Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (24 page)

The Oswald-impostor idea began in the New York field office of the FBI when they read the report of Fain's April 28 interview with Marguerite. In its May .23 air telegram to Bureau headquarters, the New York field office said this:

She [Marguerite] stated that Lee Oswald had taken his birth certificate with him when he left home. The fact that she had sent three letters to her son in Moscow since 1/22/60, which were returned undelivered, has caused her to fear for his safety.

There appears to be a possibility of locating Lee Oswald outside the USSR at the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland.

Furthermore, since Oswald had his birth certificate in his possession, another individual may have assumed his identity.

The info furnished by Mrs. Oswald may be of interest to the US State Department and it is suggested for the consideration of the Bureau, that a copy of her interview be furnished to the State Department for any action they deem appropriate.28

A handwritten entry on the Bureau copy of the New York telegram indicates that the FBI relayed Fain's report to the State Department on May 24.

The Oswald-impostor thesis led the Bureau to go beyond the advice of its New York field office. On June 3, J. Edgar Hoover sent a letter to the State Department's Office of Security, asking them to look into the matter. "Since there is the possibility that an impostor is using Oswald's birth certificate," Hoover said, "any current information the Department of State has concerning subject [Oswald] will be appreciated."29 Emery J. Adams of the Security Office, presumably after checking with the Passport Office, checked with the Soviet Desk on June 6. "SOV has received no information concerning a possible trip by Subject to Switzerland or the possible use by Subject of his birth certificate," replied D. Anderson of the Soviet Desk.30

Meanwhile, the State Department had sent a short operations memorandum to the American Embassy in Moscow on June 22, saying, "Please inform the Department whether the Embassy has been successful in communicating with Mr. Oswald as requested" in its previous memorandums.31 This seems a bit disingenuous, since we know that the department had already decided against the plan the embassy had proposed, namely, to present letters from Marguerite to her son at the Soviet Foreign Ministry. The same day, V. Hardwood Blocker, deputy director of the Office of Special Consular Services, wrote a perfunctory letter to Mrs. Oswald saying the department had again asked the embassy to send notice "as soon as further information is available."32 Blocker also said, "With regard to your questions about your son's citizenship it will be necessary that they be answered by another office in the Department. Your questions have been referred to the Passport Office for appropriate reply." Like a good little bureaucrat, Blocker had covered all the bases and, at the same time, had accomplished exactly nothing.

On July 6, the embassy in Moscow reminded the State Department of the obvious: that the department had ruled-back on May 10-against the embassy's proposed plan to ask the Soviet Foreign Ministry to help find Oswald. Therefore, the new operations memorandum from Moscow said, "No further action has been taken on this matter by the Embassy, nor has the Embassy received any other communication in the case from the subject [Oswald] or from persons in the United States." The next day, John T. White, chief of the Foreign Operations Division in the State Department's Passport Office, responded to Marguerite's question on Oswald's status as a U.S. citizen.' "The Department presently has no information that the Embassy at Moscow has evidence or record," White said after a long explanation of procedures, "upon which to base the preparation of a certificate of loss of United States nationality in the case of your son under any section of the expatriation laws of the United States." It seems heartless of the State Department to send Marguerite so many letters saying that they had asked this or that of the embassy in Moscow but to repeatedly fail to tell her the results. Neither Mr. Blocker nor anyone else in the State Department told Marguerite that the embassy had found nothing in response to its latest request.

Marguerite wrote back to White on July 16, thanking him for his information.35 Now she posed this question about Lee's U.S. passport: "Would you possibly have information as to what date he applied for his passport and from what city and state?" White looked into the matter simply by acquiring back copies of the memos from Moscow' and those from the State Department.37 "Your son, Lee Harvey Oswald, was issued a passport on September 10, 1959," White wrote to Marguerite on July 21, "at the Passport Agency at Los Angeles, California, upon an application which he executed on September 4, 1959, before a designated officer of the Superior Court at Santa Ana, California.""

