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BookNotes: The library habits of Lee Harvey Oswald

By Mike Selby
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Lee Harvey Oswald: Apparently a fan of Science Fiction.

By Mike Selby

“Running Man — Please call me! Please! Please! Lee.”

This cryptic message appeared in the want ads of the Dallas Morning News, exactly one month before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It ran for several days, sometimes with the name “Harvey” appearing with it. Who was “Running Man” and who was “Lee?” What did the name “Harvey” have to do with it?

This was the puzzle that Richard Mosk was trying to answer. As the youngest lawyer assigned to the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (informally known as the Warren Commission) — Mosk had been pouring over the classifieds to look for … well, he didn’t know what to look for. That was the problem. After murdering the president, Lee Harvey Oswald was himself murdered (insert conspiracy theory here); he could never explain why he killed Kennedy.

Mosk was unhappy. While he poured over old newspapers (not very exciting) his officemate Warren Coleman had just returned from interviewing Fidel Castro on a yacht off the coast of Cuba ((since the U.S. had tried to assassinate Castro half-a-dozen times, it wasn’t out of the question that Castro might have struck back, if only for the sake of self-preservation. Castro had requested Coleman for the meeting; as the two had met a decade earlier at a New York jazz club. Castro denied being involved in Kennedy’s murder.) His next assignment was even less glamorous: finding out what books Oswald checked out of the library.

Two library cards had been issued to Oswald; one for the main branch of the Dallas Public Library, and one for the Napoleon branch of the New Orleans Public Library. The librarian for the Dallas Public told Mosk that they unfortunately did not keep records of what their patrons had previously checked out. He had better luck in New Orleans; they were able to supply him with a list of books checked out to Oswald from January to November of 1963.

Oswald checked out a lot of science fiction that year, including novels by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Frederik Pohl. Ian Fleming appeared to be another favourite, with all available James Bond books appearing on his record. There were also international biographies, including Mao and Khrushchev, as well as academic books about communism and life in the Soviet Union.

‘Profiles of Courage’ by John F. Kennedy and ‘Portrait of a President’ by William Manchester stood out for obvious reasons, but perhaps not what everyone thought (Oswald’s wife Marina would testify that she always felt her husband liked Kennedy.) But it was Hermann B. Deutsch’s ‘The Huey Long Murder Case’ which grabbed Mosk’s attention.

Huey Long was a Louisiana senator who was assassinated in 1935 by Carl Weiss, a prominent ear, nose and throat surgeon. Like Oswald, Weiss was murdered before his trial could take place. Also like Oswald, a host of conspiracy theories appeared almost immediately, including witnesses stating Weiss wasn’t a good shot, he was set up to be a patsy, and a magic bullet theory (don’t look this up on the internet, the rabbit holes are too numerous).

He also scanned the list for any books by U.E. Baughman, Harry Edward Neal, Michael Reilly, or Edmund Starling. All were secret service agents who had written memoirs about their time guarding various presidents. Oswald had not. Feeling he had gone as far as he could, Mosk began to type up his conclusions: “He was pretty well read for an uneducated guy. I don’t think he had a high IQ, but at least he was trying read this stuff.” Mosk was also impressed that he read at all, since school records indicated Oswald was “painfully dyslexic.”

He no sooner had filed his report when he got a call from the librarian in Dallas. Although they didn’t keep any record of what their patrons had checked out, they did have records of overdue books not yet returned. A copy of ‘The Shark and the Sardines’ by Juan Jose Arevlo was checked out to Oswald, and was now three weeks overdue.

Written by the former president of Guatemala, ‘The Shark and the Sardines’ had been translated into English by June Cobb, who happened to be Fidel Castro’s public relations assistant (history would reveal that Cobb was actually a CIA agent, secretly reporting on Castro’s regime). It was published by Lyle Stuart Inc., who had also published ‘History Will Absolve Me’ — Castro’s autobiography.

Checking over inventories, this book had not been found at Oswald’s residences, place of work, or belongings. The copy of ‘The Shark and the Sardines’ which Oswald failed to return has never been found (the Dallas librarian remained very unhappy with the secret service for NOT finding and returning this copy).

So what did any of this mean? Mosk had no idea, realizing that just because Oswald checked out books from the library doesn’t mean he read them. No conclusions could be drawn from his reading habits.

Finished with this, Mosk had hoped his next assignment would be far more glamorous. It wasn’t. he spent the rest of his time of the Warren Commission indexing congressional law reports.

(The cryptic classifieds turned out to be a marketing campaign for the film ‘The Running Man,’ starring Lee Remick and Lawrence Harvey.)

Mike Selby, BA, MLIS, is Programs & Community Development Librarian at the Cranbrook Public Library