Reuben Reads Letters

[Dan O'meara]

Released document reveals the CIA had surveillance on Oswald in the months and weeks leading up to the assassination [as did the FBI]

“The memo shows that high-level CIA officers were interested in the smallest details of Oswald’s life 17 months before Kennedy was killed,” Jefferson Morley, an author of multiple books about the CIA, and about Kennedy, said on his blog, JFK Facts, after the revelation. “If Oswald was the ‘lone gunman,’ as a substantial minority of Americans believe, the clandestine service had much more access to his personal information than most know.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-jfk-documents-reveal-assassins-cia-monitor-was-jewish-spy-reuben-efron/

Do LNers find any of this weird?
It seems everyone knew the Presidential limo would be slowing down to a crawl as it turned in front of the building where this guy worked.
Yet no special attention was paid to this building, which had numerous windows open.
Is it sinister or does it reveal that the intelligence agencies were, in reality, bumbling fools who liked to give the impression of some kind of omnipotence?

[Charles Collins]

Released document reveals the CIA had surveillance on Oswald in the months and weeks leading up to the assassination [as did the FBI]

“The memo shows that high-level CIA officers were interested in the smallest details of Oswald’s life 17 months before Kennedy was killed,” Jefferson Morley, an author of multiple books about the CIA, and about Kennedy, said on his blog, JFK Facts, after the revelation. “If Oswald was the ‘lone gunman,’ as a substantial minority of Americans believe, the clandestine service had much more access to his personal information than most know.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-jfk-documents-reveal-assassins-cia-monitor-was-jewish-spy-reuben-efron/

Do LNers find any of this weird?
It seems everyone knew the Presidential limo would be slowing down to a crawl as it turned in front of the building where this guy worked.
Yet no special attention was paid to this building, which had numerous windows open.
Is it sinister or does it reveal that the intelligence agencies were, in reality, bumbling fools who liked to give the impression of some kind of omnipotence?

I liked the part about seeing two flying saucers….

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Released document reveals the CIA had surveillance on Oswald in the months and weeks leading up to the assassination [as did the FBI]

“The memo shows that high-level CIA officers were interested in the smallest details of Oswald’s life 17 months before Kennedy was killed,” Jefferson Morley, an author of multiple books about the CIA, and about Kennedy, said on his blog, JFK Facts, after the revelation. “If Oswald was the ‘lone gunman,’ as a substantial minority of Americans believe, the clandestine service had much more access to his personal information than most know.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-jfk-documents-reveal-assassins-cia-monitor-was-jewish-spy-reuben-efron/

Do LNers find any of this weird?
It seems everyone knew the Presidential limo would be slowing down to a crawl as it turned in front of the building where this guy worked.
Yet no special attention was paid to this building, which had numerous windows open.
Is it sinister or does it reveal that the intelligence agencies were, in reality, bumbling fools who liked to give the impression of some kind of omnipotence?

With the exception of the name of the agent - Efron - all of this, as I understand it, has been known since 1975. The HSCA has an extensive section on the mail opening program (HT-Lingual) that Oswald was placed on. When he returned from the Soviet Union in 1962 he was removed. According to the HSCA's investigation the CIA only intercepted one letter - this one from Oswald's mother - and no other ones even though he wrote something like 20 to his family and there were 50 in total he sent or received. They apparently missed the others which, if you read how the program was run, makes sense. The interceptions were done manually, by hand; they just grabbed things.

So if they were "closely monitoring" the "smallest details" then why just one letter? That's not "closely" monitoring him. That's just putting his name in a larger surveillance program; according to the HSCA there were over 300 names monitored. LHO was one of this group. Nothing special about him otherwise.

The HSCA section can be read here:  https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=800#relPageId=235&search=lingual. They have all of this except for the "RE" name, i.e., Efron.

