Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Douglas Brode

  Lee flipped through the magazine, particularly interested in the cover story about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his lovely bride Jackie, and their children. It wouldn’t be hard to mistake either husband or wife for a movie star, so picture-perfect were they. Lee chuckled, recalling what George had confided during their drive to the desert; fascinated by the sedate, sincere, sweet smiles on their faces. This was how the public at large was allowed to see the likely next occupants of The White House. Lee and a few others knew the truth behind that dazzling façade!

  When the phone rang, its brittle sound shook Lee out of his reverie. He answered; there was George’s voice, barely audible.

  “Lee? We have a problem. Good Karma!”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Lee replied: “Bad Karma!”

  That constituted The Company’s password for, and required response to, any discussion of Achmed Sukarno, the now 56-year-old president of Indonesia. Highly educated, fluent in numerous languages, the area’s Javanese-born power-broker since 1945 did not sit well with those who ran America’s Invisible Government.

  The first issue against Sukarno was that, during WWII, he aligned with the Japanese. Now, of course, that country was an ally. Sukarno, however, did not subscribe to the idea that the U.S. ought to be welcome to enter and establish military bases. He accused America’s current world policies as “fascistic” and spoke positively about “New Emerging Forces” in the Third World.

  Whereas in those situations the U.S. tacitly defended right-wing dictators against rebels, here America took the opposite approach: as Muslims instigated a possible coup against Sukarno, U.S. forces were readying to back up any such action.

  Not that the CIA and others of their ilk were comfortable with these insurgents. Far from it! As always in the Eisenhower era and, perhaps more significant, the age of John Foster Dulles as the key to foreign affairs, one rule was repeated over and over.

  Any enemy of my enemy is my friend ...

  For what it was worth, the name Sukarno roughly translated in English to ‘Good Karma’. At any rate, George explained that the area was heating up. The marines were about to ship out and possibly participate in a violent invasion via a route through Borneo. If that occurred, the likelihood of combat in question but placement of marine divisions in strategic areas certain, Lee’s radar unit MACS-1 would accompany them as a communications team. Which meant Ozzie would go along for the ride.

  This, George had not anticipated and did not appreciate. Lee Harvey Oswald was needed right where he was: in Japan.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do about it from there?”

  “Believe me, Lee, I’ve looked into it. Of course I could arrange an immediate transfer. But that would stick out like a sore thumb. Chances are, your cover would be blown. Forever.”

  With that, as Lee well knew, he would become dispensable. All he’d achieved gone like a wisp of smoke. That must not be allowed to happen. He could certainly ship out with the others.

  “What should I do?”

  “You’re a big boy now. On your own. Your call.”

  *

  Nine days later, at eight-thirty on the evening of October 27, 1957, Lee sat in his barracks on a lower bunk assigned to Robert Augg. That marine was at the P.X., enjoying a Coke and a burger. Even as Augg strolled back at a swift gait to hit his bunk before Taps, a shot rang out, discharged by a small weapon.

  As Augg darted inside he spotted Lee, his right arm bleeding, grimacing in pain. Beside Lee on Augg’s bunk lay a .22 caliber silver-plated derringer, a thin coil of blue-gray smoke circling upward. Already, a Navy corpsman had appeared.

  “What happened?” Augg wanted to know, none too pleased that this took place on the bunk he would sleep in that night.

  “Crazy accident,” Lee mumbled. “I shot myself.”

  “Don’t look like no accident to me,” the corpsman hissed while bandaging Lee, his own fingers now bathed in blood.

  “Hey, come on,” Lee laughed. “You don’t think I was trying to ‘off’ myself, do ya?”

  “No,” the corpsman insisted. “When a marine wants to commit suicide, he generally succeeds. All you wanted was a flesh wound serious enough to get you off active duty.”

  “You have no proof of that.”

  “I know all about you, Oswald, and your commie leanings.”

  Later that night Oswald was attended in the base hospital by several nurses, one of them attractive. Ordinarily she might not have given this scrawny runt a second glance. But she had heard all the rumors about Oswald’s reputation as a lover who had conquered Tokyo’s Dragon Lady and Sara, the best looking secretary on base. Wanting to know what all the shouting was about she whispered in Lee’s ear that she’d return at midnight.

