Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was, according to two United States government investigations, responsible for the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. A former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and later returned, Oswald publicly denied killing the president and Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit, claiming he was a "patsy."

Although most Americans agree Oswald had some role in the assassination, most believe there was a second gunman or that other persons were involved. ^[1] Many believe he was part of a broader assassination conspiracy that has been subject to an official coverup.^[2]

Early life and Marine Corps service

Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.^[3] His father, Robert Edward Lee Oswald Sr., died shortly before he was born. His mother, Marguerite Claverie, largely raised Lee alone along with two older siblings: his brother Robert and his half-brother, John Pic, Marguerite's son from a previous marriage. Oswald did have a step-father for several years, and his mother sent him to an orphanage for several years when she was too poor to take care of him and his brothers. The family was Lutheran. His mother is said to have doted on him to excess. She has also been characterized as domineering and emotionally volatile, however. Lee's youth was plagued by extreme mobility; before the age of 18 Oswald had lived in 22 different residences. Because of the short-lived stay in each location, he had attended 12 different schools, mostly around New Orleans and Dallas, but also in New York City.

As a child Oswald was withdrawn and temperamental.^[4] After moving in with John Pic (who had joined the US Coast Guard and was stationed in New York City), they were asked to leave due to an incident where Oswald allegedly threatened John Pic's wife with a knife, and struck his mother.^{[5] [6]} Following charges of truancy, he had a three week court-ordered stay for psychiatric observation in a facility called "Youth House". Dr. Renatus Hartogs described Oswald as having a "Vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which he tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations," and diagnosed the fourteen-year-old Oswald as having a "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies" and recommended continued psychiatric intervention.^[7] Oswald's behavior at school appeared to improve in his last months in New York.^[8][9] In January 1954, his mother Marguerite decided to return to New Orleans with Lee, which prevented Lee from receiving the care the psychiatrist had recommended.^[10] There was still an open question before a New York judge if he would be taken from the care of his mother to finish his schooling.^[11] In New Orleans, Oswald attended some extracurricular clubs such as the school's marching band; however, he soon dropped out of school and joined the Civil Air Patrol, where he became acquainted with Dave Ferrie.

Oswald left school after the ninth grade and never received a high school diploma. Throughout his life, he had trouble with spelling and writing coherently.^[12] His letters, diary and other writings have led some to suggest he was dyslexic.^[13] Nonetheless he read voraciously and as a result sometimes asserted he was better educated than those around him. Around the age of fifteen, he became an ardent Marxist solely from reading about the topic. He wrote in his diary, "I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in the back dusty shelves of libraries."^[14] At 16 he wrote to the Socialist Party of America, stating that he was a Marxist who had been studying socialist principles for "well over fifteen months," and asked for information about their youth league.^[15]

Warren Commission apologists are quick to label Oswald a “communist” due to his reading of communist literature. However, Oswald also read anti-communist books such as, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, and Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.

Oswald wished to join the US Marine Corps. He idolized his older brother Robert and wore Robert's US Marine ring. This relationship seems to have transcended any ideological conflict for Oswald, and enlisting in the Marines may have also been a way to escape from his overbearing mother.^[16] He enlisted in the USMC in October 1956, a week after his 17th birthday.^[17]

While in the Marines, Oswald was trained in the use of the Springfield .30-06 M-1 Garand rifle. Following that training, Oswald was tested in December of 1956, and obtained a score of 212, which was 2 points above the minimum for qualifications as a sharpshooter. In May 1959, on another range, Oswald scored 191, which was 1 point over the minimum for ranking as a marksman.^[18]

Oswald’s best friend in the Marines Nelson Delgado described for the Warren Commission Oswald’s marksmanship skill, or lack there of. Most of the Warren Commission’s investigation into Oswald’s life was headed by Wesley Liebeler and Albert Jenner.

Mr. Delgado: “...As I said to the men that interviewed me before, we went to the range one time, and he [Oswald] didn’t show no particular aspects of being a sharpshooter at all.”

Mr. Liebeler: “He didn’t seem to be particularly proficient with the rifle; is that correct?”

Mr. Delgado: “That’s right... It’s broken down into three categories:... marksman is the lowest, sharpshooter, and experts. And then Oswald had a marksman’s badge, which was just a plain, little thing here which stated “Marksman” on it... It was a pretty big joke... because he got a lot of Maggie’s drawers, you know, a lot of misses, but he didn’t give a darn... wasn’t as enthusiastic as the rest of us. We all loved liked, you know going to the range...”

Mr. Liebeler: “...he did not show any unusual interest in his rifle, and in fact appeared less interested in weapons than the average Marine?”

Mr. Delgado: “Yes he was mostly a thinker, a reader. He read quite a bit.”

Mr. Liebeler: “This FBI agent says that you told him that Oswald became so proficient in Spanish that Oswald would discuss his ideas on socialism in Spanish.”

Mr. Delgado: “He would discuss his ideas but not anything against our government or nothing socialist, mind you...”

Oswald was trained as a radar operator and assigned first to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Irvine, California,^[19] then to Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan. Though Atsugi was a base for the U-2 spy planes that flew over the Soviet Union, there is no evidence Oswald was involved in that operation. Oswald's experience after joining with the Marine Corps was by all accounts unpleasant. Small and frail compared to the other Marines, he was nicknamed Ozzie Rabbit after a cartoon character. His shyness and Soviet sympathies alienated him from his fellow Marines. Ostracism only seemed to provoke him into being a more staunch and outspoken communist. For his steadfast beliefs, his nickname ultimately became Oswaldskovich. The Marine had subscribed to The Worker and taught himself rudimentary Russian. Oswald was tried at a court-martial twice: initially because of accidentally shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized handgun and again later for starting a fight with a sergeant he thought responsible for the punishment he received from his first court-martial. He was demoted from private first class to private, and briefly served time in the brig. He was not punished for yet another incident, when on sentry duty one night while stationed in the Philippines, he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle. By the end of his Marine career, Oswald was doing menial labor.

Even in 1964 the Warren Commission had uncovered evidence of intelligence training. Medical papers show that he contracted gonorrhea while in Japan noting, “Origin: In the line of duty. Not due to own misconduct.” This suggests his assignments were more than “menial labor.” Oswald’s best friend in Texas, George de Mohrenschildt told the Warren Commission that Oswald told him that while in Japan he was ordered to infiltrate Japanese communists and this led him to defect to Russia.

