The Creation of the Oswald Legend

[Jim DiEugenio]

Vasilios Vazakas' just wrote part 1 of what will be a multipart series about the legend of Lee Oswald, from the defection to Dallas.

This part is interesting concerning the U2 shoot down. Looks like the plane was expendable, perhaps in exchange for sabotaging the Paris Summit. Is this why Ike made his famous, Beware the MIC speech?

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kenne...end-part-1

[Anthony Thorne]

Walt Brown covers the U2 shoot-down in a 300 page appendix (really a short book of its own) in his Chronology. Powers' plane was changed at the last minute to one most of his fellow pilots knew to be a dud. Powers was then tasked with flying directly over a spot with an anti-missile system on the ground beneath him, and the crash would derail the May Day parade peace celebrations. Khrushchev had even decorated his speech area with doves of peace, and either a journalist or the US ambassador (I forget which) was present and saw the moment when a startled Khrushchev was given the news in public. Powers was not expected to survive the mission, and Dulles - in Brown's book - appears to lie to Eisenhower both before and after the event. Brown's thesis is that Oswald was to be used as an unwitting patsy for the U2 crash. After Powers survived, Oswald (who, in some assassination books, is reported as attending the trial) suddenly develops a strong interest in returning home. With that facade blown, US intel and Angleton then had a spare patsy on hand that could be used for something else. I'm looking forward to the next pieces by Vasilios, this should be a great series. These new in-depth pieces at the Kennedys and King site are really top stuff.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Thanks Anthony.

Can you point me to Walt's piece on this, it sounds interesting.

Was giving him a dud plane part of the set up?

[Lauren Johnson]

Walt Brown covers the U2 shoot-down in a 300 page appendix (really a short book of its own) in his Chronology. Powers' plane was changed at the last minute to one most of his fellow pilots knew to be a dud. Powers was then tasked with flying directly over a spot with an anti-missile system on the ground beneath him, and the crash would derail the May Day parade peace celebrations. Khrushchev had even decorated his speech area with doves of peace, and either a journalist or the US ambassador (I forget which) was present and saw the moment when a startled Khrushchev was given the news in public. Powers was not expected to survive the mission, and Dulles - in Brown's book - appears to lie to Eisenhower both before and after the event. Brown's thesis is that Oswald was to be used as an unwitting patsy for the U2 crash. After Powers survived, Oswald (who, in some assassination books, is reported as attending the trial) suddenly develops a strong interest in returning home. With that facade blown, US intel and Angleton then had a spare patsy on hand that could be used for something else. I'm looking forward to the next pieces by Vasilios, this should be a great series. These new in-depth pieces at the Kennedys and King site are really top stuff.

Here's an essay and another by Fletcher Prouty on the U2 crash. I wonder why would Oswald be sent to Russia with his technical knowledge of the U2 before the crash and want to leave right after the crash. Is this question addressed in Brown's book?

[Anthony Thorne]

Walt Brown's book on the U2 shoot-down runs for 266 pages. His case for the CIA's involvement in the event is developed throughout, and his discussion of Oswald's possible role is returned to a few times. Here's an excerpt of the Oswald discussion below. (I've removed the footnotes from the piece, which are extensive.) For what it's worth, while he makes reference to the Titovets book, Brown does not think that Oswald was that great at speaking Russian, and he makes a number of observations in his Chronology that point out the peculiarity of events if Oswald actually did.

Brown's book is very strong in its treatment of Dulles and the CIA, and how they worked overtime to scuttle the flight, and to conceal that fact from Eisenhower. The dud plane appears to be part of the set-up. It was a last-minute substitution.

The ebook version of Brown's book is on Amazon here -

https://www.amazon.com/Master-Chronology...t+brown+u2

Point of emphasis/necessary and serious digression:

As was developed in the "Conclusions" section of the body of the Chronology, I strongly believe that consideration should be given to the idea thatat least in intelligence circlesLee Oswald, now safely tucked in to his radio, et al, career in Minsk, be blamed for the U-2 downing.

That, at least, would take the pressure off the failed mission and who was behind it, and restructure the focus onto the spy who had betrayed his country.

In the aftermath of a scenario like that, it is easy to see the American focus diverted from the failure to the betrayal by Oswald to the Soviets.

As stated elsewhere, it seems clear in retrospect that Oswald did not have enough technical information to aid the Soviets in bringing down the U-2. After all, Oswald only operated radarhe didn't build it or know anything necessarily relevant in the ground-to-air missile capabilities of the Soviets, as anything he could have possibly learned at Atsugi would have been long outdated by May of 1960.

But he had, after all, "stormed the American Embassy" on October 31, 1959 and told the American consul, Richard Snyder (as overheard by John McVickar) that he was renouncing his citizenship, that he had applied to the Supreme Soviet for citizenship, and that, if necessary, he had knowledge that he would share with the Soviets.

It seems safe to suggest that the knowledge he was talking about came as a result of his service in the U.S. Marine Corps and not from having a money-grubbing shrew for a mother.

Lee Oswald was a spy, plain and simple.

