Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Right from the beginning, Marina had felt more isolated than at any time in her life, and for one reason only. She was trapped behind her language barrier. Other than Lee, she had virtually no other human being to talk to. Dallas had been bad enough, but at least there she had the occasional contact with one or more members of the Russian emigré community who spoke her native language. But in New Orleans, if she wasn’t talking to Lee or her baby June, she simply wasn’t talking. Several times she told Lee she would appreciate it if he would try to become acquainted with some Russian-speaking people in New Orleans so she could have friends and someone with whom to converse, but he had not done this, and he continued to speak to her, and their daughter June, only in Russian.1245

  Lee kept up unrelenting pressure on Marina to write the letter required by the Soviet consulate. Every evening when he came home from work he asked her whether she had written it yet. She cried every day and stalled as best she could. Finally she told him she would go back to the USSR if he would give her a divorce. Lee, angry, told her, “There will be no divorce, I may want to come to you some time…You’re my wife and you’ll stay my wife. The children are mine. You’ll wait for me just as long as I want.” He told her “the conversation is over,” but in fact it wasn’t. Marina learned that insisting on divorce was a way to get him to ease up, at least for the time being, his insistence on her writing the letter. For Marina, a day’s postponement was a day’s hope that their relationship might change just enough to forestall a terrible event in her life.

  Another weapon at her disposal was, curiously, Anatoly Shpanko. Lee had never gotten over his chagrin at learning of Marina’s alleged infidelity while he was in Moscow, and the letter she had written to Anatoly he had intercepted. Any mention of the putative lover’s name, whether by Marina or Lee, was enough to change the subject of any argument. But one way or another, the name came up in virtually every fight, and if Marina ever spoke about some incident in Minsk, Lee would assume that Anatoly had been a part of it. “Stop it,” he would tell her in her reminiscence of the event. “I can’t stand it.” And if she herself brought up Anatoly’s name, he would tell her, “Shut up. I don’t want to hear about your boyfriends.” But Marina, on at least one occasion, told Lee, perhaps in sweet revenge for all of his beatings and mistreatment of her, that if Lee spent his whole life trying, he would never learn to kiss as well as Anatoly. Marina often daydreamed about Anatoly. He had been kind to her and she imagined he always would be. If Lee did force her to go back to the USSR, Anatoly was the man she would want to marry. Oddly, Marina thought Anatoly resembled both President Kennedy and actor José Ferrer, and Lee may have somehow inferred this association in her mind between her phantom lover and President Kennedy, who, she told Lee once, was “very attractive as a man.” Lee appeared jealous of Kennedy and said, “You mustn’t like any other man but me.”1246

  Marina taunting Lee, Lee beating up Marina, Marina running away, Lee begging her to return, blissful moments making up and reuniting, each desperately needing each other, then Lee trying to send Marina back to Russia, more beatings, inducement of jealousy, and so on. Though their marriage, as Marina said, was a succession of arguments and reconciliations, so are many marriages. But Lee and Marina’s fell into the much smaller category where both parties always seem to be just beyond the other’s reach, both unable, for whatever perversion in their makeup, to give the other what they know the other needs. It seemed that Lee and Marina were each taking turns playing Carmen to the other’s Don José, the problem being, as we shall see, that this game they were playing out with their small, ordinary hands would change history for years and years to come.

  On June 24, Lee went to the passport office and applied for a new passport. He gave his occupation as “photographer” and his proposed itinerary as “England, France, Poland, USSR, France, Finland, Poland.” He said he had intended to travel during the period from October to January.1247 Absent from the itinerary was Cuba. Recent laws1248 prohibited travel to the small island nation, and indeed, the passport that was issued the next day was stamped with a warning that a person traveling to Cuba was liable to be prosecuted.1249

