The Kennedy Half-Century (106 page)

79
. Telephone interviews with Mal Couch, March 21 and 23, 2011.

80
. Gary Mack, the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, told me that “Seymour Weitzman is almost certainly the man Mal Couch saw.” But Weitzman gave the Warren Commission two seemingly contradictory accounts. As noted in the text, Weitzman said “somebody brought me a piece of what he thought to be a firecracker and it [supposedly] turned out to be … a portion of the president’s skull.” But when asked if he was the one who had picked up the skull fragment off the street, Weitzman replied, “Yes.” E-mail from Gary Mack, June 10, 2011.

81
. From the transcript of Weitzman’s testimony, available at
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/weitzman.htm
 [accessed January 3, 2013]. Also, e-mail from Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum, Dallas, June 10, 2011. Mack notes, “Amateur photographer Jack Daniel, who filmed the motorcade from the other side of the triple underpass, also saw it happen after walking into the Plaza shortly after [the picking up of the skull fragment].”

82
.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/weitzman.htm
 [accessed August 3, 2011].

83
. Thomas Sills, Jr., for example, watched the parade from the corner of Main and Houston. During a 2008 interview, Stephen Fagin of the Sixth Floor Museum asked Sills how many shots he had heard. “I’m gonna say three,” he replied. “You know, that’s what I remember. I was nine years old and like I said. I mean, it could’ve maybe even been just two, but I didn’t hear more than three.” Fagin: “When you described it a few minutes ago, you only mentioned two shots.” Sills: “Yeah.” Fagin: “Saying ‘three,’ does that maybe come from the things you’ve read later?” Sills: “It might’ve, it might have …” Interview with Thomas Sills, Jr., June 30, 2008, conducted by Stephen Fagin, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas.

84
. For example, see the interviews conducted with Ernest Brandt, May 12, 1994, and John Templin, July 28, 1995, both conducted by Bob Porter, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas. Brandt and Templin did not come forward as witnesses until 1993. They claim they fled the scene before police could interview them on 11/22/63. Brandt says he is visible in the Zapruder film, wearing a hat, and maybe he is—but it is impossible to tell for sure since so many men were wearing hats (the fashion of the time), and the hats obscure many faces. Both men have detailed accounts about what happened, though they differ on key particulars, such as the number of shots and where they came from. Keep in mind they were supposedly standing next to one another—which could again demonstrate just how confusing the scene and acoustics were in Dealey Plaza.

85
. Personal interview with Jim Leavelle, March 17, 2011, Dallas, Texas. Americans who came of age in the late 1960s will recognize this phenomenon as the “Woodstock syndrome.” Many more people have claimed to have been at this ultimate music extravaganza, held in Woodstock, New York, in August 1969, than could actually have attended it.

8. 11/22/63: QUESTIONS, ANSWERS, MYSTERIES

1
. The Dallas district attorney’s office actually told one Dallas reporter late on 11/22 that the assassination was carried out “in furtherance of an international Communist conspiracy.”

2
. Like many who have lived or studied the confusing saga of November 22, Aynesworth appears to have changed his mind, or at least experienced a moment of doubt, since my last interview with him. In March 2013 he told a reporter that Oswald may indeed have received training and aid from Soviet agents. See Michael E. Young, “Gary Mack and the Evolution of a JFK Conspiracy Theorist,”
Dallas Morning News
, March 2, 2013,
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/explore/20130302-gary-mack-and-the-evolution-of-a-jfk-conspiracy-theorist.ece
 [accessed March 5, 2013].

3
. Interview with Hugh Aynesworth, March 18, 2011, Dallas, Texas..

4
. Said Robert Oswald, “I don’t know at what age Mother verbalized to Lee to the effect that she felt he was a burden to her. Certainly by age three, he had the sense that, you know, we were a burden.” See the transcript of “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?”
Frontline
, PBS, November 16, 1993, available online at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/1205.html
 [accessed August 5, 2011].

5
. “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 1: Summary and Conclusions,” pages 9–11, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-1.html
 [accessed April 27, 2011].

6
. Not everyone agrees that Oswald was a good shot. Ernst Titovets, one of Oswald’s closest friends during his time in the Soviet Union, says that the American defector mishandled a small-bore pistol during a firing demonstration at the Minsk radio factory. “[Oswald] took aim and fired five shots. All bullets went wide, randomly scattering.” See Ernst Titovets,
Oswald Russian Episode
(Minsk: Mon Litera Publishing House, 2010), 53–54. On the other hand, the Warren Commission took testimony from a father and son who saw Oswald practicing at a firing range with his rifle on the weekend before the assassination: “Sterling [Wood and his father] observed that Oswald fired approximately 8 to 10 rounds and that each time he was careful in ejecting the hulls, that they were caught in his hand and put into his pocket … [T]hey also looked at Oswald’s target and both concurred that he did some good shooting since all the rounds fired except one hit the bull’s eye.” See Warren Commission Hearings, vol. XXIV, CE 2003, pp. 202–3, Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=144502
 [accessed October 9, 2012] and Bill O’Reilly with Martin Dugard,
Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot
(New York: Henry Holt, 2012), 240–42.

7
. Gerald Posner,
Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
(New York: Anchor Books, 1994), 20–29; Michael L. Kurtz,
The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 143–44; Anthony Summers,
The Kennedy Conspiracy
(London: Sphere Books, 1989), 93–94.

8
. Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 94–95.

9
. Posner,
Case Closed
, 31–32; Kurtz,
JFK Assassination Debates
, 144; “One-of-a-Kind Lee Harvey Oswald Signed Application to Albert Schweitzer College—Upon Acceptance to the Swiss College, He Defected to the U.S.S.R.,” Nate D. Sanders Auctions website,
http://www.natedsanders.com/ItemInfo.asp?ItemID=32849
 [accessed May 12, 2011].

