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What Was Lee Harvey Oswald Doing in Mexico?
Politico ^ | March 18, 20 | Philip Shenon

Posted on 03/19/2015 3:48:28 PM PDT by nickcarraway

Much about his trip—weeks before the assassination—remains unexamined.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/jfk-assassination-lee-harvey-oswald-mexico-116195.html#ixzz3Uy93moex

Whhat if the answers to the many, persistent questions surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy lie not in Dallas or Washington, D.C., but in the streets of a foreign capital that most Americans have never associated with the president’s murder? Mexico City.

Only hours after shots rang out in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, U.S. Ambassador Thomas C. Mann told colleagues in the American embassy in Mexico that he was certain Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone in killing JFK.

Oswald had visited Mexico City several weeks earlier, apparently to obtain a visa that would allow the self-proclaimed Marxist to defect to Cuba, and Mann, a veteran diplomat, suspected that a plot to kill Kennedy had been hatched on Mexican soil, during Oswald’s encounters there with Cuban diplomats and Mexicans who supported Fidel Castro’s revolution. How did Mann know about those meetings? It turned out the CIA had Oswald under surveillance in the Mexican capital after he had showed up at both the Cuban and Soviet embassies there. Back at the State Department, however, a baffled Mann hit a brick wall. No one in Washington seemed interested in his suspicions, he would later complain to colleagues. And within days of the assassination, the ambassador received an astonishing top-secret message directly from Secretary of State Dean Rusk. According to Mann’s testimony years later to congressional investigators, Rusk ordered the embassy to shut down any investigation in Mexico that might “confirm or refute rumors of Cuban involvement in the assassination.” No reason was given for the order, the ambassador said.

Mann told the congressional investigators that he was under the impression that the same “incredible” shut-down order had been given by the CIA to the spy agency’s station chief in Mexico, Winston Scott. In memoirs quietly declassified in the 1990s, after his death, Scott confirmed that he, too, suspected that Oswald was an “agent” of a foreign power who may have been part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy (though Scott did not suggest that the CIA’s investigation was shut down).

What happened in Mexico City in the weeks before JFK’s murder? It is clear from government files declassified in recent decades that Oswald’s six-day trip to Mexico was never adequately investigated by the CIA, the FBI and the State Department—and, as a result, by the Warren Commission, the panel named by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination. The question has been raised anew in recent weeks by a surprising source—the Warren Commission’s chief conspiracy hunter. And in fact, lots of evidence has accumulated over the years to suggest that historians, journalists and JFK buffs who are still trying to piece together clues about the president’s murder—whether from the memories of still-living witnesses or in the new tranche of assassination-related documents the National Archives is set to release in two years—would be wise to look to Mexico City.

In the half-century since the commission named for Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald was the sole gunman in Dallas and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, it is startling to discover how many credible government officials—beginning with Ambassador Mann and CIA station chief Scott—have suggested that evidence was missed in Mexico that could rewrite the history of the assassination. The list includes the late former FBI Director Clarence Kelley and former FBI Assistant Director William Sullivan, as well as David Belin, a former staff lawyer on the Warren Commission.

Last month, another commission staffer joined their ranks: David Slawson, a retired University of Southern California law professor who, 51 years ago, was the commission’s chief investigator searching for evidence that might have pointed to a foreign conspiracy in JFK’s murder. In interviews for a new edition of my 2013 history of the assassination, Slawson said he is now convinced the commission was the victim of a “massive cover-up” by the CIA and other agencies to hide evidence that might have identified people in Mexico City who knew and encouraged Oswald to carry out his threat when he returned to the United States.

Declassified government records back up Slawson’s suspicion of how much information was withheld in 1964, when senior officials at both the CIA and the FBI assured the commission that there was no evidence in Mexico—or anywhere else—to suggest that Oswald was anything other than a delusional lone wolf. In sworn testimony to the commission, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover insisted that “there was nothing up to the time of the assassination that gave any indication that this man was a dangerous character who might do harm to the president.”

