Yet another observation is that the letter points out that Oswald did not use his "real name" when he went to Mexico City. Oswald used the name Harvey Oswald Lee. The authorities initially insisted that it was just an error involving a comma, as his visa states "Lee, Harvey Oswald", but by late December 1963 even CIA officer John Whitten thought that it was deliberately caused by Oswald. Either Oswald is admitting that he had it written up that way on purpose, or those who put this letter together have deep knowledge of Oswald's activities.
Finally, the letter states: "I had not planned to contact the Soviet embassy in Mexico so they were unprepared, had I been able to reach the Soviet embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business."
Another aspect of this letter is that Ruth Paine was clear that she was going to provide this letter to the FBI. Hosty had been out to the house twice in early November, and had not yet made contact with Lee. Ruth was confident that Hosty was going to come back. Ruth was wondering whether the letter was "the talk of an agent reporting in".
Even though Ruth claims that Oswald made furtive gestures to hide the contents of the letter from her, the fact remains that Oswald left the letter right
there by the typewriter for Ruth to find.
Oswald also knew that letter was going to be seized by the FBI before it got to the Soviet embassy -- as indeed it was. As James Douglass suggests in a pithy analysis in his book JFK and the Unspeakable:
A melodramatic, CIA-monitored Oswald in Mexico City had tried to obtain an immediate Cuban visa. His letter arriving at the Soviet embassy in Washington on November 18 now attempts to document the presumed assassin's frustrated objective in Mexico City in September -- to travel to the much safer environment of Communist-controlled Havana in order "to complete our business" with the Soviets". As was true of all mail sent to the Soviet Embassy, the Oswald letter was intercepted, opened, and copied by the FBI before its eventual delivery to the embassy.
On November 26, the Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin sent a message to Moscow saying that "this letter was clearly a provocation", and that he believed that this typed letter was a forgery because Oswald's previous letters were handwritten.
(Actually, Oswald typed a letter to the CIA-friendly International Rescue Committee in 1962 -- and the Committee commented that Oswald's letter matched the typeface of a related letter from the State Department!)
Dobrynin concluded that "one gets the definite impression that the letter was concocted by those who, judging from everything, are involved in the President's assassination. It is possible that Oswald himself wrote the letter as it was dictated to him, in exchange for some promises, and then, as we know, he was simply bumped off after his usefulness had ended. The competent U.S. authorities are undoubtedly aware of this letter, since the embassy's correspondence is under constant surveillance." (Italics added.)
I conclude Oswald was wittingly or unwittingly manipulated to write this letter, hoping that he would finally get his visas to Cuba and the USSR. Ruth Paine said that Oswald was as "gay as I have ever seen him" on November 9, the date he wrote the letter. He was really happy after they went to the driver's license bureau and found out it was closed.
Like Oswald, Michael and Ruth Paine were manipulated to do the bidding of certain intelligence operatives.
This series will come to a close by bringing together all twelve of Oswald's legend makers in the Epilogue. How did these intelligence assets respond to the fateful events of 11/22/63?
- Bill Simpich
Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney and an antiwar activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A second big shout-out to Linda Minor, who just published an incredible multi-part series on the Paines this autumn. Also to Carol Hewett, Barbara Lamonica, Nancy Wertz, Steve Jones, Bill Kelly, the late George Michael Evica, Jim DiEugenio, Jim Douglass, and all the other "operations analysts" who have put in time to sort out the role of this enigmatic couple.
Fred Osborn, Sr., worked with Allen Dulles to form the Crusade for Freedom (CFF), an early CIA project that was modeled after Radio Free Europe: CFF merged with Radio Free Europe in 1962:
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