Oswald's Tale (37 page)

8

Second Thoughts

Along with everything else, Lee was having an exchange of letters with a Brigadier General in the Marine Corps.

7 Mar 1962

Dear Mr. Oswald:

. . . A review of your file at this Headquarters reflects . . . reliable information which indicated that you had renounced your United States citizenship with the intention of becoming a permanent citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Commander, Marine Air Reserve Training, made responsible efforts to inform you of your right to appear before the review board in person [but in] the absence of reply from you concerning your rights, [the board] met on 8 August 1960 at which time a recommendation was submitted that you be separated from the Marine Corps Reserve as undesirable . . .

Sincerely, R. McC. Tompkins,
Brigadier General U.S. Marine Corps
¹

One can feel the pressure of Oswald’s hand upon each word he chooses to emphasize in his reply of March 22.

Dear Sirs:

In reply to your notification of the granting of an
undesirable
discharge and your conveying of the process at which
it
was arrived:

I would like to point out in direct opposition to your information that I have never taken steps to renounce my U.S. citizenship. Also that the United States State Department has no charges or complaints against me
whatsoever.

I refer you to the United States Embassy, Moscow, or the U.S. Department of State, Washington DC, for the verification of this fact.

Also, I was [not] aware of the finding of the board of officers of 8 August 1960. I was notified by my mother, in December of 1961.

My request to the Secretary of the Navy, his referral to you, and your letter to me, did not say anything about a
review,
which is what I was trying to arrange.

You mention “reliable information” as the basis for the
undesirable
discharge. I have no
doubt
it was newspapers’ speculation which formed your “reliable information.”

Under U.S. law governing the use of passports and conduct abroad, I have a perfect right to reside in
any
country I wish
to . . .
therefore, you have no
legal,
or even moral, right to reverse my
honorable
discharge . . . into an
undesirable
discharge.

You may consider this letter a request by me for a full
review
of my case in the light of these facts, since by the time you
receive
this letter I shall have returned to the USA with my family, and shall be prepared to appear in person at a reasonable time and place in my area before a reviewing board of officers.
²

On March 27 comes the last entry in his diary:

I receive a letter from a Mr. Phillips (employer of my mother) pledging to support my wife in case of need.

March 27, ’62

Dear Mother,

. . . We should be in the States in May at the latest.
The Embassy
has
agreed to loan me $500.00
for the trip, and also they accepted my own affidavit of support so yours won’t be necessary after all. However,
don’t try to get that businessman friend of yours to cancel his affidavit;
it may come in handy someday.
As you say,
my
trip here would make a good story about
me.
I’ve already thought about that for quite a while now. In fact,
I’ve already made 50 pages of longhand notes on the subject.

Love xxx
Lee
³

March 28

Dear Mother,

. . . You asked whether I’ll be staying at your place or Robert’s in Fort Worth. I don’t think I’ll be staying at either but I will be visiting both. In any event, I’ll want to live on my own . . .
⁴

April 12, 1962

Dear Robert,

. . . It looks like we’ll be leaving the country in April or May; only the American side is holding us up now. The Embassy is as slow as the Russians were . . .

. . . Now that winter is gone, I really don’t want to leave until the beginning of fall since the spring and summer here are so nice.

Your brother,
Lee
⁵

Can he be thinking of his undesirable discharge and all the problems it could cause him when looking for a job? America may be waiting for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat.

9

“His Impertinence Knows No Bounds”

From March 16 to May 4, there has been no change in the problem concerning the waiver.

INCOMING TELEGRAM DEPARTMENT OF STATE

May 4, 1962

FROM:
Moscow

TO:
Secretary of State

Decision needed soonest on re-consideration 243(#) [
sic
] Oswald . . . We deemed it unwise discuss 243(g) problem as long as waiver still possible, but find it increasingly awkward put Oswald off.

THOMPSON
¹

Does Oswald have any idea how many people whom he dislikes, and who in turn detest him, are now working for his cause? Telegrams are even being sent out from Moscow under Ambassador Thompson’s name.

