April Fools

Trying to nail down Lee whereabouts in early April;

I will start with April 6th
Lee gets fired from job at JCS April Fools day and is unemployed as of that friday.

April 7th
Marina is asked by Ruth if she wants to move in with Ruth. This is from secondary sources, need cite.

April 8th
"Monday, April 8, Lee applied for another job at the Texas Employment Commission, two days after Ruth Paine invited Marina to live with her “rather than return to Russia.” -JVB

She is half correct, either the TEC was notified of the firing by Lee or JCS it seems on the 8th the first work day after Lee is fired.
His card is then reactivated,
He then is at the TEC on the 11th which is noted on the 12th which Lee is supposedly also at the TEC again:





Note:

There is still is a Hidell design firm in Dallas(?) Carro[size=undefined]llton.
Wm. J. Hidell, designed Gladoaks estate for Murchison where a party was thrown on November 21, 1963. Hoover, Nixon and other right-wingers were in attendance, according to Madeline Brown.

[/size]
History
Hidell & Associates Architects has been providing superior architectural design solutions, nation wide, for more than 50 years. Conceived in 1948 as a partnership between architects William Hidell, II and Pete Decker, Hidell & Decker Architects designed & constructed commercial and industrial projects until 1952. From 1952-1979, William Hidell, II continued his work as a sole proprietorship under the firm name of William H. Hidell Architects. The firm was incorporated in 1979 as Hidell Architects, Inc. and began to take a special interest in the design and development of libraries under the new leadership of William Hidell, III. In 1995, Hidell Architects, Inc. became known as Hidell & Associates Architects, and the firm's present day name.



Then Jeanne shouted excitedly again: “look, there is an inscription here.” It read: ‘To my dear friend George from Lee.’ and the date follow [sic] — April 1963, at the time when we were thousands of miles away in Haiti. I kept looking at the picture and the inscription deeply moved [me], my thoughts going back when Lee was alive.


https://www.google.com/search?q=April+7%2C+1963%2C+while+de+Mohrenschildt+is+hanging+out+with+Oswald&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#


Robert Oswald said:
April 7 is my birthday. On April 7, 1963,
Lee took his newly purchased rifle out to the
home of Gen. Edwin Walker with the intention
of shooting him.

April 10 is the birthday of my son, Robert
Edward Lee Oswald. On April 10, 1963, Lee
again went out to General Walker s home, stood
there in the darkness, and fired through a window
at the General.

https://archive.org/stream/nsia-OswaldRobert/nsia-OswaldRobert/Oswald%20Robert%2017_djvu.txt


Anyone have any Oswald info in early April?

Cheers, Ed

Ed, nothing to give you, but if Oswald went to the TEC on the 8th, he would have needed to update his home address.

Is there a TEC record showing he lived at 214 Neely?

There is also this...

His Father William H Hidell, Sr had three brothers, Henry, Charles and Alex. The family had lost contact with Alex decades in the past and he was believed to live on the west coast and in the yachting business.
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/FBI%20Records%20Files/105-82555/105-82555%20Section%20084/84c.pdf

Ed. Ledoux wrote:Anyone have any Oswald info in early April?

Cheers, Ed

 Ed:

I'll put up what Walt Brown says in his chronology during this time concerning Oswald in a series of posts.

_________________________________________________

April 1, 1963— time unstated; Dallas, Texas;
M. Waldo George, the manager of the apartments at 214 Neeley Street, collected $ 60 in cash from Lee Oswald, which would cover the rent “for the month of April 1963 to and including May 2, 1963.”
“Shortly after this occasion the downstairs tenants, Mr. and Mrs. George B. Gray, called me and informed me that the man in the upstairs apartment was beating his wife. I made no inquiry into the subject matter.”
“Two or three days later, myself and Mrs. George called on the Oswalds in their apartment and invited them to attend Gaston Avenue Baptist Church with us. He informed me and Mrs. George that he attended the Russian Orthodox Church although they were not regular in their attendance, because they had to depend on their friends to take them.”
“During this visit Oswald stated that he had met his wife while he was serving in the United States Marines as a guard at the United States Embassy in Russia, and had married his wife in Russia. I made direct inquiry of him as to whether he had any difficulty in getting out of Russia with his wife and he said that he had had no difficulty whatsoever.”
“Neither myself or Mrs. George saw Oswald again at any time thereafter. Oswald did not pay rent for the succeeding rental period of May 2 through June 2, 1963. Because my attention was diverted by other matters, I did not go by the apartment to collect the rent for that period until several days after May 2, 1963. When I arrived at the apartment I found it vacant. (Affidavit of M. Waldo George, 11H 156) Note: Oswald may have found it a convenient explanation of his marriage to a Russian woman by suggesting he had been an Embassy guard, but it is still Lee Oswald, quick with the bizarre lie, at work. Beyond that, Oswald had left the Neely Street apartment on April 24, 1963, and at roughly the same time, Ruth Paine took in Marina Oswald as a house-guest and Russian tutor until such time as Lee Oswald found work in New Orleans and Marina could join him there.
 
April, 1963— specific time unknown and certainly not sought, CST— Dallas, Texas.
Robert Adrian Taylor, an employee at Jack’s Super Shell gas station, believed he had a gun transaction with Lee Oswald.
Oswald, along with another male, identity unknown, needed an automotive generator repair but lacked funds; a deal was struck and the gun, a Springfield bolt action, .30-06, which Taylor admittedly possessed and hunted with, was taken from the trunk of the vehicle and used as barter for the repair.
In an FBI Report dated May 19, 1964— a summary report, and not an FD-302 which would contain an agent’s name, it is stated, “TAYLOR advised that on November 23, 1963, he was watching television and, upon viewing LEE HARVEY OSWALD, commented to his wife, ‘Say, that looks like the guy I bought the .30-06 from.’ He stated, however, he cannot be positively sure the man who sold him the rifle was OSWALD. He stated that he feels that it was OSWALD since, upon viewing OSWALD on television, he immediately thought of this rifle, and, at that instant, thought OSWALD was the man who sold the weapon to him.” (FBI Report, 26H, 458-459)
Later in the same report, Taylor suggests that the man he believed to be Oswald may have returned to the station as a passenger in a vehicle driven by a woman, but since Oswald still owed him two boxes of ammunition, he had reason to doubt that it was Oswald on the second occasion.
Here’s what the Warren Report said about all of this: Another allegation relating to the possible ownership of a second rifle by Oswald comes from Robert Adrian Taylor, a mechanic at a service station in Irving. Some 3 weeks after the assassination, Taylor reported to the FBI that he thought that, in March or April of 1963, a man he believed to be Oswald had been a passenger in an automobile that stopped at his station for repairs; since neither the driver nor the passenger had sufficient funds for the repair work, the person believed to be Oswald sold a U.S. Army rifle to Mr. Taylor, using the proceeds to pay for the repairs. However, a second employee at the service station,[ there was no second employee present at the time of this transaction] who recalled the incident believed that, despite a slight resemblance, the passenger was not Oswald. Upon reflection, Taylor himself stated that he is very doubtful Taylor himself stated that he is very doubtful that the man was Oswald.” (Warren Report, p. 318, U.S. Government Printing Office edition)
Straight-up: It’s a bold-face lie. The ‘second employee’ was Glen Emmett Smith, who DID testify before the Warren Commission, while Taylor, who purchased the gun and identified the seller to the FBI as Lee Oswald, did not. (Warren Commission deposition of Smith: 10H 399-405) Smith did not recall the incident except to overhear it being told by Taylor to FBI S/ A Morris J. White, who is not mentioned nor cited in the FBI Summary Report of the incident, dated May 19, 1964, and which came at the request of the Warren Commission in a letter dated April 30, 1964— after Glen E. Smith’s testimony. Further, Smith testified he began his employment at the gas station on April 25, 1963— the day after Lee Oswald rode a bus to New Orleans, so he could not have been a witness to the transaction and thereafter denied the resemblance to Oswald.

Continuing...

April 1, 1963— time unstated; Dallas, Texas. Lee Oswald changes his address on his Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall records to Post Office Box 2915 in Dallas; inasmuch as he was given notice of imminent termination from Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall, (his last day was April 6 [oddly, an overtime Saturday], and he was fired— he did not quit), it is possible that this was the time he learned of his termination. (John F. “Jay” Harrison” Genealogical Archives) Note: This seemingly unremarkable event may have also provided the “bridge” between the March 31 photos and the April 10, 1963 attempt on General Walker, as Oswald, now a lame-duck employee, could use his remaining time to make copies of the March 31 “backyard photographs,” as well as of surveillance photos he is believed to have taken of the Walker residence.

