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The John Batchelor Show

THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION: 1/8: The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee by Paul R. Gregory

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Books, News, Society & Culture, Arts

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

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THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION: 1/8: The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee by Paul R. Gregory

https://www.amazon.com/Oswalds-Untold-Account-Marina-Lee/dp/1635768217

Merely two hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, television cameras captured police escorting a suspect into Dallas police headquarters. Meanwhile at the University of Oklahoma, watching the coverage in the student center, Paul Gregory scanned the figure in dark trousers and a white, V-neck tee shirt and saw the bruised and battered face of Lee Harvey Oswald. Shocked, Gregory said, “I know that man.” In fact, he knew Oswald and his wife Marina better than almost anyone in America.


After sixty years, Paul Gregory finally tells everything he knows about the Oswalds and how he watched the soul of a killer take shape.
Identified by the FBI as a “known associate of LHO,” Gregory soon faced interrogations by the Secret Service. Later he would testify before the Warren Commission. Here, in The Oswalds, he offers the intimate details of his time spent with Lee and wife Marina in their run-down duplex on Mercedes Street in Fort Worth, Texas, and his admission into the inner world of a young marriage before candidly assessing the murder that marked a turning point in our country’s history. His riveting recollection includes memories both casual and deadly serious, such as the dinner at his parents’ house introducing Marina to the “Dallas Russians,” a front-yard incident of spousal abuse, and a further rift in the marriage when he exposed to Marina that Oswald was not the dashing, radical intellectual whose Historic Diary would be a publishing sensation. And Gregory also gives a fascinating account of his father’s role as an eyewitness to history, serving as Marina’s translator and confidante in the first four days after the assassination.
As a scholar and skilled researcher, Gregory debunks the vast array of assassination conspiracy theories by demonstrating that Lee Harvey Oswald did it and did it alone—that the Oswald he once called a friend had the motive, the intelligence, and the means to commit one of the most shocking crimes in American history.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchler.

0:11.3

It is November 22, 1963, a day in infamy. That morning, President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy

0:21.8

are departing from a hotel in Fort Worth, Texas. A one of our protagonists in the telling

0:28.9

of a new book, The Oswalds, by Paul Gregory. One of our protagonists is Paul's father, Pete.

0:36.5

Piotr Petrovich Gagoryev, an escapee from the Soviet creature many years before, now

0:46.6

gainfully employed, he has an oil engineer in a booming Texas. His office is in the Continental

0:53.9

Life Insurance Building, nearby the hotel where the Kennedy's have stayed overnight. He

1:00.0

goes down with the other well-wishers to stand in front of the hotel as the President comes

1:07.2

out and says a few words in a light rain. I welcome Paul Gregory, because this story of

1:14.2

The Oswald from the point of view of Paul as a young man and his father as a mature and

1:20.6

very capable translator of Russian take us inside the Oswald marriage and you can puzzle

1:27.7

for yourself once again what what motivated Lee Harvey Oswald to commit this monstrous act.

1:36.1

Paul, congratulations, good evening. It's an overwhelming story, but I ask you to first

1:41.3

stand in place of your father. What did he see that morning? What did he think?

1:45.8

Well, as you say, the Continental Life Building was about half a block from Texas Hotel, so he

1:56.1

went over, joined the crowd, a very enthusiastic and friendly crowd by the way, which is an important

2:03.3

point because there was concern of the secret service about sending a Kennedy on this trip to

2:12.8

Texas, which supposedly was dominated by crazy right-wing forces. So it is important to note

2:22.5

that the crowd was very friendly. Few words, the President returns to the hotel and there was a

2:34.0

meeting of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce and that's where he delivered a speech. There was

2:41.7

a demand to see Jackie, so Jackie had to make an appearance in her pink outfit, which became quite

2:48.9

famous, of course. My father returned to his office after hearing the remarks by the President.

...

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