Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 - November 24, 1963) was the suspected assassin of U. S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Government inquiries into the assassination have concluded that the enigmatic Oswald was the only assassin, while critics of the official account have claimed that Oswald did not act alone or was not involved at all and was framed.
This photo, which shows Oswald with a rifle, handgun, and Belgrade daily newspaper Politika, was taken on March 31, 1963 by his wife Marina. The Warren Commission labeled the photo as exhibit 133-A. Since Oswald's death, there have been questions on the photo's authenticity. The House Select Committee on Assassinations
in the 1970s concluded that the photo was real.Biography
Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Edward Lee Oswald, died before he was born, and his mother Marguerite raised him and his two older siblings, his brother Robert and his stepbrother John Pic, Marguerite’s child by her first marriage. Her mother doted on him to excess, but despite this she was a domineering and quarrelsome woman and all three of her children entered the US armed forces, perhaps to escape her influence. They lived an itinerant lifestyle; before the age of 18, Oswald had lived in 22 different residences and attended 12 different schools, mostly around New Orleans and Dallas.
Oswald was a withdrawn and temperamental child. After they moved in with John Pic, who had joined the US Coast Guard and was stationed in New York City, Oswald struck and pulled a knife on his mother. His truancy caused him to be evaluated by a psychiatrist, who diagnosed the 14 year old Oswald as having a "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies." Marguerite fled back south with her son before he could be institutionalized.
When he was enrolled in school, Oswald attended infrequently. He never received a high school diploma and was for his entire life a quite terrible speller, and his letters and diary have led some to speculate he was dyslexic. Despite this, he read voraciously and as a result thought he was better educated than those around him. Starting at around age 15, he became an ardent communist, solely from his reading on the topic. Despite his communism, Oswald was eager to become a US Marine. He idolized his older brother Robert and wore Robert’s Marine ring constantly. This relationship overrode the obvious ideological conflict for Oswald, and he also may have wanted to escape from his mother. He enlisted in 1956, a week after his seventeenth birthday.
Oswald was trained as a radar operator and assigned to Atsugi, Japan. Though Atsugi was the base for the U-2 spy planes which flew over the USSR, Oswald was not involved in that operation. Oswald’s experience in the Marine Corps was unpleasant. Small and frail compared to the other Marines, he was nicknamed “Ozzie Rabbit”. His meekness and his communism did not endear him to his compatriots, and the more ostracized he was, the more ardent and outspoken a communist he became, to the point where his nickname became “Oswaldskovich”. He subscribed to The Worker and taught himself rudimentary Russian. Oswald was court martialed twice, for shooting himself accidentally with a .22 derringer and for starting a fight with a sergeant. As a result, he lost his promotion to corporal and served time in the brig. He was not punished for another incident in which he broke down and started firing his rifle into the woods. By the end of his Marine career, he was doing menial labor.
He traveled to the U.S.S.R. in 1959 where he attempted suicide to avoid being deported as a suspected American spy. The Soviet authorities then permitted him to live in Minsk, where he worked in a radio factory and married a Soviet national, Marina (nee Nicholayevna Prusakova OR Alexandrovna Medvedeva) Oswald. (After Oswald's death, Maria remarried in 1965 and changed her name to Maria Oswald Porter.) Oswald maintained that he was a Marxist, and at one time tried to renounce his American citizenship, but later changed his mind and returned to the USA in 1962 with the quick help of the U.S. State Department, bringing Maria and their infant daughter. Some believe that his attempt at defection was a planned CIA operation to gain technical secrets from the Soviets, or, to provide the Soviets with false information. Such CIA operations are documented to have existed during this time frame. In Oswald's own words to a friend, he gave the Soviets information that he believed allowed them to shoot down Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane because the military wanted to derail an upcoming summit in which it was feared that President Eisenhower, supposedly declining mentally, might be bested by Khrushchev. Either way, he got in and got out much faster than a native Communist would have been able to do.
Back in America, Oswald got a job at a Dallas graphic arts firm, Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. What is odd about this is the fact that the company did highly classified work for the government, which included the creation of detailed maps of Cuba. Oswald later told a friend that the CIA arranged for his taking the job to work on the maps. He had an assignment, which involved identifying the location of safe houses, presumably from the maps he was making for the company.
In April, during the spring of 1963, Oswald moved to New Orleans with his wife and child.
