01-05-2009, 08:50 PM
In May 1964, the magazine Tit-Bits published what I think was a three-part series in which the patsy's mother was given the services of a sympathetic and distinctly capable ghost-writer.
We were poor. I had to work very hard...
Quote:Tit-Bits, 9 May 1964, pp.23-25
Assassin? No, an American agent
By Marguerite Oswald
My Son Didn’t Kill Kennedy – says Mrs. Marguerite Oswald
Quote:Grave doubts have now been cast on the claim that 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John Kennedy last November 22.
Oswald was shot and killed two days later by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. Ruby was convicted of capital murder and has appealed.
Oswald did not have the chance to stand trial, so the truth may never be known. The Warren Commission, set up to inquire into Kennedy’s assassination, is likely to report its findings next month. Meanwhile, the list of discrepancies in the evidence grows.
• Photographs show that the President’s car had travelled 75 yards past the book warehouse from which Oswald is said to have fired. Reports say that the car’s windscreen was shattered by a bullet fired from the front.
• A police bulletin immediately after the shooting said: “All firing appears to come from the from the overpass” – in front of the presidential car. Police were seen chasing two men over this overpass – an incident which has not been mentioned officially since.
• The three doctors who tried to save President Kennedy’s life in hospital reported that a bullet had entered his neck just under the Adam’s apple.
• Only after being interviewed by the F.B.I. did the doctors reverse their opinion to say that the throat wound was an exit wound.
• Dallas police originally described the murder weapon as a 7.65 mm Mauser. But it was reported to be a 6.5 mm Italian carbine after the F.B.I. discovered that Oswald had bought such a rifle from a mail order firm.
• Firing from a rifle usually leaves gunpowder on the hands and face, but paraffin tests conducted on Oswald were negative for his face.
• The shooting took place between 12.30 and 12.31 p.m. Oswald is said to have hidden the weapon, walked down four flights of stairs, bought a soft drink, talked to policeman and walked four blocks to catch a bus for a ride through congested streets before stepping off and hailing a taxi.
But at 12.45 – a maximum of 15 minutes after the shooting – he was known to be in his apartment, four miles from the scene of the murder.
Now a new voice is added to the chorus of doubts – that of Oswald’s mother. Here is her personal story. She tells of her anguish – and her fight to clear her son’s name.
Assassin? No, an American agent
I know that my son, Lee Harvey Oswald, is innocent. Since his and President Kennedy’s tragic deaths, I have lived in a state of shock. I have cut myself off completely from my past – the quiet, respectable life of a nurse – to dedicate myself to a single cause. It is one which mothers throughout the world will understand: to prove my son’s innocence.
I am an old woman – 55. I am not highly educated. I have not travelled. I no longer have friends. I never had influential connections. And I have lost my job. But nothing will get me down. I will not let myself be intimidated by anyone. I will use for my crusade what little money I earn by writing my story. I will try to find out the truth on my own – if my country’s government will not.
I am now convinced that my son fell into a trap, that he has been slandered, victimised, betrayed. The American Press is supposed to be free and mindful of its high duties and responsibilities. But it does not even bother to check on “news” supplied by the police, or mere rumour, but prints it all undigested.
Abroad, too, all kinds of things are published. It seems that nobody cares to try to distinguish between what might be true and mere flights of fancy.
The French magazine Paris Match, for example, had no excuse for publishing a cover photograph of my son holding a rifle, captioned: “With this photo, there is no more mystery about Dallas.”
What impertinence! What a crime, to insult the memory of a dead boy in this way!
In Texas millions of men own rifles and revolvers. Millions of men have themselves photographed holding guns. Hunters, ex-servicemen, detectives…
No one denies that Lee had a gun. But the fact that he had himself photographed with a rifle does not mean that he used it to kill the President of the United States. On that basis, hundreds of thousands of men could be guilty of the crime.
There is no proof that this was the rifle used to kill Kennedy. No proof, even, that it is of the same type as the gun used by the assassin. My son was an intelligent boy. If he had been planning to use a certain gun for a political crime, he would not have arranged to be photographed with it first. Nor if he had already used it to take a shot at a general, as they are saying now.
