2

“The Best Religion Is Communism”

Oswald reported for duty at the Marine Corps recruit depot in San Diego on October 26, 1956, and was assigned to the Second Training Battalion. There, he was given a series of aptitude tests and scored slightly below average.1 He was also trained in the use of the M-1 rifle.² On December 21, 1956, after three weeks of training, he shot 212, two points over the score required for a “sharpshooter” qualification, the second highest in the Marine Corps.³ Such a score indicated that from the standing position, he could hit a ten-inch bull’s-eye, from a minimum of 200 yards, eight times out of ten.⁴ Shortly before he left the Marine Corps, in May 1959, Oswald again certified himself on a firing range. Although he then had no motivation and his disgust for the Marines was high, he still managed to score 191, enough to qualify as a “marksman.”⁵ Sgt. James Zahm, the NCO in charge of the marksmanship training unit, said, “In the Marine Corps he is a good shot, slightly above average … and as compared to the average male … throughout the United States, he is an excellent shot.”⁶*

Oswald left San Diego in January 1957, and through that summer he proceeded from infantry training at Camp Pendleton to an introductory course on radar at Jacksonville, Florida, to basic instruction in aircraft surveillance at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi.7 In early May, he was routinely promoted to private first class and given a clearance to handle confidential material.*

His progress in the Marines appeared normal on paper, but he had already developed a reputation as an eccentric among the other men. Allen Felde, a fellow recruit who served with him at both San Diego and Camp Pendleton, said he was a “left-winger” who was not popular with the other recruits and was avoided by most of them.⁸ Daniel Powers, a senior Marine at Keesler, recalled, “My first impression … is that he was somewhat, to use the term, [a] ‘loner.’”⁹ Powers thought he was “meek … could easily be led,” and “his general personality would alienate the group against him.”† Other Marines unmercifully razzed him “as the frail little puppy in the litter,” and he was nicknamed Ozzie Rabbit, because of his meekness. He used weekend passes to escape, returning the almost one hundred miles to his native city of New Orleans.¹⁰

Oswald did not easily adjust to the Corps. Kerry Thornley, a Marine who knew him well, recalled, “Well, definitely, the Marine Corps was not what he had expected it to be when he first joined. Also, he felt that the officers and the staff NCO’s at the Marine Corps were incompetent to give him orders.”11 Convinced he had great talent and intelligence, Oswald was frustrated that his superior officers did not recognize it.¹² He soon griped about the strict discipline, and even got into a fight in the barracks.¹³ But in July 1957, his fortunes changed when he was transferred to the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, California, and was informed he was to be sent in six weeks to Japan. The foreign posting opened a new vista for him, one he felt he deserved.

He arrived at Yokosuka on September 12 and was posted to the Marine Air Control Squadron One (MACS-1), based at Atsugi, about twenty miles west of Tokyo.¹⁴ Atsugi served as the base for the U-2 spy plane. Most of the Marines had seen the strange-looking plane either take off or land, as had many of the townspeople. But Oswald was not intimately associated with the U-2. He worked in a radar bubble, and although he and other radar operators sometimes heard requests for wind speeds at 90,000 feet, giving them an idea of the startling altitude the plane achieved, they knew little else about it. None of the operators in the MACS-1 unit were involved in the U-2 reconnaissance flights.*

Slightly over a month after arriving at Atsugi, Oswald shot himself in the left arm while playing with a .22 caliber derringer he had purchased a few months earlier.¹⁵ One of his fellow Marines, Paul Murphy, remembered: “I heard a shot in the adjoining cubicle. I rushed into the cubicle to find Oswald sitting on a foot locker looking at a wound in his arm. When I asked what happened, Oswald very unemotionally responded, ‘I believe I shot myself.’”16 Three other Marines were nearby when the accident happened. Pete Connor admitted that he and some others had been baiting Oswald and initially thought he had fired the shot to scare them. However, all were later convinced it was a mistake. Daniel Powers said the “feeling of the group was … Ozzie screwed up again.” Oswald was taken by ambulance to the U.S. Navy hospital in nearby Yokosuka, where he recuperated for more than two weeks.* He was released just in time to ship out on November 20, bound for the Philippines. Although the Marines intended to bring court-martial charges against him for possessing an unauthorized gun, they postponed the proceedings until he returned to Japan.

