Posted on 01/05/2006 10:03:10 AM PST by Kenny Bunk
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.
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.
What They Said:
''Oswald was a dissident. He hated his country... Oswald offered to kill Kennedy. ...We used him.''
Oscar Marino, a former Cuban agent, speaking in the documentary
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
No, but no one asked if I shot Kennedy.
Well I have. Expert!
Congratulations (sincerely). Also, thank you for serving our nation.
...and I'm telling you that that POS rifle Oswald used was not the rifle that killed JFK! PERIOD!
I respectfully disagree. For a more substantive response, see post #32.
If you were the KGB, would you ask someone who had publicly defected to Russia and been jailed for handing out leaflets for Free Play for Cuba?
Not exactly a low profile assassin. Russia or Cuba would have used someone less connected to them. Otherwise the chance of nuclear retaliation and war would have been too great.
We better keep an eye on Castro and all those Hollywood Castro lovers, they may be submissive to their master.
LBJ did it? Come on. I refuse to believe we would elect a person so evil.
No, LBJ was bad, but the worst President ever, was Jimmy Carter. Not even close.
I think so too. Much like 9/11, the events on 11/22/63 were nothing more than a tragic comedy of errors and oversights.
Smart. I hadn't thought of it that way. I just thought she was acting calmly in a bad situation. But that was before the neurosurgeon told me what he did.
I have never quite known what to make of the remark that he could've been saved. He obviously knew the Dallas man's qualifications and felt there'd been some compromise.
I heard that, too. But to believe it, I think you'd also have to believe he had more money and connections than the Kennedys.
And that, I don't buy.
I think she was merely acting on instinct and adrenalin. A soldier, stunned by a blast that severs an arm, will pick up the arm and carry it away.....for a few steps. It's automatic. She was just picking up the pieces of her recently shot husband.
That is one of the most enduring myths in American history. Anyone who has been in the school book depository and looked down at where the motorcade was can see it wouldn't have even required a genuine marksman. In fact, NOVA did exactly what you say is impossible and were even able to get off more rounds than the 4 that Oswald fired. The bullets retrieved from the car and the bodies were fired from Oswalds Manlicher. The school book depository is in fact the optimal place from which to have fired on Kennedy.
Yes, there was never a second thought that Jackie was a strong woman and maintained her integrity throughout the ordeal. Small wonder she was so very, very private after that.
But I was wondering why the well-qualified surgeon just 'gave up.' The one I worked for had a similar situation involving a young man who was hit while on a motorcycle. The brain was swollen and so a skull flap had to be removed and time allowed for the swelling to subside before the piece of skull could be replaced.
It was really no big deal, other than getting them to come back to town and get finished. The kid would've gone on like he was, wearing a helmet. Ugh!
Not it doesn't. The Cuban service is excellent and it defies believability they would have gotten themselves involved in an assasination plot against Kennedy with someone who had already proven himself unstable in Russia and the United States. So, they give him 6,500....what possible reason could they have had for believing he had the ability or the opportunity to kill Kennedy. Anyone who spent time with Oswald was quick to pick up he was a narcissicist and unstable.
None of that is true. He lived like everyone else and in fact was a problem because he expected to be treated better (which was the story of his life, and his mother's as well), Marina's family was not big in security.
"Perhaps, but Carter didn't draft me, as did LBJ, to fight a war in Southeast Asia so the Democrats could keep the White House in 1968 (which they didn't anyway)."
I understand your pain --- Dad in Vietnam for 8 years and me in Bosnia (well around and above Bonsia, LOL) thanks to Clinton trying to act tough.
But personal animus aside, Carter's betrayal will made a nuclear mullah --- and the deaths of millions --- an almost certainty in our lifetimes.
This is disinformation, meant to deflect possible guilt away from LHO, toward a pet conspiracy theory. I have no idea what LHO did or did not do on that fateful day. But others have demonstrated that he could have very well done what he is accused of doing with that rifle. Done deal, kids.
So let's be good freepers and put that part of the story to rest, because it's getting in the way of uncovering the facts.
BTW, don't let the low price fool you. As kids, we all bought surplus military rifles. I (still)have a British .303 "Jungle Carbine" that I bought for $19.95. Mail Order. I still shoot a 6.5X55 Swedish Mauser carbine I bought mail order for $29.95, which was in brand new condition, and I knew a kid who bought the Italian job, which at one point was going for $12.95. Junk. But, he shot a moose dead with it, with one shot.
Cuba's involevement is no surprise. Kennedy tried to get Castro assasinated, Oswald was in Cuba shortly before the assasination. Bay of Pigs & the Missile Crisis were on Castro's mind. I'm sure Kruschev and the Soviets would have approved.
The paraffin test on Oswald's cheek after he was arrested came out negative.`
Checkmate
The "pristine bullet" was not pristine, as shown by photographs from other angles, for example:
http://jfkassassination.net/ce399.gif
The idea that there must have been a "magic bullet" is bunk, and was based on the false idea (as presented in Oliver Stone's movie, among other places) that JFK and Connolly were sitting at the same height. (You remember the scene with the two sitting chairs in the movie.) In fact, Connolly was sitting much lower, as you can see from this photo of the limo:
http://jfkassassination.net/sbt3.jpg
Oswald was the only shooter to fire shots that struck the people in the limo, and, even if part of a conspiracy, probably the only shooter in Dealey Plaza.
http://jfkassassination.net/home.htm
Well, no. But then, neither would I have gotten that Aga chap to shoot the Pope, when he had so many incriminating items on his résumé.
Excellent point, though. But, does it let Castro off the hook?
According to Edward J. Epstein, in Legend, LHO lived in a luxo flat, all by himself, that was lavishly furnished, and had a spectacular view. (See LHO photos, in the book) Hardly typical.
The handwritten bio is extant, and shows all the earmarks of having been hurriedly written at one or two sittings.
Marina's guardian was a Colonel in the KGB Border Section, which was plenty big stuff inn those days.
Edward J. Epstein, ","Legend."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
