A Couple of Real Gems from the "Harvey and Lee" Website

[Jim Hargrove]

According to the Warren Commission, Oswald was stationed in Japan from September 1957 until November 1958, more than a year.  But no Marine stationed at Atsugi noticed Oswald speaking, reading or writing Russian.  One of Oswald’s closest associates at Atsugi was Zack Stout, who John Armstrong interviewed in November, 1998.  

Zack Stout said, "Most of the time we were with a mobile radar unit. Shortly after he arrived we left Japan and traveled constantly from location to location in the South China Sea [beginning in November 1957]. I know Oswald didn't attend any Russian classes or read any Russian books or listen to any Russian records. He didn't have anywhere to get such materials and if he had them we [Stout and fellow Marines] would have known about it. We slept in the same bunkhouse and most of the time worked on the same radar crew. The idea that Oswald studied Russian in Japan is ridiculous--it just didn't happen."

The Warren Commission says that Oswald left Japan and reported for duty at the  Marine Corps Air Facility in Santa Ana, California, in December 1958.  A month later, he took the infamous Russian language test in which he got more questions right than wrong.  A few months after that, he spent two hours conversing in Russian with Rosaleen Quinn. While he was stationed in California, he conspicuously read Russian literature, blasted Russian songs so loud they could be heard outside his barracks, and became known to his fellow soldiers as Comrade Oswaldovitch.  But this happened only—and suddenly--in California.   

Mr. Bojczuk is wise to avoid explaining how Oswald learned to read, write and speak Russian in a matter of days while stationed in California.  He does say this….

There's no reason to doubt that Oswald learned Russian in the same way that any other sufficiently motivated person would learn a foreign language. You get hold of some suitable learning materials, then you get your head down and put in some effort.

Damn, that sounds easy!  I think I’ll get myself some suitable learning materials, put my head down and put in some effort, and become an attorney ready to pass the local bar exam.  Should only take a day or two!  Or maybe a medical doctor… or a nuclear physicist!

Remember, kids, just by putting your head down and making some effort, you can learn to read and write Russian just like in the newspaper below, and you can do it in less than a month… in your spare time with no teachers!  It’s easy… according to Mr. Bojczuk!

[Mathias Baumann]

Jim,

we may disagree about where and when Oswald learned Russian (and about the number of Oswalds! ). But you certainly have a point here. The official story about how Oswald managed to get a passing grade on his Marine Corps test is not believable, if you and Sandy are right and he only had a few months to prepare himself. If I may quote myself:

Quote

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.

Of course I could be wrong - the target level may have been much lower and/or Oswald maybe have been a genius. But I think all in all this is a pretty educated guess.

 

By the way, did Oswald speak Spanish or not? The evidence seems to be contradictory.

 

[Michael Walton]

Wow, so now Sandy Larsen is a language expert.  Ironically, he says that kids learn languages faster than adults, then contradicts himself when he asks how long does it take a kid to learn Dickens? As if comparing that apple with an orange will prove...what?

What a joke.

***
As is usually the case here on this forum, whenever a member posts a rebuttal of another "researcher's" pet theory, the normal modus operandi is to either ignore or post long passages of text from testimony and whatnot.  The biggest problem with this is that just because a word or phrase is found in the available record, "researchers" then project this word or phrase onto their pet theory.

There's no evidence - at all - that this Oswald double and his unibrowed "sad" Mom - each bearing an unbelievably striking resemblance to the real US born Oswald and his Mom - ever existed.

When you boil this crazy theory - and many other silly ones as well - down to the essence of it all, the next question is - who really cares? Even if there was an Oswald clone - or three or four - what does it matter?

If we are to believe there was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, there is plenty of solid evidence elsewhere to prove the conspiracy. One is even what Oswald - or was it his clone (LOL) - knew he was being framed when he was caught saying in front of reporters that he was a patsy. You can take it to the bank that he knew, from the time he was dragged from the theater kicking and screaming until he says the word "patsy" that it had dawned on him that the jig was up.

