by Judyth Baker
Why Be Concerned About What Oswald Was Reading?
The FBI was. And Ferrell, as well as other serious researchers, made note of the books Oswald read. Perhaps an assassin’s reading materials could help explain why he committed the crime and cast light on his evil motives.
The FBI confiscated every book it could find that Lee Oswald had read in New Orleans. We know that many of Oswald’s writings and documents were chemically treated to find fingerprints. In addition, perhaps the FBI sought to find underlined passages – Lee was fond of underlining passages. Or perhaps they wanted the books to be kept from the public eye. What would people think if they had learned that Lee Oswald the Evil had read the classic religious book Ben Hur – a Story of the Christ, when he was supposed to be a cruel, demented, Communist, Castro-loving atheist who single-handedly killed the nation’s president?
What if Lee Oswald had underlined some key passages that showed a different side to the supposedly demented killer? We know the title of the book – Ben Hur – a Story of the Christ was truncated by the FBI to “Ben Hur” – obscuring the fact that Lee had read a big book that was beloved and respected by American Christians. Certain other book titles were also truncated that should have had full titles shown to indicate their actual topic. The full titles of these books might have better revealed some of the character and thoughts of the real lee H. Oswald (to be revealed below).
If I seem biased in favor of Lee Oswald, one must remember that facts are being brought to the fore here that will not be found in “official version” sources. Not a few, but hundreds of suppressed facts exist that throw everything out of the shadows into the light. Any perplexity or frustration with those pushing the official version is caused by these anomalies found by honest researchers. Only persons with a double-digit IQ could possibly come to the conclusions pushed on the Internet by the “Oswald-did-it” clan, when exposed to the new evidence. Dishonesty is rampant among those such as John McAdams, Gary Mack, Dale Myers and Gerald Posner, who have pushed the official version using sources that prove they are not ignorant of the truth.8
No mention is found in the Wikipedia biography, for example, of the fact that Lee Oswald visited New Orleans college campuses in 1963 over a course of weeks with former FBI Chicago-area chief Guy Banister, famed for his anti-communist, anti-Castro, and anti-desegregation stances. That old bulldog would never have associated with Oswald if the young man had really been a communist or a pro-Castro activist. By ignoring the statements of multiple witnesses, or demeaning them in their “conspiracy theory” sections, Wikipedia is guilty of withholding vital information about Lee Harvey Oswald that the public has the right to know (why are we not surprised?).
In this example of evidence ignored or suppressed by the media, in 1995 Dr. Michael L. Kurtz, a respected professor of history and native of Louisiana, told the ARRB that when he was a student in New Orleans, Kurtz and a fellow student (who has corroborated Kurtz’ account) witnessed Guy Banister and Lee Oswald working closely together on college campuses9
“…during the spring and summer of 1963…(a)s I have (stated)in my book … I myself saw Banister and Oswald together in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. On the first occasion, Banister was debating President Kennedy’s civil rights policies with a group of college students, including myself. Oswald was in the company of Banister. At the time – this is the late spring of 1963 – I was a senior at what at that time was the Louisiana State University in New Orleans, although today it’s called the University of New Orleans … Banister was certainly a rabid segregationist to say the least, virulently critical of President Kennedy’s civil rights policies.”
Later that summer, Oswald was acting quite differently. By mid-August, he had conducted three pamphleteering events for his bogus branch chapter of the FPCC (Fair Play for Cuba Committee) that he had founded – a chapter that never held a meeting, and never had a membership list that was made public. A famous photo of Oswald handing out “Hands Off Cuba” flyers near the entrance of the Trade Mart has been widely published. But almost ignored, except by researchers, is the 40-page booklet Oswald also handed out on an earlier occasion, “The Crime Against Cuba” by Corliss LaMont, of which researcher William Davy tells us some crucial information:
“Written by a well-known New York peace activist, the tract was critical of the Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1963 the pamphlet had already gone through four printings. However, the copies that Oswald distributed were from the first printing of June of 1961, a period that found Oswald still in Russia. In 1961 a large bulk order for this first printing came directly from the Central Intelligence Agency.”10
So how did the “pro-Castro” Lee Harvey Oswald get his hands on a stack of 1961 first-print pamphlets, with, logically, the CIA as the likely provider? Three later editions had been printed since the big CIA order. The Warren Commission failed to mention this fact about the pamphlet. Knowing the true relationship of Oswald to Banister makes it easier to guess how Lee got hold of the pamphlets.
Anyone who closely studies the evidence with an open mind realizes that Lee was surrounded by “Agency” people in New Orleans. In contrast, there is a foreboding silence about his agency connections in Dallas, except for his relationship with FBI agent James Hosty, a man who obediently destroyed evidence in the case.11 Author-researcher Harold Weisberg was one of the few who realized that Warren C. deBrueys, head of the FBI office in New Orleans, was transferred to Dallas when Lee was there after his trip to Mexico City. It was deBrueys who wrote and collected a big file on Lee, which was released Dec. 8, 1963. Weisberg asks, quite reasonably, why was deBrueys brought to Dallas?12
We now understand that the Warren Commission, the Secret Service, and the FBI did not give us accurate information regarding the above events. Thus, though we can hope to learn something about the real Lee H. Oswald by reviewing his reading choices, we must be cognizant of the fact that the official list shows only the books the FBI reported to the Secret Service, which the Secret Service passed on to the Warren Commission.