April 2, 1963— time unstated, although event would occur in the evening, CST; Dallas, Texas. Ruth Paine invites Marina and Lee Oswald to dinner, and it on this occasion that Michael Paine met Lee Oswald for the first time. (Testimony of Ruth Paine, 2H 450) Note: Ruth Paine would later testify that Michael drove to pick up Marina Oswald and Lee Oswald. This for the most-part casual event would allow Michael Paine, on the evening of November 22, to recall the building— 214 W. Neely Street— when he was shown a “backyard photograph” and asked if he had any knowledge of where it had been taken. (Testimony of Ruth Paine, 2H 480; Michael Paine’s “clapboard recognition” testimony is at 9H 444) April 2, 1963---time not specified, Huntsville Prison, Texas. On the same evening that Michael Paine met Lee Oswald for the first time, Juanita Dale Phillips, whose stage name was “Candy Barr,” was released from Huntsville Prison after serving three years and four months of a fifteen year sentence for narcotics possession (marijuana). Ms. Phillips was met by Mr. and Mrs. Abe Weinstein, Jack Ruby’s competitors in Dallas, and taken home. (Austin American, April 2, 1963, pages 24 and 25.) “Sometime in the spring of 1963”— Michael Paine meets Lee Oswald for the first time; Michael noted that Ruth Paine had met the Oswalds earlier at a party hosted by Everett Glover which, he, Michael Paine, did not attend. He added that Ruth then invited Lee and Marina Oswald to dinner, and cited the date as April 10, 1963— the night General Edwin Walker was shot at. He is corrected by Warren Commission staff counsel Wesley Liebeler, who tells him the dinner was on April 2, 1963. (Testimony of Michael Paine, 2H 393, 402) Note: Michael Paine’s best memory of the event is that Lee Oswald spoke rudely and sharply to Marina, in the presence of dinner guests. (Testimony of Michael Paine, 2H 422) Note: In a subsequent deposition before Counsel Wesley Liebeler (unlike the testimony before the Commission cited herein), Paine was asked if General Walker was discussed at the first meeting between Lee Oswald and Paine. Paine answered, “Yes; I think we did discuss him in passing.” (Deposition of Michael Ralph Paine, 11H 399) This would tend to suggest that the dinner WAS on April 2, 1963, and not the night Oswald left the note for Marina— April 10— when Michael Paine could NOT have met Oswald unless he was driving the getaway vehicle seen by General Walker— see entry for April 10, 1963) Paine was also asked “Did Oswald ever indicate to you in any way that he had been involved in the attempt on General Walker’s life?” Paine answered: “Not that I remember at all— nothing whatsoever. I think the only thing he did— the only thing that I can remember now, was that he seemed to have a smile in regard to that person. It was inscrutable— I didn’t know what he was smiling about— I just thought perhaps it was— the guy assumed it was rapport for a person who was an extreme proponent of patriotism or something.” (Deposition of Michael Ralph Paine, 11H 399) This is probably a steno error and where it states “it was— the guy” it should read, “it was— that I”; beyond that, given what Paine knew about Oswald’s political thinking, this answer is absurd; it’s also ridiculous since it revolves around the first meeting between Michael Paine and Lee Oswald on April 2, 1963, eight days before the attempt on General Walker. Paine further testified that after April 2, 1963, he did not see Lee Oswald again until after his return to Texas from “New Orleans” (via Mexico), which would be early October, 1963, when Walker was not as controversial a topic. It remains a curiosity that the Warren Commission would ask Michael Paine when the dinner was held, and when his answer contradicted a central fact— the Walker shooting of April 10— Paine was told he was wrong, and he was corrected. Right or wrong, if Paine had said the dinner took place on Christmas Day, 1963, a month and a day after Oswald was publicly executed, his answer should have been allowed to stand, unchallenged. No individual was allowed to question the Warren Commission’s perceptions, although a lot of people have done so since they went out of business.

Continuing...

April 5, 1963— time unstated, CST; Dallas, Texas. Lee Oswald puts the date 5 IV 63 on a print of a photo from the backyard, with him holding a rifle and newspapers, and wearing a pistol in a holster. The photo, along with English/ Russian phonograph records loaned to Oswald by George DeMohrenschildt, was mailed to DeMohrenschildt’s address, shortly before he left the United States for Haiti. The package was stored, according to DeMohrenschildt, and the photo was only discovered in 1967. (John F. “Jay” Harrison” Genealogical Archives) Note: This particular “backyard photo” had the notation, in Russian, “Ha ha ha, hunter of fascists,” and from an examination of the handwriting, compared to other samples published or privately owned, it is highly likely that Marina Oswald wrote the caption. (editor’s hypothesis, which, if correct, would not have seemed nearly as funny a few days later when, it is alleged, the “hunter of fascists” took a shot at General Edwin Walker, U.S. Army, Resigned.) It is also to be recalled, at occasional points through this narrative, that when Marina Oswald was first taken to the Dallas Police station, she denied ever having seen Oswald’s rifle— despite the fact that she photographed it. This created a serious Catch-22 for the Warren Commission, as they had Marina admitting to important evidence against her husband, with respect to a gun that she never saw, excepting the inch or so visible* at the butt-end of the blanket. (*) Michael Paine dealt with that blanket, thinking it was tent poles. If one inch of the rifle was visible, even Michael Paine probably would have concluded it was not tent poles or camping gear.
 
April 6, 1963— according to the testimony of Marguerite Oswald, this is the last day of employment of Lee Oswald at Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall— a Saturday. (Testimony of Marguerite Oswald 1H 218) (see also time cards for employment, published as CE 1855 in 23H 624-625) Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall photo department manager also indicates that April 6, 1963 was Oswald’s last day. (Deposition of John G. Graef, 10H 178) That data, however, defies logic, as Saturday work was overtime, and by that point in time, Oswald’s work was viewed as lousy, and Jaggers was not likely to pay him overtime to do virtually nothing correct on his last day of work. Either way, the end of the job coincides with alleged “Walker” preparation, and within less than three weeks, Oswald was in New Orleans. Dennis Ofstein would testify, “… he mentioned the last day he was with Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall— I asked him what he was going to do, where he would go to work, and he said he didn’t know. He liked the type of work at the company and that he would like to stay with this type of work and he would look around and if he didn’t find anything else, he could always go back to the Soviet Union, and sort of laughed about it. (Deposition of Dennis Hyman Ofstein, 10H, 203) Note: John Graef, photo department director at Jaggers, would testify, “… in the course of carrying these jobs through and back in the darkroom, I began to hear vague rumors of friction between him and the other employees… I began hearing that— or began noticing— that very few people liked him. He was very difficult to get along with… Lee was not one to make friends… Then, we’ll say his personality began to come out… there was an incident about a Russian newspaper deal… andhe said, ‘I studied Russian in Korea,’; but mostly, it was Oswald’s poor work product: “more and more he was being relied upon to produce this exact work and there were too many times— it was his mistakes were above normal. He was making too many mistakes… Well, my impression of his mistakes were somehow that he just couldn’t manage to avoid them. It wasn’t that he lacked industry or didn’t try… I think he just couldn’t— he somehow couldn’t manage to handle work that was exact.” (Deposition of John G. Graef, 10H 186-188) Note: John Armstrong cited House Select Committee Document #006795 which notes that on the same day, a flight plan was filed for air travel between New Orleans and Garland, Texas. The pilot was listed as D. Ferrie, and the three passengers were Diaz, Lambert (Clay Shaw alias?) and Hidell (see John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald, pp. 505 and 519) Question: If Oswald could not manage to handle work that was exact, and didn’t have the skills to drive, HOW did he take a war surplus rifle and perform a task that required exactitude far above and far beyond the mundane chores he was unable to perform?
 
April 6, 1963— time unstated, presumably p.m., Dallas, Texas; On the date of his termination from Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall, Lee Oswald was given an invitation to visit Dennis Ofstein and his family; Ofstein, because of his abilities with the Russian language, was the closest thing to a friend Oswald had at Jaggers. As far as this written invitation to Oswald, “none whatsoever” was the response. (Deposition of Dennis Hyman Ofstein, 10H 198) April 7, 1963— Ruth Paine writes to Marina Oswald, offering her shelter in the Paine home, but does not mail the letter. (Testimony of Ruth Paine, 2H 449)* additional confirmation of “not sent” (Testimony of Ruth Paine, 2H 502) Note: See Ruth Paine entry for April 8, for which there was no testimony.
 
