The Unraveling of Richard Case Nagell

[Tom Graves]

The following is an article written in 2018 by Richard Russell, author of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

My comments are in brackets.

. . . . . . .

Why would a man who knew Lee Harvey Oswald and had apparent connections to intelligence walk into a bank, shoot two holes in a wall, and await arrest months prior to JFK’s assassination? There is no better alibi than being in federal prison.

On September 20, 1963, two months before President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, a highly decorated Army veteran named Richard Case Nagell walked into a bank in El Paso, fired two shots into a wall from a revolver, and went outside to await arrest. There was speculation, even by the officer who put him in handcuffs, that for some reason he wanted to be locked up. Nagell was charged with attempted bank robbery. Only later would he indicate to the FBI that he feared being implicated in an “inimical act” — one that involved accused JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. 

Nagell would end up serving more than four years in federal prisons following two trials presided over by Judge Homer Thornberry — a close friend of new President Lyndon Johnson, who suddenly resigned a congressional seat to take over the Nagell case early in 1964. Following Nagell’s release from Leavenworth Penitentiary in April 1968, he quickly obtained a passport, left the country, and traveled to East Germany. There he was removed from a train and held behind the “Iron Curtain” for another four months, until being returned to US intelligence officials at the Berlin border. 

What could be known of Nagell’s strange saga was featured in my book on the Kennedy assassination, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Now recent releases from the National Archives of long-withheld CIA and FBI assassination-related files shed new light on Nagell, and on which branches of the CIA had the strongest interest in him. 

A 220-page CIA Office of Security file on Nagell — including a section on “Alleged Connection with Lee Harvey Oswald” — raises more new questions than it answers. A primary responsibility of the Office of Security (OS) is the protection of classified material. Upon his arrest prior to the assassination, Nagell had suggested that the FBI look in the trunk of his car. Besides a small Minolta spy camera and other items, it contained a notebook. According to the just-released OS file, the contents included “what purport to be various codes, CIA and FBI agents’ names, Soviet and other Communist embassy addresses and names, and the addresses of various other people and organizations, including the Los Angeles address of the ‘Fair Play for Cuba Committee.’”

Lee Harvey Oswald had set up a Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. His own notebook, found at the time of his arrest after the assassination, had other similar listings to Nagell’s — including the telephone number for the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. Nagell’s notebook designated the same phone number — 11-28-47. 

The CIA’s OS file makes no mention of these similarities. Indeed, the OS goes out of its way to portray Nagell as a mentally disturbed individual, while at the same time conducting an extensive investigation into six names listed under “CIA” in Nagell’s notebook. Each name had a check mark beside it. One was “J. Sloss,” who the OS concluded was likely John Richard Sloss, a longtime employee with the Agency’s Senior [sic; Security] Research Staff. According to a March 3, 1965 memo [emphasis added; see my previous post on this 3/03/65 memo, above] to the OS from the Chief of the Research Branch, Sloss had been “granted a ‘Q’ Clearance in October 1963” — higher than Top Secret — while subsequently being polygraphed in 1964 “regarding giving CIA documents or classified information to unauthorized persons [and] contact with a possible Communist sympathizer.”

Sloss’s name has never come up in connection with the assassination, but his appearance in Nagell’s notebook certainly adds credence to the likelihood that Nagell was engaged in intelligence-gathering activities. The OS file goes on to describe Nagell’s having walked into the American Embassy in Mexico City in the fall of 1962, saying that he wanted to renounce his citizenship. Three autumns earlier, ex-Marine Oswald had done the same thing in Moscow in an alleged “defection” with radar secrets to the Soviet Union, where he remained until the summer of 1962. The OS document on Nagell cites an FBI interview with Fred Morton, the district attorney in the El Paso bank case, that Nagell also “allegedly turned over secret material to Soviet agents while in the Military Service.”

So the pattern of both their lives make it appear that Oswald and Nagell were staunch leftists and even enemies of the state. But were they? Or was something else going on? According to a not-previously-seen CIA interview about Nagell with a Colonel Ned Glenn (March 24, 1964), the colonel and Nagell had in the 1950s both been attached “to an Intelligence Branch of the United States Army in the Far East.” Nagell was “a member of the US Army Counterintelligence Corps in Japan,” designated as the 3rd Operations Group, until “terminating in about 1958.” 

That was the same timeframe when Oswald served as a Marine radar operator at the Atsugi Naval Air base in Japan. Nagell told this author in 1975 that he’d had a “purposeful, but casual acquaintance” with Oswald while both were stationed there.