10
. Posner,
Case Closed
, 32–33; Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 102–3.

11
. John Newman,
Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK
(New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2008), 3–6; “Report on Lee Harvey Oswald,” Segregated CIA Collection, Record Group 233, Box 98, Folder “Investigation of JFK Assassination Performance of the Intelligence Agencies,” Archives II, College Park, MD.

12
. “Ex-Marine Asks Soviet Citizenship,”
Washington Post and Times Herald
, November 1, 1959.

13
. Some assassination researchers/conspiracy theorists, including Anthony Summers and Jim Marrs, think that Nosenko lied about his relationship with Oswald. James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s counterintelligence czar, did not believe that Nosenko was a legitimate defector and more likely was a double agent. Nosenko failed two lie detector tests, although both of these tests were administered while he was being tortured by the CIA. Nosenko passed a third polygraph exam in 1968 which included questions about Oswald. Nosenko’s timely—some said convenient—defection right after the assassination allowed the government to rule out a KGB role in the assassination. Angleton suspected that the KGB had planted Nosenko for this very purpose. By contrast, the FBI believed that Nosenko was a legitimate defector. According to Summers, the FBI considered Nosenko a “godsend” because he could “quash allegations that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had failed to expose a dangerous Communist agent.” Adding to the intrigue, Richard Helms, the CIA’s deputy director for planning, persuaded the Warren Commission to ignore Nosenko. According to author Michael Kurtz, Helms lied to Earl Warren about Nosenko’s value “because
he feared that allowing Nosenko to testify before the Warren Commission would tarnish the agency’s image.” See Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 132, and Kurtz,
JFK Assassination Debates
, 148. This is a strange, tangled, murky episode—a classic bureaucratic skirmish between the FBI and the CIA that took precedence over the Warren Commission’s mandate to tell Americans the truth about the assassination. The only thing clear about it is that the CIA won the dispute, since Nosenko’s name appears nowhere in the Warren Commission report or the volumes of information accompanying it. This is yet another example of the commission’s failure to tell the full story behind the assassination—and the CIA’s determination to deny the commission information vital to its investigation.

14
. In January 1961, Soviet passport officials in Minsk met with Oswald and asked whether he still wanted Soviet citizenship. Oswald later wrote: “I say no[,] simply extend my residential passport … and my document is extended unitll [
sic
] Jan 4. 1962.” Vincent Bugliosi,
Reclaiming History
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 592–604.

15
. “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives,” page 392, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html#defection
 [accessed April 29, 2011]; Posner,
Case Closed
, 43–51; Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 136; telephone interview with Gary Powers, Jr., February 14, 2011.

16
. Telephone interview with Gary Powers, Jr., February 14, 2011. Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum, told me that he is skeptical of Powers’s account, since “no one has ever found such a news story in any print or broadcast form.” E-mail from Gary Mack, June 15, 2012.

17
. I was not able to find any national TV news stories aired at that time that included Oswald. However, Oswald was filmed by two television cameramen in New Orleans as part of his advocacy on behalf of Castro’s Cuba. There is a possibility, however remote, that this local footage was distributed more widely. A more plausible explanation, however, is that Powers saw Oswald’s picture in a newspaper and later misremembered seeing it on TV, since Oswald was the subject of numerous pre-11/22 newspaper stories. See “Young Ex-Marine Asks to Be Russian Citizen,”
Oakland Tribune
, October 31, 1959, p. 1; “Ex-Marine Requests Citizenship,”
New York Times
, November 1, 1959, p. 3; “Texan in Russia: He Wants to Stay,”
Dallas Morning News
, November 1, 1959, sec. 1, p. 9; “Brother Tries to Telephone, Halt Defector,”
Oakland Tribune
, November 2, 1959, p. 8; “U.S. Boy Prefers Russia,”
Syracuse Herald-Journal
, December 11, 1959, p. 46; “Third Yank Said Quitting Soviet Union,”
San Mateo Times
, June 8, 1962, p. 8; “Marine Returning,”
Lima News
, June 9, 1962, p. 1.

18
. Marina’s comment has raised questions about whether Oswald received language training from an intelligence agency. Gary Mack says he interviewed Marina and asked her if Oswald had ever flubbed a Russian sentence. Mack: “Did he ever say anything to you like ‘My, that’s a lovely chair you’re wearing?’” Mack says Marina laughed at his question and insisted that Lee had never made such an obvious gaffe. She did confirm, however, that his dialect resembled those of the northern Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia). In 1992 Marina told Gerald Posner that people from the Baltic states “speak with accents and do not speak [fluent] Russian.” Earlier, she told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that Baltic residents “don’t speak Russian very well” and “have different nationalities than Russians.” Personal interview with Gary Mack, February 22, 2011; Posner,
Case Closed
, 64.

19
. “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives,” page 393–94, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html#defection
 [accessed May 2, 2011]; Posner,
Case Closed
, 55 and 66–74; Jim Marrs,
Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 1989), 124–25.

20
. On June 13, 1962, Lee, Marina, and their four-month-old daughter arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey. They were met by INS inspector Frederick Wiedersheim and Spas Raikin of the Traveler’s Aid Society. Oswald was disappointed that the press had not turned out to interview him. Raikin put the couple in touch with the New York City Department of Welfare, which provided them with temporary housing at a Times Square hotel. Lee borrowed money from his brother Robert and flew his family from New York to Dallas. When Lee arrived at Love Field, he was again disappointed that there were no reporters on hand. He and Marina moved in with Robert’s family and stayed for several weeks. Bugliosi,
Reclaiming History
, 638–44.