Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Douglas Brode

  "But if Kennedy didn't really write this, why bother—”

  "Profiles in Courage will provide the cornerstone of the emergent Kennedy legend. My outfit is eventually going to have to deal with that as well as him, the person.”

  "As one of your operatives, I will, too."

  "Now you got it. However remote he may seem at the moment, Lee, believe me: in time, John Fitzgerald Kennedy will become the most important person in your life."

  *

  Lee first met George on November 22, 1957, six years to the day (and for that matter hour) previous to the assassination in Dallas of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Still quartered at the San Diego base if already in the process of readying himself for his transfer, Lee received a phone call while in the PX. He was alone there other than a girl on duty behind the counter.

  "This is Lee Oswald. Who's this?"

  "George."

  For a moment the name didn't register. Lee ran through all the Georges he had ever encountered. Then, it hit him. George! The person that the FBI agent had told him about.

  "Oh, yes. George. Of course! Hello."

  "Lee, I'd like to meet with you to talk a bit.”

  "I'd be delighted." Lee was careful not to say too much while in hearing distance of the girl. However unlikely, she could be a Soviet spy. Lee knew that such things happened. After all, he'd watched each and every episode of I Led Three Lives.

  "Jot down this address,” George said. ”Meet me tonight—"

  "I'll have to see about a pass."

  "Already arranged. Waiting for you at H.Q."

  Lee yanked a napkin from a nearby container, then picked up a pencil stub lying on the counter. "Okay, ready."

  Just as I guessed, the waitress mused. That marine's a queer. Heading off now to meet the man he arranged with for a late-night tryst. As always I can spot faggots a mile away!

  *

  As no direct bus line yet existed between the San Diego Marine Corps base and San Ysidro Port of Entry at the city's southernmost tip, Lee, in civvies, had to change three times. At the main bus depot he disembarked and hopped aboard the San Diego Trolley, which delivered him to the post. There, the guards awaited those wishing to cross over from the United States to Mexico’s Northern-most city, Tijuana. Lee presented his identification to an uninformed Mexican who signaled him on.

  That was easy!

  Lee joined the gathered mass, sweating as he always did when forced to be part of a crowd. Among those also trickling into the foot walk from one country to the other was a mixed batch of Anglos and Latinos. Once in downtown Tijuana, Lee hailed a cab to drive him over to Rosarito Beach, a separate nearby community known for its red-hot row of clubs and bars.

  Eventually they pulled up to the address. Lee recognized the name "Villa's Hideaway" above the door from George’s call. Inside, the lighting proved dim but colorful, the walls crowded with Mexican kitsch including paintings of the country's own film and music-biz celebrities, Pedro Armanderiz, decked out in a Pancho Villa costume he’d worn in films on the folk-hero, prominent among them.

  Lee pushed his way past low-hanging papier-mache renderings of blue bulls and bone-white models of the human skeleton, past scattered customers at the bar and tables, all the way to the back end. In an adjoining small room, set back in the furthest corner, sat an American in a beige suit with nondescript tie.

  'George?' Lee mouthed the name without emitting a sound. A nod let him know that here was his coordinate. Lee stepped up to the table where the American signaled for him to sit.

  "Hello," Lee now ventured to softly say.

  "Lee Harvey Oswald, I presume?" George inquired, extending a hand for shaking. Lee responded in kind. "Everything you told the FBI man, I already know. I'd like to learn more about you. Any further details, please share with me now."

  After a pretty Latina served Lee a beer, he rambled on. He could now accurately fire a rifle, if need be, in the line of service. Following his embarrassing moment on the range with that snarling sergeant, Lee practiced alone whenever he could until he became accurate enough to win the prized Sharpshooter distinction. Now, he rated as a marine; a man!

  Lee had begun, in addition to leaving communist reading matter on his bunk, to openly spout phrases concerning "the disparagement of the common worker under a corrupt capitalist system" and the "obvious American imperialism taking place in the Third World." Most marines stepped away; a few threatened his life. On more than one occasion Lee was beaten by unknown assailants. All of this finally paid off: he had been invited to attend a meeting of San Diego's secretive communist cell.

