From the annals of Broken Promises  – in 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine from Fort Worth, Texas living in Moscow, announced that he would never return to the United States. Oswald secretly travelled to the Soviet Union earlier in that year.  When in Moscow he told his Intourist guide that he wanted to become a Soviet citizen.  When asked why Soviet officials —all of whom, by Oswald’s account, found his wish incomprehensible—he said that he was a communist. When his visa was due to expire on October 21, he was told that his citizenship application had been refused, and that he would have to leave  that evening.  In a failed possible suicide attempt, Oswald cut his left wrist in his hotel room bathtub.  The wound was minor but bloody.  This delayed his departure and Soviet authorities kept him in a Moscow hospital under psychiatric observation until October 28.  According to Oswald, he met with four more Soviet officials, who asked if he wanted to return to the United States.  Oswald insisted that he wanted to become a Soviet citizen.  On October 31, Oswald appeared at the U.S. embassy to renounce his U.S. citizenship. “I have made up my mind,” he said; “I’m through.”  If only that had been true.

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