Lee in New Orleans: Suspicious Actions of JFK’s Alleged Assassin the Summer of 1963 #leeharveyoswald

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]It was during this immediate period that the garage owner, Adrian Alba, made an interesting observation.

[00:00:05]>> [music] >> He had just checked out a car to a government man he believed had shown him FBI credentials. Sometime later, he saw that same car stop alongside Oswald, who was walking nearby. A white envelope was handed out the window to Oswald, who leaned [music] down, received it, and headed toward the coffee company where he worked.

[00:00:31]>> [music] >> Hello and welcome back to my channel.

[00:00:36]And if you're new, then welcome. I'm Jessica Nelle, and I would love to earn [music] your subscription. And we are in part five of The Fingerprints of Intelligence in the Life of Lee Harvey Oswald. We have gone through his childhood, his military training, his defection to the Soviet Union, and his return to the states, particularly looking at his work at a photographic firm called Jagars-Chiles-Stovall. Now, we're going to look at his time in New Orleans. That is our fifth episode. And like we did last time, we are going to start out with a reading from Henry Hurt's Reasonable Doubt, which is a book from 1985, and then we are going to fill in the pieces with some updated information from this book, Lee Harvey Oswald: Patriot, Provocateur, or Patsy by Jim Marrs, which just came out this year, or this last year, so 2025.

[00:01:30]So, we're going to get our spine of our information from Henry Hurt, from this classic, and then fill in a few updated details from this modern work.

[00:01:42]Okay, [snorts] he says, "Less than a week after George de Mohrenschildt left Dallas, Lee Oswald was aboard a bus bound for New Orleans, the city of his birth."

[00:01:53]On that same day, there was a front-page story in the Dallas Times Herald reporting a statement by Vice President Lyndon Johnson that President Kennedy would visit Dallas in coming months.

[00:02:03]If later testimony from Marina is correct, Oswald had with him disassembled and stashed in his luggage his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

[00:02:13]He arrived in New Orleans on April 25th, 1963 and after several days that have never been accounted for, moved in temporarily with relatives that he hadn't seen in 6 years.

[00:02:26]The city was seething with perhaps the most heated political activity of its turbulent history. Thousands of exiles from Castro's Cuba filled certain quarters of the city and the CIA and FBI maintained highly active operations to keep tabs on that exile community.

[00:02:45]Indeed, until the direct intervention of President Kennedy following the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA was operating training facilities near New Orleans to teach exiles paramilitary operations in preparation for a full-scale invasion.

[00:03:01]With the exception of Miami, it's unlikely that any other American city harbored such intense feelings about the Cuban issue.

[00:03:09]At the height of the United States unofficial efforts to topple Castro, as many as 300 American intelligence officers and perhaps 2,000 intelligence agents were involved in what has come to be known as the secret war against Castro.

[00:03:24]Whatever the fine points of the argument over the best way to destabilize Cuba, the most intense single passion was the hatred for Fidel Castro, the man who had led the fight to topple a corrupt dictatorship and had himself turned out to be something even worse, a murderous puppet whose strings ran to Moscow.

[00:03:44]Second in intensity was the hatred for John F. Kennedy because of his perceived betrayal of the exile cause that led to the humiliating failure at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.

[00:03:57]By May 10th, I mean, that's 2 weeks later, that's quite a ways. Oswald had gotten a mundane job as an oiler of coffee making machinery at the William B. Riley Company on Magazine Street, just off Canal Street and only a few blocks from the city's famed French Quarter.

[00:04:15]Next door was the Crescent City Garage which held a contract with the US government to service and a portion of its huge fleet of vehicles.

[00:04:24]This, [snorts] of course, meant that agents and operatives from government services were constantly dropping off vehicles and picking them up from the garage next door to Oswald's place of employment.

[00:04:34]Usually reticent, Oswald became quite friendly with Adrian T. Alba, an owner of the garage. Oswald took an apartment in a residential area about a mile away.

[00:04:44]He sent for his wife and daughter. With these basics out of the way, Oswald settled into what appeared to be serious political activity.

