End of Days

by James L. Swanson

  In September 1956, Oswald dropped out of high school altogether. And in October, after he turned seventeen, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He served at bases in America and Japan, where he was court-martialed twice: once for assaulting a superior and another time for accidentally shooting himself in the arm with a pistol.

  Throughout his three years in the Marine Corps, Oswald was a malcontent and constant complainer who loved to argue with his superiors to show that he was smarter than they were. He also made no secret of his interest in Communist societies. He never received a better than average performance rating, but the Marine Corps managed to teach him to do one thing well—shoot a rifle with skill and reasonable accuracy.

  Lee Harvey Oswald as a fifteen-year-old high school student.

  (courtesy of the National Archives)

  In September 1959, under false pretenses, he was granted a dependency discharge to care for his mother, and then, in October 1959, in a series of bizarre events, he traveled to the Soviet Union, showed up in Moscow, and tried to commit suicide there when his visa expired and he was ordered to leave the country. That incident led him to the United States embassy, where he attempted to renounce his American citizenship. Soviet officials, though suspicious that he might be a spy or more likely mentally unstable, allowed Oswald to remain in the country and assigned him a job at a radio factory.

  In April 1961, he married a nineteen-year-old Russian woman named Marina Prusakova. After a few years, Oswald grew dissatisfied with life in Russia, and he wanted to return to the United States. He was no longer the exotic foreigner and center of attention he had been when he had first defected. He, Marina, and their infant daughter left the Soviet Union in June 1962 and traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, where his mother and brother lived.

  Between the summer of 1962 and the spring of 1963, Oswald struggled as a member of the lower class of Southern, white, working poor. After his failed attempt at killing General Walker, Oswald, at his wife’s insistence, retreated to New Orleans with his tail between his legs to start over with another low-paying, entry-level job that would never allow him to fulfill his grandiose dreams.

  In late May, Oswald wrote to the New York City office of an obscure organization called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). It was a group that lobbied for fair treatment of the island nation after its revolutionary dictator, Fidel Castro, had installed a Communist regime there. Around this time, Marina and their little girl joined Lee in New Orleans. It didn’t take long for Marina to discover that Lee still possessed his rifle. He kept it in a closetlike room where he hung his clothes and stored his other belongings.

  At night, Lee would often take the rifle out of the closet. “We had a screened in porch,” Marina recalled, and “sometimes evenings after dark he would sit there with his rifle.” Under the cover of darkness, when neighbors could not see him, Lee practiced aiming his telescopic sight. On several occasions, Marina found him on the back porch, sitting alone in the dark, fondling the rifle.

  By June, Lee was distributing FPCC handbills on the streets of New Orleans. In July, he was fired from yet another job, and the U.S. Navy (which had jurisdiction over the Marine Corps) affirmed its decision to change his discharge from the Marine Corps to “undesirable” after it learned he had tried to defect to the Soviet Union. In letters to Secretary of the Navy John Connally, Oswald had argued, without success, that the service should reinstate the honorable discharge he had been given when he left the Marines, before he moved to Russia.

  In August 1963, Oswald got a taste of the celebrity he had always craved. He was arrested in New Orleans after a street brawl with Cuban anti-Communists who objected to his distribution of pro-Castro literature. Oswald was jailed overnight, and Marina did not know where he was or why he did not come home that evening. It was another one of his mysterious, annoying disappearances.

  The next day, he returned and explained what had happened. Marina was relieved. At least he had not tried to shoot someone. But she was scornful. She thought Lee’s pro-Cuban efforts were foolish: “I would make fun of him, of his activity . . . in the sense that that it didn’t help anyone really . . . I would say . . . to Lee . . . that [he] could not really do much for Cuba, that Cuba would get along well without him, if they had too.” Oswald shrugged his shoulders and told Marina that she did not understand him but boasted that some people understood the importance of his work. He was about to get the recognition he longed for.

