What I Think Happened--Part 1

I have been interested for most of my life in the events of November 22, 1963.

I have attended to the various ‘document dumps’ with voracious interest, consuming hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages, cramming as much into my brain and my schedule as I can. Most of what I have read backs up what I am about to say.

I’ve read most of the books. I’ve listened to most of the interviews with all the scores of people involved. I’ve watched not just the Z film, but the others as well.

I’m not an expert, and I’m leaving a lot out, including links.

But here’s what I think happened.

Let’s Talk About Oswald

Lee Oswald is a guy about whom we know everything, yet nothing. Within hours of his death we knew the name of his third grade teacher and what his favorite color was, but we had no insight into the man himself. I have said for years that nothing about Lee’s life makes any sense. See if you agree

Here was a guy who, from a broken home and fleeing a troubled childhood, joins the Marines in 1956 at the age of 17 after dropping out of high school. It was his second attempt. Everything about his military time is either average or below average, including his shooting skills. In 1957 he is assigned to an Air Control Squadron in Japan where he may or may not have held a high security clearance (according to who you ask) and may or may not have worked on top-secret radar projects.

If he did, then he did it amongst a dust cloud of disciplinary issues and infractions. If he did, he kept a security clearance even after accidentally shooting himself, assaulting a superior officer and suffering a nervous breakdown all over the course of about 2 years. Two years into the Marine corps he finally gets a rating of ‘average’.

Everything on paper about Oswald indicates he is the sort of guy you wouldn’t even bother to remember— but everyone that encountered him never forgot him. On paper, he was poorly disciplined and not overly bright, but the testimony of those he served with was that he was passionate, intelligent, and quick witted, though maybe a little awkward.

In February of 1959 Oswald requests a proficiency test in Russian and scores ‘poor’, yet later on his wife Marina would testify that he spoke like a native. Odd, don’t you think?

In August of 1959 he requests a discharge from the Marines because of long term medical issues being suffered by his mother, and in September of the same year he is released from active duty. He visits his extended family in Texas and then 11 days after his release from the USMC, (rather than tend to his mom) he leaves for the Soviet Union where he theoretically knows no one and doesn’t speak the language.

He stays in the Soviet Union from Oct of 1959 to June of 1962. A lot happens while he is there, and we know about most of it because for some reason, the CIA has extensive files on him, most of which have only recently come to light.

For example, Oswald married Marina Pusakova in April of 1961. Marina is her own puzzle, but I digress. While in Minsk, the newlyweds have their picture taken together—very much a ‘hey, random stranger can you take a picture of me and my wife in front of this landmark’ kind of photo.

The CIA knows who took the picture.

Doesn’t that strike you as an obsessively odd amount of attention to be paying to a guy who has yet to kill the president? I mean other than defecting to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War , and renouncing his citizenship after holding a secret clearance with the US military, what has this loser from New Orleans ever done to make anybody important notice him?

As an aside, it has recently come to light that a program existed in the late 1950s and early 1960s whereby recently discharged military personnel were ‘defected’ to the Soviet Union in order to gather information. In preparation for this work they were sent to , among other things, Russian language school. Just a thought.

In June of ‘62 the Oswalds (Lee, Marina, and baby June) arrive in America after having somehow gotten his citizenship back and having somehow navigated a labyrinth of paperwork and bureaucracy between two Cold War enemies. They move in with Lees brother Robert and the guy who couldn’t speak Russian 3 years earlier has written a book in Russian after having married a woman who spoke no English.

In the Fort worth area, the Oswalds become heavily involved in the Russian immigrant community—a community that contains, according to some, deep cover Russian agents learning all they can about American society—the counterprogram to ours. Lee gets a job at a welding company. Between June and August of 1962 Lee is interviewed by the FBI twice. The FBI denied for years that these interviews happened. I have yet to find the transcripts, if they exist, for these interviews.

In September of 1962, the Oswalds are introduced to George De Mohrenschildt—a Russian immigrant, petroleum agent, and occasional CIA asset. When Lee lost his job, it was George who suggested he look for work in Dallas. In February of 1963 he introduces the Oswalds to Ruth Paine, a woman with intelligence community connections and also a woman whose tax returns during this time period remain classified. Later on, when the Oswalds have marriage problems, Marina moves in with Ruth Paine, and Ruth Paine gets Lee his job at the book depository.

