September 16, 2025 • 34 mins
Larry Hancock earned his BA with honors, majoring in history, cultural anthropology and education. He's been researching Lee Harvey Oswald in depth for 35 years. We engaged in a discussion about the JFK assassination, with a particular focus on Lee Harvey Oswald. We explored Oswald's personality, intelligence, and interactions, as well as his experiences in Russia and his evolving political views. The conversation also touched on Marina and Lee Oswald's life in the early 1960s, the complexities of Oswald's character, and his potential involvement in the assassination of JFK.
Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510783407?...
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mysterious-circumstances--5479817/support.
Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510783407?...
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mysterious-circumstances--5479817/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances podcast. I am your host, Justin.
I am joined by Larry Hancock, the author of a
book called The Oswald Paradox. And as all of my
listeners know, I've always been down the rabbit hole of
the JFK assassination, but I've actually never took the time
to look more into Oswald, which I mean, he has
(00:44):
to be some kind of a fascinating man because of
all the little quirks and rabbit holes to go down
and everything like that. But Larry, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oh, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I am happy to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I took another look at Oswald myself, after working on
this for thirty plus years and writing like three or
four books on the assassination. It's like, you know, maybe
I should reconsider Oswald, Like he's right at the middle
of this. Maybe I should take another look and not
just like believe everything I read about Oswald and all
the books.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Oh man, and how'd you get started into it? How'd
you get fascinated by this?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, it's strung. I of course I grew up with it.
I was a sophomore in high school when Kennedy was shot.
Remember that quite well, Sunday Morning watch Oswald shot by
Ruby on TV. So that sticks with you. But then,
you know, college, air Force life in general got in.
(01:46):
And then but about I think it was about ninety five,
my wife came in and said, you know, I just
read a reporter in Dallas has published a book on
the Kennedy assassination, you know, and you'd be interested. And
I said, well, sure, I'll read it. And I read
it and that was it. Thirty years plus later, that's
(02:06):
all it took. It's like one book and I'm done.
It goes on forever.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Oh that is outstanding. How long did it take you
to compile all the information in the Oswald paradox?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, the strange thing is I went down so many
leads and so many roads. I mean, there are so
many people that have posed, you know, different motives and
different scenarios and that sort of thing. I got caught
up in those for many, many years. But it all
kind of gave background work on Oswald. But as as
(02:39):
I just said, it's like at that point in time,
I was just taking everything in and so somebody that
seemed like a reputable source wrote something about Oswald. I
assume and knew what they were talking about. You know,
it took me about twenty years plus to get to
the point of going, wait a minute, no, you need
to go back to the original source material yourself. You
(03:00):
need to revisit this. And so, actually I've done three
books on the assassination, but about two years ago I
decided i'd finally written a book called Tipping Point, which
was my take on the conspiracy. This is where it started,
this is how it came about. These are the people
that went to Dallas. And it's kind of like, okay,
(03:21):
I'm done, all right. I finally satisfied myself on the conspiracy.
No it wasn't Oswald. And then it was like, what
about Oswald? Wait a minute, you forgot him. He's not
even in the book, okay. And so for about two years,
David Boyle and my co author and I went back
to Oswald, back to other sources, back to friends, people
(03:43):
that had befriended him in Russia as well these United
States and the Marine Corps kind of like a totally
revisit to Oswald and see where it takes us. Let's
not have any preconceptions. Let's just go look at Oswald.
As a person. And so that's that's in the last
couple of years looking at it, at it as a
person and working a lot of the issues that have
(04:07):
come up. You know, people made assumptions about Oswald, took
positions on Oswald. You know, how do we assess that
if we're looking at it with fresh eyes that is.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Actually really intriguing. So what are some of the things
that surprised you when you got further in depth with Oswald?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
I think one of the things that surprised me is
he's he's often pictured, well, he's pictured by the Warren
Commission as being antisocial, a social violent, you know, disassociated
from society, out of touch, you know, that kind of
loan or lone nut. You got to have him be
that kind of person if he's going to be a
(04:46):
loan nut. And one of the reasons they did that,
it becomes very clear, is that they couldn't find any
motive for him to kill JFK or not even to
dislike him. People they interviewed said, yeah, he the Kennedy
administration was doing the right thing, and pretty much everywhere
except in regard to Cuba, he really thought Kennedy was
(05:07):
the right person to talk about Dayton with khrus Chef
and maybe prevent a war. He was very much in
tune with racial justice and Kennedy's policies on integration, so
he spoke positively about Kennedy and actually mapping Kennedy's you know,
global View is pretty close fit to Oswald's in terms
(05:30):
of easing Cold War tensions and maybe we can talk
to these people. So that was a pop problem for them,
so they reverted to kind of cherry picking to make
him the loan dot. And one of the things we
do in the book is we went to the trouble
of pulling Ashley a photo collection that kind of shows
(05:52):
the real oz Wall you know, joking around in school,
joking with kids and girls in the hallway in Russia.
You know he has there's lots of friends in Russia.
He's on the beach with girls in bikinis. You know,
this is not the Oswo you see in the warrant commission.
You know, if Life magazine had put these pictures on
the front page rather than osweo with a rifle, you know,
(06:14):
it might have been harder to sell the image that
was sold a Gosiele. But the other thing we also
saw hause there're two or three and what we're looking
for is constance. What's the constant in his personality? What's
the continuity in his character? What can you I say?
You know I say? And we found there was some
real constants. For one thing. Oswa was actually far more intelligent.
(06:38):
Then you get a sense of in reading either the
Warrant Commission or a lot of conspiracy literature. He tested
at one point eighteen in school, which is pretty good
IQ test in school. When he went into the Marines,
he tested and got into a technical career field as
a radar technician operator, you know, not just infantry, but
(07:00):
a technical career field. When he was in the Marines,
as his officers would go on record to say, he
read a lot. You know, Oswa was on the transport
going from the US to Japan. He was reading Leaves
of Grass by Whitman. This is not your normal marine literature.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I was in the Marines.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I know it's not you probably weren't reading I was
not reading.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
That when I was near for I was not reading
any Whitman.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
But he read politics, he read history. He in Japan,
in the Marines, one of his officers testified that they
would get into political discussions and Oswald could hold his
own or better talking geopolitics, social systems. This marine auser
(07:54):
was a graduate of an Ivy League university in political science.
You know, okay, this is a pretty big admission for
a Marine officer to make that this guy with one
stripe and he you know, like he's talking at my level.
