Jim Hargrove
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Mr. Bojczuk continues to claim that the mastoidectomy is fatal to Harvey and Lee even though a member of the exhumation team, Dr. Vincent Di Maio, noted that “many World War II-era kids bore the same scar.” Dr. Linda Norton’s team went on to identify the man in the grave at Rose Hill Cemetery by Marine Corps dental records.
But John Armstrong has proved that there were two men in the USMC at roughly the same time going by the name Lee Harvey Oswald. One, for example, had a false upper front tooth that failed while in the Marines, while the body exhumed in 1981 had all its front teeth intact. One LHO in the Marines in 1958 traveled aboard the USS Skagit and was stationed in Ping-Tung Taiwan at the very same time another LHO was treated repeatedly for venereal disease far away in Atsugi, Japan. One LHO could read, write, and speak the Russian language while still a Marine, the other could not. From Marine Corps unit diaries and other records, it is easy to see that one Oswald worked with an entirely different group of Marines than the other at numerous times.
Dr. Norton’s team did indeed prove that the man buried in Oak Hill cemetery was Lee Harvey Oswald. One of them, that is. I have told Mr. Bojczuk more than once that I disagree with John Armstrong about the mastoidectomy. I think it was the Russian-speaking Oswald all along that had it, and that Hoover found out and faked a record or two, as he did so often in this case.
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9 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:
Jim,
To me, there is a very clear distinction between Comrade and Citizen. The Soviets took this very seriously, especially during the height of the Cold War.
There are others who do not think the distinction is very great.
Here's a portion of the Soviet's explanation for rejecting the citizenship application of Harvey Lee Oswald.
We do not have Oswald's original citizenship application, nor the Soviet's written rejection of that application.
This is only an "explanation" of why some Oswald's application was rejected.
In this letter, it says that Harvey Lee Oswald's request for USSR Citizenship was denied. It doesn't say when he applied for that citizenship, but the negative character reference memo from the Minsk Radio factory in CE 985, p. 433 https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135&relPageId=447&search=%22Harvey_Lee%20Oswald%22 is dated December 11, 1961 and refers to “Citizen” Harvey Lee Oswald.
(We're back to the surly and non-social Oswald here)
As early as February, 1961, Oswald was trying to get back to the U.S. The U.S. told him he would have to appear at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in person. He didn't have permission to travel to Moscow, but in July, he showed up there and appeared at the Embassy on July 8th. He told the Embassy staff there that he had never actually applied for Soviet Citizenship, but was living in Russia as a non-resident alien and showed them his non-citizen alien identity card as proof.
In his letter of resignation addressed to the Director of the Minsk Plant dated May 18, 1962, LHO identified himself as, “The Locksmith of the Experimental Plant.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1317#relPageId=516&tab=page
p. 486
In his employee workbook, LHO gave his job title as “Adjuster”
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1317#relPageId=95&tab=page
p. 65.
So far, I've seen him called an Assembler, a Regulator, an Adjuster, and a Locksmith.
You asked, "You do point out some interesting anomalies in the Russian data. Do you have a theory to explain this?"
I think the Harvey Lee Oswald persona was created long before we knew it to be, but by who or why or how, I don't know.
Steve Thomas
Steve,
We’ve been talking about this for a while, but I’m just beginning to appreciate how weird it is. If we assume that the reversing of “Lee Harvey” and “Harvey Lee” was just an error by Soviet bureaucrats, then must we also assume that the formal rejection of “Lee Harvey Oswald’s” Russian citizenship request was made not only a year and a half after he left the Soviet Union, but also nearly two weeks after he was shot dead in Dallas police headquarters by Jack Ruby?
No doubt lumbering USSR bureaucracies moved slowly back then, but the assumption that these Russian government employees moved so slowly that they couldn’t cope with breaking news of the world’s most famous alleged assassin is hard to believe... and I don’t believe it. I had the good fortune to spend a few days in Saint Petersburg recently, and I’m convinced that the Russians who built that beautiful city were not fools.
If we assume that references to “Lee Harvey” and “Harvey Lee” are, in fact, references to two different people in the USSR in the early 1960s, what are we to make of that? Does it take us back to Michael Eddowes’ theory that “Khrushchev Killed Kennedy” and that the man killed by Jack Ruby was a Russian agent sent to the U.S. in 1961?
Trouble is, that was disproved decades ago by Linda Norton and her exhumation team. The evidence she, uh, uncovered is pretty clear: the “Lee Harvey Oswald” buried in Oak Hill Cemetery clearly had a life in the U.S. and the U.S. Marines Corps, which pretty much disproves that a Russian agent invented in 1961 was shot dead by Jack Ruby. The only other interpretation I can conjure is that Ms. Norton was part of a Soviet conspiracy, which seems HIGHLY unlikely.
Can you make any more sense of this?
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19 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:
John,
For some more funny business going on...
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135#relPageId=444&tab=page
On page 430 of CE 985, there is a Certificate dated July 15, 1961 that “Comrade”, Lee Harvey Oswald was employed as an assembler at the Minsk Radio Plant. The date January 1, 1960 is typed on the Certificate.
Steve, the page you link is a State Department translation of Soviet document(s). We don’t see the actual Russian paperwork, not that it would necessarily help us much. Could something be lost in translation here? January 1, 1960 sounds suspiciously like some sort of bureaucratic time stamp for, say, a the effective date of new form or a new regulation or something.