Another curious document is Folsom Exhibit 1 page 7 stating that Oswald received Russian language training.

The Atsugi air base in Japan was one of the bases for the CIA’s mecarb experiments in mind control, the infamous MK-Ultra.

While testifying before the Warren Commission in 1964, Covert Operations director Richard Helms strongly denied the CIA ever had any interest in Oswald and never remembered hearing his name until after the assassination.

In 1979 HSCA, the House Select Committee on Assassinations cited Helms for perjury.

“Richard Helms, the Deputy Director of plans [Covert Operations] CIA, testified before the Commission along with John McCone, Director of Central Intelligence, on May 14, 1964. Helms said that the CIA could find no indication that anyone in the Agency even suggested a contact with Lee Harvey Oswald... There is a CIA internal memorandum dated November 25, 1963, that seems to contradict Helms’s testimony.”

Helms’ memo written the day after Oswald’s murder stated “as soon as” he heard Oswald’s name he remembered a US intelligence agency had attempted to recruit him. The name of the agency, covert operation, and recruiting agent were removed from the document and will remain classified until the year 2039 on the grounds of “national security” due to Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11652.

Life in the Soviet Union

In October 1959 Oswald moved to the Soviet Union. He was nineteen and the trip was well-planned in advance. He received an early "hardship" discharge by claiming he needed to care for his sick mother in New Orleans and submitted several applications to foreign universities in order to obtain a student visa (and possibly help avoid Marine Corps reserve duty).

There has been speculation as to the legitancy Oswald’s hardship discharge. The Warren Commission marked as evidence a letter by Dr. Rex Z. Howard MD stating that he had been treating Marguerite Oswald for illness since September 6, 1959. However the letter is dated September 3. This has led many to question the document’s authenticity. Dr. Howard was never questioned by the Warren Commission to refute or confirm this.

How Oswald paid for his $1,500 ticket to Russia remains a mystery. Conspiracy researchers believe that since he obtained his papers from the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, his trip may have been paid by its director Clay Shaw whom ran business fronts foreign and domestic for laundering CIA funds. To date no documentary evidence has emerged as to the source of Oswald’s funds.

After spending one day with his mother in New Orleans he departed by ship for the Soviet Union, first arriving in France, then England and eventually Finland as part of a package tour.^[20] When he arrived in the Soviet Union and showed up unexpectedly at the US Embassy in Moscow he said he wanted to renounce his US citizenship.^[21] When the Navy Department learned of this it changed Oswald's Marine Corps discharge from "hardship/honorable" to "undesirable."^[22]

Oswald told a reporter in Moscow, "For two years I've had it in my mind, don't form any attachments, because I knew I was going away. I was planning to divest myself of everything to do with the United States."^[23] To another reporter he said, "I would not consider returning to the United States," and referred to the Soviet government as "my government."^[24] His wish to remain in the Soviet Union was initially applauded by the Soviets, but although he had some technical knowledge acquired in the Marines they soon discovered he had little of real value to offer the Soviet Union and his application for Soviet residency was rejected.^[25] In response, Oswald made a bloody but minor cut to his left wrist in his hotel room bathtub. After bandaging his superficial injury, the cautious Soviets kept him under psychiatric observation at the Botkin Hospital.^[26][27] Although this attempt may have been no more than an attention-getting ruse, the Soviet government feared an international incident if he attempted something similar again.

Against the advice of the KGB, Oswald was allowed to remain in the Soviet Union. Although he had wanted to remain in Moscow and attend Moscow University, he was sent to Minsk, located in modern-day Belarus. He was given a job as a metal lathe operator at the Gorizont (Horizon) Electronics Factory in Minsk, a huge facility which produced radios and televisions along with military and space electronic components. He was given a rent-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building under Gorizont's administration and in addition to his factory pay received monetary subsidies from the Russian Red Cross Society (a Soviet organization entirely separate from the international medical aid organization). This represented an idyllic existence by Soviet-era working-class standards.^[28] Oswald was under constant surveillance by the KGB during his thirty-month stay in Minsk.^[29] Oswald gradually grew bored with the limited recreation available in Minsk.^[30] He wrote in his diary in January 1961: "I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No night clubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough." Shortly thereafter, Oswald opened negotiations with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow looking toward his return to the United States.

At a dance in early 1961 Oswald met Marina Prusakova, a troubled 19-year-old pharmacology student from a broken family in Leningrad now living with her aunt and uncle in Minsk. While later reports described her uncle as a colonel in the KGB or MVD, he was a lumber industry expert in the MVD (Ministry of Interior) with a bureaucratic rank equivalent to colonel. Oswald and Marina married on April 30, 1961, less than a month and a half after they met. Their first child was born in February 1962.

When asked by HSCA what Oswald did for a living in Russia, Marina responded, “I really don’t know what kind of job exactly he did.”

After nearly a year of paperwork and waiting, on June 1, 1962 the young family left the Soviet Union for the United States.

Dallas

In 1962 the State Department paid for Oswald to return to the United States. Lee and Marina’s passports show they traveled by different routes through Europe. Some researchers believe this was due to Lee’s meeting with intelligence agents on his trip home.

When Oswald arrived back in the United States in New York, the first person to greet him was Spas T. Raikin to help him through customs. Raikin was a staunch anti-communist, a member of the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Nations, which was part of US overseas intelligence.

Back in the United States, the Oswalds settled in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where his mother and brother lived, and Lee attempted to write his memoir and commentary on Soviet life, a small manuscript called The Collective. He soon gave up the idea but his search for literary feedback put him in touch with the area's close-knit community of anti-Communist Russians.

The Oswald’s closest friends in Dallas were George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt and Ruth and Michael Paine.

George de Mohrenschildt was a Russian Count who joined the Vichy French intelligence during WWII and was a Nazi sympathizer. He also ran business fronts for the CIA and was part of the O.A.S (Secret Army Organization), a French terrorist group that tried to assassinate Charles DeGaulle by having snipers shoot at him as he rode in his limousine. The O.A.S was also part of the C.I.A’s ZR/Rifle program. The C.I.A wanted O.A.S assassins to assassinate foreign leaders. Both George and Jeanne told the Warren Commission that despite being best friends neither could recall how or why they first met the Oswalds. De Mohrenschildt was shot and killed in his home in 1977 after being called to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Committee member Gaeton Fonzi commented, “The inability of the Assassinations Committee to effectively react to the death of a key witness revealed that it was still-six months after it was formed-totally incapable of functioning as an investigative body. It reflected six months of political reality and how successful its opponents had been in keeping it distracted and off-balance.”