Oswo was extremely when he came back to the US
after Russia and did interviews, job interviews and placement interviews.
(08:19):
He tested well, he interviewed well. We have records showing
that the placement people really thought he should go into
management level jobs. But he always needed a job so
badly and money so badly that they had to put
him into the first job that came along, which is
pretty much always manual labor. So I think those are
(08:42):
two finding. He doesn't have the character. He has more
intelligence than you expect. He's not at all anti social
or asocial. I mean, at the time of his death,
yet he was married and had two children, had dated
extensively in Japan and Russia, proposed wece in Russia. You know,
this is not a loaner. You had to really sway
(09:05):
the facts to make him a loaner. But the thing
is if he liked you and you caught kind of like,
you know, if you didn't put him down, he had
good friends and had but if you it's kind of like,
I remember this from the sixties. You know, these they
are these people who were pains if you didn't agree
totally were their politics, they were just a pain. One
(09:27):
of my marine buddies said, oh, yeah, we had there
was one in every barracks, you know, And yeah, they'd
get into arguments or they just you know, they just read,
you know whatever. So there was that. I think the
other thing that was constant is Oswald was always his
own person. He wanted to see things for himself. That's
why he got into the Marines. He wanted to adventure,
(09:49):
he wanted to travel, he wanted to write, and actually
by nineteen sixty three he was writing a lot which
no nobody ever reads, but they put it in the
Warrant Commissi in the appendices. Right in the twenty sixth volumes,
you have Oswald's monograph on geopolitics, Why Russian Communism is bad?
(10:11):
What was you know, compromised between the capitalist system and
the socialist system, he writes, He reads and he writes
and so, but he wants to do it himself. He
doesn't take orders. Well, I think that's something if you
were in the Marias we can appreciate. You know, when
when you throw a drink on your n CEO in
(10:32):
the club, that's not a good sign. You know, in school,
he wasn't. When he had gone from New Orleans to
New York City, which is a tough move for any city.
People laughed at his clothes, they aft at his accent,
of course, and he didn't get into fights. He just
(10:53):
became a truant. But when the truant officer said, okay,
you've got two choices, you've got to go. You're either
going into a home where you went back to school,
it's like back to school, and the next semester he
gets an a on social relationship, like okay, he understands
the system, but he doesn't take orders. Well, in the Marines,
he gets kicked off the football team because he wants
(11:15):
to be calling the plays. Okay, this is awesome, you know. So,
as you said, he really was quite a unique individual
for the late fifties early sixties. You know, I grew
up in that time and place and he would have
stood out as a character. But he's the kind of
character that you you thought was you kind of respected
(11:37):
and kind of thought was a pain in the rear
both at the same time.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Do we know what got Oswald into so in depth
with politics.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, he said himself. His mother like moved the family
like six different times over five six years. He was
always in different school, so he was at home a lot,
on his own a lot, did a lot of reading.
He was a reader. He was a reader more than
a talker. So he did a lot of reading at
(12:07):
different publications, and he was very upset by the fact
that his mother always was getting low paid menual jobs,
and so he kind of got to think, you know,
there's a class system in place here. I don't like this.
Mother can never We're not never have a stable family,
We're always moving. And so that started tending him towards
(12:28):
what you would call economic justice thinking, I guess you
would say, it's kind of like the system is not fair.
And so he starts doing a lot of reading and
basically gets sent into a mindset where he gets very
inclined towards socialism. You know, everybody. In his own writing,
he says, look, I believe in capitalism. They're not. Don't
(12:50):
believe in communism. But there should be health care for all,
there should be work, job training for all. You know
that you should be able to get help trained to
get a good job or go to college or whatever.
So that's kind of his mindset. As a teenager. He
actually wrote the Young Socialist Federation in the US wanting
(13:12):
to join, and with Osbolle, it's kind of like, I
want to join the Young Socialist Federation And is there
a club around here that I can join? Okay? Not
you're a social guy. And if there's not a club,
can I join? Start one? Okay? Again, not an a
social guy. So I think it's started in his teen years.
And if you look at his reading, we know what
(13:34):
he was reading because they got his library card. You know,
they've got his reading list, and he's reading that sort
of literature even when he goes into the Marines. But
what really I think turned it and he himself he
was asked this, It's like, so why did you become
so interested Rush? He said, well, when I was in Japan.
And he doesn't say this, but we know what he
(13:55):
was doing. He was hitting the bars because Japan was
very Up until that time, Oswald had not even like
dated or and in his first year in Japan, Okay,
his buddy's introduced them to the bars. They introduced them
to the bar girls. It's a whole different world in Japan.
And he kind of for a while at least, he
(14:15):
becomes more like your normal marine in Japan, you know, Okay, fine,
He's meeting lots of young people in the in the bars,
and they're they're talking about what's going on in Japan.
And he said, you know, Japan was moving towards a
very strange place between you know, an imperial system and
you know, democracy, and so they're socialist and they're communists,
(14:40):
and they're talking to them, and no doubt, some of
them more I don't think there's any dat at all,
were at the bar because they wanted to spread their
their with and so he became intrigued by what they
were saying. And most of them were looking towards Russia,
I mean, Japan, Russia. The influence is very great there.
(15:00):
And he just became like, well, I wonder, you know,
I was interested in socialism. I wonder how the Russians
are doing it. I wonder how they're doing their communism
because os were Oswald Socialism, Marxism and communism at that
point where all three words could mean anything, you know.
But so he became interested in going to Russia, started
(15:23):
studying Russia, you know, Russian self teaching Russia even and
when he got after he got busted a couple of times.
One time for having a pistol and shooting himself in
the leg. Okay, not a good thing, d s. Second
for throwing a drink on his nco not a good thing.
He kind of became disingented with.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
The core right.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
All right, they took away one stripe. They're not giving
me my corporal stripe. They didn't let me extend my
tear in Japan. All right, What am I going to
do next? So he really gets into studying Russia. He
looks looks to enroll in college and Switchedland actually, and
if you look at his application, he wants to study
politics and philosophy and you know that kind of a
(16:07):
liberal education. But he even even took a as we know,
you can get extra credit if you speak a language, right,
so he actually took a Russian test in the Marines,
and we have a scores and he couldn't speak it
very well, which makes sense he had nobody to talk to.
