The widow of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald began her testimony today before Chief Justice Earl Warren and members of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (The Warren Commission).
Chairman and Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren presided, with members Senator John Sherman Cooper, Representative Hale Boggs, Representative Gerald R. Ford, and Allen W. Dulles in attendance. Also present were Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald and her attorney John Thorne, with William D. Krimer and Leon I. Gopadze interpreting for Mrs. Oswald and the Commission. Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin led the interrogation.
Following procedural pronouncements, the session started with the revelation by Chief Justice Warren that Mrs. Oswald has been interrogated not fewer than forty-six times by the FBI in the last ten weeks.
Mr. Rankin’s questioning of the witness was not chronological nor did it adhere to a discernible pattern of strategy, but all questions seemed crafted to illicit responses that corroborated or impeached other information held but not revealed.
The session was protracted by the language barrier. Mrs. Oswald does not have a conversational command of English and all questions posed and subsequent responses were conveyed through the interpreters. Much time and effort was spent clarifying such questions and responses.
Initial questioning concerned the various domiciles held by the Oswalds in Dallas and New Orleans in the seventeen months prior to the assassination. Also discussed were Mr. Oswald’s various employers, rates of pay, and reasons for leaving (always termination).
By American standards, the Oswalds lived meagerly, but Mrs. Oswald insisted that they had sufficient means – clearly a perspective influenced by her upbringing in the poverty-stricken working class of the communist Soviet Union.
The Oswalds resided in several places after their arrival in Texas in June 1962 until Mr. Oswald’s death on November 24, 1963 at the hands of nightclub owner Jack Ruby (nee Jacob Rubenstein), including: one month with Mr. Oswald’s brother Robert, three with weeks Mr. Oswald’s mother, Marguerite Frances Claverie Oswald Ekdahl, and a four-month stay in New Orleans. Throughout their residency in Texas, they stayed, at various times, with acquaintances and in rented apartments.
Mr. Oswald did not know how to operate a motor vehicle; the Oswalds often lived separately for financial or logistical reasons, although Mrs. Oswald lived apart from Mr. Oswald on at least three occasions due to his abusive behavior.
At the time of the assassination, Mr. Oswald was renting a room in Dallas while Mrs. Oswald was staying with Ruth Paine in Irving.
The Oswalds were living at 214 W. Neely St. in Dallas when Mr. Oswald fired a single shot at General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963, providing disturbing evidence of Mr. Oswald’s capacity for murder.
Mr. Oswald had been planning the murder for at least one month, as indicated by the photographs he made of General Walker’s residence in early March. It was during this period that Mrs. Oswald took pictures of Mr. Oswald wearing a revolver and holding the rifle.
Mr. Oswald was not skilled. His jobs included sheet metal worker, photography apprentice, coffee machine maintainer, and finally, clerk at the Texas School Book Depository where he was working the day of assassination. All of these positions were separated by periods of unemployment during which he collected benefits and looked for further employment.
Mrs. Oswald first observed the rifle used in the assassination in their apartment on Neely Street in February 1962. She saw the rifle again during their stay in New Orleans, and in the garage of Ruth Paine, wrapped in a blanket, after their return to Dallas in September of 1963.While living in New Orleans, Mr. Oswald contemplated joining Castro’s regime – and even considered hi-jacking an airplane – but was disabused of these notions by Mrs. Oswald.
Frustrated with his employment and living conditions in the United States, Mr. Oswald thought to return to the Soviet Union via Havana. To this end, Mr. Oswald travelled to Mexico City on September 26, 1963 and applied for a visa to Cuba; also visiting the Soviet embassy to facilitate his entrance to Cuba.
He visited both embassies over two days, but ultimately failed to obtain admission to Cuba and returned to Dallas after seven days in Mexico.
Upon arriving in Dallas in October, Mr. Oswald filed for the remainder of his unemployment benefits and again sought work.
Upon receiving a tip from Ruth Paine’s neighbor about a possible job opening, Mr. Oswald applied at the Texas School Book Depository on October 15th and started the next day.
These are the major points of testimony provided by Mrs. Oswald during the first day. Testimony will continue tomorrow.