The endless
tangle of questions about bullets, trajectories, wounds,
time sequences and inconsistent testimony that has surrounded
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and has obsessively
fascinated, if not entirely blinded, a generation of assassination
buffs-probably never will be resolved.
Within this morass
of facts. however, there is a central actor, Lee Harvey
Oswald. His rifle, which fired the fatal bullet into the
president, was found in the sniper's nest, His cartridge
cases were also found near the body of a murdered policeman
on the route his flight. He was captured resisting arrest
with the loaded murder revolver in his hand.
In light of this
overwhelming evidence, the issue that ought to have concerned
Americans was not Oswald's technical guilt but his dangerous
liaisons abroad. Only eight weeks before the assassination
he had excited FBI and CIA interest in his activities by
renewing his contacts with Cuban and Soviet intelligence
officers in Mexico City. Although these foreign connections
remained of great concern to the two U S. intellige agencies,
they were considered too sensitive to be aired, publicly
in the emotional aftermath of the president's slaying.
Oswald was not
a "loner- in the conventional sense. Ever since he
was handed a pamphlet about the Rosenberg prosecution at
the age of 15, he had sought out affiliations with political
organizations, front groups and foreign nations that opposed
the policies of the U.S. When
he was 16. he wrote the Socialist Party "I am a Marxist
and have been studying Socialist Principles for well over
five years" and he requested information about joining
their "Youth League-." He also attempted to persuade
a friend to join the youth auxiliary of the Communist
Party. He subsequently made membership inquiries to such
organizations as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist
Labor Party, The Gus Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee,
the Daily Worker, The Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the
Communist Party, USA correspondence that brought him
under surveillance by the FBI,
While still in
the early stages of his flirtation with political causes,
0swald joined the Marine Corps . In October 1959, after
a two-year stint as a radar operator, Oswald became the
first Marine to defect to the Soviet Union, In Moscow, he
delivered a letter stating. "I affirm that my allegiance
is to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
Not only did
he publically renounce his American citizenship but he told
the U.S. consul that he intended to turn over to the Soviet
Union military secrets that he had acquired while serving
in the Marines, adding that he had data of "Special
interest" to the Russians. Since he indeed had exposure
to military secrets such as the U-2 spy piane and radar
identitification system, and since he may have collected
data while on active duty, his defection had serious espionage
implications.
Oswald thus had compromised all the
secret data he had come in contact with in the Marines. He
had also through this act put himself in the hands of his
hosts.He was now completely dependent on the Soviets for financial
support, legal status and protection.
Before disappearing into the Soviet
hinterland for a year, Oswald spelled out his operational
creed in a long letter to his brother. From Moscow, he wrote
presciently of his willingness to commit murder for a political
cause: "I want you to understand what I say now, I do
not say lightly, or unknowingly, since I've been in the military
.... In the event of war I would kill any American who put
a uniform on in defense of the American Government --",
and then ominously added for emphasis, " Any American."
Although his letter was routinely intercepted by the CIA and
microfilmed, no discernable attention was paid to the threat
contained in it .
When Oswald returned from the Soviet
Union in June 1962 (with a little help from a State Department
eager to demonstrate that it could win back a defector from
the Soviets), joined by a Russian wife, he retained his militant
convictions. In Dallas, where he settled, he purchased a rifle
with telescopic sights and a revolver from a mail-order house
under a false name. He also lectured his more liberal acquaintances
on the need for violent action rather than mere words. General
Edwin A. Walker, an extreme conservative, who had been active
in Dallas organizing anti-Castro guerrillas became in the
Spring of 1963 a particular focus of Oswald's attention. He
repeatedly suggested to a German geologist, Volkmar Schmidt,
and other friends, that General walker should be treated like
a "murderer at large". He did not stop at fierce
words. For weeks, he methodically stalked Walker's movements,
photographing his residence from several angles.
He then had his wife photograph him,
dressed entirely in black, with his revolver strapped on a
holster on his hip, his sniper's rifle in his right hand,
and two newspapers --~The Worker~ and the~Militant~ -- in
his left hand. He made three copies of the photograph-- one
of which he inscribed, dated "5--IV-63" and sent
to a Dallas acquaintance, George De Mohrenschildt. He then
left with his rifle wrapped in a raincoat, telling his wife
he was off to "target practice", but his target,
General Walker, was out of town that night. Five nights later,
Oswald returned to Walker's house, and fired a shot at him
that missed his head by inches, demonstrating that he had
the capacity as well as the willingness to kill "Any
American".
After the failed assassination, Oswald
went to New Orleans, where he became the organizer for the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Aside from printing leaflets,
staging demonstrations, getting arrested and appearing on
local radio talk shows in support of Castro that summer, Oswald
attempted to personally infiltrate an anti-Castro group that
was organizing sabotage raids against Cuba. He explained to
friends that he could figure out his "anti-imperialist"
policy by "reading between the lines" of the Militant
and other such publications. In August, he wrote the central
committee of the Communist Party USA asking "Whether
in your opinion, I can compete with anti-progressive forces
above ground, or whether I should always remain in the background,i.e.
underground". During this hot summer, while Oswald spent
evenings practicing sighting his rifle in his backyard, the
Militant raged on about the Kennedy Administration's "terrorist
bandit" attacks on Cuba. And as the semi-secret war against
Castro escalated, Oswald expressed increasing interest in
reaching Cuba.
