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THE PAINE's

Paines-cia

 

NEW EVIDENCE

Regarding Ruth and

Michael Paine

by Steve Jones

I would like present several new items of evidence regarding the

Paine’s that I have discovered since the last Paine panel convened in

1996, and also share how efforts by myself and others to get the Paine’s

deposed for testimony before the ARRB fell on deaf ears.

The first item of evidence regards conversations that I had with a

close personal friend of Ruth Paine. These conversations took place in the

spring and summer of 1997. The friend asked me never to reveal her identity

due to fear of possible repercussions. This friend got to know Ruth

very well in Nicaragua during the early 90s when they both were volunteering

for the organization Pro-Nica. This was one of the various Christian

peace organizations that were trying to help the people of that beleaguered

nation in the wake of the war between the Contras and the

Sandanistas. Over the course of several months this friend shared with me

the following information about Ruth that helped to either confirm or

clarify previous leads that have been developed by other Paine researchers

and myself:

1. Everyone in Pro-Nica, including this friend, thought that Ruth

was working there in some type of intelligence gathering capacity.

Ruth would take copious notes of everything she saw or heard;

she asked people many inappropriate personal questions as if

she were trying to gather information; and she took photographs

of people for supposed purposes that were later proven to be

false. She was confronted about this but consistently and vehemently

denied that she had anything to do with the CIA or any

other governmental intelligence agency. Normally when an agent

or asset was outed they would quietly leave in order to avoid

further embarrassment. But since Ruth never admitted her guilt

and refused to leave, she was instead asked to take a leave of

absence. When she was taken to a R&R camp in nearby Costa

Rica, she was asked to leave because they, too, suspected that

she was an agent. Ruth returned to Nicaragua and finished her

tour of duty and then left for the U.S. where she continued her

relationship with this friend.

2. Upon returning to the U.S. she admitted to her friend that her

father had worked for the CIA as an “executive agent.” Apparently

while he was traveling abroad for Nationwide Insurance

and then later while working for the Agency for International

Development he would gather intelligence information for the

agency. Barbara LaMonica, Carol Hewett and myself had previ- Continued on page 20

Steve Jones

holds a B.A. in History from Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA; an ordained Lutheran minister

and a Fellow in the Association of Professional Chaplains and is a chaplain at the Southeastern

Pennsylvania Veterans' Center in PA. Jones began studying the Kennedy assassination in 1983 after

reading Best Evidence by David Lifton and has been researching Ruth and Michael Paine since

1994. He has been published in Probe, The Fourth Decade, Open Secrets, and also in the Humanist

magazine.

TOPIC: Intelligence connections for Ruth Paine, her work in Nicaragua, her ties to eastern power

structure and the ARRB’s lack of interest in securing a deposition from the Paines.

ously uncovered documented evidence that the CIA had approached

her father to run an educational co-operative alliance

in Vietnam in 1957, and that her father’s AID field reports had

been routed through the CIA. Ruth’s friend has now conclusively

confirmed our prior research. We also have documented evidence

that Ruth’s sister worked for the CIA as a staff psychologist in

1961, but Ruth never mentioned her sister to her friend.

3. The friend would often try to get Ruth to open up more about

the Kennedy assassination but all Ruth would say was that she

had old copies of LIFE magazine that would tell anyone all they

needed to know. There was, however, one occasion when the

friend tried to bring up the assassination when Ruth began to say

how sad she was that her daughter (then about 40) was estranged

from her. Ruth said that her daughter told her that she refused to

talk to her until “she came to grips with the evil that she had been

associated with.” The friend said that Ruth had tears in her eyes

when she said this and was certain that this was a veiled reference

to the Kennedy assassination. When the friend tried to gently

probe further, Ruth refused to talk about the subject.

4. Ruth told her friend that every summer she would take a long

driving trip from her home in the south to the northeast to visit

friends and relatives. This seems to discredit my theory that her

long summer vacation in 1963 had any clandestine purpose.