  Oswald’s arrest had attracted the attention of the press. He made a brief television appearance on WDSU-TV, when the station filmed him demonstrating in front of the International Trade Mart. He enjoyed watching himself on the news that night. And on August 17 and then again on August 21, Oswald participated in two New Orleans radio shows to discuss Cuba, Communism, and Marxism. His first appearance was on the WDSU-Radio program Latin Listening Post, hosted by William Stuckey. Oswald did not go out over the airwaves live. Stuckey taped the interview and then condensed it down to a five-minute segment for broadcast. Today it is hard to grasp the hold that Cuba had on the American mind—and on the minds of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Lee Harvey Oswald—in the early 1960s. Half a century later, the program feels dated, like a dusty, antiquated artifact from the Cold War.

  Stuckey announced what he had in store for his audience.

  “This is the first of a series of Latin Listening Post interviews of persons more or less directly concerned with the conflict between the United States and Cuba. . . . Tonight we have with us a representative of probably the most controversial organization connected with Cuba in this country. The organization is the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The person, Lee Oswald, is secretary of the New Orleans chapter for the . . . Committee. This organization has long been on the Justice Department’s black list and is a group generally considered to be the leading pro-Castro body in the nation.”

  Oswald was an exciting find for Bill Stuckey, a New Orleans reporter who had covered Latin American affairs in the city for several years. He had been hunting for a live specimen like Oswald for a long time. “Your columnist,” Stuckey confided to listeners, “has kept a lookout for local representatives of this pro-Castro group. None appeared in public view until this week when young Lee Oswald was arrested and convicted for disturbing the peace. He was arrested for passing out pro-Castro literature to a crowd which included several violently anti-Castro Cuban refugees.”

  It was not hard for Stuckey to persuade Lee to appear on his show. He craved the publicity and was eager to show off his knowledge and oratorical skills.

  “When we finally tracked Mr. Oswald down today and asked him to participate in Latin Listening Post,” Stuckey explained, “he told us frankly that he would because it would help his organization to attract more members in this area.”

  Stuckey played up the drama by touting Lee as some sort of pro-Castro mastermind. “Knowing that Mr. Oswald must have had to demonstrate a great skill in dialectics before he was entrusted with his present post, we now proceed on the course of random questioning of [him].” Stuckey’s flattery must have pleased his guest. Oswald had not won the coveted title of secretary over the other members of the New Orleans chapter because of his talent in “dialectics.” He was the organization’s only member, and he had awarded the title to himself.

  During the interview, Stuckey probed Lee for details about the FPCC, questioning him about the size of the membership rolls, the specific goals of the organization, whether its members believed that Cuba was a puppet of the Soviet Union, and whether the FPCC was itself Communist controlled. For a novice, Oswald handled himself well. He said that both the number of members and their names must remain secret.

  He explained that the organization’s central principle was “Hands Off Cuba!”—a policy of American nonintervention in Cuban affairs—the motto printed on the handbills that he had distributed. Oswald denied Stuckey’s assertion that Cuba was a Soviet colony in the Western Hemisphere. “Castro is an independ
ent leader of an independent country,” Oswald insisted.

  Stuckey asked him if the FPCC would continue to support Castro if he broke off relations with the Soviet Union. “We do not support the man. We do not support the individual,” Oswald explained. “We support the idea of independent revolution in the Western Hemisphere, free from American intervention. . . . If the Cuban people destroy Castro, or if he is otherwise proven to have betrayed his own revolution,” Oswald added, “that will not have any bearing upon this committee.”

  Then Stuckey asked if the Castro regime was a Communist one. “Every country which emerges from a sort of feudal state as Cuba did, experiments,” claimed Oswald, “usually in socialism, in Marxism.” But he insisted that Communism had not taken over the island. “You cannot say that Castro is a Communist at this time, because he has not developed his country, his system this far. He has not had the chance to become a Communist. He is an experimenter, a person who is trying to find the best way for his country.”

