Lee Harvey Oswald's Double Life

What follows is an excerpt from JFK and the End Of America:

While great effort was made to disassociate Oswald from the CIA, we today have an abundance of evidence to indicate he was not only employed by the agency but that he was being set up by the agency. All along Oswald’s journeys, CIA “shepherds” accompanied him. In LCAP it was David Ferrie. In Dallas it was DeMohrenschildt. In New Orleans it was David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, ex-FBI agent Guy Banister, and a rat’s nest of violent anti-Castro Cubans, in whose company Oswald was often seen. Ruth Paine watched over Oswald’s family in Irving; she later implicated Oswald as the assassin. David Atlee Phillips, a high-ranking CIA officer, met with Oswald. Even while in the Marine Corps and Russia, Oswald was apparently under orders from the CIA.

Oswald joined the Marines after completing his stint with LCAP. His Marine Corps commander, John Donovan, described Oswald as “a wise guy, troublemaker, officer baiter, revolter against authority.”20 Oswald often spoke to his fellow marines of his affection for the Soviet Union and Marxist philosophies, yet his assignment gave him access to highly classified items—“secret radio frequencies, call signs and codes which were compromised…at the time of his defection.”21 It seems quite peculiar that, at the height of the Cold War, a Marxist was loudly, obnoxiously, and without fear of repercussion espousing his political views while in the United States Marine Corps. Oswald’s fellow Marines were naturally put off by him; they viewed him as an oddball who was somehow protected by the higher-ups. Despite this, Oswald was court-martialed twice for infractions which had nothing to do with his insurrectionist politics. Not only was he not kicked out of the Marines, he was assigned to a top-secret American installation in Japan. While securing intelligence assignments, Oswald also cemented his legend as a communist agitator.

As part of his Marine Corps service, Oswald was assigned to Atsugi Air Base. According to Edward Jay Epstein, “Atsugi wasn’t simply an Air Force defense base; it was a CIA base. And the CIA program at that base involved one of America’s most secret and important reconnaissance missions, the U-2 spy plane.”22 The U-2 could fly at heights that were beyond Soviet radar capabilities, and thus the plane could conduct valuable espionage missions without detection by the Russians. Until May 1, 1960, that is, when an American U-2 piloted by Gary Powers was shot down over Soviet air space. How did the Russians gather the intelligence to know when and where the U-2 was flying?  Some have speculated that Oswald could have supplied this information to the Soviets when he defected. Oswald was a radio communications operator at Atsugi and certainly would have had “access to highly sophisticated materials.”23 

But there is some question as to whether it was the real Lee Harvey Oswald who was assigned to Atsugi in the first place. (For some, this conundrum has never been satisfactorily resolved; even now one wonders, “Who was the real Oswald, and who was the fake?”) A fellow Marine claims the Oswald he knew bore no resemblance to the Oswald arrested in Dallas on November 22, 1963. This was one of the first of many Oswald impostor scenarios [like the Red Bird Airport Oswald impostor previously mentioned), as reported by scores of witnesses who knew Oswald (or his double) and remembered him (or his double) quite vividly. Richard Bullock served with Oswald at Atsugi, and came to know him rather well. Bullock was fully acquainted with Oswald’s physical appearance, and the guy he saw shot down by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963, was not the “Atsugi Oswald.” Bullock claimed that the Oswald he saw on TV after the JFK assassination looked “nothing like…the man I knew…the ‘Ozzie’ I knew in the marines [was] two or three inches taller, 40 pounds heavier…and wore thick glasses.”24

Bullock was not called to testify to the Warren Commission, but Oswald’s commander John Donovan was. When the WC counsel refused to question Donovan about Oswald’s classified work in the Marines, Donovan was aghast. “Don’t you want to know about the U-2?” Donovan asked.25 The reply was thanks, but no thanks.  Commissioners, perhaps briefed by their WC superior Dulles, were careful to avoid areas of connection between Oswald and the CIA.

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