Meanwhile, at home, he is setting down in a blue-covered journal, a gift from George Bouhe in more generous times, the results of each reconnaissance he makes to Walker’s house. The timetables of various bus routes within a mile of his target are included with his photographs, and he also puts in his estimate of the distance to various rear windows and doors from various sites of aim in the back alley. His joy as a young adolescent in studying the Marine Corps manual is being exercised again. He has dedication to detail. If it takes a General to kill a General, there is going to be balance in this event. Needless to add, the other half of himself, the enlisted man who despised all officers, can be a populist now: It takes a Private to shoot a General! That kicks off more in the scheme of things. So, Private-General Oswald, serving as his own staff, elaborates his plans. On his nocturnal missions, he even takes a nine-power hand telescope that he has brought back with him from Russia to aid in his estimates of distance. Like any good General, he knows that the more you prepare, the more inevitable it becomes that you will actually go into battle and thereby commence that semi-unbelievable activity of killing your fellow man.
The Mannlicher-Carcano carbine arrives some two weeks after it has been ordered, and the Smith & Wesson revolver with the sawed-off barrel, delayed for nearly two months, also comes in on the same day, March 25. One is at the post office, the other at REA Express near Love Field. How can he not see it as a sign? Having arrived on the same day, perhaps they will be used on the same day. Perhaps they were.
A fellow employee, Jack Bowen, recalls that Oswald, having brought the rifle over to Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall after he picked it up at the post office, showed it to him.5 Oswald is even acting like a man from Texas, which place, after all, is not one of the fifty states so much as a separate nation with specific customs: An offering of friendship is to show your neighbor the rifle you have just acquired.
Now came the cleaning of his weapon. To the degree that one sees one’s rifle as a loyal servant—if treated properly—cleaning one’s gun becomes a sacramental act. One is imbuing the wood of the stock and the metal of the barrel with nothing less than an infusion of one’s own dedication. The axiom is basic: The more one cleans a piece, the more accurately it will shoot; but then, every gun lover is a closet mystic. It is one reason that congressmen are terrified of the National Rifle Association. Not many politicians understand mystics, and not many politicians like what they do not understand.
From an FBI report: MARINA . . . said she can now recall that OSWALD cleaned his rifle on about four or five occasions during the short period of time which elapsed from the time he acquired the rifle in March, 1963, until his attempted assassination of General WALKER. [She also] said it would have been entirely possible for him to have practiced on any of the times he was away from the house ostensibly attending school and if he had practiced on such occasions, it would have been without her knowledge.6
From April 1 on, Oswald attended no more typing classes, but did not inform Marina.7
From an FBI report: . . . He had his rifle wrapped in a raincoat and told MARINA he was going to practice firing with the rifle. She remonstrated with him. She said the police would get him. He replied he was going anyway and it was none of her business. He did not say where he was going to practice firing the rifle, other than he was going to a vacant spot . . . 8
To Marina, he looked so suspicious. Every time he took his rifle out of the house, he would wear a dark green military overcoat even if the weather in Dallas was unseasonably warm. That was because he could walk along carrying the rifle under his green coat.
At night he would call out in his sleep, and say things in English she could not understand; then he would mumble and seem frightened. He was certainly afraid of something. She never did know where and how he practiced. Afterward, people would say it had to be at the Trinity River, which had a levee thirty-five feet high that you could use as a backstop for bullets.
In fact, she tried to keep her distance from the rifle and never went near it when she cleaned. Who knew? It could go off!9
On the last day in March, a Sunday, Lee had Marina photograph him in their backyard. He was dressed in a black shirt and black pants and dark cowboy boots. He held his rifle in his left hand, his pistol in a holster on his hip and he had The Worker and The Militant in his right hand. For years, those famous photographs Marina took on that day were under suspicion by Warren Commission critics. They looked to be doctored. His head sits at an odd angle to his neck, and the shadow under his nose is vertical while the shadow of his body slants away at an angle. These anomalies are so evident that in 1964, a good lawyer could have created real doubt in a jury’s mind whether the body of the man holding the gun belonged to Oswald. By now, simulated photographs taken at the same time of day and year in Dallas have been able to produce the identical discrepancies in the shadows. Even though only one of the original negatives was ever found, microscopic analysis of the grain in this negative shows that head and body belong to the same man. Moreover, grain analysis of the prints for which no negatives were found indicates that they were printed from the same roll that contained the negative that was found. The prevailing conclusion is, then, that the photographs are real, and Marina took them. The most novel supposition left to us now is that some instinct which had developed in Oswald from working all those months in an enlarging room at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall now told him to cant his neck at an odd angle. Who can know how much filigree he puts, consciously and/or unconsciously, into his scenarios?
