The Exoneration of My Friend Lee Oswald — Part I

The bias of the Warren Commission (and the media), explained by a living friend of the man falsely blamed for killing JFK

Left: Oswald’s friend, Dr. Ernst Titovets. Right: Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren hands President Lyndon B. Johnson a copy of the Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy in 1964.

“O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason! Bear with me.”

           — Antony’s speech at Caesar’s funeral, “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare

I did not recognize, in the Warren Commission’s presentation of Lee Harvey Oswald, my friend Lee, whom I knew here in Minsk in the early 1960s. I wondered why these dignitaries, the members of the Commission — along with the conspiracy theorists — would choose to so grossly distort and misrepresent the character of this man I knew and feed it to the American people as the final truth?

A naïve rhetorical question addressed to the void!

To me, Lee Oswald was a friendly and warm character with a good sense of humor. We met when he lived in Minsk for two and half years, while I was attending medical school. I sought him out to practice my English, and we became friends.