4 Months Before He Shot JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald Lectured the Jesuits

[Claude Barnabe]

Thank you Bill for posting Oswald's notes, speech and Q&A of the Jesuit Studies speech. I do believe his thoughts at that session represent the essence of who Oswald really was. I recommend members of the forum read the full WC testimony of Nelson Delgado, (Oswald's marine buddy). I think it provides a comprehensive 'picture' of Oswald's true character which coincides with the Jesuit speech. (NOTE: the '59 Oswald differs little from the '63 Oswald)

[Claude Barnabe]

IMHO the Delgado testimony provides the motivation for the participation of LHO on 11/22/63. It explains LHO desire to learn Spanish and his desire to reverse his undesirable discharge.

[Greg Doudna]

4 hours ago, Claude Barnabe said:

IMHO the Delgado testimony provides the motivation for the participation of LHO on 11/22/63. It explains LHO desire to learn Spanish and his desire to reverse his undesirable discharge.

Claude, could you elaborate further on how you see Delgado's testimony of his and Oswald's early interest in going to Castro's Cuba (dropped by Delgado, continued by Oswald) sheds light on or background or further understanding of what Oswald was doing on Nov 22, 1963? 

I too am struck by the continuity between Delgado's Oswald in 1959 and Oswald in 1963 at Spring Hill; also Oswald's proficiency in Spanish.

Edited July 3 by Greg Doudna

[Robert Burrows]

On 7/1/2024 at 10:02 PM, Bill Simpich said:

I agree with Greg Doudna that Oswald delivered a fine speech at Eugene Murret's Jesuit seminary.  I have always felt it was very telling about what was going on with Oswald.   I go back and forth about whether he offering his sincere thoughts about politics - he certainly was about his economic system.  I think he was hoping to get picked up by an intelligence agency, as a provocateur or a double agent.

Before we get to the speech, look at Oswald's notes.   I will reprint my favorite two sections below and in the following post.

His original notes are hard to read - happily,Jeremy Bojczuk has transcribed them.  Go to his site and read them, I will reprint my favorite parts here.  I think they are authentic and illustrate his true thinking.

Oswald thought General Walker and his pals in the army were not enough to pull off a coup.  What got him thinking about that?  Probably Walker's relations with the Cubans and the Minutemen.   He thought that the USMC might be the best path to organize a coup.   

I will offer here the first portion of Oswald's notes.   These notes are not the actual speech!!  The speech is quite different.  I will get to that.

Americans are apt to scoff at the idea, that a military coup in the US., as so often happens in Latin American countries, could ever replace our government. but that is an idea that has grounds for consideration. Which military organization has the potential of executing such action?

Is it the army? With its many conscripts, its unwieldy size, its scores of bases scattered across the world?

The case of Gen. Walker shows that the army, at least, is not fertile enough ground for a far right regime to go a very long way. For the same reasons of size and disposition, the Navy and Air Force is also to be more or less disregarded.

Which service, then, can qualify to launch a coup in the USA?

Small size, a permanent hard core of officers and a few bases are necessary.

Only one outfit fits that description and the U.S.M.C. is a right wing infiltrated organization of dire potential consequences to the freedoms of the U.S.

I agree with former President Truman when he said that “The Marine Corps should be abolished.”

 

 

 

 

 

"...our two contries have too much too offer too each other to be tearing at each others trouths in an endless cold war. Both are conoutries have major shortcomings and advantages. but only in ours is the voice of dissent all the ability of that voice of dissent allowed opportunity of expression, in returning [illegible] to [illegible] the U.S., I hope I have awoken a few who were sleeping, and others who were indifferent."

Oswald's notes read like an inarticulate synopsis of JFK's Peace Speech. 

[Claude Barnabe]

Greg, the WC had difficulty attributing a motive for Oswald's actions on 11/22/1963. I believe Oswald's obsessive desire to join the Cuban revolution (as shown in Delgado's testimony and his actions in '63: attempt at repatriating Marina and the kids to Russia, request for Cuban visa in MC et al) provided the conspirators a path to ensnare him in the plot. For Oswald, assisting in killing JFK was not an 'end' but a means to an 'end'. I think someone or a group promised him passage to Cuba.

