No person, or body, not even the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), has ever dug more deeply into what the American intelligence community knew about Oswald prior to the assassination. What Newman reveals here literally makes the Warren Commission look like a Model T Ford. All the denials issued to that body by the likes of John McCone and J. Edgar Hoover are exposed as subterfuges. Contrary to their canards, there was a lot of interest in Oswald from the time he defected to Russia until the assassination.

Newman first discovered this when he was hired by PBS to work on their ill-fated Frontline special about Oswald in 1993. And it was this discovery that inspired him to write the book. The CIA Director at the time of the debate in Congress over the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board had testified there were something like 39 documents at CIA about Oswald. Most of them were supposed to be clippings. Newman discovered there was many, many times that amount. Further, he discovered the Agency held multiple files on Oswald. And finally, and perhaps most interestingly, there were some puzzling irregularities within the record. (When the author expressed his continuing bewilderment about this to the archivist, the archivist replied, "Haven't you ever heard of Murphy's Law?" To which Newman shot back, "Every time I turn around I'm walking into Mr. Murphy.")

Mr. Murphy makes his appearance right at the start. Once Oswald defected to Russia in 1959 the FBI opened up a file on him for security purposes. But at the CIA there is a curious, and suspicious, vacuum. Richard Snyder of the American Embassy in Moscow sent a cable to Washington about Oswald's defection. But the exact date the CIA got it cannot be confirmed (p. 24). Further, the person who received it cannot be determined either. Since Oswald was a former Marine, the Navy also sent a cable on November 4th. This cable included the information that Oswald had threatened to give up radar secrets to the Soviets. But again, no one knows exactly when this cable arrived at CIA. And almost as interesting, where it was placed upon its immediate arrival. (p. 25) This is quite odd because, as Newman points out (Chapter 3), Oswald's close association with the U-2 plane while at Atsugi, Japan should have placed alerts all over this cable. It did not. To show a comparison, the FBI recommended "a stop be placed against the fingerprints to prevent subject's entering the US under any name." (Ibid) So, on November 4, 1959, the FBI issued a FLASH warning on Oswald. This same Navy memo arrived at CIA and, after a Warren Report type "delayed reaction", eventually went to James Angleton's CI/SIG unit on December 6th. Angleton was chief of counter-intelligence. SIG was a kind of safeguard unit that protected the Agency from penetration agents. It was closely linked to the Office of Security in that regard. But as Newman queries: where was it for the previous 31 days? Newman notes that the Snyder cable and this Navy memo fell into a "black hole " somewhere. In fact, the very first file Newman could find on Oswald was not even at CI/SIG. It was at the Office of Security. This is all quite puzzling because, as the author notes, neither should have been the proper resting place for an initial file on Oswald. This black hole "kept the Oswald files away from the spot we would expect them to go-the Soviet Russia division." (p. 27)

Another thing the author finds puzzling about this early file is that he could find no trace of a security investigation about the danger of Oswald's defection. This is really odd because while talking to some of his friends the author found out that Oswald knew something that very few people did: the U-2 was also flying over China. If Snyder's original memo said that Oswald had threatened to give up secrets on radar operation to the Russians, and Oswald had been stationed at the U-2 base in Japan, there should have been a thorough security investigation as to what Oswald could have given the Russians. For the obvious reason that the program could be adjusted to avoid any counterattack based upon that relayed information. Newman could find no evidence of such an inquiry. (pgs 28,33-34) Further, the author found out that Oswald was actually part of a unit called Detachment C, which seemed to almost follow the U-2 around to crisis spots in the Far East, like Indonesia. (p. 42)

Needless to say, after Oswald defected, the second U-2 flight over Russia--with Gary Powers on board--was shot down. Powers felt that, "Oswald's work with the new MPS 16 height-finding radar looms large" in that event...