Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Oswald concludes with the most eloquent prose of his that I am aware of: “No man, having known, having lived, under the Russian Communist and American capitalist system, could possibly make a choice between them, there is no choice, one offers oppresstion the other poverty. Both offer imperilistic injustice, tinted with two brands of slavery. But no rational man can take the attitude of ‘a curse on both your house’s.’ There are two world systems, one twisted beyond recognition by its misuse, the other decadent and dying in its final evolution. A truly democratic system would combine the better qualities of the two upon an American foundation, opposed to both world systems as they are now. This than is our ideal.”1100

  It is difficult to divorce these political writings of Oswald’s from his contemplated assassination of General Walker. We know that Oswald was very busy during this period. He didn’t miss a day of work at Jaggers for the months of February and March of 1962,1101 and we know he was also busy working on his plans to murder Walker during this time because he later told Marina this.1102 So he obviously had no free time to spare—that is, he had to have made time by staying up until midnight or later many nights during March working on his political statement.1103 Why the urgency? We can never know for sure, but we do know that Oswald did not view himself a mere foot soldier in the Marxist struggle but a potential leader. We also know he knew there was a chance he would be apprehended in his attempt to murder Walker, and if such an event happened, it’s reasonable to assume he wanted these writings to be accepted as a moral (though not a legal) justification for what he had done, and hoped he would be rightfully perceived by those of similar mind as not the equivalent of a hit man or a member of a firing squad carrying out a sentence of death, but as an important historical figure who not only pulled the trigger but conceptualized its rationale, and hence should be greatly respected for his visionary and leadership qualities. If there were not some umbilical cord between his political manifesto and his plans to murder Walker, it’s hard to imagine why, during this turbulent period, he would have set aside time to write it.

  Marina had not been happy when she discovered the carbine standing in a corner of Lee’s closet study. “What do you need a rifle for? What do we need that for?” she asked, and he only responded that it might come in handy some day for hunting.1104 Though she said no more about it, still it bothered her that he would buy a “toy” like this when they were scrimping, even on their food. But Marina was from the old school and felt that Lee worked for his money, and ought to spend it as he pleased.1105

  Lee’s rages in February subsided in March and he seemed more relaxed. She believed this was due to his “little closet,” since he could lock himself away where Marina could not get on his nerves, and he seemed to be preoccupied anyway during this period since, she said, “I know that Lee was planning for something,” though she didn’t know what.1106

  On March 8, V. Gerasimov of the Soviet embassy replied to Marina’s letter seeking readmission to the Soviet Union, explaining that it was not going to be easy. Among other things, she had to fill out an application in three copies and furnish three copies of a detailed biography of herself. In addition, she needed to indicate the profession she would pursue back in the Soviet Union and the place she wanted to reside. She also had to supply three passport-sized photos of herself and three of her child, as well as one or two letters from her relatives in the USSR who would be inviting her to live with them.1107

  Since Marina didn’t want to go back anyway, she was pleased the embassy was making it so difficult. She was particularly heartened by the fact that Gerasimov said the “time of processing” her application “requires five to six months.” Wise in the ways of the Soviet bureaucracy, she was sure that five or six months really meant much longer, by which time the whole thing with Lee hopefully will have blown over. When Lee made her sit down and fill out the application on March 17, she did so with a much lighter heart than when she wrote the first letter.1108 It looked as though things might still turn out all right.

  But on March 29 or April 1, John Graef took Oswald aside in the laboratory. Graef had no office at Jaggers, just a desk out in the open among some others, so he sought out a quiet corner of the darkroom where he could talk to Lee without being overheard. He didn’t want to embarrass the boy. Business had slackened off somewhat and Graef figured it was a good time to let Lee go. “Lee,” he said, “I think this is as good a time as any to cut it short. Business is pretty slow at this time, but the point is that you haven’t been turning the work out like you should [and] there has been friction with other people.” Graef was also thinking about a recent incident when he had looked up from his desk and saw Lee reading a Russian paper—Krokodil, he thought it might have been. Graef advised him to put it away. In the political climate of America in the early 1960s—hotly anti-Communist and anti-Soviet—it didn’t seem wise to flaunt such a thing. That wasn’t why Graef was firing him, of course, but it didn’t help Lee’s case.