The Russian-speaking LHO WAS in Russia on both 7/15/61 and 1/1/60, though on the ‘61 date it is a little murky whether he was in Minsk or Moscow.
19 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135#relPageId=447&tab=page
On page 433 of that CE Exhibit (CE 985), it says that “Citizen” Harvey Lee Oswald was hired as a regulator at the Minsk Radio Plant on January 13, 1960.
"Comrade" Lee Harvey Oswald is hired January 1, 1960 as an assembler.
Two weeks later, "Citizen" Harvey Lee Oswald is hired on January 13, 1960 as a regulator.
If I have this right, a regulator was someone connected with quality control.
It wasn't until 10 days after that first Certificate is dated, on January 11, 1960, that Lee H. Oswald submitted an application for employment at the Minsk Radio and TV plant. On his application, he wrote that his parents were dead, and he had no brothers or sisters. (pp. 426-427).
Maybe he was appointed or hired as of January 1st, but didn't officially fill out an application until January 11th.
That does seem weird. Is it possible that these are, again, translation issues? Do you know if there was any kind of distinction between Soviet “citizens” and “comrades?”
19 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:PS: Lee Harvey Oswald maintained until the day he died that he had not applied for citizenship in the USSR, and he was right.
It was Harvey Lee Oswald who was denied citizenship.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=7986&relPageId=111&search=Dobrynin_December 11, 1963
From H&L pp 266-277:
Snyder and McVickar cabled the news of Oswald's visit to Washington, DC at 1:00 pm.15 Snyder later wrote in a Foreign Service Dispatch to the Department of State, "He (Oswald) wished to renounce his American citizenship and that he had applied to become a citizen of the Soviet Union. He presented to the interviewing officer his passport and the following signed, undated, handwritten statement:"
I Lee Harvey Oswald do hereby request that my present citizenship in
the United States of america, be revoked.I have entered the Soviet Union for the express purpose of applying for
citizenship in the Soviet Union, through the means of naturalization.My request for citizenship is now pending before Supreme Soviet of the
U.S.S.R.I take these steps for political reasons. My request for the revoking of
my American citizenship is made only after the longest and most serious
considerations.I affirm that my allegiance is to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
s/ Lee H. OswaldThe Russian-speaking Oswald also reportedly told UPI correspondent Aline Mosby in Moscow on 10/31/59: "I will never return to the United States for any reason ..... when I left America to seek citizenship in Russia it was like getting out of prison." I think there are a number of other indications that LHO applied for Russian citizenship, but it doesn’t seem to have ever been granted.
I can't remember. Did Classic Oswald® specifically say that he never applied for Soviet or Russian citizenship?
19 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:Funny business going on over there in that ol' Russia.
Steve Thomas
You do point out some interesting anomalies in the Russian data. Do you have a theory to explain this? If memory serves, John B. also believes there were two Oswalds in Russia during the early 1960s, which really never occurred to me or, I’m pretty sure, to John A.
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10 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:
Funny business going on over there in that ol' Russia.
Funny business going on right here too! The Bolton Ford incident occurred while "Lee Harvey Oswald" was in Russia. So did lots of other incidents in the U.S. at the same time.
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2 hours ago, John Butler said:
I sure that's the case as far as government folks (Warren Commission, FBI, and others) were concerned. She could be easily portrayed as a fantasist due to her background as a Fortean Society member, head of a UFO club, and someone who describes people in a lurid, fantastical manner. Whether what I wrote here is true or not doesn't matter. Perception is the key. She could be perceived that way by those in charge so that her information could be ignored or discredited.
My perception is that we haven’t seen a scintilla of evidence that any of this Fortean/Kittrell business is true. All we have is an unsigned blog post from a site called www.joshuablubuhs.com. The link is here.
We offer more than a hundred pages of documents from the National Archives and the FBI Series 2 Microfilm Collection from UMI. That’s real evidence.
Pete offers us a cut and paste of an anonymous blog from joshuablubuhs.com.
That’s not evidence.
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8 hours ago, John Butler said:
It's been a long time since I have studied Man, Myth, and Magic and UFOs and such. But, I do remember a few things about Charles Fort and the Fortean Society. They tinkered with and discussed things that are farther out then even I am willing to go.
To the point: Is this discussion of Fort and things Fortean an attempt to discredit Laura Kittrell through the Fortean Society beliefs? Is this an attempt to discredit her vis a vis the information she provided on the Oswald doubles.
PS
When I was a kid I enjoyed the writings of A. Merritt.
John,
Assuming Pete is right about the source, it probably is an attempt to discredit her. Fortunately, Ms. Kittrell, unlike many other witnesses to two Oswalds, left behind a substantial amount of material in her own words, allowing us to judge her observations for ourselves. The connection to John Fort, if true, may have come by way of Ms. Kittrell’s father, who, like Fort, collected news clippings professionally.
Anyway, back around the turn of the century, William Weston wrote a two part essay for The Fourth Decade all about Laura Kittrell. Part 1 can be read here.