  Though people in attendance had only referred to each other by nicknames, leaving Lee unable to share with George their identities, he had taken close note of their appearances. Lee could relate these in detail to George if that might be of any value. Lee had arrived here to help his country, in any way he could, by creating an alternative Lee Oswald: a pinko facade that covered his real patriotism completely. When Lee finished, he knew from George's eyes that the CIA man had been impressed.

  *

  Three weeks later, an hour and twelve minutes after picking Lee up at the camp's entrance, George turned onto the well-traveled highway, abandoning it for a primitive road, clearly a forgotten relic of the 1930s. More surprising still, they later turned onto a rough dirt pathway from back in frontier days.

  "My guess is that you'll finish the book by the time you arrive at your destination."

  "Which means I'll be traveling for several hours?"

  "Longer than that. You'll arrive tomorrow morning."

  "Am I flying?" George nodded affirmatively. "Is there some secret CIA airport out here in the middle of nowhere?"

  George glanced over, smiled, then returned his eyes to the path. "Assume whatever you like, Lee. No, there is no airport. I think you'd have to go a long way to even find some old deserted prospector's shack in this stretch of desert."

  "It's like, if there's an edge to the world where people might drop off and disappear into a void, this is it."

  "You got that one right." With that, George pulled over onto a long, flat stretch. In the moonlight, a few misshapen cacti located on the far side of a cleared-out square stretched toward the cream-colored moon, like the ghosts of some ancient Spaniards. Lee knew enough to step out without being told.

  George, maneuvering around to the sedan’s head lights, motioned for Lee to join him. A bit nervous, Lee did. "Lee, have you ever heard the term 'twinning'?"

  Lee mulled that over. "I don't believe so."

  "While we're waiting, let me explain. Twinning is the most extreme form of plastic surgery. ‘Plastics’, as medical people refer to it. Designed to restore a person's face to a normal appearance in the event a birth defect or accident.”

  "Sure."

  "Well, twinning takes that premise a giant leap further. Eight plastic surgeons in the world, tops, are accomplished enough to perform this technique, though the concept is simple to explain. ‘Twinning’ means the making-over of one person's face in the precise likeness of another's."

  "Wow. But how does this have anything to do with me?"

  "In terms of the services you have volunteered for—and, Lee, let me remind you again, they are essential to the well-being of the U.S.—the Company requires that you have a double."

  Lee took that in, stunned. "Someone who looks just like me? God, I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

  George laughed. "Be that as it may, this is a necessity. Now, I must tell you too that you do not have to go through with it. If you wish, you may drop out of the program now.”

  Lee pulled himself up as straight and tall as he could. "I volunteered, didn't I?" George nodded. "I'm committed. Fully!”

  "Glad to hear that," George sighed, relaxing. More than Lee could guess. Despite George's magnanimous offer of a moment ago, the CIA operative's orders were to, if Lee expressed hesitation, draw his .45 automatic from its shoulder holster right beneath George's jacket
and execute Lee Harvey Oswald at once.

  "I am interested to know, though: Why do I need one?"

  "It has to do with your eventual planned defection to Moscow that I mentioned last time we met. At times, you might be needed back in the states. Whenever that occurs, your double will secretively enter the Soviet Union, assuming your place until you are able to return.”

  "Incredible," Lee responded, grinning with anticipation.

  *

  "So," George said in Villa's Hideaway in the late-evening of November 22, the first of three meetings there. "Now I know the life and times of Lee Harvey Oswald."

  "If you want a dedicated American willing to go down in history as a traitor if need be, so long as he serves his country and serves it well, that's me."

  One of the best at what he did, George had thoroughly researched Lee Harvey Oswald before this first meeting. Reports from sources as far-flung as Bethlehem in Louisiana to the Youth House in New York provided telling hints as to the personality of this over-anxious volunteer. George’s job had been to take such jagged pieces and fit them into a revealing jigsaw puzzle.

