Jim Hargrove

On 9/3/2020 at 5:19 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Jim,

It is fine, of course, for Jeremy to develop a competing hypothesis explaining how Oswald learned Russian. But someone should point out how -- unlike your hypothesis -- Jeremy's is inconsistent with most of the evidence. Evidence which, characteristic of Jeremy, he simply ignores.

For example, that bunkmates of Oswald at one base said that Oswald was constantly reading Russian newspapers, etc., yet bunkmates elsewhere during the same time period didn't say anything at all about this. Jeremy's hypothesis ignores this fact, while yours explains it.

You could probably come up with other cases of Jeremy's hypothesis ignoring evidence.

Sure.  One of the men who served with LEE Oswald for nearly a year immediately before the other LHO started his stay at MACS 9 in Santa Ana was Zack Stout, who, asked if LHO studied Russian during this period (late 1957 through much of 1958) said this to John Armstrong:

"Where do people come up with these stupid ideas. That's ridiculous. No, he never spoke Russian or had a Russian book or a Russian newspaper. If he had any of those things, all of us would have known about it."

There are other examples (see William Kelley’s interview with Richard Bullock), but the point is that this LHO gave no indication of having any comprehension of the Russian language prior to arriving in Santa Ana in late October 1958.  And yet the Warren Commission and Mr. Bojczuk want us to believe that in just four month’s time the one-and-only “Lee Harvey Oswald” taught himself enough Russian to be able to get more answers right than wrong in a Russian language test administered Feb. 25, 1959 and to carry on a lengthy conversation, in Russian, with Rosaleen Quinn just a month or so later.  It is preposterous.

Mr. Bojczuk says he believes this far-fetched scenario, but members of the Warren Commission, at least privately, apparently didn’t.  As Jim DiEugenio pointed out here, “Harold Weisberg unearthed the transcript of the Warren Commission's January 27, 1964 executive session meeting. That meeting contains a reference by Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin to the Commission's efforts ‘to find out what he [Oswald] studied at the Monterey School of the Army in the way of languages.’ (Philip Melanson, Spy Saga, p. 12).”

Quote

Another big problem with Jeremy's hypothesis is that it has Oswald learning Russian with the use of a handful of Russian documents and a Russian-English dictionary. Anybody who has learned a foreign language without being immersed in it knows that this would be impossible. Oswald would have at least had to have audio tapes in order to learn how to pronounce the words. Even so, for a person to bring himself up to speed enough to read newspapers in his spare time, in such a short period of time, would be a near impossibility.

As I’ve pointed out before, foreign language instructor Mathias Baumann stated on this forum that, in his opinion, obtaining Oswald’s tested proficiency in Russian would require, in a language less difficult than Russian, “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 of course, Mr. Baumann’s estimates did not include time to become familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet, extensively different from our own.

The assertion that, with no formal instruction whatsoever,  Lee Harvey Oswald taught himself enough Russian in four months to get more questions right than wrong in a Russian language exam and to carry on a lengthy conversation in Russian with Rosaleen Quinn doesn't pass the laugh test.
 

17 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

As I pointed out elsewhere, the historical Lee Harvey Oswald learned Russian at least partly by teaching himself while in the Marines.

Mr. Bojczuk shamelessly supports the Warren Commission excuse that LHO taught himself to read, write, and speak the Russian language in his spare time in the Marine Corps.

“Oswald subscribed to a newspaper printed in Russian, which I believe he said was published in San Francisco.”

–James Anthony Botelho, from his Marine affidavit of June 3, 1964.

Here's an image of a Russian language newspaper printed in San Francisco that is probably similar to the one Oswald reportedly read in the Marine corps while stationed in California.  Can you imagine teaching yourself to read a newspaper like this--in your spare time?

If you believe the WC and Mr. Bojczuk on this nonsense, may I interest you in purchasing the Golden Gate Bridge?

Mr. Bojczuk tirelessly creates strawman arguments about one LHO’s Russian language skills and then fearlessly criticizes the arguments he himself invented.  What he doesn’t do is look at the simple facts.

In October 1959 one LHO returned to the U.S. and was assigned to MACS 9 in Santa Ana, where he suddenly demonstrated so much interest in and understanding of Russia and the Russian language that some of his fellow Marines called him “Oswaldovitch.”  He took a Russian language test and got more questions right than wrong.   Rosaleen Quinn, who was studying Russian in a Berlitz course, told the Warren Commission that “Oswald spoke Russian well.”  Erwin Donald Lewis said, in an affidavit: “It was a matter of common knowledge among squadron members that he could read, write, and speak Russian.”

So the question becomes, When did this LHO learn Russian?  Some people believe that Oswald was given a crash course in Russian while stationed at Atsugi and the Philippines.  One of the men who served with this Oswald (actually American-born LEE) for nearly a year was Zack Stout.  In 1995 John A. asked this Mr. Stout if Oswald spoke or studied Russian while in Japan. Zack answered, "Where do people come up with these stupid ideas. That's ridiculous. No, he never spoke Russian or had a Russian book or a Russian newspaper. If he had any of those things, all of us would have known about it."

Zack Stout

John also interviewed Richard Bullock, who worked with LEE Oswald in Japan.  Bullock said, "He was NOT the guy I saw in the picture on TV shot by Jack Ruby." He said that the LEE Oswald he knew wore glasses and “looks nothing like him. That's not the man I knew. The man I knew was 30-40 pounds heavier and 3-4 inches taller than the man accused of killing President Kennedy.”

