New Documents expose three Mexican Presidents as CIA assets in project LIENVOY

LIENVOY was a Cold War joint espionage project between the CIA and the Mexican Government, financed by the U.S., to wire tap persons and entities of interest in order to develop and implement counter measures and policy. The two main CIA targets were the Soviet (LIMERICK) and Cuban embassies and everyone associated with these.

The Mexican targets were political adversaries of President Adolfo López Mateos, (who went by the cryptonym “LITENSOR”), as well as the Communist Party (CP) of Mexico, newspapers and magazines who were enemies of LITENSOR. Even though the Mexican government allowed this type of operation on their soil, Mexico (and Lopez Mateos) insisted that they were not about to break diplomatic or commercial relations with Cuba, despite the enormous pressure from the U.S. to do so. Interestingly enough as we shall see, three consecutive Presidents of Mexico, from 1958-1976 had prominent positions working for the CIA in project LIENVOY. The project was later renamed KDBADGER.

According to documents found in NARA 104-10414-10124 History of Mexico City Station for HSCA:

Here is an image of the AMPEX 601 model used by LIENVOY:

This is a photo of the actual base house listening post (LP) of the LIENVOY project showing how the many banks of tape recorders and other equipment were set up. One can easily count as many as 32 tape recorder units:

The listening post was manned by Mexican Army officers and their friends and family, a proposition which spelled certain disaster:

From the beginning, the project showed crucial vulnerabilities. For instance, in 1958, several operatives were busted and promptly divulged everything they knew to the Mexican Secret Service:

Despite these problems, the LIENVOY project consistently received high marks when inspectors were sent to evaluate facilities and operations. In this case, the Inspector General:

Author’s note: LIFEAT also was a telephone wire tap operation aimed at the personal phones of Soviet and Cuban Embassy personnel. It was a direct operation which the Mexican government was unaware of, and it’s cost was almost double that of the liaison-dependent LIENVOY project.

The second page of this memo is of particular interest, because it boasts how meticulous and efficient the LIENVOY and LIFEAT operations were, supposedly picking up leads on the most insignificant information gleaned from wire-tapped intercepts:

Yet year after year, when funding was at stake, there were always issues which made this project appear to be a very disorganized and risky endeavor:

….so much so, that Anne Goodpasture had this to say years later in a 1978 HSCA deposition:

One of the main problems encountered by the LIENVOY project was the father/son team of Rodolfo and Luis Echeverria who at the time was Under-Secretary of Government (Sub-secretario de la Gobernación), and who were the liaisons between the Mexican government and the CIA Mexico City Station led by Win Scott. The son, Luis, would go on to become President of Mexico from 1970 to 1976:

Then we have the true identity of one Robert B. Riggs, who supervised the entire operation on behalf of COS (Chief of Station) Win Scott (AKA Willard Curtis). None other than Anne Goodpasture:

This document confirms her position in the LIENVOY project:

Digging deeper, we found this in her 201 file. A true spook in all the sense of the word:

In case the reader is curious about the term “flaps and seals”, it means mail opening, reading and re-sealing the envelope for subsequent delivery to the addressee:

And here is the organizational chart corresponding to the LIENVOY Project in 1966:

This document shows the incredible amount of data generated by the project:

Identity of LIRAMA

The LITEMPO CIA project is defined as: “Operation support and security backstopping for the Mexico City operations [CIA], commencing in 1960. Involved a liaison relationship with the Mexican government.” An asset by the name of “LITEMPO-2” had been identified as future President of Mexico Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970). The LIENVOY organizational chart shown above also shows an individual at the very top who only interacted with Win Scott and who’s cryptonym was “LIRAMA”. The following is a quote from the document shown below:

“In mid-1964, it became evident that LIRAMA would replace LITENSOR [Lopez Mateos President of Mexico] in December 1964. (LIRAMA was then LITEMPO-2 and a [redacted] with Willard C. Curtis ( Win Scott) under LITEMPO [redacted] CURTIS/LIELEGANT/LITENSOR relationship in project LIENVOY)”

So we come full circle here. From 1958 to 1976 (18 years) ALL Mexican Presidents had been full time CIA assets in the LIENVOY wire tapping operation run by the CIA in Mexico City!

LIENVOY Reports of September and October, 1963

Now that the extended introduction is out of the way and we have seen how sleazy the principals were, let’s look at LIENVOY during the months of September and October, 1963, when it is alleged that Lee Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy in hope of obtaining a visa to return to the Soviet Union. This is the LIENVOY report for the month of September, 1963:

Clearly, this report shows nothing out of the ordinary, in fact, it comes across as boring! Not much happened there in September, 1963. The last page of the report is extremely revealing because it says that Paul V. Levister (pseudonym) was in Mexico City between 22 September and 1 October, 1963 – exactly the dates it is alleged that Lee Oswald made a spectacle of himself trying to get back to Russia! This would have been the perfect event to report back to headquarters singing the praises of the LIENVOY project! Are we missing something here??

