Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

267  The source of Oswald's funds




If there is anything constant in Oswald’s life, it is his need of money. After three years on a marine private’s pay, he goes to Russia. There he works in a factory for the pittance of 80 rubles a month. He returns to America with a wife and child in mid-1962 and thenceforward works at a series of jobs paying the legal minimum wage or less — when he is not unemployed. For months his only acknowledged source of income is the Texas unemployment compensation of $33 a week. His job at the School Book Depository, from whose warehouse he is supposed to have shot the President and Governor Connally, paid him $1.25 an hour.



Surely he was a pauper, a fellow whose monetary resources could only keep him swinging between want and destitution. But if there is another thing about Lee Oswald as certain as his indigence, it is that he was often capable of expenditures that would have cramped the purse of a suburban status seeker.

(...)

Where did the money come from? The FBI and the Dallas police fail to supply information on the subject. For the Russian period, we have the unsupported assertion of Pravda that Oswald was an American spy who made numerous contacts with the American Embassy. This might indicate a CIA affiliation. He wrote his mother that, on his return, he would spend a day or so in New York and Washington for “sightseeing.” After that, all is dark except for one hint. An Associated Press dispatch of November 30 from Dallas says in part:

“Someone telegraphed small amounts of money to Lee Harvey Oswald for several months before the assassination of President Kennedy, it was reported today,” the Dallas Times Herald said. The unidentified sender telegraphed Oswald $10 to $20 at a time.

Here apparently are some of the Western Union items about which the FBI has been so secretive — but why this secrecy? If the money came from the Communist Party, it is hard to understand why the FBI should cooperate in a Bolshevik plot. If it came from a right-wing or Fascist source, the FBI could not lose much by revealing it. But if the money came from a government source, then the agency’s reticence is understandable.

(Harold Feldman, OSWALD and the FBI, The Nation, Januari 1964)

269  Norman Mailer & Lawrence Schiller's KGB files on Oswald



see also:
187 Portions of Anne Goodpasture's ARRB interview


"I whisper this, the (KGB) fulfilled that promise only in part, but the part
    was enough to do the book."

(Norman Mailer)

Erasing the Past...Discussions

Researchers have always suspected that conversations within Oswald's apartment
were monitored and recorded by the KGB. These suspicions were confirmed
when Normal Mailer published a few of these conversations in his 1995 book, "Oswald's
Tale," assuming the transcripts are genuine. But it was not until I met Ana Ziger, in 1998,
that I realized Mailer had failed to find the answer to the most important question: What
language were Oswald and Marina speaking? Where are the original KGB tapes?

(John Armstrong, Harvey & Lee, p. 338)

Soviet KGB records of Oswald’s time in Moscow and Minsk that were obtained by Norman Mailer
are now in the possession of Mailer’s former associate Lawrence Schiller, who refused to turn them over
to the ARRB.

(Bill Kelly, ARRC.org)



Much of the book features Warren Commission interview transcripts and abundant sections of written work by other authors (largely, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, interviewer of Oswald in Moscow in 1959 and Marina Oswald’s biographer and also, a known CIA dabble.
(...)
While investigation Lee Oswald’s Russian period, Mailer gets access to KGB transcripts taken from bugs that were placed in Oswald and Marina’s apartment. Ample sections of these are reproduced in the book. Basically, I found them not to add much light on Oswald’s character and it all amounts to a lot of bickering between a newly married couple. It’s essentially boring.

However, one item stands out, and it’s another thing Mailer omits–and that is what language are they speaking in?

(Book Review: Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery by Norman Mailer)


Norman Mailer

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York City in April 1960. The FPCC's purpose was to provide grassroots support for the Cuban Revolution against attacks by the United States government, once Fidel Castro began openly admitting his commitment to Marxism and began the expropriation and nationalization of Cuban assets belonging to U.S. corporations. The FPCC opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, the imposition of the United States embargo against Cuba, and was sympathetic to the Cuban view during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Subsidiary Fair Play for Cuba groups were set up throughout the United States and Canada. Among its twenty-nine early notable supporters were William Appleman Williams, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Jean-Paul Sartre, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Waldo Frank, Alan Sagner and Carleton Beals.

The FPCC achieved notoriety through the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans. Oswald would later be accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy.

