Robert: Not His Brother's Keeper
Robert Oswald appeared on NBC's Dateline on June 14. I had been eagerly awaiting this segment --- it had been postponed due to the NBA playoffs --- but somehow missed it. What follows is based primarily on the transcript posted to the MSNBC web site (http://www.msnbc.com/news/172765.asp), which was a little buggy but ultimately accessible.
"If you've never heard of Robert Oswald, well, that's just fine with him," reporter Josh Mankiewicz said at the outset. Robert Oswald may declare he wants anonymity, or something close to it, but that doesn't stop him from appearing on television from time to time. He appeared on the PBS Frontline program five years ago (Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?) and another show thirty-odd years ago (see Forgive My Grief, Vol. III, "The Robert Oswald Show"). He also wrote a book on his infamous brother entitled Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald back in the sixties.
As before, Robert Oswald cut his brother no slack --- did not allow for the possibiity, however remote, that Lee may not have been President Kennedy's sole assassin. He told Dateline: "I recognize as far as I'm concerned that he was very sick. Very ill. And there's nothing I can do about that."
In spite of that comment, and in spite of his declared belief that Lee Oswald was JFK's sole assassin, Dateline said that Robert Oswald spoke to them, in part, "to correct what he feels are misimpressions, to go on the record about the brother he loved and lost."
Robert said he "lost track" of his brother between the time Lee returned from the Soviet Union in 1962, and the assassination. Dateline duly noted a "string of Texas jobs" Lee Oswald worked during this period, not mentioning any of his employers by name.
Robert spoke of his conversation with Lee in jail after the assassination: Lee said, "Don't you believe all that so-called evidence." When Mankiewicz asked why, if Lee wanted notoriety, he didn't admit to the crime, Robert replied, "They already knew his name. They knew what the charges were. He's assuming he's gonna live through a trial. It would go down in history, wouldn't it? But he went down first."
Mankiewicz finally got down to the nitty gritty:
It has been more than 34 years and still people come to Dealey Plaza every day to see the book depository, the grassy knoll, and to ask the questions that outlived Lee Harvey Oswald. Was he a part of the assassination? The evidence suggests that he was. But could he fire his rifle accurately? Could he fire it fast enough? And the most tantalizing question of all, was anyone else involved?Mankiewicz: Who do you think shot President Kennedy?
Oswald: There's only one conclusion I can reach. It was my brother, Lee. Unfortunately.
Mankiewicz: Lee Harvey Oswald. And no one else?
Oswald: That's correct.
Mankiewicz: No co-conspirators?
Oswald: No conspiracy. He did buy the rifle, he did buy the pistol, he had the general opportunity. His palm prints are on the rifle. If there was a conspiracy to kill the president, it was separate and apart from what Lee did.
Dateline noted that Robert Oswald owns a set of the Warren Commission volumes, and used that to frame this peculiar statement: "...the evidence which has convinced him of Lee's guilt has seemed only to fuel conspiracy theories." The only "conspiracy theory" mentioned had to due with the exhumation of Lee Oswald's remains in 1981. Dateline noted that officially, it was indeed the bones of Lee Oswald unearthed that day. Not surprisingly, no mention was made of suggestions by those who viewed the body in 1963 and again after the exhumation, that there were curious anomalies that could indicate a body swap.
Near the conclusion of the segment, Robert Oswald demonstrated his skill with an unidentified weapon said to be "similar to the mail order rifle Lee was accused of using." Robert squeezed off three rounds in four and a half seconds --- enough to show that Lee could "have fired quickly and accurately enough to kill the president." Robert admitted there was nothing scientific about his test --- he did it for his own personal satisfaction.
An interesting question that went unasked is, "What made you change your opinion of Lee's involvement in this case?" As Penn Jones, Jr. noted in an article in Forgive My Grief, Vol. III, Robert Oswald told the Warren Commission that he did not believe his brother shot JFK unaided.
Mr. Dulles. ...You have testified that you felt that your brother did have or would have required some outside help or assisstance to do what he did --- roughly to that effect, I believe.Mr. Oswald. That is right.
Mr. Dulles. Have you any idea at all or any thoughts as to what kind of help, where that could have come from, who was involved. I have in mind --- was this in your opinion a rightist plot, a leftist plot, an anarchist plot?
Mr. Oswald. If I may take your question, sir; in the parts that you pointed out --- I believe the first part was to where and how.
Mr. Dulles. And who.
Mr. Jenner. May have assisted.
Mr. Oswald. The where and the how, sir, I am not of any opinion. And as to who might have assisted him, as related in my diary, or memorandum---
Mr. Jenner. Identify the page, please.
Mr. Oswald. On page 6 --- and I quote --- "I still do not know why or how, but Mr. and Mrs. Paine are somehow involved in this affair." I am still of that opinion, sir.
A little later, Robert added: "Based on that and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, I am of the opinion that Mr. Ruby did in fact know Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Sunday, November 23, 19--- Sunday, November 24, 1963, and that he was in my opinion paid to silence Lee Harvey Oswald."
Dateline's viewers might have found Robert's comments on that interesting.
According to Penn Jones, "Robert knows his brother killed no one that day." Jones wrote that following a second trip to Washington to testify before the Warren Commission, "Robert gave up [a] book contract which had a promised $10,000 advance. Robert then bought a new automobile, moved into a new home in Wichita Falls, Texas and got a promotion with the brick firm with which he was employed."
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