Steven Hager: The Two Oswalds

[Jim Hargrove]

Another installment in my long-distance debate with Greg Parker (my comments in black, his in blue):

10. FBI took Oswald off the watch list at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, weeks after Oswald’s New Orleans arrest and less than two months before the assassination.

And your proof that this is linked to an "Oswald Project" is?

Mr. Parker doesn't seem to want to talk about the fact that the FBI cancelled the wanted notice on LHO just weeks before the assassination and that, at almost the same time, a CIA memo gave him a clean bill of political health.

The WC didn’t even bother to depose the Division 5 guy (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.

What’s really unnerving is that similar steps were taken right around the same time by Mexico City CIA personnel. Newman called this “turning down the lights” on “Oswald.” It’s enough to make a fellow feel paranoid.

 

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 “Harvey and Lee” Oswald project.

 



At the very same time the FBI was taking “Lee Harvey Oswald” off the watch list, the CIA was giving “Lee Henry Oswald” (biographical data matching LHO’s) 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.

Some people want to chalk up the CIA memo to a relatively innocent mole hunt, but just look at how things worked out.

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 happened next, of course, has been documented by scores of writers and filmmakers for more than half a century.

“Lee Harvey Oswald,” or more likely someone who looked like him, began making all kinds of appearances in and around Dallas. These appearances were clearly designed to attract attention. Here are just some:

“Oswald” visits the Sports Drome Rifle Range on Oct. 26, Nov. 9, Nov. 10, and again on Nov. 17, several times creating a scene and once shooting at another guy's target;

On Nov. 2 “Oswald” visits Morgan's Gun Shop in Fort Worth.

Also on Nov. 2 “Oswald” visits the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership where he test drives a car at wrecklessly high speeds saying he would soon come into enough money to buy a new car.

On Nov. 6 or 7 “Oswald” visits the Irving Furniture Mart for a gun part and is referred to the shop where Dial Ryder works.

On Nov. 15, “Oswald” goes to the Southland Hotel parking garage (Allright Parking Systems) and applies for a job and asks how high the Southland Building is and if it had a good view of downtown Dallas.

On Nov. 20 “Oswald” hitch-hikes on the R.L. Thornton Expressway while carrying a 4 foot long package wrapped in brown paper and introduces himself to Ralph Yates as “Lee Harvey Oswald,” discusses the President's visit, and asks to be dropped across the street from the Texas School Book Depository (where Russian-speaking “Lee Harvey Oswald” is already working).

The set-up of “Lee Harvey Oswald” was almost complete. How could this possibly have been accomplished if the FBI and the Secret Service hadn’t been put to sleep just a few weeks earlier?

Mr. Parker would like us to believe that there is nothing to see here.  Just move on, eh?

[Michael Clark]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Another installment in my long-distance debate with Greg Parker 

...........

Mr. Parker would like us to believe that there is nothing to see here.  Just move on, eh?

Jim, I recently had a collaborative cross-forum posting exchange with Tom Scully. It went well, and, while I had some concern, It did not run afoul of the admins here at EF.

I am concerned that this cross-forum, "debate" is of a different nature and might result in rules or decisions that would prohibit any such cross-postings; effectively throwing the good out with the bad.

Just an observation. I've seen things like this happen before.

Cheers,

Michael

[Mathias Baumann]

5 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Or another explanation is Phillips simply misread the importance and veracity of Alvarado's story rather than "promoted" it as Morley claims. When he published his book, he tried to make it look like he had Alvarado figured out all along. Jane Roman issued a statement later saying that Morley and Newman took her remarks out of context.

Tracy,

if Phillips used Alvarado to falsely link Oswald to the Cubans he would try to conceal that, wouldn't he? The fact of the matter is that Alvarado's whole story was phony from start to finish yet Phillips completely failed to see that. So he was either grossly incompetent or he was playing a false game.

About Jane Roman: I can't say I'm surprised about that statement. But you cannot deny the fact that headquarters withheld vital information from the Mexico City station. Why was that done? Is it not likely that Oswald was part of a CIA operation against the FPCC and that someone wanted to conceal this? Oswald presented newspaper clippings and photos from his exploits in New Orleans to Silvia Duran in order to get a visa. So is it not possible that New Orleans and Mexico City were somehow part of the same clandestine operation?

You also did not address the other questions I've raised: Why did the CIA lie about destroying the tapes of the phone calls? Who impersonated Oswald on the phone? And why? Why are there no photos of Oswald? Why did the CIA falsely state that the cameras were out of order?

 

[Michael Clark]

11 minutes ago, Mathias Baumann said:

Tracy,

About Jane Roman: I can't say I'm surprised about that statement. But you cannot deny the fact that headquarters withheld vital information from the Mexico City station. Why was that done? Is it not likely that Oswald was part of a CIA operation against the FPCC and that someone wanted to conceal this? 

 

Mathias, I am in agreement with this 2006 Larry Hancock take on that situation.

 

On 9/23/2006 at 11:24 AM, Larry Hancock said:

Good point John - although have to consider that there could well be two CIA camps in operation here. It could be that the Mexico City staff were doing their job quite well and became aware of Oswald and began investigating him on their own. This would explain the observation by the interpreter that the office was "hot" about Oswald even at the time the first call was being translated.

Oswald may have come onto their radar screen independently from whoever was running the compartementalized opearation. Then you run into the conflict of the local office being hot about what he's really doing there and the covert faction trying to lower their attention so their compartmentalized operation doesn't get stepped on.

Which probably explains a large amount of the apparant internal conflict and contradiction we see between different CIA elements immediately following the assassination. Talk about "conflicted"...

Personally, I see a "stovepiped" operation, rather than a "compartmentalised" operation that kept Jane Roman from forwarding this LHO information to MC. Angleton was by-passed, in my CT.

[Mathias Baumann]

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

I'm going to respond to Mr. Parker's rebuttals to my list of reasons LHO was a CIA spy one item at a time, and in no particular order.  In this post, my comments are in black, Mr. Parker's in blue.

6. CIA employee Donald Deneslya said he read reports of a CIA agent who had worked at a radio factory in Minsk and returned to the US with a Russian wife and child.

Utter rubbish. Deneslaya claimed to have read reports about someone wanting to redefect. - an ex-Marine who sounds like Oswald. Nowhere but nowhere does Deneslaya refer to this person as an agent. He does indicate he may have been a "contact" for intel on the Minsk factory. That, does not an "agent" make.

It would help others check and assess this information if Mr. Parker spelled Donald Deneslya’s name correctly.  D-E-N-E-S-L-Y-A.  Here is an HSCA document describing the report Deneslya read in the summer of 1962, 

from Harvey and Lee:

CIA Debriefing Report

In 1962 CIA employee Donald Deneslya received a debriefing report from the
New York City field office concerning a Marine "defector" who recently returned with
his family from the Soviet Union. The report was approximately four to five pages in
length and provided organizational details about the Minsk radio plant, where Harvey
Oswald worked for 2 1/2 years. 62-07108 The report was signed by Major Andy Anderson,
who conducted debriefings for the CIA's domestic contacts division, and was filed with
the Industrial Registry Branch in the Office of Central Reference.46

In 1978 Deneslya was interviewed by the HSCA, who then requested the
domestics contact report and any additional information the CIA had concerning the
Minsk radio plant. Following is the context of a letter from the HSCA to the CIA's Scott
Breckenridge.