I finally decided to ask the friend if she would serve as a gobetween

with Ruth and she agreed. I sent her several articles that

Carol, Barbara, and I had written on the Paine’s (and some key

documents) and asked her to show this material to Ruth. Ruth

was due to visit her friend in the near future. Suddenly, out of

blue, the friend called me and told me that Ruth had cancelled

her planned visit. From then on the friend seemed very reluctant

to talk to me anymore. I eventually cut off contact with her, sensing

fear and apprehension on her part.

The second line of evidence regards an FBI document dated 12-3-

63, stating that the FBI had interviewed two friends of the Paine’s who

vouched for their innocence in having anything to do with the assassination.

The friends were Fred and Nancy Osborn. It just so happened that

Fred’s father, Fred Osborn Sr., was a friend and associate of Allen Dulles.

Vol.4, Issue 4, Winter 1998 19

Michael Paine -

A Life of Unanswered Paradoxes

by Nancy Wertz

When speaking of Michael Ralph Paine, researchers usually have

to immediately add, “the husband of Ruth Paine.” It is as if he had no

important identity of his own, instead being considered merely as an appendage

to the more important personage of his wife. If Ruth Paine was

considered to be the darling of the Warren Commission inquirers, in essence,

their Queen, then her husband Michael Paine was, in contrast, treated

as the court jester. His testimony rambles in many areas. He starts to

answer and is cut off and then exhibits an astonishing lack of recall on

many subjects of a personal nature. He jumps back and forth over the

Oswald is guilty/not guilty fence several times. And, of course, when

follow-up questions are needed, they are nowhere in sight. It is this individual

however who may hold more keys to Lee Oswald’s character and

actions than has been suspected. In essence, the spotlight to date might

have been shining on the wrong Paine!

Michael was the product of an interesting and eclectic family background.

His mother was Ruth Forbes with ancestors of two diverse cultures

in her lineage. On one side, there was the artistic faction dating

back to Ralph Waldo Emerson. This background was coupled with the

financial empire building family -- the Forbes.

On Michael’s father, George Lyman Paine Jr.’s side, his paternal

grandfather was a well-known Boston preacher with a lineage dating back

to Robert Treat Paine, signer of the Declaration of Independence. In a

letter submitted to Allen Dulles during his stint on the Warren Commission,

an “anonymous friend” of Michael’s mother provided revealing tidbits

about Reverend Paine and his antics in Boston during the 20s and

30s.

Lyman Paine, Michael’s father, was a promising architect in New

York who had graduated from Harvard, like many of the Paine men in his

family tree before him. The early years of his marriage to Ruth Forbes

produced two children: Michael in 1928 and Cameron (Ronnie) in 1932.

Deeply impressed by the experience of the depression, Lyman rejected

the capitalist system and drifted into Marxist viewpoints. This major philosophical

change ultimately caused the dissolution of his marriage. He

later moved to Los Angeles and became actively involved in a socialist

splinter group, espoused Trotskyte principles and married a like minded

woman named Freddie Drake. This geographical and philosophical shift

effectively cut off any type of on-going relationship with both of his children.

Michael’s father remained an elusive shadow filtering in and out of

Continued on page 20

Nancy Wertz

became interested in political violence in the mid 1960s. Since that time, she has dedicated her time to

research the JFK assassination. During the early 1970s, she had a weekly radio college talk show in

California. She has provided assistance to authors and researchers, and together with Gordon Winslow,

created the first Researchers Directory in the early 90s to foster sharing in the research community.

She has specialized in the examination of Marita Lorenz and Ruth Paine.

TOPIC: Michael Paine and his family background and influence, his political persuasions, his work at

Bell, his “lost summer of 1963,” and his actions on November 22-24.

his life. When Michael was only 13 years of age, Lyman had begun to

take him along to meetings of the Communist Party in New York City. At

this time, Michael became aware of intense political discussion, as three

separate groups vied for membership in the area. His family life drifted

until his mother met and married Arthur Young, when Michael was 18

years of age. By this time, he had already lived in New York, Santa Barbara

and Cambridge. As one looks at Michael’s life, “drifting” is a word

that often comes to mind.

