Oswald and the Mexico City FrameWorks

   [Original version posted at The Education Forum, 17 March 2007]




In the court of public opinion, Lee Harvey Oswald was convicted in part due to allegedly traveling to Mexico City and visiting the Soviet embassy and Cuban consulate there. Some know that there was a "Mystery Man" at the time of those alleged visits whose image was captured by CIA surveillance cameras that covered both buildings. He was initially thought to be Oswald, though there was no physical resemblance between the two men. Some also know that the voice of a man who represented himself as "Lee Oswald" was caught on CIA telephone taps at those buildings at the time, though it was only recently that we learned there was evidence at the time that the man's voice did not match Oswald's. The speaker's Russian was described as "poor," "broken," "very bad, almost unintelligible." And yet, according to a transcript of the telephone conversations, he insisted on conversing in the Russian language.

In an executive session before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, David Atlee Phillips answered questions about these circumstances. An American attempting to go to Cuba (as Oswald had allegedly tried to do in Mexico City) would have been violating the law. So the first tapped phone conversation should have raised a red flag for the upper-echelon of the CIA and the US Embassy in Mexico City. There would be a cable sent to Washington -- and there was. Washington replied that this was probably a young fellow who had defected to the USSR and then came back home with a Russian wife and child. But then there was another intercepted phone call by the "Lee Oswald" individual to the Russian Embassy. And although Phillips stated (in a newspaper interview during the HSCA investigation) that the man had indicated to Russian Embassy personnel that it would be in their interest to talk to him, somehow all the documentary evidence for this allegedly got lost in the shuffle of a busy office.

According to Phillips, it was all a mistake. They had an intercepted phone conversation with "Lee Oswald," and at about the same time, there were photographs of a big fellow nearing middle age. So the CIA cable from Mexico City to Washington asking for the lowdown on the tapped "Lee Oswald" mistakenly gave a physical description of an aging linebacker -- as the "Lee Oswald" in question (on the taps). Per Phillips, "Lee Oswald" -- presumably meaning Lee Harvey Oswald -- then left Mexico and returned to the United States (which was determined how?), and he was of no further CIA concern since he fell under the jurisdiction of the FBI(!). The CIA didn't even bother to follow up on the matter, so confident were they in the FBI's abilities. And the aging linebacker? Well, according to Phillips, he did go to the Soviet Union at about this time (which was determined how?)

Once President Kennedy had been murdered, there was a lot to think about.
...after this whole thing was over, I noted certain weaknesses in my performance, one of them being, damn, why didn’t I know more about this [the tapped "Lee Oswald"] before the assassination?

So I think what may have happened is I did indeed see the transcript and didn’t recognize that it pertained to the other transcript. So it went back into the files. After the assassination, let’s look at everything, my goodness, that’s talking about Lee Harvey Oswald.

         (David Atlee Phillips, HSCA Security Classified Testimony, p.105)


"Gosh, golly, gee -- if only we'd followed the proper procedures in this instance. I, for one, am of the opinion that someone's earned theirself a pretty stern talking-to on how we dropped the ball on this one (by God)." For 15 years, the evidence of the tapped intercepts was suppressed. When discovered during the HSCA, Phillips could still maintain they were of the real Lee Harvey Oswald, and the aging linebacker issue was just a mix-up. That is all very convenient. On the most superficial level of an investigation that discovered these circumstances, the personnel involved could show proper contrition and receive some criticism for improper procedures.

More convenience occurred in the alleged malfunctioning of CIA surveillance cameras. So, according to Phillips, "there was no picture of Lee Harvey Oswald that we ever saw in Mexico" (ibid., p. 67). There were all kinds of pictures of an aging linebacker at "about" the same time, but for some reason, we couldn't get any of Lee Harvey Oswald. No photographic evidence to prove Oswald was ever in Mexico City? That's alright since we know from other evidence that he was making phone calls. And not until many years later did this prove to be false as well, since it was determined very early on that the voice on the tapes did not match that of Lee Harvey Oswald. But evidence of that determination was suppressed for forty years. And the significance of it was not merely suppressed -- an official conclusion was made in spite of it: Lee Harvey Oswald was visiting and telephoning the Soviets and Cubans in Mexico City. We know this because we know it, so there.

In appearance, the Mexico City events suggest an amateurish or at least poorly thought-out effort to implicate Oswald. A burly, balding fellow approaching middle age learns just enough Russian to pass the test conversationally and then gets sent on some mission. Much to our surprise, it succeeds -- but only because the truth was suppressed for a long time. Lee Harvey Oswald was apparently in Mexico City doing all the things the aging linebacker did, and then he -- apparently -- went on to do so much more.

