by H. N. Lloyd
The FBI tracked down a Dr. and Mrs John McFarland of Liverpool, England, who confirmed that they had befriended a man they positively identified as Oswald on a coach trip from Houston, Texas to Mexico City. Oswald had told Dr. McFarland that he was going to go to Cuba to meet Fidel Castro. The FBI traced Oswald to the Hotel del Comercio in Mexico City; where he was registered as staying from Friday the 27th of September 1963 until Tuesday the 1st of October 1963. On further investigation the FBI discovered that Oswald had visited the Cuban Embassy; and attempted to get a tourist visa to Cuba. When he was told that this would not be possible without first obtaining a Russian visa, Oswald allegedly had one of his legendary fits of temper. Oswald subsequently went to the Russian embassy; and attempted to gain a tourist visa to enter Russia, given his previous attempted defection to Russia and then repatriation back to America; the request was obviously flatly denied. Oswald was incensed by this; and allegedly created quite the scene; some reports even suggested Oswald brandished a gun. The CIA also informed the FBI that they had in their possession several taped phone calls intercepted going into the Russian embassy; which held on them conversations Oswald had with embassy staff, proving that Oswald was in Mexico at this time.
Back in Dallas; Oswald began looking for work and applying for various jobs. There seemed to be nothing in the locations of the jobs he applied for that indicated he was looking for work in a specific location, i.e. on the route of the up and coming Presidential motorcade. On Tuesday the 15th of October 1963, Oswald applied for the job at the Texas School Book Depository; he was hired on the spot; and given instructions to start work the very next day. Five days later, on Sunday the 20th of October 1963, Marina gave birth to the couple’s second child, Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald. The next night Oswald for some reason attended a right wing rally, where he listened to his former attempted victim; General Walker; give one of his regular right wing rants.
On Tuesday the 29th of October 1963, FBI Agent James Hosty; the man assigned to investigate Oswald after his defection, interviewed Marina at her home, when Oswald found out about this interview he was furious, and wrote Hosty a letter denouncing the ‘harassment’ of his wife. Hosty was unperturbed, and on Tuesday the 5th of November 1963 Hosty returned to interview Marina Oswald once again. Oswald had instructed Marina to get Hosty’s car registration number; if he were to ‘harass’ her any further, this Marina dutifully did, and passed Hosty’s car registration number on to Oswald, what Oswald wanted the registration number for remains unclear. On Tuesday the 12th of November 1963, Oswald personally attended his local FBI office, where he hand delivered a further communication to Hosty, allegedly warning Hosty to stay away from his wife.
Lee Harvey Oswald had been renting 1026 North Beckley Street in Dallas; under the name of O. H. Lee; he had lived there since becoming estranged from Marina on Monday the 14th of October 1963. Every weekend he would travel to Irving, Texas, where he would meet Marina, and see his daughters. On Thursday the 21st of November 1963, Oswald asked his colleague Buell W. Frazier for a lift to Irving a day earlier than usual; as he needed to collect some curtain rods from his ex-landlady, a Mrs Ruth Paine. Oswald arrived that evening at 2515 West Fifth Street, and he failed to mention any curtain rods to Mrs Paine, and certainly did not take any away with him, however it was deduced that this was the point where Oswald collected the 6.5 mm Carcano Model 91/38 rifle (more commonly referred to as the Mannlicher-Carcano by most buffs) which had been left wrapped in a blanket in the garage of 2515 West Fifth Street. Oswald had bought the Mannlicher-Carcano in March 1963; via mail order from Klein’s Sporting Goods store of Chicago. Oswald had used the name A. Hidell of PO Box 2915, Dallas, Texas, and the gun had been paid for with a thirty dollar postal order. At the same time Oswald used the same pseudonym and postal address to purchase the .38 Special Smith and Wesson revolver, serial number V510210, from George Rose and Company Incorporated of Los Angeles, California. Oswald once again used a thirty dollar postal order to buy this weapon. Tests carried out by FBI handwriting experts determined that both of these postal orders had been written out by Lee Harvey Oswald.
