On October 23rd, I had attened a ultra-right meeting headed by General Edwin A. Walker, who lives in Dallas.
This meeting preceded by one day the attack on A. E. Stevenson at the United Nations Day meeting at which he spoke
As you can see, political friction between “left” and “right” is very great here.
Could you advise me as to the general view we have on the American Civil Liberties Union?[C7-405]
In any event, the Commission has been unable to find any credible evidence that Oswald had direct contact or association with any of the personalities or groups epitomizing or representing the so-called rightwing, even though he did, as he told Johnson, attend a meeting at which General Walker spoke to approximately 1,300 persons.[C7-406] Oswald’s writings and his reading habits indicate that he had an extreme dislike of the rightwing, an attitude most clearly reflected by his attempt to shoot General Walker.
Relationship With Wife
The relations between Lee and Marina Oswald are of great importance in any attempt to understand Oswald’s possible motivation. During the period from Oswald’s return from Mexico to the assassination, he and his wife spent every weekend but one together at the Irving, Tex., home of Mrs. Ruth Paine, who was then separated from her husband. The sole exception was the weekend of November 16-17, 1963, the weekend before the assassination, when his wife asked Oswald not to come to Irving. During the week, Oswald lived in a roominghouse in Dallas, but he usually called his wife on the telephone twice a day.[C7-407] She testified that after his return from Mexico Oswald “changed for the better. He began to treat me better. * * * He helped me more—although he always did help. But he was more attentive.”[C7-408] Marina Oswald attributed that to their living apart and to the imminent birth of their second child. She testified that Oswald “was very happy” about the birth of the child.[C7-409]
While those considerations no doubt had an effect on Oswald’s attitude toward his family it would seem that the need for support and sympathy after his recent rebuffs in Mexico City might also have been important to him. It would not have been the first time that Oswald sought closer ties with his family in time of adversity.[C7-410]
His past relationships with his wife had been stormy, however, and it did not seem that she respected him very much. They had been married after a courtship of only about 6 weeks, a part of which Oswald spent in the hospital. Oswald’s diary reports that he married his wife shortly after his proposal of marriage to another girl had been rejected. He stated that the other girl rejected him partly because he was an American, a fact that he said she had exploited. He stated that “In spite of fact I married Marina to hurt Ella [the girl that had rejected him] I found myself in love with Marina.”[C7-411] Many of the people with whom the Oswalds became acquainted after their arrival in the United States thought that Marina Oswald had married her husband primarily in the hope that she would be able to leave the Soviet Union. Marina Oswald has denied this.[C7-412]
Marina Oswald expressed one aspect of her husband’s attitude toward her when she testified that:
* * * Lee wanted me to go to Russia, and I told him that if he wanted me to go then that meant that he didn’t love me, and that in that case what was the idea of coming to the United States in the first place. Lee would say that it would be better for me if I went to Russia. I did not know why. I did not know what he had in mind. He said he loved me but that it would be better for me if I went to Russia, and what he had in mind I don’t know.[C7-413]
On the other hand, Oswald objected to the invitation that his wife had received to live with Mrs. Ruth Paine, which Mrs. Paine had made in part to give her an alternative to returning to the Soviet Union.[C7-414] Marina Oswald wrote to Mrs. Paine that: “Many times he [Oswald] has recalled this matter to me and said that I am just waiting for an opportunity to hurt him. It has been the cause of many of our arguments.”[C7-415] Oswald claimed that his wife preferred others to him.[C7-416] He said this about members of the Russian-speaking group in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, whom she said he tried to forbid her from seeing,[C7-417] and also about Mrs. Paine.[C7-418] He specifically made that claim when his wife refused to come to live with him in Dallas as he asked her to do on the evening of November 21, 1963.[C7-419]
The instability of their relations was probably a function of the personalities of both people. Oswald was overbearing in relations with his wife. He apparently attempted to be “the Commander” by dictating many of the details of their married life.[C7-420] While Marina Oswald said that her husband wanted her to learn English,[C7-421] he made no attempt to help her and there are other indications that he did not want her to learn that language. Oswald apparently wished to continue practicing his own Russian with her.[C7-422] Lieutenant Martello of the New Orleans police testified that Oswald stated that he did not speak English in his family because he did not want them to become Americanized.[C7-423] Marina Oswald’s inability to speak English also made it more difficult for her to have an independent existence in this country. Oswald struck his wife on occasion,[C7-424] did not want her to drink, smoke or wear cosmetics[C7-425] and generally treated her with lack of respect in the presence of others.[C7-426]