Yet, the silliness continues. You'd think the people who planned this murder out had superhuman powers when they:

 - Had the assassin's clone running around 10 whole years before the assassination;
 - Had the ability to alter every single piece of film and photo evidence taken during the murder;
 - Had a Jack Ruby impostor murder Oswald A or B in the Dallas parking garage;
 - Faked photos of the above when they removed a hanging microphone in some photos but not in others;
 - Had an assassination headquarters in the basement of Ruby (or *his* clone's) nightclub;
 - Whisked Kennedy's body from the back of Air Force One to perform pre-autopsy surgery on his body;
 - But these same supermen, when putting his body back into the coffin, put him in a different body bag (oops)

People who fall for this xxxx have no ability to distinguish truth from fiction and silliness. Not to bring up today's toxic political environment, but it's like "researchers" here will believe *anything* you tell them without batting an eyelash.
 

[Michael Clark]

31 minutes ago, Michael Walton said:

Wow, so now Sandy Larsen is a language expert.  Ironically, he says that kids learn languages faster than adults, then contradicts himself when he asks how long does it take a kid to learn Dickens? As if comparing that apple with an orange will prove...what?

What a joke.

***
As is usually the case here on this forum, whenever a member posts a rebuttal of another "researcher's" pet theory, the normal modus operandi is to either ignore or post long passages of text from testimony and whatnot.  The biggest problem with this is that just because a word or phrase is found in the available record, "researchers" then project this word or phrase onto their pet theory.

There's no evidence - at all - that this Oswald double and his unibrowed "sad" Mom - each bearing an unbelievably striking resemblance to the real US born Oswald and his Mom - ever existed.

When you boil this crazy theory - and many other silly ones as well - down to the essence of it all, the next question is - who really cares? Even if there was an Oswald clone - or three or four - what does it matter?

If we are to believe there was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, there is plenty of solid evidence elsewhere to prove the conspiracy. One is even what Oswald - or was it his clone (LOL) - knew he was being framed when he was caught saying in front of reporters that he was a patsy. You can take it to the bank that he knew, from the time he was dragged from the theater kicking and screaming until he says the word "patsy" that it had dawned on him that the jig was up.

Yet, the silliness continues. You'd think the people who planned this murder out had superhuman powers when they:

 - Had the assassin's clone running around 10 whole years before the assassination;
 - Had the ability to alter every single piece of film and photo evidence taken during the murder;
 - Had a Jack Ruby impostor murder Oswald A or B in the Dallas parking garage;
 - Faked photos of the above when they removed a hanging microphone in some photos but not in others;
 - Had an assassination headquarters in the basement of Ruby (or *his* clone's) nightclub;
 - Whisked Kennedy's body from the back of Air Force One to perform pre-autopsy surgery on his body;
 - But these same supermen, when putting his body back into the coffin, put him in a different body bag (oops)

People who fall for this xxxx have no ability to distinguish truth from fiction and silliness. Not to bring up today's toxic political environment, but it's like "researchers" here will believe *anything* you tell them without batting an eyelash.
 

This guy might agree with you..

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Posted December 12, 2010

No one has mentioned any evidence yet in this thread,I thought for sure that I was going to read all about it in this thread but apparently a definition of the word evidence is in order. 

The most compelling circumstance for a conspiracy is that there seems to be too much evidence against Oswald, so I could see where one may start to doubt that all that evidence could be pointing that clearly to one person but on the other hand I suppose it could if he did it and knew that he was going to be caught. He was really sloppy about this whole thing and left a ton of evidence, this is not a tough case to crack if you are willing to accept the truth about it but I suppose that dreaming up sinister assassiantion plots and theories with nothing to support them can be quite a nice hobby if you like that kind of stuff.

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[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Michael Walton said:

Wow, so now Sandy Larsen is a language expert.  Ironically, he says that kids learn languages faster than adults, then contradicts himself when he asks how long does it take a kid to learn Dickens? As if comparing that apple with an orange will prove...what?

 

That's the whole point einstein. Kids learn languages more quickly than adults do. It takes them a long time to read Dostoyevsky. We should, therefore, expect it to take even longer for an adult to do the same. Yet Oswald was reading at that level after only a couple of years.

How did Oswald do that?

 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Jim Hargrove]

50 minutes ago, Michael Walton said:

People who fall for this xxxx have no ability to distinguish truth from fiction and silliness. Not to bring up today's toxic political environment, but it's like "researchers" here will believe *anything* you tell them without batting an eyelash.

Mr. Walton, as always, demonstrates all kinds of anger and no actual EVIDENCE. He clearly knows little about one of the most enduring themes among Warren Commission critics for more than half a century:

More than fifty years ago, Sylvia Meagher published her highly regarded book, Accessories After the Fact.  She had a whole section entitled “Two Oswalds.”

 

In The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald, Robert Groden has an entire chapter entitled “Too Many Oswalds.”

In his recent book JFK and the Unspeakable James Douglass devotes dozens of pages to evidence that was Oswald in two places at the same time, including on 11/22/63. He footnotes Harvey and Lee a number of times.  The book has been lauded by Oliver Stone, Mark Lane, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who called it "a very well-documented and convincing portrait... I urge all Americans to read this book and come to their own conclusions.”

None of this apparently means anything to Mr. Walton, who just seems want to let us know how angry and unhappy he is.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim writes:

<blockquote>Oswald learned to read, write and speak Russian in a matter of days while stationed in California.</blockquote>

Jim seems to be claiming that the only alternative to the 'Oswald was actually a non-existent Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee' fantasy is that Oswald learned Russian to a high level "in a matter of days". But he also writes:

<blockquote>you can learn to read and write Russian just like in the newspaper below, and you can do it in less than a month</blockquote>

Ah. Now we've gone from "in a matter of days" to "less than a month". We're getting warmer. Let's see what the actual timescale probably was:

- December 1958: Oswald arrives in Santa Ana, California.
- February 1959: Oswald takes the Russian test, and doesn't do very well ("his rating was 'poor' in all parts of the test" [Warrren Report, p.650; for details, see Hearings, vol.8, p.307: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=315 ]).
- Summer 1959: Oswald spends an evening with Rosaleen Quinn, who "thought Oswald spoke the language well for someone who had not attended a formal course in the language" (CE 2015, p.8).

I'm not aware of exactly when Oswald met Quinn, who specified only "the summer of 1959", but it must have been several months after he took the Russian test. The period from his arrival in California to the earliest evidence of something like fluency is not in fact "a matter of days", or "less than a month", but at least half a year.

How good Oswald's spoken Russian was when he met Quinn is uncertain, but it was clearly nowhere near that of a native speaker, since we know that even three or four years later he was still far below that level: Marina was "constantly correcting" Oswald's spoken Russian, according to George de Mohrenschildt.

As I pointed out earlier, there is nothing magical about Oswald's knowledge of Russian.  Perhaps he had a better-than-average aptitude for learning languages, but all the evidence is consistent with the unremarkable conclusion that he was a native speaker of English who acquired Russian gradually, beginning in his teens, continuing in his early twenties while living in the Soviet Union, and never approaching the level of a native speaker of Russian.

Casual readers may not be aware that the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory requires the Oswald who defected to the Soviet Union to have been indistinguishable from a native speaker of Russian. This is from page 10 of the cult's holy book:

<blockquote>One of the requirements for infiltrating an agent into a foreign country is that he/she have an intimate knowledge of the local language. ... And there is little point in sending an American agent, taught in the United States to speak a Slavic or Oriental language, to infiltrate these countries because they would speak with an accent. One way to avoid the problems of physical appearance and accent is to recruit local residents or former residents living abroad.</blockquote>

For the theory to be correct, Oswald must have deliberately flunked his Russian test, and he must have deliberately pretended over several years to speak Russian at a level far below his actual level. And let's not forget that he spoke Russian with a non-native accent, which also must have been a conscious deception, carried on for several years.

