The Truth About Oswald's Birth Certificate

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Just now, Sandy Larsen said:

As I said on the other H&L thread, I'm always willing to listen. As long as it's one argument at a time and is clearly explained.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

(BTW, I deserve a little credit myself, for finding that three-document page that nearly-perfectly aligned with the WC's Oswald birth records.  )

 

Absolutely true!

[Guest]

 

Just now, Sandy Larsen said:

Lance,

Can you give me any further information about the Wilmouth documents to the FBI that don't exist. I'd like to check it out for myself.

Thanks

If you'll recall from the Postal Money Order thread, Armstrong references Chicago bank official Wilmouth's statement to the FBI as establishing that the money order should have bank endorsements.  I no longer have my copy of H&L, but Wilmouth's supposed statement is the sole authority cited in the footnote for the point about bank endorsements.  I went so far as to review the Armstrong collection at Baylor University and was never able to find any such statement or any document quoting Wilmouth as saying this.  I kept challenging people to show me the beef, but no one ever did.  Nevertheless, "Wilmouth said this" has become H&L gospel, and the point has been repeated throughout the assassination literature.  Not the biggest issue in the world, I'll grant you, but enough mistakes like this do become disconcerting.

My posts were not intended to be insulting to you or even to Armstrong, for that matter.  I believe there is a reasonable case to be made, on the basis of reasonably plausible evidence, that one or more Oswald impersonators were at work in the months before the assassination, for the apparent purpose of making LHO seem a more credible Lone Nut.  What is maddening to me, however, and what I call the Flat Earth mentality, is the insistence on defending every last bit of H&L, no matter how silly or demonstrably false, as though H&L were some sort of Bible.  I recall reading Walt Brown saying that Armstrong had turned up an amazing amount of new information that should be considered even if you rejected his core premise.  I think that's a fair assessment - but I also think I've proved to myself that you can't take H&L at face value and do have to track down the original sources.  To just dig in your heels in the face of every challenge (and I'm not talking about you personally) does a disservice to genuine research and detracts from plausible theories built on plausible evidence.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Wilmouth is referenced on pages 451, 461 and 475 according to the index.

[Guest]

35 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

At one time I entertained the concept of writing a book to refute Armstrong. I soon realized that it would take around 2000 pages to refute his nearly 1000 pages of nonsense. So I do a little here and there. The number of instances where there is no citation or an incorrect citation is astounding.

You would not believe the amount of time I spent debating the actual Flat Earthers on a Christian site.  As far as they were concerned, I don't believe I ever scored a point.  For some, H&L has become a religion, and even a 2000-page refutation would accomplish pretty much nothing.  I finally slapped myself on the forehead and said, "My God, I am a reasonably sane, fairly elderly attorney, and I am actually spending my time debating with PEOPLE WHO THINK THE EARTH IS FLAT!!!"

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Just now, Lance Payette said:

You would not believe the amount of time I spent debating the actual Flat Earthers on a Christian site.  As far as they were concerned, I don't believe I ever scored a point.  For some, H&L has become a religion, and even a 2000-page refutation would accomplish pretty much nothing.  I finally slapped myself on the forehead and said, "My God, I am a reasonably sane, fairly elderly attorney, and I am actually spending my time debating with PEOPLE WHO THINK THE EARTH IS FLAT!!!"

Agreed about the 2000 page book. But we have apparently convinced Sandy about the BC stuff so there is at least some point to a reasonable amount of effort. Not to toot my own horn too much, but before my exhumation article series about 17 years ago (or however long it has been) you heard a lot of CTs about the LHO exhumation. Not so much now-but it does take a great deal of work and the late Gary Mack helped me a great deal with that.

[Sandy Larsen]

40 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Sandy,

Not trying to "pile on" but here is another example of an Armstrong idea that was demonstrably false and he knew it or should have known it:

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2017/01/marguerite-never-smiled.html

At some point you have to ask why he does these things and the answer I come up with is to mislead or confuse people. Another thing about Armstrong that angers me is that he doesn't defend himself-he gets Jim Hargrove or David Josephs to do it. Back in the late 90s when I got started with Armstrong his excuse was he wasn't on the Internet. What is his excuse in 2017? 