Every item about his Russian tripand returnscreams that he had serious assistance in some form in order to make the trip, survive, and return.

The Soviets knew it, also.

For "official purposes," "Oswald" was given a Russian examination while in the Marine Corps on February 25, 1959. How it came to pass that a grunt Pfc. was given such a test has never been explained, nor have the specific results, but "Oswald" allegedly scored in the mediocre range.

That score, however, is excellent for someone who could not speak Russian and who could never have mastered the massive challenges of learning the very difficult Russian alphabetparticularly considering Oswald's extreme difficulties with the far simpler English alphabet.

On the same day, "Oswald" also took a test in physics, and got a score of 75. That would only have been possible if 75 points were awarded for getting your name on the paper at least close enough to correct to be recognizable.

Lee Oswald could not have scored a 75 in physics on any day he ever lived, and considering that a very well-educated person typed this entry, it needs to be added that that well-educated person would quickly admit that HE could not score a 75 in physics.

The entire episodewhich Oswald never spoke of, was simply a covert entry into his U.S. Marine Corps record, to be dusted off, as needed, in the future.

The physics test is probably best explained as just a throw-away so it did not appear that Oswald was ONLY being tested in Russian. But physics? Couldn't it have been something Oswald might be able to do, like arithmetic?

But it's damn strange......

Lee Oswald was given a "hardship discharge" to leave the Marine Corps on September 11, 1959, three and one-half months before his original enlistment would have expired.191

Yet there is not one document in existence to suggest that there was a valid reason for him to be granted a hardship discharge.

The proximate cause, we are told, was an injury suffered by his mother in January, 1959, but it was no injury at all. Rather, it was a dodge by Mrs. Oswald to get on some kind of dole as well as to get her son out of the Marine Corps.

She obtained more than one job between her "injury" and the discharge, but once hired, she immediately sought a medical opinion, on the company's dime, that she was disabled and not able to work.

She was seen by several doctors during that time, but none of them bought into here charade. Thus, Pfc. Oswald, the rank to which he had been busted because of his two convictions for military infractions, was given a hardship discharge without any documentation to support the claim.

Hardship discharges from the U.S armed forces are not common, because the time involved in seeking and receiving such a discharge will usually exceed the normal enlistment period.

Except in Oswald's case.

To compound the felony, on the day before he received his hardship discharge, he received his first-ever passport from the State Department.

Someone receiving a hardship discharge to care for an ailing mother needs a passport even less than he would need a bad credit rating.

It's an absurdity on face, but it is ignored because an American spy could not have done what Oswald was alleged to have done in late November, 1963.

As part of the hardship discharge, a lookout card should have been placed in the files of the Department of State, guaranteeing that the blessed recipient of the hardship discharge did not suddenly decide to go sight-seeing.

I have no statistics whatsoever to support a claim, but I would wager heavily that the number of U.S. service men given hardship discharges was very small, no more than a fraction of one per-cent.
Of THAT group, I would again wager heavily that the same fractional amount went back to the person for whom the hardship discharge was given and took off for foreign lands three days later.

That comes to about 1 in 10,000.

Oswald, naturally.

Oswald's trip from his discharge in California,192 his passage to Europe, his movement to Helsinkithe best access point in Europe for gaining quick admission to the Soviet Unionhis trip to Russia, and the expenses he incurred there as a basic tourist paying the basic tourist rateall added up to far more money than he could have accumulated as a Marine.

He had lived far above his means in Japan; he was paid in military scrip, and he had arranged, at the time of his enlistment, to have money taken out of his monthly pay and have it sent to his not-yet-ailing mother.

He could not have afforded, on his own, to make the trip he made with the costs incurred.

He would not have known, from general knowledge, that Helsinki, Finland, was the ideal entrepot to the Soviet Union. But that ties in with his hardship discharge, because it can also be argued that Oswald had to get to the Soviet Union in haste.

From the date of his dischargeSeptember 11to the date of his arrival in MoscowOctober 16five weeks were consumed. Had he left the Marines on December 24, those five weeks would have meant arrival in Moscow on January 28thnot the best time of year to scout out a city like Moscow.

As it is, October is not beach weather in the general vicinity of the Kremlin.

Fully knowledgeable that the U.S. Embassy had been wired for sound by the Russians, he had to get his U-2 awareness into the public domainat least in the United States, so that a reasonable amount of time could pass before he could be singled out as the low-level scapegoat to blame the situation on.

Although this would be the first of two occasions when he was the "patsy."
When he made his bravado appearance in the Embassy, nothing was done. Snyder duly cabled the United States so
that the State Department and his other employer would be aware of Oswald's threats.

I would suspect that anyone else who promised, verbally with nothing hidden, that he was fully capable and prepared to commit treason, would have been placed under arrest by the Marine guards at the Embassy.

Under optimum circumstances, someone posing that kind of danger and brazenly admitting it might well have been quietly executed and nobody would have been the wiser.

The most difficult possibility to consider is that he would be allowed to just walk out the door, fully intent to share that which would be "Top Secret" military secrets with the Soviets.

