OSWALD LINK TO C.I.A. REPORTED AT INQUIRY – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
By Nicholas M. Horrock Special to The New York Times
- March 27, 1978
Credit…The New York Times Archives
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March 27, 1978, Section A, Page 14Buy Reprints
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WASHINGTON, March 26—A former finance officer for the Central* Intelligence Agency has testified before the House Select Committee on ‘ Assassinations that his colleagues had told him that Lee Harvey Oswald was a secret operative for the agency in Japan in the late 1950’s.
The witness, James B. Wilcott, wno said that he had served in low‐level jobs With the C.I.A. from 1957 through. April 1966, contended in an interview that conversations with colleagues in the agency’s Tokyo station . after President Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, convinced him that Oswald, who had served as a marine in the Far East, had been recruited by the agency to infiltrate the Soviet Union.
Mr. Wilcott, who acknowledged that his memory of events. 15 years ago was often sketchy, said that he testified under oath at a closed session of the House committee on Wednesday, supplying the names of several officials of the C.I.A. who might be able to give further details on the matter.
Robert Blakey, the chief counsel and Pfaff director of the committee, declined to comment on the testimony. However, an interim report issued by the committee indicated that, although the staff had conducted some 1,400 field interviews, the committee chose to fly relatively few witnesses to Washington to obtain formal, sworn testimony like that supplied by Mr. Wilcott..
According to several sources, the committee was investigating Mr. Wilcott’s testimony..
Mr. Wilcott said that he joined the C.I.A. as a low‐ranking finance officer in 1957 and was sent to Tokyo in 1960. At the Tokyo station, which was in building that ostensibly housed ‘ United States Air Force personnel, M. .Wilcott said, his responsibilities included making cash disbursements for projects’ identified only by code names called “cryptos.”
– He said’ that his wife was a clerical employee of the agency at that time and that he stood “watch shifts” to earn extra money. .
Mr. Wilcott said. that although the traditions and the regulations , of the agency separated members of the support staff such as himself from intelligence officers and other officials, he fraternized with operational personnel while he was on night‐watch’ duty, in occasional off duty conversations and at the. teller’s cage where he made his disbursements.
He said that in the months after Kennedy’s death he had several conversations with personnel involved in covert operations. Those talks, he said, convinced him that Oswald, who had been stationed at Atsugi Air Base, Japan, had been recruited to infiltrate the, Soviet Union as a spy.
Mr. Wilcott. said that he could recall only one specific conversation, which occurred shortly after Jack Ruby shot Oswald in Dallas. .In an account of the conversation that he prepared for publication, Mr. Wilcott noted, “I. was talking with someone, I can’t recall who for sure, and I expressed disbelief about Oswald even being a C.I.A. project, I was told something like, ‘Well, Jim, so and so drew an advance sometime in the past from you for Oswald’ or ‘for that project under such and such: a crypto.’
at the time, which I have since forgotten, as well as the time, that the advance of funds was drawn,” he wrote. ,
There appear to be several discrepancies in the recollections of Mr. Wilcott, gray‐haired man of medium height For instance he remembered having learned of the Kennedy assassination on an aft ernoon flight of a ‘private plane. However, Kennedy was shot at midday in Dallas, which would have been early the next. morning in Japan.
Oswald served in the Far East from 1957 until November 1958 and was discharged from the Marine ‘Corps before Mr. Wilcott was sent to Tokyo. Mr. Wilcott said that, he had been told that Oswald had been taken to Japan for questioning after returning from the Soviet Union in 1962.
There has been speculation about whether Oswald came under the control of the intelligence agency in ‘Japan. In a recent book, “Legend, the Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald,” Edward Jay Epstein describes Oswald’s interest, in the Russian language and his strange contacts with Japanese civilians. ‘
But officials of the agency have denied under oath having ever recruited, trained or manipulated Oswald, and former senior officials of the agency have angrily denounced as irresponsible attempts to connect the agency to the assassination.
The agency will not say whether it has employed individuals. Mr. Wilcott said that after leaving Tokyo in June 1964 he served at the agency’s offices in Rossly, Va.; at the main headquarters, in McLean, Va., and at the station in Miami. He said that he resigned in April 1966.
Mr. Wilcott said that after leaving the agency he became active in the movement against the Vietnam War and developed an interest in left‐wing political causes. He said that he began circulating his account of the conversations concerning Oswald several years ago but that they were never published.
According to one• source, the House committee learned about Mr. Wilcott’s story from Philip Agee, a former agent of the C.I.A. who published several’ years ago a book attacking the agency’s operations in Latin America.
Mr. Wilcott was represented at the committee hearing by Williams H. Schaap, one of Mr. Agee’s lawyers.
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