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

Political Activities

Oswald’s post-defection political activity centered on Cuba and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Aside from a single, apparently uneventful distribution of Committee materials in Dallas between April 6 and April 24, 1963, Oswald’s first public association with the cause came in New Orleans, where under the name “Lee Osborne” he had printed a “Hands Off Cuba” handbill along with an application form and membership card for the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He distributed these materials uneventfully near the U.S.S. Wasp at the Dumaine Street wharf on June 16, 1963, distributed literature downtown on August 9, 1963—which led to his arrest after a dispute with three anti-Castro Cuban exiles—and distributed again on August 16. After his arrest he was interviewed by police and, at his request, by an FBI agent; on August 17 he appeared briefly on a radio program, and on August 21 he debated Carlos Bringuier, one of the Cuban exiles arrested with him, over radio station WDSU in New Orleans. Bringuier further alleged that on August 5, 1963, Oswald had attempted to infiltrate the anti-Castro organization with which Bringuier was affiliated. While the Commission found no credible evidence of conspiracy, it treats these activities as revealing aspects of Oswald’s character and as pertinent context for evaluating his possible motive for the assassination.

第七章

CHAPTER VII examines Lee Harvey Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) activities in New Orleans during the summer of 1963, the collapse of those efforts, and his subsequent attempts to emigrate to Cuba or the Soviet Union. The chapter demonstrates that Oswald’s FPCC “organization” was essentially a solitary fabrication and traces the personal, professional, and ideological frustrations that culminated in his failed Mexico City visa applications in late September and early October 1963.