CIA Headquarters sent a cable to the Mexico City station on November 23 instructing them to send a CIA officer “with all photos” of Oswald at the Soviet and Cuban Embassies “to HQ on next available flight.”
But the CIA’s Mexico City station sent back a cable on November 23 stating they had done a “complete recheck” of the photographs of “all visitors” to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies from September 1 through the “first half November,” and it “shows no evidence Oswald visit,” and a CIA memorandum on December 13, 1963 states, “None of our several photo observation points in Mexico City had ever taken an identifiable picture of Lee Oswald.”
A 1967 CIA memorandum confirms, “No photograph was taken, acquired, or received of Oswald alone or with any individual in front of the Cuban Embassy, the Soviet Embassy, or anywhere else in Mexico.”
The CIA documented that their “criteria for selecting subjects for photographing” is as follows: “If the target is unknown, and/or a previous photograph has not been taken, the observer takes one.” (Oswald was unknown and the CIA did not have a “previous photograph” of him.)
A CIA memorandum on November 27, 1963, states, “We have photographic coverage during daylight hours,” and “their consulates are located in the embassies and therefore the coverage of the embassies would include coverage of the consulates. The photographic coverage of the mentioned installations is of a continuous nature during daylight hours.”
Another CIA memo states that during September 1963, Soviet Embassy hours were from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and “offices in the Soviet compound may be visited by appointment only.” It also states, “Visitors may enter the Cuban Consulate” from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday.
The CIA documented that Sylvia Duran, the Cuban Consulate employee who spoke with the KGB officer impersonating Oswald, “works at the Cuban Consulate from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. daily.”
Oswald’s alleged visits would have clearly occurred “during daylight hours” when the “photographic coverage” of the embassies “is of a continuous nature.” If Oswald had made six visits to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies, CIA observers at each embassy would have had ample opportunity to take several pictures of him coming and going.
In 1975, the CIA claimed they had no photograph of Oswald visiting the Cuban Embassy on Friday, September 27, 1963, because, “The camera, based upon the recollection of officers still in service at headquarters, was down on the 27 because of mechanical malfunction.”
But on November 23, when the CIA’s Mexico City station did a “complete recheck” of the photographs of all visitors to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies from September 1 through the first half November, the complete recheck that “shows no evidence Oswald visit,” they made no mention of a malfunctioning camera at the Cuban Embassy on September 27.
The allegedly malfunctioning camera explained only why Oswald was not photographed visiting the Cuban Embassy on Friday, September 27, but as for the alleged visit to the Soviet Embassy on that day, the CIA stated, “Why Oswald was missed in his probable entry to the Soviet installation on the 27th is not yet explained,” which means they have no explanation.
And as for no photographs of Oswald during his alleged visits to the two embassies on Saturday, September 28, the CIA claimed, “Both the Cuban and Soviet Embassies were closed to the public on Saturdays,” and “photographic coverage was normally suspended” on Saturdays.
How could Oswald have visited either embassy on Saturday, September 28, if both embassies were closed to the public that day?
Three years later, in 1978, the CIA came up with a new story in a memorandum to the House Select Committee on Assassinations about the “camera bases” at the Soviet Embassy, stating, “There were two separate bases which covered the Soviet gate,” and one camera base “was not working on September 28, 1963, a Saturday, although it did work four out of the eight Saturdays in September and October 1963 . . . . Coverage for the Soviet gate on Saturdays was standard operating procedure.”
So, the new story is that photographic coverage was not suspended on Saturdays, but they had no photograph of Oswald coming and going from the Soviet Embassy due to one of the two cameras not working on some Saturdays, whereas their previous story was that the camera covering the Cuban Embassy was not working on Friday, September 27.
Again, there had been no mention of a malfunctioning camera when the CIA’s Mexico station did the “complete recheck” of all visitors to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies from September 1 through the first half of November. And since they were specifically looking for photographs of Oswald on September 27 and 28, it certainly would have been important to say something about cameras not functioning on those two particular days.
The CIA’s 1978 story continues by stating the other camera base covering the Soviet Embassy “would have been working on the afternoon of the 27th and on Saturday the 28th,” but it is “the base whose production is unaccountably missing. The Agency has not as yet offered any explanation as to why the production is ‘missing.’”
The CIA “acknowledged” to the Assassination Records Review Board that back in 1963, the Mexico City station had “three photographic surveillance operations targeting the Soviet compound; and one photographic surveillance operation, which employed at least two cameras, targeting the Cuban compound.”
On March 12, 1964, the Warren Commission told the CIA that no government agency could “fill in the very large gaps still existing in Lee Harvey Oswald’s visit to Mexico.” The Commission also stated “there were many days during which we knew nothing about his whereabouts” and “the evenings of his entire trip were unaccounted for.”
Further, the Warren Commission stated the “registry” at the hotel where Oswald allegedly stayed “showed the name of Oswald,” but the hotel clerk “completely denies any other memory of Oswald’s being at the hotel . . . . All the subordinate hotel personnel, such as cleaning ladies, etc., likewise deny any memory of Oswald,” and a CIA document from December 1963 addresses Oswald’s alleged time in Mexico, stating, “No source then at our disposal had ever actually seen Lee Oswald while he was in Mexico.”
Two Church Committee staffers examined the CIA’s records on Oswald and the alleged Mexico visit, and in correspondence to another staffer, they wrote, “The unidentified individual visited the Soviet Embassy on October 1 and October 4, 1963 and impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald.”
The staffers also wrote that according to “a dispatch from Mexico City to Headquarters,” the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division Chief “knew the identity of the individual.”
The evidence is overwhelming that it was not Oswald at either the Soviet Embassy or the Cuban Embassy, but the entire cover-up hinged on Oswald’s alleged visits to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies, which would cause President Johnson to fear that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban Premier Fidel Castro were behind President Kennedy’s assassination.
The Church Committee Report states, “For the first twenty-four hours after the assassination, the CIA’s attention focused primarily on Oswald’s September 27, 1963, visit to Mexico City.”
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