Book by former CIA analyst sheds light on Cuba, Kennedy, Oswald

By David Adams
(Reuters) - Lee Harvey Oswald had closer ties to Cuba's intelligence agency in the months before his fatal shooting of John F. Kennedy than previously known, according to a new book by a former CIA analyst.
Furthermore, the CIA lied about its knowledge of those ties to the Warren Commission that was tasked with investigating the crime, according to Brian Latell, the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America from 1990 to 1994 and author of the book "Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA, & the Assassination of John F. Kennedy," due out on July 9.
Cuba also hid what it knew about Oswald, writes Latell, citing a CIA wiretap of a conversation between two Cuban secret service agents he uncovered in declassified archives.
"I am now convinced that Oswald was engaged with the Cubans," Latell told Reuters.
While he is careful not to suggest Oswald killed Kennedy on instructions from Havana, Latell says the new evidence confirms a widely held belief that Oswald was motivated to kill Kennedy by a fervent desire to impress Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
"I'm convinced he wanted to defect to Cuba," Latell said. "He loved Cuba and Castro, and wanted to join the revolution."
Latell's book, which is a revised edition of an earlier work on Cuban intelligence published last year, is based on new pieces to the puzzle uncovered from several sources, including the unpublished memoirs of Thomas Mann, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico at the time of the assassination, as well as an interview with a former Cuban intelligence agent and declassified government documents.
Seven weeks before Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Oswald famously traveled to Mexico City by bus hoping to obtain a visa from the Cuban embassy there to visit Havana. Cuba denied him a visa, but the bus trip, and Oswald's known communist sympathies, have long generated suspicion of Cuban involvement in Kennedy's death, although no hard evidence has ever been found.
"What he did during most of the time he spent in the Mexican capital remains perhaps the most important unsolved mystery of the Kennedy assassination," writes Latell, who spent much of his career at the CIA working on Cuba.
U.S. officials never admitted the full extent of what they knew, fearing perhaps they would face public pressure to retaliate against Cuba if greater evidence of a Cuban link became known, Latell argues.
Mann learned shortly after Kennedy's death that Oswald had stayed at the Hotel del Comercio in Mexico City, known by the CIA to be a haven for Cuban spies in Mexico working for the DGI, Havana's national intelligence agency, closely run by Castro.
Mann learned this information at the time from the CIA station chief in Mexico, according to his memoirs, written in 1982. But when he raised it with his superiors in Washington, Mann was silenced by the State Department and told to cease his inquiries about Oswald's stay in Mexico.
Mann was furious and objected, but did as he was told. "In the week after the assassination Mann was convinced Cuba was involved. He was convinced Oswald was working for the Cubans at the hotel," Latell said.
"He started getting very aggressive and upsetting apple carts in Washington."
Mann, who died in 1999, was reposted out of Mexico barely a month after the Kennedy assassination.
During its investigation of the crime in 1964, the Warren Commission was curious about the Mexico trip. But when the commission traveled to Cuba and asked about Oswald's hotel stay, the CIA hid its knowledge about goings on at the hotel, according to Latell.
The Warren Commission later declared that it found no evidence of Cuban government involvement in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
In his research on Cuban intelligence Latell also discovered records of a CIA wiretap of a phone conversation between two DGI officials in Mexico and Havana shortly after the assassination in which they discussed the events in Dallas. One of them remarked how interesting it was that Oswald had wanted to fight for the revolution. How could they have known that, Latell asks, unless the DGI already had a file on him?
Latell suspects Cuba was aware of him as far as 1959 when Oswald first sought contact with Cuban officials at the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles.
Castro has always asserted that Oswald was totally unknown to Cuban authorities. Latell and others find that hard to believe, citing reports that after being denied a visa in Mexico, Oswald shouted, "I'm going to kill Kennedy," in the street outside the Cuban consulate.
"We thought that was incriminating of Oswald," said Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel to the 1977 House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations, which re-examined the evidence in Kennedy's death.
Castro was asked about Oswald's shouted threat, but denied any knowledge of it.
"We found that it did happen and he lied about it," said Blakey, adding that the motive of Oswald's Mexico trip remains unclear as Latell's book does not reveal exactly what occurred in the Hotel del Comercio.
Latell also cites an interview with a former Cuban agent tasked with monitoring U.S. communications, who said that on the day of the assassination he was ordered to stop all CIA tracking efforts and redirect his antennae toward Texas.
"Castro knew Kennedy was to be fired upon," Latell says the agent told him.
U.S. officials covered up these vital clues because they were concerned about the consequences if a Cuban connection was publicized, Latell argues.
"Had it been known it could have triggered an invasion of Cuba," he said. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, "didn't want that" so soon after the missile crisis that had brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war barely a year earlier.
"They went nose to nose before and they didn't want to do it again," Latell says.



