Miss JOHNSON. As it appeared in the Boston Globe.
Mr. SLAWSON. I believe that was on November 24, 1963?
Miss JOHNSON. Sunday. November 24. It was filed on November 22.
Mr. SLAWSON. Except for possible deletions of your complete article as
it was submitted, is that a true copy of your article?
Miss JOHNSON. A true copy of my article.
Mr. SLAWSON. I present this in evidence as Exhibit No. 3.
(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 3 was received in evidence.)
Mr. SLAWSON. I now have a document marked Exhibit No. 4 which is an
article from the--a copy of an article from the Christian Science
Monitor of November 25, 1963.
(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 4 was marked for
identification.)
Miss JOHNSON. The interview was given November 23, and that is a true
copy of the interview as published in the Monitor.
Mr. SLAWSON. For the record, Miss Johnson, that is an interview of you
by a correspondent working for the Christian Science Monitor; is that
correct?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. SLAWSON. I then introduce it in evidence as Exhibit No. 4.
(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 4 was received in evidence.)
Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, I have here what purports to be a true copy
of a statement you gave to a representative of the U.S. Department of
State on December 5, 1963, and it has been marked Priscilla Johnson
Exhibit No. 5.
(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 5 was marked for
identification.)
Miss JOHNSON. Yes; that is okay. That is a copy.
Mr. SLAWSON. I then introduce in evidence this Exhibit No. 5.
(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 5 was received in evidence.)
Mr. SLAWSON. Finally, I have here a document marked Priscilla Johnson
Exhibit No. 6, which purports to be a true copy of an article written
by you as published in Harper's magazine.
Miss JOHNSON. April 1964.
Mr. SLAWSON. Right; in the April 1964 issue.
(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 6 was marked for
identification.)
Miss JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. SLAWSON. That is a true copy?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. SLAWSON. I introduce as evidence, present this as Exhibit No. 6.
(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 6 was received in evidence.)
Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, to begin the deposition, I would like you to
state, with the help of your notes or articles at any time you want to
refer to them, exactly when and where and how many times you saw Lee
Harvey Oswald.
Miss JOHNSON. May I have the calendar. I saw him, Lee Harvey Oswald,
on two occasions. First of all I had been at the American Embassy in
Moscow, and Mr. McVickar, the consul, had told me that a would-be
defector was staying at my hotel, that he had shown a reluctance to
talk with officials of the Embassy or with other correspondents, but
knowing my interest in kind of human interest stories, he thought that
I might want to see this man. This was on an afternoon in November, and
I think it must have been Monday, November 16, 1959, that Mr. McVickar
advised me to see Mr. Oswald. So I stopped by Mr. Oswald's room, which
was the floor below my own room in the Metropole Hotel. He lived on the
second floor. I asked him for an interview, and he agreed to come to my
room in the hotel that evening at an hour he named. I forgot what hour
it was--8 or 9. So the second occasion on which I saw him was when he
actually came that evening, and he stayed until the early hours of the
morning, although I don't remember what hour. So far as I know, those
were the only two occasions on which I saw him.
Mr. SLAWSON. He was in the same hotel you were staying in?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes. Could I interpolate a question here?
Mr. SLAWSON. Certainly.
Miss JOHNSON. Maybe it is out of line, but do you know whether he did
stay at that hotel the rest of the time or did he go and leave? You see
when I went back they had said he left. Had he actually gone to another
hotel or did he remain in that hotel all the time?
Mr. SLAWSON. I believe that he was staying in the Hotel Metropole at
the time you saw him, and I think he stayed there----
Miss JOHNSON. The rest of the time?
Mr. SLAWSON. The rest of the time. He had previously been in, I think,
the Hotel Berlin, but he had moved to the Metropole before you saw him.
Miss JOHNSON. And they did move him out of the Berlin?
Mr. SLAWSON. That is right.
Miss JOHNSON. He stayed in the Metropole?
Mr. SLAWSON. Stayed in the Metropole.
Miss JOHNSON. So I was informed incorrectly when I was told he had gone
by the people at the hotel?
Mr. SLAWSON. Do you remember when you were informed that he had gone?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes. I think that it was Thursday, the 19th.
Mr. SLAWSON. Could you state some of the details of that, how that came
about that you were so informed?
