Missing Tape Still Clouds JFK Probe by DEB RIECH,1ANN
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1999 NATION Missing tape still clouds JFK probe By DEB RIECH,1ANN It is widely known that the CIA just pictures." to fish for details about what Os- The Associated Press bugged telephones and took sur- Documents contradict Rudd's wald was doing in Mexico City. Or, WASHINGTON — Hours after veillance photos at both the em- understanding. A newly released maybe someone was trying to link President John F. Kennedy was bassy and the consulate. But the memo dated Nov. 27, 1963, from Oswald to the KGB's assassina- slassinated, FBI agents reported- agency maintained that it had rou- FBI headquarters to its office in tion unit before Kennedy's mur- ly listened to a tape of a phone call tinely erased and reused tapes of .Mexico City, stated: der. that a man identifying himself as the phone intercepts. A message "If tapes covering any contacts Whatever the answer, there was "Lee Oswald" had placed to the from the CIA's Mexico City sta- subject [Oswald] with Soviet or plenty of reason for worry in Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. tion to headquarters on Nov. 24, Cuban embassies available, for- Washington about any evidence They made a startling discov- 1963, said: "HQ has full tran- ward to bureau for laboratory ex- pointing to Soviets or Cubans as ery: The voice on the tape was not scripts all pertinent calls. Regret amination and analysis together somehow involved in the assassi- Oswald's, government records say. complete recheck shows tapes for with transcript. Include tapes pre- nation. Relations with the former This controversial tape has been this period already erased." Soviet Union were a question mark in the assassina- It also was known that while he viously reviewed Dallas if they icy. Both sides were returned to you." were armed with nuclear weapons. tion investigation since Kennedy was in Mexico City, Oswald had The Cuban missile was killed. The assassination oc- contact with Valeriy Kostikov — a And a transcript of a telephone crisis was still very much an America's mind. curred 36 years ago today, and man that one CIA memo described call FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover only now have new details about as a "case officer in an operation made to President Lyndon B. "The public must be satisfied the tape come to light. which is evidently sponsored by Johnson just six hours after the that Oswald was the assassin; that The CIA said years ago that the the KGB's 13th Department re- plane arrived in Dallas supports he did not have confederates who tapes on which it recorded the call sponsible for sabotage and assassi- the belief that FBI agents listened are still at large," Nicholas Katz- were erased. Documents released nation." It was the caller who is to a tape that suggested an imper- enbach, then deputy attorney gen- in recent years said otherwise. The thought to have impersonated Os- sonation. eral, wrote in a memo on Nov. 25, latest and newest of declassified wald who links him to this Soviet "We have up here the tape and 1963. documents offer more evidence spy unit known as Department 13. the photograph of the man who "Speculation about Oswald's that the tapes survived. Newly declassified documents was at the Soviet Embassy using motivation ought to be cut off and The discovery that the voice on — some released in the past six Oswald's name," Hoover told we should have some basis for re- the tape was someone other than months — say that after the presi- Johnson, according to a transcript butting [the] thought that this was Oswald was a "disquieting discov- dent was shot, a Navy plane car- of that call released in 1993. "That a communist conspiracy or ... a ery because the man who imper- ried a top-secret package from picture and the tape do not corre- right-wing conspiracy to blame it sonated Oswald was still at large," Mexico City to Dallas and landed spond to this man's voice, nor to on the communists." said John Newman, an ex-military there about 4 a.m. EST the day his appearance. In other words, it In a telephone interview last intelligence analyst, author, and after the murder. appears that there is a second per- week, Katzenbach said he does not professor at the University of Former FBI agent Eldon Rudd, son who was at the Soviet Embas- know anything about the FBI lis- Maryland. later a Republican congressman sy down there." tening to a tape in Dallas. Oswald was in Mexico City in from Arizona, was aboard the While they would not speculate "Whether I knew anything about September and October 1963. plane. about the identity of the caller, it at the time, or what I knew During his one-week stay, he con- "There were no tapes, to my several assassination researchers about it at the time, I don't recall," tacted the Soviet. Embassy and the knowledge," Rudd said in a tele- privately offered some explana- he said. Cuban Consulate, inquiring about phone interview. "I brought the tions: Oswald could have been im- Oswald's trip to Mexico City visas needed to go to the Soviet pictures up [from Mexico], and it personated by a CIA officer who was addressed only briefly by the Union via Cuba. was my understanding that it was called the Soviet Embassy simply Warren Commission, which con- THE RECORD A-3 THE RECORD A-13 ASSOCIATED PRESS Lee Harvey Oswald, in police custody, talking to reporters in Dallas on Nov. 23, 1963, hours after President John Kennedy was assassinated. cluded in 1964 that Oswald was closed down. in 1998. the lone gunman who killed Ken- The CIA's phone intercepts in nedy. Mexico City have been an unan- His activities in Mexico City swered question in the assassina- were investigated vigorously by tion case for decades, says T. Jer- the House Select Committee on emy Gunn, former director and Assassinations, which re-investi- general counsel of the review gated the Kennedy murder in the board. 1970s. The committee then raised However, he said two assistant the possibility of an Oswald imper- counsels on the Warren Commis- sonation, but said there was not sion, William T. Coleman Jr. and sufficient evidence to "firmly" W. David Slawson, told the review conclude that it happened. board that they had gone to Mexi- Many more details about the co City and not only read tran- trip, however, have surfaced in scripts, but listened to recordings. CIA and FBI documents released "We tried to find the tape," by the Assassination Records Re- Gunn said of the review board's view Board. The board, set up by effort. "We were unsuccessful. We Congress to amass all assassina- tried to get everything we could, tion-related records, opened tens and we end up with question of thousands of pages before it marks." .