Richard Bullock

Forum member William Kelley also interviewed Mr. Bullock.  See his interview here.

In the months before being stationed in Japan, Classic Oswald® was stationed briefly at various locations in the U.S., and, according to the soldiers who lived and worked with him, was actually in those places.  There is no indication that he even had a chance to study the Russian language while moving about in these various assignments.

So, where did this 9th grade dropout learn Russian?  Through a process of elimination, we think it is most likely that he learned it as a child.  After he lived in Russia for two and a half years, Harvey Oswald returned to the U.S. with his Russian wife.  There, many people remarked about how good his Russian language skills were. De Mohrenschildt, in particular, noted his remarkable fluency, but also noted that he made grammatical errors, just as you would expect from someone who learned a language at an early age and then abandoned it for a decade or so.

As to the mastoidectomy, I have often said that I think John A. got this wrong, but he was in good company.  Although he noted many tiny scars in his autopsy report on LHO, Dr. Earl Rose failed to note a scar behind his ear.  Mortician Paul Groody also missed the scar.  My working theory is that it was the Russian-speaking Oswald all along who had the procedure done.

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Now that I have corrected Jeremy's mischaracterization of what I said, I will have no further dialog with him. It's just a waste of time.

But if we don't continually correct his mischaracterizations of H&L research, the bs may be repeated forever on the internet without correction!  Why should we let that happen?

Mr. Bojczuk will be back in a few hours posting about the mastoidectomy and falsely claiming that John A. is actually a “snake oil salesman.” He has posted this again and again and again and again and again and again in just the last year or so. Although he accuses me of being a spammer, he is actually the one who has made SCORES of nearly identical posts in the last year about the mastoidectomy.  Watch for it soon….

In the meantime, if anyone who happens to read this wants to see some SERIOUS JFK ASSASSINATION research, just click this link:

HarveyandLee.net

5 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

According to John Armstrong's 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the long-term doppelganger scheme required the defector to be a native speaker of Russian so that he could understand the language that was being spoken around him when he defected a decade or so after the scheme had been set up. But that can't be true, because you don't need to be a native speaker of a language in order to understand that language.

Utter nonsense.  The H&L analysis doesn’t require anything like the above; the Oswald Project only required a false defector who secretly understood the Russian language. The theory that the Russian-speaking Oswald learned the Russian language as a child arose through a process of elimination.  There has never been evidence that he was given instruction, openly or secretly, in that language, and John A. interviewed a number of Marines who indicated Classic Oswald® simply wasn’t in a Russian language program prior to the fall of 1958, when the Russian-speaking Oswald suddenly became known as “Oswaldovitch” in MACS 9 at the small Marine Corps facility in Santa Ana, CA.

Serving with the Russian-speaking Oswald in MACS 9,  Sergeant Erwin Lewis said,  "It was a matter of common knowledge that Oswald could read, write, and speak Russian.”

Time and time again, Mr. Bojczuk misrepresents H&L and then analyzes what’s wrong with his own mischaracterization.  

6 hours ago, Pamela Brown said:

I have uncovered evidence of Bob Dylan's wrestling with the JFK assassination in its aftermath, as well as having concerns related to Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald (as presented in an art exhibit) and have updated Deconstructing MMF to add definition:  

https://dylagence.wordpress.com/2020/04/09/deconstructing-murder-most-foul-were-a-j-weberman-and-david-icke-among-the-sources-bob-dylan-used/

Hi, Pam,

My favorite granddaughter is in her final year of a physical therapy doctorate at Saint Catherine University in St. Paul, MN. Just a few weeks ago we enjoyed a picnic lunch with her right by a big waterfall near downtown Minneapolis.  What a beautiful place!

Speaking of Jack Ruby and LEE Oswald....

Let’s continue to look at some more evidence for two Oswalds.

1963: Harvey in New Orleans, Lee in Dallas

In the summer of 1963, when the Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald was in New Orleans pretending to be a pro-Castro commie, a lot of people saw American-born LEE Harvey Oswald hanging around with Jack Ruby in Dallas.  Among these people were Dorothy Marcum, Francis Irene Hise, Helen Smith (“Pixie Lynn”) , Dixie Lynn, Kathy Kay, and others.

Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen wrote in the New York Journal American (June 6, 1964): “It is known that 10 persons have signed sworn depositions to the Warren Commission that they knew Oswald and Ruby to have been acquainted.”

A few months ago Gary Shaw sent John A. a 10-page FBI report on a 1977 interview with a Ruby employee named Odell “James” Estes.  Estes told the FBI he worked at the Carousel Club from the last week in June until Sept. 2, 1963. 

Estes said he saw “Lee Oswald” at the Carousel Club many times during his employment there, including in Jack Ruby’s office.  He said he once drove Oswald to Love Field and even took two overnight fishing trips with Oswald to a lakeside cabin near Mineral Wells.  He described lengthy talks with this Oswald.  Since he (Estes) stopped working at the club on Sept. 2, he was quite certain that the two fishing trips, just a week apart, were both in August 1963.