Miss JOHNSON. Sure. Well, I wrote the story about him. I must have
filed it on the 18th, but I don't think it was in connection with the
story but with rather the fact that I had been told by him that he
thought he would leave the hotel at the end of the week. So as soon
as I had written the story and wasn't too busy in other ways, I went
to the hotel. The woman who sat on his floor, the second floor, and I
think it was the 19th, a Thursday, I asked if Mr. Oswald was there,
because I wanted to catch him before he left. I expected he would leave
the 20th. And because I kind of wanted to keep in contact with him, for
his sake. And the woman who was sitting on the second floor--I don't
know what you call her--who gave the keys out, just threw up her hands
and said, "He is gone." So I asked her when he had gone, and she said
she didn't know. So I assumed I had been informed correctly, and didn't
try to get in touch with him again. And he had told me that he would
let me know before he left for good, and he didn't either.
Mr. SLAWSON. Let us call a recess for a minute here, so that I can look
for some records on Oswald's stay at the Hotel Metropole.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, in connection with your statement that you
had returned to see Oswald and were told by a woman employee of the
hotel on the second floor that he had left at a time which she did not
know, I have here a copy of a letter Oswald wrote his brother Robert
Oswald dated November 26, 1959 (Commission Exhibit No. 295). At the
bottom of the letter he gives his address as "Hotel Metropole, Room
201, Moscow," with the marking, "(New Room)."
Miss JOHNSON. His room when I saw him was, I think it was room 225. It
was down a corridor to the right. My room was 319, on the next floor.
You turned just a little to the left to get to it. His was about 225 or
something like that. So he had probably been moved to a cheaper room.
My room would probably have had the same rent as his--$3 a day--but
later his was maybe a little bit less.
Mr. SLAWSON. I see. And would the woman employee of the hotel who told
you that Mr. Oswald had gone have had charge only of the old corridor
and not the corridor with room 201 in it?
Miss JOHNSON. No; I think she would have had charge of his new room
too, but he would have entered it possibly from the other side of the
landing. I rather forget where the 01 was, but he might have entered it
rather than from her desk turning right and then going down a corridor
and then turning left. He might have taken his key from her and gone
off to the left from her desk and from the elevator. She would have
had charge of his room, but she might have been on duty for the first
time since he moved, and only been aware that he had left--she might
not have been trying to mislead me. It might have been her first day on
duty since he switched his room, and she might have seen he wasn't in
225 and not realized that he was on the same floor but in another room.
I think the key thing is they probably gave him a very inexpensive
room, since they were paying or since he was very poor. They perhaps
accommodated him in allowing him to switch rooms.
Mr. SLAWSON. You mentioned a minute ago that he might have taken
his key from her. You mean by that that ordinarily--or rather,
frequently--a hotel guest would leave his key with the woman on his
floor, but that it was possible to carry the key with you so that you
would not have to pick it up from her?
Miss JOHNSON. No; customarily you pick it up from her when you go to
your room and you leave it with her when you leave your room. It is
simply that she would have had a book in which she had written down the
room number of every guest, and I think each morning changes would be
recorded there. My guess is that she rather than consciously misleading
me--although she could have been told to say he was out, was gone--that
there is a very good chance that she simply had not taken in that he
was still there and in another room.
He would have left his key though, and customarily she would have
always asked him for the key when he left.
Mr. SLAWSON. Did Oswald say something to you which would have led you
to believe that he was interested in getting a less expensive room at
the hotel?
Miss JOHNSON. He struck me as notably reticent about his finances,
about his financial situation. He told me, truthfully or otherwise;
that he had been there for 10 days on Intourist. He said he was paying
the standard room and food rate, and said "I want to make it clear
they are not sponsoring me." I must have asked him about his financial
situation in some detail, because I thought it would give a clue as to
how they were handling him. If they had allowed him to go from the $30
a day rate, that is the rate if you come Intourist which he said he was
on, if they allowed him to go from $30 to a lesser sum, since mine was
$3, that would indicate that they had an interest in him and they were
seeking to help him, whether he knew it or not.
And he was defensive. He bristled on the point, and I assume that there
was more of an exchange of words than I took notes of, and that there
was something there. I just didn't know what it was, and I couldn't get
it out of him.
But when you say he switched from 225 to 201, 225 was an outside room,
the kind that foreigners have, and it would probably be bugged, and it
would be for foreign guests coming in on Intourist. I don't remember
room 201, but the chances are it was an inside room. It might have been
very small. It might or might not have had a bath attached to it, and
the rate for it could have been as low as $1.50 a day. And they could
have been either accommodating him because of their interest in him, or
because they were simply responding to his financial situation while
pending a decision on his request to stay.
Mr. SLAWSON. While we are on this subject--how much he was paying for
his hotel room and his finances generally--I am not clear whether you
were able to get some kind of indication out of him whether he was
paying the $30 a day or simply the lower, something like $3 a day.