On the morning of Friday the 22nd of November 1963, Oswald was seen entering the Texas Book Depository carrying a long package, Buel W. Frazier described it as a long sack. When questioned about the sacks content, Oswald had told Frazier that the sack contained the curtain rods he had collected the previous evening from his former landlady. At 12:00 p.m. Oswald asked his colleague Charles D. Givens to close the elevator door once he had reached the ground floor, so that Oswald could summon the elevator to take him to the sixth floor. This, the FBI stated, was the last time any employee of the Texas School Book Depository saw Oswald until after the assassination.
After the assassination, at 12.32 p.m. Oswald was found in the canteen on the second floor of the Texas School Book Depository; by Warehouse Superintendent Roy S. Truly. Shortly afterwards Mr Truly realised that Oswald was the only employee missing from the building and so informed the police. At this time Oswald had walked the seven blocks to a bus stop. Bus driver, Cecil J. McWatters, was able to identify Oswald as a passenger who had boarded his bus, as McWatters remembered that he had just heard the news of President Kennedy having been shot, and he had commented to Oswald, ‘I wonder where they shot the President’, to which Oswald replied, ‘They shot him in the temple’. On the bus was one of Oswald’s former landladies, a Mrs Mary E. Bledsoe. Mrs Bledsoe noted that Oswald’s clothing was dirty, and that he appeared ‘nervous’. She stated that Oswald travelled only two blocks before disembarking the bus a short walk from where he had boarded. From the bus he hired a taxi, the driver; William W. Whaley stated that he picked Oswald up from the Greyhound Bus Terminal Taxi Stand. Whaley dropped Oswald two and three quarter miles away at the 500 block of North Beckley Street, some little distance from where Oswald was currently residing.
At 1.00 p.m. Oswald entered 1026 North Beckley Street; he went to his room where he collected his jacket and .38 Special Smith and Wesson. Mrs Earlene Roberts, Oswald’s current Landlady, discovered the guns discarded holster in Oswald’s bedroom later that afternoon. Oswald left 1026 North Beckley Street; and made his way 0.86 miles to 10th Street and Patton Avenue. Here Patrol Officer J. D. Tippit pulled up alongside Oswald; and engaged him in a brief conversation before at 1:15 p.m. Oswald shot Officer Tippit with the .38 Special Smith and Wesson. Of the thirteen witnesses to the shooting six of them were able to positively identify Oswald as the shooter. After murdering Officer Tippit, Oswald ran west along 10th Street, turning south onto Patton Avenue; before turning west onto Jefferson Boulevard. Oswald was then observed entering the Texas Theatre; at 231 West Jefferson Boulevard, here the cashier; Julia Postal, telephoned the police to inform them that Oswald was hiding out in the movie theatre. At 2:00 p.m. the police entered the Texas Theatre. They found Oswald sat in the darkened auditorium, and as they approached Oswald attempted to fire his .38 Special Smith and Wesson, but the gun misfired and the police were able to apprehend Oswald without any further bloodshed.
Back at the Texas School Book Depository, Deputy Sherriff Seymour Weitzman and Officer Gene Boone had discovered the snipers nest in the south west corner of the sixth floor. Next to the three spent bullet casings the officers discovered some brown paper; that was similar in appearance to what witnesses saw Oswald carrying his package in that morning, however none could positively identify the paper as being the exact same pieces. In the northwest corner of the building; Weitzman and Boone discovered the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that had been purchased by Oswald from Klein’s Sporting Goods. One of the casings that had been discovered in the snipers nest was found to be dented in the neck area, this was found to be a mark unique to bullets fired from Oswald’s rifle, and was caused when bullet casings were rapidly ejected from the weapon. Fragments of bullets taken from President Kennedy and Governor Connally were tested by the FBI and were confirmed to have been fired from Oswald’s rifle. Oswald’s right palm print was also disc
overed on the underside of the rifle, but this had not been found until after Oswald’s death, as it had been hidden by the fore-grip. It was suggested that this palm-print had been left on the gun as Oswald had been assembling it. Oswald’s palm-print was also discovered on the boxes that had been used to form the snipers nest around the window of the depository.
