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Jim Hargrove

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  1. All of us surely agree that “The Kennedy assassination is not [just] a murder; it's a political/intelligence operation operating on a 70+ year scale,” but, again, this thread simply is trying to ascertain if the “Lee Harvey Oswald” named by the anonymous caller was actually the Russian-speaking youth who was given the identity of the American-born Lee Harvey Oswald. Toward that end, all I am trying to do right now is find out if the following people were listed in the Manhattan phone book for the years 1945-1949: Fred Blair (aka Carroll Blair?) Louis Weinstock Edwin Ekdahl, and Emil and/or Grace Gardos (Grace Gardos was in the 1945 directory at 217 E 86th) Simple.
  2. John, When you refer to the NYC City Directory, is that different than the Manhattan telephone directory (or phone books for the other boroughs)? Also, did the NYPL provide an answer about the years 1945-1949? If memory serves, the 1945 directory I found Grace Gardos listed in was online from the NYPL.
  3. This needs even more emphasis, because at worst it suggests the possibility of a conspiracy among several members of the Bureau and the Agency. To reiterate... The FBI took Oswald off the watch list, managed by its “WANTED NOTICE” cards, at the same time a CIA cable gave him a more-or-less clean bill of political health, just a couple of months after Oswald’s New Orleans arrest for alleged violence in support of Communist Cuba and less than two months before the assassination. These two actions effectively took the federal spotlight off “Lee Harvey Oswald.” The WC didn’t even bother to depose Gheesling, who ordered the FBI's flash cancellation. “Lee Harvey Oswald” had been on that list for nearly four years, since the “defection.” Now that he was taken off it, he’d no longer be under FBI and SS surveillance on 11/22. At the very same time the FBI was taking “Lee Harvey Oswald” off the watch list, the CIA was publishing several confusing things about him. Responding to a query from the Mexico City station, four CIA officers signed a cable giving lots of accurate biographical data on our boy but calling him “Lee Henry Oswald.” The three page cable expressed no security concerns whatsoever about Oswald and, in fact, indicated the Moscow embassy felt “life in the Soviet Union had clearly had maturing effect on Oswald.” Nothing to worry about here! This cable was signed by Jane Roman (Angleton’s assistant), William Hood (also close to Angleton), Thomas Karamessines (assistant to Helms) and John Whitten who, according to Jefferson Morley, was the only CIA officer of the four signers who suffered any adverse consequences for this troubling cable. John Armstrong believes that Angleton ran the Oswald Project. Again, at the same time the FBI was taking “Lee Harvey Oswald” off the watch list, the CIA was giving “Lee Henry Oswald” (biographical data mostly matching LHO’s official biography) a clean bill of political health in the infamous cable of 10/10/63 (see above). It was now no longer officially necessary for the FBI to monitor “Oswald’s” activities in Dallas. And the Secret Service would no longer be expected to investigate him prior to a presidential visit to Dallas. Although “Lee Harvey Oswald” had been arrested for a supposedly violent confrontation in support of Fidel Castro in New Orleans just two months earlier, the entire National Security apparatus of our Federal government now seemed to just stop worrying about him. What stunning timing!
  4. Awesome! I spent the first 10 years of my life living at 440 Riverside Dr. in Manhattan (near Grant’s Tomb and Columbia University). John K., Paul J. and I are mostly interested in the years 1945 -1949 and would like to know if any of these people had Manhattan addresses during those years: Fred Blair (aka Carroll Blair?) Louis Weinstock Edwin Ekdahl, and Emil & Grace Gardos (Grace Gardos was in the 1945 directory at 217 E 86th) Any help would be appreciated.
  5. The phonebooks themselves are not copyrighted, but we are not dealing only with them. We are working with digitized, indexed, web-oriented repackagings that MAY have copyrightable elements. I’ve worked as an editor, publisher, and book author in the print and electronic publishing business for roughly 50 years, and I know a thing or two about copyright laws also. But let’s stop arguing about this and keep to the subject at hand.
  6. Bill, Without considering which chapter is under discussion, may I ask if you would consider abandoning your statement that LHO “was a spy in his own mind” and at least discuss the possibility that this Russian-speaking young man who allegedly sat in a U-2 radar bubble before "defecting" to the USSR was an actual U.S. spy?