Of course, in August 1963, Classic Oswald® was still in New Orleans.  Despite this depiction of “Oswald” being in New Orleans and Dallas simultaneously, an FBI cover memo states that Estes was “willing to submit to a polygraph examination” and “talked very coherently and did not evidence the mannerisms frequently associated with a mentally disturbed individual.”  It should be noted that although the 1977 FBI report indicated Estes was “80 percent blind,” in 1963 he could see well enough to drive a car.

A 10-page report on Odell Estes’ FBI interview can be read on the Mary Ferrell site at the link below:

ODELL ESTES FBI REPORT

9 hours ago, Dennis Berube said:

That's not fireproof logic there to say the least. John's work on Oswald is very complex and difficult to fully grasp but he has uncovered solid documented information to back a good amount of his work. It certainly cannot be satisfactorily explained away with such a straw man statement.

Lifton on the other hand...

Thanks, Dennis.  I’ve been running this website for more than 20 years now, but John has written most of the material currently on HarveyandLee.net, and I’m proud to present his research to the world. 

Please feel free to check it out at:

HarveyandLee.net

On 8/28/2020 at 3:52 AM, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

On that note, does Sandy know why Jim Hargrove is taking a break from spamming threads with 'Harvey and Lee' talking points? Has he finally accepted that 'Harvey and Lee' is a lost cause?

The insults never end.

When there isn’t an active H&L thread, Mr. Bojczuk posts his attacks against me and H&L in any thread available. Why is he so interested in me?  Is he keeping a dossier?  Why?

H&L research is hardly a “lost cause,” and Mr. Bojczuk knows it.  In recent years three books have been published based on Harvey and Lee.   Just two feature-film length video talks by John Armstrong posted on YouTube by “MrChrillemannen” have a total of nearly 619,000 views.  The videos are:

Captain Westbrook, officer Tippit and Oswald's double

and

Who impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald?

On 8/28/2020 at 3:52 AM, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The problem with far-fetched tin-foil-hat theories like the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense and Lifton's body-alteration nonsense is that the explanations they provide are implausible.

Gene Kelly, posted 7/28/20:

The work of Armstrong - and Jim Hargrove's representation - must somehow threaten someone (or something) for it to become so personal.  Such staunch opposition ironically has the opposite effect on me ... it sends a message that there's substance to the H&L anomalies. 
 

James DiEugenio, posted 8/14/20:

I don't have a dog in this fight, but its striking when, in their mania to discredit Armstrong, WC critics team up with WC apologists like Parnell. To the point of using a phony application to a phony college which was part of a phony discharge.

I have presented much evidence on this forum for Harvey and Lee, and I resent being insulted like this nearly every day by Jeremy Bojczuk.  Don’t let people like Mr. Bojczuk mischaracterize this research without at least checking it out directly!  To see for yourself the H&L evidence, please visit the website John A. and I run:

HarveyandLee.net

On 8/25/2020 at 12:41 PM, Mathias Baumann said:

"I Led 3 Lives" first aired in 1953, so the same year Oswald allegedly started to display his left-wing leanings.

Yes, but there is a serious question about whether LHO actually ever saw "I Led 3 Lives."

Robert Oswald wrote:

One of his favorite programs was I Led Three Lives, the story of
Herbert Philbrick, the FBI informant who posed as a Communist spy. In the
early 1950's, Lee watched that show every week without fail. When I left home
to join the Marines, he was still watching the reruns."

But Robert Oswald joined the Marines and left for San Diego on July 15, 1952, and, as you say, the "I Led Three Lives" program didn't premiere until roughly a year later. This gets worse in Youth House....  

On 8/25/2020 at 12:13 AM, Richard Booth said:

I'm here because I am interested in H&L and the evidence presented in that book which is incredibly compelling, and if there are some speculative things that could be wrong, well, that's fine--I don't demand perfection and I think it's insulting to refer to discussions of this subject as "doctrine" and then use reductionist thought processes to try to invalidate something you obviously have no belief in. 

Absolutely!  Important open questions are....

Who was Harvey (the Russian-speaking LHO), and...

Was the false Oswald of 1963 the same person as H&L’s “Lee?”

Magathanks to Vasilos Vasakas and Jim Di. for bringing us this important series on the seemingly endless treachery involved in the creation of the legend of LHO, as well as the clear hints that this crap may be ongoing even well into the present century. 

Malcolm Blunt’s work shining a light on Betsy Wolf is marvelous new research.  Why was her work declassified so late and why were her handwritten notes not transcribed?  Genius is hardly required to reason why. There are so many chilling revelations….

The indication that all the docs in the 201 file so belatedly opened on LHO are copies, with the originals supposedly in the Office of Security without time stamps or handling records, is sure reminiscent of LHO’s school and employment records, the originals of which apparently disappeared in FBI custody, replaced by b&w photos.  How telling!

Equally chilling is Mr. Blunt’s discovery that the Michael Goldsmith interview with CIA officer William Larson apparently disappeared from the National Archives some time between 2006 and 2010.   If this is true, must we assume that efforts to cover up the truth about Oswald will continue indefinitely?  What other conclusion is reasonable? Also apparently missing is the HSCA interview with OS Chief Robert Gambino.  I agree with Mr. Vasakas that the search for Popov’s mole was just Angelton’s excuse.