De Mohrenschildt introduced Lee and Marina to their other best friends in Texas, Michael and Ruth Paine. Early that summer when Oswald went to live in New Orleans, Marina and her daughters June and Rachel moved in with Ruth and her children Sylvia Lynn and Christopher.

Michael Paine worked on classified projects for defense contractor Bell Helicopter. Ruth Paine spoke fluent Russian and her father and brother in law worked for the A.I.D. the Agency for International Development a branch of the CIA. The Warren Commission locked away the Paines’ tax returns from 1956-58 as CD (Commission Document) 848 until the year 2039 on the grounds of “national security.” CDs 212, 218, 258, 508, 600-629 which also relate to the Paines are also locked away until the year 2039 on the grounds of “national security.” De Mohrenschildt’s son in law, Gary Taylor told the Warren Commission, “If there was assistance or plotters in the assassination they were, in my opinion, most probably the DeMohrenschildts.”

In Dallas in July 1962, Oswald got a job with the Leslie Welding Company but disliked the work and quit after three months. He then found a position in October 1962 at the graphic arts firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a photoprint trainee. The company has been cited as doing classified work for the US government but this was limited to typesetting for maps and produced in a section to which Oswald had no access. His co-workers and supervisors eventually grew frustrated with his inefficiency, lack of precision, inattention, and rudeness to others. He had also been seen reading a Russian publication, Krokodil (Russian: "Крокодил", "crocodile"), in the cafeteria. (Ironically, this magazine was largely a satire of the performance of the Soviet system, not of the West; by this time Oswald had long become dissatisfied with the U.S.S.R., as noted). One of his closest friends at work was Dennis Hyman Ofstein. Ofstein testified he thought Oswald had gone to Russia as a spy and now suspected him of being a spy for the KGB. Ofstein was so suspicious of this that he even had the FBI run a security check on Oswald, because he was afraid Oswald might get him into trouble. On April 1, 1963, after six months of work, Oswald's supervisor terminated Oswald's employment at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.^[31]

Alleged Attempt To Assassinate General Walker

Ten days after being fired, Oswald allegedly attempted to assassinate General Edwin Walker with the rifle shown in his backyard pose photos of March 31.^[32]

General Edwin Walker was an outspoken anti-Communism and member of the John Birch Society who had been commanding officer of the Army's 24th Infantry Division based in West Germany under NATO supreme command until he was relieved of his command in 1961 by JFK for distributing politically inflammatory literature to his troops. Walker resigned from the service and returned to his native Texas. He ran in the six-person Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1962 but lost to John Connally, who went on to win the race. In February 1963 the general was making front-page news with an evangelist partner in an anti-Communist tour called Operation Midnight Ride. The morning of the assassination, Walker published handbills showing Kennedy’s picture and reading, “Wanted for Treason.”

Walker was sitting at a desk in his dining room (working on his federal income tax returns) when Oswald fired at him from less than one hundred feet (30 m) away. Walker survived only because the bullet struck the wooden frame of the window, which deflected its path, but was injured in the forearm by bullet fragments.

The Walker shooting has been consistently cited as evidence for Oswald’s culpability in the JFK assassination. The Warren Commission concluded:

“The circumstances of the attack on Walker coupled with other indications that Oswald was concerned about his place in history and with the circumstances surrounding the assassination, have led the Commission to believe that such concern is an important factor to consider in assessing possible motivation for the assassination.”

There no solid evidence tying Oswald to the shooting. He was never sought by the police or F.B.I. It was not until after Oswald’s death that the Warren Commission concluded he was the perpetrator. Their claim was based on Marina’s testimony Lee confessed to her and photos of the Walker home found at Ruth Paine’s house.

The photo of the Walker home, marked as Warren Commission Exhibit 5, was altered during the assassination investigation by cutting out the license plate of the car parked in Walker’s driveway. Marina noted this during her testimony, “No; but I think when the Commission showed me this picture the number was there... I would have remembered this black spot that I see on it now. When Lee showed me this photograph there was the number on the license plate on this picture. I would have remembered it if there were a black spot on the back of the car where the license plate would be.”

Even General Walker himself told the Warren Commission he was unconvinced of Oswald’s guilt in his shooting. “...I had no way of knowing that Oswald attacked me. I still don’t. And I am not very prone to say in fact he did. In fact, I always claimed he did not, until we can get into the case or somebody tells us differently that he did. …I want to go on the record that the city police has misused the Commission and also the F.B.I...”

Walker later told assassination researcher Jim Marrs, “The Warren Commission Report was ridiculous and a sham as well as an insult to the public’s intelligence.”

According to Jim Marrs the Commission’s chief investigator into the Walker shooting Wesley Liebeler also expressed doubts about Oswald’s guilt and believed the FBI had falsified evidence in the case.

In March, Oswald allegedly ordered a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5mm rifle by mail (see below) using his alias "A. Hidell", having already ordered a revolver by mail in January.

It has been erroneously claimed that the Mannlicher-Carcano was affirmatively linked to the Walker bullet through ballistics tests and neutron activation analysis. These claims are fraudulent. The Warren Commission’s ballistic experts Robert A. Frazier and Joseph D. Nicol both testified they were unable to match the bullet back to the rifle. Neutron activation analysis tests by HSCA were also unable to link the bullet to the rifle.

New Orleans

Oswald returned to New Orleans, arriving on the morning of April 25, 1963 looking for work. After Oswald got a job as a machinery greaser with the Reily Coffee Company in May, Marina was driven there by family friend Ruth Paine. Oswald was fired for inefficiency and dereliction of duty on July 19.

During this period, Oswald began to consider returning to the Soviet Union or going to Cuba. He had Marina write to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. about the possibility of their returning to the Soviet Union.^[33] His Marxist ideals became focused on Fidel Castro and Cuba and he soon became a vocal pro-Castro advocate. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a national organization and Oswald set out on his own initiative as a one-member New Orleans chapter, spending $22.73 on 1,000 flyers, 500 membership applications and 300 membership cards. He told Marina to sign the name "A.J. Hidell" as chapter president on one card.^[34]

Most of Oswald's activities consisted of passing out flyers to passers-by on the street. He made a clumsy attempt to infiltrate anti-Castro exile groups and briefly met with a skeptical Carlos Bringuier, New Orleans delegate for the anti-Castro Cuban Student Directorate. Several days later, on August 9, Bringuier and two friends confronted a man passing out pro-Castro handbills and realized that it was Oswald. During an ensuing scuffle all of them were arrested and Oswald spent the night in jail.

