Steven Hager: The Two Oswalds

[Michael Clark]

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Tracy,

I won't waste my time trying to convince people who have no interest in upsetting the status quo, or who are afraid of having their image or career tarnished, or who are the type who dismiss things without bothering to study the evidence.

I have purchased the domain name JFKAssassinationFacts.com and plan to build a website designed to bring to the public's attention simple indisputable facts the rip apart the lies that are widely reported, taught, and believed about the assassination and Oswald. On the home page it will have something like a Top Ten List of facts making my point, each backed up by official government documents that the reader can evaluate for themselves.

"JFK assassination facts" is a widely searched phrase. So I expect to get a lot of traffic from people who are curious about the assassination or who are writing a class paper on it.

 

 

That's very cool Sandy...

[W. Tracy Parnell]

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Tracy,

I won't waste my time trying to convince people who have no interest in upsetting the status quo, or who are afraid of having their image or career tarnished, or who are the type who dismiss things without bothering to study the evidence.

I have purchased the domain name JFKAssassinationFacts.com and plan to build a website designed to bring to the public's attention simple indisputable facts the rip apart the lies that are widely reported, taught, and believed about the assassination and Oswald. On the home page it will have something like a Top Ten List of facts making my point, each backed up by official government documents that the reader can evaluate for themselves.

"JFK assassination facts" is a widely searched phrase. So I expect to get a lot of traffic from people who are curious about the assassination or who are writing a class paper on it.

 

 

Good for you and I wish you the best of luck with it. I still have to wonder why Armstrong and company haven't taken their concerns higher though.

[Jim Hargrove]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I have purchased the domain name JFKAssassinationFacts.com and plan to build a website designed to bring to the public's attention simple indisputable facts the rip apart the lies that are widely reported, taught, and believed about the assassination and Oswald. On the home page it will have something like a Top Ten List of facts making my point, each backed up by official government documents that the reader can evaluate for themselves.

"JFK assassination facts" is a widely searched phrase. So I expect to get a lot of traffic from people who are curious about the assassination or who are writing a class paper on it.

This is really good news.  Best of luck with it, Sandy!!!

Here are four quick suggestions for your consideration ….

1. A link to the three minute YouTube video in which Gil Jesus and Mark Lane show how the FBI altered the observations of three Dealey Plaza witnesses (what Tracy Parnell would call, you know, three “mistakes”).

 

 

2. The obvious fact that the CIA and the Kennedy Administration were at war during the final weeks of President Kennedy’s life.

 

 

(You might want to link the Richard Starnes piece that provoked Krock, but Starnes’s newspaper is long gone and the NYTimes is still flourishing (or “failing” depending on your IQ). 

 

3. Evidence that the FBI secretly brought LHO’s possessions to Washington D.C. the night of the assassination, altered them, and then secretly returned them to Dallas a few days later, only to publicly bring them back to Washington the following day.  And of course, how they altered their own agent’s sworn Warren Commission testimony to hide the secret transfer.

 

 

4. And, of course, all the evidence that “Lee Harvey Oswald” was really a remarkably successful spy working for the U.S. government, planning to attempt to resume his spying activities in Russia at just about the time he was framed for the assassination of JFK.

[Mathias Baumann]

I'm not yet convinced of the two Oswalds theory, but I think the question how Oswald learned Russian so quickly does merit some serious consideration.

First of all I asked myself: How difficult was the test Oswald took? So I did some googling on U.S. Military language tests and I found this bit of information:

"People wishing to work as military language analysts are required to maintain at least L2/R2 proficiency." Source: https://www.german-way.com/levels-of-language-proficiency-my-life-in-germany/

L2/R2 is the level of an advanced beginner, which I think roughly equates to the A2 level of the Common European Framework (CEF). You need to take on average 80 to 120 individual (one-on-one) lessons (a lesson being 45 minutes) or 400 lessons of a group course to reach this level in the German language (provided that you already know the Roman Alphabet). These numbers do not include the time you need for homework, mind you.

And Russian is even more difficult than German. It's considered a level 3 language (German is level 2): https://www.thebalance.com/defense-language-aptitude-battery-3332702 So considering Oswald was of average intelligence I estimate he would've needed at least somewhere between 100 to 200 lessons of instruction plus about the same amount of time to prepare for the lessons in order to pass the Marine Corps test. And that is a low and optimistic estimate.

But maybe Oswald was highly intelligent and able to learn foreign languages more quickly than others? I took a look at his school career.

