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In its 1964 Report, the Warren Commission told us that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy, a conclusion disputed to this day. The Report painted Oswald as a loner all his life, and this was repeated in 1993 by Gerald Posner in his book Case Closed. This portrait was simply not true.
Both Posner and the Commission focused on Oswald's brief stay in New York City in creating their portrait of the loner Oswald, but there he was an uprooted Southerner, teased about his accent, a stranger in strange surroundings.
A broader look at Oswald's life tells a markedly different story. It's easy to say someone had no friends when you don't bother to interview them, but researcher John Armstrong has interviewed many of Oswald's friends from elementary school, junior high and high school. 1964 just wasn't a good year to announce that you were a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.
In school in New Orleans, Oswald was a member of an Astronomy Club, and attended its regular meetings. He was also a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol. Some of his friends from this period were interviewed by the FBI and the Warren Commission, but the implications of their testimony was ignored in favor of the loner portrait.
While stationed overseas in the Marines, Oswald had a number of close buddies. Some were interviewed by the Warren Commission, others later by Edward Epstein. One of them, Kerry Thornley, later wrote a novel, The Idle Warriors, basing the main character on Oswald, and describing his associates. Lee also had a Eurasian mistress. Back in the states, he was close to Nelson Delgado, who shared his curiosity about the Cuban revolution.
Leaving the Marines, he traveled to the Soviet Union, where he told a reporter that someone had spent two years preparing him for the trip. Given work at a radio factory in Minsk, he developed several close friends, and dated a number of women, one of whom he married.
When he and his wife returned to Texas, he met a number of people through the White Russian community in Dallas. One was George Bouhe, who helped him look for a job. Another was Michael Paine, who was closer to Oswald than he admitted in 1964; they often talked politics, and attended various political meetings together.
A third friend, George DeMohrenschildt, turned out to have been assigned to Oswald by the CIA, to whom he reported. Despite the origin of their relationship, DeMohrenschildt came to like and admire Oswald, as is apparent from his manuscript published in 1979 in the volumes of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Oswald moved in the Spring of 1963 to New Orleans, where he hooked up with his marine buddy Kerry Thornley. After working at a coffee company, he became employed by Guy Banister, a former FBI man with CIA connections. Oswald set up a phony Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter, and sought to attract and identify pro-Castro New Orleanians. From CIA stocks, he was provided with a supply of pamphlets entitled "The Crime Against Cuba" by Corliss Lamont. Someone ordered "Hands Off Cuba" leaflets for him, and his friend Kerry Thornley picked them up. An anti-Castro Cuban delivered a thousand of the leaflets to Oswald's home on one occasion. Another of his friends in New Orleans was apparently Ron Lewisl also a Banister employee.
Back in Dallas that October, Oswald continued to attend meetings with his friend Michael Paine, whose wife helped him find a job at the Texas School Book Depository. After the assassination, a number of employees recalled conversations with him, but none admitted friendship, though one drove Oswald to visit his wife every weekend, and drove him back to work on Mondays.
The myth of Oswald as loner was allowed to develop because those who were most aware it was false were also those with the most to lose by admitting friendship with the accused assassin. With the passage of years, more evidence has been released, more people are willing to speak candidly, and a fuller portrait of the man is at last beginning to emerge.
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