[Greg Doudna]

5 hours ago, Claude Barnabe said:

Greg, the WC had difficulty attributing a motive for Oswald's actions on 11/22/1963. I believe Oswald's obsessive desire to join the Cuban revolution (as shown in Delgado's testimony and his actions in '63: attempt at repatriating Marina and the kids to Russia, request for Cuban visa in MC et al) provided the conspirators a path to ensnare him in the plot. For Oswald, assisting in killing JFK was not an 'end' but a means to an 'end'. I think someone or a group promised him passage to Cuba.

Thank you Claude. The narrative of Oswald liked Castro, dreamed of going to Cuba ... in continuity from Delgado 1959 through Nov 1963 ... I understand the picture you are presenting... 

But Oswald started his FPCC chapter and went on the radio in New Orleans against the wishes of the FPCC national, and Oswald speaks of "we" as if he is a spokesman, even though not authorized by anyone in FPCC. Speaking in the name of FPCC he denies, denies, denies that the FPCC is connected to any communist party or control, in agreement with FPCC self-representation which federal agencies were deadset on proving otherwise to discredit and disrupt the FPCC.

Meanwhile he is writing letters to the Communist Party USA including to the governing Central Committee of the CPUSA addressing them as "Comrades" as if he is an equal (!--with no prior Party experience or having attended a single Party meeting!), documenting in writing that he, as a FPCC chapter head, is directly intent on promoting the party's communist party objectives and taking directions from them (!). Documenting in writing everything publicly denied, the FPCC leadership's worst nightmare, creation of evidence in exact agreement with what federal agencies were seeking to discredit the targeted FPCC.

And of course the Backyard Photos, if they had been released in connection with his FPCC activities would have been fatal to the FPCC. A picture is worth a thousand words--think of the impact of that visual if it had appeared in a national press story on the FPCC's representative in New Orleans! 

And this from an Oswald who according to his own personal writings had no love for the Communist Party USA, would be predicted to not like the Soviet-Cuba alliance, and condemned the CPUSA's support for the Soviet Union.

I am wondering how this works with the prevailing narrative of Oswald as a sincere pro-Castro believer/supporter in 1963.

When his actions, if not directly COINTELPRO, could hardly better serve what COINTELPRO was intent on doing, to discredit and subvert the FPCC, the most effective organization in America lobbying for the US to follow a nonaggression policy toward Cuba.  

How could Oswald be a sincere Castro supporter in 1963, when his actions are so destructive of the FPCC, and when he is personally a libertarian socialist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism), which would be predicted to be opposed to the Castro of 1963, would be predicted to be a JURE/Manual Ray anti-Castro type rather than a pro-Castro supporter in 1963?

Delgado says both his and Oswald's liking of Castro in 1959 began before Castro was realized to be communist and before Castro's alliance with the USSR. It is true that Delgado says Oswald did not break from Castro after Castro started publicly going communist and pro-USSR and the news of Castro's executions, etc. were in full force that alienated Delgado. Delgado says Oswald basically expressed denial, said that was hostile US propaganda at the time. But if Oswald's personal writings are reflective of the real Oswald, it would practically be predicted that Oswald also, just as Delgado even if not quite as quickly, would break from support for Castro for the same reasons that Delgado did. 

What Oswald was doing with FPCC in 1963 looks so much like COINTELPRO, which seems inconsistent with the narrative that Oswald was actually, sincerely enamored with Castro in 1963, even if he was for real in 1959 as was Delgado for real in 1959, in the first bloom of Castro coming to power, is the logic here.

I'm having trouble seeing how these factors are reasonably folded into a narrative in which Oswald in 1963 is a true-blue pro-Castro idealist. 

(I am hoping you will push back, if you're willing to do so!)

Edited July 6 by Greg Doudna

[Claude Barnabe]

Took awhile but here goes.