Subsequent to the issuance of that threat, the data that Oswald promised to give to the Soviets at least had the potential to have fomented the biggest international crisis that occurred during the time Oswald was in the Soviet Union.

Or Oswald's knowledge could have been the target where the finger of guilt was pointed.

The Russians, in their own sneaky Bolshevik way, made it easy for anyone in the United States who wanted to accuse Oswald.

First of all, following his "failed suicide,"and I've bled more than Oswald did when I've cut myself shavingand then his "scene" at the U.S. Embassy, Oswald was suddenly allowed to stay in the Soviet Union.

There followed a period of two months in which most authors would have us believe that Oswald was staying in his hotel room, alone, learning Russian. Others would say he never learned Russian.

But there was plenty of time in that November and December "window" for experts to pick his brains and at the end of the day, what choice did Oswald have?

For one thing, he did not have remotely enough money to consider that he had made an error and that he should return to the United States.

Financially, it was not an option, and his mission was not yet completed.

He could also not return to the Embassy so quickly, beg forgiveness and hope for the best. As it was, when he did that in 1961, they let him cool his heels for fifteen to sixteen months.

So he took his genial hosts up on their offer to let him stay, essentially as a stateless person, and they would give him the opportunity that was sought by every worker in the workers' paradise: he would be put to work.

No matter how many sources you read, the standard story regarding Oswald's employment was that he was sent to work in a radio factory. In the purely generic sense, that is an accurate description, since the site was named the Minsk Radio Factory (the Minsk peasants were not chic enough yet for designer labels).

The "Minsk Radio Factory" also had an experimental component contained within it, and that experimental component was a section devoted to developing new and better radar systems.

It was kismet! Oswald, the radar operator at Atsugi, gets sent to a "radio factory" as cover for possible work on radar development.

Personally, I don't think Oswald had the intellect to make radios, much less develop experimental radar, but the Soviets were absolute riverboat gamblers when they saw any opportunity.

This all meant that U.S. officials, had they chosen to make Oswald the U-2 fall-guy, would have been charging someone in Minsk, at somewhat of a distance from United States courts, but with the addition to "Soviet radar designer" added to his resume. (This is a stark pre-cursor to Oswald'sone of the Oswalds'visits to Clinton and Jackson, Louisiana, in late summer, 1963, for no other purpose than seeking employment in a mental institution. Imagine what the U.S. media would have done with the phrase "mental hospital" on November 23, 1963, in headlines.)

The critical "key" to making Oswald the U-2 fall-guy was not handed to the CIA as they assumed it would be. All along, they had made two absolute promises to President Eisenhower: one, that the U-2 could never be shot down by the Soviets; and second, that if a U-2 developed mechanical problems at a lofty altitude, the pilot would never survive to discuss the problem.

GaryPowers, U-2 pilot personified, was cooling his heels in Lubyanka Prison. Oswald the fall-guy was temporarily off the hook.

Had Oswald been blamed by the U.S., would the United States charge him, as a stateless person, in far-off Minsk? Would he have been tried for treason in absentia? Would the Soviets have extradited him?

It's an interesting legal question, because the Soviets could not have deported him to the United States. This factor will be explained below.

Not only did he succeed in making the threat, but shortly after the U-2 incident, the FBI put out the well-known letter suggesting that someone might be impersonating Oswald. That would let him off the hook should anyone want to charge him with criminal activity at any time.

It was a "fall-back option" that might have been needed in a damage assessment scenario, and I doubt that it was a coincidence that the U-2 fell from the sky in such close proximity to the FBI putting out an alert that someone might be masquerading as Lee Oswald (although why anybody would masquerade as Lee Oswald, well, you know....).

"It was the other guy, see. We were aware of it all along..."

So Oswald has gotten a hardship discharge, funding, a no-risk journey to the Embassy to promise treason, and an alibi just in case it was needed.

That doesn't whisper "spy"; it doesn't say "spy"; it screams "SPY!"

Oswald had a great deal of assistance to get to the Soviet Union, but amazingly, the U-2 incident seems to have been the turning point in Oswald's love affair with the Soviet Union.

For someone who had so loudly professed his love for Marxism, it seems highly peculiar that Oswald would want to return to the United States.

It is even more peculiar that the United States considered it. Or agreed to it.
 Or paid for it.

Oswald wrote a letter to his brother Robert, who would make a future career and a good living out of ratting out his brother any time the opportunity arose, although when he got the chance to help cinch the case against his brother with forensic evidence, he avoided the opportunity altogether.193

In one particular letter, Lee wrote Robert that Gary Powers looked like a decent enough human being when Oswald saw him in Moscow.

There was no legitimate way that Lee Oswald could have seen Francis Gary Powers in Moscow, unless, of courseand for reasons wholly unknown except perhaps in U.S. intelligence circles, Oswald was invited to attend Powers' trial, held for a total of two days in mid- August, 1960.

Oswald was not officially in Moscow from the first week of 1960 until July of 1961, when he had to visit the Embassy to begin the actual paperwork process of repatriation.

