This ambiguity in Oswald’s feelings toward Kennedy* was also reflected in the observations of other people who testified before the Warren Commission. Raymond Franklin Krystinik, who attended an ACLU meeting in Dallas with Oswald the month before the assassination, said Oswald felt Kennedy was doing “a real good job” in the area of civil rights. “That was the only comment that was made [by Oswald] in reference to President Kennedy,” Krystinik testified, clearly not a blanket endorsement of the Kennedy administration.64 Lieutenant Francis Martello of the New Orleans Police Department, who interviewed Oswald after his arrest resulting from his activities in connection with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, told the Warren Commission that all of Oswald’s thoughts “seemed to go in the direction of the socialist or Russian way of life, but he showed in his manner of speaking that he liked the president…or, if he didn’t like him, of the two [Khrushchev and Kennedy] he disliked the President the least.”65
Though the record was somewhat mixed, if anything Oswald had a positive feeling for Kennedy. As late as the summer of 1963 he said something in praise of the president and his wife in a casual conversation at the home of Lillian and Dutz Murret.66 In any event, at the London trial I knew I would be asking a jury to believe that someone who did not, apparently, dislike Kennedy had in fact killed him. But quite apart from Oswald’s personal feelings, although his trying to kill General Walker made some sense in that it was the Far Left (Oswald) shooting at the Far Right (Walker), why would someone on the political left like Oswald shoot at someone in the middle, or if anything, left of center, like Kennedy?*
I knew I’d have to closely scrutinize the official record to at least find something I could give the jury that went in the direction of Oswald’s opposition to Kennedy. I already had one built-in argument. Even if we assume Oswald liked Kennedy, he clearly revered Castro, and Kennedy was Castro’s sworn enemy. I also found a nugget, as small as it was, in Captain Fritz’s interrogation of Oswald. “I have no views on the president,” he told Fritz. “My wife and I like the president’s family. They are interesting people.” And then he added the cryptic, “I have my own views on the president’s national policy.”67 Certainly not a ringing declaration of affection by Oswald for Kennedy. But I needed something more.†
I got a little help in the testimony of William Kirk Stuckey, who interviewed Oswald on his New Orleans radio show on the evening of August 17, 1963, following Oswald’s altercation with anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Oswald’s Marxist rantings on the show are covered elsewhere in this book, but the points of his interview that went to the issue of motive were his telling Stuckey that “Hands off Cuba” was the main slogan of his Fair Play for Cuba Committee. “In other words, keeping your hands off a foreign state,” which Oswald said our U.S. Constitution dictated. “Castro,” he went on, “is an independent leader of an independent country…He is…a person who is trying to find the best way for his country…We cannot exploit that system and say it is a bad one…and then go out and try to destroy it.”68
Oswald gave Stuckey two speeches by Castro to read, a pamphlet by French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and a pamphlet titled The Crime against Cuba. Also, and more importantly, he gave him a pamphlet with a sketch on the cover whose message was clear: Kennedy was at the head of the line, leading the military, the intelligentsia, the media, and the people in the unconstitutional and criminal war against Cuba.69 Whatever else Oswald may have thought of Kennedy’s policies—for instance, in the area of civil rights—one thing was very clear: he very strongly opposed Kennedy’s belligerent and militaristic (Bay of Pigs) policy toward Cuba.
I certainly would be able to use this to my advantage before the London jury, but I was still looking for a clearer example of hatred by Oswald toward Kennedy. Murder, after all, is an act of passion, and the London trial was a trial for murder, plain and simple. In the Stuckey interview and in the pamphlets Oswald had given Stuckey, the passion against Kennedy, if any, had to be inferred. I wanted (not needed, since motive, as indicated earlier, is not an element of murder that I had to prove) something more direct.
