25. The exact Sicilian translation is "this thing of ours."

26. See Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 195965 (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005); Marifeli Perez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

27. In another odd twist, CIA director George H. W. Bush wrote de Mohrenschildt a letter in September 1976 in response to a complaint from de Mohrenchildt that he was still being targeted by federal agencies because of his friendship with Oswald. Bush reported that he had found no evidence to justify the grievance.

28. Gerald Blaine, one of the Secret Service agents assigned to the Kennedy detail, also thinks that Oswald would have been a poor choice for a group plotting a political assassination: "[He] had an overwhelming need for recognition. This is the story of most assassins. He also had a personality that would prevent him [from] talking to someone over five minutes without totally alienating them. This would make anyone leery of using him as a conspiracy partner." E-mail from Gerald Blaine, January 9, 2013.

29. Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 15172; Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 27679. De Mohrenschildt was the recipient of an inscribed copy of one of the famous photos of Lee Oswald holding a rifle in the spring of 1963. The photo only became publicly known after de Mohrenschildt killed himself in 1977, when his testimony was being sought by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. It is not clear why de Mohrenschildt committed suicide or whether he received the photo from Lee Oswald or from Marina.

30. The Paines separated in 1962 and were divorced on May 4, 1970, in Dallas. Apparently, the couple reconciled for a brief period following the assassination (see Ruth Hyde Paine's testimony before the Warren Commission, March 21, 1964, vol. 9, p. 353), but the marriage ultimately disintegrated.

31. James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 16970; Posner, Case Closed, 110; "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives," pp. 41618, National Archives and Records Administration website,

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html

[accessed May 4, 2011].

32. You can see all three Oswald gun photos at

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/backyard-photos.html. Marina's comments on the "backyard photos" appear at

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/oswald_m1.htm

[accessed January 3, 2013].

33. Similar actions have been taken by other violence-prone individuals. For example, Seung-Hui Cho, the student who killed thirty-two people at Virginia Tech in April 2007, took a photo of himself just before going on a rampage that ended with his own suicide. The print shows Cho wearing a black T-shirt and ammunition vest while holding two automatic pistols. See Mike Nizza, "Seung-Hui Cho: Who Is This Man?" New York Times, August 30, 2007,

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/seung-hui-cho-who-is-this-man/

[accessed May 5, 2011].

34. "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 4: The Assassin," pp. 18387, National Archives and Records Administration website,

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html#walker [accessed May 5, 2011]; Posner, Case Closed, 97106.

35. On page 249 of the 2002 "Robert Welch University" edition of The Politician, the John Birch Society's Robert Welch makes the following claim regarding Eisenhower: "The role he has played, as described in all the pages above, would fit just as well into one theory as the other; that he is a mere stooge, or that he is a Communist ..." The most common defamatory quote regarding Eisenhower attributed to Birchers is the phrase "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy," which you can view at

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/02/farright-john-birch-society-2010.html

[accessed October 31, 2012].

36. It is unclear whether Oswald hated Kennedy. During a radio debate with an anti-Castro Cuban named Carlos Bringuier (discussed later in this chapter), Oswald was asked if he agreed with Fidel Castro's description of JFK as a "ruffian and a thief." "I would not agree with that ... particular wording," he replied. "However, I and the ... Fair Play for Cuba Committee does [sic] think that the United States government through certain agencies, mainly the State Department and the CIA, have made monumental mistakes in its relations with Cuba." "Lengthy Teletype of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald Debate with Comments on President Kennedy-Only Three Months Before Oswald Assassinated Kennedy," Nate D. Sanders Auctions website,

http://natedsanders.com/ItemInfo.asp?ItemID=30696

[accessed May 12, 2011]. Vincent Bugliosi, however, theorizes that Oswald may have been jealous of Kennedy since Marina once described him as "very attractive" and thought that one of her ex-boyfriends bore a resemblance to the president. Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, 711. See also Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee (New York: Random House, 1980), 41013.

37. Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, 67173; interview with Volkmar Schmidt, January 1995, conducted by William E. Kelly,

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html

[accessed May 5, 2011].

38. Ken Holmes, a Dallas resident who has been investigating 11/22 for decades, says that the car belonged to one of Walker's bodyguards. Holmes also says that Walker-who was indisputably on a plane traveling from New Orleans to Shreveport when he heard that Kennedy had been shot-stood up and told his fellow passengers, "I'm General Edwin A. Walker, and I want you to see where I'm at." Walker realized instantly that he could use an alibi. Personal interview with Ken Holmes, January 14, 2011, Dallas, Texas.

39. According to Dallas officer Jim Leavelle, Marina Oswald kept the Walker note to hold over her husband's head and deter him from further violence, and he promised "not to do any more of that silliness." Personal interview with Leavelle, April 8, 2011, Dallas, Texas. In recent years, Marina Oswald appears to have become less reliable and more inclined to change her story, but for the months after the assassination, it seems probable that she told the truth to the authorities as she remembered it-and the memories were fresh.

40. "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 4: The Assassin," pp. 18387, National Archives and Records Administration website,

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html

#walker [accessed May 5, 2011]; Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992), 34950; JFK, special edition DVD, directed by Oliver Stone (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 1997). Robert Frazier, the FBI ballistics expert who worked on the Walker case, was "unable to reach a conclusion" as to whether the bullet found in Walker's home had come from the rifle discovered on the sixth floor of the Book Depository. However, Frazier did say that "the general rifling characteristics of the rifle ... are of the same type as those found on the bullet ... and, further, on this basis ... the bullet could have been fired from the rifle on the basis of its land and groove impressions."

41. "Testimony of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald Resumed," Warren Commission Hearings, vol. V, pp. 38791, History Matters website,

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh5/html/WC_Vol5_0199a.htm

[accessed December 20, 2012].

42. This behavior by Oswald is oddly predictive of two future assassins: Arthur Bremer, who shot George Wallace in 1972 after first stalking President Nixon, and John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in 1981 after initially targeting President Carter. See "Portrait of an Assassin: Arthur Bremer," PBS American Experience,

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/sfeature/assasin.html

[accessed December 20, 2012], and Del Quentin Wilber, Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan (New York: Henry Holt, 2011).

43. Telephone interview with Wesley Buell Frazier, April 16, 2013.