The Kennedy Half-Century (107 page)

21
. John M. Whitten, “First Draft of Initial Report on GPFLOOR Case,” Record Group 263, Box 17, Folder “OSW10:V10B,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland.

22
. “Memorandum for the Record: [CIA] Meeting With HSCA Staffers,” June 29, 1978, Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=49667&relPageId=6
 [accessed February 29, 2012].

23
. Thomas B. Casasin to Walter P. Haltigan, November 25, 1963, Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=248348
 [accessed February 29, 2012].

24
. Newman,
Oswald and the CIA
, 151–52; Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 149; confidential cable from Edward L. Freers, U.S. embassy in Moscow, to the U.S. State Department, November 2, 1959,
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/pdf/WH18_CE_908.pdf
 [accessed September 23, 2011].

25
. The exact Sicilian translation is “this thing of ours.”

26
. See Don Bohning,
The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959–65
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005); Marifeli Pérez-Stable,
The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy
, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Aviva Chomsky,
A History of the Cuban Revolution
(Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

27
. In another odd twist, CIA director George H. W. Bush wrote de Mohrenschildt a letter in September 1976 in response to a complaint from de Mohrenchildt that he was still being targeted by federal agencies because of his friendship with Oswald. Bush reported that he had found no evidence to justify the grievance.

28
. Gerald Blaine, one of the Secret Service agents assigned to the Kennedy detail, also thinks that Oswald would have been a poor choice for a group plotting a political assassination: “[He] had an overwhelming need for recognition. This is the story of most assassins. He also had a personality that would prevent him [from] talking to someone over five minutes without totally alienating them. This would make anyone leery of using him as a conspiracy partner.” E-mail from Gerald Blaine, January 9, 2013.

29
. Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 151–72; Newman,
Oswald and the CIA
, 276–79. De Mohrenschildt was the recipient of an inscribed copy of one of the famous photos of Lee Oswald holding a rifle in the spring of 1963. The photo only became publicly known after
de Mohrenschildt killed himself in 1977, when his testimony was being sought by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. It is not clear why de Mohrenschildt committed suicide or whether he received the photo from Lee Oswald or from Marina.

30
. The Paines separated in 1962 and were divorced on May 4, 1970, in Dallas. Apparently, the couple reconciled for a brief period following the assassination (see Ruth Hyde Paine’s testimony before the Warren Commission, March 21, 1964, vol. 9, p. 353), but the marriage ultimately disintegrated.

31
. James W. Douglass,
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 169–70; Posner,
Case Closed
, 110; “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives,” pp. 416–18, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html
 [accessed May 4, 2011].

32
. You can see all three Oswald gun photos at
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/backyard-photos.html
. Marina’s comments on the “backyard photos” appear at
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/oswald_m1.htm
 [accessed January 3, 2013].

33
. Similar actions have been taken by other violence-prone individuals. For example, Seung-Hui Cho, the student who killed thirty-two people at Virginia Tech in April 2007, took a photo of himself just before going on a rampage that ended with his own suicide. The print shows Cho wearing a black T-shirt and ammunition vest while holding two automatic pistols. See Mike Nizza, “Seung-Hui Cho: Who Is This Man?”
New York Times
, August 30, 2007,
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/seung-hui-cho-who-is-this-man/
 [accessed May 5, 2011].

34
. “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 4: The Assassin,” pp. 183–87, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html
#walker [accessed May 5, 2011]; Posner,
Case Closed
, 97–106.

35
. On page 249 of the 2002 “Robert Welch University” edition of
The Politician
, the John Birch Society’s Robert Welch makes the following claim regarding Eisenhower: “The role he has played, as described in all the pages above, would fit just as well into one theory as the other; that he is a mere stooge, or that he is a Communist …” The most common defamatory quote regarding Eisenhower attributed to Birchers is the phrase “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy,” which you can view at
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/02/farright-john-birch-society-2010.html
 [accessed October 31, 2012].

36
. It is unclear whether Oswald hated Kennedy. During a radio debate with an anti-Castro Cuban named Carlos Bringuier (discussed later in this chapter), Oswald was asked if he agreed with Fidel Castro’s description of JFK as a “ruffian and a thief.” “I would not agree with that … particular wording,” he replied. “However, I and the … Fair Play for Cuba Committee does [
sic
] think that the United States government through certain agencies, mainly the State Department and the CIA, have made monumental mistakes in its relations with Cuba.” “Lengthy Teletype of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald Debate with Comments on President Kennedy—Only Three Months Before Oswald Assassinated Kennedy,” Nate D. Sanders Auctions website,
http://natedsanders.com/ItemInfo.asp?ItemID=30696
 [accessed May 12, 2011]. Vincent Bugliosi, however, theorizes that Oswald may have been jealous of Kennedy since Marina once described him as “very attractive” and thought that
one of her ex-boyfriends bore a resemblance to the president. Bugliosi,
Reclaiming History
, 711. See also Priscilla Johnson McMillan,
Marina and Lee
(New York: Random House, 1980), 410–13.

37
. Bugliosi,
Reclaiming History
, 671–73; interview with Volkmar Schmidt, January 1995, conducted by William E. Kelly,
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html
 [accessed May 5, 2011].