September 27, 1978

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S. House of Representatives
3331 House Office Building, Annex 2
Washington, D.C. 20515

Mr. Scott Breckinridge
Principal Coordinator, HSCA
Office of Legislative Counsel
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C. 20505

Dear Mr. Breckinridge:

In connection with its investigations into the circumstances surround­-
ing the death of President Kennedy, the Select Committee on Assassi­-
nations has been informed that during the summer of 1962, a CIA con­-
tact report concerning the Minsk Radio Plant was routed to the Foreign
Documents Division in the Soviet Branch of the Directorate of Intelli-­
gence. The source of this contact report is believed to have been a
former Marine and defector to the Soviet Union who returned to the
United States with his family during the summer of 1962. The source
is believed to have stated that he had been employed at the Minsk
Radio Plant. The Committee has been further informed that this con­
tact report was filed in a volume of material concerning the Minsk Ra­-
dio Plant, and that this volume is retrievable from the CIA's Industrial
Registry Branch which, in 1962, was a component of the office of Cen-­
tral Reference. The Committee therefore requests immediate and com­-
plete access to the above referenced contact report and the volume of
materials regarding the Minsk Radio Plant....

                 -----      ------

NOTE: The CIA responded by providing materials on the Minsk radio plant.  But the
contact report, which would have identified the name ofthe CIA agent who provided the
information (probably Oswald), was missing. The HSCA reported, "The employee ad­-
vised the committee that the contact report had been filed in a volume on the Minsk ra­-
dio plant that should be retrievable from the Industrial Registry Branch, then a compo­-
nent of the Office of Central Reference. Accordingly, the committee requested that the CIA
provide both the contact report and the volume of materials concerning the Minsk radio
plant. A review by the committee of the documents in the volumes on the Minsk radio
plant, however, failed to locate any such contact report. "48 Once again the CIA had ma­-
nipulated their records and was content to "let the records speak for themselves. "

The HSCA reported, "The CIA has denied ever having had any contact with Oswald, and
its records are consistent with this position. "49

According to former CIA officer Robert Morrow it was Tracy Barnes, the Assistant
Deputy Director of Plans (under Richard Helms), who received Oswald 's information
from Minsk. Barnes later became head of the CIA's Domestic Operations Division (DOD).

--from Harvey and Lee, pp. 396-397, Copyright © 2003 by John Armstrong.  All rights reserved.

Would anyone care to speculate who was "source of this contact report" since the CIA and the HSCA did not produce it? Could it be anyone other than Oswald? 

So we have a former Marine, who supposedly once worked in a radar facility monitoring, among other things, top secret U2 flights, who suddenly "defects" to an enemy nation, telling a U.S. representative in that nation he planned to tell the enemy everything he knows. Instead, he gives detailed information to the CIA on his more than 2-1/2 years of work in an electronics manufacturing plant in that enemy nation.  That's called SPYING!

And "The CIA has denied ever having had any contact with Oswald...." [HSCA Report p. 208]  Is there any other name for this than spying?  The evidence clearly shows "Lee Harvey Oswald" was a CIA spy!

Jim,

I recently stumbled upon this:

Excerpts from Oswald's essay on Minsk and the factory.   (c. June 1962)
( Source:  CE 92 & CE 94)

Upon his return to the USA in 1962, Oswald hired a secretary to type and correct his handwritten essay about Minsk.  He ran out of money before all the pages could be typed.  These are excerpts from both the typed and handwritten pages, in a version correcting the grammatical and spelling errors that Oswald's dyslexia caused in his writings.    


This factory manufactures 87,000 large and powerful radios and 60,000 television sets in various sizes and ranges, excluding pocket radios, which are not mass-produced anywhere in the USSR.  It is this plant which manufactured several console model combination radio-phonograph-television sets which were shown as mass-produced items of commerce before several hundreds of thousands of Americans at the Soviet Exposition in New York in 1959.  After the Exhibition, these sets were duly shipped back to Minsk and are now stored in a special storage room on the first floor of the Administrative Building--at this factory, ready for the next International Exhibit.  