Any of this make any sense to you? Because I’ll tell you what it looks like to me. It looks like Lee Oswald was an intelligence asset himself of some kind and had been for years. It looks like he was being surrounded by the right people and put in the right place for some reason.

Now let me be clear; I don’t know what Oswald the intelligence asset was doing in Dallas. I find it doubtful that the ‘long game’ was to have him in place to take a potshot at the President if he ever came to town. After all, Lee orders the rifle ( March of 63) long before there was any announcement of Kennedy’s visit. But if I had to speculate, it appears that Oswald, between March and November, was doing everything in his power to become a noisy, visible, noted Communist agitator—to establish himself as a known leftist sympathizer. He did radio interviews, allowed himself to be spotted handing out Commie handbills, and even got arrested during this very brief period. What purpose this served long term I am not sure, although on the surface it appears to conveniently paint him as a direct adversary of Kennedy policies, especially in regards to Cuba.

Most of the rest of Lee’s life is common knowledge—semi-established historical fact. He was working at the TSBD that day in Dallas. We all agree on that. He caught a ride to work that day with a coworker as Oswald did not drive. We all agree on that. According to some, he brought his rifle to the TSBD that morning disguised as curtain rods and as the Presidential motorcade headed down Elm Street, he squeezed off 3 shots and made history.

Of course what’s not so commonly known is that Oswald was spotted on the second floor mere seconds after the shots rang out by a police officer. It’s also not commonly known that a young woman was on the stairwell on the 4th floor and she testified to anyone who would listen that Lee never went past her. Either way the manager of the TSBD vouched for Lee and Lee was allowed to leave.

That seem odd to anyone else?

The President of the United States has just been killed, and the guy later accused of it was allowed to just go home?

Lee headed to the boarding house where he was staying. His landlady saw him at he exact moment that Walter Cronkite announced Kennedy’s death. The interesting part of that piece is that it requires a very fortuitous set of events for Oswald to reach the boarding house that quickly. He has to catch every bus, and they have to not hit any traffic snares or red lights caused by—oh, I don’t know, a presidential motorcade and subsequent assassination.

An interesting theory is that Oswald caught a ride with a person who cannot establish where she was that day—Ruth Paine. There are some interesting eyewitness accounts. I’m not sold on that either way, to be honest.

Lee grabs a revolver and heads out on foot. According to some he is confronted by Officer Tibbetts of the Dallas PD and Oswald kills him, leaving a wallet behind. Oddly enough, when Oswald is arrested later that day, he has his wallet with him. There is another issue later with his jacket. A lot happened that day.

Oswald, after presumably killing the President and a police officer in broad daylight before witnesses (whose testimony differs), makes his way to a movie theatre where he jumps the turnstile rather than buy a ticket even though he had money with him. The manager calls the police who, in the middle of having a presidential assassination going on, send a sizable group of officers to apprehend Oswald. They do so, and the reports of how that arrest went down vary wildly.

Oswald is taken into custody and at every opportunity claims he is a ‘patsy’.

Paraffin tests on his hands prove he didn’t fire a gun that day.

He makes one phone call—or tries to. He doesn’t call his wife, or his mother. He attempts to call a long-since retired CIA agent, as one does. The call never goes through.

The next day a mob-connected nightclub owner manages to get into Dallas police headquarters with a loaded gun where he shoots Oswald within inches of the police. Nothing to see here, folks!

So What Happened?

If Oswald was an asset in Dallas on some sort of assignment, he would have made a pretty convenient patsy. I suspect he realized that as soon as the shots rang out that his presence in town wouldn’t stand up to the sort of scrutiny that follows an assassination so he fled the scene. He went to his place of residence, grabbed some things, and went to meet his handler to get further instructions. But since he has already been picked as a patsy, his handlers double-crossed him and made sure that a sizable police presence would take him into custody and that he would not live to testify.

Of course, that’s only one level of the conspiracy. As has been said by much better men than me; the event is one thing; the cover-up is another. With both Kennedy and Oswald off the table, the waters had to be muddied, and quickly, by people who knew how.

That’s part 2, folks.