Oswald’s unit finished its Philippine maneuvers in four weeks, but did not immediately return to Atsugi since the internal war in Indonesia had heated up. Instead, it established a temporary radar installation at Subic Bay.† While there, Oswald passed a test for promotion to the rank of corporal.¹⁷ But his dissatisfaction intensified as he was assigned to KP (kitchen) duty for the duration, a punishment for the derringer incident. His deteriorating attitude was reflected in his semiannual performance rating of 3.9, slightly below the minimum required for an honorable discharge.18 Oswald later wrote to his brother, Robert, about his Philippine posting: “I remember well the days we stood offshore at Indonesia waiting to surpress [sic] yet another population, when they were having a revolution there in Mar. 1958. I can still see Japan and the Philippines and their puppet governments.”¹⁹* The Indonesia crisis did not cool until March, when Oswald’s unit finally returned to Atsugi.

Within a month, on April 11, a summary court-martial was brought against him for the unregistered weapon with which he had wounded himself.²⁰ He was found guilty, given twenty days’ hard labor (suspended for six months if his behavior was good), fined $50, and demoted to the rank of private (negating his passing mark for corporal). Oswald was infuriated, convinced he had been singled out for enough punishment with three months of KP duty. To others, he seemed more irritated than usual. A Marine colleague, Paul Murphy, remembered that in the Philippines, and upon the return to Atsugi, Oswald was “self-contained and withdrawn.”²¹ This was the time that Oswald later admitted he first thought of defecting to Russia. The more dissatisfied he became with the Marine Corps, the more he looked for another horizon for fulfillment, and the Soviet Union was increasingly the likely candidate.

He may have been influenced by Japanese Communists who encouraged him to defect. George de Mohrenschildt, later his only friend in Dallas, quoted him as saying: “I had met some Communists in Japan and they got me excited and interested, and that was one of my inducements in going to Soviet Russia, to see what goes on there.”²² Oswald also told de Mohrenschildt that the evidence to bolster his Marxist beliefs was manifest throughout Japan. “He said that while he was in Japan he saw tremendous injustice.… the poverty of the Japanese working class or the proletariat, as he called them, and the rich people of Japan. He said it was more visible than anywhere else.”²³

His contact with Japanese Communists may have come through a hostess at Tokyo’s Queen Bee, one of the three most expensive nightclubs in the capital. The club was frequented by officers and foreign businessmen who ogled the one hundred beautiful hostesses, some of whom were informants for Japanese and foreign intelligence agencies.24 An evening at the Queen Bee cost anywhere from $60 to $100. Oswald only made $85 a month, and he was extremely tightfisted. By the time he defected in the fall of 1959, he had saved $1,500, nearly 75 percent of his Marine salary during two years of service.²⁵ That makes it unlikely Oswald bought any dates at the Queen Bee. But some of his fellow Marines saw him with a striking and well-dressed Japanese woman on several occasions, and later during his stay in Japan, he was seen with a Eurasian woman who reportedly spoke Russian.*

Oswald did not discuss his personal life with his fellow Marines, and the more he refused to fit in, the worse he was treated. Corporal Thomas Bagshaw recalled Oswald “was almost frail, shy and quiet,” when he arrived at Atsugi. He felt sorry for him because so many other Marines picked on him.²⁶ When Oswald spent his liberties reading instead of bar-hopping and chasing women, others ridiculed him. They taunted him as “Mrs. Oswald,” threw him in the shower fully clothed, and provoked him in every possible way. Fellow Marine Dan Powers recalled, “He was a different individual.… He was quiet … feminine … and a lot of times you felt sorry because the rest of the guys were most of the time picking on him …”²⁷ When Oswald had been in school, since he was a year older than his classmates, he was larger than most, and he often bullied them. In the Marines, he was far from the toughest and, at five feet nine inches, hardly the biggest in his unit. Initially, he did not fight back, instead walking away from any provocation, the anger bottled inside.

