The JFK 100

"When [Oswald is] arrested," Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) is informed by one of his investigators, "Marina buries him with the public. Her description of him is that of a psychotic and violent man."⁽¹⁾

"Yeah, after they take her to Six Flags Inn in Arlington, prepare her for the interviews, teach her how she should answer," Garrison replies, "and after two months and 46 interviews, she has a nervous breakdown."⁽²⁾

Is this an accurate portrayal of Marina Oswald? Does the accused assassin's widow deserve some of the blame for the public's perception of her late husband?

Let's examine the charges one by one.

First, note that, according to Oliver Stone, it is not Lee Harvey Oswald's reportedly psychotic and violent behavior that "buries him with the public," but rather, Marina Oswald's description of such behavior. Thus, Stone reinforces the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald is the victim, with his widow the victimizer.

But Lee Oswald is only "victimized" by Marina if her statements about him are untrue. Are they? Is Marina Oswald's testimony the only indication in the historical record of psychotic or violent behavior on the part of her husband?

No; there is abundant evidence of such behavior on Lee Oswald's part, beginning with the evidence linking him to the April 1963 assassination attempt upon the resigned US Army Major General, Edwin A. Walker.

There is the eyewitness testimony of numerous White Russian residents of Dallas and Fort Worth who, for a brief time, befriended Lee and Marina, primarily out of sympathy for Marina. When Elena Hall met Marina, for example, Marina "had black and blue over half of her face."⁽³⁾ Hall allowed Marina to stay at her home on one occasion when Oswald's behavior drove Marina out of her house.⁽⁴⁾

There is Anna Meller, who saw "a terrible blue spot" over Marina's eye on one occasion,⁽⁵⁾ and who housed Marina on another occasion she left Lee.⁽⁶⁾

There is George Bouhe, who saw Marina with bruises and a black eye on more than one occasion, and assisted her when she moved in with Elena Hall.⁽⁷⁾

There is Alexander Kleinerer, who was witness to an occasion when Lee, angry that Marina's skirt was partly unzipped, "slapped [Marina] hard in the face twice" while she held their baby, June.⁽⁸⁾

There are the Oswalds's fellow tenants at a roominghouse owned by Mahlon Tobias, who frequently complained to Tobias: "They didn't like the way [Oswald] beat her all the time."⁽⁹⁾

"They complained to you that he manhandled her?" Warren Commission counsel Albert Jenner asked him.

"Yes," Tobias testified, "there was one man that came over there one night and he told me, he said, 'I think that man over there is going to kill that girl . . .'"⁽¹⁰⁾

A common opinion among this community was that Lee Oswald was mentally unbalanced. Another woman who welcomed Marina Oswald into her home, Katherine "Katya" Ford, called Lee "unstable," observing that "something was rather wrong with the man."⁽¹¹⁾ Oswald was "a mental case," she said. "We all thought that."⁽¹²⁾

To Anna Meller, Lee Oswald was "absolutely sick. I mean mentally sick."⁽¹³⁾ George Bouhe referred to Oswald's mind as "diseased."⁽¹⁴⁾

Marina Oswald also testified to the Warren Commission about a relevant incident she said took place on a weekend morning on late April of 1963:

 

Mrs. OSWALD. It was early in the morning and my husband went out to get a newspaper, then he came in and sat reading the newspaper. I didn't pay any attention to him because I was occupied with the housework.

Then he got dressed and put on a good suit. I saw that he took a pistol. I asked him where he was going, and why he was getting dressed. He answered, "Nixon is coming. I want to go and have a look." I said, "I know how you look," or rather, "I know how you customarily look [at things], how you customarily take a look," because I saw he was taking the pistol with him . . ."⁽¹⁵⁾ ". . . Then he said, 'I am going to go out and find out if there will be an appropriate opportunity and if there is I will use the pistol.'"⁽¹⁶⁾

Marina said she cried and fought with her husband until he finally agreed not to go.⁽¹⁷⁾

Although Marina could not be sure of the date this incident occurred, she thought it was "perhaps about three days before [Oswald] left . . . for New Orleans," on April 24, 1963.⁽¹⁸⁾

Advocates of Lee Harvey Oswald's innocence commonly accuse Marina of fabricating this story, noting that Vice-President Richard Nixon was not in Dallas during the month of April 1963.

