Cuba Paid Oswald to Kill Kennedy, New Film Says

[jAZ]

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/arti...04111709990002

Updated: 10:55 AM EST
Cuba Paid Oswald to Kill Kennedy, New Film Says

By Mark Trevelyan, Reuters

BERLIN (Jan. 4) - Cuba lay behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald and its agents provided the gunman with money and support, an award-winning German director says in a new documentary film.

Wilfried Huismann spent three years researching "Rendezvous with Death," based on interviews with former Cuban secret agents, U.S. officials and a Russian intelligence source, and on research in Mexican security archives.

The film, shown to journalists in Berlin on Wednesday, says Oswald traveled to Mexico City by bus in September 1963, seven weeks before the Kennedy shooting, and met agents at the Cuban embassy there who paid him $6,500.

Oscar Marino, a former Cuban agent and a key source for the documentary, told Huismann that Oswald himself had volunteered for the assassination mission and Havana had exploited him.

"Oswald was a dissident. He hated his country...Oswald offered to kill Kennedy," Marino said in the film.

"He was so full of hate, he had the idea. We used him...He was a tool."

He said he knew with certainty that the assassination was an operation of the Cuban secret service G-2, but would not say if it was ordered by President Fidel Castro.

Oswald was shot dead by Jack Ruby two days after killing Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

The film argues Cuba wanted to eliminate Kennedy as the chief enemy of its Communist revolution, and portrays him and Castro as dueling opponents each trying to assassinate the other first.

Former CIA official Sam Halpern told Huismann: "He (Castro) beat us. He bested us. He came out on top, and we lost."

FBI PROBE ABORTED

Laurence Keenan, an officer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who was sent to Mexico City immediately after Kennedy's death to investigate a possible Cuban connection, said he was recalled after just three days and the probe was aborted.

"This was perhaps the worst investigation the FBI was ever involved in," Keenan said. "I realized that I was used. I felt ashamed. We missed a moment in history."

Keenan, 81, said he was convinced Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, blocked further investigation because proof of a Cuban link would put him under irresistible pressure to invade the island, a year after the Cuban missile crisis had brought the United States and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

"Most likely there would have been an invasion of Cuba which could have had unknown consequences for the whole world," he told journalists at the screening, saying that was why Johnson preferred to accept Oswald was "a crazed lone Marxist assassin."

Interviewed for the film, Alexander Haig, then a U.S. military adviser and later secretary of state, quoted Johnson as saying "we simply must not allow the American people to believe that Fidel Castro could have killed our president."

"And the reason was that there would be a right-wing uprising in America, which would keep the Democratic party out of power for two generations," Haig said.

He added that Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the assassinated president and attorney general in his administration, had personally ordered eight attempts on the life of Castro, who is still in power to this day.

Cuban and Russian sources interviewed in the film say the KGB alerted the Cubans to Oswald in mid-1962 after he left the Soviet Union, where he had lived for three years, and returned to the United States with his Soviet wife and their daughter.

Cuban intelligence first made contact with Oswald in November 1962, according to the film.

Huismann also unearthed a U.S. intelligence report shown to Johnson which said Cuban secret service chief Fabian Escalante flew via Mexico City to Dallas on the day of Kennedy's assassination, and back again the same day.

Tracked down by the film maker, Escalante denied he had been in Dallas and evaded questions about Cuba's alleged role. "What is truth, what are lies?" he said, smiling.


01/04/06 11:12 ET

[scho63]

I continue to firmly believe as I have stated in other posts that there is ZERO chance Oswald acted alone. There is at least two other players in this mess; Russia, Cuba, the Mob

----------------------
http://news.yahoo.com/book-former-ci...180735990.html

(Reuters) - Lee Harvey Oswald had closer ties to Cuba's intelligence agency in the months before his fatal shooting of John F. Kennedy than previously known, according to a new book by a former CIA analyst.

Furthermore, the CIA lied about its knowledge of those ties to the Warren Commission that was tasked with investigating the crime, according to Brian Latell, the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America from 1990 to 1994 and author of the book "Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA, & the Assassination of John F. Kennedy," due out on July 9.

Cuba also hid what it knew about Oswald, writes Latell, citing a CIA wiretap of a conversation between two Cuban secret service agents he uncovered in declassified archives.

"I am now convinced that Oswald was engaged with the Cubans," Latell told Reuters.

While he is careful not to suggest Oswald killed Kennedy on instructions from Havana, Latell says the new evidence confirms a widely held belief that Oswald was motivated to kill Kennedy by a fervent desire to impress Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

"I'm convinced he wanted to defect to Cuba," Latell said. "He loved Cuba and Castro, and wanted to join the revolution."

Latell's book, which is a revised edition of an earlier work on Cuban intelligence published last year, is based on new pieces to the puzzle uncovered from several sources, including the unpublished memoirs of Thomas Mann, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico at the time of the assassination, as well as an interview with a former Cuban intelligence agent and declassified government documents.

Seven weeks before Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Oswald famously traveled to Mexico City by bus hoping to obtain a visa from the Cuban embassy there to visit Havana. Cuba denied him a visa, but the bus trip, and Oswald's known communist sympathies, have long generated suspicion of Cuban involvement in Kennedy's death, although no hard evidence has ever been found.

"What he did during most of the time he spent in the Mexican capital remains perhaps the most important unsolved mystery of the Kennedy assassination," writes Latell, who spent much of his career at the CIA working on Cuba.

U.S. officials never admitted the full extent of what they knew, fearing perhaps they would face public pressure to retaliate against Cuba if greater evidence of a Cuban link became known, Latell argues.

Mann learned shortly after Kennedy's death that Oswald had stayed at the Hotel del Comercio in Mexico City, known by the CIA to be a haven for Cuban spies in Mexico working for the DGI, Havana's national intelligence agency, closely run by Castro.

