by Gus Russo
Kennedy aide Kenny O’Donnell wrote, “[Kennedy] had been pressing the reluctant Governor Connally for months to stage a fund-raising event for the party, and Connally, who had no desire to be branded a Kennedy supporter in Texas, had been stalling him off.”5 According to Connally, for over a year and a half, Kennedy had been pressuring both him and Vice President Johnson to set up the trip. But both were less than enthusiastic. Johnson later told aide Robert Kintner:
Kennedy did not come at my request. That’s a great myth. He came down here because he wanted to raise a million dollars and to improve himself. I put him off several months and Connally put him off several months. I didn’t want him to come—told him it was a mistake to come. . . Connally agreed.6
The Kennedy-Johnson ticket had barely squeaked to victory in Texas in 1960. The same pairing now appeared a straw dog in 1964, and Connally felt political risk in associating with the President, who was anathema to his “power base” in oil and other sources of Texas wealth. Some affluent Connally backers even hoped the governor, a Democrat, would gain a vice-presidential spot on Goldwater’s Republican ticket. In any event, the Governor supported Kennedy’s policies as little as possible.
Connally had still more reasons for stalling the President: he had his own legislative and electoral problems to take care of, and no time to devote to the planning of such a trip.
Finally, in June of 1963, on a Kennedy trip to El Paso, Texas, Connally was summoned to the Presidential hotel suite, where he found both the President and Vice President. Addressing Johnson (but intending to reach Connally), Kennedy asked sarcastically, “Well, Lyndon, do you think we’re ever going to have that fund-raising affair in Texas?”
Connally resignedly took the hint, responding, “Mr. President, fine—let’s start planning your trip.”7 Although the date wasn’t yet set, both Johnson and Connally let the word leak to the press that Kennedy was coming to Dallas in the fall. By September 26th, the Dallas Morning News broke the story that the President would visit several Texas cities on November 21 and 22. A potential sniper would only have to stand by for further details to be announced.
On October 4, 1963, Connally was in Washington and met with the President to iron out the details. Although Connally had figured on one fund-raising dinner, Kennedy, to Connally’s dismay, pressed for four. Not only did Connally think that this would leave a bad taste in Texans’ mouths, appearing as a financial rape of the state, but he also knew he had no time to mount such an offensive. It was mutually decided that the president’s campaign trip would consist of unspecified events in Houston and San Antonio, a breakfast in Fort Worth, a fund-raising luncheon in Dallas, a dinner in Austin, then a fund-raising steak cookout at the LBJ Ranch in Austin on Friday night—all in a whirlwind two days.
The Security Problem
“Politics and protection don’t mix.”
—Kenny O’Donnell, JFK aide to Secret Service man Jerry Behn8
“Keep those Ivy League charlatans off the back of the car.”
—JFK, speaking November 18, 1963 to Agent Floyd Boring about Secret Service men assigned to the Dallas motorcade9
From the very start, the Texas trip was replete with security problems. Not only would Kennedy insist on the trip, but he would also insist on a motorcade through Dallas, over the objections of Connally and Texas State Democratic Party executive secretary Frank Erwin. Kennedy used motorcades as political campaign tools, convinced the visibility they offered had helped him win the 1960 election. Kennedy instructed the Secret Service and the Dallas Police to relax security: he didn’t want motorcycles riding alongside his limousine, partly because the noise would impede conversation within the car. He didn’t want Secret Service men bracketing the limousine, because he wanted the crowds to “see Jackie.”
