Mexico's Lee Harvey Oswald Files
DFS secret police, reporting to CIA, investigated an alleged plot from the Cuban embassy to kill Kennedy
Credito: Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 36-69-963
Did a mysterious red-haired black man with a scarred face hand Lee Harvey Oswald $6,500 in cash at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, two months before he shot John F. Kennedy? Or was the Nicaraguan double agent who reported this to Mexico’s secret police a fabricator seeking fame and fortune? Or was this all part of a CIA counter operation to divert attention from the real assassins?
Six decades after the assassination of JFK at Dealey plaza in Dallas on that fateful Nov. 22, 1963, which would shift history, documents continue to drip in on the sprawling confounding case. One pile of dusty papers offering clues lies in Mexico’s national archive, now in the colorful building of the former Lecumberri prison. I had a chance to get in there and wade through the files of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad, or DFS, Mexico’s secret police of the time, on Oswald’s trip to Mexico in September 1963.
Credito: Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 36-69-963
The folder catalogued as Exp. 36-69-963 reveals some juicy reports by Mexican agents who followed players, including: a Mexican secretary at the embassy reported to have an affair with the Cuban ambassador; a British tourist who happened to meet Oswald on the bus; and the curious character of a Nicaraguan double agent who says he saw money change hands. There are familiar names in Mexican espionage involved including Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, who later became the country’s spy chief and then governor of Veracruz, and Luis Echeverría, who became president and was a CIA informant.
Credito: Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 36-69-963
The files also contain interesting lists of questions that agents filed at various times during the investigation, like this one below. “How much was the assassin paid?” an agent asks. “How much did DURAN get for her role in the plot?” he writes, referring to the Mexican secretary.
Credito: Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 36-69-963
The DFS was founded in 1947, in the same year as the CIA and with assistance from it, and always had a close relationship with its American big brother. Indeed, some of the interrogations by the DFS in the Mexico files also appear in declassified CIA docs summarized and translated into English (although it’s interesting to see what details the Company keeps and omits). The CIA also “borrowed” (in their own speak) witnesses from the DFS, including a key source in this case, who would complain the Mexican agents threatened that he would be “hanged by the testicles.”
Credito: Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 36-69-963
Oswald came into Mexico using this visa above, which was issued in New Orleans, and crossed the border at Nuevo Laredo on Sept. 26, going back on Oct. 3. He took a Transporte Fronteras bus to Mexico City, the DFS found, and stayed at the Hotel Comercio, which was on Sahagún street in the capital’s historic center.
Oswald was supposedly trying to get a visa to Cuba, from where he would go to Russia, and he even talked about this to the British tourist on the bus. It was strange behavior as the former marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union and then gone back to the United States with his Russian bride.
Credito: Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 36-69-963
The two most colorful DFS interrogations are of…
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