Part 59

Mr. PAINE. Well, this was a question. I asked him how was it they so readily accepted--you know other Americans have a hard time staying more than 30 days there, "How was it that you were so readily accepted into the bosom of Soviet Society?" And to that he answered, "well, it was just a fortunate mood between the countries or something to that effect," is something that I gathered.

I didn't remember the history and I thought it would be--he smiled a little bit. I can't remember whether he smiled a little bit when I then asked him how did he manage to get out, at one time, but at one time I do remember he smiled as though there were a story there, and I didn't--I supposed the story would be too intricate, not interesting enough to try to get him to relate it.

Mr. LIEBELER. You did not ask him to relate the story?

Mr. PAINE. No; I did not.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you ever learn the circumstances under which he left Russia, from him?

Mr. PAINE. As he told me at that same half hour before we came back to our house on Fifth Street,----

Mr. DULLES. Was this the first time you had seen him?

Mr. PAINE. All this happened in the first half hour.

Mr. DULLES. The first time you had ever seen him?

Mr. PAINE. The first time I had seen him or at least that first night.

He told me he had decided, that he had wanted, to come back to this country and it was through the fortunate circumstance of the Embassy still having his passport which was a legal loophole that made it legally possible, and I asked him--at sometime I thought this was rather nice that the State Department, I think this was a little later in the same evening, the State Department had forewarned him, had granted him money also, to come back.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you that?

Mr. PAINE. He told me that and I was rather proud of the State Department for its generous behavior toward such a wayward citizen. He actually had spoken--I had mentioned this because he had spoken abusively of the American Government.

Mr. LIEBELER. At this time, during the first meeting?

Mr. PAINE. Not just the American Government--yes; at this same meeting. He had spoken with abuse of, sort of resentment that they didn't let him have his passport and I thought, well now, that was just kind of a nice trick, by having a consular official there that he knew, this man wanted to change his mind, this little legal dodge of not wanting to give him his passport which I think is illegal if the man wants it, it would be the thing to permit him to come back.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you point that out to Lee Oswald?

Mr. PAINE. Yes; I did.

Mr. LIEBELER. What did he say?

Mr. PAINE. I don't think he responded to it.

Mr. DULLES. He talked about surrendering the passport rather than surrendering citizenship, did he?

Mr. PAINE. The two were synonymous, I thought, that if you surrendered your passport and with the intention of adopting another one that was renouncing American citizenship.

Mr. DULLES. I see.

Mr. PAINE. Which he wanted, he told me he wanted to renounce his American citizenship. He said that quite flatly.

Mr. LIEBELER. Do you remember anything else about this conversation concerning his trip back and his attitude toward the State Department and the United States that he discussed during this first meeting?

Mr. PAINE. I don't believe so. I think I have got it a little confused with Marguerite Oswald what she said at the assassination, at the time of the night of the 22d. She was resentful of the State Department, thinking it had been remiss in taking so long in getting him back. I don't remember whether he had voiced the same--I am confused, I don't know whether it was he or she who had voiced this resentment. I thought to the contrary it was very generous.

Mr. LIEBELER. Do you remember whether or not Oswald himself voiced resentment against the Government of the United States in this connection?

Mr. PAINE. Yes; I do remember that. That was the thing that prompted me to say that it was actually rather nice of them to have been illegal just for this----

Mr. DULLES. I didn't catch the last. Nice of them to have been what?

Mr. PAINE. I thought it probably was illegal of the embassy official not to hand over his passport when he demanded it in order to surrender it to the Soviet Union.

Mr. LIEBELER. But you don't remember Oswald responding to that when you made that answer to him?

Mr. PAINE. I don't remember his response.

The CHAIRMAN. You also said you thought it was rather nice of the State Department to do that in order to make it possible for him to return if he wanted to?

