I Am A Patsy! I Am A Patsy!
		    by George De Mohrenschildt
		      edited by David Reitzes
		               1998






Editor's Note:

This is the manuscript that George De Mohrenschildt was writing at the time 
of his death. It has never been published, but the House Select Committee on 
Assassinations reproduced De Mohrenschildt's original typewritten manuscript
photographically in the twelfth volume of the Hearings appendices.(It's also
available for downloading at Deanie Richards' JFK Place.) 
It is not presented to support John Armstrong's theory, which it doesn't, 
particularly, but to offer an unconventional look at Oswald -- Harvey 
Oswald in Armstrong's narrative -- from a sympathetic point of view.

It has been edited for spelling and grammar, and occasionally copyedited
for clarity. The author's meaning has in no instance been altered, nor
has material been deleted, and only in rare cases rearranged for the
sake of form. Readers familiar with the original may be dismayed by the
lack of European flavor left in the writing. My intention was to present
the manuscript in as "professional" a form as possible without making
the sort of structural changes for which an editor would normally be
responsible; it has not, therefore, been "edited" in a professional
sense. Nevertheless, it should not be quoted for evidentiary purposes,
and pagination has not been maintained for consistency of source
citations. For the sake of Internet distribution, control characters
have been omitted, and author's emphasis is indicated with capital
letters in lieu of italics. The editor does not endorse the factual
accuracy of the material.


Preface in Haiti

I am a patsy! I am a patsy! These last words of my friend, Lee Harvey
Oswald still ring in my ears and make me think of the terrible injustice
inflicted on the memory of this "supposed assassin."

November 1963 was fairly uneventful in Haiti-no shootings and no
invasions. My young geologist Alston Boyd and I had worked in our office
located on Avenue Truman in the center of Port-au-Prince. Since we
started very early in the morning to avoid the infernal daily heat, our
daily chores were over at 2 pm. This office occupied a large room of a
Quonset building belonging to the Haitian government and we were kept
there virtually incommunicado since it contained government maps and
other "strategic information."

Alston and I drove to my house overlooking Port-au-Prince in the area
called Tonton Lyle and a block away from the presidential retreat, then
we ate and took a siesta like any self-respecting Haitian. Then later
the afternoon we dressed and went to the reception at the Lebanese
Embassy.

The usually animated streets of the capital seemed deserted. "I feel
trouble in the air," said my wife Jeanne. The air was balmy, the
soldiers and the tontons macoutes were absent and we could not hear any
shots. We greeted the Lebanese Ambassador and joined the crowd. George
Morel, head of the Pan-American Airways in Haiti came up to us
immediately. "Didn't you know your president was killed?" He asked in a
strained voice.

At first we thought he was talking about the President of Haiti, Dr.
Francois Duvalier who was my nominal boss in Haiti. Seeing our blank
expression, Morel explained. "President Kennedy was assassinated today."
I hoped that it wouldn't happen in Texas, especially in Dallas. But
Morel summarily explained the situation.

Gloomily we filed out of the Lebanese Embassy, where people did not seem
to be too badly concerned about President Kennedy's fate, got in the car
and drove away. "If he had his tonton-macoutes around, this would not
have happened," I said angrily, and this was my first serious criticism
of our services supposed to protect the President of the United
States.

We drove to the American Embassy, located near the sea-shore and not too
far from my office. The doors were wide opened and two marines stood
there on both sides of a book where the American residents would sign
their names as a gesture of reverence to the dead head of state. Having
signed our names, we were the first to have done it, we drove to the
house of an old friend of mine Valentin (Teddy) Blaque, an attache at
the Embassy.

Teddy's house was similar to ours, but more elaborate, with a large
terrace overlooking the sparkling bay of Port-au-Prince. Several mutual
friends stood around, looking at each other with stunned expression, and
seemed to ask the same question: "Why him?"

"For the fist time we had a president who was young and energetic. And
he was trying to solve the problems of the world," said Jeanne sadly,
holding back her tears. "And he had to go . . ."

The beautiful view seemed funereal to us as we stood there silently.
"And in Dallas," I mused aloud, "why there? A conservative and somewhat
provincial city, but successful and proud of its success. We knew the
Mayor -- a charming man --and many city fathers."

"But who did it?" I asked Teddy.
"I just listened to the radio and a suspect was arrested already," he
said.

Before he mentioned the name, I thought of Lee and his rifle with the
telescopic lens. Could it be Lee? No it was impossible.

And driving back home, in stunned silence, we thought of Lee and the
predicament he was in. But since the official version had it that Lee
Harvey Oswald was the main suspect, we made our deposition at the
Embassy. We did know him and we were aware of the fact he owned a rifle.
We would be happy to testify what we knew about him and about our
relationship with him and his wife. Be we did not believe he was the
assassin.

Then we learned that a letter was sent by someone influential in
Washington to the official of the Haitian government to drop me from the
payroll and to exile me as fast as possible. Fortunately I had good
friends and the latter did not happen. And later, little by little, we
were ostracized by the United States Ambassador Timmons, then by the
American businessmen and government employees, with whom we had been on
very good terms and, finally, came the news of the investigation of all
our friends and even acquaintances in the United States.

Then came the man with the white teeth and a flannel suit, an FBI agent
trying to scare us off. At last, after a long time, we were officially
invited to come to Washington and help the Warren Commission in their
investigation. Although we could contribute very little, we still
accepted to go to Washington and testify. Although our depositions were
supposed to remain confidential, all the three hundred paged of
irrelevant conversation were printed and promiscuously distributed.
Actually our depositions were longer than Marina's and Mrs. Marguerite
Oswald's put together! Why?

We assume two reasons -- to waste taxpayer's money and to distract
attention of the American people from the people involved in the
assassination of President Kennedy. All the gossipy, futile stuff
related to our private lives, half of it not relevant to Oswald --
boring and useless. And all this because my wife and I liked Lee Harvey
Oswald and tried to defend him, and because Lee said before he died, "I
liked and admired George De Mohrenschildt."

Getting to know Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife

Early in the summer of 1962 the rumors spread out among the Russian
speaking people of Dallas and Fort Worth of an unusual couple, the
Oswalds. He was supposedly an ex-marine, an unfriendly and eccentric
character, who had gone to Russia and brought back with him a Russian
wife. He had lived in Minsk where I had spent my early childhood. And so
I was curious to meet the couple and to find out what had happened to
Minsk.

Someone gave me Lee's address, and one afternoon a friend of mine,
Colonel Lawrence Orlov, and myself drove to Fort Worth, about 30 miles
from Dallas. We drove over the dreary miles which smelled like sewage
that separated the two cities. Texas does have lovely open spaces, but
here they were degraded and polluted. After some searching, we found a
shack on Mercedes street in a semi-industrial, slummy area near
Montgomery Ward.

I knocked, and a tawdry but clean young woman opened the door. I
introduced myself and the colonel, giving a reference the name of George
Bouhe, from whom I obtained the address. George was an elderly refugee,
very friendly, the father superior of all the Russians in the Dallas
Fort Worth Area. So this was Marina Oswald.

To Orlov she was beautiful, notwithstanding bad teeth and mousy blond
hair. I did not find her very attractive, although she had a certain
charm and she spoke beautiful, melodious Russian -- so different from
the language used by us who anglicized our language and bastardized it
with foreign intonations and words.

Marina offered us some sherry and said that Lee would be over soon. We
spoke, a little fooling around; she had a pretty good sense of humor,
but the opinions she expressed seemed trite to me. And then entered Lee
Harvey Oswald, who was to become so famous or so infamous. He wore
overalls and clean workingman's shoes. Only someone who had never met
Lee could have called him insignificant.

"There is something outstanding about this man," I told myself. One
could detect immediately a very sincere and forward man. Although he was
average-looking, with no outstanding features and of medium size, he
showed in his conversation all the elements of concentration, thought
and toughness. This man had the courage of his convictions and did not
hesitate to discuss the. I was glad to meet such a person and was
carried away back to the days of my youth in Europe, where as students,
we discussed world affairs and our own ideas over many beers and without
caring about time. Lee was looking tenderly from time to time at Baby
June. He loved her. We shook hands and left.

Driving back the colonel mused, "She is so charming and young!"

"But I found the ex-marine so much more interesting," I said. My friend,
the retired Air Force colonel, resented Lee and his offhandedness, his
ironic smiles, and especially his ferociously independent. spirit. All
his sympathy went to Marina, the poor Russian refugee.

We spoke English first and then, somehow, we switched to Russian. Lee
spoke it very well, only with a slight accent. Marina did not say very
much.

"Doesn't your wife speak any English at all?" I asked Lee.

"No, and I don't want her to know English. I want her to continue
speaking her own language. Russian is beautiful and I don't want to
forget it." And he added with deep conviction, "Russian literature is
marvelous and the people I met in the Soviet Union were so warm and nice
to me. Yes, I made many friends there," he added thoughtfully.
"And how about the Soviet government?"

"Well, that's another story. The trouble with me is I always look for an
ideal which probably does not exist."

"Maybe your friend does not understand Russian," said Lee, looking at
Colonel Orlov. "Let's speak English then. You know I was a Marine and
have respect for the brass," he smiled, and added a few kind words to my
friend.

And then it was time for us to go. "My wife speaks Russian also and she
would like to spend some time with you Marina, and the baby of course,"
I said.

"I would like to but it will depend on Lee," Marina answered humbly.

"I am sure Lee will let you go and will come himself." A bond of
friendship was already formed between the two of us.

First meeting with Lee

Lee called me a few days after our trip to Fort Worth. "Marina and I
will come over tonight, if you don't mind," he said.

"Maybe I could drive to Fort Worth and drive you?" I asked.

"No, thank you, we will come by bus," he answered laconically.

And here they were, Marina, Lee and the baby June. We lived at the time
in a pleasant area called University Park, a few blocks from the
Southern Methodist University, a conservative stronghold. Both my wife
and I were fairly free at the time and welcomed our guests, so different
from the local society. Jeanne liked Marina immediately and offered to
help her with her English. "Yes, I have to know the language," Marina
agreed, and then added unexpectedly, "People already asked me why I
liked Lee," and her eyes darted about the furniture and decoration of
our rather modest home, "and I answer them, why did Lee like me?"

Jeanne liked this humble remark and her sympathy for Marina increased.
In the meantime Lee and I sat on a comfortable sofa and talked all
evening. Naturally I do not remember the sequence, although I recorded
what I remembered a few years later; mostly I asked questions and he
answered them. Naturally I wanted to know what made him go to the Soviet
Union, and he answered me by telling me of his youth in New Orleans.
Ever since his childhood he had been keenly aware of social and racial
injustices. Instead of playing basketball or baseball, like any other
red-blooded American youth, he read voraciously. Among the books he read
was Marx's Das Capital which made a deep impression on him. Ironically,
he said he borrowed this book from the Loyola University library.

"What did you like in it?" I remember asking him.

"It made clear to me the intolerable fact of the exploitation of the
poor by the rich."

"But," I said, "Lee, you must have seen it all over the world: the weak
and the poor are exploited everywhere by the powerful and the rich.
Listen to this: Two dogs meet on the cross-point between East and West
Berlin. One dog is running away from capitalism, the other from
communism. The capitalist dog asks, 'Why do you run away!' 'Because I
can eat but I cannot bark. Why are you running away?' 'If I bark I
cannot eat,' answered the capitalist dog."

Lee laughed and answered with a joke he heard somewhere in Minsk. "As
you know," he said, "Russians grab all they can from the satellite
countries. So one day at the meeting of the Communist party in Rumania,
one of the workers stood up and said, 'Comrade Secretary, may I ask you
three questions?' 'Go ahead.' 'I want to know what happened to our
wheat, our petroleum, and our wine?' 'Well,' said the Secretary, 'it's a
very complex economic question. I cannot answer it immediately.'
"Well, a few months later the workers are holding the same type of a
meeting and another comrade raises his hand and says, 'Comrade
Secretary, may I ask you four questions?' 'Shoot,' says the secretary.
'I want to ask you what happened to our petroleum, our wine, our wheat,
and also what happened to the comrade who asked the three questions last
time?'"

We both laughed. "At least here we are not being sent to a concentration
camp," I said.

"You are wrong," answered Lee seriously. "Most of the convicts in
American jails are political prisoners; they are victims of the
system."

I later read similar opinions in several liberal books, and Lee was way
ahead in thought of all of them; this was over fourteen years ago. I
remember concluding this conversation by telling Lee, "If you want to be
a revolutionary, you have to be a fool or to have an inspiration. And
your actions will be judged by the success or failure of your life."
Lee agreed. What I liked about him was that he was a seeker for justice
-- that he had highly developed social instincts. And I was disappointed
in my own children for their lack of such instincts.

Incidentally, I remember some details pretty well because I made note of
them later, and also made tapes of my recollections fairly soon after
the assassination.

That night Jeanne served a Russian dinner which Marina found delicious
but Lee hardly touched. He was ascetic in his habits, was indifferent to
foods, and didn't like desserts. In the meantime, baby June slept
quietly in bed all wrapped up. Lee looked tenderly at her often. That
night we learned a lot about him -- he neither drank nor smoked and
objected if others, especially his wife did so. Since neither my wife
nor I smoked and we drank very little, he considered us on his side.
Jeanne was appalled finding out that baby June hadn't had any of the
injections usually given to a child. Also, Marina would pick up a
pacifier from the floor, then try it herself before putting it in June's
mouth. Unfortunately, she had infected teeth at the time, so the baby
was exposed also.

My wife had high ideas about hygiene, so she was outspokenly critical.

"Your infected teeth have to be removed as soon as possible," she told
Marina. When Marina objected that she didn't have any money and couldn't
speak English, Jeanne promised to help her.

After dinner Lee and I went back to the sofa and renewed our
conversation.

"I served in the Marine Corps not because I was a patriot, but because I
wanted to get away from the drudgery and to see the world," admitted
Lee.

"Did you like the service?"

"Not particularly. But I had time to study and to read, and indeed we
traveled a LOT."

"You told me you lived in Japan. How did you land there?"

"Just an accident of the Marine Corps duty. The military duty was boring
and stupid. But fortunately I moved around, and began visiting places
where youngsters meet and established contacts with some more
progressive-thinking Japanese."

"And this," said Lee thoughtfully, "is what led me to Russia eventually.
I also learned there of other, Japanese ways of exploitation of the poor
by the rich -- semi-feudal, industrial giants which act
paternalistically yet exploit the workers, proletarians. The wages in
Japan were ridiculously low," he added.

"Well, it's changing now," I said. "Say, Lee, it's in Japan that you got
your discharge from the Marine Corps?"

Lee did not like to elaborate on this touchy subject: "I had to work to
support my mother." But it developed later, as we all know, that he did
not go back to the USA to support his mother but changed his mind and
instead went to Russia. He obviously used the money obtained at his
discharge for this trip. He first went to Western Europe then drifted to
the USSR via Finland if I remember well. Later on, Lee's honorable
discharge was changed to undesirable, and he hated to talk about it and
considered it unfair to him. This explains his hatred of John Connally
who was Secretary of the Navy at the time of this change of Lee's
discharge. But that day he did not discuss this subject, and went on
talking about Russia: "I got to Moscow and stayed there until the
Russians had confidence in me and gave me a permit to work." He did not
mention that he tried to commit suicide in desperation and cut his
wrists.

Marina took part in the conversation. "Lee, you threw your passport in
the face of the American consul and you said that you denounced your
citizenship," she said.

Later Lee talked to me about his ordeal in Moscow but not this time. He
continued talking about his impressions of Minsk because he knew I was
interested in this subject. He gave me a general description of the city
I knew from my early childhood. "I was assigned to work there without
any particular reason, in a TV factory -- possibly because I had a
little electronic training in the Marines," he said.

"Tell me more about the countryside," I asked him.

"Swisloch river is pretty clean, we used to go by row-boats to the
nearby forest to picnic on weekends. The forests are beautiful there:
huge pine trees, clean grass, full of berries of all kinds."

I remembered the cathedral, several other picturesque churches, and the
main building -- GRU, NKVD, KGB, police headquarters, where my father
spent several months and where he almost died of starvation and was
finally sentenced to life exile in Siberia. But these were childhood
memories, and resentment on my part had disappeared. Lee have me a
perfect description of all these landmarks; they were still there,
unchanged. But there were many new factories built, one of them in which
he worked.

"Did you like your job?"

"Not particularly, but the pay was sufficient, about a hundred rubles a
month -- an average for the Soviet Union. I could live on it. My
apartment and all utilities were furnished by the factory for a nominal
fee, as well as medical insurance, etc."
He gave me the prices of bread, produce, milk, and such, which were
reasonable, and of clothing, which were outrageously high. "Sometimes I
used to run short of meat, but you know, I am not a big eater; it was of
no importance to me."

Marina listened in and gave more precise information, especially
complaining about clothing and shoes. She was a practical one.

"You must have been somewhat privileged," I said, "being a foreigner;
but how did the other workers live in Minsk, the Russians?"
"Not too well. Usually one roof for a couple, and community kitchens and
lavatories," he admitted. "This led to quarrels, gossip, jealousy -- a
rather dismal situation. But what does it matter if everyone is in the
same boat, if everyone suffers? No rich exploiters like here; no great
contrasts between the rich and the poor."

"Butter and meat were out of my reach," said Marina bitterly, "but you
foreigners could afford these luxuries." She was ready to continue
talking, but since she was from Smolensk, a town I was not familiar
with, I asked Lee to talk more about Minsk. To me his descriptions were
most touching.

That night Marina announced that Lee was going to be laid off from his
job in Fort Worth at Leslie Welding Company, if I remember correctly. It
was a poor job anyway -- minimal wages, long hours, unhealthy conditions
-- but Lee did not complain. He never complained; it was Marina who was
constantly dissatisfied. The air of American prosperity bothered her;
she was envious of other people's wealth or well-being. Lee's mind was
of a stoical, philosophical type. That's why, I guessed, he had gotten
along so well with the other Russians he met in the Soviet Union.
Russians do not mind to suffer, and even go hungry if they can spend
entire nights talking and speculating on some esoteric matters.
Next time the Oswalds came to visit us, we began speaking of Minsk
again. I reminisced that when I was five years old, my father used to
take me to the forest, and I helped him as well as I could in his
awkward efforts to cut down a big pine tree. It was a tough job for my
father, who had never been a physically able man, and he constantly hurt
himself. Once he jammed his finger so badly that the bone broke and the
finger remained useless for the rest of his life. Surprisingly, I grew
adept at that sort of thing and quite able with an ax.
"Is that lovely forest north of town still in existence?" I asked Lee
and explained exactly where it was.

"Yes, we used to go there frequently by bus with my fellow workers. We
took food along and spent the whole day talking freely. I explained the
United States to them and they informed me about life in Russia."
Lee generally did not complain about his life in Russia but Marina did
very frequently -- sincerely or not, I do not know. She considered me a
capitalist and tried to please me. I promised Lee that night to give him
introductions to a few influential people since I wanted him and his
family to move away from the gruesome Fort Worth slum. I hoped that the
other members of the Russian community would help him, and told him
so.

"Thanks a lot, I can take care of myself; I don't need those creeps; I
shall find something," he answered gruffly. This was an example of Lee's
independence; he refused help, objected even to my help. Rather than be
indebted to someone, he would rather starve on his own.
While Marina was usually a lot of fun -- she laughed easily but did not
say anything that would make you think -- Lee was serious and did not
take life as a joke. But if he happened to be in a good mood, he became
an excellent companion, remembered political jokes, told them well and
laughed at mine.

"Do you know the one about an American tourist carrying a small
transistor radio in Moscow?" Lee asked me.

"No, I don't know the story."

"Well, the Muscovite stopped the American and said, 'We make them much
better than you do. What is it?'"

We both laughed. Then I countered, asking Lee, "What is the difference
between capitalism and socialism?" Lee did not know. "Capitalism makes
social mistakes and socialism makes capital mistakes."

"A Russian Commissar is asked at the holy gates where he would like to
go --  to a capitalist hell or to a communist hell," said Lee.

"The Commissar answers, 'I would like to go to a capitalist hell; I am
so tired of communist hell."

Then I told Lee a few foolish jokes about Kennedy: "President Kennedy
tells a group of businessmen, 'The economic situation is so good that if
I weren't your president I would invest in the stock market right now!'
And the businessmen answer in unison: 'If you were not our president, so
would we.'"
We both laughed.

"Kennedy had a terrible nightmare. He wakes up Jackie: 'Honey, what a
terrible thing; I dreamed I was spending my own money, not the
government's."

Again we laughed, but without resentment, we both liked President
Kennedy.

So I finished my foolish jokes with this one: "John Kennedy runs to his
mother at night: 'Mama! Mama! Help! Bobby is trying to run my
country."

I think it was at that time that I told Lee that I had known Jacqueline
Kennedy as a young girl, as well as her mother, father and all her
relatives, and how charming the whole family was. I especially liked
"Black Jack" Bouvier, Jackie's father, the delightful Casanova of Wall
Street. Lee was not jealous of Kennedy's and Bouvier's wealth, and did
not envy their social positions; of that I was sure. To him wealth and
society were big jokes, but he did not resent them.

Now I want to tell something which my seem foolish to people who are not
dog lovers. At the time we had two lovely black Manchester Terriers:
Nero and his faithful wife Poppea. Nero had followed us on a long trip
over the mountains of Mexico and Central America and saved our lives on
several occasions; Poppea was bought for him upon our return to USA and
was a wonderful wife for him. I cannot tell how much intuition Nero
developed during our trip and how easily he recognized friends from
enemies.

Well, on the first evening our dogs did not express any interest in
Marina or in Baby June but they were fascinated by Lee. Nero especially
showed his complete confidence and affection for him. He seldom did it
to anyone even to our close friends. He snuggled up to Lee and looked at
him with affection. He sensed that he was an utterly sincere person and
was deprived of hatred. Poppea also licked his hand in a rare display of
affection. Incidentally, many of our friends and even our own children
complained that our dogs were either unfriendly or totally indifferent
to them.

Lee finally found a job at Taggart's Reproduction Company through the
Texas Employment Agency without help from anyone. I was a good job for
him as he had been interested in photography for a long time. I guessed
that he took a course at the Marine Corps. Anyway he brought a good
camera from the Soviet Union and took excellent pictures. Later he
showed me excellent enlargements he made himself. These were in black
and white he was not advanced enough to develop and enlarge color
photographs.

But Lee's job did not pay well and, as he began to trust me more, he
accepted an introduction to a successful businessman-banker, Sam Ballen,
who owned, among other companies, a large reproduction outfit for maps,
electric logs, and records. It was not a successful meeting; Lee and my
friend did not like each other. To the businessman Lee was a radical and
a maverick., and Lee considered Sam an ordinary bourgeois with no
redeeming features. Actually, both were interesting people; they just
did not appeal to each other.

Another conversation comes to my mind. One evening Lee was in a blue
mood and confided that he was not particularly pleased with his
reception in Minsk. Somewhat naively, he had expected to be treated as a
special person, a prominent refugee, and nothing happened; there was
little difference between his condition in Minsk and that of an ordinary
Soviet worker. And so he had become depressed. That evening Lee
expressed an opinion that he did not appreciate the Soviet type of
government.

"Why?" I asked.

"It is somewhat too regimented for me," he said. "We were obliged to go
to the meeting at the factory after work, dead tired, and listen to
inflammatory speeches. I was lucky if I was able to sleep.
Indoctrination of any kind is not to my taste."

I saw his point.

Our first evenings with the Oswalds were spent in conversation, and we
got to know each other very well. Now something else happened in our
relationship. Before Lee got his job at Taggart's, I asked my daughter
Alex and my son-in-law Gary Taylor to help the Oswalds move to Dallas.
The Taylors went to visit the Oswalds in Fort Worth, and right then they
offered to let Marina stay with them, and to keep the baby. Whatever
furniture they had could be stored in her garage. This generous
proposition was accepted; Marina moved to Dallas. Lee stayed for a short
time in the apartment in Fort Worth and then moved to a small room at
the YMCA in Dallas, close to his work at Taggart's. During Marina's stay
at my daughter's place, my wife helped her -- drove her to Baylor
Hospital where they pulled out her rotten teeth. Thus baby June was kept
healthy and well fed. But this short separation did not prevent Lee from
coming to see us, even alone.

Further conversation with Lee in 1962

At the time we knew Lee, nothing could be further from our minds than
that he might become such a historic figure. His visits were very
frequent -- sometimes he would come for a short time, sometimes he would
spend the whole evening with us. Some bits of our semi-bantering,
semi-serious repartees remain in my memory. "You are an extremely
sincere person, Lee," I told him. "You do not lie even to yourself. Most
of the people I know are the opposite of you. They put out a front, they
confuse, they deceive, they lie even when thinking."

"I guess it's dangerous to be that way. I know I make a lot of enemies.
But what the hell," he acknowledged, "my position is that I am afraid of
very few things in life. I am not cautious. I am not," he smiled, "a
turkey which lives only to become fat." And he showed me his nonexistent
belly. He was becoming very thin.

"Lee, your way of life is so un-American, it scares me to think what may
become of you."

"It is true," Lee said. "I am probably committing a sin in not being
interested in possessions or money. When a rich man dies, he is loaded
with his possessions like a prisoner in chains. I will die free; death
will be easy for me."

"Stop talking about death; you are only twenty-two. If you want to talk
about gruesome subjects, let me tell you this joke: A usurer is on a
deathbed. A priest gives him a crucifix to kiss, and the usurer says, 'I
cannot loan you much for it.'"

"Regarding your attitude on money and possessions," I said, "I couldn't
agree more with you. You would rather do something unusual than drive a
Cadillac. I am the same way."

"Life for me," continued Lee, "is like a hungry crocodile: I'd better
defend myself. I have to defend myself against the stupidity of this
would. It is enormous! Life must be the work of a perfect idiot. Or
maybe the stupidity, like breaking of the atom, is self-perpetuating."

Not too bad for a twenty-two-year-old American proletarian and a
high-school dropout, I thought. "Lee, you have a very original mind."
"Thank you," he said. "I do not often hear compliments. But let me tell
you more why I despise  the money-loving middle class. Such people are
simply stupid, not serious; they are curiously attracted by crooks and
adventurers. And so you hear how often they are sheared of their wool,
like sheep, by variousfinancial schemers."

"Diderot," I said, "thinks very much like you. "You have nothing and I
have very little now, so a real friendship is possible between us. We
are sincere with each other." Lee agreed.

"Another thing Diderot said," I continued, "He was very happy being poor
and living in a shack. When he achieved opulence and found a nice
apartment in Paris, he knew he was going to die."

"The philosophers talk, but you act," said Lee enviously. "This trip of
yours, what a freedom! 3,600 miles on foot on tough trails of Latin
America. This demanded a complete change in life -- willingly, suddenly.
For this you needed an extraordinary moral audacity."

"This time I want to thank you, Lee. But do not exaggerate; this was an
act of desperation rather than audacity, after the death of my only son.
In the end this trip was very satisfying to Jeanne and to me."
And so we chatted in an open and friendly manner, and I must say of Lee,
my opinion of this fellow changes completely and frequently, which
happens only with people who are close and important to me. I usually
judge the others superficially and label them once and for all.

But now I should explain the reasons why I had introduced the Oswalds to
my daughter Alex and to her husband. They were about the same age. Gary
was a scatter-brained, simple-minded but pleasant young man and, as most
of his financial schemes failed, he had plenty of time on his hands. His
fondest ambition consisted of rapidly becoming another Clint Murchison
or H. L. Hunt, and that was hard to achieve. Frankly, I hoped that my
daughter and her husband Gary would acquire some of the global interests
that Lee certainly possessed. His serious approach to life contrasted
sharply with the foolish flippancy of Gary's. I also hoped that Marina
would teach my daughter some interesting facts about Russia. When these
two were together, they were somehow able to communicate, as my daughter
is an excellent linguist.

But introducing people of such different backgrounds led to unpleasant
results. First of all we caused a separation between Marina and Lee. We
understood it was not their first separation, but we actually caused
this one. It amazed my daughter that Lee called Marina on the phone
infrequently and did not express much desire to be with her. But he
missed baby June. It was peculiar for a young husband, but I already
suspected that he was pleased being alone at the YMCA and was already
bored with Marina's company. Next, the personalities of Lee and of Gary
clashed. Lee considered Gary a spoiled, rich American, a foolish
youngster; and Gary looked down at Lee as a supercilious, impractical
lunatic with revolutionary ideas. My daughter's opinion of Marina was
low also; she was slovenly and didn't know anything about baby-care,
although she had obtained a degree as a "registered pharmacist" in the
USSR. My daughter's opinion of Lee was low also; he was not
good-looking, did not care about his appearance, and neither was he
inclined to make money. As for me, I regretted that Alex did not see any
of the qualities I liked in Lee -- the fact that he was socially
motivated, was a dreamer and a seeker of truth. But such people have a
very hard time in life, and that's why so many people consider him a
failure and a loser.

Maybe, had he lived longer, he would have fit better into the scheme of
American life; he would have joined the group of love-children, would
have grown a beard, and certainly would have been among the protesters
against the war in Viet Nam. It was probably Marina, dissatisfied with
my daughter's attitude, who made Lee hustle and find an apartment. Very
soon the Oswalds settled in their own ground-floor apartment on Elsbeth
Street in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. It was far away from us, while
we wanted them to live nearby. Lee probably wanted to be as far away as
possible from the other Russian refugees, whom he disliked. The
apartment was ten miles or more away from our place at University Park.
With Lee's job secure at Taggart's and away from the gruesome slum in
Fort Worth, Jeanne and I thought the Oswald family would be happy.
Jeanne registered the baby at a children's clinic for regular check-ups
and Marina, was treated almost gratis in the dental clinic of the Baylor
hospital. This involved long trips for Jeanne, driving back and forth,
but she did not mind. Staying so far away from anyone put Marina in a
condition of total dependence on Lee, since she could not communicate
with anyone around; we were the only ones she could understand. To have
the couple for dinner, we had to drive back and forth, almost forty
miles for a four-way trip.

Jeanne became quite close to Marina at the time, while Lee and I saw
each other frequently. Soon, however, these trips became difficult for
us as we both became busy in our professions; yet we wanted to continue
seeing the Oswalds. One solution would have been for them to buy some
second-hand car, but Lee did not know how to drive, nor did Marina, of
course. (I did not doubt Lee's word.) I mention this here because later
Lee's lack of driving ability became a controversial issue. I believed
him because I knew about the abject poverty of his childhood in New
Orleans. In these prosperous United States, Lee's family occupied a
position at the poverty line, similar to poor blacks and
Mexican-Americans.

