Who was Jane Roman?
Jane Roman was a CIA employee who worked as a senior liaison officer on the Counterintelligence Staff during 1963. The Counterintelligence Staff was overseen by the legendary James Angleton who Morley wrote a book about and who figures prominently in many conspiracy theories. Roman died in 2007.
What is Roman's connection to Morley?
Morley and researcher John Newman interviewed Roman in 1994. Unfortunately, the interview was more like an ambush as Roman was peppered with questions about CIA documents she had signed off on thirty-one years before. Roman was 79 years old at the time of the interview. Newman did most of the questioning and Morley spoke "hardly a word" according to Roman's account which is confirmed by a transcript of the interview.
What is the significance of the interview according to Morley?
Morley wrote an article titled "The Oswald File: Tales of the Routing Slips” that appeared in the Outlook section of the Post in April of 1995. According to Morley, "the gist of the story was in the third paragraph." That section reads:
"The routing slips on newly released files show that some senior CIA officials who knew about the FBI reports [about Oswald] failed to share the information with agency colleagues in Mexico City who were trying to learn more about Oswald six weeks before the assassination."
But Morley's work on the matter has evolved since 1995. Then, Morley was held back by editors at the Post who refused to go along with the more sensational aspects of his work. But in 2002, Morley elaborated on his theories in an Internet article where journalistic standards are easy to sidestep.
What Morley is really saying is that CIA Headquarters told Mexico City station via an October 10, 1963 cable that the "latest" information on Oswald was a 1962 State Department report that related only basic data such as he had defected in 1959 and returned to the US with a Russian wife. The cable also said that Oswald's time in the Soviet Union had a "maturing effect" on him. But the latest information was actually contained in two FBI reports from October of 1963 that Roman had signed off on. Therefore, Morley implies Roman knowingly signed off on an incorrect report for nefarious reasons.
Morley now believes that the reason for the actions of Roman and other CIA officials was to cover up the existence of his "Oswald operation" which the Mexico City station had no need to know about. Morley bases this in part on Roman's statement that someone at the CIA had a "keen interest" in Oswald that was held on a "need to know basis." But Roman's statements were made after looking at documents that she had not seen for thirty years and studied out of context.
Did the CIA ever respond to Morley's allegations?
In 1995, an agency document said that the October 10th cable "was not a complete report on Oswald based on all information available." The document went on to say that the phrase "latest [headquarters] information" likely referred to a "citizenship issue" and was not meant to imply that "no other information" on Oswald was available.
Did Roman ever respond to the allegations of Morley and Newman?
Absolutely. She first responded immediately during the interview. She told Newman, "All these things that you have shown me so far before the assassination would have been very dull and very routine." Roman also said "I had thousands of these things." In other words, the name "Oswald" only held special significance after the assassination. And with so many documents to deal with Roman may have not realized that the wording of the headquarters cable was not strictly correct. Roman also said, "I wasn’t in on any particular goings-on or hanky-panky as far as the Cuban situation." Finally, she told Newman, "this is all routine as far as I was concerned."
Roman called Morley three days after the interview to voice her displeasure. Roman told Morley that it was her opinion that the FBI reports "were never read by the person who drafted the reply [to Mexico City]." After the article was published Roman said that Morley had made a "monstrous mountain out of a molehill."
At Morley's suggestion, Roman began to write a response to the Post but never sent it. She may have decided that responding would only call more attention to the matter and therefore would not be worth it. Fortunately, Roman did provide her draft remarks to the ARRB. "Being an admirer of the Post and the Outlook section," Roman began, "and believing that they adhered to integrity and veracity rather than pandering to sensationalism, I agreed, having checked the editor’s [Morley] credentials. I bitterly regret this decision."
Roman continued, "[Newman's] 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 ... 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."
Roman added. "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."
Roman noted that sub-headline “'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."
Interestingly, Roman predicted way back in 1995 where people like Newman and Morley were heading. Roman wrote, "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?"
That is exactly the case as Newman has written several books promoting the idea that individuals in the Pentagon were responsible for JFK's murder. Morley has maintained that JFK's "enemies" killed him and he is open to Newman's notion of Pentagon involvement.
Has other information about the Jane Roman matter come to light since 1995?
In 1996, Roman responded to an ARRB request for an interview. Roman told Jeremy Gunn that the Morley article was "sensationalistic, scurrilous" and "tendentious" and her "words were taken out of context."
In 1997, the ARRB interviewed Roman. She provided the review board with general information about the Counterintelligence Staff. Roman repeated her belief that the FBI reports had not made their way to Oswald's file at the time the reply to Mexico was written. Roman "continually" expressed her displeasure with the Morley article which was the obvious basis for several of the questions put to her by the ARRB staff. Roman said that Morley had taken her statements "out of context" and written a "misleading" article.
Researcher Gerald McNally spoke to Roman by phone in 1999. Roman told McNally that she agreed to speak to Morley after verifying that he was a Post editor and because he seemed to be "charming and presentable." Roman repeated her theory that the cables she had signed off on "were still being circulated and had not been integrated into Oswald's 201 file" and therefore were not available to the person who had prepared the reply to Mexico station.
in 2008, Morley published his book Our Man in Mexico. Morley wrote about his interview with William Hood, an OSS and CIA official who was close to Richard Helms. Hood looked at the CIA cables Morley is so concerned about and agreed that there was "a lot of coordination." Hood did not know why the "latest headquarters information" on Oswald was omitted from the cable to Mexico. But when Morley suggested it was because "somebody at headquarters was running an operation involving [Oswald]," Hood balked. "Absolutely not," He insisted. "There’s no reason to. If it was something at Helms’s level there would be a reason not to tell somebody in the field. But not at this level."
Hood told Morley that while the missing information about the DRE-Oswald encounter was "significant" he considered its exclusion from the cable an "anomaly" and added that he didn't "find anything smelly in it."
0 comments:
Post a Comment