Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

by Norman Mailer

  Someone gave me Lee’s address and one afternoon a friend of mine, Colonel Lawrence Orlov, and myself drove to Fort Worth, some 30 miles from Dallas. We drove over the dreary sewage-smelling miles separating the two cities. Texas does have lovely open spaces, but here they were degraded and polluted. After some searching, we found a shack on Mercedes Street in a semi-detached, slummy area, near Montgomery Ward.

  I knocked and a tawdry but clean young woman opened the door . . . To Orlov she was beautiful notwithstanding bad teeth and mousy hair . . . 6

  Marina offered us some sherry and said that Lee would soon be home from work. We spoke a little, fooling around; she had a pretty good sense of humor but the opinions she expressed seemed trite to me. And then entered Lee Harvey Oswald who was to become so famous or infamous. He wore overalls and clean workingman’s shoes. Only someone who never met Lee could have called him insignificant. “There is something outstanding about this man,” I told myself. One could detect immediately a very sincere and forward man. Although he was average looking, with no outstanding features and of medium size, he showed in his conversation all the elements of concentration, thought, and toughness. This man had the courage of his convictions and did not hesitate to discuss them. I was glad to meet such a person and was carried away back to the days of my youth in Europe, where as students, we discussed world affairs and our own ideas over many beers and without caring about time.7

  These positive evaluations continue:

  Lee’s English was perfect, refined, rather literary, deprived of any Southern accent. He sounded like a very educated American of indeterminate background.8

  . . . it amazed me that he read such difficult writers like Gorky, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Turgenev—in Russian . . . I taught Russian at all levels in a large university and I never saw such proficiency in the best senior students who constantly listened to Russian tapes and spoke to Russian friends.9

  . . . both Lee and I were non-conformist, even revolutionary . . . but my long years of experience in Latin America, followed by my son’s death and the ensuing sadness, made me commiserate with the fate of the poor and of the starving. As a younger man, I was career- and money-mad, a hustler . . . But Lee was the same since his childhood, which made him such a beautiful and worthwhile person to me.10

  . . . He was socially motivated, was a dreamer and a seeker of truth. But such people have a very hard time in life and that’s why so many people considered him a failure and a loser.11

  Very often people ask me with suspicion why I, a person with several university degrees and of fairly good financial and social standing—with friends among the rich of this world—became such a friend of that “unadjusted radical”—Lee Harvey Oswald? Well . . . I already spoke of his straightforward and relaxing personality, of his honesty or his desire to be liked and appreciated. And I believe it is a privilege of an older age not to give a damn what others think of you. I choose my friends just because they appeal to me. And Lee did.12

  De Mohrenschildt’s manuscript is titled I’m a Patsy. Jeanne De Mohrenschildt mailed it to the House Select Committee on Assassinations the day after her husband committed suicide in March 1977.

  In 1964, when De Mohrenschildt testified before the Warren Commission, he did not speak in such favorable terms of Lee or of Marina:

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. . . . I found her not particularly pretty, but a lost soul, living in the slums, not knowing one single word of English, with this rather unhealthy looking baby, horrible surroundings.13

  . . . She is that type of a girl—very negligent, poor mother, very poor mother. Loved the child, but a poor mother that doesn’t pay much attention. And what amazed us, you know, that she, having been a pharmacist in Russia, did not know anything about the good care of children, nothing . . . 14

  MR. JENNER. Do you recall making this statement . . . “Since we lived in Dallas permanently last year and before, we had the misfortune to have met Oswald, and especially his wife Marina, sometime last fall.”

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.

  MR. JENNER. What do you mean by the misfortune to have met Oswald and especially his wife Marina?

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. . . . it is not pleasant to have known the possible assassin of the President of the United States. And since he is dead, it doesn’t matter. But we still know Marina. We had the misfortune of knowing her—it caused us no end of difficulty, from every point of view . . . 15 people like us should have been protected against even knowing people like Oswald. Maybe I am wrong in that respect . . . 16 He is just a kid for me, with whom I played around. Sometimes I was curious to see what went on in his head.

  But I certainly would not call myself a friend of his.

  MR. JENNER. Well, that may well be. But Marina, at least, expresses herself that way—that you “were the only one who remained our friend.”

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. . . . We were no friends, nothing. We just were too busy to be with them—period . . . 17 they were very miserable, lost, penniless, mixed up. So as much as they both annoyed me, I did not show it to them because it is like insulting a beggar—you see what I mean . . . 18 I did not take him seriously—that is all.

  MR. JENNER. . . . Why didn’t you? . . .

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, he was not sophisticated, you see. He was a semieducated hillbilly . . . All his opinions were crude . . . 19 His mind was of a man with exceedingly poor background, who read rather advanced books, and did not even understand the words in them . . . So how can you take seriously a person like that? You just laugh at him. But there was always an element of pity I had, and my wife had, for him. We realized that he was sort of a forlorn individual, groping for something . . . 20 I was not interested in listening to him because it was nothing, it was zero . . . 21 After we found out what was going on in that town of Minsk, what was the situation, what were the food prices, how they dressed, how they spent their evenings, which are things interesting to us, our interest waned. The rest of the time, the few times we saw Lee Oswald and Marina afterwards, was purely to give a gift or to take them to a party, because we thought they were dying of boredom, you see—which Marina was.22

  While thirteen years separate us from the negative testimony in 1964 and De Mohrenschildt’s handsome appraisals of 1977, the gap between these two sets of evaluations is, nonetheless, too great. What is going on?