After a couple of abusive months, Oswald decided to mix with his fellow Marines. Initially, he tried to be funny, thinking it might allow him to be accepted. But those who knew him said he was absolutely humorless and failed completely.28 He then began socializing, visiting nearby bars, drinking for the first time in his life, and even having his first sexual experience with a bar girl as some of his newfound buddies cheered him on.²⁹*

Despite his efforts, Oswald was never completely accepted. Slowly, he became more aggressive, using his knowledge of current affairs to belittle others, especially officers. John Donovan recalled, “He would listen interestedly, ask questions in an interested manner, and then … point out a dozen places they didn’t know what they were talking about.”³⁰ Nelson Delgado, one of Oswald’s fellow Marines, said Oswald tried to “cut up anybody” in those arguments and “make himself come out top dog.”³¹ Powers noticed that Ozzie Rabbit had changed at Atsugi: “[H]e had started to be more aggressive … he took on a new personality, and now he was Oswald the man rather than Oswald the rabbit.”³² Peter Connor remembered that the new Oswald got into several fights and began responding to orders from officers “with insolent remarks.”³³ John Heindel said Oswald started drinking a good deal and “was often in trouble for failure to adhere to rules and regulations and gave the impression of disliking any kind of authority.”³⁴

His anger found a partial release in June 1958, when Oswald confronted Sgt. Miguel Rodriguez, the man he blamed for his long stint on KP duty during the Philippine posting. At the Bluebird Cafe in Yamato, Oswald poured a drink on Rodriguez and challenged him to fight. Military police broke it up before the two went outside. This prompted a second court-martial, on June 27, where Oswald was sentenced to twenty-eight days in the brig and fined $55.³⁵ His suspended sentence of twenty days from the first court-martial was reinstated. In a performance review, he was given his lowest rating since joining the Marines, and a previously granted extension of overseas duty was canceled.36*

The brig was meant to be punishing. Conversation was prohibited. Except while eating and sleeping, prisoners stood at attention. Even asking to go to the bathroom required standing at attention and repeatedly screaming a request until a guard gave permission. When Oswald was released, other Marines noticed he had changed. He abandoned his unsuccessful attempts to be accepted by them. Joseph Macedo found him cold, withdrawn, and bitter.³⁷ According to Daniel Powers, his attitude was: “All the Marines did was to teach you to kill, and after you got out of the Marines you might be good gangsters.”³⁸ He remarked he “was tired of getting kicked around.”³⁹†

Within two months, on September 14, 1958, Oswald sailed with his unit to Taiwan. A few days after arriving, the constant razzing from his colleagues and his overall frustration at the Marine Corps resulted in a breakdown. One evening while on guard duty, Oswald started firing his M-1 rifle at shadows in the woods. By the time his commanding officer reached him, he was on the floor, slumped against a tree, “shaking and crying.”40 As they walked Oswald back to his tent, he kept repeating that he could no longer bear guard duty. He was sent to Japan to recuperate, returning to Atsugi by October 5. The following day he was transferred out of MACS-1 and placed on general duty.⁴¹ He was reassigned to the Marine squadron at Iwakuni, an air base 430 miles southwest of Tokyo. Owen Dejanovich, who had gone to radar school with him, was stationed at the same base, and immediately noticed that Oswald, now called Bugs by his fellow Marines, referred to them as “you Americans” and spoke of U.S. “imperialism” and “exploitation.”⁴² Other Marines ignored him.

On November 2, Oswald ended his fourteen-month tour of duty in Japan and sailed for the States. He spent a one-month leave in Fort Worth with his mother and brother, Robert, with whom he went hunting.⁴³ On December 21, he boarded a bus and reported for his new Marine assignment, the Air Control Squadron Nine, at El Toro, California.⁴⁴ It was there that Oswald, disgusted with the Marines, flaunted his Russian studies and Communist leanings. Court-martialed twice, he seemed no longer to care what the Marines did to him.

