Oswald's Game

by Davison, Jean

  Oswald’s strong reaction to these films made an impression on his wife. A Secret Service report two weeks after the assassination quotes her as saying that her husband had seen a movie on TV “depicting a plot to kill a Cuban dictator with a bomb where the plotters had to dig a tunnel and that Lee did not like the picture as he said that was the way they did it in the old days.” She later testified, “One film about the assassination of the president in Cuba, which I had seen together with him, he said that this was a fictitious situation, but that the content of the film was similar to the actual situation which existed in Cuba, meaning the revolution in Cuba.”

  Q. Do you recall anything else he said about either of these films?

  A. Nothing else. He didn’t tell me anything else. He talked to Ruth a few words. Perhaps she knows more.… They spoke in English. [So far as the record shows, Ruth was never asked about this.]

  After Marina’s testimony was revealed, the movie dealing with an American president’s assassination, Suddenly, received considerable attention in the press. But the other movie—the one Oswald commented on—did not. Since the Commission staff was unaware of the plots to murder Castro, Oswald’s statements attracted no further attention. Apparently even Marina didn’t fully understand what he meant. For Oswald, however, “the revolution in Cuba” was the Castro revolution, not only his takeover of power but the continuing social revolution. The most reasonable explanation for Oswald’s remarks is that he saw the parallels between this movie and the American-backed plots against Castro. The movie was a fictionalized account of the actual situation which existed in Cuba—except that the methods shown were out of date. That observation, in turn, suggests that Oswald somehow knew of the methods being used in ongoing plots.

  I believe that, together with the two recent threats he made against President Kennedy’s life, this excited reaction and his comments indicate that Oswald was, in fact, aware of Castro’s warning about American-backed plots to assassinate him. He was excited because the double feature had practically read his mind.1 Coincidences like this one can make almost anyone believe that fate has intervened. If I’m right, these two movies must have seemed like a tug at his sleeve.

  On the next night, a Sunday, Marina’s labor pains began. Ruth drove her to the hospital while Oswald stayed behind to babysit June and the Paine children. When Ruth returned, the children were in bed and Oswald was in his room. Although his light was still on, he didn’t come out to ask her about Marina. Shortly after eleven Ruth called the hospital and was told that Marina had delivered a girl. By then, Oswald’s light was out. Much annoyed, Ruth decided he might as well wait until the following morning to hear that he was a father again. Evidently, Oswald was extremely preoccupied.

  Even at this point, there are signs that Oswald hadn’t yet made his decision. The president’s tentative plans to visit Dallas had been announced, but the visit would not be made definite until November 8, and even then there was no word of a motorcade.

  During the next two weeks Oswald résuméd his old routine of building his political credentials, and he once again turned his attention to Edwin A. Walker. On Wednesday, October 23, he attended a large right-wing rally at which Walker spoke. The next evening some of Walker’s followers created a national furor by jostling and spitting on the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson. Over dinner at the Paines’ that Friday, Oswald mentioned going to the Walker rally. Michael, who was also interested in finding out more about the Far Right, gathered that Lee was going around to right-wing groups to familiarize himself with them. That evening Michael was going to an American Civil Liberties Union meeting and invited Oswald to come along.

  During the meeting one of the speakers made the remark that all members of the John Birch Society shouldn’t be considered anti-Semitic. “Lee at this point got up,” Paine recalled, “speaking loud and clear and coherently, saying that … he had been to this meeting of the right-wing group the night before or two nights before and he refuted this statement, saying names and saying how … people on the platform speaking for the Birch Society had said anti-Semitic things and also anti-Catholic statements.” One of the names Oswald mentioned was Walker’s.

  A friend and co-worker of Paine’s, Frank Krystinik, was at the ACLU meeting and heard Oswald’s remarks. He got the impression that Oswald was “stirring in dirty thoughts that you shouldn’t like General Walker. He didn’t say General Walker is a bad guy. He just made comments that General Walker is anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic and he was spreading a little seed of thought.”

