Tosh Plumlee and Lee Harvey Oswald
- Fred Litwin
- 8 minutes ago
- 6 min read
I think the above photograph is obscene. Like many people, I have visited Oswald's grave, but the last thing I would do is salute. After all, Oswald killed JFK, and he killed a policeman.
So, here is what Plumlee has to say about Oswald in his book.
In the spring of 1958, I was sent for training at the School of Illusionary Warfare in Nags Head, North Carolina, where I met a young Lee Harvey Oswald. [page 6]
There are two problems with this statement. First, in the spring of 1958, Oswald was overseas in Japan. He was not stateside. Second, there was no such facility in Nags Head.
But in what has to be one of the biggest self-owns in history, check out this paragraph from Plumlee:
We were taught how to infiltrate foreign countries, capture radio stations and use them to broadcast propaganda. They told us that if you lie well enough, people start to believe you. We'd been picked, they said, because we were talented actors, and talented actors make good liars. [page 6]
Yes, talented actors make good liars.
The next mention of Lee Harvey Oswald in the book is on page 28 when Plumlee describes Dealey Plaza on November 22nd.
Ahead and to our right, about a hundred fifty feet away, stood the seven-story red-brick Texas Book Depository Building I saw someone I believed to be Lee Harvey Oswald standing near the entrance and wondered if he were part of the abort team.
And, of course, Plumlee recognized Oswald because he had met him in Nags Head, right?
But when did Plumlee first meet Lee Harvey Oswald. Well, it was all because of George Joannides. To set the stage, Plumlee talks about Fidel Castro sailing to Cuba and then heading to the Sierra Maestra mountains in 1956. [page 60]
Meanwhile in Havana, student members of M-26-7 were being routinely arrested and executed by Batista's secret police. Some escaped to the Sierra Maestra mountains and joined Castro and his rebels. A number of them were reporting back to the CIA at Miami's Wave Station.
Their point of contact (POC) was a CIA officer out of Washington, DC who called himself Jay Howard. Later, after he became chief of the Psychological warfare branch of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami, I learned that Jay Howard's real name was George Joannides. It's through Joannides that I first met a young CIA cut-out like myself named Lee Harvey Oswald.
I've seen no evidence that George Joannides used Jay Howard as a pseudonym. But, you have to give Plumlee credit for inserting Joannides into his story. And he learned Joannides real name in the early 1960s, but this is the first time he has mentioned him. And Joannides found the time to introduce Oswald to Plumlee.
In Chapter 8, Plumlee discusses his time with Oswald at Nags Head.
The eight-week course was held for covert operatives from all over the world. Lee and I were part of a group of fifty-five students, separated into specialties. His were languages and infiltration, and mine were psychological operations.
While stationed in Miami between flights to Cuba, I had been approached by CIA official Wild Bill Harvey and told to attend the course. I later learned that another CIA man I had met in Miami named George Joannides was running the psychology warfare program taught at Nags Head -- a program designed by the infamous Sidney Gottlieb, director of the MK-Ultra program under CIA director Allen Dulles.
So, Harvey old Plumlee to attend the course with Joannides as the program director -- a program designed by Sydney Gottlieb!
Is it possible to get any more famous names into a paragraph?
In 1959, Plumlee claimed he was in Honolulu taking a jungle warfare course, and who did he run into? None other than Lee Harvey Oswald!
Nights in Honolulu, I'd frequent the Shell Bar on Waikiki Boulevard. It's where all the second lieutenant trainees hung out. "Quiet Village" by Martin Denny with its nature sounds and bird calls was a popular song at the time. One night I walked in and saw Oswald was sitting there with some other young military-looking guys dressed in civilian clothes. Lee and I acknowledged one another, and I sat down with his party and ordered a Singapore Sling -- gin, lime and pineapple juice with a touch of grenadine -- which was a popular drink at the time.
Our conversation was casual. How are you doing? Good to see you again.
One of the guys in Oswald's group told me that they were about to take a ship to return to Atsugi Naval Airbase in Japan. There Oswald continued radar training at the U-2 base before defecting to the Soviet Union in October 1959. The hope was, according to former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, that the KGB would try to turn Oswald into an agent, which would give the CIA valuable penetration into the KGB. [page 98]
Ah -- enjoying a Singapore Sling with Oswald. The only problem is that Oswald was not in Hawaii in 1959, he was there in 1957 on his way to Atsugi. And relying on Marchetti is problematic.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Victor Marchetti
Marchetti was a contributing editor to a homophobic newspaper in the 1980s.
An examination of the hoax that implicated E. Howard Hunt in the JFK assassination.
Marchetti said that Clay Shaw was a domestic contact of the CIA.
Nagle and Storper use Marchetti as a source on Clay Shaw.
Marchetti wrote about a fake defector program, but actually knew nothing about it.
Wecht uses Marchetti as a source about an ONI program.
Plumlee next ran into Oswald in April 1963:
I ran into Oswald again in 1963 after he had returned to the United States and was living in Dallas. I had just finished flying mobsters Johnny Roselli and John Martino from Houston to Galveston. My next trip was Houston to Dallas to coordinate arms shipments for the anti-Castro rebels, so my encounter with Oswald would have taken place somewhere in the month of April.
The location was a CIA safehouse run Alpha ember Manuel Rodriguez Ocarberrio, which stood directly behind an apartment Lee and his family were renting on 214 W. Neely Street in a section of Dallas known at the time as Oak Cliff. [pages 99 - 100]
Plumlee writes that "the two of us had maybe three conversations over the course of the next two months at various CIA safehouses in the Dallas area, including one on Beckley Avenue, one near Sunset High School and another on Hallendale."
And then Plumlee saw Marina and Lee arguing from "the safehouse across the alley."
Plumlee was convinced that Oswald was innocent:
I have no doubt that Lee was innocent. He never tried to kill President Kennedy. He was a young patriot like me from a broken family who was recruited and trained to complete clandestine missions for the government. It was Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who arranged for Oswald's repatriation back to the United States (For reasons, I'll get into later.) [page 104]
Robert Kennedy arranged for Oswald's return. Who knew?
And, of course, Plumlee channels Judyth Vary Baker:
In the summer of 1963, after this return from the Soviet Union, Lee spent time in New Orleans where he was very publicly presented as a member of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Why he was doing this, is another story that was never explored by the Warren Commission, involving a fast-acting cancer-causing virus developed by the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans that Lee was tasked with smuggling into Cuba for the purpose of infecting Fidel Castro. [page 154]
I wonder why the Warren Commission did not explore this story.
Is anybody going to take this book seriously?
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Tosh Plumlee
Plumlee's new book is quite the novel.
Part One of two parts.
Second of two parts.
Some of Plumlee's interesting activities in 1959.
A bizarre story in which Plumlee writes to the FBI that he has provided bad information to an article about him in a Denver magazine.
Plumlee steals a plane and writes some bad checks.
Did Plumlee fly an abort team to Dallas or the actual assassins?
Plumlee writes to Palamara that Dinkin's messages might have been the intelligence to send the abort team to Dallas.
PBS Frontline investigated Plumlee's allegations about Nags Head, North Carolina and could not corroborate any part of his story
Wow, Tosh finds someone who has a photograph of Jack Ruby, Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana, Ed McLamore, and Lee Harvey Oswald.
