Creating the Oswald Legend

[James DiEugenio]

Vasilios Vazakas has just written a nice essay about Oswald's defection for Kennedysandking.com.

It uses some of Prouty's material and Mark Prior's nice short essay on the U2.

Poses the very interesting question:  Did Dulles sacrifice the U2 and Powers in order to sabotage the Paris Peace Summit?  And is this what Ike was referring to in his famous Beware the MIC Farewell Address?

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/creating-the-oswald-legend-part-1

[James DiEugenio]

By the way, I forgot to add, this will be a multi part series.

VV is really a sharp commentator , so we should all look forward to it.

[Paul Brancato]

Peter Dale Scott surmises that Oswald never gave anything of value to the Soviets about the U2, and that his outburst at the US embassy was kind of a barium meal to see where his words would end up. Apparently KGB did not take the bait. He cites as 'proof' that the outburst was part of an intelligence gathering operation, the utter lack of concern in US intelligence circles and the ease with which he later re-entered the US. 

Edited February 28, 2017 by Paul Brancato

[James DiEugenio]

Does Scott know that he U2 was going to be  obsolete?

Does he take note of the scuttling of the Paris Summit?  Or of the famous Farewell Address where Ike turned on the MIC?

Is everything that LHO and his mom did now a "barium meal"?

Who was he feeding the barium to in Minsk?  Marina?

To me, with the big picture in mind, and Talbot's book,  V V's interpretation makes a lot more sense.

Edited February 28, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

Jim - do you think Oswald was adlibbing in Snyder's embassy office? I'm sure everyone who has heard that story has reacted with "huh"? He was doing something. What is your view on Oswald and US Intelligence? Your thread is about Oswald the Legend. Was he a rogue ex-marine that others conveniently turned into a legend? Or was he a witting participant? I think it's mostly the latter.

im not trying to defend Scott, just wanted to post his theory, since he has done so much good research that I find his opinions worth paying attention to. His deeper look at Continuity of Government operations likewise makes sense to me. 

[James DiEugenio]

Paul:

In my book Destiny Betrayed, second edition, I make my statement about how and why I think Kennedy was killed, and its also my portrait of Oswald.

I do this in Chapters 7 and 8, which are entitled "On Instructions from his Government" and "Oswald Returns: Strange Bedfellows".  Those two chapters go on for about 50 pages. You will not find one sentence about a "barium meal" in there.  (I prefer Oatmeal myself, with milk,  raisins and cinnamon.   Hof's Hut in Long Beach, 6.95 if you get there before 11:00 am)

Those two chapters constitute my testament about Oswald.  Documented with 305 footnotes.  I am very proud of it since it uses some rare sources for 2012; like TItovets (who sent me his book from Russia), and Greg Parker's work on REDSKIN. Also a couple of interviews I did in New Orleans, Lisa Pease's landmark article on Otepka from Probe Magazine, and Grover Proctor's good work on the Raleigh call. Plus I also utilized some articles that were exclusive to Probe Magazine e.g. the work of Hewitt, Jones and LaMonica on the White Russians and the Paines, and also some Jim Garrison materials.  You will not find any footnotes to anything by Peter Scott.  I have studied Scott's work from way back when he wrote his unpublished manuscripts "The Dallas Conspiracy" and his Hoch/Scott/Thompson anthology  "Beyond Conspiracy". In my view, its good those remained unpublished. Because in my opinion Scott, in many of his writings, is just too theoretical, experimental almost, too abstract, and his connections are so wide apart, even today: 54 years after the fact.

What I did is I took Oswald literally form the beginning, since too many writers begin with the defection as if that is when Oswald became radioactive.  Not true at all.  I began in his childhood, go through NYC, back to New Orleans, his meeting up with Ferrie, his attempt to join the Marines while he was underage, his move back to Fort Worth where he TRIES TO SELL a classmate on communist philosophy, and then writes a letter to the youth group of the socialist party. 

Note:  this is all BEFORE he even joins the Marines, let alone the defection.  I then spend ten pages on the period of his induction until his utterly phony hardship discharge.(see the testimony I quote from Dr. Goldberg about that.) Its clear to me that Oswald was recruited into intelligence work though ONI while in the Marines.  And in an interview I did with Dan Campbell, who knew Oswald from an orphanage they were in and also 544 Camp Street, i got the info that Oswald was gone a lot from Santa Ana, since Dan did a shooting exhibition there and stayed late one night.  The C. O. then offered him Oswald's bunk and said something like, he's hardly ever here anyway.  When you combine that with the Rosaleen Quinn testimony, with the WC transcript about Monterey, with LHO getting a Russian test and Titovets' book and my interview with him--that LHO spoke fluent Russian when he met him in Minsk--well, that is a slam dunk that Oswald was getting Russian language training.  He then gets dismissed early on a phony pretext, and then goes to Russia through Helsinki? The only station in Europe you can get a visa in 48 hours.  And that is all a coincidence?

The testimony of Botelho and Bucknell, plus the connections of Albert Schweitzer college e.g. Casparis and Brundage, cinched it for me.  Oswald was recruited by Navy intel, learned Russian in the service, and then became part of the CIA's false defector program.  And I demonstrate, with TItovets' help, that the KGB knew this. And again, we are not even in Minsk yet. From there it gets even better.

Does anyone here read my books?  I mean David Talbot and Jim Douglass think they are pretty good.  That means something does it not?  

 

 

Edited February 28, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

29 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, I begin at the beginning for roughly the same reason I begin Mexico City in New Orleans and end in Dallas.

If you cannot prove that the official stories about Oswald getting down there and returning are kosher, then how does that impact everything else in between?  This is a problem I have with the Lopez Report.  The authors accept the evidence of Oswald going down there from the WC.  Yet today, both Mumford and Winston, among others, have been discredited.  It appears they were suborned. 

