Chapter XXXIII: Part 33

Mr. REYNOLDS. The police told me that she had hung herself and that she was the one that was with Garner. Everybody calls him "Dago."

Mr. LIEBELER. Did the police department tell you that she had worked for Jack Ruby?

Mr. REYNOLDS. No.

Mr. LIEBELER. The only source of information that you have for that is the article that Bob Considine wrote about this whole thing?

Mr. REYNOLDS. That's right.

Mr. LIEBELER. Have you heard anything about Nancy J. Mooney, or do you know anything about her other than that which you read in Bob Considine's newspaper article?

Mr. REYNOLDS. No; I don't. Well, I know one thing, she was 16, and her age, that is just what I have heard.

Mr. LIEBELER. You have heard that?

Mr. REYNOLDS. From the police department.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you know that she also used the name Betty MacDonald?

Mr. REYNOLDS. No; I didn't know that.

Mr. LIEBELER. My information is also that she is 24, not 16.

Mr. REYNOLDS. Twenty-four?

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you ever hear that she tried to commit suicide prior to the time she hung herself in the Dallas Police Station?

Mr. REYNOLDS. No.

Mr. LIEBELER. Or that she had four children that had been taken away from her because of her conduct?

Mr. REYNOLDS. I see nothing in that whole story that Considine wrote that would really come to me--be true.

I mean, it is true in one sense, and it is fair story, but I don't see any connection there, let's say.

Mr. LIEBELER. Considine was trying to create an impression that some girl had worked for Jack Ruby and was connected with Garner, and hung herself in the police department?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. Do you believe there is any connection in that respect?

Mr. REYNOLDS. No; I don't.

Mr. LIEBELER. Have you considered, when you thought about this problem, that there are other people that actually went down to the police station and viewed Oswald in lineups, and have testified in Washington before this Commission, and received international publicity in connection with the identification of Oswald as the murderer of Tippit and that so far at any rate they have not been attacked in any way such as you were?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes; I have.

Mr. LIEBELER. Can you suggest to me why you were picked out to be shot for this reason and not these other people?

Mr. REYNOLDS. The ones that I know, I am the only aggressor in the whole bunch. I am the only one that actually did something more than just look. I actually did something.

Mr. LIEBELER. But that is the only distinction you can see between yourself and those other people?

Mr. REYNOLDS. That's right.

Mr. LIEBELER. Have you discussed this question of the possible relationship between your shooting and the assassination, with General Walker?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes; I have.

Mr. LIEBELER. What did you say to him and what did he say to you about this matter, if you remember.

Mr. REYNOLDS. Oh, I said to him basically the same thing that I have said to you, and he said it could be and he thinks that it's strange that I was shot. I think anybody would think it strange. But of course, if you have ever talked to him, he wouldn't say yes or no.

Mr. LIEBELER. Does General Walker know of any facts, so far as you know, that would relate your shooting to the assassination?

Mr. REYNOLDS. No.

Mr. LIEBELER. He has never expressed a firm opinion to you one way or the other as to whether there was in fact, any connection between the two, has he?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Let me just let him answer that when he talks to you.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you know that he is going to talk to us?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes; I do.

Mr. LIEBELER. How do you know that?

Mr. REYNOLDS. I talked to him.

Mr. LIEBELER. Talked to him since we have invited him to come over and talk to us?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. When is the last time you talked to General Walker?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Around noon today.

Mr. LIEBELER. Talked to him on the telephone? Or in person?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Telephone; yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you discuss with him your appearance before the Commission here?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. Would you tell us the general subject of your conversation?

Mr. REYNOLDS. I just don't want to answer that, really.

Mr. LIEBELER. Preceding your conversation at noon today, when was the last time you talked to him before that, do you remember, approximately?

Mr. REYNOLDS. About a week ago. Maybe 2 weeks.

Mr. LIEBELER. How many times have you talked to him about this question altogether?

Mr. REYNOLDS. I have no idea; five or six.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now, in fact, General Walker sent a telegram to the Commission suggesting that we take your testimony, did he not?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. You knew that he did? Did he tell you that?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes. May I go off the record?

Mr. LIEBELER. Sure.

I think I have asked you all the questions I can think of, Mr. Reynolds, at this point. But I do want to say this to you. If you can think of anything else that you want the Commission to know in connection with this whole thing, I want you to feel free to say what it is right now. Or if you think there are any other facts that relate to this that we haven't brought out.

Mr. REYNOLDS. I don't know of any. I think it should be investigated what happened to me.

Mr. LIEBELER. The Dallas Police Department did conduct an investigation of the attack on you.

Mr. REYNOLDS. But their investigation didn't go too much past Garner. I mean they questioned a lot of people, but not anything of any importance. They have a little old bullet. I believe that is the only clue that they have.

Mr. LIEBELER. If you can't think of anything else that you think we ought to know and I haven't already asked you about, we can terminate the deposition at this point.