At El Toro, Oswald subscribed to a Russian-language newspaper that he painstakingly tried to read with the help of a Russian-English dictionary, and played Russian records “so loud that one could hear them outside the barracks.”⁴⁵ While some Marines continued to call him Ozzie Rabbit, most now dubbed him Oswaldskovich, and he liked it so much that he asked people to call him that.46 He peppered his conversations with da and nyet. Every time a friend played a record containing classical Russian music, Oswald ran to his tent, inquiring, “You called?”⁴⁷ Whenever he played chess, he used a set with red pieces to represent the “Red Army.” Some Marines kidded him that he was a Russian spy. He liked that.⁴⁸ He walked around the camp with his hat pulled so low over his eyes that he could barely see. Extremely sloppy, with unshined shoes and his shirt partially hanging out, looking like a caricature of the cartoon character Beetle Bailey, he bid “Hello, Comrade” to acquaintances.

Fellow Marine Nelson Delgado became friends with Oswald soon after his arrival at El Toro. It was then that Castro was leading his revolutionary army toward Havana. Oswald and Delgado shared a mutual respect for Castro, so much so that they eventually spoke about going to Cuba to fight in the revolution.⁴⁹ Oswald kept pressing Delgado for information on how he could get to Cuba, and finally Delgado recalled, “I started getting scared. He started actually making plans …”⁵⁰ Delgado’s enthusiasm waned as Castro’s commitment to Communism was exposed in the press. But Oswald told him the U.S. media was full of propaganda that distorted Castro’s position. The more he listened to Oswald, Delgado found him a “devout atheist” who preached that the U.S. “was not quite right.” He told Delgado that Socialism was the best choice for most people, and complained about how he “hated the military.”⁵¹ Among Oswald’s reading materials, Delgado saw Das Kapital, Mein Kampf, and George Orwell’s Animal Farm.*

Another Marine who knew Oswald even better was Kerry Thornley. When Thornley met him, around Easter 1959, “he [Oswald] had lost his clearance previously, and if I remember, he was assigned to make the coffee, mow the lawn, swab down decks, and things of this nature.” Thornley enjoyed debating philosophy, politics, and religion with him. Thornley, who described himself as “an extreme rightist,” thought Oswald such an unusual character that he wrote a preassassination novel based on him (it was not published until 1991).52 Over the course of half a dozen discussions, Thornley was convinced Oswald believed that capitalism exploited workers and that “Communism was the best system in the world.” Oswald was also “quite sure that Castro was a great hero.”⁵³ Once, Thornley recounted, “he looked at me and he said, ‘What do you think of communism?’ And I replied I didn’t think too much of communism, in a favorable sense, and he said, ‘Well, I think the best religion is communism.’”⁵⁴ Thornley found it difficult to debate issues regarding the Soviet Union since Oswald challenged any information “on the grounds that we were probably propagandized in this country and we had no knowledge of what was going on over there.”

Thornley thought he was “emotionally unstable” and “unpredictable.” “He got along with very, few people,” he recalled. “He seemed to guard against developing real close friendships.”⁵⁵ Before long, Thornley and Oswald had a falling out, when Oswald griped about a march they were scheduled to be in. Thornley commented, “Well, comes the revolution you will change all that.” Oswald’s voice cracked as he screamed at Thornley. He put his hands in his pockets, pulled his cap low over his eyes, and sat by himself. He never spoke to Thornley after that. “Well, at the time I just thought,” recalled Thornley, “well, the man is a nut.… He had a definite tendency toward irrationality at times, an emotional instability.” He also found Oswald “impulsive,” burdened by a “persecution complex,” and said that he never showed any affection to anyone, and nobody ever showed any in return.⁵⁶ By the end of their relationship Thornley thought Oswald was “pathetic.”⁵⁷*

There is, of course, the question of why the Marines tolerated Oswald’s flagrant study of Russian and subscription to Russian-language newspapers as well as leftist publications like The Worker. None of his fellow Marines reported that he proselytized Communism during basic training or during his fourteen months in Japan. He complained about the Marines, but that was not thought to be unique. Oswald did study the Russian language, but not in the conspicuous way that he did later at El Toro. Even one of his commanding officers in Japan studied the language. While he may have been considered a Russophile, he gave the Marines no reason to believe he might be a security threat.

