JFK Files: FBI Report On Mark Lane Talk To Socialist Workers Party, Detroit, Feb 16, 1964

I'm somewhat randomly poking through the JFK files released last night.  

I found some reports about people who have said something that someone thought might turn out to be important.  Perhaps the FBI and CIA just don't want people to know the kind of reports they write about people they befriend or meet.  Or all the meetings they infiltrated and reported on.

One report was about a "Mexican playwright, Elena Garro de Paz",  who said she'd been at a party in Mexico City attended by Oswald before the assassination.

Elena Garro de Paz was married to poet Octavio Paz until 1967.  (See  this obituary.) This report was dated July 1969.

Another report is a lengthy interview with Cynthia Thomas, wife of the Foreign Service employee who had written the original report on Elena Garro de Paz.  By this time Thomas' husband Charles, had been separated from the Foreign Service and had committed suicide.  Among other things, the report says,

"Ms. Thomas said she believed Elena's allegation about Duran being Oswald's lover because Elena was not the type of woman who took part in gossip, "women talk," or stories about other women."

The report by Charles Thomas mentions at first that Elena Garro de Paz met Oswald at a party at Ruben Duran's house, but then Thomas writes that it was actually at another party.  Rebecca Biron's book, Elena Garro and Mexico's Modern Dreams  mentions this story, skeptically, about Oswald and Duran being lovers.  But this book suggests that these revelations aren't anything new.

Another was about a woman, Lillian Fisher of Redondo Beach, California, who'd said that Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren would be assassinated at the JFK funeral.  They concluded this wasn't a threat, just an upset fear.

Another reported, briefly, that the SCDCP (seems to be the Southern California District Communist Party) had a meeting on November 23, 1963 to discuss the implications of the assassination for them. It reports they agreed that no effort should be made to defend Oswald.  They also

"concluded  that CP should expect increased Mc Carren Act and ultra-right activities, but no immediate danger existed for  pick up by Federal authorities of CP members."

Finally I looked through a Feb 16, 1964 report on the Socialist Workers Party meeting in Detroit where Mark Lane raised lots of questions about the official reports of the assassination.

"Detroit, Mich
Feb 16, 1964
The regular Friday night S.W.P. Forum was cancelled and everyone was invited to go to the central Methodist Church located on Woodward and Adams to hear a lawyer named Mark Lane give a talk about Lee Harvey Oswald.
The talk was attended by about 250 people.  There was several male and female negro's in the crowd."

Here's a screen shot of the beginning of the report.

click on image to enlarge and focus

The report is basically notes on Mark Lane's talk, an interesting look at the early thoughts of one of the more well known JFK assassination conspiracy theorists.


[UPDATE Oct. 30, 2017:  I've done a second post on things I've found in the newly released files.  There's a short one that talks about poisoning Castro's face cream and a longer look at the lengthy notes of thee House Select Committee on Assassination's trips to Cuba and Mexico.  Elena Garro de Paz and Silvia Duran come up again.  In these files Duran's contact with Oswald - if it happened at all - is characterized as three trips to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico where she worked.]