"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (13 page)

“Your brother sounds like a very smart man.”

“Of course he is,” Lee gulped. “Like you, he's a marine.”

The sergeant smiled back. For the first time, the recruiter actually believed that this kid might just have a shot.

“You want to know what Robert said the last time I saw him?” Lee—realizing he was winning the marine over—asked in a
rhetorical manner. “Boy, if you ever get into the marines, you are going to end up a
general
!”

During the next half-hour, Lee continued his story about Robert's visit. How he read over the marine manual with his brother. When Robert left, he allowed Lee to keep the book. The boy read it over and over until he had it memorized. To prove himself, Lee ran through a litany of details—care of the M1 rifle, the philosophy of martial arts, the
esprit de
corps
necessary for absolute commitment—stunning the sergeant as to Lee's veracity, comprehension, and passion for the Marines.

Lee didn't mention some of his other reading matter for fear the sergeant would send him packing. During one of Lee's visits to The Village a stumble-bum struck up a conversation about communism, insisting it would replace our own capitalist system, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop that. Lee had conversed with the elderly fellow calmly for a while, then began ranting about the true greatness of democracy.

About a week later, as Lee ascended from a subway stop, he came face to face on the street with a dreary woman, handing out pamphlets about the immorality of the Rosenbergs having been convicted and executed as spies on flimsy evidence that they'd sent atomic bomb secrets to Russia. Initially, Lee brushed past her; then, something snapped. He turned, headed back, took one.

At the apartment, where he lived alone now since Marguerite had disappeared again—she would return sooner or later, acting as if this were completely normal—Lee read it with interest.

As it happened, WOR-TV in New York, Channel 9, re-ran on weekdays a half-hour filmed series called
I Led Three Lives
. The show had been based on a bestseller by Herbert J. Philbrick. This advertising executive balanced his home life as an average white-collar worker and devoted husband with secret activities as a member of a clandestine Commie cell planning to overthrow our government. Perceived as a traitor by neighbors who learned of his double identity, Philbrick kept a greater secret, one he would not share even with his distraught wife: he happened to be a special agent working for J. Edgar Hoover. A patriot, Philbrick was willing to go down in history, if need be, as the worst traitor since Benedict Arnold in order to serve his country.

Over 23 weeks, Lee watched each of the 117 episodes, believing what he was told by the ever-ultra-serious announcer: every case presented here was true. Philbrick, played by Richard Carlson, discovered seemingly nice, normal citizens—from high school teachers through household-maids to local politicians—who, deep inside, were Red to the core.

It never occurred to Lee, nor to most impressionable viewers watching every day at 4:30 P.M., that the scripts were fictional, including one about a Harriet Nelson type housewife who transforms her vacuum cleaner into a bomb launcher, planning to initiate a bloody revolution from her own living room.

The show offered arch fantasy done in the style of docu-drama, as such convincing to the innocent audience. This was the period during which Lee was ordered to Brooklyn's Youth House. In the TV room he watched the series. And the news as well. So there was Joseph McCarthy, the mean-bully of a senator from Wisconsin, staring into the camera, announcing that “the State Department has been infiltrated by communists.” He held a paper high, insisting: “I have in my hand a list of 205 members of the communist party that are nonetheless still serving in the State department.” He then hinted that the army too might be 'pink.'

How hard it was to tell where the fiction of
I Led Three Lives
left off and the reality of 'Tailgunner' Joe began! Lee
decided he had to learn more. In
Invisible Man
, Ellison had insisted that the communist party was as corrupt as any other institution, promising to help the black man while exploiting colored people for the party's own ends.

On the other hand, Ellison defended pure Marxism. At once Lee took
The Communist Manifesto
out of the lending library. When other kids, bad to the bone, caught him in the act of reading it they taunted Lee even more viciously. One called him a Red, as such worse than the boy who had murdered his father.

“I'm not a commie,” he tried to explain. “I'm a Marxist.”

They didn't get the subtle distinction. In response to the next round of beatings, Lee flashed them that twisted, cynical smile, which he was even then in the process of perfecting.

Gradually, I am coming to understand my mission in life. I will be to the next generation what Herb Philbrick was to the previous. Like him, lead a seemingly normal existence. I will do so not as a civilian but as a marine. As such. I will let it be known to all I read Marx. I'll subscribe to the
Daily Worker
so 'they' have an address at which to reach me.

Sooner or later, I'll be contacted by a commie agent. I'll join them, only to betray their plans to the authorities, doing my country a greater service even than Philbrick. Like him, I'll write a book exonerating myself. Hollywood will do a TV series.

Who would I like to have play me? That's easy: Sinatra!

*

“I tried signing up two years ago. They said come back in a year. After that, I forged my mom's name on a paper saying it was okay for me to join up but they told me to go home.”

“How old are you now, Lee?”

“I turned seventeen six days ago.” Lee reached into his pocket and pulled out his birth certificate for proof.

The sergeant glanced over it, then eyeballed Lee. “No matter how tough your brother told you Boot Camp can be, it's tougher. They'll put you and all the others in your outfit through hell. Some will not be able to take it. Bigger guys than you have washed out. Do you want to go through with this?”

“Sergeant, it‘s what I was born for!”

*

Precisely as that marine said earlier, Lee arrived in San Diego for Boot Camp two days later. And, likewise, the 17-year-old learned the hard way that everything he'd been told at the Dallas Recruitment Center was true. Within minutes of arrival, the routine began: there is a right way and a wrong way
and The Marine Way
to make your bed, eat at mess, erect a pup tent, march in close order drill, wear your uniform, share a squad encampment, salute a superior officer, speak only when spoken to by your Drill Sergeant, clean your assigned piece, crawl across a three-rope bridge, sit on a stool at the PX while off duty (rare!), clean a latrine when that is your assignment, peel a potato, run in place when you believe it's impossible to take a step further, employ a knife during training for hand to hand combat; rapid disassembly of a .30 caliber machine gun, the proper means of thrusting forward with a bayonet, preparing your piece for inspection so perfectly a stranger could comfortably eat off it.

