Oswald's Game

by Davison, Jean

  JFK said he raised question because he was under terrific pressure from advisers (think he said intelligence people, but not positive) to okay a Castro murder, said he was resisting pressure.

  Officially, the CIA was against the idea as well. Only the month before, its Board of National Estimates had prepared a paper for the president which concluded that “it is highly improbable that an extensive popular uprising could be fomented” against Castro and that Castro’s death “would almost certainly not prove fatal to the regime.”

  After hearing this sometimes contradictory testimony, some committee members came to feel that a Becket-like situation may have developed in which CIA officials carried out what they believed to be the wishes of their superiors. At one point, Senator Charles Mathias questioned Richard Helms:

  Q. Let me draw an example from history. When Thomas Becket was proving to be an annoyance, [like] Castro, the King said who will rid me of this man. He didn’t say to somebody, go out and murder him. He said who will rid me of this man, and let it go at that.

  A. That is a warming reference to the problem.

  Q. You feel that spans the generations and the centuries?

  A. I think it does, sir.

  Q. And that is typical of the kind of thing which might be said, which might be taken by the Director or by anybody else as Presidential authorization to go forward?

  A. That is right. But in answer to that, I realize that one sort of grows up in [the] tradition of the time and I think that any of us would have found it very difficult to discuss assassinations with a President of the United States. I just think we all had the feeling that we’re hired … to keep those things out of the Oval Office.

  Q. Yet at the same time you felt that some spark had been transmitted, that that was within the permissible limits?

  A. Yes, and if he had disappeared from the scene they would not have been unhappy.

  The first known CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro was set into motion in August 1960, when an official in the CIA’s Office of Medical Services was given a box of Castro’s favorite cigars and asked to treat them with poison. After being doctored, the cigars were handed over to an unidentified conspirator on February 13, 1961.

  6 … Getting Out

  FEBRUARY 13, 1961: At the American Embassy in Moscow, Richard Snyder found on his desk a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald, whom he hadn’t seen or heard from in over a year. Oswald had decided to return to the United States, but he was worried about the reception he might get from the American authorities. He wrote, “I desire to return to the United States, that is if we could come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any legal proceedings against me.” He asked to have his passport returned and concluded, “I hope that in recalling the responsibility I have to America that you remember yours in doing everything you can to help me since I am an American citizen.”

  On February 28 Snyder replied. He asked Oswald to come to Moscow for an interview to determine his citizenship status. Unsure about the reference to “legal proceedings,” Snyder also sent a dispatch to the State Department about Oswald’s letter, asking whether he might face prosecution on his return, and if so, should Snyder tell him that? The State Department responded by saying it had no way of knowing whether Oswald had broken any laws and could offer him no guarantees. It cautioned Snyder not to return his passport through the Soviet mails under any circumstances.

  Oswald didn’t want to go to Moscow to be interviewed—he was afraid he might be arrested the minute he set foot on American territory at the embassy. On March 12 he wrote Snyder again saying he found it “inconvenient” to come to Moscow:

  I see no reason for any preliminary inquiries not to be put to me in the form of a questionnaire and sent to me. I understand that personal interviews undoubtedly make the work of the Embassy staff lighter than written correspondence; however, in some cases other means must be employed.

  Snyder replied on March 24, restating the need for him to come to Moscow. And there the matter rested, for the moment—a standoff.

  Meanwhile, something else was going on in Oswald’s life. On March 17 he had met Marina Prusakova, an attractive 19-year-old girl, at a dance at the Minsk Palace of Culture. He saw her once more at another dance the following week. Soon after, Oswald went into the hospital for an adenoid operation, and Marina visited him there several times. After just these few meetings—and a stolen kiss on a hospital stairway—Oswald proposed. Marina, an orphan, lived with her Aunt Valya and Uncle Ilya, sleeping in their living room. When Oswald was released from the hospital on April 11, she invited him home for dinner. Oswald told her relatives he had come to Russia to learn the truth about it, not just the “truth” shown to tourists. He told them he was happy there. As he was leaving for work, Ilya put his arm around Oswald’s shoulders and told him, “Take care of this girl. She has plenty of breezes in her brain.”

  Marina had not yet decided to say yes. She would later admit that she had been attracted to Oswald because he was an American, someone out of the ordinary compared to her Russian boyfriends. The fact that he had a private apartment was appealing, as well. But Marina has also said, “I fell in love with the man.” In her biography of Marina, Priscilla Johnson McMillan noted that the ideal man of Marina’s imagination was Pechorin, the protagonist of Mikhail Lermontov’s story “A Hero of Our Time.” She wrote, “Vengeful and cold, Pechorin is forever spinning webs of intrigue that destroy all those whose lives touch his own.” McMillan pointed out that Pechorin shunned emotional contact with other people and boasted, “How many times have I played the part of an axe in the hands of fate? Fame is a question of luck. To obtain it, you only have to be nimble.”

  On April 18 Oswald proposed again and insisted that they be married right away or break up—he couldn’t go on seeing her, he said, without having her. They were married as soon as it could be arranged, on April 30. They had known each other for six weeks.