The second half of this article, about the conflicting “Blame it on Cuba” vs. Lone Nut campaigns, is more familiar territory for many of us.  Nevertheless, Mr. Vasakas covers it concisely and yet still covers the most important details.

Thanks again for this terrific series!

9 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

if he's willing to espouse support for Marxism and Communism as a child that's going to bring the exact same sort of ridicule that speaking Russian is going to bring. It's just about the same kind of thing... It's no more or less alienating to speak Russian than it is to spend hours talking about Communism and getting yourself kicked out of someone's house for it. If anything, speaking Russian would have been equal to or about the same as showing off a copy of "Das Kapital" or saying "I'm a Communist."

That's why the anonymous phone call to Mrs. Jack Tippit is fascinating.... if there's any truth to it a whole lot of weird stuff about Oswald is explained.  Read it again (I've added some boldface):

URGENT 11-30-63 7-37 PM EST MB
TO DIRECTOR, AND SACS DALLAS AND NEW YORK
FROM SAC, NEW HAVEN /100-18158/
NEW YORK VIA WASHINGTON
LEE HARVEY OSWALD, IS - R
ON NOV. THIRTY INSTANT, JACK D. TIPPIT, SELF EMPLOYED
CARTOONIST FOR NATIONAL MAGAZINES AND WIFE, ONE SIX FOUR
NEW TOWN TURNPIKE, WESTPORT, CONN., ADVISED AS FOLLOWS. AT
APPROXIMATELY ELEVEN THIRTY AM ON INSTANT DATE MRS. TIPPIT
RECEIVED A TELEPHONE CALL FROM UNKNOWN WOMAN WHO ASKED IF
MR. TIPPIT WAS A POLICEMAN AND IF HE WAS RELATED TO THE POLICE-
MAN TIPPIT WHO WAS SHOT IN DALLAS. MRS. TIPPIT REPLIED HER
HUSBAND WAS NOT A POLICEMAN, WAS DISTANTLY RELATED TO OFFICER
TIPPIT AND ASKED IDENTITY OF CALLER. ON ANOTHER EXTENSION
JACK TIPPIT LISTENED TO BALANCE OF PHONE CALL. THE WOMAN SAID
SHE COULD NOT GIVE HER NAME AS SHE WAS AFRAID OF BEING KILLED,
THAT SHE WAS FROM NEW YORK AND HAD TO COME "HERE" TO MAKE THE
CALL SO THAT SHE COULD NOT BE TRACED AS SHE WAS IN FEAR OF HER
END PAGE ONE

PAGE TWO:

LIFE. THE WOMAN REQUESTED THAT NOTHING BE SAID TO THE PRESS
ABOUT A WOMAN CALLING AS THEY WOULD KNOW HER IDENTITY AND SHE
WOULD BE KILLED.
THE WOMAN SAID SHE KNEW OSWALD-S FATHER AND UNCLE WHO
WERE HUNGARIANS AND COMMUNISTS. THE WOMAN CONTINUED THAT
OSWALD-S FATHER AND UNCLE HAD LIVED AT SEVENTY SEVENTH AND SECOND
AVENUE, YORKVILLE, NYC, THAT WHILE LIVING THERE BOTH WERE
UNEMPLOYED, GOT THEIR MONEY FROM COMMUNISTS AND SPENT ALL THERE
TIME IN COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES.
THE WOMAN THEN BEGAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY, DISJOINTEDLY,
AND NERVOUSLY. SHE STATED SHE HAD TWO NAMES TO GIVE AND
MENTIONED THE NAME EMILE KARDOS AND SAID SOMETHING ABOUT A
BROTHER IN LAW. WHEN MRS. TIPPIT TRIED TO FIND OUT WHOSE
BROTHER IN LAW THE WOMAN KEPT REPEATING THE WORD BROTHER IN LAW.
THE WOMAN STATED KARDOS IS HEAD OF THE COMMUNISTS AND THAT THIS
GROUP IN NEW YORK NOW HAS CHARTS AND MAPS. THE WOMAN SAID
SOMETHING ABOUT WEINSTOCK THE EDITOR OF QUOTE WOMAN-S WORLD
UNQUOTE BUT DID NOT GIVE FURTHER DETAILS.. THE WOMAN SAID THE
END PAGE TWO

PAGE THREE:

GROUP IN NEW YORK PLANS TO TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT, THAT OF
COURSE THEY WOULD DENY THIS BUT SHE KNEW IT TO BE TRUE.
SHE THEN HUNG UP ABRUPTLY. THE WOMAN NEVER GAVE ANY REASON
FOR HER CALL WHICH SOUNDED LOCAL. MRS. TIPPIT THOUGHT THE
WOMAN HAD AN AUSTRIAN OR GERMAN ACCENT WHILE MR. TIPPIT
BELIEVED IT WAS SPANISH. BOTH FELT THE WOMAN SOUNDED LIKE
A MATURE ADULT AND DID NOT HAVE A YOUTHFUL VOICE.
MR. TIPPIT EXPLAINED WOMAN MAY HAVE OBTAINED HIS IDENTITY
FROM AN ARTICLE ON PAGE ONE OF NORWALK, CONN. QUOTE HOUR
UNQUOTE FOR NOVEMBER TWENTYFIVE LAST, WHICH STATED THAT WE MAY
BE A DISTANT RELATIVE OF THE DALLAS POLICEMAN. TIPPIT SAID
ARTICLE RESULTED FROM TELEPHONE CALL FROM REPORTER WHO WAS
CHECKING ALL TIPPITS IN LOCAL TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES.
BUREAU REQUESTED TO COORDINATE ABOVE WITH ANY OTHER
INFORMATION TO DETERMINE IF PERTINENT AS NEW HAVEN HAS NO
KNOWLEDGE OF THE RESIDENCE AND ASSOCIATES OF OSWALD-S FATHER
AND UNCLE.

