Angleton & Oswald: The Hidden Relationship
Ghostly fingerprints of the CIA’s legendary counterintelligence chief appear on the Oswald file
Top CIA spymasters lied for decades to cover up their snow-white innocence
Sorry about that, Mrs. Kennedy
During the summer of 1961, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 20-year-old American living in Minsk, wrote a letter to his mother in rural northern Texas. Marguerite Oswald, who raised Lee as a single mother, had worried endlessly about her younger son after he got a discharge from the Marines and ran off to the Soviet Union. In the letter, Lee dropped word that he had married a Russian girl named Marina. He also asked for a copy of George Orwell’s novel 1984, a request that belies Oswald’s reputation as a fanatic. Oswald, it seems, wanted to read Orwell, a banned anti-communist author, hardly the impulse of a Marxist-Leninist ideologue. “Dear Lee,” Marguerite responded on July 8, 1961. “Received your letter yesterday. I’m sending a package today, please let me know if you receive it.” She included deodorant, shaving cream, dish towels, a potholder, and a can opener. “I couldn’t imagine where I could get the novel 1984,” she added, “but the wife [of a visiting couple] has read it (she lives in …
