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

CHAPTER VI

George De Mohrenschildt’s extended testimony before the Commission traced his origins, education, and arrival in the United States (9 H 168-179; CE 3100). He described his petroleum geology work, his wartime and postwar activities in Europe, his marriage to Jeanne, and the family’s years in Texas and Louisiana before settling in Dallas (9 H 179-180, 190-191, 191-192, 195, 201-203, 211-212; 9 H 300-302 (Jeanne De Mohrenschildt)). He recounted his developing connections within the Russian émigré community and his introduction to Marina and Lee Oswald through mutual friends early in 1963 (9 H 213-216, 276, 280-282, 296-297; 8 H 352-353 (Max E. Clark); id. at 377 (Bouhe); id. at 431-433 (Mrs. Voshinin); id. at 467-469 (Igor Voshinin); 9 H 99-100 (Gary E. Taylor); id. at 120-121 (Ilya Mamantov); id. at 164-165 (Helen Leslie); 10 H 10-12 (Everett Glover)). Both testified about their charitable work among the émigré community; their FBI files — placed in the Commission’s records — contained no indication of subversive activity. A footnote noted additional data on the De Mohrenschildts’ background in the Commission’s files.

Michael Paine — an engineer interested in aircraft and fluent in Russian — and Ruth Paine, a Russian-language translator and practicing Quaker who had converted in the early 1950s, were introduced to the Oswalds through George De Mohrenschildt in February 1963 (2 H 433-436, 438-439 (R. Paine); 2 H 459-462, 468-469; 3 H 9 (R. Paine)). Michael R. Paine, Ruth’s former husband, testified about family relationships, Michael’s peace work, and Ruth’s translation activities for the émigré community (2 H 459-462, 468-469; 3 H 9; 9 H 435 (M. Paine)). Ruth’s conversations with Marina Oswald, the storage of the Oswalds’ belongings in the Paine garage, and her role in receiving Marina’s mailings for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee are documented in extensive exhibits (CE 408, 409, 409-B, 410, 411, 412, 415, 416; 2 H 483-498 (R. Paine); cf. CE 422; 2 H 501-502 (R. Paine); 3 H 4-5, 9 (R. Paine); 1 H 26 (Marina Oswald); CE 461). Ruth’s work compiling Russian-language vocabulary lists with Marina, her search of Quaker meeting records to assist in locating the Oswalds in spring 1963, and her decision to drive Marina to deliver the Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets in Dallas are treated in detailed testimony (3 H 10 (R. Paine); 1 H 23 (Marina Oswald); 3 H 10 (R. Paine); CE 461; 9 H 345-346 (R. Paine)). A footnote noted additional data on the Paines in the Commission’s files.

The Commission’s files also contain supplementary materials relating to Chapter VI’s treatment of Oswald’s life, including FBI files CD 1114, 1115, which contain source materials used in compiling the narrative of Oswald’s defection and return. The polygraph examination of Albert Guy Bogard, conducted February 24, 1964 and documented at CE 3031, was found of uncertain reliability under the standards of Appendix XVII (CE 3031; 10 H 352-356 (Bogard); app. XVII, pp. 813-816). Supplemental Bureau material on the De Mohrenschildt family relationships (CE 3116, 3117) and on the FBI’s pre-assassination contacts with Oswald (CE 3116, 3117, 821-824, 826, 829, 830, 833, 836; 4 H 403-430 (John W. Fain); 4 H 431-440 (John L. Quigley); 4 H 440-476 (James P. Hosty, Jr.)) is incorporated by reference and remains available in the Commission’s records.

CHAPTER VII

The Warren Commission’s sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters form a dense evidentiary spine documenting the lives, environments, and institutional responses that converged on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The material draws on congressional hearing transcripts, witness depositions, physical exhibits, and investigative files amassed by the Commission and shared by the FBI, the Secret Service, the State Department, and various local authorities.

Lee Harvey Oswald emerges from this record as a man defined less by any single allegiance than by a restless, oppositional identity assembled from fragments of ideology, grievance, and self-absorption. Witnesses who knew him in Dallas and New Orleans in 1962 and 1963 — Buell Wesley Frazier, Linnie Mae Randle, the Paines, the De Mohrenschildts, Michael and Ruth Paine, George and Jeanne De Mohrenschildt, and a wide circle of Russian-speaking émigrés in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — described a young man who read Marxist literature, spoke in a stiffly formal vocabulary he seemed to have learned from a dictionary, and brooded over perceived slights. Marina Oswald testified that her husband “used words as though he had learned them out of a dictionary.” Fellow Marine Kerry Thornley, who served with him in California, confirmed the impression of an awkward autodidact who quoted Dostoevsky and argued politics in the barracks. Allison Folsom, who handled Oswald’s discharge from the Marines in 1959, recalled that Oswald expressed bitterness at the Soviet authorities’ refusal to grant him citizenship and insisted on his right to renounce his American citizenship under 8 U.S.C. § 1481, even as his mother, Marguerite Oswald, begged him to return home.

The Commission’s investigation of Oswald’s contacts with Soviet and Cuban officials drew heavily on the testimony of Richard E. Snyder and John A. McVickar of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and on the contemporaneous “Historic Diary” Oswald kept (Commission Exhibit 24). The diary entries trace his defection in October 1959, his disillusionment with life in Minsk, his courtship of Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, and his growing frustration with bureaucratic delays that prevented his family’s departure for the United States. Priscilla Johnson, a young journalist who interviewed him in Moscow, told the Commission that Oswald struck her as “a man who had worked very hard at being an American Marxist,” reciting talking points about the United States while professing admiration for Soviet life. The embassy’s files, including his renunciation of citizenship document and a personal history he wrote for Soviet authorities, supplemented this picture.

On his return to the United States in June 1962, Oswald settled first in Fort Worth with his brother Robert and his wife, before moving to the Dallas suburb of Irving, where Ruth Paine — a Quaker and Russian-language translator he had met through the De Mohrenschildts — offered to store his belongings and allow Marina and their infant daughter June to live in her home. The Paine household became the staging ground for Oswald’s final months: Ruth’s garage held materials for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee pamphlets he would distribute in New Orleans, and her conversations with him about the committee’s activities are documented in extensive testimony. The De Mohrenschildts, particularly George — a Russian-born petroleum geologist with White Russian connections and a taste for paradox — became the Oswalds’ closest social link to the émigré community. The Commission found no evidence of any conspiracy between the De Mohrenschildts and Oswald; both George and Jeanne testified extensively, and their FBI files — placed in the Commission’s records — contained no indication of subversive activity.