Part 75

Mr. JENNER. Describe your automobile, will you please?

Mrs. PAINE. It is a 1955 Chevrolet station wagon, green, needing paint, which we bought secondhand. It is in my name.

Mr. McCLOY. But automatic transmission?

Mrs. PAINE. Automatic transmission; yes.

Then, in the later lessons, I think there were altogether three with Lee----

Mr. JENNER. Have you finished with this lesson on the Sunday morning, was it?

Mrs. PAINE. No; it was a Sunday afternoon and I drove back to the house.

Mr. JENNER. How long did the lesson take on the parking lot?

Mrs. PAINE. Oh, 20 minutes, perhaps. I will say of him that he set for himself tasks; a good student in the sense that he planned now I am going to back up this way and I am going--one of the problems is to turn around and go the other way on the street. In other words----

Mr. JENNER. U-turn.

Mrs. PAINE. It is not a U-turn, no. It is a narrower one to head in back up and go the other way and he would set this problem for himself, how to do it, back up and do it, and set the problem of backing up, driving, going back, I mean. And set himself a course. I was doing this, too, but I was interested in the eagerness he had and his desire to achieve; desire to do this and do it well.

In helping himself by setting up these course plans, you could almost say.

Mr. JENNER. All right.

Would you refresh my recollection of the date this occurred?

Mrs. PAINE. My letter is dated the 14th. I say, "I taught him yesterday, Sunday."

Mr. JENNER. Fourteenth of October?

Mrs. PAINE. Fourteenth of October. So that would have been----

Mr. JENNER. That would have been October 7?

Mrs. PAINE. Thirteenth.

Senator COOPER. May I ask a question here?

Mr. McCLOY. Senator Cooper has a question.

Mr. JENNER. Yes.

Senator COOPER. On the occasion when you drove with him, did you find it necessary to show him how to turn on the ignition?

Mrs. PAINE. No; I did not.

Senator COOPER. How to take steps to start the car and put it in motion?

Mrs. PAINE. No, indeed; he had started it before I came out or else he wouldn't have been in the driver's seat because I didn't want him to drive on the street. So he had the car ready to go; backed out with a considerable bump.

Mr. JENNER. He backed out of the driveway?

Mrs. PAINE. I am recalling this now, I think so. I recall that he then didn't attempt to go, I didn't let him, but at one point we practiced parking on the street in front of my house.

Mr. JENNER. This was a subsequent occasion?

Mrs. PAINE. This was a subsequent occasion. But when the lesson was done he gradually let me turn the car into the driveway. This is harder and I was glad to do it and he was glad to be relieved of that requirement.

Representative BOGGS. Mr. Chairman, I don't want to interrupt this line of inquiry, but I have to go to a meeting at the Speaker's office and I can't be back this afternoon, and I wonder if I might ask Mrs. Paine several questions?

Mr. McCLOY. By all means.

Representative BOGGS. Not particularly in this line.

Where did you first meet Marina. I know you told us.

Mr. McCLOY. She testified to that yesterday.

Representative BOGGS. Tell me briefly.

Mrs. PAINE. At a party of people at the end of February 1963.

Representative BOGGS. How long was it thereafter that she moved into your home for the first time?

Mrs. PAINE. She first came on the 24th of April.

Representative BOGGS. And she lived there for 2 weeks?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Representative BOGGS. And her husband lived here--her husband was with her?

Mrs. PAINE. No. He had already gone on to New Orleans.

Representative BOGGS. When did she return to your home?

Mrs. PAINE. She came with me from New Orleans, leaving there the 23d of September and arriving in Irving the 24th of September.

Representative BOGGS. And she lived with you in Irving from the 24th of September until the 23d?

Mrs. PAINE. The morning of the 23d.

Representative BOGGS. Of November?

Mrs. PAINE. She left the morning of the 23d, she left expecting to come back.

Representative BOGGS. During that period of time did Lee Oswald live there?

Mrs. PAINE. No.

Representative BOGGS. He visited there on weekends?

Mrs. PAINE. He visited there on weekends.

Representative BOGGS. How well did you know Lee Oswald?

Mrs. PAINE. Insufficiently well.

Representative BOGGS. What do you mean by that?