  “I think you tried to do the work,” Graef told him, “but I just don’t think that you have the qualities for doing the work that we need.”

  Lee just looked at the floor the whole time Graef was talking. Graef gave Lee until April 6 and suggested he get in touch with the Texas Employment Commission again, adding that he would be happy to give him a reference for any prospective employer—with a reservation he kept to himself. Graef felt he would have to warn future employers about the fact that Oswald found it so difficult to get along with his coworkers. When Graef was finished talking, Lee, who had said nothing at all, finally said, “Well, thank you,” turned, and walked away.1109 When Lee came home that night, he did not tell Marina that he had lost his job.1110

  On Sunday, March 31, Oswald wrote to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in New York City telling them, “I do not like to ask for something for nothing but I am unemployed. Since I am unemployed, I stood yesterday for the first time in my life, with a placare around my neck, passing out fair play for Cuba pamplets [almost undoubtedly Corlis Lamont’s basic pamphlet, The Crime against Cuba, about America’s offenses against Cuba] ect.* I only had 15 or so. In 40 minutes they were all gone. I was cursed as well as praised by some.” Oswald asked for “40 or 50 more of the fine basic pamplets.”1111

  This was not Oswald’s first communication with the FPCC, but it appears to be the earliest dated one that survived the chaotic conditions of that office.1112 The reason we know it was not the first communication is that among the piles of evidence accumulated by the Warren Commission is an empty envelope found in Lee’s rooming house. The printed return address is “Rm.329, 779 Bway NY,” the address of the FPCC. Although the only part of the postmark that is legible is “1962,” the envelope is addressed to 2703 Mercedes Street in Fort Worth,1113 where Oswald had not lived for nearly six months by the time he wrote the letter of March 31. In any case, the letter that Lee wrote to the FPCC at the end of March 1963 was to be followed by an exchange of several more letters extending over the next few months, to at least August 12. On May 26, Oswald requested “formal membership” in the organization, the leading pro-Castro group in the United States.1114†

  Also on Sunday, March 31, the day after he passed out pamphlets on behalf of Castro in downtown Dallas, Lee surprised Marina, who was hanging out diapers in the backyard at Neely Street, by coming down the outside backstairs dressed all in black as if he represented the return of Zorro. He was carrying some essential props: his rifle and some recent issues of the Worker and the Militant. His pistol was tucked into his waistband. He wanted her to take his picture.

  Marina laughed. “Why are you rigged out like that?” she demanded, thinking that Lee had gone “crazy.” She wasn’t interested in taking photographs either. She had never used a camera, didn’t care to learn how, and had diapers to dry. Nevertheless, she allowed herself to be persuaded. He showed her how to point his cheap Imperial Reflex camera and which button to push. She snapped the shutter at least three times as Lee smugly
brandished the carbine and newspapers.1115

  When Marina asked Lee what he planned to do with the photographs, he told her he was going to send them to the Militant to show he was “ready for anything.”1116 Oswald apparently did what he promised. Sylvia Weinstein, who handled the Militant’s subscriptions, told author Gus Russo that she opened the envelope containing the pictures that Oswald had sent, and the man in black appeared “kooky.” She was struck by the fact that Oswald was holding both the Worker and the Militant in his hand, two newspapers that were ideologically at war with each other over Soviet dominance of socialist movements as well as interpretations of Stalin’s role in history. She figured that Oswald would have to be “really dumb and totally naive.”1117

  Oswald probably intended the backyard photographs to be of great historical significance, telling Marina the photos were “for posterity.”1118 He may have intended to leave them for inclusion in the dossier he was compiling on his assassination of General Walker. Or they could have been another exhibit he could flash at Cuban leaders who were going to welcome him with open arms when they realized that he was the one who killed one of Castro’s greatest American enemies.

