Other Men In Mexico City

Soviet Embassy 3rd Sec., Asst. Cultural Attaché, & KGB Officer Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov

Despite the extensive reviews of governments, legal experts, researchers, and members of the public some controversial topics of discussion still lay entangled within historical shadows. The scene and occurrence of the crime is of primary concern but in some cases the crucial related events span not just a given time and place but great distances that add further problems to discerning verifiable facts. A different nation, different cultures, and languages can provide almost insurmountable challenges to investigators who are unprepared for them. In some cases, it may be that certain groups and leaders counted on this fact to occlude a complete accounting and spare mistakes or deception from being revealed. While officials might currently discount and reproach members of the public for spurring on myths or rumors, these lies are within the very tools of the intelligence trade. Such means were repeatedly utilized by several intelligence groups and in Mexico City during the nineteen sixties and some of those deceptions persist.

Among the largest Central Intelligence Agency holding in the Americas was Mexico City Station, the Central Intelligence Agency base within Mexico which served as the primary intelligence hub of its operations. Dozens of CIA officers, agents, staff, and sources continuously undertook a huge web of operations extending throughout Mexico that include round the clock surveillance operations targeting several Communist embassy compounds in Mexico City. Station Chief Winston Scott, an experienced and demanding officer, led a cadre of some of the most notable and infamous Agency employees during that period and his domain was the grounds for more than one historical controversy. Among these are enduring questions about the circumstances of a traveler named Lee Harvey Oswald, that according to official files visited the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in the months before the death of President Kennedy in November.

However, several factors challenge the allegations offered by American leaders that would infer it was either not Lee Harvey Oswald who made all these visits or the person who did was connected to Oswald. Seeking to assure a lone gunman scenario, some officials tried to suppress these other strange figures in that period within Mexico City without concern for their investigation. We must consider who did the information’s removal help beyond the obvious attempts to secure peripheral intelligence operations, what possible unknown agenda might be protected or best served with its obfuscation, why after nearly sixty years are there unidentified figures in this episode, and how can we identify one or more of them?

Aspiring student Gerald Peterson ventured to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City during November nineteen sixty-three to inquire about studying in “the Soviet Union”. During the course of this visit he encountered Soviet official Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov, whom Peterson believed was just the cultural attaché of the embassy. Unknown to the average person is that embassies for every nation invariably use members of their staff and employees for intelligence purposes. As Peterson learned of the extensive requirements to study abroad, he and Leonov had repeated meetings at cafes from November of nineteen sixty-three until March of nineteen sixty-four. Leonov questioned Peterson regarding the extremist group the John Birch Society, requested literature about them, and he also had Peterson write “a brief paper describing the Society, it aims and purposes.” Clearly Leonov was gathering intelligence on this anti-Communist group that might offer potential dangers to Soviet operations and might be ripe for infiltration. Leonov even threw Peterson a small farewell party when the American decided to leave and would later offer Peterson to join him on a fishing trip. However, Peterson grew suspicious of these repeated unsolicited invitations and cut off contact with Leonov before deciding to report his experience to officials.i ii Of course Peterson was not the only aspiring traveler Leonov encountered during that fall season.

Silvia Duran After her Arrest By Mexican Authorities was Ordered
(Credit: Mary Ferrell Foundation)

Included within the assumed visits and calls of “Lee Harvey Oswald” are particularly strange episodes in which a person using the name Oswald but of varying appearance was proven to have visited the Cuban embassy, a fact the CIA first attempted to suppress. Cuban consulate official Silvia Duran told American investigators a short, red-faced, blond haired man calling himself Oswald paid her visits at the embassy. This same person used biographic information matching the actual Lee Harvey Oswald including claiming membership in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and marriage to a Russian woman. Yet in addition he supposedly produced a Communist party membership card, despite that Oswald was never a member even while in Russia and membership was illegal in Mexico according to Duran. This also varied from the normal procedure in which the “American Communist Party would arrange visa matter for their members”. The blond “Oswald” further engaged in a heated argument with the Cuban Ambassador Eusebio Azcue, who also described a person that did not match Lee Harvey Oswald’s appearance.

