Interview With JFK Assassin's Brother

Nov. 20, 2004 -- Robert Oswald first heard the news on the radio that his brother, Lee Harvey Oswald, was in custody for shooting a police officer.

When he arrived at the police station in Dallas, he received more shocking news: FBI agents told him they were about to charge his younger brother with the murder of President John F. Kennedy.

"Words can't express the hit that you take," Oswald told ABCNEWS. "My head just flopped down. The only thing I recall in the whole room, plus those two FBI, was the time, and it was right at midnight." He left, shaking the entire walk back to the hotel.

The following is an excerpt of ABCNEWS' interview with Robert Oswald, who spoke of his brother's attention-starved behavior and troubled childhood.

Robert Oswald: I think more than anything else, if I had an opportunity and the facts that said Lee was innocent, I would be out there shouting it loud and clear. But the facts point in the other direction. If you go right down the line and look at it, all the facts will point to Lee's involvement. Lee actually committed the crime, period.

There's blank spaces in there, i.e. when he went from New Orleans to Mexico City. There's some unanswered questions there. We will never know the answers 'cause he's buried. A lot of people like to speculate. I frankly do not. I like to stick with the facts, what we know.

Lee Harvey Oswald's Opportunity

The reason Lee went after the president is because of opportunity and no other. If he wasn't working where he was working or if the president's car wasn't going by there at that particular time, it wouldn't have happened. It wasn't a master plan or anything. There's no shadowy figures out there.

He wanted to be somebody and this opportunity came about coincidentally, nothing planned, nothing organized. It happened that way. It's one of those happenstances of history.

Now what we don't know is the why. We can go through all those speculations and theories and so forth and everything, but I think it goes back to his character. He had some real serious mental problems as far as I'm concerned. This is not an excuse of what he did. This is understanding what he did. He had problems at home. He had problems on his job. He was completely frustrated about what was going on around him. He was really in serious depression as far as I'm concerned.

His demeanor and his direction that he wanted to go was to be somebody. But then again, he's being held down by the society, you know, that he really wanted to take notice of him, and they didn't take notice of him.

Political Assassin?

ABCNEWS: Given the enormous role that politics played in Lee's thinking and conversation and behavior, is it fair to characterize him as a political assassin?

Oswald: No, definitely not. Lee's political demeanor was simply a method of getting attention. He wanted to stand out, no matter what the crowd was. He was gonna be different from the crowd. If everybody had been Marxist, he would have been an American, vice versa. You know, Russian, whatever, he would have been opposite to stand out.

I think Lee's motive was more psychological than anything else, not political. He simple saw an opportunity. He took the opportunity and acted on it.

It's so coincidental that everything came together. Where he's just started to work and where the president was coming, and this was an opportunity he couldn't pass up, to be really somebody, and I don't think initially he thought he would be caught, period. He was gonna outsmart the authorities. He was gonna get away with it.

ABCNEWS: The reporters asked him, "Did you shoot the president?" And he said on news film: "I didn't shoot anybody." Why do you think he denied it?

Oswald: To me, his psyche at that particular time, he was basically saying "I'm smarter than you. You gotta catch me. I'm gonna tell you no, I didn't do anything. You've got to prove to me, and then I'm still gonna outsmart you."

ABCNEWS: On one of the news clips he says something that so many people have commented on over the years. He says "I'm just a patsy." What do you make of that?

Oswald: It means zero. It's a continuation of Lee's personality. He's telling everybody, "I'm still in command here. They got the wrong guy, and they're not gonna be able to prove it." He is still in command, OK? That's what he wants to do. He's gonna show up the authorities no matter who they were that he knew what they wanted to know. He's the center of attention. That's where he wants to be. That's where he is, and he's gonna play it for all it was worth.

You can't take a news clip like that and say, hey, that's it. You know, this is the truth. No, you've got to do the whole history. … You got to come all the way from childhood on up, and especially that last year of his life and understand what transpired in his life, and what didn't transpire in this life. And what didn't transpire in his life was the recognition by other people that he was better than they were.

‘No Emotion’

ABCNEWS: Tell me about your visit with Lee at Police Headquarters.

Oswald: A police officer indicated a particular large glass screen area to stand in front of, pick up the telephone. Lee came out of a door and, and showed up and I started a conversation with him.

We're through glass. Lee appeared in front of me, behind the other side of the glass. He picked up the other telephone on the other side. So we're talking on telephones, one to the other. I noticed that he has a black eye and a bruise on, around his eye and everything. I said, "They treating your all right?" He said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I got this at the theater." I said, "OK." The next thing out of his mouth was, "This is tapped," meaning the telephones were tapped.

