Mr. JENNER. You are a highly sophisticated person.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, he was not sophisticated, you see. He was
a semieducated hillbilly. And you cannot take such a person seriously.
All his opinions were crude, you see. But I thought at the time he was
rather sincere.
Mr. JENNER. Opinion sincerely held, but crude?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. He was relatively uneducated.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Oh, yes.
Mr. JENNER. Quite, as a matter of fact--he never finished high school.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; I did not even know that.
Mr. JENNER. Did you have the feeling that his views on politics were
shallow and surface?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Very much so.
Mr. JENNER. That he had not had the opportunity for a study under
scholars who would criticize, so that he himself could form some views
on the subject?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Exactly. His mind was of a man with exceedingly
poor background, who read rather advanced books, and did not understand
even the words in them. He read complicated economical treatises and
just picked up difficult words out of what he has read, and loved to
display them. He loved to use the difficult words, because it was to
impress one.
Mr. JENNER. Did you think he understood it?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. He did not understand the words--he just used
them. So how can you take seriously a person like that? You just laugh
at him. But there was always an element of pity I had, and my wife had,
for him. We realized that he was sort of a forlorn individual, groping
for something.
Mr. JENNER. Did you form any impression in the area, let us say, of
reliability--that is, whether our Government would entrust him with
something that required a high degree of intelligence, a high degree of
imagination, a high degree of ability to retain his equilibrium under
pressure, a management of a situation, to be flexible enough?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I never would believe that any government would
be stupid enough to trust Lee with anything important.
Mr. JENNER. Give me the basis of your opinion.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, again, as I said, an unstable individual,
mixed-up individual, uneducated individual, without background. What
government would give him any confidential work? No government would.
Even the government of Ghana would not give him any job of any type.
Mr. JENNER. You used the expression "unstable." Would you elaborate on
that?
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, unstability--his life is an example of
his instability. He switched allegiance from one country to another,
and then back again, disappointed in this, disappointed in that,
tried various jobs. But he did it, you see, without the enjoyment of
adventure--like some other people would do in the United States, a new
job is a new adventure, new opportunities. For him it was a gruesome
deal. He hated his jobs. He switched all the time.
Mr. JENNER. Now, let's assume he switched jobs because he was
discharged from those jobs. Does that affect your opinion? That is,
assume now for the purpose of discussion that he lost every one of his
jobs.
Mr. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, frankly, if I--you always base your opinion
on your own experience. If I had my own country since my childbirth,
and my government, I would remain faithful to it for the rest of my
life. He had a chance to be a marine. Here was a perfect life for
him--this was my point of view. He was a man without education, in the
Marines--why didn't he stay in the Marines all his life? You don't need
a high degree of intelligence to be a marine corporal or a soldier.