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The Kennedy Curse, Part 11 - Lee Harvey Oswald
45 Plays26 days ago
On today's episode, we're taking a side quest into the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. Elements of his life seamlessly into conspiracies surrounding JFK's assassination.
Check out our YouTube channel, Fixate Today: Grey Matters
Sources (there's a lot):
Books: The Kennedy Curse by Edward Klein, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Katie Clifford Larson, The First Kennedys: The Humber Roots of an American Dynasty by Neal Thompson, After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family 1968 to the Present by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power by Garry Wills, Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates, RFK Jr.: The Rise and Fall by Vincent Isabel, Marina and Lee by Priscilla Johnson McMillan
Media: Grey Gardens (1975 documentary), JFK (1991 film), Thirteen Days (2000 film), Murder in Greenwich (2002 television film), Bobby (2006 film), Grey Gardens (2006 musical), Grey Gardens (2009 film), Parkland (2013 film), 11.23.63 (2016 series), Jackie (2016 film), Chappaquiddick (2017 film), Cover-Up (2018 podcast), The RFK Tapes (2018 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episodes 400-405: JFK (2020 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode Relaxed Fit: Marilyn Monroe & The President’s Aspirin (2020 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode Side Stories: The Bullet in the Backseat (2023 podcast), Wine & Crime, Episode 366: Lobotomy Crimes (2024 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode 1046: The Miseducation of Ed Larsen - JFK & Government Conspiracies (2025 podcast), United States of Kennedy (2025 podcast), Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder (2025 podcast), Wine & Crime, Episode 456: Family Curses (2026 podcast), Love Story (2026 series)
Websites: historyhit.com, Scientific America, CNN, PBS, CBS News, BBC, Autistic Self Advocacy Center, InStyle, Best Buddies International, All Things Interesting, USA Today, Today in Civil Liberties, Cambridge Dictionary, Kennedys and King, RJP Books, New York Post, Boston Magazine, Time, The Moth, Vanity Fair, Voices Center for Resilience, Reddit, Washington Association of Black Journalists, NPR, The Ringer, The Daily Express, The Harvard Crimson, Wikipedia
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Fixate Today Gone Tomorrow. I'm Nikki and I have ADHD, Joy is autistic, and we are letting our hyperfixations fly.
The Kennedy Curse and Focus on Lee Harvey Oswald
00:00:08
Speaker
Today we are fixating on the Kennedy curse.
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone. we're in our series within a series still about JFK. Today, we are going to take a bit of a side quest, but not really because it's obviously very important to the JFK story. But we're going to do probably two episodes talking about Lee Harvey Oswald.
Research and Writing Process
00:00:44
Speaker
Oswald is ah known as the assassin of JFK. And his story is crazy. Yeah. And I'll take responsibility for a bit of this. I, I, anyone who knows how we go about making this podcast, Nikki, it's her fixation. She is like researches and writes and all that. And then I keep up as we go and I pick out the pieces that I get
Exploration of Lee Harvey Oswald's Life
00:01:09
Speaker
fixated on. And
00:01:11
Speaker
Lee Harvey Oswald is mine. And I did not expect to be. So I yeah kind of begged, can we please have like even an extra episode? So... ah But I had a like mind blowing week researching this. Yeah. Well, also, I think that's really clear. That's how we work when I did the episodes alone and they were like 22 minutes and then we get together and we're like four hours later.
00:01:34
Speaker
i know. And we try. We try because we've already had a conversation beforehand. And like, you know, that's already been a half an hour. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So just last week, really quick, we talked about, we laid some groundwork about understanding the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs. We moved on to to Jack and Jackie's five-city Texas tour and the political implications.
00:02:02
Speaker
And then we sadly got into the logistics of the assassination itself and the quick passing of the presidential election.
Oswald's Life Events and Relationships
00:02:12
Speaker
towards to lbj yeah so we stuck to very much like the facts as they have been known throughout time like we didn't get super conspiracy it was just like this is what happened and we're gonna get kind of the same way in the second episode when we talk about the assassination kind of from lee harvey oswald's
00:02:33
Speaker
I don't want to say perspective, but like through through what he was doing that day and up leading up to it and stuff like that. We do have an upcoming episode that does focus on conspiracy theories. And that was not the intent of this one at all. The intent of this one is just truly to learn about the life of Lee har Harvey Oswald. However, in learning that, you can start seeing um some patterns and um get some ideas, and especially of the relationships that pop up in Lee Harvey's life that lend themselves to the future conspiracy theories. Yeah.
00:03:13
Speaker
But we're trying to look at them not necessarily in the lens of the conspiracy, just the relationship as it's Yeah, yeah. So actually kind of like peppered throughout, especially this episode, um there will be like some side notes about like possible conspiracy theories or like, even if I mention it, it's more stuff to keep in mind for when we do get to the conspiracy theories episode.
Insights from "Marina and Lee"
00:03:38
Speaker
um But I'll just be like, just maybe it was this. Who knows? Keep this person in mind. Yeah. I do want to give a little shout out. um I read a book this week. It was book Marina and Lee by Priscilla Johnson McMillan. It was a book that was actually released in um the 70s. Super interesting. It was compiled directly from Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald's wife. she and Priscilla became close friends. Priscilla had actually, prior to the assassination, had interviewed Lee Harvey when he was in Moscow as a defector. She is a linguist, so she speaks ah full Russian. She had also been part of a speechwriting team for JFK, so is one of the only people who is the only person who had ever directly spoken to both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald. And again, this information that she gathered through their friendship was pretty much in the immediate aftermath before we started hearing, before ever the spin on everyone's conspiracies. Probably before the Warren Commission, I'm guessing, because I think the Warren Commission is when everything really like kicked up in terms of conspiracy stuff.
00:04:52
Speaker
She does end up testifying. oh okay. Interesting. But I haven't read it yet. Yeah. um So I could not, i think this is a great book. Yeah. I'll throw it in the, um our show notes with the rest of the, the yeah sources I used because then it'll be listed down there as well. So if you forget the name or haven't written it down when Joy said it, it'll be in the show notes. Yeah. And to be, and the reason i was directed to it through round table discussion that was basically about The idea that that there is no big conspiracy and that this book is reinforces that. It's one of the best sources to understand that.
00:05:29
Speaker
And I went into it and i was so, I was with it. And that was what the perspective I wanted. And then just this last night, I i texted Nikki and I'm like, well, I saw something. I want to.
00:05:42
Speaker
Like, whoops. Yeah, because we're very, and I think it's very funny with our perspectives on the assassination because I'm like, I'm you this time. I'm like, I know what happened. This is what happened. There's no question about it. This is what happened. And you're like, I don't think so. I went in blank. I mean, I went in, but I really did go in not like, yeah, this is, there's no conspiracy theory here.
00:06:09
Speaker
But I think there is a little bit. But I don't think it's kind of like what we think. Like, I don't think yeah i don't i don't think with itable it's something solvable. I think right little pieces of intelligence services from different countries that and that with questionable motives, but i don't I don't know what the ultimate motive is. Right, right.
00:06:29
Speaker
right. Well, let's get into it. I'm going to open with some quotes through my research that I found about Lee Harvey Oswald. And I was going to just open with this one quote, and then I found three that I was like, okay, this is who this person is.
00:06:43
Speaker
So from the author of The Devil's Chessboard, David Talbot, quote Lee Harvey Oswald was one of those bright, lost, fatherless boys whom society finds inventive ways of abusing.
00:06:57
Speaker
The next was from the book The Kennedy Imprisonment by Gary Wills. And by the way, this book was fantastic. I highly recommend this one. It was tough to find, but I found it.
00:07:08
Speaker
Quote, Oswald was a brutal restatement of the idea of power as the combination of resource with will. And finally, from a friend of Oswald regarding Oswald's possible CIA ties, quote, I never would believe that any government would be stupid enough to trust Lee with anything important. I think that's key. Um,
00:07:31
Speaker
I'm add one more. Yeah. I get it. It's another French. It might be actually the same one as the previous quote, ah who would be George de Mareschil.
00:07:43
Speaker
Guys, when we get to this to this george this George feller, we have no idea how to say his name. And we've listened to it. We listened to it together just now. I tried to write it out phonetically. And it's French. And I can't do it. And we're going to do our best. But when we get to him, he's going to be George. George. So George said, and this is so simple.
