Bugliosi & Marina

[William Kelly]

At the end of Bugliosi' book Reclaiming History he has a section called Bookends in which he discusses the Ruby trial, Kennedy-Lincolin coincidence and "A Conversation with Marina."

At the time Bugliosi met Marina she was working as a clerk at a Dallas Army-Navy Surplus store, and had an attitude about Bugliosi, who she knew had a closed mind about her murdered husband being the lone-nut assassin of the President.

In fact (p. 1444-1445 -1446) Bugliosi implies that on the evening before the assassination, if Marina had not three times rejected Oswald's offer for them to live together again, he might not have killed JFK at all.

BUG: "The mundane exercise of learning to drive and lookng forward to one day having a driving license speaks loudly FOR the proposition that Oswad's intent to murder the president was formed somewhat on the spur of the momentnot long before the day of the assassinationj, and as a necessary corollary and concomitant to this, AGAINST the proposition that a gorup like the CIA or organized crime conspired with Oswald to have him kill Kennedy for them....For all intents and purposes, Oswald's conduct during the month before the assassination alone precludes the notion of conspiracy."

"...If Marina was willing to come back to him, a possiblity he already knew was faint, he was prepared to forego his plans concerning Kennedy. If Marina, then, had agreed to come back to Oswald on the night before the president came to Dallas, it is almost a certainty the assassination would never had taken place."

[bugliosi footnote: Of course, using this type of 'but for' causation, we could say that if someone had bought Hitler's paintings in Vienna in 1913, perhaps the Second World War would not have taken place.]

(p. 1485-1488) Bug: "When I walked into the Army-Navy store,...my Fort Worth lawyer Jack Duffy,...introduced me to her. Marina, unsmiling, said to Duffy crisply, 'I know who he is. I've seen him many times on TV.'"

"...Marina proceed to tell me that she had already heard I was writing a book on the assassination and asked me not to write it. when I asked her why, she told me, 'Because I know you won't be fair. You're not interested in the truth. I've already been told what you're going to say - that Lee is guilty.' I told her I would be scrupulously fiar and would include opposing views in my book, including hers. She brushed this off, saying that 'people listen to you. No one cares what I say.'"

"She said any book by me saying her late husband killed Kenendy would cause further harm to her and her two daughters by Lee, and her son by the man she divorced but still lives with....I told he that she and her children were all innocent victims,but in writing my book I had no choice but to discuss the facts as I knew them to be. She told me I didn't know all the facts, that there were 'many documents' I've never seen. When I asked the chain-smoking women with the blue, intelligent eyes what those documents were, she just dismissed my question with a wave of her hands."

[i'll tell you what those documents are Mr. Bug, but Marina is right, you are not really interested - BK]

"...But she is sure of one thing. 'Lee was set up as a patsy.' She doesn't specifically know by whom, but they were connected, she said, to the U.S. government. Who then, I asked,, did kill Kennedy? 'Cubans,' she replied. 'Pro-Castro or anti-Castro Cubans? I asked. 'Anti-Castro Cubans,' she assured me. Who covered this fact up? I asked. 'The CIA covered it up,' she said, because the anti-Castro Cubans were working for the CIA, and the CIA was afraid that if they didn't cover up the assassination for the anti-Castro Cubans, the latter woujld let it be known that they tried to kill Castro for the CIA.'"

"'Lee,' she said, worked 'undercover for someone in the American government,' bu when I asked her for whom, she said she did not know. She believes Lee knew the assassination was going to take palce and told the FBI about it, but doesn't know why the FBI didn't stop the assassination. She also believes that LBJ and the CIA, along with the FBI, knew the assassinaiton was going to take place, and later, the Mafia, 'ordered Ruby' to kill her husband. When I told her she was implicating quite a few groups, she replied that 'they all work together.'"

"When I asked her why,...he didn't tell the authorities after his apprehension about what he knew, she said, 'Lee didn't want to come forward. He didn't want to betray the people he was loyal to.' But why, I asked, would he feel any loyality to those who had betrayed him by setting him up as a patsy? She said she didn't know the answer to that question, and could only repeat, 'that Lee was very loyal to these people.' Who were these people? I once again asked Marina, and Marina,...again said she didn't know."

"....My sense of Marina after the meeting is essentially the same as it was before, with the exception that she was a little more feisty and intense than I had anticipated. Although her mind has clearly become addled by the impregnation of all the conspiracy theories she has heard and read about, I feel that as to matters about which she has personal knowledge, she is a truthful person....."

"In parting, she said that the previous thirty-seven years had been terrible, but told me she had 'a favorite motto' that applies to her life. 'Tragedy does not always come to harm you.' By that she meant my assessment of her being a victim was wrong. 'I have been victimized, but I have not become a victim,' she told me. The expereince, she said, had caused her to learn about herself. ANd what had she learned? I asked....'There are certain things for only me to know,' she said."

"'You should stop smoking,' I said with a smile to soften my injunctive words, whereupon she proceeded to point to the cigarette in her hand and day that at the time she started smoking years ago, 'They [the tobacco manufactures] didn't tell us about all the bad ingredients in their cigarettes.' I told her that was one conspiracy to cover up the truth that I agreed with her on."

"We finished our conversation by her telling me that, 'although I've been polite to you today...that doesn't mean I like you."

I think Marina, in all her wisdom accumulated during what she has been through, is right on the mark. - BK

[Michael Hogan]

I think Marina, in all her wisdom accumulated during what she has been through, is right on the mark.

"I think he [LHO] was a small potato who got fried in a big batch." (Marina Oswald to researcher A.J. Weberman)