  After the formal meeting broke up, discussion continued over coffee. Krystinik joined Oswald and Paine at the back of the room, and approached Lee by saying that Michael had told him a bit about his political background. Knowing that Frank was about to defend free enterprise, Michael excused himself, because he had heard it all before. Krystinik asked Oswald what Russia had to offer that was better than he could find in the United States, and recalled, “He kind of shrugged his shoulders and didn’t make any particular comment then.” Frank mentioned that he had met Marina and June at the Paines’ and told him he should be “real proud of them”—to which Oswald replied that they were nice, and let it go at that. Soon they were debating about capitalism. Krystinik told him he was an employer and paid two men $3 an hour and made $4, but he bought the machinery and material. Oswald said he was exploiting labor but, “That is all right for you. In your society it is not a crime.”

  Frank sensed that Oswald was talking down to him and acting “as if he had complete command of the argument.” He felt that there were moments in the discussion when he had him practically beaten but Oswald wouldn’t accept his opinion. Lee “turned his back and would go down a different avenue.” Frank agreed with Michael, who had told him that Oswald was interesting to talk to but that once he had said his piece, he got very repetitive—he “had a certain fixed image in his mind, and was reluctant to have it improved or changed.”

  The only time President Kennedy’s name was mentioned Oswald had said he thought Kennedy was doing “a real fine job” in civil rights—Krystinik noticed that he placed a special emphasis on the way he said it. (There was continuing racial violence in the South. The month before, several black children were killed in the bombing of a Birmingham church. The Worker’s position was that the president and the attorney general weren’t taking a strong enough stand against the racists.) Eventually an older man interrupted their discussion, and he and Oswald talked about civil rights and Cuba. Before the meeting ended Oswald went to speak to the man who had operated the movie projector that night and asked him how the projector worked. Then he picked up an application form for membership in the ACLU. As they were going out the door, Krystinik joked to Paine, “We are going to have to set this boy up in business and convert him,” and Oswald answered lightly, “The money might corrupt me.”

  On the drive home Paine explained that the function of the ACLU was to protect civil liberties. Oswald told him that he couldn’t join such an organization because it didn’t have political objectives. He asked Michael if he knew the older man he had been talking to. Paine recalled, “I think he said the man seemed to be friendly to Cuba, or rather he said, ‘Do you think that man is a Communist?’ And I said ‘No.’ And then he said something, ‘I think he is.’ Then I asked him why and I think he said something in regard to Cuba or sympathy with Cuba, and then I thought to myself, well, that is rather feeble evidence for proving a Communist.

  “But he seemed to have the attitude of, felt he wanted to meet that man again and was pleased to have met him.” And once again Paine thought, “If this is the way he has to meet his Communists, he has not yet found the Communist group in Dallas.”

  Oswald now considered how he might use the American Civil Liberties Union. On November I he mailed in the ACLU application form he had taken with him and rented a post office box, giving the ACLU and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee as organizations that might receive mail at that b
ox. On the same day he sent another letter to Arnold Johnson, the Communist party official in New York. Even allowing for Oswald’s deviousness, it doesn’t sound like someone actively planning an assassination:

  … I have settled in Dallas, Texas for the time.

  Through a friend, I have been introduced into the American Civil Liberties Union local chapter, which holds monthly meetings on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

  The first meeting I attended was on October 25th, a film was shown and afterwards a very critical discussion of the ultra-right in Dallas.

  On October 23rd, I had attended a ultra-right meeting headed by General Edwin A. Walker, who lives in Dallas.

  This meeting preceded by one day the attack on A. E. Stevenson at the United Nations Day meeting at which he spoke.

  As you can see, political friction between “left” and “right” is very great here.

  Could you advise me as to the general view we have on the American Civil Liberties Union?

  And to what degree, if any, I should attempt to heighten its progressive tendencies?

  This Dallas branch of the A.C.L.U. is firmly in the hands of “liberal” professional people, (a minister and two Law professors conducted the Oct. 25th meeting.) However, some of those present showed marked class-awareness and insight.

