Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (27 page)

Although Oswald was not heard from in Russia between December 1959
and February 1961, the wheels of the U.S. bureaucracy were turning.

As early as November 10, 1959, the FBI, upon learning of Oswald's
attempted defection, placed a "flash" notice on his fingerprint card. This
would serve to alert Bureau officials should Oswald's fingerprints turn up
in any FBI investigation. It also placed his name on a "watch" list used in
monitoring overseas communications.

By the summer of 1960, the FBI was fully alert to Oswald and to the
possibility that some sort of espionage game was being played out. On
June 3, 1960, FBI director Hoover wrote to the State Department's Office
of Security, warning: "Since there is a possibility that an imposter is using
Oswald's birth certificate, any current information the Department of State
may have concerning subject will be appreciated."

About this same time, the Marine Corps, informed that Oswald had
offered to tell military secrets to the Soviets, took action. After failing to
reach Oswald with certified letters, the Marine Corps officially changed
Oswald's "honorable discharge" to "dishonorable" on September 13,
1960.

But it was Oswald's mother who seemed to get the swiftest reaction
from queries about her son. After phone calls to the FBI and letters to her
congressmen failed to turn up information about her son, Mrs. Oswald
spent her small savings on a train ticket to Washington. Arriving on
January 28, 1961, she called the White House wanting to speak to President Kennedy, who had just been inaugurated eight days before.

Failing to reach the President, she asked to speak to Secretary of State
Dean Rusk. Instead, she was granted an immediate interview with Eugene
Boster, White House Soviet affairs officer. Although she had not heard
from her son in more than a year and his trip to Russia allegedly was made
entirely on his own, Mrs. Oswald quoted Boster as saying, "Oh, yes,
Mrs. Oswald, I'm familiar with the case." As before, she charged that her son was working for the government of the United States and demanded
that the government locate him in Russia. Memos were routinely sent to
Moscow.

On February 1, 1961, less than a week after Mrs. Oswald's Washington
visit, the State Department sent a "Welfare-Whereabouts" memo to Moscow.

On February 13, 1961, the U.S. embassy in Moscow received a letter
from Oswald dated February 5, stating: "I desire to return to the United
States, that is if we could come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any legal proceedings against me."

Secretary Snyder was understandably astonished that Oswald should
write to him just after he had been asked to locate the ex-Marine.

Mrs. Oswald maintained that the rapidity of response from her son
indicated that the U.S. government was in contact with Oswald while in
Russia.

The Warren Commission attributed his sudden reappearance to coincidence, in light of the fact that routine queries about Oswald had not yet
been initiated by the American Embassy.

In his letter, Oswald showed unusual knowledge of the legalities of
citizenship. He pointed out that he had never "taken Russian citizenship"
and added: "If I could show [the Soviets] my American passport, I am of
the opinion they would give me an exit visa."

Perhaps recalling Hoover's memo of the previous summer, the State
Department informed Snyder that Oswald's passport was to be delivered
on "a personal basis only."

On May 16, 1961, after some written sparring with the embassy,
Oswald further complicated the entire matter by writing:

Since my last letter I have gotten married . . . My wife is Russian, born
in Leningrad, she has no parents living and is quite willing to leave the
Soviet Union with me and live in the United States . . . I would not
leave here without my wife so arrangements would have to be made for
her to leave at the same time I do.

Oswald was ready to return to the United States, but only with his new
bride, Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova.

A little more than a month after telling the American embassy that he
wished to return home, Oswald met the Russian woman who would
become his wife and a chief witness against him after the assassination.

Around March 17, 1961-nobody seems to be certain of the date,
including Marina-Oswald attended a trade union dance at the Palace of
Culture in Minsk. Here he met nineteen-year-old Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova, who was the hit of the party in a red brocade dress and
hairstyle "a la Brigitte Bardot." Oswald was introduced to her as "Alik"
and soon they were dancing.

Marina said they spoke Russian and she believed "Alik" to be a Soviet
citizen, but from the Baltic area-Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. She was
greatly surprised to learn this man was really an American named Lee
Harvey Oswald.

After the dance, Oswald and Marina visited in the home of friends,
where Oswald spoke up in defense of the United States, saying that while
there were defects such as unemployment and discrimination, there still
was ".. . more democracy ..."

According to Oswald's diary, the pair hit it off well and he obtained
Marina's telephone number before going home. The following week they
again met at a dance and this time Oswald was allowed to accompany
Marina home, where he was introduced to the aunt with whom she lived.
Marina then agreed to go out on a date with Oswald, but the appointment
fell through. On March 30, the day before his scheduled date with Marina,
Oswald entered the Fourth Clinical Hospital for an adenoids operation.

Although the hospital visiting hours were Sundays only, Marina was
able to visit Oswald almost every day, perhaps because she wore the white
uniform of a pharmacist. She felt sorry for Oswald and on Easter Sunday,
the day after his operation, brought him a painted Easter egg. Oswald
immediately asked her to become his fiancee and she agreed.

Oswald wrote in his diary: "We are going steady, and I decide I must
have her, she puts me off, so on April 15 I propose, she accepts." They
married on April 30, less than six weeks after first meeting.

In later years, Marina exhibited a strange memory loss about many
aspects of their meeting, whirlwind romance, and wedding.

