Possible Hijack Collaborator - Richard Case Nagell - After August 6, 1963

This article concludes a series.

The first article was Lee Harvey Oswald's Activities During the Housemans' Vacation.

The second article was The Oswalds' Plan to Hijack an Airplane.

The third article was Possible Hijack Collaborator - Jack Leslie Bowen.

The fourth article was Possible Hijack Collaborator - Richard Case Nagell - Through August 6, 1963

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From about August 9 to September 10, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald planned to hijack an airplane in order to fly himself, his wife Marina and his daughter June to Cuba. Marina tried to talk him out of the plan but reluctantly agreed to go along with him.

At one point during this period, Lee told Marina that some other man -- Lee did not name the man to Marina -- had offered to help Lee take over the airplane. Lee considered the man's offer but ultimately rejected it. Lee explained to Marina that, "your accomplice is your enemy for life".

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I think that such an offer was made to Oswald by Richard Case Nagell, a financially troubled former US Army counter-intelligence officer.

In the summer of 1962, Nagell had been fired from his job working as an investigator for the California state government. Nagell's wife left him, taking along their two children, and demanded child support. Therefore Nagell tried to earn money by selling secrets first to the Cuban intelligence service, then to the Soviet intelligence service, and third to the CIA. Nagell did not realize that his Cuban contact and his CIA contact actually were FBI agents, who were interested mostly in learning from him about his interactions with his Soviet contact.

The Soviet contact instructed Nagell to collect information about the Oswalds. Nagell visited Dallas in October 1962 and in April 1963 to collect such information. Nagell claims that he and Oswald met secretly in Mexico City at the end of July 1963. (This trip of Oswald to Mexico City is unknown; it is not Oswald's famous trip at the end of September 1963.) On August 6, Nagell returned from Mexico City to Los Angeles.

On August 5 and 8, two airplanes were hijacked to Cuba. In the following days, Oswald in New Orleans began to develop his plan to hijack an airliner to Cuba.

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On August 10, the Houseman family arrived at Kellerman's Mountain House.

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Nagell's activities during August and September 1963 are mysterious. He never told his full story in a coherent manner. He did not want to admit that he had been trying to sell secrets to Cuba and to the Soviet Union or that he had been deceived and manipulated by the FBI. He was a liar and fabricator, and he often was confused, paranoid and irrational.

However, his claim that the Soviet intelligence service had tasked him to collect information about the Oswalds is plausible. Nagell's collection effort eventually might have led him to meet personally with Oswald in August and September. Nagell might have secretly tape-recorded Oswald involved in a discussion with two Cuban immigrants about assassinating President Kennedy. Nagell might have tried to sell that tape recording to the FBI. That is the essence of what happened with Nagell, in my opinion.

Furthermore, I speculate that Oswald discussed his hijack plan with Nagell and that Nagell played along but ultimately argued against that plan.

However, during August and September 1963, Oswald was not thinking about assassinating President Kennedy. If Nagell indeed recorded Oswald participating in such a conversation, Oswald was merely playing along with the two Cubans who were driving the conversation. During August and September, Oswald was preoccupied with his desire to emigrate to Cuba.

Years later, Nagell's incoherent, self-serving story was blown out of proportion. Nagell has received more credit than he has deserved because (I believe) the FBI has covered up his story and has persecuted him in order to discredit and silence him.

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In Los Angeles during August, Nagell continued (he claimed) to spy on two Cuban immigrants -- "Angel" and "Leopoldo" -- who were planning to assassinate President Kennedy. Through some unknown series of events, Nagell met with Oswald during August 23-27 in New Orleans, where Nagell secretly tape-recorded a conversation that included himself, Oswald, Angel and another person (logically, Leopoldo). In this tape-recorded conversation, the four men discussed assassinating President Kennedy.

If Angel and Leopoldo really existed and if this conversation really happened, then I speculate that Oswald was merely playing along with the assassination talk, primarily in order to somehow get money to buy airplane tickets.

Nagell's motivation for arranging and tape-recording such a conversation would have been to sell incriminating information about Angel and Leopoldo to his various intelligence-service contacts.

Nagell has claimed that on August 27 Nagell tried to warn the CIA that Angel was trying to recruit Oswald for a plot to assassinate President Kennedy. What really happened (I think) was that Nagell tried to sell his tape-recording to his CIA contact (i.e. to the FBI employee, "Bob", pretending to be Nagell's CIA contact).  However, Nagell did not get the price he demanded, so he kept the tape-recording for a potential future sale.

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During the last days of August when Nagell was meeting with Oswald in New Orleans, Nagell began persuading Oswald to give up his plan to hijack an airliner. Nagell initially played along with Oswalds plan by offering to help in the hijacking. After he gained Oswald's confidence, however, Nagell began persuading him to return to Mexico City a second time in order to apply for a visas at the Cuban and Soviet embassies.

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Years later, Nagell wrote a memorandum that summarized some of his adventures as follows:

During the period 1962-1963, and prior thereto, as a civilian, I may have performed intelligence services for a foreign nation, after being deceived by signing a contract and by other reasons into thinking that I was functioning for the CIA.