END AND ACK PLS
7-45 PM OK FBI WA LLD FOR RELAY
6-47 PM CST OK FBI DL FL
TU PLSDISC M
CC-MR_ROSEN

Hello, Richard,

Thanks for the thoughtful post. Several people over the years have suggested to me the possibility that the two LHOs were twins, fraternal or otherwise. 

As you probably know, the page on HarveyandLee.net entitled “Who Was Harvey”  is pretty much limited to a brief overview of one of the LHO’s Russian language abilities and an examination of the anonymous phone call(s) to Mrs. Jack Tippit of Westport, Connecticut.  It’s not much to go on. I’m hoping that John Kowalski’s patient pursuit of Mrs. Tippit’s notes will eventually pay dividends.

A couple of things come to mind examining the twins possibility.  First is that there appears to be a substantial size difference between the two LHOs, especially during their earlier years.  Do you know if this kind of height and weight difference is common among fraternal twins?

There is no evidence I can cite that Marguerite gave birth to twins, although if the Oswald Project was indeed based on a pair of twin boys we can expect that information to have been suppressed possibly before and certainly after the assassination.  

There is also the possibility that one of the LHOs learned the Russian language at a very early age.  De Mohrenschildt, among others, noted how remarkably fluent Oswald was in Russian, despite the fact that he made grammatical errors.  This is just the sort of skills you would expect from a youngster who learned Russian early and then switched to English.  

You may also recall that Vladimir Petrov, a professor in the Slavic Language Department at Yale University, concluded that a letter written by LHO “was written by a Russian with an imperfect knowledge of English.”  Also, I’ve forgotten her name, but John A. has told me that a woman staying with the Marguerite Oswald who cared for the Russian-speaking LHO once said that, late at night, she heard Marguerite speaking on the phone in a foreign language, a language she did not recognize.

These points may argue against the twins analysis, but not doubt we should all be open to new evidence.  I can’t speak for John A. here, but I’ve always thought ONI involvement in the Oswald Project was possible.  It should be stressed, though, that intelligence oversight of the false defection program may not have been related at all to the conspiracy to assassinate JFK.

Welcome to the forum, and I hope you’ll continue to post here.

11 minutes ago, Mark Stevens said:

Is this basically correct?

No, it isn't.  Why don't you at least try to understand the basics of Harvey and Lee before arguing against them.

Quote

“He may have begun to study the Russian language when he was stationed in Japan, which was intermittently from August 1957 to November 1958.”  [WCR, p. 256]

Quote

In 1995 I met and spoke with Zack Stout, who was living in El Dorado, KS. Zack was a fellow Marine who remembered the day that LEE Oswald arrived in Japan. He and Oswald became close friends and worked together every day for the next 10 months either in the radar bubble in Atsugi, the Philippines, Subic Bay, aboard ship, and were sometimes together while on liberty. LEE was assigned a bunk on the first level of barracks #5, a large two-story wood frame building that housed 72 men. Oswald slept on the upper bunk that he shared with Robert Augg, who slept on the lower bunk. I asked Zack if Oswald spoke or practiced speaking Russian in Japan. Zack answered, "Where do people come up with these stupid ideas. That's ridiculous. No, he never spoke Russian or had a Russian book or a Russian newspaper. If he had any of those things, all of us would have known about it."  [HarveyandLee.net, Marine Corps and Soviet Union, emphasis added]

Does anyone here believe Oswald taught himself the Russian language while in the Marines?

John,

I’m a little confused by your posts.  You are saying you think both LHOs were in the Soviet Union and you’re wondering which one went there first?    I just don’t see the evidence for both having been there.

Also, from what I’ve read, American intel really didn’t trust at least some of the Russian defectors.  Look how they treated Yuri Nosenko!  They practically tortured him for three years.

2 hours ago, John Butler said:

Jim,

 Is your theory is based mostly on an analysis of the photographs?   No.  As I have written several times before, the photographic evidence for Lee Oswald in quite weak and vague.

As for the rest,  I'm not certain I want to go through that again just to have it casually dismissed.  Thanks for taking the time to make a comment.

 

John,

How 'bout going through it one more time....

We can disagree about the specifics of who the two LHOs were, but at the 2018 Spy Wars meeting in San Francisco, Peter Dale Scott answered a question from John Newman about LHO’s Russian language abilities.

From Spy Wars, Part 2: March 3, 2018 in San Francisco

Oh, good grief!

According to the 1964 testimony of Lt. Col. Allison G. Folsom, Lee Harvey Oswald answered four more questions right than wrong in a Russian language exam administered to him while he was still in the Marines.  The overall score was rated “poor,” which is the same rating he was given in a series of tests including English reading and vocabulary.