But on Sunday, April 21, 1963, the front page of the Dallas Morning News was dominated by a headline linking Nixon to Lee Oswald's hero, Fidel Castro:

 

NIXON CALLS FOR DECISION
TO FORCE REDS OUT OF CUBA
Open US Support
Of Rebels Urged⁽¹⁹⁾

It was the paper's only major story about Nixon that month, and it ran the very morning Marina Oswald said her husband read the paper, got dressed, took his pistol, and prepared to go "take a look" at Richard M. Nixon, whom Oswald apparently believed was visiting town. It is possible that Oswald misread another prominent article, which announced that Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was visiting Dallas that day; it is also possible that, as Marina herself suggested, her husband was simply playing a cruel game with her.⁽²⁰⁾

In short, if the public believes Lee Harvey Oswald to have been "a psychotic and violent man," it is because he acted that way, not because of his wife.

What of Oliver Stone's other accusations, that Marina was 'prepared' for her interviews by unnamed conspiratorial forces, who 'taught her how she should answer'; and that she had a nervous breakdown at that time?

The last claim is the easiest to dispose of; it never happened. Marina Oswald did not have a nervous breakdown. As JFK's documented screenplay contains no source note for the allegation, it's anybody's guess where Stone came up with it.

Was Marina coached? Was she instructed how to testify?

Oswald's widow, remarried and named Marina Porter, was questioned extensively about this in 1978 by the House Select Committee investigating John F. Kennedy's murder. She affirmed her 1964 Warren Commission testimony that she had initially concealed evidence of Oswald's guilt from the FBI and Secret Service in order to protect him, but that all of her testimony given under oath to the Warren Commission had been truthful.

Here she is questioned by Congressman Richardson Preyer:

 

Mr. PREYER. It has been alleged by some critics that the reason your story changed was not so much because of the reasons you have given or because of your own beliefs, but rather because the FBI and the Secret Service put pressure on you to incriminate Lee immediately after the assassination.

While the FBI and the Secret Service did question you, was there ever any pressure from them for you to give evidence that would incriminate Lee, evidence that you believed to be false?

Mrs. PORTER. No; that is not correct. I maybe like Secret Service and dislike FBI, but both of those people were working for one cause, to find the truth. The Secret Service did question in a more gentle way and I responded to that much better. The FBI sometimes were a little bit too brutal and my response was not as cooperative. Maybe in some little way I want to punish them for it, not to give them information or correct information but it was not for the reasons I have been accused of doing it. It was human mistakes, human error, in my own character.

I do apologize for it, but it is not because they tried to twist my arm and told me what should I tell and what not to tell. That is not true.⁽²¹⁾

During the 1980s, Marina came to doubt the Warren Commission's conclusion that her husband had been John F. Kennedy's assassin, but she still maintains that her testimony to the Commission was honest. During a November 22, 1996, appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Marina was asked if she believed she had been improperly led in her testimony by the Warren Commission, and she said she did not.

In an interview with researcher Steve Bochan, FBI agent Jim Hosty recalled his impressions of Marina. "You know, in the book [Assignment: Oswald], I show that she isn't a sweet innocent little peasant girl that people think she is. . . . She was one of these 'in your face, copper' type women. You know, after the assassination, the Secret Service interpreter started advising her of her rights, and before he could get it out of his mouth, she started advising him of her rights. (Laughs.) But I mean, she was no dummy. Unlike the average person, she knew the difference between the Secret Service and the FBI . . . and she played one agency off against the other."

In the final analysis, Oliver Stone produces no evidence that Marina Oswald lied to the Warren Commission or was in any way 'prepared' for her testimony. But that does not stop him from assigning her a measure of responsibility for the evidence against her late husband, Lee Harvey Oswald.

NOTES:

1. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 56. All quotations are from the shooting script and may vary slightly from the finished motion picture.

2. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 57. All quotations are from the shooting script and may vary slightly from the finished motion picture.

3. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VIII, p. 395; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 89.

4. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VIII, p. 395.

5. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VIII, p. 383; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 85. Marina told Meller she had hit her head on a door; Meller didn't believe her: ". . . I felt always like [the] girl tried to hide something."

6. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VIII, p. 365.

7. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VIII, p. 365; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 85. Marina told Bouhe that Oswald had hit her.

8. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. XI, p. 120; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 93.

9. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. XI, p. 120; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 93.

10. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. XI, p. 120; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 93.

11. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. II, p. 308; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 84.

12. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. II, p. 308; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 84. It is Commission counsel Wesley Liebeler who speaks the phrase, "mental case"; Mrs. Ford agrees with it.

13. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. XI, p. 381; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 84.

14. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VIII, p. 374; Gerald Posner, Case Closed (Random House, 1993), p. 84.

15. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. V, pp. 387-88.

16. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. V, p. 392.

17. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. V, p. 390.

18. Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. V, p. 393.

19. Albert H. Newman, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: The Reasons Why (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1970), p. 23.

20. Albert H. Newman, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: The Reasons Why (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1970), p. 23.

21. HSCA Hearings, Vol. II, pp. 278-79.