On November 25, 1963, the CIA used a Nicaraguan informant to generate the “Oswald was paid” story, and on the following day, November 26, the CIA’s Mexico City station sent a cable to Headquarters stating, “At this moment, station officer and local security officer are interviewing Nicaraguan who claims that on 18 September he saw Lee Oswald receive six thousand five hundred dollars in meeting inside Cuban Embassy.”
The Nicaraguan was eventually identified in declassified CIA documents as Gilberto Alvarado Ugarte, “a well known Nicaraguan Communist underground member who was an informant of a Nicaraguan Security Service officer who was, in turn, a CIA source.”
Alvarado first “called the American Embassy” on Monday, November 25, and later met with two Embassy security officers. He told them directly that he saw the Cubans pay Oswald $6,500, which would be more than $55,000 in the year 2021. Alvarado then repeated his story to a CIA “station officer” on November 26, after which he was “interrogated” by two CIA officers.
Four days later, on November 30, 1963, one day after President Johnson established the Warren Commission to prevent a nuclear war due to Castro’s alleged involvement in killing President Kennedy, Alvarado “admitted to Mexican security officials in writing that his whole story of having seen Lee Oswald receive money in the Cuban embassy in Mexico City was false.”
The CIA stated, “Alvarado clearly was a trained intelligence agent.”
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called President Johnson on November 29 and told him that the Cuban payoff story is “giving us a great deal of trouble.” But when Hoover called Johnson, the President was apparently unaware of an internal CIA cable two days earlier in which the CIA stated there is “mounting evidence that Alvarado is fabricating his story of seeing Oswald take money in the Cuban Embassy . . . . We find it incredible that the Cubans would brief and pay an assassin in front of a stranger.”
Another internal CIA cable on November 27 said Oswald “applied for unemployment insurance in New Orleans on 17 September,” one day before he was allegedly taking a payoff at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, and the cable states that Oswald’s “New Orleans landlady believes he was there continuously between 17 and 25 September.” This cable, too, said the information “gives further reason to believe Alvarado is fabricating,” but as with the other cable on November 27, Johnson was obviously not informed of it.
A CIA Memo for the Record on November 27 also addresses Oswald’s whereabouts when he was supposedly at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico. It states, “A check of airlines indicates that he did not leave New Orleans that day or the following one, and every indication, including the statements by his landlady, would lead to the conclusion that he remained in New Orleans until 25 September 1963.”
As noted earlier, on November 23 the CIA’s Mexico City station did a “complete recheck” of “all visitors” to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies from September 1 through the “first half November,” and it “shows no evidence Oswald visit,” which by itself would prove that Alvarado was lying about seeing Oswald at the Cuban Embassy on September 18.
Besides keeping President Johnson in the dark about Alvarado’s story being a fabrication, CIA Director and KGB officer John McCone sent a cable to President Johnson’s National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, on November 27 vouching for Alvarado and his credibility.
McCone stated that Alvarado had been questioned “until 2 a.m. this morning,” and “the wealth of detail Alvarado gives about events and personalities involved with Oswald in Cuban Embassy is striking.” McCone also stated that the CIA officer who questioned Alvarado “was impressed by Alvarado,” who “is now hiding” in a CIA safe house.
And to add weight to the idea that there was now solid information linking Castro to the assassination, McCone ominously warned, “We cannot guarantee Alvarado’s safety.”
An internal CIA cable from the following day, November 28, states that an “investigation of Oswald’s activities” had determined that Oswald “was in New Orleans on September 19, 1963,” one day after he was allegedly in Mexico taking a payoff. It also states that the CIA “can confidently regard Alvarado as fabricator” and that Alvarado “might respond to the suggestion that he has been having delusions and needs psychiatric treatment,” but as with the two cables and the memo from the previous day, Johnson was not informed of it.
CIA Director John McCone had a meeting with President Johnson early on November 28, but McCone did not inform the President of Alvarado’s deception. McCone did, however, send a letter to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and he included a “Memorandum for the President through Mr. McGeorge Bundy” in which McCone once again vouched for Alvarado.
McCone informed Johnson in his wordy “Memorandum for the President through Mr. McGeorge Bundy” that in his meeting with Johnson that day, “Time prevented me from mentioning this morning’s developments in Mexico City.”
The memorandum started out with McCone’s “developments,” which recapped in precise detail everything about Oswald’s alleged visit to Mexico at the end of September and who Alvarado was and his story about an alleged payoff to Oswald on September 18. It also recapped how the CIA was “holding Alvarado voluntarily in a safe house” and “checking every detail of his story.” (Johnson was already aware of all these alleged “developments.”)
As with his cable to Bundy the day before, McCone harped on Alvarado’s credibility, telling Johnson that Alvarado “has advised our station in great detail of his alleged knowledge that he actually saw Oswald given $6,500 in the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City on September 18th.” McCone’s November 28 memorandum sounds like a repeat of his November 27 cable, and McCone is obviously trying to communicate that he just cannot get over how Alvarado is giving details of a conspiracy involving Castro, even if he did write that Alvarado’s “knowledge” of a Cuban payoff to Oswald was now seen as “alleged knowledge.”
The only thing that would cast a negative light on Alvarado’s story was relatively hidden in the fifth paragraph of McCone’s eight-paragraph memorandum. The entirety of the memorandum was worded in such a way as to give weight to Alvarado’s story and the possibility of Cuban involvement, and unless Johnson himself carefully read the memorandum, he would miss that McCone stated in the fifth paragraph, “We doubt the story.”
The sixth paragraph mentions Sylvia Duran’s arrest, stating, “This arrest has caused several telephone conversations between the Cuban Ambassador in Mexico and President Dorticos in which Dorticos has expressed great concern over money matters.”
McCone then blatantly lied about Dorticos’s “great concern over money matters,” stating, “It is somewhat obscure, however, whether his concern runs to a disclosure or an attempt by the Mexican authorities to bribe Sylvia Duran into making a damaging statement.”
There was nothing “obscure” about what Dorticos said. Dorticos wanted to know if Sylvia Duran told Mexican authorities that the Cubans “had offered money to the American.” In another conversation that evening, Dorticos focused on whether “she had been threatened so that she would declare that the people at the Consulate had given money to this person, the American.”
McCone knew perfectly well that there was nothing in the conversation about “Mexican authorities” trying to “bribe Sylvia Duran” (see first post) and the only other explanation that McCone proffered for Dorticos’s “great concern over money matters” is that it is an amazing “disclosure” that Cuba paid Oswald to kill President Kennedy.
To further his objective of promoting how potentially ominous Alvarado’s story was, CIA Director John McCone wrote in the seventh paragraph, “At the moment, it seems that Alvarado’s statement cannot be verified because of the dates or for other reasons. However, the investigation will continue.”
“Seems” that it cannot be “verified” is a far cry from saying that Alvarado’s story is patently false and ridiculous and that there is no need for further investigation.
McCone’s memorandum “through Bundy” was clearly designed to keep President Johnson in the dark about Alvarado’s deception so that Johnson would fear the possibility of Cuban involvement.
McCone did, however, call President Johnson on November 30, one day after Johnson established the Warren Commission, and said, “We had a phone call from Mexico City that this fellow Alvarado that I was telling you about this morning . . . signed a statement that all the statements that he made in connection with that matter had been false . . . . Apparently there is no such truth in it at all . . . . So this looks like it probably washes out entirely.”
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