5. Testimony of Mrs. Arthur Carl Johnson, Vol. 10, pp. 297–298.
6. In the Daily Texan of May 13, 1964, the late Helen Yenne showed how, over a period of several days, news of the Barghoorn affair was printed in the Dallas papers near, or next to, stories about President Kennedy’s visit. Characterizing Oswald as a “paranoid schizophrenic,” Mrs. Yenne suggested that he may have hated Kennedy for “loving” Barghoorn in a way that he did not “love” him, and it was her view that the Barghoorn case could actually have triggered the assassination. So strikingly apt did Mrs. Yenne’s analysis appear to the small circle of people who read her article and were also acquainted with Oswald that the weekend of November 16–17 was long afterward known among them as “Lee’s Barghoorn weekend.” Mrs. Yenne, who was unaware that Oswald ever actually mentioned the Barghoorn case, was brilliant in spotting the significance of the affair.
Publicity about Professor Barghoorn continued in newspapers, on radio, and on television through Wednesday, November 20, at which time the exact route of the Kennedy motorcade through Dallas was known. Some writers on the assassination have alleged with cruel inaccuracy that Barghoorn told Kennedy in the Oval Office following his release that he was a spy. Professor Barghoorn denies the allegation. Moreover, he never met President Kennedy and never saw him in the Oval Office—that week or any time. (Letter from Frederick C. Barghoorn to the author, August 11, 1976.)
7. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, pp. 43–44.
8. Warren Commission Report, p. 40.
9. Testimony of Roy S. Truly, Vol. 7, pp. 381–382; Testimony of Warren Caster, Vol. 7, pp. 387–388.
10. After the assassination, this is precisely what Oswald said about the discovery of his rifle in the Book Depository Building.
11. Exhibit No. 3009, Vol. 26, p. 536.
12. Testimony of Buell Wesley Frazier, Vol. 2, p. 222.
13. In her testimony before the Warren Commission (Vol. 1, p. 66), Marina said that it was she who asked Lee that evening to buy her a washing machine and that after he agreed, she told him not to bother but to get something for himself instead. Thus the story arose that the Oswalds had a fight over a washing machine on the night of November 21, and that this was a pivotal event—a story that was widely circulated after the assassination among newspapermen and lawyers for the Warren Commission. But in the many interviews I have had with Marina, she says, and I believe her, that each time the subject of a washing machine came up (and it seems to have arisen three to five times in New Orleans and Irving), it was Lee who raised it, not Marina. On November 21 he apparently mentioned it as an inducement to get her to move to Dallas; and on that evening, Marina stresses, he did not say, “I’ll buy a washing machine,” but, “We’ll buy a washing machine.” Lee and Marina did not fight that evening about a washing machine. As for the car, on the long Veterans Day weekend of November 9–11, Marina and Lee had admired a secondhand car that Michael had just bought for $200. So there was a question about what the Oswalds would buy first after they had saved enough for an apartment: a car for Lee or a washing machine for Marina.
14. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, pp. 47–48.
15. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, p. 18.
16. It is possible that Oswald waited what appears to have been nine days to tell Marina in person that he had been to the FBI, because he feared the Paines’ telephone was being tapped. He had not, after all, signed the FBI note, and as long as he did not mention it over the telephone, the FBI would not know for certain who it was from.
17. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 11, pp. 391–393.
18. Exhibit No. 2124, Vol. 24, p. 695.
19. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, p. 47.
Chapter 36. November 22, 1963
1. Exhibit No. 2008, Vol. 24, p. 407.
2. Exhibit No. 2009, Vol. 24, pp. 408–409.
3. Exhibit No. 1381, Vol. 22, pp. 677–678 and 673 respectively.
4. Because he did not go in the domino room, Oswald almost certainly did not see the full-page hate group advertisement in the Dallas Morning News that day, which, surrounded by a heavy black border, proclaimed: “Welcome, Mr. Kennedy, to Dallas,” and addressed twelve questions to the president that implied that he was helping the Communist cause.
