Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  He returned from his lesson in a markedly more cheerful mood. He felt he was making good progress at learning to drive.1564

  Lee went back to work on Monday, November 4, but did not call Jim Hosty at the FBI Dallas office. However, Hosty was closing in on him. On Monday Hosty called the Texas School Book Depository and asked the personnel department whether Lee Oswald was employed there. They confirmed he was and told him that his address was 2515 West Fifth Street in Irving, a blind alley, since Hosty already knew that Lee was not living at Ruth Paine’s. But since he knew that Lee was now living somewhere in Dallas, he sent a letter to the bureau’s New Orleans office instructing it to “make the Dallas office the office of origin” on the case. Hosty was once again taking control of the case.1565 On the same date, November 4, Forrest Sorrels, in charge of the Secret Service in Dallas, was informed of the president’s forthcoming trip to Dallas. Gerry Behn, the special agent in charge of the White House detail, called Sorrels and told him the visit would probably take place on November 21, less than two and a half weeks away. He asked Sorrels to check out two possible sites for a formal luncheon on that day, the new Trade Mart near downtown off the Stemmons Freeway, and the Women’s Building at Fair Park on the other side of town.1566

  If Lee had picked up a copy of that day’s Dallas Morning News in the lunchroom at the Texas School Book Depository, he would have read the front-page headline story: Governor John Connally and the chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, Eugene Locke, asked “The Blue-Ribbon Citizens Council” to handle a noontime luncheon honoring the president on either November 21 or November 22. There were no details as to the location of the affair.1567

  The next day, Tuesday, Jim Hosty made another trip to Fort Worth. Since his route took him past Irving and Ruth had told him she would try to get Lee’s address in Dallas for him, he decided to stop by to see if she had done so. His partner, Agent Garry S. Wilson, went up to the door with him, and Hosty spoke with Ruth on the doorstep for a few minutes. She had not asked Lee for his address in Dallas, but she had given him Hosty’s telephone number and thought he would call. Ruth mentioned the fact that Lee had told her that weekend that he was a Trotskyite Communist. She found what Lee told her more amusing than anything else, and told Hosty Lee was “an illogical person.” Hosty wondered to Ruth whether Lee had mental problems. Ruth responded that she did not understand the thinking of anyone who espoused Marxism, but that was far different from a judgment that Lee was unstable or unable to function in a normal society.1568

  The interview at the front door lasted only a few minutes, and Hosty and Ruth recalled Marina appearing briefly just as the agents were leaving. She had actually been outside while Hosty was talking to Ruth, memorizing the license plate number of Hosty’s official FBI car and walking around the car several times to see if she could determine the car’s make, which she could not. The two women watched from the front window as the FBI agents drove away from the curb, made a U-turn, and went back the way they had come, heading for the highway to Fort Worth. Then Marina, in accordance with Lee’s instructions and still without Ruth’s knowledge, wrote the license plate number down on a piece of paper. Either she got one number wrong or Lee copied it wrong into his address book, where it was found, written in his hand, after the assassination.1569

  The next day, Wednesday, November 6, Oswald visited the branch of the Dallas Public Library in Oak Cliff, where he checked out a book called The Shark and the Sardines.1570 The book was by the former president of Guatemala, Juan José Arévalo, and was directly addressed to the American people. It accused American policy of being predatory toward the people and governments of Latin America, which Arévalo compared to the policy of the shark toward sardines. (Another Guatemalan president, Jacobo Arbenz, had been overthrown by a CIA-inspired coup in 1954.) Translated from the Spanish by June Cobb and Dr. Raul Osegueda, Arévalo writes to the American reader in the introduction, “This book [does not] seek to cast blame on the North American people, people who, like us, are victims of the imperialist policy of promoting business, multiplying markets, and hoarding money.” Symphonic music to Oswald’s ears, no doubt.*

