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Lone Gunman or Patsy: A Cultural History of Lee Harvey Oswald
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University
By
Michael L. Moravitz
Master of Arts
George Mason University, 2002
Director: Martin Sherwin, Professor
History Department
Spring Semester 2011
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA

Copyright: 2011 Michael L. Moravitz
All Rights Reserved
ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………...iv
Abstract................................................................................................................……….v
Introduction .......................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1 The Warren Commission and Oswald: Biography as Motive........................17
Chapter 2 Oswald the Nut ...............................................................................................60
Chapter 3 Oswald the Red .............................................................................................98
Chapter 4 Oswald the Anti-Hero ..................................................................................139
Chapter 5 Oswald as Mob Patsy ...................................................................................173
Chapter 6 The Double Oswald, and Manchurian Candidate Oswald ...........................213
Chapter 7 Secret Agent Oswald ....................................................................................239
Chapter 8 Oswald on Television and Film ...................................................................288
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................333
Sources…………..……………………………………………………………………341
iii

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
Jack Ruby Guns Down Oswald ....................................................................................…4
The Infamous Photograph of Oswald with Weapons .....................................................18
A Subversive Re-Visioning of Oswald as Rock Singer ................................................140
Oswald in Police Custody .............................................................................................339
iv

ABSTRACT
LONE GUNMAN OR PATSY: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF LEE HARVEY
OSWALD
Michael L. Moravitz, PhD
George Mason University, 2011
Dissertation Director: Dr. Martin Sherwin
More than 40 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas,
Texas, the tragedy continues to spark controversy. Key questions remain in dispute, and
a battle has taken place in American culture over the alleged assassin, the enigmatic
former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. In American culture, there is not one Oswald but
many Oswalds, reflecting myriad theories about the assassination. In these portrayals,
Oswald appears as a post-modern man – how his life is interpreted depends on the
perspective of the viewer. Basic facts of Oswald’s life are debated concerning his
political beliefs, his connection to espionage, and what his role was in the assassination.
How one perceives Oswald in part reflects how one perceives the United States during
the Cold War: Oswald as lone gunman is an anomaly in a generally good society, and he
is placed outside the community politically and socially. Oswald as patsy reflects a
darker view of American society, in which he was connected to forces larger than himself
let loose in American society by the Cold War or active in the criminal underworld.

INTRODUCTION: THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION, AMERICAN CULTURE,
AND LEE HARVEY OSWALD
November 22nd, 1963. The day still haunts the American psyche and has left a
deep imprint on American culture. More than 40 years after the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, the tragedy continues to spark controversy
and debate. Key questions remain in dispute, and a battle has taken place in American
culture over the alleged assassin, the enigmatic former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald.
Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, set up a commission chaired by Chief
Justice Earl Warren to investigate the assassination after the murder of Oswald. The
Warren Commission and its supporters claimed that Oswald was the sole assassin, and
they described him in terms of a stock character of American culture, the anti-social
psychopathic loner. This portrait resonated with the history of previous assassins and
would-be assassins in the United States. As the chief counsel of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations, G. Robert Blakey, pointed out, “The typical political
assassin in the United States was a deranged, self-appointed savior, essentially a loner.” 1
To the Warren Commission and its defenders, Oswald was a malcontent with a failed
marriage and no other significant associations, a Marxist, and a little man who wanted to
make himself great through a terrible deed.
1
G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, The Plot to Kill the President, (New York:
Times Books, 1981), 372.
1

The Warren Commission's critics drew a different portrait of Oswald, replete with
shadows and doubt about his complicity, his associations, and ultimately the meaning of
his life. The critics described Oswald as a more complex figure – a man of the Cold War
– with ties to organized crime, the U.S. and Soviet intelligence communities, and anti-
Castro Cubans in the United States. Oswald himself told reporters after his arrest that he
was just a “patsy,” a dupe set up to take responsibility for the assassination, but he did not
say who was responsible. For many of these critics, Jack Ruby killed Oswald to silence
him. In some of the works presenting conspiracy theories, Oswald is depicted as more or
less innocent of involvement in the assassination, but in other works, he is still the
malcontented Marxist and pathological misfit described by the Warren Commission.
In American culture, there is not one Oswald but many Oswalds, reflecting
myriad theories about the assassination and different interpretations of the United States
at the height of the Cold War. In these cultural portrayals, Oswald appears as a post-
modern man – how his life is interpreted depends on the perspective of the viewer. There
was, of course, a single, historical figure but basic facts of Oswald’s life are debated
concerning his political beliefs, whether he was a spy, and what his role was in the
assassination.
For the Warren Commission and its defenders, there is the “Lone Nut” Oswald
that emphasizes the alleged assassin’s mental instability and anti-social behavior, or the
“Red Oswald” that stresses his supposed Marxist beliefs. For several novelists, writers,
and filmmakers there is also “the anti-hero Oswald” who is the flawed protagonist of the
assassination tragedy. To the critics of the Warren Commission, there is “Oswald as the
2

Mob Patsy” who is enmeshed in a plot to assassinate the president and is manipulated by
organized crime. There are also elaborate theories of a “Double Oswald” in which
Oswald’s identity is taken over by a conspirator, or “Manchurian Candidate Oswald” in
which he is brainwashed to carry out the assassination. The most popular conspiracy
theory is “Secret Agent Oswald” in which the accused assassin is an undercover U.S.
intelligence operative who takes the blame for a plot involving mobsters, the CIA, anti-
Castro Cubans, or a combination of these elements. For the critics, Oswald’s life, which
can be seen in so many contradictory ways, is a refracted image of the fears many
Americans felt of sinister groups in the nation.
How one views Oswald also could affect how one appraises President Kennedy.
The president’s assassination at the hands of the mob or extreme right-wing would give
Kennedy a heroic dimension: he died because of his moves to crack down on organized
crime, advance civil rights, or ease Cold War tensions. On the other hand, Kennedy slain
at the hands of Oswald as lone nut or left-wing extremist would have less impact on how
one interprets Kennedy or American society.
How one perceives Oswald in part reflects how one perceives the United States
during the Cold War: Oswald as lone gunman is a freakish anomaly in a generally good
society, and he is placed outside the community politically, socially, mentally, and
perhaps sexually. Oswald as patsy reflects a darker view of American society, in which
the former Marine was connected to forces larger than himself let loose in American
3

.
Figure 1: Jack Ruby Guns Down Oswald
4

society by the Cold War or active in the criminal underworld. These malignant forces
kill Kennedy and make Oswald their dupe.
During the Cold War, for the first time in U.S. history, a large military and
intelligence establishment was created to deal with the threat from the Soviet bloc. The
Cold War was an economic, political, and military struggle with serious consequences for
American society.. As the Cold War historian H. W. Brand points out, “Most perversely,
the call to arms against communism caused American leaders to subvert the principles
that constituted their country’s best argument against communism.” 2 Secrecy masked
the U.S. government’s covert, and helped feed public suspicion of authorities, especially
during the Vietnam era. Questions over the Kennedy assassination contributed to this
suspicion about government, with many Americans believing that a conspiracy was
responsible. The alleged conspirators – from across the political spectrum from the far
right to the far left – reflected uncertainty about Oswald himself.
This dissertation will look at popular books and films about the assassination from
1964 to the present to examine the different interpretations of Oswald, and show how
these reflect a politically and ideologically fractured American society. A model for this
study is historian David Greenberg’s Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image, which
describes the many images of President Richard Nixon through a variety of media,
including newspapers, political cartoons, television, and film. Greenberg explained that
“history consists not only in what important people did and said but equally in what they
2
H.W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 224,
5

symbolized – what they meant – to their publics.” 3 Greenberg wrote that he sometimes
describes his book as a “’cultural history’ of Nixon” because “the meanings of a figure as
rich and controversial as Nixon are found not just in high politics but also in the
culture.” 4
The results of Gallup opinion polls over the past 40 years will show how the
American people largely have embraced the popular discourses of conspiracy and have
rejected the official version of Oswald as the lone gunman. The Gallup polling
organization has compiled years of polling data since the assassination. According to this
data, a majority of Americans believe Oswald was part of a conspiracy, but given the
many different theories, Americans are divided over who is ultimately responsible. 5
From the day of the assassination, with news bulletins broadcast around the
world, the popular media has shaped the public’s perceptions of the murder of John F.
Kennedy. This has continued to the present, with the examinations of the assassination
done largely by the government, journalists, literary figures, and film directors rather than
historians. Historian Max Holland, in his essay “After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the
Assassination,” published in 1994, points out that “Very few of the more than 450 books
and tens of thousands of articles that compose the vast assassination literature published
since 1964 have been written by historians...The assassination is treated [by historians] as
3
David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image, (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2003), xi.
4
Greenberg, xii.
5
While a majority of Americans are convinced there was a conspiracy, younger people are more likely to
believe that Oswald did not act alone. Most Americans have long ago concluded that it is not paranoid to
believe Oswald was part of a conspiracy, but the many versions of Oswald’s life have split the public over
who ultimately was responsible for the assassination and manipulated Oswald as a patsy.
6

a footnote, or afterthought if it is addressed at all.” 6 Holland places the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy in the context of the Cold War and the Kennedy
administration’s efforts to kill Cuba’s Communist leader Fidel Castro. Holland argues
that Oswald was motivated by the Administration’s anti-Castro policies, which he
followed closely in the press, and that the Kennedy assassination was an unintended
consequence of the Administration’s hard-line policies toward Cuba. Oswald acted
alone, according to Holland, and hatched the plot to assassinate Kennedy on his own.
In his discussion of the literature of the critics of the Warren Commission,
Holland deplores what he calls “books that conjure up fantastic conspiracies through
innuendo, presumption, and pseudo-scholarship while ignoring provable but inconvenient
facts.” 7 He criticizes historians for not paying enough attention to the assassination, and
leaving the field to conspiracy theorists. He is critical of the Warren Commission for
failing to examine the CIA plots to kill Castro, which President Kennedy had his brother,
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, oversee from the Justice Department. For Holland,
efforts to kill Castro and undermine the Cuban Revolution provided the motivation for
Oswald. Holland notes that Castro himself spoke about U.S. plots to assassinate him in
an interview with the Associated Press shortly before the JFK assassination and
threatened retaliation. Holland speculates Oswald read the interview in newspapers while
in New Orleans. In Holland’s view, the missing link in the chain of evidence tying
Oswald to the crime is the lack of an appropriate motive for Oswald to kill the President.
6
Max Holland, “After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination,” Reviews in
American History, Vol, 22 No. 2 (June 1994, ) 191.
7
Holland, 191.
7

The Warren Commission, instead of focusing on Oswald’s “extreme politicization,”
described the self-styled Marxist as “a callow nonentity trying to elbow his way into
history by striking out at a president who had it all: looks, youth, and power.” In
Holland’s words, the truth was that “the Kennedys’ fixation on Castro had inadvertently
motivated a political sociopath.” Holland declares flatly “Oswald had no accomplices,
and there was no conspiracy, and nothing that has come to light since 1964 reasonably
allows for any other conclusion.” 8
Michael L. Kurtz is one of the few historians to examine the Kennedy
assassination. Kurtz agrees with Holland that historians have largely left the examination
of the assassination to non-historians and that Cuba was connected to the JFK
assassination. In fact, Kurtz describes his study, Crime of the Century, as “the only full-
length scholarly study of the Kennedy assassination.” However, Kurtz parts company
with Holland over whether there was a conspiracy. Kurtz claims, “the bulk of the
evidence pointed to Fidel Castro as the mastermind” behind the murder plot. 9 Like
Holland, Kurtz also notes the AP interview with Castro, but takes the Cuban leader at his
word that he would attempt to retaliate against American plots against him.
In an elaborate counter-plot outlined by Kurtz, Castro persuaded the Florida
mafia chieftain Santos Trafficante to have his mobsters kill Kennedy instead of trying to
assassinate the Cuban leader as the CIA had hoped. According to Kurtz, the mob boss
decided to kill Kennedy because of money: Castro in 1959 had “agreed to allow
8
Holland, 201-203.
9
Michael L. Kurtz, Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination From a
Historian’s Perspective, 2
8
nd Edition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993), ix.

Trafficante to use Cuba as a staging area for the importation of illegal narcotics into
Florida.” 10 Kurtz discounts the theory that the mob killed Kennedy for its own purposes
instead of at the bidding of Castro. Many theorists argue the mob was angered over the
Kennedy administration’s crackdown on the mafia, especially in light of the secret
collusion between organized crime and U.S. intelligence to attempt to assassinate Castro.
Kurtz, however, contends that the mafia faced an even greater crackdown after
Kennedy’s death, but this presupposes that the mob would know beforehand that they
would face a tougher time in subsequent administrations. Furthermore, Kurtz provides
little evidence – other than the AP interview – to bolster his contention that Castro had
the American mafia killed his nemesis.
While Kurtz’s theory seems fantastic (and he acknowledges it cannot be proven
and that future disclosures may change his views), it underlines the difficulty in pinning
down who Oswald was, who he associated with, and whether ultimately he was a lone
gunman or patsy (the word Oswald himself used to describe his connection to the
assassination). Kurtz concludes, “It is quite conceivable that Lee Harvey Oswald was a
‘patsy,’” especially since he seemed to be always associating with anti-Castro Cubans
and right-wing extremists in New Orleans rather than leftists. In Kurtz’s words, “In his
twenty-four years, Oswald lived a life so riddled with contradictions and unexplained
events that it continues to mystify assassination researchers. The deeper one delves into
the details of Oswald’s life, the more ensnared he becomes in mazelike complexity.” 11
10 Kurtz, l-li.
11 Kurtz, 232-233.
9

This dissertation will delve into this “mazelike complexity” by examining the
contested details of Oswald’s life. There is a huge amount of material on the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, but there is no cultural history focusing on popular
portrayals of Oswald. This study will not make an exhaustive study of all these works
nor will it try to answer the question of who killed Kennedy. The forensic and other
evidence related to the assassination will not be discussed, except as it relates to how
Oswald is portrayed. Instead, this study will focus on some of the key works by the
critics and supporters of the Warren Commission, works by important literary figures
(Norman Mailer and Don De Lillo), and popular television shows and movies that portray
Oswald (including The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, JFK,
and Ruby). This study will cover all the important types of Oswald portrayals, and
examine what these different interpretations can tell us about American culture in the
decades after the assassination.
In examining Oswald’s life, this study will cast a wide net over different genres,
examining popular journalistic books and exposés about the assassination, as well as
novels, films, and television shows from the time of the Warren Commission to the
present. Works of culture are “texts” that have shaped public attitudes about the
assassination. The official version of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life as described by the
Warren Commission and its defenders will be compared with alternative cultural
portrayals of the alleged assassin. The ideas of cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz,
have relevance to historians of culture. In his words, “Believing…man is an animal
suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs,
10

and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an
interpretive one in search of meaning.” To explain culture, Geertz advises researchers to
pick through “piled up structures of inference and implication,” and to engage in “thick
description” – a close explication of details of meaning in cultural expressions. 12 In this
way, this study will try to describe what the different versions of Oswald’s life mean in
relation to, not only Oswald and the Kennedy assassination, but more importantly to
American society.
Popular portrayals of Oswald have generally placed him in the context of a
conspiracy because he did in fact have ties, or at least hints of ties, to organized crime,
intelligence agencies, or anti-Castro Cubans. The historian Richard Hofstadter, however,
has dismissed such theories of conspiracies and what he calls “the paranoid style in
American politics,” which he describes as a far right-wing focus on alleged conspiracies
as a driving force in American history. According to Hofstadter, the practitioner of the
paranoid style sees history as “a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost
transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of
political give-and-take, but an all-out crusade.” 13 Similarly, professor of cultural studies
Peter Knight has deplored what he calls “a conspiracy culture” in the United States. He
12
Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture,” The
Interpretation of Cultures, (New York: Basic Books, 1973) 5-6.
13
Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996 (1964)), 29. While Hofstadter focused on
right-wing conspiracy theories, his idea of the “paranoid style” can also be seen in some
of the conspiracy theories regarding the Kennedy assassination from leftist critics of the
Warren Commission. Ironically, some of the alleged conspirators identified by these
leftist critics also resemble the paranoid right-wingers described by Hofstadter.
11

writes, “Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 in particular,
conspiracy theories have become a regular feature of everyday political and cultural
life…part and parcel of many people’s normal way of thinking about who they are and
how the world works.” 14
Hofstadter and Knight overlook the differences between plausible conspiracy
theories and ludicrous ones. It is much more believable to say, for example, that
organized crime was involved in Kennedy’s assassination than to assert the U.S.
government recovered alien bodies at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Some conspiracy
theories are more believable than others, and conspiracy theorists have thrived because
the Warren Commission did not answer fundamental questions. After all, another official
investigation, the House Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s, concluded that
Oswald did not act alone. 15
In looking at books, novels, and films, this study will follow other historians who
have compared and contrasted different genres of popular culture. A number of cultural
historians have examined cultural works connected to the Kennedy assassination,
especially in the aftermath of the movie, JFK. There is no study, however, solely focused
on how Oswald has been portrayed. Among historians who have examined the culture of
the Kennedy assassination, David M. Lubin studied the famous images connected to the
assassination and Kennedy administration. Lubin points out that, “Culture, popular or
14
Peter Knight, Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X Files, (New York:
Routledge, 2000), 2.
15
Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations U.S. House of Representatives, (New
York: Bantam Books, 1979).
12

otherwise, is not a mere side effect of history or a glittering distraction from it but is
instead integral to it, playing an active role in the making of that history.” Lubin argues
that, “Our perceptions of JFK and his era, not to mention our own, rely entirely upon
endlessly replicated and infinitely elastic chains of images from art, literature, and
media.” 16 These images include the Zapruder film of the assassination, and the widely-
seen photographs of Oswald posing in the backyard with a rifle and of Jack Ruby’s
murder of Oswald.
Similarly, Art Simon in Dangerous Knowledge explores art and film about the
JFK assassination, including Hollywood movies, Andy Warhol pop-art, underground
cinema, and photographs. He argues that these images have been the subject of a
“complex struggle over access to and interpretation of film and photographic imagery,”
and that the debate over who killed JFK “raised crucial questions about who should
assume the authorship of history.” 17
Professor Barbie Zelizer of Temple University contends that the news media’s
coverage of the assassination also was the focus of an intense struggle over who had the
authority to tell the story of the murder of John F. Kennedy. She studied the media’s
coverage over the years since the Kennedy assassination and concludes that journalists
had a professional stake in upholding the Warren Commission’s findings. According to
Zelizer, journalists, especially those in the television industry, saw the official version of
16
David M. Lubin, Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images, (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003), xi., xiii.
17
Art Simon, Dangerous Knowledge: the JFK Assassination in Art and Film,
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 2.
13

events as validating their coverage of the murder and their own reportage – even though
there were many problems with their coverage of the assassination. Zelizer writes,
“Journalists’ ability to create narrative patterns shaped the assassination into a
recognizable news tale, allowing them to reassert through narrative the control they had
lost in coverage.” The news media, in Zelizer’s view, exhibited a strong territorial
instinct in protecting their professional “turf” (the Kennedy assassination) from all
interlopers, such as the independent Warren Commission critics, historians, and
especially film directors in Hollywood. Zelizer writes that Oliver Stone’s controversial
movie about the assassination, JFK, “contested the journalistic authority their [the news
media’s] versions imply.” 18
This dissertation agrees with Zelizer and Simon in seeing American culture as an
arena in which the government, historians, journalists, and artists have struggled over
who has the authority to answer the question, who killed JFK? Similarly, in her study
Tangled Memories, Marita Sturken described “cultural memory” as “a field of cultural
negotiation through which different stories vie for a place in history.” 19 Certainly, the
Kennedy assassination has been a field of “cultural negotiation,” with the different
versions of Oswald’s life and his guilt or innocence the subject of controversy and
contention. Sturken herself studied the history of the Zapruder film of the assassination,
and stated, “The instant captured in this film is historicized as the moment when the
18
Barbie Zelizer, Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the
Shaping of Collective Memory, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 197, 213.
19
Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: the Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic, and the
Politics of Remembering, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1.
14

country changed, when it went from being a nation of promise, good intentions, and
youthful optimism to one of cynicism, violence, and pessimism.” 20 Similarly, Robert
Burgoyne, in Film Nation, contended that the fragmented, “collagelike narrative
structure” of Oliver Stone’s JFK, which mixes documentary film, recreations, and
suppositions, is a reflection of a “national narrative in disorder and disarray” and “a
disruption of the …historical narrative that gives continuity to national identity.” 21
Robert Rosenstone also defended the film as a serious movie that engaged historical
“issues, ideas, data, and arguments.” 22 Instead of just being a recreation or a costume
drama, JFK, according to Rosenstone, provoked the audience to think anew about the
assassination.
Despite its alleged flaws, JFK was a significant and important film given its effect
on public attitudes about the assassination, the enormous controversy it generated, and its
impact on public policy. Congress subsequently established a review board to release
public documents about the assassination. As Sturken and Burgoyne argue, the
assassination is a significant cultural watershed, ending a presidency seen – rightly or
wrongly -- as embodying youthful vigor and optimism and beginning a period of social
upheaval, marked by controversy over the Vietnam War, further political assassinations,
20
Sturken, 28.
21
Robert Burgoyne, Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History, (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 88.
22
Robert Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: the Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 128.
15

and youthful protest. Authors Norman Mailer and Priscilla Johnson McMillan have even
seen Oswald as a precursor to the hippies of the later 1960’s. 23
Since so much of the history of the assassination is debated, cultural works on the
assassination have taken on even more importance as a way for Americans to struggle
with the meaning of November 22 nd , 1963. Novels, television shows, and films have
allowed writers and movie directors to speculate about Oswald in a way that the official
version did not. The assassination and Oswald’s life are a significant field of study given
the wide public interest in the assassination and its impact on popular culture. This is
because mystery still surrounds Oswald’s life, and he remains a remarkably opaque
figure, upon whom much is projected. Oswald is among the most investigated
individuals in history, and yet there are many different versions of key facts in Oswald’s
life and his personality. Jim Garrison, the crusading and controversial New Orleans
district attorney depicted in JFK, declared that Oswald was a hero based on Garrison’s
belief that Oswald was an American intelligence agent who was a “false defector” to the
Soviet Union and played no role in the assassination but instead was set up. Other
conspiracy theorists believe Oswald played a role in the assassination but was the fall guy
for sinister and powerful forces such as U.S. intelligence and organized crime. Also,
although this theory is less popular than in the 1960’s, some speculated that Oswald was
a Soviet or Cuban intelligence operative.
23
See Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee, (New York: Harper and Row, 1977),
157, and Norman Mailer, Oswald’s Tale: an American Mystery (New York: Random
House, 1995), 506-508.
16

CHAPTER 1: THE WARREN COMMISSION AND OSWALD:
BIOGRAPHY AS MOTIVE
The Warren Commission fired the opening salvo in the cultural battle over
Oswald’s life. Kennedy's successor, President Johnson, faced rumors and speculation
about a possible conspiracy, some even involving himself. Dallas nightclub owner Jack
Ruby's murder of Oswald, two days after Kennedy's death, destroyed the possibility that
the alleged assassin would stand trial for the murder. To contain the political
consequences of these events, Johnson directed the establishment of an official,
bipartisan investigative panel, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Rushing to complete its
work before the November 1964 election, the Commission tried to paint a convincing
portrait of Oswald as a loner at odds with society to support its famous conclusion that it
found "no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any
conspiracy, domestic or foreign.” 24
To the Commissioners and many Americans, Oswald’s guilt was epitomized in
the image of Commission Exhibit Number 134, which appeared on the cover of the
popular magazine, Life. This photograph depicted the alleged assassin dressed in black, a
24
Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F.
Kennedy, (1964; repr., New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991) 21.
17

Figure 2: Infamous Photograph of Oswald Posing with Weapons
18

pistol at his hip, and a rifle -- the rifle that allegedly killed JFK -- held in his left hand,
Marxist literature in his right hand. Oswald appeared cocky, aggressive, and
dangerous.He resembled, perhaps consciously if the photograph is authentic, popular
perceptions of the black-hatted gunslinger of the old West or the social outcast, mass
murderer of modern times. David M. Lubin, who researched images associated with
President Kennedy, said the photograph of Oswald evoked popular representations of
gunslingers from the early 1960’s, such as the TV western Have Gun Will Travel, as well
as the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War. 25 Later critics of the Warren Commission
who advanced various conspiracy theories about the assassination argued that the image
must be a fake. They would seize on Oswald’s statement in police custody that someone
had superimposed his head on another person’s body. Some photographic experts said
the shadows in the photograph did not align properly. Oswald’s wife, however, testified
that her husband asked her to take the photograph several months before the
assassination. To the Warren Commissioners, the photograph was a graphic illustration
of Oswald's complicity – even though it provided no direct evidence that Oswald used the
rifle to kill Kennedy.
The two differing interpretations of the photograph – real or fake – reflect the
debate in American cultural over Lee Harvey Oswald. To the Warren Commission and
its defenders, the image evokes Oswald as “lone-nut” assassin: he stands alone in his
backyard, dressed in black – a color associated with evil, holding not only the rifle that
allegedly killed Kennedy and the pistol that killed officer J.D. Tippet, but also reading
25 Lubin, 218-219.
19

material that links him to extreme left-wing views that, according to the official version
of events, helped guide his actions. For the most part, defenders of the Warren
Commission would accept this as the proper representation of Oswald.
To conspiracy theorists, however, the Oswald image as counterfeit indicates a plot
that set up Oswald to mask the nefarious forces actually responsible for the assassination.
These critics say the Oswald image fits too comfortably with the official narrative. In
fact, embedded in the Warren Commission report, as will be shown, are suggestions of
conspiratorial associations that run counter to the official version.
The Warren Commission was created to stifle what the official report would
consistently term “rumors” and “speculation” of a conspiracy. In the post-assassination
environment in Washington, as reports of a conspiracy circulated, President Johnson and
his aides were more interested in allaying the public’s suspicions about the assassination
and convincing Americans of Oswald’s guilt than in exhaustively investigating the
evidence wherever it may lead. Disclosures over the years after the Warren
Commission’s report show that Johnson and members of his administration were anxious
to squelch the rumors and presupposed the Warren Commission's ultimate conclusion
that Oswald was the lone assassin. Many critics of the Commission have pointed to a
memo to Johnson aide Bill Moyers from Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach
on November 25, 1963, one day after Oswald was killed by Ruby, in which Katzenbach
laid out the rationale for releasing the FBI report on the assassination and forming a blue-
ribbon panel to investigate the assassination. Katzenbach in fact was largely in charge of
20

the Justice Department, with the slain president’s brother, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy, in agonized mourning. Katzenbach argued that “The public must be satisfied
that he [Oswald] did not have confederates who are still at large, and that the evidence
was such that he would have been convicted at trial.” “Speculation about Oswald’s
motivation,” he went on, “ought to be cut off, and we should have more basis for
rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is
saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists.” 26
Katzenbach concluded by writing that, “We need something to head off public
speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort” by releasing the FBI report and
possibly taking the other step of forming a “Presidential Commission of unimpeachable
personnel.” 27 Although Katzenbach stated that “all the facts” should be made public, he
was clearly assuming that Oswald was solely responsible, and that the Johnson
administration had an interest in ending discussion of a possible conspiracy, rather than
probing any evidence of a conspiracy. A presidential panel would prevent any
26
History Matters Archive (www.history-matters.com/archive). Because of the public
interest in the Kennedy assassination and political assassinations in the 1960’s in general,
many documents related to these controversial events are available online, including at
the History Matters Archive, which describes itself as a site dedicated to shedding
“needed light on the darker aspects of post-World War II American politics.” Another,
more extensive archive is available from the non-profit Mary Ferrell Archive
(www.maryferrell.org), which is “dedicated to the exploration of the deeper stories
behind the national crises and tragedies that shape our society.” The documents at these
sites have been scanned from the National Archives and other official sources, and the
supposition of these organizations that the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy does
not affect the validity of the documents.
27
History Matters Archive.
21

congressional inquiry, take the investigation out of the hands of the Dallas police, and
exert executive administration authority over the matter.
Katzenbach would later acknowledge in his testimony to the House Select
Committee on Assassinations that his memo was not “artistically phrased.” He stood
behind the findings of the Warren Commission, but expressed regret if the committee
found its investigation to be inadequate. Katzenbach denied that he wanted to squelch
evidence of a conspiracy, stating that “if there was a conspiracy, then we ought to say
there was a conspiracy.” However, he indicated the political rationale for containing
claims of a plot. He said it was “desirable” to quickly wrap up and make public the
conclusions of investigators to end “speculation” in the United States and abroad of a plot
by the right-wing, left-wing, or eve President Johnson himself. 28
Johnson was initially wary of appointing a commission instead of allowing the
Texas state authorities to probe the matter. (At the time, there was no federal statute on
presidential assassinations.) In trying to convince a skeptical Senator Richard Russell – a
Democrat from Georgia -- to take on the onerous task of serving on the commission,
Lyndon Johnson indicated he was more fearful of congressional hearings implicating the
Soviet bloc in the assassination and possibly causing nuclear war than in following any
evidence of a conspiracy. According to a transcript of the taped telephone conversation
with Russell on November 29, 1963, Johnson said, “we’ve got to take this out of the
arena where they’re testifying that [Soviet premier Nikita] Khrushchev and [Cuban leader
Fidel] Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill forty million
28 History Matters Archive.
22

Americans in an hour.” 29 It is not clear whether Johnson really feared a possible nuclear
war over public perceptions of a Soviet-led assassination conspiracy, or if the wily Texan
was merely using this as a ploy to convince Senator Russell. Coming just over a year
after the Cuban missile crisis that led the two sides to the brink of nuclear war, however,
there had to be real fear of the implications of a Soviet plot as well as a recognition that a
nuclear war would be a disaster.
Johnson also might have feared that evidence of a right-wing domestic conspiracy
would roil dangerous political forces in the nation. This, in fact, was what the Soviets
thought, and perhaps they had a special perceptiveness about their adversary, the United
States, in the aftermath of the assassination. Khrushchev sent his deputy, Anastas
Mikoyan, to Washington to represent the Soviet Union at Kennedy’s funeral. According
to a recently released cable that Mikoyan sent to the Kremlin on November 25, 1963, the
Soviet Deputy Premier reported on his discussions with U.S. officials and his conclusions
that “Judging from everything, the U.S. government does not want to involve us in this
matter, but neither does it want to get into a fight with the extreme rightists.” In fact,
Mikoyan stated, the U.S. government “clearly prefers to consign the whole business to
oblivion as soon as possible.” 30
Of course, the Warren Commission did not succeed in confining the case to
oblivion, and the mystery of who killed Kennedy and whether Lee Harvey Oswald was
guilty would be debated for decades to come precisely because the commissioners did not
29
Michael R. Beschloss, ed. Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-
1964. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997) 67.
30
Mary Ferrell Archive.
23

uncover all the facts of the case and tried to “cut off” speculation, in Katzenbach’s words,
rather than write an independent and exhaustive report.
To convince the public of the alleged assassin’s guilt, the Warren Commission
relied on the findings of the FBI and forensic and scientific evidence that have come
under withering assault by assassination researchers. Many of the foundations of the
Commission’s finding of Oswald’s guilt are now infamous, such as the so-called “magic
bullet,” which allegedly tore through both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally
only to be found in near complete shape on a hospital stretcher. Shaping the evidence to
prove Oswald’s guilt was only part of the problem: the Warren Commission also sought
to present the alleged assassin’s life in such a way as to make it fit into a supposed
historical pattern of the “lone nut” assassin and to explain the assassination in the absence
of a clear motive by Oswald.
As the Warren Commission began its work, one commissioner, former Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Allen Dulles, made a point in executive session on
December 16, 1963 of the supposed historical pattern of mentally unstable, lone
assassins. Dulles drew the attention of his fellow commissioners to a book on seven past
assassination attempts, in which he said, “you’ll find a pattern running through here that I
think we’ll find in this present case.” Even before the commission began to investigate
the assassination, Dulles was already advancing the argument of Oswald as lone gunman.
Dulles described such assassins as “habitual,” apparently meaning that they were
motivated by mental instability and megalomania rather than as part of politically
motivated conspiracies. Dulles argued that the only conspiracy was the attempted
24

assassination of Harry S. Truman by two Puerto Rican nationalists. Commissioner John
J. McCloy reminded Dulles of the Lincoln conspiracy, but Dulles dismissed this, saying
“one man [John Wilkes Booth] was so dominant that it almost wasn’t a plot.” 31 To the
commission’s critics, Dulles’ argument was not tenable: the Oswald case should have
been judged by the evidence and not a supposed pattern of past assassination. After all,
of the seven presidential assassinations and attempted assassinations, two of them, or
about 29 percent, were conspiracies.
In its report, the Warren Commission included a section on presidential protection
and the history of assassinations and attempted assassinations of U.S. presidents,
including former president and 1912 candidate Theodore Roosevelt and president-elect
Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Warren Commission emphasized the mental instability and
megalomania of the assassins and would-be assassins, even though often they had
political motives. This would buttress the Commission’s own portrait of Oswald. This
section of the report began with the first attempt on a president’s life: on January 10,
1835, Richard Lawrence fired two pistols at Andrew Jackson, but they misfired. The
report noted, “A jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was confined in jails
and mental hospitals for the rest of his life.” 32
As for John Wilkes Booth, the Warren Commission described him as a “fanatical
Confederate sympathizer.” 33 The Commission emphasized Booth’s fanaticism rather
31 History Matters Archive. (Warren Commission Executive Session Transcript
December 16, 1963. pp. 51-52)
32 WC Report, 505.
33 WC Report, 506.
25

than his Confederate sympathies, and downplayed Booth’s conspirators, who were
attempting multiple assassinations of the top Lincoln Administration officials. 34
The Commission called the assassin of President James A. Garfield in 1881,
Charles J. Guiteau, a “bitterly disappointed” office seeker “obsessed with a kind of
megalomania,” who claimed at his trial that the “’Deity’ had commanded him to remove
the President.” Guiteau fatally wounded Garfield on July 2, 1881, while the president was
walking to a train at a station in Washington. The Commission’s account pointed out that
“There were some hereditary mental problems in his family” but despite “evidence of
serious abnormality,” Guiteau was found guilty of murder and executed. 35
Leon F. Czolgosz carried out the next presidential assassination, gunning down
President William McKinley on September 6, 1901, during an appearance at the Pan
American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The Warren Commission described
Czolgosz as a “self-styled anarchist” who suffered from “delusions.” The report added
that “There is evidence that the organized anarchists in the U.S.A. did not accept or trust
him.” Apparently Czolgosz was too much of a loner even for fellow anarchists. He was
executed, and “Investigations by the Buffalo police and the Secret Service revealed no
accomplices and no plot of any kind.” 36 Like Booth, Czolgosz had a political motive
since, as an anarchist, he would have opposed the government.
34 Booth fatally shot Lincoln during a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington on April 14, 1865 – shortly
after the fall of the Confederacy. Booth died less than two weeks later in a confrontation with federal
troops.
35 WC Report, 507.
36 WC Report, 510.
26

The Warren Commission also quoted a letter from President Theodore Roosevelt,
complaining about “the multitude of cranks and others” who tried to enter the White
House grounds. During the presidential campaign of 1912, one of these “cranks” – John
N. Schrank – shot and wounded Roosevelt as the former president and third-party
candidate campaigned in Milwaukee on October 14. Schrank “had a vision” of the
“ghost of McKinley” who “told him not to let a murderer…become President.” 37
McKinley’s ghost apparently believed that Roosevelt was responsible for McKinley’s
assassination. Schrank was found to be insane and committed to mental hospitals the rest
of his life.
Yet another “mentally unstable” lone gunman, Giuseppe Zangara, attempted to
kill president-elect Franklin Roosevelt in Miami, Florida on February 15, 1933. Instead
of killing Roosevelt, Zangara’s shots missed and killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak.
The Warren Commission emphasized that Zangara had a “professed hatred of capitalists
and Presidents” and “seemed to be obsessed with the desire to kill a president.” Again,
there is a political motive: Zangara’s left-wing sympathies. The report noted that
Zangara had no chance of escaping – another theme of the Commission history, which
suggested Zangara like Oswald and other assassins apparently wanted to gain fame
through their murderous deeds rather than escaping. Zangara was electrocuted 33 days
after the attempt on Roosevelt’s life. “No evidence of accomplices or conspiracy came to
light,” the Warren Commission concluded, despite “sensational newspaper speculation,
wholly undocumented, that Zangara may have been hired by Chicago gangsters to kill
37 WC Report, 511.
27

Cermak.” 38 The Warren Commissions had a similar view of the “speculation” about
whether Oswald was part of a conspiracy.
Finally, two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to kill Harry S. Truman on
November 1, 1950, sparking a gun battle in which one of the assassins and a policeman
were killed. Truman was unhurt. Even though this clearly was a conspiracy since it
involved more than one person, the Warren Commission emphasized that investigators
“could not establish that the attack on the President was part of a larger Nationalist
conspiracy” despite “a great deal of evidence linking [the would-be assassins] to the
Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico.” 39
While Dulles steered his fellow Commissioners toward the Oswald as lone nut
thesis, the former CIA director also indicated the complex environment of the Cold War,
in which Oswald’s associations with possible conspirators and intelligence agencies was
suggested but not proven. Instead of grappling with this evidence, the Commission took
its cue from Dulles, accepted the denials of both the U.S. and Soviet intelligence
agencies, and concluded Oswald had no such associations.
In the January 27, 1964 executive session, Dulles was asked whether it could be
proven to the public that Oswald was not a secret agent of either the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) or CIA. Dulles answered that it would be “a terribly hard thing to
disprove,” and when pressed, flatly declared “No” it could not be proven. Dulles
explained that the record of such an agent “might not be on paper,” and even if it was,
38 WC Report, 512.
39 WC Report, 513.
28

there would only be “hieroglyphics” or indications that only experts could decipher.
Only two people would know – the agent and the man who recruited him – and Dulles
claimed that the recruiter would not disclose the secret relationship “even under oath.” 40
Dulles was describing the shadowy world of espionage during the Cold War, and the
difficulty in determining the motive of someone like Oswald. Some Warren Commission
critics have criticized the choice of Dulles to be on the Commission since President
Kennedy had fired him as CIA director in the wake of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion
of Cuba, and Dulles may have been keeping secrets away from the Commission, such as
the CIA plots with the American mafia to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In the end, the Commissioners declared that they found no evidence of any ties
between Oswald and U.S., Soviet, Cuban, or any other foreign intelligence agency; no
ties between Oswald and organized crime or any other conspirators; and no ties before
the assassination between Oswald and Jack Ruby and the Dallas police officer allegedly
killed by Oswald after the assassination, J.D. Tippit. In its final report, the
Commissioners wrote, they had “found no evidence that anyone assisted Oswald in
planning or carrying out the assassination,” and “no evidence that Oswald was involved
with any person or group in a conspiracy.” 41 However, the Commission added a caveat:
“Because of the difficulty of proving negatives to a certainty the possibility of others
being involved with either Oswald or Ruby cannot be established categorically, but if
40
History Matters Archive. (Warren Commission Executive Session Transcript, January
17, 1964 151-153.)
41
WC Report, 21.
29

there is any such evidence it has been beyond the reach of all the investigative agencies
and resources of the United States.” 42
Despite its finding that Oswald acted along, the Commission could not identify a
single, over-riding motive for Oswald to kill Kennedy. The biography of Oswald would
have to substitute for a clear motive. Oswald’s life explained the murder: he was a
malcontent at odds with every society he lived in. The Commissioners in fact devoted a
substantial portion of their final report, presented to Johnson on September 24th, 1964, to
describing the strange, short life of Oswald, leaning heavily on Oswald’s supposed
psychological make-up. The Commission said although it “could not make any definitive
determination of Oswald’s motives,” it isolated “factors which contributed to his
character and which might have influenced his decision to assassinate President
Kennedy.” 43 These factors were Oswald’s “deep-rooted resentment of all authority
which was expressed in a hostility to every society in which he lives;” “His inability to
enter into meaningful relationships with people, and a continuous patter of rejecting his
environment in favor of new surroundings;” “His urge to try to find a place in history and
despair at times over failures in his various undertakings;” “His capacity for violence;”
and “His avowed commitment to Marxism and communism,” which “was expressed by
his antagonism toward the United States.” 44
The Commission walked a tightrope in ascribing left-wing views to Oswald,
while emphasizing his alleged overall hostility to his environment wherever he was,
42 WC Report, 22.
43 WC Report, 23.
44 WC Report, 22-23.
30

including in the Soviet Union. Oswald was an extremist through the U.S. political lens,
but his arrogant and hostile brand of individualism, as portrayed by the Warren
Commission, made him a poor choice as conspirator and in line with the “lone-nut”
assassin thesis. He was supposedly a leftist unconnected with leftist groups in the United
States, Soviet Union, Cuba, or elsewhere.
In fact, if you take Oswald’s political views as presented by the Commission at
face value, the assassination does not make much sense, since the alleged assassin spoke
highly of Kennedy’s policies on civil rights and other matters. The Commission wrested
Oswald from the political environment in which he lived, with strong communities of
conservatives and right-wing extremists in New Orleans, Louisiana and Dallas, Texas.
Oswald’s other alleged plans to assassinate other political figures make more sense if
Oswald really had left-wing sympathies. The Commission concluded that Oswald fired a
shot at right-wing extremist, retired General William Walker, while the General was in
his Dallas home on April 10, 1963. The shot missed General Walker, and it was only
after the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Commission inquiry that Oswald was
tied to the attempted murder. Marina Oswald also testified that Oswald threatened to kill
former Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential nominee in 1960
whose political success rested on his anti-Communism.
In its report, the Commission provided a biography of the alleged assassin that
emphasized his unsettled childhood, psychological problems, his rejection of U.S. society
and dissatisfaction with Soviet life, his failures as a Marine, husband, and worker, and his
31

avowed commitment to Marxism. The study of Oswald’s life showed that he was
“profoundly alienated from the world in which he lived,” and that his life was
characterized by “isolation, frustration, and failure.” 45 Although many considered
Oswald to be “a meek and harmless person,” the alleged assassin as portrayed by the
Commission had delusions of grandeur, imagining himself as “’the Commander’” and a
“political prophet.” 46 His commitment to Marxism testified to his rejection of U.S.
society. In general, the Commission always opted for the most negative interpretation of
Oswald’s life, weeded out contrary information, and obscured evidence of Oswald’s
connections to U.S. or Soviet intelligence agencies, or at least the interest of these
agencies in a former Marine who ostensibly defected to the Soviet Union and then
returned to the United States.
The Commission claimed a significant factor in shaping Oswald’s character was
the death of his father two months before his own birth in New Orleans on October 18,
1939. This strained the family finances, and the young Oswald spent some time in an
orphanage because his domineering mother, Marguerite, had to work. Assassination
researcher Jim Marrs claimed this was really an early form of day-care, which was not
generally available at that time, because Marguerite would care for the children during
her weekends off from work. 47 The Commission’s portrayal of Marguerite indicated
that the panel also considered her a factor in creating what the panel claimed was
45
WC Report, 376.
46
WC Report, 376.
47
Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, (New York: Carroll & Graf
Publishers, Inc., 1989) 97.
32

Oswald’s twisted psyche. She constantly complained about the family finances and the
unfairness of her plight, and her third marriage to Edwin Ekdahl was “stormy” and
“short-lived.” Despite these difficulties, the report noted that the young Oswald became
“quite attached” to Ekdahl. 48 The family moved several times during Oswald's
childhood, spending time in Louisiana, Texas, and New York City.
In New York, Oswald became a disciplinary problem at home and at school. He
allegedly pulled a knife and threatened the wife of his half-brother, with whom Oswald
and his mother were staying. After the incident, Marguerite and Oswald moved out of
the apartment. In junior high school, his classmates apparently teased Oswald about his
“’western clothes’ and Texas accent.” 49 (Upon later moving back to New Orleans,
Oswald was apparently teased in turn for the northern accent he had developed. To the
Commission, Oswald the outsider was too much of a southerner for New York, and too
much of a northerner for Louisiana.) His truancy resulted in a stay at a juvenile home
from April 16 to May 7, 1953, in which he underwent a psychiatric examination. The
Commission would lean heavily on the observation of Oswald during his stay in the
juvenile home, even though it is not clear a troubled adolescence had any bearing on
whether Oswald killed Kennedy.
While the Warren Commission quoted the psychiatric findings about Oswald at
length, apparently indicating the psychological foundation of the future assassin, the
Commission also tried to have it both ways by declaring that “the psychiatric
48 WC Report, 377.
49 WC Report, 379.
33

examination did not indicate that Lee Oswald was a potential assassin” or “potentially
dangerous.” 50 However, this caveat does not appear in the summary of the report, which
probably is what most Americans and the news media read.
In general, the Commission usually presented the most damaging evidence of
Oswald’s guilt in the summary, allowing some contrary information in the bulk of the
report, but relegating most of it to the 26 volumes of testimony, exhibits, and appendices
that surely few people would take the time to read. The report also did not have a subject
index, which made it hard for later researchers to find relevant material. In any case, it is
hard to imagine how a psychiatric examination of a junior high school student would
indicate whether the teenager was a future assassin, but the Commission’s report
extensively quoted the psychiatrist who examined Oswald, Dr. Renatus Hartogs and other
staff members of the juvenile home.
Dr. Hartogs found Oswald to display “intense anxiety, shyness, feelings of
awkwardness and insecurity,” who had a “vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of
omnipotence and power, through which he tried to compensate for his present
shortcomings and frustrations.” That is probably a description of many teenagers, but Dr.
Hartogs diagnosed Oswald as having a "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid
features and passive-aggressive tendencies," who emotionally was a “quite disturbed
youngster who suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and
deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self involved and
50 WC Report, 379.
34

conflicted mother.” 51 The report denied news reports after the assassination that claimed
the psychiatric examination indicated that Oswald’s “‘outlook on life had strongly
paranoid overtones’” and that he was “a potential assassin” that “should have been
institutionalized.” 52 The distinction drawn between the news reports and Dr. Hartogs’
finding of a “personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-
aggressive tendencies” was probably lost on the general public.
Despite the disclaimers about reports of Oswald’s schizophrenia and future
propensity for violence, the Commission undoubtedly believed that this was the psyche
of a future presidential assassin. Years before the Federal Bureau of Investigation honed
the technique of creating a psychological profile of violent offenders, the Commissioners
sought to understand the psyche of a man who they claimed single-handedly killed
President Kennedy. Oswald, as seen by Dr. Hartogs, apparently fit the Commission’s
profile of the lone nut assassin. The Commission’s disclaimer may have served the
purpose of absolving the New York authorities of responsibility for failing to detect the
future assassin (if that was even possible). The report declared there was no way “to
predict the outburst of violence which finally occurred,” but also bemoaned the fact that
“Lee Oswald never received that [psychiatric] help” that would have healed the damage
to his personality. 53 The second phrase undermines the first, and leaves the reader with
the implication that the assassination would never have happened if Oswald had been
treated by a psychiatrist or psychologist.
51 WC Report, 380.
52 WC Report, 379.
53 WC Report, 382.
35

The blame for this, according to the Commission, once again rested with
Oswald’s mother. Dr. Hartogs recommended that both Oswald and Marguerite undergo
counseling, but they did not follow the advice. Dr. Hartogs singled out Marguerite
Oswald as the overriding cause of Oswald’s withdrawn and antisocial behavior. He also
claimed she could not see her own responsibility for her son’s difficulties.
The report went on to claim other experts who were able to observe the young
Oswald. A social worker, who interviewed Oswald, Evelyn Strickman Siegel, found him
to be a "seriously detached," "withdrawn," and an "emotionally starved, affectionless
youngster." Oswald admitted fantasies of “sometimes hurting and killing people, but
refused to elaborate on them.” 54 According to a figure drawing test administered by
another staff member, Oswald depicted “empty, poor characterizations of persons
approximately the same age as the subject” – reflecting a “considerable amount of
impoverishment in the social and emotional areas.” 55 On the positive side, Oswald
scored above average on intelligence tests, and Siegel found that he had a “pleasant,
appealing quality.” 56 Once again, the Commission presented this information with the
clear intent of showing the psychological basis for Oswald’s culpability.
In January 1954, Marguerite uprooted her family once again and moved back to
New Orleans, where the Commission claimed Oswald started reading about Marxist
philosophy, and showed a peculiar ability to provoke those around him. The Warren
Commission described how Oswald expressed support for communism, and even wrote
54 WC Report, 380.
55 WC Report, 381.
56 WC Report, 380.
36

to the Socialist Party of America to profess his belief in Marxism. According to the
Commission, not only was Oswald portrayed as antisocial -- he was one of "them," the
Reds. The father of a classmate asked Oswald to leave his home during a meeting of the
New Orleans Amateur Astronomy Association after the “loud-mouthed” and “boisterous”
Lee (what happened to shy and withdrawn?) began to argue about the appeal of
communism and his desire to joint a communist cell. 57 However, Oswald’s brother
Robert would later insist that he never saw Oswald read Marxist literature and did not
express sympathy with the Soviet bloc. 58 Oswald also joined the Civil Air Patrol in New
Orleans, which would indicate some degree of patriotism by the youngster, as would his
following in both of his brothers’ footsteps into the U.S. military. Assassination
researchers would later claim that Oswald met David Ferrie, who is the focus of many
conspiracy theories, while in the Civil Air Patrol and that perhaps at this age Oswald
already was laying the groundwork for later intelligence work.
The Commissioners repeatedly quoted neighbors, co-workers, and fellow Marines
as saying Oswald was a "loner" who was quiet and spent his time reading. Oswald never
graduated from high school, and, at age 17, joined the Marine Corps, apparently to escape
his unhappy home life with his mother. The Commission laconically noted that Oswald’s
“study of Communist literature…might appear to be inconsistent with his desire to join
the Marines.” His fellow Marines testified that Oswald had “few friends and kept very
much to himself.” He earned the nickname “Ozzie Rabbit” because of his meekness.
57
WC Report, 384.
58
See Robert L. Oswald with Myrick and Barbara Land, Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey
Oswald by his Brother, (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967), 71-72.
37

One Marine even testified that he thought Oswald could be “easily led” and an easy
subject for brainwashing! 59
At the same time, Oswald allegedly chafed at Marine Corps authority. As the
report put it, Oswald’s Marine career “was not helped by his attitude that he was a man of
great ability and intelligence.” 60 He would bait his officers about foreign affairs and try
to display his mastery of the subject and prove his superiority. While in the Marine
Corps, Oswald was stationed for 15 months in Japan. There, he developed a pugnacity
and apparent self confidence that the Commission ascribed to his having acquired an
unnamed girlfriend. In fact, in its report, the Commission periodically questioned
Oswald’s masculinity. For example, his half-brother testified that Oswald slept with his
mother until he was almost 11, and his future wife Marina told her friends that Oswald
“’was not a man’” and could not satisfy her sexually. 61 The Warren Commission even
published a photograph of Oswald’s pubic hair (Commission Exhibit 672), which surely
had absolutely no relevance to his guilt or innocence. In an appendix, the Commission
included a lengthy description of the pubic hairs that runs for 10 lines: “the hairs were
very smooth, lacking the knobbiness characteristic of pubic hairs….” 62 Perhaps the
Commission sought to give the impression of placing Oswald under the microscope in
examining his life and his pubic hairs. The hairs were found on the blanket that Oswald’s
59 WC Report, 385-86.
60 WC Report, 385.
61 WC Report, 418.
62 WC Report, 590.
38

ifle was wrapped in, but no one disputed that it was Oswald’s blanket. Perhaps of more
significance is that hairs were found on the blanket that could not be matched to anyone.
Despite this “microscopic” approach and the attention devoted to Oswald’s
teenage psyche, surprisingly little information is provided about his duties in the Marine
Corps while stationed in Japan and later California. Later researchers would reveal that
Oswald was a radar technician at the Atsugi, Japan airbase involved with super-secret U2
reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union. Many of his fellow Marines also testified
that Oswald openly talked about his Marxist beliefs, studied the Russian language,
praised Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, and expressed an interest in going to the
Soviet Union and Cuba. Other Marines would call Oswald “comrade” or
“Oswaldskovitch.” One of Oswald’s colleagues explained that Oswald “looked upon the
eyes of future people as some kind of tribunal” and that his Marxist beliefs would lead to
him being seen in history books as a man “ahead of his time.” 63
Conspiracy theorists would see this interest in the Soviet bloc as an indication of
Oswald’s preparation as an intelligence operative. If his behavior is taken at face value,
it is hard to believe the Marine Corps took no interest in Oswald’s outspoken pro-Soviet
views. There were also indications, as there would be throughout the Commission’s
biography, of contrary beliefs, such as the fact that fellow Marine Kerry Thornley, who
wrote a novel before the assassination with a character based on Oswald, who claimed
that one of Oswald’s favorite books was George Orwell’s 1984 – the dystopia about a
totalitarian society that would seem strange reading material for an admirer of the Soviet
63 WC Report, 388-89.
39

Union. At the very least, Oswald’s reading material indicates he explored both sides of
an issue.
During his service in Japan, Oswald had some disciplinary problems, being court-
martialed for possessing an unregistered, private handgun and "using provocative
language to a noncommissioned officer” when he spilled a drink on one of his sergeants
and “abusively challenged him to fight.” 64 He served 20 days in the brig. However,
conspiracy theorists would claim that there was more than meets the eye here, and that
Oswald’s confrontation with the sergeant may have been a manufactured incident to keep
him away from his peers for a period of intelligence training.
Oswald was honorably discharged in September 1959, a designation that was
changed to “dishonorable” following his defection to the Soviet Union. Oswald,
according to the Commission, felt the dishonorable designation unjust. The report
stopped short of saying this was a motive for the assassination, but said it may have been
a factor in his “general hostility against the government and its representatives.” 65
After traveling to the Soviet Union and attempting to defect, Oswald found the Soviets
appeared to take little interest in him, and when he was told to leave the country, Oswald
slashed his wrist in an apparent suicide attempt. After his release from the hospital,
Oswald went to the U.S. embassy to declare his belief in Marxism and to announce his
intention to stay in the Soviet Union. However, according to the Warren Commission, he
never took the legal steps to renounce his U.S. citizenship, enabling him to return to the
64 WC Report, 386.
65 WC Report, 388.
40

United States when his experience in Russia soured. The consular officer of the U.S.
embassy in Moscow, Richard E. Snyder, who dealt with Oswald, described him as
“extremely sure of himself and seemed to know ‘what his mission was.’” Snyder did not
say what he thought Oswald’s “mission” was, but he testified that Oswald vowed “to give
Soviet officials any information that he had concerning Marine Corps operations, and
intimated that he might know something of special interest.” Despite Oswald’s threat,
the Commission found no evidence that the Soviet authorities used the defector “for any
particular propaganda or other political or informational purposes.” 66 Many assassination
researchers claim Oswald was in fact a “false defector,” sent by U.S. intelligence into the
Soviet Union to see how Soviet authorities and the KGB would respond.
However, the Commission described Oswald’s desire to live in the Soviet Union
as evidence of his “hatred of the United States,” which he complained bitterly about in a
letter to his brother. Oswald denounced “their government’s unfair economic system and
plans for war,” and also criticized segregation, unemployment, automation, and U.S.
militarism. In an extraordinary passage in the letter, Oswald declared, “Happiness is
taking part in the struggle, where there is no borderline between one’s own personal
world, and the world in general.” 67 The Soviet authorities eventually allowed Oswald to
stay in the country on a year-by-year basis. He was sent to Minsk to work in a radio
factory, while also receiving an extra stipend from Moscow and a good apartment. The
Warren Commission report also claimed that Soviet intelligence showed no interest in
66 WC Report, 392-93.
67 WC Report, 393.
41

Oswald, which is hard to believe if in fact he did have some knowledge of the U2
reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union from his days in the Marine Corps in Japan.
In Minsk, Oswald apparently found life dull, and began to resent “the exercise of
authority over him and the better treatment afforded to Communist Party officials.” 68
According to the Warren Commission, Oswald found that the Soviet workers’ paradise
was not a paradise after all. Much of the information in the report from his time in the
Soviet Union comes from Oswald’s self-described “Historic Diary,” but some researchers
insist this document is a fake and not a valid guide to Oswald’s interactions with the
Soviet authorities. Less than 18 months after his defection, Oswald was already taking
steps to return to the United States. However, Oswald did date Russian women, and
eventually married one, Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova, the niece of a Minsk MVD
[Interior Ministry security agency] official. In 1962, Oswald, his young wife, and their
newly-born daughter returned to the United States. The Commission declared that
Oswald’s return to his homeland “testified to the utter failure of what had been the most
important act of his life.” 69 However, the Warren Commission declared, "Despite the
fact that he had left the Soviet Union, disillusioned with its Government, Oswald seemed
more firmly committed than ever to his concepts of Marxism. He showed disdain for
democracy, capitalism, and American society in general." 70
The Commission quoted some of Oswald’s writings, including a work called “The
Collective” about his life in Minsk to suggest his perennial dissatisfaction wherever he
68 WC Report, 393.
69 WC Report, 395.
70 WC Report, 13.
42

was and his rejection of both the capitalistic United States and communism as he found it
practiced in the Soviet Union. Oswald began with the details of his birth in the United
States, saying that the death of his father “left a far mean streak of indepence [sic]
brought on by negleck [sic].” 71 (The Commission made a point of noting that Oswald’s
numerous misspellings may have resulted from a “reading-spelling disability,” or what is
known as dyslexia.) 72 Oswald went on to write that after two years in the Soviet Union
and “alot [sic] of growing up,” he decided to return home. 73 Oswald’s easy return to the
United States after ostensibly defecting to the Soviet Union seems odd to many
researchers, unless he was in fact a false defector.
According to the Commission, as he returned to the United States, Oswald
described his dissatisfaction with the United States and Soviet Union, and posited an
alternative that would apparently combine the best elements of both systems --
democracy and individual rights and a socialist economy. He denounced both the United
States and Soviet Union as offering “imperilistic [sic] injustice, tinted with two brands of
slavery.” Oswald considered himself an expert on political science (what the
Commission had called a “political prophet”) since he had lived under both systems. In
Oswald’s words, he foresaw the “emplacement of a separate, democratic, pure
communist society…but one with union-communes” and “democratic socializing of
production.” Oswald also criticized the mass purges and abuses by Soviet authorities,
71 WC Report, 395.
72 WC Report, 383.
73 WC Report, 397.
43

writing “The Soviets have committed crimes unsurpassed even by their early day
capitalist counterparts.” 74
Oswald would not be greeted as a political theorist upon his return. According to
the Warren Commission, Oswald found life to be a constant struggle in the United States,
moving from menial job to menial job and having marital difficulties. Once again,
however, even in the Commission’s report, there were indications that Oswald’s life was
not what it seemed on the surface. In Dallas, members of the Russian émigré community,
who were decidedly anti-Communists, sought to help the young couple, but Oswald
resented their attempts to assist Marina and their daughter. Some of the émigrés sought
to pry Marina away from Oswald, who allegedly was physically abusive toward his wife.
Despite a two-week separation instigated by some of the émigrés, Marina and Oswald
reunited. One émigré couple, George and Jeanne De Mohrenschildt, remained friends
with Oswald. George De Mohrenschildt actually had longstanding connections with U.S.
intelligence, and he may have been a contact person between Oswald and the CIA,
although the Warren Commission made no mention of this. De Mohrenschildt would
commit suicide in March 1977 – just before a representative of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations tried to reach him. Even if De Mohrenschildt was not
performing any intelligence role in befriending Oswald, he appeared to be a strange
associate for a former defector to the Soviet Union.
To the Warren Commission, Oswald was becoming more and more isolated and
frustrated as he failed to gain long-term employment or forge meaningful relationships.
74 WC Report, 397-98.
44