FBI files released some years ago had cryptic references to a Nagell-Oswald relationship, and are quoted anew in the OS document. On December 19, 1963, Nagell had “advised Special Agents of the El Paso Office of the FBI that ‘for the record’ he would like to say that his association with LEE HARVEY OSWALD was purely social and that he had met OSWALD in Mexico City and in Texas.” (Nagell’s arrest outside the bank preceded Oswald’s alleged trip to Mexico City a week later; if accurate, Nagell would have been referring to an earlier sojourn). 

Then, on January 2, 1964, Nagell advised agents of both the FBI and Secret Service “that he had been acquainted with MARINA, the wife of LEE HARVEY OSWALD. Subject further pointed out that OSWALD was having marital difficulties with Marina.” The Secret Service is on record as having interviewed Marina Oswald about Nagell, but no transcript or notes are known to exist — only the FBI’s assertion that a photo of Nagell was shown to her, and that she supposedly said she’d never seen him before.

The OS file also describes an FBI report of an earlier meeting Nagell had had with Bureau agents in Miami, on January 24, 1963: “Subject stated he wished to be advised if he was given a pistol with a silencer and possibly some microfilm by sources — Cuban, Russian or both — from Mexico City through a Cuban in Miami — if he would be permitted to return these items to his contact so he could be of further use to the United States Government … He gave the impression that he was better at determining what the enemy is up to than the agencies regularly handling these matters, except the FBI.” Nagell also “claimed he had the names of all Americans involved in activities against the United States in a safe deposit box, the key to which he gave to a close friend in the event of his death.” 

So the Nagell files also point to his involvement in some kind of counterintelligence (CI) operation, one that could well have overlapped with Oswald. Indeed, a number of other newly released files, pertaining to Nagell’s mysterious 1968 arrest in East Germany upon release from prison, bear routing initials of “CI,” a subject we will take up in Part 2 of this article. 

While the OS release on Nagell contains no smoking guns, it’s obvious he was far more than a “lone nut” whose temporary insanity brought about his arrest outside the El Paso bank. That defense, upheld by a US appellate court, would eventually be the basis of his release — after Judge Homer Thornberry had sentenced Nagell to the maximum ten years, oddly enough “with the provision he may be released at any time the U.S. Bureau of Prisons decides.” 

According to the CIA’s Office of Security, “A ten-year prison sentence does seem harsh,” although “NAGELL’s complaint that he was ‘salted away’ is open to speculation.” The same previously classified file adds: “His story of being involved in espionage is not fully contradicted by evidence.” 

That evidence, briefly mentioned in the OS material, includes an article that appeared in the El Paso Times (January 27, 1964) concerning Nagell’s arraignment for attempted bank robbery. It was headlined: “Suspect Says Agents Asked Him About Oswald, Activities Link.” According to the article, Nagell “said he had been questioned by the FBI and the US Secret Service, regarding alleged subversive activities and also Lee Harvey Oswald … Nagell’s assertions came when he was attempting to have some documents and photographs returned to him.” 

They never were. Judge Thornberry, President Johnson’s close friend, apparently made sure of that. 

https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/avoid-linked-jfk-assassination-get-locked/

[Mitch Todd]

I notice the video does not explain how Nagell had the names of several CIA officers in his notebook. Anyone who claims that Nagell was insane (he most certainly was not) and that he was only a low-level counter-intel officer in the Army needs to explain how in the world he could have known the names of not one or two but six CIA officers.

Here is where my decades of intel experience gives me a broader, deeper perspective. I worked with several Army counter-intel guys. For nearly a year, my direct operational boss was an Army counter-intel guy. I got briefed at least 15 times by Army counter-intel officers/officials. I worked at two NSA sites. I worked several joint intel assignments where we had guys from several three-letter intel agencies, including the CIA. Personally, I never knew of any CIA guys who would even use their real names on assignments, and certainly not in operations. Sometimes you would not even know when someone was CIA--they would be placed under the guise of working for a different agency, and you would find out later that they were CIA.

No Army counter-intel officer working under CIC or in any other CIA-connected capacity is going to know the names of six CIA personnel. That is not going to happen. He will work with one CIA contact, maybe two on rare occasions, and he probably won't even know the CIA guy's real name.

I can assure you that it is astonishing that an Army counter-intel guy would have, much less write down, the names of six CIA personnel. That is extremely suspicious and unusual. If you don't believe me, find someone who has had a TS/SCI clearance, with caveats, and who has worked joint intel assignments, and ask them what they would think if an Army counter-intel guy had the real names of six--not two or three, but six--CIA guys, and also wrote them down, even in a private notebook. I guarantee you they will tell you that this would be extremely unusual and would indicate that the Army counter-intel guy was much more than your usual counter-intel officer.