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"I never had any trouble in controlling any bureau or embassy that I was in charge of, and that goes for the CIA."
(Thomas Mann, Oral History Interview, p. I-20)

Under President Eisenhower, Thomas C. Mann had worked his way up to the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. But Mann's strongly pro-business views and his condescending, patriarchal attitudes toward Latin Americans were not welcome where an "Alliance for Progress" would be launched, inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy." President Kennedy appointed Mann as US Ambassador to Mexico, thereby removing him from areas of policy implementation. On December 14th, 1963, President Johnson reappointed Mann to his previous post. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. sent a copy of that announcement's briefing statement to Richard Goodwin with "R.I.P" written on an attached note; the two had been Kennedy's main advisors on Latin America. (Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade, W. W. Norton & Company, NY, NY: 1997, p. 501, n156.)

Within two months of the (re-)appointment, President Johnson had reason to call upon the wisdom and expertise of his Latin American advisor: the Coast Guard had seized four Cuban fishing vessels in U.S. waters. In the ensuing National Security Council meeting, Mann argued that this was a "test" by the Soviets similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Attorney General Robert Kennedy replied that it was a "traffic violation." He thought the idea of making an international crisis out of it was "foolish." The next NSC meeting adjourned after "a rather violent argument" Mann had with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Kennedy. Later that day, CIA Director John McCone agreed with Kennedy and McNamara's position, and the arrested fishermen were sent back to Cuba (ibid., p. 155).

Aside from Jeff Shesol's book, there doesn't seem to be much information around on Thomas C. Mann, the US Ambassador to Mexico during the Kennedy Administration (and there's not a whole lot on him in Shesol's book). Other than the above, all I've found is a curious FBI report and Mann's oral history interview in the LBJ Library.


1) The FBI report

This document dated 25 November 1963 is interesting and somewhat amusing, as it indicates efforts to calm down the Ambassador by the Embassy's FBI legal attaché and Mann's subordinates. Without much detail, the report intimates that Mann had been a nuisance, insisting that "no stone should be left unturned" in investigating the possibility that Castro's regime was behind the murder of President Kennedy.


2) Mann’s oral history interview

This interview, conducted by Joe B. Frantz on November 4th, 1968, deserves to be read in full. But I want to post some excerpts to flesh out a few of the issues mentioned above, and in consideration of any investigation of President Kennedy's assassination.

Mann said that his "first serious private conversation" with Lyndon Johnson was in 1961, around the time of Mann's appointment as US Ambassador to Mexico (I-2). Afterward, he corresponded with the Vice President about "problems" and "trends" (I-3). Later (pp. I-21--I-22), he was asked if he was in Mexico during the Bay of Pigs.

M: No, I was on my way to Mexico at the time of the Bay of Pigs.... I wasn't able to get a decision or a clear idea about whether the new Administration wanted to scrub it or see it through. My personal opinion—I left on April 1, and my personal opinion is that what happened was that we fell between the stools and we couldn't decide one way or the other. That's a long story.

F: Things had almost gone too far to pull back, I gather?

M: They had never gone too far if the Administration had wanted to pull back. You could disband the force, and that would have been better than putting them on the beach and leaving them there, in my opinion. I think we did the worst thing. We fell between the stools. I would personally think that, having gone that far, we should have seen it through. I think that it wasn't a bad plan. If we had seen it through, it would have worked, but that might have required some U.S. support. We were not prepared to do that. We were not used [sic] on all kinds of definitions and questions of what was intervention, what was legal, did we have an inherent right of unilateral self-defense -- all these very technical questions. While these were being debated, we lost out.

F: Do you think sometimes that we are over-solicitous of the feelings of our Latin American neighbors when a crisis arises and it hampers our acting intelligently for fear of criticism?

M: Yes, I do. I think that we would get respect and support if we did what was right, assuming always that we are acting in a reasonable way and a lawful way. I think the worst thing we can do is to do what we did at the Bay of Pigs. I want to say parenthetically I don't think President Johnson had any control over this. I wasn't in the White House at that time, and I don't think this was anything that he was responsible for at all. I think it was indecision largely due to the fact that there was a new team there. The President had just taken office.

F: He had a situation and didn't know what to do with it.

M: That's right. I don't think he had time to really understand what all the issue [sic] were.... I've never seen our prestige as low as it was after the Bay of Pigs, not because we helped put the men ashore, but because we failed. That's important.

Earlier in the interview Frantz had asked Mann what had brought him back to Washington from his assignment as Ambassador to Mexico; had President Johnson personally sent for him?

M: He telephoned me and asked me to come up to Washington. This was a few days after he took office.

F: The press indicated that this meant a more realistic policy toward Latin America. Were press reports correct, or would you care to comment on that?

M: I don't know whether the word realistic tells you very much. I hope I'm realistic. I hope also that Mr. Johnson and I shared a belief that ideals have their place in American foreign policy. It's really a question of balance. We're living in an age, I think, of revolution. We've been seeing the same kinds of disturbances in Latin America for twenty-five years that we've seen here in the U.S.A. in the last few years.

