Murder Tales: The JFK Conspiracies

by H. N. Lloyd

  At seventeen Oswald left high school, without graduating, and joined the Marines. Oswald did this for two reasons, he was following in his brothers footsteps, and Oswald idolised his brother, secondly he wanted to escape his mother’s apron-strings. Despite his previous dalliances with socialism/Marxism, Oswald was granted a security clearance to handle classified military intelligence. He was trained to use radar; and assigned to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, then he was posted to Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan, a place that was a known front for Top Secret Naval Intelligence operations. Here Oswald learned to use firearms, his shooting wasn’t particularly spectacular, he was first recorded as a Sharpshooter, excellent for a civilian, average for a Marine, and then was downgraded to a Marksman, good for a civilian, poor for a Marine. He wasn’t a very popular Marine, and his fellow Marine’s felt that he was ‘sloppy’ and a ‘troublemaker’, he had no friends in his unit; and was resentful of authority. Oswald was court-marshalled and demoted after he shot himself in the elbow with a privately owned and unregistered .22 derringer. For this offence he was reduced in rank from a Private First Class to a simple lowly Private. He was then placed in the brig for letting his temper get the better of him and punching the Sergeant he felt was responsible for the shooting incident. Oswald’s medical records show that he was treated for a venereal disease, but was not kicked out of the Marine Corp as would be usual, because his infection occurred, ‘in the line of duty, not due to his own misconduct’. What Oswald could have been doing as part of his duties to get infected with a venereal disease is lost to history, but might hint at something the FBI failed address further, covert operations perhaps? Whilst in the Marines; Oswald also took it upon himself to learn Russian, but when he took a proficiency exam in the subject he came out with just a poor rating. Oswald was released from active duty on Friday the 11th of September 1959; he claimed that his mother couldn’t fend for herself; and that she desperately needed his help. Oswald was given a special Hardship Discharge because of the sob story he had given his superiors. This also meant that rather than his ties being completely severed with the Marines; he was placed on the Marines Corp reserve list. After what transpired over the next few weeks he was taken off the reserve list; and given a full retrospective Undesirable Discharge.

  Whilst in the Marines, Oswald had applied for a passport, and he received it the day before his leaving the armed forces. He had also saved up his pay and had a nest egg of $1,600; which in today’s money would have a buying power equivalent to $12,000. Oswald informed his family that he was going to take some time out using his savings to travel and study abroad, arranging to attend the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland. On Friday the 9th of October 1959, Oswald sailed into Southampton, England, on the SS Marion Lykes. Here he arranged for a flight to Helsinki on the same day. At Helsinki, Oswald arranged for a tourists visa to enter Russia. He received his tourist’s visa on Wednesday the 14th of October 1959, and the very next day he crossed over into Soviet Russia. He then travelled by train from Vainikkala to Moscow; arriving there on Friday the 16th of October 1959. That evening he told his tourist guide that he wished to defect. When interviewed by the Russian officials; Oswald informed them that he had been a Marine Corp radar operator and that he had been privy to secret information that would be of interest to the Russians, he would be willing to give them this information once his Russian citizenship had been confirmed. On Wednesday the 21st of October 1959, Oswald was informed that his application for Soviet citizenship had been refused and he would be deported that night back to America. Oswald was crushed, later that evening Oswald slit his left wrist whilst he lay in the bath. He was taken to a psychiatric hospital; where he needed five stitches in his wrist and he was kept under observation. Oswald was released from the psychiatric hospital on Saturday the 31st of October 1959, upon leaving the hospital he went straight to the American embassy and spoke to Embassy Staff member Richard Snyder. He told Snyder he wished to renounce his American citizenship. The news reached America and became a front page headline, a former Marine and top secret Radar operator defecting. Now the Russian’s were a canny lot, and they suddenly realised they had an excellent propaganda coo in their midst. So on Monday the 16th of November 1959, Oswald was informed that although he was not being given full Soviet citizenship, he would be allowed to stay indefinitely in Russia as a ‘resident alien’. He was promptly shipped off to Minsk with much pomp and circumstance; and put to work in the Gorizont Electronics plant as a lathe operator. To keep Oswald sweet, Communist party officials arranged for him to be placed in an apartment that was relative luxury compared to his co-workers’ abodes, and for him to be given a pay grade that far outranked his menial job. Oswald wasn’t trusted, he was placed under constant surveillance, his phone calls were tapped; and all of his closest friends were in fact KGB stooges, the genuine locals treated Oswald with nothing but contempt and fear. Oswald began to believe that he was being treated like a fool, he had expected to come to Russia and be treated as some kind of hero; instead he felt like a forgotten and unappreciated factory worker. He also realised that his immense pay salary was worthless, there was nowhere and nothing to spend his money on in Minsk; Russia simply didn’t have the amenities and mod-cons of a modern American city. Oswald began to regret his rash decision to defect. In January and February, March and May of 1961 Oswald wrote to the American Embassy asking for his passport back; and for all possible charges of treason against him to be dropped. He then repeatedly kept writing in the subsequent months asking for updates on his request.