The first person to visit Oswald in jail was FBI agent John Quigley. What Oswald and Quigley talked about is unknown because Quigley told the Warren Commission he was ordered to destroy all his notes from the interview. When Oswald later moved back to Dallas, Quigley was assigned to the Dallas office, until after the assassination when he was assigned back to New Orleans.

The arrest got news media attention and Oswald was interviewed afterwards. He was also filmed passing out flyers in front of the International Trade Mart with two "volunteers" he had hired for $2 at the unemployment office. Oswald's political work in New Orleans came to an end after a WDSU radio debate between Bringuier and Oswald arranged by journalist Bill Stuckey. Instead of discussing Cuba as he had successfully done during a previous radio program, Oswald was publicly confronted with the lies and omissions he had made concerning his life and background and became audibly upset.^[35]

Oswald's five months in New Orleans were carefully scrutinized after the JFK assassination, most notably by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison in his unsuccessful attempt to link Oswald to wealthy local businessman Clay Shaw, a former president of the city's International Trade Mart. Garrison's attempt to establish connections between the two included W. Guy Banister (a retired FBI agent and former New Orleans Police Assistant Superintendent turned private investigator and anti-communist) and Banister's friend, an anti-Castro activist and employee of Mafioso Carlos Marcello named David Ferrie.

Ferrie and Oswald had been simultaneously members of the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans in 1955, when Oswald was 15. Numerous witnesses have reported them attending CAP meetings together,^[36]and both appear in a CAP group photo.^[37]

The address printed on the pro-Castro leaflets was “544 Camp Street” the same address of Guy Banister’s office. An office also used by the late CIA agent E. Howard Hunt. In 1975 a letter emerged stating:

“November 8, 1963 Dear Mr. Hunt, I would like information concerning my position. I am asking only for information. I am suggesting that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else. Thank you, Lee Harvey Oswald”

The ‘Dallas Morning New’ had three separate handwriting experts examine the letter and confirm Oswald’s handwriting. HSCA marked the letter as evidence but declined to examine it claiming it was of too poor a quality to examine.

In 2007 the late E. Howard Hunt’s son claimed his father told him the CIA had recruited him to assassinate President Kennedy but he had declined. He later came to doubt his father’s word after Hunt sued conspiracy buffs in 1975 for accusing him of being present on the infamous grassy knoll. Hunt was unable to account for his whereabouts and had his son lie to provide an alibi. Hunt initially won his case but lost on appeal.

The 1979 House Subcommittee on Assassinations stated in its Report that it found evidence that Oswald, while living in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, had established contact with David Ferrie as well as with other non-Cubans of anti-Castro sentiments.[1] The Committee found "credible and significant"[2] the testimony of six witnesses who placed Oswald and Ferrie together in Clinton, Louisiana in September, 1963.

Alleged Trip To Mexico City

While Ruth Paine drove Marina back to Dallas in late September 1963, Oswald lingered in New Orleans for two more days waiting to collect a $33 unemployment check. He boarded a bus for Houston but instead of heading north to Dallas he took a bus southwest towards Laredo and the U.S.-Mexico border. Once in Mexico he hoped to continue on to Cuba, a plan he openly shared with other passengers on the bus.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). the Cuban consul told Oswald that "as far as [he] was concerned [he] would not give him a visa" and that "a person like him [Oswald] in place of aiding the Cuban Revolution, was doing it harm."^[38] However, less than three weeks later, on October 18 the Cuban embassy in Mexico City finally approved the visa, and 11 days before the assassination Oswald wrote a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington DC, which said, "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business."^[39][40]

The alleged trip to Mexico City has not gone without question especially by the Warren Commission’s own investigator into the matter, Wesley Liebeler.

The issue of the alleged trip was first raised during Oswald’s initial interrogation on November 22, 1963. Officer Elmer Boyd and FBI Agent James Hosty both testified Hosty raised the issue Oswald of traveling to Mexico City, which he denied. Oswald insisted he’d only been to Tijuana during his Marine days. (The Church Committee investigation later concluded that Hosty had destroyed communication between himself and Oswald prior to the assassination.)

According to Commission Exhibit 1781, an FBI report written four days after Oswald’s death, Marina told the FBI, “She did not know anything about any trip that Oswald may have made to Mexico City.”

The Commission interviewed two witnesses placing Oswald in Texas during the alleged dates.

Sylvia Odio was an anti-Castro Cuban American living in Dallas. Odio told the Warren Commission that on either September 26th or 27th two anti Castro Cubans and a white man introduced as “Oswald” from “New Orleans” met with her at her apartment. They were collecting donations for an anti Castro organization. She said one of the Cubans called himself Leopoldo and the Oswald she met was Lee Harvey Oswald. Leopoldo called Odio back later that night and said their friend Oswald was an ex-Marine who was “kind of nuts” and that Oswald said, “[Cubans] don’t have any guts... because President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs, and some Cuban should have done that, because he was the one that was holding the freedom of Cuba actually.” It was as if Leopoldo was giving Odio information about Oswald that she wasn’t even asking for. Odio felt scared and recognized the Oswald she had met when she saw him on TV after the assassination.

The Warren Commission concluded that the Cubans were Loran Eugene Hall and Lawrence Howard and the white man was William Seymour. Declassified Warren Commission Document 1553 shows that the Commission had already obtained statements from both Odio and Hall which contradict their conclusion. Hall said that he had not met with Odio and Odio said that Seymour was not the white man she had met.

Wesley Liebeler strongly objected to the Commission’s conclusion in a memo and requested to re-interview Odio.

“...Furthermore, Sylvia’s testimony is actually misrepresented when it is stated that she and her sister felt Oswald ‘looked familiar’ when they saw his picture after the assassination. Sylvia testified that she was sure it was Oswald.

The paragraph about the psychiatrist is quite unfair. It sates that Odio ‘came forward’ with her story, whereas she did not come forward at all and was quite reluctant to get involved at all. Her story came to the attention of the FBI through a third person. The hearsay statements of ‘friends’, concerning their personal opinion of a witness are thin stuff indeed. The whole paragraph is poor and should come out.