5. Testimony of James Jarman Jr., Vol. 3, pp. 200–201 and 210.
6. Exhibit No. 1381, Vol. 22, pp. 681–682.
7. Testimony of Charles Douglas Givens, Vol. 6, p. 350.
8. Ibid., p. 349.
9. Ibid., pp. 349–350.
10. Exhibit No. 723, shown in Warren Commission Report, p. 80, and in Vol. 17, p. 504.
11. Testimony of Charles Douglas Givens, Vol. 6, pp. 350–351.
12. Testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams, Vol. 3, p. 169.
13. Ibid., p. 175; Testimony of Harold Norman, Vol. 3, p. 191.
14. Testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams, Vol. 3, p. 175.
15. Testimony of Harold Norman, Vol. 3, pp. 191–197.
16. Testimony of James Jarman Jr., Vol. 3, p. 211.
17. Testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams, Vol. 3, p. 175; Testimony of Harold Norman, Vol. 3, p. 192.
18. James A. Zahm, a Marine Corps master sergeant who is expert in rifle training, testified before the Warren Commission (Vol. 11, pp. 306–310) that the four-power scope is ideal for moving targets at ranges up to two hundred yards because it enhances viewing power with a minimum exaggeration of body movements. Zahm added that the fact that Kennedy’s car was moving slowly away from Oswald at a downward grade of three degrees straightened out the line of sight in such a way as to compensate for greater distance between the first (176.9 to 190.8 feet) and last (265.3 feet) shots (15 to 22 yards as seen through the scope).
Robert Oswald was critical of the Warren Commission for its reliance on experts and its failure to consult him about his brother’s capabilities with a rifle, since he taught Oswald to shoot and was familiar with his special qualities as a marksman. Robert states that “Lee had very rapid reflexes” and was “much stronger than he looked,” adding that he had “unusual strength in his hands” and that his forearms were powerful and well developed. (Robert Oswald, op. cit., pp. 209–211.)
A final point. So far as is known, Oswald never fired his rifle between April 10 and November 22. But Zahm and others have said that Oswald’s dry firing in New Orleans, working the bolt, manipulating the trigger, and aligning the sight, would have been extremely helpful, with the scope aiding him to identify any errors in trigger manipulation.
19. Testimony of Marrion L. Baker, Vol. 3, p. 252; Testimony of Roy S. Truly, Vol. 3, p. 225.
20. Testimony of Mrs. Robert A. Reid, Vol. 3, p. 274.
21. Testimony of Mrs. Mary Bledsoe, Vol. 6, pp. 409–410.
22. Warren Commission Report, pp. 161–162.
23. Testimony of Roy S. Truly, Vol. 3, pp. 226–277.
24. Testimony of Roy S. Truly, Vol. 7, p. 383.
25. Testimony of Roy S. Truly, Vol. 3, p. 230.
26. Testimony of J. W. Fritz, Vol. 4, p. 205.
27. The description broadcast on Tippit’s radio was of a slender white male, about thirty, 5 feet 10 inches in height and weighing about 165 pounds (Oswald weighed between 140 and 150 pounds). The description came from a steamfitter, Howard Leslie Brennan, who watched the motorcade from a retaining wall facing, and just across the street from, the southeast corner of the book depository. Brennan twice saw a man, the same man, in the sixth-floor corner window. Once, before the motorcade’s approach, Brennan watched him sit sideways on the window sill, thus seeing the man from the waist up. Brennan next saw the man as he took aim for his final shot. He appeared to be standing, resting against the window sill, holding the gun in his left hand and against his right shoulder. Brennan estimated that he took a couple of seconds to aim and fire, then drew back and paused for a second, as if to be sure that he had hit his mark. Brennan claims to have seen 70 to 85 percent of the gun.
