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

by Morley, Jefferson

• ISBN13: 9780700615711
• ISBN10: 0700615717
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-11
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas

Summary

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 akey 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not only covered up the agency's interest in Oswald but also, after Scott died, absconded with the only copies of his unpublished memoir.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.

Author Biography

Jefferson Morley is currently the national editorial director for the Center for Independent Media.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Prologue: April 28, 1971	p. 1
London
Up from Escatawpa	p. 13
The Apprentice Puppet Masters	p. 24
His Friend Philby	p. 35
Washington
Spies on the Rise	p. 49
Operation Success	p. 61
A New Life	p. 73
Mexico City
The American Proconsul	p. 83
Amcigar	p. 101
Spy as Poet	p. 111
Knight	p. 123
Darkness	p. 133
Wedding in Las Lomas	p. 140
"You Might Have Had a Seven Days in May"	p. 151
A Blip Named Oswald	p. 168
Out of the Loop	p. 191
"The Effect Was Electric"	p. 203
"A Transparent Operation"	p. 215
"I Share That Guilt"	p. 232
An Anonymous Warning	p. 240
The Padrinos	p. 257
Night of Tlatelolco	p. 265
"The Sludge of Spies and Knaves"	p. 272
A Fall in the Garden	p. 284
Afterword	p. 289
Notes	p. 293
Bibliography	p. 347
Index	p. 353
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