Fourth Reich Archaeology - UNLOCKED: A Halloween Defection - Oswald in Moscow

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

UNLOCKED: We promised to release this, our first piece of paywalled content, for free as soon as our wonderful listeners got the first episode of THE WARREN COMMISSION DECIDED over 1,000 streams. You all pulled through in record time, so we hope you enjoy this little spooky story about Lee Harvey Oswald's attempted defection to the Soviet Union on Halloween, 1959. The consular officials who witnessed his performance said it looked rehearsed, like a man reciting memorized lines. But who wrote the script? It's short, sweet, and mysterious. We hope you like it!Songs:The Phantom of the OperaVladimir Vysotsky - Koni Priveredivye (Fastidious Horses)Timothy Cleary - Mission CriticalMichael Jackson - Stranger in MoscowTimothy Cleary - GremlinSting - Russians

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. It's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of darks in people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic. The Warren Commission decided. The Warren Commission decided. The Warren Commission decided.

Well, well there, dear listener. I didn't see you come in. But, boy, am I glad you did. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology, and I'm Don inviting you to join me for a little spooky season story time. This story is being offered up as a bit of a surprise treat for our ground floor patrons. So if you want to hear the whole thing, sign up at patreon.com under 4th Reich Archaeology. For sources, I've woven this story together mostly from John Newman's 1995 classic Oswald and the CIA, as well as our own Jerry Ford's 1965 book, Portrait of the Assassin. And I've also consulted the primary sources cited in each of those secondary texts.

Now, get comfortable, don your costume, light your candles, and let's begin. Today's story takes place in Moscow, exactly 65 years ago today, on October 31, 1959. Unlike today's unreasonable heat wave, sweeping the globe, that day was a brisk, autumnal, crisp day, with a blue sky shining above the streets and buildings, and people of Moscow. Bear that weather in mind, as it may just become relevant to our story shortly. The protagonist of our story today is a young man who just turned 20 years years old a couple weeks before on October the 18th. That man's name was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Lee had arrived in Russia on October 16th. He immediately applied via letter to the Supreme Soviet seeking to petition for Soviet citizenship. His tourist visa only had a duration of five days and expired on October 21st. According to what we'll be referring to as Lee's historic diary, Lee was devastated when his visa was permitted to lapse with no word from the Russian authorities on the status of his application. After getting the runaround from a slew of Russian bureaucrats, Lee is finally informed by the police that indeed his application was rejected.

He goes on on October 21st to commit what doctors would call a show suicide attempt. incising a razor into his wrist and immersing himself in the bathtub of his hotel room. In that same historic diary, he wrote in an entry time-stamped 7 p.m. Somewhere, a violin plays as I watch my life whirl away. I think to myself how easy to die and a sweet death to violins. A young Russian woman who had been showing Lee around the city found him in his hotel room about an hour later later, and called an ambulance. With five quick stitches and a short rest,

Lee was fully recovered. Over the next ten days, he continued to press his case with Soviet officials, seeking that citizenship he so desired and promising to renounce his American citizenship in exchange. Waiting for a call, He holds up in his hotel room from October 29th all the way through Saturday, October 31st. It would be a Halloween to remember for young Lee Harvey Oswald.

By October 31st, Lee had steeled up his resolve to go to the American embassy and renounce his U.S. citizenship, notwithstanding the fact that the Russians had offered him no commitment to accept his application for Soviet citizenship. In his 1965 portrait of the assassin, Gerald Ford wrote, A showdown. That was a word he liked. It indicated strength and independence. The kind of showdown he was contemplating took shape in his mind. So far, he had gotten action only through dramatic moves. Well, he would make another. one. He had another trick or two up his sleeve. They didn't think he meant business giving up his

American citizenship. He would show them. In his historic diary for October 31st, Lee writes, I meet and talk with Rima a few minutes. That's the tour guide. She says, stay in your hotel room and eat well. I don't tell her what I intend to do since I know she would not approve. After she listens, I wait a few minutes and then I catch a taxi. American Embassy, I say. Lee enters the American Embassy in Moscow around 12.30 p.m.

as he set it down in his historic diary. Entering I find at the office of consular sign. Opening the door, I go in. A secretary, busy typing, looks up. Yes, she says. I'd like to see the consular, I said. Will you sign the tourist register, please? She says dryly, going back to her typing.

Yes, but before I do that, I'd like to. to see the consular laying my passport on her desk as she looks up puzzled. I'm here to dissolve my American citizenship. and taking my passport goes in to the open inner office, where she lays the passport on a man's desk. Her name was Jean Hallett. There's a man here, and he wants to renounce his citizenship. Hallett announced to American Consul Richard Snyder.

And while Jean was in Snyder's office, her 12-year-old daughter Carolyn Hallett came off the elevator at the embassy from the residential wing, and, as curious children often do, she gave Lee Oswald the old once-over as he sat on the sofa waiting to be taken into the office. Lee was dressed in what he would describe as an outfit that would be unmistakably American. A dark suit, a white shirt, a dark tie, no overcoat, no scarf, no hat, despite the chilly fall weather, and a pair of thin white cotton gloves, the kind you might wear to a formal event. Once Lee was admitted to Snyder's office, he recounts their exchange as follows, once again in his historic diary.

