Now it was altogether different. Oswald’s state of mind was no longer what it had been in August. And this time, unlike the last, it was the FBI that was coming after him. To Oswald this apparently meant only one thing—he was about to suffer retribution for all his sins, both those he had actually committed and those that existed only in his imagination. It was not simply a loving father who had found him out, but an avenging one. It was this he had been dreading; it was for this he had been waiting, all his life.
There was something else, too. Maybe Marina described Hosty’s visits in a teasing, slightly provocative manner, or maybe Oswald merely took her description that way, but the visits evidently caused him to feel that his sexual hold over her was in jeopardy.
Thus the threat that the Hosty visits held for Oswald could scarcely have lain deeper than it did. It was a threat that was both heterosexual and homosexual in nature, for it entailed the threat of being found out and punished for his “sins,” on the one hand, and, on the other, the threat and promise of unification, of being joined with and becoming part of the symbolic father whom Oswald dreaded and loved at the same time.
The visits to Ruth and Marina by an obscure agent of the FBI appear to have been linked in Lee’s mind with the forthcoming visit by President Kennedy, which was now only ten days away. Since Hosty was an emissary of the government, his arrival was like a herald, or a precursor, of President Kennedy’s. And since Hosty’s status with the FBI made him a sort of stand-in for a father, his visits were a paradigm, an emotional equivalent, of the president’s.
Ironically, the visits to Irving by an agent of the United States government appear to have been a catalyst and a precipitating element of the events that lay ahead.23
— 35 —
The President’s Visit
Ruth Paine had a lot on her mind. She was teaching part time and, besides attending to her own children’s needs, she was busy ferrying Marina and her children to the dental and medical clinics where they had appointments. Lee’s presence throughout the long Veterans Day weekend had been a strain on her. And on top of that had been her discovery of Lee’s letter to the Soviet embassy and her perplexity about what to do.
Ruth now had two copies of Lee’s letter: the one she had made and the handwritten original that Lee had left on her desk, either out of carelessness or because he wanted her to see it. She decided to consult Michael. The next time he came to the house, probably on Tuesday, November 12, she handed him Lee’s letter. “I never knew he was such a liar,” she said, and she asked Michael to take a look.
Michael was sitting by the picture window in the living room, gazing outside and reading Time. He was daydreaming, he later said, of another job and another wife—“another fate and another mate.” The harder Ruth tried to claim his attention, the harder he resisted.1 Finally, he glanced at the letter, but he read the opening not as “Dear Sirs” but as “Dear Lisa.” What on earth was Ruth doing, he thought, reading Lee’s mail? He resented her being so nosy. He read on, however, and saw that Lee was writing about an encounter with the FBI. Michael imagined that he was boasting of his fictional exploits to some friend.
“Yes, it is shocking that he’ll make up stories like that,” Michael said, handing the letter nonchalantly back to Ruth. He, too, thought the letter was an example of Lee’s “colossal lying.”
Ruth asked whether he thought they ought to do something about it.
“Let’s have another look,” Michael said.
“Oh, never mind.” Ruth was annoyed. “If you didn’t get it the first time, forget it.”
Michael’s lack of interest deflated Ruth. Had he responded, she might have taken the initiative and gone to the FBI herself. As it was, she did nothing, although if Hosty had come by again that week, she would probably have given him the letter.
Would it have made any difference? Between them the Paines knew a lot about Lee. He was not just an angry misfit; they both suspected there was more to it than that. Suppose they had been on better terms with each other and had pooled everything that between them they now knew or guessed about Lee. Suppose they had decided to give Lee’s letter to the FBI. Would it have changed anything?
The answer appears to be no. The FBI had opened its file on Lee Harvey Oswald in October 1959, at the time of his defection to the Soviet Union; when he returned to the United States in 1962, FBI agents interviewed him twice in Fort Worth. It was decided that he was not a security risk, and in August 1962, his case was closed. The FBI continued to gather such information about him as came its way, but there were no further investigations. As a Soviet citizen, however, Marina remained of interest to the FBI, and she, as a “pending, inactive case,” was assigned to Agent Hosty of the Dallas office. In checking on her whereabouts in March 1963, Hosty learned of her troubled marriage. When he reviewed Oswald’s file and found that he was subscribing to the Worker, a Communist publication, he recommended that his case be reopened.
From that time on, the FBI kept a check on Oswald, but it was consistently six weeks to three months behind his movements. He was traced to New Orleans, for example, but jurisdiction over his case was transferred to the New Orleans office only in September, as Oswald was getting ready to leave for Mexico. After the bureau learned through the CIA in October that he had been in touch with the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, it intensified its search for his whereabouts; but it was not until the end of that month that Marina was traced to the Paines’. When Hosty visited Ruth and Marina in the first week of November, he learned where Oswald worked in Dallas, but he still did not know where he lived, and jurisdiction over the case had not yet been transferred from New Orleans back to the Dallas office.