  Oswald seemed about to launch another campaign of “above-ground” political work involving the Fair Play Committee and the ACLU. But when he arrived at the Paine house that afternoon, he learned that the FBI had been there looking for him.

  During October, William Attwood continued his effort to open a line of communication with Cuba. So far, he had gotten little response from Cuban officials. In mid-October Attwood and the president’s friend Ben Bradlee, then with Newsweek, urged Kennedy to meet with Jean Daniel, a French journalist who was on his way to Havana to speak with Castro—perhaps the president could convey a personal message to Fidel. Kennedy saw Daniel on October 24, and gave him his views on Cuba. He told Daniel that he understood the Cubans’ desire for a genuine revolution after the Batista regime, which the Americans had wrongly supported, but that the United States couldn’t tolerate Communist subversion in Latin America. The problem, he said, was that Castro had betrayed the revolution by becoming “a Soviet agent in Latin America.” Kennedy asked Daniel to come back to see him after he talked with Castro, and Daniel understood that he was to be an “unofficial envoy.”

  Meanwhile, CIA officials again met with AM/LASH. The Cuban was told that his proposal for a coup was under consideration. AM/LASH requested a meeting with Robert Kennedy to obtain assurances of high-level American support. Instead, Desmond Fitzgerald, the senior official of the CIA section handling Cuba, decided to meet with AM/LASH personally on October 29. Fitzgerald used an alias and was introduced as a “personal representative” of the attorney general. Fitzgerald indicated that the United States would support a coup but drew the line at providing a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight, the assassination weapon AM/LASH had requested.

  But in early November AM/LASH’s case officer was directed to inform the Cuban he would be given the rifles and explosives he had asked for.

  14 … November—The Decision

  FBI agent James Hosty wanted very much to speak to Lee Harvey Oswald. The FBI had lost track of him when he left New Orleans. On October 3 the New Orleans office advised Hosty that Marina had recently left town in a station wagon with a Texas license plate “driven by a woman who could speak the Russian language,” and that Lee Oswald had remained behind and then disappeared the next day. (This information apparently came from a neighbor.) Hosty was asked to try to locate Lee and Marina Oswald. He had then checked their old neighborhood in Dallas and contacted Robert Oswald, but came up empty.

  On October 25 his interest in Oswald intensified considerably when New Orleans advised him that it had been informed by the CIA that Oswald had been in touch with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City in early October. Hosty’s worry now was that the Russians might have recruited Oswald for espionage. Four days later, New Orleans sent him the forwarding address Oswald had left with the post office—2515 West Fifth Street in Irving, Ruth Paine’s home. Hosty immediately checked out the Paines and found that they were reputable. Ruth was said to be a Quaker and a “kindly” lady.

  On November I Hosty went to her house to find Oswald. Ruth was cordial and invited him in, but she didn’t know Oswald’s rooming house address. She knew the phone number, but didn’t think to offer that, and Hosty didn’t request it. When Hosty asked if she knew where Oswald worked, Ruth hesitated. She explained that Lee had told her the FBI had gotten him fired from jobs in the past. Hosty assured her that this wasn’t so, that the agency never interviewed people at their jobs, and that he wanted to know where Oswald worked to see if he was employed in a sensitive industry. Ruth told him, and when Hosty realized that Oswald was a laborer in a warehouse, he was relieved—Oswald wasn’t in a position to commit espionage at work.

  While they were talking, Marina walked into the room. When Ruth introduced Hosty as an FBI agent, Marina looked alarmed. Hosty thought she reacted like other people he had interviewed from Soviet bloc countries who seemed to be afraid of any kind of police. But this was only part of the reason. Marina knew her husband’s attitude toward the FBI, and something of that attitude had rubbed off on her. Using Ruth as an interpreter, Hosty tried to reassure her. He told her that his duty was to protect people and that if anyone should ever try to put pressure on her by threatening her relatives in Russia she could come to the FBI for help.