  One of the comments from Dr. Renatus Hartogs had far more meaning to the CIA agent than the good doctor likely intended. Lee "dislikes intensely talking about himself and his feelings." That ranked high among those traits any experienced CIA agent hoped to find in an inexperienced would-be operative. To Frank Sturgis, it was imperative that a potential operative be not only able to keep his mouth shut but be strongly inclined to privacy. Always there would be enemy agents feigning friendship to get a still-green operative to open up and spill his guts.

  The word "feelings" struck George as the most important; stoicism was essential. The lack of such a trait made a man vulnerable, in particular to the beautiful women invariably recruited by the KGB to open up a naive man, he blurting out everything he knew once she tapped into his emotions.

  Adding to this were the observations of a Youth House social worker, Evelyn Strickman, who had tagged Lee as "a rather pleasant" young man with an "appealing quality" despite his being "emotionally starved" and, as a result, an "affectionless youngster." The lady had not only reasserted Dr. Hartogs's statement about Lee's relationship to his own emotions, going a giant step further, implying he might actually be incapable of feelings. That, at least in the proper context, Lee could come off as "pleasant" and "appealing" was important if he were going to win over members of the KGB in an intricate plan that Sturgis and Company head-honcho Allen Dulles were developing.

  Despite all these dark aspects, Lee had struck George from day one as naively innocent. An intriguing aspect of the mix!

  One element troubled him, though: the fact that while attending school in the New York area, Lee flatly refused to salute the U.S. flag. This had provided incentive for several brutes to beat him in the playground during recess though that did not deter Lee from his decision.

  "You tell me you are a patriot," George had asked Lee point blank, "and yet ..." He quoted the report verbatim.

  "Show me the stars and stripes whenever you like," Lee responded. "I'll jump up and salute. See, that was at the time when my master-plan first began to take shape. I had to plant the thought in others’ minds as early as I could that I was turning anti-American. At school, jobs, even the marines; always I had to do something to make people suspect I’m a Commie."

  "So that they would contact you, then you’d contact us?"

  Lee grinned, nodded, and told his inquisitor all about his experiences in Beauregard Junior High after Marguerite made the decision to abandon New York as a bad idea and return them both to New Orleans. For once, Lee actually found a friend. Fellow teenager Edward Voebel shared Lee's interest in aviation. They joined the Civil Air Patrol, a boy's club. Lee made sure his fellow fifteen-year-old saw copies of The Communist Manifesto whenever Ed visited. If Voebel were in the future questioned by any government official, he would verify that Lee harbored Red leanings way back then. Another friend, Palmer E. McBride, like Lee appreciated classical music, the only kind Lee listened to other than Sinatra. After Lee shared copies of the Socialist Call, a magazine Lee subscribed to, McBride's father said that Lee could never come to their house again. That was alright; Lee was establishing a false front which, as such incidents accumulated, would eventually bring party members around to meet him.

  "Usually," George admitted, "we have to do a great deal of legwork in setting up a 'legend.' You appear to have covered most of the bases on your own."

  "Legend?"

  "Our term for the alternative you. The Lee Harvey Oswald of public perception as compared to the one who actually exists."

  "I see."

  Do you, Lee? I hope so. If you do, this could prove more important than you, or even I, can imagine at this moment. If not—if you ever make the ultimate mistake of confusing the one with the other—all hell could someday break loose!

  *

  "Lee, this is where I must leave you for now."

  George, aka Frank Sturgis, stepped around the car and proceeded to slip back into the driver's seat, preparing to head off.

  "You're going?" Lee asked in a panic. He glanced around. The desert now appeared as something out of a nightmare about the southwest: a vast, empty expanse in the darkness, where life consisted only of snakes, spiders, other unthinkable monsters dating back to pre-history. The land itself might swallow him up, so formidable was the white sand below, the black sky above.

  “Yes. I must.”

  “But—” Lee gulped, panicky.

  "No buts." Without another word, George smiled cryptically, waving his left hand in a circular gesture of farewell. Then he backed up the sleek Sedan, turning it around, heading back down the barely visible path. In a moment, man and machine were gone as completely as if neither had ever existed.