Miss JOHNSON. You see he said he had been there since 10 days--perhaps
what he said was since being there for 10 days on Intourist at $30
a day "I have been paying the standard room and food rate." That is
probably how I should read my own notes.
"I want to make it clear they are not sponsoring me." Your question is?
Mr. SLAWSON. I am trying to establish what your impression was at the
time of how much he was paying for that hotel room.
Miss JOHNSON. At the time I was very unclear what he was paying. I
think now he must have been paying $30 for the 10 days after his
arrival in October, and $3 a day after that until he left room 225.
What he was paying when he moved into room 201 I don't know.
Mr. MOSK. That was $30 a day the first 10 days?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes, $300 for the first 10 days. Probably after that $3 a
day, and after that I don't know.
Mr. SLAWSON. Are meals included in that $30 a day?
Miss JOHNSON. Meals are included, but they wouldn't have been included
once he went off it.
Mr. SLAWSON. I realize you can only do this very approximately but if
one were eating fairly inexpensively as Oswald probably did----
Miss JOHNSON. And as I did.
Mr. SLAWSON. But on the other hand he probably did not know much about
the city of Moscow, and so could not hunt out places that might be
inexpensive. But how much per day do you think he could get along on
for meals?
Miss JOHNSON. Perhaps I could just tell you from my own experience.
I had a one-burner stove and I bought some food at the Embassy
commissary, some from the hotel, and some in the stores around, and
my total living expenses probably didn't exceed $50 a week, and my
room would have been $21, and taxis would have been a little bit. So
probably I could have done it on $15, and he without the stove and
without the use of the commissary, but having probably modest tastes,
he could have done it for somewhere between $10 and $25 a week foodwise.
He did tell me that he had only been on one expedition by himself to
this children's store where he got some food at the buffet, and if that
is an indication that he was taking all his meals at the Metropole,
then it would have cost him $25 to $30 a week for food at least.
Mr. MOSK. He generally didn't eat breakfast, or he generally ate very
little for breakfast. Would this make a difference?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. MOSK. It might reduce it?
Miss JOHNSON. Because breakfast, coffee alone was very cheap. We had
old rubles then, and I think it was--the figure in my mind is 2-1/2
old rubles, which is 25 cents, for coffee in the room, and they didn't
charge you anything for room service. That would have been cheap,
and soup was very nourishing and that was cheap. I think he knew his
Intourist guide pretty well, and she may have taken him home and given
him food, or shown him cheap places to eat, so that when he said his
only expedition himself, that could mean that he took literally himself
but it could be he went other places with her, inexpensively. So he
could have done pretty well. He could have kept it pretty low.
Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, I don't think that we established clearly
before when, or rather what day it was, when you spoke to John McVickar
and later spoke to Lee Harvey Oswald and had your interview with him.
Miss JOHNSON. I believe I spoke to John McVickar either on Friday,
November 13, or Monday, November 16. My recollection is that it was
Monday, the 16th, and that on coming home from the Embassy, coming to
the Metropole, I went straight to Oswald's room, and therefore that
would have placed my original conversation with McVickar on the 16th,
my interview with Oswald probably on the 16th, my writing of the story
and my second conversation with McVickar on the 17th, and my filing
of the story on the 18th. But I could have seen Oswald as late as the
17th; Tuesday, the 17th. I could have seen Oswald as late as Tuesday,
the 17th. My interview was the 16th or the 17th.
Mr. SLAWSON. Fine. Miss Johnson, I have here a copy of Commission
Exhibit No. 911, which is a memorandum for the files dated November
17, 1959, written by Mr. John A. McVickar of the American Embassy
in Moscow. This is the same John McVickar which you and I have been
discussing and to whom you spoke about Lee Harvey Oswald some time just
before you saw Mr. Oswald.
I hand you a copy of Exhibit No. 911 and would like you to take some
time to read it and comment on your opinion of its accuracy, and make
any corrections you like. It purports to record a discussion that you
had with Mr. McVickar about Lee Harvey Oswald.
Miss JOHNSON. Yes; firstly he says that I told him that I had seen
Oswald Sunday, May 15. He would have meant here Sunday, November 15. My
recollection is that it was a Monday night that I spoke with Oswald,
and it would therefore be Monday, November 16, not May.
Mr. MOSK. 1959?
