Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Douglas Brode

  Over 23 weeks, Lee watched each of the 117 episodes, believing what he was told by the ever-ultra-serious announcer: every case presented here was true. Philbrick, played by Richard Carlson, discovered seemingly nice, normal citizens—from high school teachers through household-maids to local politicians—who, deep inside, were Red to the core.

  It never occurred to Lee, nor to most impressionable viewers watching every day at 4:30 P.M., that the scripts were fictional, including one about a Harriet Nelson type housewife who transforms her vacuum cleaner into a bomb launcher, planning to initiate a bloody revolution from her own living room.

  The show offered arch fantasy done in the style of docu-drama, as such convincing to the innocent audience. This was the period during which Lee was ordered to Brooklyn’s Youth House. In the TV room he watched the series. And the news as well. So there was Joseph McCarthy, the mean-bully of a senator from Wisconsin, staring into the camera, announcing that “the State Department has been infiltrated by communists.” He held a paper high, insisting: “I have in my hand a list of 205 members of the communist party that are nonetheless still serving in the State department.” He then hinted that the army too might be ’pink.’

  How hard it was to tell where the fiction of I Led Three Lives left off and the reality of ’Tailgunner’ Joe began! Lee decided he had to learn more. In Invisible Man, Ellison had insisted that the communist party was as corrupt as any other institution, promising to help the black man while exploiting colored people for the party’s own ends.

  On the other hand, Ellison defended pure Marxism. At once Lee took The Communist Manifesto out of the lending library. When other kids, bad to the bone, caught him in the act of reading it they taunted Lee even more viciously. One called him a Red, as such worse than the boy who had murdered his father.

  “I’m not a commie,” he tried to explain. “I’m a Marxist.”

  They didn’t get the subtle distinction. In response to the next round of beatings, Lee flashed them that twisted, cynical smile, which he was even then in the process of perfecting.

  Gradually, I am coming to understand my mission in life. I will be to the next generation what Herb Philbrick was to the previous. Like him, lead a seemingly normal existence. I will do so not as a civilian but as a marine. As such. I will let it be known to all I read Marx. I'll subscribe to the Daily Worker so 'they' have an address at which to reach me.

  Sooner or later, I’ll be contacted by a commie agent. I’ll join them, only to betray their plans to the authorities, doing my country a greater service even than Philbrick. Like him, I'll write a book exonerating myself. Hollywood will do a TV series.

  Who would I like to have play me? That’s easy: Sinatra!

  *

  “I tried signing up two years ago. They said come back in a year. After that, I forged my mom’s name on a paper saying it was okay for me to join up but they told me to go home.”

  “How old are you now, Lee?”

  “I turned seventeen six days ago.” Lee reached into his pocket and pulled out his birth certificate for proof.

  The sergeant glanced over it, then eyeballed Lee. “No matter how tough your brother told you Boot Camp can be, it’s tougher. They’ll put you and all the others in your outfit through hell. Some will not be able to take it. Bigger guys than you have washed out. Do you want to go through with this?”

  “Sergeant, it‘s what I was born for!”

  *

  Precisely as that marine said earlier, Lee arrived in San Diego for Boot Camp two days later. And, likewise, the 17-year-old learned the hard way that everything he’d been told at the Dallas Recruitment Center was true. Within minutes of arrival, the routine began: there is a right way and a wrong way and The Marine Way to make your bed, eat at mess, erect a pup tent, march in close order drill, wear your uniform, share a squad encampment, salute a superior officer, speak only when spoken to by your Drill Sergeant, clean your assigned piece, crawl across a three-rope bridge, sit on a stool at the PX while off duty (rare!), clean a latrine when that is your assignment, peel a potato, run in place when you believe it’s impossible to take a step further, employ a knife during training for hand to hand combat; rapid disassembly of a .30 caliber machine gun, the proper means of thrusting forward with a bayonet, preparing your piece for inspection so perfectly a stranger could comfortably eat off it.