I arrived at this conclusion in September 1963, after conducting investigations of certain persons, among whom were ... Lee H. Oswald, later accused as the lone assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

In other words, during September 1963 figured out that "Bob" was not really a CIA officer. However, Nagell did not figure out that "Bob" was an FBI officer. Rather, Nagell guessed incorrectly that "Bob" was a Cuban or Soviet intelligence officer.

Nagell explained his situation to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who in turn wrote a memorandum summarizing Nagell's situation as follows:

In late August or early September of 1963 for reasons he [Nagell] would not spell out, it became apparent that an exceedingly large – he emphasized the word "large" – operation, pointing toward the assassination of President Kennedy, was under way.

At just about the time of this discovery, for reasons he would not explain, the individual who had given him the assignment was moved to another part of the country, and Nagell suddenly found himself without a direct contact.

Nagell writes that after he failed in his efforts to contact the CIA and FBI, he tried to "neutralize" the assassination plot.

... When I signed papers in 1962 acknowledging I was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, I did so in good faith and with a clear conscience, and I did not know or even suspect I was working for other interests.

Later, when I became cognizant of my actual employer, I made every reasonable effort to correct the situation. I initiated a number of approaches to both the CIA and the FBI in Mexico and in five different locales within the United States.

When these agencies demonstrated they considered me just another crank, or, in the case of the FBI specifically, when its agents seemed more bent on trying me into a violation of the law than helping me, I took other steps to neutralized the capacity in which I was acting. ...

Nagell therefore met with Oswald on about September 10 to discourage him from further collaboration we Angel and Leopoldo. Nagell later described this meeting as follows:

In September 1963, "Laredo" [Nagell] (a code name unknown to Oswald) met with Oswald at Jackson Squire in New Orleans, where both were photographed. Photos of two of Oswald's associates, whom I specially call "Leopoldo" and "Angel," were displayed to Oswald.

Oswald was informed [by Nagell] that neither Leopoldo nor Angel were agents of Cuban G-2 (as the Dirección General de Intelligencia was then called), a story they had strapped on Oswald the previous month. He was informed that the two were in fact counter-revolutionaries known to be connected with a violence-prone faction of a CIA-financed group operating in Mexico City (and elsewhere), that in 1962 both of them had participated in a bomb-throwing incident directed against an employee of the Cuban Embassy there, that both were well-known to Cuban and Mexican authorities and, of course, to the CIA.

He [Oswald] was informed [by Nagell], in so many words, that he was being "used" by fascist elements in an attempt to disrupt the Cuban revolution to ruin chances for a contemplated rapprochement between Cuba and the United States, probably to incite the U.S. government to initiate severe retaliatory measures against Cuba (in the form of an invasion), etc.

He [Oswald] was asked [by Nagell] some subtle questions relating to his discussions with Leopoldo and Angel, about his pending move to Baltimore, Md., why he was going there without his wife and child, etc. Despite evidence to contrary, he denied that there had been any serious discussion to kill President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, or anybody else.

In mid-September, Nagell finally heard again from "Bob," who was now considered by Nagell to be a KGB agent, not a CIA agent. It seems that "Bob" officially informed Nagell that he preparations had been completed for some new task that Nagell was supposed to do.

In Sept.1963 I was informed by an American, known to me as an agent of the same foreign government, that arrangements for my participation in the aforementioned [undefined criminal] act were completed. At this time I refused the aforesaid proposal.

Because Nagell now believed that "Bob" really was a Cuban or Soviet agent, Nagell refused to cooperate further with him.

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Now Nagell tried again to sell his secrets directly with the FBI. Sometime during the days September 13-17 he sent the FBI a letter that he later described as follows:

... In the aforesaid letter [sent during September 13-17], I advised [FBI Director] Mr. Hoover of a conspiracy (although I did not use the word "conspiracy") involving Lee Harvey Oswald "to murder the Chief Executive of the United States, (President) John F. Kennedy." I indicated that the attempt would take place "during the latter part of September (1963), probably on the 26th, 27th, 28th, or 29th," presumably at Washington, D.C.

I furnished a complete and accurate physical description of Mr. Oswald, listing his true name, two of his aliases, his residence address, and other pertinent facts about him. I disclosed sufficient data about the conspiracy (citing an overt act which constituted a violation of federal law) to warrant an immediate investigation if not an arrest of Mr. Oswald.

I revealed something about myself which incriminated me on another matter. I stated "by the time you receive this letter, I shall have departed the USA for good." ...

I think that if Nagell really did send such a letter to the FBI, then at least part of his motivation was to sell his tape-recording of Oswald, Angel and Leopoldo discussing plans to assassinate President Kennedy.

The FBI has denied all knowledge of Nagell's letter, and Nagell himself did not keep a copy. It's certainly possible that Nagell never sent such a letter at all, but I believe that he did send the letter and that the FBI eventually destroyed it.

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On September 17 -- about the same day when Nagell sent his letter to the FBI -- Oswald went to a Mexican consulate in New Orleans and obtained a visa to visit Mexico, where he intended to visit the Cuban Embassy and obtain a visa to travel from Mexico to Cuba. So, Oswald had been convinced -- perhaps by Nagell -- to give up the hijack plan for good.