  Fortunately, Lee had been assigned a single room. Or did George somehow arrange that for me from stateside? On other nights Sara visited Lee, she apparently possessing authority to go wherever on this base she chose. In addition to providing sexual favors, Sara brought messages from George and picked up ones from Lee which she would send out in the morning.

  Initially George expressed elation that Lee had been willing to go above and beyond by actually wounding himself to avoid the scheduled November 8 shipping-out. Unfortunately, though, that massive move was pushed back several weeks.

  The doctors, certain Lee’s wound had been self-inflicted to avoid leaving, made certain he was discharged on November 18, two days before the new date of departure. The USS Terrell County carried Lee and other radar experts toward the northern tip of the Philippine’s archipelago for Operation Strongback.

  Everyone noticed Lee’s terrible depression, assuming it had to do with his not wanting to fight and hesitancy to leave those beauties. None guessed that he terribly feared his use as a CIA operative might be compromised, his run as a spy now finished.

  Shortly after their arrival the men were rounded up again and shipped out once more. They incorrectly assumed (and Lee desperately hoped) they’d head back to Japan. Instead they joined thirty other transports deep in the South China Sea, waiting for orders. Lee perked up a bit as he shortly became the squadron’s clear-cut chess champ. He also began to gamble; this, and his glorious conquests, caused Lee to become fully accepted by the men around him for the first time in his life.

  Lee enjoyed this experience so thoroughly that he failed to set himself up as a target as often as he ought to by spouting Red propaganda. People actually seemed to like him. For the first time ever, Lee Oswald finally began to like himself.

  Then, whistles blew, men rushed to ready themselves for what might come, and they approached the island of Corregidor. Where, as punishment for a fake suicide, he worked mess duty.

  Things calmed down in early March and, to Lee’s delight and relief, they returned to Japan, arriving at Atsugi, Lee later reassigned to Iwakuni. He received word from George, through Sara, that Lee would resume his three lives as hardworking marine, traitor, and double-agent. While in Tokyo he learned more from The Dragon Lady than she did from him. He actually was turning into a real-life incarnation of fictional James Bond.

  Owing to the medic’s charges and illegality of the self-owned derringer, Lee went before a court martial on April 11 and was found guilty. In addition to constant kitchen work while on Corregidor, an unofficial advance punishment before Lee even had a chance to defend himself, now he was sentenced to twenty days at hard labor.

  Wait a minute, here. I’m experiencing déjà vu ... this is the From Here to Eternity scene when several MPs escort Frankie to stir. At this moment, I finally am ‘Angelo Maggio.’ Meaning I’ve become Sinatra. Will Ernest Borgnine as ‘Fatso Judson’ be waiting for me on the inside? Whatever! It’s finally happened: my pitiable life has become one and the same with my favorite movie ...

  When this ordeal ended, Lee returned to his outfit. He struck everyone as a changed man, no longer spouting the joys of communism but bitterly, even viciously attacking America.

  It’s working. I’m
fooling them all again ...

  In so doing Lee followed to the letter a script George had prepared and transferred to Lee through Sara. In terms of plans George scripted for Lee following his tour of duty, it was necessary that Lee accrue a terrible reputation, a number of verifiable outrages appearing on his permanent record. The worst being his threatened defection to Russia. Lee basked in the possibility; his adventures as a secret agent were not about to come to an end but only just beginning ...

  *

  Three nights following John Wayne’s unexpected visit to Corregidor, on January 29, 1958, Perry Sommers arrived to take his turn at guard duty on the outer limits of a temporary base at Cubi Point. He carried a shotgun, the weapon of choice for such an assignment; communist Fillipinos were known to search the area, looking for stray Americans they might murder. Also Sommers had in his possession a canteen full of hard alcohol which the men fermented from leftover potato and orange peels.

  In Sommers’ shirt pocket a hundred dollar (American) bill had been tucked in place.