  And, perhaps most important, fire that weapon from a prone position during hours of target practice. Lee had so completely memorized the details about corps rituals that from the moment Basic began he excelled all in his group at every aspect of marine life but one: firing the leatherneck's second spine, his M1.

  “You are the worst shot I have ever seen,” a freckle-faced instructor shouted one day in early November, 1956. “Damn! You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from five feet away.”

  Lee mumbled some sort of apology but feared this might be his downfall: his aim remained terrible and likely always would.

  “What kind of marine are you? What kind of man are you?” the instructor wailed a week later when Lee, unnerved, scored worse still. Those words hurt the most; the idea that Lee’s poor aim somehow disqualified him as a man. After that incident, Lee—who had remained anonymous among the grunts until then—found himself once more marginalized. There was some razzing during the time spent in Basic. No matter how hard he tried to change, he was still Lee Oswald, not ‘Angelo Maggio.’

  Things took a turn for the worse once the group moved on to Camp Pendleton for full-scale combat training. A fellow grunt named Perry Sommers made it a point to chat with Lee, a rarity among group members. Timid to the point of near-total silence when not spoken to first, Lee at last opened up. He chatted with Sommers over a Coke during evening break, believing he’d found a friend. When the subject of women came up, Lee shyly admitted that, much as he thought about sex, he’d never actually “been with” a female. The moment those words were out, Lee knew he’d made a mistake. The grin on Sommers’ face turned ugly.

  The following day, fellow marines razzed Lee about being a “cherry virgin.” he had no idea as to how he ought to respond other than force a shit-eatin’ grin and pretend this was all in good fun, they laughing with, not at, him. Inside, he knew that wasn’t the case. “Ozzie the Rabbit” became his corps nickname.

  It would not go away; not here, not after that ordeal was over and Lee moved on to the specialty he had requested, radar control school in Jacksonville, FL and later Biloxi, MS.

  At all four of his stateside bases, Lee was also kidded, sometimes hassled, about something far more disturbing. Copies of communist publications regularly arrived in the mail. Lee could have hid them for private reading; instead, he left such stuff strewn all over his bunk where others could observe what they considered radical material. Two muscle-bound jerks began to turn the screws whenever an occasion arose.

  Worse, Perry Sommers, Lee’s supposed friend, joined with them in harassment. More than once they tossed Lee in the shower after he finished dressing for dinner. None of this bothered Lee as much as the derisive humor about his sexual status.

  How perfect! This is all fitting into my master plan ...

  *

  One day, early in January 1957, Ozzie was sitting around, playing chess with a fellow fan of the game, when another marine entered the barracks and whispered that Lee was required at headquarters. That seemed odd to everyone but him. Lee smirked, muttering under his breath that it was “about time.”

  Upon arrival, Lee was curtly escorted down a long hall into a large holding room, empty other than himself, then summoned by several M.P.s to step sharply between them down yet another long corridor, directly to a room at the far end.

  “Sit down,” a medium-build man in a dark civilian suit commanded. Ozzie did as told, glancing around the tight room.

  “Yes, of course,” Lee replied, his voice barely able to rise above a whisper. “I take it you’re from the FBI?”

  “What makes you say
that?” The man curiously eyed Lee.

  “In all honesty, I thought you would arrive some time ago.”

  “Explain, Private Oswald.”

  Lee, feeling more relaxed now that he could momentarily control the narrative, crossed his legs. “This is about the Red literature I receive in the mail, right?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “Some of the boys complained to higher-ups, and they thought it best to call you?”

  “From the manner in which you speak,” the FBI agent sighed, “it would appear that I’m here less by a natural chain of events than your conscious desire to summon me.”

  “Sir, that is precisely the case.”

  For the next hour, Lee rambled semi-coherently, the wild words augmented by grand hand gestures that left the agent too stunned to respond. No one was more dedicated to the United States than Lee; he would kill, even die for his country. But how could a no-one like himself make a contribution? Then he watched I Led Three Lives and felt inspired to follow suit: read the enemy’s books, subscribe to the papers, figure sooner or later, once they had his address, someone would contact him.

