Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA

by Jefferson Morley

Mexico City was the Casablanca of the Cold War-a hotbed of spies, revolutionaries, and assassins. The CIA's station there was the front line of the United States' fight against international communism, as important for Latin America as Berlin was for Europe. And its undisputed spymaster was Winston Mackinley Scott.

Chief of the Mexico City station from 1956 to 1969, Win Scott occupied a key position in the founding generation of the Central Intelligence Agency, but until now he has remained a shadowy figure. Investigative reporter Jefferson Morley traces Scott's remarkable career from his humble origins in rural Alabama to wartime G-man to OSS London operative (and close friend of the notorious Kim Philby), to right-hand man of CIA Director Allen Dulles, to his remarkable reign for more than a decade as virtual proconsul in Mexico. Morley also follows the quest of Win Scott's son Michael to confront the reality of his father's life as a spy. He reveals how Scott ran hundreds of covert espionage operations from his headquarters in the U.S. Embassy while keeping three Mexican presidents on the agency's payroll, participating in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and, most intriguingly, overseeing the surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald during his visit to the Mexican capital just weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy.

Morley reveals the previously unknown scope of the agency's interest in Oswald in late 1963, identifying for the first time the code names of Scott's surveillance programs that monitored Oswald's movements. He shows that CIA headquarters cut Scott out of the loop of the agency's latest reporting on Oswald before Kennedy was killed. He documents why Scott came to reject a key finding of the Warren Report on the assassination and how his disillusionment with the agency came to worry his longtime friend James Jesus Angleton, legendary chief of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton not only covered up the agency's interest in Oswald but also, after Scott died, absconded with the only copies of his unpublished memoir.

Interweaving Win Scott's personal and professional lives, Morley has crafted a real-life thriller of Cold War intrigue—a compelling saga of espionage that uncovers another chapter in the CIA's history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Espionage, Conspiracy Theories

384 pages, Hardcover

First published March 11, 2008

About the author

JEFFERSON MORLEY is a journalist and editor who has worked in Washington journalism for over thirty years, fifteen of which were spent as an editor and reporter at The Washington Post. The author of The Ghost, a biography of CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton, and Our Man in Mexico, a biography of the CIA’s Mexico City station chief Winston Scott, Morley has written about intelligence, military, and political subjects for Salon, The Atlantic, and The Intercept, among others. He is the editor of JFK Facts, a blog. He lives in Washington, DC.

Reviews

[AC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Turned out to be a much less interesting book than I had hoped. Win Scott, who was CIA Station Chief in Mexico City during the 1960's, was a minor figure. The central chapters deal, in a very convoluted fashion, with Oswald's visit to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies in Mexico City in September 1963, and introduce some new evidence to show that the CIA knew more about these visits than they subsequently let on. But Morley does not add anything of great significance.

One sidelight, Morley is currently involved in a FOIA suit to get the CIA to cough-up information about George Joannides, who was CIA liaison to the 1970's HSCA investigation (see Fonzi) -- though the CIA never mentioned that Joannides was knee-deep in the handling of the Oswald appearance in Mexico City both after AND before the assassination.
(http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/...)

As I have said in other reviews, though many think I'm nuts, it is my view that a thorough reading of the literature shows conclusively not only that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, organized by the American Right and the CIA and executed by men associated with the Anti-Castro organizations in Miami and New Orleans, but that so much is now known about these events that the old saw "that we'll never know" is simply absurd and willful blindness. It is, in fact, "case closed" -- but in a manner that Gerald Posner would never have wished for.

[Jamey · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems to have been very important to the author of Our Man In Mexico and his editors not to alienate "mainstream" readers and reviewers, in the hope (I suppose) that the book might gain more notice than a more frankly anti-Warren Commission text could hope to garner. James W. Douglass' magnificent JFK and the Unspeakable, for instance, has received no mainstream media attention whatsoever, despite its considerable impact on the reading public and the passionate acclaim it has garnered from so many.

