Mr. THORNLEY. This was on an afternoon. Does he have the time down?
Mr. JENNER. 25th of November.
Mr. THORNLEY. That was Secret Service, wasn't it? Let's see, the 22d,
23d, 24th.
Mr. JENNER. This was Special Agent Merwin Alderson and Special Agent
Richard Farrell. It was the Monday following the assassination.
Mr. THORNLEY. What I believe happened is--I believe they arrived in
Arnaud's Restaurant where I was working at the time about midnight
Sunday night so it would actually be Monday, yes, sir, that they talked
to me. I gathered at the time these gentlemen were from the Secret
Service, but those are the gentlemen.
Mr. JENNER. Did you say to them in connection with this sudden
termination of the relationship between yourself and Oswald "that you
had made this comment to Oswald, that he was a Communist and that
things would be different when the revolution came"?
Mr. THORNLEY. No; I didn't tell them he was a Communist; no. But
Oswald, certainly that was his reason for his anger. There was an
implied accusation of communism in my saying, "Comes the revolution you
will change all that."
Mr. JENNER. Yes.
Mr. THORNLEY. You see, he wasn't understanding the comments I was
making in relation to "1984" at all, our traditional meeting ground
here. He was interpreting them in light of his alleged communism, and
that is why he became angry. But no; I didn't say to him, "You are a
Communist"--ever.
Mr. JENNER. It is your explanation.
Mr. THORNLEY. This was not my opinion.
Mr. JENNER. You are saying that he interpreted your comment to be that
you accused him of being a Communist, and then he made the remark, "Not
you, too."
Mr. THORNLEY. I am sure he interpreted that that way but I certainly
didn't think he was a Communist and I certainly didn't tell him so.
Mr. JENNER. To what did you attribute this inability of his to maintain
reasonably cordial or at least military-service family relations with
his fellow marines?
Mr. THORNLEY. Well, at the time I just thought--well, the man is a
nut--at the very moment it happened, I dismissed it without thinking
about it.
Mr. JENNER. See if you can articulate a little more, when you say "a
nut," a lot of people will interpret the expression "a nut" differently.
Mr. THORNLEY. I understand that. I was just trying to give you my
first impression first: that he was some kind of a nut, and I stopped
thinking about it.
Mr. JENNER. You mean a nut in the sense of an extremist, not an
organized thinker?
Mr. THORNLEY. I didn't think about that enough to classify it. I just
thought, "something is wrong with him, maybe something is bugging him
today, maybe he is crazy, I don't know what," but I just wasn't at that
moment--it wasn't that important to me, I didn't feel much better than
he did that morning, I am sure, so I just shrugged it off.
Later, I did reflect on it, and that, combined with his general
habits in relation to his superiors, and to the other men in the
outfit, caused me to decide that he had a definite tendency toward
irrationality at times, an emotional instability. Once again right
away, I didn't know exactly what was the cause of this. A couple of
years later I had good reason to think about it some more, at which
time I noticed----
Mr. JENNER. Now when please? Before the assassination?