Immediately after high school, Michael was accepted into the fall

of 1947 term at Harvard. His two-year sojourn at the institution that had

awarded high academic honors to several of his ancestors was a disaster.

Majoring in physics, Michael could barely pull D’s and when he finally

succumbed to an F in one class, the Administrative Board voted to dismiss

him at the end of the term. Side margin notations in the file describe

the young man as “shy and lazy.”

Disenchanted with the educational environment, Michael worked

at Granby Construction in Colorado for a brief period as a common laborer.

This might have been prompted by his father’s reminiscences published

on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his graduation from

Harvard in 1922. Lyman wrote of his life: “.... I got a job through the

Civil Works Administration of the NYC Housing Authority .... I shared

the hard work and dreams of liberals .... I joined the Federation of Architects,

Engineers, Chemists and Technicians, a union of professional men.

There I came into contact with Marxism. The writings of Marx, Engels,

Lenin and Trotsky opened new doors upon an old world. The theory of

historical materialism began to make clear much that had eluded me these

many years: The relations between the movement of society and the movement

of ideas.”

But Granby also failed to provide resolution for the troubled young

Michael Paine -- searching for a way to bridge his sense of privileged

intellectualism and his need to identify with the common man. The fall of

1950 found him at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He left the school

after one year, still lacking that elusive degree. It obviously bothered him

when, on his Army induction forms he attempted to justify his academic

failures and wrote: “I left college twice, although not so much for academic

reasons as for personal difficulties.”

The lack of graduate status did not hinder Michael’s ability to secure

a job in his chosen field of study - physics. In 1951, he obtained

20 Kennedy Assassination Chronicles

employment with the Bartol Research Foundation at the Franklin Institute

of Philadelphia in their nuclear research lab. He described his work

there as working with Van Der Graaf generators making coincidence

counters and instrumentation to run the machinery. This job lasted nine

months. His Army personnel files indicate that while he registered with

the draft board in September 1948, he received student deferments while

he was at Harvard and Swarthmore and also “later an occupational deferment.”

Three months after he left Bartol, his deferment lapsed and Michael

Paine entered the U.S. Army, serving for two years in the 40th Division in

Korea.

Michael had known Ruth Hyde for two years when they married in

December of 1957. The carefree life he had known up until then and had

hoped to continue unabated with a new soulmate was disrupted with the

Jones, Continued from page 18

Wertz, Continued from page 19

birth of a daughter in the second year of their marriage, shortly after they

moved to Irving, Texas. Michael had initiated the move from their Pennsylvania

family and friends in order to accept a position of some authority

at Bell Helicopter Research Lab in Arlington.

While he thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to contribute

groundbreaking newly fashioned ideas in helicopter and aerodynamic

design, Michael was being forced to grow up. He no longer could work

isolated in the lab, ignoring the hours he toiled over the craft he loved.

Now he was an administrator, responsible for budgets, project deadlines

and the management of his staff.

In addition, he now had a family to manage. By the time of the

birth of their second child, Christopher, in February of 1961, Michael was

feeling irrevocably trapped. Far away from lifelong family and friends,

neither Ruth nor Michael had a common support group to help bring them

back together. A summer visit by Michael’s father, Lyman, in August of

that year may have been the catalyst to move him into action. Michael

had always admired his father’s ability to act on his beliefs, no matter

how disruptive to the status quo. Even so, Michael moved ahead cautiously.

Just as he had been a child of divorce himself, Michael was clearly

heading towards that same status when the Oswalds entered his life. He

had set up a separate residency from Ruth in September of 1962, in order

to meet Texas divorce requirements. He visited Ruth and the children on

Tuesday and Friday of each week, and often could be found at their home

on weekends too. It was an unusual kind of separation but it was typical

of Michael who had always kept a safety net in his life. He could still

consider himself a family man, yet also keep his wife and children at

arm’s length emotionally.