Miss JOHNSON. 1959. Yes; I was struck by Oswald's reserve, and that
comes out in the memo. I had forgotten, but I recollect, and it is not
in my notes but I recollect that it is true that he said he had never
talked so long about himself to anybody, that about his use of words
struck me very much in conversation, that he sometimes pronounced a
particular word correctly and later pronounced it incorrectly, and that
simple words he sometimes mispronounced and hard ones he got right.
Mr. MOSK. He was speaking in English?
Miss JOHNSON. Oh, yes; his emphasis on legality, I had the impression
that unconsciously he wasn't 100-percent behind what he was doing,
that he wanted to get out of it and he left a loophole and that the
scapegoat was the Embassy.
Mr. SLAWSON. I would like to ask a question on that. You think then
that he may have at least unconsciously had reservations right at that
time that he was not doing the right thing?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes; and I think this is implicit in the interview and
it corresponds with my recollection. It says here, "it was her opinion
that he might consciously or not have been trying to leave a loophole
for himself."
I felt that in making such a scapegoat of the Embassy and of Mr.
Snyder, he was leaving himself a reason not to go back to the Embassy,
and hence not to really renounce his citizenship, and that impressed me
even then, and I think that didn't come out in my story and it doesn't
come out in my notes, but it does correspond with my recollection.
I felt he was using his annoyance at the Embassy for other reasons. It
was a pretext, although I didn't think it was conscious. And I did bore
in on whether the Embassy had given him two versions, that is, whether
they had said they were too busy, or whether there was legal grounds
that they couldn't allow him to renounce citizenship until he had
assurance of Soviet citizenship.
I was just interested in resolving the discrepancies, because I wanted
to clarify the nature of the loophole he was leaving himself, rather
really than to put the Embassy on the spot. And also I wanted to get
the Embassy's role straight because I didn't know how fully in my story
to put his annoyance at Snyder, the consul. I wanted to be clear on
what he was doing, before writing about his annoyance with Snyder.
Mr. MOSK. Do you think, Miss Johnson, that he had any knowledge of the
law of expatriation?
Miss JOHNSON. My recollection of him was that he was very legally
minded. He showed me his letters from the Embassy, his exchange of
letters from the Embassy, and that is in the notes, that he claimed
they were acting illegally. He showed me the text of these letters
and asked me what I thought of them. He said that he had been told on
Saturday, October 31, that is a Saturday, that they needed time to get
the papers together.
Mr. MOSK. But do you think that he had ever read a book of statutes or
did he give you that impression, that somebody had told him about the
law or that he had read the law?
Miss JOHNSON. He claimed that they were acting illegally, and I am not
at all sure that he didn't also indicate that he had a right, that he
knew he had a right. I am not sure that he didn't say that they had
told him at the Embassy that they wanted some assurance that he had
Soviet citizenship, but actually I believe that this was more what
I gathered from talking to Mr. Snyder and Mr. McVickar, that they
actually wanted to give him time to think.
Somewhere I got the idea that he had also been told that they wanted
assurance that he had Soviet citizenship, before letting him renounce
American citizenship. Where I got the impression, I think it was from
him, but I am not sure. Yes; my guess about him is that he would feel
that he knew the law. Whether he would have seen it or been told it by
somebody that he thought knew the law, he would have informed himself
or thought he was informed about his legal rights. He seemed very stuck
on the importance of legality, legalism.
Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, I am going to now back up a bit and ask you
some questions about the general atmosphere in Moscow, quite apart from
Lee Harvey Oswald. I make reference here to Exhibit No. 5, which we
introduced just a minute ago. On the first page of that exhibit, which
is your statement to the Department of State, you mention that most of
the defectors who came to Moscow while you were a correspondent there
came because of personal troubles they were having at home, rather than
reasons of ideology.
You also bring up the fact that, rather your belief that, the Russians
had wanted one or two defectors from the U.S. exhibition of 1959 to
counter the negative propaganda they had been suffering from the
frequent defections of East bloc persons to the West. I wonder if you
would comment about both those points? First, if you could give us a
description of approximately how many American defectors you either
knew or had knowledge of at that time?
Miss JOHNSON. Well, I heard about most of those who came through,
though I didn't necessarily interview them. There had been one called
Webster--Richard Webster, I think--from the fair, and he had had a job
in Ohio. He worked at the fair. I don't know what he did. At the end
of the fair he asked to stay. That was, say, September or so of 1959.
