by Gus Russo
9 Psychiatrist’s report quoted in Hartogs and Freeman, The Two Assassins, 319.
10 Later, when her own mental state deteriorated after having her children, some would cite the possible effects of being raised without a mother (psychologists say this can be more devastating than being raised without a father).
11 Report of Evelyn Strickman [Siegel], Youth House, April 30, 1953 (FL).
12 Ford and Stiles, 71.
Immediately after the assassination, Marguerite would behave in ways that astonished those who saw her. She hadn’t seen much of Lee for months, yet, when she arrived at Dallas Police Headquarters, where he was being held after the shooting, she behaved in a pushy, proprietary manner, as if the entire assassination drama were a way for her to at last receive the attention she deserved. Throughout that weekend, she displayed a kind of self-absorption that might have been mistaken for a parody in less serious circumstances. While the rest of the world was gripped by the drama and sorrow of what had happened to the President, she cared only for Lee—and not really Lee, but how she appeared because of her son. This continued after he was shot by Jack Ruby. In the protective custody of the Secret Service, she demanded beers for herself and a state funeral for her son; above all, she demanded attention for herself. (Mike Howard, interview by author, 7 December 1993.)
13 Mike Howard (one of the Secret Service agents who sequestered the Oswald family in the days following the assassination), interview by author, 7 December 1993.
14 John Pic, testimony, WC vol. XI, 74.
15 Report of Evelyn Strickman [Siegel], Youth House, 30 April 1953.
16 From the Book Week quote used on the dust jacket of A Woman in History.
17 From the Saturday Review quote used on the dust jacket of A Woman in History.
18 Allen Campbell, interview by author, 8 February 1994.
Campbell, who was older than Lee at the time, remembered being so depressed one day that he sobbed on a nearby riverbank. Approaching Campbell, Oswald comforted him, saying, “Allen, there’s someone out there who loves us. One day we’ll find them.”
19 Interview of Alan Campbell, 5 May 1993 (FL).
There is some evidence that Lee might also have suffered brain damage. When he was five years old and his brother Robert was 12, Marguerite made one of the many moves of their childhood, this time from a house in Fort Worth. As the moving van backed out of the driveway, Robert cut behind it on his bicycle. Lee followed on his tricycle, and the driver slammed on his brakes when a worker shouted a warning. The sudden stop caused a chest of drawers to slide from the back of the van and onto young Lee. He was unconscious for eight days. A doctor warned Marguerite that “if the boy comes to at all, he’s going to have a problem.” From then on, Lee would suffer occasional black outs. He began doing things of which he’d have no memory, such as walking out in the middle of a class and wandering school hallways. When a teacher asked where he was going, he’d ask in return what the questioner was talking about. (Former Secret Service agent Mike Howard—who helped sequester the Oswald family immediately after the assassination—interview by author, 7 December 1993.)
Based on the above account, Dr. Lee Russo, a distinguished neurosurgeon, does not preclude the possibility of temporal lobe damage, which could cause petit-mal seizures. Dr. Russo has speculated that even if the damage did not lead to anti-social behavior, seizures might have made classmates think Oswald weird, which could have made him withdraw. (Dr. Lee Russo, interview by author, 10 December 1993.)
20 Oswald’s sea bag was stored in the Paines’ garage. The finding of a Minox camera and undeveloped film in what was thought to be the sea bag became, for several decades, a principal source of conjecture that Oswald might have been employed by Soviet or American intelligence. Very few Americans had that kind of camera in 1963; it was largely restricted to intelligence agents and camera buffs. The mystery continued when the FBI seemingly deleted the camera from its inventory of items in the garage, compiled after the assassination. The Dallas police insisted that it had been on its list, but the FBI made no mention of the camera. The mystery deepened when copies of the developed film were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and the photographs included what appeared to be reconnaissance of foreign border areas and coastlines, mixed with tourist pictures of European cities Oswald was never known to have visited. But, it turned out that the FBI was right not to list the camera, for it belonged not to Oswald but to Michael Paine, who cleared up the mystery, at the author’s instigation, in a 1993 interview for Frontline. Paine not only identified the camera as his, but also specified that he had taken each of the photos.
