Those alive when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news the president had been shot. For Hoover fellow Paul Gregory, then a 21-year-old college student at the University of Oklahoma, the day became particularly memorable – life-changing, even – when he saw television news footage of Kennedy’s killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, being escorted into police headquarters.
“I know that guy,” he said to himself, confused and in disbelief. Gregory had gotten to know Oswald and his Russian wife Marina, whom he had taken Russian lessons with. For much of the summer of 1962, Gregory had been, outside of Lee’s family, the couple’s only friend. Gregory’s new book, The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee (Diversion Books, 2022) details a story he has kept largely private (with the exception of speaking to the authorities at the time).
Here, Stanford News talks to Gregory about what he knew of Oswald and how the assassination has captivated conspiracy theorists for over 60 years. Gregory is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and is a scholar of Soviet and Russian economics.