It turns out he was rather intelligent:

Lee scored an IQ of 118 on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. According to Sokolow, this indicated a "present intellectual functioning in the upper range of bright normal intelligence." 67 Sokolow said that although Lee was "presumably disinterested in school subjects he operates on a much higher than average level." 68 On the Monroe Silent Reading Test, Lee's score indicated no retardation in reading speed and comprehension; he had better than average ability in arithmetical reasoning for his age group. 69

Source: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html#newyork

But I found no evidence that he ever learned a foreign language at school, so I presume he was unfamiliar with the necessary techniques. On the other hand Nelson Delgado is supposed to have taught Oswald Spanish, which might indicate that Oswald learned languages quickly. But the important point here is that he had an instructor - Delgado.

Language is all about communication, so without an interlocutor it is very hard to learn a language, because actual practice is an integral part of the whole process. So my conclusion is that Oswald would not have passed the test without intensive regular instruction.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Mathias Baumann

[Jim Hargrove]

Interesting, Mathias.  Do you have any idea if the "Defense Language Aptitude Battery" described in your second link bears any resemblance to what was in effect in the late 1950s? Do you know (or can you make an informed guess) how the proficiency ratings of "0, 0+ 1, 1+, 2, 2+, or 3" would relate to Oswald's score?  

I too find it exceptionally unlikely that Oswald taught himself Russian.  Which leaves only secret training during a time frame narrowed down by Sandy Larsen to a period of seven months.  Or the possibility that he learned Russian earlier in his life.

You mention Nelson Delgado.  According to the Warren Commission, he worked with our boy at MACS-9 near Santa Ana, CA  from 12-22-58 until 9-4-59.  This is the only place where Oswald showed off his Russian abilities before returning from the "defection," although there is considerable evidence in FBI reports with other soldiers (unpublished by the WC) that Russian-speaking Oswald actually arrived at MACS-9 in October of 1958, while the other Oswald was still in Japan.  Among the soldiers who lived and worked with him at MACS-9 earlier in 1958 were  Delgado, Sergeant Erwin Lewis, Sergeant Camilous Brown, Buddy Simco, Mack Osborne, Neil Tessem, Henry Roussel, Robert Allen, and Paul Hickey.

It was common knowledge at the Santa Ana facility that Oswald could read, write, and speak Russian.  WC apologists try to leave the impression that he was teaching himself the language there, but the argument has never been convincing.  Thank you for your post.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Interesting, Mathias....

I too find it exceptionally unlikely that Oswald taught himself Russian.  Which leaves only secret training during a time frame narrowed down by Sandy Larsen to a period of seven months.

 

It is now narrowed down to FIVE months!

 

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

It was common knowledge at the Santa Ana facility that Oswald could read, write, and speak Russian.  WC apologists try to leave the impression that he was teaching himself the language there, but the argument has never been convincing.  Thank you for your post.

 

LOL, it would have been pretty tough for Oswald to teach himself Russian while at Santa Ana. He arrived there in the middle of December 1958 and took his Russian test in February 1959. Which he passed. So Oswald was able to teach himself Russian in TWO MONTHS? In his spare time?

Oh that's precious!

 

[Sandy Larsen]

14 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

21 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I have purchased the domain name JFKAssassinationFacts.com and plan to build a website designed to bring to the public's attention simple indisputable facts the rip apart the lies that are widely reported, taught, and believed about the assassination and Oswald. On the home page it will have something like a Top Ten List of facts making my point, each backed up by official government documents that the reader can evaluate for themselves.

"JFK assassination facts" is a widely searched phrase. So I expect to get a lot of traffic from people who are curious about the assassination or who are writing a class paper on it.

This is really good news.  Best of luck with it, Sandy!!!

Here are four quick suggestions for your consideration ….

Thanks Jim! I've made a note of you suggestions and will incorporate most of them.

 

[Mathias Baumann]

Jim,

it's hard to say anything exact about Oswald's proficiency level without access to the actual exam papers. But this might give you an idea what L2/R2 actually means:

In the US, an influential proficiency measure is the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale, developed by the US State Department. It identifies five levels of language proficiency:

• Level 1 – Elementary – Can fulfill the basic needs in a language, such as ordering meals, asking time, and asking for directions.
• Level 2 – Limited Working Proficiency – Can fulfill routine social demands, such as small talk about one’s self, one’s family, and current events.
• Level 3 – Professional Working Proficiency – Can discuss a variety of topics with ease and almost completely understand what others are saying.
• Level 4 – Full Professional Proficiency – Can participate in all manners of conversations with ease and only rarely makes grammatical mistakes.
• Level 5 – Native or Bilingual Proficiency – Can use the language the way an educated native speaker of the language would.

Additionally, a person in between levels might be at a 1+, 2+, 3+, or 4+ Level. Source: http://www.languagesurfer.com/2013/05/29/all-about-language-proficiency-and-language-fluency/

Level 2 in reading and listening on the ILR scale is what the U.S. military expects today as a minimum. I don't know what kind of scale they used in the 1950s but my guess is that the skills they expected were quite similar.

