The first article was Lee Harvey Oswald's Activities During the Housemans' Vacation.
The second article was The Oswalds' Plan to Hijack an Airplane.
The third article was Possible Hijack Collaborator - Jack Leslie Bowen.
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From about August 9 to September 10, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald planned to hijack an airplane in order to fly himself, his wife Marina and his daughter June to Cuba. Marina tried to talk him out of the plan but reluctantly agreed to go along with him.
At one point during this period, Lee told Marina that some other man -- Lee did not name the man to Marina -- had offered to help Lee take over the airplane. Lee considered the man's offer but ultimately rejected it. Lee explained to Marina that, "your accomplice is your enemy for life".
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I think that some other man did offer to help Lee hijack an airplane. Furthermore, I think that two different men might have offered separately. In this article here, I will explain that such an offer might have been made by a man named Richard Case Nagell.
Nagell's life is told in a book titled The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell.
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| Richard Case Nagell |
Although Russell interviewed and studied Nagell over the course of several years, Nagell's life remains mysterious. Nagell refused to tell his full story to Russell.
My own explanation for Nagell's refusal is that he did not want to admit that he had tried to sell secret information to the Cuban and Soviet governments. In that regard, my following explanation differs from Russell's book.
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Nagell was born in 1930. He enlisted in the US Army in 1948 and served in the infantry in the Korean War. After he was wounded a third time, he was sent to language school to learn Japanese and then was stationed in Japan. (Later he taught himself also Russian and Spanish.) He served as a counter-intelligence officer and reached the rank of captain.
In 1954 he suffered a brain injury in a helicopter accident, which seems to have affected his conduct. In 1958 he married a Japanese woman and therefore lost the security clearance he needed to continue working as a counter-intelligence officer. Rather than return to the infantry, Nagell quit the Army in 1959.
From then until June 1962 he worked as an investigator for the California state government. Then he was fired for misconduct. His Japanese wife left him and took along their two children. Nagell, although unemployed, was required to pay child support.
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Because of his financial problems, Nagell decided to earn money by selling secrets to the Cuban intelligence service. In August 1962, he traveled to Mexico City, where he paid a young man $20 to deliver an envelope to the Cuban embassy. The young man delivered the envelope instead to the US embassy, where eventually an FBI officer read the enclosed letter, which offered to sell secrets. During the following months, an FBI Spanish-speaking officer pretended to be a Cuban intelligence officer and deceptively manipulated Nagell.
The Cuban intelligence officer (i.e. FBI officer) instructed Nagell to sell secrets also to the Soviet intelligence service and to inform the Cuban spy (i.e. the FBI officer) about his interactions with the Soviets. In this arrangement, Nagell was earning money secretly from Cuban intelligence (i.e. from the FBI) and from Soviet intelligence.
To earn more money, Nagell decided to sell secrets likewise to the Soviet intelligence service.
To earn even more money, Nagell decided to sell secrets likewise to the CIA. Because Nagell already was being controlled by the FBI, however, the CIA transferred Nagell's offer to the FBI, which then assigned another FBI officer named "Bob" to pretend that he was a CIA officer paying for Nagell's secrets.
The best secrets that Nagell had to sell to the Cuban intelligence officer (i.e. to the FBI) and to the CIA (i.e. to the FBI) was details about his interactions with the Soviet intelligence service. The FBI was well informed about Nagell's antics and in particular about the sneaky business he was doing with Soviet intelligence.
One of the tasks that Nagell received from the Soviet intelligence officer was to find out what the Oswalds were doing in the USA. To accomplish that task, Nagell traveled to Dallas, Texas, in October 1962, and observed Marina Oswald. In these circumstances, Nagell began to become somewhat knowledgeable about Marina and Lee Oswald.
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After doing this task in Dallas in October 1962, Nagell proceeded to Miami, where he got a job working as a bodyguard for Rolando Masferrer, a Cuban gangster who was extorting money and smuggling guns among Cuban exiles. Apparently, Nagell got this job because he was told to do so by his Cuban intelligence officer (i.e. the Spanish-speaking FBI officer).