Tracy,

I think we need to give Armstrong a little slack, just as we should WC testimony that looks a little suspicious but probably has some innocent explanation. At the time Armstrong wrote that Marguerite never smiled, that probably was his recollection. And he was swayed by the testimony of two people he interviewed at the time who said she never smiled.

But I know such things are frustrating. It would be better if mistakes like that weren't made.

So far I haven't seen anything Armstrong has written that is real damning. For example, that birth certificate issue, I can see how it could have fooled many back in the 1990s. Of course, Armstrong should have spent more time studying it. It looks to me like he spread himself too thin.

I'm not going to assume that Armstrong is wrong about everything just because of a few mistakes. What I've learned with CT books in general is that one needs to be cautious what they accept from the books. Because most researcher/authors aren't professional detectives or professional writers.

A case in point -- and this is just my opinion -- I find that lately I agree very little with David Lifton. And yet I think he was right with Best Evidence. So see, it would be a mistake for me to disregard everything he's written based on what I've seen him write lately.

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

 

If you'll recall from the Postal Money Order thread, Armstrong references Chicago bank official Wilmouth's statement to the FBI as establishing that the money order should have bank endorsements.  I no longer have my copy of H&L, but Wilmouth's supposed statement is the sole authority cited in the footnote for the point about bank endorsements.  I went so far as to review the Armstrong collection at Baylor University and was never able to find any such statement or any document quoting Wilmouth as saying this.  I kept challenging people to show me the beef, but no one ever did.  Nevertheless, "Wilmouth said this" has become H&L gospel, and the point has been repeated throughout the assassination literature.  Not the biggest issue in the world, I'll grant you, but enough mistakes like this do become disconcerting.

My posts were not intended to be insulting to you or even to Armstrong, for that matter.  I believe there is a reasonable case to be made, on the basis of reasonably plausible evidence, that one or more Oswald impersonators were at work in the months before the assassination, for the apparent purpose of making LHO seem a more credible Lone Nut.  What is maddening to me, however, and what I call the Flat Earth mentality, is the insistence on defending every last bit of H&L, no matter how silly or demonstrably false, as though H&L were some sort of Bible.  I recall reading Walt Brown saying that Armstrong had turned up an amazing amount of new information that should be considered even if you rejected his core premise.  I think that's a fair assessment - but I also think I've proved to myself that you can't take H&L at face value and do have to track down the original sources.  To just dig in your heels in the face of every challenge (and I'm not talking about you personally) does a disservice to genuine research and detracts from plausible theories built on plausible evidence.

Thanks Lance.

Having looked that up in the book, I do now recall your asking about it. I, like you, waited for someone to answer.

I wonder if somebody else described the processing of PMOs and Armstrong misremembered the person as being Wilmouth.

You are right though... it is disconcerting that Armstrong would make such a mistake. But people do make mistakes. Readers need to be cautious, especially when reading books written by unproven authors.

[Jim Hargrove]

WHERE IS LEE HARVEY OSWALD’S FULL BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

Why were we only given a short-form birth certificate--what Louisiana Dept. of Health currently calls  a “birth card” which is not even recognized by all government agencies? Why were we not given the full, official birth certificate of Lee Harvey Oswald?

The company that currently handles fulfillment of internet, phone, and fax requests for Louisiana birth certificates is the VitalChek Network. From Vitalchek’s website:

Short Form Birth Certificate
A short form birth certificate contains almost all of the important information that is on a long form birth certificate except it may not have signatures or detailed parents information on it depending on the state location. It can usually be used for proving citizenship and for proof of identity but it may not always be accepted by every state or for all applications. To see if your state accepts a short form birth certificate as proof of identity or citizenship, you can contact your local governing body such as city hall.
Long Form Birth Certificate
A long form birth certificate is sometimes referred to as the official version, each state may call it something a little different. It typically has all of the information you would expect to see on a birth certificate but can also vary by the location in which the person was born – time and place of birth, parent’s names,address, signatures of those present at birth, etc. You will need a long form birth certificate if you are looking to start an adoption process or if you are applying for a dual citizenship.

