Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK Read Online Free PDF Page A

Oswald back to his room, a possibility suggested by Korengold's recollection that his contact with Oswald came "after several unsuccessful attempts."36) It was rare that a chance to interview a defector came around, and it began to look as though his persistence had paid off. "The embassy called us," Korengold replied hopefully. Caught off guard, Oswald flatly refused to give Korengold an interview. Korengold recalled, "Oswald stated he knew what he was doing and insisted he did not wish to talk to anyone."37
    After ten minutes of getting nowhere with Oswald, the intrepid UPI bureau chief left the Metropole, disappointed but not about to give up. When Oswald shut the door, he felt Korengold was part of a plot. Oswald later wrote of his feelings: "This is one way to bring pressure on me. By notifing [sic] my relations in U.S. through the newspapers."3S Meanwhile, Korengold went back to his office and spoke with a correspondent for the UPI, Aline Mosby. As we will discuss in a later chapter, Mosby led a colorful life in the Soviet Union, including being "drugged" in a Moscow restaurant and victimized in the Soviet press for her "drink and debauchery."39

    Within minutes of talking to her bureau chief, Mosby was on her way to Room 233 in the Metropole. She told the FBI in 1964 that she had learned of Oswald in the fall of 1959 "from a source she can no longer recall,"' but the source was probably Korengold. Mosby recounts her journey to Oswald this way:
    I went up in the creaky elevator to the second floor and down the hall, past the life-sized nude in white marble, the gigantic painting of Lenin and Stalin and the usual watchful clerk in her prim navy blue dress with brown braids around her head. An attractive fellow answered my knock on the door of Room 233.x'
    For Oswald, life was getting more interesting by the moment. Oswald was surprised at the attention he was getting: two American reporters in less than half an hour.42
    "I am Lee Oswald," he said with a "hesitant smile" to Aline, who recalls that she then "murmured some pleasantry" in reply. Oswald, still off guard and unsure, refused her a formal interview, but Mosby, it seems, was far more successful than Korengold in loosening Oswald's tongue. "I think you may understand and be friendly because you're a woman," Oswald told her.43 He then agreed to answer Mosby's questions.
    Oswald informed Mosby that he had applied to renounce his American citizenship and become a Soviet citizen. He did so, he said, "for purely political reasons."44 Mosby successfully elicited enough personal details from Oswald to rush back to her office and put all of this into a report for the wires, adding, "The slender, unsmiling Oswald refused to give any other reasons for his decision to give up his American citizenship and live in the Soviet Union. He would not say what he is planning to do here."4s
    There was, of course, someone else who was listening to what Oswald said to Mosby. An internal 1964 CIA memorandum that commented on a draft paper entitled "KGB operations against foreign tourists" contained the following useful entry: "Rm 233, Hotel Metropole, Moscow-equipped with infra-red camera for observation of occupants."46 Thus the Soviet KGB office in Moscow was presumably busy writing a report of the conversation between Aline Mosby and Lee Oswald, as Mosby's UPI ticker of the same event burned across the wires of the U.S., including those in Texas.

    The reporters of the Star Telegram in Forth Worth were probably still drinking their first cup of coffee when Mosby's UPI report popped out of their ticker. The second line read,"Lee Harvey Oswald, of Fort Worth, Tex., told United Press International in his room at the Metropole Hotel, `I will never return to the United States for any reason.' "47
    Halloween in Fort Worth
    "The first time I was aware he was in Russia," Robert Oswald testified in 1964 about his brother Lee Harvey Oswald, "was on Halloween Day 1959, October 31."48 Within hours