Book by former CIA analyst sheds light on Cuba, Kennedy, Oswald - Yahoo! News

 

Not only that, but the fact that his brother was also assassinated publicly, and many other Kennedy's followed in "accidents", gives impetus to the theory of a vendetta. I like Oliver Stone's version, personally. The banking connection is there, but too many are clueless when it comes to how true power operates. They do not even know LBJ's very FIRST act was to rescind Kennedy's EO to print silver backed currency. Also, Kennedy was going to disband the CIA. Think about THAT for a moment...

 

Yes, I suppose long ago I went through a hatred phase. Some of that is still on this very forum, lol. I found through the years that there are good people everywhere, even at the very top --and it's only their focus which separates our realities. The evil, greedy henchmen you see on the political and corporate field, those guys are pawns serving a purpose...an end to it all. Now, there are fascist, eugenicist scumbags at the top, too --I just want to make that clear. Also, I still don't have everything figured out yet. Maybe if anybody does claim to have it all figured out, they are probably lying. Just when I think I have an answer, sometimes it turns out to be entirely wrong. One thing is for certain, there is good in this terrible world, and it's worth fighting for. Hatred isn't my avenue, but it's better than indifference, so I can't point fingers. One thing more people need to do is GET MAD. They need to FEEL something, anything. They have been conditioned for so long, fed daily on the horror and chaos, they simply...shut...down. Sensory overload.

The scumbags in politics and many corporations are performing their roles, bringing about change and implementing the groundwork for a New Order. They are not invaluable or just or righteous --they are necessary and expendable. The "reason" why is debatable, of course. Some claim it's to usher in a new age of reason, to alter the core beliefs of humanity and to bring about a new era, a space age and technological growth. As a warring species which is primarily concerned with division and boundaries, too caught up in flavors of beliefs in the same God and ethnic origins, we are doomed to forever murder each other until the last. We all know 'diplomacy' doesn't work, nor do 'treaties' and 'alliances'. Sooner or later, we are destined to forget and repeat the same mistakes. What needs to change in order to STOP this cycle? Should we return to isolationist policy with every nation closed off to the other?

These are *some* of the questions, *some* of the ideas which concern *some* of the people who push for world government. It really ticks a lot of people off, too. Nationalist pride and patriotic fervor often get in the way of...the broader picture. Sure, I am a patriot and I love liberty and reason, but I don't see much liberty these days and certainly not a speck of reason to be had. So, what's everybody so upset about? It's not like we actually even *have* freedom and liberty and justice. If you're already falling off a cliff, might as well smile and enjoy the ride down.

The thing that really stumps some folks, is the real structure of the "NWO". There are three major "heads", one is the business or administration side, headquartered in the UK. A second is a clandestine and secretive branch located in the Vatican. The third is openly known and is the war apparatus, and this is the United States. Together, they synchronize and move, pushing here and stabbing there, separate but bound by common interest and the control of money and information. Most of the policies of the world, through various corporate cartels and political/religious structures emanates from these three heads.

In the end, will we have a global Fascist empire with a single, poor slave race? Maybe we will, and maybe we will fight back at some point. maybe one day, far in the future we will have learned our lesson and closed the door on myths and fables and can finally accept reason with open eyes, but mostly, I hope we can learn to appreciate our greatness as humans and recognize our true potential. We have been kept in the dark for far too long already, made to feel guilty with fear used as a weapon against us. We no longer need stories of frightening things to keep us in check, we have left the playground and we can find our own way now. We have learned to stand on our own... or have we?

 

Amen Brother, some of your best in writing right there. well done.