In the first part of his piece, Mr. Weston wrote the following biographical sketch of Ms. Kittrell:
Laura Kittrell (the surname is pronoounced with the accent on the first syllable) was born in October 1904. At the time she met Oswald, she was 59 years old. Her father was W.H. “Bill” Kittrell, a prominent politician in Dallas and a former secretary of the Texas Democratic Party. He had been personally acquainted with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and numerous other national figures. He later became employed in the public relations field and in the early 1960’s provided a press clipping service to various types of clients. Laura lived with her father and mother and was never married. Like her parents, she considered herself a good liberal Democrat. He co-workers regarded her as intelligent and capable at her job, but a little too opinionated on matters of public interest. As an active member of the Lutheran church, she practiced the charity taught in the Bible. She had sympathy for the poor and downtrodden and did not hesitate to champion their cause whenever she felt the system was oppressing them. Her compassionate nature suited her for a job at the TEC, and she had been working there since 1950. In 1963, she had just started her position as a counselor for blue collar workers at the industrial employment office at 1206 Ross Avenue.
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If Laura Kittrell was a member of the Fortean Society, she was in good company. According to Wikpedia:
The Fortean Society was primarily based in New York City. Its first president was Theodore Dreiser, an old friend of Charles Fort, who had helped to get his work published. Founding members of the Fortean Society included Tiffany Thayer, Booth Tarkington, Ben Hecht, Alexander Woollcott and many of New York's literati such as Dorothy Parker.... Other members included Vincent Gaddis, Ivan T. Sanderson, A. Merritt, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller.
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5 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:
This whole post was excellent. Thanks for the analysis. It makes sense.
Does anyone know if Laura Kittrell's manuscript is available online? I'd like to read it. I didn't know about the motorcycle jacket. That's an interesting detail that should have been easy to confirm Oswald's ownership of such a jacket.
Denny,
The problems noted by Dr. Norwood at Baylor University's digital collections site appear to have been fixed in the last day or two. I was able to download the 187-page document at the link below, although the system was VERY slow. Note that the PDF file is misnamed “Laurel Kittral,” but it does contain all the material you seek about Laura Kittrell.
Here is the link to the correct subsection of the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor.
When the first page of the PDF file appears, click “Download,” and then click “Full Asset,” and then click “Download” again.
Also definitely worth reading is the ten-page 1978 memo from HSCA’s Gaeton Fonzi to Blakey. I believe Mr. Fonzi was the last person to interview Ms. Kittrell. The memo is at the very end of the file.
You may spend less time waiting for Baylor’s server if you do this early in the morning or late at night.
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We all sympathize with Marina's position after the assassination and surely understand how she, to put it charitably, had to cooperate entirely with the authorities (Sylvia Meagher titled one of her chapters "The Scorpion's Lash: Testimonies of Marina Oswald") but I don't think her behavior going back at least to 1962 was blameless. Here's how John A. put it:
There was never a single indication that Lee Harvey Oswald harmed or abused Marina in the Soviet Union. Nor was there an indication that he harmed or abused her at Robert Oswald's house or "Marguerite Oswald's" apartment in Fort Worth in the summer of 1962. But soon after the young couple moved into the apartment on Mercedes Street, and were alone, Marina began to complain that her husband was beating her. (H&L p. 428)
Was Marina trying to invent grounds for a divorce? I seem to recall Marina saying somewhere that her husband told her he was tiring of their marriage and wanted to go back to Russia, but I can't recall the specifics. Does this ring a bell with anyone? If so, should we give it much credence?
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On 5/17/2020 at 2:06 PM, Steve Thomas said:
John,
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/oswald_m1.htm
WC testimony February 3, 1964
Mr. RANKIN. Did you know that Lee Oswald was an American when you first met him?
Mrs. OSWALD. I found that out at the end of that party, towards the end of that party, when I was first introduced to him, I didn't know that.http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscamar1.htm
HSCA testimony 1977?
Mrs. PORTER. No, I didn't. When he asked to dance, we just talked very little.
Mr. McDONALD. Did he tell you he was an American?
Mrs. PORTER. No, not at that--not during the dancing, no.
Mr. McDONALD. At this time you were speaking in Russian together?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes. He spoke with accent so I assumed he was maybe from another state, which is customary in Russia. People from other states do speak with accents because they do not speak Russian. They speak different languages.
Mr. McDONALD. So when you say another state, you mean another Russian state?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes, like Estonia, Lithuania, something like that.
Mr. McDONALD. Did you suspect at all that he was an American?
Mrs. PORTER. No, not at all.Steve,
Thanks for putting together all that testimony from Marina and the others in one spot. I really wish we could trust Marina on this, for her stated belief that on first meeting him she thought her future husband was from a Russian state such as Estonia or Lithuania kind of makes our point for us. (She also mentioned a “Baltic state” to an interviewer.)
It may be that Oswald let down his guard at the dance and spoke Russian to this attractive young woman, but it is also clear that he was, in general, hiding his knowledge of the Russian language while in Moscow as well as Minsk. For example,
At Botkinskaya Hospital in Moscow after the so-called suicide attempt, a medic wrote: “the patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian. Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what he was asked.” (WCE 985, Volume 18, 470.)
In Mink, the man assigned by the Soviets to teach Oswald Russian, Stanislav S. Shushkevich (he went on to become the first president of Belarus when it gained its independence in 1991) said this when interviewed:
Oswald’s Russian was limited; “he knew very few words.”
