From: Kathy Wheat Fife (79)  ~ 3/1/00 Alumni Sandstorm

   After reading all the Kennedy stuff [...] I am
going to type out a 2 page excerpt from a book
written by my (former) uncle's brother [who]
worked for John Connally before the assassination.
He was a JAG attorney in the US Navy for many
years. [...] He was privy to some incredible
information about Lee Harvey Oswald and has a very
interesting perspective of what may have happened
that day. There are a few more mentions of the
incident in the middle of the book. Here goes:

   One day we got a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald.
The name meant nothing to us then. The letter was
long and handwritten and was mailed from Russia
where Oswald was living with his wife, Marina. It
was addressed to "The Honorable John Connally" who
was then the secretary of the navy in the Kennedy
Administration. It had been processed routinely
in the secretary's mail room. Someone there
decided that I, as special counsel to the
secretary, should "staff" the letter. The decision
was logical because the letter had legal
overtones. Also, the mail room had a limited
choice. The secretary's personal staff consisted
of only four people. The naval aide was Captain
Bill Anderson, who had been skipper of the nuclear
submarine Nautilus on her historic voyage under
the ice at the North pole and was later to become
a congressman from Tennessee. Colonel Ed Wheeler,
later to become a lieutenant general and a hero of
the Vietnam War, was the marine aide. Commander
Jim Jenkins, the special assistant for public
affairs, was my close friend from days of duty
together in Naples, Italy. Jim was destined to
become the secretary for Health, Education and
Welfare for the state of California. Still later
he was deputy counsellor to President Ronald
Reagan, under Ed Meese.
   I, as special counsel, was the fourth.
   So it fell to me to decide what to do with the
letter. It was essentially a complaint from Oswald
about the character of his discharge from the
Marine Corps, and a plea to Connally to use his
authority as secretary of the navy to change the
discharge to one more favorable.
   Those unfamiliar with the US military services
should know at this point that the Marine Corps is
part of the Navy Department. Even the secretary of
the navy needed to remind himself of this fact
from time to time to avoid oversights damaging to
delicate Marine Corps sensibilities. Connally had
a sign over the door leading out of his office
that read, "Remember the Marines." It reminded him
to call the Marine Corps commandant to apprise him
of important decisions before they became public.
The flamboyant commandant at the time, General
David Shoup, could become particularly peevish if
this were not done.
   When Oswald left the Marine Corps and went to
live in Russia, he was given an administrative
discharge that was less than commendatory. As I
recall, he was discharged as "undesirable." He
thought that characterization unfair. Later events
were to prove the epithet to have been
exceptionally mild. The letter was an attention
getter. You don't find many Marines defecting to
the Soviet Union.
   I sent to the Marine Corps Headquarters for
Oswald's record, and studied the circumstances of
his defection and subsequent discharge. There were
no conflicts of fact between his letter and his
record. A review of the statutes and regulations
governing administrative discharges led to the
conclusion that Oswald's discharge was in complete
compliance with all legal requirements.
   That, however, was not the end of it. The
secretary can exercise clemency if he feels that
there are strong extenuating circumstances. He may
also intervene if an applicant's service was
exceptionally meritorious.
   Neither applied to Oswald. He had been a lousy
Marine.
   So I prepared the usual two papers that
accompany all correspondence going into the
secretary's "action" basket. The first was a
brief, setting forth everything I thought the
secretary needed to know in order to make an
informed decision. It concluded with a
recommendation for action. The second was a paper
for the secretary to sign that would put the
recommended action into effect.
   In Oswald's case, my conclusions were that his
complaint had no legal basis, his request was
without merit, and that Connally should not
involve himself in any way. I recommended that he
refer the letter to the commandant of the Marine
Corps for "appropriate action." This phrase meant,
in clear officialese, that the secretary was
washing his hands of the case. The commandant
could do with it as he wished. No one could doubt
that the result would be. It was a kiss-off.
    A day or two later, Connally called me into
his office. He had obviously read the entire file
and was intrigued. We discussed the case for half
an hour or so, and at the end he said, "I agree
with you, Andy--this is the way we should handle
it." He then signed that second piece of paper
that sent Oswald's letter on its way, we thought,
to oblivion.
   But that's not exactly the way it turned out.
On 22 November 1963, while riding beside President
Kennedy in a motorcade in Dallas, John Connally,
then governor of Texas, was shot through his arm
and lung by Lee Harvey Oswald. President Kennedy
was shot and killed in the same incident. The
history books say it slightly differently--that
Connally was wounded during Oswald's assassination
of President Kennedy. The assumption is always
that Oswald was shooting at Kennedy and that
Connally was hit by accident of as a secondary
target of opportunity. Could it not, however, have
been the other way around? In spite of all the
investigations, including that of the Warren
Commission, and the continuing fascination with
and theories about the event, no one has yet to
come up with a credible motive for the shooting of
Kennedy by Oswald. Against this, we know for a
fact that Oswald once asked Connally for help in
what may have been cri du coeur. He was turned
down flat. What greater motivation does a
psychopath need?
   Thus, by fortune I am able to provide a
footnote to history.
   "A Journey Amongst the Good and the Great",
memoirs by Andy Kerr.
 
-Kathy Wheat Fife (79)
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