espionage after he was found making sketches of port facilities. During 1941 de
Mohrenschildt applied for a post in the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
According to the official account, he was not hired. Soon after he made the
application, he went to Mexico where he stayed until 1944. In the latter year he
established his name as de Mohrenschildt, jettisoning the German version of von
Mohrenschildt, and began study for a master's degree in petroleum engineering at
the University of Texas. According to some accounts, during this period the
Office of Naval Intelligence because of alleged communist sympathies
investigated De Mohrenschildt. After the war, de Mohrenschildt worked as a
petroleum engineer in Cuba and Venezuela, and in Caracas he had several
meetings with the Soviet ambassador. During the postwar years he also worked in
the Rangely oil field in Colorado. During the 1950's, after having married
Winifred Sharpless, the daughter of an oil millionaire, de Mohrenschildt was
active as an independent oil entrepreneur.
In 1957, de Mohrenschildt was approved by the CIA Office of Security to be
hired as a US government geologist for a mission to Yugoslavia. Upon his return
one J. Walter Moore of the CIA’s Domestic Contact Service, with whom he
remained in contact, interviewed him. During 1958, de Morhenschildt visited
Ghana, Togo, Dahomey; during 1959 he visited Africa again and returned by way
of Poland. In 1959 he married Jeanne, his fourth wife, a former ballet dancer and
dress designer who had been born in Manchuria, where her father had been one of
the directors of the Chinese Eastern Railroad. During the summer of 1960, George
and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt told their friends that they were going to embark on
a walking tour of 11,000 miles along Indian trails from Mexico to Central
America. One of their principal destinations was Guatemala City, where they
were staying at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961, after which
they made their way home by way of Panama and Haiti. After two months in
Haiti, the Mohrenschildts returned to Dallas, where they came into contact with
Lee Harvey Oswald, who had come back to the United States from his sojourn in
the Soviet Union in June, 1962. By this time de Mohrenschildt was also
frequenting Admiral Henry C. Bruton and his wife, to whom he introduced the
Oswalds. Admiral Bruton was the former director of naval communications, and
had superintended a comprehensive modernization and reorganization of the
navy's means of keeping in touch with ships, planes, missiles, submarines, and the
like.
It is established that between October, 1962 and late April, 1963, de
Mohrenschildt was a very important figure in the life of Oswald and his Russian
wife. Despite Oswald's lack of social graces, de Mohrenschildt introduced him
into Dallas society, took him to parties, assisted him in finding employment, and
much more. It was through de Mohrenschildt that Oswald met a certain Volkmar
Schmidt, a young German geologist who had studied with Professor Wilhelm
Kuetemeyer, an expert in psychosomatic medicine and religious philosophy at the
University of Heidelberg, who compiled a detailed psychological profile of
Oswald. Jeanne and George helped Marina move her belongings during one of