The strange saga of Lee Harvey Oswald follows a twisting road, punctuated by strange off-ramps. In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigated the stories of Oswald’s involvement with the FBI and CIA, but said it was unable to substantiate them.

However, documents released in 1995 gave credibility to those stories. These documents center on a shadowy figure called Maurice Bishop—likely a pseudonym—who was said to have been an intelligence agent during the early 1960s.

Life magazine Bay of Pigs cover (Getty)Antonio Veciana founded a Cuban exile group named Alpha 66, which had launched guerrilla raids against Castro's regime. Veciana testified before the House committee that he considered Bishop his U.S. intelligence contact. He said he met with Bishop more than 100 times, and that Bishop had instructed him to organize Alpha 66. He was also paid by Bishop. The HSCA committee decided not to credit Veciana's claim because, among other things, there was no proof that Maurice Bishop existed.

But the new documents, released by the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board in 1995, support the contention that Bishop existed, and backs Veciana's story. Government sources said the document—a U.S. Army intelligence report dated Oct. 17, 1962—describes a man who fits the profile of Maurice Bishop. "He used a different name, but we believe this man fits Bishop's profile very closely," according to the document.

The document is a report from an Army intelligence officer, Col. Jeff W. Boucher, to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. It said the intelligence operative described as fitting Bishop's profile "has contact with the Alpha 66 group" and that Alpha 66 "was going to conduct raids against Cuba."

The kicker to Veciana’s story? He testified that one of his meetings with Bishop was in Dallas. Bishop was accompanied by another man, someone Veciana had never met. The man’s name was Lee Harvey Oswald. The meeting happened sometime in September, 1963 —two months before Kennedy's assassination.

What was a poverty-stricken blue-collar loner like Oswald doing with a CIA spook? And why would he meet with Veciana, a fervent anti-Castro activist?

All of this makes it no surprise that the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that although Oswald had shot Kennedy, a conspiracy was “probable.”