Lee Harvey Oswald - Why did he do it ?

John F Kennedy was assassinated on the 22nd of November . His assassin , Lee Harvey Oswald , was gunned down on the the 24th of November . Why did Oswald do it ?

The Inadequate Fantasist

Lee Harvey Oswald lived most of his adult life hiding behind a mask of normality. His mask was convincing to many people he came in contact with except those who knew him well. What lay beneath the surface was Oswald's fatally crippled personality. He had a defensive and surly character that no-one could penetrate, not even his wife Marina.

Oswald was a bitter and angry young man. As a youth his mother had little or no control over him and, indeed, conspired with him in his rebellion. He was determined to get what he wanted. Prison files are full of case histories like his. He learned very early in life to hate the world, learned early that he had to sink or swim on his own resources. He also learned that he had to develop his life unsustained by a mother who could never give true maternal warmth.

Lee Oswald's lifelong isolation left him without the resources for the kind of role-modelling and parental guidance most of us take for granted. People who are close to others turn to them in moments of stress and doubt to interpret the meaning of an event or a social interaction. As an adult, Lee Oswald was unable to accomplish this with the only person who was truly close to him - his wife Marina. He was too domineering and insistent she follow his commands. He could not ask her if his thoughts and actions were consistent with the world around him, seeking out meaning, exchanging ideas. To Lee, Marina had to follow and admire.

To those who knew him well Oswald was secretive, aggressive and arrogant - to a degree almost paranoid. His brother Robert said Lee liked to create drama and mystery around himself. As a child Lee became fascinated with television programmes about espionage and subversive activities.

Lee Harvey Oswald believed he was an important man and his wife often ridiculed him for this unfounded belief. To a disturbed man like Oswald, his wife's scornful attitude likely acted as a catalyst, fueling Oswald’s anger and resentment. The evening prior to the assassination he tried to make-up to his wife after a series of bitter disagreements about their lives together. She rejected his advances. It must have been a terrible blow to his ego.

Oswald not only saw himself as an unappreciated revolutionary but a person who was superior to his contemporaries. This is borne out by the many people who crossed Oswald's path, especially in the years after his return from the Soviet Union. Even as a child Oswald expressed fantasies about omnipotence and power to a child psychologist.

In many ways Oswald’s actions in killing Kennedy was a rebellious act - undoubtedly the result of his feelings toward authority and a society that had relegated him to a menial position in life. His need to protest festered as he strove to gain recognition. So much of what he did was egocentric, ego-satisfying. The political and humanitarian ideals he espoused wasn’t done in order to help others but to draw attention to himself; to satisfy his narcissistic tendencies.

Oswald desperately wanted to become famous and successful. His brothers and his wife have testified to the many occasions when they sensed a bitter disappointment in Oswald when he failed to draw attention to himself.

The Political Motives

Poor parenting from a single unstable mother and a fatherless upbringing affected Oswald greatly, warping his sense of right and wrong and creating an individual who was continually frustrated in his relationships with others. In response to these frustrations Oswald transferred his emotional attachments to his inadequate and poorly thought out political philosophy. Oswald turned to radical politics for the purpose of ego- building.

Oswald's belief in the socialist ideal has been confirmed by numerous sources who knew him. As an 18 year old Oswald espoused his political principles to Palmer McBride and William Wulf Jr. McBride told the FBI, “During the period I knew Oswald he resided with his mother in the Senator Hotel or a rooming house next door...I went with him to his room on one occasion, and he showed me copies of Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. Oswald stated he had received these books from the public library, and he seemed quite proud to have them.”
Aline Mosby, a reporter, interviewed Oswald in Moscow after his defection and this interview gives a clue to the way Oswald acted out his political dramas. Oswald told her he became interested in communist ideology when “an old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenburgs...”.

