A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination

by Philip Shenon

  Rankin pressed her on other details of her husband’s trip to Mexico, asking what else he had told her about how he had spent his time there. She remembered he talked about attending a bullfight and doing other sightseeing. Was there anything else? Although her husband had never expressed any interest in other women during their marriage—“he doesn’t like other women”—he had specifically noted his distaste for women in Mexico. “He said he didn’t like Mexican girls,” she said, a comment that drew no follow-up from Rankin.

  During her testimony, she insisted, as she had consistently since the day of the assassination, that she had no advance knowledge of Oswald’s plans to kill the president. In fact, she thought her husband liked Kennedy. “I had never heard anything bad about Kennedy from Lee.” Even so, she said she was convinced of her husband’s guilt in the assassination. She knew almost from the minute she visited him at Dallas police headquarters on the afternoon of the murder. “I could see by his eyes that he was guilty,” she said. And she was convinced that he had acted alone—that there was no conspiracy.

  She thought that he killed the president because he was consumed by the idea of making a mark in history, she said. He was a voracious reader; he spent hours each week at the public library near their homes in Dallas and New Orleans, and he often checked out biographies of important figures from world history, including Kennedy. Lee Oswald wanted to be remembered, too. “I can conclude that he wanted, in any way, whether good or bad, to do something that would make him outstanding, that he would be known in history.”

  She suggested sadly that she might have prevented the assassination if she had only been more understanding the night before the president’s murder, when Oswald had visited Marina and the children at the home of Ruth Paine. The Oswalds had been separated for several weeks, and Marina said he pleaded for her to reconcile and to go with the children to live with him in Dallas. At one point that night, she said, he was in tears. He “just wanted to make up.”

  Although she intended to reconcile with him eventually, she had refused to give in that night, she said. “I gave the appearance of being very angry.… When he went to bed, he was very upset.” He left the next morning, taking the rifle he had stored, hidden in a blanket, in Ruth Paine’s garage.

  Marina knew that her mother-in-law was scheduled to be the next witness to testify before the commissioners, and she expressed her condolences to Warren and the others for what they were about to endure. “I am sorry that you will devote your time to questioning her, because you will only be tired and very sick after talking to her,” Marina said. “When you get to know her, you will understand why.”

  Her mother-in-law, she said, had seized on the assassination as an opportunity to make money. “She has a mania—only money, money, money.” Marina knew how angry her mother-in-law was over her conclusion that Lee had murdered the president. If given a chance, Marina said, she “would scratch my eyes out.”

  At five fifty p.m. on Thursday, February 6, after four days and twenty hours of testimony, the commission ended its questioning of Oswald’s widow.

  “Mrs. Oswald, you have been a very cooperative witness,” Warren said warmly. “You have helped this commission.”

  “It is difficult to speak the truth,” she said. “I am very grateful to all of you, I didn’t think among Americans I would find so many friends.”

  “You have friends here,” Warren assured her.

  The chief justice told reporters after her testimony that Mrs. Oswald was “a very brave little woman.” Marina in turn told reporters that she had become fond of Warren. She said he reminded her of one of her grandfathers in Russia.

  * * *

  In Texas, Marguerite Oswald was outraged by the sympathetic coverage of her daughter-in-law’s trip to Washington and her testimony to the commission, and she decided to strike back.

  On February 3, the first day of Marina’s testimony, Mrs. Oswald called Secret Service headquarters in Washington to offer to reveal what she said was damaging information about her daughter-in-law. The Secret Service did not return the call, but instead passed word to the Warren Commission that Mrs. Oswald was agitated.

  Rankin, busy questioning Marina, had Norman Redlich call Mrs. Oswald in Texas the next day. Redlich had a secretary listen in on an extension and make a transcript.

  “Hello Mrs. Oswald,” said Redlich, identifying himself as Rankin’s deputy. “I am calling you because of your call to the Secret Service.”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “You indicated that you had some information which you would like to give about which we might question Marina. I am calling and would like to know if you would like to give this information to me.”

