ustxtxb_obs_1963_12_13_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

Was He a Loner or a Conspirator? Where did Lee Oswald get the money for his reported trip to Mexico? How did he ti plan to finance the trips he has been reported contemplating to Europe and Russia, and then to Russia via Cuba, possibly with an excursion through Europe? Accounts in Dallas of his work history and income the last year and a half of his life indicate that he bounced from one job to the next and led the life of a harried, penny-pinching common laborer of uncommon mind. He may have been exigent to the point of desperation six weeks or so before the assassination, when he found himself out of a job, his Texas unemployment compensation exhausted, and his wife about to give birth to their second baby. His wife’s benefactress, Mrs. Ruth Paine, says that Oswald told her he was a Marxist, but never said he was a communist. Such a disposition toward radical disaffection from the society, combined with his doing so poorly in jobs and finances, could have coalesced into a motive for his shooting of the President. Of course, there are many questions, and much more evidence that can bear on this question. But the financial evidence does not now appear, on the basis of what I’ve found here, to sustain a conspiracy theory. Mrs. Paine said Oswald didn’t tell her or his wife about his reported trip to Mexico this fall, but she speculated, on the basis of his habits as they are known to her, that he would have hitch-hiked to Laredo from New Orleans and then traveled to Mexico City by bus, which is a notoriosly cheap mode of transporation. \(Thereupon the Mexican government announced in Mexico City that contrary to earlier reports, Oswald did not drive to Mexico City _, but took a bus into the interior, and lived so frugally, he could have made the whole inside Mexico, food and all, “He was a person to save money,” Mrs. Paine said. If, as reported, but not confirmed, he had $150 stashed at Mrs. Paine’s in Irving, it might be relevant that Mrs. Paine said the Oswalds had planned to move Mrs. Oswald out of Mrs. Paine’s, and take an apartment of their own, after Christmas. “He tipped only five cents to that cab driver [after the assassination]. A man trying to leave a trail wouldn’t usually do that, but I think he couldn’t stand to pay any more,” she said. “I thought he felt insecure in jobs. He lost jobs, and he wanted to save money, for fear of being out of work.” He felt that his having been to Russia and having a Rus sian-speaking wife worked against him. Mrs. Paine said. THERE ARE documents that may implicate the communist and pro-Castro left in Oswald’s activities. On the face of them, as they are described in Dallas, none of them implicates anyone but Oswald in the shooting of the President. Bill Alexander of the district attorney’s office says that when he accompanied officers to Oswald’s Dallas room about 3 o’clock or 3:30 the afternoon of the assassination, he saw letters among Oswald’s papers on letterheads of the Communist Party of America, the Worker in New York City. and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The same man signed the letter from the Communist Party and the one from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, as an official in both instances, Alexander said. The “big letter”three pages, typed and singlespacedwas the one from the Cuba committee, telling Oswald how to organize a local Cuba committee and “conduct activities to avoid ‘nosy neighbors,’ ” Alexander said. The contents of the other letters were not significant, he said. Justice of the Peace David Johnston, who arraigned Oswald, accompanied the officers on this search, too. He saw an Americanmade address book that he said contained quite a few writings in Russian and English and some other languages, possibly including Spanish. A map of Dallas showing the trajectory of the bullet that killed the president was also found on this search, Johnston said. Alexander said that on the fly page of the address book, Red Square in Moscow appeared to have been drawn in ; but he was not sure that was what it was. Lt. E. L. Cunningham of the forgery bureau saw John B. Connally’s name in the book. Detectives B. L. Senkel and F. L. Turner said they saw Fair Play for Cuba handbills among the papers; Senkel reported seeing a large picture of Castro, enclosed in clear plastic. Other information would indicate that papers of Oswald’s found in the Irving home of Mrs. Paine included a letter on Communist Party of America stationery thanking Oswald for “photographic work.” It can be reported from Irving that his effects there included letters and photographic negatives. Officers could not read some of the letters because of the language they were in. \(New York newspapers have reported that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee admits having received five letters from Oswald, recounting his activities for the corn mittee in New Orleans. Obviously relevant also in this general connection are the facts of Oswald’s defection to Russia and the published accounts about his application for documents to travel to Russia through Cuba in Mexico City at the end of SeptemOSWALD was reported to be in Russia from late in 1959 through mid-1962. The financial record pieced together here begins around the first of June, 1962, when the Oswalds’ landlord in Fort Worth remembers them moving into a one-bedroom duplex there. The rent was about $60 a month; while the apartment was small, it was clean. The Oswalds stayed there through September of last year. On a job application in Dallas this year, Oswald said he had worked before at a Fort Worth firm. \(This company has since merged with another one; its business has to do with welding. A division manager says Oswald worked there about 12 weeks, probably from July to September as a sheet metal helper for less than $1.50 an A man named Ernest C. Koerner, who is presently very upset about all this, and speaks of finding out who this nation’s enemies are, and taking up our guns again, lived in a duplex behind the Oswalds and worked at a large retail store in Fort Worth. Koerner said that the Oswalds had no visitors that he saw, and frequently argued loudly in a foreign tongue. Occasionally they went walking, with Oswald walking far to the front of his wife; they had no car, Koerner said. Koerner related an incident that suggests Oswald was what is sometimes called “cheap.” One day Koerner gave Oswald a discount slip that could be credited on the purchase of a TV set in the store where Koerner worked. Oswald was curt about this at first, but when he understood what the slip was, he told Koerner he had just bought a TV that day, but it wasn’t working well, so he would take it back the next day and buy another one on the discount slip. Koerner said that the next day he saw Oswald carrying the boxed-up TV he had bought out of his house, presumably to turn it in and buy another one on discount. The Oswalds’ landlord told a newsman that on occasion Oswald was late paying his rent, and that the Oswalds left without giving notice and with about $30 rent and some utility bills unpaid. Moving from Fort Worth to Dallas, Os December 13, 1963 5