From a letter on May 8 by Joseph Norbury, to Robert I. Owen, in the Office of Soviet Union Affairs, Department of State:

Dear Bob,

. . . You will also have noted our cable of May 4 on the
OSWALD
case. If the 243 (g) waiver is not granted soon on this one, I think we should call the Oswalds in and send them on to Belgium. It is not that our hearts are breaking for Oswald. His impertinence knows no bounds. His latest letter contained an imperious demand that the State Department stop trying to get travel funds from his relatives in the U.S . . . . On the two or three recent occasions he has telephoned from Minsk, I have had to refer lamely to a still unsettled “problem” which is still holding up his wife’s case . . .
²

If, for months, State has been requesting Justice to waive the sanction, now . . . the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the Department of Justice finally relinquishes its punitive position in a letter on May 9 to Michael Cieplinski of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs at State.

Dear Mr. Cieplinski:

. . . Your letter also states that the waiving of sanctions in behalf of Mrs. Oswald would be in the best interests of the United States.

In view of the strong representation made in your letter of March 27, 1962, you are hereby advised that the sanctions imposed pursuant to Section 243 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act are hereby waived in behalf of Mrs. Oswald.

Sincerely yours,
Robert H. Robinson, Deputy Assoc. Commissioner
Travel Control
³

It is well worth quoting from the most salient paragraph of Michael Cieplinski’s letter of March 27:

. . . if Mrs. Oswald is not issued a visa by the Embassy, the Soviet Government will be in a position to claim that it has done all it can to prevent the separation of the family by issuing Mrs. Oswald the required exit permission, but that this [American] Government has refused to issue her a visa, thus preventing her from accompanying her husband and child . . .
⁴

Finally, on May 10, Joseph B. Norbury can write to Oswald with positive news.

Dear Mr. Oswald:

I am pleased to inform you that the Embassy is now in a position to take final action on your wife’s visa application. Therefore, you and your wife are invited to come to the Embassy at your convenience . . .

The Embassy has on file two copies of your wife’s birth certificate and one copy of her marriage certificate. Therefore, she need bring only one more copy of her marriage certificate, three photographs, an X-ray, serological analysis and certification of smallpox inoculation.

As you were notified previously, three photographs of your daughter and a copy of her birth certificate will also be necessary for the Consular Report of Birth and the amendment to your passport . . .

Please notify the Embassy when to expect you.
⁵

10

Farewell to Ella

It may be recalled that Max Prokhorchik was the fellow who had a fight with Oswald when the settings were changed on Max’s drill. That had been back in the early days of January 1960, just after they both started to work at Horizon. Afterward, Max had been interested in Ella, since there was a sort of mystery about her. She had seen so much of that American. Later, Max and a fellow named Arkady went out in a threesome with Ella until she chose Max, and then soon after he proposed, and Ella’s mother said, “Let it be. Let her be your wife.” So they were married on May 4, 1962. A very small ceremony. Fifteen months had gone by since she stopped seeing Lee, and not once in all that time had Lee spoken to Ella. In fact, he now pretended not to know her. But one day, most suddenly, toward the end of May, he came up to her workbench just as Ella was getting ready to go home and have lunch with her new husband. Lee came in, walked straight up to her, and said, “Can we meet today? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Ella lost her head. If she’d been married a little longer she might have said yes, but she’d only been living with Max a couple of weeks, and he was so close to her that he was following her around, watching her every step, so she thought she probably couldn’t, probably shouldn’t, not after that fight between Max and Lee over two years ago. She shook her head. She said, “I just got married,” and Lee said, “Did you marry somebody I know?” She looked at him and said, “Yes.” He turned his back and walked out through the same door by which he had walked in. Some days later, someone told her that he had left for America. If only she had known he was going away.

She remembers that Lee certainly seemed to want to tell her something, but once he turned away, she didn’t have time to react. And she didn’t feel like running after him.

She thinks Lee must have seen her with Max. In the weeks before their marriage, she and Max had always been together. Lee would have seen that not only did she leave Horizon with Max each evening, but she would walk to work with him each morning. Lee certainly wouldn’t like the idea that she had married Max.

Ella was very surprised, however, that Lee was going back to America. She even started to contradict people about it. Someone would say, “Do you know Lee Oswald is in America?” and she’d answer, “No, I can just bet it’s not America he’s going to.” She was so sure of herself that she was very surprised later to find out she was wrong.

