Oswald in Mexico City

by T. G. Metcalf

On March 12, 1963, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald, using the alias “A. Hidell”, mailed a money order in the amount of $21.45 to Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, along with a coupon he had clipped from the February 1963 issue of American Rifleman magazine to purchase a Mannlicher–Carcano rifle, complete with a telescopic sight.

At 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 10, 1963, former U.S. Major General Edwin A. Walker, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War and an outspoken segregationist, was seated at a table in his dining room in Dallas working on his income taxes, when Lee Harvey Oswald fired a bullet from his new Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. The bullet hit the wooden window frame near General Walker, shattered it, and passed within an inch of the man’s head.

* * *

LBJ sat at his desk and looked at J. Edgar Hoover, seated across from him. He took off his half-moon reading glasses, put them on the desk, and rubbed his eyes.

“I hate both of those skinny little Ivy League pricks,” LBJ said.

“So do I, but we can’t set the ship on fire, out in the middle of the ocean,” Hoover said, “just because we hate the captain and his chief officer.”

“True,” LBJ said.

“The way I look at it,” Hoover said, "I’m a tortoise, those two bastards are hares, and the tortoise always wins the race. I’m on my sixth President, you know.”

LBJ put his right hand on his forehead and slowly slid it backward over his hair. “I hate this fuckin’ job, and I knew I’d hate it when I took it,” he said, “but I also knew that five out of eighteen presidents died in office over the last hundred years, and I liked those odds, especially given what you and I know about all those powerful drugs that keep The Golden Boy goin’.”

Hoover nodded.

LBJ leaned forward, put his elbows on his desk, and squinted at Hoover. “You’re gonna turn seventy—your mandatory retirement age—in January of ‘65, right?”

“That’s right,” Hoover said.

“And you do not want to retire,” LBJ said. “Am I right about that?”

“I dread the thought of retirement a thousand times worse than I dread the thought of death,” Hoover said.

“If the odds worked out for me, and I was to take over,” LBJ said, “I’d waive that fuckin’ mandatory retirement age for you.”

Hoover nodded.

“I just wanted you to know that,” LBJ said. He leaned back in his chair.

* * *

On the evening of June 12th, 1963 on TVs across America people watched Walter Cronkite with the News on CBS. Cronkite started by reporting that the previous day a Buddhist monk had gotten out of a car in the middle of a busy intersection in Saigon, sat down in the lotus position, let another monk pour gasoline over him, waited for that monk to step away, and then the seated monk struck a match and set fire to himself, as an act of protest against the Catholic President of South Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm, for persecuting and killing Buddhists, who made up eighty percent of the country’s population. Behind Cronkite was a picture of the monk seated perfectly upright, with a wide swath of flames a few feet high and many feet wide, being blown to the right of the monk, off his bald head, face, and chest, as he sat in a large puddle of flames that reached up to his elbows.

Behind Cronkite a picture of JFK then replaced the one of the monk, and Cronkite reported that following President Kennedy’s nationally televised address on civil rights the previous evening, the president had discussed the country’s turbulent racial situation with former President Dwight Eisenhower, but details of that conversation were yet to be released by the White House.

Behind Cronkite a picture of Medgar Evers then replaced the picture of JFK. “At approximately fifteen minutes after midnight today,” Cronkite said, “a sniper shot Negro civil rights leader Medgar Evers in the back as he got out of his car in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi, and Mr. Evers died less than an hour later, at a nearby hospital. He was 37 years old. Agents of the FBI have joined state and local authorities in search of the killer. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called Mr. Evers ‘a pure patriot’, and Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett stated that police were prepared to deal with any unrest that might result from the killing of Mr. Evers.”

* * *

Hoover sat in front of LBJ’s desk.

“I thought The Golden Boy overplayed his hand by sending those National Guard troops to Tuscaloosa,” LBJ said, “but then the sonofabitch rescued himself, by giving that goddamn speech.”
“He knows TV time is the goose that always lays a golden egg for him,” Hoover said.
“That’s what being pretty’ll do for you,” LBJ said.
“Yes, that’s part of it,” Hoover said, “but Sorensen is also the best speechwriter a man could possibly have.”
“Goddamn it, yes he is,” LBJ said. “I can’t stand that sanctimonious bastard, but he sure can write.”

