Act of Retribution: The Military-Industrial-Intelligence Establishment and the Conspiracy to Assassinate President John F. Kennedy

By J.P. Phillips

My quest for an answer to the riddle of President Kennedys assassination first began in April 1967 following a talk given by Warren Commission critic and best-selling author, Mark Lane at Michigan State University where I was a graduate student.
My search has lasted well over twenty years. Gathering every scrap of information I could find on the assassination, I have arrived at what I believe is the most credible thesis to date. As a result of meticulous research, I am able to identify probable suspects in what I have come to believe was a far-reaching conspiracy which involved not only renegade elements from the CIA and organized crime figures, but one which extended to the highest echelons of the U. S. government.
By pulling together existing knowledge of the assassination, while introducing new evidence, my book focuses primarily on six main principals (persons of interest), their motives and their activities in relation to the assassination and the links that connect them:

1. LEE HARVEY OSWALD: Accused by the Warren Commission In 1964 of being the sole assassin of President Kennedy.
2. JACK RUBY: Dallas night-club owner who, two days following the Presidents assassination, shot and killed Oswald.
3. CARLOS MARCELLO: Reputed crime boss of the New Orleans- Dallas Mafia during the time of the assassination.
4. GENERAL CHARLES PEARE CABELL: Deputy Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1962 when he was dismissed by President Kennedy along with other high-ranking intelligence officials for the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
5. EARLE CABELL: Younger brother of General Charles P. Cabell who was Mayor of Dallas the day President Kennedy was assassinated.
6. FRED KORTH: Fort Worth businessman and banker who was Secretary of the Navy from 1962 to October 1963 when he was forced by President Kennedy to resign for his involvement in the TFX controversy.

As to the motives of those individuals involved in the Presidents murder, I believe that the assassination was planned and carried out with a dual purpose in mind:

1. as an act of vengeance by those ex-high government officials who were dismissed by the President either for alleged wrongdoing as in the case of Fred Korth, or for incompetence as in General Cabells case.
2. to prevent the Presidents domestic and foreign policies- particularly in reference to his stand on the Vietnam conflict- from being implemented.

Viewed in this light, the assassination of President Kennedy was an act of retribution by a group of mean-spirited, vengeance-seeking individuals who acted in the misguided belief that by assassinating this president they were furthering the national interest.
Notwithstanding his immense popularity with the American people, President Kennedy was perceived by his killers to be a clear and present danger to the country and to its interests at home and abroad for several reasonsfor his stand on civil rights and racial equality; for his attempt to closely regulate the oil and gas industry; for his desire to normalize relations with Cuba; for his desire to ease tensions between the superpowers through a reduction in armaments; for his crackdown on organized crime; for his stated intention to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam. Removing him from office by political murder, therefore, excused his killers in their own eyes from any wrongdoing, for by killing this President, they were convinced that they were acting in the national interest against the seemingly dangerous policies of a chief executive who, if allowed to finish his presidency, would lead the nation to ruin. A wise mind will never censure anyone for having employed any extraordinary means for {preserving} a kingdom. Believing, like Machiavelli, that they were acting to preserve and maint

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 17, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462824441

J.P. Phillips

J.P. Phillips (a pseudonym), is a retired adjunct professor of history and humanities. Born in Boston, Massachusetts he holds degrees from Boston University and Michigan State University where he received his Ph.D. Besides the JFK assassination, his current academic interest is Russian economic reform. Recently, he has published two books on this subject. He resides with his wife in Okemos, Michigan.

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PART I

THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD; THE DEFECTOR

CHAPTER ONE

BOY IDEALIST: OSWALD’S EARLY LIFE

Lee Harvey Oswald was born on October 18, 1939 at the Old French Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana to Robert and Marguerite Claverie Oswald. His father, an insurance premium collector, had died of a sudden heart attack shortly before Lee’s birth. His mother, Marguerite, is described as an attractive brunette of French and German extraction {who] managed the best she could under difficult circumstances.(1)

Although Oswald’s early life could be described as relatively carefree and happy, the family was beset with continuous financial hardship. To help care for the family, Oswald’s two older brothers, Robert, who was five years old at the time of Lee’s birth, and John Pic, Jr. (a child from a previous marriage), who was seven at the time, were both placed in foster care. With the help of her sister Lilian Murrett, Mrs. Oswald went to work in New Orleans in an attempt to care for the infant Lee. However, the effort proved too great a task and in December 1942, Lee joined his two older brothers in the Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Orphan’s Assylum where they had been sent the previous year.(2)

In 1944, Mrs. Oswald was able to remove her three children from the orphanage and moved the family to Texas. There Mrs. Oswald met and married a man who was more than capable of providing adequate financial support for her and her boys. Edwin Eckdahl, an electrical engineer who was originally from Boston, resided in Dallas at the time of their meeting. Robert Oswald, in his biography of his younger brother Lee, gives this rather favorable impression of Eckdahl.: One weekend {mother] brought a friend with her, a tall, white-haired man with glasses and a Yankee accent. He was good natured and friendly and seemed to know how to talk to boys. We liked him because he seemed to like us.(3) Lee, especially liked Eckhdal: All of us . . . got alone well with him, writes Robert, but I think Lee loved him most of all. He was the first father Lee had ever known. John and I could remember having a father to play with us when we were little, . . . but Lee had never known a normal family life.(4)

It must have been to the youthful Lee’s intense satisfaction, therefore, when, in 1945, Marguerite and Eckdahl were married, settling in the fall of that year in Benbrook, a comfortable suburb of Fort Worth. There, in October 1945, just after his sixth birthday, Lee was enrolled in the first grade at the Benbrook Elementary school. The house the family rented, we are told was a spacious, low house of native stone surrounded by some acreage.(5) A few hundred yards behind the house was a small creek where Lee and his two brothers could fish and swim to their heart’s content.