There was really nothing more to ask, and this brought to an end the cheerless and unfruitful 1960 string of letters between Marguerite and the State Department on the whereabouts of Lee Harvey Oswald. In fact, all doors seemed to close at once. The marines did their part on August 17, 1960, when Oswald was given an undesirable discharge from the USMC Reserves.39 Professor Casparis in Switzerland closed his part of the story too, sending Marguerite a letter on September 3. Casparis said they had not heard from Oswald and that they were sorry they could not refund his $25 deposit. "We hope that by now you have heard from your son," Professor Casparis closed, "for we can certainly understand your concern about him."40

The impostor issue languished a little longer in the bureaucracy. The FBI's legal attache in Paris was directed to investigate in Switzerland," and the Washington field office opened a file based on the interaction with the State Department Office of Security.42 The Washington office closed its file a month later,43 arguing that it was sufficient that the Dallas office and the Bureau had the case fully covered. The FBI Paris legal attach6 issued interim reports on September 27 and October 12,44 and the question finally met its bureaucratic death with a final report from Paris on November 3, 1960, saying, "If any news should be received by the Albert Schweitzer College in Churwalden [Switzerland] about Lee Harvey Oswald, you will be duly informed."45

Upset about all that had transpired and still without word about the welfare of her son, Marguerite Oswald boarded an airplane for Washington, D.C., on January 26, 1961. There she made a personal trip to the State Department. A 1961 FBI report described the visit this way:

She [Marguerite] advised that she had come to Washington to see what could be done to help her son, the subject. She expressed the thought that perhaps her son had gone to the Soviet Union as a "secret agent" and that the State Department was not doing enough to help him. She was advised that such was not the case and that efforts were being made to help her son.46

"Mrs. Oswald called at the Department," said a Department of State "instruction" airgram to the American Embassy in Moscow on February 1, 1961. "The Embassy is requested to inform the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Mr. Oswald's mother is worried as to his personal safety, and is anxious to hear from him."47

It had taken Marguerite's efforts for an entire year capped by a plane trip to the nation's capital to move the State Department to ask the Soviet Foreign Ministry about Lee Harvey Oswald's whereabouts in Russia. After meetings with Gene Boster, officer in charge of Soviet Affairs, Denman Stanfield of the Office of Consular Service, and Ed Hickey, deputy director of the Passport Department, Marguerite returned to Texas emptyhanded.48 Ironically, during this time Oswald had written to the American Embassy in December, asking to return to America, as we will establish in Chapter 10. However, the KGB intercepted that letter and Oswald wrote the embassy again on February 5, 1961, asking why there had been no response to his first letter. His second letter arrived on Richard Snyder's desk on February 13, 1961, two weeks after Marguerite's visit to Washington.

A week later, the department sent Oswald's address to his mother. Lee had been in Minsk the entire time. He had a boring job in a radio factory but, for the most part, was having a good time falling in and out of love with Russian girls.

In Russia with Love

On January 7, 1960, the Soviet "Red Cross" greeted Lee Harvey Oswald as he arrived at the train station in Minsk,49 the capital of Belorus, also known as White Russia. The Red Cross greeting party for Oswald in Minsk was most likely one more means of keeping a close watch on his activities. Two days earlier, the Red Cross had given Oswald 5,000 rubles, enough to retire his 2,200-ruble hotel debt in Moscow with spending money to spare.SO At the Hotel Minsk, "Rosa and Stellina," two Intourist employees who spoke excellent English, welcomed Oswald. Stellina was in her forties and married with children, but Rosa was "twenty-three, blond, attractive," Oswald wrote in his diary, "we attract each other at once."S1 On January 8, the mayor of Minsk, a "comrade Shrapof," welcomed Oswald to his city, a recognition of special status which undoubtedly pleased the twenty-year-old boy from Texas.S2 Shrapof promised Oswald a rent-free apartment and warned him about " 'uncultured persons' who sometimes insuit foriengers [sic].""

On January 11, Oswald visited the Belorussian radio and television factory, where he met Alexander Ziger, a Polish Jew from Argentina who had arrived in Russia in 1955. For many reasons, not the least of which was his job as a department head at the factory and his command of English, Ziger would become an important influence in Oswald's life. Oswald reported for work at the factory on January 13, after which Ziger and his family became good friends of the American defector.