  7. Sandy, My take is that WWII was special. My father landed on Normandy Beach on D-Day plus 4 (four days after D-Day) and he was nearly 40 yrs old. He was a U.S. Army lieutenant in charge of a small group of African-American troops. Matt, Copyright laws are often complex. A collection of public domain elements, if original and comprehensive new material is added, can sometimes be copyrighted again, which may be the case in an analog to digital transformation. There is plenty of case law behind this.
  8. A search for "1946 Manhattan phone book" or something similar produced multiple working sources, including the NYC Public Library and several others. Looking virtually inside the 1946 phone book worked beautifully on several sites, but when I tried for 1948, there was just a brick wall. Lots of references, lots of libraries to visit in person, but no ability to look inside the 1948 book online. My bet is it is either a copyright exclusion or a limit to how many people are willing scan and publish that many pages. Hopefully, I'll have something to send your way from Connecticut soon.
  9. Paul, As we probably indicated before, at the time of her marriage to Edwin Ekdahl, Marguerite was working for the U.S. Navy and Edwin for EBASCO, suggesting a clear path to an intelligence hookup. Note the pictures below that John A. referred to near the beginning of his book. The first one shows Marguerite on the day of her marriage to Ekdahl on May 7, 1945: The second is a close-up of Marguerite from the Paul’s Shoe group photograph taken in 1957. The pictures directly above and below show the Marguerite who married Edwin in 1945. Note her level eyebrows in both photos. The last photo (below) is from 1954 and shows the “Marguerite” who testified to the Warren Commission. Note her slanting eyebrows, which, in most photos of this woman, were partially obscured by glasses. Here is the detail: And here is the full shot:
  10. Matt -- Thanks! I forgot to put two and two together. John -- That's quite a file, but it seems to end in the 1950s, at least from what I've browsed through so far. Do you know of anything else on Bentley that goes to or approaches 1963? Or do you think much more was unlikely after she changed teams?
  11. Sure, but some of us are trying to figure out if Blair stayed in NYC for any period of time in the late 1940s. If he did, he may have stayed with the Gardos family (his sister Grace and her husband Emil). This could help give us some clue how the anonymous caller knew of Emil’s commie brother-in-law. That information probably didn’t come from news reports, at least from the East Coast. Surprisingly, for me at least, the New York Times Archives has only a single article about Emil Gardos, and that was a March 3, 1934 AP story describing the hearing in Milwaukee in which Federal Judge F.A. Geiger revoked “the citizenship of Emil Gardos of Cleveland, Communist organizer, chemical engineer and editor.” John K and Paul J-- Do either of you know how to access the Manhattan phone book after 1946 or 1947? It was simple to gain access to the 1946 book, but I spent an hour trying to look through the 1948 edition without success.
  12. Paul, Can we find out if there was any relation between Ruth A. Ekdahl of Manhattan and Edwin? Interesting that only a single Ekdahl was listed in the 1946 directory for a place the size of Manhattan. Researcher Brian Doyle, who lived in the area most of his life, just wrote to me and said, “The reference to 207 N Broadway Orangetown is actually 207 N Broadway, Nyack, NY...Orangetown is the township but the name of the town for that residence is "Nyack, NY." According to Google Maps, the distance from 207 N Broadway in Nyack to 125 Wadsworth Ave., New York, NY is 19.9 miles.
  13. From the 1946 Manhattan phone book: A single entry for Ekdahl, which was, Edkahl, Ruth A 125 WdswrthAv Quite a few listings for Blair. Here they are starting with Blair C and going through Blair F. I too think its a long shot that Fred Blair or Carroll Blair or whatever his name was ever had his own residence in NYC. It was expensive even back then. There is an entry for Louis Weinstock, but he appears to be an MD. I’ll take a look at another directory this evening or tomorrow, perhaps skipping to 1948.
  14. Successfully searching for Emil or Grace Gardos in Manhattan 1945 telephone directory: Unsuccessfully searching for Fred B. Blair in Manhattan 1945 telephone directory: Will check 1946 through 1949 asap.
  15. No worries, Geo. The whole case is confusing! Several of us keep telling you that the “Lee Harvey Oswald” referred to by the anonymous caller was in all likelihood not the same boy whose early years in Louisiana and Texas were described in the Warren Report. We think he is a different person who went by the same name. But since you seem interested in finding Hungarian associations of the surname Oswald (and close variants), if you have the time and inclination perhaps you could check your genealogical sources to see if there is any reference to identical twin boys with this name being born sometime in the 1930s in Hungary? Bear in mind this is a VERY long shot. Finally, if you aren’t sick of us yet, could you look into the name Istvan Gardos, named in the 1963 U.S. legal petition posted above by Matt Cloud? Date of birth in Hungary is unstated, but he apparently became a Canadian citizen in 1955 and was deported from the U.S. in 1963.
