The difficulties which Oswald’s problems would have caused him in any relationship were probably not reduced by his wife’s conduct. Katherine Ford, with whom Marina Oswald stayed during her separation from her husband in November of 1962, thought that Marina Oswald was immature in her thinking and partly responsible for the difficulties that the Oswalds were having at that time.[C7-427] Mrs. Ford said that Marina Oswald admitted that she provoked Oswald on occasion.[C7-428] There can be little doubt that some provocation existed. Oswald once struck his wife because of a letter which she wrote to a former boy friend in Russia. In the letter Marina Oswald stated that her husband had changed a great deal and that she was very lonely in the United States. She was “sorry that I had not married him [the Russian boy friend] instead, that it would have been much easier for me.”[C7-429] The letter fell into Oswald’s hands when it was returned to his post office box because of insufficient postage, which apparently resulted from an increase in postal rates of which his wife had been unaware.[C7-430] Oswald read the letter, but refused to believe that it was sincere, even though his wife insisted to him that it was. As a result Oswald struck her, as to which she testified: “Generally, I think that was right, for such things that is the right thing to do. There was some grounds for it.”[C7-431]
Although she denied it in some of her testimony before the Commission,[C7-432] it appears that Marina Oswald also complained that her husband was not able to provide more material things for her.[C7-433] On that issue George De Mohrenschildt, who was probably as close to the Oswalds as anyone else during their first stay in Dallas, said that:
She was annoying him all the time—“Why don’t you make some money?” * * * Poor guy was going out of his mind. * * *
We told her she should not annoy him—poor guy, he is doing his best, “Don’t annoy him so much.” * * *[C7-434]
The De Mohrenschildts also testified that “right in front” of Oswald Marina Oswald complained about Oswald’s inadequacy as a husband.[C7-435] Mrs. Oswald told another of her friends that Oswald was very cold to her, that they very seldom had sexual relations and that Oswald “was not a man.”[C7-436] She also told Mrs. Paine that she was not satisfied with her sexual relations with Oswald.[C7-437]
Marina Oswald also ridiculed her husband’s political views, thereby tearing down his view of his own importance. He was very much interested in autobiographical works of outstanding statesmen of the United States, to whom his wife thought he compared himself.[C7-438] She said he was different from other people in “At least his imagination, his fantasy, which was quite unfounded, as to the fact that he was an outstanding man.”[C7-439] She said that she “always tried to point out to him that he was a man like any others who were around us. But he simply could not understand that.”[C7-440] Jeanne De Mohrenschildt, however, thought that Marina Oswald “said things that will hurt men’s pride.”[C7-441] She said that if she ever spoke to her husband the way Marina Oswald spoke to her husband, “we would not last long.”[C7-442] Mrs. De Mohrenschildt thought that Oswald, whom she compared to “a puppy dog that everybody kicked,”[C7-443] had a lot of good qualities, in spite of the fact that “Nobody said anything good about him.”[C7-444] She had “the impression that he was just pushed, pushed, pushed, and she [Marina Oswald] was probably nagging, nagging, nagging.”[C7-445] She thought that he might not have become involved in the assassination if people had been kinder to him.[C7-446]
In spite of these difficulties, however, and in the face of the economic problems that were always with them, things apparently went quite smoothly from the time Oswald returned from Mexico until the weekend of November 16-17, 1963.[C7-447] Mrs. Paine was planning a birthday party for one of her children on that weekend and her husband, Michael, was to be at the house. Marina Oswald said that she knew her husband did not like Michael Paine and so she asked him not to come out that weekend, even though he wanted to do so. She testified that she told him “that he shouldn’t come every week, that perhaps it is not convenient for Ruth that the whole family be there, live there.” She testified that he responded: “As you wish. If you don’t want me to come, I won’t.”[C7-448] Ruth Paine testified that she heard Marina Oswald tell Oswald about the birthday party.[C7-449]
On Sunday, November 17, 1963, Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald decided to call Oswald[C7-450] at the place where he was living, unbeknownst to them, under the name of O. H. Lee.[C7-451] They asked for Lee Oswald who was not called to the telephone because he was known by the other name.[C7-452] When Oswald called the next day his wife became very angry about his use of the alias.[C7-453] He said that he used it because “he did not want his landlady to know his real name because she might read in the paper of the fact that he had been in Russia and that he had been questioned.”[C7-454] Oswald also said that he did not want the FBI to know where he lived “Because their visits were not very pleasant for him and he thought that he loses jobs because the FBI visits the place of his employment.”[C7-455] While the facts of his defection had become known in New Orleans as a result of his radio debate with Bringuier,[C7-456] it would appear to be unlikely that his landlady in Dallas would see anything in the newspaper about his defection, unless he engaged in activities similar to those which had led to the disclosure of his defection in New Orleans. Furthermore, even though it appears that at times Oswald was really upset by visits of the FBI, it does not appear that he ever lost his job because of its activities, although he may well not have been aware of that fact.[C7-457]
While Oswald’s concern about the FBI had some basis in fact, in that FBI agents had interviewed him in the past and had renewed their interest to some extent after his Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities had become known, he exaggerated their concern for him. Marina Oswald thought he did so in order to emphasize his importance.[C7-458] For example, in his letter of November 9, 1963, to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, he asked about the entrance visas for which he and his wife had previously applied. He absolved the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City of any blame for his difficulties there. He advised the Washington Embassy that the FBI was “not now” interested in his Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities, but noted that the FBI “has visited us here in Dallas, Texas, on November 1. Agent James P. Hasty warned me that if I engaged in F.P.C.C. activities in Texas the F.B.I. will again take an ‘interrest’ in me.”[C7-459] Neither Hosty nor any other agent of the FBI spoke to Oswald on any subject from August 10, 1963, to the time of the assassination.[C7-460] The claimed warning was one more of Oswald’s fabrications. Hosty had come to the Paine residence on November 1 and 5, 1963, but did not issue any such warning or suggest that Marina Oswald defect from the Soviet Union and remain in the United States under FBI protection, as Oswald went on to say.[C7-461] In Oswald’s imagination “I and my wife strongly protested these tactics by the notorious F.B.I.”[C7-462] In fact, his wife testified that she only said that she would prefer not to receive any more visits from the Bureau because of the “very exciting and disturbing effect” they had upon her husband,[C7-463] who was not even present at that time.[C7-464]
The arguments he used to justify his use of the alias suggest that Oswald may have come to think that the whole world was becoming involved in an increasingly complex conspiracy against him. He may have felt he could never tell when the FBI was going to appear on the scene or who else was going to find out about his defection and use it against him as had been done in New Orleans.[C7-465] On the other hand, the concern he expressed about the FBI may have been just another story to support the objective he sought in his letter.
Those arguments, however, were not persuasive to Marina Oswald, to whom “it was nothing terrible if people were to find out that he had been in Russia.”[C7-466] She asked Oswald: “After all, when will all your foolishness come to an end? All of these comedies. First one thing and then another. And now this fictitious name.”[C7-467] She said: “On Monday [November 18, 1963] he called several times, but after I hung up on him and didn’t want to talk to him he did not call again. He then arrived on Thursday [November 21, 1963].”[C7-468]