“When Will All Our Foolishness Come to an End?”
Oswald was ashamed to call Marina when he first arrived in Dallas. He had fully expected he would be calling her from Cuba, and he could not bring himself to talk to her that first day. Instead, he went directly to the YMCA, where he had stayed a year earlier when he had moved to Dallas to find work. He registered as a serviceman to avoid paying the 50¢ membership fee.1 Later that same day he checked in at the Texas Employment Commission, filed a claim for the last of his unemployment checks, and emphasized that he needed to find work quickly.2 He listed his address as 2515 West 5th Street in the Dallas suburb of Irving, which was Ruth Paine’s house, where Marina was staying.3
The following day, Friday, October 4, Oswald reviewed the newspaper’s help-wanted ads and applied for work as a typesetter at the Padgett Printing Company. He made a favorable impression on the plant superintendent, Theodore Gangl, who was prepared to hire him. However, before committing himself, he telephoned one of Oswald’s references, Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, and spoke to Robert Stovall. Stovall remembered Oswald well and told Gangl he was “kind of an oddball … peculiar … and that he had some knowledge of the Russian language … may be a damn Communist.” Stovall concluded, “If I was you, I wouldn’t hire him.”4 Oswald did not get the job.
After his Padgett interview, he finally telephoned Marina. She was elated that he was not in Cuba. He told her to send Ruth Paine to pick him up and bring him to the Paine home in Irving, but Marina explained that Ruth had just donated blood at the hospital in case it was necessary during the baby’s birth, and she was too tired to make the trip. He hitchhiked the twelve miles to the Paine’s home and arrived within the hour. Alone with Marina, he began to complain bitterly about his mistreatment by the embassies in Mexico City. He described how they shuttled him back and forth, each waiting for the other to act first, and denounced the “bureaucrats” and the “red tape” that had frustrated his goals.5 “The same kind of bureaucrats as in Russia No point going there,” he said to Marina.6 She said he never again talked of “Uncle Fidel,” fighting in the Cuban revolution, or of visiting Havana.7 Marina, who had never relished the idea of moving there, was pleased.
Once he vented his frustration about the embassies, he told her about the rest of his trip. He gave her postcards of bullfights as well as a small silver bracelet inscribed with her name, which he claimed he bought in Mexico, but probably purchased at a Dallas five-and-dime store.8 Considering his setbacks, he was affectionate and kept saying how much he had missed her, with his only real distraction being the concern for finding work. When Ruth drove him to the bus station on Monday, October 7, after a relatively quiet weekend, he asked if Marina could stay until he found a job and a new apartment. Ruth assured him that Marina could stay as long as she wanted.
Deciding the YMCA was too expensive, Oswald found a room in a boardinghouse in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, at 621 Marsalis Street. He paid the $7 weekly rent in advance, registered under his real name, and moved in that same day.9 He searched daily for work, telephoning and visiting the employment commission and prospective employers, but had no success. Mary Bledsoe, who rented him the room, did not like him as a tenant. She said he hardly spoke after he moved in. Bledsoe was also aggravated because he used her refrigerator, ate meals in his room, and made twice daily telephone calls to his wife “in that foreign language.”10 On Saturday, October 12, Lee told Bledsoe that he was going to visit his wife for the weekend and said, “I want my room cleaned and clean sheets put on the bed.” “Well, I will after you move,” she told him, “because you are going to move.… I am not going to rent to you anymore.”11 Oswald, taken by surprise, demanded $2 back, the prorated portion of the $7 he had prepaid for one week. Bledsoe refused. He was angry when he left for Ruth Paine’s house, convinced that his landlady’s abrupt rejection meant the FBI was back on his trail and had been asking about him.12 He would not use his real name for his next rental.
For the second weekend in a row, Marina and Lee did not argue, perhaps because the baby was due any day. Both Marina and Ruth noticed the difference. Michael Paine visited Friday and he, too, found Oswald a “reasonable person.”* This surprised him, because he had previously concluded Lee was a “bitter person … [with] quite a lot of very negative views of people in the world around him, very little charity in his view toward anybody …” Before Ruth had even invited Marina to live with her, she had discussed it with Michael. They were concerned that since Lee was so cruel to Marina, he might be violent toward them as well. “We assumed or felt that—if we handled him with a gentle or considerate manner that he wouldn’t be a danger to us … that he wasn’t going to stab Ruth or Marina,” said Michael.13
Marina was the only one who knew about Lee’s Mexico City trip, but she misunderstood how that affected him. She viewed his apparent withdrawal from political action as a turn for the good. To Ruth and Michael Paine, he now seemed just like someone who was trying hard to support his family and find work. “Lee had said over the weekend that he had gotten the last of the unemployment compensation checks that were due him,” recalled Ruth, “and that it had been smaller than the others had been … and he looked very discouraged when he went to look for work.”14 The Texas Employment Commission arranged interviews for some excellent possibilities, including sales-clerk positions at Solid State Electric and Texas Power and Light that paid $350 and $250 per month, respectively, but the companies were not interested. Even when the commission sent him for low-paying jobs like a clerk-trainee at Burton-Dixie, at $1.25 per hour, he was not hired. According to Ruth, Oswald feared that he was losing some job opportunities because he could not drive and could only work at places reached by public transportation. That weekend, she gave him his first driving lesson. He drove three blocks to a parking lot and then around the lot, but Ruth said he was “pretty unskilled.”