  5

  Not in a Million Years

  There is one place where De Mohrenschildt’s reactions in 1964 and in 1977 do not conflict. It gives a clue.

  Oswald had his own manuscript, a fifty-page work in longhand (the first ten pages of which were typed by Pauline Bates a couple of days after he came back to America). It is an ungainly text, dense in its material, but does offer a closely seen view of existence in the Soviet Union; at that time it would have been of some value to American intelligence: Oswald was offering a working-day perspective of life in Minsk that was percipient. (Indeed, a large part of his manuscript is printed in the Appendix.)

  Soon enough, he was induced to show these pages to his new friend George.

  Here is De Mohrenschildt’s account in 1977 of how he spoke to Oswald about the manuscript in 1962:

  “Your story is simple and honest but it is very poorly written. It is deprived of any sensational revelations and it’s really pointless. Personally I like it because I know Minsk, but how many people know where Minsk is? And why should they have interest in your experiences? Tell me!”

  “Not many,” Lee agreed mildly.

  I did not say, not to offend him, that his grammar was poor and his syntax was abominable. And those long, pompous words . . . 1

  His remarks to the Warren Commission in 1964 give much the same estimate:

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. . . . It was just a description of life in a factory in Minsk. Not terribly badly written, not particularly well . . . I just glanced through. I realized that it is not fit for publication. You can see it right away . . .

  MR. JENNER. It i
s horrible grammar?

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Horrible grammar.

  MR. JENNER. And horrible spelling.

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.2

  Given the huge discrepancy in other places between his manuscript and his testimony, it is obvious that De Mohrenschildt was working from one agenda in 1964 and another in 1977. Yet, on this specific point concerning the value of Oswald’s manuscript, his reactions are close to identical: It is the only place where there is agreement between testimony and manuscript. Even in 1977, De Mohrenschildt is still doing his best to shift attention away from the thought that he had any interest in Oswald’s manuscript. Evidence of interest, after all, could suggest the possibility that he had had a task to perform, and one part of it was, precisely, to obtain Oswald’s fifty pages long enough to have a copy made and passed on to the proper people. So, he was still debating in 1977—out of fear, presumably, of how much he had to tell—whether to reveal his covert connections. Yet, a few weeks later, most desperate for money, he was ready to be interviewed in depth by Edward Epstein, although not wholly ready—his suicide interrupted his confession. Most of what he had to tell was now lost.

  It has to be understood that the Warren Commission in their own decorous fashion had been suspicious of George, and pursued the details of his biography with exceptional attention. There was so much, after all, to check up on.

  Having arrived in New York just before the Second World War began, De Mohrenschildt soon went to work for his cousin, Baron Konstantine Von Maydell, on a documentary about the Polish resistance. Yet, not too long after the partition of Poland in 1939 between the Soviet Union and Germany, Maydell became a Nazi agent, or so he was later identified by the FBI. De Mohrenschildt, on his own declaration, was “collecting facts on people involved in pro-German activity” for another friend, Pierre Freyss, who was head of the Deuxième Bureau for French counterintelligence. De Mohrenschildt was almost certainly serving as a double agent in that period, but whether his primary allegiance was to the French or the Germans is another matter.

  By the following year he tried to join the OSS, and his name pops up in the intelligence files of various countries over the next fifteen years, culminating finally in some serious connections with the CIA, most notably on geological surveys he did in Yugoslavia and West Africa to provide an overview of their oil resources. (Needless to say, it also involved much mapping of sensitive areas.) On his return from Yugoslavia in 1957, he was debriefed by J. Walton Moore of the Domestic Contacts Division of the CIA in Dallas.

  It is amusing to observe how De Mohrenschildt, as he speaks to the Warren Commission, veers off from any suggestion that he might have sophistication in these matters:

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. . . . [Before] we met the Oswalds . . . we talked about them to Max Clark, and again to Bouhe. And I asked Mr. Bouhe, “Do you think it is safe for us to help Oswald?” . . .

  MR. JENNER. Why did you raise the question?

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I raised the question because he had been to Soviet Russia. He could be anything, you see. And he could be right there watched day and night by the FBI. I did not want to get involved, you see.3

  During the fall of 1962, De Mohrenschildt was arranging the largest business transaction of his life—a search for oil reserves in Haiti that could make him a wealthy man—with the aid, that is, of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, President of Haiti. George was hardly looking to add any Soviet associations to his name. Not at this point. Papa Doc was perfectly capable of seeing that George’s career, reduced to the line items of a dossier, showed an unmistakable profile: He had the classic background for a spy. Since these were the years when it was considered possible, even likely, that Castro, after his success at the Bay of Pigs, might make a move on the Dominican Republic or Haiti, it was a question whether the Baron, under the burden of his suspicious background, could arrange terms with a man as suspicious as Duvalier of infiltration by agents of Castro. So George needed the CIA to pass along a few hints that they were favorably inclined to him and to his project in Haiti.