  The speed with which the passport was processed by the State Department—and even the fact that it was issued at all—became an essential suspicion of conspiracy theorists, but in fact the State Department had no legal grounds for denying any American a passport since the Supreme Court had ruled in 1958 that travel abroad was a right of all citizens.1250 The FBI had not placed Oswald on the watch list for those seeking passports because, the agency would later say, its “investigation of Oswald had disclosed no evidence that Oswald was acting under the instruction or on behalf of any foreign government or instrumentality thereof.”1251 Oswald also benefited from the recent installation in the New Orleans passport office of a Teletype system to Washington that markedly sped up the issuance of passports, their being granted in “24 hours in most cases.”1252 Both the legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State, Abram Chayes, and the assistant chief of the Legal Division of the Passport Office of the Department of State, Carroll Hamilton Seeley Jr., told the Warren Commission that based on Oswald’s background he had a right to a passport and he could not legally be denied one.1253 Seeley added that another former defector, Paul David Wilson, had applied for a passport and received it as a “routine issuance.”1254

  On June 26, a confidential informant for the FBI in New York reported the arrival of Oswald’s June 11 letter at the Worker. That same day the FBI’s New York office sent the post office box information on Oswald to its New Orleans office, but it wasn’t until August 5, 1963, after some legwork, that the New Orleans office verified that Oswald was living in New Orleans and at 4907 Magazine Street. The information was forwarded to Special Agent Hosty in Dallas,* but as of that point New Orleans became the “Office of Origin” for Oswald’s case file, and Hosty wouldn’t have anything to do with the Oswald case until October of 1963.1255

  On July 1, Marina finally wrote her letter to Comrade Reznichenko at the Soviet consulate in Washington, D.C., giving “family problems” as her reason for the long delay of her reply. They were also, Marina added, one of her reasons for wanting to return to her homeland, although the main one was simple “homesickness.” She wished, she said, to return to Leningrad, where she grew up and went to school. She said her husband also “expresses a sincere wish to return together with me to the USSR. I earnestly beg you to help him in this. There is not much that is encouraging to us here and nothing to hold us.” She said that since she was pregnant, she “would not be able to work for the time being…And my husband is often unemployed.”1256

  Marina’s change of heart about writing the letter had been brought about by an astonishing coup de théâtre. The evening before she wrote the letter, Marina was watching Lee read and she sensed he was very sad. He put his book down and went into the kitchen alone. A moment later, Marina put the baby down and followed him. He was sitting in the dark in a chair in reverse, his arms and legs wrapped around the back of the chair, his head resting on top. He was staring at the floor. Marina put her arms around him, stroked his head, and could feel him shaking with sobs. Finally, she said, “Everything is going to be alright. I understand.” She held him for fifteen minutes and he told her between sobs that he was lost. He didn’t know what he ought to do. Finally, he stood up and returned to the living room, and then suddenly asked, “Would you like me to come to Russia, too?” Marina thought he was kidding. Oswald explained that he wasn’t. “There’s nothing to hold me here,” he said. “I’d rather have less but not have to worry about the future…We’ll be together, you and me and Junie and the baby. How would I manage without my girls?” Marina was beside herself with joy, dancing around the room and sitting in Lee’s lap. It couldn’t be clearer that although Marina loved America, she cared for Lee more. A while later, Lee held her by the shoulders in the kitchen and told her to write the Soviet embassy that he would be coming too.1257

&
nbsp; Marina would have been surprised to read what he wrote on his note accompanying her application for a visa:

  Dear Sirs

  Please rush the entrance visa for the return of Soviet citizen, Marina N. Oswald. She is going to have a baby in October, therefore you must grant the entrance visa and make the transportation arrangements before then. As for my return entrance visa please consider separtably.

