By Hugh Williamson in Berlin
Published: January 6 2006 02:00 | Last updated: January 6 2006 02:00
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.
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The 90-minute film, titled
Rendezvous with Death, features n 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a retired FBI agent, who was sent to Mexico after the assassination to investigate Oswald's activities and says he was withdrawn after only a short time.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".
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/29386ff2-7e...0779e2340.html
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