Sixty years ago today, Lee Oswald, a CIA agent and FBI informant, found himself in custody in Dallas; a mere 70 hours later, he met his demise. A twist of fate occurred just three weeks earlier, on November 2, 1963, when Oswald, codenamed "Agent Lee," potentially foiled an assassination attempt on JFK in Chicago. His tip-off to FBI's Hoover led to the cancellation of the Chicago trip, altering the course of events. However, destiny took a different turn in Dallas.
The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 mandated the release of all documents by 2017. Six years post-deadline, crucial files are still tightly held by the CIA, complicating an already elusive case where the accused are essentially the investigators.
Oswald, a naive yet honest patriot, was unwittingly groomed by the CIA since he was 17. Initially deemed a "poor shot" in the Marines, Oswald's trajectory shifted as he was transferred to the Monterrey School of Languages, a CIA-operated institution where he studied Russian. Trained as a Radar operator for the CIA's False Defection Program, Oswald was meant to use his radar knowledge to lure the Russians.
His defection was remarkably efficient. Flown to the UK and promptly to Helsinki (on a day without commercial flights to Helsinki), he applied for a Soviet visa and arrived in Leningrad almost instantly. The Russians, aware of his CIA ties, didn't take the bait. After two years, Oswald returned to the USA with astonishing speed, accompanied by his Russian wife, benefiting from expedited processing and a substantial return loan from the US embassy in Moscow.
Despite his "defection," Oswald retained his CIA security clearance, essential for his job at the Padgett Printing Corp., a CIA front in Dallas producing secret military maps. Planted within anti-Castro groups after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Oswald began to doubt his mission, troubled by the violence of the Cuban groups. In New Orleans, the FBI approached him to monitor the CIA's illegal activities on American soil.
Oswald unwittingly became a pawn in the power struggle between FBI's Hoover and CIA's Allen Dulles, both harboring animosity towards Kennedy and each other. Only after the JFK assassination and two failed attempts on his life did Oswald realize his role, declaring, "I am only a patsy."
Six decades of independent research have uncovered the planned and executed cover-up, raising the question of whether the government will ever muster the courage to admit the inevitable. Perhaps future generations will see Oswald's name cleared, with the possibility of his reburial at Arlington, not far from the Kennedy family plot.