Oswald “found it hard to communicate with his ‘comrades’ in any meaningful way.
Talking about the famous popular song “Moscow Nights,” Shushkevich indicated it would have been “impossible for Oswald to understand the lyrics.”
The interviewer added, “Oswald, Shushkevich told me, did not make sense. He didn’t appear to know a lot. He didn’t appear to want to know a lot.” In the end, Shushkevich felt he had been given the assignment not really to teach Oswald Russian, but to find out how much Russian Oswald knew.
At the same time Oswald was hiding his Russian fluency, there is evidence that Marina was hiding her knowledge of English. After living in the United States for more than a year and a half, she still needed a couple of translators during the WC hearings. Although one biographer said she only knew a few words in English while living in the Soviet Union, American “defector” Robert Webster, who Marina befriended shortly before she met Oswald, told author Dick Russell that Marina spoke fluent English, though with a heavy accent.
It is almost funny to think how Boris and Natasha, I mean Lee HARVEY Oswald and Marina Prusakova, may well have been hiding from each other their knowledge of each other’s languages. What language was their pillow talk? I wish I could have more confidence in Marina’s testimony.
Dr. Norwood was probably wise to largely steer clear of Marina’s testimony and statements in his article on Oswald’s Proficiency in the Russian Language.
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21 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:
Ofstein went through the Monterey School of Language and the possibility exists that Oswald may have as well.
Steve,
The opening pages of Harvey and Lee discuss the possibility that Oswald learned Russian at a facility such as the Monterey School of Languages while in the Marines. As Dr. Norwood noted above, the highly detailed USMC records provide no time for him to have studied there, or anywhere like it, at least officially. It certainly could not seem to have happened during the period of less than one year when Classic Oswald® was in boot camp (1956), ITR training (early 1957), aviation training in Jacksonville, Florida (March-April, 1957), or radar school in Biloxi (May-June, 1957). There is substantial evidence, including records and eyewitness accounts, that he was at all these places.
Which brings us to Japan. In August 1957, Oswald boarded the USS Bexar and arrived in Atsugi in September. After some travel to the South China Sea and Subic Bay (Philippines) this Oswald left Atsugi in November 1958 and, we’re told, was then stationed starting the following month at the Marine Corps Air Facility in Santa Ana, California, where, just a month later, he got more questions right than wrong in a Russian language test designed for native speaking Russians and suddenly, and loudly, appeared to all around him to read, write, and speak Russian.
Did this Oswald have an opportunity to learn Russian while he was previously stationed in Japan? John Armstrong interviewed Zack Stout, who bunked with Oswald for nearly a year at Atsugi and while traveling to the Philippines. John asked Zack if he ever saw Oswald study the Russian language. Mr. Stout said:
"Most of the time we were with a mobile radar unit. Shortly after he arrived we left Japan and traveled constantly from location to location in the South China Sea [beginning in November 1957]. I know Oswald didn't attend any Russian classes or read any Russian books or listen to any Russian records. He didn't have anywhere to get such materials and if he had them we would have known about it. We slept in the same bunkhouse and most of the time worked on the same radar crew. The idea that Oswald studied Russian in Japan is ridiculous--it just didn't happen."
So how did it happen?
The best write-up on this I know of is Dr. James Norwood’s essay on my website:
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10 hours ago, James Norwood said:
Jim,
I appreciated your detailed reply, and I admired your ability to work closely to Laura Kittrell's manuscript. In our debate, we agree on the main issue that the interviews with employment counselor Kittrell were staged events. They were part of a pattern of similar incidents with Oswald imposters creating impressions that would later serve to incriminate him and provide the public with a motivation for Oswald killing the president, following the assassination. These events go back at least to Sylvia Odio's encounter with men who showed up on her doorstep, including "Leon" Oswald, who was clearly an imposter.The issue that we are debating is who were the actors in the Kittrell charade. My argument is that the two men interviewed by Kittrell were both imposters used to create the post-assassination memory of an angry young man, sympathetic to Marxism and prone to violence. It was only by chance that the two different impersonators were assigned to the same counselor. Your position is that this was part of a "final test" about how convincing the impersonators could be and that both Oswalds were instructed to meet with the same counselor, Laura Kittrell.
My position is that this chance occurrence inadvertently provided the opportunity for an eyewitness to experience first-hand how Oswald was being groomed as the patsy. It is for this reason that Kittrell's manuscript was suppressed until the HSCA convened in the late 1970s. Your position is that Classic Oswald was the first of the two men visiting Kittrell at the TEC and that he was coached in advance to leave a vivid impression on Kittrell. My position is that the two different imposters were being used to create confusion in the post-assassination period and that the plotters would never risk alerting Oswald to the method being used to set him up as the scapegoat by asking him to leave such an unfavorable impression of himself.
You make a persuasive case for Oswald as a skilled "performer" who could play a role to the hilt when instructed to do so by his handlers. The example you give about the phony suicide in Moscow is a good one. Another instance is his ability to hand out the leaflets in New Orleans, then go on the air to promote the FPCC and speak favorably of Fidel Castro. You and I would likely agree that for most of his life, this young man had been inculcated in the art of role-playing and deception, referring to Marx's "Das Kapital" in front of school chums or even his fellow Marines.