Greg, the narrative you have presented for the summer of '63 in NO  has Oswald as a willing or unwitting intel asset. Further, if he was being directed, whoever was directing LHO, IMHO knew what was coming in November.
First, the inception of the FPCC. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York City by Robert Taber in April 1960. The beginning of the FPCC had some organizational issues. The issues were solved with the help of the SWP and CPUSA. This from an article by Bill Simpich in CounterPunch mag 2009: "The Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party were able to work together within the FPCC......Within six months, the FPCC had 7000 members in 27 “adult chapters” and 40 student councils on various college campuses with emerging student leaders..." You may recall in the backyard pictures LHO is holding a copy of the Worker and Militant, publications of SWP and CPUSA. NOTE: was he already planning his FPCC chapter? By the summer of '63 the FPCC was already in a downward spiral. This is from a forum topic: "Why was the FPCC being targeted in the summer of '63". Posted by Greg Parker: From The Party: The Socialist Worker's Party 1960-1988, VOL 1: The Sixties: by Barry Sheppard
At the convention [the July, 1963 SWP national convention], a meeting of pro-Cuba activists discussed the situation in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Cubans living in the United States who supported the July 26 Movement had helped us build the FPCC. Now most of them had returned to Cuba. In most areas, the FPCC had dwindled down to supporters of the SWP and YSA. Since we did not want the FPCC to become a sectarian front group, the meeting decided to stop trying to build it. The FPCC then existed for a while as a paper organization, until the assassination of President John Kennedy.
An article published in Kennedy and King by Paul Bleau in August  entitled 'Exposing the FPCC Part 1' summarizes the same sentiment. The FPCC in the summer of '63 was defunct. The US travel ban to Cuba, the migration of M26 Cubans back to Cuba and the Oct '62 missile crisis all contributed to its demise.
The above explains why LHO words on the radio debate and follow-on letter to the CPUSA did not matter. So what was he really up to? I'll draw your attention to the Warren Report Chapter 7 subsection 'Interest in Cuba'. In July '63 LHO convinced Marina the family should return to Russia and at his behest Marina wrote a letter to the Soviet Embassy asking for an expedited visa so Rachel could be born in Russia. Marina gave the letter to Lee to mail. Unknown to her Lee placed a separate note to the embassy asking that his visa application be considered separately. LHO had no intention of returning to Russia, at least not immediately. From the report, "Marina Oswald testified that her husband engaged in Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities "primarily for purposes of self-advertising. He wanted to be arrested. I think he wanted to get into the newspapers, so that he would be known." According to Marina Oswald, he thought that would help him when he got to Cuba. He asked his wife to help him hijack an airplane to get there, but gave up that scheme when she refused."
During the summer of '63 LHO practiced dry firing the MC on the porch of their apartment (WCR 382). He contacts  Arnesto Rodriguez of the Modern Language Institute to continue his education in the Spanish language. He also contacts Dean Andrews to enlist his aid in reversing his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps. Delgado and LHO spoke about how an Honorable Discharge from the Marine Corps could afford them an officer rank in the revolutionary corps. Recently I re-read Kerry Thornley's WC testimony. It reinforces the Delgado testimony, in fact Thornley took part in some of the Cuba discussions with Delgado and Oswald.
LHO knew the revolution was over in Cuba, but Castro had begun to export his revolution to other Latin American and South American countries. Delgado in his testimony mentioned they could export the revolution to other oppressive regimes.
When LHO's bid to get a Cuban visa in Mexico City failed,  he must have been open to other options. If you objectively look at the final acts of LHO on 11/22, bringing a rifle to the TSBD (discussed in 'What's the Package, Lee' thread), leaving Marina $179 cash, about a months pay, exchanging his wedding ring for his USMC ring and leaving his wedding ring with Marina, these are the actions of a man who was involved in the conspiracy that killed JFK.
The forum has become an echo chamber for 'poor innocent Lee, the patsy'. Members are critical of the Warren Commission and its conclusions. While I disagree with their conclusion of LHO as sole assassin, I do agree with their characterization of LHO's personality traits. After all the commission had the time, money, resources to research a man's life like never before. Virtually everyone LHO came into contact with was interviewed. If you take the time (and it's considerable) to read the various testimonies you begin to assemble a picture of who Oswald really was. In short the Commission 'nailed' it.

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

1 hour ago, Claude Barnabe said:

If you objectively look at the final acts of LHO on 11/22, bringing a rifle to the TSBD (discussed in 'What's the Package, Lee' thread), leaving Marina $179 cash, about a months pay, exchanging his wedding ring for his USMC ring and leaving his wedding ring with Marina, these are the actions of a man who was involved in the conspiracy that killed JFK.