  The theme of the book, most likely the last book Oswald ever read,1571 was very much in keeping with Oswald’s passionate advocacy of the Cuban cause, and it may have colored his view of President Kennedy as well. Although Arévalo first published the book in Spanish during the Eisenhower administration, he added language to it after the election of John F. Kennedy, who, Arévalo said, owed his presidency to big money as surely as Eisenhower had. After saying that Eisenhower had been “negotiated and bought by Wall Street and the Republican Party,” Arévalo wrote that one should not ever forget that “his successor John Kennedy is the son of the number one landlord in the United States, or that Calvin Coolidge was president thanks to the ringing and ready money of the House of Morgan, in which Coolidge was a powerful stockbroker.”1572

  While not expressly about the political situation then existing in Cuba, the book was widely popular with the part of the Left that was concerned with Cuba and the Kennedy administration’s general policy on Latin America, including the Alliance for Progress, and it was advertised in leftist political papers and magazines. Newman noticed copies of it displayed for sale at the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party when he visited there doing research for his 1970 book on the assassination.1573

  On Thursday morning, November 7, the front-page headline of the Dallas Morning News announced that the president’s wife would be accompanying him on the forthcoming trip to Texas, the first “political” trip for the First Lady since Kennedy became president (she had accompanied him on foreign excursions). He was definitely scheduled to speak in Houston on November 21, exactly two weeks hence, but other engagements, including appearances in Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin on the following day, were still “tentative.”1574

  On Friday morning, November 8, the Dallas Morning News finally reported that the president’s trip to Dallas was set for November 22, fourteen days away. According to Governor Connally, President Kennedy would speak at a luncheon sponsored by the Dallas Citizens Council and the Graduate Research Center, but the site was still uncertain because the Secret Service had not yet cleared the matter. “Under consideration,” the News said, “are the Trade Mart, with a seating capacity of 1,800 but with security difficulties, and the Women’s Building at the State Fair which is larger.” However, Connally assured his Texan constituents immediately after a conference with the White House that the plans were “as firm as can be at this time.”1575

  Back in Washington, the Secret Service was working on security problems. Agent Winston Lawson, the advance man for Dallas, was briefed on his assignment by Roy Kellerman, the assistant special agent in charge of the White House detail,1576 and immediately afterward went to the Secret Service’s Protective Research Section in the Executive Office Building. He informed them of his assignment as advance man for Dallas and asked them to comb their files for “active subjects”—people who potentially would be a danger to the president in the Dallas area. He waited for them to do the work and was relieved when they failed, astonishingly, to produce a single name in the Dallas area.1577

  That evening, Lee again drove out with Wesley Frazier to spend the weekend in Irving, a long one, since Monday was Veterans Day.1578 Ruth had discussed with Marina whether they ought to tell Lee that the FBI had paid a second call earlier in the week—she knew that he had been deeply upset by the first visit, though not why. Although they didn’t resolve what to do, Marina settled the issue by telling Lee soon after he arrived Friday evening. Lee had gone out to where Marina was hanging diapers and asked her, “Have they been here again?” Marina told him yes, earlier in the week, but she had forgotten to tell him when he called each day on the phone. “How on earth could you forget?” he asked. She said she was afraid to upset him. “It upsets me worse if you keep it from me. Why must you hide things all the time? I never can count on you.” Marina insiste
d that Hosty was a nice man and only wanted to protect her rights. Oswald snapped, “You fool. He doesn’t care about your rights. He comes because it’s his job.” Lee softened slightly when he learned Marina had done one thing he asked her to—she got Hosty’s license number.1579

  When Lee questioned Ruth about what Hosty had said during this last visit, she said that he had inquired whether Lee had mental problems, to which Lee laughed scoffingly. When Lee complained bitterly to Ruth that the FBI was “inhibiting his activities,” Ruth did not see how exactly. She assumed he meant his activities such as passing out pro-Cuba pamphlets or expressing support for Fidel Castro as he had done in New Orleans, which she told him he had every right as an American to do.1580

  Ruth Paine told the Warren Commission that at some point around this time, Oswald told her that he had gone to the downtown office of the FBI in search of Hosty, and finding him out, had left him a note “saying what he thought” about the FBI “bothering him and his family.” Although, because of poor questioning by Warren Commission counsel, it is not 100 percent clear when Ruth Paine was saying Oswald told her this, and she herself said she wasn’t positive,* the garbled context and her testimony seemed to indicate that she thought he told her this on the weekend of November 9–10, 1963.1581 If this is accurate, then Oswald probably left the note at some time during the previous week. As the reader knows, the date that Oswald stopped by the FBI office, as well as the contents of the note he left, are mired in conflict and have already been discussed in a long footnote in the “Four Days in November” section.

