In the speech I referred to a book which I believe is on your desk written by a Mr. Joesten, Joachim Joesten; entitled “Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?” in which, in the course of many arguments intended to prove or suggest that Oswald was “framed” by wicked American conservatives, he makes much of Oswald’s supposed connection with the CIA. In my speech I made the point that if it were established that Oswald was in the employ of the CIA that would not by any means exclude the possibility that he was also in the employ of the Soviet and that therefore the argument in the book is completely fallacious. I think I can tell you precisely what I did say.
Mr. Jenner. Thank you, sir. By the way, do you have a copy of that speech? I spoke to your counsel and he thought you might have one.
Mr. Oliver. I have my one copy and I may say that this speech consists of 39 and a little more typed pages including 2 or 3 inserts here and there——
Mr. Jenner. You might find that section dealing with this precise subject.
Mr. Oliver. And that the first 27 pages deal with questions of the impression produced on the public mind by shownmanship.
Mr. Jenner. Excuse me, what do you mean by that, Doctor?
Mr. Oliver. I mean the ease with which many people confuse actors with the roles they play and so carry from a performance an impression that it has a reality that it did not have.
Actually, I start out by pointing out that whenever anybody goes into a theater to see Hamlet for example, he more or less consciously tells himself that he is going into that theater to undergo an illusion. He knows perfectly well the actors are not Hamlet, and the other characters are feigned—that in real life the actors may not resemble the characters they impersonate at all, and so on.
And then I took up the whole question of the socialist mentality as exhibited in history. I made some comments on the letters of objurgation that I had received, for I was still illustrating that mentality, and I spoke briefly about the general suppositions of the people called “liberal intellectuals.” I did not begin to discuss the facts of the assassination until late on page 27.
In other words, more than two-thirds of my speech dealt with these general—of my pitch, dealt with these general considerations.