Star Trek Log One (1974), by Alan Dean Foster, adapts the scripts
from the first three episodes of the animated version of Star Trek, which ran from 1973 to 1974. The animated series
continues the five-year voyage of the first televised series (Star Trek: The Original Series, 1966-1969). Expanding
on the details provided in the episodes, Foster turns in three short stories
with a unifying narrative, creating a sense that the stories are occurring within one
extended voyage.
14th Printing: May 1977.
Author's collection.
Star Trek: The Animated Series, being a 30-minute cartoon show
geared towards children, presented limitations on the literary scope of the scripts.
Further, Foster’s then-audience for the Star
Trek Log series was young teens whose minds are just beginning to grasp
abstract scientific and philosophical concepts. Therefore, we must examine the book
within those parameters, and not as adult-oriented science fiction.
The three stories of Star Trek Log One include:
Beyond the Farthest Star: The Enterprise
investigates an ancient space ship locked in orbit around a dead star and finds
a deadly alien presence millions of years old.
Yesteryear:Spock travels
back in time in order to save his future in this coming-of-age
story.
One of Our Planets is Missing: A giant sentient cloud is moving
through the galaxy consuming planets. Can the Enterprise find a way to communicate with a life form that doesn’t
recognize the crew’s existence?
Beyond the Farthest Star
“Veil of stars.
Veil of crystal.” (Foster 3)
Foster expands upon the
two-dimensional portrayals in the animated series to give further depth to the
characters and plot. “Beyond the Farthest Star,” based on the script by Samuel
A. Peeples (who also wrote the second pilot for Star Trek: The Original Series, "Where No Man Has Gone Before”)
starts off with an internal monologue by Captain Kirk off-duty, contemplating
the vastness of the universe while en route to the Time Planet, the mysterious
world first introduced in the episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” from Star Trek: The Original Series
(1966-1969). Before the Enterprise
can reach the Time Planet, it travels through an unexplored area of space where
it gets trapped by the gravity well of a dead star whose mass has imploded on
itself — much like a fly caught in a spider’s web.
Establishing a tenuous orbit
around the dead star, the Enterprise
finds a derelict alien space ship hundreds of millions of years old, where it
encounters a disembodied alien presence driven mad by eons of isolation.
Each story also introduces a
scientific element as well as another Star
Trek staple, an exercise in values clarification, where we analyze ethical
decisions in hypothetical situations.
“Beyond the Farthest Star” introduces the
reader to the idea of imploded stellar material and the intense gravity
generated by so-called “dead stars.” The story doesn't go so far as to call it a black hole, since in 1973, the air date of the original
animated episode, black holes were a relatively new concept. The
term itself was first used in an obscure publication, Science News Letter (18 January
1964), in a report about a meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS); however, it was arguably more widely
introduced into the modern lexicon in 1967 by physicist John Archibald Wheeler, according to Michael
Quinion, a British etymologist.
Therefore, in 1973, using the idea of a “negative star-mass” generating a gravity
well as a plot device was a very new idea. In this way, Star Trek demonstrates its ability to serve as a venue for new
scientific concepts. Moreover, the writers show faith that their young audience
will not be intimidated by such new ideas, but would instead embrace them, even
as some elements of the scientific community still struggled to accept these
theories.
In the end, Kirk tricks the alien into trapping itself in the dead star’s
gravity well while the Enterprise uses
it to slingshot itself out of orbit. The immortal alien, tormented into madness
by hundreds of millions of years of isolation, faces an eternity alone. Though
it almost cost them their lives, the crew of the Enterprise is left feeling only pity for the malevolent
creature . . . and so is the reader.
The following
clip from the episode highlights the crew's struggle to rid themselves of the ancient
alien threat as well as the entity’s loneliness after eons trapped in orbit
around a dead star:
Yesteryear
[Young Spock] “Is there nothing you can do?”
[Vulcan Healer] “To save him, nothing. But I
can prolong his life-though he will always be in pain. Or . . . I can release him
from life. In this I will need your decision. He is your pet.” (Foster 131)
“Yesteryear” is the longest
section of Star Trek: Log One.
Building on an excellent original story by veteran Star Trek writer D.C. Fontana, here we see Spock’s youth as a
half-Vulcan, half-human child explored in detail. Story elements first
introduced in The Original Series’ episodes, “Journey to Babel” and “The City
on the Edge of Forever,” are expanded on in this treatment. Ideas introduced in
“Yesteryear,” such as Spock being bullied as a child, continue to be included
in the character’s backstory as evident in the most recent movie Star Trek (2009).
Spock was a tremendously popular
character among young science fiction fans of both sexes in the early 1970s.
Intelligent, strong, and disciplined, Spock served a model for a new generation
of scientist-explorers who also embraced a more liberal philosophy (as
embodied in the Vulcan IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations).
Even more so than Captain Kirk, Spock is the single most recognizable iconic
image from the series, apart from the Enterprise itself.
In “Yesteryear,” Kirk and Spock take
a journey to the past back in time via the so-called “Guardian of Forever” on
the Time Planet. What was thought to be a mission of passive observation turns
out to have had serious consequences for the present timeline.
