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

Motivations for Oswald’s FPCC Activity and Emigration Attempts

Oswald’s emigration attempts and FPCC activities shared a common motivation: hostility toward the United States and attachment to a country he believed embodied his committed political principles. Marina testified that he engaged in FPCC work “primarily for purposes of self-advertising,” wanting to be arrested and appear in newspapers so he would be known when he got to Cuba; he even asked her to help hijack an airplane for that purpose, abandoning the plan only when she refused. He practiced operating his rifle’s bolt on his apartment’s screened porch, reviewed Spanish in September, and arranged for his family to return to Irving, Texas, to live with Ruth Paine. Mrs. Paine was told Oswald was going to Houston or possibly Philadelphia for work, while Marina knew of his Mexico City and Cuba plans. His interest in Cuba appears to have grown alongside the frustration of successive failures—in jobs, political activity, and personal relationships—making his emigration attempt a final “escape hatch” from the mediocrity and defeat that plagued his life.

CHAPITRE VII.

Chapter VII of the Warren Commission Report examines Lee Harvey Oswald’s potential motives for assassinating President Kennedy. The chapter considers three main areas: the possibility that Oswald was motivated by sympathy for Fidel Castro’s Cuba and opposition to Kennedy’s policies toward the Castro regime; the alleged influence of Dallas’s rightwing anti-Kennedy atmosphere; and Oswald’s complicated, often troubled relationship with his wife Marina. The Commission ultimately found no credible evidence linking Oswald to rightwing groups in Dallas, while his relations with Marina were characterized as stormy and unstable, marked by mutual resentment, financial strain, and emotional friction in the weeks before the assassination.

Oswald’s Potential Pro-Castro Assassination Motivation

This section investigates whether Oswald was motivated to assassinate President Kennedy by a desire to aid the Castro regime. The chapter notes that Kennedy had publicly and aggressively criticized the Castro government, while Castro had in turn bitterly attacked Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, the travel ban, the economic embargo, and broader U.S. policy. The Militant and the Worker, both publications to which Oswald subscribed, carried strongly critical coverage of Kennedy’s Cuba policy, his civil rights record, his position on automation, and his efforts to ease U.S.–Soviet tensions. During a New Orleans radio debate on August 21, 1963, Oswald declined to endorse Castro’s characterization of Kennedy as a “ruffian and a thief,” and one witness testified that Oswald had actually approved of Kennedy’s civil rights stance shortly before the assassination. The Commission also observed that Marina Oswald testified that her husband had grown disillusioned with Cuba after bureaucratic difficulties and his unhappy experience with the Cuban consul in Mexico City, which dampened his enthusiasm for the Castro regime. The fact that Oswald was carrying only $13.87 at his arrest, while leaving $170 behind at his wife’s room in Irving, suggested he had no practical plan to flee to Cuba, casting doubt on the theory that he expected to be received there as an assassin.

Possible Influence of Anti-Kennedy Sentiment in Dallas

This section addresses the suggestion that Dallas’s anti-Kennedy climate may have influenced Oswald. The chapter describes hostile incidents involving Vice President Johnson during the 1960 campaign, the assault on Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in late October 1963, and the extreme anti-Kennedy newspaper advertisement and handbills that circulated in Dallas before the President’s visit. The Commission found no evidence, however, that any of these rightwing groups or the broader climate of hate in Dallas had any connection to Oswald’s actions. While Oswald was demonstrably aware of this political ferment, as shown by a letter he wrote to Communist Party U.S.A. representative Arnold Johnson describing his attendance at an ultraright meeting led by General Edwin A. Walker, the Commission could not establish any direct contact between Oswald and the personalities or groups representing the rightwing. Oswald’s writings, reading habits, and his own attempt to shoot General Walker all reflected, the Commission concluded, an extreme personal dislike of the rightwing rather than any affinity with it.