Sadly, the somewhat idyllic existence the Oswald boys enjoyed in Benbrook was to be short lived. For soon after they were married, Marguerite and Eckdahl began quarreling over his suspected marital infidelities. I did’nt know then that mother often nagged Mr. Eckdahl until he began to spend more time away from home, comments Robert. She left him several times, then went back.(6) Then, in the summer of 1947, Marguerite’s suspicions were confirmed when she had her then fifteen-year-old son, John and one of his friends, drive to the house where she suspected Eckdahl was staying with a paramour. Author Jay Epstein describes what transpired: John’s friend posed as a Westerb Union messenger, and when the door was opened, Marguerite pushed her way in to confront a woman, dressed in a negligee and Eckdahl.(7) Furious at having discovered her husband’s infidelity, Marguerite promptly left Eckdahl and filed for a divorce. John had to go to Fort Worth to testify against Mr. Eckdahl at the hearing. Robert writes: There was some talk about putting Lee on the stand, but as John remembers it, ‘Lee said he would’nt know right from wrong and truth from falsehood, so they excused him as a witness.’ Marguerite’s divorce was granted in June 1948. It was a blow to Lee, Robert later admitted. It meant the end of the only father-son relationship he would ever know. (8) The effect would prove traumatic for Lee.

During the divorce proceedings in Fort Worth, Eckdahl was represented by Fred Korth, who was later to become Secretary of the Navy under President Kennedy. Interestingly, Korth’s name was among those later found in Oswald’s phonebook following his capture by Dallas police on November 22, 1963. (9) Precisely what Korth’s actual relationship was to Eckdahl beyond the lawyer-client relationship is a matter of conjecture as is whether Korth had any contact with any member of the Oswald family before or following Marguerite’s divorce from Eckdahl. In his biography of his younger brother, Robert Oswald describes the relationship between Lee and Eckdahl as very close. Could Oswald’s close relationship with Eckdahl have at some point brought him into contact with Korth? What was the nature of Robert’s relationship with Eckdahl? Was it as close as Lee’s? Did either Lee or Robert or both ever come to know Korth personally? And why does Korth’s name appear in Oswald’s phonebook? Could the reason have something to do with Oswald’s undesirable discharge from the Marines following his defection to the Soviet Union in 1959? In 1961, Oswald wrote to John Connolly, Korth’s predecessor as Secretary of the Navy, asking for a reversal of his undesirable discharge. By then, Connolly had resigned as Navy Secretary to campaign for Governor of Texas, leaving Korth to succeed him.

From the time of his mother’s divorce from Eckhahl in June 1948 to the time the family moved to New York City in August 1952, little is known of Oswald’s life. For two years, from the summer of 1952 to early 1954, Oswald lived with his mother in New York. It was at this juncture in his life that Oswald began to display the signs of serious emotional problems. In the spring of 1953, he was arrested for truancy and remanded to the New York City Youth House for a six week observation period. At the Youth House, Oswald was examined by Dr. Renatus Hartogs, a clinical psychologist whose report on Oswald’s behavioral problems describes the thirteen-year old adolescent as a tense, withdrawn and evasive boy, who dislikes talking about himseld and his feelings. (10) Earlier, Robert also noticed a secretive, introverted aspect of his younger brother’s personality which, in his opinion, most likely stemmed from Lee’s feelings about the marital disputes between his mother and step-father, Eckdahl: I’m sure that Lee was far more upset by their conflicts than we were, comments Robert, {but} {h}e kept his feelings to himself and did’nt show how much he worried . . . .(11)

Notwithstanding Oswald’s emotional problems, Hartogs also noticed that the young adolescent’s intelligence was well above average. Lee is a youngster, Hartogs wrote, with superior mental endowments, functioning presently in the bright-normal range of mental efficiency. His abstract thinking capacity and his vocabulary are well developed. No retardation in school subjects could be found despite truancy. (12)

Dr. Hartog’s findings concerning Oswald’s above average intelligence are supported by the results of a battery of intelligence tests he took while at the Youth House. These reveal that Oswald’s IQ (118), was well above average. On all other tests, Oswald also scored above average. Thus, whatever else can be said about his character and personality, at this time in his young life, from an intelligence standpoint, Oswald was no slouch and did not seem to display the signs of a typical teen-age delinquent in the 1950s.

As an idealistic adolescent growing up at the height of the Cold War, Oswald would develop one overriding ambition – to join the U.S. Marines as his brother Robert had done. Curiously, it was at this time that Oswald also began to show a rather inordinate interest in politics, certainly atypical for someone of his young age and generation. As Oswald would later claim, his initial interest in politics at this time was piqued by the intense publicity surrounding the trial and subsequent execution at Sing Sing Prison in 1950 of the accused atom bomb spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. (13) According to Oswald, it was the Rosenberg case which was responsible for his initial flirtation with Marxism. As he tells it, one day, on a New York street corner, he was handed a pamphlet by an old woman who was protesting the deaths of the accused spies. The pamphlet, Oswald noticed, was published by the American Communist Party and, supposedly made a deep impression on him.(14) If we are to believe Oswald’s own testimony, it was at this juncture in his life that his alleged infatuation with Marxism began, an infatuation whose dire consequences could not be foreseen at the time. Genuine or not, because of it, Oswald’s life would henceforth embark on a shadowy path which would take him from his birthplace in New Orleans to a rendezvous with history in Dallas on that fateful afternoon in November 1963.

Oswald’s troubles with the New York school system continued, in spite of his being chosen President of his eighth-grade class. Refusing to salute the American flag one day, Oswald, once more, found himself in trouble with the school authorities. Marguerite, however, came to his rescue by removing him from school, taking him with her back to New Orleans in early 1954. There Oswald was enrolled in Beauregard Junior High School where he would later join the local chapter of the Civil air Patrol (the exact same unit where, coincidentally, David Ferrie, one of the principals in the Kennedy assassination, was to become an instructor). While in junior high, Oswald played sports briefly and became a voracious reader of books, particularly those on Marxism. Suddenly, Karl Marx, the nemesis of American capitalism and democracy, became one of Oswald’s boyhood heroes. By way of contrast, if not contradiction, another of his heroes was the fictional character Herbert Philbrick, star of the then popular television series, I Led Three Lives: Citizen, Communist, Counterspy.

