Jim Hargrove
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Posts posted by Jim Hargrove
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1 hour ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
Jim,
I am a little confused here: my post above was in response to David Joseph's good question asking how in the world did our "Oswald's" picture wind up on the visa application forms on Sylvia Duran's desk in the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City?
While none of us know for certain (and since we all agree that our "Oswald" was not in Mexico City), I offered what I thought were two reasonable possibilities:
1. The impostor already had the "Oswald" photos with him, ready to go, and then attached them himself. In this scenario, neither Duran nor Azcue noticed the discrepancy.
2. The impostor really did submit photos of himself, but those photos were later switched (somehow) by U.S . intelligence assets/operatives before they entered the JFK investigation evidence stream. (Simply tear off the impostor's photo, and staple "Oswald's" photo in its place. Can't be that difficult, right?)
I am open to other ideas, and I assumed the purpose of this forum was to explore any and all evidence.
Thanks for posting the 1977 report with Estes.
Sorry, Paul.... I don’t have much to add to the question of the photo on the visa application, but I just learned about the Estes interview yesterday and I wanted to work it in to this thread. Perhaps the segue was confusing, but all sorts of issues about two Oswalds and false Oswalds are being discussed under this topic.
As I’m sure you know, there is quite a lot of evidence suggesting one Oswald was seen in and around Ruby’s club at the same time Classic Oswald® was in New Orelans, but much of the evidence, at least that Hoover allowed to survive, seems to be hearsay or at least hearsay-related. This was a direct account by a fellow willing to take a polygraph indicating that he worked with LEE Oswald at the Carousel Club day after day in the summer of 1963, and I think it has been largely overlooked--at least by John A. and me—and I’ll bet a whole lot of other even knowledgeable people.
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13 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
So why didn't the "Oswald" impostor readily produce the photo the first time?
Well, I can't say for sure, but I bet it was too risky to pull a photo out of his pocket that wasn't him. She would have to staple it to the application forms right there, and she would probably look at the photo somewhat. The risk of scrutiny was reduced if our impostor took the form with him and then returned with the photo already stapled and ready to go. (Maybe a little crumpled or smudged, too.)
Another possibility is that once U.S. Intelligence got their hands on copies of the "Oswald" visa application, they switched the original photo of the impostor with a photo of our "Oswald".
The amount of disinformation and questionable information surrounding “Lee Harvey Oswald” in this case is simply stunning. Now there is a thread on the Ed Forum even suggesting “Oswald” never roomed at 1026 N. Beckley. Sheesh….
Here’s yet another example. A few days ago Gary Shaw sent John A. a 10-page FBI report on a 1977 interview with a Ruby employee named Odell “James” Estes. Estes told the FBI he worked at the Carousel Club from the last week in June until Sept. 2, 1963.
Estes said he saw “Lee Oswald” at the Carousel Club many times during his employment there, including in Jack Ruby’s office. He said he once drove Oswald to Love Field and even took two overnight fishing trips with Oswald to a lakeside cabin near Mineral Wells. He described lengthy talks with this Oswald. Since he (Estes) stopped working at the club on Sept. 2, he was quite certain that the two fishing trips, just a week apart, were both in August 1963.
Of course, in August 1963, Classic Oswald® was still in New Orleans. Despite this depiction of “Oswald” being in New Orleans and Dallas simultaneously, an FBI cover memo states that Estes was “willing to submit to a polygraph examination” and “talked very coherently and did not evidence the mannerisms frequently associated with a mentally disturbed individual.” It should be noted that although the 1977 FBI report indicated Estes was “80 percent blind,” in 1963 he could see well enough to drive a car.
John and I will be adding this material to the Jack Ruby page on HarveyandLee.net, but until the update is completed, the 10-page report on Odell Estes’ FBI interview can be read on the Mary Ferrell site at this address:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10020&search=%22Odell_Estes%22#relPageId=47&tab=page
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Paul,
I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph above, as well as much what follows. Perhaps this view is overly simplistic, but . . . .