We had defectors on the brain right then in Moscow, all of us, because
there had been a great deal of travel. The result was that a lot of
tourists were there; there were an unusually large number. That is to
say there had been three defectors. And Webster, now, when you did
go into it, it developed that he wasn't too happy with his wife and
he was interested in a waitress at the Hotel Ukraine. There had been
another one named Petrulli--Nicholas Petrulli. I have forgotten the
circumstances, but again they were personal, and I think he changed his
mind. I think my colleague, Mr. Korengold, supported him, really, while
he was thinking it over and deciding not to do it.
That is as far as I can remember. Those were better known cases that I
didn't bother with because I couldn't compete with the agencies. And
the Oswald case I did see because Mr. McVickar said he was refusing to
talk to journalists. So I thought that it might be an exclusive, for
one thing, and he was right in my hotel, for another. But then, once
I got talking to him, I realized right away that he was different. At
least I found him interesting at the time. Afterward I thought he was
very interesting.
I don't remember the Petrulli case; it was probably after the Oswald
case, and then there were a couple named Block--Morris Block and Mrs.
Block. I one day encountered Mrs. Block on the third floor of my hotel,
sitting talking with the woman who gave out the keys. She was quite
a forthcoming lady who talked far more about herself than she should
have, since they couldn't have wanted any publicity right then about
themselves. So I knew about the Blocks, too.
Mr. MOSK. They also came back?
Miss JOHNSON. They did come back this year, lately. But I didn't know
too much about the Blocks. There was something else about the Blocks.
Maybe they had some connection with the Soviet Union. Maybe he had
been there before. There was some reason about the Blocks. Anyway, I
couldn't get to interview them. That was the crux of the matter. So
that Oswald was the only--and there was something that made me think
the Blocks were not pure ideological, that they had some connections
with Russia as such, although I may be quite mistaken.
Mr. SLAWSON. You mean possibly some business or personal connection
that would give them a tie?
Miss JOHNSON. Right.
Mr. SLAWSON. That would be different, quite apart from the ideology of
Communist Russia?
Miss JOHNSON. I had the feeling that perhaps Mr. Block had been in the
Soviet Union before, perhaps in the service during war or that they
were of Russian ancestry, something of that kind, which took away from
any ideological features.
Here Oswald was of an age that made him different right away. He was
only 20, and I had never heard of anybody of that age in the first
place, or that generation, taking an ideological interest to the point
where he would defect. His age made him extraordinary.
Somebody of his generation reminded me right away of the 1930's, and I
lived in the hotel where I heard stories about the kind of defectors
who came in the 1930's; that is, they had been ideological. They had
come for reasons of race or sex; women desirous of emancipation, the
American women; Negroes desirous of thinking that here is a country
where Negroes were treated equally; people of leftist views; and among
the press corps I was aware that most of the Western press corps or
much of it were fellow traveling or Communist, and I read quite a bit
about them.
Mr. MOSK. This is during the thirties?
Mr. SLAWSON. During the 1930's?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes. Malcolm Muggeridge, Eugene Lyons, Louis Fischer. And
I would gather these tales, because I was interested in them.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. SLAWSON. Do you want to add something to what you have previously
said?
Miss JOHNSON. The ones we have are Malcolm Muggeridge, Eugene Lyons,
Louis Fischer, Walter Duranty. These were famous cases of people
who had a great interest in communism, and the Soviet Union in some
ways was the promised land to them. Mr. Lyons later titled a book
"Assignment in Utopia." Our press corps was not at all like that. We
were mostly there because Moscow was a great place to make a name and
a career, and we ranged from very interested, like me, to downright
disenchanted, you know. We were all pretty anti and skeptical, and we
were there because it was good for our careers rather than because we
were interested in communism or because we thought it was the promised
land, and that was always striking to me, because I often heard stories
about the thirtys, and I really thought it sounded very exciting
then. And he was the one person who seemed to have nineteen-thirtyish
reasons, unemployment in the United States, economic difficulty, racial
inequalities, interest in communism. So I thought sometime I would like
to write an article about how the kind of newspaper people and the kind
of defectors who really came now reflected what happened to the Soviet
Union compared to the thirtys, going back to Muggeridge's memoirs,
Lyons, Fischer's memoirs, Duranty's memoirs, and what other people had
said about Duranty to show what happened to the Soviet Union itself. It
didn't attract people now for ideological reasons.
It was a bourgeois country like any other, and if it attracted people
from the West it was because they wanted to make it their career; it
had become a career for foreigners; or because they were personal
malcontents.
They weren't getting along with their wives. It was the strangest kind
of reason. Oswald was the exception that proved the rule. And I had
made notes about him in the interim, when I thought of him, because of
this. He was the exception who proved the rule because he purported to
be acting for ideological reasons.