I finally found words of Oswald’s which, though not as direct as I had hoped for, I was willing to settle for. In reading Oswald’s 1959 Historic Diary, I found two similar entries that literally leaped off the page for me, meaning more to me than perhaps the average person. As the prosecutor of Charles Manson, I knew he didn’t know the people he ordered his followers to murder. They were simply representatives of the white establishment he hated, and he was using his minions to vent his spleen on society for him. In other words, the murders were representative, symbolic murders. In the first of the two diary entries I came across, Oswald wrote, “To a person knowing both systems [capitalist and communist]…there can be no mediation between the systems as they exist today. He must be opposed to their basic foundations and representatives.”70
Although Oswald’s being opposed to the representatives of a system he hated is certainly logical and necessarily follows, I nonetheless felt that to go off on a tributary, as Oswald did, and specifically mention the “representatives” of the systems was not what one would normally do in the context in which he was writing—an abstract discussion of the systems themselves. I may be wrong, but to me it showed that Oswald had consciously focused in on the representatives themselves, that it was unlikely the word was just a gratuitous addendum. This inference I drew was fortified in a much stronger later entry by Oswald, in which he wrote, “I have lived under both systems…I despise the representatives of both systems.”71
From the moment I saw these two entries—particularly the word despise, which certainly connotes passion—I knew that in addition to arguing the motives set forth by the Warren Commission and the HSCA, I would offer for the London jury’s consideration an additional possible motive for the murder that, if not necessarily transcendent, was at least working in confluence with the others at the fateful moment Oswald decided to murder Kennedy. To counter Gerry Spence’s anticipated argument that his client (Spence referred to him as “Lee” at the trial) would never have killed Kennedy because he liked him, I would use words to the effect that although Oswald may not have hated Kennedy personally, Kennedy, being the president, was the ultimate, quintessential representative of a society for which he had a grinding contempt. (“The United States,” he wrote to his brother Robert from Russia, “is a country I hate”;72 he told New Orleans police lieutenant Francis Martello that he “hated America” and that he would not permit his wife to learn the English language because he did not want his family to “become Americanized.”73) And therefore, when he fired at Kennedy, in his addled mind he was firing at the United States of America. And even assuming, just for the sake of argument, that he had positive feelings about Kennedy, those would have been subsumed by his enmity for America. Speaking of Oswald’s revolutionary thoughts, Michael Paine said that he “had frequently had the impression” that they were “of a rather drastic nature, where kindness or good feelings should not stand in the way of those actions.”74
Returning to one of the essential questions—whether Oswald was the type of person to have killed Kennedy—let’s briefly reflect on the rudimentary nature of his personality and the life he led. I like Relman Morin’s description of Oswald in his book Assassination: “Oswald was a loner, a perennial failure, an egotist with small reason for egotism, restless, dissatisfied, highly introverted, quarrelsome, given to fantasies…He developed no close relationships and had no close friends…He read voraciously, borrowing books from the public libraries. His wife said there were occasions when he read all night, sitting in the bathroom so the light would not disturb her…He earned little money…[and] lived like an ascetic. He ate little and rented cheap rooms. He spent almost nothing on himself. He was not interested in clothes, automobiles, playing cards, or chasing women.”75
I’ve always had the sense that there was something “test-tube,” something mechanical, about Oswald, that he simply was not someone who
had the normal components of humankind, but rather was someone who was manufactured in a lab with normal cognition yet abnormal “affect,” as psychiatrists would say. I mean, as described on the pages of this book, which were gleaned from the official record, how many of you readers have ever met someone like Lee Harvey Oswald? Yes, you may have run across a fanatical leftist or rightist. But did they also, as Morin says, chase women? Or have a sense of humor, or like jazz, or have a profane tongue, or dress sloppily, or any of the myriad personal characteristics or eccentricities that are so very human? Oswald seemed to be bereft of these things. What he did look like was a presidential assassin.
If anyone ever had the psychological profile of a presidential assassin, it was Oswald. He not only had a propensity for violence, but was emotionally and psychologically unhinged. He was a bitter, frustrated, and beaten-down loser who felt alienated from society and couldn’t get along with anyone, including his wife; one who irrationally viewed himself in a historical light, having visions of grandeur and changing the world; one whose political ideology consumed his daily life, causing him to keep time to his own drummer in a lonely obsession with Marxism and Castro’s Cuba; and one who hated his country and its representatives to such an extent that he defected to one of the most undesirable places on earth. If someone with not just one but all of these characteristics is not the most likely candidate to be a presidential assassin, then I would ask, Who would be? Oswald cut the mold. If he didn’t, what else is missing from the equation that would add up to a likely presidential assassin?
Certainly, and unequivocally, Oswald’s background, character, and disposition show that he was the exact type of person who had it within himself, and who had a motive, to kill the president. In other words, his alleged act was completely consistent with his personality. But does all of this mean he did, in fact, do it? No. For the answer to that question we have to turn to the evidence, and, as we have seen, the evidence is more than overwhelming that he shot Kennedy. It is conclusive, leaving no room for any doubt.
For those who, despite all the evidence, still entertain some doubt that Oswald killed Kennedy, or believe there was a massive conspiracy behind his act, writer Jon Margolis says it very well: “All conspiracies that have been alleged are unsupported by credible data and require far more suspension of disbelief than does acceptance of the prosaic likelihood that poor Oswald did it by himself, because he was mad.”76
The fact that Kennedy was a powerful public figure was very relevant to Oswald’s motivation for killing him. On the other hand, murders of powerful public figures in America by the groups fancied by conspiracy theorists—the CIA, mob, FBI, and military-industrial complex—are absolutely unheard of. Show me a precedent. I’m sure if Will Rogers were alive, the very suggestion that, for instance, the Joint Chiefs of Staff conspired with the nation’s industrial leaders (as depicted in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK ) to murder Kennedy would have prompted his expression, “That’s the most unheard of thing I ever heard of.” On the other hand, if there was any evidence that one or more of these groups actually had the president killed, that would be different. But there is none (see conspiracy section). None whatsoever.