Having gone back in time to the point
when Spock was still a young boy, a paradox is created. Two Spocks can’t exist
at the same time, so one Spock must cease to exist. Since the adult Spock is
under the protection of the Guardian of Forever, the child Spock dies during a
Vulcan rite of passage and the paradox is resolved.
Being a story for young people,
there are some holes in the theoretical rational for the time paradox. For example, if the
paradox is created because two Spock’s can’t exist at the same time, how is it
that he can go back in time to save himself? Fortunately, Foster layers the
story with such rich detail regarding Spock’s childhood and Vulcan culture that this
inconsistency is easily overlooked.
The time paradox also results in
other unforeseen events, such as Spock’s parent’s divorce (a novel topic for
young people’s literature in the early 1970s) and his mother’s accidental
death. To stop these events from occurring, Spock must go back in time and set
things right. I’m sure many children have wished that restoring their families
was as easy as breaking the laws of physics.
The crux of the story revolves around
young Spock’s decision to prove his Vulcan heritage by surviving a harsh Vulcan
desert endurance test of manhood, the Kahs-wan. He is joined in his journey by
his childhood pet sehlat, a large bear-like creature first mentioned in
“Journey to Babel.”
The presence of the elder Spock,
disguised as a distant family relative, alters the timeline further by causing
his younger self to leave on the Kahs-wan sooner than expected. This further
disruption of the timeline actually ends up restoring the younger Spock’s life,
although at the cost of the life of his beloved pet sehlat, who saves his young
master from a predatory Vulcan mountain lion-like creature called a le-matya.
The sehlat, who survived in the
initial timeline, must die in order for the time paradox to be resolved and the
elder Spock restored to his own timeline.
A bit confusing, but the young
reader is presented with a classic Star
Trek quandary: The elder Spock must allow his childhood pet die in order
for his own existence, and the events that changed as a result, to be restored.
The younger Spock faces a
heart-wrenching decision. With his pet sehlat suffering in pain from the
poisonous claws of the le-matya, he must decide whether to have a Vulcan healer extend the animal's life, which will only prolong the pain, or have his beloved animal companion mercifully put down.
Young Spock decides to put his
pet sehlat out of his misery. Making the logical decision
also gives him the confidence needed to take the step into adulthood.
The larger implication of this decision for the young reader is that if putting
a beloved pet to sleep is an act of mercy, does that same principle also apply
to a beloved family member?
The animated episode spends
precious little time on these scenes; however, Foster develops these
underlining concepts in more detail through a focal point common to his young
teen readers, the pains of growing up and proving yourself to your family and
peers.
The following clip from the episode captures the young Spock's adolescent angst:
One of Our Planets is Missing
[Spock]“Someday Captain, when we are able to protect
ourselves a little better, we may be fortunate enough to meet it again, or
others like it.”
“And
when that day comes,” Kirk agreed softly, caught up in Spock’s own sense of
wonder —and his own emotional release —“when that day comes, Mr. Spock, the ant
will stand on its hind legs and converse with the man.” (Foster 184)
After the more sublime human
drama of “Yesteryear” we are plunged into sci-fi high adventure with “One of
Our Planets is Missing,” which Foster adapted from a script by Marc Daniels,
who directed over a dozen episodes of The
Original Series. In this episode, a giant sentient cloud that consumes
planets is heading towards the Federation colony of Mantilles with a population
of 82 million. Kirk must decide whether to inform the planet
they only have about three and a half hours to live, even though they couldn't possibly be evacuated in time.
The “sentient cloud” doesn’t
recognize creatures as small as humans as life and is unaware of our
existence.The only way to stop the
cloud is for Captain Kirk to destroy the Enterprise
inside the creature’s brain, saving Mantilles, but at the cost of his ship and
crew.
While there is little doubt about
what they must do, Spock raises the morality of killing a living creature,
particularly one about to be executed for a crime that it is unaware of having
committed. On this scale, could the cloud be any guiltier of murder than humans
are when they step on ants?
“One of Our Planets is Missing”
draws on elements of The Original Series
episodes “The Doomsday Machine” and “The Immunity Syndrome.” From “The Doomsday
Machine” is drawn the idea of a giant planet-consuming entity; “The Immunity
Syndrome” contributes the concept of an interstellar life form, and in both
episodes the machine and interstellar life form can only be killed from the
inside.
Unlike “The Doomsday
Machine” and the interstellar amoeba in “The Immunity Syndrome,” the sentient
cloud in “One of Our Planets is Missing” is intelligent and can be reasoned
with, so one trusty Vulcan mind-meld later and Mantilles is saved.
What Foster captures from the
original script is the cloud-creature’s sense of loneliness, its uniqueness,
and its isolation; all concepts very familiar to his teenage audience.
The following
clip from the episode shows Spock exchange consciousness with the cloud
creature via the Vulcan mind meld:
Epilog
Foster establishes a sense of
unity throughout the three stories by highlighting related emotional elements.