Though the projected 50 years have elapsed, the promised full release of files has not happened, and we live an an era in which the government persists in lying, misleading, and withholding information on the 35th President's murder despite the appearance of thousands of files, articles, and works of scholarship that make it unmistakably clear that Oswald did not shoot JFK, that the murder and the coverup were both perpetrated by a coalition of persons from CIA (e.g., David Atlee Phillips), organized crime (e.g., Carlos Marcello), Cuban exiles (e.g., David Morales), and LBJ's organization (e.g., LBJ).

Morley's reluctance to come out against the Warren Commission's "conclusion" (the lone gunman story they were handed as their raison d'etre from the beginning) is understandable. But it hobbles his book, because important and suggestive information is left hanging without an explanatory framework. Yes, this allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, but a wider study that acknowledged more of the existing work in the field might have provided much more insight.

Oswald is repeatedly referred to as having shot the President. This is false, and it makes for a bulky but transparent artifice, dragged around through the whole book, whereby author and reader are expected to pretend that all this stuff about Oswald in Mexico City two months before the assassination is of interest because it suggests he might have been encouraged by foreign contacts in Cuba and/or the USSR to murder the President. He did not murder the President; he was a patsy; the CIA people who helped frame him were involved in an impersonation that deliberately and falsely linked LHO with those foreign contacts. The initial purpose of that frame in Mexico City was to prepare a trap so that the assassination would trigger a U.S. war against Cuba. The second purpose, after that route had been rejected by LBJ and others (e.g., Richard Helms), was to provide a tool to force reluctant figures in the establishment (e.g., Earl Warren) to participate in the lone nut coverup (since now the only alternative, as LBJ told Warren, would be an internationally backed patsy and a consequent "nuclear war").

Morley writes (page 282), "Angleton had files on the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, including autopsy pictures of the remains of RFK, who had been slain by a Palestinian waiter in a Los Angeles hotel in June 1968." This has long been known to be simply false. Robert Kennedy died of wounds inflicted on the back of his head at point blank range; Sirhan was firing--probably blanks--from the front at a distance of several feet; there were far more bullet holes in the victims, the ceiling, and the doorframe than Sirhan's gun could hold.

In Our Man In Mexico, the murder of President Kennedy is repeatedly referred to as an "intelligence failure," a common locution in establishment discourse on which I have called bullshit in the contexts of both 11/22 and 9/11. See my essay "Failure and Crime Are Not the Same: 9/11's Limited Hangouts," published 11/22/03 on Michael Ruppert's website, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free...

I respect Jefferson Morley for his labor, his intelligence, his clear prose, and his interest in the period. I respect him also for his FOIA lawsuit regarding the activities of CIA employee George Joannides, which may prove very important. Our Man In Mexico is well worth reading. But I regard it as a good book that traded an unrealized excellence in exchange for a readership that might be wider, if more complacent and intellectually timid, than it might otherwise have been.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're looking for actual CIA dirt, this book isn't too juicy. If you're looking for a biography of a moderately interesting high level operative, then maybe it's for you. I dove into this book with excitement, only to come away wishing I'd read a book about Jim Angleton instead.

[Manuel Fernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

TIL: Elena Garro conoció a Lee Harvey Oswald.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Our Man in Mexico' is quite an intriguing and well written biography of Winston Scott and his career within the CIA, which culminates in his position as station chief in Mexico City.
Morley is a journalist who has worked at the Washington Post from 1992 to 2007, and he has also written for the likes of The Los Angeles Times, The Nation and Rolling Stone.
For those readers who are attracted to this books sub-title, 'the Hidden History of the CIA', expecting juicy revelations from the wilderness of mirrors, especially regarding the fascinating visit by Lee Oswald in September '63, may well come away from these pages with more questions than answers. Whatever dark secrets were kept from the Warren Commission, the Church Committee and the HSCA, they remain well hidden.
Mexico City, the pride of the CIA's Western Hemisphere division, at the centre of Cold War spy operations, and Scott the agencies most celebrated station chief have left us with faulty photographic and hidden voice surveillance of LHO, photographs that two operatives have testified to seeing; the Sylvia Duran/Oswald affair; the Elena Garro story; the plane standing at Mexico City airport, awaiting a special passenger for a flight to Havana, and who knows how much more? Quite probably the answers to some of these secrets, immediately after Scott's death, are scooped up by Angleton.
Gone like snow on the water.

