Jim Hargrove
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Posts posted by Jim Hargrove
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5 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
Jim,
Thanks for the info on Louis Weinstock. If someone can get a look at those papers (have they been digitized?) then they would probably give us a clue as to why (Bentley) dropped his name in her call to the Tippit's.
As to Elizabeth Bentley herself, while I hope to have a much more definitive answer in a few weeks, for now I believe she was exactly what the narrative has said she was: a genuine communist in the 1930's who then turned into an FBI informant in 1945.
At present, I have no reason to suspect she was an American intelligence asset in the 1930's.
I anticipate elaborating on this in April.
How about formulating a couple of questions we would like to see answered. Here's a start:
Did Louis Weinstock ever work or associate with Emil Gardos?
Was Weinstock associated with a periodical called "Workers World?"
Did Weinstock know Elizabeth Bentley?
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Mark,
Nevertheless, Blakey stated unequivocally: "Edward Benevides – Date of death : February 1964.” I said in my post above that there was “evidence that Edward Benavides was killed in 1965….” and I meant it. But John Simkin posted an excerpt from a Ramparts magazine article from November 1966, which stated that Edward was killed in 1964 (perhaps incorrectly) and went on with the following, which I sincerely doubt is totally bogus:
Domingo's father-in-law, J.W. Jackson, was so unimpressed with the police investigation of Eddy's death that he launched a little inquiry of his own. Two weeks later Jackson was shot at in his home. The assailant secreted himself in the carport, fired once into the house, and when Jackson ran outside, fired one more time, just missing his head. As the gunman clambered into an automobile in a nearby driveway, Jackson saw a police car coming down the block. The officer made no attempt to follow the gunman's speeding car; instead, he stopped at Jackson's home and spent a long time inquiring what had happened. Later a police lieutenant advised Jackson, "You'd better lay off of this business. Don't go around asking question; that's our job." Jackson and Domingo are both convinced that Eddy's murder was a case of mistaken identity and that Domingo, the Tippit witness, was the intended victim.
Jean Davison was a Warren Commission supporter. I still consider the Benavides killing suspicious.
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1 hour ago, Mark Ulrik said:
I don't think I've heard that before. But why wait until almost a year after he testified?
Despite the evidence Edward Benavides was killed in 1965, there is also considerable evidence that he was killed in February 1964, before Domingo testified to the W.C. Note, for example, Point 1 in the letter below from none other than G. Robert Blakey stating the date of death for Edward was February 1964.
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45 minutes ago, Mark Ulrik said:
What is it about his death that you find suspicious?
Mark,
Of the witnesses to the Tippit killing, Benavides was the closest. He worked as a barber and told the WC and another interviewer that the killer looked like Oswald but "I remember the back of his head seemed like his hairline was sort of--looked like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapered off and he looked like he needed a haircut for about 2 weeks.”
As we can see, the hair on the back of Oswald’s head was tapered, instead of being squared off as barber Benavides remembered, suggesting someone who looked like Oswald—but was not Oswald—was involved in the shooting.
TSBD employee Roy Lewis said of Oswald, “We would tease him about it because his hair would be growing down the back of his head,” not squared off as Benavides testified.
Benavides also testified that the Tippit killer unloaded spent cartridges from his gun one at a time, although the pistol taken at the Texas Theater had an extractor that ejected all the shells simultaneously.
I also believe, but cannot prove, that Benavides saw two more Dallas cops at the Tippit murder scene at the time of the murder but was too afraid to say so. If memory serves, Benavides also told someone that he believed his brother’s shooting was meant for him, but I’d have to search for that reference.
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The list of suspicious deaths looks pretty lengthy to me. For example, within a year of the JFKA, Karyn Kupcinet was murdered, Eddy Benavides was shot in the head (he was the lookalike brother to closest Tippit shooting witness Domingo Benavides), a number of people died who seemed to know Oswald associated with Jack Ruby, including Bill Chesher and Hank Killam. I’d certainly add to the list Guy Banister, Mary Pinchot, and, just slightly later, Rose Cheramie and Dorothy Kilgallen (as well as Kilgallen’s friend Mrs. Earl Smith, who died two days later). There are others, but I doubt direct proof of an association to the assassination will ever be made.