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Three days later, on September 20, Nagell walked into a bank, shot two bullets into the banks' ceiling, walked outside, and waited for the police to arrive to arrest him. Later he explained that he did so in order to obtain psychiatric treatment.

Even though it was obvious that Nagell had not really attempted to rob the bank, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. That punishment caused reasonable suspicions that the US Government was trying to silence Nagell.

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A superb account of Nagell's activities has been written by Dave Reitzes. If you read all of it, you will see that Nagell became insane by the end of his life.

Below is a video of Dick Russell talking about his book The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Possible Hijack Collaborator - Richard Case Nagell -- Through August 6, 1963

This article is the fourth in a series.

The first article was Lee Harvey Oswald's Activities During the Housemans' Vacation.

The second article was The Oswalds' Plan to Hijack an Airplane.

The third article was Possible Hijack Collaborator - Jack Leslie Bowen.

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From about August 9 to September 10, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald planned to hijack an airplane in order to fly himself, his wife Marina and his daughter June to Cuba. Marina tried to talk him out of the plan but reluctantly agreed to go along with him.

At one point during this period, Lee told Marina that some other man -- Lee did not name the man to Marina -- had offered to help Lee take over the airplane. Lee considered the man's offer but ultimately rejected it. Lee explained to Marina that, "your accomplice is your enemy for life".

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I think that some other man did offer to help Lee hijack an airplane. Furthermore, I think that two different men might have offered separately. In this article here, I will explain that such an offer might have been made by a man named Richard Case Nagell.

Nagell's life is told in a book titled The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell.

Richard Case Nagell

Although Russell interviewed and studied Nagell over the course of several years, Nagell's life remains mysterious. Nagell refused to tell his full story to Russell.

My own explanation for Nagell's refusal is that he did not want to admit that he had tried to sell secret information to the Cuban and Soviet governments. In that regard, my following explanation differs from Russell's book.

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Nagell was born in 1930. He enlisted in the US Army in 1948 and served in the infantry in the Korean War. After he was wounded a third time, he was sent to language school to learn Japanese and then was stationed in Japan. (Later he taught himself also Russian and Spanish.) He served as a counter-intelligence officer and reached the rank of captain.

 In 1954 he suffered a brain injury in a helicopter accident, which seems to have affected his conduct. In 1958 he married a Japanese woman and therefore lost the security clearance he needed to continue working as a counter-intelligence officer. Rather than return to the infantry, Nagell quit the Army in 1959.

From then until June 1962 he worked as an investigator for the California state government. Then he was fired for misconduct. His Japanese wife left him and took along their two children. Nagell, although unemployed, was required to pay child support.

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Because of his financial problems, Nagell decided to earn money by selling secrets to the Cuban intelligence service. In August 1962, he traveled to Mexico City, where he paid a young man $20 to deliver an envelope to the Cuban embassy. The young man delivered the envelope instead to the US embassy, where eventually an FBI officer read the enclosed letter, which offered to sell secrets. During the following months, an FBI Spanish-speaking officer pretended to be a Cuban intelligence officer and deceptively manipulated Nagell.

The Cuban intelligence officer (i.e. FBI officer) instructed Nagell to sell secrets also to the Soviet intelligence service and to inform the Cuban spy (i.e. the FBI officer) about his interactions with the Soviets. In this arrangement, Nagell was earning money secretly from Cuban intelligence (i.e. from the FBI) and from Soviet intelligence.

To earn more money, Nagell decided to sell secrets likewise to the Soviet intelligence service.

To earn even more money, Nagell decided to sell secrets likewise to the CIA. Because Nagell already was being controlled by the FBI, however, the CIA transferred Nagell's offer to the FBI, which then assigned another FBI officer named "Bob" to pretend that he was a CIA officer paying for Nagell's secrets.

The best secrets that Nagell had to sell to the Cuban intelligence officer (i.e. to the FBI) and to the CIA (i.e. to the FBI) was details about his interactions with the Soviet intelligence service. The FBI was well informed about Nagell's antics and in particular about the sneaky business he was doing with Soviet intelligence.

One of the tasks that Nagell received from the Soviet intelligence officer was to find out what the Oswalds were doing in the USA. To accomplish that task, Nagell traveled to Dallas, Texas, in October 1962, and observed Marina Oswald. In these circumstances, Nagell began to become somewhat knowledgeable about Marina and Lee Oswald.

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After doing this task in Dallas in October 1962, Nagell proceeded to Miami, where he got a job working as a bodyguard for Rolando Masferrer, a Cuban gangster who was extorting money and smuggling guns among Cuban exiles. Apparently, Nagell got this job because he was told to do so by his Cuban intelligence officer (i.e. the Spanish-speaking FBI officer).

In this stressful situation, Nagell suffered a nervous breakdown and voluntarily committed himself to a hospital mental ward in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he stayed from December 20, 1962, to January 22, 1963.