I said, "They may or may not be, I don't know." But that set up the conversation from then on. He was not about to indicate to me in any form — not that I think he would have, I don't know. At that particular time, I don't think he would have told anybody anything. But, that certainly set up the conversation. So, we talked about family matters and everything. He was concerned that June Lee needed shoes.

He's being mechanical in his answers. I mean, there's no expression. There's nothing. His voice is not shaking. It's not strong, it's not, you know, rough or anything. Physically he's about 10 pounds lighter than the last time I saw him. His face is drawn a little bit and everything. As the conversation went on, we talked about family things. I'm trying to get him to relax and, and be less mechanical about his answers and everything and I finally just said, I said, "Lee, what the Sam Hill's going on?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," [Lee said]. I said, "Now, wait a minute. They've got you charged with the death of a police officer and the death of the president. They've got your pistol. They've got your rifle. And you tell me you don't know what's going on."

I know I became tense doing this … I'm looking into his eyes, I'm looking for some sign of something — some emotion or something. And there's nothing in there. And he finally is aware of my intensity and he says, "Brother, you won't find anything there."

And he was absolutely right. There was nothing there. There was no emotion that you could see. Whatsoever. He said something to the effect, "Well, you know, don't be getting in trouble with your boss coming up here visiting me." I mean, he's not concerned one bit. That's the impression I leave with. That's the impression I get. What's going on around him. He's saying, he's concerned about his daughter not having shoes. I'm trying to get through to him that, you know, he's in a lot of trouble, if he didn't know that, and what could I do to help. OK? I walked out of there with zero.

Feelings of Alienation in Childhood

ABCNEWS: What is it in Lee's background that could help us understand what he did?

Oswald: Well, if you look at his entire life, from beginning to end, it starts off on the negative, with the death of Dad two months before he was born. Now, a lot of the families I know experienced similar type situations, but they make it OK, that's great. In this particular circumstances, though, as you follow his life along, it becomes, you know, a question mark of whatever he is gonna be, whether he has to do it on his own.

Lee had none, absolutely none, unfortunately, of Dad's guidance and discipline, that John [Pic, Robert and Lee's older half-brother] and I did. I mean I had 5½ years and that made a lot of difference. Very early on, he'd learned that he wasn't wanted. We weren't wanted. Mother was always alienating herself from us. John and I were in three different orphan homes. Lee was in one. And he was placed in one when he was just barely 3 years old, one day after Christmas.

Maybe she did the best she could with what under the circumstances that she had presented to her. I don't know what all the alternatives were. I was a child. … She constantly told us how poor we were, that we needed to do something to help her. That we were, you know, a burden to her. So every time we turned around we were being shipped off we understood that. We were a burden.

[At] an orphan asylum, the Bethlehem Orphan Home, John and I seemed to get along pretty good there and stuff. Lee was, you know, 3 years old. That's quite an adjustment for him. We looked after him. … I think we all know, that the formative years now, by 5 are very, very important, without exception. I think any of the experts in that discipline would understand what I'm talking about there. And he missed it all.

And very early on, he showed a leaning toward things that were more introverted than extroverted. He lived within himself. He solved and imagined his own problems. He loved the program, I Lived Three Lives. That's what he used to get fascinated with. Some people couldn't get away from it. He couldn't get away from it. He didn't realize it was just a program, and it was entertainment as such, and when it was over, it was over. He carried it with him. It basically was about a man that was a family man, an FBI agent, and an undercover agent, at the same time. That was his three lives, best I can remember the program, you know. Well , it developed as just part of his nature, that's what he wanted to do, you know, he wanted to be somebody that he wasn't. He liked intrigues. He liked mysteries.

I think that the key time to me, is 14, 15 years old, New York, New Orleans. If he had got the help that he needed, that the court recommended and everything, and the psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever it was, that should have been working with him, I think that, that's a very key point. It would have made all the difference in the world.

Politics to Lee as far as I'm concerned was the key to getting attention that he wanted. It was anything whether it was politics or being a radical about this or that or anything, it was to stand out, so somebody would say "ah ha, he's different," you know. "And I'm gonna give him some attention." Good, bad or indifferent but that's what he was after.

Fatal Decision

ABCNEWS: When do you think Lee made the decision to shoot President Kennedy?

Oswald: That's a tough one. It had to be almost spontaneous. It had to be after the motorcade route was fixed and published, and then considering other alternatives, he tried to use I think one last opportunity to change his mind. By that I mean he went to visit Marina into the week and not on the weekend. He went on the Thursday night, which was unusual as I understood it. He was only visiting over there on the weekends. So I think this was a last effort type thing.

And whether it was to see where he stood, or what was going on, or to see his daughter for the last time, I will never know. I just don't know how to answer that. But definitely, that decision had been made prior to getting there, I think.

Robert Oswald, who worked for many years in the construction supply industry in Texas, is now retired. The father of two children and four grandchildren, he is author of Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald.