Albert Schweitzer College

[Mervyn Hagger]

4 hours ago, B. A. Copeland said:

This, for me, has been one of the biggest questions or thoughts I have as well Jason. I’ve thought about this many, many times and the only way I could justify it is perhaps his being “off the books” and compartmentalized? Perhaps they (hypothetical handlers) didn’t even want to  hint at his defection being false? I suppose it would make sense of LHO was primarily going to the USSR primarily on his own with a bit of help in the background but then again, I’m with Bagley, Roman and other evidence that strongly suggest LHO was being helped. Hell Lee told Snyder that “they told me...” I have never definitely learned who “they” are...boy would I ever love to know....

Just speculation city unfortunately but fun to do from time to time lol.

I agree with your interpretation B.A., because it is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from this chain of events.

The record points to a very concerned mother expecting her son to be at college in Switzerland, because he failed to show up. So where was he? The trail leads to UK Immigration and at that point LHO is sticking to the original story with a side bar excursion for a week in England, before going on to Switzerland and college. Someone had the power to change that itinerary and get LHO to go along with it.

The mistake starts when CIA or "Americans" or British or anything else is considered as one entity without division. It's the foundation of racial and religious bigotry, because human beings don't walk in lock step unless they are being forced to do so under threat of physical harm.

[B. A. Copeland]

5 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

I agree with your interpretation B.A., because it is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from this chain of events.

The record points to a very concerned mother expecting her son to be at college in Switzerland, because he failed to show up. So where was he? The trail leads to UK Immigration and at that point LHO is sticking to the original story with a side bar excursion for a week in England, before going on to Switzerland and college. Someone had the power to change that itinerary and get LHO to go along with it.

The mistake starts when CIA or "Americans" or British or anything else is considered as one entity without division. It's the foundation of racial and religious bigotry, because human beings don't walk in lock step unless they are being forced to do so under threat of physical harm.

Couldn't agree more, Mervyn.

[Robert Harper]

11 hours ago, B. A. Copeland said:

This, for me, has been one of the biggest questions or thoughts I have as well Jason.

Thanks for these thoughts. The idea that they had to "cover his defection" made the most sense; and a "dishonorable" discharge would have been restrictive of his ability to work among other things. I'm guessing that an "undesirable" discharge can cover a variety of acts that might include leaving too early on a promise, or shown to have given authorities a false account of his mother's injury. I haven't been convinced that he faked being ticked off as part of his job;  though going to see Dana Andrews for help might have been a chore given. I tend towards he didn't like that they did that; that that wasn't part of the deal.

[Mervyn Hagger]

On ‎5‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 8:27 AM, Jason Ward said:

 I am more comfortable with agreeing that the evidence suggests Oswald fully planned on school in Switzerland until some time after arriving in Southampton.  I do ask why the US government would piss Oswald off by retroactively downgrading his discharge status to UNDESIRABLE if the government is in some way involved in his defection?    

Jason, I can see from your writings that you detest speculation as being 50 years worth of wasted effort.

I agree with you one hundred percent. (Never could understand the thousand, etc., percenters!)

Refusing to swallow speculation is the thing that brought me here when I was already following a ship investigation. It also prised out of the woodwork factual answers that others did not like because they did not support their speculation.

This brings me to your comment.

Logic says, and you seem to agree with the logic approach to looking for supporting facts, and not speculative ideas, that by coupling your first line with your second line, you are blocking conclusive thoughts about your first line.

You state that "....Oswald fully planned on school in Switzerland until some time after arriving in Southampton", well that says it all. Because if your conclusion is true, then it should not be followed by your second statement in the form of a question. It is akin to Splke Millgan's verse "String is strong but rope is thicker, therefore the higher the fewer." String may be strong and rope may be thicker (than string), but height and quantity are unrelated factors in conclusion. That is why he called it "Silly Verse for Kids."

However, that being stated, I agree with both of your statements.

But, your first statement does beg the question about what happened to LHO's plans between Southampton and Heathrow, because narrowing it down, that is what you are wondering about.

That change of plans requires a cause to bring about effect.

It has to be a powerful cause because LHO's plans have been consistent up until this point. There is no ambiguity. He is going to college in Switzerland.

So even if we don't speculate and say, "OK, he decided to take a detour on his way to Switzerland by sightseeing in England for a week", then no sooner had his tourist adventure begun in England after exiting Immigration at Southampton, than some very powerful cause came into his life that effected an immediate change of plan.

Why 'immediate'?

He had only just left Immigration at Southampton and he had only just spelled out his itinerary which remained unchanged to that point in time.

But look at the time from that follows: He is shortly off to Heathrow Airport and in those days that was not as easy as it is today, and neither is it a step around the corner from Southampton to Heathrow.

Something sent him to Heathrow, and not only that, but where he was very open and clear about his plans, now they are secretive and mysterious.

Next, somehow or other, this young man of limited funds checks into an expensive hotel in Helsinki, Finland, and then moves to an equally expensive hotel in Helsinki, Finland.

Suddenly there is no mention of Switzerland or college.

His mother becomes worried: because her son has vanished!

Now let's look at your second sentence which is in the form of a question: "I do ask why the US government would piss Oswald off by retroactively downgrading his discharge status to UNDESIRABLE if the government is in some way involved in his defection?"

Actually, you asked a question: "I do ask why the US government would piss Oswald off by retroactively downgrading his discharge status to UNDESIRABLE...?" and then you add a speculative conclusion: "....if the government is in some way involved in his defection?" Those are two questions (a) and (b) joined together.

The answer to question (a) is perhaps answered by an amendment to your question (b), so that it could read:

"I do ask why the US government would piss Oswald off by retroactively downgrading his discharge status to UNDESIRABLE? (Perhaps "....the government is in some way involved in his defection?"

If that amendment is true, then is answers your first statement: "I am more comfortable with agreeing that the evidence suggests Oswald fully planned on school in Switzerland until some time after arriving in Southampton."

However, I would (again) add my oft-repeated caveat, so that your response could read:

""I do ask why the US government would piss Oswald off by retroactively downgrading his discharge status to UNDESIRABLE? (Perhaps "....(a faction within) government is in some way involved in his defection?"

Now, is that a faction working with MI6 (British equivalent of CIA; MI5 is equivalent of FBI) responsible?

Or is this a some sort of joint undertaking between a faction within MI6 working with a faction within CIA?

Whatever it is, you seem to have reached a conclusion that someone representing something caused LHO to drop what he was intending to do and immediately do something else.

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by Mervyn Hagger

[Jason Ward]

8 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

Jason, I can see from your writings that you detest speculation as being 50 years worth of wasted effort.

I agree with you one hundred percent. (Never could understand the thousand, etc., percenters!)

David Josephs is one of the very few friends here who makes every effort to show us the evidence he uses to support CIA-centric explanations.  If everyone who speculated about the CIA were as dedicated as he is to staying close to the evidence, I think our understanding would be in a much better place.   

Most of the others I see who invoke the CIA begin diverging farther and farther from the evidence so much that they even drift into the absurd areas of classical fallacies in logic.  They start arguing that because so many people believe in the CIA explanation, this is evidence that the CIA explanation is true.   They argue that because so-and-so believes in the CIA explanation, this is evidence the CIA explanation is true.   There is something about the CIA as an explanation that causes researchers or "researchers" to depart from merely rational (and certainly academic or legal) standards of evidence, persuasion, and logic.   

So I choose to avoid the CIA - there's enough people working on that already.   

8 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

Whatever it is, you seem to have reached a conclusion that someone representing something caused LHO to drop what he was intending to do and immediately do something else.

Ehhhhh....maybe.

If you take Oswald as a 19 y.o. ne'er-do-well with a modest education, modest bank account, and the product of precarious single motherhood in the 1940s/1950s, I think many of us would see him differently if we excluded everything else we "know" about him.

Can we try to take Oswald as he was in 1959 - an anonymous teenager?

Can we try not looking as Oswald as a figure in history, the center of all conspiracy theories, a man who helped change history?

I think everything we "know" and study about Oswald is too often taken in terms of what happens in 1963.   It becomes the defining point in our understanding and all parts of Oswald before then are made to explain and enhance his famous day in 1963. 

Can we just forget all that and look at him as an insecure 19 y.o. boy in 1959, just to see where that leads?

 

 

Jason

[James DiEugenio]

On May 11, 2018 at 3:55 AM, B. A. Copeland said:

This, for me, has been one of the biggest questions or thoughts I have as well Jason. I’ve thought about this many, many times and the only way I could justify it is perhaps his being “off the books” and compartmentalized? Perhaps they (hypothetical handlers) didn’t even want to  hint at his defection being false? I suppose it would make sense of LHO was primarily going to the USSR primarily on his own with a bit of help in the background but then again, I’m with Bagley, Roman and other evidence that strongly suggest LHO was being helped. Hell Lee told Snyder that “they told me...” I have never definitely learned who “they” are...boy would I ever love to know....

