The Man on the Motorcyle in Mexico City Revsited

The Man on the Motorcycle in Mexico City – Revisited

 

In the 2013 updated version of Anthony Summers’ book Not in Your Lifetime, Part IV – entitled “Endgame– Deception and Tragedy – in Chapter 19 (p. 325), Exits and Entrances in Mexico City,” it is noted that,  “….In 1994 in Mexico City, the author interviewed an attorney named Homobono Alcaraz. He had featured in FBI reports as having said that, while studying law…he had met and talked with Oswald. The encounter, Alcaraz told the author had occurred at Sanborn’s restaurant, in the company of two or three other American students – all of them, like Alcaraz himself, Quakers.” 12

“The students talk centered on the difficulties involved in getting to Cuba. Oswald, Alcaraz recalled, eventually left with one of the Americans – whom Alcaraz remembered as having been named Steve ’Kennan, or Keenan’ (Alcaraz had trouble pronouncing or spelling the name) from Philadelphia. They went off together on his motorbike. Oswald riding pillion, headed for the Cuban Consulate. Recent research established that a student from Philadelphia named Steve Kenin did visit and live for some time in Mexico, did frequent a Quaker guest house, and did ride a motorbike – and did travel to Cuba.” 13

The foot notes say: “Note 12 –. Kennan/Keenan: ints. Steven Kennan; “The Man on the Motorcycle in Mexico City” by Bill Kelly, http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.ie, also drawing on work by researchers Stu Wexler, Greg Parker and Larry Hancock.”

Indeed, it was in 2006 when we did locate Steve Kenin - “The Man on the Motorcycle in Mexico City” – and while only garnering a few sentences and a footnote in Summers’ book, the research that led to the identification and location of Kenin, and what we learned from him, deserves further elaboration, as it really is a story unto itself.

Having read the early FBI reports from San Francisco about a Mexican national who saw Oswald take off for the Cuban embassy on the back of a motorcycle driven by an American named Steve Keenin or Kennin, - a Quaker student from Philadelphia – I declared a challenge to a number of JFK assassination researchers – that we knew enough about this guy that we should be able to find him, and I wrote what we knew then in an article – “Philadelphia Quakers With Oswald in Mexico City.”

With Australian researcher Greg Parker, Larry Hancock (Someone Would Have Talked) and Stu Wexler, together and sometimes separately, we scoured the internet, Quaker archives and Philadelphia college record books searching for a Steve Kennin or Keenin, but came up empty. After a few years of searching we all eventually gave up.

Then one day I received an email from Dave Ratcliff, who posted my original article on “Philadelphia Quakers in Mexico City” at his Ratville Web site [ xxx ], saying that he received an email from a women in Germany who was desperate to reach me concerning the man on the motorcycle in Mexico City. Dave gave her my email address and I received an email from Moni, saying that during the summer of 1963 her mother met a man Steve Kenin – at a Quaker hostel in Mexico City. He was a college student from Philadelphia, who rode a motorcycle, and they went on a holiday to visit ancient Mayan ruins and spend time at an Acapulco hotel.

Nine months later, back in Germany, Moni was born, and she took the name of her suspected father, and his photograph, which she carried around with her and scanned and sent to me in an email saying how much she would like to locate the man she suspected of being her father Steve Kenin – the Man on the Motorcycle in Mexico City.

I shared this new information with Parker, Hancock and Wexler, and now armed with his true full name we quickly learned that he was working as a contractor in the Southwest USA. Parker also found him listed in a footnote in a book which credited him as the author of a Temple University News article about Cuba.

Stu Wexler obtained his email address and sent him off a note, while I contacted Tony Summers, telling him that we finally found The Man on the Motorcycle in Mexico City.

But first, we had to let Moni straighten out her family ties while we got a full make on him, finding everything we could about him before Tony would interview him.

While he remembered Moni’s mom and they exchanged letters through the mail, we learned a lot about Steve Kenin, that he did attend Temple University in Philadelphia, but didn’t graduate, which was one of the reasons we couldn’t find him. He was born in Philadelphia, had a twin brother who was a folk musician, and they ran a music store, the Guitar Workshop, that was still in existence.

In 1963 Steve Kenin dropped out of Temple and rode his motorcycle to Mexico and wrote an article about vagabonding around Mexico for Motorcycle Magazine. He was certainly our guy, the Steve “Kennin or Kennen” who Homo Bono saw ride off with Oswald from Sanborns restaurant to the Cuban Embassy.

I still had to drive one day to Philadelphia to the Temple University library to check out the article Kenin wrote that was published in the Temple student newspaper and referenced in the book. In a special office at the library, I was given the hardbound copies of the 1960 Temple News to review.

Opening the hardbound copies, I quickly located the series of three articles young student Steven Kenin wrote about his trip to Cuba, but was pretty much shocked to find on the front page a photo of Fidel Castro with his arm around Kenin!

Not only did Kenin go to Cuba in 1960, he met and was photographed with Castro.

This was what I considered a bomb, and went to a nearby internet café and emailed Tony about the Kenin-Castro photo-bomb.

Eventually, after Moni straightened out their family affairs, it was our turn, so Tony Summers called Steve Kenin on the phone and introduced himself and they talked about Kenin’s time in Mexico.

Yes, he rode his motorcycle to Mexico, yes he met a German women at the Quaker hostel Casa de Amegos, and yes they went on a holiday together, but no, he didn’t recall meeting Alcaraz the lawyer or Lee Harvey Oswald at Sanborns or giving Oswald a ride to the Cuban embassy on his motorcycle.

But yes, he did meet Castro, albeit only briefly, as they crossed paths on the fly at an airport, and they only stopped to take the photo together.

Kenin thought he had left Mexico by the time Oswald got there in late September 1963, before his August 1963 Motorcycle Magazine article was published.

It was all pretty suspicious however, and Kenin himself thought so too, especially the idea that the government records indicated that he knew Oswald, gave him a ride to the Cuban embassy to get visas to Cuba, and that there existed a photo of him and Castro together.

If, immediately after the assassination, the government records indicated he gave Oswald a ride to the Cuban embassy, and then the photo of him and Castro came out, it would have certainly been suspicious, implying a direct link between Oswald and Castro, regardless of the truth.

And there are still some loose ends to this thread – as a former secretary at the American embassy recalled Kenin giving her a ride to work on the back of his motorcycle, but he claims not to remember her either. Of course if it was all true he might deny it, as who would want to be associated with the man accused of killing President Kennedy?  And he does have a twin brother who reportedly took over the motorcycle, who hasn’t been questioned yet, so perhaps as it has been suggested, the twin brother was the one who gave Oswald a ride? 

Kenin did also acknowledge being in New York City when Castro spoke at the UN, when and where LICOZY-3 was reportedly recruited as a double-agent by the Cubans and the FBI-CIA.

As Summers explains it in: “Note 13: In a further twist, the CIA reportedly ran an agent in Mexico, code named LICOZY-3, who was a student from Philadelphia. This according to former CIA Mexico City station officer Philip Agee, who resigned from the Agency in 1968 and took refuge in Cuba. The Kenin located in 2006 said he did not recall the Oswald encounter described by Alcaraz, and denied having had any involvement with U.S. intelligence. (Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary. New York: bantam 1976 pp. 545, 634; Kenin: int. Steven Kennan, Temple University News, October 4 & November 1960, Motorcyclist magazine, August 1963).”

Who was the double agent LICOZY-3? The Philadelphia student whose CIA role was terminated by Phil Agee in Philadelphia before Agee left the agency?