End of Days

by James L. Swanson

  “Well, I have answered that, uh, prior to this program on another radio program.”

  “Are you a Marxist?”

  “Yes, I am a Marxist.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “As I said . . . very great.”

  Oswald launched into a long-winded and unconvincing list of countries as he tried to carve a vague distinction between Marxism and Communism. Then the host announced that it was time to break for a commercial. As soon as the show returned to the air, the interrogation continued.

  Stuckey asked Oswald how he supported himself in Russia, and whether he had enjoyed a government subsidy. Lee stumbled. “Uh, well, as I, um will uh.” Then he stalled. “Well with that I will answer your question directly then, since you will not rest until you get your answer.” He said that he held a job.

  Stuckey continued to ask Oswald about his time in Russia and pressed him again on whether he had tried to renounce his American citizenship. “Well, it’s a long drawn out situation.” Then he resorted to false logic. “Well, the very obvious answer is that I am back in the United States. A person who renounces his citizenship becomes by definition unable to return to the United States.”

  That may have been true, but it did not answer whether Lee had attempted to renounce his citizenship. This evasiveness would become one of Oswald’s verbal trademarks.

  Ed Butler demanded, “What did you do between October 31 and November 16, 1959?” and then asked Oswald if he had ever been to a particular street in Russia. The intricate question sounded obscure and meant nothing to the audience. Oswald said no, he had not been there but in the next breath he revealed that he knew the street (and pronounced its name with a proper Russian accent) and that the Soviet foreign ministry was located there. He knew that, he said, only because he had once lived in Moscow.

  For a man who had lived in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, his comments about Russia were superficial and uninteresting. If this was his moment to prove that he was a sophisticated political thinker, his performance was not that impressive.

  Oswald kept his cool but was getting frustrated. He objected to the whole line of questioning about his background: “Of course this whole conversation—and we don’t have much time left—is getting away from the Cuban American problem.” But it was fine, he added, if they wanted to grill him about Russia all night: “. . . I am quite willing to discuss myself for the remainder of this program.”

  Bill Slatter jumped in to rescue Oswald: “Mr. Butler, let me interrupt. I think Mr. Oswald is right. . . . We should get around to organization of which he is the head in New Orleans, Fair Play for Cuba.” Slatter had omitted the last word of the organization’s name. Oswald corrected him at once. “Committee,” Oswald interjected, “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

  Slatter asked, “As a practical matter, what do you hope to gain through your work?”

  At last, Oswald must have thought: a political question that he longed to answer. The program was almost over, but now he would have the opportunity to explain. “The principles of the Fair Play for Cuba [now Oswald failed to say the word Committee, the very lapse for which he had just chastised Slatter] consist of restoration of diplomatic, trade and tourist relations with Cuba. That is one of our main points . . . we are in a minority surely. We are honestly not interested in what Cuban exiles, or rightist . . . organizations might have to say. We are primarily interested in the attitude of the U.S. government towards Cuba.”

  Oswald rejected the insinuation that he was a Soviet puppet. “We are not at all Communist controlled regardless of the fact that I lived in Russia. Regardless of the fact that we have been investigated. Regardless of any of those facts, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is an independent organization not affiliated with any other organization. Our aims and our ideals are very clear and in the best keeping with the very traditions of American democracy.”

  Carlos Bringuier could no longer remain silent. “Do you agree with Fidel Castro when in a speech [on July 26, 1963] he characterized President Kennedy as a ruffian and a thief?”

  Oswald demurred. “I would not agree with that particular wording. However . . . does the U.S. government . . . ah, the State Department and CIA had made some serious mistakes in its relationship with Cuba . . . which put Cuba onto dogmatic Communism.” No doubt he was referring to the CIA sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis ten months ago.

  Then Oswald got into the question of American support for Castro’s overthrow of Batista.

  Ed Butler asked, “Why are people starving today?”

