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JOHN McADAMS SAID:
The key thing is that Marina [Oswald] has never backed off her testimony. She affirmed all the key elements of it to [Priscilla] McMillan [author of "Marina And Lee"], and to the HSCA, and even as late as the 1990s to Oprah.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And even later than that, John. Marina told Vincent Bugliosi on November 30, 2000, that she took the backyard photos and she also re-confirmed for Bugliosi that LHO had taken a shot at General Walker:
"Although...I did not come to interrogate Marina about the facts of the case, since this had already been done ad nauseam, a few references to factual matters were made. When she insisted on Oswald's innocence, suggesting he would never do such a murderous act, I reminded her that he had, in fact, attempted to murder Major General Edwin Walker, and she readily admitted he had, telling me she knew this because "Lee told me he did."
But she hastened to add that the president was different because "Lee liked Kennedy." And [Fort Worth lawyer and friend of Bugliosi's] Jack Duffy, who has studied the assassination for years and leans toward the conspiracy theory, asked Marina if she had taken "the backyard photos" of Oswald holding the Carcano rifle. "Yes," she answered evenly, "I did." "That settles that issue," Duffy said." -- Page 1487 of "Reclaiming History" by Vincent Bugliosi
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To be fair, there is also this excerpt from Bugliosi's book relating to Vincent's interview with Marina Oswald on November 30, 2000:
"Marina, wearing very light makeup, was dressed in the most inexpensive of slacks and a pullover sweater. There was no sense of the modern woman about her, and her clothing and demeanor still spoke of the old country to me.
She told me she feels "very strongly" that her former husband did not kill Kennedy. When I reminded her that she told the Warren Commission and the FBI that she believed he had killed Kennedy, the essence of her long, rambling explanation was that "all that they showed me against him led me to believe it."
I asked her if the authorities ever told her what to say or threatened her in any way. She said they never told her what to say, but "they kept talking to me over and over again. I was exhausted, and had a four-week-old child, and at one point I didn't want to answer—the word, I think, is 'tattle on'—my friends and relatives in Russia. And I felt their questions about them were not relevant, but they told me if I wanted to stay here in this country, I'd have to answer all their questions." " -- Page 1486 of "Reclaiming History"
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
Regarding Marina's alleged fear of being "deported" back to Russia....
I want someone to tell me why being sent back to Russia would have been a fate worse than death for Mrs. Marina Oswald in 1964?
Given the situation Marina was confronted with after the assassination --- her husband is dead, she has no job, very few friends, speaks very little English, and she's now on her own and living in a country that's foreign to her --- it's difficult for me to think of one good reason under the sun why she would be afraid (or unwilling) to go back to her native Russia.
The "Marina Was Afraid Of Being Deported" line of reasoning has never made any sense to me at all. But apparently it does make sense to most conspiracy theorists. But I would think that Marina would have been anxious and eager to get back to her USSR homeland, which is where her family and friends were located.
Marina did later say that she did want to remain in the United States. But the notion that has been advanced over the years by various conspiracy theorists that she was deathly afraid of being deported back to the Soviet Union (and therefore she told numerous lies in her Warren Commission testimony in order to avoid deportation) is, in my opinion, a totally ridiculous and illogical notion.
David Von Pein
September 2010
February 2015
October 2023
MARINA OSWALD'S HSCA TESTIMONY IS HERE. [AUDIO VERSION BELOW.]
press following the assassination:
on February 7, 1964:
"The Dick Cavett Show" in 1977:
(via NBC-TV in 1993):
(November 22, 1996):
MARINA OSWALD:
