OSWALD and the FBI (The Nation, 1964)

[antiimperialist]

The Nation, 27 January 1964, pages 86–89



If the FBI did not employ Oswald or work with him, then who wrote the letters he addressed to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York? Oswald alone certainly didn’t. Whoever wrote the letters to New York was coherent, commanded a good vocabulary, rarely misspelled a word, and punctuated decently. Oswald himself wrote English that a sixth-grader would blush to acknowledge. Here is a letter he wrote to his mother from Russia on June 28, 1963. I preserve the original spelling and punctuation:

Dear Mother.
Recived your letter today in which you say you wish to pay me back the money you used last year, that, of course, is not nessicary however you can send me somethings from there every now and than.
If you decide to send a package please send the following:
One can Rise shaving cream (one razor (Gillet)
Pocket novels westerns and scienace fiction—Time or Newsweek magazine
Chewing Gum and chocolate bars.
That’s about all. Ha-ha
I very much miss sometime to read you should try and get me the pocket novel “1984” by Wells.
I am working at the local Radio plant as a mettal worker. We live only five minutes from there so it is very conveinant.
Well thats about all for now. I repeat you do not have to send me checks or money!
Love XX

Lee

P.S. Marina sends a big Hello to you also

Now compare this semi-literate effusion with the following addressed to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee about two years later. (A New York Times report on the letters to FPCC indicates that they were handwritten, so presumably no public stenographer improved their style.)

Dear Mr. Lee:
I was glad to receive your advice concerning my try at starting a New Orleans F.P.C.C. chapter.
I hope you won’t be too disapproving at my innovations but I do think they are necessary for this area.
As per your advice I have taken a P.O. Box (N.O. 30061).
Against your advice I have decided to take an office from the very beginning.
I u c from the circular I had jumped the gun on the charter business but I don’t think it’s too important. You may think the circular is too provocative, but I want it to attract attention even if it’s the attention of the lunatic fringe. I had 2,000 of them run off.
The major change in tactics you can see from the small membership blanks, in that I will charge $1 a month dues for the new Orleans chapter only and I intend to issue N.O. F.P.C.C. membership cards also.
This is without recourse to the $5 annual F.P.C.C. membership fee.
However, you will lose nothing in the long run because I will forward $5 to the national F.P.C.C. for every New Orleans chapter member who remains a dues paying member for 5 months in any year.…

And so on for several more well-integrated paragraphs.
He now spells “receive” and “necessary” correctly. He has mastered the apostrophe. His ideas cohere. He tackles words like “innovations,” “provocative,” “recourse,” “disapproving,” “approaching,” and “application” with success, something that would have been clearly beyond the powers of the voluntary exile in Minsk.
Until the authorship of the letters to FPCC is settled, I think it reasonable to suppose that Oswald did not compose them, at least not without help. Who, and where, is the invisible scribe? No associate of his New Orleans period has been found, or even hinted at. If Oswald was employed by the FBI to operate in “Castro groups,” as the news report suggests, it is also reasonable to suppose that in the letters to FPCC his pen was guided by the FBI.

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[LunaSea]

1. got a better link?

Having trouble with this one.