning “home”. The AEOCEAN 3 case was among the first of these, and we eventually turned up something like two dozen similar cases. We established links between some of these women and the KGB. KUDESK became interested in the developing trend we had come across. It was partly out of curiosity to learn if Oswald’s wife would actually accompany him to our country, partly out of interest in Oswald’s own experience in the USSR, that we showed operational intelligence interest in the Harvey story.

T.B.C.

REDWOOD – Action indicator for the Soviet/Eastern Division of CIA 

OI - Operational Intelligence 

6 Branch – CIA Soviet Section 

6 Research Section - Soviet "Realities" Support Branch 

KUJUMP – KU - Divisions of the CIA iteslf 

ODACID dispatch –

LPOVER - A business cover - Over is Casasin's assignment in Paris (Newman p. 309) Conover Nast Publications. 

KUDOVE - Clandestine Services 

AEOCEAN 3 - AE - Legal travelers program to USSR - AE/OCEAN 3 is a CIA agent working out of SR10 Philip Nelson - redefectors attached to Russian women. 

KGB - Soviet Intelligence Service 

KUDESK = CIA 

Operational Intelligence Interest -

Harvey Story - ?

Redacted Version : showDoc.html

Unredacted : showDoc.html

Mary Ferrell: CIA Cryptonyms

[Many thanks to Rex Bradford at Maryferrell.org for posting these records, and to John Newman, Bill Siimpich and Malcolm Blunt for helping to decode them.]