  Thank you

  Lee H. Oswald

  (Husband of Marina Nicholeyev [Nikolaevna])1258

  Lee had no plan to go back to the USSR at all, either with Marina and June or without them. As will be very clear in the Mexico City section of this book, he only wanted a visa for the USSR to enable him to get an in-transit visa to Cuba, which allowed travelers on their way to the Soviet Union to enter Cuba temporarily. His crying ruse had persuaded Marina at long last to write the letter to the Soviet embassy. She had no idea he had asked for the separate visa until long after the assassination of the president, which makes the last paragraph of her letter to Reznichenko especially poignant: “These are the basic reasons why I and my husband wish to return to the USSR. Please do not deny our request. Make us happy again, help us to return [to] that which we lost because of our foolishness. I would like to have my second child, too, to be born in the USSR.”1259

  Lee had not told Marina his job involved greasing machines in a coffee factory. He pretended it was a photographic job, but he couldn’t explain why he smelled of coffee, and he finally fessed up. Working with grease and oil had an effect, for a brief period, on his own personal hygiene. He grew sloppy in his appearance, wearing sandals, old work pants, and a dirty T-shirt he rarely changed.1260 He told Marina, “My work isn’t worth getting dressed for.” Marina told him to do it for himself, or, at least for her. “I simply don’t care,” he answered.1261* Lee’s sloppy appearance was in sharp contrast to the cleanliness he had always demonstrated throughout his adult life. For instance, in Russia, Marina noted that no matter how late at night, he would bathe, shave, and brush his teeth before they would be intimate.1262

  Oswald’s work performance at the Reily coffee company was very poor, and the man in the personnel department who hired him, Alfred Claude Jr., considered firing him several times in the first four weeks of his employment, but he didn’t only because the maintenance department was short of employees at the time.1263 His immediate supervisor during those first four weeks, John Branyon, said he would not have given him a recommendation to another employer.1264

  Typically, Lee made no friends at Reily and was often downright rude. He ate lunch alone at the nearby Martin’s Restaurant, and when the men took a break in the alley, Lee would sit on a bench by himself, staring into space and making no reply if any of them sought to include him in their bull sessions.1265

  He did make one friend (or acquaintance at least), though, Adrian Alba, a part-owner of the auto storage garage next door to Reily’s. Alba kept a coffee urn and Coca-Cola machine in his office for his clients, and Lee took to dropping in frequently during his breaks. Lee found Alba interesting in that Alba was a knowledgeable gun enthusiast who often worked at “sporterizing” military rifles and carbines. Surplus military rifles were usually inexpensive, but also heavy and awkward to handle, and Alba eliminated some of the weight, shortened and refinished the stock, and reseated the barrel, sometimes shortening it as well. Alba did most of the work himself right there in his office, although he turned the more delicate and critical problems over to a gunsmith.

  Oswald may have wanted to purchase a better rifle than his Mannlicher-Carcano. Alba said Lee expressed an interest in “one 30.06 Springfield rifle” that Alba was “in the process of sporterizing,” until Alba told him it would cost him more than a hundred dollars. Lee didn’t mention it again.1266*

  When Lee stopped in at Alba’s, he’d put a nickel in the Coke machine and start thumbing through Alba’s considerable collection of hunting and gun magazines. Alba thought Lee was very quiet, not ready to talk until he felt like talking. He learned nothing of Lee’s personal life, only that he had some guns himself. When they did talk, it was only about guns.

  Lee spent so much time with the magazines that on several occasions someone from Reily’s had to come warn him that someone was looking for him and he risked getting fired if he didn’t get back to work right quick. Sometimes Lee borrowed one or two of the magazines, but was always scrupulous about returning them after a week or so.1267

