Silvia Duran and the CIA

[Walt Cakebread]

If that was an Oswald impostor why in the world would he draw close attention to himself by acting like that?

I believe there are multiple instances of someone impersonating LHO in the weeks leading up to the assassination.  They have something in common.  In all instances the imposter DID things to draw attention to himself because his intent was to create a scene that people would remember.  All the instances put LHO in a guilty posture.  Why pretend to be LHO if no one would remember?  Look at all these stories and we see a man who did not act like the real LHO ... he was not polite and quiet which was LHO's real personality.  To the contrary the imposter was rude and loud, in every instance.

he was not polite and quiet which was LHO's real personality.  To the contrary the imposter was rude and loud, in every instance.

I believe you are right Louis.... In the "disturbing the peace incident in N.O"....Lee wasn't the aggressor, and he did not create a loud scene.

[Jon Banks]

Dan Hardaway on the Mexico City investigations:

In 1978 the CIA resisted the HSCA’s inquiry into Mexico City more than any other area of inquiry. The chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey, told the Committee on August 15, 1978, “[T]he deeper we have gotten into the Agency’s performance in Mexico City, the more difficult they have gotten in dealing with us, the more they have insisted on relevance, the more they have gone back in effect on their agreement to give us access to unsanitized files. For a while we had general and free access to unsanitized files. That is increasingly not true in the Mexico City area….” And we have since learned that they used George Joannides to shut down the investigation into Oswald and Mexico City. In doing so, they lied to us about who he was. He ran propaganda operations in Miami in 1963-64 and was the case officer for DRE, the anti-Castro group that scored the anti-Fair Play for Cuba Committee coup using Oswald in New Orleans in August of 1963.

As G. Robert Blakey has since acknowledged, “The CIA not only lied, it actively subverted the investigation.” I think the CIA expected we would take the superficial approach of considering the “Castro did it” theory, but when we went beyond the initial appearances and began pushing our investigation into the propaganda sources, seeking interviews with the actual penetration and surveillance agents, seeking to find others in Mexico City who may have seen Oswald, then the Agency resistance to our investigation turned to a stonewall. Shouldn’t it be enough to raise serious questions that when a Congressional Committee investigating specific disinformation operations ran by the CIA, the CIA brings one of those involved in the operation being investigated and uses him in an undercover capacity to forestall and subvert the investigation? But that’s not all...

Phillips was transferred to Mexico City later in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs. Kent was promoted to Headquarters, and George Joannides took over Kent’s position in Miami, including supervision of DRE. While still stationed in Headquarters in the early 60’s, David Phillips had worked with Cord Meyer to develop the first disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting and disrupting a group of Castro sympathizers who had organized themselves into the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). In the summer of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald formed a chapter of the FPCC in New Orleans. In August of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, still in New Orleans, had an encounter with DRE which led to a lot of publicity linking Oswald to communists, labeling him as pro-Castro, and discrediting the FPCC. In July and August of that year there is strong evidence that Oswald was used to identify and contact pro-Castro students at Tulane University. In early September, Oswald was seen with David Philips in Dallas.

On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the FPCC in foreign countries. To my knowledge, the operational files on this new anti-FPCC operation have never been released by the CIA. In New Orleans, on September 17, 1963, Oswald applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa immediately after William Gaudet, a known CIA agent, had applied for one. On September 27 Oswald arrived in Mexico City. This activity did not occur suddenly or in a vacuum. Oswald had started establishing his pro-Castro bona fides earlier that summer in New Orleans, including establishing an FPCC chapter there.

There are too many similarities between Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and Mexico City to simply dismiss, without investigation or discussion, the possibility that he was being used in an intelligence operation, either wittingly or unwittingly, in both cities. In addition to his contacts with the Soviet and Cuban diplomatic facilities in Mexico City, which could have been part of an intelligence dangle, an attempt to discredit the FPCC, or both, there is now also evidence of Oswald’s contacts with students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his presence at social events with Cuban Consulate employees.

David Phillips frequently lied about Oswald and Mexico City, but in a footnote in a little known book he self-published, Secret Wars Diary, he wrote: “I was an observer of Cuban and Soviet reaction when Lee Harvey Oswald contacted their embassies.” [Emphasis added.] One purpose served by an intelligence dangle is to enable the dangling agency to observe the reaction and, from that observation, identify roles of employees, procedures and processes of the enemy...

In 1978, we knew not only about the allegations of the twist party, but also about the stories of Oswald’s contact with students. The CIA prevented us from interviewing Oscar Contreras, a student Oswald contacted. But Anthony Summers, and others, have interviewed him since. Contreras acknowledges that Oswald, in late September, 1963, approached him and three other students who were members of a pro-Castro student organization. He asked them for help getting a visa to Cuba from the Consulate. Contreras did have contacts at the Consulate and spoke to the Consul and an intelligence officer. Both warned him to have nothing to do with Oswald as they suspected he was trying to infiltrate proCastro groups. Contreras still wonders how Oswald identified him and his friends as the students, out of the thousands attending the University, as the ones with contacts in the Consulate. Shenon, some way or another, sees this incident as supporting possible Cuban involvement in the assassination. No mention is made to the similarity to what Oswald was doing with Tulane students in New Orleans...