Mr. REYNOLDS. I would like to say something that might be important. About 3 weeks after I got out of the hospital, which would be around the 20th of February, my little 10-year-old daughter--somebody tried to pick her up, tried to get her in a car.

Now, again, whether that has any connection or not, I don't know, but it did happen, and it never had happened before nor after. But they even offered her money. She was smart enough to run and get away.

Mr. LIEBELER. Have you seen any other indication that anybody has been following you or that anybody is watching you or anything like that?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Someone unscrewed my light globe one night on the front porch of my house, and someone definitely did it.

Whether it was a jokester or kid, but I have a lamp over the light. They had to take three screws loose to get to my light globe. They took those off and unscrewed my light, and that is for sure. Now, that was around the 20th of February, too.

Mr. LIEBELER. That was after you had gotten out of the hospital?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. Is there anything else that would lead you to think anybody has been looking for you or looking after you?

Mr. REYNOLDS. No.

Mr. LIEBELER. Thank you very much, Mr. Reynolds.

TESTIMONY OF PRISCILLA MARY POST JOHNSON

The testimony of Priscilla Mary Post Johnson, was taken at 10:25 a.m., on July 25, 1964, at 200 Maryland Avenue NE., Washington, D.C., by Messrs. W. David Slawson and Richard M. Mosk, assistant counsel of the President's Commission.

Mr. SLAWSON. I will swear you in if you will rise? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Miss JOHNSON. I do.

Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, would you please state your full name and address?

Miss JOHNSON. My full name is Priscilla Mary Post Johnson, 48 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass.

Mr. SLAWSON. And would you state for the record your occupation or activities now and also what they were in 1959 when you saw Lee Harvey Oswald?

Miss JOHNSON. In 1959 I was a Moscow correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance, and now I am a freelance writer on Soviet affairs.

Mr. SLAWSON. Have you been given a copy of the Executive order and the joint resolution authorizing the creation of this Commission?

Miss JOHNSON. I have.

Mr. SLAWSON. And an opportunity to read them?

Miss JOHNSON. I have.

Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson has been asked to testify this morning because she in the course of her duties as a newspaper correspondent in 1959 interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald on at least one occasion while he was in Moscow, just after he had announced to the American Embassy that he wanted to renounce his American citizenship and become a Soviet citizen. She is going to describe to the best of her recollection, with the help of her notes taken at the time, what went on during that interview. Miss Johnson, first I think we will put in as exhibits the various notes you have taken and articles you have written since that time, about your interview with Mr. Oswald. I present you a copy, marked Johnson Exhibit No. 1, of the notes you have said were taken at that time, and I wonder if you would acknowledge that that is a true copy.

Miss JOHNSON. Yes; it is.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 1 was marked for identification.)

Mr. SLAWSON. I present this as Exhibit No. 1, introduce it in evidence as Exhibit No. 1.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 1 was received in evidence.)

Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, I have marked this as Exhibit No. 2.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 2 was marked for identification.)

Mr. SLAWSON. It purports to be a true copy of the article you wrote of your interview with Mr. Oswald, and submitted on November 18, 1959.

Miss JOHNSON. That is right. I submitted it to the Soviet censor on November 18.

Mr. SLAWSON. I submit this in evidence and mark it as Exhibit No. 2.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 2 was received in evidence.)

Mr. MOSK. Miss Johnson, was anything censored?

Miss JOHNSON. No. It would show on that. Nothing was censored.

Mr. SLAWSON. I now show you a document marked Exhibit No. 3 which purports to be a true copy of an article you wrote for the Boston Globe.

Miss JOHNSON. I wrote it for the North American Newspaper Alliance. That just happens to be one place that it appeared. It probably appeared in other places too.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 3 was marked for identification.)

Mr. SLAWSON. Then I will say your article----

Miss JOHNSON. For the North American Newspaper Alliance.

Mr. SLAWSON. As it appeared in the----

Miss JOHNSON. As it appeared in the Boston Globe.

Mr. SLAWSON. I believe that was on November 24, 1963?

Miss JOHNSON. Sunday. November 24. It was filed on November 22.

Mr. SLAWSON. Except for possible deletions of your complete article as it was submitted, is that a true copy of your article?

Miss JOHNSON. A true copy of my article.

Mr. SLAWSON. I present this in evidence as Exhibit No. 3.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 3 was received in evidence.)

Mr. SLAWSON. I now have a document marked Exhibit No. 4 which is an article from the--a copy of an article from the Christian Science Monitor of November 25, 1963.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 4 was marked for identification.)

Miss JOHNSON. The interview was given November 23, and that is a true copy of the interview as published in the Monitor.

Mr. SLAWSON. For the record, Miss Johnson, that is an interview of you by a correspondent working for the Christian Science Monitor; is that correct?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes.

Mr. SLAWSON. I then introduce it in evidence as Exhibit No. 4.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 4 was received in evidence.)

Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, I have here what purports to be a true copy of a statement you gave to a representative of the U.S. Department of State on December 5, 1963, and it has been marked Priscilla Johnson Exhibit No. 5.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 5 was marked for identification.)