  16. Thanks for checking the Hidell name in Hungary, Geo. Nothing in this case is easy, eh? I’ll read your post above again to see if I can make more sense of it. In the meantime…. Going back to Sandy’s theory…. Before the paywall crashes down, Ancestry.com reports for Hidell there are 124 birth records 231 marriage and divorce records 406 death records 246 census records and, notably 49 immigration records The site has a 14 day free trial, but I used up mine a couple of years ago to get access to its newspaper database. John Armstrong believes the Hidell alias may have been used by both Oswalds, Harvey starting in the USSR, Lee in the U.S., but, perhaps to keep their identities differentiated for select intel personnel, LEE used AleX Hidell and Harvey used AleK Hidell. Both variants appear to have been in evidence. If memory serves, David Josephs felt the “X” vs. “K” was an optical illusion due to a lack of resolution but, in my opinion at least, John makes a good case. For more on this, see: https://harveyandlee.net/Alex/Alek.html
  17. Yesterday, I asked John Armstrong if, in his many conversations with Marina Oswald Porter, she ever referred to Oswald as “Alek.” John answered, “Never.” Geo – If you’re willing to help us, please search for two surnames: Hidell and Heidel John K – Will do. Thanks for the tips.
  18. Thanks, Robert! Just wanted to add my name to the list of people thanking you for this database of probable Kennedy assassination conspirators. In my thirty years of research on this subject, I’ve come up with only a much shorter list of names that I’m convinced were involved in the killing, but every one of them appears on your list in a prominent way! Thanks so much!
  19. Amen. As David Walsh’s piece in the November 1996 Ramparts article stated: Domingo [and his father-in-law J.W. Jackson] are both convinced that Eddy's murder was a case of mistaken identity and that Domingo, the Tippit witness, was the intended victim. It is important for all of us to understand that, although witnesses to the Tippit killing have substantially different accounts, many of these witnesses were actually quite far away. Domingo Benavides was the closest, just a few feet away.
  20. Sandy-- Fascinating theory. We could start exploring it by asking Geo Kozma if the surname Hidell shows up in Hungarian genealogical searches, and if so to look for it associated with a first name of Alek or variants Alec and Alex. If memory serves, Marina referred to her husband as Alek in a few conversations with researchers, but, of course, these talks were all after the assassination when the name Alek Hidell was well known. I’ve often wondered if, during interrogations, Oswald ever spilled the beans about his association with American intelligence. There is no indication that he did, at least during the full sessions attended by a number of witnesses. But as you no doubt suspect, If Oswald was keeping his spy status secret (and there are indications he was good at that), and if this theory is reasonably correct, Oswald might well have denied anything to do with the name Hidell, even though he seemed reasonably truthful in his other answers. The more we keep working on this topic, the more interesting it seems to get…. Paul J. is apparently working on researching Elizabeth Bentley’s NYC contacts in the 1940s and is hoping for some information within a couple of weeks. I’m helping John K. with his continuing work to locate Mrs. Tippit’s original notes, which may not be as impossible as it sounds, and I’m also going to try contacting the NYU library early next week to see what can be learned from the Weinstock Papers without actually traveling to NYC. Geo: Any chance you could look into the surname Hidell in Hungarian genealogical databases? If you find anything, could you look for it associated with first names of Alek or Alec or Alex, or anything that makes more sense to you in a Hungarian setting?
  21. How about formulating a couple of questions we would like to see answered. Here's a start: Did Louis Weinstock ever work or associate with Emil Gardos? Was Weinstock associated with a periodical called "Workers World?" Did Weinstock know Elizabeth Bentley?