Immediately afterward, Brennan sa
w everyone, including the police, running in the wrong direction, toward the west side of the building. He went to a policeman in front of the building and was taken to Forrest Sorrels, a Secret Service man who was parked in front in a car, and then to the sheriff’s office. At 12:45 P.M., the description he gave of the man he had seen in the window went out on police car radios. It was this description that presumably caused Tippit to stop and question Oswald. That night, however, Brennan refused to identify Oswald positively in a police lineup as the man he had seen that day. He later told the Warren Commission that he refused out of fear: the shooting might be part of a conspiracy, and he and his family could be in danger if he were the sole eyewitness. Once Oswald was dead, Brennan felt the danger was over and he could safely identify him as the man he had seen in the window. (Testimony of Howard Leslie Brennan, Vol. 3, pp. 140–161, and Vol. 11, pp. 206–207.)
28. The account of Oswald’s movements from the Tippit shooting to the end of the chapter is taken from the Warren Commission Report, pp. 165–180; and from David Belin’s November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury (New York: Quadrangle Press, 1973), pp. 23–48 and 272–277. This quote appears on p. 273.
Chapter 37. The Wedding Ring
1. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 9, pp. 432–433.
2. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, pp. 68–71.
3. Ibid., pp. 69, 78–79.
4. Ibid., p. 79.
5. Testimony of Michael R. Paine, Vol. 2, p. 424, and Vol. 9, p. 449; Testimony of Raymond Frank Krystinik, Vol. 9, p. 472.
6. Conversation with Michael Paine, August 23, 1973.
7. Testimony of George de Mohrenschildt, Vol. 9, pp. 274–275.
8. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, p. 81.
9. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, p. 83, and Vol. 9, pp. 371–372.
10. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, p. 83.
Chapter 38. An End and a Beginning
1. Oswald told his brother, Robert, later that day that he considered the Paines to have been true friends to him and Marina, and that he believed the Paines would continue to care for Marina and the children (Robert Oswald, op. cit., pp. 144–145).
2. Warren Commission Report, p. 200.
3. Ibid., p. 601.
4. Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 3, pp. 85–87.
5. Testimony of H. Louis Nichols, Vol. 7, pp. 328–330.
6. The account of Oswald’s funeral is from Robert Oswald, op. cit., pp. 149–165.
Epilogue
1. Robert Oswald, op. cit., p. 169.
2. Telephone conversation with Samuel B. Ballen, May 20, 1977.
3. Conversation with Samuel Ballen, November 28, 1964.
4. Telephone conversation with Samuel B. Ballen, April 21, 1977.
5. Because of de Mohrenschildt’s friendship with Oswald, and his acknowledged affiliation with at least one intelligence service in the past (French Intelligence during World War II), the question has arisen whether de Mohrenschildt might have been working for the CIA in Haiti, and from there might have played a part in the assassination. The available evidence does not support either of these speculations.
According to Warren Commission Document No. 1012, dated June 3, 1964, and declassified May 31, 1977, Richard Helms, formerly the CIA’s deputy director of plans, advised Lee Rankin, general counsel of the Warren Commission, that in 1942 the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, considered de Mohrenschildt for employment but did not hire him because of allegations that he was a Nazi agent. According to the Helms memo, the CIA first established contact with de Mohrenschildt in December 1957, after he returned from a mission in Yugoslavia for the International Cooperation Administration. The CIA had several meetings with de Mohrenschildt at that time and maintained “informal, occasional contact” with him until the autumn of 1961.
The rest of the memo, as well as another Helms memorandum, Warren Commission Document No. 1222, dated July 6, 1964, and declassified June 1, 1977, constitutes reports on de Mohrenschildt in Dallas, Haiti, and elsewhere, reports from which it appears that he could not conceivably have been a CIA employee at any time, nor have had any connection with it during the Haiti period.
As for de Mohrenschildt’s remorse over the “frivolity” of his behavior toward Oswald, to some it appeared that it was more serious, resembling that of Ivan Karamazov toward his father’s murderer, Smerdyakov.