A sense of isolation and loneliness is felt not only by the alien creatures in
“Beyond the Farthest Star” and “One of Our Planets is Missing,” but also by the
young Spock in “Yesteryear.” This recurrent theme creates an emotional strand
young readers can latch onto as they navigate the sci-fi technobabble.
Back cover.
In determining a book’s success,
one should attempt to view it through the eyes of its intended audience, in
this case that means young teens in the 1970s. Being a member of that
demographic, I feel uniquely qualified to bring that point of view into this
discussion. Star Trek Log One was a Christmas gift from my father in 1977, a small gesture by my dear old dad
trying to connect with me through my interests. As I was entering
adolescence at the ripe old age of 13, I could relate to many of the themes in
the book, particularly the coming-of-age story in “Yesteryear.”
I still have that cheap paperback
of Star Trek Log One I received as a
stocking stuffer some 36 years ago and rereading it brought back many memories. If a book, any book, can take us as far away as our youth, then the text —even
one as ephemeral as adaptations of Saturday morning cartoon scripts —becomes something a bit
more than just words on a page.
Work Cited
Foster, Alan Dean. Star Trek Log One. New York: Del Rey,
1974. Print.
As I sit recovering from our
first real snowstorm in nearly two years, my thoughts are drawn to the winter
of 1978. I was a 13 year old seventh grader at St. Teresa of Avila
Middle School, in Albany, NY. My English class was given the assignment of
writing a poem in honor of the season.I
recall looking outside at the snow falling on the ground and remembering the
excitement felt only when we are young and the prospect of spending long
periods of time in the cold and snow is something you actually want to do.
Upstate New York experienced some
brutal winters the late 70s, so there were no shortage of snow days
off from school. My friends and I would gather at my house, build snow forts,
snowmen, have snowball fights, and drink hot chocolate in our family’s wood-paneled,
1970s kitchen, decorated in burnt orange, avocado green, and harvest gold. I
recall having this image in mind when I wrote the poem.
I had quite forgotten about it
until recently when I found it among my school memorabilia, published in a copy of
the St. Teresa’s Tribune (Vol. I,
issue #4; June 1979). I was initially appointed as the “photographic editor,”
primarily because I owned a German Agfa camera (a gift from my fascist Italian
grandfather). This proved to be a rather meaningless title since photographs can’t be
printed off a mimeograph machine.
Here is my awkward first effort,
not bad for a young teen suffering through puberty at a Catholic middle school:
Snowstorm
The snow falls gently on the ground
As I stand upon my self-made mound
Not a thing moves, shivers or quakes
For tonight we are in the snow’s wake
Harder and harder as it falls
Fun we’ll have in the shape of a ball
Nine, ten, eleven inches deep,
Harder and harder it gets to reap
Inside I sit all snug and warm
Until my friends come in a swarm
So here we sit all together
Drinking hot chocolate and hoping for warm weather
I’m sure my critics will say I
have not much improved. One can
view a scan of the original publication below.
Of note, in the publication is an interview with
Father Gary Mercure, a priest then assigned to St. Teresa’s who later was
convicted of raping two alter boys (click on link for more information).
Mercure was not convicted of anything related to St. Teresa’s, though I do
recall he went on an extended leave or a sabbatical shortly after this
interview, purportedly due to a “nervous breakdown.”I stopped serving as an altar boy at some point in 1978, so I had little contact with him beyond my annoying questions in
catechism class. This is at least one way my early skepticism at the validity
of a hierarchal approach to spiritualty served me well.
Below are scans of the St. Teresa’s Tribune (Vol. I, issue #4;
June 1979) in glorious mimeograph, and of no particular interest to anyone but alumni of the school, which was
razed in 2012 to make room for a Mormon Temple.
“Nobody’s going to shoot at me.” — The last words of Lee Harvey Oswald.
I was born in November 1964, a year
after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Indeed, my middle name "Jack" is partially in tribute to the then not-so-recently deceased late president. Kennedy's death hung over the children
of my generation like a specter. Like many, I too was convinced that JFK’s
death was the result of CIA machinations, or a jealous J. Edgar Hoover at the
FBI, or the Mafia. Perhaps the deed was done at the hands of pro-Castro Cubans
upset over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, or maybe it was anti-Castro Cubans
upset over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, or it was Castro himself, striking
back after failed CIA assassination attempts. Maybe it was the Soviets, angry
at being bested by JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Like most, I knew few
specifics, but since so many believed there was a conspiracy I assumed where
there was smoke there must also be fire.
Spurred on by what I was convinced
was the weight of evidence that favored a conspiracy, including the 1979
United States House Select Committee on Assassinations which concluded that
there likely was a second shooter on the infamous grassy knoll and that
President was likely assassinated as the result of a conspiracy, I decided to
investigate the matter for myself. In the early 1990s, I began reading every
book or magazine article I could find on the topic. Using my access to the
library at the college I worked, I used interlibrary loan to get books I
otherwise would never have been able to read. I taped and watched a
mind-boggling number of “documentaries” which purported evidence of
conspiracies. I read the Warren Report, various autopsy reports, ballistic
studies, and investigative reports from all sides of the debate.
