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 B
Authors: John Newman
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president knew this, in part, because of intelligence collected by the very U-2s Oswald was watching. It is reasonable, therefore, to try to determine if the CIA ever investigated what Oswald knew about the U-2 program.
Claims of an Investigation at El Toro
One day in November 1959-shortly after Oswald's defectiona group of strangers are alleged to have visited Oswald's former unit at the El Toro Marine Base. One of Oswald's marine coworkers, Nelson Delgado, recalled the experience to Oswald biographer Edward J. Epstein. Delgado told Epstein he "remembers a group of civilians in dark suits arriving in November with stenographers and literally taking over their headquarters company to question marines about Oswald." Delgado explained that "one by one" Oswald's marine associates "were ushered into their captain's office." 16 According to Delgado, none of the marines were told who their interrogators were. That was and is most unusual. El Toro was a marine base, and it would have been natural for Naval Investigative Service (NIS) agents to come and ask questions, but such agents must-and always do-identify themselves when questioning military personnel in any official capacity.
Epstein recorded Delgado's vivid account of how the interrogation at El Toro proceeded:
When his turn came, Delgado recalls, he was asked his name, rank and serial number. Then one of the civilians shot quick questions at him concerning his job in the radar bubble, his knowledge of Oswald's activities and especially his opinion of the sorts of classified information to which Oswald had had access. A number of other marines in the unit recalled being asked the same questions as a stenographer typed away at her machine."
Researchers have been unable to identify the origin of this interrogation unit. Neither the FBI nor the Marine Corps has any record of this investigation, and both the OSI and the CIA have denied ever conducting it. The ONI and the NIS response to Epstein's Freedom of Information Act request was similarly uneventful: They told Epstein that "the report of the investigation was not in their files."
If Delgado's account of this investigation is true, who were these men in dark suits? It is not unreasonable to assume they were from the intelligence agency that had the most at risk with respect to U-2 operations when Oswald defected: the CIA. It would not have been abnormal for the Office of Security, which was the most likely element to be charged with protecting the overall security of the U2 program, to have been conducting what, in military intelligence parlance, could be called a quiet "damage control" assessment. Oswald had worked at three locations in Asia, where one of the most sensitive CIA programs in the world was in progress, and he had then traveled directly to the very country against which this supersecret program was targeted. American intelligence methods and the lives of American U-2 pilots were potentially at stake.
Whether or not such an investigation-perhaps at a much higher level of classification than the confidential Navy and State Department cables on Oswald-was conducted, it should have been. The situation called for quick and accurate answers to the questions. Who was Oswald? What did he know? What damage could he do to the program? If such an investigation did not exist, it is reasonable to begin wondering why not. In this vein, one would be justified in asking if there had been some terrible lapse in U.S. counterintelligence or if Oswald's defection may have been planned by American intelligence." We know little about the November 1959 El Toro interrogation Delgado claims to have been part of. If it did occur, it fell into the same black hole that the confidential Navy and State Department cables from Moscow fell into at the CIA. The possibility that those cables-which described Oswald's stated intent to disclose secrets to the Soviets-were somehow lost in the CIA is close to zero. The State and Navy cables
Claims of an Investigation at El Toro
One day in November 1959-shortly after Oswald's defectiona group of strangers are alleged to have visited Oswald's former unit at the El Toro Marine Base. One of Oswald's marine coworkers, Nelson Delgado, recalled the experience to Oswald biographer Edward J. Epstein. Delgado told Epstein he "remembers a group of civilians in dark suits arriving in November with stenographers and literally taking over their headquarters company to question marines about Oswald." Delgado explained that "one by one" Oswald's marine associates "were ushered into their captain's office." 16 According to Delgado, none of the marines were told who their interrogators were. That was and is most unusual. El Toro was a marine base, and it would have been natural for Naval Investigative Service (NIS) agents to come and ask questions, but such agents must-and always do-identify themselves when questioning military personnel in any official capacity.
Epstein recorded Delgado's vivid account of how the interrogation at El Toro proceeded:
When his turn came, Delgado recalls, he was asked his name, rank and serial number. Then one of the civilians shot quick questions at him concerning his job in the radar bubble, his knowledge of Oswald's activities and especially his opinion of the sorts of classified information to which Oswald had had access. A number of other marines in the unit recalled being asked the same questions as a stenographer typed away at her machine."
Researchers have been unable to identify the origin of this interrogation unit. Neither the FBI nor the Marine Corps has any record of this investigation, and both the OSI and the CIA have denied ever conducting it. The ONI and the NIS response to Epstein's Freedom of Information Act request was similarly uneventful: They told Epstein that "the report of the investigation was not in their files."
If Delgado's account of this investigation is true, who were these men in dark suits? It is not unreasonable to assume they were from the intelligence agency that had the most at risk with respect to U-2 operations when Oswald defected: the CIA. It would not have been abnormal for the Office of Security, which was the most likely element to be charged with protecting the overall security of the U2 program, to have been conducting what, in military intelligence parlance, could be called a quiet "damage control" assessment. Oswald had worked at three locations in Asia, where one of the most sensitive CIA programs in the world was in progress, and he had then traveled directly to the very country against which this supersecret program was targeted. American intelligence methods and the lives of American U-2 pilots were potentially at stake.
Whether or not such an investigation-perhaps at a much higher level of classification than the confidential Navy and State Department cables on Oswald-was conducted, it should have been. The situation called for quick and accurate answers to the questions. Who was Oswald? What did he know? What damage could he do to the program? If such an investigation did not exist, it is reasonable to begin wondering why not. In this vein, one would be justified in asking if there had been some terrible lapse in U.S. counterintelligence or if Oswald's defection may have been planned by American intelligence." We know little about the November 1959 El Toro interrogation Delgado claims to have been part of. If it did occur, it fell into the same black hole that the confidential Navy and State Department cables from Moscow fell into at the CIA. The possibility that those cables-which described Oswald's stated intent to disclose secrets to the Soviets-were somehow lost in the CIA is close to zero. The State and Navy cables
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