38
. Ken Holmes, a Dallas resident who has been investigating 11/22 for decades, says that the car belonged to one of Walker’s bodyguards. Holmes also says that Walker—who was indisputably on a plane traveling from New Orleans to Shreveport when he heard that Kennedy had been shot—stood up and told his fellow passengers, “I’m General Edwin A. Walker, and I want you to see where I’m at.” Walker realized instantly that he could use an alibi. Personal interview with Ken Holmes, January 14, 2011, Dallas, Texas.

39
. According to Dallas officer Jim Leavelle, Marina Oswald kept the Walker note to hold over her husband’s head and deter him from further violence, and he promised “not to do any more of that silliness.” Personal interview with Leavelle, April 8, 2011, Dallas, Texas. In recent years, Marina Oswald appears to have become less reliable and more inclined to change her story, but for the months after the assassination, it seems probable that she told the truth to the authorities as she remembered it—and the memories were fresh.

40
. “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 4: The Assassin,” pp. 183–87, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html
 #walker [accessed May 5, 2011]; Mark Lane,
Rush to Judgment
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), 349–50;
JFK
, special edition DVD, directed by Oliver Stone (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 1997). Robert Frazier, the FBI ballistics expert who worked on the Walker case, was “unable to reach a conclusion” as to whether the bullet found in Walker’s home had come from the rifle discovered on the sixth floor of the Book Depository. However, Frazier did say that “the general rifling characteristics of the rifle … are of the same type as those found on the bullet … and, further, on this basis … the bullet could have been fired from the rifle on the basis of its land and groove impressions.”

41
. “Testimony of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald Resumed,” Warren Commission Hearings, vol. V, pp. 387–91, History Matters website,
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh5/html/WC_Vol5_0199a.htm
 [accessed December 20, 2012].

42
. This behavior by Oswald is oddly predictive of two future assassins: Arthur Bremer, who shot George Wallace in 1972 after first stalking President Nixon, and John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in 1981 after initially targeting President Carter. See “Portrait of an Assassin: Arthur Bremer,” PBS American Experience,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/sfeature/assasin.html
 [accessed December 20, 2012], and Del Quentin Wilber,
Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan
(New York: Henry Holt, 2011).

43
. Telephone interview with Wesley Buell Frazier, April 16, 2013.

44
. The SV T-1 story comes from John Davis’s
Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Signet, 1989), 133–37. SV T-1 was a businessman from Darien, Georgia, who supposedly met with two of his business associates (Salvadore Pizza and Benny Capeana) at a restaurant owned by Marcello. During the dinner, SV T-1 saw a man he believed to be the restaurant’s owner passing a wad of cash to a man whom SV T-1 later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald. SV T-1 told his story to a police officer named
Johnny Harris. Davis lists his sources as “Interview of Joseph Albert Poretto by Special Agent Reed Jensen. Dictated 11/27/63. Interview of Mrs. Ella Frabbiele by Special Agent Reed Jensen. Dictated 11/27/63. Interview of Anthony Marcello by Special Agent Reed Jensen. Dictated 11/27/63.” But when I looked at the original transcripts of these interviews on a respected independent website, they told a completely different story. Anthony Marcello, one of the managers of the restaurant/motel in question and brother of Carlos Marcello, told the FBI’s Jensen that he had never seen Oswald or Ruby at his establishment. Poretto and Ella Frabbiele, a cashier at the restaurant, told Jensen the same thing—neither of them had seen Oswald at the restaurant or anyone who even resembled Oswald. See the Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=56999&relPageId=61
,
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/show Doc.do?absPageId=673595&imageOnly=true
, and
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=673594&imageOnly=true
 [accessed September 27, 2011].

45
. The timeline is as follows: Oswald handed out flyers at the Dumaine Street Wharf on June 16. He was fired from the Reily Company on June 19. He walked into a store owned by an anti-Castro Cuban on August 5, pretending to be anti-Castro himself. The store owner and his associates confronted Oswald on August 9, leading to a scuffle. Oswald appeared in court on August 12, pled guilty, and paid a $10 fine. Johann Rush, a cameraman for WDSU-TV, filmed Oswald as he was coming down the steps of the courthouse building. On August 13, the
Times-Picayune
ran a short article entitled “Pamphlet Case Sentence Given.” Oswald handed out pamphlets again on August 16 in front of the International Trade Mart. WDSU-TV and WWL-TV aired brief news footage of the event. Bill Stuckey, a young reporter who hosted a radio program called “The Latin Listening Post,” interviewed Oswald on August 17. Stuckey was so pleased with the interview that he invited Oswald to return on August 21 for a debate with two prominent anti-Castro Cubans. Oswald was caught off guard when Stuckey asked him about his undesirable discharge from the Marines and Russian defection. Posner,
Case Closed
, 131–61.

46
. Davis,
Mafia Kingfish
, 135–37; Posner,
Case Closed
, 121–30; “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives,” pp. 406–7, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html#attack
 [accessed May 6, 2011]; Mark North,
Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991), 276–77.

47
. During this same period, Oswald accepted an invitation from his cousin, Eugene Murret, to give a brief speech on life in the Soviet Union at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. Murret was at Spring Hill studying to become a Jesuit priest. According to Murret, Oswald addressed twenty students, plus two priests, and said that he had become disillusioned with life in the USSR after realizing that the Soviet people were “dominated by roughnecks.” In addition, Murret remembered that Oswald “was very vague about his leaving Russia to return to the United States.” See the Warren Commission Report, vol. XXV, exhibit 2649, pp. 920–22.