April 8, 1963— Ruth Paine visited Marina Oswald at the Neely Street residence; Lee Oswald, although unemployed, was not present. (FBI report of S/ As Bardwell Odum and James Hosty, November 28, 1963; CE 2124, 24H 692)

April 8, 1963— time unstated, CST— Dallas, Texas. Lee Oswald reported to the Texas Employment Commission “seeking employment; he having lost his position with Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall.” (Affidavit of Helen P. Cunningham, June 11, 1964, 11H 478) Note: Two days later is the alleged “Walker incident,” and two days following that, Oswald will again visit the Texas Employment Commission. Perhaps he now considered himself an unemployed and not easily-employed, based on his failure in his new attempted career move: sniper.

Continuing...

April 10, 1963, prior to the events allegedly involving Lee Oswald and General Edwin Walker. The U.S. Navy announced that the nuclear submarine Thresher, with 129 men aboard, had been lost off the New England coast while making test dives after a recent overhaul at the Electric Boat complex. (Harold W. Chase and Allen H. Lehrman, eds., Kennedy and the Press; the News Conferences, p. 420) Note: It goes without saying that this news would clearly overshadow the “assassination attempt” on General Walker.
 
April 10, 1963— evening, CST, Dallas, Texas. Lee Oswald eats dinner with Marina, and leaves their residence at 7: 00 or 7: 30 p.m. (Testimony of Marina Oswald 1H 37) Later, someone took a shot at General E. Walker, US Army, Resigned; Marina tells Warren Commission that Lee did not return from his typing class at Crozier Tech on schedule, and she became worried, walked into his room, and found a note with directions. “He only told me that he had shot at General Walker.” (Testimony of Marina Oswald 1H 16).
Marina added that Oswald claimed Walker was a fascist, and that the world would have been a better place if someone had killed Hitler. (Testimony of Marina Oswald 1H 16) In subsequent testimony, Marina indicates that Lee returned home at 11 p.m. Note: In James Martin’s testimony, Allan Dulles told Martin that the Walker event occurred on this date. (Statement by Commissioner Dulles during testimony of James H. Martin 1H 485) Questions: Did Marina notice anything odd about Oswald’s behavior at dinner? People planning to commit murder occasionally will behave outside of their traditional behavioral norms. Did Marina see Oswald take a rifle with him to “typing class”? There is no hint of it in her testimony, and not surprisingly, it is an unasked question. It seems unlikely that the question would not have been asked because Marina did not know what a rifle was. She knew. Had Marina made any protest, prior to April 10th, about the existence of the rifle and/ or the pistol? She would testify, after the assassination, that they were living in abject poverty, yet Oswald had enough resources to spray money around on his weapons collection. But did she make any such statement, or did she recall making any such statement, prior to the assassination? And was the abject poverty the sum and substance of her concern? Guns don’t kill people…. abject poverty does.
 
April 10, 1963— 9: 30 p.m. CST (time not precise). One shot was fired at Major General Edwin E. Walker, U.S. Army, Resigned, as he worked on his income tax returns while sitting near a window. He will telephone Robert Alan Surrey as well as the police, and Surrey will arrive within fifteen minutes, and overhear police conversation as well as press interviews given by Walker….
 
[There is a big big blurb on this I excluded.]
 
April 10, 1963— 9: 15 or 9: 30 p.m., CST, Dallas, Texas. Robert Alan Surrey arrives at the home of General Edwin A. Walker, U.S. Army, retired. Aware of people looking in windows on April 8 and the presence of tire prints outside, Surrey spends the evening at Walker’s home and the tire imprint evidence is sought on the morning of April 11. (Testimony of Robert Alan Surrey, 5H 440) Note: Upon Surrey’s arrival, Walker pointed to a hole in the wall and Surrey said, “Oh, you found a bug.” Surrey would also notice that Walker’s right forearm was bleeding slightly. No explanation is given for that.

April 10, 1963— 10: 00 p.m., CST— Dallas, Texas. Marina Oswald “suddenly” discovers a note written by Lee Oswald, which allegedly contained instructions as to what she should do in the event he is taken into police custody. The first item indicated, “Here is the Key to the post office box which is located in the main post office downtown on Ervay Street, the street where there is a drugstore where you always used to stand.” As it happens, the Post Office was at 400 N. Ervay Street (where Warren Commission depositions were taken in Dallas), and four blocks south of there was “Skillern’s Drugs” on the first floor of the Mercantile Bank Building. The fifth and seventh floors of that building were occupied by Hunt Oil Company. The Warren Commission Exhibit volumes begin on 16H 1, and the first item is “an unsigned note in Russian to Marina Oswald.” The contents of this note, when translated by my erstwhile Russian guest, pro-tem, of the editor of this Chronology (and therefore able to be translated by any number of people in close contact with law enforcement, c. 1963), strongly suggest that it was the “Walker note,” left for Marina. It seems an odd and almost bizarre coincidence that the very first item published in the “manual of Oswald’s guilt” was a note providing instructions for what a non-Russian-speaking woman should do on the odd chance that her husband was incarcerated or killed in some unstated event. It seems even more odd that no translation was created for that exhibit— because many other such exhibits are translated. Nor was any handwriting expert consulted to see if the note was written by Oswald— since it was known, via Marina, that she received the note. The note has a notation that looks like “D 30 Jue” on the upper right-hand corner in smallish script. I cannot place any meaning on it. (Commission Exhibit 1, 16H 1) That said, I asked my transient Russian visitor to review a good number of Oswald’s writings in Russian, and while she found a good number of grammatical errors, most commonly the omission of necessary commas, she paused while reading this first document— this possible “Walker note”— and asked how long the writer of the document had been in Russia. I told her, “Two-point-five years, and this was approximately one year AFTER his return.” She told me that Oswald’s Russian— as shown in the note— that beyond the absence of commas, there were a number of extremely well-made connections in words. The Russian language contains constructions “bl” and “b,” which, when they follow certain other letters, are silent, but they change the intonation and inflection of the letter just before them. Oswald had all of them correct, and it seems unlikely that he wrote the Walker note using a dictionary over the span of several days. “Look, here,” my guest said, “many Russians would not get this correct— or this word here— would not be spelled correctly.” She also added parenthetically that “a long, long time ago,” she saw a movie, in Russia, in the Russian language. It was a Russian movie, not an American movie with a Russian overdub, and it portrayed Oswald as, in her specific words, “a very strange man indeed.” I leave it to the reader to draw the necessary conclusions, but it seems bizarre in the extreme that someone who could not spell at all well in English (allegedly his native language) could nevertheless correctly spell difficult if not impossible Russian words. Addendum: Although the first exhibit is not attributed to Oswald, nor specifically to the Walker event, the events immediately following CE 1 are also Walker-related, except for one photo of Oswald, neck-up, in his Marine digs with a helmet, suggesting, of course that he knew how to kill. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows…. Question: Why would there be a reference to a location where Marina “used to stand”? Finally: Much has been made of the “Walker note,” and Marina, investing all her energy to convict her husband for everything imaginable, made sure that the Warren Commission got the full treatment, with all of the possible “Walker thoughts,” including all of that which Oswald allegedly burned so it did not have to be produced, still had the energy to note that the photo with the hole where the license plate should have been HAD been an intact photo when she saw it. Sylvia Meagher, a first-generation assassination researcher (d. 1989), took an alternative view of the so-called Walker note, and her spin is that it had nothing to do with an assassination attempt on General Walker. Meagher’s only published work (beyond her indices) is Accessories After the Fact, and to this it day remains one of the Chronology editor’s “top five” recommendations (personal works, including this monster, excluded).

Continuing...