The records declassified decades later tell a very different story, and show just how much evidence about Oswald’s Mexico trip —including CIA tape recordings of wiretaps of Oswald’s phone calls in Mexico—never reached the commission. Although the spy agency assured the commission in 1964 that there were no surveillance photos of Oswald in Mexico, CIA Station Chief Scott, in his memoirs, strongly suggested that there were photos, and other CIA officials later told congressional investigators in the 1970s that they recalled seeing the pictures. CIA and FBI records, meanwhile, show that the agencies never tried to track down or interview key witnesses who had encountered Oswald in Mexico.

Slawson is also convinced that someone blocked him from seeing a top-secret June 1964 letter from Hoover to the commission in which Hoover revealed that Oswald may have openly boasted about his plans—“I’m going to kill Kennedy”—while in Mexico, apparently at the Cuban embassy. Slawson believes the CIA was desperate to shut down any investigation in Mexico City out of fear the Warren Commission might stumble onto evidence of the spy agency’s long-running schemes to murder Fidel Castro. (Mexico City had been a staging area for some of the plots.) Slawson is careful to note that he is not suggesting any sort of far-flung, carefully laid-out conspiracy. For one thing, he notes, Oswald did not get the job he held at the time of the assassination, at the Texas School Book Depository, which was on the president’s motorcade route, until after he had returned to Texas from Mexico in early October 1963; the route itself was not announced until days before JFK’s arrival in Dallas.


TOPICS: Conspiracy; History
KEYWORDS: assassinationplots; conspiracy; conspiracytheory; jfk; jfkassassination; leeharveyoswald; mexico; mexicocity; oswald
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To: Partisan Gunslinger
For the last time bozo, piss off. Keep it up and I'm notifying the moderator, understand?
101 posted on 04/05/2015 4:07:39 AM PDT by jmacusa (Liberalism defined: When mom and dad go away for the weekend and the kids are in charge.)
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To: jmacusa
For the last time bozo, piss off. Keep it up and I'm notifying the moderator, understand?

lol What are you going to tell them? That I responded to your posts?

102 posted on 04/06/2015 11:38:44 AM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Partisan Gunslinger
You're delusional. I made two or three posts about this and now you've become obsessed with trying to convince me of the inconceivable. What is it with you chasing after me and this need you have to talk my ear off about this? How many ways can you be told to take a hike?
103 posted on 04/06/2015 1:44:43 PM PDT by jmacusa (Liberalism defined: When mom and dad go away for the weekend and the kids are in charge.)
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To: jmacusa
I'm not out to convince you of anything because I know you won't change your mind, you refuse to look at evidence. I'm here to provide a counterpoint to the lone shooter theme because it's not true, and corruption thrives when a plurality of the people won't face the truth about their government.

This is a subject where most people will disagree. If you're the type of person that can't stand disagreement then you should not have posted your opinion on this thread, because it will be disagreed with.

So you think everything is always on the up and up huh? People like Obama and Holder never try to pull anything underhanded? If Obama could, then his brothers in spirit could...FDR, Johnson, Clinton. They are and were all corrupt to the core.

104 posted on 04/07/2015 9:38:54 AM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Partisan Gunslinger
Why are you so obsessed with trying to convince me that there was a vast conspiracy to kill Kennedy? Why have I got all this free parking in your head? You're so stupid to think that something as serious as killing a president of the United States is going to be something carried out in the greatest secrecy with everybody keeping their mouths shut. I can just imagine the conspiracy you got going through your fevered brain about the killing of Robert Kennedy. I can stand disagreement in spades buddy boy so don't EVER tell me not to post here.
105 posted on 04/07/2015 4:05:41 PM PDT by jmacusa (Liberalism defined: When mom and dad go away for the weekend and the kids are in charge.)
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To: nickcarraway

Everyone knows that Oswald desired to be a spy for the Soviets. He bothered them by even going to Russia. When he got turned down time after time to be a spy, he finally went to Mexico to bother them there. He was a sycophant of communism.

No way in any world would the Soviets accept someone knocking on their doors demanding to become a spy.

Oswald was a lone nutcase looking to impress the Soviets. I have no doubt he thought they’d save him from American justice if he killed JFK. I also have no doubt the Soviets would not have saved him. They did not want him around at all. Oswald was a pest.


