Reclaiming History (134 page)

Oswald was also, however, trying to cope with a dose of the clap. On September 16, just after embarking from Atsugi for Taiwan on September 14, he had reported to sick bay with a discharge and slight burning sensation in the urethra. The doctor took a smear, and the official diagnosis was that organisms were detected “resembling neisseria gonococci” (almost certainly gonorrhea, a disease that was nearly a rite of passage for millions of young men in those years), and that Oswald had “urethritis, acute, due to gonococcus” with a “slight discharge and a stinging sensation on urination.” The origin was listed, strangely, as “in line of duty [in line of duty?], not due to own misconduct.” But the Marine captain who interpreted Oswald’s medical record on this matter for the Warren Commission was unable, either because of his lack of knowledge or the ambiguity of the records, to explicitly tell the Commission whether or not Oswald had actually contracted gonorrhea, though he said, “We
assume
he had gonorrhea,” and Oswald was given antibiotics for gonorrhea.
³³⁹
The infection was tenacious, resisting treatment by several different antibiotics,
³⁴⁰
and it is probable the doctor thought that Oswald would get better care in a hospital in Japan than could be provided in what was a very hastily assembled temporary camp in Taiwan.

The day after Oswald’s arrival back at Atsugi from Taiwan on October 5, he was assigned to “Sub-Unit 1” of MAG-11, apparently a rear guard unit that had not gone with the rest of the squadron to Taiwan, and the following day Oswald entered the Atsugi Station Hospital, where he remained from October 7 to October 13 to receive treatment for his gonorrhea.
³⁴¹

Two weeks later he departed Yokosuka, on November 2, aboard the USS
Barrett
, and arrived in San Francisco on November 15. His tour of foreign duty was over.
³⁴²
He had about a year left to serve on his enlistment, but he had already hatched a new plan, one in accordance with his brother Robert’s perception of him: try a job, fail, do something dramatic. He was planning to defect to the Soviet Union.

I
n November of 1959, when he had been in Moscow for several weeks, Oswald told journalist Priscilla Johnson McMillan, “For two years I have been waiting to do this one thing”—that is, to defect.
³⁴³
Two years before that date he was still with his unit in the Philippines, and even if the plan began in fantasy, he had plenty of time to brood over it, particularly during his weeks in the brig. McMillan says that he also told Marina that he had been exposed to Soviet propaganda in Japan, both in the form of people who were pro-Soviet and in Soviet magazines. “Soviet propaganda,” he would tell Marina, “works well.”
³⁴⁴

Though he may have begun laying his plans to defect while still in Japan, he kept the fact well to himself. Four days after he arrived in San Francisco for processing at the receiving station, he went on leave, taking a bus to Fort Worth. Again he stayed with Marguerite but spent a lot of time at Robert and Vada’s place on Davenport Street. He had just missed seeing his half brother John Pic and his family, who about a month earlier had passed through Fort Worth on their way to John’s new duty station in Japan.
³⁴⁵
It had been six years since he had last seen John in New York, and it would be another three before the three brothers would be together again.

The vacation was uneventful, and Lee apparently revealed nothing of his new cast of mind to his brother. He visited the farm at least twice and hunted squirrels and rabbits with a .22 rifle. Three days before Christmas, 1958, Lee arrived at his new duty station in El Toro, California. Lee’s new unit, Marine Air Control Squadron No. 9 (MACS-9), was attached to the Third Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro.
³⁴⁶
He had once been stationed briefly at El Toro while awaiting transfer to Japan, but this time he went back to work in his specialty, aircraft surveillance, as an aviation electronics operator (“scope dope”), to use the jargon of the era.
³⁴⁷
His actual duty station was an old blimp base, LTA (Lighter Than Air), under the administration of El Toro but about ten miles away in Santa Ana. Fixed-wing aircraft flew out of El Toro, while the old LTA base was now being used principally by helicopters, which were housed in two of the largest wooden hangars ever constructed.
³⁴⁸
Oswald’s work there was the same as his work in Japan, with the significant difference being that no one expected enemy planes to penetrate the airspace of sprawling, wealthy, conservative Orange County, which bridged the tract home suburbs of San Diego to the south and Los Angeles to the north. With the exception of a few days when his squadron was sent to Yuma on the Arizona-California border for air defense exercises, Oswald would serve out the remainder of his enlistment at Santa Ana.
³⁴⁹