The Louisiana Department of Health website describes the current differences between the birth card and long-form certificates this way:

Short-form birth certificates (birth cards) are $9.00 and include the name at birth, date of birth, parish of birth, father's initials, mother's last name and first initial, file date and issue date.Long-form birth certificates are $15.00 and include the name at birth, date of birth, parish of birth, hospital of birth, mother's residence at time of birth, mother and father's full names, parent's place of birth, age of parents at the time of birth, file date and issue date.
 
 

 

The birth card for Oswald lacks the following information that should be shown on an official, long-term birth certificate: It doesn’t name the hospital where the birth occurred, it doesn’t list the mother’s residence at the time of of birth, it doesn’t provide the parents’ place of birth or their ages at the time of the child’s birth, and it lists only a single date, not the file date and issue date.

The Louisiana Department of Health website says “Both certificates are legal certified copies of birth records and have a raised seal. However, some agencies or other governmental entities may not accept the birth card for certain purposes. It is recommended that you check with the agency or governmental entity prior to obtaining a birth card to verify that this document will be accepted.

According to the DHH website, Louisiana will only issue birth cards if the full long-form birth certificate is ordered as well—they are only “sold in pairs.”  And so why has the official birth certificate for Lee Harvey Oswald been withheld?  Why can we not see a certificate recognized by all government agencies?  Is something being hidden?  (I have a theory involving Marguerite's residence, but I want to run it be John Armstrong and do some more research.)

To W. Tracy:  It’s true that this information is based on current Louisiana laws and procedures, but I think you and I are both old enough to realize that the birth card shown above does not contain all the information found on official, long-form birth certificates, at least from major cities.  (My New York City birth certificate is a full 8.5 x 11 inch page filled with WAY more information than either the LA birth card or even the LA  full certificate.)  Will you consider modifying your article, or are you only interested in scolding John Armstrong whenever possible?

WHY CAN’T WE SEE A FULL BIRTH CERTIFICATE FOR LEE HARVEY OSWALD?

Edited January 8, 2017 by Jim Hargrove

[W. Tracy Parnell]

8 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Tracy,

I think we need to give Armstrong a little slack, just as we should WC testimony that looks a little suspicious but probably has some innocent explanation. At the time Armstrong wrote that Marguerite never smiled, that probably was his recollection. And he was swayed by the testimony of two people he interviewed at the time who said she never smiled.

But I know such things are frustrating. It would be better if mistakes like that weren't made.

So far I haven't seen anything Armstrong has written that is real damning. For example, that birth certificate issue, I can see how it could have fooled many back in the 1990s. Of course, Armstrong should have spent more time studying it. It looks to me like he spread himself too thin.

I'm not going to assume that Armstrong is wrong about everything just because of a few mistakes. What I've learned with CT books in general is that one needs to be cautious what they accept from the books. Because most researcher/authors aren't professional detectives or professional writers.

A case in point -- and this is just my opinion -- I find that lately I agree very little with David Lifton. And yet I think he was right with Best Evidence. So see, it would be a mistake for me to disregard everything he's written based on what I've seen him write lately.

Sandy,

I think we are coming at this thing from different perspectives. I have been involved with Armstrong since the late 90s. I have seen too many instances where he is not being honest to give him the benefit of the doubt at this point and many researchers from the CT side agree with me. Both the BC and the “Marguerite never smiled” issues are really minor but illustrate a larger problem.

In the case of the “smiling” issue, Armstrong had to know it was bogus. He was in close contact with Jack White who was his mentor. And a guy on the old JFK Research forum showed White that the “smiled” issue was wrong before H&L was published. But Armstrong used it anyway. A silly, small thing but why do it? Unless you are bent on misleading people. To be fair, a second motive may be the desire to use his all the research he obtained. In other words, he spent all the time and money doing the research so he was going to use it even if it was wrong. In the mid-nineties when he was getting started, you had to physically go out and obtain every document, interview and so on. And so may be a somewhat understandable tendency to use something once you have paid for it in money and sweat. But that is still not a good reason to mislead people in my view. The is a rumor that the H&L project was privately bankrolled and Armstrong didn’t pay for it. That would make sense because he is a successful businessman and I never could understand how he had all that time to waste when he could be making big money. But that is just a rumor and I cannot confirm it.