Just speculation city unfortunately but fun to do from time to time lol.

Because if they did not, it would be what poker players call a "tell".

Edited May 12, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Mervyn Hagger]

Check out this document ... http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/pdf/WH16_CE_229.pdf

Now why did the college write to LHO on March 22, 1960?

That is the year following his strange departure from Heathrow Airport in London, to who knows where? He arrived in Helskinki.

But that was in 1959, the year BEFORE this letter was written. See the attached envelope for proof of posting!

Also note the address: It was sent to his Marine Base in Santa Anna, California - and they sent it on to his Fort Worth address!

That is when his mother got suspicious and began asking her own questions.

Mervyn

 

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by Mervyn Hagger

[Tom Hume]

That’s very strange, Mervyn. I have trouble reading the date on the envelope, but it’s not a matter of the 1960 date on the letter being a mistake, because the letter makes reference to the first lecture taking place on Tuesday, April 19, which is consistent with 1960, but not 1959 (April 19 was a Sunday in 1959). Puzzling.

 

Edited May 13, 2018 by Tom Hume

[Mervyn Hagger]

8 hours ago, Tom Hume said:

That’s very strange, Mervyn. I have trouble reading the date on the envelope, but it’s not a matter of the 1960 date on the letter being a mistake, because the letter makes reference to the first lecture taking place on Tuesday, April 19, which is consistent with 1960, but not 1959 (April 19 was a Sunday in 1959). Puzzling.

 

Hi Tom. If this letter is genuine, and no one has suggested that it is a fake, then it appears to be a consistent reminder that LHO was going to school in Switzerland, and everyone excepted that as a fact - including the school which had a very prestigious U.S. connection. See: http://coverthistory.blogspot.co.uk/2005/07/oswald-and-albert-schweitzer-college.html

Again and again I come back to the time that LHO left UK Immigration at Southampton - who LHO also told that he was going to college in Switzerland and his trip to the UK would last a week. Then something happened. Within hours he was at London Heathrow Airport getting his US Passport stamped. Where he went we do not know. The next thing we know for sure is that he has checked into a very expensive hotel in Helsinki, Finland.

Logic says that between Southampton and Heathrow something happened to Lee Harvey Oswald.

The question is: what was it?

Mervyn

 

[Mervyn Hagger]

Having discovered that a huge number of news and feature articles were written about Lee Harvey Oswald's actions following his exit from UK Immigration at Southampton, England, it is certainly beginning to look as though one of two things happened:

1) Lee Harvey Oswald was confronted by someone who had tremendous threat value to himself. In other words, "you will do as I say, or else." Or else what? Maybe harm to his family members in Texas.

2) Lee Harvey Oswald vanished and someone else took his place.

In addition to his mother being shocked that he was not at school in Switzerland, his brother tried to contact LHO in Moscow via the U.S. Embassy. His Mom tried to bring in Jim Wright to figure out what was going on. By all accounts LHO was not a political person, and he quite clearly stated that he was not a communist. He did share ideas from Marx, but so did the church that he was associating with in the USA, and that church maintained a college he had made plans to attend in Switzerland.

That church was an amalgamation of two denominations - the Universalists and the Unitarians.

Neither would have found favor in Dallas, Texas during 1959, because that was the home of the first real mega-church conducted as an outreach of the Southern Baptists. Their ideological doctrine linked communism with Satanism (Billy Graham wrote that and used it as part of his title for a secular magazine article. Graham was also a member of the Dallas church.)

That was the Dallas church of Pastor Criswell were advocates of Pre-Millennial-ism.

That doctrine warned of a revived Roman Empire in the Bible. Its political head would be called 'The Beast', and its spiritual head 'The False Prophet'. This entity, possibly known as the United States of Europe,  would one day attack the USA and destroy it.

Then it would turn on a united USSR-China communist coalition and commence the final war culminating in the 'Battle (at) Armageddon'. This coming WWIII would necessitate the return of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem as King of kings and Lord of lords, and all war would then cease for one thousand years.

This doctrine of Pre-Millennial-ism has many variations on the same theme, and Herbert W. Armstrong (who certainly did not like the Southern Baptists), was a great advocate of this ideology which was broadcast for half an hour each day over stations such as KRLD-AM (50kW), in Dallas.

