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German film links Cuba
to Kennedy assassination
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin.
Financial
Times, UK, January 6 2006.
Hoping to scoop the world on one of America's
supreme historical puzzles, Germany's leading
television broadcaster will claim in a documentary
film tonight that it was the Cuban secret
service that organised the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy.
The 90-minute film, titled Rendezvous with
Death, features an interview with Oscar
Marino, a former agent of the Cuban G2 secret
service, who says he knew before the assassination
in November 1963 that Lee Harvey Oswald
- Kennedy's killer - had been picked by
his colleagues to do the job.
"He offered to kill Kennedy, and we
used him to do this," Mr Marino says
during the film, made by Wilfried Huismann,
a prize-winning German director. Mr Marino
claims that Mr Oswald, a Communist who had
lived in the Soviet Union for three years,
was identified to Cuba by the Russian KGB
secret service.
Mr Huismann, who worked on the project
with Gus Russo, the Baltimore-based author
of a book on the sCuban leader Fidel Castro,
told the FT his exclusive interview with
Mr Marino provided "decisive new evidence"
beyond the dozens of existing inquiries,
books and films on the subject.
He admitted many Americans were "very
sceptical" that he had solved the Kennedy
assassination puzzle, but argued that his
research focus on Mexico City - which Oswald
visited two months before the assassination
in Dallas, Texas - was his breakthrough.
He interviewed Mr Marino in the city, and
gained exclusive access to parts of the
country's secret service archive. "I
ask sceptical Kennedy assassination specialists
- have you ever done research on the case
in Mexico? Most, if not all, have not."
Mr Marino knew before the killing that
Oswald had been recruited in Mexico City
in September 1963 to do the killing, according
to the filmmaker. In addition, in late 1962
the Cuban spy saw a list of about 100 foreign
agents financed by the Cuban secret service.
"Oswald was on the list," Mr Huismann
said. The G2 decided to have Kennedy killed
because it believed the US planned to kill
Mr Castro, according to the film.
Another key witness in the film is Lawrence
Keenan, a retired FBI agent, who was sent
to Mexico after the assassination to investigate
Oswald's activities and says he was withdrawn
after only a short time.
Ulrich Deppendorf, a director of the ARD,
the German broadcaster airing the documentary,
said the film was "certain to gain
the worldwide credit it deserves".
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