I admit freely, in retrospect,
that I was looking for evidence of a conspiracy. I was convinced that President
John F. Kennedy was so powerful a threat to the military-industrial complex, or
the intelligence community, or the Mafia, or disgruntled Cubans, arch-conservatives,
or Communists that one of these groups carried out and got away with the crime
of the century.
In the end, I came to the
conclusion that while some groups had motive to kill President Kennedy, Lee
Harvey Oswald got there first and acted wholly of his own accord. It is a
conclusion I came to only after years of research and deliberate contemplation.
Lee Harvey Oswald
After my first year of research,
I noticed that the one common element to every theory was Lee Harvey Oswald.
Sometimes Oswald is the hub of a theory —an agent working for the government,
or the Soviets, or on behalf of the Mafia, etc. Sometimes Oswald is a peripheral
element, a dupe, a patsy, the fall guy. I could spend an eternity exploring the
minutiae of every theory, and did for years, or I could focus my energies on
Lee Harvey Oswald.
To that end, I created a timeline
of Oswald’s life. Only facts gathered from the most verifiable and objective sources
were considered for inclusion, which helped me to determine which theories were
possible within the context of the timeline.
Oswald’s upbringing, in his own
words and as verified by his brother Robert, was largely marked by neglect. Their
father, Robert Oswald Sr., died about two months before Lee Harvey was
born on October 18, 1939, leaving his upbringing in the hands of his mother, Marguerite.
Without a husband, Marguerite felt her children were a burden and placed them
in an orphanage (“Who was Lee Harvey Oswald”). Marguerite was intensely
self-centered and emotionally distant from her children and as a result Lee
Harvey Oswald grew up without making any significant connection to a nurturing
influence.
In 1952, Marguerite and Lee moved
to New York City and into her step-son John Pic’s apartment, who was newly
married with a young son.Like the
mother-in-law from hell, Marguerite planted herself in Pics’s home and showed
no desire to find a place of her own. Oswald hated the move and showed his
displeasure by getting into loud arguments with his mother and hitting her. In
one incident, Oswald pulled a knife on Pic’s wife and punched his mother in the
face when she tried to interfere. Oswald’s behavior carried over into the
classroom, when he showed up, where he got into fights, had temper tantrums,
did no homework, and refused to salute the flag (Posner 10, 13). Already, the
spirit of the young Marxist was becoming evident.
While it is tempting to suggest
that the 11 year old Oswald was acting out in response to being uprooted from
his native south, there is sufficient eyewitness testimony to establish that
Oswald’s dysfunctional, and violent, behavior had already manifested itself in
Texas prior to moving to New York. Neighbors in Fort Worth observed Marguerite
was “overbearing,” but at the same time did not discipline Oswald, whose
behaviors at this time included throwing stones at other children, public
displays of temper, and threatening older brother John Pic with a butcher knife
on one occasion, and throwing a knife at him another time (Posner 9, 10).
In 1953, Lee Harvey Oswald was
remanded to a youth detention center for his persistent truancy and ordered to
undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Evelyn Siegel (née Strickman),
a social worker assigned to Oswald, noted Marguerite “never gave a damn” about the young Lee Harvey Oswald — a
sentiment echoed by his probation officer who thought Oswald’s mother
contributed to her son’s socially maladjusted behavior (Posner 12, 14).
Siegel remembered Oswald in an
interview for the PBS documentary series Frontline:
He was just emotionally frozen. He was a kid
who never developed a trusting relationship with anybody. From what I garnered,
he really interacted with no one. He made his own meals. His mother left at
seven and came home around seven and he shifted for himself. You got the
feeling of a kid no one gave a darn about. He was just floating along in the
world with no emotional resources at all (“Who was Lee Harvey Oswald”).
As Gerald Posner notes in his
book Case Closed, Oswald joined the
U.S. Marines very likely for the same reasons his older brother Robert and
step-brother John Pic. Pic reported Oswald joined up “. . . to get from out and
under . . . [t]he yoke of oppression from my mother.” Robert concurs, stating Oswald
“. . . had seen us escape from mother that way. To him, military service meant
freedom” (Posner 19).
Comrade Oswald
Oswald’s early interest in politics
is well documented. I Led Three Lives,
a jingoistic mid-fifties television show about an FBI agent who infiltrated the
Communist Party, intrigued Oswald, noted his brother Robert for Frontline:
. . . he became really engrossed in that
particular television show. I think he just liked the atmosphere that you could
do anything that you wanted to do, that you could imagine you could do. (“Who
was Lee Harvey Oswald”)
By the time he was in high
school, Oswald was vocalizing his Communist beliefs to classmates, who later
testified to early discussions with the budding young Marxist. At 16, Oswald
wrote the Socialist Party of America and asked about joining a local branch of
their youth league (Posner 16-18). Any theory that Oswald was not a Communist
has difficulty challenging the well-documented evidence of Oswald’s early
political leanings.
With no fellow Socialists to
mingle with, Oswald diverted himself by joining the Civil Air Patrol, the youth
auxiliary of the Air Force. Though his time with the Civil Air Patrol was
brief, it does lead us to one intriguing bit of evidence, a photograph (see
fig. 2, below) which connects conspiracy theory favorite David Ferrie with
Oswald.