Only after arriving at El Toro, and following his two court-martials and nervous breakdown while on guard duty, did Oswald flaunt his controversial and brazen behavior. By then, he had been busted to buck private, had spent time in the brig, and was already known as an eccentric troublemaker. Instead of working as a trained radar operator, he had been reduced to doing janitorial work around the base.58

Only one officer is known to have taken him seriously. When an El Toro mailroom clerk informed his operations chief, Captain Robert E. Block, that Oswald was receiving leftist literature, Block confronted him. Oswald dissembled that he was merely trying to indoctrinate himself in the enemies’ philosophy, according to Marine Corps policy. Although skeptical, Block dropped the matter. Except for Block, others viewed Oswald as peculiar but harmless.

Near the end of his tour of duty, Oswald began a series of maneuvers intended to sever his Marine ties and prepare for his defection to the USSR. In March 1959, he applied for admission to a small liberal arts school in Churwalden, Switzerland, the Albert Schweitzer College.59 After a discharge from the Marines, Oswald was expected to fulfill a three-year inactive-reserve commitment.⁶⁰ During that period, foreign travel was only allowed for a valid reason. Attending a Swiss school would qualify him for overseas travel. He lied extensively on the school application, and he was accepted.*

On August 17, Oswald submitted a request for a dependency discharge on the ground that his mother needed his support.⁶¹ A candy jar had fallen off a shelf while Marguerite was at work and hurt her nose. Although several doctors could find nothing wrong with her, she claimed she was totally disabled and finally found a physician who agreed.⁶² She sent her own affidavit, as well as affidavits from a doctor and two friends, attesting to her injury and maintaining she could not support herself.⁶³ Oswald’s request for a dependency discharge was approved two weeks later. On September 4, 1959, he was transferred to another squadron, the H&H, in preparation for his release.⁶⁴ That day he also applied at the superior court of Santa Ana, California, for a passport. Citing the primary purpose of his trip as attending Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland and Turku University in Finland, he also listed England, France, Germany, Russia, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic as places of intended travel.⁶⁵ The passport was routinely issued six days later.⁶⁶

Oswald was discharged from the Marines on September 11, 1959, and he traveled by bus to Fort Worth, where he arrived at his mother’s house in the early morning hours of September 14. The next day he shocked Marguerite by informing her that he was about to board a ship and was going to work for an import-export business.⁶⁷ He withdrew $203 from his only bank account, at the West Side State Bank, gave $100 to his mother, and left for New Orleans on September 16.⁶⁸ There, he purchased a one-way ticket for passage on the freighter Marion Lykes, scheduled to leave for Le Havre, France, on September 18.69 During his final night in New Orleans, he wrote his mother and warned her: “Just remember above all else that my values are different from Robert’s or your’s. It is difficult to tell you how I feel, Just remember this is what I must do. I did not tell you about my plans because you could hardly be expected to understand.”⁷⁰

Although completely ignorant of his intent to defect, two Marine acquaintances would not have been entirely surprised if they had known. Mack Osborne recalled: “I once asked Oswald why he did not go out in the evening like the other men. He replied that he was saving his money, making some statement to the effect that one day he would do something which would make him famous.” Kerry Thornley had also heard Oswald talk of fame. “He wanted to be on the winning side so that 10,000 years from now people would look in the history books and say, ‘Well, this man was ahead of his time.’ … He wanted to be looked back upon with honor by future generations. He was concerned with his image in history.… He expected the Russians to accept him on a much higher capacity … to invite him to take a position in their government, possibly as a technician.… He then felt he could go out into the Communist world and distinguish himself …”⁷¹

Two days behind schedule, on September 20, 1959, the Marion Lykes left for Europe.

*Harold Weisberg stated that “Oswald’s marksmanship … was poor …” Jim Garrison is merciless in his attack on Oswald’s rifle ability, saying he was “terrible,” a “notoriously poor shot,” and had “an abysmal marksmanship record in the Marines.” A fellow Marine, Nelson Delgado, is often cited by critics as saying that Oswald drew “Maggie’s Drawers” on the firing range, meaning that Oswald completely missed his targets. But Delgado was not posted with Oswald when Lee qualified as a sharpshooter. Those in charge of the marksmanship branch who were familiar with Oswald’s record praised his ability and said he was easily capable of carrying out the JFK assassination. It “was an easy shot for a man with the equipment he had and his ability,” said Sgt. Zahm. Major Eugene Anderson, of the marksmanship branch, said the assassination shots “were not particularly difficult” and that, based on his Marine record, “Oswald had full capabilities to make this shot.”