Whenever I thought about him I thought: What is behind these professed
reasons? They are really emotional reasons in his case, too, and I
don't understand, although it is not obvious like a wife he is leaving,
they are still emotional reasons, and I don't know what is behind his
professed ideological reasons. And I can't guess. So he was the pin
really for the piece, and I couldn't guess them. If I had known he
was back in the States--I had thought about him, it seems to me, as
recently as 3 weeks before the assassination, and wondered, and the way
that the thought used to come to me was, "I wonder what ever happened
to that little Lee Oswald?" And had I known he was back--I thought he
would have been disenchanted, trapped in Russia, unable to get out--if
I had known he was back I probably would have tried to see him, write
him, go to see him. And if I had been able to figure out his reasons
and what happened to him, maybe I could have written that piece.
Mr. MOSK. You had no indication that people could not leave the Soviet
Union?
Miss JOHNSON. Oh, yes; I did. I had plenty of indication that they
couldn't leave, and I didn't assume for a second that he had ever left
or gotten out, and I wanted, if I could, to help him, warn him subtly
that he was going to be trapped. That is why I spent so long talking
to him. But I assumed that my room was wired, and I couldn't be obvious
about it, and I tried to do it by talking to him about economics.
Mr. SLAWSON. Before we get into the actual interview you had with Mr.
Oswald, Miss Johnson, the other comment on the first page of Exhibit
No. 5 which you made was, and I quote: "The Russians had wanted one or
two defectors from the U.S. exhibition of 1959 to counter the negative
propaganda they had been suffering from the more or less frequent
defections of East-bloc persons to the West." Could you first identify
the exhibition you are referring to, and then give the basis for your
statement of what the Russians wanted?
Miss JOHNSON. Right. I am speaking of the U.S. exhibition at Sokolniki
Park in Moscow that had been opened by Vice President Nixon in July of
1959, which ran for 6 weeks, which brought a great many Americans to
Moscow for periods, fairly long periods of time, in the capacity of
employees of the fair, setting up pavilions, setting up exhibits, some
guides. And I didn't know this, but I had the impression that they had
encouraged Webster to defect.
I may be quite mistaken about that. Webster was an employee of
the fair, and I thought perhaps they wanted one. That was just an
assumption. Oswald, however, I again bored in quite a bit in my talk
with him as to whether they were encouraging him, and he said they were
neither encouraging or discouraging. He was very anxious as to whether
they were going to let him stay, and this did strike me as a little
unusual. I thought they would encourage it. And I didn't know whether
he was just a very anxious person, hence anxious, or whether they were
keeping him on tenterhooks, not for tactical reasons at all but because
of genuine doubts about having him. My only conclusion could be--it was
at the time--that Nikita Khrushchev just had been to see Eisenhower;
that they were not encouraging defections because of the political
atmosphere. I didn't realize that it might be anything personal about
Oswald. I assumed that it was the atmosphere.
Mr. SLAWSON. When you first approached Oswald to ask him for an
interview--could you describe that?
Miss JOHNSON. I knocked on his door, expecting to be let in. But I
wasn't let in. He came out. He came to the door and I stayed in the
hall. He stayed in the doorway as I recall it, and I asked him if he
would let me talk to him; expected he would say no, from what Mr.
McVickar had told me. But he said quite quickly yes, he would come, and
he said he would come to my room. He didn't invite me to his, and he
named an hour for that evening when he would come, and he did come that
evening just at the time he said, and he stayed.
Mr. SLAWSON. Could you see into his room to see whether he was alone at
that time?
Miss JOHNSON. No; I had the impression he was alone, but I didn't see
that anyone was there. Had somebody been sitting in his room, I think
I could have seen them. My guess is that his bed would have been out
of sight, but that the chairs in which anybody would have been sitting
with him might have been visible. But he may have had the door open
sufficiently little or at such an angle that I couldn't have seen had
he been alone.
Mr. SLAWSON. Did you know at the time that Miss Aline Mosby, a
newspaper reporter, I believe, for the Associated Press at that time----
Miss JOHNSON. For the United Press International.
Mr. SLAWSON. United Press--had spoken to Oswald several days earlier?
Miss JOHNSON. No; I had been told he wasn't talking to people, and I
hoped that he hadn't talked to anyone else.
Mr. SLAWSON. Did you ever learn from Oswald that he had spoken to Miss
Mosby earlier?
Miss JOHNSON. No; I never heard from anyone until after November
the 22d, 1963, although Mr. McVickar had said that I could ask Mr.