David Ferrie’s role in the
conspiracy theories stems from his work as a private investigator for a lawyer
representing New Orleans Mafia head Carlos Marcello. Additionally, Ferrie was
an associate of Guy Bannister, a retired FBI agent who also worked as a private
investigator and is reported to have organized anti-Communist activities from
his office in New Orleans.
The anti-communist activities of
Guy Bannister and David Ferrie were not isolated.Training camps for anti-Castro Cuban forces
were shut down that summer of 1963. Ferrie’s alleged activities flying for
anti-Castro Cubans was not an entirely uncommon activity. A deceased relative
of my family flew with arm shipments to anti-Castro forces to Cuba in the early
1960s and still spoke bitterly about the U.S. “abandoning” anti-Castro forces decades
later (Sartorio).
The photograph below (fig. 2) shows
a teenaged Lee Harvey Oswald in a group picture with David Ferrie at a 1955
Civil Air Patrol cookout (“Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald”). Ferrie actually had
been officially suspended from the Civil Air Patrol at the time, purportedly
for giving “unauthorized political lectures to the cadets” (Posner 142). One
can only surmise the reaction of the budding young Socialist Lee Harvey Oswald,
who refused to salute the flag even at this young age, to the political
rantings of the anti-Communist David Ferrie.
Fig. 2: David Ferrie (circled on left) and a young Lee
Harvey Oswald (circled on right) at a Civil Air Patrol cookout in 1955. Proof of a conspiracy
or that young men eat lunch?
While intriguing, the
photograph itself does not further any conspiracy theory. Oswald’s Marxist beliefs
were set during his formative teen years and there is no evidence to suggest
that he abandoned his political beliefs, even after his failed attempt to enter
Cuba via Mexico City in October 1963.
I do, however, believe Oswald may
have attempted to use his previous acquaintance with David Ferrie during the
summer of 1963 in an attempt to infiltrate anti-Castro Cuban organizations and
build up his credentials as a Communist activist prior to his planned attempt
to defect to Cuba later that fall. This is an old theory, but one that seems to
fit the facts.
It is well-known that Oswald
attempted to infiltrate anti-Castro groups in New Orleans in August 1963, when
he approached lawyer Carlos Bringuier, a delegate to the anti-Castro Cuban
Student Directorate. Bringuier, at first, thought Oswald was an FBI informant,
so he was suitably surprised four days after his initial meeting with Oswald to
find him on a street corner handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets (Posner
151-152).
On those leaflets, the address
for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee’s was stamped 544 Camp Street. The Fair
Play for Cuba Committee New Orlean’s chapter was comprised of exactly one
person, Oswald himself, and there is no evidence that he ever rented an office
at the Camp Street address. Guy Bannister, however, did have an office at that
address and David Ferrie was reported to have visited there numerous times that
summer of 1963 (Posner 137-138). Interestingly, 544 Camp Street is
approximately one block away from the Reilly Coffee Company, where Oswald
worked the summer of 1963.
Are such coincidences possible?
In my essay, Arthur John Shawcross: The Monster on Alexander Street, I noted
how I discovered years after the fact that my odd ball next-door neighbor in
Rochester, NY, in 1988 was a serial killer. I later found out that in 1987
Shawcross, following a long stretch in prison, spent a brief period of time in
Delhi, NY, at the same time I was visiting my mother in the small New York hill
town. Coincidence? Yes, absolutely.
Oswald and Ferrie were
essentially two sides of the same coin. Each had political agendas regarding
Communism that were driven by deep-seated personal issues. Both lived in New
Orleans and worked within one block of each other. The possibility that their
lives intersected is not so much a coincidence as much as it was a statistical probability.
Since both Oswald and Ferrie were
known to have worked in the same area of New Orleans, my wholly unsubstantiated
opinion is that there is a probability that Oswald may have run into Ferrie.
Could Oswald have attempted to approach Ferrie, as he did Carlos Bringuier, with
an eye towards infiltrating the anti-Communist/anti-Castro groups with whom
Ferrie was involved? Ferrie, being a rabid anti-Communist, would very likely
have remembered the one boy from his Civil Air Patrol chapter who defected to
the Soviet Union. One can only imagine what transpired when these two
borderline personalities met, if they ever did. Ferrie, however, denied ever
knowing Oswald and the trail went cold when Ferrie died in 1967.
Listing 544 Camp Street on the
Fair Play for Cuba leaflets was more likely than not Oswald thumbing his nose
at the anti-Castro movement, who he clearly saw as his nemesis that summer of
'63.
Video
Clip 1: WDSU-TV Interview with Lee Harvey Oswald.
From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Oswald’s study of the Russian
language in the Marines, long cited as evidence of a conspiracy, did not raise
any suspicions at the time since others, including one of his commanding
officers, studied the language as well (Posner 31). Oswald’s Russian language
skills, however, were rated poor when tested by the Marines. Oswald did
cultivate an interest in Castro while in the Marines and likely made contact
with Japanese Communists while stationed there, from whom he may have gotten
the idea to defect (Posner 24-25).