Due to my wife's help, Marina's four spoiled teeth were removed and her
system was not poisoned by them anymore. Baby June became healthy also.
The Russian colony collected a small amount of money for Marina and the
care of the baby June. Lee did not know about it; he would not have
accepted any charity, so it was done secretly. I think Jeanne handled
the operation, and Marina spent nights in the house while the next
morning Jeanne would drive her to Baylor dental clinic or to the
childcare center.

An amusing incident happened on the way to Baylor, recalls my wife. We
had to drive by the predominantly black section of town, gaudy but
cheerful Hall and Washington Streets, with almost every decrepit house
lodging either a nightclub, strip-tease joint or dance hall, hookers and
flashy pimps strolling along the broken pavements. Suddenly Marina
excitedly attracted my wife's attention shouting in Russian to slow
down. She looked at the tall, muscled, black youngster standing proudly
at the corner, surveying the situation. "Look at him! Look!" She pulled
at my wife's sleeve in a frenzy. "What a handsome man!"

"Oh, yes," agreed Jeanne, "he is very handsome."

"No, he is fantastic, fantastic!" exulted Marina. Such an enthusiasm
surprised my wife. "He is so big and strong! What muscles he must
have."

As my wife related this incident, she observed that is was not a
question of an attraction of a Nordic woman to an exotic man of a dark
race, but was surprised that a young married woman with a child would
show such uninhibited admiration for a sexy male.
I drove her myself on the same street and teased her about her
attraction to black men. "Marina," I guessed, "you did not see in Russia
such uninhibited, natural men."

She laughed: "Neither Russians nor American whites can compare to such
beautiful men," she said candidly. "Maybe the Cubans I met in Minsk were
just as attractive."

The Oswalds in Minsk

The stories related by Lee and Marina about Minsk were especially
interesting to me. It seems that Lee was very unhappy at the beginning
of his stay there and he even tried to slash his wrists out of despair.
Since he was supposed to have done it already in Moscow, in order to
obtain a permit to remain in the Soviet Union, the wrist-slashing became
somewhat of a habit if not a subterfuge with him. Marina held a job of a
pharmacist in the hospital where Lee was treated, she took care of him
flirted with him very nicely and began conquering his heart. Later he
polyps problem so he kept on going to the some hospital. And that's how
the romance began and flourished.

Marina came from a fairly good family from our point of view, since her
father belonged to a former Czarist officer group. After his death her
mother married a man called Prusakov. Later her mother died and Marina
got tired of living with her stepfather and her half-brothers and
sisters. And so she decided to move from Smolensk to Minsk where she
received soon a degree of a registered pharmacist. I remember Marina's
amusing repartee when I asked her if she liked her half-brothers and
sisters.

"They were good, normal children, not like me. I was a bad one." And she
laughed, showing a good sense of humor and a great deal of charm.
After the hospital meetings, Lee and Marina began going out together to
dances and movies and eventually the relationship of affection and love
developed between them. "I remember looking at the new apartment
building near the river Swisloch," reminisced Marina, "but only high
technical and political personnel lived there, as well as some
foreigners, Lee among them." It was a wonderful setting for a Soviet
romance -- love, an American refugee, a river, and a new apartment
building. Actually the building belonged to the factory where Lee worked
at the time; his staying there was no particular favor. But for the girl
who had lived in crowded rooms with a stepfather and several children,
this new house seemed a real paradise.

And so they married and moved to that apartment building. Why did she
marry him? She could have cohabitated with him; this happened frequently
with young couples in Russia. The reasons are known only to Marina:
love, pity or desire to come to the United States; probably the latter,
as soon after their wedding Lee decided that he wanted to go back to the
United States. He traveled to Moscow without a permit, went to the
United States embassy, got back his passport, and borrowed $500 for the
return.

Each month while in Texas, he religiously paid the installments due on
that loan. Marina frequently complained that he was too punctual in his
payments -- but I ask you, where do you find another man in Lee's
position, on the verge of starvation, who would be in such a hurry to
repay a government loan, one which would be very difficult to collect
from a poor man like Lee. Lee felt this obligation very sincerely.
Another question still puzzles us: How come the Soviets permitted Marina
to leave her homeland so easily, while it was so hard for Lee to obtain
a permit to leave the USSR? They had to make another trip to Moscow to
arrange it, and he never explained to me clearly how he got the permit
to take Marina along. "Well, I managed," Lee smirked, "because all
bureaucrats, all over the world, are stupid."

Marina had an uncle, a colonel of the MVD called Medvedev; I think he
was her mother's brother. For some time she had lived with him, in
Smolensk I think, and Lee told me that this important man was dead set
against his niece marrying him. Later something made him change his
mind. We were not interested at the time in the whys and the wherefores
of this colonel's activities; now it is too late to ask questions. Maybe
it was simply for his own reasons the colonel helped his niece get out
of Russia. Possibly it was a good riddance of a Prusakova niece,
possibly something else.

The loyal decrepit Russian refugees liked Marina only because her real
father had been a pre-revolutionary officer or some czarist official. We
were indifferent to this matter and did not inquire further. But the
permission to leave USSR was puzzling to us, uncle or no uncle, because
we knew of many cases where Americans could never obtain a permit for
their Soviet wives to leave Russia. Personally I know of one case; one
of the reporters of the Christian Monitor successfully extracted his
wife from Russia at the time of Stalin.

One day Jeanne asked Lee a straightforward question: "Why did you decide
to go to the USSR; answer frankly! You risked never being able to return
to your country."

"I was looking for an ideal," Lee answered sadly.

"And why did you decide to return here?" Jeanne insisted.

"Because I did not find my ideal. Obviously utopia does not exist. I
could travel the rest of my life and never find it."

We liked this statement and agreed with Lee. We were becoming close
friends. From time to time my wife would prepare a special Russian or
French dinner for the Oswalds, always keeping in mind that both of them
were undernourished. And I would talk with Lee in the meantime, often
late into the night. Although he unquestionably had had some unpleasant
experiences, as the slashing of his wrists proved, Lee was never hostile
or upset about his life in the Soviet Union. He spoke of his co-workers
humbly and engagingly: "They were hospitable, friendly and sincere; they
invited me to their homes, fed me from their meager supplies, and we
discussed all subjects frankly as we do here."

"Did they tell you any jokes about their regime?" I asked.
"Here is one I remember," Lee said. "An American worker comes to the
Soviet Union and sees some big apartment complexes. He asks, 'To whom do
they belong?' 'To the state.' Then the Russian worker comes to visit the
United States. He asks, 'These huge factories, to whom do they belong?'
'To the capitalists,' comes the fast answer. 'Aha,' says the Russian,
'this is terrible!' Then he notices nice suburban homes with new cars.
He asks, 'To whom these belong?' 'To the workers,' comes an immediate
answer."

Then I asked Lee, "Did you ever hear that one about a Soviet worker who
was wandering from one factory to another asking, 'Is there a place that
would pay me as little as the little work I intend to do?'"

Lee did not laugh: "That is a rather vicious joke. Soviet workers work
almost as hard as we do here, and certainly they get paid much less."

Then he reminisced, "Nobody in the Soviet Union tried to intimidate me
or influence me. But I encounter such tendencies here. Nobody ever tried
to make a communist out of me. I was a sympathizer but I never joined
the party."

He is probably on the level, I thought. "And what were your living
conditions like there?" I asked.

"Not bad at all: ample meals, clean surroundings, good
companionship."

"And the pay?"

"Sufficient; the apartment cost me five per cent of my pay, and I don't
eat much, as you know. With Marina's additional salary we managed quite
well."

"And clothes?"

"Expensive but adequate; and I am not interested, as you know, in
stylish clothes. Of course, the Cubans dressed to kill," he smiled.
Marina must have missed good clothes there, I thought. "And how about
transportation? I asked.

"Of course I could not afford a motorcycle, but I like to walk, and the
public transportation was cheap and good."
"What was most annoying to you in the Soviet Union?" asked Jeanne, who
was listening in.

"Those endless, endless meetings we had to attend after work; listening
to those deadly, monotonous speeches. You were lucky if you were in the
back and could take a nap. We listened to those bureaucratic outpourings
half-dazed, like children during a very boring lesson. Then we voted,
rather indifferently, on various trivial issues. Later we would file
out, exhausted and would return home. "And," Lee smiled, "we never
received any extra pay for the hours lost, and we certainly deserved
it."

I approved of his attitude, nodding agreement. I would also hate to
waste my time on such meetings.

Lee spoke of other foreigners living there: some Cubans whose names I've
forgotten, one family of refugees from Argentina -- the father was an
experienced engineer and Lee had a great respect for him. More than once
he mentioned this family to me, talking mainly of the daughters who
"were so pretty" and so friendly to him. All in all Lee spoke frequently
to me of his interest in women and he even bragged amusingly and
somewhat naively of his conquests in Russia.

Here in the United States, Lee wasn't certainly a ladies' man; he felt
depressed and confined. I think he frequently regretted having left
Minsk. But there I can visualize him cutting a path as a Casanova among
the Russian women. And why not? He was a foreigner, he acted freely, he
looked pleasant, and his interest in Russian people was warm and
genuine.

Marina admitted herself one day, "He was something out of the ordinary.
He looked like an American, he was easygoing, loose and alert -- not
like the average guy." Lee was a perfectly normal and well adjusted
citizen of Minsk, Marina insisted frequently. "The only trouble with him
was his interest in books -- serious books -- serious books, politics,
discussions, rather than sex."

Maybe it is not nice to talk about confidential sex matters between the
Oswalds, but I might as well do it; they shed light on the personalities
of this interesting couple. Marina was close enough to my wife to be
completely open with her. "Lee does not have sex with me but rarely,"
she admitted, "very rarely, about once a month -- and he is in such a
hurry, poor fellow, that I do not get any satisfaction. It's most
frustrating." When Jeanne repeated this matter to me, I laughed and told
Marina a well-known Texas joke, translating it, probably for the first
time, into Russia.

"Mandy was a good-looking black prostitute. A handsome, tall black by
the name of Rastus came to see her. 'How much do you charge Mandy?' 'For
fifteen dollars I does it all, for ten we does it, for five you do it
all!' Rastus hadonly five dollars, so they agreed and went to bed.
But while Rastus began making love to Mandy, he turned out to be such a
formidable male that in ecstasy Mandy wailed: 'Rastus I shall do it all
on credit, you have such an honest face!'"

Naturally in Russian it did not sound very hot, but we all laughed and
possibly it was the beginning of Marina's ardent interest in our racial
minority -- the blacks.

But aside from such foolishness, we talked with Oswalds of their lives
in the Soviet Union. And soon we acquired a certainty that Marina wanted
a richer and materialistically more rewarding life then the one she had
at home and it was she who convinced Lee to go to the American Embassy,
to ask for the return of this passport and for money all this in view to
go with him to the United States. Another interesting fact: the first
time he went from Minsk to Leningrad or Moscow he did it illegally, but
the second time he obtained a legal Soviet permit to go there by train.
As a foreigner Lee was not supposed to leave town without notifying the
police and obtaining a permit. Not an easy matter for some of the people
who had tried to leave Russia.

I remember Marina telling me without any emotion that she had been
discharged at the time from the Komsomol, an organization of Communist
youth, and that it happened because she had married an American. In the
Soviet Union it was a disgrace, but she did not attach any importance to
it while in Minsk, because obviously she know she would leave her
country anyway. Both Lee and I laughed about her naive belief that the
streets of the United States were paved with gold and that the poor
people were the ones who had to wash themselves their Cadillacs. I
remember Lee telling us a joke, which circulated at the time among the
young Russian. Capitalism to them meant champagne, luxurious cars, jazz,
caviar for dinner and Gina Lollobrigida for a girlfriend. Marvelous!
Communism to them meant vodka, dirty tramway, balalaika, black bread and
their own mother! Marina laughed good-naturedly.

Very often people ask me with suspicion why I, a person with several
university degrees and of fairly good financial and social standing --
with friends among the rich of the world - became such a friend of that
"maladjusted radical,"  Lee Harvey Oswald? Well, I hope that this book
clarifies Lee's personality and endows him with a lot of most attractive
features. I already spoke of his straightforward and relaxing
personality, of his honesty or his desire to be liked and appreciated.
And I believe it is a privilege of an older age not to give a damn what
others think of you. I choose my friends just because they appeal to me.
And Lee did.

It never occurred to me that he might be an agent of any country,
including the United States -- although he might have been trained in
Russian for some ulterior motive. Lee was too outspoken, naively so. In
this way I was similar to him.

In 1946 when I was working in Venezuela for William Buckley's family
company, Pantepec Oil Company, I met the Soviet Ambassador there who had
been before world was one a roustabout for Nobel Oil interests, and my
uncle was a director of that outfit. So the Ambassador knew my name and
was extremely friendly to me. We spent many an evening talking and
drinking vodka. As a result he suggested that be would offer me a
contract to work in the Soviet Union. But after listening to me and my
outspoken opinions, he advised me, "My friend, you talk too much, you
criticize too much; you would be a babe in the woods in my country and
would end up in Siberia."

Also Lee was very interested in other people, in their work, he tried to
improve his own education by reading, observing and studying. Sometimes
he was amusing when he used long, difficult words in English -- words
like charisma, politicomania, extravaganzas, elitism -- the knowledge of
which he liked to display. We even laughed together about his use of
such words, the exact meaning of which eluded him. Occasionally Lee's
constant search for truth, for the answers to the mysteries of life,
seemed tragic and disturbing to me. But this proves also that it seems
highly improbable that any government would try to make an agent of such
a man. He own element of self-inquiry, self-denial and self-doubt, mixed
with instability worried Lee. But I told him not to worry, in my opinion
instability, doubt, constant search were elements of youth and were
indicative of exuberant life. I told Lee that I pitied people who did
not possess such characteristics, were living dead, they form the mass
of obedient slaves in all countries.

A strong desire for adventure was also one of Lee's motivations. That's
why he became a Marine, that's why he switched jobs just because he did
not like what he had to do so far. And routine was deadly to him.
However his last job at the printing company fitted him well and he
seemed fairly happy.

"Why didn't you stay in the Marine Corps?" I asked him one day.

"Oh, did not care for the military, not much fun being an underling; not
much adventure either."

"You could become an officer, you are intelligent enough," I
countered.

"Oh, no, to hell with being an officer. I don't like to command other
guys."

Often I was asked with suspicion, long before the assassination, "How
did you get along so well with Lee Oswald?"

"In my life I have done many things, I was often a promoter, an
originator of new ideas, so I liked now ideas, even if they seemed
strange and outlandish, I enjoyed meeting people of various types,
evaluated their thoughts, did not criticize them," I retorted.
Later on, when I was in the hot water because of my friendship with Lee,
a friend of mine testified: "George always liked stray dogs and stray
people."

Many people considered Lee a miserable misfit, an insult to the American
way of life, and completely disregarded him. A Russian refugee living in
Dallas told me once, "I am scared of this man Oswald, he is a
paranoid."

"Paranoid or not, he is as intelligent as you are. Listen to him, there
is a lot of sense in what he says," I would reply.

Probably to annoy Lee, the Russian refugees and some ultra-conservative
Americans showered Marina with gifts and gave her too much attention.
Since Americans could not communicate with her, their efforts were
wasted. But the gifts given his wife by the refugees annoyed Lee.
Unquestionably Marina added oil to the fire bragging about the gifts and
talking how successful some of the donors were -- owning their own homes
and two automobiles. He might have been wounded in his pride, although
he never complained to me.

At the time Lee did not want Marina to learn English. She could only say
yes and no and if she went to the store, he had to point out the
articles she wanted. "It's very egotistical on your part Lee," Jeanne
told him. "You have to let her study English so she can communicate with
other people than the Russian refugees. You cannot keep her a
recluse."

Sensing that Lee resented them, the members of the Russian colony gave
Marina some hundred dresses. Baby June received a new crib, a carriage
and a lot of toys. Unquestionably it annoyed Lee. The more people gave
Marina, the more it disturbed Lee. Disturbed is not the right word --
maddened. And so he declined invitations to these "benefactor's" homes,
he was often rude to them. That situation had very sad consequences for
this family.

As far as we are concerned, we continued our good relationship with the
Oswalds, even after the situation in Soviet Russian and in Minsk
especially have been thoroughly discussed. Instead of questioning them,
we became concerned in the welfare of this couple. Be nice to the poor
was always Jeanne's motto.

Seeing that Lee's situation was also gradually deteriorating, I became
even nicer to him. Never kick a man who is down; help him, was my
belief. Sometimes Lee's action and his sensitivities annoyed me, but I
did not try to show any resentment and attempted to find a solution for
him and his wife.

Contrasts between the Oswalds

One day Lee brought to me typescripts of his experiences in Russia. He
was interested in publishing them in a form of an article in a magazine
or possibly to develop them into a book. A few typed pages, and poorly
at that, in substance could not add much to what he had already told me.
And what he had told me was of interest only to me, because I was
familiar with the locale, but not to other readers. But it was important
for him to get my recognition since he knew that I published many
articles in Europe and in this country did some theatre reviews for the
Variety Magazine. And so Lee sat on the sofa and looked hopefully at
me.

"What do you think of this?" he asked.

"Remember I am not a professional writer, I was lucky enough to have had
some articles published, your story is simple and honest but it is very
poorly written. It is deprived of any sensational revelations and it's
really pointless. Personally I like it because I know Minsk but how many
people know where Minsk is. And why should they have interest in your
experiences? Tell me!"

"Not many," Lee agreed mildly.

I did not say, so as not to offend him, that his grammar was poor and
the syntax was abominable. And those long, pompous words . . . But that
was the result of his poor, formal education. And the only things in his
favor stood out -- his sincerity and his obvious good will to inform
correctly.

"If you add some sensational, detective story type details, a beautiful
female spy, depraved, masochistic policemen, if you depict all Russians
as degenerate monsters, then your script will be published.
"No, thank you," said Lee proudly. "I do not want to tell lies. My
purpose is to improve Soviet-American relations." And he added quickly,
"People here should know how decent and generous Russians are. How well
they treated me, a simple American ex-marine, with kindness and
generosity -- I did not find anything monstrous in Soviet Russia."
"I agree with you personally. Also you talk about some individuals you
met there. It's good and factual, they are decent people. But who is
interested in comrade this or that, in refugees from Argentina or in
some cheerful Cubanstudents? Correct?"

Lee agreed and I handled him back his pages.

The same typescripts were shown me later for identification by the
Warren Commission lawyer and they were printed in the Warren Commission
report. So Lee's wishes came true after his death.

This was a period of relative tranquility for Lee, as he was working for
Taggart's developing and enlarging photos, posters and maps and he
seemed to enjoy his work. But Marina was dissatisfied and complained to
Jeanne again. "He comes home tired, hardly talks to me, only to the
baby, then reads Russian books and is seldom tender and loving to
me."

Incidentally I never saw him interested in anything else except Russian
books and magazines. He said he didn't want to forget the language --
but it amazed me that he read such difficult writers like Gorki,
Dostoievski, Gogol, Tolstoi and Turgenieff -- in Russian. As everyone
knows Russian is a complex language and he was supposed to have stayed
in the Soviet Union only a little over two years.

He must have had some previous training and that point had never been
brought up by the Warren Commission -- and it is still puzzling to me.
In my opinion Lee was a very bright person but not a genius. He never
mastered the English language yet he learned such a difficult language!
I taught Russian at all level in a large University and I never saw such
a proficiency in the best senior students who constantly listened to
Russian taped and spoke to Russian friends. As a matter of fact
American-born instructors never mastered Russian spoken language as well
as Lee did.

The fact that Lee reserved Marina as a perfect Russian conversationalist
for himself was foolish and selfish. Being in close relationship with
the Oswalds we noticed the signs of the coming disintegration of their
already fragile relationship. Lee seemed to be fond of Marina but he
mostly cherished baby June. Maybe he was too secretive a person to show
his affection and Marina's Slavic nature demanded more attention and
tenderness. But Lee never spoke badly to us about his wife, he never
criticized her but neither did he ever express any deep feeling for her.
Even in his typewritten memoirs he spoke very little of her.

Marina, on the other hand, annoyed and criticized Lee, due possibly to a
perversity of her Russian character. "He is so puny, so dull, he never
drinks, only works, tries easily, is only interested in books" she
complained to me and my wife. And she said that behind his back and
obviously to him directly when we were to there. Never did we hear from
her that she loved her husband. But there was nevertheless an element of
strong attachment which tied together these two so different people, but
we did not notice it at the time.

Lee was indeed all wrapped up in his work, books, his ideas on equality
of all people, especially of all races; it was strange indeed for a boy
New Orleans and Texas poor white family, purely Anglo, to be so
profoundly anti-racist.

"Segregation in any form, racial, social or economic, is one of the most
repulsive facts of American life", he often told me. "I would be willing
anytime to fight these fascistic segregationists -- and to die for my
black brothers."

He obviously intended to do just that, as we shall see from the later
chapters and from Marina's inscription on Lee's picture. Warren
Commission completely disregarded this unusual aspect of Lee's character
and eliminated mystatement from the report.

Otherwise, we seldom heard from Lee much talk about women, Marina, on
the other hand, spoke freely to Jeanne add to myself about her
pre-marital experiences, her admiration for strong, sexy men. She spoke
enthusiastically about the Cubans she met in Russia. "They were outgoing
and gay. Often they carried their guitars with them, sand their catchy
Caribbean tunes, danced so well. They were such fun!"

This was an indirect criticism of her husband who did not like music,
except Russian folkloric sad tunes, who did not play any musical
instruments and could not dance. And let's face it: he wasn't
particularly entertaining with her.

Here I want to dispel once more the impression I may have given that Lee
did not have a keen sense of humor. For instance I remember this one he
told me. "A Russian doctor had a parrot who was able to say 'how do you
do', 'good night,' etc. One hot evening the doctor left the parrot on
the windowsill to cool off. A Russian musician passes by and hears
parrot's greetings. He takes his hat off and says, 'Excuse me, comrade,
I thought you were a bird!'"

On American politics he expressed the following opinion. "Under
dictatorship people are enslaved but they know it. Here the politicians
constantly lie to people and they become immune to these lies because
they have the privilege of voting. But voting is rigged and democracy
here is a gigantic profusion of lies and clever brain-washing."
Also he said something about FBI which did not strike me at the time as
very clever, but history proved his judgment correct. "Knowledge is a
great power, especially if you know it about very important people."
Obviously J. Edgar Hoover's files must come to your mind.

Also he told me the joke which must have been circulating at the time in
the Soviet Union, "A strip-tease joint was opened in Moscow for the
tourists. It was decorated and run just like in Paris and lots of money
was spent on thisestablishment. Yet it did not attract much trade. A
state Economic Commission questioned the worried director. He explained,
'I did my best, hired the best decorators, imitated a place in Paris.'

'How about the girls?" asked a member of the commission. 'No trouble
with them, they are all at least for thirty years good, party
members.'"

Lee also liked jokes about southern hillbillies and rednecks but I
cannot recall any of them not. He subscribed to Krokodil a Soviet
satirical publication, somewhat similar to the New Yorker of to the
British Punch. Krokodil, which we often read together, featured mainly
Russian self-criticism in the form of short stories or cartoons. Animals
frequently featured local politicians, and in the manner of Krilov's
fables, emphasized the foibles of the Soviet bureaucracy. It also took
swipes at the bourgeois world quite sharply. Lee read Russian classics
and discussed some at length with me, especially I remember The Idiot by
Dostoievski, a psychoanalytical study. He understood the
pre-revolutionary life in Russia, which I did not know but heard about
from my parents. Russian classics belong exclusively to the
pre-revolutionary or early revolutionary days and modern Russians are
fascinated by those days of extravagant aristocracy, czarist power and
abuses of it, great wealth and great waste, ownership of slaves,
temporal strength of the Greek-Orthodox church -- these aspects of the
old days Lee observed with distaste but the elegance and the gaiety of
the certain occasions gave him a feeling of nostalgia, as he were
Russian himself.

Marina did not care about any of this, she was a super-materialist,
really destined by nature for the mediocre, middle class American life:
new clothes, new buildings, plastic, neutral surroundings, tall,
well-dressed men. "Lee, when shall we get a car?" She kept on nagging.
"Everyone here has one, even the poorest people!" And poor Lee even did
not know how to drive a car. And when Marina was talking to Jeanne he
said: "I never wanted a middle-class wife, mediocre, obscure,
money-loving who would have the taste of vanity, of luxury, of comfort,
of all that bourgeois nonsense."

Well, you have one, I thought. Marina liked wine, he objected to it. She
smoked, he detested the smell of tobacco. So whenever she was without
him she would become a chain-smoker, inhaling deep, asking for drinks,
enjoying these forbidden pleasures. He called Lee, a slender, ascetic
man, but by no means a weakling, a bookworm. He respected education and
knowledge, especially in others, she was just the opposite; she didn't
value her degree as a pharmacist.

"It must have been difficult not get it?" I asked her once.

"Not for me, I got by easily, used ponies and passed my examinations,"
she answered breezily. But she would remember some handsome fellows and
had met and shared bed with, of real soviet type orgies. She confided in
Jeanne. Those parties were organized in Minsk by richer sons of the
bureaucrats who disposed of comfortable apartments while their parents
were gone. The kids drank and slept together indiscriminately. "This was
terrific, "she reminisced. "And I also remember a handsome boy who
instead of joining us on holidays would take a book and would go all day
to the forest to study. Some people are crazy," she concluded.

In my conversations with Lee, I found out that he was an open and
straightforward agnostic. Religion did not interest him. He saw that was
probably since his early childhood. His agnosticism was on the type of
Jefferson's or Franklin's -- and it was fine. He was not an aggressive
atheist who wanted to impose his point of view with violence. He must
have read Toynbee and Bertrand Russell because his argumentation against
organized religion was solid. One day he said, "The doctor sees a man at
his weakest, the lawyer sees the man at his wickedest and the priest
sees a man at his stupidest," he chuckled. "I read it somewhere, it's
pretty good?"

Lee was always very humble with me and he really blossomed when I showed
some interest in what he had to say. But aren't we all the same way?
Only once, while discussing organized religion, he expressed his views
with cold disdain. "What I dislike," he said, "are the materialistic
aspects of the American type religion, to all, but the large
denominations with their ridiculously garish churches, their
tax-deductible tricks and finagling." Lee seems quite versed in the
matter. Here he was rather instructing me. And I had to agree with him
on the greedy aspects of our modern Christianity, so far removed from
the original teachings of poverty and humility.

I remember talking to my wife about Lee and she mentioned that we both
treated him on a perfectly equal basis, and never scorned him, while
other people who helped the Oswalds did it for Marina only or for the
child. And Lee did not like any help, especially that type. He was
occasionally rude to the people who interfered in their lives being
intrinsically a very independent, self-sufficient person. And so he
began refusing invitations which infuriated Marina.

Many local people, especially Russian refugees, resented Lee because he
had deserted these United States, the "country of the brave and the
free" and many considered him an outright traitor. And he, a hundred
percent, native-born American smiled and would say: "who are the real
Americans? Only the Indians, blacks and the Mexicans from the
South-Western states, to whom this country originally belonged."
We have a different attitude. We like young people who search to solve
some problems which bother them. He disliked many aspects of American
life and thought that maybe somewhere else it was better. Being with him
took me back to my young days at the University of Liege, when we spent
entire discussing various problems of life without any respect for the
rules or for the establishment.

It was not the first time that he mentioned that he was disappointed in
the Soviet Union because he did not find there his ideal of justice.

"Maybe it does not exist . . ." he said sadly one day. "And so I came
back."

The narrow-minded people condemned him without understanding his
motivations, without giving him a chance to explain himself. And later
on our Dallas police let him die without explaining himself and telling
the truth.

But we are talking of the year 1962 and of people he met then. Many
resented him -- and he answered in kind. And we were the only ones who
took interest in him and gave him a chance to express himself.

Since I had mentioned Lee's agnosticism, let's go back to Marina's
attitude towards religion. We were positive that at the time Marina was
also an agnostic, even an atheist, after all she was brought up in
Soviet Russia in purely communist surrounding. She did not have the
slightest idea of God, not any interest in anything divine -- or so it
seemed to us. But soon she realized that being religious in the United
Stated would help her, as it usually does.

And so she had her child June christened later in the Greek-Orthodox
church in Dallas during one of her separation from Lee. This exacerbated
their conflict.  He told her in our presence, "You double-crossed me,
you should have consulted me before doing this to my child. This is
unforgivable!" And so there was another element added to their
disputes.

Personally I do not criticize faith or religion, but these should be
true and profound feelings, not the outward manifestations. Lee's faith,
his strongest belief was - racial integration. He told me at many
occasions: "It hurts me that the blacks do not have the same privileges
and rights as white American."

And I agreed with him. This was the time when blacks had to sit at the
back of the bus, couldn't eat in restaurants or stay in the hotels and
motels reserved for the whites. It angered and annoyed me. At the time I
didn't have many contacts with the blacks, except with some artists,
teachers and preachers. But in my profession I couldn't afford to have
black friends often in the house, I would have been blackballed and
eliminated from the competitive field.

Fortunately now the situation changed for me and I am very happy. Lee
also resented the poor care of his child. This led to frequent quarrels
and recriminations. Gradually fights between the Oswalds became frequent
and vicious. Marina would arrive by bus with the baby and would complain
to Jeanne: "He beat me up again," and showed bruises on her body to
Jeanne and a black eye to me.

One day we visited them in their apartment on Elsbeth Street in Oak
Cliff. It was on the ground-floor of a dreary red-brick building, the
atmosphere of the house and the neighborhood conducive to suicide. The
living-room was dark and smelly, the bedroom and the kitchen facing
bleak walls. But Lee was proud of his own place and showed me his books
and magazines as well as some letters from Russia which we read
together. The place was spruced up by the lovely photographs of the
Russian countryside taken by Lee there and later enlarged by him. Trees
and fields, charming peasant huts and cloudy skies contrasted strangely
with the dreary walls and the lugubrious atmosphere. Some pictures were
framed by Lee, others unframed were assembled carefully in an album. I
also remember artistically taken pictures of Moscow and Leningrad,
especially of the river Neva which I also slightly remembered from my
childhood. He was happy to have access to elaborate photographic
equipment. "Look at these churches, look at these statues," he exclaimed
proudly. Indeed almost all his pictures had a professional touch, he was
justly proud of them.