And, perhaps most important, fire that weapon from a prone position during hours of target practice. Lee had so completely memorized the details about corps rituals that from the moment Basic began he excelled all in his group at every aspect of marine life but one: firing the leatherneck's second spine, his M1.

“You are the worst shot I have
ever
seen,” a freckle-faced instructor shouted one day in early November, 1956. “Damn! You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn from five feet away.”

Lee mumbled some sort of apology but feared this might be his downfall: his aim remained terrible and likely always would.

“What kind of
marine
are you? What kind of
man
are you?” the instructor wailed a week later when Lee, unnerved, scored worse still. Those words hurt the most; the idea that Lee's poor aim somehow disqualified him as a man. After that incident, Lee—who had remained anonymous among the grunts until then—found
himself
once more marginalized. There was some razzing during the time spent in Basic. No matter how hard he tried to change, he was still Lee Oswald, not ‘Angelo Maggio.'

Things took a turn for the worse once the group moved on to Camp Pendleton for full-scale combat training. A fellow grunt named Perry Sommers made it a point to chat with Lee, a rarity among group members. Timid to the point of near-total silence when not spoken to first, Lee at last opened up. He chatted with Sommers over a Coke during evening break, believing he'd found a friend. When the subject of women came up, Lee shyly admitted that, much as he thought about sex, he'd never actually “been with” a female. The moment those words were out, Lee knew he'd made a mistake. The grin on Sommers' face turned ugly.

The following day, fellow marines razzed Lee about being a “cherry virgin.” he had no idea as to how he ought to respond other than force a shit-eatin' grin and pretend this was all in good fun, they laughing with, not at, him. Inside, he knew that wasn't the case. “Ozzie the Rabbit” became his corps nickname.

It would not go away; not here, not after that ordeal was over and Lee moved on to the specialty he had requested, radar control school in Jacksonville, FL and later Biloxi, MS.

At all four of his stateside bases, Lee was also kidded, sometimes hassled, about something far more disturbing. Copies of communist publications regularly arrived in the mail. Lee could have hid them for private reading; instead, he left such stuff strewn all over his bunk where others could observe what they considered radical material. Two muscle-bound jerks began to turn the screws whenever an occasion arose.

Worse, Perry Sommers, Lee's supposed friend, joined with them in harassment. More than once they tossed Lee in the shower after he finished dressing for dinner. None of this bothered Lee as much as the derisive humor about his sexual status.

How perfect! This is all fitting into my master plan ...

*

One day, early in January 1957, Ozzie was sitting around, playing chess with a fellow fan of the game, when another marine entered the barracks and whispered that Lee was required at headquarters. That seemed odd to everyone but him. Lee smirked, muttering under his breath that it was “about time.”

Upon arrival, Lee was curtly escorted down a long hall into a large holding room, empty other than himself, then summoned by several M.P.s to step sharply between them down yet another long corridor, directly to a room at the far end.

“Sit down,” a medium-build man in a dark civilian suit commanded. Ozzie did as told, glancing around the tight room.

“Yes, of course,” Lee replied, his voice barely able to rise above a whisper. “I take it you're from the FBI?”

“What makes you say that?” The man curiously eyed Lee.

“In all honesty, I thought you would arrive some time ago.”

“Explain, Private Oswald.”

Lee, feeling more relaxed now that he could momentarily control the narrative, crossed his legs. “This is about the Red literature I receive in the mail, right?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

“Some of the boys complained to higher-ups, and they thought it best to call you?”

“From the manner in which you speak,” the FBI agent sighed, “it would appear that I'm here less by a natural chain of events than your conscious desire to summon me.”

“Sir, that is precisely the case.”

For the next hour, Lee rambled semi-coherently, the wild words augmented by grand hand gestures that left the agent too stunned to respond. No one was more dedicated to the United States than Lee; he would kill, even die for his country. But how could a no-one like himself make a contribution? Then he watched
I Led Three Lives
and felt inspired to follow suit: read the enemy's books, subscribe to the papers, figure sooner or later, once they had his address, someone would contact him.

He'd learn all their buzz words so that when this happened Lee would know precisely what to say, putting down “American Imperialism” in the postwar world, waxing poetic about power to the people. He'd earn their trust, learn what such traitors and spies had in mind, turning everything over to the government.

Only problem was, Lee had no idea how to contact the right people. He had spent considerable time considering this.

Suddenly, it struck him. All Lee had to do was make known his supposed commie leanings and sooner or later one of the boys would do Lee's job for him by contacting the FBI.

When Lee finally ran out of words and breath, the agent sat completely still, considering all he had been told. Several thoughts passed through the man's mind. First, this scrawny, shrill, excitable marine was nuts. Certifiable, no question about it. Then again, the agent had no doubt that Lee qualified as sincere, his bizarre plot so outrageous that someone in his own profession could not help but admire its carefully conceived madness. Anyone so dedicated, as Oswald clearly was, might have value not to the FBI, their main job to seek out the radicals. However, another arm of the government ...

“Mr. Oswald,” the agent explained, “the FBI would not be the proper agency. Still, there are others in our information-gathering community who might wish to speak with you.”

“It's an honor just to be considered. Who should I contact, and how do you—”

“That will all be taken care of,” the agent said, rising. “I will contact them. They will contact you,
if
they believe it in everyone's best interest to do so.”