(Wikipedia, retrieved 1-7-2020)


Lawrence Schiller

“I must confess that you thought it was my blue eyes that charmed the KGB into giving all those secret files to me, but in fact, I had a collaborator who did the interviews with me. The same Larry Schiller who worked on interviews with me when I was writing The Executioner’s Song. And he is one of the great wheeler-dealers of all time, and actually succeeded, since it was also the occasion of the breakup of Russian Communism, to get the new and uncertain KGB to enjoy the idea that they might consider giving me the Oswald file. I have to tell you that Larry can be utterly unscrupulous. So he went around telling everyone with whom we wanted to do interviews, I was the American Tolstoy, and they owed it to history to be interviewed by us. He also succeeded in getting Marina Oswald to sit down with us for a few days and talk, and when she read the book; her acerbic comment to Larry was ‘Tolstoy, he’s not.’ (...) And of course, the Oswald book began with his ability to get the KGB to promise their files to us. Later, I whisper this, they fulfilled that promise only in part, but the part was enough to do the book.”

(Norman Mailer in a letter to a friend)

"Of course, something else is happening at Random House (...) Gerald Posner is
    well into the writing of his Oswald book, Case Closed."

Lawrence Schiller, born in Brooklyn in 1936, grew up in San Diego. After college he worked for Life magazine, Paris Match magazine, and the Saturday Evening Post as a photojournalist. He published his first book, LSD, in 1966. Since then he has published thirteen other books, including W. Eugene Smith’s Minamata and Norman Mailer’s Marilyn. He collaborated with James Willwerth on American Tragedy, Albert Goldman on Ladies and Gentleman, Lenny Bruce!, and with Mailer on The Executioner’s Song and Oswald’s Tale. The eleven motion pictures and miniseries he has directed for television include The Executioner’s Song and Peter the Great, which together won a total of five Emmys.

(From Project Mailer)

"Late ’91. So I go to Norman and talk to him about it. I tell him I believe if we spend enough time in the Soviet Union we can eventually get the files. I explain to him how I met with Bakatin and Ludmilla. I said I was pretty sure that Bakatin would not have told me that the files were divided if he had no intention of cooperating with me. Also, I told Norman, that there will be one immediate difficulty: most of the agents that dealt with Oswald had all retired years before. My plan, I say, is to find these agents and hire them. I lay out a plan for Norman. Then I go to see Jason Epstein, Mailer’s editor at Random House. I tell Jason what Norman has said, that he’d like to go there and investigate. I then tell Jason that I want Random House to cover all start-up expenses. That doesn’t seem to be a problem. I’m not saying he said, “Yes, $25,000 is not a problem.” But he is interested, especially since Norman wants to do the book. Of course, something else is happening at Random House, although at that time Jason doesn’t reveal it to us — for good reasons — Gerald Posner is well into the writing of his Oswald book, Case Closed [1993]. At roughly the same time, I do learn from Ludmilla, who has gone to Belarus for me, meeting with the assistant to the head of the Belarus KGB, that it appears we will eventually get access to the Oswald material. And also at about the same time, ABC Television puts out the word, obtained through some leak, that the Oswald files are there. That little story on ABC says to me that the files are obtainable. Of course, one of the assets and the liabilities of Larry Schiller is that I believe something is possible before I have the foundation to prove it. Then Random House gives us $25,000 for the trip.

(...)

Before we go [back to Russia], Norman and I have to make a decision about when we interview Marina Oswald. Do we do it before the trip or after? We come to an agreement that we’ll interview her after, because we will have then all the information we need about her and Oswald in Minsk, and won’t have to rely just on the published information. But I decide that we need a contract with Marina before we leave. Now, I have known Marina from the time of J.F.K.’s assassination, from when I had produced a film for ABC Television called The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. 

(...)

So I go to Marina and I said, “We’re going make this movie, blah-blah-blah, and I know your right of privacy is important. I also know, Marina that someday you’re going have a big payday with your life story, and we don’t want to screw it up. If you have faith and trust in me, I’m prepared to offer you x dollars if you sign a simple letter that says you will never bring any legal action against Lawrence Schiller, or ABC, etc., for The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.” I paid her something like $25,000 and she wrote the letter exactly the way I wanted it. Now, that film came out; it was a pretty shitty film, but it didn’t hurt our relationship. My second wife, Stephanie, had become pretty good friends with Marina when she vacationed in California with her kids. Stephanie would go to the beach with her, go to Disneyland.

