Mrs. PAINE. Following the November 5th meeting with Mr. Hosty.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Hosty.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Senator COOPER. You had said that, I believe you said, prior to the
assassination you considered Lee Oswald as being violent or dangerous?
Mrs. PAINE. Well, now I have said that the thought crossed my mind once
in relation to myself.
Senator COOPER. What caused that?
Mrs. PAINE. That he might be violent, because I thought he might resent
my stepping in to do for his wife what he was not doing.
Senator COOPER. What made you think he would be violent about it if he
wasn't caring about taking care of her?
Mrs. PAINE. Well, I wanted to satisfy myself, and I did then. The
thought crossed my mind before I went to New Orleans for the second
time as I have referred to it in a conversation with Mr. Rainey, before
I went to New Orleans and then seeing him and changing my opinion some
about him, I felt that he would not be violent or angry with me for
this offer, and then proceeded with it, and this is the only----
Senator COOPER. I can understand why a person might be angry about
something. But what about him led you to believe that he might be
violent?
Mrs. PAINE. There was nothing that I could put my finger on. On the
contrary my general impression was not of a man who would break out in
sudden marked violence. He argued with his wife, and was distinctly
unpleasant with her.
Senator COOPER. I believe you said the other day in answer to a
question by Congressman Boggs that you held the opinion now that he did
fire the rifle at the President.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; I believe that is so but I don't know.
Senator COOPER. From this vantage point, is there anything about him
now which you think of which seems consistent with the fact that he,
that you believe he did shoot the President, President Kennedy?
Mrs. PAINE. Well, what has led me to the conclusion that he did shoot
President Kennedy is the massive circumstantial evidence that surrounds
his relationship or where he was, what he had at the time of the
assassination. Perhaps we should get into the matter of motive.
Senator COOPER. In other words, a person's personality, is there
anything you can think of now which would change your mind or change
the viewpoint that you held previously that he wasn't violent?
Mrs. PAINE. No; I still can recall no incident that I saw, nothing or
thought at the time, with this small exception of the one reference to
Mrs. Rainey that--and that was a conjecture in reference to myself.
Nothing that violent or indeed that insane.
Senator COOPER. Was it your opinion that Mrs. Oswald was shaken by the
assassination and by the fact that her husband was charged with it?
Mrs. PAINE. She was certainly shaken on the afternoon when the
policemen were out there, when he was at that time just charged with
the shooting of Tippit. I never saw her after he was charged with the
shooting of the President.
Senator COOPER. One other question: I think you said when Marguerite
Oswald, Lee Oswald's mother, came to your house, and the Life people
later appeared, you spoke of that, did you say that both of them, both
Marina and Marguerite, seemed to be interested in making some kind of a
deal with Life in order to get money?
Mrs. PAINE. No.
Senator COOPER. Or were you speaking only of Marguerite Oswald?
Mrs. PAINE. I was speaking only of Marguerite Oswald. I could add
here that Marina appeared to me to want to be courteous and polite
toward her mother-in-law, and wished to go along with whatever wishes
Marguerite had on the subject.
Senator COOPER. Has anyone tried to make any kind of a business
transaction for your statement or story?
Mrs. PAINE. At that time or since?
Senator COOPER. Since.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Senator COOPER. What?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes. The Commission has a copy of an article that was
written for Look which was not published and will not be.
Senator COOPER. Has that been testified?
Mr. JENNER. Will not be what?
Mrs. PAINE. Published. It is now my property and I don't plan to, I
have no plans presently, at least.
Senator COOPER. Just for the record, have you entered into any kind of
business transaction by which you would be paid for a story about this
assassination?
Mrs. PAINE. I will not be paid for any story I write, and I am certain
now I don't want to write any such story. I have, however, worked with
Miss Jessamyn West, who is an author for an article which will appear
in Time and Red Book magazine, or I expect it will. She is writing
that, she talked to me.
Mr. JENNER. She approached you on that article?
Mrs. PAINE. No one approached me in that article. Was already decided
before I was asked. But that is----
Mr. JENNER. Who decided it?
Mrs. PAINE. I had implied that I would be willing to do this, but not
to anyone I thought was making an offer. This is aside.
Mr. JENNER. This was an offer to help the subject of the interview
being interviewed?
