Oswald's Tale (81 page)

MR. TRULY.
. . . thinking that he was just out of the Marines, I didn’t check any further back. I didn’t have anything of a permanent nature in mind for him. He looked like a nice young fellow to me—he was quiet and well mannered. He used the word “sir,” you know—which a lot of them don’t do at this time.

So I told him [to] come in to work on the morning of the 16th . . .

MR. BELIN.
Well, could you describe how his work progressed as he was working for you?

MR. TRULY.
[For] the time he was there, the work that he did was a bit above average . . . he did a good day’s work.

MR. BELIN.
What was his pay?

MR. TRULY.
$1.25 an hour . . . he worked by himself. His job was something that he needed no help with, other than to ask occasionally for stock . . . Consequently, he didn’t have much occasion to talk with the other boys.

I thought it was a pretty good trait at the time, because occasionally you have to spread your boys out and say, “Quit talking so much, let’s get to work.”

And it seemed to me like he paid attention to his job.
¹²

That Friday, the eighteenth of October, was his twenty-fourth birthday. He had a new job three days old, Marina’s pregnancy was close to term, and there was a surprise birthday party with decorations on the table. As Marina told Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Lee “could not hold back the tears.”
¹³
It is a touching moment until we realize it is one more thundering contradiction between the two halves of his nature—the stoic and the man who has wept for us a score of times already. Of course, tears are near to tenderness, and he is thoughtful of Marina’s condition—he massages her ankles and props her back with pillows. Yet, he is still Marguerite’s son, a perfectionist:

McMillan:
He brought his dirty laundry to the house each weekend for Marina to wash and iron, and he often refused to wear a shirt she had just ironed on the grounds that she had failed to do it exactly right. No sooner would they sit down at the dinner table than he would snap at Marina: “Why don’t you fix me iced tea? You knew I was coming out.” Or he would put on a baby face and complain in baby talk that he couldn’t eat because Marina had forgotten to give him a fork and a spoon. He never once got up to fetch for himself or help a wife in the final stages of pregnancy . . .
¹⁴

Still, he did cradle her head while they watched television that night.

By the end of the weekend, October 20, Marina went into labor. Lee, however, had to let Ruth take her to Parkland Hospital in Dallas and he was obliged to stay back in Irving baby-sitting Ruth’s two children and June. He did not know how to drive.

After no more than two hours of labor, Marina gave birth to a girl, while Lee, having gone to sleep, found out only on Monday morning before he went off to work.

McMillan:
He returned to Irving that afternoon with Wesley Frazier, but for some reason seemed reluctant to visit the hospital. Puzzled, Ruth guessed he was afraid to go lest someone [there] find out that he had a job and charge him with the expenses of the birth. And so Ruth told him that the hospital already knew he had a job; she had been asked the night before at the admissions office and had told the truth. But it did not make any difference. The delivery and maternity care still were free. After learning that, Lee agreed to go.

Marina never knew of his reluctance. “Oh, Mama, you’re wonderful,” he said, as he sat down on her bed. “Only two hours. You have them so easily.” He had tears in his eyes.
¹⁵

From Marina’s narrative:
He was very happy at the birth of another daughter and even wept a little. He said that two daughters were better for each other—two sisters . . . In his happiness he said a lot of silly things and was very tender with me, and I was very happy to see that Lee had improved a little, i.e., that he was thinking more about his family.
¹⁶

By the following weekend in Irving, he had become the model of a loving father:

McMillan:
He held the baby to his shoulder and stroked her head. “She’s the prettiest, strongest baby in the world,” he boasted. “Only a week old and already she can hold up her head. We’re strong because Mama gives us milk and not a bottle that’s either too hot or too cold. Mama gives us only the very best.” He studied her fingers, her “tender little mouth,” and her yawn. He was delighted with them all and pronounced that his baby was getting prettier every day. “She looks just like her mama,” he said.
¹⁷

The baby’s full name is Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald. She will be called Rachel.

Meanwhile, fatherhood brings out the conservative in Lee. Marina tries to enlarge his understanding of Ruth’s marital situation, but he is censorious of Michael’s behavior.