Hoover shifted in the chair and crossed his legs. “Just so you know,” he said, “we’re taking some flak down in Jackson now.”
“The Bureau, or all of us?” LBJ said.
“The Bureau,” Hoover said. “Some of my men had made it a habit of driving behind Evers when he drove home at night, and watching him get inside his house before they left, as protection for him. Nobody did it on Tuesday night, and there are people who are saying that that was purposeful. A setup for the sniper.”
“Was it?” LBJ said.
“We’re looking into it,” Hoover said.
“Anybody can take a bribe,” LBJ said. “Even your men.”
“That’s right,” Hoover said.
“I saw there were plenty of arrests in Jackson when word got out that Evers died,” LBJ said.

“Over a hundred and fifty,” Hoover said. “Then King showed up, did another one of his marches, and that quieted things down.”
“I saw King on TV,” LBJ said. “He was as eloquent as ever. He reminded me of The Golden Boy. I’m sure that behind all of King’s pretty words he thought of Evers as his competition.”
“I think you’re probably right about that,” Hoover said.

“Deaths can solve certain problems, you know,” LBJ said, and squinted at Hoover.

“You think King might’ve had something to do with the murder?” Hoover said.

“No, I don’t think that at all,” LBJ said. “All I’m saying is that Evers’s death solved a problem for King, because it eliminated his competition.”

Hoover nodded.

“Likewise,” LBJ said, “am I a problem for The Golden Boy and his brother? Are The Golden Boy and his brother problems for me?”

“Yes and yes, I’d say,” Hoover said, and smiled.

“Well there you go, you see,” LBJ said. “If I got murdered, that’d solve a problem for them, wouldn’t it, by eliminating the guy they think of as a possible mutineer?”

Hoover nodded.

LBJ leaned forward, squinted at Hoover, and pointed his forefinger at him. “And in the reverse direction, my friend, I can think of a particular death that would solve certain problems for you and me.” He lowered his finger. “We would never wish that on anyone, of course.” He leaned back. 

Hoover uncrossed his legs. “Of course not,” he said.

“I think the news out of Mississippi reminds us that sometimes a murderer succeeds not because he’s necessarily all that good at killing,” LBJ said, “but because somebody fails, purposely or otherwise, to protect the person the murderer wants to kill.”

“Like our men not escorting Evers home last Tuesday night, you’re saying?” Hoover said.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” LBJ said. “And I can think of plenty of other situations where leaving a certain man vulnerable to a sniper could solve a problem for somebody. Even for men like you and me.”

Hoover nodded.

“If that day were ever to come,” LBJ said, “you and I wouldn’t cry any harder about that death than we cried over what happened to Evers last week.”

“No, Lyndon, I don’t suppose we would,” Hoover said.

* * *

Clyde Tolson, the second-in-command to Hoover at the FBI, spent the first two weeks of July, 1963 on vacation with Hoover, in separate rooms at the Hotel Del Charro in La Jolla, California, just as he had done every summer since 1953.

On Hoover and Tolson’s first night at the Del Charro, after an afternoon at the Del Mar Racetrack, they lay naked in bed together in Hoover’s room, and Hoover told Tolson about the discussion with LBJ.
“It’s obvious what he wants,” Tolson said.
“Yes,” Hoover said. “We’ll figure it out when we’re back at work.”
“I remember him dangling that bait about eliminating your mandatory retirement age, if, he said, he was ever in a position to do it,” Tolson said. “There’s nothing the least bit subtle about that.”
“He’s vulgar, underhanded, and frequently ruthless,” Hoover said, “but he’s also extremely clever. He sees me as a tool.”

