ustxtxb_obs_1983_11_25_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

Chuck Caldwell’s 1731 New Hampshire Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009 Dupont Circle/Embassy area Spacious rooms Coffee shop Parking Best buy in D.C. Present this ad when checking in and receive a $10 introductory rebate. CALL TOLL FREE 800-424-2463 Printers Stationers Mailers Typesetters High Speed Web Offset Publication Press Counseling Designing Copy Writing Editing Trade Computer Sales and Services Complete Computer Data Processing Services *FUTURA 0 PRESS AUSTIN TEXAS FUTUR111 512/442-7836 1714 South Congress P.O. Box 3485 Austin, Texas 78764 voED P. It r,, v 7 COUNCIL TRADES UNION LA IIEL SNN TEX P.4′ it was a light meter. I don’t know why they wanted it changed, but they must have had some motive for it.” Later the FBI introduced a Minox camera into the records as being found during the Oswald property search, but not as Oswald’s property. Under a Freedom of Information Act request in 1978, the FBI released 25 photographs developed from two rolls of Minox film supposedly found among Oswald’s possessions fifteen years earlier. More then twenty prints from one roll showed civilian scenes apparently in Europe. Five other prints from the second roll showed military installatons either in the Far East or Central America. Another example of Oswald’s photographid ability was not revealed by the FBI until fourteen years after the assassination. Photos that Oswald took in Russia were referred to among thousands of pages of other FBI documents declassified in 1977-8. The photo references were not stamped “CD,” meaning they probably had not been submitted to the Warren Commission. Neither the photos themselves nor where the FBI found them have been released. A number of the photo descriptions, all in the Minsk area where Oswald lived, were of military establishments and other sensitive sites more of interest to an espionage agent than a sightseer. Hoover once told the Warren Commission that an “espionage training school” was located in the Minsk area. One of the most significant FBI secrets was Hoover’s decision not to reveal to the Warrant Commission the CIA plots to assassinate Castro. In Dallas while working in a typesetting and photography shop after his return from Russia, Oswald was seen trying to enlarge a photo of a “military headquarters” building in Minsk taken with a “small camera,” according to fellow employee Dennis Ofstein. Oswald told Ofstein guards at the building “were armed with weapons and ammunition and had orders to shoot any trespassers or anyone trying to enter the building without permission.” After the assassination, FBI agents showed Ofstein and other employees a photo of a leather pouch that Oswald might have used to conceal a miniature camera. In 1964, Oswald’s knowledge of sophisticated espionage equipment was made public only because Ofstein mentioned it during his Warren Commission testimony. Oswald talked in detail about the geographical disbursement of Soviet military units, Ofstein said, and introduced him to the term “microdot.” Ofstein said Oswald described microdots as “a way spies sometimes send messages and pictures of diagrams” by photographically reducing them to a dot and placing them “under a [postage] stamp.” The FBI’s only written account about Oswald’s life in Russia during the period from January 1960 to March 1961 was Oswald’s “historic diary” found among his personal effects after the assassination. Handwriting experts told the House Assassinations Committee in 1978 that the diary was written by Oswald but on the same paper and in a continuous pattern in one or two sittings. The committee also noted the dates and events described in the diary on occasion occurred after the time Oswald purportedly wrote about them. Oswald’s Russian-born wife testified he brought the diary with him when he returned to the United States in 1962, making it a forgery done in Russia. Oswald, however, was straddling both sides of the intelligence fence in the final months before the assassination. During the summer of 1963, just before this trip to Mexico City, he actively tried to join the anti-Castro Cuban exiles at their CIA-supported THE TEXAS OBSERVER 13