Addendum:-My 2014 thoughts on Oswald/Mexico City are not clarified by Jefferson Morley's probe into the hidden history of the CIA. In fact, decades prior to Morley's probe, a much more cutting appraisal of the wilderness of mirrors was published in 'Oswald and the CIA' by John Newman. The CIA has lied all along concerning the Mexico tapes and also obfuscated the fact that Langley knew, before the assassination, of Oswald's activities at the Cuban mission. I believe that false cables were sent by David Atlee Phillips, and there was never any special passenger flight to Havana. Also, the Sylvia Duran/Garro stories, are just that. Lies to fit up the assassination as the work of Cuba, which was shut down in favour of the 'lone-nut' option.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adding this to the CIA folder. I recommend reading The Ghost, by the same author about Angleton, for different prospectives on events ; I.e. Philby, Oswald, & their upbringing and personal lives.
A good example of The compartmentalization of information in the CIA, was keeping Win Scott out of the loop before & after 11/22/63.
David Atlee Phillips again, as in other books on the topic , looms unfavorably in the thick of the plot. I learned a little more about the DRE and Alpha 66 .

I learned many details about Oswald’s visit. The information about Scott being very conservative, “to the right of George Wallace”, and later, his idea’s about blaming the liberals in Washington for not perusing the Russian /Cuban connection behind the JFK murder was noteworthy, something to ponder.
Morley’s take in why the administration, CIA & FBI favored the lone assassin story without acknowledging they were watching Oswald since 1959. If they followed up on the conspiracy leads, they would’ve had to investigate their own secret groups (DRE & Alpha 66) to find out who knew what when. Doing this would be counter productive, leading to even more questions about these groups.
It’s also instructive to gain insight into how things were done then, which gives one a good idea about how things are being done now.
I also found Scott’s writing about the psychology of the counterintelligence agent & the danger to the self interesting.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book about the early years of the CIA and Winston Scott who was there for it all. He spent 12 years in charge of the station in Mexico in the 50s and 60s. Some interesting insights into the inner-workings of the CIA, especially the way it gives information to people only on a "need to know" basis. Obviously, throughout the period, anti-communism was the primary focus of the CIA's operations. About 100 pages of the book is devoted to detailing evidence of Lee Harvey Oswald's activities in the Mexico in the months before the assassination. Seems clear that the CIA is hiding something that even Win Scott apparently didn't need to know.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this primarily for the information on Lee Harvey Oswald's activities in Mexico leading up to Kennedy's assassination. And while some of that is covered, it largely deals with the life of the CIA Station Chief of Mexico City during the 1960's, and how he got to that position. It was an interesting book, and very well documented, but the part I was most interested in could have been just a chapter or two. One thing for sure--the CIA blocked, withheld, and destroyed evidence relating to Oswald. No doubt there.

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's clear after reading this book that the venal CIA subculture was responsible for the assassination of John Kennedy, more than any other factor. The subject of this book - Winston Scott - was mainly and ultimately an opportunistic civil servant who moved his way up the monkey pole and enjoyed a lavish life in Mexico City, while fostering fascism and corruption among the Mexican political elite and further corrupting three consecutive Mexican presidents.

Winston Scott and his political mentor Allen Dulles were both instrumental in looking the other way at key moments in the pre-assassination decades and in hiring the people who set the stage for the biggest, most lurid, and most tragic assassination of the 20th century.

