Steven Hager: The Two Oswalds

[Jim Hargrove]

Author Robert Doran began communicating with John two days ago.  He said he has information about "one of your Oswalds" at Carswell AFB near Fort Worth using a fascinating pseudonym.  I just emailed Mr. Doran asking his permission to post more of his material publicly.

[Michael Clark]

While I think LHO fired no shots at the President, and therefore all inquiry into him is a quest to prove a negative, and a waste of time, I do find myself wasting time by reading about him. I have seen no mention of a second Marina. WC testimony of Marina and Mrs Whitworth leaves that question open. While much of the time I don't know what to believe of Marina's testimony and statements, the encounter in the Furniture Mart, in early November of 1963, has me at a loss as to whether anyone is lying. I generally come away from it feeling that no-one is lying.

This is of particular interest because, supposedly, LHO is driving, and he does not know how to drive. He is also in the store to get a rifle scope repaired. The store has a sign out front saying that there is a gunsmith within, but the sign is outdated and the gunsmith no longer works out of that store. It sounds like an encounter with a non-Lee and a non-Marina, and you have the whole family impersonated, children included... ???

 

Mrs. OSWALD. I have never seen Lee drive the car in my lifetime. Lee never drove a car with me or the children in it. The only time I saw him behind the wheel was when Ruth Paine taught him to drive the car, he was practicing parking the car when Ruth Paine was teaching him to drive.

 

The testimony of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald, Edith Whitworth, and Gertrude Hunter was taken at 11 a.m., on July 24, 1964, in the office of the U.S. attorney, 301 Post Office Building, Bryan and Ervay Streets, Dallas, Tex., by Mr. Wesley J. Liebeler, assistant counsel of the President's Commission. Present were June Oswald and Rachel Oswald, children of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald; William A. McKenzie and Henry Baer, counsel for .Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald; Peter Paul Gregory, interpreter; and Forrest Sorrels and John Joe Howlett, special agents of the U.S. Secret Service.

 

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/oswald_m2.htm

Edited January 6, 2017 by Michael Clark
Clarification

[Jim Hargrove]

Michael,

Fascinating, isn’t it?  Marina was clearly impersonated for six weeks or so prior to the assassination of JFK.  From John Armstrong’s book:

Oswald told Mrs. Magee that he spent three years in Russia and was married to
a Russian girl who did not speak English. He also mentioned that he was a "Marxist"
and tried to explain the term to Mrs. Magee. While Oswald was looking at the apartment
his wife got out of the car and joined him. She said "hello" and then looked around the
apartment before returning to the car. Mrs. Magee noticed the woman was pregnant and
looked like she was very close to having the baby.

NOTE: Marina Oswald delivered Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald five days earlier, at
10:41 pm, October 20 , 1963, at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Mrs. Magee's
recollection that Oswald's wife was pregnant on October 25 in Baton Rogue is yet an­-
other example that a woman was accompanying Lee Oswald as he continued to imper­-
sonate Harvey. This may have been the same woman who was seen with Lee Oswald in
Sparta, Wisconsin, Jackson (LA), Alice (TX), Freer(TX), at the Furniture Mart, Sal­-
vation Army and Hutchison's grocery in Irving (TX), and other locations, posing as
Marina. [Harvey and Lee, p. 735]

 

Nearly twenty years ago now, Chris Courtwright wrote an influential short article about the many sightings of a second set of the entire Oswald family (Lee and Marina and their kids) in and around Alice, Texas in early October, 1963.  Chris titled his story Oswald in Aliceland; A Tale of Two Days; A Tale of Two Oswalds.

For more on the Whitworth/Hunter/Oswald driving mystery, see THE MAN WHO COULD—AND COULDN’T—DRIVE on the Harvey and Lee website.

[Michael Clark]

Wow, looks like I need to spend 20 years reading before I post anything here...thanks Jim.

[Jim Hargrove]

I hope you stick around, Michael.  You already know more than some of the old hands around places like this who can't buy a clue.

The people who set up "Lee Harvey Oswald" as the patsy were taking orders from the men who ordered Kennedy's death.  

[Michael Clark]

Thanks Jim,

What is interesting is that Oswald was being set-up, or cloned, long before an operation to kill JFK could have been conceived.

So I can imagine a situation where serious intelligence operatives identified a need for such an asset, long before. It's not difficult to imagine a situation where a critical situation came-up, repeatedly, where agents or officials said to themselves: "if only we had a doppelgänger, ready to go!".

So there must have been a program, an operation, to develop such assets long before and after the Kennedy hit. Such an operation should still be identifiable, detectable; even after all these years.

As a side note: I don't have any expertise in this, but I do have some experience with an observation I'll offer. LHO may have been targeted for certain behavioral aspects. I'll suggest that he exhibits certain peculiarities of Asperger's Syndrome which was beginning to be described in 1944.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Michael Clark

[Michael Clark]

Can you imagine George De Mohrenschildt being tasked with finding a couple of twin, or lookalike Russian girls who could be absconded to the USA for "Operation Doppleganger"?

i guess that I can...