Oswald’s supposed attraction to Marxism, curiously enough, did not in any way diminish his desire to one day follow in his brother’s footsteps and join the Marines.On several occasions he tried to enlist, only to be turned away due to his age (at sixteen, he was a year too young to qualify). Oswald then found a job at the Pfisterer dental laboratory where he worked for a few weeks in 1956. At Pfisterer, he made the acquaintance of Palmer Z. McBride, a fellow employee who later recalled that Oswald was very serious about the virtues of Communism and discussed these virtues at every opportunity. His devotion to Marxism was put on display when McBride took Oswald to the home of a friend, Eugene Wulf, who, at the time, was president of the Amateur Astronomy association of America. Oswald, comments Mc Bride, infuriated Wulf by telling him of the glories of the worker’s state and saying that the United States was not telling the truth about Soviet Russia. (15) Wulf’s father, who was present, found Oswald’s Marxism to be so offensive that he threw the young radical out of the house. At one point during their brief encounter, Oswald attempted to induce McBride to join the American Communist Party along with him. According to what McBride later told Wulf, Oswald was attempting to form a cell of sympathetic Marxists and had begun to make inquiries to the Youth league of the Socialist Party. (16)

In July 1955, the Oswald family moved back to Fort Worth where Oswald was enrolled in the tenth-grade at Arlington Heights High School. His high school stay was cut short, however, when on October 24, 1956, shortly after he had turned seventeen, with his mother Marguerite’s permission, he fulfilled his ambition by enlisting in the Marines. Curiously, prior to his enlistment, Oswald sent the following request to the Socialist Party of America:

Dear Sirs,

I am sixteen years of age and would like more information about your Youth League. I would like to know if there is a branch in my area, how to join, etc. I am a Marxist and have been study- ing Socialist principles for well over fifteen months. I am very interested in your YPSL. (17)

What is it that can explain Oswald’s seemingly intense curiosity about Marxism at this particular stage in his young life? Can the explanation be found in a naive idealism or was something more complex involved? Why, for instance, would someone with such a keen interest in the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx also exhibit an equally profound desire to enlist in what is perhaps one of America’s most chauvinistic institutions, the U.S. Marines, which at the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s, was not what one would consider a typical resting place for a committed Marxist. Nor for that matter is joining the Marines what one might expect from a dedicated Marxist, if, in fact, that is actually what Oswald was at the time.

Whatever the explanation, one crucial fact stands out. Later, when it came time for Oswald to defect to the Soviet Union, these earlier associations with Marxism would prove an invaluable asset in providing credence to his newfound identity as an American defector. The question which will be raised later in this narrative is whether Oswald was, in fact, a genuine defector, or, as will be demonstrated, a CIA operative posing as a defector.

ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER ONE

1. Edward Jay Epstein, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald. Epstein suggests that there was an ominous connection between Oswald and the KGB and posits that the intelligence agencies both of the United States and the Soviet Union created the legend that Oswald assassinated President Kennedy.

2. Ibid., 58, 59.

3. Robert Oswald, with Myrick and Barbara Land, Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother (New York: Coward-Mccann, Inc., 1967), 35.

4. Ibid., 36.

5. Ibid., 37.

6. Ibid., 38.

7. Epstein, Legend, 59.

8. Robert Oswald, Lee, 39.

9. See, Anthony Summers, Conspiracy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), 446n. In Part III, we shall devote a full section to Korth and the probable connection between the former Navy Secretary and the Kennedy assassination.

10. Epstein, Legend, 61.

11. R. Oswald, Lee, 38, 39.

12. Epstein, Legend, 61.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 62.

15. Ibid., 63

16. Ibid., 63, 64.

17. Ibid., 64.

CHAPTER TWO

SHITBIRDS & OTHER TERRIBLY BAD CHARACTERS

On the afternoon of October 26, 1956, the day of his enlistment in the Marines, Oswald boarded an American airlines flight for San Diego where he was due to report for basic training. At boot camp, like the other recruits, he was put through two months of grueling training, which included qualifying with his M-1 rifle, a requirement of all recruits. Oswald’s performance with the M-1 was dismal, at least initially. Sherman Cooley, his boot camp buddy, recalls that Oswald’s performance was so bad he failed to pass his rifle qualifying test which prompted the other recruits to refer to him as a shitbird. It was a disgrace not to qualify and we gave him holy hell, Cooley would recall later. (1)

In January 1957, after finally qualifying with his rifle, Oswald was assigned for combat training to the Infantry training Regiment at Camp Pendleton, California. Allen R. Felde, a fellow Marine recruit in Oswald’s eight-man squad, remembers him for his frequent attacks on U.S. foreign policy, especially in regard to America’s participation in the recent Korean War. Oswald placed most of the blame for Korea on then President Eisenhower who, as Oswald must have been aware from his campaign speeches in 1952, helped bring an end to that conflict in 1953 following his election. (2) Oswald, Felde recounts, accused Ike of causing one million casualties, while he depicted himself as the champion of the cause of the working man. Apparently, writes author Jay Epstein, the Marine Corps had not changed Oswald’s views. (3) He still appeared seemingly as pro-Marxist as ever, a somewhat contradictory stance for a Marine recruit to say the least.