  In any event, Oswald argued, the United States government had no right to interfere. “If he chooses a socialist or a Marxist or a Communist way of life, that is something upon which only the Cuban people can pass . . . but we cannot say . . . it is a threat to our existence and then go and try to destroy it. That would be against our principles of Democracy.”

  Stuckey asked Oswald to provide his definition of democracy. Lee stumbled on the answer and stalled until he could think of one. “My definition, well the definition of democracy, that’s a very good one. That’s a very controversial viewpoint. You know, it used to be very clear, but now it’s not. You know, when our forefathers drew up the Constitution, they considered that democracy was creating an atmosphere of freedom of discussion, of argument, of finding the truth. The rights, well the classic right of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In Latin America, they have none of those rights, none of them at all.”

  If the Castro regime is good for the Cuban people, Stuckey wondered, then why have fifty to sixty thousand of them fled the island? “A good question,” replied Oswald. “Needless to say, there are classes of criminals there . . . people who are wanted in Cuba for crimes against humanity, and most of those people are the same people who are in New Orleans and have set themselves up in stores with blood money.”

  “You know,” said Oswald, “it is very funny about revolutions. Revolutions require work, revolutions require sacrifice, revolutions, our own included, require a certain amount of rationing, a certain amount of calluses [sic], a certain amount of sacrifice.”

  Speaking of the Bay of Pigs, Oswald said, “I always felt that the Cubans were being pushed into the Soviet Bloc by American policy.” Oswald suggested that if America had adopted a different policy toward Cuba, and if the CIA had not meddled in its affairs, then “we could be on much friendlier relations” with Cuba. “If the situation had been handled differently,” Oswald concluded, “we would not have the big problem of Castro’s Cuba now.”

  Stuckey was pleased with Oswald’s first appearance on radio. He was a provocative and garrulous guest, and Stuckey was eager to interview him again. But the host had no idea that Lee Oswald had withheld an explosive secret about his past.

  ON AUGUST 21, Oswald was a guest on the WDSU radio show Conversation Carte Blanche, hosted by Bill Slatter. Joining Slatter as cohost was Bill Stuckey, who had four days earlier debuted Oswald to the public on his Latin Listening Post and had brought Oswald to Slatter’s personal attention. Slatter introduced the program, beginning with the headliner: “Our guests tonight are Lee Harvey Oswald, who is secretary of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee; it’s a New York–headquartered organization which is generally recognized as the principal voice of the Castro government in this country.”

  Slatter brought into the studio two other people to debate Oswald. “Our second guest is Ed Butler, who is the executive vice president of Information Council of the Americas, which is headquartered in New Orleans and which specializes in distributing anti-communist educational literature through Latin America. And our third guest is Carlos Bringuier, a Cuban refugee and a New Orleans delegate of the Revolutionary Student Directorate, one of the more active of the anti-Castro refugee organizations.” Oswald and Bringuier eyed each other with suspicion. They had encountered each other before.

  Stuckey briefed listeners on the FPCC: “The only member of the group to have revealed himself publicly so far is twenty-three-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald. He first came to public attention several days ago when he was arrested and convicted for disturbing the peace.” Slatter explained: “The ruckus in which he was involved started when several local Cuban refugees, including Carlos Bringuier, discovered him distributing pro-Castro literature on a downtown street.” Bringuier would have another go at Oswald tonight: “Mr. Oswald and Bringuier are with us tonight to give us opposing views on the committee and its objectives.”

  Stuckey boasted that Oswald was his discovery: “I believe that I was the first New Orleans reporter to interview Mr. Oswald on his activities here. Last Saturday, in addition to having him on my show, we had a very long and rambling question and answer session over various points of dogma and line of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

  According to FPCC propaganda, Stuckey explained, “Castro’s government is completely free and independent and is in no way controlled by the Soviet Union. Another cardinal point . . . is that . . . Castro seeks aid only because the U.S. Government refused.”