“The same way you see him, John,” Tolson said. He reached down and took Hoover’s hand.
“He’s brilliant, in a way,” Hoover said. “After that talk he and I had back in April, about the mandatory retirement problem, he waited patiently for over two months for the right opportunity to pick back up on that, and when the moment presented itself last week he spoke in riddles that left no doubt about how we could use each other, to our mutual advantage.”
“You two are both brilliant,” Tolson said. “He just chooses to be vulgar and coarse as a way to disguise his brilliance. His crudeness gets people to let their guards down around him.”
Two weeks later, at 11:20 a.m., after their fourth day back at work, Tolson sat in front of Hoover’s desk, with a file on his lap.

Hoover held a profile sheet between his hands—the eleventh one Tolson had handed him from the file—and read the summary on it.

The upper-left part of each page listed the person’s name, alias(es), birthdate, gender, nationality, race, height, weight, hair color, eye color, education level, occupation, languages spoken, marital status, and address. A photo of the individual was in the upper-right corner. The rest of the upper half of the page was taken up by sections entitled “Criminal History”, “Reason(s) for Surveillance”, and “Agent Name(s) & Assignment Date(s)”. The section entitled “Surveillance Findings” took up the lower half of the page.

Hoover looked up from the sheet of paper. “How many more of these do you have in that file?” he said.
“There were thirty in all, so about twenty,” Tolson said.
“These were the cream of the crop?” Hoover said.

“Yes,” Tolson said. “They’re what I came up with by looking through the files of active Bureau and CIA surveillance targets whose histories suggested they might be capable of performing, shall we say, the act.”

“What criteria did you use?” Hoover said.

“I looked for members of anti-government extremist groups who had committed acts of violence using firearms,” Tolson said.

“Who did you get the CIA’s files from?” Hoover said.

“Jim Angleton,” Tolson said. “What an evil-looking gnome that guy is.”

“From what I’ve seen so far,” Hoover said, “their files are a helluva lot better written than ours are.”

“Angleton’s a Yale man,” Tolson said, “and he hires a lot of other Ivy Leaguers. They all write well.”

“Let’s keep going,” Hoover said. He put the sheet of paper on his desk blotter, and Tolson handed him another one.
At 12:07, Hoover reviewed the twenty-seventh profile sheet from the file.

“Under ‘Reasons for Surveillance’ here,” Hoover said, “it says this man’s an ex-Marine sharpshooter who assaulted his commanding officer in the Philippines, spent time in a military jail there, got court-martialed twice, renounced his U.S. citizenship, became a communist, learned Russian, defected to Russia, got married there, ran out of money after three years, and got deported back to us. He brought the wife and her mother back with him to Dallas. He corresponds with members of the American Communist Party, and he subscribes to the Daily Worker.”

“Interesting, right?” Tolson said.

“He beats his wife, gets himself fired from low-wage jobs for disciplinary reasons,” Hoover said, “and he may have been the sniper”—he looked up at Tolson, then back down at the sheet of paper—“may have been the sniper in the April 10, 1963 attempt to kill retired Major General Edwin Walker, with a single high-powered rifle shot through the window of General Walker’s Dallas home. My God.” He looked up at Tolson.
“If he was the one who did that, he’s a man with a desire for notoriety,” Tolson said.

“If he is the one who took that shot at Walker, what I like most about him are his balls,” Hoover said. “A man’s desire for notoriety gets us nowhere unless he also has huge balls.”

“It also says there that he’s a member of the ‘Fair Play for Cuba Committee’,” Tolson said. “He spent his own money to print hundreds of leaflets for them, and handed them out on street corners.”

“I saw that,” Hoover said, and looked down again, at Oswald’s profile sheet. “He goes by the alias A. J. Hidell when he does that. He’s an angry commie who hates this country.”

“Angleton’s people are following him,” Tolson said, “because of that Cuba connection.”

“It also says here he’s been working for a schoolbook warehouse in downtown Dallas since last October,” Hoover said.

“For him, that’s a long time to have kept a job,” Tolson said.
“The big unknown,” Hoover said, “is whether he has enough hatred in him, and enough of a desire for notoriety, and big enough balls, to want to up the ante from Walker and go after the biggest trophy of all.”

“That would seem impossible to know,” Tolson said.