11

Leave-taking

F
ROM
KGB T
RANSCRIPT
F
OR
O
BJECT
: OLH-2983
F
OR
P
ERIOD
: 19 M
AY
1962

(
baby is crying
)

(
baby is crying
)

(
they go into kitchen
)

(
LHO leaves
)

(
quiet in the apartment
)

That dialogue was in the afternoon. By evening of the same day, Pavel has arrived, and then a man and woman come to visit. Given the nature of their conversation, they have to be Mr. and Mrs. Ziger, and so they appear here with their names rather than—as in the documents—Unidentified Man 3 and Unidentified Woman 2. Having taken this much liberty with our KGB transcript, “Wife” will now be changed to Marina, and “LHO” can appear as Lee.

21:30

MRS. ZIGER
: We knocked and knocked!

MARINA
: We were on our balcony; we didn’t hear anything.

MRS. ZIGER
: Where’s your daughter? Let’s hope she stays healthy. She has her mother’s eyes—they’re big.

LEE
: She has her mother’s eyes, lips, nose. She got everything from her mother, nothing from me.

MRS. ZIGER
: Next time you’ll have a son.

LEE
: We already received all our papers.
We’re probably leaving on Tuesday
. . .

MRS. ZIGER
: How are you going? By boat or plane?

LEE
: From Moscow either by train or by plane. It depends on what sort of visa they give us . . .

(
they all talk at same time; can’t understand anything
)

MRS. ZIGER
: When she grows up, she won’t even know where she was born. Maybe June’ll come to visit sometime.

MR. ZIGER
: Visiting is another matter. She just shouldn’t come here to stay.

LEE
: Have you put on tea?

MRS. ZIGER
: Don’t worry about us, we’re fine.

LEE
: Are there any glasses?

MARINA
: We have two glasses. There’s also my small cup. He already packed everything.

LEE
: Our entire fortune. An empty room.

MRS. ZIGER
: . . . You’re happy, of course?

LEE
: We’re happy.

MRS. ZIGER
: Marinochka, you must be?

MARINA
: I’m not all that happy, of course . . .

MRS. ZIGER
: [The baby] will be blond; she’s going to be pretty.

LEE
: She’s going to have a good life; she’ll have everything . . .

(
they’re all talking at once; difficult to make out
)

(
Pavel arrives and all three men move to kitchen
)

MRS. ZIGER
: Marinochka, you don’t know how much I envy you, you’re so healthy.

MARINA
: I’ll arrive [in America] with my daughter, I don’t know, maybe it’ll be difficult, maybe he won’t find work.

MRS. ZIGER
: Why won’t he find work? . . . You’ll get settled, everything will be fine, you’ll have lots of everything, you’ll have freedom.

MARINA
: We’ll have money, freedom.

MRS. ZIGER
: God, how I hate living in this city. You don’t have a lot of linen. Do you have a chest? God, and we have so much junk! How much we brought! And how much we gave away! There was our dresser, our bed, our cheval glass, oaken, huge. And dishes! We sold them all.

MARINA
: At first you probably didn’t have all that?

MRS. ZIGER
: Yes, I remember it as if it were yesterday. He was twenty-one, and I was twenty-four; I was older than him.

MARINA
: You look like you’re younger . . .

MRS. ZIGER
: How are you set for money?

MARINA
: We saved . . . Because we’re both that way.

MRS. ZIGER
: How much does it cost?

MARINA
: One ticket costs 440 new rubles. For two.

MRS. ZIGER
: Didn’t your aunt help you a little?

MARINA
: No.

MRS. ZIGER
: Thank God you’re going. It’s fate, you met your beloved American . . .

MARINA
: I’ll tell you one thing, he helps me.

MRS. ZIGER
: Most important thing is that he doesn’t have any other women.

MARINA
: Who knows, maybe I won’t always be good for him. I wouldn’t say that I’m really good.

MRS. ZIGER
: You have a good soul.

MARINA
: At first he was unhappy that she was a girl and not a boy, but now he doesn’t mind.

MRS. ZIGER
: Oh, not at all, he’ll love her.

MARINA
: He loves her now.

(
they talk about baby, about fact that some husbands are bad, drink or treat their wives badly
)

MRS. ZIGER
: Maybe you’ll want to come for a visit here sometime . . .

MARINA
: It’s easier to live there. He’ll be making more money than he makes here. What can he do here? You work and work and you make chicken feed.

MRS. ZIGER
: . . . It’s amazing that your aunt didn’t help you—she could at least have bought you a present.

