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journey. Oswald is ashamed of Marina’s cheap dresses and doesn’t want her to be seen in public. He passes the time in their small cabin writing about his growing disillusionment with governmental power.
    The Maasdam docks in Hoboken, New Jersey, on June 13, 1962. The Oswalds pass through customs without incident and take a small room at a New York City Times Square hotel.

Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald leaving Minsk, bound for the United States. [© Corbis]
    Thanks to a loan from his brother, Robert, Lee Harvey Oswald and his family fly to Dallas. The city is simmering with a rage that mirrors Oswald’s ongoing personal unhappiness in many ways. The South swung in President Kennedy’s favor during the election, but there are pockets of militant anger; people grumble about Kennedy being the first Roman Catholic president and his desire to bring about racial equality.
    This is the environment into which the Oswald family arrives. They land at a Dallas-area airport called Love Field, where the president and first lady will touch down aboard Air Force One in 17 short months. Lee’s brother takes them to his home in nearby Fort Worth.

Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald with their daughter, June Lee, in 1962. [© Corbis]
    Oswald is unhappy that his return to the United States has not attracted widespread media attention—or any media attention at all, for that matter. He thinks that he should have been noticed. But even as he fumes that the press is nowhere in sight, he is being watched—but secretly.

Lee Harvey Oswald holding baby June. [© Corbis]

 
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
    AUGUST 16, 1962
    Fort Worth, Texas
    I T IS BRUTALLY HOT IN F ORT W ORTH. FBI special agents John Fain and Arnold J. Brown have been waiting all day to see Lee Harvey Oswald. They sit in an unmarked car just down the street from Oswald’s newly rented apartment. Fain and Brown work for J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI. Hoover’s intense preoccupation is finding and arresting anyone who sympathizes with Communists. He seems to suspect almost everybody and has created an atmosphere of suspicion and fear in thousands of innocent people.
    The Oswald case is nothing new to Special Agent Fain. Back when Oswald first defected to the Soviet Union, Fain was assigned a minor investigation of Oswald’s mother because she had mailed $25 to her son in the Soviet Union. The FBI was following even the smallest leads to find Communist sympathizers.
    John Fain had also spoken face-to-face with Oswald just seven weeks earlier, on June 26. Oswald’s case has been designated an “internal security” investigation, based on the concern that his defection might make him a threat to national security. Fain’s job is to find out whether the Russians trained Oswald to perform a job against the United States. Something about the first interview, which lasted two hours, didn’t sit well with Fain. One question that Fain asked and Oswald never answered in a completely truthful manner was whether the Russians demanded anything in return for letting him come back to America. A second question interests Fain: Why did Oswald go to the Soviet Union in the first place? Oswald didn’t answer that one either. He danced around it, talking about “his own personal reasons,” that “it was something that I did.” Fain didn’t like Oswald’s attitude, thinking him proud and rude.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. [LOC, DIG-ppmscc-03262]
    John Fain needs these questions answered. He’s a very thorough man and takes it upon himself to interview Lee Harvey Oswald one more time.
    At 5:30 P.M. , the two agents see Oswald walking down the street. Fain drives up beside him. “Hi, Lee. How are you?” he says out the car window. “Would you mind talking with us for just a few minutes?”
    The three men talk for a little over an hour. Oswald is friendlier than before, less defensive. He explains that he’s been in touch with the Soviet