While Lee and I were chatting on that moth-eaten sofa of his in the
living room, Marina invited Jeanne to come to the kitchen. There she
cried and showed an infected spot on her shoulder: "The son of the bitch
caught me smoking and he grabbed the cigarette and put it out on my bare
flesh." "This is terrible, this is terrible" shouted Jeanne, coming out
of the kitchen. "Lee what have you done to your wife?"

"Well, she smoked against my orders," he said sullenly.

"You lived abroad only two years and picked up those customs," Jeanne
attacked him. "You could not have picked up this brutality in Russia
where women are independent. And here you have no right to brutalize a
woman just because she smokes occasionally."
Right there we discussed with them very frankly their growing antagonism
and tried to find a solution to it. We came up with an idea of a
temporary separation but let it up to them. "Take it easy," I told Lee,
"and stop abusing your wife."

"But she enjoys brutality," he answered calmly. "Look at me. I am all
scratched up." Indeed, even in the darkish room we could see long red
marks on his face -- traces of Marina's fingernails. "She is provoking
me," he added sadly.

"Still it's no excuse," I said. "Your temperaments obviously clash --
it's another reason for separation."

The Oswalds remained silent, wrapped up in their misery.

"Do it," said Jeanne, "before you really hurt each other. And you Lee
are responsible because you are stronger."

"Man, that woman loves to fight," countered Lee seriously.

Marina and Jeanne went back to the kitchen where Marina cried on my
wife's shoulder. On the way home Jeanne related the complaints. "He is
cold and hostile," said Marina. "He goes to bed with me so rarely now.
Once in a couple of weeks. He makes me so god-damn frustrated.

Jeanne was amused by such frank revelation but could not find a better
solution for Marina than advising her to be more feminine, use some
perfume in the evening and occasionally put on a sexy, transparent
negligee. But before leaving I remember taking a close look at baby
June, laying in her crib, rather fat and not being able yet to say a
work. "She reminds me of someone, of some celebrity." I said. And then
the answer came to me. "Look at June," I shouted. "Look she is a baby
edition of Nikita Khrushchev!"

I did not mean it as an insult, just the opposite. I rather liked that
outgoing, earthy old man, and so did the Oswalds. So we all laughed and
assembled around the crib, examining the baby. "Same pinkish color of
the skin," observed Jeanne. "Same rare, fluffy hair," said Marina. "Same
round Russian face," agreed Lee smilingly.

And so we left that evening advising our young friends to talk over
their problems and to stop torturing each other. Whatever their decision
would be, we would be glad to help them in any way we could.
Driving back from the Oswalds we spoke of their problems and laughed
about the June-Khrushchev comparison. "Yes, the baby has the same
slanting eyes and the same belligerent expression," said Jeanne, "how
come I did not notice it before?"

Yes, June was not a pretty baby at the time but perfectly normal and
healthy. We have not seen her lately, for reasons I shall explain, but I
am sure she grew up to be a lovely young girl. She has a step-father and
knows probably little or nothing about her real father. And we remember
with sadness how much Lee was devoted to her. "He is an unusually loving
and tender father," I mused aloud while driving.

"And he has a very good heart," said Jeanne, "Look how much our dogs
love him."

"It's so touching when Lee kisses June and calls her "moia malenkaia
devochka." And never gets mad at her, I concluded while we approached
our house.


Increased animosity between Lee and Marina

Conflicts in married couples develop slowly like a cancer, and then from
the slow development the sickness attacks the couple with alarming
rapidity. In previous chapter we showed how slowly but insidiously the
animosity developed in the case of Oswalds. Looking back at Lee and
remembering his reactions, he became suddenly standoffish, sometimes
supercilious and spoke only to people whom he liked and trusted. And
there were not many of them. Lee was not close to his mother and seldom
spoke of her. But neither did he criticize her. He hardly spoke of his
brother Robert and not at all of his wife. Yet, the Oswalds stayed with
them for a short time upon their arrival in the United States.

As a matter of fact we never met any member of the Oswald family and we
are sorry not to have met Lee's mother. Even Marina spoke nicely of her.
Later we admired when Marguerite Oswald tried desperately to clear up
her son's name and reputation. We wish her the best of luck. One of the
reasons we agree with Mrs. Marguerite Oswald that her son was probably
innocent of Kennedy's assassination -- and we insisted on this during
the Warren Commission interviews (although it was never brought up
publicly) -- was the following: Lee actually admired President Kennedy
in his own reserved way.

One day we discussed with Lee Kennedy's efforts to bring peace to the
world and to end the cold war. "Great, great!" Exclaimed Lee. "If he
succeeds, he will be the greatest president in the history of this
country."

Kennedy's efforts to alleviate and to end segregation were also admired
by Lee, who was sincerely and profoundly committed to a complete
integration of blacks and saw it in the future of the United States. "I
am willing to fight for racial equality and would die fighting if
necessary," he told me once.

Because of his poor, miserable childhood, he probably compared himself
to the blacks and the Indians and commiserated with them. In this he was
so different and so noble compared with the Southern trash and rednecks,
whose segregationism stems from their fear of the blacks, of their
strength and of the possibility of their prominence in every field of
human endeavor. Education for the blacks was an anathema for them, while
Lee was full-heartedly for it. He loved black children and admired their
cute and outgoing ways. He also was fond of the black music and folklore
with which he as familiar from his childhood days in New Orleans.
Lee despised the reactionary groups, the white supremacists, the
so-called "hate groups" and did not hide his feelings. I naturally
agreed with him. Marina, on other hand was not interested in anything
except acquiring possessions. Her crass materialism, envy of other
refugees' success, compared to Lee's idealism, lead inevitably to
confrontations. Lee was rather neat and orderly, Marina was lazy and
devil may care about her household and herself. This unusual
Russian-American couple was too much for the average Anglo. Hence their
cohabitation with Robert Oswald and his family was short. It all became
clear to my wife as she had the opportunity of observing Marina more
than I did. This ex-Russian activist and member of the Communist youth
stayed in bed 'till noon or later and avoided domestic chores.  This was
what happened when she stayed in our house. The same opinion was shared
by my daughter with whom Marina stayed also for a while.

Marina was simply deprived of energy while Lee, capable of an effort,
was not, however, an average go-getting type of a person who succeed in
America. I often regretted that Lee did not get a better education, he
would have done well in the scholastic world and would have been a
useful citizen.

In the meantime Lee's relationship with Marina worsened as she became
more enticed by the American "luxuries". I was a sensuous joy for her to
wear my wife's silk nighties when she stayed with us and my daughter
said that she did the same when she stayed in her apartment.

As Marina was luxuriating, Lee was rending whenever he could his Russian
books (he had brought a lot from the Soviet Union) and his friends kept
providing him with new supplies of books and magazines.

Although I did not notice any special signs of jealousy regarding Marina
-- for obvious reasons, she could not communicate with Americans and the
Russian refugees were too old for her -- it annoyed him that his wife
kept corresponding with her boy-friend, or an ex-lover, in Russia. Lee
intercepted a letter from this man and became very bitter. I do not
remember whether he beat her up on that occasion, Marina did not
complain. But he told me that the letter contained reference of Marina's
plan to return to the Soviet Union without him. It could be that Lee
imagined it. Anyway, the situation became tenser. Lee obviously loved
Marina in his own way and did not want to lose her. Marina's smoking and
occasional drinking gave fits to Lee, he hated the smell of tobacco on
Marina's breath. Laughingly I told him to avoid this problem and to
approach Marina, when he was in an amorous mood, from the back. He did
not laugh this time.

Junie's upbringing also caused bitter disputes, Lee accused his wife of
not paying enough attention to his daughter, not to change her diapers
fast enough and to be tender enough with her. Actually Marina was not a
bad mother, but Lee was too much of a perfectionist and June was his
idol. In our opinion he spoiled the child too much and we told him
so.

The Oswalds quarreled in front of us bitterly but without physical
violence. But gradually the tempo of their fights increased and we saw
Marina more often with bruises and Lee with scratches on his face.
Jeanne tried to convince Lee to change his ways to be more tolerant
otherwise this confrontation would end in a tragedy. I did not believe
that Lee would seriously hurt Marina and laughed -- "even prominent
people occasionally beat their wives, the most important is not to maim
them."

My wife liked Marina and found her amusing and stimulating but we were
both annoyed to hear her complaints about "that idiot Lee who does not
make enough money."

"Why don't you try to make something out of yourself?" asked Jeanne. "I
came penniless to America, worked hard and became a successful designer.
Go to school, learn English, revalidate your degree." Marina was not
interested.

To encourage Marina and prevent her from bitching at Lee, Jeanne gave
her a series of records to teach Russian-speaking people English. They
were her own records, as she came to the United States from China,
without knowing the language well. But she learned fast and made a
superhuman effort to become independent and to give an excellent
education to her daughter. We also gave the Oswalds a phonograph. But
instead of learning English she played melancholy Russian tunes and did
not obviously cherish the idea of finding a job.

One day both of them were reading to us a letter from Marina's
girlfriend in Russia. "Marina," it read, "I knew you would make it, you
were destined to be great and your success in America is a proof of
it."

Lee smiled sadly: "Marina what were you saying to your friend?"
Ironically Marina did become famous after the assassination, was on the
cover of Time magazine, received a lot of money from charitable but
foolish Americans, and is now well off financially.

At the time it was pathetic to read such a nonsense. But it is possible
that Marina in her own strange way considered her arrival in America a
great success, maybe the hundred odd dresses donated to her turned her
head? . . . Who knows? One day she told Jeanne that she always wanted to
come to the United States -- at any price. All the foolish gadgets and
all the junk which clutter our lives in this country.

Idea of separation

We were appalled at the Oswalds' marital troubles which from being bad
became desperate. One day Marina came to our house without announcement,
crying, badly bruised all over and carrying baby June along. It would be
dangerous for her to leave. And so we discussed the situation with a
charming couple -- the Mellers -- very kindly people without children of
their own. He had been a professor in Eastern Poland and she a Soviet
displaced person. They met in a camp in Germany, fell in love, married
and eventually came to the United States. They met Marina and liked her
and at the same time they were not prejudiced against Lee. Not being
rich, they were generous, and they accepted to host Marina and the child
till the situation would clear up.

The same day I invited Lee to come to the house to discuss the situation
with him. We spoke very calmly and as a matter of fact of the need for
separation. Our dogs, Nero and Poppea, sitting snugly next to Lee were a
living proof that he was not either frantic nor nervous. When it came to
the last beating, result of Oswalds' desperate quarrels, Jeanne said,
"Separate as fast as you can. Stay away from each other. I will let you
know Lee later where Marina will be. But not before some time
lapses."

At that Lee became indignant, our dogs went into hiding, "you are not
going to impose this indignity on me!" He shouted. "I shall tear up all
of June and Marina's clothes and break the furniture." He was incoherent
and violent. We never saw him in this condition before.

"If you do this, you will never see June and Marina again. You are
ridiculous," she said quietly. "There is a law here against abuse."

"By the time you calm down, I shall promise you will be in contact with
baby June again," I interrupted, knowing that Lee was afraid that
someone would take the child away from him. And so he calmed down,
promised to think the situation over, assured us that there would be no
more violence and after a while we drove the couple back to the dreary
Elsbeth street apartment.

The next evening Lee was back with us, all alone. Again he wanted to
talk the situation over. He sat gloomily on our famous sofa and both of
us tried to talk some sense.

"I heard of love accompanied with beating and torture," I said half
seriously, read Marquis de Sade or observe the life of the underworld --
l'amour crapule, as they say in France. But your fights seem to be
deprived of sex, which is terrible."

Jeanne tried another reasoning: "If you think you are fond of each
other, cannot you do it without scratching, biting and hitting?"
Lee sat gloomily without saying a word.

"Separation will be a test for both of you," continued Jeanne, "you will
see if you can live without each other. If you can, Lee you will find
another woman and will be happier with her."

"If not," I laughed, "you will separate or divorce again. Look at me. I
did it four times until I found somebody who can stand me."
Jeanne kept on talking about a nice temporary home for Marina and the
baby and the good care both of them will have. Naturally we did not
mention the name of Mellers.

"I promise you, Lee, that after a cooling off period, I shall give you
the address and the telephone, so you can communicate with your child.
Nobody should separate a child from her father."

Lee believed my promise because he knew that myself I had been a victim
of a vindictive wife who prevented me from seeing my children. Jeanne
had called one of two families who knew the Oswalds and they
wholeheartedly approved of the proposed arrangement because they thought
that Marina would be better off alone than with Lee. And I personally
was sure that Lee would be happier without Marina. Since Marina had been
for this arrangement from the start, it was only Lee we were worried
about.

That night we separated rather sadly. "You may hate us, Lee, or maybe
you will be grateful to us one day for enforcing this separation," I
said, "But I don't see any other way out under the circumstances. This
is Saturday, we are free tomorrow and will come in the morning to help
Marina and the baby move out."

Lee agreed but he was on the verge of tears. "Remember your promise. You
will give me soon their address and the telephone."
We shook hands and Lee left.

The next day, a Sunday, we drove to Oswalds' apartment of Elsbeth
Street. Lee hardly said hello to Jeanne to who he has always been most
cordial. "This is not the end of the world, Lee," she told him. "Cheer
up!" And she went to help Marina.

I sat on the sofa with him and tried to talk to him. He was gloomy and
hardly said a word. He did not try to help us move the crib, baby's
belongings, but when it came to Marina's clothes, he became infuriated.
In the meantime our big convertible Galaxie -- which we kept for years
in memory of Oswalds -- was filling up high. Seeing all those
innumerable clothes, Lee grabbed a bundle of them and shouted: "I will
not permit it! I will not permit it! I shall burn all this garbage."
And so back we went into the apartment following Lee and the bundle of
Marina's clothes. "You cannot go back on your promise to be calm, Lee!"
shouted Jeanne.

Disgusted, I wanted to call the police for help. But Lee looked so
desperate that I sat on the sofa again, grabbed him by the arm and tried
to reason with him. "Brutality won't help you, Lee," I said. "If you
keep on with these tantrums, Marina and the baby will be gone anyway and
you won't see them again. So better submit and keep your word."
He sat gloomily not sure of what he was going to do.

"We are wasting our valuable time helping your kids, "I shouted losing
my patience. "To hell with you and your quarrels!"

And Lee calmed down and agreed to everything. He even helped carry
Marina's clothes, acquired from the hateful Russian-American
benefactors, and put them on top of our overloaded car. with all this
junk, our convertible sank almost to the ground and groaned.
And so we departed Jeanne holding up to all that stuff to prevent it
from falling out, Marina holding on to baby June. As I was driving I
laughed because we looked so obviously ridiculous. But fortunately this
was a Sunday, there were few people on the streets and I drove slowly,
avoiding main arteries from Oak Cliff, the far Western part of Dallas,
to the Lakeview area, in the eastern part of Dallas, a distance of some
fifteen miles.

And so we reached the apartment of that gentle couple, the Mellers, who
came out, greeting Marina and the baby and helped to unload all that
junk.

Little did they suspect that this kindly action would cause them so much
trouble after November 23, 1963 and that their gentle life would be
disturbed by the insane suspicions and crazy publicity following
Kennedy's assassination.

Marina complained for the last time about that stupid Lee and all the
trouble he had caused all of us. I was worried about him. "Let's get
over with it," I said gloomily, finishing the unloading. "And let's get
out of here. We have done enough for these crazy kids."

Separation and more trouble

Obviously the separation which we caused and worked so hard at was not
the right solution for the couple's problems. It was a heavy burden on
this charitable Polish-Russian couple - the Mellers - who were used to
their own ways and who had to share Marina's temperamental problems. She
would not help Mrs. Meller in her household chores and behaved like a
prima donna. And for Lee the separation was much worse. He missed Marina
and the child and came to our house daily, asking how they were, did
June miss him, were they well taken care of. In other words he
practically forgot that this separation was not a joke and that he had
caused it to a great extent.

Again we had a chance to talk together, in a less cheerful mood than
before.  "One can arrive at truth by trial and error," he said. "In my
case I commit so many errors and I still do not know whether I arrive at
truth."

"It is possible, Lee," I countered, "that you take things too seriously.
Don't do things which are unpleasant or uncomfortable because of some
great ideology you may have. You see all the mess you are in. You must
have read Arthur Koestler's book where he repents for his years as an
ideological communist revolutionary."
Lee remembered the book.

"Stop living miserably, do like a normal person does, live pleasantly
and keep your own ideology to yourself. Don't disclose yourself."

"You are right, of course," said Lee. "But this society we live in, it's
so disgusting and degrading. How can you stand it?"

"Well, my friend, that's why we have built in distractions, stupid TV,
moronic movies, rock and roll music for most of the people."

"And good books for us," concluded Lee, rather aptly.

"Lee, you are too straight, your back does not bend enough. One of these
days someone will break your back. You have to learn to bend, be
resilient."

"But look at the politicians here, most of them. They want to be praised
publicly of their honesty and good will. Connally, the governor of
Texas, for example. In reality they will do all the degrading actions
and yet try to appear in good light."

This was the first time he mentioned his loathing for Governor Connally.
What caused it, we shall show later.

"What you need, Lee, is a good walk in the jungle, like we did. That
would bring you back to the essentials of life -- survival."

"Marina is not Jeanne, she will not do anything of the sort. And we have
the baby . . ."

Later we were asked many times with great suspicion, "Why were you
wasting your time on this crazy Marxist and his unappealing wife?"
The answer is, first, to help a young couple in despair, and secondly --
a more complex answer -- I found Lee a most interesting and invigorating
individual, he never bored me. Maybe the reader will agree . . .

Talking to Lee was a balsam for his raw nerves, a sincere conversation
calmed him down and it wasn't bad for me either. Fortunately I remember
well so much of what he said. I remember distinctly that one of those
evenings together we talked of John F. Kennedy. Lee liked him and
certainly did not include him among those despicable politicians he
mentioned before. I showed him President's picture of the cover of Time
magazine and Lee said, "How handsome he looks; what open and sincere
features he has, and how different he looks from the other ratty
politicians."

I don't remember exactly the words but Lee spoke most kindly of the
gradual improvement of the racial relations in the United States,
attributing this improvement to the President. Like most young people he
was attracted by the Kennedy's personality but he also knew that JFK's
father was a rascal who made money off whiskey and being bullish on the
stock-market which is betting against this country's economy.

Lee often mentioned that the two party system did not work well, that
other points of view were not represented. He did not see the difference
between a conservative democrat and a fairly liberal republican -- and
in that I agreed with him. "Both republicans and democrats really did
not oppose each other," he mentioned one day. "They do not represent
different points of view, but they are both solidly against the poor and
oppressed."

But regarding JFK, Lee did not have such a gloomy attitude and he hoped
that after the Bay of Pigs fiasco Kennedy would accept coexistence with
the communist world.

As I mentioned before, he did not like Marine Corps and considered it
racist and segregationist. "Do you know that President Truman wanted to
abolish this Marine Corps and I would agree with him on that." Lee did
not like any militarists, Russian or American, he thought that some day
there could be a "coup d'etat" in this country organized by the
Pentagon, and that the country would become a militaristic, nazi-type,
dictatorship. Maybe this negativist attitude was the result of the
separation, these days he was gloomy and did not smile at my jokes. Yet
I tried my best.

I remember telling him about the meeting of four girls, French, English,
American and Russian. The French girl said, "My lover will buy me a
dress." The English girl said, "My husband promised to buy me a new
coat." The American girl bragged, "My boss will buy me a mink stole."
And the Russian girl concluded, "Girls, I am a prostitute also'."

One of those evenings Lee spoke for the first time of his discharge from
the Marine Corps. "I received an honorable discharge and then those
bastards in the Navy, changed it into an undesirable discharge, just
because I went to Russia and threw my passport in the face of the
American consul."

"Didn't they do it because you lied? You were supposed to go back to the
States to help making a living for your mother . . ."

"Oh, hell, that was just a crooked excuse," he said sullenly. "And
Connally sighed this undesirable discharge."

Those days Lee was bitter about religion, which he generally seldom
mentioned. He explained his avowed agnosticism: "Money wasted on these
innumerable churches, garish and costly, should be spent much more
usefully on hospitals, asylums, homes of the poor and elderly, on
eliminating slums."

But Lee did not like the Communist party either. "In Russia party
members are mostly opportunist, carrying their cards proudly in order to
get better jobs, or they forced into the party by the circumstances or
families."

Again I tried to cheer up Lee by telling him a joke I heard in
Yugoslavia. "An uneducated Montenegian communist arrives in Belgrade
where he sees for the first time changing lights in a main intersection.
'Comrade,' he asked a passer by. 'What are these lights for?' He asked
timidly. The answer was, 'The red lights are for the Communists to cross
over, the yellow for the Communist sympathizers, the green for all the
others.' And so the peasant tried to cross on the red light, almost got
killed, and was strongly admonished by a policeman: 'What kind of fool
are you?' 'I am a member of the communist party,' the man said, 'but I
didn't really wanted to join it, I was forced into it.'"

He did not laugh but conceded that the joke proved his point. "People
without any party affiliation were the nicest among those I met in
Russia, he concluded.

I remember that Lee did not like any political parties, anywhere. He was
just a native-born [sic] nonconformist. But he told me that when he used
to teach his co-workers English in Minsk, he tried to present United
States in the most favorable light and wasn't too popular with the
authorities because of that. In the USSR he defended USA, in USA he
defended USSR.

This type of attitude I like very much and I tried to do the same when I
worked in Yugoslavia in 1967. I remember deeply offending the secretary
of the Communist party of Slovenia comparing him to my ex-father-in-law,
ex-chairman of the Republican party of Pennsylvania and an extremely
rich man. Both of them, communist and a super-capitalist, were made in
the same mold.

When he heard this, Lee finally smiled.

And so Lee tried to create good feeling in two opposing countries, in
two opposing systems of government. This is not an attribute of a
violent man, just the opposite. I must say that I never considered Lee
capable of a truly violent act. Marina annoyed him, he beat her up, but
she scratched him back and hurt him worse. Lee regretted his acts but
Marina did not. Lee threatened to destroy toys and clothes but he did
not do it. Look how he accepted our intervention. I am not a very
violent person, but I would not stand for somebody else to take away my
wife and my only child, whatever the reasons were.

Unquestionably Lee was a very sincere person, he meant what he said,
even if it meant trouble for him. Marina, I remember, had the same
feelings regarding religion as Lee; she found all religions absolutely
ridiculous, a childish farce. But at the same time she had her baby
baptized - just in case. She knew it would create a favorable impression
among Americans and Russian refugees. She did it at the time of this
separation, we did not know about it, and she did it without Lee's
consent.

And so baby June was baptized in the Russian-Orthodox church, where the
priest, father Dimitri, was a good friend of mine. Being a neophyte
himself -- he had been a strong Baptist -- he was somewhat fanatical
about his new faith and considered this baptism a great achievement. And
he did well in the church and at present time he is bishop of
California.

When Lee heard of this baptism, he became infuriated and it led him into
more religious or rather anti-religious discussions, which I remember
well.

"You know all those theories of immortality cleave me cold," said Lee.
"And who would be this mysterious judge who would punish or reward me?
It's out of sight."

"Yes, I agree with you but becoming just gas after death seems too
simple to me."

"Eternity, immortality, what high-falutin' ideas," continued Lee.

"Anyway I have hard enough time in this short existence of mine," he
smiled bitterly. "What shall I do with immortality?"
"Somebody said," pursued Lee, "this man is not intelligent enough to
doubt -- he is a BELIEVER."

"My friend," I said, "hope and religion are a peculiar mixture. They
make lots of people happy but they also made Jewish people go to gas
chambers singing Hebrew songs, instead of fighting the Nazis."

"That won't happen to me," said Lee. "I don't need hymns to pep me up
when I die. And I don't know where I shall go after death and I don't
care. But I shall not be like a rich American -- who eats, sleeps,
drinks, amuses himself and then dies painfully leaving all his belonging
and a large bank account. I shall die poor and free."

I was frequently asked, was Lee a good husband? Now we have seen his
unpleasant characteristics. But he often helped Marina in the household
work. He gave her all the money he earned. Sometimes he complained that
she was too lazy, and he did the job himself, cleaning dishes, even
washing clothes. He was tender to the baby. As far as sex is concerned,
we have heard Marina's complaints but we know that the greatest mystery
in the world is what happens between the married couple at night, behind
the closed doors. And we never looked in the keyhole.

I don't remember Lee ever saying that he would go back to the Soviet
Union, even when his marriage was going on the rocks.

If Marina had any brains, she should have known that a man like Lee, who
was not a money-maker but a barely a wage earner, would never provide
her with all the luxuries, all those desirable items, that America
seemed to possess in such limitless quantities. She picked at him,
annoyed him, as if she desired a separation, which she finally achieved
through us.

This letter from Marina's ex-lover that Lee intercepted, why did she let
it drag around. Maybe she wanted to end this unsuccessful marriage?=09

What annoyed us also was that Marina liked to ridicule Lee. She called
him a fool, a moron. "You are always thinking of politics instead of
making money --you act like a big shot!"

Marina had a bad habit of constantly correcting Lee when he was speaking
Russian and that annoyed him and me. Lee, for a man of his background,
had a remarkable talent for Russian and Marina foolishly tried to blow
up his occasional mistakes or ridicule his slight accent. It's difficult
to know two languages to perfection and Lee's English was perfect,
refined, rather literary, deprived of any Southern accent. He sounded
like a very educated American of indeterminate background. But to know
Russian as he did was remarkable -- to appreciate serious literature --
was something out of the ordinary. He had affinity to the Russian ways
of life, customs, music and food.

Therefore to criticize this remarkable fellow was an act of nastiness or
idiocy, especially for Marina who knew only two English words -- "yes"
and "no." That's how she went around and did her shopping pointing at
the articles with her finger. Lee asked me once, "What is your
philosophy of life? You make me talk a lot but tell me jokes instead of
being serious."

"Well, jokes sometimes express more than thick, serious doctoral
theses," I answered. "Frankly I am not interested in politics, I lost
most of my relatives -- and so did Jeanne -- through various wars and
revolutions. What I believe in -- live and let live. But let the
minorities and the poor live decently, then I for that type of a
government. I had voted Republican so far but I am considering switching
to the Democratic party. there is a guy there by the name of Eugene
McCarthy whom I like. I also consider that each country deserves the
government it has, let the communists live the way they want, same goes
of the socialists or even dictators. For instance the Germans definitely
deserved Hitler."

Lee nodded agreement.
"This country has too many damn problems to bust into other countries
and impose our ways. We must solve our problems first."

The FBI later annoyed me to no end and intervened in my life.
Immediately after the assassination and Lee's declaration that I was his
best friend and the only one he respected, I became marked as a suspect
number one by the FBI and CIA. Various agents, in disguise and
officially representing their agencies invaded my friends and business
acquaintances asking, "Is he a communist, is he an anarchist, is he an
agent provocateur, what country is he working for?" Some even
intimidated that I was a hypnotist and that I held Lee under my spell.

Just imagine the effect of such massive inquiries -- and both my wife
and I had left Dallas for Haiti eight or nine months before the
assassination, working on the geological survey of that country. Some
moronic agent comes to your friend and asks: "Is George a potential
killer?" Then your best friend begins to worry. The same thing happened
to my wife, a famous designer, "Is she a Marxist? Why was she born in
China? Is she an agent of the Mao Tse Tung?" Stupid questions, but your
business contacts begin to worry and you lose them.

You have to investigate like the Scotland Yard does, or do it through
the private detectives, cautiously, not by innuendo, gossip or plain
brutal imposition. Finally, assembling of a bunch of such depositions
into volumes of gossip at a large expense to the taxpayer -- and that's
what the Warren Report is -- is the height of foolishness and a
bureaucratic nightmare. But we shall talk about these matters later.

What did Lee dislike about the United States?

Lee was frequently critical of the United States and this was
understandable considering his poor and sad childhood in New Orleans,
Texas and New York. But also there was some logic in his arguments:
"America is a racist society from its very origin -- the arrival of the
pilgrims and elimination of the Indians. The United States is a
dishonest country because it's based on the spoliation of its rightful
owners. This country is based on hate and intolerance.

"And finally," concluded Lee, "I think American Anglos hate this country
because they ruined it to such an extent. Just look around -- ugliness
and pollution.

"You exaggerate, Lee, " I argued, "There are lovely places in each
town."

"The plastic ghettos of the rich, you call them lovely," he answered
angrily. "In this country of great economic wealth, the jobs are hard to
find even in times of prosperity. In depression, it's awful."

"One thing you are right about," I said, "there are few happy people
here. I remember an old joke: 'In America the poor get poorer, and the
rich get . . . Porfirio Rubirosa."
He did not laugh; Lee probably did not know who Porfirio Rubirosa
was.

"What kind of a country this is, if an Alabama ignorant redneck calls a
black professor from Dillard University a 'nigger!"

And Lee continued angrily: "You like jokes, so listen to this one. 'Two
white policemen sit in their office somewhere in Mississippi. A voice
from outside calls, 'Sheriff, come over! A man is drowning!' The
fat-bellied sheriff rises, goes out and comes back shortly. 'Goddamit,'
he says, 'another nigger tries to drown himself; the bastard wrapped
himself in chains, cannot swim.'"

Yes, Lee could be justifiably angry. But he hated FBI most of all.
"Those SOB's annoy me and Marina constantly. They keep on inquiring
about me and her. They intimate that I am a suspicious character and
that she is a communist. And so I cannot hold a decent job."
"I agree with you, Lee, why don't you write FBI a letter and
complain?"

"I did that and promised to blow up their goddamn office," he said
angrily. As we know now, the existence of this letter was carefully
concealed by FBI from the Warren Commission.

A banker, friend of mine, to whom I introduced Lee, knew the situation
and shied away from him. He did not want investigators in his wardroom.
Lee could have moved away from Dallas, and he did already move from Fort
Worth here, but those lousy investigators followed him everywhere.
That's why the Oswalds moved to New Orleans, but this happened after our
departure to Haiti. I could have advised him to stay on his job.
The banker, I mentioned above, gave Lee an interview, on my insistence,
liked him, found him an independent, clear-thinking man, yet he did not
hire him. "I am afraid of getting involved with this guy," he told me
later. "He is a hot-head. The FBI will keep pestering him. And his
undesirable discharge . . . I am sorry."

