Up to now, Lee had liked Michael well enough in spite of his being “religious.” But now he grew angry at him. Lee thought it was a man’s obligation once married to want his wife and children. He was indignant at Michael for having married without wanting children. And he condemned Michael for coming home, eating supper, and seeing his children just like a married man, then leaving.
Besides causing Lee to be more sympathetic toward Ruth and less so toward Michael, Marina’s disclosures had other side effects as well. Lee was not ordinarily interested in other people’s private affairs. But now he regularly asked Marina, over the telephone and on his arrival for the weekend, how Ruth and Michael were getting along. For the first time he seemed aware of the Paines as human beings. He even gave signs of awareness that he and his family might be in the way in the modest, one-story ranch house, and that Ruth and Michael might need privacy in which to work out their problems. He was sorry for the Paine children, too, especially the boy, Chris, and he actually tried to make up to them for the fact that their father did not live with them. Thus, he started playing more with Chris, who was two and a half, than with June. Marina was jealous for June and asked why he played so much with Chris.
“He’d rather be with a man,” Lee said. “He’s tired of you women. A boy needs a father to play with.”
In spite of small spats, the relationship between Lee and Marina continued, as of the last weekend in October (25–27), to be “unusually good,” in Marina’s words. Lee was happy with his new baby and his new job. Marina remembers him on the floor in front of the television set with a pillow between his legs and Rachel on the pillow. During the commercials, if she wasn’t asleep, he talked to her in Russian.
“See, baby, it’s your papa. See Papa?”
“Look,” he said to Marina, “she doesn’t smile at me.”
“To her,” Marina answered, “Papa probably looks upside down.”
He held the baby to his shoulder and stroked her head. “She’s the prettiest, strongest baby in the world,” he boasted. “Only a week old, and already she can hold up her head. We’re strong because Mama gives us milk and not a bottle that’s either too hot or too cold. Mama gives us only the very best.” He studied her fingers, her “tender little mouth,” and her yawn. He was delighted with them all and proclaimed that his baby was getting prettier every day. “She looks just like her mama,” he said.
— 34 —
Agent Hosty
On Friday, November 1, Lee went to the post office in Dallas. There he dropped into the mail a membership application that he had picked up at the October 25 meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union, the meeting he had attended with Michael Paine. With the application he sent in a $2 membership fee. The application was processed in New York on November 4, and Lee formally became a member of the organization he had only just told Michael he would never join because it was not political enough.
He also transacted an item of business at the post office. He rented a box for the period of November 1–December 31 for a total fee of $3. The boxes were rented at $1.50 per month, and Lee, who counted every penny, probably would not have rented a box for a two-month period unless he expected to be in Dallas the entire time. The box was not at the main post office, which he had used before, but at the terminal annex station, near his job. He took it in his name and Marina’s, a sign that he expected that by the end of the year they would be living in Dallas. He listed as nonprofit organizations entitled to receive mail at his address the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union.
And he mailed another letter to the Communist Party. Arnold Johnson, information director, had long ago answered Lee’s letter from New Orleans requesting information about how to contact the party when he moved to the Northeast. He had suggested that Oswald get in touch with the party in New York when he moved, and the party would find a way to contact him in Baltimore or wherever he might be.[1]
Lee’s new letter, postmarked November 1, was a continuation of the earlier correspondence. He announced that he had not moved north after all but had settled for the time in Dallas. He went on to report that he had been to a right-wing meeting “headed” by General Walker on October 23, and to a meeting of the ACLU on the 25th. “As you see, political friction between ‘left’ and ‘right’ is very great here,” he wrote. He added that the ACLU was in the hands of liberal, professional people, including a minister and two law professors; “however, some of those present showed marked class awareness and insight.” Lee’s question was this: “Could you advise me as to the general view that we had on the ACLU and to what degree, if any, I should attempt to highten its progressive tendencies?”[2] It was an unreal and remarkable letter, suing “we” as if he were a party member and seeking advice in the same spirit.
That same day, in Irving, Ruth and Marina had a visitor. A day or two earlier, they had come home from their errands to be told by a neighbor that a strange man had been asking for them. The neighbor, Dorothy Roberts, informed Ruth that the man paid a call on her and asked who was living at the Paines’. Ruth translated for Marina, and the two decided that it must be someone from the FBI.
Marina was frightened of the FBI, partly because she equated it with the KGB in Russia, of which she had been afraid all her life, and partly because she knew that Lee desperately feared the FBI. But she noticed that Ruth took the news calmly and that her conscience was clear. Therefore Marina did not worry much about the visit, even though the man had said to Mrs. Roberts that he would be coming by again.
On the afternoon of Friday, November 1, the children were sleeping, Marina was using Ruth’s hair dryer to beautify herself for Lee’s arrival, and Ruth was doing jobs around the house when the visitor reappeared.[3] Ruth was not surprised to find a dark-haired stranger at the door who introduced himself as Agent James P. Hosty of the FBI. She greeted him cordially, asked him in, and the two sat in the living room talking pleasantries. Hosty said that, unlike the House Un-American Activities Committee, the FBI was not a witch-hunting organization.
Gradually, Hosty switched the conversation to Lee. Was he living at Ruth’s house? Ruth answered that he was not. Did she know where he was living? Once again the answer was a surprising “No.” Ruth did not know where Lee was living, but it was in Dallas somewhere, and she thought it might be Oak Cliff. Did Ruth know where he was working? Ruth hesitated. She explained that Lee thought he had been having job trouble on account of the FBI. Hosty assured her that it was not the FBI’s way to approach an employer directly. At this Ruth softened, told him where Lee was working, and together they looked up the address of the book depository in the telephone book. Lee worked at 411 Elm Street.
While they were talking, Marina wandered in. She was frightened and a little repelled when Hosty introduced himself and showed her his credentials. He saw that she was alarmed, was aware that she had lately had a child, and tried to calm her. He explained, with Ruth translating, that he was not there to embarrass or harass her. But should Soviet agents try to recruit her by threatening her or her relatives in Russia, she had a right to ask the FBI for help. Marina was delighted. She liked this plumpish, pleasant-looking dark-haired man who was talking to her about her rights and offering to protect her. No one had given her so much attention in a long time, much less offered to protect her rights.
2
Exhibit No. 1145, Vol. 22, pp. 170–171. The letter, postmarked November 1, reached Mr. Johnson only on the 29th, with a line across the envelope in back suggesting that it had been opened along the way (Testimony of Arnold S. Johnson, Vol. 10, pp. 103–104).
3
I have based the account of Hosty’s visits on November 1 and 5 and Oswald’s reaction to them on the testimony of James P. Hosty in Vol. 4 and in the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights (Hearings on FBI Oversight, Serial No. 2, Part 3); of Marina Oswald in Vol. 1; of Ruth Paine in Vols. 3 and 9; on a conversation with Ruth Paine on November 23, 1964; and on three separate conversations with Marina Oswald. The three principals differ on such questions as the time at which the November 1 interview took place (one says 2:30, another 3:30, the third 5:00 P.M.); the duration of the second interview and where it took place; where Hosty parked the second time; on which occasion Marina talked longer with Hosty and after which occasion she gave her husband the fuller account; and whether Oswald came to Irving on Friday both weekends. I have tried to reconcile the versions with an eye to the effect of the Hosty visits on Oswald.