00:08:01
Speaker
And it just said he was very responsive to kindness. That was like how he would sum up. Yeah. And that wasn't necessarily a compliment. I think that but we'll we'll hear more about that. Yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
All right. Well, let's get into it. We're going to start in in Lee Harvey Oswald's childhood. Two months before he was born, Oswald's father died. And I got snarky immediately with my notes and I put Oswald was his mommy's special little boy, which just means that he was an extension of her own ego.
00:08:35
Speaker
His mother Marguerite sent Oswald's two older brothers to an orphanage. She kept Oswald until he was three and then sent him to an orphanage as well.
00:08:46
Speaker
So this woman's like so interesting. Yeah. And not in a good way. But she definitely has an overwhelming personality. She did raise her children children alone. Her oldest son was from a different relationship.
00:08:57
Speaker
ah When she so sent them away, they call it an orphiate orphanage. It was kind of like a boys school of sorts. Yeah. and And she did send them away because, you know, she saw them as a burden.
00:09:08
Speaker
The irony is she goes through her life ah talking about the poverty and struggling through poverty. They weren't they weren't poor. Yeah. Yeah. When she says burden, she implies that it's a financial burden, but definitely wasn't not necessarily what it was. um And yes, ah Lee went later because he was the younger and he they would don't take them till they're three. Which is why he was with her longer. he In that time, though, he did he did they built they built a different kind of bond. And so he was a weird combination of like spoiled and she babied him, but at the same time, there was a lot of acrimony too. Which really, really hit hard in ah in his teenage years and he became quite hateful. But... But they were in and out. Like she would take them kind of in and out of these orphanages. And then and at least the older boys got sent away to boarding school. And um then she would take them out that. And they were like, in military boarding school, we actually had purpose. We actually had somebody. Right, right. So we they would rather be there. So it it was a complicated um upbringing to say the least.
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah. She uprooted the boys at least, but certainly Oswald about every year and a half. Mm-hmm. And he all in all attended 12 different schools in the time he was in school. And a lot of back and forth with New Orleans and Texas. And there was a few different husbands in her life. And some were good.
00:10:39
Speaker
They weren't all bad. But, you know, they would kind of come with go. so Yeah. At one point, Oswald was sent to a youth house after refusing to go to school. And here he had a psychiatrist named Renatus Hartog.
00:10:54
Speaker
who reported that Oswald had the potential for explosive behavior. So here's one of those, like, sneaky little conspiracy things. This psychiatrist, Hartog, was a trained hypnotist with ties to MKUltra training facilities.
00:11:12
Speaker
I will define that, but I want to finish talking about him really quick. um He would go on to eventually be fired for manipulating a schizophrenic woman into believing the cure for her mental illness was to have sex with him.
00:11:25
Speaker
So nice to know even back that back then they yeah at least fired him for it. He had to face some accountability. Quick side quest to incredibly broadly explain MKUltra a bit.
00:11:40
Speaker
the Project MKUltra was a human experimentation program created by the CIA to test to see if certain drugs could be used in altering and controlling human behavior.
00:11:54
Speaker
It ran from 1953 to 1973. It involved people, including agents in the CIA, being secretly dosed with high doses of LSD primarily. They used some other um some other drugs, but it was primarily LSD.
00:12:11
Speaker
Other methods of trying to control behavior were... electroshocks, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other types of torture.
00:12:24
Speaker
So MKUltra came out of another project called Project Artichoke. This was a CIA project that explored means of interrogation.
00:12:36
Speaker
And it was cia director Alan Dulles who had ordered both Project Artichoke and MKUltra. So the aim of Project Artichoke was to develop mind control drugs to use against the Soviets after it was alleged or understood or found out that Soviet, Chinese, and North Koreans used mind control during the Korean War on U.S. prisoners of war. Dulles was interested in using these techniques on foreign leaders, right?
00:13:11
Speaker
And in fact, several plans to drug Castro had been made and just were never, like, even attempted. Dulles had taken cues from Nazi scientists who conducted interrogation experiments on concentration camp prisoners.
00:13:27
Speaker
So remember when talked about Dulles is a real bad guy? Helen Dulles is a real bad guy. And he pops up again and again. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. So MKUltra turned into kind of like they wanted to be able to create a truth serum, like a real viable truth serum to be used in interrogations.
00:13:49
Speaker
So in 1973, the a CIA director at the time, Richard Helms, ordered most of MKUltra records to be destroyed. 1977 Freedom of Information request uncovered about 20,000 documents that hadn't been destroyed.
00:14:06
Speaker
And the last of the MKUltra information was declassified in 2001. So for really, really, really long time, MKUltra was a conspiracy theory.
00:14:19
Speaker
And then, like, in the early 2000s, it was like, oh, no, this happened. Which we seem to see more and more of lately. Yeah, so weird. So that is the quick overview of MKUltra. It will come in more throughout this episode a little bit when I'm when i'm randomly like, here's the conspiracy thing.
00:14:39
Speaker
And then ah I'll talk about it a little bit again when we get to Robert F. Kennedy's assassination because it almost is more of a conspiracy in that assassination, but it pops up here. um I think just before we move on to – Oswald heading into the Marines and such. I do want to just kind of wrap up one more aspect of his young childhood. And like you said, the connection with was with the psychiatrist Hartog.
00:15:08
Speaker
He did. they They did try to get him some different psychiatric and psychological help. Yeah. But his mother would never let him follow through on it. You know, they were always wrong. Right. They didn't know. Right.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, her perfect baby boy didn't mean psychiatric help. And in the end, um what the consensus was, was that he hated his mother And he hated everything he saw in himself that was just like her.
00:15:38
Speaker
They both thought they were special, entitled to what they wanted, to a better life than they had. And this feeling made their heart their and this feeling made their lives hard since life couldn't meet their expectations. Life was unfair to them.
00:15:58
Speaker
They had right to something that they shouldn't have to work for. They needed to even up the score, bring justice as they saw it to the world. And this notion really was their basis for the skewed perception of the government, leadership, politics, authority figures, general society. And and I think that that is just core to understanding who Lee Harvey Oswald and also his mother.
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah. And As you were saying that, I thought of Charles Gatteau, who assassinated President Garfield, Abe Lincoln's assassin, which my brain is not thinking. I'm thinking of every other assassin. Oh, my gosh.
00:16:41
Speaker
Like John Hinckley, no. John Will Sputh, for the love. and But so many of the people who attempted to assassinate presidents, it's that. it's My life is is hard and it I don't deserve it to be hard and I'm entitled to it to be better. And the it's the leader of the country who is making it hard. And if I can change that, everything will change for me. And I know i am this great, strong, powerful person who has been sent to earth to make a difference. I was destined to do this. I don't really have the brains for it. I don't really want to want work for it. But I want to go down as an industry. Yeah. and
00:17:23
Speaker
As the person who changed the world. And I do. So. Yeah. But going on from that. So, yes. So we've got these. therapy and i e anyways there gets to wave of a point where death is working so yeah so he just kind of like he's in and out of he's in a lot of upheaval upheaval in his childhood and they it's i feel like everybody's like let's just get him to adulthood let's just it's fine we'll get him through um so at the age of 14 he started exploring the idea of communism we both agree that he didn't believe in communism he was a contrarian
00:18:02
Speaker
Today, he'd be an internet troll. Yeah. I'm going to make a little weird, weird personal connection tangent here. And because we're family, you will understand. Okay. um I swear a lot of this had to do with his mom's obsession with money.
00:18:17
Speaker
And like I don't know. I grew up with a father who's very obsessed with money, very frugal to like a crazy point when I tell people this. Now, not to the point of seeing his kids and family as a burden or making them feel that way, but in every other way,
00:18:33
Speaker
Penny pinching. We could never have name brand soda. There was like the air conditioning. We would have to be baking before it gets her. All those things. But we weren't poor and we didn't have to be that way. And I think that that was a lot of what Marguerite was like. She was just, she was just obsessed with money and she,
00:18:53
Speaker
She drilled it into the kids, but also made them feel like they were um the burden. And so when he has turned to communism had, I believe, something to do with that notion of anti-capitalist society where everyone gets their fair share, gets their due and and doesn't have to struggle the way his mother lived.
