by Gus Russo
Oswald’s attempts to build up the FPCC chapter in New Orleans, through leafletting, were a failure. He was made to leave the Dumaine Street Wharf for handing out the fliers and other FPCC literature in front of the USS Wasp because he lacked a proper permit. Oswald constructed other “membership” cards inventing a member named “A. J. Hidell”—the same imaginary person who ordered the Mannlicher Carcano rifle months earlier. When teased by Marina that Hidell sounded like the name of his hero, Fidel, he was embarrassed, but nonetheless admitted that no such person existed. “I have to do it this way. People will think I have a big organization,” was Oswald’s explanation.25
Marina told the local FBI, “Oh, he like [sic] Fidel and thought Hidell rhymes with it. . . No, he [Hidell] didn’t exist.”26
There is no evidence that Oswald’s leafletting attracted even one recruit.
Lee Harvey Oswald, Spy
What Oswald saw on New Orleans’ streets verified what Vincent Lee’s literature had been telling him: Oswald’s revered Castro was in trouble. For a brief period, Oswald seemed to harken back to his childhood spy fantasies, attempting to infiltrate the exiles’ movement. Ernesto Rodriguez, who ran a Spanish language school not far from Lafayette Square, remembers Oswald coming to his office and introducing himself:
He came here asking about Cubans and Cuban training camps and the like. He offered to help.. Seemingly he was already aware that there was a training camp across the lake from us, north of Lake Ponchartrain. And he wanted to get into that But that was supposedly top secret at the time. He seemed to know. But then you know, the Cubans were very indiscreet, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he picked it up someplace on the street. I told him that I wouldn’t be the party to help him. And I directed him to Carlos Bringuier.27
Oswald proceeded directly to Casa Roca, the clothing store owned by Carlos Bringuier—the local delegate to the exile group, the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE). It was August 5th, four days after the McLaney Camp raid made front page news in New Orleans. It is a virtual certainty that Oswald, a compulsive newspaper reader, read the article. Indeed, the raid was a major topic of conversation among the exiles in Lafayette Square at the time.
Upon arriving at the storefront, Oswald inquired of two young American teenagers, “Is this the Cuban exiles’ headquarters?”28 Oswald then assured Bringuier that he was opposed to Castro. He bragged to Bringuier and the two teenage boys that his Marine training had made him proficient in guerrilla warfare. Oswald then volunteered to help train Cubans in the fight against Castro. The teenagers were impressed with Oswald’s technical knowledge. He claimed to know how to make a homemade gun. He claimed to know how to make gunpowder, and to derail a train. And, he said, he knew the art of sabotage, offering them specific advice on how to blow up the Huey Long bridge.29
Bringuier, because of several recent events, was suspicious of new faces in the community. First, he had just been told that the Miami headquarters of the DRE was involved with the McLaney Camp, and was worried that “the crackdown” would soon be cracking down on him. Second, the Fernandez infiltration incident was a fresh wound. Bringuier wrote:
On August 2, 1963, I received in the store that I manage in New Orleans the visit of two friends of mine who informed me that there was a training camp a few miles outside of New Orleans. . . They also informed me of the fear they had that a Castro agent could be infiltrated into that training camp. . . The agent was a former Cuban newspaperman called Fernando Fernandez Baroenas. . . Notice the special interest of Oswald in helping me to train Cubans at a time when there was a secret training camp just a few miles from New Orleans. . . I did not trust Oswald.30
Bringuier was further put on alert by recent confrontations with other pro-Castro groups. In all that’s been written about Oswald’s time in New Orleans, very little attention has been given to these other groups, and many perceive Oswald as the lone pro-Castro activist in New Orleans. This is far from the truth. If fact, there was an active pro-Castro network, which could very easily have been aware of, or in touch with, Oswald. “Before Oswald, we had a lot of confrontations with pro-Castro supporters,” says Bringuier. “Not long before he came into my store, we had a fight with a group called the New Orleans Council for Peaceful Alternatives. This is another reason I was suspicious of Oswald.”31
The suspicious Bringuier told Oswald that he wasn’t interested in his assistance. Oswald left the Casa, but returned the following day, leaving behind for Bringuier his Marine Corps training manual, which Bringuier retains to this day. Soon Oswald composed a ten-page document he had hoped would ingratiate him with pro-Castro officials.