His closest friend, at this time, was Frank Krystinik, a co-worker

at Bell. Frank was a Catholic family man and they shared mutual interests

in their work and basic social values. During the WC testimonies of

both men, it became clear that they hung out together on several occasions

and discussed a wide variety of topics on a daily basis.

Then, enter Lee Harvey Oswald. Having heard about this young

fellow, over ten years his junior, who had defected to Russia, become

disillusioned, and returned to the States, Michael was eager to make the

acquaintance. From their first meeting on April 2nd, until the last time he

claims to have seen Lee, on November 11th, they most likely had a dozen

or more earnest conversations.

During his Warren Commission testimony, Michael implied that

he had never really had much serious conversation with Lee about politics.

But from other documents and his own revelations to various re-

Osborn Sr. attended Princeton and graduated right between the two Dulles

brothers, John Foster and Allen. I found personal correspondence at the

Dulles collection at Princeton between Osborn and the Dulles brothers. In

1950, Allen and Osborn co-founded an organization called “Crusade for

Freedom,” which was an early CIA propaganda effort patterned after Radio

Free Europe. CFF merged with RFE in 1962. Osborn served as the

first President of this organization and Allen Dulles and Henry Luce were

among the original board of directors.

For many years Osborn was in Who’s Who in America. He had

served on the boards of numerous elitist foundations and large corporations.

During WWII, with no prior military experience, he was appointed

a brigadier general in charge of the effort to make films to stir up patriotism

on the home front-in other words, propaganda. Osborn died in 1981.

This is a very important indirect connection between Allen Dulles and

Ruth and Michael Paine. It appears to be too much to be merely coincidental.

In August of 1998, I sent a letter to Laura Denk, the Executive

Director of the ARRB, imploring the Board of the utter importance not to

ignore the Paines before their time ran out. She sent me a curt brush-off

that prompted author Jim DiEugenio to send out an action alert to all

subscribers of his publication PROBE. The board was flooded with over

50 angry letters, faxes, and phone calls. Denk then asked DiEugenio to

make a case for the Paine’s deposition that she could present to Board

members.

Jim, Carol Hewett and I spent several days putting a case together

that was subsequentially sent to the Board, along with over 50 pages of

important documentation. The Board at first said that they didn’t have

enough money left to fly the Paine’s to Washington. At that point longtime

researcher Vince Salandria offered to pay the airfare. Then the excuse

became that they just didn’t have enough time. I regard these as a

phony excuses because the Board members all received PROBE where

for several years Carol, Barbara, and I had written a series of articles on

the Paines. These articles explained very clearly why the Paine’s were

important. I had also previously attempted to call Jeremy Gunn about this

but my voice mail message went unreturned.

As early as 1995, I had written a letter to ARRB Chairman Tunheim

regarding the importance of declassifying Ruth’s sister’s CIA files, but

received no response. I believe that the Board deliberately ignored the

Paine’s because they knew that a thorough questioning of these people

would lead them where they didn’t want to go -- the CIA and the eastern

establishment power structure.

Michael Paine interviewed in the 1990s for a documentary.

Vol.4, Issue 4, Winter 1998 21

searchers over the years, a different pattern emerges.

For one thing, Michael was intensely interested in political debate

regarding various governments and their people. This included the legal,

social, philosophical and mundane aspects of how people lived and carried

on their daily lives in a continuous effort to improve their lot in life.

And Michael found Lee Oswald a perfect candidate for such discussions,

however frustrating and seemingly illogical some of his stances

tended to be. Michael had a million questions for Lee but he soon learned

that Lee had limited abilities for engagement in true debate of political

philosophies beyond the theoretical. While Michael searched for the connection

between theory and practical reality to enact a social change, Lee

would dig in his heels with repetitive arguments and catch phrases. Lee

was a bona fide bitter pessimist while Michael was the eternal cautious

optimist.