Crossing my legs and laying my gloves in my lap, I wait. He finishes typing, removes the letter from his typewriter, and adjusting his glasses looks at me. What can I do for you? he asks, leafing through my passport. I'm here to dissolve my U.S. citizenship and would like to sign the legal papers to that effect. Have you applied for Russian citizenship? Yes.

Taking out a piece of paper, he says, Before we get to that, I'd like some personal information. Your reasons for coming here? I say, I've experienced life in the United States, American military life, and American imperialism. I am a Marxist, and I waited two years for this, and I don't want to live in the U.S. and be burdened by American citizenship. The date of Oswald's discharge from the Marine Corps,

core listener had been September 11th. He says, okay, that's all. Unless you want to expound your Marxist beliefs, you can go. I said I requested that I be allowed to sign legal papers divesting myself of US citizenship. Do you refuse me that right? He says, uh, no, but the papers will take some time to get ready. In the meantime, where are you staying? 212 at the Metropole, I state, angry at being refused and write.

You'll tell us what the Russians do next? Snyder asked. I turn very mad. Of course, I say, and leave. He'd go on to write in his diary. I leave embassy elated at this showdown. Returning to my hotel, I feel now my energies are not spent in vain. I'm sure Russians will accept me after this sign of my faith in them. According to Snyder's written notes of the meeting, at one point in time, Oswald blurted out that he had been, quote, warned you would try to talk me out of defecting, end quote. Listener, who do you think would have warned Oswald that a U.S. consular official might talk him out of trying to defect. Curious, isn't it? And that's not the only curious tidbit from Snyder's

written account of their meeting. I was wandering in the rain. Ask your life feeling insane. Elsewhere, Snyder's doom, I won't let me be. On and on and on it came, Kiss the rain will use to let me... Elsewhere, Snyder recounts how, quote, Oswald offered the information that he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps, and that he had voluntarily stated to unnamed Soviet officials that as a Soviet citizen, he would make no knowledge.

to them such information concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty as he possessed. He intimated that he might know something of special interest. Sure enough, listener, Oswald had been a radar specialist in the Marines where the greatest secret of the U.S. Cold War surveillance machine was kept at the Atsugi Air Base in Japan. At secret, was none other than the project overseen by Richard Bissell that we've talked about multiple times here. That's right, talking about the U-2 spy plane. Snyder himself would later go on to state his belief that Oswald was alluding to the U-2. But curiously, Gerald Ford's book, account of this incident, leaves out the fact that

Oswald told the Americans that he had planned to reveal classified information to the Soviets. Oswald recounts what apparently happened after he got back to his hotel room from the embassy in his historic diary. He writes, A knock, a reporter by the name of Goldberg wants an interview. I'm flabbergasted. How did you find out? The embassy called us, he said, the American embassy. I send him away.

I sit and realize this is one way to bring pressure on me by notifying my relations in U.S. through the newspapers. Half an hour later, another reporter, Ms. Mosby, comes. I answer a few quick questions after refusing an interview. I am surprised at the interest. Curiously, according to a 1964 CIA memo, the KGB has, had a bug in the very hotel room that Oswald happened to be staying in. The reporters got enough out of Oswald to run a story in the United Press International with the headline,

Lee Harvey Oswald of Fort Worth, Texas, told UPI in his room at the Metropole Hotel, I will never return to the United States for any reason. And so I'm missing our brief our brief Halloween glimpse at the life And so ends our brief Halloween glimpse at the life of Lee Harvey Oswald whom will be joining on our upcoming mini-series the Warren Commission decided. But before signing off, I'd like to comment just one last thing on that historic diary of Oswald's to which I've been referring throughout this broadcast.

The historic diary was not found among Lee Harvey Oswald's personal effects. It wasn't on his personal effects. It wasn't on his personal. person when he was arrested. It wasn't at the Dallas rooming house where he had been staying, nor was it, like so many of the key pieces of evidence relied on by the Warren Commission, recovered from Ruth Payne's garage. Instead, the story about the historic diary is that it apparently came from a CIA-connected reporter based in Dallas named Hugh Ainsworth. and Ainsworth never stated exactly how he came into possession of the diary, but the FBI concluded that it was given to him by a prosecutor, Bill Alexander.

That was corroborated by the fact that Alexander shared the payout with Ainsworth for selling the historic diary to Life magazine for a five-figure some, a very large amount of money at that time. Another wrinkle about this historic diary is that, according to handwriting experts retained by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the historic diary was written all in one day, despite having not only date stamps for many of the stories recounted therein, but even time stamps. And that casts all of the inconsistencies in a different light. For more, I direct the listener to the Solving JFK podcast, where host Matt Crumpton has done Yeoman's work, digging in to the

genesis and authenticity of the historic diary. Who wrote Oswald's historic diary? Did he? he write it to create a mythic version of his time in Russia? Or was it planted by somebody in the intelligence community? Remember, listener, there are the likes of James Jesus Angleton, Yale graduate, CIA counterintelligence chief, and poet extraordinaire who had once befriended E. E. Cummings and Ezra Pound. We'll never know, but we leave it for you to think on as you enjoy this spooky season. Be sure to gear up for our upcoming series The Warren Commission decided where we'll probe in to a lot of Kennedy assassination lore paying specific attention as always to the particular lens taken to that case of Gerald Ford.

Until next time, I'm Don saying scare well and keep grave-digging. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. I don't know. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. I don't know.

We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. I don't know. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be.

We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. You know,