Probably the most egregious thing Armstrong has done IMO is in the case of Stephen Landesberg. I won’t go into detail right now but I am working to get an old article series back online and I’ll post a link when I do. David Lifton is a top rate writer and researcher. I don’t agree with his theory but if he says he has a document or interview that states a fact you can probably bank on it. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Armstrong and history proves it. I am working on a project now and I can’t tell you the number of times I have tried to check one of his assertions and it took me half the day to find out he was wrong. It is almost like he doesn’t want people to check his work because he knows what they will find when they do.

I hope he won’t mind me saying this here since it is a matter of public record, but probably the best example of a researcher changing his mind about Armstrong after learning the hard way is Dave Reitzes, another top shelf writer and researcher (he is a professional writer by trade if memory serves). Reitzes was originally a CT after seeing JFK the film and he was working with Armstrong in the same capacity that Jim Hargrove etc. do now. At some point, he began to question Armstrong and didn’t like the answers he received. There are letters between the two at Armstrong’s Baylor archive including one where Armstrong unbelievably tries to tell Reitzes how to write and research. I am sorry, but it is a fact that his book is one of the worst ever published from a writing and research standpoint and that is not my opinion but a simple fact. I am not a great writer, but I get people to help me such as my wife who is an expert proofreader. Anyway, here is a link to Dave’s story in a nutshell:

Long Division

I’ll say one nice thing about Armstrong so you don’t think I am an embittered LN whose only purpose is to badmouth all CT authors. Armstrong showed that the story Marguerite told about having her husband Robert buried the same day he died and his side of the family wouldn’t speak to her after that was false. Authors such as Bugliosi and others bought that because they assumed she would know the facts. But the evidence shows she simply lied for sympathy and because she was a raving lunatic. Armstrong went out and got the death notice that showed he was buried the next day which was common for the time. A small point but an important one for the completeness of the historic record. So, I will give credit when it is deserved and I will be using his book in my project even though it is a torturous process.

I have found mistakes in virtually every book out there and I have read over 100 (not many by some standards perhaps but enough to know a little). Bugliosi, who wrote the best and most complete book whether you agree with it or not, made mistakes. In a case as enormous as this it happens. But when you study Armstrong you will find things over and over that don’t fall into the category of simple mistakes. And then you will find out what myself, Dave Reitzes and Greg Parker already know. That is, Armstrong manipulates the facts to fit his grand theory of the JFK case based on the ridiculous assertion of two Oswalds which has been disproved by scientific evidence and simple common sense.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

WHERE IS LEE HARVEY OSWALD’S FULL BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

Why were we only given a short-form birth certificate--what Louisiana Dept. of Health currently calls  a “birth card” which is not even recognized by all government agencies? Why were we not given the full, official birth certificate of Lee Harvey Oswald?

The company that currently handles fulfillment of internet, phone, and fax requests for Louisiana birth certificates is the VitalChek Network. From Vitalchek’s website:

Short Form Birth Certificate
A short form birth certificate contains almost all of the important information that is on a long form birth certificate except it may not have signatures or detailed parents information on it depending on the state location. It can usually be used for proving citizenship and for proof of identity but it may not always be accepted by every state or for all applications. To see if your state accepts a short form birth certificate as proof of identity or citizenship, you can contact your local governing body such as city hall.
Long Form Birth Certificate
A long form birth certificate is sometimes referred to as the official version, each state may call it something a little different. It typically has all of the information you would expect to see on a birth certificate but can also vary by the location in which the person was born – time and place of birth, parent’s names,address, signatures of those present at birth, etc. You will need a long form birth certificate if you are looking to start an adoption process or if you are applying for a dual citizenship.

The Louisiana Department of Health website describes the current differences between the birth card and long-form certificates this way:

Short-form birth certificates (birth cards) are $9.00 and include the name at birth, date of birth, parish of birth, father's initials, mother's last name and first initial, file date and issue date.Long-form birth certificates are $15.00 and include the name at birth, date of birth, parish of birth, hospital of birth, mother's residence at time of birth, mother and father's full names, parent's place of birth, age of parents at the time of birth, file date and issue date.
 
 

 

The birth card for Oswald lacks the following information that should be shown on an official, long-term birth certificate: It doesn’t name the hospital where the birth occurred, it doesn’t list the mother’s residence at the time of of birth, it doesn’t provide the parents’ place of birth or their ages at the time of the child’s birth, and it lists only a single date, not the file date and issue date.