Marina’s reactions, thirty years later, to this odd Sunday morning of taking photographs are still of interest. There was Lee! Dressed all in black—an idiot! When she was asked how many times she pressed her shutter, she said, “Three at least,” but then, when she was asked if it might have been five or six times, she added, “I don’t know.” After she took two pictures, he said, “Once again,” then he said, “Wait, it’s not finished yet,” and changed his position so that the outside stairs of their apartment would now be to his left. She asked him, “Why are you wearing that stupid outfit?” and he said, “For posterity.” She told him, “Yes, it will be very nice for children to remember all that, standing there with all those guns,” and he just mumbled some stupid excuse. His voice was embarrassed even, so obviously dumb.
Still, he’d been very careful to choose a good hour when they took pictures. He didn’t want any neighbors to see him standing in the backyard with a rifle and a pistol. So he listened and waited until their neighbors left for church—then he said, “Okay, let’s do it now before they return.”
It was probably on the Monday following this Sunday that he lost his job:
MR. GRAEF. . . . I said, “Lee, come on back, I would like to talk to you.” So, we went back, and I said, “Lee, I think this is as good a time as any to cut it short.” I said, “Business is pretty slow at this time, but the point is that you haven’t been turning the work out like you should. There has been friction with other people,” and so on.
MR. JENNER. What did he say when you said that?
MR. GRAEF. Nothing. And I said, “This is, I think, the best time to just make a break of it.” I believe I gave him a few days . . .
And there was no outburst on his part. He took this the whole time looking at the floor, I believe, and after I was through, he said, “Well, thank you.” And he turned around and walked off.10
He might even have seen it as one more favorable sign. Free of his job, he would have more time to prepare for Walker.
Graef’s best recollection is that Oswald was given this notice on Friday, March 29, or on April 1, a Monday, and Lee continued to work through Saturday, April 6, which is a perfect example of how essential chronology is to motive. For if Oswald was fired on March 29, he might well have reacted by asking Marina to take the photographs of himself with rifle and revolver on March 31, whereas if he was given notice on Monday, April 1, the two events are considerably less well connected, and all we can assume is tha
t there was a glint in Oswald’s eye while he was listening to Graef: To hell with being fired—just let me get back to the darkroom and develop those negatives. In his last week at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, he still puts in overtime, but then, he probably wants to leave a little money for Marina if all goes wrong.
General Walker was also a romantic. He had called his five-week lecture tour Operation Midnight Ride. Since he was coming back to Dallas on Monday, April 8, Oswald, a day or two before the General’s return, took his rifle and went out to the area near Walker’s house on Turtle Creek Boulevard and, presumably, buried it close to some railroad tracks a half mile away. Scouting the Mormon church next to Walker’s house, he then saw a notice of services on Wednesday night and most probably concluded that the presence of a stranger on Turtle Creek Boulevard, or in the alley parallel to it, would seem less suspicious if he made his attempt on that same night, Wednesday, April 10.
We have to assume that Oswald has found some kind of blind among the bushes in the alley behind Walker’s house so that he can look across the backyard from his concealed post and see into Walker’s windows. Presumably, the General, obligingly, will come into view.
McMillan: On the morning of Wednesday, April 10, Marina thought Lee looked pensive and rather sad. With tears in his eyes, he confessed at last that he had lost his job. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I tried. I liked that work so much. But probably the FBI came and asked about me, and the boss just didn’t want to keep someone the FBI was interested in. When will they leave me alone?”
Marina ached with sympathy. She had no idea how to comfort him; and when he went out for the day she supposed he was looking for work. He was dressed in his good gray suit and a clean white shirt.11
On the night of April 10, when Oswald arrives in the alley, we do not know how long he has to wait, but he is able to draw a bead on General Walker, who, conveniently, is sitting at a desk in a well-lit room with no drapes drawn, no shades down. Of course, we cannot know whether Oswald went for nervous walks and came back, having concealed his rifle in shrubbery each time, or, indeed, whether his blind was so well concealed that he could sit and wait for the half hour or hour it took until Walker happened to come to his desk. Of course, if one wishes to see Oswald’s actions on this night as a piece of choreography inspired by Destiny, it is not impossible that Walker was at his desk as Oswald arrived. There he sat, an impeccable model for the crosshairs on Oswald’s scope.
Lee fired and took off without stopping to see whether he had hit his target or not. That alone can give us a sense of how much caterwauling anxiety had come pouring in on him with the pull of the trigger.
Thirty years later, Marina can no longer remember whether or not he came home for supper on April 10—she seems to think he did not—but in any event, she very much remembers being alone at 8:00 P.M. and putting June to bed. By nine and ten o’clock, her ears preternaturally sensitive to every passing sound outside on lonely, shabby Neely Street, Marina’s condition at that hour deserves a name; mate-dread, one is tempted to call it. Nearness to a person gives all the intimations we don’t wish to have of how unstable he or she is, especially since he or she is not at home and yet feels so near to one’s senses as to make it certain that something is wrong, fearfully wrong.