The Odio analyses should be based primarily on the apparent likelihood that LHO was elsewhere. These are problems. Odio may well be right. The Commission will look bad if it turns out that she is. There is no need to look foolish by grasping at straws to avoid admitting that there is a problem.”

Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin responded, “We’re supposed to be closing doors, not opening them.”

Malcolm Price also told the Warren Commission that he helped Oswald adjust his riflescope at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Texas on September 28th, when Oswald was supposedly in Mexico trying to defect to Cuba. This and the Odio incident would indicate that Oswald was never in Mexico City, and that he was in Dallas.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote, “...the unresolved question of Oswald’s whereabouts at the time, the Odio incident remains one of the lingering enigmas in the original assassination investigation.”

In 1999 on the 36th anniversary of the assassination the ‘Washington Post’ reported the government confirmed that alleged audio recordings of Oswald in Mexico were not of Oswald’s voice.

HSCA summed up the incident best by concluding:

“The evidence did not support the definitive character of the Warren Commission’s conclusions... The Warren Commission asserted that Oswald left New Orleans by bus for Houston, on his way to Mexico on September 25. Yet there was no documentary evidence as substantiation, and neither the bus driver nor any passenger could recall seeing Oswald on that bus.”

Return to Dallas

Oswald allegedly left Mexico City on October 3, and returned by bus to Dallas, where he looked for employment. Ruth Paine found him a job filling book orders at the Texas School Book Depository, where he started work on October 16. During the week, he lived in a rooming house in Dallas, and spent the weekends with his wife at the Paine home in Irving, Texas, about 15 miles (24 km) from downtown Dallas. On October 20, the Oswalds' second daughter was born. During this period, the F.B.I. was aware of Oswald's whereabouts in Texas, and agents from the Dallas office twice visited the Paine home in early November when Oswald was not present.^[41]

During November Oswald had contact with FBI Agent James Hosty. The Warren Commission concluded Hosty’s relationship with Oswald was merely for the purpose of investigating Marina’s immigration status and Hosty denied ever meeting Oswald in person until his interrogation the night of the assassination.

The Senate Church Committee assigned to investigate US intelligence corruption, later discovered Hosty was ordered to destroy a note from Oswald after the assassination. Hosty’s superior J. Gordon Shanklin ordered, “Oswald’s dead now. There can be no trial... No! Get it out of here. I don’t want it in this office. Get rid of it!”

Hosty told the Church Committee the note read, “If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don’t cease bothering my wife, I will take appropriate action and report this to proper authorities.”

However, Hosty’s receptionist said the note read,

“Let this be a warning. I will blow up the FBI and Dallas Police Department if you don’t stop bothering my wife. Lee Harvey Oswald”

On November 16, a local newspaper reported that President Kennedy's motorcade would be going through downtown Dallas on November 22, "probably on Main Street" one block from the Texas School Book Depository, which it would have to pass to get onto the freeway to the President's luncheon site. This was confirmed by exact descriptions of the motorcade route published on November 19. On Thursday, November 21, Oswald asked a co-worker for a ride to Irving, saying he had to pick up some curtain rods. The next morning, after leaving $170 and his wedding ring he returned with the co-worker to Dallas, carrying a long paper bag with him.

Oswald was last seen by a co-worker Carolyn Arnold at in the second floor lunch room around 12:15.

Assassination of JFK

The 1964 Warren Commission report on the John F. Kennedy assassination concluded that at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, Oswald shot Kennedy from a window on the sixth floor of the book depository warehouse as the President's motorcade passed through Dallas' Dealey Plaza (see lone gunman theory). Texas Governor John Connally was also seriously wounded along with assassination witness James Tague who received a minor facial injury. On the evening of November 22, in an impromptu news conference, Oswald denied shooting president Kennedy or officer J. D. Tippit.

Oswald's flight and the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit

According to the Warren Commission report, immediately after he shot President Kennedy, Oswald hid the rifle behind some boxes and descended via the Depository's stairwell. On the second floor he encountered Dallas police officer Marion Baker who had driven his motorcycle to the door of the Depository and sprinted up the stairs in search of the shooter. With Baker was Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly, who identified Oswald as an employee, which caused Baker, who had his pistol in hand, to let Oswald pass. Oswald bought a Coke from a vending machine in the second floor lunchroom, crossed the floor to the front staircase, descended and left the building through the front entrance on Elm Street, just before the police sealed the building off. He would be the only employee to leave early that day; his supervisor later noticed only Oswald missing,^[42] and reported his name and address to the Dallas police in the building.^[43]

At about 12:40 p.m. (CST), Oswald boarded a city bus by pounding on the door in the middle of a block, when heavy traffic had slowed the bus to a halt. On the bus was Oswald's former landlady, who recognized him.^[44] About two blocks later, he requested a bus transfer from the driver and exited the bus.^[45] He took a taxicab to a few blocks beyond his rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley Ave. He walked back to his rooming house at about 1:00 p.m.

Oswald’s alleged haphazard route home has been seriously questioned by researchers. While the Warren Commission did back up their claim with eyewitness testimony they also had evidence of another account.

Warren Commission Document (CD) 5 shows that on the 23rd, both police officer Roger Craig and Marvin Robinson told the FBI they saw Oswald leave the Book Depository and get into a Nash Rambler station wagon driven by a dark skinned man. Craig said later that day at 5:30, while in the homicide office he asked Oswald about the incident. Oswald said, “That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine. Don’t try to tie her to this. She had nothing to do with it.” Ruth did own a Nash Rambler station wagon.

The Warren Commission only published certain pages of this CD in volumes XXIII and XXIV which refer only to Craig. They never mention Robinson in their report, and only Craig was called to testify. Craig repeated his story for the Commission to no avail. The Commission concluded that Craig had made up the story, because he was never even in the homicide office with Oswald. Since a news photo shows Craig there, it is clear the Commission was lying and not Craig. The Commission’s denial of such a basic fact shows how they were not interested in the truth.

Jim Garrison later subpoenaed Craig to testify to what he saw at Clay Shaw’s trial. Before he could testify Craig was nearly killed in a car bombing. But Craig lived to testify, where he repeated his story.

Earl V. Brown told the House Select Committee on Assassinations he also saw Oswald get into the same car.

