Mrs. PAINE. May I go on?
Representative BOGGS. Yes; surely. Finish.
Mrs. PAINE. This was an intervening section where he was the most human
that I saw him, and, of course, it has been followed by my anger with
him, and all the feeling that most of us have about his act. But it
seems to me important, very important, to the record that we face the
fact that this man was not only human but a rather ordinary one in many
respects, and who appeared ordinary.
If we think that this was a man such as we might never meet, a great
aberration from the normal, someone who would stand out in a crowd as
unusual, then we don't know this man, we have no means of recognizing
such a person again in advance of a crime such as he committed.
The important thing, I feel, and the only protection we have is to
realize how human he was though he added to it this sudden and great
violence beyond----
Representative BOGGS. You have no doubt about the fact that he
assassinated President Kennedy?
Mrs. PAINE. I have no present doubt.
Representative BOGGS. Do you have any reason to believe he was
associated with anyone else in this act or it was part of a conspiracy?
Mrs. PAINE. I have no reason to believe he was associated with anyone.
Representative BOGGS. Did you ever see him talking with anyone else, in
conversation with anybody else or get mail at your home?
Mrs. PAINE. I never saw him talking with anyone else. He received all
his mail from home, third class for the most part perhaps one letter
from Russia.
Representative BOGGS. Did he have telephone calls at your home of a
mysterious nature?
Mrs. PAINE. No.
Mr. JENNER. Excuse me, did he ever have a telephone call at your home
mysterious or otherwise?
Mrs. PAINE. No; never.
Representative BOGGS. You then would be surprised if he were part of
any group?
Mrs. PAINE. I would be very surprised. For one thing, I judged, I
had to wonder whether this man was a spy or someone dangerous to our
Nation. He had been to the Soviet Union and he had come back and he
didn't go as a tourist. He went by his own admission intending to
become a Soviet citizen and then came back.
Representative BOGGS. What about Marina--go ahead and finish.
Mrs. PAINE. Then the FBI came, as I thought they well might, interested
in this man who had been to the Soviet Union, and I felt that if he had
associations this would be very easy for them to know. I didn't see
any, but would tend to point to the possibility of his being a spy or
subversive. But I didn't see any such and I felt happy that they were
charged with the responsibility of knowing about it.
Representative BOGGS. Did you see any indication of any connection of
Marina with any group that might be considered unusual?
Mrs. PAINE. No; no one called her.
Representative BOGGS. Did she have any letters?
Mrs. PAINE. She received a letter from a friend in the Soviet Union
which she showed to me and mentioned to me.
Representative BOGGS. Was this just a normal letter?
Mrs. PAINE. Girl friend.
Representative BOGGS. What is your present relationship with Marina?
Mrs. PAINE. I have seen her once since the assassination. That was a
week ago Monday. It was the first time since the morning of the 23d
when she left my house, both of us expecting she would come back to it
that evening. In the intervening period I wrote her a collection of
letters trying to determine what her feelings were and whether it was
suitable for me to write and see her.
I am presently confused, as I was then, as to how to best be a friend
to her. I don't know what is appropriate in this situation.
By that I mean during the time I was writing the letters to her and not
getting an answer when she was with Mr. Martin.
Representative BOGGS. Was your conversation last Monday friendly?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Representative BOGGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mrs. Paine.
Mr. McCLOY. Might I ask one question?
You said that Lee had mentioned General Walker and indicated that he
didn't like General Walker. Can you elaborate on that a little bit, to
what extent, how violent was he in his expression?
Mrs. PAINE. No; it wasn't violent at all. It was more of, oh, well,
more not giving him much credit even, but it was done briefly, this
was in passing, so my recollection is hazy. But certainly there was no
strong expression.
Mr. McCLOY. No vehemence about it?
Mrs. PAINE. Absolutely not, I would have remembered that. And I recall
that Marina said nothing.
Mr. McCLOY. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. You mentioned that Lee did not receive any calls at your
house. Did he make any telephone calls?
Mrs. PAINE. I heard him call what he said was the "Time." You know, he
dialed, listened and hung up, and then he told us what time it was.
That is all his social contact.
Mr. McCLOY. This is only on one occasion that he spoke of General
Walker?