Found among his possessions after his arrest for Kennedy’s death, the document states in part, “I infiltrated the Cuban Student Directorate [DRE] and then harassed them with information I gained including having the N.O. [New Orleans] City Attorney General call them in and put a restraining order pending a restraining order pending a hearing on some so-called bonds for invasion they were selling in the New Orleans area.”32 Like most others who frequented the Lafayette Square vicinity, Oswald had become aware of the administration’s re-invasion plans.
Three days later, on August 9th, one of Bringuier’s friends, Celso Hernandez, came running into the store, upset at having seen an American on Canal Street handing out pro-Castro leaflets and holding a sign that proclaimed, “Viva Fidel. Hands Off Cuba!” The two grabbed their own poster saying “90 miles away Cuba lies in chains,” picked up their friend Miguel Cruz, and went hunting for the young activist. It took some searching, but eventually the protester was located at the corner of Canal and St. Charles. Bringuier was astonished to see that the young man was the very individual who had offered him help three days earlier, Lee Harvey Oswald.
The ensuing shouting match has been well documented over the years. For the record, Bringuier played Oswald like a violin, his well-known smirking grin in full display. Bringuier and his friends grabbed Oswald’s leaflets and threw them in the air. Bringuier recalls what happened next:
When he recognized me, he smiled at me. He even tried to shake hands with me. I refused to shake hands with him and I started insulting him and cursing him in English. When I saw that there was a group of Americans that gathered over there, I turned to the Americans and told them that Oswald wanted to destroy the United States in the same way that they have destroyed Cuba. The Americans start [ed] insulting Oswald then.33
A shoving match followed, and Bringuier felt Oswald was taunting him into throwing the first punch. Realizing how a foreigner would be perceived striking an American citizen, Bringuier regained enough self-control to refrain from hitting Oswald. However, the shouting continued until all four men were arrested.
Oswald was the only one of the four who couldn’t initially make the $25 bail, and thus was the only one to spend the night in jail. In jail, he was interviewed by the local FBI (at Oswald’s request), and by a New Orleans policeman, Lt. Francis Martello. The reports they filed are replete with Oswald’s lies about his local “chapter” of the FPCC, its meetings and membership. Oswald also gave both FBI Agent Quigley and Lt. Martello copies of his pro-Castro fliers with the “544 Camp Street” address stamped on them—quite possibly in an effort to expose the threat to Castro posed by the anti-Castro Cubans who frequented that building. After initially contacting his cousin Joyce Murret, who refused to post bail, Oswald eventually secured his release through his aunt Lillian, with a loan from a family friend.
Oswald clipped and attached a small news article about the incident, and sent copies to the FPCC headquarters, and to the American Communist Party. He wrote, “I am doing my best to help the cause of new Cuba.”34
Juan, the MDC camp manager, recently made a claim as to what happened next. “One day Lee Oswald knocks on my door,” Juan recalls. “I have no idea how he found out about me or where I lived.” Oswald said he was aware that Juan was involved in training Cubans on the lake. “I knew in my bones that Castro was behind Oswald,” Jua
n says. “What I saw was a shitty-looking guy who was trying to finagle something. He was a lunatic hillbilly with B.O.—a casualty of life.”35 Juan then discussed with other camp members whether they should burn down Oswald’s house. They decided against it because Oswald obviously didn’t own the house he was living in, and the aggression would only harm his landlord. Instead, Juan accompanied Carlos Quiroga (a friend of both Arcadia and Bringuier) to Oswald’s apartment.