“True,” Hoover said, “but I can imagine ways to cultivate this situation. We can use our men to harass him, stoke the fire he has inside him, and set the stage for him to do what we hope he’ll do.”

“I wish we knew for sure that he was the one who took that shot at Walker,” Tolson said.

“Why don’t we know that?” Hoover said.

“You noticed the name of the agent who’s covering him?” Tolson said.

“Yes,” Hoover said. “I don’t believe I’ve met him.”

“James Hosty has been with us since ‘52,” Tolson said. “He started in Louisville and we moved him to Dallas in ’53. He’s not the sharpest pencil in the box, and he works for Gordon Shanklin, who always turns into a shaking, quaking, nervous mess whenever he deals with us here at headquarters. The findings on that profile sheet are not only incomplete, they’re also poorly written, as I’m sure you noticed.”

“Shockingly so,” Hoover said. “If those two men were competent, these findings,” he held up Oswald’s profile sheet and shook it, “would state definitively whether this was the man who took the shot at Walker.”
“Perhaps we should be grateful for their incompetence,” Tolson said. He smiled. “If they had bothered to follow up on that and had worked with the law enforcement people down there in Dallas, Oswald might not be a free man, and a man who’s in jail would be of no use to us.”

“Good point, Clydie,” Hoover said, and smiled. “Hosty and Shanklin are obviously lazy and sloppy. We can exploit that. We can bully Shanklin into having Hosty harass Oswald, which might incite him to consider putting someone else in his rifle’s crosshairs.” He winked.
“Absolutely,” Tolson said.

“Let me take a quick look at the last of those profiles,” Hoover said, and pointed at the file in Tolson’s lap. “Then we’ll go get lunch at The Mayflower.”

Tolson handed Hoover the last three profile sheets.

* * *

On Monday, September 16th, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was living in New Orleans and receiving unemployment checks, received a 15-day transit visa he had applied for, for a visit to Mexico. 

A week after that, Oswald watched his pregnant wife and their infant daughter get into a car bound for Dallas, and on September 26th he left his apartment in New Orleans, went to the bus depot, bought a bus ticket, and rode Continental Trailways #5121 for twelve hours to Houston, where he bought another ticket and boarded bus #5133, which stopped in Corpus Christi on its way to the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas. When he got to Laredo he crossed the International Bridge into Nuevo Laredo, passed through customs, boarded Flecha Roja bus #516, and rode it for 750 miles to Mexico City, where he arrived at about 10:00 a.m. on September 27th. He checked into the Hotel del Comercio, put his suitcase and a small zippered bag in Room #18, and left the hotel.

Oswald went to the Cuban Embassy, which the CIA’s in-country electronic-surveillance group, led by a Station Chief named Winston Scott, had filled with listening devices.

The operatives in the electronic-surveillance group listened to Oswald tell the woman at the embassy’s front desk that he wanted a transit visa to visit Cuba so he and his family could fly to Havana and stay there for a couple of weeks—long enough to obtain a visa for them to move back to the Soviet Union. He showed her his passport, his membership card in the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee”, some correspondence with members of the American Communist Party, and a newspaper clipping about his arrest for pro-Cuba activities in New Orleans, which included a picture of him in police custody, accompanied by two uniformed officers.

The woman told Oswald that because Cuba would only be a stopover place for him and his family, he could not receive approval for a transit visa to Havana until after the Soviet Embassy had approved a long-term entrance visa for him and his family to stay in their country, so Oswald walked the short distance to the Soviet Embassy, where the CIA’s surveillance group used its bugs, once again, to listen to and record Oswald’s conversations with three KGB officers who were working there under diplomatic cover.

One of the three KGB officers Oswald spoke with, in Russian, was Valery Vladimirovitch Kostikov, whose title at the embassy was Vice Consul.

Oswald explained to the three men that he wanted a visa so that he, his pregnant wife, and their daughter could go to the U.S.S.R. He said that if he were to be granted that visa, he’d ask to meet with high-ranking Soviet officials in Moscow and offer to perform a great service to their country. He said he would not reveal the specifics of his offer until he met with the senior officials in Moscow.