McMillan:
Lee thought it was a man’s obligation once married to want his wife and want children. He was indignant at Michael for having married without wanting children. And he condemned Michael for coming home, eating supper, and seeing his children just like a married man, and then leaving . . . Lee was not ordinarily interested in other people’s private affairs. But now he regularly asked Marina, over the telephone and on his arrival for the weekend, how Ruth and Michael were getting along. For the first time, he seemed aware of the Paines as human beings. He even gave signs of awareness that he and his family might be in the way in the modest one-story ranch house . . .
¹⁸

Now a letter comes to Marina in Irving from her younger sister, Galina, in Leningrad:

September 29, 1963

Leningrad

Hello, dear Marinochka!

. . . I dream very often about mother; it is even unpleasant, somehow, for, after all, she is dead. And when I wake up, I feel rather frightened . . .

Marinochka, how nice it would be if you could come here to the Homeland; you could find a job for yourself and your husband would have work and the children could be sent to a public nursery, and everything would be all right. But would they allow you to return again? If you adopted American citizenship, they may not permit it, and generally, it seems to me, that it would be very difficult for you to leave. But, honestly speaking, I would like it better if you would live here. The unemployment is the most vicious scourge in life. We do not have it here; we do not even know what
unemployment
is. You know it yourself. There is a crying need for pharmacists in Leningrad. Come, I am always waiting for you. If things get hard—we will help you . . .

Come, Marina. We will walk together, you and I, and recollect our youth. It was nice then, and even then you, too, could have gotten married and we would have been together in Leningrad. But we were fools.

Marinochka, my dear, write to me about everything in detail. I, too, am always glad to receive your letters . . .

Galka
¹⁹

While this letter stands for itself, it has collateral effects. Certainly, it has been perused by both the Soviet and the American mail-intercept programs. So, it has enabled the FBI, which had lost sight of Oswald’s whereabouts once he left New Orleans, to pick up his address in America again.

2

The Shadow of the FBI

On Friday afternoon, November 1, while Marina was setting her hair in preparation for Lee’s arrival, an FBI man came to Ruth’s house in Irving. A dark, strong, pleasant-looking man with a dark mustache, his name was James P. Hosty, and as he would later tell the Warren Commission, he had a revolving load of about forty cases to take care of around Dallas and environs. Lee Harvey Oswald was one of those cases. Back in April, he had located Oswald on Neely Street, but before he could interview him, Oswald had moved. Now, Hosty had not only picked up the address in Irving, but knew that Oswald had been in Mexico City visiting the Cuban and Soviet embassies. Since the FBI had a source installed in the Russian compound, they now knew that Oswald had been closeted with Valery Kostikov, who was categorized by FBI and CIA as a functioning officer in the Thirteenth Department of KGB, precisely the cadre that took care, from time to time, of those bloodletting actions described euphemistically as “wet jobs.” The FBI, we can recognize, had a colder view of Kostikov than Oleg Nechiporenko’s portrayal of him as a star volleyball player.

McMillan:
. . . Ruth was doing work around the house when [Hosty] reappeared . . . She greeted him cordially, asked him in, and the two sat in the living room talking pleasantries. Hosty said that, unlike the House Un-American Activities Committee, the FBI was not a witch-hunting organization.

Gradually, Hosty switched the conversation to Lee. Was he living at Ruth’s house? Ruth answered that he was not. Did she know where he was living? Once again the answer was a surprising “No.” Ruth did not know where Lee was living, but it was in Dallas somewhere and she thought it might be Oak Cliff. Did Ruth know where he was working? She explained that Lee thought he had been having job trouble on account of the FBI. Hosty assured her that it was not the FBI’s way to approach an employer directly. At this Ruth softened, told him where Lee was working, and together they looked up the address of the book depository in the telephone book. Lee worked at 411 Elm Street.
¹

About this time, Marina came into the room:

McMillan:
Before Hosty left, Marina begged him not to interfere with Lee at work. She explained that he had had trouble keeping his jobs and thought he lost them “because the FBI is interested in him.” . . .

“I don’t think he has lost any of his jobs on account of the FBI,” Hosty said softly.

Ruth and Marina urged the visitor to stay. If he wanted to see Lee, they said, he would be there at 5:30. But Hosty had to get back to the office; and . . . he asked Ruth to find out where he was living. Ruth thought that would be no problem; she would simply ask Lee.
²

MRS. PAINE.
I said to Agent Hosty that if in the future Marina and Lee are living together, and I know, or I have correspondence with them, I would give him his address if he wished it. Then it was the next day or that evening or sometime shortly thereafter Marina said to me while we were doing dishes that she felt their address was their business . . . This surprised me. She had never spoken in this way to me before, and I didn’t see that it made any difference.
³

We can only speculate on the kind of contained wrath Oswald would feel at Ruth Paine’s obeisance to authority in the name of being aboveboard, forthright, keeping her word, and having nothing to hide.