Both Oswalds (H&L) had roots in Dallas. Beautiful Marina and the couple’s growing family were in Dallas. Ruth Paine was in the Dallas area and, although she may not yet have put the future alleged assassin into the TSBD when Nagel opened fire in that bank, she was already closely involved with the family of the patsy-to-be. George DeMohrenschldt and/or other white Russians were in position to keep a watchful eye on Boris and Natasha, I mean Harvey and Marina. Jack Ruby was in town as well, and apparently had been working with American-born Lee Oswald while Russian-speaking Oswald was in New Orleans framing himself.If “Oswald” was to be the fall guy, why would you want to find a similar cast of characters in another city? How could you be sure that uprooting “Oswald,” or even his whole family, to yet another city would not produce unintended consequences?
My opinion is that Dallas was always the first choice for positioning the Official Patsy.® Alice, TX isn’t all that close to San Antonio or Houston, and seeking a job at a radio station isn’t much of a proving ground for a future assassin. Your reasoning for the SE Texas sightings is the most cogent argument I’ve ever heard for them, but I’m still not convinced.
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11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:
I think Chicago and Florida were smoke and mirrors meant to confuse JFK and "Security", including rumors, thus Milteer/an office building(Florida), and unwitting actors in Chicago calling in ("Lee"), people escaping, the guy with the gun and trunk full of ammo that worked in a building overlooking the route. False threats.
Ron,
For what it’s worth, I think John A. agrees with your statement above, at least if I’m remembering discussion(s) with him from a couple of years ago. He felt those plots, if real, were designed to fail.
The fact that Paul J. believes differently gives me considerable pause, but it sure seems like a whole lot of effort was put into setting up the Russian-speaking Oswald as far back, and even earlier, than his Aug. 9 altercation with Bringuier, surely a staged event, along with the arrest and television interview.
This Oswald’s U.S. stomping grounds were limited to New Orleans and Dallas and environs. Moving the patsy to Chicago, Miami, or Houston just weeks before the hit might appear suspicious and could result in unanticipated consequences. For the whole charade to work, Classic Oswald® just had to be in the right places at the right times, especially on 11/22/63.
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Paul,
1. It’s pretty undeniable that evidence of Nagell’s knowledge of the plot pre-dating the assassination is murky at best, but, to me at least, it doesn’t make the timeline impossible. Our “Oswald” was arrested in New Orleans on Aug 9, more than a month prior to Nagell’s arrest. Regardless of how much faith we put into other plots in other cities, many researchers believe the Dallas plot was already underway when “Oswald” was publicly sheep-dipped in NOLA. Even if Dallas was only selected later from among several candidates, isn't it possible that Nagell only knew about the Dallas plot?
2. True enough, but if there once was evidence from G-men that put a fellow who called himself “Oswald” and looked like “Oswald” nearly 400 miles south of where the evidence shows he was on Oct. 3th and 4th, how could that wildly conflicting evidence be allowed to see the light of day?
I once spent days going through just one roll from John A’s set of 33 rolls of microfilm from the “FBI Series 2” set published in 1978 by UMI. All of them were allegedly related to the JFK assassination. There were documents shown in the roll I studied not only from the FBI but from the Secret Service, State Department, Treasury Department, and quite possibly local police departments, though I don’t remember that specifically. Hoover had every opportunity to muck around with virtually ALL the documentary evidence, certainly documents from the Feds. From his activities in the hours after the assassination confiscating school and early employment records of “Oswald,” it’s obvious Hoover was trying to cover-up the real story of LHO.
3. No question that if ANY LHO was in Dallas when ANY LHO was supposed to be in Mexico, that evidence had to disappear, but I don’t remember the story about the Dallas Circle Apartments on September 25. That had to be right after New Orleans, or when Harvey was in transit to Texas. Does the evidence look convincing?
6. If Mrs. Glosson was correct, the man with the valid-looking Texas driver’s license was probably LEE, as I said in the thread you linked. Would the cover-up conspirators have risked putting out multiple “Oswalds” with multiple Texas driver’s licenses? Seems too risky to me. The fact that the Warren Commission attorneys couldn’t go to the bother of calling the Texas Dep’t of Public Safety license records department when they had Marina and the Furniture Mart ladies arguing about “Oswald’s” driving history speaks volumes.
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On 1/5/2020 at 11:01 AM, Paul Jolliffe said:
Jim,
1. The simplest explanation is that the photo supplied by the Cubans to the HSCA was an artifact and not a real image captured outside the Cuban Consulate in 1963. Instead, at some later date, some CIA operative substituted the image of the "real Oswald impostor" (Lee? Someone else?) with this image of Leonov. The Cubans innocently then gave this switched image to the HSCA, even though it was inauthentic.