  Mrs. Oswald began by saying how outraged she was to have to deal with a midlevel staffer like Redlich. “I will give the information only to Mr. Rankin or one of the officers on the commission. I am tired of being pushed around, no offense to you. I will talk directly to Mr. Rankin, Mr. Warren or the president of the United States.” She explained that after hearing nothing back from the Secret Service the day before, she had called a radio station that morning to report that she was being stonewalled in her effort to expose the truth about the assassination. “The only course I have is to make this public.”

  She then claimed, as she often would, that “I think my life is in danger,” before launching into a mostly incoherent rant about the sacrifices she had made for her children and her country, and how no one would listen to her. “If you could know what a woman alone has had to take, I’ve been pushed around,” she said. “I want to have a voice in this, and the public and the foreign public wants me to have a voice in this.” She warned darkly that the truth about Marina was not being told and that only she knew it. “When my daughter-in-law says anything, I should be there. I am not accusing her of anything. I hope she is innocent, but I have no proof that anyone is innocent.”

  Redlich listened for several more minutes before trying to end the conversation. “Do you have anything else you wish to say?”

  “I think I have said everything at this particular moment,” she said. “This important information I am keeping in my heart. How long I can do it, I don’t know.”

  Redlich hung up the phone and tracked down Rankin, warning him of what seemed to be Mrs. Oswald’s threat to go public with some devastating allegation against her daughter-in-law. Rankin and Warren quickly agreed to invite Mrs. Oswald to come to Washington immediately. Rankin called her the next day and asked her to testify the following Monday.

  “Well, I will have to call Mr. Lane and discuss it with him,” she replied.

  “You are welcome to come by yourself or with your attorney,” Rankin said.

  With no additional prompting, Mrs. Oswald then launched into a seventeen-hundred-word stream-of-consciousness monologue about the mendacity of her daughter-in-law. She accused Marina of vanity and laziness, suggesting she might have deserved the battering she had taken from her husband. “I saw Marina with a black eye,” she said. “I certainly don’t approve of men beating their wives but there are some times when I believe a woman should be beaten.”

  The venom kept pouring out, until finally Mrs. Oswald revealed the extraordinary allegation that she intended to make. She would accuse Marina and her friend Ruth Paine of involvement in the president’s assassination. “Marina and Mrs. Paine are in this together,” she said. “I believe in my heart that Marina and Mrs. Paine set Lee up. There is a high official involved in this, and I would say that there are two Secret Service men involved.”

  Lane, she said, “has a lot of documents—affidavits—proof almost that my son is not guilty of killing President Kennedy.”

  Rankin could only imagine the furor that would result if the allegation—Oswald’s mother accusing his widow of involvement in the assassination—made its way to reporters. “We want anything you have,” he said, trying to placate her. He urged her to call him, collect, when she decided to travel to Washington. The n
ext day, he sent her a telegram, formally asking her to appear in Washington the following Monday, all expenses paid.

  She told reporters in Fort Worth how excited she was to go to Washington and how much work she had to do to prepare herself. She began gathering up documents—the letters, the phone bills, the yellowing newspaper articles—that she insisted would demonstrate that her son was innocent.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, February 10, she arrived at the VFW building in Washington accompanied by Lane and by John F. Doyle, a Washington lawyer retained by the commission to represent her; Doyle had been recommended by the local bar association. To the relief of the commissioners, she asked to be represented in the hearing by Doyle, which meant that Lane had to remain outside.

  Congressman Ford recalled that Mrs. Oswald made her “presence felt from the moment she entered” the conference room. He was impressed at first. “If I saw her walking down the street, I would have said, ‘Here is a strong, purposeful woman.’” He remembered she clutched an “oversized black handbag which proved to be her portable filing cabinet. It bulged with letters, documents and clippings.”

