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From the Archives 101: The President's Assassin Speaks (~1964)
On August 21, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963) appeared in a debate on WDSU-FM New Orleans. The debate was moderated by WDSU radio commentators Bill Slatter and Bill Stuckey. Oswald represented the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which he was the only member. He debated Carlos Bringuier, the leader of the New Orleans branch of the Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE), an anti-Castro group, and Edward Scannell Butler, the leader of the Information Council of the Americas, a right-wing organization. On August 9, Oswald and Bringuier had gotten into a fight, when Bringuier encountered Oswald distributing pro-Castro leaflets. Both were arrested for disturbing the peace and quickly released. Stuckey learned of the incident and invited Oswald and Bringuier on his radio program. Here is a transcript of the debate.
Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, on April 10, 1963, Oswald had tried and failed to assassinate retired Major General Edwin S. Walker, a prominent anti-communist and segregationist speaker, who was a member of the John Birch Society. Of course, on November 21, 1963, Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. He was quickly apprehended. But on November 24, Oswald was himself murdered by Jack Ruby.
Soon after the Kennedy assassination (probably in 1964), Key Records, a right-wing record label based in Los Angeles, California and affiliated with the John Birch Society, released an LP titled "The President's Assassin Speaks." The record was narrated by Billy James Hargis (1925-2004), an evangelical preacher affiliated with the John Birch Society. It featured Oswald and Bringuier's comments from the WDSU debate, with Hargis playing the part of the moderator. As it happens, Hargis was closely associated with Walker. Hargis was also the leader of Christian Crusade, a religious organization he founded. In 1964, Christian Crusade was investigated by the IRS, which revoked its tax exempt status. In 1971, he founded American Christian College in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But in 1974, he was forced to resign, when he was accused of sexually assaulting male and female students. The college went bankrupt and closed in 1977.
The LP was the eleventh in a series of "anti-subversion" albums released by Key Records. It was intended to emphasize that Oswald was a Communist, and not affiliated with the right-wing.
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