In such circumstances, Lee would have had the sense to destroy the weapon.
But is the photograph genuine?
Damaging
After his return from Russia, my son was very thin. In his photograph, he is fat. I have talked with experts, who say the photograph is a fake. My son's head has been stuck on someone else’s body.
I am his mother. But I never saw that photograph before – and he used to send me all the snaps he took, or that were taken of him.
His wife Marina never spoke of it in the time we lived together after my son was arrested.
She told me everything. We talked non-stop going over every little thing, but she never mentioned that photograph.
But now, many months later, she is supposed to have sold a photograph like this, so damaging to her husband and father of her infant children.
Marina is a foreigner, the product of a Communist upbringing, but I don’t believe her capable of doing such a thing.
The police went through all her belongings, as they did mine, and seized all the photographs. Why, then, if that one existed, was it not made public immediately?
Why wait months? Why wait for the moment when grave doubts were being expressed in the privacy of the government commission set up to inquire about President Kennedy’s death?
Why wait for the moment when new evidence which would clear my son had just come to light? Why wait till just after I had won my first great victory – of at last having a lawyer to defend my son’s memory before the Commission of Inquiry presided over by Judge Earl Warren, the Chief Justice?
Our family is a family of good, loyal, honest Americans. We have never clashed with the law. Lee had no police record. I myself have never taken part in politics, or talked politics with my children. Ours was a quiet, ordinary life – like that of millions of other Americans.
All my children were and are patriots. All three volunteered for military service. My eldest son is in the Air Force and has been for 14 years.
Proof
When Lee was 16, he tried to enlist in the Marines. I think that alone is striking proof that these things being written about him now are false: that at 15 he was going around with Marxists, that he was a Red, an admirer of Karl Marx, and so on.
That episode also goes to far to support my own theory about what happened in Dallas and the part Lee really played…
I believe he was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, sent first to Russia, then to Dallas. And I believe that his mission in Dallas was to infiltrate the ranks of subversive organisations and perhaps – who knows? – to uncover a plot against Kennedy.
At 16 and while still a student, my son was a member of the Aviation Cadet Corps – a pupil plot in the American Air Force.
A boy must be a patriot to be accepted into the Cadet Corps. He must also show the moral and physical qualities of the future officer.
The government would not have chosen Lee as a future pilot if he had been regarded as anti-American, dangerous or even unbalanced.
I have carefully kept to myself a photograph of Lee in his Air Force Cadet uniform. I publish it now as proof that he was a cadet and to show that this has been carefully hushed up by the police.
One evening, Lee came home in uniform, accompanied by an American officer. That officer told me that Lee was a boy who should be in his country’s service, being alert, educated and loyal; that America needed him, and that I should let him enlist in the Marines.
I hesitated for a long time. After all, what mother wants her child to leave her, perhaps to be sent overseas to some danger-spot?
I talked it over with other members of the family. At last I agreed.
Fortunately, the military authorities did not. They ruled that since Lee was well under the age limit, he must wait at least six months.
Lee did not give up his plan to enlist. He brought home an enormous volume, the Marines Training Manual, and learned it by heart. So much so that I teased him a bit and used to call him “the general.” But I was very proud of him.
At the same time Lee was studying the manual he was reading Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.
Trust
But this was only after making contact with the Marines and while he was a pupil air pilot, attending all the Cadet Corps meetings. It was then that he got hold of Das Kapital.
To be an American is to be proud of American freedom.
I don’t ask my children questions. I trust them. I didn’t ask Lee why he was reading this book. I was sure, any way, that he had been told to study it by the military authorities supervising his training.
Now that I think things over, I am sure that the Marines already planned to make young Lee a special agent. They must have told him to prepare himself by studying not only the manual, but also Communist literature. I am told that this is standard procedure with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Lee never told me that he worked for an espionage service. Nor did I ask him.
But since when does a secret agent tell his mother what he is really doing? Did the parents of U.2 pilot Gary Powers, shot down over Russia, know what their son’s work was?
It is true that no one has come forward to say that Lee was an agent. But isn’t it the rule of all secret services not to acknowledge their own?
It is possible that even now Lee’s superiors stay silent in order to hunt down the guilty.