  He’d learn all their buzz words so that when this happened Lee would know precisely what to say, putting down “American Imperialism” in the postwar world, waxing poetic about power to the people. He’d earn their trust, learn what such traitors and spies had in mind, turning everything over to the government.

  Only problem was, Lee had no idea how to contact the right people. He had spent considerable time considering this.

  Suddenly, it struck him. All Lee had to do was make known his supposed commie leanings and sooner or later one of the boys would do Lee’s job for him by contacting the FBI.

  When Lee finally ran out of words and breath, the agent sat completely still, considering all he had been told. Several thoughts passed through the man’s mind. First, this scrawny, shrill, excitable marine was nuts. Certifiable, no question about it. Then again, the agent had no doubt that Lee qualified as sincere, his bizarre plot so outrageous that someone in his own profession could not help but admire its carefully conceived madness. Anyone so dedicated, as Oswald clearly was, might have value not to the FBI, their main job to seek out the radicals. However, another arm of the government ...

  “Mr. Oswald,” the agent explained, “the FBI would not be the proper agency. Still, there are others in our information-gathering community who might wish to speak with you.”

  “It’s an honor just to be considered. Who should I contact, and how do you—”

  “That will all be taken care of,” the agent said, rising. “I will contact them. They will contact you, if they believe it in everyone’s best interest to do so.”

  “They?”

  “The Central Intelligence Agency. If they do decide to go ahead, you will be approached by a man called George.”

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  ANY ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

  “Political solutions don’t work.”

  —Woody Allen; Sleeper, 1973

  Having recently returned to the CIA office in Miami following one of his frequent sojourns to Cuba, on January 10, 1957, agent Frank Sturgis, aka George, busied himself with typing a report on the status of Fidel Castro's desire to seize control of the island's politics with his guerilla force. Then the phone on his desk rang. Answering in hopes of keeping the conversation brief, George was pleasantly surprised to hear a familiar voice on the other end, causing him to smile.

  “Hey, ‘George’? Welcome home. ‘Dick Tracy’ here.”

  That could be only one man: Bob Maheu, a former FBI agent now serving several A list companies as a private contractor. Also Maheu performed a variety of chores for the CIA, making key connections between Company agents and potential operatives. He received his nickname owing to an uncanny resemblance to an ever popular square-jawed honest-cop comic-book character featured in the Sunday Funnies and B movies. Flattered by the comparison, Maheu had taken to sporting a yellow hat with black band similar to Dick Tracy so as to heighten the comparison.

  “Hey, Robert. What have you got for me this time?”

  The disembodied voice explained he’d been contacted by a field agent who had recently completed a routine investigation on a marine, seemingly of Red leanings. Instead, Lee Harvey Oswald turned out to be a super-patriot, if an odd one, as such perhaps of potential use to the U.S. government's information-gathering community. The FBI agent contacted the CIA; the top brass there tapped 'Dick Tracy' to get in touch with George and request he look into it, see if there might be something here.

  “Of course,” George said. He and his old pal chatted for a few minutes, George jotting down the essential information before returning to more pressing matters. The conclusion of his findings dealt with a Cuban whose friendship George cultivated while in Cuba, a valuable contact named Manuel Artime Buesa.

  *

  Buesa had been with Castro from the very beginning: i.e., the middle of March, 1952, following a military coup in which Fulgencio Batista seized control of the government and augmented an authoritarian regime to the benefit of Cuba's small moneyed classes if at the expense of the poverty-level multitude. No matter how exploited the dirt-poor masses were, Batista's new regime offered them less; so little that, as always happens when people no longer can feed their families anything but garbage, lacking even that, the likelihood of revolution increases.