In addition to Lee's letter to Robert, researchers have suggested that Oswald is present in a photograph taken during Powers' two-day judicial event.194

After the paragraph immediately above was written, I dug around in all of the photographic material I could find, and I believe that I found the photograph that others have spoken of.

It is an expansive photograph taken from the right-rear (an irony in itself) of the Great Hall' in the Hall of Columns where Francis Gary Powers was put through the judicial wringer.

The picture naturally focuses upon the marquee names up frontthe three-judge military panel, the procurator- general of the Soviet Union, the flunky assigned to lose Powers's case, and, of course, Powers himself.

In the lower left hand corner of the photograph, there appears in right profile an individual who very well could be Lee Harvey Oswald (or "Harvey").

Virtually every other male pictured in the audience is wearing a suit coat, which may presume to mean they were dressed in suits. But "Oswald" is dressed in a dark sweater, with a sport-shirt collar protruding, and the ensemble is far too reminiscent of Lee Oswald to simply ignore it.

Although I am usually a skeptic when in comes to photographic evidence, or primal screams of alteration, I am persuaded that this individual was Lee Oswald, in attendance, in Moscow, at the trial of the captured U-2 pilot.

The photograph appears in the photo section of Wise and Ross, The U-2 Affair.
Please, if it is possible, visit that work and form your own opinion, and please contact the editor of the Chronology
with YOUR thoughts.

According to Ernst Titovets, Oswald's English-speaking friend from Minsk, once the U-2 became publicized in the Soviet Union, Oswald, who had fired a pistol at a range at his radio factory and had done poorly, suddenly feared for his own safety and hastily joined the factory's hunting club, which allowed him to purchase a shotgun.

Oswald would keep the gun in his highly-touted apartment until shortly before his departure for the United States, and then he smuggled it out, rode a street car and pawned the gun.

Titovets, however, did not know Oswald at the time of the U-2 and would not meet him until September of 1960. It is impossible to discern from Titovets' memoir how he knew of Oswald's sudden fears, based on the Soviets' disgust with the American espionage episode AND Oswald's own private knowledge of that specific aircraft.195

A larger question would have been who was Oswald more afraid of at the time of the shotgun purchasehis fellow workers, or a "rogue" American who might come gunning for him?

It is an interesting scenario to play out, unlikely as it may seem. Oswald promised to tell the Russians about the U-2, and there can be no doubt that he did.

Powers was shot down.
Oswald is killed in Russia and the dead Oswald is revealed to have been the source of the information that allowed the Russians to bring down the plane and thereby totally undermine the long-awaited Paris Summit.
Dead men tell no tales, and the scenario above, juxtaposed to Dallas in November, 1963, is exactly what happened.

But Oswald survived, at least temporarily, and, again according to Titovets, decided that he wanted to return home, his decision in the thinking stage from the time of Powers' trial onward.

Yet Oswald took no overt acts with regard to repatriation until December, 1960, when he wrote to the U.S. Embassy in an attempt to get the process going.

But Embassy personnel insisted they never received the letter which, it goes without saying, was opened by Soviet spies (they had them, too...) before it reached the Embassy.

Either the Embassy wanted to ignore Oswald, or the Soviets did not want him to leavenot just yet.

Oswald waited for a response to his letter as the final calendar pages of 1960 fell from the calendara time when John F. Kennedy was firming up cabinet appointments, naming ambassadors, and getting ready for an entirely new look in the White House.

Accordingly, Oswald dispatched a second letter, which began with a complaint that he got no response to the first letter. The Embassy claimed they had not received the first letter, but this early 1961 letter did get a response, so the wheels were turning for Oswald's returnat a time when he had not yet met the woman he would marry and thereby complicate the repatriation process.

As the wheels of the bureaucratic empire turned slowly, Oswald met Marina Nikolayevna Prossakova (spellings varyparticularly when Lee Oswald tried to spell that name), and they were married within a few weeks.

His reasons for the marriage and her reasons for the marriage are both unresolved issues, but "love at first sight" does not seem to have been one of the clearly defined options.

Oswald was required to visit the Embassy in early July, 1961, and he apparently did so in spite of Soviet travel restrictionsbut nothing was done.

The Embassy informed Oswald that they could not go forward with Marina's applicationMarina, now with child,196 but unknown to the Embassywithout Marina making an Embassy visit, so she flew to Moscow to join Lee.

The bureaucratic wheels continued to turn slowly, and that would make sense IF the idea that Oswald was a possible U-2 patsy, because it would look a little obvious if he were given a hardship discharge to get to Russia in semi-decent weather, and then brought back home immediately after his Soviet "patsy" services were not needed as "Plan B."

The passage of time would see to that.

The most immediate problems were several: Oswald openly articulated that he would not return unless he had some understanding about what would happen with regard to "the charges against me," although none were known to exist.
Oswald would also develop financial problems, even though he was living very well by Soviet standards, and he and Marina both had incomes.

Finally, there were legal difficulties with Marina's application, because existing law stated clearly that the U.S Embassy (technically, the consulate) could not issue an entry visa to the United States to any individual who was a citizen of a nation to which the United States could not deport people.