On Monday, October 14, Ruth, who had errands in Dallas, drove him into the city. Later that day, while having coffee with some neighbors, she had a conversation that would have a profound impact on future events. Ruth, Marina, Dorothy Roberts, and Linnie Mae Randle were discussing Lee’s difficulty in obtaining work. Roberts and Randle were also young mothers, and they clearly empathized with Oswald’s predicament, especially since Marina’s second child was about to be born. Linnie Mae Randle recalled that Wesley Buell Frazier, her younger brother, “had just looked for a job, and I had helped him try to find one. We listed several places that he might go to look for work. When you live in a place you know some places that someone with, you know, not very much of an education can find work.”15 Mrs. Randle said that Buell had applied for jobs at Manor Bakery and Texas Gypsum Company, but both involved driving a truck, so they were not practical for Lee.16 Then Mrs. Randle mentioned that her brother had finally found a job at the Texas School Book Depository, a warehouse that handled the distribution of mostly educational books.17 “I didn’t know there was a job opening over there. But we said he might try over there. There might be work … because it was the busy season ….”18
It was the group’s final suggestion, and Marina later urged Ruth, “Would you please call the Texas School Depository?” “I looked up the number in the book,” recalled Ruth, “and dialed it, was told I would need to speak to Mr. Truly, who was at the warehouse. The phone was taken to Mr. Truly … and I talked with him …” “She said, ‘Mr. Truly,’” recalled Roy Truly, “‘you don’t know who I am but I have a neighbor whose brother works for you.… He tells his sister that you are very busy. And I am just wondering if you can use another man … I have a fine young man living here with his wife and baby, and his wife is expecting another baby in a few days, and he needs work desperately.’ And I told Mrs. Paine to send him down, and I would talk to him—that I didn’t have anything in mind for him of a permanent nature, but if he was suited, we could possibly use him for a brief time.”19
The same day Ruth Paine called the School Book Depository, Oswald rented an eight-by-twelve-foot room in a boardinghouse at 1026 North Beckley Street, also in Dallas’s Oak Cliff neighborhood, for a dollar more a week, eight dollars, than the Bledsoe room he was forced to vacate.20 He registered as O. H. Lee.* Unlike Mary Bledsoe, his new landlady, Gladys Johnson, and the manager/housekeeper, Earlene Roberts, found his quiet manner acceptable. Except for weekend visits to his wife, they later reported he never went out at night or had a single visitor.21 Instead, according to Johnson, he stayed inside his room “95 percent of the time,” and the remainder silently in front of the communal television “with the other men renters and he wouldn’t speak to them. Maybe they would speak to him but he wouldn’t speak, not saying a word to any of the other boarders.”22 Earlene Roberts found him remote as well. “He wouldn’t say nothing. I would say, ‘Good afternoon,’ and he would just … give me a dirty look and keep walking and go on to his room.… That was the only peculiarity about him.”23
After Oswald settled into the North Beckley Street rooming house, he telephoned Ruth’s home that evening to speak to Marina Ruth got on the phone at the end of the conversation and told him about Truly and suggested he go to the School Book Depository as soon as possible.24 The next day, Tuesday, October 15, Oswald went to Dealey Plaza, in downtown Dallas. “So he came in,” said Truly, “introduced himself to me, and I took him in my office and interviewed him. He seemed to be quiet and well mannered.”25 Oswald filled the application as he sat with Truly. He told him he had just been honorably discharged from the Marines, where he had office duties. “I asked him if he had ever had any trouble with the police and he said, ‘No,’” Truly remembered. “So 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 used the word ‘sir,’ which a lot of them don’t do at this time.”26 Truly had two possibilities for Oswald. One position was in a storage warehouse some distance from Dealey Plaza. The other was as a clerk at the main Depository. Truly decided he seemed earnest enough to hire him as a clerk at the main building, to fill book orders, at $1.25 per hour.27 Truly told him to report to work the following morning, October 16, which was the start of a new pay period.*
Oswald was elated when he telephoned Marina that night. He told her it was good to be working with books, and the work would not tire him. His primary responsibility was to fill textbook orders, by finding the books in the seven-floor Depository and then bringing them to the first floor, where the orders were processed. The work atmosphere was a relaxed one, and people left Lee alone, which he liked. At the first-floor recreation room where the workers ate lunch and sometimes played dominoes, Oswald sat by himself, reading day-old newspapers.† “He never would speak to anyone,” recalled co-worker Bonnie Ray Williams. “He was just a funny fellow.… He never did put himself in any position to say anything to anyone.” But one person who engaged him in a brief conversation that first week was Buell Frazier, Linnie Mae Randle’s brother. When Frazier discovered that Oswald’s wife was staying at the Paines’ house in Irving, he realized they were neighbors, as Frazier lived only a block from the Paines. “Are you going to be going home this afternoon?” Frazier recalled asking Oswald. “And he told me then … that he didn’t have a car, you know, and so I told him … anytime you want to go just let me know.’ So I thought he would be going home every day like most men do but he told me no, that he wouldn’t go home every day and then he asked me could he ride home say like Friday afternoon on weekends and come back on Monday morning and I told him that would be just fine with me.”28
On Friday, October 18, Oswald asked Frazier for his first ride to Irving. When he arrived at the Paines’, he was startled by a small surprise birthday party Ruth and Marina had planned.29 Lee was twenty-four years old. There was a birthday cake, decorations, and wine. Michael Paine was also there. Marina remembered that Lee was so touched that he had tears in his eyes. He was emotional the remainder of the evening, crying and apologizing to Marina for what he had put her through.30 It was another quiet weekend, until Marina began her labor Sunday evening. Around 9:00 P.M., Ruth drove her to Parkland Hospital, while Lee baby-sat with the household’s three children. Ruth returned after checking Marina into Parkland, and although Oswald was in the guest bedroom with a light on, he did not come out to ask any questions.31 Ruth stayed up, telephoning the hospital until she heard before midnight that Marina had given birth to a second daughter. Ruth told Lee the following morning before he left with Frazier for work.32
Frazier drove Oswald to the Depository on Monday, October 21, and then took him back to Irving that evening. Ruth was surprised that he did not want to go to Parkland until she discovered he feared that if the hospital knew he had a job, he would have to pay for Marina’s stay. But Ruth had already told the hospital the previous evening that he was employed, and she assured him that his salary was so low that the maternity care was still free.33 He finally visited Marina later that evening. They named the infant Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald.*
Two days after the birth of his daughter, Wednesday, October 23, Oswald returned to his world of political activism. He had promised Marina that he would never again try to kill Walker, but now that he had returned to Dallas, he could not escape thinking about the right-wing general. Walker was more active than ever in politics; he was talking of again running for political office, and the failed assassination attempt had even created a backlash of sympathy for him. On Wednesday, Oswald attended a right-wing rally at which Walker addressed 1,300 people.34 It is not known if Oswald was stalking him that night, as he had for nearly two months before first trying to kill him.*
The day after Oswald attended the Walker rally, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Adlai Stevenson was in Dallas for United Nations Day and was attacked by a surging crowd of right-wing protestors. Some spat on him, and another struck him on the head with a placard. Stevenson was rushed from the scene. That incident received widespread media coverage and could only have exacerbated Oswald’s inherent fears about the growth of the political right. The Walker surveillance was news that would have greatly upset Marina, but he did not tell her. He did, however, report his activities to Arnold Johnson of the American Communist party. In a letter in which he notified Johnson that he had relocated temporarily to Texas, he said he had been at an “ultra-right meeting” with Walker, and advised that the “political friction between ‘left’ and ‘right’ is very great here.”35 He also mentioned the attack on Adlai Stevenson, citing it as evidence of the tensions between right and left.