On March 18, Oswald reported to the Naval Air Training Center at Jacksonville, Florida where he was scheduled to undergo training as a radar controller, a task which he had requested upon signing up for the Marines. The job of radar controller, it should be noted, was assigned only to men of above-average intelligence and overall reliability. Routinely promoted to Private First Class, Oswald was granted final security clearance to handle classified material, a curious coincidence considering his publicly stated pro-Marxist sympathies. (4)

In early May, Oswald was graduated from the radar controller’s course. His next assignment took him to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi where he studied aircraft control and took a warning operator course. Through this and other courses in radar operation and control, Oswald gained a thorough knowledge of how radar is used for identifying friendly from unfriendly aircraft. He also mastered the techniques for countering radar jamming on Soviet planes, all of which exposed him to highly classified, sensitive information not available to the average Marine recruit. (5) David Patrick Powers, a fellow Marine at Kessler, unsuccessfully attempted to strike up a friendship with Oswald. Powers recalls how Oswald would use up almost all of his weekend passes travelling to New Orleans, presumably, Powers surmised, to visit his mother. However, doing so would have placed Oswald in two locations at once since his mother was, at the time, residing in Texas. Oswald’s relatives in New Orleans recall his making only one phone call from Kessler. Presumably, writes Epstein, {Oswald} was seeing someone else (6) in New Orleans. Exactly who Oswald was visiting there on weekends remains a mystery. (7)

The following month, in June 1957, Oswald successfully completed his proficiency exams, surprising everyone by finishing seventh in a class of thirty. After his graduation from the radar control program, Oswald achieved Aviation Electronics operator status with the Military Operation Specialty – or MOS – 6741, and ordered to Atsugi, Japan where he was to join up with MACS-1, Marine Control Squadron One. Departing San Diego on August 21 aboard the USS Boxar, Oswald disembarked at Yokosuka, Japan, a U.S. naval port near Tokyo. (8)

The U.S naval air base at Atsugi is located approximately thirty-five miles southwest of Tokyo. Constructed during World War II, Atsugi was the focal point of Japan’s air defense system and the main training base for the Japanese kamikaze pilots who, during the closing days of the Pacific campaign, wrecked havoc on the warships of the American fleet. When Oswald arrived there in 1957 to begin his tour of duty, Atsugi was the base of operations for the First Marine Air Wing. It was also the home of the high-altitude U-2 spy plane, described by author Anthony Summers as perhaps the west’s most important single military asset in the mid-1950s. (9) As such, Atsugi was one of the CIA’s major operational bases in East Asia. For these reasons, writes Epstein, Atsugi remained a ‘closed base,’ which meant that personnel on the base had to have cards showing their security clearance on their persons at all times. (10)

Oswald’s position at Atsugi was that of radar operator. He was assigned to work in the radar bubble which was located at the northern end of the mile-long runway. As radar controller, his main task was to direct friendly aircraft toward their destination and to spot unidentified aircraft and then alert the Tactical Control Center at Iwakuni which would send up interceptors.

While off duty, Oswald, we are told, frequently went on trips to Tokyo. According to what he had confided to a close friend sometime afterwards, Oswald had become involved with a small group of Japanese Communist party members, a strange coincidence in itself considering his classified position at Atsugi. Oswald’s account is corroborated in a report issued by two attorneys for the Warren commission, W. David Slawson and William Coleman, Jr., which states that  . . . there is the possibility that Oswald came into contact with Communist agents at that time, i.e., during his tour of duty in the Phillipines, Japan and possibly Formosa {Taiwan}. Japan, especially because the Communist Party was open and active there, would seem a likely spot for contact to have been made . . . . {W}hether such contacts, if they occurred, amounted to anything more than some older Communist advising Oswald who was then eighteen or nineteen-years old to go to Russia and see the Communist world, is unclear. (11) Author Jay Epstein, who suspects that Oswald may have been a Soviet agent at this time, comments that the Warren commission did not . . . pursue this in its final report. (12) Again, considering Oswald’s highly classified position at Atsugi, one is left to wonder, why not?

A possible explanation of the true nature of Oswald’s mysterious trips to Tokyo while he was on military leave from Atsugi is provided by Zack Strout, a close friend in whom Oswald had confided on several occasions. According to Strout, Oswald once told him about an affair he was having with a Japanese nightclub hostess at the Queen Bee, which at the time, was one of Tokyo’s most expensive night spots. Oswald, it should be pointed out, was earning less than $85 a month take-home pay from the Marines. Writes Epstein: This, in itself, was extraordinary {for} the Queen Bee, known for its more than one-hundred strikingly beautiful hostesses . . . catered to an elite clientele – field grade officers, pilots (including U-2 pilots), and a few junior officers with private incomes – not to impoverished Marine privates. (13) Precisely what PFC Oswald was doing at the Queen Bee in the midst not only of the beautiful hostesses but of high-ranking military officers is anyone’s guess, unless, of course, there was a more official reason for his presence there.

In November 1957, Oswald’s Marine unit was transferred to the Phillippines. Prior to his departure from Atsugi, Oswald accidentally shot himself in the arm, or so he would claim, inflicting a superficial wound. For his carelessness with what was discovered to be an unregistered weapon, a serious violation of Marine Corps regulations, Oswald was not only fined but sentenced to twenty days hard labor. (14)

It was while he was stationed in the Phillippines that Oswald became involved in an incident which was to have important implications. On January 15, 1958, PFC Martin Strand, an old Marine buddy who had accompanied Oswald from the U.S., first to Atsugi, then to the Phillippines, was found shot to death while on guard duty at Cubi Point. (15) Shrand’s lifeless body was discovered by the officer on duty, Lt. Hugh Cherrie. In reconstructing the incident, Cherrie later recounted that while he was making a routine check of the guard, he heard an explosion which he immediately recognized as a shotgun blast followed by bloodcurdling screams coming from the vicinity of Shrand’s patrol. The screams were like some wild thing . . . . I knew I was’nt supposed to leave my post, no matter what happened, but I just said, ‘Hell, the guy’s in trouble,’ and took off over there. (16) When he arrived at the scene of the shooting, Lt. Cherrie found Private Schrand lying mortally wounded in a pool of blood. Six feet away on the ground directly behind the wounded Marine was his shotgun. Later, when the postmortem investigation of the incident was completed, it was concluded that Private Schrand died from a shotgun blast under his right arm which was fired by his own weapon. Writes Epstein: Suicide was ruled out because the barrel of the gun was longer than Schrand’s arm and no object which could have enabled him to pull the trigger to fire the shotgun was found at the scene. (17) Initially, it was supposed that Schrand had been killed by Phillippine nationalist guerillas; however, when no evidence of any infiltrators turned up in the formal investigation of the incident, Schrand’s death was ruled accidental on the assumption that the shotgun had gone off when Schrand accidentally dropped it.