  Before George would agree to meet Oswald, therefore, he not only checked with Max Clark, as had George Bouhe, but had looked to establish the understanding he needed with the CIA:

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. . . . I have the impression to have talked—to have asked about Lee Oswald with Mr. Moore, Walter Moore.

  MR. JENNER. Who is Walter Moore?

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Walter Moore is the man who interviewed me on behalf of the Government after I came back from Yugoslavia—G. Walter Moore. He is a Government man—either FBI or Central Intelligence. A very nice fellow, exceedingly intelligent, who is, as far as I know—some sort of FBI man in Dallas. Many people consider him head of FBI in Dallas. Now, I don’t know. Who does—you see? But he is a Government man in some capacity. He interviewed me and took my deposition on my stay in Yugoslavia, what I thought about the political situation there. And we became quite friendly after that. We saw each other from time to time, had lunch . . . I just found him a very interesting person.4

  De Mohrenschildt would have known that Moore was not FBI and not G. Walter but J. Walton. De Mohrenschildt was blurring his own relation to the CIA by projecting himself as an innocent. Since J. Walton Moore had debriefed him on Yugoslavia, De Mohrenschildt would have had to know that Moore was CIA. The FBI by its charter did not deal with foreign affairs and the CIA most certainly did! Of course, by 1964, De Mohrenschildt’s game had been seriously skewed because of the assassination, and the CIA could wreck his project in Haiti if he now connected the Agency in any small way with Oswald.

  Back in 1962, however, the CIA had had need of someone with real skills to debrief Oswald. Lee was an unknown quantity. Even as the KGB had contemplated the possibility that their Marine defector was some new kind of CIA agent, now the CIA could return the compliment. Was the KGB engaging in a novel ploy? Oswald could have been sent back from Russia for purposes of Soviet propaganda. A direct debriefing, if it turned out badly and Oswald found a newspaper that would not hush it up, could prove internationally embarrassing and, worse, would injure relations once more with J. Edgar Hoover: Oswald was now ostensibly under FBI jurisdiction. Technically speaking, the CIA was not supposed to go near him. Yet, the CIA needed to know what Oswald, after living in the Soviet Union for two and a half years, could tell them about life there. A debriefing in depth could fine-tune their knowledge. The need was real, but the operation, while small, had to be delicate. They would go in for an unwitting debriefing—even as Oswald had been debriefed in Moscow without formal declaration.

  MR. JENNER. Did the Oswalds, either together or separately, come to your home frequently or several times and spend the day with you?

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I was trying to pin down how many times we saw them in all, and it is very hard, you know. I would say between 10 and 12 times, maybe more. It is very hard to say . . .

  MR. JENNER. And [Oswald] was aware that you had approached [people] to have them out socially . . .

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes . . . I did ask some people to invite them because they were so lonesome . . . 5

  In the novel Harlot’s Ghost, Hugh Montague, also known as Harlot, gives a lecture on the procedures employed to gain the confidence of a person who has been selected as a target for espionage. “Disinterested seduction,” Harlot assures his CIA class, is the underlying mechanism. He then asks:

  “Would any of you be familiar with the cardinal law of salesmanship?”

  Rosen’s hand shot up. “The customer doesn’t buy the product until he accepts the salesman.” . . .

  “Perfect,” said Harlot. “I, as the principal, am there to inspire the putative agent—my client—with one idea. It is that I am good for his needs. If my client is a lonely person with a pent-up desire to talk, what should be my calculated response, therefore?”

  “Be there to listen,” said several of us at once . . .

  “Clear enough,” said Harlot. “In doubt, always treat
lonely people as if they are rich and old and very much your relative. Look to provide them with the little creature comfort that will fatten your share of the will. On the other hand, should the client prove to be a social climber who gnashes his teeth at the mention of every good party he was not invited to, then sympathy won’t get you much. Action is needed. You have to bring this person to a gala gathering . . . However,” added Harlot, “one has to keep a firm grasp on the intrinsic problem. An exceptional friendship is being forged. One is acting as generously as a guardian angel. That can arouse suspicion in a client [so] you, as the guardian angel, have to be ready to dissolve the client’s distrust. It is reasonable to assume that the client, in some part of himself, knows what you are up to, but is amenable to your game. Now is the time to talk him into taking the first step [but] keep the transition modest . . . Reduce the drama. Request something minor . . . Warm the soup slowly . . . Now, ask for a bit more. Can your friend let you have a look at X report? You happen to know that this X report is sitting on his desk.”6

  Oswald, of course, was not being developed as an agent. It was much too early for anything like that. The immediate objective was to determine whether the KGB had turned him into their agent and, if not, to debrief him skillfully of his knowledge of Minsk and learn enough about his character to decide whether he could be of any use.