Claude, I'm curious why someone wouldn't mull all of the above and conclude instead that Oswald alone assassinated President Kennedy?

[Greg Doudna]

2 hours ago, Claude Barnabe said:

Took awhile but here goes.

Greg, the narrative you have presented for the summer of '63 in NO  has Oswald as a willing or unwitting intel asset. Further, if he was being directed, whoever was directing LHO, IMHO knew what was coming in November.
First, the inception of the FPCC. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York City by Robert Taber in April 1960. The beginning of the FPCC had some organizational issues. The issues were solved with the help of the SWP and CPUSA. This from an article by Bill Simpich in CounterPunch mag 2009: "The Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party were able to work together within the FPCC......Within six months, the FPCC had 7000 members in 27 “adult chapters” and 40 student councils on various college campuses with emerging student leaders..." You may recall in the backyard pictures LHO is holding a copy of the Worker and Militant, publications of SWP and CPUSA. NOTE: was he already planning his FPCC chapter? By the summer of '63 the FPCC was already in a downward spiral. This is from a forum topic: "Why was the FPCC being targeted in the summer of '63". Posted by Greg Parker: From The Party: The Socialist Worker's Party 1960-1988, VOL 1: The Sixties: by Barry Sheppard
At the convention [the July, 1963 SWP national convention], a meeting of pro-Cuba activists discussed the situation in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Cubans living in the United States who supported the July 26 Movement had helped us build the FPCC. Now most of them had returned to Cuba. In most areas, the FPCC had dwindled down to supporters of the SWP and YSA. Since we did not want the FPCC to become a sectarian front group, the meeting decided to stop trying to build it. The FPCC then existed for a while as a paper organization, until the assassination of President John Kennedy.
An article published in Kennedy and King by Paul Bleau in August  entitled 'Exposing the FPCC Part 1' summarizes the same sentiment. The FPCC in the summer of '63 was defunct. The US travel ban to Cuba, the migration of M26 Cubans back to Cuba and the Oct '62 missile crisis all contributed to its demise.
The above explains why LHO words on the radio debate and follow-on letter to the CPUSA did not matter. So what was he really up to? I'll draw your attention to the Warren Report Chapter 7 subsection 'Interest in Cuba'. In July '63 LHO convinced Marina the family should return to Russia and at his behest Marina wrote a letter to the Soviet Embassy asking for an expedited visa so Rachel could be born in Russia. Marina gave the letter to Lee to mail. Unknown to her Lee placed a separate note to the embassy asking that his visa application be considered separately. LHO had no intention of returning to Russia, at least not immediately. From the report, "Marina Oswald testified that her husband engaged in Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities "primarily for purposes of self-advertising. He wanted to be arrested. I think he wanted to get into the newspapers, so that he would be known." According to Marina Oswald, he thought that would help him when he got to Cuba. He asked his wife to help him hijack an airplane to get there, but gave up that scheme when she refused."
During the summer of '63 LHO practiced dry firing the MC on the porch of their apartment (WCR 382). He contacts  Arnesto Rodriguez of the Modern Language Institute to continue his education in the Spanish language. He also contacts Dean Andrews to enlist his aid in reversing his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps. Delgado and LHO spoke about how an Honorable Discharge from the Marine Corps could afford them an officer rank in the revolutionary corps. Recently I re-read Kerry Thornley's WC testimony. It reinforces the Delgado testimony, in fact Thornley took part in some of the Cuba discussions with Delgado and Oswald.
LHO knew the revolution was over in Cuba, but Castro had begun to export his revolution to other Latin American and South American countries. Delgado in his testimony mentioned they could export the revolution to other oppressive regimes.
When LHO's bid to get a Cuban visa in Mexico City failed,  he must have been open to other options. If you objectively look at the final acts of LHO on 11/22, bringing a rifle to the TSBD (discussed in 'What's the Package, Lee' thread), leaving Marina $179 cash, about a months pay, exchanging his wedding ring for his USMC ring and leaving his wedding ring with Marina, these are the actions of a man who was involved in the conspiracy that killed JFK.
The forum has become an echo chamber for 'poor innocent Lee, the patsy'. Members are critical of the Warren Commission and its conclusions. While I disagree with their conclusion of LHO as sole assassin, I do agree with their characterization of LHO's personality traits. After all the commission had the time, money, resources to research a man's life like never before. Virtually everyone LHO came into contact with was interviewed. If you take the time (and it's considerable) to read the various testimonies you begin to assemble a picture of who Oswald really was. In short the Commission 'nailed' it.