This book is adequate at criticizing Scott's legacy, but at various points also functions as slightly too much of an apology for Winston Scott, but likely that was a concession to the fact that Winston Scott's son Michael participated in the forming of the narrative of the book, which also serves to clear the name of Winston Scott and his family, while simultaneously slapping Winston on the wrist, post-mortem, post-everything. The CIA was clearly an alternate governing body, was above the law, and was a playground of cronyism, fetishized paranoia, and mainly about acquiring and distributing power, keeping few people truly safe.

Certainly the book is an important angle, but more should have been said about the total corruption of the Mexican political system that also influenced the way that the American CIA functioned in Mexico City and in turn that the corruption of people like Winston Scott and Allen Dulles also corrupted Mexican politics and damaged world history beyond repair. And the damage leads all the way to the present day, as corruption and cartels have destroyed much of Mexico and its future, in order to benefit American renegades, mediocre ex-pats, and deranged gringo cowboys playing out fantasies of power and domination. It also looks likely that Winston Scott killed his second wife Paula and used his influence in Mexico City to cover it up. Winston Scott is far from being absolved for so many high crimes he seems to have committed and in which he participated, by virtue of this book existing. The subtext in this book and the "unwritten"/unincluded parts make that clear. CIA stooges and their world was mostly extrajudicial.

It's important to understand the context of the deep levels of corruption that are the norm in Mexico and the warm huggy embracing Mexican culture that makes the business deals that screw so many people in Mexico seem like the right thing to do when what they're often doing is stealing all the candy in the piñata. Sadly, it was not just US pressure, but also the Mexican politicians' and Mexican presidents' willingness to make shitty deals and sell out their own citizenry, as the US also did north of the border, that have sunk Mexican institutions. And that was the climate in which Win and his men were operating... it didn't combine well with their American free market crony capitalism.
And the combination helped to screw many generations of the indigenous population in a very savagely efficient totality. And it chewed up everyone else in its path in Mexico also.

The CIA's main post-war mission, as with almost everything else post-WW2, was to protect the financial interests, at any expense. Certainly that's also the history of the world. So, Win was correct about one main tenet: "It Came to Little". And people were murdered and had the tops of their heads blown off for "little". For a pile of money and a monopoly on the power.

Conservatives were never truly held accountable for creating the culture and the climate in which they got away with killing John Kennedy and then blaming the longshot patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. And Winston Scott was one of the principal hawkish conservatives in a key position to have done more to prevent the assassination of John Kennedy. And he didn’t.

I've got to candidly say, it kind of bothers me that Winston Scott's son Michael has enjoyed a very successful career in Hollywood and doesn't seem to have done more than merely request his father's files from Congress, for personal reasons, maybe for fear of implicating his father further. It seems pretty obvious that Michael's father Winston indeed looked the other way when Lee Oswald was in Mexico City just prior to the JFK assassination. So many red flags. So much shredded paperwork.
"Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown..."