Be that as it may, strange circumstances surround Schrand’s sudden, violent death. Author Jay Epstein reports that a number of Marines he interviewed years later, asserted that Oswald was on guard duty that night and was possibly involved in the Schrand incident. However, when he questioned the nine officers and enlisted men who were on duty at Cubi Point the night Schrand died, he was unable to find any corroborating evidence indicating that Oswald was ever witness to Schrand’s death. (18) Nonetheless, the enlisted men, continuing to suspect that something more was involved in Schrand’s death, grew increasingly nervous of guard duty. (19)

What could possibly have led the Marines who Epstein questioned to believe that Oswald was possibly involved in Schrand’s sudden death? If, in fact, Oswald was involved, how so? Exactly what did the enlisted men on duty that night at Cubi point mean by something more? Whatever it was, no one is saying. One can only wonder, why not? Why all the silence?

Whatever answers there to these questions, circumstantial evidence exists that an attempt may have been made to cover up the incident. When Schrand’s body was found by Lt. Cherrie, Schrand’s weapon – the shotgun alleged to have inflicted the fatal wound – was positioned, as Lt. Cherrie has asserted, six feet away from the body. Lt. Cherrie’s testimony as to exactly where the shotgun was positioned when Schrand was found, contradicts the statement made by James R. Persons, the first man to reach Schrand. Persons, Epstein informs us, believes the weapon was ‘right beside the body’ not a matter of feet away. Lt. Cherrie, Epstein writes, also recalls picking up the gun at one point and intending to put it back where he had found it, thus raising the possibility that the gun was moved after the shooting. (20)

The question we must ask is, did someone give Lt. Cherrie an order to move Schrand’s weapon back to where he found it? Or did Lt. Cherrie do this on his own? Where precisely was Schrand’s weapon positioned at the time of his death? Moreover, assuming Oswald was somehow involved in Schrand’s death, what role did he play? Was he directly involved? Lastly, if a cover-up of the Schrand incident did take place, what was it that the Marine authorities were trying to conceal? (21)

The answers to these and to other questions we shall raise later concerning Oswald’s service in the Marines, might well be contained in the startling testimony of James Wilcott, a former CIA finance officer, to the House Committee on Assassinations in 1978. ( 22) Wilcott asserted that Oswald had been recruited from the military {read Marines} for the express purpose of becoming a double agent assignment to the USSR. (23) The source for Wilcott’s information came, he would testify to the Assassinations Committee, from a CIA case officer who, following the Kennedy assassination, told him about Oswald’s intelligence connections. According to what Wilcott’s source told him, Oswald had been ‘handled’ under a specific ‘cryptonym’or code designation. (24) Wilcott further stated that the cryptonym used for Oswald was familiar to him at the time and that he himself had unwittingly handled funding for the Oswald project. His informant also told him that it had been a stupid project and that Oswald was a poor subject for a deep cover operation and had failed to convince the Russians. Wilcott added that the CIA apparently had a special handle on Oswald, perhaps because the Agency had discovered that he had murdered someone {possibly Schrand} or had committed some other serious crime during a routine lie detector test. (25) Writes author Anthony Summers: {I}t is worth passing to consider Wilcott’s speculation that American intelligence may have had ‘some kind of ‘handle’ on him. Could the strange circumstances surrounding Schrand’s death have given the Agency that special handle? Although, writes Summers, there is no hard evidence that Lee Oswald was really involved in the death of Marine Schrand, the incident may take on significance in light of Wilcott’s allegation about a CIA ‘handle’ on Oswald. What it suggests about CIA recruiting methods is at least consistent with remarks made during an executive session of the Warren Commission. Speaking of the CIA and FBI, Chief Justice Warren said, ‘They and all other agencies do employ undercover men who are of terrible character.’ To which Allen Dulles, former CIA Director concurred, ‘Terribly bad characters.’ (26)

Support for the view that Oswald was directly responsible for Schrand’s death comes from several sources. Throughout much of his career in the military, Oswald seemed to be in constant trouble with his superiors. The first time he and the Marine authorities locked horns came in 1957 following the incident when he had apparently accidentally shot himself in the arm with what turned out to be an unregistered weapon. For this seemingly minor infraction of military regulations, Oswald was court-martialed, found guilty, and sentenced to twenty days hard labor. He was also forced to forfeit $50 in pay and reduced in rank from Corporal to Private. His confinement was later suspended for six months with the provision that it would be cancelled altogether after that time if he avoided further trouble. (27)

Oswald, true to form, failed to keep his end of the bargain. Zack Stout, another Marine buddy, recalls the time when Oswald put in for a hardship discharge and was turned down, he became increasingly bitter . . . and began to argue that he was being singled out for mistreatment by the Marine Corps. (28) His resentment soon got him into trouble once again, this time for spilling a drink over a sargeant, then trying to provoke a fight with him. A second courtmartial in which Oswald acted in his own defense resulted, acquitting him of assaulting a superior but finding him guilty of using provoking words. This time, Oswald was sentenced to twenty-eight days in the brig and was forced to forfeit $55 in pay. (29) From now on, say his former buddies, Oswald spoke bitterly of the Marine Corps and reinforced his reputation as a loner. (30)

The relatively short time Oswald spent in the brig had apparently hardened his attitude toward the military in general and the Marines in particular. Joseph D. Macedo, a fellow radar operator in Oswald’s unit, recalls a meeting he had with Oswald shortly after his release from the brig. Macedo found Oswald, a completely changed person from the naive and innocent boy who arrived at Atsugi less than a year before. Oswald was now cold, bitter and withdrawn. Avoiding his Marine buddies, Oswald began to be seen more and more in the company of his Japanese friends, both male and female. Another of Oswald’s buddies remembers meeting him at a house in Yamato, Japan with a woman who worked for a Navy officer as his housekeeper. In the same house resided a young Japanese man. Oswald’s Marine buddy was unable to determine exactly what his relationship was to this small group of Japanese individuals. Where they simply good friends who occasionally socialized together? Or was something more complicated involved?