Arriving in the evening, Juan remained in the car while Quiroga went in to speak with Oswald. They spoke for approximately 45 minutes on the screenedin front porch. During this time, Quiroga became convinced that Oswald was a committed Communist. At one point, Oswald’s daughter June came running out to the porch, and Oswald addressed her in Russian. Quiroga asked him where he had learned the language and Oswald replied, “I’m studying Russian at Tulane University.”36 Oswald also told Quiroga, “Cubans in the United States are all criminals.” If the U.S. invaded Cuba, Oswald said, he would fight with Castro.37
Local FBI Special Agent in Charge Warren DeBrueys, who had started monitoring Oswald a month earlier, now stepped up his interest. Oswald had been called to his attention after a New York informant alerted him to Oswald’s correspondence with the FPCC and other communist groups located there. As he had with Arcadia in 1961, DeBrueys sought out the current CRC and its members for information. He utilized Arcadia’s successor, Frank Bartes, as well as Carlos Quiroga, Carlos Bringuier, and others.38 When no evidence could be found of Oswald’s network, the FBI lost interest in him. Bartes, who briefly met Oswald at his sentencing trial (Oswald was fined $10), advised DeBrueys that “Oswald was a potentially dangerous man”39—an astute conclusion that obviously wasn’t taken very seriously.
Leaving the courtroom, Oswald was briefly interviewed by a local TV station. But the increasingly self-absorbed Oswald, who relished the notoriety, was in a quandary. He had no TV on which to watch himself on the news. He decided that with a little better planning, he could actually arrange to see himself on television. Three days later, he called all the local stations and advised them that on the following day, Friday, August 16, he could be seen demonstrating in front of the International Trade Mart. Two stations accepted his invitation. When the Friday demonstration was filmed for TV, Oswald was elated. He also had ideas about where he would view the coverage. That evening, he raced to the same corner grocery store where he had made himself a nuisance. The owner, Henry Cogreve, refused to let Oswald turn on his TV, whereupon Oswald left and followed Plan B: he would visit his Aunt Lillian.40 Marina, by now sick of Lee’s posturing, refused to accompany him, saying, “I see you all day at home in all forms. I don’t want to see you on TV.”41
The climax of this series of events was Oswald’s participation in a radio debate with Bringuier, journalist Bill Stuckey, and Ed Butler. Bringuier had brought Oswald to Stuckey’s attention after the trial, and Stuckey asked the all-too-willing Oswald to participate. Butler was the head of an anti-Communist organization known as the Information Council of The Americas (INCA).42 Bringuier remembers first seeing Oswald at the radio station on the evening of the debate, Saturday, August 17:
Before the debate, we were talking over there for about 15 minutes and first I told him that if at any time he changed his mind and he wants to come to the right side, he can come to me and that I would try to help him. He said no, that I was on the wrong side and that he was on the right side and he saw my guidebook, the guidebook for Marines, that he had left for me. He said to me, “Carlos, please don’t use that guidebook because it’s obsolete, you’re going to get killed.”43
Butler recalls that Oswald arrived at the station in a heavy black wool suit on a typical New Orleans August day—incredibly hot and humid. “Yet he was as cool as a cucumber—didn’t sweat a drop.” Describing Oswald’s appearance, Butler remembers, “Oswald had the face of a parrot on the neck of a bull! He had not a perpetual smirk but a sort of a fleeting sneer that would come over his face every once in a while.”
