Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  After a brief tour in the South China Sea, he returned with his unit to the United States and in November 1958 was assigned to the Marine Air Control Squadron at El Toro, California, another base at which U-2 aircraft were stationed. Again he was part of an aircraft surveillance crew, and one of his superior officers, Lieutenant John E. Donovan, has said that Lee was “competent, very competent,” on the job. He took orders willingly and was cool in assessing emergency situations.7 Donovan urged him to go to noncommissioned officers’ school.

  Nevertheless, it was clear that Lee’s enthusiasm for the Marine Corps had eroded, and at El Toro he began to flaunt his enthusiasm for the USSR. He acquired a Berlitz phrase book and started to study Russian ostentatiously in the barracks. He subscribed to a Russian-language newspaper, and when he and his roommate played chess, he always chose the red chessmen because he liked the “Red army.” He played Russian songs so loudly that they could be heard outside the barracks. He asked to be called “Oswaldskovich,” used words such as “da” and “nyet,” called some of the men “Comrade” and was pleased when they called him “Comrade” in return. It was the behavior, one would guess, not of a spy but of a slightly egregious schoolboy hungry for attention. Nonetheless, some of the men did call him, jokingly, a “spy”—and Lee loved it.

  From a lieutenant named Nelson Delgado, Lee also learned a few words of Spanish. With Delgado and some of the other men he followed the ups and downs of Fidel Castro, who came to power in Cuba on January 1, 1959, while Lee was at El Toro. He talked enthusiastically of going to Cuba and fighting Castro. But his talk about Castro had nothing like the shock value of his talk about Russia because Castro had not declared himself a Communist yet, and the United States had not made up its mind whether he was an enemy or not.

  Lee had other characteristics, besides his interest in Russia, that set him apart from his fellow Marines. He had completed only the ninth grade, but he listened to classical music, read books like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, and tried to appear more intellectual than the other men. He loved to lure his officers into discussions of foreign affairs to show off his superior knowledge, and then, when he had outshone them, he treated them as if they were unfit to be in command over him. Lee apparently had a very high opinion of himself. One friend said that he liked to “come out top dog.”8 He seldom went out with girls following his return to California, explaining to a roommate that he was saving money and would one day do something that would make him famous.

  With less than a year left of his enlistment, Lee was promoted, for a second time, to private first class and took and passed a series of high school equivalency tests. He did “poorly” on the Russian-language tests he had asked to take. And he made no plans to reenlist. He wrote to his brother Robert that once he was out of the Marine Corps, “I know what I want to be and how I’m going to be it, which I guess is the most important thing in life.”9 He applied and was accepted for the spring 1960 term at Albert Schweitzer College, a liberal arts school in Switzerland, stating that he hoped to study philosophy, broaden his knowledge of German (a language he did not know), and live in a “good moral atmosphere.”10

  By his last summer in the Marine Corps, the summer of 1959, Lee was taken off radar duty and assigned to clerical and janitorial jobs. He was considered to be deficient in discipline and sloppy in his personal habits and in barracks inspection, and it was said that the sergeant major was going to take steps to “straighten him out.” It was even rumored, falsely, that he had lost his security clearance.

  Lee was anxious to get out of the Marines. In August of 1959, he saw his opportunity. Marguerite had sustained a slight injury to her nose while working in a candy store the previous Christmas, and Lee, with four months left to go in the Marine Corps, applied for an immediate hardship discharge on the grounds that he was his mother’s sole source of support. Marguerite, who in the past had supplied her sons with false documents so that they could enter the service before they were of eligible age, now supplied documents attesting that she was disabled and unable to support herself. Less than a month later, Lee was released from active duty and transferred into the Marine Corps reserve. On September 4, 1959, as soon as he knew that his release would be coming through, he applied for a passport, stating that he planned to study at Schweitzer College and at the University of Turku, Finland, and would be traveling to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, England, France, Germany, and Russia.