But it was not just with Lee that Michael conversed and shared

ideas. In June of 1964, the FBI found evidence that Michael had spent

several Sunday afternoons in the spring of 1963 at Luby’s cafeteria, located

near Southern Methodist University in Dallas. After interviewing

Michael and a former student who recalled such incidents, it was found

that he would eat lunch at Luby’s after attending weekly church services

at the Unitarian Church nearby. During these lunch visits, Michael would

engage in what he characterized as “intellectual conversations or debates

concerning world affairs with various SMU students.” This FBI interview

contains strong and articulate opinions of Michael Paine that we

have seldom found in the official Warren Report record. He spoke unfavorably

about the US hard-line towards Castro and felt that Castro did not

start down the Communist path originally and did so only after his mishandling

by the United States. He also expressed strong views on increasing

trade with Eastern Europe and lessening the tension with Cuba,

all with a strong leaning towards peaceful coexistence. None of this is

surprising, as it is a throwback to the peacenik stance of the Paine/Young

and Hyde families.

Both Ruth and Arthur Young were peace advocates who believed

in participatory government by the people. They thought nothing of putting

pen to paper to express a determined viewpoint regarding the threat

of the bomb, nuclear test ban treaties or United States involvement in

international affairs and commerce. As members of the social and economic

elite, those letters were read and consideration given.

Michael told a researcher in the 70s that he was eager to meet Lee

Oswald in April of 1963. He wanted to see what made him “tick.” Charged

with the task of bringing the Oswalds from Dallas to Irving, Michael was

glad when he arrived at the Neely St. apartment to find that Marina was

not yet ready with the baby. This gave him the chance to talk with Lee

about his experiences in the Soviet Union one on one.

Michael also discussed Lee Harvey Oswald with his friend and coworker

Frank Krystinik on several occasions, but especially after the ACLU

meeting at SMU on a Friday evening nearly one month before the assassination.

According to Frank, Michael said that Lee was generally considered

to have a rather disagreeable and offensive personality and that

“nine out of ten people would dislike him personally.” In fact, Frank and

Lee’s emotional discussion of the employer/employee relationship after

that ACLU meeting resulted in a general animosity between the two men.

Although Lee never referenced the argument in subsequent conversations

with Michael, Frank did and expressed disappointment in the attitudes he

had heard. Most likely, this only meeting with Lee did not measure up to

the tales Frank had been hearing from Michael, who looked at Lee in a

mixed fashion. While he would criticize Lee’s beliefs, he would be the

first to defend his right to choose those beliefs.

When Ruth had first approached Michael with the idea of Marina

staying with her again in the fall of 1963, Michael had discussed it with

Frank. Michael expressed concern about Lee’s reaction to such a suggestion

of separating husband from wife. Could Lee cause his family harm?

After much debate, the two men concluded that all would be well if the

delivery of the offer was made in a non-threatening manner.

Where did this discussion about violence come from? Could the

suspicion have been planted from a letter Marina wrote to Ruth during

mid-July in 1963? Marina had written that her marriage was getting better,

although for now she would hold Ruth’s kind invitation in reserve in

case, “Lee gets rough with me again.” Didn’t this send any signals to

Ruth on potential physical danger for Marina and her child? Although

Michael often brushed off Ruth’s concerns, she continued to share them

with him, such as she later did with the Mexico City letter.

Michael was also exploring various political groups in the Dallas

and Fort Worth area on his own. One night would find him at a John

Birch Society meeting and by the end of the same week, he would be

attending an ACLU meeting. And now he had met this young Lee Oswald

who seemed, at first glance, to be someone who took action.

While Ruth found communication with Lee difficult, she also felt

that if one disagreed with him, he automatically thought that you were

wrong and therefore stood firmly against him. She avoided having political

discussion or any argument. On the other hand, Michael craved such

discourse with Oswald. In FBI interviews in early December, after the

assassination, Michael conveyed much of Lee’s ideological viewpoints,

further illustrating the depth of their conversations.

