Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Oswald’s disillusionment with Soviet life grew; in a January 1961 diary entry he wrote, “I have had enough.” On January 4, 1961, he was asked by the passport office if he still wished to become a Soviet citizen; he replied that he did not, but asked for an extension of his residence permit. On February 13, 1961, the American Embassy received an undated letter from Oswald requesting the return of his passport and asking to return to the United States. Snyder replied February 28 that Oswald would have to appear personally. On March 17, 1961, Oswald attended a trade union dance at the Palace of Culture for Professional Workers in Minsk, where he met Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, a 19-year-old pharmacy technician living with her aunt and uncle, Ilya and Valia Prusakov. After visiting Oswald in the hospital following his March 30, 1961 admission for an ear, nose, and throat condition, Marina agreed to consider his proposal. They were married April 30, 1961. On May 25, the Embassy received a letter informing it of the marriage and requesting assurance Marina could accompany Oswald back. On July 8, 1961, Oswald appeared at the closed Embassy on a Saturday; Snyder met him briefly and suggested he return Monday. Oswald called Marina, who arrived July 9, and they took a room at the Hotel Berlin.

[Note: The six MISSING TOPICS — description of the emergency surgical operation on President Kennedy, the official autopsy report (A63-272), supplementary autopsy documentation, sworn expert testimony on forensic firearm identification methodology, full technical analysis of the C2766 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, and full technical analysis of the .38 Special S.&W. firearm — are not addressed in the source material provided (Parts 11–14 of Chapter II). They are treated in other chapters of the Warren Commission Report (notably Chapter III on the assassination, Chapter IV/Appendix V on the autopsy, and Chapter V on the rifle and shell analysis), and consequently no content could be added from the supplied source. The section is therefore returned without fabricated additions.]

II. With the assistance of Agent in Charge Sorrels of the

Bureaucratic maneuvering, family tension, and quiet desperation preceded Oswald’s return to American soil. After retrieving his passport and initiating Marina’s immigration paperwork at the American Embassy in Moscow in July 1961, Oswald returned to Minsk for Soviet exit visas. Marina faced workplace meetings, Komsomol pressure, and a reported hospitalization for “nervous exhaustion” she later denied. By late December 1961, Soviet officials granted the visas; Oswald’s diary recorded the news tersely: “It’s great (I think?).”

Financial arrangements proved nearly as difficult: Oswald needed about $800 for transportation, his mother had limited resources, and he begged her not to contribute while requesting aid from the International Rescue Committee. The State Department offered a $435.71 repatriation loan, which Oswald accepted in June 1962 before boarding a train with Marina and infant daughter June Lee. They crossed into Holland and departed on the SS Maasdam, where Oswald spent the voyage drafting two sets of answers to anticipated questions about his defection—one apologetic, one defiant. In notes on ship stationery, he recorded disillusionment with both capitalist and communist systems, proposed a nonexistent “third choice,” acknowledged his Red Cross subsidy had been paid by the Soviet government, and declared he would “never sell myself intentionlly, or unintentionlly to anyone again.”

The Maasdam landed at Hoboken on June 13, 1962, where a Traveler’s Aid Society representative met them. After one night at a Times Square Hotel, they flew to Fort Worth, where Robert Oswald and his wife met them at Love Field. Robert thought Lee seemed thinner, balder, and had acquired “something of an accent,” but otherwise appeared “the same boy.” Within days, Oswald hired public stenographer Pauline Virginia Bates to type a manuscript from his Soviet-era notes but ran out of money after ten pages. He also contacted Peter Gregory, a Russian-speaking petroleum engineer who tested his language abilities and provided a fluency letter.

The Oswalds first stayed with Robert’s family, then with Oswald’s mother Marguerite, who had moved to Fort Worth from Crowell. Marina testified that Lee did not get along with his mother, and within weeks they moved into a dilapidated one-bedroom apartment on Mercedes Street. Oswald found work as a sheet metal worker at the Leslie Welding Company, falsifying his application with prior experience and an honorable Marine discharge. His FBI interviews in June and August 1962 revealed a man still anxious about surveillance but less hostile than during his 1959 interrogation.

Through Peter Gregory, the Oswalds entered Dallas’s Russian émigré community—George Bouhe, Anna Meller, Elena Hall, and the De Mohrenschildts—which provided groceries, clothing, furniture, and small cash gifts. Members noted Oswald seemed resentful, once raging that he did not need their help. Marina suffered: witnesses saw her with a blackened eye, which she variously attributed to a door or to Lee. By October, after losing his job at Leslie Welding, Oswald left Fort Worth for Dallas, leaving Marina at Elena Hall’s house. He moved into the YMCA and began work as a photoprint trainee at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, where colleagues taught him photographic techniques later useful in forging identification cards.

Marina moved to an Elsbeth Street apartment with Oswald in November 1962, but days later she left him temporarily, staying with various Russian-speaking families while he wept and promised to change. She returned; George Bouhe, who had sheltered her, declared himself finished with both of them.

In early 1963, Oswald began corresponding with the Communist Party, U.S.A., and the Socialist Workers Party, subscribing to the Worker and attempting to join the latter. He read Marx, Lenin, H. G. Wells’s “Outline of History,” and biographies of Hitler, Kennedy, and Khrushchev. Through the De Mohrenschildts, the Oswalds met Ruth Paine, a Russian-language student whose separated husband Michael worked at Bell Helicopter; Paine became a confidante for Marina and a stabilizing presence amid their marital storms.

In January 1963, Oswald ordered a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver from a Los Angeles supplier under the alias “A. J. Hidell,” and in March ordered a rifle from Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago under the same name; both arrived March 20. The rifle went into a storeroom at the Neely Street apartment the Oswalds had entered that month, where Oswald spent long hours alone, forbidding Marina from entering. Marina saw him leave once with the rifle and observed him cleaning it. In the backyard she photographed him: in one he held the rifle and copies of the Worker and the Militant; in the other he had the revolver strapped to his belt. Oswald used the name “Alek James Hidell” on identification cards he probably produced at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, using photographic techniques taught by a colleague—the same methods that produced work samples he sent to various organizations.