Cuba's Investigation into Mexico City: "It Was Oswald"

[Steve M. Galbraith]

The top Cuban counter intelligence officer Fabian Escalante reported in his book "The Cuban Files: The Untold Story of the Plot to Kill Kennedy" that Cuban intelligence investigated the assassination of JFK and specifically the allegations that Lee Oswald visited their Embassy and Consulate in Mexico City two months before the event. In the course of their investigation among other things they traced every person who was working at the Consulate at that time. As a result, they said they found two additional eyewitnesses, in addition to the three previously known (Duran, Azcue and Mirabal), who were at the Consulate and who said they saw Oswald during his visit (note: Azcue said he didn't believe the man was Oswald).

Along with other evidence, the Cuban government concluded that it was indeed Oswald who visited the consulate.

So we have the Cubans saying it was the real Oswald; the Soviets saying it was the real Oswald; and the Americans saying it was the real Oswald. And the conspiracy response to this is? They all lied? Mistaken? Fooled? Or what?

From the Escalanate book:

[Charles Collins]

LHO wrote the letter to the Russian Embassy saying he was there. But he lied to the investigators in DPD about it. This was just another one of LHO’s compulsive lies. His brother Robert said he despised LEOs and liked to try to show that he could “outsmart” them. I suspect LHO was just lying to mess with them, or at least to not cooperate with them.

[Dan O'meara]

Everyone accepts that Oswald defected to Russia.
Why not accept he just visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico?
What's the problem?

[Steve M. Galbraith]

It seems obvious that if the person below impersonated Oswald at the Soviet Embassy and Cuban consulate that both Moscow and Havana would have exposed it, would have been telling the world about the act of deception. Screaming it in fact. They wouldn't hold it back. After all they both blamed the CIA for the assassination; why not include this into their allegation?

But like "the dog that didn't bark" was a clue the fact they didn't bark, didn't expose it certainly seems to me evidence - not proof but along with the other information pretty powerful evidence - that it *was* Oswald. Add the fact that both intelligence agencies investigated the incident (Oleg Nechiporenko quotes from the report by the head of the KGB who said it was Oswald) and concluded it was Oswald then what more do we need? We have, then, the Soviet investigation and the above Cuban investigation. Add the American investigation and what more is needed?

What's the other explanation? They were fooled by this person? A four year old can tell you it's not Oswald. And yes I know about the next allegation: "But what about the phone calls??!"

[Martin Weidmann]

It seems obvious that if the person below impersonated Oswald at the Soviet Embassy and Cuban consulate that both Moscow and Havana would have exposed it, would have been telling the world about the act of deception. Screaming it in fact. They wouldn't hold it back. After all they both blamed the CIA for the assassination; why not include this into their allegation?

But like "the dog that didn't bark" was a clue the fact they didn't bark, didn't expose it certainly seems to me evidence - not proof but along with the other information pretty powerful evidence - that it *was* Oswald. Add the fact that both intelligence agencies investigated the incident (Oleg Nechiporenko quotes from the report by the head of the KGB who said it was Oswald) and concluded it was Oswald then what more do we need? We have, then, the Soviet investigation and the above Cuban investigation. Add the American investigation and what more is needed?

What's the other explanation? They were fooled by this person? A four year old can tell you it's not Oswald. And yes I know about the next allegation: "But what the phone calls??!"

The whole "Oswald in Mexico" thing is only significant as a way to color Oswald in the most negative way possible. In no other murder case it would matter where the suspect was weeks prior to the murder. It's only an issue in the Kennedy case and one can only wonder why.

The real question that is never asked is why it is of such importance where Oswald was weeks prior to the assassination when at the same time it's being claimed (by some LN's) that Oswald did not decide to kill Kennedy until 24 to 48 hours before the actual murder.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Here is Escalante's conclusion - I assume Cuban intelligence too since his was based on their investigation - as to why Oswald went to Mexico City and visited the Cuban consulate there: he/they say Oswald was a CIA operative/agent sent to blame Havana for the assassination. But that's completely illogical since it was the same CIA that disproved all of the allegations about Oswald meeting Cuban agents at a party or receiving money to assassinate JFK.

So, Escalanate has the CIA creating the allegations to blame Havana but then ignores the fact that it was, again, the CIA that exposed them for being just that: rumors. And the reason Oswald went there was - as Marina explained - to defect to Cuba, to leave the hated US. It's typical JFK conspiracy thinking where logic and reason and facts are ignored in service to the theory. I'm not surprised that a Cuban apparatchik like Escalanate would believe it; but why would normal people believe it?

[Steve M. Galbraith]

The "Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City" allegation has been promoted for decades by conspiracy believers - NOT by lone assassin advocates - who say that an Oswald double was sent by the real assassins of JFK, usually it's claimed it was the CIA, to connect Oswald and the assassination to Cuba or the Soviet Union. It was all part of the plan to kill JFK and blame others for some benefit. To justify the removal of Castro, to stop the investigation because it would lead to WWIII, to...well, who knows. They still make the claims today even after all of these revelations indicating it was Oswald and not an impostor.

The claim that this has been a lone assassin issue to use against Oswald is simply wrong from beginning to end. The middle too. It's the conspiracists who have been promoting it. Lone assassin believers have been knocking it down not promoting it.

Here is an entire section at the Mary Ferrell website where the conspiracy authors claim Oswald was impersonated, where it was part of a CIA drug running operation, where Oswald was with CIA sponsored Phiadelphia Quakers (??) and other craziness: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Oswald_in_Mexico_City.html

As for Oswald: This event, his visit, shows that he was willing to completely abandon his pregnant wife and young child, leave them on their own with nothing, defect to a communist country (again) leaving a hated America behind (again), and then behaving like - according to the Cubans and Soviets - an erratic, unstable, paranoid man, a man who said he was being hunted by the US government and that, after pulling out a revolver, saying that if "they don't leave me alone, I'm going to defend myself!"

What does that say about him? To me this is not a well man, he's desperate and angry and unstable. If you think this person was normal, not a danger, then what would it take to prove otherwise?

But again this has been a side argument not a main one: it's been the conspiracists who have obsessed over the Mexico City matter not lone assassin believers.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

LHO wrote the letter to the Russian Embassy saying he was there. But he lied to the investigators in DPD about it. This was just another one of LHO’s compulsive lies. His brother Robert said he despised LEOs and liked to try to show that he could “outsmart” them. I suspect LHO was just lying to mess with them, or at least to not cooperate with them.

Yes, one of the interesting parts of this matter is how he behaved, what he told the Soviets and Cubans, what he planned to do. If the Cubans give him that visa then he's gone, he's off to Havana to build a new life. How do the conspirators frame him then? All of their efforts are gone, he's in Cuba. How would they know he wouldn't be able to get that transit visa?

This is another example of the long list of things the so-called conspirators simply couldn't control, couldn't manage. From where Oswald was at the time of the shooting to this and everything in between the ability of these conspirators was limited. In conspiracy world there simply seems to be no limits to what they could do: fake films and photos that fool experts 60 years later, order people to commit crimes and have them remain silent for the rest of their lives and on and on.

It's been more than half a century and over that time multiple generations of Americans in government and outside have looked into this tragedy. There's no there there. As Robert Oswald said, "Asking questions is good, it's right. But after the tenth time, the twentieth, enough already."