In September 1958, Oswald’s radar unit was moved to Taiwan in anticipation of a possible confrontation between Chinese Communist and Nationalist forces over the off-shore islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the Formosa Straits which had been occupied by Nationalist forces with the assistance of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Early that month, a crisis had broken out when Communist gun emplacements on the Chinese mainland began shelling Nationalist positions on the two disputed islands. The presence of U.S. Marines in Taiwan was intended as a gesture both to the Nationalists but particularly to the Communists that if Quemoy and Matsu were invaded from the mainland, the U.S. Navy would be there to repel the invaders.

During what turned out to be an abbreviated tour of duty in Taiwan, Oswald once again drew unwanted attention to himself. While on guard duty one night, he was heard firing shots into the darkness. When he was later asked to explain why he did so, Oswald claimed that he had been shot at by men in the woods who failed to answer his challenge to properly identify themselves. However, Lt. Charles R. Rhodes, a control officer from South Carolina who investigated the shooting incident that night, believed at the time as he does now, that Oswald staged the incident as a ploy to get himself back to Japan.(31) In fact, a short time after the strange shooting incident took place, Oswald was put aboard a military transport aircraft and sent back to Atsugi. The official explanation for his sudden departure from Taiwan was that he was being transferred to Atsugi for medical treatment. (32). Lt. Rhodes, however, persists in surmising that Oswald fired off his gun to get out of {Taiwan} . . . .(33) If so, then why? What was the actual reason for Oswald’s reassignment to Atsugi? Moreover, was Oswald alone involved in the ploy, or were others involved in making the decision? Was Oswald’s transfer back to Japan from Taiwan part of a larger, more ominous scheme?

In Japan, Oswald was assigned to the Marine squadron at Iwakuni, an American air base situated approximately 430 miles southwest of Tokyo which guarded the Tactical Control center for the entire northern Pacific area. The Iwakuni air base, in fact, had the important task of coordinating Japanese air defenses in the event of attack from the Soviet Union, North Korea or Communist China.

Owen Dejanvick, an old acquaintance of Oswald’s from the time the two men were Marine recruits attending radar school together at Keesler AFB, remembers Oswald as an embittered individual at this time. He kept referring to the Marines at {Iwakuni} as ‘you Americans’ as if we were some sort of foreigner simply observing what we were doing.(34) Oswald’s tone, according to Dejanovick, was without doubt, accusatory and his frequent references to American imperialism and exploitation caused Dejanovick to wonder whether Oswald might have been deliberately trying to shock the other Leathernecks at Iwakuni by his stridently anti-American statements. During his off-duty hours, Dejanovick sometimes would observe Oswald at the Orian Bar in Iwakuni in the company of an attractive Eurasian woman. She was much too good looking for Bugs {the nickname Denjanovich gave Oswald}, he later told Jay Epstein in an interview. Denjanovich also could not help but wonder why such a beautiful roundeye as he described her, who was more than likely not simply a common bar fly, would choose to associate with the mere Marine PFC. (35)

Dan Powers, another Marine stationed with Oswald’s unit at Iwakuni, got the impression from Oswald that the Eurasian woman at the Orion was part-Russian and that ahe was giving Oswald lessons in the Russian language. (36)

Just who was the attractive Eurasian woman at the Orion Bar in Iwakuni and why was she teaching Russian to Oswald? In view of what would later transpire, could it be that by teaching him to learn the Russian language, Oswald was being prepared for an assignment that would take him to the Soviet Union? Was his so called anti-Americanism mere posturing in preparation for his oncoming defection to Russia?

Upon the completion of his tour of duty in East Asia, Oswald was transferred to El Toro Marine base at Santa Ana, California. There he applied to take the Marine proficiency test in spoken and written Russian. The results of the test which he took on February 25, 1959, deserve our close inspection. On the reading section of the exam, he achieved a score of plus four, indicating that he got four more answers correct than incorrect. On the written part of the test, his score was plus three. In comprehending Russian, Oswald did poorly, scoring minus five. Although in comparison to other students studying Russian at the Marine language school, Oswald’s overall performance on the proficiency tests he took was considered poor, it showed, writes Epstein, that he had learned, if not mastered, the rudiments of a very difficult language. Moreover, Epstein continues, since it would take more than three months had he been back in the U.S. to achieve such a level in written and spoken Russian, except under extraordinary circumstances, Oswald would have had to begun his training in Russian while he was still in Japan. None of Oswald’s barracks-mates in Japan, we are told, can recall Oswald ever using either records or a linguaphone to teach himself Russian, which suggests that he had more private means. (37) Could Oswald’s private means have been the attractive Eurasian woman Oswald was seen frequently with at the Orion Bar?

In the weeks following his return to the U.S., Oswald could be seen assiduously pouring over a Russian language textbook and a Russian language dictionary. He also subscribed to the Russian language newspaper, the People’s World, which was the organ of the Socialist Worker’s Party of the U.S.

Oswald’s somewhat unusual choice of reading matter quickly brought the young Marine to the attention of his commanding officer, Capt. Robert E. Block. When he asked for an explanation, Oswald glibly informed Capt. Block that he was simply familiarizing himself with Marxist doctrine in accordance with Marine Corps policy. This cursory explanation seemed to satisfy Capt. Block who did not pursue the matter further, even though he remained highly skeptical of Oswald’s explanation.(38) One must ponder why Capt. Block failed to further investigate Oswald’s peculiar curiosity for Marxism? Was Capt. Block perhaps instructed to let the matter drop? If so, then who ordered him to do so and why?

By the summer of 1959, it seemed to his Marine buddies that Oswald had become such a Russophile that they began to sarcastically call him, comrade Oswaldkovich. Responding to his new nickname, Oswald, we are told, played along with the Russian allusion by calling them ‘comrade’ and answering questions put to him by his buddies with a ‘da’ or ‘nyet.’ (39) Were these repeated references to Oswald’s pro-Russian, pro-Marxist sentiments genuine, or could they have been a ploy to reinforce the legend that was being created portraying Oswald as disloyal and pro-Soviet.