After Nagell was released from this mental ward, Nagell decided to earn more money by selling secrets to the FBI. He did not understand that he already had been providing his secrets to the FBI since the summer of 1962. The money that Nagell had been earning from his Cuban intelligence officer and from his CIA officer was all coming from the FBI. Therefore, the FBI ignored Nagell's new offer to sell secrets directly to the FBI.

In the last days of January 1962, this comedy of errors became even more complicated when Nagell involved himself with two Cuban immigrants -- "Angel" and "Leopoldo" -- who were scheming to assassinate President Kennedy. On his own initiative (it seems to me), Nagell began reporting about those two would-be assassins to his various intelligence controllers. Of course, Angel and Leopoldo might be imaginary beings fabricated by Nagell in order to earn more money. Even if Angel and Leopoldo were real, the FBI had good reason to doubt Nagell's secret reports about them. (In general, everyone should understand that Nagell fabricated many of his stories.)

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Meanwhile, Nagell continued to do tasks for the Soviet intelligence service -- and informing his CIA officer (really a FBI officer) about those interactions. As instructed by the Soviet intelligence service, Nagell traveled from Miami back to Dallas in early February 1963 in order to collect more information about the Oswalds.

At that time, Lee Oswald was working as a photography processor at the Jaggar-Chiles-Stoval company during the days and taking typing classes during the evenings. At home, Oswald was spending time studying maps and bus schedules. He recently had rented a post-office box under the name A. J. Hidell. Perhaps (or perhaps not) Nagell was able to observe that Oswald was sneaking around and learning to spy.

In any case, Nagell proceeded from Dallas to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where he met with and reported to his Soviet intelligence officer in February. Of course, Nagell subsequently would have informed also his CIA officer (i.e. FBI officer) about his meeting with his Soviet intelligence officer.

In April 1963, Nagell returned to Dallas to collect more information about the Oswalds for the Soviet intelligence officer. Because the FBI wanted Nagell to please his Soviet intelligence officer, the FBI (through the phony CIA officer) provided credentials that enabled Nagell to visit government offices in Dallas and San Antonio to obtain official information and documents about Marina's immigration status.

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From Dallas, Nagell proceeded to Los Angeles, where he investigated Vaughn Snipes (aka Vaugn Marlowe), an executive officer of the Los Angeles chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Nagell remained in Los Angeles into the second half of July 1963. While there, Nagell reported also that the two (imaginary?) assassins Angel and Leopoldo seemed to be associated with Snipes/Marlowe.

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In the second half of July, while Nagell was in Los Angeles, Oswald became unemployed in New Orleans.

According to stories he told to Russell, Nagell was instructed (by whom?) to travel in late July to Mexico City, where he met personally for the first time with Oswald. This was not Oswald's famous trip to Mexico City in September 1963. Rather, this was a still unknown trip by Oswald in July 1963.

Nagell refused to tell Russell any details about his supposed meeting with Oswald in Mexico City.

On July 26, someone signed the register of the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with the words "Lee H. Oswald, USSR, Dallas Road, Dallas, Texas". Perhaps that was done to plant false information about Oswald's whereabouts on a day when he actually was in Mexico City.

Russell, in his book about Nagell, provides several other indications that Oswald was in Mexico City at about the end of July. Because those indications are complicated to explain, I will not detail them here in this article, which already is too long. (See The Man Who Knew Too Much, pages 369-379.)

Nagell returned from Mexico City to Los Angeles on August 6, 1963.

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That was four days before the Houseman family traveled to Kellerman's Mountain House.

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My speculation that Nagell offered in late August 1963 to help Oswald hijack an airplane will conclude in a future article.

Possible Hijack Collaborator -- Jack Leslie Bowen

This article is the third in a series.

The first article was Lee Harvey Oswald's Activities During the Housemans' Vacation.

The second article was The Oswalds' Plan to Hijack an Airplane.

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From about August 9 to September 10, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald planned to hijack an airplane in order to fly himself, his wife Marina and his daughter June to Cuba. Marina tried to talk him out of the plan but reluctantly agreed to go along with him.

Lee did not have the money to buy the necessary airplane tickets. He took some ineffective actions to obtain money from family friend Ruth Paine, from his aunt's Murret family and from Marxist political parties.

At one point during this period, Lee told Marina that some other man -- Lee did not name the man to Marina -- had offered to help Lee take over the airplane. Lee considered the man's offer but ultimately rejected it. Lee explained to Marina that, "your accomplice is your enemy for life".

(Lee said those words in Russian, but I don't know the Russian words. The English words were stated in the book Marina and Lee, a biography of Marina Oswald written by Priscilla Johnson McMillan.)

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I think that it really did happen that another man did offer to help Lee hijack an airplane. Furthermore, I think that two different men might have offered separately. In this article here, I will that such an offer might have been made by a man named Jack Leslie Bowen.

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Oswald and his family moved from the Soviet Union to Fort Worth, Texas, in June 1962. Lee soon got a job at the local Leslie Welding Company. He quit that job, without explanation, on October 8, 1962.

On the following day, Lee began renting a post-office box under two names -- Lee Harvey Oswald and A. J. Hidell.