00:19:18
Speaker
stru Yeah. aunt And it could also be a way to be contrarian to his mother. Yep. Both, huh? Right. Right. because Because my next note is he was a performative communist to be obnoxious. Yeah. No, I agree. And he's got this contentious relationship with his mother who's obsessed with money.
00:19:39
Speaker
That must just been so irritating to her. Yeah. But I do think, and i don't know if this is the point, um ah throughout history, I think we've thought of, thought of Lee Harvey al Oswald as being very pro-communist. He really wasn't. Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, he was interested in it.
00:19:55
Speaker
He wanted to pursue it. Then he kind of went, ah no, this isn't as great as I was thinking. Because I don't think it was communism. He wanted to be in a group. He wanted to be accepted by a group.
00:20:06
Speaker
And preferably one where he didn't have to work and his financial me needs were. Precisely. no That's what I was just going to say. All right. So- So he does, though, end up just following in the footsteps of his brothers who entered and they both went into the military right at 18.
00:20:24
Speaker
Lee goes in. Actually, he gets an extra signed. His mom signs the paper so he can go even a year earlier. she can get rid him. Yeah. And what's funny is my note is he joined the Marines at 17 to escape his mother. But then when you said she had to give permission, I was like, oh, she was done to. They're escaping each other.
00:20:43
Speaker
This is another group that he wanted to find belonging. He wanted to to be accepted by these cool military guys. However, no one liked him.
00:20:54
Speaker
He tried to fit in by being funny, which just miserably failed. He would try to one-up everyone, berating others for making mistakes, even though he was also making mistakes.
00:21:06
Speaker
Oswald qualified as a sharpshooter in his military records. He scored by 191, which is on the low end of qualifying as a sharpshooter, but he's still qualified. And basically what that means is it's average for Marines, an average score for a Marine, but an incredible score for a non-Marine. After the assassination, it was recorded that his rifle was firing correctly. That's one of the conspiracies, that it wasn't working properly, and that's why he had to do multiple shots because he was a bad... It was like his rifle wasn't working but he despite him being such a sharpshooter. And it's like, he was just average.
00:21:45
Speaker
Conspiracy theories say there is evidence that he was a poor shot, His rifle was inaccurate and event reconstructions cannot recreate the timeline of the shots being fired. That's just all stuff to keep in mind. But it seems like his rifle was fine and he was a decent shot.
00:22:02
Speaker
It just opens a dialogue for conspiracy talk. Correct. Oswald in the Marines with other Marines would talk openly about defecting to Russia, but nobody took him seriously. he's He's over there like trying to what up everybody and like be funny. And now he's talking about running away to Russia. Everyone's like, sure, Jan. He spent time at a Japanese airbase and was linked to a U-2 spy plane that was used there at the time.
00:22:29
Speaker
I bring this up because that airbase had rumored MKUltra ties. Now, it is said this UK spy plane was top secret, but Oswald really had no... He did not have clearance that would allowed him um access to No. Something else happened very interestingly while he was at this Japanese airbase. It was ah at Tsugi base in Japan. In 1958, he accidentally shot himself in the arm with a non-military weapon.
00:23:04
Speaker
Nobody else saw this happen. And he was court-martialed for illegal possession of and and of this unauthorized weapon. they And they never knew where it came from. Wow. um So after serving his sentence for the court-martial, he got a second court-martial for hitting the sergeant he blamed for that the disciplinary actions. A contrarian, you think?
00:23:32
Speaker
um And he ended up spending several weeks in the brig. And these actions resulted his eventual dishonorable discharge from the military that plagued him for, ah well, for the rest of his short life, but with um getting, including with getting jobs.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. Okay. Because also like in addition to the dishonorable discharge, he part of the discharge was, ah it's called a dependency charge. Yeah.
00:24:02
Speaker
So he was left the military because he had to care for his mother after a heavy candy jar from a high cabinet fell and hit her face. That's crazy. So what a humiliating way to leave the military. Well, and it was said that, so his mother was involved in his like military life twice.
00:24:24
Speaker
One to get him in early and one to get him out because of this candy jar incident. And I don't think at the time of the discharge of for the gunfire, dependency need, he he was immediately um considered dishonorably discharged. I think it was like retrospect, they like went back through his papers kind of thing, which was probably a little bit of a hit later ah down the road. I think he thought he got away with something, getting out, and um then then then took that hit later, and and that was a big... Which is so interesting because he put himself back into like their their minds with like all the things he'll do later. It's like if you just chilled out, you wouldn't have been disarmed. You'd be discharged.
00:25:04
Speaker
Exactly. Lay low. Lay low, buddy. Because you're a menace. i mean So after his time in the military, Oswald well, even before, even when he was like dabbling in communism, he had pretty cartoonish ideas about like what communism actually was and the Soviet Union. So he claimed to be pro-communist and pro-Marxist. And he desperately wanted to go to Russia and he wanted to live in Russia and become a Russian citizen.
00:25:34
Speaker
But I will say this seems more like a whim. Yeah, for sure. its a yeah Any... Even his research and studies, he didn't really get it. Yeah. He he he wasn't, i mean, he was only educated to the maybe ninth grade. Yeah, think so. he He'd like to read, um but it was always thought, like, he'd like to he like to hear big words about, like, these, pi and use them, but he didn't really conceptualize them.
00:26:00
Speaker
I really get this more as, like, a he got a bug in his ear and just, yeah like, i want to I want to do this. want to move to Russia. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so much we'll see is that in his life. Like, I want to go to Mexico so I can go to Cuba and I want to go back to New Orleans and we're going to go to Texas. We're going to do this and then we're going to do this. And yeah, so much of his life up to the assassination is just like getting getting an idea and being like, all right, we're going to do it. I'm going to do it. And to be fair, I'm much the same way. I do not defect, but I see i do go to these places vacation.
00:26:32
Speaker
Vacation. Yeah. On a whim. And if you decided to defect, you have people who love you would that would be like, how about a vacation instead of affecting how a nice hotel and a spa treatment? I don't think you're going to like being a citizen, but you're going to love being a tourist.
00:26:48
Speaker
Which quite honestly, it seems like I had a better time in Moscow than Lee Harvey also did. Yeah. even Even at the beginning of the pandemic, you had a better time in Moscow than he did.
00:27:01
Speaker
So Oswald did go ahead and defect to Russia, but the KGB didn't want him. um He was in Russia on a tourist visa, but he had his citizenship request denied.
00:27:13
Speaker
He had a tantrum. In response, he slit his wrists knowing that the person assigned to him as his tour guide would find him. I guess at the time, like, if you were there on a tourist visa, you had somebody assigned to you. Like, this wasn't a tour guide from, like, a company. It was, like, the government assigned to him. Like a minder of sorts, like in North Korea. Yeah.
00:27:35
Speaker
And they he even, like, tried to pursue the kgb and say, like, do you want my secrets? Like, do I want to know about, yeah you know, the military secrets I have? And they're like, yeah, I mean, no, not really. you're i We don't really have much. Yeah. Right.
00:27:51
Speaker
We know most of what you already know. We probably know more. Well, this ah tantrum worked and he was deemed mentally unstable and was hospitalized, thus lengthening his stay.
00:28:06
Speaker
So interestingly, while he was in the hospital, Eisenhower was in the Soviet Union meeting with Khrushchev. Now, I will just say that they did claim he did get good medical care. This came up even later in the book about the good medical care yeah that the Soviets had to offer.
00:28:23
Speaker
Something I was not expecting to hear. Don't know if that's actually true, but that's funny. Yeah. Right. Especially, especially at this time. Lee was ultimately deemed harmless and his extended stay was granted without citizenship being granted.
00:28:41
Speaker
So this wasn't enough, though. In response, he at the embassy, he threw his U.S. passport and started screaming like on the embassy steps that he'd tell the KGB everything he knew.
00:28:55
Speaker
He desperately wanted to rescind his U.S. citizenship. And the gentleman at the – it wasn't the ambassador – whomever he worked with at the embassy, fully understood what a mistake he was making.
00:29:10
Speaker
yeah and And that he didn't, at this young age, did not understand the implications of what he was doing. Yet at the same time, he wasn't in a position to stop him from doing it. But he knew once once he rescinded his citizenship and turned over his passport, he was going to be stuck in in the Soviet Union for forever. He was not going to have an opportunity to leave. And he did not know what he was, what what what he would have in store. Right, right. So the only thing they could do at that time was like put him off for a couple days. It was like a bank holiday.