By ten, she can no longer bear it. She invades his oversized closet, his sanctum sanctorum. On the writing table is a sheet of paper with a key placed on top of it. “Farewell!” says the mute presence of the key. As she would later tell the FBI, “[My] hair stood on end.”12 She picked up the paper and read what he had written. It comes down to us in good stiff English furnished by Secret Service translators, who straightened out whatever was ungrammatical in the suspect’s Russian.
This is the key to the mailbox which is located in the main post office in the city on Ervay Street. This is the same street where the drugstore, in which you always waited, is located. You will find the mailbox in the post office which is located 4 blocks from the drugstore on that street. I paid for the box last month so don’t worry about it.
2. Send the information as to what happened to me to the [Russian] Embassy and include newspaper clippings (should there be anything about me in the newspapers.) I believe the Embassy will come quickly to your assistance on learning everything.
3. I paid the house rent on the 2nd so don’t worry about it.
4. Recently I also paid for water and gas.
5. The money from work will possibly be coming. The money will be sent to our post office box. Go to the bank and cash the check.
6. You can either throw out or give my clothing, etc., away. Do not keep these. However, I prefer that you hold onto my personal papers (military, civil, etc.).
7. Certain of my documents are in the small blue valise.
8. The address book can be found on my table in the study should you need same.
9. We have friends here. The Red Cross also will help you.
10. I left you as much money as I could, $60 . . . You and [June] can live for another 2 months using $10 per week.
11. If I am alive and taken prisoner, the city jail is located at the end of the bridge through which we always passed on going to the city . . . 13
9
Stoicism, Majestic in Purpose
In the depths of Oswald’s logic lies an equation: Any man who is possessed of enough political passion to reach murderous intensity in his deeds is entitled to a seat at the high table of world leaders. Such may have been Oswald’s measure. The route to becoming a great political leader—given his own poor beginnings—might have to pass through acts of assassination.
As we can see by his note to Marina, he was more or less prepared to be captured or to die. So, he had not only assembled the integument of his art—the plans, photographs, bus schedules, and his farewell letter—but had also attempted to give a presentation of his political thought. He was not only possessor of a unique rank, Private-General, but looked to hold the desk of Philosopher-General.
Under the burden of not knowing whether his social ideas would soon be read with the respect one gives to the last words of a dead man or used as a text in his trial—his defense would be political!—or, meanest option of them all, would end as no more than a few more notes written to himself (especially if he had no opportunity to fix his sights on Walker, or, worse, lost his nerve), he chose to print his message out by hand, and it appears with relatively few errors among his other papers.
What follows is a good portion of the several parts of this credo. He was but five years ahead of his time—which is to say that by 1968 he would not have felt so prodigiously alone. By then, in Haight-Ashbury, many of his formulations would have seemed reasonable. Hippies were moving up into Northern California and Oregon to found small societies on principles much like his. Indeed, what Oswald offers seems more a libertarian pronouncement than a radical call to arms, a menu of fifteen one-sentence programs large and small for the free man of the future.
The Atheian system
A system opposed to Communism, Socialism, and capitalism.
1. Democracy at a local level with no centralized State.
A. That the right of free enterprise and collective enterprise be guaranteed.
B. That Fascism be abolished.
C. That nationalism be excluded from every-day life.
D. That racial segregation or discrimination be abolished by law.
E. the right of the free, uninhibited action of religious institutions of any type or denomination to freely function
G. Universal Suffrage for all persons over 18 years of age.
H. Freedom of dissemination of opinions through press or declaration or speech.
I. that the dissemination of war propaganda be forbidden as well as the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.
J. that Free compulsory education be universal till 18.
K. nationalization or communizing of private enterprise or collective enterprise be forbidden.
L. tha
t monopoly practices be considered as capitalistic.
M. That combining of separate collective or private enterprises into single collective units be considered as communistic.
N. That no taxes be levied against individuals.
O. That heavy graduated taxes of from 30% to 90% be leveled against surplus profit gains.
R. that taxes be collected by a single ministry subordinate to individual communities. that taxes be used solely for the building or improvement of public projects.1
He is mounting a pincers attack on the status quo. With his Atheian system, he will look to reach the mass of Americans—that is one arm of the attack. He is also looking to abolish the largest obstacle to a new and powerful party of the left in America, nothing less than the Communist Party.
Only by declaring itself to be, not only not dependent upon, but opposed to, Soviet domination and influence, can dormant and disillusioned persons hope to unite to free the radical movement from its inertia.
Through the refusal of the Communist Party U.S.A. to give a clear cut condemnation of Soviet piratical acts, progressives have been weakened into a stale class of fifth columnists of the Russians.
In order to free the hesitating and justifiably uncertain, future activist for the work ahead we must remove that obstacle which has so efficiently retarded him, namely the devotion of the Communist Party U.S.A., to the Soviet Union, Soviet Government, and Soviet Communist International Movement.
It is readily foreseeable that a coming economic, political or military crisis, internal or external, will bring about the final destruction of the capitalist system, assuming this, we can see how preparation in a special party could safeguard an independent course of action after the debacle, an American course . . . 2