Lee Harvey Oswald: a Lone Assassin or the Perfect Victim of a Conspiracy - Case Study Example

Lee Harvey Oswald An assassin is a person who murders a politically important person either for hire or from fanatical motives. He can be a lone assassin or the perfect victim of a conspiracy. There’s also a possibility that’s he’s being deceived by real intelligence operatives into a game that can cause him his life. Lee Harvey Oswald was considered the assassin of the late 35th President of the United States of America John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Suspicious happenings in the life of Lee Oswald which may reveal a fraudulent connection with a government agency or possible assassination conspirators are investigated by conspiracy authors. Two authors wrote about the possibility that Oswald was really the assassin implicated in the murder of John F. Kennedy. A lone assassin theorist, Jerry Organ, argues in his essay entitled “The Oswald Agenda” that such assassin was indeed willing to kill for political reasons. Mel Ayton, centered on the specially incisive discussion of Oswald’s personal motives giving emphasis on such assassin’s leftist politics. His study was within the framework of a classic psychological study of pathological murderers which was published before the Kennedy assassination. The FBI assigned agent James Hosty for a close surveillance of Lee Oswald when he returned to Dallas from New Orleans. Researcher Steve Bochan’s interview shows an interesting FBI insider’s view. It showed Oswald’s propensity for violence. Since he was able to shoot at Walker, then it was possible that he shot Kennedy seven months later. There was also a theory stating that there were two Oswalds. One was a look-alike substitute but then it might not escape critical scrutiny. Another theory implored that Oswald could have been given a job to enable him to be at the building overlooking the parade route. Then someone seemed to guide Kennedy to have a motorcade down Elm Street. According to the books, the chain of custody for the evidence against Oswald was mostly broken so marking evidence is sufficient for legal purposes. Aside from subscribing to the Trotskyist communist publication, The Militant, he wrote a letter to the editor commending its coverage of the labor movement. “Oswald, in His Own Defense” was an essay by Joel Grant and John Locke implying that Oswald was denied counsel while in the custody of the Dallas police (McAdams, J. 1995-2010). During the election campaign period in 1963, the US 35th President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, began a series of trips to various parts of the country. He was fatally hit by an assassin’s bullet while having a motorcade along Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Jacqueline, his wife who was seated next to him in the car was unharmed. Texas Governor John Canally, seated in front of the president, was wounded but he recovered. Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin who was 24 years old and had lived in the Soviet Union for some time, was arrested by the police. While he was in police custody and after being imprisoned for two days, he was shot by Jack Ruby who was a night club operator. He died before he was brought to trial. Lyndon B. Johnson, Vice President that time assumed the presidency and subsequently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the crime. The commission’s report that the shots which wounded Governor Canally and killed President Kennedy were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald was made public on September 27, 1964. No evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of a local of foreign conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was found by the commission (Niven). Lee Harvey Oswald was named an assassin because he was implicated with the assassination of a former US President. He was born in 1939 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The untimely death of his father, an Insurance salesman, gave him a far mean streak of independence brought on by neglect. When he became a member of the US Marine Corps at 17, his independence was strengthened when he had exotic journeys to Japan, the Philippines and the scores of odd islands in the Pacific. He abandoned his American life after serving in the United States Marine Corps for three years. He went to USSR to seek a new life full of optimism and hope. In the fall of 1959, he stood in red square vowing to see his chosen course through. Then he decided to return to the USA after two years. Oswald’s motivation for the assassination undoubtedly involved many factors. Any one motive or group of motives can’t be ascribed to him by the commission investigating the assassination. One factor was overriding hostility to his environment. The study of events, relationships and influences were significant in shaping him. The most outstanding conclusion of the study was that he was alienated from the world in which he lived. His life was full of isolation, frustration and failure. He had very few close relationships with other people and finding a meaningful place in the world had been so difficult for him. Nothing seemed to satisfy him. He resented the US capital system which for him was exploiting him and others like him. He preferred the Soviet Union and spoke highly of Cuba. While he was in the Soviet Union, he resented the Communist Party members accorded special privileges and being taught by him as betraying communism so he spoke well of the United States. While he was15 years old, he started reading about communism. He had a strong conviction as to the correctness of the Marxist doctrine which was described as irrevocable and also theoretical by an associate in the Marines not thinking that he was a Communist. He said that he was a Communist several times but he never joined any Communist Party. He was probably attached to Marxism and Communism as an expression of his hostility to his environment. His commitment to Marxism was an obvious element for deciding to go to Russia and later to Cuba and probably influenced his decision to shoot at General Walker and also to assassinate President Kennedy. Another factor leading to the assassination was the fact that he was not able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He had no friends no associates aside from his relatives. He respected George de Mohrenschildt, a peripheral member of the Russian community and a nonconformist although he did not like the members of the Russian community, in general. His relation with some of them became hostile. He was very disagreeable and disappointed. When his wife’s Russian-American friends helped her, he expressed considerable resentment with their gesture so he was offensive with them. When he returned from the Soviet Union, he severed all relations with his