On Friday, October 25, at Ruth’s house for the weekend, Oswald and Michael Paine had a long political discussion. “When I used to see him watch football games on a Saturday or Sunday,” Paine recalled, “I used to think, ‘Well, that is a hell of a way for a revolutionary to behave.’ So I talked to him to draw him out, and he did advance his revolutionary beliefs in those discussions with me.”36 Paine, a pacifist and an intellectual, enjoyed debate and discussion, but found it difficult with Oswald. “He was not interested in arriving at the truth, it was quite unfruitful to have real discussion with him,” says Paine. “His arrogance was more than just the arrogance of youth.… [He thought] he had the word from the enlightenment, that he knew the truth …”37 But in this latest conversation with Oswald, Michael detected a frustration and exasperation he had not previously noticed. “He still thought that as for Russia and the U.S., it was a pox on both your houses,” Paine told the author. “But while he believed that change was necessary, he thought it would only come through violence, and he was sincere in that. He was definitely not a proponent of nonviolent change, the Gandhi method. That was repulsive to him. I am practically quoting him, ‘that violence was necessary for change.’ And I debated him on that. It was a very important point to me.”38
During the conversation, Oswald mentioned he had attended a speech by General Walker two nights before. Paine told him that he had attended a John Birch meeting that same night. “I knew he visited right-wing groups like John Birch and others,” recalls Michael. “Our notions and purposes were quite different, and I don’t think he appreciated how different we were on this.” Paine visited in the hope of opening a dialogue between left and right. “But he went with the idea to spy on them,” says Paine, “that by so doing he might be making the next step toward getting close to this cabal that he was sure controlled everything. He definitely thought he was listening in on the capitalist planning, and he clearly thought this was important work.”39
Michael planned to attend a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union that very night. He invited Lee to go with him. “I invited him because I thought I needed to show this kid a group of people who are concerned about the same kind of problems, say the humanity of man to man, and trying to do something about it, in a way that was typically American, through free speech and political action. But he was not much interested in going. It was at the church and that was certainly a mark against it for him. But finally he decided to go with me.”40 As they left the house, Lee leaned over to Marina, who was just back from the hospital, and whispered, “If only Michael knew what I wanted to do to Walker! Wouldn’t he be scared!”41
At the ACLU meeting, a speaker stated that just because a person was a Bircher, it did not mean they were an anti-Semite. Oswald stood and objected. He told the group about his visit to the Walker meeting at which a John Birch spokesman had made anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic attacks. Paine thought Oswald’s remarks were “clear and coherent.”42 After the meeting, Oswald got into a three-way discussion with an elderly man and Frank Krystinik, a co-worker of Michael Paine’s. Krystinik almost got into a fight with Oswald when he attacked the free enterprise system, but the older man won Lee over with some kind words about Cuba. In the car on the way home, Oswald told Michael that he thought the older man was a Communist, since he talked favorably about Cuba. “I thought to myself,” said Paine, “‘Well, that is rather feeble evidence for proving a Communist.… If that is the way he has to meet his Communists, he has not yet found the Communist group in Dallas.’”43 Paine tried to convince Oswald of the good work with which the ACLU was involved, but Oswald said he could not join such an organization since it “wasn’t political.”*
The remainder of the October 26 weekend at the Paines’ house was uneventful. However, both Michael and Ruth noticed that Lee’s more convivial attitude that existed since his return to Dallas was disappearing. He snapped at Marina for failing to get him iced tea or to iron his shirts correctly. Sometimes, he refused Ruth’s meals and made Marina prepare another. If he finished eating ahead of the others, he often just left the table, without saying a word, and watched television in the living room. Never did he offer the Paines any money toward Marina’s or his daughters’ upkeep. It was the same Lee they had come to know, and dislike, a year earlier.44
During these first three weeks that Oswald settled back into Dallas, he was not aware that the FBI had taken a renewed interest in him because of his Mexico City trip. On October 25, the same day Lee attended the ACLU meeting, local Dallas field agent James Hosty learned that “another agency [the CIA] had determined that Lee Oswald was in contact with the Soviet embassy in Mexico City in the early part of October …”45 That notice greatly increased Hosty’s interest in Oswald, as he was now possibly an espionage case.
FBI policy is to have a file follow the person, so the local FBI office, where the person under surveillance is living, is always the one with the original file and primary responsibility for the case. Once the New Orleans office discovered that Oswald had filed a change of address from his Magazine Street apartment to Irving, Texas, it notified the Dallas FBI that Oswald might have moved there. Hosty was assigned the case, and he first had to determine whether Oswald had actually moved to Texas. Once he proved Oswald was in his jurisdiction, then the New Orleans office would forward the original file to him.
On October 29, Hosty went to Irving and asked a neighbor of the Paines some questions. He learned that a Russian-born, Russian-speaking woman was living with Ruth Paine. On Thursday, October 31, Hosty ran a credit check on the Paines and conducted some more interviews with those who knew them. “I wanted to make sure before I approached Mrs. Paine that she was not involved in any way with Lee Oswald, in any type of activities which were against the best interest of the United States.”46
The following day, Friday, November 1, Hosty drove to the Paines’ home. Since he did not consider Ruth Paine “a hostile witness,” he did not bring along another agent for the interview.47 In the mid-afternoon, Hosty parked in front of a neighboring house and knocked on the Paines’ front door. Ruth had almost been expecting Hosty, because Dorothy Roberts had told her that a man had come around asking questions, and Ruth correctly assumed it was the FBI. During their nearly twenty-five-minute conversation, Hosty discovered that Marina and her children lived at the Paine residence, that Ruth did not know Lee’s address in Dallas, and although she had been hesitant to divulge his employer for fear he could lose his job, she finally told Hosty about the School Book Depository.48 “Towards the conclusion of the interview, Marina Oswald, who had apparently been napping, entered the living room,” recalled Hosty.49 Ruth, in Russian, told Marina that Hosty was from the FBI. “I could tell from her eyes and her expression that she became quite alarmed, quite upset,” Hosty remembered.50 He knew she had recently had a child, and tried to soothe her nerves. After telling her the FBI was not a witch-hunting organization, he slowly turned the conversation to Cuba. When he said he knew of her husband’s Fair Play for Cuba work in New Orleans, Marina told Hosty, with Ruth translating, “Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s just young. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He won’t do anything like that here.”51 Before he left, he wrote his name and telephone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Ruth. Marina urged him, as had Ruth, not to interfere with Lee’s new work. The FBI had caused him to be fired from his earlier jobs, she said. “I told her this was not true, that I had never had anyone fired from any job nor did I know of any other FBI agents that had ever done this,” Hosty recalled.52*
On Friday, during his lunch break, Oswald rented a post-office box at the Terminal Annex across Dealey Plaza, No. 6225, for a two-month period, at $1.50 per month.53† He listed his real name, Marina’s name, and two organizations, Fair Play for Cuba and the American Civil Liberties Union, as authorized to receive mail. “Hidell” no longer appeared on the application. This was the same day that Oswald sent in his membership fee to the ACLU. He also wrote a letter to Arnold Johnson, of the American Communist party, asking, “Could you advise me as to the general view that we have on the American Civil Liberties Union? And to what degree, if any, I should attempt to heighten its progressive tendencies?”54 It was vintage Oswald—talking about “we” as though he were a party member, and again implying that he was at the vanguard of progressive politics.
