Oswald's Tale (74 page)

MR. JENNER
. . . . you supplied the FBI with [a radio] transcript?

MR. STUCKEY.
No, as a matter of fact I gave the tape to the FBI the Monday following the interview, which would have been August 20, 1963. I told them I thought it was very interesting, and if they would like to have a transcript they could copy it, which they did. They made a copy and then they gave me a copy of their transcript and returned the tape to me . . . .

MR. JENNER
. . . . would you tell us about that broadcast?

MR. STUCKEY.
Yes.

As I said, this was a 37-minute rambling interview between Oswald and myself and following the interview, first we played it back to hear it. He was satisfied . . . I think he thought he had scored quite a coup.

Then I went back over it in his presence and with an engineer’s help excerpted a couple . . . of his comments in which he said Castro was a free and independent leader of a free and independent state, and the rest of it, as I recall, was largely my summarizing of the other principal points of the 37-minute interview, and it was broadcast on schedule that night.

MR. JENNER.
You had watered it down in length to how many minutes?

MR. STUCKEY.
Five minutes.

MR. JENNER.
Five minutes?

MR. STUCKEY.
Actually 4 and a half.

MR. JENNER
. . . . Was that your last contact with Mr. Oswald?

MR. STUCKEY.
No, it was not . . . . I told him that I was going to talk to the news director to see if [he] was interested in running the entire 37-minute tape later, [but] the news director [said] there would be more public interest if we did not run this tape at all but instead arranged a second program, a debate panel show, with some local anti-Communists on there to refute some of his arguments . . .

I picked Mr. Edward S. Butler [who] is the Executive Director of the Information Council of the Americas in New Orleans . . . an anti-Communist propaganda organization. Their principal activity is to [distribute] strongly anti-Communist . . . tapes to radio stations throughout Latin America . . .

MR. JENNER.
[Mr. Butler] was an articulate and knowledgeable man in this area to which he directs his attention?

MR. STUCKEY.
Yes; so I asked him to be one of the panelists on the show, which he accepted, and incidentally, I let him hear the 37-minute tape in advance; and for the other panelist, I asked Mr. Carlos Bringuier [in order] to give it a little Cuban flavor.

And then Oswald called me . . . and I told him we were going to arrange the show and would he be interested, and he said, yes, indeed, and then he said, “How many of you am I going to have to fight?” That was his version of saying how many are on the panel.

MR. JENNER.
He said this to you?

MR. STUCKEY.
Yes; in a jocular way . . . He said he thought that would be interesting.
⁸

Lee is ready to believe that he may just be as good as he has been telling himself he is ever since he started dominating political discussions in the Marine Corps.

Of course, his estimate of the power of the machine he opposes is not nearly so keen as his recognition of his own capacities when he is at his best.

McMillan:
While he was talking to an FBI source over the telephone that day, Stuckey, as he remembers it, was put through to the chief or deputy chief of the New Orleans bureau, and this man read aloud to him over the phone portions of Oswald’s FBI file, including the facts that he had been to Russia, tried to renounce his U.S. citizenship, stayed there nearly three years, and married a Russian woman. Stuckey went to the FBI office and was permitted to examine the file, as well as newspaper clippings from Moscow at the time of Oswald’s defection.
⁹

MR. JENNER.
And was he unaware when he came in at 5:30 on the afternoon of Wednesday that you had done this, and received this information and had done some research?

MR. STUCKEY.
He was unaware of that fact. During the day . . . Mr. Butler called and said he too had found out the same thing . . . his source apparently was the House Un-American Activities Committee [and] we agreed together to produce this information on the program that night.

MR. JENNER
. . . . You thought it might be a bombshell and be unaware to him?

MR. STUCKEY.
Exactly.

MR. JENNER.
All right.

MR. STUCKEY
. . . . So at about 5:30 that afternoon I arrived at the studio alone. Oswald appeared, and in a very heavy gray flannel suit, and this is August in New Orleans, it is extremely hot, but he appears in [this] very bulky, badly cut suit, and looking very hot and uncomfortable. He had a blue shirt on and a dark tie, and a black looseleaf notebook . . . then Mr. Butler came in with Mr. Bringuier. Both looked as if they had pounds and pounds of literature with them, and statistics . . .

MR. JENNER.
Had Oswald met Mr. Butler before?

MR. STUCKEY
. . . . I think he knew who he was. Oswald asked me something about the organization, and I told him, I said, “Well, it is just like your organization; it is a propaganda outfit, just on the other side of the fence,” and that satisfied his curiosity.

I think he immediately kissed it off as a hopeless rightist organization . . .
¹⁰

Carlos Bringuier and Oswald had a conversation before the show began:

MR. BRINGUIER
. . . . I was . . . .trying to be as friendly to him as I could. I really believe that the best thing I could do is get one Communist out of the Communist Party and put him to work against communism, because [then] he know what communism mean, and I told to Oswald that I don’t have nothing against him in the personal way, just the ideologic way. I told him that for me it was impossible to see one American being a communist, because communism is trying to destroy the United States, and that if any moment . . . he will start to think that he can do something good for his country, for his family, and for himself, he could come to me, because I would receive him, because I repeat to him that I didn’t have nothing against him in the personal way. He smiled to me. He told me—he answered me that he was in the right side, the correct side, and that I was in the wrong side, and that he was doing his best. That were his words at that moment.