OTOH, the number of deaths occurring around the time the HSCA was getting organized defies easy excuses. Six top FBI officials died within a 6-month period right around the HSCA’s creation. John Simkin wrote about these suspicious deaths in an EF post on April 18, 2005. Here’s what he wrote:
When the Select Committee on Intelligence Activities and Select Committee on Assassinations began investigating Kennedy's death in the 1970s the deaths of potential witnesses increased dramatically. This included several criminals with possible links to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Those who were killed or who died in suspicious circumstances during this period included Malcolm Wallace (1971), Lucien Sarti (1972), Charles Willoughby (1972), Thomas Davis (1973), Richard Cain (1973), Dave Yarras (1974), Sam Giancana (1975), Jimmy Hoffa (1975), Roland Masferrer (1975), Johnny Roselli (1976), George De Mohrenschildt (1977), Charlie Nicoletti (1977) and Carlos Prio (1977).
William Sullivan, the main figure in the FBI involved in the Executive Action project, and the person in the FBI who investigated Oswald, was shot dead near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, on 9th November, 1977. Sullivan had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period in 1977. Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and his liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested and Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene.
Several important figures in the Central Intelligence Agency died before they could give evidence to the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigations. William Harvey, head of the ZR/RIFLE project, died as a result of complications from heart surgery in June, 1976. William Pawley, who took part in Operation Tilt, died of gunshot wounds in January, 1977. David Morales, who some believe organized the assassination, died aged 53, on 8th May, 1978.
John Paisley was deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide.
According to the journalist, Victor Marchetti, Paisley was a close friend of Yuri Nosenko. Marchetti also claimed that Paisley knew a great deal about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was murdered during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation because he was "about to blow the whistle".
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5 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
Jim,
I agree that any surviving notes from that (those?) call/s may be very interesting. But until/unless they surface, we're left to parse out whatever we can from the FBI memo.
Jim, what do you make of (Bentley) specifically naming "Weinstock"? How do you think Louis Weinstock fit into this?
Paul,
I’m not sure what to make of the Weinstock reference by the caller, but your question prompted a little internet research. Not sure how much people here already know, but the best source of info I’ve found so far seems to be here:
New York University Library’s Guide to the Louis Weinstock Papers and Photographs
Weinstock and his wife were both Hungarians! The bio indicates: “In the 1960s he served as a business manager for The Worker, a newspaper published by the Communist Party of the United States.” This may, however, have occurred after his radicalization following years of imprisonment in the 1950s. There was no mention of “Workers World” or, of course, “Woman’s World,” but I wouldn’t rule out an earlier association with “Workers World” since, according to the papers held by NYU, from 1930 to 1949 he had some sort of association with “Workers Alliance of America,” which certainly sounds Worker-ish to me. Perhaps this was already established.
Here are some of the NYU Library document collections covering the period of interest:
Workers Alliance of America, 1930-1949, inclusive
Box: 1, Folder: 32 (Material Type: Mixed Materials)Local Union 848, (Weinstock's Home Local), 1940-1949, inclusive
Box: 2, Folder: 18 (Material Type: Mixed Materials)Expulsion from the Painters' Union, 1945-1950 , 1967, inclusive
Box: 2, Folder: 23 (Material Type: Mixed Materials)Lemkin v Weinstock, Rarback v Weinstock, 1945-1946, inclusive
Box: 2, Folder: 22 (Material Type: Mixed Materials)It’s probably a mistake to parse too finely the third-hand (or worse) account in the FBI report, but to me it sounds as if the Weinstock reference was somewhat disconnected from the “Emile Kardos” and brother-in-law statements. Can we thank the FBI for telling us that the caller “said something about Weinstock,” and nothing more specific than “Woman’s World?” My bet is Weinstock, with substantial union organizing efforts in NYC for decades, was probably the best known of the Hungarian leftist/commies discussed here.