Eusebio Azcue Denied Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Embassy

At first the Agency tried to minimize this conflicting description by deleting it from later versions of the original account, but Duran described Lee Harvey Oswald as “approximately five feet six, with sparse blond hair, weighing about 125 pounds.” Consul Azcue stated the man’s “nose was more aquiline, his eyelashes were straighter, his hair was blonde, his height was between five feet six and five feet seven; he was between 35 and 37 years of age; his cheeks were sunken; and, he had a cold look in his eyes.”iii iv v Oswald in fact was five foot nine barefoot, had thinning but not sparse brown hair, and weighed at least ten pounds more than whomever the person calling themselves Oswald did. Now some might claim it may be confusion, but the description was consistent among two independent witnesses and was removed from public versions of the earlier documentation. Duran was later arrested by Mexican officials at the request of a US diplomatic leader but she was never interviewed by the President’s Commission. Further notable is that photographic surveillance according to one document “was stopped” hours before it was scheduled to cease on the Cuban embassy before one of these visits.vi The Agency ascribed this failure to faulty equipment, yet it did function in the same period during other times.

Mexico City Station’s DAvid Atlee Phillips (Credit: JFK Facts)

Later investigating Select Committee officials would learn from Mexico City Covert Action Chief David Atlee Phillips that Duran had been inspected for possible recruitment by the Agency station in Mexico City. Advice emerged from a CIA double agent and Cuban cultural attaché Luis Alberu Souto (LITAMIL-9), who had told Agency officials during the period of interest if they wanted to recruit Duran “get a blond haired, blue-eyed, American in bed with her.” Congressional investigators also were given an unconfirmed report that Oswald was in the company of a “tall, thin, blond haired man while in Mexico…If true, it is possible that this same individual may on occasion have used Oswald’s name in dealing with the Cuban and Soviet Consulates. The man’s name, if there is such a man, is not known.”vii

An interview of CIA Mexico City SOurce Carlos Jurado-DELMAR
(Credit: El Heraldo de Chiapas)

Agency source Carlos Jurado-Delmar (LIRING-3) allegedly became romantically involved with Duran and would claim in nineteen sixty-seven that she told him that Oswald and she had been lovers. Yet similar to the prior statements about her these claims are unproven and emerge from sources inclined to attack her for contending testimony. Some in the public have insisted these rumors are truth but no definitive evidence is offered to support them, the Agency’s rumors have unknowingly been repeated by some the public seeking to prove a greater plot.viii These stories deviate and distract from the original reporting of events and feasibly seek to compromise Duran’s credibility. All the later stories neglect the blond-haired man present in the original evidence because they feasibly wish to erase him from the record. Yet there is a certain gaunt and blond-haired man that did show up on CIA surveillance of the Soviet embassy in Mexico City because he worked there.

Nikolai Leonov served in various capacities within Mexico City since nineteen fifty-three and would three years later according to official reports become a Staff Officer of the “Fifth (Latin American) Department of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate”. During nineteen sixty-three he occupied the post of Third Secretary and was the Assistant Cultural Officer for the Soviet embassy. When he took leave to Kiev in May of the same year he served as the interpreter for visiting Cuban leader Fidel Castro and returned to Mexico City by summertime with his family. Leonov is noted by CIA officials to be of above average intelligence, possessed a biting sense of humor, and displayed superb Russian language skills, “speaks excellent Spanish, good English, some French and little German”.ix His “first love is chess” and officials further observed him taking “interest in meeting Americans, presumably for intelligence purposes”. Within a couple years Leonov was in daily contact with Marxist writers, weekly spoke with aligned newspapers, and by the late nineteen sixties was a “personal friend” of Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Che Guevara.x xi During the next decade he rose to the second highest position in the KGB and would later become a reported intelligence mentor of his subordinate Vladimir Putin. Following the dissolution of the KGB Leonov was not content to be idle and was elected to the Russian Federation’s Duma legislative body.  

Nevertheless, Leonov also would create disparaging stories and rumors about fellow Soviet intelligence employees and superiors. Officials surmise that Leonov likely had an inferiority complex “due to his slender build”, claims of visiting brothels, was cheap, his family believed he lacked any “consideration for his wife or their daughter Irina”, and Leonov “displays outbursts of ill temper especially in treatment of his wife.”xii In one such episode Leonov played Soviet Embassy Consul Sergey Konstantinov in a game of chess and he would not come to the phone to speak with his wife despite her tears or demands. Leonov’s wife “usually calls him ‘my devil’, ‘my ogre’ or ‘my Satan’, while he in turn uses such expressions as ‘old witch’, ‘hag’, and describes her to others as the ‘skinny one’.” His unhappy family life, excessive lifestyle, sporting activities, and his intelligence work is noted to have severely aged Leonov just a few years following these events.

