Reclaiming History (361 page)

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When I saw the “room” on a trip to Dallas on September 22, 2004, I wondered how anyone could possibly use this small room as any type of functional study. The current tenant, John Thompson, who has lived there for four years, was kind enough to measure the room for me. It’s three feet nine inches by four feet five inches, a room he uses as a closet to put his “junk.” Incidentally, the door leading out of this small room to the outside, which enabled Oswald to come and go without Marina knowing, is no longer there.

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Sometime in the “late spring or early summer of 1963,” a Dallas police officer, W. R. Finigan, who was posted on the corner of Main and Ervay not far from Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall, spotted a man across the street passing out literature. He had a sign on his back (probably the placard Oswald wore around his neck) reading, “Viva Castro.” When Finigan’s superior, Sergeant D. V. Harkness, stopped to talk to Finigan for a moment, the man removed the “Viva Castro” sign, ran into a department store, and disappeared. Harkness told Finigan to forget about it. A passerby who had seen the leaflet peddler close up reported to the police that the guy had muttered, “Oh hell, here come the cops” as he fled. (CE 1409, 22 H 796, Letter from Finigan to J. R. Curry, May 15, 1964)

†
New Yorker
writer Albert H. Newman, in his fine book
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: The Reasons Why
, argues that all of this activity by Oswald, as early as March of 1963, revolved around a desire to get to Cuba and be recognized as a hero of the Cuban Revolution (Newman,
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
, p. 329), a plan he had first broached years before with Nelson Delgado, his buddy in the Marine Corps at El Toro. And Marina testified to Oswald’s interest in Cuba and Castro’s revolution while they were still in the Soviet Union (1 H 24; CE 944, 18 H 631–632).
Newman noticed the likelihood that Oswald was listening to nightly broadcasts of shortwave radio from Cuba, something the Warren Commission overlooked. The Commission sent the small Russian radio found in Oswald’s rooming house after the assassination to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, which reported that the radio “appears to be a normal receiver and there’s no evidence of its use for any other purpose” (CE 2768, 26 H 155). Newman, a shortwave listener himself, easily determined that Oswald’s “tourist” brand radio was capable of receiving Radio Havana’s twice-nightly English-language broadcasts on both the normal broadcast and the shortwave band. Oswald was certainly familiar with the shortwave band and Soviet attempts to jam it. He wrote in his notes on the Soviet Union, “But the jamming frequiences are only half those of the ‘Radio Moscow’ propaganda programs, which may be heard on any short wave radio in the United States and without jamming” (CE 95, 16 H 406). He also referred to a Voice of America broadcast he had heard in Minsk in a letter to his brother Robert (CE 316, 16 H 875). Mr. Johnson, the landlord of Oswald’s final residence in the Oak Cliff rooming house, said that Oswald retired early and listened to his small radio (Hugh Aynesworth, “Oswald Rented Room under Alias,”
Dallas Morning News
, November 23, 1963, p. 6).
In the summer of 1966, Newman used the cheapest portable, transistor shortwave radio he could find—it cost less than twelve dollars—to check Radio Havana’s signal in Dallas and found it to be consistently the strongest on the forty-nine-meter band (at 6.135 megacycles), three times stronger than it was in New York. Newman, in referring to Cuban radio, writes, “If soap and cigarettes can be sold over radio, so can hatred of the United States, its policies and its leaders.” (Newman,
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
, pp. 23–27)

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The April 8, 1963, edition of the
Militant
to which Oswald subscribed carried a story datelined Denver, March 27, and headlined “United Picket Line in Denver Greets ‘Night Riding’ Walker” and mentioned that Walker had challenged President Kennedy to drop the Eighty-second Airborne Division on Cuba and get rid of Fidel Castro (Newman,
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
, p. 342). It cannot be known whether Oswald got his copy of the edition on April 9, or before he left to shoot Walker on April 10, or sometime thereafter.

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Coleman lived in the house on the other side of the church parking lot and apparently was the only witness to have heard the sound of the rifle shot, though he originally thought it was a car backfire. Coleman told the FBI that he ran out to his backyard, stepped up on a bicycle, and looked into the floodlit church parking lot, where he saw about eight cars parked and a man hurrying to one of them, a white or beige 1950 Ford, with its headlights on and its motor running. The man was a white male, nineteen to twenty years old, about five feet ten inches tall and weighing around 130 pounds, “real skinny,” and had dark bushy hair, a thin face, and a large nose. A second man was walking to a 1958 black-over-white Chevrolet sedan. This man, also a white male, was around six feet one inch tall and weighed about 200 pounds. The first man got into the Ford and drove out of the lot, he said, at a “normal rate of speed” to Turtle Creek Boulevard—this is probably the car Walker saw as he came down the stairs with his pistol. The second man went to the Chevy, pushed the driver’s seat forward, and leaned into the backseat. At that point Coleman went back into the house and saw no more. (CE 2958, 26 H 437–438, FBI interview of Walter Coleman on June 3, 1964; position of cars in lot: CE 953-B, C, D, 23 H 773–775)