April 10, 1963, late evening, Dallas, Texas. Lee Oswald returns home, after allegedly firing a shot at General Edwin Walker, sitting in an illuminated window, and missing. “… the day Lee shot at Walker, he buried the rifle because when he came home and told me that he shot at General Walker and I asked him where the rifle was and he said he buried it.’ (Deposition of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald Resumed, 11H 293) Note: This revelation came in testimony in late July, 1964, and not when Marina testified day after day in early February as the Warren Commission’s first witness. That may explain its Pinocchio quality, as the totality of the testimony “evolves” with the passage of time. Of equal or greater import, either Lee or Marina was lying about the gun being buried, unless extreme caution was taken with it. Having been long doubtful of this testimony, the editor of this Chronology purchased (legally), a very cheap, well-used bolt-action .22 in the state of New Jersey, and in the month of May (simulating April in Dallas and simulating the quality of a Mannlicher-Carcano before burial), buried it in the earth for three days. In that short amount of time, damage was done to both the wood and the metal parts of the weapon. It has never been fired. Allow for the possibility that a surplus Mannlicher Carcano would not fare any better, and possibly worse— IF it was, in fact, buried. Marina initially testified that Lee had taken the weapon away from the apartment three days after the Walker shooting, TO bury it, but then amended her testimony that he brought it home after three days. One of Lee Oswald’s challenges, of course, if he buried the weapon that he somehow mysteriously carted from 214 Neely Street to Walker’s home, some distance away, is that Oswald would have first had to get out of any residential area, as he could not very well bury the rifle in someone’s front yard and expect them not to notice.
Secondly, Oswald would have had to been cool, calm, and oh-so collected— which Marina insisted he was not, not even when he returned home without the gun— in order to bury it somewhere and remember the exact spot, in the dark, in order to subsequently retrieve the rifle. For my dime, the whole story stinks from start to finish.
 
April 11, 1963— time unstated, Irving, Texas. Ruth Paine brought Marina Oswald to her home in Irving, following up her thought on inviting Marina to stay there. It was on this occasion (or 8 April 1963) that Marina told Ruth Paine that Lee had asked her to return to Russia and indicated that Lee was tired of the marriage. (Report of FBI S/ As Bardwell Odum and James Hosty, November 28, 1963, CE 2124, 24H 692) Note: Mrs. Paine testified to this event, but was not asked, “What was Marina’s state of mind that day?” given that we have been asked to believe that she was aware, only hours before that her husband had attempted to murder a well-known public figure. (Deposition of Ruth Paine, 9H, 359) April 11, 1963— time unstated, Houston, Texas. On the day after the Walker shooting, Jack Ruby introduced “Lee Harvey Oswald” to friends in the Escapades Lounge in Houston, Texas, a good distance from Dallas. One of the witnesses to the event, Robert Price, described one of the men as 5’11”, 28-30 years old, with light crew cut, and added that an additional person, unnamed, was a pilot. Note: Someone named Lee Oswald, who had previously applied for unemployment benefits, applied for unemployment benefits in Dallas on the same day. (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald, p. 521) It would make some sense that this unemployment insurance applicant was the “historical Lee Oswald,” as he had been fired from his job at Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall, where his work concluded on Saturday, April 6, 1963. The only real oddity is that Oswald was not at the unemployment office when it opened on Monday, April 8, and that he waited until Thursday, April 11. In thirteen days, perhaps because of the Walker incident and a near-brush with the law in which Oswald was nearly caught handing out Fair Play for Cuba materials in Dallas, Oswald would skip town and try to make a new start of political chicanery in New Orleans. The kicker: Not until November 22, 1963, did the alleged assassin truly become “Lee Harvey Oswald.” Although that may have been his birth name, and there is some dissent on that point, he did not “use” that name. To the world at large, he was Lee H. Oswald, so this introduction is either overstated by the witness or overstated, if true, by Ruby, to make sure nobody forgot whom they saw. But why would Ruby do that?

April 12, 1963— time unstated, Dallas, Texas. Having weakened his resume entry as “sniper” by his inability to hit a well-lighted General Walker two days previously, Lee Oswald once again visited the Texas Employment Commission in search of employment. (Affidavit of Helen P. Cunningham, June 11, 1964, 11H 478)

Continuing...

April 12-13, 1963— times unstated and unsolicited; Dallas, Texas. Marina Oswald indicated she saw numerous photos of Walker’s house amidst a collection of data Lee Oswald had compiled. (Testimony of Marina Oswald 1H 39) Question: If she had just been ‘rescued’ by Ruth Paine the day before, how, on this date, would she have been rummaging through Oswald’s private yet sophomoric collection of spy-wannabe materials? If she was trying to induce spousal abuse, she was clearly on the right track.
 
April 13, 1963— time unstated and unasked— perhaps for good reason; Dallas, Texas. Lee Oswald burned his “notebook” of logistics (descriptions of house, distances, location, distribution of windows) regarding the Walker shooting. He did so by burning his notebook with matches over a wash bowl in the bathroom in the apartment on Neely Street. Marina’s testimony is confused and garbled, as one might expect from testimony being invented as events dictated: Liebeler: “You previous told the Commission that Lee Oswald prepared a notebook in which he kept plans and notes about his attack on General Walker; is that right?” Mrs. Oswald: “I saw this book only after the attempt on Walker’s life. He burned it or disposed of it.” [Yet she will later say she saw him making entries on a regular basis, and she saw him burn it, so why the “or””] Liebeler: “Tell me when you first saw the notebook?” [She would subsequently testify she saw him making entries in it before the shooting.] Mrs. Oswald: “Three days after this happened.” [perjury] Liebeler: “You saw the notebook 3 days after it had happened?” Mrs. Oswald: “I think so.” Liebeler: “How did you come to see it then?” Mrs. Oswald: “When he was destroying it.” [perjury] Liebeler: “Is that the only time you ever saw it?” Mrs. Oswald: “I saw on several occasions that he was writing something in the book, but he was hiding it from me and he was locking it in his room.” [perjury] Liebeler: “Did he actually lock the door to his room when he left the apartment?”
Mrs. Oswald: “The door to his room could be locked only from the inside and he was locking the door when he was writing in the book, otherwise, he was hiding it in some secret place and he warned me not to mess around and look around his things. He asked me not to go into his room and look around.” Liebeler: “You saw him writing in this book before the night that he shot at General Walker?” [questions all based on the a priori assumption of Oswald’s guilt in the Walker shooting, with the only proof being Marina Oswald, a former Soviet citizen who had been cast out of Leningrad for reasons not documented, sent to Minsk, where she met an American and married him— then ratted him out.] They are asking the person who would find him guilty whether or not he was guilty…. Mrs. Oswald: “Not before the night.” Liebeler: “After?” Mrs. Oswald: “No; not before— 1 month before, but not every day, you know, sometimes. I saw him writing on several occasions in that book prior to the attempt on Walker’s life, only I did not know what he was writing.” …. Liebeler: “But 3 days after he shot at General Walker, you saw him destroy the book; is that correct?” Mrs. Oswald: “Yes.” Liebeler: “How did he destroy it?” Mrs. Oswald: “He burned it.” Liebeler: “Where?” Mrs. Oswald: “In the apartment house on Neeley.” Liebeler: “Where in the apartment?” Mrs. Oswald: “He burned it with matches over a wash bowl in the bathroom.” Liebeler: “And you first became aware of this when you smelled it burning; is that correct?” Mrs. Oswald: “I did not see the book, but I saw him writing in this book several times, but after he burns the book he told me what was in that book and he showed me several photographs. Before he burned the book, he showed me several photographs that were in the book. I asked him what the pictures were and he sad, ‘Well, this one is a picture of the house of General Walker’s— his residence.” Liebeler: “And that picture was pasted in the notebook; is that right?” Mrs. Oswald: “No; It was loose in the book— I really don’t remember.” [the standard “Marina refrain”] …. Liebeler: “Did you say anything to Lee when you saw him destroying this book about why he prepared it and why he left it there in the apartment when he went to shoot General Walker?” Mrs. Oswald: “No; I did not. No; I never asked him why he left it in the apartment, why he left his book in the apartment while he went to shoot General Walker. I did not ask him why he left it in the apartment. I asked him what for was he making all these entries in the book and he answered that he wanted to leave a complete record so that all the details would be in it. He told me that these entries consisted of the description of the house of General Walker, the distances, the location, and the distribution of windows in it.” … “All these details— all these records that he was writing it either for his own use so that he would know what to do when the time came to shoot General Walker. I am guessing that perhaps he did it to appear to be a brave man in case he was arrested, but that is my supposition. I was so afraid after this attempt on Walker’s life that the police might come to the house. I was afraid that there would be evidence in the house such as this book.” …. “At the time he was destroying it— he showed me this book after this attempt on Walker’s life, and I suggested to him that it would be awfully bad to keep a thing like that in the house.” Marina then claimed that at the same time, Lee took the rifle and buried it, and then she craftily recanted and claimed the rifle’s interment was immediate: “No; the day Lee shot at Walker, he buried the rifle because when he came home and told me that he shot at General Walker and I asked him where the rifle was and he said he buried it.” …. Liebeler: “Had he destroyed the notebook before he brought the rifle back?” Mrs. Oswald: “No.” Liebeler: “How long after he brought the rifle back did he destroy the book?” Mrs. Oswald: “He destroyed the book approximately an hour after he brought the rifle home.” Liebeler: “After he brought the rifle home, then, he showed you the book?” Mrs. Oswald: “Yes.” Liebeler: “And you said it was not a good idea to keep this book?” Mrs. Oswald: “Yes.” Liebeler: “And then he burned the book?” Mrs. Oswald: “Yes.” (Deposition of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald resumed, 11H 293— 294)
Note: This is a seriously significant exchange, for at least two reasons. First, by suggesting that Marina had NO KNOWLEDGE of the Walker event, she’s off the hook for that one, although she testified shortly thereafter, “I was so afraid after this attempt on Walker’s life that the police might come to the house. I was afraid that there would be evidence in the house such as this book… I told him that it is best not to have this kind of stuff in the house— this book…. At the time he was destroying it— he showed me this book after this attempt on Walker’s life, and I suggested to him that it would be awfully bad to keep a thing like that in the house.” (Deposition of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald Resumed, 11H 292-293) Why would it be necessary for Marina to tell Lee that the book was not a nifty keepsake WHILE he was in the process of destroying it? The reality is that she was guilty as an accessory after the fact— but since she was the Warren Commission’s “star” with her ability to make Oswald into a monster, since he was not alive to do it himself, no charges would have been considered. Secondly, “the tale” takes on added significance because it is most likely that the DeMohrenschildts visited the Neely Street apartment and saw the Oswalds for the last time— and by accident (so we are asked to believe) they also saw the rifle. It has to be considered that the burning of paper and possibly photographs would leave a lingering aroma (especially photos, c. 1963) in such a small apartment and would have been still detectable by the late-night visitors— particularly as there is no indication that the purification burning ritual was carried out as early as dawn. Finally, if the reader goes back to the testimony immediately above, the question needs to be asked, If Marina was afraid that something LIKE THE BOOK could cause problems with the legal authorities, what in God’s name did she think the gun was going to do for anyone’s ability to stay out of jail? There is absolutely no logic to any of this, and if read that way, it seems clear that Liebeler is just walking her into a trap that there is no way out of. As a final thought, a few lines later, Marina would insist, when shown CE 5, that the license plate had been there when she was first shown the photo.
 