And a question for you about Elizabeth Bentley. Does it strike you as normal for someone to go from a dedicated Commie to a dedicated Commie fighter? Would she more likely have been an intel asset all along?
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2 hours ago, Geo Kozma said:
You mean Marina just pretended to have found it on his shelf when she sold it quickly before the FBI came to list his books?
Geo,
Your geneological stuff always confuses me, but I can easily explain about Marina. Most JFK researchers I know are entirely sympathetic to the horrible position she was in after the Kennedy assassination. Nevertheless, many of us have suspicions about her both in her early years in the USSR and here in the U.S. Whole threads exist discussing her and her credibility.
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Mrs. Jack Tippit (Christina Tippit) was a sophisticated woman. According to an obituary of her John K. found, she was a ”well-loved bon vivant… a fashion model… TV guest star… [and] started her writing career at the age of 19 while still attending Texas Tech University, seeing her comedic pieces published in /The New Yorker/ and performed on /The Tonight Show/, and going on to develop material for performers including Imogene Coca, George Gobel, Hermione Gingold and Virginia Graham. Over her long career, she authored screenplays, television projects and worked on TV’s /As the World Turns/.
I’ll bet this woman was no slouch taking notes and conducting off-the-cuff interviews. When hearing a name that may have sounded like “Emile Kardos,” or anything similar, she might well have asked, “How do you spell that?” Knowing a little bit more about Mrs. Tippit makes it seem all the more urgent to somehow help John K. find those notes!
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22 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
You and I agree that the Tippit caller (Elizabeth Bentley) believed there was some connection between Emil Gardos and/or Louis Weinstock and the little NYC boy. She may (MAY) even have believed that Gardos and/or Weinstock was the little NYC boy's genetic "father" or "uncle". (Although please note that she did NOT specifically state that in the call, as far as we can tell.)
Paul,
I think the anonymous caller (Elizabeth Bentley, probably) believed that Emil Gardos was Oswald’s father and Fred Blair was his uncle. Your skepticism about this surprises me, so if you’ll bear with me, let’s go over it once more.
The FBI report said, “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.” She then mentions the name “Emile Kardos” (surely Emil Gardos) and talks about a brother in law (Fred Blair fits perfectly).
Are any of us aware of another Hungarian Communist team of brothers-in-laws active in Yorkville during the era? And note that the caller says “both were unemployed, got their money from communists, and spent all there [sic] time in communist activities.” This fits beautifully with the Milwaukee Journal’s coverage of the Gardos hearing: “But at the trial the government showed that during his entire residence in the United States his sole work was as an organizer and editor for the Communist party.”
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John,
It’s just conjecture, but my bet would be there were a number of other similar programs set up, some perhaps developed around identical twins, and the pairs would be activated on an opportunistic basis. Just a guess. John A. found a book indicating that Cuba used twins as spies. Patricio and Antonio De LaGuardia, identical twin brothers, were Castro's top intelligence agents for a time, at least according to the source.
Also, I wanted to thank you again for sending all the research material on the Tippits of Connecticut. I had no idea Tina was such a prolific screenwriter! Thanks again!
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2 hours ago, Geo Kozma said:
yes since 1952 there was in NYC a Hungarian "Kutura" bookshop and after 57 it wass mostly CORVINA they sold.
Thanks, Geo! To me, this means we have to consider the possibility, if Marina’s story is true, that Oswald himself purchased “Circus Maximus” in the U.S., not only that it may have been sent to him. Whichever situation is true, if he really possessed the book at the time of his arrest, it just adds more credibility to the entire anonymous phone call saga.
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Thanks, Jim!
This podcast makes a number of interesting points about the endless contradictions of “Lee Harvey Oswald,” including nods to Harvey & Lee research via the Magic Tooth®, John Pic’s refusal to identify photos of his own half-brother, the Bolton Ford incident in the U.S. while LHO was in Minsk, and, of course, how the allegedly leftist LHO so often associated with right-wing operatives.
It also posits that the immediate goal of the Kennedy assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba, a position I strongly agree with, despite the added benefits to people supporting the upcoming war in Vietnam and a number of other international issues pointed out by Jim DiEugenio.
