by Dave O’Brien

For a ‘lone’ assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald associated with some darkly suspicious characters.

To be sure, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy was no social butterfly.

The Warren Commission branded Oswald as a “loner and communist sympathizer who was a misfit in any society in which he lived.” This included his brief military career.

During his service in the Marines in Japan, Atsugi became a top-secret base for the U2 Reconnaissance spy plane that flew data gathering missions over the Soviet Union.

When Oswald was granted a ‘hardship’ discharge in 1959 to tend to his ailing mother, he instead went to the Soviet Union, renounced his U.S. citizenship and threatened to divulge radar and technology secrets to the Soviets if the U.S. State Department didn’t expedite the necessary paperwork.

The Office of Naval Intelligence has steadfastly claimed that Oswald’s clearance level would not have made him a national security threat or a viable asset for its Cold War adversary.

So, we are asked to believe that it is mere coincidence that after several successful missions into Soviet airspace, soon after Oswald arrives in Moscow and seeks Soviet citizenship, Francis Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane is shot down from 70,000 feet!

If this embarrassing incident didn’t put Oswald on the CIA’s radar as a defector worth monitoring, as it claims, then why were thousands of CIA files on Oswald among the last to be released in 2017 by law?

If we are judged by the friends we keep, then Oswald was destined for infamy, sought or unsought.

While Oswald’s possible association with the CIA is less obvious than his connections to the mob, a couple of acquaintances establish a CIA link once he returned home from the Soviet Union.

FROM COMRADE TO AMIGO

A few months after JFK took office, he inherited a CIA plan to train and assist anti-Castro rebels for an invasion of Cuba to oust dictator Fidel Castro.

Since Oswald appears to be a Castro supporter because of the leader’s embrace of Communism as a way of life for his island nation, Oswald would not have been involved in this operation due to philosophical differences with anti-Castro rebels.

In fact, Oswald headed the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and got into a scuffle with anti-Castro Cubans in the summer of 1963 while handing out pamphlets in public.

However, as it relates to the clandestine Bay of Pigs operation, two things possibly connect Oswald to rogue agents of the CIA:

1. The CIA training camp was stationed in Lake Pontchartrain near Oswald’s hometown of New Orleans, where he settled with his wife and daughter upon returning to the U.S.

2. A key anti-Castro rebels trainer was CIA operative David Ferrie, an associate of Oswald in the New Orleans chapter of the Civil Air Patrol going back to 1955.

Ferrie was a mentor of Oswald in his teen years, but their association runs cold once Oswald joins the Marine Corps and defects to the Soviet Union.

When Oswald returned to the U.S., it is not known if he reconnected with Ferrie, but their opposing views on Communism would have caused a conflict.

FERRIE’S CIA FELLOWSHIP

An intriguing possibility is what might have followed from the divide between the two former friends.

During the Bay of Pigs boot camp, Ferrie worked directly with two CIA clandestine specialists, E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis.

If those names are familiar, they would become prominent 11 years later as two of the Watergate burglars who would both serve time in jail for their role in the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters’ office.

This is not to say that Watergate was a CIA sanctioned operation, but both Hunt and Sturgis seem to have maintained a curious association with Richard Nixon.

It is compelling to note that after officially working for the CIA during the Eisenhower/Nixon hatched Bay of Pigs, Hunt and Sturgis stayed loyal to Nixon as independent criminal operatives.

It is the failed Bay of Pigs that caused Hunt and Sturgis to put their CIA talents to private use.

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison believed that when President Kennedy cancelled the planned air cover at the 11th hour for the invading CIA trained rebels, the ‘target’ switched from Castro to the U.S. Commander-in-Chief.

Angered by the decision that possibly resulted in 100 rebels to be killed and more than 1000 to be captured, Hunt and Sturgis became rogue agents and independent contractors.

As a Hunt and Sturgis loyalist, it is not absurd to assume that David Ferrie went rogue with them.

Here’s where an old friendship may have resurfaced for a dark mission in Dallas.

With Oswald back in New Orleans as Ferrie’s training camp was disbanding, could this have been where Oswald emerged as the perfect patsy?

OPERATION DALLAS

Given Oswald and Castro’s shared preference for Communism, could that have been used to recruit Oswald into plans against the new target, JFK?

In April of 1963, Oswald demonstrated a conviction to use violence for a passioned purpose when he attempted to shoot militant General Edwin A Walker with the same rifle that would be linked to President Kennedy’s assassination.