That is the climate to which Edwin Walker returned, and John Birch Society members would not find their political views out of step with Pre-Millennial beliefs.

However, Lee Harvey Oswald was not a party to any of this.

He was on the most liberal and all-inclusive side of religion, and the Universalist-Unitarians were also promoters of a pacifist approach to conflict.

Unfortunately those views don't seem to fit the description of the USSR, or the USA, and they certainly had no place in Dallas, Texas of 1959.

But pacifism is not a word that we now associate with Lee Harvey Oswald.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Mervyn Hagger

[David Josephs]

WCD321 is a 235 page chrono of Oswald starting Sept 1959 from HELMS.

(note. He mentions the BYP and the 2 newsletters as proof of pro-Communist views yet the 2 papers he is holding offer opposite views of the situation... the same person would not be reading both of those papers)

Anyway, he notes that Oswald mentions going to the UNIVERSITY OF TURKU in Finland... as well as A. Schweitzer as well as visit the countries in between as a tourist...  ALL IN 4 MONTHS?

And his locations were determined by...  the stamps on the passport, not any 1st hand knowledge... (p16)

 

I found a Thesis paper on the Life of A. Schweitzer... which included a list of letters, one with the following description:

Letter from Hans Casparis, founder of the Albert Schweitzer College in Churwalden, Switzerland, February 26, 1968.

Problem being, the school moved from CHURWALDEN in 1965....  the "FRIENDS" newsletter of Dec 1965 says they are trying to raise funds to move, while all the histories say they moved in Dec 1965...   ????

Yet nothing I have yet come across offers the address of this new location... and a look at the town itself shows very little looking like a "larger chateau from which to run the school"

I believe, that for us to figure out the significance of the planned all along ASC stopover which was just dropped once he hits England.... and he came to send a Unitarian Reverend in RI his application...

Well...  the top of the ASC application tells the sender to make 2 copies, etc...  one has to wonder where OSWALD gets this application.... while he is still in the MARINES in March 1959... in Southern CA...

Where do you suppose that application came from?

 

 

 

 

 

[Mervyn Hagger]

David, this is too confusing for me. I am not sure what you are suggesting. By the way the 'Friends' referred to are Friends of the College, not the Society of Friends (Quakers). But what exactly is the point you are trying to make?

[David Josephs]

44 minutes ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

David, this is too confusing for me. I am not sure what you are suggesting. By the way the 'Friends' referred to are Friends of the College, not the Society of Friends (Quakers). But what exactly is the point you are trying to make?

I never said that FRIENDS were related to Quakers... you did.

I was trying to get you to see that your limited exposure to the JFK evidence precludes you from coming to a broader conclusion than you do...  the FRIENDS incorporated in NYC was to help funnel money and students to the college...

Right...    (sarcasm)

that this trip had nothing to do with religion.  It had to do with spy-craft.  Sun Tzu - all war is deception

Oswald was not coerced into pretending to defect... after REALLY wanting to go to ASC to study philosophy...  that is a conclusion you are proposing based on extremely limited JFK exposure...

Just go see for yourself - and if you can answer the few questions posed, even better...

i.e.  Show me the proof Oswald knew he was accepted to the school...  

 

 

 

Edited May 14, 2018 by David Josephs

[B. A. Copeland]

On 5/12/2018 at 10:42 AM, James DiEugenio said:

Because if they did not, it would be what poker players call a "tell".

I'm with you there Jim.

On 5/11/2018 at 3:54 PM, Robert Harper said:

Thanks for these thoughts. The idea that they had to "cover his defection" made the most sense; and a "dishonorable" discharge would have been restrictive of his ability to work among other things. I'm guessing that an "undesirable" discharge can cover a variety of acts that might include leaving too early on a promise, or shown to have given authorities a false account of his mother's injury. I haven't been convinced that he faked being ticked off as part of his job;  though going to see Dana Andrews for help might have been a chore given. I tend towards he didn't like that they did that; that that wasn't part of the deal.

I tend to lean towards that as well for sure.

Edited May 14, 2018 by B. A. Copeland

[David Josephs]

So it turns out that our man Josepf Dutkanicz and Vladimir Sloboda - who both defected in the summer after Oswald, 1960, were both Military intelligence....  both ACSI (now where have we seen that before Steve Thomas?)

but please don't jump to any conclusions...  like Army Intel was somehow involved in getting Oswald to Russia....

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96584#relPageId=3&tab=page