Oswald's Tale (105 page)

7
. WC Testimony, Vol. III, p. 85.

8
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 551.

9
. WC Testimony, Vol. IV, pp. 228–229.

10
. Ibid., p. 230.

11
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 552.

12
. WC Testimony, Vol. I, p. 152.

13
. WC Testimony, Vol. IV, p. 226.

14
. WC Testimony, Vol. I, p. 156.

15
. WC Testimony, Vol. IV, p. 233.

16
. Ibid., pp. 233–234.

17
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 555.

18
. WC Testimony, Vol. I, pp. 235; 150.

Chapter 9: “He Cry; He Eye Wet”

1
. WC Testimony, Vol. I, pp. 156–157.

2
. Ibid., pp. 158–160.

3
. Ibid., pp. 161–163.

4
. Oswald, op. cit., p. 155.

5
. Ibid., pp. 158–159.

6
. Ibid., p. 156.

7
. Ibid., pp. 160–161.

8
. WC Testimony, Vol. I, p. 166.

9
. Ibid., p. 167.

10
. Ibid., p. 167.

11
. Ibid., p. 169.

12
. Ibid.

13
. Ibid., pp. 169–170.

14
. Oswald, op. cit., p. 162.

15
. WC Testimony, Vol. I, p. 168.

16
. Epstein, op. cit., p. 532.

17
. Oswald, op. cit., pp. 162–165.

18
. CE 295, Vol. XVI, pp. 815–822.

PART VII: THE AMATEUR HIT MAN

Chapter 1: The Amateur Hit Man

1
. Interview of Jack Ruby by Lawrence Schiller, 1966, © Alskog, Inc.

2
. WC Testimony, Vol. V, p. 190.

3
. Ibid., p. 191.

4
. Ibid., p. 194.

5
. Ibid., p. 195.

6
. Ibid., p. 196.

7
. Ibid., p. 197.

8
. Ibid.

9
. Ibid., p. 198.

10
. Ibid., pp. 198–199.

11
. Ibid., pp. 208–210.

12
. Ibid., p. 211.

13
. Ibid., p. 212.

14
. Ibid.

15
. Frank Ragano and Selwyn Raab,
Mob Lawyer,
p. 151.

16
. Ibid., p. 152.

17
. Posner, op. cit., p. 372, citing CE 2303, Vol. XXV, p. 27.

18
. WC Testimony, Vol. XIV, p. 151.

19
. WC Testimony, Vol. V, p. 185.

20
. Posner, op. cit., p. 374.

21
. WC Testimony, Vol. XIV, p. 468.

22
. Posner, op. cit., pp. 375–376.

23
. Ibid., p. 378, citing Affidavit of George Senator, November 24, 1963.

24
. Posner, op. cit., p. 377.

25
. Ibid.

26
. Ibid., p. 378.

27
. Ibid.

28
. WC Testimony, Vol. XV, p. 364.

29
. Harry Carlson’s name is actually Harry Olsen, but since Ruby made the error in his testimony of calling him Carlson and the Warren Commission accepted that, it would have been confusing to correct their text.

30
. WC Testimony, Vol. XIV, p. 221.

31
. Posner, op. cit., pp. 382–383.

32
. Ibid., p. 385.

33
. Ibid.

34
. Ibid., p. 386.

35
. Ibid., p. 387.

36
. Ibid., p. 389, citing WC Testimony, Vol. XV, pp. 672–673.

37
. WC Testimony, Vol. XVI, pp. 632–633.

38
. WC Testimony, Vol. XIV, p. 236.

39
. Ibid.

40
. Posner, op. cit., p. 391.

41
. Ibid., pp. 392–393.

42
. WC Testimony, Vol. V. p. 199.

43
. Posner, op. cit., p. 393.

44
. WC Testimony, Vol. V, p. 199.

45
. WC Testimony, Vol. XII, p. 399.

46
. WC Testimony, Vol. V, p. 199.

47
. Ibid.

48
. WC Testimony, Vol. XII, pp. 400–401.

49
. Posner, op. cit., pp. 396–397.

50
. Ibid., pp. 395–396.

51
. WC Testimony, Vol. XIII, p. 215.

52
. Posner, op. cit., p. 392.