The men took notes, said they’d take Oswald’s request under consideration, and told him that it could take four months or more for him to receive a visa. Oswald went back to the Cuban Embassy and lied to the woman he had talked with earlier. He told her that the Soviet Embassy had had no problem with his visa application. She called the embassy, the man there exposed Oswald’s lie, and when she told Oswald she was unable to confirm what he had said he lost his temper, shouted, “I’m going to kill Kennedy for this,” and left.

Two CIA surveillance operatives who sat next to each other and wore headphones as they taped Oswald’s outburst looked at each other when they heard it.

On the morning of Saturday, September 28th, Oswald returned to the Cuban Embassy and saw that people were working there on a day that it was normally closed. The same woman who had sent him to the Soviet Embassy the previous morning let him into the building, and after he sat in a waiting area for almost an hour she phoned the Soviet Embassy, put Oswald on the line, and the CIA’s surveillance group listened to him tell a man named Ivan Obyedkov that he wanted to speak with Valery Kostikov. Obyedkov told Oswald to come to the embassy.

Oswald went to the Soviet Embassy. Kostikov led Oswald to a car, the two men got in, and Kostikov drove them to a restaurant. The CIA’s surveillance operatives had not put bugs in the car they used, so they were unable to pick up anything the two men said to each other en route to the restaurant, at the restaurant, or on their way back to the embassy. The CIA’s Station Chief in the Mexico City office, Winston Scott, was especially upset about that because Kostikov was known to be an agent in the KGB’s Department 13, which dealt in international terrorism, sabotage, and assassinations.

An hour after the two men returned to the Soviet Embassy, Oswald left through a side door and went sightseeing. He saw a jai alai arena near the Monumento a la Revolución, went inside, decided not to buy a ticket, left, and a short while later he came upon a movie theater that would be showing The Manchurian Candidate with Spanish subtitles in half an hour. He bought a ticket, a bag of popcorn, and found himself transfixed by the movie, whose plot centers on a decorated Korean War veteran who is brainwashed by Chinese communists when his Army platoon is captured, and after he returns to civilian life in the U.S. he becomes an assassin who plans to kill the presidential nominee of an American political party as part of a communist plot to overthrow the U.S. government.

After Oswald left the theater, he walked for over two hours. He couldn’t stop thinking about his conversation with Kostikov and about the sniper in the movie, for whom he felt empathy. He ate dinner in a taquería, walked back to his hotel, and could not get to sleep that night until almost 2:30 a.m., after having imagined himself, again and again, in the real-life role of an assassin like the one in The Manchurian Candidate.

On Sunday Oswald went to museums in the late morning, ate a burrito he bought from a street vendor, wandered through the city, and in the middle of the afternoon he followed groups of people that were headed to Plaza México to watch a bullfight. He decided not to pay for a ticket to see the bullfight, returned to the movie theater, bought a ticket, and watched The Manchurian Candidate again. When the movie ended he knew what his mission was going to be when he returned to the U.S.

After the movie, Oswald took his map of Mexico City from his back pocket, unfolded it, and from then until sundown he took that map out of his back pocket several more times as he walked from place to place.

On Monday Oswald walked down streets he was familiar with, bought his meals from street vendors, went into and out of stores, conversed in halting Spanish with students in a plaza near a large university, and bought a silver bracelet to take home to his wife.

On Tuesday afternoon one of the CIA’s electronic-surveillance operatives recognized Oswald’s voice, and his halting, broken Russian, in a call Oswald made to the Soviet Embassy from a pay phone.

Oswald asked to speak with Valery Kostikov, waited a few minutes for Kostikov to take the call, and asked him if he had received any news from Moscow since Saturday. Kostikov said no. Oswald said he planned to return to the U.S. the following day unless there was a reason to stay in Mexico City. Kostikov told him to go ahead and leave.

On Wednesday morning Oswald checked out of Hotel del Comercio, went to the bus depot, bought a ticket, and boarded a bus for Nuevo Laredo. He passed through customs, went into the bus station in Laredo, and bought a ticket for the 10-hour ride to Dallas with a stop in San Antonio, on Greyhound bus #1265.

