This is the first in a series of essays explaining the background of the twelve handlers of Lee Harvey Oswald during the last four years of his life. It is a gripping story of espionage, based on documents in the National Archives. Ask the House Oversight Committee to release both the JFK files and the MLK files. US history should not be wrapped in mystery. Many of the key issues have already been resolved.

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If you appreciate gazing into the darkness, that's all the more

reason to gather around the fire. This is a story about ghosts and

spooks that haunt the United States of America. When it's over, I'm

going to suggest that we talk to the people in Washington who can

help us make sure we can get the end of the story right. Some of the

last chapters are written down and sitting in cold, unlit basements.

And though this story is filled with ghosts, some of the spooks are still

alive and can still talk.

With millions of documents released in the years since the JFK Act was passed in the nineties, the intelligence backgrounds of the twelve who built the Oswald legend have come into focus. A legend maker can range from a "babysitter" who just keeps an eye on the subject to someone handing out unequivocal orders. I count twelve of them, and I'll tell you about them here in this series of essays.

Many of these legend makers did not know each other, and some of them know nothing about the JFK assassination itself, but their stories when put together can solve important puzzles. A couple of them are integral to the plot. Now is the moment to sum up what we have, demand the rest, and ask the right questions to those still alive. Although we may never know who fired the shots at JFK, you may agree that the new documents reveal who called the shots.

One important clue revealed in the documents is that the CIA consciously used Lee Harvey Oswald's visa requests for espionage purposes before JFK was assassinated. A CIA office used Oswald as "bait" while simultaneously trying to recruit Soviet officers and hunt for Soviet penetrators of the CIA itself.

Several CIA officials got Oswald got into the Soviet Union in 1959 with an "instant visa" after sweetening up the Soviet consul in Helsinki. Otherwise this Marine would have never got past Moscow's border officials.

Oswald tried this again when trying to re-enter the Soviet Union through Mexico City. This time, he got used as part of a counter-espionage game aimed at the Soviets and the Cubans. The story of these instant visa searches is in my essay The Office that Spied on Its Own Spies.

During Sunshine Week in Washington DC (March 14-20), a number of researchers and concerned citizens called on the House Oversight Committee to campaign for hearings that will bring more documents and the living witnesses into the daylight. A new MLK Act, based on the JFK Act, is also under discussion for immediate release of the King case documents, presently locked up until 2029.

It's not well known that most CIA employees sign a secrecy oath saying they will go to prison if they provide classified information. This oath made it impossible for many people to tell everything they knew. There is still time to get it right. The head of the House Select Committee of Assassinations investigation in the 1970s no longer believes that the CIA cooperated with their two year probe into the JFK and MLK cases. A copy of the 1963 version of this secrecy oath can be viewed here.

This is about how badly the US wanted Soviet secrets during the Cold War. The USSR was not well understood in the postwar era. The American people were extremely naïve about the role of intelligence agencies. This is a story about how fear of the unknown was twisted into the drive to build an American empire. This is the story of the twelve legend makers of Lee Harvey Oswald.

The story will keep returning to Legend Maker #1

The story begins with a man called "Mother". In every sense of the word, he is Legend Maker #1. Always in other people's business, he was a fisherman, a mad genius, and in a category by himself.

James Angleton was the chief of CIA counter-intelligence between 1954 and 1974. During the first days of the CIA, his British intelligence friend Kim Philby dubbed Angleton "the driving force of OSO" the CIA's Office of Special Operations. He got the keys to the kingdom after the bitter end of the Korean War when the Cold War began in earnest.

One of the first things Angleton did was to set up a small super-secret group known as CI/SIG, pronounced see-eye-sig, an acronym for the Counter-Intelligence Special Investigations Group. CI/SIG was the CIA of the CIA. CI/SIG's mission was to hunt within the CIA for enemy agents that might try to infiltrate the Agency. The preferred word was "penetrate", rather than "infiltrate". The preferred term was not "infiltrators", but "moles".

Angleton surrounded himself with other cagy molehunters that will pop up as we sit around the fire telling this story, such as his personal assistant Ann Egerter who controlled Oswald file, his chief of CI/SIG Birch O'Neil, and his trusted compatriot Ray Rocca who helped him direct the cover-up as a liaison to the Warren Commission.

Angleton's molehunts became more and more frequent, at least partially because the CIA was always trying to penetrate other agencies. His focus became an obsession during the fifties when he learned that his old friend Kim Philby from British intelligence was probably an agent of the Soviet Union. Before he fell into disgrace, Philby was nearing the top of the hierarchy of British intelligence. (In January, 1963, Philby defected and made it official.)

Two other British intelligence officials that were colleagues of Angelton and Philby had previously defected, but Angleton never imagined that Philby would become "The Third Man". The already famous 1949 film noir penned by Graham Greene was a cautionary tale. For Angleton, it was a humiliation that changed his life forever.