Question: How is this *one* letter from his mother 17 months *before* the assassination something that the CIA should have told the Dallas Police about? What should they have told the Dallas Police? How did the CIA know Oswald worked in that building? Hosty, the FBI agent assigned to monitor Oswald, said he was told by Ruth Paine about the job and the building. But he testified that it meant nothing to him. If anyone dropped the ball it would have been Hosty and the FBI not the CIA. But again, why would he need to tell the Dallas Police about this oddball Oswald? Where is the threat?

I don't see how you can go from this one letter 17 months before Dallas to "the CIA should have told the Dallas Police about Oswald." How does it connect? The CIA's monitoring of Oswald, as I see it, ended when he returned from the USSR. At that point it was given to the FBI to keep track of him and Marina. The CIA was out of the loop. Am I wrong?

One more: If Oswald was a CIA agent, as some conspiracists believe, then why do they need to monitor him? He's one of their people. I guess one can respond that these other didn't know he was a CIA agent - compartmentalization and all of that - but wouldn't counter intelligence know this?

[Dan O'meara]

With the exception of the name of the agent - Efron - all of this, as I understand it, has been known since 1975. The HSCA has an extensive section on the mail opening program (HT-Lingual) that Oswald was placed on. When he returned from the Soviet Union in 1962 he was removed. According to the HSCA's investigation the CIA only intercepted one letter - this one from Oswald's mother - and no other ones even though he wrote something like 20 to his family and there were 50 in total he sent or received. They apparently missed the others which, if you read how the program was run, makes sense. The interceptions were done manually, by hand; they just grabbed things.

So if they were "closely monitoring" the "smallest details" then why just one letter? That's not "closely" monitoring him. That's just putting his name in a larger surveillance program; according to the HSCA there were over 300 names monitored. LHO was one of this group. Nothing special about him otherwise.

The HSCA section can be read here:  https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=800#relPageId=235&search=lingual. They have all of this except for the "RE" name, i.e., Efron.

Question: How is this *one* letter from his mother 17 months *before* the assassination something that the CIA should have told the Dallas Police about? What should they have told the Dallas Police? How did the CIA know Oswald worked in that building? Hosty, the FBI agent assigned to monitor Oswald, said he was told by Ruth Paine about the job and the building. But he testified that it meant nothing to him. If anyone dropped the ball it would have been Hosty and the FBI not the CIA. But again, why would he need to tell the Dallas Police about this oddball Oswald? Where is the threat?

I don't see how you can go from this one letter 17 months before Dallas to "the CIA should have told the Dallas Police about Oswald." How does it connect? The CIA's monitoring of Oswald, as I see it, ended when he returned from the USSR. At that point it was given to the FBI to keep track of him and Marina. The CIA was out of the loop. Am I wrong?

One more: If Oswald was a CIA agent, as some conspiracists believe, then why do they need to monitor him? He's one of their people. I guess one can respond that these other didn't know he was a CIA agent - compartmentalization and all of that - but wouldn't counter intelligence know this?

Firstly, Steve, I'm asking the question whether this is sinister, incompetence or something else.
That Oswald was on the radar of the intelligence community prior to the assassination can hardly be denied. Nowhere have I said that anyone should have told the DPD anything but I am saying that if any checks were done regarding the route of the motorcade, Oswald's name should surely have come up, him being a big commie and all [Hosty seemed to think he was capable of it].
It's interesting you think the CIA were so incompetent they could only intercept one of Oswald's letters.

Couldn't it be that the FBI/CIA were well aware of Oswald but just dropped the ball because they weren't the all-knowing entities they liked to present themselves as and that a lot of the shenanigans that came out later [and that had CTers in such a froth] consisted of the various intelligence agencies trying to erase any prior knowledge of Oswald, simply because it made them look like buffoons. But in getting caught out trying to erase prior knowledge of Oswald they came across as conspirators rather than incompetent [which they probably preferred].

The same sort of thing could be said of the DPD investigation. It was so unbelievably incompetent it had to be a cover-up.
That said, what better way to hide a cover-up than to look completely inept.