Mrs. PAINE. Well, I regret, of course, very deeply that I didn't perceive him as a violent man.

Representative BOGGS. You saw no evidence of violence in him at any time?

Mrs. PAINE. No, I didn't. He argued with his wife but he never struck her. I never heard from her of any violence from him.

Representative BOGGS. Did he ever express any hostility toward anyone while he was talking with you?

Mrs. PAINE. Not of a violent or----

Representative BOGGS. Did he ever express any political opinions to you?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes, he called himself a Marxist. He said that on the occasion after Stevenson had been in town in relation to the United Nations Day.

Mr. JENNER. Adlai Stevenson?

Mrs. PAINE. Adlai Stevenson, and Lee had been to a meeting of the National Indignation Committee held another night that week, and he was at our home the following Friday night and commented that he didn't like General Walker.

This is the only thing I heard from him on the subject.

Representative BOGGS. Did he ever express any violence toward General Walker?

Mrs. PAINE. No.

Representative BOGGS. Did he ever discuss President Kennedy with you?

Mrs. PAINE. He never mentioned Kennedy at all.

Representative BOGGS. Did you see the rifle that he had in the room in your home?

Mrs. PAINE. In the garage, no.

Representative BOGGS. In the garage, you never saw one?

Mrs. PAINE. I never saw that rifle at all until the police showed it to me in the station on the 22d of November.

Representative BOGGS. Were you at home when the FBI interviewed Marina and Lee?

Mrs. PAINE. The FBI never interviewed Marina and me; I was waiting to hear your question.

Representative BOGGS. At your home?

Mrs. PAINE. The FBI never interviewed Marina and Lee at my home. The FBI was there one afternoon and talked to Marina through me; they never saw Lee Oswald in my home. I told them he would be there on a weekend.

Representative BOGGS. Did you ever discuss politics with Marina?

Mrs. PAINE. As close as we would come, I would say, would be what I have mentioned about Madam Nhu; she was interested in what the family would do. She also said to me that she thought Khrushchev was a rather coarse, country person. She said that she admired Mrs. Kennedy a great deal, and liked, this is all before, liked President Kennedy very much.

Mr. JENNER. This was all before November 22?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Representative BOGGS. Were you aware of the fact that Lee returned to your home the night before the assassination?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Representative BOGGS. Were you curious about that in view of the fact that he seldom came except on weekends?

Mrs. PAINE. It was the first time he had come without asking permission to come. He came after he and his wife had quarreled, and Marina and I said to one another, we took this to be as close as he could come to an apology, and an effort to make up.

Representative BOGGS. That was the reason you thought he had come?

Mrs. PAINE. But I didn't inquire of him.

Representative BOGGS. You did not know that the next morning when he left he had a rifle?

Mrs. PAINE. No.

Representative BOGGS. Did you see him when he left that morning?

Mrs. PAINE. No, I didn't.

Representative BOGGS. Have you been active in politics yourself?

Mrs. PAINE. No; I vote. And I am a member of the League of Women Voters, that is the extent of my activity.

Representative BOGGS. Do you belong to any other political organizations?

Mrs. PAINE. No.

Mr. JENNER. Have you ever belonged?

Mrs. PAINE. No.

Representative BOGGS. Are you, I don't know quite how to state this question, are you a practicing Quaker?

Mrs. PAINE. I am. I am also a pacifist.

Representative BOGGS. You are a pacifist?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Representative BOGGS. You are not a Marxist?

Mrs. PAINE. No; they don't go together, in fact. You can't believe violent overthrow and be a pacifist.

Mr. DULLES. Did you know Norman Thomas quite well?

Mrs. PAINE. When I was 8 I went to a rally of Norman Thomas in New York City. That was my only contact.

Representative BOGGS. Is your feeling towards Marina, shall I say in the Quaker spirit of friendship and hospitality, was that the main objective, plus the intellectual?

Mrs. PAINE. I was interested in the language.

Representative BOGGS. Intellectual stimulation of the language.

Mrs. PAINE. Yes. I found that while living with her, I could say that this day, at least added something to what I knew, what I--I learned a few more words.

Representative BOGGS. You never formed any opinion about Lee Oswald as a person?

Mrs. PAINE. I formed many, and I would like to make that a special area.