He could read it moderately well because he was self
teaching himself. So I think that that's my usual long
(16:32):
winded answer to any question, is that's where and how
he became interested in Russia and Russian.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
And what did he take away from Russia? Because you
had mentioned earlier that he didn't really like Russian Communism,
So I'm curious, like when he leaves and comes back
and what would make him say that when.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
He was so moved to go there, well, aside from
a new wife a baby, he took away a strong
dislike for the Russian and he writes about this in detail.
He actually wrote a manuscript about his time in Russian
and what he liked and what he didn't like. He
felt it was totally bureaucratic. Communist Party was more like
(17:16):
a bureaucratic system that it wasn't what they believed. It
was like the system they put in place. You know,
had to attend meetings, you had to do this, you
had to do that. Oswell didn't like taking orders, so
clearly he didn't like that. Oswell is maybe the only person,
certainly only the American actually to stage a strike in
(17:37):
a Russian factory. His friend Ernstitevitz, who wrote about this extensively,
said Oswell just decided he didn't like going to all
those meetings, and he writes about the meetings were boring,
nobody was paying attention except the party officers who were
watching to see who wasn't watching, Like this is classic Oswell.
You know, he knows what's going on. He hated the bureaucracy,
(18:00):
and he actually staged like a workstop. But his boss
in the factory, who was a good friend of his,
is going like, no, no, Lee, we do not do
this in a Russian factory. You don't understand. I'm losing
my and so he stopped. But he wrote he didn't
like the structure, the strictures, and he thought, quite frankly,
(18:20):
and this is again kind of interesting for his time
and place, that most of the party officials were just
taking advantage of the party and the perks of the party.
They could take vacations, they could go to the coast.
The workers couldn't. They had car you know, it's like
it's just another system under another name. And he actually
(18:42):
wrote that he felt that Soviet communism was actually a
facade for Russian nationalism, and that the communist parties they
were putting overseas were just tools of Russian geopolitics, which
is extremely inside and probably brighter than most people in
(19:03):
nineteen sixty I will say that. So, yeah, he did
not he did not like the system. He still retained
He actually wrote a in the spring of nineteen sixty
three a paper that said, look, here would be the
best combination of Russian socialism. You know, we need to
(19:24):
have education for all, we need to have health care
for all, but here's what we need to take from capitalism.
So he was actually thinking about how you could mail
the two together. And a lot of his reading during
the spring winter spring of sixty three was about Cuba,
and he actually came to believe that maybe Cuba was
(19:46):
doing it right. We're certainly doing it better than Russia
had And if you read Cuba literature, you know, no racism.
Everybody gets healthcare was touted, and he was reading the
PU publications like the Socialist Workers Already newspaper, which we're
touting the actually no longer touting the Russian Revolution, but
(20:06):
touting the Cuban Revolution. And Ashley got his head into
I need to go see how Cuba is. Maybe Cuba
is getting it right. As early as the Marines, he
had talked with a marine buddy named Delgado about them both,
you know, when their term was over, they should go
to Cuba, they should join the Cuban regime basically fight
(20:28):
against Jankie imperialism in Central and you know that sort
of thing, you know. So that wasn't totally new for Oswald,
and he had been he had been meeting with Cubans
in Russia who were studying there. So not at total
but that was a very much of a shift in
his thinking, like I still believe the things I believe,
(20:50):
but I wonder if anybody can get it right. In
his conversation with his best friend at the time in Dallas,
his friend asked him about that, was you know, I
probably won't ever find what I'm looking for, but I'm going.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
To keep looking at So in a way, he was
kind of seeking out that validation for his train of
thought of how things should be run and seeing if
it in some social standpoint or country, if it actually worked.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, exactly, Okay, now.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It makes sense. So what got him. I don't want
to say mad or angry, let's say involved what got
him involved with Kennedy? And I mean, I know you
mentioned Cube obviously and everything going on there, but there
had to have been more than that.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Nothing actually about even involved in Kennedy. What he got
involved with was and actually he was asked this question
on the air on radio in Your Orleans and he
was asked if he didn't like Kennedy, you know, and
Oswill said, essentially, no, it's not about Kennedy. It's the
administration policy for its Cuba. Okay, I don't like that.
(21:58):
You know there they have an embargo, they're you know,
they're they're acting against Cuba. You know, we need to
change that. So basically, it wasn't JFK Per say. It
was you know, the US needs to treat Cuba better.
There's no reason it should be treating Cuba like it is.
You know, Cuba's not doing anything, which is why he
(22:20):
committed to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. You know,
that's it exactly literally it So his interest in what
really happened is his interest in Cuba got him in
New Orleans entangled with both antic Castro Cubans and people
(22:41):
presenting themselves as pro Castro Cubans who were really anti
who wanted to figure out which side he was on.
It's kind of like they're trying to feel him out.
Is he really anti Castro where we're not sure we
need to test him. And at the same time, interestingly enough,
the very first person he went to in the Cuban
commit Unity in New Orleans, which is something we only
(23:03):
realized maybe two years ago, Max was the brother of
a senior CIA propaganda political action officer at JM Wave
in Miami, who had come out of Cuba, had been
working at covertly in Cuba, and in nineteen sixty three
(23:23):
was involved with counterintelligence propaganda anyway. So he immediately just
by making contact with this guy's brother and making contact
with the anti Castro stupid Cuban Directorate who are working
for the CIA case officers Oswell put him like just
(23:43):
through himself in the middle of a spider web connected
him to CIA Cuba project activities, and by August, at
which I find amazing. Again, we've only known fairly recently.
By August of nineteen sixty three, he was already being
used in anti Castro propaganda. Letters were being written to
(24:05):
Congressman about you know how easily Americans could be subverted.
You know, here's this well intentioned US ex marine. He's
been corrupted by Cuban propaganda. They're writing letters, they're warning
people about him. And we think we've identified at least two,
if not three, different CIA operations that were coming into
(24:30):
play using Oswald's image, but not using Oswald himself so
unwittingly using it because he had been on radio and
TV and newspapers in New Orleans with his Cuban agenda,
which is exactly what you want for deniable propaganda operations.
Do you want somebody that's going the direction you want
(24:52):
to go and you just shift stuff around him?
Speaker 1 (24:55):
What was some of his immediate family and friends thoughts
about him going down that road with Cuba, or even
moving to Russia for that matter.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Marina and Oswall Eliot. By spring they had one child
and Marina was pregnant again, and at the beginning of
nineteen sixty three, it was pretty obvious life in the
US was not working out for Marina the way she'd expected.