  The agreed on time was one a.m. Where the fuck are you? Come on ... I’m tired of waitin’. You’re gettin’ paid plenty.

  The man Sommers none-too-patiently awaited was a young Fillipino, extremely pro-American, who had taken to serving homosexual members of the company. Mostly this occurred when they were alone on guard duty, the least likely time anyone might discover them in the act.

  All along, Sommers had carefully kept his secret from being known to the others, so extreme was the harassment a “faggot” received in the armed forces, particularly tougher-than-leather marines. He lived in denial about this elemental truth except when the urge grew too strong to resist. Then, hating himself for what he considered a weakness, Sommers would arrange such assignations on the fringe of any military base, where shadow men would service so-inclined soldiers, sailors, and marines.

  One of Sommers’ key strategies to maintain his man’s man image was to pick on some small, shy, therefore suspect person. By identifying such a fellow as a “queer,” he the “man’s man” least able to tolerate homosexuals, Sommers believed he might create the perfect cover. No matter that most such victims did happen to be heterosexual; in the late-1950s an abiding myth insisted that men of a certain type-—big, boisterous, bullying-—must be straight while the smaller guys, particularly those who had not yet shed their virginity, were “queers.”

  From their first days together in San Diego, Sommers had sensed Lee would be the perfect scapegoat. There, at Pendleton, Jacksonville and Biloxi, Sommers set Ozzie up as “suspect.”

  Here he comes at last. Friggin’ little Fillipino shrimp.

  Kim, the diminutive 5’ 4” 21 year old with facial features as delicate as a lovely woman and skin softer even than most females, warily slipped into sight. Sommers took a quick glance around to ascertain no one else had wandered into this barren strip where a recently erected stretch of barbed wire separated flat open-ground from surrounding jungle. Excited at the prospect, Sommers set down his shotgun against a fence pole. Kim following fast behind, Sommers disappeared into the bushes.

  Not a word passed between them. Sommers rapidly undid his belt, dropping the fatigue pants and under-drawers. Kim fell to his knees, arching his head up, opening his mouth.

  With both hands, Sommers reached forward, seized Kim by his black hair, and pulled the boy’s face upward toward an exposed crotch. Sommers roughly pushed forward, downward, eyes closed, grunting with immediate pleasure and a mental backlog of shame. Kim sucked and slurped, accepted the whole wad, gulping it down.

  “Well, isn’t this a pretty sight, now.”

  Both men, one standing and the other kneeling, felt a surge of horror pass through their systems like electric bolts. As each pulled back, they simultaneously glanced to another nearby bush where a man, in fatigue pants and T-shirt, quietly stood. Over his unrecognizable face, a stocking had been pulled tight. This intruder now cradled Sommers’ shotgun, both barrels cocked.

  “Who goes there?” Sommers gasped.

  “Your worst nightmare,” the interloper replied. He stepped forward, the weapon leveled at Sommers mid-section.

  “Please, don’t kill poor Kim!” Terrified, the Fillipino rose, sobbing. The unknown man, who could not have been more than 5’ 6” tall, indicated for Kim to leave. Kim nodded his thanks.

  “Didn’t you forget something?” Kim, confused, spread his arms wide to suggest ‘I don’t understand.’ The unknown person nodded for Kim to re-approach Sommers. “You haven’t been paid yet.” The interloper motioned for Kim to retrieve what he had earned. Kim reached into Sommers’ shirt pocket and drew out the hundred dollar bill. The man holding the shotgun motioned for Kim to scat. A second later he was swallowed up by darkness.

  “Now,” the visitor informed Sommers, approaching with the gun pointed at the guard’s belly. “What shall we do with you?”

  “Please, no. No, no!” Sommers wailed, tears rolling down his cheeks. Without realizing it, Sommers dropped to his knees, raising his arms, joining one hand with the other as if praying.

  “Not so tough now, are you?” The unknown man brought the shotgun up beneath Sommers chin, forcing the marine to peer up.

  “I’ll never kid you again,” Sommers pleaded. “Never!”

  “That’s right. You won’t.”

