This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you
here weekday afternoons on the Drive. Paul Brands is a columnist for USA Today
and the Dow Jones market Watch. He's one of the most followed journalists in
the White House Press Corps, and his newest creation is called Countdown to Dallas.
The incredible coincidences, routines, and blind luck that brought JFK and Lee
Harvey Oswald together on November twenty second of nineteen sixty three. This, Paul,
is the so called crime of the century. Indeed, well it really
was. I mean, the thing that really boggles the mind after all this
timely is how one person could do it in such a casual fashion. This
was over in six seconds, one guy wiping out the most powerful man of
the world and just the blink of an eye. Six seconds. Six decades
we're still debating what happened that day, but it really is just just an
amazing thing. I try not to debate so much as look at some of
the facts. And one of the things that's always fascinated me, Paul,
is the weapon that Lee Harvey Oswald chose, being a marine, being very
good at what he did, a good marksman. There were so many other
weapons that would have been more effective for him to use. Do we know
why he used the Carcino, Well, it was a chief first of all.
I mean he paid about the twenty bucks for shipping. Back in nineteen
sixty three, you could easily buy rifles through the mail. The questions asked.
He had effect signatur and all that, but it was a cheap weapon,
and he practiced with it for months. His wife Marina said that he
would when they were living in New Orleans in the summer of sixty three.
He would sit on the porch in the dark at night and just to play
with the bolt action, back and forth and back and forth, and he
practiced a couple of times. There could have been maybe better weapons, more
expensive weapons, but that is what he chose. And his own Marine Corps
instructor later said he wasn't surprised at all that Oswald was able to do it.
He thought that he was a pretty good shot, even in the Marines.
Well, and that was my first That's what struck me first. When
I visited the Dallas Book Depository and I'd heard all along, Oh, he
couldn't have made that shot. Couldn't have made that shot. Any marine worth
his salt could have made those shots. Well, that's true, you consider
that he had a four power scope. It was actually a pretty easy shot.
It's often been asked, well, why didn't Oswald shoot when the car
was approaching the depository? It would have been a head on shot. I
think Oswald clearly had time to think about what he was going to do and
how he would do it. He decided to wait until the car was on
Elm Street, after it a turned left, went down that curving road in
front of the grassy knaw and all that and again. Back to his own
Marine Corps instructor, James Zam, he said that Oswald made the right decision
in terms of waiting then to shoot, because he didn't have to move his
rifle as much. If he were aiming the other way, angle would have
been a little bit harder, the gun would have had to move a lit
more often. So that is why he chose to shoot. There is actually
a very easy shot from that vantage point with the four power scope he had.
Paul brandis author of Countdown to Dallas, The Incredible Coincidences, Routines and
Blind Luck. Now those are some of the facts you and I just hammered
out. But let's talk about some of these amazing coincidences. Well, one
of the big ones is why Oswald was able to get a job in the
book's depository in the first place, five weeks before the assassination. A lot
of people say, she isn't at fishy got that job for stuff, five
weeks before Kennedy came to town. Well it's really not. Would you consider
how he got that job. He was unemployed, his wife, Marina,
had just had a second that baby. They had very little money. He
needed a job. He'd been fired a couple of times, really at trouble
holding even menial positions. In Irving, Texas, where Marina was living.
She was estranged from Lead. She went to coffee one morning with some of
the women in the neighborhood and Ruth Payne, her interpreter and woman who she
was living with. A conversation ensued about the fact that, well, Lee
needs a job. One of the women who was having coffee that morning said,
when my brother Wesley ull Frazier just got a job at this place downtown
called the Texas School Book Depository, I wonder if they could use another man,
so Marina. So Ruth Payne rather called the depository, talked to a
guy named Roy Truley who ran it, said yes, send him down,
I could use another guy. So Oswald goes down there, applied led on
his application about a bunch of things. A photo of the application is in
my book, by the way, So I gets the job. This was
October fifteenth, nineteen sixty three. Well, a lot of people don't know,
Lee, is that the Texas school Book Depository had two locations in Dallas,
and Roy truly, the guy who hired Oswald, nearly assigned him to
the other location, which was nowhere near Daly Plaza where the assassination took place.
It was only after he decided, well, I could probably use a
lot of more help at the Daily Plaza location. It was only then that
Oswald was assigned to the Daily Plaza location of the depository. So if you
think it's fishy that he got that job five weeks before Kennedy's arrival, and
all of these other people in the conspiracy chain, the women at the Suburban
Coffee and Roy Trulli, the superintendent, in deciding to assign him to the
other building, they all would have been involved in the conspiracy. And one
rule of a conspiracy, of course, is that the few of the people
who know about it the better. Just doesn't add up. And the other
thing to add to that, by the way, is that when he was
hired on October fifteenth, President Kennedy's motorcade route had not even been established for
his trip. It was later finalized by Kennedy's own personal aid, Kenny O'Donnell.
So it just does not add up. And possibly Oswald didn't even learn
of it himself until maybe a few days before. That's true, when the
motorcade route was finally finalized, it was published the next day in both Dallas
newspapers, the Times Herald and the Dallas Borning News. And Oswald had a
habit of reading the papers that his coworkers left behind in the domino room kind
of the lunch room at the depository, and he read about it there.
So it really was again just an incredible crime of opportunity. He was so
unprepared for it, in fact, that he only had did not have a
full cartridge with me at four bullets, could have had six. He did
not even have time to go out and buy more he was really just an
incredible crime of opportunity, just an amazing coincidence. I think that's what people
that's what boggles people's minds. How could this have happened? Paul brandis Countdown
to Dallas is the name of the book, and he talks about the amazing
coincidences, incredible coincidences and routines and blind luck that brought these two together,
JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald. That's the other thing. The KGB idea that
they were underwriting him in some fashion. I have a hard time with that.
Seems like even the KGB didn't want him. Well, they did not
want him. You know. I worked in Russia for a long time and
I visited Minsk in bul Rusk where Oswald lived, and he was he wanted
to live in Moscow when he defected, and the Soviet government said, now
we don't want him. This guy just strikes us as a kind of you
know, crazy. He tried to commit suicide in fact, when they said
no, you can't live in Moscow, you have to you know, leave.
Finally they relented, but they said, well you have to move to
Minsk, which is kind of a backwater, sort of a town. They
did not want him. He assigned him to a menial job in a metals
factory had made parts for radio and TV and that kind of thing. It
was really menial job. Oswald that hated it, as he hated every menial
job that he had. The KGB watched him closely. They gave him a
really nice apartment, which some people think is fishy, but they gave him
a nice apartment because it was easier to keep an eye on him. There
were monitoring devices all around and that kind of thing. They did not trust
him, and when he decided that he had had enough of life in the
Soviet Union it's a terrible place to live, they said, okay, here's
your exit papers. You know, bye bye. So they did not want
him either. And what's funny is that the KGB thought that he was a
CIA guy, and the CIA wondered, well, guy's got to be kg
It's kind of like a classic spy game, and I have decide trusted the
other. Both sides thought Oswald who was working for the other. It's really
kind of funny. Paul Brand's Countdown to Dallas, the incredible coincidences, routines
and blind luck that brought JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald together, Paul, thanks
for bringing this story together and joining us today wait. Thank you so much,
my pleasure. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five
to seven and I Hearts Media presentation