to the office, talked with him briefly, and suggested that he return on the following Monday.700 Oswald called Marina and asked her join him in Moscow. She arrived on Sunday, July 9, 701 a room at the Hotel Berlin,702 where he had stayed when he first arrived in Russia.

Oswald returned to the Embassy on Monday. Marina waited outside during his interview with Snyder,703 who asked to see Oswald's Soviet papers and questioned him closely about his life in Russia and possible expatriating acts. Oswald stated that he was not a citizen of the Soviet Union and had never formally applied for citizenship, that he had never taken an oath of allegiance to the Soviet Union, and that he was not a member of the factory trade union organization. He said that he had never given Soviet officials any confidential information that he had learned in the Marines, had never been asked to give such information, and "doubted" that he would have done so had he been asked.704 Some of Oswald's statements during this interview were undoubtedly false. He had almost certainly applied for citizenship in the Soviet Union 705 and, at least for a time, been disappointed when it was denied.706 He possessed a membership card in the union organization.707 In addition, his assertion to Snyder that he had never been questioned by Soviet authorities concerning his life in the United States is simply unbelievable.

Oswald showed anxiety, already displayed in his letters, that he might be prosecuted and imprisoned if he returned to. the United States. Snyder told him informally that he did not know any grounds on which he would be prosecuted but that he could give no assurances in this regard.708 Snyder testified that Oswald seemed to have matured while he was in Russia and did not show the bravado and arrogance which characterized his first contacts with the Embassy. Oswald told him that he had "learned a hard lesson the hard way" and had acquired a new appreciation of the United States and the meaning of freedom.709

Since Oswald's passport would expire on September 10, 1961,710 before which date he probably would not be able to obtain Russian exit papers, he filled out an application for its renewal.711 On a questionnaire attached to the application,712 he reiterated his oral statements that he had obtained only a residence permit in the Soviet Union and was still an American national. On the basis of Oswald's written and oral statements, Snyder concluded that he had not expatriated himself and returned his passport, stamped valid only for direct travel to the United States,713 to him. Accompanied by his wife,714 Oswald came to the Embassy again on the following day,715 to initiate procedures for her admission to the United States as an immigrant; they had a routine interview with McVickar, Snyder's assistant.716 Three days later, they returned to Minsk.717

On the same day, Oswald wrote to his brother. He told Robert that he had his passport again and that he and Marina were doing everything possible to leave the Soviet Union. Apparently referring to his initial reappearance at the Embassy in quest of his passport, he