The Louisiana Department of Health website says “Both certificates are legal certified copies of birth records and have a raised seal. However, some agencies or other governmental entities may not accept the birth card for certain purposes. It is recommended that you check with the agency or governmental entity prior to obtaining a birth card to verify that this document will be accepted.

According to the DHH website, Louisiana will only issue birth cards if the full long-form birth certificate is ordered as well—they are only “sold in pairs.”  And so why has the official birth certificate for Lee Harvey Oswald been withheld?  Why can we not see a certificate recognized by all government agencies?  Is something being hidden?  (I have a theory involving Marguerite's residence, but I want to run it be John Armstrong and do some more research.)

To W. Tracy:  It’s true that this information is based on current Louisiana laws and procedures, but I think you and I are both old enough to realize that the birth card shown above does not contain all the information found on official, long-form birth certificates, at least from major cities.  (My New York City birth certificate is a full 8.5 x 11 inch page filled with WAY more information than either the LA birth card or even the LA  full certificate.)  Will you consider modifying your article, or are you only interested in scolding John Armstrong whenever possible?

WHY CAN’T WE SEE A FULL BIRTH CERTIFICATE FOR LEE HARVEY OSWALD?

Jim, as you recognize, you are reading the current Louisiana statues as though they were relevant to the procedures in 1939.  For those who can't get enough of this stuff, I am attaching a 2008 law review article that traces the evolution of the Louisiana Civil Code:

.Louisiana Code History.pdf

It won't tell you anything about birth certificates, but it does make clear that the Louisiana statutes have undergone major revisions since 1939.  I'm no expert, but I believe the general trend has been to bring Louisiana more in line with other states.  For example, Louisiana did not adopt the Uniform Commercial Code until 1990 and was the last state to do so.

From the examples that Sandy and I have provided - including a 1901 version that Tulane University specifically calls a "birth certificate," issued by the same registrar who issued LHO's - you can see that Louisiana birth certificates were apparently extremely uninformative documents.  They contained none of the information that we would expect to see on a modern birth certificate.  On the other hand, current Louisiana birth certificates look pretty much like every other state's birth certificates.  Is it "suspicious" that Tulane University (located in New Orleans) refers to a document as a birth certificate that you don't believe should qualify as a birth certificate?

We probably CAN’T SEE A FULL BIRTH CERTIFICATE FOR LEE HARVEY OSWALD because there isn't one, at least in terms of what you are thinking of as a birth certificate.  If there is anything other than what we have already seen, it would probably be a duplicate of the page in the registry of births.  Under the current Louisiana statutes, Marina could probably order a copy.  Or better yet, just ask the Louisiana officials:  "If I were to order a copy of my father's birth certificate from 1939, what sort of document would I receive and what information would it contain?"

The more I have been associated with the JFK research community, the more I see that it is it's own worst enemy.  I have actually been driven in the opposite direction from what one would expect: more in the direction of the Lone Nut theory.  Not completely, but I am hanging on by my fingernails.  A theory like Larry Hancock's is actually plausible and is consistent with the most plausible evidence and the way conspiracies work in the real world.  It also makes sense as to why there is such a disconnect between the "assassination conspiracy" and the "cover-up conspiracy" - because they were, in fact, independent of each other.  All of these grand, elaborate, mutually contradictory conspiracy theories, where everyone is lying and nothing is what it seems, however, seem to me to do a disservice to serious research and prevent the serious research from being taken seriously.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Guest

[Jim Hargrove]

Hi, Lance.  Haven't heard from you in a while.

If you look at the Louisiana Dept. of Health's own description of the birth card vs the full birth certificate, you can see that things haven't changed much since 1939.  What kind of real, full birth certificate doesn't name the hospital a child was born in?  C'mon....  Y'all are so busy declaring how crazy and wrong John and I are, you don't take time to examine the simplest facts.  That isn't a full birth certificate.

None of us are kids here.  If you have a copy of your official birth certificate, just take a look at it. (Don't use the computer printed "short form.")   Does the full, official certificate name the hospital you were born in?  Sure it does.  Does it name at least the city your mother and father were born in?  I'll bet it does.  Does it give the age of your parents at the time of your birth?  Maybe.  And it probably has more information as well.  Louisiana's version of the full certificate is pretty brief, but not as brief as that birth card.