A week later, Clyde Tolson went to Hoover’s office, sat down, and relayed to Hoover what he had just heard during a scrambler-phone call from “our man on the inside” in the CIA’s operation in Mexico City, about Oswald’s activities and discussions there.

“By God, we may have chosen the right horse to bet on,” Hoover said. “And who says I don’t have any friends inside the CIA?” He laughed.

“Jim Angleton and Win Scott would have strokes if they found out about our boy down there,” Tolson said.

“That’ll never happen,” Hoover said. “I own that man. I know what he did during his years in the Klan, and I saved him from a long prison sentence by conning Scott into hiring him.”

“What do we do now?” Tolson said.

“I want you to talk to Marvin Gheesling and have him take Oswald off our Watch List,” Hoover said. “Put Oswald’s name in with the names of thirty or forty other people to be taken off that list, so the removal of Oswald’s name doesn’t attract any attention.”

“What reason do I give him?” Tolson said.

“Tell him we need to free up our men from monitoring low-risk suspects so they can focus on new high-risk ones,” Hoover said.

“Okay,” Tolson said.

“Then I need you to have Shanklin send Hosty to Oswald’s home, to ask Oswald lots of questions about why he defected, and why he came back. That’ll poke the bear, and we’ll keep having Hosty poke and irritate that goddamn bear right up until I can figure out a time and place for that bear to solve a certain problem for us, to use Lyndon’s words.”

* * *

In the last week of September, J. Edgar Hoover told Bobby Kennedy he felt they should meet with the President to discuss anti-government militia groups across the South, especially in Texas.

“I think we should include Lyndon in the meeting,” Hoover said, “because our biggest problems are in Texas.”

“Of course,” Bobby said.

On the following afternoon the four men met in the Oval Office. JFK sat in his rocking chair between the ends of the two sofas that faced each other, between himself and the fireplace. Bobby sat on the sofa to JFK’s left, and Hoover and LBJ sat on the one to his right.

Hoover opened a folder on his lap. “One of the many groups we monitor down South that hates the federal government is based in Dallas,” he said, “and it’s handing out thousands of these.” He took a piece of paper from the folder and handed it to JFK.

Full-face and side-view photos of JFK were at the top of the piece of paper. “WANTED FOR TREASON” appeared in large, boldface letters under the photos, and below that were seven numbered examples of the acts the anti-Kennedy group considered treasonous.

JFK looked at the piece of paper. “It says here,” he said, “‘Kennedy is turning the sovereignty of the U.S. over to the United Nations’. It also says ‘Kennedy authorized the use of federal troops in a sovereign U.S. state’. Well, they’re right about that one.” He looked up and handed the piece of paper to Bobby.

Hoover closed his folder and held it up. “I’ve got a lot more of that kind of hate propaganda in here,” he said, and put the folder on the sofa cushion next to him.

“Are many people taking these groups seriously?” Bobby said to Hoover.

“They’re getting a lot of attention in Texas,” Hoover said to Bobby.

“What’s Governor Connally’s reaction to them?” Bobby said.

“It’s not a problem for him at the state level,” Hoover said. “Like all the governors who came before him, he talks about Texas as if it’s its own republic. But Lyndon can speak to that much better than I can.”

“It’s true,” LBJ said to Hoover. He looked at JFK. “Texas is full of people who hate the federal government. To get them to vote for you you’ve gotta convince them you’ll fight against the bureaucracy in Washington.”

Bobby handed the piece of paper to LBJ.

“These groups’ activities picked up after we sent federal troops to the University of Mississippi last year,” Hoover said, “to get that young Negro enrolled there.”

“I think I need to go to Texas sometime in the next month or two and try to calm the waters,” JFK said, “and I’d like you to join me for that, Lyndon. We need to remind them we’re not ogres, and we need to get Connally to share the stage with us.”

“Of course, Jack,” LBJ said.

