WAS JFK'S ALLEGED ASSASSIN A POOR SHOT? STATEMENTS ON THE MARKSMANSHIP ABILITY OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD Compiled by Michael T. Griffith 1994 --------------------- Two Marine Colleagues --------------------- Nelson Delgado and Sherman Cooley served with Oswald in the Marines and saw him shoot. Here is some of what they had to say about his marksmanship ability: Nelson Delgado -------------- Before the Warren Commission: Q. Did you fire with Oswald? DELGADO. Right; I was in the same line. By that I mean we were on line together, the same time, but not firing at the same position, but at the same time, and I remember seeing his [shooting]. It was a pretty big joke, because he got a lot of "Maggie's drawers," you know, a lot of misses, but he didn't give a darn. Q. Missed the target completely? DELGADO. He just qualified, that's it. He wasn't as enthusiastic as the rest of us. We all loved-- liked, you know going to the range. (8 H 235) In a filmed interview with attorney Mark Lane: LANE. Sergeant, prior to your Warren Commission testimony, were you interviewed by agents of the FBI? DELGADO. Yes, they came to my home in south Jersey to interview me. The first two visits, they came just to get my story--what I knew about Oswald, how close we were, and things like that. After that, the questions were tending [to try] to break my story down. . . . LANE. When did you first meet Oswald? DELGADO. Just prior to the Christmas of 1958, Lee Oswald reported into our unit. Oswald and I got along really good together. We were, like I say, working in the same job, involving aircraft and radar. We controlled them from the ground, and ran intercepts. We were about forty enlisted men who participated in this job. All of us knew Lee, and he knew all of us. We got along fine. We had discussions, and, uh [stops]. LANE. Was Oswald interested in guns? DELGADO. They [the Warren Commission] say he was a gun enthusiast, but I recall many instances where we stood inspections, and he was constantly being gigged for having a dirty weapon and for taking improper care of his weapon. He was always reminded when he had to clean the weapon. He never took it upon himself to do so. LANE. Do you have personal knowledge of Oswald's ability with a rifle? DELGADO. At the range he couldn't prove by me that he was a good shot. As any person who has ever served in the armed forces could tell you, there's a part in the qualification that calls for rapid firing. This is done with ten shots, eight in the clip and two that you load by hand. They give you forty-five seconds to fire these ten rounds. Well, when you fire these, then you stand you stand away from your firing position, till everyone has finished firing. Then the targets are brought down and scored. The targets are run back up, and there are disks for the number that you have hit--fives, fours, threes, or misses. Well, in Oswald's particular case, it was quite funny to look at, because he would get a couple of disks. Maybe out of a possible ten he'll get two or three Maggie's drawers. Now, these [the Maggie's drawers] are a red flag that's on a long pole, and this is running from left to right on the target itself. And, you don't see this on a firing line too often--not a Marine firing line. You can't help but noticing when you're seeing disks, round cylindar things, coming up and down, and farther on down the line you see a flag waving [i.e., a Maggie's drawer]. Well, that was gonna catch your eye anyway. And we thought it was funny that Oswald was getting these Maggie's drawers so rapidly, one after the other. And this is why I can't think that he could be a good shot, because a good shot doesn't pull this. He'll pull a three, but he won't pull a Maggie's drawer-- that's a complete miss. LANE. How did the FBI react to your statement that Oswald was a poor shot? DELGADO. They tried to disprove it. They did not like the idea when I came up with the statement that Oswald, as far as I knew, was a very poor shot. LANE. Do you feel that the agents of the FBI actually tried to get you to change your statement that Oswald was a poor shot. DELGADO. Yes, sir, I definitely do. (From the 1966 documentary RUSH TO JUDGMENT, produced by Mark Lane and Emile de Antonio) Sherman Cooley -------------- In an interview with former Rockefeller Foundation fellow Henry Hurt: If I had to pick one man in the whole United States to shoot me, I'd pick Oswald. I saw the man shoot. There's no way he could have ever learned to shoot well enough to do what they accused him of doing in Dallas. (REASONABLE DOUBT, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985, p. 99) ------------------------------- Other Interviews and Statements ------------------------------- In addition to Sherman Cooley, Henry Hurt interviewed over fifty other former Marine colleagues of Oswald's. Hurt reported the results of those interviews: On the subject of Oswald's shooting ability, there was virtually no exception to Delgado's opinion that it was laughable. . . . Many of the Marines mentioned that Oswald had a certain lack of ccordination that, they felt, was responsible for the fact that he had difficulty learning to shoot. They believed it was the same deficiency in coordination responsible for his reported inability to drive a car. (REASONABLE DOUBT, pp. 99-100) Oswald was in the Soviet Union from October 1959 till June 1962. For most of his time in Russia, he lived in the city of Minsk. While there, he belonged to a gun club. The members of his gun club reportedly viewed him as a poor shot: Members of the club reported that Oswald had been considered a poor shot. (G. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings, FATAL HOUR, New York: Berkley Books, 1992, p. 139). ***************************************************************** Michael T. Griffith (74274,650)