Joe Biel - The CIA Makes Sci Fi Unexciting: The Life of Lee Harvey Oswald

The CIA Makes Science Fiction Unexciting #6:

A Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald

Tenth Anniversary Issue

By Joe Biel

First Published August 1, 2011

First printing of 4,000 copies

Distributed by IPG, Chicago and Turnaround, UK

Microcosm Publishing

2752 N Williams Ave

Portland, OR 97227

ISBN 978-1-934620-83-0

This is Microcosm #77

Edited by Adam Gnade

Designed by Joe Biel

Illustrated by Keith Rosson

www.microcosmpublishing.com

Lee Harvey Oswald is known best as the man accused of shooting President Kennedy and the first person to be assassinated on live television. And the world has continued to move in this directiondiminishing a person to two split seconds and ignoring what led him or her up to this climax. Media is reduced to who can create the strangest or most shocking headline. Communications offer little beyond a persons 140-character attention span limit. So, its not surprising that the rest of Lees biography gives a perspective that all of his days were fast-moving, eventful, and a little unbelievable. He accomplished a lot in 24 years; yet the interesting parts are often missing from the storytelling.

Its important to note that we probably wouldnt know any of this without the work of Oliver Stone, petitioning Congress and President Clinton to make public 30-year-old FBI and CIA files about Lee, not to mention the public pressure campaign for making his film, JFK. The films production was successful in relaunching a public pressure campaign to restart the discussion around the Kennedy assassination and release more documents.

On the subject of declassified documents, heres a little background. After 25 years sensitive documents become declassifiedwhether they are from the FBI, CIA, or whomever. That said, there is no telling what is still sensitive 25 years later and will then be redacted those lines blacked out with markerwhen the document is released. The feds tell us this is because some related aspect of this operation is still ongoing and its secrecy is pertinent to national security. Conspiracy theorists interpret this to mean that the people involved in this cover-up are still working in government. Whatever the reason, the parts that would have been highly newsworthy at the time of the incident now rarely and barely make a blip on the news. Due to the sheer amount of classified documents and their increasing voluminosity each year, a person would need to know that a certain document exists in the first place in order to seek it out. But there are no shortage of people working hard to sift through the documents about Lee.

L EE WAS BORN O CTOBER 18, 1939 IN N EW O RLEANS to Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Sr. and Marguerite Frances Claverie. He had two older brothers, Robert and John. Their father died before Lee was born and Marguerite raised her sons alone. When Lee was two, his mother placed her three sons at the Bethlehem Childrens Home orphanage for 13 monthsshe was unable to support them. When Lee was five years old, his mother married again in Fort Worth but her new husband engaged in numerous extra-marital affairs and filed for divorce three years later.

Lee was withdrawn and temperamental. When he was 12 he and his mother lived with his half-brother John Pic and his wife. John was a Coast Guardsman in New York City. One day Lee arrived home at the usual time and blurted out, Mother, I didnt go to school todayinstead all day long I rode the subway out to Brooklyn, out to Queens. Despite their rocky relationship, Marguerite was proud that Lee would come home and announce this accomplishment to his mother. But Lee and Marguerite were soon asked to leave after Lee threatened Johns wife with a knife and struck their mother.

Truancy charges led to a psychiatric assessment and the psychiatrist described Lees vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which he tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations. Finding a personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies, the psychiatrist recommended continued treatment. During his stay at the orphanage, a social worker profiled Lee as being very detached, reading whatever books were available. He had a hard time reading but hung out in the library and devoured books endlessly. His figure drawings were described as impoverished. He was starved for attention but didnt like being around other boys all the time and they picked on him. He didnt like taking showers with them. He wanted to join the military. He talked to the psychiatrist about how much joy he found in playing with his brothers three-month-old baby.

The social workers liked Lee better than Marguerite. They took copious notes about how she insisted on washing all of her boys until they were 11 or 12, at which point she couldnt bear to look at them anymore. She expressed concern about Lees genitals in particular, explaining her fear that Lees were abnormal and doctors insisted that they were fine.

In January 1954, Marguerite returned with him to New Orleans. There was a question pending before a New York judge as to whether Lee should be removed from the care of his mother to finish his schooling, although his behavior began to improve during his last months in New York.

Young Lee had trouble spelling and writing coherently, but he still read voraciously. By age 15 he claimed to be a Marxist, writing, I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in the back dusty shelves of libraries. He wrote to the Socialist Party of America for information on their Young Peoples Socialist League, saying he had been studying socialist principles for well over fifteen months. Oswalds best friend at the time, Edward Voebel, gave a different impression, saying Lee commonly read paperback trash. Lee also started reading the Marine Corps manual because, according to his halfbrother, he needed to get away from the oppressive yoke of their mother.

In October 1955, Oswald left the 10th grade and worked as an office clerk and messenger around New Orleans. Planning for his enlistment, the family returned to Fort Worth in July 1956 and he re-enrolled in 10th grade for the September sessionbut he quit in October to join the Marines. By the of age 17, he had resided at 22 locations and attended 12 schools. He never received a high school diploma.

Despite only being at Arlington Heights High School for four weeks, Lee was the subject of three photographs that appeared in the schools yearbook. It looks like this boys life has been supervised, said Marguerite, believing he was under surveillance his whole life. But it further cements her other statementsthat he was, in fact, friendly and social.

{ Young Lee was frequently smiley and flambouyant }

In 1965, Jean Stafford conducted interviews with Marguerite for her book, A Mother in History. Of course, Marguerites favorite subject appears to be her son. Marguerite spent her life trying to correct his legacy. The Warren Commissions 26 volume investigation discusses Lees childhood at length. Testimony is present for everything from his favorite board games to his fondness for playing hooky. Its almost like the Warren Commission lays the blame for Kennedys murder on Marguerite more than Leeciting how much she moved the family around and that she put her young sons in an orphanage. It would be hard not to feel a need to defend your own good name.