One of Oswald’s closest Marine buddies at the time was a Puerto Rican, Nelson Delgado. Delgado’s friendship with Oswald began largely as a result of Oswald’s seemingly tolerant attitude toward minorities. He treated {me} like an equal, Delgado commented which was generally not the case with other Marines in his unit. Delgado also admired the manner by which Oswald used his to ‘cut others, even officers, down to their proper size. (40) In Epstein’s opinion, what seemed to weld the bond between them was their common interest in Fidel Castro . . . . (41) Both Oswald and Delgado were supporters of Castro who had recently come to power in Cuba. Oswald, we are told, talked constantly about someday being able to visit Cuba to join up with Castro’s barbudos" – his guerilla army which was credited with overthrowing the dictator, Fulencio Batista, in January 1959.

A short time after their initial meeting, Delgado began noticing that Oswald was receiving several pieces of mail bearing the stamp of the Cuban embassy in Washington. It was also at this time that Oswald began accompanying Delgado by bus to Los Angeles which is approximately one-and-one half hours away from the El Toro base. Not knowing what the actual purpose of Oswald’s visits to Los Angeles were, Delgado, upon inquiring, was told by Oswald that he was using his Los Angeles visits to drop in at the Cuban Consulate. For what purpose, we may ask?

Late one evening, while Delgado was on guard duty with Oswald at the base, a call came from the MP guard shack. The caller informed Oswald that a visitor was waiting to speak to him at the front gate. The individual who called on Oswald, claims Epstein, had to be a civilian; otherwise they would not have let him in. (42)

About one hour later, as Delgado was passing by the main gate, he saw Oswald accompanied by a man wearing a top coat. Both were engaged in what appeared to Delgado to be a heated conversation. It seemed odd to Delgado, writes Epstein, who later interviewed him, that anyone could wear a coat on a hot California night. Although Oswald did not inform Delgado who the stranger was, Delgado formed the impression at the time that he was in some way connected with ‘the Cuban business.’ (43) In 1964, Delgado was subjected to harsh criticism and cross examination by the Warren Commission over the mysterious visitor in the top coat who called on Oswald that night. The Commission’s rough handling of Delgado, Epstein writes, led to considerable confusion in his testimony and today Delgado . . . is unable to recall what led him to the conclusion that the stranger . . . was connected with Cuba. (44)

What could it have been that caused Delgado to conveniently forget his original account about the so called, Cuban business? Who was the stranger in the top coat who visited Oswald, and who engaged him in animated conversation? Was he from the Cuban Consulate as Oswald had earlier indicated to Delgado? Did the Cuban business Delgado refers to have anything to do with the plots which were about to be hatched against Castro by the U.S. government? Or, was Oswald collecting information on the activities of Cubans living in the Los Angeles area for use by the U.S. government later on?

Just as Oswald was about to complete his latest tour of duty with the Marines, Delgado noticed, among Oswald’s papers, a stack of spotter photos depicting a fighter aircraft at various angles. Later, we are told, Oswald placed the photos in a duffle bag and asked Delgado if he would deliver the bag to the bus station in Los Angeles, put it in a locker, and bring him back the key?(45) Agreeing to his request, Delgado could not help but wonder why Oswald had these particular photographs in his possession. What did he intend to do with them?

As his stint in the Marines was about to end, Oswald, in March 1959, submitted an application for admission Spring term 1960 to the Albert Schweitzer College in Churwladen, Switzerland, to study philosophy. Albert Schweitzer College had recently opened at the time of Oswald’s application and had less than 50 full-time students in attendance. On his application, Oswald professed fluency in Russian but was careful to avoid any mention of his radical political views. When asked to list his favorite author, Oswald selected not Karl Marx, as one might expect, but the conservative author and preacher, Norman Vincent Peale.

Shortly after his admission to Albert Schweitzer, Oswald wrote to his brother, Robert, saying, Pretty soon I’ll be getting out of the Corps and I know what I want to be and how I’m going to be it . . . . (46) Whatever it was, one thing is certain. Oswald would cut short his matriculation at the small, as yet, insignificant Swiss liberal arts college. As we shall notice presently, Oswald had a much more controversial ambition in mind.

In July 1959, Oswald filed papers with the Red Cross for the purpose of securing an early release from the Marines on the grounds that his mother, who had recently injured herself from an accident, required his support. Although his mother’s injury later turned out to be a fabrication, Oswald’s request for a dependency discharge was swiftly approved and on September 3, 1959, Oswald was detached from duty. (47) As his career in the U.S. military came to a close, a completely new phase of Oswald’s shadowy existence was about to begin.

ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER TWO

1. Epstein, Legend, 65.

2. Ibid.

3. Epstein, Legend, 66. The question might be raised as to whether Oswald was being truly sincere in his dislike of U.S. foreign policy; or, was his anti-American, pro-Marxist rhetoric a clever cover to dupe his fellow Marines into supposing that he was sympathetic to Communism and the Soviet Union?

4. Ibid.

5. Oswald’s acquaintance with radar technology, including radar jamming equipment was, as we shall notice in the following chapter, to prove highly significant in surmising the true nature of his defection to the Soviet Union.

6. Epstein, Legend, 67

7. A clue to the actual nature of Oswald’s visits to New Orleans at this time is provided by authors Michael Canfield and Alan J. Weberman in their book, Coup d’Etat in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: The Third Press, 1975), 20. Evidence suggests, write the authors, that Oswald’s cousin, Dorothy Murret, was an agent of the3 CIA. Dorothy Murret is the daughter of Mrs. Oswald’s sister, Lilian Murret, who, at the time, resided in New Orleans. This evidence, continue Canfield and Weberman, is contained in Warren Commission Document 1080, a classified, withheld file open only to the Federal government and which probably would have been unavailable to researchers for at least fifty more years had it not been misfiled. Most of Document 1080 is a biography of Harold Isaacs compiled from FBI interviews with him taken during the early 1950s. Isaacs, write Canfield and Weberman, was a disillusioned leftist intellectual who had become a professional ant-Communist on a very high ‘think tank’ level." Isaacs, it turns out, was associated with the Center for International Studies at MIT which is endowed by the CIA.