PART VIII: OSWALD’S GHOST

Chapter 1: The Punishment of Hosty and the Death of the Handler

1
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 625, note 22.

2
. HSCA Report, p. 195.

3
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 626, note 22.

4
. WC Testimony, Vol. IX, p. 274.

5
. HSCA, Vol. XII, p. 73.

6
. Ibid., pp. 214–215.

7
. Ibid., p. 225.

8
. Ibid.

9
. Ibid., pp. 225–227.

10
. Ibid., pp. 228–229.

11
. Ibid., pp. 229–230.

12
. McMillan, op. cit., pp. 569–570.

13
. Posner, op. cit., p. 118.

14
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 570.

15
. Fonzi, op. cit., pp. 189–192.

Chapter 2: In the Rubble of the Aftermath

1
. WC Testimony, Vol. I, p. 172.

2
. Ibid., pp. 173–174.

3
. Ibid., p. 174.

4
. Ibid., p. 175.

5
. Ibid., pp. 60–61.

6
. Ibid., pp. 79–80.

7
. Ibid., p. 61.

8
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 565.

9
. Ibid., p. 563.

10
. Ibid., p. 568.

Chapter 3: Evidence

1
. WC Testimony, Vol. XI, pp. 308–309.

2
. WC Testimony, Vol. III, p. 411.

3
. Ibid., p. 412.

4
. Author’s November 1993 conversation with Dr. Robert Artwohl, head of Emergency Services, Union Memorial Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland.

5
. One is, of course, assuming that it was Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano that was used in the assassination. For, if it was not, then what did happen to his gun, and what was in the package he brought with him that morning to the Texas School Book Depository? Why indeed would he carry his gun to work if it was not going to be used? Would he take it there in order to allow others to implicate him? There are many arguments that would attempt to disprove the use of the Mannlicher-Carcano, but they all seem weak in the light of Ockham’s Razor: The simplest explanation that covers all the facts is likely to be the correct explanation.

Chapter 4: Character

1
. CE 25, Vol. XVI, p. 106.

2
. Hitler, op. cit., p. 29.

3
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 573.

4
. CE 322, Vol. XVI, p. 886.

5
. McMillan, op. cit., p. 518.

6
. Ralph Waldo Emerson,
The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
p. 253. One must apologize to Emerson, a great writer, for presuming to invert his second paragraph by placing it above the first.

7
. WC Testimony, Vol. XI, pp. 49–50.

Chapter 6: The Third Widow

1
. WC Testimony, Vol. I, p. 182.

2
. Ibid.

3
. Unpublished interview of Marguerite Oswald by Lawrence Schiller, 1976.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTE:
When more than one edition is listed, citations in the notes are from the starred edition.

G
OVERNMENT
R
EPORTS

Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and 26 accompanying volumes of Hearings and Exhibits. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964. (Report, without accompanying volumes, also published by The Associated Press, 1964*; and by Doubleday, 1964.)

Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, with 12 accompanying volumes of Hearings and Appendices on the Kennedy investigation, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979. (Report, without supporting volumes, also published by Bantam, 1979.)

B
OOKS

Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
The Complete Essays and Other Writings.
New York: Random House, Inc., 1940.

Epstein, Edward Jay.
Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald,
as printed in
The Assassination Chronicles.
New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1992*. (Originally published as
Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald.
New York: Reader’s Digest Press/McGraw-Hill, 1978.)

Fonzi, Gaeton.
The Last Investigation.
New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993; first trade paperback edition, 1994*.

Hitler, Adolf.
Mein Kampf,
translated by Ralph Manheim. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.

McMillan, Priscilla Johnson.
Marina and Lee.
New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

Mailer, Norman.
Harlot’s Ghost.
New York: Random House, 1991.

Manchester, William.
The Death of a President.
London: Michael Joseph, 1967.

Nechiporenko, Col. Oleg Maximovich.
Passport to Assassination.
New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993.

Oswald, Robert L., with Myrick and Barbara Land.
Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald.
New York: Coward-McCann, 1967.

Payne, Robert.
Portrait of a Revolutionary: Mao Tse-tung.
New York: Abelard-Shuman, 1961.

Posner, Gerald.
Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.
New York: Random House, 1993; Anchor Books, 1994*.

