Yet another Harvey & Lee factoid that doesn't withstand scrutiny?

[W. Tracy Parnell]

3 hours ago, John Butler said:

Payette and Parnell deny the existence of two people who have come to be known as Lee Oswald and Harvey Oswald.  It is fairly easy based on readily available evidence to show that there was a Harvey and Lee set based upon the person known as Lee Harvey Oswald.

This article explains my position in a succinct way:

 http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-truth-about-harvey-lee.html

For those who don't want to take the time to read it you have:

1. A mastoidectomy found on "Harvey" that "Lee" was supposed to have (1981 exhumation).

2. An examination in Russia of "Harvey" also revealed the mastoid scar.

3. HSCA handwriting analysis as applied to H&L (link at above article).

4. HSCA photo analysis which shows photos of "Lee" and "Harvey" to be the same person.

It should be noted that while we have had several amateur dental and photo experts try to counter the above, John Armstrong himself has never offered an explanation for any of it and simply ignores it. Of course, there are probably hundreds of little things that when added together with the above evidence are enough to convince most researchers. In fact, an informal poll here at EF (where CTs dominate) showed that the majority do not believe the H&L theory although they admire Armstrong's work.

I realized some time ago that you can't convince everyone but I believe the theory has been marginalized and I have moved on to other areas.

Edited August 16, 2019 by W. Tracy Parnell

[Lawrence Schnapf]

Lance- what's your take on Armstrong's analysis of the postal franking mark on the envelope that is alleged to have contained the money order for the rifle. Armstrong believes the mark represents where the envelope is deposited as opposed to the general PO office where mail is processed before being mailed out-of-town. Another question is how banks processed postal money orders in 1963. My research so far suggests they may have been handled like cash but i'm not finished with my research.  

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

Lance- what's your take on Armstrong's analysis of the postal franking mark on the envelope that is alleged to have contained the money order for the rifle. Armstrong believes the mark represents where the envelope is deposited as opposed to the general PO office where mail is processed before being mailed out-of-town. Another question is how banks processed postal money orders in 1963. My research so far suggests they may have been handled like cash but i'm not finished with my research.  

I will cheerfully plead Total Ignorance but will look into the franking mark.  I dived into the "postal money order mystery" to the point of challenging my sanity.  I was the one who discovered that the number across the top of the Klein's money order is a File Locator Number which shows that the money order was fully processed through the Federal Reserve System and, at the end of that processing, was placed by the Treasury Department in the Federal Records Center for the requisite retention period (in case there were a controversy and the Postal Service needed the original money order for evidentiary purposes).  The File Locator Number was a relatively recent innovation that allowed a money order to be quickly retrieved (as the Klein's money order was).

The File Locator Number really put the "postal money order mystery" to bed insofar as I was concerned, but of course not insofar as my opponents were concerned.  Thus, I beat the living hell out of the secondary issue as to whether the postal money order "should" have had endorsements on the back.  I produced what I thought was an informed and logical explanation as to why a postal order that was deposited for payment with a Federal Reserve member bank, sent to a Federal Reserve regional bank and then to the Treasury Department as agent for the Postal Service - as this one was - would not have endorsements on the back (i.e., because it had never been outside the Federal Reserve system, with the Federal Reserve having contracted to act as collection and payment agent for the Postal Service).  This would be in contrast to one that was deposited with a non-member bank and sent to a clearinghouse bank before it entered the Federal Reserve system.

But despite many hours of trying I could never get a definitive answer from documents or attempted contacts.  I bowed out of the matter when Sandy decided he was a de facto lawyer who knew how to interpret statutes, regulations and case law better than a real lawyer who had been practicing for 35 years (me).  If you revisit my posts on that topic (if you can stand it), you will see that I truly beat it to death and beyond.  But I will take a look at the franking issue.