The United States did not have the right to deport people to the Soviet Union, so Marina Nikolayevna Oswald could not be given an entry visa to the United Statesat least not from any U.S. agency IN the Soviet Union.

The United States Government therefore had the option to tell Oswald that some kind of arrangements would have to be made through a third country, but in the meantime, he was out of luck.

Case closed, so to speak, right?

The State Department initially made arrangements for Marina to be granted an entry visa to the United States at the U.S. Embassy in Belgium, but for some reason, that logistic scenario did not seem to work well. That, of course, fuels the theory that between the Oswalds' (now a group of three with their daughter, David), departure from Minsk and their going on board the ocean liner bound for Hoboken, New Jersey, that time was spent in a safe-house for the purpose of debriefing.

It has not been proven that it happened, but it cannot be categorically denied as a possibility, either.

So the State Department went the extra mile and granted Marina a waiver of regulation 243 (g) so that her entrance visa to the United States would be presented to her in Moscow, after the Oswalds arrived there by train from Minsk.
One unique oddity about the whole procedure is that at the time these events were happening, the U.S. Passport Office was overseen by Frances Knight.

She would subsequently answer scripted inquiries put to her by the Warren Commission, stating that since Oswald had, in fact, never renounced his citizenship, he was entitled to the same amount of considerationno more, no lessthat any American citizen overseas would be entitled to.

The testimony was boilerplate and soporific, as 243 (g) was a major factor, despite being a basic non-entity.

What the Warren Commission did not learn from Mrs. Knightand from past events they should have had at least a passing awareness with the situationwas that she was a dyed-in-the-wool "red hater," and it was her custom to deny passports to anyone even remotely suspected of leftist, Communist, fellow-traveler, or pro-Soviet leanings.

From where I'm sitting, Lee Harvey Oswald would be the poster boy for her prejudices, with Marina Oswald, niece of a GRU Colonel197 would have been a close second.

Corliss Lamont, who authored a leftist pamphlet at the time in question, was denied a passport as a formality. He and others like him would have to petition Congress for a redress of grievances (and he will re-enter our narrative shortly).

Yet Oswald, who would pass out Lamont's pamphlet along with pro-Cuban literature, was given a passport with the complete knowledge of Frances Knight.

That in itself is astounding, because given that woman's track record, she would not have issued passports to the Cincinnati "Reds" to barnstorm overseas.

But Oswald, the defector, the traitor, got his passport quickly in September, 1959, and it would be returned to him in May, 1962.

And, lest we forget, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow handed over $435.71 to cover the travel expenses of two people who had lived very well and very frugally in Minsk.

The money was to be repaid, and even that process was unusual, because the vast majority of people, owing that exact amount, would pay off $20, perhaps $50, until the loan get down to the nickels and dimes, and then pay the remaining dollars and seventy-one cents.

Oswald paid the $.71 first and then moved on with the loan. That economic theorizing hardly provides guilt of an espionage pedigree, but it is symptomatic of something out of the ordinary.

Details about the mid-passage are for the most part unknown, and not even a commentary about the baby's reaction is available.

Arriving in Hoboken, New Jersey, a poor-man's Minsk with ocean frontage, the Oswalds were not met by the FBI or local authorities who might want to chat about Top Secret information shared with the KGB in Moscow.

Instead, they were greeted by Spas T. Raikin (b. 1922, still alive in 2012). The inventory of the Spas T. Raikin Papers, contained in 55 boxes at the Hoover Institution Archives in Stanford, California (suggesting the Archives was named for the President named Hoover, not the skirt), contains a thumbnail sketch of Raikin, which includes the notation, "Raikin became a social worker who helped resettle Bulgarian refugees in the United States under a State Department Program, well as a staff member in the Travelers' Aid Society. It was in that capacity that he was directed to meet Lee Harvey Oswald upon his return from Russia. Raikin found a hotel room for Oswald, his wife, and baby, and handed him a check, that paid for their move to Fort Worth, Texas. His account of this event is in the Warren Commission Report and is discussed in dozens of works on the Kennedy assassination." (source cited)

Oddly enough, Robert Oswald claimed that HE paid for Lee's passage to Ft. Worth.

One of those two gangsters is lying.

But who was Raikin? Among other things, he served as the secretary of the Central Executive Board, Bulgarian National Council, from 1960 to 1963the years that overlapped the U-2 and the Kennedy assassination.

His resume also makes him a very odd choice to meet and greet the Oswalds and hand them a checkand if he did so, whose check was it?

His Archive is 99 binders, in 55 boxes "relating to Bulgarian history, the Bulgarian Orthodox Eastern Church, Bulgarian émigré affairs, and activities of anti-communist organizations, including the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and the Bulgarian National Front." (source cited)

A leading anti-Communist is sent to greet the Oswalds and give them money? He must have had June 13 juxtaposed with October 31.

It's amazing and uncanny, but the few references to this appear in commentary by Ed Tatro, and subsequently, to the researchers he deals with in a comprehensive network.