April 13, 1963 (possibly, and dangerous if true, April 14) Lee Oswald retrieved the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle allegedly used to shoot at General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963, and allegedly buried on that date until its retrieval three days later. (Deposition of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald Resumed, 11H 292) Note: Marina Oswald is unsure, in her testimony, as to the exact time of the retrieval:
“As I remember, it was the weekend— Saturday or Sunday when Lee brought the rifle back home.” (Deposition of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald resumed, 11H 293) Marina Oswald is once again suffering from her ongoing bouts with selective memory; the gun had to be in the Neely Street apartment on Saturday, as that is when Jeanne DeMohrenschildt saw the weapon, and George DeMohrenschildt blandly commented that it must have been Oswald who missed with the shot taken at General Walker. Secondly, had the Warren Commission been aware of its own evidence, they would have taken the two events— the return of the weapon (method unstated), and the DeMohrenschildts’ visualization and verbalization of it— and compared them to Ilya Mamantov’s translation of Marina Oswald’s answers to Will Fritz in the early evening of November 22. The most telling of those comments was that she had never seen anything more than the butt end of the gun, secreted in the blanket, but that she had never seen the gun itself. She saw the entire gun when Lee “brought it back,” she saw it in the closet with Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, she saw it on the porch on Magazine Street based on testimony that she watched Lee work the bolt, and she photographed Lee Oswald holding it. (See deposition of Ilya Mamantov) Note: If there are two facts tangential to the Kennedy assassination that are known to be absolutes and not in dispute, they would be that Walker was lionized by not only the Dallas right-wingers, but throughout much of the rightist South, and second, that he was equally respected and admired by the vast majority of the Dallas Police Force, a group which was believed to be a subset of the Birchers and Minutemen, c. 1963. While that is an exaggeration, there were certainly many right-wingers and far fewer, if any, “liberals” among the group. Yet the Walker shooting, noted in the papers as leaving behind a 30.06 steel jacketed bullet, was unsolved until it was “solved” in the guilt by association mode and the testimony of Marina Oswald. There are too many missing pieces here— if the cops were unable, in what had to have been dogged attempts, to find a body of evidence to seek an indictments or indictments, since the murder attempt was on someone who was very highly thought of by them, how, suddenly, did the “steel jacketed bullet” implicate Oswald, to the exclusion of others, on and after November 22nd? Clearly, it was a day for magic bullets. (media sources) Note: With respect to Lee Oswald’s burning of the written evidence of his planning of the Walker event, photos did survive, including one (CE 5, 16H 5), showing a grainy view of Walker’s home, and including a 1957 Chevrolet with a hole in the photo where the license plate would have been. Adamant as she was in “giving up” Lee for the Walker crime, Marina Oswald was equally adamant that she had seen that photo and it was intact— license plate included— when she saw it. Warren Counsel Liebeler tried to get her to admit to the possibility that the mark could have resulted from a crease or from a hole being made through the photo (which clearly DID happen), but Marina stood her ground on the visibility of the license plate when she saw the photo. It appears in Jesse Curry’s Memoirs, and although unreadable absent some kind of computerized magnification, the photo as shown in Curry’s book DOES include the license plate. The license plate on that vehicle, parked in front of Walker’s house, was “redacted” by having a hole cut in the photo AFTER it left the property room of the Dallas Police. Suspects in this “for certain” photographic alteration could include, but not be limited to Dallas cops, FBI, Warren Commission— but it was not an accident that the license plate in question disappeared from the photo of that vehicle. In the normal course of “accidents happen,” any similar sized portion of that photograph could have been damaged. But the coincidence that a small piece was damaged and had contained the license number is another instance of one “Kennedy coincidence” too many. So when one views the Warren Commission’s “Exhibits,” one only has to proceed as far as Commission Exhibit 5, on the fifth page of Volume XVI, to see that the lies and deceit begun with the words, scripted questions, unasked questions, avoided witnesses— continues immediately into the exhibits. (For Marina’s recollection of there being a license plate visible in the original photo— and how would she be aware except if the photo was intact?— see Marina Oswald’s insistence in deposition of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald Resumed, 11H 294-295)

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April 13 or 14, 1963, 10: 00 p.m.— April 13, a Saturday, and April 14, Easter Sunday.** The date( s) on which the DeMohrenschildts claimed they learned of Oswald’s ownership of a weapon as well as the last time they had any contact with Lee Oswald. George DeMohrenschildt would subsequently testify, “I did not know even that he was interested in weapons ‘til the day— which probably you will ask me about later on— Easter— I think, why my wife saw his gun. I didn’t know he was interested. I didn’t know he had the gun. I didn’t know he was interested in shooting or hunting. I didn’t know he was a good shot or never had any impression.” (Deposition of George S. DeMohrenschildt, 9H 248)
 