  He did not tell his mother about his plans. But he quickly disabused her of her hopes that he would live with her. He stayed with her in Fort Worth for two days, then left abruptly for New Orleans, telling her that he was going to get a job on a cargo ship and would send her “big money.” In a letter just before his departure, he wrote to her that “my values are very different from Robert’s or yours. I did not tell you about my plans because you could hardly be expected to understand.”11 And on September 20 he was aboard a freighter, the SS Marion Lykes, bound from New Orleans for Le Havre, France.

  Lee landed in Le Havre on October 8 and left for England the same day. The following day he flew to Helsinki, applied for and was granted a tourist visa to the Soviet Union, crossed into Russia by train on October 15, and arrived in Moscow on October 16. His visa, good for only six days, would expire on October 20. But the day after his arrival, Lee told his Intourist interpreter, Rimma Shirokova, that he wanted to give up his American citizenship and become a citizen of the USSR. It was October 17, the day before his twentieth birthday.

  Rimma reported Lee’s desire to her superiors and helped him draft a letter to the Supreme Soviet requesting citizenship. She was uneasy about the strange fish she had on the hook, but she befriended Lee, continued to guide him around Moscow, and presented him with a copy of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, perhaps as a warning, on his birthday.

  On October 19 Lee was interviewed in his room at the Hotel Berlin by a correspondent for Radio Moscow, Lev Setyayev, who was ostensibly seeking his impressions as a tourist to use in propaganda broadcasts overseas. Whatever Lee may have said—and he felt guilty about it long afterward—his remarks were not used on the air, and part of Setyayev’s job almost certainly was to gather impressions of Oswald for the KGB, the Soviet secret police.

  On the morning of October 21, Lee reported for an interview with an official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the MVD. The official was not encouraging. That afternoon Lee was informed that his visa had expired and he had to leave Russia that night. A few hours later Rimma found him locked in his hotel room, bleeding badly. He had slashed his left wrist.

  Lee described his suicide attempt in a handwritten account of his experiences in Russia, which he called his “Historic Diary.”12 In it he wrote that he had soaked his left wrist in cold water to numb the pain, slashed it, then plunged it into a bathtub full of hot water in order to make it bleed more. He knew, however, that Rimma would be coming within the hour. After she found him, he was rushed to the Botkin Hospital, where foreigners are frequently treated, and placed in the psychiatric ward. He had recovered enough by the next day to complain about the poor food and about being in a ward for the insane. A psychiatrist examined him, decided he was not dangerous, and transferred him into a new ward, where he enjoyed a more or less happy, attention-filled week. Rimma came to see him often, and he noted in his diary that she was “preety.”

  Lee was released on October 28 and moved from the Hotel Berlin to the Hotel Metropole, two blocks away. That afternoon he was driven to OVIR, the Soviet visa office, and interviewed by a new set of officials, who appeared to know nothing about him or his earlier interview. They asked if he still wanted citizenship, and he said he did. They told him that a decision would be forthcoming, but “not soon.” He was to return to his hotel room and wait.

  After three days Lee was wild with impatience. He decided that a “showdown” might convince the Russians of his earnestness, so while Rimma was briefly absent—she was watching him closely—he took a taxi to the American Em
bassy. There he told a receptionist in the consular office that he wished to “dissolve his citizenship.” She summoned Richard E. Snyder, the US consul, and he took Lee into his office, where his assistant, John A. McVickar, was also present. Lee repeated his desire to renounce his citizenship, affirmed his allegiance to the USSR, and announced that he had applied to become a Soviet citizen. He slapped his passport down on Snyder’s desk and demanded to take the oath renouncing his American citizenship that very moment. And he handed Snyder a letter formally requesting that his American citizenship be revoked and affirming his allegiance to the USSR. He added that he had been a radar technician in the Marine Corps and would make available to the Soviet government such knowledge as he had acquired.