Before we went inside the room of the debate, he saw my guidebook for Marines that I was carrying with me, because I did not know what will happen in the debate and I will have to have that weapon with me to destroy him personally as a traitor if he is doing something wrong in the debate. When he saw the guidebook for Marines, he smiled to me, and he told me, “Well, listen, Carlos, don’t try to do an invasion with that guidebook for Marines, because that is an old one and that will be a failure.” That was his joke in that moment . . .”
¹¹

They began—Oswald against Bringuier and Butler and Stuckey and a moderator named Slatter. After the introductions, no time was wasted:

BILL STUCKEY:
. . . Mr. Butler brought some newspaper clippings to my attention . . . that Mr. Oswald had attempted to renounce his American citizenship in 1959 and become a Soviet citizen. There was another clipping dated 1962 saying that Mr. Oswald had returned from the Soviet Union with his wife and child after having lived there three years. Mr. Oswald, are these correct?

OSWALD:
That is correct. Correct, yeah.

BILL STUCKEY:
You did live in Russia for three years?

OSWALD:
That is correct, and I think that the fact that I did live for a time in the Soviet Union gives me excellent qualifications to repudiate charges that Cuba and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is communist-controlled.

SLATTER:
Mr. Oswald, [is it correct] that you at one time asked to renounce your American citizenship and become a Soviet citizen . . . ?

OSWALD:
Well, I don’t think that has particular import to this discussion. We are discussing Cuban-American relations.

SLATTER:
Well, I think it has a bearing to this extent, Mr. Oswald: You say apparently that Cuba is not dominated by Russia and yet you apparently, by your own past actions, have shown that you have an affinity for Russia and perhaps communism, although I don’t know that you admit that you either are a communist or have been, could you straighten out that part? Are you or have you been a communist?

OSWALD:
Well, I answered that prior to this program, on another radio program.

STUCKEY:
Are you a Marxist?

OSWALD:
Yes, I am a Marxist.

BUTLER:
What’s the difference?

OSWALD:
The difference is primarily the difference between a country like Guinea, Ghana, Yugoslavia, China, or Russia. Very, very great differences. Differences which we appreciate by giving aid, let’s say, to Yugoslavia in the sum of a hundred million or so dollars a year.

BUTLER:
That’s extraneous. What’s the difference?

OSWALD:
The difference is, as I have said, a very great difference. Many parties, many countries, are based on Marxism. Many countries such as Great Britain display very socialistic aspects or characteristics. I might point to the socialized medicine of Britain.

BUTLER:
I was speaking of—

SLATTER:
Gentlemen, I’ll have to interrupt and we’ll be back in a moment to continue this kind of lively discussion after this message.

COMMERCIAL

STUCKEY:
Mr. Oswald, I believe you said in a reply to a question of Mr. Butler’s that any questions about your background were extraneous to the discussion tonight. I disagree because of the fact that you’re refusing to reveal any of the other members of your organization, so you are the face of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans. Therefore, anybody who might be interested in this organization ought to know more about you. For this reason, I’m curious to know just how you supported yourself during the three years that you lived in the Soviet Union. Did you have a government subsidy?

OSWALD:
Well, as I, er, well—I will answer that question directly then, as you will not rest until you get your answer. I worked in Russia . . . At no time, as I say, did I renounce my citizenship or attempt to renounce my citizenship, and at no time was I out of contact with the American Embassy.

BUTLER:
Excuse me, may I interrupt just one second. Either one of these two statements is wrong. The
Washington Evening Star
of October 31, 1959, page 1, reported that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine, 4936 Connally Street, Ft. Worth, Texas, had turned in his passport at the American Embassy in Moscow [and] had applied for Soviet citizenship. Now it seems to me that you’ve renounced your citizenship if you’ve turned in your passport.

OSWALD:
Well, the obvious answer to that is that I am back in the United States. A person who renounces his citizenship becomes legally disqualified for return to the U.S. [but] as I have already stated, of course, this whole conversation, and we don’t have too much time left, is getting away from Cuban-American problems. However, I am quite willing to discuss myself for the remainder of the program . . .

SLATTER:
Excuse me. Let me interrupt here. I think Mr. Oswald is right to this extent. We shouldn’t get to lose sight of the organization of which he is the head in New Orleans, the Fair Play for Cuba.

OSWALD:
The Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

SLATTER:
As a practical matter, knowing as I’m sure you do, the sentiment in America against Cuba, we, of course, severed diplomatic relations some time ago. I would say Castro is about as unpopular as anybody in the world in this country. As a practical matter, what do you hope to gain for your work? How do you hope to bring about what you call “Fair Play for Cuba,” knowing the sentiment?

OSWALD:
The principles of thought of the Fair Play for Cuba consist of restoration of diplomatic, trade and tourist relations with Cuba. That is one of our main points. We are for that. I disagree that this situation regarding American-Cuban relations is very unpopular. We are in the minority, surely[, but] we are striving to get the United States to adopt measures which would be more friendly toward the Cuban people and the new Cuban regime in that country. We are not at all communist-controlled regardless of the fact that I had the experience of living in Russia, regardless of the fact that we have been investigated, regardless of any of those facts, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is an independent organization not affiliated with any other organization. Our aims and our ideals are very clear and in the best keeping with American traditions of democracy.

BRINGUIER:
Do you agree with Fidel Castro when in his last speech of July 16th of this year he qualified President John F. Kennedy of the United States as a ruffian and a thief? Do you agree with Mr. Castro?

OSWALD:
I would not agree with that particular wording. However, I and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee do think that the United States government, through certain agencies, mainly the State Department and the CIA, has made monumental mistakes in its relations with Cuba. Mistakes which are pushing Cuba into the sphere of activity of, let’s say, a very dogmatic communist country such as China is . . .
¹²

The show ended soon after.

MR. STUCKEY
. . . . I think that after that program, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, if there ever was one in New Orleans, had no future there, because we had publicly linked the Fair Play for Cuba Committee with a fellow who had lived in Russia for 3 years and who was an admitted Marxist.