Following her interview with Jefferson Morley and John Newman, Jane Roman wrote this unsent letter to the Washington Post. The reason she never mailed it is unknown. However, the ARRB uncovered the letter and published it as an assasssination-related item. The raw letter has been available for some time, but has likely not been seen by most researchers. The letter, which called Morley's article "sensationally misleading" (among other things) certainly has never been promoted by either Morley or Newman for obvious reasons.
Note that Roman's letter has been reproduced as faithfully as possible with the exception of a sidebar that was not fully legible. Also not presented here is a section she crossed out. The raw letter may be seen HERE.
To The Editor,
In the April 2 Outlook section of your paper, an article appeared headlined “The Oswald File: Tales of the Routing Slips—Six Weeks Before JFK’s Murder, the CIA Didn’t Tell All That it Knew.”
Some weeks prior I, a CIA retiree, had been contacted by an editor of Outlook [Morley] who informed me of yet another Presidential commission set up to quell the new speculations generated by the Oliver Stone movie “JFK.” He said a problem had arisen that only I could resolve. He would like to interview me bringing along an historian. Being an admirer of the Post and the Outlook section and believing that they adhered to integrity and veracity rather than pandering to sensationalism, I agreed, having checked the editor’s credentials.
I bitterly regret this decision. At the interview, which was tape recorded by both men, [Morley] spoke hardly a word. The interview was done by Mr. [John] Newman who is writing a book on “Oswald and the CIA.” His approach can best be described as belligerent and confrontational. I later told [Morley] that it appeared to me that he had set up this interview in order that Mr. Newman could ask his questions of me. The whole situation appeared to me to be making a monstrous mountain out of a mole hill. My statements have been seriously contorted, taken out of context or, at best, misinterpreted.
I asked for a copy of the statements made by me which were to be used in the article prior to publication which I understood was agreed upon. This was never done. For the record: I have never heard or read that there was any CIA relationship, direct or indirect, with Oswald. The Warren Commission, a body of distinguished, honorable and knowledgeable men, reached this conclusion as did the three other government commissions or committees set up in later years. The CIA contributed wholeheartedly in all these investigations.
I do not recall saying that the withholding of FBI information from CIA Mexico station was deliberate, nor do I believe it. My explanation would be that the two FBI reports of October 1963, mentioned in the Outlook article as initialed by me, went through extensive routing and would not have reached Oswald’s dossier in central registry and been available to the desk officer who prepared and drafted the reply to the Mexican Station cable. I had nothing to do with the preparation and drafting, I signed off on it as a matter of routine coordination and review. The FBI reports in any case would not have added anything of significant value to the situation in Mexico City and the cable was a summary of pertinent facts. There was no particular reason for withholding [the cable] that I can imagine.
The Outlook article says one CIA explanation of the FBI reports not being included states that the station request focused only on the status of Oswald’s citizenship and therefore draws only from State Department information. I never saw the incoming cable from Mexico Station, so I was in no position to verify it. Frankly, I don’t recall having been informed of this information in this form. The quotation of my saying, “This may or may not be true” was either taken out of context or contorted. I certainly would not have impugned the veracity of another CIA official.
Naturally, Oswald was the subject of great interest to both the CIA and the FBI even before the assassination. CIA would have explored every available asset abroad to establish his motives and activities. Some of this investigation may have been operationally sensitive and therefore held closely on a need-to-know basis. The fact, as publicly known now, that Oswald was a big headache to the Soviets who placed him as a metal worker in Minsk and were happy to return him to the states with a Soviet wife (a most unusual occurrence as some Americans know to their sorrow) speaks for itself. In my opinion he was a complete sociopath, if not in fact a psychopath.
The sub headline on the Outlook article “Six Weeks Before JFK’s Murder, the CIA Didn’t Tell All That it Knew” is sensationally misleading. The information in the cable from Mexico Station was disseminated to State, the FBI, INS, and Navy (Oswald was an ex-Marine) and to their representatives in Mexico City.
The Soviets, Castro, the Mafia and President Johnson have all been publicly suspected of having been behind the assassination. In the article, it was stated that the “JFK” film suggested that Kennedy was murdered because he was resisting escalation of the Vietnam War. Mr. Newman was an advisor to Oliver Stone. Are the military then to be considered the next suspect?
I apologize to all my former CIA colleagues and those presently concerned for my much regretted involvement in this most flagrantly ridiculous [and] incorrect article.
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