[00:04:52]If it wasn't genuinely serious, it was certainly ostentatious and far-flung. He took firm positions espousing certain causes and he made sure his statements got on the record. There, in the hotbed of anti-Castro passions, Oswald created a chapter of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the FPCC. This is the same organization that's referenced in that famous midnight press conference where they call out he was for the uh Cuba Free Cuba Committee or something like that is what the uh law enforcement officer says, and then Jack Ruby from the back says, "Fair Play for Cuba Committee."

[00:05:32]So, they're getting information about Oswald. Jack Ruby has information. It is about this committee right here.

[00:05:41]He established A.J. Hidell as its secretary, which was his pseudonym, which means he and himself were the only two members of this Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which is really just one person. It was during this immediate period that the garage owner, Adrian Alba, made an interesting observation.

[00:06:02]He had just checked out a car to a government man he believed had shown him FBI credentials.

[00:06:08]Sometime later, he saw that same car stop alongside Oswald, who was walking nearby. A white envelope was handed out the window to Oswald, who leaned down, received it, and headed toward the coffee company where he worked. With the establishment of the FPCC chapter, one of Oswald's first moves was to send honorary membership cards to prominent figures in the Communist Party of the United States. As early as June, Oswald was handing out literature in the vicinity of a naval vessel docked at New Orleans. Around July, at Oswald's direction, Marina wrote her second letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, stating that she and her husband wanted to return to the Soviet Union.

[00:06:50]Oswald's activity during this period was addressed in the same CIA memorandum that reflected the official belief that the KGB probably did debrief Oswald upon his defection to the Soviet Union. The report states, quote, "Longstanding KGB practice generally forbids agents serving outside the USSR to have any contact with domestic communist parties or with Soviet embassies or consulates."

[00:07:13]Deletion.

[00:07:14]Yet Oswald blazed a trail to the Soviets, which was a mile wide.

[00:07:20]If nothing else, this analysis, if accurate, suggests that the one bit of certainty in the confusion is that Oswald was not working for the Soviets.

[00:07:29]Whatever his genuine motive for apparently throwing in with a pro-Castro group, Oswald could be certain of at least two accomplishments. First, he would become a lightning rod in attracting the most emotional and vocal disagreement with his position. Second, he would be well remembered, standing out as one of the only people in New Orleans willing to express such discordant minority views in public.

[00:07:52]It was therefore predictable that by August Oswald found himself in a street brawl with some anti-Castro exiles who were angered by the pro-Castro leaflets he was openly distributing on Canal Street. Oswald was jailed overnight following the scuffle.

[00:08:08]About a week later Oswald appeared on a local radio interview show where he expressed his unpopular views. Toward the end of August, Oswald engaged in a radio debate with one of the Cuban exile leaders with whom he had been in the street scuffle.

[00:08:23]Whatever Oswald was up to, he firmly established himself as a friend of Castro's Cuba. The question persists.

[00:08:33]Was Oswald really a friend of the Castro cause or was he working for an element of the United States government that wanted him for some operational purpose to appear to be a Castro supporter, to ingratiate himself into the pro-Castro circles?

[00:08:50]One reason for such enduring suspicions is that the office Oswald claimed for his FPCC activities was in the same relatively small building at 544 Camp Street as the headquarters of Guy Banister, a former FBI man who was deeply involved in managing and coordinating the Cuban exile activities, particularly in areas where the CIA and FBI could not be officially involved.

[00:09:13]When you hear former FBI and he's in charge of an organization or activities that they're very interested in, but they can't officially be involved with, it should raise our alarm bells and make us say, "Is he former? Was it actually a known off-books activity?" etc. So, he's in this building, he's running these things, and he's in the same building as Oswald.

[00:09:36]Banister's secretary insists today that on several occasions she witnessed Lee Harvey Oswald talking in a friendly fashion to Guy Banister in the office.

[00:09:46]Her assumption then and now is that Oswald was involved in some of Banister's undercover anti-Castro activities. So he's passing on envelopes in the street.

[00:09:59]He's having friendly conversations with a guy who's running the anti-Castro activities.

[00:10:06]But publicly he's a member of this one-man committee uh that's pro-Castro. So is this sheep dipping?

[00:10:14]To [snorts] me it appears very strongly to be the case.