I worked for 23 months [ a typo.  Oswald worked 28 months ]  at this plant, a fine example of average and even slightly better than average working conditions.  The plant covers an area of 25 acres in a district one block north of the main thoroughfare and only two mile from the center of the City with all facilities for the mass production of radios and televisions.  It employs 5,000 full time and 300 part-time workers, 58% women and girls.

Five hundred people during the day shift are employed on the huge stamp and pressing machines where sheet metal is turned into metal frames and cabinets for television sets and radios.

Another five hundred people are employed in an adjoining building for cutting and finishing of rough wood into fine polished cabinets.  A laborer's process, mostly done by hand, the cutting, trimming and the processes right up to hand-polishing are carried out here at the same plant.  The plant also has stamp-making plant, employing 150 people at or assisting at 80 heavy machine lathes and grinders.  The noise in this shop is almost deafening as metal grinds against metal and steel saws cut through iron ingots at the rate of an inch a minute.  The floor is covered with oil used to drain the heat of metal being worked so one has to watch one's footing; here the workers' hands are as black as the floor and seem to be eternally...

For a good cross-section of the Russian working class, I suggest we examine the lives of some of the 58 workers and 5 foremen working in the experimental shop of the Minsk radio plant...

The shop itself is located in a two-story building with no particular noticeable mark on its red brick face.  By 8:00 A.M. sharp all the workers have arrived and at the sound of a bell sounded by the orderly, who is a worker whose duty it is to see the workers don't slip out for too many smokes, they file upstairs, except for 10 turners and lathe operators whose machines are located on the first floor.  Work here is given out in the form of blueprints and drawings by the foreman Zonof and junior foreman Lavruk to workers whose various reliability and skills call for them, since each worker has with time acquired differing skills and knowledge

Source: http://www.russianbooks.org/oswald/minsk4.htm

This certainly doesn't read like an ordinary diary. Surely Oswald wrote that report with the intention to convey information to someone else.

[Sandy Larsen]

11 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

6. CIA employee Donald Deneslya said he read reports of a CIA agent who had worked at a radio factory in Minsk and returned to the US with a Russian wife and child.

 

Jim,

Your Donald Deneslya presentation leaves little doubt that Oswald spied on Russia and reported back to the CIA. However, it seems to me that there is some possibility that Oswald did the spying on his own, and then contacted the CIA upon his return and offered to be debriefed. If so, he couldn't be counted as a CIA spy until the time of his debriefing.

(I say that as a devil's advocate. I'm quite sure Oswald was a CIA agent.)

 

[Jim Hargrove]

Mathias,

That's only a little bit of Oswald's full report.  It goes on and on.... You can read the full version here:

 

 

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/thecollective.htm

 

P.S.  I haven't forgotten Thornley and several other topics we have going.  Hope to get back to them soon.

 

Sandy,

It's pretty obvious, at least to me, why the CIA refused to produce the "CIA contact report concerning the Minsk Radio Plant [that] was routed to the Foreign Documents Division in the Soviet Branch of the Directorate of Intelligence," as the HSCA letter put it.  The CIA wanted everyone to believe that it never had any contact with Oswald.  That field report would have proved otherwise.  Had Oswald been a mere contact, debriefed on his way home from his Russian assignment, I mean self-funded adventure, the Agency would surely have been unafraid to produce the document.

 

To Michael Clark,

Thanks for the warning on "cross-forum posting."  I'll certainly keep it in mind, but if the Admins here don't object, I'd like to keep this debate with Mr. Parker going.  This, apparently, is the only way to do it.
  

[Jim Hargrove]

Continuing with Mr. Parker (his comment in blue)....

7. Kenneth Porter, employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, left his family to marry (and no doubt monitor) Marina Oswald after LHO’s death.

LOL So every person ever employed by Collins Radio was CIA? 