  Her testimony began with a promise from Warren of fairness. “I am going to ask you if you would like first, in your own way, and in your own time, to tell us everything you have concerning this case,” he began.

  “Yes, Chief Justice Warren,” she replied. “I would like to, very much.”

  And with that, she began talking, almost nonstop, for three days, her answers usually unrelated to the question she was asked. Her monologue was often punctuated by the statement, “This is important.” She seemed to revel in this. She had been given what her sons knew she always wanted: a captive audience of powerful men, foremost among them that day the chief justice of the United States, who would be forced to listen to her every word. Ford said later that “our job was to sit patiently and listen,” even though her testimony was “confused bordering on incoherence.” He later concluded that she was, simply, “kooky.”

  She launched into her life story, and that of her sons, before getting to her central allegation—that her daughter-in-law had a role in the assassination and that two of the Secret Service agents who protected Marina after the assassination were part of the plot.

  The Secret Service was involved? Warren asked incredulously. “With who?”

  Mrs. Oswald: “With Marina and Mrs. Paine—the two women. Lee was set up, and it is quite possible these two Secret Service men are involved.”

  Rankin: “What kind of a conspiracy are you describing that these two men are engaged in?”

  Mrs. Oswald: “The assassination of President Kennedy.”

  Rankin: “You think that two Secret Service agents and Marina and Mrs. Paine were involved in that, in the conspiracy?”

  Mrs. Oswald: “Yes, I do.” The proof, she said, would be found in the details of Marina’s financial arrangements to sell her life story, as if the young widow knew in advance that she would be rewarded with magazine covers and book contracts if her husband was blamed for killing the president. “Marina is going to be fixed—you know, she is fixed financially and otherwise.”

  Her rambling again veered toward self-pity. “But I am nothing,” she said. “What is going to become of me? I have no income. I have no job. I lost my job. And nobody thought about me.”

  Rankin pressed again, insisting that she explain what proof she had of a conspiracy.

  “I do not have proof, sir,” she finally admitted. “I do not have proof of an agent. I do not have proof my son is innocent. I do not have proof.”

  Rankin: “You don’t have any proof of a conspiracy?”

  Mrs. Oswald: “Of anything.”

  Rankin might have thought he was getting somewhere until, a few minutes later, Mrs. Oswald reversed herself and restated her allegations against Marina.

  Ford said he left the sessions exhausted, even though there was value in what he had witnessed. “The commission now had a lucid understanding of the volatile relationships between members of the family” that might explain why Lee had been so troubled since childhood, Ford said. The Oswalds were “a family in fragments” whose ties to one another were “a relatively meaningless accident of birth.”

  In a statement released to the press, Warren dismissed Mrs. Oswald’s testimony, saying it “produced nothing that would change the picture.” He made no mention of her allegations against her daughter-in-law.

  When asked later what she had told the commission, Mrs. Oswald was coy with reporters. She still wanted to sell her story. “I have to have something left to write about, don’t I?” she said. She said she planned to meet with New York publishers about a book contract and was hoping for an advance of $25,000 to $50,000.* “I don’t even think I’ll have to have a ghostwriter,” she said. “No, I don’t want one. I believe I can write the book by just dictating.”

  The next day, Mrs. Oswald and Lane flew from Washington to New York, and Lane revealed to reporters waiting at LaGuardia Airport that he had obtained copies of more than twenty documents from the files of the Dallas district attorney’s office that, he said, bolstered Mrs. Oswald’s campaign to prove her son’s innocence. He did not explain how he got the documents, except to say that “someone was kind enough to secure them for me” and “I like to think he secured them legally.” He made no suggestion that his source was Hugh Aynesworth, the Dallas reporter.