Mr. PAINE. Yes; I said both of these things. They had given him money. They had held, a peccadillo to hold, the passport out of the knowledge that he might, such people might, want to return, change their mind, and then to provide him money moreover to come back, this all seemed to me rather nice even though it had taken 2 more months than when he originally wanted to come back.

I had said, this in response to his, some kind of expression on his part of criticism of the State Department or the foreign embassy or whatever it is.

Mr. LIEBELER. Do you remember why he was critical? Was he critical because they had not given him his passport when he went to Russia or was he critical because in his opinion they had taken so long to arrange his return?

Mr. PAINE. I think he was critical when he first mentioned it, he seemed to have the critical attitude--some of this critical attitude may have been facial expressions or way of speaking, which was somewhat common with him. Therefore, I can't remember for sure whether it was in the words or in his attitude. He was critical, though, certainly of the first, of the State Department not relinquishing his passport.

Mr. DULLES. Was he critical at this latter time?

Mr. PAINE. He was critical of that as he was relating to his desire to go to the Soviet Union. He was relating the story to me, and then he had spoken of the State Department as though they were a bunch of bastards, wouldn't--or illegal or something. Anyway, he was unfavorable.

Mr. DULLES. But did you indicate he was rather glad that they had later taken this position so that he could get his passport back or did I misunderstand you on that?

Mr. PAINE. Well, I pointed out to him that or said "it was kind of fortunate that they had held your passport," and I think he nodded his assent to that.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you why he decided to return to the United States from Russia?

Mr. PAINE. Most of this conversation, I think, was when we had first met and I wasn't sure whether he was speaking derogatively of the Soviet Union in order to win my good graces or thinking he could win my friendship that way.

However, he spoke more with disfavor of the Soviet Union during this first meeting than was quite comprehensible to someone who had gone there.

Mr. LIEBELER. What did he say?

Mr. PAINE. But chiefly what he said was that he didn't have choice of where he could live, you were assigned, he spoke with a certain amount of derision, scorn of the fact that you were assigned jobs, and he thought the food was boring, I think, to use his word. He had mentioned that he liked to--he had gone hunting with some friends, that was the only thing he mentioned about the Soviet Union in which I sensed that he had been with people except for also mentioning that he had been the center of interest as an American who couldn't drive a car.

But apparently he had relished going hunting. He had also said with resentment, a Soviet citizen could not own a rifle. They could own shotguns but not a rifle, and that you could shoot a rifle only by joining a rifle club which he said was a paramilitary organization.

Again, this was with a degree of scorn in his voice or his attitude. I had assumed that he at least tried the paramilitary organization, the rifle club, so he could speak with such scorn, with knowledge of what he was speaking about.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you that he had joined an organization in which he was permitted to shoot a rifle?

Mr. PAINE. No; he did not. I don't know that for a fact. I had assumed from his conversation that he had tried it but I gather that he did not like this organization.

Mr. DULLES. Did he say anything about having to leave the rifle at the club, that you couldn't take the rifle away from the club, or anything of that kind?

Mr. PAINE. I assume that was true. He didn't mention it, he mentioned that a Soviet citizen could not possess a rifle.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he speak of any training that he might have received in connection with either a rifle or a shotgun while he was in the Soviet Union?

Mr. PAINE. No; he didn't.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he indicate to you the degree of facility with which he used either of these weapons while he was in the Soviet Union?

Mr. PAINE. No; he did not.

Mr. LIEBELER. He--is there anything else he told you about this hunting club or this rifle or shotgun that you can remember now?

Mr. PAINE. No; I am not particularly interested in rifles and hunting so that I didn't--it was an ideal opportunity--I think he did love hunting so I think it would have been an ideal way to reach him in a somewhat human way.

Mr. DULLES. You got no idea of how much time he was at the rifle club or what? Did it seem to be a frequent occupation?