mother. He did not see his brother Robert for almost a year. When he defected to the Soviet Union, he said that neither his mother nor his brother were objects of his affection. Of great importance in any attempt to understand Oswald’s possible motivation was his relationship with his wife, Marina. After their separation and when Oswald returned from Mexico, he changed for the better. He began to treat and to help his wife more. He was also more attentive maybe because they were separated and the imminent birth of their second child made him happy. He expressed his hatred for the American Society and acted in protest against it. An open expression of hostility against the United States and a profound rejection of his early life was his attempt to renounce his citizenship. The utter failure of what had been the most important act of his life was publicly testified by his return to the United States. He experienced psychological difficulties at that time. He became more of a recluse, very irritable, unrestrained and very explosive. Their family life began to deteriorate. He was always hot tempered and sometimes some trivial thing would drive him to a rage. He was so affected by the extreme opposition to President Kennedy in some parts of the Dallas community. When the President visited there, an extreme anti-Kennedy newspaper advertisements and handbills appeared there. While he was with the US Marine Corps Reserve, he was discharged from duty when it was discovered that he defected to the Soviet Union. He asked the then Secretary of the Navy Connally’s help to reverse his discharge from duty. Connally would run for Governor of Texas so he resigned. He was not able to help Oswald. Both Connally and the President had nothing to do with his discharge so he didn’t express any dissatisfaction of any kind with either of them. But then he still thought that he was unjustly treated. Conally was seated in front of the President during the motorcade in Dallas so the Commission considered whether Conally was the real target of Oswald. The wife didn’t know of any why her husband would kill the President. So Oswald’s motivation was more in terms of general hostility against the government and its representatives rather than to a particular person. President Kennedy so out-spoken criticized Cuba’s President Castro’s regime. A report by the Dallas Times Herald stated that Kennedy urged the Cuban people to overthrow Fidel Castro’s Communist regime for which he promised prompt US aid if they do. The Militant were also against reducing tension between the US and Soviet Union which might lead to the Soviet’s abandonment of Cuba. Such activities by Kennedy could have motivated Oswald’s assassination of him. Another thing that angered him towards Kennedy was the refusal of Cuba to allow him to get there. He only wanted to live in the Soviet Union or in Cuba but both of them denied him (Report, 1964). A question whether Oswald was a Russian informer who gave US military secrets to the Soviet K6B is the subject of a book, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald. There was still a question whether he was involved in the famous downing of the U-2 spy plane. This book being referred has strong evidence that Oswald had a closer and more devious connection with the K6B. Readers Digest editors and researchers worked for 2½ years acquiring many FBI and CIA documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Oswald’s former Associates were interviewed covering some 150,000 miles in 26 states and nine nations. An academic researcher, Edward Jay Epstein, wrote such book. But he first revealed the flaws in the Warren Commission’s investigation in his first book, Inquest. With regard to the CIA’s U2 plane, it was possible that Oswald informed the Russians on how to knock down such plane because he was a marine radar controller. To enable Oswald to return to the US, K6B coached him in preparing a 32 month-false diary of his stay in Russia. Then a false defector called Nosenko in the US was planted by the K6B so US intelligence would think that Oswald was unreliable and that the K6B won’t consider Oswald’s offer to them to divulge US military secrets when he first arrived in Moscow (Nation, 1978). There was an interview with Marge, the wife of staff Sergeant John Edward Pic, who insisted that he must be with her during the interview so his wife would be at ease. Marge said that Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, desired that she would live with the Pics together with his son. Marge courteously turned down such request which irritated Mrs. Oswald. She then did everything to turn everyone against Mrs. Pic including his husband and Oswald. Then Mrs. Pic said that Mrs. Oswald consistently started arguments over minor households matters so the situation became worse making their relationship suffer (Warren Commission). In my opinion, Lee Harvey Oswald really killed President Kennedy. The fact that he was denied entry to the Soviet Union and Cuba could be because he was an American. We know that the US and Soviet Union did not really had friendly relations since they believed in different and contradicting ideologies. Oswald was committed to Marxism so he was pro-Russian and had a deeper inclination for Cuba’s communism. President Kennedy was severely attacked by Fidel Castro’s Cuban regime in connection with the Bay of Pigs Affair, the Cuban missile crisis, US travel ban of American citizens to Cuba, the economic embargo against that country and the general policy of the United States with regard to Cuba. The Militant, a communist newspaper to which Oswald subscribed, reflects an extremely critical attitude toward President Kennedy and his admini9stration’s Cuban policy. So it had a very adverse effect on Oswald since he really wanted so much to stay in Cuba even more than his desire to be in Soviet Union. Oswald’s overriding hostility to his environment and his failure to establish friendly relations to other people made him discontented with the world around him. He also wanted to have a place as a “great man” in history but the assassination gave him a notorious identity so his dream of having a perfect society was doomed from the start. Maybe it was because of his hatred for American Society to which he rightfully belonged. So he had so much motivation which made him capable of assassinating President Kennedy. References: McAdams, J.“Lee Harvey Oswald-Lone Assassin or Patsy?” Kennedy Assassination (1995-2010). November 2010 . JFK Assassination Records “Report of the President’s Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy”, web version of 1964. November 2010 “Nation: Was Lee Oswald a Soviet Spy?” Time (Feb 27, 1978). November 2010 History Matters. November 2008. Retrieved November 2010 Niven, Paul. "John Fitzgerald Kennedy." Collier’s Encyclopedia . 39th edition 1988. Read More