Live by the Sword

by Gus Russo

  Reached for comment, Hallmark told the author, “Mrs. Sapp is level-headed in all respects, good common sense, steady as a rock. She rates an A+.” He himself distinctly remembers that on the day of the assassination, Mrs. Sapp told him, “That crazy Oswald was in here looking for a job.” When asked about Sapp’s allegation that he advised her against speaking with the FBI, Hallmark replied, “It is quite possible that I advised Mrs. Sapp not to talk to the FBI.”43

  Oswald lived in the suburb of Oak Cliff, and, according to the official report, was not known to spend his evenings in downtown Dallas. However, the garage employees were not the only witnesses to Oswald’s late night wanderings in downtown Dallas. Six weeks earlier, on October 10, an exchange student named Cristobal Espinosa was taking an evening stroll in Dallas. He was in town to attend the Texas-Oklahoma football game. At about 11:30 p.m., he met a stranger near the Baker Hotel who identified himself as Lee Oswald. Espinosa would remember the name because he had difficulty with English and asked the man to write the name in a notebook. Espinosa would re-copy the name “Oswald” next to the date.

  As the two men walked along the street at night, they chatted mostly about Espinosa’s native Ecuador. Oswald was curious about what the living conditions would be like for an American. Oswald seemed very familiar with Dallas’ downtown buildings, Espinosa told the FBI, and pointed out which night clubs had the best shows.44

  Oswald’s rejection at the parking garage left him undeterred in his quest to land a job in the heart of downtown Dallas. According to the manager of Dallas’ famous Adolphus Hotel (also on Commerce Street), Oswald applied there for a job as a bell hop. Again, he was turned away.45

  If Hubert Morrow and the witnesses at the rifle range are accurate on the dates they encountered Oswald with a rifle, another important question arises: How and when did Oswald retrieve the rifle from the Paine’s house where his things were stored? The official investigation would later conclude that Oswald went to Ruth Paine’s house on November 21, the eve of the assassination, for the express purpose of retrieving his rifle from her garage. But if the above accounts of the shooting-range are accurate, Oswald already had the rifle in his possession the previous weekend, one of the few times he did not go to Paine’s home in Irving. There is no evidence that he visited her between the 17th and the night of the 21st, when he could have returned the rifle, only to retrieve it again on the eve of the murder.

  Buell Frazier also owned a rifle (a British Enfield .303). The possibility exists that if Frazier was the “mystery driver,” he could shed light not only on Oswald’s movements, but also the rifle’s. When interviewed by the author in 1987, Frazier was firm in his belief that Oswald did not bring the rifle to work with him on the morning of the assassination. The package he carried was just too small. Frazier suggested, however, “He could have brought the rifle in to work at an earlier date, or in one piece at a time over several days.” Indeed, this latter possibility was not given adequate consideration by investigators.

  Compounding the rifle mystery is the testimony of others who claim to have seen Oswald lugging a rifle-like object around Dallas, when his Mannlicher Carcano was supposedly wrapped in a blanket in Ruth Paine’s garage.

  Another Beckley Street tenant, Jack Cody, recalls that on the morning of either November 20 or 21, he had an encounter with a man he recognized as a new tenant—a man who occupied the room in the center of the first floor, right off the common living room (the known location of Oswald’s room).

  I was living in the basement at 1026 North Beckley. It was Wednesday or Thursday, the week Kennedy was assassinated. It was about seven o’clock in the morning. I was waiting on the bus. A man came off the front porch of the place where I stayed. [He] got on the bus after me and sat down on the other side of the bus. When he got on the bus, I saw he was carrying a package, a newspaper-wrapped package. It was about six inches thick and a foot wide and about two foot long.46

  When shown a photo of Lee Oswald, Cody was firm in his identification of him.

