TNS SATURDAY SYJINING POST The next day Sylvia Odio received a telephone call from the man who called himself Leopoldo. She recalled the con- versation for the Warren Commission. March '76 "What do you think of the American?" Leopoldo asked. P. 44 "I don't think anything," Mrs. Odio replied. Shortly after news of President Kennedy's "He told us we don't have any guts," assassination was flashed to a stunned na- said Leopoldo, "because President Ken- tion, a young Cuban woman was admitted nedy should have been assassinated after to the emergency room of a hospital in a the Bay of Pigs." suburb of Dallas. Sylvia Odio had fainted Leopoldo quoted Oswald as saying it when she heard of the President's death, would be easy to kill Kennedy. He de- but it was not grief that caused her to pass scribed Oswald as a former Marine and an out—it was shock. Mrs. Odio had good expert marksman. But, he added, the reason to believe she had been visited by Cubans had decided not to have anything the President's assassins only a few weeks to do with Oswald because he was "loco." earlier. Sylvia Odio never heard from any of Well known to. students of the assas- the three men again. After the assassina- sination and the Warren Commission's tion she saw television and newspaper :9 R1 investigation, the Odio incident remains pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald and was unexplained, one of the many mysterious o) (2.1 convinced that he was the Leon Oswald loose threads never finally tied up by the Op who had called at her home. She feared s .`" official investigation. As part of its con- that Oswald's association with two mem- vo ,I. tinuing probe of the unanswered ques- bers of an anti-Castro emigre group might ris 6% tions of the assassination, The Saturday implicate her fellow exiles in the assassi- 0 I Evening Post has learned of a link be- nation. She did not report the incident to ..).4 r,. 0 m , li tween the Odio incident and one of the the authorities, but confided in a friend, m 4.,.;,.0 0 many attempts on the life of Cuban Pre- Mrs. C.L. Connell, a worker in a Catholic co .... m mier Fidel Castro carried out by the Cen- welfare group that aided Cuban refugees 43. 't3 in Dallas. Apparently Mrs. Connell re- ca. q tral Intelligence Agency and Cuban emi- E'...... •-• gres in the early 1960's. ported the story to the FBI, because two -0 ° ,% tl In September 1963, on the evening of agents questioned Mrs. Odio about it. -ts 1- ,C) the 26th or 27th—Sylvia Odio couldn't Mrs. Odio's story could not easily be o. tie 0 remember which—three men arrived unan- dismissed by the government investiga- o0 {a 6 nounced at the Odio apartment in Dallas. tors. To begin with, the possibility that Two of the visitors seemed Hispanic— the report was fraudulent and made for os Cuban, Mrs. Odio thought, or perhaps the purpose of publicity-seeking did not •0n "-:.I, 0 Mexican. The third was an "Anglo," square with the facts; Mrs. Odio had not . ..,. ,,, identified to her as "Leon Oswald." Eight taken her story to the press or the au- weeks later, when Mrs. Odio saw pictures thorities—the FBI had to seek her out. >-m , ,,,.9, ba of the accused assassin, she was sure it was Also, Mrs. Odio's sister, Annie, who was la the same man. present when the three men visited, con- 0 -6, 0 Oswald had little to say during the fif- firmed that the American resembled Lee .E fits teen-minute visit. The spokesman for the Harvey Oswald. And apparently Mrs. trio was a tall man of about forty years of Odio's psychiatrist told the FBI that she •RI•., ,.. ?-' age who identified himself only as "Leo- had mentioned the trio's visit. 0 poldo," which, he explained, was his nom The significance of the Odio incident de guerre in the anti-Castro movement. "We are good friends of your father," Just ten days before the Leopoldo told Mrs. Odio, and supported Warren Report was published, this claim with details about the senior Liebeler wrote a memorandum Odio who was in Castro's prison on the Isle of Pines. noting that "Odio may The two Cubans said they were mem- well be right," and that bers of JURE (the Cuban Revolutionary "the Commission will look Junta), an anti-Castro group with which bad if it turns out she is." Mrs. Odio also was affiliated. They asked But the Commission's chief her help in translating into English a letter council, J. Lee Rankin, was they planned to send to businessmen ap- quoted as saying, in regard pealing for funds for the anti-Castro to such objections, "At this cause. The trio had just arrived from New stage, we are supposed to be Orleans, they said; now they were to leave closing doors, not for some other, unspecified destination. opening them." As abruptly as they appeared, the three men departed.