Lee had been in a fine mood on arrival, but the moment he heard of Hosty’s visit, it was obvious that he was upset. At supper, he descended into depths of silence. He went through the motions all weekend, hung up the diapers on the clothesline in the backyard, played with the children under a tree in that same yard, watched football, which was his greatest diversion each Saturday and Sunday afternoon, but his mind was on the FBI. He gave Marina specific instructions: The next time
they
came, he wanted her to be able to describe the car, note how many doors it had and what color it was, and, most important, take down the license number.
⁴
He even told her that if the car was not in front of Ruth’s house, it would still be there on the street, next door probably. He was in one of those moods she had come to know all too well on Neely Street, and was silent again all Sunday afternoon as he watched football.

McMillan:
Michael was at home and had occasion to step over Lee while he was lying stretched out on the floor. Michael felt a pang of self-reproach. He thought he was being rude, stepping over Lee that way without even trying to make small talk . . . He did not resent Lee lying on his floor, watching his television, and crowding his house a bit. But he did feel that for a man who professed to be a revolutionary, Lee had an awful lot of time on his hands . . . To lie around watching television all day, Michael said to himself, “is one hell of a way for a revolutionary to be spending his time.”

Late in the afternoon Ruth gave Lee his third driving lesson—backing, parking, and a right-angle turn. She thought Lee really got the feel of parking that day.
⁵

Two days later, on November 5, a Tuesday, Hosty came again. His second visit with Ruth was even friendlier than the first:

MR. JENNER.
. . . Have you now exhausted your recollection on the subject?

MRS. PAINE.
I think one other thing. Agent Hosty asked me . . . if I thought this was a mental problem, his words referring to Lee Oswald, and I said I didn’t understand the mental processes of anyone who could espouse the Marxist philosophy, but that this was far different from saying he was mentally unstable or unable to conduct himself in normal society.

I did tell Lee that this question had been asked. He gave no reply, but more a scoffing laugh, barely voiced.
⁶

There is some question whether Marina spoke to Hosty that second time or not. The FBI man has no recollection of that, but Marina insists she did and had a nice conversation with Hosty.

Since Marina, like Lee, was not incapable of going in opposite directions at once, she had also managed to slip outside long enough to memorize the color and shape of Hosty’s car, and the license-plate number, which details she proceeded to jot down on a paper as soon as she got back to her bedroom.

McMillan:
Later, she and Ruth discussed whether to tell Lee about the visit. Ruth thought it might be better to wait until the weekend and Marina agreed. Each time he called that week (he called twice a day, during his lunch break and at 5:30 in the afternoon), he started by asking: “Has the FBI been there?” Each time Marina said No.

No sooner had he arrived on Friday than Lee went outside where Marina was hanging diapers and asked: “Have they been here again?”

Marina said Yes . . .

“How on earth could you forget?”

“Well, it upset you last time . . .”

“It upsets me worse if you keep it from me. Why must you hide things all the time? I never can count on you . . .”
⁷

“I never can count on you!” It is the barbaric yawp of every husband and wife who have half of a good marriage and can’t begin to gain a foothold up the wall that separates them from the other half.

McMillan:
“He’s such a nice man, Lee. Don’t be frightened. All he did was explain my rights and promise to protect them.”

“You fool,” said Lee . . . “He doesn’t care about your rights. He comes because it’s his job . . . I trust you didn’t give your consent to having him defend your ‘rights’?”

“Of course not,” said Marina, “but I agreed with him.”

“Fool,” he said again. “As a result of these ‘rights,’ they’ll ask you ten times as many questions as before. If the Soviet Embassy gets wind of it and you agreed to let this man protect your ‘rights,’ then you’ll really be in for it . . .”
⁸

The only item that ameliorated his mood was that she had taken down the license-plate number. First thing Saturday morning, November 9, he asked to borrow Ruth’s typewriter. Then, in a highly secretive posture, covering up a page of handwriting that he was now copying, he worked away on something of obvious importance to him—nothing less than a letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington:

Dear Sirs:

This is to inform you of events since my interview with Comrade Kostine in the Embassy of the Soviet Union, Mexico City, Mexico.