  On Saturday morning, November 9, Lee asked Ruth whether he might use her typewriter, and she agreed. It was a letter he didn’t want Ruth to see—when she put June down in her high chair beside him, he covered his work, which only aroused her curiosity.1582

  There was nothing of any real significance in the letter dated November 9, 1963 (though he continued to work on it off and on through November 11), that Oswald sent to the Soviet embassy in Washington. He wrote about his problems at the Russian embassy in Mexico City (but found no fault on the Russians’ part because they hadn’t been prepared for his visit) and the “gross breach of regulations” at the Cuban consulate. He just didn’t want Ruth to know about his trip to Mexico City and his effort to get into Cuba. He also told a few lies in his letter—that the FBI was “not interested in my activities” but “warned” him that if he engaged in FPCC activities in Texas the bureau would again take an “interest” in him, and that the FBI was trying to get Marina to defect to the United States. He closed by telling the embassy of the birth of his new daughter.1583

  The lone significance of Oswald’s letter is that by his asking the embassy to “please inform us of the arrival of our Soviet entrance visa’s as soon as they come,” Oswald, at this late date, was apparently still holding out the possibility of getting to Cuba (we know he didn’t want to have anything further to do with Russia) by way of an in-transit visa based on a final-destination visa to Russia. As previously indicated, what this necessarily means is that either the Soviet government had not sent a letter to Oswald informing him of its October 25, 1963, decision to deny him his request for a Soviet visa, or if the Russians did send it, with all the moving and changes of address, he had not received it. It is also clear that he had not received notification of the Soviet government’s decision on October 7, 1963, denying Marina’s request (forced on her by Lee) to return to Russia.

  After Lee finished typing the first draft of his letter to the Soviet embassy early Saturday morning, the anger and fright of the previous night seemed to dissipate, and all seven of the Oswalds and Paines piled into Ruth’s station wagon so Ruth could drive Lee all the way into Oak Cliff and Dallas to a Texas Driver’s License Examining Station to get his learner’s permit. Unfortunately, it was a local election day and the office was closed.1584 As a consolation, they trooped into a nearby dime store and did some shopping. Oswald bought rubber pants for both Junie and Rachel. He was in high spirits, crowing about his purchases, singing, and making puns in Russian that struck Marina, at least, as screamingly funny. His good mood persisted throughout the day. When Ruth left the house in the early afternoon to vote, he persuaded Marina to cook him a favorite Russian dish, potatoes and onions mixed with flour and eggs, and for once was pleased with the result, which he wolfed down while watching football on the television. At halftime he took the kids down the street for a popsicle and came back with Ruth’s Chris on his shoulders. After the game, he played “horsey” with the boy, galloping around on all fours with the boy on his back. Marina sensed that in spending so much time with Chris, Lee was pining to have his own son.1585

  That night in bed, Lee teased Marina, obviously not knowing that each of them had already been denied reentry into Russia, about returning to the Soviet Union, the thought of which he knew depressed her. And he continued his deception with her, telling her he wanted to go back too, and they would both work and see old friends. She didn’t want to go back to Minsk. He didn’t want to go to Leningrad. She didn’t like Moscow.

  “Come on, Alka, let’s not go to Russia at all.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Hooray,” Marina cried. “Do you swear?”

  “I swear.”

  “Word of honor?”

  “How come you need my word of honor?”

  “Because sometimes you promise one thing and do another.”

