Sunday, August 12, 2007

CIA Officer Confirms Oswald's CIA Employment

Hunter Leake, a CIA officer who was second in command at the New Orleans's field office in 1963, confirmed in interviews with a historian that Lee Harvey Oswald was, as long suspected, associated with the Central Intelligence Agency.

That historian is Michael L. Kurtz, a professor of history and dean of the graduate school at Southeastern Louisiana University, who describes his interviews with Leake in his 2006 book The JFK Assassination Debates, published by the University Press of Kansas.

Leake stated that Oswald came to New Orleans in 1963 because the CIA intended to use him for certain operations. His job at the Reily Coffee Company served as a cover for his actual role. Leake personally paid Oswald sums of cash for his services.

During his stay in New Orleans, Oswald was working out of the offices of a former FBI agent with CIA connections, William Guy Banister, portrayed by Ed Asner in the film JFK. Banister was observed with Oswald by numerous witnesses, including Professor Kurtz himself. Hunter Leake confirmed that he worked with Banister in anti-Castro operations.

Hunter Leake recalled voluminous files that mentioned or pertained to Oswald's activities in New Orleans. After the assassination of President Kennedy, Leake said that he was called by Richard Helms, then the agency's Deputy Director for Plans, who ordered him to transport those files to Langley, where Leake later heard they were "deep-sixed."

2 Comments:

Blogger Terry Hildebrand said...

Another reliable source who has stated that Oswald was on the government payroll for intelligence activities is Victor Marchetti, who was co-author with John Marks of the book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. I am not familiar with Mr. Leake, but I would assume that Marchetti is at least as good of a witness to Oswald's intelligence background.

Marchetti said that Oswald had been recruited by the Office of Naval Intelligence. It was perhaps as an ONI agent that Oswald was staitoned in Japan at the same base that housed the U-2 spy planes, which taught him to speak Russian, and which sent him to the USSR as an "American defector"/spy.

3:16 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thought Oswald was alleged to have been an FBI informant, is this in addition to being a CIA asset?

Even though very young at the time, it always seemed so odd to me that Oswald could move to the USSR AND return seemingly with ease, during the most frigid part of the cold war.

That always nagged at me as not ringing True.

3:21 PM  

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