  On Friday the 17th of March 1961, Oswald met nineteen year old Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova at a local dance. Her step-father had been a fairly well respected KGB officer in Arkhangelsk, and at the time of meeting Oswald; Marina had been living with her uncle Ilya Prusakov, a much feared member of the secret police. Marina had allegedly moved to Minsk to study pharmacology. It’s fair to say that it was a whirlwind romance, for the couple met and married within six weeks, which in itself led some researchers to ask if Marina might have been put up to seducing Oswald by the KGB. The FBI’s report barely mentions Oswald’s wife, and its seems that their investigation into her past was equally perfunctory, for if they had done a little more digging they would have discovered some very worrying facts indeed. It seemed that Oswald was not the first defector that Marina had taken a fancy too; Robert Webster had defected to the USSR in 1959, after he had been caught in a classic KGB ‘honey-pot’ trap. Webster had lived in Leningrad with the woman who had seduced him into defecting to Russia; and giving over his industrial secrets. Whilst in Leningrad, Webster reported that he was approached by Marina Oswald; and that she too had tried to strike up a friendship with him. Marina Oswald denied having ever met Webster; however she was later unable to explain why Webster’s address was written in her address book. Interestingly the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Norman Mailer; stated as fact in his journalistic endeavour ‘Oswald Tales’ that not only was Marina a member of the KGB, but she was also involved in the type of ‘honey-pot’ schemes that entrapped Robert Webster. Based in a hotel in Leningrad, Marina was used as what the KGB termed a ‘swallow’, an attractive young woman who seduced a target; and exploited the trust that forms between lovers; worming out the targets secrets. Eventually this honey-pot gang dissolved when the hotel management began to believe they were just a gang of common all garden prostitutes; and chased them from the hotel. Nevertheless after the failure of this honey-pot scheme; Marina allegedly continued to hobnob with high-up government officials and diplomats. Whilst her connection to the KGB is not an iron clad fact, the evidence is certainly persuasive, especially when one realises that in communist Russia people were not exactly free to marry whomever they wanted. In order to marry a foreign national, even one who wished to defect, Marina would have had to have secured permission from the KGB; further to this Petr Deryabin asserts that permission was only granted with the caveat that the potential bride became an asset of the KGB. The
CIA were certainly not convinced by Marina’s protests of innocence and portrayal as a shocked and grieving widow. They carried out their own investigation into Marina’s background; and drew up a report that listed twenty-nine indications that she was in fact a Russian spy. One of the CIA’s major concerns was Marina lying about her ability to speak English. In her dealings with the FBI; and later the Warren Commission, Marina hid behind the facade of not being able to speak a word of English and requiring a translator, yet the CIA discovered a veritable mountain of evidence that Marina was quite adept at the English tongue:

  1. As far back as 1961 Marina and Oswald were sending letters to each other written in English.

  2. Robert Webster stated that when he knew Marina in Leningrad she spoke good English, although inflected with a heavy accent.