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Marina told her biographer, Priscilla McMillan, that the incident took place on Thursday morning, April 11, the day after the attempt on Walker’s life (McMillan,
Marina and Lee
, pp. 356–358). However, earlier, on July 24, 1964, just eight months after the event, Marina clearly told the Warren Commission that this incident took place “three days after this [attempt on Walker] happened.” Question: “Three days after he shot at General Walker you saw him destroy the [notebook], is that correct?” “Yes.” (11 H 292)

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When Dr. Vincent Guinn made his neutron activation analysis of the bullet for the HSCA, he determined that it was “extremely likely” that the Walker bullet was a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet manufactured by the Western Cartridge Company, the same as the ammunition used in the Kennedy assassination (1 HSCA 502, HSCA testimony of Dr. Guinn on September 8, 1978). The Dallas Police Department’s “General Offense Report” on April 10, 1963, its first report on the Walker shooting, described the bullet as a “steel-jacketed bullet” (CE 2001, 24 H 39), whereas the 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano bullets were copper-jacketed. Frazier told the Warren Commission that “some individuals commonly refer to rifle bullets as steel-jacketed bullets, when they actually in fact just have a copper alloy jacket” (3 H 439).

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Not only could the bathroom door be locked only from the inside, but also critics point out that most bathroom doors open inward. If this one did (as of September 22, 2004, when I visited the apartment, the door did, but it is unknown whether this was the same door that was on the hinges forty-one years earlier), and Marina was pushing forward, as she said she was, unless Oswald got so caught up in the moment that he forgot to turn the knob (in which case there wouldn’t have even been a struggle), she would only be pushing the door open, not keeping it closed. Hence, the critics question Marina’s story about the entire incident (e.g., Summers,
Not in Your Lifetime
, p. 124).

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In addition to the Murrets, who were Lee’s relatives on his mother’s side, Lee had many other aunts and cousins in the New Orleans area, all on his father’s side. But other than Aunt Hazel, all of them told the FBI they had never met him and could furnish no information concerning him. (CD 107, pp.14–16, January 13, 1964)

^*
The letter was not reproduced in the Warren Commission volumes.

† On a lighter note, Marina wrote that she and Lee had recently been to the French Quarter in the evening. “It’s a shame you didn’t manage to get there in the evening. For me it was especially interesting as it was the first time in my life I had seen such. There were many nightclubs there. Through the open doors were visible barely covered dancing girls (so as not to say entirely unclothed). Most of them had really very pretty, rare figures and if one doesn’t think about too many things, then one can like them very much” (CE 408, 17 H 89).

^*
The publications he would continue to receive which he had been subscribing to included the
Worker
, the
Militant
, and
Soviet Belorussia
, an organ of the Soviet government. It’s noteworthy that in an April 19, 1963, speech by President Kennedy reported in the
Militant
, he said that “in five years time” it was likely that Castro would be deposed, and the April 29, 1963, edition of the
Militant
quoted a statement by Robert F. Kennedy on April 22, that “we can’t just snap our fingers and make Castro go away. But we can fight for this. We can dedicate all our energy and best possible brains to that effort.” (McMillan,
Marina and Lee
, pp.399–400, 611–612 note 2)
It was clear to Oswald that the Kennedy administration wanted to overthrow his hero, Fidel Castro.

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On his own membership card, Lee signed his name, then instructed Marina to sign the name “A. J. Hidell” above the typed words “Chapter President.” When Marina, perplexed, said, “You have selected this name because it sounds like Fidel,” Lee blushed, then said, “Shut-up, it is none of your business.” Marina was convinced Hidell was nothing but an “altered Fidel,” and she laughed in his face at such foolishness. If it wasn’t Fidel, she pressed him, then who was Hidell? He was stuck and muttered the contradiction that Hidell “was his own name and that there is no Hidell in existence.” Oh, Marina said, taunting him, so you have “two names?” “Yes,” he said, with nowhere else to go. He finally recovered his mental equilibrium and said it was necessary to use this fictitious name so “people will think I have a big organization.” Marina played her husband’s silly game and wrote the name A. J. Hidell on the card, as Lee insisted she do. (5 H 401, 1 H 64, WCT Marina N. Oswald)

