Did the LAPD Send Lee Harvey Oswald to Russia?

In the book, Chief: My Life in the L.A.P.D., Daryl Gates writes that the Los Angeles Police Department had a special intelligence unit that ran a program which sent American spies to Russia, totally clandestine and under deep cover. This was during the during the same period when Lee Harvey Oswald made his strange trip to the Soviet Union. A natural question arises; was the accused assassin part of the program?

Two interesting facts emerge when studying Daryl Gates. The first one is how interested he was in Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. Just a few hours before Oswald was murdered by Ruby, Gates was on the phone talking to the Dallas Police Department. The second one is that he was in charge of Robert Kennedy's security at the Ambassador Hotel the night of RFK's assassination. Actually, there was no security. Gates kept the police away claiming somebody told him Bobby didn't want the LAPD there. The Los Angeles Police would burn most of the photos related to the assassination before Sirhan's trial began. Then Gates kept the case secret for twenty-five years. When he was forced to release the files, he had destroyed most of the evidence