Miss JOHNSON. Yes; that is okay. That is a copy.

Mr. SLAWSON. I then introduce in evidence this Exhibit No. 5.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 5 was received in evidence.)

Mr. SLAWSON. Finally, I have here a document marked Priscilla Johnson Exhibit No. 6, which purports to be a true copy of an article written by you as published in Harper's magazine.

Miss JOHNSON. April 1964.

Mr. SLAWSON. Right; in the April 1964 issue.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 6 was marked for identification.)

Miss JOHNSON. Yes.

Mr. SLAWSON. That is a true copy?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes.

Mr. SLAWSON. I introduce as evidence, present this as Exhibit No. 6.

(Priscilla Mary Post Johnson Exhibit No. 6 was received in evidence.)

Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, to begin the deposition, I would like you to state, with the help of your notes or articles at any time you want to refer to them, exactly when and where and how many times you saw Lee Harvey Oswald.

Miss JOHNSON. May I have the calendar. I saw him, Lee Harvey Oswald, on two occasions. First of all I had been at the American Embassy in Moscow, and Mr. McVickar, the consul, had told me that a would-be defector was staying at my hotel, that he had shown a reluctance to talk with officials of the Embassy or with other correspondents, but knowing my interest in kind of human interest stories, he thought that I might want to see this man. This was on an afternoon in November, and I think it must have been Monday, November 16, 1959, that Mr. McVickar advised me to see Mr. Oswald. So I stopped by Mr. Oswald's room, which was the floor below my own room in the Metropole Hotel. He lived on the second floor. I asked him for an interview, and he agreed to come to my room in the hotel that evening at an hour he named. I forgot what hour it was--8 or 9. So the second occasion on which I saw him was when he actually came that evening, and he stayed until the early hours of the morning, although I don't remember what hour. So far as I know, those were the only two occasions on which I saw him.

Mr. SLAWSON. He was in the same hotel you were staying in?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes. Could I interpolate a question here?

Mr. SLAWSON. Certainly.

Miss JOHNSON. Maybe it is out of line, but do you know whether he did stay at that hotel the rest of the time or did he go and leave? You see when I went back they had said he left. Had he actually gone to another hotel or did he remain in that hotel all the time?

Mr. SLAWSON. I believe that he was staying in the Hotel Metropole at the time you saw him, and I think he stayed there----

Miss JOHNSON. The rest of the time?

Mr. SLAWSON. The rest of the time. He had previously been in, I think, the Hotel Berlin, but he had moved to the Metropole before you saw him.

Miss JOHNSON. And they did move him out of the Berlin?

Mr. SLAWSON. That is right.

Miss JOHNSON. He stayed in the Metropole?

Mr. SLAWSON. Stayed in the Metropole.

Miss JOHNSON. So I was informed incorrectly when I was told he had gone by the people at the hotel?

Mr. SLAWSON. Do you remember when you were informed that he had gone?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes. I think that it was Thursday, the 19th.

Mr. SLAWSON. Could you state some of the details of that, how that came about that you were so informed?

Miss JOHNSON. Sure. Well, I wrote the story about him. I must have filed it on the 18th, but I don't think it was in connection with the story but with rather the fact that I had been told by him that he thought he would leave the hotel at the end of the week. So as soon as I had written the story and wasn't too busy in other ways, I went to the hotel. The woman who sat on his floor, the second floor, and I think it was the 19th, a Thursday, I asked if Mr. Oswald was there, because I wanted to catch him before he left. I expected he would leave the 20th. And because I kind of wanted to keep in contact with him, for his sake. And the woman who was sitting on the second floor--I don't know what you call her--who gave the keys out, just threw up her hands and said, "He is gone." So I asked her when he had gone, and she said she didn't know. So I assumed I had been informed correctly, and didn't try to get in touch with him again. And he had told me that he would let me know before he left for good, and he didn't either.

Mr. SLAWSON. Let us call a recess for a minute here, so that I can look for some records on Oswald's stay at the Hotel Metropole.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, in connection with your statement that you had returned to see Oswald and were told by a woman employee of the hotel on the second floor that he had left at a time which she did not know, I have here a copy of a letter Oswald wrote his brother Robert Oswald dated November 26, 1959 (Commission Exhibit No. 295). At the bottom of the letter he gives his address as "Hotel Metropole, Room 201, Moscow," with the marking, "(New Room)."

Miss JOHNSON. His room when I saw him was, I think it was room 225. It was down a corridor to the right. My room was 319, on the next floor. You turned just a little to the left to get to it. His was about 225 or something like that. So he had probably been moved to a cheaper room. My room would probably have had the same rent as his--$3 a day--but later his was maybe a little bit less.

Mr. SLAWSON. I see. And would the woman employee of the hotel who told you that Mr. Oswald had gone have had charge only of the old corridor and not the corridor with room 201 in it?

Miss JOHNSON. No; I think she would have had charge of his new room too, but he would have entered it possibly from the other side of the landing. I rather forget where the 01 was, but he might have entered it rather than from her desk turning right and then going down a corridor and then turning left. He might have taken his key from her and gone off to the left from her desk and from the elevator. She would have had charge of his room, but she might have been on duty for the first time since he moved, and only been aware that he had left--she might not have been trying to mislead me. It might have been her first day on duty since he switched his room, and she might have seen he wasn't in 225 and not realized that he was on the same floor but in another room.

I think the key thing is they probably gave him a very inexpensive room, since they were paying or since he was very poor. They perhaps accommodated him in allowing him to switch rooms.

Mr. SLAWSON. You mentioned a minute ago that he might have taken his key from her. You mean by that that ordinarily--or rather, frequently--a hotel guest would leave his key with the woman on his floor, but that it was possible to carry the key with you so that you would not have to pick it up from her?

Miss JOHNSON. No; customarily you pick it up from her when you go to your room and you leave it with her when you leave your room. It is simply that she would have had a book in which she had written down the room number of every guest, and I think each morning changes would be recorded there. My guess is that she rather than consciously misleading me--although she could have been told to say he was out, was gone--that there is a very good chance that she simply had not taken in that he was still there and in another room.

He would have left his key though, and customarily she would have always asked him for the key when he left.

Mr. SLAWSON. Did Oswald say something to you which would have led you to believe that he was interested in getting a less expensive room at the hotel?

Miss JOHNSON. He struck me as notably reticent about his finances, about his financial situation. He told me, truthfully or otherwise; that he had been there for 10 days on Intourist. He said he was paying the standard room and food rate, and said "I want to make it clear they are not sponsoring me." I must have asked him about his financial situation in some detail, because I thought it would give a clue as to how they were handling him. If they had allowed him to go from the $30 a day rate, that is the rate if you come Intourist which he said he was on, if they allowed him to go from $30 to a lesser sum, since mine was $3, that would indicate that they had an interest in him and they were seeking to help him, whether he knew it or not.

And he was defensive. He bristled on the point, and I assume that there was more of an exchange of words than I took notes of, and that there was something there. I just didn't know what it was, and I couldn't get it out of him.

But when you say he switched from 225 to 201, 225 was an outside room, the kind that foreigners have, and it would probably be bugged, and it would be for foreign guests coming in on Intourist. I don't remember room 201, but the chances are it was an inside room. It might have been very small. It might or might not have had a bath attached to it, and the rate for it could have been as low as $1.50 a day. And they could have been either accommodating him because of their interest in him, or because they were simply responding to his financial situation while pending a decision on his request to stay.

Mr. SLAWSON. While we are on this subject--how much he was paying for his hotel room and his finances generally--I am not clear whether you were able to get some kind of indication out of him whether he was paying the $30 a day or simply the lower, something like $3 a day.

Miss JOHNSON. You see he said he had been there since 10 days--perhaps what he said was since being there for 10 days on Intourist at $30 a day "I have been paying the standard room and food rate." That is probably how I should read my own notes.

"I want to make it clear they are not sponsoring me." Your question is?

Mr. SLAWSON. I am trying to establish what your impression was at the time of how much he was paying for that hotel room.

Miss JOHNSON. At the time I was very unclear what he was paying. I think now he must have been paying $30 for the 10 days after his arrival in October, and $3 a day after that until he left room 225. What he was paying when he moved into room 201 I don't know.

Mr. MOSK. That was $30 a day the first 10 days?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes, $300 for the first 10 days. Probably after that $3 a day, and after that I don't know.

Mr. SLAWSON. Are meals included in that $30 a day?

Miss JOHNSON. Meals are included, but they wouldn't have been included once he went off it.

Mr. SLAWSON. I realize you can only do this very approximately but if one were eating fairly inexpensively as Oswald probably did----

Miss JOHNSON. And as I did.

Mr. SLAWSON. But on the other hand he probably did not know much about the city of Moscow, and so could not hunt out places that might be inexpensive. But how much per day do you think he could get along on for meals?

Miss JOHNSON. Perhaps I could just tell you from my own experience. I had a one-burner stove and I bought some food at the Embassy commissary, some from the hotel, and some in the stores around, and my total living expenses probably didn't exceed $50 a week, and my room would have been $21, and taxis would have been a little bit. So probably I could have done it on $15, and he without the stove and without the use of the commissary, but having probably modest tastes, he could have done it for somewhere between $10 and $25 a week foodwise.

He did tell me that he had only been on one expedition by himself to this children's store where he got some food at the buffet, and if that is an indication that he was taking all his meals at the Metropole, then it would have cost him $25 to $30 a week for food at least.

Mr. MOSK. He generally didn't eat breakfast, or he generally ate very little for breakfast. Would this make a difference?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes.

Mr. MOSK. It might reduce it?