  Oswald spoke of the unavoidable consequences of reforms and diversification of agriculture. He meandered onto topics like the production of sugar and tobacco versus sweet potatoes, lima beans, and cotton. Then time expired and the program petered out without a dramatic climax.

  After the broadcast, Stuckey felt sorry for Oswald. He invited him out for a drink.

  WHAT DO Oswald’s little-remembered radio appearances tell us? He handled himself reasonably well when confronted by four hostile questioners on live radio. He kept his cool; he used humor to foil sarcasm and anger. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He did not come off as angry or hostile. He may have been naive or wrong, but he did not sound crazy. Yes, Oswald had made some factual mistakes and exhibited some verbal tics. Two laughable vocabulary mistakes gave clues to his lack of education: He said “superfluitous” when he meant to say “superfluous,” and he said “co-concise” instead of “concise.”

  But Lee was proud of his Fair Play for Cuba Committee work. In a document he prepared, he describes the beginning of his involvement with the FPCC as though he had accomplished something of significance. “On May 29, 1963 I requested permission from the FPCC headquarters at 799 Brodwig New York 3, N.Y. to try to form a local branch in New Orleans. I received a cautionet [cautionary] but enthusiastic go-ahead from V.T. Lee National Director of FPCC. I then made layouts and had printed public literature for the setting up of a local FPCC. I hired person to distribute literature.”

  In the extract below, Oswald’s overblown description of his counterintelligence operations against anti-Castro exiles sounds ludicrous. He appropriates the language of “spy talk” that in his imagination a CIA agent might use. Oswald’s writings are a riot of misspelled words, grammatical mistakes, punctuation errors, and lack of capitalization. It is obvious that they are the musings of someone of limited education, even an autodidact, possibly dyslexic. They make him sound like a fool who has no idea what he is talking about:

  I than [then] organized persons who display recetive [receptive] attitudes toward Cuba to distrube [distribute] pamphlets . . . I infiltraled [infiltrated] the Cuban Student directorate and then harresed [harassed] them with information I gained including having the N.O. city atterny [attorney] general call then in an out restraining order pending a hearing on some so-called bonds for invasion they were selling in the New Orleans area. I caused the formation of a small, active FPCC organization of members and sympathizers. where before there were none.

  In truth Oswald was a nonentity. He was the only member of FPCC in New Orleans, and he had failed to recruit another soul to serve Castro’s cause. Oswald, as was so typical for him, was suffering from another one of his delusions of grandeur. All he did was write a letter and print some handbills. But Oswald made it sound important. “I received adive [advice], direction and literature from V.T. Lee National Director of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee of which I am a member. At my own expense I had printed ‘Hands off Cuba’ handbills and New Orleans membership Blanks for the F.P.C.C. local.”

  Oswald fancied himself a propaganda expert and claimed a hitherto unrecognized expertise. “I am experienced in Street agitation having done it in New Orleans in connection with the F.P.C.C. In Aug. 9 I was accousted [accosted] by three anti-Castro Cubans and was arrested for ‘causing a disturbance’ I was interrogated by intelligence section of New Orleans Police Dept. and held overni
ght being bailed out the next morning by relatives I subsenly [subsequently] was fined 10.$ charges against the three Cubans were droped [dropped] by the judge.” Oswald was too uneducated to realize how pathetic his boast of being an expert in “street agitation” would seem to any real intelligence agent.

  But Oswald was proud of the media coverage he had received. It allowed him to indulge the conceit that he had actually accomplished something. Finally, Oswald must have thought, people wanted to hear his opinions. He had so many of them. He was, he believed, on his way to becoming an important public spokesman for a cause. His voice would be heard.

  In the Soviet Union, he had been a novelty—the American who rejected capitalism and chose socialist life in Russia. But his celebrity there had lost its sheen. Now he had a second chance at fame. Now he was another kind of novelty—the American who had chosen life in Communist Russia but rejected it and came back home, only to become a disciple of Fidel Castro and his revolution. He was in the limelight again, and he liked it. But his moment in the spotlight did not last long. The media lost interest, the invitations dried up, and it looked as though his brief brush with fame was over.