[00:10:18]Previously housed in the same building were the offices of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the primary group organized by the CIA to bring the various discordant leadership factions of anti-Castro exiles under one united front. This building was less than a block from Oswald's job and Adrian Alba's garage. So here we have Oswald seemingly in a pro-Castro mode just in a building living peacefully and cheerfully with people who are virulently anti-Castro.

[00:10:51]He's giving public statements to the effect of his pro-Castro work and yet having these encounters. It's highly unlikely. Another person who frequented this building and worked in Guy Banister's office was a rabid anti-communist and Castro hater named David Ferrie, the one we talked about in our very first fingerprints of intelligence uh installation that that showed him in the Civil Air Patrol. He was the adult, Oswald was the 14-15 year old in this little camp setting where they're using a camp stove and doing uh military-looking activities with young people. A New Orleans-style mad genius, memorable for many reasons, Ferry was reportedly an associate of Clay Shaw, the prominent New Orleans businessman who was the only person ever brought to trial in the assassination of President Kennedy.

[00:11:50]That was the case with Jim Garrison.

[00:11:53]We've looked at that a little bit before. I I probably need to do more digging into that case, but for now, that's what we need to know.

[00:12:01]It is no minor irony that David Ferry and Lee Oswald were quite possibly acquainted many years earlier. We already talked about that. Uh while Oswald was at Beauregard Junior High, Ferry was the head of the Civil Air Patrol unit in which Oswald became a cadet.

[00:12:18]It says, "Although they've never been absolutely linked." Well, they have, actually. The book that I showed you guys, there's the photo of them uh where this indeed was the case. We have a photo of the two of them. Here is Lee.

[00:12:31]Here is David Ferry. That is David Ferry. The two did know each other in 1955, that summer. We see the two in the very same photo. So, we do have now, uh but in '85, when he published this, that must not have been known or widely known.

[00:12:51]Although they've been never absolutely linked, yes, they have. There is sure evidence that Ferry sought out and befriended certain of Oswald's peers and friends.

[00:13:00]Uh they are known with official certainty to have been in each other's company one day in the late summer of 1963.

[00:13:09]The scene was a black voter registration drive in Clinton, Louisiana, less than 100 mi northwest of New Orleans. The House Select Committee accepted the testimony of numerous respectable witnesses to the presence of Oswald and Ferry in the area for most of the day, during which Oswald applied for a job at a state mental institution located in nearby Jackson.

[00:13:32]Oddly enough, this is the same mental institution where Rose Cheramie was taken.

[00:13:36]So, these things are all really oddly and interestingly linked.

[00:13:42]Many of the same witnesses whom the HSC HSCA found to be credible insist also that Clay Shaw was present with them that day, but the committee did not find the description of the man believed to be Shaw conclusive. The description of Ferrie, on the other hand, was indisputable. It is It is significant that at the height of Oswald's pro-Castro activity, he was found miles away from New Orleans in the company of Ferrie, a virulent anti-Castro crusader and a man with strong ties to the CIA's efforts to overthrow the Cuban dictator.

[00:14:16]What Oswald and Ferrie and possibly Shaw were doing together remains unknown.

[00:14:21]Whatever the truth about his allegiances, the stage was now well arranged for Oswald to pursue his quest for a passport allowing travel to communist countries. In June, he applied at the New Orleans passport office and received his passport the following day.

[00:14:36]The promptness was odd. Yes, this This is reminiscent of that Finland situation where he applies for a passport and lo and behold, it comes the next day. I mean, in 2026, with money and connections, it would be very difficult still to get a passport the very next day. I have applied many times for different passports, not just for me, but for my children at various points, and it takes anywhere from usually on the short end is like 2 and 1/2 weeks to 6 weeks. Even when you expedite it, you're talking about 2 to 3 weeks at a minimum to get a passport.

[00:15:12]That's in modern times with mail service that's overnighting and things like that, you still get it in a couple of weeks. He applies the next day he receives it.

[00:15:25]It's especially odd considering that Oswald's peculiar international travel habits of defecting to an enemy country might have been expected to cause his application to be considered with extra scrutiny. Indeed, >> [laughter] >> among the countries Oswald listed to which he hoped to travel were France, England, Finland, and the Soviet Union, the very route he followed in his 1959 defection.

[00:15:52]On the day that Oswald was in the passport office, one of the most rabid anti-Castro Cuban exiles also was there.