  Now, Lee could make out sounds, somewhere in the far distance, moving his way: animal sounds, small feet whirring at rapid speed; something else leglessly swirling toward him in a serpentine fashion. Uncontrollably, he began to shiver and shake.

  Maybe all that had gone before was only some carefully planned ruse to eliminate Lee Harvey Oswald from the face of the earth. Yes, that was it! First the FBI agent, then this CIA operative, decided Lee was crazy. Someone in need of elimination.

  How could I have been such a fool? My God, I’m their patsy. Why wasn't it obvious from the beginning that—

  At that moment, Lee heard something above, a loud, churning noise. Perhaps it was one of those flying saucers everyone was talking about, the CIA in league with Men from Mars to destroy poor little ... as the clouds moved on and moonlight again rendered his surroundings visible, Lee spotted a helicopter as it descended onto that flat stretch of land. Once it was down, a young man in casual clothing waved to Lee from behind the control panel inside his thick glass and steel bubble. Relaxing at least a little, Lee stepped up to the whirlybird.

  "Lee Oswald?" the pilot asked. Lee warily nodded. “Hi, I’m Bill. I'll be taking you the next stretch of your trip."

  "To the hospital?"

  "No," Bill laughed. "That's way too far for my copter. I'll drop you off at a small Company airport. There, you'll board a private jet, then be on your way to—"

  Whirlybird? Secret airport? Private jet? Lee calmed down, thrilling to the cloak-and-dagger goings-on. He'd made it! For the first time, Lee Harvey Oswald knew what it was like to be one of the boys. And, beyond that, a Very Important Person.

  *

  On February 28, 1957, Dr. Angelo Martinelli, recently turned fifty but feeling ages older, rose as he did every morning at six o'clock. Leaning over in the darkness he gently kissed the cheek of his sleeping wife. Sara did not stir. Angelo rose from the bed, went through the process of washing, shaving, dressing, afterwards peeking on each of his sons, both asleep in their rooms. Not a worry in the world passed through those happy childish heads. Angelo attempted to recall a time when he had known such wondrous oblivion. An image began to take form in his memo
ry of himself as a boy, fishing at a clean, clear lake, his dog barking nearby. Before that picture, real or imagined, could reach full fruition it disintegrated, falling away from Angelo's conscious mind, lost somewhere in time, space and imagination.

  “See you all soon,” he softly whispered.

  Yawning, Angelo descended the stairwell of the handsome, tasteful, upscale penthouse suite he and his family owned in upper Manhattan. In the kitchen, Angelo brewed himself a pot of coffee, sipping a cup while reading the morning paper. Leafing through its pages, Angelo did not appreciate most of what he confronted. One bright spot: in Rome, representatives from the democracies were moving close to approving a treaty that would establish a European Common Market. This would further unify America's allies, which Angelo, a patriot, found promising.

  Otherwise? Bleak! Down in Little Rock, AK a spokesman for the school board insisted that the following autumn their stand on segregation of the races would remain in place. Surely, Pres. Eisenhower must move to break that stranglehold, employing military force. Good for him, and about time. Still, that could only weaken an already strained sense of solidarity in the U.S. at a crucial juncture when we needed just that more than ever.

  The race for nuclear supremacy between our country and the U.S.S.R. continued as America and Russia announced plans to shortly test new, high-power ICBMS in the ongoing vicious contest for supremacy in our post-atomic-world.

  Last, but hardly least, the military dictatorship of Gen. Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela had been sorely tested during the past week by open rebellion. The people, undernourished and now aware from independent news sources that well over fifty per cent of that nation's huge oil profits poured directly into the pockets of those at the top, were no longer willing to quietly accept their miserable lot in life. Who could blame them?

  The problem, as Angelo saw it, involved a free and constant flow of Venezuelan oil into the U.S. If a revolution were to succeed and if it took on a communist attitude, favoring Russia over the U.S., the very sort of chaos ready to explode in at least a half-dozen other Latin American countries, this might limit the U.S.’s ability to buy all the oil it needed cheaply. That could put the U.S. at a huge disadvantage to the Soviets, perhaps turning the tide of world domination in their favor.