The police made their way to Oswald’s home; where they discovered a photograph of Oswald stood in his back garden holding some communist newspapers; and brandishing both the weapons used in his crimes. They also discovered a membership card for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which Oswald claimed to be secretary; the card had been issued under the name of Alex James Hidell. There was also a Selective Service Card; issued under the name Lee H. Oswald. When confronted with the photograph; Oswald claimed that the police had superimposed his head onto somebody else’s body. Dr. M. F. Mason took samples from Oswald’s hands and right cheek; and upon testing these discovered that Oswald had traces of nitrate on his hands, consistent with his having recently discharged a firearm.
The FBI concluded its report by stating that during the course of their investigation they had interviewed over two thousand people, and that they had ‘strengthened the evidence that Oswald was the assassin’. Oswald had acted alone, there was in the FBI’s view, ‘No sound evidence indicating that he received any financial assistance; or that any other person, group, or foreign government inspired or directed the assassination or was cognizant of his plan to assassinate President Kennedy’. The FBI believed that Oswald had fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. They believed that the first bullet struck President Kennedy in the back, the second struck Governor Connally; and the third hit President Kennedy in the head killing him. The report ended, ‘Further investigation has developed no proof of any prior contact or association between Oswald and his murderer, Jack Ruby’.
The FBI Report has come in for as much criticism as any other investigation that has looked into President Kennedy’s death, yet it was clearly unduly rushed and badly researched, it omitted such important facts as Oswald’s Auntie Marilyn Murret being a CIA asset, every subsequent Commission and enquiry that spoke to her needed CIA approval, before her testimony was promptly classified on every occasion. This relation proved a direct link between the assassin of the President; and the government agency the murdered President had been trying to shut down. The FBI either failed to uncover this connection or deliberately suppressed it in their report, either shocking incompetence or deliberate omission for dubious purposes. Then there was Ruth Paine; the woman who lived with Marina Oswald in the months leading up to the assassination, the woman who suggested to Oswald that he might try applying for a job at the Texas School Book Depository, the woman whose house Oswald slept in the night before the assassination, the woman’s whose house Oswald allegedly hid the weapon he would later murder the President with, the woman Marina classed as one of her best friends. The FBI failed to mention anywhere in its report that Ruth Paine’s sister worked for the CIA, and that her father was a CIA asset. There were others as well who also had links to both the CIA and Oswald; but who were given only the briefest mention in the FBI report. Professor George de Mohrenschildt was for all intent and purpose a simple petroleum geologist, but who’d made himself very rich via this endeavour, so rich in fact that he was friends with the multimillionaire oil magnate, CIA officer and future President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, and the family of Jackie Kennedy, the Bouvier’s. In fact Jackie had grown up calling de Mohrenschildt ‘Uncle George’. This man who was the friend and confidant of Presidents and their kin was also peculiarly one of Lee Harvey Oswald’s only friends. That’s right, a man the murdered victim’s wife called ‘uncle’ was best friends with the alleged killer, and the investigators failed to mention it anywhere in their report! De Mohrenschildt was a Russian immigrant, originally from Mozyr; in modern day Belarus, his father had been arrested during the Russian revolution for the heinous crime of being rich and successful, and the family were forced to flee to Poland. In May 1938 de Mohrenschildt emigrated to America, where British Intelligence immediately told the FBI that de Mohrenschildt was a Nazi spy. Yet, despite this apparent Nazi allegiance, de Mohrenschildt began to work with a man named Pierre Fraiss, a member of the Marquises; the French Resistance. The pair began to pass valuable information onto the French government; on how much the Nazis were bidding for valuable oil contracts. As a result of de Mohrenschildt and Fraiss work; the French were able to undercut the Nazis and get the contracts for themselves. When America entered the Second World War, de Mohrenschildt applied to join the Office of Strategic Services; he had high hopes of attaining the position as his brother, Dimitri, worked for the CIA; and counted many of the CIA top brass amongst his close personal friends. de Mohrenschildt had his application turned down however, Richard Helms, the CIA director himself, sent a memo blocking de Mohrenschildt’s application; stating the allegations of de Mohrenschildt being a Nazi spy as the reason for the knockback. After the war de Mohrenschildt joined the Pantepec Oil Company, where he was moved to Venezuela for a few years idyllic living, before moving back to Texas in 