  If anything went wrong with his plan, the photo could still serve as a memento. Several days later, after developing and printing at least three of the negatives at Jaggers, he gave Marina a print, on the back of which he had written, “For Junie, from Papa.” Marina was appalled.

  “Why would Junie want a picture with guns?” she asked Lee.

  “To remember Papa by sometime,” he said.1119

  Sadly, the photographs did in fact turn out to be of historical significance, not because of Lee’s bungled attempt to kill General Walker but because of his all too successful attempt to murder John F. Kennedy. One of the three received the accolade of becoming a front cover of Life magazine, and it has been reprinted countless times in newspapers, magazines, books, and television documentaries. The photograph Marina took that Sunday afternoon has become the enduring universal image of, for some, the assassin of President Kennedy, for others, the helpless patsy caught in the vortex of a dark conspiracy. Whichever it is, one thing is reasonably certain. It is the image by which, more than any other, Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to be remembered, not just by his baby daughter but by the entire world. And that wish came true.

  On March 26, Ruth Paine had written Marina to invite the Oswalds to dinner on April2.1120 Marina had already been out to Irving with the children, but neither Lee nor Ruth’s estranged husband had been at any of the three meetings between the young women.

  On the appointed night, Michael Paine drove into Dallas to pick the Oswalds up at Neely Street. Michael, who had a lively interest in things political—though the only arguably political organization he ever belonged to was the American Civil Liberties Union—was intrigued by what Ruth had told him of the Oswalds. Marina was not prepared to go when he got there, and spent a half hour or so packing up the baby’s things and getting ready, while Lee sat in the living room with Michael talking politics, occasionally interrupting himself to bark orders in Russian at Marina, though he did nothing to help her. Michael was astonished that he would speak so harshly to his wife, particularly in front of a guest. “Here is a little fellow,” Michael thought to himself, “who certainly insists on wearing the pants,” and who, by keeping Marina from learning the English language, was intent on “keeping her vassal to him.”

  Michael noticed that Lee spoke as derisively of the USSR as he did of the United States, and he found that odd for someone who had taken the trouble to go and live there. What really struck Michael about Lee was his deep resentment of the exploitation of workers by their bosses, which occasioned a discourse by Lee on the Marxist theory of surplus value—the notion that profit is generated when employers pay employees less than their labor is really worth in order to profit from the difference—calling this “an unforgivable moral sin.” Michael thought that Lee’s obvious resentment of employers could scarcely be hidden from his current employer and must cause him problems at his job; he had no idea that Lee had already been given his notice and had only four more days of work.

  Michael told the Warren Commission that Oswald felt that “all the working class was exploited, and he also thought they were brainwashed, and…thought that churches were all alike…they were all apparatus of the power structure to maintain itself in power.” When Michael pointed out to Lee that his church was supported by dollars donated by the members themselves, Oswald simply shrugged his shoulders. As far as he was concerned, his views were still valid. According to Michael, Oswald dismissed others’ arguments because he saw them as a product of their environment and they didn’t know any better. He was in a state of “enlightenment” and knew the truth and therefore those who disagreed with him were just “spouting the line that was fed to [them] by the power structure.”1121

  During dinner in Irving, the conversation moved more slowly, since Michael and Ruth tried to involve Marina, and everything had to be translated. They both noticed that her opinions often differed from his and that he didn’t much like that. (Later, Ruth told Michael that Lee had disparaged Marina in Russian, calling her a fool and telling her she didn’t know what she was talking about.) In an effort to find more common ground, Michael asked Lee what he thought of Major General Walker, who was still appearing in the newspapers several times a week as his Operation Midnight Ride encountered angry demonstrations across the country. Oswald was oddly noncommittal, although they seemed to share a low opinion of Walker. But only one of them was going to try to murder him in a week or so.1122