[00:15:59]Orest Pena, the owner of the Havana Bar in New Orleans, appeared to apply for a passport. He would eventually use it to travel to East Germany.

[00:16:09]Pena later made this trip, which lasted just 1 day, and has described it to the author as purely a sightseeing holiday, right? Pena, himself an FBI operative in New Orleans, had described in detail his own controversial evidence that Oswald was also working as an FBI informant.

[00:16:26]Okay, so we have multiple people saying, "We actually saw with our own eyes Oswald interacting with FBI guys, good-natured with this, passing a white envelope, and now uh [snorts] working as an FBI informant." An obscure bit of published Warren Commission testimony supports the proposition that Oswald was seen once in the dead of night at the counter in Pena's Havana Bar.

[00:16:53]Oswald was in the company of a Latin, perhaps a Cuban, and the scene was memorable because Oswald ordered a lemonade, which the bartender had trouble making.

[00:17:03]Once served, Oswald regurgitated the drink all over a table in the bar.

[00:17:09]In any event, Oswald's presence at the Havana Bar is further evidence of his associate association with the anti-Castro extremists in New Orleans.

[00:17:19]While Peña today claims that he knew Oswald in other contexts and knew him at the time that they went to the passport office on the same day, Peña insists that it's purely coincidental that both he and Oswald appeared the same day to make travel plans to communist lands, destinations relatively uncommon in New Orleans. So, they both show up the same day. It's totally coincidence, you guys.

[00:17:39]This was far from the weirdest coincidence to mark Oswald's efforts to make travel plans.

[00:17:45]On September 17th, he walked into the Mexican consulate at New Orleans and requested a tourist card that would enable him to enter Mexico. He was issued a card bearing the number FM 824085, which he later used later that month when he did go to Mexico.

[00:18:02]In its investigation, the Warren Commission deemed it useful to know of others who applied for such tourist cards at the same time as Oswald. Indeed, it was just such an investigation that turned up the fact that Oswald and Peña had made passport the same day.

[00:18:17]The Mexican government cooperated, but no one in the list of people had any perceivable connection with Oswald or the Kennedy assassination uh who applied for that tourist card.

[00:18:27]However, the tourist card issued immediately prior to Oswald's FM 824084 was not accounted for. The FBI in its report simply noted the number and then no record. That, it might seem, would close the case. And for a long time, it did. For years, critics and researchers expressed suspicion over the missing name for the tourist card issued just before Oswald's. This skepticism was dismissed as another example of paranoia.

[00:19:01]But, many years later, in an avalanche of released documents, there suddenly appeared a name to go with a tourist card prior to Oswald's. The release of this information was unintentional, a predictable blunder resulting from massive bureaucratic duplication of documents.

[00:19:18]The name, quite innocent in appearance, was that of one William G. Gaudet.

[00:19:24]There was a flurry of intense examination by critics of this disclosure. If Oswald possessed the fingerprints of intelligence they found, Gaudet had the whole handprints covering his entire career.

[00:19:37]His association with the CIA on Latin American affairs went back to the agency's inception.

[00:19:44]As the publisher of the Latin American report, Gaudet traveled frequently throughout the regions of keen CIA interest. And his reports to that agency were regular. Indeed, Gaudet conceded that he traveled through Mexico at the time of Oswald's strange visit there.

[00:20:00]Upon the disclosure of his name, researchers located him in South Mississippi, where he was living in retirement. They pounced on him with the disclosure that he was issued the Mexican tourist card just prior to Oswald's, in sequential order.

[00:20:13]Gaudet, who did not deny his CIA connections, was angered by the manner in which his name had been disclosed. He stated that he had been aware of Oswald in New Orleans, that he had seen him on the street in New Orleans passing out his pro-Castro literature. He even volunteered that he had seen Oswald in the company of Guy Banister.

[00:20:31]Gaudet, who has since died, insisted however that he never actually met Oswald and did not know Oswald was in Mexico at the same time he was. Despite the fact that it is certain that he and Oswald were at the Mexican consulate on the same day, Gaudet explained that the sequentially numbered tourist cards were pure coincidence.