The ultra right-wing General had publicly called on Kennedy to bomb Cuba to rid the nation of both Castro and Communist allies.

If Ferrie learned of the Walker attack from his buddy Oswald, it is entirely plausible that Ferrie could have discussed it with Hunt and Sturgis. Could they have found the patsy needed for their plans to kill a common enemy?

By the fall of 1963, Oswald had moved to Dallas and got a job in the Texas School Book Depository Building located in what would become the kill site, Dealey Plaza.

Are we to accept this as nothing more than an innocent coincidence that would alter history forever?

Before he died, E. Howard Hunt confessed to being in Dallas on November 22, 1963 but denied having a role in the assassination.

Frank Sturgis says he was not in Dallas that day, but in this reporter’s book, Through The ‘Oswald’ Window, I assert that Hunt and Sturgis were two of the infamous ‘Three Tramps’ arrested after the shooting.

All three men were booked at the Dallas police station but were released soon after with no record of their arrest kept on file.

Was the presence of Hunt and Sturgis in Dallas just another remarkable coincidence? Or were the rebel CIA agents there to handle the man to be set-up as the ‘lone’ assassin of the country’s 35th President?

GEORGE AND LEE

Oswald and Ferrie is not the only verifiable friendship with CIA connections that converge in Dallas with tragic consequences.

George de Mohrenschildt and his wife developed a most unlikely friendship with Marina and Lee Oswald as summer approached in 1963.

The de Mohrenschildt’s were worldly and elegant. They rubbed shoulders with oil barons and big business in the Dallas area and when traveling, they wined and dined with the host country’s business and soc

To put it mildly, their association with the Oswald’s seemed oddly out of place with only one apparent commonality – Russia.

Born in what is now Belarus, de Mohrenschildt came to New York in 1938 with brother Dimitri, who co-founded Radio Free Europe, a CIA propaganda operation at the time.

Rather than follow his brother into the clandestine world of the CIA, George de Mohrenschildt went to the University of Texas and earned a master’s degree in petroleum geology.

He parlayed his education into an association with oil tycoons such as H.L. Hunt, John W. Mecom Sr. and Clint Murchison, who hired him as a petroleum engineer specialist.

Once settled in Dallas, de Mohrenschildt joined the right-wing outfit Texas Crusade for Freedom and hobnobbed with the likes of Mayor Earle Cabell and Ted Dealey of Dealey Plaza fame.

It has never been definitively established how the de Mohrenschildt’s were introduced to the Oswald’s, but noted researcher Edward Jay Epstein claims that de Mohrenschildt told him that he queried Oswald about his April 10 shooting attempt on General Walker on behalf of the CIA.

Before moving to Haiti in June of 1963, de Mohrenschildt helped Oswald get a job at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, a photograph analysis company. That was their last known contact.

Interestingly, during their brief interaction, de Mohrenschildt had direct contact with J. Walter Moore, the CIA’s Domestic Contact Service in Dallas.

Moore’s job was to debrief returning Americans from the Soviet Union to establish if they had any intelligence value to the agency.

Some JFK assassination researchers believe that it was Moore who had de Mohrenschildt establish contact with Lee Oswald to ascertain what Oswald may have imparted to the Soviets or have brought back with him in the way of useful intelligence.

LIES OR INCOMPETENCE?

First, de Mohrenschildt’s interaction with the CIA and corresponding befriending of Oswald debunks the decades-old claim by the CIA that they had no interest in Lee Harvey Oswald.

Since de Mohrenschildt briefed Moore on Oswald’s attempt on Walker’s life just seven months before Kennedy went to Dallas, the CIA can also no longer claim they never suspected that Oswald could be a potential assassin!

The FBI emerges as equally incompetent in their failure to monitor a suspected menace in Dallas. One still unresolved curiosity is why Oswald would leave a more interesting job that was reasonably suited to his skill set to take on a mundane and menial job in a book warehouse.

And what are we to make of Oswald’s sudden change of employment that just happens to place him in a building along the President’s parade route in Dallas?

Another credible JFK assassination researcher, L. Fletcher Prouty, once the chief Pentagon-to-CIA liaison officer, has established direct communications between de Mohrenschildt and Allen Dulles, the CIA Director fired by JFK after the botched Bay of Pigs.

When de Mohrenschildt testified before the Warren Commission in April of 1964, Dulles just happened to be one of the seven Commission members.