Shortly after his return, Oswald severed relations with his mother, and saw little of his
brother, Robert. Oswald worked for a time as a sheet metal worker, but soon quit. He
also worked at a “commercial advertising photography firm” in Dallas, but the
Commission failed to point out the firm had classified military and intelligence contracts
– odd employment for the reputed Soviet sympathizer. His employer would tell the
Commission that Oswald “was not an efficient worker,” he did not get along with his
colleagues, and he had the troubling habit of reading Russian language material at
work. 75 Eventually, Oswald was fired on April 6, 1963.
Central to the Commission’s case against Oswald was his propensity for violence,
including an alleged attempt to kill right-wing activist, retired Major General Edwin A.
Walker and a threat to kill former Vice President Richard Nixon. The Commission based
much of its conclusions on these incidents on Marina’s testimony. If Oswald had lived to
stand trial, of course, Marina would not have had to testify against her husband. Some
critics of the Warren report have noted that Marina had a personal interest in cooperating
with the Commission or, more nefariously, telling the Commissioners what they wanted
to hear so she could stay in the United States. After Oswald returned home after
allegedly firing the shot at Walker, Marina confronted her husband with a note indicating
his intentions, and she claimed that she wrangled from him a promise “never to repeat
such a performance.” 76 According to Marina, Oswald defended his actions by saying
Walker was like Adolf Hitler, and killing him would ultimately save many lives. Despite
75 WC Report, 403.
76 WC Report, 405.
45

his promise, Oswald soon threatened to kill Nixon, but Marina’s testimony about this
incident was curious. She claimed she struggled with Oswald and shut him in the
bathroom to prevent him from going out to kill Nixon. However, she also acknowledged
being confused about the incident, and testified “I couldn’t keep him from going out if he
really wanted to.” Nixon was not in Dallas around the time of the alleged incident, and
the Commission concluded that whatever Oswald told his wife, “he was not actually
planning to shoot Mr. Nixon at that time in Dallas.” 77 Once again, however, the
Commission used the Nixon incident to implicate Oswald, even though there are serious
questions about the whole story. There was also a strange incident related to the attempt
on Walker’s life that indicates perhaps there was more to the story. Shortly after the
assassination attempt, the De Mohrenschildts visited the Oswalds, and Mrs. De
Mohrenschildt noticed a rifle in the closet. Mr. De Mohrenschildt asked Oswald whether
he had fired the shot at Walker. De Mohrenschildt testified that he was only joking but
that Oswald “made a peculiar face” and “sort of shriveled.” 78
On April 24, 1963, Oswald returned to his hometown, New Orleans, where the
Warren Commission claimed the alleged assassin displayed a knack for gaining attention
for himself and his leftist political views. Once again, embedded in the narrative are
suggestions that Oswald may have been playing a double game as a sort of agent
provocateur. Ostensibly, Oswald was in New Orleans to find a job, and according to
Marina, to keep a low profile after the Walker incident. He found work as a coffee
77 WC Report, 188.
78 WC Report, 282.
46

processing machine greaser. He was fired on July 19. While in New Orleans, Oswald
posed as a leader of the local chapter of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” – a chapter
that only had himself as a member and which the national organization did not recognize.
This did not deter Oswald from handing out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans. The
Commission described Oswald’s activities as “a very shrewd political operation in which
one man single handedly created publicity for his cause and for himself,” while also
showing “Oswald’s reluctance to describe events accurately and of his need to present
himself to others as well as to himself in a light more favorable than was justified by
reality. 79
At the same time, Oswald appeared to instigate a confrontation with anti-Castro
Cubans, including activist Carlos Bringuier. Oswald had visited Bringuier and portrayed
himself as a potential recruit to fight against Castro. Later, Bringuier and a group of
Cubans scuffled with Oswald when they discovered him passing out his pro-Castro
leaflets. Police arrested Oswald and the publicity over the incident led to a radio
interview and a debate with anti-Communists. In a letter sent before the incident,
Oswald mysteriously seemed to foresee that such an event would occur, writing to the
head of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, V.T. Lee, “attributing his lack of support to an
attack by Cuban exiles in a street demonstration” and being cautioned by the police. 80
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald was never attacked other than the
79 WC Report, 407.
80 WC Report, 408.
47

Bringuier incident, and brushed aside any suggestion that Oswald might have staged the
event.
The Commission also downplayed suggestions that Oswald might have been
working for right-wing activists as an agent provocateur. The report noted that on one of
the pamphlets was stamped the address 544 Camp St. The Commission declared that
“extensive investigation was not able to connect Oswald with that address, although it did
develop the fact that an anti-Castro organization had maintained offices there for a period
ending early in 1962.” 81 Many conspiracy theorists have seized on this to suggest
Oswald was involved in an intelligence operation, since the building not only housed an
anti-Castro organization but also a right-wing extremist, private investigator and former
FBI agent Guy Bannister. A number of witnesses claimed to see Oswald associating with
right-wingers, including Bannister, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw, the only man ever
brought to trial in the assassination. Shaw was acquitted.
During this time, Oswald showed his predilection to use aliases and forge
documents. Either this was a sign of Oswald’s active fantasy life as the Commission
would have it, or perhaps a sign of some sort of intelligence work. Marina testified that
Oswald was also considering leaving the United States again for the Soviet Union or
Cuba. She also said Oswald discussed hijacking an airplane to Cuba, but nothing came
of the scheme when she refused to participate.
According to the Warren Commission, before returning to Dallas, Oswald made a
trip in September 1963 to Mexico City, in which he tried to get a visa to visit Cuba and
81 WC Report, 408
48

then the Soviet Union, but mystery still surrounds this part of Oswald’s life. The
Commission often dismissed witnesses whose testimony did not support the official
version of the assassination, while accepting the testimony of those who did as can be
seen in the testimony of anti-Castro Cuban, Sylvia Odio. She came forward to say that an
American she identified as Oswald visited her apartment with two Cuban activists while
Oswald was allegedly traveling to Mexico City. Odio testified that the American was
introduced as “Leon Oswald” and was someone “very much interested in the Cuban
cause.” In a later telephone conversation, one of the activists told Odio that the American
“is kind of nuts,” “an excellent shot,” and believed anti-Castro Cubans should have
assassinated Kennedy after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion aimed at overthrowing
Castro. 82 The Commission dismissed Odio’s story, concluding that Oswald could not
have been in Dallas because he was on his way to Mexico City, but that is circular
reasoning that avoids examining the possibility that either someone was impersonating
Oswald or that there was something wrong with the Commission’s official timeline of
events and the alleged assassin’s true beliefs.
According to the Commission, Oswald’s visit to Mexico proved to be another
source of frustration and anger. The Cuban embassy in Mexico refused to grant a visa to
Oswald until he received one from the Soviets, and that Oswald became angry over the
impasse. The report stated that “his attempt to go to Cuba or return to the Soviet Union
82 WC Report, 322.
49

may well have been Oswald’s escape hatch, his last gambit to extricate himself from the
mediocrity and defeat which plagued him throughout most of his life.” 83
After his return to Dallas, Oswald found work at the Texas School Book
Depository after a tip from the woman Marina was staying with, Ruth Paine. Oswald
lived separately in a rooming house. Around this time, Marina gave birth to their second
child, which Marina testified Oswald “was very happy” about. However, the
Commission stressed that the stormy relations between Lee and Marina Oswald “are of
great importance in any attempt to understand Oswald’s possible motivation.” 84 The
report described Oswald as an overbearing, sometimes abusive husband, and that Marina
bore some blame for the troubled marriage by provoking Oswald and ridiculing him in
front of others. In the end, the Commission stated, however, “No one will ever know
what passed through Oswald’s mind during the week before November 22, 1963.” 85
Oswald's bizarre life, as outlined by the Warren Commission, culminated on that date in
the assassination of President Kennedy and wounding of Texas Governor John Connally
from a sniper’s lair in the School Book Depository. Oswald left the building after the
assassination, and allegedly murdered police officer J.D. Tippit, who apparently had
stopped and questioned Oswald. Oswald was arrested shortly afterwards at the Texas
theater. Jack Ruby killed Oswald while in police custody two days later, ostensibly to
spare Jackie Kennedy the ordeal of appearing at Oswald’s trial.
83 WC Report, 414.
84 WC Report, 416.
85 WC Report, 421.
50

The Commission concluded, “Many factors were undoubtedly involved in
Oswald’s motivation for the assassination,” and that it cannot “ascribe to him any one
motive or group of motives.” Instead the Commission stressed Oswald’s “overriding
hostility to his environment,” his failure to establish meaningful relationships,” his effort
to find for himself “a place in history,” and “his commitment to Marxism and
communism.” 86 He was in the Commission’s view the disturbed loner who tried to be a
“great man” by slaying the president, fitting the supposed pattern of political
assassinations in the United States. Oswald the cipher yearned for greatness and became
Oswald the assassin. In this version of Oswald’s life, the Commission steadfastly
avoided any suggestion of a conspiracy and obscured the alleged assassin’s ties to groups
that could have played a role in the assassination, including U.S. and Soviet intelligence
agencies, Cuba, anti-Castro Cubans, right-wing extremists, and organized crime. The
Commission tried to give the impression of thoroughness without thoroughly
investigating all leads, dismissing or ignoring evidence of a possible conspiracy
uncovered by independent researchers, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, and
congressional investigators.
The Warren Commission had sought to head off criticism through an appeal to
governmental authority and the stellar reputations of its members. Fundamentally, the
Commission grounded its authority in all sides of the U.S. political establishment: all
branches of the government were represented by current or former officials – legislative,
executive, and judiciary – and the bipartisan panel was evenly divided between
86 WC Report, 423.
51

Democrats and Republicans, except for its chairman, Earl Warren, who had served as the
Republican governor of California but presumably was supposed to be above the political
fray as Chief Justice. The panel’s establishment also reflected the authority of President
Johnson, who at the same time sought validation from the Commission as the legitimate
successor of the slain president.
The Commission repeatedly accepted at face value the conclusions of other top
U.S. officials, including FBI director Hoover. At this time in U.S. history, perhaps many
Americans were not inclined to doubt the pronouncements of such figures, and the
Commission sought to cloak its conclusions in the authority of the government. In
declaring that there was no conspiracy, the Warren report listed seven top officials as
reaching the same conclusions “independently,” including Hoover, CIA director John A.
McCone, and the head of the Secret Service, James Rowley. 87 It apparently never
occurred to the Commission that these officials may have lied, or failed to adequately
investigate conspiracy theories that involved their own agencies. The Commission’s
judgments also were interwoven with the conclusions of these officials and agencies, and
were not independently arrived at.
In addition to its appeal to authority, the Warren Commission report used a
variety of rhetorical devices to convince the public of Oswald’s guilt. The way the text
was written and structured was designed to emphasize evidence that Oswald was the
assassin, and to bury contradictory evidence. The report included three sections offering
87 WC Report, 374.
52

its version of Oswald’s life: a brief sketch in the summary and conclusions, a full
biography in the report itself, and further biographical information in an appendix. The
summary, which undoubtedly was the most read section of the report, interweaves
Oswald into the assassination in a way that hides significant questions or doubts about the
evidence. The summary appeals to the readers’ sympathies by declaring the assassination
a crime “against a man, a family, a nation, and against all mankind.” 88 The narrative
begins with Kennedy’s arrival in Dallas, the motorcade, and then the assassination.
Suddenly, a shift is made: a police officer in the Texas School Book Depository building
confronts a man in the lunchroom – none other than Lee Harvey Oswald. After Oswald
is identified as an employee, he is allowed to go about his business, and Oswald
eventually leaves the building. The narrative does not describe those police officers who
rushed to the so-called “Grassy Knoll,” or any confusion about where the shots were fired
from. The narrative now follows Oswald as he takes a taxi to his apartment, and leaves
with a pistol.
The narrative shifts to witnesses who see a man gun down Officer J.D. Tippit, and
later a mysterious individual who sneaks into the Texas Theater to watch a movie. 89 The
police are called and once again, we are face to face with Lee Oswald. The Commission
ties this together by quoting witnesses who identify Oswald as the gunman who killed
Tippit who seeks to hide in the theater, but left unanswered is the accuracy of those
88
WC Report, 1.
89
Warren Commission critics found many weaknesses in the Commission’s forensic
evidence, in both the Kennedy assassination and the Tippit slaying. Experts could not
conclusively match the bullets in Tippit’s body to Oswald’s pistol.
53

identifications, the conduct of police line-ups in which Oswald is identified, why in fact
Tippit allegedly accosted Oswald, and why a large number of police converged on a
theater because someone entered without a ticket. At the police station, the officers
realize the suspect from the theater is a man missing from School Book Depository and
may be a suspect in the president’s assassination.
The Commission makes another shift in its narrative, beginning its biographical
sketch of a supposed loner and communist-sympathizer known as Lee Harvey Oswald.
The narrative moves through Oswald’s life right up to the assassination, and the reader
arrives again at Oswald in police custody and then his own murder. Oswald’s actions
after the assassination and his biography are woven into the narrative that compels the
reader to accept the finding of Oswald’s guilt, and to hide the weaknesses connecting the
narrative together. The summary concludes with a series of seemingly authoritative
statements about Oswald’s guilt, and his and Ruby’s lack of conspiratorial associations.
The reader is assured that “These conclusions represent the reasoned judgment of all
members of the Commission and are presented after an investigation which has satisfied
the Commission that it has ascertained the truth.” 90 The summary places Oswald center
stage, and the Commission never moved its gaze away from him to explore other possible
assassins or conspirators not related to Oswald who may have framed him for the murder
of President Kennedy, including elements of the U.S. government itself.
Throughout the report in making its case against Oswald, the Commission often
used declarative statements that masked ambiguous evidence concerning whether Oswald
90 WC Report, 18.
54

was the lone assassin. For example, despite witnesses who reported suspicious activity
behind the infamous “Grassy Knoll” or who believed gunshots were fired from that
direction, and even testimony from Senator Ralph Yarborough and others that they
smelled gunfire in the vicinity, the Commission declared “There is no credible evidence
that the shots were fired from the Triple Underpass, ahead of the motorcade, or from any
other location.” 91
When necessary, however, the Commission could obfuscate the issue. For
example, the conclusion that a single bullet wounded Kennedy in the back and neck and
also struck Governor Connally was presented in a convoluted manner reminiscent of the
bullet’s supposed trajectory: “Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the
Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive
evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s
throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds. However, Governor Connally’s
testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion….” 92
In fact, the so-called magic or single bullet theory is necessary to convincing the public of
Oswald’s guilt, because it would have been impossible for him to fire as many bullets in
the time span measured by Abraham Zapruder’s homemade film of the assassination if a
single bullet did not strike both Kennedy and Connally. The confused rhetoric of this key
passage resulted from disagreements among the Commissioners about the single-bullet
theory. Senate Richard Russell refused to sign the report until the passage was re-worded
91 WC Report, 19.
92 WC Report, 19.
55

to make it less definitive. He would later become the first commissioner to publicly
break with its lone assassin finding. 93
The report also consistently dismissed testimony or evidence counter to the
official version of events as “rumors” or “speculation.” In the body of the report, the
Commissioners dismissed all conspiracy theories, and for good measure included an
appendix entitled “Speculations and Rumors.” The introduction to the section piles
pejorative upon pejorative in dismissing these theories by automatically relegating them
to the realm of “misconceptions,” “sensational speculations, “hypotheses, rumors, and
speculations,” “conjectures,” “puzzlement,” and “misinformation.” 94 In addressing each
conspiracy theory, the Commission summarizes the theory in one or two lines and then
declares the “Commission finding” that quickly dismisses the issue.
The Commission also dealt differently with witnesses who supported the official
version and those who did not. For example, Howard Brennan testified that he saw
Oswald fire upon the motorcade from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book
Depository building. His description, according to the Commission, “most probably led
to the radio alert sent to police cars” to look for a “white, slender” suspect “weighing
about 165 pounds, about 5’10” tall and in his early thirties.” 95 Oswald was in fact
5’9”and weighted 140 pounds at his arrest. Brennan’s description probably fit thousands
of people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and is fairly general when compared with the
Commission’s own detailed description of Oswald’s pubic hair. Critics of the
93 See Marrs, 488, 467.
94 WC Report, 637.
95 WC Report, 144.
56

Commission would also raise questions about the accuracy of Brennan’s testimony and
even his eyesight. In comparison, the Commission rejected Sylvia Odio’s testimony that
a man she believed to be Oswald visited her apartment with anti-Castro activists two
months before the assassination. Odio’s sister corroborated the testimony and Odio stuck
by her testimony, but the Commission “concluded that Oswald could not have been in
Dallas on the evening of either September 26 or 27, 1963” when the encounter allegedly
took place. 96
There was also what economists call “an opportunity cost” in what the
Commission chose to investigate and describe in its report and what it chose not to
devote time to and leave out. For example, a biographical sketch of Oswald’s murderer,
Jack Ruby, contains a section about Ruby’s “Affection for Dogs” that is almost as long as
the section called “Underworld Ties.” (For the record, the Commission claimed “the
evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime.”) 97
The Commission consistently spent more time investigating Oswald and his alleged left-
wing views rather than organized crime or right-wingers. Perhaps that is understandable
since the report relied heavily on the FBI investigation of the assassination, and FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover notoriously denied the existence of the mafia for many years,
while focusing on the “Red Menace.”
Some of the details divulged about Oswald’s life also verge on the absurd. For
example, we learn that while in Mexico City, Oswald “ate the soup of the day, rice, and
96 WC Report, 322.
97 WC Report, 801.
57

either meat or eggs, but refused dessert and coffee; the waitress concluded that Oswald
did not realize that the items which he refused were included in the price of the lunch. 98
A page later we find that “Marina has testified that her husband liked bananas and
frequently ate them.” 99 The Commission did identify one of the Soviets at the Mexico
City embassy he met with, Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov, as a KGB agent in addition to
serving as a consular officer. Later researchers would report the explosive information
that Kostikov was in fact involved in so-called “wet operations” such as political
assassinations. If Oswald did indeed meet with Kostikov or if an Oswald met with
Kostikov to set Oswald up, the potential for a conspiracy is apparent. Another possible
conspiratorial relationship outlined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations but
overlooked by the Commission was that Oswald’s uncle Charles Murrett was reputedly
linked to New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello – a target of the Kennedy Justice
Department, who may have been motivated to kill the president.
The Commission spent part of the report outlining recommendations to improve
presidential security and to make the assassination of a president or other high-ranking
officials into a federal crime. The Commission’s version of the alleged assassin’s life,
however, almost makes presidential assassinations impossible to prevent. Oswald as
“lone nut” assassin makes Kennedy’s death similar to an act of God: how can one protect
the President from a crazy man with a rifle? This largely absolved government agencies
of responsibility either directly or indirectly in the assassination.
98 WC Report, 735.
99 WC Report, 736.
58

The Warren Commission and the Johnson Administration sought to exert control
over the investigation of the assassination to protect its own interests, but however much
the Warren Commissioners wished to end rumors about the assassination and consign the
case to oblivion, they merely set the agenda for the battle in American culture over the
meaning of Oswald's life. The critics would search the dark recesses of Oswald's short
existence, and find intriguing information that cast doubt on the Commission's
conclusions.
59

CHAPTER 2: OSWALD THE NUT
The Warren Commission’s defenders have largely accepted the “lone-nut” thesis
of the assassination, while searching for a better understanding of the alleged assassin,
Lee Harvey Oswald, and his possible motive for killing John F. Kennedy. The defenders
have included Warren Commission participants and those with first-hand knowledge of
Oswald, former law enforcement personnel, and independent researchers. These authors
see Oswald as a Marxist, a social outcast, and a man prone to violence, and do not find
any potential conspirators among Oswald’s associates, nor did they believe Oswald had
connections to the mob, U.S. or Soviet intelligence, or anti-Castro Cubans.
The Commission’s defenders struggled to convince Americans of the “lone nut”
thesis, and when faced with widespread skepticism, some blamed assassination
conspiracy theorists for manipulating a gullible public. However, in their attempt to
explain who Lee Harvey Oswald was, the defenders of the Warren Commission offered
almost as many interpretations of what motivated the alleged assassin as there are
conspiracy theories. The post-modern man Oswald remains an enigmatic figure in
American culture, open to a variety of interpretations.
Some researchers have emphasized Oswald’s personal motivations for the
assassination such as his familial troubles, and his alleged mental instability, rather than
his ideological beliefs. These authors emphasized the personal over the political.
60

Oswald was more of a “nut” than a “Red” – although the two categories overlap. This
interpretation of Oswald’s life makes the assassination more like an act of god than a
reflection of deeper societal problems and nefarious conspiratorial forces active in the
nation. Who can protect the president from one deranged individual with a gun? There
is some overlapping in the categories of “Oswald the Nut” and “Oswald the Red,” but
many authors emphasize one facet over the other.
One of the Commissioners, Congressman (and future President) Gerald Ford, and
his aide John R. Stiles, wrote one of the first books defending the Warren panel’s
portrayal of Oswald’s life. The authors organized Warren Commission testimony and
exhibits in Portrait of the Assassin. Published in 1965, “in the style of a novel,” it was an
effort to reach a popular audience that did not have the time to review the official
report. 100 Ford and Stiles portrayed Oswald as a man who yearned for greatness, but
was constantly frustrated and not equipped emotionally and intellectually to face reality.
Their portrait of Oswald reflected the conclusions of the Commission. The book was
designed more to convince the public that Oswald alone killed Kennedy than to explain
the reasons why. Ford and Commission staff member David Belin would become two of
the foremost defenders of the panel, even as public belief in its conclusions eroded.
Portrait of the Assassin reflected contemporary Cold War attitudes, hinting at a secret
world of espionage while claiming that Oswald was not an agent either of the United
States or the Soviet Union.
100
Gerald Ford and John R. Stiles, Portrait of the Assassin, (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1965), vii.
61

Ford and Stiles used information from executive session transcripts which would
not be made available publicly until years later, and they were able to give their “spin” on
these sessions before other writers and researchers could use this material to draw their
own conclusions. For example, Ford and Stiles described one of the first crises facing the
Commission when Texas officials claimed that Oswald was an undercover informant of
the FBI. The authors quoted former CIA director Allen Dulles as saying it was a
“terribly hard thing to disprove” whether someone was an undercover agent or informant,
but the Commission worried that this would call into question the integrity of the nation’s
institutions. Considerable efforts were made to satisfy the public that this and other
“myriad rumors” were not true. 101
Ford and Stiles steadfastly rejected the idea that Oswald was an agent of the U.S.
government, but raised the issue so often it almost begged the question of whether it was
true. They noted questions of whether Oswald was a false defector to the Soviet Union
or was attempting to infiltrate left-wing groups in the United States upon his return, but
rejected the possibility. Oswald told his brother Robert that an FBI agent who
interviewed him after his return had in fact asked him whether he was a U.S. government
agent. Oswald had replied “Well, don’t you know?” 102 Apparently the answer is that the
FBI did not know. Ford and Stiles also noted Oswald’s frequent change of address,
describing this as “classic conduct for someone who really was involved in plots, or
101 Ford and Stiles, 22.
102 Ford and Stiles, 169.
62

espionage, or other suspect activities.” 103 Yet, the authors rejected all these possibilities
as only rumors without any substance, and blamed Oswald’s supposed penchant for lying
and deception: “he cloaked his own acts in an air of mystery. He nurtured his own sense
of self-important with deliberate nonconformity.” 104
The authors’ portrait of Oswald reflected the Commission’s “lone nut” thesis that
Oswald was a failure at everything he did, and immature in lashing out at every society
he lived in: Oswald “was like a child who, failing to gain the attention he wants, finds
that smashing a toy or making a mess is the easiest way to obtain recognition.” 105
According to Ford and Stiles, Oswald’s marriage was a failure, and he was unable to
make connections with others. They recounted the familiar charges of Oswald as a
troubled youth, a wife beater, an inadequate lover and provider, and an unsuccessful left-
wing political activist who could not deal with failure. The two authors contended that
Oswald harbored a “deep-rooted resentment of all authority which he expressed in a
hostility toward every society in which he lived.” 106 They accepted Oswald as a true
Marxist and reflected Cold War attitudes toward the Soviet bloc. Ford connected
Oswald’s personal failures with Marxism, by stating that “if one were to stress the thing I
consider most deceptive about communism, it is the failure of its advocates to recognize
103 Ford and Stiles, 372.
104 Ford and Stiles, 371.
105 Ford and Stiles, 90.
106 Ford and Stiles, 540.
63

the importance of reasonable human relationships. To my mind here lies the treacherous
fallacy of the creed Lee Oswald embraced.” 107
In the end, Ford and Stiles seemed to realize the difficulty in convincing the
public that Oswald acted alone. The authors blamed many of the “rumors” of conspiracy
on Oswald’s disbelieving mother, Marguerite, and on lawyer Mark Lane, who Marguerite
wanted to represent the dead Oswald before the Warren Commission and would later
become the godfather of conspiracy theorists with the bestselling critique of the
Commission’s report, Rush to Judgment. Ford and Stiles admitted “In retrospect, the
unbelievable coincidences that took place just couldn’t happen – and yet they did, with an
inexorability that no playwright could expect an audience to believe.” 108 Where Ford
and Stiles saw coincidence, others saw conspiracy, but the authors of Portrait of an
Assassin were confident that the Warren Commission “will stand like a Gibraltar of
factual literature through the ages to come.” 109
Two writers – William Manchester and Jim Bishop – wrote popular histories that
described hour-by-hour the events leading up to the assassination and its aftermath. Both
accepted the Warren Commission’s findings and relied heavily on the report to write their
books. Of the two, Manchester offered something new to the mix of Oswald’s motives,
while Bishop emphasized the view of Oswald as a cipher who only committed the
assassination to gain notoriety. Both writers also ran afoul of the Kennedy family.
107 Ford and Stiles, 544.
108 Ford and Stiles, 293.
109 Ford and Stiles, 538.
64

Bishop received a letter from Jacqueline Kennedy asking him to forbear writing his book,
The Day Kennedy Was Shot, because she feared “’my children might see it or someone
might mention it to him.’” 110 Ironically, she noted that the Kennedy family already had
entrusted Manchester with writing the definitive account of the assassination in an effort
to prevent further commercialization of the event and to ward off a slew of books on the
subject. In December 1966, the family filed a lawsuit against Manchester to force
changes in his book, which Jacqueline Kennedy denounced as “a premature account of
the events of November, 1963, that is in part both tasteless and distorted.” 111
In the end, the lawsuit was settled before it went to trial when Manchester agreed
to delete about seven pages of text, mostly dealing with Mrs. Kennedy’s personal life. 112
Manchester also changed some unflattering descriptions of Lyndon Baines Johnson in the
hopes of preventing further political tensions between Robert F. Kennedy and the
President. John Corry, a New York Times reporter who covered the Manchester lawsuit,
wrote that, “when they [the Kennedys] could not direct him [Manchester] they began to
fight him. It was sad all around.” 113 Such are the dangers of writing an officially
authorized history.
Despite his troubles with the Kennedys, Manchester claimed in Death of a
President, published in 1967, that neither “Mrs. Kennedy nor anyone else is in any way
110
Jim Bishop, The Day Kennedy Was Shot, (New York: Random House, 1968), xv.
111
John Corry, The Manchester Affair, (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967), 173.
112
Corry, 222.
113
Corry, 9.
65

answerable” for his research or narrative. 114 Manchester explained that the Kennedy
family sought what the book jacket called a “responsible writer” to gather together
recollections of the days immediately preceding and after the assassination. Manchester
had praised Kennedy in a character sketch of the president in his 1962 book Portrait of a
President, and apparently the Kennedy family felt he could be trusted with the task of
describing the assassination in a way acceptable to them. He received unprecedented
access to the participants in the drama, including Mrs. Kennedy.
Actually, despite the family’s misgivings, Manchester’s rendering of Kennedy
was hagiographic: the President was a god-king who died a martyr. Oswald, by contrast,
was depicted as barely human. The author’s contribution to the search for Oswald’s
motive was to blame the anti-Kennedy right-wing extremists in Dallas for influencing the
deranged, left-wing assassin.
In describing the late president, Manchester repeatedly evoked the imagery and
symbols of nobility and religion. For example, he used the Secret Service’s code words
for Kennedy and his administration as chapter titles, including JFK’s name “Lancer” and
the White House as “Castle.” Of course, in later years, the phallic imagery of “Lancer”
would also evoke Kennedy’s many reported romantic liaisons, which are not even hinted
at in The Death of a President. In describing Kennedy’s last White House social
occasion, Manchester quoted the lyrics of the Arthurian musical Camelot – “For one brief
shining moment that was known as Camelot,” which Jacqueline Kennedy would use to
114
William Manchester, The Death of a President, (New York: Harper and Row, 1967),
ix.
66

mythologize JFK’s presidency. 115 In keeping with this theme, Manchester also quoted
Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, who told reporters after the shooting that he believed
Kennedy was dead by saying “Excalibur has sunk beneath the waves.” 116
In his epilogue, Manchester expressly drew the connection between Kennedy’s
assassination and what he called “the noble victim” who is ritually murdered in
mythology from Arthur in Britain to Siegfried in Germany. 117 Kennedy’s death comes in
autumn, Manchester pointed out, similar to the deaths of the noble victim in mythology,
as people prepare for the winter and worry that spring will not come. This noble victim
served an emissary to the Gods, “to temper the wrath of the Almighty and assure a green
and abundant spring.” This “atavistic power” must be understood, he explained, “if one
is to grasp what happened to the memory of John Kennedy.” 118
In his rhetorical excess, Manchester might have added Jesus Christ to his list of
“noble victims” similar to JFK. In fact, Manchester at one point described the
assassination as “the passion of John Kennedy,” and the author also used the words
“martyr” or “martyrdom” several times to describe Kennedy’s death. 119 In addition,
Jacqueline Kennedy, according to Manchester, refused repeated suggestions that she
changed her bloodstained dress in the hours after the assassination, her clothes a holy
relic of sorts bearing witness to the martyrdom of the nation’s first Roman Catholic
president. The clothes reappear in the final pages of The Death of a President with
115 Manchester, 29.
116 Manchester, 172.
117 Manchester, 623.
118 Manchester 623.
119 Manchester, 169.
67

Manchester suggesting someone viewing the relics with no knowledge of their
provenance might wonder what had befallen their wearer and who was to blame.
It was not enough for Manchester to blame Oswald, who was described as such a
nonentity that he was almost beneath Manchester’s contempt. In recounting Oswald’s
defection to the Soviet Union, Manchester called Oswald’s writings “ravings” that
“stamp him as an incoherent hater, nothing more. Looking for doctrine in them is like
looking for bone in a polyp.” 120 Similarly, Oswald’s work record demonstrated for
Manchester that “he couldn’t do anything right…Bit by bit the sickening truth was
emerging: no one wanted him, no one had ever wanted him.” 121 Manchester explicitly
drew the comparison between Kennedy and Oswald as the very best and the very worst
of the nation: “Lee Harvey Oswald had become the most rejected man of his time. It is
not too much to say that he was the diametric opposite of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.” 122
Whereas Kennedy was “all-powerful, “cheered,” “noble,” “beloved,” and a “hero,”
Oswald was “impotent,” ignored,” “ignoble,” “despised,” and “a victim.” 123 Even in
death, Kennedy appeared powerful and vibrant compared to the pipsqueak Oswald.
Manchester related how General Philip Wehle looked upon Kennedy’s naked body as it
lay on a table awaiting the autopsy. In a scene redolent of homoeroticism, the general felt
“a great welling love, an unendurable sadness, the cruelty of a personal life.” The
president’s body appeared “unmarred,” and the general thought “What a magnificent
120 Manchester, 31.
121 Manchester, 93.
122 Manchester, 93.
123 Manchester, 93.
68

ody he had, the physique of a Greek God.” 124 In fact, Kennedy had suffered a gaping
head wound, and in life had struggled with disease and affliction.
The question for Manchester, then, was how a nonentity like Oswald could kill a
great god-king like Kennedy. Oswald’s political motives were dismissed. Manchester
echoed the Warren Commission’s description of the alleged assassin’s sexual
inadequacy, and also claimed that Marina had finally rejected Oswald in favor of her
friend, Ruth Paine, who she was living with. This, of course, hints at psychosexual
motives for the assassination, but Manchester did not emphasize this argument. Instead,
he blamed the extreme right-wing’s hatred of the President prevalent in Dallas for
swaying a “deranged mind” such as Oswald’s. 125 Manchester included many examples
of the Dallas far right’s hatred of the Massachusetts Democrat, while discounting
Oswald’s own ostensibly extreme left-wing views; otherwise the connection between
Oswald and his environment would not fit. He wrote that in Dallas, there was “a
stridency, a disease of the spirit, a shrill, hysterical note suggestive of a deeply troubled
society” along with “a dark streak of violence.” 126 Many advisors and confidants of
President Kennedy warned him of the danger in Dallas, and Manchester noted that many
Americans assumed before Oswald’s arrest, that the assassin had to be a right-wing
extremist. According to the author, Jacqueline Kennedy thought when told of Oswald’
arrest, “Oh my God…but that’s absurd…It even robs his [Kennedy’s] death of meaning.”
124 Manchester, 400.
125 Manchester, 287.
126 Manchester, 43.
69

She then told her mother, “He [JFK] didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for
civil rights…It’s-- it had to be some silly little Communist.” 127
The gallant Manchester, however, rescued the meaning of Kennedy’s death by
blaming the right-wing atmosphere in Dallas as the main cause of the President’s
assassination. Dallas was portrayed as Oswald’s double in ignominy. While the panoply
of Kennedy’s Roman Catholic funeral was being held in the nation’s capital on
November 24 th , 1963, Oswald was gunned down while being transferred to the Dallas
jail. “The pairing of Dallas and Washington,” according to Manchester, “like that of
John Kennedy and Lee Oswald, is an affront, yet all were irrevocably joined in American
history that weekend.” 128 In Manchester’s view, the right-wing enclave of Dallas, like
Oswald, was the worst that the nation had to offer, while Kennedy and Washington were
the best.
As the previous examples indicate, Manchester overstated through strained
rhetoric the cravenness of Oswald, the greatness of Kennedy, and the evil atmosphere of
Dallas. Deploying heavy doses of alliteration, Manchester described Kennedy’s
limousine nearing the site of the assassination as “the glittering blue convertible, its
fender flags fluttering, breasted the breakers of noise and moved steadily ahead past the
police barriers.” 129 Often, Manchester displayed stereotypical and elitist views, and
resorted to rhetorical excess, as in this novelistic description of the netherworld of police
departments and their habitués, like Jack Ruby:
127 Manchester, 407.
128 Manchester, 514.
129 Manchester, 151.
70

The men and women who had surrounded President Kennedy…were
unacquainted with the maggoty half-world of dockets and flesh-peddlers, of
furtive men with mud-colored faces and bottle blondes whose high-arched
overplucked eyebrows give their flat glittering eyes a perpetually startled
expression, of sordid walkup hotels with unread Gideon Bibles and tumbled
bedclothes and rank animal odors, of police connivance in petty crime, of a way
of life in which lawbreakers, law enforcement officers, and those who totter on
the law’s edge meet socially and even intermarry. There is no mystery about Jack
Ruby’s relationship with the Dallas Cops. His type is depressingly familiar in
American police stations. 130
In the end, time has shown that Manchester’s depiction of President Kennedy, of
Dallas, and Lee Harvey Oswald were simplistic perhaps to the point of absurdity. The
popular historian began work on his book shortly after the assassination, and his work
reflected the national distress over the assassination.
Some of the same criticisms can be leveled at Jim Bishop’s The Day Kennedy
Was Shot, published in 1968 by an author who had already reached a large audience with
his earlier work The Day Lincoln Was Shot, as well as A Day in the Life of President
Kennedy. Once again, the reader finds a contrast between the vibrant, handsome,
powerful Kennedy and a cipher who failed at everything. Here’s how Bishop introduced
Oswald to the reader: “He talked big but couldn’t hold onto a job...He brooded sullenly
and appeared to have trouble making love to his wife…Sometimes, in his frustration, he
beat her with his fists…To a young man whose father had died two months before he was
born; to a boy who had slept with his mother until he was eleven years of age; to one who
130 Manchester, 334.
71

had, of necessity, spent time in orphanages, one who was now accused of lacking
manhood, the weapons may have made him as big as the biggest man.” 131
While there is some question about whether Oswald slept in his mother’s bed, he
certainly did not do so from his birth to eleven years old. In fact, he spent some time in
orphanages at an early age, as Bishop noted. The author completed his introduction of
Oswald and recitation of his failures by writing “The young man who seldom responded
to a friendly ‘good morning’ found himself at the end of his particular blind alley. He
was friendless, homeless, ‘hounded by the FBI,’ as he said, and now he knew he was a
cipher.” 132
Kennedy, by contrast, “had been a fair prince indeed, bringing youth and
sophistication and an air of confidence to the throne.” 133 He courageously acknowledged
the possibility of assassination, according to Bishop, even on the day of his death, but
bravely ventured into Dallas, or “nut country” as the President called it. 134 The speech he
planned in downtown Dallas would have confronted and challenged the right-wing to end
their resistance to change, but of course, the speech was never given. Kennedy’s zest for
living also was contrasted to the abstemious Oswald. At one point, Bishop described
Kennedy as “a merry sinner” who enjoyed “the sins of the flesh,” in which “he joined
hands with the average man everywhere.” 135 Lest the reader think that Bishop was
referring to any sex scandals involving the late President, he wrote that Dallasites viewed
131 Bishop, 13-14.
132 Bishop, 15-16.
133 Bishop, ix.
134 Bishop, 25.
135 Bishop, 432.
72

Kennedy and his wife as a “Nice couple with no scandal running their marriage into the
ground.” 136
In describing the assassination itself, Bishop contended Oswald crouched on the
sixth floor of the Book Depository building with his rifle “about to make history. Never
again would he be regarded as a human cipher…the silent, sullen, psychotic.” 137
Afterward, stunned people around the world could not believe “a meteor, racing across
the heavens, could be brought down by an idiot with a cork gun.” 138 Bishop spent little
time trying to decipher the motive of the cipher, other than to say Oswald had gunned
down the great leader in the street “without motive except for the notoriety involved.” 139
This made Oswald even more of a “lone nut” than the Warren Commission had described
in its report.
The fact that the alleged murderer was a left-wing nut, and not a right-wing nut in
a conspiracy, absolved the city of Dallas – and the nation itself -- of guilt in the
assassination – even as Mrs. Kennedy fretted that a communist assassin deprived her
husband’s death of meaning. Bishop noted the nation’s extreme sorrow and sense of
guilt over the assassination, but concluded, “These sorrows are not the symptom of a sick
society. To the contrary, the health of the community is displayed by the increasing
amount of mass shock which follows each assassination…The country feels that it is
‘above’ violence. Not culture, no country is.” Any loser with a weapon willing to give
136 Bishop, 143.
137 Bishop, 162.
138 Bishop, 335.
139 Bishop, 419.
73

up his life can kill any leader in the world: “The fanatics, the sick, transform their hate
and frustration into a final, physical act.” 140
Stylistically, Bishop too used many strained metaphors in describing the events of
November 22, 1963. In the Oval Office, he wrote, there was “the array of pens standing
in a holder like asparagus.” 141 He described a conversation as having “the quality of a
snowball running downhill; it became bigger, more magnificent as the mood plumbed the
depths.” 142 Perhaps Bishop and Manchester faced a similar problem in trying to describe
events in a new way that had received massive media coverage. Bishop also reverted to
stereotypes at times, including references to “the natural feminine contempt for time” and
“Negro prisoners” whose giggles “lasted the longest.” 143
The Ford, Bishop, and Manchester books reached hundreds of thousands of
readers. Manchester reported that his bestselling book sold more than 550,000 copies in
bookstores and 800,000 more through the Book of the Month Club. 144 Despite the brisk
sales, their unquestioning acceptance of the official version of events and their
unflinching praise of Kennedy are dated products of their time. However, others would
take up the pen to defend the commission, and better explain the lone assassin’s motives.
Some emphasized the psychological wellsprings for Oswald’s alleged actions.
140
Bishop, 679.
141
Bishop, 615.
142
Bishop, 658.
143
Bishop, 69 and 388.
144
Manchester reported the figurse in a letter to the New York Times on February 5,
1992. Reproduced in Zachary Sklar, and Oliver Stone JFK: The Book of the Film, (New
York: Applause Books, 1992), 452
74

While Manchester hinted at possible psychosexual motives for the assassination,
Dr. Renatus Hartogs, the same psychiatrist who examined Oswald as a teenaged truant in
New York City and was quoted extensively in the Warren Commission, tried to explain
the alleged assassin’s motive in psychological terms. In a 1965 book co-authored with
Lucy Freeman titled The Two Assassins, Hartogs used the Warren Commission report as
a means to put Oswald, as well as Ruby, on the couch for a Freudian examination. In
Hartog’s words, the book was “not an attempt to condone, or to blame. It is an attempt to
understand” in order to “save other men from being slaughtered by strangers” in the
future. 145 Hartogs recounted Oswald’s life as portrayed by the Warren Commission,
explaining why certain events were supposedly important psychologically in
understanding the alleged assassin. Hartogs described his own examination of the young
Oswald and his apparent psychological reasons for allegedly killing Kennedy.
Hartogs’ account of his examination of Oswald went beyond his own meager
report about the truant, and it is hard to believe he would have such a vivid memory from
such a brief encounter whose importance was only apparent after the assassination.
Hartogs claimed that he remembered Lee Harvey Oswald as “a slender, dark-haired boy
with a pale, haunted face.” He wrote that he “remembered thinking how slight he seemed
for his thirteen years. He had an underfed look, reminiscent of the starved children I had
seen in concentration camps.” 146 (Surely, Oswald was not underfed to that extent.)
Hartogs described Oswald’s demeanor as “withdrawn, almost sullen…I could not
145
Dr. Renatus Hartogs and Lucy Freeman, The Two Assassins, (New York: Zebra
Books, 1976 (1965)), 13.
146
Hartogs and Freeman, 92.
75

perceive a crevice of warmth. No matter what I said, his frozen mask would not
crack.” 147 Most sensationally, Hartogs claimed that he “sensed a deep anger stirring far
beneath the surface. I thought to myself, this boy is choked with silent rage.” 148 As the
Warren Commission report pointed out Hartogs did not diagnose Oswald as having a
“strongly paranoid outlook.” As mentioned previously, Hartogs wrote in his report that
Lee had a “personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive
tendencies” -- psychological jargon that is less catchy than “choked with silent rage.”
Hartotgs’ report also stated that “No finding of neurological impairment or psychotic
mental changes could be made.” 149
In his book, Hartogs described his testimony to the Warren Commission, and
made a slight adjustment to his findings. He said he was asked “what particular thing
about Oswald” made Hartogs conclude that Oswald had “a severe personality
disturbance.” 150 Of course, Hartogs’ report from his examination said simply
“personality disturbance,” not “severe personality disturbance.”
The accuracy of Hartogs’ recollection of his brief examination of Oswald is
impeached by an unlikely source, Warren Commission counsel David Belin. In
November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury, Belin quoted Hartogs’ testimony that Oswald “had
a potential for explosive, aggressive, assaultive acting out” - even though the
147 Hartogs and Freeman, 92.
148 Hartosg and Freeman, 92.
149 Hartogs and Freeman, 319.
150 Hartogs and Freeman, 93.
76

psychiatrist’s report from the time made no mention of this. 151 Belin concluded that “The
passage of time blurs the accuracy of human recollection, even of an expert witness such
as a psychiatrist,” and that fellow counsel “Jim Liebeler had no inhibitions about
destroying the testimony of a psychiatrist” by pointing out the discrepancies in his
testimony and the official record. 152 Despite Belin’s statement, as was seen in the
previous chapter, the Warren Commission did make much use of Hartogs’ report and the
evaluation of Oswald during his time at Youth House in New York City. Why did the
Warren Commission use Hartogs’ report so extensively if he was unreliable or his
conclusions were not helpful in understanding Oswald’s psyche?
The main contribution of Hartogs’ book is analyzing Oswald’s alleged
psychological motivation for killing Kennedy. Hartogs wrote that he accepted “Freud’s
important discoveries which reveal the close connection between our sexual and
aggressive desires.” 153 Whether one accepts Hartogs’ analysis may depend, not only on
how one views Oswald, but also how one views Freudian interpretations. Hartogs
dispatched quickly with the “conscious” motivations of Oswald, such as his view of
Kennedy as the enemy of Communist-ruled Cuba and perhaps envy of Kennedy’s “power
and wealth,” and instead focused on his “unconscious” reasons, with a heavy dose of
oedipal angst and fear of castration. 154 Hartogs posited that in Oswald’s unconscious
fantasy, by killing a stranger, President Kennedy, he was really “killing a member, or
151
David Belin, November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury, (New York: Quadrangle, 1973),
412.
152
You Are the Jury, 422.
153
Hartogs and Freeman, 250.
154
Hartogs and Freeman, 253-55)
77

members, of his family for whom he bore hatred as a child.” 155 These family members
included the father who died before Oswald’s birth, his stepfather Ekdahl who supplanted
the father Oswald never knew, the brothers who were his rivals in childhood, and of
course his domineering mother, Marguerite. According to Hartogs, “murder usually
expresses both hate and sensuality…Oswald may have been getting out his sexual
feelings in the only way open to him – the child’s way of violence.” 156 In addition,
Hartogs added the usual tropes that Oswald may have felt sexually inadequate or had
homosexual impulses. Hartogs concluded that Oswald’s “fury boiled within him perhaps
from the very day he was propelled from his mother’s body into a hostile world.” 157
Dallas psychologist Diane Holloway, who had a peripheral connection to the
Kennedy assassination, also tried to explain Oswald’s psyche and his motive for
allegedly killing the president. Holloway was one of the psychologists who examined
General Walker to determine whether he was competent to stand trial for inciting the
rioting that broke out at the University of Mississippi when James Meredith tried to enroll
as the school’s first African-American student. Of course, according to the Warren
Commission, Oswald first attempted to kill Walker before assassinating Kennedy.
Holloway also had connections to the Dallas police department and Parkland Memorial
Hospital where both Kennedy and Oswald were taken after being shot. Perhaps these
connections also made her biased toward accepting the official version of events. In fact,
in the introduction to her 2000 book, The Mind of Oswald, Holloway acknowledged that
155 Hartogs and Freeman, 259.
156 Hartogs and Freeman, 272.
157 Hartogs and Freeman, 274.
78

when an event like the Kennedy assassination affects a community, the area “feels
involved in a search for motives: perhaps partly as a way to absolve themselves of some
sense of community guilt.” 158 To explain Oswald’s motive, Holloway examined
Oswald’s writings as a means to posthumously analyze his psyche.
Throughout the book, Holloway analyzed Oswald’s letters to his family, the diary
he kept in the Soviet Union, his statements to reporters and on job applications and
official documents, and other writings. Holloway began by describing the first note by
Oswald in the historical record: a brief card the 11-year-old Oswald sent to his half-
brother John Pic in 1950. The card requested that Pic, who was serving in the Coast
Guard, send $1.50 to Oswald. Holloway castigated the 11-year-old for displaying “the
selfishness, spelling deficiencies, and demanding ways which would become some of his
character traits.” 159 Yet, the psychologist pointed out that the young Oswald probably
wrote the card at the urging of his mother. It is hard to see how Holloway’s analysis can
be accepted given Oswald’s young age and the possibility that Marguerite was the one
responsible for the grand request. Holloway seems to analyze Oswald’s words in light of
the Warren Commission’s conclusions instead of examining them with a fresh eye.
For example, in discussing Oswald’s childhood, she declared that “He gradually
became more alienated from others,” and “He became more openly hostile to others.”
What evidence is there for this? Holloway quoted Oswald’s note in a nine grade boy’s
autograph book: “’Roses are red, Violites ar blue, People like you, Should be in a
158
Diane Holloway, The Mind of Oswald: Accused Assassin of President John F.
Kennedy, (Victoria, B.C.: Trafford Publishing, 2000), v.
159
Holloway, 2.
79

zoo.’” 160 Surely, this childhood ditty cannot be taken as signs of Oswald’s “contempt
for others.” Holloway accepted the official view that Oswald was a believer in
Marxism from an early age and during his time in the Marine Corps. She quoted a letter
Oswald wrote three weeks before he joined the Marines in 1956 to the American Socialist
Party in which he declared “I am a Marxist” and would like information about the party’s
youth league. 161 In the military, Oswald displayed his resentment of authority, according
to Holloway, and began to plot his defection to the Soviet Union. “Dispirited with his
Marine service,” she wrote, “Lee became more insolent, less industrious, and openly read
and discussed Marxism, socialism, communism and pro-Castro sentiments with some
servicemen.” 162
Holloway accepted as valid Oswald’s diary and based much of her analysis of his
time in the Soviet Union on this document. The psychologist quoted Oswald’s
description of his suicide attempt when he apparently despaired that the Soviets would
not accept him: “I decide to end it…slash my left wrist…Somewhere, a violin plays, as I
wacth my life whirl away. I think to myself. ‘How easy to die’ and ‘a sweet death. (to
violins)” 163 According to Holloway, “This romanticized suicide attempt with violin
music showed the influence of Lee’s reading and his willingness to manipulate others,
160
Holloway, 5. Holloway reproduced Oswald’s words as he wrote them and without
corrections
161
Holloway, 7.
162
Holloway, 9.
163
Holloway, 18.
80

even if he had to abuse himself.” 164 However, the passage may also mean the attempt
was not serious if Oswald could look back on it with some humor.
Holloway described Marina as a rebel, and that she may have been drawn to a
foreigner but would grow disenchanted with Oswald’s lies. In fact, Holloway
emphasized Oswald’s deceptiveness and lying to manipulate others. The author also
dismissed any possibility that Oswald was a intelligence agent even when his writings
may indicate that. For example, Oswald wrote to John Connally, who he thought was
still the Secretary of the Navy, to protest the changing of honorable discharge from the
Marines to undesirable discharge (not the even more serious dishonorable discharge).
Oswald wrote that he always “had the full sanction of the U.S. Embassy, Moscow, USSR
and hence the U.S. government” during his time in the Soviet Union. 165
Holloway assumed this was a bold-faced lie, but perhaps Oswald was hinting at
some official sanction for his defection. Also, in a letter to his brother Robert, Oswald
mentioned the release of the U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union, Francis Gary
Powers. Oswald wrote that Powers “seemed to be a nice, bright, American-type fellow
when I saw him in Moscow.” 166 The problem is that Oswald was not in Moscow when
Powers was brought there and put on trial, and there is no known incident in which
Oswald could have seen Powers in person. Holloway assumed Oswald made a mistake:
perhaps Oswald saw Powers on television. Conspiracy theorists would allege that
perhaps the KGB used Oswald in some way to assess Powers after the U-2 incident.
164 Holloway, 19.
165 Holloway, 86.
166 Holloway, 88.
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In her conclusion, Holloway quoted an extraordinary passage Oswald wrote about
himself: “Lee Harvey Oswald was born in Oct 1939 in New Orleans La., the son of a
Insurans Salesman whose early death left a mean streak of indepence brought on by
negleck.” Holloway declared that this was a “fitting self-analysis” for a man who during
his childhood experienced “emotional deprivation” and his mother’s “unrealistic
delusions of grandeur about her son and perhaps about herself.” 167 Holloway contended
that if she were to analyze Oswald as a 13-year-old in the 1990’s, she would have
diagnosed him as “Conduct disorder, undersocialized, non-aggressive.” 168 As an adult,
he would have been diagnosed as “Paranoid Personality Disorder” or “Antisocial
Personality Disorder” Some of the attributes that Holloway contended people found in
Oswald would fit under these descriptions: “secretive,” “jealous,” “antisocial,”
“misanthropic,” “bitter,” “hostile loner,” “sensitive to perceived insults, “ready to lash
out at others,” “poor interpersonal relationships,” “have no empathy,” and “exploit
others.” 169 In the end, Holloway’s analysis merely reinforces the findings of the Warren
Commission by updating the psychological terminology used to describe the “lone nut”
assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Related to the effort to understand the presumed assassin’s psychology are
attempts to pin the blame on the dysfunctionality of Oswald’s family, including his
upbringing by Marguerite and his tempestuous marriage to Marina.
167 Holloway, 225.
168 Holloway, 226.
169 Holloway, 226-227.
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In Jean Stafford’s profile of Marguerite in A Mother in History, the author clearly
suggested that the alleged assassin’s problems started, like Norman Bates in Psycho, with
mother. As Stafford wrote, “while she [Marguerite] remains peripheral to the immediate
events of the Dallas killings, she is inherent to the evolution of the reasons for them.” 170
The author accepted the official version of Oswald as the lone assassin, and the premise
that “the child is father of the man: we need to know the influences and accidents and
loves and antipathies and idiosyncrasies that were the ingredients making up the final
compound. 171 In her three days interviewing Marguerite, who called herself “a mother in
history,” Stafford found her subject to be obstreperous in defense of her son, adamant in
her claim he was an agent of the U.S. government, keenly interested in making money
from her notoriety, and somewhat addled in her thinking. As Marguerite described
herself to Stafford, “I should say I’m very outspoken, I’m aggressive, I’m no dope. Let’s
face it, if you step on my toes I’m gonna fight back, and I don’t apologize for that.” 172
Certainly, many Americans now believe Marguerite’s claim that her son was
framed, that he may have been a government agent, and that he was not the deranged
“lone nut” of the Warren Commission. However, Marguerite did not come across as a
sympathetic character. She described her son as intelligent and courageous, and rejected
the supposition that Lee was a failure at everything he did, pointing out that he was only
24-years-old when he died. Marguerite also had a singular way of looking at the
170
Jean Stafford, A Mother in History: Three Incredible Days with Lee Harvey Oswald’s
Mother, (New York: Pharos Books, 1992 (1966)), 4.
171
Stafford, 4-5.
172
Stafford, 30.
83

assassination. At one point she told Stafford, “Now maybe Lee Harvey Oswald was the
assassin….But does that make him a louse?” 173 Many people would say yes, but
Marguerite explained that the assassination may have been a “mercy killing” because
“President Kennedy was a dying man” and needed to be killed for the “security of the
country.” 174
These interviews took place in 1965 before Kennedy’s medical problems,
including his suffering from Addison’s disease, were well known, but as Stafford
interjected, “Some mercy killing! The methods used in his instance must surely be
unique in the annals of euthanasia.” 175 Marguerite also had a plaque on her wall of her
quote, “MY SON – LEE HARVEY OSWALD EVEN AFTER HIS DEATH HAS DONE
MORE FOR HIS COUNTRY THAN ANY OTHER LIVING HUMAN BEING.” 176
Marguerite even wanted her son buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Stafford found her subject’s arguments “specious, her logic bizarre, and her
deductions plucked from the foggy, foggy air.” 177 Marguerite had a severe persecution
complex. She believed the government needed to reimburse her for her son’s work as a
secret agent, but even if one believes Oswald was connected to U.S. intelligence, she
takes her case to the extreme, comparing herself to the Virgin Mary. She told Stafford,
“if you research the life of Jesus Christ, you find that you never did hear anything more
about the mother of Jesus, Mary, after He was crucified. And really nobody has worried
173 Stafford, 12.
174 Stafford, 12.
175 Stafford, 13.
176 Stafford, 38.
177 Stafford, 47.
84

about my welfare.” 178 On the final day of the interview, Marguerite visited her son’s
grave on Mother’s Day, and declared “Let’s have a little defense of Lee Harvey Oswald!
On Mother’s Day, let’s come out and say that he died in the service of his country.” 179
Other family members had negative things to say about Oswald.
His wife, Marina, recounted an abusive relationship with her husband. Their
married life was the focus of journalist and Soviet scholar Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s
1977 account, Marina and Lee, which was largely based on the author’s exclusive series
of interviews with Marina. The cover of the book is a strange heart-shaped valentine,
with Lee, the accused assassin, on the right half of the heart in red and Marina, his bride,
on the left-half in yellow. As a young reporter in Moscow, McMillan had interviewed
Oswald as well when the U.S. embassy tipped her off that he was trying to defect.
McMillan found the ex-Marine’s “words to be bitter” even though his tone was “level
and expressionless.” 180 She also found his reason for defecting strange: there were few
people seeking to immigrate to the Soviet Union from the United States for ideological
reasons at that time. McMillan stated that she wrote her book to try to answer “the
question that puzzles many people even today. Why?” 181 That is in fact the classic
question for the post-Warren Commission authors who believe the lone gunman theory.
The author added that she also wanted to try “to reconcile the quiet, rather gentle ‘Lee’”
178
Stafford, 93.
179
Stafford, 106.
180
Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee, (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 70.
181
McMillan, 6.
85

who she interviewed in Moscow with “the dangerous ‘Oswald,’ the man who shot the
President.” 182
McMillan sought to explain the assassination by stressing the tempestuous nature
of Oswald’s marriage to Marina, the many disappointments of Oswald’s life, and
psychological factors. Marina and Lee’s relationship, according to McMillan, “was
founded on a mutual willingness, indeed a mutual need, to inflict and accept pain. They
were deeply and reciprocally dependent.” 183 Marina herself had a troubled childhood
and upbringing. She was born in 1941, the illegitimate daughter of a father she never
knew. Her mother died when she was a teenager, and her stepfather treated her cruelly.
Oswald met Marina in Minsk, where she was living with her aunt and uncle and working
as a pharmacist.
Oswald courted Marina only after having been rejected by another woman, Ella
Germann, a Soviet Jew. Oswald claimed in his diary that he married Marina to get back
at Germann. Even so, the author argued that the marriage worked reasonably well in the
Soviet Union while Oswald was away from his mother, had a good income and apartment
by Soviet standards with a boost from the authorities in the form of a “Red Cross”
subsidy, and no worries about finding work. But Oswald wrote in his diary that he had
become disenchanted with the Soviet Union because of the regimentation of the society
and lack of social and professional opportunities. He had decided to return to the United
States. As McMillan put it, Oswald’s “need for his mother’s love” was not met in
182 McMillan, 7.
183 McMillan, 231.
86