  Just five days later, Ruth Paine sat down to write Marina a letter, which she had been mulling over ever since the night of the dinner party. She knew that Marina was expecting another child and that Lee was insisting that she return to the Soviet Union. Even worse, Lee would not divorce her, leaving her abandoned in the Soviet Union but not free. Ruth also knew that Marina was very much opposed to leaving the United States, and she was angry that Lee would so cavalierly shrug off his responsibilities to his wife and children. She had talked the matter over with Michael and decided she had to intervene somehow, but she was afraid her Russian was not up to such a serious discussion. She wanted to offer Marina the chance to come live with her in Irving, and she wrote the letter as a way to gather her thoughts and hoped she was expressing them in passable, although halting Russian.1123

  Dear Marina,

  I want to invite you to move here and live with me both now and later when the baby is born. I don’t know how things are for you at home with your husband. I don’t know what would be better for you, June and Lee—to live together or apart. It is, of course, your affair, and you have to decide what is better and what you wish to do. But I want to say that you have a choice. When you wish, for days, weeks, months, you could move here. I have already thought about this invitation a lot, it is not a quick thought.

  It seems to me that it would be pleasant and useful for us both to live together. We can easily help one another. When you converse it helps me. If you sometimes correct my mistakes in conversation and letters, I would be very happy. It is so helpful for me that I would consider it proper to buy all which we need from the grocery store: food, soap, etc. Lee would have to give you enough money to pay for clothes and medical expenses. You can get rest here such as you need during pregnancy. During the day it is rather quiet here, but not so quiet as at your place. You and June would be by yourselves in the room which fronts on the street. There you would find privacy. Here, I think, it would not be difficult to learn English. From me and from my children you would learn words. In the course of two weeks you could learn all I know about cooking. I’m bad at housecleaning. Perhaps you could help me with this a bit. I don’t want to hurt Lee. Of course I don’t know what he wants. Perhaps he feels like Michael, who at one time wants and doesn’t want to live with me. You know, you could live here [on Lee’s] workdays and return home on weekends. You would only need to carry ba
ck and forth clothes, diapers, etc. The other things necessary for June and you are here all the time: beds, sheets, towels, a high chair for June, etc.

  Please think about this invitation and tell me (now or later) what you think. If you are interested in coming here earlier than September or October (about which we have already spoken), I want to write an official letter to you and Lee, and I want him to know all that I have said to you. Where you and June live—that is of course a matter which touches him deeply. Therefore, I want to speak directly with him about it.

  She signed the letter “Your Ruth” and then added a postscript: “Do you have the book by Petrov: Self-Teacher in English Language? My neighbor has promised us a bassinette after the birth of the baby.”1124

  It had not been an easy letter to write. It was not an easy letter to send either. In fact, Ruth never mailed it. For the time being she kept it in her purse, thinking she might give it to Marina personally, but she never did. Eventually, she turned it over to the Warren Commission, with the notation “Not sent” on it.1125

  According to Marina, Lee cleaned his rifle on four or five occasions during the short period between the time he received the rifle in the mail and the attempt on General Walker’s life on April 10.1126 It is not known precisely where or when Oswald practiced shooting the new gun, only that he did it. Marina said she thought Lee had practiced with his rifle “once or twice” before the Walker shooting.1127 And she told the FBI that Lee, before the shooting, had told her he had been practicing, the implication being that it was more than once.1128 The Warren Commission never even hazarded a guess as to when and where he might have done so.1129 So we are left with only one occasion we can rely on since Marina vividly recalls it. And again, we don’t know the date except Marina says it was “shortly before” the attempt on Walker’s life, which would put it sometime in early April.1130 Marina recalls that Lee had arrived home from work just as she was taking the baby out for a ride in her stroller. He told her to go ahead and he would catch up to her so they could all walk together. When he caught up though, he was carrying the carbine underneath his green Marine Corps raincoat. He told her he was going to practice with the rifle, which upset her because he had led her to believe that he would accompany them on their walk.