Copyri rht. n 1876, The Saturd/r 'Evening Post Company THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

March '76 Castro's secret police learned of his two companions as Lawrence the conspiracy before it could be Howard, a Mexican-American, and carried out. Veciana and his mother William Seymour, an Arizonan who fled to safety in Miami. Reinaldo was not lost on the Warren Commission's looked like Lee Harvey Oswald. Gonzales hid on a farm outside Ha- staff. One member, David Slawson, called Seymour told the agents he had vana. The farm was owned by a not been In Dallas in September Mrs. Odio "the most significant witness wealthy Cuban businessman who 1963 and had never met Sylvia Odio. linking Oswald to anti-Castro Cubans." In had fought with Castro against the It appears that the Warren Com- Batista regime, but later turned a memorandum he wrote together with mission did not even consider the against the Cuban revolutionary William Coleman (another Warren Com- possibility that "Leon Oswald" was leader. The farm had often been used mission staffer and now Secretary of Trans- deliberately impersonating Lee Har- for anti-Castro activities. portation), Slawson said: vey Oswald in an incident staged to The secret police tracked Gon- The evidence here could lead to an anti- implicate the real Oswald in the as- zales to the farm and arrested him. Castro involvement in the assassination on sassination. Such an interpretation Under torture he revealed the details some sort of basis as this: Oswald could should not have seemed farfetched of the assassination plan. The owner in view of the other evidence the of the farm and his wife were ar- have become hnown to the Cubans as Commission staff had seen. For ex- being strongly pro-Castro. He made no rested and sentenced to prison for ample, six days after the Odio inci- their part in the affair. secret of his sympathies, and so the anti- dent, a man calling himself Lee Os- They were Amador Odio-Padron Castro Cubans must have realized that the wald visited the Soviet Embassy in and Sara del Toro, the parents of law-enforcement authorities were also Mexico City. The Central Intelli- Sylvia Odio. aware of Oswald's feelings and that there- gence Agency observed him several Antonio Veciana continued lead- fore, if he got into trouble, the public times during the next two weeks at ing paramilitary attacks on the Cas- would also learn of them. . . Perhaps both the Soviet and Cuban embas- tro regime from bases in the south- 'double agents' were even used to per- sies. The CIA sent the FBI a photo- eastern United States, He also suade Oswald that pro-Castro Cubans graph of a man the Agency identified worked to raise money to finance as this "Lee Oswald." But the CIA's these operations. In 1962 he claimed would help in the assassination or in the photograph clearly shows that the getaway afterward. The motive on this to have raised a war chest of man was not Lee Harvey Oswald. His $100,000. Less than a year after the would of course be the expectation that true identity, like that of "Leon abortive attempt on Castro's life, after the President was killed Oswald Oswald," was never learned by the Veciana had become chief of Alpha would be caught or at least his identity Warren Commission. 66. His activities continued at least ascertained, the law enforcement author- Thus, the Warren Commission until September 1965 when the FBI ities and the public would then blame the failed to offer a persuasive argument reported to the Miami police that assassination on the Castro government, to support its claim that Lee Harvey Veciana was planning to attack Cu- and the call for its forceful overthrow Oswald had not been one of the trio ban delegates to the U.N. that visited Sylvia Odio, nor did it Veciana's Alpha 66 activities would be irresistible. A second Bay of Pigs succeed in answering the question of invasion would begin, this time, hope- brought him to Dallas on at least one who "Leon Oswald" really was. The occasion—April 1964—when he fully, to end successfully. Odio incident has remained one of spoke to local members of the com- Slawson added that their scenario was the many mysteries surrounding the mando group. The Dallas Alpha 66 "probably only a wild speculation, but the assassination of President Kennedy meetings were held at the home of facts that we already know are certainly that have persisted during the ensu- one Jorge Salazar at 3126 Hollan- sufficient to warrant more investigation." ing dozen years. But The Saturday dale. It is interesting to note that, Yet the final position of the Warren Evening Post has learned of a thread just after the assassination of Presi- that may connect the incident to one Commission was that Sylvia Odio's visitor dent Kennedy, a Dallas deputy sher- of the several attempted assassina- iff was Cannoned on page 95 told by an informant that tions of Fidel Castro that took place Oswald had been associating with during the early 1960's. some Cubans at "3128 Harlendale." In 1960 a group of accountants in Like the two Cubans who, with Cuba launched an elaborate opera- "Leon Oswald," visited Sylvia Odio tion to embezzle government funds in September 1963, Antonio Veci- continued from pada 45 and finance the anti-Castro under- ana was I) an anti-Castro activist, ground. This was the beginning of 2) engaged in raising funds for the was not Lee Harvey Oswald, because Alpha 66, perhaps the most famous commandos, and 3) acquainted Oswald could not have been in Dallas of the anti-Castro commando with Sylvia Odio's father. While this at the time of the visit. Although the groups. falls far short of proving it, a real drafters of the Warren Report admit- One of the founders of Alpha 66 possibility exists that Veciana was ted that "there Is no firm evidence" was Antonio Veciana. In 1961 Veci- one of the two Cubans who visited to support the claim, they concluded ana and Reinaldo Gonzales, a bank Sylvia Odio, or that he at least can that Oswald was riding a Continental employee and former leader of the shed some light on the Odio inci- Trailways bus from New Orleans to anti-Batista wing of the Bank Work- dent. There is nothing in the avail- Houston at the time of the Odio ers Union, planned an attempt on able records of the Warren Commis- incident. the life of Fidel Castro. Veciana's sion to indicate that the government The FBI helped close the door on mother rented an apartment a block investigators ever pursued this line of the Odio incident for the Commis- and a half from the Presidential Pal- inquiry or were even aware of this sion by locating one Loran Eugene ace. The plotters planned to fire a subtle link between the abortive Hall, an anti-Castro activist who said bazooka from the apartment and kill assassination attempt in Havana in that he was one of the three men Castro while he was delivering one of 1961 and the successful one in Dallas who visited Mrs. Odio. He identified his marathon speeches. two years later. ft