That Friday, Frazier dropped Oswald off at the Paines’ only a few hours after Hosty had left. When Marina told him of the FBI visit, his mood changed dramatically. He became nervous and agitated, and demanded to know everything that was said.55 He yelled at Marina for not remembering much of the conversation. Ruth gave him the number and address for Hosty and noticed Lee sat quietly through dinner.56 On Saturday, Lee was still nervous. He pulled Marina aside and instructed her that if the FBI visited again, she was to write down the make, color, and license number of the agent’s car.57 Sunday, Ruth gave Lee another driving lesson. It was the only break in an otherwise sullen weekend.
The following Monday, November 4, the Secret Service in Dallas was instructed by the White House to examine three potential luncheon sites for November 22, the date chosen for the President’s Dallas visit.58 One site, the Women’s Building at the State Fairgrounds, lacked the necessary food-handling capacity, and the Market Hall was already booked for that date.59 That left the Trade Mart, and though it presented additional security problems, Forrest Sorrels, special agent in charge of the Dallas office, was convinced that special precautions could protect the President.60 Sorrels recommended the Trade Mart be selected for the luncheon.
Meanwhile, Hosty had received a report from his New Orleans counterpart, Milton Kaack, and immediately saw that Oswald’s New Orleans FBI interview was filled with lies. It prompted more curiosity about the former defector. On Tuesday, Hosty paid a second visit to the Paines’ home. This time he was accompanied by Gary S. Wilson, an agent just out of training school. “We went to the front porch,” recalled Hosty. “I rang the bell, talked to Mrs. Paine, at which time she advised me that Lee Oswald had been out to visit … his wife … over the weekend, but she has still not determined where he was living in Dallas, and she also made the remark that she considered him to be a very illogical person, that he had told her that weekend that he was Trotskyite Communist.”61
While she talked to Hosty, Ruth thought Marina was in the bedroom, but actually she had slipped out the kitchen door. She went around the side of the house and memorized Hosty’s license-plate number, but she could not determine the car’s make since she could not read English.62* She went back into the house and entered the living room as Hosty was about to leave. Ruth translated as they talked for a few minutes. Marina was much more relaxed than during their first meeting.
Although Marina may not have been upset by Hosty’s second visit, Ruth feared that Lee would indeed be. “Marina and I talked about whether to tell Lee that the FBI had been out a second time,” recalled Ruth.63 When Oswald called each day that week and asked if the FBI had visited again, Marina said no. But when Oswald returned to the Paines’ house Friday, November 8, Marina told him. He was furious, insulting Marina for even speaking with Hosty. “You fool,” he shouted. “You frivolous, simple-minded fool.”64 “He was very angry again,” recalled Marina “He said that he will talk to Mr. Hosty and tell him to stop harassing me.”65
“He felt the FBI was inhibiting his activities,” recalled Ruth. He was “seriously bothered by their having come out and inquired about him.… He was worried about losing his job.”66 During the second interview, Hosty had asked Ruth whether Oswald was mentally disturbed. “I did tell Lee this question had been asked,” she said. “He gave no reply, but more a scoffing laugh, hardly voiced.”67 Through the dinner and evening, Oswald was in a terrible mood.
The following day, Saturday, Lee asked Ruth to borrow her typewriter. But he took a break while using it to go with Ruth, Marina, and the children to the State Driver’s License Examining Station in Oak Cliff. Oswald wanted to apply for a learner’s permit. However, Ruth had forgotten it was a local election day and it was closed. They then spent some time at a local five-and-dime store before returning to Irving.*
Oswald stayed at the Paines’ through Monday, November 11, Veterans’ Day. Ruth gave him his final driving lesson during the weekend. On Sunday, she was up before Marina and Lee and, while walking through the living room, saw a handwritten draft of the note Lee had been working on the day before. Although she had noticed it on Saturday, on this day it was folded so that she could see the words “The FBI is not now interested in my activities …”68 She knew that was not true. Since there was no address, she did not know where the letter was being sent. Opening the rest of it, she was startled. In it, he noted that he and Marina had relocated to Texas, and “This is to inform you of events since my interview with Comrade Kostine in the Embassy of the Soviet Union, Mexico City, Mexico.” He wrote: “I could not take a chance on applyig for an extension unless I used my real name, so I returned to the U.S.”† Oswald said that while the FBI had been interested in his Fair Play activities in New Orleans, an Agent “Hasty” had warned him not to start such activities in Texas, and had suggested his wife “could defect from the Soviet Union.” The note ended with: “Of course I and my wife strongly protested these tactics by the notorious FBI. I had not planned to contact the Mexican 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 stuip Cuban Consule was at fault here I am glad he had since been replaced by another.”69 Ruth, who did not even know Oswald had been in Mexico, thought the letter was mostly a figment of his imagination. She was not only confused about why he would write such a note but also upset that he would do it in her home. Ruth hand-wrote a copy of the note before Oswald awoke. She intended to confront Lee over it, but failed to do so. She also debated whether she should give it to Hosty.
