Mr. SLAWSON. Could you elaborate a little bit on that radar point. Had
you been informed by the American Embassy at the time that he had told
Richard Snyder that he had already volunteered to the Soviet officials
that he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps, and would give
the Russian Government any secrets he had possessed?
Miss JOHNSON. I had no idea that he had told Snyder that, but he did
tell me--I got the impression, I am not sure that it is in the notes
or not, I certainly got the impression that he was using his radar
training as a come-on to them, hoped that that would make him of some
value to them, and I----
Mr. SLAWSON. This was something then that he must have volunteered to
you, because you would not have known to ask about it?
Miss JOHNSON. Well, again I am not very military minded, and I couldn't
have cared less, you know. But somehow along the line, if it is not in
my notes then it is a memory, then it is one of the things I didn't
write--well, one thing is you know I tend to write what I thought I
might use in the story. But I wasn't going to write a particularly
negative story about him. I wasn't going to write that he was using it
as a come-on so I might not have transcribed it just simply for that
reason, that it wasn't a part of my story.
But it definitely was an impression that he--and it was from him,
certainly not from the Embassy, that he was using that as a come-on,
and I sure didn't like that. But it didn't occur to me he might have
military secrets. I just felt, well hell, he didn't have much as a
radar operator that they need, although even there I didn't know.
Maybe there was some little twist in our radar technique that he might
know. It showed a lack of integrity in his personality, and that I
remembered. What he might or might not have to offer them I didn't know.
About the other point, police interest, I assumed the police would
be the first people to be interested, and that whether he knew it or
not, he had talked to somebody from the police, that he was getting a
favorable room rate because of this interest. That is what I was after
the whole time. But I was struck only by his secretiveness in answer to
this, and I couldn't make out whether he had something to hide, whether
he didn't know really what the situation was, or whether he was simply
a very secretive person.
Mr. SLAWSON. Did he tell you that he had this information which he
was, you might say, holding out as bait to the Soviets, or that he
had already given to the Soviet Government whatever expertise or
information he might have had as a radar operator?
Miss JOHNSON. I think he told me--could you repeat your question?
Mr. SLAWSON. Well, I will put it in a different way. I wonder whether
your memory is that Oswald was telling you that he had this information
which he had not yet given to the Soviet Government, and hoped to use
it as a means of convincing them to take him, or whether he had already
given it to them?
Miss JOHNSON. No; he didn't tell me that he had any specific
information, that he offered it, that he had told them, or that he
would tell them. It was not that explicit. It was something like
if his experience as a radar operator would be of any use to them,
perhaps they would let him work as a radar operator. It was a little
more pointed than that, because I realized that he was going to make
available his radar experience, and that he did want to use it as a
come-on.
It was a tiny bit, a little bit more pointed than that, but it was more
in that category. If anything he learned as a radar operator in the
Marines would be useful to them, he would give it to them, and he hoped
to continue his training, something like that.
But it is not in my notes. It is memory, and it is the most negative
recollection of him I had.
Mr. SLAWSON. Did he make any comments to you about having been
interviewed by any Soviet newspaper reporters or radio reporters or
anything of that type?
Miss JOHNSON. Well, of course that is an obvious question I ought to
have asked him, since a visiting foreigner very quickly does get that
kind of attention, but I didn't ask him.
Mr. SLAWSON. You did, I think, according to the statements you have
made in these exhibits, ask him whether he had had any contacts with
American Communists or other Communists before he came to the Soviet
Union?
Miss JOHNSON. I wasn't as suspicious about this as I had been on the
Soviet police angle, but he awakened my suspicions by his reticence. He
seemed to have something to hide, and once again I didn't know whether
he had something to hide or whether he was just very secretive, because
I asked him what books he had read, and he wouldn't say. Yet he was
certainly trying to give me the impression that he was a book-learned
boy, and this comes about page 11 of my notes. We were talking about
books, and we were talking about his contact with American Socialists
or Communists about the same time.
So perhaps the way that the conversation led from one to the other gave
me the impression that he wasn't naming books because he didn't want
to hurt authors by suggesting that they had had anything to do--he was
taking full responsibility--that they had had anything to do with his
defection. But you would think he would have mentioned books because he
was giving the impression that he was a boy who paid a lot of attention
and he really read books.
Then Socialists and Communists, I wasn't too suspicious although I
should have been. How did he get there? It wasn't easy at all for him
to do. I was more impressed, awed by it, than I was inquisitive about
where he might have been coached.