In the summer of 1963, Oswald was the secretary of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, run by a certain Alek J. Hidell. In reality, Oswald was the only member, and he had Marina sign the name "Alek Hidell" on membership cards. However, recent evidence suggests that Hidell might actually have existed. On August 9, while Oswald distributed "Hands Off Cuba" and "The Crime Against Cuba" leaflets on the streets of New Orleans, he was harassed by anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Police arrested Oswald for disturbing the peace and made him pay a fine of $10. The arrest caught the attention of William Stuckey, a local reporter who hosted a radio show on WDSU called "Latin Listening Post." Oswald was a guest on the radio program on August 17 and August 21. There is some controversy as to whether Oswald actually harbored pro-Castro thoughts. The address listed on his pamphlets, 544 Camp Street, was (in reality) the address of a racist, one-time FBI agent and detective named W. Guy Banister who ran a training camp for anti-Castro exiles prepared to take over Cuba. Banister was rumored to have used Oswald to collect the names of Communist sympathizers at area colleges. Prof. Michael Kurtz, a professor of Louisiana history, witnessed Oswald and Banister at Tulane University making anti-integrationist remarks (though Oswald was staunchly pro-civil rights). Witnesses say Oswald used a work area on the second floor of 544 Camp. He was also seen signing guns out of Banister's storeroom at 544 Camp.
Amongst the people Banister worked with was a homosexual ex-pilot for Eastern Airlines named David Ferrie who also worked for Carlos Marcello's lawyer, G. Wray Gill, in Marcello's 'illegal deportation' case. Ferrie, who had no scientific credentials, claimed to be working on a cure for cancer using lab rats he kept at home. He also tinkered on a submarine in his backyard that he planned for use in the Cuban invasion. He had previously flown missions into Cuba under the pay of Eladio del Valle, an anti-Castro Cuban from Miami. He was also a self-proclaimed bishop in the Orthodox Old Rite Roman Catholic Church of North America. It is rumored that Oswald spurned Ferrie's sexual advances at the age of 15 when he was a member of Ferrie's Civil Air Patrol unit.
Oswald was a very poor worker, and hung out at a next-door parking garage befriending garage owner Adrian Alba. The garage was regularly used by the local FBI and CIA agents to park their government cars. Alba has testified that he saw the driver of one such car pass a white envelope to Oswald, who stuffed it under his shirt and walked away. The House Select Committee on Assassinations found this claim to be baseless.
Oswald passed out leaflets another time in front of the New Orleans International Trade Mart offices.
The rifle and Oswald’s marksmanship
In March 1963, Oswald (using the name of his ex-boss in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Alek J. Hidell) allegedly purchased a rifle and handgun that were later linked by investigators to the events of November 22, 1963.
Rifle
- 6.5x52mm Mannlicher-Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle
- Serial number C2766
- Western Cartridge 160 grain (10.37 g) ammunition
- Side-mounted Ordnance Optics 4 x 18 scope
Handgun
- 0.38 Special Smith & Wesson Victory revolver 2.25 in bbl
- Serial number V510210
- Converted from 0.38 S&W, shortened from 5 in bbl
The rifle was kept in the garage of family friends, Michael and Ruth Paine, at whose home Marina Oswald was living at the time. See Warren Commission report describing testimony of Michael R. Paine and his wife, Ruth Paine. [1]
During his military career Oswald scored as a "sharpshooter" in December 1956, on two occasions achieving 48 and 49 out of 50 during rapid fire at a 200-yard distant target, but failed to attain a marksmanship badge. Skeptics doubt the likelihood of Oswald being able to fire shots so accurately and rapidly with the weapon and from the position he was theorized to use to kill Kennedy (a moving 12 to 9 miles-per-hor target). Expert marksmen could not accomplish Oswald's alleged feat in their first try during the reenactments by the Warren Commission (1964) and CBS (1967).
The assassination and Oswald’s death
According to the controversial Warren Commission report on the John F. Kennedy assassination, Oswald shot Kennedy from a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where he was employed during the Christmas rush, as the President's motorcade passed through Dallas's Dealey Plaza at 12:30 pm on November 22. Texas Governor John Connally was wounded at the same time, along with an assassination witness, James Tague, who was standing some 270' in front of the presidential limousine. However, photographic and filmed evidence seems to prove that there were at least one or two shooters in an area known as the grassy knoll behind a picket fence atop a small sloping hill in Dealey Plaza, to President Kennedy's right-front.
Oswald then left the depository after being seen in its second floor lunchroom within only 76 to 90 seconds after the assassination. How he left the scene is still in conjecture. One witness, a decorated Dallas police department detective, claim he saw Oswald leave with four other dark-complected people in a white Nash Rambler with a luggage rack on top possibly owned by Ruth Paine. However, a punched bus transfer found on Oswald after his arrest seems to indicate that he took a bus, then left in the middle of traffic and (based on a witness statement) entered a taxi (which he was witnessed to have first offered to an elderly woman), which he got out of close to his rooming house in Oak Cliff. Either way, he got to his room. According to the report, he changed his clothes and grabbed a pistol in his room at the boarding house, even though no pistol or evidence of one (including a holster alleged to have been found there) had been found by the housekeeper when cleaning. At about the same time, according to his housekeeper, a police car (#107) containing two officers pulled up and beeped the horn twice before leaving after about a second. Oswald left thereafter in a great hurry, and was last seen at 1:03 or 1:04 PM standing and waiting at a bus stop near his rooming house.