Mr. PAINE. No; I can't say I had any fruitful idea of whether he was a member of it. I assumed he was a member of it. He didn't say he was a member of it. I assumed he spoke with authority saying it was a paramilitary organization and somehow conveying the idea that he didn't like that aspect of it and, therefore, I assumed he didn't like it. He spoke only with pleasure of his hunting trip. He mentioned a hunting trip, I don't think he mentioned them in plural, which he had taken with some friends.

Mr. LIEBELER. Do you remember any more details about that hunting trip?

Mr. PAINE. We talked, this was within the first half hour, the talk was very brief.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he ever mention to you this hunting trip or anything relating to a rifle or shotgun in the Soviet Union at any later time?

Mr. PAINE. No; I didn't know what time he was referring to.

Mr. LIEBELER. I mean at any other time after the first meeting with you did he refer again to his activities in the Soviet Union?

Mr. PAINE. I see.

Mr. LIEBELER. In connection with this rifle?

Mr. PAINE. No; that subject never came up again.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you at this first meeting about his work in the Soviet Union?

Mr. PAINE. I had gathered he worked somewhere in a television factory.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you that?

Mr. PAINE. Yes; I can't remember whether it was television, it was electronics of some sort.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you the nature of his work?

Mr. PAINE. He did not tell me. I thought to myself that if he was in a very honorable position there he would have mentioned it. So, I thought he was probably just a mechanic of some sort, wiring it together.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you how much he was paid?

Mr. PAINE. I can't remember, I think he did but I don't remember what he said.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he indicate that he received any income other than from his work?

Mr. PAINE. No; I don't believe he told me anything about that.

Mr. LIEBELER. We have been referring primarily here in our questioning to the first meeting that you had with him, but do you remember any subsequent conversation with Oswald about his work, his pay, and his income in the Soviet Union after this first meeting?

Mr. PAINE. I think he thought it was too low. He thought the standard of living, he recognized the standard of living was low, and they were restricted therefore in their--just too confined, told where to live. The food was boring and there was nothing to do. I didn't get the idea it was lack of money. He did not say anything about lack of money.

Mr. DULLES. I wonder if we could get for our guidance the approximate number of times he saw Lee Oswald?

Mr. PAINE. It was about four times that we had lengthy conversations.

Mr. DULLES. Four times, that is four times prior to the date of the assassination.

Mr. PAINE. That is correct.

Mr. DULLES. Or that includes all the times?

Mr. PAINE. I didn't see him again after the assassination.

Mr. DULLES. You didn't see him after the assassination. Four times prior to the assassination including this one time you have already described?

Mr. PAINE. Yes. This is the first meeting before he went to New Orleans and then about three weekends after he came back----

Mr. DULLES. I think that will be taken up. I just wanted to get in my mind approximately how many times in all you saw him.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did Oswald at any time indicate to you that he was treated by the Russian authorities in any way different from ordinary Russian citizens who occupied a similar status in the Soviet Union?

Mr. PAINE. No; I wasn't aware of that.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you about any special training that he had?

Mr. PAINE. No; he did not.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he mention his living accommodations?

Mr. PAINE. Well, with some kind of resentment he did, that it was assigned, and I think that is about all he said.

Mr. DULLES. May I ask whether these questions relate to all the four times or just to the first time, are we still on the first?

Mr. LIEBELER. Basically on the first time, sir, unless we specify to the contrary.

Mr. DULLES. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. Tell us what else you and Oswald discussed during this first meeting that you had?

Mr. PAINE. Unfortunately that first meeting was the clearest one. I was asking him questions, taking his answers. I had hoped when I met this man to have insights into Russia, both meeting him and meeting his wife, and interesting talks about the differences between the Russian system and the American, the western system.

Then I found that he was--some questions, later in the evening, the conversation was translated into Russian also so that Marina could follow along.

Mr. DULLES. You mean after the first half hour when you were preparing----

Mr. PAINE. That is right, when we came back after dinner to our house.

Mr. DULLES. Your house. So this went on?

Mr. PAINE. What you have heard now occurred mostly in the first half hour when I was speaking directly to him when I met him.