This same friend of mine testified at Warren Commission that had I
stayed in Dallas, there would have been no assassination (if Lee was
involved) as I would have known what he was up to. And I am thankful for
this one intelligent remark, although at the same time the same banker
said some disagreeable things about me. But I am a Christian, so I
forgive him.

Some other good friends understood what we were trying to do for the
Oswalds -- trying to improve their position materially, socially and
emotionally. And had we been successful, Lee's animosity might have
disappeared or would become constructive criticism. and, God, we need
it!

Marina testified at the Warren Commission hearings that Lee had been a
different person in the Soviet Union, a friendly and compatible man, but
in the States he became resentful and a recluse. He disliked the life of
Russian refugees, comparing their bourgeois ways, soft and comfortable,
with the tough and ascetic life of their compatriots in Russia. He
considered them fools who did not understand the problem of the United
States, and even traitors to their own mother-country. Why Lee did not
resent our soft ways of life, I shall never know.

Lee disliked people who were lavish with Marina, and spoiled her. And
she foolishly bragged, "Look at this, look at that. They gave it to me.
They can afford it." Naturally it infuriated him.

And so, testified Marina, Lee became somewhat of a recluse, and all that
giving backfired, making Oswald's life miserable and empty. It could be
that this was intentional; some elderly lonely people are jealous of an
unusual couple,  seemingly in love, so they get mixed up in their
affairs.

Lee disliked and even despised bureaucracy in every form here or in the
Soviet Union. "Here they are nasty', he said to me once. "In the Soviet
Union they are naive and stupid." This outburst came out after I asked
him, "How the hell did you get out so easily out of Russia?"
"I outsmarted those Russian bureaucrats. Man! They are just an amorphous
[sic] bunch of people. They make a mistake and go to a concentration
camp like a bunch of sheep."

Comparing Soviet Union and this country, Lee told me one day, "Both
sides have made a lot of mistakes, enormous mistakes. But which side is
right and which side is wrong -- I shall be damned, I don't know."
And he added seriously. "I hope at least China will be right and will do
well."

Effects of the separation

Several interviewers and even good friends asked me constantly the same
question: "You belong to a different sphere of society; why did you get
mixed up with these 'low class' people, the Oswalds?"

Most of the reasons were explained in previous chapters but there was
another important explanation. In 1960, I lost my only son to a
congenital disease -- Cystic Fibrosis, CF for short. Although the fatal
issue was expected, when it happened it affected me so strongly that I
knew that I had to get "away from it all." I asked my wife Jeanne to
give her successful designing profession and join me on an expedition on
foot by the trails of Mexico and all of Central America. This effort
helped me immensely and then we met the Oswalds very shortly after our
return.

Lee understood the nature of my ordeal, and so did Marina, which was a
Russian way of going back to nature -- to be alone in the wilderness
with the image of the lost person in our minds. And so we experienced a
communication with a departed child. But walking among the poor and
dispossessed opened our eyes to the realities of life. Before that, like
most people in this country, we were hustling after our business, quite
successfully most of the time, and dismissed poverty and inequality from
our mind.

I became receptive to some of Lee's ideas, listened to them, discussed
them freely and came to look at his as a friend, almost a son. Our
experience of living with the poor people of Mexico and of Central
America interested Lee immensely and he kept asking intelligent
questions. Because of his childhood in New Orleans and his early contact
with Latin Americans, he understood complex, semi-feudal problems and
was searching for solutions. Marina was not involved in these
discussions. Thus, possibly I identified Lee with my lost son,
unconsciously, of course, an as far as age is concerned he could be my
son. Maybe this is the reason why Lee accepted our paternalistic in his
private life. Lee trusted Jeanne and I implicitly and felt that whatever
we tried to do would be beneficial to him.

I can think of another element of our closeness. At one period in my
life, I was an officer the Polish cavalry where I always prided myself
on excellent relations with the soldiers. Maybe I treated Lee also like
a soldier firmly but fairly. And on Jeanne's part there was the same
element vis-a-vis Marina, who was about her daughter's age. And do the
Oswalds might have considered us their foster parents.

After the forced separation, Lee came to our house every day. Once he
brought some visiting cards he printed for me at Taggart's -- a touching
gesture, and I still keep these cards. Lee obviously liked my impossibly
long name and spelled it correctly, but he printed the cards on shiny
bristol paper with fancy letters and black borders, as if they were made
for a funeral.

The evening he brought my cards he appeared completely despondent from
lonesomeness. "Give me Marina's telephone," he begged me. "I want to
talk to her and the child."

We consulted each other. By consensus we have Lee Marina's telephone and
address, against Marina's will. We just did not believe that she would
be afraid of Lee. Whether our decision was a right one, we don't know
but starting that evening Lee began calling his wife at all times of day
and night, disturbing everybody until this charming couple, the Mellers,
asked Marina to move out.

This time we had nothing to do with the move and it seems that Marina
refused to be with Lee and moved first to Mrs. Katia Ford's place -- a
Russian refugee married to an American geologist -- and later she moved
in with another family named the Rays. (She was also a Russian refugee
and he an American advertising executive.)

Eventually she returned back to Lee. But before that she gave Lee each
time her telephone and address. Marina returned to her domicile after a
tearful scene -- which we did not see. Supposedly Lee swore her his
love, stood on his knees and promised to make some money. Later on we
were told that Marina had moved away from Lee for a few days in Fort
Worth, and then went back to him.

The separation we were involved in so painfully was too short to have a
positive effect, I told Lee. He should have been more patient and we
were angry with ourselves for this intervention in their lives.
And life was catching up with us -- time became very valuable for both
of us. Jeanne had to finish some urgent designing jobs, and my long
awaited project of a geological survey of Haiti was coming to fruition.
At the same time I was chosen chairman of the local Cystic Fibrosis
campaign, which meant writing letters, seeing lots of people,
participating in various meetings and, above all, raising money. Jeanne
was most useful spending her energy most usefully, raising large amounts
of money from our rich neighbors and from the executives of the clothing
industry. The campaign was a great success.

And here is another coincidence: my ex-wife and I had started this
Cystic Fibrosis foundation on a small scale in Dallas and eventually it
became a national organization with headquarters in Atlanta. At the time
of our friendship with the Oswalds, Jacqueline Kennedy became an
honorary chairman of our Foundation for which, we all, afflicted parents
were profoundly grateful to her. Lee Oswald was aware of this fact and
out of friendship to me, he expressed several times how much he admired
our President's wife.

Our meetings at the end of 1962

Somebody familiar with things Haitian would know how difficult is to
organize anything worthwhile in that country. But I have always been
very fond of Haiti, and especially of people there. Fortunately my many
friends were helpful and we were assured now that my survey was
developing a firm base. Also I was trying to organize a company to help
develop the sagging economy of this impoverished but beautiful country.
So the time was short for us and we seldom saw the Oswalds.
One night Lee came alone and seemed very depressed.

"Lee, my friend," I told him."You like Tolstoy, don't you. He said many
clever things but his one applies to you: 'Man must be happy. If not he
has to work on himself to correct this misunderstanding which makes him
unhappy.' I think I know what your 'misunderstanding' is."

Lee nodded sadly. "My tragedy is," he said, "that my suffering is
inflicted on me by a person close to whom I want to be and from whom I
would want to find protection and consolation."
These words, which I remember distinctly, touched me greatly.
"You try to change Marina into your image. It's difficult, if not
impossible. You should like her for what she is, not for what you would
want her to be. Do you my point?"

"But she is becoming like an American middle-class wife," Lee fought
feebly. "She thinks only of foolish comforts. She is becoming like the
rest of them,talking of washers, dryers and other gadgets as if they
were the most important things in life."

"Lee, you are too demanding. She is new in this country and is affected
by it. Take it easy. Try to be friends with her. Somebody said,
'Friendship is a quiet and exquisite servant, while love is a ferocious
and demanding master.'"

"I am a fool and I am very unhappy," said Lee quietly. "But thanks for
your advice anyway. You are a very good friend."

When he left I thought, Here is a good fellow whose tragedy is a
complete misunderstanding of himself. He wants love from a woman who
does not understand him. And he himself does not face squarely the
issues. What is most important to him? In the meantime the despair is
like an organism which destroys him. He begins to lose hope.
And so Lee went back home and to his miserable life. But he seemed to be
resigned to unhappiness and we have not had any complaints from Marina
-- no black eyes and no burned cigarettes on her delicate white
flesh.

In the meantime a big party was to be given for Christmas of 1962 by
Declan Ford, the geologist, and his wife Katia, the Russian refugee, who
knew the Oswalds well but tried to steer away from them. They were
probably annoyed by Marina's stay with them; as far as Lee was concerned
they were rather indifferent. Being younger than most ex-Russians, Katia
was a relatively liberal person.

After we received the invitation, Jeanne called Katia and asked her
permission to bring the Oswalds, who were extremely lonesome as the
time. Katia was not too enthusiastic at Jeanne's suggestion but with a
little of arm-twisting she accepted, but asked specifically not to bring
the baby June. Or maybe the baby was just a pretext and Oswalds had no
money to hire a baby-sitter. So I got on the phone and said, "The
Oswalds are lonesome, isolated; nobody sees them except us and we are
not giving a party this year. We will not come without the Oswalds."

"Marina will not have anyone to speak to if we invite her to another,
purely American, party. At your party she will find some
Russian-speaking people. I have a solution, I shall find a baby-sitter
for June." Fortunately Jeanne's friend, an American-Italian lady, a good
Christian, volunteered for the job and stayed with June that whole
night.

That Christmas Eve both Marina and Lee were well dressed and looked very
elegant. Lee didn't always have to be a nondescript individual; he had
sometimes a very pleasant appearance and could dress well.

The self-appointed baby-sitter, Anita, liked June and took care of her
in a typical warm, Italian manner, and the Oswalds and the two of us,
chatting pleasantly, went to Ford's attractive house in North Dallas. It
was a clear, cold night and a slight layer of snow -- unusual for Texas
-- cheered all of us and gave the city a Christmas-like appearance.
Most of the guests had already consumed lots of drinks and they were
chattering excitedly in a dozen languages. The loveliest girl of the
crowd was a Japanese musician, Yaeko Okui, staying in Dallas for a short
time with her friends from Tokyo. She was a delicate, elegant,
sophisticated girl, restrained and dignified, a little lost in our
Dallas society of noisy, self-assertive, aggressive females.

Marina did not look too well, she seemed to be afraid of the crowds. She
looked to operate with men one-to-one, and appeared bashful, like a
country girl. Lee, on the other hand, blossomed, and was the hit of the
party. Naturally a good conversationalist -- if he wanted to be -- both
in English and Russian, he was outgoing and friendly. Possibly because
the people were more liberal than usual, his behavior was exemplary.
Serious, attentive and polite, he answered questions intelligently, if
the person who asked the question was serious. He reacted well to the
surroundings.

Somebody played Russian tunes on the piano and some good voices could be
heard. Marina unfortunately was not musical and Lee was engrossed in
conversations. I stayed around him and noticed that several women
flirted with him and displayed their charms. Some were quite attractive.
But Lee's greatest conquest was this Japanese girl, Yaeko, I had
mentioned before, and who I also found the most interesting woman of
all. He noticed her also and angled towards her, or possibly it was
vice-versa. Anyway, soon they were engrossed in a conversation.

Of course, Lee had served in Japan, and there he had learned a lot about
the country and the people. He had told me that he met there some
interesting leftist youngsters.

Maybe Yaeko had met GIs, whatever it was, but they were engrossed in
each other and I left them alone. Marina stayed around, but not being
able to understand. she fretted and did not know what to do with
herself. As far as I was concerned, I was delighted. How many times I'd
heard her call Lee a bore, a fool, a bookworm; how many times she
degraded his masculinity. And here the loveliest girl of all was in a
trance. Now Marina became just a jealous woman. She even forgot to smoke
cigarettes and to drink wine, which were free and plentiful. She just
watched Lee with narrow, jealous eyes. "We should go home," she muttered
to me. "It's getting late. I am worried about June."

"Don't worry, she is well taken care of. And we are having a good time,"
I answered, enjoying the situation sadistically.

And Lee this time was not to be budged. It was the first time that I saw
him truly shine in a crowd. He enjoyed the evening and insisted on
staying there to the end of the party.

The other Russians at the party, unknown so far to the Oswalds, like
cultured Russian Jews, were amazed by Lee's almost perfect command of
the language. He spoke very fast to an elderly lady and she said, "I
have lived here in America thirty years and I cannot speak English and
well as you, young man, speak Russian."
The party finally became boisterous and noisy. Lee and Yaeko lost track
of each other. But she found me and asked timidly, "What an interesting
friend you have. What's his name?"

"Lee Harvey Oswald."

"Oh, what a lovely name."

"I agree with you that Lee is an unusual and intelligent young man, but
many others, the majority, disagree with me. They don't seem to
understand him.

"I do," said Yaeko. "He had so many true things to say about Japan. He
is a very sensitive person and he understood my country. The new Japan
is very complex."

"Yes, Lee is not one of those GI's who believe that for a bar of
chocolate and a pair of stockings you can conquer a woman, and for a
larger stake, the whole country."

"Where does he work?" She asked bashfully.

I gave her Taggart's address and the telephone number and thought to
myself, "Hee hee! A real romance is in the making." At last something
good was happening to my friend Lee; new horizons were opening for him.
Unfortunately I cannot say whether this romance has materialized, as I
my life became hectic and I did not have much time for the Oswalds,
their conflicts and even Lee's love life. They did communicate however
and I wouldn't have known about it had it not been for Marina who came
over one day, furious, and told me, "Look what I found in Lee's pocket
-- this Japanese girl's address. What a bastard; he is having an affair
with her."

I did not say anything just smiled and thought, Good for him.
"That Japanese bitch," she cried bitterly. "We had a fight over her, and
look at the result." She sported a new black eye.

"She provoked me to a fight," Lee told me later, showing his scratched
face. "This time she fought like a mad cat."
The situation was normal again, they were at each other's throat.

Rare meetings in 1963

This last incident, due to Lee's romantic interlude, showed us that it
was up to only them to iron out their difficulties. We even began to
agree that the Russian refugees were perhaps right in eliminating this
unhappy couple from their lives. We did not show to Lee or Marina this
change of our attitude but our meetings became rarer. When we saw each
other we spoke mostly about Lee's job, our upcoming departure, and about
June's health.

Only one evening led to some serious discussion. I remember Jeanne
complimented Lee for his serious attitude towards life; she was tired of
people teasing her and did not enjoy this American pastime. My teasing
annoyed her also.

"Excessive vanity is related to jokes and constant teasing," she told
Lee. "People who tease are trying to be brilliant at others' expense.
That you don't do, Lee, neither to us or to Marina. The teasers and
constant jokers want to show themselves superior."

Lee was grateful for the compliment. He sat on that sofa of ours and
told us something very touching: "I think that I shall be moving away
from here after your departure. When my heart is heavy -- and it will be
when you are gone --it will be hard for me to remain in one
place."

"Don't impose new changes on Marina and the child; think of them," said
Jeanne. "If everyone works out well, we shall invite you to stay with us
in Haiti."

Then she gave the Oswalds this advice: "You seem to be still in love
with each other. Cultivate this love as you would cultivate a fire,
adding affectionate actions like little pieces of wood. Otherwise the
fire will be extinguished."

"Study, Lee" -- I had to add my piece of advice. "Study is the best
consolation against worst adversities. Some philosopher said that, it's
not my own idea."

"Kids," said Jeanne. "We shall miss you, although you have been giving
us a lot of headaches. We shall be basking in the sun of Haiti, drinking
the beauty of our favorite island and eating sunshine and mangoes."
"Maybe it won't be so pleasant," said I, not wanting the Oswalds to
think of their dismal lives on Elsbeth Street in Oak Cliff. "Remember
life in America is fun . . . fun . . . fun . . . and then worry . . .
worry . . . worry . . . " I quipped. "Try to have more fun than
worry."

As a result of our admonishments Marina promised not to smoke and Lee
said, "I won't put out cigarettes on your arm, since you won't be
smoking." Peace for a while in the Oswald family.
Practical issues of life took over, I had to spend all the time on my
geological work and on preparations for departure and Jeanne was
designing furiously for several companies at the time trying to make
some money. our finances were almost exhausted.

But one evening with Oswalds, fraught with incidents, stands out in our
memory. That evening we decided to show the 8 mm movie of our walking
trip which lee did not see and insisted on seeing. This was sometime in
January of 1963. A scientist working for the research department of an
oil company, Everett Glover, arranged for the projection in his house.
And he invited all his friends, acquaintances and colleagues. (Most
scientists and skillful technicians dream of wilderness and free life in
the open.) And so the large room was full. Our only guests were Lee and
Marina. they had found someone to baby-sit for baby June.

I did not show this film often as this original was precious to us and
we didn't have a copy of it. Taken all outdoors, this film came out
amazingly well, starting with our departure from the "civilized" world
and ending a year later, south of Panama canal. What we did was a little
walk from the Texas border, all on foot, and we did not cheat even once.
This trip began in October of 1960, and we returned from Panama in a
civilized way by plane, to Jamaica first and then to Haiti where we took
a good rest. During this hegira we made a complete breakaway from all
comforts, slept exclusively outside, on the ground, ate whatever the
Indians had to sell, and I exchanged occasionally my knowledge of
minerals for food supplies. We walked freely as much as we wanted,
slowly at first, much faster later, guiding ourselves by old mining maps
and by compass. We lost a lot of disgusting fat in a hurry, and after
three months became lean and bronzed like savages, able to run up a high
mountain without breathing hard.

The film, taken periodically, showed this amazing change in us, from
slobs to healthy individuals; the rest consisted of beautiful scenery,
of Indians we met, of our wonderful Manchester, Nero, and of our
unpredictable mule, Condessa. (We stopped in a ranch south of the Panama
Canal and left our mule there, to be retired from hard work. I hope she
ended her life peacefully.)

Quite a few of Glover's friends from Dallas and New York, mostly your
career people, although conservatively inclined, were interested in
meeting Lee Harvey Oswald. Some were more interested in him than in our
movie. and they got their money's worth. After the showing they asked
Lee some pointed questions and he answered them aggressively and sharply
without hiding, and even exaggerating, his feelings. Lee wanted to show
these well dressed, prosperous youngsters that he was radically
different from them. I wanted to stop him but he went on nevertheless,
talking of his sympathies for revolutionary movements all over the
world, of his respect for Fidel Castro and for Che Guevara. This made
him hardly popular with this group, composed mainly of big oil
companies' employees, dreaming not of revolutions but of advancement of
their respective careers.

And there is nobody more conservative and even race conscious than an
oil company employee or executive. Lee knew that. "I bet you" he said
sharply, "that your companies do not employ any blacks or Mexicans in
any positions, not executive but average position . . ."
Nobody answered Lee's challenge.

"Naturally abroad you act differently, you use natives of all colors
that American oil companies are soooo liberal."

Incidentally, now the situation has changed somewhat, possibly because
of President Kennedy's assassination, which put in sharp prospective
racial discrimination in this country. But there was an exception in
this conservative group -- a tall, dark-haired, attractive woman in her
late twenties. She took a vivid interest in Marina and did not take
offense to Lee's utterances. She asked me if Marina spoke any English. I
said no. "Would you introduce me to her? My name is Ruth Paine."

I did. And to my great surprise Ruth began to speak in fluent Russian to
an equally flabbergasted Marina.

Mrs. Ruth Paine, an eccentric American, came from a wealthy Philadelphia
Quaker family, and went to some Eastern college where she took Russian
studies very seriously. She was one of those gifted people who learn a
difficult language well, and was infatuated by the Russian culture. Mrs.
Paine was probably bored in the suburban Irving atmosphere and wanted to
practice Russian; her husband being a research engineer for Bell
Helicopter, she had energy and time on her hands. She saw a
native-Russian who did not speak any English; Marina was a real find for
her. Some people accused her later of an infatuation of a different
type, but I did not notice it. Anyway she was more interested in Marina
than in Lee who in the meantime continued his furious and extravagant
discussions with our conservative friends.

Thus began a friendship between these two women, a friendship which
lasted till the days of assassination. Ruth Paine has done more for
Marina and June than any other person, yet, for some reason Marina
refused to see her after Lee's death.

All in all the showing of our picture was a success, beautiful scenery,
waterfalls, volcanoes in eruption, outcrops of brilliantly hued deposits
showed up well -- and the scientists, being adventurers at heart, loved
the wilderness. Marina could not care less; she was not an outdoor
woman. But being polite, she did not express her dislike, and kept on
chatting amicably with Ruth Paine.

Lee, on the other hand, commented excitedly how much he liked the film,
and that he envied us for having lived for a year close to nature, an
ascetic life of complete freedom: "You have walked almost 4,000 miles to
get away from people, comforts, stupid gadgets and conventions. It would
be my dream also. I envy you. I have never been completely free."

"Yes it was a great privilege," I told Lee, "but it was tough, believe
me. We wore out twenty two pairs of shoes and guaraches each."

The subject of our film filled most of our last conversations with Lee.
I advised him to try the same. We spent quite a lot of money on our
trip, but some American lunatic who pretended that he was a saint had
done part of our itinerary by himself, without spending a cent; people
fed and clothed him out of charity.

"I would never do anything without paying for food and lodging," said
Lee. "And Marina is not an outdoor woman like your wife."

Some newspapermen and writers attributed to me the part of Svengali, of
a sinister, evil adviser to Lee. Nothing could be farther from the
truth. He was a strong and stubborn man, a hundred-percent American, who
had made a decision early in life, in his childhood as a matter of fact,
that the American way of life means unabridged capitalism, crooked
politics, violence, racism, pursuit of luxuries rather than ideals,
living up to the Joneses etc., and that conviction motivated his escape
to Russia. Nothing could have persuaded him to the contrary.

Lee's views on Latin America were determined long before we met. On the
basis of our trip, I began to look at things somewhat like Lee always
did. Previously I lived in several Latin American countries, where the
social injustices were obvious, but then I was looking at life as an
eager petroleum geologist, not as a sociologist. This time our primitive
trip put us close to the simplest people; we lived with them and
understood the problems of the poor. And it was exactly what had
happened to Lee in Japan, hence his immediate close relationship with
Yaeko Okui, who was a sensitive and perceptive woman.

Lee told me that the same phenomena of awakening to the fate of the poor
occurred to Che Guevara when he carried out his assignment as a doctor
in Central America, in places we visited ourselves. The desperate plight
of the poor could not be denied by anyone with open eyes and a little
bit of feelings for a fellow man.

"Che Guevara understood the situation well," said Lee, "although his
stay in Central America took place years before your trip. But still you
saw dismal poverty in parts of Mexico, in Guatemala, San Salvador,
Nicaragua and Panama, didn't you?"

"Yes, we did. But in Costa Rica we found a somewhat different situation.
Why?"

We knew the answer but asked Lee anyway.

"Simply because," he said, "that this country has never been occupied
and corrupted by us, Americans."

Right he was. The ignorant "high-school dropout" knew the history of the
different United States interventions in Latin America. And so Costa
Rica is the Switzerland of Latin America, with a truly democratic
government, limited police force, and no army or air force. You can talk
there freely, and meet the president in the barbershop in San Jose. You
can also find refuge there if you steal millions in the USA.

All these problems are clear and open now, but they were not in 1963. We
discussed with Lee the dismal poverty of overcrowded El Salvador, where
the wealth of the whole country belongs to 23 families, latifundistas
since the Spanish conquest. It's still true today. And then the
tragicomic history of Nicaragua. The Somoza family owns most of
Nicaragua, and this regime was imposed by the wife of an American
ambassador during the occupation by the Marines. An elderly Nicaraguan
geologist told us the story of a handsome and husky telephone lineman,
who seduced the lonesome wife of the Yankee Ambassador -- the name was
mentioned but I forgot it -- and his subsequent appointment as chief of
police, which was equivalent to a dictator for life -- his and his
children's.

These discussions with Lee took place 13 years ago. Today the frequent
support of the United States of oligarchs, crooked generals and ruthless
dictators is discussed openly in the Congress, Senate and at the United
Nations. But in 1963 such conversations might have been considered
subversive. Now, after Vietnam and Watergate, we all see a little
clearer and talk more freely.

"Lee, how do you understand the Latin American situation so well?"
"I am from New Orleans; as a kid I met a lot of refugees from all these
banana republics; no better source of information." In this way both Lee
and I were non-conformist, even revolutionaries. But my long years of
experience in Latin America, followed by my son's death and the ensuing
sadness, made me commiserate with the fate of the poor and of the
starving. A younger man, I was career and money mad, a hustler . . .But
Lee was the same since his childhood, which made him such a beautiful
and worthwhile person to me.

I had been in the Social Register, played with the jet-set, knew
innumerable rich people, including the Bouvier family, father and
mother, and Jacqueline and Lee when they were young girls - all this
foolish activity makes me today disgusted with myself. Now all this
opportunism-waste of time is meaningless but Jeanne, my wife, and Lee
had always been on the side of the underprivileged and she had lived in
China and saw new-born babies thrown in the garbage because parents were
too poor to feed them. To Lee, commiseration for the dejected came
naturally. Poor as his family was in New Orleans, he never really
experienced hunger. But his inner nature he belonged to the socially
motivated people.

In our last meetings Lee often expressed his concern about this country
-- past and present. Its origins - according to him - by the
hypocritical pilgrims, through Indian genocide, invasion of the
continent by the greedy and hungry European masses, who, meeting racist
attitudes of the Anglos, became even more racist themselves. Before
busing confusion arose in this country, Lee was keenly aware of the
racist cancer eating America's healthy tissues. "All people are SOB's,"
he often said, "but the strongest and more ferocious always win,
physically but not morally."

Jeanne often participated in our discussions. Let me explain her
background a little and to clarify why she got along so well with
Lee.

Social attitudes are unpredictable and do not depend on your parents or
on your environment. Jeanne's family in china was well to do, her father
built a railroad, how lived a luxurious childhood, but she preferred
from early days to give than to receive. He remembered the Chinese as
humble and kind people, dismally poor, who hated to fight and rather
insulted each other and stamped their feet. Even in huge families,
violence was seldom seen. These subjects were interesting to Lee who
discussed them with my wife. She told him of the formation of the puppet
state of Manchukuo, of the Japanese invasion and of the ensuing
cruelties, of her flight from the Japanese to the United States. Lee
compared her experiences of the old militaristic japan with the present
Japanese movement, which he knew so well. And do both of them got along
fabulously well, instructing each other on the Far-Eastern situation
thirty years ago and now.

Since Marina never participated in these discussions, we would talk with
Jeanne of this curious couple after their departures from our home.
"The opposites attract," was Jeanne's opinion.

"I think it's sex," was my opinion," but what type of sex I don't know."
But there must have been a strong emotional bond between those two. They
always came to each other, except just before the assassination Lee
begged Marina to come and live with him, he had a job with the Book
Depository, everything seemed fine. And Marina refused because Lee could
to buy a washing machine to which she had had access in Mr. Paine's
house. From this incident came the theory attributed to me by some
publication (Esquire, I think): "A washing machine theory of Kennedy's
assassination." Supposedly I compared Marina to a typical Texas woman
who would not go back to her husband because he could not afford a new
Cadillac. But in poor Marina's case it was a washing machine.
The comparison is not bad but I did not enunciate it since for me Lee is
innocent of Kennedy's assassination. I cannot prove it but the later
events, which will be discussed, tend to prove Lee's innocence.
I did not know Lee to be a dangerous man, a man who would kill like a
maniac without any reason - with reason any man is a potential killer --
and we proved that he was rather an admirer of Kennedy's. Lee's
connections, when we knew him, were fairly liberal, egalitarian, not
even communist but rather vague, Marxist beliefs. He did not try to
influence me in any way nor did I try to exert any influence on him.
"That's why it's so easy to be with you," said Lee one day, "everyone
tries to influence me one way or another, in the Soviet Union, in Japan,
here, and you leave me strictly alone."

Our film recurred frequently in our conversations and even Marina
participated in these discussions. "How could you have done such a thing
at your age?" she asked Jeanne. "And to look so trim, strong and
beautiful?

"Effort and constant exercise. Control over your body," would lecture
Jeanne. But to no avail. Neither was I successful to convince Lee to be
sportier. "Get your troubles, your sadness, your anger out of your
systems through hard physical exercise," I advised them both. "It worked
so well in our case. Unfortunately neither of them would follow our
advice.

Lee and Admiral Chester Bruton

There was a hiatus in our meeting with the Oswalds as I had to fly to
Haiti to sign a contract there and then spent some time in New York
preparing for the survey. Jeanne during that time did not see the
Oswalds, she was finishing her designing assignments and was packing. We
would take a minimum of things to Haiti, leaving our furniture and heavy
items in a warehouse in Dallas. Then I came back from New York and asked
Jeanne to invite the Oswalds. They arrived immediately and brought baby
June along. I remember this was a beautiful, spring day, warm enough to
swim. And so Jeanne called Frannie, the were of Admiral Chester Bruton,
both good friends of ours and incidentally long-time enemies of Richard
Nixon, whom they knew from his California days when he made his career
ruining good citizens' reputations.

Admiral Bruton was submarine hero of World War II and I do not recall
whether he had four of five naval crosses. He never talked about them
and a most humble and charming person.

Frannie Bruton, an ex-school teacher, a painter, an admirable woman in
many respects had invited us that same day to a swimming party. Jeanne
asked her if we could bring a couple of friends along and we mentioned
the name of Oswalds. Although we had spoken to her about this unusual
couple, Frannie was not sure who they were but asked us to bring them
along anyway.

And so we arrived to Bruton's lovely place with a huge swimming pool and
Frannie was delighted to see us. When I reminded her that Lee was an
ex-Marine, she went to get the admiral who was a congenial man and
linked to meet the enlisted men.

In the meantime Marina sat by the swimming pool with the baby. She
either did not know how to swim or disliked showing her figure which was
not too hot. Jeanne gave her a conservative bathing suit but she refused
to use it. Lee sat quietly, immersed in his thoughts. That was frequent
with him when he was in new surroundings. Before diving in, I told him
jokingly, "Lee isn't that funny that you get punished for your actions
-- which are only an appearance -- but you don't get punished for your
thoughts, which are the real thing."