[00:20:50]He staunchly denied that his getting his tourist card had anything to do with a possible CIA assignment involving Oswald.

[00:20:57]Given the paucity of known facts, there can be only speculation about these oddities. However, it is possibly significant that on the very day before Oswald and Gaudet were assigned their tourist cards for travel at the same time in Mexico.

[00:21:11]The CIA informed the FBI that it was giving some thought to planting deceptive information which might embarrass the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

[00:21:20]That committee, of course, was the pro-Castro group for which Oswald, alone in New Orleans, had been ostensibly working.

[00:21:27]In this capacity, he made use of the alias A.J. Hidell, which was reserved for only the most significant of Oswald's dark movements. So, the CIA informed the FBI that it was giving thought to planting deceptive information that would embarrass the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

[00:21:45]The day before Oswald and Godot were applying for their travel card. Interesting.

[00:21:53]Okay. Now, we're going to look at this book and find any additional information that might help us in our search for what exactly were the fingerprints of intelligence that were on Lee Harvey Oswald's movements and activities while he was in New Orleans.

[00:22:12]Lee Oswald applied for unemployment compensation benefits on April 12th, and 5 days later, decided for some unknown reason uh that he wanted to move back to New Orleans to look for work.

[00:22:24]Marina and June Oswald accepted Ruth Paine's invitation to move in with her.

[00:22:29]I don't know that June had much to do with it. June >> [laughter] >> was a toddler.

[00:22:34]It's kind of a funny wording. Uh because she and Michael Paine had separated.

[00:22:38]Ruth saw this as an opportunity to further her studies in Russian and offered food and lodging as payment. On April 15th, Lee reportedly had a Viva Castro placard around his neck and passed out Fair Play for Cuba literature in front of H.L. Green store in Dallas.

[00:22:55]If true, Oswald actually began his FPCC activities in Dallas and not in New Orleans.

[00:23:03]On April 24th, 1963, Ruth Payne drove Lee Oswald to the bus station so he could travel to New Orleans.

[00:23:11]It was very odd that Lee Oswald was going to head to New Orleans to look for work when Dallas, Texas was a thriving, fast-growing community and he had already established himself with the Texas Employment Commission as a person of good relationships, good credibility.

[00:23:26]He had done well on his tests. He had presented himself in a way that was favorable.

[00:23:31]He had been deemed employable by them and had just completed a solid 6-month stretch with Jaggers, Chiles, Stovall.

[00:23:39]All of Lee's test scores were available at this office. I find his reason to leave his wife and young family and travel 506 miles to New Orleans by slow-moving bus to look for a menial, low-paying job ridiculous on his face.

[00:23:54]Yeah. He could have secured any number of similar jobs right there in Dallas and kept his family together.

[00:24:01]He says that in his opinion, this move was not to look for work, but more likely to go on assignment to interact with people associated with the intelligence community. In retrospect, this proved to be much more believable than his inability to find another job in Dallas.

[00:24:15]I'm also puzzled by where the weapons Lee Oswald allegedly picked up at the post office on on March 25th, 1963, were stored.

[00:24:25]Or had he packed them up and taken them with him to New Orleans on the bus? I haven't seen anything definitive in the literature, right? Right. The only thing that Hurt said was that um presumably, the weapon had been dissembled and was carried with him on the bus.

[00:24:42]Earlier, I mentioned that there appeared to be a guiding hand. This move from Dallas, Texas to New Orleans for no legitimate job-related reason is consistent with that kind of scripted approach. He didn't have to go as he had been awaiting a determination from the unemployment office in Dallas for benefit payments and there had been many similar job opportunities available to him. The move made no sense unless intelligent operatives had plans for him in New Orleans. It says he arrived and he visited the New Orleans employment office the next day to state his availability for work. He indicated he had been skilled in commercial photography and shipping. There [snorts] has to have been a dispute over his unemployment benefits because he appealed a decision on April 29th, 1963 stating that his Jaggers, Childs, Stovall earnings hadn't been included in the determination.

[00:25:38]On or about May 9th, Oswald secured a job at William B. Riley Coffee Company in New Orleans. The owner, Mr. William B. Riley, had been a prominent backer of the anti-Castro organization called the Crusade to Free Cuba Committee. I've never heard that before.

