Oswald's CIA Connections Confirmed

From a public address by author and JFK assassination writer Joan Mellen available here. Joan provides evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a false defector program that sent spies into the Soviet Union, run by the head of CIA Counter-Intelligence James Jesus Angleton.

One of those CIA documents demonstrates that Oswald, indeed one of Angleton’s assets in the Soviet Union, communicated back to the CIA through a CIA asset at American Express named Michael Jelisavcic. One of my discoveries for “A Farewell to Justice” was the original of a note that Oswald, arrested in New Orleans for a street fight, handed to the police lieutenant who was questioning him, Francis Martello. On the margin of that piece of paper was Michael Jelisavcic’s espionage number, inadvertently unredacted when CIA declassified the document.

This number clearly directs CIA to an espionage file. Oswald also had Jelisavcic’s name and room number in his possession.

Oswalds CIA connections did not end when he returned to the United States. Joan cites an interview with Hunter Leake, second in command at the New Orleans field office of the CIA. Leake was interviewed by historian Michael Kurtz.

Leake admitted that CIA used Oswald as a courier and that Oswald came to New Orleans in April 1963 because the CIA office there intended to use him for certain operations. Leake either was disaffected from the Agency, or, perhaps, was just an honest man. He admitted that he personally paid Oswald various sums of cash for his services. Oswald was on the CIA payroll, Leake knew. He himself paid Oswald’s CIA salary.

Leake also explained in this telephone interview with Professor Kurtz why there was no documentation on Oswald’s employment with CIA in New Orleans. After President Kennedy’s assassination, he drove the files personally to Langley, Virginia. They were so voluminous that he had to rent a trailer to transport them.

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