MG: I notice the video does not explain how Nagell had the names of several CIA officers in his notebook.

It's not actually clear if any of the names in Nagell's list are those of CIA personnel. He listed "F. Parker," "Mrs Guthries," "C. Churchill," "J. Sloss," "E. Leibacher," "J. Davanon," as well as "Richard Fecteau."

Richard Fecteau was indeed a CIA agent, who had the bad luck of being captured by the Communist Chinese government in the early '50's during a botched infiltration attempt. Fecteau's captivity was well publicized: China prosecuted him and sentenced him to 20 years for spying. His case was widely known long before Nagell was arrested in 1963.

Of the rest, the CIA was able people to find associated with the agency whose names were similar to those found in Nagell's notebook and who might have been in position to have come across him at some point, but was unable to determine whether or not any of then were actually a match. An initial and last name aren't a lot to go on when you're talking about an agency as large as the CIA. The CIA did not that they did have two employees named Ernst Leibacker and Joseph Francis Davanon working out of the Los Angeles Domestic Contact Service field office in the early 1960's, when Nagell was living in the LA area. The DCS was an inherently public-facing operation, so their names being in his notes would not be particularly eyebrow raising if they are indeed the same people in his notes.

Fecteau was CIA, but everyone knew that by 1963. Of the others, some, all, or none might have actually been associated with the Agency.

As for your own experiences, just because it was that way where you were working when you worked there does not mean that things were handled that way at other operations in the 50's and early 60's.

[Tom Graves]

MG: I notice the video does not explain how Nagell had the names of several CIA officers in his notebook.

It's not actually clear if any of the names in Nagell's list are those of CIA personnel. He listed "F. Parker," "Mrs Guthries," "C. Churchill," "J. Sloss," "E. Leibacher," "J. Davanon," as well as "Richard Fecteau."

Richard Fecteau was indeed a CIA agent, who had the bad luck of being captured by the Communist Chinese government in the early '50's during a botched infiltration attempt. Fecteau's captivity was well publicized: China prosecuted him and sentenced him to 20 years for spying. His case was widely known long before Nagell was arrested in 1963.

Of the rest, the CIA was able people [sic] to find associated with the agency whose names were similar to those found in Nagell's notebook and who might have been in position to have come across him at some point but was unable to determine whether or not any of then were actually a match. An initial and last name aren't a lot to go on when you're talking about an agency as large as the CIA. The CIA did not [sic] that they did have two employees named Ernst Leibacker and Joseph Francis Davanon working out of the Los Angeles Domestic Contact Service field office in the early 1960's, when Nagell was living in the LA area. The DCS was an inherently public-facing operation, so their names being in his notes would not be particularly eyebrow raising, if they are indeed the same people in his notes.

Fecteau was CIA, but everyone knew that by 1963. Of the others, some, all, or none might have actually been associated with the Agency.

As for your own experiences, just because it was that way where you were working when you worked there does not mean that things were handled that way at other operations in the 50's and early 60's.

See my earlier posts on J. Sloss.

Regarding your comment, ". . . if they are indeed the same people in his notes," Ernst Leibacker and Joseph Francis Davanon are unusual names, wouldn't you agree?

What's the probability that they just happened to have the same names of two LA CIA officers, but, in reality, were just too guys Nagell happened to know at his favorite bar or from his bowling league?

[Benjamin Cole]

Nagell himself claimed to be a double agent, and that he was assigned by Moscow to interdict LHO, who had been trained to assassinate JFK.

Unfortunately, Nagell appeared troubled. Also, the provenance of whatever was in his lawyer's office papers is unverified, including the dubious Hidell ID card, which was likely fabricated after 11/22.

That there was interaction between LHO and G2 and KGB all along the line in the second half of 1963 is indisputable. That Castro threatened the Kennedy brothers in September '63 with a revenge assassination attempt is matter of historical record.

The US Ambassador to Mexico, Thomas Mann, and the State Department staffer Charles Thomas, both thought there was a lot to the Cuba-LHO connection, and they were both shut down.

In some circles, the LHO as G2-KGB asset version of the JFKA is heresy. I am open minded.

Nagell? I don't know. When intel agencies say "So-and-so was too unstable to ever be a staffer," that may be true, but manipulating a troubled soul may still be on the table.

[Gerry Down]

Sometimes you would not even know when someone was CIA--they would be placed under the guise of working for a different agency, and you would find out later that they were CIA.

Doesnt this employ that as part of your job (great to have someone of your experience on the forum by the way), you got to know the names of several CIA agents, even though it might be some time after you had worked with an individual that you became aware they were CIA.