Carl Mather also worked for Collins Radio, and see below for a third Collins Radio employee clearly in bed with the CIA at the time of the HSCA. Collins Radio was the lessee of the Rex, a ship that helped bring a team of CIA assassins to Cuba on October 31, 1963.  Rhetorical giggling won't make the incriminating facts about this case go away.  Bill Kelly's article linked below demonstrates that Collins Radio was up to it's eyeballs in CIA shenanigans.

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/02/collins-radio-connections-to.html

By the time the HSCA was in session, Collins Radio personnel still had a close association with the CIA, as this July 2017 NARA release demonstrates.  There are many other examples in this single 2017 release.

[Jim Hargrove]

Continuing my "debate" with Greg Parker (his comments in blue)....

20. President Kennedy and the CIA clearly were at war with each other in the weeks immediately before his assassination, as evidenced by Arthur Krock's infamous defense of the Agency in the Oct. 3, 1963 New York Times. “Oswald” was the CIA’s pawn.

Kennedy was at war with the CIA and Oswald was a CIA pawn and that is another of your "proofs" that there was an "Project Oswald"? Only a lunatic would make that statement.

I'll let Mr. Parker be in charge of the insults and limit my explanation to four easy-to-understand points.

1. With his trip to Russia, staged FPCC activities, and staged commie-loving history going all the way back to the Marine Corps, it was easy to paint the Russian-speaking Oswald as a commie with ties to Castro, which is exactly what happened.  LBJ had to intervene to prevent a possible war with Cuba and perhaps even the Soviets. (Question for Mr. Parker:  What CIA Officer lied over and over in his attempts to tie Oswald to the Cubans and Castro and the assassination of JFK?)

2. Oswald’s ties to both the FBI and the CIA made G-men, especially J. Edgar Hoover, all too happy to enter full scale cover-up mode immediately.  Please understand: If you are plotting the assassination of a sitting president, you have to shut down a full scale investigation.  Otherwise, the search for the guilty will be relentless and you will be caught.

3. Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald had demonstrated that he would follow even difficult orders, critical in the days and hours before and immediately after the assassination. (He absolutely had to be in the right places at the right times to become a successful patsy.  And a patsy was absolutely critical for the plot to succeed.  Without one, the search for the plotters would have been, again, relentless.)

4.  The “Harvey and Lee” project (JA suspects it was controlled by David Atlee Phillips) made it simple to send around a fellow who looked like Russian-speaking Oswald in the weeks prior to the hit to set him up as the assassin-to-be.  For example....

The Sports Drome Rifle Range on Oct. 26, Nov. 9, Nov. 10, and again on Nov. 17, several times creating a scene and once shooting at another guy's target.

Morgan's Gun Shop in Fort Worth on Nov 2.

The Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership also on Nov. 2 where he test drove a car at wrecklessly high speeds saying he would soon come into enough money to buy a new car.

The Irving Furniture Mart On Nov. 6 or 7 for a gun part where he was referred to the shop where Dial Ryder worked.

The Southland Hotel parking garage (Allright Parking Systems) on Nov. 15 to apply for a job and oh-so-subtly ask how high the Southland Building was and if it had a good view of downtown Dallas.

Hitchhiking on Nov. 20 on the R.L. Thornton Expressway while carrying a 4-foot long package wrapped in brown paper and introducing himself to Ralph Yates as “Lee Harvey Oswald.” He discussed the President's visit, wondered if you could shoot a president, and asked to be dropped across the street from the Texas School Book Depository (where Russian-speaking “Lee Harvey Oswald” was already at work).

The 1973 motion picture “Executive Action” with Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan does a great job showing how an “Oswald” look-alike traveled around Dallas in the weeks before the assassination doing many of the things listed above.  Many of the earliest Warren Commission critics also wrote about the frame-up of Oswald in the weeks preceding the assassination.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

14 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:

You also did not address the other questions I've raised

No, and I'm not going to right now. I'm on summer vacation.

[Jim Hargrove]

OK, Tracy, please respond when you are available.