Michael also realized that some of what Lee said did not add up.

While Lee claimed he had become a Marxist in the US and had learned

Marxism from reading books, it was clear that he was expressing some

concepts he had read but had not completely understood. Lee also told

him that he had never met a communist until he went to the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, he did not say if he had ever met any back in the States

after he returned.

Lee told him that he did not believe in the exploitation of man by

man and he quoted frequently from Marx. Yet watching Lee lounging in

the Paine home watching sports on television and ordering his wife to

bring him this or that, led Michael to wonder that “for a man who professed

to be a revolutionary, (he) had an awful lot of time on his hands.”

Maybe he wasn’t such a doer after all.

Michael had mixed feelings about Oswald. To the FBI on November

23rd, he claimed that Lee was disrespectful to his wife Marina, showing

much anger towards her and insulting her frequently. Michael also

recalled telling Lee during one discussion that he was completely against

violence in any form, but Michael distinctly remembered that Lee did not

provide a return comment.

When he again spoke to the FBI (agents Odum and Peggs) on November

24th, Michael expressed some empathy for Oswald’s lack of ability

to hold a job. He felt that Oswald’s expressed Marxist views might

likely cause his job losses, although he could not specifically say it was

so. In the FBI summary, it almost sounds like a certain level of admiration

of Oswald coming from Michael Paine. Again, Lee seemed to take

action, while Michael watched.

Michael’s friend, Frank Krystinik, knew of Ruth Paine’s devotion

to the Quaker religion and that Michael attended a Unitarian Church. It

was Frank’s belief that Michael had sympathy for Lee and was trying to

convert him. Later, after Oswald secured full time employment at the

TSBD in Dallas, Michael told Frank that things were improving for the

Oswalds and that this might mean that Lee could begin to assist in the

support of his wife and two daughters.

On some level, Lee Oswald may have influenced Michael Paine to

act on something he had dreamed of for years. Using money he had been

given by his father during a visit to Los Angeles in the summer of 1963,

while Lee and Marina were in New Orleans and Ruth and the children

were traversing the East coast, Michael purchased a small plot of land.

This was the dream of the “old barn research lab” in Paoli during the early

years of his marriage, come to life.

On the day of the assassination, Michael Paine went to work at

Bell. During his lunch break at a cafeteria near the lab, he dined with an

intern. Discussing the various newspaper, magazine and radio commentary

on the presidential visit, Michael suggested that there might be trouble

from the right wing element in Dallas. Later claiming that it was with no

thought of Oswald in particular, Michael wondered aloud what type of

22 Kennedy Assassination Chronicles

person would cause trouble like that. A complete pacifist by nature and

background, Michael speculated about the makeup of such an assassin.

It was at this time that a waitress told them that the president had

been shot. Believing this to me a poor joke, Michael listened to a transistor

radio report from a nearby table. They then raced back to the lab

to listen to updates on a better quality radio.

Upon his return to the lab, Michael called Ruth to tell her the

news and to turn on the radio. He was informed that she and Marina

had already heard the news. According to Michael, it was a short conversation,

as neither had any more news than that available then. Having

heard Dealey Plaza, he had not connected it to the TSBD. Shortly

after this, as Michael and Frank listened to the constantly updated news

flashes, they looked at a Dallas map to determine the site of the shooting

and discovered that the TSBD was situated there.

Immediately Frank Krystinik advised Michael to call the local

FBI and report Oswald’s proximity to the shooting locale. Michael

wavered, not wanting to go after Lee just because he was a known “black

sheep” already. They debated for twenty minutes back and forth, with

Frank more adamant by the minute. Still, Michael declined to make the

call. Trying to work, but preoccupied with the thoughts racing through

his mind of what all of this might mean, Michael found himself unable

to assemble a simple vibration meter. In this scenario, the next news

they heard on the radio sent him into a tailspin. Oswald’s name was

announced in connection with his apprehension at the theater in connection

with the killing of a police officer. Although the news announcer

did not connect it with the assassination, Michael later explained

that was all he needed to send him home to Irving.