The Oswalds spent the night in New York City, and Marina would testify that they walked around midtown a little bitLee had undoubtedly been there before, in the early 1950sand got ready for their next stop. They did not get a chance to see major league baseball, as the Yankees were the only professional team in New York City, and they beat the K.C. Athletics, 8-4 before a sitting room only crowd of 11,119 in Kansas City.

The following day, they flew to Love Field, in Dallas, where they were met by Robert Oswald, and, to Lee Oswald's definite chagrin, no members of the press.

Questions have been raised about the amount of luggage that the Oswalds had when they boarded the S.S. Maasdam in Holland, and a smaller amount of luggage that they arrived with in the DallasFt. Worth area, but nothing of substance has been wholly proven.

They resided briefly with Robert Oswald and his family in Ft. Worth, proving that blood is thicker than water, as Lee had written some rather hostile sentiments to his brother at the time of his arrival in the Soviet Union.

Robert Oswald was contacted in late June by the FBI and was told that the Bureau would want to speak to Lee upon his return. Robert's comment at that statement was to the effect that if they didn't know Lee had been back for a few days, someone was not doing their job.

Accordingly, Lee was whisked off the street and into a Bureau vehicle on or about June 26 as he was walking toward Robert's home.

He was interviewed by FBI Special Agents John Fain and B. Tom Carter, although Fain would write the eventual FD-302 report and then retire in early 1963, raising the hackles of Marguerite Oswald after the assassination, as she sensed a set-up with regard to this interview.

Oswald, according to Fain's report, "bristled" at the idea of being dragooned into a car to be grilled by the feds, but from the vantage point of over 51 years, it still seems preferable to handcuffs in Hoboken.

Oswald was asked mostly routine questions, which led up to a question as to whether or not he had been contacted by anyone representing themselves as being from the Soviet Union (émigrés excluded, later), or, worse still, anyone from Soviet intelligence.
Oswald said that there had been no contacts, and he was most likely telling the truth, because if there was to have been a contact, it should have happened after the FBI had a chance to grill Oswald and let the spotlight dim a bit.

Oswald was then asked if he were to be contacted by anyone in a Soviet circle or anyone from Soviet intelligence, would he be willing to inform the Bureau of that contact.

Oswald said he would do that.

In plain and simple English, that constituted an agreement that made Lee Harvey Oswald, a "P.C.I.," or "potential criminal informant" for the FBI.

Oswald had signed on as a snitch.

It may well explain how he managed to take care of a family of three when his most common income was $33 per week unemployment compensation. That said, I've seen a W-4 form for Oswald in which it was stated that his earnings were just above $3,600.

I do not recall the year of the tax document being visible, but either way, there is money in there that Lee Oswald did not earn or that he was not given from the employment commission.

In 1962, Oswald could have only worked a possible twenty-six weeks, suggesting his last check would have been paid in 1963, so he would have had 24 weeks of wages.

To make $3,600, Oswald would have had to earn $150 per week, which he never even approachedofficially. Given his usual job average of about $55 per week, and some unemployment at $33, his average week should have been somewhere around $46--$48 weekly. Splitting the difference and using $47, for twenty-four weeks wages he would have earned $1,128, a far cry from $3,600+.

If the wage statement was for 1963, the situation does not improve very much. Oswald was unemployed from early April, through his alleged Walker incident, through his hasty departure to New Orleans, and then until May 9, when he went to work at Reily Coffee greasing coffee-bean machines.

When Reily had their fill of his nonsense, they cut him loose in mid-July, and he did not work again until October 15, 1963, when he got a job as a stock boy in a book warehouse, and he really only collected a couple of weeks' pay there.

He therefore worked about 23 weeks, with a guess-timate of $1150 in earnings, and he added 16 weeks of unemployment, adding another $528.

Still way short of $3,600, and even if you combined both years' earnings, $2,806, someone is still being charitable to him, and on the books.

But who?

Can Oswald be judged by the "guilt by association" criteria?

If so, the verdict is abundantly clear. With the exception of the United States Marine Corpsofficially, at least,--his employers form the who's who' of the ultra-conservative right-wing.

From Tujauge, a pre-Marine Corps employer, through Leslie Welding, Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall, Reily Coffee, and the Texas School Book Depository Company, he was employed by right-wing political individuals who would not and did not tolerate his extreme leftist posturing.

He certainly made no friends at Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall by reading Russian political literature, and based on Richard Stovall's future conversations with potential employers, Oswald had left behind a very negative impression.

His only real friend cited from any of his four jobs after returning FROM Russia, was Dennis Ofstein, at Jaggers- Chiles-Stovall. Ofstein, while in the Armed Forces, had spent a full year at the Army Language School at Monterey, learning Russian, but asked the Warren Commission to believe that despite the training, he was surprised that the Army never put his Russian to any use.

Despite the fact that Ofstein worked for a company that supplied maps, in the Cyrillic alphabet, to the U.S. government. Why they were not simply in English cannot be known.

Oswald's "known associate" during his tenure at Reily Coffee was Adrian Alba, the garage proprietor in proximity to Reily, who was also the prime witness against Oswald for his gun and weapon curiosity.