She even wrote, you know, the Oswa who proposed to
me in Russia was romantic. He had his own apartment,
(25:24):
he had a lot of money. We were doing well
in Russia and now we're in the US where it's
kind of like, without saying it, I expected there would
be cars and refrigerators and appliances, and no they're not.
He has all these menial jobs. He keeps losing his job.
He gets bored, he can't keep it. We're separated. They
were separated frequently over a year or so. She was
(25:47):
living with other people. In January of sixty three, she
started applying to go back to Russia, and he was
endorsing her, possibly him, but at least her going back
to Russia, because She'srusian citizen. The question is how she
was taking it well. According to Marina herself, basically, Oswell said,
(26:08):
my desire is to get to Cuba, you know how,
whatever it takes. He even talked about hijacking and airft,
which was getting to be a thing at that time,
and will would you help me if I get a pistol?
And Marina said, I told him he was out of
his mind. You know, if he wants to go to Cuba,
and he gets to Cuba and he wants me and
the kids to come, she's pregnant again by that time.
(26:30):
I told him, I would come, but you know it's
on him. I don't want to be part of any
of that nonsense. I think it's stupid. She Marina had
no problems telling Oswald when she thought he was doing
something stupid. That's pretty bad. Sounds like right, yeah, yeah,
And generally probably her judgment calls her better than more
lightly on Thursday, November the twenty first, Basically in the book,
(26:57):
we write what we think is a solid biography and
character study of Oswald for about two thirds of the book,
and then in the fault last two thirds of the
book it is speculative. This is the scenario of what
we think Oswell got into, how people manipulated him, how
they set him up, so on and so forth. But
(27:17):
we think that on the twenty first, you really had
a choice. Some people had offered him a way to
get to Cuba, which is what he wanted to do.
Marina had a new baby, she was living with someone
that's taking care of her the pains through pain, and
we know according to her, he said basically he came
(27:38):
back and he said, I want us to move together
as a family immediately. I want to get an apartment tomorrow.
I want you to commit to move in with me.
I want to have the family together. And Marina essentially said, look,
I got a brand new baby diapers here, heir diapers.
This lady here has a wor washing machine. Once we
(27:58):
get a two or three much down on the road,
and once you show me an apartment of the washing
machine in it, we'll talk. I mean, I hate to
be that blunt, but you know, sometimes life is like that.
And so Marina said, she later regretted, you know, being
kind of like rejecting his overture. But our assessment is
(28:19):
he was on the cusp. He had an offer to
go to Cuba. You know, he's torn new baby family.
Which way are you going to go? And when she
declined his offer, we feel that on November twenty second,
he was going to take the offer to go to
Cuba and actually get on a plane that would essentially
(28:39):
be hijacked to Cuba. Had nothing to do with JFK,
nothing to do with the assassination, other than he was
probably told it'll be easier to do this when everybody
is looking at the president being in town.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, it's totally understandable. If anything else, I know, we
are running a little bit low on time here, if
anything else, What do you hope that readers will take
away from this book?
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I think really what I would hope to is that
the Oswald that everybody has in their mind, and even
the Oswell that either the Warrant Commission or the conspiracy
community which I've been part of for decades. Now, okay,
it's not the Oswald. We really need to give Oswald
his due and address the complexity of his character, the
(29:28):
issues with this character, what got him into trouble. He's
a bit of a drama queen. I mean, there's no
doubt about that. He could. He wasn't violent, but he
he could be dramatic in his activities. Kind of like
we get back to somebody who throws a drink in
the NCO's face is a bit of a drama queen
a little bit, and then invites the NCO outside into
(29:49):
the alley when he's outweighed, probably by forty pounds, you know,
a bit of a drama queen. They need to Oswell
needs to be given as due as a real person,
which he hasn't been. He's not that way in the textbooks.
He's not that way in the Warren Commission or in
most of the conspiracy books. Number one would be in fairness,
(30:10):
you need to look at the original sources, people that
knew Oswald, people that knew him in the Rings in
Russia High school, and get the real Oswald. And then
you need to step back and say, well, if that's
the real Oswald, did he really kill the president? And
ask yourself that question? And when you see it doesn't
(30:31):
look like he did, it's like, well, in that case,
how was it so easy to convict him? And what
you see is there's really when push comes to show
there was only one piece of evidence that convicted Lee
Harvey Oswald, and that was a rifle traceable to Osweal
that was found in the school book depository. Interestingly enough,
(30:53):
Oswald's in custody for forty eight hours, almost two days.
Nobody ever showed him that rifle and said is this yours?
Nobody ever showed him the sack that was supposedly used
to carry it into the school book depositor and said,
it's this yours. And if you say this as yours,
so it won't have your fingerprints on it. Right, So
(31:13):
nobody ever gave them the opportunity to defend himself. And
that's one of the things that becomes very clear is
up to the time of his death, he had no
idea how much trouble he was in. He was telling
talking to his wife about buying new shoes for the baby,
this like, this is his concern, you bitch, your charge
(31:34):
killing and this He was not concerned. He was only
beginning to realize how deeply he was into it. And
so I like people to look at his behavior during
that forty eight hours and again compare that to what
supposedly he did. And if you look at that and say, oh,
that none of that fits, then we need to address
(31:56):
who and how Oswald was framed. Who and now Ozzy
was framed at the time of the assassination, and why
did that lead to an immediate characterization of Oswald as
the only one involved. I mean, what we find is
if you look after the fact, you find calls from
the president's political aid to Dallas that night saying there
(32:22):
will be no charges of conspiracy. And in Dallas you
find the DA tearing up a charge that said conspiracy
in the assassination of the president. Why would the president
have this guy on the phone calling the head of
the law enforcement in Dallas. The Texas Attorney General saying
there will be no charges or investigation of conspiracy. Why
(32:45):
do you find within forty eight hours the assassination of
the president j Edgar Hoover telling his chief aids to
write a report on oswell as the Loan assassin. They
push back and say, well, boss, that's gonna be hard
to do because we haven't really done an investigation yet.
(33:06):
The response is, I don't care about it. I want
to report on my desk in like four days, okay,
and make it look good. Why would that happen? So
it needs to raise some questions, higher level questions that
need to be asked about how could this have happened
to Oswald? How does it happen?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
So?