“Tell Sorensen about this, Bobby,” JFK said, “so he can get to work on the kinds of speeches I’ll need, and I want Lyndon to edit them.” JFK looked at LBJ. “Will you do that for me?”

“Of course, Jack,” LBJ said.

“I’d also like you to work with Connally on our itinerary,” JFK said to LBJ.

“I’ll do that gladly, Jack,” LBJ said.

“Thank you very much, Lyndon,” JFK said. He looked at Hoover. “Is there anything more you’d like us to discuss, Edgar?”

“No,” Hoover said. “We’ve covered the concerns I felt you should know about.”

Bobby stood up. “Thank you for calling this meeting,” he said to Hoover.

Hoover stood up. “You’re welcome,” he said. “I’ll continue to keep you gentlemen apprised.”

On October 2nd, 1963, The White House announced that the withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam could be completed by December 31, 1965. 

Two days later, JFK met with Texas Governor John Connally in the Oval Office and they finalized the plans for the President’s and Vice President’s fundraising events and motorcades in Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin, on November 21st and 22nd.

* * *

On November 12th, Lee Harvey Oswald went to the FBI’s office in Dallas and asked to see Agent James Hosty. When the receptionist told Oswald that Hosty wasn’t there, Oswald asked for a piece of paper and a pen. He wrote a note that said, “If you don’t stop coming to my house and bothering my wife I will blow up this office and the Dallas police station.” He asked the receptionist for an envelope, put the note in it, wrote Hosty’s name on the outside, gave the envelope to the receptionist, and left.

The next morning, JFK sat in his rocking chair in the Oval Office, and Bobby sat on the sofa to his right. They had spent ten minutes discussing the civil rights situation.
 “We have a year to right things,” Bobby said.
“We’re going to need a full year,” JFK said.

“Let’s take one step at a time,” Bobby said. “We need to start by making the Texas trip into a big win for us.”

“I saw Lyndon yesterday,” JFK said. “My God, he looks terrible. His gut is hanging out over his belt, and his clothes looked like he’d slept in them.”

“He’s like Achilles in his tent,” Bobby said. “He spends his days sulking about how important he used to be in the Senate, and how unimportant he is now.”

“Who can blame him?” JFK said. He stopped rocking. “Let’s start pulling him into discussions like this one.”

Bobby shifted on the sofa.

“What?” JFK said. “You don’t want to do that?”

“I don’t trust him,” Bobby said. “My gut tells me he’s up to something. Not that he’d necessarily do anything to hurt us, but if he knew somebody was trying to do us harm, he might not tell us, and he might step back to get out of their way when they come after us.”

“That is why I call you Dark Robert,” JFK said. “In your world someone is always hiding behind the curtain, with a dagger in his hand.”
“I’ve been right plenty of times in the past,” Bobby said. He looked at his watch, and stood up.

JFK put out his right hand. “Give me a hand,” he said.

Bobby grasped JFK’s hand and pulled him up.

“Let’s go get something to eat,” JFK said.

* * *

On the following day, Hoover sat across from Tolson, in Hoover’s office.

“Whatever else Hosty is good for,” Hoover said, “he’s done what we wanted him to. All that’s left for us to do now is wait until the week before Thanksgiving, when lightning will either strike, or it won’t.”

“If it doesn’t,” Tolson said, “we have another year to come up with some other plan.”

“Yes,” Hoover said, “and whether that commie delivers the goods for us or not, this has been a helluva lot of fun.”

About the author

T. G. Metcalf’s background is in microbiology, linguistics, beekeeping, and story-writing. “Oswald in Mexico City” was taken from an unpublished novel. Later this year Metcalf will be seeking a publisher for a literary novel entitled Sarah’s Calling and a collection of short stories. 

About the illustration

The illustration includes three photos, all in the public domain. To the right is a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald with rifle, taken in Oswald's back yard, Neely Street, Dallas Texas, March 1963. Taken by Marina Oswald, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The left top image is Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burning himself to death in Saigon in protest of persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnam government. Photo taken by Malcolm Browne, June 11, 1963, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The left bottom image is the poster for the U.S. theatrical release of the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate. In the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.