Miss JOHNSON. Because breakfast, coffee alone was very cheap. We had old rubles then, and I think it was--the figure in my mind is 2-1/2 old rubles, which is 25 cents, for coffee in the room, and they didn't charge you anything for room service. That would have been cheap, and soup was very nourishing and that was cheap. I think he knew his Intourist guide pretty well, and she may have taken him home and given him food, or shown him cheap places to eat, so that when he said his only expedition himself, that could mean that he took literally himself but it could be he went other places with her, inexpensively. So he could have done pretty well. He could have kept it pretty low.

Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, I don't think that we established clearly before when, or rather what day it was, when you spoke to John McVickar and later spoke to Lee Harvey Oswald and had your interview with him.

Miss JOHNSON. I believe I spoke to John McVickar either on Friday, November 13, or Monday, November 16. My recollection is that it was Monday, the 16th, and that on coming home from the Embassy, coming to the Metropole, I went straight to Oswald's room, and therefore that would have placed my original conversation with McVickar on the 16th, my interview with Oswald probably on the 16th, my writing of the story and my second conversation with McVickar on the 17th, and my filing of the story on the 18th. But I could have seen Oswald as late as the 17th; Tuesday, the 17th. I could have seen Oswald as late as Tuesday, the 17th. My interview was the 16th or the 17th.

Mr. SLAWSON. Fine. Miss Johnson, I have here a copy of Commission Exhibit No. 911, which is a memorandum for the files dated November 17, 1959, written by Mr. John A. McVickar of the American Embassy in Moscow. This is the same John McVickar which you and I have been discussing and to whom you spoke about Lee Harvey Oswald some time just before you saw Mr. Oswald.

I hand you a copy of Exhibit No. 911 and would like you to take some time to read it and comment on your opinion of its accuracy, and make any corrections you like. It purports to record a discussion that you had with Mr. McVickar about Lee Harvey Oswald.

Miss JOHNSON. Yes; firstly he says that I told him that I had seen Oswald Sunday, May 15. He would have meant here Sunday, November 15. My recollection is that it was a Monday night that I spoke with Oswald, and it would therefore be Monday, November 16, not May.

Mr. MOSK. 1959?

Miss JOHNSON. 1959. Yes; I was struck by Oswald's reserve, and that comes out in the memo. I had forgotten, but I recollect, and it is not in my notes but I recollect that it is true that he said he had never talked so long about himself to anybody, that about his use of words struck me very much in conversation, that he sometimes pronounced a particular word correctly and later pronounced it incorrectly, and that simple words he sometimes mispronounced and hard ones he got right.

Mr. MOSK. He was speaking in English?

Miss JOHNSON. Oh, yes; his emphasis on legality, I had the impression that unconsciously he wasn't 100-percent behind what he was doing, that he wanted to get out of it and he left a loophole and that the scapegoat was the Embassy.

Mr. SLAWSON. I would like to ask a question on that. You think then that he may have at least unconsciously had reservations right at that time that he was not doing the right thing?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes; and I think this is implicit in the interview and it corresponds with my recollection. It says here, "it was her opinion that he might consciously or not have been trying to leave a loophole for himself."

I felt that in making such a scapegoat of the Embassy and of Mr. Snyder, he was leaving himself a reason not to go back to the Embassy, and hence not to really renounce his citizenship, and that impressed me even then, and I think that didn't come out in my story and it doesn't come out in my notes, but it does correspond with my recollection.

I felt he was using his annoyance at the Embassy for other reasons. It was a pretext, although I didn't think it was conscious. And I did bore in on whether the Embassy had given him two versions, that is, whether they had said they were too busy, or whether there was legal grounds that they couldn't allow him to renounce citizenship until he had assurance of Soviet citizenship.

I was just interested in resolving the discrepancies, because I wanted to clarify the nature of the loophole he was leaving himself, rather really than to put the Embassy on the spot. And also I wanted to get the Embassy's role straight because I didn't know how fully in my story to put his annoyance at Snyder, the consul. I wanted to be clear on what he was doing, before writing about his annoyance with Snyder.

Mr. MOSK. Do you think, Miss Johnson, that he had any knowledge of the law of expatriation?

Miss JOHNSON. My recollection of him was that he was very legally minded. He showed me his letters from the Embassy, his exchange of letters from the Embassy, and that is in the notes, that he claimed they were acting illegally. He showed me the text of these letters and asked me what I thought of them. He said that he had been told on Saturday, October 31, that is a Saturday, that they needed time to get the papers together.

Mr. MOSK. But do you think that he had ever read a book of statutes or did he give you that impression, that somebody had told him about the law or that he had read the law?

Miss JOHNSON. He claimed that they were acting illegally, and I am not at all sure that he didn't also indicate that he had a right, that he knew he had a right. I am not sure that he didn't say that they had told him at the Embassy that they wanted some assurance that he had Soviet citizenship, but actually I believe that this was more what I gathered from talking to Mr. Snyder and Mr. McVickar, that they actually wanted to give him time to think.

