This CIA Spy Played One in the Movies Too

Ramon Alvarez had parts in The Falcon and the Snowman and Beyond the Limit

Hester Roos-Alvarez (LIEMPTY-19) and Ramón Alvarez (LIEMPTY-1) ran a photo surveillance operation for the CIA in the 1960s (Credit: Alvarez Family.)

Ramon Alvarez, supervisor of the CIA photographic surveillance operation that photographed Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the assassination of President Kenned, was a spy in real life—and he played one in the movies.

Alvarez was a handsome man, “a bit James Bondish,” in the words of a family member. He and his wife Hester worked for the CIA in Mexico City for fifteen years in the 1950s and 1960s. They were known by the code names LIEMPTY-1 and LIEMPTY-19.

When Alvarez gave closed-door testimony to JFK investigators in 1978, the CIA was on high alert and kept his testimony secret for forty years.