On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 20: The Marina Oswald Tapes

Fred Litwin
Sep 2
3 min read

Updated: Sep 5

After her Warren Commission testimony in 1964, J. Lee Rankin requested that the FBI wiretap Marina Oswald's phone in an attempt to discover any new information about her late husbands assassination of President Kennedy. Attorney General Robert Kennedy approved the wiretaps.

This podcast contains some excerpts of rare audio recordings from these wiretaps. Guests Paul Gregory, Denis Morissette, Steve Roe and Marianna Yarovskaya discuss the implications of what Marina Oswald thought about conspiracy theories.

Here is Hoover's request for a wiretap:

The results were not encouraging and the wiretaps were stopped:

Here is a good summary of the wiretaps:

You can see Hoover's message below in which he says, "I agree reluctantly ..."

The FBI did send the Warren Commission memos with information from the wiretaps:

Here is a 1975 FBI document about the wiretapping.

Here is the article from the New York Times:

A note on the Paul Gregory segment

Paul brings up the questioning of Marina Oswald by the Secret Service at the Six Flags Inn after the assassination. He thinks there was an attempt to link Oswald's gun to the Soviet Union.

Peter Dale Scott discussed this at a critic's conference with the HSCA.

Here is the Mamantov deposition that Scott mentions - he was the translator for Marina Oswald when she was at police headquarters right after the assassination.

Previous Episodes of On the Trail of Delusion:

Episode 1

My first guest was Robert Reynolds who is an expert on the JFK assassination files.

Episode 2

Robert A. Wagner discusses his new book, JFK Assassinated.

Episode 3

Gerald Posner discusses the JFK assassination and conspiracy theories.

Episode 4

Dr. Martin Kelly, Jr., discusses conspiracy theories and the medical evidence in the JFK assassination.

Episode 5

Steve Roe discusses the life of General Edwin Walker and Oswald's attempt to kill him.

Episode 6