Somewhere I got the idea that he had also been told that they wanted assurance that he had Soviet citizenship, before letting him renounce American citizenship. Where I got the impression, I think it was from him, but I am not sure. Yes; my guess about him is that he would feel that he knew the law. Whether he would have seen it or been told it by somebody that he thought knew the law, he would have informed himself or thought he was informed about his legal rights. He seemed very stuck on the importance of legality, legalism.

Mr. SLAWSON. Miss Johnson, I am going to now back up a bit and ask you some questions about the general atmosphere in Moscow, quite apart from Lee Harvey Oswald. I make reference here to Exhibit No. 5, which we introduced just a minute ago. On the first page of that exhibit, which is your statement to the Department of State, you mention that most of the defectors who came to Moscow while you were a correspondent there came because of personal troubles they were having at home, rather than reasons of ideology.

You also bring up the fact that, rather your belief that, the Russians had wanted one or two defectors from the U.S. exhibition of 1959 to counter the negative propaganda they had been suffering from the frequent defections of East bloc persons to the West. I wonder if you would comment about both those points? First, if you could give us a description of approximately how many American defectors you either knew or had knowledge of at that time?

Miss JOHNSON. Well, I heard about most of those who came through, though I didn't necessarily interview them. There had been one called Webster--Richard Webster, I think--from the fair, and he had had a job in Ohio. He worked at the fair. I don't know what he did. At the end of the fair he asked to stay. That was, say, September or so of 1959. We had defectors on the brain right then in Moscow, all of us, because there had been a great deal of travel. The result was that a lot of tourists were there; there were an unusually large number. That is to say there had been three defectors. And Webster, now, when you did go into it, it developed that he wasn't too happy with his wife and he was interested in a waitress at the Hotel Ukraine. There had been another one named Petrulli--Nicholas Petrulli. I have forgotten the circumstances, but again they were personal, and I think he changed his mind. I think my colleague, Mr. Korengold, supported him, really, while he was thinking it over and deciding not to do it.

That is as far as I can remember. Those were better known cases that I didn't bother with because I couldn't compete with the agencies. And the Oswald case I did see because Mr. McVickar said he was refusing to talk to journalists. So I thought that it might be an exclusive, for one thing, and he was right in my hotel, for another. But then, once I got talking to him, I realized right away that he was different. At least I found him interesting at the time. Afterward I thought he was very interesting.

I don't remember the Petrulli case; it was probably after the Oswald case, and then there were a couple named Block--Morris Block and Mrs. Block. I one day encountered Mrs. Block on the third floor of my hotel, sitting talking with the woman who gave out the keys. She was quite a forthcoming lady who talked far more about herself than she should have, since they couldn't have wanted any publicity right then about themselves. So I knew about the Blocks, too.

Mr. MOSK. They also came back?

Miss JOHNSON. They did come back this year, lately. But I didn't know too much about the Blocks. There was something else about the Blocks. Maybe they had some connection with the Soviet Union. Maybe he had been there before. There was some reason about the Blocks. Anyway, I couldn't get to interview them. That was the crux of the matter. So that Oswald was the only--and there was something that made me think the Blocks were not pure ideological, that they had some connections with Russia as such, although I may be quite mistaken.

Mr. SLAWSON. You mean possibly some business or personal connection that would give them a tie?

Miss JOHNSON. Right.

Mr. SLAWSON. That would be different, quite apart from the ideology of Communist Russia?

Miss JOHNSON. I had the feeling that perhaps Mr. Block had been in the Soviet Union before, perhaps in the service during war or that they were of Russian ancestry, something of that kind, which took away from any ideological features.

Here Oswald was of an age that made him different right away. He was only 20, and I had never heard of anybody of that age in the first place, or that generation, taking an ideological interest to the point where he would defect. His age made him extraordinary.

Somebody of his generation reminded me right away of the 1930's, and I lived in the hotel where I heard stories about the kind of defectors who came in the 1930's; that is, they had been ideological. They had come for reasons of race or sex; women desirous of emancipation, the American women; Negroes desirous of thinking that here is a country where Negroes were treated equally; people of leftist views; and among the press corps I was aware that most of the Western press corps or much of it were fellow traveling or Communist, and I read quite a bit about them.

Mr. MOSK. This is during the thirties?

Mr. SLAWSON. During the 1930's?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes. Malcolm Muggeridge, Eugene Lyons, Louis Fischer. And I would gather these tales, because I was interested in them.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. SLAWSON. Do you want to add something to what you have previously said?

Miss JOHNSON. The ones we have are Malcolm Muggeridge, Eugene Lyons, Louis Fischer, Walter Duranty. These were famous cases of people who had a great interest in communism, and the Soviet Union in some ways was the promised land to them. Mr. Lyons later titled a book "Assignment in Utopia." Our press corps was not at all like that. We were mostly there because Moscow was a great place to make a name and a career, and we ranged from very interested, like me, to downright disenchanted, you know. We were all pretty anti and skeptical, and we were there because it was good for our careers rather than because we were interested in communism or because we thought it was the promised land, and that was always striking to me, because I often heard stories about the thirtys, and I really thought it sounded very exciting then. And he was the one person who seemed to have nineteen-thirtyish reasons, unemployment in the United States, economic difficulty, racial inequalities, interest in communism. So I thought sometime I would like to write an article about how the kind of newspaper people and the kind of defectors who really came now reflected what happened to the Soviet Union compared to the thirtys, going back to Muggeridge's memoirs, Lyons, Fischer's memoirs, Duranty's memoirs, and what other people had said about Duranty to show what happened to the Soviet Union itself. It didn't attract people now for ideological reasons.