*Oswald had the lowest-level security clearance, “confidential.” Two fellow Marines believed he had a “secret” clearance, though they admitted it was merely a hunch and not based on direct knowledge. The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the question in the late 1970s, reviewing all relevant military files, and concluded Oswald did not have a higher clearance.

†Powers was perhaps the first person, but certainly not the last, to think Oswald was homosexual. “He had a lot of feminine characteristics,” he recalled. Another Marine, David Christie, stayed away from him because he thought he was gay. Although he seldom went to bars with other Marines, several recall that while stationed in Japan, Oswald visited a transvestite bar in Yamato, a club with which he seemed familiar. When stationed in California, Oswald once crossed with a group of Marines to Tijuana, Mexico. There, he took them to a run-down gay bar, the Flamingo. Several recalled that Oswald seemed to know the place and people.

*Some critics try to tie Oswald to the U-2, assuming such a relationship might have intelligence overtones. Yet he never showed any interest in the plane. Of the more than two hundred Marines spoken to by researchers, only one claimed Oswald ever mentioned the plane, and his testimony is suspect. Lieutenant John Donovan, the officer in charge of Oswald’s radar team, said he remembered one day when Oswald discussed the U-2’s radar blips with him. Yet other Marines in Oswald’s unit do not recall any radar operations at the time Donovan claims the incident happened, at Cubi Point in the Philippines. Moreover, Donovan testified before the Warren Commission in 1964 and never mentioned the U-2 incident in fourteen pages of detailed testimony. He told the U-2 story for the first time in the 1970s, as if his memory had improved during the intervening decade.

*Oswald’s shooting accident has been seized upon as “arranged” so that he could be absent from his unit and engage in intelligence work. Henry Hurt, in Reasonable Doubt, ignores the testimony of the four Marine witnesses, and asserts that Oswald’s wound was “contrived” and there “was a general assumption that Oswald had shot himself intentionally.” Anthony Summers says the ailments “could conceivably have been excuses to get Oswald out of circulation for another purpose.” He concludes, “The sickness ploy, it turns out, is a standard intelligence technique.” But they have no supporting evidence. Even Summers admits he is indulging in “some very cautious speculation,” and Hurt confesses, “Such evidence of espionage activities is, of course, speculative and circumstantial.” Military records show that Oswald was confined to a hospital for his entire recuperation.

†On January 5, 1958, one of Oswald’s fellow Marines, Martin Schrand, was killed at Subic Bay in an accident during guard duty when his gun dropped and discharged. Summers alleges that an unnamed Marine, after the assassination, “heard a rumor” that Oswald was involved in Schrand’s death. According to Summers, if that hearsay is true it could have provided the CIA a “handle” to force Oswald into intelligence work. After extensive speculation, Summers finally concedes, “There is no hard evidence that Lee Oswald really was involved in the death of Marine Schrand …”

*Oswald appears to have been dyslexic. Because of his extensive misspellings, when any of his writing is further quoted herein, the author has omitted “[sic]” after the errors.

*Oswald later told Marina that he had had eight sexual relationships while in Japan, though he described only three of the women in detail—one nearly twice his age, one extremely thin and promiscuous, and the last one a fat woman who also cooked for him.

* In the autumn of 1958, Oswald was treated for a mild case of venereal disease. The Marine file has a notation “in line of duty, not due to own misconduct.” Jim Marrs, without any citation, charges this is “strong evidence that his extracurricular activities had the blessings of the military, if not of the CIA.” The truth is much simpler. The doctor who treated him said that such notations were made routinely to avoid having the person’s pay jeopardized.