His assignment to the factory, a major producer of electronic parts and systems with 5,000 employees, disappointed Oswald, who had hoped to continue his "education" in Russia. He was employed in the "experimental shop"' as a lowly "metal worker"55 fashioning parts on a lathe.S6 On the other hand, his income allowed for a relatively luxurious lifestyle. His salary probably varied from 70 to 90 (new) rubles per month ($70-$90),57 normal for factory workers and better than the salaries of many professionals. The Red Cross, however, again added their magic touch, by supplementing his income with an additional 70 (new) rubles per month, bringing his total income up to a level equal to that of the director of the factory.SB

Oswald enjoyed his first months in Minsk, especially after work, when he studied Russian under the tutelage of the attractive blond Intourist guide, Rosa.S9 Oswald did not like the big picture of Lenin looking down at him at work, and was less than enthusiastic about "compulsory" physical training every morning-"shades of H. G. Wells!!" he wrote in his diary. On the other hand, there was Rosa. "At night I take Rosa to theater, movie, or operor [opera] almost every day," he wrote, "I'm living very big and am very satisfied."' Oswald soon had Russian friends his own age, like Pavil Golova- chov,61 and lost interest in Rosa when he noticed one of Ziger's two daughters, Anita, about whom he put this entry in his diary: "20, very gay, not so attractive, but we hit it off."6Z

Oswald's relationship with Anita Ziger did not develop because she already had a Hungarian boyfriend named Alfred, and Oswald found Anita's twenty-six-year-old sister, Leonara, "too old." During the spring and summer of 1960, however, more than Oswald's love life began to stall. After a May Day party at the Ziger's house, he wrote this in his diary: "Ziger advises me to go back to USA. Its the first voice of opposition I have heard. I respect Ziger, he has seen the world. He says many things, and relat[e]s many things I do not know about the USSR. I begin to feel uneasy inside, its true!"63

In June he met an attractive girl named Ella German who encouraged his interest but refused his sexual advances. Oswald obtained a hunting license in June, and in July, permission to have a 16-gauge shotgun, both privileges not usually accorded to foreigners.64 However, his hunting hobby and his interest in Ella did little to reverse his growing pessimism about life in Russia. His diary entry for "Aug-Sept" 1960 has this note:

As my Russian improves I become increasingly con[s]cious of just what sort of a sociaty [society] I live in. Mass gymnastics, compulsory after work meeting[s], usually political information meeting[s]. Compulsory attendance at lectures and the sending of the entire shop collective (except me) to pick potatoes on a Sunday, at a State collective farm. A "patriotic duty" to bring in the harvest. The opions [opinions] of the workers (unvoiced) are that its a real pain in the neck. They don't seem to be especially enthusiastic about any of the "collective" duties [-] a natural feeling."

As his early enthusiasm for Russia diminished, his attention focused on Ella German. Ella was a coworker at the factory and, as the weeks rolled by, Oswald became increasingly interested in her. "I noticed her," Oswald later wrote, "and perhaps fell in love with her, the first minute I saw her."'

Oswald was not a bad catch-from a young Russian girl's point of view. More noteworthy than his extra income was his apartment with a balcony overlooking the river for which he paid just 60 rubles a month.67 He describes it in his diary as "a Russian dream." Russian workers typically had to wait for several years for similar accommodations. But Oswald's relationship with Ella did not culminate in sex, as had those with other Russian girls. It is possible that this made Ella more of a challenge to Oswald, who spent New Year's Day at Ella's home with her family.

A crucial moment had arrived. After an appropriate amount of eating and drinking-to the point that Oswald says he was "drunk and happy"-Ella accompanied him back to his apartment. During the walk back Oswald proposed to Ella, but she did not respond. The following night on the way back to her home from the movies Oswald again proposed marriage, this time on Ella's front doorstep. She turned him down cold this time. She did not love him, she said, and was afraid to marry an American. Oswald was angry-"too stunned to think," he wrote later. He decided that Ella had been primarily interested in arousing the envy of other girls at her having an American as an escort. It was nevertheless a blow to Oswald's ego, and his disenchantment with Russia became linked to Ella's failure to love him.