The hurdle I am unable to overcome in the interviews with Kittrell is why and how Oswald's handlers would conceivably send him on a mission to overtly incriminate himself. Oswald was carefully being groomed as the assassin of an American president. Surely, the plotters would not want to arouse Oswald's suspicions by asking him to defame himself publicly by acting belligerent in a public place before a civil servant. The moment of the interview that strikes me as most "rehearsed" is when the man shifts the conversation away from job-hunting to the topic of guns, explaining to Kittrell the different meanings of the terms “Marksman,” “Sharpshooter,” and “Expert,” as used in the Marines. That scene fits with the pattern of other Oswald impersonators, boasting about rifles and on multiple occasions actually firing at a shooting range. But if Oswald were sent on this mission to Kittrell's office, he would almost certainly be curious as to the purpose behind such an act of self-defamation in the employment office.
By the morning of November 22, Oswald had to have been kept blissfully ignorant of the role he had been assigned as scapegoat. Nothing could be left to chance. If he suspected that he was being set up, he simply could have stayed at home from work that day.
So, my question to you is as follows: If Classic Oswald were given instructions to report to the Texas Employment Commission, behave erratically, mention his years spent in the Soviet Union, and talk about firearms, how would that assignment have been presented to him without this savvy, experienced operative recognizing that he was being duped?
JamesDr. Norwood,
Thank you for distilling this pivotal question. I should probably run this by John A. first, but it has recently occurred to me that the Russian-speaking Oswald was most likely given the same story the plotters, including David Atlee Phillips, were trying to place into the record: that "Lee Harvey Oswald" was about to defect to the Soviet Union a second time.
There is substantial evidence for this. For example, in his PBS article Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City, John Newman wrote this about the vanished audio recordings of an Oswald impostor in Mexico City (emphasis added):
We know about a 30 September tape because of the recollection of the CIA translator who transcribed it, Mrs. Tarasoff. She remembers not only transcribing it but also the fact that the Oswald voice was the same as the 28 September voice—in other words the same Oswald impostor. Mrs. Tarasoff remembers the Oswald character asked the Soviets for money to help him defect, once again, to the Soviet Union. In addition, the CIA officer at the Mexico City in charge of Cuban operations, David Atlee Phillips, in sworn testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), backed up Mrs. Tarasoff's claim about the tape and the request for money to assist in another defection to the Soviet Union.
To anyone who ever wondered why on earth our State Department issued a new passport in 1963 enabling this returned Russian "defector" to travel, once again, to the Soviet Union, this is probably the most logical answer. Spy, spy, and spy again. My bet is that this is what the Russian-speaking Oswald was told when he began sheep-dipping himself in New Orleans in the summer of '63. And it was probably much on his mind when he appeared at the Texas Employment Commission in early October, 1963.
He might well have looked forward to "defecting" again. After all, a 23-year-old man with obvious marital problems probably could consider worse fates than being in Russia again and again pursued by women as good-looking as Marina Prusakova.
At the TEC he told Ms. Kittrell about Cuba, Russia and his love of Russian opera. (Which prompted the funniest line in Ms. Kittrell's long essay: "Men in Dallas do go to the opera, but it is usually under duress, and they are not the same men you see downtown in motorcycle jackets.")
In many of the pages of her write-up, you can feel how appalled Ms. Kittrell was to think about the Russian experiences of this odd character in front of her. All this commie stuff was just so awful she simply didn't want to believe it. She clearly saw how disappointed the first Oswald was when she failed to criticize Batista sufficiently. It's all really pretty thick, and this is just her second-hand account. It was right after the Batista discussion that she wrote, "It struck me all at once that he was play-acting again...." though I doubt the true reasons for the performance ever occurred to her.
The second Oswald, who Ms. Kittrell referred to as the "Teamster," was clearly in on the plot, at least the plot to set up the patsy, and so he needed no other conditioning for his test appearance at the TEC in later October. I think this line of reasoning makes good sense not only for the encounters of the two Oswalds with Ms. Kittrell, but for the whole set-up of the patsy for the assassination of JFK. And as I say again and again, if you are going to assassinate the President of the United States in broad daylight and get away with it, you simply must have a designated patsy. Without one, the search for you will be relentless, and you will be caught.
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On 5/9/2020 at 6:02 AM, James R Gordon said:
I came across this image - I am sure fellow members have seen this image before. However it is the first time I have seen the tear in the back of the shirt as well as the scalpel cuts on the front.
I do not know whether Getty - by linking the bullet damage to the back of the shirt and the damage to the front are suggesting how similar the two tears are.
I find it useful to see both damaged areas of the shirt together. It is the firts time I have seen that.
Thought I would share this.
James
I thought someone would say this earlier, but this is a spectacularly clear illustration of what Cliff Varnell has been telling us for years: that the shallow back wound was near the third thoracic vertebra, despite the endless efforts by WC apologists to depict it as being higher.
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20 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:
Jim,
Do you know if the physical description of the "silent woman" provided by Mrs. Kittrell matches in any way with the description of the woman in the Furniture Mart encounter or the Alice, Texas encounter?