The Soviets, however, did not need
Oswald. He was a low-level radar operator and any codes he knew were changed
once it was known he had traveled to the Soviet Union (“Who was Lee Harvey
Oswald”). Indeed, Oswald had been busted to private prior to leaving the
marines and his last job was not as a radar operator, but rather doing
janitorial work (Posner 32). Higher ranking members of the U.S. military and
various intelligence agencies had defected to the Soviet Union during the 1950s
and 1960s, with far more valuable secrets that the few paltry outdated codes
Oswald could offer.
Oswald defected to the Soviet
Union in October 1959 and remained through June 1962. The Soviet government
did not trust Oswald and after his initial request to stay had been rejected,
Oswald attempted a “suicide” in a thinly veiled attempt to draw on their
sympathy. Oswald slashed his wrist, but the wound was not particularly deep,
and it was planned just minutes before his Soviet “tour guide” was due to
arrive.
The doctor on duty who examined
Oswald, Dr. Lydia Mikhailina, was interviewed for Frontline and reported she thought this was a “show suicide since
he had been refused political asylum.” In short, Oswald blackmailed the Soviet
Politburo in order to avoid an international incident by having an American
citizen die under mysterious circumstances (“Who was Lee Harvey Oswald”). It
worked and Oswald was permitted to stay.
Oswald, however, never got the
appointment to Moscow University that he sought and instead was shipped off to
Minsk to build televisions and electronics. This is rather ironic since in an
interview with reporter Priscilla McMillan (née Johnson) shortly after his
arrival in Russia, Oswald stated that he defected because, “He did not want to
live like a worker under capitalism as his mother did and be exploited all his
life” (“Who was Lee Harvey Oswald”). This, of course, is exactly what Oswald
would experience in the Soviet Union.
He settled into his job as a
factory worker and enjoyed a “luxury apartment” befitting his status as a
high-profile foreign émigré (“Who was Lee Harvey Oswald”). A perk a young man
his age would not ordinarily enjoy, and no doubt helped the socially awkward
young man attract a pretty young Russian bride, despite his language problems
and general loathing of humanity.
While Oswald “defected” to the
Soviet Union, he never actually officially renounced his citizenship. He may
have been hedging his bets since the Soviets were never completely welcoming of
him. His ideal of a worker’s paradise quickly eroded into a dull, gray
existence as he discovered he was as out of place in Russia as much as he was
in the United States. The government did not trust him — the KGB kept Oswald
under surveillance, thinking that he could be a sleeper agent. In the end, they
determined they had little to fear from Oswald.
We concluded that he [Lee Harvey Oswald] was
not working for American intelligence. His intellectual training, experience,
and capabilities were such that it would not show the FBI and the CIA in a good
light if they used people like him. —Vladimir Semichastny, former head of the
KGB, who handled Oswald's case (“Who was Lee Harvey Oswald”)
Oswald, despite his earnest
claims of allegiance to Marxism, had no credentials as a Communist activist and
this, in part, was what led to his initial rejection by the Soviet government.
The lesson Oswald learned was that if he ever planned to defect again, he should
have a better resume. This, in my opinion, was the driving motive behind Oswald
for his subsequent activities in New Orleans after his return to the United
States.
Video
Clip 2: Oswald Arrest News and New York City Street Interviews.
From the Aeolus
13 Umbra YouTube channel.
The Bloody Facts
The cabal of politicians and
academics living in the bubble of the House Select Committee who assembled the
carefully constructed conclusions of its 1979 report had its integrity
successfully challenged by of all things, rock and roll and porn. Gallery magazine included a flexible
plastic recording of a police dicabelt that purportedly proved that four
gunshots took place in a six-second period, an impossibility with the Mannlicher-Carcano
rifle Oswald used. This suggested a second gunman.
Steve Barber, a rock drummer with
experience in audio production, purchased the issue and listened to the
recording. Barber discovered a faint, but discernible, “Hold everything
secure . . . ” that was attributed to Sheriff Bill Decker and known to have been
spoken by Decker approximately one minute after Kennedy was shot. This meant
that the “sound impulses” noted by House Select Committee experts and
attributed to the assassin, took place after the assassination. The sound
impulses were not gunshots and because of this, and other errors, the House
Select Committee’s report was conclusively refuted by the National Academy of
Sciences in a 1982 investigative report (Posner 241-242).
Subsequent investigations
established that Oswald had in fact approximately eight seconds to make three
shots, sufficient time to make the kill. Further, there was no fourth shot. Oswald
displayed sufficient skill in the Marines to make a head shot of man moving
slowly away from him in a straight line. The “Magic Bullet” is a red herring,
Governor John Connelly’s and President Kennedy’s bodies were positioned to
permit the path the bullet followed. Reverse ballistic trajectory projection of
Connelly’s and Kennedy’s wounds leads back to the area of the sniper’s next in
the sixth floor window of the School Book Depository (“Who was Lee Harvey Oswald”).
Video
Clip 3: NBC News Break November 22, 1963, WBAP-TV.