Claude, thanks very much for the thoughtful response. A first point is I don’t agree with the reasoning that if Oswald was an informant or agent provocateur in Aug 63 New Orleans that his agency would necessarily know about or be involved in the assassination in Dallas on Nov 63; non sequitur. 

Second there was a CIA message to the FBI just at the time Oswald was getting his visa to go to Mexico City informing FBI of an operation designed to discredit the FPCC in some area where FPCC had support. Since that operation is not otherwise identified, and since it occurs at the time the New Orleans CPUSA connected head of the FPCC chapter decided to go to Mexico City, was that anti-FPCC operation related to Oswald? It looks like it. 

Third, if FPCC by mid 1963 was a paper or shell organization dying a natural death, doesn’t that CIA-FBI message alerting to a new imminent anti-FPCC false flag (or similar) operation indicate ongoing active operations to subvert that organization, which Oswald’s behavior looks closely like?

And fourth, I believe Canadian political scientist Gary O’Brien in “Oswald’s Politics” justly criticizes the Warren Commission’s treatment of Oswald’s motivation in psychological terms. O’Brien says Oswald aligned with the anti-Castro JURE would agree very well with Oswald’s writings and political views. 

And fifth, I agree Oswald’s behavior on Nov 21-22 indicates Oswald was involved in something but there are other possibilities than that he was intending either to shoot Kennedy personally or go to Cuba. 

I believe sources for the “real Oswald” in the 1959-1963 period are: his personal papers and writings other than his letters; the Delgado WC testimony you note; Titovets’ book on Oswald in Minsk; de Mohrenschildt’s “I’m a Patsy!” Manuscript; and his Aug 63 Spring Hill College address in Alabama. 

But that other things of Oswald reflect persona not the real Oswald, such as some of his letters, behaviors, and, in the case of the Backyard Photographs, photographs.

I don’t think it is necessarily certain the real Oswald of 1963 underneath persona would be pro-Castro. As for joining in revolutions in other Latin American locations, there is no evidence in Oswald’s writings of an advocacy for, love for or romanticization of revolutionary violence.

Edited Friday at 04:41 PM by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

One possibility for making sense of Oswald on Nov 22 is he had intentionally incriminated himself in what he thought was going to be a failed assassination attempt that would be blamed on Castro. Then someone turned that into a real assassination and he had been set up. Then he was told to maintain his persona after his arrest including to his police interrogators until intervention from higher authority would get him freed. That didn’t happen because the mob got to him first and killed him. 

In other words he was screwed royally.

In this scenario, the rifle on the 6th floor was his mail-order marked rifle; he got it into the TSBD, though it makes better sense the rifle infiltration into the TSBD happened prior to Nov 22; but he did not shoot it.

And his TWICE, not once but TWICE, telling witnesses he was bringing a package of “curtain rods”—was part of intentional feint to look incriminating. And the justification for the curtain rods would be the real wrecked curtain rod in his room (of the photos) done intentionally by himself in support of that ploy.

But the only way it makes sense for Oswald to be a witting part of a framing of Castro (as part of working for US interests) would be if he had, like Delgado just not as quickly, become dis-enamored with Castro for similar reasons the earlier Delgado did—the dictatorship, etc. 

Remember Oswald read and liked Orwell’s Animal Farm, about a socialist revolution begun with ideals and happiness that becomes corrupted by the growing power of evil pigs. It’s an anti-Communist message, but Liebeler was not correct that Animal Farm is anti-socialist. Orwell himself was socialist. The animals revolution is the socialist revolution and the reader remains sympathetic to the farm animals and the ideals of their revolution to the end even as the betrayal of that revolution unfolds. Oswald read Marx and Jack London and many others as a mid-teenager, formative to his retaining in adulthood socialist views like Jack London, an American not a non-American socialist. 

