Mr. JENNER. Excuse me, before you reach that.
Mrs. PAINE. Right.
Mr. JENNER. Are you reasonably certain that he came home or came to
Irving the previous afternoon?
Mrs. PAINE. Certainly.
Mr. JENNER. Perhaps to refresh your recollection, do you remember a
weekend in which Lee Harvey Oswald called from Dallas and said to
Marina that he would not be in that Friday afternoon because he was
going to do some job hunting the next morning, and that he would come
the next day? Could it be that this was that weekend?
Mrs. PAINE. Well, he had already had a job that weekend, didn't he?
So he wouldn't have been job hunting. I recall he was there in the
morning, Saturday morning.
Mr. JENNER. Looking for another job?
Mrs. PAINE. Oh, well, no.
Mr. JENNER. You don't recall any discussion of his being dissatisfied
with the job at the Texas School Book Depository?
Mrs. PAINE. No.
Mr. JENNER. And was undertaking to look for another job?
Mrs. PAINE. No.
Mr. JENNER. There is no discussion?
Mrs. PAINE. There is one Saturday that he came out later but that
was still in October. It was the second weekend that he came out,
altogether he came out on the weekend of the 4th, so he would have come
out on October 12, Saturday. It doesn't check with my recollection.
Mr. JENNER. So just to make sure, it is your present recollection that
you can recall no occasion when you were advised by Marina or directly
that Lee Harvey Oswald called and said he would not be in on that
particular Friday but would come the next day?
Mrs. PAINE. I would be quite certain it was not that weekend. It is
possible that this happened, I don't recall any discussion, nor did I
have any idea that there had been any occasion when he had to look for
a different job.
Mr. JENNER. Never any discussion on that subject?
Mrs. PAINE. Never.
Just to complete the discussion of automobile driving, I will go on to
the next weekend then when he did not come out to my house, but I----
Representative FORD. That would be the weekend of the 18th?
Mrs. PAINE. Just prior to the assassination. The 16th I was having a
birthday party for my little girl and said I couldn't possibly take him
again to this place so he could take a test. But that he didn't need a
car. This was news to him. He thought he needed a car for his initial
test, learner's permit. I said he could go himself from Dallas.
Mr. JENNER. This was a conversation between you and Lee Oswald?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. How did it take place?
Mrs. PAINE. It must have been by phone.
Mr. JENNER. Did he call you or did you call him?
Mrs. PAINE. He called to the house nearly every night around 5:30 to
talk to Marina. And Marina suggested to him that he wouldn't, shouldn't
come out that weekend because I was having a birthday party and it had
been a long weekend, the prior weekend. She didn't want him to wear out
his welcome, and then I said to him he could still try to get----
Mr. JENNER. You did talk with him on the telephone?
Mrs. PAINE. That is my recollection. I am certain that I talked with
him, that he was surprised that he didn't need a car. I had to tell him
that he didn't need a car to take with him to take his test.
Mr. JENNER. Take his initial test?
Mrs. PAINE. Take his test, and suggested that he go from Dallas himself
to take this test. Then he called us Saturday afternoon of the 16th to
say he had been and tried to get his driver's permit but that he had
arrived before closing time but still too late to get in because there
was a long line ahead of him, the place having been closed both the
previous Saturday for election day and the following Monday, the 11th,
Veterans Day. There were a lot of people who wanted to get permits and
he was advised that it wouldn't pay him to wait in line. He didn't have
time to be tested.
Mr. JENNER. Could you help us fix, can you recall as closely as
possible the day of the week, this is the weekend of the assassination,
was it not?
Mrs. PAINE. The weekend before.
Mr. JENNER. The weekend before, and this conversation you are now
relating that you had with him in which he said that he had gone to
the driver's license station, when did that conversation with you take
place?
Mrs. PAINE. That conversation was with Marina, and she told me about it.
Mr. JENNER. When did she tell you about it?
Mrs. PAINE. He called her, it must have been Saturday afternoon, soon
after he had been, he went Saturday morning and they closed at noon.
Mr. JENNER. I see. This was the weekend he did not come out to Irving?
Mrs. PAINE. This was the weekend he did not come out.
Mr. JENNER. The weekend in which you had your birthday party for your
son was it?
Mrs. PAINE. It was either that same afternoon or it was possibly
Sunday, I don't recall. It is important though. I wish I could recall
when his call to her was. Since it relates to the problem of when I
dialed his number.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Chairman, I have marked as Commission Exhibit No. 426
a form or document which purports to be a driver's permit or driver's
license permit application by Lee Harvey Oswald. It is a one-page form
document on heavy board, or at least heavy paper.
Are you familiar sufficiently with the handwriting or handprinting
of Lee Harvey Oswald to be able to tell us whether the writing and
handprinting on that document is or is not Lee Harvey Oswald's?
Mrs. PAINE. I am not sufficiently familiar. I can simply compare it
with the only other thing I have seen in his printing which is what he
wrote down in my diary.
Mr. JENNER. Refreshing your recollection in that respect and looking at
the exhibit, if you are able to do so, would you give us your opinion
as to whether the exhibit is in the handwriting or handprinting of Lee
Harvey Oswald?
Mrs. PAINE. I think it very likely is.
Mr. JENNER. In your short talk with Lee Harvey Oswald on the subject of
his having gone to the license application department in Dallas, was
anything said about his actually having filled out a driver's license
or a learner's permit application?
Mrs. PAINE. No; nothing.
Mr. DULLES. Could we have the date of this document?
Mr. JENNER. If it is dated. My recollection is it is not.