Local Democrats argued against publishing the motorcade route in the newspapers. But again, the decision was made by the President’s people. Presidential assistant Bill Moyers informed the Dallas coordinators, “[Kennedy’s] not coming down here to hide. He’s coming down here to get a public reaction, and the decision is to print the route of the President’s procession.” Or, as Kennedy himself said, “If you want the people to turn out, they have to know where to find you.”10
The President’s Lincoln limousine was equipped with a removable protective bubble-top, but its use was similarly vetoed by JFK. Advance man Marty Underwood remembered Kennedy saying, “This is Jackie’s first trip, and the people love her, and I’m going to keep it down.” Kenny O’Donnell, John Connally, and even Jackie herself, Underwood remembers, wanted the top up, but JFK prevailed. Finally, Bill Moyers instructed the Dallas contingent to “get that Goddamned bubble-top off unless it’s pouring rain.” Thus, the critical decisions of November 22nd were made by the White House, and not by a gang of government conspirators luring Kennedy into what has been referred to as “the kill zone.”11
On November 14, the White House, in effect, determined that the downtown route in Dallas had to traverse the “insecure” Dealey Plaza. Kennedy’s aide Kenny O’Donnell concluded that the day’s luncheon should be held at the Trade Mart, as opposed to the Women’s Building on the south side of Dallas.
It was not the only time Kennedy would drive through Dealey Plaza. In a startling coincidence, the summer before the assassination, Kennedy visited House Speaker Sam Rayburn, then on his deathbed at Baylor University Hospital, just east of downtown Dallas. Kennedy proceeded to the hospital, where a Secret Service officer spied a man with a gun-like bulge under his coat. The mysterious man seemed to be giving orders. The Secret Service detail thought he belonged to the press. Members of the press assumed he was with the Secret Service. The man lost himself in the crowd. Even then, Dallas seemed haunted with mysterious figures who posed a threat to Kennedy’s life.
Oswald Returns from Mexico City
Oswald spent his first night back in Dallas at the YMCA. To avoid paying for the room, he lied about still being in the Marines.
The next day, he applied for a job as a typesetter, but when the firm called Oswald’s references, they refused to vouch for him—calling him “an oddball.” Oswald didn’t get the job. He then hitch-hiked to Ruth Paine’s home in Irving, where Marina and daughter June were staying. This pattern of staying in Irving only on weekends would continue until a week before the assassination. Lee told Marina of his frustration in Mexico City, and Marina was convinced that Oswald had completely dropped the idea of going to Cuba. The couple decided that, for financial reasons, Oswald should live in Dallas alone while he searched for work. After spending that first weekend in Irving, Oswald took a bus to Dallas, where he found a room-for-rent at $7 a week. However, the landlady, Mary Bledsoe, considered him odd, and evicted him by the end of the week.12
On October 14, while Lee was in Dallas looking for work and lodging, Ruth and Marina visited with neighbor Linnie Mae Randle. The women were commiserating on the young couple’s financial plight, especially with Marina now due to deliver their second child. Randle said that her brother knew of a job opening at his place of employment, the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas. Later that night, when Lee called, he accepted Ruth’s suggestion that he pay a visit to the Depository.
In Dallas, Lee had already found a new room, just large enough for a single bed and dresser, in a rooming house for single men at 1026 N. Beckley Street. This time the rent was $8 per week. By sheer luck, the location was a direct, four-mile bus ride to and from the Depository. Oswald, now worried that the FBI had queered things with his previous landlady, registered under the name of “O.H. Lee.”13 One of his co-tenants, Leon Lee, remembered the day of Oswald’s arrival.
“Isn’t that interesting?” housekeeper Earline Roberts remarked to Leon Lee. “We have another Mr. Lee who just moved in.” Leon Lee remembers Oswald:
He rarely smiled, and always seemed preoccupied. The other tenants used to walk up the street and have an occasional dinner. Oswald only joined us once. He just stayed in his
room all night while the rest of us would be in the living room watching television. I remember that he only came out to watch “The Fugitive,” which he loved.14
The owner of the house, Mrs. A.C. Johnson, recalled: “That man [Oswald] never talked. That was the only peculiarity about him.” Like Leon Lee, Johnson also remembered Oswald spending his evenings alone in his room, except for an occasional TV program.15 He only seemed to emerge from his social shell when in the company of children. Johnson’s daughter, Mrs. Fay Puckett, says that “Mr. Lee” became very close with her children, often playing catch with them in the front yard. Buell Frazier would have similar memories. Fay Puckett remembers Oswald as a frugal man who seemed to subsist on apples, cheese, and milk, which he kept in the refrigerator..16
Oswald started working as an order-filler (“a picker and packer”) for Scott-Foresman Books at the Depository on Wednesday, October 16, 1963. Two days later, at Ruth Paine’s home, he celebrated his 24th birthday. By Marina’s account, it was one of the most pleasant nights of their family life. Oswald was happy and considerate of his pregnant wife, rubbing her ankles, and following her around the house like a puppy dog at her beck and call. He seemed enthusiastic about the future.
