Back in New Orleans after leaving New York, Lee Oswald joins the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) run by "Captain" Dave Ferrie. One day, Marguerite comes home from work to find Lee dressed in his CAP uniform along with an adult in uniform who tries to talk Marguerite into forging paperwork to get Lee into the Marines prior to the legal age. Marguerite assumes this person is a Marine recruitment officer (or is told that is what he is), but it is known that Dave Ferrie was constantly encouraging his young charges to join the Marines. Since Lee was in his CAP uniform, it stands to reason he had just come back from a CAP meeting and that the adult with him was none other than Dave Ferrie and not a random Marine recruitment officer.
The CAP had released details in 1948 of commencing it's own countersubversive programs and operations. In doing so, the CAP requested "permission" from both the FBI and CIA - indicating that their plans involved both domestic and overseas components. Indeed, the plans included teaching recruits into the program, lessons in the Russian language, culture and military tactics. Domestically, the plan was to place recruits into various businesses and given the names of fellow employees suspected of being comsymps to spy and report on. Ferrie started such clandestine groups within his CAP unit (“the Omnipotents”) and soon Oswald would be studying Marx and learning Russian and trying to talk a fellow employee at a dental lab where he worked as a messenger boy, into searching for and joining Communist cells.
Sylvia Ludlow Hyde Hoke, the sister of Ruth Paine, worked for the CIA as a psychologist under military cover at the Human Resources Research Office housed at George Washington University. She was part of a team working on recruitment issues regarding maintenance of planes used in the FICON project - a precursor project to the U2 flights. The final report was issued in September 1956. The following month, Lee Oswald joined the Marines, listing Aircraft Maintenance and Repair as his preference, and ultimately working in the radar maintenance unit at Atsugi, Japan - home of the U2.
Richard Bissell was head of the CIA U2 program and also Deputy Director of Plans, the section which accounted for more than half of the CIA budget. This also made him responsible for all covert operations. Bissell issued a memo on September 2, 1959 stating that operations against the Soviets were to be increased. Two days later, Oswald, the former U2 base radar operator, applied for his passport with the aim of traveling to the Soviet Union.
Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union via Helsinki - the only place at that time that an American could gain quick access to a Soviet entry visa - and this was only because the CIA had spent months lavishing the Chief Soviet Consulate officer, Gregory Golub, with female companions, lunches and dinners. Golub finally agreed that he would issue quick visas to American citizens if they purchased Intourist vouchers and looked "okay" to him. He issued the first two such visas shortly before the arrival of Oswald. Normally the visas would take weeks, but Oswald got his in one to two days. The usually frugal Oswald also purchased 10 expensive Intourist vouches.