  Nothing that Oswald said on the New Orleans radio programs would have given any listener cause to suspect that he had already attempted to murder one man and soon would try to kill another. In twelve weeks, he would attempt to assassinate the president of the United States. Soon Oswald would speak to a much larger audience than had heard him on a New Orleans radio station, when he would answer hostile questions in the same manner as he did on the radio show.

  MARINA NOTICED that after Lee’s arrest and radio appearances, he started to bring his rifle out to the porch more often: “It began to happen quite frequently after he was arrested . . . in connection with some demonstration and handing out of leaflets.” Not only did he sit in the dark on the back porch peering through the telescopic sight at imaginary targets, he worked the bolt action of the Mannlicher-Carcano. “He would sit there with the rifle and open and close the bolt.”

  In the six months he had owned it, Marina had seen him clean the weapon four or five times. Before he tried to kill General Walker, she thought nothing of it. “I thought it was quite normal that when you have a rifle you must clean it from time to time.” Now, in New Orleans, she asked him why he continued practicing with the rifle. It looked to Marina as though he was preparing again for . . . something.

  His answer stunned her. He planned to go to Cuba, he said. Marina was exasperated. She warned Lee that if he did that, she would stay in New Orleans. There was no way she was going to agree to leave the United States and move to Fidel Castro’s notorious revolutionary island. Lee had fantasized about killing Richard M. Nixon, JFK’s republican opponent in the 1960 presidential election. Marina barricaded Lee in the bathroom until he cooled off and promised he would not try to do it. He also fantasized about hijacking a plane to Cuba. “He wanted very much,” Marina said, “to go to Cuba and have the newspapers write that somebody had kidnaped an aircraft.”

  “For God’s sakes, don’t do such a thing,” Marina pleaded.

  Lee asked her if she would help him. Of course not, she said. “I told him that I would not touch that rifle.”

  He said that if she did not want to, it was fine. He could do it himself, and everything, he said, would go well. Oswald started studying airline schedules.

  Despite Lee’s obsession with Cuba, he never complained to Marina about President Kennedy. Oswald, a man who wanted the United States to keep its “Hands Off Cuba!” as the leaflets of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee demanded, had reasons to resent JFK for the U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but not once did he rant to Marina about the anticommunist American president.

  Marina admired JFK and wanted to know more about him. “I was always interested in President Kennedy and had asked [Lee] many times to translate articles in a newspaper or a magazine for me, and he always had something good to say . . . from Lee’s behavior I cannot conclude that he was against the president.”

  She was well aware, however, of her husband’s delusions of grandeur. “He said that after 20 years he would be prime minister.” How absurd, she thought. “I think that he had a sick imagination—at least at that time I already considered him to be not quite normal—not always, but at times. I always tried to point out to him that he was a man like any others who were around us. But he simply could not understand that. I tried to tell him that it would be better to direct his energies to some more practical matters.”

  Lee was not interested in his wife’s sanguine opinion of his limitations. “At least his imagination, his fantasy, which was quite unfounded, as to the fact that he was an outstanding man. And the fact that he was very much interested, exceedingly so, in autobiographical works of outstanding statesmen of the United States and others.”

  Marina became convinced that Lee viewed himself in heroic terms. “I think that he compared himself to these people whose autobiographies he read. That seems strange to me, because it is necessary to have an education in order to achieve success of that kind.”

  A man born with what Oswald called his mean independent streak and the smug sense of superiority he exhibited in the Marine Corps could never function in Soviet society. But he could not fit in in America, either. He felt like a man without a country. Marina suspected he was incapable of being happy anywhere. She once said, “I am sure that if he had gone there (to Cuba) he would not have liked it there, either. Only on the moon, perhaps.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “SHOW THESE TEXANS WHAT GOOD TASTE REALLY IS”

  To many Americans, there was more to John F. Kennedy’s administration—something intangible—than speeches, world travels, multiple crises, and anti-Communism. He had style. Kennedy possessed a glamorous effervescence that made him seem larger than life and a youthful symbol of a new era of American optimism and spirit. He was the first president born in the twentieth century. With his enchanting wife, who was just thirty-four, and two beautiful young children, the telegenic president cultivated a jaunty, athletic public image of a sailor, touch-football enthusiast, sportsman, and father. The public had nicknamed him JFK.

