Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  Since there were so few students attending, the school had to get by on donations from benefactors. The American Committee of Friends of Albert Schweitzer College was incorporated in New York but had its offices in Boston. The head of the American Admissions Committee was Unitarian Church Minister Dr. Robert Schact of Providence. It was Schact who cleared Oswald’s application and sent it to Switzerland for final disposition.98 When Marguerite Oswald wrote her son a series of letters in Russia in late 1959, she enclosed money orders. She got no reply except a returned letter. She was worried he might be lost. She alerted the FBI to the fact that she had gotten a letter from Casparis saying that Lee was expected there in April of 1960. He had been accepted and his application fee had been deposited. She was visited by FBI agent John Fain in April of 1960. Marguerite told Fain about the returned letters and how Lee was apparently lost in Russia. Now, J. Edgar Hoover began to search for Casparis and his college. This search occasioned the famous June 3, 1960, memo by Hoover saying that there is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald’s birth certificate. It turned out that Oswald never went to Schweitzer. But the question that remains, which the Commission never answered is: How did Oswald ever hear of this obscure institution halfway around the world while he was in Santa Ana? Because, as has been shown, the college did not advertise in the Christian Register from 1948–59.99 Was it brought to Oswald’s attention by Kerry Thornley? Thornley testified that he had been going to the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles around the time he met Oswald.100 Author George Michael Evica also explored the career of Hans Casparis, who wrote that he had graduated from three universities and lectured at the University of Zurich. When Evica contacted that university, they said he had never lectured there. He also had no reported degrees from any of the colleges he said he graduated from.101

  Then there is Percival Brundage. Brundage was one of the three incorporators of Friends of ASC, whose purpose was to receive and administer money and properties for the benefit of the institution. As Evica notes, Brundage was a major Unitarian Church Officer from 1942–54. This was during the time period—during World War II and at the beginning of the Cold War—when the Unitarians were cooperating with first the OSS, and then the CIA. In fact, this association became so prevalent that by 1960 all Quaker/Unitarian welfare agencies were placed under suspicion by the KGB.102 But further, in 1960, Brundage was also a signatory for the purchase of the Southern Air Transport airline by the CIA. In fact, he became one of the major stockholders of the company.103 As many people know, this was an infamous CIA proprietary company that did major supply missions for the Agency in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. Brundage was a director of the Friends of Albert Schweitzer College from 1953–58. The FBI visited the mysterious school in 1960 and 1963. The latter visit was part of the Warren Commission investigation of Oswald. Coincidentally—or not—Albert Schweitzer closed down in 1964, shortly after Kennedy’s murder.104

  Because Oswald never had the opportunity to stand trial, how he knew about and why he applied for this almost undetectable institution is one of the many mysteries of his short life. But it would appear to indicate that he knew months in advance that, after his Marine service was over, he would be emigrating to Europe. We will now examine how Oswald actually did leave the Marines, for this aspect is almost as clouded in mystery as his application to an obscure “college” in Churwalden.

  Oswald’s military assignment was scheduled to end on December 7, 1959.105 (It had been lengthened because of his confinement.) Yet, on August 17, he submitted a request for an early discharge due to medical problems his mother was having. With less than four months remaining on his obligation, and realizing there would be some kind of inquiry at both ends of the request, one would think there must have been quite an emergency at home. In another conspicuous failure, the Warren Report spends four sentences on this issue.106 It merited much more attention.

