14-12-2015, 03:52 AM
(This post was last modified: 14-12-2015, 01:23 PM by Deborra Ann Low.)
Drew Phipps Wrote:In "Oswald's Tale," Norman Mailer interviews witnesses from Russia who said that Oswald couldn't load film into a camera, couldn't put batteries in a radio, couldn't tune or adjust the antenna of a radio, and incidentally was a terrible shot. The Russians that knew him (and Marina), and presumably the KGB that interviewed these people, concluded that he was too incompetent to be a spy.
Well, I have always leaned toward E. Howard Hunt's assessment of Mailer, "The writer who presumes to reveal the inner world of espionage without having experienced it, is comparable to a young man haunting a brothel exit and asking patrons what it was like." I wouldn't quibble about him being a terrible shot, but Oswald would have been a true anomaly if he hadn't yet mastered the art of putting batteries in a radio or adjusting an antenna. That being the claim, it's a wonder he could tie his shoes, sign his passport or speak English, let alone Russian. It's my guess, that if you're not looking to be outed as a spook, you might steer clear of doing spooky things. It would behoove you, in fact, to have the reputation of being completely techno-ignorant, and it wouldn't require acting lessons or spy training to feign that level of incompetence. I'm sure I'm dating myself here, but in my generation it wasn't uncommon for women to do such things with perfect ease and ulterior motives.
