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At the American embassy, Oswald announced that he meant to become a Soviet citizen, swore out an affidavit that said: "I affirm that my allegiance is to the Soviet Socialist Republic." The Marine Corps got news of Oswald's action, convened a special board and gave Oswald an "undesirable" discharge from the Marine Reserve. Enraged, Oswald wrote a letter to John Connally, who had just stepped down as Secretary of the Navy to run for Governor of Texas. Said the letter, which was found among Oswald's Marine records last weekend:
"I shall employ all means to right this gross mistake or injustice to a bona-fide U.S. citizen and ex-serviceman." Connally turned over the correspondence to his successor, Fred Korth, and Oswald's demands went no farther.
An American correspondent who met Oswald in Moscow recalls that "he talked in terms of capitalists and exploiters, and said he was sure if he lived in the U.S. he wouldn't get a job, that he'd be one of the exploited. But I didn't perceive what the essential thing was—that this guy would be unhappy anywhere." Maybe the Russians were more perceptive. At any rate, they turned down his application for citizenship, agreed only to let him stay on as a resident alien.
He was in the Soviet Union for almost three years, worked for a time at a factory in Minsk, married a blonde hospital employee named Marina Prusakova. But in January of 1962, Oswald wrote to Texas' Republican Senator John Tower asking that the Senator help him and his Russian wife get out of Russia. Tower turned the request over to the State Department, which ruled that since Oswald had not succeeded in rejecting his U.S. citizenship he was worthy of a $435 loan to get home with his wife.
Back in Fort Worth, Oswald still headed down the dead-end street, allied himself with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a New York-headquartered pro-Castro outfit that holds a prominent place on the Communist front organization lists of both the State Department and the Department of Justice. In an erratic bit of derring-do, Oswald went to New Orleans last July. There he tried to infiltrate the Cuban Revolutionary Student Directorate, a militant crew of anti-Castro raiders, by offering his Marine experience to teach military tactics to members. Directorate leaders were leary of Oswald—and they were furious when, only a little later, they saw him passing out "Hands Off Cuba" pamphlets on a New Orleans street corner. Hot words and a scuffle followed. Oswald was fined $10 for disturbing the peace. Soon afterward he took his wife and two small children to Dallas, landed a job as a warehouse man in the same building from which President Kennedy and Governor Connally were shot.
As the overwhelming evidence piled up against Oswald, police decided to transfer him to a maximum security jail. At 11:20 a.m., Oswald was led into the basement garage of City Hall and toward a nearby armored car.
Just then another car drove up. A man got out and jumped over a three-foot-high rail. He broke through a cordon of Dallas cops—who were certainly not having one of their good weeks —and approached Oswald almost as though he were going to shake hands. He was Jack Ruby (born Rubinstein) a stocky, balding 50-year-old bachelor who owns a couple of Dallas strip joints, was known to cops as a publicity-seeking pest.