There were other books Lee read or paged through without checking them out. One such book was The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), a beautifully illustrated tome,13 kept safe from check-outs. Lee and I accessed it together on several occasions.
Besides New Orleans’ main library, we also met several times at Tulane University’s libraries: one such book we read there was The Lost World of Quintana Roo (1963), by Michael Peissel.
What is certain is that in 1963, the last year of his life, Lee Harvey Oswald had established a record as an avid reader with eclectic and sometimes intellectual tastes. Officially, though witnesses tell us he was sometimes elsewhere, Oswald spent 115 days in the Dallas, Texas area and then moved to New Orleans, where he spent 152 days.
After telling his Russian-born wife, Marina, that he was leaving her forever (McMillan), Lee Oswald visited Mexico and Mexico City for less than two weeks, then returned to Dallas, where he lived some 54 days. He spent that time generally apart from his wife, visiting her and their offspring on most weekends, where they lived with Ruth Paine, who was estranged from her husband, Michael.
When police sought a “suspect” in the killing of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, it is a fact that they first descended on the local library at 1:35pm in the Oak Cliff area, after police officer C. T. Walker saw a male suspect run inside. But they were quickly redirected to the Texas Theater, where Lee Oswald was arrested after a short but violent struggle. Researchers who have carefully examined all the witnesses have sometimes concluded that an attempt by officer Nick McDonald to plant a gun that could be linked to Tippit’s murder provoked Lee to defend himself.
Lee was apprehended at about 1:45pm, some 75 minutes after Kennedy was shot. A charge sheet with the murder of Tippit, the murder of Kennedy, and the near-fatal wounding of Texas Governor John Connally against Oswald was filled out with a time notation of 1:40pm.
&
nbsp; The next day, it was announced that no one else was involved in Kennedy’s death.
One day later, Oswald was assassinated by Marcello associate and mobster Jack Ruby. Lee had been in police custody for 47 hours.
Lee’s death by public execution (we have evidence that the police knew Lee would be shot) was the first witnessed on live TV, and seen by millions. At almost the same time, the famous Katzenbach Memo was issued by the FBI. Said John Edgar Hoover, FBI director: “The thing I am most concerned about, and Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so that they can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”14
It is in this context that we enter a deeper study of the reading habits of Lee in New Orleans.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the Nasty Boor
Priscilla Johnson-McMillan wrote Marina and Lee, taking thirteen years to do so. The book purports to be biographical. It delves into many negative personal details about Lee H. Oswald, such as describing how he burped without excusing himself, and that he breathed his foul breath deliberately into his wife’s mouth. According to McMillan, Oswald was a selfish, brutal, shallow, irresponsible man quite capable of impulsively killing Kennedy, but her book was such an obvious hatchet job that Choice magazine concluded:
McMillan has no background in psychology, yet attempts to weave Freudian explanations of Oswald’s alleged motives for assassination. The use of source materials is so shoddy as to be capricious, with many claims about Oswald’s history and state of mind having no citations to substantiate them.… The armchair, pop-psychoanalysis is so loose, the conclusions so logically flawed and so far beyond McMillan’s data and sources, that the book obscures more important questions than it clarifies. It is poor history; its overwhelming bulk of pseudo history renders it poor human interest or journalism.15
The New York Times’ Thomas Powers, noted Pulitzer Prize recipient and a writer of insider-style books about the CIA, disagreed:
Despite strong reviews (including an enthusiastic one, in these pages, by me), Ms. McMillan’s book, “Marina and Lee,” made no deep impression on the public, which was unready to recognize, much less accept, Oswald’s humanity, while the professional assassination scholars darkly suspected that Marina (and perhaps even Ms. McMillan!) might be part of the plot.16
The standard media response to anti-Oswald books is almost universally enthusiastic, whereas short shrift is given to pro-Oswald books in general. Thus, the public, until the advent of the Internet, could rarely find any dissenting voices raised in Oswald’s defense.
McMillan’s book, flawed as it is, does give us a window into how data in the case has been handled and reported by “official version” researchers and government agencies. McMillan cites official records when she tells the reader that Lee “first” visited the Napoleon Branch library near his apartment, on “May 22…[when he] applied for a borrower’s card, and took out his first book. It was Portrait of a Revolutionary: Mao Tse-tung, by the biographer Robert Payne.” (400).
According to the FBI and Secret Service, as reported to The Warren Commission, Lee Oswald’s library card was issued May 27, not May 22. But the list of books the FBI released to the Secret Service tells us McMillan was correct. Still, the list is all in a jumble and out of order, which is typical of how evidence was presented in the Warren Commission Exhibits. They seem to have been tossed together like a Caesar salad.