  “Mr. Oswald also gave me this rundown on his personal background. . . . He said . . . that he had lived in Forth Worth Texas before coming here to establish a Fair Play for Committee here . . . ”

  If Oswald was expecting another genial conversation like the one he had enjoyed with Bill Stuckey a few days ago, he was mistaken. Unbeknownst to Lee Oswald, Slatter was setting him up. In the four days since Lee’s appearance on Latin Listening Post, Slatter and Ed Butler had both researched his life. They had found remarkable newspaper stories about things that Oswald had failed to disclose. The host of the program was about to expose him.

  Now Slatter pounced: “However there were a few items apparently that that I suspect that Mr. Oswald . . . left out from this original interview, which was principally where he lived between 1959 and 1962.” He told the audience that he and Butler had found old clippings that revealed that Oswald had attempted to renounce his American citizenship, had defected to the Soviet Union, and had returned to the United States in 1962.

  Slatter confronted his guest: “Mr. Oswald, are these things correct?”

  “That is correct, yes.” He had the good sense not to try to deny the information that Slatter had collected on him.

  “You did live in Russia for three years?”

  “That is correct. And I think those—the fact that, uh, I did live for a time in the Soviet Union gives me excellent qualifications to repudiate the charges that Cuba and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is communist controlled.” It was not a bad recovery for a radio novice.

  But it inflamed the hotheaded Bringuier, who demanded in an excited clipped tone, “I want to know exactly the name of the organization that you represent here in this city, because I have some confusion. Is it Fair Play for Cuba Committee or Fair Play for Russia Committee?”

  Unruffled, Lee deflected the young Cuban’s sarcasm.

  Oswald had been blindsided, but he was willing to discuss his life in the Soviet Union. He was enjoying the notoriety and public attention he was receiving tonight.

  “Well of course that is very provocative,” Oswald replied in a calm voice, “and . . . I don’t think it requires an answer.” Then Bringuier recited a collection of boring statistics on the number of automobiles, telephones, and televisions per person in Cuba versus Russia, and the price difference for Cuban sugar when sold to America versus Russia. It was a long and confusing statement that Bringuier insisted Oswald explain.

  Lee replied with humor: “Well, in order to give a
clear and co-concise and short answer to each of those—let’s say, well questions . . . ” The audience could hear him chortle. To any listener, Oswald sounded relaxed and amused. He dismissed the excitable Cuban exile in one line: “This I do not think is a subject to be discussed tonight. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee, as its name implies, is concerned primarily with Cuban American relations. . . . ”

  Bill Slatter obliged with a pointed question on the subject: “How many people do you have on your committee here in New Orleans?”

  Oswald was evasive: “I cannot reveal that as secretary of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

  Ed Butler jumped in: “Is it a secret society?”

  “No, Mr. Butler, it is not. However it is, ah, standard operating procedure for a political organization consisting of a political minority to, ah, safeguard the names and number of its members.” It sounded like dialogue from a Hollywood spoof of an espionage film.

  Butler dug in: “Well, the Republicans are in the minority. I don’t see them hiding their membership.”

  Oswald parried well. “The Republicans, are not a, well [laughs], the Republicans are an established party representing a great many people. They represent no radical point of view. They do not have a violent and sometimes emotional opposition.”

  The conversation veered into a long discussion about whether Oswald ever tried to renounce his U.S. for Soviet citizenship. Oswald lied and denied it, at which point Stuckey contradicted him with old newspaper clippings that claimed he did. Oswald tried to get off the topic by saying “any other material you may have is superfluitous.” Lee, whose vocabulary was limited, either could not remember the correct word, superfluous, or had forgotten how to pronounce it. So he made up a new malapropism of his own.

  But Stuckey pursued him: “You apparently by your past activities have shown that you have an affinity for Russia, and perhaps communism, although I do not know that you admit to being a communist or ever have been one. Are you or have you been a communist?”