2 THE ASSASSIN

The most fundamental decision the newly organized Commission had to make was the scope of its inquiry. The executive order empowering it said, "The purposes of the Commission are to examine the evidence developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and any additional evidence that may hereafter come to light or be uncovered by federal or state authorities; to make such further investigations as the Commission finds desirable; to evaluate all the facts and circumstances surrounding such assassination, including the subsequent violent death of the man charged with the assassination, and to report to me its findings and conclusions." (R471)

This language granted the Commission extremely broad authority, a necessity in any comprehensive investigation. Yet it obligated the Commission to do but two things: Examine the evidence given it by the FBI and make a report. Whatever else the Commission did or did not do was to be the Commission's own decision. The Commission could therefore limit its inquiry to only that which was delivered to it by the FBI, as long as it rendered a report. It could and did look into what it considered related matters, such as the killing of Officer Tippit, but it was not so charged.

The magnitude of the FBI and Secret Service investigations is indicated in the Foreword

of the Report.

"Beginning November 22, 1963, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted approximately 25,000 interviews and reinterviews of persons having information of possible relevance to the investigation and by September 11, 1964, submitted over 2,300 reports totaling approximately 25,400 pages to the Commission. During the same period the Secret Service conducted approximately 1,550 interviews and submitted 800 reports totaling some 4,500 pages. Because of the diligence, cooperation, and facilities of Federal investigative agencies, it was unnecessary for the Commission to employ investigators other than the members of the Commission's legal staff." (Rxii-xiii)

But nowhere in the Foreword or elsewhere did the Report set forth the scope of the Commission's inquiry. There is no chapter or section of a chapter on this subject. Under "The Commission's Function" in the Foreword the Report does declare, "The Commission's most difficult assignments have been to uncover all the facts concerning the assassination . . ." (Rxiv). Could the Report fairly imply that the Commission had uncovered all the facts without stating what facts it had looked for and where and how it had sought them?

This leads us to the most obvious question among many others: Did the Commission ever consider that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald could have been the assassin? Neither in the Report nor anywhere else is there even any indication that the Commission ever seriously considered such a possibility. Oswald himself denied having shot anybody. The Report concludes his denial was not credible because the Commission considered him a liar. Whether or not Oswald actually was a liar, the fact remains that the Commission ruled out the possibility of anyone else being the assassin of President Kennedy. This was the widely but not officially reported conclusion of the massive FBI report turned over to the Commission. It was the conclusion of the Dallas police. Perhaps it was even the fact. But in determining before it held its hearings that it would not diligently seek out all other possibilities the Commission conducted an inquiry with a built-in verdict. It converted its function from one in which it would "uncover all the facts" to one that could have but a single purpose: To validate the conclusion that Oswald was the lone and unassisted assassin. This can scarcely be called the premise for an impartial and unbiased investigation.

Almost without exception, the contents of the Report and the 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits are directed to holding Lee Harvey Oswald guilty of the Kennedy and Tippit murders. Historians of the future or public or private investigators who might want to consider the possibility that anyone else could have been the killer will find little to help them in these 27 volumes. This self-imposed limitation has been almost entirely overlooked in comment on the Commission's Report.

Analysis of the Report can therefore be made only in the context of its single-minded devotion to proving Oswald was the lone assassin.

Measured by the attention devoted to biographical data about him in the Report, the Commission evaluated knowledge of the kind of man Oswald was as by far the most important aspect of its work. Careful and prolonged investigations into his life and background were made and reported by various police agencies. The Commission additionally took testimony from many witnesses on this subject--relatives, acquaintances, teachers, social workers and others. Not Counting discussion of the crimes, 313 pages of the Report and its appendix--more than one-third of the entire book--are exclusively biographical. By comparison, the chapter of the Report entitled "The Assassination" (R28-59) consumes less than ten percent as much space.

Without doubt, since the Commission had decided Oswald was the criminal, a biographical investigation was in order. The Report presents this data in the fashion of prosecuting attorneys. There is no impartial story of the life of this dead and formerly insignificant man. All that is reported is intended to build a case for the Commission's conclusion that Oswald was ;ln unstable, unhappy character, a failure in everything he did except in killing. Such a man, longing for a place in history, if only in infamy, the Report states, was capable of committing terrible crimes. The Commission was untroubled by psychiatrists of professional standing in reaching this conclusion, preferring its own amateur efforts, unsullied by anything that could fairly be considered actual evidence. By careful selection and equally careful avoidance of the opinions of people who knew him, the authors of the Report portrayed Oswald as the sort of person from the murk of whose mind such evils could emerge.

Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1939, two months after the death of his father, the second of his mother's three husbands. Never wealthy, the family, with children from two different fathers, was thereafter beset with economic problems. With the end of her third marriage, Mrs. Marguerite Oswald worked to support her children and keep the family together. She was not always successful. At times the children were separated from their mother and each other when Mrs. Oswald provided for them as she could in children's homes and military schools. The family moved often (R377ff., 669ff.).

As he grew, Oswald was an inconsistent student. Sometimes he earned "A's," but more often, especially when older, poor marks. He had a lifelong problem with spelling. In August 1952, Oswald and his mother moved to New York City, where an older, married son by her first marriage also lived. Oswald became a persistent truant and the object of study by social service agencies.

