Silvia Duran and the CIA

[Louis Earl]

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.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

The three senior KGB officers/Embassy officials who met Oswald in Mexico City were first interviewed in 1993 by the PBS Frontline program "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" Here are excerpts from that show.

FRONTLINE NARRATOR: At the Soviet embassy, he met with three consular officials. In fact, all three were KGB officers working under diplomatic cover. In this, their first interview, they recall that Oswald's hands were shaking and his behavior was erratic.

OLEG NECHIPORENKO, KGB: [through interpreter] We all thought the man had an unstable nervous system. He was extremely agitated.

VALERY KOSTIKOV, KGB: [through interpreter] During our talk, Oswald kept feeling in his pockets, taking out all sorts of papers. Then he took out a gun and put it in front of him. I sat opposite him. I took the gun away and put it on Pavel's desk.

Pavel Antonovich asked him, "Why did you come here with a gun? What do you need a gun for?" He said, "I'm afraid of the FBI. I'm being persecuted. I need a gun to protect myself, for my personal safety." That's what he said."

The three KGB officers were shown the photo that the CIA released. All said the man was not the person they met who said he was Oswald.

NARRATOR: But there is much evidence that the real Oswald was in Mexico City. At the Soviet embassy, all three KGB officers told FRONTLINE the man they met was the real Lee Harvey Oswald, not the man in the photograph the CIA released.

VALERY KOSTIKOV, KGB: [through interpreter] No, this is a completely different person. The Oswald who had visited our embassy and whose photographs I saw in many newspapers and on TV was completely different.

Source/link: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/oswald/transcript/

Nechiporenko wrote a book - "Passport to Assassination" - about the meeting. He said the man was indeed Lee Harvey Oswald and that the man in the photo did not identify himself as Oswald but was an American who had visited the Embassy before seeking a visa.

[Jerry Freeman]

Someone impersonating another person wouldn't, it seems obviously, act this way. Go back multiple time? Isn't once enough? And then act in an outward way that draws great attention to yourself?

Answered concisely above...attention is what was intended.

Further: Handwriting experts... concluded that the signature on the hotel register belonged to Oswald.

A forgery? Why not sign it 'Hidell'?

....wrote in a letter he sent to the Soviet Embassy that he went to MC and visited the Cuban consulate.

Then why would he staunchly deny ever being in Mexico when interrogated by Fritz?
21 pages were done on all this here-------
https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,1599.msg41639.html#msg41639

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Just one more and I promise to shut up.

This is the photo (immediately below) that the man who said he was Oswald gave to the Cubans (Duran) for his transit visa application. The Cuban government provided this to the HSCA investigation (you can see the two staples that were used to staple it to the application).



This is a photo of the man who some believe was impersonating Oswald.


It is obvious to anyone that the two men are different. Does anyone believe that Duran was given the top above photo but the man below was the actual person who was impersonating Oswald? And he gave the top above photo for his application to Duran? And she didn't realize the difference?

Imagine that you are Duran. The man in the second photo comes to you applying for a transit visa. He gives you the above top photo for the application. You look at it. You can see within a second that the photo is not of the man in front of you; it's a different person.

[Jerry Freeman]

Just one more and I promise to shut up.
... the photo that the man who said he was Oswald gave to the Cubans (Duran) for his transit visa application. The Cuban government provided this to the HSCA investigation (you can see the two staples that were used to staple it to the application).

Ms Duran was a Mexican national not a Cuban. A link/report---

Why did Duran refer to Oswald in her interrogations as "blonde and short," an identification subsequently omitted from accounts of the interrogation? Was she describing Oswald or an imposter? It should be noted here that Duran told the HSCA she believed that she dealt with the same man who was arrested in Dallas, though her colleague Eusebio Azcue told the HSCA he believed otherwise.

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Sylvia_Durans_Interrogation.html

... a photo of the man who some believe was impersonating Oswald. 
It is obvious to anyone that the two men are different.

Go look through that thread I linked.
There is no proof otherwise that he was deliberately impersonating Oswald.
 

Does anyone believe that Duran was given the top above photo but the man below was the actual person who was impersonating Oswald? And he gave the top above photo for his application to Duran? And she didn't realize the difference?

Who told you that Duran was shown that Russian embassy picture? I don't believe she was. Also...she could have just been given that Oswald photo [taken elsewhere besides Mexico]--the tie..the sweater.. all this discussed somewhere in that Oswald in Mexico thread. We were told that people said Lee Oswald was in Mexico. We were also told that Saddam had WMDs 
 

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Back to the original post/question. This is from Gus Russo's book "Live by the Sword":

"On the day after the assassination, CIA headquarters in Langley received a cable from the Mexico City Station informing them that the Mexican Police were detaining and planning to arrest Sylvia Duran... Headquarters immediately telephoned the Mexico Station ordering them to prevent the arrest. If Cuba was involved in the president's assassination, the CIA wanted to find out before the Mexico City police did.

Thomas Karamessines, Deputy to Richard Helms, the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans, has testified that "the CIA feared that the Cubans were responsible [for the assassination] and that Duran might reveal this during an interrogation...

The CIA was unsuccessful, however, in preventing the arrest, and was forced to settle for assisting Mexican authorities preparing the Duran interrogation questions. "

From the cable that Karamessines sent to the Mexico City Station:
"ARREST OF SYLVIA DURAN IS EXTREMELY SERIOUS MATTER WHICH COULD PREJUDICE [U.S. ] FREEDOM OF ACTION ON ENTIRE QUESTION OF [CUBAN] RESPONSIBILITY. WITH FULL REGARD FOR MEXICAN INTEREST, REQUEST YOU ENSURE THAT HER ARREST IS KEPT ABSOLUTELY SECRET, THAT NO INFORMATION FROM HER IS PUBLISHED OR LEAKED, THAT ALL SUCH INFO IS CABLED TO US, AND THAT FACT OF HER ARREST AND HER STATEMENTS ARE NOT SPREAD TO LEFTIST OR DISLOYAL CIRCLES IN THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT."

[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/