  Another report of Oswald with a long package came from Ralph Leon Yates. Five days after the assassination, Yates told the FBI the story of his encounter with Oswald. He was driving near Beckley Street on Wednesday the 20th of November, when he picked up a young man hitchhiking into downtown Dallas. During their brief trip, the young man, who was carrying a long package that he said contained curtain rods, asked Yates questions about the President’s upcoming motorcade. He wanted to know two things: Was the route changed, and did Yates believe a person could take a rifle and shoot the President from the top of a building or from a window? Yates replied that he believed it could happen if the man was a good enough shot and had a scope. Yates dropped off his passenger at Elm and Houston Streets, the site of the Texas School Book Depository. After this strange encounter, Yates returned to his place of work and related the incident to a co-worker, Dempsey Jones.47

  If Oswald’s encounters with Morrow and Sapp were predicated upon his need to locate a sniper’s perch along the then-known motorcade route (Main Street) by Tuesday, November 19, it became a moot point. On that day, the Dallas Morning News published the exact motorcade route, showing the turn in front of Oswald’s place of work on Elm Street. Oswald’s quarry was handed to him on a silver platter.

  Until now, there has been no proof of how Oswald learned the exact route of the motorcade. Some who have championed Oswald’s innocence point to other published versions of the route, showing no turn in front of the Depository. If Oswald had seen these maps, they say, he wouldn’t have shot Kennedy. It is now known that Oswald did indeed learn the exact route of the motorcade, and in plenty of time to finalize his plans.

  As mentioned, Oswald rarely socialized with his housemates at Beckley Street. However, one of those tenants, Hugh Slough, has one and only one lingering memory of Oswald. On Wednesday evening, November 20, Slough was sitting in the living room of 1026 North Beckley, watching television with four other tenants. Typically, Oswald was alone in his tiny room, which adjoined the living room. Jerry Duncan, employed at the service station directly across the street, had come over to the house to socialize with Slough and others. Duncan told Slough that he had met the new tenant, “Mr. Lee,” and would introduce them if Lee ever came out of his room. Slough remembers what happened next:

  On television, they were announcing that they were about to show the final plans for Kennedy’s parade route on Friday. Suddenly, Oswald came out of his room, stood behind the couch, staring intently at the television set. They were showing the exact parade route, the turns—where it was going to go right past the School Book Depository. Jerry kept trying to introduce me to Oswald, and frankly couldn’t get his attention. He was just completely absorbed by the news. Nothing else seemed to matter. And when it was over—it didn’t last over five minutes—Oswald just turned around and went straight back into his room. I never got a chance to be introduced to him.48

  There are some indications as to what Oswald may have been doing back in his room. After the assassination, the Dallas Morning News published a report based on a piece of information leaked by the Dallas police. An anonymous source described a map of Dallas found in Oswald’s room. The paper reported, “Oswald had placed marks at all major intersections along the motorcade route—three or four as I recall. There was also a line from the Texas School Book Depository Building to Elm Street. This was the trajectory of the bullets which struck the President and Governor Connally.”49

  The original Oswald map, stored in the National Archives, is too faded to be of any use. In addition, the map, after-the-fact, was laminated, which obliterated the faint pencil markings on it. Prior to the lamination, Dallas-based Kennedy archivist Mary Ferrell made a photocopy which retains some of the markings. At least twelve Oswald markings are still visible. Dealey Plaza is prominently marked. Eight of the marked sites provide a direct line of sight to the motorcade route. Elmo Cunningham, of the Dallas Police Intelligence Division, found the map in Oswald
’s room. He told the author, “The map definitely had the President’s route on it. It was in pencil, very faint—but it was definitely there. It extended all the way from Love Field to the Trade Mart [the beginning and end of the motorcade route].”50

  On Thursday, November 21, according to Buell Frazier, Lee Oswald approached Frazier at work and asked if he could ride back to Irving with him to pick up some curtain rods. At 5 p.m., Oswald arrived unannounced at the Paine house, his first visit there on any Thursday since moving back to Dallas. Marina, who had not seen him for two weeks, later described him as looking lonely. But Marina was in no mood to be sympathetic. Earlier, she had been upset to learn that Oswald had used a fictitious name when registering at the rooming house. She was not ready to let him off the hook.