Speaker 1 (33:26):
I appreciate you so much coming on the podcast and
talking about the Oswald paradox, and for my listeners, you
can check the links in the description. You can go
and click on those and go check out his other
books and this one for the purchase, and thank you
again for joining me.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I appreciate you. I appreciate it was a great conversation.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Absolutely, I agree.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
A good weekend you too.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
SA She s
Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances podcast. I am your host, Justin.
I am joined by Larry Hancock, the author of a
book called The Oswald Paradox. And as all of my
listeners know, I've always been down the rabbit hole of
the JFK assassination, but I've actually never took the time
to look more into Oswald, which I mean, he has
(00:44):
to be some kind of a fascinating man because of
all the little quirks and rabbit holes to go down
and everything like that. But Larry, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oh, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I am happy to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I took another look at Oswald myself, after working on
this for thirty plus years and writing like three or
four books on the assassination. It's like, you know, maybe
I should reconsider Oswald, Like he's right at the middle
of this. Maybe I should take another look and not
just like believe everything I read about Oswald and all
the books.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Oh man, and how'd you get started into it? How'd
you get fascinated by this?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, it's strung. I of course I grew up with it.
I was a sophomore in high school when Kennedy was shot.
Remember that quite well, Sunday Morning watch Oswald shot by
Ruby on TV. So that sticks with you. But then,
you know, college, air Force life in general got in.
(01:46):
And then but about I think it was about ninety five,
my wife came in and said, you know, I just
read a reporter in Dallas has published a book on
the Kennedy assassination, you know, and you'd be interested. And
I said, well, sure, I'll read it. And I read
it and that was it. Thirty years plus later, that's
(02:06):
all it took. It's like one book and I'm done.
It goes on forever.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Oh that is outstanding. How long did it take you
to compile all the information in the Oswald paradox?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, the strange thing is I went down so many
leads and so many roads. I mean, there are so
many people that have posed, you know, different motives and
different scenarios and that sort of thing. I got caught
up in those for many, many years. But it all
kind of gave background work on Oswald. But as as
(02:39):
I just said, it's like at that point in time,
I was just taking everything in and so somebody that
seemed like a reputable source wrote something about Oswald. I
assume and knew what they were talking about. You know,
it took me about twenty years plus to get to
the point of going, wait a minute, no, you need
to go back to the original source material yourself. You
(03:00):
need to revisit this. And so, actually I've done three
books on the assassination, but about two years ago I
decided i'd finally written a book called Tipping Point, which
was my take on the conspiracy. This is where it started,
this is how it came about. These are the people
that went to Dallas. And it's kind of like, okay,
(03:21):
I'm done, all right. I finally satisfied myself on the conspiracy.
No it wasn't Oswald. And then it was like, what
about Oswald? Wait a minute, you forgot him. He's not
even in the book, okay. And so for about two years,
David Boyle and my co author and I went back
to Oswald, back to other sources, back to friends, people
(03:43):
that had befriended him in Russia as well these United
States and the Marine Corps kind of like a totally
revisit to Oswald and see where it takes us. Let's
not have any preconceptions. Let's just go look at Oswald.
As a person. And so that's that's in the last
couple of years looking at it, at it as a
person and working a lot of the issues that have
(04:07):
come up. You know, people made assumptions about Oswald, took
positions on Oswald. You know, how do we assess that
if we're looking at it with fresh eyes that is.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Actually really intriguing. So what are some of the things
that surprised you when you got further in depth with Oswald?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
I think one of the things that surprised me is
he's he's often pictured, well, he's pictured by the Warren
Commission as being antisocial, a social violent, you know, disassociated
from society, out of touch, you know, that kind of
loan or lone nut. You got to have him be
that kind of person if he's going to be a
(04:46):
loan nut. And one of the reasons they did that,
it becomes very clear, is that they couldn't find any
motive for him to kill JFK or not even to
dislike him. People they interviewed said, yeah, he the Kennedy
administration was doing the right thing, and pretty much everywhere
except in regard to Cuba, he really thought Kennedy was
(05:07):
the right person to talk about Dayton with khrus Chef
and maybe prevent a war. He was very much in
tune with racial justice and Kennedy's policies on integration, so
he spoke positively about Kennedy and actually mapping Kennedy's you know,
global View is pretty close fit to Oswald's in terms
(05:30):
of easing Cold War tensions and maybe we can talk
to these people. So that was a pop problem for them,
so they reverted to kind of cherry picking to make
him the loan dot. And one of the things we
do in the book is we went to the trouble
of pulling Ashley a photo collection that kind of shows
(05:52):
the real oz Wall you know, joking around in school,
joking with kids and girls in the hallway in Russia.
You know he has there's lots of friends in Russia.
He's on the beach with girls in bikinis. You know,
this is not the Oswo you see in the warrant commission.
You know, if Life magazine had put these pictures on
the front page rather than osweo with a rifle, you know,
(06:14):
it might have been harder to sell the image that
was sold a Gosiele. But the other thing we also
saw hause there're two or three and what we're looking
for is constance. What's the constant in his personality? What's
the continuity in his character? What can you I say?
You know I say? And we found there was some
real constants. For one thing. Oswa was actually far more intelligent.
(06:38):
Then you get a sense of in reading either the
Warrant Commission or a lot of conspiracy literature. He tested
at one point eighteen in school, which is pretty good
IQ test in school. When he went into the Marines,
he tested and got into a technical career field as
a radar technician operator, you know, not just infantry, but
(07:00):
a technical career field. When he was in the Marines,
as his officers would go on record to say, he
read a lot. You know, Oswa was on the transport
going from the US to Japan. He was reading Leaves
of Grass by Whitman. This is not your normal marine literature.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I was in the Marines.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I know it's not you probably weren't reading I was
not reading.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
That when I was near for I was not reading
any Whitman.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
But he read politics, he read history. He in Japan,
in the Marines, one of his officers testified that they
would get into political discussions and Oswald could hold his
own or better talking geopolitics, social systems. This marine auser
(07:54):
was a graduate of an Ivy League university in political science.
You know, okay, this is a pretty big admission for
a Marine officer to make that this guy with one
stripe and he you know, like he's talking at my level.
Oswo was extremely when he came back to the US
after Russia and did interviews, job interviews and placement interviews.