  3. Back in Russia; photographs were discovered with descriptions written on the reverse side by Marina in both Russian and English.

  4. Upon searching Marina’s apartment as part of their investigation, Dallas police uncovered a notebook owned by Marina, in which she had written notes to herself in English.

  5. Her boss; a chap called James Martin, who also subsequently became Marina’s lover, stated that Marina understood all instructions given to her in English. She had read her contract without any difficulty, and signed it to signify her understanding; the contract had of course been written in English. In fact when James Martin later attempted to tell the Warren Commission this, and a lot more about Marina’s dodgy background, that she herself had failed to disclose, Martin found himself suddenly interrupted by Earl Warren; who ordered the stenographer to tear up the records of Martin’s evidence.

  6. Marguerite Oswald stated that she had many conversations with her daughter-in-law after her arrival in the United States; all of these conversations had been conducted in English.

  7. Marina had spoken to staff at the Reilly Coffee Company; when Oswald had been employed there; and the staff reported that Marina spoke perfect English.

  All this evidence; and the FBI never once mentioned any of these lingering doubts in their report. They also failed to mention that Marina had told them that she had been receiving English lessons from one George Bola, who just happened to be Jack Ruby’s next door neighbour. The CIA certainly noticed the inconsistencies, coincidences and peculiarities in her story, and they kept tabs on Marina for several years after the assassination, when Marina wanted her side of the story put to the public, the CIA made sure that one of their assets did the job, although why the CIA should want such editorial control over Marina’s life story is unknown. Priscilla Johnson was selected to author ‘Marina and Lee’, given the fact that Johnson had previously met both Oswald and Marina; when she had worked for the American embassy in Moscow during Oswald’s defection. Donald Jameson, the CIA’s Chief of the Soviet Russia Division comment in a memo, ‘I think that Miss Johnson can be encouraged to write pretty much the articles we want’. Despite all these inconsistencies and clandestine shenanigans; the official FBI report into President Kennedy’s assassination happily reported that Marina was simply a shocked and grieving widow; confused and hurt by the whirlwind of events she had been caught up within.

  On Saturday the 8th of July 1961, Oswald attended the American Embassy where he signed documentation confirming that he had not taken an oath of allegiance to the USSR. He also confirmed that he had not been granted Soviet citizenship; by giving the Embassy staff his Soviet ‘stateless’ passport. On Monday the 10th of July 1961, Oswald returned to the embassy where he completed the paperwork to regain his American passport. On Friday the 18th of August 1961, the State Department authorised the return of Oswald’s passport. Despite receiving his passport back in the summer of 1961, by January 1962 Oswald was still living in Russia. It was from Russia that he wrote to the Naval Secretary; his alleged future victim John B. Connally; protesting his undesirable discharge from the Marines. On Thursday the 15th of February 1962, Marina gave birth to the Oswald’s first child, a daughter who they called June. On Saturday the 24th of February 1962, Oswald applied for a repatriation loan for him and his family, the request was denied. On Wednesday the 7th of March 1962, the State Department reversed this decision; and gave Oswald $435.71; this was for the express reason of getting Oswald and his family back to the United States of America.

  On Wednesday the 13th of June 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald, Marina and June docked at Hoboken, New Jersey; Oswald disembarked the SS Maasdam expecting a heroes return, press and family eagerly awaiting the return of the prodigal son. He was greeted by nothing and no one. Instead the young family quietly shuffled through immigration; and stated that they would be living at 7313 Davenport Street, Fort Worth, Texas, living with Robert Oswald, the brother that Oswald had once idolised. In view of his attempted defection, Oswald was placed under immediate FBI scrutiny, he was interviewed by the FBI on Tuesday the 26th of June 1962, where he was said to be rude and curt. He denied renouncing his American citizenship; and also denied that he had given away any state secrets. He fervently denied that he had been turned and recruited by the Soviet Secret Service. Ludicrously Oswald claimed that his antics in Russia and his attempted-defection had simply been an extended holiday. He claimed that he had stayed in Russia for so long simply because the bureaucracy in getting Marina out of the country had been lengthy and complicated.