It was a bourgeois country like any other, and if it attracted people from the West it was because they wanted to make it their career; it had become a career for foreigners; or because they were personal malcontents.

They weren't getting along with their wives. It was the strangest kind of reason. Oswald was the exception that proved the rule. And I had made notes about him in the interim, when I thought of him, because of this. He was the exception who proved the rule because he purported to be acting for ideological reasons.

Whenever I thought about him I thought: What is behind these professed reasons? They are really emotional reasons in his case, too, and I don't understand, although it is not obvious like a wife he is leaving, they are still emotional reasons, and I don't know what is behind his professed ideological reasons. And I can't guess. So he was the pin really for the piece, and I couldn't guess them. If I had known he was back in the States--I had thought about him, it seems to me, as recently as 3 weeks before the assassination, and wondered, and the way that the thought used to come to me was, "I wonder what ever happened to that little Lee Oswald?" And had I known he was back--I thought he would have been disenchanted, trapped in Russia, unable to get out--if I had known he was back I probably would have tried to see him, write him, go to see him. And if I had been able to figure out his reasons and what happened to him, maybe I could have written that piece.

Mr. MOSK. You had no indication that people could not leave the Soviet Union?

Miss JOHNSON. Oh, yes; I did. I had plenty of indication that they couldn't leave, and I didn't assume for a second that he had ever left or gotten out, and I wanted, if I could, to help him, warn him subtly that he was going to be trapped. That is why I spent so long talking to him. But I assumed that my room was wired, and I couldn't be obvious about it, and I tried to do it by talking to him about economics.

Mr. SLAWSON. Before we get into the actual interview you had with Mr. Oswald, Miss Johnson, the other comment on the first page of Exhibit No. 5 which you made was, and I quote: "The Russians had wanted one or two defectors from the U.S. exhibition of 1959 to counter the negative propaganda they had been suffering from the more or less frequent defections of East-bloc persons to the West." Could you first identify the exhibition you are referring to, and then give the basis for your statement of what the Russians wanted?

Miss JOHNSON. Right. I am speaking of the U.S. exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow that had been opened by Vice President Nixon in July of 1959, which ran for 6 weeks, which brought a great many Americans to Moscow for periods, fairly long periods of time, in the capacity of employees of the fair, setting up pavilions, setting up exhibits, some guides. And I didn't know this, but I had the impression that they had encouraged Webster to defect.

I may be quite mistaken about that. Webster was an employee of the fair, and I thought perhaps they wanted one. That was just an assumption. Oswald, however, I again bored in quite a bit in my talk with him as to whether they were encouraging him, and he said they were neither encouraging or discouraging. He was very anxious as to whether they were going to let him stay, and this did strike me as a little unusual. I thought they would encourage it. And I didn't know whether he was just a very anxious person, hence anxious, or whether they were keeping him on tenterhooks, not for tactical reasons at all but because of genuine doubts about having him. My only conclusion could be--it was at the time--that Nikita Khrushchev just had been to see Eisenhower; that they were not encouraging defections because of the political atmosphere. I didn't realize that it might be anything personal about Oswald. I assumed that it was the atmosphere.

Mr. SLAWSON. When you first approached Oswald to ask him for an interview--could you describe that?

Miss JOHNSON. I knocked on his door, expecting to be let in. But I wasn't let in. He came out. He came to the door and I stayed in the hall. He stayed in the doorway as I recall it, and I asked him if he would let me talk to him; expected he would say no, from what Mr. McVickar had told me. But he said quite quickly yes, he would come, and he said he would come to my room. He didn't invite me to his, and he named an hour for that evening when he would come, and he did come that evening just at the time he said, and he stayed.

Mr. SLAWSON. Could you see into his room to see whether he was alone at that time?

Miss JOHNSON. No; I had the impression he was alone, but I didn't see that anyone was there. Had somebody been sitting in his room, I think I could have seen them. My guess is that his bed would have been out of sight, but that the chairs in which anybody would have been sitting with him might have been visible. But he may have had the door open sufficiently little or at such an angle that I couldn't have seen had he been alone.

Mr. SLAWSON. Did you know at the time that Miss Aline Mosby, a newspaper reporter, I believe, for the Associated Press at that time----

Miss JOHNSON. For the United Press International.

Mr. SLAWSON. United Press--had spoken to Oswald several days earlier?

Miss JOHNSON. No; I had been told he wasn't talking to people, and I hoped that he hadn't talked to anyone else.