Oswald’s landlady Earlene Roberts told the Warren Commission Oswald arrived at his boarding house before 1:00. Roberts testified a police car pulled up in front of the house with two uniformed officers in it, beeped and then drove off. After this, Oswald put on his jacket and left at either 1:03 or 1:04.

Oswald allegedly walked south on Beckley Street and then turned left onto Crawford. Oswald then moved east on 10th Street one block, he then ran down Patton Street where he turned right onto Jefferson to arrive at the movie theater three blocks down. During this haphazard walk he allegedly murdered police officer Jefferson Davis Tippit.

The Tippit murder is consistently cited as the key evidence of Oswald’s guilt in the Kennedy assassination. Only a guilty man would have killed Tippit. The alleged motive for the murder being to avoid arrest for Kennedy’s murder.

HSCA concluded:

“In this regard, the Committee noted that Oswald had on more than one occasion exhibited such [violent] behavior. The most blatant example is the shooting of Officer Tippit. The man who shot Tippit shot him four times at close range and in the areas that were certain to cause death. There can be no doubt that the man who murdered officer Tippit intended to kill him, and, as discussed above, the Committee concluded that Oswald was that man.”

Eyewitnesses told the Warren Commission they saw Oswald murder Tippit. Gerald Posner author of ‘Case Closed’ stated on page 281, “...a dozen witnesses saw Oswald kill Tippit...” In fact two witnesses Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides identified Oswald as the shooter. Another witness William Scoggins testified he heard gunshots and looked to see Oswald standing over Tippit saying, “Poor dumb cop.” or “Poor damn cop.” Assassination researchers also note Acquila Clemmons whom stated she saw two men murder Tippit.

Forensic evidence points towards Oswald’s innocence and impedes Markham’s testimony. Markham testified she saw Tippit and Oswald speaking through the passenger side car window. However crime scene photograph Barnes Exhibit A shows the car window closed. The Warren Commission’s chief investigator into the Tippit murder, David Belin noted this inconsistency when questioning Officer WE Barnes. Barnes confirmed the window was already closed when he arrived at 1:40.

In 1973 Belin wrote a memoir ‘November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury’ in which he defended his investigations into the Kennedy and Tippit murders. Belin quotes extensively from Barnes but deletes his statement about the window being closed.

The Warren Commission’s ballistic experts Cortlandt Cunningham and Joseph D. Nicol were unable to match the four bullets that killed Tippit back to Oswald’s .38 revolver.

Officer JM Poe found four shell casings at the crime scene. Poe told the Warren Commission their shells marked as Exhibit 509 were not the shells he found because they did not bare his initials to mark the chain of evidence. Poe’s superior Gerald Hill also testified Poe marked the shells.

The shells also conflict with the crime scene bullets. Two of the four shells are Remington Peters shells and the other two are Winchester Western. However, of the four recovered bullets, three are Winchester Western and only one is a Remington Peters.

Many researchers believe the shells were switched because Tippit was killed with an automatic pistol which eject their shells automatically. Revolvers, like Oswald’s need their shells to be emptied manually. Since revolvers and automatics use different types of shells, if Tippit was shot with an automatic pistol which ejected its shells, then they must be switched for revolver shells to show that Tippit was killed with revolver shells, like the one Oswald’s pistol would have used.

Oswald’s jacket is also cited as being found near the crime scene, however the Commission marked two separate jackets as evidence unable to determine which one was found. A dark jacket, CE 163, and a light jacket CE 162.

Officer WR Westbrook testified that exhibit 162 was the jacket he had found.

Helen Markham said the killer wore a gray jacket. When shown exhibit 162, Mrs. Markham said it was not the jacket the killer wore.

Earlene Roberts, and William Scoggins also said exhibit 162 was not the killer’s jacket.

Ted Callaway said the killer wore a gray jacket. When shown exhibit 162, Callaway said that it was the same color.

Sam Guinyard saw the killer flee the scene and said he wore a gray jacket, and identified 162 as the jacket.

William Whaley said that he was unsure if 162 or 163 was the jacket.

Charlie Virginia Davis saw the killer flee the scene. She testified the man wore a light tan jacket.

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A few minutes later, Oswald ducked into the entrance alcove of a shoe store to avoid passing police cars, then slipped into the nearby Texas Theater without paying (even though he had $14.00 in his pocket).^[46] The shoe store's manager noticed Oswald and followed him into the theater where he alerted the ticket clerk, who phoned the police.

The police quickly arrived en masse and entered the theater as the lights were turned on. Officer M.N. McDonald approached Oswald sitting near the rear and ordered him to stand up. As Oswald said "Well, it is all over now" and appeared to raise his hands in surrender, he struck the officer. A scuffle ensued where McDonald reported that Oswald pulled the trigger on his revolver, but the hammer came down on the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger of the officer's hand, which prevented the revolver from firing.^[47] Oswald was eventually subdued. As he was led past an angry group of people who had gathered outside the theater, Oswald shouted that he was a victim of police brutality.

Oswald was held on suspicion first as a suspect in the shooting of Officer Tippit and was questioned by Detective Jim Leavelle. Shortly afterward Oswald was also booked on suspicion of murdering both President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. By the end of the night he had been arraigned for both murders.^[48]

While in custody, Oswald had an impromptu, face-to-face brush with reporters and photographers in the hallway of the police station. A reporter asked him, "Did you shoot the President?" and Oswald answered, "I have not been accused of that." The reporters answered that he had been. "In fact, I didn't even know about it until a reporter in the hall asked me that question," Oswald added. Later Oswald said to reporters, "I didn't shoot anyone," and "They're taking me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy!" Unedited footage of the impromptu face-to-face also shows Jack Ruby lingering amongst the reporters.^[49]

Police interrogation

Oswald was interrogated several times during his two days of detention at Dallas Police Headquarters. He denied killing President Kennedy or Officer Tippit, denied owning a rifle, said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a pistol were fakes, denied knowing anything about the forged Selective Service card with the name "Alek J. Hidell" in his wallet, denied telling his co-worker he wanted a ride to Irving to get curtain rods for his apartment, and denied he had been seen carrying a long heavy package to work the following morning.^[50]

Oswald was also interrogated by FBI Agents James Hosty and James Bookhout. Police Lieutenant Jack Revill who knew Hosty, testified that as soon as Hosty arrived, he was sure that Oswald was the killer.