  Richard Snyder was in a dilemma, for Lee Oswald appeared to be sane and he was within his rights. But Snyder was newly stung from handling the cases of two would-be defectors, one of whom had quickly changed his mind. If only from a humanitarian point of view, Snyder thought, glancing at Oswald’s passport and noting that he was still a minor, the boy ought to have time to think it over. The step he was proposing was irrevocable, for if he were granted Soviet citizenship, he would never be allowed to leave Russia. Snyder decided to put Oswald off, telling him that he could not administer the oath because it was a Saturday and he needed time to prepare the papers. But Oswald was free to appear two days later, on Monday, he said, and take the oath then if he chose. Snyder suggested, however, that Oswald wait until he was assured of Soviet citizenship, or he would have no citizenship at all. Lee stalked out, leaving his passport and his letter behind.

  The exchange lasted less than an hour, but it had so nasty a tone that it was remembered long afterward by three Americans, besides Snyder and Oswald, who were present during parts of it—John McVickar, the vice-consul; Marie Cheatham, the receptionist; and Edward L. Keenan, a graduate exchange student down for the weekend from Leningrad.

  Lee returned to his hotel greatly pleased with himself and confident the Russians would accept him after his bravura display of good faith. That day and the next he was besieged by members of the American press corps in Moscow, who had been told by the embassy about his attempt to defect. Lee confided to his diary that the attention made him feel “exhilarated and not so lonely.” But fearful lest he prejudice his case, he turned every one of them away. He repeatedly refused long-distance telephone calls from his mother and his brothers and spent two weeks in “utter loneliness.”

  On November 3, Lee wrote Llewellyn Thompson, the American ambassador in Moscow, again asking that his citizenship be revoked and complaining about his treatment by Snyder. Snyder replied by mail that he had only to appear at the embassy to renounce his citizenship. But Lee did not stir from his hotel. On November 8 he wrote to his brother Robert: “I will never return to the United States, which is a country I hate.”13

  On November 13 Lee telephoned Aline Mosby, a reporter for United Press International; she came to see him, and he talked to her “non-stop” for two hours. And on November 16 a Soviet official came to his room and informed him that he could remain until a decision had been made as to what to do with him. It was virtually a promise that he could stay, and Lee was vastly relieved.

  I happened to be the beneficiary of his relief. I was a newspaper and magazine reporter in Moscow in 1959. I had just returned from a visit to the United States, and on November 16 I went to the consular office of the American Embassy, as the American reporters did, to pick up my mail. John McVickar welcomed me back with these words: “Oh, by the way, there’s a young American in your hotel trying to defect. He won’t talk to any of us, but maybe he’ll talk to you because you’re a woman.”

  McVickar turned out to be right. At the Hotel Metropole I stopped by Oswald’s room, which was on the second floor, the floor below my own. I knocked, and the young man inside opened the door. Instead of inviting me in, he came into the corridor and stood there, holding the door open with his foot. I peeked into his room and saw that it was exactly like mine, right down to its shade of hotel blue. To my surprise he readily agreed to be interviewed and said that he would come to my room at eight or nine o’clock that evening. Good as his word, he appeared, wearing a dark gray suit, a white shirt with a dark tie, and a sweater-vest of tan cashmere. He looked familiar to me, like a lot of college boys in the East during the 1950s. The only difference was his voice—he had a slight Southern drawl.

  He settled into an armchair, I brought him tea from a little burner I kept on the floor, and he started talking fairly easily. He spoke quietly and unemphatically and only rarely betrayed by a gesture or a slight change of tone that what he was saying at that moment meant anything special to him. He began by complaining about Richard Snyder and his refusal to accept on the spot his oath of renunciation. I had no idea what he was talking about, since I had not discussed him with Snyder or McVickar, nor heard about the stormy scene at the embassy two weeks before.14

  During our conversation Lee returned again and again to what he called the embassy’s “illegal” treatment of him, which he termed a “prestige and labor-saving device.” He spread out two letters on my desk: one his letter of protest to the American ambassador, Llewellyn Thompson, and the other his letter from Snyder, which said that he was free to come to the embassy at any time and take the oath. Well, I said, all you have to do is go back one more time. He swore he would never set foot there again. Once he became a Soviet citizen, he said, he would allow “my government,” the Soviet government, to handle it for him.