The pamphlet led Oswald to change the direction of his life for it was from this period he became enamoured with left-wing politics. The memory of the Rosenburg case, I believe, lasted until his incarceration in the Dallas police jail. Oswald had made repeated requests the weekend of the assassination for John Abt to defend him. Abt was a left-wing New York lawyer who had defended communists and a newspaper story about Abt had appeared on the same page as the President's visit to Dallas. In attempting to contact Abt Oswald was revealing something about himself - he was already preparing for his appearance on the political stage, emulating the Rosenburgs by becoming a cause celebre.

Oswald had a desperate desire to act in a political way to further the cause of his commitment to communism and to the Cuban Revolution and in so doing elevate himself as an important revolutionary. He needed a cause to belong to; to inflate his self-image and sustain it. Oswald said that nothing kept him in the United States and he would lose nothing by returning to the Soviet Union. His real destination, of course, was Cuba. Cuba was a country which embodied the political principles to which he had been committed since he was an adolescent.
To Oswald Cuba was the last gambit - his last chance to fulfill his political fantasies. As Marina testified to the Warren Commission, "I only know that his basic desire was to get to Cuba by any means and all the rest of it was window dressing for that purpose." He hatched a plan to hi-jack a plane to Cuba and wanted Marina to help. When she refused he abandoned his plans.
Marina has testified to Oswald’s view of Castro as a hero and said Lee had wanted to call their second child Fidel if it had been a boy. Michael Paine told BBC Timewatch researchers that Lee, “…wanted to be an active guerrilla in the effort to bring about the new world order.” Nelson Delgado, Oswald’s friend in the Marine Corps said that Oswald’s hero was William Morgan, a former sergeant in the U.S. Army who became a major in Castro’s army. In August 1959 Morgan received considerable press coverage when he lured some anti-Castro rebels into a trap by pretending to be a counter-revolutionary. This may explain Oswald’s counter-revolutionary activities in New Orleans when he visited anti-Castroite Carlos Bringuier. Oswald wanted to emulate Morgan.

Oswald's political ideals remained with him up to the moment of his death and there is convincing evidence to support this. It was inevitable that someone as politically motivated as Oswald would eventually reveal his political self that tragic weekend. A man like Oswald needed a stage to show the world he was a true revolutionary. But he did not do this by confessing. Instead he showed his commitment to his ideals by a clenched fist salute, a symbol of left-wing radicalism, as he was paraded around the Dallas police station. There are at least two published photos of Oswald giving this gesture.

The periodicals that Oswald subscribed to may have influenced his actions. As the Warren Report pointed out, “The October 7th., 1963, issue of the Militant reported Castro as saying Cuba could not accept a situation where at the same time the United States was trying to ease world tensions it also was increasing its efforts to tighten the noose around Cuba.”
Castro’s opposition to President Kennedy’s attempt to deal with Cuba was also reported in the October 1, 1963, issue of the Worker, to which Oswald also subscribed.
Oswald spoke to Michael Paine about the left-wing paper saying, “You could tell what they wanted you to do ..... by reading between the lines, reading the thing and doing a little reading between the lines.”

In the month before the assassination Oswald may have entered into his revolutionary fantasies whilst watching television. A Secret Service interview with Marina was first recognised by Jean Davison as a telling indication of Oswald's state of mind. Marina told agents that on Friday, October 18th. Oswald had watched two movies on television and he had been “greatly excited”. The first movie was Suddenly, in which Frank Sinatra played an ex-soldier who planned to shoot an American president. Sinatra’s character was to shoot the president with a high-powered rifle from the window of a house overlooking a railway station. The second movie, We Were Strangers, was based on the overthrow of Cuba’s Machado regime in 1933.John Garfield had played an American who had gone to Cuba to help a group of rebels assassinate the Cuba leader. Oswald’s reactions to these movies made a strong impression on his wife, according to the Secret Service report.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s failure as a man, a husband, a worker, a Marine and a son, began shortly after his birth. And Oswald's embrace of communism, his strong belief in Castro and the Cuban revolution and a desire to be recognised as an important person provoked him to kill President Kennedy.

Full article here by Mel Ayton author of The JFK Assassination: Dispelling The Myths