In this stressful situation, Nagell suffered a nervous breakdown and voluntarily committed himself to a hospital mental ward in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he stayed from December 20, 1962, to January 22, 1963.
After Nagell was released from this mental ward, Nagell decided to earn more money by selling secrets to the FBI. He did not understand that he already had been providing his secrets to the FBI since the summer of 1962. The money that Nagell had been earning from his Cuban intelligence officer and from his CIA officer was all coming from the FBI. Therefore, the FBI ignored Nagell's new offer to sell secrets directly to the FBI.
In the last days of January 1962, this comedy of errors became even more complicated when Nagell involved himself with two Cuban immigrants -- "Angel" and "Leopoldo" -- who were scheming to assassinate President Kennedy. On his own initiative (it seems to me), Nagell began reporting about those two would-be assassins to his various intelligence controllers. Of course, Angel and Leopoldo might be imaginary beings fabricated by Nagell in order to earn more money. Even if Angel and Leopoldo were real, the FBI had good reason to doubt Nagell's secret reports about them. (In general, everyone should understand that Nagell fabricated many of his stories.)
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Meanwhile, Nagell continued to do tasks for the Soviet intelligence service -- and informing his CIA officer (really a FBI officer) about those interactions. As instructed by the Soviet intelligence service, Nagell traveled from Miami back to Dallas in early February 1963 in order to collect more information about the Oswalds.
At that time, Lee Oswald was working as a photography processor at the Jaggar-Chiles-Stoval company during the days and taking typing classes during the evenings. At home, Oswald was spending time studying maps and bus schedules. He recently had rented a post-office box under the name A. J. Hidell. Perhaps (or perhaps not) Nagell was able to observe that Oswald was sneaking around and learning to spy.
In any case, Nagell proceeded from Dallas to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where he met with and reported to his Soviet intelligence officer in February. Of course, Nagell subsequently would have informed also his CIA officer (i.e. FBI officer) about his meeting with his Soviet intelligence officer.
In April 1963, Nagell returned to Dallas to collect more information about the Oswalds for the Soviet intelligence officer. Because the FBI wanted Nagell to please his Soviet intelligence officer, the FBI (through the phony CIA officer) provided credentials that enabled Nagell to visit government offices in Dallas and San Antonio to obtain official information and documents about Marina's immigration status.
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From Dallas, Nagell proceeded to Los Angeles, where he investigated Vaughn Snipes (aka Vaugn Marlowe), an executive officer of the Los Angeles chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Nagell remained in Los Angeles into the second half of July 1963. While there, Nagell reported also that the two (imaginary?) assassins Angel and Leopoldo seemed to be associated with Snipes/Marlowe.
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In the second half of July, while Nagell was in Los Angeles, Oswald became unemployed in New Orleans.
According to stories he told to Russell, Nagell was instructed (by whom?) to travel in late July to Mexico City, where he met personally for the first time with Oswald. This was not Oswald's famous trip to Mexico City in September 1963. Rather, this was a still unknown trip by Oswald in July 1963.
Nagell refused to tell Russell any details about his supposed meeting with Oswald in Mexico City.
On July 26, someone signed the register of the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with the words "Lee H. Oswald, USSR, Dallas Road, Dallas, Texas". Perhaps that was done to plant false information about Oswald's whereabouts on a day when he actually was in Mexico City.
Russell, in his book about Nagell, provides several other indications that Oswald was in Mexico City at about the end of July. Because those indications are complicated to explain, I will not detail them here in this article, which already is too long. (See The Man Who Knew Too Much, pages 369-379.)
Nagell returned from Mexico City to Los Angeles on August 6, 1963.
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That was four days before the Houseman family traveled to Kellerman's Mountain House.
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My speculation that Nagell offered in late August 1963 to help Oswald hijack an airplane will conclude in a future article.
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