“**” The Demohrenschildts visited the Oswalds at 214 Neely Street to drop off a stuffed pink Easter bunny for the Oswald baby. Apparently they awakened the Oswalds, as Lee let them in and then got fully dressed. The dates are suggestive and are the best estimates for the event. Because DeMohrenschildt commented, “Are you then the guy who took a pot shot at General Walker?” it is clear that Easter fell after April 10, the date of the Walker event. The following weekend, and the last one on which Easter could fall, (April 20-21), the Oswalds spent Saturday at a picnic with Ruth Paine and Lee spent Sunday well-dressed in the bathroom, rebuffed by Marina in the “Nixon event.” It is extremely unlikely that following DeMohrenschildt’s comment about Walker that Oswald would have gone hunting for Nixon the following morning, and beyond that, the DeMohrenschildts left Dallas for good (or evil) on Friday, April 19. For that reason, and because Easter did fall on April 14 of 1963, those are the suggested dates; it is also a factor that the DeMohrenschildts left Dallas for New York, and thence to Haiti, on Friday, April 19. George DeMohrenschildt believed the date of the Oswald visit was Easter Sunday; his wife thought it was the previous Saturday night. Logic suggests Saturday, because it would be somewhat odd— although few things were odd for George DeMohrenschildt— to drop off an “Easter gift” very late at night ON EASTER SUNDAY. (Deposition of George S. DeMohrenschildt, 9H 248-249; Deposition of Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, 9H 299) The viewing of the rifle by Jeanne DeMohrenschildt is critical in this entry. George DeMohrenschildt testified that his wife said, “’ Look, George, they have a gun here.’ And Marina opened the closet and showed it to Jeanne, a gun that belonged obviously to Oswald…. I didn’t look at the gun… Jeanne was looking at it, at the gun, and I think she asked Marina, ‘what is that’ you see. That was the sight on the gun. ‘What is that. That looks like a telescopic sight.’” “And Marina said, ‘That crazy idiot is target shooting all the time.’ …I asked him, ‘Why do you do that?’… He said, ‘I go out and do target shooting. I like target shooting.’ So out of the blue, really jokingly I told him, ‘Are you then the guy who took a pot shot at General Walker?’ And he smiled to that… He sort of shriveled, you see, when I asked this question.” (Deposition of George S. DeMohrenschildt, 9H 249) The above-cited “crazy idiot is target shooting all the time” comment attributed to Marina Oswald, flies directly in the face of Marina’s repeated disclaimers that Oswald never did any target shooting— and, at certain necessary points in her testimony, that she had never seen the gun. It also flies directly into the face of her own narrative, when taken to police headquarters in the late afternoon of November 22nd, that she had ever seen the gun, and she had no idea what the ‘gizmo’ [the telescopic sight] was. She would tell that to the FBI and Secret Service in four separate interviews between December 4, 1963 and December 16, 1963— admittedly a series of occasions when she would not want to be bragging about Lee’s target practicing. She was clear in the interviews that her husband never left or returned to their home carrying the rifle (1), that she had no knowledge of him speaking of, or doing, target practice, and that she had never seen him clean the weapon or have it in his hands. (2) When called to give testimony in Washington, she changed the story to say that Oswald had taken target practice in a field “near Dallas” and she added that she recalled Oswald practicing with the rifle on a day in January, 1963, and also cleaning the rifle that day. (3) She changed that story the following day to make the date of the practice and cleaning closer to the time of the Walker attempted shooting. (Commission Exhibits 1785, 1401, 1790, 1403, 2694, and 1404, respectively, in 23H 392— 394, 22H 740— 764, 23H 403— 404, 22H 765— 784, 26H 58— 68, and 22H 785— 788) Notes on the obvious perjury: (1) Marina stated to the FBI that Lee never left or returned home with the rifle, yet she told the Warren Commission that after he was clearly guilty of attempting to kill General Walker, he buried the rifle and returned home with it three or four days later, hidden under his raincoat. But even that “begs” a far larger question: If Marina never saw Lee walk in the door with the gun, how did it arrive at the Neely Street residence? That was where the couple was domiciled at the time “Hidell” received the package at a post office box that only “Oswald” could use. From there, it has to be presumed that he took it home, or else he had a fellow conspirator keep possession of the weapon until the Walker event, after which he brought it home. Logistics support the concern: The “apartment” was a cracker-box. Marina was not employed and had nowhere essentially to go, so it is a reasonable assumption that she was at home when Lee retrieved the package at the post office and brought it home. The only counter-scenario would put Marina in the water closet and Lee snuck the gun in. If that was the case, however, did Marina think the gun suddenly appeared from nowhere when Lee brought it home after the Walker event, and that also begs the question because she said he practiced with it before the Walker event. (2) Her denial of ever seeing the weapon in his hands is fraught with problems. She would testify that she sat with him on the porch on Magazine Street in New Orleans while he “dry fired” the gun, and she admitted that she photographed him holding the gun. (The latter italics were stated to me, February, 1996, by Marina Oswald.) Beyond that, if she never saw him with the gun in his hands, it either implies that he moved it about in the apartment with great stealth, or Marina moved it, suggesting herself therefore as an accessory before the fact by helping him to maintain the rifle. (3) Marina did not see Lee clean the gun after practicing with it in January, 1963, because “officially,” he did not take possession of it until mid-to-late March. The fact that she changed her statement to authorities the following day is a result of one of several possible scenarios: First, she realized she was wrong; second, the authorities realized she was wrong and reminded her of the purchase/ receipt data— either to prevent the “January statement” from looking foolish or to prevent it from being taken as true, thereby proving the existence of a rifle before “Hidell” ordered a rifle from Klein’s Sporting Goods. It all adds up to massive perjury, and these are not isolated instances. It could be argued that Marina was fearful of legal charges being brought against her, or she was fearful of deportation back to Russia of herself and the two children— a complex illegality in 1963, or, thinking as a Russian woman might have in the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin (to quote Sean Connery in “The Hunt for Red October”) she might have been fearful of a one-way trip to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Over the years, I’ve received numerous requests from researchers (and I’m thankful for their confidence) that I personally contact Marina and “write her biography.” I’d frankly love to, but Marina is having none of it, and I think any researcher worth his salt (excluding the Biblical Lot and his wife) would have to get into the perjury issues in any honest biography, and I’m convinced that the reason Marina is extremely reticent to have a biography done is exactly that reason— and the fear of the fallout that could still impact on her children— and their children. Not deportation or Lubyanka, mind you, but serious opprobrium for generations. What their father did (allegedly) was bad enough. Mama, too? Mrs. DeMohrenschildt corroborated Marina’s pre-interruption testimony in a virtually identically-told scenario. “Then we went to another room, and she opens the closet, and I see the gun standing there. I said, what is the gun doing over there?… A rifle… In the closet, right in the beginning. It wasn’t hidden or anything.” When shown CE 139, the alleged assassination weapon, Mrs. DeMohrenschildt would answer, “It looks very much like it.” (Deposition of Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, 9H 315) “I just asked what on earth is he doing with a rifle.” She said, ‘Oh, he just loves to shoot.’ I said, ‘Where on earth does he shoot? Where can he shoot?’ When they lived in a little house. ‘Oh, he goes in the park and he shoots at leaves and things like that.’ … But he was taking the baby out. He goes with her, that was his amusement…. that was his amusement, practicing in the park, shooting leaves…. She just said, we are so short of money, and this crazy lunatic buys a rifle.” (J. DeMohrenschildt, 9H 316-317) “And then I returned back, and told George— do you know what they have in the closet? I came back to the room, where George and Lee were sitting and talking. I said, do you know what they have in this closet? A rifle. And started to laugh about it. And George, of course, with his sense of humor— Walker was shot at a few days ago, within that time. He said, ‘Did you take a pot shot at Walker by any chance?’” (Deposition of Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, 9H 316-317) Note: DeMohrenschildt was pointedly asked, “Was there ever an occasion after this time, when you and Mrs. De Mohrenschildt came to see the Oswalds, that as soon as you opened the door, you said, ‘Lee, how is it possible that you missed?’ and George DeMohrenschildt answered, “Never.” He would state, however, that Oswald did not like Walker—“ this was the period of General Walker’s you know, big showoff, you know.” (Deposition of George S. DeMohrenschildt, 9H 250) Note: The significance of this testimony, if true, is overwhelming, as it, plus Marina’s own story about Lee “dry-firing” the rifle on the porch in New Orleans, makes her November 22, 1963 statements patently egregious lies. She could not claim that she had only seen a couple inches of the gun in the blanket if this OR the New Orleans testimony is true, and she could not have questioned what the telescopic sight was, (claiming to have never seen it) at Dallas Police headquarters following Lee’s arrest on November 22nd. If Marina Oswald was prepared to go the lie route that quickly, the reader needs to be very cautious regarding every word stated in the four-plus decades since. Recapitulation of the “DeMohrenschildt gun-sighting” incident. It is critical to see the events in one linear progression, as they open more doors to more ugly places than the mind can conjure. In and of itself, the incident of seeing the rifle in the closet is, in microcosm, absolute proof of so many anomalies that make the totality of the investigation a sham.
April 10, 1963, a Wednesday evening. One shot is fired at General Edwin A. Walker as he was (at the 11th hour— odd for such a patriot) doing his tax returns. (media sources, et al; the event itself is not in dispute) Marina Oswald would tell the FBI that upon realizing what Lee had done, she asked him what he had done with the rifle, citing a fear that it would be found. She added that Lee told her he had buried the rifle in the ground at a good distance from the Walker residence. He would not return with the rifle until Sunday, April 14— in the first telling of the tale. Early Warren Commission critics Leo Sauvage and Sylvia Meagher would question the entire corpus of the “buried rifle” story. How exactly did Oswald bury the weapon without the necessity of digging a hole with his bare hands? With what, precisely, was the rifle protected, because an old wooden rifle, buried in the ground for four days— particularly with the spring rains of April either past or current— would clearly shows signs of what can only be described as “rot.” How, if Oswald buried the rifle in the dark of night (and alone, of course), how was he able to return to the exact burial site four days later? On that occasion, how did he unearth it without using his bare hands? How did he get it home, concealed? All of those are very valid considerations, considering that a microscopic study of the weapon did not reveal as much as one soil particle. Sylvia Meagher, in acknowledging the questions raised by others, added: “To my colleague’s [Sauvage] questions, I will add one of my own: How is it that the many searches of Oswald’s property and possessions by local officers and federal agents uncovered no rifle-cleaning equipment? According to the Commission, Oswald made active and frequent use of the rifle, even burying it in the ground for a few days. That he did so but failed to clean the weapon (which was ‘well-oiled’ when discovered in the Book Depository, as mentioned earlier) is scarcely believable. Yet the inventories of Oswald’s belongings, which list such miscellany as ‘Label with King Oscar Kipper recipes’ (CE 3042) and ‘One Texas flag— small’ (CE 2713, do not include any rifle-cleaning paraphernalia.” (Warren Commission testimony of Paul Stombaugh, 4H 81; Leo Sauvage, The Oswald Affair: An Examination of the Contradictions and Omissions of the Warren Report, passim; Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, & the Report, p. 129) April 13, (most likely April 13, a Saturday; possibly April 14, Easter Sunday) 1963. Marina would tell the FBI that during the visit that she had shown Mrs. DeMohrenschildt “a rifle which Oswald had bought,” and further, that “this rifle was standing in a corner or on a shelf in the house on Neely.” (FBI report of December 11, 1963, Commission Exhibit 1403, 22H 776-777)
If Marina was worried about the “surveillance book” that Lee had kept, but not worried about the rifle being there (if, in fact, he had brought it back by then) why in God’s name would she advertise the event by displaying the rifle to one half of an extremely unstable couple? As the Warren Commission would subsequently report, it was Mrs. DeMohrenschildt who adamantly insisted that the visit was on this date— providing a serious problem, inasmuch as it would have been difficult for her to see a rifle in the Oswald apartment if that rifle was buried elsewhere, in an undisclosed location— but in a field near a railroad track. (Warren Commission deposition of Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, 9H 315— 317; Marina Oswald FBI interview, December 11, 1963, Commission Exhibit 1403, 22H 777) George DeMohrenschildt inadvertently provided a clue, which, combined with Marina’s “backslide,” noted immediately below, throws the whole issue up in the air, with the only certainty that Marina Oswald was totally lacking in credibility. DeMohrenschildt testified that the visit occurred “quite late in the evening. I think they were asleep. We knocked at the door and shouted, and Lee Oswald came down undressed, half undressed, you see, maybe in shorts, and opened the door.” (Warren Commission deposition of George DeMohrenschildt, 9H 249) This led Sylvia Meagher, among several, to raise a critical issue— perhaps one of dozens “overlooked” by the Warren Commission: “Supposedly [because Marina would change the rifle return date from Sunday to Saturday, the same day on which she advised Oswald to burn the documents but did not force him to permanently stash the rifle], only a few hours earlier Oswald had recovered the rifle with which he had attempted to shoot General Walker and had burned the tell-tale notebook. When Marina Oswald heard that knocking, surely her first thought must have been that it was the police coming to arrest her husband [a reasonable assumption, and it’s more reasonable inasmuch as Marina’s pedigree suggested that she had more to fear from the proverbial “late night knock on the door” than the typical American housewife would]. And surely, relieved as she must have been to find that it was only the DeMohrenschildts on a social visit, the last thing in the world that she would have done that night would have been to call attention to that rifle or to remark casually that Oswald ‘just loves to shoot.’” (Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, & the Report, p. 130; Marina’s comment in Warren Commission Deposition of Marina Oswald, 9H 316) Even then, it’s yet another change in the story by Marina Oswald. She was the first witness called by the Warren Commission, and although many of their choices of witnesses were of no value whatsoever while the big fish avoided the unabated hook, she was the one witness who would never have given evidence in a court of law. That said, her first day of testimony wholly contradicts everything you have read in this “recapitulation,” and as you’ve seen and as you will see, the story would go through additional metamorphoses. Nevertheless, after a few howdy-do’s and thank-you coming, the testimony approached relevance: Warren Commission General Counsel Rankin: “Did you ever show that rifle to the DeMohrenschildts?” Marina Oswald: “I know that DeMohrenschildt had said that the rifle had been shown to him, but I don’t remember that.” (Warren Commission testimony of Marina Oswald, 1H 14— the 14th page of 17,909 in the 26 volumes.) The question is, How did she know, on February 3, 1964, what George DeMohrenschildt was saying? The only possible answer is that one of her “keepers” made her aware of that data. Shortly after (four pages later), another monkey wrench was thrown into the gears. Marina Oswald: “By the way, several days after that [Walker event], the DeMohrenschildts came to us, and as soon as he opened the door, he said, ‘Lee, how is it possible that you missed?’ I looked at Lee. I thought that he had told DeMohrenschildt about it. And Lee looked at me, and he apparently though that I had told DeMohrenschildt about it.” (Warren Commission testimony of Marina Oswald, 1H 18) This puts the DeMohrenschildt statement ahead of Mrs. DeMohrenschildt’s viewing of the weapon, and ahead of her comment to her husband that Lee had such a weapon. Two possibilities: Marina was lying (not mistaken— make no mistake: her every thought was focused on what had happened; she didn’t like the idea of the “gulag”) or else George DeMohrenschildt somehow (“ how” unknown or unstated) had knowledge of the Walker event. There are no other options. On July 24, 1964, when giving further depositions before the Warren Commission, Marina Oswald backslid and indicated “it was the weekend— Saturday or Sunday when Lee brought the rifle home,” thus making it possible for Mrs. DeMohrenschildt to have seen it. (Warren Commission deposition of Marina Oswald, 11H 294)