Mrs. PAINE. Just that one in my hearing, apropos of a discussion that
was already begun.
Mr. McCLOY. We have rather interrupted the sequence of your questioning.
Mr. JENNER. That is all right.
Representative BOGGS. There is one item I might bring out along the
line you were inquiring about.
You gave some consideration, did you not, Mrs. Paine, during this
period, as to whether Mr. Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald, could or might
have been a Russian agent.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And we discussed this yesterday, as I recall?
Mrs. PAINE. Briefly.
Mr. JENNER. And what conclusions did you come to on that score and why?
Mrs. PAINE. I thought that he was not very intelligent. I saw as far as
I could see he had no particular contacts. He was not a person I would
have hired for a job of any sort, no more than I would have let him
borrow my car.
Mr. JENNER. Did you give consideration in that connection? Did his
level of intelligence affect your judgment as to whether the Russian
Government would have hired him?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. How did it affect you?
Mrs. PAINE. I doubted they would have hired him. I kept my mind open on
it to wonder.
Mr. JENNER. And you had doubt why?
Mrs. PAINE. Simply because he had gone to the Soviet Union and
announced that he wanted to stay, and then came back, and I wasn't
convinced that he liked America.
Mr. JENNER. Did your judgment of him, and as to his level of
intelligence, affect your decision ultimately that the Russian
Government might not or would not have hired him because he was not a
man of capacity to serve in such a way for the Russian Government?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; that affected my judgment.
Mr. DULLES. Have you any idea as to his motivation in the act, in light
of what you have said in the assassination?
Mrs. PAINE. It is conjecture, of course, but I feel he always felt
himself to be a small person; and he was right. That he wanted to be
greater, or noticed, and Marina had said of him he thinks he is so big
and fine, and he should take a more realistic view of himself and not
be so conceited.
(At this point, Representative Ford entered the hearing room.)
Mrs. PAINE. And I feel that he acted much more from the emotional
pushings within him than from any rational set of ideas, and----
Mr. DULLES. Emotional pushings toward aggrandizement you have in mind
is what you said?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. McCLOY. When you testified earlier this morning, Mrs. Paine, about
the dry sighting of the rifle, you know what dry sighting is, don't you?
Mrs. PAINE. I found out last night.
Mr. McCLOY. You found that out last night?
Senator COOPER. Tell her to describe it then.
Mrs. PAINE. Shall I try to describe it? See if I know? It involves
holding the rifle and as if to fire and pulling the trigger, but
without any ammunition in it. Going through the motions and, therefore,
wiggling it and having to resight it.
Representative FORD. Going through the motions?
Mrs. PAINE. Of ejecting something.
Senator COOPER. A dry run.
Mr. JENNER. Is that sufficient, Senator?
Mrs. PAINE. Do I understand it?
Mr. McCLOY. That is a pretty good description, it is just as well as I
can give.
Representative FORD. You actually saw him doing this?
Mrs. PAINE. No, he showed me last night how it was done.
Mr. McCLOY. We had testimony this morning whether he had an opportunity
to dry sight the rifle in his New Orleans house.
Mrs. PAINE. I was just discussing what would be visible in the front of
his house.
Mr. JENNER. We were having some testimony, Representative Ford, of Lee
Harvey Oswald's dry sighting of the rifle when he was in New Orleans.
Representative FORD. Marina so testified when she was here.
Mr. McCLOY. You don't purport to say it was impossible for him to do it
without observation but it was difficult.
Mrs. PAINE. It was difficult.
My then 2-year-old boy found a number of boys with trucks to play with
right on that immediate driveway or alley as it is marked on the paper
and small boys would have been very interested and they went right by
there and Marina complained that Junie couldn't get her nap because
there were so many children.
Mr. McCLOY. He could have done it very early in the morning without
observation?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. Have you any idea generally how Lee Oswald used his time, I
mean when you weren't observing him when he wasn't at your house? Did
he talk, tell you how he used his time? Did he use it on television?
What I am trying to get at is--is there a great deal of time he had
available to him that there is no way of knowing what he did. But did
he talk about that, did he give you an idea of what he was, how he
occupied himself, reading, television?