Oswald's weapons curiosity also offers another insight into his "spy" resume, as both alleged gun purchases were made in direct conflict with virtually all known laws and practices at the time, and in the face of policies articulated by the companies from whom he made the purchase.

Oswald (actually, "Alek J. Hidell," a soon-to-be-known pro-Cuban sympathizer) sent a money order198 for a rifle, with a telescopic sight, to Klein's Sporting Goods, in Chicago.

This was sent from Dallas, Texas, where Oswald could have walked down the street and bought the identical weapon or perhaps one that was better, because a lousier weapon does not come quickly to mind.

But to do that would have betrayed his cover. The purchase had to be made by a faceless, "never heard of the guy" pedestrian named Hidell, and, accordingly, the rifle was sent to "Hidell" at a post office box rented by Oswald in Dallas, and a post-office box that could only receive mail FOR Lee H. Oswald.

Clearly, the rifle, even if broken down, would not have fit in "Oswald's" post office box, so a card would have been put in the mailbox, suggesting that "Oswald" should pick up a package.... addressed to... Hidell?

It's a violation of postal rules. Anything sent to Oswald's box intended for someone named "Hidell" should have been returned because the addresseeHidellwas unknown.

Yet we have been asked to believe that Oswald just waltzed in and got the rifle with absolutely no questions asked.

That CAN happen if an individual is able to "identify" himself as some manner of operative, but a just-plain citizen can't do it.

Then, equally magically, Oswald got his gun into the rented apartment at 214 Neely Street without anyone noticing. It traveled from the post office to the apartment with no one noticing Oswald and able to identify him eight months later, and Oswald's wife Marina did not know of the gun's existence until she saw it regularly in Oswald's private little area in the apartment.

She thought that perhaps he had brought the Russian-bought shotgun to America.

That is one neat trickgetting a gun, of all things, out of a post office against postal regulations, and getting it past your ever-suspicious wife who you have condemned (pro-tem) to a life of poverty.

The same kind of chicanery applied to the pistol purchase. The cost was within a few cents of $30, and the purchaser was required to send at least 50% of the cost of the chosen weapon as a down payment.

The purchaser also had to supply the name of a positive character reference, because references were checked in mail-order pistol sales, especially from California to Texas.

"Oswald" only sent $10NOT 50% of the purchase price, and his character reference was "D.H. Drittel," whoever that might have been.

Given Oswald's track record for fictional acquaintances, I doubt if there ever was a D.H. Drittel.

But, once again, no matter, because Seaport Traders shipped the gun, C.O.D.199

The gun was shipped Railway Express to Oswald's post-office box in Dallas.

From time immemorial, companies like Railway Express, UPS, FedEx and the like cannot deliver items to post office boxes; they must deliver to residential addresses.

There is also the problem of the "c.o.d.," because who was going to pay the unpaid $20?

Not some postal clerk...

It would have meant that Oswald would have had to be stationed at the post office, praying that Railway Express would violate a known rule and show up at the post office, and that Oswald could con the post office into accepting delivery while he paid the c.o.d. charges.

And that scenario is as unlikely as someone being an expert marksman with a cheap, war-surplus rifle just assembled and not sighted in.

Finally, the question of timing enters the concern. Why, suddenly, after sneaking through a Moscow bus ride a year earlier to rid himself of a gun, did Oswald suddenly feel the need to acquire a medium-powered rifle, even though it was the cheapest junk on the advertising page he purchased it from, as well as a handgun?

The others at Reily were only known to Oswald for taking him aside and telling him to do his job. It is not known if Oswald had Russian literature to read at that job site, as he had hastily left Dallas for New Orleans; beyond that, it would have been unlikely that Reily would have been extremely fussy about who they hired to grease their machines.

The coffee people at Reily, however, did somehow manage to use their coffee expertise to move quickly into high- paying positions at NASA within a year or less after November 22, 1963.

At Oswald's initial post-Russian job, Leslie Welding, very little is known about performance or reading preferences, but what does stand out is that Oswald simplyand only allegedlyquit the job at the urging of George DeMohrenschildt, the aristocrat who befriended the peon. What is not clear is the OswaldDeMohrenschildt association as early as the fall of 1962, because most of the Russian émigrés that Oswald came in contact with were as a result of social gatherings that occurred after Oswald left Leslie Welding.

The evidence is clear that George and Jeanne DeMohrenschildt were espionage agentsto put a negative connotation on C.I.A.employed individuals. DeMohrenschildt had been a spy since the days of World War II, and he was not very secretive about his craft. Nor was he secretive about his involvement in the purchase of oil leases, which he was constantly doing with someone else's money.

What remains secretive are his C.I.A. files and the identity of the individual or individuals who murdered DeMohrenschildt shortly before he was scheduled to give testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

He was the only one of the Russian émigrés to be slated for testimony, as the rest of them wanted absolutely no part of Oswald, and only allowed him in their presence out of pity for Marina.

To the remainder, Oswald was a traitor, having thought so well of the land that the émigrés forsook for the sake of freedom that he left America to go to Russia and espouse Marxist philosophy.