21 Interview of Ruth Paine, 2 July 1993 (FL).
22 Oswald, 53. WC vol. XI, 38-39—cited in Posner, 10.
23 CD 1245, FBI report of interview with Mrs. Clyde Livingston, 4 June 1964. WC vol. XXV, 119—cited in Posner, 8.
24 Interview of Pat O’Connor, 14 June 1993 (FL).
25 Interview of John Clark Carro, 21 May 1993 (FL).
26 Interview of Evelyn Strickman Siegel, 21 May 1993 (FL).
27 John Carro, testimony, WC vol. VIII, 207-208.
28 From Oswald’s social and psychiatric reports, by Dr. Renatus Hartogs and Evelyn Strickman, as quoted in Hartogs, Renatus, and Lucy Freeman, The Two Assassins, New York: Crowell, 1965, 319-320.
29 Robert Oswald, testimony, WC vol. I, 60 (quoted in Posner, 14).
30 Hiram Conway, testimony, WC vol. VIII, 86.
31 Transcript of WC executive session, 23 June 1964.
32 Interview of Robert Oswald, 13 June 1993 (FL).
33 Interview of Robert Oswald, 13 June 1993 (FL).
34 Osborne, Mack, affidavit, WC vol. XIII, 322.
35 McMillan, 76; and see (CD 352) CE 1385 WC vol. XXII, 703, Aline Mosby’s notes of an interview in Moscow in November 1959.
36 Interview of Owen Dejanovich, 29 April 1993 (FL).
37 McMillan, 76.
38 Interview of Willy Wulf, 4 June 1993 (FL).
39 Ibid.
40 Edward Voebel, testimony, WC, vol. III, 9.
41 Ibid, 13.
42 His Russian associates would later doubt Oswald’s sincerity to the Marxist cause. A number of them told PBS’s Frontline in 1993 that they were suspicious of Oswald because he never attended any Marxist meetings during his entire 2 1/2 year stay in the Soviet Union.
43 CE 2240, 2.
44 Posner, 19.
45 Interview of Dan Powers, 10 June 1993 (FL).
46 Interview of Owen Dejanovich, 29 April 1993 (FL).
47 Epstein, Legend, 88.
48 Ibid.
49 Posner, op cit., 29.
50 Gerry Hemming, interview by author, 5 June 1992.
The Consul’s name was Manuel Valasquez. His house was in Monterey Park, a suburb of Los Angeles with poor bus service and too far—some nine miles— from the city for anything approaching ordinary walking. In January of the same 1959, the Monterey Park Police were called to break up a reported quarrel at Valasquez’ house. Paul Bartlett, a photographer for the local Post Advocate, took ten photographs of some 35 Cubans present, nine of whom were taken to the station. After Kennedy’s assassination, Hank Osborne, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, heard that Oswald was among those photographed. He assigned a reporter named Boris Yaro to the story. The Monterey Park police told Yaro that a CIA agent had just visited the station and removed several of the photographs, which were never returned. Oswald did not appear in the photographs that remained. (Boris Yaro, interview by author, 19 October 1991.)
51 Epstein, Legend, 89.
52 Ibid.
53 Nelson Delgado, testimony before Warren Commission; extracted in Epstein, Legend, 89 Years later, when the Rockefeller Commission would investigate the Warren Commission’s performance, Ray Rocca, the CIA liaison to the Warren Commission, wrote that the Delgado story was credible and should not have been overlooked by the official investigators into the President’s death. Rocca wrote that Delgado’s testimo
ny suggests “more of a possible operational significance than is reflected by the language of the Warren Report, and its implications do not appear to have been run down or developed by investigation.” As noted, the author attempted to learn more of this incident in 1991—hence the Hemming story.
54 Interview of Robert Oswald, 13 June 1993 (FL).
55 Oswald wrote to his mother shortly before boarding the ship that would take him to Europe: “Just remember above all else that my values are different from Robert’s or yours. . . Just remember this is what I must do. I did not tell you about my plans because you could hardly be expected to understand.” (Lee Oswald to his mother, letter, CE 200, WC vol. XVI, 580.) The letter was postmarked 19 September 1959. Oswald’s ship, a freighter named Marion Lykes, left New Orleans for Le Havre the following day.
