Mrs. PAINE. 413, the photograph.
Mr. JENNER. 413 is to the best of your recollection an actual picture
of your final draft letter as transmitted to Marina?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Now directing your attention to page 10 of the material
that you supplied me, and which you discussed with me last evening,
you wished to make a statement to the Commission with respect to this
letter, do you?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. All right. Would you please proceed to do so?
Mrs. PAINE. I think it would be easier if I read what is here.
Mr. JENNER. Any way you want to handle it, Mrs. Paine.
Mrs. PAINE. Marina stayed with me 2 weeks in the spring as you know,
and I realized then what a proud and capable person she is. She was
not accustomed to accept help from others, and I knew that her pride
and independence would be a stumbling block to her accepting help even
though she needed it.
I respected her for this and somehow I wanted to ease such acceptance
for her, and to explain that the situation I proposed would be a
situation of mutual help. I hoped--now I should say that in Commission
Exhibit----
Mr. JENNER. They are to your right on the table.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; 411 and 412, I mentioned that if she were counted as a
dependent on Michael's income tax his yearly payment to the government
would be reduced by a certain amount, and that by that amount she--we
could very nearly live--her expenses could very nearly come under
this, so it would be more a case of breaking even than a case of her
accepting so much as she might think from us. But I think that in fact
this reference to the tax reduction did not encourage her, as I had
hoped.
Mr. JENNER. It wasn't quite correct either, was it, Mrs. Paine?
(Laughter.)
Mrs. PAINE. Did I get a chance to read the second letter as written at
2 a.m. and I was hopeful only more than----
Mr. JENNER. Mrs. Paine, I think the members of the Commission and also
you from our talk last night, are interested in your letters which you
have now identified suggesting financial arrangements to Mrs. Oswald,
since to one who might read them without knowing the background they
might seem crass.
Mrs. PAINE. I felt crass in Russian, particularly.
Mr. JENNER. I was not thinking in terms of your difficulty in
communicating with her, but you had no selfish or ulterior financial
motive, did you, in this connection?
Mrs. PAINE. Did it appear that?
Mr. JENNER. It might.
Mrs. PAINE. Even with such bad arithmetic.
Mr. JENNER. Your arithmetic was all right. Your interpretation of the
law was not as good as it might be.
Mr. DULLES. Am I not correct, I understood you were trying to make her
feel she was not going to be a burden to you?
Mrs. PAINE. That is right.
Mr. DULLES. And were using certain subterfuges to accomplish that; that
is the impression I got from what you said.
Mrs. PAINE. That is absolutely correct. That I hoped, and further I
would say in the letters to her I made reference that this money not
paid to the government would be therefore available for spending money
for her. I had put myself in her position and thought wouldn't it
be terrible to have to ask for a nickel for a package of Lifesavers
every time you wanted it, and thought I wouldn't want to be in such a
situation if she doesn't have her own, something she can count upon as
her own money, it would be unbearable to her.
So I tried to cast about both for a way of making her feel that this
would not be a burden to us, and a way of getting her petty cash in the
pocket that she would not feel was a handout. So that it would be a
legitimate possibility for her to consider.
I judge that my effort in this regard, besides the bad understanding
of the tax law and the poor arithmetic, didn't help because of her
following letter.
Mr. JENNER. That is what I was coming to. Before we get to that, Mrs.
Paine, I direct your attention to Commission Exhibit No. 414.
Mrs. PAINE. 414?
Mr. JENNER. That is a translation of your letter, Commission Exhibit
No. 413. Have you read that translation?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Is there anything in the translation to which you might
desire to take exception or at least make a comment?
(At this point Chief Justice Warren left the hearing room.)
Mrs. PAINE. One minute. Yes, it accurately reflects some of my bad
Russian.
Mr. JENNER. You take no exception to the translation?
Mrs. PAINE. I think no.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Chairman, if you please, I offer in evidence, Mr.
Dulles, may I have those exhibits----
Mr. McCLOY. They may be admitted.
Mr. JENNER. As Commission Exhibits 411, 412, 413 and 414, the documents
that had been so marked?
Mr. McCLOY. They will be admitted.
(The documents referred, previously marked Commission Exhibits Nos.
411, 412, 413, and 414, were received in evidence.)
Mr. JENNER. You did receive a response from Marina, did you not, Mrs.
Paine?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; I did.
Mr. JENNER. And is the response the document now handed to you marked
Commission Exhibit No. 415?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; it is.
Mr. JENNER. And you supplied the Commission with your translation of
that letter and that translation----
Mrs. PAINE. 415 is that what you said?
Mr. JENNER. 415. It appears on pages 10, 11, and 12 of the material you
supplied me.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You don't have an envelope but you have a letter.
Mrs. PAINE. I don't have an envelope. I don't know what happened to it.
Mr. JENNER. Is the exhibit in Marina Oswald's handwriting?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; it is.
Mr. JENNER. Is there anything on the exhibit other than that in the
handwriting of Marina Oswald?
Mrs. PAINE. There are a few underlinings on the page marked four.
Mr. JENNER. Who placed them there?
Mrs. PAINE. Which are my own.
Mr. JENNER. All right. Anything else?
Mrs. PAINE. Except for the underlining "he does not know" at the very
bottom.
Mr. JENNER. "He" refers to whom?
Mrs. PAINE. Lee.
Mr. JENNER. You were about to state to the Commission Marina Oswald's
reaction to your series of invitations. Is that correct?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Would you proceed then?