childhood by Marguerite; “The Marine Corps – the ‘mother of men’ – failed him too;” he
rejected his “mother country” by defecting; and finally he rejected “Mother Russia”
because “it had failed to meet his needs.” When he returned to the United States and the
“emotional orbit of his mother,” he acted “wildly” and with more spitefulness and
meanness toward Marina. 184 Complicating his return was the fact that Marina had given
birth to their daughter, June Lee. In Dallas shortly before the assassination, Marina
would give birth to their second daughter, Rachel.
Once again, Marguerite is the focus of criticism in Oswald’s psychological make-
up, and yet McMillan did treat Oswald’s political beliefs and idealism with respect. She
claimed that his political solution to his disenchantment with both the United States and
Soviet Union “was similar to the solution proposed by a generation of American activists
in the later 1960s: participatory democracy at a community level.” As such, “Oswald
was a pioneer, if you will, or a lonely American anti-hero a few years ahead of his
time.” 185 In fact, several writers have picked up on the idea of Oswald as an “anti-hero,”
a point of view that will be discussed later.
In the United States, Marina told McMillan that Oswald began to beat her
regularly, and there is corroborating testimony in the Warren Commission report from
neighbors and acquaintances of the Oswald’s who either heard violent arguments or saw
Marina with black-eyes or bruises. Oswald had trouble holding onto work, as well,
which, McMillan argued, took a toll on the marriage. In McMillan’s recounting of the
184 McMillan, 158.
185 McMillan, 157.
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events leading up to the assassination, Oswald resented the help his mother and the
Russian-expatriate community gave to Marina. He had no lasting friendships, and only
seemed to care about his daughters. His efforts to establish himself as a recognized left-
wing political activist failed, as did his attempt to kill General Walker. “To the American
left,” McMillan wrote, “Lee Oswald did not exist. Yet this was the community he
yearned to belong to and whose hero he hoped to become.” 186
In the end, McMillan’s portrait of Oswald bolstered the image of the alleged
assassin in the Warren Commission report. Here was a true loner whose only meaningful
relationship -- his marriage to Marina -- was a failure. McMillan also dismissed the
possibility of Oswald as an intelligence agent and or a conspirator: “I have often asked
Marina whether Lee might have been capable of joining with an accomplice to kill the
President. Never, she says. Lee was too secretive ever to have told anyone his plans.
Nor could he have acted in concert, accepted orders, or obeyed any plan by anybody
else.” 187 Years later, Marina would change her view of whether her late husband was a
patsy, but with this author, she hewed to the official line.
Marina provided details of her love life with Oswald, including the fact that she
had cheated on him in Minsk while he was away in Moscow seeking approval to return to
the United States. She gave somewhat mixed opinions on Oswald’s love-making.
According to Marina, Oswald “ejaculated too soon, before Marina was ready. It made
her so furious that at times she could have hit him.” “As time went on,” McMillan
186 McMillan, 365.
187 McMillan, 453.
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wrote, “their sexual relationship grew more harmonious, and eventually Marina came to
consider her husband a tender and accomplished lover.” 188
McMillan recounted the last night Marina and Lee spent together, which has
become a trope in the assassination lore that maybe Oswald would not have assassinated
President Kennedy if Marina had not rejected Lee’s attempt at reconciliation. Marina and
Lee had argued when she found out he was living in a boarding house under an alias.
Marina was staying separately at the home of a Quaker woman, Ruth Paine, who
befriended Marina. Lee visited the Paine residence the Thursday evening before the
assassination, and attempted to convince Marina to live with him again, but Marina
refused: “Three times he had begged her to move to Dallas with him ‘soon.’ Three times
she had refused. And he had tried to kiss her three times.” 189
Marina saw symbolic significance in the recurrence of the threes. After being
informed that her husband was a suspect, Marina found that Lee had left his wedding ring
in a cup. Defenders of the Warren Commission would repeat the story of Oswald leaving
his wedding ring as a way to say goodbye before he killed Kennedy.
Ultimately, by emphasizing Oswald’s personal life, McMillan seems to blame the
assassination largely on the alleged assassin’s futility as a lover and husband, with the
added impetus of his left-wing political beliefs. She also concluded as an arm-chair
psychological analyst that President Kennedy stirred up “memories and associations” as a
parental figure, husband, and political leader that “were too deep, too charged
188 McMillan, 120-21.
189 McMillan, 419.
89

emotionally, altogether too much to bear” for Oswald when given the opportunity by fate
to carry out the assassination. 190
McMillan told the author of this dissertation that she respected the Oswalds and
sought to give Lee “his humanity.” She rejected the idea that Oswald was a “nut,” but
that he “displaced many of his conflicts…onto the political sphere and that he believed
himself to be acting for ideological reasons.” She said she still believes Oswald was the
lone assassin and had no ties to U.S. or Soviet intelligence. McMillan said the Soviets
did not trust ideological defectors and saw him as being “emotionally and politically unfit
to be an agent.” 191
There are some conspiracy theories about McMillan herself: that she has
connections to the CIA and was acting on its behalf either in interviewing Oswald in
Moscow or in collaborating with Marina in writing a book that upheld the Warren
Commission’s findings. McMillan declared “I am not and never have been an agent of
anybody and am exactly what I purported to be.” McMillan said she is no longer in touch
with Marina and that she came under the influence of conspiracy theorists in Dallas who
persuaded her Lee was a patsy. Marina’s more recent statements are described in
Chapter 7.
In her book, McMillan described an incident several weeks before the
assassination, when Oswald, with Marina at his side, watched two assassination-related
movies, “Suddenly” and “We Were Strangers.” Marina paid little attention to the
190
McMillan, 467.
191
Priscilla Johnson McMillan, emails to author, December 21 and December 30, 2010.
90

movies, but claimed “she felt [Lee] sit up straight and strain toward the television set,
greatly excited.” 192 The researcher John Loken studied the Dallas-area television listings,
and questioned whether Oswald had watched “Suddenly.” 193 However, Loken believed
that Oswald may have known about the film and been indirectly been motivated by its
story of a sniper in a window preparing to assassinate a U.S. President. Loken also
argued that Oswald was motivated by two other films about political assassination, “The
Manchurian Candidate” and “We Were Strangers.” Loken found no evidence that
Oswald had seen “The Manchurian Candidate,” with its tale of Cold War intrigue,
brainwashing, and political assassination, but it was showing at a theater near Oswald’s
place of employment in 1962. Oswald also subscribed to Time magazine, which included
a review of the film that perhaps Oswald read. According to Loken, “We Were
Strangers” – film about a plot to kill a Cuban leader in the 1930’s – did show on Dallas
television, and as noted earlier, Marina claimed Oswald had watched the film.
Loken accepted the lone assassin theory, which can even be seen in the dedication
of his short study to Clay Shaw – the New Orleans businessman put on trial and acquitted
for conspiring to kill Kennedy. Loken described Shaw as “a noble man, wrongly accused
of conspiracy, whose life and reputation were ruined by the powerful.” 194 The author
also accepted the official view of Oswald as a negligible person. Loken described
Oswald as “a weak and impressionable personality, frequently imitating what others had
192
McMillan, 380.
193
John Loken, Oswald’s Trigger Films: The Manchurian Candidate, We Were
Strangers, Suddanly? (Ann Arbor: Falcon Books, 2000), 380.
194
Loken, iii.
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done or said before him.” 195 He argued that given the alleged assassin’s personality,
these films “were important psychological ‘triggers’ in Oswald’s tangled web of motives.
If they provided even five to ten percent of the stimulus for his act their influence would
still be momentous.” 196
Of course, the connection between watching violent movies and committing an
act of violence is questionable, but the parallels between the Kennedy assassination and
films dealing with political killings are eerie and even resulted in “Suddenly” and “The
Manchurian Candidate” being withdrawn from circulation for a number of years.
Interestingly, the plots of all three films deal with conspiracies to assassinate political
leaders. Loken did not know how that may have affected Oswald’s psyche or his
willingness to act with others to kill.
Oswald’s brother, Robert, accepted the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee
was the lone gunman, and Robert co-authored a book describing his attempt to
understand his sibling’s violent act. Robert Oswald believed that the Warren
Commission failed to answer the question why Lee had killed the president, and he found
tentative answers in his own family history and its impact on his brother’s psyche.
Robert Oswald blamed his mother, in part, for Lee’s troubles. “Lee’s imagination
and love of intrigue,” according to Robert, “was a lot like Mother’s,” and her “wild
195 Loken, 5.
196 Loken, 2.
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imagination” must have “influenced Lee’s view of the world.” 197 As a child, Lee loved a
radio program “Let’s Pretend” that dramatized fairy tales, and later enjoyed the television
series “I Led Three Lives,” about an FBI informant who posed as a Communist spy.
While some would see these interests as indicating the possibility Lee lived the life of a
double-agent, Robert dismissed his mother’s insistence that Lee was a secret agent of the
United States while he lived in the Soviet Union and afterward. Mrs. Oswald, Robert
wrote, “still sees a spy behind every door and tree.” 198 Robert thought that some
conspiracy theories may be influenced by his mother’s claims. Robert also described his
mother as a temperamental and quarrelsome woman who had “an extraordinary idea of
her ability and importance.” 199 Robert believed that Lee, as a youngest sibling, did not
have the resources to develop his independence from his mother.
While Robert largely accepted the Warren Commission’s findings that Lee was a
loner at odds with society, the elder Oswald provided some observations that run counter
to the official biography. For example, he remembered Lee “as a happy baby and a
happy little boy.” 200 He also did not remember ever seeing Lee read Marxist literature or
express an interest in communism – even though Robert accepted this as true. Robert
stated that “I never suspected, until [Lee] went to Russia, that he had the slightest interest
in Communism.” 201 Instead, Lee showed an interest in the Marines and Robert’s Marine
197
Robert L. Oswald with Myrick and Barbara Land, Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey
Oswald by his Brother, (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967), 47.
198
Oswald, 47.
199
Oswald, 23.
200
Oswald, 35.
201
Oswald, 72.
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Corps handbook. He remembered Lee “as a bright little boy, asking endless questions
and expecting answers from his older brothers.” 202
Robert also wrote that when he visited the family when they were in New York
City, Lee seemed to be “a normal, healthy, happy thirteen-year-old boy who was
enjoying himself.” 203 However, Robert learned later of Lee’s difficulties there. While
staying with his half-brother John Pic and his wife, the teenaged Lee allegedly became
involved in a violent argument with Mrs. Pic and threatened her with a knife. According
to Robert, John Pic stated that “I was never able to get to the kid again.” For his part,
Robert declared that Lee “was not only playing truant from school. That year he began to
play truant from life.” 204
Throughout the book, Robert attempted to reconcile his first hand observations of
his brother with the enormity of his alleged crime. During Lee’s stint in the Marine
Corps and then his time in the Soviet Union, Robert had limited dealings with his brother,
but looking back on his brother’s “short life,” he detected a pattern: “Try a job. Fail. Do
something dramatic.” 205 In Robert’s view, Lee craved attention, just like his mother.
When he returned to Dallas after leaving the Soviet Union, Robert detected that his
brother “seemed a little disappointed” that no reporters were on hand to record the
moment. 206
202 Oswald, 91.
203 Oswald, 62.
204 Oswald, 53-54.
205 Oswald, 75.
206 Oswald, 116.
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Robert also related an extraordinary moment when he talked to his brother after
he was charged with the assassination. Robert remembered “how completely relaxed
[Lee] seemed…His voice was calm and he talked matter-of-factly, without any sign of
tension or strain.” Finally, Robert asked “Lee, what the Sam Hill is going on?” Lee
replied “I don’t know.” Robert recited some of the evidence against his brother, who
“stiffened and straightened up” and said “I just don’t know what they’re talking
about…Don’t believe all this so-called evidence.” As he studied his brother’s face and
stared into his eyes, Lee Oswald said quietly, “Brother, you won’t find anything
there.” 207 After Ruby killed his brother, Robert wrote on a scrap of paper on December
11, 1963 that he would not judge his brother, leaving that to God, because “If I judge you
now I might never know the reason why…The child and young man I knew could not be
the one. What devil of devils possessed this brother of mine?” 208
Robert concluded that the assassination was Lee’s “final protest to a world that
had ignored him, sometimes mocked him, always failed to acknowledge his
superiority,” 209 Robert left open the possibility that someone may have influenced or
encouraged him. He also found a pattern in family history that he thought might help
explain his brother’s actions. He dismissed Lee’s alleged political motivations and
conspiracy theories that he thought were partly the result of his brother’s cultivated
mysteriousness and “enjoyment of intrigue.” 210 Instead, Robert noted that important
207 Oswald, 143-44.
208 Oswald, 182.
209 Oswald, 214.
210 Oswald, 216.
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dates leading up to the assassination coincided with important dates in Robert Oswald’s
life, including Robert’s birthday, the birthday of his son, and the anniversary of his
marriage. These could be coincidences, according to Robert, or “they could be the result
of his realization that I had been lucky enough to achieve what he wanted and would
never achieve – a certain success in military life, a happy marriage, a good job,
reasonable financial security, and a son.” 211 Robert reached for a psychological
explanation for his brother’s alleged crimes, probing into his family’s troubled history
and finding a grim parallel to his own life.
In the pro-Warren Commission portraits of Oswald, though, contradictory
evidence about Oswald emerged. Oswald appears to have loved his children. Moreover,
the authors found that he never said anything negative about President Kennedy. He
impressed Russian émigrés with his knowledge of the Russian language. Oswald even
was something of a civil rights activist. When he appeared in a New Orleans court for his
part in a fracas while distributing “Fair Play for Cuba” leaflets, Oswald infuriated anti-
Castro Cuban activist Carlos Bringuier by sitting in the “colored” section of the
segregated courtroom. Some writers would build on these and other incidents in
Oswald’s life to portray him as an anti-hero, as discussed in chapter 4.
Robert Oswald, and other defenders of the Warren Commission, sought to better
understand the motivation of the alleged assassin. Many found the answer in Oswald’s
troubled life, his familial difficulties, and his reported mental problems. These authors
emphasized the “lone nut” portrait of Oswald, while downplaying his ideological
211 Oswald, 240.
96

motivation and dismissing any conspiratorial associations. Such an interpretation stresses
the personal rather than social implications of the assassination – except for those
concerned with the treatment of the mentally ill or those like Manchester who argued that
the right-wing extremism in Dallas pushed a deranged Oswald over the edge.
97

CHAPTER 3: OSWALD THE RED
Some writers, who accepted the lone assassin findings of the Warren
Commission, nevertheless thought the panel had downplayed Oswald’s ideological
motivation for the assassination. They took at face value Oswald’s stated left-wing
extremist views, in particular his support of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. They saw him as the
avenger for hostile U.S. actions against Cuba, including the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs
invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. Oswald was one of “them.”. These defenders of
the Warren Commission symbolically removed Oswald from the U.S. body politic; he
was an alien organism. These writers included people connected to the U.S. or Soviet
bloc intelligence agencies. Both sides of the Cold War divide had an interest in
downplaying any intelligence connections between Oswald and their own espionage
activities. However, some writers in the West suspected Oswald was part of a Soviet or
Cuban conspiracy. It was sometimes hard for these writers to determine whether Oswald
was a “lone wolf” left-wing assassin or one connected to a Red conspiracy. The “Oswald
the Red” interpretation particularly appealed to Americans concerned with the
Communist “menace” or who viewed Marxism as an alien or evil ideology.
Defenders of the Warren Commission faced a problem in the 1970’s, when a
presidential panel and a congressional investigation revealed the existence of CIA plots to
assassinate Castro with the assistance of organized crime figures. This information had
98

een withheld from the Warren Commission, and presumably former CIA director Allen
Dulles did not tell his fellow members what he knew about the plots. These revelations
were a boon to conspiracy theorists because it brought together the elements of a plot that
could have been aimed at President Kennedy instead of Castro. The theorists argued that
organized crime was angry at being asked to assist the Kennedy administration, while
Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the Justice Department launched a crackdown on
the mafia. CIA operatives and anti-Castro Cubans, angry over the Bay of Pigs fiasco and
Kennedy’s apparent efforts to rein-in anti-Castro covert operations, were other possible
elements of this alleged plot.
As congressional investigations, historians, and journalists uncovered more details
of what investigative journalist Seymour Hersh called “The Dark Side of Camelot,”
defenders of the Warren Commission sought to incorporate this material in understanding
Oswald while maintaining he acted alone in assassinating Kennedy. Hersh recounted the
CIA plots to kill foreign leaders, including Cuban leader Fidel Castro, alleged collusion
between Kennedy’s political operation and organized crime, and the president’s many
alleged extramarital affairs, including with Judith Campbell Exner, who was also the
mistress of Chicago mafia chieftain Sam Giancana. Kennedy allegedly used his lover as
a courier to pass money and messages between the administration and the mob. 212
Several of the Warren Commission’s defenders came up with a new theory: Lee Harvey
212
Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, (New York: Little, Brown, and
Company, 1997). Hersh claimed that the Bobby Kennedy and others close to the slain
president sought to cover-up many of these potential scandals after the assassination, but
the journalist accepted the official verdict that Oswald was the lone assassin.
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Oswald was the lone assassin and was motivated by press reports quoting Fidel Castro as
threatening President Kennedy over the attempts to overthrow and kill him, including the
plots involving the CIA and the mob.
Before the revelations of the mid-1970’s, journalist Albert H. Newman offered an
early version of the Oswald as Cuban avenger theory in his 1970 book The Assassination
of John F. Kennedy: the Reasons Why. Newman dedicated his book to the state of Texas
and the city of Dallas, and he made clear he was not among those like Manchester who
blamed the right-wing climate in Dallas for influencing the alleged assassin. Instead,
Newman cited the periodicals that Oswald read and Cuban short-wave propaganda
broadcasts that he believed Oswald listened to as inciting Oswald to target General
Walker and to assassinate Kennedy. He accepted the Warren Commission’s findings
about how the assassination was committed, but not why. He downplayed psychological
motivations, and emphasized Oswald’s supposed ideological beliefs as a Trotskyite
Marxist.
Newman did not know at the time he wrote his book of the covert CIA campaign
against Castro’s Cuba, but quoted Cuban and other communist propaganda that would
“invent” covert crimes against the island nation. 213 Newman’s attitudes reflected his
place as an American in the Cold War who accepted his government as “good” and the
communists’ as “evil,” with no grey area in between. We now know, of course, that
213
Albert H. Newman, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: the Reasons Why, (New
York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1970), 77.
100

Cuba did not need to “invent” U.S. covert actions against the island, including attempts to
assassinate Castro. Newman diverged from the official account in arguing that “Lee
Harvey Oswald was the exact opposite of a deranged individual. He was a carefully
calculating political assassin, security in his inner convictions, with an immense capacity
for self-control and planning.” 214 According to Newman, “at the moment in which
[Oswald] squeezed the trigger, John F. Kennedy was a ‘criminal aggressor,’ the author of
a ‘reactionary and vicious’ policy of ‘strangling Cuba,’ who as chief of the evil CIA was
immediately responsible for arson, sabotage, and political murder.” 215
Newman accepted the idea that Oswald was attracted to Marxism at an early age,
and traced his life and ideological development. He noted that in New York one of his
teacher’s testified to the Warren Commission that the young Oswald “’had consistently
refused to salute the flag.’” According to Newman, this was “Oswald’s first public
gesture of ideological protest against the government of the United States.” 216 Oswald
told reporters in Moscow when he was trying to defect that his interest in Marxism began
in New York, when he was handed a pamphlet in 1953 protesting the impending
execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of being atomic spies for the Soviet
Union. Newman accepted the official version of Oswald’s life that during his teenage
years and then in the Marines, Oswald read further about Marxism, made statements in
support of the Soviet Union, and then tried to defect for ideological reasons.
214 Newman, x.
215 Newman, 74.
216 Newman, 15.
101

Newman outlined Oswald’s growing disgruntlement with Soviet-style
communism, and his supposed acceptance of the more radical Trotskyite faction. “The
Trotskyites, with their concept of the ‘permanent world revolution,’” Newman stated,
“are more akin to Fidel Castro and the violent Chinese Communists than are the more
cautious Russians.” 217 Newman noted that Oswald subscribed to both the Trotskyite
publication “The Militant” and the pro-Soviet “The Worker.” In fact, those are the two
publications that Oswald held in the famous backyard photos, dressed in black and with
his weapons. Some researchers claimed that Oswald showed his lack of understanding of
communist theories by holding the rival publications together, but Newman contended
that both supported Fidel Castro and opposed U.S. policy toward Cuba. Newman also
pointed out that a radio able to received short-wave broadcasts from Cuba was found in
his possessions, and he assumed Oswald listened to these broadcasts. He alleged that
through this propaganda, “Fidel Castro was more responsible for the assassination of
John F. Kennedy than any other now-living person…The endless propaganda that
emanated from Havana after the Bay of Pigs was undoubtedly a strong factor in Oswald’s
motivation.” 218
According to Newman, Oswald may have had conspirators in the attempt on
General Walker, but accepted the Warren Commission finding that Oswald acted alone in
killing Kennedy. Newman stated that Walker and Kennedy, although on opposition ends
of the American political spectrum, were opposed to Cuba. Newman concluded “That to
217 Newman, 241.
218 Newman, xii.
102

Oswald’s mind, he did not murder Mr. Kennedy as a hated human being, but rather
delivered a most vehement political protest, registering dissent from the administration’s
policy toward the Marxist Cuba he traitorously supported.” 219 Newman diverged from
the Warren Commission in theorizing that Oswald was on his way to attempt to kill
Walker again when he was accosted by officer Tippit.
The strength of Newman’s book is to place Oswald’s life within the framework of
history events, including as noted before the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis.
Although his own Cold War attitudes make the work dated, Newman provided more
context to Oswald’s actions than the Warren Commission. For example, the
Commission’s report provided no background about General Walker, who was both a
right-wing “Birch Society” anti-communist and a staunch segregationist. Walker in fact
was accused of inciting the riot that broke out when federal marshals escorted James
Meredith to enroll as the first African-American at the University of Mississippi on
September 30 and October first, 1962. Newman contended that Oswald, who told several
people that he supported the civil rights struggle, obviously knew of these events, in
addition to the general’s anti-Cuban activism. On April 10, 1963, Oswald allegedly fired
the shot at Walker, months after the Mississippi rioting.
In her 1983 book Oswald’s Game, independent researcher Jean Davison
emphasized Oswald’s work as a pro-Castro agent provocateur. Davison accepted the
official version of Oswald as an avowed Marxist, and she took his ostensibly extreme
219 Newman, 571.
103

left-wing beliefs very seriously. In her words, “A Marxist killing a liberal president made
no sense,” and Oswald without a motive made the assassination “an event without
meaning.” 220 While she acknowledged Oswald’s troubled upbringing and personal life,
his bitterness and arrogance, Davison contended that “Virtually everyone who knew Lee
Oswald thought he was intelligent, rational, and dedicated to his brand of left-wing
politics.” 221 In this rendering, Oswald’s interest in Communism began at an early age
when he was handed a leaflet in New York City about the Rosenberg espionage case. He
avidly read the pamphlet and books about Marxism. Oswald’s later defection to the
Soviet Union, in Davison’s view, was a logical extension of his beliefs, even though he
became disillusioned with the Soviet brand of Communism.
After his return to the United States with his new wife Marina and baby in tow,
Oswald became more and more interested in Cuba and its charismatic leader Fidel
Castro. Oswald staged demonstrations first in Dallas and then in New Orleans in behalf
of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. “There’s little doubt,” Davison argued, “that
Oswald’s pro-Castro activities were designed to help him get into Cuba and be warmly
received once he got there.” 222 So far, there is not much in Davison’s account from the
Warren Commission findings, but she added new twists to anti-Castro activist Sylvia
Odio’s alleged encounter with Oswald before the assassination and Oswald’s motive for
killing Kennedy.
220
Jean Davison, Oswald’s Game, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983), 14-15.
221
Davison, 20.
222
Davison, 141.
104

Davison claimed that Odio did in fact see Oswald, but that Oswald and his two
associates were apparently attempting to infiltrate the anti-Castro movement. As the
Warren Commission reported Odio claimed that Oswald and two Latin-looking men
came to her apartment shortly before the assassination and made provocative remarks, in
the meeting and a later telephone conversation about Oswald’s belief that Kennedy
should be killed. Many conspiracy theorists claim that perhaps someone was
impersonating Oswald or, if in fact he was there, the meeting indicated his true anti-
Castro and anti-Kennedy beliefs. However, Davison contended that Oswald was
probably acting as a provocateur “to encourage acts of violence that will discredit the
group he has infiltrated. By goading the exiles into attacking the president, a pro-Castro
provocateur might have hoped to destroy two threats to Cuba with one blow.” 223
Ultimately, according to Davison, Oswald assassinated President Kennedy in
revenge for the plots against Castro. Like several other researchers, Davison pointed to
an Associated Press report from Havana carried in the September 9 th New Orleans Times
Picayune in which Castro declared that U.S. leaders “would be in danger if they helped in
any attempt to do away with leaders of Cuba…’We are prepared to fight them and
answer in kind. United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to
eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.’” Other press accounts that
Davison presumed Oswald read dealt with covert U.S. raids on Cuba and President
Kennedy’s remarks calling for a coup there. Davison concluded by declaring “The
assassination of John Kennedy was neither an act of random violence nor a conspiracy. It
223 Davison, 196.
105

was carried out as a result of Oswald’s character and background interacting with
circumstance. It’s likely that had there been no plots against Castro, Oswald would have
eventually killed someone, but it would not have been President Kennedy. Castro’s
warning had simply deflected his aim.” 224
One of the problems in dealing with intelligence matters is trying to tell “who the
hell is who.” Davison made the point that “leaning first toward one theory, and then
another, I soon discovered that it was possible to manipulate the evidence to support any
position I took.” 225 Warren Commission counsel David Belin echoed those remarks. in
Final Disclosure: The Full Truth About the Assassination of President Kennedy and
expressed support for the Oswald motivated by anti-Castro activities theory. (Those on
either side of the Kennedy Assassination debates often make extravagant claims that they
are presenting the final conclusion, the full truth, and the complete story of the case.)
Belin claimed that with his knowledge of the case, he could “pick and chose facts here
and there” and write “a more convincing and less vulnerable to refutations” conspiracy
book. 226 However, he wrote that one must look at the overall record, not just separate
strands of testimony or evidence. In Final Disclosure and his earlier book November 22:
1963: You Are the Jury, Belin denounced what he repeatedly called “assassination
sensationalists” and “assassination cultists” that mislead the public about the truth about
224
Davison, 297.
225
Davison, 21.
226
David Belin, Final Disclosure: the Full Truth About the Assassination of President
Kennedy, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988.
106

the JFK assassination and Oswald’s guilt. His most scathing comments were reserved for
one of the first critics of the Warren Commission, attorney Mark Lane, whom Belin
denounced as an “assassination profiteer.” 227
In both books, Belin defended the Warren Commission’s findings and painted the
familiar portrait of Oswald as a loner, malcontent, failure, and committed Marxist. He
claimed in both books that the evidence against Oswald was overwhelming, and that the
murder of Police Office J.D. Tippit was a key to understanding the assassination. He
argued that Oswald’s killing of Tippit makes clear his responsibility for the assassination
of President Kennedy. Why else kill Tippit? Of course, Belin omitted the possibility that
Oswald was involved a conspiracy and would still have a motivation to kill Tippit to
make his escape even if he was not the lone assassin.
In his second book Final Disclosure, Belin added to this portrait by
acknowledging the revelations about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro and the Warren
Commission’s inability to find a direct motive for Oswald’s alleged assassination of
Kennedy. Belin himself served as executive director of the Rockefeller Commission in
1975 investigating the illegal domestic activities of the CIA. The Commission helped
uncover the anti-Castro skullduggery. Belin denounced the CIA for not providing
information of the plots to the Warren Commission, and belatedly concluded that
“Oswald may have wanted revenge against the person who was seeking, according to the
newspaper reports about Castro, to assassinate the political leader that Oswald admired
most. What better way for recognition in Cuba could there be than to kill the person –
227 Final Disclosure, 22.
107

Kennedy – who was (allegedly) responsible for attempts to kill Castro?” 228 Belin even
claim it was possible that during his visit to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico
City in the weeks before the assassination that a Castro agent or sympathizer promised
financial support or other assistance t if Oswald succeeded in killing Kennedy.
Investigative author Gus Russo advanced a similar thesis in Live by the Sword:
The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, although he included much more
documentation and details about the Kennedy administration’s covert operations against
Castro. Russo’s research benefited from the release of government documents in the
aftermath of the 1991 movie JFK, but he excoriated the film’s portrayal of the Garrison
investigation and what he called a clique “conspiriati” united in their “pathological hatred
of the U.S. government.” He claimed these writers had churned out a “barrage of
ideologically-driven books” on the assassination. 229
Russo, however, documents many unsavory U.S. deeds: the CIA plots to
assassinate foreign leaders, especially Castro, including efforts to use organized crime to
accomplish the deed. Russo restated with emphasis the familiar thesis that Oswald killed
Kennedy alone in response to U.S. policies toward Cuba and his hero, Fidel Castro.
Russo claimed Bobby Kennedy, as well as President Johnson and other top officials,
moved to cover-up the covert activities against Castro, causing decades of suspicion
about the assassination. Russo, like Belin and FBI agent James Hosty, saw a possibility
228
Final Disclosure, 213.
229
Gus Russo, Live by the Sword: the Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK,
(Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998), viii.
108

that Cuban operatives may have known about Oswald’s plans to kill Kennedy or even
encouraged them, but that it was impossible to say for sure now that the investigative trail
is cold.
Russo claimed his book answered the following issues: “Oswald’s apparent lack
of a motive; the Kennedy family’s reluctance to say anything about Jack’s death; Robert
Kennedy’s unrelenting grief; the secrecy surrounding the two key cities in Oswald’s life
(New Orleans and Mexico City).” He declared that his researcher has convinced him that
“John and Robert Kennedy’s secret war against Cuba backfired on them -- that it
precipitated both President Kennedy’s assassination and its coverup.” 230 Russo
recounted in much detail the Kennedy administration’s plots against Castro, which
included anti-Castro Cuban exiles, the mob, U.S. military and intelligence, and even
members within Castro’s government. These efforts began in the waning months of the
Eisenhower administration, including the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. After
Kennedy went ahead with the invasion, the president moved to both increase covert
actions against Castro, but to tighten the reins on the operations by placing them directly
under the control of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
According to Russo, “Plot followed plot – the latest more overwrought than the
last: using the deadly botulism poisons on [Castro’s] cigars to kill on contact; placing a
bomb in an exotic seashell certain to attract Castro’s attention when he was skin diving;
230 Russo, xi.
109

exploding the bomb from a nearby submarine; or just having an intermediary present
Castro with the gift of a skin diving suit contaminated with still another exotic poison.” 231
Russo argued that these plots almost brought the world to the brink of nuclear
annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis because the Soviets had placed the missiles
in Cuba to protect their ally, Fidel Castro. The covert program’s tentacles reached out
from Miami, Florida and New Orleans, Louisiana, where Russo contended that “a young,
emotionally vacant Castro admirer” – Lee Harvey Oswald -- became aware of the
activities and resolved to take action to defend his hero. 232
Russo’s biographical sketch of Oswald was in line with the other authors’ who
emphasized his ostensible Marxist beliefs and political motivation for the assassination.
Once again we are told of Oswald’s childhood conversion to Marxism, and his defection
to the Soviet Union, but Russo contended that Oswald’s life provided “fertile ground for
developing [his] negative qualities,” and that Oswald’s difficult childhood provided “a
framework in which to understand the adult Oswald.” 233 Many of the incidents outlined
in the Warren Commission report were included, but Russo provided one new wrinkle
involving Allen Campbell, a former resident of the orphanage that Lee stayed at when he
was young,. In an interview with Russo, Campbell claimed that residents of the
orphanage, including a four-and-a-half-hear-old Oswald, witnessed a priest raping girls,
231 Russo, 57.
232 Russo, 84.
233 Russo, 88.
110

and that “Witnessing the rapes ‘shattered’ Lee.” 234 Russo did not offer any corroborating
evidence for the allegation.
Russo accepted at face value Oswald’s declarations in support of Marxism, and
the ideological reasons for his defection to the Soviet Union. He also accepted the
statements from former KGB officers that Oswald was of no use to them, even though he
was under tight surveillance. In fact, they said the surveillance tapes showed frequent
fights between the newlyweds Lee and Marina. According to the tapes, Marina’s last
words to Lee as they moved out to go the United States were “’You fucking guy, you
can’t even carry a baby.’” According to Russo, “Oswald’s behavior patterns were clearly
consistent: once he became disillusioned with his current sanctuary, whether with his
mother, the Marines, Russia, or his wife, he soon became what his early psychological
profiles had predicted all along – manic, schizoid, and passive-aggressive.” 235
Even so, as mentioned earlier, Russo stressed the political motivation for the
Kennedy assassination. When Oswald returned to his birthplace, New Orleans, in the
spring of 1963, “He inadvertently became enmeshed in a convoluted world of political
intrigue that often led straight to John and Robert Kennedy:” the brothers supported an
array of anti-Castro activists and training camps in the city that allegedly became known
to Oswald through newspaper accounts and his own alleged attempts to infiltrate the
Cuban exile groups. 236 According to Russo, many of the figures who featured in later
conspiracy theories – David Ferrie, Guy Bannister, Cuban exile leaders – were actually
234 Russo, 90.
235 Russo, 111.
236 Russo, 134.
111

associated with Bobby Kennedy’s efforts against Castro. In the end, “the activities of
Robert Kennedy’s New Orleans agents inspired Lee Oswald, perhaps with Cuban
instigation, to assassinate Kennedy.” 237 Supposedly, Oswald may have had dealing with
Cuban operations during his trip to Mexico City, which Russo described as “the most
spy-infested [city] in the Western Hemisphere.” 238 However, Russo said he found no
conclusive proof of Cuban involvement.
After the assassination, Russo detailed how Bobby Kennedy and others moved to
protect his brother’s legacy from revelations about his health and especially the CIA
covert campaign against Cuba. Russo claimed that the “politically-motivated assassin”
Oswald, ironically, “accomplished his chief goals of changing American policy towards
Cuba, and rising to heroic proportions in Cuba eyes.” 239 Upon assuming office, President
Johnson sought to avoid a possible nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union over Cuba and
quietly shelved the plans against Cuba. The Kennedys – in Russo’s version of events –
lived by the sword in dealing with Castro, and tragically Jack Kennedy would die by the
sword by a defender of the Cuban leader.
In the end, Russo provided an updated, much more detailed version of the Oswald
as Castro’s avenger thesis, but the broad outlines of the argument can be seen in
Newman’s book from 1970. As can be seen, the Warren Commission’s defenders have
had to incorporate revelations about the “Dark Side of Camelot” and the nasty
intelligence underworld of the Cold War in order to convince a skeptical public that
237 Russo, 134.
238 Russo, 209.
239 Russo, 458.
112

Oswald acted alone. Some conspiracy theorists, however, would claim that Oswald was
actually an undercover operative posing as a left-wing extremist – thereby creating what
intelligence agencies call a “legend,” or cover story. Once again, things may not be as
they seem in the twilight struggles of the Cold War.
In his memoir, Passport to Assassination, former KGB counter-intelligence
operative, Colonel Oleg M. Nechiporenko, compared the rivalry between the Cold War
intelligence agencies as like a water polo game. When one watches the game from above
one does not see underneath the surface, but a camera under the water would show much
“thrashing and dunking” not visible otherwise. 240 Yet, Nechiporenko reaffirmed the
Warren Commission findings that Oswald was not of interest to either Soviet or U.S.
intelligence. Nechiporenko was among several former law enforcement or intelligence
operatives to defend the finding that Oswald acted alone in the Kennedy assassination.
Perhaps members of U.S. law enforcement have a built in bias to accept the
findings of the FBI and the Warren Commission, and as it turns out, both Cold War
adversaries had a vested interest in denying having any involvement with Oswald.
However, even if this was true, Oswald became the subject of much intelligence concern
and activity.
Following the end of the Cold War when much Soviet material on Oswald
became public, Colonel Nechiporenko, wrote about his experiences in Passport to
240
Oleg M. Nechiporenko, trans. Todd P. Bludeau, Passport to Assassination: the Never-
Before-Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him, (New
York: Birch Lane Press, 1993), 6.
113

Assassination. He recounted his meeting with Oswald during his visit to the Soviet
embassy in Mexico City. Nechiporenko also included formerly secret KGB documents
and the reminiscences of his former colleagues who had direct knowledge of the Oswald
case – a sort of KGB oral history. The Colonel described Oswald as a “tourist non grata”
in Moscow, that he was judged to be too inept to be an American agent, and not valuable
as a source for intelligence or for propaganda. Nevertheless, Nechiporenko wrote that
Oswald was able to manipulate events: “He acted with an enviable stubbornness, raised
the stakes by attempting suicide, and placed the highest Soviet government organs in a
difficult position.” 241 The result was that the Soviet authorities decided to take a wait-
and-see attitude, grant Oswald residency but not citizenship, and wait a year to determine
whether he could be a spy or of use to the USSR. The KGB believed that Oswald “fit the
description” of other defectors who later changed their minds and returned to their
homeland. 242
Nechiporenko acknowledged that Oswald was under KGB surveillance
throughout his stay in Minsk, but that he did not seem to be involved in any intelligence
activities – although, before being allowed to return to the United States, the KGB,
according to Nechiporenko, observed Oswald trying to build a bomb. This “quirky and
unsettling” attempt fizzled, to the relief of the KGB 243 . Through these and other
disclosures, Nechiporenko bolstered the Warren Commission’s view of Oswald as
unstable and violence-prone.
241 Nechiporenko, 50.
242 Nechiporenko, 55.
243 Nechirporenko, 63.
114

In fact, Nechiporenko claimed Oswald exhibited similar behavior in the visit to
the Soviet embassy in Mexico. Before then, the KGB Colonel had been unaware of
Oswald, and only learned of his stay in the Soviet Union through the interview with
Oswald himself. On September 27, 1963, Nechiporenko wrote that he met with Oswald
during his first visit to the embassy, and found him to be aloof and “in a state of physical
and mental exhaustion.” 244 According to Nechiporenko and the Warren Commission,
Oswald wanted to obtain visas to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union. The KGB officer
wrote that he quickly judged Oswald to be unsuitable for an agent: “The more I learned
about Oswald and the more I observed him…the less I was interested in him.” 245 Oswald
claimed to be under FBI surveillance, and Nechiporenko thought “let him be their [the
Americans] headache.” 246 Nechiporenko gave Oswald a bureaucratic response that he
would have to wait months before a visa could be issued, and which point Oswald
reportedly shouted, “’This won’t do for me! This is not my case! For me, it’s all going
to end in tragedy!’” 247
Oswald was even more unstable during his second visit to the embassy, according
to Nechiporenko, and even pulled out a pistol to the consternation of the KGB officers to
show how he would defend himself if not allowed to return to the Soviet Union.
Nechiporenko reported that Oswald declared that he was not safe in the United States,
244 Nechiporenko, 68-69.
245 Nechiporenko, 70.
246 Nechiporenko, 72.
247 Nechiporenko, 70.
115

that he was “hysterical” when discussing the FBI, and that “they’ll kill me.” 248 Oswald
added ominously, “if they don’t leave me alone, I’m going to defend myself.” 249
All of this, of course, must be read skeptically, since Nechiporenko frequently
tries to score points against his former Cold War adversaries. “During the Cold war
period,” he wrote, “the assassination was used for psychological advantage by both
superpowers.” 250 He claimed that the KGB has released all its information on Oswald,
including his book, and that now it is time for the U.S. secret services to follow suit. He
also included a denial that Valery Kostikov, who also met with Oswald in Mexico City,
was the KGB officer in charge sabotage and subversion in the Western Hemisphere.
Kostikov told Nechiporenko with a chuckle in April 1993 that he “would have retired a
colonel-general, not as a colonel” if that had been his position in 1963. 251 However,
former FBI agent William Hosty wrote that Kostikov was “the KGB’s chief assassination
expert for the Western Hemisphere” when he met with Oswald, and declassified
government documents show the CIA thought so too at the time. 252
Nechiporenko did give a remarkable view inside the KGB mentality, however.
When he saw Oswald on television after the assassination and recognized him as the
strange visitor to the embassy, the KGB officer and Kostikov rushed up to their superior
with the news. With a chuckle (KGB officers apparently had an odd sense of humor), the
248 Nechiporenko, 77.
249 Nechiporenko, 80.
250 Nechiporenko, vii.
251 Nechiporenko, 138.
252 James P. Hosty, Jr. with Thomas Hosty, Assignment: Oswald, (New York: Arcade
Publish, 1996), 215.
116

KGB chief in residence reminded them that they had sent a memo to Moscow
headquarters about Oswald’s visit. He said, “It’s our good fortune that we informed the
Center about those visits on a timely basis. Prepare a telegram quickly, and don’t forget
to mention our cable number so-and-so from such and such a date.” 253 Apparently, this
was the KGB officers’ version of the American “cover your ass” memo.
Nechiporenko also added his own observations about Oswald and the
assassination, and his theory can only be described as Byzantine. He took many
seemingly logical steps to arrive at the illogical conclusion that Oswald killed Kennedy,
that he acted alone, but that he had come to the attention of a “big conspiracy” involving
various people connected to U.S. intelligence plotting to kill the president. However,
Oswald acted independently of this “conspiracy,” which Nechiporenko called “the
conspiracy that did not kill Kennedy.” 254 In his words, “The sum total of all the facts
indicate that within the framework of a certain group or structure united in its common
goal of the president’s assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was viewed as a future
scapegoat,” but that “there is no evidence to believe” that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act
alone to kill Kennedy. 255
Ruby then killed Oswald to protect the conspirators who did not kill Kennedy.
Nechiporenko’s theory is unbelievable, unwieldy, and illogical, but his own view of
Oswald – his aggression, “sadomasochistic personality,” propensity for violence, and
failed personal relationships -- does not differ much from the Warren Commission and its
253 Nechiporenko, 102.
254 Nechiporenko, 134.
255 Nechiporenko, 313.
117

defenders. 256 Although his book is largely about intelligence matters, his personal view
of Oswald is more in tune with “Oswald the Nut” rather than “Oswald the Red.”
Another former East Bloc intelligence official, Ion Mihai Pacepa, who defected to
the United States from Romania in 1978, painted a far different picture of the
assassination in Programmed to Kill. Pacepa blamed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
and the KGB for the assassination. Pacepa accepted many of the Warren Commission’s
claims about Oswald: that he was a committed Marxist from an early age, that he was a
true defector to the Soviet Union, and that he was “puritanical, socially inept,
introverted.” 257 The former Romanian intelligence official also quoted from the
testimony of Dr. Hartogs on Oswald’s supposed mental instability. However, Pacepa
emphasized the ideological reasons for the assassination and for Oswald’s actions.
Pacepa concluded from the events of Oswald’s life that he was recruited by Soviet
agents while he was serving in Japan. He wrote that it was “not likely” that the KGB
would overlook “a U.S. serviceman who often spent his evenings socializing in bars
around his base and loudly proclaiming his sympathy for Marxism.” 258 However,
Oswald’s proclamations in support of Marxism seemed to occur after his service in Japan
while he was in California, according to the Warren Commission testimony of former
Marines who served with Oswald. Also, Pacepa ignored the fact that it would be equally
256
Nechiporenko, 189.
257
Ion Mihai Pacepa, Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the
Kennedy Assassination, (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2007), 133.
258
Pacepa, 38.
118

unlikely for American counter-intelligence to overlook a Marxist Marine at the Atsugi air
base in Japan where U-2 spy planes flew out of in the late 1950’s.
Pacepa believed that Oswald must have given the KGB secrets about the
American spy plane before he defected to the Soviet Union. He claimed that the KGB
probably allowed Oswald to visit Moscow as a reward for his intelligence information.
However, the committed idealist Oswald wanted to stay in the Soviet Union, apparently
slashing his wrist in protest to being ordered back to the United States. Pacepa alleged
that the KGB must have decided to allow Oswald to stay for the time being, but to
“program” him for an assignment in the West: to kill Kennedy as revenge for
Khrushchev’s humiliation in the Berlin Crisis. Pacepa described the Soviet premier as a
“crude, boorish peasant” who referred to Kennedy as “the Pig” and ordered the
assassination of his arch rival. 259 However, the Soviets tried to prevent Oswald from
carrying out his mission in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the West
German trial of a KGB assassin in 1962 and 1963. According to Pacepa, Khrushchev
could not afford another international crisis if Kennedy was killed and Oswald’s ties to
the Soviets became known. Oswald carried out his mission despite the Soviet entreaties,
because even though he was a Marxist, he was also a “headstrong, individualistic
American who had never shown much respect for authority.” 260
Pacepa claimed that the KGB ordered all its allies, including Romania, to carry
out a disinformation campaign to blame the assassination on the right-wing in the United
259 Pacepa, xxi, 78.
260 Pacepa, 187.
119

States and the CIA. Pacepa denounced the critics of the Warren Commission, including
Mark Lane, as being financially supported by the Kremlin. He also dismissed the writing
of Nechiporenko as being a continuation of the disinformation campaign called
“Operation Dragon.” 261 The tentacles of the Communists even reached into the heartland
of America. The former Romanian official claimed that Ruby was a Cuban intelligence
agent assigned to silence Oswald. He even alleged that the notorious circulars in Dallas
denouncing Kennedy as a traitor were probably produced by the KGB to implicate the
American right!
Overall, Pacepa’s arguments show little understanding of American politics and
the context of the assassination. He offered some interesting information about how the
Romanian and Soviet intelligence organizations worked, but as a defector to the West, he
clearly had political biases of his own. Perhaps Pacepa was trying to please his new
employers by blaming the Reds.
Retired FBI agent James Hosty defended his role in investigating Oswald from
the other side of the Cold War East-West divide. Hosty wrote about his experiences in
Assignment: Oswald, and claimed that he was FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s scapegoat
in the aftermath of the assassination because he was assigned to what Hosty called “the
routine counter-espionage” investigation of Oswald and his wife Marina. 262 According
to Hosty, there was no indication that Oswald was violence-prone, but that the CIA and
261 Pacepa, 282.
262 Hosty, 8.
120

FBI withheld information that Oswald had met in Mexico City with Kostikov, who,
despite Nechiporenko’s denials, was believed to be a KGB agent involved with violent
covert activities. Hosty stated that only later did he learn that Kostikov was indeed from
“Division 13, the KGB department in charge of terrorism, sabotage, and
assassinations.” 263 In fact, Hosty cited a declassified document called a CIA summary
report of December 13, 1963 about Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, in which U.S.
intelligence noted “A particularly sinister aspect of OSWALD’s dealings with the Soviets
in Mexico City arises from the likelihood that he met with Soviet Consul Valeriy
Vladimirovich Kostikov,” who is believed to work for “Department 13 of the KGB, the
Department charged with Sabotage and assassinations.” The summary report goes on to
say, however, “if OSWALD had been a Soviet agent in training for an assassination
assignment or even for sabotage work, the Soviets would have stopped him from making
open visits and phone calls to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico” as Oswald did several
times. 264
Hosty argued that there was a cover-up in the wake of the assassination to keep
from the public this potentially explosive information, but even so, Hosty supported the
“lone gunman” theory, writing that “I believe that Lee Oswald killed President Kennedy”
and that he “acted alone.” 265 The Warren Commission, according to Hosty, did not
satisfactorily answer the question of why Oswald killed Kennedy, but that “it is safe to
263 Hosty, 175.
264 Hosty, 313-314.
265 Hosty, 249.
121

assume, at a minimum, that Oswald killed Kennedy for ideological/political reasons.” 266
Hosty also cited information that Oswald may have told the Cubans and Soviets in
Mexico City of his plans to kill Kennedy as part of an effort to impress them, but that
“We don’t know how the Cubans reacted to Oswald’s threat…and perhaps we never
will.” 267 He also stated that Marina fit the profile of a Soviet sleeper agent – “a well-
educated young person who had left the Soviet Union under unusual circumstances.” 268
Despite his suspicions, there is no documented connection between Marina and Soviet
intelligence, and Hosty wrote “Regardless of whether Marina was a KGB agent or not, it
is clear Oswald was acting independently of his wife.” 269
Hosty himself is the source of several conspiracy theories, including allegations
that Oswald was a FBI informant. He also carried out the unconscionable act after the
assassination of destroying of a note that Oswald left him at FBI headquarters in Dallas.
Hosty claimed the note merely told him to “leave [Oswald’s] wife alone and speak
directly to him.” 270 Hosty participated in the interrogation of Oswald after the
assassination, and it was then that he learned Oswald had written the unsigned note.
When Hosty introduced himself to Oswald, the suspect’s “face…turned ugly” and he
“exploded,” shouting “’Oh, so you’re Hosty. The agent who’s been harassing my wife!”
When he calmed down, Oswald apologized for “blowing up at you. And I’m sorry for
266 Hosty, 246.
267 Hosty, 246.
268 Hosty, 44.
269 Hosty, 116.
270 Hosty, 29.
122

writing that letter to you.” 271 In the end, there is no way to confirm Hosty’s account of
what the note said because he destroyed it allegedly on the orders of his superiors after
Ruby killed Oswald. apparently to avoid any embarrassment to the FBI. Some
conspiracy theorists claim Oswald made some sort of threat in the note. Hosty avoided
criminal prosecution over the destruction of the note when it became publicly known in
the 1970’s.
Hoover placed Hosty on probation after the assassination because his “handling of
a security-type case [Oswald] was grossly inadequate” and “slipshod.” 272 When the
Warren Commission criticized the FBI in its report, Hoover went further and suspended
Hosty for 30 days without pay and transferred him to Kansas City, which apparently in
those days was like the KGB sending someone to Siberia. Hosty goes on at length about
his bureaucratic struggle with the FBI leadership, his testimony before the Warren
Commission and later congressional probes, and his own theories about the assassination,
which provide an insight into the netherworld of Cold War espionage. In the end, Hosty
accepts the official version of Oswald’s life, with the caveat that perhaps he told the
Soviets or Cubans of his plans and they may have provided “tacit encouragement” or
support of some kind. 273
Although Hosty accepted the Warren Commission’s “lone gunman” thesis and
what he called the “simple truth” of Oswald’s guilt, the FBI agent showed how much
espionage and counter-espionage activities revolved around Oswald, and at a certain
271 Hosty, 20, 22.
272 Hosty, 101.
273 Hosty, 249.
123

point, it is hard to believe Oswald did not have more direct connections to Cold War
intelligence activities. 274 Even the “simple truth” appears complicated.
Carlos Bringuier, the anti-Castro Cuba involved in a fracas with Oswald in New
Orleans, was another author to accuse the Communists of being behind the assassination.
In his 1969 book Red Friday, Bringuier defended the Warren Commission’s portrait of
Oswald as a true Marxist disciple, but he added that, “A Communist conspiracy involving
several persons besides Lee Harvey Oswald is a distinct possibility.” 275 Bringuier’s own
views as a fervent activist against Fidel Castro are readily apparent.
Political scientist Edward Jay Epstein was a critic of the Warren Commission,
writing a book called Inquest that detailed the panel’s investigative shortcomings. His
later work Legend: the Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald accepted at face value the
extreme leftist views of the alleged assassin and emphasized his ideological motivation
for killing Kennedy. However, Epstein argued that the Soviets had not been forthcoming
about their involvement with Oswald and that Oswald must have been a Soviet agent –
even if the KGB was not directly involved in the assassination. In his analysis, Epstein
began and ended Legend with a discussion of the KGB defector to the United States, Yuri
Nosenko. Epstein used as sources former high-ranking CIA officials, including the mole-
hunting counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. Epstein accepted the Angleton
274
Hosty, 26.
275 nd
Carlos Bringuier, Red Friday: November 22 , 1963, (Chicago: Chas. Hallberg and
Company, 1969), 108.
124

position that Nosenko was a false defector who was sent to the United States after the
assassination “to protect...the prior connection Oswald had had with the KGB.” 276
Epstein described how Nosenko defected to the United States in early 1964,
claiming to have supervised the KGB file on Oswald after his own defection to the
Soviets in 1959. Nosenko told his CIA handlers that “neither Oswald nor Marina had
ever been recruited or even approached by the KGB as possible agents” and had not even
debriefed the former Marine because “he was deemed ‘unstable…and of little
importance.” 277 Epstein explained that Angleton and his colleagues found it hard to
believe Nosenko’s story because Oswald “was probably the only person in the Soviet
Union who had observed the U-2 up close and had had access to its pilots and other
personnel” at the time of the downing of Francis Gary Power’s U-2 plane in May,
1960. 278 In the United States, Nosenko would endure several years of illegal detention
and harsh interrogation techniques – years before the “War on Terrorism.” Eventually,
the CIA released Nosenko with a new identity and accepted him as a true defector.
Epstein defended the CIA’s harsh treatment of Nosenko and accepted the Angleton view
of him as a false defector. In 1974, Angleton was forced out following revelations of
abuses during his tenure. Epstein concluded that, “With Nosenko accredited and the
counterintelligence staff purged, the CIA had truly been turned inside out.” 279
276
Edward Jay Epstein, Legend: the Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, (New York:
Reader’s Digest Press, 1978), 44.
277
Epstein, 9.
278
Epstein, 120.
279
Epstein, 274.
125

Showing the many ways Oswald’s activities can be interpreted, Epstein suggested
that the Soviet Union created a cover story for Oswald to mask his connections to the
KGB. Epstein stopped short of accusing the KGB of outright involvement in the
assassination; the evidence was too murky to tell. Epstein outlined a tale similar to the
Warren Commission of Oswald’s early life, his time in the Marines, and his dedication to
Marxism. Oswald “became a voracious reader of books and found a hero: Karl Marx.” 280
Epstein reported that Oswald “had become involved with a small circle of Japanese
Communists in Tokyo while in the Marines.” 281 This may have been the start of an
espionage career, Epstein suggested.
Epstein rejected the notion that Oswald had nothing to offer the Soviets, including
classified information about the U.S. air defense system and especially the U-2. Epstein
theorized that much of Oswald’s writings, including his “historic diary” and his statement
of political principles written on the return voyage to the United States showed signs of
being dictated to him. Epstein noted that experts believed the diary was not a
contemporaneous account of events in the Soviet Union but written in one or two
sessions. Epstein wrote that this all suggested that “the diary was prepared …to provide
Oswald with a consistent cover story accounting for his decision to leave the USSR.” 282
Conspiracy theorists would counter that the U.S. intelligence sent Oswald to Russia, and
had him fabricate his diary.
280 Epstein, 60.
281 Epstein, 71.
282 Epstein, 110.
126

Epstein accused the Soviets of dissembling and accepted the statements of U.S.
officials without question. He noted that CIA officials testified that “Oswald was not
interviewed by any CIA officer.” Epstein found “this lapse..inexplicable.” 283 Many
conspiracy theorists would instead claim there was no lapse and of course Oswald had
been debriefed. They would argue Oswald posed as a leftist while working as a U.S.
agent. Epstein, however, argued that Oswald was a true Marxist, but may have become
disillusioned with the Soviets for not being “revolutionary enough.” 284 He then
transferred his allegiance to Cuba and sought to create a record of pro-Cuban activities in
New Orleans. Oswald’s “game” in New Orleans in support of the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee and attempts to infiltrate the anti-Castro Cuban movement “involved creating
just such a record for himself.” 285 In Mexico City, Oswald met at the Soviet embassy
with KGB agent Valery Kostikov. Epstein reported that after the assassination, Angleton
and his staff were suspicious of Oswald’s contacts with Kostikov. The author left the
door open whether the Soviets or Cubans had incited or directed Oswald to kill Kennedy.
Epstein’s book showed how researchers who believed Oswald’s leftist proclamations and
activities as genuine could raise questions about whether there was a Soviet or Cuban
conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. Oswald the Red may have been the lone
gunman, but maybe he had help.
Many historians, however, argue that Kennedy, Khrushchev, and even Fidel
Castro sought to lessen Cold War tensions in the aftermath of the potentially catastrophic
283 Epstein, 168.
284 Epstein, 218.
285 Epstein, 218.
127