  Though born to the middle-class, the university educated Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, felt the people's pain and set about organizing potential rebels in hopes of ousting Batista. Buesa, hearing Castro speak on a Havana street corner, had been attracted by his hulking presence and lawyer’s ability to bandy about words, inspiring all who had gathered to listen. That very day Buesa offered his services. For the next year and a half, Buesa and other volunteers trained for the coming day of revolutionary fervor with whatever rifles they could get their hands on, mostly outdated Springfields and Winchesters. In time they came to number more than 160, mostly drawn from the lower-classes. Buesa noted five university-educated intellectuals among Castro‘s followers. To Buesa’s surprise, Castro, despite his own academic background, appeared uncomfortable around such supporters. Several years later, Buesa would learn why.

  Just before daybreak on the 26th of July, 1953, as the entire country readied for summer fiesta, a caravan of rickety cars roared down the highway toward the Monacada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Each was filled with stalwarts certain that, before the noon hour, they would capture the military compound.

  Then, everything that could possibly go wrong proceeded to do precisely that. Unprepared for such an ambitious undertaking, the men ecstatically leaped out of the transports before Castro gave the order to do so. In moments, they were overrun by forces that outnumbered the rebels ten to one. During this skirmish, fifteen members of Batista's army were killed, as were nine of Castro's men. Others were captured. All were tortured, this including castration with rusty razor blades. Some were executed immediately afterwards, most imprisoned.

  Fidel and Raoul managed to make their escape into the Gran Piedra mountains, hoping to reorganize there. These survivors were all captured by government forces three days later. In the early fall of that year, the rebels were tried en masse by an Urgency Tribunal. Castro, with his considerable argumentative skill, managed to wrangle his own separate court case at which he belligerently defended himself. No matter; after being found guilty, all were tossed into Presidio Modelo, a noted hellhole, each man sentenced to serve a one-year term there. This, supposedly, to teach each and all a lesson. In the case of Fidel Castro, the miserable food and filthy surroundings had the opposite effect.

  During that horrific year, Castro—sometimes in a group cell, on other occasions relocated in solitary—constantly read. At this point democracy, which he expressed interest in as a university student, disappeared from his writings, the theories of Karl Marx coming to dominate his world-view. Buesa, on the other hand, was not won ove
r. As he and Castro had discussed earlier, Buesa preferred to oust Batista, then call for open and honest elections so as to create a democracy, much like the one in the U.S. The now radicalized Castro scoffed, assuring his comrade that in time Manuel would see the error of his ways.

  When Batista staged a fixed election in 1954, winning the popular vote overwhelmingly, Castro now had tangible evidence to convince his comrade that the right to vote clearly did not insure that the people would be heard. Buesa did take that into account, still continuing to believe the problem lay not with the idea of elections, rather the patent dishonesty of this one.

  The turning point for Castro came from a source closer to home. Mirta had never bought into her husband’s revolutionary fervor. She married Castro in 1948 owing to his advanced degrees, believing her husband would soon get over such youthful idealism and set to work earning a living as a lawyer. With Fidel behind bars, she set out to obtain a divorce. Worse, Mirta accepted a job in Batista’s government, offered if she would publicly reject her husband's radicalism. Worse still Mirta openly raised Castro’s son in Havana’s most solidly middle-class neighborhood, as if to announce her subscription to the consumer-values of those rare few able to afford an American-like lifestyle.

  Now Castro abruptly turned against the U.S., less for its democratic system than its economic base. If capitalism had corrupted his Mirta, it might do the same to anyone. Communism took on a lustre in missives Castro released from behind bars. Nonetheless, Batista, believing the revolutionaries must, after suffering constant torture, be sufficiently humbled, announced that all would be released on schedule. Batista guessed that the Castro brothers would crawl off into oblivion like whipped dogs.

  Upon release, a hardened, bitter, more extremist Castro began sending loyalists out to bomb strategic Batista posts. As innocent citizens were harmed and in some cases killed, Castro insisting this was regrettable but unavoidable, he incurred the wrath not only of their fascistic leader but also moderate liberals and progressives who likewise opposed Batista but still subscribed to non-violent methods. Police were instructed to shoot down Movement members on sight. The Castro brothers, realizing they might soon be dead, quickly decided a strategic retreat was in order. On July 7, they and Buesa slipped away into Mexico.