When jurisdiction had been transferred, and when he had learned Oswald’s home address, Hosty, who was usually assigned to watch right-wing activists and members of the Ku Klux Klan, meant to follow up on Oswald. But as far as he was concerned, Oswald was a small fish, about one of forty or so cases that he was carrying in November.2 Moreover, the FBI’s primary interest was in subversion. As a malcontent who had defected to the Soviet Union and returned with a Russian wife, there was always the chance that Oswald had been recruited as a spy and posed a threat to the political security of the United States. Hosty had accumulated enough evidence to warrant watching him for security reasons, yet there was nothing to suggest that he might pose a threat to the life of the president. It never crossed Hosty’s mind to cite Oswald to the Secret Service, the agency specifically charged with protecting the safety of the president.
Even if Ruth and Michael had given the FBI Oswald’s letter to the Soviet embassy, the most they might have accomplished was to cause the FBI to step up its surveillance of Oswald as a possible security threat. Hosty had, in fact, received a note that he suspected was from Oswald, but it did not alarm him or attract his particular attention. For the all-important missing ingredient was violence. Oswald was not known ever to have uttered a threat against the president or vice president. He was not known ever to have shot at anyone. That secret—the secret of Oswald’s attempt on General Walker—was locked up inside two people, Oswald himself and Marina.
There was one last irony. During the week following Hosty’s visit to the Paine household, the Secret Service and the FBI were busy with President Kennedy’s forthcoming visit. The visit had been announced on September 13, nearly two months before, but final confirmation that the president was to be in Dallas on November 22 was published only on November 8. On November 12 the Protective Research Section of the Secret Service arrived in Dallas and, working with the FBI and the local police, began to investigate possible threats to the president’s safety, which were, of course, believed to come from the right. Final details of the president’s visit were made known only on November 19. Hosty was not aware until the night of November 21 that the president was to have a motorcade through Dallas the next day. And not until the afternoon of November 22 did he realize that the motorcade had passed beneath the windows of the Texa
s School Book Depository, the place where he had discovered that Lee Harvey Oswald worked.
Marina thought that living at Ruth’s house was “wonderful.” It made her realize how hard her life was with Lee—she never had any good times with him, really. Marina enjoyed little things, like sitting and having coffee with the neighbors, visiting, doing favors, treating other people with decency. She had discovered that there was such a thing as suburban, middle-class American life, and she liked it. She knew she would have to give it up when Lee, with his angry and mistrustful nature, took her to live with him in Dallas.
And there was Ruth herself. Marina did not want to lose her. They had a good time together; they confided the details of their marriages to one another and gave each other much-needed moral support. And yet they were not so close that it was a strain for either of them to be with the other all the time. Marina found that Ruth had a way of respecting distances and leaving the other person alone. Her house was an oasis of serenity.
In short, Marina was in no hurry to go back to Lee. She missed him during the week when they were apart, but minutes after he appeared on the weekends there was friction again. Marina knew all too well what living with him was going to mean. He would try to cut her off from everyone. She hoped to prolong her stay at Ruth’s until after the holidays, and in the meantime build up her bargaining power with Lee. Maybe if she stayed away long enough, he would make concessions and not force her to give up her other friends. Marina could not bear to let that happen, to lose touch with what was decent and sane in her life.
And it was a matter of principle. Marina simply would not do to Ruth what Lee had forced her to do her émigré friends the year before—cut her off. She was not going to have that on her conscience. After all that she had done for her, Marina was not going to turn her back on Ruth Paine.
Marina expressed the worry that was nibbling at her in a way that was disconcerting to Ruth. When she moved to Dallas, Marina of course meant to give Ruth her address. But one evening as they were standing at the sink doing dishes, Marina said suddenly: “When we have our apartment, please, Ruth, our address is private. Don’t give it to anyone.”3
Ruth failed to connect the remark to Hosty or the FBI. Not knowing Marina’s train of thought, she was surprised by the remark. She was surprised, too, at the hint of asperity in Marina’s tone.
Lee called on Friday, November 15, at lunchtime, to ask if he could come out that day. Marina hesitated. She sensed that he had overstayed the weekend before. “I don’t know, Lee,” she said. “I think it’s inconvenient for Ruth to have you come every time.” Marina added that it was the birthday of Lynn, the Paines’ little girl, and they were going to have a party the next day.
“Will Michael be there?” Lee asked.
Marina said that he would.
“Well, it’s a family celebration. I don’t want to be in the way.”
Marina does not know whether Lee acceded as readily as he did because he no longer liked Michael; whether, to the contrary, he respected the Paines’ privacy and thought they ought to have a chance to be alone; or whether he had other things to do. He simply said: “Fine. There’s plenty for me to do here. I’ll read and I’ll watch TV. Don’t worry about me.”
Marina says that Lee did not get angry or withdrawn, as he did when his feelings were hurt. Lee liked to be alone, and Marina recalls that on an earlier weekend either he had stayed in Dallas until Saturday, giving as a reason, or pretext, that he was looking for a job in photography, or he had mentioned to her that one of these weekends he would be staying in alone on Friday night. This weekend, in any case, he gave none of his familiar signs of feeling rebuffed. He even called again that night.