From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
The head shot caught so
dramatically on Abraham Zapruder’s film is misleading to the untrained eye. The
reaction backwards is the result of the “jet affect” of the energy of the
bullet being absorbed by the brain which in turn shoots out the hole created by
the exiting bullet with enough force to push the head back (an effect which has
been repeated in tests). As gunshot exit wounds are larger than entry wounds,
this also corresponds with the existing physical evidence, unless conspiracy
theorists would have us believe that basic laws of physical science and
ballistic dynamics were temporarily suspended in Dealey Plaza for about eight seconds.
Attempts to link Oswald to the
mafia via Jack Ruby have similarly fallen apart. There is no evidence that
Oswald had any underworld connections. Ruby, despite his underworld
connections, was a low-level hustler not trusted by either side of law. Tony
Zoppi, a Dallas reporter who knew Ruby, stated in an interview with Gerald
Posner in 1992:
People in Dallas, in those circles, knew
Ruby was a snitch. The word was on the street that you couldn’t trust him
because he was telling the cops everything. . . .You have to be crazy to think
anybody would have trusted Ruby to be part of the mob. He couldn’t keep a
secret for five minutes. He was just a hanger-on, somebody who would have liked
some of the action but was never going to get any.(Posner 361)
“Somebody who would have liked
some of the action but was never going to get any.” The very same thing could
be said about Lee Harvey Oswald.
According to former Dallas
Detective Jim Leavelle, who was escorting Oswald when Oswald was shot, noted in
an interview on the PBS program Frontline,
the time selected to transport the prisoner where spur of the moment.
Therefore, no inside informant working for the mafia could have contacted Ruby
to “tip him off” when Oswald would be transported, a key element for the mafia
conspiracy to be true. Ruby was nowhere near a phone when the decision to move
Oswald was made.
Fig. 3: This non-descript door leads to the underground
garage where Oswald was shot. It sits diagonally across from the School Book
Depository.
More significantly, Lee Harvey
Oswald tried to assassinate General Edwin Walker, a hard-right conservative
leader, in April 1963. A fact attested to by his wife Marina, who reported that
Oswald admitted doing so, and saved several of the photographs Oswald took of
Walker’s residence when planning the assassination attempt (Posner 114-116).
Oswald missed Walker when his
bullet was deflected by the window frame. Oswald aimed close enough that Walker
reported his arm bled in three places after being hit with glass and wood from
the window (“Who was Lee Harvey Oswald”).
Oswald would have another shot
that November, and at a target much bigger than even he could have anticipated.
The Deal with Dealey Plaza
Fig.
4: Layout of Dealey Plaza on historical marker at Dealey Plaza.
Dealey Plaza is flanked by two
semi-circular colonnades between an overpass and two low walls in front of
reflecting pools. Three roads run through it and buildings situated on the
outskirts include the Texas School Book Depository and County Court House and
jail. Dealey Plaza is an echo chamber made of concrete, asphalt, brick, and
stone.
Fig.
5: The view of the colonnade and the grassy knoll. A similar colonnade sits
opposite the plaza.
The crack of a high-power rifle
in this acoustic arena led some witnesses to claim they heard a sound from the
grassy knoll. Sound waves of the gunshot from the Depository Building would
have echoed off the semi-circular colonnade nest to the grassy knoll. After
years of my own research, I determined that so-called witness reports were not
credible. There was no second gunman on the grassy knoll. There was no need.
Oswald had the better shot from a better position. For one, the grassy knoll is
actually quite close to the colonnade and not far from the street. Abraham
Zapruder filmed the scene while standing on top of a wall about 30 feet away
from the fence where the alleged second shooter stood.
Fig.
6: A view of Zapruder's position from the grassy knoll.
I took the picture above (fig. 6)
standing from the point on the grassy knoll where the second shooter would have
stood had he actually existed. I am looking over to the short wall by the
stairway where two people are standing. Zapruder stood on top of that wall,
flanked by his secretary and stopped filming right on the point in the fence
where the second gunman should have been standing. No one is there.
Fig. 7: A view of the grassy knoll from Zapruder's position. Despite being so close he did not identify a
gunshot from this position.
Zapruder himself is not clear on
where the shots came from. Initially he reported he thought the shots came from
behind him, and the grassy knoll is to the right of Zapruder at about the 2 o’clock
position. Later, Zapruder testified before the Warren Commission, “There was
too much reverberation. There was an echo which gave a sound all over. In other
words that square [Dealy Plaza] is kind of —it had a sound all over.”
Neither Zapruder’s original
statement nor his Warren Commission testimony supports a conspiracy theory. Further, it confirms the "echo chamber" acoustics of Dealy Plaza —a point often dismissed or overlooked by conspiracy theorists.
Video
Clip 4: Oswald Arrest and Eyewitness Reports.
From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel
My Pilgrimage to Dealey Plaza
In April 2002, I travelled to
Dallas to do media relations for the International Reliability Physics
Symposium. This gave me the opportunity to see Dealey Plaza for myself. I made
several visits, taking photographs and retracing Oswald’s and Ruby’s steps.
