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![handle is hein.jfk/jfkarch36514 and id is 1 raw text is: 04 065 0348
22 March 1977
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
SUBJECT: Comments on an Associated Press Article
Ex-CIA Aide Doubts Oswald Link to Cuba,
Published in the Washington Post of 17 March
1977.
[a] The man who headed covert CIA operations in
Mexico City in 1963 says Lee Harvey Oswald neither
asked for nor received any aid from the Cubans or
Russians in assassinating President Kennedy.
[b] In fact, David Atlee Philips writes in 'The
Night Watch', none of the CIA personnel in Mexico
City had ever heard of Oswald,. and were unaware that
he had defected to the Soviet Union, .married a Russian,
and then returned to the United States.
[c] CIA surveillance, Philips wrote, showed that
Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy in an.attempt to
return to Russia and wanted to .go via Cuba.
[d] He said a file check with Washington normally
would have been instituted, but all the agents were so
busy they did not get around to it until the wife of
an agent took it upon herself to compose the cable.
[e] Even then, he said, she mistook Oswald's middle
name as 'Henry' and relayed.a faulty physical descrip-
tion of him.
[f] The reason for this, Phillips said, was that the
wife had not read about Oswald but 'heard' about him -
presumably from some clandestine source - and was working
phonetically.
Overall comment: The above .article is based upon Phillips'
book, The Night Watch, and apparently not on public state-
ments made by.Phillips. The.writer of the article has ex-
tracted certain details from the book and then.put them to-
gether to fit his own fancy. Specific comments on each para-
graph follow.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.jfk/jfkarch36514&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)