  Hosty mentioned Oswald’s pro-Cuba activities in New Orleans, but gave nothing away regarding his knowledge of the trip to Mexico. Marina recovered her composure enough to tell him that Lee was no longer passing out his pro-Castro leaflets. As Ruth remembered it, Marina also told Hosty that she thought Castro wasn’t getting fair treatment in the American press. Before he left, Hosty gave Ruth his office address and telephone number, which she would give to Oswald that day.

  When Oswald arrived a few hours later, Marina told him an FBI agent had been there looking for him. Irritated and upset, he questioned her in private, going over exactly what had been said. He was especially concerned and suspicious about Hosty’s remark that Marina could go to the FBI for help if she needed it. McMillan reports that he told Marina, “You fool. Don’t you see? He doesn’t care about your rights. He comes because it’s his job. You have no idea how to talk to the FBI. As usual, you were probably too polite. You can’t afford to let them see your weaknesses.” Oswald warned her that if she ever agreed to let the FBI “protect her rights,” she would get into trouble with the Soviet Embassy. Even as he spoke Marina could tell that he was inwardly calculating at great speed and trying to conceal his anxiety. Oswald instructed his wife that if Hosty returned, she should take down his license plate number. That way, if Oswald saw his car parked near Ruth’s house, he would be forewarned. He now had to think of some way to handle the FBI.

  One should keep in mind Oswald’s attitude toward authority, as he had demonstrated in the past. Oswald evidently felt he should be able to do whatever he wanted without interference. When he was interfered with, he considered it a personal affront and often took his complaint to a higher authority. He believed that what he was doing was right, even when his actions were “illegal.” Thus, for example, he could threaten to give away military secrets in one breath and charge that his legal right to expatriate himself was being denied him in the next—and tell the American ambassador he was going to ask his new government to lodge a formal protest. After deciding to leave Russia, he expected the Americans to do everything they could to help him. In his logic, there was no inconsistency in any of this. Since he was always right, anyone who opposed him was wrong.

  On that weekend there was a crisis in South Vietnam. On November 2 an army coup ousted President Diem, and Diem and his brother were assassinated. At home, a front page Morning News headline on November 4 announced, “
President in Dallas.” The story said that the president was tentatively scheduled to attend a noon luncheon in Dallas on November 21 or 22.

  On November 5, Hosty passed through Irving with another agent en route to Fort Worth and stopped by to speak briefly with Ruth. She still hadn’t found out Oswald’s address in Oak Cliff, but she told him that when the Oswalds moved into an apartment again, as she expected, she would be perfectly willing to give him that address. During their conversation Ruth commented that she thought Oswald was a Trotskyite. When Hosty asked her if she thought this was a mental problem, Ruth said that she didn’t understand the mental processes of a Marxist, but that “this was far different from saying he was mentally unstable or unable to conduct himself in normal society.” Ruth later testified, “I was not at all worried about ideology contrary to my own or with which I disagreed, and it looked to me that he was a person of this ideology or philosophy which he calls Marxism, indeed nearly a religion,” but that she didn’t think him dangerous because of these beliefs.

  While Ruth was speaking with Hosty, Marina slipped out the back door and memorized the license number of his car. She had also overheard and understood a part of their conversation. Ruth testified that during that day or the next, while they were doing dishes, Marina told her “she felt their address was their business.… and she made it plain that this was a matter of privacy for them. This surprised me. She had never spoken to me this way before, and I didn’t see that it made any difference.”

  When Oswald returned to Irving on Friday the 8th, he was greeted with the unwelcome news of Hosty’s return visit. When Ruth told him Hosty had asked if this was a mental problem Lee “gave no reply but more a scoffing laugh, hardly voiced.” He said, “They are trying to inhibit my activities.” Ruth replied, “You have your rights to your views, whether they are popular or not.” She was thinking in terms of his handing out pamphlets or expressing a belief in Fidel Castro. But privately she also thought that with his background as a defector he ought to expect the FBI to be interested in him. She suggested that he go see Hosty and tell him whatever he wanted to know. Of course, this was exactly what he could not do. But he said that he had stopped at the downtown office of the FBI and left a note.