This belief of mine is just a theory. But it is one which fits the facts. It is also as likely to be correct as all the others put forward about my son.
We were poor. I had to work very hard...
Quote:Tit-Bits, 16 May 1964, pp.8-9 & 31
The Truth About Lee’s Moscow Trip
By Marguerite Oswald
I was born 55 years ago in New Orleans, where jazz came from. It is the most Latin city in America, which no doubt explains why all our family are romantics. My father was of French origin. His name was Jean Claverie. He was one of the first tram driver in the city.
My mother was of German origin. Her name was Dora Stucke. When I was very small, I loved singing. I had a good voice and was soloist in the church choir. I completed high school, then went straight back to work as secretary to a lawyer.
In 1929, at 21, I married Edward J. Eic, a porter. He deserted me while I was expecting my first child, John Edward – today a senior NCO in the regular Air Force. We were divorced in 1932.
The following year, I married Robert Edward Lee Oswald, an insurance man of Irish origin. Our first son was born Robert, who now works for a brick and cement factory.
Hero
My husband made me very happy. But not, alas, for long. He died of a heart attack in August 1939, some days before Hitler’s invasion of Poland. I was pregnant again at the time.
The child, whom I named Lee Harvey, was born on October 18, 1939. The name Lee is an Oswald family one, in memory of General Lee, commander-in-chief of the Southern armies in the Civil War, a hero of every patriotic American. That shows how much we are attached to our traditions.
It was not easy for a woman on her own to bring up three small children in wartime. But I managed it and my little ones never wanted for anything.
Lee was always intelligent which caused some jealousy among the neighbours.
In 1945 I married again, to Edwin A. Ekdahl. He was an engineer in Boston – so we had to leave New Orleans.
Divorce
The Press has made a good deal out of my many moves, but these always arose from family needs.
The two elder boys were sent to a military college. Lee stayed with me.
My third marriage ended in divorce in 1948 and I went to New York to be near my son Edward, who was stationed there.
We were poor. I had to work very hard.
Lee was not unhappy, but he missed the South. He felt stifled among the skyscrapers. He was bored in class, where the other pupils were so much less advanced.
My son was fascinated by the zoo and used to play truant to go there.
He was taken back to school by the truant officer and lectured. But he still stayed out.
Again he was caught and this time he was taken before a judge and sent to a training centre for six weeks.
I had him back at last and was advised to take him home to the South. That is why we went back to New Orleans. Lee didn’t play truant again there and easily won his high school diploma.
No one told me he had been given a psychiatric examination or that he had been classed as “dangerous.”
The whole thing has been made up, to bolster the “case” against him.
If it is true, why did they let me have him back? Why was he not sent for treatment? How is it that this medical history was not studied before they accepted him as a pupil pilot? Since when do the Marines accept “unbalanced” men as volunteers? When Lee reached 17, he enlisted at once. He was sent to a camp where he specialised in electronics and aviation.
The Commandant of the Marines sent me a magnificent certificate, telling me that I should be proud to be his mother. Lee was always happy to be in the Marines. His letters were full of enthusiasm. When he came home on leave he always wore his uniform. Each time he repeated how proud he was to be a Marine.
Promoted
He sent me money from time to time and presents from foreign countries he visited – the Philippines and Japan.
If he was in any trouble while in the Service, I never heard of it. The Marines, who sent me his honour diplomas, did not tell me of any of the supposed bad conduct on Lee’s part. He was, in fact, promoted corporal.
The newspapers have spread another legend: that my son won a medal as a champion rifle-shot.
What nonsense! It was not my son, but his battalion which won the medal. It was awarded to them all, as a team. There is nothing to show that Lee was an especially good shot.
At this time, I was an overseer in a sweet factory at Fort Worth, Texas.
A big glass jar fell on me and I had to have hospital treatment. All this was expensive and I was not insured. I had to sell my furniture. I was destitute. In September, 1959, Lee came home. He had been given a discharge on compassionate grounds because of my sickness. I was living in dreadful conditions.
“We shall have to move somewhere else,” I told Lee.
“We’ll talk about it again tomorrow morning,” he said. But next morning he told me: “Mother, I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to work on a cargo boat and try and get into the export and import business.