56 Lee to Robert Oswald, letter, 8 November 1959 (CE 294), 57. Interview of Rimma Shirakova, 4 April 1993 (FL).
58 For years, a remark attributed to Oswald’s wife fueled speculation that Oswald arrived in Russia already proficient in the language, leading to the conjecture that he may have been trained by the military as a spy. Marina Oswald’s statement that when she met him, she thought he was from “the Baltic States” was the basis of this theory. Her remark actually was based on the fact that the Baltic citizens spoke poor Russian. In 1992, Marina would tell Gerald Posner, “Baltics don’t speak Russian very well.” Oswald himself remarked to a Moscow reporter: “I can get along in restaurants, but my Russian is very bad.” (CE 1385) Vyacheslev Nikonnov, the KGB officer who reviewed the KGB file on Oswald after the fall of communism, said in 1993, “I don’t think her impression of Oswald being from a Baltic State really reflects his good knowledge of Russian because most people from the Baltic States do not speak good Russian. In fact, they are foreigners.” (I.V. 8 April 1993, [FL].)
Rimma Shirakova says that Oswald knew only a few words of Russian, like “how are you?” (I.V. 21 January 1993 [FL].) She elaborates, “As for the Russian, I helped him a bit. But I can’t say that he was very good at languages “(Interview, 4 April 1993 [FL].) His first Russian girlfriend, Ella Germann, says his Russian was poor, and she agreed to help him with it. Dr. Lydia Mikhailina, who treated Oswald after his suicide attempt, says, “Oswald spoke not a word of Russian.” (Interview January 1993 [FL]). Margarita Gracheva, who disbursed tourist tickets at the Hotel Berlin, where Oswald initially stayed, remembers him well, and says he spoke no Russian (Interview, 18 January 1993 [FL].)
Numerous other hotel employees confirm that Oswald definitely could not speak the language. In fact, many expressed pity for him because of the fact that, with no one to talk to, he stayed in his room alone for weeks on end. Stanisalv Shshkevich, then a teacher [foreigners were assigned], and later chairman of the Parliament of Belarus, says, “I personally taught the Russian language to the man who is considered the murderer of Kennedy. I can’t say that he was very good at languages. So though he spent many hours, the result wasn’t very good.” (UPI story from Moscow, 23 January 1994.) Even near the end of his life, after spending over two and a half years with his Russian-speaking wife, Oswald’s linguistic skills were weak. Oleg Nechiporenko, the KGB agent who saw him in the Soviet embassy in Mexico City in September 1963, says he spoke poor Russian even then. Their discussions were conducted in a “cocktail” of Russian, English, and Spanish (Interview, 27 January 1993 [FL]).
59 CE 1385, WC vol. XXII, 702, 706.
60 Interview of Rimma Shirakova, 4 April 1993 (FL).
61 Interview of Dr. Lydia Mikhailina, January 1993 (FL).
62 Nechiporenko, 54.
63 Interview of Vladimir Semichastny, 6 April 1993 (FL).
64 Dino Brugioni, interview by author, 27 January 1998.
65 Interview of son of Vasili Petrov (who asks that his name be withheld), 10 January 1993 (FL).
66 Nechiporenko, 62.
67 Izvestya, “KGB Case File No. 31451 on Lee Harvey Oswald,” 11 August 1992, 3.
68 Interview of Vladimir Semichastny, 6 April 1993 (FL).
69 Nechiporenko, 61.
70 Interview of Vladimir Semichastny, 6 April 1993 (FL).
71 Interview of Pavel Golovachev, 8 April 1993 (FL).
72 Interview of Allen Campbell, 2 February 1993 (FL).
73 Interview of Richard Snyder, 19 August 1993 (FL).
Because he had CIA experience, Snyder’s estimation of Oswald’s appeal to the KGB rings true. Snyder continues, “All intelligence agencies, certainly ours and the KGB, used foreign nationals for their work. But I don’t think they’d have touched him with a ten-foot pole. He was a flaky kid. I saw absolutely no reason to believe that Oswald was anything but what he appeared, this kid standing before me who really didn’t know beans about what he thought he was going to do.” Snyder subjected Oswald’s knowledge of Marxism to a kind of quick oral test, and found it almost non-existent in terms of the basic theories on which the credo was based. “I never really considered him a Marxist in the sense that I believed what he said when he came in. He had all the earmarks of a sophomore Marxist, someone who’d just discovered a religion. . . I had no reason to believe he even knew what Marxism was in any serious sense.” The consular/CIA official also dismissed the possibility that Oswald was a fake defector. Says Snyder, “I can’t possibly imagine where the fake would arise and for what purpose. Whom was he faking it for?”