She told varying stories as to who first introduced her to Oswald, then
finally stated she just couldn't remember. She also told the House Select
Committee on Assassinations that Oswald had proposed to her "a month
and a half" before their wedding. This would mean Oswald proposed the
first night they met. However, this was by no means the only inconsistency in Marina's recollections.

Marina claimed to be born on July 17, 1941, in the northern seaside
town of Molotovsk. A war baby, she never knew who her father was and
took her mother's name. In the book Marina and Lee, she suddenly
revealed that she had found out that her father was a Soviet traitor named
Nikolai Didenko. This may be a small matter, but it was never revealed to
the Warren Commission. Her mother left her as an infant with elderly
relatives in Arkhangelsk, where she grew up until rejoining her mother at
age seven. By then her mother had married an electrical worker named
Alexander Medvedev and by 1952, the family was living in Leningrad.
Here Marina attended a pharmacist school. She was a young student when her mother died. She said life with her stepfather became intolerable after
the death of her mother.

Upon graduation from school in June 1959, she was assigned a job in a
pharmaceutical warehouse, but quit after only one day and spent the rest of
the summer on vacation. At the end of the summer, she went to Minsk to
live with her maternal uncle, Colonel Ilya Vasilyevich Prusakov, a ranking
officer in the MVD (the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, portions of
which function as secret police), a leading citizen in Minsk and a Communist Party member.

It was at her uncle's urging that she attended the dance where she met
Oswald. Marina's uncle apparently never protested her marriage, although
his position could have allowed him to study Oswald's KGB file, which
must have shown that Oswald had written to the American embassy about
returning to the United States since it is now known that the KGB was
keeping him under surveillance.

Within a matter of days after their marriage, Oswald informed Marina of
his desire to return to the United States. Soon Marina began to apply for
the documents necessary to leave the Soviet Union. Her exit visas appeared to have been expedited despite the fact that there were several
problems with her background information. She stated her name as "Marina Nikolaevna," which indicated her father's name was Nikolai. She
insisted, however, that she never knew the name of her father. Her birth
certificate identified her birthplace as Severodvinsk. This was the name
given to Molotovsk, but not until 1957. Furthermore, since being a
member of the Communist Party might cause problems in leaving Russia,
she denied any membership. Actually, she was a member of the Komsomol,
the Communist Party's youth movement.

These discrepancies did not escape the notice of the CIA. Shortly after
the assassination, a CIA memorandum noted:

.. . at the time [the Agency] was becoming increasingly interested in
watching develop a pattern that we had discovered in the course of our
bio[graphical] and research work: the number of Soviet women marrying
foreigners, being permitted to leave the USSR, then eventually divorcing their spouses and settling down abroad without returning "home."
... we eventually turned up something like two dozen similar cases.

Noting that the birth certificate Marina brought to the United States was
issued July 19, 1961, and that she had to have one to obtain a marriage
license, author Edward Epstein concluded: "It thus seemed that new
documents-and possibly a new identity-were furnished to Marina after
it was decided that she would accompany Oswald to the United States.

On July 8, 1961, Oswald had flown to Moscow to retrieve his passport
at the American embassy. Since he had never technically defected, his
passport was promptly returned, although the State Department cautioned the embassy to proceed carefully in Oswald's "involved case" and to
make sure "that the person in communication with the Embassy is .. .
Lee Harvey Oswald."

With all their applications made, the Oswalds settled down to wait for
approval to leave Russia.

To further complicate the situation, a baby girl-June Lee Oswald-was
born to Marina on February 15, 1962. On May 10, the Oswald's heard
from the American embassy that everything was in order and that they
should come to Moscow to sign the final papers.

It was during this time that Marina noted a cooling in Oswald's attitude
toward her. This coolness was to increase after they left Russia. It was
almost as if he had made up the story of his love and instead was simply
following some sort of orders in his courtship. Afterward, with his assignment completed, he didn't bother to act like his love was real.

Accounts of Oswald's time during this period are filled with inconsistencies. For example, in his diary he claims to have returned to Minsk from
Moscow on July 14. However, on August 1, Rita Naman and two other
tourists reported meeting a young American in Moscow and snapping his
picture. Two photos made by these tourists were displayed by the House
Select Committee on Assassinations, which said the young American was
Oswald.

On May 24, 1962, the Oswalds arrived in Moscow to attend to the final
details of their departure from Russia. On June 1, Oswald signed a
promissary note at the American embassy for a repatriation loan of $435.71,
the money needed for his return, and the couple boarded a train that same
evening.

Their trip home also has nagging indications of intelligence handling.
The Warren Commission said they crossed out of Communist territory at
Brest. Yet Marina's passport was stamped at Helmstedt, one of the major
checkpoints on the East German border. Intriguingly, Oswald's passport
shows no Helmstedt stamp at all, raising the possibility that he somehow
traveled a different route from Marina's.

Arriving in Amsterdam, the Oswalds stayed-not in a hotel-but in a
private establishment recommended by someone in the American embassy
in Moscow, according to Marina. She described this place variously as a
"private apartment" and as a "boardinghouse." While the official record
shows they stayed here only one night, after the assassination Marina
recalled a three-day stay and she reacted with confusion when questioned
about this by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. She did note
that advanced arrangements had been made at this place and that their
hosts spoke English.

Many researchers suspect that Oswald, and perhaps Marina, were "debriefed" by U.S. intelligence during their Dutch stopover. Even the chief
counsel of the Warren Commission called the episode "unexplained."