There are also some highly questionable positions in the presentation, especially the statement that “We know” Oswald shot at Walker because of the Backyard Photos, etc. The podcaster doesn’t mention that the original police descriptions of the Walker shells clearly do not match the Walker shells now in evidence. It makes no mention of the Magic Money Order that allegedly paid for the Magic Rifle that allegedly shot the Magic Bullet at JFK. OTOH, it does a nice job explaining how the CIA lied and lied about it’s pre-assassination interest in LHO, mostly blaming J.J. Angleton.
I wish it had done a more complete job explaining how and why the FBI took Oswald off the watch list, managed by its “WANTED NOTICE” cards, at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, just a couple of months after his New Orleans arrest for alleged violence in support of Communist Cuba and less than two months before the assassination. These two actions effectively took the federal spotlight off “Lee Harvey Oswald.”
The strangest part of the whole hour and a half presentation to me, though, is the one-time mention that the Oswald Project was run by Ukrainian intelligence, a statement never mentioned again. That seems so weird that I’m wondering if I misheard it!
All in all, though, this podcast seems well worth listening to.
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John,
I left the East Coast just over 60 years ago and have lost track of everyone I ever knew there. But I do recall the names of a number of people from school, and perhaps there's a slight possibility....
Do you have notes on Mrs. Tippit and her descendants you could email to me?
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12 hours ago, Geo Kozma said:
No there is no translator name listed. Because it is just a few captions ...cca 100 drawings and only 63 titles...
I think Gardos going in daily because of his other translation (which he helped to do for his wife) he might have just corrected a few titles and in that day it was done in the office not at home (and my mom did the typewriting and corrctings.
Also we must not forget the Jewish name-relations were known to them: GArdosh knew he had a name-relation on the Oswald family Tree in the Archives. But KAján the cartoonist had a wife whose original name (Roth) also exists among the many gardosh families - and my mother maternal name Keller also exists on the Oswald family tree lists.
I suppose he knew this distant "family" link- and also that it wa not sure it was really family due to the NAme Limit Priciple - most typical names did pop up in all families. But he evidently did not share it. (if he did, my mom would have told me about it... Even if he did not suppose Oswald will become more famous than he was with his Soviet fling...it was better for him not to say anything...Except maybe asking somone in the Corvina to send this book to Oswald. It was not forbidden.
Geo,
Thanks for the confirmation that no translator was listed by Corvina for "Circus Maximus." Several of the little comics you sent from its pages still strike me as quite funny, even after all this time.
Hope you hear from your Corvina Press contact tomorrow. It will be very interesting to see if the publisher had any U.S. distributors in 1963, although you already said they probably didn't. If that is the case, then it is most likely that someone sent the book to Oswald, IF Marina's story is true.
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Paul and Sandy,
Many of us suspect that Edwin Ekdahl may well have had something to do with the early phases of the Oswald project, though we need to remember that Marguerite Oswald worked for the U.S. Navy during WW II. The FBI’s fine work conducting a background investigation of Edwin after the assassination included the information that “records do not indicate where Ekdahl worked from 1943 to 1953.” This despite the fact the FBI published his Social Security number!
John K. probably asked about the alleged Boston trip to consider the possibility that Ekdahl might have had something to do with LHO and the New York commies. Paul’s analysis opened up a brief window in the fall of 1945 when Marguerite, Edwin, and Lee might have been in Boston, a relatively short distance away from NYC.
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7 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
Jim,
We know for a fact that Grace Gardos was living in Yorkville in the mid 1940's. John Butler provided these screenshots in 2019:
- Jim, here is my reply from 2019 to the late John Butler after he posted these screenshots:
John B.,
Good. That's exactly what I (Paul Jolliffe) wanted to see.
OK it would appear from the address 217 E. 86th Street in NYC (which appears on Google Maps below to be largely unchanged since the 1940's), that there is an elementary school nearby with a very interesting history - The Ramaz School.