But he awakened me to the point that I should be inquisitive because of
the very fact that he eluded, naming names, specified that he had no
contacts with American Communists, going out of his way to stress it. I
am sure that this part of our conversation was quite a bit longer than
came out in my notes. Again you know I had no idea that he was going to
ever be at all important. But it was he who put the emphasis on lack
of contacts with American Communists. He said American Socialists were
to be shunned by anybody with an interest in progressive ideology. I
probably brought them up rather than the Communists first, just as his
interest in Socialist literature.
He answered, "Well, they were to be shunned." This was an emphatic
reply to what was probably a very vague, general, unemphatic question.
And he called them "a dormant flag-waving organization."
So that woke me up and I asked him what about American Communists,
and he said--he was very emphatic here and again probably at more
length than was in the notes--that only through reading literature and
observing, but he wouldn't name what literature, American Communists
"(I never saw an American Communist)" he said, and I put that in
parentheses because I was that uninterested, really. I didn't make it
anything but a parenthetical observation, but only through reading did
he conclude it was best. In other words it was he who had tried to
emphasize that there had not been people involved.
Retrospectively I see that this was important, that there may have been
people involved.
Mr. SLAWSON. You say retrospectively you see that it was important. Do
you mean by that that you see now it was very important to him that he
establish to you that he had come only on his own?
Miss JOHNSON. Well, I saw then that it was important to him to
establish this to me. My story reflects whatever importance I gave it
at the time. But if I knew about him then a tenth of what I know now,
I would have tried to pin him down even more on it, that he might have
had coaching.
It is also the sort of thing that comes out more clearly when
you look at your notes and you think about a person afterwards,
just-how-did-he-get-here kind of a thing.
How does a boy like this who doesn't know his way around Moscow find
his way here? But at the time I was talking to him, I had less interest
really than in any help he may have had on the Soviet side.
Mr. SLAWSON. Trying to divorce what you now know from what you knew
then, did he go into any detail at all about his life before he came to
Russia, his life in the Marine Corps particularly?
Miss JOHNSON. The only details there were about his experience abroad.
He said literally nothing about his experience in the Marine Corps in
the United States except that he was studying Russian then. He did
speak about his experience in the Marine Corps abroad in Japan, in
the Philippines, and he indicated that he hated to be part of it, you
know, "oppressing power." He said he had been part of an invasion of
Indonesia in March 1958, that there was a Communist-inspired social
turnover, that they had to sit off the coast in ships with enough
ammunition to intervene. He was told that they might have had to go in
in Suez in 1956.
He had been in Japan and the Philippines, and he hated to participate
in what he viewed as American imperialism, but details of his life in
the Marine Corps he didn't go into at all.
Mr. SLAWSON. At that time did you yourself speak a fair amount of
Russian?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. SLAWSON. Were you able to judge his facility in that language?
Miss JOHNSON. No; because our conversation was totally in English. It
was he who volunteered about his linguistic competence, and I think
that he said that while the Berlitz method had helped him learn to read
and write, and I queried "write" because writing is even harder than
speaking, it hadn't taught him to speak. And he indicated considerable
helplessness in the language. There are a number of things not in the
notes, such as perhaps this, about the language, there was more than is
in the notes.
His helplessness about the city, the fact that he had only been on one
walk by himself is not in my notes, but it is in my story. There are a
few things like that that weren't in the notes, but that came across
very clearly. I had the feeling that he felt quite helpless in Russian,
not that he hadn't studied it but he simply didn't find the study was
useful in his day-to-day getting around the city.
Mr. SLAWSON. Your article quotes Oswald as saying that he used Berlitz
methods in learning the language. Does your memory have anything to add
to that as to what exactly he might have meant?
Miss JOHNSON. Yes. This was another point where he struck me as really
rather elusive about an innocent enough subject. I see on page 3,
he said, "I started learning Russian a year ago along with my other
preparations."
Well, his saying "along with my other preparations" took my interest
at the time. What were they? Whether I tried to find out more about
what they were and failed and therefore that is not in the notes, but
he threw it out and he then didn't really deliver as far as detailing
them. He said, "I was able to teach myself to read and write from
Berlitz. I still have trouble speaking."