Ragano, Frank, and Selwyn Raab.
Mob Lawyer.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994.

Summers, Anthony.
Conspiracy.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980; Paragon House, 1989 and 1991*.

Wise, David.
The American Police State: The Government Against the People.
New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

U
NPUBLISHED AND
M
ISCELLANEOUS
M
ATERIALS

Compilation of Oswald’s earnings and expenditures from the Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, Mary McHughes Ferrell, 1993.

Interview of Marguerite Oswald by Lawrence Schiller, 1976, © New Ingot Company.

Interview of Jack Ruby by Lawrence Schiller, 1966, © Alskog, Inc. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA Central Library, Silver Spring, Md., temperature records for Clinton, Lousiana, September 1963.

Transcript of dialogue,
Frontline,
“Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” produced by WGBH, Boston, Mass., and broadcast on PBS stations, November (various dates) 1993.

N
ORMAN
M
AILER
was born in 1923 and published his first book,
The Naked and the Dead,
in 1948.
The Armies of the Night
won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1969; Mailer received another Pulitzer in 1980 for
The Executioner’s Song.
He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

BY NORMAN MAILER

The Naked and the Dead

Barbary Shore

The Deer Park

Advertisements for Myself

Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters)

The Presidential Papers

An American Dream

Cannibals and Christians

Why Are We in Vietnam?

The Deer Park—A Play

The Armies of the Night

Miami and the Siege of Chicago

Of a Fire on the Moon

The Prisoner of Sex

Maidstone

Existential Errands

St. George and the Godfather

Marilyn

The Faith of Graffiti

The Fight

Genius and Lust

The Executioner’s Song

Of Women and Their Elegance

Pieces and Pontifications

Ancient Evenings

Tough Guys Don’t Dance

Harlot’s Ghost

Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man

The Gospel According to the Son

The Time of Our Time

Why Are We at War?

The Spooky Art

Modest Gifts

The Castle in the Forest

Praise for
Oswald’s Tale

“A masterpiece.”

—
The Economist

“The intelligence of Mailer, the power of his imagination, and the sense, really, that this is a great novelist like Balzac or Dostoevsky or Dickens. There’s something magnificent about this imagination and the way he goes for the darkness of the United States. It’s very, very powerful.”

—BBC
Late Review

“Brilliant . . . Spellbinding . . . His finest achievement since
The Executioner’s Song.
”

—
The Washington Post Book World

“Mailer is excellent on the exalted state of mind Oswald must have been in during the last couple of days before the motorcade.”

—
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Constantly fascinating . . . The greatest body of information on the Oswalds yet attempted . . . Of his books this one most closely resembles
The Executioner’s Song.
”

—
The Atlantic Monthly

“There are heart-stopping moments . . . . Watching a major novelist wrap his instincts around the drab figure at the center of one of America’s greatest tragedies makes a fascinating study.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“
Oswald’s Tale
is terrific, thrilling with vitality and intelligence and wit, and organized with an inventive cunning that makes the reading utterly compelling . . . . Mailer is able to reconstruct Oswald’s American life in the same convincing detail as his life in Minsk. That is some achievement, and an even greater one is the portrait of Oswald that emerges . . . . His Oswald is both likeable and repulsive, to be pitied and feared . . . . This book may not be the last word on Oswald, but it is odds-on there will never be a better.”

—
The Daily Telegraph

“Vintage Mailer . . . [His] gifts for getting inside a character’s skin have never been more acute than with Oswald; his complex, equivocal wife, Marina; his mother, finally given her moment to explain her life; and Jack Ruby, given his moment to justify his. A very large cast of secondary characters, in both Russia and the United States, are not just sketched but brought to life . . . . More than any other book on the Kennedy assassination, this one will live with you.”

—
The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Fascinating . . . One of the several amazing things about
Oswald’s Tale
is that we can actually read some of the transcripts of private conversations between Lee and Marina Oswald in their bugged apartment in Minsk.”

—
The Village Voice

“Important new insight into the story of the century.”

—
The Dallas Morning News

“The real thrust of his magnificent book is the insight we gain into a complex man. Simply put, we understand Oswald more now than we ever did before.”

—
Booklist
(starred review)