Lee Harvey Oswald
Alleged Assassin Of JFK

Born: October 18, 1939
Died: November 24, 1963

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Lee Harvey Oswald (alias Alek J. Hidell or O.H. Lee) a somewhat enigmatic figure, was the alleged assassin of U. S. President John F. Kennedy. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.

This photo, which shows Oswald with a rifle, handgun, and Belgrade daily newspaper Politika, was taken on March 31, 1963 by his wife Marina. The Warren Commission tagged the photo as exhibit 133-A. Since Oswald's death, there have been questions on the photo's authenticity. The House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s concluded that the photo was real, although some still refuse to accept this verdict.Oswald was a former United States Marine who had served as an air flight controller. During his military career Oswald scored as a "sharpshooter" in December 1956, on two occasions achieving 48 and 49 out of 50 during rapid fire at a 200-yard distant target, but failed to attain a marksmanship badge. Skeptics doubt the likelihood of Oswald being able to fire shots so accurately and rapidly with the weapon and from the position he was said to use to kill Kennedy (a moving target). However, according to later friends, Oswald was an excellent shot.

Oswald learned Russian during his military career, then traveled to the U.S.S.R. in 1959 where he attempted suicide to avoid being deported as a suspected American spy. The Soviet authorities then permitted him to live in Minsk, where he worked in a television factory and married a Soviet national, Marina (nee Nicholayevna Prusakova OR Alexandrovna Medvedeva) Oswald. (After Oswald's death, Marina remarried and changed her name to Marina Oswald Porter.) Oswald maintained that he was a Marxist, and at one time tried to renounce his American citizenship, but later changed his mind and returned to the USA in 1962, bringing Marina and their infant daughter. Some believe that his attempt at defection was a planned CIA operation to gain technical secrets from the Soviets. In Oswald's own words to a friend, he gave the Soviets information that he believed allowed them to shoot down the U-2 spy plane because the military wanted to derail an upcoming summit in which it was feared that President Eisenhower, declining mentally, might be bested by Khrushchev. Either way, he got in and got out quicker than usual Communists.

Back in America, Oswald got a job at a Dallas graphic arts firm, Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. What is odd about this is the fact that the company did highly classified work for the government, which included the creation of detailed maps of Cuba. Oswald later told a friend that the CIA arranged for his taking the job to work on the maps. He had an assignment, which involved identifying the location of safe houses, presumably from the maps he was making for the company.

In April, during the spring of 1963, Oswald moved to New Orleans with his wife and child.

In the summer of 1963, Oswald was the secretary of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, run by a certain Alek J. Hidell. In reality, Oswald was the only member, and he had Marina sign membership cards with "Alek Hidell." On August 9, while Oswald distributed "Hands Off Cuba" and "The Crime Against Cuba" leaflets on the streets of New Orleans, he was harassed by anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Police arrested Oswald for disturbing the peace and made him pay a fine of $10. The arrest caught the attention of William Stuckey, a local reporter who hosted a radio show on WDSU called "Latin Listening Post." Oswald was a guest on the radio program on August 17 and August 21. There is some controversy as to whether Oswald actually harbored pro-Castro thoughts. The address listed on his pamphlets, 544 Camp Street, was (in reality) the address of a racist, one-time FBI agent and detective named W. Guy Banister who ran a training camp for anti-Castro exiles prepared to take over Cuba. Banister was rumored to have used Oswald to collect the names of Communist sympathizers at area colleges. Prof. Michael Kurtz, a professor of Louisiana history, witnessed Oswald and Banister at Tulane University making anti-integrationist remarks (though Oswald was staunchly pro-civil rights). Witnesses say Oswald used a work area on the second floor of 544 Camp. He was also seen signing guns out of Banister's storeroom at 544 Camp.

Amongst the people Banister worked with was a homosexual ex-pilot for Eastern Airlines named David Ferrie who also worked for Carlos Marcello's lawyer, G. Wray Gill, in Marcello's 'illegal deportation' case. Ferrie, who had no scientific credentials, claimed to be working on a cure for cancer using lab rats he kept at home. He also tinkered on a submarine in his backyard that he planned for use in the Cuban invasion. He had previously flown missions into Cuba under the pay of Eladio del Valle, an anti-Castro Cuban from Miami. He was also a self-proclaimed bishop in the Orthodox Old Rite Roman Catholic Church of America. It is rumored that Oswald spurned Ferrie's sexual advances at the age of 15 when he was a member of Ferrie's Civil Air Patrol unit.

Oswald was a very poor worker, and hung out at a next-door parking garage befriending garage owner Adrian Alba. The garage was regularly used by FBI and CIA cars. Alba has testified that he saw the driver of one such car pass a white envelope to Oswald, who stuffed it under his shirt and walked away. The House Select Committee on Assassinations found this claim to be baseless.

Oswald passed out leaflets another time in front of the New Orleans International Trade Mart offices.

In March 1963, Oswald (using the name of his ex-boss in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Alek J. Hidell) purchased a rifle and handgun that was later linked to the events of November 22, 1963.

Lee Harvey Oswald Biography Continued