1952. In 1957 he was sent to Yugoslavia by the State Department; on a geological survey. Here he was detained and accused of spying on military instillations by local officials, he was returned to America with his tail between his legs, and was debriefed twice by the CIA. He then went on an extended trip around Central America and the Caribbean, de Mohrenschildt explained that this was an extended honeymoon for his fourth wife; this didn’t explain his regular reports filed with the State Department, and his furtive meetings with the American Ambassador in Costa Rica. When he returned home; de Mohrenschildt was debriefed by J. Walter Moore, as he always was whenever he returned from one of his ‘business trips’ or ‘vacations’ abroad. J. Walter Moore was in point of fact a CIA agent, working for the Domestic Contacts Division, clear evidence if ever there was any needed that de Mohrenschildt was a CIA asset. In 1962 de Mohrenschildt befriended Oswald, de Mohrenschildt being an eminent Russian émigré got to hear of all Russian immigrants coming to the Dallas area, and de Mohrenschildt stated that he and his wife befriended Oswald and Marina simply to help them integrate into Dallas’s Russian immigrant community. At the time Oswald was living in nearby Fort Worth, and it was de Mohrenschildt who advised Oswald to move to Dallas itself, he even helped Oswald secure a job at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, a Dallas based photography firm. In June 1963, de Mohrenschildt moved to Haiti to take up a position surveying oil and other geologically interesting sites on the island. Before he left Dallas in May 1963, de Mohrenschildt had been briefed by the CIA and Army Intelligence in Washington D.C. about how he could help to further connections for the intelligence services whilst in Haiti. It was stated that at this point de Mohrenschildt had no further contact with Oswald. So we have another CIA asset involved in the life of the former defector and Presidential assassin, and yet the FBI’s official report barely mentioned de Mohrenschildt, it dealt with him in a few short lines, and it naturally never once mentioned his connections to the CIA.
Then there was the package that Buell Frazier and Linnie Mae Randle stated they saw Oswald carrying the morning of the assassination. There were other witnesses, most notably Frazier and Randle’s mother, Mrs Essie Mae Williams, who stated categorically that Oswald carried no such package that morning, and that her son and daughter were either mistaken or deliberately lying for some reason. Indeed a Psychological Stress Evaluation test carried out on Frazier indicated that he was indeed deliberately lying about the package he claimed Oswald had beencarrying. It is also telling that out of all the witnesses who saw Oswald enter the Texas School Book Depository that day, Frazier was the only one willing to testify to Oswald carrying a package into the building. The FBI also failed to mention that the paper found in the Texas School Book Depository, thought to have been the wrapper for the rifle package, wasn’t the nice clean cut evidence it first appeared to
be. You see in the 1980’s researcher Gary Shaw; uncovered a confidential FBI memo which stated categorically that the paper which the FBI thought Oswald had taken from the Texas School Book Depository to wrap his gun in, did not have the same properties as the paper the Depository used. The paper was of a different colour, did not emit light through it in the same manner, and reacted differently under UV light, in other words the paper did not come from the School Book Depository. There were also none of the tell tale marks or abrasions inside the package; that the forensic team would have expected to have found if there had been a bulky and heavy rifle carried in the paper, or indeed any of the telltale oil and grease residue that a rifle should have left behind, after all the Carcano had been immerged in Cosmoline before being shipped to Klein’s Sporting Goods, to prevent it corroding in the saltwater air of the Atlantic Ocean. The FBI tried to explain this inconvenient fact away by suggesting that the rifle might have been wrapped in a cloth, but they could find no forensic evidence of such a cloth having been inside the package, or at the scene of the shooting, or in Oswald’s belongings. The FBI were also unable to answer why the incriminating wrapping paper was not in evidence in any of the crime scene photographs, only a crude outline of the package had been drawn onto the bare floorboards; to indicate where the package had allegedly been found. Then the second sack turned up. On Wednesday the 4th of December 1963, a postal worker discovered in the ‘Dead Parcel’ room of the Irving Post Office; a package addressed to a Mr Lee Oswald, 601 W. Nassaus Street, Dallas, this was an address that did not exist, so the parcel had been sent back to the sorting office. When the package was opened it was discovered to hold an identical, if empty; sack to the one that Oswald had allegedly carried his rifle in. Who was trying to send this to Oswald? More interestingly, why was this being sent to Oswald when; as the FBI surmised, Oswald could just have easily have made one himself in his place of work? Again the FBI failed to mention this conundrum in their final report.