From school's website:
" In the 1930's, the Upper East Side neighborhood known as Yorkville was an area where "Jewishness" was toned down; Jews of the area did not want to attract attention. In fact, in 1936, following the Depression and during the rise of Hitlerism, the pro-Nazi German-American Bund held street rallies up and down Third Avenue . . .
As darkness fell upon European Jewry, the light of European children began to fill the halls of the Ramaz School. Jews from France, Belgium, Germany and Holland were flocking to the United States. Their children came from the Lycées of France, the Tachkemoni of Antwerp and a myriad of other schools.
The refugee population especially concerned Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein. It was apparent to him that if the Ramaz School did not exist, these children would have difficulty finding a suitable Jewish school. By 1938, in order to ensure adequate space for these students, the Ramaz School rented several rooms in the Central Jewish Institute building at 125 East 85th Street. Seventy-one boys and girls enrolled, creating the need to lease the entire building as the school's new quarters.
The Ramaz School was becoming widely recognized as an institution known for its academic excellence. The Teacher's Institute of Yeshiva University began sending student teachers to observe and fulfill their student-teaching requirements. In 1942, the school received its provisional charter from the Board of Regents of the State of New York. Enrollment by this time had risen to one hundred and twenty students."
John Butler, we know from the testimony of Nelson Delgado that "Oswald" apparently knew at least some Yiddish! Whether or not "Oswald" was indeed the biological son of the Gardos parents (and we now in 2024 know for a fact he was NOT their biological son), we are certain there must have been some connection between them, however brief. If there are any surviving elementary school records for either little John Gardos (or "Oswald"), the Ramaz School archives (if they exist) are a good place to start..
https://www.ramaz.org/about-ramaz/history
Here is what 217 E. 86th Street looks like today - except for the street level storefronts, the building itself looks unchanged for decades:
So today, in 2024, we can confidently conclude that whether or not Emil and Grace Gardos were officially our "Oswald's" foster parents for a bit in the mid 1940's in Yorkville, they were living in the heart of a neighborhood in which a recent refugee from Eastern Europe (very possibly with a Jewish background) might have been placed in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
We can also confidently state that Elizabeth Bentley would have been very familiar with the activities of communists living in this area at that time.
As to "Circus Maximus", I am not aware that Grace Gardos translated that one. Do we have evidence for that? I know she did the translation for another book from the same publisher in Hungary at the same time, but are we certain of her connection to "Circus Maximus" itself?
Can anyone here get ahold of a copy of the 1962 edition of "Circus Maximus"? (The ones available on Amazon are in German, which in itself raises some interesting questions.)
Paul,
Thank you for pointing to John Butler’s solid evidence that Grace Gardos was living in Yorkville in 1944 as well as 1946. I had completely forgotten it. While admitting my shortcomings, please note that I meant to say Grace Gardos (probably with Emil’s help) had translated into English “Kárpáti rapszódia (Carpathian Rhapsody)” published by Corvina Press, the same publisher as “Circus Maximus,” which was printed about the same time. It's the second time I've made the same mistake <sigh>.
Geo Kozma may have a copy of “Circus Maximus” since he has sent some interior page scans of it, but if Grace Gardos was listed as a translator, my guess is he already would have told us.
Also, in your answer to Sandy’s question about the names of our two boys, isn’t it possible that you’re putting too much emphasis on the July 1947 creation of the CIA? Many people, including Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles, were prominent members of both the CIA and the earlier OSS. The origin of the modern Communist Menace® clearly predates the CIA, if only by a few years.
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9 hours ago, John Kowalski said:
Does anyone know why Communists would be taking care of Oswald, given that he was been prepared for some future role in an intelligence operation?
John,
Here’s my take. At the end of WW II, U.S. Intel surely realized that Russia would no longer be an uneasy ally but a flat-out enemy. I just looked it up, and Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech on March 5, 1946. By then, the time had already passed to start upping the U.S. spy game!
Who better to serve as a spy for the U.S. than a Russian-speaking, Commie-spouting kid who could assume an American identity and travel to Russia where he could act like a disgruntled American, but one who could secretly understand all the Russian conversations around him. John A. has written about how Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald was said to have read Communist books and talked readily about Communism early in his life, for example, with Henry Timmer in North Dakota in 1953 and with Palmer McBride and the New Orleans Amateur Astronomy Association members a few years later.