  Jacqueline Kennedy, or Jackie, as she was known—became a star in her own right. Sometimes she even outshone JFK himself. Celebrated for her elegant, trendsetting fashion and understated beauty, she appeared on the covers of magazines looking more like an alluring movie actress than a politician’s wife. She was a world traveler and lover of culture. And yet she remained a reserved, quiet person whose desire for privacy made her all the more fascinating to the public. A strong believer in the preservation of America’s past, she undertook a much-needed historic renovation of the White House, hosted a popular and unprecedented television special on the result, and brought the president’s home alive with artists, authors, and musicians.

  President Kennedy claps his hands as his children Caroline and John Jr. dance for him in the Oval Office at the White House.

  (Cecil Stoughton, courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

  John Kennedy’s sharp wit and ability to laugh at himself enhanced his appeal. But he had a dark side. He loved history for its lessons and inspiration, but he was also drawn to its tragedy, irony, and disappointments. And below the surface of his public image of vigor, his cheer camouflaged a lifetime of physical pain and multiple illnesses, including Addison’s disease. Convinced that the American people did not want to see their president as weak or sick, he battled his ailments in secret. Of all his characteristics, John Kennedy had one more important than all the rest—an ability to inspire people, through words and personal example, to attempt great things. It was the core of his mystique.

  In August 1963, death whispered in Kennedy’s ear again when it took the life of his newborn, two-day-old son, Patrick. It was Jackie’s second failed pregnancy. But the emptiness that loss created left one saving grace. It drew Jack and Jackie Kennedy clo
se again. They had kept it hidden from the American people, but theirs was not the picture-perfect marriage. Not until years later would any of that become public. He viewed marriage the way a royal prince might see the institution—necessary and useful but not sacrosanct.

  BY LATE September, Marina was fed up with life in New Orleans and with her husband, and on the twenty-third she left New Orleans for Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. She was expecting her second child next month, and her friend Ruth Paine had offered to take her in and care for her.

  Ruth drove her station wagon from Irving to New Orleans to retrieve Marina and her simple household goods. Marina was pregnant, so Lee carried the boxes and loaded the car. There was also something he did not want her to see.

  He had wrapped the Mannlicher-Carcano in a plaid wool blanket. Then, unbeknownst to her, he carried the rifle to the car and slipped it inside. Marina did not discover it until she got back to Texas: “After we arrived, I tried to put the bed, the child’s crib together.” She searched for the metallic parts. “I looked for a certain part, and I came upon something wrapped in a blanket. I thought that was part of the bed, but it turned out to be the rifle.”

  The rifle that Lee had used to try to murder General Walker was now back in Dallas. At the time of the Walker attack, Oswald and the Mannlicher-Carcano were barely acquainted. He had owned it for less than three weeks when he attempted to use it to assassinate the general. Now Lee and his rifle were old friends.

  LEE LEFT New Orleans too, but he did not head straight to Texas or to his family. He decided to take a long and mysterious excursion between New Orleans and Fort Worth—out of the United States and into Mexico.

  On September 27, four days after his departure from New Orleans, Oswald showed up in Mexico City, where he visited the Cuban embassy and applied for permission to travel to Cuba. The Cubans, scoffing at his wild tales of Fair Play for Cuba activities, gave him no special treatment and told him it would take months. Frustrated, he then went to the Russian embassy for help in getting to Cuba or returning to the Soviet Union. The Russians knew he was an odd duck and were in no hurry to allow him back into their country either. He was furious.