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

after Oswald's defection, three or four Forth Worth reporters were at the home of Robert Oswald, pestering him for information about his brother. Robert Oswald initially resisted but then yielded to the pressure tactics of the reporters, who suggested that he cooperate because he might be "the only source of information" about what brother Lee was doing in Russia.
    When the interview was over, another man appeared at Robert Oswald's house. Robert does not recall who he was other than that he identified himself as a reporter for the Fort Worth Star Telegram. This man not only asked questions but had suggestions as well. He told Robert Oswald he should send two telegrams, one to Secretary of State Christian Herter, and the other to Lee Oswald in Russia. With the man still in his home, Robert immediately called Western Union and sent both telegrams, and then advised the reporter of the contents. Even though Robert "did not receive confirmation of these telegrams from Western Union" while the reporter was still present, they both appeared in full in the Sunday, November 1, edition of the Star Telegram."'

    Thus Robert Oswald sent two messages to his brother, one directly and the other through the U.S. State Department. The first one to arrive in Moscow was the latter, a State cable arriving at 6:34 P.M. Sunday evening at the American Embassy in Moscow. The embassy was requested to "pass following message if possible." The message read, "For Lee Harvey Oswald from Robert Lee Oswald. QUOTE Contact me as soon as possible through the fastest means available. UNQUOTE." The photostatic copy of this cable extant in the National Archives today bears the signature of then Secretary of State Christian Herter,50 who had either come into his office at the State Department or received the cable via an aide early that Sunday morning. In any event, arriving at the embassy communications center at 6:34 P.M., the cable would have to wait until Monday morning for someone to attempt to deliver it to Oswald.
    That same Sunday, Oswald's mother attempted to call him at his hotel room. Kent Biffle, a Fort Worth newspaper reporter, had arranged a three-way telephone conversation between his office, Marguerite Oswald, and her son at the Metropole hotel. Seth Kantor, another Fort Worth newspaperman at the time, recalls what happened:
    [I]t took several hours to arrange the call trans-Atlantically and trans-continentally and get the call into Russia to where Oswald was. At times it seemed it would be impossible to get the call through, but at last the call was ready and Mrs. Oswald was on her line in her home and Kent Biffle, sitting right across from me at the Press city desk, was on his phone, and here came Oswald on the phone from Russia. As soon as Oswald found out that it was his mother on the phone in Fort Worth and it was a newspaperman who had set this thing up, so she could talk to her son, Oswald hung up. All those hours down the drain."
    Oswald was evidently offended at the thought that newspaper reporters would use his mother as a means of getting the story on his defection.
    On Monday, Richard Snyder asked his secretary, Marie Cheatham, who also served as the administrative assistant for the consular section, to telephone Oswald, tell him that the embassy had received a telegram from his brother, and ask him to stop by the office to pick it up.51 When he took Cheatham's call at 9:30 A.M., Oswald, not keen on the idea of returning to the embassy, refused Cheatham's request. Snyder told his secretary to try a different approach. She wrote a memo to Snyder afterward to explain what happened:

    I again called Mr. Oswald immediately thereafter, as instructed by you, to ask him if I could read the message to him over the telephone. His room did not answer. At 11:05 I contacted Mr. Oswald at his hotel and asked him if I could read the message from his brother, that I now had two telegrams for him. Mr. Oswald replied, "No, not at the present time," and