  Could there have been some reason other than passion for Oswald’s sudden decision to marry? He later claimed that he had proposed to another Russian girl, Ella German, and had been turned down—he married Marina on the rebound, he said, to hurt Ella and didn’t fall in love with Marina until after their marriage. That may have been true. But it would have been unusual for Oswald to take a step like marriage without considering how it would affect his plans to leave Russia. Eventually he would have to go to the embassy. Did it occur to him that if the Americans intended to arrest him it might be to his advantage to have a Russian wife? Before his wedding Oswald, having cut himself off from his family, was completely alone. If the Americans had wanted to take him into custody at the embassy and whisk him away to the United States to stand trial, no one but Oswald would have protested. Marrying a Russian citizen gave him some leverage. If he were arrested now, his wife could protest to the Soviet government—thus raising the specter of an “international incident.”

  Although Marina didn’t realize it until after their marriage, Oswald had told her many lies during their courtship. He had said he was 24, increasing his age by three years. He told her his mother was dead. And he maintained that he had renounced his American citizenship and could never go back to the United States. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, Marina could understand someone wanting to keep secrets from potential informers. But as McMillan put it, “Marina soon realized that her husband’s secretiveness was of another kind entirely. He told lies without purpose or point, lies that were bound to be found out. He liked having secrets for their own sake. He simply enjoyed concealment.”

  A few weeks after their wedding they went to see a Polish spy movie. Coming out of the theater Lee remarked, “I’d love a life like that.” When Marina expressed surprise, he explained, “I’d love the danger.”

  During their courtship Marina also began to notice Oswald’s interest in Cuba. In mid-April an army of Cuban exiles supported by the United States invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and was quickly defeated. Marina heard Oswald condemn
the invasion and American policy toward Cuba and Fidel Castro in general. He took her to see a Soviet film about Castro and afterward spoke of him as “a hero” and “a very smart statesman.” Oswald sought out the Cuban students living in Minsk—there were about three hundred of them—to find out more about Castro’s revolution. The students he met were disappointed in Russia, as he was. According to Marina, he felt the Cubans would succeed in creating an egalitarian society where the Russians had failed.

  On May 16, less than three weeks after his marriage, Oswald wrote the American Embassy in a familiar vein:

  I wish to make it clear that I am asking not only for the right to return to the United States, but also for full guarantees that I shall not, under any circumstances, be prosecuted for any act pertaining to this case.… Unless you think this condition can be met, I see no reason for a continuance of our correspondence. Instead, I shall endeavour to use my relatives in the United States, to see about getting something done in Washington.

  He informed the embassy he had gotten married: “My wife is Russian … and is quite willing to leave the Soviet Union with me.…” He said he would not leave without her, adding, “So with this extra complication, I suggest you do some checking up before advising me further.”

  Earlier that month Oswald had written a letter to his brother Robert, his first since 1959, when he told Robert he never wanted to hear from him again. Acting as though nothing had happened, Lee informed Robert of his marriage and invited him to visit him in Russia sometime. Testing the waters, he said nothing about his plans to return. He also wrote to his mother for the first time in a year and a half. After Robert answered in a friendly manner, Oswald wrote a second time on May 31: “I can’t say whether I will ever get back to the States or not, if I can get the government to drop charges against me, and get the Russians to let me out with my wife, then maybe I’ll be seeing you again. But you know it is not simple for either of those two things.”

  When he had received no response to his most recent letter to Snyder by July, Oswald decided to take his vacation and fly to Moscow. He still suspected he was walking into a trap. He told Marina the embassy was entitled to arrest him because, “I threw my passport on the table and said I didn’t want to be a citizen anymore.” Always sensitive to his legal rights, Oswald must have known that that action wasn’t enough to put him in jail. More likely, he was worried he would be accused of giving the Soviets military information, as he had threatened to do.

  Since Oswald hadn’t let the embassy know he was coming, Richard Snyder was surprised to see this bad penny turn up. Snyder remembered him as one of the most obnoxious young men he had ever known. Since it was a Saturday, the consular offices were closed, and Snyder suggested he return the following Monday. Oswald telephoned Marina and asked her to join him, assuring her, “It’s okay. They didn’t arrest me.” She flew to Moscow on Sunday and accompanied him to the embassy the next day.

  To determine whether Oswald had committed any expatriating acts, the embassy personnel questioned him at length about his activities since he had come to the Soviet Union. Was he a Soviet citizen, they asked? No. Had he applied for citizenship? No. Had he taken an oath of allegiance to the Soviet Union? No. Had he made any statements for the Soviet press or for audiences? No. Had he joined a Soviet trade union? No. When he was asked whether he had given the Russians information he had acquired as a radar operator, he replied

  That he was never in fact subjected to any questioning concerning his life or experiences prior to entering the Soviet Union, and never provided such information to any Soviet organ.… that he doubted in fact that he would have given such information if requested despite his statements made at the Embassy.