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, Jefferson Morley provides the reader with an immensely entertaining, page-turning biography recounting the life of a relatively unknown, yet important American bureaucrat and spy, Winston Scott (1909-1971). While Morley classifies his book as a biography, he dedicates a significant portion of the book exploring the many inconsistencies between the United States’ official stance on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the differing descriptions surrounding the event found in archived CIA documents. Morley’s journalistic writing style greatly enhances the readability of the text, and he successfully achieves his stated purpose of depicting the multifaceted life of Winston Scott, highlighting his role and achievements while serving in the CIA throughout the beginning of the Cold War, and arguing the CIA had some role in JFK’s assassination without positing his own definitive theory (p. 15).
Winston Scott was born in 1909 in Jemison, Alabama. Throughout his childhood and into adolescence, Scott was a naturally gifted athlete with a predilection for math—an interest he continued to pursue into adulthood by earning a Ph.D. to the chagrin of his farmer father, who accused him of becoming a “fancy pants intellectual” who could not land a “real job” (p. 55). It was his interest and talent for math—specifically his background in cryptology—that laid the foundation for his career in the CIA. After being recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—a precursor to the CIA—in 1943, Scott went to London, where he learned the art of intelligence gathering from his British MI6 counterparts. Scott played a critical role in institutionalizing these lessons, tactics, and techniques learned from the British into a nascent American intelligence organization that would eventually become the CIA (p. 74).
Through the late 1940s and into the early 1950s, Scott used his intellect and charm to climb the bureaucratic ladder at the CIA, earning numerous promotions and placements in managerial positions, culminating in his ascension to chief of the CIA’s station in Mexico City in 1956. Scott had an outsized influence on US-Mexican relations. Armed with his gregarious personality and a command of the Spanish language, Scott played a crucial role in restoring American prestige and trust among Mexican officials who had grown weary of American influence and power throughout the 1950s.
It is at this point in the book that Morley begins skillfully integrating and weaving Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK’s assassination into the biographical narrative of Winston Scott. The official CIA and Warren Commission line was that Oswald had acted alone in killing JFK and that he was not a person of interest for the CIA prior to the assassination. While the CIA had a file on him—he was a former US Marine turned communist, after all—they claimed he was nothing but a “blip” on their radar and had no reason to closely track his actions. However, leaning on evidence and records primarily found in Winston Scott’s partially declassified manuscript of an unpublished memoir, Morley discovered that Oswald visited Mexico City two months prior to killing JFK to acquire a visa to travel to Cuba. Furthermore, Morley states that Scott and the CIA had in fact carefully and assiduously followed and tracked his movements during his visit to Mexico City—a blatant contradiction to the official CIA and Warren Commission reports. Despite uncovering inconsistencies, Morley states he has no interest in positing his own theory for what really happened to JFK. He simply reveals that the story is incomplete and that unfortunately much of the evidence which could fill in the gaps are buried and locked away in classified CIA vaults.

My main critique of this book is its missed opportunity in exploring the CIA’s role in domestic Mexican affairs. While I understand book titles are rarely determined by the author, I believe this title slightly misleads the reader into thinking the book would include at least a chapter related to US covert operations in Mexican politics. Morley states that Mexico was a “cold war battlefield” in which the Soviet Union vied for a foothold in the west while the US attempted to counter its influence and intelligence operations. However, the extent of Morley’s coverage and analysis into US influence in Mexico stopped at depicting Scott’s deep and personal relationship with President López Mateos and the extravagant parties they would attend together in the late 1950s. Although the 1950s and 1960s were ostensibly an auspicious period for Mexico—known as the “Mexican Miracle”—this timespan also saw a development of grassroots labor movements and pushback against governmental policies by union leaders. It is likely that President López Mateos would have leaned on his personal relationship with Winston Scott to request US intelligence support to gather information on domestic labor groups to preempt any organized protests in an attempt to keep the peace. This could have a been a great opportunity for Morley to use as another lens to explore Scott’s personal and the CIA’s institutional role in influencing Mexican politics.
Morley’s brilliant use of Winston Scott’s partially declassified manuscript provides a personal touch in depicting the circumstances surrounding JFK assassination in contrast to the more sterile and governmental accounts provided by the Warren Commission reports. Morley is a skilled writer and uses his journalistic background to bring to life a typically mundane topic. His ability to vivify the career and life of a bureaucrat who worked in the arcane field of US intelligence is quite impressive. Although Scott had minimal involvement in Oswald’s assassination of JFK and the subsequent investigation, Morley uses Scott as an opportunistic lens to analyze the assassination from the perspective of senior CIA officials, blending this well-researched biographical work into a mystery thriller.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Win’s conclusion that there had been no “serious investigation” of Oswald’s communist connections was well informed. His effort to blame “foreign policy pundits, leftists and liberals” was less persuasive. There were, after all, few such heretics at the top of the CIA. His friend Allen Dulles did not care to push the Warren Commission to look at Oswald’s Cuban connections. His friend Jim Angleton could have mounted a serious investigation of possible counterintelligence failures around Oswald any time he wanted. Instead, he stalled the Warren Commission and indulged the suggestion of Anatoly Golitsyn, his favorite defector, that the Soviets were trying to hide a connection to Oswald. Likewise, his esteemed colleague Dick Helms could have ordered a closer review of the proliferating reports of Oswald’s activities in Mexico. Instead, he ordered Win and other station chiefs to cut off and discredit all discussion of the alleged assassin’s motives and contacts.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A son's desire to understand his father's personal and professional lives guides Jefferson Morley's book on Winston Scott - head of the CIA in Mexico City during the crucial Cold War era. We don't really learn whether Scott's operatives played a role or not in covering up Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's mystery trips there right before November 22, 1963. Even Scott seemed to be hiding elements of this long-standing mystery, and for what purpose? Scott's death at 62 leaves us wondering.

