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

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.