MARINA
: What are you talking about! She didn’t even buy diapers for June. He and she alone make thousands. They could at least have bought something. I’m not asking for expensive presents, maybe a little hat for 40 kopecks. Now, the pharmacy girls helped—one of them would bring over diapers, another would bring something else. Every little bit helps.

MRS. ZIGER
: Did you already say goodbye to your aunt?

MARINA
: Not yet.

MRS. ZIGER
: When did you tell her?

MARINA
: I think they got my letter day before yesterday . . . I told her that I was leaving. “Are you crazy! You’re going to leave after all.”

MRS. ZIGER
: I’m following my husband. Wherever needle goes, thread follows . . .

(
they talk about what Marina will wear for her trip; they talk about furniture: how much, more or less, they’ll get for it; then they talk about her baby
)

MARINA
: Alik, come over here; she’s sleeping.

22:40 (
Lee, Pavel, and Mr. Ziger come in from kitchen
)

MRS. ZIGER
: So, Alik, are you going to miss us?

LEE
: Of course, we’ll miss you.

(
everyone’s yelling; can’t make out what; Pavel is taking pictures
)

(
they all talk at same time; can’t make anything out
)

MRS. ZIGER
: You have to promise to teach this baby Russian.

LEE
: I promise.

MRS. ZIGER
: It’s good to know Russian; it never hurts. Isn’t it good you can understand?

(
guys talk about radio; women talk about their problems; can’t understand anything
)

PAVEL
:
Customs won’t look.

MARINA
: They don’t look at everything, anyway—they do it selectively.

MRS. ZIGER
:
When we arrived in Odessa,
there was an enormous warehouse; everyone had brought 7 or 8 chests. We brought a piano, a stroller, four enormous chests full of everything—everyone brought half a train car of things. And the Ukrainian women say: “Look at all the stuff they brought with them, and they say that people there are dying of hunger.” And my girls came wearing thin high heels: “Look at those heels!” We were crestfallen, you can’t imagine . . . Things here have changed so much during this last five years!

PAVEL
: For worse?

MRS. ZIGER
: For better. Let’s hope so. I’m tired of living and suffering in a country like Russia, the biggest and richest country.

PAVEL
: In the final analysis, the number of bombs in every country isn’t all that terrible. When there are enough bombs, no one will start a war.

MR. ZIGER
: You’d have to be crazy.

PAVEL
: They say that we’re arming because Americans want war. Americans had their bomb before we did; why didn’t they attack then? They don’t want war. No one wants war.

MR. ZIGER
: I don’t know whether there’ll be a war or not.

PAVEL
: There can’t be two systems for very long.

MR. ZIGER
: If Marxism is really right, then capitalism is dying, expiring, so there’ll only be one system. If it’s not right, then Communism won’t last very long. Communism has changed when you compare it to Communism that was described by Engels and Marx.

(
static; nothing audible
)

MRS. ZIGER
: Goodbye.

MR. ZIGER
: We’ll still see each other before you go.

23:10 (
Mr. and Mrs. Ziger leave
)

There was something she had never told anyone before. It seemed irrelevant. Yet, before they left Russia, Lee took her out on the balcony and asked her to try—before she quit her job at the pharmacy; he said, Try to get some narcotics and bring them home. When she told him she couldn’t obtain such items legally—you have to sign for everything—he said, “Can’t you steal it?” She wouldn’t. She couldn’t and she wouldn’t.

But to this day, she has no idea why he wanted narcotics. He didn’t say morphine or amphetamines, just “narcotics.” It wasn’t as if he was drug-addicted; why, he couldn’t even take much alcohol. Maybe he wanted to sell drugs in Minsk so he could come home to America with more money. But she didn’t understand. He was scared to death even to smuggle his writing papers out. He spent a lot of time worrying about where to put those mysterious pages. He would bring up such a concern now and again on the balcony.

F
ROM
KGB T
RANSCRIPT
F
OR
O
BJECT:
OLH-2983
F
OR
P
ERIOD
: 20 M
AY
1962

LEE
: . . . You won’t say anything. You’ll answer their questions, you [won’t] talk. You’re going to sit there and keep your mouth shut, got it?

MARINA
: If there’s trouble, you’ll have to deal with it.

LEE
: That’s all there is to it. It’s my responsibility. You just sit tight . . . [At the American Embassy] you should say: No, I’m not a member of a trade union. I’ve never been in any Soviet organization.

MARINA
: So do they persecute you for that in America? Why
should I go to a country like that?