Korengold about him. That was a tip that perhaps he had talked to
somebody at UPI, but I didn't want to tip the UPI that I was on to it
because I thought that would reinvigorate their efforts. So I never did
speak to anybody except Mr. McVickar.
Mr. SLAWSON. While we are back on Mr. McVickar, I don't think we
established for the record absolutely clearly whether there was
anything in Exhibit No. 911 besides the date and the day which you felt
should be corrected?
Miss JOHNSON. No; not at all. There is a postscript at the bottom
which is dated November 19. So far as I recall, this doesn't reflect
another conversation. It simply reflects an afterthought on the part of
Mr. McVickar, or conceivably a second conversation between me and Mr.
McVickar. He may have asked me more questions, and this may reflect a
little additional.
Mr. SLAWSON. But it does not reflect a second conversation between you
and Lee Harvey Oswald; is that correct?
Miss JOHNSON. No.
Mr. SLAWSON. I asked you if that was correct?
Miss JOHNSON. It is correct. It does not reflect a second conversation
with Mr. Lee Harvey Oswald.
Mr. SLAWSON. Now then, we can get back to your interview with Lee
Harvey Oswald that evening. I have some questions here, but I want
you to feel free to interject any comments of your own at any time.
Of course we have as exhibits many of your previous statements and
articles reflecting your thinking about this before coming here today,
so we can both, I think, confine ourselves to elaborations or possible
corrections or discussions around the points that you have already set
down in the exhibits. The first thing I would like to bring up is a
point you touched upon briefly already in the exhibits, that Oswald
seemed to be greatly concerned with economics, and that you weren't,
and that consequently a great deal of the time in the interview was
taken up you might say with noncommunicative thought, or speech rather.
I wonder if you would define what you mean by economics, and elaborate
on that a little bit?
Miss JOHNSON. Well, since I liked Mr. Oswald, and since Mr. McVickar
had pointed out to me that there was a narrow line between my duty as a
correspondent and duty as an American, I hoped to establish some kind
of communication with him, although I was really trying to write a
story about him. I went outside my duty in the sense that I did try to
establish some kind of communication. I rather quickly perceived that
the best way to do this was to follow his lead and discuss economics.
That is what interested him more than anything. He wasn't interested
in talking about politics. He hadn't seen enough of Soviet society to
discuss it very concretely, nor was I in a position to point out to him
too much about its shortcomings, because I was a correspondent there,
because my room wasn't a really private place for conversation, and so
I tried really to point out its shortcomings in economic terms which
seemed to be the surest way of reaching him, and it was the subject on
which he had the most interest.
My notes therefore don't really reflect a great deal of that part of
the conversation, because it meant nothing to me storywise at the time.
It wasn't what I was going to write about. And I wasn't too interested
in it really. I was just trying to talk with him. And so when I talked
to him, what I said wasn't recorded in the notes, and the gist of his
reply was--of his replies were--that is about the exploitation of
the worker. I tried to point out to him that in the stage of primary
accumulation any society has to take more from the workers. They
have to be paid less than they really create. So there is poverty
and injustice everywhere. It was by way of trying to say to him that
things were not so good in the Soviet Union if he just would look,
because I wanted him to think before he did it. I assumed his act was
irrevocable and I was very sorry for him. So all this was couched in
economic language, which takes up time, and in which I wasn't really
too interested. I did feel that when he left that if I only understood
economics more--had only taken more interest in it when I studied it,
I had only studied it a bit more--that I could have answered him,
talked with him in terms that he could really respect, and that it
might have caused him to think more about his action and might even
have caused him to hesitate, and might have built up his respect for me
sufficiently that I could become someone whom he would have come back
to talk to and could have been some help to him.
And I felt that I had failed him in the sense that I could not talk
to him in the one language that he really wanted to talk in and was
interested in. I did as much as I could along those lines, but I felt
that it had been inadequate in the situation in my own desire to help
him.
Mr. SLAWSON. You used the term "economics." Do you mean by that,
economics in the sense of a Marxist versus Capitalist discussion,
terms like you used, "primary accumulation," "exploitation," and so on?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes, a little better than exploitation, more in primary
accumulation, and comparing the two systems. If I had been good at
comparing the two systems and using economic verbiage--I guess that
what I am saying is that if I had had long words about economics, been
able to throw them around with some authority, he would have respected
me. He did respect words, long words, language, and if I had seemed to
have a key to some occult science that he didn't know about but was
interested in, that this would have compelled his respect and might
have brought him back. But I had taken a course in Soviet economics at
Harvard where they had waived the requirement that you had studied the
American economic system, and I had done all right in the course, but
that really was where my economic training began and ended, and I just
barely sustained my interest through the course.
