A comparison of the formal note Oswald handed Snyder 176 and his letter of November 3 177 with the provisions of section 349 (a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act 178 suggests that Oswald had read the statute but understood it imperfectly; he apparently was trying to use three out of the four ways set out in the statute to surrender his citizenship, but he succeeded in none.

Moreover, persuasive evidence that Oswald's conduct was not carefully coached by Soviet agents is provided by some of his actions at the Embassy. The single statement which probably caused Oswald the most future trouble was his declaration that he had already volunteered to a Soviet official that he would, if asked, tell the Soviet Government all that he knew about his job in radar as a Marine. Certainly a statement of this type would prejudice any possibility of his being an effective pro-Communist agent.

Further, though unquestionably evidencing anti-American sentiments, Oswald's behavior at the Embassy, which brought him exceedingly close to expatriation, was unlikely to have increased his value in any capacity to the Soviet Union. Richard E. Snyder, the official who interviewed Oswald on October 31, testified that he "had every reason to believe" that Oswald would have carried through a formal--and therefore effective--renunciation of his American citizenship immediately if he had let. him.179 However, as a defector, Oswald could have had considerable propaganda value without expatriating himself; and if he had expatriated himself his eventual return to the United States would have been much more difficult and perhaps impossible. If Snyder's assessment of Oswald's intentions is accurate, it thus tends to refute the suggestion that Oswald was being coached by the Soviets. In addition, reporters noticed Oswald's apparent ambivalence in regard to renouncing his citizen-ship-- stormily demanding that he be permitted to renounce while failing to follow through by completing the necessary papers 180--behavior which might have detracted from his propaganda value.
According to Oswald's "Historic Diary" 181 and the documents furnished to the Co
mmission by the Soviet Government, 182 Oswald was not told that he had been accepted as a resident of the Soviet Union until about January 4, 1960. Although on November 13 and 16 Oswald informed Aline Mosby 183 and Priscilla Johnson 184 that he had been granted permission to remain in the country indefinitely, the diary indicates that at that time he had been told only that he could remain "until some solution is found with what to do with me." 185 The diary is more consistent with the letter Oswald wrote to his brother Robert on December 17, saying that he was then, more than a month after he saw Johnson and Mosby, about to leave his hotel,186 and with some later correspondence with his mother. Oswald mailed a short note to his mother which she received in Texas on January 5; that same day she mailed a money order to him in Moscow, but it apparently got there too late, because she received it back, unopened, on February 25. 187 Oswald's conflicting statement to the correspondents also seems rec-oneliable with his very apparent desire to appear important to others.