It was Ruth who spoke to him first. She apologized for being unable to take him to get his learner’s permit the next day. But she told him that he could go back to the Driver’s Station in Oak Cliff and take his test without a car. Lee was surprised that he did not need a car.4 Then Marina talked to him. She urged him not to stay alone in his room the whole weekend but to get out and take a walk in the park. Their conversation was friendly and warm.
Lee called again the next day, Saturday, November 16, in fine humor. He claimed that he had been to the Driver’s Station, but there was a long line ahead of him and he was informed that his turn would not come before closing time. Lee did not wait. He told Marina that he had taken her advice instead and sat in the park. “Do you remember?” he asked. It was the park they had been to in the spring.
“Only, Papa, be sure and eat better,” Marina begged, worried that if he was alone he would starve himself as usual.
Lee called that night again, this time to ask if the children were enjoying the party. Marina said yes. Was “his” Junie having a good time? She was.
“I ate very well,” he assured Marina. “I found a good place where you can get a fine meal, steak, French fries, salad, and dessert, for only $1.25. Don’t be worried about me.”
Marina missed him. She wanted to ask what he was going to do the next day, but she refrained.
Lee’s landlady said later that he never left his room for more than a few minutes all weekend except to carry his laundry to the Washeteria across the street.5 Someone else saw him there reading a magazine.
Lee’s reading that weekend is a matter of enduring curiosity, but he almost certainly read a good deal about President Kennedy’s visit, which was to take place the following Friday. The Dallas papers were full of it, and Lee had more newspapers around him, and more time to read them, than if he had been at the Paines’. Although the visit had been announced two months before, the atmosphere in Dallas was so hostile to the president that there had been some question as to whether he ought to come. On October 24 Adlai Stevenson, US ambassador to the United Nations, had been in Dallas for a meeting and had been struck and spat upon by a right-wing crowd armed with placards that had been stored in the home of General Walker. The police had lost control of the crowd, and there was widespread doubt as to whether they could cope with a visit by President Kennedy. Stevenson himself advised the president not to go. In the wake of the Stevenson affair, the mayor called upon the city to redeem itself. The police were stung by all the criticism, and statements by Police Chief Jesse Curry began to appear, claiming that the local police would be in charge of arrangements to protect the president. Reading about the thoroughness of their preparations, Lee may well have laughed that scoffing laugh of his; for he, too, had had nothing but contempt for the Dallas police ever since they missed him by a long mile following his attempt on General Walker.
On Friday, November 15, at about the hour that Lee was leaving work, the Dallas Times-Herald reported that the Dallas Trade Mart might be chosen as the site where the president would have lunch the following Friday. On the next day, Saturday, the Times-Herald reported that the presidential party was likely to “loop through the downtown area, probably on Main Street,” on its way to the Trade Mart. If Lee saw the story, it would have been his first hint that the motorcade might come close to the building in which he worked.
Sharing the front pages with the Kennedy visit that weekend was another story in which Lee was interested. It concerned Frederick C. Barghoorn, a Yale political science professor who had been arrested for “espionage” during a visit to the USSR. The story broke on November 12. Two days later, on Thursday, President Kennedy made the Barghoorn case the centerpiece of what was to be his last press conference. The president asserted vigorously that Professor Barghoorn was not a spy, and he broke off the cultural exchange negotiations with the Soviet Union that were then in progress until Barghoorn was released. On Saturday, November 16, one of the Dallas dailies featured on its front page an AP story reporting Barghoorn’s release, together with the White House announcement that the presidential motorcade would loop through downtown Dallas.
Lee told Marina about Barghoorn’s arrest, apparently over the telephone, shortly after the story broke on November 12, adding that he had read about it in t
he newspapers and heard about it on the radio as well. He was sorry for Barghoorn. “Poor professor,” Lee said. “He’s the victim of a Russian provocation. It isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”
Nor was it the first time Lee had taken an interest in the plight of Americans caught in the USSR. He had followed the case of Francis Gary Powers. First Powers and now Barghoorn were accused of being spies, both were imprisoned in Soviet jails, both attracted worldwide publicity, and both touched the politics of the presidency. Lee felt that he, too, had been trapped inside Russia, but he was different from Powers and Barghoorn in that no publicity surrounded his name, and no one had come to his rescue. President Kennedy went all out for Barghoorn. No one cared about the fate of Lee Oswald.6
On Sunday, November 17, Lee failed, uncharacteristically, to call Marina. She missed him, and when she saw Junie playing with the telephone dial, saying “Papa, Papa,” she decided impulsively, “Let’s call Papa.”
Marina was helpless with a telephone dial, so it was Ruth who made the call. She dialed the number Lee had given her weeks before while they were awaiting Rachel’s birth, and a man answered.
“Is Lee Oswald there?” Ruth asked.
“There is no Lee Oswald living here.”
“Is this a rooming house?” Ruth wanted to know.
“Yes.”
“Is it WH 3–8993?”
“Yes.”
Ruth thanked the man and hung up. “They don’t know a Lee Oswald at that number,” she said. Marina looked distinctly surprised.7
The next day, Monday, November 18, Lee called as usual at lunchtime. “We phoned you last evening,” Marina said. “Where were you?”
“I was at home watching TV. Nobody called me to the phone. What name did she ask for me by?”
Marina and Lee Page 64