The October 1963 report is just as bland and generic as the one filed for September 1963, in fact even more so. First of all, “contact by an English-speaking man” with the Soviet Embassy does not constitute a positive identification of Lee Oswald. It is preposterous to even suggest this. There are more questions raised than answered:

No specific date is provided. Note how in the September report, the specific date of 3 September is provided when reporting an event at the Soviet Embassy. For all we know, it could have been a Brit who was “English speaking” – the nationality is not specified. The “Lee Oswald” who allegedly engaged those at the Soviet and Cuban Embassies supposedly spoke broken Russian, and none of this is mentioned in the October report. Compare the second entry where the specific name of the long distance caller is provided, Herb Provost from Las Vegas.

Note the date of this report: 7 November 1963. By this time, all of the supposed cables of 8, 9, 10, 11 and 15 October, screaming – “we have an ex-marine Communist-defector trying to get back to Russia via Cuba”! – (see 104-10050-10232) – that were supposedly sent to headquarters and the FBI, would have been processed, and at least a cursory mention of the cables written into the October report! The highlight of October in project LIENVOY appears to have been the need to cable Headquarters “for four replacement recorders”.

LIENVOY and Lee Harvey Oswald

After the JFK assassination, it was up to Birch O’Neal, who worked under James Jesus Angleton, to sort out the Lee Oswald-in-Mexico City mess.

O’Neal figured that if the Soviet Embassy was under telephone surveillance, tapes had to exist which showed Oswald talking on the phone in Russian trying to get back to the Soviet Union via Cuba. Good old Birch must have been just as perplexed as everyone else to find there was nothing of the sort.

Boris and Anne Tarasoff, Russian contract translators/transcribers for the CIA could never identify Lee Oswald in the tapes that they heard:

The revelations of NARA 104-10268-10002

One of the new files released is a 231 page collection of documents containing details of how the CIA scrambled to dissociate itself from Lee Oswald after the JFK assassination. The now-famous “Rocca” memorandum is also included in this treasure trove of documents. In this memo, Rocca stated how Angleton was willing to “wait out the Commission” in its attempt to obtain confirmation of the nasty rumors that Lee had actually been a CIA operative. The collection also contains details of William King Harvey’s QJWIN and ZR/RIFLE connections and Richard Helms direct involvement with this “EYES ONLY” program of assassinations

A most intriguing document contained in 104-10268-10002 is a top secret report written by David Slawson which recorded a “fact-finding” trip to Mexico City by Howard P. Willens, William T. Coleman and David Slawson on 7 April 1964 on behalf of the Warren Commission. It just so happens that it was DDP (Deputy Director of Plans) Richard Helms who recommended these men fly to Mexico City, where COS (Chief of Station) Win Scott was waiting to give them the royal treatment and help them sort out the Mexico City mess. The report covers 79 pages of the most disgusting and Machiavellian attempts to frame Lee Oswald for the Commission. I will go into more detail at a later date, however, this short excerpt shows how they attempted to reconstruct Lee’s supposed sojourn into Mexico.

Why is this important? Because, again, the monthly LIENVOY reports shown above for September and October 1963, do not contain any information of Lee’s supposed telephone calls to the Soviet or Cuban Embassies on 27 and 28 of September or 1 and 2 of October! Ditto for Sylvia Durán!

As we saw with LIEMPTY, it was the intrepid Dan Hardway who followed the lead of the wire tap operation, precisely because as shown before, the HSCA figured the photographic surveillance had to in some way coincide with the recordings gleaned from the audio surveillance. Hardway spent almost five months studying LIENVOY!

But before I sign off on this post, let’s take a closer look at how LIENVOY was exploited by those who ran the project. The next two documents give examples of how information obtained from wire taps was used to propose false flag operation and fake events:

And how about this one – under extreme pressure from the U.S., Mexican President Lopez Mateos (LITENSOR) promised to break relations with Cuba if a serious enough false flag incident could be invented to sway public opinion about Cuba. All of this under the umbrella of LIENVOY. In Mexico this is known as “la caja China” (the Chinese box).

And this one shows how LIENVOY was exploited by Mexican President LITENSOR. In this case former Guatemala President Juan José Arévalo, who endured nearly 30 coup attempts while President:

When we combine what we now know about the LIENVOY project with the fiasco that the LIEMPTY project was, it becomes quite evident that the Lee Oswald who was arrested in Dallas 22 November, 1963, never went to Mexico City during the supposed dates that prevail in the historical record. Furthermore, having three Mexican Presidents as their assets and in their pocket, it’s not hard to see how the CIA was able to create the Mexico City scenario which was used to frame Lee Oswald for the assassination of John Kennedy.