____________________________________________________________________________

In my effort to assist my opponents on the "two half bills" issue (no, really, I'm actually interested in how these things evolve), I have now dived into this to the point that I am DONE.  Despite trying about 300 different Google searches, the only additional thing I have found is this from Lamar Waldron's Legacy of Secrecy:

At the time, Oswald had half of a torn box top in his pocket [WRONG], and was perhaps looking for someone with the other half.  (Dollar bills torn in half were later found in his rooming house, indicating Oswald had used that technique before.  The CIA file of Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime confirms that the CIA  also used this technique for Artime during AMWORLD in 1963.)53

53.  CIA 104-10240-10337, 7-9-63 memo from Henry D. Hecksher.

So here we see that Waldron (1) invents the notion that Oswald had a "torn box top" in his pocket despite the complete absence of any evidentiary basis for the Cox's lid being torn; (2) states that dollar bills torn in half were found in the rooming house; (3) uses #(2) to speculate that Oswald "had used that technique before"; and (4) footnotes #(1)-(3) with nothing but a reference to a CIA memorandum referring to the use of a torn dollar bill by AMBIDDY-1 (the same one that Armstrong uses to support his theory).

Voila, through error and raw speculation Oswald becomes a CIA guy on a mysterious mission, rather than a terrified assassin looking for someplace, anyplace, to hide and gather his wits.  And so it goes.  (I hate to keep interjecting common sense and logic, but if I were a CIA operative with $13.87 in my pocket on a mission to meet my contact inside the Texas Theater, I probably would have paid the 25 cents to get in, as opposed to risking the entire mission by slipping in behind Julia Postal.  Oswald really was cheap, wasn't he?  Or was that part of The Plan - "Sneak in without paying, it'll be way more exciting for everyone"?)

[David Von Pein]

3 hours ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

...the postal franking mark on the envelope...

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2012/08/The Postmark On Commission Exhibit 773

 

Lawrence Schnapf said:

...the money order...

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2015/10/The "Hidell" Money Order  <----- (Warning: Pack a lunch [and maybe dinner too] if you want to read this whole webpage.)

Edited August 16, 2019 by David Von Pein

[Guest]

If I my plumber or doctor deposits a bill at the Post Office in my tiny Arizona town, addressed to my home 1/2-mile away, the only postmark it will have is Phoenix - 200 miles away!  I always find it humorous, but I guess this is somehow efficient for the Postal Service.  Ditto for UPS and FedEx - your overnight package is going to their central processing facility even if the facility is 2000 miles away and you are sending the package to someone 125 miles away.

[Jim Hargrove]

So, let me get this straight....

“Lee Harvey Oswald,” half of what CIA accountant James Wilcott called the “Oswald project,” who by his behavior was clearly looking for a “contact” at the Texas Theater (by sitting right next to multiple theater patrons), had on his person a note about two torn-in-half dollar bills, or, more likely, two actual torn in half dollar bills--as listed in the Dallas JFK archives right next to a list of possessions on his person when he was in Dallas Police custody.

Or all this was just an Amazing Coincidence®?

Was it also an Amazing Coincidence that the Agency, just a few months earlier, documented a similar program involving torn-in-half dollar bills in effect for Manuel (AMBIDDY-1) Airtime?

Or, are we to believe that the Dallas Police failed to find the torn dollar bill note in Agent Oswald’s tiny room until 11/23/1963?

It’s easy to understand why the list of patrons from the Texas Theater had to disappear.  Oswald’s odd behavior of sitting right next to one patron and then moving to another and then another clearly suggested he was looking for a contact.  The fact that he created a scene doing so meant the probably more than one patron would have noticed that he was watching events on screen far too early to have killed Tippit or to be seen by Brewer in front of the shoe store.

As to the torn bills note Mr. Payette wants us to forget about?  Why isn’t it in evidence at the National Archives?  Why is it just sitting in a box in Dallas?  My suspicion is that it, like the police reports indicating “Oswald” was arrested in the balcony, were preserved because a couple of Dallas cops got tired of being played by Hoover and the FBI.  Just as they refused to alter their records about a certain camera when the FBI tried to call it a light meter.

Do we seriously believe Agent Oswald didn’t make use of CIA programs? See my next post (below) about Agent Oswald.  Do we seriously believe the Agency didn't have an Oswald Project?

[Jim Hargrove]

 

20 Facts Indicating the Oswald Project Was Run by the CIA

1. CIA accountant James Wilcott testified that he made payments to an encrypted account for “Oswald or the Oswald Project.”  Contemporaneous HSCA notes indicate Wilcott told staffers, but wasn't allowed to say in Executive session, that the cryptonym for the CIA's "Oswald Project" was RX-ZIM.

2. A 1978 CIA memo indicates that a CIA operations officer “had run an agent into the USSR, that man having met a Russian girl and eventually marrying her,” a case very similar to Oswald’s and clearly indicating that the Agency ran a “false defector” program in the 1950s.