Representative BOGGS. Would you just tell me just in a sentence or two, I know you could go into it in greater detail, but was your opinion favorable? Was it unfavorable, or what?

Mrs. PAINE. I disliked him actively in the spring when I thought he just wanted to get rid of his wife and wasn't caring about her, wasn't concerned whether she would go to the doctor. I then found him much nicer, I thought, when I saw him next in New Orleans in late September, and this would be a perfectly good time to admit the rest of the pertinent part of this letter to my mother written October 14, because it shows something that I think should be part of the public record, and I am one of the few people who can give it, that presents Lee Oswald as a human person, a person really rather ordinary, not an ogre that was out to leave his wife, and be harsh and hostile to all that he knew.

But in this brief period during the times that he came out on weekends, I saw him as a person who cared for his wife and his child, tried to make himself helpful in my home, tried to make himself welcome although he really preferred to stay to himself.

He wasn't much to take up a conversation. This says, "Dear Mom," this is from Commission Exhibit No. 425, "Lee Oswald is looking for work in Dallas. Did my last letter say so? Probably not. He arrived a week and a half ago and has been looking for work since. It is a very depressing business for him, I am sure. He spent last weekend and the one before with us here and was a happy addition to our expanded family. He played with Chris"--my 3-year-old, then 2--"watched football on the TV, planed down the doors that wouldn't close, they had shifted and generally added a needed masculine flavor"----

Mr. JENNER. Wait a second.

Mrs. PAINE. "And generally added a needed masculine flavor. From a poor first impression I have come to like him. We saw the doctor at Parkland Hospital last Friday and all seems very healthy" and this refers to Marina. "It appears that charges will be geared to their ability to pay."

Representative BOGGS. Were you----

Mrs. PAINE. May I go on?

Representative BOGGS. Yes; surely. Finish.

Mrs. PAINE. This was an intervening section where he was the most human that I saw him, and, of course, it has been followed by my anger with him, and all the feeling that most of us have about his act. But it seems to me important, very important, to the record that we face the fact that this man was not only human but a rather ordinary one in many respects, and who appeared ordinary.

If we think that this was a man such as we might never meet, a great aberration from the normal, someone who would stand out in a crowd as unusual, then we don't know this man, we have no means of recognizing such a person again in advance of a crime such as he committed.

The important thing, I feel, and the only protection we have is to realize how human he was though he added to it this sudden and great violence beyond----

Representative BOGGS. You have no doubt about the fact that he assassinated President Kennedy?

Mrs. PAINE. I have no present doubt.

Representative BOGGS. Do you have any reason to believe he was associated with anyone else in this act or it was part of a conspiracy?

Mrs. PAINE. I have no reason to believe he was associated with anyone.

Representative BOGGS. Did you ever see him talking with anyone else, in conversation with anybody else or get mail at your home?

Mrs. PAINE. I never saw him talking with anyone else. He received all his mail from home, third class for the most part perhaps one letter from Russia.

Representative BOGGS. Did he have telephone calls at your home of a mysterious nature?

Mrs. PAINE. No.

Mr. JENNER. Excuse me, did he ever have a telephone call at your home mysterious or otherwise?

Mrs. PAINE. No; never.

Representative BOGGS. You then would be surprised if he were part of any group?

Mrs. PAINE. I would be very surprised. For one thing, I judged, I had to wonder whether this man was a spy or someone dangerous to our Nation. He had been to the Soviet Union and he had come back and he didn't go as a tourist. He went by his own admission intending to become a Soviet citizen and then came back.

Representative BOGGS. What about Marina--go ahead and finish.

Mrs. PAINE. Then the FBI came, as I thought they well might, interested in this man who had been to the Soviet Union, and I felt that if he had associations this would be very easy for them to know. I didn't see any, but would tend to point to the possibility of his being a spy or subversive. But I didn't see any such and I felt happy that they were charged with the responsibility of knowing about it.

Representative BOGGS. Did you see any indication of any connection of Marina with any group that might be considered unusual?

Mrs. PAINE. No; no one called her.

Representative BOGGS. Did she have any letters?

Mrs. PAINE. She received a letter from a friend in the Soviet Union which she showed to me and mentioned to me.