While he was pondering over that, I continued, "This is a nice place,
makes you think of oppressed workers, etc., but you should see the
places of the real moguls of finance. this is a poor admiral's
retirement home."

Frannie and Jeanne were talking in the meantime with great animation
about China. Frannie, a world-traveled woman, of most varied interests,
knew China where she spent several years with her husband. She loved the
country and the people - so she and Jeanne hit it off fabulously well.

I went back to Lee and told them quietly, so that the ladies could not
hear.
"Does the wife of the Admiral strike you as an aristocratic, rich
woman?"

He just nodded agreement.

"Do you know that she is the daughter of a tenant-farmer widow's from
Oklahoma. In her childhood the motor was so poor that she stood washing
in. Frannie walked to school four or five miles. She couldn't afford to
buy paperand used the margins of old newspapers to write on or to do
her arithmetic. And the Admiral was also a poor farm-boy from Arkansas.
He got his education in the Navy and is both a lawyer and an electronics
engineer."

I do not know why I wanted to talk so much, but this time I wished to
convince Lee that all is not bad in this world and that comforts
obtained honestly are not to be despised. But Lee did not say
anything.

At that time came the Admiral Chester Bruton, not tall, broad of
shoulders, a typical submariner. "When I was in a submarine in the
Pacific he used to joke good-naturedly." I couldn't turn around in the
tower because I was constantly excited thinking of all those women on
the mainland.

So I had to forge ahead, and that's how I got my Navy crosses."
We used to call him Henri, in the French manner, because he loved to
speak French to us and so did Frannie. Both spoke French very well and
were well read. Later they went to live in France.

But this day he greeted everybody and began talking disgustedly of his
new job with Collins Radio, actually an important position he took after
his early retirement from the Navy. He did not like the commercial
aspects of his work. "I should have stayed in the Navy a bit longer," he
said irritably, "I am made to be a salesman."

Then he began talking warmly to Lee, asking him about his duties in the
Marina Corps, but my friend remained cool and aloof, although Henri was
kind and continued chatting amicably.

"That Marine Corps was the most miserable period in my life," he said
disgustedly. "Stupid work, ignorant companions, abusive officers. Boy,
was I happy to have gotten out of it. To hell with the Navy."

Here I saw for the first time his profound dislike for the military and
especially for the brass. The term "admiral" irritated him.
"He is somewhat of a rebel and a little bit a Marxist," I told the
admiral, trying to smooth over the disagreeable incident.

I never saw Henri mad, but he was this time and I knew that he could
hardly restrain himself from telling Lee to stand at attention first and
then to order him out of the house. Instead he just walked away. Lee did
not continue being insulting and spoke politely with Frannie about his
stay in Japan. "You lived in the compounds there, being officers wives,
and did to have the chance to meet the real people in Japan, like I
did."

"I wish I could have," answered Frannie diplomatically.
Marina was the personification of charm that afternoon. We had to
translate what she said, of course. But she loved the arrangement of the
house, as we took her around, the luxury really quite relative of the
furnishings, Frannie's paintings (she was an excellent amateur painter),
the whole thing. And the surroundings were an incredible contrast to the
gloomy apartment of Elsbeth Street. And so she smiled politely and even
flirted with the Admiral. Excellent snacks were served later by our
hosts, not a real dinner, and nothing out of ordinary happened anymore.
Henri was a good host and restrained himself while Lee, finally relaxed,
told some funny, if slightly derogatory, stories about his Marine Corps
life.

"We had a sergeant in the Marines who was as racist as any German SS
trooper," he began telling us. "But then his sex habits . . ."

"Please, Lee," I stopped him.

"I could sing you the Marine anthem but, fortunately, I never learned
it." Lee was trying to be funny again.

I cannot say that this evening was a great success. But we left quite
late, still amicably, because most of the conversation at the end of the
evening was carried on in French between four of us.

Four years later was saw the Brutons again in Washington DC. They had
moved to Arlington permanently, and we spent a couple of days in their
house. Naturally the subject of the assassination came up, and the
Brutons were absolutely flabbergasted. They did not associate the rude
young ex-marine with the "presumable" assassin of President Kennedy.
They probably did not catch Oswald's' names when they met him, and they
had traveled extensively in the meantime. Frannie became quite excited
that she had entertained "that horrible individual." Henri, being an
adventurous man, was rather amused than appalled by this fortuitous
acquaintance. "Well," he said jokingly, "we met Nixon, and we also met
Lee Harvey Oswald."

Neither of the Brutons were ever approached by the FBI, and had never
been asked to testify at the Warren Commission; nobody seems to have
known of this strange meeting. It seems to me that I had mentioned it to
Albert Jenner of the Warren Commission, but possibly he did not take me
seriously, and then it may be that the Commission would not bother an
American admiral. The so-called foreigners were to bear the brunt of the
suspicions and innuendoes.

Easter of 1963

In April 1963 we were at last ready to leave for New York and then
Haiti. I could begin to work on my long-awaited contract, which was
officially finalized, signed by the President Francois Duvalier and
published in the Haitian Congressional Record. All our light belongings
were packed, and the furniture ready to be sent to the warehouse.
During the commotion before departure we saw little of Oswalds and we
knew that they were living practically like hermits; nobody visited them
or invited them over, except maybe the Paines. On April thirteenth, if I
remember correctly, we sat exhausted in the evening. "This is a big
holiday," said Jeanne. "And the Oswalds are alone. Even Marina is
abandoned by the conservative refugees as she has gone back to her
'Marxist' husband." I agreed with Jeanne and commiserated with Marina.
Being left alone was an unfair penalty for her because she preferred
Lee, notwithstanding all the fights and the beatings.

Jeanne had previously bought a huge toy rabbit, practically June's size
-- a fluffy thing for the poor child. Oswald's new apartment was on
Neely Street, a few blocks away from the old place on Elsbeth Street.
This was our first visit to their new abode which was infinitely better
than the previous one. They had the second floor here all to themselves.
Huge trees shaded the structure and in the back yard the climbing roses
hung up on the trellises. The house itself was a white frame of the
usual type of southern structure.

We rang the bell. The lights were off -- it was obviously late for our
sedentary friends -- as although it was about 10 pm, we had to keep
ringing a long time. Finally the front window opened. "Who is there?"
asked Lee's familiarvoice.

"Jeanne and George; open up, we have something for June," I answered
cheerfully. Lee came down, opened the front door and then led us up a
dark staircase. Now Marina was up also and the apartment was lit up. It
was clean and spacious but almost devoid of furniture. "Isn't this a
nice place?" confided Marina in Russian. "So much better than the old
'hole-in-the-walls.'" We agreed and congratulated them on finding such a
good place.

She was cheerful and Lee was smiling also, which hadn't happened often
or lately. He was happy that they were left alone by the E9migr=E9s and
even by the rare Americans they knew. Lee's feelings for the E9migr=E9s
could be compared to those of pro-Castro Cubans towards all the refugees
crowding the streets of Miami. Lee appeared satisfied with his job and
proud of being able to provide a better place for his family. This was
the first time we did not see any conflict between him and his wife. Of
course, what follows will prove that all was not honey in the Oswald
family.

Marina served soft drinks and began discussing some domestic affairs
with Jeanne. Lee and I walked to the balcony and began to chat. He was
very curious about my project in Haiti, but so far neither one of us
were sure it would materialize. Now it was "a fait accompli." Lee envied
my profession and the chance I would have to help an undeveloped country
and the poor people there. He knew Haiti from his readings; he was aware
it was the oldest independent black republic in the world. He knew that
Haiti had helped the United States during the War of Independence, a
fact not known to many Americans of his age and background. He also had
heard about United States intervention in Haiti after World War I --
actually at the end of the war -- and of the long American occupation of
that country. He even knew which part of the Espagnola Island the
Republic of Haiti occupied and her size. "You are very lucky going
there; it will be an exciting experience," he said.

And this opinion was valuable and encouraging to me because most  of my
friends and acquaintances had a very dim view of my whole project, and
thought it would be dangerous and a waste of time. It turned out to be
one of the most useful and pleasant experiences of our lives. But most
of these advisers knew little about Haiti, and I mean well educated,
prominent people. To them it was an insane, tropical, black republic --
rather a ferocious dictatorship. Some had predicted the worst disasters
if we lived there.

Then we talked pleasantly of his job, and of June who was growing
nicely. We also spoke of the unfortunate rise of ultra-conservatism in
this country, of the racist movement in the South. Lee considered this
the most dangerous phenomenon for all peace-loving people: "Economic
discrimination is bad, but you can remedy it," he said. "But racial
discrimination cannot be remedied because you cannot change the color of
your skin." Of course, he greatly admired Dr. Martin Luther King and
agreed with his program. I just mention it in passing here, but he
frequently talked of Dr. King with a real reverence.

In the meantime Marina was showing Jeanne her bedroom, kitchen and
living room. She opened a large closet, next to the balcony, and began
showing Jeanne her wardrobe, which was considerable. On the bottom of
the closet was rifle standing completely openly.
"Look! Look!" called Jeanne excitedly. "There is a rifle there."
We came in and I looked curiously. Indeed there was a military rifle
there of a type unknown to me, with something dangling in front.
"What is that thing dangling?" asked Jeanne.

"A telescopic sight," I answered.

Jeanne never saw a telescopic sight before and probably did not
understand what it was. But I did; I had graduated from a military
school.

"Why do you have this rifle here?" Jeanne asked Lee.

"Lee bought it," answered Marina, "devil knows why. We need all the
money we have for food and lodging and he buys that damn rifle."

"But what does he do with a military rifle?" asked Jeanne.

"He likes shooting at the leaves."

"But when does he have time to shoot at the leaves and the place?" asked
Jeanne curiously.

"He shoots at the leaves in the park whenever we go there."

This did not make much sense to us, but as we liked target shooting
ourselves, we did not consider this a crazy occupation. All this time
Lee stood next to me curiously silent.

I popped a question spontaneously: "Did you take a pot shot at General
Walker, Lee?" And then a guffawed, "Ha! Ha!" I thought this was a pretty
good joke.

Lee's reaction was strange. I have often tried to reconstruct it. He did
not say anything. He just stood there motionless. It was naturally a
very foolish joke because there had been an assassination attempt a few
days before on General Edwin Walker, a rather notorious character who
was asked to resign his post in Germany by General Eisenhower, if I
remember correctly. Anyway he was an ultra-rightist who had tried to run
for governor of Texas. And he got a surprising number of votes, some
200,000, on a political platform somewhat to the right of Hitler's. This
joke just popped out because General Walker lived fairly close to us, on
Turtle Creek. Everyone knew his house with the huge American flag in
front, sometimes replaced by a Confederate flag -- and much later by
South Vietnamese and Rhodesian flags.

As I said, Lee's facial expression remained calm. He became just a
little paler. This was the last time I was with him, and yet I cannot
say with precision what his reaction was. I think he mumbled something
unintelligibly, and I did not ask anything further. For sure he was
embarrassed, possibly stunned. And Marina was definitely shocked.
Neither Jeanne nor I laughed much at my Walker joke. And certainly not
Marina nor Lee. Only later we realized how stunning and unexpected this
joke was to them. It hit the nail on the head.

Marina testified to the Warren Commission that I knew Lee shot at
General Walker; she also testified under oath that Lee did shoot at
General Walker and had missed him narrowly. I do not blame General
Walker -- whom we jokingly called General "Fokker," and whom I never had
the pleasure of meeting -- for calling me a dangerous radical to the
Warren Commission; I stupidly laughed at a bullet which might have
killed him. This joke cost me a lot of money by hurting badly many of my
business contacts.

Marina testified also that Lee considered General Walker a fascist and
tried to kill this most dangerous man for his country. Marina's
testimonies turned out to be contradictory and vague, but there is
another thing which makes me believe that Lee possibly tried to shoot
General Walker. A man, whose name I do not recall, a Jewish man, whom
Lee met at the Ford's Christmas party, described General Walker as the
most dangerous man in the United States, a potential neo-fascist leader.
I noticed that Lee kept on asking why. And the other fellow explained
clearly his reasons. Lee might have been influenced by this statement.
(Another possible reason is the inscription of Lee's photograph, which
we received posthumously, and Marina's inscription on it. I shall talk
about it later.)

This innocuous remark of mine influenced our lives, but we heard later
from Albert Jenner, counsel of the Warren Commission, that Marina's
testimony was even more damaging to me. She supposedly remembered me
saying, "Lee, why did you miss him?" That I naturally did not say, and
Marina was so vague in her recollections that even the Warren Commission
did not take her seriously. Marina believed that I knew somehow of Lee's
shooting at General Walker, and that's why she was so afraid that
evening that I might tell the police or FBI about it. Lee, on the other
hand, never considered me capable of treason, and then he knew, of
course, that I was completely unaware of his attempt.

Lee was a little scared of my extra-sensory perception, which I still
have with my students. Had I known anything about his plan, I would have
persuaded him not to try any such crazy foolishness. Lee often commented
with amazement that I could guess his thoughts. And I do believe in the
existence of ESP, especially among people attuned to each other.

Constantly I guess who is on the line when the phone rings. I know when
somebody close to me writes me a letter or wants to get in touch with
me. It even happened that I thought suddenly of a well-known person --
but barely known to me -- turn on the TV and there he would be. This
happened I remember with Captain Rickenbacker whom I know slightly but
admired a great deal. We were sitting in a living-room with friends in
New Orleans and I said suddenly, "Turn on the radio, Captain
Rickenbacker is going to speak." And he did.

Anyway this evening of Easter of 1963 ended in an amicable manner. We
walked in the small garden and Marina gathered a gorgeous bouquet of
yellow roses and gave it to Jeanne in appreciation of the rabbit she had
brought for the child. The Oswalds were also happy that I did not
mention any more the rifle or the Walker joke, instead of making an
issue out of it. It was our last meeting and a friendly one. We said
that June looked less now than Khrushchev, she was growing up. She did
not have such a bald head, her eyes got bigger and she was less
chunky.
Lee himself mentioned it, caressing the child: "Look, she is much
better-looking now than our great Russian leader."

"I hope she keeps his amusing and friendly personality," said Jeanne.

He is gone now, God bless his Bible-quoting soul and his earthy
personality.  His sudden bursts of anger and beating of the table with
his shoe, are all gone and belong to history. Millions of Russians miss
him.

After this Easter visit things began to move so fast for us that we
could not see the Oswalds, and we did not even talk to them on the
phone.

Our move to Haiti

Our move to Haiti ended our personal contacts with the Oswalds. But
other contacts were not interrupted, including the strangest one, the
posthumous, which I will describe later. Soon after arrival in
Port-au-Prince, capital of Haiti, we received a post-card from Lee,
giving us his new address in New Orleans. At our last meeting for Easter
neither of Oswalds mentioned that they intended to leave Dallas. So,
this was surprise for us. Obviously they moved from Dallas at about the
same time we did, but we, we do not know. Maybe they were just lonesome.
Maybe Lee wanted to remove himself and his family from General Walker's
neighborhood?

And so Lee gave us this now-famous address on Magazine Street in New
Orleans, Louisiana, the town where he spent most of his youth.
Incidentally it was written in English. The card got lost somehow and
Jeanne failed to put the exact address in her book. So she still has
under Lee Harvey Oswald's address -- 214 Neely Street, telephone RI
1-5501, and the business address of his reproduction company. We did
mean to send them a Christmas gift but the tragic events of November
1963 occurred in the meantime.

Anytime we look at this address book we think of Lee and wish he were
alive, not only because we liked him so much, but also because he could
have proved his innocence, or, if he were involved, to tell the whole
truth about the conspiracy. He always had enough integrity to tell us
all the truth, even if he had done anything wrong. Remember, he did not
deny -- or accept -- his guilt in shooting at General Walker.
What I had to say here, and it bothered me for a long time that I did
not do it before, relates to the type of person Lee Harvey Oswald was;
the reader will have to form his opinion of his guilt, or lack of it.
Several new elements will be brought in here, which, in our opinion, are
favorable to Lee. Both my wife and I still miss him and are deeply sorry
that he met such an untimely death at the hand of such a repulsive
individual.

And so we led a delightful existence in Haiti in our beautiful house
overlooking the Bay of Port-au-Prince, doing useful work with my
international group of geologists: one Italian, on Swiss and one
American, as well as theHaitian helpers. Incidentally, I may have
gotten this assignment because there were no Haitian geologists in the
whole country at the time. There may have been some in exile.
But after November 22, 1963 the situation changed for us. Information
trickled from the Embassy personnel, and through the Miami papers that I
had been Lee Harvey Oswald's "best friend"; that both Jeanne and I
"befriended" the assassin of the President of the United States. Of
course, we ourselves did tell the political officer at our Embassy that
indeed we knew Lee and Marina and that we were ready to help in any
investigation; we also wrote to our friends about it -- all our letters
were incidentally intercepted by FBI -- and finally I wrote a letter of
condolences to Jacqueline Kennedy's mother, whom I had known better than
her illustrious daughter. Mrs. Hugh Auchinchloss of Washington DC,
ex-Mrs. Jack Bouvier of New York and Southampton, was a dear friends of
my in-laws and mine. In this letter I expressed my grief over the death
of a great President and a wonderful man. Being influenced by the
barrage of one sided propaganda in the newspapers, on radio and TV, I
added to this letter, "I am deeply sorry I have ever met Lee Harvey
Oswald and had befriended him."

Living abroad and not having any inside information on the case we were
"brainwashed" by the media which emphasized and explained constantly
that indeed Lee was unquestionably the lone and only assassin. Without
any facts and Lee dead, everyone in Haiti considered him the assassin.
Even cynical and well informed European diplomats in Haiti were of the
same opinion. But they began to grumble asking themselves the same
question: "Where is the motive?"

Now something unusual happened. A gray-suited, bulky, Miami suntanned,
with false teeth and an artificial smile, Mr. W. James Wood, an Agent of
FBI arrived in Port-au-Prince for the sole purpose of making me deny a
statement I had made to my friends and to the political officer at the
Embassy. What was this disturbing statement. It had contacted a
government man in Dallas, the only one knew personally, probably a CIA
agent, or possible an agent of FBI, very nice fellow by the name of J.
Walton Moore. Looks like it's a specialty of these government agents to
have a capital letter instead of the first name. Purely Anglo-Saxon, you
know. . . . Anyway, Mr. J. Walton Moore had interviewed me upon my
return from a government mission to Yugoslavia, and we got along well.
He had lived in China, was born there as a matter of fact, in a
missionary family. So I invited him and his wife to the house and he got
along fabulously well with Jeanne. I used to see Mr. Moore occasionally
for lunch. A cosmopolitan character, most attractive.

A short time after meeting Lee Harvey Oswald, before we became friends,
I was a little worried about his opinions and his background. And so I
went to see Mr. J. Walton Moore to his office -- in the same building I
used to have my own office, Reserve Loan Life Building on Ervay Street
-- and asked him point blank: "I met this young ex-Marine, Lee Harvey
Oswald, is it safe to associate with him?" And Mr. Moore's answer was,
"He is OK. He is just a harmless lunatic."
That he was harmless was good enough for me. I would decide for
myselfwhether Lee was a lunatic.

And that was the statement which greatly disturbed W. James Wood and his
superiors. And that same statement disturbed later Albert Jenner, a
counsel of the Warren Commission, when I gave my testimony. As disturbed
Jenner was -- and he knew that my testimony was truthful -- W. James
Wood who came to see us in Haiti was more than disturbed. He tried to
make me deny this statement. And so we were sitting in a luxurious
Embassy room, staring with animosity at each other, and this repulsive,
replete bureaucrat dared to tell me, "You will have to change your
statement."

"What do you mean?" I asked incredulously.

"That false statement of yours that a government man told you that our
President's assassin was a harmless lunatic."

"False statement! Man, you are out of your mind!" I answered sharply.
And so the gray-suited man in no uncertain terms threatened me: "Unless
you change your statement, life will be tough for you in the States."

"Nuts!" Was the only answer I could make.
After meeting Mr. W. James Wood, I immediately began having doubts of
Lee's guilt. And while I was talking to him -- the conversation lasted
quite some time -- he constantly tried to intimidate me, reminding me a
lot of undesirable people I had met in my life and puritanically
challenging me on the grounds of moral turpitude, i.e., too many
women.

I told this obnoxious FBI agent that neither FBI or CIA or any other
agency was in any way implicated in President Kennedy's assassination.
(I just took a precaution which seemingly backfired.) But I did imply
that these governmentagencies were negligent. Still my statement was
of utter importance to the FBI and Mr. Wood, and he kept on trying to
force me to deny it. I categorically refused to deny anything and we
ended this stormy session without shaking hands.

Then my wife went through the same routine: threats and allusions to her
belonging to some leftist organization of scouts (imagine -- leftist
scouts!) which marred her background. Since she did not have any
behavior pattern of moral turpitude, except her guilt to have been born
in China, she answered Mr. Wood in a quiet and icy manner, and
absolutely refused to influence me to change my statement.
"You don't seem to like FBI," said the gray-suited man with an
artificial smile at the end of the interview.

"I do not like your methods. They are both brutal and naive. Learn from
Scotland Yard: they know how to conduct themselves. When they inquire
they do it with discretion, not by innuendo and gossip. You do harm to
the people you investigate, and don't discover anything useful about the
case."

A friend of mine in Dallas, an investment banker, later told the Warren
Commission investigators that our emotions were probably tensed up
during our interview with Mr. Wood. And he was right.

The assurance that he was harmless naturally influenced me very
positively in my relationship with Lee. And still I kept asking him many
embarrassing questions like, "How did you get to Russia? It's expensive
to travel so far?  How did you come back so easily?" His answers were
good enough to me. He did not work for any foreign government, nor for
our government -- the latter is more doubtful. If I thought he did, he
would not have been a good friend of mine. On the other hand, after this
interview, my opinion of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover (another letter
instead of the first name) became very low, and this has been confirmed
by recent events, i.e., the destruction of Lee's letter to the FBI in
which he demanded they leave him and his wife alone.

As I mentioned before, the whole Bouvier family were very close friends
of mine; I met them upon arrival in the United states. They were very
warm, friendly people. The newspapers all over the country made a big
issue out of it: "A mystery man who was close to Lee Harvey Oswald and
to Jacqueline Kennedy." Some newspapers put forth some odious
insinuations. My life seems to be full of such strange coincidences.
It's probably only in the grave that I shall stop meeting strange people
and form peculiar friendships.

Even Dr. Francois Duvalier, president of Haiti, got alarmed by all these
goings on. Incidentally, President Duvalier was no friend of John F.
Kennedy, who had cut down United States help to Haiti to nothing. But
there was anotherfactor: My house was located on the same mountainous
development as President Duvalier's palace, on Tonton Lyle Estates, and
the implication was obvious: Living next to the man who befriended a
president's assassin presented a problem.

In a small country like Haiti, government people know more of what is
going on in the American Embassy than the Ambassador himself. The visit
of the FBI man was blown completely out of proportion. Americans were
scared of me and even Haitians avoided visiting us.

The Warren Commission

As the atmosphere of Port-au-Prince became oppressive for us, and my
work was suffering from it, we were considering abandoning my survey,
disbanding my small personnel, and returning to the States. But
President Duvalier found himself a solution to this situation. He asked
Dr. Herve Boyer, Minister of Finance -- the Secretary of the Treasury,
and a good friend of mine who had helped me get the Survey contract --
to invite me to his office to have a chat with me. This was a friendly
office which I visited often when problems had to be solved, and the
secretary who was also Boyer's mistress, a gorgeous Mulatto girl, was no
less amicable to me as usual.

But not so Dr. Boyer. He said decisively, "You are in the hot water.
Everyone is talking about you and your wife. Do not abandon your survey,
but go back to the States and clear your name somehow. If you cannot,
come back, wind up your work and leave the country."

It so happened that on the same day our Embassy received a letter,
addressed to me and my wife, from Mr. J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel of
the Warren Commission. Mr. Rankin invited us to come to Washington DC,
if we wished, and to testify. This letter also stated that if we agreed
to testify, the Warren Commission would pay all our expenses to
Washington and back to Haiti. 	Of course we were most anxious to
cooperate as much as we could to solve this crime. But Jeanne refused to
travel without our two Manchester terriers. and, after an exchange of
wires, Mr. Rankin accepted the additional "dog expense." It was
fortunate that Nero and Poppea, our terriers, were blissfully unaware
that this trip was caused by Lee Harvey Oswald whom they liked so much.
For them this expedition was a ball.

We stayed at the old Willard Hotel, not far from the Veterans
Administration Building, where the Commission was located. I was the
first to testify. The man who took my deposition was Albert Jenner, a
lawyer from Chicago, who much later became well known in connection with
the Watergate case. Jenner was a well known trial lawyer, and I have to
admit that either he was much more clever than I or that I was impressed
by the whole setting and the situation as it unfolded in Washington at
the time. Anyway, Jenner played with me as if I were a baby.

Also, people I met there were rather impressive: Allen Dulles, head of
CIA at the time [sic], who did not interfere in the proceedings, but was
there as a distant threat; Judge Warren himself, a rather sympathetic,
paternal figure who had a weakness for Marina, we found later;
Representative General ford, friendly and youthful-looking (the last ten
years changed him considerably); and then innumerable, hustling lawyers,
all of them trying to figure out how a single man, Lee Harvey Oswald,
could have done so much damage with his old, primitive, Italian army
rifle. Having around such a galaxy of legal and political talent, you
don't have to be tortured; you would impressed and intimidated to say
almost anything about an insignificant, dead ex-Marine. And during my
lengthy deposition, I said some unkind things about Lee which I now
regret.

The reader must imagine my situation, sitting there and answering an
endless flow of well prepared and insidious questions for more than two
days. Was this an intimidation?

"We know more about your life than you yourself, so answer all my
questions truthfully and sincerely," Jenner began.
I should have said, "If you know everything, why bring us all the way
from Haiti?" But I did not, and began to talk. And my answers were very
nicely edited in the subsequent Report. "Say the whole truth and nothing
but the truth," he intoned.

Jenner was a good actor. Very cold and aloof at first, he switched to
flattery and smiles when he felt that I was getting tensed up and
antagonistic.

"How cosmopolitan you are! How many important people you know! Yes, you
are great!" said Jenner ingratiatingly. And probably this flattery
worked well on me, proving to me that Albert Jenner was such a good
friend of mine. So I answered all the questions to the best of my
ability, with utter sincerity, without even asking to have my lawyer
present, and he, the sneaky bastard, did not say a word that the whole
testimony would be printed and distributed all over the world. And so my
private life was shamelessly violated.*

[Editor's note: De Mohrenschildt is mistaken; Jenner told him up front
that his testimony would be published in full, to which the Baron
replied, "I can imagine what a volume it will be for the future Ph.D.'s
to study" (9 H 174).]

During this time, Jeanne and the dogs were languishing in the old
Willard Hotel. At the end of this long testimony, Jenner seemed
convinced that I was not involved in any way in this "already solved"
assassination. He began showering compliments on me and I felt like a
star of a pornographic movie. Before leaving, I told Jenner of the harm
this affair was causing me, mainly because of the attitude of the
American Ambassador -- of its effect on my work in Haiti. He inserted
therefore some nice statements, putting me above all suspicion. Big
deal! The harm was already done.

And how could I have been suspected of anything, being so far away from
Dallas, unless President Duvalier and I used voodoo practices and
inserted needles, or shot at a doll resembling President Kennedy? Since
everything was known, Jenner concluded my useless testimony with the
following words: "You did all right. Keep up the life you have been
living. You helped a poor family." And he added as an aside, "Remember,
sometimes it is dangerous to be too generous with your time and
help."

Then followed one and a half days of testimony for my wife and our
Manchesters. They were not "material witnesses" but Jeanne refused
categorically to leave them in the hotel. If our dogs could have talked,
their testimonies would have been more valuable than ours.

As Jeanne and I later discussed our experiences as witnesses, many
details came to our minds. For instance, "Lee Harvey Oswald must have
asked you a question about your political philosophy. What did you say?"
asked Jenner of me slyly. "Live and let live," I answered simply. Jenner
made some comments on that but generally seemed satisfied.
I said to Jeanne later: "It was an unpleasant experience, but in Russia
we would have been sent to Siberia for life." She agreed.

Jeanne's opinions regarding our experiences were somewhat different from
mine. I was anxious to clear up my name and return to Haiti.

"I considered it a favor of mine to come and help the Commission," she
had said. "I was completely relaxed. The counsel was pleasant and
reserved. However, instead of asking pertinent questions, for instance
'When did you meet the Oswalds?' and 'How many times did you talk to him
and Marina, and about what?'; instead they asked me, 'Where were you
born? Who were your parents?' I never suspected that my personal life
would be broadcast, although I had nothing to be ashamed of. Still it's
my property, my life. The whole report was a wash-up, a cover-up."

Later we shall say whom the Warren Commission tried to cover up, maybe
unconsciously. "I can never forgive the cheek of asking me how many
children I had," continued recollecting my fiery wife, "how many jobs I
changed, and why, whom I had worked for, how many times I went to Europe
on buying trips, how much I earned. I had expected to speak only of Lee
and Marina. So I have a grudge, and if I could, I would try to make them
pay for the harm and insult they have done to me. Where is the privacy
we are supposed to have here?" said Jeanne bitterly.

"And so I spoke of my wonderful parents, of my life in China, my arrival
in the USA. Poverty, hard work, success finally. But I hoped that this
would be a country free of prejudice, of racial discrimination.
Financial opportunities in the USA were not the prime reasons for my
coming here. My faith, or lack of faith, all was polluted by this
porno-exhibitionist questioning. Finally we began discussing Lee in a
desultory manner," concluded Jeanne.

Naturally our testimonies regarding Lee and Marina coincided. We said
the same things in our own ways and we never even bothered to read our
own testimonies. When you tell the truth, you don't have to remember it,
so we did not discuss further details among ourselves.

"Finally," remembered Jeanne, "they made me identify the gun. Nero, the
Manchester was there; he sniffed at the gun. He could have made a better
identification than I. For me the gun seemed familiar, but whether it
was the same we saw in the closet, I couldn't say. It seemed to have a
telescopic sight. So I told Jenner, 'Ask Marina; she could identify the
gun!'"

We both felt that the minds of the members of the Warren Commission were
already made up; they were obsessed with the idea that Lee was the sole
assassin. The idea of Cuban refugees with a mortal grudge against
Kennedy did not interest them. We both were investigated the same way.
Anytime we said anything favorable to Lee, they passed it up. And Jenner
jesuitically kept asking questions which were incriminating to Lee.