Edited January 8, 2017 by Michael Clark

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Michael Clark writes:

Quote

While much of the time I don't know what to believe of Marina's testimony and statements, the encounter in the Furniture Mart, in early November of 1963, has me at a loss as to whether anyone is lying. I generally come away from it feeling that no-one is lying.

There is no need to suppose that anyone is lying. With the Furniture Mart account, there are three possibilities:

1 - The witnesses were lying, for no obvious reason.
2 - Oswald, his wife and their children were all impersonated as part of a ridiculously complex conspiracy involving a duplicate Oswald, beginning when he was 12.
3 - The witnesses were mistaken, as witnesses often are.

It isn't difficult to see which of these three options is the most likely to be correct (clue: it isn't option number two).

If you can get hold of the Harvey and Lee book, you will have hours of fun identifying this sort of logical error. Almost every time a witness account can be interpreted as part of an Oswald-was-impersonated-from-the-age-of-12 conspiracy, critical thought goes out of the window and the account is accepted without question. It happens over and over again, and with documentary evidence too. Someone made a mistake when filling in a piece of paperwork? Don't be silly! It's all part of the conspiracy! Take away every example of this sort of error, and the 'Harvey and Lee' theory just collapses.

 

[Michael Clark]

On 1/6/2017 at 10:27 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

Deleted, the quote function pops up sometimes and I can't get rid of it.

38 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

 

There is no need to suppose that anyone is lying. With the Furniture Mart account, there are three possibilities:

1 - The witnesses were lying, for no obvious reason.
2 - Oswald, his wife and their children were all impersonated as part of a ridiculously complex conspiracy involving a duplicate Oswald, beginning when he was 12.
3 - The witnesses were mistaken, as witnesses often are.

It isn't difficult to see which of these three options is the most likely to be correct (clue: it isn't option number two).

If you can get hold of the Harvey and Lee book, you will have hours of fun identifying this sort of logical error. Almost every time a witness account can be interpreted as part of an Oswald-was-impersonated-from-the-age-of-12 conspiracy, critical thought goes out of the window and the account is accepted without question. It happens over and over again, and with documentary evidence too. Someone made a mistake when filling in a piece of paperwork? Don't be silly! It's all part of the conspiracy! Take away every example of this sort of error, and the 'Harvey and Lee' theory just collapses.

 

Jeremy, it's crazy stuff. How does it get explained? Does LHO know how to drive, or does he not? Is Marina lying about him not knowing how to drive, and that she NEVER drove with him? It's utterly baffling.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Michael Clark
Stumbling on use of quote function

[Michael Clark]

And regarding the Harvey and Lee book, no thanks. I stumbled upon this myself while reading WC testimony. I don't need or want to be guided to or through it. I spent the last 6 years studying ancient Roman History. I like that because of the mystery, vagueness and questions that arise over the lack of information, and the need to put together pieces of what was not lost over time. This whole thing has mountains of information and it just gets foggier and foggier. It is unsettling to say the least.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Michael Clark

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Michael Clark said:

And regarding the Harvey and Lee book, no thanks. I stumbled upon this myself while reading WC testimony. I don't need or want to be guided to or through it. I spend the last 6 years studying ancient Roman History. I like that because of the mystery, vagueness and questions that arise over the lack of information, and the need to put together pieces of what was not lost over time. This whole thing has mountains of information and it just gets foggier and foggier. It is unsettling to say the least.

I think you are wise to stick with your own research.  Although I have read many of the major works, probably starting with Lifton and Groden way back when, I eventually realized that the original source documents, testimony transcripts and video interviews were a far better way to go.  My personal theory, if I have one, is in the vein of what Larry Hancock wrote in Someone Would Have Talked, but only because I was thinking along those lines before Larry steered me to his books.  We probably all need a "working paradigm" to help make sense of the evidence, the trick being to keep it from becoming a "fundamentalist religion."

When I bought and read from cover to cover my very own copy of Harvey & Lee (based largely on Walt Brown's semi-recommendation in his massive chronology, which I likewise read), my first inkling that something might be amiss in Harvey & Lee Land came as I neared the end.  "Wow, I can't wait to learn what happened to Fake Lee, Fake Marina and Fake Marguerite after the assassination!," I foolishly thought.  But no, the book ended as though it had hit a brick wall.  The Fake Family, which had supposedly left a trail wider than Interstate 40 in the years before the assassination, simply vanished into the night, apparently of no further interest to Armstrong.  I found this unsettling, perhaps a clue that the Fake Family was perhaps even more fake than we were being led to believe.

LHO does seem to me to have one of those nondescript faces that resembles a lot of other people (notably Billy Lovelady, but plenty of others as well).  And there is a tendency of some people to want to be at least a small part of history, sometimes even to the extent of convincing themselves they have seen things they haven't (see the next paragraph below).  I don't think this accounts for all the strange sightings, since some of them are quite good and even my theory can accommodate them, but it is undeniable that Armstrong commits the common fallacy of giving credence to every piece of "evidence" that in any way supports his pet theory while "explaining away" far more credible evidence.