A Modern Photo of KGB Officer Nikolai S. Leonov
(Credit: Molodaya Gvardiya)

According to a Russian media interview with Leonov during two thousand and five the KGB officer states he was interrupted from a weekend volleyball game in the fall of nineteen sixty-three by an embassy duty officer. The officer appeared agitated while inquiring if Leonov would receive an American inquiring about visa information. Leonov was annoyed by the interruption because it was not a workday and hoped to rebuff the visitor until the next week began, based on supporting documentation the date of this supposed encounter would be on Sunday September 29, 1963. Leonov claimed a desperate pale young man with a revolver stood before him named Lee Harvey Oswald and that he “wanted to return immediately to the USSR, where he had earlier worked in Minsk, and be delivered from the constant fear for his life and for the fate of his family.” Investigating officials claimed to have little information about this specific day but versions of this quite dramatic episode were parroted by the supporters of Oswald’s guilt. Yet the person seemingly key to that story was Leonov, he states having received Oswald and if true, American officials would have overlooked the very man this purported visit relied upon.xiii

It appears that Leonov’s personality of biting sarcasm, making up stories, a slight inferiority complex perhaps also based on never knowing his father, and outbursts of emotion when challenged by women are similar to a couple of individuals who allegedly visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. His asserted interaction with frantic Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly brandishing a gun further adds the possibility of Leonov intentionally misrepresenting the events at the Soviet embassy. During nineteen sixty-three Leonov is described as a having blond hair “sometimes worn in a crewcut”, stands five feet five inches, had “blue eyes”, was “quite slender”, is thirty-five years old, and wore dull clothing.xiv xv Leonov also speaks English and Spanish, the latter is the language a caller alleged to be Oswald spoke when phoning the Soviet embassy but the actual Lee Harvey Oswald had no knowledge of Spanish.

Could it be in seeking to hamper this possible attempt by a known defector to regain access once again to the Soviet Union spurred Leonov into defensive action heedless of the future consequences? Is it possible this unpredictable KGB staff officer decided to manipulate the situation for other yet unknown reasons? At the very least Leonov certainly is a quite similar physical and behavioral match for the man calling himself Oswald and having an outburst in the Cuban embassy. He allegedly interacted with Oswald at the Soviet embassy in highly strange episode and might be the same figure the CIA tried to repeatedly suppress because he represents contending and unknown portions of the official timeline.
Sincerely,
C.A.A. Savastano

References:
i. House Select Committee on Assassinations, Segregated CIA file, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming-Lorenz, Bio Information-Contact No. 57—Gerald Leroy Peterson and Contact No. 75 Gloria Villarreal Sepulveda, (n.d.), p. 2-3, National Archives and Records Administration Identification Number: 104-10218-10354
ii. Ibid, Reel 53, Folder H, Nikolay Sergeyev Leonov, p. 21
iii. HSCA, Lee Harvey Oswald, The CIA, And Mexico City, pp. 94-95, NARA ID: 180-10110-10484
iv. Ibid, pp. 190-192, 199
v. Ibid, Sylvia Duran’s previous statements RE: LHO’S visit to the Cuban Consul, (n.d.), p. 23, NARA ID: 180-10142-10133
vi. Central Intelligence Agency, Russ Holmes Work file, Overview of Mexico City Photo Ops with Chronology, 27 September 1963 (Friday), p. 1, NARA ID: 104-10413-10000
vii. HSCA, Lee Harvey Oswald, The CIA, And Mexico City, p. 7
viii. Ibid, p. 195
ix. HSCA, CIA Seg. File, Box 8, Biographic Profile of Nikolay Sergeyevich Leonov, p. 2, NARA ID: 1993.07.10.11:07:49:620340   
x. HSCA, CIA Seg file, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming- Lorenz, Reel 53: Nikolay Sergeyev Leonov., Psychological Assessment, p. 2, NARA ID: 1994.04.25.08:44:28:850005
xi. HSCA, CIA Seg file, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming- Lorenz, Reel 53: Nikolay Sergeyev Leonov., SPR, p. 6, NARA ID: 1994.04.25.08:44:28:850005
xii. Ibid, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming- Lorenz, Dispatch: Redblock- Nikolay Sergeyevich Leonov, Personality Sketch, pp. 2, 3, NARA ID: 104-10218-10249
xiii. Mark Hackard, December 19, 2015, OSWALD & THE KGB IN MEXICO, Espionage History Archive, espionagehistory.com  
xiv. Ibid, Nikolay Sergeyevich Leonov transcript, p. 1
xv. Ibid, Microfilm Reel 53: Hemming- Lorenz, Folder H – Nikolay Sergeyev Leonov, October 4, 1967, pp. 1, 3, 6, 9, NARA ID: 1994.04.25.08:44:28:850005

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