Despite the untranquil atmosphere, Oswald managed to keep his composure. He refused a lie detector test, appeared to anticipate questions that might incriminate him, and declined to answer them. One of the few times his calm failed him was at 3:15 P.M. on Friday, when two FBI men entered and Oswald learned that one of them was James P. Hosty. He became “arrogant and upset” and accused Hosty of twice “accosting” his wife. Fritz asked what he meant. Oswald answered that Hosty had “mistreated” his wife on two occasions when he talked to her and “practically accosted her.”[3]
Hosty asked Oswald if he had been to Russia, and Oswald said yes. Hosty then asked if he had been to Mexico Ctiy, and Oswald’s composure deserted him again. “He beat his fists on the table and went into a tantrum,” Fritz said later.
By 3:00 P.M. on Friday afternoon, it became known that a suspect had been apprehended, and not just Fritz’s office but the entire Police and Courts Building was in an uproar. It was a policy of the Dallas police to be accessible to the press, but now, with reporters from Dallas, from all over the country, and even from abroad clamoring to get in, the guards virtually gave up trying to check press credentials. Almost anyone could get to the third floor. And among those who did was a nightclub operator named Jack Ruby, who was seen there at 11:30 P.M. on Friday, and again at a midnight press conference in the basement.
The place was a tumult of reporters and cameramen, cables and tripods and television lights. Several times that day Oswald was led from Fritz’s office to a basement assembly room for police lineups. He was mobbed each time. Microphones were thrust in his face and questions shouted at him. He told reporters that he demanded a shower and his “civil rights.” By curious contrast he did not complain to the police about the way they were treating him—only the press.
At 7:10 on Friday evening, Lee Harvey Oswald was brought before Justice of the Peace David L. Johnston and arraigned for the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit.
That night Gregory Olds, president of the Dallas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who did not know that Oswald was a member, when to the jail to see if he wanted a lawyer. Three people—two police captains and Justice of the Peace Johnston—assured Olds that Oswald had been informed of his rights and had so far declined counsel. Just before midnight Oswald was taken to the basement for a press conference, and Olds decided to attend. During his brief appearance Oswald did protest that, at his arraignment, “I was not allowed legal representation during that very short and sweet hearing.” He requested “someone to come forward and give me legal assistance.” But Olds did not hear in the hubbub, and he went home.
Oswald was asked at the press conference whether he had killed the president. He replied: “Nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when a newspaper reporter in the hall asked me that.” It could have been Oswald’s way of saying that he had tried to kill the president and this was the first he knew that he had succeeded.
On Saturday, at 1:36 A.M., Lee Harvey Oswald was brought again before Justice of the Peace Johnston and formally arraigned for the murder of John F. Kennedy.
That morning, having apparently decided during the night whom he wanted to represent him, Oswald told Fritz that he wanted a lawyer—John J. Abt of New York City. Fritz wondered why he did not want someone in Dallas. Oswald said he did not know Abt personally, but he had defended “victims” charged under the Smith Act—the 1940 law making it a crime to advocate violent overthrow of the government—and Abt was the man he wanted. Failing that, he would appeal to the ACLU. However, he told Fritz, he lacked money for the long-distance call. Fritz said that he could use the prison phone and call collect. Fritz explained how to place the call and trace Abt even though Oswald lacked a telephone number or address for him.
At 1:40 P.M., just after his visit with Marina, Oswald tried to reach Abt. He succeeded in obtaining Abt’s home and office numbers from the New York operator, but he failed to find him at either place. Abt was the lawyer he had told Marina about during their visit, the lawyer he was “counting on.” He did not tell Marina, nor did he mention to Fritz, that John Abt was a lawyer for the US Communist Party.
Fritz later asked whether Oswald had succeeded in reaching Abt. He answered that he had not, then courteously thanked Fritz for allowing him to use the prison phone.
At 4:00 P.M. on Saturday the telephone rang at the Paines’. Ruth answered.
“This is Lee,” said the voice at the other end of the line.
“Well, hi!” Ruth said.
Lee asked Ruth to call John Abt in New York City and request him to be his attorney. He gave her the numbers he had obtained and told her to call after 6:00 P.M., when long-distance rates went down. Ruth agreed, and he thanked her.
No sooner had she hung up than the telephone rang again. It was Lee. In a word for word repetition of the call he had just made, he asked her again to call Abt.
Ruth was stunned—stunned by his gall, his assumption that her friendship for him would not have been affected by what had happened, and that she would go right on helping him just as she always had. She thought he seemed utterly “apart” from the situation he was in.[4]
Appalled and angry though she was, Ruth did try to reach Abt, and like Lee, she failed. Abt was at a weekend cabin in Connecticut.
Shortly after 5:00 P.M. on Saturday, H. Louis Nichols, president of the Dallas Bar Association, appeared in the office of Police Chief Jesse Curry. Curry was relieved to see Nichols and led him immediately to Oswald’s maximum security cell on the fifth floor. Oswald was at the center of three cells with no one on either side. He was lying on his cot. He stood up to greet Nichols, and the two men talked on a pair of bunks three or four feet apart. Nichols explained that he had come to see if he wanted an attorney.
Did he, Oswald asked, know a lawyer in New York City named John Abt?
Nichols said that he did not.
Well, Oswald said, that was the man he would like to have represent him. Failing that, Oswald said he belonged to the ACLU and would like someone from that organization to represent him. But if that should fall through, he added, “and I can find a lawyer here [in Dallas] who believes in anything I believe in, and believes as I believe, and believes in my innocence”—here Oswald hesitated—“as much as he can, I might let him represent me.”[5]
Apparently, Oswald intended to continue trying to reach Abt himself. But he asked Nichols to return the following week and, if he had failed to find someone of his choosing, he might ask the Dallas Bar Association to find him a lawyer.
Nichols and Curry left the cell area together wondering aloud whether Curry had an obligation to reach Abt, wherever he was, even though Oswald had not asked Nichols, Curry, or Fritz to do it for him.
Oswald’s choice of Abt, together with his remarks to Nichols, appear to bear out Marina’s belief that her husband had every hope of making his a political trial, a forum for his ideas, at which he would either proclaim his innocence or proclaim that his deed had been justified by history.
Throughout his interrogations, Oswald made many statements about his actions on November 22 that the police already knew to be lies. He lied about his whereabouts at the time of the assassination. He lied about the rifle. And he lied about the manner of his flight from the Depository Building. But he talked about his political affiliations. Not only had he lived in Russia for three years, he said, but he was in touch with the Soviet embassy and received Soviet newspapers and magazines. He mentioned repeatedly that he was a member of the FPCC and had been “secretary” of its New Orleans “chapter.” He was also a member of the ACLU. He claimed proudly to be a Marxist. Asked if he belonged to the Communist Party, he replied that he had “never had a card,” perhaps a way of saying that his sympathies belonged to the party, but he was not a member.