In regard to the Furniture Mart incident, I found the following portion of the WC Report to be pretty telling:  "Finally, investigation has produced reason to question the credibility of Mrs. Hunter as a witness. Mrs. Hunter stated that one of the reasons she remembers the description of the car in which Oswald supposedly drove to the furniture store was that she was awaiting the arrival of a friend from Houston, who drove a similar automobile. However, the friend in Houston has advised that in November 1963, she never visited or planned to visit Dallas, and that she told no one that she intended to make such a trip. Moreover the friend added, according to the FBI interview report, that Mrs. Hunter has 'a strange obsession for attempting to inject herself into any big event which comes to her attention' and that she 'is likely to claim some personal knowledge of any major crime which receives much publicity.' She concluded that 'the entire family is aware of these tall tales Mrs. Hunter tells and they normally pay no attention to her.'"

[Michael Clark]

Thanks Lance. I don't intend to peruse this at all. The biggest reason is that I don't think Oswald did it and I try to avoid him, the TSBD, etc. I am left with little to go on with regard to the Dal-Tex building and the other players who fill out the larger garment of the conspiracy.

 

With regard the WC testimony however, and with all respect to you, and I appreciate your comments, but the commission opinion that you posted is the last thing to which I would give any credibility. The commission discrediting something or someone is a red flag that would draw me directly to whatever it is that they are trying to discredit. 

If they had testimony from the Hunter family stating what the commission says they say, that might be a different story. But, I always keep in mind that people may be saying something because they are afraid, or for other reasons.

There are two women at the store, one sitting near the door. The 4 Oswalds come in. LHO brings a scope and returns it to the car and comes back in. I guess, if Mrs. hunter is to be disbelieved, the only thing to be discredited is her witnessing Lee driving to and from the store, with the detail that they are going the wrong way down the street. I believe her, because the other lady was there and I don't see any need to interject a minor detail when the rest of the encounter is not really in question.

This was my first run-in with the two Oswalds whereas I had been dodging those threads and stories because they seemed cooky to me. I'll still avoid them in general. I like episodes and stories that I can relate to friends and interested parties,  stories that typically revolve around the larger issues of politics and intrigue. 

 

Thanks again Lance!

Edited January 8, 2017 by Michael Clark

[W. Tracy Parnell]

I have a (non-confrontational) question for Jim Hargrove/David Josephs. At the Armstrong/Baylor files is found the following document (p. 4):

http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-arm/id/2517/rec/1

This is an interesting document because it confirms the date of Marguerite's marriage to Ekdahl-May 5, 1945. As you may know, the date is mentioned in some records as May 7 instead of the 5th. Small point, but important for the historic record. My question did Armstrong obtain this document himself or was it found in some existing government files? I don't see anything that indicates it was in the FBI files or anything and it looks like Armstrong may have obtained this on his own. If so, I would like to give him credit for that in any future projects I do.

Edited January 10, 2017 by W. Tracy Parnell

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Bump for the above question to Hargrove/Josephs.

[Mathias Baumann]

I must admit I too find the "Harvey & Lee" story hard to swallow. However, if the reports of Oswald's astounding fluency in Russian are to be believed we have to explain how he was able to learn this language so quickly and expertly.

I work at a language school and I teach German as a second language. To get from zero to a level close to that of a native speaker you need on average at least a thousand lessons (a lesson being 45 minutes). However, most people never get that far and drop out much earlier, especially those coming from a non-Indo-European language background.

Russian is an Indo-European language, but from the Slavic family, so there are considerable differences in grammar compared to English. In some ways it is much less complicated: http://www.russianlessons.net/lessons/getting_started.php

I'd really like to know if Oswald learned any foreign languages at high school and if so, how he scored in his exams. That might give us a clue if he was some sort of natural born language genius. There are also reports that he was fluent in Spanish (e.g. Nelson Delgado said so), by the way. Can anyone shed some light on this matter?

I find it hard to believe that Oswald could've mastered Russian without attending professional lessons on a regular basis. Rumors that he attended a military language School seem to be unfounded however: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/09/monterey-language-institute-presidio.html

Of course Oswald's Russian would have improved considerably during his stay stay in Russia if he also kept studying on a regular basis. So the question is: how good was his Russian when he arrived there? The KGB gives us a clue here: "Oswald, it was feared, perhaps spoke better Russian than he let on" (http://www.russianbooks.org/oswald/minsk2.htm). So it seems his Russian was either not that good at that time or he deliberately hid his proficiency from the authorities for whatever reason.

When Marina met Oswald for the first time she thought he was a native (from the Baltics). That was in March 1961, so Oswald had been exposed to and immersed in the Russian language for about one year and a half. Could that have been long enough to reach that level of language proficiency? I think that's at least possible.