The woman who knew both Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK

President John F. Kennedy called heads of state, celebrities and business titans his buddies, but his assassin, loner Lee Harvey Oswald, had few acquaintances. Priscilla Johnson McMillan is probably the only man living to have known both men.

Now a stylish and spry 85, McMillan was when he was a senator, guiding Kennedy on Asia a Harvard researcher who worked for the long run 35th president.

“There is really a defector residing in your hotel, he will not speak to anybody but he may speak to you personally because you are a girl,” an embassy official informed her.

Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, was trying to renounce his American citizenship and proceed to the Soviet Union.

The guy who’d shake the free world in only four years “appeared like a school boy,” she said. “He had only had his 20th birthday however he appeared like he was in his late teens, and his method was that, rather tentative, rather bashful, not bombastic at all and not trying to make a huge impact.”


The picture is in sharp contrast to Kennedy, the dashing and magnetic war hero who’d become president at only age 43. McMillan, who remained friends with Kennedy until his presidency recalls him because of his inquisitive nature, and has speculated how he might respond to their own killer.

“He would wish to understand why he died, he had wish to understand why this child had nothing better to-do than go out and shoot somebody, much less go out and shoot him.”



McMillan’s chance meeting with Oswald and long-time friendship with Kennedy turned into something of the mission following the assassination in Dallas.

The novel details the Oswald’s troubled life and union, and provides an inside perspective of the private occasions leading to the assassination.

“He wanted to discuss Marxism economics and I did not need to discuss that, I liked to discuss him,” she said of her own dialog with him. “He wanted not to return to america.”

McMillan says Oswald was inspired by his “belief in Marxist ideology… he loathed capitalism.”

Oswald told her the seeds of his own Marxist leanings were planted when he was a adolescent and living in the Bronx and saw fiscal inequalities firsthand. As a stimulating factor for his political views, Oswald mentioned the case of as Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed, McMillan recalled.

Oswald spent nearly three years within the USSR before going back again to america in June of 1962, handing out proCastro pamphlets in New Orleans, and holding odd-jobs before getting hired at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

McMillan believes that Oswald’s ideology and psychological unbalance, combined using a net of deceit and fury over his rocky relationship with Marina, made a critical mix that caused the terrible events on Nov. 22, 1963.

“He understood there was something wrong with himself, however he had these other issues, delusions that he was something larger than he was,” McMillan said. “He believed he was a remarkable guy who was going to claim himself for background, and he even explained in defecting to the USSR that he ‘wanted to give the people of the Usa something to consider.”

Despite theories that Oswald didn’t act alone, McMillan believes it would have been possible for him to execute the offense without help. She believes he might have even foreshadowed his notorious action, purportedly capturing at anticommunist firebrand Gen. Edwin A. Walker from his living-room window in April of 1963. Oswald missed, and until after President Kennedy was killed law-enforcement never associated him for the apparent assassination attempt.

“A couple of days after he told Marina he would go and take a glance at Nixon,” McMillan said. “[Marina] locked him in the restroom, and for the remainder of their time together she was scared he would do something violent.”

Oswald saw Marina and requested to go back, but she refused, in the eve of the assassination, McMillan said.



Spurned by his own wife, Oswald left her some cash and, she’d only discover later, place his wedding-ring in his own grandma’s teacup. McMillan believes he’d already determined how he’d make history.

“I believe his leaving the marriage ring was disassociating himself from her, from what he was planning to-do,” she said.

After his arrest, Oswald requested to be represented by New-york lawyer John Abt, the long-time chief counsel for the American Communist Party.

For conspiracy theories regarding the assassination, McMillan believes Oswald’s fast death in the hands of club operator Jack Ruby gave rise to flights of unlucky fancy. She denies that, saying Oswald could have readily acted only, although some critics have maintained McMillian might have worked for or been affected by the CIA. The Lee Harvey Oswald she knew might have considered it was his destiny where he worked whenever the Kennedy motorcade passed the book depository to shoot the president, she said.

“President Kennedy might have come and gone from Dallas in perfect security,” she said. “But the selection of a course that will take the president past his window could mean just one thing to Lee -destiny, obligation, historical importance had come together in this time and location and singled him out to-do the action.”

Oswald and Kennedy both crossed the routes of at least two others, Joan Hallet and Oliver. Joan Hallet was the secretary who met Oswald when he visited the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where Oliver Hallet also served. As a junior Naval officer where Hallet worked in the Kennedy White House, they afterwards moved to DC.

“It is the ideal case of the small world department,” she stated. “Everything you do will return.”
When it started in 1996 Eric Shawn, a New Yorkbased anchor and senior correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC), joined the network. Shawn also frequently reports from the Us. Lately, he was live from Boston to report on the developments within the Boston Marathon bombing.