The Equivocal Assassin?

Did a bitter fight with his wife cement Oswald's plan to murder JFK the next day?

Most of us think that something as momentous as deciding to kill the president of the United States would be a longstanding passion and there would be little, if anything, that might change the mind of a dedicated assassin. Twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald had committed himself to political assassination. His target, however, was not Kennedy. He wanted to kill Edwin Walker, a retired general whose rightwing views Oswald viewed as akin to a second coming of Hitler. Oswald had barely missed Walker only seven months before Kennedy’s trip to Dallas. 

Oswald and Kennedy were in the same city by chance. Oswald had gone to Mexico City in late September hoping to get a travel visa to Cuba. Castro was leading the pure revolution, thought Oswald, but the Soviet and Cuban missions had turned Lee away. If Oswald had succeeded, he would have been in Havana when JFK visited Texas. Instead, Oswald returned to Dallas in early October, bitter and dejected over another of his failed grand ideas.

O…