Summary of Oswald’s Guilt
Putting aside for the moment the separate issue of whether or not Oswald was part of a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, there can be no doubt that he shot and killed the president. Yet other than a very small cadre of responsible conspiracy theorists who acknowledge Oswald’s guilt but believe he was part of a conspiracy, the vast majority of the conspiracy community believe that Oswald is totally innocent, that he never fired one shot at Kennedy. Nearly all of them also believe that Oswald was framed by others who conspired to kill Kennedy. Here is a small sampling of both states of mind: “A false case against Oswald was constructed.”1 “The idea that Oswald was framed for the crime is supported by several things.”2 “The evidence showed that Oswald had no motive, no means (marksmanship of the highest order) and no opportunity (his presence on the second floor of the Book Depository little more than a minute after the shooting…constitutes an alibi).”3 “Evidence has piled up that Oswald…was set up as the patsy, and did not shoot anyone.”4 “The other participants [in the conspiracy] were almost certainly law enforcement officers of one kind or another who were in a position to plant the evidence which would incriminate Oswald.”5 “It is the federal government that maintains the guilt of an innocent Lee Oswald.”6 “President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. The man who paid with his life for that crime in the basement of the Dallas City Hall was innocent.”7 “Shots were fired [at Kennedy] by an assassin I consider unidentified.”8 “There is not a shred of tangible or credible evidence to indicate that Oswald was the assassin. It can now be inferred that Oswald was framed.”9 “Oswald was framed for two murders—then was himself murdered.”10 “Oswald was who he said he was, a patsy.”11 “No credible evidence…connects [Oswald] to the assassination,” and “irrefutable evidence shows conspirators, none of them Oswald, killed JFK.”12 “Lee Harvey Oswald had nothing whatsoever to do with the assassination of John Kennedy. Oswald was a very convenient scapegoat for the murder and was set up for it by the real killers.”13
It is remarkable that conspiracy theorists can believe that groups like the CIA, military-industrial complex, and FBI would murder the president, but cannot accept the likelihood, even the possibility, that a nut like Oswald would flip out and commit the act, despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence showing that Oswald killed Kennedy, and not an ounce showing that any of these groups had anything to do with the assassination.
It is further remarkable that these conspiracy theorists aren’t troubled in the least by their inability to present any evidence that Oswald was set up and framed. For them, the mere belief or speculation that he was is a more-than-adequate substitute for evidence. More importantly, there is a simple fact of life that Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists either don’t realize or fail to take into consideration, something I learned from my experience as a prosecutor; namely, that in the real world—you know, the world in which when I talk you can hear me, there will be a dawn tomorrow, et cetera—you cannot be innocent and yet still have a prodigious amount of highly incriminating evidence against you. That’s just not what happens in life. I articulated this fact in my opening argument to the jury in London: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when a man is innocent of a crime, chances are there isn’t going to be anything at all pointing towards his guilt. Nothing at all pointing towards his guilt. But now and then, because of the very nature of life, and the unaccountability of certain things, there may be one thing that points towards his guilt, even though he is innocent. In an unusual situation, maybe even two things point to his guilt, even though he is innocent. And in a very rare and strange situation, maybe even three things point to his guilt, even though he is completely innocent. But with Lee Harvey Oswald, everything, everything points towards his guilt. In fact, the evidence against Oswald is so great that you could throw 80 percent of it out the window and there would still be more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.”14
Indeed, the evidence against Oswald proves his guilt not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt, or, as they say in the movies, beyond a shadow of a doubt.* In other words, not just one or two or three pieces of evidence point toward Oswald’s guilt, but more than fifty pieces point irresistibly to his guilt. And not only does all of the physical, scientific evidence point solely and exclusively to Oswald’s guilt, but virtually everything he said and did points unerringly to his guilt.† Under these circumstances, it is not humanly possible for him to be innocent, at least, as I said, not in the real world in which we live. Only in a fantasy world could Oswald be innocent and still have all this evidence against him. I think we can put it this way: If Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, then Kennedy wasn’t killed on November 22, 1963. You simply cannot have the mountain of evidence that Oswald had against him and still b
e innocent.
The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists display an astonishing inability to see the vast forest of evidence proving Oswald’s guilt because of their penchant for obsessing over the branches, even the leaves of individual trees. And, because virtually all of them have no background in criminal investigation, they look at each leaf (piece of evidence) by itself, hardly ever in relation to, and in the context of, all the other evidence.
Reclaiming History Page 173