(08:19):
He tested well, he interviewed well. We have records showing
that the placement people really thought he should go into
management level jobs. But he always needed a job so
badly and money so badly that they had to put
him into the first job that came along, which is
pretty much always manual labor. So I think those are
(08:42):
two finding. He doesn't have the character. He has more
intelligence than you expect. He's not at all anti social
or asocial. I mean, at the time of his death,
yet he was married and had two children, had dated
extensively in Japan and Russia, proposed wece in Russia. You know,
this is not a loaner. You had to really sway
(09:05):
the facts to make him a loaner. But the thing
is if he liked you and you caught kind of like,
you know, if you didn't put him down, he had
good friends and had but if you it's kind of like,
I remember this from the sixties. You know, these they
are these people who were pains if you didn't agree
totally were their politics, they were just a pain. One
(09:27):
of my marine buddies said, oh, yeah, we had there
was one in every barracks, you know, And yeah, they'd
get into arguments or they just you know, they just read,
you know whatever. So there was that. I think the
other thing that was constant is Oswald was always his
own person. He wanted to see things for himself. That's
why he got into the Marines. He wanted to adventure,
(09:49):
he wanted to travel, he wanted to write, and actually
by nineteen sixty three he was writing a lot which
no nobody ever reads, but they put it in the
Warrant Commissi in the appendices. Right in the twenty sixth volumes,
you have Oswald's monograph on geopolitics, Why Russian Communism is bad?
(10:11):
What was you know, compromised between the capitalist system and
the socialist system, he writes, He reads and he writes
and so, but he wants to do it himself. He
doesn't take orders. Well, I think that's something if you
were in the Marias we can appreciate. You know, when
when you throw a drink on your n CEO in
(10:32):
the club, that's not a good sign. You know, in school,
he wasn't. When he had gone from New Orleans to
New York City, which is a tough move for any city.
People laughed at his clothes, they aft at his accent,
of course, and he didn't get into fights. He just
(10:53):
became a truant. But when the truant officer said, okay,
you've got two choices, you've got to go. You're either
going into a home where you went back to school,
it's like back to school, and the next semester he
gets an a on social relationship, like okay, he understands
the system, but he doesn't take orders. Well, in the Marines,
he gets kicked off the football team because he wants
(11:15):
to be calling the plays. Okay, this is awesome, you know. So,
as you said, he really was quite a unique individual
for the late fifties early sixties. You know, I grew
up in that time and place and he would have
stood out as a character. But he's the kind of
character that you you thought was you kind of respected
(11:37):
and kind of thought was a pain in the rear
both at the same time.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Do we know what got Oswald into so in depth
with politics.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, he said himself. His mother like moved the family
like six different times over five six years. He was
always in different school, so he was at home a lot,
on his own a lot, did a lot of reading.
He was a reader. He was a reader more than
a talker. So he did a lot of reading at
(12:07):
different publications, and he was very upset by the fact
that his mother always was getting low paid menual jobs,
and so he kind of got to think, you know,
there's a class system in place here. I don't like this.
Mother can never We're not never have a stable family,
We're always moving. And so that started tending him towards
(12:28):
what you would call economic justice thinking, I guess you
would say, it's kind of like the system is not fair.
And so he starts doing a lot of reading and
basically gets sent into a mindset where he gets very
inclined towards socialism. You know, everybody. In his own writing,
he says, look, I believe in capitalism. They're not. Don't
(12:50):
believe in communism. But there should be health care for all,
there should be work, job training for all. You know
that you should be able to get help trained to
get a good job or go to college or whatever.
So that's kind of his mindset. As a teenager. He
actually wrote the Young Socialist Federation in the US wanting
(13:12):
to join, and with Osbolle, it's kind of like, I
want to join the Young Socialist Federation And is there
a club around here that I can join? Okay? Not
you're a social guy. And if there's not a club,
can I join? Start one? Okay? Again, not an a
social guy. So I think it's started in his teen years.
And if you look at his reading, we know what
(13:34):
he was reading because they got his library card. You know,
they've got his reading list, and he's reading that sort
of literature even when he goes into the Marines. But
what really I think turned it and he himself he
was asked this, It's like, so why did you become
so interested Rush? He said, well, when I was in Japan.
And he doesn't say this, but we know what he
(13:55):
was doing. He was hitting the bars because Japan was
very Up until that time, Oswald had not even like
dated or and in his first year in Japan, Okay,
his buddy's introduced them to the bars. They introduced them
to the bar girls. It's a whole different world in Japan.
And he kind of for a while at least, he
(14:15):
becomes more like your normal marine in Japan, you know, Okay, fine,
He's meeting lots of young people in the in the bars,
and they're they're talking about what's going on in Japan.
And he said, you know, Japan was moving towards a
very strange place between you know, an imperial system and
you know, democracy, and so they're socialist and they're communists,
(14:40):
and they're talking to them, and no doubt, some of
them more I don't think there's any dat at all,
were at the bar because they wanted to spread their
their with and so he became intrigued by what they
were saying. And most of them were looking towards Russia,
I mean, Japan, Russia. The influence is very great there.
(15:00):
And he just became like, well, I wonder, you know,
I was interested in socialism. I wonder how the Russians
are doing it. I wonder how they're doing their communism
because os were Oswald Socialism, Marxism and communism at that
point where all three words could mean anything, you know.
But so he became interested in going to Russia, started
(15:23):
studying Russia, you know, Russian self teaching Russia even and
when he got after he got busted a couple of times.
One time for having a pistol and shooting himself in
the leg. Okay, not a good thing, d s. Second
for throwing a drink on his nco not a good thing.
He kind of became disingented with.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
The core right.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
All right, they took away one stripe. They're not giving
me my corporal stripe. They didn't let me extend my
tear in Japan. All right, What am I going to
do next? So he really gets into studying Russia. He
looks looks to enroll in college and Switchedland actually, and
if you look at his application, he wants to study
politics and philosophy and you know that kind of a
(16:07):
liberal education. But he even even took a as we know,
you can get extra credit if you speak a language, right,
so he actually took a Russian test in the Marines,
and we have a scores and he couldn't speak it
very well, which makes sense he had nobody to talk to.
He could read it moderately well because he was self
teaching himself. So I think that that's my usual long
(16:32):
winded answer to any question, is that's where and how
he became interested in Russia and Russian.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
And what did he take away from Russia? Because you
had mentioned earlier that he didn't really like Russian Communism,
So I'm curious, like when he leaves and comes back
and what would make him say that when.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
He was so moved to go there, well, aside from
a new wife a baby, he took away a strong
dislike for the Russian and he writes about this in detail.