  Whatever intrigue Oswald had planned for the following day—whether inspired by Cubans in Mexico City, or by Bobby Kennedy’s anti-Castro allies in New Orleans—this trip to Irving was a last desperate attempt at self-preservation. It now seems clear that Oswald was hoping Marina would give him an excuse to not jump into the maelstrom on Friday. It was his last attempt at salvaging a normal life.

  Although she later claimed she was inwardly happy to see Lee, Marina, ever the strong-willed Russian coquette, also admitted that she did everything she could to not let him know it. Her biographer wrote:

  Marina saw Frazier’s car stop at the house and Lee get out. She did not go to greet him. She looked sullen as he entered the bedroom. . . He took her by the shoulder to give her a kiss. Marina turned her face away and pointed to a pile of clothes. “There are your clean shirt and socks and pants. Go in and wash up.”51

  “He tried to start a conversation with me several times, but I would not answer,” Marina later told her biographer. He also tried to kiss her several times, but each attempt was rebuffed. Four times that night, Lee asked Marina to move with him to a nicer apartment in Dallas. Each time, she refused.

  “I was like a stubborn little mule,” Marina recalled. “I was maintaining my inaccessibility, trying to show Lee that I wasn’t easy to persuade. If he had come again the next day and asked, of course I would have agreed. I just wanted to hold out one day at least.”52

  Lee then went outside with his daughter Junie (Junie was his pet name for June). He played with her longer than ever before, until dark. Marina would later wonder if he was saying goodbye to her.

  After helping to put June to sleep, Oswald himself went to bed around 10 p.m. Marina avoided him, soaking for over an hour in the bath while Lee lay on the bed. She later said that Lee was awake most of the night, finally dozing off around 5 a.m.

  The morning of the 22nd, Oswald’s late night took its toll. When the alarm went off at 7 a.m., he failed to rouse. Marina had to wake him. He arose and got ready for work, saying, “Mama, don’t get up. I’ll get breakfast myself.” He then went and kissed his two sleeping children, uncharacteristically not doing the same to Marina. Approaching the bedroom door, he turned around and said to his wife, “I’ve left some money on the bureau. Take it and buy everything you and Junie and Rachel need. Bye-bye.”

  When Marina later arose, she would find $170, practically all of Lee’s savings. Had she noticed something else, she says she would have been alarmed. The next evening, after Lee had been arrested for murdering John Kennedy, Marina would make another discovery on the bureau that made her heart sink: Lee had left his wedding ring in a small demitasse cup. He had never taken it off before.53

  For those who subscribe to the theory that even the most complicated human events can be distilled down to the basic human desire for security and companionship,54 they need look no farther for verification than the assassination of John Kennedy. Certainly there are political dimensions to the murder, with the likelihood that Lee Oswald’s murderous act was encouraged by shadowy figures in Mexico City and concrete plans discerned in New Orleans. But just as the Washington Senators’ scout, Joe Cambria, could have altered the future by signing young Fidel to a baseball contract, so could Marina Oswald have changed the shape of history the night before the assassination.

  “The Other Assassin”

  “The greater the US. support for the overthrow [of Castro], particularly in terms of military force, the greater the US. influence on the new government.”

  —State Department memo to Robert Kennedy’s CCC head, Joseph Califano, November 7, 196355

  “I think maybe we’ve got him now.”

  —President Kennedy, November 19, 1963, referring to Fidel Castro, as related by the CIA’s Richard Helms56

  As the middle of November rolled around, events seemed to gather speed, and all of the omens pointed towards success for the Cuban plan about to unfold. On November 15, 1963, Artime’s commando leaders, who had been training with the CIA in Virginia, embarked from Norfolk, Virginia. On November 19, the Second Naval Guerrilla, commanded by another exile friend of Bobby’s, Brigade hero Pepe San Román, received over one-half million dollars for weapon purchases.57 The former President and strongarm leader of Nicaragua, General Luis Somoza, was so convinced the invasion would begin soon and succeed that he predicted, “In November, strong blows will begin against Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro by groups we are training.”58

