A. Yes.
Q. Do you think he thought that would help him when he got to Cuba?
A. Yes.
Q. Did he tell you anything about that, or is that just what you guess?
A. He would collect the newspaper clippings about his—when the newspapers wrote about him, and he took those clippings with him when he went to Mexico.
On August 16 Oswald staged another demonstration in front of the International Trade Mart. A friend of Bringuier’s picked up one of the leaflets and saw that Oswald had his name and address stamped on it. They decided to turn the tables on him. The friend went to Oswald’s house posing as a Castro sympathizer and talked to him for about an hour on his front porch. Oswald reportedly told him that the United States didn’t have the right to invade Cuba or overthrow its government, and that if it tried to, he would fight for Castro. He wasn’t taken in by the visitor. Afterward, Marina testified, “I asked Lee who that was, and he said it was probably some anti-Cuban, or perhaps an FBI agent.”
The Oswalds were getting along better by this time. He no longer hit her—she was seven months pregnant—and he even confided in her to some extent. According to McMillan’s book, Marina tried to tell Oswald he wasn’t the outstanding man he thought he was. She reminded him that Cuba had gotten along without him so far, and told him, “Poor great man sits here all by himself. He’s part of a great cause, and yet he has nothing to eat. Nobody sees that he’s a genius.”
“You laugh now,” he replied, “But in twenty years, when I’m prime minister, we’ll see how you laugh then.” He told her Cuba was “a tiny country surrounded by enemies” and that he hoped his leaflets would help wake up the American people. When Marina commented that America obviously wasn’t ready for a revolution, he agreed: “You’re right. I ought to have been born in some other era, much sooner or much later than I was.”
Marina explained to the Warren Commission, “I was not exactly happy with this occupation of his, but it seemed to me better than his ‘games’ with the rifle as in Dallas. To tell the truth, I sympathized with Cuba.… But I did not support Lee since I felt that he was too small a person to take so much on himself.”
As a result of the publicity he’d been attracting, Oswald was invited to appear on a local radio show called Latin Listening Post. The moderator, William Stuckey, found him to be self-assured and “very well qualified to handle questions”—if his speaking style had a fault, it was that Oswald seemed “a little stiff” and too academic. On the air, Stuckey asked him about his background, and Oswald said that after he had been honorably discharged from the Marines as a buck sergeant, he had gone back to work in Texas, and had recently moved to New Orleans with his wife and child. No mention of Dallas or Russia. (Because of his court-martials he had never gotten above the rank of private first class.)
In response to Stuckey’s questions, he denied that Castro was controlled by the Soviet Union, and pointed out that when Khrushchev had asked him to allow on-site inspections of his rocket bases during the missile crisis, Castro refused. He called Castro an “experimenter, a person who is trying to find the best way for his country.” But he insisted that the Fair Play Committee did not support Fidel Castro as an “individual”—rather, it supported “the idea of an independent revolution in the Western Hemisphere, free from American intervention.”
If [Castro] chooses a socialist or a Marxist or a Communist way of life, that is something upon which only the Cuban people can pass. We do not have the right to pass on that.… We cannot exploit that system and say it is a bad one, it is a threat to our existence and then go and try to destroy it.
According to Oswald, the “current of history” indicated that “countries emerging from imperialist domination” would choose socialism in one form or another. “Cuba,” he declared, “is irrevocably lost as far as capitalism goes and there will never be a capitalist regime again in Cuba.” Here Oswald was repeating two themes expressed in a letter to his brother Robert from Moscow four years earlier: opposition to American imperialism and a classic Marxist belief in historical inevitability.
When Stuckey asked him why so many people were fleeing Cuba, Oswald mentioned the criminal class and said that many of them were “the same people who are in New Orleans and have set themselves up in stores with blood money.” He said he thought that the Cuban government’s attitude was “good riddance.” Stuckey pressed him on this issue, asking why so many workers and peasants were leaving Cuba while few were leaving dictatorships like Nicaragua, and Oswald turned the question to his advantage.
Well, a good question. [The] Nicaraguan situation is considerably different from Castro’s Cuba. People are inclined not to flee their countries unless some new system, new factor, enters into their lives. I must say that very surely no new factors have entered into Nicaragua for about 300 years, in fact the people live exactly as they have always lived in Nicaragua. I am referring to the overwhelming majority of the people in Nicaragua, which is a feudal dictatorship with 90 per cent of the people engaged in agriculture. These peasants are uneducated. They have one of the lowest living standards in all of the western hemisphere and so because of the fact that no new factor, no liberating factor, has entered into their lives, they remain in Nicaragua.
He explained the flight of workers and peasants from Cuba this way:
You know, it’s very funny about revolutions. Revolutions require work, revolutions require sacrifice…. These people are the people who do not remain in Cuba to be educated by young people, who are afraid of the alphabet, who are afraid of these new things which are occurring, who are afraid they would lose something by collectivization.… You know, it used to be that these people worked for the United Fruit Company or American companies engaged in sugar refining, oil refining in Cuba. They worked a few months every year during the cane cutting or sugar refining season.… They feel that now they have to work all year round to plant new crops, to make a new economy … they feel that they have been robbed of the right to do as they please…. What they do not realize is that they have been robbed of the right to be exploited, robbed of the right to be cheated, robbed of the right of New Orleanean companies to take away what was rightfully theirs. Of course, they have to share now. Everybody gets an equal portion. This is collectivization and this is very hard on some people, on people preferring the dog-eat-dog economy.