I regreted very much after that conversation not having ever really
studied economics formally, at least not knowing the terms.
I am so uninterested in it that if somebody tells me the words I forget
them. It was that bad with me. This was the only real occasion where I
was very sorry.
Mr. SLAWSON. In Commission Exhibit No. 911, which is John McVickar's
memorandum to files about his conversation with you, he quotes you
as saying, "Miss Johnson remarked that although he used long words
and seemed in some ways well-read, he often used words incorrectly as
though he had learned them from a dictionary."
Was that in reference to these economic discussions you had with Oswald?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes. I think really he didn't use long words too
much about economics. I felt if I could have, I could have made an
impression. Words were important to him. And he was not qualified, mind
you, for a technical discussion of economics.
It wasn't that he was qualified for it. If I had been, I felt I would
have had a value to him.
Mr. SLAWSON. I wish you would elaborate on this: What kind of knowledge
you felt Lee Oswald had on economics, and his general ability to engage
in abstract argument and discussion.
Miss JOHNSON. He liked to create the pretense, the impression that he
was attracted to abstract discussion and was capable of engaging in
it, and was drawn to it. But it was like pricking a balloon. I had
the feeling that if you really did engage him on this ground, you
very quickly would discover that he didn't have the capacity for a
logical sustained argument about an abstract point on economics or on
noneconomic, political matters or any matter, philosophical. Actually
the conversation kept coming back to him, and this was not only my
desire for an interview. It was the way he led it. He really talked
about himself the whole time.
Whatever he was talking about was really Lee Oswald. He seemed to me
to have really zero capacity for a sustained abstract discussion on
economics or any other subject, and I didn't think he knew anything
about economics.
In fact, if I had been a little smarter I would have just used the
economic words that I could have remembered, compelled his respect and
he wouldn't have known that I didn't know anything.
Mr. SLAWSON. You said that you did not get into much political
discussion with him.
Miss JOHNSON. No, we didn't. Partly I couldn't engage him directly on
the Soviet Union because I had a poor status there as a correspondent.
I worked for the weakest of the American agencies. I was always in
danger of being expelled with my visa expiring. Even then I was only on
a 1 month visa, and at that only because of the spirit of Camp David. I
had just barely gotten back in the country.
I was just there on sufferance, and I really couldn't show my hand
politically, tell him anything I thought politically. He also didn't
seem interested in a pointed political discussion about either society.
He seemed to be able or willing to discuss in generalizations rather
than in direct terms, a comparison of the two societies or anything
like this. The point where I felt I could engage him was on economics,
and here we did go in for some comparisons of the two societies. That
was all. But politics we hardly discussed, except when he brought it
up. And he didn't bring it up in terms of people at all.
(Short recess.)
Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, I wonder if you would search your memory
with the help of your notes and make any comments you could on what
contacts Lee Oswald had had with Soviet officials before you saw him,
any remarks he made or things you could read between the lines, and so
on.
Miss JOHNSON. I was looking for contact between him and the secret
police, and I wanted to find out if there had been such contact, and
if so, how much and was he aware of it. And I came away impressed only
with the fact that he was secretive, and not at all certain what his
contacts had been, but assuming that there had been some, whether or
not he was aware of it.
He was very reticent as to who he had seen, what agencies they
represented. I asked him whether he had told Intourist of his
intention, and his answer, which is on the record somewhere, I asked
him if they were encouraging him, and he said they treat it like a
legal formality. They don't encourage and don't discourage you.
"They do of course warn you that it is not easy to be accepted as a
citizen of the Soviet Union." They were investigating the possibility
of his studying.
I assumed that the police had told him he wasn't to see any of us, and
that they would tell him when he left the hotel at the end of the week
not to tell any one before he left. I asked him if Intourist knew about
his intentions and he refused to answer.
He said he had had an interview with an official of the Soviet
Government a few days later. I assume that means after his arrival. But
"official of the Soviet Government" meant nothing and I didn't know
what agency that official represented.
Also I had the impression, in fact he said, he hoped that his
experience as a radar operator would make him more desirable to them.
That was the only thing that really showed any lack of integrity in
a way about him, a negative thing. That is, he felt he had something
he could give them, something that would hurt his country in a way,
or could, and that was the one thing that was quite negative, that he
was holding out some kind of bait. That also indicated his extreme
naivete, because they have plenty of radar operators, and I doubted
that anything in that realm would be of use to them, although perhaps
he knew codes and things.