Mr. LIEBELER. Then you returned to Irving to your house and had dinner and had the additional conversation?

Mr. PAINE. Yes. Now, in all the subsequent conversations, you are going to get less information in what he said.

Mr. DULLES. In the first part of this meeting you were alone and in the second part of the meeting there were other people there?

Mr. PAINE. My wife and Marina was able to join us. At this time Marina was packing things for Junie and I noticed that he was speaking very harshly to her. He was telling her what bag or satchel to take. I gathered from it, of course, it was in Russian, and I thought to myself, here is a little fellow who certainly insists on wearing the pants.

Mr. DULLES. You don't understand Russian yourself?

Mr. PAINE. No. So he spoke loudly to her, and didn't rise from his seat. But spoke surprisingly harshly especially in front of a guest.

Mr. DULLES. How did she take this?

Mr. PAINE. With a bit of umbrage. She didn't like it. It rankled her.

Representative FORD. In other words, this half hour conversation took place in their apartment?

Mr. PAINE. Yes.

Representative FORD. While she was packing the bags to go to your home?

Mr. PAINE. That is right.

Mr. DULLES. Was she packing the bags for some days or was this----

Mr. PAINE. No; just bottles, diapers, clothing, something.

Mr. DULLES. For a weekend?

Mr. PAINE. Just for the evening.

Mr. DULLES. Just for an evening?

Mr. PAINE. I don't know why it took so long but it did. I guess they weren't quite ready when I arrived.

Mr. LIEBELER. What else did you and Oswald speak about during this evening, do you remember?

Mr. PAINE. After supper the conversation was translated into Russian, and I wanted to gather Marina's or get Marina's corroboration of certain things he said about Russia and there we found when she had differing opinions from him that he would not let her, he would slap her down verbally, and not let her express them or say--Ruth told me later, he was calling her a fool, "You don't know anything."

When I encountered this, I actually trusted Marina to know--the questions I was asking, it seemed to me could be better answered by Marina, so I wasn't paying very close attention to what he had said about that.

Mr. DULLES. Could you indicate on what points they seemed to differ or what points that he raised that irritated her or vice versa in their discussion about Russia? You said he slapped her down. I was wondering on what kind of points he slapped her down.

Mr. PAINE. I have unfortunately tried to remember those points myself wishing, wondering whether hypnosis would bring it out of me as a tape recorder, or something. I was interested to know whether the Russians were happy with their system, whether they felt the presence of the Secret Police, these are questions, I don't remember asking them, these are questions that I would have been interested in.

Mr. LIEBELER. Do you remember any response either from Marina or from Oswald on these points?

Mr. PAINE. And I don't remember anything specific here. I just remember that I encountered too many points, where they apparently differed and, therefore, I had in mind I will just wait until she can learn English and we will get it from the horse's mouth.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you speak with Oswald during this first meeting of the circumstances under which he met Marina and married her in Russia?

Mr. PAINE. I don't remember when I learned that. I think I learned it from Ruth, who had spoken to Marina on this subject.

Mr. LIEBELER. What did you learn?

Mr. PAINE. It may have been--I don't remember when it occurred, it may have been after the assassination, I may have read it in the paper or something.

Mr. LIEBELER. You don't remember any specific conversations with Oswald on that subject?

Mr. PAINE. No; I don't.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did Lee Oswald ever speak to you about his experience in the United States Marine Corps?

Mr. PAINE. He mentioned that his brother went in the Marine Corps and apparently enjoyed it and he had then, I think he said he had left school early to join it and I gathered, I thought to myself, he is expecting to find the joy his brother found there and he did not find it. He did not like the Marine Corps.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you anything--pardon me.

Mr. PAINE. He did not mention that I can recall his exit from the Marine Corps.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he ever mention the name of Governor Connally in connection with his experiences in the Marines?

Mr. PAINE. Not that I remember.

Mr. DULLES. Did he ever mention the President in this or any other conversations?