  On Tuesday, November 19, Rolando Cubela (AM/LASH) told his CIA case officer “Nicolas Sanson” (Nestor Sanchez) that if he didn’t receive immediate assurances of backup support from Washington, he would break off and return to Cuba. Later that day, impromptu meetings were held at the White House. Those present were the President, Bobby Kennedy, the CIA’s Deputy Director of operations Richard Helms, and Herschel Peake of the CIA’s Technical Services Division (among other things, this department was responsible for designing the exotic assassination devices referred to earlier).59 The CIA officers in attendance claim that while Cuba was the topic of the meeting, AM/LASH was not discussed.

  Also on November 19, exile leader Tony Varona, training in the Cuban Officer Training Program at Ft. Holabird, Maryland, received a phone call from fellow exile (and Bobby Kennedy friend) Erneido Oliva. Oliva requested that Varona come immediately to Washington to attend a meeting with Bobby Kennedy.60 According to Miami Station Chief Ted Shackley, Oliva had Bobby’s private telephone number and used it regularly to discuss the Cuban situation.61

  On this same day in Havana, AM/TRUNK infiltrators in Castro’s Army were advised by their CIA contacts to monitor the Voice of America radio network on the coming night for an important message: a program was planned that would “inspire the rebel army to unite and rise [up] in a coup against Fidel.” The broadcast would also “carry two major guarantees from the U.S. Government.”62

  On Wednesday, November 20, Cubela received a telephone call from “Sanson” (Sanchez), who told Cubela that the meeting he had requested seeking express Kennedy approval for his mission would take place on November 22 (at that meeting Cubela would be provided with the weapon that Herschel Peake’s division had designed). The Church Committee later summarized, “At earlier meetings with the CIA, AM/LASH had only received general assurances of U.S. support for a coup plan, and thus the November 20 telephone call was the first indication that he might receive the specific support he requested.”63

  Later that same day, Robert Kennedy wrote a memo to National Security advisor McGeorge Bundy concerning Cuba, the contents of which remain secret. Only Bundy’s response is known: “The Cuban problem is ready for discussion now. . . so we will call a meeting as soon as we can find a day when the right people are in town.” The right people were clearly the Cubans Bobby had alerted the previous day: Oliva and Varona, along with Harry Williams and Manuel Artime.

  Thus, the same day that Oswald watched the November 22 motorcade proceed along the route previously detailed on television, “the other assassin” was assured that the Kennedys would give him not only their support, but a custom-made weapon to use against Castro. It was to be delivered to him on November 22nd in Paris.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

&nb
sp; DIE BY THE SWORD

  “I’ve created such a can of worms for myself with my Cuban policy that, yes, something could happen to me.”

  —President Kennedy, to author John Davis, September 19631

  “I don’t want him to go.”

  —Robert Kennedy, referring to his brother’s scheduled trip to Texas, Nov 20, 1963

  “Dallas is a very dangerous place. I wouldn’t go there. Don’t you go.”

  —Senator William Fulbright pleading to President Kennedy in October 1963

  The letter arrived like so many others at Robert Kennedy’s Hickory Hill home. However, this one was different. It was not a request for a photograph or autograph, nor was it congratulations on the birth of the latest Kennedy child. In this letter, an anonymous writer from Texas was warning RFK not to let the President go to Dallas because “they” would kill him there. It is not clear who “they” were. And the letter would never again see the light of day. Thirty-five years later, it, like most of Bobby Kennedy’s personal papers, is unavailable to historians, its whereabouts unknown.2

  On November 20, the day of his 38th birthday, Bobby informed Ramsey Clark of his misgivings about his brother’s trip to Texas. Kennedy’s fears were not merely based on anonymous letters or intuition. For not only were warnings being received at Hickory Hill, they were also being monitored at the White House, the FBI headquarters, and the Secret Service. Responding to the September threat by Castro, Bobby’s Cuban Coordinating Committee’s secret unit was casting a wide net, collecting information implicating not only pro-Castro activists, but anti-Castro exiles left out of the Kennedy loop.