*Henry Hurt alleges that when Oswald was in the brig, “his fellow Marines … were out of touch with him … and cannot testify that he was actually confined.” Hurt implies the incarceration may have been a cover story so Oswald could continue purported intelligence work. But another Marine, confined in the brig at the same time, confirmed that he remembered seeing Oswald in a single cell during his imprisonment.

As for the general proposition that Oswald was recruited by the CIA while he was a Marine stationed in Japan, the evidence is unconvincing. James B. Wilcott, a former CIA finance officer, claimed that while stationed in Japan after the assassination, he heard that Oswald had worked for the CIA under a special code designation and had been paid from a secret fund for deep cover operations (Conspiracy, p. 129). Wilcott admitted he never reported the allegations because he considered the information unreliable hearsay (HSCA Rpt., p. 199). When questioned by the House Select Committee in 1978, he could not remember Oswald’s special cryptonym or the project name from which the disbursements allegedly came. CIA employees who served with Wilcott testified Oswald had no contacts to the Agency, and they repudiated Wilcott’s tale (HSCA Rpt., pp. 199–200). An intelligence analyst with whom Wilcott claimed to have had a conversation about Oswald was not even posted overseas at the time. The Select Committee concluded: “Based on all the evidence … Wilcott’s allegation was not worthy of belief” (HSCA Rpt., p. 200). Another source pointing to a possible Oswald intelligence connection during his Marine service is Gerry Patrick Hemming, who served with Oswald in Japan and was himself recruited by the CIA. Hemming, a self-promoter who has provided other outlandish and unproven “disclosures” about the JFK assassination, says that while Oswald never said he was an agent, Hemming had a hunch he was. Hemming’s intuition is the extent of his evidence (Marrs, Crossfire, p. 104).

†Because of his sullen and changed attitude when released from the brig, Jim Marrs raises the astonishing speculation that Oswald may have been swapped with an identical imposter. He writes, “It may well be right here that a new Oswald—an entirely different man—was substituted for the New Orleans-born Marine.” Michael Eddowes, a British author, later wrote an entire book contending that Oswald had been switched with a KGB assassin while in the Soviet Union. He led an effort to exhume Oswald’s corpse, winning the support of Lee’s mother and wife. In 1981, the body was dug up from its Texas grave, and forensic pathologists confirmed it was Oswald. Incredibly, the issue still lives, as some conspiracy buffs now claim the body of the real Oswald was swapped back into the grave before the exhumation.

*Delgado tried to deflect Oswald’s interest in Cuba by telling him to write to the Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C. Oswald later told Delgado he had been in contact with the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles, but Delgado thought he was lying until he saw a letter in Oswald’s belongings with a gold seal on it and assumed it was from the Cubans. On another occasion, Oswald received a visitor at the base, and although Delgado did not see the person and did not even know if it was a man or woman, he assumed it might be someone from the Cuban government. He never asked Oswald. Although Delgado’s speculation has no factual foundation and is only his hunch, some critics use it to assert Oswald may have had a Cuban intelligence connection. The Cuban government has officially denied having had any contact with Oswald in 1959.

*Jim Garrison provides snippets of quotes from seven Marines saying they never heard Oswald talk about Communism, the Soviet Union, or Cuba. He concludes, “The statements of Oswald’s other associates at the Marine base were almost uniform in their agreement that he had no inclination in the direction of communism or anything leftwing” (On the Trail of the Assassins, pp. 52–53). Garrison writes that Thornley “had not served with Oswald as long as a number of others and had not even lived on the same part of the base.… The other Marines’ affidavits … overwhelmingly contradicted Thornley’s claims.” But Thornley did live on the same part of the base as Oswald, though they were in different Quonset huts (WC Vol. XI, p. 85). The other Marines’ affidavits did not contradict Thornley’s testimony—they only said Oswald did not talk to them about the same things he discussed with Thornley. Thornley is not even listed in the indexes for books by Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone, Henry Hurt, John Davis, David Scheim, Mark Lane, and Josiah Thompson.

*On the application, he said he intended to take a summer course at the University of Turku in Finland. He never contacted that school. However, since he intended to apply for a Soviet visa in the less-trafficked consulate in Helsinki, the statement on the application provided him an excuse for traveling to Finland.