It was deadly boring duty. “All we did was look at radar screens,” a fellow marine named Mack Osborne commented. “It was the sort of work a left-handed monkey could do…The only thing to do at that base was to play around.”
³⁵⁰

It was clear to all of his mates that Oswald was now concentrating on learning Russian—he would sit in his room for hours on end poring over Russian newspapers bought in Los Angeles and a Russian-English dictionary,
³⁵¹
but when he took the Marine Corps proficiency test in Russian on February 25, 1959, less than two months after his arrival, he scored a minus 5 on understanding, which meant he got five more answers wrong than he got right; 4 on reading, four more answers right than wrong; and 3 on writing. His composite score for the entire test was 2. His marks were rated as “poor” in all categories.
³⁵²
However, since the test was designed to assess the proficiency of native speakers and students at the military’s rigorous language schools, and Oswald had apparently acquired the language entirely on his own, his grades were not that bad. He apparently had the rudiments of the language and a base on which to build. It was also apparent that he must have been studying for some time before he arrived in Santa Ana, mainly in Japan. “I remember that Oswald could speak a little Russian,” says Paul Murphy, who served with Oswald at Atsugi.
³⁵³
Most of the marines who knew him at Santa Ana were aware of—and amused or even awed by—his studies and predilection. They often kidded him, calling him “Oswaldovich,” and he enjoyed it, answering their questions with “
da
” and “
nyet
” and addressing them as “comrade,”
³⁵⁴
while at the same time referring, seriously, to “American capitalist warmongers.”
³⁵⁵
Oswald took it in good humor when some of the guys accused him of being a Russian spy.
³⁵⁶
When he and Richard Call played chess, Oswald always took the red chessmen because he said he preferred the “red army.”
³⁵⁷
On the other hand, one of Oswald’s superior officers said he never heard Oswald “confess” to being a Communist or say he “thought about being a Communist.”
³⁵⁸
*
Many of the men who served with Oswald at LTA Santa Ana recalled a Russian-language paper Oswald read, and one was certain that Oswald read the American Communist Party paper, the
Daily Worker
.
³⁵⁹

According to Epstein, Oswald subscribed to a Russian-language newspaper as well as the
People’s World
—a publication of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party—and the arrival of the papers caused consternation in the mailroom. When mail clerks brought it to the attention of Captain Robert E. Block, the operations officer, Block asked Oswald about it. Oswald blithely explained that he was merely carrying out Marine Corps policy of getting to know the enemy. Block knew he was being conned but didn’t make an issue of it.
³⁶⁰
The only conclusion one can come to is that Oswald’s Marine superiors, in never curtailing or giving Oswald any trouble over his Soviet affinity, must have concluded that the lowly, eccentric private, on his way out of the military anyway, could not possibly be a security risk. Besides, Oswald wasn’t being secretive. He was advertising his pro-Soviet sentiments.

On March 9, Oswald was promoted back to private first class, the appointment retroactive to the first of that month,
³⁶¹
but it seems not to have encouraged him to make a fresh start in the corps. Although he would attract no further disciplinary action, the unofficial record is strewn with instances of his wiseguy attitude, almost always accompanied by pursed lips and a petulant expression on his face that people up until his death often referred to as a smirk. He frequently baited his superiors (noncommissioned officers and officers) by asking them questions on foreign affairs about which he already knew they were uninformed, all to demonstrate he knew more than they did; was deliberately sloppy, including not shining his shoes; would sleep late; wear his hat as low over his head as possible to avoid having to look at anyone; and engage in other acts of recalcitrance and rebellion against an existence in the Marines he analogized to being like George Orwell’s
1984
with its mythical leader Big Brother.
³⁶²
Oswald’s marks for conduct and proficiency continued to hover during this period barely at the threshold of acceptability.
³⁶³