I was unable to remain in Mexico City indefinitely because of my Mexican visa restrictions which was for 15 days only. I could not take a chance on applying for an extension unless I used my real name so I returned to the U.S.

I and Marina Nicholeyeva are now living in Dallas, Texas.

The FBI is not now interested in my activities in the progressive organization FPCC of which I was secretary in New Orleans, Louisiana, since I no longer live in that state.

The FBI has visited us here in Texas. On Nov. 1st agent of the FBI James P. Hosty warned me that if I attempt to engage in FPCC activities in Texas the FBI will again take an “interest” in me. This agent also “suggested” that my wife could “remain in the U.S. under FBI protection,” that is, she could defect from the Soviet Union.

Of course I and my wife strongly protested these tactics by the notorious FBI.

I had not planned to contact the Mexico City Embassy at all so, of course, they were unprepared for me. Had I been able to reach Havana as planned, the Soviet Embassy there would have had time to assist me. But of course the stupid Cuban Consul was at fault here. I am glad he has since been replaced by another.
⁹

It was a bizarre letter and could serve no conceivable purpose with the Soviets in Washington. They would have to be wholly mistrustful. Either Oswald was out of his normal, manipulative powers of mind—such as they were!—or he wrote the letter on the assumption that it would be read by the FBI and so would cause havoc between its formal and covert echelons—a COINTELPRO action improvised in this case by Oswald. Let us remind ourselves that it was not Ian Fleming but the FBI that chose the name COINTELPRO.

The question we have to ask once more is whether Oswald was indeed working with COINTELPRO or some analogous group. To ask this much, however, is to encourage another question: Was Oswald trying to escape from such a group, or was he looking to embarrass it? Or had he begun to go mad from the pressure of trying to live like other people?

In any case, his extreme reaction to Hosty may reflect the pressure he was being subjected to by any group that was paying him a stipend. If, by hiding in Dallas, he has felt free for a little while, Hosty’s arrival, even if it is in the relatively innocent line of duty as an FBI professional, could kick off Oswald’s somewhat justifiable paranoia. He would, after all, not know who was communicating with whom in the FBI.

There is, of course, a rational explanation for why he is so upset. It is that if he agreed to be a working provocateur for what he considered to be an FBI group, then he had been promised that there would be no FBI visits at home or at work. Now the rules of the game had changed.

In any event, two days later, on November 12, during his midday break, he went up to the main FBI office on Commerce Street, which was not far from his job at the Book Depository, and with “a wild look in his eye,” as described by the receptionist,
¹⁰
he gave her a note in an unsealed envelope for Hosty. The FBI man was out to lunch.

We are left with no more than Hosty’s recollection of the contents. That is hardly certified to be trustworthy inasmuch as Hosty was told to destroy the note on the orders of his superior, Gordon Shanklin. According to Hosty, for what such testimony is worth under the circumstances, Oswald’s note told Hosty not to visit or bother his wife, and then suggested that if Hosty did not desist, he, Oswald, was ready to take action against the FBI. Whether that action would be legal or was a personal threat could not be determined.

According to Hosty, he received comparable unsigned notes all the time, so he did not even know whether this had come from Oswald or someone else. He just filed it in his work box. Such indifference, however, does not square very well with the fact that Hosty knew Oswald had been in Mexico City and had visited the Russian Embassy twice and had been in conversation there twice with a KGB agent who was conversant, according to the FBI, with “wet jobs.”

In the meantime, Ruth was having her own flight of paranoia. On Sunday, November 10, while Lee was typing the letter to the Russian Embassy, he left his handwritten copy on Ruth’s desk. She, inflamed with curiosity she could not quite admit, finally read the first couple of lines and was so agitated by them—“Comrade Kostine” indeed!—that:

MRS. PAINE.
I then proceeded to read the whole note, wondering, knowing this to be false, wondering why he was saying it. I was irritated to have him writing a falsehood on my typewriter, I may say, too. I felt I had some cause to look at it.
¹¹

Her buried sense of property is coming out. This is one of the very few remarks that Ruth Paine makes in hundreds of pages of testimony which suggests there may be other forces at work in the universe than reason, sweet reason.