I think a program encompassing two Lee Harvey Oswalds could have started even before the creation of the CIA. As you probably know, there are a surprising number of references in U.S. records to “Harvey Lee Oswald.”
Sandy’s speculation that Oswald might have been taken away from Gardos “during one of his legal battles” had never occurred to me before, but it might have ended that phase of Oswald’s commie education. He might have gotten some more lefty tips earlier in Europe, but that is even more speculative.
On the Maraz school, I know of no evidence that either Oswald ever attended it, although Paul notes that Nelson Delgado said [Harvey] Oswald knew a few words of Yiddish. I spent the first 10 years of my life living in Manhattan, and despite the fact that I’m not Jewish, I learned a few Yiddish words too. It’s hard not to in NYC. Despite all that, perhaps Godless Commies wouldn’t mind at all if someone under their care went to a good Jewish school, especially one dedicated to low-profile exposure of its students.
On your Boston question, John A wrote the following on the Early Years page of our website:
"In September (1945), according to Robert Oswald, the family drove in Ekdahl's car from Dallas to Port Gibson, MS where Robert and John entered the Chamberlain Hunt Military Academy. Robert Oswald told the FBI that his mother, Ekdahl, and LEE then drove to Boston, MA where they resided until June, 1946, but it appears that Robert was mistaken. Records show that LEE Oswald entered the "low first grade" at the Benbrook Common School on October 31, 1945. He was 6 years old and his address was Route 5, Box 567, Benbrook, TX. Young Oswald attended this school for 82 days, was absent 15 days, and his guardian was listed as E. A. Ekdahl."
Please let me know how I can help with your efforts to locate Mrs. Tippit’s notes and/or descendants.
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17 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
Jim,
For yeats I assumed that the anonymous woman caller (Bentley) had stated outright that "Oswald's" Hungarian father was "Emile Kardos" (Emil Gardos) and that the his uncle was (Fred Blair).
However, a close re-reading of the FBI document merely implies that, but does not quite say it categorically.
David Joseph argued this point years ago, and I have come to suspect he might (may) have been on to something: it is possible that the caller (Bentley) did NOT allege that Gardos and Blair were our "Oswald's" father/uncle?
Yes, she mentioned them (Gardos directly, Blair indirectly) so she obviously connected them somehow with our "Oswald" in Yorkville in the 1940's.
But maybe she didn't overtly state that Gardos/Blair were "Oswald's" "Hungarian father and uncle", Communists who got all their money from communist activities . . . "
Maybe she meant yet other (unnamed) men.
After all, she (Bentley) also mentioned "Weinstock" of "Women's World", whom we've now identified as Louis Weinstock of "Workers World", yet as far as anyone knows, there is no familial connection between either Gardos and/or Blair and Louis Weinstock.
So if she (Bentley) did not connect connect the name "Weinstock" with the phrase "Oswald's" Hungarian father and uncle", then how certain can we be that she meant to connect the names "Gardos" and (presumably Blair) with the phrase "Hungarian father and uncle"?
The men (Gardos and Blair) and Weinstock were important to her- she mentioned them in close proximity to her claim that she "knew 'Oswald's' Hungarian father and uncle". These men did indeed play some role in young "Oswald's" life in Yorkville, according to her.
But whether she meant to imply (as we have inferred) that the "Hungarian father and uncle" were necessarily (Gardos and Blair) might not be so.
She might have meant they were only (mentors or friends? of "Oswald's" "Hungarian father and uncle."
Might.
Either way, our "Oswald" probably had a copy of Tibor Kajan's "Circus Maximus" cartoon book because it likely had some connection to Grace Gardos, a woman he remembered from Yorkville in the 1940's.
Hi Paul,
You raise, once more, an interesting question. I had forgotten about an old Milwaukee newspaper article that indicates that Gardos moved around quite a bit while in the U.S., including residencies in in New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, Ohio, and New Jersey. Please take a look at the last four paragraphs in the left column of the 1949 Milwaukee Journal article below.