Oswald had typed a final copy from the draft Ruth saw. He asked Marina to cosign the letter that day, but she refused. Marina noticed he was anxious, putting the letter through the typewriter twice before he had it in decent condition. He typed the envelope at least four times. The only significant change he made to the draft Ruth had seen was a paragraph asking to “please inform us of the arrival of our Soviet entrance visa’s as soon as they come.”70 He mailed the letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington on Tuesday, November 12.71
Oswald was consumed over the holiday weekend by Hosty’s last visit and the draft of the letter to the Soviet embassy, which took him three days. On his Monday holiday, when he was not working on the letter, Marina found him withdrawn, and he spent much of his time alone in the backyard. Oswald was with Marina and Ruth from Friday the eighth until he left with Buell Frazier to drive to work on Tuesday morning. However, after the assassination, some claimed he had been at the Sports Drome Rifle Range that weekend practicing with his Carcano.72 Other witnesses came forward and said they had also seen him there the following weekend.73 Since his time was accounted for, critics again raised the issue of an imposter, claiming that someone tried to frame him by sending a sharpshooter, with a similar weapon, to the range so people could later testify that Oswald was a good shot. But a review of the witness statements shows an honest mistake in identification. There was no Oswald in the sign-up sheets at the range—an imposter certainly would have at least printed his name in the register to substantiate the frame.74 Four witnesses who originally thought it was Oswald could not later identify him when shown photographs.75 Others said the “imposter” had a new and brightly polished rifle (Oswald’s Carcano was dull and weather-beaten) and a Tasco scope (he used an Ordnance scope), and they described the rifle as having the wrong type of wooden stock and a barrel that was too long.76 Depending on the witness, “Oswald” drove a 1940 or 1941 Ford truck, or an old-model Chevrolet, or a Ford Hardtop, or a dark, modern four-door sedan. One even claimed to have given him a ride home afterward.77 A part-time worker at the range, Malcolm Price, said the last time he saw “Oswald” was on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, at a holiday “Turkey Shoot.”78 That was after the assassination, the day Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, not a very good time for the purported conspirators to send an imposter to the practice range. Garland Slack, one of the practice-range witnesses, said that “Oswald” had long hair and big ears. But Slack admitted, ‘You see, you read the papers and you get to where you imagine things and you find yourself imagining that you saw somebody …”79*
It is likely that on the same day Oswald sent the letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington, he also walked into the FBI office at 1114 Commerce Street, near the Depository, and asked if Agent Hosty was in.* He was at lunch. Oswald did not give his name to the receptionist, Nanny Fenner, but instead just handed her an unsealed envelope with “Hasty” written across the front (the same misspelling of the agent’s name as in his letter to the Soviet embassy). She remembered he looked “awfully fidgety” and “had a wild look in his eye.” When Hosty returned from lunch, she gave him the envelope and said, “Some nut left this for you.”80 According to Hosty, inside was an undated note that read, “If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don’t cease bothering my wife, I will take appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities.”81 Hosty said it was unsigned and concluded it was either from Oswald or from one other person whose case he was investigating, whose wife he had recently spoken to. Only after the assassination, when he confronted Oswald in jail, and Oswald, upon hearing Hosty’s name, became very excited and started yelling, was it confirmed that the note was from Lee.82†
The note has taken on added importance because after the assassination, Hosty admits the note was destroyed at the direction of the Dallas special agent-in-charge, J. Gordon Shanklin.83 According to Hosty, Shanklin first demanded to know why he had a note from Oswald. Hosty explained his contacts with Ruth Paine and Marina. Then two days later, after Oswald had been killed by Jack Ruby, Hosty was again called into Shanklin’s office. There, his chief produced the note and, according to Hosty, said, “Oswald is dead now. There can be no trial. Here—get rid of this.” Hosty then destroyed the note. Although Shanklin, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he never knew about the note until 1975, Hosty is more credible. Sixteen other employees in the office knew the Oswald note existed.84 Some, such as agent Kenneth Howe, said they had even shown it to Shanklin. When Hosty retired in 1979, the FBI returned more than $1,000 of the salary that had been withheld from him in 1964, when he was suspended for not having spotted earlier that Oswald was a potential threat and transferred to Kansas City from Dallas.85
The destruction of Oswald’s note was against FBI regulations and is one of the Bureau’s worst breaches of trust in the case. It allowed skeptics to question the FBI’s overall role and relationship to him. To compound the problem, the FBI hid the existence of the note from the Warren Commission. Despite extensive testimony before the Commission, Hosty never mentioned it, claiming later that he had never been asked. The information only leaked out in 1975. But the note is not evidence of a conspiracy or cover-up. It is evidence, at least in this instance, of the FBI’s negligence and impropriety. Bill Alexander, the assistant district attorney who drew up the murder indictments against Oswald and later prosecuted Jack Ruby, told the author, “I worked with those fellows at the FBI over many years. What they were doing with the Hosty situation is covering their asses. By Sunday, when Oswald was killed, Hoover was already convinced that Oswald was guilty. People like Shanklin were running for cover to make sure no one could point a finger and say, ‘You failed to spot Oswald as a threat.’ They were afraid the note would be seen as something they were derelict in following up on. And Oswald was dead, so they figured, ‘What the hell, we don’t need it anymore,’ and they destroyed it. It was a pretty stupid thing to do.”86 In the same way that Hoover censured seventeen agents for the preassassination investigation of Oswald to insulate himself from any responsibility, Shanklin thought he could protect himself by disposing of the evidence of his office’s contact with Oswald.*
On Tuesday, November 12, the same day Oswald dropped off the note to Hosty, Michael Paine visited Ruth in Irving. One of the first things she did was show him the letter Oswald had drafted for the Soviet embassy. “I never realized how much he could lie,” she said. “I want you to read this letter.” She wanted to know what to do, especially if she should contact Hosty before his next visit. But Michael was distracted and only glanced at the letter. He mistakenly thought the salutation “Dear Sirs” was “Dear Lisa” and thought Oswald was merely writing to a friend. “Ruth was somewhat irked that I didn’t take more interest in the thing … and didn’t show it to me again and I asked her what was in that letter that I didn’t see and she didn’t tell me,” Michael remembered.87 Ruth, discouraged, put the letter aside and decided not to call Hosty but instead wait for his next visit. Hosty never came to the house again before the assassination.†
On Thursday, November 14, the White House gave its approval of the selection of the Trade Mart as a luncheon site for the President.88 Once it was chosen, the Secret Service was directed to determine a motorcade route that would allow forty-five minutes for the President to travel from Love Field airport to the Trade Mart.89 On that same day, agents Forrest Sorrels and Winston Lawson drove over a possible route. They then met with Dallas police, who reviewed the route the following day, November 15.90 The Dallas Times Herald announced the Trade Mart selection on November 15, and the following day listed Main Street as the parade’s primary artery.91 On November 18, Secret Service and Dallas police again drove the route and confirmed its selection.