F: We've finally imported them.

M: I think the question is how the U.S. should deal with a wide range of problems; how we can best help to promote Democratic [sic] growth; how we can best help promote economic and social progress in the area. I suppose the words realist and pragmatist and that sort of thing stem from perhaps a difference of opinion on whether we should, in effect, espouse revolution without defining what kind of revolution we're talking about. I think in the Latin American mind, one who talks about revolution is understood to be saying that he favors violence in the streets and disorder. I thought we should favor orderly evolution and be careful of what we said and orient our program so that that would be made clear. If there was a difference, perhaps that was it. (pp. I-8 -- I-9).

There were criticisms of President Johnson as having over-reacted with US intervention in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 1965. Mann commented on this. "Starting in 1964 when I first came back, it was perfectly obvious to me that what you might call the 'Kennedy wing' of the Democratic party was out to attack, and the [sic] were looking for any basis of attack." (pp. I-14--I-15) Mann believed the Dominican problem had come about because Juan Bosch had not "handled himself well" as president; there had been "a lack of minding the store, running the affairs of the country well. He was a very bad administrator, more of a poet than a politician" (I-12).



Since there were many layers in the suppression of the facts of what happened in Mexico City, it's difficult to say if the appearance of an "amateurish" effort to implicate Lee Harvey Oswald was not just that, an appearance. A counterintelligence operation might have several "outs" for situations of blown cover. Maybe including the possibility that some group of half-cocked idiots had cooked things up all on their own and sent a burly, balding man who spoke poor Russian to visit Cuban and Soviet diplomatic outposts, claiming to be Lee Oswald.

Thomas Mann strikes me as being a little too eager to get at the full implications of what "the evidence" indicated -- that the Soviets and Cubans were behind the murder of President Kennedy. Did those more "in the know" recognize that the evidence was problematic at best, so cooler heads prevailed? Or was it a case where any real look at the evidence would reveal it for what it was? Oswald was, in fact, implicated by the evidence, even though someone had to recognize that it looked like some sort of attempt to frame him. Which, of course, would tend to exonerate him (at least on the Mexico City side of things). Was this just some "confusing side-note"?

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A good man named Robert Howard responded to my posting above on May 21, 2007:
.......Robert Kennedy had some recollections about the very same topics Ambassador Mann spoke about and it is rather obvious, that there was not only divergence's of outlook between RFK and Mann, but some rather unpleasant moments personally.

This is from RFK: In His Own Word's [these are selected excerpts, as the material goes on quite a while.] RFK: "We got into one rather violent argument, a substantive argument on what to do about Cuba about the time that two or three fishing vessels arrived in Florida, in [U.S.] territorial waters. I was invited to a N.S.C. meeting on that matter".......

"My major argument at that time was with Tom Mann and with Bob McNamara. I said that I thought [the Cuban vessels] should be sent back. Ultimately, that point of view prevailed. Then it was a question of what we were going to do with Cuba. All of us were in favor of cutting off the water and supplying our own water [at Guantanamo], so they couldn't keep cutting it off and putting it back on. The major question was what to do about the employees. There were several thousand [Cuban] employees down there. And Tom Mann was in favor of firing the employees. He said they brought in ten million dollars a year to the Cuban government, or five million dollars. It didn't make any sense to give to the Cuban government. They were security risks".......

"Subsequently, he [Mann] said that the reason we should fire them was that the only thing the South American's understood was money. And when you took away this money from the Castro government, it would be a sign to the rest of the countries of Latin America that this was a new administration, which was going to stand up to them, that money was going to be involved, and that if they misbehaved, they would lose economically"..........

"I said I thought that he sounded like Barry Goldwater making a speech at the Economics Club, that this policy of the United States had gone out 50 years before."


I responded to Robert's post: "In Shesol's book the account I posted was followed by just that same further conflict on the Cuban workers at the base. Mann got his way on that, and Shesol notes that this was the last time Bobby ever attended (i.e., was ever invited to) an NSC meeting or any other major foreign policy meeting in LBJ's administration.

"I should clarify the Mann quote about his 'control,' as [a member of the Lancer Forum] thought I was taking Mann at his word and believed Mann was a major guy in charge. I explained that my thinking was that Mann was blowing smoke about his importance, was not a particularly bright bulb, and his previous career suggested he seemed the type to be a good 'cover man' as 'the official face' while important people were running things in the background. In the early 50s, he was attached to Greece until he became US Ambassador to Guatemala after the CIA coup. He then continued a bureaucratic rise up the ladder, until demoted by JFK to Mexican Ambassador (and restored to his previous post more or less immediately after the assassination). All very interesting in terms of Mann's pro-business policy attitudes…."



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