[00:25:57]Oswald listed a Robert Hidell as a job reference and he got hired for a machine greaser position at the wage rate of $1.50 an hour. He found an apartment on Magazine Street. On May 10th, 1963, Ruth Paine, Marina, and June and their belongings arrived in New Orleans.

[00:26:17]Ruth Paine stayed for 8 days in the modest apartment. She never reported seeing a rifle or a handgun in that tiny apartment. She did talk about taking bug spray and putting a circle around she and her children where they were sleeping so that the roaches wouldn't crawl all over them.

[00:26:34]Much has been written about the William Riley Coffee Company and it appears to have been a staging point for select people to gain temporary employment before being moved to other permanent employers. Two of Oswald's superiors at Riley Coffee, Alfred Claud who hired him, Emmett Barbie, his supervisor, and co-worker John Brannigan found employment at NASA.

[00:26:57]Oswald had thought he was destined for employment at NASA as well. He told that garage owner Adrian Alba that he thought he found his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as he thought he would be hired by NASA at the Michoud Plant. Mr. William Riley, having been a staunch anti-Castro figure in the New Orleans community, likely paved the way or provided a direction for or minimally an opportunity for Oswald's Cuba-oriented activities.

[00:27:30]Additionally, the vice president William Monaghan had been a former FBI agent and an industrial security specialist.

[00:27:38]One would think with this background that Mr. Monaghan could easily have ferreted out former Russian defectors like Oswald.

[00:27:45]As it turns out, he did as he notified the FBI that Oswald had been employed by the Riley Coffee Company.

[00:27:53]After less than 3 weeks on the job at the William Riley Coffee Company, Lee Oswald contacted the New York City headquarters of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee by letter on May 26th, 1963, proposing to rent a small office in New Orleans and establish a new branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

[00:28:16]Oswald did not even wait for a reply.

[00:28:19]So, the frugal new Cuba advocate on May 29th, 1963 ordered 500 application forms from Jones Printing Company 300 membership cards and 1,000 copies of a handbill. It read, "Hands off Cuba. Join the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. New Orleans charter members branch. Free literature. Lectures. Everyone welcome."

[00:28:44]According to handwriting experts, Marina Oswald signed Lee Oswald's membership card with the name A.J. Hidell as chapter president. Going forward, we see much more of the mysterious name A.J.

[00:28:56]Hidell.

[00:28:57]>> [snorts] >> Oswald then either rented or occupied office space for the FPCC.

[00:29:02]This one building had two addresses. One of them was on Lafayette Street. The other one at 544 Camp Street also housed the Banister Detective Agency. Its director, Guy Banister, had a very interesting history. Before he relocated to New Orleans, he had been a senior agent with the Chicago office of the FBI.

[00:29:22]Isn't it interesting, the web we weave, as we now have the alleged traitor, Lee Harvey Oswald, reportedly working in the same building as a former senior FBI agent who presumably was well acquainted with J. Edgar Hoover.

[00:29:37]Intelligence sources have denied for years any association between Lee and Guy Banister. However, Mrs. Delphine Roberts, Guy Banister's secretary, said that her boss had, {quote} taken Lee Oswald under his wing and worked with him on a regular basis.

[00:29:53]Bill Simpich, a lawyer and excellent researcher in this field of JFK research, added in his book, State Secrets, which is apparently free and available only on Mary Ferrell's website, that other Banister staffers included Vernon Gerdes, Tommy Baumler, George Higginbotham, and Allen Campbell. And that they agreed that Oswald and Banister worked together. So, that's five co-workers of Guy Banister saying, "Yeah, Oswald and Banister were working together." They also had the same address that these pamphlets are being handed out from. Simpich reported that Mrs. Roberts and Mr. Higginbotham both said that they had been told by Guy Banister that Oswald worked for him.

[00:30:45]On June 16th, Lee Oswald, likely under the direction of Guy Banister, had been positioned at the Dumaine Street Wharf in New Orleans handing out the pro-Castro leaflets that he had recently received from the printer. So, he aggressively began promoting the Fair Play for Cuba Committee of which he was the only member in this new chapter. At this point in history, these actions by Lee Oswald would have been very controversial, but they are consistent with someone carrying out the duties of a provocateur, right? A rabble-rousing assignment. The FPCC had been under investigation.