That night, Marina dozed with her head in Lee’s lap as he watched two movies on television, both of them involving assassinations. In the 1954 movie “Suddenly,” Frank Sinatra played a sniper attempting to assassinate a U.S. president by shooting him from an open window with a rifle. In the second film, “We Were Strangers,” John Garfield starred as an American in Cuba who attempts the assassination of a corrupt dictator. Although the Garfield character died before seeing the success of the revolution, his cohorts were successful. Marina woke up in time to see the end of the Garfield film. She recalled the scene for her biographer, Priscilla McMillan:
People were dancing in the streets, screaming with happiness because the president had been overthrown. Lee said it was exactly the way it once happened in Cuba. It was the only time he showed any interest in Cuba after his return from Mexico.17
Two days later, on Sunday, Marina went into labor. Lee stayed home to babysit June, while Ruth drove Marina to the hospital. When Marina was taken into the labor room, Ruth Paine returned to Irving to care for her own family. Two hours later, Marina, with no family or friends present, gave birth to Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald (had it been a boy, the two had settled on naming the baby David Lee). When Ruth arrived home, she found Oswald, a father now for the second time, asleep—amazingly uninterested in the welfare of his wife or newborn child. She didn’t wake him. Before he went to work on Monday morning, Ruth told him the news.18
Bureaucracy and Tragedy
“What do you think about Oswald being in touch with the Russians in Mexico City?” The question startled FBI agent Jim Hosty. It was early in October 1963, shortly after Oswald’s visit to Mexico City, and Hosty had been visiting the Immigration office on another case when the INS officer posed the question to him. Hosty had already been informed by the FBI’s New Orleans bureau that Oswald’s mail was being forwarded to the Paine house in nearby Irving. He had also planned to speak with Oswald in the future. This new information, although incomplete and revealed through informal channels, changed everything. “Whoa! That’s news to me,” said Hosty.
It was in this roundabout manner that the man responsible for the Oswald file in Dallas learned about his subject’s Embassy visits. Further, due to a combination of bureaucratic regulations and, ostensibly, bungling, neither Hosty nor the Secret Service had been informed of the sensitivity of Oswald’s contacts in the Russian Embassy. The disclosure of these facts clearly would have flagged Oswald’s case workers to watch him closely at the time of the president’s Dallas visit.
It was known as the Third Agency Rule, and had it not been in effect in 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald would have never been allowed to get near the President when he came to Dallas. (In fact, when the tragic potential of this rule was recognized after the Kennedy assassination, it was promptly replaced by a rule requiring the sharing of information.) In essence, this federal regulation prevented the dissemination of information beyond those agencies and offices specifically addressed in writing. Thus, neither Jim Hosty nor the Secret Service would be informed of the seriousness of Oswald’s liaisons in Mexico City. Hosty, specifically, was not informed that Oswald met KGB officer Kostikov, allegedly a KGB assassination specialist. (Note: this allegation, although believed at the time, has never been proven.)
“Here’s the big hullabaloo,” said Hosty. “I did not know who Kostikov was. Headquarters probably knew who he was, but they didn’t tell either New Orleans or Dallas.” If Hosty had known these facts, if the work and information of several different government agencies on Oswald had been compiled and shared, the matter would have been dealt with more seriously. But government regulations prohibited the agencies from even reporting individuals to the Secret Service, the president’s protector, unless they had made specific threats against the President. Anything else would have been viewed as an invasion of privacy and a violation of a person’s civil rights. And as far as Hosty knew, Oswald had uttered no such threats.