An amusing detail of Jeanne's interrogation: Jenner shied away from Nero
-- and Jeanne promised that he would not bite, that he never bit Lee who
was a good human being, to which Nero would be willing to swear. We
discussed also what we had heard from the Commission members -- that
most other witnesses were nervous and contradicted themselves, probably
intimidated by the awesomeness of the proceedings and the fact that many
were not even naturalized citizens. And so some good people spoke very
unkindly and untruthfully of Lee just because they were frightened and
they wanted to please the Commission. They really should be forgiven.

All the favorable facts we mentioned about Lee were subsequently
misinterpreted in the printed edition of the report or not mentioned in
it at all. Both of us furthermore felt that Jenner was displeased
whenever he heard some favorable facts about Lee. Then we asked
ourselves, Why did the Warren Commission spend all the money bringing us
back and forth, keeping us in an expensive hotel, doing all that
hellishly expensive investigation around the world about us, even
carrying our mutts to Washington and back to Haiti? Why such a waste of
the taxpayers' money if they did not want to hear the truth?
We discovered that we both told Jenner independently, "Why don't you
send good detectives to new Orleans and to Mexico, find who were Lee's
contacts at that time and what he was up to at the time of the tragedy."
It seems that a Senate Commission is going to do just that now, in the
summer of 1976.

We wondered why the Commission paid so much attention to the testimonies
of people who had known Lee and Marina in Dallas, long before the
assassination or others who had known him long before that? And the
answer was, just to fill up the pages and tranquilize the American
populace.

Jeanne's dispute with Mrs. Hugh Auchinchloss, Jacqueline Kennedy's
mother

In the evening when we finished our deposition. Jeanne asked her, "Why
don't you, the relatives of our beloved President, you who are so
wealthy, why don't you conduct a real investigation as to who was the
rat who killed him?"

"But the rat was your friend Lee Harvey Oswald," was the cold answer.
Thus the minds of not only the members of the Commission but of the
President's own family were all made up.
Jenner kept asking me, "Why did Oswald like you when he didn't like
anybody else?" -- as if there was some homosexual link between us.

"I don't have the slightest idea; maybe because I liked him."
"Maybe he liked you because you were a strong person?" Jenner asked,
again intimating that maybe I was a "wolf" or a devil influencing him to
do evil.

"Maybe he identified you as an internationalist?" -- intimating again
some dark connections I might have.

"Maybe," I answered. "I am no admirer of any particular flag."
Jenner continued his line of inquiry: "You and your wife were the only
ones who remained his friends?"

The question was asked of both of us, and we answered both in about the
same terms: "To us they were warm, open, young people, responsive to our
hospitality."

Albert Jenner then brought to my attention part of a letter I wrote to
Mrs. Auchinchloss from Haiti. He used this as my admission of Lee's
guilt, and I had explained already under what circumstances this letter
was written: "Since we lived in Dallas, we had the misfortune to have
met Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife Marina. I do hope that Marina and her
children (now she has two by Lee) will not suffer too badly through
life, and that the stigma of the assassination will not affect her and
the innocent children."

This was my foolish letter and my speculation, not Jeanne's. And again,
after the impact of this letter he read to me, Jenner very cleverly
bamboozled me into [speculating about] a possible motive of Lee's.

"The only reason for Lee's criminal act," I continued, "would be that he
might have been jealous of a young, rich, attractive president who had a
beautiful wife and was a world figure. Lee was just the opposite; his
wife was bitchy and he was a failure."

Now, away from the pressure of the Commission, I consider this statement
of mine most unfair. It would not have made him a hero to have shot a
liberal and beloved president, especially beloved by the minorities; and
Marina was not such a bitch, while Jacqueline was not so beautiful.
Especially she was not beautiful inside when she married that gangster
of international shipping, Aristotle Onassis.

If you read the Warren Report, there is another leading question by
Jenner: "As a humanitarian person you cannot imagine anyone murdering
another person?" A childish, naive question, of course.

"I cannot imagine doing it myself," I answered equally stupidly -- but
at least I did not express an opinion about Lee's guilt.
Lee, an ex-Marine, trained for organized murder, was capable of killing
but for a very strong ideological motive or in self-defense.

But a few more words about my letter to Mrs. Auchinchloss, Mrs.,
Kennedy's mother. The copies of these letters were given the Warren
Commission by Allen Dulles, her close friend, as well as the copies of
her letters to me. On January 29, 1964, she wrote to me: "It seems
extraordinary that you knew Lee Harvey Oswald and Jacqueline as a child.
It certainly is a strange world. And I hope, like you do, that Lee
Harvey Oswald's innocent children will not suffer."

Very tired by our testimonies, we were invited after our ordeal to the
luxurious house of Jacqueline Kennedy's mother and her step-father, Mr.
Hugh Auchinchloss. This luxurious home was located in Georgetown, and
Auchinchloss' money originated of some association of Hugh's family with
John D. Rockefeller, Sr., of the oil fame. We spoke about another
coincidence on our lives.

I flew one day from Dallas to Washington, and Mrs. Hugh Auchinchloss
happened to be on the same plane. She was flying from some health farm
in Phoenix, Arizona, where rich women stay to diet, exercise, and put
themselves in an acceptable shape again. This was a year of presidential
election, and Mrs. Auchinchloss, a staunch Republican, was for Nixon,
and was sure than her son-in-law JFK did not have the slightest chance
to win the elections. I, on the other hand, was sure that Kennedy would
win the election, and was going to vote Democratic for the first time. I
told her that the mood of the country was in favor of her charming
son-in-law, and she answered that I did not understand American
politics.

Eventually, we had to talk sadly about the assassination. Allan Dulles
was there also, and he asked me a few astute questions about Lee. One of
them was, I remember, did Lee have a reason to hate President Kennedy?
However, when I answered that he was rather an admirer of the dead
President, everyone took my answer with a grain of salt. Again the
overwhelming opinion was that Lee was the sole assassin.

I was still thinking of poor Lee, comparing his life with the life of
these multimillionaires. I tried to reason, to no avail. It seemed to me
that I was facing a conspiracy, a conspiracy of stubbornness and
silence. Finally both Jeanne and Janet Auchinchloss, got very emotional,
embraced each other and cried together, one over the loss of her
son-in-law, another over the loss of a great President she admired so
much.

"Janet," I said before leaving, "you were Jack Kennedy's mother-in-law,
and I am a complete stranger. I would spend my own money and lots of my
time to find out who were the real assassins or the conspirators. Don't
you want any further investigation? You have infinite resources."
"Jack is dead and nothing will bring him back," she replied
decisively.

"Since he was a very beloved president, I wouldn't leave a stone
unturned to make sure that the assassin is found and punished," implored
Jeanne. "We both have grave doubts in Lee's guilt."

Later we discussed for a long time why a woman so close to President
Kennedy -- as well as Robert Kennedy and the rest of Kennedy family, as
we discovered later -- would be so adamant on this subject. A later
chapter, dealing with Willem Oltman's strange adventure, will raise
further grave doubts in readers mind. Would it be possible, as much as
it sounds like a sacrilege, that Lee was a "convenient" assassin to all
the relatives and friends of the late President Kennedy? Convenient not
in any derogatory sense but just because he was a PATSY -- a patsy not
himself involved in any revenge plot arising out of JFK's biggest and
costliest mistake -- the Bay of Pigs.	Isn't better to think, maybe
subconsciously, that the assassin was a crazy, semi-literate, ex-Marine,
screwed-up, Marxist lunatic, with an undesirable discharge and a
poverty-stricken childhood, unsuccessful in his pursuits both in USSR
and in USA -- and with a record of marriage verging on disastrous? It's
better for them and the rest of the country to hold this belief than to
find out that the assassination was a devilishly clever act of revenge
caused by the Bay of Pigs disaster. This would explain Lee's desperate
scream, "I am a patsy!"

But we were still in the Auchinchloss' luxurious mansion, about ready to
leave. "Incidentally," said Mrs. Auchinchloss coldly, "my daughter
Jacqueline never wants to see you again because you were close to her
husband's assassin."

"It's her privilege," I answered.

Hugh, who was a very silent man, asked me suddenly, "And how Marina is
fixed financially?"

"I do not know; I just read that she received quite a lot of money from
the charitable American people -- maybe eighty thousand dollars."
"That won't last her long," he said thoughtfully and, almost without
transition, pointed out to an extraordinary chest set: "This is early
Persian valued at sixty thousand dollars."

We said goodbyes amicably to the Auchinchlosses and drove off back to
our hotel. "That son-of-the-gun Hugh has an income running into
millions," I told Jeanne thoughtfully.

"Such figures are beyond my comprehension," she said sadly.
Our return to Haiti

When we had received Rankin's letter inviting us to come to Washington
and testify before the Warren Commission, we knew that we would be of
little help, as we had been out of contact with Lee for over eight
months prior to theassassination [sic]. We could not say what
happened to him and Marina after we had left Dallas. But, naturally, I
was anxious to testify in order to clear my name and to be able to work
on my survey.

But the American colonists in Port-au-Prince were in an uproar when they
were told that we were going to Washington to testify. "How horrible!"
said some. "Aren't you afraid?" said the others. Even my old friend at
the Embassy, Teddy Blaque, said, "But he was an assassin, and you were
so deeply involved with him." Many thought that we would be put in jail
and would never come back to our lovely house in Port-au-Prince.

Fortunately the Haitian Ambassador in Washington was reassured by the
Warren Commission that we were decent people; the Ambassador transmitted
this message to the President Duvalier and we could return safely to
Haiti. But my contract became hopelessly harmed by the intervening
publicity and by the peculiar attitude taken by the American Embassy
towards us. And President Duvalier, the astute Papa Doc, knew through
his informants that our Embassy would not protect my rights any more.
And the old fox was absolutely right: The payments for my survey began
drying up, and in later years I never received any cooperation from
anyone in our Embassy or in the State Department in trying to recover
the large balance of my contract still due to me.

I cannot even give a complete resume of incongruous theories and
suppositions which evolved -- and are still evolving to-day -- in
feverish minds of various writers and reporters as a result of my past
friendship with Lee, and the colorful excerpts from the Warren
Commission depositions which were leaked out.

One theory had it that Lee was operated by me via long distance from
Haiti. Impulses were transmitted very deviously because I, a geologist
and a famous scientist, had previously inserted a transistor in Lee's
skull (either under the skin or deeper; I do not remember). A book was
published in New York describing this whole operation in detail. Since
Papa Doc disliked President Kennedy, we would sit in his office,
surrounded by "Tonoon-Mascouts," and would operate poor Lee, who would
blindly obey us.

As a credit to the American reader, I may say that this book didn't have
much success, and I seldom meet anyone who had bothered to read it.
However another book was published in Luxembourg -- to avoid criminal
prosecution -- and it had an enormous success in Europe. L'Amerique
brule -- America Burns -- contains over 400 pages of outrageous
innuendoes against the American institutions. The writer, James Hepburn,
an invented name, is actually a group of European newspapermen who had
assembled dirt about the United States. This collective "James Hepburn"
calls both Lee Harvey Oswald and myself CIA agents. 	Let me translate
this nonsense which appears on page 356: "Oswald was suspected, as any
other agent returning from a mission in the enemy territory, of having
been 'manipulated.' He was put therefore under surveillance by CIA and
then interrogated and 'tested' by one of the specialists utilized at the
same time by Washington (CIA) and by Houston (oil men) and whose 'nom de
guerre' was George S. De Mohrenschildt, and whose nickname was
'Chinaman.'"

This "well-informed" book which still has flashes of success in Europe,
goes on describing yours truly: "The Chinaman was 'presumed' to have
been born in the Ukraine and was an ex-officer in the Polish cavalry. He
was recruited during the war by OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and
was registered in 1944 at the University of Texas where he obtained a
degree of geological engineering, specializing in petroleum geology. The
CIA used him in Iran, in Egypt, in Indonesia, in Panama, in Guatemala,
in Nicaragua, in San Salvador, in Nigeria, in Ghana, in Togo, in Haiti,
etc., where he worked -- in principle -- for the Sinclair Oil Company.
George De Mohrenschildt was closely connected with petroleum circles
(and a member of the Dallas Petroleum Club, of the Abilene Country Club,
and of the Dallas Society of Petroleum Geologists) and had close
personal connections with the managers of the following companies: Kerr
McGee Oil Company, Continental Oil Company, Cogswell Oil Equipment,
Texas Eastern Corporation and also with John Mecom (of Houston). He was
a distinguished and cultured man [Mr. Hepburn obviously buried me
already] who was part of the establishment and frequented the Social
Register of New York. His wife, a White Russian lady, born in China,
worked frequently with him. Another of his covers was the International
Cooperation Administration (ICA) in Washington."

This "book" also accuses Lee of working for a photographic firm in
Dallas as a CIA cover which specialized in making and reproducing of
maps and confidential documents for the United States Federal
Government.

But enough of all this nonsense. However, let us remember that all these
idiocies and distortions were based on the Warren Report. If I were a
CIA agent, I would not have been so miserably treated by the American
Embassy in Port-au-Prince, and especially by the Ambassador. It is
discouraging to say that the Warren Report contained mostly the "words
which were put in our mouths" so to speak. However, there were a few
good and truthful facts in this report. For instance, a friend of mine,
an investment banker in Dallas, testified that he met Lee and that he
found him intelligent and alert. Another young man, who had lived in
Fort Worth, also had some kind of words for my friend.

Effects on our lives

The publication of the Warren Commission Report brought an immediate and
drastic change in our lives in Haiti. Only the close and true friends
understood the real reasons of our involvement with the "presumed
assassin" of the generally beloved President Kennedy. In this manner the
phony friends were weeded out of our lives. But in addition to the
publicity caused by the Report, many people were contacted by the FBI
agents at various times asking imbecilic and insulting questions,
implying grimly the worst suspicions about us. The same thing happened
to Jeanne. A good friend recalls that an FBI agent asked for the whole
day of his precious time just to talk about us. Discussing Jeanne's
background in China, the agent asked our friend, "Is she loyal to the
United States?" Our friend answered without hesitation, "Yes, she is, in
my opinion." "Whom are you kidding?" the FBI agent said
sarcastically.

Insulting and stupid articles appeared in the newspapers and in the
magazines all over the world, and still do, about Jeanne and I, calling
us "mysterious associates of Lee Harvey Oswald." Just a few months ago
the Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle published articles
implying that I had received a considerable amount of money in the
Bahamas just to keep quiet about the mystery of Kennedy's assassination.
A shyster in Washington by the name of Fensterwald assured a European
newspaperman of a similar monetary operation. I would have probably sued
the authors of such vicious allegations, but this would have added
additional publicity.

Even a nice and fair book by Gerald Ford, Portrait of the Assassin, in
which he mentions us very favorably, had disastrous effects on our
lives: "Oh! You were mentioned in that book about the assassin."
Money was offered for interviews, which we refused to accept. Overseas
telephone service in Haiti was inadequate -- very few people had private
telephones. I happened to be one of the few with the telephone in my
office, but not at home. This office telephone kept buzzing for months
-- some unknown voices asking me insidious questions: "What was your
relationship with Oswald? What did you think of him? Did you have the
same convictions as he did? Did he kill Kennedy? Why are you hiding in
Haiti?" Some man called me from Hong Kong just to ask me a single
question: "Who are you?"

And these implications were so false, because I had been working to
obtain my contract in Haiti a year before we met the Oswalds, and we
arrived on this island nine months before all hell broke loose in Dallas
-- and we were living there without interruption all during this time.
And so after a few particularly insisting reporters kept on calling me,
and spending their evil money, I would hang-up. But the worst was the
attitude of the Ambassador Timmon, the charge d'affaires Curtis and all
the other sycophants. But more on that subject later.

Then came an offer for us to appear on a televised interview for the
NBC's The Warren Report. The reporter's name was George McMillan and he
asked if he could come all the way to Haiti to visit us. He sounded like
an intelligent man and was provided with a good recommendation by a
mutual friend. I did not commit myself to a televised interview but told
McMillan that he was welcome to visit us in Haiti.

A gruesome incident took place the day of his arrival at the old
Port-au-Prince airport. After a season full of invasions, a group landed
from Cuba and made havoc all over eastern Haiti. They were well armed,
familiar with the terrain, and they murdered indiscriminately.

Eventually all of them were executed by the faithful "tonton-macoutes,"
TNs as we used to call them. One of the invaders was brought in to
Port-au-Prince and publicly executed to show the Haitian populace that
it wouldn't pay to attack Papa Doc and his government; the dead body was
then exhibited on the plaza near the airport with all the supplies and
ammunition. The exhibit was attached to a chair and the swarm of flies
around him was like funeral smoke.

When McMillan, an experienced newsman arrived, he saw the commotion and
the crowds surrounding the body. I did not want him to see the gruesome
sight and drove around it at full speed without comment. Later in the
evening, however, around drinks, he began to talk about it.

Incidentally, when we invited McMillan, we were not sure whether he
wanted to talk to us about Oswald or about the situation in Haiti, which
was the center of attention at the time. Since I was in charge of the
geological survey and the only American working independently in Haiti
at that time, I thought that was why McMillan wanted an interview with
me. I certainly knew the situation well, and it was different from what
the American press had described. In my opinion Dr. Duvalier was an
advocate of the poor blacks against the rich, French-educated Mulattos.
This was a simplified version of the situation but better than the full
condemnation of the Duvalier regime in Graham Green's The Comedians. I
hadn't wanted him to see that dead man attached to the chair without
giving him some facts surrounding the execution. What an impact his
report would have on the public in the USA if he started with a
statement about the dead body and the flies.

We brought McMillan to our house because he seemed a very pleasant
individual. He had told us that he defended blacks' equal rights and
that somewhere in the Carolinas, where he lived, the KKK burned crosses
on his lawn and forced him to leave. Anyway, he wanted all our friends
who came to visit us in Haiti to know the true facts about the regime --
the good and the bad. Later on when we sat on our terrace to the sounds
of the delicate tinkling of "anolis" -- small lizards -- and looking at
the fantastic view of the city and the dark bay, McMillan mused aloud,
"Why didn't you want me to see the cadaver?" He stopped suddenly as a
huge tarantula moved slowly on its long legs close to him, and he
shuddered. "Don't worry," I reassured him; these big ones are dangerous,
not the small ones. "Very simple," I said. "I didn't want you to see the
dead guerrilla, without telling you the facts surrounding his death
first. After all, Papa Doc is my employer."

But instead of listening to me, or even answering, McMillan launched
into a diatribe about the great program NBC was preparing about the
Warren Report, how we would be the main personalities in it, etc. He
even offered to bring in the whole TV crew if we accepted. But sick of
all this unwanted publicity, we firmly refused.

Fortunately George McMillan turned out to be an interesting, pleasant,
and  a good tennis player. He did not waste his time altogether, and
being boycotted by the Americans in Haiti, we were glad to have with us
a liberal, independent person. He left Haiti two days later, asking us
to reconsider our decision, and mentioned a substantial fee.

I asked several friends for advice regarding this TV matter and they all
answered that remaining silent and invisible would harm us. "You are the
only ones who could say a few kinds words about Oswald," wrote one of my
best friends who had met Lee and wasn't entirely convinced of his guilt.
"This national TV appearance would dispel the dangerous aura of mystery
in your relationship with Lee," wrote another.

And so, after batting it between us back and forth, we reconsidered our
decision. I called McMillan and arrangements were made immediately by
NBC to bring us and our faithful pooches to New York City.

The weather was stormy, and we had to circle for two hours over the
city, but the ordeal ended and we landed safely. NBC reserved for us an
apartment at the Plaza Hotel, and the next day we spent the whole
afternoon in front of the cameras.

And again, as the interview progressed, it became obvious that the
producer and McMillan tried to make me say something derogatory about
Lee, and to insidiously drag out of me some comment damaging to his
memory. To them he was definitely the assassin and we were possibly his
conspirators or secret advisers. As Jeanne and I were positive about our
non-sensational statements, the interview did not make any sense. We had
been invited to New York on the mistaken premise that either we would
produce some inside information or would prove to millions of Americans
watching the show that Lee was the only assassin.

Since the Warren Commission, slanted as it was, could never find any
reason for Lee's involvement in this "crime of the century", the
promoters of the NBC show hoped that I, as his best friend, would
finally explain his insane action. And that was the reason why we were
brought into New York.

And to Jeanne and I, who did not have anymore information than anyone
else reading newspapers and magazines, Lee remained the same person we
knew -- eccentric, interesting, warm, a close friend -- and we never
considered him seriously as President Kennedy's assassin.

Of course, insanity is a possibility, but all the previous incidents and
conversations with Lee did not suggest impending insanity. Nor was he
ever to us a poor loser, a stupid high school dropout, a bloodthirsty
revolutionary, nor a person jealous of other people's success and money.
Such people are met everyday on the streets of any American city in
droves. The picture of Lee with the rifle and Marina's inscription would
indicate that he might have been considering "hunting fascists" -- and
in his mind General Walker was one -- but certainly not our President
Kennedy.

A few days later, while still in New York, I saw a complete 40-minute
preview of our appearance, and again we saw what a poor job we did
trying to present Lee's side. And later, the worst parts of this forty
minutes interview were used for the hour-length show called The Warren
Report that so many millions saw. It was like a McCarthy era, the time
of the government's witch-hunt against the "leftists." This was a
general hunt, government's and media's against a defenseless dead
man.

Upon return to Haiti we knew immediately that something had gone awry
with our relationship with the Haitian government. Usually we went
through customs first, cheerfully greeted by Mr. Jolicoeur, a
clown-like, charming public relations man for Papa Doc. This time our
luggage was searched surreptitiously while militia examined our papers
in a different parts of the building. When our luggage and we were
reunited, the bulk of maps and information I had carried with me were
missing. Since they were my property, I lodged a strong protest with our
Embassy and the Duvalier's cabinet. Both parties laughed at me: What
maps? What search? Where were you? How naive can you be. . . .


Our return to the United StatesThe incident with the stolen maps
destroyed my desire to continue working for the Haitian Government, and
the American Ambassador declared in a hysterical way, "I hate you. You
cause me nothing but trouble!"

"I am a Christian, Mr. Timmon," I said. "I don't hate anybody. But I
wish you would help me recover my maps."

Before this incident the Haitian Government insisted that I try to
develop some of the resources I'd discovered in Haiti: copper, titanium,
bauxite, excellent oil possibilities. Therefore, whenever I left the
country I took the bulk of information (not all, fortunately) with me
and each time I acted as an agent for the Government. Here, with my maps
gone, the trust was destroyed and I began preparing for departure. Since
the Haitians owed me large amount of money for the survey, I was able to
dispatch most of my valuable information through friends to a safe place
to the States. Anyway, most of my work was completed and I began
worrying that the Haitians would detain me as a hostage.

Just recently an American citizen, an ex-Air Force officer domiciled in
Haiti, was accused by Papa Doc of dealing with his enemies abroad. The
poor fellow looked for asylum in our Embassy, but it was refused to him.
(All other embassies give asylum to political refugees; ours doesn't.)
In addition to this, the chief of police came and assured the Ambassador
that nothing would happen to the poor ex-US officer. And so he was
carried out screaming and shouting and nothing was heard of him again.
My friends in the know told me that he was beaten to death in the
dungeon of the presidential palace.

Such a fate was not to our taste. Since nobody expected our immediate
departure, we made a very secret deal with a small German line -- plying
the trade in the Caribbean islands, using the good offices of the German
Ambassador -- and the little ship accepted us on board late in the
evening. How did we avoid customs, etc.? I still had a liasse passe from
President Duvalier, and nobody bothered to stop our truck with our
furniture, supplies, and our personal car.

Late in the evening, the only person who came to say goodbye to us was
the delightful Ambassador and his charming Austrian wife; we had a few
glasses of champagne and departed to the dark Caribbean. Incidentally on
the manifest of this ship we signed our names as follows: Jeanne -- a
cook; -- [text missing?] reckoned. And that's how we landed in Miami,
having skirted very close to the Cuban Coast.

The crew, most international, was composed of a German ex-submarine
commander, an engineer -- a young Norwegian genius who could repair
anything on board -- and a medley of Haitians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians
and other picturesque Caribbeans. Since Jeanne decided to cook some
delicious European meals for the captain and crew, and I, in excess of
energy, painted the whole deck, a pleasant surprise awaited us in Miami.
When I asked the captain for the bill, not only for us but also for the
car and the luggage, the answer was, "It was a pleasure having you on
board. You earned more than the price of your transportation." The only
way to reciprocate was to invite the officers to a sumptuous dinner.

From Miami we drove slowly to Texas. Incidentally, as we were skirting
Lake Okochobee late at night on a deserted road, a brilliant comet
crossed the dark, tropical sky, lighting the weird scenery around and
even scaring our dogs. A comet for some is considered a good omen, but
for us it foretold very bad timesindeed.

In Dallas we hoped to meet some good, old friends; quite a few had come
to Haiti and enjoyed our hospitality. Instead we encountered suspicion
and outright hostility. Surprised at first, we soon discovered the
reason -- the Warren Commission Report. Immediately after our
testimonies, the transcripts of which we signed without even bothering
to read -- it was supposed to be truth and nothing but the truth; who
would want to quibble over the words? -- we were so sick and tired of
the whole affair, we put the matter of the inquiries by these various
agencies completely out of our minds; and while driving an open car back
to Dallas along the coast, we breathed in the fresh marine air and
wanted to forget the whole tragic incident. But in Dallas we had to face
another situation.

"Have you read the Warren Report?" a lawyer, a good friend of ours,
asked us.

"No," I answered, "I heard there is a comprehensive resume of various
depositions."

"Aren't you going to read it? It contains some sixteen volumes and one
of them is almost exclusively about the two of you."

The aura of suspicion, of innuendoes, of gossip, of semi-lies and
concealment polluted the air around us. But the events forced us to read
what we had said in Washington DC and especially what has been said
about us in thesetwenty-six voluminous tomes. Still, we postponed
reading these dry, bureaucratic, insipid pages until one day we saw some
friends in Fort Worth (they had known Lee and Marina also but had
avoided interrogation by some hook or crook) and they loaned to us the
volume in which we figured so prominently. "Read it carefully and don't
miss a word. Actually, you should read all the volumes; then you will
understand the attitude of many people towards you."

And indeed, after reading several deposition, I was ready to vomit, and
I understood what Albert Jenner, our "inquisitor" at the Warren
Commission had mentioned: "You will be the only people in the world to
know exactly what others think about you." He did not dwell further on
these words and did not indicate that our depositions and those of other
people we knew or had even remote relations with, would be printed,
after careful editing, to probe the nebulous point that Lee was the sole
assassin. It turned out that some decent people volunteered to testify
on the condition that their testimonies would remain secret and
available only to Warren Commission members. But the FBI insisted that
all depositions should be printed and distributed to the public.
The shades of J. Edgar Hoover mush regret that decision after it was
discovered how many falsehoods his organization was involved in. And
never again these patriotic and decent people will expose themselves in
the degrading positions of "informers."

It was saddening to read the opinion of an old business associate that
he "never trusted me completely." My ex-secretary divulged that I had
made many suspicious and intriguing trips to Houston, Texas -- such an
exotic and mysterious place to her underling's mind. A scurrilous remark
was made by an old Russian emigre, a biddy whom we never considered
bright, but harmless. "That Chinese woman never even believed in God,"
she declared indignantly, as if religion was not a very personal matter.
"He always wanted to be the commissar of Texas," was an opinion of a
slight acquaintance. And finally the testimony of my ex-son-in-law, Gary
Taylor: "If anyone had finagled this assassination or had influenced Lee
Harvey Oswald in that direction, that person would be obviously George
De Mohrenschildt." Of course, in the meantime my daughter had abandoned
him, and he kept a grudge against me because I had not approved of their
teenage marriage.

Reading all this I even thought of writing a short book assembling these
opinions, and giving the book the title, I Arranged Kennedy's
Assassination. Or another title that would attract customers: My Affair
with the Teenage Jacqueline Bouvier and How I Got Rid of Her Husband.
The same people, Russian refugees and Americans, who had detested or
ignored Lee and Marina made money out of them later, especially out of
the resulting unbelievable promotion of the "poor Russian Marina," --
"that defenseless, God-fearing, miserable wife of that brutal monster
Lee Harvey Oswald." The story reminds me somewhat of another specimen,
Svetlana Stalina, the daughter of the greatest assassin the world has
seen (not excluding Adolf Hitler and Attila the Hun), communist and
daughter of the ferocious communist, who came to the United States in
search of God.

But back to Marina. She finally "made it in the United States",  just
like her girlfriend put it in her letter from Soviet Russia in 1962. She
became a success, had her cover in Time; money poured from the naive
Americans. Her arrival in this country was superbly fulfilled: Lee
Harvey Oswald had finally become a real moneymaker after his death. Poor
fellow, even his tomb was desecrated, and stolen from the public
cemetery near Arlington, Texas. Lee became subject of articles and books
-- and will be for a long time -- by the scavengers of a poor man's
death.

I would not dare to call our dear President Gerald Ford a scavenger, but
his book was the first one directly accusing Lee Harvey Oswald, his
Portrait of the Assassin. Naturally the book was ghost-written, inept
and uninteresting, yet he was the first one (he or his ghost-writer) to
have the information assembled by the Warren Commission. Again, I have
to give credit to the American people, the book was a failure.
Newspapermen kept on calling us; they were geniuses at discovering our
whereabouts: We did not have a listed number, and stayed with some
friends. They should have used their talents investigating Lee's
activities in Atlanta, New Orleans, and Mexico City just before the
assassination. Garrison did it and his career as District Attorney was
ruined. People who had the slightest connection with Lee and whose
testimonies were not exactly "kosher" as far as the official version was
concerned died mysteriously.

The owner of the apartment house on Gillespie, an eccentric lady who,
like us, was extremely fond of Haiti -- she almost had a fit when she
saw Haitian car licenses on our car -- asked discreetly for police
protection for us. With the exception of the European press, the
majority of the American books and articles accepted an almost
preposterous thesis introduced by some lawyer of the Warren Commission
that the same bullet killed Kennedy and gravely wounded Governor John
Connally. Yet Connally himself distinctly remembers two consecutive
shots and he has never changed his testimony.

Only some more logical and cynical writers mentioned the fact that there
was no reason whatsoever for Lee's action; but they approve the thesis
that Lee was aiming at Governor Connally, whom he had reason to dislike,
but being a usual flop and fuck-up, he killed Kennedy instead and only
wounded Connally.