Anyway, hope you and your Russian-speaking wife are doing well.

[Guest]

Just a point of interest, but:

Louisiana births before 1911

Before 1911, no births were recorded by the state. Some individual parishes recorded births before 1911, notably Orleans Parish, which began in 1790.

Also, from a thesis submitted to Vanderbilt University:

In 1918 the legislature passed La. Act 257, which created the

position of a local registrar who was responsible for reporting to the State Bureau of Health the

numbers of births and deaths. This act also created a Bureau of Vital Statistics that would

regulate the procedures for making vital records.  The 1918 statute is also significant because it

is the first time that “race” was listed as a category that serves a vital statistical purpose.

Despite these advances, Louisiana stilled lagged behind the rest of the country when it

came to vital record collection. As of 1940 twelve percent of births in the state still went

unrecorded. This is not to mention the many records that were incomplete. According to news

reports, Louisiana ranked among the states with the least complete vital records.31 Administrators

in the health department attributed the deficiencies to negligence on the part of physicians and

mid-wives who often sent incomplete records to the registrar or either failed to do them

altogether.32 To remedy this problem the Bureau of Health, through the authority of the state

legislature, required physicians and mid-wives to register before they could obtain a license to

practice in the state. The thought being that the threat of license revocation would compel health

professionals to make better records. Over the years they expanded the compulsory registering to

include clergy and funeral home directors thereby tightening their web of control.

The point being, Louisiana was and is a unique state.  We can't just look back 77 years, impose our notions of "what should be there," and conclude that something is "suspicious" if it isn't there.

As for Armstrong, I have had a few unimportant law review articles published, none more than about 15 pages.  I almost drove myself insane making sure my footnotes were beyond reproach (the footnotes being pretty much all that the reader of a law review article cares about).  I cannot even imagine undertaking a project of the magnitude of H&L without a very sizable team of researchers and fact-checkers.  My guess is Armstrong bit off more than any human could chew, became wedded to his pet theory at an early date, and in his enthusiasm for his project became careless about his sources, never imagining that anyone would actually check his footnotes (and, to a large degree, he was right - clear errors have been repeated ad nauseam in article after article, book after book).

[Jim Hargrove]

Here's an official, full Louisiana birth certificate from 1971 (from media.nola.com):

 

Note the information provided by it that was not included in the "birth card" for Lee Harvey Oswald: hospital name, mother's residence and address, father's place of birth, mother's maiden name, mother's place of birth, signature of attendant, dates of signatures, date of registration, date registration filed, time of birth, and probably other things I missed.

Lance quotes a source as saying, " As of 1940 twelve percent of births in the state still went unrecorded. This is not to mention the many records that were incomplete."  But that also means the 88 percent of births WERE recorded, as Oswald's clearly was, and I'll bet those that weren't tended to be in rural and/or impoverished areas.  Oswald's birth in a big city hospital attended by a real physician probably increased the odds dramatically that a full, complete, and accurate birth certificate was completed.  Where is it?

Again, why can we not see the full, official birth certificate of the purported assassin of a sitting president?

[Guest]

But wait, there's more.  Here is one old statute, from Louisiana Territory days, that is fully consistent with what I am saying and what we are seeing.

AN ACT

To provide for the recording of Births and Deaths.

Section 1. Be it enacted, by the legislative council and House of Representatives of the territory of Orleans, in general assembly convened, That it shall be the duty of all the parish judges of this territory (except the parish judge of New Orleans, to be hereafter provided for) to record all the births of white persons on a book bound and kept for that purpose by order of dates, and likewise to record all deaths of white persons

on another book kept in the same manner.

Section 2. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the parish judges to receive declarations of births within eight days from the birth, and that they may however extend that delay to three months after the birth, when a declaration could not be made sooner on account of the persons who are to make the same, living at a distance or being prevented to do so by sickness or other lawful impediment.

Section 3. And be it further enacted, That the birth of a child shall be declared by his father, or in case the father could not make the said declaration, by any other person who may have been present at the birth of the child, and that the said birth shall be immediately recorded in the presence of two witnesses.

Section 4. And be it further enacted, That the said records shall contain the day, hour, and place of birth, the sex of the child, and the first name or names given to the child, the first name or names, profession and residence of the father and mother, and the name of the witness.