6. The number three is, indeed, conceded to have a universal symbolic meaning, since it crops up in nearly every form of human expression: in religion, mythology, folklore, and literature. In psychoanalysis the number is frequently taken to be a castration symbol. Freud called it “symbolic of the whole male genitalia.” In the Christian religions the number signifies a splitting apart, the separation of a whole into three parts and unification into one, as in the Holy Trinity, “the Three in One, the One in Three.” Still another example, one closer to Oswald, perhaps, is the “thesis, antithesis and synthesis” by which the German historian Hegel, the forerunner of Marxist philosophy, believed the forward movement of history is determined.
7. The Huey Long Murder Case, a book by Hermann Bacher Deutsch, which Oswald took out of the New Orleans Public Library on June 1, 1963, opens with the words: “Assassination has never changed the course of history.”
8. Sung in the Stanley Kramer production, High Noon, lyrics by Ned Washington, music by Dmitri Tiomkin, copyright 1952.
9. Much of the suspense in High Noon is created by the ticking of a clock that hangs on the wall of a railway station. As the action proceeds, the hour hand moves slowly toward twelve noon. In “The Queen of Spades,” too, there is a clock, and the hands move from twelve midnight to 12:25. In the Texas School Book Depository, Lee Oswald was seen at 11:55 A.M. and again at 12:10 P.M. The first shot was fired at President Kennedy a few seconds after 12:30 P.M.
10. Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
11. Joan and Clay Blair Jr. The Search for JFK (New York: Berkley-Putnam, 1976).
12. Poems by Alan Seeger (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916).
13. William Manchester, The Death of a President (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 121.
14. Not only would Jacqueline Kennedy witness Oswald’s act, but there was a real danger that he might hit her accidentally. When asked about this, Dr. David Rothstein of Chicago, who has written extensively about assassinations, suggested in conversation with the author on May 4, 1971, that Oswald’s willingness to risk hitting Mrs. Kennedy while aiming at her husband was an example of the “unconscious matricidal wish showing through.”
15. U. E. Baughman and Leonard Wallace Robinson, Secret Service Chief (New York: Harper & Bros., 1961), pp. 254–255.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Abel, Elie. The Missile Crisis. Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966.
Anson, Robert Sam. “They’ve Killed the President!” New York: Bantam Books, 1975.
Barron, John. KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Agents. New York: Reader’s Digest Press, distributed by E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974.
Baughman, E. U., and Leonard Wallace Robinson. Secret Service Chief. New York: Harper & Bros., 1961.
Belin, David W. November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury. New York: Quadrangle Press, 1973.
Blair, Clay, Jr., and Joan Blair. The Search for JFK. New York: Berkley-Putnam, 1976.
Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. The Soviet Bloc. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
Chekhov, Anton. Four Great Plays. Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. New York: Bantam Books, 1958.
———. Sochineniya. Tom 7. St. Petersburg: Izdateltstvo A. B. Marksa, 1901.
COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom. New York: Monad Press, 1975.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. New York: New American Library, 1957.
Draper, Theodore. Castroism: Theory and Practice. New Yor
k: Praeger, 1965.
Epstein, Edward J. Inquest. New York: Viking Press, 1966.
Goldenberg, Boris. The Cuban Revolution and Latin America. New York: Praeger, 1965.
Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee of the Judiciary, US House of Representatives, Ninety-Fourth Congress, First and Second Sessions on FBI Oversight, Serial Two, Part III. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1976.
Hilsman, Roger. To Move a Nation. New York: Doubleday, 1967.
Holroyd, Michael. Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968.
Horney, Karen, MD. Feminine Psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
———. New Ways in Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1939.
Hyland, William, and Richard W. Shryock. The Fall of Khrushchev. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968.
The Investigation of the Assassination of President Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies, Book V. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1976.
Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954.
Karol, K. S. Guerrillas in Power. Translated from the French by Arnold Pomerans. New York: Hill & Wang, 1970.
Kennedy, John F. The Burden and the Glory. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
———. Profiles in Courage. New York: Harper & Bros., 1956.
———. The Strategy of Peace. New York: Harper & Bros., 1960.
———. To Turn the Tide. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: New American Library, 1969.
Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament. Volumes One and Two. Translated from the Russian and edited by Strobe Talbott. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970 and 1974.
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