Mr. De Mohrenschildt. Oh, yes.
Mr. Jenner. Quite, as a matter of fact—he never finished high school.
Mr. De Mohrenschildt. Yes; I did not even know that.
Mr. Jenner. Did you have the feeling that his views on politics were shallow and surface?
Mr. De Mohrenschildt. Very much so.
Mr. Jenner. That he had not had the opportunity for a study under scholars who would criticize, so that he himself could form some views on the subject?
Mr. De Mohrenschildt. Exactly. His mind was of a man with exceedingly poor background, who read rather advanced books, and did not understand even the words in them. He read complicated economical treatises and just picked up difficult words out of what he has read, and loved to display them. He loved to use the difficult words, because it was to impress one.
Mr. Jenner. Did you think he understood it?
Mr. De Mohrenschildt. He did not understand the words—he just used them. So how can you take seriously a person like that? You just laugh at him. But there was always an element of pity I had, and my wife had, for him. We realized that he was sort of a forlorn individual, groping for something.
Mr. Jenner. Did you form any impression in the area, let us say, of reliability—that is, whether our Government would entrust him with something that required a high degree of intelligence, a high degree of imagination, a high degree of ability to retain his equilibrium under pressure, a management of a situation, to be flexible enough?