  One reason for a hardship or dependency discharge is so the enlisted man can be home to care for the ailing dependent. Once Oswald was discharged he spent all of three days in Fort Worth with his mother.107 What makes this “dependency” discharge even more odd is this: Seven days before he was actually released, he applied for a passport. Obviously, no passport was needed to go to Texas. He stated on his application he may be traveling to Europe, among other places, including Finland. (This last, as we shall see, was significant.) On his application he mentioned his intent to attend ASC. His passport was issued six days later, the day before he left for Texas.108 It would seem then that Oswald’s actual agenda was not to care for his mother, but to hightail it for Europe using his application to Albert Schweitzer as a pretext. Once in Europe he would then leapfrog to Finland for easier access to his real destination, which was Russia. (For this is what actually happened.) When he did arrive in Fort Worth, he gave his mother a hundred dollars—which he could have mailed her—and then left for New Orleans, where he said he was going to get into the import-export business.109

  Oswald began maneuvering for this early discharge on July 6th. That day he visited the Red Cross HQ at the Marines Corp Air Station in El Toro.110 He told them that his mother had suffered an injury at Cox’s Department Store in Fort Worth and had filed suit against the store. Yet his mother had worked at King Candy Company in the Fair Ridglea Department Store and her civil action was against them. But the suit was not filed until August 11, over a month after Oswald spoke of it. He requested a “Q” allotment be sent to her from his check, that is, a certain portion of his funds be dispersed to her. He then asked for supporting paperwork to begin his dependency discharge. The Red Cross in El Toro then got in contact with the Red Cross in Fort Worth. The Red Cross there got in contact with Marguerite. They learned that she claimed to have been hurt by a candy jar falling on her nose on December 5, 1958 while working the King Candy booth at Fair Ridglea Department Store.111 Dr. Milton Goldberg examined her and said there was a laceration, but his X-rays revealed no fractures. But Marguerite kept on returning to him and complaining of ailments. Goldberg did more X-rays but could find no fractures anyplace. He concluded she had suffered no partial or permanent disability.112 When the company filed its first notice of the injury, they said she would be out of work for one week. As we have seen, even though this injury occurred in early December of 1958, Oswald did not file for a “Q” allotment for seven months. Further, there is no evidence that Marguerite ever got any help with her injury from her son Robert who lived right there in Fort Worth.

  On the day of the assassination, Dr. Goldberg phoned the local FBI office in Fort Worth. He told them about his treatment of Marguerite. He explained how he could not go along with her alleged injury for compensation purposes. He suggested two other doctors for her to see if she wished to pursue it. But he also added an interesting detail. He said he recalled that during the time he treated her, she said that her son wanted to defect to Russia.113 Her first visit to him for a lacerated nose was on January 9, 1959. This was a full nine months before Oswald was formally discharged. It is six months before he reported to the Red Cross to begin his dependency discharge.

  Marguerite went on to see five doctors total. Finally, her insurance company decided to cut off payments to her. This is when she decided to file a lawsuit against King Candy. She told the Red Cross on July 9 that this is why her son needed the hardship discharge, and this is why she needed the paperwork to follow through on it. The paperwork was completed, and Oswald filed his petition on August 17. On August 27, just ten days later, the board approved the petition. On August 31, it was directed that Oswald be released from active duty.114 The House Select Committee on Assassinations did something the Warren Commission did not do. It interviewed the senior member of the board that reviewed Oswald’s discharge. Colonel B. J. Kozak told them that, compared to the pro forma procedure the board gave Oswald, it normally took three to six months for a hardship application to be approved.115 In fact, this was common knowledge among Oswald’s Marine buddies. In his testimo
ny before the Commission, Nelson Delgado stated that he knew Oswald was requesting a hardship discharge, but “it usually took so long a time to get a hardship discharge.”116 For some reason, it did not take long at all in Oswald’s case: just two weeks.

  Virtually everything about this discharge suggests it was a pretext to get Oswald out of the service early and on his way to Russia. Since, according to Rosaleen Quinn, he now spoke Russian well, there was no need for him to do any more military service, since he was not an infantry man, but an intelligence asset. The cover-up the Commission performed on this aspect of Oswald’s life is typical of the quality of their work in exploring who Oswald was.