Steve Thomas
Ms. Kittrell thought the woman was deaf because she seemed to speak with her hands and added this in her manuscript:
The woman, who was young, had a broad, countrified, but wistful, blonde, face, with an expression of grave sadness,and once when my eyes caught hers. I had seen that she was staring at me with great intcntness (sic), as though she wanted to tell me something. Immediately I thought that the only thing she could possibly want to tell me was that her husband was cruel to her, and that he beat and kicked her, and that there she was, unable to make a sound. I felt my eyes ready to fill with tears, so looked away. I did not know what on earth I could do about it, if this were the case.
She was a Seventh-Day Adventist, as anyone could plainly see from looking at her, for she wore no makeup, and was cloth[ed] as women of that sect often are, tackily in shades of grey, and she wore round-toed, flat, oxfords, just like children wear.
It does strike me that this could be a description of Marina, still indicating she knew little English.
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Mr. Caddy,
In reference to the television show I Led Three Lives, Robert Oswald wrote: “When I left home to join the Marines, he was still watching the reruns.” Robert Oswald left home for the Marines on July 15, 1952, more than a year before the first episode of I Led Three Lives aired.
Robert Morrow is accurately quoting from Robert Oswald’s book. But Robert Oswald’s statement is demonstrably incorrect, to put it charitably.
EDIT: Robert Oswald was discharged from the Marines in July 1955, while first-run episodes of I Led Three Lives were still being aired.
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19 hours ago, James Norwood said:
Jim,
I find your idea of testing the waters ("a final test") to be intriguing with regard to the Laura Kittrell interviews. At the same time, your chronology of the other incidents of Oswald impostors fits into a pattern in which Kittrell's experience must be included. For years, I have reflected on Kittrell's manuscript after ordering a copy from the National Archives.
Here are several observations:
There are moments during the first interview in Kittrell's office that seem "staged." During the interview, the man who claimed he had resided in the Soviet Union slammed his fist down on her desk, upending a flower vase. The man was also assertive in eavesdropping on the previous client's conversation, then commenting on what the woman was privately telling the counselor. Uncharacteristic of what we know of the quiet and reserved Oswald who was shot by Jack Ruby, this man was loquacious in almost bragging about his past experiences in the Soviet Union and San Diego and commenting on the political operative Murray Chotiner. This demonstrative behavior does not square with the passive and taciturn profile of Oswald. The second Oswald interview was even more curious with a different man with a different background as a teamster.
In the first interview, the slamming of his hand onto Kittrell's desk would have stood out most in anyone's recall of the conversation. Here is the description from pp. 11-12 in Kittrell's manuscript:‘Well, I’ll be damned’, he said, as though only mildly amazed. Then he paused and seemed suddenly to grow very angry, for he brought the heel of his palm down against the surface of my desk, hitting it astonishingly hard, considering that he had not made a fist. When he did this, the little vase of periwinkles, being jarred, tumped over, spilling water down the side of the desk and onto the floor. I reached in my desk for a dust cloth.”
The hypothesis that I have been exploring is that the two men meeting with Kittrell were both imposters, whose visits to the Texas Employment Commission were intended to create confusion after the assassination. In a large, metropolitan employment bureau, the clientele show up and take numbers, then are assigned to the next available counselor. It was only by chance that, in this case, the two Oswald impersonators were assigned to Kittrell.
It is highly unlikely as well that Marina would have accompanied Oswald to the interview. She would have been at home with the children. The silent woman accompanying the first man to the interview and vividly recalled by Kittrell was also a likely imposter.
Another important detail is that after the interviews, a different employment counselor, Robert Adams, followed up with an attempt to contact Oswald about a job opening at the airport in handling luggage. Ruth Paine took the message, yet chose not to pass it on to Harvey. Through her efforts, Oswald was eventually hired at the TSBD for wages less than the baggage handler, which would have paid him $100 a month more than a TSBD book handler. Adams' phone call fielded by Ruth Paine was at a time when Oswald had not yet accepted the job at TSDB.
I find it likely that all of the interviews at the Texas Employment Commission were played out by imposters. Kittrell later identified the first, aggressive Oswald from a photo of Larry Crafard. She could not recognize the man she interviewed from any of the photos of Oswald or the extensive film footage of him over the assassination weekend. At the time of the interview, the man was wearing a motorcycle jacket, an item of clothing that would make him stand out. It was also an article of clothing that was not part of known wardrobe of Oswald.
The purpose of this elaborate set of interviews with Oswald imposters, likely conceived by David Atlee Phillips, was twofold:
(a) to sow the seeds of confusion after the assassination; and
(b) to implant memories of an Oswald who was prone to erratic behavior and violence.
In the multiple Oswald impersonations leading up to the assassination, there were occurrences that the plotters could not anticipate. In the case of the Kittrell interviews, one of those unpredictable incidents was that the two imposters were interviewed by the same counselor, who eventually wrote up her experience of the interviews in a lengthy memoir. The Kittrell manuscript shows us the lengths to which the plotters would go in framing Oswald and in evoking chaos for anyone trying to reconstruct Oswald's movements after he was dead.
We may never know the identities of the individuals interviewed by Kittrell. But what we can conclude with certainty is that the impression given to the counselor was that of a man prone to violence, which is part of a pattern of other Oswald pre-assassination sightings in the Dallas area with the same feeling of being "staged": shooting erratically at the rifle range, test-driving an automobile at high speed, arguing with a waitress about an order of eggs, among others. During the Kittrell interview with the first Oswald, the man in motorcycle jacket brought up the subject of guns. Instead of learning about job opportunities, he took the time to carefully explain to Kittrell the different meanings of the terms “Marksman,” “Sharpshooter,” and “Expert,” as used in the Marines.