Oswald was good at this. When Stuckey brought up the lack of press freedom in Cuba, he compared it to the voluntary press censorship during wartime in the United States and complained about the Times-Picayune and States-Item syndicate, which he spoke of collectively as “the only newspaper we have in New Orleans and a very restricted paper it is.” He said, “The Fair Play for Cuba Committee has often approached this paper with information or comments and this paper has consistently refused [to use it,] because … it is sympathetic to the anti-Castro regime. It has systematically refused to print any objective matter, giving the other man’s viewpoint about Cuba.” (This answer shows that he had been following the local newspapers’ coverage of Cuba.) He also claimed that he had gone to their offices and asked for coverage of his Trade Mart demonstration and they refused.
The other answers he gave indicate that he was well-informed about Cuba. His reference to young people teaching the old was an allusion to the Alphabetization or Literacy Campaign of 1961, in which young Cubans went into rural areas to teach older people to read. Oswald also complained about the U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba. And he referred to the anti-Castro underground—the “Batistaites” still in Cuba who had gone into hiding and had been “engaged in counter-revolutionary activities ever since the Bay of Pigs and even before that, just after the revolution. In other words, they have remained underground.”
He probably obtained this information from a variety of sources, but primarily from his reading, including the pamphlets Fair Play had sent him and articles about Cuba in The Militant and elsewhere. He had also spent time with Cuban students in the Soviet
Union—one of his best friends there was a Cuban student named Alfred. And although there’s no direct evidence for this, he may also have been in contact with some other Cubans in New Orleans. (Back in Dallas, George de Mohrenschildt had noticed that Oswald knew quite a bit about the history of several Latin American countries. He later wrote that Oswald told him he’d learned a lot from talking with refugees from those countries when he was a teenager in New Orleans—“no better source of information.”)
After this broadcast, Stuckey and the station manager decided to arrange a debate between Oswald, Carlos Bringuier, and another anti-Communist, Ed Butler. Oswald showed up promptly on the afternoon of August 21. He was wearing a Russian-made suit—heavy gray flannel, badly cut—a shirt and tie, and carried a black looseleaf notebook under his arm. Since the initial interview, Bill Stuckey had learned, through a telephone call to the FBI, that Oswald had lived in Russia. He confronted him with this on the air and caught Oswald offguard.
STUCKEY: You did live in Russia for three years?
OSWALD: That is correct, and I think that those, the fact that I did live for a time in the Soviet Union gives me excellent qualifications to repudiate charges that Cuba and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is communist controlled.
Naturally, his opponents didn’t agree.
Later in the debate Bringuier asked him if he concurred with Castro’s recent characterization of President Kennedy as “a ruffian and a thief.” Oswald replied, “I would not agree with that particular wording. However, I and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee do think that the United States Government through certain agencies, mainly the State Department and the CIA, has made monumental mistakes in its relations with Cuba.” Bringuier was referring to recent press reports of a speech in which Castro charged that the United States hadn’t delivered all the food and medical supplies it had promised Cuba in return for the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners. Castro had said, “The ruffian Kennedy operates this way. We freed the mercenaries and already they are organizing new aggressions against Cuba.”
Oswald’s remark that he didn’t agree with Castro’s particular wording suggests that he may have instead agreed with the substance. But he went on to blame the State Department and the CIA, and this too may have reflected his attitude toward John Kennedy. Marina has said that he considered Kennedy the best American leader one could expect at that point in history. And he seemed to feel that Kennedy might have pursued a softer line on Cuba if it hadn’t been for the political pressures he had to contend with. He explained how a president had to reckon with the opinions of others. His only negative comment was that Joe Kennedy had bought the presidency for his son—but this criticism was directed against capitalism. “Money paves the way to everything here,” he said. Thus, he seemed to put most of the blame for America’s policy toward Cuba on conservative elements, not on Kennedy himself. But it should be kept in mind that Oswald considered his wife unqualified to discuss political issues with him, and he knew she admired Kennedy.
Although Lee Harvey Oswald was a clever debater, the revelation about his defection won the debate for his opponents. Stuckey later said, “I think that we finished him on that program.… Oswald seemed like such a nice, bright boy and was extremely believable before this. We thought the fellow could probably get quite a few members if he was really indeed serious about getting members. We figured after this broadcast of August 21, why, that was no longer possible.”