Three days later, on October 12, 1962, Oswald was hired by a local company called Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval in Dallas. The company's main business made graphic artworks for billboards, posters and advertisements, and Oswald's job was to process photographs.

One of Oswald's associates at his new employer was Jack Leslie Bowen. When Oswald applied for a library card, he named Bowen as a personal reference. After the assassination of President John Kennedy, the FBI wanted to question Bowen, but he had disappeared in January 1964, right when the FBI began trying to contact him. He remains disappeared to the present day.

I think that when Oswald was in New Orleans and trying to get money for airplane tickets during August and September 1963, he contacted Bowen, who probably still was living in Texas. Perhaps Bowen even traveled to New Orleans to discuss Oswald's hijack plan with him. Bowen even offered to board the airplane with Oswald's family and to help do the hijacking. Bowen's offer raised Oswald's suspicions about him, however, and so Oswald rejected the offer and broke off contact with Bowen.

Lee told Marina about Bowen's offer, but she would not have known who Bowen was even if Lee had named him to Marina.

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Oswald's switching his employment from the Leslie Welding Company to Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval in October 1962 seems to have something to do with Bowen, with Cuba, and with intelligence collection.

Bowen's middle name is Leslie, so he might have had some familial relationship with the owners of the Leslie Welding Company. At Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval, Bowen's position was "assistant art director", so he might have supervised Oswald.

Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval is said to have done some graphic-arts work for intelligence agencies. In particular, the company is said to have done some work involving aerial photographs of Cuba.

Two days before Oswald began working there, he began renting that post-office box under that false name Hidell. Marina explained later that Lee chose the name Hidell because it rhymed with the first name of Fidel Castro. That rental of that post-office box is Oswald's first known use of that false name.

In light of such considerations, I speculate that Bowen arranged for Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval to hire Oswald and that Bowen intended to use Oswald in some intelligence-collection work involving Cuba. Perhaps Bowen figured that Oswald's defection to Russia and his Russian wife might enable Oswald to befriend Communist sympathizers among Cuban exiles.

At the company, Bowen was able to train Oswald how to take, edit and process photographs -- skills useful in intelligence collection. In January 1963, Oswald enrolled in a typing class, and perhaps that too was part of Bowen's training of Oswald.

Marina said that during this period Oswald often stayed late at work, was gone three evenings a week for his typing class, and spent time at home studying at maps and bus schedules.

When Oswald had worked six months at Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval, he was fired. That was when he moved to New Orleans and ended (as far as we known) his regular association with Bowen.

In August or September 1963, when Oswald was trying to get money for airplane tickets, he contacted Bowen, because Oswald's previous association with Bowen caused Oswald to think initially that he could trust Bowen to keep secret his plan to hijack an airplane to Cuba. However, Bowen's offer to collaborate in the actual hijacking caused Oswald to distrust him.

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I do not think that Bowen worked for a government intelligence agency such as the CIA or FBI. Rather, I think that he worked for a non-governmental, Masonic organization.

I am not going to write here a long description of the Masonic Order. Suffice it to say here that the organization is ancient, is secret, is based in Scotland but operates world-wide, and involves itself in the business of collecting intelligence. Bowen was one of this organization's intelligence collectors, and he tried to groom Oswald as a secret agent.

Bowen did not have anything to do with the assassination, but his Masonic intelligence organization told him to disappear and gave him a new identity.

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The person known to Oswald as Jack Leslie Bowen was born with the name John Caesar Grossi in Paterson, New Jersey. He spent time in several penitentiaries before moving to Ft. Worth in about August 1961 and becoming an assistant art director at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall in Dallas.

Bowen was married, but his wife, Patricia Gervan Bowen, lived in Ontario, Canada, with her mother, Mable Gervan, and near her sister, Edna (née Gervan) Elliott. Despite this distance, Bowen maintained frequent contact with his in-laws, the Elliott family.

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After Oswald gave up his hijack plan, he traveled to Mexico City to apply for a visa at the Cuban embassy there. On his bus ride to Mexico City in September 1963, Oswald sat next to a man who was named John (Jack) Howard Bowen.

This second Jack Bowen in Oswald's mysterious adventures had been born with the name Albert Osborne in 1888 in Grimsby, England. He immigrated to the United States in 1914 and later claimed that he was ordained that year as a minister in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1916, he moved to Canada, where he served as a soldier until about 1920.

He subsequently returned to the United States and settled in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1929. He lived there for the next 14 years and said that one of his closest friends there was a social worker named Mary Elliott (the same family name as that of the first Bowen's in-laws).

Still named Osborne, he  managed a boys club in Knoxville for a while, but was fired for encouraging homosexual and anti-American activities among the boys. In 1943, he left Knoxville and began to travel as a minister throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. By 1956, he had assumed two aliases -- John Howard Bowen and John H. Owen -- and was operating an orphanage in Mexico.

Albert Osborne, aka Jack Bowen,
Oswald's seatmate on the bus ride
to Mexico City in September 1963 

I suspect that both of those Jack Bowens worked for a Masonic intelligence service but misled Oswald into thinking that they were associated with the Cuban intelligence service.