Whether it was the naturally obnoxious Oswald or a theatrical-obnoxious Oswald that turned them all away, they were unanimous in disavowing the defecting wife-beater.

Except George and Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, who just happened to be leaving the United States for Haiti as Oswald was leaving Dallas for New Orleans, land of Clay Shaw.

When Oswald's days at Reily Coffee ended in mid-July, 1963, he economically abandoned his family for the greener pastures of leafleting, debating, and being a one-man cover' for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans.

Oswald's associations with Guy Banister and David Ferrie are well-established; less so with Clay Shaw, but the court- protected "Clay Bertrand" who wanted Oswald to have a legal defense in Dallas is a strong indicator.

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the various anti-Castro organizations that centered around Guy Banister and other notables in New Orleans are as far apart as the takeoff and projected landing sites of Gary Powers ill-fated mission. The question is then focused: Was Oswald truly working for V.T. Lee and the FPCC in New York, and trying to find out about Banister, et al, or was he really working for Banister to determine if there were other FPCC types in New Orleans.

As you ponder that choice, use your imagination to create an image of Lee Oswald's battered body if FPCC leaflets, bearing Guy Banister's address, had gotten into circulation without Banister's absolute approval.

It's not a pretty sight, as Jack Martin could attest.

So Oswald, a/k/a "Osborne," a/k/a "Hidell" purchased leaflets and FPCC membership cards in the FPCC and made sure he was seen and hopefully threatened, in order to fill out the leftist resume he was instructed to create.

He handed out leaflets alongside the U.S.S. Wasp, a site guaranteed to win no converts whatsoever, but only Navy discipline prevented Oswald from being the corpse that kicks off most episodes of "N.C.I.S."

He handed out leaflets in front of the New Orleans Trade Mart, a hub of American and international business, where the interest of Cuba counted for nil.

One C.I.A. contract employee in the Trade Mart, William Gaudet, photographed Oswald as a favor to the local newspapers, and one of the photographs captured Clay Shaw walking up the avenue. Dean Andrews identified other individuals in those pictures, but if anything was done by way of follow-up, it has been done in secret.

Frustrated, Oswald stopped in to visit with Dr. Carlos Bringuier, a leader of the anti-Castro contingent in New Orleans,agroupprobablyonlysecondtothatofMiami,Florida.200 Oswaldreturnedadayortwolateranddropped off a Marine Corps manual, to prove his manhood and his loyalty.

Within forty-eight hours, however, Oswald was seen on Canal Street by Bringuer's associates, Celso Hernandez and Miguel Cruz, and Oswald's failures to be noticed at the Navy dock or at the Trade Mart were about to take a more positive turn for his resume.

The two observers reported on Oswald's activities, which included a cardboard "Viva Fidel" sign that was almost as pathetic as the "clipboard" that Oswald left behind in the Texas School Book Depository.

Bringuier led the trio back, and they accused Oswald of a number of indiscretions. Oswald tried to continue his campaign, but his leaflets were taken from him and he was pushed or shoved, although I'm not certain of the distinction.
Policearrived. All four individuals were carted to the proverbial "station house," and Bringer's trio were released on their own recognizance.

Oswald "spent the night in the joint."

His Murret family connections found someone who found someone else to post his $10 bond, and in Monday's court event, Oswald was found guilty and fined the $10, while the other three, the ones who made the mess and did the pushing, went free with their charges dismissed.

Two events during that weekend tend to highlight Oswald's non-traditional situation. For one thing, he demandedand gotan FBI interview on a Saturday, which would be rare even if he had committed a real crime, as the courts are not in session over the weekend, so the FBI could get to him on Monday during normal business hours.

Yet Oswald, the returned "defector" and "traitor" was interviewed at the New Orleans station house by FBI Special Agent Francis Quigley.

If nothing else, this strongly suggests that the FBI knew Oswald had left Dallasand why would they need to know?and that his "file" had been moved to the New Orleans Field Office.

That, in itself, is significant.

Secondly, while in custody, one of the New Orleans CID officers looked through Oswald's collection of literature and decided to ask him about it.

Asked specifically what he knew about this guy Corliss Lamont, Oswald made quite a show of letting his interrogator know how ignorant that question was, because Oswald was clear that Corliss Lamont was a woman.

This means that Oswald was not even aware of the materials he was distributing.

THAT spells "spy" again.

[Jim DiEugenio]

BTW, does anyone have this picture of Oswald at the Gary Powers' trial that Walt talks about?

I would like to see if its really him.

[Magda Hassan]

BTW, does anyone have this picture of Oswald at the Gary Powers' trial that Walt talks about?

I would like to see if its really him.

Possibly in the Kremlin archives. Can make a request I suppose.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Magda:

That photo has been out there for quite awhile.

I imagine that it was in Pravda and then got distributed from there.

[Magda Hassan]

Can't recall it. Don't know if the Pravda archives are intact now knowing what happened to the paper subsequently. Izvestia newspaper was around then too I think but not sure if they are around now.

It might be here. Not sure if there is a pay wall:
https://www.eastview.com/Files/EastViewP...rchive.pdf
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/node/5839