The anti-racism and pro-JFK of Oswald was real, that was not persona. An ideal that workers should own and control the fruits of their labor, not for the enrichment of absentee owners, in networked democratically run enterprises across the land, as economic theory was real. The real Oswald supported Kennedy from the left, liked Kennedy’s domestic liberalism, would be inspired by JFK’s achievement of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and perhaps would be inspired by those elements in JFK speeches envisioning a non-colonial future world and an end to the Cold War. 

All it would take for Oswald to support Ray/JURE as an alternative to Castro in Cuba—Ray/JURE whom RFK envisioned as having a role in governing a post-Castro free and democratic and non-Soviet-aligned Cuba—would be contact with Ray/JURE people or ideas. They agree in political views with Oswald’s own writings—and the Animal Farm parable’s message as Oswald could have seen it applied to Castro.

This is a different possible way of seeing Oswald than the deeply entrenched view that Oswald was a diehard Castro loyalist who hated America. 

How could an Oswald who was too poor of a shooter to have pulled off what people say he did; in an assassination in which a picture-perfect kill shot of the president in the limo was NOT taken on Houston before the turn to Elm; an Oswald who liked and supported JFK; who never practiced shooting in the runup; who never claimed credit as being a hero in killing JFK; who did not attempt to kill Walker when he with Robert Surrey stood together in that alley and fired that staged shot into an empty room… HOW could Oswald have his rifle there in the TSBD on Nov 22 and look so self-incriminated?

Oswald’s witting involvement in a false flag failed assassination attempt to be blamed on Castro would be one way of making sense of some things, but it requires abandonment of the widespread perceived certainty that Oswald at least by 1963 was a Castro loyalist.

The main argument claimed against Oswald having worked for a military or federal agency doing undercover things is the lack of a document confirming that. But Dulles said in WC executive sessions that there would be no document and that an agency chief would not and SHOULD NOT tell the truth (if Oswald had worked for them) even if asked under oath. Dulles said that (as one in a position to speak with some authority on the matter of agency chief practices and ethical norms). He said the only person—the only person in America— an agency chief should tell the truth re a covert relationship with Oswald was the president personally if ordered, ie LBJ, whom some consider a person of interest himself in the assassination. That was Dulles’ take on the question of how one would ever know if Oswald had worked for anyone on the U.S. side. 

[Claude Barnabe]

To JC:

To my satisfaction, there is enough testimony, anecdotal street data to conclude LHO wasn't even in the window. Also JFK was killed in a crossfire.

[Claude Barnabe]

To GD:
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm not a fan of the false-flag operation, perhaps because I don't know much about it and the whole thing seems rather hokey to me. I think it's a popular theory for some forum members because it gives LHO a pass. It's the poor Lee syndrome again. I've read your views on the Tippitt murder. You theorize Larry Crafard murdered Tippitt. Some months ago, can't remember the thread, someone posted a video interview of Johnny Brewer. His story 'sealed the deal' for me. LHO killed Tippitt period.
As for exporting Castro's revolution, I refer you back to the Delgado testimony, he and LHO did talk about doing just that. This was prior to Che.

[Joe Bauer]

Just some thoughts.

I think just the fact that Oswald put himself on the line and went ahead and talked to this intellectual Jesuit group took some courage and strength of will. I think LO knew he was speaking to some very highly educated men and yet felt he still had something worthy to share despite his lack of such credentials.

How well and/or poorly he and his talk was received is another matter although important as well.

Lee Oswald was obviously a very emotionally injured young man.

His entire childhood through adolescence was deeply scarred by extreme unstableness and parental neglect. No protective and guiding father at all and even worse, stuck under the control of an oppressively awful and self-obsessed mother who herself was an unstable psychological mess.

His ENTIRE childhood!

Many people who have such an emotional needs starved childhood like Oswald's likely end up living with major depression, frustrations and general unhappiness the rest of their adult lives.

Hence, a much more prevalent rate of adult anger issues, cynicism about the world, general unhappiness, alcohol and other addictions, stunted personal social growth and job and education achievement, broken marriages, suicides ... you name it. 

