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General Edwin Walker was an anti-communist, segregationist, and member of the John Birch Society. Walker was commanding officer of the 24th Army Division under NATO, but was relieved of this post by JFK in 1961 for distributing right-wing literature to his troops. Walker resigned from the Army and returned to his native Texas. He ran in the six-man Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1962 but lost to John Connally, who went on to win the race. When Walker came to Oswald's attention in February 1963, the general was making front page news by joining forces with an evangelist in an anti-communist tour called "Operation Midnight Ride".
Oswald began to put Walker under surveillance, taking pictures of Walker's home and nearby railroad tracks, perhaps his planned escape route, using the same camera used by Marina to take the famous backyard poses (see below). Oswald mail-ordered a rifle (see below) using his alias Hidell (he had already ordered a pistol in January). He planned the assassination on April 10, ten days after he was fired from Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. He chose a Wednesday evening because the neighborhood would be relatively crowded because of services in a church adjacent to Walker's home; he would not stand out and could mingle with the crowds if necessary to make his escape. He left a note in Russian for Marina with instructions should he be caught. Walker was sitting at a desk in his dining room when Oswald fired at him from less than a hundred feet (30 m) away. Walker survived only because the bullet struck the wooden frame of the window, deflecting its path, though he was injured in the forearm by fragments.
At the time, authorities had no idea who attempted to kill Walker. Marina saw Oswald burn most of his plans in the bathtub, though she hid the note he left her in a cookbook, intending to bring it to the police should Oswald again attempt to kill Walker or anyone else. Oswald's involvement was unknown until the note and some of the photos were found by the authorities following the assassination of JFK. The bullet was too badly damaged to run conclusive ballistics tests, though neutron activation tests later proved that the bullet was from the same manufacturer as the one that killed Kennedy.
Oswald was unemployed, he had failed to kill General Walker, and his best friend, de Mohrenschildt, had moved away from Dallas. Leaving Marina, who was pregnant for the second time, with the Paines, he returned to the city of his birth to look for work, arriving on the morning of April 25. In May, Oswald got a job with the Reily Coffee Company (from which he was fired in July) and Marina joined him in New Orleans, driven there by Ruth Paine.
Though Oswald got a new passport and had Marina write to the Soviet embassy about returning to the USSR, he was still disillusioned with that country. His Marxist hopes were pinned on Fidel Castro and Cuba; he became a vocal pro-Castro advocate. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a national organization and Oswald, unsolicited, set out to become a one-man New Orleans chapter. Oswald spent $22.73 on 1000 flyers, 500 membership applications, and 300 membership cards and had Marina sign the name "A.J. Hidell" as chapter president on one of the cards.
Most of Oswald's work consisted of passing out flyers. He made a clumsy attempt to infiltrate anti-Castro exile groups and briefly met with the skeptical Carlos Bringuier, the New Orleans delegate for the Cuban Student Directorate. Several days later Bringuier and two friends confronted a man passing out pro-Castro handbills and discovered it was Oswald. In the ensuing scuffle, all were arrested and Oswald spent the night in jail. The trial got press attention and Oswald was interviewed afterwards. He was also filmed passing out fliers in front of the International Trade Mart with two "volunteers" he had hired for $2 at the unemployment office. Oswald's work came to an end with a WDSU radio debate between Bringuier and Oswald arranged by journalist Bill Stuckey. Instead of discussing issues concerning Cuba, Oswald was confronted with lies and omissions he had made concerning his background. Oswald was devastated and humiliated, and a month later he left New Orleans.
Oswald's four months in the city are the subject of much attention, most notably New Orleans DA Jim Garrison's attempt to link Oswald to local businessman Clay Shaw, former president of the International Trade Mart. The links between Oswald and Shaw were supposedly Guy Bannister , a former FBI agent turned detective, and David Ferrie , a pilot and amateur cancer researcher who wore an ill-fitting red wig because a rare disease made him hairless. Ferrie and Oswald were both in the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans in the 1950s and a CAP group photo shows them together, though there is no credible evidence that they knew each other then or in 1963. Bannister had an office in the building at 544 Camp Street and Oswald stamped some (but not all) of his flyers with that address. There is also no credible evidence that Oswald knew Bannister or rented an office at Bannister's building, and in any case Oswald's letters, applications, etc. were constantly filled with lies. But Oswald must have known the building since the Reily Coffee Company is only a block away. It was also home to the anti-Castro Cuban Revolutionary Council, and using their address may have been Oswald's way of attempting to embarrass them.
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