Visiting the location where a historical event actually took place gives one a
sense of context that cannot be replaced by photographs, video, or the written
word.
Hawkers of cheap tabloids
purporting claims of conspiratorial cover-ups roamed the plaza. I find this
somewhat on the level of Jesus finding money-changers in the Temple, an
absolute sacrilege; however, I found it
hard to get angry at them. These were men clearly at the bottom of the
socio-economic ladder and trying to hustle up enough money for their next meal.
Fig. 8: The Texas School Book Depository. The sixth floor
sniper's nest window is partly opened. Two street vendors selling conspiratorial tabloids can be
seen just left of the entrance.
I was more outraged by a woman
who set up a table on the walkway between the grassy knoll and where Abraham
Zapruder stood while filming the assassination. She was pushing a
conspiratorial theory involving an elderly couple that was both complex and
breathtakingly stupid in its construction. Her display was comprised of a
poster board with photographs and notes made in marker, not much removed in
quality from a grade school project. Of course, she was selling a vanity press
publication about the “theory.”
I interrupted her presentation to
a young tourist couple and rattled off about a dozen questions, none of which
she could answer and all of which exposed her theory as a self-serving attempt
to score a buck. Deciding I made my point, I marched off before I lost my
temper on what I considered to be sacred ground.
Walking towards the reflecting
pools, I realized, here I was in my black suit and sunglasses aggressively
questioning a conspiracy nut at Dealey Plaza. I ironically had become a “Man in
Black” and rather than casting doubt in the woman’s mind about her theory, I
probably just reinforced it. I can only imagine what her reaction would have
been if she found out I was a defense information-corporate intelligence consultant
in town doing media relations for a symposium that included scientists who
worked in the defense industry.
Dealey Plaza is a Rorschach test —
we see in it what we bring there ourselves.
Parting Shots
Lee Harvey Oswald’s life was marked
by rejection –rejected by his mother, the Marines, the Soviet Union, and even
Cuba during his failed attempt to defect to the Caribbean Communist nation in
the summer of 1963. Returning to Dallas, Oswald’s future was bleak. He was
separated from his wife, now pregnant with their second child, due to his
inability to earn a living.
Oswald ended up at the School
Book Depository with the assistance of Ruth Paine, a friend of his wife. The
president’s exact route was published just two days before the visit. No secret
agency or a conspiratorial cabal of criminals put Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas,
at the School Book Depository, or a gun in his hand (“Who was Lee Harvey
Oswald”).
Barely a year after the Cuban
Missile Crisis, when the USA and USSR stood on the brink of nuclear war, no
one knew better than Lee Harvey Oswald that the assassination of John F.
Kennedy by an ex-marine who defected to the Soviet Union could be the trigger
to finally plunge both super powers into a war of total annihilation.
Oswald, however, like any number of criminals
I worked with during my tenure as a prison educator, denied any involvement in
the crime, even when faced with overwhelming evidence. Indeed, Oswald even
feigned surprise when informed by the press that he was charged with the
assassination; as though he fully did not expect that any suspicion should fall
on a Marxist, ex-marine, former Soviet defector.
My purpose here is not to discuss
every detail regarding the assassination; there already are exhaustive
resources available in print, on video, and the Internet that explore the
evidence. In any event, it is not likely I could change the mind of anyone who is committed
to the conspiracy theory that the assassination is not the result of a lone
gunman. I am merely sharing my research experience and encouraging those
interested in the matter to do so themselves.
The complication for any
conspiracy theory is that the number of people involved to make them happen is
staggering. For any of these theories to be true many people would have to be involved,
yet not one credible confession, death bed or otherwise, has come forth. Time
has proven that the Mafia’s “code of silence” lasts only until the D.A. can
offer a good plea deal and witness protection. CIA agents sold national secrets
to the Soviets. Nixon, with all the power he wielded, could not keep his
attempts to subvert democracy a secret, even with a cadre of men as loyal as G.
Gordon Liddy. As a result, I am incredulous that a secret such as a conspiracy
to kill the President of the United States could be kept quiet for 50 years.
In the end, the debate over the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy reveals more about the debaters than
the debate. The truth really is out there, but sometimes it is easier to
believe that the leader of the United States of America at the height of its
power and influence during the Cold War could only be removed by a vast
conspiracy rather than a sociopathic loner with a gun and a grudge.
We could not possibly be that
vulnerable, could we?
Related Content on the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube Channel
JFK Assassination: As
It Happened – 6 1/4 hours of compiled NBC news reports. No narration, just
original unedited footage.
Related Content on the PBS America YouTube Channel
PBS Frontline
Special: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald (1993) – A well-researched documentary
on the life of Oswald. Its conclusion, that he acted alone, continues to
stand the test of time.
Works Cited
“JFK Assassination: As it
Happened.” NBC News Special Coverage.
National Broadcasting Company. 1993. Television.
Posner, Gerald. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the
Assassination of JFK. Random House , Inc.: New York. 1993.
Print.
Sartorio, Donna. Personal
interview. July 2005.
“Who is Lee Harvey Oswald?” Frontline. PBS. 1993. Television.