And as you can see this is still a pretty basic level, far from that of a native speaker. It's certainly not inconceivable that Oswald could've reached that level within a 5 months timeframe if he received regular training. My ballpark guess is that he'd have needed about 5 to 10 lessons per week plus about the same time for preparation at home.

But to make a really educated guess we'd have to know what the test looked like. It's not by any chance hidden somewhere in the Warren Report? Or is there any way of getting access to similar tests from that time?

(By the way, it just occured to me that Oswald was probably a dyslexic. It would be very interesting to see if some of the mistakes he made in the tests could be attributable to dyslexia. That might partly explain his rather poor result.)

But I have another question for you: Have you looked into the question if Oswald attended the Monterey language school? The Warren Commission looked into that rumor. Do you know where exactly it originated?

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.de/2011/09/monterey-language-institute-presidio.html

[Jim Hargrove]

Thanks, Mathias.  It should be noted that, at least according to the White Russians around Dallas after Oswald returned to the USA, his Russian ability was at least approaching that of a native speaker.  A number of them noted how remarkable it was.  Marina told the HSCA that her future husband was reading classic Russian novels in Russian when she met him, a year or so before the pair left the USSR.

I’ll keep an eye out for it, but I’m pretty sure that the Russian language test has never been reproduced by the WC, or the HSCA, or released by the ARRB.  It’s also quite possible that part of it was done verbally.  

Regarding the Monterey Army Language School, I can’t tell you much beyond what John wrote in the opening pages of Harvey and Lee.  “I began listing the dates of his Marine Corps training,” he wrote starting on p. 4, “assignments, transfers, and duty stations on 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1959 calendars. I soon realized there was no time for Oswald to have taken Russian classes in boot camp (1956), ITR training (early 1957), aviation training in Jacksonville, Florida (March-April, 1957), or radar school in Biloxi (May-June, 1957). In August 1957, Oswald boarded the USS Bexar to Japan and no one saw him reading or studying Russian during the voyage.”  He then spends some time on Japan, concluding no one saw Oswald practicing Russian while stationed there, which brings us right up to MACS-9 at Santa Ana, where Oswald suddenly became Comrade Oswaldovich.

John had to base this, of course, on the USMC records we have been handed by the U.S. Government.  If Oswald was being groomed as a spy who secretly understood Russian, his Russian language training would most likely have been hidden, at least in the documents.  John talked to a number of Marines, though, and apparently found no evidence off the documentary record of Oswald taking or talking Russian before MACS-9 in Santa Ana.  I’m not sure how extensive these interviews were.  Yet another huge complication is that John makes an excellent case that the Oswald stationed at Santa Ana was not the same Oswald who was stationed in Japan. 

Another question for you, if do don’t mind.  Had Oswald scored the equivalent of an A+ on the Russian exam, do you think the Marines would have published that fact?  Your work on this subject is most appreciated.

[Jim Hargrove]

14 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

It is now narrowed down to FIVE months!

....

LOL, it would have been pretty tough for Oswald to teach himself Russian while at Santa Ana. He arrived there in the middle of December 1958 and took his Russian test in February 1959. Which he passed. So Oswald was able to teach himself Russian in TWO MONTHS? In his spare time?

Oh that's precious!

 

I always thought so.  John thinks Harvey was stationed at Santa Ana two months or so before the official record indicates, which would give him a little more time to teach himself Russian.  Obviously, WC apologists should accept John’s analysis!  Then they wouldn’t be in quite such a bind about our boy’s Russian skills, heh-heh-heh.

Can you tell us how you shaved off two month from Oswaldovich's excellent Russian Self-tutelage Adventure?

[Jim Hargrove]

20 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Thanks Jim! I've made a note of you suggestions and will incorporate most of them.

Sandy,

Are you seeking any other suggestions?

I have a couple....

[Sandy Larsen]

6 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Can you tell us how you shaved off two month from Oswaldovich's excellent Russian Self-tutelage Adventure?

In this post I wrote the following:

Quote

So far I have shown (with your help and John's book) that Oswald had at most seven months to learn Russian well enough to impress his date. (Specifically, from the time he left boot camp on January 18, 1957, till the time he set sail for Atsugi on August 22, 1957.) If we knew that Felde's affidavit and the unit diaries were real and not fabricated to hide Oswald's whereabouts (that being in intensive language training), we could subtract several months from that seven. But for now I will leave most that time alone.

