On October 23rd, I had attened a ultra-right meeting headed by General Edwin A. Walker, who lives in Dallas. This meeting preceded by one day the attack on A. E. Stevenson at the United Nations Day meeting at which he spoke. As you can see, political friction between "left" and "right" is very great here. Could you advise me as to the general view we have on the American Civil Liberties Union ? 405

In any event, the Commission has been unable to find any credible evidence that Oswald had direct contact or association with any of the personalities or groups epitomizing or representing the so-called rightwing, even though he did, as he told Johnson, attend a meeting at which General Walker spoke to approximately 1,300 persons.406 Oswald's writings and his reading habits indicate that he had an extreme dislike of the rightwing, an attitude most clearly reflected by his attempt to shoot General Walker.

Relationship With Wife

The relations between Lee and Marina Oswald are of great importance in any attempt to understand Oswald's possible motivation. During the period from Oswald's return from Mexico to the assassination, he and his wife spent every weekend but one together at the Irving, Tex., home of Mrs. Ruth Paine, who was then separated from her husband. The sole exception was the weekend of November 16-17, 1963, the weekend before the assassination, when his wife asked Oswald not to come to Irving. During the week, Oswald lived in a roominghouse in Dallas, but he usually called his wife on the telephone twice a day.407 She testified that after his return from Mexico Oswald "changed for the better. He began to treat me better. * * * He helped me more--although he always did help. But he was more attentive." 408 Marina Oswald attributed that to their living apart and to the imminent birth of their second child. She testified that Oswald "was very happy" about the birth of the child.409

While those considerations no doubt had an effect on Oswald's attitude toward his family it would seem that the need for support and sympathy after his recent rebuffs in Mexico City might also have been important to him. It would not have been the first time that Oswald sought closer ties with his family in time of adversity.410

His past relationships with his wife had been stormy, however, and it did not seem that she respected him very much. They had been married after a courtship of only about 6 weeks, a part of which Oswald spent in the hospital. Oswald's diary reports that he married his wife shortly after his proposal of marriage to another girl had been rejected. He stated that the other girl rejected him partly because he was an American, a fact that he said she had exploited. He stated that "In spite of fact I married Marina to hurt Ella [the girl that had rejected him] I found myself in love with Marina." 411