The Report does evaluate testimony from the trained people who examined Oswald because of his truancy. These included Dr. Renatus Hartogs, a psychiatrist (8H214ff.). Although not necessarily valid with respect to Oswald the man two comments in the Report are worthy of

consideration because of the lack of alternatives:

"It would be incorrect, however, to believe that those aspects of Lee's personality which were observed in New York could have led anyone to predict the outbursts of violence which finally occurred." (R382)

"Contrary to reports that appeared after the assassination, the psychiatric examination did not indicate that Lee Oswald was a potential assassin, potentially dangerous, that his 'outlook on life had strongly paranoid overtones,' or that he should be institutionalized." (R379)

A more recent psychiatric examination of the adult Oswald is in the Commission's record but avoided in the Report. While in the Soviet Union, Oswald attempted suicide. He was hospitalized and at that time was subjected to three days of psychiatric observation. The psychiatrist's conclusion was that he was "not dangerous to others" (18H464).

In January 1953 Oswald and his mother returned to New Orleans, living initially with relatives. His school work improved but remained mediocre. When in the tenth grade, he quit school after writing a note in his mother's name saying they were leaving town.

This was eleven days before his sixteenth birthday. He sought unsuccessfully to enlist in the Marines. Until he was finally accepted on October 26, 1956, he worked at various jobs, studied the Marine Corps manual, read much, and became interested in politics.

Just before his enlistment was to end, he obtained a fraudulent "hardship" discharge from the Marines and al most immediately left the country. His destination was the Soviet Union. He arrived in Moscow on October 16, 1959. After first applying for Soviet citizenship, which was never granted, he went to the United States Embassy and delivered a written renunciation of his citizenship, which was not in the proper form and was not accepted. The consul was able to divert him by various stratagems and Oswald never again made a serious effort in this direction. He worked in an electronics plant in Minsk, where he met and married on April 30, 1961, a 19-year-old pharmacist, Marina Prusakova. A month or two later, according to her account, he began talking to his wife about returning to the United States. There are contradictory versions which indicate Marina was interested in leaving the Soviet Union. After many difficulties and considerable assistance from the United States Government, including the loan of $435 71, the couple and their infant daughter June crossed the Soviet frontier on June 2, 1962. They arrived in the United States on June 13 and flew to Fort Worth, Texas, the next day.

During his life in the Soviet Union, Oswald developed a thorough hatred for that country's political system. Four days after his arrival in :Fort Worth, he asked a public stenographer to type a manuscript about his life in Russia and his observations. From the time of his return until his murder, Oswald was never regularly employed. He lived in Fort Worth, New Orleans and Dallas. He made a brief trip to Mexico at the end of September 1963 and returned to Dallas. He obtained employment at the Texas School Book Depository on October 16, 1963, after favorably impressing the manager, Roy S. Truly, in an interview. The lead on the job came from a neighbor of Mrs. Ruth Paine, with whom the then pregnant Marina and the baby lived while Oswald sought employment in Dallas.

During the week Oswald slept in a rented cubbyhole. He spent weekends with his family at the Paine home, in nearby Irving. There is reason to believe that he sought more desirable employment.

Only in the context of other things that had been imprinted upon the public mind was it even possible to suggest Oswald was an assassin type. He was a quiet person, staying to himself and reading much, especially of history and biography. He was neat and tidy. Above all, he was devoted to his family. His relations with his wife were punctuated with frequent arguments arising from his apparent Victorian concepts of feminine conduct. He objected strenuously and sometimes physically to her smoking and occasional wine drinking. Marina is the source of the intelligence that she could and did give as well as she got and that some of their minor battles ended in victory for her. She and some of their friends in the Russian community of that part of Texas said Oswald had justification for whipping her.

He nonetheless remained in love with her and his fondness for his two daughters was the one thing everyone who ever talked to him remembered. Merely thinking of them made him smile.

He was, from Truly's description, a very satisfactory employee and a man with desirable characteristics. Favorably impressed by Oswald, Truly described him as "quiet and well mannered," and was particularly pleased by Oswald's use of "the word 'sir,' you know, which a lot of them don't do at this time." On reporting for work on the 16th of October, Oswald was put with a more experienced employee. "He worked with him, it seemed to me, like only an hour or two, and then he started filling orders by himself. And from then on he worked alone." Asked how Oswald's work progressed, Truly said, "Well, he seemed to catch on and learn the location of the stock. We have several thousand titles of books in our warehouse. But he was filling mostly one or two publishers' orders . . . The main publisher was Scott, Foresman and Co." Asked where Scott, Foresman books were kept, Truly replied, "On the first floor and the sixth floor." The sixth floor was both a reserve or a warehouse supply and a source from which the bins on the first floor were replenished for the smaller orders (3H214). Almost every one described Oswald as a man who minded his own business and went about doing his job without idle chatter. It is this employment which put Oswald at the assassination scene and, according to the conclusion of the Report, in a position to kill President Kennedy. Truly's account of where Oswald worked was quoted because it was from the sixth floor of this building that the Commission decided all the shots were fired.