Read Online Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK by John Newman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Newman
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through March 6, 1958, Oswald's unit, MACS-1, joined other marine units for maneuvers-code-named OPERATION STRONGBACK-in the South China Sea and the Philippines. MACS-1 left for the Philippines aboard the Terrell County, LST 1157, on November 20, 1957.9 The purpose of this operation was to prepare for American intervention in the Indonesian crisis in late 1957. This planned action in the Far East was paralleled by a crisis in the Middle East that featured a U.S.-backed force of 50,000 Turkish soldiers set to invade Iraq. Overlaying both situations was the larger context of the Soviet launch of a satellite Sputnik-in October 1957, on the top of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). This event publicly dramatized the ongoing race to deploy ICBMs tipped with nuclear warheads, and Sputnik's success sparked U.S. fears that the Soviet Union was well ahead in this lethal new arms race.
MACS-1 landed and stayed a week on an island at the northern end of the Philippine archipelago, reboarded only to sail to Subic Bay, where they waited for another week, then returned to sea to join an invasion flotilla off Indonesia for a month. They returned to the Philippines, landing at Cubi Point just before January 1, 1958.10 They set up their radar bubble at Cubi Point Air Base, next to a special hangar. Inside it, the CIA often stored a U-2 reconnaissance plane. "I saw it take off, saw it on radar, and saw it land," recalls Oswald's commander, John Donovan, "and I saw it hand-pushed into the hanger."'' On this assignment, Oswald's unit had an additional mission with a direct connection to the U-2: sentry duty to guard the U-2 hangar. 12
That rather inglorious task which Oswald, like the other enlisted men, performed, did not curtail his interest in the U-2 when he was at his favorite place-drawing traces of aircraft trails with his grease pencil on the plotting board inside the radar bubble. Oswald's unit had not been operational very long before he noticed something interesting. Donovan describes what happened:
One time we were watching the radar there at Cubi Point and Oswald said, "Look at this thing." He had a trail in grease mark and he said, "This thing just took off from Clark and it's moving over China!" And I said, "You can't be right," and he agreed. A week later he saw it again, so several of us began looking hard and we saw it. Oswald was right, and we saw it so regularly that we started clocking them. I even called the duty officer about them and he said, "Look, fella, there's no planes flying over China." We knew better. We saw them all the time, mostly flying out of Cubi Point, but sometimes they flew out of Clark."
This story confirms what Hospital Corpsman Hobbs told the ONI in 1964 about the gossip at Atsugi in 1958. The CIA was flying U2s over China as well as over the Soviet Union.
Oswald's unit later deployed (September 14 through October 6, 1958) to Ping Tong on the north side of Taiwan, and Donovan was his commander there too. Donovan recalls: "In Formosa [Taiwan] we were near the U-2 as well."" There, Oswald spent many hours drawing traces of the U-2's tracks over the People's Republic of China.
The deployment of Oswald's unit occurred as a series of international crises escalated the U.S.-Soviet Cold War toward the brink of confrontation. The Chinese Communists, perhaps to embarrass Khrushchev,15 provoked a crisis by shelling Nationalist islands in the Taiwan Straits, taking advantage of an already simmering crisis in the Middle East. Eisenhower intervened in Lebanon and brushed aside the Chinese provocation. Khrushchev upped the ante by threatening Berlin, demanding an end to Western control of that encircled German city. Eisenhower forced Khrushchev to back down. Throughout this sequence, Eisenhower's toughness was more than bravado. He knew something-as we will shortly discuss in more detail-that made these decisions easier: The Soviet ballistic missile testing program had ground to a halt. The
MACS-1 landed and stayed a week on an island at the northern end of the Philippine archipelago, reboarded only to sail to Subic Bay, where they waited for another week, then returned to sea to join an invasion flotilla off Indonesia for a month. They returned to the Philippines, landing at Cubi Point just before January 1, 1958.10 They set up their radar bubble at Cubi Point Air Base, next to a special hangar. Inside it, the CIA often stored a U-2 reconnaissance plane. "I saw it take off, saw it on radar, and saw it land," recalls Oswald's commander, John Donovan, "and I saw it hand-pushed into the hanger."'' On this assignment, Oswald's unit had an additional mission with a direct connection to the U-2: sentry duty to guard the U-2 hangar. 12
That rather inglorious task which Oswald, like the other enlisted men, performed, did not curtail his interest in the U-2 when he was at his favorite place-drawing traces of aircraft trails with his grease pencil on the plotting board inside the radar bubble. Oswald's unit had not been operational very long before he noticed something interesting. Donovan describes what happened:
One time we were watching the radar there at Cubi Point and Oswald said, "Look at this thing." He had a trail in grease mark and he said, "This thing just took off from Clark and it's moving over China!" And I said, "You can't be right," and he agreed. A week later he saw it again, so several of us began looking hard and we saw it. Oswald was right, and we saw it so regularly that we started clocking them. I even called the duty officer about them and he said, "Look, fella, there's no planes flying over China." We knew better. We saw them all the time, mostly flying out of Cubi Point, but sometimes they flew out of Clark."
This story confirms what Hospital Corpsman Hobbs told the ONI in 1964 about the gossip at Atsugi in 1958. The CIA was flying U2s over China as well as over the Soviet Union.
Oswald's unit later deployed (September 14 through October 6, 1958) to Ping Tong on the north side of Taiwan, and Donovan was his commander there too. Donovan recalls: "In Formosa [Taiwan] we were near the U-2 as well."" There, Oswald spent many hours drawing traces of the U-2's tracks over the People's Republic of China.
The deployment of Oswald's unit occurred as a series of international crises escalated the U.S.-Soviet Cold War toward the brink of confrontation. The Chinese Communists, perhaps to embarrass Khrushchev,15 provoked a crisis by shelling Nationalist islands in the Taiwan Straits, taking advantage of an already simmering crisis in the Middle East. Eisenhower intervened in Lebanon and brushed aside the Chinese provocation. Khrushchev upped the ante by threatening Berlin, demanding an end to Western control of that encircled German city. Eisenhower forced Khrushchev to back down. Throughout this sequence, Eisenhower's toughness was more than bravado. He knew something-as we will shortly discuss in more detail-that made these decisions easier: The Soviet ballistic missile testing program had ground to a halt. The
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