Added By S.
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Before the age of 18 Oswald had lived in 22 different residences and had attended 12 different schools. Around the age of fifteen, according to his own accounts, he became a Marxist. Despite his Marxist sympathies, Oswald wished to join the US Marine Corps. He idolized his older brother, Robert and wore Robert's US Marines ring. While in the Marines, Oswald was trained in the use of the M1 Garand rifle. Oswald, however, was trained primarily as a radar operator, a job that required a security clearance. He was assigned first to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Irvine, California in July 1957, then to Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan in September 1957. Although Atsugi was a base for the top-secret CIA U-2 spy planes that flew over the Soviet Union, there is no evidence Oswald was involved in that operation. Some say tht this is where he might have begun a possible spy career. He will pass the Corporal exam, but will never get the rank after having been court-martialled twice: initially because of accidentally shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized handgun, and then later for starting a fight with a sergeant he thought responsible for the punishment he received from his first court-martial. Some will say, in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination, that he was a bad shooter, but in actual fact, he was above average according to the Marine’s standards. When he left the Army, in 1959, by pretending that he was his mother’s sole provider, he had in fact planned the next chapter of his life. In October 1959, Oswald emigrated to the Soviet Union. He arrived to Moscow on October 16 and his application for Soviet residency was initially rejected, much to his surprise. Oswald was allowed to remain in the Soviet Union and was sent to Minsk, where he was under constant surveillance by the KGB during his thirty-month stay. In 1961, Oswald opened negotiations with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow over his proposed return to the United States and soon after, met Marina Prusakova, a troubled 19-year-old pharmacology student. Lee and Marina married on April 30, 1961, less than six weeks after they met. After nearly a year of paperwork and waiting, on June 1, 1962 the young family left the Soviet Union for the United States. Back in the United States, the Oswalds settled in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and, obviously, the FBI became interested in him. They met with Oswald twice, on June 26th and on August 16th. Those meetings did not yield anything worthy for the FBI, but the agent in charge of Oswald’s file requested that he contact the Agency should the Russians contact him. The agent then recommended that the file be closed. In April 1963, Oswald attempted to kill General Edwin Walker, a right-wing extremist who embodied everything Oswald hated, but Oswald missed and the evidence did not suspect him. Oswald returned to New Orleans, and his Marxist ideals became focused on Fidel Castro and Cuba and he soon became a vocal pro-Castro advocate. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a national organization and Oswald set out on his own initiative as a one-member New Orleans chapter. Oswald's five months in New Orleans were carefully scrutinized after the JFK assassination, most notably by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison in his unsuccessful attempt to link Oswald to wealthy local businessman Clay Shaw, a former president of the city's International Trade Mart. Garrison's attempt to establish connections between the two included W. Guy Banister (a retired FBI agent and former New Orleans Police Assistant Superintendent turned private investigator and anti-communist) and Banister's friend David Ferrie, an anti-Castro activist and one-time employee of the attorney for Mafioso Carlos Marcello. Ferrie and Oswald had been simultaneously members of the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans in 1955, when Oswald was 15. However, no ties between Oswald and Bannister could ever be proven (no more than between Bannister and Ferrie, even though it remains plausible that they knew each other). In late September 1963, Oswald took a bus southwest towards Laredo and the U.S.-Mexico border. Arriving in Mexico City, he completed a transit visa application at the Cuban Embassy, claiming he wanted to visit the country on his way back to the Soviet Union. The Cubans insisted the Soviet Union would have to approve his journey to the USSR before he could get a Cuban visa, but he was unable to get speedy co-operation from the Soviet embassy. After shuttling back and forth between consulates for five days, Oswald left Mexico City on October 3, and returned by bus to Dallas, expressing disappointment in the Castro regime. Later, he found a job filling book orders at the Texas School Book Depository, where he started work on October 16. On November 12th, he paid a visit to the FBI’s offices to give an envelope to agent James Hosty. Hosty’s superior ordered him to destroy this envelope which, according to Hosty, contained a note requesting that the Bureau leave his wife alone. When Marina rose on the morning of November 22nd, Oswald had already left, leaving $170 and his wedding ring on a desk. Buell Frazier noticed Oswald getting into his car with an oblong package, which Oswald will say were drapery poles. At 11h21, on November 24th, after 12 hours of interrogation of which no records were kept, Oswald was shot almost point-blank by Jack Ruby in the Dallas Police Department garage, on live TV before millions of viewers. He was about to be transfered from his police detention cell to the county prison, which was located on the corner of Houston and Elm Streets, just steps from the Texas School Book Depository...