And OMG, the return is even worse.  Its an evidentiary atrocity.  LHO, or whoever, did not get down there the way the WC says he did and he did not return the way the WC says he did.  Period.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Paul:

As per your question about Oswald ad libbing in the Moscow Embassy, no I don't think he was.  If you read my book you will see that Snyder seems a part of the CIA's Operation REDSKIN, as described by Greg Parker.  And he wrote a memo three days before Oswald got there.  It was about how to handle American "defectors", and he placed that word himself in quotes.  The advice was on how to meet these people and not have them lose their citizenship.  Which Oswald did not do, almost as if he had read the Snyder memo.

I think LHO hinted at his secrets to the U2 there because he had been told the embassy was bugged.  And this utterance would make him tantalizing to the KGB.

Edited February 28, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

In looking back at this, I don't wish to leave the impression that I am being too hard on Scott.

IMO, Scott has written two valuable books in the JFK field: The War Conspiracy (in its original version.)  And Crime and Cover Up, which was one of the first works to indicate a connection between the JFK case and Watergate through the CIA.  His anthology with two other authors, The Politics of Escalation, is also valuable.

I am not qualified to critique or evaluate his work on the CIA and drugs, or 9-11.

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, here is something I forgot about or did not know, its from Walt Brown's Chronology:

"Finally, there were legal difficulties with Marina’s application, because existing law stated clearly that the U.S Embassy (technically, the consulate) could not issue an entry visa to the United States to any individual who was a citizen of a nation to which the United States could not deport people. The United States did not have the right to deport people to the Soviet Union, so Marina Nikolayevna Oswald could not be given an entry visa to the United States—at least not from any U.S. agency IN the Soviet Union. The United States Government therefore had the option to tell Oswald that some kind of arrangements would have to be made through a third country, but in the meantime, he was out of luck. 

Case closed, so to speak, right? 

The State Department initially made arrangements for Marina to be granted an entry visa to the United States at the U.S. Embassy in Belgium, but for some reason, that logistic scenario did not seem to work well. That, of course, fuels the theory that between the Oswalds’ (now a group of three with their daughter June), departure from Minsk and their going on board the ocean liner bound for Hoboken, New Jersey, that time was spent in a safe-house for the purpose of debriefing. It has not been proven that it happened, but it cannot be categorically denied as a possibility, either. 

So the State Department went the extra mile and granted Marina a waiver of regulation 243 (g) so that her entrance visa to the United States would be presented to her in Moscow, after the Oswalds arrived there by train from Minsk. One unique oddity about the whole procedure is that at the time these events were happening, the U.S. Passport Office was overseen by Frances Knight. 

She would subsequently answer scripted inquiries put to her by the Warren Commission, stating that since Oswald had, in fact, never renounced his citizenship, he was entitled to the same amount of consideration—no more, no less—that any American citizen overseas would be entitled to. The testimony was boilerplate and soporific, as 243 (g) was a major factor, despite being a basic non-entity. What the Warren Commission did not learn from Mrs. Knight—and from past events they should have had at least a passing awareness with the situation—was that she was a dyed-in-the-wool “red hater,” and it was her custom to deny passports to anyone even remotely suspected of leftist, Communist, fellow-traveler, or pro-Soviet leanings. From where I’m sitting, Lee Harvey Oswald would be the poster boy for her prejudices, with Marina Oswald, niece of a GRU Colonel would have been a close second."

Armstrong mentions this also in his biography, although he is not as specific about what 243 (g) represented.  He says that the State Department intervened.  (Armstrong, p. 386)  This may have been what nudged Knight to do something extraordinary.  Again, this exit out of Russia with Marina was just so exceptional.

[James DiEugenio]

Michael Clark brings back so many old threads that new ones disappear prematurely.

 

One thing I wanted to ask here:  How many people think Oswald was in the expansive photo of the trial of Gary Powers?  Walt Brown thinks its him.

Can anyone post that pic?  Does Robin Unger have a good version?

If it is him then the  plot thickens about LHO and the U2.

[Michael Clark]

10 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Michael Clark brings back so many old threads that new ones disappear prematurely.

 

I often put links into threads to tie them to related threads. If I could do that without bumping them I would. I also restore broken links on threads, again, bumping them.

Sorry for the inconvenience; if I get pinged some more regarding that I'll stop.

PS: no guesses on the Bikini/The Fonz riddle?

Cheers,

Michael

Edited March 2, 2017 by Michael Clark

[James DiEugenio]

Let me ask again:  can someone post that photo of what is supposed to be Oswald at the trial of Gary Powers in the USSR?

Walt Brown thinks  it is him.  

Edited March 2, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Walton]

I would  absolutely  love to see that photo! Didn't  even  know  something  like  that may exist.

Mike Clark you seem interested  in learning  here though  I  do  question  why you want to  use  a photo for a riddle.

You  might want to open a Word file and just start creating your own version  of links of old and favorite  forum links.

[Steve Thomas]

On 2/28/2017 at 0:44 AM, James DiEugenio said:

 Its clear to me that Oswald was recruited into intelligence work though ONI while in the Marines.  

 

Jim,

 

I had done some reading about the 507th USASA Group a while back. (This was the unit that Dennis Offstein of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall and Thomas Crigler - the recruiting Sergeant Offstein went to to check up on Oswald, belonged to.) In reading through some of the blog entries, I discovered that the Army Security Agency hit these guys up when they first enlisted - even before they went through boot camp. They were even enlisted for a longer period of time than a normal enlistment. After basic training, the ASA and FBI conducted their background checks. What do you think  of the idea that ONI was following the same procedure - i.e., that Oswald was recruited when he enlisted? 

 

Steve Thomas