3. Robert Webster and LHO "defected" a few months apart in 1959, both tried to "defect" on a Saturday, both possessed "sensitive" information of possible value to the Russians, both were befriended by Marina Prusakova, and both returned to the United States in the spring of 1962.

4. Richard Sprague, Richard Schweiker, and CIA agents Donald Norton and Joseph Newbrough all said LHO was associated with the CIA. 

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

6. Kenneth Porter, employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, left his family to marry (and probably monitor) Marina Oswald after LHO’s death.

7. George Joannides, case officer and paymaster for DRE (which LHO had attempted to infiltrate) was put in charge of lying to the HSCA and never told them of his relationship to DRE.

8. For his achievements, Joannides was given a medal by the CIA.

9. 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.

10. Oswald’s lengthy “Lives of Russian Workers” essay reads like a pretty good intelligence report.

11. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots.

12. Oswald owned an expensive Minox spy camera, which the FBI tried to make disappear.

13. Even the official cover story of the radar operator near American U-2 planes defecting to Russia, saying he would give away all his secrets, and returning home without penalty smells like a spy story.

14. CIA's Richard Case Nagell clearly knew about the plot to assassinate JFK and LHO’s relation to it, and he said that the CIA and the FBI ignored his warnings.

15. LHO always seemed poor as a church mouse, until it was time to go “on assignment.”  For his Russian adventure, we’re to believe he saved all the money he needed for first class European hotels and private tour guides in Moscow from the non-convertible USMC script he saved. In the summer of 1963, he once again seemed to have enough money to travel abroad to Communist nations.

16. To this day, the CIA claims it never interacted with Oswald, that it didn’t even bother debriefing him after the “defection.” What utter bs….

17. After he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, bragging to U.S. embassy personnel in Moscow that he would tell the Russians everything he knew about U.S. military secrets, he returns to the U.S. without punishment and is then in 1963 given the OK to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union again!

18. Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by JFK, and the Warren Commission clearly wanted the truth hidden from the public to protect sources and methods of intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Earl Warren said, “Full disclosure was not possible for reasons of national security.”

19. CIA's Ann Egerter, who worked for J.J. Angleton's Counterintelligence Special Interest Group (CI/SIG), opened a "201" file on Oswald on December 9, 1960.  Egerter testified to the HSCA: "We were charged with the investigation of Agency personnel....”  When asked if the purpose was to "investigate Agency employees," she answered, "That is correct."  When asked, "Would there be any other reason for opening up a file?" she answered, "No, I can't think of one."

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.  The Agency, as the Kennedy Administration warned, wanted JFK dead! 

Please go ahead and deny this!

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

As to the torn bills note Mr. Payette wants us to forget about?  Why isn’t it in evidence at the National Archives?  Why is it just sitting in a box in Dallas?

Jim, I understand and appreciate the level of your devotion to Harvey and Lee.  I'm not questioning your intelligence, sanity or good faith.  Many highly educated, intelligent and sane people believe things that I find completely absurd - Scientology, for example.  This is why I find the psychology and dynamics of conspiracy communities and internet forums fascinating.  Why do you, David Josephs, William Niederhut, Jim DiEugenio and others regard as Truth things that I and others regard as completely and self-evidently goofy - and vice versa?

My point with threads such as this is that the level of your devotion really does (I believe) blind you to the flaws in your evidence and reasoning.  In my quest for Truth over the past 60+ years - meaning my quest for metaphysical and ontological Truth, not the minor-league truth of something like the JFK assassination - one thing I've really tried to do is to stay self-critical and to insist that my beliefs be grounded in logic, common sense and the best available evidence, that they not be driven by emotion or wishful thinking.  To paint with a broad brush, I don't see this sort of self-critical approach in the conspiracy communities.  They very much resemble fundamentalist religious communities.

The less I knew about the assassination, the more inclined I was to see vast and dark conspiracies.  For many years - 30, at least - all I really knew about the assassination was from conspiracy-oriented sources - Lifton, Groden, Lane, Livingston and all the rest.  Even five or six years ago, I was truly a rabid conspiracy theorist.  I had no interest at all in the Warren Report or any Lone Nut perspective.  I had no framework to see how one-sided, flawed and deceptive these sources were.  As I dived deeper, especially into the actual Lee Harvey Oswald and his actual life, the scales gradually fell from my eyes.  The more I know about the assassination, the more I am inclined to see that the Lone Assassin explanation is the one that best fits the facts and makes the most sense - simple as that.  I have absolutely no emotional investment in this explanation.