Another possible reason {why CD 1080} is still classified, say the authors, could be its relation to another FBI document {CD 942} which tells us that it had been alleged that {Dorothy} Murret was linked in some manner with the apparatus of Professor Harold Isaacs and that she travelled extensively in the Far East and spent long periods of time in India. CD 1080 reveals that Isaacs was interested in Far Eastern affairs and his work ‘takes him away from MIT and consists of international travel and concentration on study of India.’ In view of these facts, Canfield and Weberman posit, was Murret just a travelling ‘teacher’ or was she using this as a cover for spying activities she was performing for Harold R. Isaacs, a professor at a notorious CIA think tank? Ibid., 20, 22.

Furthermore, there has been some speculation regarding Isaac’s possible role in the Kennedy assassination. In CD 645 and CD 866, Canfield and Weberman write, a man reported overhearing two men speaking about the Kennedy assassination at a Canadian airport. Richard Giesbrecht told the FBI that when the first man asked the second how much Oswald knew {of the assassination}, the second one said: ‘We have a film that I have seen where Isaacs is near Kennedy after the landing {in Dallas}.’ The first man then mentioned something about Isaacs, ending with the query, ‘Why should a person with such a good record as Isaacs become mixed up with a psycho?’ In a November 1967 article in McCLean’s Magazine, Giesbrecht stated that the ‘psycho’ referred to was Oswald.

8. Epstein, Legend, 76, 68.

9. Summers, Conspiracy, 144.

10. Epstein, Legend, 68. There appears to be yet another reason for all the security present at Atsugi besides the U-2. In a footnote, Epstein points out that despite the U.S.-Japanese treaty banning the stationing of nuclear weapons in Japan, at least six witnesses who served with Oswald at Atsugi reported that such armaments were available. One observer was an officer who eye-witnessed the presence of these weapons. Ibid., note 6, 303, 304.

11. Cited from Ibid., 306.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid. In 1957, 1958, an evening at the Queen Bee, writes Epstein, "a date would cost anywhere

From $60-$100. It is difficult to understand, implies Epstein, how Oswald could have afforded such extravagent entertainment on his meager salary. Epstein also points out that ‘according to one source, Navy intelligence was . . . interested in the possibility that the hostesses from the Queen Bee were being used at the time to gather intelligence and that Oswald was receiving money from someone at the Queen Bee. (Ibid., 73, 74) Who was providing the money and for what purpose? Oswald’s intelligence contact perhaps? If so, who was his contact? Could Oswald’s Japanese girlfriend have been the contact in question?

14. Summers, Conspiracy, 146.

15. Epstein, Legend, 77, 78.

16. Cited from ibid., 77.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 11n., 308

19. Ibid., 78

20. Ibid, 10n., 307, 308.

21. Ibid., 78.

22. Assassinations Committee Hearings (1978), 198f.

23. Ibid.; also, Wilcott, New York Times, 27 March 1978.

24. HSCA Report, 198f.

25. Ibid.

26. Summers, Conspiracy, 159.

27. Epstein, Legend, 80. By curious coincidence, on the same day that Private Schrand was found dead, Oswald successfully completed a test that entitled him to promotion to the rank of Corporal.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., 81.

30. Summers, Conspiracy, 146.

31. Epstein, Legend, 84.

32. Ibid. Oswald had apparently contracted a slight case of gonorrhea. According to his service medical records, his condition had long been under treatment.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 84, 85.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., 85.

37. Ibid., 87, 88.

38. Ibid., 88.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., 89.

41. Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43. Ibid., 91.

44. Ibid., 4n., 311.

45. Ibid., 91.

46. Ibid., 92. See also, Robert Oswald, Lee.

47. Mrs. Oswald cooperated fully with her son in securing letters from two friends – a doctor and an attorney – with which Oswald was able to successfully obtain his dependency discharge from the Marines. One might venture to ask for the identity of her two friends, especially the attorney. Was it Fred Korth, perhaps? If so, could this help to explain, among other factors, the presence of Korth’s name in Oswald’s phonebook?

CHAPTER THREE

OSWALD’S DEFECTION

On the day of his discharge from the Marines, Oswald applied for a U.S. passport, noting on his application that he intended to travel to the Soviet Union and Cuba. Within a surprisingly short time, six days to be exact, Oswald’s passport application to America’s chief Cold War nemesis was approved.

Oswald next travelled by bus from California to Fort Worth, Texas to visit his supposedly injured mother. Arriving on September 14, he informed his mother, much to her surprise, of his plan to travel to New Orleans where he would board a ship and work in the import-export business (1) instead of remaining in Fort Worth. (2)

While in Fort Worth, where he resided in his mother’s house, Oswald visited his brother, Robert, whose house was located on Davenport Street. According to Robert, we did’nt do much that day – just sat around the house and talked. (3) What exactly was the subject of their conversation? Were the two brothers simply reminiscing or could there have been some more important matters discussed? Perhaps Oswald’s planned visit to the Soviet Union? {Lee} told us he planned to go to New Orleans and work for an export firm, Robert would write later. However detailed his plans might have been, he kept them to himself. (4) Or did he? Would it be an exaggeration to suggest that Oswald’s visit to his older brother may have involved a briefing with Robert concerning Oswald’s upcoming journey which, as we shall see presently, will take him first to Helsinki, Finland, and from there to the Soviet Union? Was Robert Oswald connected in some mysterious way with the strange events which were about to transpire in his younger brother’s life? If so, he does not say.

Departing Fort Worth, Oswald arrived in New Orleans on September 17, 1959 and went directly to the offices of Travel Consultanta, Inc., where he booked passage on the freighter, Marion Lykes, bound for Le Havre, France. Three days later and one day behind schedule, the Marion Lykes sailed from New Orleans. On board, besides Oswald, were only three other passengers, despite the fact that the ship could accommodate three times that many. They were: George B. Church, Jr., a retired Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army; his wife; and Billy