Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Was the Lee Harvey Oswald of fame a spy? Was he spying for the US in Russia?

Well, first note that espionage is a profession. Spies get paid. So, if Oswald was spying for the US in Russia, then they owed him 3 years back pay when he returned home. 

But not only did he not receive any back pay, he had to pay a debt to them for his transportation back to the States, which, over time, he did pay.

If Oswald was spying for us in Russia, then how did he transmit information back here?

Did you ever see The Eye of the Needle with Donald Sutherland? A great movie based on a great novel by Ken Follett. In it, Donald Sutherland plays a German spy who is living and working in England during World War 2 under a false identity. He works at a requisition center- which involved knowing where men and equipment were being sent- and he would transmit the data back to Germany at night using a small transmitter in his room. 

Well, you know that Oswald wasn't doing anything like that in Russia. And he wasn't using snail mail either because the Russians were monitoring (as in reading) all of his incoming and outgoing mail. He certainly didn't do it by phone. 

So, what was he doing? Just saving it all up until he got back here? But how? If he was writing stuff down, wouldn't we know about it? Don't we pretty much have every word he ever wrote in Russia?

So, did he just keep it all in his head? 3 years worth of spying? He would have needed an encyclopedic memory. But, when he got back here, he had just two brief sessions with the FBI. That's all. And frankly, I don't know what he could have told them except what daily life was like for the average common Belorussian. 

And why would he talk to the FBI about that? Wouldn't it be the CIA? 

A famous researcher reminded me recently that there is only the evidence. It's all that matters. So, what is the evidence that the Lee Harvey Oswald of fame was a spy? 

We don't know of any spying he did before he went to Russia, and we don't know of any spying he did while in Russia. Did he take any photos there that had intelligence value? Did he interrogate anyone who knew things of intelligence value? Did he travel around the country taking pictures and collecting data? Was he meeting with subversives? How could he have done anything like that when the Soviets had him under surveillance 24/7? It seems to me that he worked his job at the factory and when he was free, he hung out with his friends and went chasing girls, and that's about it. 

Some think his wife Marina was a KGB agent, but if so, Oswald wasn't savvy enough to pick up on it. I know that spies will often use sex to get information etc. At least, it happens a lot in the movies. But to take it as far as getting married to the subject and having children with him? She was some dedicated KGB agent if she was willing to do that.      

Anyway, as I see it, he gets back to the States, and he's still not a spy and isn't being treated like one. He's got to take menial jobs for low pay just to survive. If he's freakin' spy, what's he working menial jobs for at $1.11/hr for? That doesn't sound like spy work to me. 

But then we get to New Orleans, and that's where he was involved with spy-ish stuff. Can't deny that because there was Bannister and Ferrie and the Fair Play for Cuba, etc. etc. But, by then he was already the chosen patsy, right? So, whatever was going on, he was being used. He was being played. He was being manipulated.  If he was already the patsy by then- and he was- then he wasn't really a spy. I don't know what they told him, but, I do know that they weren't paying him as a spy, and they certainly weren't regarding him as a spy, but rather as their mark, their patsy. 

So, what is the real, solid, incontrovertible evidence that the Lee Harvey Oswald of fame was a spy?