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. This undercuts the argument that Oswald was part of a
Communist conspiracy, but does not exclude him as a “lone-wolf” left-wing assassin.
Castro himself told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that it would have
been “insane” both “ideologically” and “politically” to kill President Kennedy because
that “would have been the most perfect pretext for the United States to invade” Cuba. 286
He denied he was threatening the president in his September 7, 1963 remarks that if the
United States was “aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders” than U.S. leaders
would be in danger. He told the committee his remarks were “a warning that we knew”
of U.S. plots to assassinate him, and that such attempts to kill a foreign leader would “set
a very bad precedent.” 287 Castro’s remarks are obviously self-serving, but his logic
appears sound: assassinating Kennedy would court disaster for the Cuban regime.
During the 1990’s and beyond, several defenders of the Warren Commission
fought against a rising tide of skepticism about the panel’s findings, especially in the
aftermath of Oliver Stone’s 1991 film, JFK. In these books, Oswald is seen as having a
mix of motives similar to the Warren Report’s conclusions. The emphasis is more on
evaluating the case against Oswald and the forensic evidence than in uncovering the
alleged assassin’s motive. However, they have contributed to the portrait of Oswald as
both a “Nut” and a “Red.” Former Los Angeles police detective-turned-true crime author
Mark Fuhrman sought to refurbish his reputation in his study of the Kennedy
286
Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations U.S. House of Representatives,
(New York: Bantam Books, 1979), 148.
287
House Report, 149.
128

assassination by rehashing the evidence and trying to boil it down to what he called in the
title of his brief book, A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963. The publisher
described Fuhrman as “America’s most famous detective,” but left out why Fuhrman is
famous: he was caught lying about repeatedly using a certain racial epithet to refer to
African-Americans, which contributed to the acquittal, despite a mountain of forensic
evidence, of former football star O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife and her
friend.
Fuhrman claimed that he was investigating the Kennedy assassination as a
“simple act of murder” by “examining the relevant evidence and arriving at logical
conclusions” as any detective would. 288 f course, much of this evidence is in dispute by
experts on both sides of the debate, and there is nothing simple about the Kennedy
assassination case. Fuhrman, however, was not deterred in trying to determine whether
Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible, and whether he acted alone or part of a conspiracy.
In Fuhrman’s view, Oswald indicated his guilt by repeatedly lying during police
interrogation about key matters, and that the evidence against Oswald was a “slam-dunk
case” before Ruby gunned down the alleged assassin. 289
Fuhrman’s portrait of Oswald was the same as the Warren Commission. The
former detective claimed “Oswald was socially isolated,” a “failure” both as a Marine
and as a defector to the Soviet Union, and displayed a “propensity for violence.”
Oswald’s “extreme political views,” the author added, “seemed to be more an expression
288
Mark Fuhrman, A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963, (New York: William
Morrow, 2006), 11.
289
Fuhrman, 74.
129

of his personal frustration than of any kind of philosophical or moral convictions.” 290 n
the end, Fuhrman concluded that the evidence was overwhelming of Oswald’s guilty, and
that he had the means and opportunity to kill Kennedy. Fuhrman refused to speculate
about Oswald’s specific motive, writing that whether it was “a desire for a place in
history, envy of a man more powerful than he could ever dream of being, political
convictions, or psychopathology” may never be resolved. 291 he only question remaining
regarding Oswald was whether he had any confederates, and Fuhrman concluded the
answer was no, and that Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald. “One result of
Oswald’s unexpected death,” according to Fuhrman, “is that his life has become more
mysterious and more important in retrospect,” including suggestions that he was “a top-
secret operative for the CIA, or KGB, or perhaps a double agent.” But Fuhrman
concluded “That’s giving Oswald far too much credit.” 292
Three authors defending the Warren Commission have made lavish claims about
their books: Jim Moore titled his work Conspiracy of One: the Definitive Book on the
Kennedy Assassination; Gerald Posner called his work Case Closed; and former Manson
family prosecutor-turned-true crime author Vincent Bugliosi sought to correct history
from the supposed distortions of the critics in Reclaiming History.
Moore’s book was the weakest, and as a former critic who became a believer in
the Oswald as lone gunman theory, he displayed all the zealotry of the newly converted.
He spent a lot of pages bashing his erstwhile colleagues in the community of critics: His
290 Fuhrman, 88-89.
291 Fuhrman, 88-89.
292 Fuhrman, 101.
130

chapter on the first conspiracy theorists – “The Madness Begins” – is the longest in the
book at 40 pages. (The book is 220 pages long.) He claimed many critics were
interested in “lurid speculation” rather than the “logic” of the case. 293 He denounced
conspiracy theorist Robert Groden as “one of the most irresponsible critics ever to put
paper in a typewriter.” 294 He labeled Mark Lane a “professional troublemaker” whose
book Rush to Judgment was “deeply flawed and heavily biased.” 295 House Select
Committee counsel Robert Blakey “skillfully engineered” a conclusion of mob
involvement because of “his natural bias” and without “a shred of hard, cold
evidence.” 296 Many more examples of this invective could be given. In his epilogue,
Moore wrapped himself in the flag and launched a final ad hominem attack on the critics,
concluding that many of them “genuinely detest this country and deplore our form of
government.” 297 In addition, Moore excessively touted his own credentials. He claimed
he had “no axe to grind,” that he has spent “the last 23 years researching” the case, and
that “very few individuals on the face of the earth…have more knowledge of the
Kennedy assassination than I do.” 298
Moore wholeheartedly supported the “lone nut” theory. The assassination was
“the crazed act of a single man” – Oswald. 299 His motive was simply to make himself
293
Jim Moore, Conspiracy of One: the Definitive Book on the Kennedy Assassination,
(Fort Worth: the Summit Group, 1992 (1991)), 31.
294
Moore, 50.
295
Moore, 79.
296
Moore, 145.
297
Moore, 200.
298
Moore, viii.
299
Moore, 77.
131

famous: “Notoriety…probably meant more to him than anything else on earth.
Truthfully, he had failed at life.” The author further opined that “Lee Harvey Oswald
may well be the first man in recorded history to have plunged the entire world into
mourning simply to become well-known by doing so.” 300 Throughout the book, Moore
recounted the evidence against Oswald, quibbled with some of the Warren Commission’s
conclusions regarding the shot sequence, claimed to have gained a fresh perspective of
the crime by recreating the “sniper’s lair” in the Texas School Book Depository building,
and added a somewhat laughable additional piece of evidence against Oswald.
According to Moore, Oswald indicated his guilt after the assassination by nervously
purchasing a Coca-Cola at the Book Depository soda machine rather than his usual Dr.
Pepper!
Investigative author Gerald Posner wrote a more persuasive case against Oswald
in Case Closed, published in 1992. Posner became the most prominent independent
defender of the Warren Commission in the 1990’s. He concluded "Lee Harvey Oswald,
driven by his own twisted and impenetrable furies, was the only assassin at Dealey Plaza
on November 22, 1963.” 301 Posner relied heavily on the Warren Commission testimony
to paint a portrait of Oswald as a violent, unstable person who was committed from an
early age to communism.
300
Moore, 202-203.
301
Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, (New
York: Random House, 1993), 472.
132

Posner conducted his own interviews of certain witnesses, most significantly
Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko, who claimed to be one of the KGB officials who followed
the Oswald case when the former Marine was in the Soviet Union. Nosenko defected to
the United States after the assassination, but some top CIA officials were skeptical of his
claims that there was no KGB connection to Oswald. But Posner accepted Nosenko’s
story and his bona fides as a true defector. Nosenko told Posner that the KGB had
“absolutely no interest in Oswald,” who was considered a useless intelligence source. 302
The defector contended that the KGB already had better information than Oswald could
provide regarding the U-2 spy plane and other matters. However, Nosenko confirmed the
KGB kept this supposedly harmless and worthless defector under tight surveillance.
Posner’s account was in line with the official version of Oswald’s life: a rootless
malcontent and adherent of Marxism that failed at everything he tried. After becoming
disenchanted with the Soviet Union, the 22-year-old Oswald returned to the United States
and “began thinking beyond mere criticism.” Posner cited some of Oswald’s writings to
argue that Oswald’s “rebellious convictions against government and authority were
slowly evolving toward violence and revolution.” 303 Posner highlighted Marina’s
testimony and others before the Warren Commission that Oswald lashed out at those
trying to help the young couple, rejected the materialistic values of American society,
admitted trying to kill General Walker, yearned to defend Fidel Castro and the Cuban
revolution, compulsively lied, and adhered to extreme left-wing beliefs. Marina testified
302 Posner, 49.
303 Posner, 76.
133

that in New Orleans Oswald suggested hijacking an airliner to Cuba and would sit on his
porch at night, working the bolt action of his rifle.
Posner followed the Warren Commission’s version of Oswald’s one-a-half-years
in the United States. When he learned of the presidential motorcade to pass beneath the
window of his place of work, “Oswald, who thought his contribution to his revolutionary
cause would be the death of Walker, was suddenly faced with the possibility of having a
much greater impact on history and the machinery of government.” In Posner’s view,
“Lee Oswald always thought he was smarter and better than other people, and was
angered that others failed to recognize the stature he thought he deserved.” 304 Here, once
again, the “lone nut” Oswald seized an opportunity to strike back at his lifelong
humiliation and frustration and to assassinate Kennedy.
Former Los Angeles prosecutor Bugliosi’s massive, 1612-page tome was the
author’s attempt to squash every conspiracy theory. Reclaiming History included a
lengthy section chronicling the events leading up to and after the assassination, much as
Manchester and Bishop had done, but Bugliosi also included a lengthy biography of
Oswald, a short chapter devoted to motive, and many pages devoted to refuting the
“conspiracy authors” who often “knowingly mislead their readers by lies, omissions, and
deliberately distorting the official record.” Bugliosi declared that the “ambitious
objective” of his work is to complete the work of the Warren Commission and to turn
public opinion in the United States around into accepting the official conclusions that
304 Posner, 220.
134

Oswald acted alone. 305 The book grew out of Bugliosi’s participation in a British-
produced television show in which he took on the role of prosecuting Oswald before a
real jury and with testimony from real witnesses in July of 1986. Well-known defense
attorney Gerry Spence represented Oswald. The show resulted in Oswald’s “conviction.”
Bugliosi contended that the case against Oswald is “overwhelming and relatively
routine,” but the conspiracy “buffs” have muddied the water with a myriad of conspiracy
theories. 306 This is not surprising since, as recounted above, many of the defenders of
the Warren Commission are scathing in their criticisms of the conspiracy theorists, but
Bugliosi was also critical of his colleagues who support the lone gunman theory. He
deplored what he called the “psychiatric silliness” of Hartogs and his Freudian analysis,
but he was especially critical of Posner and Moore for “engaging in many of the same
unfortunate tactics as the Warren Commission critics” through misleading arguments and
omissions. 307 Thus, Bugliosi saw the need for a book devoted to “the facts and
objectivity,” with the goal to “not knowingly omit or distort anything.” 308
In his biography of Oswald, Bugliosi hewed closely to the Warren Commission
report, buttressed by disclosures by other authors, principally Priscilla Johnson
MacMillan’s Marina and Lee. Once again, we are told of Oswald’s troubled childhood
and his discovery of Marxism, which Bugliosi claimed “probably” provided Oswald “a
metaphor for the outward expression of his disaffection with life, for the rage of a child
305
Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: the Assassination of President John F.
Kennedy, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), xv.
306
Bugliosi, xxv.
307
Bugliosi, 936, xxvi.
308
Bugliosi, xxxix.
135

who believed he had been abused and neglected.” In Bugliosi’s view, Oswald believed in
Marxism largely for psychological reasons: “Lee’s Communism had always been an
attitude rather than an activity.” 309 He was destined, in this account, of being frustrated
in his search for happiness and meaning in the Soviet Union and the United States, in his
attempt to travel to Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and in his personal relationships.
Bugliosi accepted the Warren Commission’s view of Oswald and his motivations.
He described Oswald as a “demented non-entity,” a “deeply troubled person and a
restless Marxist,” “a first-class ‘nut,’” and “a loser trying to give meaning to his life.” 310
This “nut” was in turn killed by Ruby, another “nut.” 311 Bugliosi point out that in a trial,
the prosecution does not have to provide a motive, but that it was valuable to provide one
to the jury who want to know why a crime was committed. While emphasizing Oswald’s
nuttiness, Bugliosi also agreed that Oswald had political motivations: to strike at the heart
of the capitalist power and to aid his hero Fidel Castro. “Oswald,” according to Bugliosi,
“viewed himself as a militant soldier of action in the Marxist class struggle to bring about
change, not by a slow, evolutionary process but by a violent revolution.” 312 In the end,
Bugliosi’s portrait of Oswald was perhaps even more one-sided and facile than the
portrait painted by the Warren Commission. He certainly used all the adjectives he could
find to describe the accused assassin: “If anyone ever had the psychological profile of a
presidential assassin, it was Oswald…He was a bitter, frustrated, and beaten-down loser
309 Bugliosi, 540.
310 Bugliosi, xxvii, xxvi, 945, 943.
311 Bugliosi, xxx.
312 Bugliosi, 937.
136

who felt alienated from society and couldn’t get along with anyone…and one who hated
his country and its representatives.” 313 For some reason, however, most Americans have
not been persuaded by the evidence presented by the Warren Commission, and Bugliosi’s
attempt to reclaim history on behalf of the Commission does not appear to have been
successful, partly because only the hardiest reader could plow through his ponderous
book.
Moore, Posner, and Bugliosi all stayed within the confines of the Warren
Commission’s version of Oswald’s life. They sought to convince the public of Oswald’s
guilt. Some of the other defenders of the Warren Commission emphasized the
ideologically motivations of Oswald as a Marxist, and Soviet- and Cuban-sympathizer.
Some even speculated whether “Oswald the Red” had help from the other side of the
Cold War divide. However, this seems far-fetched given the attempts to ease tensions
following the Cuban Missile Crisis. The world would have faced nuclear Armageddon if
the Soviets or Cubans had been implicated in a plot to kill Kennedy.
The defenders of the Warren Commission tried to determine Oswald’s
motivations and to counter critical assaults on the report. To the Commission’s critics,
Oswald may in fact be guilty of firing shots at President Kennedy, but in their renderings
of his life, Oswald was not portrayed as a loner. He had connections to shadowy figures
in the U.S. and Soviet intelligence communities, in the mob, and among right-wing anti-
communists. In these works, Oswald emerges as an enigmatic figure, operating in the
netherworld of spies and organized crime. Oswald is still the key to the assassination, but
313 Bugliosi, 949.
137

primarily as the pawn of the sinister forces ultimately responsible for the President’s
assassination. In death, Oswald -- the post-modern man whose life can be interpreted
multiple ways – is intertwined forever with his alleged victim.
138

CHAPTER 4: OSWALD THE ANTI-HERO
Several writers and creative artists have depicted Oswald as the lone assassin, but
have done so in a more sympathetic manner. Oswald, in these renderings, is seen as an
anti-hero -- a man who did a terrible deed but who strove to make his mark on history,
who battled tough odds as an underdog trying to achieve greatness, and who was true to
his convictions as a political idealist. Stephen Sondheim even composed a musical in
which Oswald appears as a singing lone gunman who is the benchmark for American
assassins. In this way, Sondheim explored the fascination with violence in American
society. Creative artists like Sondheim, novelist Don DeLillo, and author Norman Mailer
used Oswald as a means to express deeper truths about the United States and about the
assassination rather than simply trying to answer the question, “Who killed Kennedy?”
Oswald as anti-hero also has appealed to those influenced or associated with the 1960s
counter-culture, with its embrace of non-conformity and rejection of establishment
values. In such an environment, a presidential assassin can be presented more
sympathetically or in unusual ways.
The image that best captures Oswald as anti-hero is a graphic manipulation of the
news photograph that showed Jack Ruby gunning down Oswald while he was handcuffed
139

Figure 3: A Subversive Re-Visioning of Oswald as Rock Singer
140

to a police detective. The Center for History and New Media at George Mason
University describes the image as “A provocative manipulation by ‘Pixel Jockey’ George
Mahlberg..” 314 The image, which has circulated on the Internet, is titled “In-A-Gadda-
Da-Oswald” – a reference to a classic Rock song – and shows Jack Ruby charging into
Oswald while jamming on a guitar instead of carrying a gun, while the detective is
playing the keyboards, and Oswald is belting out a song instead of screaming in fear and
pain as Ruby is shooting him. What could be more of an anti-hero than the bad boy
Rock’n’Roll star of American popular music? While the Warren Commission and
defenders of its report tried to marginalize Oswald and place him outside the mainstream
of American society emphasizing either his “lone nut” status or his Marxist “Red”
political beliefs, Oswald as anti-hero is a man who may have carried out a reprehensible
deed, but is a recognizable figure from American culture – the radical individualist who
strives to make his mark on the nation’s history.
Oswald’s Marine acquaintance, Kerry Thornley, penned a short non-fiction sketch
of the alleged assassin after Kennedy was killed, and, incredibly, wrote a novel with its
main character based on Oswald before the assassination. In his 1965 non-fiction book,
Thornley wrote one of the most curious descriptions of Oswald by anyone who thought
he committed the assassination: “I have never personally known an individual more
motivated by what appeared to be a genuine concern for the human race than Lee Harvey
314
Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/links/pdf/introduction/0.20.pdf [accessed March 25,
2011].
141

Oswald. Lee was moved by what people usually call the purest humanitarian sentiments.
Oswald was a philanthropist.” 315 In this book and his novel, Thornley described an anti-
hero, who is a non-conformist and idealist, motivated by the purest of motives, only to
face rejection and hatred for his actions.
Thornley was an interesting person himself. In his Warren Commission
testimony, he called himself “an extreme rightist…a libertarian, which is that I believe in
complete sovereignty of the individual.” 316 However, Thornley’s personal beliefs
changed over the course of his life: at one time, he considered himself a Marxist, then an
Ayn Rand “objectivist,” and later an anarchist attached to left-wing movements during
the 1960’s. According to his biographer Adam Gorightly, Thornley influenced the ‘60’s
counter-culture with his participation in a spoof religion called Discordianism, whose
followers believed in “sowing the seeds of chaos as a means of achieving a higher state of
awareness.” 317 Through this movement and a series of pranks under the rubric
“Operation Mindfuck,” Thornley and his associates spread their ideas in California
during the height of the counterculture, and influenced neo-paganism and such writers as
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, who co-authored The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
The first book of the trilogy, The Eye in the Pyramid, is dedicated to Thornley and
another key figure in Discordianism, Gregory Hill. The trilogy is a science fiction and
adventure fantasy that features myriad conspiracy theories, including on the Kennedy
315
Kerry Thornley, Oswald, (Chicago: New Classics House, 1965), 24.
316
Thornley, 96.
317
Adam Gorightly, The Prankster and the Conspiracy: the Story of Kerry Thornley and
How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture, (New York: Paraview Press,
2003), 61.
142

assassination, as well as explicit sexual scenes (Wilson was a former editor at Playboy)
Nazi zombies, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, an anarchistic pirate submarine captain, and
a talking telepathic dolphin named Howard. The Kennedy assassination is described as
the result of multiple gunmen reflecting separate conspiracies involving Lee Harvey
Oswald, the Illuminati, the CIA, mafia, and even John Dillinger, who it turns out did not
die at the hands of the FBI in Chicago in the 1930’s. Oswald – who is a lone gunman
seeking to transcend “time and hazard, heredity and environment” and to fell a “Tyrant” -
- is in the Texas School Book Depository aiming his weapon when “his mouth falls open
in astonishment as three shots ring out, obviously, from the direction of the Grassy Knoll
and Triple Underpass.” As a result, Oswald achieves “omniscience” instead of
“omnipotence” and his later smirk before the media and police showed “I know
something you don’t know.” 318 The smirk is erased by Ruby.
In this portrayal, Oswald is a lone nut gunman who actually does not kill Kennedy
but finds himself in the middle of multiple conspiracies, reflecting Thornley’s ideas about
Oswald as well as his chaotic thoughts about religion, the individual, and conspiracies.
Wilson and Shea wrote in the conclusion of the trilogy that Oswald was the “Hero of a
series of novels by [Warren Commission critic] Harold Weissburg [sic],” the “Villain of
another novel” called the Warren Commission, and “featured in other works of fiction by
[other Commission critics].” 319 This post-Modern ambiguity reflected the Discordian
precept that “All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in
318
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, (New York: Dell
Publish, 1988 (1975)), 28.
319
Shea and Wilson, 801-802.
143

some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and
meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.” 320
In fact, Thornley’s ideas about the JFK assassination changed over time like his
political beliefs. His testimony to the Warren Commission and his non-fiction book
supported the view that Oswald was the assassin. However, a long-time critic of the
Warren Commission, David Lifton, whose book Best Evidence is a detailed examination
of the forensic evidence and of a bizarre alleged plot to alter the President’s body to hide
the fact of a conspiracy, convinced Thornley that he was wrong, and he became an ardent
opponent of the Commission’s findings. In another bizarre turn, Thornley became
enmeshed in New Orleans’ District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation of the
assassination. Thornley became a subject of some of Garrison’s conspiracy theories as
someone who tried to frame Oswald.
Garrison believed that Thornley wrote his novel The Idle Warriors before the
assassination to establish in the public mind that Oswald was a communist and a lone nut.
The problem with this theory is that the novel was not published until decades after the
assassination. However, Thornley had expressed virulently anti-Kennedy opinions while
in New Orleans, and found himself in close proximity to many of the figures that feature
in assassination theories. Thornley was acquainted not only with Oswald, but while in
New Orleans, came in contact with right-wing activists Guy Bannister and David Ferrie.
During a later stay in Los Angeles, Thornley became acquainted with mobster Johnny
Roselli -- a key figure in the CIA-mafia plots to kill Castro. Garrison thought all these
320 Quoted in Gorightly, 10.
144

coincidences added up to Thornley’s possible involvement in a conspiracy. He would
write of Thornley that “the strange intersections between his life and Lee Oswald’s
remained enigmatic. Was Thornley an agent of the intelligence community? Had he
impersonated Oswald or coached others to do so? Did he know more than he was
saying?” 321 The comedian Mort Sahl became a firm believer in Garrison’s assassination
conspiracy theories, and began to include references to Thornley’s alleged role in the
assassination in his stand-up routines.
Unfortunately for Thornley, his constant questioning of society, his extreme
individualism, and his experiences with Oswald and Garrison helped cause him to
become paranoid and mentally ill. In the 1970’s, he came to believe that there was a
conspiracy, and he had been used by the conspirators as part of the plot. According to his
biographer, Thornley “became like the very people he’d parodied,” people who “created
elaborate conspiracy theories which mirrored their own muddled minds.” 322 Thornley
died from a kidney ailment in 1998 – seven years after his novel based on Oswald was
finally published.
Thornley’s earlier non-fiction book Oswald – published in 1965 – is a short work
made up of several segments: a psychiatrist’s commentary on the alleged assassin and
Thornley’s description of him, Thornley’s own thoughts about Oswald, selections from
his novel The Idle Warriors, and his Warren Commission testimony. There is even a
poetical tribute to the slain President by Paul Neimark, which perhaps was included to
321
Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Warner Books, 1988), 89.
322
Gorightly, 200.
145

counter-balance some of the positive statements about Oswald by Thornley so soon after
the assassination.
In the book, Thornley recounted his experiences with Oswald while the two were
stationed at the Marine Air Control Squadron 9 in El Toro, California in 1959. At first,
Thornley wondered why everyone picked on Oswald, but came to see that Private
Oswald sought to keep “fresh” the view of him “as a poor, persecuted soul.” Oswald
thought himself “the most important man in the unit” and the hostility of others seemed
to provide him with reassurance that he was “a unique somebody.” 323 According to
Thornley, during their first meeting, Oswald proclaimed himself both an atheist and a
believer in Communism, which he described as his religion. Thornley was also an atheist
with an interest in politics and literature, and the two struck up an acquaintance in which
they would discuss their opinions. The Marine Corps in the 1950’s apparently was a
bastion of individualism and offered opportunities for philosophical discussion. Oswald,
in fact, recommended Thornley read George Orwell’s classic indictment of a totalitarian
society, 1984. Because of this, Thornley suspected Oswald’s Marxism was a put-on:
when the author read about Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union later, he was
surprised and thought Oswald must have been sincere after all. In fact, Thornley told the
Warren Commission that “Everything Oswald has ever done has surprised me.” 324
In the Marine Corps, Thornley described an Oswald different from the Warren
Commission portrait of the “lone nut assassin:” Thornley’s Oswald was a jokester who
323 Thornley, 19.
324 Thornley, 109.
146

would make other Marines laugh with his comparisons of the Corps and a Communist
society: “In a group, Lee was a loud and boisterous person, making jokes or arguing the
case for Communism, or both, without reserve.” Individually, however, Oswald was
“shy and reserved.” 325 Thornley and Oswald’s friendship broke up over a curious
incident involving a reference to 1984. After Oswald made one of his frequent
complaints about the Marines, Thornley replied “Well, comes the revolution you will
change all that.” Oswald, according to the author, took on an expression of “pained
surprise and shouted, his voice cracking, ‘Not you, too, Thornley!’” 326
The two never spoke again. Thornley would later tell the Warren Commission
that he believed Oswald wanted to be on the right side of history, and that his belief in
Communism was calculated to put him on the winning side, as he saw it. To question his
sincerity as a revolutionary, in this interpretation, was a betrayal. Thornley opined that
Oswald “looked upon history as God. He looked upon the eyes of future people as some
kind of tribunal, and he wanted to be on the winning side so that ten thousand years from
now people would look in the history books and say, ‘Well, this man was ahead of his
time.’” 327
Thornley’s thoughts about Oswald would clearly influence the Warren
Commission’s interpretation of Oswald and this alleged cluster of motivations, including
325 Thornley, 32.
326 Thornley, 33.
327 Thornley, 108.
147

what the commission called, “His urge to try to find a place in history and despair at
times over failures in his various undertakings.” 328
In trying to reconcile the joking Oswald he knew in the Marine Corps and the
image of Oswald as Kennedy’s assassin, Thornley blamed both his former friend and
U.S. society. According to Thornley, Oswald reached a state of “frantic despair” in
which the jokester and idealist the author knew in the Marine Corps became a “cold-
blooded killer.” 329 This despair arose because of his disillusionment with the United
States. According to Thornley, Oswald’s “religion was Communism not because of any
great superiority on the part of that ideology, but for the lack of a better alternative
conspicuously available to him in the United States of America.” 330 As Thornley would
explain, “In using the word ‘misfit’ to describe Oswald we confess that we live in a
closed society – for only where individualism is difficult or impossible can the word
‘misfit’ have any significance.”
A search for true freedom caused Oswald to defect to the Soviet Union, to despair
upon his return to the United States, and to conclude that “there was little difference”
between the two societies. Oswald’s “frantic despair” resulted from the lack of
“diversity” in the society and culture of the United States, and was “a natural reaction to
the absence of alternatives.” 331 In this formulation, Oswald the assassin is not a nihilist
328 WC Report, 23.
329 Thornley, 25.
330 Thornley, 29.
331 Thornley, 86-87.
148

ut a frustrated idealist – an anti-hero who deserves some sympathy despite his
reprehensible act.
Thornley’s novel The Idle Warriors was written before the assassination, and its
protagonist, Johnny Shellburn, was based on Lee Harvey Oswald. The novel was not
published in full until 1991, but was known to assassination researchers and others
through Thornley’s Warren Commission testimony, the segments in Oswald, and the
contretemps with Garrison. The Idle Warriors of the book’s title referred to Marines
based in Japan, who are gradually demoralized by their military experiences during
peacetime. In his preface to the novel, Thornley wrote that he wanted to convey “the
humor, the bitterness and the rebellion.” 332 The novel has some of the flavor, if not
literary quality, of Joseph Heller’s classic account of the absurdity of military service
during World War Two – Catch 22. Thornley’s character Shellburn, like Oswald, is
interested in foreign affairs and philosophy, including Marxism, and stands out for his
quirkiness. However, Shellburn and some of the other characters also reflect Thornley’s
interest in Eastern religion and philosophy and his radical individualism.
Johnny Shellburn, like Oswald is posted at Atsugi in Japan, but is a clerk-typist
rather than a radar technician. Shellburn is drawn to the Japanese people and culture, and
he first appears in the novel staring at a candle in an attempt to achieve apparently some
mystical experience. Shellburn started to act “real weird – staring at candles, reading and
332
Kerry W. Thornley, The Idle Warriors, (Avondale Estates, GA: IllumiNet Press,
1991), xi.
149

telling his oldest buddies to get lost.” 333 On liberty, Shellburn visits Buddhist temples
and his Japanese girlfriends. He starts to chafe against Marine discipline and
sympathizes not only with the Japanese, but the Filipino and Chinese people he comes
into contact with. In one scene, Shellburn talks with an elderly Japanese man and they
discuss how the Japanese could have won the war against the Americans. Shellburn’s
buddy, Abe, “wondered if old Johnnysan was turning into a blue-eyed Jap or
something.” 334
Like the Warren Commission’s version of Oswald, however, Shellburn has
trouble maintaining his relationships with his girlfriends and buddies, he listens to Radio
Moscow, and he finds himself in trouble with his superiors. In a scene in the Philippines,
Shellburn criticizes a fellow soldier for always quickly following orders, and Shellburn
languishes under a tree reading Kipling: “Lo, all our pomp of yesterday;/is one with
Nineveh and Tyre!/Judge of the Nations, spare us yet/Lest we forget – lest we forget!”
Shellburn ruminates that “It was a prediction of what might, and did, come of the British
Empire. The same thing’s going to happen to America.” 335 Johnny Shellburn predicts
American decline and wants to be on the right side of history, as Thornley said of the real
Oswald. Shellburn opines “I’m a revolutionary; I can’t wait; I always try to make things
happen” – a sentiment that would fit into the conception of Oswald as a lone assassin
who wants to change history by slaying President Kennedy. 336
333 Warriors, 11.
334 Warriors, 55.
335 Warriors, 100.
336 Warriors, 160.
150

Shellburn had tried to achieve recognition within the Marines, but he has as little
success as Oswald. He enters a contest in which he must give a speech, in which he
implores his fellow Marines to act appropriately toward the Japanese and other peoples
where they are stationed. Shellburn urges his audience to ask themselves “’Have I ever
endorsed Communist propaganda by my actions?’ Actions, gentlemen, speak much
louder than words. What about your conduct on liberty?” 337 Shellburn’s last illusions
are shattered when he finds that his Marine buddy Mike Cervata, whom he considered the
best Marine he knew, is heavily involved in the black market. Shellburn becomes more
lackadaisical and sloppy. He writes to a former buddy that he has found “The Great
Universal Truth” – his version of Murphy’s law. “’Jack, I’ve found it; it’s the smell of
vomit on board ship when the sea is rough. It’s the smell of a fart the guy in front of you
lets out when you’re at attention in formation. It’s the cry of an old man when he’s made
the victim of a cruel joke…The Universal Truth, Jack, is the great dragon of reality.” 338
Back in Japan, he is drawn to the Japanese pacifists. He rages against his countrymen:
“Blundering dolts! Whole country full of incompetents! Defenders of the status quo!
Defenders of the status quo, your time has come!” 339
In the final chapter, the reader learns that Shellburn has defected to the Soviet
Union. Thornley had struggled with the ending of his novel, and Oswald’s defection
provided him with a ready-made solution. Various people who knew Shellburn offer
their thoughts on why he defected – most of them reflecting their own viewpoints and
337 Warriors, 79.
338 Warriors, 139.
339 Warriors, 189.
151

iases. The black marketer, Mike Cervata, offers a possible reason to a captain
investigating the matter: “Since he was born, Johnny Shellburn lived in the hymn and
history of the Corps…So what happened when he found himself in a hap-hazard, half-
assed air wing outfit?” The answer: “’He was demoralized.’” 340 The conclusion of
Thornley’s novel is not wholly satisfactory, but his fictionalized portrait of Oswald shows
that the alleged assassin was a much more complicated figure than the non-entity of the
Warren Commission portrayal – unless one accepts Garrison’s thesis that Thornley was
attempting to frame his former Marine buddy.
Novelist Don DeLillo painted a vivid picture of Oswald in Libra, which he
explained was “a work of imagination” that sought to “fill some of the blank spaces in the
known record.” 341 DeLillo follows Oswald from his stay in New York City with
Marguerite through his years in the Marine Corps and his defection to his return to the
United States with Marina and events leading up to the Kennedy assassination. DeLillo’s
Oswald resembles the portrait of the Warren Commission: he is a committed leftist, true
defector to the Soviet Union, and a supporter of Fidel Castro. However, he becomes
enmeshed in a plot involving right-wing Central Intelligence Agency operatives, anti-
Castro Cubans, and mobsters. By choosing the artistic form of the novel, DeLillo was
less bound by the historical record and could openly speculate about what form a
340
Warriors, 200.
341
Don DeLillo, Libra, (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), 458.
152

conspiracy may have taken. He invented a plot around Oswald that mixed fact with
fantasy to explore a dark side of the United States in the middle of the Cold War.
Oswald, in this rendering, is set up to be the fall guy for the assassination
precisely because he is who he is. David Ferrie, a real-life figure who is at the center of
the assassination plot in Libra, explains to Oswald that he is “a quirk of history,” “a
coincidence,” because his real life “matches the cardboard cutout [the plotters have] been
shaping all along.” 342 Oswald is a shooter in the assassination, but his main role “was to
provide artifacts of historical interest, a traceable weapon, all the cuttings and hoardings
of his Cuban career.” 343 The right-wing activists want Cuba to be blamed for the
assassination and having Oswald fingered as the assassin would leave a trail that shows
his connections to Cuba, and evidence of Castro’s alleged motive to kill Kennedy: the
CIA attempts on his life and sabotage operations against his communist regime.
The novel begins with a teenage Oswald hurtling through the subway tunnels of
New York: “He was riding just to ride.” 344 This imagery suggests the trajectory of
Oswald’s life as he is moved along by a conspiracy he does not fully understand to his
fate as the man blamed for Kennedy’s assassination. Many of the events recounted in the
Warren Commission are included and embellished in Libra, but they are interspersed
with parallel accounts of the fictional plot to kill Kennedy, as well as flash forwards to a
CIA historian trying to put together a comprehensive history of the “Dallas labyrinth,”
perhaps expressing the desire of Americans to have a full accounting of assassination,
342 DeLillo, 330.
343 DeLillo, 386.
344 DeLillo, 3.
153

“the seven seconds that broke the back of the American century.” 345 Oswald’s life is
depicted in chapters with geographical designations, such as “In the Bronx,” “In New
Orleans,” “In Minsk,” “In Dallas” etc. The chapters about the plot are labeled as dates in
the months leading up to the assassination. In this way, DeLillo describes a convergence
of people, time, and place on Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. As plotter David
Ferrie opines, the Texas School Book Depository building has “been sitting there waiting
for Kennedy and Oswald to converge on it.” 346
In the novel, fictional C.I.A. agent Win Everett plots to stage an assassination
attempt against President Kennedy that will be blamed on Cuba, sparking American
outrage and a commitment to overthrow Castro. The CIA plotters are angry over
Kennedy’s failure to back fully the Bay of Pigs invasion and pulling back from the
campaign against Castro. The plan is to blame the assassination on someone linked to
Castro, which eventually become Oswald. “The pocket litter, the gunman’s effects, the
sidetrackings and back alleys must allow investigators to learn that Kennedy wanted
Castro dead, that plots were devised, approved at high levels, put into motion, and that
Fidel or his senior aides decided to retaliate. This,” Delillo writes, “was the major
subtext and moral lesson of Win Everett’s plan.” 347 However, Everett wants the
assassins to miss Kennedy, but he loses control of the plot and the committed right-wing
activists move ineluctably toward a real assassination. The desire to blame Cuba
345 DeLillo, 301, 181.
346 DeLillo, 384.
347 DeLillo, 53.
154

emains, but the CIA operatives, anti-Castro Cubans, and mobsters all have a desire to
see Kennedy dead.
While DeLillo accepts many of the Warren Commission tropes about Oswald, the
author “fills in the blank spaces” about Oswald’s intelligence connections. Everywhere
he goes in the novel, Oswald draws the attention of U.S. and Soviet intelligence and law
enforcement agencies. As a Marine in Japan, Oswald makes contact with communist
agents, including a beautiful Geisha girl at a high-class bar, and he provides them with
information about the U-2 spy plane, radar codes, and other intelligence. Later, in the
Soviet Union, the KGB debriefs Oswald before sending him to Minsk. An agent named
Alek gets Oswald to tell him everything about his military service, including details about
the U-2: “He [Oswald] described times when the radar crew received requests for winds
aloft at eighty thousand feet, ninety thousand feel. He described the voice from out there,
dense, splintered, blown out, coming down them like a sound separate into basic units, a
lesson in physics or ghosts.” 348
DeLillo leads the reader to believe this information is crucial to the downing of
the U-2 spy plane flight of Francis Gary Powers, who the Soviets shot down during
Oswald’s stay in the Soviet Union. DeLillo also includes a scene in which the KGB has
Oswald observe Powers while in custody for any insights into the prisoner. DeLillo
bases this scene on a line he quotes in an actual letter Oswald sent his brother while in
Minsk, in which he says Powers “seemed to be a nice, bright American-type fellow,
348 DeLillo, 161.
155

when I saw him in Moscow.” 349 There is no record of Oswald being in Moscow while
Powers was there. In this way, DeLillo uses some of the conspiracy theories and his
freedom as a novelist to speculate about Oswald’s intelligence connections.
Back in the United States, Russian émigré George de Mohrenschildt is assigned to
debrief Oswald about his stay in the Soviet Union on behalf of the CIA. The CIA
arranges Oswald’s work at the photographic firm which DeLillo suggests handles photos
taken from U-2 reconnaissance flights, but he loses his job after he refuses to tell about
his encounters with the Soviet KGB. De Mohrenschildt later finds out that Oswald was
the man who attempted to kill the right-wing activist, General Walker, and unwittingly
tells a CIA agent involved in planning the Kennedy assassination. In this way, Oswald
becomes known to the plotters and is enmeshed in the conspiracy. DeLillo also diverges
from the Warren Commission in having Oswald attempt to kill Walker with the help of a
(fictional) former Marine buddy, an African-American man named Bobby Dupard upset
at the general’s segregationist views.
DeLillo describes a situation in which Oswald becomes involved in the plot to kill
Kennedy partly by the actions of the plotters, partly by the actions of Oswald, and partly
by pure coincidence. Some of these coincidences include Oswald walking into Guy
Bannister’s office to attempt to get a job as an agitator while the plotters are searching to
locate him and Oswald getting a job at the Texas School Book Depository shortly before
Kennedy is to ride through Dallas in an open motorcade. Oswald plays a double-game
throughout. He is a committed leftist who wants to work for the right-wing Bannister as
349 DeLillo, 210.
156

someone posing as a leftist and reporting on what he finds. Ferrie asks, “Why do you
want a job doing undercover work for the anti-Castro movement when it’s clear to me
that you’re a Castro partisan, a soldier for Fidel?” Lee responds with “his funny little
smile.” 350 He cooperates to some extent and for his own motivation with the CIA and
FBI. Oswald is fatalistically riding the conspiracy toward its end just as he rode the
subway at the beginning of the novel. “Summer [in New Orleans before the
assassination] was building toward a vision, a history. He felt he was being swept up,
swept along, doing with being a pitiful individual, done with isolation.” 351
Ferrie plays a key role in the novel in convincing Oswald to voluntarily take part
in the plot, applying pressure through verbal arguments and sex. In a key scene, Ferrie
and Clay Shaw talk to Oswald about his astrological sign as a “Libra,” the title of the
novel. DeLillo never explains what role Shaw played in his fictional plot, but Shaw
described a Libran as “The Balance,” someone who is “Poised to make the dangerous
leap.” Ferrie describes Libra as “The Scales.” 352 The references indicate that Oswald is
the key, influencing him to take part in the plot will tip the scales to success, killing
Kennedy and suggesting Castro is to blame, thereby galvanizing the American people in
an anti-Communist crusade. It is Ferrie’s job to make Oswald tip the scales. As Ferrie
tells Oswald that he “believes in his heart that he’s a dedicated leftist. But he is also a
350 DeLillo, 317.
351 DeLillo, 322.
352 DeLillo, 315.
157

Libran. He is capable of seeing the other side,” and is “sitting on the scales, ready to be
tilted either way.” 353
Part of Ferrie’s attempt to influence Oswald involves sex. Oswald, in DeLillo’s
novel, is also balancing between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Near the beginning
of the novel, a teenage Oswald encounters Ferrie in the Civil Air Patrol and then with a
friend as they seek to buy a handgun. The friend leaves Ferrie and Oswald alone,
apparently disturbed by the pilot’s strangeness and creepy sexuality. In real life, Ferrie
suffered from a skin condition that caused him to be hairless, and he would paste fake
hair on his head and as his eyebrows. He was fired as a airline pilot because of his
blatant homosexuality and alleged pedophilia. In the scene with Ferrie, Oswald “wanted
to leave but found himself just standing there grinning stupidly.” He seems oblivious to
Ferrie’s sexual undertones. Ferrie tells Oswald he is “a boy with intelligent eyes,” and
asks “Tell me about your eyes.” 354
Years later as the Kennedy plot unfolds in New Orleans, Ferrie and Oswald are
together with a woman. Ferrie undoes Oswald’s zipper and the woman helps Lee
ejaculate. Ferrie is moving toward approaching Oswald sexually himself. In a later
scene, Ferrie gets on top of Oswald on a sofa: “Ferrie was breathing all over him,
covering his head and neck with heavy breath. Then he felt it on his pants, seeping
in.” 355 This is all part of Ferrie’s attempts to tip the scale. “’Think of two parallel
lines,’” he tell Oswald. “‘One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill
353 DeLillo, 319.
354 DeLillo, 44.
355 DeLillo, 341.
158

the President.’” Ferrie is trying to forge “’a connection’” between the lines, based on
“dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self.’” 356
In the end, Oswald takes part in the plot, shooting at Kennedy from the Texas
School Book Depository. The fatal head shot is fired, however, from the Grassy Knoll by
CIA operatives and anti-Castro Cubans. DeLillo has Jack Ruby silence Oswald by
killing him because the Dallas nightclub owner is in financial straits and had sought help
from the mob to bail him out. A fictional New Orleans gangster named Carmine Latta –
clearly patterned after real crime boss Carlos Marcello – bankrolled the plot and
arranging for Ruby to kill Oswald.
DeLillo’s novel is itself a balancing act between history and fiction, in which
known facts mingle with speculation. The author explained that “While drawing from
the historical record, I’ve made no attempt to furnish factual answers to any question
raised by the assassination…I’ve altered and embellished reality, extended real people
into imagined space and time, invented incidents, dialogues, and characters” – all a part
of an effort to “fill some of the blank spaces in the known record.” 357 The plot outlined
by DeLillo is not wholly convincing, given the coincidences involved and the grafting of
a truly Marxist Oswald onto a right-wing plot. It is also hard to believe a conspirator
would plan originally to miss Kennedy. Overall, however, DeLillo has written a major
literary work that paints a compelling picture of Oswald in which he resembles the
Warren Commission’s portrait of the loner Marxist, but finds himself in an existential
356 DeLillo, 379.
357 DeLillo, 458.
159

quagmire at the center of a conspiracy that he is aware of but does not fully understand.
DeLillo examined an underside to American society, in which malignant forces are loose
in society and willing to kill the nation’s leader to advance their cause. This is the larger
truth he sought to convey in the novel: the specifics may not be right but he is sure of the
ultimate culprits and their motivation. DeLillo used historical figures and made-up
people to offer his explanation for who killed Kennedy and why – out-of-control
intelligence operatives, gangsters, and anti-Castro Cubans who want to spark a crusade
against Cuba and to avenge the disaster of the Bay of Pigs.
Noted author Norman Mailer wrote an in-depth “novelistic” non-fiction narrative
of Oswald's life, Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, published in 1995, that analyzed
his character to determine whether he had the make-up of a presidential assassin. 358
Mailer ended up largely validating the Warren Commission’s finding of Oswald’s guilt,
but his portrait of Oswald was more sympathetic to the accused assassin, playing up some
of his positive attributes. Mailer explained that he was trying to answer certain questions:
"What kind of man was Oswald? Can we feel compassion for his troubles, or will we
end by seeing him as a disgorgement from the errors of the cosmos, a monster?" 359 The
author's purpose was to decide whether Oswald's character fits the crime and, if so, what
is the philosophical meaning of the assassination. Mailer wrote that the "crux" of his
inquiry was that the assassination of a man as "large in his possibilities as John Fitzgerald
358
Norman Mailer, Oswald’s Tale: an American Mystery, (New York: Ballantine Books,
1996 (1995)), 682.
359
Mailer, 197.
160

Kennedy is more tolerable if we can perceive his killer as tragic rather than absurd." 360
Ultimately, Oswald is more anti-hero than hero, but Mailer argued that Oswald was a
tragic figure -- an idealist who had pretensions of creating a better world but was
repeatedly frustrated in his life, reduced to living a menial existence in both the Soviet
Union and in his homeland, the United States.
Mailer's work is divided into two parts: the first begins somewhat disconcertingly
with details about Marina's family and looks at Oswald's life in the Soviet Union. The
second part describes Oswald's life in the United States, including his childhood and
service in the Marine Corps before his defection. The first part detailed the private lives
and sexual history of both Marina and Oswald during his stay in Minsk. Mailer even
provided information about Oswald's flatulence: "He was always spoiling the air with
gases." 361 Mailer emphasized this part of Oswald’s life at first because he considered it
the key to understanding his personal and political tribulations and the transition from a
young defector to hated presidential assassin. Mailer demonstrated the dashed hopes of
an idealistic man who believed in Marxism but found Soviet life to be dreary and
degrading. Mailer’s examination of Oswald’s marriage also revealed that he was largely
a failure in the personal sphere as well, with a nagging wife who had no illusions about
the man she married.
In the personal sphere, Mailer showed how Marina’s difficult family and social
life during her years living with her stepfather in Leningrad helped undermine the
360 Mailer, 198.
361 Mailer, 216.
161

Oswald marriage from the beginning. Mailer discounted the tales of Marina’s
promiscuity, but reported that Marina lost her virginity when raped by a soccer player
and that she hung out with an adventurous young crowd. Her stepfather considered her a
“whore” and made her sleep outside the apartment if she came home late. The stigma of
those years would haunt her even when she left to stay with her aunt and uncle in Minsk.
As Mailer put it, “Now her reputation felt like ugly clothing, smelly, that she was
condemned to war.” 362 She seized the opportunity to marry Oswald “to find someone to
belong to, and to have a family. 363 Earlier on in the marriage, a dissatisfied Marina
would cheat on Oswald while he was away in Moscow, seeking a night with an old
boyfriend while her husband was trying to arrange their passage to the United States.
The early emphasis on Oswald's life in the Soviet Union also derived in part from
Mailer's unprecedented access in the post-Cold War era to Soviet documents and the
ability to interview people who knew Marina and Oswald in the Soviet Union. Mailer
acknowledged that this was a major stimulus to writing the book. Among those
interviewed were KGB officers in charge of the surveillance of Oswald, but they were
identified by pseudonyms. The KGB sought to determine whether “some American
intelligence service sent Lee Harvey Oswald [to the Soviet Union] to check out …Soviet
legal channels” or as “a test case to determine how moles might be implanted for special
tasks.” 364 In short, the Soviets wanted to determine whether Oswald was a spy. Mailer
was allowed access to detailed KGB documents about the surveillance of Oswald in
362 Mailer, 170.
363 Mailer, 183.
364 Mailer, 72.
162

Minsk. Not only did the KGB tail Oswald, but operatives bugged his apartment and
interview people he came into contact with. The surveillance revealed Oswald to be an
unexciting character, poor worker, and allegedly poor shot. He went out with his fellow
workers to hunt rabbits and was not successful.
Before meeting Marina, Oswald had several affairs with Soviet women, and had
proposed and been rejected by Ella Germann, a Soviet Jew. A former KGB man told
Mailer that “Oswald didn’t exhibit any [sexual] deviations,” and he helpfully added that
“a homosexual reveals himself in his behavior” and “his eyes start blazing when he sees a
man…when his butt is big.” 365 Mailer quoted extensively from the KGB transcripts of
Oswald’s bugged apartment, including Oswald’s fights with his new wife, Marina. The
marriage got off to a rocky start, especially since Oswald had lied about a number of
things, including his desire to return to the United States. In one fairly typical exchange,
Marina asked “do you hate me when you yell at me?” Oswald replied “Yes.” Marina
then asked “Why are you afraid of people? What scared you?” Oswald yells “angrily”
according to the transcript: “Shut up, shut up… You stand there and blab.” 366 After the
birth of their daughter, the two fight about Oswald’s plans to return to his homeland.
Marina declared “Out of my sight you dog! You scoundrel! Don’t look at me that way –
nobody is afraid of you. Go to hell, you bastard!” 367 Mailer ruminated that perhaps the
two could have appeared in a one-act play: “Newlyweds.” However, there is nothing
365 Mailer, 133.
366 Mailer, 228.
367 Mailer, 294.
163

funny about Oswald’s alleged physical abuse of Marina, which occurred for the first time
after their marriage and would allegedly escalate after they arrive in the United States.
The KGB documents did not contain any revelations about whether Oswald was
an American intelligence agent -- or an operative of the Soviet Union. The KGB officers
told Mailer that they had “decided, after analyzing all their material once more, that
during the year and a half [Oswald] had been in Minsk, there had been no evidence that
he was an active agent of any intelligence service.” The Soviet authorities decided “Let
him go home. Good riddance.” 368 These conclusions dovetail with the defenders of the
Warren Commission who repeatedly state that Oswald had no connection to any
intelligence agency, but Mailer would examine whether Oswald had a peripheral ties to
the CIA when he returned to the United States.
Oswald’s personal and political experiences in the Soviet Union are important to
Mailer in determining Oswald’s character and whether he killed Kennedy. Mailer
accepted Oswald's Marxist declarations at face value and dealt seriously with his political
beliefs to draw a more rounded picture of the alleged assassin than the Warren
Commission, which depicted him as a one-dimensional social misfit and loser. After his
departure from the Soviet Union, Oswald declared his intention to "put forward" an
alternative to both the capitalist and communist systems. Oswald said "I have lived under
both systems" in an effort to find the truth behind "Cold War clichés” but found that
neither system was better than the other. 369
368 Mailer, 252-253.
369 Mailer, 302.
164

Central to Mailer's portrait of Oswald as a tragic figure is his grandiose
aspirations. Mailer wrote that "the project of Oswald's life" was "to give no quarter to the
resplendent superiority of the moneyed enemy [in the United States], but to stand proud,
partisan, and a guerrilla fighter -- if, for the most part, only in the privacy of his mind." 370
Oswald even wrote a political manifesto before his alleged attempt to assassinate General
Walker, in which he posited "The Atheian System...opposed to Communism, Socialism,
and capitalism." The system consisted of "Democracy at a local level with no centralized
state," social and economic freedom, no individual taxes, and levies on surplus profits to
be used "solely for the building or improvement of public projects." 371 Mailer contended
that Oswald's system bore similarities to the principles of the Hippies, who would emerge
later in the 1960's. In addition to quoting Oswald's political writings, Mailer also
emphasized the tremendous obstacles facing Oswald, including his unsettled childhood,
his domineering mother, his troubled marriage, and his dyslexia, which made him seem
less intelligent than he was.
Mailer freely speculated about Oswald’s sexuality, his political beliefs, and
connection to intelligence agencies. In fact, in his repeated references to Oswald’s sexual
and excretory functions, Mailer revealed himself as a pseudo-Freudian. For example, he
ruminated that “If [Oswald] stays in dirty clothes once he gets home” from his job
greasing machines at a coffee company in New Orleans, “that might be related to sitting
370 Mailer, 431.
371 Mailer, 506-508.
165

in dirty diapers as a child.” 372 Regarding Oswald’s political beliefs, Mailer described
him as an extreme mixture of “anarchism and authoritarianism.” 373 Mailer also noted
that Oswald purportedly had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf . Mailer speculated that as a
Marxist, Oswald would reject “concepts of race and historically destined folk,” but
“Hitler’s success [in rising from obscurity to German leader] probably lit a candle in the
dungeon of Oswald’s immense hopes for himself.” 374
Mailer is ambiguous when it comes to Oswald’s connection to U.S. intelligence
agencies. He accepted the possibility that Oswald “was engaged again on the periphery
of espionage.” 375 He assumed Oswald was involved with Japanese communists while a
Marine stationed at Atsugi. Although he accepted the KGB claims that in the end
Oswald had nothing to offer them, Mailer suggested that the CIA used Russian émigré
George de Mohrenschildt to quietly and secretly probe what Oswald knew about the
Soviet Union from his stay there. However, Mailer does not think Oswald was a U.S.
agent, but he left open the possibility that he would be proven wrong by future
revelations from the CIA and U.S. government.
Mailer, in examining Oswald's life, argued that he may have been involved with
figures from U.S. intelligence, anti-Castro Cubans, and organized crime, but, if he were,
he was probably trying to use them to his own purposes as a sort of "double agent."
Mailer concluded that Oswald "had the character to kill Kennedy, and that he probably
372 Mailer, 548.
373 Mailer, 457-458.
374 Mailer, 459.
375 Mailer, 400.
166

did it alone." 376 A reprehensible act -- but Mailer argued that Oswald's tragedy was his
earnest strivings that all ended in failure.
In the end, Mailer's Oswald sought to change society through a terrible,
destructive act: "The world was in crisis and the social need was to create conditions for
recognizing that there had to be a new kind of society." The assassination of Kennedy
would be "the shock therapy needed to awaken the world." 377
Of course, Oswald ended up an anti-hero instead of a hero, but Mailer concluded
that he could have titled his book "An American Tragedy," if the title had not been taken
already by Theodore Dreiser. Oswald’s tale ended with the death of Kennedy, the death
of Oswald, and the death of Oswald's "long and determined dream of political triumph,
wifely approbation, and high destiny." 378 Mailer's Oswald is not a cipher -- "a small
lonely man" who absurdly "felled a giant." 379 Rather, Mailer saw Oswald as a more
substantial figure whose troubled life story offers some meaning and balance to the
terrible events in Dallas. The combination of idealism, thwarted ambition, and a failed
marriage led Oswald to slay Kennedy. Mailer sought to determine whether Oswald was
“an assassin with a vision or a killer without one,” and he clearly believed the former. 380
Mailer sought in his book to explain Oswald and his terrible deed by examining
his life and his political ideology. He took Oswald’s writings seriously, and did not
discount the alleged assassin as a “nobody.” The reader is asked to sympathize with
376 Mailer, 778.
377 Mailer, 781.
378 Mailer, 790-191.
379 Mailer, 198.
380 Mailer, 198.
167

Oswald – even though Mailer believes him to be the assassin. In the end, Mailer’s book
is a nuanced portrait of Oswald that probably does not convince many people, including
those on opposite sides of the assassination debate. Those who support the Warren
Commission’s finding would undoubtedly find it difficult to sympathize with Oswald –
however grand his conception of himself as political leader and philosopher. Those who
think there was a conspiracy would reject Mailer’s cautious acceptance of Oswald’s guilt.
The acclaimed composer Stephen Sondheim and librettist John Weidman
collaborated on a dark musical called Assassins in which Lee Harvey Oswald and other
American presidential assassins and would-be assassins sing about their deeds. The
musical portrays the assassins as representations of a dark streak in the American dream:
violence as a way to make a name for oneself, to advance a cause, and to be remembered
by history. Oswald is the hinge that binds the assassins that came before him and those
that follow. This Oswald is the Warren Commission Oswald: a lone gunman and failure
at life who kills Kennedy out of fury at his own insignificance. However, unlike the
Warren Commission, this Oswald is not out of the mainstream of the United States as a
communist, anti-social loser, but rather is part of a tradition of political assassinations and
gun violence tied to a national creed of individualism and personal freedom.
The musical was first presented on January, 27 1991, but received “mostly
negative” critical reviews and had a “relatively brief run.” 381 Some critics and audience
381
Andre Bishop, “Preface” to Assassins by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman,
(New York: Theater Communications Group, 1991), vii.
168

members complained that the musical had no point of view, but Weidman argued that
Assassins “suggests that while these individuals [presidential assassins] are, to say the
least, peculiar – taken as a group they are peculiarly American…Assassins suggests it is
because we live in a country whose most cherished national myths…encourage us to
believe that in America our dreams not only can come true, but should come true, and
that if they don’t someone or something is to blame.” 382
In the opening scene at a fairground, the proprietor of a shooting gallery urged a
variety of presidential assassins to take a chance on shooting a president: “Hey, pal—
feelin’ blue?/Don’t know what to do?/…C’mere and kill a president.” 383 (5-6) The
proprietor encourages Czolgosz, Guiteau, Booth, and others with the refrain that
“Everybody’s/Got the right/ to their dreams.” 384 While such obscure would-be assassins
as Lynnette “Squeaky” Fromme and Samuel Byck, who tried to hijack a plane and crash
it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon, appear, Oswald does not. Oswald will not
appear until the end of the musical, emphasizing his importance in the pantheon of
assassins and would-be assassins.
Sondheim and Weidman go through each presidential assassination in American
history by emphasizing the particular and varied motivations of each assassin, while
showing how they relate to each other as representatives of a dark American political
tradition. John Wilkes Booth is introduced as the group’s “Pioneer,” and he and the
382 Quoted in Bishop “Preface,” x-xi.
383 Sondheim and Weidman, 5-6.
384 Sondheim and Weidman, 7.
169

proprietor proclaim “Free country --!” 385 The whole group sings “Everybody’s/Got the
right/To some sunshine –“ but Booth in the next scene declares his particular motive was
to “kill the man who killed my.” 386 The Confederate sympathizer sings that “How the
Union can never recover/From that vulgar,/High and mightly/Niggerlover” – Abraham
Lincoln. 387
In later scenes, the remaining pre-Oswald assassins -- Guiteau, Czolgosz, Zangara
– and the post-Oswald would-be assassins -- Byck, Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, and John
Hinckley – sing about why they tried to kill a president. Their individual motives vary –
for example, Fromme declares her love for Charles Manson while Hinckley pines for
actress Jodie Foster. They unite, however, in proclaiming that in the United States,
“There’s another national anthem, folks,/For those who never win,/For the suckers, for
the pikers,/For the ones who might have been…” 388
In the penultimate scene, Oswald appears as he works on the sixth floor of the
Texas School Book Depository. He is carrying out menial tasks and is surly when
approached by Booth, who is urging Oswald to seize his chance to make history. At one
point, he snaps at Booth “Fuck you” and later asks whether he is an FBI agent harassing
him. 389 Clearly, this Oswald reflects the Warren Commission view of the angry and
frustrated Oswald. Booth sings of Oswald’s troubled life from a father who “died before
your birth” and his “Crazy mother,” his defection and return, and his troubled marriage to
385 Sondheim and Weidman, 11-12.
386 Sondheim and Weidman, 19.
387 Sondheim and Weidman, 21.
388 Sondheim and Weidman, 85.
389 Sondheim and Weidman, 91.
170

Marina. Booth goes on, “this morning, depressed over your estrangement from a wife
who views you as a dismal and pathetic failure, you rose before dawn….and came here to
kill yourself.” 390
Booth has other plans for Oswald: “All your life you’ve been a victim, Lee. A
Victim of indifference and neglect. Of your mother’s scorn, your wife’s contempt, of
Soviet stupidity, American injustice, You’ve finally had enough.” 391 Booth urges
Oswald to kill Kennedy instead of himself, and the stock boy will be remembered like
Brutus long after his death. He will also find a place among his predecessors and
successors: the long line of assassins. Oswald still resists, and a disgusted Booth lets slip
that “Are you such a vapid, vacuous nonentity” but the other assassins make a “shushing”
sound. 392 Oswald must not face his personal failure and obscurity, but must seize the
opportunity to make himself part of history. Booth tells Oswald that the Kennedy
assassination “is the big one. You’re the big one. You’re the one that’s going to sum it
all up and blow it all wide open.” 393 (98) Fifty years from now, Booth informs Oswald
“they’ll still be arguing about the grassy knoll, the mafia, some Cuban crouched behind a
stockade fence.” 394
In this rendering, Oswald as lone assassin spawns endless debate over a supposed
conspiracy. The assassins declare that Oswald’s act will give them “meaning” and
390 Sondheim and Weidman, 92.
391 Sondheim and Weidman, 94.
392 Sondheim and Weidman, 97.
393 Sondheim and Weidman, 98.
394 Sondheim and Weidman, 97.
171