George de Mohrenschildt was forced to relive his time with Oswald when he returned from Haiti in 1966. The following year, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison questioned the de Mohrenschildt’s for the pending Clay Shaw trial.

Garrison claimed that the de Mohrenschildt’s believed Oswald was the “scapegoat” for the assassination of JFK but couldn’t prove it.

As for his association with the CIA, de Mohrenschildt claimed to have no formal role. He acted on behalf of the CIA on occasion in exchange for the CIA opening some doors with foreign governments for de Mohrenschildt’s oil business.

One such return from a business trip would be his last. On March 29, 1977, the U.S. government once again wanted to talk to de Mohrenschildt about Oswald.

He was told that the newly formed House Select Committee on Assassinations planned to summon him to appear as a witness. Instead, de Mohrenschildt apparently took his own life from a gunshot to the head.

Apart from proclaiming Oswald’s innocence to Garrison, in is unclear if de Mohrenschildt ‘handled’ Oswald on behalf of the CIA or merely curried favors from the CIA by reporting on Oswald’s activities, such as the Walker shooting and Oswald’s role as a pro-Castro advocate.

Nothing has been clarified to-date through the release of thousands of classified CIA files in 2017.

OSWALD AND THE MOB

There are two people who directly connect Oswald to notorious mob figures, one of which bridges a fascinating link between organized crime and the CIA.

A third person, none other than Oswald’s slayer Jack Ruby, links Oswald to mobsters by happenstance – unless we accept eyewitness reports of Oswald visiting with Ruby at his nightclub in the weeks leading up to the assassination.

Even if the two never met prior to their rendezvous with history in the basement of the Dallas police station, Ruby definitely had ties to organized crime.

Ruby’s phone records in the months leading up to the assassination reveal an escalating number of incoming and outgoing phone calls with mob figures associated with mafia chieftains Sam Giancana of Chicago, Santo Trafficante of Florida and Carlos Marcello of Louisiana/Texas.

Ruby’s phone conversations with nefarious gangsters is so compelling, we must ask if Jack Ruby was ‘ordered’ by organized crime to silence Oswald.

If this can never be proven, Oswald has two direct connections to crime boss Carlos Marcello, who’s hatred of the Kennedy brothers is legendary.

All three top mobsters were priority targets of Robert F. Kennedy as Attorney General under his brother in the White House.

But for Marcello, the rivalry with RFK got personal, leading to America’s top crime buster deporting Marcello to Guatemala without a court order.

Marcello secretly re-entered the U.S. with the help of an old friend of Lee Harvey Oswald and resumed his battle with the Kennedys.

After both JFK and RFK were assassinated, while in prison on an insurance fraud scheme, Marcello was caught on tape by an FBI undercover agent explaining why he had JFK killed instead of his hated enemy RFK:

“If you want to kill a dog, you don’t cut off its tail.
You cut off its head. The dog (President Kennedy)
will keep biting you if you only cut off the tail (Bobby).
But if you cut off the head, the dog will
die, tail and all.”

It has never been established that Marcello knew Oswald or ever met him, but it was very possible that the notorious crime Lord did hear of Oswald and know about his anti-American background prior to 1963.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

During Marcello’s troubles with the Kennedy brothers, a bookie who worked for one of Marcello’s capos was a man named Charles ‘Dutz’ Murret, who just happened to be Lee Harvey Oswald’s uncle!

When Oswald returned to the U.S. with Russian wife Marina and daughter June, they stayed with the Murret’s in New Orleans until they eventually settled in Dallas.

There is no evidence that Murret ever introduced his nephew Lee to Carlos Marcello or would have ever had the chance to bring the two parties together.

Murret wasn’t a top-level employee of Marcello, so if Oswald was ever brought to the attention of Marcello, it likely would have trickled up through the chain of command as per a typical mafia structure.

The Warren Commission dismissed this possibility and concluded that Oswald’s interaction with his uncle Charles was uneventful and meaningless to the JFK assassination.

However, Marina has stated that her husband knew what his uncle did for a living and who the ‘big boss’ was. Further, if Oswald was inclined to keep up with current affairs, he would have known that his uncle’s ultimate boss was at public war with the Kennedy boys.

It is reasonable to conclude that Oswald would have been interested in the Marcello/Kennedy feud if for no other reason than it involved his uncle’s employer.

