Mr. JENNER. Enlarge on that please.
Mr. THORNLEY. He got along with very few people.
Mr. JENNER. Why was that, in your opinion?
Mr. THORNLEY. He was extremely unpredictable. He and I stopped speaking
before I finally left the outfit. This will give you an example of----
Mr. JENNER. How did that arise?
Mr. THORNLEY. It was a Saturday morning. We had been called out to
march in a parade for a man or some men--I believe they were staff
NCO's--who were retiring from the Marine Corps. This was a common
occurrence. Every now and then we had to give up our Saturday morning
liberty to go march in one of these parades and everybody, of course,
having just gotten up, and having to stand out, to look forward to
a morning of standing out in the hot sun and marching around, was
irritable. So, we were involved at the moment in a "hurry-up and wait
routine" which is common in large organizations like the military. We
were waiting at the moment, in the parking lot by the parade ground,
sitting. Oswald and I happened to be sitting next to each other on a
log that was used to bank cars, in the parking lot. I had just finished
"1984" a couple of days earlier, and I had not yet discussed it with
Oswald, and I was--he said something and I said something; I don't
recall what it was--I was definitely thinking of "1984" at the time and
I was using terms from "1984." Oswald didn't seem to be particularly
amused by what I was saying, and he was--he seemed to be kind of lost
in his own thoughts, and so I stopped making any comments at all to him
for awhile. Then he turned to me and said something about the stupidity
of the parade, of the whole circumstance right at the moment, how angry
it made him, and I said, I believe my words were, "Well, comes the
revolution you will change all that."
At which time he looked at me like a betrayed Caesar and screamed,
screamed definitely, "Not you, too, Thornley." And I remember his voice
cracked as he said this. He was definitely disturbed at what I had said
and I didn't really think I had said that much. He put his hands in his
pockets and pulled his hat down over his eyes and walked away and went
over and sat down someplace else alone, and I thought, well, you know,
forget about it, and I never said anything to him again and he never
said anything to me again.
Mr. JENNER. You mean you never spoke to each other from that time on?
Mr. THORNLEY. No; and shortly thereafter I left the outfit for
overseas. I don't recall that we were ever in a situation where we
would have spoken, but I know we never spoke after that. And this
happened with many people, this reaction of Oswald's, and therefore
he had few friends. He never seemed to have any one friend for a long
length of time, one acquaintance. He seemed to guard against developing
real close friendships.
Mr. JENNER. Did you ever--excuse me, you recall being interviewed by an
agent of the FBI?
Mr. THORNLEY. Yes, sir.