  Oswald, Russia, and the CIA

  Oswald departed Fort Worth by bus seventy-two hours after he got there. There is no record of him offering any kind of medical care for his mother. In fact, for part of his seventy-two-hour stay he visited with his brother Robert and his family.117 (Predictably, the Warren Report does nothing to underline this seeming paradox.) Oswald then left Texas to go to New Orleans. He arrived on September 17 and went to the International Trade Mart. There he went to Lewis Hopkins of Travel Consultants. Hopkins also handled travel arrangements for Clay Shaw who managed the Trade Mart.118 Curiously, Oswald stated on his passenger questionnaire that he was in the import-export business, which he was not, but Shaw was.119 Oswald stayed at the Liberty Hotel, and he booked passage with Hopkins on a freighter called the Marion Lykes for 220.75 dollars. He wrote a letter to his mother in which he said that his values were different than his family’s and, “Just remember this is what I must do. I did not tell you about my plans because you could hardly be expected to understand.”120

  Nelson Delgado told the Commission he could not quite comprehend how Oswald could afford to travel across Europe: “I couldn’t understand where he got the money to go …. The way it costs now, it costs at least 800 dollars to 1,000 dollars to travel across Europe, plus the red tape you have to go through.”121 The late Philip Melanson expressed similar doubts. The author of Spy Saga noted that before his departure, Oswald’s bank account showed a balance of 203 dollars, which is about what the ticket for his ship journey cost. It is possible that he stowed away over a thousand dollars. Or perhaps he borrowed the money from someone. But there is no evidence of that.122

  His ship made two stops in France before departing for England. He landed at Southampton on October 9. He told officials that he planned on staying in country for a week before departing for college in Switzerland.123 The report says that Oswald arrived in Southampton on October 9 and left for Helsinki, Finland—a country on his passport application—the same day. Yet Oswald’s departure from England is stamped on his passport for October 10.124 He arrived in Helsinki late on the night of the tenth. He then did something that the report just glides over: He checked into the Hotel Torni for a bit more than a day, and then the Klaus Kurki Hotel for over four days. Yet here, the official story arrives at another quandary. We have mentioned the problems that the financing of this long voyage presents for someone of the status of Oswald. Complicating this is the fact that servicemen in Japan at that time were paid in scrip redeemable at American bases.125 Yet, when Oswald arrived in Helsinki, he stayed at a five star hotel. The Torni is the same hotel that housed U.S. President Herbert Hoover, President Mannerheim of Finland, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, and Finnish aristocrats like Prince Bertil and Count Folke Bernadotte.126 Upon its opening in 1931, it was billed as Finland’s first skyscraper hotel. Its top floor holds art exhibitions monthly, and the hotel has an observation platform, which is the highest vantage point in Helsinki. It was also constructed with marble staircases and stained glass windows. Upon its opening, it was the leading hotel in the city, and it published its own newspaper.

  During World War II, the Torni became an espionage headquarters for both the British and Soviets. In fact, the entire hotel was occupied by the Soviets from 1944 until 1947. Outside the edifice there is a plaque which states that “The Control Commission of the Allied Powers resided in this hotel during 1944–1947.”127 Clearly, no one from the Warren Commission visited this place. Retired British police detective Ian Griggs did. When the author met Griggs in Dallas in 2010, he told me that the Torni was roughly the Finnish equivalent of the famous Savoy Hotel in London. On his own, it makes absolutely no sense for Oswald to have stayed there. On his budget, Oswald should have been staying, at the most, at a Holiday Inn Express–type motel. Either someone told him about this, or he checked his wallet, did some figuring, and understood he was not even in Moscow yet. So on his second day he checked into the Klaus Kurki, where he stayed for four days. But according to Griggs, this second hotel is another high-class operation. It is located on Bulevardi, one of the best streets in town and is described as a “boulevard hotel.” The two buildings are about 300 yards from each other. According to Griggs, the Torni is perhaps the number one luxury hotel in Helsinki; the Klaus Kurki is probably number two. If the Commission had described these two hotels in any detail, or furnished photos, any objective reader would have to ask: What was a guy with 203 dollars in his account doing at a hotel where, if he was in town, Nelson Rockefeller would stay at?