Continuing....

April 14, 1963— Easter Sunday. Marina Oswald would tell the FBI that it was on this day that Oswald returned with the “buried” rifle, wrapped in a raincoat. She was specific that it was on the Sunday following the night of the assassination attempt.” (Commission Exhibit 1403, 22H 777) Yet the rifle that Oswald brought back to the apartment on April 14, 1963, was in the closet late on the evening of April 13, 1963. The story as the Warren Commission told it, was very straightforward, basic, and carefully worded to convince the reader even more of Oswald’s overall guilt for many things: “In connection with the relations between Oswald and DeMohrenschildt, the Commission has considered testimony concerning an event which occurred shortly after Oswald shot at General Walker. [Italics mine.] The DeMohrenschildts came to Oswald’s apartment on Neely Street for the first [and only] time on the evening of April 13, 1963, apparently to bring an Easter gift for the Oswald child. Mrs. DeMohrenschildt testified that while Marina Oswald was showing her the apartment, she saw a rifle with a scope in a closet. Mrs. DeMohrenschildt then told her husband, in the presence of the Oswalds, that there was a rifle in the closet. Mrs. DeMohrenschildt testified that ‘George, of course, with his sense of humor— Walker was shot at a few days ago, within that time. He said, “Did you take a pot shot at Walker by any chance?”’ At that point, Mr. DeMohrenschildt testified, Oswald ‘sort of shriveled, you see, when I asked this question … made a peculiar face … (*) changed the expression on his face’ and remarked that he did target shooting. Marina Oswald testified that the DeMohrenschildts [who left Dallas and the Oswalds on April 19, a Friday, so April 13-14 (Easter) is the only possible weekend time for the visit and the sighting of the rifle in the closet.] came to visit a few days after the Walker incident and that when DeMohrenschildt made his reference to Oswald’s possibly shooting at Walker, Oswald’s ‘face changed… he almost became speechless.’ (*) (Warren Report, pp. 282— 283) Clearly, the events are badly askew and no accounting of it can bring the totality of events into the finite universe. If the Warren Commission were on trial for accuracy on only this event, their labor( s) and Report would have been instantly scrapped. One last thought (*): There are frequent references to Oswald’s “reaction” when DeMohrenschildt— jokingly or otherwise— made his comment asking how Lee could have missed Walker. His facial movements became frozen or shriveled, and he became speechless… How is it that these things happened when Oswald was the butt of a joke, but they did not happen when he was accused of murdering the President of the United States AND a local policeman?
 
