Free Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK by John Newman Page A

point in the Agency for his files at that time. The counterintelligence implications of the Oswald case were there from the very beginning and, as we will discover, would grow more acute right until the murders of Kennedy and Oswald. Quite apart from the U-2 considerations of Oswald's defection in 1959, the CI staff and its controversial leader, James Jesus Angleton, should have had many concerns. For example, they should have wanted to know about the defection's implications for the KGB's capability against CIA operations in Japan and every other place Oswald had been stationed. If Angleton and his staff were to get involved in a secret damage investigation in the wake of any defection to the Soviet Union, the logical person for him to call upon would be the chief of his own mole-hunting section, the Counterintelligence Special Investigation Group. That person at the time was Birch D. O'Neal. Therefore we should ask the question: Is there any evidence of O'Neal's interest in Oswald during the initial "black hole" period in November 1959?

    The answer is yes.21 On Friday, November 6, 1959, Snyder's lengthier dispatch on Oswald's defection arrived at State Department headquarters in Washington." This document was in the possession of the FBI no later than the following Thursday, November 12, and was at the CIA, where fifteen copies were sent, no later than Friday, November 13. We can confirm that it was physically located at the CIA by this date because of a parenthetical entry on the CIA's document lists on Oswald prepared for the HSCA.23 The original CIA cover sheet is missing, which still prevents an authoritative determination on the precise office and person to whom it first went in the CIA.
    We at least know, however, that this document was in fact in the CIA during the mysterious, or "black hole," period of November 3 through December 6. In fact, it falls nearly in the middle of this period. A kind soul to whom historians shall forever be indebted typed a bracketed note about this document on a CIA document list, which reads "[Received in CIA on 13 Nov 59]."2` Moreover, upon close examination there is some handwriting in the upper righthand corner of the copy in the National Archives. We can easily read it because it was written so neatly. It says "O'Neal," almost certainly the very man we are looking for-chief of CI/SIG. That writing appears to be identical to O'Neal's writing elsewhere in the collection, and is thus hard evidence that Angleton's mole-hunting chief was scrutinizing these earliest of materials on Oswald.
    The disheveled nature of Oswald's early CIA files makes it impossible to understand as much as we might otherwise, but the foregoing is clear evidence of CI/SIG receipt of several Oswald documents on December 6, 1959. This information was not publicly available until 1993, and much additional research will be necessary just to ensure all related records have been located. We now know that somebody in the CIA was examining a key Oswald document on November 13, and so we should consider whether the content of that document could help illuminate the threat posed to the U-2 program by Oswald's defection. The contents of Snyder's November 2 dispatch confirmed what those in the Agency who knew of the U-2 program should have feared the most-that Oswald had threatened to talk about more than radar. As previously discussed, in this dispatch Snyder offered a more complete version of the threat Oswald made in the American Embassy on October 31:

    Oswald offered the information that he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps and that he had voluntarily stated to unnamed Soviet officials that as a Soviet citizen he would make known to them such information concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty as he possessed. He intimated that he might know something of special interest [emphasis added].
    Snyder's later theory that by "something of special interest" Oswald may have meant the U-2 program seems