Upon his arrival, he encountered six gruff law enforcement officers

searching the house and garage. Marina appeared terrified, Ruth

seemed not to understand the full implications of what was happening

around her and Michael was reeling from the utter invasion of privacy

the situation suggested. Michael was bombarded with questions about

the rifle and the blanket. By the time the entire group was stuffed into

cars and taken to Dallas Police HQ’s, tempers had flared and everyone

was “irked” to some degree or another.

Once at the DPD downtown offices, things began to settle down

and Michael found the officers there much more congenial. But as the

evening crept on, he began to notice an increased sense of suspicion

being placed on both him and his wife. Ruth was no longer there as

interpreter for Marina; they had brought Ilya Mamantov in for that job.

Ruth was there to be questioned herself. Other than asking him if he

wanted to speak with Lee himself, to which he declined, Michael was

more of a bystander that night. Why had the police asked Michael to

talk to Lee? They denied access to him by his family -- Robert, Marguerite

and even Marina. Did they hope to overhear something incriminating

in a conversation between Lee and Michael? While waiting for

the questioning and affidavit-taking to be completed, Michael contemplated

their situation. Later that night at home, Michael and Ruth talked

about whether Lee could have really done all that he had been accused

of by the police, the FBI and the Secret Service. No matter how they

tried to rationalize the situation, they kept coming back to that empty

blanket in the garage and Marina’s face as it fell limp in the arms of the

policeman.

Michael has left a very muddled trail relating to his knowledge

of the weapons of Lee Harvey Oswald. When I think of Michael Paine

and the alleged Oswald rifle, I am reminded of the most memorable

question that came out of the Watergate era. What did he know and

when did he know it? To answer this query, one must categorize the

various references in which Michael discussed Oswald’s weaponry.

That Friday night at police headquarters, Michael watched through

a glass window as Marina was shown a rifle. The police were asking

her to verify that this was the rifle she had known to belong to her

husband, Lee Oswald. He sensed that she could not truly differentiate

between one rifle and another, but for Michael it was a crystallizing

moment of insight. Recalling the incident in 1973, he claimed that, for

the first time, as he saw Marina’s expression, he made a connection to the

camping equipment that wasn’t turning out to be “camping equipment” at

all. That empty blanket roll that he had seen in the garage may have

actually contained the rifle that had been used to shoot the president.

Twenty years after that, on a Frontline special commemorating the

30th anniversary of the assassination, viewers were shocked to hear

Michael Paine tell them, for the first time, that he had been shown one of

the famous “backyard photos” on that night in April, 1963 when he first

met Oswald. Why hadn’t he mentioned it before? No one had asked him,

he claimed. At the time of seeing this picture, Lee told Michael that in the

Soviet Union, a person could not own a rifle, but could own a shotgun, if

they belonged to a recognized club. Michael got the impression that Lee

clearly adored weapons, but did not make the connection that the weapons

in the picture were actually owned by Lee.

This represents three different versions from Michael Paine on the

weapons of Lee Harvey Oswald. Clearly the 1993 recollection sheds an

entirely new light on Michael’s relationship with Lee Oswald. Did Michael

make the connection of guns and violence when he asked Frank Krystinik

if his own family might be in danger? Why would he have been willing to

risk this? Ruth Paine has indicated that her first realization that Michael

knew about the weapons before the assassination was shocking to her

when she heard it in the course of the Frontline documentary preparation.

Even so, seeing it on television when it aired in November of 1993 caused

deep pain for her.

When Krystinik was interviewed by FBI agents Schott and Brown

in Arlington on November 25th, he told them that Michael and he heard

about the location of the shooting at the same time. Unsure of the exact

location, they looked it up on a Dallas map and it was at this time that

Michael said, “That is right next to the TSBD building.” Frank made the

quick connection that this was where Lee Oswald worked but was quickly

assured by Michael that while this was true, “...he does not even own a

gun.”