“I can’t hope to earn more than 35 dollars (about £12 10s) a week here.”
The next day I protested mildly: “Lee, I can earn a few dollars looking after children. We can make a good life together.”
He said: “No mother, I’ve made up my mind.”
On the third day, we said goodbye.
I do not believe that he decided overnight, just like that, to go to Russia. He must have received an order.
My son was a soldier. It was as a soldier and his mother that we parted. He had left me 100 dollars (about £36).
A week later, he wrote from New Orleans that he had joined a ship sailing for Europe.
It was not until November 1959, that I learned from the newspapers that my son was in Moscow and that he wanted to renounce American nationality.
I borrowed some money and went to Washington to find my son’s address. I wrote to him.
He replied: “Mama, I beg you, send me some money.” By return of post I sent him a cheque for 20 dollars (about £7).
Problems
But what had happened to the large sum of money he was given when he was demobilised?
He wrote me again in June, 1961, to tell me that he had married.
After that, his letters were more frequent. He told me about his life, his wife, the baby that was born to them, the little everyday problems.
He asked for books, shaving-soap, razor-blades. But he sent me presents, too – a shawl, statuettes, many photographs. He never mentioned politics or his plans.
One of the legends told about him now is the story of his having written a threatening letter to Governor Connally of Texas, who was wounded when President Kennedy was shot.
In fact all he wanted was that the Marine Corps’ decision to expel him dishonourably should be revoked.
Opinions
Lee had been dishonourably discharged. Whether or not he went to Russia after that was his own business. Nor should ex-soldiers be penalised for their political opinions. Lee was just standing up for his rights.
At last he wrote asking me to help him return to Texas. I did what I could, but without success.
How did he raise his fare back? It was, of course, the American Embassy in Moscow which gave him the money and his passport. That is understandable if Lee was an agent.
It seems that the Russian Government has passed my son’s dossier to the American Government. I have not been allowed to see it.
I intend to go to the Russian Embassy myself, to claim it from them. I am sure it will show that the Communists had discovered Lee was an American agent.
My son, his wife, and his little girl came to live with me for more than a month after their return.
Marina Nikolaevna Pruskova is a pretty and charming girl. I always got on well with her. It is not true that our relations were strained or that this was why Lee went to live elsewhere.
Foreigner
Certainly, Marina always remained a “foreigner” to me – a woman from the unknown, a citizen of a country enemy to mine, a girl who was born, grew up and was educated under the Communist regime.
Either everything we have been told about Communism and Russia is a big lie or one ought to be wary or a woman who is wholly the product of Soviet culture.
Marina has never denied the Russians or renounced Communism. She was born in Archangel, but brought up in Leningrad, where she studied. Her father and mother are dead, but she has an uncle, once a colonel in the Red Army, now retired.
She went to university and has a degree in pharmacy.
She met my son at a dance. They were married six weeks later.
I must here deny two more legends. The first is that Lee learned Russian because he was a Marxist. He learned Russian during his service in the Marines. His teachers belonged to the Army. The course was part of Army training.
The second is that Lee did not want Marina to learn English. It would be ridiculous for a husband to forbid his wife to learn the language of the country she was living in. The fact is that Marina did not speak English well, but she could make herself understood.
Marina said that she loved Lee deeply, wanted never to leave him, wished only to devote herself to her child.
Still it’s true there were moments when she spoke of going back to Russia. Once I saw her with a black eye. “Lee did it,” she said.
Lee and Marina brought me gifts from Russia. There was a camera and a little transistor radio.
Lee told me that he adored his wife. He was not earning much, but he bought her a gold ring with a ruby – the ruby is Marina’s birth-stone. She had brought a pair of ruby ear-rings from Russia.
Lee spent a lot of time with his baby, fed her, told her stories. He was a good father.
I did not see Lee and Marina again for nearly a year. He had a job at last, in a factory. Marina wept with joy. “Thank God, Lee’s working,” she said to me.
Why the separation? Well, that’s how life is. Lots of married children live far away from their mothers. It may be, too, that as an agent entrusted with a dangerous mission Lee did not want to involve his mother. Or explain to her why he did what he had to do.