Did the CIA Know Oswald's State of Mind?
- Fred Litwin
- Jul 27
- 6 min read
Jefferson Morley's Substack post on the supposed CIA surveillance of Oswald wonders how CIA officials knew his state of mind.
You wouldn’t know it from Isikoff and Russo’s underinformed account but all five signed off on a cable about Oswald on October 10, 1963, which they drafted after consulting the Oswald file. We know they looked at the Oswald file because because the cable quotes verbatim from a 1961 State Department dispatch stating Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union had a “maturing effect” on the ex-Marine.
How do Isikoff and Russo explain the fact that CIA officials said in October 1963 that Oswald, the alleged assassin, was “maturing?”
They don’t. They are silent about this fact because it fatally undermines their argument. If Oswald wasn’t under surveillance, how could top CIA officials confidently pronounce about his state of mind?
I am confused about what Morley is trying to say. He even admits that the CIA cable in question is quoting from a 1961 State Department memo. So, all the CIA was doing was just quoting from a cable in their file.
Oswald had realized that life in the Soviet was drab and boring and he hated the indoctrination sessions. He realized that he wanted to come back to the United States. And so the State Department people who were dealing with him felt he had matured somewhat from when he first appeared as an angry 20-year-old.
Snyder noted that "his manner of speech, and his general approach to the degree that I recall it was, well, less stiff, less formal, and certainly less haughty than it had been on the first occasion. He also didn't use with me the kind of Marxist sloganeering which I had got from him on the first interview ..."
So, CIA officials didn't pronounce on Oswald's state of mind -- they just quoted from a State Department memo from 1961.
There is no mystery here at all.
Previous Relevant Blogs Posts on Jefferson Morley's Congressional Testimony
An analysis of Congresswoman Luna's Congressional Hearings
An FBI memo that quoted James Angleton is used by Morley to reach an unwarranted conclusion.
Morley misreads Angleton's testimony before the HSCA.
Morley believes a document proves the CIA did not believe that a lone gunman killed JFK.
Additional documents relevant to Part Three.
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Morley believes that Agustin Guitart was spying on pro-Castro forces in New Orleans
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