  Lee’s tone was level, almost expressionless, and while I realized that his words were bitter, somehow I did not feel that he was angry. Moreover, he did not seem like a fully grown man to me, for the blinding fact, the one that obliterated nearly every other fact about him, was his youth. He looked about seventeen. Proudly, as a boy might, he told me about his only expedition into Moscow alone. He had walked four blocks to Detsky Mir, the children’s department store, and bought himself an ice cream cone. I could scarcely believe my ears. Here he was, coming to live in this country forever, and he had so far dared venture into only four blocks of it.

  I was astounded by his lack of curiosity and the utter absence of any joy or spirit of adventure in him. And yet I respected him. Here was this lonely, frightened boy taking on the bureaucracy of the second most powerful nation on earth, and doing it single-handedly. I wondered if he had any idea what he was doing, for it could be brutal to try to stay if the Russians did not want you—futile and dangerous. I had to admire Lee, ignorant, young, and even tender as he appeared, for persisting in spite of so many discouragements.15

  I was sorry for him, too, for I was certain he was making a mistake. He told me that he had been informed that morning that he did not have to leave the country. So I supposed that he would soon be granted citizenship, vanish into some remote corner of Russia, and never be heard from again. He would not be allowed to see any Americans, much less reporters, and he would be unable to signal his distress. Like every Westerner in Moscow, I had heard innumerable tragic stories about foreigners who had come to Russia during the 1930s, crossed the Rubicon of Soviet citizenship, and never been allowed to leave. I assumed that Lee would regret his choice and that he, like the others, would be trapped. As young as he was, he would have a lifetime to be sorry.

  Our evening was like a seesaw, with me trying to get Lee to talk about himself and Lee trying to talk about his “ideology.” I would say that Lee won. But occasionally our purposes coincided, as when he spoke of “exploitation” in the United States. His mother, he said, had been “a worker all her life, having to produce profit for capitalists,” and I thought I heard his voice tighten. I supposed he must love his mother very much.

  What about his father, I asked. Lee said that his father died before he was born. I asked what his father’s work had been. “I believe he was an insurance salesman,” Lee said, and his “believe” had a cold sound indeed. I wondered if he was angry at his father, ashamed of him, or wha
t.

  Lee made it clear that he would not be talking to me or to anyone else, except that the American embassy had told the press of his defection and he wanted to give me his “side of the story.” Now that he had been informed that he did not have to leave Russia, he supposed it was “safe” to speak out—he would not be endangering his chances of remaining. He told me repeatedly that his decision was “unemotional,” and this seemed important to him. But he added—a hint, perhaps, that he felt he was unusual—that he did not recommend defection for everyone. It meant coming to a new country, adjusting, and “always being the outsider.” But at least he would never have to go home, and that was the big thing to him. “I believe what I am doing is right,” he said. He also said that he had talked to me because he wanted to give the American people “something to think about.”

  Before he left, at two o’clock in the morning, he told me that he had never talked so long about himself to anyone. I felt another twinge of pity, for if this was his idea of openness, then I thought that he must never have talked about himself to anyone at all. As for me, I felt that I had failed. I had reached out, and my fingers had not touched anyone.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ll be writing my story about you tomorrow. Do you want to come up and look it over? There might be some mistakes you’ll want to correct.”

  “No,” he said, “I trust you. It’ll be okay.”

  I made him promise that before he left the Metropole to be swallowed up in Soviet life forever, he would at least come up to say goodbye.

  The following night I had supper with John McVickar. We talked about Oswald, of course, and McVickar told me a little about the angry scene at the embassy. As vice-consul, McVickar daily saw former Americans who were fruitlessly trying to go home. He thought that if someone at the embassy had had time to listen to Oswald, it might have helped defuse him. He was afraid that, instead, the encounter had pushed him further toward the tragic step—Soviet citizenship—that would make it impossible for him ever to go home. I was puzzled over Oswald’s refusal to return to the embassy. If he had come five thousand miles just to renounce his citizenship, why allow pique to stand in his way? Partly to comfort McVickar, I wondered aloud whether Oswald might be leaving himself a loophole, a crack in the door, just in case he decided some day to go home.16