Before ever setting foot in the Soviet Union, Oswald scored as well in a Russian-language exam as he did in tests of his English.  Are we to believe this, as the Warren Commission told us,  was merely because he was “motivated” to teach himself Russian?

On 8/13/2020 at 6:44 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

PDS: … There is a fragment of a release that says that the man who made the phone calls spoke horrible Russian AND English!  So, I do not think that was the man in Dallas. And I actually think, and this is completely anecdotal, but I once had an hour long conversation with Marina when I was trying my hardest not to bring up the assassination, and we were talking about literature, and I said did she like Henry James and she said that she had never heard of Henry James, who was Henry James, and I said, oh, he's sort of like the American Turgenev, and she said, "Oh, Turgenev, Alec really loved Turgenev." The man who checked out books from the New Orleans Public Library was not a lover of Turgenev."

14 hours ago, John Butler said:

I have to say this fits my biased interpretations of the Dynamic Duo in Russia and elsewhere.

John,

I thought about your theory of both LHOs in Russia when I read Mr. Scott's remarks again.  It still seems far-fetched to me.  For one thing, there is considerable evidence of one LHO's activities in the U.S. while the other was in the USSR.  Beyond that, it would seem counterproductive to risk sending the birth LHO to Russia at the very time the impostor was there.  What possible reason would there be to take that risk?  Is your theory is based mostly on an analysis of the photographs?

There is plenty of evidence that Oswald had considerable ability with the Russian language while he was still in the Marines.  But it is also clear that he hid his Russian skills while in the USSR.

As soon as he arrived in Moscow, the Soviets apparently suspected he was a spy and decided to kick him out.  In a desperate move, Oswald faked a suicide attempt and was able to rescue his mission.  Nevertheless, medics at Botkinskaya Hospital in Moscow who treated his wound realized that “The patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian. Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what was asked.”

In Russia, “Oswald” tried to hide his fluency in Russian from almost everyone.  Pulitzer Prize winning author Norman Mailer was among the earliest people to gain access to Russian Intel documents about “Oswald.”   Mailer wrote that when “Oswald” arrived in Moscow by “Deluxe class,” he hired a personal tour guide named Rimma and, “He didn’t seem to know a single word in Russian, so Rimma spoke to him in English.”

By the time he got to Minsk, “Oswald” continued to pretend he didn’t speak Russian.  Mailer wrote, “People laughed at him when he talked.  His Russian was so bad people laughed, not mocking, but friendly.  He would try to pronounce words, get them wrong. They would laugh…. You have cows in America?  You have pigs in America?  He couldn’t understand their words, so they showed him with sign language, made animal sounds, and he laughed.”

A Belarusian scientist named Stanislav Shushkevich was eventually assigned to teach “Oswald” the Russian language.  A few years ago, Shushkevich was extensively interviewed by an American writer.   There were, apparently, only a dozen or so lessons, and the teacher noted that “He didn’t appear to know a lot.  He didn’t appear to want to know a lot.”  Shushkevich added that he “knew very few words” in Russian.

Shushkevich concluded that he real job (he didn’t speak English) was not to teach “Oswald” Russian, but “to see how much Russian Oswald really knew….”

As soon as he arrived in Moscow, the Soviets apparently suspected he was a spy and decided to kick him out. In a desperate move, Oswald faked a suicide attempt and was able to rescue his mission. Nevertheless, medics at Botkinskaya Hospital in Moscow who treated his wound realized that “The patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian. Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what was asked.”

Clearly, Oswald tried to hide his Russian fluency while in the Soviet Union.  Saying otherwise is merely attempting to hide the fact that he was a U.S. spy who successfully worked in the Soviet Union understanding everything that was said about him but pretending he barely understood a word.  His brilliant and lengthy final report was published by the Warren Commission, hidden in plain sight for all these years.

For much more on all of this, read Dr. James Norwood’s essay on my website:

Oswald’s Proficiency in the Russian Language

14 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:

Dear Jim,

if I remember correctly your explanation for Oswald's remarkable fluency in Russian was that he learned it in school in Hungary in the late 1940s. I found believable evidence on the internet that  Russian was not taught in Hungarian public schools until many years later. I still think that the most likely explanation for Oswald's language skills is that he took a fair amount of lessons, probably one-on-one lessons. I remember that someone posted an interview with Oswald's Marine buddy Delgado, who thought that Oswald learned Russian in Berlin (Berlitz?). That seems like a plausible explanation to me. Now I accept that there is no evidence that Oswald ever took lessons at a Berlitz school. But he almost certainly did not learn Russian in Hungary. So what is your current theory now? Where and how did Oswald learn Russian, in your opinion?

Hi, Mathias,

It’s good to see you posting here again.

The possibility that the Russian-speaking Oswald had a Hungarian background is based SOLELY on the document transcribed below.  (Can’t recall if you’ve seen it or not.)  Harvey and Lee critics tend to mock “Hungarian Harvey,” but we have always believed this is just a possibility.

Anyway, the day after the assassination, Mrs. Jack Tippit, of Westport, Connecticut was telephoned by an unidentified woman. This woman said she personally knew Oswald's father and uncle in New York City, who were from Hungary, promoted communism and lived at 77th and 2nd Avenue in Yorkville (NYC). This woman asked Mrs. Tippit to relay her information to Dallas authorities.

