Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, according to the conclusions of two government investigations into the assassination. The 1964 Warren Commission concluded Oswald acted alone; the House Select Committee on Assassinations, during the late 1970s, concluded that while Oswald was the shooter, President Kennedy "most likely was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy". Some critics of the official accounts have claimed that Oswald was not involved at all and was framed, and many conspiracy theories have been developed, but no single compelling alternative suspect has emerged.

New Orleans

Oswald was unemployed, he had failed to kill General Walker, and his best friend, de Mohrenschildt, had moved away from Dallas. Leaving Marina (who was pregnant for the second time) with the Paines, he returned to the city of his birth, New Orleans, to look for work, arriving on the morning of April 25. In May, Oswald got a job with the Reilly Coffee Company (from which he was fired in July) and Marina joined him in New Orleans, driven there by family friend Ruth Paine.

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Though Oswald had renewed his U.S. passport with no difficulty and had Marina write to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC about the possibility of returning to the Soviet Union, he was still disillusioned with that country. His Marxist hopes were pinned on Fidel Castro and Cuba; he soon became a vocal pro-Castro advocate. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a national organization and Oswald, unsolicited, set out to become a one-member New Orleans chapter. Oswald spent $22.73 on 1000 flyers, 500 membership applications, and 300 membership cards and had Marina sign the name "A.J. Hidell" as chapter president on one of the cards.

Related Topics:
Soviet Union - Fidel Castro - Cuba - Fair Play for Cuba Committee

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Most of Oswald's work consisted of passing out flyers on the street to passersby. He made a clumsy attempt to infiltrate anti-Castro exile groups and briefly met with the skeptical Carlos Bringuier, the New Orleans delegate for the anti-Castro Cuban Student Directorate. Several days later Bringuier and two friends confronted a man passing out pro-Castro handbills and discovered it was Oswald. In the ensuing scuffle, all were arrested and Oswald spent the night in jail. The trial got news media attention and Oswald was interviewed afterwards. He was also privately filmed passing out fliers in front of the International Trade Mart with two "volunteers" he had hired for $2 at the unemployment office. Oswald's work came to an end in the wake of a WDSU radio debate between Bringuier and Oswald arranged by journalist Bill Stuckey. Instead of discussing issues concerning Cuba, Oswald had been publicly confronted by Bringuier with the lies and omissions he had made concerning his life and background. Oswald was devastated and humiliated, and a month later he left New Orleans to return to Dallas.

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Oswald's four months in the city are the subject of much attention, most notably New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's attempt to link Oswald to wealthy local businessman Clay Shaw, former president of the International Trade Mart. The links between Oswald and Shaw supposedly included W. Guy Banister, a retired FBI agent and former New Orleans police chief turned private investigator, and David Ferrie, a pilot and amateur cancer researcher who wore an ill-fitting red wig because a rare disease made him hairless. Although Ferrie and Oswald were both in the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans in the 1950s and a CAP group photo shows them together, there is no credible evidence that they had any significant contact when Oswald was a teenager or knew each other a decade later in 1963. Banister had an office in the building at 531 Lafayette and Oswald stamped a few (but not all) of his flyers with the address 544 Camp Street. Both addresses have different entrances but share the same structure, a building which was a block away from Oswald's job at the Reilly Coffee Company. There is also no credible evidence that Oswald knew Banister or rented an office at the building, and in any case Oswald's letters, applications, etc. constantly contained lies. 544 Camp Street was also home to the anti-Castro Cuban Revolutionary Council, and a number of people have suggested that using their address was Oswald's attempt to embarrass them. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/camp.htm

Related Topics:
Jim Garrison - Clay Shaw - W. Guy Banister - David Ferrie - Cancer - Civil Air Patrol

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