00:29:44
Speaker
And um that was the only way they could like try to at least slow it down. Yeah. In the end, it did work. I mean, he kind of cooled off a little bit and backed up a little bit on the, backed off on the like being quite so yeah um anxious of rescinders. Yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
So actually, both the Soviet Union and the U.S., the optics of either way he went back to the U.S. or stayed the Soviet Union were bad. It's a bad look that the U.S. had a Marine attempting to defect to the Soviet Union.
00:30:17
Speaker
And the Soviet Union couldn't very well send U.S. Marine home with slashed wrists and all worked up and frantic. was like both sides— It was a bad look. Whereas you'd think both sides would sort of be taking advantage of this situation. Maybe both sides like, no, no, no. Yeah. We do not want to deal with this guy.
00:30:38
Speaker
And he was also not honest. Well, we'll see. He'll meet a young lady soon. And he was not honest with her about his citizenship and told her he he hey he was, he did have a visa to be in, hu in Russia, which he did not. yeah So he was still on, yeah, just a temporary Right.
00:30:57
Speaker
um So despite all of this, despite that there is an American soldier screaming directly at the Soviet Union that he will give secrets, the CIA still didn't open a file on him for another year. Because it was they were like, he doesn't have secrets.
00:31:17
Speaker
He wanted so badly to be needed and powerful and Yet he was constantly told he wasn't. Right. Right. So Oswald was given a job by the government at a TV factory.
00:31:32
Speaker
The Soviet Union wanted to see his potential. It wasn't even like they were like, we don't even care. They were kind of like, it'd be great if he had something. Yeah.
00:31:44
Speaker
so In some ways, they rolled out the Soviet red carpet to him. Actually, he the position was well-paying. I mean, you know, by all standards. Plus, he got an additional stipend from the Red Cross. And when you added those those two salaries together, it would be like he was being paid via managed manager at at this. Yeah.
00:32:08
Speaker
factory. yeah They also gave him one-bedroom apartment, which was very unusual. So he was well taken care of and put in a can in a good position um for the time. Right. Well, the Soviets were trying to figure out if if they could somehow use Oswald to their advantage as like a dupe or a distraction, not as a military asset, but they were like, we could use him for something, right?
00:32:37
Speaker
um He was constantly surveilled, even being assigned, quote, friends. So beyond this tour guide, he knew people were being told by the government to just like go get a drink with this guy at the bar after work.
00:32:52
Speaker
So eventually Oswald decided that returning to the U.S. s was the lesser of two evils. And I think this was because um how well treated he was being was still like, I just work at a TV factory. That's not enough.
00:33:09
Speaker
They're not using me. They're not taking advantage of my vast knowledge of military secrets. And yeah, he didn't think he thought he was above a ah manual labor. Oh, yeah.
00:33:20
Speaker
So with this ah decision, he did return to the U.S., but he brought a wife and a child. Now, to be very clear, um the woman he married, her name was ah Marina.
00:33:32
Speaker
ah She had a pretty fascinating background of her own, um and it could be argued that her upbringing was even more traumatic than his was.
00:33:44
Speaker
He had to fight very hard. it's it that they knew They only knew each other for like, a couple months before they got married. Again, she did think he was, he had a visa. That was a lie. The first lie he told her, you know, right from the beginning, he also told her he never had intentions of moving her to the U S of course, that became obvious very shortly after she wasn't necessarily opposed, but they went through, there were a lot of hoops to get them out of Russia. um Lots of letters, right? You can only imagine
00:34:17
Speaker
Lee's like persistence in writing letters. Everything about Feeling so entitled and and yeah and so condescending in his language that he's using in and sending it ah you know the Soviet government. like They think they they should be at his disposal.
00:34:36
Speaker
I don't know how this guy got away with it for so long. But right but yes, so eventually he did. He was able to return to the U.S. And pretty amazingly, Marina was too. She was also pregnant, which they kind of ah kept under that They kind of kept that secret tell um you know until they could no longer longer for fear of that would help help have held them back. so Right.
00:35:01
Speaker
um And she also, you know, based on her life until she met him, she was only 19. Yeah, she was young. And poor. He was 22, so he was still young, but. He had lied to her about that also, though. Right. He did think, she he had told her he was older.
00:35:19
Speaker
One more just thing that just blew me away was, so they go through this, he's fighting for this, you know, to be able to bring Marina and go back to the U.S. And then he demands that they pay for it.
00:35:30
Speaker
his yeah He demands um that his his um travel is paid for to go back to the US. And and he gets it paid for. Yeah. It's like, gosh, he's a Karen. He's a Soviet Karen. but Crazy. My gosh. Well, Marina, in marrying so young and marrying an American, she really believed that an American would treat her better than a Russian would.
00:35:59
Speaker
But he was, Lee was controlling an emotionally abusive relationship. Almost immediately. It would escalate in their short time together, but it was like they got married and he got he got not great right away.
00:36:16
Speaker
So when Marina and Oswald returned to the U.S., they landed in Texas. He believed that everyone would clamor to speak to him about his two years in the Soviet Union, but nobody cared.
00:36:29
Speaker
Marina didn't want to move to the U.S., but she did find a community of other Russian immigrants that really took care of her. Most of them were anti-communists who had fled the Soviet Union. So not the kind of people Oswald wanted to hang out with. The community just really took both of them in. But as I said, they especially cared for Marina.
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah, they were quick on the spot, though. um And we forget this was in like within months um ah that theye and then they were we'll call them the Russians that referred to as the Russians kind of threw out. I mean, Marina doesn't speak a word of English, so yeah she needed this community. um But they they helped them. They helped provide them with places to stay. They helped them financially. they They were involved in trying to help them with their marital problems, help them make connections, to find jobs. And they were mainly more sympathetic to Marina, um but not so much Lee, especially after they got to know him a little bit. At least this core group. Yeah. um And they were ah quite maternal to Marina, especially at beginning. But then they they did start getting a little frustrated with her um and her continually going back to Lee. Yeah.
00:37:48
Speaker
So back in the U.S., Oswald's physical abuse of Marina had escalated. All of the forms of violence were in the marriage now.
00:37:59
Speaker
And this was only made worse because the couple moved in with Marguerite, Oswald's mother, into her one-bedroom apartment in Fort Worth. Marguerite would always defend her son's domestic violence.
00:38:12
Speaker
ah Nothing was ever his fault. So Marina is, like, being actively abused. And there is another adult who could help her who is like, not what? You just didn't do this right.
00:38:26
Speaker
You brought it on yourself. Okay, Nikki, I found this recording from his mother. This is years later. um But you've got to hear this and you will understand. So I'm going to go ahead and play It's a little bit long, but and and I might break it up a couple.
00:38:41
Speaker
couple parts because there's there's several aspects to it that say a lot about marguerite it's also an old recording so my son wasn't a fool and he certainly wouldn't go in person with a note to the fbi office threatening to bum it and uh things that i'm reading now in the paper and if that were true what the hell is the matter with the fbi why didn't they have him under surveillance ah You know, Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't a crank who wrote letters.
00:39:12
Speaker
They knew all about Lee Harvey Oswald for years and years and years. Mrs. Oswald, would you cooperate in a reopening of the investigation? Only in one way.
00:39:24
Speaker
That is? If we have full disclosure. I hate to bring the name of Kennedy because when I do, it's so I'm against him. I'm not for or against anyone. I never forget that my son was murdered after being charged. And I don't think that the Kennedy family has the right or should have the right to withhold evidence.
00:39:48
Speaker
Okay, so um so you can hear right there, Parchman's like, wait, my son's life was taken? and and and I thought that was just yeah amazing. But you could also, you can hear that like, no, he did nothing wrong. um Yeah.
00:40:08
Speaker
So this is, ah we were talking before we started recording about the Stephen King book and then the miniseries 11-22-63. Yeah. And of everything, I think Marguerite is the, like the actor who plays Marguerite is so spot on and perfect. And so anytime I hear anything about Marguerite or hear her voice, that's what I picture. And it's like,
00:40:33
Speaker
Yeah, if you want an idea of her, I know it's a fictionalized series, but go watch that and you'll so you'll get a feel for Marguerite. Yeah. I wish we were on in YouTube so you could actually see her because when you see her in this clip, you can. Yeah. I'm going to play one more part. This is really hard to understand and we might cut this out, but but if you can understand what they're saying, it's super interesting because, and let me just, It's about her trying to tell this journalist that she will, for a price, give him some more information. course.
