The CIA used Oswald as the initial fall guy so that LBJ would fear Khrushchev and Castro were behind the assassination, which is what made the phony Mexico City trip so important. LBJ had fears of a nuclear war and established the WC with a "no conspiracy" mandate.
Oswald was a CIA asset, and the upper echelons of the U.S. intelligence community were focused on Oswald two weeks before President Kennedy was assassinated.
On November 8, 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a letter to the CIA Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Helms, with fourteen pages of information on Oswald, the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” that Oswald joined in the spring of 1963, and on a group of anti-Castro Cubans with whom Oswald had a confrontation while passing out pro-Castro leaflets on August 9, 1963.
Hoover’s information said that the FBI had interviewed Oswald “at his request” in the “First District Police Station” in New Orleans on August 10, 1963, the day after he was arrested for scuffling with anti-Castro Cubans. While speaking with the FBI, Oswald expounded on “A.J. Hidell,” who, according to Oswald, had enlisted him to pass out the pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans.
Oswald also told the FBI that he received two membership cards from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He received the first card, which had been signed by the Executive Secretary Vincent Lee, in late May 1963, and then “a short time later,” Oswald received a membership card “signed A. J. Hidell” that “made him a member of the New Orleans chapter.”
The FBI report on the interview states, “Oswald had in his possession both cards and exhibited both of them . . . . He said that he had spoken with Hidell on the telephone on several occasions . . . . He said that he has never personally met Hidell.”
Oswald stated that he distributed the pro-Castro leaflets, which led to the scuffle and his arrest, because he “received a note through the mail from Hidell” requesting that he do so. The pro-Castro leaflets “bore the name of A. J. Hidell” and a “nonexistent” Post Office Box.
The CIA’s “Counterintelligence staff” first handled Hoover’s information, after which it went to the CIA’s “Special Activities Staff.” And on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination, Hoover’s information on how Oswald openly talked about being handled by someone named Hidell was being “processed” by the CIA’s “Special Investigations Office.”
Why would Hoover send fourteen pages of information on Oswald, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and anti-Castro Cubans to CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Helms two weeks before President Kennedy’s assassination if Oswald was not a CIA asset? And why was it handled by the CIA’s “Counterintelligence staff,” the CIA’s “Special Activities Staff,” and the CIA’s “Special Investigations Office?”
Oswald most definitely had a connection to the CIA, regardless of the fact that CIA Director and KGB officer John McCone would later testify to the Warren Commission that Oswald had absolutely no association whatsoever with the CIA.
When Oswald was being interrogated shortly before he was killed on November 24, 1963, he told Secret Service Inspector Thomas J. Kelley that he had received “a letter signed by Alex Hidell” after he wrote to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee headquarters in New York.
Again, if the name Hidell was an alias that Oswald was using, and Oswald had just shot the President of the United States with a rifle purchased under the name Hidell, why would Oswald expound on the name “Hidell” when talking to a Secret Service agent, which is exactly what he did when he talked to the FBI three months earlier?
As for McCone’s denial that Oswald had anything to do with the CIA, McCone was forewarned of exactly what he would be expected to say during his testimony.
On May 12, 1964, two days before his testimony, the Warren Commission’s General Counsel, Lee Rankin, called McCone and said in part, “All they want to deal with is the question of your knowledge about Oswald being an agent or informer or anything of that character . . . . This testimony is going to be made public. I thought you might want to keep that in mind.”
When McCone testified about Oswald, his exact words to the Warren Commission were, “The Agency never contacted him, interviewed him, talked with him, or received or solicited any reports or information from him, or communicated with him directly or in any other manner.”
But on November 6, 1961, Robert Amory, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Intelligence, sent a memorandum to the CIA Deputy Director for Plans on the subject of “Positive Intelligence Exploitation of Former Residents of the USSR.”
Amory’s purpose in sending the memorandum was to “reaffirm my strong interest in the positive intelligence exploitation of former residents of the USSR,” including repatriates and émigrés, “on a world-wide basis.” The Deputy Director wrote that the intelligence exploitation “requires screening the places of residence of as many former Soviet residents as possible,” which makes it obvious that it would have been CIA policy to contact both Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife, Marina.
Richard Helms, upon taking over as Deputy Director for Plans in February 1962, immediately replied to Amory. Four months before Oswald would return to the United States with his Russian wife after his two-and-a-half-year sojourn in the Soviet Union, Helms acknowledged the “continued interest” in the “intelligence exploitation of repatriates and other former residents of the USSR.”
Helms also stated, “All Headquarters components of this office,” meaning the CIA’s Directorate of Plans, “have been alerted to the importance of the intelligence potential inherent in the repatriate flow,” which, again, means it would have been important for the CIA to contact Oswald.
A memorandum dated November 25, 1963, from an obviously ranking CIA officer with “subordinates” states, “I remember that Oswald’s unusual behavior in the USSR had struck me from the moment I had read the first dispatch on him, and I told my subordinates something amounting to ‘Don’t push too hard to get the information we need because this individual looks odd.’
“We were particularly interested in the info Oswald might provide on the Minsk factory in which he had been employed, on certain sections of the city itself, and of course, we sought the usual biographic information that might develop foreign personality dossiers,” which is further proof that the CIA would have a reason to contact Oswald.
When Oswald was arrested on November 22, 1963, a reporter at Dallas Police Headquarters asked, “Did you shoot the President?”
Oswald replied, “No. They’ve taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy.”
After the WC was established due to LBJ's fear of a nuclear war, the CIA fed the WC information alleging that anti-Castro Cubans were behind the assassination, but in Katzenbach's memo to the White House, he not only said that the Commission should establish “some basis for rebutting the thought that this was a Communist conspiracy,” but also that the Commission needed to rebut the idea that it was “a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists.”
When the Warren Commission was formed, covering up the CIA’s information that anti-Castro Cubans killed President Kennedy was just as important as covering up the CIA’s initial information implicating Castro in the assassination.
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