“immortality” and reassert them as “a force of history.” 395 Oswald is finally convinced
and shoots at the motorcade. In the final scene, the assassins sing once again that the
United States is a “Free country” in which “Everybody’s/Got the right/To their
dreams…” 396
Sondheim and Weidman’s Oswald places him firmly as part of the American
experience of criminal violence and assassination. He is not to be identified as someone
outside the mainstream of history. In other portrayals of Oswald as an anti-hero, the
details of Oswald’s life differ, including whether he is the lone gunman. Thornley and
Mailer emphasized his individualism and rebelliousness. DeLillo placed him at the
center of his novel as a protagonist who is part of a conspiracy involving the American
underworld and intelligence community. Sondheim and Weidman’s Oswald resembles
the Warren Commission portrait, but places him in a panoply of past and future
presidential assassins that reflect a society in which violence is glorified. All these works
use creative forms to delve deeper into the meaning of Oswald’s life, the assassination,
and American society. For DeLillo, Oswald is a pawn of nefarious forces active in the
United States. Thornley, Mailer, and Sondheim and Weidman portrayed Oswald as a true
American in some respects. Even thought Oswald’s left-wing views are out of the
mainstream of American political thought, his radical individualism reflects a deep string
in U.S. culture and society. This leads to terrible violence in Sondheim’s musical, but
395 Sondheim and Weidman, 100.
396 Sondheim and Weidman, 105, 107.
172

Mailer and Thornley sympathized with the misunderstood assassin, perhaps reflecting
their own non-conformity as creative artists, and the effects of the 1960s counter-culture.
CHAPTER 5: OSWALD THE MOB PATSY
Over the years, the critics of the Warren Commission have poked multiple holes
in the official version of the assassination and the case against the alleged lone gunman,
Lee Harvey Oswald. The critics have convinced a strong majority of Americans that
there was a conspiracy, but the public is divided over who was responsible for killing
President Kennedy. The conspiracy theorists have identified numerous suspects and
institutions allegedly responsible for the assassination, from President Lyndon Baines
Johnson and the CIA to the Teamsters Union chief Jimmy Hoffa and the mafia. The
satirical publication The Onion made fun of the array and complexity of the theories in a
spoof newspaper article from November 22, 1963 that declared “Kennedy Slain By CIA,
Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons; President Shot 129 Times from 43 Different
Angles.” The Onion described how the plots unfolded:
Preliminary reporters indicate that hitmen for the Giancana crime syndicate fired
from a nearby grassy knoll, CIA agents fired from an office building slightly off
the parade route, Cuban nationals fired from an overpass overlooking Dealey
Plaza, an elite hit squad working for Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa fired from
perches atop an oak tree, a ‘lone nut’ fired from the Texas Book Depository, a
shadow-government sharp-shooting team fired from behind a wooden fence, a
173

consortium of jealous husbands fired from an estimated 13 sites on the sidewalk
along the route, a hitman working for Johnson fired from a sewer grate over
which the limousine passed, and Texas Gov. John Connally lunged at the
president from within the limousine itself, slitting the president’s throat with a
combat knife. 397
For many Americans who lived through that day, however, time has not erased
the pain of President Kennedy’s death. Some researchers have dedicated their lives to
finding the party or parties they believe were responsible. The fact that Jack Ruby, a
Dallas nightclub owner with connections to the underworld, gunned downed Oswald
while he was in police custody has convinced many that the Mafia was responsible for
the assassination. In this rendering, Oswald is the patsy of the mob. Organized crime
sets up Oswald to take responsibility for the crime and then kills him to silence him.
Oswald recedes in importance in relation to the plot, while Ruby emerges as a more
important figure. When conspiracy theorists focus on Oswald, they often blame
intelligence agencies for the assassination, while a focus on Ruby usually points to a mob
plot. Other authors have combined these alleged conspirators into a multi-faceted plot.
The Warren Commission and its defenders saw Oswald as a political and social anomaly.
To the mafia conspiracy theorists, the underworld secretly wields enormous power in
U.S. society. Mobsters gun down the nation’s president on the streets of Dallas without
fear of retribution.
The Oswald as mob patsy appeals to those who consider organized crime a major
threat in American life, including investigative journalists and mafia experts. The House
397
Scott Dikkers, Robert Siegel, John Krewson, et al., Our Dumb Century, (New York:
Three Rivers Press, 1999), 101.
174

Select Committee on Assassinations blamed the mob for the assassination under the
guidance of former Justice Department organized crime prosecutor G. Robert Blakey.
Blaming the mob for the assassination was also more politically palatable to members of
Congress than an examination of Oswald’s intelligence connections. The House
Committee largely avoided that topic and focused on organized crime and anti-Castro
Cubans. The Oswald as mob patsy also imbued President Kennedy with a heroic
dimension that his supporters could embrace. Despite allegedly being compromised with
his own ties to mob-connected people, Kennedy is gunned down largely because he had
his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, crack down on Mafiosi and labor unions
connected to the mob. According to this theory, Kennedy was a tragic figure who,
despite his own flaws, courageously attempted to battle the power of organized crime.
Investigative journalist Jack Anderson was an early proponent of the theory that
the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Castro backfired and led to the death of Kennedy. His
theory evolved over time, as more and more information came available about the plots.
Anderson, in his column coauthored with Drew Pearson, initially reported about the CIA
plan to assassinate Castro in a March 7, 1967 article. Pearson and Anderson wrote that “a
reported plan in 1963 to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro, which according to some
sources, may have resulted in a counterplot by Castro to assassinate Kennedy.” The
column also cited the remarks of Warren Commission, Senator Russell Long, as saying
175

“Lee Harvey Oswald…trained with Castro revolutionaries in Minsk during his Soviet
stay.” 398 No mention was made of the role of the mob in the CIA plots.
However, in a January 18, 1971, column, Anderson named John Roselli,
identified as “a ruggedly handsome gambler with contacts in both the American and
Cuban underworlds” as being one of the main conspirators with the CIA in the plots
against Castro. Anderson reported that there had been “six assassination attempts against
Cuba’s Fidel Castro” by the CIA during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and before the
Kennedy assassination. Anderson stated that the last attempted occurred in February or
March 1963 – nine months before Kennedy “was gunned down in Dallas by Lee Harvey
Oswald, a fanatic who previously had agitated for Castro in New Orleans and had made a
mysterious trip to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City.” This has led to a “nagging
suspicion” that Castro “became aware of the U.S. plot upon his life and somehow
recruited Oswald to retaliate against President Kennedy.” 399
In the disclosures so far, Anderson accepted the view of Oswald as a left-
wing extremist, and blamed Castro more than the Mafia for the Kennedy assassination.
Anderson would later acknowledge that Roselli was the source of much of his
information about the plots, and that the story emerged over time. Anderson reported in
July 27, 1975 that Robert Kennedy “was tormented by the terrible thought, according to
intimates, that he may have helped trigger the assassination of his brother” through his
398
Jack Anderson and Drew Pearson, “Senate Aide Scouted Deals for Dodd,”
Washington Post, (March 7, 1967).
399
Jack Anderson, “6 Attempts to Kill Castro Laid to CIA,” Washington Post, (January
18, 1971).
176

oversight of the CIA and the plots to kill Castro. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs,
Kennedy had threatened to “’splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the
winds’” but instead appointed his brother to keep an eye on the agency. 400
Anderson was free to divulge more details some weeks later. On August 7, 1976,
Roselli was found in an oil drum with his legs sawed off in Dumfoundling Bay, Florida.
This occurred shortly after Rosselli testified about the CIA-Mafia plots to the Senate
committee investigating CIA abuses. Anderson, in his September 7, 1976, dramatically
stated that “Mafia mobster John Roselli may have taken the secret of the John F.
Kennedy assassination with him to his death.” In his account, Rosselli persuades higher-
ranking mobsters – Chicago boss Sam Giancana and Florida godfather Santo Trafficante
– to participate in the CIA plots to kill Castro, but the snipers who were dispatched to
Cuba were caught, tortured, and then turned around to kill Kennedy. Castro “decided to
turn the tables and use the same crowd to arrange Kennedy’s assassination, according to
Roselli’s scenario.” To cover their tracks, “the plotters lined up Lee Harvey Oswald to
pull the trigger.” 401
One must keep in mind Roselli was the source of this theory, and may have been
protected a deeper secret – that the mob killed Kennedy for their own reasons and that
Castro was not involved. His account must have worried other mobsters, however, since
he was murdered before he could tell more. In fact, Chicago boss Giancana suffered a
similar fate. On July 19, 1975, staff representatives of the Church Committee arrived in
400
Jack Anderson, “Did the Castro Plot Backfire,” Washington Post, (July 27, 1975).
401
Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, “Behind John F. Kennedy’s Murder,” Washington
Post, (September 7, 1976).
177

Chicago to arrange Giancana’s testimony about the CIA-Mafia plots. That evening, he
was shot in the back of the head while cooking dinner. No one was ever charged in either
case.
A surprising advocate of the theory that the CIA-Mafia plots backfired and led to
John Kennedy’s assassination was Lyndon Johnson. In comments published in the July
1973 edition of the Atlantic Monthly shortly after Johnson’s death, the former President
declared “I never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled
the trigger.” This from the man who set up the Warren Commission and publicly
endorsed its findings. Johnson also stated that the United States “had been operating a
damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean” – an apparent reference to the CIA plots using the
mob to kill Castro. Johnson speculated that the Kennedy assassination had been
retaliation for a CIA-backed assassination team captured in Havana. 402 Johnson’s claim
that he believed Oswald did not act alone was an explosive statement, but the former
President may also have had hidden motives in implying that Castro was to blame. In
doing so, Johnson preserved the left-wing basis of the assassination and perhaps shielded
himself, the CIA, the mob, or right-wing from allegations of direct involvement.
In his 1973 book Legacy of Doubt, journalist Peter Noyes investigated the links
between organized crime, right-wing extremists, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the familiar
cast of characters in New Orleans – mafia chieftain Carlos Marcello, his associate David
402
Leo Janos, “The Last Days of the President: LBJ in Retirement,” the Atlantic, (July
1973), 39.
178

Ferrie, and private investigator Guy Bannister. However, Noyes focused his
investigation on a mystery man in Dealey Plaza that he tried to connect to all these parties
– a man known by various names including Eugene Hale Brading. Noyes suggested that
organized crime and right-wingers assassinated Kennedy, and that Oswald was not the
left-wing extremist as portrayed by the Warren Commission. Noyes’ convoluted story
centers on Brading and his apparent role in the plot.
A Dallas sheriff’s deputy questioned a man who identified himself as Jim Braden
just after the assassination because the deputy thought the man was acting suspiciously.
The man claimed he went into a building to make a phone call, and was accosted by the
deputy upon leaving the building. The man’s statement was included in the Warren
Report, and seemed, according to Noyes, simply “a footnote to history.” 403
What Noyes found, however, was that Braden was really Eugene Hale Brading,
and the he was a convicted felon who rose “from petty thief to a ranking member of the
underworld” with ties to “the Mafia, oil men, and ‘far right’ industrialists.” 404 The
journalists’ investigation showed Brading in close proximity at key moments to other
suspects in the assassination, including Ferrie, Marcello, and the Hunt family of right-
wing oil barons. Brading was actually on parole from an embezzlement conviction when
he was in Dallas November 22, 1963, and had reported to the authorities in Texas as
required. While Noyes found many disturbing connections and coincidences involving
Brading, the author had a hard time finding what the mystery man’s role was in an
403 Peter Noyes, Legacy of Doubt, (New York: Pinnacle Books, 1973), 23.
404 Noyes, 39.
179

assassination plot. Noyes suggested that perhaps Brading posed as a secret service agent
to cover Oswald’s escape from the scene. Noyes accepted the Warren Commission’s
finding that Oswald shot the president, but disagreed about his true motivation.
In the years after the assassination, Brading had ties to organized crime figures
such as Jimmy Fratiano, who was described by a police official as “’the executioner for
the Mafia on the West Coast.” 405 Brading was also a member of the La Costa Country
Club in southern California, a reputed mob hang out. Noyes suggested that Brading was
a courier for the mob and may have been involved in taking millions of dollars skimmed
from Las Vegas casinos out of the country. The journalist declared that “In the
underworld, people like Gene Brading supply the brains; the Fratiannos supply the
muscle and gunpowder.” 406
How does Lee Harvey Oswald fit into all this? Noyes claimed that the Warren
Commission ignored Oswald’s ties to Ferrie, which would connect him with the New
Orleans mob and anti-Castroites. Noyes also accepted the testimony of anti-Castro
Cuban activist Sylvia Odio that Oswald appeared at her doorstep in September 1963 with
two other anti-Castroites. Noyes wrote that Odio had identified one of the other men as
Loran Eugene Hall, a member of the Minutemen paramilitary anti-Communist group that
was also known as Lorenzo Pascillo. During the Warren Commission investigation, Hall
originally had told the FBI that he had visited Odio’s residence with two other men and
that neither of them was Lee Harvey Oswald. Even though the FBI investigation was not
405 Noyes, 51.
406 Noyes, 52.
180

complete at the time the Commission’s report was going to press, the panel used the
information in part to discredit Odio’s story. However, after publication of the report,
Hall retracted his story.
Noyes noted that Oswald “depicted himself as a member of the far left,” but he
asked “was this an accurate profile of the man who killed John Kennedy?” 407 In fact,
Noyes suggested that perhaps Oswald himself was a Minutemen since he seemed to
know ultra-right-wingers such as Guy Bannister. Oswald had defected to the Soviet
Union but Noyes pointed out he had returned apparently unhappy with the way of life
there. Noyes suggested that Oswald re-defected and became a right-wing activist. He
did not consider whether Oswald had intelligence connections.
In concluding his book, Noyes outlined a series of questions and called for a
congressional investigation into the assassination. He declared that he “cannot for one
moment accept the proposition that [Kennedy] was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting
as a solitary killer.” 408 He wrote that “Two groups are closely interwoven in this
investigation: the organized underworld and paramilitary extremists. Both groups hated
the Kennedy family.” 409 Noyes even suggested that mystery man Brading and organized
crime played a role in the assassination of another Kennedy, Robert, in Los Angles on
June 5, 1968. The journalist deplored the Jim Garrison prosecution in New Orleans as a
sham that was apparently designed to divert attention away from Carlos Marcello’s
involvement in the assassination.
407 Noyes, 185.
408 Noyes, 229.
409 Noyes, 228.
181

Noyes stated that the title of his book referred to the “legacy of doubt” among the
American public resulting from the unanswered questions about the assassination, but in
the end, the reader is left with more questions and few answers. There is suspicion, but
not much hard evidence. One is left to wonder, like Noyes, “Was Eugene Hale Brading’s
rise to prominence in the organized underworld connected with his presence in Dealey
Plaza on November, 22, 1963? Or was his being there just an accident of history?” 410
Jack Anderson, Noyes and other Warren Commission critics did succeed in
convincing many Americans there was a conspiracy and pressuring Congress to open its
own investigation. During the 1970’s, two such congressional investigations uncovered
evidence that indicated the Mafia may have been responsible for the assassination of
President Kennedy. First, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities – known as the Church Committee
after its chairman, Idaho Senator Frank Church – publicized its findings in 1976 that the
CIA had solicited help from the mob to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The CIA
had withheld information of the plots, which had occurred in the later months of the
Eisenhower administration and then the Kennedy administration, from the Warren
Commission – even though it raised questions about whether Castro had retaliated for the
attempts on his life by assassinating Kennedy or that the CIA and mob had conspired to
kill Kennedy instead of Castro. With widespread public skepticism about the findings of
the Warren Commission, the House of Representatives decided to establish a committee
410 Noyes, 230.
182

to re-investigate the Kennedy assassination, as well as that of civil rights leader Martin
Luther King, Jr.
During $5.5-million investigation from 1976 to 1978, the House of
Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations reexamined the forensic,
photographic, and other evidence in the Kennedy case. The chief counsel of the
committee, G. Robert Blakey, – a former Justice Department lawyer and expert on
organized crime –acknowledged that the early part of the 12-member panel’s
investigation was “rough sailing.” 411 The Congressional Black Caucus had spearheaded
the effort to form a committee, and in September 1977 the resolution setting it up was
approved. Blakey later recounted the turmoil surrounding the committee’s first
chairman, Democrat Henry Gonzalez of Texas, and its first chief counsel, Philadelphia
prosecutor Richard Sprague. Blakey described his predecessor as “a man of action, not
reflective or cautious” who admitted to a reporter that he had not read the Warren
Commission’s report or any of the critical books “because he wanted to keep an open
mind.” He assembled a staff of 170 lawyers, investigators, and researchers, and his
budget proposal for the committee ballooned to $6.5 million. Controversy erupted,
according to Blakey, over “Sprague, his methods, and his proposed budget.” 412 Sprague
clashed with chairman Gonzalez, who sought to dismiss the chief counsel. Eventually,
411
G. Robert Blakey, “Introduction,” Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations
U.S. House of Representatives, (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), xxxi.
412
.G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, The Plot to Kill the President, (New York:
Times Books, 1981), 64-65.
183

oth Gonzalez and Sprague resigned, and Democrat Louis Stokes of Ohio took over the
chairmanship, with Blakey as chief counsel.
To the Warren Commission critics who believed the CIA or other government
entities were responsible for the assassination, the selection of a mafia expert predisposed
the House committee to find the mob responsible. In its final report, the Committee
rejected any notion that the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union or
even anti-Castro Cuban groups and the national syndicate of the mob were responsible
for the assassination. But, the congressional probe looked at Oswald’s short but
complex life and decided Oswald was probably a pawn of individual mobsters and
perhaps anti-Castro Cubans
Unlike the Warren Commissioners, who based their case largely on Oswald's life,
the House Committee relied primarily on the scientific evidence, believing, as the chief
counsel Blakey explained, that it was more reliable and valuable than official documents
and witness testimony. The Committee accepted many of the Warren Commission's
forensic findings, including the “single-bullet” theory or what the critics called “magic
bullet theory” that one shot by Oswald passed through President Kennedy and caused
Governor Connally’s wounds. In fact, the forensic panel voted 8-1 in support of the
Warren Commission’s findings, with only Allegheny County, Pa. coroner Dr. Cyril
Wecht – a leading opponent of the “magic bullet theory,” in opposition. 413 The
Committee also rejected allegations that any of the autopsy materials or photographic
evidence was faked as part of a high-level cover-up.
413 House Report, 34.
184

In fact, the Committee appeared headed to concluding there was no conspiracy
until a last minute reversal as a result of acoustical evidence -- the purported recording of
the assassination by a policeman with his microphone stuck on the “on” position. The
Dallas police department had recorded the transmissions. The Committee initially asked
Dr. James E. Barger, the chief scientist of the acoustical analysis firm Bolt Beranek and
Newman, to analyze the recording. The analysis compared impulses on the recording
with reconstructions of shots fired from various locations in Dealey Plaza. There were at
least four impulses that may have been shots, and the first, second, and fourth were
apparently from the Texas School Book Depository., but the third shot may have come
from the notorious grassy knoll. Barger testified in September 1978 that “The probability
of there having been a shot from the grassy knoll was about 50 percent.” 414
The Committee was thrown into turmoil, however, in the final weeks of its
investigation in December 1977 after a re-analysis of the recording from two other
acoustical experts, Dr. Mark Weiss and his research associate Ernest Aschkenasy. They
concluded mathematically that “with a certainty factor of 95 percent or better, there was a
shot fired at the Presidential limousine from the grassy knoll.” 415 The Committee was
forced to conclude that the existence of two gunmen equaled a conspiracy. The
Committee wrote "the scientific acoustical evidence established a high probability that
two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy." 416 The committee theorized that
Oswald’s first shot missed, his second so-called “magic bullet” wounded both Kennedy
414 House Report, 73.
415 House Report, 76.
416 House Report, 103.
185

and Connally and, the third shot from the grassy knoll missed entirely, and then Oswald’s
fourth shot fatally struck Kennedy in the head.. Many conspiracy theorists also believed
a gunman fired from the “grassy knoll” but many thought that a frontal shot caused
Kennedy’s fatal head wound.
The conclusion was not unanimous; four of the 12 Committee members rejected
the findings of a conspiracy. Three of four Republicans on the panel voted against the
conclusion, in addition to one Democrat. Another Democrat, Congressman Christopher
Dodd of Connecticut, voted in support of the Committee’s findings but dissented on some
of the technical details, including the sequence of shots. Republican Congressman
Robert W. Edgar of Pennsylvania outlined his reasons for accepting the Warren
Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He wrote that he “saw
little evidence of a conspiracy” or of “a second shooter.” 417 He called for further study of
the acoustical evidence, and suggested that the Committee was rushed in reaching its
conclusions and did not have the technical knowledge to digest the scientific data. Edgar
compared the language of the initial draft of the Committee’s report and the final version.
At first, the Committee was to conclude that “Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of
President Kennedy,” and that “There is insufficient evidence to find that there was a
conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.” 418 The acoustical evidence changed the
conclusions in the report at the last minute, but remains controversial, with further tests
both in support and in opposition of Weiss and Aschkenasy’s findings.
417 House Report, 657.
418 House Report, 662-663.
186

In the end, a divided panel of politicians concluded there was a conspiracy, but
the defenders of the Warren Commission were not convinced. In his foreword to the
Bantam edition of the Committee’s report, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker
pounced on the panel’s schizophrenic findings. The House Committee had found,
Wicker noted, that “most of the Warren commission’s major conclusions were
unassailable” and that its panel of pathologists had upheld the “much disputed ‘single-
bullet’ theory.” 419 Wicker claimed the Committee’s report actually “blows away
virtually every conspiracy theory of real consequence” that he dismissively wrote had
been advanced by “hot eyed assassination buffs.” 420 The New York Times reporter
argued that the Committee also had failed to advance a believable theory about what
actually occurred in the alleged conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.
Yet, the Committee did find troubling associations between the alleged assassin
and anti-Castro Cubans and underworld figures. The Congressmen raised new questions
about the assassination, not only through the controversial acoustical evidence, but also in
exploring some of the associations of Oswald that would become part of the assassination
culture. In many respects, the Committee accepted the Warren Commission’s version of
Oswald’s life: he was a Marxist loner with no connection to American or Soviet
intelligence. Unlike the Warren Commission, the Committee did not engage in any
speculation about his mental make-up and his psychological motivation for the crime and
focused on Oswald’s political beliefs. According to the report, Oswald's "actions and
419
Tom Wicker, “Forward,” House Report, xxii.
420
Wicker, xxiii-xxiv.
187

values were those of a self-proclaimed Marxist who would be bound to favor the Castro
regime in Cuba, or at least not advocate its overthrow.” 421 The Committee accepted at
face value some of the details of the official version of Oswald’s life: the Marxist Marine
with no connection to American intelligence even though he served at a top-secret U-2
airbase in Japan; the ideological defector to the Soviet Union, and the disaffected radical
with an unstable. The Committee concluded that “in the last 5 years of his life, Oswald
was preoccupied with political ideology,” and upon his return to the United States, “his
words and actions still revolved around ideological causes.” 422 The congressional
investigators tied themselves into knots into denying any intelligence role for Oswald and
trying to fit a left-wing assassin into a right-wing Mafia and anti-Castro conspiracy. The
panel avowed that “There was no indication in Oswald’s CIA file that he had ever had
contact with the Agency.” 423 The report left the door slightly ajar in noting that the
CIA’s enormous and complex filing system – “designed to prevent penetration by foreign
powers” – had “the simultaneous effect of making congressional inquiry difficult.” 424 It
is the nature of spies – and their filing systems – to be inscrutable.
Yet, the Committee relied on the CIA files to discount various conspiracy
theories, especially those involving U.S. government culpability. The congressional
report did not delve deeply into Oswald’s relationship, for example, with George de
Mohrenschildt, who committed suicide in March 1977 after being interviewed by
421 House Report, 167.
422 House Report, 60-61.
423 House Report, 247.
424 House Report, 248.
188

assassination researcher Edward J. Epstein and before a Committee investigator was
scheduled to talk to the Russian-émigré. The report outlined many of the suspicious
activities of de Mohrenschildt that to most observers indicated intelligence connections,
but the Committee declared that its reviews of CIA files “showed no evidence that de
Mohrenschildt had ever been an American intelligence agent.” 425 The report noted that
de Mohrenschildt had testified before the Warren Commission that he had discussed
Oswald’s case upon his return to the United States with J. Walton Moore, whom the
émigré described as “a government man” either FBI or CIA but was “known as the head
of the FBI in Dallas.” The Committee tartly noted that “In 1963, J. Walton Moore was
employed by the CIA in Dallas in the Domestic Contacts Division.” 426 This division of
the CIA would interview people who had traveled to the Soviet Union and other areas of
intelligence interest to gain information about those countries. Many researchers have
concluded that de Mohrenschildt must have been asked by Moore to “handle” Oswald
upon his return and to debrief him for the CIA on his sojourn in the Soviet Union. The
unquestioning Committee, however, thought otherwise, and de Mohrenschildt took his
secrets to the grave.
The Committee also dispatched of the notion that Oswald had been an FBI
informant. The congressmen largely relied on the FBI’s own denials and explanations in
determining “there was no credible evidence that Oswald was ever an informant for the
425 House Report, 277.
426 House Report, 276.
189

Bureau.” 427 The panel found nothing suspicious in the FBI’s interviews with Oswald
upon his return to the United States, its failure to prosecute him for any alleged espionage
offenses. The panel also did not consider whether Oswald was an official agent
provocateur of some kind in his double dealings with leftist radicals and right-wingers.
The congressional investigators focused on individuals, not institutions. They
found troubling signs that Oswald had relationships in New Orleans with rabid anti-
Castroite, private investigator David Ferrie, who worked for mob boss Carlos Marcello
and was one of the strangest figures related to the Kennedy assassination. There was
evidence Ferrie served as the captain of the young Oswald’s Civil Air Patrol unit. In the
summer of 1963, witnesses also told of seeing Ferrie and Oswald together. Witnesses
also placed Oswald together with another anti-Communist, right-wing figure -- former
FBI agent Guy Bannister. The cast of characters in New Orleans’ District Attorney Jim
Garrison and the House Committee’s investigations are similar, but they drew different
conclusions: Garrison ignored the mob and blamed the intelligence community; the
House committee focused on the mob instead of U.S. intelligence.
Blakey suggested that Garrison turned a blind eye to Ferrie’s mob connections
because the District Attorney may have had ties to the Marcello organization himself.
Garrison’s defenders said Blakey ignored evidence that U.S. intelligence was involved
and focused on the mob because he was a former Justice Department lawyer under
Robert Kennedy involved in prosecuting the Mafia. The problem, of course, was that
Ferrie and Bannister were connected to the mob, the intelligence community, and anti-
427 House Report, 246.
190

Castro Cubans, so many conspiracy advocates have adopted a theory that elements of all
these groups conspired in the assassination. The panel took into account the Mafia-CIA
plots to assassinate Castro, but stopped short of concluded that the plots some how led
directly to a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
The Committee chastised the FBI and CIA for failing “to provide [the Warren
Commission] with all relevant evidence and information.” 428 The CIA did not disclose
the assassination plots against Castro, and presumably, Commission member and former
CIA director Allen Dulles kept silent as well. According to the House report, “Virtually
all former Warren Commission members and staff contacted by the committee said they
regard the CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro to be the most important information
withheld from the Commission,” and that information “would have led to significant new
areas of investigation and would have altered the general approach of the
investigation.” 429 In addition, the FBI did not involve its organized crime investigators in
the assassination probe, despite Ruby’s links to organized crime. FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover seemed determined, according to the Committee, to wrap up the investigation as
quickly as possible. He told President Johnson hours after Ruby killed Oswald on
November 24, 1963 that “The thing I am most concerned about…is having something
issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.” 430
While criticizing the FBI and CIA for withholding information and presuming
Oswald’s guilt, the Committee viewed these shortcomings as understandable and not part
428 House Report, 331.
429 House Report, 333.
430 House Report, 313.
191

of a cover-up, as many Warren Commission critics alleged. The Committee
acknowledged the Commission’s flaws in rushing to complete its investigation, over-
stating the evidence, and failing to pursue leads of possible conspiracy, especially
concerned organized. Despite these serious shortcomings, the House panel praised the
Commission for conducting its investigation “in good faith, competently, and with high
integrity.” 431
In looking at Oswald’s life, the Committee outlined sketchy links between the
alleged assassin and organized crime and his involvement with anti-Castro Cubans
despite his purported pro-Castro sympathies. At the same time, the Committee accepted
at face value the CIA’s denial that Oswald was connected to American intelligence in any
way. The Committee declared that "The Warren Commission was, in fact, incorrect in
concluding that Oswald...had no significant associations, therefore its finding of no
conspiracy was not reliable." 432 One of Oswald's Fair Play for Cuba leaflets had the
address of 544 Camp Street, which the Committee said, was associated, paradoxically,
with anti-Castro activities and Bannister. Oswald also allegedly had some connections to
the New Orleans Mafia through an uncle, Charles "Dutz" Murrett, "a minor underworld
gambling figure," who had associations with "significant organized crime figures
affiliated with the Marcello organization." 433
Unlike the Warren Commission, the Committee also believed Sylvia Odio’s story
that a man named as “Leon Oswald” who she recognized after the assassination as Lee
431 House Report, 336.
432 House Report, 108.
433 House Report, 209.
192

Harvey Oswald visit her Dallas apartment with two anti-Castro Cubans. One of these
men would later call Odio and talk about Oswald as wanting to assassinate Kennedy.
The report stated that the committee disagreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald
could not have been there. “Based on a judgement of the credibility of Silvia and [her
sister] Annie Odio, one of these men at least looked like Lee Harvey Oswald and was
introduced to Mrs. Odio as Leon Oswald.” 434 This incident connected Oswald with
virulently anti-Castro Cubans. The Committee dismissed the idea that Oswald was being
impersonated by someone, but did not adequately explain why an avowed Marxist would
have such strange associates.
Having decided that there was a conspiracy, the Committee was faced with the
problem of finding who conspired with Oswald. The House members looked at three
prime suspects for being behind the assassination: New Orleans mafia chieftain Carlos
Marcello, Florida boss Santo Trafficante, Jr., and mob associate Jimmy Hoffa of the
Teamsters Union. The Committee determined that “organized crime had the motive,
opportunity, and means to kill the President.” 435 The Report quoted transcripts of FBI
electronic surveillance of mob bosses making hair-raising threats against President
Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. For example, Buffalo, New York boss
Stefano Magaddino erupted during one conversation that “They should kill the whole
family, the mother and father too. When he talks he talks like a mad dog, he says my
434 House Report, 166-167.
435 House Report, 197.
193

other the Attorney General.” 436 However, these same surveillance tapes also seemed
to absolve the national syndicate of organized crime – the so-called Mafia Commission of
top bosses – of plotting and agreeing to kill President Kennedy because there are no
transcripts indicating such a decision. The Committee decided that Marcello and
Trafficante may have independently decided to kill Kennedy. Marcello had more
autonomy because the New Orleans boss had added respect since the Sicilian mob first
established itself in the United States in the city in the 1880’s. Marcello in fact was the
Committee's prime suspect, but it “was unable to establish direct evidence of Marcello's
complicity." 437 Oswald of course spent part of his childhood in New Orleans, stayed in
the city in the crucial months leading up to the assassination, and had connections to
Marcello associates.
For his part, Trafficante was a close ally of Marcello. Both had connections to
Jack Ruby. Dallas Mafia boss Joseph Civello owed his fealty to Marcello. The
Committee concluded that Ruby also probably serving as a courier for gambling interests
connected to Trafficante when he visited Cuba in 1959. There were unsubstantiated
reports Ruby even visited the Florida boss just before his release from a Castro jail in
August 1959. As for Hoffa, the Committee examined his hatred for the Kennedy’s who
had vowed to bring the Teamsters boss to justice for mob-influenced racketeering, but
436 House Report, 203.
437 House Report, 208.
194

decided unconvincingly that “he was not a confirmed murderer” and that “it was
improbable” he was involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. 438
The House panel had a final problem of deciding how Oswald fit into a mob
conspiracy since it accepted the view that “it is likely that his principal motivation in the
assassination was political” based on his purported left-wing radicalism. Ruby’s
organized crime connections were clear but Oswald had tenuous links to the mob. Many
would argue his links to the intelligence community were more apparent. The Committee
wanted to have it both ways – an organized crime conspiracy and a left-wing Oswald.
The mobsters “must be generally characterized as right-wing and anti-Castro.” The
report suggested that “From an organized crime member’s standpoint the use of an
assassin with political leanings inconsistent with his own would have enhanced his
insulation from identification with the crime.” 439 The Committee mentioned several high-
profile incidents when the mob used assailants with no connection to organized crime,
but could not discern exactly how Oswald was convinced to take part in the alleged plot.
Perhaps an explanation of Oswald’s role in a mob plot came from a police
informant who secretly recorded a conversation with right-wing segregationist Joseph
Milteer before the assassination. The Committee noted the suspicious nature of Milteer’s
comments, but was unable to find any connection between Milteer and the assassination.
The Committee edited out a key segment of the conversation, however, which indicated
advance knowledge of how the plot allegedly unfolded regarding Oswald as a patsy. On
438 House Report, 221.
439 House Report, 222-223.
195

November 9, 1963, Miami police informant William Somersett recorded the conversation
with Milteer, in which they discussed Kennedy’s upcoming visit to Miami, which
occurred just before the president traveled to Texas. Milteer described how one could
assassinate the president “From an office building with a high-powered rifle.” Somersett
asked “They are really going to try to kill him?” to which Milteer replied “Oh, yeah, it is
in the working.” 440 The Committee quoted this part of the conversation, but not a later
exchange about how to avoid detection. Somersett commented that “Boy, if that
Kennedy gets shot, we have got to know where we are at. Because you know that will be
a real shake, if they do that.” Milteer responded that “They wouldn’t have no stone
unturned there no way. They will pick up somebody within hours afterwards, if anything
like that would happen just to throw the public off.” This would suggest that a patsy
would obscure the true nature of the plot. In this scenario, a supposedly left-wing
Oswald would be picked up quickly to cover-up the right-wing conspirators. The Miami
police notified federal authorities about Milteer’s comments before Kennedy visited
Miami, and the president’s motorcade was cancelled. The motorcade, however, was not
cancelled later in Dallas – even though Milteer suggested the plotters could change their
plans quickly to take advance of presidential vulnerability. He stated “There ain’t any
count down to it, we have just got to be sitting on go.” 441
In its report, the House Committee blended into the assassination cultural stew
spicy ingredients -- anti-Castro Cubans, the mob, and a second gunman -- but failed to
440 House Report, 297.
441 Mary Farrell Archive.
196

present a coherent recipe for the alleged conspiracy. The Committee had suspects, but no
hard evidence implicating any individual other than Oswald. The Committee was
divided in its conclusions, and was in turmoil for much of the investigation. In the end,
the Congressmen acknowledged, “the President's assassin [Oswald] himself remains not
fully understood,” partly because the probe refused to look too deeply into whether the
former Marine had ties to the CIA, FBI, or another intelligence agency. 442
In his book The Plot to Kill the President, co-authored with Richard N. Billings,
the chief counsel of the House investigation, G. Robert Blakey, expounded on his theory
about the mob’s involvement in the assassination and its use of Oswald as the assassin.
Blakey’s view of Oswald as a mish-mash of the Warren Commission’s view of the left-
wing, mentally unstable assassin combined with an organized crime and anti-Castro
Cuban conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Blakey wrote of the “paradoxical character of
Lee Harvey Oswald.”
a devoted husband and father, a family man, who would beat his wife regularly
and disappear from home for days, even weeks, an avowed Marxist, a follower of
Fidel Castro of Cuba, whose fictional hero was Ian Fleming’s James Bond, an
anti-Communist British spy. Oswald was sullen and anti-social, often physically
repulsive by choice, yet he craved approval and public recognition. Finally, he
was a loner who was almost never alone. 443
Blakey tried to weave together these paradoxical characteristics with conspiratorial
threads while downplaying evidence of Oswald’s intelligence connections.
442 House Report, 224.
443 Blakey and Billings, 348.
197

Blakey explained that the Committee accepted much of the Warren Commission’s
view of Oswald’s motivations in the assassination, especially his political views. He
wrote, “We had to believe…that the plot to assassinate the President, for Oswald at least,
was rooted in his fundamentally leftist political beliefs.” 444 Blakey theorized that either
Oswald’s uncle “Dutz” Murrett or David Ferrie could have told the mob about Oswald’s
political beliefs and his inclination to act violently and rashly, specifically in his alleged
attempt to kill General Walker. Both Murret and Ferrie had ties to New Orleans mafia
boss Carlos Marcello. Oswald was reported together with Ferrie and with anti-Castro
Cubans, including in the Odio incident. Blakey acknowledged the Committee was “at a
loss to find a fully satisfactory explanation for the contractions of Oswald’s anti-Castro
and pro-Castro activities.” The most logical explanation, according to the former chief
counsel, was that the anti-Castroites posed as Castro supporters for “Oswald’s benefit.”
445 Another logical explanation would be that Oswald was posing as a pro-Castroite, but
that would lead into the intelligence labyrinth, which Blakey and the Committee seemed
determined to avoid. In the end, Blakey surmised, there were “the elements of the
conspiracy in New Orleans” in the summer of 1963: “knowledge of an expected
presidential trip to Texas; a violence-prone, pro-Castro Oswald; and an alliance of anti-
Castro and underworld figures whose common bond was a hatred of the U.S.
President.” 446
444 Blakey and Billings, 363.
445 Blakey and Billings, 177-178,
446 Blakey and Billings, 365.
198

But how could the mob manipulate Oswald to act as an assassin? Blakey
explained, “A number of instances have been recorded in which the usual pattern [of
gangland slayings] was altered when it was necessary to hide the true nature of the
murder, as might be expected in the assassination of a high-level government official.” 447
The mob would select someone with no traceable ties to organized crime to carry out the
assassination. The mob would conceal its participation in the plot, and usually made sure
the assassin would be murdered after the hit. Blakey wrote that an example of this type
of mob hit was the attempted murder of Mafia leader Joseph Colombo, Jr. on June 28,
1971 by a black man with no known connection to the target. Colombo was left in a
coma, and the assailant was killed in a melee after the shooting. Blakey maintained that
mobster Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo apparently recruited the assailant for the hit on
Colombo with the help of black criminals he met in prison. In this way, Oswald would
be one of the gunmen in the assassination, set up to be the patsy to take sole
responsibility. The mob then pressured an organized crime associate with financial
problems, Jack Ruby, to silence Oswald in a classic gangland slaying.
Blakey expounded on the mob’s motive to kill Kennedy. He cited reports of
“massive vote stealing in Illinois…and Texas” that helped propel the Kennedy-Johnson
ticket in the November 1960 election. Much of the vote stealing in Illinois was in the
mob-controlled West Side Bloc of Chicago. In this way, the Mafia was “justified in
taking some credit for Kennedy’s election.” 448 Also, mob-connected entertainer Frank
447 Blakey and Billings, 373.
448 Blakey and Billings, 377.
199

Sinatra introduced Kennedy to Judith Campbell Exner, who became the president’s
mistress even as she had ties to shady underworld characters, including two key players
in the CIA-mafia plots to kill Castro, Johnny Roselli and Chicago mob boss Sam
Giancana. The last White House telephone contact between Kennedy and Campbell
came a few hours after a luncheon between the president and FBI director J. Edgar
Hoover on March 22, 1963. Blakey said it is not known what the two men discussed, but
since Hoover had uncovered Campbell telephone calls to the White House and her
connections to the mob, it is implied that they talked about the issue. In any case, the
mob would have felt betrayed by Kennedy for his administration’s crackdown on
organized crime while accepting its help in other matters. As Blakey wrote, “prosecutors
and police” understand that “there is a line that must not be crossed” in relations with the
mob: “do not ‘sleep with them’” by taking favors, “either money or sex.” 449
Blakey credited investigative journalist Jack Anderson for uncovering how the
plot may have unfolded with information supplied by John Roselli. “The details that
Roselli supplied in their face-to-face meetings, according to Anderson, linked the Mafia
directly to the assassination.” 450 The disclosures in Anderson’s columns about the CIA-
Mafia plots and the Kennedy assassination helped build support for the establishment of a
congressional investigation. However, Blakey and the House Committee rejected the
notion that Castro was ultimately behind the plot to kill Kennedy because he had so much
449 Blakey and Billings, 375.
450 Blakey and Billings, 386.
200

to lose if his culpability was uncovered. The United States would clearly retaliate and
annihilate the Castro government.
Other authors have added to the literature of Oswald as mob patsy in the years
after the House investigation. David E. Scheim was the unlikeliest of the mob conspiracy
theorists: he received a doctorate in mathematics from MIT and was director of
management information systems at the National Institutes of Health. His 1988 book
Contract on America: the Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy built on the work
of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Scheim alleged that “President John
Kennedy and very possibly his brother Robert were martyred in a valiant struggle against
organized crime.” He applauded their “heroism” in fighting the mob, and implored his
readers to “carry on their crusade against the ‘enemy within’ and return to other
enlightened Kennedy policies that were aborted by the assassination.” 451 Here is a
revision of the Camelot myth lauding the late President. In this account, the noble
Kennedy is not felled by a deranged individual, but is the victim of a conspiracy by a
nefarious and powerful foe – the Mafia. Scheim mentions but does not emphasize the
Kennedy family’s own associations with organized crime, beginning with patriarch
Joseph P. Kennedy’s widely reported bootlegging during the Prohibition era. These
connections were the President’s “Achilles Heel.” 452
451
David E. Scheim, Contract on America: the Mafia Murder of President John F.
Kennedy, (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988), 4-5
452
Scheim, 62.
201

Scheim placed the Kennedy assassination in the context of other mafia murders of
politicians, labor leaders, witnesses, and anyone else who got in their way. The author
notes a theory that Giuseppe Zangara’s attempt to assassination President-elect Franklin
Roosevelt in Miami, Florida in 1933 was really the use of a deranged individual to cover
up the assassination of the real target: anti-mob Chicago mayor Anton Cermak. As noted
earlier, the Warren Commission used Zangara’s assassination attempt as an example of a
deranged individual trying to kill an American president or president-elect. Scheim,
however, stated that before he died after being mortally wounded in the Miami incident,
Cermak himself thought the mob was responsible. In this plot, the real assassin – hired
by Al Capone’s gang – shot Cermak while Zangara fired wildly, diverting attention.
Scheim speculated that the mob may have a hand in later assassinations in the 1960’s,
including mob nemesis and presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy. Scheim also alleged
that the Mafia may have killed Malcolm X and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
became they were fighting organized crime in the ghetto. Scheim listed some of the
cases of journalists or key witnesses in the JFK assassination who died under mysterious
circumstances. According to Scheim, the deaths “are singularly characteristic” of the
mob, which he wrote “routinely kills and intimidates witnesses to cover its crimes” 453
Scheim detailed the evidence of the most likely mobsters responsible for the assassination
– Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and Santos Trafficante. The other parts of the plot
include familiar suspects, including David Ferrie, Guy Bannister, and Jack Ruby. Scheim
also outlined the case for Oswald’s innocence: “His marksmanship was marginal, and he
453 Scheim, 38.
202

had no apparent motive to kill President Kennedy. Yet after the Dallas shooting, with
remarkable dispatch, Oswald was arrested, proclaimed the lone assassin and then
permanently silenced by Jack Ruby’s revolver.” 454 Scheim related the same connections
between Oswald and the mob through his uncle, “Dutz” Murrett. Murrett – “a criminal
operative in the empire of New Orleans Mafia boss Marcello” – had “a lifelong influence
on his nephew.” Oswald was “familiar with his uncle’s criminal activities,” and grew up
“on Exchange Alley in New Orleans, a center of notorious underworld joints and Mafia-
affiliated gambling operations.” 455 Furthermore, Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, was a
close friend of mobster Sam Termine. Scheim alleged that “These underworld family
connections….suggest a different picture than that of the erratic, pro-Marxist loner
portrayed in the Warren Report.” 456 Oswald was also connected as other researchers
have said to the Marcello organization and anti-Castro Cubans through David Ferrie.
Scheim did not spend a lot of pages dealing with Lee Harvey Oswald; he merely
presented evidence to suggest the official version of his short life is wrong and that he
was the patsy of the mob. The author spent much more time in recounting Jack Ruby’s
mob connections, and what comes across is that the Warren Commission woefully
understated Ruby’s connections to various mobsters. In fact, Ruby grew up in the
criminal milieu in Chicago in the 1920’s and 1930’s, allegedly running errands for Al
Capone. He was then involved with a mob-dominated labor union. When the Chicago
mob expanded into Dallas in the 1940’s, Jack Ruby came along. According to Scheim,
454 Scheim, 41.
455 Scheim, 42-43.
456 Scheim, 44.
203

“Jack Ruby’s occupational pursuits in Dallas encompassed three standard underworld
arenas: illegal gambling, narcotics and prostitution.” 457 His many and close contacts with
the Dallas police forces enabled him to be a “mob fixer.” 458 His long-time mob
associates include alleged gamblers, murderers, and drug traffickers such as Lewis
McWillie, Paul Roland Jones, and Joseph Campisi, and even the reputed head of the
Dallas underworld, Joseph Civello. Ruby traveled several times to Cuba, allegedly on
Mafia errands, including helping arrange the release of Santos Trafficante from a Fidel
Castro jail.
The culmination of Ruby’s mob career was fulfilling what Scheim called “a
meticulously coordinated murder contract” to kill Oswald. 459 Scheim denounced the
official version that Ruby killed Oswald in a spur of the moment fit of rage and sadness
over Kennedy’s murder. Instead, Scheim outlined Ruby’s extensive phone contacts with
mobsters in the weeks leading up to the assassination, and alleges that the Dallas police
must have tipped off the nightclub owner of the time of Oswald’s transfer to the Dallas
city jail. Ruby apparently hoped to receive a reduced sentence, but when he was
convicted of first degree murder, he attempted in his Warren Commission testimony to
indicate mob involvement. He asked to be taken to Washington, where he could talk
freely, but his request was denied. According to Scheim, “Ruby, a lifelong criminal,
briefly rose to a level of nobility by attempting to put the truth on the record,” but in the
457 Scheim, 87.
458 Scheim, 67.
459 Scheim, 124.
204

end had to conclude as he said near the end of the hearing, “Maybe certain people don’t
want to know the truth that may come out of me.” 460
Scheim did not discount the possibility that renegade CIA agents or anti-Castro
Cubans played an operative role in the assassination, but he maintained that the Mafia
was the main party in the conspiracy. He concluded that “when the evidence is sorted
and arranged, the pieces of the assassination puzzle fall neatly into place. Gracing the
tableau are neither crackpots nor clowns, freak coincidences nor senseless crimes.
Rather, sharply info focus is the vicious combine of killers, suspected by Europeans from
the start, a ground with the motive and capability to perform the assassination” – the
mob 461 . Scheim’s work is a powerful indictment of the Warren Commission’s failure to
investigate evidence of mob involvement, particularly Ruby’s strong underworld
connections. It was much easier to blame the supposed lone nut, Lee Harvey Oswald,
rather than look at political and social corruption in American society.
Author John H. Davis is another leading proponent of the “mob killed Kennedy”
theory. Davis advanced the theory that Florida Mafia chieftain Santos Trafficante, New
Orleans boss Carlos Marcello, and mob-controlled Teamsters Union president Jimmy
Hoffa conspired to kill the president. His 1993 book The Kennedy Contract contained
the allegations of Frank Ragano, who was a lawyer who represented Hoffa and
Trafficante. Ragano claimed that both clients made incriminating statements to him
460 Scheim, 160.
461 Scheim, 269.
205

about the assassination. Ragano said he met with Hoffa in Washington, D.C. in January
1963, and that Hoffa asked him to tell Trafficante and Marcello that they must kill
Kennedy. “This has to be done,” Hoffa allegedly told Ragano. In February, Ragano met
with the two mobsters in New Orleans and delivered the message. According to Ragano,
the two men “looked at each other and didn’t say a world.” The lawyer stated that the
mobsters “were dead serious. They looked at each other in a way that made me feel
uncomfortable. It made me think they already had such a thought in mind.” 462
On November 22, 1963, Hoffa called Ragano and said “Have you heard the good
news?...They killed the sonofabitch. This means Bobby is out as attorney general,
Lyndon will get rid of him.” 463 Later that evening in Tampa, Florida, Ragano had a
dinner with Trafficante, who toasted John F. Kennedy’s death. In coming weeks,
Marcello told Ragano that Hoffa “owes me big,” apparently referring to the assassination,
while Hoffa confided to the lawyer that “I’ll never forget what Carlos did for me.” 464
The next explosive claim by Ragano is that in 1987, while on his deathbed, Trafficante
confided that “You know, Frank, Carlos screwed up. We should have killed Bobby, not
Giovanni” – apparently referring to the two Kennedy brothers. 465 Ragano stated that in
retrospect, he feels “great shame” for his role in the alleged plot, and for crossing the line
of professionalism in believing his clients’ enemies were his enemies. Davis stated that
462 John H. Davis, The Kennedy Contract: the Mafia Plot to Assassinate the President,
(New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1993), 4.
463 Davis, 5.
464 Davis, 6.
465 Davis, 7.
206

“Frank Ragano is the highest level person to come forward claiming knowledge of the
conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.” 466
The motive for Hoffa and the two mobsters is clear: they were feeling pressure
from the Kennedy Justice Department, and wanted to protect their criminal enterprises.
They also felt betrayed by their alleged support in getting Kennedy elected and by
agreeing to help the CIA assassinate Fidel Castro. Marcello had the added incentive of
revenge: Bobby Kennedy had him deported to Guatemala as an alien on April 4, 1961.
After he made his way back to the United States, Marcello allegedly swore vengeance
against Robert Kennedy. A Las Vegas businessman Edward Becker met with Marcello at
his farmhouse in September 1962. According to Becker, he mentioned the deportation
case against Marcello, causing the Mafia chieftain to declare in Sicilian “Get the stone
out of my shoe!” Marcello declared that he was doing to take care of Bobby Kennedy.
He cited a Sicilian saying that “if you want o kill a dog, you don’t cut off the tail, you cut
off the head.” 467 The head in this case would apparently by President Kennedy.
Becker’s claims sound like a scene from the Godfather films, and it is not clear why
Marcello would make such a threat in the presence of a man he did not know well. In an
ironic twist, Marcello was acquitted of federal conspiracy and perjury charges brought by
the Kennedy Justice Department on the day of the assassination.
What was Oswald’s role in this alleged Mafia plot? In Davis’ view of the plot,
Oswald resembled the lone nut of the Warren Commission: he was an avowed Marxist
466 Davis, 8.
467 Davis, 34.
207

and social outcast, but he came to the attention of the mob as someone who could be the
patsy. Davis outlined the same sketchy connections between Oswald and the Marcello
organization. The author stated that Oswald’s “surrogate father,” his uncle Charles
‘Dutz’ Murrett, was “a prosperous bookmaker in the Marcello gambling network.” 468
Davis recounted the witnesses who reported seeing Oswald in the presence of right-wing
private detective Guy Bannister and his associate Davie Ferrie. In this account, Carlos
Marcello probably financially backed Oswald’s pro-Castro leafleting and demonstrations
as part of an anti-Castro operation. Davis emphasized Bannister and Ferrie’s ties to the
Marcello organization rather than their connections to the intelligence community.
According to Davis, Ferrie must have informed Marcello of Oswald, and the New
Orleans crime boss decided that the “ex-defector to the Soviet Union is the ideal ‘nut’ for
him to set up to take the blame for the assassination.” 469 Bannister’s support of Oswald’s
political activities provided the former Marine with “a reputation as a pro-Castro
‘commie nut,’ which will divert attention away from Carlos Marcello when Oswald is
arrested for assassinating the President.” 470 Ferrie uses some people who resemble
Oswald to impersonate him in Mexico City and Dallas in the weeks before the
assassination to plant incriminating evidence against him. Davis theorized that Oswald’s
rifle was also planted in the Book Depository building, and that in all likelihood, Oswald
468 Davis, 42.
469 Davis, 74.
470 Davis, 74.
208

“was not recruited by Marcello, Bannister, and Ferrie to participate in a conspiracy to
assassinate the president” but rather was set up to take the blame. 471
Davis discounted Oswald’s supposed intelligence connections. He acknowledged
that the mob could not have sent Oswald to the Soviet Union, but weakly argued that “the
issue is not relevant to the conspiracy to assassinate the president.” 472 Actually, if
Oswald was a U.S. or Soviet intelligence agent, that would indicate some degree of
conspiratorial complicity by the CIA or KGB in the assassination. Others argue that the
mob could not have covered up so many aspects of the conspiracy – that government
institutions must have been involved. Davis dismissed this argument by saying that FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover, the Kennedy family, President Johnson, and the Warren
Commission had their own reasons for not thoroughly investigating a mob conspiracy.
Such a probe would have uncovered many unsavory secrets. Davis claimed, for example,
that Hoover was a horse gambling addict, and that New York mobster Frank Costello had
incriminating information about the FBI director. Hoover for many years denied the
existence of the mob, and focused on his anti-communist crusade. Bobby Kennedy
sought to change that, but the murder of his brother brought an end to his campaign
against Marcello, Trafficante, Hoffa, and the mob.
None of the mobsters ever faced criminal charges in the assassination of President
Kennedy. Trafficante died a free man on March 17, 1987, but not before his alleged
death-bed confession to Ragano. Marcello was convicted of fraud and conspiracy
471 Davis, 88-89.
472 Davis, 254.
209

charges in the 1980’s, but was eventually released from prison when his conviction was
overturned on appeal. He died on March 3, 1993 at age 83. He had been suffering from
dementia. In the 1960’s, Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering, fraud, and other
charges. He began serving a 13-year prison sentence in 1967, but received executive
clemency from President Richard Nixon in 1971. James Riddle Hoffa famously
disappeared on July 30, 1975, and his body has never been recovered. Authorities
believe that Teamsters president Frank Fitzsimmons conspired with the mob to kill Hoffa
to thwart his bid to regain the leadership of the union.
Davis alleged that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was an associate
of Marcello and sought to protect the crime boss by alleging a CIA plot to kill Kennedy
through his prosecution of businessman Clay Shaw. Davis denounced as “preposterous”
the theories advanced in Oliver Stone’s celebration of Garrison in the movie JFK. 473
Davis states that Stone “transformed the volatile, flamboyant, unscrupulous, frequently
irresponsible egomaniac, and publicity hound” Garrison into “the quiet, serious, low key,
crusading strait arrow” prosecutor portrayed by actor Kevin Costner. 474 The Kennedy
assassination conspiracy theorists do not just criticize the Warren Commission: they
frequently eviscerate each other on behalf of their pet theories. There is a great debate
among the theorists over whether the mob or some part of the government, especially the
CIA, was responsible for the murder of President Kennedy. Davis’ theory rests on the
473 Davis, 232.
474 Davis, 236.
210

credibility of Ragano – a man who represented some of the nation’s most vicious
criminals and who first made his allegation in a book manuscript he was trying to sell.
In an example of the many ways the evidence in the Kennedy case can be
interpreted, John Canal, an independent researcher with a background in electronics,
advanced the novel theory that Oswald was the lone assassin, but was silenced by Jack
Ruby as a mob hit to protect Mafia secrets. In his book Silencing the Lone Assassin,
Canal endorsed the Warren Commission’s findings that Oswald fired all the shots at
Kennedy, and that he was a Marxist and unbalanced. According to Canal, no
conspirators would have enlisted a “’nut’ like Oswald,” who was “peculiar and
unpredictable.” 475 He assassinated Kennedy “to get even with a society that he thought
was responsible for making his life miserable,” and possible to avenge the “attempts on
the life of Castro.” 476 Canal speculated that Oswald had learned of the CIA-Mafia plots
to kill Castro by infiltrating anti-Castro Cuban groups in New Orleans in 1963. He
rejected the idea that Oswald was connected to U.S. intelligence, and argued that the
alleged assassin must have duped people active in the anti-Castro movement, including
Guy Bannister and his boyhood Civil Air Patrol leader David Ferrie. Carlos Marcello,
when told that the man accused of killing Kennedy knows about the CIA-Mafia plots and
may talk, decided to have Jack Ruby silence Oswald in “a classic Mob hit.” 477
Canal’s theory seems far-fetched, but Ruby’s gangland-style slaying of Oswald
and the nightclub owner’s many ties to the underworld has convinced many conspiracy
475
John Canal, Silencing the Lone Assassin, (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2000), 52.
476
Canal, 68,
477
Canal, 97.
211

advocates that the Mafia was responsible for the assassination. This theory also has the
support of the congressional investigation of the Kennedy assassination. In this
rendering, a tragically flawed president takes on the mob, but pays the ultimate price for
his double-dealings. The Oswald as mob patsy appealed to Mafia experts who believed
organized crime to be a major threat, and to supporters of the president’s crack down.
The theory focused on Oswald’s ties to mob figures in New Orleans and minimized
evidence of his intelligence connections, while stressing Jack Ruby’s obvious
involvement with the criminal underworld.
However, many other researchers believe the mob only a part in the alleged plot,
and that elements connected to the CIA and anti-Castro movement were the main
culprits. In these theories, Oswald was connected to U.S. intelligence – a secret agent –
set up to take the fall for the assassination to mask the other plotters. There are even
theories that conspirators employed a double to implicate the real Oswald, or
brainwashed him to carry out the deed at the behest of the masterminds behind the plot.
212

CHAPTER 6: THE DOUBLE OSWALD, AND
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE OSWALD
Among the more exotic conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination are
those that involve a double Oswald, or an Oswald brainwashed to carry out the murder of
President Kennedy by unseen, nefarious forces. The double Oswald theory is based on
Warren Commission testimony and other evidence that contradicts the official version of
Oswald’s life – for example, the double Oswald visited a car salesman and drove at a fast
speed when the “real” Oswald could not drive. Some of the ideas about the double
Oswald have entered the mainstream of American culture, including in Mark Lane’s
bestselling critique of the Warren Commission, Rush to Judgment. Some theories are
more outlandish, including British researcher Michael Eddowes’ suggestion that the
“real” Oswald was replaced in the Soviet Union by a KGB assassin who carried out the
mission to kill Kennedy. The idea of a brainwashed Oswald resembles the Cold War
novel and movie thriller, the Manchurian Candidate, about a U.S. soldier captured during
the Korean War and programmed to carry out a political assassination in the United
States. There is some basis in history, however, for this theory, since the CIA carried out
mind control experiments to beat the Red Bloc in the race to create the perfect double
agent. All the theories about the double Oswald and the Manchurian candidate Oswald
reflect the tensions, mysteries, and espionage double-dealings during the Cold War.
213