The attentive reader will have noticed that the fact that Oswald spoke Russian with an accent contradicts the basic premise of the theory. The whole point of the 'Oswald project' was to create an agent who didn't speak Russian with an accent. Oswald was such an agent. He was not supposed to speak Russian with an accent, but he did. So much for the theory.

Now that we have established that there is no good reason to even suspect that Oswald might have been a Hungarian refugee, I wonder what Jim has got to say in reply to Mathias's questions:

<blockquote>At what age did Harvey leave Hungary according to your theory? How long could he have learned Russian if he started in grade 5?</blockquote>

Will he claim that the hypothetical Hungarian refugee child did indeed learn two foreign languages, both of them entirely unrelated to his native language, to a very high level in just two years? Or will he admit that the 12-year-old Oswald in New York cannot possibly have been a Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee?
 

[Jim Hargrove]

21 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:

Jim,

we may disagree about where and when Oswald learned Russian (and about the number of Oswalds! ). But you certainly have a point here. The official story about how Oswald managed to get a passing grade on his Marine Corps test is not believable, if you and Sandy are right and he only had a few months to prepare himself. If I may quote myself:

Of course I could be wrong - the target level may have been much lower and/or Oswald maybe have been a genius. But I think all in all this is a pretty educated guess.

 

By the way, did Oswald speak Spanish or not? The evidence seems to be contradictory.

 

Mathias,

I know of no example of evidence suggesting Oswald spoke Russian before his arrival in California.  Do you?  Given the WC's claim of his arrival date from Japan, that gave him just a single month to learn Russian well enough to get more questions right than wrong on a Russian exam supposedly testing his reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.  It's ridiculous.

The Spanish issue is interesting, but you probably won't like my answer (g).

The evidence seems to show that Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald spoke no Spanish, but American-born Lee Oswald did—at least a little.  The evidence for Lee Oswald’s Spanish speaking ability comes largely from the Mexico City affair, which can be debated endlessly, and from Laura Kittrell at the Texas Employment Office, who met both Oswalds and wrote endlessly about her encounters, which she concluded involved someone deliberately impersonating—in name and appearance--the real Oswald (she thought Harvey was the real Oswald). The are a few other incidents that I’m probably forgetting.  Did you have any others in mind?

[Mathias Baumann]

4 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Mathias,

I know of no example of evidence suggesting Oswald spoke Russian before his arrival in California.  Do you?  Given the WC's claim of his arrival date from Japan, that gave him just a single month to learn Russian well enough to get more questions right than wrong on a Russian exam supposedly testing his reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.  It's ridiculous.

The Spanish issue is interesting, but you probably won't like my answer (g).

The evidence seems to show that Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald spoke no Spanish, but American-born Lee Oswald did—at least a little.  The evidence for Lee Oswald’s Spanish speaking ability comes largely from the Mexico City affair, which can be debated endlessly, and from Laura Kittrell at the Texas Employment Office, who met both Oswalds and wrote endlessly about her encounters, which she concluded involved someone deliberately impersonating—in name and appearance--the real Oswald (she thought Harvey was the real Oswald). The are a few other incidents that I’m probably forgetting.  Did you have any others in mind?

Jim, I was  specifically refering to Nelson Delgado's claim that he'd taught Oswald Spanish. He says Oswald's Spanish was good enough they were able to discuss Marxism. I also remember reading about several instances when witnesses heard him speak Spanish in Robert Blakey's book. I think his landlady heard him talk Spanish over the phone.

[Michael Walton]

More than fifty years ago, Sylvia Meagher published her ...

OMG! Oh, this is outstanding, Jim. You've just hit it out of the park by confirming exactly what I said above. You're now taking what Sylvia Meagher wrote and projecting it onto Armstrong's clone fairy tale.

Did you really think you'd be able to sneak this by knowledgable readers on this forum? Of course Sylvia said there were "doubles" but not ones running around as kids way back in 1953, not ones with a unibrowed and happy Mom.

