Mr. DELGADO. And how low we can catch them and where we can't catch
them.
Mr. LIEBELER. And I suppose all the men who worked with the radar sets
knew these things?
Mr. DELGADO. They all knew. What do they call it now--authentication
charts, which is also a secret.
Mr. LIEBELER. What is the nature of these charts?
Mr. DELGADO. Authorization chart is, if we receive an order over the
phone, over the headsets--authentication. Pardon me. That's the word.
Let's say this order, we can question it. What it actually amounts to,
he has to authenticate it for us. Now, he should have the same table or
code in front of him that I have. He gives me a code. I would look it
up in my authentication chart, decipher it, and I could tell whether or
not this man has the same thing I am using. And this changes from hour
to hour, see. There's no chance of it--and day to day, also.
Mr. LIEBELER. So that the information, the code itself would not be of
any particular value to the enemy, since it is changed?
Mr. DELGADO. It's changed from day to day; no.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did there come a time when you were stationed at Santa
Ana that you met Lee Harvey Oswald?
Mr. DELGADO. Yes; in the beginning of 1959. He arrived at our outfit.
I didn't take no particular notice of him at the time, but later on we
had--we started talking, and we got to know each other quite well. This
is all before Christmas, before I took my leave.
Mr. LIEBELER. This was in 1957 or 1958?
Mr. DELGADO. 1958. And we had basic interests. He liked Spanish, and
he talked to me for a while in Spanish or tried to, and since nobody
bothered, you know--I was kind of a loner, myself, you know. I didn't
associate with too many people.
Mr. LIEBELER. How old were you at that time?
Mr. DELGADO. I was 17--18 years of age; 17 or 18.
Mr. LIEBELER. About the same age as Oswald?
Mr. DELGADO. Right. He was the same age as I was. And nothing really
developed until I went on leave----oh, yes. At the time he was--he was
commenting on the fight that Castro was having at Sierra Madres at the
beginning, just about the turn of 1959. When I went on leave, it just
so happened that my leave coincided with the first of January, when
Castro took over. So when I got back, he was the first one to see me,
and he said, "Well, you took a leave and went there and helped them,
and they all took over." It was a big joke.
So we got along pretty well. He had trouble in one of the huts, and he
got transferred to mine.
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you know what trouble he had in the other hut?
Mr. DELGADO. Well, the way I understand it, he wouldn't hold his own.
Came time for cleanup, and general cleanliness of the barracks, he
didn't want to participate, and he would be griping all the time. So
the sergeant that was in charge of that hut asked to have him put out,
you know. So consequently, they put him into my hut.
Mr. LIEBELER. What were these huts? Were they quonset huts?
Mr. DELGADO. Quonset huts, right.
Mr. LIEBELER. And they served as barracks, right?
Mr. DELGADO. Right.