My memory isn’t getting any better as I get older. Did we ever establish solid evidence that Gardos lived in NYC during a time that would make sense for him being a guardian of Harvey Oswald? This would just about have to be during the 1940s. Providing such generalized time frames, the article doesn’t preclude NYC stays for Gardos during the 1940s, but it doesn’t explicitly support such a timeline either.
In other respects, the identification of Gardos (and Blair) by the anonymous caller seems to make sense. Just how many Hungarian communist men with a known communist brother-in-law (“uncle” to young Harvey Oswald) would have been active in the Yorkville area of NYC during this era? Manhattan is a densely populated island, but its Yorkville neighborhood is really quite small, consisting of perhaps a couple of dozen blocks bordering the east side of Central Park.
According to the report, the woman said, “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.” This matches nicely with this statement from the Milwaukee Journal article: “But at the trial the government showed that during his entire residence in the United States his sole work was as an organizer and editor for the Communist party.”
The FBI report also indicated that the caller said “Kardos [presumably Gardos] is the head of the communists,” which is a stretch, but from his known biography, he clearly had at least some leadership roles in the party. And finally….
There is the Hungarian printing of Circus Maximus, a book translated by the wife of Emil Gardos [Geo Kozma believes she must have had help from her husband] in 1963, and allegedly in Oswald’s possession in 1963. If it was a legitimate possession of LHO, it is another strong connection between Gardos and Oswald. But I’m not sure I believe it. As far a I know, we have only Marina’s claim that it was in Oswald’s possession. Perhaps it was yet another miracle find by Ruth Paine. What do you think?
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There is little chance that American-born Lee Harvey Oswald was the boy referred to by the anonymous caller. During the 1940s this Oswald lived in Louisiana and Texas. There is no indication that this Oswald set foot in New York City, much less lived there, until 1952, three years after Emil Gardos was deported. During the mid to late 1940s, the Russian-speaking Oswald lived largely under the radar, his whereabouts, with just a few exceptions, largely unknown.
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14 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:
200 posts in this thread now. 100 of them by new member Matt as this is the only thread I know of he's posted in.
You are right on the mark, Ron! It is almost pointless for anyone to post anything in this thread as long as Matt's endless screeds replace everything else within minutes.
MATT -- Patrick Moynihan was one of the few personal heroes I can count among American politicians. From what I know about him, I LOVED that man! But you are OBVIOUSLY abusing this thread, and I'm going to complain to the mods about you asap!
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15 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:
I know what the story is about; I'm closer to it than you can "possibly fathom."
That's an intriguing statement. Can you tell us more?
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It’s been awhile, so let’s review the basic facts of this thread. Referencing the FBI report in my original post in this thread….
On 11/30/1963 an unknown woman made a phone call answered by Mrs. Jack D. Tippit of Westport Connecticut. (Forum member John Kowalski spoke a few years ago to the daughter of Mrs. Tippit, who said there were actually several calls from the anonymous woman and that her mother, Mrs. Tippit, had made written notes about the calls that, at least then, still existed.)
According to the report, the anonymous caller “said she knew Oswald’s father and uncle who were Hungarians and communists.” She added, “Oswald’s father and uncle had lived at Seventy Seventh and Second Ave. in Yorkville, NYC,” and that “both were unemployed, got all their money from communists and spent all their time in communist activities.” The anonymous caller said she would be killed if her call(s) became public knowledge.
The FBI report misidentified the “Hungarian father” as “Emile Kardos,” who, we have long suspected, was actually Emil Gardos, a Hungarian immigrant deported for communist activities in 1949. While still in the U.S. Emil married Grace A. Blair, whose brother was Fred Blair, long time chairman of the Wisconsin Communist Party and probably the “uncle” and “brother-in-law” referenced by the anonymous caller.
Forum member Paul Jolliffe has made an excellent case that the anonymous caller was most likely Elizabeth Bentley, a communist spy active in the U.S. for at least a dozen years before becoming a “professional anti-communist” working with the FBI. Forum member Matt Cloud pointed out that, just as she apparently feared, Bentley died just a few days after her 11/30/63 call.