Mr. PAINE. He mentioned the President only once that I can remember specifically; at the ACLU meeting I think.

Mr. DULLES. At the which?

Mr. PAINE. At the ACLU meeting I took him to. He had mentioned, he thought President Kennedy was doing quite a good job in civil rights, which was high praise coming from Lee.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you have any discussion during this first meeting other than the discussion you have already mentioned concerning Oswald's political beliefs?

Mr. PAINE. There, of course, I was interested in that subject, found we differed, and then in order to not wrestle with concepts or arguments that were unmanageably large, I tried to bring it down to more specific instances of how he would like to see the world be.

Mr. LIEBELER. How did you become aware of the fact that you differed, do you remember?

Mr. PAINE. I don't remember him making any bones about it the very first meeting. He told me he had become a Marxist, in his own apartment there, that he had become a Marxist by reading books and never having met a Communist in this country.

And he also then told me with a certain sadness or regret that he couldn't speak about political and economic subjects with his people, and fellows at work.

(At this point Senator Cooper entered the hearing room.)

Mr. LIEBELER. You were going to mention specific areas of political discussion that you had with him.

Mr. PAINE. One other thing happened in this first half hour, the most fruitful half hour I had ever had with him. He had mentioned his employer. I probably asked him why did he leave this country to go to the Soviet Union, and his supreme theme in this regard is the exploitation of man by man, by which he means one man making a profit out of another man's labor, which is the normal employment situation in this country and to which he found--took, felt great resentment.

He was aware that his employer made--he made more money for his employer than he was paid and specifically he mentioned how his employer of the engraving company goods and chattels that he had, that Oswald didn't have, and with some specific resentment toward this employer, and I thought privately to myself that this resentment must show through if he ever meets his employer, it must sort of show through and that his employer wouldn't find that man very attractive. So this was his guiding theme.

The reason it appears that this country, the system in this country had to go, had to be changed, was because of this supreme immoral way of managing affairs here, the exploitation of man by man which occurs in this country.

We discussed about it occurring in the Soviet Union, the taxation of a man's labor, it occurs there also, and it appeared that only, he seemed to agree or sometimes I had to feed him, this conversation now is a later one, when we were talking about the specifics of exploitation of man by man, he agreed that the only difference was that in the Soviet Union it is a choice which is impersonal.

The person who decides the man's wages and labor does not stand to gain by it whereas in this country the man who decides stands to gain by it.

Mr. DULLES. The man who decides what, to employ the other man?

Mr. PAINE. No; what wage to pay him.

Mr. DULLES. What wage to pay him?

Mr. PAINE. Or what his return shall be. So that was the only--the most important, by far economic and political almost, let's call it economic doctrine he held.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he translate that economic doctrine to specific policies that he thought should be adopted or specific changes that should be made in the structure of this country?

Mr. PAINE. I had never, to my satisfaction, uncovered an area of progressive change that he would advocate. I asked him how did he think this change was going to come about, and he never answered that.

And it seemed to me he was critical of almost everything that occurs in this country. So that he did not--I did not come to--did not know of anything in which he could see a progressive evolutionary change or policies that could be pushed in order to promote his ideals.

Representative FORD. Did he react academically, intellectually, violently or in what way did he express these views?

Mr. PAINE. Well, he was quite dogmatic. First he wanted to put me in a category. In one of the later talks--when we first met he talked very freely and then I think as we made, in later conversations, I had to do more and more of it--make more and more effort to draw something out of him.

In his later conversations, Ruth found him so bothersome.

Mr. DULLES. What was that word?

Mr. PAINE. Bothersome, that she couldn't join the conversations. He would get too angry or too----

Representative FORD. He resented the probing or the questioning?

Mr. PAINE. No; he did not really resent the probing. For instance, take this issue of the exploitation of man by man. When we had boiled it down to this rather fine difference or technical difference that one was done by an impersonal body and one was done personal.