On May 2, 1957 Oswald traveled from Jacksonville, Florida to Biloxi, Mississippi in order to take a radar course. The course ended on June 17. I think we can remove this period of time because 1) surely Oswald needed to take the course given that he would later be involved in that kind of work in Japan; and 2) there were witnesses to Oswald attending the course (including Daniel Powers). Oswald was part of a group of six, and they were granted leave from June 20 to July 9. There were witnesses to Oswald taking two-week leaves around that time (Marguerite's neighbor, Lee M. McCracken), and so it's likely Oswald actually did take that leave.

Therefore, Oswald had at most five months to learn Russian well enough to impress his date. (Specifically, from the time he left boot camp on January 18, 1957 till the time he set sail for Atsugi on August 22, 1957. Minus the time he spent at radar school and on leave, from May 1 till July 9.)

Can we whittle off more?

 

Now, to be clear, this assumes that there was only one Oswald. It also assumes that Allen / Allexander Felde's testimony was fake... a cover story for Oswald to be taking secret Russian classes. (If we were to accept Felde's testimony as fact, then there was in fact no time available for Oswald to be taking Russian classes.)

Suppose we accept those assumptions. This would mean that Oswald took Russian classes in the time periods from January though April 1957, and/or for about a month in July/August 1957. After which time he set sail for Atsugi.

However, I now realize that I need to add a couple months to that five months to account for Oswald's potentially available time after he returned from Atsugi. He returned in November 1958, but immediately took a 30 day leave, one which his brother Robert remembered. So Oswald couldn't have resumed his Russian training until December 1958. He passed his Russian test a couple months later, in February 1959. Therefore, we are back up to seven months of potentially available time for Russian classes.

So, Oswald had at most seven months available for secret Russian classes, in order to learn it well enough to pass his Russian test and to impress his date Rosaleen Quinn.  (Specifically, from the time he left boot camp on January 18, 1957 till the time he set sail for Atsugi on August 22, 1957. Minus the time he spent at radar school and on leave, from May 1 till July 9. Plus from the time he returned from Atsugi and his 30-day leave on December 18, 1958 till the time of his Russian test on February 25, 1959.)

 

[Sandy Larsen]

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Sandy,

Are you seeking any other suggestions?

I have a couple....

 

Jim,

I do plan on asking for ideas and contributions once I have the web site built and am adding content.

In the meantime, on occasion while reading the forum or adding my own posts, I come across a good point for my "Top Ten List. (The list will actually be FAR longer than ten items But only the top ones will be listed on the home page.) I make a note of these when I see them.

So if you have suggestions, my preference is for you to wait till I am ready to add them to my site. However, if you have a point that is a really good, but one you might forget, than I'd like to know about it now so I can make a note of it.

Thanks!

 

[Jim Hargrove]

Sandy,

Sorry for the delay.  I’ve been wasting my time trying to find a legible document among the new “releases.”

If Felde’s real job was to ‘splain why the one-and-only-LHO simply didn’t have time to study Russian, you’d think the powers-that-be would have made some sort of effort to have his story match the official USMC chronology of Classic Oswald®.  Felde’s FBI statement, however, causes real problems.

At Camp Pendleton, Jacksonville, and Memphis, Felde and Oswald were together for about 10 months. Felde’s description clearly matches our understanding of Harvey Oswald: interested in politics and debate, smart, and “left-winged.”  And yet he told the FBI, for example, that he was with Oswald in Memphis until well into September 1957.  Troublesome, since Lee Oswald boarded the USS Bexar in San Diego bound for Japan on August 21, 1957.  There are other problems.

WC apologists will just claim that Felde’s recollections were incorrect, even though many USMC docs actually back up his chronology.  We must also wonder why the Warren Commission didn’t even bother to interview Felde, nor did the HSCA or the ARRB.  The WC did take testimony from Marines who had known Lee Oswald for just a couple of days in Japan, but didn’t want to talk to the only soldier who had been with Oswald the full first 10 months of his abbreviated Marine Corps career.

[Sandy Larsen]

17 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

If Felde’s real job was to ‘splain why the one-and-only-LHO simply didn’t have time to study Russian, you’d think the powers-that-be would have made some sort of effort to have his story match the official USMC chronology of Classic Oswald®.

"Classic Oswald"... a registered trademark? Ha! I like it.

Jim,

You make a good point, and I agree with you. The only reason I am assuming that Felde's story is a cover in my little analysis is because it allows me to consider the possibility that Oswald actually took secret Russian language classes  while in the Marines. If I were to accept Felde's story at face value, then I'd know that Oswald couldn't have taken secret classes and must have known the language prior to entering the Marine Corp. (Either that or he was some kind of language-learning genius.)

To be honest, I do believe Felde 's story is true. And because of that, I don't believe Oswald took secret Russian classes while in the Marines. And therefore Oswald must have known Russian before joining the Marines. In other words, I believe that Oswald was probably a Russian speaking immigrant. (And because of other evidence, I believe there was another Oswald who didn't speak Russian.)