Getting Lee Right
Pun intended
My confrontation with who was Lee Oswald continues. As do some health challenges, as I type this after dealing with a torn retina last week. Both eyes seem to be working now.
The problems are pretty much presented by digesting, or trying to, “The Man Who Knew too Much”, by Dick Russell, which I referred to in my last post.
This is a very problematic work. The problem is that the subject of the book, Richard Case Nagell, wants us to know that he did his best to avert the assassination, short of actually carrying out what he claims to be his orders, i.e. kill Lee Harvey Oswald so Lee could not kill JFK.
This is a conundrum. Nagell claims intimate acquaintance with Lee and two co-conspirators, “Angel” and “Leopoldo” for about a year in 1962/63, but cannot tell us or Dick Russell exactly what he experienced or did because he is somewhat constrained by wanting to win custody of his children from his estranged wife, because he wants to get out of prison for shooting up a bank, and because he wants his disability pension from the US Military for service as a counterintelligence agent set to 100%. And finally because he doesn’t want to get killed as so many people with significant knowledge of the assassination did. Perhaps he failed on that last goal.
I keep looking for the sentence in the book where Nagell says “over beers Oswald told me he was going to kill Kennedy so he would be welcomed in Cuba” as Leopoldo and Angel chortle in the background. Or even “over beers I joined Leopoldo and Angel in urging Oswald to kill Kennedy so that he could go to Cuba and be welcomed as a hero.”
I must have missed it. Everything is murky.
What it adds up to is this: a very active and very dark underworld of the “enlisted men” of the military intelligence and counterintelligence world. Disposable and Betrayable. Trash.
The fact that I do not believe that Richard Case Nagell knew who was Lee Oswald and did not know who Lee thought he was does not mean that he and Lee and Leopoldo and Angel were not all actors in a swirl of conspiracy that ended with the murders of our president and of Lee Oswald.
“The Man Who Knew too Much” tells us clearly that we do not know who killed our President. Shame on us.
As I have been writing this, I have reread the wrap-up of the story, Russell’s evaluation of it all, and suddenly this much has been clear. Nagell is claiming to have introduced Lee Oswald to the people who set him up as a patsy in the assassination of the president in Dallas. Hardly something one would brag about, and even if one were to admit it, how. Hardly something one can be clear and transparent about.
As I pondered this, I reached into my own experience. If I want you to know more about me, how do I recount to you that in my life I have rescued someone from prostitution, helped a recovering heroin addict put the boyfriend who tried to shoot her into prison, and rescued a relative who was on the verge of suicide from homelessness. Can I tell you those details? I don’t think so. (these are all different people by the way)
It occurs to me that figuring out Lee’s story may be my latest “rescue” project.
Words are difficult. Even last night I emailed someone to say that some years ago I was picked up for spying in Iran…… that sounds sensational doesn’t it! (the story there is that in the Shah’s time wandering around a village near the Soviet border with a Nikon and a few lenses could get you picked up for spying; of course that same year I let someone from Solidarity pick me up in the dining room of my hotel in Warsaw and take me out drinking with his buddies who spent into the wee hours of the morning shouting into my ear what creeps the Russians were. This was when the Warsaw Pact was still a thing.)
So how does Richard Nagell, who really was in military intelligence, got pensioned out, then freelanced, then got permission from his CIA handler to double, then got confused about which handler was on which side, and then was told to recruit a patsy in Los Angeles, and then was told to shadow Oswald and later introduce him to some Cubans who wanted to kill the president. How exactly does he tell us that story?
To his credit, Russell wraps up his book with a frank assessment of the mystery and murkiness of his tale. I think he’s telling us a real one, but I don’t believe that either he or we know just what he is telling us.
A problem I have with Dick Russell is that I do not believe that he has a clear idea of who Lee was . He seems to accept the idea that Lee was a Marxist. I think he is wrong.
I think Lee was on the right. I’m sure he knew David Ferrie well, I’m sure he had some confidence in Banister, I’m happy to believe he worked for military intelligence sniffing out security risks (all on the left of course) and I’m confident that Michael Paine was one of his targets.
I’m dealing with an anti-hero here I think.
Why should he be attractive? One could ask. Because all the evidence argues that he is a victim, that he was used and betrayed.
The only way I can think of handling this is to imagine that the assassination plot was laid over another one, a provocation.
This means that when Lee went to work on November 22, he thought something was up. He may even have thought that an operation Northwoods kind of provocation was going to get him sent to Cuba.
To my friends concerned about the Paines. No doubt they were and still are on a kind of post-traumatic denial. My own experiences suggest that the entire family Michael Paine came from is as well.
But I believe it is a straighter line to give Lee agency than to assume that the Paines fabricated most of the evidence against him, in that garage.
The grandest irony is that Ruth Paine does not understand that Lee was actually on her side at least as far as fighting communism was concerned. Any understanding of Ruth, and Max Good has touched on this, is that she is no liberal.
These are random thoughts. My thoughts are a bit random these days. As I said last time, I am going to publish the rest of The White Gloves Legend in rapid succession to ALL my readers, probably beginning in July.
Then I’m going to rewrite it.
I also intend to resume posting more regularly. I think I’m beginning to see the path I want to go down. I’m not very embarrassed by the pauses. I’ve been thinking.
- Robert
Here are some photographs from that village in Iran
“The Loom”, copyright Robert Manz
“Water of Life”, copyright Robert Manz
“Knotting a Persian Rug” copyright Robert Manz