And how does someone from such a neglected fatherless upbringing become a good and stable father themselves when he has children? Not as likely as those coming from much more nurturing and healthy minded childhoods. It's a hugely experienced problem in poor income level American history.

Yet, despite all this, Oswald was clearly gifted with a noticeable in-born curious intelligence and showed promise in this way despite his neglected life growing up.

He read a lot. On his own volition. Scattered reading with no loving and wise and practical direction.

He eventually taught himself another language. A difficult one. Try that challenge.

Lee Oswald also had an amazingly strong self-will to do as much as he did after such a neglectful childhood and escaping the depressing clutches of his oppressive mother. Marines joining, successfully completing military duty school, world travel and actually making it in Soviet Russia? Making friends there. Wooing and winning the affections of the prettiest girl in Minsk? Fathering a child with her. Not bad for a kid from his world.

Much has been written about Oswald's early age anger issues.

In New York where his nutty mother took him to live in a cramped apartment in a poor part of town with resentful relatives ( what an awful living situation ) he would brazenly skip school and ride the trains and go to places like the zoo, all by himself. Doing that in a dangerous big city took some strong willed young guts.

And who could blame someone his age and living in such a miserable resentful host situation wanting to escape from it all? Those adventurous trips on those trains was the young Oswald's own form of depression escaping therapy.

Young Lee was having anger and depression issues beyond normal teen rebellion ones.   Hello!  He even pulled a small knife on his mother's relatives when they talked down to him once too often. Luckily, that was the worst of that extreme acting out.

Young Lee didn't have but a few friends growing up.

Changing schools so often is a problem. And who would want to bring a friend home to meet "his" mother? He is often bullied. He does his best to fight back but being small in stature gets him beaten pretty badly. He has no father to seek some protective and empathetic support after coming home bruised and humiliated.

He is poor. Very poor. Still, he picks up what little jobs he can. He somehow joins the local Junior Civil Air Patrol youth group whose leader is a convicted child ( boys ) molester David Ferrie.

He reads and reads. The local library is his sanctuary.

These sad truths about the neglected childhood Oswald are common in this country through the decades.

I mention them ( and yet mixed with some remarkable inner strength survival abilities and drives ) only to preface my take on Oswald as a young man on up to his murder at the age of just 24 at the hands of a sleazy bully strip tease owner right inside the Dallas Police Department building on November 24,1963.

Despite what L.O. had achieved in his short 24 year long life he was clearly an extremely frustrated, angry and PTSD afflicted young man.

He could hardly find the most lowest minimum wage paying jobs. He never even learned to drive a car! 

Oswald had no practical skills when it came to making a living and barely being able to put a roof over his little family.

Too often, out of pity, he and Marina and their baby had to take charity from others just for the basics. This humiliated and frustrated Oswald even more.

Near the end he was losing his wife and children from his life for good. He knew this.

He just couldn't seem to get it together to provide a better life for them.

I think Oswald hit bottom emotionally when he finally realized he was losing Marina for good. She had had enough. She didn't know how, but she knew she had to get away from Lee permanently.

When Oswald was able to sit down and share intellectual thoughts with others like George De Mohrenschildt and a little bit with Michael Paine ( so rare )  he was described as extremely poorly informed academically by them, although GM did say he saw innate intelligence in Oswald.

I am capsulizing ( in an admittedly simplistic way ) Oswald's real life here from his birth to his death to try to explain and maybe understand his erratic and desperate behavior in his last days.

Had Oswald completely broken down mentally and emotionally by 11,22,1963?

Perhaps doing something even he knew was suicidal?

His emotional development important years throughout his entire childhood were so neglectful and bad one must consider he was prime candidate for extreme anti-social behavior as a PTSD effected adult. And losing Marina and his kids could have been the final blow.

Whether Oswald was a patsy or not...he "was" emotionally damaged enough ( and family loss desperate enough ) to do something enraged like killing Tippit... imo anyways.

 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 10:10 PM by Joe Bauer

[Claude Barnabe]

Thank You Joe Bauer for that posting. You just encapsulated all the investigative work the Warren Commission did on Lee Oswald's life.