Mann learned this information at the time from the CIA station chief in Mexico, according to his memoirs, written in 1982. But when he raised it with his superiors in Washington, Mann was silenced by the State Department and told to cease his inquiries about Oswald's stay in Mexico.

Mann was furious and objected, but did as he was told. "In the week after the assassination Mann was convinced Cuba was involved. He was convinced Oswald was working for the Cubans at the hotel," Latell said.

"He started getting very aggressive and upsetting apple carts in Washington."

Mann, who died in 1999, was reposted out of Mexico barely a month after the Kennedy assassination.

During its investigation of the crime in 1964, the Warren Commission was curious about the Mexico trip. But when the commission traveled to Cuba and asked about Oswald's hotel stay, the CIA hid its knowledge about goings on at the hotel, according to Latell.

The Warren Commission later declared that it found no evidence of Cuban government involvement in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

In his research on Cuban intelligence Latell also discovered records of a CIA wiretap of a phone conversation between two DGI officials in Mexico and Havana shortly after the assassination in which they discussed the events in Dallas. One of them remarked how interesting it was that Oswald had wanted to fight for the revolution. How could they have known that, Latell asks, unless the DGI already had a file on him?

Latell suspects Cuba was aware of him as far as 1959 when Oswald first sought contact with Cuban officials at the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles.

Castro has always asserted that Oswald was totally unknown to Cuban authorities. Latell and others find that hard to believe, citing reports that after being denied a visa in Mexico, Oswald shouted, "I'm going to kill Kennedy," in the street outside the Cuban consulate.

"We thought that was incriminating of Oswald," said Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel to the 1977 House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations, which re-examined the evidence in Kennedy's death.

Castro was asked about Oswald's shouted threat, but denied any knowledge of it.

"We found that it did happen and he lied about it," said Blakey, adding that the motive of Oswald's Mexico trip remains unclear as Latell's book does not reveal exactly what occurred in the Hotel del Comercio.

Latell also cites an interview with a former Cuban agent tasked with monitoring U.S. communications, who said that on the day of the assassination he was ordered to stop all CIA tracking efforts and redirect his antennae toward Texas.

"Castro knew Kennedy was to be fired upon," Latell says the agent told him.

U.S. officials covered up these vital clues because they were concerned about the consequences if a Cuban connection was publicized, Latell argues.

"Had it been known it could have triggered an invasion of Cuba," he said. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, "didn't want that" so soon after the missile crisis that had brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war barely a year earlier.

"They went nose to nose before and they didn't want to do it again," Latell says.

[loochy]

Children in England Attend Magic School and Fight Evil Wizard, New Film Says

[Frazod]

Amazing to think that sonofabitch Castro is still sitting down there laughing at us. Eleven American presidents later.

[Dayze]

if it could be proven that the CIA orchestrated it by having JFK swallow and M80, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
nothing the government does, or what they have done, shocks me.

[DJ's left nut]

If that's true, Johnson was probably right to handle it how he did.

Invading Cuba really could've sparked another global war. Perhaps not truly WWIII in scale, but it would've been an extremely volatile and potentially catastrophic situation.

The cold logic of it all is that the American public probably was better off for not knowing of any potential Cuban involvement.

[gblowfish]

[Imon Yourside]

Absolute horseshit.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by KILLER_CLOWN

Absolute horseshit.

Why? What's your theory?




this should be fun

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Why? What's your theory?




this should be fun

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Why? What's your theory?




this should be fun

Obligatory


My moneys on the military industrial complex.

[Garcia Bronco]

Originally Posted by JohnnyV13

My post is more about how power works in washington, and what agencies will have people with the capabilities you need to get the job done.

I mean think about it, Hoover and the Kennedy's hated each other. If Bobby were to go around ordering assassinations he's not supposed to order, then Hoover has the goods on him. Using the FBI would be VERY risky, b/c you'd have to bypass Hoover, and he was there FOREVER. If Hoover found out, he either use the info to squeeze the kennedys' nutsack in politics OR he'd leak it.

Now, think about this: Bobby is going to use a covert agency, say the NSA. That means Bobby is going over the head of the NSA chief to task people under the NSA authority, and the NSA chief is not under the DOJ. At best, Bobby would have to give up political favors to get NSA guys to do this job. And. the Sec. of Defense isn't going to be real happy b/c the NSA is under the DOD.

Now maybe the theory is Haig knows b/c Haig is a military advisor and Bobby used covert military intelligence units to get it done. But again, the AG isn't in the chain of command for military units. That would have to come out of the White House.

You could argue JFK was using Bobby as a backdoor conduit for his orders, but how "covert" is using your freak'n brother? Anything Bobby does is going to be connected to JFK, and its not like he is going to gain any deniability by using Bobby.

This whole sequence just seems rather unlikely

His brother was the President.

[Garcia Bronco]

Either way its been proven that Oswald killed him, alone. So I am willing to accept this story. I also agree the American Public was better off not knowing. It would have been WWIII, with the Russians getting destroyed.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

Either way its been proven that Oswald killed him, alone. So I am willing to accept this story.

That's like watching a pink elephant fly down out of the sky and rape a cow to death, fly off, and then say "It's God's will."

Uh....based......on.....whut?

[Garcia Bronco]

Originally Posted by Rausch

That's like watching a pink elephant fly down out of the sky and rape a cow to death, fly off, and then say "It's God's will."

Uh....based......on.....whut?

Based on forensic evidence. They even found the third bullet. He did it with a spectacular display of shooting. Marine Corp shooting.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Rausch

That's like watching a pink elephant fly down out of the sky and rape a cow to death, fly off, and then say "It's God's will."

Uh....based......on.....whut?

The lack of any verifiable evidence to the contrary.