After the program Stuckey noticed that he looked “a little dejected” and invited him to a nearby bar for a beer. At the bar Stuckey thought he seemed to relax for the first time, and they talked for about an hour. When Stuckey asked if his relatives had influenced him to become a Marxist, Oswald seemed amused. No, he said, they were “pretty much typical New Orleans types.” He told Stuckey that he had started reading Marx and Engels when he was 15 and that his service in Japan had convinced him that “something was wrong with the system,” so he decided to go to Russia and see for himself how a revolutionary society operates. But he became disillusioned with Russia, he said, and he believed that Cuba was now the only revolutionary country in the world. Stuckey’s impression was that Oswald regarded himself “as living in a world of intellectual inferiors.” He thought Oswald knew he was intelligent and wanted “to have an opportunity to express his intelligence.”
A week after the debate, Oswald wrote the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA:
Please advise me upon a problem of personal tactics.
I have lived in the Soviet Union from Oct. 1959 to July 1962.
I had, in 1959, in Moscow, tried to legally dissolve my United States citizenship in favor of Soviet citizenship, however, I did not complete the legal formalities for this.
Having come back to the U.S. in 1962 and thrown myself into the struggle for progress and freedom in the United States, I would like to know whether, in your opinions, I can continue to fight, handicapped as it were, by my past record, can I still, under these circumstances, compete with anti-progressive forces aboveground or whether in your opinion I should always remain in the background, i.e. underground.
Our opponents could use my background of residence in the U.S.S.R. against any cause which I join, by association, they could say the organization of which I am a member is Russian controlled, etc. I am sure you see my point.
I could of course openly proclaim (if pressed on the subject) that I wanted to dissolve my American citizenship as a personal protest against the policy of the U.S. government in supporting dictatorships, etc.
But what do you think I should do? Which is the best tactic in general?
Should I dissociate myself from all progressive activities?
Here in New Orleans, I am secretary of the local branch of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” a position which, frankly, I have used to foster communist ideals.
On a local radio show, I was attacked by Cuban exile organization representatives for my residence etc. in the Soviet Union.
I feel I may have compromised the F.P.C.C., so you see that I need the advice of trusted, long time fighters for progress. Please advise.
The information director of the party, Arnold Johnson, eventually replied on September 19, saying that, as an American citizen, “you have a right to participate in such organizations as you want,” but that “often it is advisable for some people to remain in the background, not underground.”
Marina has said that Oswald thought more highly of the American Communists than he did of the Party members in Russia. He showed her a letter from a Party official in New York—perhaps this one—and said in effect: see, here is someone important who understands what I’m trying to do. It must have seemed to him, after the debate, that he could no longer work openly as a pro-Castro organizer, certainly not in New Orleans—and that he would now have to remain in the background, i.e., underground.
In late August he began practicing dry-firing his rifle several times a week on his front porch. He explained the practice to Marina: “Fidel Castro needs defenders. I’m going to join his army of volunteers. I’m going to be a revolutionary.”
During the second half of the summer, Oswald was seen with two Latin Americans who have never been identified. Dean Andrews, a New Orleans attorney, claimed that in July Oswald came to his office more than once in the company of a short, stocky Mexican, about 26 years old. He called the Mexican “Oswald’s shadow.” Although Andrews couldn’t prove his story, one part of his testimony rings true. He said that Oswald came to see him about getting his less-than-honorable discharge upgraded. Oswald had been trying to get the Marines to reinstate his honorable discharge ever since he returned to the United States, and that month had received official notice that his request had been rejected. Considering Oswald’s persistence when he believed he had been wronged, it makes sense that he might have then gone to an attorney. (Andrews said that since Oswald couldn’t pay his fee, nothing came of it.)
Also, about this time, Oswald was reportedly s
een in the Habana Bar with a Mexican or Cuban by both the bartender and Orest Pena, the owner. The Habana Bar was said to be a hangout for Spanish-speaking seamen, both pro- and anti-Castro. The man with Oswald was described as being approximately 28 years old, short and muscular, with very hairy arms and a receding hairline.
Finally, during the August 16 Trade Mart demonstration, Oswald was photographed by a local TV news crew while he was handing out his leaflets with two young men. One was a teenager Oswald approached and offered $2 for an hour’s work. But the other was a Latin American who has never been identified. The House Assassinations Committee published a photograph taken from the news film and suggested that this second man should be investigated further.
Oswald was always on the lookout for people who agreed with his political ideas. Under a paragraph entitled “Organizer” in his résumé, he wrote: “I hired persons to distribute literature. I then organized persons who display receptive attitudes toward Cuba to distribute pamphlets.… I caused the formation of a small, active, FPCC organization of members and sympathizers where before there was none.” It has been assumed that Oswald was lying when he claimed to have organized a small group of supporters. It may be that he was simply exaggerating—possibly his support consisted of only one or two unidentified Latin Americans.
The Warren Report described Oswald’s completed résumé as consisting of
… several sheets of notepaper which he presumably intended to call to the attention of Cuban and Soviet officials in Mexico City to convince them to let him enter Cuba. On these sheets he had recorded facts about his Marine service, including the dates of his enlistment and discharge; the places where he had served, and the diplomas that he had received from military school. Recorded also were notes on his stay in the Soviet Union, his early interest in Communist literature, his ability to speak Russian, his organization of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, his contact with police authorities in connection with his work for the Committee, and his experience in “street agitation,” as a “radio speaker and lecturer,” and as a photographer.
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