In his interview with FRONTLINE, Blakey calls the prosecution case against Lee Harvey Oswald "open and shut." While he does not see Oswald as a Soviet, CIA or FBI recruit, he is careful to point out many of the unanswered questions regarding Oswald's mysterious associations and possible ties to the mob. This interview was conducted in 1993 in conjunction with Frontline's first broadcast of "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" For this 2003 publication of the interview, Mr. Blakey has added a notation to those questions touching on the CIA, and refers the reader to a long addendum at the end of this interview that reflects his opinion on the CIA in light of current revelations.

Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey is a recognized expert on organized crime and an authority on the JFK assassination. He is the author of the 1981 book, The Plot To Kill the President , and in the late 1960s he campaigned for and helped write much of the anti-racketeering legislation that would usher in the demise of the Mafia. As chief counsel to the 1977 House Select Committee on Assassinations, Blakey led the investigation into President Kennedy's assassination, reexamining the evidence with a new forensics panel. The committee found that there was a "probable conspiracy,"suggesting that parts of the Mafia and/or certain anti-Castro Cuban groups "may have been involved."

CIA clearly did lie about the case. For example, Helms lied about the case. The CIA appear to have been not cooperative, to have put out false photographs of Oswald, to have claimed they had no photographs of Oswald, there were many cases where they seem to have tried to cover their tracks,. How do you know that you found the underlying cause of this? You have to draw a distinction between the FBI and the Agency in the 1960s--and the substantial lack of candor between them and the Warren Commission--and the subsequent behavior of the agencies as they dealt with the congressional committee [in 1977].

2003 Addendum: I now no longer feel comfortable with the conclusions I expressed here in 1993. I set out below the reasons for this judgment.

It is impossible to prove a negative, but I'm always convinced that we had sufficient access to the files themselves, I particularly, in an unedited form. We had total access to the agents who prepared them. … The records are as they seem.

We took very seriously the hypothesis that Lee Harvey Oswald was connected to the CIA or our intelligence services. When we went to the CIA files, we took very seriously the hypothesis that they had been edited in some way. We talked to the agents who had created them, we made sure that each of the agents was given a release from their secrecy oath and was carefully instructed that if they lied to us, there would be prosecution. We cross checked the references in files to see what would be in parallel files.

Was there a concern that the intelligence services simply kept that information from you so there was no firm evidence either way?

Would the Americans develop a false defector program and put Oswald in it? When you look at Oswald's life, he just doesn't seem to be emotionally stable enough to be the kind of candidate that our people would recruit.

The ultimate judgment on Oswald as a recruited agent is that he was not—either by the CIA or by the Soviets. For example, if the Soviets had recruited him in Japan, the time and place to use him was in Japan, not to have him defect to Russia to make radios. That just is not what makes sense. Take a look at his character. The KGB conducted an investigation of him in the Soviet Union by the wiretapping, the bugging, the debriefing of all of his neighbors. None of this is consistent with Oswald having been recruited.