106 posted on 04/07/2015 4:21:19 PM PDT by CodeToad (Islam should be outlawed and treated as a criminal enterprise!)
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To: eartrumpet

Nice! took the words right from the post I was about to make.


107 posted on 04/07/2015 4:22:25 PM PDT by CodeToad (Islam should be outlawed and treated as a criminal enterprise!)
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To: jmacusa
Why are you so obsessed with trying to convince me that there was a vast conspiracy to kill Kennedy?

Obsessed? You have more posts on this thread than I.

Why have I got all this free parking in your head?

You give yourself way too much credit. lol

You're so stupid to think that something as serious as killing a president of the United States is going to be something carried out in the greatest secrecy with everybody keeping their mouths shut.

Greatest secrecy? It's been known since the third day what happened. Oswald said he was the patsy. Ruby said he needed to be moved out of Texas because of the conspiracy. Johnson said there were other people and other motivations. Johnson's attorney said Johnson facilitated it. The Dallas police record their arrest of one of the real shooters. Almost no secrecy. The problem is the useful idiots that elevate their government to a form of deity that just can't believe it's capable of killing a president. The media also don't want it to be known that the great liberal Johnson has a history of murder from Marshall to Kennedy.

I can just imagine the conspiracy you got going through your fevered brain about the killing of Robert Kennedy.

I've never looked at that.

I can stand disagreement in spades buddy boy so don't EVER tell me not to post here.

No you can't stand disagreement. Look at your posts on this thread. You are a troll, as another poster pointed out. You have no logic or facts to back anything you say, you just agitate.

108 posted on 04/09/2015 4:39:07 PM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Partisan Gunslinger
"House Committee on Assassinations came after the Warren Commission and is the final word on the assassination and is more detailed, and they determined there were multiple shooters."

The only evidence for their multiple shooters was the last minute introduction of supposed "acoustic evidence", that was later debunked.

109 posted on 10/21/2015 10:34:52 AM PDT by mlo
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To: mlo
The only evidence for their multiple shooters was the last minute introduction of supposed "acoustic evidence", that was later debunked.

Debunked where? Shot to the back, shot to the car trim, shot to the curb, shot to the head. 4 shots documented right there. There were more than that of course, they set up a crossfire, but those four have direct evidence. The House Committee on Assassinations got it right.

110 posted on 11/01/2015 12:18:22 AM PDT by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Partisan Gunslinger

You can start with this:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/acoustic.htm

There is more if you need it. The HSCA found no shots on that recording, without which they would have ended with the same conclusion the Warren Commission did.


111 posted on 11/01/2015 10:44:18 AM PST by mlo
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To: yarddog

info on jack ruby here.

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/ex-flame-says-jack-ruby-had-no-choice-but-to-kill-oswald/


112 posted on 11/01/2015 10:57:55 AM PST by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: PeterPrinciple

Yes, although I still think Oswald acted alone, I always thought the Jack Ruby thing was the strangest part of the whole affair.

It seems Mexico City was a hub of KGB activity at one time. I recall seeing a program about JFK and his women. One thing the FBI noted was that Marilyn Monroe met with KGB agents in Mexico City.

I think they eventually decided that she had Communist sympathies but was not too smart.


113 posted on 11/01/2015 4:04:17 PM PST by yarddog (Romans 8:38-39, For I am persuaded.)
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To: mlo
You can start with this: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/acoustic.htm There is more if you need it. The HSCA found no shots on that recording, without which they would have ended with the same conclusion the Warren Commission did.

Oh yeah, the backfiring motorcycles. lol

No, they concluded a conspiracy.

114 posted on 11/02/2015 11:27:46 AM PST by Partisan Gunslinger
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To: Partisan Gunslinger
"Oh yeah, the backfiring motorcycles. lol"

You obviously didn't read it since backfiring motorcycles have nothing to do with it.

115 posted on 11/02/2015 1:06:18 PM PST by mlo
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To: Partisan Gunslinger

As I’ve already said, they concluded probable conspiracy based on the invalid acoustic evidence, without which they were about to agree with the Warren Commission’s conclusions.


116 posted on 11/02/2015 2:08:44 PM PST by mlo
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