Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  Although he cultivated the appearance of impermeability, of having made up his mind about everything, Lee was also suggestible, and there was a thread running through the Manchester biography that may have fascinated him—the theme of death. Lee had tried to commit suicide at least once and had attempted a political murder that might have resulted in his own death. Thus he may have been particularly spellbound by Manchester’s many references to Kennedy’s close brushes with death. During the PT-boat episode of World War II, Manchester wrote, Kennedy’s superiors assumed that he had been killed in action. Throughout the book Manchester emphasized the president’s fatalism, his conviction that he was “fighting the clock.” He even cited a remark by Kennedy to the historian Arthur Schlesinger, who, when he came to writing a book about Kennedy’s presidency, Kennedy said, would have to call it The Only Years, because he was going to have only a single term. Even when he was speaking solely of politics, the words Manchester used were suggestive. He called Kennedy, in the purely political sense, “the biggest target in the land.”

  Manchester was captivated by the president and mystified that he was not yet preeminent in the affections of his countrymen. Kennedy, he conceded, was not so lovable as Lincoln had been. “He has a weaker grip on the nation’s heartstrings,” Manchester wrote, “and the reason isn’t that he hasn’t been shot.” How might Lee Oswald read a passage like that?6

  Immediately after finishing Manchester’s biography, Lee read a book by the president himself, Profiles in Courage. In it Kennedy tells about eight US senators who, when called upon in a crisis to choose between the politically popular course and the course they believed to be right, had chosen the right course even at the cost of their careers. Kennedy called upon every citizen of the United States to bear on his shoulders all the burdens of the politician. Every man must do as his conscience required, do the great, the lonely, the unpopular thing, the thing that would in the long run be best for the people. He might be reviled, he might even lose his life, but history would vindicate and understand. With such words it is possible that President Kennedy handed his assassin the very weapon he needed most, not the gun or the bullet, but the argument.

  If Lee, at this time, did start to consider another act of violence that would awaken the American people to the danger they were in, then he very quickly shoved the idea onto a back burner of his mind, where it might well have simmered forever. Cuba remained on the front burner, and he resumed his peaceful political activity in behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Near the end of July, he wrote an extraordinary letter to Vincent T. Lee, the organization’s national director in New York, in answer to Vincent Lee’s friendly and encouraging letter of almost two months before.

  In his undated reply Lee Oswald answered that he had made some “inovations” in his activities on behalf of Cuba, and “I hope you won’t be too disapproving.”7 One innovation was that “against your advice I have decided to take an office from the very beginning.” This was a lie, for Lee never rented an office. He enclosed one of his handbills, in which he claimed to have a “charter chapter,” another lie. He also enclosed the membership application he had had printed and gave Mr. Lee a lecture on the system of dues he had set up, assuring him that it would not cheat the national office out of any money.

  Vincent Lee was disgusted. He had hopes of what a discreet and energetic new member might be able to achieve even in territory so inhospitable as Louisiana. But this man was obviously a nut. He had gone off and “violated all the rules.” Even the few steps he had taken made clear that Oswald was the kind who would be “isolated” no matter what community he was in.8 What was worse, he was claiming to speak for the FPCC when in fact he was exposing it to reprisals that could be a public embarrassment. By being associated with such a freebooter, the FPCC, which was in a precarious situation anyhow, had much to lose and nothing to gain.9 Vincent Lee decided to sever communications. He did not answer the letter. Oswald did not perceive for some time, if ever, that the FPCC had cut him off. He kept on writing Vincent Lee, sending clippings, trying to impress him. Vincent Lee did not reply.

  Lee was diligent at first about looking for a new job. He scoured the Help Wanted ads in the newspaper and answered a variety of them, for jobs in photography, clerk-typist jobs, even a job as yard man at a marble and granite company. He filed a claim for unemployment compensation based on his employment in Texas and was granted maximum benefits payable at $33 a week for thirteen weeks. But in order to qualify for the payments, he had to visit the Louisiana Employment Commission every Tuesday and list the names of the concerns where he had applied for work. Again, Lee embroidered reality; the number of enterprises at which he falsely claimed to have sought employment was in the scores.10 From the end of July, he looked for work only desultorily, and after the middle of August, he stopped looking altogether. He had started to receive unemployment compensation, and on these payments, plus what he had saved while he was working, he managed to live until October.

  Meanwhile, although unemployed and unable even to hold down a job as a manual laborer, Lee was oddly enough capable of a public life of a kind. His cousin Eugene Murret, who was training to be a Jesuit priest, wrote from Mobile, Alabama, inviting Lee to speak at his seminary about Russia. Overcoming his antireligious scruples, Lee accepted, and on a Saturday at the end of July, Lillian and Dutz Murret drove him and Marina to Mobile. Lee was to speak that night.