When Michael was hauled back down to the DP headquarters on

Saturday, November 23rd, for a formal affidavit, the FBI (Harrison) also

interviewed him. Michael told him that he had never seen a rifle or other

weapon in the possession of Oswald. Having given no statement on Friday

night, Michael now claimed that he had seen the shape of a heavy

pipe-like object wrapped in a rough blanket tied up with a string in the

garage at the Irving house. He had picked it up to move it out of the way

to get to his power saw, which was also stored in the garage. Michael

dismissed the lumpy bundle as tenting equipment of some type belonging

to the Oswalds.

To the questions from Atty. Liebeler for the Warren Commission

testimony, Michael described three separate times he had to step over or

move the bundle in his garage. The question before us then was whether

it was reasonable to assume that Michael, a bright creative man, would

not have suspected that was a rifle all along. Given the 1993 revelation,

the better question is why he never told his wife that there was a weapon

in the garage. Michael knew that Ruth abhorred weapons of any kind,

even refusing to allow her son Chris to have a toy replica. If he did know

that Lee owned a rifle and that it was stored in his garage, did he rationalize

it being okay because he did not think Oswald was prone to physical

violence? Did he think that Oswald was only a hunter and would use a

rifle in this manner, as he did in the Soviet Union?

Even granting this consideration, there were actions on Michael’s

part that showed he did have cause to question Lee’s proclivity towards

violence. Although Michael refused to be tricked into leading questioning

by Liebeler that he had observed Lee in a violent mode, consider this.

If Michael didn’t know about the photo back in April, and if he didn’t

know or suspect that Lee possibly took a shot at General Walker, and if he

didn’t know about the physical abuse to Marina, then why did he feel the

need to discuss the possibility of Lee becoming violent by offering food

and shelter to Marina and his children?

Vol.4, Issue 4, Winter 1998 23

Why is it so important to know what Michael knew or thought

about Lee Oswald’s rifle? The rifle and the photograph are intertwined as

important evidence in this case. If it is true that Michael saw that photo

on April 2nd, then the allegations of photo tampering on the weekend of

November 22nd come into question and the exact version of the photo

Michael saw at Lee’s becomes very important. There is another interesting

facet to this story of the photo and the rifle.

In 1965, Marguerite Oswald was in the Los Angeles area conducting

some research associated with her view that her son, Lee Harvey Oswald,

was innocent of the assassination of the President. She requested

an interview by the FBI and two agents were dispatched to the Hollywood

Plaza Hotel, where Marguerite expressed her belief that her son

was framed and that her chief suspect in the assassination was none other

than Michael Paine. Marguerite further expressed suspicion about the

“extra” car that the Paines owned in 1963. Such unsubstantiated allegations

had become routine for Marguerite by this time, but she then revealed

a curious recollection.

Marguerite told the agents of her stay at the Paine home on Fifth

Street in Irving, Texas the night of the assassination, November 22nd.

Marguerite slept on the sofa in the front living room. Trying to sleep, she

heard Marina’s muffled cries in the bedroom with her children and the

continued whispering coming from the bedroom of Ruth and Michael

Paine. She claimed that at around 2:00 am on Saturday morning, she

observed Michael Paine go through a doorway into a room which she

thought was another bedroom, but later found it to be the inside door to

the garage. She felt that possibly his purpose in doing so was to plant

incriminating photographs of her son, Lee, and that these were subsequently

found by the police during their second search on Saturday afternoon.

These are but a few of the questions it would have been nice to ask

Michael Paine, under the auspices of the ARRB. Unfortunately, that opportunity

has been lost, with the closing down of the ARRB in September,

1998. And so, once again, the government has closed another door on yet

another attempt to move us closer to the truth and the facts in this case.

And, once again, the responsibility is shifted to the citizens, like you and

me, to move forward and unearth all of the facts to ensure an accurate and

complete historical record—whether it takes 35 years, or 40 years, or 100

years.