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   [  ] 17 “A Transparent Operation” As the jaws of the big black steel gates on the driveway at Reforma 2035 opened up late on Sunday morning, November 24, and Win’s big black car emerged, the Mexico City station chief was heading toward a watershed in twentieth-century history. This was a time in which men of power in the United States of America would choose between war and peace. As the Mercury cruised down the Mexican capital’s main boulevard in the light Sunday traffic, the man in the backseat did the calculus of counterintelligence . Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? Had Win’s station failed to pick up some sign that the man who called on the Soviet and Cuban diplomatic offices six weeks ago was a communist agent? A threat to the president? Was he a disturbed individual? Someone’s agent? Or a double agent? And why would someone kill him? That was the new stunning fact that Win had to deal with: the leftist interloper whom he had written a cable about six weeks earlier, the man whose presence at the Cuban consulate he had chosen not to report , the man who had apparently gone on to kill Kennedy, was now as dead as the president. Win and Janet and the kids had spent all morning watching television in the bedroom, talking and staring at the bleak, majestic images on the screen. World leaders were converging on Washington. The president’s coffin was going to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. Solemn crowds were gathering. Men and women were weeping openly. Gravelly voiced announcers supplied a steady stream of repetitious details. Back in Dallas, Oswald was going to be transferred to [  ]   c h a p t e r 1 7 another prison. The cameras cut away from Washington to a parking garage as Oswald, in handcuffs, was brought out by a phalanx of stocky detectives . A man in a suit darted out of the crowd, jabbed a pistol in Oswald’s stomach, and shot him. Baffled at the sight, Michael and his siblings watched the chaos, the shouts, the men writhing on the floor of the parking garage. They looked at each other and talked about their disbelief. He shot him. They heard the name Jack Ruby. The guy who shot the president was dead. It was so unbelievable. Win left immediately for the embassy. Upon his arrival , Tom Mann told Win he thought that Kennedy’s assassination would lead the United States to invade Cuba. In Washington, President Johnson feared the assassination would lead to war. Thirteen months earlier, Johnson had watched as all the generals and a majority of Kennedy’s national security advisers had advised an invasion during the missile crisis. Only Kennedy’s resolute statesmanship had diverted the consensus of the brass into a peaceful resolution. He did not want to find himself in a similar situation. He had talked with Hoover the previous morning about the possibility of an imposter in Mexico City. He might be facing a communist dirty trick or a right-wing provocation from those who hated Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. More than anything, LBJ needed some answers about Oswald’s contacts with the communists in Mexico City. He needed the agency to get him the story. He needed Win to deliver. Johnson spent an hour that morning with John McCone, who presented Win’s preliminary findings as written up by John Whitten, Mexico desk chief. Oswald had not only visited the Soviet embassy, McCone told the president. He had also gone to the Cuban consulate. The station now believed the voice on the tape was Oswald. “The search for Oswald data on November 22 found technical operations material the subject matter of which showed the speaker to be Oswald,” Whitten wrote. “Our expert monitor says the voice is identical with the voice of 1 October known to be Oswald’s.” In other words, the CIA had listened to the October 1 tape of Oswald, and “an expert monitor” had compared them. The identity of this expert has never been revealed. It is also possible that the expert did not exist, that Whitten was simply reporting what he had been told by Win or someone else. Whitten’s comment was the third reference by a senior CIA or FBI official in less than 48 hours to the existence of Oswald tapes. Win and Dave Phillips were insisting no such recordings existed, but John Whitten , J...

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