  Aunt Lillian, not realizing that in his own eyes Lee was a public man already, urged him to make notes so that he would not be nervous. She was surprised at his airy reply: “Oh, don’t worry about me. I give talks all the time.”11

  Lee spoke for half an hour about his everyday experiences in Russia, then answered questions. What he liked best about Russia, he said, was that the state takes care of everyone. If a man gets sick, no matter how poor he is, the government will provide for him. What he liked best about America was the material prosperity. He said that he was a Marxist and favored a brand of socialism that would combine the best of capitalism and Communism. Two of the priests who were present said later that Lee had handled himself well. Both had the impression that he was at least a college graduate.12

  Now that he had time on his hands, Lee became more and more active on behalf of Castro. He was turned away from a printing shop where he tried to order three thousand more “Hands Off Cuba” leaflets, and Vincent Lee had failed to answer his most recent letter. But he did find encouragement from another quarter. Early in August Arnold Johnson, director of the Information and Lecture Bureau of the US Communist Party, wrote, answering a letter that Lee had written the Worker two months before.

  Johnson’s reply, dated July 31, was terse and routine: “It is good to know that movements in support of Fair Play for Cuba has [sic] developed in New Orleans.… We do not have any organizational ties with the Committee, and yet there is much material that we issue from time to time.… Under separate cover we are sending you some literature.…”13

  Such a letter could have been a source of aggrandizement only to a man like Lee. Thus, at about this time, he wrote another letter to Vincent Lee that was even more extraordinary than the one that had preceded it:

  … I rented an office as I planned and was promptly closed three days later for some obscure reasons by the renters, they said something about remodeling, ect., I’m sure you understand. After that I worked out of a post office box and by useing street demonstations and some circular work have substained a great deal of interest but no new members.

  Through the efforts of some Cuban-exial “gusanos” [a word for the anti-Castro exiles often used in the Militant] a street demonstration was attacked and we were officially cautioned by police. This incident robbed me of what support I had leaving me alone.

  Nevertheless thousands of circulars were distrubed and many, many pamphlets which your office supplied.

  We also managed to picket the fleet when it came in and I was surprised in the number of officers who were inter
ested.…

  I continue to recive through my post office box inquires and questions which I shall endeavor to keep ansewering to the best of my ability.14

  The letter was dated August 1 and postmarked August 4, and it contains not a single true fact apart from the reference to picketing the fleet, which had occurred a month and a half before.

  The uncanny thing about the letter is that on Monday, August 5, the day after he mailed it, Lee started to bring about the events he had just described. He visited a clothing store run by Carlos Bringuier, New Orleans representative of the Cuban Student Directorate, an organization of anti-Castro exiles.15 Bringuier was having a conversation with a couple of teenage boys. Lee listened awhile, then joined in. He told Bringuier that he, too, opposed Castro and Communism. He said that he had been in the Marine Corps, had been trained in guerrilla warfare, and would gladly train Cubans to fight Castro. He wanted to join the fight himself. The teenagers who were present were intrigued when Lee explained to them how to make a homemade gun, how to make gunpowder, and how to derail a train. He told them in detail how to blow up the Huey Long Bridge, as if learning this delicate art had been the part of his training he relished most.

  Before leaving, Lee put his hand in his pocket and offered to contribute to Bringuier’s cause. Bringuier was skeptical because he had been warned that the FBI might try to infiltrate his organization and he was not sure what breed of cat Oswald was, whether he was from the FBI or whether he might, on the other hand, be pro-Castro. He refused Oswald’s money. Undaunted, Lee returned to the store the next day and left his Guidebook for Marines.

  A few days later, on Friday, August 9, Bringuier received word that a young man was demonstrating on Canal Street, wearing a homemade placard that said “Viva Fidel!” and passing out handbills. Bringuier and two friends went in search of the man and found themselves face to face with Lee Oswald. Lee looked surprised, then smiled and held out his hand to Bringuier. Bringuier exploded. He explained to the crowd that this man had presented himself a few days earlier as an anti-Castro volunteer; now it turned out that he was a Castro agent and a Communist. Bringuier’s Latin anger had its appeal, and the crowd began shouting at Oswald: “Traitor! Communist! Go to Cuba!” and, to each other, “Kill him!”

  A policeman told Bringuier to keep moving and let Oswald hand out his literature. But one of Bringuier’s companions grabbed a handful of Oswald’s leaflets, tore them up, and hurled them in the air. Bringuier removed his eyeglasses and went up to Oswald as if to hit him. Lee crossed his arms in front of his face and said quietly: “Okay, Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me.”

  Just then two patrol cars arrived and took all four of them, Oswald and the three exiles, to the police station. Bringuier noticed at the station that Oswald appeared confident, cool, very much in command of himself. Bringuier and his friends each put up $25 bond and were told to show up in court on Monday. Oswald did not put up bond and stayed overnight in jail.

  On arriving for work the next morning, Francis Martello, a lieutenant in the Intelligence Division of the police department, decided to have a talk with Oswald.16 Lee was flattered that Martello listened seriously to his views about Russia and Marxism. He claimed that the New Orleans “chapter” of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee comprised thirty-five members and met monthly at various addresses, which he declined to divulge, with about five in attendance each time. Martello’s later account suggests that Lee was in a grandiloquent frame of mind, but his response to one question was striking succinct. Asked his opinions of Kennedy and Khrushchev, Lee said tersely: “They seem to get along very well together.” Martello was impressed by Lee’s calm, his almost professorial demeanor, his lack of aggressiveness or emotional outbursts, and the fact that Bringuier, for all his efforts, had been unable to taunt him into physical combat. Martello later called Oswald “a very passive type.”