Oswald told his wife he planned to
hijack an airliner to Havana, suggesting, as the summer progressed,
that he might even earn a position in Castro's government.
On September 9th, in a report that appeared on the front page
of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Castro himself warned that
if American leaders continued "aiding plans to eliminate
Cuban leaders ... they themselves will not be safe".
The implication of this threat was
not lost on Oswald. Telling his wife that they might never
meet again, he left New Orleans two weeks later headed for
the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. To convince the Cubans of
his bona fides-- and seriousness-- he had prepared a dossier
on himself, which included a 10 page resume, outlining his
revolutionary activities, newspaper clippings about his defection
to the Soviet Union, propaganda material he had printed, documents
he had stolen from a printing company engaged in classified
map reproduction for the U.S Army, his correspondence with
the Fair Play for Cuba Committee executives and photographs
linking him to the Walker shooting.
Oswald applied for a visa at the Cuban
Embassy on the morning of September 27th 1963. He said that
he wanted to stop in Havana en route to the Soviet Union.
On the application the consular office who interviewed him,
noted: "The applicant states that he is a member of the
American Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Despite such recommendations,
Oswald was told that he needed a Soviet visa before the Cuban
visa could be issued. He argued over this requisite with the
Cuban counsel, Eusebio Azque, in front of witnesses, and reportedly
made wild claims about services he might perform for the Cuban
cause. During the next five days, he traveled back and forth
between the Soviet and Cuban embassies attempting to straighten
out the difficulty.
When he telephoned from the Cuban
embassy to arrange an appointment at the Soviet Embassy with
an officer called Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov, he set off
alarm bells at the CIA, which had been surreptitiously monitoring
the phone line. Kostikov was a KGB officer who had been under
close surveillance in Mexico by the FBI ( and who,in 1971,
was identified by a KGB defector in London as the head of
sabotage operations in Mexico). By the time the CIA had identified
Oswald, and notified the FBI, he had left Mexico.
When he returned to Dallas that
October, Oswald assumed a different identity--"O.H.Lee--
and, separating himself from his family, he moved to a rooming
house. He also forbade his wife from divulging his whereabouts.
He then got a job at the Texas Book Depository, which overlooked
the convergence of the three main streets into central Dallas.
On October 18th, Oswald's visa
was approved by the Cuban Foreign Ministry (despite the
fact that he had not officially received a Soviet visa,as
required.) Three weeks later, he wrote another letter to
the Soviet Embassy, referring to his meeting with Kostikov
in Mexico, and adding cryptically: "Had I been able
to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy
there would have had time to complete our business."
FBI counterintelligence, which had
intercepted this letter in Washington, and evidently was interested
in Oswald's "business" in Havana, urgently requested
its field agents in Dallas to locate him. An FBI agent, James
Hosty, rushed over to the home where Oswald's family was living,
and questioned his wife, but he did not find him Oswald until
November 22nd, when he had been arrested for the murder of
a Dallas policeman and President Kennedy. In
the final analysis, the Warren Commission turned out to be
right: Oswald was the assassin. He had brought his rifle to
work on November 22nd, carefully prepared a concealed sniper's
position at a sixth floor window, and, waiting in ambush for
almost an hour, shot the President as the motorcade passed
below. The possibility that he had assistance-- for example,
someone setting off a firecracker as a diversion-- can never
be precluded. But the real question is not how but why Oswald
assassinated the President.
The most obvious motive was provided
by Oswald himself in his letter from Moscow: To kill any American
who put on a uniform against his cause. He openly subscribed
to the terrorist creed that a man with a rifle could change
history; and, as far as Oswald was concerned, President Kennedy
and General Walker were both actively working to destroy his
avowed hero-- Castro.
Whether Oswald , given his clear disposition towards killing
an American leader, was prodded or otherwise induced into
committing the assassination was the question that vexed American
intelligence after the shooting. Oswald had disappeared in
the Soviet Union for more than a year, without yielding a
trace of what, if any, training and indoctrination he had
undergone. The only record of this missing year was a "diary"
he brought out with him, which had in fact been written in
two days presumably to provide him with a consistent cover
story or legend. His five days with the Cubans in Mexico City
were also a blank -- although friendly sources within the
Cuban Embassy indicated that he was pressured to prove his
loyalty and worth. Although the Cuban government insisted,
through both official and intelligence channels, that Oswald
was presumed crazy and dismissed as such by the embassy staff,
it left unanswered the disturbing question of why a visa was
approved for Oswald-- after the report was received from the
embassy. Among the eleven questions prepared by the CIA for
Mexican interrogators was one that expressed its direct concern:
"Was the assassination of of President Kennedy planned
by Fidel Castro ... and were the final details worked out
inside the Cuban Embassy".
In Dallas, before Mexican investigators
could question their sources, Oswald was shot dead, and with
his death ended the hope of unraveling his motive.
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