  In September 1962, Oswald began to subscribe to ‘The Worker’, an east coast based Communist magazine, Oswald had previously been seen reading copies of this publication when he was in the Marines. On Monday the 11th of March 1963; ‘The Militant’ the magazine of the Socialist Workers Party, printed a letter signed L. H. of Dallas; the FBI concluded that Oswald was the author of this letter.

  When Marina Oswald was interviewed by the FBI; she informed the agents who interviewed her that President Kennedy had not been the first assassination that Oswald had attempted. On the night of Wednesday the 10th of April 1963, Oswald had skipped a typewriting class; and had instead gone to the home of General Edwin Walker, a strident anti-Castro mouthpiece in the local Dallas media. Outside the generals’ home; Oswald had hidden in some bushes and had fired a rifle at the general. Oswald had thankfully missed his target, the bullet striking the window frame, and he had fled the scene. The bullet fired at General Walker was recovered by the FBI and tested, unfortunately it was too badly mutilated and distorted for them to match it to Oswald’s firearm, however it did display some of the same ‘characteristics’ as the bullets fired from Oswald’s rifle.

  By June 1963, Oswald was living in New Orleans. He wrote to the editor of ‘The Worker’ magazine; and informed them that he had set up a New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He asked the magazine to send him as much literature and leaflets as they could; so that he could hand them out on the streets of New Orleans and garner support for the movement. He subsequently wrote to Gus Hall and Benjamin Davies Jnr, respectively the General Secretary and National Secretary of the Communist Party of America, in his letters he included honorary membership cards for the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. At this time Oswald had took to wandering around New Orleans; wearing a sandwich board that read, ‘Hands Off Cuba!’ and, ‘Viva Fidel!’ On Friday the 9th of August 1963, Oswald had been arrested in New Orleans and charged with ‘Disturbing the Peace by Creating a Scene’. He had been passing out leaflets in Canal Street, when three Cuban immigrants had taken umbrage with his pro-Castro stance. Oswald had received a $10 fine for this offence. Before his arrest; he had appeared on local radio supporting Castro, and on Friday the 26th of July 1963, Oswald had appeared on ‘Conversation Carte Blanche’ on Station WDSU. In this radio programme; Oswald put an argument forward for ending the sanctions levelled against Cuba, and he even ventured some mild support for President Kennedy; when he stated that he did not agree with Fidel Castro when he called Kennedy ‘a ruffian and a thief’. On Saturday the 17th of August 1963, Oswald gave a further interview, this time on television, where he
identified himself as a Marxist, and advocated America being more lenient in its commercial and political dealings with Cuba. Again in this interview Oswald did not display any hard-line politics against President Kennedy or his administration, his primary concern was, like his organisation stated; fair play for Cuba.

  On Wednesday the 25th of September 1963, Marina and June Oswald left New Orleans bound for Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was not with his wife and child at this time. The FBI surmised; after viewing surveillance photographs of the Russian Embassy in Mexico City; that Oswald was in all probability travelling via bus to Mexico during this timeframe. Oswald needed a visa to get into Mexico, and low and behold if not stood in front of Oswald in the queue as he waited to get his visa, was an off duty CIA agent; also trying to get a tourist visa for Mexico. Agent William Gaudet somehow got a good look at the man stood quietly behind him, and was able to later confirm that this man was Lee Harvey Oswald. How was he able to remember the unassuming Oswald months after simply being stood in front of him in a queue? Well, Gaudet claimed that Oswald was a bit of a local character in New Orleans, and he’d seen Oswald wearing his sandwich board and handing out ‘Fair Play For Cuba’ leaflets.