The counterintelligence program described by Marchetti dovetails with the Oswald story. It provides an explanation for the U.S. government’s indulgence of his behavior. That Oswald was in fact a participant in such a program was the belief of James Botelho, his former roommate in Santa Ana. Botelho, who later became a California judge, stated in an interview with Mark Lane that Oswald’s Communism was a pose. Botelho said: “I’m very conservative now [in 1978] and I was at least as conservative at that time. Oswald was not a Communist or a