On the other side of the coin, what if Marcello came to know of Oswald’s anti-American activities at a time when he was contemplating a ‘hit’ on JFK and was looking for the ideal fall guy?

CONNECTION IN DALLAS

Marcello also oversaw organized crime in Texas, where another low-level mobster named Jack Ruby had recently opened a strip club, a customary front for la Cosa Nostra at the time.

Per the mafia playbook, Ruby used his Carousel Club to get in the good graces of the Dallas police, state law enforcement officials, judges and even local and state lawmakers by providing free food, booze and the ‘outside’ services of his erotic dancers.

Ruby was often seen at the Dallas police station with complimentary fresh coffee and sandwiches. He was seen on at least two occasions at the station where Oswald was detained after the shooting before he walked past security on November 24 to silence Oswald forever.

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald and Ruby did not know each other and that both assassins acted alone.

On the other hand, the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 confirmed Ruby’s ties to the Marcello crime family and noted:

1. Carlos Marcello had a clear motive to assassinate either John or Bobby Kennedy.

2. Jack Ruby, because he personally knew up to 80% of Dallas police officers, was able to stalk Oswald and eventually shoot him while in police custody.

A WEB OF CONSPIRACY?

There is a second, more alarming means in which Oswald could have become the framed ‘patsy’ in President Kennedy’s assassination.

A betrayal of an old friendship may not only have drawn Oswald into a trap to be the fall guy for the events in Dallas, it may have triggered a troublesome conspiratorial alliance that the government had to conceal from the American public.

As detailed earlier, Oswald’s Civil Air Patrol leader David Ferrie became a CIA operative and a guerilla warfare trainer for Cuban exiles looking to oust Fidel Castro and reclaim their country.

In preparing for what would become the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Ferrie formed an association with infamous CIA agents E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis.

As it turns out, Ferrie was a ‘double agent’ of sorts.

He also developed a working relationship with Carlos Marcello’s lead deportation lawyer G. Wray Gill, serving as a private investigator.

Ferrie also had a particular talent that would prove useful and give him direct access to Marcello. Ferrie was a former commercial airline pilot. After Marcello was exiled to Guatemala by Robert Kennedy, researchers believe it was Ferrie who was called upon to secretly fly Marcello back into the U.S.

So, how does Oswald’s teenage mentor David Ferrie find himself in a relationship with both the CIA and organized crime?

UNHOLY ALLIANCE

Declassified files in 2017 confirm that the CIA formed an unthinkable working relationship with organized crime after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

The CIA got retired FBI agent Robert Maheu, then an aid to billionaire recluse Howard Hughes, to reach out to Johnny Roselli, a top mob lieutenant of Chicago mafia chief Sam Giancana, for help with plans to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Giancana was able to call upon fellow mob boss Santo Trafficante because he was keen to oust Castro and reinstate deposed leader Batista in order to reclaim casino operating rights in Havana.

Since the Castro revolution and having the casinos confiscated, Trafficante and Meyer Lansky were losing millions of dollars. Trafficante even spent a few months in a Cuban jail where witnesses claim that Jack Ruby was a frequent visitor.

It is not known what direct role, if any, CIA agents Hunt and Sturgis played in the Castro murder attempts, but as Ferrie’s handlers, it’s safe to say they were being kept informed by their mob insider.

As attempts on Castro’s life failed, everything changed after the peaceful resolve of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, in which President Kennedy pledged to never invade Cuba again.

It is here, some historians believe, that the target switched from Castro to Kennedy with the unholy alliance still intact because:

A) Thanks to JFK, rebel CIA operatives, such as Hunt and Sturgis, had to abandon plans to help thousands of Cuban exiles liberate their country.

B) Organized crime bosses were still being persecuted by the RFK Justice Department along with the lost hope of getting the casinos back.

With Ferrie being at the heart of this unholy alliance, and who just happened to know a young Marxist defector who was likely not pleased with U.S. efforts to rid Cuba of Castro and Communism, could the rebel CIA operatives and certain organized crime figures have hatched a plan to assassinate JFK and frame Oswald as the ‘lone’ nut assassin?

As the following chart demonstrates, 1950’s associates Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie are the only individuals who can be connected to a disturbing alliance known to have been in the assassination business.

Diagram by Paul O’Brien

Fidel Castro survived but John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald did not. The question remains:

Are the nefarious connections of Oswald to the CIA and mob shown above an incredible coincidence?

Or did this sinister alliance alter history and, with the exception of Oswald, got away with it?