  On the telephone Lee was his old, demanding self. He called the Murrets several times and ordered them to bail him out. Dutz was away on a religious retreat, and Lillian was in the hospital, recovering from an ear operation. The only member of the family on the spot was the older daughter, Joyce Murret O’Brien, who was on a visit from Beaumont, Texas. She came to the jail, but when she learned that her cousin’s trouble had to do with politics, with helping Castro in some way, she became frightened and did not want to bail him out. Martello assured her that the offense was mild. Joyce conferred with her mother, and they decided that the best course was to call Emile Bruneau, a politician of their acquaintance, and ask his help. Apparently, it was Bruneau who sprung Lee.

  Lee, meanwhile, had made an unusual request. He told Lieutenant Martello that he wished to speak with someone from the FBI. It was Saturday morning, and the agent who came to the police station, John Quigley, had never seen Oswald’s file, did not recognize the name nor realize that another FBI agent, Milton Kaack, was already engaged in a mild investigation of this very man. Kaack had visited Oswald’s landlady and the Reily coffee company only a few days before, on August 5.

  In an hour and a half interview with Quigley, Lee told a number of lies that was unprecedented even for him.17 But why, given his fear and hatred of the organization, did Lee ask to see someone from the FBI? No one from the agency had been to see him in a year, and there is every reason to suppose that Lee would stay as far away from the FBI as he possibly could.

  Perhaps, as Lee’s brother Robert has suggested, it was part of Lee’s continuing effort to create mystery and drama around himself. Perhaps he wanted to impress the officers at the police station, encourage them to think that he had been acting as an FBI provocateur and thereby secure an early release. Or perhaps, finding himself in jail for the first time, Lee needed to feel singular and important, and summoning the FBI gave him that feeling. It is even possible that the FBI’s lack of overt attention over the past year, relief though it was, had created a feeling of suspense in him and had strained his sense of self-importance.

  Lee may also have anticipated that local FBI officers would read about his street scene in the newspapers. By being the first one to tell them about it, and in his own terms, he may have felt that he could control the situation. Lee knew, moreover, that the FBI would have been most interested in his recent attempt on General Walker. Now that he was in a police station, obviously up to no good, he may, without quite knowing it, have hoped to catch the eye of someone who would stop him before he did anything worse. Finally, after the anticlimax of the Walker affair, Lee still wanted, in a way, to be punished. By deliberately inviting the FBI into his life again, perhaps he thought he could control even his own punishment.

  The lies he told Agent Quigley did help revive the FBI’s interest in him. But for the moment what Lee carried away from his incarceration was a brief but exhilarating memory. He had been locked up just long enough so that he could later claim to have paid a price for the pro-Castro cause. He had turned the tables on the FBI, summoning an officer at his pleasure rather than being summoned at theirs. And by far his happiest recollections were his talks with Lieutenant Martello. From them he learned that prison need not be all bad. Prison can provide a forum for your ideas. People pay attention and listen to you there.

  Lee arrived home in scapegrace good spirits, dirty, rumpled, unshaven, with a glint of humor in his eye and an air of gaiety about him. “I’ve been to the police station.”

  “I thought so,” said Marina. “So that’s the way it turned out.”

  She wanted to know where he slept. He explained that the beds had no mattresses, so he had taken off all his clothes and made a mattress of them.

  “You slept without any pants on?”

  “It was hot. And it was just men, anyway. If they didn’t like it, they could have let me out sooner.”

  He added that in the morning he had been taken to see a police officer, a good man and “a kindly uncle,” to whom he explained his theories. “He listened to my ideas and let me out.”

  Marina had been worried when
Lee failed to come home the night before. She knew that he was out with his leaflets and guessed that he was in trouble with the police. At least he was not with another woman. She had memories of the Walker evening, however, and so she had checked Lee’s closet. The rifle, thank God, was in its place. Even so, Marina had not been able to get to sleep until three o’clock in the morning.

  Now that her prodigal had come home, she fed him, and he took a nap. A little sheepishly, he confessed on awakening that there was supposed to be a trial. “If I pay ten dollars, there will be no trial.”

  Marina was terrified of trials. “Pay, of course,” she said. “We don’t need any trials. But do you see where your little jokes lead?”

  That evening Dutz Murret, home from the retreat, went immediately to the Oswalds’. He noticed with horror Castro’s photograph pinned to the wall and asked Lee straight out if he was part of any “Commie” group. Lee answered that he was not. Dutz told him in no uncertain terms to show up in court the next day and, after that, go out, get a job, and support his family.

  Lee appeared in court on schedule, sat squarely in the middle of the black section of the segregated courtroom, pleaded guilty to the charge of “disturbing the peace by creating a scene,” paid his $10 fine, and left.