Mrs. PAINE. His birthday is on it only. Picked up at his room on the
date of the assassination. I guess it was picked up, I don't know.
Mr. JENNER. Could I review this with you a little bit? Did Lee Harvey
Oswald on this occasion tell you in the course of what limited
telephone conversation you had with him, that he had gone to the
driver's license application bureau?
Mrs. PAINE. No; he told Marina.
Mr. JENNER. And did--he told Marina and then Marina in turn told you?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. How near the time of the telephone conversation?
Mrs. PAINE. She told me immediately.
Mr. JENNER. Did Marina tell you?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. She just turned from the phone and told you at once?
Mrs. PAINE. That is correct.
Mr. JENNER. This was spontaneous?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes. It may have been while she was still on the phone, I
don't recall, but it certainly was immediate.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Dulles, to answer your question the document is not
dated.
Representative FORD. I was just noticing in the upper right-hand corner
on the one side he lists his occupation as photographer.
Mr. JENNER. Yes; this is so.
Mrs. PAINE. This is what he wanted to do, not what he was doing.
Mr. JENNER. Would you please relate to the Commission what your
impression of what his occupation was or occupation had been during the
period of time that you had known him?
Mrs. PAINE. When I first met him he was working at
Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. And had expressed himself as liking his work.
I gathered that it was a kind of copying or making up of advertising
layout, develop a photographic process.
When we arrived at New Orleans he pointed to a building where he was
working. I saw no writing on the outside of the building. He said--no,
first on the phone when he first called to say he had a job, he said he
was doing work similar to what he had been doing, photographic type of
work.
Representative FORD. Work in Dallas?
Mrs. PAINE. He called to us in Dallas from New Orleans to say he was
doing such work.
Mr. JENNER. In New Orleans?
Mrs. PAINE. Subsequently, I have heard it is not so, but this is what
he told Marina and she told me over the phone. He said, and she told me
immediately over the phone, that he was getting $1.50 an hour instead
of $1.25 he had been getting, and then in New Orleans he pointed to
a building where he was working, somewhere along the river, near the
French Quarter, but a big large brick building with no particular
designation on it. I don't know what sort of building it was, but he
said it was the photo outfit where he was working then.
When he was looking for a job he said, now, in October, early October,
he came back to the Dallas area and he was looking for a job, he said
he was hopeful of getting similar work again, photographic layout,
whatever it was. But that he was pleased to get any job that would
produce an income.
Mr. DULLES. For the Commission's information, Mr. Jenner, is this not,
that is Exhibit No. 426, a form which Lee Oswald apparently took home,
or filled out somewhere, either his home or at the office, but it was
never sworn to and is not signed.
Mr. JENNER. That is correct.
Mr. DULLES. It is not a completed document. It has no date on it.
Mr. JENNER. It is my information and there will be testimony and that
is why I didn't go into the document, that it was found in his, among
his effects in his room on Beckley Street. With permission, I might
describe the document possibly a little more in detail in view of the
interest and the question. At the top of the document under name there
is hand printing on this form, first the form is entitled "Application
for Texas Driver's License."
Mrs. PAINE. May I interrupt?
(Whereupon, at 12:45 o'clock the President's Commission recessed.)
Transcriber's Notes:
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Misspellings in quoted evidence not changed; misspellings that could be
due to mispronunciations were not changed.
Some simple typographical errors were corrected.
Inconsistent hyphenation of compound words retained.
Ambiguous end-of-line hyphens retained.
Occasional uses of "Mr." for "Mrs." and of "Mrs." for "Mr." corrected.
Dubious repeated words, (e.g., "What took place by way of of
conversation?") retained.
Several unbalanced quotation marks not remedied.
Occasional periods that should be question marks not changed.
Occasional periods that should be commas, and commas that should be
periods, were changed only when they clearly had been misprinted (at
the end of a paragraph or following a speaker's name in small-caps at
the beginning of a line). Some commas and semi-colons were printed so
faintly that they appear to be periods or colons: some were found and
corrected, but some almost certainly remain.
The Index and illustrated Exhibits volumes of this series may not be
available at Project Gutenberg.
Page 2: Missing opening quotation mark: the fund for the Russian-born
widow had reached $76,000."
Page 3: "No, I have no recollection of anything that she said?" likely
should end with a period. Punctuation errors like this occur elsewhere
and have not been changed.
Page 152: "RYW" may be a misprint for "RWY".
Page 224: "Mr. Ball. It is west of of your house?" repeats "of".
Page 229: 'Mr. Ball. That is about where you were, a "Z" when he
entered the door' should be 'at "Z"'.
Page 262: "The Chairman. Mr. Whaley, will you wait outside...."
was printed as "Mr. Chairman...." and has been changed here for
consistency, to make searches more reliable.
Page 286: Added missing period between "m" and "?": and that is p.m.?
Page 320: "you have to go the meetings" may be missing "to" after "go".
Page 320: "She said the thought" probably should be "She said they
thought".
Page 341: "in the early party of September" probably should be "part".
Page 363: "a bruise or contusion or ecchymosis" was misprinted as
"eccmymosis"; spelled correctly earlier on the same page.
Page 364 and elsewhere: "Mr. Specter" misprinted five times as "Mr.
Spector"; corrected here.
Page 375: "its jacket appears to me to be intact" misprinted as "in
tact"; corrected here.
Page 383: "exit would labeled B, Exhibit 388" probably should be "exit
wound".
Page 388: "Mr. Paine. That was in Dallas?" should end with a period,
not with a question mark.
Page 481: "Does your interpretation" misprinted as "Does you
interpretation"; corrected here.