[Charles Reimler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting CIA HISTORY Surveillance Of OSWALD. Why Was OSWALD HIRED As An Employee By Book Depositary?
Location Motorcade With EMPLOYEE OSWALD Inside Whom Under SURVEILLANCE EVEN In Mexico. WHY WAS OSWALD HIRED By Library? ODD Occupation Considerations Of His Own HISTORY, PLUS PROVEN Under Surveillance. OSWALD Was A High School ‘Dropout’, And NOT A BookWorm. Odd Circumstances Throughout JFK Issues, But I DOUBT Oswald Was A Brilliant Individual.

[Jehú Jair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected more in depth analysis regarding Tlatelolco's massacre, but was very superficial and not quite substantial. Nevertheless, it's worth reading to learn how Mexico and US collaborated during the Soviet Union era and some events prior Kennedy's assassination.

[Ken Grissom · Rating 5 out of 5]

What the CIA's Mexico City station chief did not know about Lee Harvey Oswald raises questions, none of the probable answers to which are comforting.

[Vince · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I was going to read about a well known spy, this story is more than a biography.

[Patrick J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whether due to incompetence or malfeasance, we may never truly know what Oswald was doing in Mexico City in the weeks leading up to the assassination.

[Chris Flick · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing glimpse of what was going on "behind the scenes" in Mexico in the 1960s. Fascinating for someone who had lived there at the time. Don't read for the biography of Winston Scott, read for the story of Mexico in the 1960s.

[Girard Bowe · Rating 3 out of 5]

No staggering revelations in this book about Scott, who was the CIA chief in Mexico during the '50s and '60s. I was hoping to get more information about Oswald's presence in Mexico shortly before the JFK assassination, but there were only tantalizing tidbits. Scott was aware of video and audio recordings of Oswald as he visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. Scott asked his superiors in DC for more information on the American-turned-Russian-turned American who wanted Cuba's help in returning to the USSR. The CIA cut Scott out of the information loop even before the assassination. Oswald was apparently already on the CIA's radar. Was he merely being observed? Was he part of a CIA operation? We'll probably never know. Supposedly, the audio and video recordings were destroyed. Almost immediately after Scott died, CIA spook Jim Angleton went to his house and took documents, including an unpublished memoir by Scott.

Only 3 stars - there were myriad names and acronyms and details which made the overall story hard to follow. Search for "The Mystery of Oswald's Contacts with the CIA in Mexico" for a more succinct and cohesive version of this book. I better enjoyed two of Morley's other books, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton and Scorpions' Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate.

[Matt Potter]

penetrating glimpse behind cia's curtain, circa 1963

Fascinating, insightful biography; look forward to seeing more from the author in 2017 with expected national archive releases re jfk.