  The Warren Report noted that some of these answers were undoubtedly false. Oswald had almost certainly applied for Soviet citizenship, he had a membership card in a Soviet trade union, and “his assertion to Snyder that he had never been questioned by Soviet authorities concerning his life in the United States is simply unbelievable.” But at the time, since Oswald’s answers indicated he was still an American citizen and there was no way of proving otherwise, the embassy had little choice but to conclude that he had not expatriated himself. In a dispatch to the State Department, Snyder reported Oswald’s many denials and added:

  Oswald indicated some anxiety as to whether, should he return to the United States, he would face possible lengthy imprisonment for his act of remaining in the Soviet Union. Oswald was told informally that the Embassy did not perceive, on the basis of the information in its possession, on what grounds he might be subject to conviction leading to punishment of such severity as he apparently had in mind. It was clearly stated to him, however, that the Embassy could give him no assurance as to whether upon his desired return to the United States he might be liable to prosecution for offenses committed in violation of laws of the United States or of any of its States. Oswald said he understood this. He had simply felt that in his own interest he could not go back to the United States if it meant returning to a number of years in prison, and had delayed approaching Soviet authorities concerning departing from the Soviet Union until he “had this end of the thing straightened out.”

  Snyder concluded:

  Twenty months of the realities of life in the Soviet Union have clearly had a maturing effect on Oswald. He stated frankly that he had learned a hard lesson the hard way and that he had been completely relieved of his illusions about the Soviet Union at the same time that he acquired a new understanding and appreciation of the United States and the meaning of freedom. Much of the arrogance and bravado which characterized him on his first visit to the Embassy appears to have left him.

  When McMillan read that last passage to Marina Oswald after the assassination, Marina burst out laughing and remarked that “without an ulterior purpose he would never have said any such thing.”

  It now appeared that he would be allowed to go home. But despite the assurances Snyder had given him, Oswald remained wary. Upon returning to Minsk with his wife, he began preparing a cover story to protect himself, just as he had done when he planned his defection.

  After the assassination one of the items found among Oswald’s belongings was a twelve-page handwritten account of his life in Russia which he had grandly entitled “Historic Diary.” When portions of the diary appeared in the news media, Oswald’s melodramatic tone made it appear as if he were a highly emotional young man who had become thoroughly disillusioned with the Soviet Union. What no one realized then was that the “Historic Diary” was not a diary at all—that is, it was not a daily, spontaneous account of his experiences in Russia. It had been written up after his July interview at the embassy.1

  The Warren Commission staff noticed anachronisms in the diary. Entries for particular days sometimes alluded to events that hadn’t yet occurred. Because of these discrepancies, the Warren Report noted that Oswald had apparently written many entries at a later date, possibly with “future readers in mind,” and that it wasn’t an accurate guide to the details of his activities. Despite this skepticism, however, the report relied on the diary to establish Oswald’s state of mind when he decided to return to the United States. It quoted an entry dated January 4–31, 1961:

  I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No night clubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough.

  The report concluded that “a great change must have occurred in Oswald’s thinking to induce him to return to the United States,” and suggested that he came back chastened—his return “publicly testified to the utter failure of what had been the most important act of his life.” The idea that Oswald had learned his lesson and was humbled was, of course, the same impression he had created with Richard Snyder.

  But Oswald’s actual purpose in writing the diary is suggested by its contents. Point by point, the diary covered most of the questions he had been asked at the e
mbassy. It begins with his arrival in Moscow full of hope and idealism. It describes his attempt to renounce his citizenship—omitting his threat to give away secrets. A November entry mentions the interview he had with Aline Mosby, which he knew had been published in the United States: “I give my story, allow pictures, later story is distorted, sent without my permission, that is: before I ever saw and O.K.’ed her story.” His questioning by Soviet officials is made to appear extremely perfunctory.

  The diary claims he was offered Soviet citizenship but turned it down. It says he was asked to address a meeting of workers in Minsk but politely refused. It says nothing of his joining a trade union. After recording his growing disillusionment with the Soviet system, he wrote:

  Feb. 1st [1961] Make my first request of American Embassy, Moscow for reconsidering my position. I stated “I would like to go back to U.S.”

  Feb. 28th I receive letter from Embassy. Richard E. Snyder stated “I could come in for an interview anytime I wanted.”

  March 1–16 I now live in a state of expectation about going back to the U.S.

  Oswald didn’t mention his concern about the possibility he would be arrested. The rest of the diary depicted a continuing disillusionment with the Soviet Union and an uncharacteristic silence about politics.

  In short, the “Historic Diary” was a self-serving account that could be used as evidence that he had violated no American laws. It may also have served to get his story straight in his own mind, in case he was questioned by the authorities after he arrived in the United States, as indeed he would be.

  By January 1962 the only hitch remaining was getting the Americans to agree to let Marina come into the country. The embassy wrote Oswald suggesting that he precede his wife to the United States, but he refused. Sometimes he would tell Marina, “If it hadn’t been for you, I could have gone to America long ago.” And she would counter his accusation with perhaps more truth than she realized, “The only reason you’re waiting for me is—you’re afraid they’ll arrest you if you’re alone.”