I have heard it said that sometimes they are really almost full time engaged in whatever the sport is, and that they only have another job to be able to say that they have amateur status.
Representative Ford. Have you ever been to Minsk?
Mr. McVickar. I have only passed through Minsk on the train several times going back and forth to Poland.
Representative Ford. Do you feel from your experiences in the Soviet Union it was unusual for Oswald to be sent or permitted to go to Minsk?
Mr. McVickar. No; I don't think that is particularly unusual. I have a feeling that what they were trying to do probably was, at least a part of what they were trying to do, was to take advantage of his competence and knowledge in the electronic field, and so they probably sent him to a place where they would have technicians qualified to learn from him.
The same thing was done in the case of the immediately previous defector, Mr. Webster, who was a glass expert—what do they call that kind of glass, foam glass?
No, fiber glass. At any rate, he was employed at the fair that we had in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1959, and he more or less defected and he was sent to a glass factory, to work at a glass factory in Leningrad, and it was logical for them to send him there because he could do that kind of work and he could teach them something about how it was done in the United States.
Representative Ford. Do you know of any special kind of schools that might be in Minsk, any particular schools that they might send a person like Oswald to?
Mr. McVickar. I only had the impression without being sure of my facts, that he went to a factory where they manufactured electronic equipment. I don't know of any particular school that he might have been going to.
Mr. Dulles. I want to straighten out if I can this question of the delay in the issuance of an exit visa for Mrs. Oswald.