Oswald Visited Cuba and Soviet Union Before Kennedy Assassination

CIA: Oswald Visited Cuba and Soviet Union Before Kennedy Assassination
By Cathy Burke | Wednesday, 16 Sep 2015 04:59 PM

Assassin Lee Harvey Oswald visited Mexico City seeking visas to travel
to Cuba and the Soviet Union weeks before the slaying of President John
F. Kennedy — information the CIA gave to President Lyndon Johnson three
days after the fatal shooting in Dallas, according to newly declassified
data.

The Washington Times reports the travel plans were included in the
19,000 pages of presidential daily briefings from the 1960s — known as
the President's Daily Brief and stamped "For the President's Eyes Only"
on some pages — being made public. About a fifth of the content is still
redacted to protect sources and methods.

The Times reports in a Nov. 25, 1963, briefing that Oswald, a former
Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, visited both the Cuban
and Soviet embassies on Sept. 28.

"He was trying, we are told, to arrange for visas so that he could
travel to the USSR via Havana," the briefing reads.

Oswald returned to the United States Oct. 3, according to the briefing.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Oswald shot Kennedy with a sniper rifle as he rode in
an open-air motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Charged with the
assassination, Oswald claimed he was a scapegoat; two days afterward, he
was shot and killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

The day of the assassination, the spy agency's briefing concluded a
Soviet anti-missile paraded in Moscow appeared only designed for use in
the atmosphere. In Japan, meanwhile, an election didn't change the
balance of power. At least one page in the briefing remains classified.

The newly declassified briefings also included information to Kennedy —
a day before the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis — that a new warhead
launcher was spotted in Cuba.

"These are an incomparable window into how a president thinks," said
William Inboden, who worked under President George W. Bush and now leads
the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at
Austin. "When we're reading these, it's a mirror image of what the
president's concerns were."

The release of the briefs was made possible by a 2009 executive order
from President Barack Obama stating all classified material will
automatically undergo a declassification review and release after 25
years. The full collection of briefs from the Kennedy and Johnson era
are posted on the CIA's website.

Source: CIA: Oswald Visited Cuba and Soviet Union Before Kennedy
Assassination -
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/cia-john-f-kennedy-assassination-lee-harvey-oswald/2015/09/16/id/691900/