Angleton used CI/SIG in a ruthless manner, destroying the lives of innocent CIA agents and anyone else in the cross-fire. By the time Angleton was fired in the midst of the Watergate era, he was accused of being a Soviet mole himself.

The CIA was eager for ways to see inside the Soviet Union, which had closed itself off from many aspects of Western society. One way was to cultivate contacts that spoke the Russian language. That led inquiring minds to Harvard University, its Russian department, and a Radcliffe graduate student in the department named Priscilla Johnson.

A wealthy and attractive Long Islander whose father was in the textile trade, Priscilla Johnson, Bryn Mawr '50, was a catch. Internationally minded, she was a member of the United World Federalists and other liberal groups. She applied for a job with the CIA in late 1952 as graduation beckoned the following spring. Just when it seemed that Johnson had successfully jumped through all the hoops, her application was rejected in March 1953 because of her membership in the United World Federalists, the League of Industrial Democracy, and her questionable associates.

Johnson landed on her feet. In April, she joined the research staff of the new senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. In fact, she withdrew her application before the rejection came in. Johnson may have nailed the JFK post thanks to the aid of her mentor and Long Island neighbor the CIA's chief of International Operations, Cord Meyer, Legend Maker #2. Johnson told military historian John Newman that she thought Meyer "was waiting for me to grow up".

In 1947, Meyer was one of the founders of the United World Federalists, a group hoping to stop the spread of atomic weapons and to build a stronger United Nations. He was engaged in postgraduate studies at Harvard while building the movement. However, the tides of history were working against Meyer. In 1948, the Soviets threw up a blockade around Berlin that lasted for months. In 1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb. In 1950, a devastating war broke out on the Korean peninsula, taking millions of lives. Meyer saw his hopes for arms control wane, and his frame of mind steadily became more anti-communist. He left Harvard and joined the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), headed by Frank Wisner.

By 1953, Meyer's duties included shepherding Operation MOCKINGBIRD, an infamous program where the CIA used the American news media "like a mighty Wurlitzer". Many reporters did the CIA's bidding and basically churned out stories as unpaid shills for the Agency. It was a great way to develop sources and advance one's career. MOCKINGBIRD established a pattern of a media/intelligence alliance that many believe has only accelerated to the present day. Johnson was willing to sing like a mockingbird, and built her career on it. She was to become Legend Maker #3.

The CIA wanted spotters at Harvard

Claiming that her passion was the oxymoron known as "Soviet law", Johnson made her way to the USSR in December 1955 for a four month trip. The highlight of her stay was landing a temporary paycheck as an "emergency" translator with the State Department, covering the historic Soviet Party Congress where Khrushchev denounced the legacy of Joseph Stalin. Johnson also picked up work at the New York Times office during her Moscow stay.

Upon her return to Boston, the records indicate that Johnson was then vetted by the CIA to work as a "legal traveler into USSR - spotter". Johnson denies knowing anything about this application to use her as a spotter. Without taking Johnson at her word, it's fair to say that the CIA may have used her or planned to use in ways that she did not know about, and the events surrounding her should be analyzed with that in mind.

The CIA's consideration of Johnson as a possible spotter marks an opening gambit in REDSKIN, a program designed to look at Russian-speaking students and recruit them into the legal travelers program to the USSR.

It's been a matter of record for some time who actually was a spotter of Russian-speaking students at Harvard during 1956-57 --Richard Snyder, the consul at the American Embassy who met with Oswald at the time of his defection in 1959. Snyder was to become Legend Maker #4.

Although Snyder was a CIA officer between 1949-1950, he went so far as to deny on the record that he had any relationship with the CIA after 1950. This hurt Snyder's credibility with the House Select Committee of Assassinations (HSCA), the body that reviewed the JFK case in the late seventies. The HSCA unsuccessfully tried to repair the damage done by the Warren Commission's irresponsible investigation immediately after the assassination.

The HSCA was displeased by Snyder's denial of any CIA relationship after 1950, as it was documented that he was a spotter at Harvard while studying Russian, and had access to students that might be going to the Soviet Union. Snyder was working for Nelson Brickham of the Soviet Russia division within the Directorate of Plans. Brickham was responsible for running black propaganda, false flag recruitments and the gathering of information on Soviet missile silos.

"Black propaganda" consists of statements that blame one side for the actions actually committed by the other side. Similarly, a "false flag" recruitment means that a recruiter is not telling the truth about the purpose for the recruitment. It seems apparent that Brickham and Snyder were recruiting Harvard students into what was known as Project REDSKIN.

Three Priscillas?