Lee called Marina on Friday the fifteenth to discuss visiting for the weekend (he always first called to ask permission). She did not think it was a good idea, because Michael was staying that weekend to celebrate his daughter’s birthday, and Lee might have worn out his welcome with the three-day holiday weekend just past.92 Marina also sensed some resentment from Ruth toward Lee, but did not know that Ruth had found a draft of the letter to the Soviet embassy. Lee agreed to stay at his North Beckley Street room. When he later telephoned Marina over the weekend, he told her that he had returned to the driver’s license bureau to get his learner’s permit, but the line had been too long and he left.93 Gladys Johnson, his landlady, said that except for a single walk, Oswald did not leave the house and only made calls to Marina.94
At Marina’s request, on Sunday, November 17, Ruth telephoned the number at North Beckley.
“Is Lee Oswald there?” asked Ruth.
“There is no Lee Oswald living here.”
“Is this a rooming house?”
“Is this WH3–8993?”
“Yes.”
“I thanked him and hung up,” recalled Ruth. She turned to Marina and said, “They don’t know of a Lee Oswald at that number.” Marina was startled.95 The next day Lee called Marina. Ruth said, “I was in the kitchen where the phone is while Marina talked with him, she clearly was upset, and angry …”96 Marina asked him where he had been the previous night, and he told her he was using a different name because of the FBI, but also became angry with her for calling the rooming house.97 She found his alias “unpleasant and incomprehensible.”98 “After all, when will all our foolishness come to an end?” demanded Marina. “All of these comedies. First one thing then another. And now this fictitious name.”99 A fight with Marina was the last thing Lee wanted. Their relationship was strained at times since his return from Mexico but better than it had been in New Orleans. It was as though the argument had broken a fragile truce. And now Marina and Ruth knew about his alias. It was only a matter of time until one of them told Hosty, and again he would have to confront the FBI.
Oswald did not call Marina on either Tuesday or Wednesday, the nineteenth and twentieth. The others at the rooming house noticed he sulked and did not use the phone. Oswald was simmering alone and did not want any contact with people, even his family. “He thinks he’s punishing me,” Marina told Ruth.100
That Tuesday, the Dallas Times Herald detailed the exact route of the presidential motorcade. It showed that the motorcade would proceed along Main Street, then turn onto Dealey Plaza, a public square that the Texas School Book Depository bordered.* The motorcade would then turn onto Houston Street and make a left along Elm Street before reaching the Stemmons Freeway.101 The left turn onto Elm Street meant the cars would pass directly in front of the Depository. The city’s only other newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, provided the same exacting details on both November 19 and 20.102 There was no change in the motorcade route, and there was no doubt about the Elm Street crossing.* Whether Oswald learned of the route on the day first published, the nineteenth, or on the next day, when he followed his routine of reading day-old newspapers in the first-floor lunch room of the Depository, it is hard to overestimate the impact of that discovery. Oswald, who thought his contribution to his revolutionary cause would be the death of Walker, was suddenly faced with the possibility of having a much greater impact on history and the machinery of government. Failed in his attempts to find happiness in Russia or the U.S., rejected by the Cubans, barely able to make a living in America, frustrated in his marriage, and hounded, in his view, by the FBI, he was desperate to break out of his downward spiral. He had endured long enough the humiliations of his fellow Marines, the Russian and Cuban bureaucrats, the employers that fired him, the radio ambush in New Orleans, the refusal of V. T. Lee and other Communist leaders to acknowledge his efforts and letters. Lee Oswald always thought he was smarter and better than other people, and was angered that others failed to recognize the stature he thought he deserved. Now, by chance, he had an opportunity that he knew would only happen once in his lifetime.
On Thursday, November 21, Oswald broke his routine of eating a meager breakfast at the rooming house. Instead, he treated himself to a special breakfast at Dobbs House restaurant. Before 10:00 that morning, he approached Buell Frazier and asked if he could have a ride to Irving that evening as he needed to “get some curtain rods. You know, [to] put in an apartment.”103 His apartment did not need curtains or curtain rods. Both were already in place.104 It was likely later that day that he used brown paper and tape at the Depository to fashion a bag over three feet long.
Marina saw Frazier’s car stop near the Paine home that afternoon near 5:00, and Lee stepped out. He had not called in advance as usual to ask permission before coming to Irving. It was also the first time he had ever broken his routine and arrived on a Thursday instead of a Friday. “He said he was lonely because he hadn’t come the preceding weekend, and he wanted to make his peace with me,” recalled Marina.105 She refused his kisses, and turned her back on him when he spoke. “He tried very hard to please me,” Marina recalled. “He spent quite a bit of time putting away diapers and played with the children on the street. He was upset over the fact that I would not answer him. He tried to start a conversation with me several times, but I would not answer. And he said that he didn’t want me to be angry with him because this upsets him.” He seemed different than she had seen him before, and he told her he “was tired of living all alone,” and pleaded, “Why won’t you come with me?” “Alka,” Marina responded. “I think it’s better if I stay here.”106 “He repeated this not once but several times,” Marina remembered, “but I refused. And he said that once again I was preferring my friends to him, and that I didn’t need him.”107 He tried to induce her by saying he had saved money and would buy her a washing machine. Marina told him thank you, but “it would be better if he bought something for himself—that I would manage.” One final time, while on the front lawn, he begged her to join him in Dallas. “I’ll get us an apartment and we’ll all live peacefully at home.” She again refused. “I was like a stubborn little mule,” she recalled. “I was maintaining my inaccessibility, trying to show Lee I wasn’t easy to persuade.”108*
Ruth, who had been grocery shopping, had pulled up in her car by 5:30. “He was on the front lawn. I was surprised to see him,” she recalled. Marina apologized to Ruth that Lee had appeared without any warning, but Ruth said not to worry, that it was his way of making up for their quarrel. “As I entered the house and Lee had just come in, I said to him, ‘Our President is coming to town.’ And he said, ‘Ah, yes,’ and walked into the kitchen …”109
During the rest of the evening the atmosphere in the house was cordial. Ruth did not notice there was any special tension between Marina and Lee. Marina remembered that after her last refusal to join him in Dallas, Lee mostly stopped talking.110 During dinner, Marina asked him about the President’s visit, assuming that talking about politics, his favorite subject, might improve the atmosphere. “And he did not make any comment about it at all,” she recalled. “It was quite unusual that he did not want to talk about President Kennedy being in Dallas.… That was quite peculiar … [and] I asked him … if he know which route President Kennedy will take … and he said he doesn’t know anything about it.”111 After a quiet dinner, he watched television on his own.