  With that, the stranger pulled the trigger, unleashing first one, then the other blast, afterwards hurrying off.

  Seventy-five-feet away, Lt. Hugh Cherrie, in the process of inspecting another guard-post, heard the double-boom followed by a bloodcurdling scream. Freezing up, he tried to tell himself the former was lightning, the latter a harsh wind coming off Subic Bay. No, it’s a marine. And he’s in serious trouble.

  Leaving his post technically qualified as dereliction of duty but there was no stopping Hugh when a comrade in arms might be in danger. Arriving simultaneous with a medic who also heard the sounds, the lieutenant spotted Sommers, head all but blown off, lying in a thickening pool of his own blood.

  Another marine, Peter Francis Connor, was assigned to the remainder of that night’s guard duty. Several others were called to remove Sommers’ dead body. The experience was eerie, but no detail-—not even the blood, dark brown in the moonlight—struck Connor as bizarre as what he noticed throughout the area: bits and pieces of red-and-white Christmas candy everywhere.

  Accident or suicide, the word eventually came down, and likely no one would ever know which. Case closed. All the same, a rumor spread throughout the base that this had been a murder, with but one suspect. Marines looked suspiciously at Ozzie from then on. But no one kidded him ever again. When any marines did speak to him they politely addressed him as Lee.

  Also, Oswald struck the marines as different from that day on. “A completely changed person from the naïve and innocent boy” was how Joseph D. Macedo, another member of Coffee Mill, recalled Lee, as understood through his attitudes and actions beginning the following morning. Others would, in retrospect, particularly after the events of 11/22/1963, remember that Lee had grown “cold” and “bitter,” yet conversely more outgoing than before. He joined the guys (not only his three friends) for drinks, gambling, and whoring sojourns.

  On one occasion, at the Enlisted Men’s Club, Lee picked a fight with a larger guy, Miguel Rodriguez, though this Mexican-American from Texas had never given Lee a problem. Not wanting any trouble, Rodriguez refused to meet Lee outside for a fist-fight, even after his tormentor had flipped a full measure of booze all across Rodriguez’s clean shirt.

  An official complaint was filed. Lee again stood Court Martial, this time for behavior unbecoming a marine. He found himself locked in The Brig for a month. When Lee stepped back out into the light of day, everyone could tell the treatment behind bars, known to be brutal, had not caused this difficult marine to mend his ways. Rather, imprisonment had the opposite effect. His eyes had turned mean, ugly even; the shoulders were pulled far back, head held high as if to announce what he
soon put into hysterical words: L.O.H. had gone all the way over to the other side, hating everything his country stood for.

  Beautiful! Everything according to our scenario ...

  Lee would rant and rave, occasionally quoting Shakespeare, which he had focused on behind bars: “Oh, how all occasions do inform against me!” Additionally, he put in for a hardship discharge. If granted, following return to San Diego, he would not be required to remain in the reserves. Lee could go off to attend his sickly mother. He had, in the short time between leaving Corregidor and finishing his tour of duty, come full cycle: the perennial outsider accepted as one of the guys, then through seemingly stupid mistakes back to the barrel’s bottom.

  They’re actually buying it. I hoodwinked everyone.

  One day, a month and a half later, Gator—figuring that their continuing friendship entitled him to ask what none of the others dared—questioned his pal over beers at the Bluebird.

  “Lee, just how angry are you?”

  “Want to know the truth?”

  “I’m almost afraid to say this, but ... yes.”

  “I’m considering defecting to the Soviet Union.”

  After a long silence, during which he recovered, the gentle giant spoke: “There’s something else I have to ask.”

  “Mmmmm? I think I know.”

  “You can tell me, Lee. You know I’d never rat you out.”

  “I trust you, Gator.”

  Hesitantly, Gator closed the remaining space between them so Lee could whisper. “Did you kill Sommers that night?”

  Lee’s smile turned laconic. “That, my friend,” he replied, “is one of those things you never will know, not for certain.”

  CHAPTER NINE:

  STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

  “Make no mistake about it: espionage is a dirty business!

  —Robert Maheu, 1963