For a while, the thirty-five minute debate went well for Oswald, who held his own against three well-informed opponents. Ed Butler remembers that “he was a total Castrophile. He wanted to promote Fidel Castro and did everything that he could in the debate, prior to it, and afterward.”44
However, Oswald soon became unnerved when Ed Butler blind-sided him with information he had received from friends in Washington. Quiroga had already reported to Butler that Oswald spoke Russian. Both Butler and Quiroga were suspicious. A couple of phone calls later, Butler learned of Oswald’s defection to Russia. Butler remembers, “The information came from the House Un-American Activities Committee files. I requested it and they sent it.” Some have assumed that Butler had a CIA connection because of his ability to so quickly learn of Oswald’s past. But as Butler explains, “They got it from the newspapers, the open press. That’s basically what they sent me—clippings that Oswald had defected to Russia and so forth. Got it by special delivery, and as soon as I got it, I knew that I had a serious guy on my hands.”45
Oswald’s problem was that he had been informing the radio audience that he was a pure ideological Marxist, not a Russian Communist. When it was exposed on the air that he had once lived in the Soviet Union, as a Soviet citizen, he immediately lost his credibility and composure. Oswald began noticeably stammering at that point. Carlos Bringuier says, “My last memory of Lee Harvey Oswald during the debate. . . was Oswald becoming red and redder in his face because he was angry that it had been discovered that he had tried to defect to the Soviet Union and he had been exposed in the debate. I could still see his face becoming red and redder and redder.”46 Bringuier was overjoyed at the turnabout. “After the debate,” he said, “I thought Oswald was destroyed.”47
Oswald was not only embarrassed, but furious at Ed Butler. Butler recalls:
The last thing that I remember was Oswald taking out a notebook, glancing up at me, fixing me with a gaze of hatred, asking for my name and address and phone number, writing it down in the notebook, and snapping it shut. Then he looked up and gave me that Oswald sneer. I went one way and he went the other. I saw it as a threatening act and I think it was [so] intended. Nobody knows what’s going on in another person’s head, but I think it was a very calculated threat. “Alright, you got me on the air, but I’ll take care of you later.” I immediately went to the television media, the other media, and did what I could to warn them about Oswald and say that this guy is a danger. I was surprised when he killed President Kennedy, but I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if he had killed Ed Butler.48
When Oswald went home after the taping, he said to Marina, “Damn it. I didn’t realize they knew I’d been to Russia. . . I wasn’t prepared and I didn’t know what to say.”49
Carlos Bringuier summed up the entire series of events this way: “In my opinion, when he approached us—when he approached me here in New Orleans—he was trying to gain information about what the Cuban refugees were up to here in New Orleans. I don’t know who sent him to me, but he was trying to gain information for the Communist cause.”50
Oswald, considering himself “exposed,” wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, saying, “I feel I may have compromised the FPCC.” He inquired if he should go “underground,” and signed off, “Please Advise.”51 A response came from the Party secretary, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, in which she discouraged him from going “underground,” but advised him that the Party might find a way to get in touch with him later.52
Oswald then made his next major life decision: he would go to Cuba. He had already told Marina to return with June to Russia. He now told her that he would only join her there if he didn’t like Cuba. His problem was that the State Department had forbidden U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba. But Lee had the solution: he’d hijack a plane to the island. “I’ll be needing your help,” he announced to his startled wife.
“Of course I won’t help,” was Marina’s response. She could not contai
n her laughter, saying, “The whole thing is so funny, it even makes the baby laugh.” She then turned to baby June and said, “Junie, our papa is out of his mind.”53
Lee was not in the least bit dissuaded by Marina’s response. He embarked on an exercise regimen, training to subdue the pilot. He obtained maps and flight schedules determining which flights had sufficient fuel to make the trip to Cuba. He then composed the scenario, which he forced the laughing Marina, now pregnant again, to rehearse with him. Priscilla McMillan, Marina’s biographer, wrote:
He would sit in the plane’s front row. No one would notice when he got up and quietly moved into the pilots cabin. There, he would pull his pistol and force the pilot to turn around. . . [Marina] was to sit in the rear of the plane. Once Lee had subdued the pilot, she was to rise, holding June by the hand, and speak to the passengers, urging them to be calm.54
When Marina reminded him that she hardly spoke any English, he amended the script. The new version had her drawing a pistol, ordering, “Hands up and don’t make any noise!” It was still too much English for Marina to master, she said.
The very pregnant Marina also objected, “Do you really think anybody will be fooled? A pregnant woman, her stomach sticking way out, a tiny girl in one hand and a pistol in the other?”
It was during this same period that Lee decided on a new name for their unborn baby, whom he hoped would be a boy. Up until this point, Lee and Marina had agreed that a son’s name would be David Lee. Now, Oswald had a new suggestion: “Fidel—Fidel Oswald.” Marina reached down to her Russian roots, and firmly responded, “There is no Fidel and there will be no Fidel in our family.”55