74 Many still insist, without any hard evidence, that Oswald was a fake defector, working for a U.S. intelligence service. A high-ranking CIA official told the author in 1993 that a program using fake defectors was considered, but never implemented. He said, “Although the Soviets had fake defectors, we in the U.S. didn’t have the capability. Practically speaking, who in their right mind would defect from the U.S. in 1959 and spend the rest of their lives in Russia? On the other hand, the Soviets, I’m sure, had no shortage of volunteers.” (Confidential interview by author, 15 October 1993)
Also interviewed in 1993 was Senator Richard Schweiker, who headed the Church Subcommittee looking into the JFK murder in 1975. Asked about fake defectors, he paused, looked at his aide, took a breath, and said, “Oh, I guess I can say this now. Hell, it’s been thirty years, the Cold War is over. (PAUSE) I was told by knowledgeable CIA brass that there was a fake defector program. However, I was assured in a most convincing manner that Oswald was not a part of it. I agreed not to mention the program in my report.” (Interview of Senator Richard Schweiker, 7 July 1993 [FL].)
75 See Yuri Nosenko, interview by Gerald Posner, in Posner, 58.
76 Interview of Ernst Titovets, 6 April 1993 (FL).
77 Interview of Vacheslav Nikonov, 12 April 1993 (FL).
78 Quoted in “Literati Probing Oswald’s Days in Minsk,” The Chicago Tribune, 29 January 1993, 1.
79 Quoted in “Literati Probing Oswald’s Days in Minsk,” The Chicago Tribune, 29 January 1993, 1.
80 Bakatin, 163-166.
81 Interview of Vacheslav Nikonov, January 1993 (FL).
82 Ivan Ivanovich Lunyov, interview by author, 14 January 1993.
83 Interview of Vacheslav Nikonov, 12 April 1993 (FL).
84 Some writers such as former CIA agent Frank Camper (The MK/ULTRA Secret) suggest that Oswald was sent to the Soviet Union as a guinea pig—with no specific mission, but to test the viability of the concept of mind control. Camper further suggests that the Soviets knew this about Oswald, and the only reason they allowed him to stay in the Soviet Union was to study him. This remains at least logically possible. Most now agree that Oswald wasn’t an espionage agent. (This theory at least explains Oswald’s detached, dysfunctional attitude, his later nightmares, and his interest in LSD.)
American attempts at mind control were largely prompted by American fury and dismay over the “Communist brain-washing” that forced American prisoners in Korea to attack their homeland and government using Communist terms.
Project Artichoke, as it was named in 1952, had started earlier, with CIA attempts to duplicate suspec
ted Soviet use of drugs and hypnosis—as demonstrated as long before as the Moscow purge trials—to alter states of mind: to strip subjects of their own desires and identities and to give them new ones. One of the possible objects of such a transformation was to see if a person could be induced to commit an assassination against his/her will. The agency had an intense interest in this possibility, and “authorized a virtually unlimited use of unaccountable funds for the project.” (Gordon Thomas, 96) The first practical steps to test the possibility of breaking and re-making human minds took place during the summer of 1950. Rapid alternating injections of powerful depressants and stimulants were used, then massive electroshock and a variety of drugs (including LSD and heroin) and hypnotic techniques, including inducing amnesia so that the subject would not remember the “treatment.” Quite a few doctors and scientists from various disciplines were recruited. Although it would be unfair to say that none of them had moral concerns or scruples, all fit Allen Dulles’ insistence that the ethics of every member of the staff “must be such that he would be completely cooperative in any phase of our program, regardless of how revolutionary it may be.” The objects of the most dangerous experiments were captured spies, defectors, suspected double agents, etc. (Simultaneously, the Navy was carrying out tests on unwitting American college students. The chief doctor knew this was “unethical,” but felt he had to do it “for the good of the country.”)
In April 1953, Artichoke (see Gordon Thomas) became MK/ULTRA, to which behavioral research was transferred in 1954 (Marks, 186). The link to Oswald, for some, is the fact that he was stationed at the Atsugi U-2 base, which is believed to be one of the two foreign CIA stations where MK/ULTRA experiments were conducted.
When the Americans took over Atsugi after World War II, they were amazed to find an “entire city” underground. The Japanese had used it for storing records, including all the documentation of Colonel Ishi, the father of Japan’s chemical and biological warfare. Some believe that the CIA wanted to capture and occupy the city for that reason. One of Ishi’s experiments was infecting fleas with botulism. Few realized that Japan’s only way of reaching the U.S. with its botulism weapons were a few hundred balloons—which were filled with the infected fleas. Luckily, Isihi wasn’t able to keep the fleas alive during their voyage.