That spring a young officer, Lieutenant John E. Donovan, joined Oswald’s radar squadron. Donovan was a 1956 graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, a background that attracted Oswald’s interest. Donovan often chatted with Oswald, especially on long night-watches, when they had to stay on duty until the last plane came in, often with little to do but talk. Donovan thought Oswald competent in all the jobs he was called on to do—surveilling unidentified aircraft or planes in distress, plotting on the board, relaying information to air force and navy radar sites, et cetera—and he did not hesitate to let Oswald serve as crew chief when neither of the two sergeants normally entrusted with that responsibility were available. He also found Oswald fairly bright and surprisingly well versed in foreign affairs, and Oswald would take great pride in his ability to mention not only the leader of a country but five or six subordinates in that country who held positions of importance. Donovan was less impressed by Oswald’s knowledge of philosophy, although he knew many philosophers’ names. “It was obvious,” Donovan said, “that he often knew the names and that was it.” Donovan was also aware of Oswald’s high opinion of himself and his sense of grievance that the Marine Corps did not recognize his talent, even without the magic college degree, and place him in a position of prominence in the corps. “There is something wrong,” he told Donovan, “when I have more intelligence and more knowledge” than the men “that are leading us.” Donovan suggested that if Lee felt he had the necessary qualities—and Donovan seemed to think he had—that he put in for noncommissioned officer leadership school, or even leave the corps, get a commission as an officer, and reenter the service.
³⁶⁴

Donovan said that Oswald played end on the squadron football team and would quite often argue with the quarterback in a huddle as to what play should be called. Some of the players reported to Donovan that if a play was called that was not to Oswald’s liking, he would slack off on that play. Because he was not getting along with the other players, Donovan had to drop Oswald from the team.
³⁶⁵

Another marine, Nelson Delgado, also saw Oswald in heated discussions with officers. “He didn’t like the immediate people over him…All of them weren’t as intelligent as he was in his estimation,” Delgado recalled. “They’d be talking about…politics, which came up quite frequently during the break…and I would say…Oswald had them stumped about four out of five times. They just ran out of words, they couldn’t come back, you know…He thought himself quite proficient with current events and politics…He used to cut up anyone who was high-ranking, and make himself come out top dog.”

Delgado, who said Oswald always had a “very sarcastic sneer” on his face, also noticed that Oswald was a poor loser. “Whenever he got in a conversation that wasn’t going his way he would just get mad, he’d just walk off, you know, and leave.” When Warren Commission counsel asked Delgado if he spotted “any homosexual tendencies” in Oswald, Delgado responded, “No, never once…In fact we had two fellows in our outfit that were caught at it, and he [Oswald] thought it was kind of disgusting that they were in the same outfit with us.”
³⁶⁶

Delgado told the Warren Commission that “anything, anything that [Oswald’s superiors] told him to do, he found a way to argue it to a point where both him and the man giving him the order both got disgusted and mad at each other…For him there was always another way of doing things.”

Question: “He didn’t take too well to orders that were given to him?”

“No, he didn’t.”
³⁶⁷

In addition to reading
Mein Kampf
and
Das Kapital
, Oswald told Delgado about this other unnamed book he was reading, one that provided one of the few lighthearted moments at the hearings of the Warren Commission. Delgado told an amused Wesley Liebeler, who was questioning him, that the book was “about a farm, and about how all the animals take over and make the farmer work for them. It’s really a weird book, the way he was explaining it to me, and that struck me as kind of funny. But he told me the farmer represented the imperialistic world, and the animals were the workers, symbolizing that they are the socialist people, you know, and that eventually it will come about that the socialists will have the imperialists working for them.”