If Lee, at this time, did start to consider another act of violence that would awaken the American people to the danger they were in, then he very quickly shoved the idea onto a back burner of his mind, where it might well have simmered forever. Cuba remained on the front burner, and he resumed his peaceful political activity in behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Near the end of July, he wrote an extraordinary letter to Vincent T. Lee, the organization’s national director in New York, in answer to Vincent Lee’s friendly and encouraging letter of almost two months before.
In his undated reply Lee Oswald answered that he had made some “inovations” in his activities on behalf of Cuba, and “I hope you won’t be too disapproving.”[7] One innovation was that “against your advice I have decided to take an office from the very beginning.” This was a lie, for Lee never rented an office. He enclosed one of his handbills, in which he claimed to have a “charter chapter,” another lie. He also enclosed the membership application he had had printed and gave Mr. Lee a lecture on the system of dues he had set up, assuring him that it would not cheat the national office out of any money.
Vincent Lee was disgusted. He had hopes of what a discreet and energetic new member might be able to achieve even in territory so inhospitable as Louisiana. But this man was obviously a nut. He had gone off and “violated all the rules.” Even the few steps he had taken made clear that Oswald was the kind who would be “isolated” no matter what community he was in.[8] What was worse, he was claiming to speak for the FPCC when in fact he was exposing it to reprisals that could be a public embarrassment. By being associated with such a freebooter, the FPCC, which was in a precarious situation anyhow, had much to lose and nothing to gain.[9] Vincent Lee decided to sever communications. He did not answer the letter. Oswald did not perceive for some time, if ever, that the FPCC had cut him off. He kept on writing Vincent Lee, sending clippings, trying to impress him. Vincent Lee did not reply.
Lee was diligent at first about looking for a new job. He scoured the Help Wanted ads in the newspaper and answered a variety of them, for jobs in photography, clerk-typist jobs, even a job as yard man at a marble and granite company. He filed a claim for unemployment compensation based on his employment in Texas and was granted maximum benefits payable at $33 a week for thirteen weeks. But in order to qualify for the payments, he had to visit the Louisiana Employment Commission every Tuesday and list the names of the concerns where he had applied for work. Again, Lee embroidered reality; the number of enterprises at which he falsely claimed to have sought employment was in the scores.[10] From the end of July, he looked for work only desultorily, and after the middle of August, he stopped looking altogether. He had started to receive unemployment compensation, and on these payments, plus what he had saved while he was working, he managed to live until October.
Meanwhile, although unemployed and unable even to hold down a job as a manual laborer, Lee was oddly enough capable of a public life of a kind. His cousin Eugene Murret, who was training to be a Jesuit priest, wrote from Mobile, Alabama, inviting Lee to speak at his seminary about Russia. Overcoming his antireligious scruples, Lee accepted, and on a Saturday at the end of July, Lillian and Dutz Murret drove him and Marina to Mobile. Lee was to speak that night.
Aunt Lillian, not realizing that in his own eyes Lee was a public man already, urged him to make notes so that he would not be nervous. She was surprised at his airy reply: “Oh, don’t worry about me. I give talks all the time.”[11]
Lee spoke for half an hour about his everyday experiences in Russia, then answered questions. What he liked best about Russia, he said, was that the state takes care of everyone. If a man gets sick, no matter how poor he is, the government will provide for him. What he liked best about America was the material prosperity. He said that he was a Marxist and favored a brand of socialism that would combine the best of capitalism and Communism. Two of the priests who were present said later that Lee had handled himself well. Both had the impression that he was at least a college graduate.[12]
Now that he had time on his hands, Lee became more and more active on behalf of Castro. He was turned away from a printing shop where he tried to order three thousand more “Hands Off Cuba” leaflets, and Vincent Lee had failed to answer his most recent letter. But he did find encouragement from another quarter. Early in August Arnold Johnson, director of the Information and Lecture Bureau of the US Communist Party, wrote, answering a letter that Lee had written the Worker two months before.
Johnson’s reply, dated July 31, was terse and routine: “It is good to know that movements in support of Fair Play for Cuba has [sic] developed in New Orleans…. We do not have any organizational ties with the Committee, and yet there is much material that we issue from time to time…. Under separate cover we are sending you some literature….”[13]
Such a letter could have been a source of aggrandizement only to a man like Lee. Thus, at about this time, he wrote another letter to Vincent Lee that was even more extraordinary than the one that had preceded it:
…I rented an office as I planned and was promptly closed three days later for some obscure reasons by the renters, they said something about remodeling, ect., I’m sure you understand. After that I worked out of a post office box and by useing street demonstations and some circular work have substained a great deal of interest but no new members.
Through the efforts of some Cuban-exial “gusanos” [a word for the anti-Castro exiles often used in the Militant] a street demonstration was attacked and we were officially cautioned by police. This incident robbed me of what support I had leaving me alone.
Nevertheless thousands of circulars were distrubed and many, many pamphlets which your office supplied.
We also managed to picket the fleet when it came in and I was surprised in the number of officers who were interested….
I continue to recive through my post office box inquires and questions which I shall endeavor to keep ansewering to the best of my ability.[14]
The letter was dated August 1 and postmarked August 4, and it contains not a single true fact apart from the reference to picketing the fleet, which had occurred a month and a half before.
The uncanny thing about the letter is that on Monday, August 5, the day after he mailed it, Lee started to bring about the events he had just described. He visited a clothing store run by Carlos Bringuier, New Orleans representative of the Cuban Student Directorate, an organization of anti-Castro exiles.[15] Bringuier was having a conversation with a couple of teenage boys. Lee listened awhile, then joined in. He told Bringuier that he, too, opposed Castro and Communism. He said that he had been in the Marine Corps, had been trained in guerrilla warfare, and would gladly train Cubans to fight Castro. He wanted to join the fight himself. The teenagers who were present were intrigued when Lee explained to them how to make a homemade gun, how to make gunpowder, and how to derail a train. He told them in detail how to blow up the Huey Long Bridge, as if learning this delicate art had been the part of his training he relished most.
9
The FPCC was neither large nor influential and existed so much on the fringe of American political life that it did not even dare keep a complete file of members. In December 1963 it went out of business altogether.
10
For an incomplete list, see Burcham Exhibit No. 1, Vol. 19, p. 212; Hunley Exhibit Nos. 2, 3, and 5, Vol. 20, pp. 205–211; Rachal Exhibit No. 1, Vol. 21, p. 283; and Exhibit Nos. 1908–1911, Vol. 23, pp. 709–713. Oswald ran a real risk of being caught in the false references he gave and other lies he told on application forms. But he evidently assumed that no one would check up on him, and he gave his fantasy free rein. Thus the paper trail he left behind, including his job applications and unemployment compensation forms, is helpful in any effort to understand his fantasies.
15
Testimony of Carlos Bringuier, Vol. 10, pp. 32–51; Testimony of Philip Geraci III, Vol. 10, pp. 74–81; and Testimony of Vance Blalock, Vol. 10, pp. 81–86.