“And Mr. Hosty ran over to me and he says, ‘Jack.’ - now as I recall these words- ‘a Communist killed President Kennedy.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘He is in our communist file. We knew he was here in Dallas... We had information that this man was capable.’”

Hosty testified that during the interrogation Oswald denied visiting Mexico City and claimed to be in the second floor lunch room of the Book Depository.

Oswald's murder

At 11:21 am CST Sunday, November 24, while he was handcuffed to Detective Leavelle and as he was about to be taken to the Dallas County Jail, Oswald was shot and fatally wounded before live TV cameras in the basement of Dallas police headquarters by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner and pimp with many friends and acquaintances in the Dallas Police and in the criminal underworld. Millions watched the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the first time a homicide was captured and shown publicly on live television.

Both the Warren Commission and HSCA were charged with investigating possible conspiracies in Oswald’s murder and reached opposite conclusions. The Warren Commission concluded that Ruby entered the police garage down the main ramp and acted alone in killing Oswald.

However the Commission took testimony from police officers Roy Vaughn and Patrick Dean guarding the garage ramp whom both swore they did not allow Ruby to pass nor was there anyway Ruby could have slipped passed them. The Commission’s chief investigator into Oswald’s murder, Burt Griffin attempted to rectify this contradiction by accusing Dean of committing perjury. Earl Warren reprimanded Griffin and the paradox was written into the Warren Report.

HSCA concluded Ruby was allowed to enter the garage through another entrance by his friends in the Dallas police. This would necessitate a conspiracy to murder Oswald.

“The Committee however, found that Ruby probably did not come down the ramp, and that his most likely route was an alleyway located next to the Dallas Municipal Building and a stairway leading to the basement garage of police headquarters... Ruby’s shooting of Oswald was not a spontaneous act in that it involved at least some premeditation... There is also evidence that the Dallas Police Department withheld relevant information from the Warren Commission concerning Ruby’s entry to the scene of the Oswald transfer.”

Unconscious, Oswald was put into an ambulance and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where JFK had been taken after his death two days earlier. Doctors operated on Oswald, but Ruby's single bullet had severed major abdominal blood vessels, and the doctors were unable to repair the massive trauma. At 48 hours and 7 minutes after the President's death, Oswald was pronounced dead. After a full autopsy, Oswald's body^[51] was returned to his family.

As Oswald was dying in the ambulance Officer BH Combest asked if he had any last words. Oswald shook his head.

Oswald's grave is in Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in Fort Worth.^[52] The inexpensive coffin was provided at the expense of the state. The November 25th burial and funeral were paid for by Oswald's brother Robert. There was no religious service and reporters acted as pallbearers. When his mother died in 1981 she was buried next to Oswald with no headstone. Originally his headstone read Lee Harvey Oswald, but this marker was stolen and replaced with one which only reads Oswald. His wife Marina, who was sequestered by federal agents the day after the assassination and later released, married Kenneth Porter in 1965 and her two daughters June and Rachel took Porter's last name.

Investigations

• The Warren Commission created by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963 to investigate the assassination concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy and that he acted alone (also known as the Lone gunman theory). The proceedings of the commission were secret and about 3% of its files have yet to be released to the public, which has continued to provoke speculation among skeptics.

• In 1968 The Ramsey Clark Panel met in Washington, DC to examine various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence pertaining to the death of President Kennedy. It concluded that President Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him, one of which traversed the base of the neck on the right side without striking bone and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its right side.^[53]

• In 1976, the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities headed by Senator Frank Church, better known as the Church Committee investigated corruption and illegal activities carried out in the name of “national security,” primarily by the CIA. The Committee investigated the Warren Commission but not the assassination itself. Their conclusion was scathing review of the Commission accusing both they FBI and CIA of withholding vital information and influencing the investigation.

• In 1979, an investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that Oswald assassinated President Kennedy "probably...as the result of a conspiracy." The HSCA prepared an initial report concluding that Oswald acted alone until a Dictabelt recording purportedly of the assassination surfaced and the Committee revised their conclusion. This acoustic evidence has itself been called into question and many believe it is not a recording of the assassination at all.^[54] The attorney for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, G. Robert Blakey, told ABC News that there were 20 people, at least, who heard a shot from the grassy knoll, and that the conclusion that a conspiracy existed in the assassination was established by both the witness testimony and acoustic evidence. In 2004, he expressed less confidence in the acoustic evidence.^[55] Officer McLain, whose motorcycle the Dictabelt evidence comes from, has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination^[56]. The HSCA was unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy. It also had insufficient evidence to identify any group responsible.

Possible motives

The Warren Commission could not ascribe any one motive or group of motives to Oswald's actions:

It is apparent, however, that Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. Oswald's search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start. He sought for himself a place in history — a role as the "great man" who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation. He also had demonstrated a capacity to act decisively and without regard to the consequences when such action would further his aims of the moment. Out of these and the many other factors which may have molded the character of Lee Harvey Oswald there emerged a man capable of assassinating President Kennedy.^[57]

1981 exhumation

In October 1981 Oswald's body was exhumed at the behest of British writer Michael Eddowes, with Marina Oswald Porter's support. He sought to prove a thesis developed in a 1975 book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy (re-published in 1976, in Britain as November 22: How They Killed Kennedy and in America a year later as The Oswald File).

Eddowes' theory was that during Oswald's stay in the Soviet Union he was replaced with a Soviet double named Alek, who was a member of a KGB assassination squad. Eddowes' claim is that it was this look-alike who killed Kennedy, and not Oswald. Eddowes's support for his thesis was a claim that the corpse buried in 1963 in the Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas did not have a scar that resulted from surgery conducted on Oswald years before.

This “second Oswald” theory was originally proposed by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover three years prior to the assassination. HSCA discovered a memo dated June 3, 1960 in which Hoover suggests the Russian Oswald may be an imposter. Hoover had not mentioned this during his Warren Commission testimony and was unable to offer more information due to his death in 1972.

When Oswald's body was exhumed it was found that the coffin had ruptured and was filled with water; leaving the body in an advanced state of decomposition with partial skeletonization. The examination positively identified Oswald's corpse through dental records, and also detected a mastoid scar from a childhood operation.

