Behind Norman Mailer's Sneaky Oswald Tale

A Portrait of the Great American novelist as an underhanded government apologist

Professor Ernst Titovets (left) and writer Norman Mailer at the professor’s office in Minsk (October 1992).

This story comes from my friend Ernst Titovets via the Justice Integrity Project in Washington, D.C.

Titovets is a Belorusian scientist who, as a young medical student befriended Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who would be accused of killing President John F. Kennedy. Titovets, still active in his profession, spoke with the JFK Facts Podcast last year and gave his unique perspective on the events of the early 1960s.

Titovets recounts that in October 1992, Norman Mailer, perhaps the most famous American novelist of that era, traveled to Minsk to research a book about Oswald. He got special attention from Mailer, doubtless because Titovets was a rare English-speaker in the city, which was why he had spent an unusual amount of time with Oswald three decades previous.

The two men did not exactly hit it off. Titovets does not believe that his American friend with whom he agreeably debated politics and philosophy in 1961 and 1962 was the man who shot killed President Kennedy in 1963. He believes Oswald was what he said he was: a patsy for JFK’s enemies.

By contrast, Mailer would go on to write a massive tome, “Oswald’s Tale,” which embellished the government’s “lone gunman” scenario with pseudo-psychological insights and creative literary references, while displaying unusual credulity about the role of the CIA.

At the time of Mailer’s visit, Titovets, age 53, had earned both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees and served as the head of the Experimental Department at the Neurology and Neurosurgery Research Institute in Minsk. At his department, Professor Titovets and his 21-person team were engaged in brain research, cerebral pathology and therapy. In his spare time, Titovets was working on his own book about his late friend Oswald.

The two authors met when Mailer and his entourage visited the professor at his office without preliminary notice in October 1992. We travel back in time to witness that meeting. The rest of this account comes in the words of Titovets.