Mr. SLAWSON. Did you ever learn from Oswald that he had spoken to Miss Mosby earlier?

Miss JOHNSON. No; I never heard from anyone until after November the 22d, 1963, although Mr. McVickar had said that I could ask Mr. Korengold about him. That was a tip that perhaps he had talked to somebody at UPI, but I didn't want to tip the UPI that I was on to it because I thought that would reinvigorate their efforts. So I never did speak to anybody except Mr. McVickar.

Mr. SLAWSON. While we are back on Mr. McVickar, I don't think we established for the record absolutely clearly whether there was anything in Exhibit No. 911 besides the date and the day which you felt should be corrected?

Miss JOHNSON. No; not at all. There is a postscript at the bottom which is dated November 19. So far as I recall, this doesn't reflect another conversation. It simply reflects an afterthought on the part of Mr. McVickar, or conceivably a second conversation between me and Mr. McVickar. He may have asked me more questions, and this may reflect a little additional.

Mr. SLAWSON. But it does not reflect a second conversation between you and Lee Harvey Oswald; is that correct?

Miss JOHNSON. No.

Mr. SLAWSON. I asked you if that was correct?

Miss JOHNSON. It is correct. It does not reflect a second conversation with Mr. Lee Harvey Oswald.

Mr. SLAWSON. Now then, we can get back to your interview with Lee Harvey Oswald that evening. I have some questions here, but I want you to feel free to interject any comments of your own at any time. Of course we have as exhibits many of your previous statements and articles reflecting your thinking about this before coming here today, so we can both, I think, confine ourselves to elaborations or possible corrections or discussions around the points that you have already set down in the exhibits. The first thing I would like to bring up is a point you touched upon briefly already in the exhibits, that Oswald seemed to be greatly concerned with economics, and that you weren't, and that consequently a great deal of the time in the interview was taken up you might say with noncommunicative thought, or speech rather. I wonder if you would define what you mean by economics, and elaborate on that a little bit?

Miss JOHNSON. Well, since I liked Mr. Oswald, and since Mr. McVickar had pointed out to me that there was a narrow line between my duty as a correspondent and duty as an American, I hoped to establish some kind of communication with him, although I was really trying to write a story about him. I went outside my duty in the sense that I did try to establish some kind of communication. I rather quickly perceived that the best way to do this was to follow his lead and discuss economics. That is what interested him more than anything. He wasn't interested in talking about politics. He hadn't seen enough of Soviet society to discuss it very concretely, nor was I in a position to point out to him too much about its shortcomings, because I was a correspondent there, because my room wasn't a really private place for conversation, and so I tried really to point out its shortcomings in economic terms which seemed to be the surest way of reaching him, and it was the subject on which he had the most interest.

My notes therefore don't really reflect a great deal of that part of the conversation, because it meant nothing to me storywise at the time.

It wasn't what I was going to write about. And I wasn't too interested in it really. I was just trying to talk with him. And so when I talked to him, what I said wasn't recorded in the notes, and the gist of his reply was--of his replies were--that is about the exploitation of the worker. I tried to point out to him that in the stage of primary accumulation any society has to take more from the workers. They have to be paid less than they really create. So there is poverty and injustice everywhere. It was by way of trying to say to him that things were not so good in the Soviet Union if he just would look, because I wanted him to think before he did it. I assumed his act was irrevocable and I was very sorry for him. So all this was couched in economic language, which takes up time, and in which I wasn't really too interested. I did feel that when he left that if I only understood economics more--had only taken more interest in it when I studied it, I had only studied it a bit more--that I could have answered him, talked with him in terms that he could really respect, and that it might have caused him to think more about his action and might even have caused him to hesitate, and might have built up his respect for me sufficiently that I could become someone whom he would have come back to talk to and could have been some help to him.

And I felt that I had failed him in the sense that I could not talk to him in the one language that he really wanted to talk in and was interested in. I did as much as I could along those lines, but I felt that it had been inadequate in the situation in my own desire to help him.

Mr. SLAWSON. You used the term "economics." Do you mean by that, economics in the sense of a Marxist versus Capitalist discussion, terms like you used, "primary accumulation," "exploitation," and so on?

Miss JOHNSON. Yes, a little better than exploitation, more in primary accumulation, and comparing the two systems. If I had been good at comparing the two systems and using economic verbiage--I guess that what I am saying is that if I had had long words about economics, been able to throw them around with some authority, he would have respected me. He did respect words, long words, language, and if I had seemed to have a key to some occult science that he didn't know about but was interested in, that this would have compelled his respect and might have brought him back. But I had taken a course in Soviet economics at Harvard where they had waived the requirement that you had studied the American economic system, and I had done all right in the course, but that really was where my economic training began and ended, and I just barely sustained my interest through the course.

I regreted very much after that conversation not having ever really studied economics formally, at least not knowing the terms.

I am so uninterested in it that if somebody tells me the words I forget them. It was that bad with me. This was the only real occasion where I was very sorry.