  That question brings us to Oswald’s purpose for naming Finland on his passport application. He was there to attain a visa to Russia. The Soviet Embassy in Helsinki had direct ties to Intourist, which was the Russian state-owned travel bureau. Therefore, they could arrange for a visa in five to seven days, which is usually how long it took for Intourist to arrange for suitable lodgings. On page 690 of the Warren Report, it states that Oswald “probably applied” for the visa on October 12 and received it on October 14. But according to his actual visa application, he applied for it on October 13, which means he got the visa not in forty-eight hours, which is what the Commission leads us to think, but in a startling twenty-four hours.128 The Commission was troubled by the alacrity with which Oswald was processed. They asked the CIA to investigate. The Agency said that Mr. Golub, the employee who handled visas there, could issue a transit visa—one good for twenty-four hours—in a few minutes. But for a longer stay it would take about a week.129 This really did not explain how Golub got Oswald his visa that fast since Oswald’s initial visa was for a week. What the CIA did not tell the Commission is that the Russian embassy in Helsinki may be the only one in Europe where the officer was allowed to issue a visa in a matter of hours. A State Department dispatch of October 9, 1959 revealed that the American Embassy in Helsinki had direct ties to Golub. And they sent persons to him who needed a visa in a hurry. Golub then would call them back to alert them the mission had been accomplished.130 None of this is in the Warren Report, where Golub’s name is not even mentioned. Perhaps because it would indicate that someone was informing Oswald on how to proceed in advance. Further, Oswald was still indulging in his spendthrift ways. For Oswald purchased ten “tourist vouchers” at a price of thirty dollars apiece.131 Oswald then left Helsinki by train on October 15 and crossed into the USSR at Vainikkala. The Russian speaking Marine, Oswaldskovich, was now where he wanted to be.

  At this point it is necessary to do something that the Warren Report does not do: Place Oswald’s supposed defection in a historical perspective. Prior to 1958, American defectors to Russia had been a quite rare phenomenon. But yet, in 1959, there had already been two defectors to the USSR, Robert Webster and Nicholas Petrulli. In 1958, there had been four.132 By the end of 1960, the number had ballooned into the high teens.133 Several of them had a change of heart and returned to America. Many of them followed the same route of entry into Russia as Oswald had done.134 And, like Oswald, several of them were from the military.135 To make things more intriguing, Webster had worked for Rand Corporation, which had close ties with the CIA. Rand was one of the first companies to sell technical products inside of Russia. And it was at such a trade fair that Webster defected. Both Henry Rand, who founded the company, and executive George Bookbinder worked for the OSS
, the precursor to the CIA. Their Washington representative Christopher Bird was a known CIA agent.136 And although Oswald was not supposed to have known about Webster, as he was arranging to leave Russia in 1961, he asked U.S. embassy officials about the fate of a young man named Webster who came to Russia at about the time he did.137

  None of this important history is in the Warren Report. In fact, the names of Webster and Petrulli are not in the index. Which is surprising in light of the following fact: Webster met the nineteen-year-old Marina Prusakova in Moscow in 1959, before she met her future husband, Lee Oswald. And Webster spoke to her in English—a language Marina was not supposed to have learned yet. But which she spoke, albeit with a heavy accent.138 Further, after the assassination, the address of Webster’s Leningrad apartment was found in Marina’s address book.139 For, like Oswald being sent to Minsk, Webster was sent out of Moscow to Leningrad, from where he applied for an exit visa. It would seem more than happenstance for a nineteen-year-old girl—whose uncle worked for the Soviet version of the FBI—to meet two out of the three American defectors in all of Russia in a matter of months, especially when they were among the first defectors to Russia in many years. Further, Webster eventually took a common-law wife in Russia who was suspected of being a KGB agent. Webster informed authorities of his intention to defect two weeks before Oswald did the same. Webster left Russia a fortnight before Oswald left. Marina once told an acquaintance that her husband had defected to the USSR after working at a trade exhibition in Moscow. Marina had temporarily confused Oswald with Webster, for this is how Webster had defected.140 All this says much about the probability of an American defector program in place, and Russian knowledge of it.