Mrs. PAINE. All I really should say in clarification here is that there
was bad communication between Red Book, Miss West and myself, and she
was under the impression that I had agreed to do this before she had
in fact been contacted, but then the fact of Red Book and Miss West
thinking that this was something I had agreed to I then did agree to do
it.
(Discussion off the record.)
Senator COOPER. Back on the record.
Have you been paid or promised any monetary consideration for any
article that you might write or you might assist someone else in
writing about your experiences connected with the Oswalds?
Mrs. PAINE. The complete answer to that would be that I received a $300
advance from Look magazine for helping in the writing of that article
which will not appear, and that I have been told I will receive $500
from Red Book magazine for helping Miss West in writing that, and if
you want, I will tell you what I think about what I want to do with
this money but perhaps that is not pertinent.
Senator COOPER. If you want to?
Mrs. PAINE. Well, I plan to give it away.
Mr. JENNER. You mean give it to charity?
Mrs. PAINE. To charity.
Senator COOPER. That is all I have.
Mr. JENNER. You have referred to a Look magazine article in the
preparation of which you have assisted. I have marked as Commission
Exhibit No. 460 a document which I received from Mr. George Harris,
after you had authorized me to call him and ask for it.
Would you glance through that and verify that that is the article in
the final form?
You have examined Commission Exhibit 460. Is that the Look article to
which you have made reference in your testimony here this afternoon?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And that article, however, is not one to be published?
Mrs. PAINE. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Did you look over that article in this final form and
approve it as to text and statements made in it?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; although I don't think the final draft had been done
or final approval given before it was decided that it would not be used.
Mr. JENNER. But as this exhibit stands, Commission Exhibit No. 460, the
text and statements that are made in there had your approval?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; they are, of course, not all of my words.
Mr. JENNER. Of course, not. The article was written by?
Mrs. PAINE. By George Harris, who is a senior editor on Look magazine,
and he wrote it from typed copy he had directly as he had taken it from
my telling.
Mr. JENNER. So it is, to use somewhat of a vernacular, it is ghost
written?
Mrs. PAINE. It is ghost written but most of it is my words.
Mr. JENNER. I offer in evidence, as Commission Exhibit No. 460, the
document we have just identified.
Senator COOPER. It will be received in evidence.
(The document referred to, heretofore identified as Commission Exhibit
No. 460, was received in evidence.)
Mr. JENNER. Do you have an interest in the Russian language as has
appeared from your testimony?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Mrs. Paine, are you now or have you ever been a member of
the Communist Party?
Mrs. PAINE. I am not now and have never been a member of the Communist
Party.
Mr. JENNER. Do you now or have you ever had any leanings which we might
call Communist Party leanings.
Mrs. PAINE. No; on the contrary.
Mr. JENNER. Are you now or have you ever been a member of any groups
which you consciously recognize as being, let us say, Communist front
groups?
Mrs. PAINE. No; I have not and I would be quite certain I had not been
unconsciously a member of any such groups.
Mr. JENNER. I take it from your response that you have an aversion to
communism?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; I do.
Mr. JENNER. And would be at pains and have been at pains during your
adult life, at least, to avoid any association with or any advancement
of communism as we know and abhor it?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; that is right.
If I may say here, I am offended by the portion of the Communist
doctrine that thinks violence is necessary to achieve its aims. I am
likewise offended by the doctrine that any means to what is considered
a good end is legitimate.
I, on the contrary, feel that there is no justification at any time for
deception, and the Communists, as I have observed their activity, have
no reluctance to deceive, and this offends me seriously.
Mr. JENNER. In that thinking, violence also impels you against the
Communist faith?
Mrs. PAINE. It certainly does.
Mr. JENNER. Or political doctrine?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; their espousal of violence repels me.
Mr. JENNER. You have an interest in the Russian language?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; I do.
Mr. JENNER. Now, the members of the Commission, all of them are
interested in how you came to have your interest in the Russian
language, and they would like to have you indicate when it first arose
and under what circumstances and what impelled you to have an interest
in the Russian language; start from the very beginning of your life in
that connection--that episode in your life?
Mrs. PAINE. All right. To be really the very beginning I will start and
say I have been interested in other languages before being interested
in Russian. I studied French in high school, German in college, and got
a tutor to study Yiddish when I was working with a group that spoke
that language.