As if this all isn’t interesting enough, a few years ago Paul Jolliffe pointed out here that, according to Heritage Auctions, in 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald had, among his possession, the following two books.
Neither book was among the “Oswald possessions” as listed in detail by the Dallas Police and, greatly expanded, by the FBI. According to Heritage Auctions, the two books “were included in a cleanout of personal papers requested by Marina Oswald following the assassination and given to her personal lawyer. Accompanied by a letter of provenance.” “Circus Maximus” was published in 1963 by the Hungarian publisher Corvina Press.
Geo Kozma has pointed out that in the same year, Corvina published another book, “Kárpáti rapszódia (Carpathian Rhapsody).” According to Goodreads.com: “The book was translated into English by Grace Blair Gardos, the American wife of Hungarian Emil Gardos.” Which leaves us with the following stunning coincidence:
Grace Blair Gardos, the American wife of Oswald’s “Hungarian father,” was associated with Corvina Press, publisher of a book allegedly found in LHO’s possessions. Both books were published in 1963, indicating that “Circus Maximus,” at least, had to be sent somehow to Oswald in 1963. Why?
1. Was the book sent as an innocent gift to LHO to remind him of his time with the Gardos family?
2. Or was it, and probably the “Communist Manifesto,” sent as part of a frame-up of the Russian-speaking Oswald?
If the latter, why was “Circus Maximus” included, perhaps implicating Emil and Grace Gardos? “Communist Manifesto” alone would have done the trick!
It should also be noted that this limited biographical data does not fit at all into the Official History of the Lee Harvey Oswald® born in New Orleans to Robert Edward Lee Oswald and Marguerite Frances Claverie. John A. and I believe it fits far better with the Russian-speaking Oswald who, as a probable WWII war orphan, would have needed foster care at all times in the 1940s.
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10 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:
What tripe.
7 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:This point is pathetic.
1 minute ago, Matt Cloud said:Now, do you have anything have substance to add? Anything at all?
The insults go on and on. Of course, I brought up this topic based on John A's research in the first place, here and in other threads dating back years. You've been here for three days pontificating ad nauseam and putting out posts by the scores. I've never seen anyone post half as much as you do every day. Remarkable!
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4 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:
And next time you respond, if you respond, address me directly. Don't write about me in the third-person as though I am not here. Are we clear?
How’s this for clarity: I’ll address you as I see fit and not as you command!
OTOH, I do hope you can help Geo Kozma. I have a hard time understanding him.
The Anonymous Phone Call to the Tippits of Connecticut
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Sandy--
Fascinating theory. We could start exploring it by asking Geo Kozma if the surname Hidell shows up in Hungarian genealogical searches, and if so to look for it associated with a first name of Alek or variants Alec and Alex. If memory serves, Marina referred to her husband as Alek in a few conversations with researchers, but, of course, these talks were all after the assassination when the name Alek Hidell was well known.
I’ve often wondered if, during interrogations, Oswald ever spilled the beans about his association with American intelligence. There is no indication that he did, at least during the full sessions attended by a number of witnesses.
But as you no doubt suspect, If Oswald was keeping his spy status secret (and there are indications he was good at that), and if this theory is reasonably correct, Oswald might well have denied anything to do with the name Hidell, even though he seemed reasonably truthful in his other answers.
The more we keep working on this topic, the more interesting it seems to get….
Paul J. is apparently working on researching Elizabeth Bentley’s NYC contacts in the 1940s and is hoping for some information within a couple of weeks.
I’m helping John K. with his continuing work to locate Mrs. Tippit’s original notes, which may not be as impossible as it sounds, and I’m also going to try contacting the NYU library early next week to see what can be learned from the Weinstock Papers without actually traveling to NYC.
Geo: Any chance you could look into the surname Hidell in Hungarian genealogical databases? If you find anything, could you look for it associated with first names of Alek or Alec or Alex, or anything that makes more sense to you in a Hungarian setting?