The double Oswald theory is a key component of many conspiracy books. The
popularity of the theory reflects the failure of the Warren Commission to adequately
explain testimony and evidence that ran counter to the official version of Oswald’s life.
Some of the double Oswald theories and the Manchurian Candidate Oswald also appeal
to those who believe U.S. and Soviet intelligence agencies would capable of just about
anything in the espionage wars of the Cold War. Such ideas flowered in the 1960s and
1970s with revelations in the United States of CIA misdeeds and because of the secrecy
surrounding intelligence activities. Some authors, such as Lincoln Lawrence, appear to
have exploited paranoia about secret cabals and intelligence agencies.
Mark Lane was part of the “first generation” of Warren Commission critics who
questioned the official findings. Along with Sylvia Meagher, Edward Epstein, and
Harold Weisberg, Lane used the evidence and testimony gathered by the Commission
itself to question its findings. In Rush to Judgment, published in August 1966, Lane
accused the Warren Commission of preparing “brief for the prosecution,” in which the
evidence against the accused, Lee Harvey Oswald, “was magnified, while that in his
favor was depreciated, misrepresented or ignored.” 478 Lane had sought to represent
Oswald’s interests before the Commission, but was rebuffed. His book can be seen as the
brief for the defense of Oswald, and some of his criticisms resemble the rhetoric of an
attorney’s closing arguments before a jury. For example, he noted the Commission’s
statement that having Ruby silence Oswald would have presented grave risks to any
478
Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992 (1966)),
378.
214

conspirators. Lane sarcastically added that “Those dangers were to be a little mitigated
by the incompetence of the Commission, but the assassins could not have known that.” 479
In his examination of the forensic evidence, Lane helped blaze the trail of
conspiracy theorists with criticisms of the “single bullet” or “magic bullet” theory. Lane
noted how the bullet supposed retrieved from Governor Connally’s stretcher was “almost
undeformed and quite unflattened” despite allegedly having caused Kennedy’s back and
neck wounds and all of Connally’s wounds. 480 Lane also seized upon contradictions in
witness testimony used to bolster the case against Oswald. He blasted Howard Brennan,
who supplied a description of the alleged assassin that supposedly fit the description of
Oswald. According to Lane, Brennan “admitted he lied to federal and local police
authorities, “was grossly in error [in his testimony],” “was unable to identify two
witnesses he swore he saw in the fifth-floor windows of the Book Depository on
November 22,” and had “poor eyesight.” Nevertheless, Brennan was “a reliable witness”
for the Commission because his testimony was key to the case against Oswald. 481 Lane
also talked with another witness, Helen Markham, who claimed she saw Oswald killed
officer Tippit. He recorded the conversation in which she described the killer as “a short
man, somewhat on the heavy side, with slightly bushy hair” – hardly a description that fit
Oswald. 482 Lane shared his information with the Commission, but was “admonished and
479 Lane, 272.
480 Len, 76.
481 Lane, 97.
482 Lane, 180.
215

threatened with prosecution” for surreptitiously recording the conversation apparently in
violation of federal law. 483
In general, Lane accused the Commission of accepting the testimony of witnesses
who supported its case against Oswald, and rejecting that of witnesses who did not. As
Lane put it, “testimony compatible with the theory of Oswald as the lone assassin was
accepted, even when incredible, while incompatible testimony, no matter how credible,
was rejected.” 484 The author also accused the Commission of tailoring the evidence to
suit its theory, instead of the other way around: the Commission’s “criteria for
investigating and accepting evidence,” he wrote, “were related less to the intrinsic value
of the information, I believe, than to its paramount need to ally fears of conspiracy” by
advancing the Oswald as lone-gunman theory. 485
Lane advanced his ideal of a double Oswald based on some of those witnesses
rejected by the Commission but judged reliable by the author. Lane outlined a series of
incidents in the weeks before the assassination suggesting that “an effort to frame Oswald
had been under way long before the assassination.” 486 Lane presented the testimony of
witnesses who testified that Oswald or his double brought a rifle to a sporting goods shop
in Irving, Texas, asking that a telescopic sight be mounted on it. A gun shop employee
named Dial D. Ryder said a man came into the shop several weeks before the
assassination and asked for the telescopic sight to be mounted on his rife. Ryder filled
483 Lane, 195.
484 Lane, 395.
485 Lane, 175.
486 Lane, 324.
216

out a repair tag with the man’s name – “Oswald.” The owner of a nearby furniture store
and her friend offered corroborating testimony that in early November a man resembling
Oswald, Marina, and their two children, stopped in their store. The man had initially
asked if he could asked about obtaining a part for a gun, apparently under the mistaken
belief that a gunsmith shop was on the premises. The Warren Commission dismissed the
testimony, but Lane believed that conspirators may have been laying “a trail of evidence
leading to Oswald.” 487
A car salesman, Albert G. Bogard, said on November 9, 1963, a man came into
the showroom and asked for a demonstration. He drove at a high speed, and recklessly.
Bogard testified that the man told him he would be receiving some money in a couple of
weeks and gave his name as “Lee Oswald.” Oswald, according to Marina and others who
knew him, could not drive. The Warren Commission refuted the testimony on those and
other grounds, but Lane claimed that “If it was not Oswald, then someone was
impersonating Oswald in an obvious, not to say strident, manner.” 488 Some of Bogard’s
colleagues corroborated his testimony. A logical problem with Lane’s theory, however,
is why would conspirators try to implicate Oswald in such a way that was not consistent
with the real Oswald?
Multiple witnesses also testified they saw someone resembling Oswald practicing
at rifle ranges in Dallas and Irving. In some of these instances, Oswald or the double
Oswald brought attention upon himself by acting boisterously or suspiciously. Lane
487 Lane, 326.
488 Lane, 333.
217

declared that the witness testimony showed “someone resembling Oswald fired a rifle at
the Dallas and Irving rifle ranges, entered into squabbles and discussions, asked for
another man’s assistance in sighting his rifle and, although he was an excellent shot, fired
at another man’s target.” 489 Once again, the Warren Commission dismissed this
testimony as inconsistent with the known facts of Oswald’s life.
Lane’s fourth and final example of the double Oswald was Sylvia Odio’s
testimony, discussed previously. She claimed that a man identified as “Leon Oswald”
came to her apartment with two mysterious anti-Castroites. Lane stated that the
Commission rejected Odio and the other witnesses’ testimony because it did not fit with
the official theory. According to Lane, “The evidence was contrary to that which I
believe was the fundamental prejudice of the Commission – that Oswald planned and
committed the assassination unaided.” 490 He concluded that Commission had in face
“prepared a fertile ground for the cultivation of rumor and speculation” rather than
allaying fears of conspiracy. 491
Rush to Judgment sold more than one million copies, and helped make Lane the
most prominent critic of the Warren Commission. Lane did not offer any theory about
who was responsible for framing Oswald or assisting him in the assassination – that
would come later, as discussed in the following chapter. Lane succeeded in convincing
many Americans of the shortcomings of the official version of Oswald’s life, but to the
defenders of the Warren Commission, he was an arrogant, outspoken opportunist making
489 Lane, 335.
490 Lane, 325.
491 Lane, 343.
218

money off the tragedy in Dallas. Certainly, he presented a one-sided case on behalf of
Oswald to counterbalance the perceived one-sidedness of the official report. As the
British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote in his introduction to Rush to Judgment, If the
Warren Commission had allowed Mr. Lane to contest their evidence before judgment,
there would have been no need of his book.” 492
Richard Popkin, a history and philosophy professor, was another advocate of the
double Oswald theory. His study first published in 1966 was simply titled The Second
Oswald. Popkin rejected the quick solution of the crime that “one lonely alienated man
had done the deed all by himself.” 493 While he acknowledged that some of the evidence
against Oswald was convincing, he stated the official theory of the assassination was
“implausible” and involved a “fantastic amount of luck.” 494 Popkin sought to demolish
key evidence in the Warren Commission’s case against Oswald (i.e. the “magic bullet”)
and to advance his own theory of the second Oswald that he believed better explained the
problems, inconsistencies, and discrepancies in the evidence.
Popkin summarized much of the testimony of the double Oswald as related in
Lane’s book. Popkin wrote that: “people report that they dealt with Oswald under odd or
suggestive circumstances,” including witnesses who saw him “at a rifle range hitting
bull’s eyes,” and that “he and two Latin types tried to get financing for illegal activities
492
Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Introduction,” Rush to Judgment, 17.
493
Richard H. Popkin, The Second Oswald, (Raleigh, NC: Boson Books, 2006 (1966), 1.
494
Popkin, 3.
219

from Mrs. Sylvia Odio.” 495 He did not think someone was trying to frame Oswald; rather
he thought it was more plausible that the testimony showed that Oswald was involved in
a conspiracy. A second Oswald resembling the real Oswald were both involved in the
plot. Popkin suggested that “the duplication played a crucial part in the events of
November 22. Second Oswald was an excellent shot, real Oswald was not. Real
Oswald’s role was to be the prime suspect chased by the police, while second Oswald,
one of the assassins, could vanish” 496
According to Popkin, the second Oswald fired from the School Book Depository
building, but all the evidence left at the scene implicated Oswald, including the rifle and
shell casings. In addition to the second Oswald assassin, Popkin theorized that another
gunman fired from the infamous grassy knoll. The final appearance of the second
Oswald occurred as he fled the building: a witness, J.R. Worrell, and Deputy Sheriff
Roger Craig, saw the real assassin flee the scene to make his successful get-away.
According to Popkin, the evidence implicated the real Oswald, but that he planned to
make his get-away like the real assassin. The only thing that went wrong was Tippit
stopped the real Oswald before he could escape. Oswald gunned down the officer and
was subsequently arrested at the movie theater.
Popkin concluded that the real Oswald “played his role well. The police chased
him and found him, and ignored all other clues, suspects, and possibilities.” He
continued that “the second Oswald data would probably have made all eyewitness
495 Popkin, 37.
496 Popkin, 59.
220

evidence against Oswald useless.” The problem for Popkin is Jack Ruby: he offers no
conspiratorial explanation for why Ruby killed Oswald, apparently accepting the official
version that the night-club owner had killed the hated assassin of the beloved Kennedy.
Popkin merely wrote that “Except for the Tippit episode, Oswald’s subsequent arrest and
Jack Ruby’s shooting, it might have been a perfect plot.” 497 Popkin also had a hard time
determining who in fact was in league with the real Oswald and listed a series of
suspects: “Maybe Oswald met some far-right extremist when he went to hear General
Walker on October 23. Maybe some right-wing Cubans involved him in a plot when he
was in New Orleans, or maybe he got involved with some leftist plotters in New Orleans,
Mexico City, or Dallas.” 498 He denounced the Warren Report as “a rush job, a slap-dash
one, defending a politically acceptable explanation.” 499 Popkin called for a new
investigation run by both lawyers and historians since the assassination was both a “legal
problem and a historical one.” 500 Yet, the reader of The Second Oswald is left with as
many questions as before. Popkin did not deal with Ruby, his relation to Oswald, or
many of the details of Oswald’s life, such as his defection to the Soviet Union. Was
Oswald a real leftist, or a right-winger? In the end, Popkin’s theory seems less
believable than the Warren Commission version of Oswald’s life.
497 Popkin, 70.
498 Popkin, 75.
499 Popkin, 75.
500 Popkin, 79.
221

British researcher Michael Eddowes’ The Oswald File, published in 1977,
contained one of the most implausible theories of the assassination: a KGB assassin
posed as an imposter Oswald to kill Kennedy on behalf of the Soviet Union. Despite its
implausibility, the book led to the exhumation of Oswald’s grave to determine who in
fact was buried there. Eddowes claimed that Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev had
Kennedy assassinated as revenge for his humiliation in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Oswald imposter was already in place to carry out the assassination. Eddowes wrote
that “the real ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald never returned to the United States but
disappeared shortly after his arrival in the Soviet Union in 1959.” 501 The assassin of
President Kennedy was “a member of Department 13, the sabotage and assassination
squad of the Soviet State Security Service (KGB), and in 1962 had entered the United
States in the guise of Oswald.” U.S. authorities, in Eddowes’ account, suspected that
‘Oswald’ was an imposter, but buried evidence of the conspiracy to avoid a nuclear war.
According to Eddowes, “the assassination was an act of war,” but “the Warren Report
inevitably was a declaration of peace and incidentally an admission of defeat.” 502
Eddowes believed that the real Oswald studied Marxism and even as a Marine,
expressed an interest in the Soviet Union. However, the author claimed that Oswald
“never expressed Communist sympathies” and “never displayed any sign of wishing to
defect to the Soviet Union.” 503 When he traveled to Moscow, a KGB assassin assumed
501
Michael Eddowes, The Oswald File, (New York: Ace Books, 1977 (1976)), 1.
502
Eddowes, 2.
503
Eddowes, 15.
222

the identity of Oswald and “the real Oswald was subsequently kept hidden.” 504 The diary
supposedly kept by Oswald about his life in the Soviet Union was a KGB forgery. The
assassin was identified in the book as ‘Oswald’ with quotation marks to distinguish him
from the real Oswald. ‘Oswald’ eventually traveled to the United States with his fellow
KGB companion Marina having been thoroughly trained in how to act like the real
Oswald. “When ‘Oswald’ arrived in the United States he came well versed in the Oswald
family background, having been coached to appear as an American citizen with some
knowledge of American history and politics.” 505 He was a sleeper agent who is
activated after the missile crisis to assassinate Kennedy.
Eddowes offered flimsy evidence in support of his theory. He based most of his
case on the claim that Oswald was 5’11’’ tall, but the man who returned to the United
States allegedly was 5’9’’. He kept careful track of the varying recorded heights of
Oswald throughout his life – from his entrance and exit from the Marines, his passport,
the estimates of FBI agents who interviewed him, to his autopsy. Eddowes made no
allowances for possible mistakes or typographical errors. The autopsy report on
‘Oswald’ also did not mention a mastoid operation scar that Oswald had, as well.
Eddowes did not adequately explain why Oswald’s mother and brothers would accept
this imposter into their family. According to Eddowes, Marguerite and Robert Oswald
notice “considerable differences between [the imposter] and the 19-year-old man who
had left the United States.” Of course, some differences would be understandable for a
504 Eddowes, 22.
505 Eddowes, 35.
223

young man who had been away for a couple of years, but Eddowes was not deterred. He
claimed that Marguerite and Robert “never thought to question that the man with Marina
might not be the real Oswald.” because the State Department and FBI assured them this
was their kin and they were “conditioned by their own pleasure in welcoming home the
renegade.” 506 Eddowes also had to deal with the fact that Oswald’s fingerprints matched
‘Oswald.’ He surmised that the KGB had somehow broken into FBI headquarters and
replaced Oswald’s fingerprints with ‘Oswald’s.’
Eddowes outlined some of the suspicious material that indicated that ‘Oswald’
was a spy – such as his use of aliases, his various espionage related paraphernalia,
including a Minox camera, and his activities in Dallas, New Orleans, and Mexico City.
Eddowes theorized that Oswald deliberately sought to leave evidence that he was a
“fervid supporter of Castro.” 507 The author recounted the attempt to assassinate Castro
enemy General Walker, and the pro-Castro pamphlets and radio appearances in New
Orleans. The wily Soviets wanted “the imposture” to be discovered, and tried to create
“a confusing chain of evidence” that would “place responsibility for the assassination on
the Cubans or the Soviets.” 508 The Americans, however, would have no choice but to
cover this up to avoid nuclear Armageddon. Following Eddowes’ logic can be difficult.
Many other conspiracy theorists have looked at the same details of Oswald’s life, and
concluded that he was in fact a U.S. intelligence agent posing as a leftist. This
underscores the so-called “wilderness of mirrors” of Cold War intelligence, in which it is
506 Eddowes, 36.
507 Eddowes, 62.
508 Eddowes, 2.
224

hard to tell who is an agent for whom. There seems to be endless possibilities when
Oswald’s life is examined.
To make Eddowes’ tale even more fantastic, he claimed ‘Oswald’ conspired with
two other KGB agents – George de Mohrenschildt and Dallas nightclub owner Jack
Ruby. “It is my belief,” Eddowes wrote, “that these three men…were the three primary
operatives at work in Dallas for the purpose of killing President Kennedy.” 509 Ruby
would have to be among the most unlikely KGB agents with his shady business dealings
and mob connections dating back to his boyhood days in Chicago. Eddowes agreed with
the Warren Commission, however, that ‘Oswald’ was the sole assassin: he gunned down
Kennedy, fled the scene, but had to kill a suspicious Tippit. This led to ‘Oswald’s’ arrest,
and his murder at the hands of Ruby to silence the KGB assassin. Eddowes claimed that
“there is overwhelming evidence of conspiracy,” “powerful evidence that the assassin
was a Soviet agent,” and “persuasive evidence that the Soviet agent was an imposter.” 510
The U.S. authorities then “needed to cover up their own incompetence in preventing an
impostor from assuming the identity of an American citizen….and proceeding to
assassinate the President” They also “needed to cover up the identity of the assassin and
the facts of espionage and conspiracy” to prevent war and “in the interest of national
security.” 511
While most readers probably would have a hard time accepting Eddowes’ theory
of an imposter Oswald, his book led to the exhumation of Oswald’s grave and the
509 Eddowes, 186.
510 Eddowes, 187.
511 Eddowes, 146.
225

examination of the remains on October 4, 1981 at Baylor University Medical Center in
Dallas. Dr. Linda Norton, head of the team of pathologists who examined the remains,
declared that “We, both individually and as a team, have concluded beyond any doubt,
and I mean beyond any doubt, that the individual buried under the name Lee Harvey
Oswald in Rose Hill cemetery is Lee Harvey Oswald.” The New York Times reported
that “The finding appeared to end speculation that the corpse might have been that of a
Russian agent sent here to kill President Kennedy in 1963.” Robert Oswald opposed the
exhumation, but Eddowes gained the support of Marine Oswald Porter, who had re-
married, in examining the remains to end the speculation. 512
So was the Oswald arrested in Dallas a KGB imposter? Not according to
journalist Robert Sam Anson. Instead, the former Time magazine correspondent argued
in his 1975 bestseller ‘They’ve Kill the President!’ The Search for the Murderers of John
F. Kennedy that there was a U.S. intelligence imposter of Oswald. Anson argued that the
Oswald who defected to the Soviet Union was really a CIA operative who assumed the
identity of Oswald with the real Oswald’s understanding and consent. The real Oswald
also worked for U.S. intelligence and resumed his life overtly in the United States when
the CIA operative returned from the Soviet Union. Anson wrote that his book sought to
establish “that there was a conspiracy; that Oswald had numerous links to the intelligence
community; that Oswald…was implicated in the crime by the intentional use of a look-
512
“Oswald’s Body is Exhumed; An Autopsy Affirms Identity,” New York Times,
(October 5, 1981).
226

alike, a common practice in intelligence work,” and that the CIA and FBI withheld “vital
information about Oswald’s and Ruby’s backgrounds” from the Warren Commission. 513
Anson accused the CIA and organized crime of carrying out the assassination. He asked
“Cui Bono?” Who benefits. His answer is that the “Key beneficiaries were linked in a
common cause. The cause was Cuba. The beneficiaries were organized crime and the
Central Intelligence Agency.” 514 Anson claimed the mob and CIA wanted to set up
Castro’s Cuba to take the blame for the assassination, but their plot did not succeed in its
main goal of provoking a U.S. invasion of the communist nation.
In many ways, aside from his imposture theory, Anson’s study can be termed a
mainstream conspiracy book: he offered some of the standard tropes of the literature,
including an analysis of the forensic evidence. He also supported what can be called “the
peace thesis” of the assassination: that Kennedy was killed because of his efforts to
ratchet down the tensions of the Cold War, seek a rapprochement with the Soviet Union
and Cuba, and end the war in Vietnam. This idea will be discussed more extensively in
the following chapter, since it is a key argument of much of the assassination literature,
especially by authors who believe Oswald had ties to U.S. intelligence.
Anson argued that Oswald’s life had all the earmarks of an intelligence career –
from his time in the Marines to his double-dealings among the pro- and anti-Castro
Cubans in New Orleans. Anson pointed to a series of indications of intelligence work:
“works at a CIA base” at Atsugi Japan, “defects to Russia with no money,” “marries the
513
Robert Sam Anson, “They’ve Killed the President!:” The Search for the Murderers of
John F. Kennedy, (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), 7.
514
Anson, 11-12.
227

niece of a high-ranking Soviet official,” “slips across the iron curtain without leaving a
trace,” “threatens espionage and is not arrested,” “befriends a former spy” – George de
Mohrenschildt, “uses an alias,” “keeps an office in a building with other agents” at the
544 Camp Street address in New Orleans, “gets a passport when one should be denied,”
and “is finally shot down in a room crowded with police by a former informer for the
nation’s chief investigative agency” -- meaning Ruby and the FBI. 515
Regarding Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union, Anson outlined an elaborate
deception, in which “a rootless young marine” is “recruited for an intelligence
assisgnment.” Oswald’s job was “to stay out of sight, to go underground while a skilled
agent borrows his identity for an assignment in the Soviet Union.” 516 This agent was a
false defector who posed as Oswald to gain whatever intelligence he could while in the
Soviet Union. When his mission is completed or aborted, the second Oswald returned to
the United States, and “the historical Oswald catches up with his identity. When the
plane lands in Dallas, the historical Oswald deplanes to be met by family and friends.” 517
To prove his case, Anson used some of the same data as Eddowes – the divergent heights
recorded for Oswald and differences in his appearance in certain photographs. “The
‘Oswald’ who was in Minsk,” according to Anson, “seems thicker of hair, fuller of face,
and broader of jaw and chin” than the real Oswald. 518 When he reassumed his identity,
the historical Oswald acted as an informer for U.S. authorities, but yet another Oswald
515 Anson, 189-190.
516 Anson, 211.
517 Anson, 212.
518 Anson, 207.
228

enters the picture. “Again a double is used, but this time without Oswald’s knowledge”
to lay “a trail of incriminating clues…pointing straight at a pro-Castro activist” – Lee
Harvey Oswald. 519 So in Anson’s view there are three Oswalds – the historical Oswald,
the intelligence operative Oswald, and “an impostor who was used to frame the historical
Oswald for the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.” 520 Anson had the good sense to
acknowledge that his theory is “not a happy solution” since it is Byzantine, but he
claimed that this “is the way things work in the world of intelligence.” 521
In his conclusion, Anson declared that the evidence is overwhelming that Oswald
had ties to the CIA or other U.S. intelligence branch. He wrote that “The conspirators
had to be sure they would have protection” – that they “had the power to blackmail the
government, or were, in fact, part of the government.” 522 According to Anson, all roads
led back to Langley, Virginia where the CIA is based. These elements of the CIA may
have conspired with their allies among the anti-Castro Cubans or mob, but only the
intelligence operatives had the power to elicit a cover-up of the crime. Arguments for
CIA complicity in the assassination, as will be seen in the next chapter, are among the
most popular theories about the assassination. The revelations in the 1970’s of CIA
abuses led many Americans to wonder whether the agency or people associated with it
carried out the ultimate crime – the murder of the nation’s president. Anson’s multiple
Oswald theory, however, seems more far-fetched, and is based on flimsy evidence.
519 Anson, 214.
520 Anson, 211.
521 Anson, 211.
522 Anson, 345.
229

Even stranger is the tale told of an Oswald containing a microchip in his brain that
allowed his mind to be controlled to carry out the assassination. Lincoln Lawrence’s
1967 book – originally published under the title Were We Controlled? – is so strange and
strangely written that it may very well be a hoax, exploiting fears about unknown cabals
and government secrecy. Perhaps it is significant that Lawrence mentions the date of
Oswald’s microchip surgery as April 1, 1961 – which would be April Fools Day.
Lawrence took some facts, including the work on mind control by certain scientists and a
1963 stock market swindle, to weave a story of Germanic conspirators called “The
Group” that have Oswald carry out the assassination so they can make half a billion
dollars by selling short on the stock market on November 22, 1963. Lawrence described
the leader of “The Group” as “Mr. One” and the story of their conspiracy was labeled
“The Rumor.” He claimed he spent three years tracking down “The Rumor,” which he
called “terrifyingly, incredibly…if you will….completely unbelievable.” 523 He was right
about that, but the theory would appeal to people who believed that the government was
lying about the assassination, the Vietnam War, and intelligence matters cloaked in
secrecy. Suspiciousness about the Kennedy assassination contributed to a climate in the
1960s and 1970s in which conspiracy theories proliferated – some more believable than
others.
523
Lincoln Lawrence and Kenn Thomas, Mind Control, Oswald, & JFK: Were We
Controlled?, (Kempton, Illinois: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997 (1967)), 19. Lincoln
Lawrence was apparently the pseudonym of the author of Were We Controlled? Kenn
Thomas added an introduction to the 1997 edition.
230

Lawrence based some of “The Rumor” on scientific research reported in such
publications as the New York Times. In an article from May 17, 1965, the Times reported
on the use of a radio transmitter to stop a charging bull. The bull had fine wire electrodes
implanted in its brain, and Dr. Jose Delgado of Yale University conducted the experiment
in behavior control. Lawrence speculated that this research was far beyond that reported
in the mainstream media and could be applied – not just to bulls – but humans. Lawrence
took this experiment and other brain research on behavior control to postulate that a
human could have a micro chip implanted to control his or her behavior under hypnosis –
what the author called “Radio-Hypnotic Intracerebral Control.” In addition, the time
perceptions of the human could be controlled by “Electronic Dissolution of Memory.” 524
This, according to Lawrence, was what happened to Oswald.
“Mr. One” and “The Group” arranged for Oswald to travel to the Soviet Union,
where a doctor performed an operation on the unwitting former Marine to implant the
chip. Lawrence wrote “Mr. One’s idea was to direct Oswald into a situation where he
would be used by the Behavior Control Project in Minsk and be prepared as a ‘sleeper’ to
return to the United States for use at some future time.” 525 A great Soviet researcher on
mind control – known only as “the Professor” – conducted the operation. Oswald was
told this was part of a research project. In fact, Oswald spent time in a Minsk hospital in
April 1963 to have his adenoids removed. The real object of the surgery, according to
Lawrence, was to create the most “efficient kind of human intelligence tool” ever
524 Lawrence and Thomas, 27.
525 Lawrence and Thomas, 83.
231

devised. 526 The object was to carry out an assassination of a U.S. president – any
president – to sell short on the stock market to make a fortune for “The Group.” The
Soviets apparently were unwittingly part of the plot – believing that Oswald would be the
tool of the KGB and not “The Group.” When Oswald returned to the United States, he
waited to be activated to carry out the assassination – precisely to coincide with a stock
market swindle that was already driving the stock market down.
Lawrence combined his incredible theory of a mind control assassin with a real
swindle: a convicted fraudster named Tino de Angelis and his Allied Crude Vegetable
Oil Refining Corporation. His company collapsed in a fraud involving the commodities
market and soybean oil. The collapse of the company coincided with the assassination,
but Lawrence suggested this was not coincidence. He claimed that de Angelis’ actions
were also being controlled “the Group.” The author wrote that “the time-table of Allied’s
artificial expansion and eventual financial bust was a matter of delicate timing….when it
did topple, there was a President to be assassinated immediately.” 527 Oswald kills
Kennedy, and then Ruby under another form of hypnosis guns down Oswald – all on
behalf of “the Group.”
Lawrence claimed the plot was “the cleverest, most technically sophisticated
crime ever committed,” and explained many of the inexplicable testimony and
contradictions in the evidence. 528 “The Rumor,” according to Lawrence, offered “A
motive for the assassination;” “A key to the strangely mentally-confused Jack Ruby’s
526 Lawrence and Thomas, 84-85.
527 Lawrence and Thomas, 126,
528 Lawrence and Thomas, 171.
232

actions and statements;” “The only credible explanation for the self-destructive course
taken by De Angelis and Allied;” and “The unlocking of the riddle of Oswald.” 529 The
book ended with the question “Is it all true…or is it just a Rumor?” 530
Lawrence’s book was republished 1997 by Adventures Unlimited Press, whose
other titles include Psychic Dictatorship in the USA, Extraterrestrial Archaeology, and
Anti-Gravity and the World Grid. In his introduction to Were We Controlled?, an author
associated with Adventures Unlimited, Kenn Thomas, acknowledged that the book was
one of several that contained “the most outré speculation about the JFK murder.” 531
Thomas claimed that “One measure of the veracity of the main control claims” in the
book “is its durability as an urban legend.” 532 It seems more likely that its durability as
an urban legend shows the gullibility of some people, and the vast suspiciousness of
many Americans concerning their government. This suspiciousness reached toxic levels
following the JFK, Martine Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations, the
Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and the 1970’s revelations of CIA abuses,
including the plots to kill Castro with the help of organized crime.
Jerry Leonard offered another theory of a brainwashed Oswald: he was the victim
of CIA mind control techniques. Leonard is a physicist – demonstrating once again the
eclectic nature of the assassination researchers – who wrote The Perfect Assassin: Lee
529 Lawrence and Thomas, 171-172.
530 Lawrence and Thomas, 173.
531 Lawrence and Thomas, ii.
532 Lawrence and Thomas, viii.
233

Harvey Oswald, the CIA, and Mind Control, published in 2002. Leonard offered what he
called “a unifying ‘conspiracy’ theory: that there was a CIA-backed plot to assassinate
the president and that Oswald was the one who pulled the trigger.” However, Oswald
was also “an innocent patsy” because he was “a victim of the CIA’s secret program to
train ‘involuntary’ assassins to do its bidding through advanced mind control
technology.” 533 Leonard acknowledged that much of his theory was based on
supposition, combining both historical facts about what is known about CIA experiments
in mind control with the unproven claim that Oswald was a victim of this research.
Leonard described how declassified documents from various mind-control
programs code-named ARTICHOKE, MKDELTA, AND MKULTRA sought to develop
mind-controlled intelligence couriers, double agents, and even assassins. One study from
1954 discussed how an individual could be “induced under ARTICHOKE to perform an
act, involuntarily, against a prominent (deleted) politician or if necessary, against an
American official.” The study assumed the individual would be taken into custody and
“’disposed of.’” 534 Leonard claimed that such a scenario may have been played out less
than 10 years later in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Leonard outlined the various techniques the CIA researched, including hypnosis,
the creation of multiple personalities, and the use of drugs such as LSD. According to
Leonard, “By compartmentalizing the behavior modification-oriented research grants and
farming out the developmental work to numerous (and often suspecting) researchers,
533
Jerry Leonard, The Perfect Assassin: Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA, and Mind Control,
(1
234
st Books, 2002), vii.
534
Leonard, 2.

agencies, and hospitals, the CIA was able to covertly run a vast mind-control research
and testing effort under the pretext of legitimate medical research.” 535 CIA-backed
researcher Ewen Cameron, based at McGill, University in Montreal, Canada conducted a
series of notorious experiments on mentally ill patients to erase their memories and build
up a new personality or behavior. Cameron placed mentally ill patients in drug-induced
comas, subjected them to electro-shock therapy, and repeatedly made them list to recoded
messages until they were “’depatterned.’” 536 Leonard also quoted from the work of a
Harvard-trained psychologist George Estabrooks, who claimed to use hypnosis for
military applications during World War Two. The CIA built on this work to try to create
mind-controlled assassins. According to Leonard, “The key to eliciting this type of
behavior appears to be to alter the subject’s perception while under trance so that the anti-
social act he is to be manipulated into committing does not appear to be anti-social and
therefore does not appear to violate his personal moral code.” 537 The subject presumably
would also have no memory of the hypnotic suggestion or even of the assassination.
While it is known the CIA conducted this research, Leonard takes it a step farther:
that it succeeded in creating such assassins and that Lee Harvey Oswald was one of them.
Leonard surmised that Oswald came to the attention of U.S. intelligence during his
Marine Corps service in Japan, and may have been subjected to mind control
experimentation then. He later would go on an intelligence mission to the Soviet Union
by posing as a defector. Leonard theorized an “intentionally induced schizophrenia and
535 Leonard, 8.
536 Leonard, 7.
537 Leonard, 17-18.
235

multiple personalities could explain Oswald’s contradictory ideological positions and his
alleged psychological instability.” An intelligence agency could use “his pro-
Communist personality…to infiltrate Communist organizations as a means of monitoring
them and their members or as a means of feeding these groups disinformation.”
According to Leonard, “evidence indicates that Oswald was used as an agent
provocateur, a double agent used to infiltrate and discredit ‘enemy’ organizations by
engaging in illegal or undesiserable behavior.” 538 The author pointed to Oswald’s
activities in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, in which he posed as an pro-Castro
activist. Finally, he would be induced to carry out the assassination of Kennedy to
advance a right-wing conspiracy. The “physical act” would be committed by Oswald,
but “the CIA would have provided the hidden mental stimulus of his anti-social
response.” 539 Alternatively, he may have been programmed to take responsibility while
leaving a trail of evidence pointing to a left-wing motive or conspiracy in the plot.
Leonard surmised that “If Oswald did not do the actual shooting of the president, it is
very possible that he could have been manipulated using mind control techniques into
setting himself up to take the fall through a series of pre-planned actions to implicate
himself in the murder.” 540
Leonard admitted that there is no proof that Oswald was under the influence of
mind control while apparently posing as a double agent or informer, or as the alleged
assassin. However, he claimed that “the striking similarities between Estabrooks’
538 Leonard, 26.
539 Leonard, 75.
540 Leonard, 73.
236

description of a hypno-programmed spy, declassified descriptions of proposed CIA mind-
control experiments and the details surrounding the assassination of JFK lend credibility
to this thesis.” 541 Leonard expressed the hopes his theory would lead to further research
into the subject or even a “truly independent congressional investigation.” 542 Certainly,
Leonard’s theory is more solidly based on historical fact than Lawrence’s, but there is no
proven connection between any CIA mind control research and Oswald.
The theories of the double Oswald and the Manchurian Candidate Oswald reflect
the Cold War espionage milieu and are related to the suspicion that Oswald was an
intelligence agent, as discussed in the following chapter. While some of these ideas
strain one’s credulity, they have influenced American culture. Many of these authors
took some facts and built elaborate fantasies about Oswald doubles and brainwashing. In
fact, the double Oswald as outlined by Lane is a mainstay of the assassination literature,
and overlaps with the portrait of Oswald as Secret Agent. These theories have found a
receptive audience in the American people, many of whom are deeply suspicious of their
government in the wake of the revelations of official misdeeds from the 1960’s to the
present day. While many decry the gullibility of people who believe that alien bodies
were recovered at Roswell, New Mexico or that the U.S. government carried out the
September 11, 2001 terror attacks, these theories grew out of an environment in which
revelations about the Vietnam War, Watergate, and CIA dirty tricks made the
unbelievable seem believable. Unanswered questions about the Kennedy assassination,
541 Leonard, 43.
542 Leonard, 79.
237

as well as those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, contributed to this
suspiciousness.
238

CHAPTER 7: SECRET AGENT OSWALD
In American culture, one of the enduring interpretations of Oswald’s life is that he
was a secret agent. To many interpreters, Oswald bore all the hallmarks of an agent of
U.S. intelligence, either the CIA or some other agency. Oswald’s apparent defection to
the Soviet Union, his return to the United States, and the fact that he was not prosecuted
on any espionage charge, even though he had threatened to reveal U.S. secrets at the
height of the Cold War, made many suspicious. Many of these conspiracy theorists,
including New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, believed Oswald also worked as a
double agent of the FBI. Oswald as secret agent brought to the forefront the suggestion
that U.S. intelligence agents played a role in the assassination, either as the main
conspirators or in combination with anti-Castro Cubans, the mob, Texas oilmen, or right-
wing extremists. This led many theorists to suggest that Kennedy had been killed
because he had sought to ease Cold War tensions – the “peace thesis” mentioned earlier.
In this rendering, the Cold War unleashed dark forces in American society that resist any
accommodation with the Communist enemy, even if it means committing treason and
killing the nation’s head of state. While Oswald the Nut or Oswald the Red was one of
“them,” Oswald the Secret Agent was one of “us.”
Like the Oswald as mob patsy theory, the Secret Agent Oswald arguments gave
President Kennedy a heroic cast – he was killed for trying to make peace. A right-wing
239

plot made sense ideologically, as well, since the right was the natural adversary of a left-
wing president. Oswald in these renderings is usually made a patsy of the far-right
because his intelligence background made him appear to be a left-wing extremist,
masking the true nature of the plot. Some of the double Oswald theories suggested that
intelligence operatives or some other right-wing party impersonated the former Marine in
order to bolster the case against him. Secret Agent Oswald theories appealed to those
concerned about the largely invisible power of the intelligence bureaucracy, and
supporters of Kennedy worried about the staunch opposition to his Cold War, civil rights,
and social policies. Secret Agent Oswald became a mainstay of the conspiracy books,
largely because the public was receptive to this idea after the scandals and revelations of
the 1960s onward. As political scientist Philip Melanson and historian John Newman
have shown, Secret Agent Oswald also has endured because a compelling case can be
made that it is true and fits with the historical context of his life. Some theorists,
however, posit an unbelievably vast conspiracy and cover-up that takes on the tinge of
Richard Hofstadter’s “paranoid style.”
Some of the first authors to investigate the Kennedy assassination believed that
Oswald was a secret agent of the CIA, FBI, or both. As discussed previously, the Warren
Commission, early on in its investigation, was faced with reports that Oswald had been a
confidential FBI informant. The Commission accepted the FBI’s denials – and the
denials of the CIA – that either agency had used Oswald as an agent or informant. This
did not stop the speculation that Oswald was in fact working for the government in a
strange activities on both sides of the Cold War divide.
240

German-born author Joachim Joesten, who had emigrated from his homeland
after the Nazis took power and eventually became a U.S. citizen, was one of the first
proponents of the Oswald as secret agent theory. In his 1964 book Oswald: Assassin or
Fally Guy?, Joesten dedicated his book to Mark Lane, praising the lawyer for destroying
“the Myth of the Demented Assassin.” 543 Joesten also criticized the evidence marshaled
against Oswald, but went a step further than Lane had done at that point in theorizing
about Oswald’s connection to the government and the nature of the alleged conspiracy to
assassinate Kennedy. Joesten wrote that “Oswald was a ‘fall guy’” – picked for the role
“precisely because, as a petty, and perhaps discarded, agent of the CIA, and later of the
FBI.” He claimed that Oswald was an “ideal scapegoat” because “his obtrusive display
of ‘Marxist’ feelings stamped him as the kind of man who could be made to appear an
irrational assassin and around whom a web of circumstantial evidence could be
woven.” 544 Joesten believed Oswald’s Marxism was the mask of a double agent.
Joesten’s own left-wing sympathies are apparent, especially in his condemnation
of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and the right-wing elements that supposedly killed
Kennedy. He urged the public to take a “good hard look at Mr. Hoover to see that ‘the
king is naked,’ that his patriotic vestments are spun out of thin air and are, indeed, in
Samuel Johnson’s famous definition, ‘The last refuge of a scoundrel.’” 545 Joesten also
concluded that “The conspiracy involves…some officials of the CIA and the FBI as well
543
Joachim Joesten, Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?, (New York: Marzani & Munsell,
1964), 3.
544
Joesten, 11-12.
545
Joesten, 15.
241

as some army figures such as General Walker, and reactionary oil millionaires such as
H.L. Hunt.” 546 He advanced an early, truncated version of the “peace thesis,” saying
Cuba “sticks in the craw of the CIA” after the Bay of Pigs and “once Kennedy began a
policy of easing the Cold War, some of the CIA, like much of the Pentagon, would be
dismantled and the agency brought under presidential control.” To such men, Kennedy
would be seen as a “traitor” – a crime punishable by death. 547
Joesten also denounced the media for not questioning all the supposed evidence
being amassed against Oswald before his murder at hands of Jack Ruby. He blamed the
Texas authorities, in particular Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, for creating an
atmosphere in which “within hours, Oswald was crucified as guilty” through a series of
“lies,” “contradictions,” “half-truths,” and “misleading smears.” 548 Joesten deplored this
supposed misinformation released about Oswald, but some of the contradictory
information was probably the result of the chaotic atmosphere after the assassination.
Joesten himself relied on some of the early erroneous press reports about the
assassination to argue for Oswald’s innocence and on articles in questionable
publications, such as the National Enquirer. Joesten derided the mainstream media for
not questioning the case against Oswald, and for lashing out at the early critics.
In his rendering of Oswald’s life, Joesten built his case for the alleged assassin as
a young agent of the CIA. He wrote that “one of the most important pieces of evidence
which points to Oswald’s having been a CIA agent is that his so-called ‘defection’ to the
546 Joesten, 146.
547 Joesten, 152.
548 Joesten, 30.
242

Soviet Union was never taken seriously by the three parties concerned – not by the Soviet
government, not by Oswald, and not by the U.S. government.” 549 Joesten noted that if
Oswald was a real defector who had given the Soviets information, he would have been
prosecuted upon his return. He also pointed to odd statements that indicated Oswald was
not a true Communist, and was in fact loyal to the other side. He quoted Oswald as
saying “I found some Marxist books on dusty shelves in the New Orleans library and
continued to indoctrinate myself for five years” as a teenager. Joesten claimed that no
self-respecting Marxist would use the word “indoctrinate.” 550 In addition, Joesten
recounted Oswald’s odd activities on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which
indicated he was an agent provocateur and not a real supporter of the organization. The
author added that Oswald’s flight after the assassination was understandable: “It was not
an assassin who was fleeing; it was an undercover agent, an agent provocateur, shoe
cover as a pro-Castro man was, for the time and place, singularly provocative and
unhealthy.” 551 While Joesten’s account led to severe criticism from the mainstream
press, he was a trailblazer as conspiracy theorist, and many of his ideas would become
common themes of the conspiracy literature in years to come.
Joesten’s book was similar to another work also published in the United States
shortly after the release of the Warren Report – American émigré Thomas Buchanan’s
Who Killed Kennedy? Both books appeared first in Europe, where they received a much
549 Joesten, 127-128.
550 Joesten, 128.
551 Joesten, 143.
243

more favorable reception in the press than in the United States. Joesten catalogued some
of the epithets he was called in the American press, including “a ‘fantast,’ a ‘revisionist,’
a ‘left extremist,’ a ‘symptom of a sick age,’ a ‘demonologist,’ whose book is
‘rubbish.’” 552 In a review titled For Some the Rational Isn’t Enough, New York Times
journalist Harrison E. Salisbury denounced Buchanan’s book. He wrote that “Each
uncertain link in Mr. Buchanan’s tenuous chain of evidence has been specifically tested
and rejected by the painstaking Warren inquiry.” 553 Both Joesten and Buchanan, who
was living in Paris, were leftists and advanced similar theories in their books, including
the right-wing nature of the alleged conspiracy, the participation of Texas oilmen
opposed to Kennedy’s plan to cut their huge “oil depletion allowance” tax break, a
version of the “peace thesis,” and Oswald as secret agent.
Buchanan drew parallels between the Southern antagonism he saw in both the
Lincoln assassination conspiracy and the alleged conspiracy to kill Kennedy. He noted
that initially “the impulse of observers everywhere was to assume a link between the
Kennedy assassination and the recent violence of Southerners against the Negro.” 554
With a supposed radical leftist accused of the crime and talk of an international
conspiracy, the case gained international significance with the threat of conflict between
the United States and communist bloc. When Ruby gunned down Oswald, the political
motivation of the assassination receded, according to Buchanan, because it was hard to
552
Joesten, 189.
553
Harrison E. Salisbury, “For Some the Rational Is Not Enough,” New York Times,
(November 22, 1964).
554
Thomas G. Buchanan, Who Killed Kennedy?, (New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1965
(1964)), 11.
244

imagine the Dallas nightclub owner in a left-wing plot. It was then assumed that
“Oswald had been a deranged fanatic. And miraculously, it was found that Ruby, too,
was crazy – temporarily, of course.” 555 Buchanan claimed this supposition was counter
to the facts of the case, as well as the historical pattern of American presidential
assassinations.
Buchanan outlined a history of the three previous presidential assassinations that
was strikingly at odds with the history presented in the Warren Report that emphasized
the derangement and lack of political motives of the assassins. Buchanan showed how
Booth’s assassination of Lincoln was part of a large, politically motivated plot to end the
life of a supposed tyrant suppressing the South. Buchanan rejected the idea that Booth
was deranged because he had accomplices – not only below him but also above him. “if
the final murderous expression of the plot was Booth’s own formulation,” Buchanan
wrote, “the responsibility for the original conspiracy extends to circles far above
him…directly to the capital of the Confederacy and its rulers.” 556 Buchanan stressed that
the other two presidential assassins – Guiteau and Czolgosz – had specific political
motives as well. Guiteau supported the Stalwart Republican faction against President
Garfield, while Czolgosz was an anarchist. According to Buchanan, “Three times out of
four, so far, the murdered president of the United States has been succeeded by a man
selected by his right-wing opposition.” In the other case, according to Buchanan,
“President McKinley, though himself of the extreme right, was succeed by an even more
555 Buchanan, 25.
556 Buchanan, 35.
245

extreme right-winger” – Theodore Roosevelt – in terms of his foreign policy. 557
Buchanan’s own leftist views are apparent in this analysis, and his rendering of Oswald’s
life and the alleged plot against Kennedy.
Buchanan alleged that the identification of Oswald as a Marxist and Soviet
defector brought nothing but opprobrium to the far left. He asked, “Why would any
Communist or person of pro-Communist opinions act as though he were an anti-
Communist?” 558 Buchanan’s answer was that Oswald was no leftist, but was in fact an
agent of the CIA and FBI. He claimed that it is clear Oswald went to Moscow on orders
from U.S. intelligence because “he was never prosecuted for the serious offense of
having compromised the secret codes of the Marine Corps.” 559 The author stated that
while “Oswald does not seem to have been one of the C.I.A.’s more successful agents,”
he also “does not seem to have been one of their more highly paid ones either.” 560
Buchanan also added that it was “beyond discussion” that Oswald was a “double agent in
New Orleans” 561 Unlike a true leftist, according to Buchanan, Oswald did not associate
himself with downtrodden blacks in the South, but was usually in company with those on
the right, including the Russian émigré community.
Buchanan accused Oswald of being an accomplice in the assassination and of
being set up as the patsy. The leader of the plot was an unnamed Texas oilmen identified
557 Buchanan, 40.
558 Buchanan, 59.
559 Bucanan, 121.
560 Buchanan, 124.
561 Buchanan, 127.
246

as “Mr. X.” 562 The motive was a variation of the “peace thesis:” the oilmen were
threatened not only with losing their big tax break, but also all the money associated with
defense spending. Buchanan alleged “the murder of the President was provoked,
primarily, by fear of the domestic and international consequences of the Moscow pact:
the danger of disarmament which would disrupt the industries on which the plotters
depended and of an international détente which would in their view, have threatened the
eventual nationalization of their oil investments overseas.” 563 The authorities decided not
to probe too deeply into the matter especially since they suspected or knew that Oswald
was, in fact, “their own man.” 564
Another early critic of the Warren Commission, Harold Weisberg, became a
proponent of the Oswald as Secret Agent theory. Weisberg wrote the Whitewash series
of books criticizing the Commission’s investigation, and laid out his theories about
Oswald and the assassination in his 1967 tome Oswald in New Orleans: Case for
Conspiracy with the CIA. The book focused on Oswald’s activities in New Orleans in the
months preceding the assassination, and his alleged connection to the CIA, anti-Castro
Cubans, and right-wing extremists. Weisberg was a support of New Orleans District
Attorney Jim Garrison, and his research helped bolster the DA’s case for conspiracy.
Weisberg wrote that he was concerned with Garrison’s investigation in three ways: “My
published work contains a great deal of the story, my unpublished discoveries carry this
562 Buchanan, 147.
563 Buchanan, 144.
564 Buchanan, 152.
247

forward, and I was able to direct the investigation where it could locate more of the
suppressed and ignored data collected by the government but not used in the official
Report.” 565 Weisberg praised Garrison as “indefatigable, fearless, and, I am confident,
incorruptible.” 566 The former Senate committee investigator looked forward to
Garrison’s prosecution of businessman Clay Shaw as a sign the alleged conspiracy would
be exposed, but his hopes would be dashed.
Weisberg focused on Oswald’s connections to “Cuban refugee groups” that he
called “the mendicants, the creatures of the CIA.” 567 He outlined a plot in which anti-
Castro Cubans and people with ties to the CIA, allegedly including Clay Shaw, David
Ferrie, and Guy Bannister, conspired to kill Kennedy. Weisberg claimed that Oswald’s
supposed branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was an “entirely phony one-man,
self-designated non-organization” designed to provide “the establishment of what in
intelligence is known as a ‘cover.’” 568 Oswald’s leaflets with the 544 Camp Street
address connected him, not to the pro-Castro movement, but to its violent opposition
supported by the CIA. Weisberg claimed that Oswald was gathering whatever
information he could about those sympathetic to Castro on behalf of Bannister’s detective
agency, the Cuban exiles, and ultimately the CIA. He documented what he called a “vast
intelligence operation” to monitor Oswald. In his words, “The spook-master must know
565
Harold Weisberg, Oswald in New Orleans: Case for Conspiracy with the CIA, (New
York: Canyon Books, 1967), 25-26.
566
Weisberg, 401.
567
Weisberg, 32.
568
Weisberg, 38.
248

what each of his spooks is up to.” 569 Weisberg also reported that a secret source, who
claimed to have known Oswald in the Marines Corps, portrayed an Oswald starkly at
odds with the Warren Commission. The source said Oswald “was bright, not a kook of
any kind, not a blatant or proselytizing Marxist, and really a quiet, serious guy” who had
a high-level “crypto” security clearance. 570
Weisberg claimed the Warren Commission tried to suppress any hint of Oswald’s
connection to anti-Castro Cubans and the CIA. Weisberg noted a discrepancy in the
Commission’s transcription of Oswald’s radio interview about the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee. According to the Commission, Oswald said “I worked in Russia. I was not
under the protection of the – that is to say I was not under protection of the American
government.” According to the actual recording that Weisberg listened to, Oswald said
“I worked in Russia er, I was er under the protection er, of the er, that is to say I was not
under protection of the American government.” Weisberg interpreted this as a slip of the
tongue indicating that Oswald in fact was a U.S. intelligence agent in Russia “under the
protection” of the U.S. government, before hastily correcting himself. 571
Weisberg bolstered his case by repeatedly using Warren Commission testimony
and FBI and police documents that were not used in the report or were dismissed as
unreliable. He highlighted the testimony of witnesses whose statements were at odds
with the official version of events. For example, a boyhood friend of Oswald testified
569
Weisberg, 74.
570
Weisberg, 86-87.
571
Weisberg, 132. The tape of this interview would be played during the 1964 film The
Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, which is discussed in Chapter 8.
249

that he believed David Ferrie was the head of Oswald’s Civil Air Patrol Unit. This would
connect Oswald at an early age with a man who later was active in the anti-Castro
movement and Guy Bannister’s detective agency. Warren Commission counsel did not
ask further questions about Ferrie’s relationship with Oswald. Weisberg also quoted at
length the testimony of New Orleans defense attorney Dean Andrews, who claimed a
man named Clay Bertrand, active in the city’s homosexual milieu, contacted him shortly
after the assassination to request that he represent Oswald. Weisberg and Garrison would
claim that Clay Bertrand was an alias of Clay Shaw. Andrews also testified that Oswald
had come into his office months earlier to discuss getting his undesirable discharge from
the Marines changed. Andrews said he was accompanied by several Latino homosexuals.
The Warren Commission dismissed Andrews’ testimony and the unexplained
relationships between Oswald, the mysterious Clay Bertrand, and the Latinos.
The homosexual underworld of New Orleans featured in the conspiracy theories
of Weisberg and Garrison. This would also be portrayed controversially in Oliver
Stone’s movie JFK, which was based on Garrison’s prosecution of Shaw. For his part,
Weisberg stated that the supposed homosexuality of Shaw and Ferrie was not relevant to
a politically-motivated assassination. He scolded the Warren Commission for fishing for
information linking Oswald to homosexuality. However, Weisberg cataloged all the
bondage paraphernalia seized from Shaw’s house after his arrest. The only reason would
be to cast aspersions on Shaw’s character. Weisberg prudishly declaimed that “It is
nauseating and revolting that all the combinations and permutations of the extravagant
and imaginative perversions of these tortured and sick men must be part of the accounting
250

of the assassination.” 572 Whatever his sexual proclivities, the urbane Shaw seemed an
unlikely suspect in the assassination: he founded the International Trade Mart in New
Orleans, and was a civic leader who helped restore buildings in the French Quarter.
Weisberg believed that the Kennedy administration’s crackdown on the anti-
Castro groups after the Cuban missile crisis triggered the assassination. He wrote, “If
people motivated by hate and dominated by uncontrollable passion needed any motive
other than the Bay of Pigs and the guarantee of Cuban territorial integrity by Kennedy as
his contribution to the solution of the Cuban missile crisis, the change of policy [in
cracking down on the exiles]…provided it.” 573 Oswald’s “intelligence cover” as a pro-
Castro partisan made him a perfect patsy.
Like Weisberg, New Orleans District Attorney Garrison believed Oswald was
innocent, and he brought the only prosecution in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A
grand jury indicted businessman Clay Shaw, and he was tried and acquitted in 1969.
Garrison claimed that Shaw knew Oswald, and he had a motley collection of witnesses
testifying to associations among rabid anti-communist David Ferrie, private detective
Guy Bannister, Clay Shaw, and Oswald. Garrison described his theories about the
assassination and his views on Oswald in 1988 in On the Trail of the Assassins, which
Oliver Stone would use as the basis for his movie, JFK.
572 Weisberg, 201.
573 Weisberg, 161.
251

According to Garrison, Oswald was “mild-mannered” – not a violent sociopath as
portrayed by the Warren Commission – and “innocent” in the assassination. 574 Bannister
manipulated Oswald as an agent provocateur to make him appear as a Marxist activist in
New Orleans, but U.S. intelligence was the real power behind the plot to kill Kennedy.
Garrison wrote, “Oswald appears to have been extensively manipulated by the C.I.A. for
a long period prior to the assassination and may well have believed that he was working
for the government. Oswald was also an F.B.I. confidential informant.” 575 The scope of
Garrison’s theory of who was behind the assassination is breathtaking:
I believe that what happened at Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963,
was a coup d’etat. I believe that it was instigated and planned long in advance by
fanatical anticommunists in the United States intelligence community, that it was
carried out, most likely without official approval, by individuals in the C.I.A.’s
covert operations apparatus and other extra-governmental collaborators, and
covered up by like-minded individuals in the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the Dallas
police department, and the military; and that its purpose was to stop Kennedy
from seeking détente with the Soviet Union and Cuba and ending the Cold
War. 576
In Garrison’s view, Oswald recedes in importance, and becomes merely the pawn of vast
governmental forces that set him up as the “communist scapegoat” in the assassination to
end Kennedy’s efforts to forge peace and subdue Cold War tensions. 577 Oswald,
according to Garrison, did not even play a role in the assassination, and was calmly
buying a Coca-Cola while the presidential motorcade passed by. Garrison dismissed
what he called “false sponsors” who have been accused of carrying out the assassination
574
Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Warner Books, 1988), 117,
234.
575
Garrison, 327.
576
Garrison, 324.
577
Garrison, 70.
252

