“Something to think about”

[Steve M. Galbraith]

 

Very informative, thanks!

Sure, 'welcome.

Imagine being Priscilla Johnson? She works for JFK when he was in the Senate (she spoke French and said JFK asked her a lot of questions about France's colonial policies in SE Asia); then she gets a job for a news service in Moscow (she also speaks fluent Russian) and interviews this odd young American. Then four years later that same strange man kills JFK? Then she writes, for me, the definitive book on Oswald and Marina. Pretty amazing journey.

BTW, she also wrote a terrific biography on Robert Oppenheimer. There's a movie coming out about his life. Looks interesting. He was later haunted, of course, by his work on the atomic bomb, that he had helped unleash horrors he was sure were going to destroy mankind. Something JFK was deeply worried about.

[Michael Walton]

The only thing Mr. Oswald gives us to think about, 60 years on, is how on earth a man drinking Coca Cola on the fourth step of the Depository entrance managed to assassinate Pres. Kennedy

Yes. And also why on Earth a supposed madman would say while in police custody, "The only reason why I'm here is because I lived in Russia. I'm nothing but a patsy."

[Michael Walton]

Oswald was a narcissist who desired attention. 

Yes, he was a narcissist who was worried about his daughter getting a new pair of shoes while in police custody.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

The Cubans who met Oswald in Mexico City when he tried to defect to Cuba said he was angry, erratic, demanding and seemed unstable. The KGB officers who met him at their Embassy in Mexico City said the same things: he was angry, emotional, erratic, unstable, thought the US government was out to get him.

So the Warren Commission's characterization of him in 1964 - angry, disaffected, erratic -  was something years later both Cuban and Soviet personnel agreed with. It's all the same general story about the man, his makeup, his personality. How did the Warren Commission get the Cubans and Soviets to go along with this supposed fake image of Oswald? They created a fake story and then years later along comes the Cubans and Soviets to help them out?

How much more information about the man is going to rejected? Is everything about him faked? Including what the Cubans and Soviets said? Does that make sense to you?

[Jon Banks]

Pricilla Johnson had a long relationship with the CIA. Which is why I find it hard to believe her interview with Oswald in the USSR occurred by chance, just as she didn't accidentally gain access to Marina Oswald, Soviet defectors and others.

From JFK Facts:

A witting source is someone who knows they are giving information to the CIA. In 1959 many patriotic Americans were witting sources, of course. There was nothing wrong with supplying the U.S. government with useful information. McMillan was certainly not a tool of the Agency, not at that time. She was considered for Agency employment several times and rejected for her youthful association with leftist groups.

Nonetheless, McMillan maintained contact with Agency officials who recognized she was sympathetic to the Agency’s purposes. British popular historian John Simkin cites a declassified December 1962 CIA memo, which stated about McMillan before she married.

“I think that Miss Johnson can be encouraged to write pretty much the articles we want. It will require a little more contact and discussion, but I think she could come around…. Basically, if approached with sympathy in the cause she considers most vital, I believe she would be interested in helping us in many ways. It would be important to avoid making her think that she was being used as a propaganda tool and expected to write what she is told.”

A mutually useful relationship developed and was documented in McMillan’s CIA file. According to this January 1975 CIA memo, the Agency classified McMillan as a “witting collaborator.”

https://jfkfacts.org/why-cia-ties-were-omitted-from-obituaries-of-priscilla-johnson/

[Jon Banks]

Oswald was a narcissist who desired attention.

None of us can say for certain who Oswald actually was or diagnose him with a mental or personality disorder.

Except for Oswald's defection to Russia and his summer in New Orleans in 1963, what other examples can you name of him going out of his way to attract attention to himself?

His life in 1963 is peculiar to me because in Dallas, he mostly kept to himself and seemingly tried to hide where he lived and not draw attention to himself, but in New Orleans he did the opposite and went out of his way to draw attention to himself.

Some speculate that he was mixed up in a COINTELPRO operation targeting the FPCCC. Outside of that explanation, it just looks bizarre.

He aligned himself with an outlier political group (Commies) because that brought notoriety to himself. 

Aligned himself how? Why didn't he have any communist friends or join any socialist clubs? Where were his Leftist friends and associates?

I guess if we stretch the definition of Leftists to include Liberals like Ruth and Michael Paine, that's the closest I can come up with.

He did have some friends but none of them identified as communists or marxists. And he was not an official member of the FPFCC or Communist party.

Strange if he genuinely believed in those ideologies.

[Charles Collins]

One of the odd instances of history surprising us is that the main/chief author of the Warren Commission Report, Norman Redlich, was a vocal defender of the Rosenbergs at that time and protested their death penalties (he was a life long opponent of capital punishment). Redlich was a critic of HUAC, McCarthy (he represented clients called before the committee; remember that JFK and RFK were on that committee as well), argued Hiss was innocent, and was not "fond" of Hoover. He was a man of the political left (imagine a young Oswald and Redlich marching down Broadway Avenue together protesting on behalf of the Rosenbergs?).

So we have Rosenbergs+Oswald+Redlich+JFK+RFK in a strange historical danse macabre.

Re Oswald's "something to think about" statement: I think the Oswald of 1959 was a far different person, less cynical and angry, than the 1963 version. By November of '63 he was lost, without hope, trapped in a dead end job in a country he hated. He wanted to tell the American people in 1959 how awful the US was, how much it had hurt him and his family. Four years later I don't think he really cared much about the American people, he thought they were sheep and fools and were incapable of understanding what he knew about America. In a way, it's remarkable similar to the conspiracy view of the US: that the American people don't know how the government has lied to them all of these decades. Very cynical view of the US.

As to Oswald in the USSR: We have the latter learned fact that the Soviets/KGB never really questioned Oswald as to what he knew. Not in a serious, deep way. He sort of fell through the security cracks. When Yuri Nosenko defected and told the CIA this they didn't believe him; to them, that wasn't how the KGB acted with defectors. This led to the belief that Nosenko was a fake defector which meant Oswald *did* have a deeper relationship with the KGB. This in turn led to Angleton turning the Counter Intelligence division upside down over the issue and ultimately contributed, in part, to his firing.

The key point in this is that IF Oswald was indeed a CIA agent or asset then Angleton would have known from him (Oswald) that Nosenko was correct. So all of the internal strife caused by Nosenko's defection and Angleton's over reaction would have been avoided. But that's only if Oswald was indeed a CIA asset (which for me is absurd).

BTW, the Johnson news article on Oswald can be read here:  https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1137#relPageId=306

Her notes on the interview (hard to read) are here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1137#relPageId=297

He was a man of the political left (imagine a young Oswald and Redlich marching down Broadway Avenue together protesting on behalf of the Rosenbergs?).

If LHO had lived to go to trial, and Abt had declined to defend him, I suppose it is possible that Redlich might have stepped up and volunteered.

Here’s something about Redlich that I found in Wikipedia that is interesting. I have read Belin’s books and am familiar with his theory.

He was credited with disproving the Belin Theory, which related to a city bus ticket in Lee Harvey Oswald's pocket helping him escape to Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Redlich


Does anyone know the source of the claim that Redlich disproved Belin’s theory?

[Richard Smith]

Yes, he was a narcissist who was worried about his daughter getting a new pair of shoes while in police custody.

If Oswald was worried about his daughter (or the young children of the two men who he murdered) he would not have committed the crime in the first place.