At 9:00, he looked into the kitchen, where Marina was washing the dishes. She thought he looked sad.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. It was almost two hours before his usual time. “I probably won’t be out this weekend.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too often. I was here today.”
“Okay.”112
That same evening, after Lee had gone to bed, Ruth went into the garage to paint some children’s blocks. The light was on. “It was unusual for it to be on,” she recalled. “I realized I felt Lee … had gone out to the garage, perhaps worked out there or gotten something.”113
“I went to sleep about 11:30,” Marina remembered. “But it seemed to me that he was not really asleep. But I didn’t talk to him.”114 In the middle of the night, she remembered resting her foot against his leg, and he shoved it away with a ferocity that surprised her. “My, he’s in a mean mood,” she thought. Marina thinks his tension finally gave way to sleep, but not until nearly 5:00 A.M.115
The following morning when the alarm sounded, it was Marina, half-asleep, who urged him to get up. Usually, Marina prepared breakfast for him, but that morning she remained in bed. When he was ready to leave, he came to the bedroom door. “He told me to take as much money as I needed and to buy everything, and said goodbye, and that is all,” recalled Marina.116 He walked out the door without kissing her, something he always did before leaving.
When Marina fully awoke, she went to the kitchen, but he was gone and the coffeepot was cold. Returning to the bedroom, she was startled to see that he had left $170 on top of their bureau. It was a remarkable sum for the Oswalds, and she knew it must be almost all their savings. She did not notice something else that would have alarmed her. On the bureau, in a hand-painted demitasse cup that had belonged to her grandmother, Lee had placed his wedding ring. He had never before taken it off.
*Despite the Paines’ separation, Michael spent considerable time at the house, still keeping many of his belongings there.
* His new alias was probably a simple reversal of his name, but he might also have tried to emulate V. T. Lee, the national president of Fair Play for Cuba.
* Some have questioned the coincidence that Oswald obtained a job at a building that gave him a clear shot at the presidential motorcade. Garrison says that Oswald was manipulated, that “guiding hands made sure that he would be at the right place at the right time.” That argument ignores the fact that no motorcade route had even been proposed by the date Oswald was hired at the Depository. Moreover, such a theory means that Linnie Mae Randle, who suggested the Depository, and Ruth Paine, who told Oswald about it, were part of the conspiracy, as were Roy Truly and the Texas employers who rejected Oswald for jobs earlier in the week. Even Robert Stovall, Oswald’s former employer, who scuttled his hiring at Padgett by a poor recommendation, would have to be part of the plot. That single incident, Oswald obtaining the job at the Book Depository, highlights two key flaws in almost every conspiracy theory—the constant interpretation of coincidence as evidence of conspiracy, and the inordinate number of people who would have had to be involved in any such plot—more than a dozen on just this issue.
†He was too miserly to buy a daily paper, instead picking up the throwaways at work the day after. However, he still maintained subscriptions to journals he thought important—The Militant, The Worker, Time, and some Russian periodicals.
* Marina chose Audrey after Audrey Hepburn, and Rachel after a niece. Oswald objected to Rachel saying, “It sounds too Jewish.” He wanted Marina, so they added it as a second middle name. Today, Oswald’s second daughter goes by Rachel.
* Oswald kept his pistol hidden in a leather case at his North Beckley room. His rifle was in the Paines’ garage. Michael Paine, who often used a workbench he kept in the garage, thought the dismantled rifle was “camping equipment wrapped in a greenish rustic blanket.” Michael, an absolute believer in the privacy of the individual, was tempted to look inside the blanket tied with string, but never did.
* The ever fickle Oswald sent in a $2 membership fee to the ACLU a week later, on November 1. Michael Paine told the author that Oswald became a member “because he mistakenly thought if you joined, you got a free legal defense.”
* On the following Monday, November 4, Hosty telephoned the School Book Depository, under a pretext, and confirmed Oswald was working there. He then sent an airmail communication to the New Orleans FBI bureau and informed them that Oswald had relocated to Texas and that the Dallas office should again be the office of origin and the file returned to Hosty’s attention. Some who contend that Oswald was an FBI informer overlook the work done by the FBI just to determine where Oswald was living at any given time. If he had been an informer, the FBI would not likely have needed several weeks to find where he was between his departure from New Orleans and his arrival in Dallas.
† According to Marina and those closest to him, Oswald was a notorious penny-pincher. He paid the rent in advance for the post-office box through December 31, 1963, providing some evidence that he planned to be in Dallas at least through that period.
* After the assassination, Hosty’s name, office address and telephone number, and license-plate number were found in Oswald’s address book. Some, such as Henry Hurt, charge that this “fired speculation that the notation indicated an informant relationship.” How Oswald obtained the license-plate number has also stumped many critics, although during her Warren Commission testimony Marina admitted to getting it (WC Vol. I, p. 48). She told Priscilla Johnson McMillan, for her book Marina and Lee: “I am a sneaky girl.”
Oswald’s address page with Hosty’s number became controversial after the assassination for another reason. When the FBI gave the Warren Commission copies of Oswald’s address book, typed by the FBI, it omitted any references to Hosty. It turned out the person who typed it only concentrated on “leads,” and assumed since Hosty was not a lead, the information was unnecessary. Most critics mistakenly conclude it was a deliberate cover-up, even though the original address book was available for inspection at the National Archives.
* Oswald’s driving ability, or lack thereof, became an issue after the assassination when a Dallas car salesman, Albert Bogard, said Lee Oswald visited him on Saturday, November 9, and test-drove a car at high speeds. It could not be the real Oswald since he was occupied with Marina and Ruth in Irving that entire day. Again, the specter of a “second Oswald” was raised. Bogard said he had written Oswald’s name on a business card, which he had thrown away, and also claimed to introduce Oswald to his manager, who could not remember such a meeting. None of his fellow workers supported Bogard’s story, although one did remember a five-foot-tall “Oswald,” not a very good imposter. Bogard was fired soon after he told his story.
† This was another example of Oswald’s bravado over the interchangeable use of his real name and his aliases, primarily Hidell. Once rejected by the Soviet and Cuban embassies, he had no intention of staying in Mexico, but he evidently wanted to make the Soviets believe he had a more exotic reason for not staying.