He actually wrote a manuscript about his time in Russian
and what he liked and what he didn't like. He
felt it was totally bureaucratic. Communist Party was more like
(17:16):
a bureaucratic system that it wasn't what they believed. It
was like the system they put in place. You know,
had to attend meetings, you had to do this, you
had to do that. Oswell didn't like taking orders, so
clearly he didn't like that. Oswell is maybe the only person,
certainly only the American actually to stage a strike in
(17:37):
a Russian factory. His friend Ernstitevitz, who wrote about this extensively,
said Oswell just decided he didn't like going to all
those meetings, and he writes about the meetings were boring,
nobody was paying attention except the party officers who were
watching to see who wasn't watching, Like this is classic Oswell.
You know, he knows what's going on. He hated the bureaucracy,
(18:00):
and he actually staged like a workstop. But his boss
in the factory, who was a good friend of his,
is going like, no, no, Lee, we do not do
this in a Russian factory. You don't understand. I'm losing
my and so he stopped. But he wrote he didn't
like the structure, the strictures, and he thought, quite frankly,
(18:20):
and this is again kind of interesting for his time
and place, that most of the party officials were just
taking advantage of the party and the perks of the party.
They could take vacations, they could go to the coast.
The workers couldn't. They had car you know, it's like
it's just another system under another name. And he actually
(18:42):
wrote that he felt that Soviet communism was actually a
facade for Russian nationalism, and that the communist parties they
were putting overseas were just tools of Russian geopolitics, which
is extremely inside and probably brighter than most people in
(19:03):
nineteen sixty I will say that. So, yeah, he did
not he did not like the system. He still retained
He actually wrote a in the spring of nineteen sixty
three a paper that said, look, here would be the
best combination of Russian socialism. You know, we need to
(19:24):
have education for all, we need to have health care
for all, but here's what we need to take from capitalism.
So he was actually thinking about how you could mail
the two together. And a lot of his reading during
the spring winter spring of sixty three was about Cuba,
and he actually came to believe that maybe Cuba was
(19:46):
doing it right. We're certainly doing it better than Russia
had And if you read Cuba literature, you know, no racism.
Everybody gets healthcare was touted, and he was reading the
PU publications like the Socialist Workers Already newspaper, which we're
touting the actually no longer touting the Russian Revolution, but
(20:06):
touting the Cuban Revolution. And Ashley got his head into
I need to go see how Cuba is. Maybe Cuba
is getting it right. As early as the Marines, he
had talked with a marine buddy named Delgado about them both,
you know, when their term was over, they should go
to Cuba, they should join the Cuban regime basically fight
(20:28):
against Jankie imperialism in Central and you know that sort
of thing, you know. So that wasn't totally new for Oswald,
and he had been he had been meeting with Cubans
in Russia who were studying there. So not at total
but that was a very much of a shift in
his thinking, like I still believe the things I believe,
(20:50):
but I wonder if anybody can get it right. In
his conversation with his best friend at the time in Dallas,
his friend asked him about that, was you know, I
probably won't ever find what I'm looking for, but I'm going.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
To keep looking at So in a way, he was
kind of seeking out that validation for his train of
thought of how things should be run and seeing if
it in some social standpoint or country, if it actually worked.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, exactly, Okay, now.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It makes sense. So what got him. I don't want
to say mad or angry, let's say involved what got
him involved with Kennedy? And I mean, I know you
mentioned Cube obviously and everything going on there, but there
had to have been more than that.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Nothing actually about even involved in Kennedy. What he got
involved with was and actually he was asked this question
on the air on radio in Your Orleans and he
was asked if he didn't like Kennedy, you know, and
Oswill said, essentially, no, it's not about Kennedy. It's the
administration policy for its Cuba. Okay, I don't like that.
(21:58):
You know there they have an embargo, they're you know,
they're they're acting against Cuba. You know, we need to
change that. So basically, it wasn't JFK Per say. It
was you know, the US needs to treat Cuba better.
There's no reason it should be treating Cuba like it is.
You know, Cuba's not doing anything, which is why he
(22:20):
committed to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. You know,
that's it exactly literally it So his interest in what
really happened is his interest in Cuba got him in
New Orleans entangled with both antic Castro Cubans and people
(22:41):
presenting themselves as pro Castro Cubans who were really anti
who wanted to figure out which side he was on.
It's kind of like they're trying to feel him out.
Is he really anti Castro where we're not sure we
need to test him. And at the same time, interestingly enough,
the very first person he went to in the Cuban
commit Unity in New Orleans, which is something we only
(23:03):
realized maybe two years ago, Max was the brother of
a senior CIA propaganda political action officer at JM Wave
in Miami, who had come out of Cuba, had been
working at covertly in Cuba, and in nineteen sixty three
(23:23):
was involved with counterintelligence propaganda anyway. So he immediately just
by making contact with this guy's brother and making contact
with the anti Castro stupid Cuban Directorate who are working
for the CIA case officers Oswell put him like just
(23:43):
through himself in the middle of a spider web connected
him to CIA Cuba project activities, and by August, at
which I find amazing. Again, we've only known fairly recently.
By August of nineteen sixty three, he was already being
used in anti Castro propaganda. Letters were being written to
(24:05):
Congressman about you know how easily Americans could be subverted.
You know, here's this well intentioned US ex marine. He's
been corrupted by Cuban propaganda. They're writing letters, they're warning
people about him. And we think we've identified at least two,
if not three, different CIA operations that were coming into
(24:30):
play using Oswald's image, but not using Oswald himself so
unwittingly using it because he had been on radio and
TV and newspapers in New Orleans with his Cuban agenda,
which is exactly what you want for deniable propaganda operations.
Do you want somebody that's going the direction you want
(24:52):
to go and you just shift stuff around him?
Speaker 1 (24:55):
What was some of his immediate family and friends thoughts
about him going down that road with Cuba, or even
moving to Russia for that matter.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Marina and Oswall Eliot. By spring they had one child
and Marina was pregnant again, and at the beginning of
nineteen sixty three, it was pretty obvious life in the
US was not working out for Marina the way she'd expected.
She even wrote, you know, the Oswa who proposed to
me in Russia was romantic. He had his own apartment,
(25:24):
he had a lot of money. We were doing well
in Russia and now we're in the US where it's
kind of like, without saying it, I expected there would
be cars and refrigerators and appliances, and no they're not.