From her recollections of the employment office interviews, the most vivid memories that would stand out for the counselor were the slamming of the fist onto the desk and the discussion of guns. The Kittrell interviews may best be seen alongside the other examples of Oswald impersonation that continued into the very day of the assassination. Those memories were intended to cement the eventual profile of Oswald as a malcontent prone to violence that became the basis of the Warren Report.Dr. Norwood,
Thanks so much for this thoughtful post. Your observations are always keen and most appreciated, and, in this case, certainly may be correct. For the moment though, let me take what I think would be, at least in part, John A’s position on this.
We agree that elements of this entire story do appear to be “staged,” and I think we would also agree that the two young men claiming to be “Lee Harvey Oswald” were both following instructions during their appearances at the Texas Employment Commission. Let’s consider the first Oswald’s performance.
The first “Oswald” Ms. Kittrell encountered, as you say, apparently pounded his fist on the table in reaction to a discussion of Murray Chotiner. This is the man John A. believes was Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald, who appeared numerous times at the TEC.
If this Oswald’s reaction seems abnormally aggressive, recall that his ability to to complete an assignment included, for example, slitting his own wrist when authorities in Moscow decided to send him home. This kid knew how to play a role and follow instructions!
If the first Oswald Ms. Kittrell encountered was not really Harvey, then the actor was remarkably well versed in Harvey’s biography. Murray Chotner, at the time, was hardly well known outside of California and played a minor role in Harvey’s life story. Yet the impostor picked up on it spontaneously?
In thinking about my theory that the Kittrell appearances might have been a test to see if the two Oswalds could confound an experienced interviewer, I also thought about the TEC’s procedure of assigning the next available counselor to each waiting client. I do believe, though, that this could be overcome if, unknown to Ms. Kittrell, a client specifically stated that he had unfinished business with her.
Your observation about the silent woman with the first Oswald is a good one, but have you considered that this might have been Judyth Baker vacationing from her chemical work in New Orleans? (Joke!) No doubt we agree entirely on Ruth Paine’s position here. Your point about the woman, though, remains a good one.
On Larry Crafard, I think John A. has argued that Crafard had unusually bad teeth not visible in a number of photographs, as well as some tattoos that, if she saw them, might not be visible in the photos.
Finally, I recall that in her interview with Gaeton Fonzi, Ms. Kittrell accurately described what we believe are familiar distinguishing characteristics of the two Oswalds. She said the first Oswald was “very military, neat as a pin,” which kind of matches Classic Oswald®, while the second was “slouchy” and “unkempt” and “had this peculiar way of laughing and talking so that people all over the room could hear him….”
Recall that real Marguerite’s best friends for many years were Myrtle and Julian Evans. Julian testified about LEE Oswald this way: “Lee couldn't talk to his mother in a soft voice or a low voice; it was always a very loud, insolent voice, and it seemed like he got to raising his voice all the time, and he didn't seem to care who heard him or what he said. He had what I would call a foghorn voice, and he didn't seem to make any effort at all to control it. He would just blare out, and it did disturb others around the house…. You don't see a voice in a kid like that, at 13 years old, very often."
Sure sounds like Harvey and Lee to me.
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5 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:
The TV drama I Led Three Lives ran from Oct. 1, 1953 to Jan. 1, 1956. Oswald would have been age 13-16 during this time period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Led_3_Lives
A key page from Robert Oswald’s book – https://twitter.com/CONELRAD6401240/status/1259856311585583109/photo/1
QUOTE
The center of Lee’s fantasy world shifted from radio to television when Mother bought a television set in 1948. When it was new, all of us spent far too much time watching variety shows, dramas and old movies. Lee, particularly, was fascinated. 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.
UNQUOTE
[Robert Oswald, Lee: Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother, p. 47]
Robert Oswald joined the Marines and left home for San Diego on July 15, 1952. Before he left home, how could he possibly have seen his “brother” watching a show that didn’t air for the first time until more than a year later? Much less reruns!
Just more smoke from Robert.
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10 hours ago, Anthony Thorne said:
Jim, I'd say the new book is about a different subject.
Those earlier books, whatever their respective merits, are largely about Oswald's doppelgänger, twin, or double.
This new book is about a totally different guy who had a career path that oddly matched things that Oswald got up to, possibly because they shared handlers or both took part in the same program. So it's a slightly different kettle of fish.
Ah, thank you, Anthony. I'll really look forward to reading this, because comparisons of Oswald and Webster are fascinating indeed.
It is not a coincidence that both Webster and Oswald "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. These US "defectors," acting in perfect
harmony, were both working for the CIA. [Harvey and Lee, p. 267]Alan Weberman had this to say a few decades ago:
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As far as I can tell (and I'm trying to keep up) this is the FIFTH BOOK in the last few years about TWO OSWALDS. Here are the other four (the fourth is at the end):
Three other books based on “Harvey and Lee:”
The JFK Assassination and the Uncensored Story of the Two Oswalds
From an Amazon review: “I'd read a good chunk of Armstrong's Harvey and Lee, but Shannan provided clarity for me on the matter of Marguerite Oswald in particular and the whole thesis in general. So much easier to read this digest than the master's unedited tome.”