Former FBI Director Clarence Kelley summed up the situation:
Had our intelligence communities pooled their information on Oswald, had the Oswald-Kostikov-Mexico City information been distributed among the various agencies (assuming the facts about Kostikov were as explosive as they appeared to be), had the Secret Service Protective Research Section been aware of all the Oswald data, and had the information been distributed to the New Orleans and Dallas FBI field offices in time for them to act, then, without doubt, JFK would not have died in Dallas on November 22, 1963.19
Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that when the CIA notified the FBI and the U.S. Department of State of Oswald’s Soviet Embassy visit, it omitted any reference to Oswald’s Cuban Embassy visit. The CIA later maintained publicly that it wasn’t aware of that visit until after the assassination, although the evidence is convincing that it knew well before. That omission demonstrates the extremely sensitive nature of both the CIA operations in that Embassy and of Oswald’s contacts there. It was still another bureaucratic decision that may have contributed to the tragic events of November 22, 1963.
Even if he had known of Kostikov, or of Oswald’s Cuban Embassy visit, Hosty was aware of the risk he would run in interviewing Oswald. With even this cursory knowledge of Oswald’s Mexico visit, Hosty was now hamstrung—his own government’s regulations kept him from contacting Oswald. Hosty recently recalled the situation:
The reason I didn’t interview Oswald was because I couldn’t. It was forbidden. The regulations said that if a person had been in touch with an embassy, he could not be interviewed without first clearing it with the agency developing Ms information.
You have got to understand that if I had gone out and asked him what he was doing talking to the Russian Embassy, mat would have given away a very, very secret operation that the CIA had in Mexico City; that they had this capability of determining this. This could have had serious repercussions on the international scene. I doubt very much whether the CIA would have ever granted permission to interview him, and I don’t think based upon his previous interviews that I would have even requested an interview. I just don’t think that interviewing Oswald would have been productive, and certainly if we had interviewed him, we would have given away a very, very vital secret [the nature of CIA operations in Mexico City].20
Hosty decided, however, that it might be worthwhile to visit Marina Oswald and Ruth Paine when Lee wasn’t home. After learning from neighbors that Lee wasn’t living with Marina at the Irving home during the week, Hosty dropped in twice, on November 1 and 5. Although Marina, who associated all law enforcement with the authoritarian KGB, was initially frightened, Hosty calmed her down with his manner, even winning her over. “I gave her the basic ‘we-are-here-to-help-you’ talk and it lasted only fifteen minutes.” Hosty told Marina the FBI w
ould protect her from any Soviet agents who might use threats to recruit her.
Marina’s biographer wrote, “Marina was delighted. She liked this plumpish, pleasant-looking dark-haired man who was talking to her about her rights and offering to protect her. No one had given her so much attention in a long time, much less offered to protect her rights.”21 A week after this second Hosty visit, Oswald, during a lunch break at the Depository, walked the four blocks to the Federal building, which housed the local FBI offices. Oswald left Hosty’s secretary Nanny Lee Fenner an envelope for Hosty that contained an unsigned note. Typical of his FBI paranoia, Oswald asserted in his note that Hosty had “bothered” Marina. Hosty remembers the note as containing one or two sentences along the lines of, “If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don’t cease bothering my wife, I will take appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities.”22
Hosty, however, assumed that the unsigned note had come from a right-winger named Jimmy George Robinson, “one of my klansmen,” whom he was investigating. He put the note aside and dismissed it. Years later, his secretary Nanny Fenner claimed that the note contained violent threats. She also claimed never to have opened the envelope, but that the note fell out of the unsealed envelope.23 Hosty says that the note was folded in such a way that Fenner never could have read it. Fenner consistently refuses to be interviewed on the matter.
When the Warren Report was released in 1964, it asserted that the FBI (meaning Hosty) should have reported Oswald to the Secret Service, in spite of the Third Agency rule. As a result, Hosty became one of FBI Director Hoover’s scapegoats, agents who were suspended or transferred after JFK’s death. Hoover promptly suspended Hosty without pay and transferred him to the FBI equivalent of Siberia—Kansas City.