(...)

A working, trustful relationship with Marina was established. Before we went back to Russia and Belarus, I contacted Marina and went out to dinner with her. The short and long of it is that I negotiated an agreement with her, and paid her $15,000. For five days, Norman and I would have the right to interview her for so many hours a day, so many hours in the morning, so many in the afternoon."

(Long Legs, the American Tolstoy, Oswald and the KGB: A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller)

271.  40-minute filmed interview with George deMohrenschildt


related:
136 George de Mohrenschildt's CIA affiliate personnel file

Gallery, 4/78, ran Willem Oltmans new assertion that General Donald Donaldson, a Bulgarian émigré, claimed
that J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles and Richard Nixon conspired in the assassination. Oltmans interviewed
George deMohrenschildt and his wife in 1967 for Dutch television station NOS, and CBS did the camera
work. This 40-minute film mysteriously disappeared from NOS files in 1975. In 1977 a depressed de
Mohrenschildt revealed that "he felt responsible for Oswald's role. He wanted to confess" but was 
receiving death threats. Recall that deMohrenschildt supposedly committed suïcide with a rifle just hours
before a HSCA staffer, Gaeton Fonzi, was to interview.

(Mal Hyman, Burying the lead, p. 277) 


NOS building, Hilversum, The Netherlands

It is unclear if Oltmans knew of DeMohrenschildt's mental problems at the time he made his statements, 
but in later years, Jeanne told the newsman:

... If George's death was engineered, it is because you focused such attention on my husband that the 
real conspirators decided to eliminate him just in case George actually knew something, just like so many 
others involved in the assassination.

(Jim Marrs, Crossfire)


Oltmans as DeMohrenschildt in JFK (1991)

While I thought this would be a quick read of rehashed material I was already familiar with, I was quite 
shocked to learn what I have through Oltman’s perspective.

For starters, if you believe the New York Times or any of the mainstream media reports on Oltmans he was
a money hungry third rate reporter who exaggerated and promoted deMohrenschildt as the svengali behind
the assassination for his own profit, when in fact, as his papers reveal, he was a very thorough and 
respected Dutch journalist who had previously worked as a foreign correspondent in the Far East.

He worked closely with his editors and NOS TV producers, and how he became entwined in the JFK 
assassination story is a story in itself.

(Bill Kelly, Walking the Razor's Edge - The Dutchman and the Barron)

273  Memorandum mentioned in Dr. Humes's testimony as being attached to President Kennedy's coat


See also:
40 The original autopsy notes by Commander James J. Humes
41 The first draft of the autopsy rapport by commander James J. Humes

(The articles of clothing referred to were marked Commission Exhibits SOS. 393, 394 and 395 for identification,
and received in evidence.)

Mr. SPECTER. Taking 393 at the start, Doctor Humes, will you describe for the record what hole, if any, is
observable in the back of that garment which would be at or about the spot you have described as being
the point of entry on the President’s back or lower neck.


CE393

Commander Humes: Yes, sir. This exhibit is a grey suit coat stated to have been worn by the President on
the day of his death. Situated to the right of the midline high in the back portion of the coat is a defect,
one margin of which is semicircular.
Situated above it just below the collar is an additional defect. It is our opinion that the lower of these
defects corresponds essentially with the point of entrance of the missile at Point C on Exhibit 385.


CE385

Mr. SPECTER. Would it be accurate to state that the hole which you have identified as being the point of
entry is approximately 6 inches below the top of the collar, and 2 inches to the right of the middle seam of
the coat?

Commander Humes. That is approximately correct, sir. This defect, I might say, continues on through the
material. Attached to this garment is the memorandum which states that one half of the area around the
hole which was presented had been removed by experts,
I believe, at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and also that a control area was taken from under the
collar, so it is my interpretation that this defect at the top of this garment is the control area taken by the
Bureau, and that the reason the lower defect is not more circle or oval in outline is because a portion of
that defect has been removed apparently for physical examinations.

Mr. SPECTER. So, does the one which you have described as the entry of the bullet go all the way through?

Commander Humes. Yes. sir ; it goes through both layers.

(Warren Commission, Volume II: Comdr. James J. Humes)