Oswald's Motive

[Jon Banks]

And working at a dead end job - at $1.25 an hour (in today's dollars that minimum wage or less) - that had no possibilities of advancement. He kept getting fired, couldn't hold a manual job, got fired from the one job - the photography one - that he thought had potential. He defected to the USSR, came back, failed at everything he tried, tried to defect to Cuba. He entered the Marines in 1956 as a PFC and left three years later as a PFC. Wife, two kids who have to live apart from him because he couldn't provide for them. He's 24 not 18.

He wants to leave the US because he can't make it here. He's a failure by any measure - he speaks Russian? - but he blamed society, the US, the FBI, for it.

He reportedly got a better paying job offer at the airport before taking the Book Depository job.

Why he chose to work that low paying job at the Book Depository, we don't know. But what evidence is there that he couldn't have gotten a better paying job?

How many Americans who were fluent in Russian language during the Cold War would be "unemployable"?

And again I ask, is it normal for someone to view themselves as a "failure" at such a young age? He didn't know he would be killed at 24.

It seems like you guys are projecting your own biases onto Oswald. Including the conservative implication that his being raised by a single mother somehow turned him into a sociopath. Being raised poor by a single parent isn't easy but 99% of people who grow up like that don't become violent criminals. So it looks like you guys are grasping at straws again...

[Jon Banks]

Looks like an excerpt from Priscilla Johnson McMillan‘s novel.

Marina and Johnson's credibility problems don't ever get taken into consideration for some reason.

Johnson lied about her relationship with the CIA while she was alive (declassified docs proved that she had a relationship with the agency). Marina lied to the Warren Commission on a number of occasions. 

[Walt Cakebread]

Bill omitted the fact that everyone who knew Oswald personally said he liked JFK and agreed with Kennedy's pro-Civil Rights policies (unlike General Edwin Walker who was a bigot and pro-Segregation).

Even after the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile crisis, LHO had a favorable opinion of JFK. That speaks volumes.

While it's fair to argue that Oswald had political motives for targeting Gen. Walker ("if" he targeted Walker), there is no evidence that LHO held a grudge towards JFK.

Bill omitted the fact that Oswald reportedly told Capt. Fritz that he didn't think Lyndon Johnson's policies towards Cuba would be different from Kennedy's.

Bill omitted the fact that LHO had no known friends who were Marxists. Nearly everyone whom he associated with was anti-communist. His Fair Play For Cuba organization was fake. There were no members. Oswald's real intentions for setting up the fake FPFC chapter remain ambiguous.

Lastly, politically motivated assassins and terrorists tend to take credit for their work. So it would be highly unusual for a political assassin or terrorist to deny responsibility if the act was motivated by politics.

His Fair Play For Cuba organization was fake. There were no members. Oswald's real intentions for setting up the fake FPFC chapter remain ambiguous.


It looks to me like Lee Oswald was trying to impress Castro., and win acceptance into Castro's Island bastion....  There can be no doubt that Lee Oswald was trying to win acceptance by Castro.   Was it genuine or was it a scheme ?     Based on his infiltration of the USSR in 1959 ( as an agent of the US Government ) I believe Lee's actions of forming the NO chapter of the FPFCC, and the distribution of pro Castro leaflets, as well as the radio debate,   were all simply a scheme.....in a effort to win entry into Cuba.

We can discuss WHY Lee wanted to gain entry into Cuba later.......

[Bill Chapman]

He reportedly got a better paying job offer at the airport before taking the Book Depository job.

Why he chose to work that low paying job at the Book Depository, we don't know. But what evidence is there that he couldn't have gotten a better paying job?

How many Americans who were fluent in Russian language during the Cold War would be "unemployable"?

And again I ask, is it normal for someone to view themselves as a "failure" at such a young age? He didn't know he would be killed at 24.

It seems like you guys are projecting your own biases onto Oswald. Including the conservative implication that his being raised by a single mother somehow turned him into a sociopath. Being raised poor by a single parent isn't easy but 99% of people who grow up like that don't become violent criminals. So it looks like you guys are grasping at straws again...

How can you possibly let a sicko mother like that off the hook

[Charles Collins]

I think William Manchester writes an interesting passage on page 86 of his book “Death of a President”:



The bleak truth was that he couldn’t do anything right. He hadn’t even been able to hold a job as a greaser of coffee machinery. Bit by bit the sickening truth was emerging: no one wanted him, no one had ever wanted him. He had sailed to the U.S.S.R. to escape his disappointments in his own country. Thwarted there, too, he had sailed back. The month before Truly employed him he had tried to run to Havana, which was on bad terms with both Moscow and Washington, but in Mexico City the Cubans wouldn’t even grant him a visa. By then Lee Harvey Oswald had become the most rejected man of his time. It is not too much to say that he was the diametric opposite of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Oswald was aware of this. Significantly, he attributed the President’s success to family wealth; as he saw it, Kennedy had had all the breaks. Like many delusions this one had a kernel of truth. The President was ten times a millionaire. But that was only one of a thousand differences between them. One man had almost everything and the other almost nothing. Kennedy, for example, was spectacularly handsome. Although Oswald’s voice hadn’t yet lost its adolescent tone, he was already balding, and he had the physique of a ferret. The President had been a brave officer during the war, and while strapped to a bed of convalescence he had written a book which won a Pulitzer Prize. Oswald’s record in the peacetime service had been disgraceful, and he was barely literate. As Chief Executive and Commander in Chief, Kennedy was all-powerful. Oswald was impotent. Kennedy was cheered, Oswald ignored. Kennedy was noble, Oswald ignoble. Kennedy was beloved, Oswald despised. Kennedy was a hero; Oswald was a victim.