I don't want anyone to "forget" about the torn bills.  I want to see the EVIDENTIARY BASIS (if there is one) for the claims that Armstrong, Waldron, Simpich and others have made.  I have shown with little effort that some of those claims are false and misleading.  There is, at least so far, no evidentiary basis for believing that any torn bills ever existed - or, if they did, where they were found or what they really might mean.  It's all "castles in the air" - assumptions, speculation, inferences and connections woven out of NOTHING and presented as Truth.

On another forum where this same subject was discussed at length, the critic in my position kept saying over and over "You are ASSUMING what you are required to PROVE."  This is exactly the point.  I won't keep debating the issue because I'm clearly upsetting some people and I have no illusions of debating a Scientologist out of his devotion to Scientology.  No matter what I say, you are going to keep saying the same things.  And that's fine.  I've been trying to keep the discussion focused on this one issue and the evidentiary basis or lack thereof for this one issue, but when I can't get a substantive response beyond "Oh, yeah, well what about this?" then it's time to move on.  If you or someone else wants to show me that I'm wrong about this issue, then do it with evidence - and I'll gladly say "Well, there you go, those dollar bills really were in Oswald's wallet and that really is a genuine puzzle that demands an explanation."

But don't try to overwhelm me with Oswald's molars and the Oswald Project and all that sort of stuff, because the issue here is "What is the evidentiary basis for Armstrong's claim that two dollar bills torn in half were found in Lee Harvey Oswald's wallet when he was arrested and that the use of these bills to locate a contact in the Texas Theater is the most reasonable explanation?"  If the answer is "All we have is the handwritten note in the DPD collection and the inferences we draw from it," simply admit that fact.  My criticisms of that position will stand, and we'll simply agree to disagree.

[Steve Thomas]

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

 

20 Facts Indicating the Oswald Project Was Run by the CIA

2. A 1978 CIA memo indicates that a CIA operations officer “had run an agent into the USSR, that man having met a Russian girl and eventually marrying her,” a case very similar to Oswald’s and clearly indicating that the Agency ran a “false defector” program in the 1950s.

 

Jim,

 

I'd still like to know whose application for Soviet citizenship was denied in 1961.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=7986&relPageId=111&search=Dobrynin_December%2011,%201963

p. 111.

In that letter, Dobrynin lays out why the Soviet Government rejected the citizenship application of Harvey Lee Oswald.

Documents submitted by Dobrynin on May 5, 1964:

CE 985 pp. 404+

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135#relPageId=418&tab=page

There is an application for a non-citizen alien identity card, which was granted on January 4, 1960, 1961, and 1962, but no application for citizenship, and no correspondence from the Soviet Government denying such an application.

So whose application for citizenship was denied?

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Denny Zartman]

It always amazes me that any grown adult with even the most basic knowledge of the JFK assassination can conclude that Oswald acted alone, much less anyone who has studied the events in depth.

I suppose this endless tug of war between LN's and CT's is part of what makes this case endlessly fascinating to so many of us.

[Cory Santos]

Lance, all seriousness, your thoughts on the Raid Area 51 event?

[Guest]

Donald Norton.

Thanks to Malcolm Blunt.

[John Kozlowski]

1 hour ago, Bart Kamp said:

Donald Norton.

Thanks to Malcolm Blunt.

Are there any pics of him from around the time Mae Brussell and John Judge met him?

[Paul Baker]

On 8/17/2019 at 7:29 PM, Denny Zartman said:

It always amazes me that any grown adult with even the most basic knowledge of the JFK assassination can conclude that Oswald acted alone, much less anyone who has studied the events in depth.

This amazes you? Considering that:

• There is no credible, physical evidence that connects any suspect other than Lee Harvey Oswald to the assassination of JFK.
• There is not a single viable, coherent explanation for the assassination other than that given by the Warren Commission.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Paul Baker said:

This amazes you? Considering that:

• There is no credible, physical evidence that connects any suspect other than Lee Harvey Oswald to the assassination of JFK.
• There is not a single viable, coherent explanation for the assassination other than that given by the Warren Commission.

Not worth considering.