So I said, "Well, how did you teach yourself to read and write from
Berlitz? Did you just get a textbook or did you go into some city
nearby for lessons at a school?" And he wouldn't answer, and that
struck me as one hell of a--I mean a strange thing to be elusive about.
Why, learning a language is just something you can tell somebody, so I
thought.
So I said, "Practice or a teacher? Did you have a teacher or did you
just do it from practice?" And he wouldn't say. And then that got me
sufficiently curious that I asked him on what money he had come to the
Soviet Union. That was my next question. He did have a way of a little
bit piquing your curiosity and then failing to deliver.
He liked to play cat and mouse with your curiosity.
Mr. SLAWSON. Can you go into and describe what kind of assurances
Oswald said he had been given at that time about his ability to stay
indefinitely in the Soviet Union, or lack of assurances?
Miss JOHNSON. This was a point on which his anxiety was patent, and he
said almost at the beginning of the interview, "They have confirmed the
fact that I will not have to leave the Soviet Union, be forced to leave
even if the Supreme Soviet refuses my request for Soviet citizenship."
This came up repeatedly in the conversation, that he was anxious, that
he had been very anxious that he would be forced to go--what was your
question exactly again?
Mr. SLAWSON. I think you are already addressing yourself to it. I am
interested in what Oswald told you about how sure he was at that time
that he would be permitted to stay in the Soviet Union.
Miss JOHNSON. Well, he had by that time been told that he wouldn't have
to leave, and as it had obviously been very recently that he had been
told. It was obviously also an enormous relief to him but he hadn't
quite recovered from the anxiety he had felt before the assurance,
because it kept coming up again and again. In fact, he even----
Mr. SLAWSON. Could you state for the record what kept coming up again
and again? I mean, what did he tell you he had been told?
Miss JOHNSON. The fact that he could stay in the Soviet Union as a
resident alien even if he did not receive Soviet citizenship, that
he wouldn't have to leave the country. It came up almost as a leit
motif of this conversation, his anxiety about staying, and his recent
reassurance by them that he could remain as a resident alien had not
altogether quelled the anxiety which was still alive, even though the
assurance was there.
He was holding on to it and repeating it, you know, reiterating it as
though it gave him something to hold on to. In fact, he did give this
as a reason for his talking to me, that he no longer was afraid that by
talking to a foreigner he would be compromising his ability to stay. In
other words, all the time I was also curious really as to just what he
was. Was he a publicity seeker? Was he doing it for that reason? And so
he said he wouldn't have talked, that he would have given no statement
to the press, which was a rather pretentious way I guess of describing
his utterances up to that time, if the Embassy hadn't already released
it, and he wouldn't have said anything to anyone if they hadn't
released it.
This was another reason for his being mad at the Embassy. Then he went
on to say as another reason for talking--he was already inconsistent
there--he would like to give his side of the story and give the people
of the United States something to think about.
And then on top of that, that having been assured "I would not have to
return to the United States I assumed it would be safe for me to give
my side of the story," and at the time I underlined the word "safe."
Why did he think it would be unsafe, and "my side of the story"? He
is assuming that the Embassy is giving out a negative story about
him. He was paranoid. I mean he assumed that they were saying nasty
things about him and he wanted to set the record straight. This told me
something about him already at the beginning of the interview, that he
really was a little bit paranoid.
Mr. SLAWSON. I have intentionally asked you of your impressions on this
point, without giving you some other information that we have, and I
now want to give that information to you and see whether in the light
of this, what is your interpretation of Oswald's attitude at that time.
His historic diary, which is Commission Exhibit No. 24, has an entry
that on November 15 he interviewed Aline Mosby. That is incorrect,
probably a day late. It was probably the 14th or the 13th. On November
16, which he places as the day after he interviewed her, he has the
following entry:
"A Russian official comes to my room, asks how I am, notifies me I can
remain in U.S.S.R. 'til some solution is found with what to do with me.
It is comforting news for me."
Miss JOHNSON. That was the 16th.
Mr. SLAWSON. But I say, do not take the dates correctly except that one
date comes after another, because he also placed the interview with
Mosby the 15th, which we know must have been at least as early as the
14th, and possibly as early as the 13th.
Miss JOHNSON. In other words--yes; but that might help account for the
fullness. Either he is lying; i.e., really he is misled, or not lying
but confused about his reason for talking to me, and I think he was.
Mr. SLAWSON. But I think that the significance of the entry is that the
promise that he could stay was very distinctly qualified.