Representative BOGGS. Was this just a normal letter?

Mrs. PAINE. Girl friend.

Representative BOGGS. What is your present relationship with Marina?

Mrs. PAINE. I have seen her once since the assassination. That was a week ago Monday. It was the first time since the morning of the 23d when she left my house, both of us expecting she would come back to it that evening. In the intervening period I wrote her a collection of letters trying to determine what her feelings were and whether it was suitable for me to write and see her.

I am presently confused, as I was then, as to how to best be a friend to her. I don't know what is appropriate in this situation.

By that I mean during the time I was writing the letters to her and not getting an answer when she was with Mr. Martin.

Representative BOGGS. Was your conversation last Monday friendly?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Representative BOGGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mrs. Paine.

Mr. McCLOY. Might I ask one question?

You said that Lee had mentioned General Walker and indicated that he didn't like General Walker. Can you elaborate on that a little bit, to what extent, how violent was he in his expression?

Mrs. PAINE. No; it wasn't violent at all. It was more of, oh, well, more not giving him much credit even, but it was done briefly, this was in passing, so my recollection is hazy. But certainly there was no strong expression.

Mr. McCLOY. No vehemence about it?

Mrs. PAINE. Absolutely not, I would have remembered that. And I recall that Marina said nothing.

Mr. McCLOY. Yes.

Mr. DULLES. You mentioned that Lee did not receive any calls at your house. Did he make any telephone calls?

Mrs. PAINE. I heard him call what he said was the "Time." You know, he dialed, listened and hung up, and then he told us what time it was. That is all his social contact.

Mr. McCLOY. This is only on one occasion that he spoke of General Walker?

Mrs. PAINE. Just that one in my hearing, apropos of a discussion that was already begun.

Mr. McCLOY. We have rather interrupted the sequence of your questioning.

Mr. JENNER. That is all right.

Representative BOGGS. There is one item I might bring out along the line you were inquiring about.

You gave some consideration, did you not, Mrs. Paine, during this period, as to whether Mr. Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald, could or might have been a Russian agent.

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Mr. JENNER. And we discussed this yesterday, as I recall?

Mrs. PAINE. Briefly.

Mr. JENNER. And what conclusions did you come to on that score and why?

Mrs. PAINE. I thought that he was not very intelligent. I saw as far as I could see he had no particular contacts. He was not a person I would have hired for a job of any sort, no more than I would have let him borrow my car.

Mr. JENNER. Did you give consideration in that connection? Did his level of intelligence affect your judgment as to whether the Russian Government would have hired him?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Mr. JENNER. How did it affect you?

Mrs. PAINE. I doubted they would have hired him. I kept my mind open on it to wonder.

Mr. JENNER. And you had doubt why?

Mrs. PAINE. Simply because he had gone to the Soviet Union and announced that he wanted to stay, and then came back, and I wasn't convinced that he liked America.

Mr. JENNER. Did your judgment of him, and as to his level of intelligence, affect your decision ultimately that the Russian Government might not or would not have hired him because he was not a man of capacity to serve in such a way for the Russian Government?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes; that affected my judgment.

Mr. DULLES. Have you any idea as to his motivation in the act, in light of what you have said in the assassination?

Mrs. PAINE. It is conjecture, of course, but I feel he always felt himself to be a small person; and he was right. That he wanted to be greater, or noticed, and Marina had said of him he thinks he is so big and fine, and he should take a more realistic view of himself and not be so conceited.

(At this point, Representative Ford entered the hearing room.)

Mrs. PAINE. And I feel that he acted much more from the emotional pushings within him than from any rational set of ideas, and----

Mr. DULLES. Emotional pushings toward aggrandizement you have in mind is what you said?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Mr. McCLOY. When you testified earlier this morning, Mrs. Paine, about the dry sighting of the rifle, you know what dry sighting is, don't you?

Mrs. PAINE. I found out last night.

Mr. McCLOY. You found that out last night?

Senator COOPER. Tell her to describe it then.

Mrs. PAINE. Shall I try to describe it? See if I know? It involves holding the rifle and as if to fire and pulling the trigger, but without any ammunition in it. Going through the motions and, therefore, wiggling it and having to resight it.

Representative FORD. Going through the motions?