[00:31:22]The US agencies wanted to root out any supporters or people sympathetic to Castro so they could know who they were and keep tabs on them.

[00:31:31]Guy Banister and others like William Riley were active and considered themselves to be staunch anti-Castro patriots. We get a little bit of information about Godat. We get Peña.

[00:31:46]And then he goes on. It appears Lee Oswald knew his way around New Orleans intelligence community and he had been going to delve into the Cuban corner of it even more deeply very soon.

[00:31:58]>> [snorts] >> Seemingly, everywhere Oswald went during this time, he interacted with people in the intelligence arena. He had a former employer. He had his William Riley company connections. He had Banister, Warren De Brueys, and David Smith. These people were all seen interacting and were very well connected. How could all of these people not know what Oswald had been up to? Was it because they had been directing his activities? Did Oswald understand why all these people had an interest in him?

[00:32:29]Wasn't Oswald just a poor $1.25 an hour laborer? How did this daily wage working man secure another labor position in New Orleans at the same pay rate, but not connecting with average workers who are doing normal stuff, but he's like in the who's who of the US intelligence community. He's got FBI guys, CIA guys, handing out leaflets that are printed with the same address.

[00:33:01]It's quite a leap for a commoner to make, and we're supposed to believe there's nothing to see here.

[00:33:07]Lee Oswald applies for the new passport, gets it the next day.

[00:33:12]On July 6th, Oswald's cousin, Eugene Murret, invited him to deliver a speech about his time in Russia to a group of students at the Jesuit House in Mobile, Alabama. Oswald's cousin was studying to become a Catholic priest.

[00:33:28]That's a little bit about the Murrets. I I need to learn more about the Murrets.

[00:33:31]I wonder if there's any books that talk about it.

[00:33:36]Uh we have a little bit here, so I'm just going to jump ahead to those points. Oswald took up his cousin, Eugene Murret's, request to speak at the Jesuit House of Studies in Mobile on July 27th, 1963. He spoke for over an hour, including Q&A about contemporary Russia and the practice of communism.

[00:33:55]And he touched on aspects of capitalism.

[00:33:58]From all indications, the speech went over well, and Lee Oswald was perceived as being very articulate. Murret also sent Lee Oswald a follow-up letter on August 22nd, informing him of the points raised by some audience members. Lee Oswald thought a blend of capitalism and communism would work well in the US.

[00:34:17]Murret equated it with socialism and wasn't confident that this form of government would work in such a large country.

[00:34:25]On August 5th or 6th, Lee Oswald paid a visit to a clothing store owned by a former Havana, Cuba attorney named Carlos Bringuier, who happened to be a delegate of the Cuban Student Directorate, an anti-Castro organization, and an FBI informant. Uh another name was the DRE.

[00:34:45]Later, we learned recently, actually, in some of the document drops, that undercover CIA officer George Joannides, chief of the Psychological Warfare Branch of the Miami Station, supervised the DRE under the direction of Chief David Atlee Phillips, in a CIA operation code named Am Bell.

[00:35:07]>> [snorts] >> Oswald, who may or may not have been aware of the CIA connection, explained his Marine Corps background to Mr. Bringuier and expressed an interest in joining his organization. Oswald volunteered to train Cubans in their fight against Castro and offered to fight Castro's forces himself. He indicated he had been trained in guerrilla warfare while serving as a Marine. He offered to leave his Marine Corps guide book to convince Mr. Bringuier of his sincerity.

[00:35:35]Oswald's efforts failed because Bringuier pinned him as an FBI informant or a communist penetration agent.

[00:35:44]This is significant because within 48 hours of the assassination of John F.

[00:35:48]Kennedy, the CIA influenced DRE claimed that Oswald had killed Kennedy on orders from Castro.

[00:35:58]Hmm.

[00:35:59]So, that was August 5th or 6th. On August 9th, Lee Oswald was back out working the pro-Castro side of the fence on Canal Street. He's handing out FPC leaflets and who shows up? Carlos Bringuier.

