JFK, Oswald and Mexico

On Dec. 3 of last year, Jorge Castaneda wrote in El País that there is a mystery surrounding Oswald’s presence in Mexico before the Kennedy assassination, and that the U.S. tried to quell suspicions about Cuba’s involvement in the assassination. I had read Paul Gregory’s Nov. 7 article in The New York Times, “Lee Harvey Oswald Was My Friend,” which led me to read in English “The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination” by Lamar Waldron and “A Cruel and Shocking Act” by Philip Shenon. And finally, I read Ron Rosenbaum’s “Why’d Oswald Do It?” It may all come down to a party in Mexico City (The Spectator, Nov. 21, 2013). I name my references because that is what my profession requires.

It is already well-known that before JFK’s assassination, the CIA had plotted a dozen attempts to kill Fidel Castro, from the most extravagant James Bond-style poisonings with cigars or fountain pens to the classic gunshots. It seems that the Kennedy brothers were aware, which led the bored Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to say that the brothers “had been operating a damned Murder Incorporated.” We know that the CIA and the FBI had fooled the Warren Commission, but sooner or later, things would come into the light.

In September 1963, before the Nov. 22 assassination in Dallas, Oswald went on a mysterious trip for almost a week. According to Shenon, this may be the key to why he shot Kennedy. It should be noted that my authors do not doubt that Oswald was the perpetrator of the crime. The question is: Why? It seems that in their attempts to kill Castro by a sort of three-cushion billiards game, the CIA’s plan backfired. The result was that Oswald, a sincere Castro supporter, was convinced that he needed to eliminate a U.S. president who would resort to murder to eliminate a Cuban president, Commander Fidel Castro. The Cubans were aware of all of it, thanks to their undercover agents, double agents and even a triple agent.

At a party in Mexico, Oswald met not only several members of the Mexican left, but also a female employee from the Cuban embassy, as well as Elena Garro and her daughter, Helena. Oswald had applied for a visa to visit the island of Cuba. During his three trips through the Cuban embassy, as well as at the party, he received information about the CIA’s repeated attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Maybe it came from the Mexican woman who worked at the embassy and dealt with Oswald. She was immediately interrogated after Nov. 22 by our Federal Security Directorate, which later did not allow the FBI or CIA to interrogate her. In declassified CIA files there is a note from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, saying that Oswald had shouted at the Cuban embassy, “I’m going to kill Kennedy.” This information was never confirmed by Havana, but it is decisive.

The Warren Commission did not know that the CIA had intended to kill Castro, much less that it had been with consent from the Kennedys. It didn’t know about Hoover’s note, either. Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald knew that the life of his admired and idolized Castro had been threatened. It is surprising that the conspiracy theorists who believe Oswald to be innocent have never taken into account what Oswald said. Otherwise, they would know that he was a fanatical Castro supporter. Neither have they ever taken into account his visit to Mexico and his contacts in the Cuban embassy.

Why? In order to not attribute an indirect responsibility to the Cuban government? The Cubans had no reason to reveal Oswald to the U.S. And there, we can accept the unpopular theory of the lone assassin.