process, in any event, I will not have to leave the Soviet Union and I will never * * * [word missing].

I recived your telegram and was glad to hear from you, only one word bothered me, the word "mistake." I assume you mean that I have made a "mistake" it is not for you to tell me that you cannot understand my reasons for this very action.

I will not speak to anyone from the United States over the telephone since it may be taped by the Americans.

If you wish to corespond with me you can write to the below address, but I really don't, see what we could take about if you want to send me money, that I can us, but I do not expect to be able to send it back.

LEE 589

Oswald's statement that he had been told that he could remain in Russia was not true. According to his diary, he was not told until later that he could remain even temporarily in Russia,540 and only in January was he told the he could remain indefinitely.541 The Embassy tried to deliver a typed copy of a telegram from his brother John on November 9; Oswald refused to answer the knock on his door, and the message was then sent to him by registered mail.542

Toward the end of this waiting period, probably on November 13, Aline Mosby succeeded in interviewing Oswald.543 A reporter for United Press International, she had called him on the telephone and was told to come right over, Oswald's explanation being that he thought she might "understand and be friendly" because she was a woman.544 She was the first person who was not a Soviet citizen to whom he granted an interview since his meeting with Snyder at the Embassy on October 31. Miss Mosby found him polite but stiff; she said that be seemed full of confidence, often showing a "small smile, more like a smirk," and that he talked almost "non-stop." Oswald said to her that he had been told that he could remain in the Soviet Union and that job possibilities were being explored; they thought it probably would be best, he said, to continue his education. He admitted that his Russian was bad but was confident that it would improve rapidly. He based his dislike for the United States on his observations of racial prejudice and the contrast between "the luxuries of Park Avenue and workers' lives on the East Side," and mentioned his mother's poverty; he said that if he had remained in the United States he too would have become either a capitalist or a worker. "One way or another." he said, "I'd lose in the United States. In my own mind, even if I'd be exploiting other workers. That's why I chose Marxist ideology."

Oswald told his interviewer that he had been interested in Communist theory since he was 15, when "an old lady" in New York handed him "a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs." But when Mosby asked if he were a member of the Communist Party he said that he had never met a Communist and that he "might bare seen" one only once, when he saw that "old lady." He told her that while