Mrs. PAINE. As reflected in this letter. This was the third letter I
received from her after a space of over a month, and I had been very
concerned about her. I was much relieved to get it. She said she had
been to the doctor and her condition was normal. She responded to
this series of four letters of which we have three in rough draft,
saying--shall I read in some of the things said?
Mr. JENNER. To the extent that you desire to do so. We will not read
the whole letter, it is quite long; that which is pertinent to what you
have in mind.
Mrs. PAINE. Well, that for a considerable period Lee has been good to
her, she writes. He talks a lot about the coming baby.
Mr. JENNER. Perhaps you might pick out--there are only about four
sentences.
Mrs. PAINE. "He has become more attentive and we hardly quarrel".
Mr. JENNER. This indicates a change somewhat in relationship and would
you please read that portion of the letter?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. Could we have the date of this letter once again?
Mrs. PAINE. The date of the letter. We have no date on the letter. It
was written somewhere between July 18 and July 21, which is the date of
my reply.
Mr. JENNER. That is how you identify it?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Representative FORD. This is 1963?
Mrs. PAINE. Right. Again, "He has become much more attentive and we
hardly quarrel. True I have to give in a great deal. It could not be
otherwise. But if one wants peace then it is necessary to give in. We
went to the doctor, my condition is normal."
And she thanks me for the invitation and thanks Michael also and says:
"I would try to take advantage of it if things really become worse, if
Lee becomes coarse with me again and treats me badly."
Mr. JENNER. I direct your attention to the paragraph following that
one, Mrs. Paine.
Mrs. PAINE. Now another question:
"If as is possible it becomes necessary for me to come to live with
you in order to say that I am a dependent of Michael's surely it would
be necessary to have an official divorce, isn't that so? But I think
Lee would not agree to a divorce, and to go simply from him to become
a burden to you that I don't wish. Surely Michael would need to have
a paper showing that I am living at his expense but no one would just
take his word for it, right?"
And I realized much later that in the Soviet Union you don't do
anything without the proper papers, and just having a person under your
roof for anyone to see, having them in fact eating at your table is
not, would not be, sufficient proof--would not be sufficient there in
Russia.
Representative BOGGS. It might not be here.
Mrs. PAINE. It might not be here. Well, in any case I judged she felt,
reading my invitations this was of some importance to me whether
Michael counted her as a deduction, and so on, whereas in fact this
wasn't the point at all, but that I had hoped to somehow make, if
possible, for her to accept such help.
Mr. JENNER. Have you finished your observations?
Representative BOGGS. As a matter of fact, there are certain
limitations under our law as to how you can claim a dependent.
Mrs. PAINE. Well, I asked a few people who didn't know much about it
before I wrote it.
Representative BOGGS. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. The tenor then of this letter was as I gather from your
testimony and as you have related to me last evening whether she would
come to live with you in the fall or generally was something which now
became subject to reconsideration?
Mrs. PAINE. Pardon?
Mr. JENNER. The matter of her coming to live with you, the possibility
of her living with you on a more extended basis than----
Mrs. PAINE. Was an invitation I had made to her.
Mr. JENNER. And that her response was not acceptance but one that she
would now defer?
Mrs. PAINE. It was a "thank you" and a refusal basically.
Mr. JENNER. Did you respond to that letter?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; I did. My letter is dated July 12.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Liebeler will mark that Commission Exhibit 416, which
consists of how many pages, Mr. Liebeler, three pages. You have that
exhibit. Is that exhibit all in your handwriting?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; it is.
Mr. JENNER. Is that the draft of letter to which you have reference
being your response to Marina's letter of----
Mrs. PAINE. Undated letter.
Mr. JENNER. Undated letter which would be somewhere just prior to July
21?
Mrs. PAINE. Right.
Mr. JENNER. And is that a draft of letter in the same condition now as
it was when you completed it?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Have you supplied the Commission with a translation of that
letter?
Mrs. PAINE. I have.
Mr. JENNER. We will mark as Commission Exhibits 417 and 418 two
exhibits, the first being a one-page exhibit entitled "Translation from
Russian", and the second being a four page photograph of what appears
to be a letter dated July 21, 1963. Directing your attention to Exhibit
418.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Do you find it?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Would you please identify that exhibit? It consists of four
pages.
Mrs. PAINE. It appears to be a photograph of my letter to her of July
21.
Mr. JENNER. Having observed it and looked at it last night, is it your
best recollection at the moment that it is a photograph of the letter
that you actually transmitted to Marina?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Directing your attention to the next exhibit which is No.
418----
Mrs. PAINE. 417, you are talking about the translation.
Mr. JENNER. Is that a translation of the letter, of your letter to her?
Mrs. PAINE. That is far from complete.
Representative FORD. It is far from complete?
Mrs. PAINE. Far from complete. It is incomplete.
Mr. JENNER. I would like to have you make then, directing your
attention to the translation that has been supplied us.
Mrs. PAINE. It goes as far as two-thirds down on page 2, you must have
more somewhere.
Mr. JENNER. No; that is all we have. Would you mark with this red
marker pen the point to which Exhibit 417 is a translation?
Mrs. PAINE. Here.
Mr. JENNER. Is the translation accurate up to that point or rather do
you have any exceptions to it?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. In relation to what?
Mrs. PAINE. "This would" on the next to the last paragraph "this would
offend my father very much." "This hurt my father", no subjunctive to
it.