 

Well, I'll tell you what. We will have global governance, it's a certainty --but all the while you will be told you are free. You will be told you can have all those things, but every nation will be absorbed into the order. In fact, most Americans already believe they are free, but they're not. The country belongs to a UN assembly, and its role as "guardian of freedom" policing the world has worked flawlessly at cementing global governance for the IMF and World Bank.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." --Goethe

 

I used to feel this way. In fact, I still do from time to time. But, no matter what, this world will change with or without us. Maybe the way to reach our goal is through this, too. Maybe this world needs reformation and a rebirth. I admire the concept of personal religion. But, organized religion and especially societies dominated by religion with its indoctrination and force of will, I cannot accept. I do know that we have given it a full run on a tank full of religion and "freedumb" for a very long time. We have had an endless supply of consuming and entertainment, enough to suit every desire. What gets me, is that people only ever seem to be content when they can have their own way. Yet, there's a price to be paid for all the consuming and entertainment that has happened, while others have seen fit to get the ball rolling to change this destructive path. Now, I am not on the side of globalism and the elimination of free thought --I can only recognize the reason some support this philosophy. Understanding your perceived "enemy" really can be enlightening. Folks have had their say, they have run this course, and proven for all to see that a selfish lifestyle is not wise. And so, we see an extension of this in the form of saturating our culture with every type of entertainment, trinket and toy imaginable. We see wars being fought for the corporate empires built on this foundation of need and greed, and it's all for what? We all should know this won't last forever.

I want to give you all an example. It's based on my favorite movie: "Batman Begins"..
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Ra's Al Ghul: You cannot lead these men unless you are prepared to do what is necessary to defeat evil.
Bruce Wayne: And where would I be leading these men?
Ra's Al Ghul: Gotham. As Gotham's favored son you will be ideally placed to strike at the heart of criminality.
Bruce Wayne: How?
Ra's Al Ghul: Gotham's time has come. Like Constantinople or Rome before it the city has become a breeding ground for suffering and injustice. It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die. This is the most important function of the League of Shadows. It is one we've performed for centuries. Gotham... must be destroyed.
_____________________
The idea is nothing new; people must earn their role in life. I am not my ancestors. We are not those people who forged a new nation of liberty and prosperity. We are the ones who, to varying extent, led to its demise. Now, the premise suggested to Bruce Wayne is a slightly veiled concept we face today. The part that stabs true in this, is the part which suggests total destruction as a means to cure what has gone wrong. Think about this seriously for a moment. If all the "policies" and "campaigns" and various attempts to make a better society have failed, and continue to fail --what would be a viable solution? The same question could be applied to a cancer patient. Should we talk about the cancer some more, perhaps assign a special committee to ascertain what's wrong, then increase the size of the panel and then argue over who has the best ideas? Maybe we should fight with each other over the cancer and try to pretend it's the other group's fault. We can vote on it and elect new people to promise us a solution, then blame it all on a conspiracy which promotes the continuation of the cancer. We would accept "treatment" over the cure, and believe our faith will guide us through. It must be God's will. Well, we could also cut it out. Destroy the cancer, and save the host. You see, we did not earn this freedom which some of us admire so much. We did not fight on a battlefield for freedom, we fought for corporations and concepts. For every Trayvon Martin gangster wannabe, there's a thousand others who support his cause of ignorance and selfishness. We never run out of reasons for perpetuating the cancer that is our lives, and we constantly believe we deserve liberty for doing nothing to obtain it. We vote for a single "leader" and place blame on others, and we demand that our "rights" be respected. The very rights many of our ancestors bled for and were willing to sacrifice everything to obtain, we are supposed to receive because they wrote down some of them on a piece of parchment. Just as Gotham fell into decay and was overwhelmed with crime and violence, our society is the manifestation of that movie metaphor. The majority of the people are responsible for its condition, and they are the cancer.

Now, if somebody else has a better method to eradicate the disease of our world, and can offer a way to fix this, I am all ears. And good luck. We can blame Obama and Bush and Clinton and every other President if we like. We can do everything in our power to restore sensible liberty and reason, but we will still end up with a world full of ignorant idiots. How do we cure "stupid"? I don't know...how do we cure cancer?