Since childhood Oswald had been threatened by a specific mental disease, paranoia. In the end the paranoiac loses all sense of reality. He is overpowered by a monstrous feeling of personal resentment and a blind craving for revenge. No one can predict what will trigger the catastrophe in any given case. But we now know that the firestorm in Lee Oswald’s head ignited on the evening of Thursday, November 21, 1963.


Robert Oswald read Manchester’s book and only wrote about disagreeing with part of Manchester’s description of LHO’s funeral. So, it appears that Robert Oswald didn’t disagree with this assessment…

[Steve M. Galbraith]

I think William Manchester writes an interesting passage on page 86 of his book “Death of a President”:



The bleak truth was that he couldn’t do anything right. He hadn’t even been able to hold a job as a greaser of coffee machinery. Bit by bit the sickening truth was emerging: no one wanted him, no one had ever wanted him. He had sailed to the U.S.S.R. to escape his disappointments in his own country. Thwarted there, too, he had sailed back. The month before Truly employed him he had tried to run to Havana, which was on bad terms with both Moscow and Washington, but in Mexico City the Cubans wouldn’t even grant him a visa. By then Lee Harvey Oswald had become the most rejected man of his time. It is not too much to say that he was the diametric opposite of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Oswald was aware of this. Significantly, he attributed the President’s success to family wealth; as he saw it, Kennedy had had all the breaks. Like many delusions this one had a kernel of truth. The President was ten times a millionaire. But that was only one of a thousand differences between them. One man had almost everything and the other almost nothing. Kennedy, for example, was spectacularly handsome. Although Oswald’s voice hadn’t yet lost its adolescent tone, he was already balding, and he had the physique of a ferret. The President had been a brave officer during the war, and while strapped to a bed of convalescence he had written a book which won a Pulitzer Prize. Oswald’s record in the peacetime service had been disgraceful, and he was barely literate. As Chief Executive and Commander in Chief, Kennedy was all-powerful. Oswald was impotent. Kennedy was cheered, Oswald ignored. Kennedy was noble, Oswald ignoble. Kennedy was beloved, Oswald despised. Kennedy was a hero; Oswald was a victim.

Since childhood Oswald had been threatened by a specific mental disease, paranoia. In the end the paranoiac loses all sense of reality. He is overpowered by a monstrous feeling of personal resentment and a blind craving for revenge. No one can predict what will trigger the catastrophe in any given case. But we now know that the firestorm in Lee Oswald’s head ignited on the evening of Thursday, November 21, 1963.


Robert Oswald read Manchester’s book and only wrote about disagreeing with part of Manchester’s description of LHO’s funeral. So, it appears that Robert Oswald didn’t disagree with this assessment…

Persecution complex, paranoia...the same general "The world is out to get me" view. His mother held the same sort of view. It's one that, again, I think Marxism made clearer to him, filled in the details. That view divides the world between oppressor and oppressed, the capitalist owners and the ordinary workers. Oswald was one of the latter. But he also mocked the workers, viewed them as dumb and ignorant and unable to see how they were exploited. Thus the loner behavior.

What is remarkable, as I said elsewhere, is the conspiracy believers think we are insane. Or incredibly stupid. We don't see that this was all an act, a "history" created by the powerful government, this powerful "they" that can do almost anything. All of this evidence of the man is really a lie that we fall for. The radical views he held when 16 and 17 before joining the Marines? All acts. The defection? Faked. The pro-Castro work? His legend and acts directed by his handlers - Joannides or Phillips or DeMohrenschildt or someone.

[Jon Banks]

How can you possibly let a sicko mother like that off the hook

Oswald was murdered. How is getting murdered being "let off the hook"?

[Jon Banks]

Persecution complex, paranoia...the same general "The world is out to get me" view. His mother held the same sort of view. It's one that, again, I think Marxism made clearer to him, filled in the details. That view divides the world between oppressor and oppressed, the capitalist owners and the ordinary workers. Oswald was one of the latter. But he also mocked the workers, viewed them as dumb and ignorant and unable to see how they were exploited. Thus the loner behavior.

I think "contrarian" is a better description of Oswald's personality and his contradictory views.

Contrarian: opposing or rejecting popular opinion; going against current practice.


And his brother Robert basically said something along the lines of Lee wanting to be "different" and viewing Marxism as a way to achieve that.

What would have been the appeal to him about something like Marxism?

The appeal to Lee of something like that Marxism, communism, socialism, would be something unique, something different — not [an] everyday occurrence.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/interview-robert-oswald/