00:41:07
Speaker
said twelve years ago if you know which is which is said like my time knowledge is is value everybody's good paid you getting paid he's getting paid you had to pay for this that you can put me on for a half hour i'm indiscriminating <unk>s much much more i can go into very powerful I may have to summarize that, but yeah, so she basically says, if you give me another half an hour for a price, I can, and then she says under her breath, there's much, much more. i can tell you.
00:41:36
Speaker
yeah so I mean, that's her in a nutshell. That's about – yeah, Marguerite's wild. ah Part of Oswald's abuse to his wife was he forbid Marina to learn English.
00:41:52
Speaker
And so this is – he kind of mentioned it. Like, she didn't know any English. But not only that, he was now not allowing her to learn English. thinking this would isolate her more, but she's got this wonderful group of immigrants who are taking her in. And, and so it kind of didn't work completely because he still found, she still found community, but well, she found a community, but, and they, they in particular did try to step up and, and, uh, help her learn, help put her in, um, classes and give her but he yeah even at that he would stop it from happening his his excuse was then if she learns russian then he will lose his ability his russian speaking it's all about him here yeah so it comes back to being male
00:42:37
Speaker
him but yeah yes you're right I'm sure it's control right it's control over her but um but you know the the community did try to help but yeah and even they couldn't make much so we're gonna get into a part that you accidentally this is when you texted me this part of my script you texted me last night and you're like whoops I'm all in so in Dallas Oswald met George and I'm so sorry from here on out he's gonna be George I'm gonna try to say his name once day Morin Schild.
00:43:11
Speaker
It's, it's fine. But George, a Russian immigrant and his only friend. There's so much to say about George. I could have gone on forever, but I tried to summarize it and I could not not talk about this guy. So, so he was like this eccentric, brilliant man.
00:43:30
Speaker
He was provocative like Oswald, but like, He was good natured about it. Like, yeah, he was he was like likable in being a contrarian. Yeah. But like would make you feel uncomfortable. But like in just wacky ways, like he would. Yeah. Like not have a shirt on when he. like Right. Apparently, may he must have had a nice physique is I got that he must have a nice physique out of this. he Talked a lot about shirtlessness. um He was 51, and I think Oswald this time was 23. They were a strange pair.
00:44:01
Speaker
George like was a guy who was always for the underdog. um And like he he in that he was a contrarian, he could argue either side convincingly. I don't know if it was always to be contrary, but he could he could shape arguments and his mindset to fit the occasion, I suppose. Yeah.
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah. he was ah just like a bit of a chameleon. He wasn't an ideologue because his stance could change as needed. He actually just like arrived at the Oswald's door one day. hmm.
00:44:38
Speaker
I think about this now, like, okay, I'm going to like, let's just go out and say, I'm going to think this guy is somehow connected to intelligence, which we'll get into. But if you think about the the ways that we have all these like spy networks and here's the 60s, you're like, let's go knock on the door.
00:44:55
Speaker
Hi, just here to meet you. Just yeah. Right. um So he heard about the new Russians in town and just said he wanted to meet them. went up to his ah door. and And from that day on, he played a pretty vital role in both Lee and Marina's life. He was more drawn to Lee than Marina, which is unusual because most people were definitely more drawn to Marina.
00:45:21
Speaker
George also had an eccentric wife named Jean um who... who really is hard on Marina, actually. she um Marina gets on her nerves.
00:45:33
Speaker
But they they kind of thought of Marina as being weak um and always looking for handouts. um His meetings with George always kind of like occurred in a vacuum outside of any other relationships with coworkers.
00:45:46
Speaker
George had a lot larger than life personality and much more powerful and influential men in society sought meetings with him yet lee could like meet with him as often as he wanted it was just kind of an unusual situation which kind of makes you think like was there a different motive to it yeah he sure gave a lot of attention to lee what was his what was his payoff George understood people. He could he could analyze people very well. And he quickly understood that Lee could be played. Just by showing interest in him and listening to him, he and Jean admitted they used him to gather as much information about Russia as they could. And then they kind of kept him around because they felt sorry for him.
00:46:39
Speaker
George and Lee's conversations were always um about getting information from Lee about Russia. And then from there, talking politics, going through, especially going through like current Russian periodicals and pro-communism newspapers and comparing them with the difference in perspectives from the U.S. news. Yeah.
00:47:04
Speaker
So as I see this, ah Lee was a very unique source in that he spokeook he spoke fluent Russian. There is a Russian community in in Fort Worth, Dallas-Fort Worth at the time, but they they left the country years ago and they're all anti-communism. So Lee and Marina can give a unique perspective that's more current.
00:47:24
Speaker
And I think that that was the information somehow or another that George was trying to get from him. Just a little bit about George's history. Yeah. He had moved to the US s in 1938. He became, um his father had been arrested by the Bolsheviks and sent to a gulag.
00:47:43
Speaker
He was from an aristocratic family and, and they lost everything during the revolution. However, like, George was like always comfortable in these high class circles, even though he was no longer rich. I mean, he was like, he liked to socialize with them. He was comfortable socializing with him. Yeah. He wasn't really particularly driven by a desire for money. He just needed enough to get by. Again, very unique. He sought education and worldly knowledge. He was born in Belarus in 1911, which was part of the Russian Empire at the time. He was actually in Minsk, which is where in Belarus is where he ah he was born, which is where Oswald...
00:48:29
Speaker
was placed when he was working in the factory and that's where he lived. So oh they had that, that connection. So yeah. So he was naturalized yeah us s citizen in 1949, but he was of Baltic, German, Swedish, Polish, and Russian heritage. He was quite a mix. He was highly educated. He spoke six languages.
00:48:47
Speaker
He had an alleged relationship meeting slash with the, with the Pope in 1963 and was even said to be a go-between relaying political messaging behind the scenes. between soviet uh relations and the papacy papacy and the papacy wow as soon as he arrived in the u.s the fbi did start watching him and throughout much of well the rest of his life he considered the fbi his nemesis yeah uh i'll go back to you on them all right well i again weird connections uh He actually met the Bouvier family when he was in New York. So Jackie Kennedy's family, he had interactions with them.
00:49:33
Speaker
So he actually worked for French intelligence, gathering information about pro-German companies. But the FBI believed he had ties to the Nazis. He had amassed a small fortune by marrying and divorcing wealthy widows. Yeah, his the the his method of making a living was always a little questionable. He was always dabbling in this and dabbling in that. um Not, again, not too focused on wealth, but also questionable like how he... Right, and recognizing that he needed some wealth to stop to yeah live the way he wanted to.
00:50:07
Speaker
So he moved to Dallas to start a career in the U.S. oil industry where he actually met George H. Bush and maintained a correspondence with him when Bush was the CIA director.
00:50:19
Speaker
It's openly said that George was a known CIA asset. Although to what degree, nobody knows. Right. And later in his career, he did pen a letter um directly to George Bush at the time saying, I hate to have to reach out to ask you this, but ah the FBI keeps following me and I'd really like them to stop. And I want to see if you can do anything about that.
00:50:46
Speaker
And George Bush replied in ah in a lengthy letter in which he said, i I looked into it. I don't see that happening, but I wish I could help you. Yeah.
00:50:57
Speaker
Yeah. So George met J. Walton Moore of the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division. um So as you said, when he introduced himself to the Oswalds, he was with U.S. Colonel Lawrence Orlov, was with him when they first met.
00:51:14
Speaker
On March 1977, George was visiting a friend from Manila Pen, Florida. He was visiting because his daughter was staying with this friend. So I do believe his daughter his daughter um was involved, was friends with Lee Harvey Oswald. Maybe it wasn't even a connection, how he got connected to them back in the- Running in that circle. Yeah, right at the beginning when when they were in Fort Worth.
00:51:40
Speaker
um So yeah, that that could have been part of the connection of what brought them together. Okay. Yeah. So then, yeah, it would make sense then that, yeah, we we're still seeing her in the picture. Yeah. So while he was visiting, he had agreed to sit down for an interview from ah with a journalist from Reader's Digest.
00:51:58
Speaker
House Select Committee on Assassinations Investigator Gaten Fonzie arrived at the home during this interview, leaving his card with George's daughter. So this this guy from this really specific committee was looking for George.