– from Oswald himself to organized crime and the Soviets and Castro. These theories
mask the real culprits. According to Garrison, “What remains as the only likely sponsor
with both the motive and the capability of murdering the President si the covert action
arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.” 578 In short, it was a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Garrison uncovered a series of witnesses who claimed to have seen Oswald or
someone resembling him in the company of Shaw, Ferrie, and Bannister. One witness,
insurance agent Perry Russo, claimed he was at a party where he heard Ferrie, a man
called Bertrand who allegedly was Clay Shaw, and an individual identified as “Leon
Oswald.” Russo said Ferrie talked about how “they could get rid of Kennedy and blame
it on Castro. That then could be an excuse to invade Cuba.” Ferrie talked about setting
up a “’triangulation of crossfire’” to shot Kennedy from three directions. 579 To confirm
Russo’s story, Garrison admitted his staff used hypnosis and so-called truth serum –
strange tactics from any district attorney. Less dramatic but more believable testimony
came from a series of witnesses in the town of Clinton, Louisiana, who said they
observed a man who looked like Oswald arrive in a Cadillac with two other men who
looked like Ferrie and Shaw. Oswald stood in a long line of African-American waiting to
register to vote. Oswald also applied for a job
Garrison concluded that Oswald was undergoing “sheepdipping” – an intelligence
term for “manipulated behavior designed to create a desired image.” 580 This would help
set up Oswald to be the patsy in the assassination, creating a trail of evidence under the
578 Garrison, 339.
579 Garrison, 179.
580 Garrison, 70-71.
253

guidance of Ferrie and Bannister to appear to be an extreme leftist. Garrison believed
Oswald was a secret agent and that “some part of the intelligence community had been
guiding him” from his days in the Marine Corps to his defection to the Soviet Union and
then back in the United States. 581 Garrison also accepted the idea of a double Oswald –
that someone had been impersonating him to create even more incriminating evidence.
Garrison thought that Shaw was a CIA agent but he failed to build a convincing
case tying the New Orleans businessman and civic leader to the assassination. He
presented one witness at the trial, Charles Spiesel, who testified he heard Ferrie and Shaw
discuss the possible assassination of Kennedy. Under cross examination, Spiesel
admitted that he believed “the New York City police had hypnotized him, tortured him
mentally, and forced him to give up his practice as an accountant.” 582 He also said he
fingerprinted his daughter to make sure that she was the same person he had sent to
college at LSU. Vernon Bundy, another witness, said he said Oswald and Shaw together
on a wharf while he gave himself a heroin injection. Overall, this was obviously not very
believable testimony.
In his book, Garrison revealed a sense of persecution, accusing the authorities and
the media of being unfair to him. He was arrested in 1971 for allegedly taking bribes to
protect organized crime pinball gambling. At his trial a tape was played in which he
seemed to discuss the payoffs, but Garrison claimed the tape had been edited to make him
look guilty. He was found not guilty, but lost his next bid for re-election as district
581 Garrison, 70.
582 Garrison, 277.
254

attorney. He later became a state court appellate judge. Some Warren Commission
critics have stood by Garrison in all his controversies, while others said he set back the
effort to solve the case. He was anathema to the defenders of the Commission’s findings.
His story became the basis for Stone’s JFK, reigniting the controversy over Garrison’s
prosecution of Shaw and more importantly the Kennedy assassination.
Mark Lane – the New York attorney who authored the best-selling critique of the
Warren Commission Rush to Judgment – later penned another bestseller that blamed the
CIA for the Kennedy assassination. In his book Plausible Denial, Lane offered his
theory about the assassination and the role of convicted Watergate burglar and former
CIA officer E. Howard Hunt. Lane focused on his work defending a group called Liberty
Lobby that published an article on August 14, 1978 in its journal Spotlight that accused
Hunt of involvement in the assassination. Hunt sued for defamation. Lane did not focus
on Oswald. However, Lane prefaced his book by alleging that “Oswald was on a mission
in the Soviet Union on behalf of the CIA” and that no file was opened on him at the CIA
initially “because he was playing the role the agency had assigned him.” 583
Hunt had initially won a $650,000 judgment in his defamation lawsuit, but the
verdict was overturned on appeal because of legal technicalities. Lane took on the case in
an effort to put the CIA on trial for the murder of President Kennedy. He did not argue
libel law, but focused on the facts of the case to try to prove Hunt was involved in the
583
Mark Lane, Plausible Denial: was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK?,
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), xxi.
255

assassination. In his book, Lane accused Hunt and other CIA officers of setting up
Oswald to take the fall for the assassination. They had created “a domestic legend for
Oswald to complement the international legend already in place.” 584 Oswald’s ties to the
CIA were kept secret while he became a “publicly known activist, Marxist and
troublemaker.” 585 In particular, Lane accused the CIA of faking Oswald’s visits to the
Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City. He stated that “Lee Harvey Oswald may
never have visited Mexico City” as the Warren Commission alleged. 586 There were no
pictures or audio recordings showing Oswald visiting the embassies despite heavy CIA
surveillance. Lane pointed to information that Hunt had been the acting CIA station chief
in Mexico City at the time.
He also presented the testimony at the Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby libel trial that
Hunt was in Dallas the day before the assassination meeting with Jack Ruby and other
conspirators to plan for the assassination. This testimony came from Fidel Castro’s
former lover, Marita Lorenz, who was recruited by the CIA in a failed attempt to poison
the Cuban leader. She claimed that she drove to Dallas with some of the anti-Castro
conspirators, including future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, and that she attended a
meeting with Hunt and Ruby.
While the testimony of one person would not be enough to win a murder
conviction, Lane successfully undermined Hunt’s credibility and his alibi witnesses.
Lane emphasized Hunt’s past as an illegal operative for President Nixon in the Watergate
584 Plausible Denial, xxiii.
585 Plausible Denial, xxiii.
586 Plausible Denial, 54.
256

scandal and his covert CIA past. The strategy worked and in February 6, 1985 a Florida
jury found for the defendant Liberty Lobby against the plaintiff, E. Howard Hunt. Lane
quoted the forewoman of the jury as saying the panel reached its verdict because “The
evidence was clear…The CIA had killed President Kennedy.” 587 Lane claimed the
verdict received little attention in the news media, which he steadfastly accused of
supporting the Warren Commission and not giving the critics a fair hearing.
In advancing his theory of CIA complicity in the assassination, Lane offered his
own version of the peace thesis as the motive to kill Kennedy. He wrote, “The Cold War
was receding. Kennedy had negotiated a test ban treaty with the Russians,” he “began to
consider a deal with Fidel Castro,” and he was planning to deescalate the war in
Vietnam. 588 The CIA allegedly opposed these moves and feared Kennedy was
determined to reorganize the intelligence agency after he won a second term in 1964.
Lane also provided some biographical information about how he became involved
in researching the Kennedy assassination and trying to defend Oswald in the court of
public opinion. Lane was a young, reform Democrat in New York, who won a seat in the
State assembly in a battle against the Tammany Hall political machine. He served only
briefly and became a defense attorney for poor and minority clients. After Oswald was
killed in police custody, Lane wrote a brief on behalf of the slain alleged assassin. In this
defense brief published in the National Guardian in December 19, 1963, Lane castigated
the media and Texas authorities for assuming Oswald’s guilty. He wrote, “In all
587 Plausible Denial, 322.
588 Plausible Denial, 104.
257

likelihood there does not exist a single American community where reside 12 men or
women, good and true, who presume that Lee Harvey Oswald did not assassinate
President Kennedy. No more savage comment can be made in reference to the
breakdown of the Anglo-Saxon system of jurisprudence.” 589 Lane outlined some of the
points in the evidence that he would expand upon in Rush to Judgment. His article came
to the attention of Marguerite Oswald and she asked him to represent her son’s interests
before the Warren Commission. It took courage for Lane to take this unpopular stance,
but his critics would allege that he was only interested in making money with his books.
Lane became a lightning rod for criticism. Warren Commission chief counsel J. Lee
Rankin sought to have Lane disbarred. Later, the CIA would circulate a memo on how
officers overseas could rebut the arguments of Lane and other conspiracy theorists.
Lane and many other critics have complained that the news media – in particular
the three major U.S. television networks and leading newspapers such as the Washington
Post and New York Times – have muzzled the Warren Commission critics, refusing to
examine their arguments. Lane like other critics found an avenue to reach the American
public through presentations at universities and especially through talk radio. In the
dedication to a later edition of Rush to Judgment, Lane paid tribute to talk radio for
allowing “the story of the facts surrounding the murder of our leader to reach into every
city, village, and hamlet.” Lane singled out “Ray Breim in Los Angeles,” “Bob Grant in
New York,” and “Larry King, who is everywhere” for carrying the word about the
assassination “from coast to coast, across the nation.” He claimed that “Marconi and the
589 Plausible Denial, 336.
258

Founding Fathers must be smiling” because of talk radio’s role in upholding “the Bill of
Rights.” 590
Celebrities also contributed their voice to the cause of finding the truth behind the
assassination. In Plausible Denial, Lane mentioned the role of African-American
comedian and activist Dick Gregory for helping publicize evidence of conspiracy and
pressing for the establishment of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. For his
part, Jim Garrison hailed the role of satirist Mort Sahl in helping his investigation and
playing a key role in having the DA appear on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
As mentioned earlier, Sahl included information about Kerry Thornley’s alleged role in
the assassination in his comedy routines. Garrison said his chance to appear on the
Carson show arose “unexpectedly through the efforts of Mort Sahl,” who he said “was
spending an extended period of time in New Orleans helping the office in a variety of
ways.” While appearing on the Tonight Show, Sahl began discussing with Carson the
Kennedy assassination. “Suddenly,” according to Garrison, “Sahl turned toward the
audience and asked if they did not think Carson show invite me to be a guest on the show
so that I could explain my side of the case.” 591 The audience responded positively, and
Garrison went on to appear on the show – a scene was recreated on the extended video
and DVD version of Oliver Stone’s JFK. Carson sharply questioned Garrison, who
590 Lane, v.
591 Garrison, 241-242.
259

complained that the talk show host asked him questions of the “’When did you stop
beating your wife?’ type.” 592
According to Garrison, Carson tried to prevent him from showing photographs of
three tramps picked up after the assassination. The tramps became fodder for conspiracy
theories because there was no apparent record of their arrest and appeared to be well
kempt for hobos. Researchers Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield praised Dick
Gregory for also publicizing the issue of the mysterious tramps in the 1970’s during the
Watergate scandal. Weberman and Canfield wrote a book largely based on their theory
that the tramps were CIA operatives, including E. Howard Hunt and fellow Watergate
burglar Frank Sturgis. Weberman and Canfield concluded that “There is substantial
evidence [linking] Howard Hunt and Frank A. Sturgis to the ‘tramps’ who were picked
up in the vicinity of the Texas School Book Depository after the assassination.” The
authors described Lee Harvey Oswald as “a deep cover CIA operative” and that
“overwhelming evidence” suggested a link between Hunt and Oswald. 593 The tramps
live on in popular memory even though two Texas journalists Ray and Mary La Fontaine
uncovered records of the tramps in the Dallas police archives that indicated they were in
fact tramps. Despite debunking the tramps, the La Fontaine’s offered a version of secret
592
Garrison, 245.
593
Michael Canfiled and Alan J. Weberman, Coup d’Etat in America: The CIA and the
Assassination of John F. Kennedy, (San Francisco: Quick Trading Company, 1992
(1975)), xx-xxi.
260

agent Oswald, in which he was allegedly an FBI informant tracking illegal arms trade
involving anti-Castro Cubans. 594
Texas journalist Jim Marrs, in his 1989 book Crossfire: the Plot that Killed
Kennedy, synthesized much of the conspiracy literature. This was one of the books
Oliver Stone used as the basis of his movie JFK. On the frontispiece of the book, Marrs
included the Adolf Hitler quote that “The great masses of the people will more easily fall
victims to a great lie than to a small one.” 595 The “great lie,” in this case, would be the
Warren Commission’s version of the assassination: that “Kennedy’s death was the result
of a tragic meeting between a powerful national leader and a warped solitary young man
wanting to be somebody.” 596 Marrs outlined his own theory of the assassination, in
which all of Kennedy’s enemies apparently had a role to play, and Oswald was a patsy
set up through his connections to U.S. intelligence. Marrs even accused Kennedy’s
successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, of complicity, having the ultimate power, along with
J. Edgar Hoover, to cover up the real story of the assassination, Oswald’s links to U.S.
intelligence, and his own role in the murder.
On point after point, Marrs took issue with the Warren Commission portrayal of
Oswald’s life, beginning with his childhood and his mother, Marguerite. “Despite much
conjecture,” Marrs wrote, “there is little evidence that Lee’s childhood was any better or
594
Ray and Mary La Fontaine, Oswald Talked: the New Evidence in the JFK
Assassination, (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 1996).
595
Jim Marrs, Crossfire: the Plot that Killed Kennedy, (New York: Carroll & Graf:1989),
v.
596
Marrs, xi.
261

any worse than others,” and he defended Marguerite for doing the best she could with
meager resources. 597 Marrs dismissed the idea of Oswald as seriously mentally ill, as Dr.
Hartogs’ had claimed. He noted the psychiatric tests showed Oswald “to be a bright and
inquisitive young man who was somewhat tense, withdrawn, and hesitant to talk about
himself and his feelings.” Marrs blamed much of the negative information about Oswald
on the “passionate attitudes” generated by the assassination. 598
Marrs suggested that even as a teenager, Oswald may have concocted a
“procommunist cover” after coming into contact with David Ferrie in the Civil Air Patrol
in New Orleans. 599 The investigative journalist also stated that it was unbelievable that
Oswald would have professed support for Marxism and the Soviet Union while serving in
the Marines. He listed many of the same circumstances that made researchers believe
Oswald was a U.S. agent, including his service at Atsugi. Marrs cited the testimony of
Oswald’s Marine Corps acquaintances about his apparent interest and involvement in
espionage. Marrs told the tale of Oswald’s patronage of the Queen Bee nightclub, where
it was believed beautiful hostesses tried to extract secrets from American servicemen.
Marrs asked, “Was the poor Marine, Private Oswald, being used to gather intelligence or
was Oswald testing his intelligence abilities to infiltrate Communist agents in the Queen
Bee?” 600 Marrs also cited Marine medical records that said Oswald was treated on
September 16, 1958 for gonorrhea and that he had contracted the venereal disease “’In
597 Marrs, 92.
598 Marrs, 96-97.
599 Marrs, 101.
600 Marrs, 104.
262

line of duty, not due to own misconduct.’” This, Marrs claimed, was “strong evidence”
that Oswald’s “extracurricular activities had the blessings of the military, if not the
CIA.” 601
In the view of Marrs, Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union also seemed like an
intelligence operation. “It appears obvious to most assassination researchers,” Marrs
summarized, “that Oswald’s visit to Russia was a planned intelligence operation” –
perhaps part of the Office of Naval Intelligence’s fake defector program. 602 Upon his
return to the United States, Oswald continued to cross paths with people connected to the
intelligence world, had dealings with no less than seven FBI agents, and came into
contact with many of Kennedy’s enemies. “During the summer of 1963,” Marrs wrote,
“Oswald was loose in a deceptive world of undercover agents while living in New
Orleans. And while it may never be positively determined exactly who Oswald was
working for, it is safe to assume that his employers represented the anti-Castro Cubans
and their CIA and mob allies.” 603 Marrs claimed there was evidence that Oswald may
have been informing on the activities of the assassination conspirators, and was
“shocked” when he learned the plot had actually taken place and succeeded. 604
In his outline of the alleged plot to kill Kennedy, Marrs listed the many parties he
believed to have had a role – the CIA, Cuban exiles, organized crime, the government,
601 Marrs, 105.
602 Marrs, 134.
603 Marrs, 155.
604 Marrs, 585.
263

and military-industrial complex. The vast array of suspects resembled those of Jim
Garrison:
A consensus of powerful men in the leadership of U.S. military, banking,
government, intelligence, and organized-crime circles ordered their
faithful agents to manipulate Mafia-Cuban-Agency pawns to kill the chief.
President Kennedy was killed in a military-style ambush orchestrated by
organized crime with the active assistance of elements within the federal
government of the United States. Pressure from the top thwarted any
truthful investigation. 605
At the top of the list, Marrs included LBJ and Hoover. Hoover faced retirement if
Kennedy stayed in office, while LBJ might have been dropped from the ticket in 1964
because he was embroiled in scandals centered on his protégé Bobby Baker. Therefore,
in Marrs’ theory, they had the most to gain through Kennedy’s death, and the most to lose
if he lived. Marrs concluded his book by wring that “One can almost hear the sad spirit
of John F. Kennedy whispering from Dealey Plaza: Et tu, Lyndon?” 606
Marrs book, along with those of Robert Sam Anson, Robert Groden and Harrison
Livingstone, and Anthony Summers, is a mainstream conspiracy book in its rendering of
the alleged plot and its portrayal of Oswald. All of these works of synthesis were mass-
market books that claimed Oswald worked for U.S. intelligence. However, unfortunately
for Marrs’ credibility, he has gone on to write dubious conspiracy tomes on The Alien
Agenda regarding UFO’s, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the
Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids, and The Terror
Conspiracy: Provocation, Deception and 9/11. Many of the critics of conspiracy theories
605 Marrs, 588.
606 Marrs, 590.
264

often lump all the Kennedy assassination literature with much more dubious claims about
extraterrestrials, secret societies, and outrageous government plots. However, all
conspiracy theories must be judged individually on their merits. The fact that many
people ascribe to such theories is also an effect of the collapse in public confidence in
government and other institutions in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and other
national traumas and scandals of the 1960’s and beyond.
Other authors have argued that both the mob and U.S. intelligence conspired
together with Oswald in the assassination. Investigative author Anthony Summers
published his influential book Conspiracy in 1980. It was later revised and reissued in
1998 under the title Not in Your Lifetime: the Definitive Book on the J.F.K. Assassination
following the release of many official documents in the aftermath of Oliver Stone's JFK.
Summers examined the shadowy connections of Oswald, Ruby, and other assassination
figures with the mob, US intelligence, and anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Summers argued “it
is possible that a renegade element in US intelligence manipulated Oswald at some stage
-- even if intelligence operatives had nothing whatsoever to do with the assassination
itself. In the worst case scenario, it is even possible that the same element activated
pawns in the anti-Castro movement and the Mafia to murder the President.” 607 Summers
admitted that the full truth is not known.
607
Anthony Summers, Not in Your Lifetime: the Definitive Book on the J.F.K.
Assassination, (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998), xii.
265

At the center of the book is Oswald. Summers examined Oswald's defection to
Moscow and concluded that “From the moment of his arrival in the Soviet
Union...Oswald became an obvious focus of interest for both Soviet and American
intelligence. The denials, by both sides, are highly unconvincing.” 608 After his return to
the United States, Oswald allegedly associated with figures in Dallas and New Orleans
connected with US intelligence, including Russian émigré George de Mohrenschildt and
former FBI agent Guy Bannister. The issue connecting the intelligence community with
the mob and anti-Castro Cubans was, of course, Cuba, which Summers called “the key to
the crime.” 609
Summers outlined the now well-known plot by the Central Intelligence Agency to
use mob operatives to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The author suggested that
when the Kennedy Administration apparently pulled back from its anti-Castro campaign
and continued its public crackdown on the Mafia, the mob and the Cuban exiles felt
betrayed -- a possible motive for the assassination. The key mob figures who may have
played a role in the assassination were New Orleans Mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello and
Santos Trafficante, who was involved in mob operations in Cuba before Castro seized
power. Summers wrote “in this labyrinthine tale, the names and the threads of evidence
interconnect and merge under the common denominator of American intelligence and the
Mafia.” He added, “The United States ‘at peace’ with Castro's Cuba, true or not, was a
608 Summers, 118.
609 Summers, 173.
266

notion the exiles and their backers would never accept.” 610 In this labyrinth, Summers
suggested Oswald was posing as an anti-Castro activist during his stay in New Orleans
before the assassination and that this may have been part of an intelligence operation.
Not In Your Lifetime connected Oswald to the intelligence community, anti-
Castro Cubans, and rabid anti-Communists – hardly the loner described by the Warren
Commission. But Summers was truthful enough to admit that he did not have all the
answers given the incomplete state of the historical record. The title of the revised edition
comes from a statement from Earl Warren, who told reporters that documents in the
Kennedy case “might not be [released] in your lifetime.” 611
Robert J. Groden and Harrison Edward Livingstone – longtime Kennedy
assassination researchers – presented their version of the “peace thesis” and “secret agent
Oswald” in their 1989 book High Treason. Groden, who served a photographic
consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and Livingstone argued that
the power structure behind the façade of democracy was responsible for killing Kennedy
as he moved to end the Vietnam War, to accept the Castro regime in Cuba, and forge
détente with the Soviet Union. Groden and Livingstone borrowed the idea of “the Secret
Team” posited by retired Colonel Fletcher Prouty of a power structure operating
underneath the façade of democracy. This “loosely knit, informal organization,”
according to Groden and Livingstone, “has gradually established a shadow government,
610 Summers, 253.
611 Quoted in Summers, xi.
267

with a secret, institutionalized covert action capability outside the official
government.” 612 These elements conspire with organized crime, anti-Castro Cubans, and
right-wingers to kill Kennedy, and manipulate Oswald, as a CIA agent, to be the patsy.
Prouty’s ideas also influenced Oliver Stone, as discussed in the next chapter.
The authors of High Treason heaped praise on Kennedy for seeking peace against
what they called “the War Party” and “the Ultra Cold Warrior Sect” that would oppose
any pull-out from Vietnam. 613 A key component of the peace thesis is to argue for the
flawed “greatness” of Kennedy for having the courage to try to normalize relations in the
Cold War to prevent the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. To many historians, however,
Kennedy was an ardent Cold Warrior, and they dispute whether he was going to pull out
of Vietnam in a second term or that he intended to rein in the anti-Castro campaign.
Groden and Livingstone claimed that the key to understanding the assassination
was the alleged cover-up of the evidence that only those in power within the government
could accomplish. The author alleged that there has been “an unquestionable pattern of
fabricated, forged, and falsified evidence” in the assassination, including the infamous
photos of Oswald holding the rifle, and the autopsy photographs and x-rays. 614 The
mafia would not be able to implement such a cover-up, and Groden and Livingstone
criticized the House Select Committee on Assassinations for focusing on the mob instead
of the CIA and other government agencies.
612 Robert J. Groden and Harrison Edward Livingstone, High Treason: the Assassination
of President Kennedy and the New Evidence of Conspiracy, (New York: Berkley Books,
1990 (1989)), 405.
613 Groden and Livingstone, 416.
614 Groden and Livingstone, 268.
268

Groden and Livingstone called Oswald “the first witness” of many to die in the
Kennedy case. 615 Oswald allegedly knew too much from being a covert operative
overseas and in the United States. “Clearly,” the authors wrote, “Oswald was no ordinary
lone nut assassin. Oswald had to have been trained in the Russian language by the
military. He was stationed at Atsugi Air Base in Japan, the famous U-2 base, and
eventually spent a couple of years in Russia as a ‘defector.’” 616 Groden and Livingstone
noted that Oswald associated with people connected with U.S. intelligence after his return
to the United States. They speculated that Ferrie used his homosexuality to control
Oswald from an early age: “Like a guided missile, [Oswald] became a double agent, an
agent provocateur, and finally the victim of the double cross.” 617
Groden and Livingstone believed Oswald probably did not even go to Mexico
City ahead of the assassination to visit the Soviet and Cuban embassies. The authors
alleged that people with intelligence connections were “laying a trail leading to Oswald,
the designated patsy,” and linking him to Castro. 618 Part of the mystery concerned the
photograph – initially identified as being of Oswald leaving the Cuban or Soviet
embassies – taken by the CIA in Mexico City. The man clearly was not Oswald, and
appeared stockier and older. The CIA has never been able to explain who in fact is
pictured, and why no photographs of Oswald entering or leaving the embassy exist
despite extensive surveillance.
615 Groden and Livingstone, 131.
616 Groden and Livingstone, 190.
617 Groden and Livingstone, 292.
618 Groden and Livingstone, 192.
269

Groden and Livingstone also reported the statements of Beverly Oliver, a Dallas
woman who claimed to know Jack Ruby well and said Ruby introduced her to a man in
his Carousel Club as “my friend Lee.” 619 She claimed the man was Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oliver also claimed to be the so-called “Babushka Lady” – an unidentified woman in a
headscarf who photographed Kennedy’s motorcade in front of the Grassy Knoll. She
said an FBI agent confiscated her film. Groden and Livingstone also mentioned the
incident caught on film, in which Ruby corrected the information being given by Dallas
authorities about Oswald the night of the assassination. The authorities reported
Oswald’s membership in a right-wing Cuban group but Ruby shouted out the correction
that Oswald belong to the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Groden and
Livingstone asked how Ruby knew this, and claimed it showed the nightclub owner was
involved in “Cuban affairs.” 620
Groden and Livingstone wrote that their book built on the work of Anthony
Suimmers, and their ideas also resembled the mass-market book of Jim Marrs. Unlike
Marrs, Groden and Livingstone did not blame Lyndon Johnson. They claimed LBJ was
himself “a captive of the War Party, and he could do nothing after the assassination of
Kennedy” at odds with the Secret Team. 621 He dutifully reversed Kennedy’s order to
withdraw one thousand troops from Vietnam as part of an eventual pull-out. This part of
the “peace thesis” – still hotly debated by historians – would be a key part of the Oliver
Stone movie JFK.
619 Groden and Livingstone, 461.
620 Groden and Livingstone, 310.
621 Groden and Livingstone, 416.
270

Crossfire, High Treason, and Lane’s Plausible Denial also discussed an
interpretation of a key White House tape of President Richard Nixon that allegedly linked
the Watergate break-in cover-up with the Kennedy assassination. On the tape from June
23, 1972, Nixon spoke to his Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman of the need for the CIA to
tell the FBI to back off the Watergate investigation because it involved former CIA
operative E. Howard Hunt and the some of the anti-Castro Cuban burglars. Nixon said
“this Hunt, that will uncover a lot of things… That is going to open the whole Bay of
Pigs thing up again.” 622 Conspiracy theorists claim that the “whole Bay of Pigs thing”
was a euphemism for the Kennedy assassination that supposedly involved the mob, the
anti-Castro Cubans, and the CIA. Hunt was a CIA liaison for the Cuban exiles. In his
memoirs, Haldeman himself claimed that Nixon was referring to the assassination in his
reference to the Bay of Pigs. This interpretation would find its way into another Oliver
Stone film – Nixon. Stone’s films and the popular books of Lane, Groden and
Livingstone, Summers, and Marrs show the American public’s insatiable demand for
material counter to the official version of the assassination and Oswald’s life.
The Secret Agent Oswald received support from a surprising source in 1988 on
the 25 th anniversary of the assassination: Marina Oswald Porter. The widow of the
alleged assassin told the Ladies’ Home Journal that she now believes Oswald “worked
for the American government” as an agent. 623 She said she can see “certain traits of
professional training, like being secretive.” She also claimed that Oswald “was taught
622
See Marrs 272-273, and Groden and Livingstone 332-333.
623
Myrna Blyth and Jane Farreel, “Marina Oswald,” Ladies’ Home Journal, (November
1988), 184-188, 236-237.
271

the Russian language when he was in the military” and that “he got out of Russia quite
easily.” “How did this happen?” she asked. Marina speculated that George de
Mohrenschildt may have been part of the conspiracy, and that Lee had been caught
between two forces – the government and organized crime. She said “Maybe [de
Mohrenschildt] was going between Lee and somebody.”
Marina acknowledged that she had provided damning testimony about her
husband to the Warren Commission, but she described herself as a “blind kitten” who had
been led through her appearances before the panel by its members. “Their questioning,”
she said, “left me only one way to go: guilty. I made Lee guilty.” Marina claimed that
she feared for her life in making these statements. She admitted that Lee mistreated her
in some ways, but defended him as a husband and father. She also said Oswald admired
President Kennedy, and taught her to like him. She now accepted her late husband’s
claim that he was just a patsy, but she did not know whether he was totally innocent of
involvement. There is obviously a stark contrast between her comments in the interview
and the story she told the Warren Commission and Priscilla Johnson McMillan. Her
earlier statements bolstered the image of Oswald as the lone nut assassin, but now she
said she believed her late husband was a secret agent and a patsy.
Historians and political scientists have also entered the fray of the Kennedy
assassination debate, and the works of Philip Melanson and John Newman show that a
reasonable case can be made based on historical sources and the historical context to
argue that Oswald was an American intelligence agent. In his 1990 book Spy Saga: Lee
272

Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence, Melanson, a political science professor at
Southeastern Massachusetts University and chair of the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination
archives, detailed the evidence that indicate the alleged assassin was a CIA agent.
Melanson acknowledged his debt to the investigative work and ideas of another political
scientist, Peter Dale Scott, and British researcher Anthony Summers. Melanson noted
that Oswald left a “rich and mysterious trail of events and artifacts” during his brief life,
and that no historical clarity has been achieved to answer the question “’Who was Lee
Harvey Oswald?’” Melanson described Oswald as “the most fascinating and complex
assassin (alleged or actual) in U.S. history.” 624
The expert on American political assassinations concluded that there was a
conspiracy and Oswald was a U.S. intelligence agent but he did not seek to demonstrate
whether the former Marine actually took part in the assassination. According to
Melanson, “Lee Harvey Oswald spent nearly all his adult life working for U.S.
intelligence – most likely for the CIA – as an agent-provocateur. He did so in both the
domestic and international arenas, right up to his involvement in the assassination.”
Oswald “maintained a façade of leftism...[but] his associations and contacts were
decidedly right-wing and anti-communist.” 625
Melanson marshaled his evidence to show that the real Oswald was much more
complex than the lone nut portrait drawn by the Warren Commission and its defenders.
He described Oswald as “a poised, rather resourceful political manipulator who surely
624
Philip H. Melanson, Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence, (New York:
Praeger, 1990), xiii-xiv.
625
Melanson, xiv-xv.
273

lived one of the most eventful, intrigue-filled lives imaginable.” 626 Oswald created a
paper trail across the U.S. and Soviet governments – including the CIA, FBI, military
intelligence, and the State Department in the United States and the KGB and MVD in the
Soviet Union. Melanson rejected the notion that Oswald was a Soviet agent, pointing out
that the Red hunters in the U.S. government would have had to be completely
incompetent to let him slip through their fingers. As other authors noted, Oswald was not
prosecuted for defecting to the Soviet Union and he was not even seriously investigated
to uncover whether he divulged any secrets to the KGB.
From his time in the Marines to the end of his life, Oswald was entangled in
espionage matters. Melanson described the Atsugi air base in Japan, where Oswald was
stationed, as “one of the blackest [secret] bases anywhere in the world.” 627 The data on
the U-2 was “ultrasecret,” including how high it could fly, and Oswald would have heard
U-2 pilots request information for winds at an altitude of 90,000 feet – far higher than the
acknowledged altitude record at the time. 628 For Oswald to have served at such a base,
and then to pose as a left-wing extremist does not fit with the historical context of the
Cold War. Melanson pointed out “This behavior occurred in 1958, when the Cold War
tensions were high. The House Un-American Activities Committee was active;
blacklisting was declining but still in evidence. It had been only four years since Senator
Joseph McCarthy’s witchhunts.” 629 Melanson argued that it is much more plausible that
626 Melanson, xvi.
627 Melanson, 7.
628 Melanson, 8.
629 Melanson, 10.
274

Oswald became involved in U.S. intelligence during his Marine years, was taught the
Russian language by the government, and then went on a secret mission to the Soviet
Union.
Melanson outlined the favorable treatment Oswald received from the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow and the State Department – even though he had ostensibly defected
and threatened to give up secrets, including something of special interest, an apparent
reference to the U-2. Several chances were missed to post a lookout card on Oswald’s
passport by the State Department to flag officials about the reputed Communist. At that
time, the passport office was led by Francis Knight, “whose strident anti-communism was
legendary with the Washington bureaucracy” and one of her assistants was Otto Otepka,
“a zealous red-hunter.” 630 Not only was Oswald’s passport returned, he was given
money by the State Department to pay for his travel expenses. When he reapplied for a
passport in 1963 before he visited Mexico City, he was given one without any trouble.
Melanson argued that the failure to prosecute Oswald upon his returned showed that he
was spy: “The only way that Oswald could be accepted as not being the traitor who
down the spy plane [flown by Francis Gary Powers] is if the Agency had precise control
over the content and number of the ‘secrets’ he delivered to the KGB.” 631
Back in Dallas and New Orleans, Oswald associated with a variety of right-wing
anti-Communists but posed as an extreme left-wing activist. Much of Oswald’s time was
devoted to creating a paper trail linking Communists with liberal groups, including the
630 Melanson, 21.
631 Melanson, 28.
275

Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Congress on
Racial Equality. Melanson claimed that Oswald’s activities were “primarily concerned
with paper, not people.” 632 He did not associate with the left wing but through his letter-
writing created links between the Communist Party and the Soviets with the American
left, which Melanson called “Smearing the Left Kremlin-Red.” 633 Melanson accepted the
testimony of the Clinton, Louisiana witnesses uncovered by Garrison that claimed that
Oswald, allegedly in the company of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw, tried to participate or
observe a voter-registration campaign by CORE. Melanson recounted the evidence
uncovered of CIA domestic spying in the United States during the 1960’s – which was
illegal – and its interest in such groups as CORE and the FPCC. He argued that it was
more likely Oswald visited Clinton with Guy Bannister, rather than with Shaw.
Melanson alleged that Oswald’s visit to Mexico City was described to set him up
to be the patsy in the assassination. “If Oswald was directed to Mexico by his handlers so
that he could be set up which is the most logical option,” the author wrote, “then someone
was working to create for him an image of motive and madness for the impending
assassination of the President.” 634 Melanson pointed out the despite CIA surveillance of
the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico, no photographs or audio recording of Oswald
have emerged. Melanson wryly noted that “The CIA’s vaunted data-gathering network
was a sieve when it came to Oswald.” 635 In fact, the evidence indicated that someone
632 Melanson, 62.
633 Melanson, 55.
634 Melanson, 92.
635 Melanson, 137.
276

was impersonating Oswald. “There is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that the
CIA covered up proof of an Oswald impostor at work,” according to Melanson. 636 All
the evidence of the double Oswald in Mexico and Dallas formed “a consistent pattern in
which each contributes to the false portrait of a violence-prone, left-wing hothead who is
increasingly frustrated and out of control.” 637
Oswald as Secret Agent, according to Melanson, is central to understanding the
assassination. He blamed “Elements of the CIA’s anti-Castro network” for framing
Oswald as the centerpiece of their conspiracy. 638 These elements – who may have been
renegades – did not need a large conspiracy to succeed. Instead, Melanson wrote, they
could count on the authorities to cover-up evidence of the conspiracy to protect the secret
of Oswald’s ties to U.S. intelligence. “Conspirators could have correctly calculated that
the possessors of such files [on Oswald] would attempt to freeze out or stonewall any
official investigators….Thus the cover-up could be quite extensive while the conspiracy
could be rather small and tight-knit.” 639 However, Melanson added that the conspirators
could have had the support of people higher-up in the government.
Melanson’s work is much more convincing than the study by his fellow political
scientist, Peter Dale Scott, whose 1993 book Deep Politics and the Death of JFK blamed
the assassination, not only individuals, but a systemic problem in American society.
636 Melanson, 92.
637 Melanson, 106.
638 Melanson, 145.
639 Melanson, 147.
277

Scott proposed a concept called “Deep Politics,” which he defined as “all those political
practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than
acknowledged.” 640 Scott claimed that “Deep Politics” offered an answer to the question
of context: What were the structural defects in governance and society that allowed this
huge crime to be so badly investigated (or in other terms, to go unpunished)?” 641 In
practical terms, Scott described an interconnection between the U.S. government,
organized crime, big business, and the drug traffickers. Oswald and especially Ruby,
according to Scott, were part of this deep political system: “Both Ruby and Oswald,
when studied in this broader political context, emerge as operators within the world
where political and criminal activities interface.” 642
Scott used much of the book to detail the criminal and political connections of
Jack Ruby. He claimed that the Warren Commission steadfastly refused to look at
Ruby’s organized crime and political connections, while the House Select Committee on
Assassinations only looked at his mob ties. Scott outlined how Ruby “’knew everybody’
or at least a broad cross-section of Dallas, from its politicians, millionaires, cops, and
judges, to its dope traffickers, thieves, and prostitutes.” 643 He was an informant on the
drug trade while also being heavily involved in the drug trafficking himself. He knew
many mobsters but also the Texas oil men who patronized the gambling establishments
of organized crime. Scott included many of the connections between Ruby and organized
640
Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, (Berkley: University of
California Press, 1993), 7.
641
Scott, 4.
642
Scott, 19.
643
Scott, 127,
278

crime contained in the Oswald as Mob Patsy works, but emphasized the importance of
Ruby in the Dallas crime hierarchy and his connections to the city’s elite, including
oilman Clint Murchison.
Scott often employed a tactic of connecting a series of names to each other before
winding up with someone or something tied to the assassination. The connections seem
tenuous in many cases. For example, “We learn however from Lieutenant George
Butler’s note of the 1947 Paul Jones attempt to bribe Sheriff Guthrie that the top oilmen-
gamblers who (it was hoped) would bring big money to the gambling tables were Clint
Murchison, his friend Toddie Lee Wynne, and Ray Ryan. These are presumably Clint
Murchison, Sr., who was Hoover’s host at the Del Charro, and Toddie Lee Wynne, Sr.,
father of Toddie Lee Wynne, Jr., chairman of the board of the Great Southwest
Corporation, which…supplied a manager to handle the affairs and testimony of Marina
Oswald.” 644
Oswald, for Scott, was a less interesting figure than Ruby. He described his
connections to the organized crime and political structure of New Orleans, where he was
born. Scott outlined many of the connections the House Assassinations Committee found
between Oswald and his family and organized crime in New Orleans, but accused the
congressmen of overlooking the ties between the Democratic Party establishment there
and the mob. According to Scott, “in New Orleans, as in Chicago, criminal power and
local politics had been deeply intertwined for decades.” 645 As a Marine, Oswald became
644 Scott, 206.
645 Scott, 77.
279

enmeshed in intelligence matters, but Scott did not focus on Oswald’s connections to the
U-2 plane and his defection to the Soviet Union. Scott was much more concerned with
the political power structure in the United States and the interface between organized
crime and the government. Scott merely noted that Oswald’s “apparent defection to the
Soviet Union in 1959…has been frequently interpreted as part of a program by U.S.
intelligence…to penetrate the Soviet Union with false defectors.” 646
Back in Dallas and New Orleans, Oswald continued to live in “a milieu with
intelligence overtones” but Scott did not accept the notion that Oswald was a CIA
agent. 647 Instead, Scott believed Secret Agent Oswald was a private contractor. Oswald
must have worked for private detective Guy Bannister in his shenanigans involving the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee and other leftist groups. The most likely possibility,
according to Scott, was that “Oswald and Bannister were working for…an intelligence-
mafia gray alliance, rooted in the deep political economy of New Orleans.” 648 Scott
expressed doubt Oswald was on the FBI payroll but suggested he worked for a private
security agency that reported to the FBI. Scott also advanced the theory that as a private
contractor, Oswald was informing on illegal gun trafficking by ordering weapons through
the mail in 1963. At the time, a Senate panel was investigating such transactions.
Scott concluded that Oswald and Ruby were players in the deep political system,
and this system is to blame for the Kennedy assassination, later scandals such as
Watergate and Contragate, and it would seem any nefarious activity ever alleged against
646 Scott, 78.
647 Scott, 78.
648 Scott, 87.
280

the U.S. government. President Kennedy, according to Scott, “was murdered by a
coalition of forces inside and outside government, of the type described in this book. In
short, Kennedy was killed by the deep political system.” 649 This system felt threatened
by President Kennedy moves to change the status quo of “graduated escalation in
Vietnam, the intelligence-mafia symbiosis, the fostering of the military industrial
complex.” 650 He called on .Americans to reform the deep political system, and stop
trying to hold individuals responsible for the assassination.
Overall, Scott’s arguments are much less convincing than Melanson’s: they are
too broad and much too detailed in laying out intricate connections between different
people and groups. Scott also displayed an ignorance of American history when he
claimed that Booth’s assassination of Lincoln was part of a plot that killed two members
of his cabinet. One plotter did wound Secretary of State William Seward, but he did not
die and another plotter failed to carry out his attack against Vice President Andrew
Johnson. There were not “three killings” as stated by Scott. 651 Scott’s book resembles
the “paranoid style of American politics.” As discussed earlier, historian Richard
Hofstadter defined the paranoid style as seeing history as “a conspiracy, set in motion by
demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is
not the usual methods of political give-and-take, but an all-out crusade.” 652 The only
difference is Scott’s paranoia is left wing, while Hofstadter described a style that he said
649 Scott, 299.
650 Scott, 298.
651 Scott, 295.
652 Hofstadter, 29.
281

was mostly adopted by the right wing. Despite these weaknesses, Scott has many
admirers, including the ubiquitous Oliver Stone, who offered a blurb of praise on the
book jacket of Deep Politics.
Historian John Newman cautiously came to the conclusion that the CIA “had a
keen operational interest” in Oswald from his defection to the Soviet Union until his
death. 653 The University of Maryland professor who served in military intelligence for
20 years carefully outlined his case through archival research of government documents
in his 1995 book Oswald and the CIA. Newman did not address the larger debates about
the assassination, but focused instead on how U.S. intelligence, including the FBI as well
as the CIA, tracked Oswald. He concluded that the CIA “used sensitive sources and
methods to acquire intelligence on Oswald” and that “witting or not, Oswald became
involved in CIA operations.” 654 Newman stopped short of calling Oswald a CIA agent.
He alleged that “there probably was a relationship, though not that of an ‘agent’ or
‘informant.’” 655 He argued that the Agency’s interest in Oswald may have led
assassination conspirators to use or manipulate the former Marine.
Newman showed that despite their denials, the CIA and FBI were very much
aware of Oswald and kept track of him during all stages of is brief life. He noted “the
sheer amount of paper the intelligence agencies created on Oswald,” indicating “a
653
John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2008 (1995)),
xix.
654
Newman, xix.
655
Newman, xx.
282

significant level of interest in him.” 656 Newman began by looking at Oswald’s
defection. Oswald’s declaration to U.S. Embassy in Moscow consular officer Richard
Snyder that he intended to defect and share secrets with the Soviets set off alarm bells
across the intelligence bureaucracy. Snyder notified Washington of Oswald’s threat to
share secrets, especially “something of special interest”, and his cable reached the CIA,
FBI, and the Pentagon. 657 According to Newman, the “something of special interest”
was obviously the U-2, the CIA’s most important secret program at the time. The U-2
provided critical intelligence that showed the Soviets were not ahead of the United States
in their ballistic missile program. There was no so-called “missile gap,” which allowed
President Dwight Eisenhower to take a tougher line against the Soviets and Chinese.
Newman also discussed a number of anomalies in the CIA file on Oswald,
including the fact that a key file – called a 201 – was not opened on the former Marine at
the time of his defection but more than a year later. Such a file would be routinely
opened on someone of “active operational interest,” such as a defector to the Soviet
bloc. 658 Newman wrote that “Abnormalities in Oswald’s files like this one raise
questions about his possible role in U.S. intelligence operations.” 659 In other words, the
CIA may have been funneling key information about Oswald to some other location in
the bureaucracy to hide a secret program that could be comprised by his defection.
656 Newman, 199.
657 Newman, 5.
658 Newman, 47.
659 Newman, 48.
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“Some hungry black hole in the CIA,” Newman wrote, “seemed to be consuming every
scrap of paper on Oswald in the days immediately following his defection.” 660
Newman also described how the CIA probably kept track of Oswald through
other “human assets” in the Soviet Union and its top-secret HT/Lingual program to open
mail going between the United States and the Soviet Union. The FBI also interviewed
Oswald’s mother and brother about the defection and Marguerite’s intention in January
1960 to cable money to her son. The FBI has never explained how it came to know
Marguerite intended to send the money. During the interview, Marguerite told an FBI
agent that she believed Oswald had taken his birth certificate with him. This set off a
round of memos, including one from J. Edgar Hoover himself. On June 3, 1960, Hoover
asked the State Department to investigate Oswald’s whereabouts in the Soviet Union
because “There is the possibility that an imposter is using Oswald’s birth certificate.” 661
Apparently J. Edgar Hoover himself was worried about the possibility of a double
Oswald.
Like Melanson, Newman also noted the anomalous handling of Oswald’s
passport, his efforts to repatriate himself, and his return to the United States. Newman
pointed out that by 1961 there were two reasons for CIA interest in the former Marine:
“his decision to marry a Soviet citizen and his cumulative experience in the Soviet
Union.” 662 The FBI also had a compelling interest in Oswald upon his return to Dallas
and Fort Worth, Texas, but showed a strange ambivalence about the former Marine. He
660 Newman, 27.
661 Newman, 144.
662 Newman, 219.
284

could have faced espionage charges, but the FBI, “which had been primed for Oswald’s
return from Russia, calmly closed the book on him in spite of his uncooperative and
obstreperous attitude, refusal to take a lie detector test, and immediate mail activities with
just about any communist or left wing organizations he could think of.” 663
In New Orleans, the FBI and CIA created more paper trails about Oswald.
Newman discussed many of the same suspicious events and people allegedly tied to
Oswald – his leaflets with the 544 Camp Street address stamped on it, his scuffle with
Bringuier, and his correspondence tying the Fair Play for Cuban Committee with a
known Soviet defector. Newman suggested that Guy Bannister, the private detective
with ties to the CIA, FBI, and anti-Castro Cubans, was “using Oswald to smoke out pro-
Castro Cuban students in local universities and to discredit local leftwing or communist
academics.” 664 The evidence also indicated Oswald was involved in a CIA program
known as AMSPELL, which was a propaganda mission on behalf for the Cuban Student
Directorate (DRE) – the anti-Castro Cuban group that Bringuier was a leader of. Oswald
activities, culminating with his radio debate with Bringuier and another anti-communist
activist, were “a bonanza for AMSPELL’s mission” by tying the FPCC to the communist
party and Soviet Union when Oswald was confronted with his defection to the Soviet
Union and his attempt to renounce his U.S. citizenship. 665
Newman also sought to untangle Oswald’s activities in Mexico City, which he
pointed out was “one of the most intensely surveilled spots on the planet” with Soviet,
663 Newman, 262.
664 Newman, 309.
665 Newman, 318.
285

U.S., Cuban, and other intelligence activities active there. 666 Newman acknowledged that
the Mexico mystery remains unsolved, but he concluded that the evidence suggested
some possibilities, including the presence of an Oswald imposter. Oswald also may have
been a “dangle” – an offer from a double-agent to the Soviets or Cubans to feed them
disinformation or find out what they knew about something of interest to the CIA.
Oswald may have been a key part of such an operation or somehow found himself in the
middle of it, according to Newman. The author also raised the possibility that the
Mexico City story about Oswald was designed “to falsely implicate the Cuban
government in the Kennedy assassination.” 667
Newman’s book showed that the CIA, as well as FBI and military intelligence,
had a high degree of interest in Oswald, whether he was a secret agent or not. For many
conspiracy theorists, Newman did not go far enough and was too careful in his claims.
Newman himself thought so. He added an epilogue in 2008 called “The Plot to Murder
President Kennedy: a New Interpretation,” in which he accused CIA counter-intelligence
chief James Angleton of being the prime force in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. “No one
else in the Agency,” Newman alleged, “had the access, the authority and the diabolically
ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot.” 668 The plotters maneuvered Oswald
in Mexico City to place a “virus” in Oswald’s file that implicated the Cubans. That
666 Newman, 352.
667 Newman, 391.
668 Newman, 637.
286

would require a “national security cover-up” of the assassination plot after Kennedy was
killed to prevent World War III. 669
In the Kennedy assassination literature, Secret Agent Oswald has become the
main conspiracy theory. Bestselling books have linked Oswald to the CIA, the FBI, and
other agencies as part of a plot to kill Kennedy to prevent his efforts to make peace with
the Soviets and Cuba, and end the Vietnam War. This “peace thesis” received wide-
spread circulation in Oliver Stone’s JFK. Blaming the right appeals to the left, and
creates a counterfactual myth about the slain president. No one knows what he would
have done had he lived, but to many of his supporters, he would have eased Cold War
tensions and pulled out of Vietnam. Melanson and Newman also showed that it is not
paranoid or extreme to interpret the evidence of Oswald’s life as showing that he was
either a secret agent or someone of operational interest. This Oswald is much less of a
“loser.” Instead of being a failure at his marriage, his work, and as a political activist,
Oswald emerges as a cool and competent figure in Cold War intrigues, whose true social
and political identity is opposite to the official version of the Marxist Soviet defector
669 Newman, 636-637.
287

CHAPTER 8: OSWALD ON TELEVISION AND FILM
Lee Harvey Oswald has been depicted in a variety of ways on television and in
film. These depictions have been based on both the Warren Commission report and the
conspiracy literature. The most important Kennedy assassination film or television show
is surely Oliver Stone’s JFK based on New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison’s
investigation of the crime. JFK not only shaped popular perceptions about the
assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald but also sparked renewed debate about whether
there was a conspiracy. The movie’s impact extended into the political system, with
Congress and President George H. W. Bush approving the creation of a panel to oversee
the release of government documents related to the assassination. Other films, however,
have contributed to the debate about Oswald’s life and the assassination controversy both
before and after JFK.
Some films and television programs reflected journalistic conventions of balance
– both sides of the controversy were given air time. However, Oliver Stone’s JFK and
British producer Nigel Turner’s series The Men Who Killed Kennedy presented a pro-
conspiracy point of view that engendered much controversy. Both of these works
showcased theories that received attention in many conspiracy books, but the fact that
Stone and Turner reached a broader audience bothered many critics. In particular, Oliver
Stone faced harsh criticism of his film from former officials, historians, and movie critics
288

oth because of his controversial message and, more importantly, because he presented
his message through a wide-release, major studio film that reached millions of
Americans. Film and television shows about the assassination, especially JFK, raised
questions about who has the authority to present a historical argument. Stone used a
popular medium associated more with entertainment than historical debate to argue that
Oswald was a secret agent and set up to take responsibility for an assassination
conspiracy and cover-up that reached to the highest levels of U.S. government. Stone
was criticized both for his message and his medium.
A popular way in American culture to examine the Kennedy assassination
controversy has been to imagine Oswald on trial. There have been television programs
and films in which Oswald has been put on trial to determine for the viewer whether he
killed the president or there was a conspiracy. There is also a novel by conspiracy
theorist Walt Brown, The People v. Lee Harvey Oswald, in which Oswald survives
Ruby’s attempt on his life to stand trial for the murder of John F. Kennedy in a Texas
courtroom. Brown had the legal teams agree to move forward with the trial even though
there were many reasons for a mistrial concerning the lack of a proper chain of custody
for the physical evidence and the fact that the autopsy was not performed on Kennedy in
Texas as required under Texas law. At the time of the assassination, there was no federal
law on killing a president. Brown used the novel to examine real controversies over the
evidence, and to have much of the testimony of the Warren Commission subjected to
cross-examination. The novel is heavily weighted toward a finding of conspiracy. The
novel ended with the trial judge directing a verdict of “Not guilty.” Oswald is treated
289

more as an enigma than a flesh and blood person. Throughout the novel, Brown has
characters comment on Oswald’s inscrutability. His own defense lawyer suggests to the
jury that Oswald was a spy, but acknowledged “I’m not going to pretend to tell you that I
know” who or what he was. 670
The trial of Oswald is more a novelistic vehicle to examine the evidence in the
case, rather than to characterize the alleged assassin. Brown wrote he had “neither love
nor sympathy” for Oswald, and that he considered him a “patsy” who had “blood on his
hands” by allowing him to be used by “those who pulled the trigger.” 671 Brown rued the
fact that Oswald – the self-declared “patsy” who thereby hinted at knowledge of the
forces behind the assassination – never stood trial. He concluded that “Above [John
Kennedy] is the eternal flame. All around him is the eternal doubt.” 672
More indelible portraits of Oswald have been seen on film and television screens.
For many Americans, seeing is believing in an age in which visual representations often
receive wider currency than texts. Multiple actors have given life to Oswald on screen,
reflecting different interpretations of the alleged assassin. The first movie depicting Lee
Harvey Oswald was a low-budget film from director Larry Buchanan, which was
released briefly in April 1964 before the Warren Commission report had been issued.
Surprisingly, the film – with the obvious title of The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald –
670
Walt Brown, The People v. Lee Harvey Oswald, (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992),
57.
671
Brown, xviii-xix.
672
Brown, 612.
290

focused on whether Oswald was not guilty by reason of insanity instead of whether he
was innocent or guilty of the crime. There are no conspiracy theories presented.
Buchanan claimed that he was forced to withdraw the film because of “unwarranted
pressures.” 673 However, he did not say who applied this pressure or why. The film
found a second lease of life as a video and DVD. The film is notable for showing the
attitudes at the time, in which the media and many Americans accepted the evidence of
Oswald’s guilt from the authorities. However, the film also reflected journalistic
conventions of balance – even though the issue was whether Oswald was guilty by reason
of insanity rather than whether he was the lone gunman or the patsy in a conspiracy.
The film includes archival footage of Oswald in police custody, as well as the
aftermath of the assassination. However, no attempt is made to recreate the assassination
or other scenes from Oswald’s life in the film. Instead, actors are shown in a courtroom
setting, presenting the evidence and making their arguments. Interestingly, the sequence
of shots differs from the eventual Warren Commission version of the assassination.
According to the evidence at the trial, one shot hit Kennedy in the back, one shot hit
Governor Connally, and the third shot hit the president in the head. There is no “magic
bullet.” Oswald was played by Charles Mazynick, but he has no lines in the film. He
does not take the stand in his defense. In fact, when asked to plead guilty or innocent,
Oswald stays mute. The judge notes that by law, his plea would be not guilty. His
lawyer offers a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. In addition to archival footage of
673
Larry Buchanan, dir., The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, 94 minutes, (Something Weird
Video, 1964).
291

Oswald in custody, the film also plays the actual taped interview with Oswald in New
Orleans, in which he was confronted with the fact that he was a former defector to the
Soviet Union, attempted to renounce his citizenship, and declared himself a Marxist
supporter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The prosecution argues that Oswald was
not insane and carried out the assassination for his own warped political reasons and
because of his personal failures.
While the prosecutor presents what is assumed to be the overwhelming evidence
of Oswald’s guilt, the camera occasionally shows a close up of Oswald’s eyes, which are
either staring straight ahead or shifting. Apparently the director wanted to indicate a
troubled state of mind. He also did not want to make obvious that an actor was playing
the defendant and would look different than the archival footage of the real Oswald.
When the defense presents its case, an actor plays a psychiatrist who examined Oswald
was a teenager -- obviously patterned off of Dr. Renatus Hargtogs. The psychiatrist
testifies that he found even at that young age that Oswald had a “schizoid personality”
with a “passive aggressive” and “paranoid” state of mind. The psychiatrist also notes that
mentally ill individuals like Oswald who do not have a father sometimes are “vengeful to
authority” and father-figures. In the Warren report, Hartogs’ examination of Oswald was
used to bolster the case of Oswald as lone-nut assassin, but in Buchanan’s film, the
Hartogs character was used to show Oswald was severely mentally ill and should not be
found guilty and executed. Another psychiatrist, retained for the defense, testifies that
Oswald had the “classical symptoms” of schizophrenia and should be found legally
insane. The prosecution counters that Oswald showed cunning in his crimes, attempted
292

to flee the scene of the assassination, and killed a police officer who tried to stop him.
This, the prosecution said, showed Oswald met the legal definition of sanity by knowing
right from wrong.
In the end, the audience of the film is left to decide whether Oswald should be
found guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity. However, Buchanan undercut this
ending by adding a final commentary from the legal consultant to the film, Texas defense
attorney, Charles W. Tessmer. He told the viewers at the end of the film that historically,
presidential assassins have not had any luck in trying to plead insanity, and no doubt
Oswald would have been convicted and executed for the assassination. Tessmer
solemnly adds that such accused individuals should not be tried in the media instead of
the courtroom – an obvious point given the many of the statements from the federal and
state authorities proclaiming Oswald’s guilt after his arrest. Buchanan sought to take
advantage of public interest in the assassination with a quickly produced, low-budget
film. In his mixing of archival footage and recordings with recreated scenes, Buchanan
set a precedent that Oliver Stone would follow.
The 1977 ABC television movie The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald – with the same
title of Buchanan’s theatrical release – reached a far wider audience. The mini-series also
depicted a fictional scenario in which the alleged assassin faces the Texas justice system.
The screenplay by Robert E. Thompson was also published as a paperback book, but
some of the scenes are different from the television production. The film begins with a
statement that “Lee Harvey Oswald was killed before he could stand trial for the
293

assassination of John F. Kennedy. In creating the following certain names and events
have been changed…[but] the testimony and historical scenes of November 21-24, 1963
have a factual basis.” 674 Oswald is portrayed in many ways like the Warren Commission
portrait: he is obstreperous and argumentative, has marital problems, and fails in his
attempts to find success in both the Soviet and American societies. While the production
tried to give both sides to the case, the film emphasized the personal motive for
assassinating Kennedy, especially in the final scene in which Oswald takes the witness
stand in his own defense. Jack Ruby is also edited out of the story, undermining what
many consider prima facie evidence of a conspiracy in his murder of Oswald. The film
sought to present both sides of assassination debate, but the actor John Pleshette played
Oswald in a way that emphasized his idiosyncrasy, orneriness, and troubled personal life
-- more in tune with the Warren Commission than conspiracy theories.
In the opening scene, Oswald is in his cell plastered with articles about himself
while watching a television report about his trial. Oswald argues with the television
announcer who is describing the alleged assassin as both an enigma and an outcast.
Oswald shouts at the TV, “Why because you think so?” In an instant, Oswald changes to
ask the guard to leave the TV on because “Free speech, that’s what this country is all
about, isn’t it?” 675 Oswald, however, is to be taken from his cell to hear the verdict in
his trial. He is a flinty and argumentative character more in line with the Warren
674
Robert E. Thompson, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, (New York: Ace Books,
1977), vii.
David Greene, dir., The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, 192 min. (World Vision Home
Videos, 1976).
675
Thompson, 90.
294

Commission than the conspiracy literature. When Oswald emerges before the media, he
is dressed in the same clothes he wore when shot by Ruby: a black pull-over sweater,
shirt and slacks. Instead of being shot, the scene dissolves into light.
The rest of the film flashes between scenes recreating parts of Oswald’s life and
the trial process. In the first flashback, Oswald plays with his daughter while Marina
scolds him the evening before the assassination. Marina asks him why he didn’t he tell
her he was coming on a Thursday, and Lee responds that “I wasn’t sure I would.” 676
That night, Oswald asks Marina to move with him to a new apartment, away from the
home she is staying in while he lives in a rooming house. However, Marina refuses and
they argue. Marina wants to watch the glamorous President Kennedy and his wife on
television, but Oswald wants to go to bed and switches off the television. Marina turns it
back on, and the two take turns switching the screen on and off. Lee leaves the room,
and that morning leaves his wallet and wedding ring on the bureau. In this way, the film
emphasizes Oswald’s difficult relationship with Marina, his alleged personal motive for
the assassination, and the idea that it was a spur of the moment decision and not a well-
planned conspiracy.
These personal difficulties and motivations are also apparent in Oswald’s
defection to the Soviet Union. His suicide attempt is depicted as a legitimate attempt to
kill himself at the thought of having to leave the Soviet Union. The suicide scene has
Oswald write a note quoting from the “historic diary:” “I am shocked!!!My dreams have
676 Thompson, 33.
295

een shattered…Somewhere a violin plays, as I watch my life whirl away.” 677 Of course,
Oswald is rescued in time and is allowed to stay in Minsk. There, he meets Marina and
appears to be happy until receiving a letter rejecting his application to study at a
university. When Marina insists on seeing what the letter says, Lee slaps her for the first
time. Once again, Oswald’s personal difficulties are emphasized, and his inability to
move ahead in society. This is clearly more in line with the Warren Commission and its
defenders than the Oswald depicted in the conspiracy literature.
However, some conspiracy-related material is included in the film, including
Marguerite’s insistence that her son is working for the government while in the Soviet
Union. Also, there is a de Mohrenschildt character called Van Kuyper who alleges a
conspiracy only to commit suicide while the defense team seeks to interview him. His
allegations are undermined by the fact that Van Kuyper is in a mental institution at the
time of his suicide. De Mohrenschildt also committed suicide as investigators sought to
interview him, and he was troubled by mental illness in his final days. In the film, there
are a number of witnesses who supposedly would bolster the defenses case, but they
unexpectedly and perhaps mysteriously die. Also, there is a Cuban-American woman
patterned after Sylvia Odio. An “Oswald figure” waits outside the woman’s home as
Cuban-Americans discuss sending the American to kill Fidel Castro. They say the
former Marine is “a little crazy,” “a crack shot,” and would even be prepared to kill
President Kennedy. 678 The defense team probes this incident and other conspiracy
677 Thompson, 20.
678 Thompson, 144.
296

allegations, but the viewer is largely left with sketchy suppositions. While the prosecutor
also wonders about whether there is more to Oswald than there seems at first, he
independently checks the physical evidence and it is all found to be solid.
Oswald speaks and acts enigmatically many times in the film. He refuses to
cooperate with his attorney, other than to declare that he is innocent and that he did not
own a rifle. At one point, Weldon looks at his client, and Lee says “Stop looking.”
Weldon responds, “For what?” and Oswald responds “For anything.” 679 As he enters the
courtroom at one point, Oswald also tells reporters that he wants justice, but does not
explain what he means. The equivocal statement may mean Oswald wants an acquittal,
but justice could also mean that he is guilty.
During the trial, Weldon questions some of the Warren Commission testimony,
and presents alternative explanations to the evidence. However, the final courtroom
scene in which Oswald takes the stand in his own defense is heavily weighted toward a
finding of Oswald as lone assassin. Mathew Weldon asks him whether he killed
President Kennedy, and Oswald responds “No, I did not.” 680 Oswald testifies that he was
in the lunchroom at the time of the assassination. Weldon then probes for any
information on conspirators who may be behind the assassination, but Oswald resolutely
refuses to answer. For example, Weldon asks was in the lunchroom “waiting for the
telephone to ring? Whom did you expect to call you there?...Perhaps the same person
679 Thompson, 112.
680 Thompson, 168.
297

who told you to go to Mexico?” 681 Oswald stubbornly refuses to help his own case by
revealing whether someone else was behind the assassination. Finally, he stops
answering and turns his back to his attorney.
During the cross-examination, the prosecutor relentlessly probes into the state of
Oswald’s mind before the assassination, asking him about the argument with Marina on
the night of November 21, 1963. The prosecutor declares “I think the jury can guess now
what was forming in your mind when your wife refused to come to bed with you so she
could watch the President on television.” The defense objects, but the prosecutor keeps
pressing: “Click! Click! Click!...THAT was the moment, wasn’t it!” Finally, Lee
screams “NO! NO! NO!” and buries his head against the glass wall of his enclosure in the
courtroom. The prosecutor concludes, “Mr. Oswald, that is the first time in the course of
this trial that I have ever seen you exhibit any emotion of any kind whatsoever. I am sure
the jury will notice that I appear to have struck a chord.” 682 Oswald stammers,
“Everyone…gets emotional when…when people pry into their personal lives.”
In this scene, the one thing that sparks an emotional response from Oswald is his
relationship with Marina and his family life. While Oswald had stated his Marxist-
Leninist beliefs to reporters and is shown handing out the pro-Castro leaflets in New
Orleans, it is the personal and not the political that the film emphasizes. No single,
coherent conspiracy theory is presented in contrast. The film concludes with Oswald
again leaving his cell to hear the verdict, only this time he is shown being slain by Ruby.
681 Thompson, 169.
682 Thompson, 174-175.
298

