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Oswald friend knew kennedy New York Times
Nov. 24, 1964
Page 1
Friend of Oswalds Knew Mrs. Kennedy
By Tad Szulc
Special to the New York Times
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23- A colorful Russian-born society figure and business promoter has emerged, as the result of several extraordinary coincidences, as the only known link between the family of President Kennedy and his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Testimony by George S. de Mohrenschildt before the Warren Commission brought out that he knew Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Bouvier, as a little girl on Long Island in 1938, remained her mother’s friend over the ensuing years and became a friend and protector of Oswald and his wife, Marina, in Texas 25 years later.
Another coincidence was that about the time he met the Oswalds in 1962, Mrs. Kennedy had agreed to become the honorary chairman of a foundation to combat cystic fibrosis that Mr. de Mohrenschildt had established in memory of his late son.
The report of the Warren Commission, published last Sept. 27, said that "extensive investigation had been conducted into the background" of Mr. de Mohrenschildt and his present and fourth wife, the former Jeanne Fomenko, who was born in China of Russian parents. No reason for the inquiry was offered in the report, however.
It said that "the commissions investigation has developed no signs of subversive or disloyal conduct on the part of either the de Mohrenschildts" and that "niehter the F.B.I., C.I.A., nor any witness contacted by the commission has provided by the commission has provided any information linking the de Mohrenschildts to subversive or extremists organizations."
"Nor," the report states, "has there been any evidence linking them in any way with the assassination of President Kennedy."
Was a French Agent
Mr. de Mohrenschildt acknowledged to the commission that during World War II he worked in the United States "on behalf of the French intelligence," but denied that he had illegally sketched Coast Guard installations in Texas then.
Although the commission’s report made no reference to the coincidence of Mr. de Mohrenschildt’s association with Mrs. Kennedy’s mother and later with the Oswalds, its interest in the 53-year-old oilman and promoter was shown in the fact that 118 pages of testimony in the hearings released today dealt with his interrogation and 46 pages with the questioning of his wife. This is one of the longest sections of individual testimony in the 26 volumes of the hearings.
Was in Polish Academy
MR. de Mohrenschildt, who is 6 foot 2, was born in Mozyr, Russia. After the Communist Revolution in 1917, his family moved to Poland, and MR. de Mohrenschildt was graduated from a Polish Army cavalry academy in 1931. He earned a doctorate in international commerce at the University of Liege in Belgium in 1938, and in 1949 was awarded a master’s degree in engineering and geology at the University of Texas. He became a Untied States citizen the same year. He was engaged in oil ventures in Dallas at the time he met the Oswalds. He has, according to his testimony last April, worked in oil fields and in corporation offices. He speaks give languages fluently, and has been related by marriage, family and friendships to prominent American families.
His uncle, Ferdinand de Mohrenschildt, married a daughter of William Gibbs McAdoo, then Untied States of the Treasury. His brother, Sergei is a professor at Dartmouth College.
Mr. de Mohrenschildt was successively married to the former Dorothy Pierson, the former Phyllis Washington and the former Wynne Sharples, before marrying his present wife in 1956.
His son, Sergel, died of cystic fibrosis in 1960. Subsequently, Mr. de Mohrenschildt made a trip on foot across Mexico at the time. His other travels had taken him to Africa, the Caribbean, Western Europe and Yugoslavia. In Mexico, he became acquainted in 1960 with the Anastas I. Mikoyan, now chief of state of the Soviet Union.
Mr. Mikoyan was on a trade mission to Mexico at the time, attempting to negotiate trade agreements with the Mexican Government-controlled oil corporation known as Pemex.
Mr. de Mohrenschildt testified that he met Mrs. John V. Bouvier 3d at Belport, L. I., shortly after his arrival in the United States in 1938, when he worked as a perfume salesman in New York. Jacqueline Bouvier was apparently nearing her ninth birthday.
"Mrs. Bouvier is Jacqueline Kennedy’s mother, also her father and her whole family," he testified. "She was in the process of getting a divorce from her husband. I met him also. We were very close friends. We saw each other every day. I met Jackie then, when she was a little girl; her sister, who was still in the cradle practically. We were also very close friends of Jack Bouvier’s sister, and his father."
Mr. de Mohrenschildt told the commission that his friendship with Mrs. Kennedy’s mother-- now Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss--"more or less remained, because we still see each other, occasionally."
He Noted Coincidence
Exhibits appended to the commission’s hearings show that following President Kennedy’s assassination, Mr. de Mohrenschildt wrote Mrs. Auchincloss deploring the event and pointing to the strange coincidence of having known both Mrs. Kennedy and her husband’s assassin.
The letter was written on Dec. 12, 1963, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where Mr. de Mohrenschildt now lives and has a series of business ventures in which he is associated with the Government of President Francois Duvalier.
He asked Mrs. Auchincloss to express "my deepest sympathy to your daughter and tell her that both my brother and I will always remember her as a charming little girl from East Hampton."
"Since we lived in Dallas permanently last year and before," he wrote, "we had the misfortune to have met Oswald and especially his wife Marina sometime last fall. Both my wife and I tried to help poor Marina who could not speak any English, was mistreated by her husband; she and the baby were malnurished [sic] and sickly. We took them to the hospital."
"I was jus sitting in my office thinking of the strange gate which made me know Jackie when she was a little girl-- and which made me also know the assassin (or presumed assassin), his wife and child," he wrote.
Reply Was Sent
Mrs. Auchincloss replied, thanking him for his letter, and remarking that "it seems extraordinary to me that you knew Oswald and that you knew Jackie as a child."
"It is certainly a very strange world," she wrote.
Mr. de Mohrenschildt testified that after he and his wife had befriended the Oswalds in Dallas, he once told Oswald that "I met Mrs. Kennedy when she was a child, you know, that she was a very strong-willed child, very intelligence and very attractive child you see, and I thought that Kennedy was doing a very good job with regard to the racial problem, you know."
"And he also agreed with me," Mr. de Mohrenschildt testified. " ‘Yes, yes, yes; I think it is an excellent President, young full of energy, full of good ideas.’ "
"He was an admirer of President Kennedy," Mr. Mohrenschildt said.
Mr. de Mohrenschildt’s testimony showed that the Oswalds became friends of Mr. de Mohrenschildt and of other Russian-born persons in Dallas after their arrival in Texas, even though they were socially and economically below that group.
He said that the Russian community there was always interested in new people of Russian background, and that he had met the Oswalds through friends. Mrs. Oswald, he testified, lived briefly with his daughter, after the de Mohrenschildts took her away from Oswald following a beating he administered her.
Mr. de Mohrenschildt told of his efforts to find a job for Oswald in Dallas and of small gifts made to the Oswald family.
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