April 15, 1963, during daylight hours, CST, Dallas, Texas. Lee Oswald hung a sign around his neck saying “Cuba! Viva Fidel!” and passed out a small number of leaflets in Dallas. (McMillan, Marina and Lee, p. 294) Note: The reader is encouraged to recall that Oswald’s fame as a Cuban supporter resulted from his efforts in New Orleans, not Dallas; there are snippets of documented suggestions that Oswald did, in fact, attempt some pro-Castro efforts in Dallas, but they would pre-date his order for leaflets in New Orleans, raising the question, “Where did he get these particular materials?” It should also be added, as notice will be taken below, that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee sent materials to Lee Oswald, but on April 19, 1963— perhaps received hours before his departure for New Orleans, if at all. (Deposition of Vincent T. Lee, 10H, 87)
 
April 15, 1963, 11: 59 p.m., CST— Dallas, Texas. The deadline for filing of a tax return for fiscal year 1962 by Lee Oswald. Mark North, in an Appendix, duplicated what he cited as Oswald’s form 1040-A form, but it raises questions: why didn’t Oswald claim three dependants? Secondly, although some of the print and misspellings look like Oswald’s, the signature doesn’t. Who signed it? Clearly, Oswald filed such a form— this one was filed from 602 Elsbeth Street, suggesting it was completed prior to March 2, 1963, which would have been typical for Oswald, since he was always Johnny-on-the-spot on the unemployment line. Was it filed early enough that his return, $ 57 and change, would have gone to 602 Elsbeth, or would it have been forwarded? Was there any proof that in addition to his postal boxes, Oswald left residential forwarding addresses in his travels? North noted that Oswald’s tax return may have been “classified” (others’ tax returns were right on the desks in front of members of the Warren Commission when either Commissioners took testimony or staff counsel took depositions) because he had been paid “informant money” and under the then-existing tax code, he would have been required to itemize it as income. Knowing Oswald, it would have been the last thing he would have done, as he would have been hell-bent for leather for that $ 57 jackpot. North added, “Typically, informants for the Bureau earn from seventy-five to two hundred dollars per month for their cooperation.” (Mark North, Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy, p. 257) Comment: I have absolutely no idea where that per-month stipend data came from, but it is not accurate. It is only accurate in that it would be something along the lines of a “maintenance fee” for certain informants— Smith and Jones— who could be counted on to come up with valuable information two or three times per year. In that scenario, Smith and Jones would get $ 150 (+/-) per month just for saying “Howdy-do” to their FBI handler, with no questions asked. The money would be recorded as spent on “pay to confidential informant” and the agent would be reimbursed. But when Smith or Jones came in out of the cold with a gem, the price would be much higher, and it would be evaluated as to its value before payment was made. The reader needs to understand that the U.S. Government does not spend its money. They spend OUR money. And it is not unlike a well-constructed spigot, linking Congress and the taxpayers’ wallets. In my own circumstances, I often carried “flash rolls” of sizable amounts of money— amounts that would be sizable today, and were horse-chokers in 1969— 1970. It also happened that I was hired, as noted somewhere else, on June 30, 1969, a Monday. This was the last day of the government’s fiscal year (the start and end of the fiscal year are 365 days apart, but I believe they have been restructured since 1969). That day was like an absolute madhouse in the New York Regional Office— where I was sworn in, prior to my first airplane experience (and not expected) aboard the Eastern Airlines shuttle to Washington. All remaining “informant” monies had to be spent that day, or else it would have been reported to Congress that “information purchase” money, budgeted at “X” dollars, was not all spent, and Congress could take it upon itself to lower the budgeted amount the following year. Not a chance. It had to be spent. The safe or safes were opened, and any and all discretionary funds were spent. If my recollection is correct— and it has been almost forty years, there was something like $ 19--$ 20,000 in the “informant’s fund” in the New York field office. Agents took cash, contacted their informants, and paid them for the weather report. “Hey, my man, what’s on the street today?” “Heat and taxi cabs, Mr. Secret Agent Man.” $ 500 changed hands. The report/ receipt for that transaction would have stated something like, “Information regarding street transactions and ongoing street events of interest was purchased from a confidential informant.” I do not believe, as might be obviously suspected, that agents were putting money in their own pockets. They were too terrified of “Mr. Hoover,” in the case of FBI agents, or any other law-enforcement bureau director even though the whole purpose of the exercise was simply to empty the safe. “Buy money” went the same route— someone would be paid for the delivery of illegal weapons, narcotics, espionage microfilm, --you name it, they bought it that day. Delivery might have been immediate, or at a specified date in the future. I can’t say I didn’t learn a great deal on “day one.” Beyond that, it was the same way in criminal investigations. Whatever it cost, you did it. I was on the street in New York City on one occasion in New York City, probably with nothing more than $ 40 in my wallet. I was working that night with a senior agent, and he was not the kind who wore white shirts and cuff links. He was a walking punk, but he made the kind of excellent arrests that the white-shirt boys couldn’t touch. I was slightly better dressed. We were following a couple of known wrongdoers, and they went into an expensive New York night spot that 1. You just don’t walk into, and 2. You are required to be well dressed. We had neither appointment nor garments— well, at least my partner, G.E., God bless him, didn’t. But he had cash, as was his norm. He handed $ 300 (in 1970) to the doorman and we were in that place, fashion not withstanding. He quickly hooked up with the objects of the exercise, and introduced me as his attorney. The next three hours were spent with me inventing legal ways to get them all out of federal arrests they had suffered. The food and drink bill came out of his pocket also. The next morning, he yelled over from his desk to mine, “How much did we spend last night, about a half a yard?” The amount seemed about right, but he said, “Okay, you put down $ 250 and I’ll put $ 250. Criminal investigation.” That was “G.E.” for you, and although I quickly came to dislike the political nature of the work, it always stayed with me that there were good people like him, keeping citizens like me safe. His partner was shot in the back of the head and paralyzed; if G.E. is alive in 2013, he would be in his mid-70s. He was sent out of the U.S. because he was effective enough that a contract was put out on him, and I hope he survived those torrid days and nights. Back to Oswald the informant, Mark North suggested, “In all likelihood he did inform for the Bureau, for however short a period of time.” (Mark North, Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy, p. 258) Question: What did Lee Oswald know, prior to the filing of his income tax form for the fiscal/ tax year 1962 that would have been of any interest to the FBI? He had agreed that he would inform them if he was contacted by anyone in Soviet intelligence (he agreed to such an arrangement while sitting in an automobile with S/ A John Fain and S/ A Tom Carter, or possibly, Arnold Brown). Who in Soviet intelligence would want to talk to Lee Oswald in the United States in 1962, when they could have picked his brain (singular) in the Soviet Union, for free, until April? If Oswald had anything to say to anyone, it would have been to a group that was strictly concerned with foreign intelligence, and that rules the FBI out.
__________________________________

This takes us through the middle of April. Most of this is just a raw data dump and overkill, but I didn't want to try to sort out what I thought was relevant. 

Let me know if you'd like me to continue further or there's anything else you'd like to see.

Okay so then Helen at TEC has Lee in front of her on April 8?

YES?

April 8, 1963— time unstated, CST— Dallas, Texas. Lee Oswald reported to the Texas Employment Commission “seeking employment; he having lost his position with Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall.” (Affidavit of Helen P. Cunningham,)


So this is garbage:
Note: John Armstrong cited House Select Committee Document #006795 which notes that on the same day, a flight plan was filed for air travel between New Orleans and Garland, Texas. The pilot was listed as D. Ferrie, and the three passengers were Diaz, Lambert (Clay Shaw alias?) and Hidell (see John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald, pp. 505 and 519)

The reason it gets traction, a document foisted on Garrison by Girnus while in prison, is that Lee is supposedly not accounted for during this time. More Armstrong doings I suspect.
Guess they didn't scour the TEC docs and statements.


This was the whole point of a thread aptly titled April Fools.

Its hilarious as Diaz, Hidell and Lambert are aliases ... yet Diaz is not an alias for whom they claim (Hermonio Diaz).
As a joke I'm posting a pic I found but seems to make my point as to silly claims.




Thanks Greg and Stan for playing along!
Cheers, Ed