00:52:13
Speaker
When George returned to the home for, oh my gosh. When George returned to the home for lunch, his daughter told him who had visited, but she spoke Spanish so the housekeeper and the gardener wouldn't know what was being said.
00:52:26
Speaker
When I read that, that kind of confused me. Not trying to be prejudiced, but wouldn't that theoretically the housekeeper and gardener be more apt to... Perhaps. Perhaps that's why we know this happened.
00:52:40
Speaker
Oh, okay. I get it. I wasn't making that connection. so they fought the yeah So they thought they were being sneaky and using another language, ah but the language they chose was Spanish. Perhaps that's my you know that was my thought. god it that i did not have that thought thing so after this conversation his daughter then left to do some shopping later that afternoon george was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound again this was 1977 right okay yes yeah so no one heard a gunshot and there was no note left
00:53:18
Speaker
Jay Walton Moore, the member of that CIA domestic contacts division who George had met in 63, answered to Richard Helms, who we've already talked about a little bit.
00:53:30
Speaker
Helms was the intelligence officer who oversaw Project Artichoke, later known as Project MKUltra. Later in life, investigator Gaten Fonzie wrote The Last Investigation, where he explained that the CIA sabotaged his efforts to investigate the assassination as well as any connections to George.
00:53:53
Speaker
One of the avenues of interference that the CIA did was removing key players and witnesses. George's family has always said that he would have never taken his own life.
00:54:06
Speaker
So that little side tangent sets up some conspiracy things. I kind of think it's fair. i i think there's something there. Yeah. It's weird stuff. You know, it's kind of have been said that he was Lee's handler. And I i don't know. i think he played some kind of role. Yeah. I don't know. but Maybe a time a small role, but I think he played some. Yeah. I think there's something there.
00:54:30
Speaker
But this is the thing you were saying, like, i don't think we'll ever know to what end. No. And I also think it's interesting how they they really, um ah and I keep harping on this, how much they inserted themselves, when I say they, George and Jean, his wife, inserted themselves into the Oswald's life, including their marriage. Yeah.
00:54:55
Speaker
And on one level, they were trying to help protect Oswald's Marina and give support for him, her to leave him. But then they got frustrated of her constantly going back and put a lot of the blame back on her as, you know, part of the toxic codependent marriage. But I think the key is they were, they knew how to manipulate that.
00:55:17
Speaker
Right. To... get them get to to extract the behaviors of maybe they wanted or to get them to open up even as much as like sharing information about their secret sex lives and stuff like that which again theme we see over and over again right so let's let's go back to our timeline with oswald now that we've taken that little tangent detour everyone knew that oswald was horrifically abusing marina and She was in just an awful situation. Her friends were afraid to contact authorities because the abuse would get worse. And there was a possibility that she'd be sent back to the Soviet Union. And if she got sent back, there was a very good chance her kids would not be forced to go with her.
00:56:03
Speaker
And as much as they, again, wanted to help her, they her you know They were all ex or had Russian backgrounds, and they may have had a slightly higher tolerance for marital abuse yeah because of the way they grew up witnessing it in like in the Russian tradition. Yeah. Remember, marina Marina married him because she thought she'd be treated better by an American. Yes, very much. And she had been physically abused as a child,
00:56:31
Speaker
But so yes, even these people who are a little bit more tolerant are still understand how bad it it was. And at one point, um there was a major intervention.
00:56:42
Speaker
It was led by George and his wife, Jean. There was another George that I'm not even gonna get into because it gets too confusing. who is ah definitely a father figure for Marina. But they, at one point, they just all decided we're going to have this intervention. They all pitched in, confronted Lee in front of Marina, um told them they would support Marina, that they would find her a living place, help her with the baby. um they But they said if she chose to leave them and take their help, this was the last time they're going try.
00:57:15
Speaker
And if she left left them and went back, then the Russians largely, then they backed off. yeah and And that's what she did. She did leave them. She did go back. And so the bulk of that Russian group did cut a lot of ties with them. That's when George and Sean were able to, they did not cut ties as much. then That's when they became closer um and stayed involved and learned to play their weaknesses. But Yeah, they did have that one chance and to make that break. And they really so they were really fully willing to support her.
00:57:50
Speaker
But I think after that, they were not... As supportive. Yeah. And the abuse just kept getting worse and worse. Yeah. So there was there was violence there was physical violence. There was ah emotional abuse. But it did turn into, so become sexual abuse as well.
00:58:04
Speaker
Yeah. There's this one part in the book. It's kind of disturbing. But and they said even at like a certain point on the weekends, all of a sudden Lee would say, stop doing the dishes.
00:58:16
Speaker
Lee is hot. Ew. That's so gross. I like the implication. Whatever. Ew.
00:58:24
Speaker
but ah So, but yes, he was, ah he was very bad to her. goodness Well, at this time, Oswald got a job at the, at the Jaggers Chili's Stovall Company, which was a graphic design and printing organization that did have military ties.
00:58:41
Speaker
Oswald never worked on the military end, however. This is a job he liked best out of his jobs. I think it was the least physical labor. Yeah, yeah. And while he was working there, he actually started taking a night typing course, um encouraged by George because he thought it could help him build a career, like kind of more of like a like journalism career, like putting together these this like typing, pipe printing along with the graphic design. Yeah. But also gave him a block of time, so like after work, where he was unaccountable. And Marina wasn't really exactly sure where he was or what he was doing.
00:59:19
Speaker
they did I mean, nothing ever specifically came out of it, but it was kind of a kept questionable, like kind of weird thing um at that at that time. And then he would come home with like a he didn't have a typewriter at home, but he'd have like this big old textbook and he like made a makeshift mocked up typewriter on it. And he would spend hours like practicing typing on this thing and also studying maps and bus routes, which I think you're going to get into in in a little bit here.
00:59:46
Speaker
So, yeah. um At this time, during his time at this job, he became obsessed with James Bond novels. So much so he created kind of a fantasy world where he was the spy and he even progressed to making himself fake IDs and renting a P.O. box under an assumed name. And it was, he did, he would stay late at work at this, this time.
01:00:11
Speaker
center which was discouraged and management did not like it. And they think that might have been when he made up some of these fake documents and such. Yeah, that makes sense. he He had rented this P.O. box under this assumed name that was what right in the area.
01:00:28
Speaker
like across the road, Marina um also caught him lying about what their address was several times where he would use this PO address and definitely avoid, although they had a mailing address. And he would say he would stay at the YMCA or a boarding house near his work, but was a bit elusive regarding like his whereabouts and was not ah always even honest with um Marina about where he was.
01:00:57
Speaker
So he during this time, he was spending, like, he had a lot of okay time away that was unaccounted for or or seemed to be doing kind of strange things. Yeah. Yeah. Well, later we'll see this behavior was even a red flag to Marina about his mental health. Later, she discovers he's doing it again, and she's like, okay, things are bad. Things start to spiral.
01:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. all right. So at the same time, we're going to kind of zoom out to like what's going on in in Texas at the time. Right-wing extremist and segregationist Billy James Hargis and General Edwin Walker were organizing an event called Operation Midnight Ride, which was a five-week anti-communist tour around Texas.
01:01:48
Speaker
Operation Midnight Ride was supported by Senator Strom Thurmond and the American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell. In 1962, Walker had organized a group to prevent the desegregation of the University of Mississippi, where the group stole a high-pressured hose from a fire truck and aimed it at U.S. Marshals. A journalist was shot and killed in the chaos. It was um it was a melee.
01:02:15
Speaker
Walker was always staunchly anti-Kennedy, but he was also a villain for Oswald. So Walker and Kennedy represented both parts of the American imperial power structure to Oswald. So they're kind of like they're on opposite ends of the spectrum of things he hates.
01:02:33
Speaker
So Walker, am I right in saying he's very, he's right wing extremist, anti civil rights and such? Oh, yeah. Okay. And that is one thing Oswald or Lee.
01:02:46
Speaker
And because I can't really let him go, George also are very, they're very pro civil rights and equal rights. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons they're so hateful of this particular feller.
01:03:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And this is like Dallas had a really um high population of right wing extremism at this time, which which are we talked yeah about. Right. Like then that was a big reason that the Kennedys were coming to visit. There was actually a large chapter of the John Birch Society, which was right-wing political advocacy group. It was founded in 1958, and it had anti-communist ties. it was associated with ultra-conservative, radical far-right, right-wing libertarian ideas. Yeah.