Rose Hill Funeral Home directors Paul Groody and Alan Baumgarter were present for the exhumation and noted the corpse’s skull was fully intact, while the corpse they buried in 1963 had been subjected to a craniotomy where the skull is cut open to remove the brain. Oswald’s 1963 autopsy report published in the Warren Report as Exhibit 1981 notes a craniotomy.

Assassination theories

Critics have not accepted the official government conclusions and have proposed a number of alternative theories which assert that Oswald conspired with others or Oswald was not involved at all and was framed. However, many of these theories contradict each other, and no single compelling alternative suspect or conspirator has emerged.

One government investigation, the HSCA, ruled out many of these theories but concluded that, while Oswald was the assassin, that Kennedy was "probably" killed as the result of a conspiracy. However, the HSCA report did not identify any probable co-conspirators and its conclusion has been criticised for its reliance upon acoustic evidence that has been called into question.

Mannlicher-Carcano Rifle

In March 1963, Oswald used his alias "A. Hidell" (which he would later use for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and for which he was carrying an I.D. card when arrested after the Kennedy murder) to purchase the rifle later linked to the November 22, 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. The surplus Italian military rifle was purchased from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, with a coupon taken from an ad in the February issue of American Rifleman. FBI and Treasury Department experts later matched the handwriting on the coupon and the envelope to Oswald. The rifle was purchased under "A. Hidell" but sent to a Dallas post office box rented by Oswald under his own name.

Backyard Photos

The "backyard photos," which were taken by Marina Oswald, probably around Sunday, March 31, 1963, show Oswald dressed all in black and holding two Marxist newsletters — The Militant and The Worker — in one hand, a rifle in the other, and carrying a pistol in its holster. The backyard photos were shot using a camera belonging to Oswald, an Imperial Reflex Duo-Lens 620. ^[58] When shown the pictures at Dallas Police headquarters after his arrest, Oswald insisted they were fakes. ^[59] However, Marina Oswald testified in 1964.

These photos were labelled CE 133-A and CE 133-B. CE 133-A shows the rifle in Oswald's left hand and newsletters in front of his chest in the other, while rifle is held with the right hand in CE 133-B.

The HSCA obtained another first generation print (from CE 133-A) on April 1, 1977 from the widow of George de Mohrenschildt. The words "Hunter of fascists — ha ha ha!" written in block Russian were on the back. Also in English were added in script: "To my friend George, Lee Oswald, 5/IV/63 [April 5, 63]"^[60] Handwriting experts consulted by the HSCA concluded the English inscription and signature were written by Lee Oswald. After two original photos, one negative and one first-generation copy had been found, the Senate Intelligence Committee located (in 1976) a third photograph of Oswald with a backyard pose that was different (CE 133-C, with newspapers held in his right hand away from his body). An FBI test photo with an agent in the identical pose was released with the Warren Commission evidence in 1964, but it is not known why the photo itself was not publicly acknowledged until a print was found in 1975 amongst the belongings of deceased Dallas police officer Roscoe White.^{[citation needed]}

Marina told the Warren Commission she had indeed taken the two photos by hand with her Imperial Reflex camera. However in when testifying before HSCA Marina stated, “So I took one picture, I think,... I don’t recall. Maybe I took two pictures...” She never mentioned a third photo.

Marina later told reporter Harrison Edward Livingstone she had never taken any photos.

The Warren Commission’s own photographic expert Lyndal Shaneyfelt testified the Imperial Reflex was not a functioning camera.

In the second and third photo Oswald’s posses differ yet the background remains identical. This suggests the photos were taken with a tripod, not by hand as Marina testified.

These photos have been subjected to rigorous analysis.^[61] A panel of twenty-two photographic experts consulted by the HSCA examined the photographs and answered twenty-one points of contention raised by critics.^[62] The panel concluded the photographs were genuine.^[63] However, despite such evidence, some critics continue to contest the authenticity of the photographs, including Jack D. White in his testimony before the HSCA. ^[64]

Footnotes

References

• Michael Eddowes, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy, self-published, (1975), paperback (republished as Nov. 22, How They Killed Kennedy, Neville Spearman (1976), hardback, ISBN 0-85978-019-8 and as The Oswald File, Potter (1977), hardcover, ISBN 0-517-53055-4)
• Robert J. Groden, The Search of Lee Harvey Oswald: A Comprehensive Photographic Record, New York: Penguin Studio Books, 1995. ISBN 0-670-85867-6
• Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film JFK, New York: M. Evans & Company, 1998, ISBN 0-87131-920-9
• David S. Lifton, Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the. Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Carroll & Graf Publishers, NYC, 1988, softcover, ISBN 0-88184-438-1
• Norman Mailer, Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, New York: Ballantine Books, (1995) ISBN 0-345-40437-8
• Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, Carroll & Graf Publishers, NYC, 1990, ISBN 0-88184-648-1
• Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina And Lee, New York: Haper & Row, 1977.
• Dale K. Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit, Oak Cliff Press, Inc., Milford, MI, 1998, ISBN 0-9662709-7-5
• John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers,1995. ISBN 0-7867-0131-5
• Oleg M. Nechiporenko, Passport to Assassination: The Never-Before Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993, ISBN 1-559-72210-X
• Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, Random House (1993), hardcover, ISBN 0-679-41825-3
• Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, Who killed president Kennedy, Fontana (1980),
• Matthew Smith, JFK: Say Goodbye to America, Mainstream Publishing (2004)
• Philip H. Melanson, Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald And U. S. Intelligence, Praeger Publishing, (1990), ISBN 0-275-93571-X

External links

• Frontline: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
• LHO in Doorway: Lee Harvey Oswald in doorway?
• The Unofficial JFK Assassination FAQ #19 by John Locke
• Lee Harvey Oswald: Lone Assassin or Patsy
• Lee Harvey Oswald Chronology
• Crime Library: Lee Harvey Oswald
• JFK Lancer Forum
• The President has been shot Website
• Lee Harvey Oswald In Russia
• Lee Harvey Oswald's Gravesite
• Lee Harvey Oswald's Camera - Imperial Reflex Duo-Lens - 620.
• The Last Words of Lee harvey Oswald
• Mind Control: The Rosetta Stone of the JFK Assassination; Oswald as "Manchurian Candidate"
• Lee Harvey Oswald - Spartacus Educational website by John Simkin
• Lee Harvey Oswald Assassination Video on YouTube
• Lee Harvey Oswald: A Patriotic, U.S. Marine; Oswald was "just a patsy", who was murdered by Jack Ruby to cover up the truth.

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