  22. Mark, Nevertheless, Blakey stated unequivocally: "Edward Benevides – Date of death : February 1964.” I said in my post above that there was “evidence that Edward Benavides was killed in 1965….” and I meant it. But John Simkin posted an excerpt from a Ramparts magazine article from November 1966, which stated that Edward was killed in 1964 (perhaps incorrectly) and went on with the following, which I sincerely doubt is totally bogus: Domingo's father-in-law, J.W. Jackson, was so unimpressed with the police investigation of Eddy's death that he launched a little inquiry of his own. Two weeks later Jackson was shot at in his home. The assailant secreted himself in the carport, fired once into the house, and when Jackson ran outside, fired one more time, just missing his head. As the gunman clambered into an automobile in a nearby driveway, Jackson saw a police car coming down the block. The officer made no attempt to follow the gunman's speeding car; instead, he stopped at Jackson's home and spent a long time inquiring what had happened. Later a police lieutenant advised Jackson, "You'd better lay off of this business. Don't go around asking question; that's our job." Jackson and Domingo are both convinced that Eddy's murder was a case of mistaken identity and that Domingo, the Tippit witness, was the intended victim. Jean Davison was a Warren Commission supporter. I still consider the Benavides killing suspicious.
  23. Despite the evidence Edward Benavides was killed in 1965, there is also considerable evidence that he was killed in February 1964, before Domingo testified to the W.C. Note, for example, Point 1 in the letter below from none other than G. Robert Blakey stating the date of death for Edward was February 1964.
  24. Mark, Of the witnesses to the Tippit killing, Benavides was the closest. He worked as a barber and told the WC and another interviewer that the killer looked like Oswald but "I remember the back of his head seemed like his hairline was sort of--looked like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapered off and he looked like he needed a haircut for about 2 weeks.” As we can see, the hair on the back of Oswald’s head was tapered, instead of being squared off as barber Benavides remembered, suggesting someone who looked like Oswald—but was not Oswald—was involved in the shooting. TSBD employee Roy Lewis said of Oswald, “We would tease him about it because his hair would be growing down the back of his head,” not squared off as Benavides testified. Benavides also testified that the Tippit killer unloaded spent cartridges from his gun one at a time, although the pistol taken at the Texas Theater had an extractor that ejected all the shells simultaneously. I also believe, but cannot prove, that Benavides saw two more Dallas cops at the Tippit murder scene at the time of the murder but was too afraid to say so. If memory serves, Benavides also told someone that he believed his brother’s shooting was meant for him, but I’d have to search for that reference.
  25. The list of suspicious deaths looks pretty lengthy to me. For example, within a year of the JFKA, Karyn Kupcinet was murdered, Eddy Benavides was shot in the head (he was the lookalike brother to closest Tippit shooting witness Domingo Benavides), a number of people died who seemed to know Oswald associated with Jack Ruby, including Bill Chesher and Hank Killam. I’d certainly add to the list Guy Banister, Mary Pinchot, and, just slightly later, Rose Cheramie and Dorothy Kilgallen (as well as Kilgallen’s friend Mrs. Earl Smith, who died two days later). There are others, but I doubt direct proof of an association to the assassination will ever be made. OTOH, the number of deaths occurring around the time the HSCA was getting organized defies easy excuses. Six top FBI officials died within a 6-month period right around the HSCA’s creation. John Simkin wrote about these suspicious deaths in an EF post on April 18, 2005. Here’s what he wrote: When the Select Committee on Intelligence Activities and Select Committee on Assassinations began investigating Kennedy's death in the 1970s the deaths of potential witnesses increased dramatically. This included several criminals with possible links to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Those who were killed or who died in suspicious circumstances during this period included Malcolm Wallace (1971), Lucien Sarti (1972), Charles Willoughby (1972), Thomas Davis (1973), Richard Cain (1973), Dave Yarras (1974), Sam Giancana (1975), Jimmy Hoffa (1975), Roland Masferrer (1975), Johnny Roselli (1976), George De Mohrenschildt (1977), Charlie Nicoletti (1977) and Carlos Prio (1977). William Sullivan, the main figure in the FBI involved in the Executive Action project, and the person in the FBI who investigated Oswald, was shot dead near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, on 9th November, 1977. Sullivan had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period in 1977. Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and his liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested and Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene. Several important figures in the Central Intelligence Agency died before they could give evidence to the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigations. William Harvey, head of the ZR/RIFLE project, died as a result of complications from heart surgery in June, 1976. William Pawley, who took part in Operation Tilt, died of gunshot wounds in January, 1977. David Morales, who some believe organized the assassination, died aged 53, on 8th May, 1978. John Paisley was deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide. According to the journalist, Victor Marchetti, Paisley was a close friend of Yuri Nosenko. Marchetti also claimed that Paisley knew a great deal about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was murdered during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation because he was "about to blow the whistle".
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