Johnson was identified with a different number in this 1956 CIA application (52373) than in her 1952 application (71589). The response from Security in 1956 is odd, stating "she was apparently born 23 September 1922 in Stockholm, Sweden, rather than 19 July 1928 at Glen Cove, New York." Did someone try to slip Johnson by CIA management by another number? This puzzle only deepens.

This 1956 application was withdrawn a few months later, but emerged again in 1958. On April 10, Cord Meyer sent a cable to Western Europe expressing interest in Johnson, right after Johnson applied for a Soviet visa in Paris. A couple weeks later, a request went out seeking approval for Johnson to become a "REDSKIN traveler and informant", and that "SR/2 (Soviet Russia Division #2) will have primary responsibility of handling agent."

Other memos, one sent by "SR/RED/O'Connell", illustrate that three Priscillas have now emerged: Besides the original Priscilla Mary Post Johnson, we now also see the names "Priscilla McClure Johnson, Priscilla McCoy." It's still uncertain what this means, other than two months of apparent confusion and very poorly redacted forms between April-June 1958.

Johnson was supposedly rejected in June 1958 because her "past activity in USSR, insistence return and indefinite plans inside likely draw Sov suspicions". Nonetheless, she decided to return to Moscow and study Soviet law under a fellowship grant from either Columbia or Harvard universities.

JFK recommended Priscilla Johnson as a member of a travel group to the Soviet Union

Three months later, the chairman of the "Inter-University Travel Group", David C. Munford, sought and obtained a recommendation from Senator John F. Kennedy for Johnson to be accepted as a member of his group traveling to the Soviet Union. It's unclear to me why such a recommendation was necessary, but it is fascinating that JFK tried to get Johnson into a group that was the focus of REDSKIN.

As fate would have it, Munford had been too successful in his recruitment efforts. Munford had to tell JFK that there wasn't room for Johnson in the group, but assured him that she could still join if someone dropped out. Munford wrote Johnson and remarked, "I gather I will go on hearing echoes of your serious intent in this matter."

Three weeks later, Munford wrote her another letter of congratulations for landing work as a journalist in the Soviet Union: "Some people make their own luck and you are one of them." In both letters between Munford and Johnson, both before and after one of the couples dropped out of the program, any participation by Johnson in the program seemed to be irrelevant and went unmentioned.

Johnson denies having any relationship with the CIA during this time, and denies ever being a CIA employee. Ironically, these letters are in the files because they were intercepted by the CIA pursuant to a mail intercept program set up by Legend Maker #1 Angleton to read the mail of Americans in the Soviet Union. These letters surfaced when Johnson filed a Freedom of Information Act request years later asking for all records "indicating my employment in your agency".

Johnson worked for NANA, an intelligence-linked news agency

At this point, Johnson had been accepted by the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) in Moscow. For good reasons, NANA has a bad reputation as a hotbed of intelligence.

Ernest Cuneo purchased NANA in the mid-1950s and was its owner and president until 1963. Cuneo started out as an aide to a World War I veteran, New York progressive mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who served in World War I. Cuneo served with the OSS during World War II and was its liaison to the White House, State Department, FBI, and British intelligence. NANA's vice president was the well-known author Ian Fleming. Fleming later credited Cuneo with more than half the plot for Goldfinger and all of the basic plot for Thunderball. The dedication page in Goldfinger reads, "To Ernest Cuneo, Muse."

After Cuneo's death, Sidney Goldberg became NANA's president, the husband of Lucianne Goldberg. Goldberg was part of Nixon's "dirty tricks" operation that stalked McGovern during 1972, looking for "real dirty stuff"who was sleeping with whom, what the Secret Service men were doing with the stewardesses, who was smoking pot on the plane"that sort of thing." Goldberg's team succeeded in the outing of Democratic vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton for electroshock treatments, effectively destroying any chance the McGovern campaign had to overtake Nixon's re-election machine. Goldberg suggested to Linda Tripp that she should tape all of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky. After the tapes were made, Goldberg urged Tripp to take the tapes to Kenneth Starr and also tipped the lawyers on the Paula Jones case.

After Bill Clinton left a telltale mark on Monica Lewinsky's blue dress, Goldberg was the one who tipped Tripp to convince Lewinsky not to launder the dress in order to trap Clinton. Although NANA folded in 1980, Goldberg maintains a news agency at her website, while her son Jonah Goldberg is the editor-at-large for the right-wing National Review Online.

Priscilla Johnson was about to see life from the center of an intelligence cyclone.We have a safe vantage point to watch this twisted tale as it sucks in even more spooks and destroys more lives. At this point,there's no point in cursing the darkness. Instead, we can add some more fuel to the fire.

Continued within the week...hopefully here at opednews, but somewhere on the internet.

Authors Bio:

Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney and an antiwar activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.