Mrs. PAINE. Of ejecting something.

Senator COOPER. A dry run.

Mr. JENNER. Is that sufficient, Senator?

Mrs. PAINE. Do I understand it?

Mr. McCLOY. That is a pretty good description, it is just as well as I can give.

Representative FORD. You actually saw him doing this?

Mrs. PAINE. No, he showed me last night how it was done.

Mr. McCLOY. We had testimony this morning whether he had an opportunity to dry sight the rifle in his New Orleans house.

Mrs. PAINE. I was just discussing what would be visible in the front of his house.

Mr. JENNER. We were having some testimony, Representative Ford, of Lee Harvey Oswald's dry sighting of the rifle when he was in New Orleans.

Representative FORD. Marina so testified when she was here.

Mr. McCLOY. You don't purport to say it was impossible for him to do it without observation but it was difficult.

Mrs. PAINE. It was difficult.

My then 2-year-old boy found a number of boys with trucks to play with right on that immediate driveway or alley as it is marked on the paper and small boys would have been very interested and they went right by there and Marina complained that Junie couldn't get her nap because there were so many children.

Mr. McCLOY. He could have done it very early in the morning without observation?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Mr. DULLES. Have you any idea generally how Lee Oswald used his time, I mean when you weren't observing him when he wasn't at your house? Did he talk, tell you how he used his time? Did he use it on television? What I am trying to get at is--is there a great deal of time he had available to him that there is no way of knowing what he did. But did he talk about that, did he give you an idea of what he was, how he occupied himself, reading, television?

Mrs. PAINE. Talking just about the time after October 4 when he was----

Mr. DULLES. Yes; let's take it in that period.

Mrs. PAINE. I knew he was occupied with looking for a job.

Mr. DULLES. Yes.

Mrs. PAINE. How much of the day this occupied him, of course, I didn't know. I didn't see him. Then he got the job, and I judge that occupied him more fully. He spoke of one evening meeting he went to, this National Indignation Committee meeting.

Mr. DULLES. What about other evenings? Do you know anything about other evenings when he wasn't with you?

Mrs. PAINE. Except for the one in which he accompanied my husband to a Civil Liberties Union meeting.

Mr. DULLES. All right.

Mr. McCLOY. Did you, at any stage of your life while you were, whether living with your husband or apart from him, did you ever contemplate inviting anyone to come and live with you in anything like the manner in which you did invite Marina?

Mrs. PAINE. My mother completed her studies at Oberlin College in February, and we talked----

Mr. JENNER. February 1963?

Mrs. PAINE. No; just now, February of 1964 and we talked about the possibility as long ago as last summer of 1963, we talked about the possibility of her coming and staying for several months. I said I was tired of living alone. This is not exactly comparable, but it also is a search for a roommate.

Mr. McCLOY. But apart from your mother, there was no one similarly situated to Marina, whom you thought of inviting to live with you?

Mrs. PAINE. No one situated similarly that I knew either.

Mr. McCLOY. No; you didn't invite anyone?

Mrs. PAINE. Didn't make any other such invitation.

Mr. McCLOY. Anyone to live with you.

Mr. JENNER. Before returning to the automobile and somewhat along the tail end at least of Representative Boggs' inquiries of you, did you ever give any consideration, Mrs. Paine, to the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald might have been employed by some agency of the Government of the United States?

Mrs. PAINE. I never gave that any consideration.

Mr. JENNER. None whatsoever?

Mrs. PAINE. None whatsoever.

Mr. JENNER. It never occurred to you at any time?

Mrs. PAINE. It never occurred to me at any time.

Mr. JENNER. That is all on that.

Was the absence of its occurring to you based on your overall judgment of Lee Harvey Oswald and his lack, as you say, of, not a highly intelligent man?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes.

Mr. JENNER. There was some reason why you gave it no thought, is that correct?

Mrs. PAINE. That, and he was not in a position to know anything of use to either Government. I am questioning myself.

Mr. JENNER. Would you please elaborate?

Mrs. PAINE. As regards he might be a Soviet agent, what does this man know that would be of interest to anybody or what could you find out, and you judge he didn't know anything that the Soviets might be interested in, and, as I say, I never gave it any thought of the possibility of his being employed by this Government.