...the fact is that it is still very much in question whether Duran had been recruited as an asset by the CIA. David Phillips, as well as other CIA employees, in 1978, were of the opinion that she may have been targeted for recruitment by the CIA. The CIA, then and since, has gone out of its way to keep details about Duran buried, claiming, among other things, to have destroyed her Mexico City P file.

https://aarclibrary.org/a-cruel-and-shocking-misinterpretation/

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Dan Hardaway on the Mexico City investigations:

https://aarclibrary.org/a-cruel-and-shocking-misinterpretation/

Hardway has stated (I'm not sure that he still believes this) that he believes the real Oswald did go to Mexico City but that he was ordered or instructed to do so by David Atlee Phillips. He argues that this was an effort by Phillips to "dangle" Oswald to the Cubans (for some unstated reason) but that he (Phillips) didn't know that two months later Oswald would be the accused assassin of the President.

However, Oswald's very odd behavior at both the Cuban consulate and Soviet Embassy weakens the "dangle" theory. Or does to me. Oswald acted so oddly and violently that the Cubans wanted nothing to do with him. In fact, Azcue said he thought Oswald was perhaps a provocateur. And the Soviets thought he was having some sort of nervous breakdown. This isn't the type of behavior, I don't think, you would engage in if you're trying to convince people that you're someone that can help them.

Hardway explained this in his review of the Veciana book: https://aarclibrary.org/a-professional-conspirator-questions-about-antonio-veciana-and-his-book-trained-to-kill/

Yes, he no longer believes, as he once did, that Veciana was truthful about seeing Phillips with Oswald (as he says in the above review). So I have no idea how he connects Phillips to Oswald. He does repeat the argument that the CIA was trying to discredit the FPCC and that Oswald may have been either a witting or unwitting participant in some sort of operation. It's all unclear to me what he believes. If Phillips ordered Oswald to MC then he wasn't an unwitting asset right? Frankly, he throws out a lot of claims - he clearly believes the CIA (or elements) were involved in the assassination - but his evidence for this is, for me, extremely weak.

The Contreras claims have been, in my view, completely disproven. As in: Contreras spoke no English; Oswald spoke little Spanish so how did they communicate? Furthermore, Contreras said in one interview that the meeting occurred in 1959 or 1969 1960 which was impossible because Oswald was still in the Soviet Union at that time. And Contreras said he wasn't living in Mexico City in 1963.

At to Duran: Duran said that she worked one week - the week of Oswald's visit - at the Cuban consulate. She had replaced the previous secretary who had been killed in a car accident and that she was a temporary replacement until the new replacement arrived from Cuban. The Friday that she met Oswald (I think it was definitely Oswald) was she said the last day she worked in that capacity. That's a helluva week of work. I hope she got a bonus. After 50 plus years there's been nothing for me indicating that she worked for the CIA.

[Jon Banks]

Hardway has stated (I'm not sure that he still believes this) that he believes the real Oswald did go to Mexico City but that he was ordered or instructed to do so by David Atlee Phillips. He argues that this was an effort by Phillips to "dangle" Oswald to the Cubans (for some unstated reason) but that he (Phillips) didn't know that two months later Oswald would be the accused assassin of the President. However, Oswald's very odd behavior at both the Cuban consulate and Soviet Embassy weakens that theory. Or does to me. Oswald acted so oddly and violently that the Cubans wanted nothing to do with him. Perhaps he wasn't following the script but I don't think you're going to act like that if you want to establish a relationship with them.

Oswald's mission was intended to fail. Who goes to an embassy on a weekend? Whomever Oswald was working with wanted the intelligence agencies in Mexico City to know he was there. That was the goal, not getting to Cuba.

He may have been an unwitting actor but I find it difficult to believe that he wouldn't have caught on to the possibility that he was being manipulated by his handlers.

Hardway explained this in his review of the Veciana book: https://aarclibrary.org/a-professional-conspirator-questions-about-antonio-veciana-and-his-book-trained-to-kill/

Yes, he no longer believes, as he once did, that Veciana was truthful about seeing Phillips with Oswald (as he says in the above review). So I have no idea how he connects Phillips to Oswald. He does repeat the argument that the CIA was trying to discredit the FPCC and that Oswald may have been either a witting or unwitting participant in some sort of operation. It's all unclear to me what he believes. If Phillips ordered Oswald to MC then he wasn't an unwitting asset right? Frankly, he throws out a lot of claims - he clearly believes the CIA (or elements) were involved in the assassination - but his evidence for this is, for me, extremely weak.

The attempts to discredit the FPCC did in fact happen and it's plausible that Oswald's weird FPCC/DRE stuff in the summer of 1963 was related to that program.

It's very plausible that both in 1959 and 1963, LHO had a relationship with US intelligence.

However, it's not clear that the New Orleans/Mexico City stuff was directly related to JFK's assassination.

It's just as plausible that Oswald both worked with Intelligence agents on some stuff but acted alone in JFK's assassination.


The attempts to paint Oswald as a deranged lunatic just don't match up with his behavior in Dallas.

For some reason, he decided to draw attention to himself while in Russia, New Orleans, and Mexico but almost always kept a low profile in Dallas. An unhinged lunatic wouldn't have that kind of discipline.