CIA kept distance from JFK killer
Records reveal actions shortly after assassination
WASHINGTON – Within hours of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA started to distance itself from any connection to suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, recently released secret records from the National Archives show.
Though CIA agents had picked up on Oswald while he was in Mexico City in September 1963, trying to return to the Soviet Union, where he had defected in
1959, they did not pay much attention to him, according to a Sept. 18, 1975, CIA report that attempted to explain what the agency knew about him.
That file, released Friday, shows the agency knew about the travels of Oswald, a former Marine sharpshooter, as he moved to the Soviet Union, returned to the USA with a Russian wife, demonstrated in support of Cuba’s communist government and traveled to Mexico City before the assassination Nov. 22, 1963.
The files were released under the requirements of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which required all documents compiled as part of the investigation into Kennedy’s murder to be released by Oct. 26, 2017. On that day,
2,891 files were released in full. Others, including the 676 released Friday were censored, in some parts to maintain the secrecy of sources who are still alive.
The Sept. 18, 1975, CIA memo on Oswald was released to a Senate committee led by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, that investigated abuses by the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies. Details about the Kennedy administration’s attempts to overthrow the government of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro or assassinate him had emerged from the committee investigation, as well as theories that Castro might have been involved in trying to kill Kennedy.
Much of the memo from CIA official Paul Hartman was meant to explain why the agency, although it had picked up traces of Oswald during his travels, did not consider him a threat.
“It should be noted that no particularly great urgency was attached to the records regarding Oswald before the assassination because Oswald’s name had no particular meaning before that fateful event,” Hartman wrote.
Other documents released Friday showed that the CIA had monitored the Soviet Union and Cuba’s embassies in Mexico City and spotted Oswald there in September 1963. Oswald was trying to get visas to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union. The CIA eavesdropped on telephone calls at both embassies and picked up Oswald on a wiretap to the Soviets as he tried to get a visa to go to Odessa.
The lack of agency cooperation with the Warren Commission, the special group appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination, was a topic of multiple documents in the recent release.
A March 9, 1964, memo to J. Lee Rankin, the chief counsel to the commission, noted problems with information the CIA gave the commission the previous month.
Commission investigator Edward Williams wrote that Richard Helms, then the CIA’s deputy director of plans, said “they would prefer not to comply with” another request for information.
Contributing: Jessica Estepa and Julia Fair.