DOPPELGANGER: The Legend of Lee Harvey Oswald
From the publisher’s blurb: “More than 300 sources, including many sworn testimonies & affidavits, were consulted, as well as John Armstrong’s massive research project HARVEY AND LEE. One fact led to another, until a coherent picture began to emerge from the immense pile of puzzle pieces…. That picture includes the background of Harvey as a juvenile immigrant fluent in Russian, and the creation of the second ‘Lee Harvey Oswald’ and the second ‘Marguerite Oswald.’ The picture continues with the recruitment of both Lee Oswald and Harvey Oswald by the ONI and the CIA, followed by Harvey’s assumption of Lee’s identity, his ‘defection’ to Russia, and Lee’s involvement with the Cuban revolution and the CIA..…”
From the publisher’s blurb: "New forensic and evidentiary material not published, proves that two individuals known as "Lee Harvey Oswald" enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1956 using the same birth certificate. Recent genealogical research identifies them as second cousins through intermarriage of second-generation French families in New Orleans. It created a nightmare of identity for the FBI."
And, of course, here is the Granddady of all the Two Oswald books:
Please see HarveyandLee.net for more details.
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I just got off the phone with John Armstrong. I told him that I thought the Laura Kittrell impersonation was a final test to see if one Oswald could pass for the other before the Sports Drome and other incriminating episodes began occurring.
John pointed out that “LEE Harvey Oswald” appeared in Baytown, TX on Labor Day weekend in 1963 attempting to purchase rifles from Fidel Castro’s friend Robert McKeown. At the time, Lee HARVEY Oswald and his family were on holiday with the Murrets at Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana.
Since Baytown is not particularly near Dallas, I still think my theory is correct, but in all fairness I must point out that John A. is not convinced.
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3 hours ago, John Butler said:
There appears to be no relationship between the two families.
Thank you for doing this, John. For some reason, genealogy always makes my brain explode. I can't quite follow the generations you've outlined above, but if you're absolutely certain about your conclusion, I'm prepared to accept it.
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Yes, we're looking a family connection between Roy Truly's wife and the famous Claire Chennault, despite the difference in spelling.
Roy Truly is pivotal to this case. He hired Oswald at the Book Depository and soon after the assassination told DPD Chief Lumpkin that Oswald was missing. I think Truly was a co-conspirator in this case. Researchers have long suspected he had CIA ties, but little or no evidence has been found. For much more on Truly, review Victoria Adams and Marion Baker.
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On 5/12/2020 at 4:57 AM, Jim Hargrove said:
According to this Find-a-Grave page, Roy Truly's wife Mildred was related to a rather famous family:
Mildred W. Chenault Truly
Rest in Peace. Daughter of William R. Chenault who was 1st cousin of famed WWII & CIA-affiliated Flying Tigers Gen. Claire Chennault. Her branch of the family spelled their surname with one "n" rather than two.
4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:Jim:
That is a really interesting find about Truly.. Are you sure it's true?
The Find-a-Grave listing is the only evidence I’ve seen so far, but the family connection should be easy enough to track down for anyone with genealogy resources. Forum member John Butler’s wife has expertise here and maybe she will help out. I’ll send Mr. Butler a note.
Gary Shaw, btw, told John Armstrong about this and John told me about it Monday. Bill Kelly did some work on this last year... but I’d also like to find a better source than a Find-a-Grave "flower."
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17 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:
Jim, can you add to that list Brewer's shoe shop appearance of one Oswald buying a pair of 'two eyelet crepe-soled shoes, model 8110, size eight and a half' a few weeks prior to the assassination? Maybe another patsy set up of the Harvey by the Lee. Maybe 'Lee' appearing in the shoe shop doorway on the 22nd to lead Brewer to the Texas theatre, as we know two Oswalds came out of there, one through the front & one out the back.
Thanks, Pete, but do you trust Johnny Brewer? I don’t necessarily believe a word he said.
Why didn’t he mention this significant event to the Warren Commission?
Was it really just a MOLE HUNT about "Oswald?"
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
It was not only in Russia. Note the bottom line on Oswald’s Dependency Affidavit ("Oswald, Harvey Lee").
During the Clay Shaw trial headed by Jim Garrison, CIA agent Donald P. Norton testified that Shaw gave him a suitcase full of cash to deliver to “Harvey Lee” in Monterrey, Mexico. He said Harvey Lee indicated he was from New Orleans and, when he saw newspaper pictures after the assassination, Norton thought “Harvey Lee” looked identical to the alleged assassin except for thinner hair.
There is some evidence that on 8/9/63 Lt. Francis Martello interviewed “Harvey Lee Oswald” in a New Orleans jail. (See H&L, p. 565). John A. also reports that the name “Harvey Lee Oswald” appeared five times in the Spanish language version of Sylvia Duran’s statement, which was presented to the WC six months after her mistreatment/interrogation. (H&L p. 673)
There are a number of other references to “Harvey Lee Oswald” in U.S. documents. Since the juxtaposition of two first names seems possible in such a large database, this all may have little real significance, but it is interesting how often it occurs.
Steve Thomas said:
Ah, thanks for the clarification!