I, like she and other serious researchers, believe that there were impostors (NOT clones) running around in mid-63 doing stuff memorable (like the car dealership incident) so that when 11/22 came around, people would say, "Oh, yeah...I vaguely remember that guy [LHO] at such and such time doing something outrageous." There is too much evidence to prove otherwise that the goal was to make Oswald look like a crazed Communist.

But Sylvia did NOT mean that there was a Hungarian kid who looked exactly like the US born Lee Oswald who was found and then living a parallel life like LHO.

Jesus - this takes the cake even for you, Jim.

[Jim Hargrove]

Ahh, I understand why you're so angry and unhappy Michael.

We both know there were two Oswalds running around, we just can't agree on for how long.  

[Jim Hargrove]

2 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:

Jim, I was  specifically refering to Nelson Delgado's claim that he'd taught Oswald Spanish. He says Oswald's Spanish was good enough they were able to discuss Marxism. I also remember reading about several instances when witnesses heard him speak Spanish in Robert Blakey's book. I think his landlady heard him talk Spanish over the phone.

I never put much significance into it, Mathias.  Seems to me that Liebeler was far more interested in talking about Oswald’s Spanish than his Russian, for the obvious reasons, even though Delgado said that Oswald at least seemed to be far more proficient in Russian than Spanish.  Delgado was one of the many California-based marines who saw Oswald reading Russian newspapers and literature and speaking Russian.  Funny no one saw that in Japan, where the other Oswald was stationed longer.

Delgado met and became friends with the Russian-speaking Oswald at MACS-9 in Santa Ana in October 1958, while the other Oswald was still in Japan, then en route to the mainland, and then on leave in Fort Worth, only later reporting briefly to a nearby base at El Toro on, according to the Warren Commission December 22 (later corrected to December 19.)  If you read Delgado’s testimony and keep that Dec 19/22 alleged arrival date in mind, you’ll see one of thousands of clear differentiations between the two Oswalds.  The Warren Commission apparently didn’t know that the nearby bases at Santa Ana and El Toro were, in fact, two different facilities.
 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

As Michael has pointed out, Jim has no justification for citing Sylvia Meagher in support of his Oswald doppelgänger fantasy. It is a disgraceful tactic.

Meagher was, and remains, one of the most rational critics of the lone-nut theory. Jim must know that she never suggested such a far-fetched explanation for the incongruous sightings of Oswald. Take a close look at the passage Jim quotes, in which Meagher notes four possible solutions:

<blockquote>In each case, the story was susceptible to one of several possible explanations. (1) The alleged Oswald was the real Oswald, despite apparently contradictory evidence to the contrary. (2) It was a case of mistaken identity in which the witness had been misled by a physical resemblance to Oswald. (3) It was a fabrication. (4) It was a case of deliberate impersonation.</blockquote>

Four perfectly credible explanations, none of which requires Oswald to have had a Russian-speaking clone from the age of 12. On the subject of which, Jim has not yet answered Mathias's questions:

<blockquote>At what age did Harvey leave Hungary according to your theory? How long could he have learned Russian if he started in grade 5?</blockquote>

Mathias provided credible evidence that Jim's hypothetical Hungarian refugee child would have had just two years in which to reach the level of a native speaker in two foreign languages, Russian and English, each of which is completely unrelated to the boy's native Hungarian. It could not have happened. The 12-year-old Oswald in New York cannot have been a Hungarian refugee. Will Jim admit this, or is he planning to leave it for a while, and then bring up the Hungarian refugee story again, hoping that everyone will have forgotten that it has been debunked?

[Michael Walton]

Jim I'm  as happy as can be in this pretty xxxxty world  we live in.

As for anger you  can  call  it  whatever  you want. But it's  mainly  frustration  at how you  and  others  spread falsehoods  all in the  name  of Kennedy's  memory. I  think  what  you  and  others like  you  do  is disgraceful.

[Sandy Larsen]

38 minutes ago, Michael Walton said:

I  think  what  you  and  others like  you  do  is disgraceful.

Jim,

Keep up the good work.