[00:36:13]Uh Mr. Bringuier sees the literature and Bringuier acts as if he's upset, but the two of them get in a scuffle that now appears to have been staged. Uh Uh, four people are arrested, Lee Oswald, Carlos Bringuier, and two other anti-Castro Cubans. Oswald is taken to the New Orleans jail, and what's interesting is that when he gets a call, he doesn't name his wife, or a friend, or a relative, a co-worker, he says to call the FBI. His alleged regular FBI contact, Mr. Warren De Brueys, hadn't been in the local FBI office on Saturday, and Oswald meets with a junior FBI agent, John Quigley. He goes off on a tangent. He shows them his the membership card that bears his name, tells all about the mysterious A.J.

[00:37:03]Hidell. After spending one night in jail, Lee Oswald is bailed out by a family friend of his aunt, Lillian Klaverly Murret.

[00:37:14]He appears at the office of the clerk of court, offers a plea of guilty, pays the fine of $10.

[00:37:24]On August 17th, Lee Oswald was approached at his apartment by a man named Bill Stuckey, and asked to appear on a program called the Latin Listening Post. He accepts the invitation, reports to the radio station, and has a 37-minute program representing himself as an FPCC spokesperson. An edited 4 and 1/2-minute segment was broadcast that same night. Two days later, he's asked to appear in a live debate against Carlos Bringuier, and Oswald accepts. It's scheduled for August 21st. He shows up.

[00:38:02]He debates Carlos Bringuier and Ed Butler.

[00:38:05]He represented the FPCC, and expressed his admiration for Castro, and called for fair treatment of Cuba. This program aired on August 22nd.

[00:38:15]During this broadcast, he was ambushed and accused of being a communist, and having given up his citizenship while living in Russia. This is the time when listen to this quote, he made a critical mistake and I believe he tipped his hand about his relationship with intelligence officials. Yes, this is a good point when we're looking at the fingerprints of intelligence, let's look at these exact words. After being accused he replies I was not under the protection of the And before going further, he quickly recognizes his error and says that is to say I was not under the protection of the American government.

[00:38:55]Despite the attack, Oswald held up very well. He points out that Ruth Payne appears back in the lives of the Oswald when she visits on September 20th. She spends three days there picks up Marina and June. Marina is very pregnant at this point and it's important to note that Oswald had become reacquainted with David Ferry who had been his instructor back during Oswald's Civil Air Patrol days.

[00:39:24]So, that is where we get for now. He says ask yourself if Lee Oswald's activities in New Orleans pass the reasonable person test. It's a good question.

[00:39:35]Is it reasonable to believe that Lee Oswald went to New Orleans to look for another laborer position or is it more reasonable to believe he had been directed to go there by some unknown person or group to become immersed in Cuban related intelligence activities?

[00:39:52]I think the record is clear. He was sent there likely to penetrate and undermine the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

[00:39:59]Yeah, we get to see him on both sides of the issue working alongside Guy Banister. According to Guy Banister's employees, that's very credible.

[00:40:07]So, very grateful to Jim Perloff for filling in those gaps for us. Things that were hinted at in 1985 filled out 40 years later in 2025.

[00:40:21]Let me know what stands out to you. That is going to wrap up for now our look at the fingerprints of intelligence. I do want to just say another whole set of investigations that you could do would be going deeper into the relationship with George de Mohrenschildt.

[00:40:39]Going more into the issues of pay stubs, the things that were alleged by Texas AG Waggoner Carr that he was that Lee Oswald was on the payroll of the FBI as a regular informant. And then recent investigations that seem to show that Oswald was given an employment code in his files at the CIA. So, there are things that you can definitely dig into as well as the oft-discussed Mexico City trip. There's plenty there for fodder for whether or not there in fingerprints of intelligence in that whole situation.

[00:41:18]But, for our purposes today, that is going to wrap up the questions that I had. I really wanted to understand the Riley Coffee Company angle a little better.

[00:41:27]>> [snorts] >> I wanted to understand the Guy Banister issue. I feel like we got that and more.

[00:41:32]So, you guys let me know if you have remaining questions about the fingerprints of intelligence in the life of Lee Oswald.

[00:41:40]Next thing we're going to look at, I think we're going to get into the Chicago plot. We may also do a classic article about Officer Tippit's movements. So, come back for that. We'll see you soon. I hope you have a great day.

[00:41:57]Bye.