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The Bowens might have helped Oswald to make secret trips. For example, Oswald's trip to Mexico City was a secret trip, and the second Jack Bowen sat next to him the whole way.

Below are a series of allegations about Oswald's whereabouts and about false evidence being planted about his whereabouts.

On March 29, 1963, Oswald was seen in a barber shop in Sparta, Wisconsin (a little east of La Crosse). He might have visited Sparta to meet some of the Bowen associates based in Ontario, which shares a border with Wisconsin. As Oswald's supervisor at Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval, the first Bowen might have been able to facilitate Oswald's absence from work without the knowledge of the company's other personnel.

On March 31, two days after Oswald was seen in Sparta, Wisconsin, he began his involvement with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee by writing a letter from his home in Dallas to the organization's president. Less than two weeks later, on April 10 Oswald tried to murder retired General Edwin Walker in Dallas. Perhaps this incident was the Bowens' test to verify whether Oswald would commit murder for them.

On July 26 someone signed the register of the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with the words "Lee H. Oswald, USSR, Dallas Road, Dallas Texas." The FBI later determined that this entry was not made in Oswald's handwriting.

In some paperwork for unemployment benefits he wrote that he had applied for jobs with a series of employers from July 29 to August 3, but all those employers later denied that he had indeed applied. On July 31 the New Orleans library recorded that he had returned two books and checked out two others, but other witnesses claimed he visited the Selective Service office in Austin, Texas, on that day to ask about changing his undesirable discharge from the Marines. The library transactions may have been performed for the specific purpose of documenting Oswald's presence in New Orleans on days when he was not in fact there.

On September 5, the Oswald family was seen at the airport in San Antonio, Texas, according to the statements of two women, Martha Doyle and Joanne Dunsmore, who worked for car-rental companies there. Doyle remembered the date precisely because the incident happened on her birthday. The two women described the family and said that Lee Harvey Oswald tried to rent a car from them. During the course of the conversation, he mentioned that his family had come to the airport "in a friend's car" and that he worked in a "publishing business" involving schoolbooks. These two women tell a story that is detailed and compelling.

At another time -- estimated to be the "late summer of 1963" -- Oswald was seen near Brady, Texas, which is on a fairly direct highway route from Ft. Worth to San Antonio (via U.S. Highways 67, 77, 87). This report was provided by a gun dealer named Robert Ray McKeown, who claimed that Oswald and someone named "Hernandez" visited him near Brady "in the late summer of 1963." There, Oswald asked McKeown whether he was interested in a deal to supply weapons to an unidentified group that intended to take over [El] Salvador. McKeown turned the offer down. Hernandez and Oswald departed and then returned about a half hour later. This time, Oswald more specifically offered $10,000 for four .300 Savage semi-automatic rifles with telescopic sights. McKeown turned down that offer too. McKeown's story is detailed and compelling.

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I speculate that after Oswald was fired from Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval in Dallas and moved to New Orleans, he and that first Jack Bowen continued occasional secret contacts. Bowen sometimes enabled Oswald to make secret trips and planted false evidence about Oswald's whereabouts.

 Therefore, when Oswald decided in August 1963 to hijack an airliner, he contacted that Jack Bowen to discuss the plan and to ask for money. Bowen did not want Oswald to commit such a stupid crime, and so he gradually manipulated Oswald into giving up that plan and traveling instead to Mexico City to apply for a visa in the Cuban embassy there. On that bus trip, Oswald was accompanied by the second Jack Bowen.

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I don't think that this Masonic intelligence service ever intended that Oswald would assassinate President Kennedy or expected him to do so. Oswald was an occasionally employed asset who might be useful in the future. Oswald wanted to work as a spy, and so maybe he might be used as a spy in some situations.

The Masonic Order has its own agenda, its own activities, its own goals. Sometimes the Masonic Order wants to collect information and accomplish actions secretly. Therefore the Masonic Order develops a network of secret operatives. Oswald was being developed.

When Oswald unexpectedly (for them) assassinated Kennedy, they did not want to be questioned in the subsequent investigation. The first Jack Bowen evaded questioning completely, and the second Jack Bowen evaded and lied.

I have written much more elsewhere about the Masonic Order and about the false name Jack Bowen, but I will limit myself to the above information in this blog about the movie Dirty Dancing.

My main here is that during the Kellerman's vacation, Lee Harvey Oswald was planning to hijack an airplane to Cuba with his wife Marina's reluctant agreement. During that period, Oswald might have discussed his plan with the Jack Bowen whom he knew from his earlier employment at Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval in Dallas.

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My next article in this series will be titled "Possible Hijack Collaborator -- Richard Case Nagell".

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The Oswalds' Plan to Hijack an Airplane

This article is the second in a series of three articles. The first article was Lee Harvey Oswald's Activities During the Housemans' Vacation.

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A major reason why I am so interested in the movie Dirty Dancing is that the story takes place about three months before the assassination of President John Kennedy. Although I was only 11 years old when the assassination happened, I know a lot about the events of 1963, because I have read and written a lot about that assassination. For example, this webpage shows part of a long work that I wrote about Jack Ruby.