I wonder if its possible that Nagell compiled a list of CIA officers, or people he suspected to be CIA, as a result of his intelligence work, and kept a list of them in his notebook in case he needed to make contact with the CIA at any stage and therefore he would have a list of potential CIA people to go to.

It sounds like, as a result of your work, you could easily compile a list of 6 or more CIA officers. And while it might seem odd to you to have written down their names in a notebook, if you were someone like Nagell who suffered from mental problems, you can see how Nagell might have written their names down in a notebook in case he ever wanted to make contact with the CIA.

[Fred Litwin]

The CIA said that Nagell might of known of Parker, Churchill and Guthrie through their work in the far east. Nagell lived in LA as did Leibacker and Davanon - he might have had some contact
with the Domestic Contact Office.

[Michael T. Griffith]

It sounds like, as a result of your work, you could easily compile a list of 6 or more CIA officers.

No way. I might be able to guess the names of one or two CIA officers from among the guys I worked with, but not six. (Obviously, this does not include the one or two guys who I later learned were CIA.)   

If you doubt me, talk to anyone who has worked in joint assignments in the intel field and who had at least a TS clearance. They will tell you it is astonishing that Nagell knew the names of six CIA personnel, not to mention that he wrote them down.

Nagell's notebook contained names of six persons who would much later be identified as CIA personnel. (The names were submitted by the FBI to the CIA in October '63 and were eventually verified by the CIA as being names of actual employees.)

And while it might seem odd to you to have written down their names in a notebook, if you were someone like Nagell who suffered from mental problems, you can see how Nagell might have written their names down in a notebook in case he ever wanted to make contact with the CIA.

Nagell had an excellent memory, as we'll see in a moment. There is a big difference between having neurological issues due to brain trauma (plane crash) and being insane. There is a big difference between excessively suspicious and being crazy. Nagell was quite lucid and intelligent. Nagell also had a drinking problem off and on. So did William Harvey. So did many other intel personnel.

The psychiatric exam reprinted in the CIA OS file notes that Nagell was "of superior intelligence and shows a remarkable memory for dates and names" ("Psychiatrist's Report on Richard Case Nagell," October 29, 1968, p. 3). Nagell admitted that he was prone to be "highly suspicious" of others, which he himself also described as "chronically paranoid," and that he tended to "impute intentions where none may exist." Trust me: Lots of counter-intel guys fit this description to a tee, but they are most certainly not insane. The psych exam concluded that Nagell showed "no overt evidence of psychosis" (p. 4), and that "he is not psychotic and seems competent in a legal and psychiatric sense" (p. 5).

The CIA said that Nagell might of known of Parker, Churchill and Guthrie through their work in the far east.

Oh, come on, Fred! Occam's Razor! No ordinary Army CI guy working in the Far East would have known the names of three CIA officers. He might, might, might have known the name of one officer, if that officer was his POC or operational handler at the time, and that's assuming the CIA officer was using his real name.

Nagell lived in LA as did Leibacker and Davanon - he might have had some contact with the Domestic Contact Office.

Again, come on! More reaching and straining and avoidance of Occam's Razor. Fred, you have no idea what you are talking about. You don't understand how stove-piped and carefully guarded CIA operations were at the time (and largely still are). Contact between Army intel offices and CIA offices was strictly regimented by "need to know" protocols.

The problem is that you are determined, no matter what, to dismiss Nagell as an unimportant nut who had no high-level intel connections.

The CIA OS file documents that Nagell was an Army counter-intel officer. He attended and graduated from the Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, Maryland. That school later moved to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and I myself attended that school and had friends who were instructors there. When you graduate from that school, you become part of the Army's intelligence corps (aka command). The CIA OS file also confirms that Nagell worked in counter-intelligence assignments in Korea and Japan. Military counter-intel guys sometimes work with CIA guys, but only if they are working as part of a CIA-controlled operation. The CIA oversees military counter-intel operations, just as NSA oversees military signals intelligence operations.

And then there is the fact that Nagell had a military ID with Oswald's name and signature on it but with Nagell's photo on it. Where and how did Nagell get this ID card?

You argue that the Nagell-Oswald military ID was not found on Nagell when he was arrested because it is not listed in any of the property reports. However, we know that the police and SS property lists are not complete: The police report doesn't mention a military ID, yet the SS report does. And, neither the police report nor the SS report mentions the notebook, much less that it listed six CIA agents. Yet, someone clearly knew that he possessed the notebook when he was arrested because the CIA OS file acknowledges that he did. Thus, it is not a convincing to argue, as you do, that he did not have the Nagell-Oswald military ID when he was arrested because it's not listed in the police property list and is not expressly listed in the SS property list (although the SS list does include a military ID).