  Lane and Mrs. Oswald had traveled to New York to hold a public rally at the Town Hall, the landmark theater on West Forty-Third Street in Manhattan, to raise support for the campaign. The New York Times reported that more than fifteen hundred people packed into the theater, paying a total of more than $5,000 for tickets, and that they cheered loudly for Mrs. Oswald as she demanded justice for her son. Dressed in black, she told the audience that hers was a lonely struggle. “All I have is humbleness and sincerity for our American way of life.”

  Lane tantalized the crowd, claiming he would soon reveal the evidence to prove that Mrs. Oswald was right. He called for a government investigation of a “two-hour meeting” that he believed had occurred about a week before the assassination in Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club between J. D. Tippit, the slain Dallas police officer, and others who may have had a role in Kennedy’s murder.* Lane declared that he had found other witnesses who heard shots being fired toward Kennedy’s limousine from the front of the motorcade—from the so-called grassy knoll—and not from the Texas School Book Depository behind it.

  * * *

  Back in Washington, another woman was taking steps that same week to tell her story—Jacqueline Kennedy. She was at the center of early efforts to establish an untarnished legacy for her husband’s presidency. It had begun on Friday, November 29, a week after the assassination, when she gave an interview to the famed journalist Theodore H. White for Life magazine, in which she compared her husband’s White House years to the mythical Camelot. In December, she arranged for a plaque to be placed in the Lincoln Bedroom, engraved with the words: “In this room lived John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with his wife Jacqueline, during the two years, ten months and two days he was President of the United States.” (Years later, President Richard Nixon would have the plaque removed.)

  Robert Kennedy had joined in her campaign to burnish the record of the Kennedy administration, and he had recruited Chief Justice Warren, then at the start of his work on the commission, to participate. On January 9, Kennedy sent a telegram to Warren, asking him “on behalf of the family” to serve as a trustee of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which would be built in Boston and “maintained as a permanent and active library and memorial to the late president.” Warren eagerly accepted the invitation, sending a reply the next day, saying he was “greatly honored.”

  The next month, the Kennedy family took a more dramatic step to cement how history remembered John F. Kennedy. On February 5, the journalist and author William Manchester was in his office on the campus of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connectic
ut, when the phone rang. The caller was Pierre Salinger, who had been Kennedy’s White House press secretary and had continued in the job under President Johnson, relaying a message from Mrs. Kennedy that she wanted Manchester to consider writing an authorized history of the assassination.

  Manchester remembered turning to his secretary and asking, “Mrs. Kennedy wants me to write the story of the assassination. How can I say no to her?”

  “You can’t,” she replied.

  A former foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, Manchester, forty-one, had written a highly respectful biography of President Kennedy, Portrait of a President, which had been published two years earlier. Kennedy had granted Manchester interviews for the book; after the biography’s publication, the president praised it. Manchester was flattered when he saw a photograph of the president and Mrs. Kennedy sailing aboard a Coast Guard yawl sometime in 1962, with Mrs. Kennedy seated and reading his book as she smoked a cigarette.

  Manchester said later that he believed Mrs. Kennedy selected him “because she thought I would be manageable.” He had submitted galleys of Portrait of a President to the White House before publication, allowing the president to alter quotations attributed to him. “He requested no changes, but Jackie may well have concluded that the incident proved that I would be infinitely obliging,” said Manchester. “It was a natural mistake.”

  Three weeks after Salinger’s call, Manchester met with Robert Kennedy in Washington. “I was shocked by his appearance,” Manchester said of the attorney general, who still seemed inconsolable over the death of his brother. “I have never seen a man with less resilience. Much of the time he seemed to be in a trance, staring off into space, his face a study in grief.”

  Kennedy explained that he had been directed by his sister-in-law to work out the logistics of a deal with Harper & Row, the publisher that had brought out John Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book Profiles in Courage in 1956. Ultimately, the agreement between the Kennedy family and Manchester provided him with an advance of $36,000; all other author’s earnings after the first printing would be donated to the Kennedy Memorial Library.* Manchester would also receive the proceeds from any magazine serialization of the book, which was likely to provide him with much more money than the advance.