Notwithstanding these superficial conclusions favored in the USA, other
countries stopped accepting the thesis of Lee's guilt. Many people
suspected LBJ, as a party which profited directly from the assassination
and who always thoroughly disliked JFK and the whole Kennedy clan, who
used to cold-shoulder him and his wife. It's not for us to judge, but
the latest discoveries of the FBI's finagling add some credence to this
theory. After all, LBJ was a most devious man, and jointly with it his
ignorance was also out of the ordinary. They say that he was not sure of
the location of Vietnam.

And so, here again, Lee Harvey Oswald was the most convenient patsy. So,
little by little, even naive and credulous Americans, annoyed by this
constant harping on Lee's guilt, by the serving of platitudes and
repetitious statements, began to disbelieve in Lee's guilt, or at least
they began to doubt the nonexistence of any conspiracy. After all,
Americans are business-minded; if somebody performs an act as
assassination, without any rhyme or reason and without any financial
reward . . . something stinks in Denmark.

We personally, kept our doubts to ourselves, saw fewer people than
before, restrained our social life, and eliminated false friends and
acquaintances. A dear friend of ours, a staff writer for the Dallas
Herald, insisted on interviewing us and pointed out my deep-felt opinion
about how harmful it is for the United States to believe that a lone
lunatic killed the President and then another lunatic killed HIM. And
then, shortly afterwards, the brother of the President was murdered in
cold blood by another lunatic without any apparent reason. What is this,
a country of homicidal maniacs? Had a reasonable theory of a plot or
plots been substantiated, I think it would have been beneficial to this
country.

A message from Lee

In February of 1967 we finally found a suitable place to settle down;
before that we moved from one place to another and visited our children
in California and Mexico. The place called conveniently "La Citadelle"
was exactly fitting to us, and was ample enough to accommodate all the
furniture which had been stored in a warehouse since the beginning of
1963. It was about time to settle down, as four years storage at the
Southwestern Warehouses began to exhaust us financially. I thought of
abandoning all of the junk and leaving it to the warehouse -- it's good
sometimes to start anew -- but there were books . . .

And so we went to the warehouse with an old, faithful friend, always
ready to help and to pick up some old junk for himself, and, before our
furniture was taken out, we began looking through the accumulation of
various and sundry items that could be eliminated. I was less interested
in this task, so I chatted with my friend, a good guy who had followed
us on many of our trips, while Jeanne was finishing the selection of
things to take and to discard. Suddenly, she rushed out of the warehouse
with a crazy look on her face, shouting excitedly, "Look, look, what I
found!"

She dragged me to the pile of open crates and I saw inside a slightly
familiar-looking green box. "What the hell is this?"

"This is the box with the records I gave Marina before our departure,"
she shouted.

"How did they get there? We left them such a long time ago?"

"I haven't the slightest idea; I considered them lost." Jeanne was short
of words; this was so weird. "I had used them myself to learn English
when I came to this country. They served me well. Then I loaned them to
Marina long before our departure for Haiti."

"Remember how punctiliously honest Lee was," I said. "He would not keep
any of our belongings. But how the hell did they into this warehouse?
Possibly he remembered where we were storing our furniture. Or, maybe he
have the package to Glover, to whom we had loaned some of our furniture,
and who finally added it to the rest of stored boxes at the Southwest
Warehouse?"

This remains a mystery to this day, because we lost track of Glover, a
good guy who got so frightened because of his very slight acquaintance
with the "President's assassin" that he moved out without leaving a
forwarding address.

My wife began taking the albums out of the box and as she opened to see
if the records were not broken, she shrieked almost hysterically: "Look,
there is a picture of Lee Oswald here!"

This was the same, so-controversial picture of Lee which appeared on the
cover of the defunct Life. Many newspapermen and "investigators" had
assumed that this picture was a fabrication, a "fake", a superimposed
photograph, and had written hundreds of pages about it. Frankly, we did
not care; but now, right there, was proof that the picture was genuine.
We stood literally frozen stiff, Lee staring at us in his martial pose,
the famous rifle in his hands, as in a Marine parade. It was a gift for
us from beyond his grave.

"What did he mean by leaving this picture to us?" I wondered aloud. "He
was not a vain kind of a person."

Then Jeanne shouted excitedly again: "Look there is an inscription
here." It read: "To my dear friend George from Lee." And the date
followed -- April 1963, a time when we were thousand of miles away in
Haiti. I kept looking at the picture and the inscription, deeply moved,
my thoughts going back to when Lee was alive. Then I slowly turned the
photograph and there was another epitaph, seemingly in Marina's
handwriting, in Russian. In translation it reads, "This is the hunter of
fascists! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Here Marina was again making fun of her husband,
jeering at Lee's very serious anti-fascist feelings, which we knew so
well, and I've described in several chapters of this book.

It's hard to describe the impact of this discovery on us, especially
Lee's dedication and Marina's inscription. This message from beyond the
grave was amazing and shocking -- from the grave we did not even dare to
visit, because the FBI considered with suspicion all the visitors at
Lee's burial place. The confirmation that Lee considered me his best
friend flattered me, but Marina's message expressed a chilling scorn for
her husband. Anyway, if he were a hunter of fascists, and we agree with
such a description, who was she making fun of him?

First of all, it casts doubt on her assertion that Lee tried to shoot
General Walker; secondly, for a Soviet Russian refugee the word
"fascist" is not a laughing matter -- some fifteen million people lost
their lives fighting the fascists. And how many more died of cold and
hunger?

We kept this photograph for ourselves, and showed it only to a few close
friends. Their reactions were interesting: To some the photograph
indicated that Lee was a maniac, a killer; it constituted a proof of his
aggressiveness, of his guilt. To others, just the opposite -- it gave
him the aura of a militant idealist. The man of such anti-fascist
inclinations could not be the assassin of the most liberal and
race-conscious president in the history of the United States.

We did not show the photograph to any authorities; to them Lee Harvey
Oswald's case was closed and we did not want any further involvement.
Neither did we show it to any investigators or reporters in the United
States. But I did write a letter to a friend, one of the editors of Life
magazine, explaining that I had a message from Lee Harvey Oswald and I
did ask him to keep the matter confidential. I added to my letter a
short resume of the facts -- how this picture got into our
possession.

Immediately I received a call from my friend saying that Life had a team
of investigators working on Oswald's case because the magazine had
doubts of the Warren Commission's conclusions. The next day a reporter
assigned to the assassination case called me and we talked for a long
time. He was intimately familiar with all the details, psychological and
technical, of this unbelievably complex case, having worked on it since
November 1963. Like ourselves, he was amazed at Marina's inscription,
and gave it the same meaning as ourselves.

"We shall use it as a main feature of our special edition if and when we
know something definite about Oswald's involvement or of his innocence,"
he said. Again, I asked the man to keep this matter confidential
temporarily and he promised to do so. Obviously either Life's people
were talkative or, more probable, our telephone was tapped. This we
found at several occasions.

Now we know much more about the "Watergate" type tactics of our
government agencies, especially the FBI, but at the time we did not have
anything to conceal -- except the existence of this picture, and this
only for our own sentimental reasons. Whenever we heard a suspicious
noise on the telephone, we laughed, spoke in foreign languages or made
offensive remarks at whoever was listening in. Some voluminous files
must be hidden somewhere containing "transcripts," translations and
obliterations of our conversations.

Again, being faithful taxpayers for years and years, we could but marvel
at the unbelievable waste of our money. But what was it compared to 140
billion US dollars spent in Vietnam? But one bad habit leads to another
. . .

Now something should be said as to why we did not contact Marina
regarding the picture. Naturally she knew of its existence from our
mutual friends, the Fords. But as this story clearly indicates, there is
not love lost between Marina and us. We had helped her with the baby
care, with her own health, and finally made a supreme effort trying to
solve her unsolvable conflict with Lee. We never received a word of
thanks from her. But this is not important; we helped her when she was
poor and desperate.

Unfortunately, after Lee's death she showed herself a real "operator."
She created an appearance of a helpless victim, of a woman searching for
God; and naturally God-fearing Americans sent her substantial
contributions or donations, all tax-free. We heard from some reporters
that donations were frequently sent stuck between the pages of Bibles,
and she would grab the money and fling the Bible furiously on the
floor.

We did not treat her very nicely in our testimonies, but we were utterly
truthful. Marina should have recognized it, had she indeed taken the
trouble of reading our depositions. She might have come then to a true
evaluation of herself and of her dead husband.

Well, she is settled now. When we see each other we say "hello"
politely. As a matter of fact, the last time I even did not recognize
her. She looked prosperous and spoke excellent English.

Another reason we did not contact Marina and haven't had a serious
conversation with her was her attitude towards Mrs. Ruth Paine. Ruth was
a perfectly charming, charitable Quaker -- a Christian in the true sense
of the word, who, like us, helped the Oswalds out of pure humanitarian
impulses. Actually, she did more for them than anyone else. Marina lived
with her and took advantage of her hospitality. Ruth drove her to New
Orleans and back. She showed utter kindness to Lee, and especially to
baby June. She and her husband were simply admirable people. Yet Ruth
had her own family to take care of as well as her teaching profession.
Her only reward consisted of lessons in conversational Russian. Lee, on
the other hand, seldom accepted hospitality and certainly did not ask
for it. And yet, Ruth's and Marina's great friendship ended abruptly
after the assassination.

As Ruth told us later, upon our return from Haiti, Marina said that she
did not want to see her ever again. And Mrs. Paine was too proud a
person to insist. It is possible that Marina was advised by the
authorities to shy away from her former independent-minded friends, and
she must have been scared stiff of the authorities. Time will tell. But
still many years went by and she still does not see Mrs. Ruth Paine.
Short sketches of various incidents involving Marina will prove to the
reader these peculiarities of her character, which may incidentally
appear admirable to many. Her dreams of an America bristling with high
buildings, criss-crossed with high-speed roads, blessed with luxury for
everyone, and especially with fast automobiles for all teenagers and
adults -- she was right; some economist calculated fifteen years ago
that if the automobiles kept on proliferating at the same rate, each
family in America would possess five hundred automobiles at the end of
this century. A paradise on earth!

Yet we never disliked Marina; there was really nothing to dislike; there
was no substance in her. She was amusing sometimes, witty -- naive
mostly, like some Russian peasants, yet with great deal of shrewdness
underneath. My wife used to call her affectionately "that rascal
Marina," and that description fit her perfectly.

Unusual visitors

The photograph we found in the record album is identical to the one Life
magazine published shortly after the assassination. I think Marina took
it; at least she so testified. Only the dedication to me and the
inscription by Marina constitute new elements. This picture
unquestionably did a lot of damage to Lee. It shows him in a
militaristic pause, holding a rifle, a pistol on his side. But let's not
forget that Lee was trained by the Marine Corps to hold, show, and
respect weapons. The Baretta we saw in his apartment was well oiled and
immaculately clean -- another bow to the United States Marine Corps.

But whatever later testimony tried to prove, I knew that he was not a
particularly good shot. He did not have that cold stare in his eyes.
(Incidentally, he had rather attractive gray eyes.) He did not have a
very steady hand nor the stiff stance which would indicate to anyone
familiar with things military a good marksman.

To Jeanne and I he did not have the ugly expression of a killer, and we
knew professional killers -- Jeanne in China during the Japanese
occupation, I in other parts of the world. Lee owned a pistol, but we
never discussed why -- I assumed for self defense; he lived in a very
disreputable part of Dallas. Maybe Lee liked to shoot at the leaves, but
he did not have the decisive, self-assured, "automatic" attitude of a
sharpshooter. On the contrary, he was the nervous, jittery, poorly
coordinated type, and, as I said before, completely unathletic.

He was also devoid of any mechanical ability. I had observed boys and
men of that type in my own regiment and they were totally unfit for
military performance, and usually very poor shots.

We had tried to keep the existence of Lee's photograph as secret as
possible; just a few friends saw it, and Life's reporter knew of it.
Something, however, leaked out, and about two weeks after my
conversations with Life's writers, I received a strange telephone call.

A slightly accented voice said, and I quote, "We are from Life
magazine," and he mentioned the name of the reporter I had spoken to.
"We are here in Dallas and would like to see you." "Certainly," I agreed
immediately. "Come over."

They knew the address, and an hour later two men appeared in our house.
A strange pair: one slight, Latin-American type fellow; the other a big
bruiser -- a beefy, powerful, Anglo type. They sat down, and announced
that they represented Life magazine. The Latin mentioned his reportorial
qualifications; the beefy character said he was a photographer. Indeed
he was loaded with cameras of all types. The names were respectively
Smith and Fernandez. Smith mentioned also that he was a staff
photographer for Fortune magazine, which put me completely at ease.
"We would like to ask you a few questions the other Life reporter failed
to discuss with you," said Fernandez. I obliged him. These questions
were unimportant, mostly about Lee's habits and his character. Then they
became more specific: Was he sociable? Whom did he know well? What were
his relations like with fellow workers in this country and in the USSR?
Did he have many friends in addition to us? What did he do in Mexico?
Whom did he meet there? Could he speak Spanish? Why did he go to New
Orleans? Could he drive a car? And many other questions, which I do not
recall now.

I answered these questions to the best of my ability, but naturally many
had to remain unanswered, since I was out of the country and did not
have any contacts with Lee during that time.

The question may arise; why was I so frank with Life magazine people and
let myself get pumped out so naively. The answer is that one of my most
admired friends used to be a staff writer for Life, and he had performed
an extremely kind and difficult intervention on behalf of my father, who
was stranded in Europe during the war. Incidentally, I felt very much at
ease with these two characters because I had a visitor at the time, an
economist from the East -- a very athletic fellow and a good friend, and
he was there all the time.

Later in the afternoon Jeanne arrived, very surprised to see the unusual
guests. I explained who they were. "But you have a very strong Spanish
accent?" she asked Fernandez.

"Yes, of course, I am of Spanish origin and I worked as a reporter for
Life mostly in Latin America. So excuse my poor English." This sounded
reasonable enough.

Then Smith, the "photographer," produced a series of excellent, very
clear photos of some twenty men, mostly of Latin appearance, and asked
pointedly if we had ever met any of them. We both looked carefully at
these strange, sometimes brutal faces. "I am not sorry not to have met
any of them," I quipped. "They look rather disreputable. Who are they ?"
Somehow this question remained unanswered.

"I have an excellent memory for faces and I am positive not to have ever
seen any of them," I added.

Jeanne, in a more cheerful and confident mood pointed out three
better-looking ones: "This one has a cute mustache! That one has an
interesting look about him. And this one is so handsome! Oh, I would
like to meet these three men," she concluded laughingly.

This cheerfulness was met by a stony silence, a kind of hostile
attitude.  Fernandez did not say a word. He seemed disappointed. Smith
broke the awkward silence and asked, "May I take a few pictures of you
and the dogs?" The mentioning of the dogs conquered Jeanne and we
obliged again. Many photographs were taken.

The conversation lingered for a while longer. Fernandez became more
amiable and called our dog Nero, in the Spanish manner, "Senor Nero"
which pleased Jeanne to no end. Finally the two strangers left,
promising to contact us again from New York, to give our regards to my
friend there, and to send us copies of the pictures.

A few days went by; we both were busy and didn't have time or occasion
to discuss this visit. One evening, lying in bed, I asked Jeanne, "What
did you think of those two characters who came to visit us the other
day?"

"Rather suspicious," she said. "I was thinking of them at this very
moment." This is ESP. "How did you know they were from Life?" she asked.
"Did they have any identifications?"

"None," I mused. "And I did not ask for any. But they knew exactly what
I was talking about with the Life reporter in New York. Fernandez
remembered all the questions and all my answers."

"You were very careless," said Jeanne convincingly. "Don't you know that
the house has been bugged on and off -- more on than off."

She was absolutely right: These men were imposters. Next day I checked
with the Life office in New York; Smith and Fernandez did not exist as
far as Life was concerned. But it is very possible that my naivete and
the very certainty that we did not know any of the men on the
photographs put these two men at ease; otherwise we might have joined
the other twenty or thirty people who had died mysteriously just because
of their accidental knowledge of some details or people which might have
affected the official version of Oswald's guilt.

We never communicated to anyone, except to a few very selected and
faithful friends, what had occurred. The government agencies would have
made their usual mess out of the situation, and we might have become
victims of an eventual revenge. But to our minds, this visit was very
significant: People at whom we glanced so casually were unquestionably
involved in some way in President Kennedy's assassination. Now they have
disappeared, swallowed in the mass of our population, or possibly they
had left the country altogether. It's a mystery to solve, but not for
clods from our bureaucratic mass of officials -- unsophisticated,
under-educated, and like the Englishmen said during the war of our GI's,
"overpaid, over-fed, over-sexed and . . . over here.

And Lee's opinion comes clearly to my mind: "The bureaucrats all over
the world are the same." And I am adding my own description: Most of
them would not be able to make an honest living in the world of business
and free competition.

Who are the real criminals?

Over twelve years have gone by since the tragic events of 1963.
Kennedy's widow remarried. Questions arose in some decent people's
minds: Did Jacqueline know what type of an individual she espoused, or
was it a huge bank account, not a real person? The Dean of Women at the
University of Texas, where I was lecturing at the time, was pale with
indignation when she heard the news. Then Mrs. Aristotle Onassis became
a widow again. And then Robert Kennedy was assassinated, carrying with
him the reason for the strange warning he had given my friend Willem
Oltmans . . .  Worst of all, Dr. Martin Luther King was shot in a
cowardly way by an ignorant redneck, possibly encouraged by another
redneck -- but a clever and powerful one -- J. Edgar Hoover, who hated
and despised the blacks. The award of the Nobel Prize for Peace to
Reverend King was the ultimate insult to Hoover. Then the shrewd and
unscrupulous CIA agents and their associates assembled large fortunes
with illicit profits in Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos . .
. And more discoveries will be forthcoming -- of deals, corruption,
doublecrossings -- discoveries annoying to me because they have to do
with taxes I have been paying for years. And in this manner American
money will be soon "Chinese" money.

In a way, the high school dropout, that "inferior American," Lee Harvey
Oswald, had foreseen all that by calling our bureaucracy stupid but
crooked. But knowing him the way I do, he would have also understood
"Gulag Archipelago" and would have approved Solzhenitzyn's indignation .
. .
My wife and I spent many an agonizing moment thinking of Lee, ashamed
that we did not stand up more decisively in his defense. But who would
have listened to us at the time, or would have published anything true
and favorable to him?

If you, dear reader, are interested not in the assassinations but on
organized murder for profit, follow the articles in the French
publication Le Canard Enchaine. You will learn that Aristotle Onassis''
fortune, made during the war, was based on a very simple formula:
overinsure old tankers, which are duly sunk by Nazi submarines; motley,
ignorant crew members drown and their no less ignorant, poor families
receive peanuts in a way of compensation; repeat the operation dozens,
maybe hundreds of times. Later, when a huge fortune is made, acquire
exclusive rights for transportation of Arab oil . . .

If you believe in just punishment, Aristotle's rotten soul will remain
forever in the Greek-Orthodox hell.

Conscience is the most stretchable substance. Ari's friends found him
cheerful, amicable, cosmopolitan, intelligent; although his education
was not more advanced than Lee's, he danced well and sang Greek and
Argentinean folklore songs. Only his end was somewhat gruesome.
Our performance at the Warren Commission was lukewarm and not decisive
enough in favor of Lee. I hope he will forgive us. And I hope also that
Mrs. Marguerite Oswald will also forgive us.

Lee's innocence or his being just a patsy is our conviction. And now we
can speak more objectively of the reasons of our conviction. That the
younger generation in America does not believe in Lee's guilt is a fact,
but why would old fogies, like ourselves, have such unorthodox
opinions?

Let us talk of the clever "leaning on" by the choice lawyers of the
Warren Commission, which forced us, Lee's friends and acquaintances to
appear somewhat antagonistic to him.

The general opinion setup in the United Stated at the time puts pressure
on you, warps your judgment, changes your words. In these short chapters
we tried to correct the distorted image of this good friend of ours.
Some will say that the introduction of the late Aristotle Onassis in
these chapters may be in bad taste --others may find an interesting and
significant relevance.

Somebody else will prove who fired the fatal shots, and will prove or
disprove Lee's involvement or lack of it in the conspiracy to commit the
assassination. If there are good Catholics involved in this affair,
maybe a confession will solve the problem.

We like to speak of Lee's occasional clever repartees, of his frequent
outbursts of justifiable anger at the existing situation in this rotten
world of ours, of his deep concern for those starving and poorer than
himself, of his worry and his pity for the racially segregated, for
masses deprived of their just rights by the clever manipulators. Had Lee
lived most of his life in the totalitarian country, he would have landed
in a concentration camp for his outspoken opinions and his loose
tongue.

More should be said of Lee's interests in the world affairs. I can hear
his clear speaking voice, sincere, simple, without affection; its
attractive modulation. Lee did not have a trace of nasal, Southern
drawl; his was a voice of a thinking, refined individual. Incidentally,
I never heard Lee use any four-letter Anglo-Saxon words, no profane
language in English or in Russian. This was most unusual for a man of
his background; I mean New Orleans and Fort Worth slums and the United
States Marine Corps.

But do not think he was a sissy, as there is a wide-spread belief that
if you do not swear, you are not a red-blooded American. I am guilty of
constantly cussing myself, and the students with whom I associate
happily these days consider me OK and a good guy.

Segregationists are still here but they are losing ground. Still we have
a long way to go. A professor of medicine from Kentucky but born in
Alabama believes that intermarriage and any sexual integration is the
only way to combatracism. The ones who disagree "should be shot,"
says he. Lee agreed with thisopinion, I remember.

We wish that our dogs, Nero and Poppea (both gone now) could have barked
on his behalf. Such a testimony would have been very flattering for Lee,
and you cannot fool an animal, says a truism. And yet, they were defiant
little creatures and trusted very few.

We constantly shout: "Communists at fault!", "It's a Marxist
conspiracy!" Instead, most of our mishaps come from own mistakes
committed or good actions omitted. What fiendish names we have given our
friend Lee Harvey Oswald: communist, traitor, misfit, insane killer!
In the meantime our top capitalist, Harold Lamar Hunt called John F.
Kennedy a "traitor," and a confrontation between the US Government and
the Soviet Union, during the missile crisis, a "dispute between two
communist states."

Everything is relative: We wasted $140 billion and 45,000 lives
(counting ours only) to prove that democracy is right; and Lee Harvey
Oswald wanted to improve our image around the world in his own way, by
humanizing the United States. Remember his nice but naive defense of
American ways to his friends and co-workers during his stay in Minsk.
Listening to Lee describe his experience in the Soviet Union, one saw
clearly that the Soviet Union was not a Utopia, but just another livable
country: enormous, with endless problems; full of good, friendly people
-- and many others: stupid, cruel and limited.

Judge the man after reading this book. No easy solution is offered, no
criminal presented on a dish; I am not even offering an analysis of his
complex personality. Make up your own mind.

Why, with passing time, we became more and more convinced that the whole
story of Lee Harvey Oswald has not been told; we are adding just another
chapter to it. It should be useful, as I had known him well -- better
than anybody else, according to the Warren Report; better than his
mother and wife, according to the lengths of our depositions.

How the oppressive weight influenced my testimony can be seen so clearly
by me now, looking at it after several years -- as if it were somebody
else's deposition -- deprived of a warm feeling for Lee; full of my own
stupid jokes, which make me sad now. I was not expressing myself,
really; I didn't defend Lee vigorously and passionately enough, which I
am sure he would have done if he had to defend me in a similar
situation. I was cleverly led by the Warren Commission counsel, Albert
Jenner, into saying some things I had not really wanted to say, to admit
certain defaults in Lee, which I wasn't sure were his. In other words, I
consider myself a coward and a slob who did not stand up to defend
proudly a dead friend, whatever odds were against him.

That big, clever boy, the trial lawyer, handled me like a baby: First he
bullied me, then led me to tell him carefully all about my life by
saying, "Don't conceal anything, we know more about yourself than you
do."

I should have answered: "If you do, why ask the questions? Why all the
rigmarole?"

And then later, in a friendly manner this time, Jenner would put forward
some suppositions regarding Lee, suppositions which seemed innocuous
enough at the time, but sufficiently cleverly termed to make me admit
that possibly, JUST POSSIBLY, he might have committed a crime. After
all, he was so cruel -- he put a cigarette on his wife's bare flesh . .
. a torturer!

It makes me remember now that Lee was keenly aware of the fact that it
was the white man who had brought in "scalping" during the
American-Indian war. And later somehow, the Indians, cruel and
contemptuous, were charged with this unpleasant procedure.

Almost everyone has a skeleton hidden in a closet; so did I; I shall
talk later about it. But it was such an insignificant, small skeleton; I
should have taken a stronger stand. Instead I talked, talked, talked;
drunk with words and descriptions. Talking about oneself, as everyone
knows, is the sweetest pastime. And Jenner got me into this talking mood
by calling me "distinguished, handsome, virile"; intimated that I knew
people all over the world, that I led a very colorful life, was a great
Casanova and member of the jet-set; he lauded my university degrees. In
reality, the bastard despised me, my independence, and especially my
liberalism.

Jenner was an impressive trial lawyer, somewhat like F. Lee Bailey; it
was hard to resist him. He knew how to cajole and how to threaten. In
the end, Jenner spoke much more than I did, though the Warren Report, so
well doctored, does not show it.

At lunchtime and between the sessions he offered me suggestions, tried
to find answers -- a clever plan and a good preparation. It makes me
think of the Tukhachevski trial in the Soviet Union. There, of course,
drugs were also used. The results on paper were the proof of General
Tukhachevski's treason; the results for the Soviet Union was the fall of
the Red Army and the Nazis' original, gigantic success. I am not
comparing myself to Tukhachevski, but rather making an analogy to the
whole Warren Report and its disastrous effect on the American
credibility.

In my case, such a long deposition had a soporific effect on me: You get
deadly tired of these official proceedings; you begin to agree with the
questioner just to get out of this boring room, away from the annoying,
dry individual. I only dreamt to get away from all that nonsense, to go
back to my sunny house in Haiti, to my few real friends there, to my
interesting work, and to the weekends of skin-diving in the beautiful,
transparent waters of the Caribbean near the Arcaclin Islands. My
idiotic interrogation had lasted almost three full days, then the same
torture was inflicted on my wife -- somewhat shorter and enhanced by the
presence of our Manchesters, Nero and Poppea, who testified -- silently,
unfortunately -- for their friend Lee.

The final conclusion, after my observations of this bunch of lawyers, is
a short pun: "Have you ever met an honest lawyer?" someone asked. "Yes,
I did, only recently. He paid for his own lunch . . ."

Jeanne's best suggestion, eliminated from the Warren Report, was a
suggestion, similar to mine: "Don't try to solve the crime of the
century with depositions, i.e., gossip, ninety percent of which is
irrelevant to the issues. Have good detectives hired; we are supposed to
be the heaven of private dicks. Don't use the FBI or CIA or any other
federal agents; they are recognizable a mile away."

During our walking trip through Guatemala, where we happened to be for
the Bay of Pigs, the town was full of crew-cut Americans, not speaking a
word of Spanish, out of place. I said to Jeanne, "But these are Marines,
or rather Marine pilots. What the hell are they doing here?" No question
that the same idea occurred to all the pro-Castro Guatemalans, and the
country is full of them. And messages were sent on time to Fidel
Castro.

Looking over Marina's deposition recently, I was amazed how closely our
opinions on Lee matched; they almost coincided, as if they had been
dictated to us. "The weight of the evidence" must have influenced both
of us. First we were both angry at Lee for putting us into such a
horrible situation -- bad enough for me, but think of Marina's plight --
especially the first days after the assassination. I cannot talk of her
feelings, but I know how deadly scared she was, in a foreign country,
not knowing the language, and used to Stalinish tactics.

We know -- Jenner and Dulles told us -- that Marina had made innumerable
mistakes -- perjuries if you wish -- being under tremendous pressure and
frightened out of her wits. The pressure we were under was of a
different type, yet very strong. We had lived here for a long time and
were familiar with the "American" ways. But we cannot forget the
attitude of the American Embassy in Haiti, the Ambassador's animosity
towards me, the hard and soft approach of the FBI agent, and the
possibility of losing my contract in Haiti.

A mysterious letter at the Embassy from Washington -- which I found out
about through my few remaining friends there -- warned the personnel of
us. There was pressure from our friends, from the radio, newspapers, TV,
and finally this powerful Warren Commission, all saying, "Disassociate
yourself from this assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald!" Everybody was on a
bandwagon condemning this insignificant ex-Marine.

Now let us ask ourselves a question: Was there a conspiracy on the part
of the Warren Commission members, this powerful and impressive group of
people, to promote a deliberate lie, to inculpate an innocent person?
No, I don't think so: they acted naively and sheepishly for a purpose
which seemed right to them and good for the country. The country was in
an upheaval; it was necessary to pacify the public opinion. And the dead
eccentric is the easiest subject of condemnation.

Personally, I think that such a mentality is tragic and detrimental to
this country: It's the same self-delusion as throwing Prince Sihanouk
out of Cambodia, accusing him of being a "red prince," then financing
and supporting his enemies to the bitter end. Fortunately for the "Red
Prince," he is well and back in his country, while his enemies are
either dead or exiled.

And now I am sorry to cast an accusation at John F. Kennedy's family,
especially his brother Robert, who wanted to sanctify the President's
memory and to make us all -- all American citizens -- forget our
President's biggest mistake, the Bay of Pigs. Willem Oltmans strange
incident, described here, is explainable by this attitude; also our
conversations with Jacqueline Kennedy's family.

The Bay of Pigs resulted in unbelievable hatreds and desires of revenge
among the Cuban refugee groups as well as among Castro's followers (to a
lesser degree, because their losses were smaller and the result was
Castro's triumph). But the desire of revenge among the refugee groups
here were covered up, and whenever somebody like Garrison in New Orleans
would try to establish a connection between the assassination and the
Bay of Pigs, he would be put down as a drunkard or incompetent and
silenced. Garrison was completely discredited and lost his district
attorney's position; his latest book is a fiction dealing with the
assassination.