  Back on June 5, Marina had written to Ruth telling her that Lee “insists that I go away to the Soviet Union—which I certainly don’t want to do.” Referring to Ruth’s problems with Michael, she said, “I can only console you with this: that you are not the only rejected one in this world. In many ways you and I are friends in misfortune. But surely a person can carry on through all the most heavy losses, trials and misfortunes. I think we will not perish, but that something will smile brightly on us too…Soon you will set out on your vacation, and I wish you and the children a good trip. With us everything is as it used to be. A gloomy spirit rules the house. The only joy for me and for Lee (I think) is June…Lee either yells at me or is silent, but never talks.”1268 It wasn’t until July 11 that Ruth wrote back to Marina with a shortened version of the letter she had written to her in April but had not sent, in which she invited Marina to stay with her. (The reason for the delay was that Michael, who even consulted a friend, had to first consider the possibility that Lee may become violent and “stab Ruth or Marina.” He finally concluded that if Lee were handled in a gentle and considerate manner, he would not be a danger.)1269 “If Lee doesn’t wish to live with you anymore, and prefers that you go to the Soviet Union,” Ruth wrote to Marina in Russian, “think about the possibility of living with me. It would be necessary, of course, to live dependent upon me for a year or two, while the babies are small, but please do not be embarrassed…You know, I have long received from my parents. I lived ‘dependent’ a long time.” Ruth told Marina not to concern herself with the thought of her being a financial burden to her and Michael.

  We have sufficient money. Michael would be glad. This I know. He just gave me $500.00 extra for the vacation or something necessary. With this money it is possible to pay [your] doctor and [the] hospital in October when the baby is born. Believe God. All will be well for you and the children. I confess that I think that the opportunity for me to know you came from God. Perhaps it is not so, but I believe so…Marina, come to my home the last part of September without fail. Either for two months or two years. And don’t be worried about money.

  I don’t want to hurt Lee with this invitation to you. Only I think that it would be better that you and he do not live together if you do not receive happiness. I understand how Michael feels—he doesn’t love me, and wants the chance to look for another life and another wife…I don’t know how Lee feels…Surely things are hard for him now, too. I hope that he would be glad to see you with me where he can know that you and the children will receive everything that is necessary, and he would not need to worry about it. Thus, he could start life again. Write, please.1270

  In an undated response to Ruth’s letter, Marina wrote:

  Dear, dear Ruth!

  There are no words to thank you and Michael for the thoughtfulness you show me…Now regarding your invitation to come and live with you for rather a long time. For me, of course, it is very tempting…Lee and I have not talked about it. I am afraid to talk to him, as I know he will be very hurt. While I was at your house, I wrote him about Philadelphia—that I could go there with you. Many times he has recalled this matter to me and said that I am just waiting for an opportunity to hurt him. It has been the cause of many of our arguments…I am very happy now, that for a considerable period he has been good to me. He talks a lot about the coming baby and is impatient to have a son…We went to the doctor. My condition is normal [Marina would later tell her biographer she had not gone to any doctor, it being a false assurance to Ruth.]…I will try to take advantage of
[your invitation] if…Lee becomes coarse with me again, and treats me badly. Sweet Ruth, I am so thankful to you for your good and sympathetic heart. And wherever I am I will always say that plain Americans are good, peaceful…and sensitive people…I kiss and embrace you, dear Ruth, and also Lynn and…little Chris, I wish you all the very best.

  Sincerely,

  Marina1271

  For now, at least, Marina had turned down Ruth’s generous invitation.

  July 17, 1963, was Marina’s twenty-second birthday. Lee forgot the date, and Marina glumly reminded him over supper that night. He moved quickly to repair the damage. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go out.” “The stores are closed now,” she said, thinking of the new dress or shoes that Lee had promised for her birthday. He took her to the drugstore and bought her a Coke and some face powder anyway.1272 Two days later, July 19, he was discharged from his job at Reily because his work there had gotten no better and he showed no interest in improving it.1273 Marina took the news well, blaming widespread unemployment rather than Lee, and assured him that he would soon find another job.1274

  On Monday, July 22, Lee again reported to the Louisiana Division of Employment to file a claim for unemployment compensation and to look for another job. He apparently made some effort to find employment but soon gave up, content to live on the thirty-three dollars a week he received for unemployment compensation. Every week he dutifully listed four or five prospective employers he contacted in his search for work, but most of them he never contacted.1275

  Somewhere around July 25 he received word that the review of his undesirable discharge from the Marine Corps Reserve that he had requested had resulted only in a confirmation of the original decision. The review board found that no “change, correction or modification is warranted.”1276