 

But wait, now I will now toss you a bone.  Available on Google Books is a copy of the 1918 legislative acts of Louisiana.  Act No. 257 of 1918 is the major legislation relating to births that I don't believe had changed much by the time of LHO's birth.  You can't copy anything off of Google Books, but the link that got me there is this:  https://books.google.com/books?id=_iBQAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA465&lpg=PA465&dq=louisiana+"act+no.+257"+birth&source=bl&ots=erEAB-iURO&sig=MsbFzHPHAWBVTu6Jb-S6Sg_sccg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjU2s7Q3LLRAhUM7GMKHWqHCJUQ6AEIKDAE#v=onepage&q=louisiana "act no. 257" birth&f=false

 

Act No. 257 does indeed provide for a detailed birth certificate, to be completed by the attending physician or midwife if there was one, or by someone else in attendance if there wasn't.  (This is exactly what I have from Arizona.  I was born in a hospital, but the attending physician completed the Certificate of Birth on the state form.)  If someone wanted a copy of his birth certificate, he received a record of birth that is presumably what we are seeing with CE 800.

 

But wait, this is what makes legal work fun:  Act No. 257 makes repeated references to the Parish of New Orleans as being a separate and independent (autonomous) registration district.  So it is possible that New Orleans continued to do pretty much what it had always done, which may have been consistent with the old statute set forth above.  Answering this would require Genuine Legal Research, which I am not inclined to do for free and would probably bungle anyway since I have no familiarity with Louisiana law.  But all of these questions should be easily answerable by Louisiana officials.  This should be far easier to nail down than the Postal Money Order Endorsement Mystery.

 

It may be that there "should be" a detailed birth certificate.  It may be that there is, and Marina could get it.  Or it may be that the birth certificate information was transferred to an official registry and the certificate was destroyed in accordance with the state records retention schedule.  Or it may be that New Orleans followed the procedures set forth above, and what we see is precisely what there "should be."  I always have the feeling with Armstrong's stuff that it's more fun to speculate than to nail down the real answers, because enough real answers might blow our cherished theory out of the water.

 

An aside, but I had not remembered that Corso was the source of the birth certificate "mystery."  "Colonel Corso reported back to Senator Russell that his sources had shown there were not one, but two birth certificates for a Lee Harvey Oswald and both had been used by two separate people.  The account of this was related to researcher John Armstrong in a personal interview with Colonel Phillip Corso in 1996 (pps. 17 & 332, note 66)."  1996 was precisely one year before Corso's infamous Day After Roswell was published and two years before he died at 83.  Day After is full of demonstrable silliness that meshes precisely with theories being bandied about at the time.  Even within the Roswell research community, Corso is regarded as credible only by what I call Flat Earthers.  See this by Kevin Randle, the unquestioned dean of serious Roswell researchers:  http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/01/philip-corso-and-day-after-roswell-again.html  This is not to say that Corso was a complete fraud by any means - but it is widely believed that at the end of his life he was an old man in poor health on a quest for fame and enhancing his estate.  That he is the source of the birth certificate "mystery" is, at best, ironic.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Guest

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Again, why can we not see the full, official birth certificate of the purported assassin of a sitting president?

Well, you can't see it because, if it is there, Louisiana law prohibits it from being released for 100 years except to those authorized by statute to receive it.  Marina could get it.  Law enforcement could get it. if for a legitimate purpose.  I'd probably contact someone with intimate knowledge of "the way things work" in New Orleans, like an established investigator, and see if at least some "off the record" answers could be provided as to what is there.  This is all starting to remind me of what atheists refer to, sometimes legitimately, as "God of the Gaps" arguments - all the gaps, like Oswald's "missing" birth certificate and the unidentifiable Prayer Man, are where the Real Answers are to be found; this is true even if it forces us into claiming that all of the seemingly Real Answers we actually do have are fabrications, alterations and the like.  Establish that LHO's birth certificate really is missing and I'll at least be interested.  Show me two distinctly different LHO birth certificates and I'll be extremely interested.  Show me an identifiable photo of LHO standing on the TSBD steps and I'll say, "By God, you've cracked the case!"  But all this speculation, and an entire tapestry woven out of it, goes nowhere.