Willem Oltmans and his clairvoyant

After our return from Haiti, we were literally assailed by a great
number of journalists who wanted to interview us. The most interesting
among them was Willem Oltmans, United States representative of NOS
Television (Dutch State Television) with headquarters in New York.
Oltmans, a Dutchman but educated in the United States -- a Yale graduate
-- told me how he became interested in the President's murder in 1964,
while we were still in Haiti. He flew to Dallas on March 9, 1964, on
American Airlines from Kennedy Airport in New York to address the
Criterion Club in Wichita Falls, Texas. At the counter in New York he
ran into Marguerite Oswald. The two sat together during the following
dinner flight, and it was during this journey that Oltmans first began
to doubt the truth of the conclusion that Lee Oswald was the lone killer
of President Kennedy.

It was Marguerite Oswald who told him that the police in Dallas
interrogated Lee for forty-eight hours without making a tape-recording
of the hearing or even keeping notes. When the Warren Commission asked
the Dallas police official if he didn't think Oswald an important enough
subject to borrow a tape-recorder for the investigation of the murder of
the president of the United States, the answer had been negative.=09

Upon returning to the Netherlands, Oltmans discussed their conversation
with the famous clairvoyant, Gerard Croiset, in Utrecht, the
Netherlands. In 1964, Doubleday published the biography of this amazing
Dutchman, who has been solving crimes and murders all over the world,
including in the United States. It was Croiset who first described to
Oltmans in a tape-recorded interview (which is being kept at the
Institute of Parapsychology of the University of Utrecht) that I
existed. Croiset told Oltmans that Lee had a friend in Dallas in his
fifties. He described some of my physical features, including that my
name held the letters 'sch' and the word 'de'. Oltmans immediately
consulted the chief of programs of National Dutch Television in
Hilversum, Carel Enkelaar. He received the assignment to return to
Dallas and try to locate this mysterious friend of Oswald's, who,
according to the Dutch clairvoyant, was of noble decent and was a
geologist. He was, according to Croiset, the architect of the ambush in
which Kennedy had been killed; Oswald was only the fall guy.

Oltmans returned to Fort Worth and visited Mrs. Marguerite Oswald. It
was Lee's mother who, following Croiset's description, pointed to a
volume of the Warren Commission Hearings and indicated my name to the
Dutch journalist. Oltmans reported back in Hilversum that Croiset's
indication had been correct: There was a friend in his fifties, and his
name did have the letters 'de' and 'sch'. NOS Television then instructed
Willem Oltmans to phone me on April 22, 1967, to ask for a TV interview.
I replied that I had to attend the World Petroleum Congress in Mexico
City and that he should contact me in two weeks. I did not hear from him
again until later that year.

When Oltmans reported to Hilversum that he had contacted me, the Dutch
television presidium felt Oltmans was in grave danger. They reasoned
that so many people directly or indirectly connected with trying to
unravel the Kennedy assassination had been killed or had mysteriously
disappeared, that Oltmans was immediately instructed to contact the
office of Robert F. Kennedy, at the time the Senator of the State of New
York. This office was located at the US Post Office building, near 43rd
street.

Oltmans saw Tim Hogan, Robert F. Kennedy's press assistant, and
explained the situation, including Croiset's analysis that Kennedy had
been killed in a plot an that I was the engineer of the ambush. Tim
Hogan said the Senator was making a speech in Albany that morning and
was flying back at 1 pm on the Caroline. He would inform the Senator
immediately, relaying Oltman's request as to whether he could have some
protection from FBI. NOS Television had figured that Robert Kennedy,
former Attorney General of the United States, was a safe person to ask
advice in this delicate manner.

Tim Hogan called back around 2 pm in Oltman's apartment in Kew Gardens,
New York. He relayed to Oltmans that RFK had personally picked up the
phone and talked to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington, DC; FBI agents were
to contact him later that day.

Indeed, already at 4 pm, two agents called at Oltman's apartment. They
stayed two full hours, but Oltmans only relayed to them that he was
instructed to interview us in Dallas and that, at the same time, NOS TV
had told him to contact Robert Kennedy. When the agents left the Oltmans
apartment, they assured him that from that moment on he would be under
surveillance by the FBI twenty-four hours a day, and there would be
nothing to worry about.

The next evening Oltmans wanted to visit an Indonesian friend in
Greenwich Village, an architect who was designing a cover for a book
Oltmans was writing about the late President Sukarno of Indonesia.
Driving southward on Westside drive at around 8 pm in a Sunbeam Tiger
with a V-8 motor, a convertible sports model with aluminum racing
wheels, at a speed of about sixty miles per hour, Oltmans was being
overtaken by a cab with a passenger riding in the back seat. The cab
cruised for a while next to Oltmans' car until the 53rd Street exit was
reached. Then the cab made a fast move in which Oltmans was cut off in
such a way that he crashed into the guard rails. His car was a total
loss, and his head was bleeding. He was brought to the Kew Gardens
hospital, where he was examined, bandaged and sent home. The insurance
awarded him a new car within ten days, which Oltmans quickly shipped to
the Netherlands. He himself left a few days afterwards.

Two months later, in his bungalow in the country near Utrecht, Oltmans
received a telephone call from a certain Glenn Bryan Smith, attorney
from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Smith announced that he was conducting an
investigation into the JFK murder for the author of The Green Berets. He
wanted to discuss with Oltmans the Dallas affair and compare notes.
Oltmans agreed to a meeting in the Hotel Terminus in Utrecht, but only
in the presence of Carel Enkelaar, NOS TV boss. It so happened.

During the conversation, however, Glenn Bryan Smith slipped in some
threats. He cautioned Oltmans in the presence of Enkelaar to stop
investigating President Kennedy's assassination because "you would not
be the first person to die or disappear in this matter. What they do is,
they will kidnap you from a New York street, drive you to a private
airport, and dump you over the Atlantic Ocean. You would not be the
first person to die this way either."

Oltmans says that he remained unperturbed. He waited a few months more,
publishing an extensive report on his automobile accident in the leading
weekly magazine, Haagse Post, with pictures of John F. Kennedy and
myself on the cover. Oltmans then returned to the United States in
October 1967 and came to film us with the Dallas CBS TV crew on October
15th. It was a very pleasant meeting for us.

From that moment on, this Dutch journalist, who initially approached us
because he had received indications that we might be involved indirectly
through Oswald with the Kennedy assassination, became a very personal
friend. He has visited us every year since 1967. By now he is convinced
that we had nothing to do whatsoever with the assassination. As a matter
of fact, he told us that despite of Gerard Croiset's great gifts for
solving crimes, some forty percent of his indications and prognoses are
false. Nevertheless, Oltmans relayed to us as recently as the summer of
1976 that this famous Dutch clairvoyant is still deadly convinced that I
am the man who tricked Lee Harvey Oswald, and -- financed by the Dallas
oil lobby -- set up the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I am supposed
to have done it from Haiti, probably through some voodoo trick.

I probably should have sued that Dutch clairvoyant, but I presume he is
broke, and an international lawsuit would be very costly.

Why Lee and I agreed on FBI

Recently it was established that the FBI had concealed and destroyed a
letter from Lee Harvey Oswald written to the Dallas office before the
assassination. I do not think we have the exact text of this letter, but
the newspapers report Lee was extremely angry at they way the FBI kept
annoying him and his wife and therefore made the normal pursuit of life
impossible. This explains, naturally, why in our conversations, Lee had
such a dim view of this "great" institution and its leader J. Edgar
Hoover.

I had a personal grudge against the FBI, which I will explain in this
chapter, and I had a personal distasteful impression of J. Edgar Hoover
from seeing him one day in La Jolla, California. I remember that Jeanne
and I were there to visit a partner of mine who had a ranch nearby and
made some investments in the oil ventures. In the evening, having dinner
at one of the best motels, facing the sea, I recognized Mr. Hoover,
sitting together with some of our oil magnates, and behaving in such an
obsequious manner, is if he were a servant of these very wealthy people.
He looked like a pompous waiter, or possibly, head waiter. I knew some
of the people sitting with him and a meeting could have been very simply
arranged, and thus a lot of difficulties would have been avoided for
both of us in the future. But something retained me from approaching the
group and I did not do it. Jeanne did not have any special reason to
like or dislike the man, but I had a previous experience with the FBI
which was ridiculous and could have ended badly for me.

Outside of my unimportant experience, similar to Lee's in a way, the
final result is that a letter of paramount importance to the
investigation of Kennedy's assassination was concealed, President
Kennedy was killed, and the old idol, head of the FBI, remained
untouched and secure until his natural death. The President did not get
the right type of protection, and mediocrity or failure, or both,
remained unpunished.

Now back to my tragicomic trouble with FBI. This will answer possibly
why so much money and effort was spent on the investigation of my wife
and myself. Why choose us? Why try to persecute us with such
persistence? That we knew Lee so well was not reason enough. We both
traveled a great deal, Jeanne as a famous fashion designer -- and she
was famous before I met her and ruined her career with my own
adventurous deals and this walking trip; I traveled even more as a
petroleum consultant, had several wives and was part of the so called
establishment, mainly for business reasons. People in the "jet-set" or
the "cafe society" are really very boring the world over, while an
eccentric like Lee was of great interest to me. In other words, we were
successful in our own fields and neither one of us never -- but never --
paid any attention to politics in the United States, left or right.
My early scrap with the FBI dates from 1941, soon after my arrival in
the United States. At that time I was very young, had some money which I
brought from Europe, made a little more in this country, and was about
to be drafted into the US Army. Frankly, I was not in a very
militaristic mood at the time, as the Germans saved my father from the
Russians. We are of so-called Baltic descent, which means a mixture of
Scandinavian, German, French and other lineages, descendants of the
knights who had conquered Estonia, Latvia, Finland and even parts of
Russia. Now, many of the Balts were German-oriented, and I had relatives
of this type; personally, I was French-oriented. I also had spent two
painful years in the Polish Military Academy and later, "maneuvering" on
horse-back around the Soviet border, a rather dangerous occupation. So I
did not feel very enthusiastic at the prospect of starting in boot camp
all over again.

But instead, the doctors found that I had very high blood pressure and
declared me unfit for service. I still suffer from this high blood
pressure, so really I owe my life to the good American doctors who had
discovered it so early. Now I can keep it under control.

At that time I was not yet an American citizen, but a resident of New
York, and madly in love with a young Mexican widow whom we shall call
Senora L. After meeting her in New York, I asked a Brazilian friend who
knew her, "I am madly in love with her; shall I marry her?"
"If you marry her, you will be unhappy. If you do not marry her you will
be unhappy also," answered my friend smilingly.

Of course, he was absolutely right. But still we were madly in love with
each other. And so she invited me to drive with her across the United
States to her own country of Mexico, which she would explore with me.
She had been brought up in Europe and lived there most of her life,
hence her lack of knowledge of her own country. Incidentally, she spoke
very little English, and I very little Spanish, so we communicated in
French, which probably made us most suspicious to the FBI.

Maybe someone denounced us? We both had enemies. Anyway, our delightful
trip in a new convertible Chrysler along the Eastern shore, then along
the Gulf of Mexico, was rudely interrupted. This happened near Corpus
Christi, Texas, where we had rented an apartment in the Nueces Hotel as
Mr. and Mrs. X (I forget the fictitious name we used). We left the hotel
early to go to the beach at Arkansas Pass and spent a delightful day
there. I like to paint watercolor landscapes with beautiful female
bodies in the foreground, and I made several sketches.

Driving back from the beach we were stopped on a deserted road by a
bunch of people who we thought were plain American gangsters. We had
little money with us and the car was insured, so we stopped without too
much fright. The characters identified themselves: they were FBI agents
who had taken us for German spies observing United States
fortifications.

When I was telling the story to Lee, he could not stop laughing. "This
is so typical of FBI, taking you -- at that time you were a reserve
officer in an Allied Army -- driving along the coast with a beautiful
Mexican woman, talking French to her, and painting," he guffawed. "You
were a typical German spy."

But, my friends, don't laugh at the FBI's ingenuity. Soon after having
verified our papers and listening to the angry Spanish shrieks of Senora
L -- they had followed us to the hotel and inspected our luggage -- the
agents realized they had made a foolish mistake. I understood that one
or two of them even had followed us all the way from New York -- another
expense to the American taxpayer, but he is always the victim -- so the
mistake was a very cold one. And I was accused of an infraction to the
old Mann Act: The Mann Act prohibits crossing the border from one state
to another with a woman who is not your wife for the purpose of
committing a licentious act. Of that we were certainly guilty; we had
crossed dozens of borders on the way to Mexico and committed dozens,
maybe hundreds, of licentious acts. However, we were not put in jail;
just had to sign some papers that we were not married; then proceeded
all the way to the Mexican border. We felt as if someone dirty put his
filthy hands into our very personal affairs. Senora L made a strong
complaint to the Mexican Ambassador in Washington and received much
later apologies for the FBI agents.

Five years later, when I was applying for United States citizenship in
Denver, an FBI agent came to the hearing and reopened the case, accusing
me of immorality and of a flagrant infraction of the Mann Act. I still
would like to find out some day what kind of a puritanical,
hypocritical, SOB this Mann was. I'd already passed my citizenship
examinations without a single mistake, and held an important position
with a group of oil companies, so I did get a defense. My lawyer
threatened the FBI agent with a lawsuit in the amount of a million
dollars for damage done to my reputation. And so the Mann Act was
quickly forgotten. The judge laughed at the FBI story, and I was made an
American citizen -- maybe not first class, because naturalized, but a
citizen still.

Lee concluded, "And so you lived happy forever afterwards as a
naturalized American citizen."

"You don't realize, Lee," I said, "how important is was for me to be a
citizen, as after the war I became a man without a country, a
'heimatloss.'"

"It's better to be without a country than to live in a country like
this, run by the FBI," was Lee's bitter conclusion.
I guess in these days of open immorality and of pornography staring at
you from each bookstore, nobody would be accused of breaking such an
antiquated law as the Mann Act; it's probably buried for good.

During these unbearably long sessions with the counsel for the Warren
Commission, Albert Jenner, I got the warning from him that the FBI was
after my neck "Better go to see those FBI guys and straighten up your
situation with them," was his advice. Of course I did not waste my time
on visits to the FBI; both my wife and I were anxious to get back to
Haiti. But now looking at the report, I think that there must have been
other reasons that millions of dollars were spent on my unimportant life
-- also my wife's and our children's -- with the result that our
depositions ended up three times more voluminous than Marina's, and so
much costlier to the American taxpayer. Look at all those innumerable
places we lived in, the various countries and different continents --
everywhere we went, these FBI agents were sent to receive information
through interrogation, bribery or subterfuge. And naturally, the
incident with the rifle activated all this insane activity.

Again Jenner gave me a hint at the beginning of the interrogation. He
asked me, "Didn't you know that Oswald tried to shoot General Walker?"
You already know from the previous chapters what had actually happened,
and what Marina had said later.

"Of course not," I answered, "My 'potshot' joke was in a dubious taste,
but only a joke nevertheless."

"But Marina said," continued Jenner, "you knew about it -- you said it
yourself."

Now, after all these years, reading for the first time the text of the
Warren Commission Report, which had been too repulsive for me to touch,
I can see Marina's statement. She quotes me: "How is it possible, Lee,
that you missed?" This is what I was supposed to have said that Easter
night when my wife and I arrived to give a stuffed rabbit to little
June; I was supposed to have said that before entering the apartment and
seeing the rifle. This statement would make me Lee's conspirator, of
course.

However, soon afterwards in her deposition, she affirmed, "George De
Mohrenschildt didn't know about it; he was smart enough to have guessed
it." And so such contradictory and insane testimony forced the US
government via the FBI to order the most costly and most useless
investigation.

Could it be that Marina was told by someone in the government,
especially in the FBI, to use this inane accusation, then to change it?
Maybe Marina some day will admit how all this nonsense came about.
Generally, she speaks well of both of us in her further deposition; she
calls Jeanne a good friend, and me "a strong man" and a "liberal."

Considering how foolish bureaucracy could be, maybe Marina's deposition
was poorly translated, hence contradictory. Also there was a piece of
gossip going on in the Commission building that Chief Justice Warren
liked Marina so much that he advised her to incriminate us to take
pressure off herself.  After all, we were mysterious Europo-Asiatics,
living abroad and leading a strange life. This would take away the sting
of her guilt, because she did know that Lee tried to shoot General
Walker and missed. Anything is possible in this gossipy, bureaucratic
atmosphere of innuendo, the first "Watergate" of the American
Government, the Warren Commission.

Because the second version of Marina's deposition was different again. I
would like to quote it exactly: "De Mohrenschildt did not know anything
about the shooting. Simply he thought that this was something he thought
Lee was likely to do. He simply made a joke and the sting of it hit the
target."

And this, finally, by all these devious ways, we came to the correct
version of the incident. And then Mr. Rankin asked her, "From your
knowledge were they [Lee and I] close enough so that your husband would
make George De Mohrenschildt a confident or anything like that?"

"No matter how close he might have been to anyone," answered Marina "he
would not have confided such a thing."

And thus, again, we came to a reasonably true answer.

It's hard to say whether Lee would have confided in me; this is pure
speculation, though I tend to agree with Marina. Had he done so, I would
have certainly persuaded him not to commit such a foolish enterprise. As
much as I dislike fascists, I would have been against such a violent
action toward such an insignificant man like General Walker. (We used to
call him for laughs General "Fokker.")

Marina is the only one who knows the truth about whether Lee actually
shot at General Walker. If he did, his mind had been made up firmly; he
would have remained secretive about it. But there is a contradiction
there: Lee wasn't a fool; if he had shot at anyone, he would not have
kept his rifle right in front of the closet for anyone to see. He had a
large apartment with a lot of hiding places; he would have put his rifle
in a well secreted corner.

In conclusion, poor Marina was so mixed up in her testimonies that she
did not even remember the incident described in this book, when we took
her away from Lee's apartment on Neely Street, and carried her and the
baby and her belongings to Mr. and Mrs. Meller's Place. She had probably
forgotten the burned flesh on her arm; she mush have been terribly
frightened. And so with her at first, extremely damaging testimony, we
got investigated through and through at a great expense to American
taxpayers, and fortunately for us, survived, damaged only morally and
financially.

A few more words about this lovely institution, the FBI, which might
have played a good role during the gangster days during Prohibition. The
FBI should be more controlled by the Congress. This institution should
adopt the more modern and sophisticated ways of the Surete General or of
Scotland Yard, to become more sophisticated, more secretive and less
naively vicious. Frankly, I even preferred the straightforward methods
of the Haitian police, the famous "tontons macoute," those bogeymen with
dark glasses, as they had effectively protected the lives of President
"Papa Doc" Duvalier and of his family, and still do protect the life of
his son "Baby Doc." The FBI could not protect the lives of the President
John F. Kennedy, of his brother Robert nor, most important, the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King.

The FBI did so much damage to us because, while still in Haiti, I often
expressed the opinion that Lee was a patsy, that he was not interested
in assassinating a man he liked and respected. And I was also an open
critic of our government agencies because J. Walton Moore, whom I had
contacted regarding Lee, told me that he was a "harmless lunatic." And,
as a result of this frank criticism, the FBI tried to crucify is in
Haiti, to damage our contract there, with the connivance of the American
Embassy. In the final result, I lost a lot of business contacts because
the FBI had pried too much into my private life and exposed it in the
wrong light.

I am a patsy . . .

We are alive and enjoying life in a very different way. We moved away
from the business world to the academic world, and it's more rewarding.
For this I have to thank Lee Harvey Oswald and the FBI. Fortunately,
also, we did not lose our real friends. Nor were we sent to a
concentration camp like the Japanese in World War II or the Navajos in
nineteenth-century Arizona. And we do not complain; life is interesting
and exciting for us.

Often we wish Lee were here with us to share some of the good changes we
are experiencing in this country and in the world. He was too young when
he died. But more often we think of the shady aspects of this gruesome
"investigation," of the harm done to this country and especially to the
memory of Lee, my dead friend.

Penn Jones, the editor of the Midlothian, Texas, newspaper, The
Midlothian Mirror, and a simple honest man, told me upon my return to
the United States, "I shall never forget Lee Harvey Oswald's face,
beaten brutally to a pulp; his terrified expression when he was being
led by beefy policemen the day of President Kennedy's assassination. And
this young man kept shouting, 'I am a patsy! I am a patsy!' And,"
continued this elderly newspaperman, "I swear to God I knew that he was
telling the truth."

I had a premonition the day of Kennedy's assassination, 3,000 miles away
in Haiti, that Lee was involved in some way, that he was in deep
trouble. It's strange how those things work. Think of the inscription on
the picture we had discovered in our luggage. How could a "hunter of
fascists" be the assassin of a young and liberal President? Would Lee
address this photograph so endearingly to me, knowing well how much I
liked John F. Kennedy, had he intended to assassinate him? Would his
wife call him even sneeringly "the fascist hunter" if her husband was
preparing to assassinate the most liberal President America ever had?
Lee, whether you were responsible, even partially -- even as a patsy --
in the conspiracy to assassinate, I do hope that this book will help you
sleep in peace.

Knowing Lee and his truthfulness, my wife and I believe that had Lee the
chance to speak, he would have told the truth. If he had any part in the
assassination, he would have proudly thrown to the world his reasons for
it. Lee was above all an individualist, an idealist who hoped to change
the world, not a blind slave led by his prejudices, by an excessive
devotion to a defined doctrine, to preconceived notions.

He denied that he was the assassin to the last moment of his life. And
while Dallas police questioned him for forty some hours, he never
admitted anything. For some reason, the police never released to the
Warren Commission any notes of this interrogation, and they denied that
the interrogation had been tape-recorded. Dallas police supposedly had
not a single tape-recorder at the time. As primitive as the Dallas
police were, such negligence is hardly credible.

Chief Justice Warren, while interrogating the officer who said, "We
never got around to buy a tape-recorder," asked acidly, "Wasn't it
worthwhile to borrow a tape recorder when the assassination of the
President of the United States was being investigated?" The city of
Dallas was certainly rich enough at the time to have acquired a
tape-recorder.

And so the tape of Lee's interrogation either did not exist or had
mysteriously disappeared. In my opinion Lee would have told the truth
during this lengthy interrogation, during which he must have been beaten
and maybe tortured. He could have cracked, but his last words were, "I
am a patsy!"

And so he was.

What I have been trying to concentrate on was Lee's personality and on
what I remember, taped, and noted of his opinions, his jokes, and his
remarks in our conversations. Naturally, I could not avoid relating the
effect our experiences with Lee and Marina -- and especially my
friendship with Lee -- had on our lives. I hope that this book will
correct the generally low opinion people in this country have on Lee.
Maybe this new focus on him will have some influence on the ultimate
judgment of the assassination of President Kennedy.

Lee Harvey Oswald might have been sometimes violent, like almost anyone
among us; he might kill a person he hated; he might have been violent to
a racist or a pseudo-racist, to someone who might want to hurt him and
his family. But to assassinate the President he rather admired just for
the glory of it is entirely foreign to his personality. Lee cared for
freedom in this country and he cared for the improvement of world
tension at the time.

And this type of a person was being moved from one place to another by
the Dallas police, the movements were announced, the crowds were there,
and thus he was shot and killed.

Some other aspects of Lee's personality must emerge from this book. It
shows that Lee was not a harmful person, but on the contrary a rather
inspiring individual. His deep desire was to improve relations between
the United States and the Soviet Union. It took twelve years and a man
like Kissinger to partially achieve this. At last the latent animosities
between these superpowers are dissipating.

But Lee hoped for more: He hoped that these two powerful countries would
become friends, and he strived to achieve it in a naive and maybe
foolish but sincere way. It is clear now that the war between these two
countries could have ended in a holocaust. And so Lee Harvey Oswald had
dreamed and hoped for a detente and for friendship -- not so bad for a
high-school dropout from a New Orleans slum.

It is always better for all of us to be friends than to fight; only
insane people would want to fight now with the available nuclear
arsenal. Such insane people are forcing others to believe in the
superiority of such weaponry. We can kill all the Russians hundred of
times over and they can do the same to us. So where does "superiority"
lead?

It is my firm opinion that Lee was never sure he was right, but he was
always groping for truth, for a light. It must come out clearly from all
the material I had gathered here that Lee was above all
anti-segregationist, he was "anti" any people who discriminate against
any minorities, against any underprivileged.

Both Lee and I firmly believed that subservience to any dominant
political idea is wrong, that people should try to discover an ideology
which fits them, even though it might be unpopular, and follow it. If
not, we would become the same dummies Russians were during Stalin's
time; their servility backfired and they became victims of it. "They did
not try to find out who was right and who was wrong," Lee told me during
one of our conversations, which often dealt with the Stalinist times in
Russia. He had learned a lot in Minsk. "Free people," he had said,
"should not remain mere pawns in the world game of chess played by the
rulers."

Some time ago I saw a program, sponsored by the Schick safety razor
firm,  which featured Lee talking on the radio, regarding his pro-Cuban
activity in New Orleans. The program was taped and Lee's photos were
inserted. Lee spoke rather intelligently but the inserted photos made
him look ugly and threatening. It was a nasty way to portray a dead man.
Technically the program was awful; its sole purpose was to brainwash the
American people into believing more firmly that Lee was the sole
assassin.

And we will never know the whole truth until someone will come forward,
confess, and will accept the guilt.

Let's recall some of my conversations with Lee regarding Fidel Castro.
Lee was rather an admirer of Fidel and especially of Che Guevara, a
romantic, swashbuckling personage. In his mind Fidel was a sincere man
who aimed for the best for his country, to eradicate racial prejudice
and to bring a social equality to his people. I do not think he knew
very much about Cuba, and his information came through his contacts with
Cuban students and technicians he had met in Minsk.

Lee liked Fidel as a representative of a small country, an underdog
facing fearlessly a huge and powerful country like the United States.
Che appealed to him as a handsome, brilliant doctor who had traveled
around Latin America, discovering basic injustices and who eventually
tried to correct them. He did not know that in some of the poorest
parishes of Mexico, the peasants considered him a new savior. New Che is
dead, and the man who killed him was assassinated recently in Paris. So
it's all immaterial.

Regarding the Bay of Pigs, Lee thought it was an utter disaster. He was
sure that we should not have gotten involved in the internal affairs of
Cuba. He was against the anti-Castro Cuban refugees, but this subject
was not discussed too much between us. He thought that Cuba before
Castro was a whorehouse for the American tourists, and the headquarters
of American racketeers like Lansky and Co.

I was not sure whether he was right or not. I barely knew Cuba myself; I
was there a year or so before Castro's victory over Batista. To me it
was a cheerful, corrupt country; but austerity did not seem to fit the
sunny Cuban nature.

Lee thought President Kennedy should not allow any invasion of Cuba, but
he was not vehement or violent in his views on this subject. I have the
impression that the matter was not of much interest to him. Lee never
expressed any hatred for Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs; he just
calmly assessed it as a very foolish action.

Remember that many Cuban refugees and their relatives paid with their
lives for this invasion, and the ones who remained alive here consider
the disaster Kennedy's fault. I cannot visualize Lee being in cahoots
with these Cuban refugees in New Orleans, as some sources suggest, but
he might have played his own game, meeting some of them, checking out
just for the hell of it what their motivations were.

The amusing and attractive side of Lee's personality was that he liked
to play with his own life; he was an actor in real life: a very curious
individual. On the other hand, I can very easily visualize Lee joining a
pro-Castro group.

In my humble opinion, as indicated by some events and conversations in
this book, the Kennedy family did not want to pursue the matter of
finding the real, unquestionable assassin, nor a conspiracy. And they
could have done it with their own, immense, private resources. If
somebody killed my son or brother, I certainly would want to be sure who
did it. But possibly the personality of Lee Harvey Oswald suited
perfectly the political purposes of the Kennedy family.

Lee was a "lunatic" and a "Marxist" who killed John F. Kennedy without
any reason and made a martyr of him. And so, the matter was closed
forever. Why look for more people responsible?

Lee's real or imaginary attempt at General Walker's life will remain a
mystery. According to Marina, Lee also wanted to shoot Nixon, whom he
considered a reactionary of the same type as Walker. This was at the
time when Nixon was Vice-President [sic]. But Lee never even spoke to me
about Nixon, so it remains pure speculation.

The picture appearing with this book was taken by Marina, so she says in
her deposition, in January or February of 1963. Dedications were made
probably at the same time.

Final conclusion for us, Lee's friends

We are alive and fairly healthy. I have returned to teaching and am
happy to be with young people. But I often miss Lee and his stimulating
presence. Real friends have remained faithful and good to us; the
superficial and false relationships have disappeared.

Yet, this past friendship with Lee had strangely adverse effects on our
lives. People read superficially this gossipy Warren Report and wonder
who these strange people are. They call us, ask foolish questions. Even
today, insidious articles appear claiming that we were "bribed" (by
whom?) to hide the truth about Kennedy's assassination. Subsequent
publicity make us controversial and even gruesomely threatening.

Re:  Farewell America

And so I am standing for judgment. I have never been to some of the
countries mentioned here (for example Egypt and Indonesia) and I lived
and worked in many other countries this article did not mention. In each
case I either worked for myself or for some oil companies, but I never,
never worked for the CIA, and I do not think CIA will hire me in the
future.

As for the ICA mentioned above, this was the name of the division of the
State Department, a shortening of International Cooperation
Administration, which dealt with economic help abroad. I was hired as a
petroleum technician, and  in that capacity worked for a year in
Yugoslavia.

I cannot say that I never was a CIA agent; I cannot prove it. I cannot
prove either that I ever was. Nobody can. Only recently disclosures have
been made giving names of the CIA agents who were at the same time our
State Department employees and worked in our embassies and consulates in
various capacities. Before this, CIA employment was a well kept secret.

And so almost everything I had done in my life became distorted by
unscrupulous reporters and gossip-mongers. The latest infraction into my
privacy come from people who want to write about Lee Harvey Oswald and
rehash the Warren Commission information. Just a few months ago in the
San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune came a suggestion that I
had gone to the Bahamas after the assassination to be paid off by
someone, to keep some secrets regarding Lee Harvey Oswald.

But what can you do about it? Suing is not my style, and I have no time
for it. And so I write to these writers and receive letters of
apologies.

Another painful annoyance to us is to think that some of our good
friends, in the foreign countries where I worked, read this trash and
may believe that I was some kind of an agent, and that they had
befriended a two-faced individual. The same suspicion applies to my wife
and her friends abroad.

Let us hope that this book, poorly written and disjointed but sincere,
will help to clear up our relationship with our dear, dead friend
Lee.