01:03:35
Speaker
And it was opposed to civil and equal rights. Obviously, that's why George and Lee were staunch supporters and were strongly opposed to the Birch Society. Walker was associated, i'm not sure in what capacity, with the was it was a Bircher, as they call them, associated with the Birch Society.
01:03:56
Speaker
And what's really interesting is, excuse me, we will come back to the John Birch Society like almost present day within the last 20 years when I talk about RFK Jr. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:04:10
Speaker
Still around and still weaves through this, the conspiracy-laden world of of politics. George, at this ah time, it was said, saw Lee's penchant for violence. Yeah. um And George was not violent at all, but...
01:04:28
Speaker
yeah kind of thought that like the power George had over leave may have been used to entice Lee into violence against others. So, I mean, again, conspiracy, not specific, but that's just something that's been flowwed floated out. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Well, Oswald recognized Walker's potential for becoming a fascist.
01:04:53
Speaker
Walker had given a speech that Oswald heard And in the speech, he highlighted Kennedy's failure at the Bay of Pigs. And he had even said that Jack should have killed Castro, which infuriated Oswald.
01:05:07
Speaker
So Oswald started surveilling Walker's house and studying maps of Dallas. As he started spiraling in this obsession, Marina had actually tried to hang herself.
01:05:20
Speaker
But he found her and slapped her, calling her stupid when he saw her trying to tie the noose. On March 12th, 1963, Oswald ordered a rifle out of a magazine under his assumed name, which would be the weapon he would go on to use in the assassination.
01:05:39
Speaker
He actually ordered two um rifles or two guns at the same time. i think there was like a sawed off rifle and then a revolver. Yeah, yeah. And that assumed name he used was the same as the one on the P.O. box. And he became very obsessive about checking the mailbox. I guess we still do that, right? like Did the finished package arrive? But became very obsessive about, you know, checking for it. It was the first thing, like, he had they paid off some debts um because he had finally had, a you know, this job for a while. They had paid off all their debts. And this is the very first thing he did with his money after the debts were paid was to go order these two weapons.
01:06:18
Speaker
Yep. Well, after he received his rifle, he walked to Walker's home and buried the rifle nearby. He was so obsessed, he was fired from his job, but he told Marina that it was because the FBI was harassing him at his job.
01:06:35
Speaker
Three days later, he enacted his plan. He left Marina a letter with instructions, but didn't and didn't say in the letter what he was doing. He said in the letter that he had no plans of returning, so we don't know if that means He was planning on not surviving, like a death by cop type of thing, or if he was going to be arrested. Like, he didn't clarify what that meant.
01:06:59
Speaker
In the letter, he said to send information to the Soviet government so she could return home and to get rid of all of his clothing. At the time, she loved the U.S. and the community that she kind of was involved with, and she didn't want to go back.
01:07:14
Speaker
But she would have nowhere else to go if her husband who brought her to the U.S. wasn't around. He also paid the rent and utilities ahead of time, so she would have a little bit of time to figure stuff out, I suppose.
01:07:26
Speaker
At 8.30 p.m., Walker was in his study. Oswald fired through a closed window. The bullet went through the wooden frame of the window, which made it slightly off course.
01:07:40
Speaker
The bullet went through Walker's hair, missing his head. Oswald reburied the rifle and went home, believing that he had successfully killed Walker. But the assassination attempt was botched.
01:07:53
Speaker
Oswald would go on to have two nights of convulsive panic attacks, worrying about getting caught. But at the same time, he was still upset that the attempt didn't even make the news.
01:08:06
Speaker
Such a complex man. Right? It was after this attempt that Oswald, I wrote Oswald and Marina, but really Oswald decided that they had to go to New Orleans.
01:08:18
Speaker
To get out of town, essentially, and lay low? i think so. i think that was... And he had the childhood connections to New Orleans. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly.
01:08:31
Speaker
So that's what they did. They moved back to New Orleans, where there was a large Cuban community, of course, and this community had anger at both Castro and Jack. Oswald got ah a job at a coffee company, but his new life wasn't fulfilling for him, so he shifted interest into activist politics.
01:08:50
Speaker
And went all in for support of Castro. He organized a branch of an organization called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee ah in New Orleans.
01:09:03
Speaker
He contacted the New York City headquarters to try to open a chapter but was denied. Eddie just did it anyway. He ordered 500 membership applications, but only 300 membership cards because ah more people would apply than be accepted.
01:09:19
Speaker
Marina at this time was pregnant again, and the couple had no extra money for her prenatal care. Oswald's frustration at this was the first time Marina heard him express anger directly at Jack.
01:09:32
Speaker
which was made even worse when he lost his job at the coffee plant. He registered his chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba committee at 544 Camp Street,
01:09:44
Speaker
which was the location of Guy Bannister's private investigation office. This is one of those things that's like, just keep it in mind. we will talk about him in the JFK conspiracy episodes, but just keep the name Guy Bannister in mind.
01:09:59
Speaker
There's a lot of little potential connections during this yeah time that may or may not or have be linked to. yeah They are linked to conspiracy theories. Yes. Also, ah Oswald could have been trolling him because Bannister was involved in the training of Cuban exiles against Castro.
01:10:21
Speaker
Okay. Oswald passed out pro-Castro flyers with Bannister's address in a possible attempt to troll him for being against Castro. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah.
01:10:35
Speaker
Oswald began to believe that he was going to be the prime minister of the United States in the next 20 years. The U.S. Communist Party sent a letter to congratulate Oswald about his organization, and this inflated his ego so much that he responded by offering his expertise in Cuba to go fight for Castro.
01:10:54
Speaker
People around him involved in this work kind of with him, started to get so annoyed they were telling him to go back to Russia. Oswald was finally interviewed on the news, but this only resulted in him being seen as a defector, a traitor, a communist, and a liar.
01:11:12
Speaker
Not the hero he believed himself to be. And Marina said that he became more disconnected from reality than ever after this. He even talked about hijacking a plane to go to Cuba But then he suddenly became less violent and was super excited about their second baby, suggesting that they name him Fidel. Oh, so cute.
01:11:38
Speaker
He really always wanted a boy. Yeah. And I think he wanted a boy named David. Always wanted to name David. They had early on picked that. But and ah he he did seem like he was a fairly good. Their daughter's name was June or they called her Junie. And um he was a fairly, you know, for all of his faults, he seemed like a fairly hands on father. with Like ma probably really loved his kids. Yes. Yeah. ah Also, just as an aside, he he was like the main ah like house, like he did the main household chores. and Yeah. Which is so interesting. Very interesting. Yeah.
01:12:14
Speaker
So at this time, there's a rumor, the conspiracy. We should have like a ding every time it's conspiracy, like conspiracy ding. He may have gone to a New Orleans assistant district attorney's office to ask if it was legal to import LSD to the U.S. And so we know LSD is.
01:12:36
Speaker
LSD is related to MKUltra, but could this be something like he this was a point of like a lot of calm for him. Could he have discovered LSD um and been using it to like chill out?
01:12:52
Speaker
Although I mean, LSD, I guess is not necessarily something that you use to like calm down, but I also have no idea. I was like, tell us about it. I know. i was like, i actually, I don't even know.
01:13:03
Speaker
Everything just makes me sleepy. This is one of the only times, yeah, you see him connected. to Are there be any rumors about any kind of illegal yeah drug connections? but In September 1963, Castro gave an interview where he ripped Jack and said that the CIA was trying to kill him.
01:13:23
Speaker
And then he said in that interview, Castro said that two could play at the assassination game. So what this does is plant seeds for Oswald. He's obsessed with Castro right now, and Castro's talking about assassinating Jack Kennedy.
01:13:37
Speaker
Three weeks later, Oswald and Marina went back to Texas because he planned to go to Mexico, hoping to make his way to Cuba and then back to the Soviet Union. So this happened. Witnesses and paperwork confirmed that he was there two months before the assassination, While there in Mexico, he spent all of his money on food because he didn't know Spanish. So he kept purchasing full-size meals constantly because he would just point at the menu and eat whatever he got.
01:14:05
Speaker
So he blew all his money.