He has all these menial jobs. He keeps losing his job.
He gets bored, he can't keep it. We're separated. They
were separated frequently over a year or so. She was
(25:47):
living with other people. In January of sixty three, she
started applying to go back to Russia, and he was
endorsing her, possibly him, but at least her going back
to Russia, because She'srusian citizen. The question is how she
was taking it well. According to Marina herself, basically, Oswell said,
(26:08):
my desire is to get to Cuba, you know how,
whatever it takes. He even talked about hijacking and airft,
which was getting to be a thing at that time,
and will would you help me if I get a pistol?
And Marina said, I told him he was out of
his mind. You know, if he wants to go to Cuba,
and he gets to Cuba and he wants me and
the kids to come, she's pregnant again by that time.
(26:30):
I told him, I would come, but you know it's
on him. I don't want to be part of any
of that nonsense. I think it's stupid. She Marina had
no problems telling Oswald when she thought he was doing
something stupid. That's pretty bad. Sounds like right, yeah, yeah,
And generally probably her judgment calls her better than more
lightly on Thursday, November the twenty first, Basically in the book,
(26:57):
we write what we think is a solid biography and
character study of Oswald for about two thirds of the book,
and then in the fault last two thirds of the
book it is speculative. This is the scenario of what
we think Oswell got into, how people manipulated him, how
they set him up, so on and so forth. But
(27:17):
we think that on the twenty first, you really had
a choice. Some people had offered him a way to
get to Cuba, which is what he wanted to do.
Marina had a new baby, she was living with someone
that's taking care of her the pains through pain, and
we know according to her, he said basically he came
(27:38):
back and he said, I want us to move together
as a family immediately. I want to get an apartment tomorrow.
I want you to commit to move in with me.
I want to have the family together. And Marina essentially said, look,
I got a brand new baby diapers here, heir diapers.
This lady here has a wor washing machine. Once we
(27:58):
get a two or three much down on the road,
and once you show me an apartment of the washing
machine in it, we'll talk. I mean, I hate to
be that blunt, but you know, sometimes life is like that.
And so Marina said, she later regretted, you know, being
kind of like rejecting his overture. But our assessment is
(28:19):
he was on the cusp. He had an offer to
go to Cuba. You know, he's torn new baby family.
Which way are you going to go? And when she
declined his offer, we feel that on November twenty second,
he was going to take the offer to go to
Cuba and actually get on a plane that would essentially
(28:39):
be hijacked to Cuba. Had nothing to do with JFK,
nothing to do with the assassination, other than he was
probably told it'll be easier to do this when everybody
is looking at the president being in town.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, it's totally understandable. If anything else, I know, we
are running a little bit low on time here, if
anything else, What do you hope that readers will take
away from this book?
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I think really what I would hope to is that
the Oswald that everybody has in their mind, and even
the Oswell that either the Warrant Commission or the conspiracy
community which I've been part of for decades. Now, okay,
it's not the Oswald. We really need to give Oswald
his due and address the complexity of his character, the
(29:28):
issues with this character, what got him into trouble. He's
a bit of a drama queen. I mean, there's no
doubt about that. He could. He wasn't violent, but he
he could be dramatic in his activities. Kind of like
we get back to somebody who throws a drink in
the NCO's face is a bit of a drama queen
a little bit, and then invites the NCO outside into
(29:49):
the alley when he's outweighed, probably by forty pounds, you know,
a bit of a drama queen. They need to Oswell
needs to be given as due as a real person,
which he hasn't been. He's not that way in the textbooks.
He's not that way in the Warren Commission or in
most of the conspiracy books. Number one would be in fairness,
(30:10):
you need to look at the original sources, people that
knew Oswald, people that knew him in the Rings in
Russia High school, and get the real Oswald. And then
you need to step back and say, well, if that's
the real Oswald, did he really kill the president? And
ask yourself that question? And when you see it doesn't
(30:31):
look like he did, it's like, well, in that case,
how was it so easy to convict him? And what
you see is there's really when push comes to show
there was only one piece of evidence that convicted Lee
Harvey Oswald, and that was a rifle traceable to Osweal
that was found in the school book depository. Interestingly enough,
(30:53):
Oswald's in custody for forty eight hours, almost two days.
Nobody ever showed him that rifle and said is this yours?
Nobody ever showed him the sack that was supposedly used
to carry it into the school book depositor and said,
it's this yours. And if you say this as yours,
so it won't have your fingerprints on it. Right, So
(31:13):
nobody ever gave them the opportunity to defend himself. And
that's one of the things that becomes very clear is
up to the time of his death, he had no
idea how much trouble he was in. He was telling
talking to his wife about buying new shoes for the baby,
this like, this is his concern, you bitch, your charge
(31:34):
killing and this He was not concerned. He was only
beginning to realize how deeply he was into it. And
so I like people to look at his behavior during
that forty eight hours and again compare that to what
supposedly he did. And if you look at that and say, oh,
that none of that fits, then we need to address
(31:56):
who and how Oswald was framed. Who and now Ozzy
was framed at the time of the assassination, and why
did that lead to an immediate characterization of Oswald as
the only one involved. I mean, what we find is
if you look after the fact, you find calls from
the president's political aid to Dallas that night saying there
(32:22):
will be no charges of conspiracy. And in Dallas you
find the DA tearing up a charge that said conspiracy
in the assassination of the president. Why would the president
have this guy on the phone calling the head of
the law enforcement in Dallas. The Texas Attorney General saying
there will be no charges or investigation of conspiracy. Why
(32:45):
do you find within forty eight hours the assassination of
the president j Edgar Hoover telling his chief aids to
write a report on oswell as the Loan assassin. They
push back and say, well, boss, that's gonna be hard
to do because we haven't really done an investigation yet.
(33:06):
The response is, I don't care about it. I want
to report on my desk in like four days, okay,
and make it look good. Why would that happen? So
it needs to raise some questions, higher level questions that
need to be asked about how could this have happened
to Oswald? How does it happen?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
So?
Speaker 1 (33:26):
I appreciate you so much coming on the podcast and
talking about the Oswald paradox, and for my listeners, you
can check the links in the description. You can go
and click on those and go check out his other
books and this one for the purchase, and thank you
again for joining me.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I appreciate you. I appreciate it was a great conversation.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Absolutely, I agree.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
A good weekend you too.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
SA She s
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