The screen reads “In creating the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, we have relied on
documented fact. We have assumed the roles of Prosecutor and Defense Attorney. We
do not assume the role of jury. The final judgment is yours.” 683 However, the case as
portrayed in the made-for-television movie appears stacked against the advocates of
conspiracy.
The movies JFK and Ruby, from the early 1990’s, both contain portraits of
Oswald. A trial is also at the heart of JFK, but it is Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay
Shaw and not an imagined trial of Oswald. Stone and Zachary Sklar, the co-author of the
JFK screenplay, based their script primarily on Garrison’s On the Trail of the Assassins
and Jim Marr’s Crossfire. They also had a character in the film, known simply as “X,”
voice the ideas of L. Fletcher Prouty, the retired Air Force Colonel who alleged that a
“Secret Team” of invisible power-brokers had Kennedy killed because of his plans to
withdraw from Vietnam. In this way, Stone advanced his version of the “peace thesis” as
the motive for the assassination. Stone was less concerned about who pulled the trigger
and more interested in why Kennedy was killed. For Stone, the answer is the Vietnam
War: JFK was killed to reverse his intention to pull out of Southeast Asia. This reflected
the director’s own artistic attempts in several movies, including Platoon, to come to
terms with his own experiences in combat during the war.
Stone adopted the Garrison thesis of a massive government plot to assassinate
Kennedy and cover up the crime is shown on screen. The Garrison character played by
683 Thompson, 183.
299

Kevin Costner declares that the assassination was a coup d’etat with involvement by the
CIA, FBI, anti-Castro Cubans, the mafia, and Lyndon Johnson himself. Lee Harvey
Oswald is presented as an intelligence operative but his exact role in the plot is not clear.
Garrison is unsure whether he played an active role or that he infiltrated the plot and was
trying to warn the FBI. Many scenes in the conspiracy literature are presented on film –
from Oswald’s connection to Guy Bannister, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw and his
alleged activities as an intelligence operative. Throughout the film, Stone mixed archival
footage with recreations of speculative material – angering many critics and former
officials. Stone showed as fact witness testimony that the Warren Commission had
discounted and the evidence collected by the real life Jim Garrison. In this way, he
offered a counter-weight to the Warren Commission’s own selective editing of testimony
and evidence. In some interviews, Stone said he was seeking to create a “countermyth”
to the official Warren Commission’s “myth” of the lone gunman. 684
The Warner Brothers’ film reached a vast audience – with a domestic gross of
more than $70-million – to popularize theories of Secret Agent Oswald and the “peace
thesis.” While some of Stone’s ideas were not new, he reached many more people
through his film than even the best-selling books about the assassination. Given the
success of his film and the popularity of the conspiracy theories about the assassination,
Stone presented “a people’s history” that many Americans embraced in contrast to their
skepticism about the Warren Commission’s “official history.”
684
Quoted in Robert Brent Toplin, History by Hollywood, (Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1996), 66-67.
300

The film begins with archival footage of Eisenhower’s farewell speech in which
he coined the phrase “military-industrial complex” and warned of the potential for it to
exert “unwarranted influence” on the U.S. government. 685 A narrator – in documentary
style – outlines the events of the Kennedy administration, including the Bay of Pigs, the
Cuban Missile Crisis, and the conflict in Indochina. The narrator describes how Kennedy
has brought a new, invigorating style to the White House and had been moving in the
months leading up to the assassination of reaching an understanding with Fidel Castro
and the Soviets, and ending the war in Vietnam. But, the narrator ominously notes that
“Suspicions abound that Kennedy is ‘soft on Communism’” – setting up the apparent
motive for the assassination. The audience hears the Kennedy’s famous peace speech at
the American University in Washington in which he called on Americans to “examine
our own attitudes towards the Soviet Union…For, in the final analysis, our most basic
link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish
our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” 686 Such an appeal to common humanity
would face opposition from those devoted to a black-and-white view of the Cold War.
Family photographs of Kennedy, his wife, and young children are interspersed
throughout to evoke an emotional response to the late president. But this ends with
ominously as Kennedy’s plane lands in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
685
Zachary Sklar and Oliver Stone, “JFK: the Documented Screenplay,” JFK: The Book
of the Films, (New York: Applause Books, 1992). The screenplay was revised somewhat
in putting JFK on the screen, but all the scenes discussed in this paper occur in the video
of the film, Oliver Stone, dir. JFK: Special Director’s Cut, 206 min., (Warner Home
Video, 1991). The director’s cut includes some scenes that were not shown in the version
shown in theaters.
686
Sklar and Stone, 5.
301

In the early scenes of the film, Stone shows how Garrison begins to probe the
assassination, and ties together the activities of Oswald, Ferrie, Bannister, and ultimately
Shaw to the plot. In the first scene with Garrison, the camera shows photos of him as,
according to the screenplay, “a young, Lincolnesque lawyer.” 687 This will connect later
to a scene in which “X” and Garrison meet at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington –
connecting the protagonists trying to find the killers of Kennedy with a saintly figure of
America’s history. Garrison is told the assassination, and goes to a bar to watch
television coverage, in which he and an aide learn that the president is dead.
Also watching the television at the bar is Guy Bannister and his detective agency
employee Jack Bannister. Bannister condemns Kennedy as “A Bullshit President” who is
friends with the Communists. “That’s what happens when you let the niggers vote. They
got together with the Jews and the Catholics and elect an Irish bleeding heart.” 688 This
introduces a theme throughout the movie in which Kennedy is shown as a friend to
African-Americans and a leader on civil rights while his enemies are racists. Garrison’s
maid often voices this theme by deploring Kennedy’s death, expressing her belief in a
conspiracy, and supporting her boss’s efforts to bring the conspirators to trial. In
contrast, Garrison’s wife suffers from her husband’s absence as he launches his
investigation and expresses doubt about his ideas of a conspiracy. Garrison’s wife –
played by Sissy Spacek – decides finally to stand by her husband and attend the trial near
the close of the film, as Garrison’s personal and professional life becomes reconciled.
687 Sklar and Stone, 10.
688 Sklar and Stone, 13.
302

By focusing on the hatred and bigotry of the plotters in contrast with Kennedy’s
supposedly enlightened policies, Stone gives the slain president a heroic dimension.
While the film focuses on the assassination and Garrison’s attempt to solve the mystery,
the movie is called JFK, and not “Garrison,” “Oswald,” or “Shaw” – even though these
individuals appear on screen much more than the president. The underlying theme is
about what was lost in the murder of Kennedy and his unfinished legacy.
In the bar scene, we are shown news footage – recreated by Stone – in which we
are told of Oswald’s arrest as a suspect in the assassination and his statements to the
press, in which he insists he is just a patsy, and that he did not shoot anyone. “I
emphatically deny these charges,” he declares. Later, a drunk Bannister and Martin walk
back to their office. Stone now connects Oswald with Bannister, who exclaims
”Oswald must’ve flipped.. .Who’d ever thought that goofy Oswald kid would pull off a
stunt like an assassination.” 689 At the office, Bannister becomes suspicious about
whether Martin has been refilling through his files – the implication being there is
something there about the assassination that he does not want anyone to see. Martin says
he has no reason to look in the file because “I saw enough here this summer to write a
book.” 690 Bannister becomes enraged and savagely pistol whips Martin. Stone is turning
the tables on the Warren Commission by recreating scenes based on testimony that was
rejected in the “official” version of Oswald’s life and the assassination.
689 Sklar and Stone, 14-15.
690 Sklar and Stone, 15.
303

When Garrison returns to the screen, he learns that Oswald had spent the summer
in New Orleans, and decides to investigate the matter. An aide finds that Oswald
apparently associated with David Ferrie, and that an anonymous source told him Ferrie
was to be the getaway pilot for the alleged assassin. Garrison questions Ferrie about his
trip to Houston and Galveston, Texas after the assassination, and the quirky pilot tells a
contradictory tale about going to ice skate and hunt geese. Garrison has Ferrie detained
for questioning by the FBI, but when the FBI declares Ferrie clear of any connection to
the assassination, Garrison drops the matter. However, three years later, Garrison has a
disturbing conversation with Louisiana Senator Russell Long, in which Long declares
“Those Warren Commission fellows were pickin’ gnat shit out of pepper. No one’s
gonna tell me that kid did the shooting job he did from that damned bookstore.” Long
expostulates in colorful language about the Warren Commission findings, and says “I
think Oswald was a good, old-fashioned decoy.” 691
As a result of this conversation, Garrison begins to read the Warren Commission
the 26-volumne Warren report. Stone makes this dramatically interesting by recreating
the scenes Garrison is reading about. The audience hears a witness testifying about
suspicious activity on the Grassy Knoll, and Stone shows quick-cut footage of men
moving about in uniforms and flashes of light and smoke. Garrison is becoming
obsessed with the testimony and begins to neglect his wife. He wakes up in the middle of
the night and starts explaining how Oswald was given a Russian examination while in the
Marine Corps. “Do I have to spell it out for you?” he tells his skeptical and sleepy wife.
691 Sklar and Stone, 25-26.
304

“Lee Oswald was no ordinary soldier. That was no accident he was in Russia. He was
probably in military intelligence. That’s why he was trained in Russian.” 692
Garrison takes his staff on a walking tour that shows that the 544 Camp Street
address Oswald stamped on his Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets was the same building,
with a different address, that held Bannister’s detective agency. Nearby are the offices of
the CIA, FBI, and Naval Intelligence in New Orleans. Stone shows footage of Bannister
leaving one entrance, and Oswald leaving another. Bannister argues with Oswald about
the address he has stamped on his pamphlets, which would indicate tie the alleged left-
wing activists with a right-wing, anti-Castro operative. Stone also recreated the scene of
Oswald’s fracas with Bringuier, and the radio debate. Garrison’s aide asks “What the
hell’s a Communist like Lee Oswald doing working out of Bannister’s?” Garrison replies,
“Y’ever heard of a double agent, Bill? I’m beginning to doubt Oswald was ever a
Communist.” 693 Later, Garrison questions Jack Martin, who confirms that Oswald,
Ferrie, and a mystery man named “Clay” were all linked together at the office.
In the film, Stone depicted many of the scenes contained in the conspiracy
literature about Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and Dallas. While Garrison and staff
members speculate, Stone shows the recreated scene on the screen, giving support to the
conspiracy theory. Stone mixed known facts and speculations throughout the film. For
example, Stone interspersed commentary about Oswald’s alleged ties to U.S. intelligence
with footage of a fake photograph showing Oswald posing with his rifle and leftist
692 Sklar and Stone, 32.
693 Sklar and Stone, 36.
305

literature being carefully constructed, as if this were an established fact. Also, Ferrie
allegedly died of a suicide shortly after Garrison’s investigation became public, but Stone
included footage of conspirators forcing pills down Ferrie’s throat while the DA
speculated about whether the victim was murdered. Before his death which occurred just
as news broke of Garrison’s probe, a frightened and hyperactive Ferrie tells Garrison that
he would be a dead man if he testified about the assassination. He says “Shaw’s an
‘untouchable,’ man—highest clearance. Shaw, Oswald, the Cubans – all [CIA].” 694
Other witnesses testified of the links among the conspirators. Garrison questions
his jive-talking friend, attorney Dean Andrews, about his Warren Commission testimony
that Oswald visited him in the company of “a few Cubano swishes” about getting his
undesirable Marine Corps discharge upgraded. 695 Andrews also claimed that a man
named Clay Bertrand contacted him about representing Oswald after the assassination.
Andrews denies that he knows who Bertrand really is, but Stone shows a scene with
Andrews meeting with Clay Shaw to show that the attorney is lying. In the scene,
Andrews angrily resists giving information to Garrison, saying “The government’s gonna
jump all over your head, Jimbo, and go ‘cock-a-doodledoo!” 696 Another witness – an
imprisoned homosexual gigolo called Willie O’Keefe– tells Garrison that he was a
homosexual escort for Clay Bertrand, and that he overheard a discussion with Bertrand,
Ferrie, and Oswald about assassinating the President. Ferrie declares “We need to have
three mechanics [assassins] at three different locations. An office building with a high-
694 Sklar and Stone, 91.
695 Sklar and Stone, 74.
696 Sklar and Stone, 65.
306

powered rifle. Triangulation of crossfire is the key….The crucial ting is one man has to
be sacrificed” – presumably the unwitting Oswald. 697 The fictional O’Keefe character is
a composite, and the statement about plotting the assassination is based on the story of
real-life witness Perry Russo. Stone and Sklar explained that they “chose to make
O’Keefe a convict to illustrate the ‘quality’ of Garrison’s witnesses, which received lots
of criticism.” 698 Stones uses O’Keefe as a vehicle to explore some of the testimony
about Shaw, Ferrie, and Oswald, but the fact that the character is fictional undercuts
Stone’s argument and seems like a questionable artistic choice in a film replete with
historical figures.
Stone has Garrison suggesting that Oswald was an agent of U.S. intelligence, but
the director does not focus his film on the alleged assassin. Instead, the Oswald character
– played by Gary Oldman – was a vehicle to explore the Garrison thesis of a wide-
ranging conspiracy and cover-up involving the U.S. government. Garrison and his
assistants discuss Oswald’s professed leftist beliefs coinciding with his service in the
Marine Corps and later defection to the Soviet Union. Garrison tells his assistants
“Dammit, it doesn’t add up! Ordinary people get blacklisted for leftist affiliations! The
State Department did everything short of dispatching a destroyer to Minsk to insure
Oswald’s return. Only intelligence people can come and go like that.” 699 Garrison
697 Sklar and Stone, 71.
698 Sklar and Stone, 66.
699 Sklar and Stone, 51.
307

declares “Y’all gotta start thinking on a different level – like the CIA does. We’re
through the looking glass. Here white is black and black is white.” 700
Later in the film, a skeptical investigator for Garrison questions why the probe
does not focus on the mob. Garrison responds “I don’t double their involvement…but at
a low level. Could the Mob change the parade route…or eliminate the protection for the
President? Could the Mob send Oswald to Russia and get him back? Could the Mob get
the FBI, the CIA, and the Dallas Police to make a mess of the investigation? Could the
Mob appoint the Warren Commission to cover it up?” Garrison declares “This is a
military-style ambush from start to finish…a coup-d’etat with Lyndon Johnson waiting in
the wings.” 701
Much of Garrison’s ideas about the assassination derive from a mysterious
character called “X” – an unnamed government official familiar with U.S. intelligence
who meets with the DA in Washington. “X” explains to Garrison that the main
beneficiary of the assassination is the military-industrial complex that Kennedy’s
predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned about. The defense establishment wants to
continue the war in Vietnam, while Kennedy is planning to withdraw U.S. troops from
the country. “X” tells Garrison that Johnson countermanded Kennedy’s order to
withdraw 1,000 troops from Vietnam shortly after taking office. That became a key issue
in the controversy over JFK. Garrison seems overwhelmed, and says he did not realize
Kennedy was “so dangerous to the establishment.” “X” says “That’s the real question,
700 Sklar and Stone, 59.
701 Sklar and Stone, 136.
308

isn’t it – ‘Why?’ – the ‘how’ is just ‘scenery’ for the suckers…Oswald, Ruby, Cuba,
Mafia, it keeps people guessing like a parlor game, but it prevents them from asking the
most important question – Why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the
power to cover it up?” 702 The answer for Stone and the real life Garrison is a conspiracy
and cover-up within the top echelons of the U.S. government. Secret Agent Oswald
indicates the participation of intelligence operatives, but recedes in importance.
Mixed in with the scenes of Oswald’s life are actual photographs of Lee Oswald
from his childhood and adulthood. Stone seems to be asking, could this normal-looking
kid grow up to be an assassin? The Garrison character, in his soliloquy to the jury at the
end of the film, calls Oswald “a sacrificial lamb” and asks “Who grieves for Lee Harvey
Oswald? Buried in a cheap grave under the name ‘Oswald’? No one.” 703 Here again is
District Attorney Garrison’s thesis from On the Trail of the Assassins that Oswald was
innocent and set up as the fall guy. The Garrison character describes Lyndon Johnson’s
departure from Dallas as a “getaway,” with the guilt of Oswald determined before there is
any investigation: “The ‘lone nut’ solution is in place.” 704
Oliver Stone does show on screen Oswald firing three shots at the Kennedy
limousine, as the Warren Commission said. However, this footage is portrayed in such a
way as to cast doubt on its truthfulness. Oswald must calmly squeeze off three shots on
the sixth floor of the book depository building, wipe the fingerprints from the gun, stash
the weapon, run down a flight of stairs, past two women who said they did not seem him,
702 Sklar and Stone, 110.
703 Sklar and Stone, 176.
704 Sklar and Stone, 156-157.
309

and enter the second floor lunchroom in time to be accosted by an officer searching for
the assassin. The viewer is left to conclude that the Warren Commission version is false.
Garrison, in his closing soliloquy, also presents the well known criticisms of the so-called
“magic bullet theory” that one of Oswald’s shots hit both Kennedy and Connally, and
then was recovered on a stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital in so-called “pristine”
condition. Garrison calls this “One of the grossest lies ever forced on the American
people.” 70578 Later in his soliloquy, Garrison says of the arrest of Oswald “The cops have
their man. It has already been decided -- in Washington.” 706
In his eloquent closing statement to the jury, Garrison says “Lee Oswald…was
only the first in a long line of patsies. In later years Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther
King…[would be] killed by [other] such ‘lonely-crazed men’…. We have all become
Hamlets in our country – children of a slain father-leader whose killers still possess the
throne. The ghost of John F. Kennedy confronts us with the secret murder at the heart of
the American dream.” 707 He tells the jury “It’s up to you” to convict Shaw and proclaim
the truth of the conspiracy but Costner as Garrison looks directly at the camera,
apparently telling the viewers it is up to them to see that justice is done. 708
Stone dedicated the film to the young, whom he wanted to take up the cause of
the Kennedy assassination. The film concludes on this note after the jury finds Shaw
“Not guilty.” A juror is heard saying the panel believed there was conspiracy but
705 Sklar and Stone, 152.
706 Sklar and Stone, 174.
707 Sklar and Stone, 176.
708 Sklar and Stone, 179.
310

whether Shaw was involved was unclear. That is a question unanswered throughout the
film: what was international businessman Clay Shaw’s actual role in the assassination?
He is seen discussing the plot in Oswald’s presence but we are not told his role. Shaw is
depicted as someone associated with the CIA, but Stone had to contend with the simple
fact that Shaw was acquitted. Perhaps the most telling line in the film, in this regard, is
spoken by the trial judge after he bars a policeman from testifying about Shaw’s alleged
alias Clay Bertrand. Garrison objects that the judge is ruining his case against Shaw.
The judge responds that “If that’s your case, you didn’t have a case.” 709
Stone also included some of the suspect testimony of a character called Charles
Goldberg – based on a real life witness called Charles Spiesel – who claimed he met with
Ferrie and Shaw and the two discussed the plot to kill Kennedy. Goldberg admits under
cross examination that he fingerprinted his daughter to ensure her identity, and that he
was “subject to hypnosis and psychological warfare.” Stone shifted the blame for this
questionable testimony from Garrison to a character named Jim Broussard, a composite
character who had wondered whether the mob had killed Kennedy and eventually quit the
case. Stone has one of Garrison’s assistants explain “He [Goldberg] was one of
Broussard’s witnesses.” 710 The implication is that Broussard was undermining the case
through a questionable witness. In reality, of course, Garrison had put Spiesel on the
stand only to have his credibility severely shaken. Stone used the Garrison prosecution
of Shaw as a vehicle to explore the assassination and give voice to the conspiracy theory
709 Sklar and Stone, 150.
710 Sklar and Stone, 149.
311

of a massive government plot. However, the focus on Garrison came at the cost of
dealing with the New Orleans DA’s questionable tactics and suspect witnesses. In an
ironical bit of casting, Stone had the real life Garrison portray Earl Warren on the screen.
Stone’s film, which opened in December 1991, was a great success both at the
box office and in the arena of public affairs. It sparked intense debate about the
assassination. The film also led to the creation of a congressional-mandated panel to
oversee the release of government documents about the assassination. The debate about
JFK often involved the question, “who should speak about history and matters of public
concern – journalists, historians, officials, or creative artists like Stone?” Some critics
deplored the use of a popular medium to advance theories about a high-level government
conspiracy. In the end, though, Stone presented a historical argument that many
Americans found more believable than the lone assassin theory. JFK played a role in
shaping public opinion – but it also reflected long-standing public skepticism about the
Warren Commission report and its version of Oswald’s life.
The debate over JFK began even before the film was finished and reached the
theaters. Washington Post reporter George Lardner Jr. excoriated Stone based on a script
of the film he obtained from assassination researcher Harold Weisberg. Weisberg, of
course, had helped Garrison with his assassination investigation, but the two later parted
ways over the way the DA was handling the case. Lardner deplored the “errors and
absurdities, large and small” in the script. Lardner in particular criticized the way
Ferrie’s death was depicted, and the elimination of witness Perry Russo with the
312

composite character, homosexual prostitute Willie O’Keefe. Russo – under “prodding
from hypnosis” – claimed Ferrie, Oswald, and Shaw had discussed the assassination plot
at a party. Lardner wrote that this was the “flimsy pretext” under which Shaw was
arrested and eventually prosecuted. 711
Critical assaults on JFK continued after its release, with historians, former
Kennedy and Johnson administration officials, and Warren Commission participants
targeting Stone’s film. Historian Arthur Schlesinger called Stone’s conspiracy theory
“reckless, paranoid, really despicable fantasy” in laying the blame on “the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, the CIA, the FBI, the military-industrial complex, anti-Castro Cubans, the mob and
Lyndon B. Johnson.” 712 In an ironic testament to the power of the film, debate raged
over its argument that Kennedy would have pulled U.S. forces out of Vietnam. Former
Kennedy administration official Leslie Gelb questioned the thesis that Kennedy sought to
pull out U.S. forces from Vietnam based on the National Security Action Memorandum
263, which he had issued shortly before his death. According to Stone, Johnson
countermanded the memorandum shortly after the assassination. Gelb pointed out that
the memorandum came during “one of the few periods of genuine optimism about the
war,” so the president “had some basis for believing the war might be won and that U.S.
forces could be withdrawn.” 713 Also, Gelb claimed that most officials saw the
withdrawal memo as a way to pressure South Vietnam’s President Diem to make political
711 JFK: The Book of the Film, 191-192.
712 JFK: The Book of the Film, 394.
713 JFK: The Book of the Film, 391.
313

eforms. Gelb and other commentators pointed out that there is no way of knowing what
Kennedy would have done regarding Vietnam.
Former President and Warren Commission Gerald Ford and Warren Commission
counsel David Belin also denounced JFK in an article published in the Washington Post.
Ford and Belin objected to Stone’s film as well as a documentary called The Men Who
Killed Kennedy that aired on the A&E network and its sister station, the History Channel.
Ford and Belin wrote that “The Common denominator of these commercial productions
is the big lie – the assertion that the top echelons of our government were conspiratorially
involved in that assassination and that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman who
killed President Kennedy and Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.” 714
Another defender of the Warren Commission, William Manchester, the author of
The Death of a President, wrote the New York Times to scold Stone for his rendition of
the assassination. Manchester compared the Holocaust to the Kennedy assassination. “If
you put six million dead Jews on one side of a scale,” Manchester wrote, “and on the
other side public the Nazi regime…you have a rough balance: greatest crime, greatest
criminals. But if you put the murdered President of the United States on one side of a
scale and that wretched waif Oswald on the other side, it doesn’t balance.” He claimed
this was why people have sought to find a conspiracy that “would invest the President
death with meaning.” There was no evidence of such a conspiracy, Manchester
concluded. 715
714 JFK: The Book of the Film, 253.
715 JFK: The Book of the Film, 452.
314

Stone strongly defended JFK, and the film had its admirers. Stone penned a
series of articles to various newspapers in a point by point rebuttal of his critics, but his
most wide-ranging defense came in an address to the National Press Club in Washington
on January 15, 1992. Stone declared he had a right to explore the Kennedy assassination
because “there is no accepted history of these events.” 716 He asked a series of questions
about Oswald: “Its it sacred history that this semi-literate high school dropout from Fort
Worth, Texas, professing Marxism, was taken into a secret, highly-trained Marine unit at
an air base where the U-2 flights originated in Japan?” 717 Stone raised similar questions
about Oswald’s life from his defection to his death, all suggesting the alleged assassin
was connected to U.S. intelligence. Stone declared that the Warren Commission version
of Oswald’s life and the assassination “is not history, this is myth.” 718 Stone criticized
journalists at the leading U.S. newspapers for failing to investigate the assassination.
Stone also explained that the central issue of the film was how it related to the
Vietnam War. He called the war the “watershed of our time and the divisions of our
country among our people opened up by it seems to gape wider and wider with each
passing year.” 719 He praised L. Fletcher Prouty and historian John Newman, who would
later write Oswald and the CIA, for their work documenting Kennedy’s plans to withdraw
from Vietnam and the reversal of policy under Johnson. Stone said he was attempting in
the film “to open a stall in the marketplace of ideas and offer a version of what might
716 JFK: The Book of the Film, 403.
717 JFK: The Book of the Film, 404.
718 JFK: The Book of the Film, 405.
719 JFK: The Book of the Film, 406.
315

have happened, as against the competing versions of what we know did not happen.” 720
In this respect, Stone resembled any historian marshalling his evidence to make an
argument. The director also was examining a seminal event at the height of the Cold
War, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stone’s film can be seen as an attempt, with
the end of the Cold War, to come to terms with that period of American history.
Prouty’s book “JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F.
Kennedy outlined some of the ideas Stone used in the film, particularly in the key scenes
involving “X.” The book was first published in 1996 after the release of JFK, but
Prouty had already discussed his ideas in an earlier book called the Secret Team and in
articles. Prouty’s views also showed how Oswald became a secondary figure in a vast
conspiracy. Prouty argued that a “power elite” or “high cabal” decided to kill Kennedy
because he threatened a system in which the military-industrial complex benefited from
the Vietnam War. “In Vietnam,” Prouty argued, “the United States won precisely
nothing, but that costly war served the primary purposes of the world’s power elite. For
one thing, they benefited splendidly from the hundreds of billions of dollars that came
their way.” Wars in proxy nations also provided “access to the natural resources and
human, low-cost assets” of Vietnam and other countries. 721 Kennedy threatened this
arrangement by his attempts to pull out of Vietnam, and rein in the CIA and Pentagon.
Prouty’s conspiracy theory is so all-encompassing that it resembles nothing less
that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In fact, Prouty was criticized for his connection
720
JFK: The Book of the Film, 408.
721
L. Fletcher Prouty, “JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F.
Kennedy, (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2009 (1996)), 235-236,
316

to the Liberty Lobby, the same group that Mark Lane defended in the lawsuit brought by
E. Howard Hunt. The Liberty Lobby has been accused of anti-Semitism. In his book,
Prouty wrote, “By the end of WWII the great financial powers of the Western world,
aided by their omnipotent Wall Street lawyers, had decided it was time to create a new
world power center of transnational corporations and, in the process, to destroy the Soviet
Union and socialism. To achieve this enormous objective they chose as their principle
driving force the covert power and might of the CIA and its invisible allies.” 722 This
nefarious power elite decides to conduct constant warfare, short of all-out nuclear war, to
make money and for Malthusian purposes to keep the population in check. The cabal
chooses Indochina as the main theater of this strategy.
In the film JFK, the character based on Prouty – “X” – expressed similar ideas.
During the Kennedy administration, Prouty served as a Pentagon liaison with the CIA. In
the movie, “X” called himself “one of those secret guys in the Pentagon that supplies the
military hardware – the planes, bullets, rifles – for what we call ‘black operations.’”
“X” said he “spent much of September ’63 working on the Kennedy plan for getting all
U.S. personnel out of Vietnam by the end of ’65.” 723 “X” described the many arms
contracts based on the Vietnam War, and exclaimed “No war, no money.” “X” also
describes “The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers.” 724 This
last point was based on Prouty’s singular use of ideas from a novel, Leonard C. Lewin’s
Report from Iron Mountain. Prouty claimed that the ideas in the novel resembled
722 Prouty, 18.
723 Sklar and Stone, 106.
724 Sklar and Stone, 112.
317

discussions in the Pentagon during the 1960’s about the need for warfare. Prouty quoted
from the novel that “The organization of a society for the possibility of war is its
principal political stabilizer…The basic authority of a modern state over its people
resides in its war powers.” 725 From a novel to Prouty to Oliver Stone to a theater near
you.
In such a far-reaching conspiracy, Oswald became an afterthought in Prouty’s
book and receded in importance in Stone’s JFK. Prouty wrote that “It is clear from the
abundant evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President Kennedy. Then why
study Oswald and that whole matter to absurdity? Such actions are an utter waste of time
and serve to obfuscate the truth.” 726 In Stone’s JFK, “X” voices similar ideas. Many
assassination researchers would, of course, disagree that Oswald is unimportant. To
them, Oswald holds the key to unraveling who was behind the plot. If Oswald was in
fact an agent of the U.S. government, that would be prima facie evidence of a conspiracy
and cover-up. But Prouty was not concerned with building an historical argument based
on evidence but sought to explain world affairs through his particular conspiracy theory.
JFK received much attention from scholars because the film’s popularity and its
ability to shape conceptions of the assassination (and Oswald). Film historian Robert
Brent Toplin, in History by Hollywood, pointed out that few films have had “as great an
impact on public affairs” as JFK: the movie led to the creation of an official panel to
725 Quoted in Prouty, 41.
726 Prouty, 136.
318

elease assassination-related documents. 727 However, Toplin and many other
commentators criticized film director Oliver Stone’s portrait of New Orleans District
Attorney Jim Garrison, who brought businessman Clay Shaw to trial in the assassination.
Shaw was acquitted. Toplin noted, “Far too much evidence has emerged raising serious
questions about how Garrison conducted the trial of Clay Shaw.” 728
Other commentators on JFK deplored its depiction of homosexuality. Historian
Michael Rogin pointed out that the main conspirators seen on screen are homosexuals:
Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, and a fictional composite character, imprisoned homosexual
prostitute Willie O’Keefe. Rogin wrote, “Homosexual panic displaces politics in JFK.
Stone’s Kennedy is at once the ‘father-leader’ whose killing unleashes chaos and the
beautiful young man...endangered by erotic attraction.” 729
Historian Robert Burgoyne was more positive in his examination of JFK. He
wrote that the film’s “disjointed temporality and dislocated spaces...can be read as
reflecting the distorted and irrational sense of national identity and the fragmented social
reality that the film finds at the heart of the United States in the post-Kennedy era.” 730
Whatever the strengths or shortcomings of the film, Stone’s JFK has molded public
perceptions of Oswald as a “patsy,” manipulated by dark forces in the U.S. military and
intelligence communities. Cultural historian Robert Rosenstone has written that the
727
Toplin, 47.
728
Toplin, 56.
729
Michael Rogin, “Body and Soul Murder: JFK, Media Spectacles, eds. Marjorie
Garber, Jann Matlock, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, (New York: Routledge, 1993), 10.
730
Robert Burgoyne, Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History, (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 90.
319

success of a historical film “has little to do with how the screen conveys data and
everything to do with home well films create and interpret a meaningful and useful
history, how adequately they embody its ongoing issues and insert themselves into the
ideas and debates surrounding a historical topic.” 73172 By this standard, Stone’s film was
a great success and offered a compelling version of two main ideas in the assassination
literature – Secret Agent Oswald and the “peace thesis.”
Ruby, a less successful film at the box office directed by John MacKenzie,
followed on the heels of JFK. This film also portrayed Oswald on screen but as a minor
character: the star of the film was Danny Aiello as Jack Ruby. The film outlines an
alleged plot involving a rogue intelligence agent named Maxwell and mobsters to killed
Kennedy and pin the shooting on Oswald. Oswald is seen handing the rifle to a hit man
rather than actually firing any shots. Ruby is involved with both the mob and the FBI,
but he is a portrayed as a sympathetic figure who wants to expose the plot; he vows to
“Blow this thing wide open.” His murder of Oswald is given a heroic gloss as an attempt
to bring the assassins to justice: “I done it so that one day everything’s going to have to
be brought into the open.” 73281 Unfortunately, Ruby is left to die in a Dallas jail instead of
being brought to Washington to tell his story. Whereas the screenplay for JFK
documents the assassination literature each scene is based upon, Ruby appears to take
more liberties in telling its story. But both films clearly offer a version of the
assassination at odds with the official Warren Commission report.
731
Robert A. Rosenstone, “Introduction,” Revisioning History: Film and the
Construction of a New Past, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 7.
732
John MacKenzie, dir., Ruby, 111 min. (Columbia Tristar Home Video, 1992).
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The 1988 documentary series The Men Who Killed Kennedy from British
producer Nigel Turner aired repeatedly on the A&E cable network and History Channel
in the United States beginning in 1991. 733 The initial five-part program did not try for
journalistic balance but showed a hodge-podge of conspiracy theories that did not always
fit together. Based on the statements of two French drug traffickers, the program accused
three Corsican mobsters with ties to the Marseille heroin network of carrying out a
contract from the American mafia to assassinate Kennedy. After the program aired in
Britain, the French government responded to the accusations by providing evidence that
it would have been impossible for the three to be in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
The mobster who allegedly fired the fatal head shot, Lucien Sarte, was in a Bordeaux
prison on that date. One of the alleged assassins, Sauveur Pironti, was serving on a
minesweeper based at Toulon, and the third, Roger Bocognani, was in prison in
Marseille. 734
While the program’s claim about the French connection to the assassination fell
flat, the documentary also presented interviews with a variety of witnesses to the events
surrounding the assassination and such assassination researchers as Fletcher Prouty, Jim
Garrison, and forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht. Many of the witnesses told of seeing
suspicious persons around the Grassy Knoll, or of hearing shots from the area. The
program even showed a colorized and enhanced photograph of a figure behind the picket
733
Nigel Turner, prod. The Men Who Killed Kennedy, 300 min. (A&E Home Video, 2002
(1988)).
734
Bugliosi, 904.
321

fence on the knoll apparently wearing a badge firing a rifle at the presidential limousine.
This figure was dubbed “Badgeman.” The witnesses and experts all told a tale at odds
with the Warren Commission version of the assassination and Oswald’s life.
The narrator – in the segment of the program called “The Patsy” – described
Oswald as a “figure of mystery” who was murdered before he could tell what he knew.
Ruth Paine, the housewife that Marina lived with, told the camera that people have
forgotten “how ordinary” Oswald was, while Buell Wesley Frazier, who drove Oswald to
work at the book depository, noted that Oswald loved children. The program interviewed
witnesses who questioned whether Oswald was the one to kill Kennedy or Tippit.
Detective Jim Leavelle reported that Oswald answered the investigators’ questions almost
as if the answers were rehearsed. The viewer is shown archival footage of Oswald in
police custody, including his statement that “I’m just a patsy,” until his own murder at the
hands of Jack Ruby.
The program then launched into a discussion of Oswald’s brief life in which the
narrator describes him as being “far more complex” than portrayed in history.
Researchers Gary Mack said he and other experts believe Oswald was not a perennial
loser, and that in the Marine Corps he was trained in Russian to prepare for his apparent
defection to Russia. Jim Garrison flatly stated Oswald “was employed by the Central
Intelligence Agency.” Garrison said before the assassination, Oswald must have thought
he was penetrating the plot, but became the scapegoat and was killed. The former
prosecutor said “disinformation” has made Oswald seem guilty when he “was probably a
hero.” Garrison helped present the familiar tale of Oswald in New Orleans, and his
322

contradictory activities there. Garrison called Guy Bannister a “key man in the
assassination,” and that he was “sheep dipping” Oswald to make him appear as a leftist.
Garrison concluded the segment by stating that in some ways, ‘The greatest injustice” of
the assassination is the way Oswald has been portrayed when he was completely
innocent.
Producer Nigel Turner added additional segments of the Men Who Killed
Kennedy over the years. The last three segments aired in November, 2003 proved the
most controversial by accusing Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson of being
responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy. 735 One of Johnson’s personal
lawyers in Texas, Barr McClellan, was the primary source for the accusation. In a
segment called “The Guilty Men,” McClellan said Johnson ordered the assassination to
protect himself from investigations into his criminal dealings. He said on the night of
November 21, 1963, Johnson met at the home of Dallas oilman Clint Murchison to
discuss the assassination plot with none other than former Vice President Richard Nixon
and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The History Channel eventually retracted the program
under pressure from Johnson’s widow, Lady Bird Johnson, former presidents Gerald
Ford and Jimmy Carter, and former aides to Johnson. The pressure forced the channel to
conduct an investigation by a panel of historians who deemed the charges to be false.
735
The History Channel and A&E Network no longer air or sell commercially the final
episodes of The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The author obtained a pirated copy of the
three episodes from the Ebay online auction website.
323

Bruce Weber of the New York Times noted that the controversy raised “issues of
censorship and responsibility in television broadcasting.” 736
Regarding Oswald, the most interesting part of the final three episodes of The
Men Who Killed Kennedy was a segment called “The Love Affair,” in which a woman
named Judyth Vary Baker claimed to have been Oswald’s mistress in New Orleans.
Baker told a wild tale involving an extramarital affair with Oswald mixed up with a plot
to kill Fidel Castro by making him die of cancer. Baker said she began an affair with
Oswald after meeting the polite, clean-cut man at a post. Baker claimed to be involved in
research in New Orleans with a renowned cancer expert aimed at developing a way to
inject cancer into a human being. The idea was to make Castro die of apparent natural
causes. The research and plot involved not only Oswald, but David Ferrie, Clay Shaw,
Guy Bannister, and Jack Ruby.
She claimed Ferrie worked on cancer research in his apartment. She said Oswald
was working with Bannister to uncover radicals in New Orleans, and that he was a
government agent. Oswald was sent to Mexico City to try to get into Cuba to convey the
cancer material, but cannot get a visa. Baker said Oswald did not want to take part in the
later plot to assassinate Kennedy, and tried to do his best to save the president’s life.
Little or no corroborating evidence or statements were provided to back up Baker’s
strange tale. Baker said she was told to keep quiet about her knowledge of the plot, but
736
Bruce Weber, “Moyers and Others Want History Channel Inquiry Over Film that
Accuses Johnson,” New York Times, (February 5, 2004).
Lynn Elber, “LBJ Aides Laud TV Program as ‘Victory for Truth,’” The Associated
Press, (April 7, 2004).
324

finally came forward. In one of her more plausible statements, Baker decried the fact that
she had caused “embarrassment” to her family by telling her story about Oswald, cancer,
and the Kennedy assassination.
In the early 1990’s, Oswald was a hot commodity after the success of JFK, and
the mainstream media entered the fray. The PBS television series Frontline aired a
program on November 16, 1993 called “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” near the 30 th
anniversary of the assassination. 737 The program leaned heavily on the Warren
Commission and its defenders, but included some discussion by G. Robert Blakey and
others that the mob may have been responsible. Not in doubt throughout the program
was the idea that Oswald was the trigger man in the assassination – whether he had
confederates or not. Frontline also presented little discussion of whether Oswald was a
U.S. secret agent or that a right-wing plot involving the CIA carried out the assassination.
After all, Newt Gingrich and his allies in Congress at the time might have protested and
tried to pull the plug on PBS, depriving the kids of Elmo and Big Bird. The program
attempted to offer both sides of the assassination debate in line with journalistic
conventions, but slanted the evidence in favor of Oswald as lone gunman.
The program began with archival footage of Oswald telling the press on
November 22, 1963 that the police had “taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the
Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy.” The narrator said Frontline would try to answer the
737
William Cran and Ben Loeterman, dir., “Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?” Frontline
(PBS Video, 2005 (1993)).
325

questions “Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?” and whether he was a “lone gunman,
conspirator or patsy?” Oswald was described as “the man at the center of the crime of the
century.” 738 The program included commentary from conspiracy theorists such as
Anthony Summers and mob expert G. Robert Blakey, but Warren Commission defenders
Gerald Posner, Robert Oswald, and Priscilla Johnson McMillan were more prominent.
Blakey also backed many of the Warren Commission’s findings about Oswald and the
forensic evidence – in line with his findings as chief counsel of the House Assassinations
Committee.
The program presented the details of the death of Oswald’s father before his birth,
his troubled early years, and the difficult relationship with his mother. Robert Oswald
deplored the “lack of stability” in his brother’s life, and the messages that Marguerite
imparted to her son that “The world owed her a living” and wanting “to be somebody.”
The narrator noted that young Oswald’s favorite program was “a saga of political intrigue
and espionage” – “I Led 3 Lives” – which told the tale of Communist party member and
undercover FBI informant Herbert A. Philbrick. The narrator intoned that “very real
events were making a lasting impression on Lee” – the conviction and execution of
nuclear spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Edward J. Epstein – the author of Legend and
a proponent of Oswald the Red theory – claimed this was Oswald’s “political
awakening.” The program recounted Lee’s troubles in school, his truancy and his stay at
the Youth House in New York City. Returning to his birthplace New Orleans, Blakey
738
“Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” Frontline transcript,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/parges/frontline/programs/transcripts/1205.html (accessed
6/1/2010), 1-2.
326

noted that Oswald grew up “in a community and environment of crime and corruption,”
consistent with the findings of Oswald’s mob connections. 739
One new piece of evidence the program uncovered was a photograph of Oswald
in a Civil Air Patrol barbeque in New Orleans in 1955 with group leader David Ferrie,
the alleged plotter in many conspiracy theories. The program emphasized, however, that
there is no evidence that Oswald and Ferrie had associated with each other in 1963 ahead
of the assassination. Posner said “There’s just no evidence” to back up “speculation” that
Oswald, Ferrie, and Ferrier’s employer, mob boss Carlos Marcello” conspired to kill
Kennedy. Anthony Summers merely stated that it was a “Shame” that Guy Bannister and
Ferrie were not “properly investigated” after the assassination. 740
Despite the photograph, Frontline accepted the Warren Commission’s view of
Oswald’s politics that he was a Marxist. The narrator said that at the age of 17, when
Oswald joined the Marines, “the young socialist had become an instrument of U.S.
foreign policy.” 741 The program mentioned that Oswald was stationed at a secret U2
airbase in Japan, but did not examine whether the supposedly Marxist Marine was
recruited by U.S. intelligence. Instead, Frontline focused on whether Oswald came into
contact with Japanese leftists, paving the way to his eventual defection to the Soviet
Union. The program did not explore whether this was a fake defection. With the fall of
the Soviet Union, the producers were able to interview former KGB officials, Oswald’s
Intourist guide Rimma Shirokova, and the doctor who treated Oswald after his suicide
739 Frontline transcript, 5-6.
740 Frontline transcript, 24.
741 Frontline transcript, 6.
327

attempt. They touted the party line that Oswald claimed to be an ideological defector but
he was of no use to Soviet intelligence. The narrator said that in Minsk, Oswald “had the
chance to become what he had always wanted to be, a model young Marxist.” 742
Frontline also interviewed some of Oswald’s friends in Minsk, including Ernst
Titovets. Titovets made recordings of Oswald speaking made-up dialogue in English to
help the Soviet university student learn the language. The program played an excerpt in
which Oswald played the role of a mass murderer who cut the throat of a young girl
“from ear to ear” and guns down eight men in the Bowery. Oswald said “It was very –
very famous. All the newspapers carried the story.” 743 The program immediately cuts to
the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, a not very subtle connection between Oswald’s
murderous musings and his alleged victim.
The program said that Oswald eventually soured on the Soviet Union, and
returned to the United States with his pretty young wife Marina and a baby daughter.
Frontline explored the possibility that the CIA debriefed Oswald upon his return. Former
CIA director Richard Helms said he did not know of any contact between the agency and
the former defector. However, a former CIA officer, Donald Deneselya, claimed that he
saw “a debriefing report” about a Marine re-defector who had worked at a Minsk radio
plant, indicating it was Oswald. 744 The program did not consider the possibility that
Oswald was a false defector on behalf of U.S. intelligence.
742 Frontline transcript, 10.
743 Frontline transcript, 12.
744 Frontline transcript, 14.
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McMillan told the program about Oswald’s marital difficulties in the United
States and his subscription to Communist and Trotskyite publications. The viewer is told
of Oswald’s attempt on General Walker’s life and shown the infamous backyard
photograph of Oswald dressed in black, with his weapons and leftist literature. Blakey
said Warren Commission critics seized on Oswald’s statement that the photograph was a
fake. Frontline said “The most famous critic is film-maker Oliver Stone.” 745 This leads
to footage from Oliver Stone’s JFK in which Garrison-Costner talks about Oswald as a
U.S. intelligence operative interspersed with someone creating the fake photo. The
program quotes its experts dismissing the idea.
Frontline delved more deeply in Oswald’s activities in New Orleans in the spring
and summer 1963, but ultimately found no evidence linking Oswald to a plot. “If there
was a plot to kill President Kennedy,” the narrator explained, “then it was probably
hatched in New Orleans. It was here that Lee Oswald may have crossed paths with men
that Hated Kennedy and wanted him eliminated.” However, Blakey then says that “If
you want to posit conspiracy, you must show associations. And unfortunately for a
simple explanation, the associations cut in two directions. Ambivalence, ambivalence,
ambivalence.” 746 The program presented information about Oswald’s leftist activities,
his attempt to “infiltrate” the anti-Castro Cubans, his fracas with Bringuier, and the radio
debate in which it is revealed that the former Marine once defected to the Soviet Union.
The narrator tells the viewer “Marxist politics were still his ruling passion,” he “became a
745 Frontline transcript, 17.
746 Frontline transcript, 19.
329

very visible spokesman for his ideals” in New Orleans, and that his “political hero was
still Fidel Castro.” 747 There is a discussion of witnesses who claim to have seen Oswald
together with Ferrie and Bannister. The viewer is told this “could be significant because
Ferrie, as well as Guy Bannister, was connected to one of the major figures in organized
crime” – Carlos Marcello. 748 Of course, other theorists focused on Ferrie and Bannister’s
connections to the CIA, but there is no suggestion of that.
Frontline interviewed the Odio sisters about the incident in which they said a man
identified as “Leon Oswald” together with two anti-Castroites visited their apartment.
The narrator merely noted that “the meaning of this incident remains elusive.” 749 The
producers also interviewed the former KGB officials who met with Oswald in the Soviet
embassy in Mexico City, and Cuban embassy employee Sylvia Duran. Oleg
Nechiporenko and Valery Kostikov told the story of how Oswald appeared disturbed and
had a gun when he visited the embassy. The program examined the issue of why the CIA
has never produced photographs or surveillance tapes from Oswald’s embassy visits, but
Frontline cited the statements of the former KGB officials to buttress the U.S. official
version that Oswald, and not an imposter, visited the Soviet embassy.
Frontline also hewed to the Warren Commission version of Oswald’s life during
his final weeks in Dallas before the assassination. Ruth and Michael Paine spoke of their
friendship with Marina and Lee, with Michael said of Oswald, “There’s no doubt in my
mind that he believed violence was the…only effective tool. He didn’t want to mess
747 Frontline transcript, 20.
748 Frontline transcript, 23.
749 Frontline transcript, 29.
330

around with trying to change the system.” 750 McMillan also told the story of Oswald’s
failed attempt to reconcile with his wife and have them live together again the night
before the assassination, thus emphasizing Oswald’s alleged personal motive for killing
Kennedy. The program received the witness testimony from the Warren Commission
about the killing of Kennedy and Tippit. Posner then claimed that “There is no credible
evidence to show that Jack Ruby acted at the behest of anyone in organized crime. [He]
was personally motivated from day one” to kill Oswald. 751
The narrator said Oswald’s “death meant the evidence against him would never be
tested in court. But 30 years later, the strength of that case continues to grow.” 752 The
program presented evidence of a fingerprint near the trigger guard of Oswald’s rifle that
an expert tied to Oswald based on multiple photographs of the print that he patched
together. Frontline solemnly concluded that “In the end, there is only Oswald, a man
who chose his own politics, invented his own secret life and made himself into an
assassin…There will always be one final mystery: Why did Oswald choose Kennedy?
But the solution cannot be found in the dark corridors of crime, espionage and power.
That question can only be answered by one young man and his answer will always be
silence.” 753 In the end, Frontline stuck with the Warren Commission concluding even
though the program had uncovered one piece of evidence that indicated Oswald and
Ferrie knew each other. Blakey was the only conspiracy theorist allowed much time, but
750 Frontline transcript, 32.
751 Frontline transcript, 42.
752 Frontline transcript, 44.
753 Frontline transcript, 46.
331

he was hardly a strong advocate for the critics of the Warren Commission. Evidence of
Oswald’s ties to U.S. intelligence was dismissed, and only the possibility of a mob plot
was considered.
Creative artists and documentary producers have used the mediums of film and
television to examine all the controversies surrounding the Kennedy assassination,
including the different interpretations of Oswald’s life. These productions have often
exhibited a degree of creative license, similar to the novels about Oswald, in trying to fill
in blank spaces in the historical record. By far, the most important film about the
assassination is Oliver Stone’s JFK. The Hollywood director and his film became a
focus of a sharp debate about the assassination and an artist’s role in interpreting history.
Film and television provided Warren Commission critics such as Stone and its defenders
to bring their arguments to a wide audience, even greater than the readers of the many
best-selling books about the assassination. Stone and British producer Nigel Turner
rejected notions of journalistic balance in trying to make their case for conspiracy in
visually-telling ways. These works not only shaped public perceptions, but their
popularity also reflected the skepticism of many Americans about the Warren
Commission report.
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CONCLUSION: CHOOSING FROM MULTIPLE OSWALDS
Charged by President Johnson to investigate all aspects of the assassination, the
Warren Commission fell short of its historic task of answering once and for all the
question, “Who killed Kennedy?” Instead, in the decades since the report’s release, a
heated debate has occurred in American society over the assassination and the alleged
culprit, Lee Harvey Oswald. Another official investigation, by the U.S. Congress, in the
1970’s concluded there probably was a conspiracy involving organized crime. In
addition, novels, non-fiction books, films, and television shows have all delved into the
mystery. As this dissertation has shown, the American public can choose from a variety
of theories regarding the assassination and the life of Oswald. In death, Oswald has taken
on a life as a post-modern man, in which multiple interpretations of his life are presented
in American culture depending on the perspective of the viewer.
The Warren Commission had trouble determining the motive of the man the panel
blamed solely for the assassination. However, the Commissioners recounted the details
of Oswald’s life in the hope of shedding light on his notorious deed. The Warren
Commission saw Oswald as mentally unbalanced and a communist – someone outside
the norms of American society. Oswald was a malcontent and loner, a Marxist, and a
little man who wanted to make himself great through a terrible deed. This fit into the
supposed historical pattern of the “lone nut” assassin.
333

The Commission’s defenders often emphasized one or the other aspects of
Oswald’s supposed motivation and personality. Oswald the Nut focused on his apparent
mental instability, his family woes, and personal failings. Oswald the Red stressed his
Marxist beliefs as the political motive for the assassination. The arguments emphasizing
Oswald’s political motivation often shaded into the possibility of a Soviet or Cuban-led
conspiracy, but more often, Oswald was seen as the lone gunman. Both theories
attempted to set Oswald apart as alien to American society – either socially or politically.
Creative artists in novels, books, films, television shows, and even a musical
explored Oswald’s psyche and the assassination in search of deeper truths. Some of these
works portrayed Oswald as an anti-hero – a radical individualist who committed a terrible
deed on behalf of his ideals. Films and television shows portrayed Oswald in a variety of
ways, sometimes using the vehicle of the trial that never took place to examine the
assassination controversy.
To the Warren Commission’s critics, Oswald was neither a lone nut nor a Red.
Instead, he was either the patsy of organized crime or an agent of U.S. intelligence. To
the critics of the Warren Commission, the murky details of Oswald’s life either show that
he is a pawn of U.S. intelligence, the mob, the Soviets, the Cubans, or anti-Castroites.
Many conspiracy authors, like Anthony Summers, believe U.S. intelligence and the mob
acted together, setting up Secret Agent Oswald to take the fall. The congressional
investigation blamed the mob, a politically more palatable conspiracy theory than one
involving U.S. intelligence. In some of the works presenting conspiracy theories,
Oswald was depicted as someone more or less innocent of involvement in the
334

assassination. However, he was connected to forces larger than himself let loose in
American society by the Cold War, and was ultimately the victim of those forces. To the
conspiracy theorists, Oswald the Red was “the legend” of an intelligence operative or the
convenient scapegoat to mask the true conspirators. Some authors even fantasized about
a brainwashed, Manchurian candidate Oswald or offered the theory, based on discordant
Warren Commission testimony, that a double Oswald impersonated the real one to take
the fall in the assassination. The Secret Agent Oswald theories appealed to those on the
left who saw the right as the more logical ideological enemy of the president than a
Marxist Soviet defector. Government secrecy and covert activities of the Cold War fed
these ideas. A conspiracy involving organized crime or right-wing extremists made
Kennedy into a flawed but heroic and tragic victim, appealing to some of his supporters
on the left.
A final determination of Oswald’s status has implications for assessing Kennedy’s
presidency, President Johnson, and the Cold War era. The historian Richard Hofstadter
perceptively wrote of the “paranoid style of American politics,” in which “uncommonly
angry minds” throughout U.S. history have used rhetoric of “heated exaggeration,
suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” 754 Some of the more extreme theories of
conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination bear some resemblance to the “paranoid style.”
However, the rhetoric described by Hofstadter also applied to some of the key suspects in
the conspiracy theories, including rabid anti-Castroite Cubans, right-wing extremists such
as David Ferrie and Guy Bannister, and perhaps renegade Cold Warriors in the U.S.
754 Hofstadter, 3.
335

intelligence establishment. The skepticism toward government reflected not paranoia,
but the experiences of the American people in the 1960s onward. The government was
caught in repeated lies about the Vietnam War, Watergate, and CIA misdeeds. Many
Americans had questions about the other assassinations of the 1960s – Robert Kennedy
and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Some cultural critics have deplored a culture in which some Americans believe in
a government UFO cover-up or official complicity in the September 11, 2001 terror
attacks. However, each conspiracy theory must be evaluated separately, and the critics
mistake cause and effect. Conspiratorial thinking, while not new as Hofstadter showed,
also arose from the effects of government secrecy and lies. There are real questions
about the evidence in the Kennedy assassination, and real questions about Oswald’s true
allegiances, his connection to Cold War espionage, and his personality and mental state.
As time has elapsed since the assassination, a majority of Americans have found the
critics of the Warren Commission more believable than the official report -- what Gerald
Ford called the “Gibraltar of factual literature.”
From the beginning, however, the Warren Commission faced a skeptical public.
According to the Gallup Organization, 52 percent of the public thought others were
involved in the assassination in a poll taken shortly after November 22, 1963. By 1976,
81 percent of the public believed in a conspiracy, which Gallup attributed to the highly
publicized findings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The percentage
remained high in 1992 at 77 percent after the release of JFK and the intense debate
336

surrounding the film – both pro- and anti-conspiracy. 755 By the 40 th anniversary of the
Kennedy assassination in 2003, the number of Americans who thought it was a
conspiracy was at 75 percent. Interestingly, those who thought it was a conspiracy were
divided on who to blame for the assassination, reflecting the many theories on the case.
Thirty-seven percent thought the Mafia was involved; 34 percent fingered the CIA; 18
percent blamed Lyndon Johnson, while 15 percent each thought the Cubans or Soviets
were involved. 756 The results of the survey are somewhat skewed because many of the
most popular conspiracy theories combine elements of the CIA, the Mafia, anti-Castro
Cubans, and even Johnson.
In a sense, the Warren Commission and its defenders see the assassination in
terms of the United States pre-November 22 nd , 1963. From that perspective, only random
acts of violence could fell a widely-regarded leader -- and then the assassin. There is
scant belief in shadowy conspiratorial forces active in the country. The critics of the
Warren Commission see the world as it unfolded post-November 22 nd , 1963. In the next
several decades, Americans would witness revelations about the Vietnam War, the
Watergate scandal, the power of the Mafia and extremist groups, the CIA-Mafia plots to
assassinate Castro and other intelligence operations, the Iran-Contra scandal, and even
the false intelligence made public before the 2003 Iraq War. The younger generation has
755
Darren K. Carlson, “Most Americans Believe Oswald Conspired with Others to Kill
JFK“ Gallup News Service, (April 11, 2001).
756
Lydia Saad, “Americans: Kennedy Assassination a Conspiracy,” Gallup News
Service, (November 21, 2003).
337

grown up with these events and the doubt surrounding the Kennedy assassination and the
failures of the Warren Commission.
Gallup found that belief in a conspiracy declines with age. Eighty-seven percent
of 18- to 29-year olds in 2003 believed Oswald was part of a conspiracy, compared with
just 61 percent among those 65 and older. The young are also more inclined to believe
the Mafia or CIA were involved; older Americans are more ready to believe the Soviets
or Cubans were responsible. 757 Many of the older generation would be more receptive to
seeing the Cold War divide as a struggle between good and evil, making them more
likely to see a Red conspiracy or to accept the official findings of a lone gunman. Those
born in the post-Kennedy era have grown up with a mass culture in which it is
commonplace to question the Warren Commission’s findings – from Hollywood films to
best-selling novels and exposes. The Warren Commission largely has lost the battle in
the minds of the young over the meaning of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life. Oswald’s smirk
no longer means smugness at his dark accomplishment, but instead indicates hidden
knowledge of the conspiratorial forces behind the assassination.
757 Saad, 4.
338

Figure 4: Oswald in Police Custody
339

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340

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CURRICULUM VITAE
Michael Moravitz graduated from Marshall High School in 1982. He received his
Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English from the College of William and Mary in 1986.
He graduated with a Master of Arts in American History from George Mason University
in 2002. He has worked as a journalist at the Voice of America since 1987.
348