The first entry on the FBI book list shows a 9/19/63 check-out for a book, while the last entry, on page 2, shows a 6/12/63 check-out date. Nor are the books in alphabetical order. When we search through the dates, we find the first book checked out was Mao’s biography. McMillan, continuing, wrote:
On Saturday morning, June 1, Lee took Marina and June [their daughter] to the Napoleon Branch of the public library, the nearest branch to their apartment, to look for books in Russian for Marina. All they found were some novels in English translation. But Lee took out two books for himself: The Berlin Wall by Dean and David Heller, and The Huey Long Murder Case by Hermann Bacher Deutch. (402)
McMillan does not mention most of the books checked out by Oswald, only these two. The biography of Mao, the infamous dictator (and liberator) of Communist China, helps bolster the “Communist” image of Oswald. The second book helps bolster the idea that Oswald was interested in assassinations.
Robert Payne, author of the Mao volume, wrote 110 books in his long and illustrious career, including the lives of Hitler, Churchill, Gandhi, Lawrence of Arabia, and Jesus Christ. For the record, I assert that The Huey Long Murder Case was interesting to Oswald not because he was fixated on assassinations, but because the author, Hermann Bacher Deutch, was a good friend of an important figure with whom Oswald was involved in New Orleans17 – Dr. Alton Ochsner. In addition, the man accused of assassinating Long, Dr. Carl Weiss, had worked in the same hospitals and infirmaries and was known to Ochsner.
Oswald, the Reader
As for reading “communist” books, as described by McMillan, by 1963 Lee Oswald had likely read them all. What no one mentions is the fact that Lee also read all the great patriotic writings of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Hobbes and others.
Few, if any, have noticed that Lee checked out a book about Communism that was recommended by the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, and perhaps only I knew why (here, you will learn why he did so). Lee himself reported that he began reading all of the available writings of Marx and Engels in English [and later, many in the Russian language] as a very young teen, saying he found them covered with dust in the bowels of the library. Even McMillan acknowledged that Lee spent considerable time reading in New Orleans:
Lee spent most of the day [surely she means after July 19, his last day working full time at Reily Coffee Company?] and the early evening until the light began to fade, reading on the screened-in porch of his apartment. As summer lengthened and dusk came on earlier, he carried a lamp onto the porch so he could read a little later. (451)
Lest anyone think highly of so much reading, McMillan is quick to add:
But the seriousness and even the quantity of his reading had fallen off.
During the first part of the summer, he had read political books, biographies, and books about Russia and Communism…but after the beginning of August, most of his reading consisted of a lighter diet of spy novels and science fiction. Marina had no idea what he was reading. (452)
McMillan stated that Lee Oswald’s quality and quantity of readings “had fallen off” by August 1963. But was McMillan accurate in her evaluation? Lee read 21 books in the first period of 69 days (61.8% of the books) , and 13 books in the later period of 55 days (38.2%), meaning that Lee read 2.4 fewer books for the second period than expected, compared to the first period (Lee Oswald was reading an average of .274 books/day, or a book every 3 to 3 ½ days, on record. This doesn’t count newspaper and magazine reading, and books he read elsewhere, such as at Tulane’s libraries. Nor does this record include any books Lee might have checked out from New Orleans’ main library system, which did not keep the kind of records that would allow us to track down any books he may have checked out there.
There is a statistically significant difference in the gross number of books read – a decline to a rate of one book read approximately every 4 days – though still at a pace that is impressive. However, when we look closer, we find that during this period Lee Oswald read Ben Hur – a Story of the Christ – 561 pages. He was also reading other big books at this time.
Ben Hur – a Story of the Christ was hardly a spy novel or a science fiction anthology, as was much of Lee’s other reading at this time: it was written by U.S. Army General Lew Wallace, and was the number one best seller in America between 1880 and 1936, when Gone With the Wind overtook it in popularity. It regained the top position once more in 1959 when the MGM film version won eleven Academy Awards.
Science fiction was an Oswald favorite in 1963. George Orwell’s seminal anti-communist book, 1984, was found among his possessions, as were the James Bo
nd novels, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Live and Let Die. Lee’s late summer choices included Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence and Brave New World. The Treasury of Science Fiction Classics was 694 pages long, the size of two ordinary books, and contained selections in science fiction from authors such as Jules Verne, H.G. Welles, Aldous Huxley, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Thus, McMillan’s statement that Lee’s reading had “fallen off” in quality and quantity is not supported by the facts. Lee was actually reading significantly more later in the summer. As for quality, the spy novels that go unnamed by McMillan are Ian Fleming’s famous James Bond series: Moonraker, Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, and Thunderball, all well-written, witty novels later made into the famous movies. Fleming himself had been in British Intelligence, as well as an advisor to Dr. Alton Ochsner’s good friend, “Wild Bill” Donovan, who founded the OSS and was instrumental in forwarding the founding of the CIA.
The Bridge Over the River Kwai was another late summer choice: written by Pierre Boulle, who also published Planet of the Apes (the English version was called Monkey Planet) in 1963. Further, Ben Hur and Everyday Life in Ancient Rome are not light reads: the latter book was later expanded and is still referenced in archaeology studies.