01:14:09
Speaker
Good Lord. So Marina and Junior in Texas right now, right? Yeah. They're staying with Ruth, who we'll talk about in a little bit, I think at this time. And I believe in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, this was one of the things that um Marina lied about, which raised suspicions was about him, Lee going to, she said Lee did not go to Mexico.
01:14:35
Speaker
You know, in retrospect, there's a lot of reasons. it was She was in a weird position. She was trying to protect her husband. She was an abused woman. But um that was She could be sent back to the Soviet Union? There was a lot, yeah. yeah but um But much ah much much was attention was brought to the fact that she said that instead of it being like somebody in shock who doesn't know the right move to make and is – Sure. Thrust into this a predicament of who she is.
01:15:03
Speaker
Probably not even thinking it through. I was like, I'm just going lie about it. Right. So while he was in Mexico, he went to the Cuban embassy there. He was told that it would take weeks for authorization to enter Cuba.
01:15:16
Speaker
Frustrated, he went to the Soviet embassy to try there. This guy just hates red tape. Yes. I mean, don't we all? But this guy is like, if I get red tape, I just like, well, I guess it's not going to happen. Not Lee. He keeps writing letters, knocking on doors.
01:15:33
Speaker
This embassy was staffed with KGB agents who believed that he was mentally unstable. He lost it when he was told it'd take four months to process his application, waving his gun around while sobbing and begging.
01:15:49
Speaker
When that didn't work, he went back to the Cuban f embassy to try again. and I think there's a vision of like, they kind of like take the gun, like the guns on the desk. And then the agent like kind of takes it, like puts it back, puts it in the drawer, takes the bullets out.
01:16:05
Speaker
He's quiet about, gives it back to him when he leaves. But like, let's just take it down a notch, buddy. Let's just handle this. look Yeah. Handle this discreetly. So, of course, his plan failed and he was forced to return to the U.S.,
01:16:21
Speaker
So he returned to Dallas in early October. Back in the U.S., he filed for unemployment while while looking for a new job. Marina had moved in with her friend Ruth Payne.
01:16:35
Speaker
During all of this, like, i think she – oh, she's so young. I think when he – sometimes when he would come up with these plans, she would be like, okay, he knows what he's doing. And so at some point in this, he called, like, back in Dallas, and she was shocked to learn that he wasn't in Cuba.
01:16:53
Speaker
Like, he was back at home. She had no idea. Do you know if this Ruth Payne had – was she part of the group of Russians or had a Russian connection? I would have to – I don't know. Because I have to imagine in some – that she must have, right, because a language barrier. Yeah, there had to be some sort of connection – I don't know. But they they were very close at this time. So i I don't know. I should have looked up more about her. But I think she's a bit of a conspiracy player. Okay.
01:17:23
Speaker
She can come up in some theories. So after this whole debacle, Mexico-Cuba debacle... Oswald stopped talking about Castro and Cuba completely.
01:17:35
Speaker
So Marina had discussed how hard things had been for her and the kids to Ruth. And Ruth had a lead on a job and connected Oswald with this position.
01:17:47
Speaker
That was on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository about six weeks before Jack's trip to Texas. Which I do hope to go. i live in the Dallas area and it is my goal to go over there and visit it. Not that not not that that would really help us on the podcast, but but I do want to go over and actually have the visuals. Yeah, that'd be very cool.
01:18:09
Speaker
I think it would be fun. So, yeah, hopefully I get over there. Well, and you could make a – you could do YouTube video about it. We can link to it. Oswald's new job appeared to be perfect for him. He spent his days filling book orders and didn't really have to interact with anybody, which, like, my dream. And mine.
01:18:26
Speaker
yeah It did appear he was trying to turn his life around. Two days after getting the job, Marina threw him a surprise party. He spent the night apologizing to her for everything he had done, and he promised Marina... He promised her he would not try to kill General Walker again.
01:18:44
Speaker
Oh, how sweet. Now, keep in mind, he loved this job. It was just a temporary job, and he knew it. Yeah. And it was like a minimum wage job, but that'd be good that he's worked good on him for working.
01:18:56
Speaker
Yeah. I, do conspiracy joy kind of thinks like, is it coincidence that that's where he got the job? I don't know. Location wise. Right. Good on him for right now. And so, but Marina's still living in Irving outside of town. And again, he's got his little rental yeah room in the city.
01:19:15
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So after the trip to Mexico, the FBI began looking closer at Oswald. Agent James Hostie had interviewed neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family, most of whom downplayed his violence.
01:19:30
Speaker
This led Hostie to report that he didn't see a potential for violence in Oswald. He spoke to Marina specifically about his time in Mexico, and she said that he's young and didn't know what he was doing and begged him not to interfere with this new job.
01:19:47
Speaker
He told her that the FBI had never interfered with a job before. So if you'll remember, he had been fired previously and said it was because the FBI was harassing him.
01:19:58
Speaker
So now an actual FBI agent is like, nobody's ever harassed. We don't do that. like He just has a bad personality and doesn't work well with others. Yeah.
01:20:10
Speaker
Loses his job. So Oswald kind of panicked when he found out about this, of course, and told Marina that if anyone came by again, she should take down information about the car that the person was driving. Like he was going to try to tail this agent or something.
01:20:25
Speaker
Ruth Payne spoke to Hostie on another visit and said that Oswald was a communist, but he was harmless. She and Marina agreed not to tell Oswald about this second visit Hostie made to speak to Ruth this time.
01:20:42
Speaker
Hostie ultimately dismissed Oswald, which, after the assassination, led to Hostie's suspension without pay and transfer to the Kansas City FBI office.
01:20:53
Speaker
I think based on everything he – like speaking to people who were like downplaying everything, who probably believed it too because, I mean, how much of Oswald's life was like thinking he was more grandiose than he actually was? The people around are like, he's fine. he just like blah, blah, blah, blah blathers on.
01:21:11
Speaker
On top of his wife begging him like, he just got this job. Please like don't don't get involved with – I think Hostie was probably going on the information he had.
01:21:22
Speaker
Which was probably right. I mean, he wasn't like some... He was a simple man. He was not known to be particularly intelligent. Yeah. Had somehow he become caught up in something?
Ignored Domestic Violence and Superficial Punishment
01:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, maybe. But I don't he but i don't think he knew he was, if he was.
01:21:39
Speaker
Right. And they didn't know about the Walker attempt. They didn't know that was him. that They probably didn't, if I'm being honest, they probably didn't care about any domestic violence against Marina. That's not what they're interested in. Yeah. That was the type of violence that he had mostly partaken in. Yeah.
01:21:58
Speaker
And so I think Agent Hostie probably, ah they thought giving him some sort of punishment would have been like, see, okay, everybody's happy. we yeah Somebody fell for this.
01:22:10
Speaker
He got thrown under the bus. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Again, this is so shocking to me to remember, though, that Oswald's 24 at this time. We've gone through all this. And and he's 24. And that means Marina is 21. It's crazy.
01:22:29
Speaker
It's insane. Well, I think we
Oswald's Perspective and Conspiracy Theories
01:22:31
Speaker
should stop here because next episode we're going to get into the actual assassination. and his kind of side of everything that happened, not like, not opinion or anything, but like,
01:22:43
Speaker
The assassination from Oswald's movements and Oswald's what he was doing and things like that. And it is, again, a crazy story. So I think what we can see are how building blocks of conspiracy theories happened.
01:22:58
Speaker
There are weird connections. The CIA and the FBI are around. There's weird interactions with like people tangentially related to cia secret operations. ah Somebody that...
01:23:14
Speaker
Oswald became friends with, George knew the Bouviers in passing. Like, it's all stuff that, like, everything is weird and tangled together, and it's like, but what matters and what doesn't? Right. And and you know what? We're going go through this whole thing, and I think we're still goingnna have that same feeling in the end.
01:23:29
Speaker
Oh, 100%. I am convinced George was some kind of intelligence asset for somebody I don't even know who. I don't know what they were trying to achieve or for whom.
01:23:41
Speaker
i don't think Lee like knew that either i think he was just being played I don't think he realized that there was anything going on which explains some of his behavior the immediate aftermath which we'll get to but um interesting yeah yeah all right well let's wrap it up there all right and we'll get into more weirdly Harvey Oswald things all right guys thanks for listening have a good night see you later music
01:24:21
Speaker
Amen.