  “I won’t betray you this time,” he assured her.

  It was not all back-and-forth chitchat. For some reason, Lee proceeded to tell Marina of all the previous women in his life, including eight during the time he was in Japan, the first one almost twice his age who taught him about sex and wanted to marry him, another he went to see more for her cooking than for love. He also told her of a one-year drought of women after he first arrived in Russia but then there had been a whole succession. “But it’s all in the past,” he said. “I was only tricking them. Then a girl came along with a red dress [Marina]—and she tricked me.” He did admit asking one of the girls, Ella German, to marry him, but “her grandmother scared her away,” Lee said. “Being American, she thought I must be a spy.” Lee told Marina that of all of the women he had ever known, she was the only one he had ever loved.

  “Oh, Alka, you don’t love me. Look at the way we fight.”

  “Everyone does that,” he replied.

  “If you loved me, maybe we wouldn’t fight,” she rejoined.

  “You silly, don’t you see that I love you?” he said as he stroked her hair. “Did you grow your hair long especially for me?”

  “Who else but you,” she purred.1586

  Ruth was up before the others on Sunday morning. The previous night she had noticed on her desk what appeared to be the letter Lee had been working on. It was still there. At least the original handwritten draft was. The paper was folded over, but some of the text was visible, and she read, “The FBI is not now interested in my activities.” Struck by the fact that this obviously was a patent lie, she unfolded the letter and read the rest of it. It was a rough draft of the letter with many cross-outs. She was appalled and alarmed at the implications of it, with its talk of contact with the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, and she wondered just whom she was harboring in her home. It sounded like a report from some sort of spy, even though she realized it was actually like someone trying to give the impression that he was a spy more than someone who really was. She was dismayed by the lies—the suggestion that the “notorious” FBI was trying to get Marina to defect to the United States, that he had met with Agent “Hasty” and had protested vigorously. She was offended that he was using her typewriter to write lies. Why, she asked herself, is Lee Oswald writing this kind of letter? What kind of a man is he after all?

  She thought the FBI should see the letter. Someone, probably Lee, was in the shower, and she hurried to make a handwritten copy of the letter, which she put in an envelope and buried in a drawer in her desk before he finished. If Hosty came a
gain as she thought he would, she would hand her copy of the letter over to him.1587

  Otherwise, Sunday was a typical weekend day. Lee again watched football in the afternoon. Michael came over for a while and had to step over Lee’s body sprawled on the floor. He didn’t begrudge Lee his leisure, but the thought crossed his mind that the would-be revolutionary did not seem to be working very hard to bring about the revolution. In the afternoon Ruth gave Lee another driving lesson, mostly on parking, and felt he was getting the hang of it.

  But Ruth could not get the letter out of her mind. Late that evening she could not sleep, so she came out to the living room to join Lee, who was watching a late movie—a spy story. She wanted to confront him about the letter but finally could not. She didn’t want him to feel she was spying on him. In any case, it wasn’t just the letter that was troubling her, and Lee, for once, was perceptive and sensed her unease. “I guess you are real upset about going to the lawyer tomorrow,” he said.

  She was going to discuss the possibility of a divorce from Michael, and she said she was indeed upset about the idea. She let it rest there, quietly watched a little more of the movie with him, and then went to bed.1588

  Ruth did go to see the lawyer on Monday morning, but since it was Veterans Day and Lee did not have to return to work, she parked her kids with a neighbor to give the Oswalds some welcomed time to themselves. Lee seemed self-absorbed, sitting alone in the backyard for a while before going back in and getting back to work on revising his letter. He eventually admitted to Marina that the letter he was working so assiduously on was to the Soviet embassy, but only to complain about the FBI. He even asked her to sign it along with him, but she would not. Later that afternoon, they talked more about the FBI while they hung the laundry out to dry. Lee told her that when they finally moved to a new apartment, after Christmas, he wanted her to keep their new address a secret from Ruth. Marina objected that she could not repay Ruth’s many kindnesses by doing such a thing. He eventually dropped the subject.1589