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On the Certificate of Vaccination document, Oswald used his rubber-stamp kit to imprint the name of “Dr. A. J. Hideel,” whose office he listed as P.O. Box 30016, New Orleans. He failed to notice his misspelling of his favorite alias, “Hidell.” More seriously, he misprinted Dr. Hideel’s post office box address, reversing the last two numbers, an error he repeated, more consequentially, when he stamped some of his handbills—if any potential recruit did try to get in touch with the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Oswald might never have known about it. The rubber-stamped location on his handbills exists in two versions, one giving A. J. Hidell’s name and the incorrect post office box number “30016, New Orleans, LA” under “Location” and the other stamped “L. H. Oswald” and giving his correct 4907 Magazine Street address. (Cadigan Exhibit No. 23, 19 H 296–297; CE 2966-A and B, 26 H 448)

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Hosty had been doing the usual things to pick up Oswald’s trace, and learned in May that Lee and Marina had apparently left the Dallas area (4 H 443, WCT James P. Hosty Jr.).

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The shortness of this period of personal neglect is evidenced by the fact that Adrian Alba, the operator of the garage next door to the coffee company where Lee spent so many of his work breaks, apparently doesn’t recall it at all. His only recollection of Oswald in this regard is that he couldn’t figure out how someone whose job was an oiler “was always extremely neat and clean. At anytime during the day his pants had a neat crease in them and his shirt was always clean—no oil on them at all” (HSCA Record 180-10072-10047, HSCA staff interview of Adrian Alba on January 24, 1978, p.2).

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No wonder. A hundred dollars was about all Lee and Marina had to their names. They never had a bank account or safe-deposit box during their marriage and Marina said that in New Orleans Lee put the family savings in a wallet he kept at their home. She estimated that there “might be $100” or two hundred dollars at the most in the wallet. Since he had no source of income other than the modest compensation he received while working, Oswald could never adequately provide for his family, and he felt shamed by this. Marina said that she was aware of the shame he felt and therefore very seldom spoke to him about finances or money or finding a job. Speaking of the New Orleans period, Lillian Murret, Oswald’s aunt, said, “Lee was very poor. They were practically starving.” (CE 1781, 23 H 387, FBI interview of Marina Oswald on November 28, 1963; HSCA Record 180-10075-10352, HSCA deposition of Lillian Murret on November 6, 1978, p.15) The situation did not improve much in Dallas. When I asked Ruth Paine at the London trial, “How would you characterize the financial condition of the Oswalds?” she responded, “They were very poor” (Transcript of
On Trial
, July 24, 1986, p.627).

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Vincent T. Lee later told the Warren Commission that he decided to quit corresponding with Oswald. “He had gone ahead and acted on his own without any authorization [to set up a New Orleans chapter]…and then, when somebody goes off like this, violating all the rules that you send him, it comes as quite a disappointment because you have had hopes. Obviously, this man was not operating in an official capacity for the organization” (10 H 90).
The hapless Lee was the only member of the “New Orleans branch” of the FPCC, a branch that had never been chartered by the national committee.

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After the FBI confirmed Oswald’s residence at 4907 Magazine Street, Mrs. Lena Garner, Oswald’s landlady, recalled that the agent, Milton Kaack (one of two New Orleans FBI agents—the other, Warren de Brueys—assigned to monitor Oswald’s activities), asked her “different little things about if I had seen him go out and did he have company and all this and that.” Concerned, she asked Kaack, “I hope I don’t have the wrong type of person in my house,” and he told her, “Oh, no.” He gave her his phone number and told her to call him if any unusual activities pertaining to Oswald took place. (CE 826, 17 H 755, xxii, FBI report of SA Milton Kaack on October 31, 1963; HSCA Record 180-10104-10364, Testimony of Lena Garner before HSCA on May 5, 1978, pp.8–10; HSCA staff interview of Mrs. Jesse Garner on February 20, 1978) Though Agent Hosty had lost Oswald’s trail in Dallas, the New York City FBI office learned from an informant that on June 26, Oswald, with a post office box numbered 30061 in New Orleans, had corresponded with the
Worker
in New York, and this information was passed on to the New Orleans office of the FBI. Another informant (almost undoubtedly a New Orleans post office employee) advised the New Orleans FBI office on July 23 that Oswald’s post office box had been rented on June 3, and Oswald had given his address as 657 French Street (as indicated, the Murrets lived at 757 French Street) in New Orleans. It is not clear from the record how the FBI got Oswald’s address on Magazine Street since the Murrets never indicated the FBI came to their door until after Labor Day. (CE 833, 17 H 794; CE 826, 17 H 754–755; 8 H 146–147, WCT Lillian Murret)