Mrs. Tippit is still very much alive and forum member John Kowalski has learned from her family that she has retained notes she made during MULTIPLE phone conversations with the anonymous caller.  Mr. Kowalski is making careful efforts to acquire a copy of those note, presumably untouched by the FBI.

Here’s a transcript of the FBI report, which was kept secret for three decades.  The actual document can be seen here.

URGENT 11-30-63 7-37 PM EST MB
TO DIRECTOR, AND SACS DALLAS AND NEW YORK
FROM SAC, NEW HAVEN /100-18158/
NEW YORK VIA WASHINGTON
LEE HARVEY OSWALD, IS - R
ON NOV. THIRTY INSTANT, JACK D. TIPPIT, SELF EMPLOYED
CARTOONIST FOR NATIONAL MAGAZINES AND WIFE, ONE SIX FOUR
NEW TOWN TURNPIKE, WESTPORT, CONN., ADVISED AS FOLLOWS. AT
APPROXIMATELY ELEVEN THIRTY AM ON INSTANT DATE MRS. TIPPIT
RECEIVED A TELEPHONE CALL FROM UNKNOWN WOMAN WHO ASKED IF
MR. TIPPIT WAS A POLICEMAN AND IF HE WAS RELATED TO THE POLICE-
MAN TIPPIT WHO WAS SHOT IN DALLAS. MRS. TIPPIT REPLIED HER
HUSBAND WAS NOT A POLICEMAN, WAS DISTANTLY RELATED TO OFFICER
TIPPIT AND ASKED IDENTITY OF CALLER. ON ANOTHER EXTENSION
JACK TIPPIT LISTENED TO BALANCE OF PHONE CALL. THE WOMAN SAID
SHE COULD NOT GIVE HER NAME AS SHE WAS AFRAID OF BEING KILLED,
THAT SHE WAS FROM NEW YORK AND HAD TO COME "HERE" TO MAKE THE
CALL SO THAT SHE COULD NOT BE TRACED AS SHE WAS IN FEAR OF HER
END PAGE ONE

PAGE TWO:

LIFE. THE WOMAN REQUESTED THAT NOTHING BE SAID TO THE PRESS
ABOUT A WOMAN CALLING AS THEY WOULD KNOW HER IDENTITY AND SHE
WOULD BE KILLED.
THE WOMAN SAID SHE KNEW OSWALD-S FATHER AND UNCLE WHO
WERE HUNGARIANS AND COMMUNISTS. THE WOMAN CONTINUED THAT
OSWALD-S FATHER AND UNCLE HAD LIVED AT SEVENTY SEVENTH AND SECOND
AVENUE, YORKVILLE, NYC, THAT WHILE LIVING THERE BOTH WERE
UNEMPLOYED, GOT THEIR MONEY FROM COMMUNISTS AND SPENT ALL THERE
TIME IN COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES.
THE WOMAN THEN BEGAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY, DISJOINTEDLY,
AND NERVOUSLY. SHE STATED SHE HAD TWO NAMES TO GIVE AND
MENTIONED THE NAME EMILE KARDOS AND SAID SOMETHING ABOUT A
BROTHER IN LAW. WHEN MRS. TIPPIT TRIED TO FIND OUT WHOSE
BROTHER IN LAW THE WOMAN KEPT REPEATING THE WORD BROTHER IN LAW.
THE WOMAN STATED KARDOS IS HEAD OF THE COMMUNISTS AND THAT THIS
GROUP IN NEW YORK NOW HAS CHARTS AND MAPS. THE WOMAN SAID
SOMETHING ABOUT WEINSTOCK THE EDITOR OF QUOTE WOMAN-S WORLD
UNQUOTE BUT DID NOT GIVE FURTHER DETAILS.. THE WOMAN SAID THE
END PAGE TWO

PAGE THREE:

GROUP IN NEW YORK PLANS TO TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT, THAT OF
COURSE THEY WOULD DENY THIS BUT SHE KNEW IT TO BE TRUE.
SHE THEN HUNG UP ABRUPTLY. THE WOMAN NEVER GAVE ANY REASON
FOR HER CALL WHICH SOUNDED LOCAL. MRS. TIPPIT THOUGHT THE
WOMAN HAD AN AUSTRIAN OR GERMAN ACCENT WHILE MR. TIPPIT
BELIEVED IT WAS SPANISH. BOTH FELT THE WOMAN SOUNDED LIKE
A MATURE ADULT AND DID NOT HAVE A YOUTHFUL VOICE.
MR. TIPPIT EXPLAINED WOMAN MAY HAVE OBTAINED HIS IDENTITY
FROM AN ARTICLE ON PAGE ONE OF NORWALK, CONN. QUOTE HOUR
UNQUOTE FOR NOVEMBER TWENTYFIVE LAST, WHICH STATED THAT WE MAY
BE A DISTANT RELATIVE OF THE DALLAS POLICEMAN. TIPPIT SAID
ARTICLE RESULTED FROM TELEPHONE CALL FROM REPORTER WHO WAS
CHECKING ALL TIPPITS IN LOCAL TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES.
BUREAU REQUESTED TO COORDINATE ABOVE WITH ANY OTHER
INFORMATION TO DETERMINE IF PERTINENT AS NEW HAVEN HAS NO
KNOWLEDGE OF THE RESIDENCE AND ASSOCIATES OF OSWALD-S FATHER
AND UNCLE.