*The conspiracy critics raise a number of other wrong identifications as imposter cases. Each has even less “evidence” than the one at the practice range. At the Irving Barber Shop, the barber remembered cutting the hair, five or six times, of a man who wore coveralls, had black hair and hairy arms, came with a fourteen-year-old boy, and drove a black Ford. He thought that was Oswald (WC Vol. X, pp. 312–24). At Hutch’s Market, in Irving, the manager identified “Oswald” as a daily customer, with slicked-back hair, who tried to cash a check, together with a woman he thought was Marina, and an elderly lady with a white babushka and a fur coat (WC Vol. X, pp. 328–40). Two employees in the Irving Furniture Mart said “Oswald” drove up in a blue-and-white Ford and came in with Marina and two children, looking for the nearest gun store. Marina was taken to the furniture store by the Warren Commission and flatly denied ever having been there. One of the witnesses later identified photos of Oswald’s brother, Robert, as the man who supposedly visited, and the other backed off her identification when confronted in person by Marina (WC Vol. X, pp. 254–301). The story that “Oswald” sent a money order from Western Union was discredited when the sole witness was contradicted by his co-workers, was himself unable to identify the man he saw as Oswald, and said he could not remember the name used. He ultimately recanted his story (WC Vol. X, pp. 311–23, 406–24). Finally, there was the story of the Irving Sports Shop, where a clerk claimed to have found a tag with the name Oswald, indicating he had a telescopic sight drilled onto his gun. But Oswald’s gun came assembled with the scope when he ordered it. The owners of the shop checked their records and found they had never worked on a Carcano. Subsequent investigation found that the clerk, apparently an attention-seeker, had made anonymous calls about Oswald and his gun to the local media and that the gun store tag was in his handwriting, not in Oswald’s. He refused to take a polygraph (WC Vol. XI, pp. 226–52).
* No one at the FBI office can remember the exact day Oswald visited. However, the receptionist, Nanny Fenner, believes it was the first business day after the holiday.
† However, special agent Kenneth C. Howe claimed he saw the note, and while he agrees with Hosty about the general contents, he said it was signed by Oswald. The receptionist, Fenner, later claimed that she was able to see the note because it slipped out of the unsealed envelope before she gave it to Hosty. According to her, it was a much more explicit threat, “Let this be a warning. I will blow up the FBI and the Dallas Police Department if you don’t stop bothering my wife. [signed] Lee Harvey Oswald” (Senate Hearings on FBI Oversight, Serial 2, Pt. 3, Oct. 21, 1975). But Hosty says the way the note was folded, it would have been impossible for Fenner to see, and if it had made an explicit threat, he would have followed up on it that same day. Instead, it was so general that he tossed it into his mail tray and forgot about it until he saw Oswald at the jail.
* Oliver Stone, in his film JFK, implies the Oswald note may have been a warning to the FBI of the plot against the President. If this was just propagated by Hollywood, it could be dismissed as irrelevant. But it was also suggested by Jim Garrison, who wrote: “He [Oswald] may have even filed reports on the plot to kill the President with his contact agent, James Hosty.” In this speculative scenario, Oswald is actually a hero who vainly tried to thwart the impending disaster. This contradicts all the available evidence. It also requires the leap of faith that Oswald, armed with the most important information of his life, a plot to kill JFK, merely dropped it off in an unsealed envelope to Hosty, and then failed to ever follow up with a telephone call or another visit. And when finally arrested and charged with the crime, instead of telling the Dallas police and the FBI that he had actually tried to warn them ten days before the assassination, Oswald quietly sat in the station and denied his guilt. Even when Hosty came into the interrogation room, Oswald did not say, “What happened to the warning I gave you?” but rather attacked Hosty for having bothered Marina.
† Hosty, of course, was criticized after the assassination for not taking more interest in Oswald. He later testified to the Warren Commission that once he determined Oswald “was not employed in a sensitive industry,” he did not take a priority over the other twenty-five to forty cases assigned to him at any one time. He first wanted to “determine the nature of his contact with the Soviet embassy … and wait until New Orleans forwarded the necessary papers to me” before taking the next step, a full interview of Marina. Hosty currently complains that he was never notified that Oswald had met with Kostikov, a known KGB agent, while at the Soviet embassy. “You can very well see how the whole thing could take on a different complexion if I knew who he was talking to.”
* Dealey Plaza, named after George Bannerman Dealey, a prominent businessman and founder of the Dallas Morning News, is a three-acre public square through which three main streets, Commerce, Main, and Elm, pass. Those parallel streets converge at one end of Dealey under a railroad bridge dubbed the Triple Underpass. The opposite side of the plaza from the underpass is ringed by office buildings, none taller than eight stories. The Book Depository is a free-standing building on the corner of Elm and Houston streets. Two small pergolas are on each side of the plaza, situated between the buildings and the underpass. The one nearest the Depository has a five-foot-tall fence at one end. In front of that fence is a patch of grass that gently declines to the curb of Elm Street. That section, including the corner of the fence, is called the grassy knoll.
*Some critics charge there were last-minute changes in the parade route and as “proof” cite a November 22 edition of the Dallas Morning News, which had a map of the motorcade that showed the cars proceeding straight along Main Street and not turning onto Houston. They contend that those responsible for the motorcade route altered it at the last moment so Oswald could have a clear shot. There was no last-minute change. Anyone familiar with Dallas traffic would immediately know that the only access from Main Street onto the Stemmons Freeway, the route the motorcade needed to take to get to the Trade Mart, was to turn right from Main onto Houston Street, then proceed one block to Elm, where a left turn would put the car less than a thousand feet from the Stemmons entrance. If the motorcade proceeded straight along Main Street, it would be forced to cross a concrete divider in order to enter Stemmons. In any case, Main and Elm are parallel roads that run through Dealey Plaza. Both afforded Oswald a clear shot from the Depository. Elm Street provides a direct-line shot, while Main Street provides a longer cross-shot.
* On July 9, 1964, the Warren Commission held a seven-hour executive session with three psychiatrists, Drs. Dale Cameron, Howard Rome, and David Rothstein. The panel of doctors told the Commission that if Marina had treated Oswald with kindness that night, it might have changed his mind about the assassination. As Dr. Cameron said, “I think what Marina had a chance to do unconsciously that night was to veto his plan without ever knowing of its existence, but she didn’t. She really stamped it down hard” (July 9,1964, executive session transcript). The Commission stayed away from the psychiatric conclusions in its final report.