I have written another long work (which I never have published) titled "The Oswalds' Plans to Hijack an Airplane". From about August 9 through September 10, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was plotting to hijack an airliner to Cuba. That period of time overlaps closely the Housemans' stay at Kellerman's from August 10 through September 2. (I wrote my hijack work long before I began writing this blog.)

My hijack work is about 25 single-spaced pages, with many footnotes, written for people who are very knowledgeable about the assassination. My work is too long and complicated to post as an article in this blog, so I have shortened and simplified it to cover just the days of the Dirty Dancing story for my readers here.

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After Oswald was fired from his job in New Orleans on July 18, 1963, he began to think seriously about moving to Cuba. Already in 1959 he had thought about moving to Cuba, but he moved instead to the Soviet Union. In June 1962 he had returned to the United States with his wife Marina and their baby daughter June.

Marina and Lee Oswald with their daughter June.
The photo was taken in 1962.

His desire to move to Cuba grew after July 25, 1963, when he received a letter from the US Marine Corps rejecting his request that his dishonorable discharge be upgraded to an honorable discharge.

He was qualified to receive unemployment benefits for 13 weeks – until about October 10. These benefits are his only known income during that period. Marina was due to give birth to their second child in October.

On August 5 and 8, 1963, there were two attempts to hijack airplanes from the USA to Cuba. These were the only hijackings that happened anywhere in the world during the year 1963.

* On August 5, a man named Roy Siller unsuccessfully attempted to hijack a small private airplane, which was flying entirely within the Miami area, to Cuba.

* On August 8, a man named Robert A. Michelena successfully hijacked a Beech T-34 private airplane to Cuba.

The hijackings apparently gave Lee his initial idea to hijack an airplane flying from New Orleans. He figured that his employment prospects and his family's medical would be better in Cuba. He could not simply emigrate to Cuba, because the US Government had imposed an economic embargo on Cuba.

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Lee Oswald's hijack plans are known because he discussed them with his wife Marina and persuaded her to participate. She, however, kept the plan secret until she revealed it through a 1977 book titled Marina and Lee. The book was written by Priscilla Johnson McMillan based on her exclusive interviews with Marina.

Because Marina felt culpable for the hijack plan, she did not mention it during the investigation of the JFK assassination. Only after more than a decade had passed did she feel secure enough to tell her biographer, McMillan about it.

Although Marina tried to talk Lee out of the plan, she eventually did agree to help him hijack an airplane. McMillan's book called Marina an "emotional accomplice" and explained her agreement as follows::

At this stage in their marriage, Lee was confiding to Marina, making her his touchstone, his lightning rod to reality. And Marina understood what he was asking of her. Even though she wondered, as he unfolded his hijacking scheme, whether or not he was crazy, she drew funny word pictures for him to show how his plan looked in the clear light of day....

She perceived that Lee needed her. With what appears to be an inborn sympathy for anyone who is lost or in trouble, or on the outs with the world, she reached out and responded to his need.

"Do you know why I loved Lee?" she once said. "I loved him because I felt he was in search of himself. I was in search of myself, too. I couldn't show him the way, but I wanted to help him and give him support while he was searching." ...

As the one person whom Lee trusted, and feeling responsible for his actions, as she did, Marina was painfully at odds with herself and her surroundings. She, too, had been a rebel. In part, it was this that had drawn her to Lee, and this that still helped her to understand him ....

Marina tried, not always successfully, to resist complicity in Lee's deceptions. She refused to approve such of his schemes as she knew about. But she now insists that he had a stronger character than she, "because he brought me low and made me cover up his 'black deeds,' when it was against my morality to do so. I felt too much pity for him. If only I had been a stronger person, maybe it would have helped." ...

The truth is that there is no such thing as being married to a man like Lee Oswald and not becoming his emotional accomplice.

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Lee began scheming right after the hijackings of August 5 and 8, but he did not inform Marina until the last half of August. On August 11, before he informed her, he asked Marina to write a letter to a friend, Ruth Paine. Much later, after the assassination, Marina feared that the letter might be used as evidence of her participation in the hijack plan. This fear caused Marina to say nothing about that plan for many years.

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Ruth Paine was a 31-year-old woman who had learned some Russian and had befriended Lee and Marina in Irving, Texas, soon after they had come there from the Soviet Union. In April 1963, Lee decided to move from Irving back to his home town, New Orleans. He went alone to New Orleans to find a job and an apartment, and Marina and June moved into Paine's home.

In May, Lee found a job and apartment there, and so Ruth drove Marina and June from Irving to New Orleans. Paine stayed in the Oswalds' apartment for a few days and then drove on to the East Coast for a vacation. Paine gave Marina a mailing address in Paoli, Pennsylvania, in case Marina needed to contact her.

On August 11, when Lee told Marina to write the letter, Paine still was traveling around on the East Coast.

By that time, Lee's thinking about hijacking an airliner had evolved. His first idea had been to hijack an airliner that was scheduled to fly from Dallas to Miami. He worried, however, that an airliner doing such a flight might not have enough fuel to fly the additional distance to Cuba.