END AND ACK PLS
7-45 PM OK FBI WA LLD FOR RELAY
6-47 PM CST OK FBI DL FL
TU PLSDISC M
CC-MR_ROSEN

14 hours ago, James Norwood said:

Jim,

Another good example of Oswald's exceptional Russian language skills is apparent in the Warren Commission testimony of Dennis Offstein, one of Oswald's co-workers at Jaggars, Chiles, Stovall (JCS).  Offstein was a technician who had studied Russian language for a full year at the famed Monterey institute, yet Oswald ran circles around him in language skills.  In his testimony, Offstein recalled that after a full-year of immersion in Russian language, he still struggled, while for Oswald, speaking Russian seemed second nature.  If Oswald had a special aptitude for learning a foreign language, there is no evidence of this from any of his teachers or classmates by time he dropped out of high school in the tenth grade.  As you indicate above, there was no window of time for him to study a language while in the Marines.  So, when, where, and how did Oswald come to such proficiency in the Russian language?  That is the topic that none of the critics on this forum wish to debate.

James

 

Indeed, LHO’s command of the Russian language both before and after the “defection,” as you know better than almost anyone else,  was never adequately explained by any of the USG cover-u… I mean investigations.  

Oswald learned Russian on his own with a dictionary and some books?  What a sad joke! 

We can disagree about the specifics of who the two LHOs were, but at the 2018 Spy Wars meeting in San Francisco, Peter Dale Scott answered a question from John Newman about LHO’s Russian language abilities.

On 8/12/2020 at 5:53 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Jeremy says it's unlikely that TWO boys each had mastoidectomy surgery, but thinks nothing of ONE boy having school records showing he attended a school in New York City and another in New Orleans simultaneously. Ha! Wow.

Okay, maybe he'll say that one of the school records had a row of clerical errors on it. To which I'd ask, well how likely is that? The odds of that happening are surely lower than the odds of two boy having a mastoidectomy. I've never heard of such a massive clerical error before, but I have seen plenty of boys who have had a mastoidectomy.

That about covers it, Sandy.  Posting only about the mastoidectomy nearly every day for years, Mr. Bojczuk tries to step away from all the other H&L evidence entirely, focusing only on the one issue he likes.   But there is so much more.

Mr. Bojczuk refuses to discuss dozens of topics we've presented over the years about the two Oswalds.  One of them is the Bolton Ford incident, and so here's a summary of it.

On January 20, 1961, while Harvey Oswald was in Minsk, two men visited the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans. They spoke with Assistant Manager Oscar Deslatte and said they were interested in purchasing 10 Ford Econoline Trucks. As one of the men discussed the purchase with Deslatte the other man, who identified himself as Joseph Moore, made a list of the equipment they desired on the trucks.

Deslatte went to his boss, truck manager Fred Sewell, and told him about the two men who wanted to purchase trucks and said they represented the "Free Democrats of Cuba or some such organization." Sewell told Deslatte to give the men a bid of $75 over their cost for the trucks. Deslatte and Sewell returned to Deslatte's desk and wrote out a bid form to Joseph Moore. As Deslatte was filling out the bid form, Joseph Moore and the other man began talking to both Deslatte and Sewell.42

When Moore saw that Deslatte had written his name on the bid form he asked that the name be changed to "Friends of Democratic Cuba." Moore's friend looked· at the form and said, "By the way, you'd better put my name down there because I'm the man handling the money." When Deslatte asked, "What's your name?" the man replied, "Lee Oswald."

Deslatte gave the original bid form to "Lee Oswald" and kept a copy for his files, which he gave to the FBI following the assassination.

\

The purchaser was listed as the "Friends of Democratic Cuba," 402 St. Charles Street, New Orleans, LA., phone number JA-5-0763.43 After talking with Deslate for over an hour the two men took the original bid form and left.

The Friends of Democratic Cuba was incorporated on January 9, 1961 in Louisiana. The address of 402 St. Charles Street was listed as vacant in the 1960, 1961 and 1962 New Orleans City directories.

Remarkable about the “Friends of Democratic Cuba” were the names of two of its officers. The image shown below is a composite scan from the beginning and the end of the Louisiana Articles of Incorporation for Friends of Democratic Cuba, Inc.

W. Guy Banister worked at the infamous 544 Camp Street address in New Orleans, made famous by the Jim Garrison investigation.

Gerard Tugague employed Oswald briefly in late 1955 and early 1956 at the 300 Sanlin Building in New Orleans.

On our website John Armstrong wrote, “This well-known incident was cited in Warren Commission Document 75 p. 677 and the House Select Committee on Assassinations Vol. X; FBI 67-39565-66. For years some JFK researchers believed that an impostor was using Oswald's name while the alleged future assassin was in Russia. As more and more examples surfaced it became clear that another man, using the name "Lee Harvey Oswald," was associating with anti-Castro Cubans and CIA operatives in the southern United States during the very years the Warren Commission placed him in the Soviet Union. This man was southern born LEE Oswald, and is a clear indication that both Oswalds were active in American intelligence operations.”There are other examples of LEE Oswald operating in the U.S. while HARVEY Oswald was in Russia. For an overview, see THIS PAGE on HarveyandLee.net.

For more, see The Bolton Ford Incident