Lee
Harvey Oswald in 1959
Document
May Link Agent, Oswald
Army
Intelligence Report is Issued
RIF
# 198-10004-10015 Army Document
By
Michael Dorman
Special Correspondent
Special Correspondent
A
long-secret government document released this week lends credence to a favorite
theory of conspiracy advocates on President John F. Kennedy's assassination:
the contention that Lee Harvey Oswald was seen in Dallas with a U.S.
intelligence agent about two months before the murder.
That
issue has long been connected with unproved reports that a violent Cuban exile
group -- perhaps with the help of an American intelligence agency -- was
involved in the assassination. The House Select Committee on Assassinations
investigated the reports but said in 1978 it was unable to substantiate them.
However,
the document obtained yesterday by Newsday provides a previously
lacking measure of credibility to the reports. Those reports center on a
shadowy figure called Maurice Bishop -- likely a pseudonym -- said to have been
an intelligence agent during the early 1960s.
Antonio
Veciana, founder of the Alpha 66 Cuban exile group that launched repeated
guerrilla raids against Fidel Castro's regime, testified before the House
committee that he considered Bishop his U.S. intelligence contact; that he met
with Bishop more than 100 times over a 13-year period; that Bishop had directed
him to organize Alpha 66 and had paid him $253,00. Moreover, he said, he had
met briefly in Dallas with Bishop and Oswald sometime around September, 1963,
two months before Kennedy's Nov. 22 assassination. G. Robert Blakey, chief
counsel to the House committee, said: "After careful analysis, we decided
not to credit Veciana's claim" because, among other things, there was no
proof that Maurice Bishop existed.
But
the document, released by the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board, supports
the contention that Bishop existed and otherwise backs Veciana's story.
Government sources said the document -- a U.S. Army intelligence report dated
Oct. 17, 1962 -- describes a man who fits the profile of Maurice Bishop.
"He used a different name, but we believe this man fits Bishop's profile
very closely," one official said.
The
document is a report from an Army intelligence officer, Col. Jeff W. Boucher,
to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara and a controversial figure in the Vietnam War. It said the
intelligence operative described as fitting Bishop's profile "has contact
with the Alpha 66 group" and that Alpha 66 "was going to conduct
raids against Cuba."
Alpha
66 leaders, the document said, had told the operative they "desired
support of the U.S. Army in the action phase," including funds, equipment
and arms. "In return the group would provide intelligence information,
would furnish captured equipment, and could land agents in Cuba. The group
estimated it would require $100,000 to complete the balance of its program,
consisting of four more raids on Cuba."
The
document said a unit of Army intelligence had approved debriefing Alpha 66
frogmen who had conducted underwater operations against Castro; exploring the
possibility of buying captured Soviet equipment from Alpha 66 and briefing
Lansdale on the Alpha 66 proposal to furnish intelligence information and
material for financial support.
Because
34 years have passed since the assassination, government officials said, they
do not know whether participants in the Bishop affair are still alive -- much
less whether anyone can shed additional light on the story.
COMMENTS:
What
follows is an edited version of a message posted to the alt.conspiracy.jfk
newsgroup.
For
many more of the sordid details of the Bishop-Veciana connection, please refer
to Gaeton Fonzi's book The Last Investigation (chapters 14, 15). Fonzi,
as a matter of interest, also believed that "Maurice Bishop" was none
other than David Atlee Phillips, the spymeister extraordinnaire responsible for
the "Oswald in MExico City" deception. Clearly from this
just-released document, however, we can see that Oswald was exactly the
intelligence (either ONI, or CIA contract agent) operative many of us believe
he was.
Further,
it should be noted that 3 months after the HSCA report was released -- with
Veciana's testimony -- Veciana was driving his pickup truck home from his Miami
marine supply store when a 1971 Buick station wagon pulled alongside and four
.45 caliber slugs ripped into the cab. The shots only grazed the lucky Veciana,
and he was out of the hospital in two days.
On a
more personal footnote -- Alpha 66, the group that "Bishop"
commissioned Veciana to found, was responsible for the blowing up of Cubana
Airlines Flight 455, off the south coast of Barbados, on October 6, 1976. This
resulted in the loss of 73 lives, including the entire Cuban national fencing
team.
ARMY – Califano Papers
Page 2
7 Oct 1962
ACSI-CO
SUBJECT: Cuban Operations (U)
4. (S) To assess Pfunter and his
claims, and in the hope of obtaining intelligence information, the USAOSD asked
Pfunter to furnish items of Soviet ordnance material and intelligence
information on Cuba….It was further indicated that important information concerning
Soviet underwater demolition team (UDT) countermeasures was also obtained in
this raid, and that the frogmen who attempted to sink a Russian ship desired to
discuss their experience with a U.S. expert in underwater swimming. ONI has
stated an interest in participating in a debriefing of these individuals on
this subject, and arrangements are being made for the debriefing to take place
in Puerto Rico.
Jeff W. Boucher
Col. GS
Chief, Collection Division
Did Michael Dorman write the book Pay-Off?
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