Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. KennedyUnited States. Warren Commission
History
Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
United States. Warren Commission
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 -- Assassination; Oswald, Lee Harvey
Both the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency
compiled data for the Commission on Soviet wives of American citizens
who received exit visas to leave the Soviet Union, where the relevant
information was available. In both cases the data were consistent
with the above conclusion of the State Department. The Department of
State had sufficient information to measure the timespan in 14 cases.
The Department points out that it has information on the dates of
application for and receipt of Soviet exit visas only on those cases
that have been brought to its attention. A common reason for bringing
a case to the attention of the Department is that the granting of the
exit visa by the Soviet Union has been delayed, so that the American
spouse seeks the assistance of his own government. It therefore
appears that the sampling data carry a distinct bias toward lengthy
waiting periods. Of the 14 cases tested, 6 involve women who applied
for visas after 1953, when the liberalized post-Stalin policy was
in effect. The approximate waiting periods for these wives were, in
decreasing order, 13 months, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month, and 10
days.[C6-289] Of the 11 cases examined by the Central Intelligence
Agency in which the time period is known or can be inferred, the Soviet
wives had to wait from 5 months to a year to obtain exit visas.[C6-290]
In his correspondence with the American Embassy and his brother
while he was in Russia,[C6-291] in his diary,[C6-292] and in
his conversations with people in the United States after he
returned,[C6-293] Oswald claimed that his wife had been subjected
to pressure by the Soviet Government in an effort to induce her not
to emigrate to the United States. In the Embassy correspondence,
Oswald claimed that the pressure had been so intense that she had
to be hospitalized for 5 days for “nervous exhaustion.”[C6-294]
Marina Oswald testified that her husband exaggerated and that no such
hospitalization or “nervous exhaustion” ever occurred.[C6-295] However,
she did testify that she was questioned on the matter occasionally
and given the impression that her government was not pleased with her
decision.[C6-296] Her aunt and uncle in Minsk did not speak to her “for
a long time”; she also stated that she was dropped from membership in
the Communist Youth Organization (Komsomol) when the news of her visit
to the American Embassy in Moscow reached that organization.[C6-297]
A student who took Russian lessons from her in Texas testified that
she once referred to the days when the pressure was applied as “a
very horrible time.”[C6-298] Despite all this Marina Oswald testified
that she was surprised that their visas were granted as soon as they
were--and that hers was granted at all.[C6-299] This evidence thus
indicates that the Soviet authorities, rather than facilitating the
departure of the Oswalds, first tried to dissuade Marina Oswald from
going to the United States and then, when she failed to respond to
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