Because Paine was traveling in or near Pennsylvania, Lee figured that such a fuel problem would be eliminated if he hijacked an airliner that was fueled to fly from Dallas to (for example) Philadelphia. With this consideration in mind, he told Marina to send a letter to the Paoli address, informing Paine that Lee was unemployed and that their family had no money.

Lee apparently hoped that Marina eventually might persuade Paine to buy airplane tickets for the Oswald family to fly to Pennsylvania. When Marina wrote the letter on August 11, she still did not know anything about Lee's hijack plan, but later she realized that this plan was his motivation for her writing the letter.

Because Paine was traveling, she did not receive the letter in Paoli until about August 25. On that date, she wrote a letter back to Marina. Since that date was a Sunday, the Paoli post office would not have begun to move the letter until Monday, August 26. I estimate that the Oswalds received Paine's letter in New Orleans on about Saturday, August 31.

Paine's letter lacked any hint that she might arrange for the Oswalds to join her on the East Coast. Paine did not even send any money. Rather she said that she would return home through New Orleans in late September and, if necessary, would drive Marina and June back to Irving.  When Lee read the letter, he understood that his family would not fly to the East Coast with tickets purchased by Paine.

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Marina mailed her letter (August 11?) close to the day when the Houseman family arrived at Kellerman's Mountain House (August 10), and Marina received Paine's letter (August 31?) close to the day when the Houseman family departed from Kellerman's (September 2?).

So, while the Houseman family was at Kellerman's, Lee Harvey Oswald's was thinking that he and Marina might hijack a Dallas-Philadelphia flight to Cuba.

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Marina told her biographer McMillan that she was informed about Lee's hijack plan in the third week of August -- a few days after she mailed her letter to Paine.

Lee explained to Marina that she and June would sit in the airliner's back end, whereas he would sit in the front end, near the pilots' cabin. During the flight, Lee would pull out a pistol to demand control of the plane, and Marina would stand up and persuade the passengers to not resist the hijacking. Marina rejected this proposal, because she spoke English too poorly to persuade the passengers.

After arguing about Marina's objection for a few days, Lee altered his plan so that Marina would not have to say much on the airplane. He would buy her a small pistol, which she would use to silently threaten the passengers into submission. Lee informed Maria that he was shopping for a pistol that she could use.

Of course, Marina rejected this second plan too. Lee and Marina continued to argue about his plan for several days. Eventually and reluctantly, however, she did agree to go along with the hijacking.

Eventually Lee modified his plan yet again. Now he planned to hijack a smaller plane from a smaller town (smaller than New Orleans). He reasoned that a smaller plane would carry fewer passengers who would have to be controlled. To develop this new plan, he went to some unknown airport and returned with a new set of airline schedules.

I think that Lee redirected his plans toward smaller airports after Marina received Paine's disappointing letter (disappointing to Lee) at about the end of August. In this article here, I will not discuss Lee's subsequent hijack plans, which evolved mostly during September. I will discuss them in my next article.

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On August 31 -- about the same date when Paine's letter was received -- Lee wrote a letter to the editor of The Worker newspaper in New York City applying for a job as a photographer, explaining that he and his family intended to move to New York "in a few weeks." On the next day, September 1, he wrote two more letters – to the Socialist Workers' Party and to the Communist Party – indicating that he and his family intended to move to the Baltimore-Washington area in October. He apparently hoped one of these organizations might offer him a job and advance him the money for the airplane tickets that would enable him and Marina to hijack an airplane to Cuba.

September 1 was the day of the talent show at Kellerman's.

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On the same day, September 1, Lee also called the family of his aunt -- of his mother's sister -- and proposed that he and Marina visit on Labor Day, September 2. Lee might have intended to probe his aunt's family -- the family name was Murret -- to loan him the money for the airplane tickets. Lee and Marina did visit the Murret family on Labor Day, but the conversations there did not get around effectively to any loan being given to Lee.

At that Labor's Day party, Lee did talk with his cousin, Marilyn Murret. She had traveled abroad a lot during the previous several years and had just returned from a two-month bus trip through Mexico and Central America. According to McMillan's book, Lee said nothing to the Murrets that day about traveling to Cuba or even Mexico. However, Marilyn Murret's stories about her low-cost travels might have prompted Lee to consider the possibilities of buying tickets for a small airplane flying from a small airport instead of tickets for a major airline flying from the New Orleans airport.

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At about the beginning of September, figured that he would not be able to hijack an airliner, but he continued to think about hijacking a smaller airplane. He eventually gave up on all hijack plans -- probably around September 10. Subsequently he began developing a different plan to emigrate to Cuba by obtaining a visa in Mexico City.

At some point in his arguments with Marina about his hijack plan, he mentioned to her that he had found another man who had agreed to use a gun to help him take over an airplane. Lee told Marina that he had considered using this other man (Lee did not name him to Marina), but ultimately decided not to do so. Lee's explanation to Marina about his decision to reject this other man's help was "your accomplice is your enemy for life".

I think that Oswald's discussions with this other man about the hijacking began during August. I will speculate about this in this series' next article, titled "Oswald's Possible Accomplice in the Hijack Plan".

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