After leaving the scene, Oswald allegedly shot and killed Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit at 1:15 or 1:16 PM, 0.85 mile distant from the rooming house. However, witness statements and shell casings indicate a different story. Oswald was seen in the vicinity of the murder scene, but his movements were calm. Several witnesses claimed they saw a man who did not resemble Oswald at all fire the shots. Another witness says she saw Oswald with a second man and that they ran off in separate directions. The report claims Oswald fired two Winchester-Western bullets and two Remington-Peters bullets. However, the shell casings indicated the murderer fired three Winchester-Westerns and one Remington-Peters. The report says there was either a shot unaccounted for that went missing or that he put a Remington-Peters in a Winchester-Western shell, the second of the two being more likely to the report, though it is impossible to do so.
Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theater in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff at about 1:50 pm, first as a suspect in the shooting of Tippit and was then charged with assassinating Kennedy, even though the arraignment hearing on the Kennedy charge was abruptly interrupted and never did get finished, so he was never really officially charged with the assassination of President Kennedy.
While in custody, Oswald denied the shooting, telling reporters "I didn't shoot anyone" and "I'm just a patsy".
Oswald was shot and killed by Texas nightclub owner Jack Ruby in Dallas, Texas, while being transferred to a nearly next door county jail, two days after the president's assassination, and before being brought to trial. Many alternative theories of the assassination contend that he acted on behalf of others, or even that Oswald was not the actual assassin.
Investigations
The Warren Commission created by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963 to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald did assassinate Kennedy and that he acted alone (also known as the Lone gunman theory). The proceedings of the commission were secret, and 3+% of its files have yet to be released to the public, further fuelling speculation about the assassination. A later investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, during the late 1970s, concluded that President Kennedy had "most-likely was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy."
In October 1981, Oswald was subject to an exhumation undertaken by British writer Michael Eddowes (with Maria Oswald Porter's support). They sought to prove or disprove a thesis developed in a 1975 book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy (The book was republished in 1976 in Britain as November 22: How They Killed Kennedy and in America a year later as The Oswald File.) The thesis of the trio of books was that when Oswald went to the Soviet Union, he was swapped with a Soviet clone. Eddowes's support for his thesis was a claim that the corpse buried in 1963 in the Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas did not have a scar that resulted from surgery conducted on Oswald years before. The final results of the exhumation found that the corpse they studied was Oswald's. The finding was based on dental records.
New evidence
New evidence has recently come to light indicating conspiracy in the Kennedy death. Witness Judyth A. Vary Baker came forward claiming to have had an affair with Oswald during his months in New Orleans and having learned of the JFK conspiracy in which he was involved. However, it seems that her account can be easily debunked regarding some slip-ups, including the inclusion of Cancun as a rendezvous spot for her and Oswald if he escaped when it apparently didn't exist until very late in the 1970s. Seldom is a Judyth supporter found these days, with the exception of out-of-work photographer Martin Shackelford and "Dr." Howard Platzman.
Also, a letter dated November 18, 1963 was recently found. It was definitely not in Oswald's handwriting, according to the authentication of handwriting experts. The letter was signed "Alek J. Hidell." It mentioned the recent efforts at organizing an FPCC chapter in New Orleans and indicated that Oswald was being used as a front because Hidell would be shunned and the chapter not paid attention to were Hidell to do it, perhaps indicating that the real Hidell was a person of low social standing or otherwise. He also mentioned Oswald's having bought a rifle for him and planning to do "something big" when Kennedy came to Dallas.
This letter's apparent implications were confirmed when employment records for an "Al Hydell" were found, indicating that he was working at one of Oswald's former workplaces in New Orleans a week before the assassination and took the weekend off. A photograph of him was found that was a remarkable dead ringer for Oswald with the exception of a bull neck and a larger nose. Other employment records linked to these indicate that he had operated a quack practice as "Dr. A. Hideel" in Fort Worth two years before. Witnesses state a similar looking person was seen in Mexico at about the time Oswald is reputed to have gone there.
A cursory reading of the Warren Report and a look at the evidence shown there seems to indicate that the new Hidell evidence ties up many loose ends.
See also
External links
- Lee Harvey Oswald Research Page
- Lee Harvey Oswald: Lone Assassin or Patsy
- J. Lee Rankin's evidence on Oswald's Marine-corps shooting grade (his available records range from "rather poor" to "fairly good".)
- Analysis of the backyard photo concluding it fraudulent
- Analysis of the backyard photos concluding them genuine
- Oswald and Clay Shaw
- Lee H. Oswald - Biography and Bibliography