However, that "simple" explanation is not very convincing to me.
Another possibility is that the image at the top of your webpage
is not, in fact of Leonov at all, but of a Leonov impostor, probably from the CIA. This has a kind of logic to it: the plotters knew that our "Oswald" (Harvey) never went to Mexico City, but they deliberately planned the impersonation there to FAIL , thus revealing that the "Oswald" impersonator was . . . a known Soviet operative/official! A man who was a close personal confidant of both Castro and Khrushchev - a perfect patsy himself! Thus implicating the USSR in the assassination, somehow . . .
But I don't like that one, either. Too messy, and anyway, the guy doesn't merely resemble Leonov, he is the spitting image of Leonov!
Maybe Dick Russell was on to something when he wrote that Richard Case Nagell was working with Soviet intelligence to kill Oswald and stop the assassination. I don't fully trust Nagell as a source, but could the Soviets have been aware that something funny involving somebody posing as "Oswald" was going on inside the Cuban Consulate on Friday, September 27? And if they did, would they react immediately once they realized that "Oswald" had this bizarre history in the USSR himself? Could a highly trusted Spanish speaking Soviet official have been dispatched by Khrushchev himself to investigate???
That seems doubtful, too, but I just don't have any other ideas at the moment.
We'll have to leave it for now with the agreement that, whoever he was, he sure looked a heckuva lot like Leonov!
2. The identifications by the radio station guys as our "Oswald" may not be 100% based on their memories of the man's appearance, but instead may be based on the fact that the guy used the name "Lee Oswald." After all, Parker did note a difference in hair color, a difference picked up by several witnesses. You and I agree that the south Texas LHO was not our "Oswald" up in Dallas, being interviewed by Laura Kittrell at TEC.
3. and 4.
You and I agree that our Dallas "Oswald" was very probably outside Sylvia Odio's door in Dallas on 9/25/63. We agree that our "Oswald" was at the TEC in Dallas on Thursday, October 3. We agree that there is no convincing evidence that our "Oswald" went to Mexico City at all in the interim. So, since he really was at the Dallas YMCA the night of Thursday, October 3, isn't it probable that his handlers had put him up there for the entire week before while his doppelganger was down in Mexico City? (There is no reason why they should have put him up in a nicer lodging for a few days, and then switched him to the YMCA for the last night. Instead, I bet he was there all along.)
5. I don't know what language the "wife" of LHO was speaking down in south Texas/Alice, but nobody claimed it was Russian. There is no reason to assume the Marina impostor was speaking Russian. She and her "husband" may have been speaking something as simple as garbled Spanish. (Or not, but it doesn't matter. It wasn't Marina.)
6. You wrote "does that mean there was a fellow, perhaps going by the name “Lee Oswald,” being prepared for a job in a building along the parade route? Would someone who looked like him have gone to local rifle ranges to shoot at other people’s targets, and so on? Mrs. Paine called Roy Truly on Oct. 15 to start the process in motion to put Classic Oswald® in the TSBD, so the timing here makes complete sense."
Yessir! That's exactly what I think!
Had the plotters decided on San Antonio or Houston, then you bet there would have been a host of weird "Oswald" sightings wielding a rifle in either city! These south Texas/Alice sightings below were some of the CIA's "backstopping" of the tentative (and ultimately discarded) "Oswald" San Antonio story:
I. The unnamed, not interviewed by the FBI waitress at the B.F. Cafe in Freer Texas whose boss told the FBI that the "Oswald" she met wanted a job in Freer, and asked specifically how far it was to San Antonio. When told it was 100 miles, this "Oswald" reacted in surprise. (The FBI did NOT want any confirmation of this one!)
II. Martha Doyle and Joan Dunsmore of the San Antonio International Airport statement:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96293&relPageId=4&search=Martha_Doyle
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96293&relPageId=7&search=Joan_Dunsmore
III. The Stanley Moczygemba account about picking up a hitchhiking "Oswald" early on Saturday morning, October 5 in San Antonio and driving south to Leming, Texas.
And here are some examples of witness statements about the CIA's tentative and ultimately discarded plan to backstop the "Oswald" in Houston story:
From John Armstrong's 1997 speech to C'OPA:
I. A few days later an "Oswald" applied for a job at the Continental Oil Company in Houston. This person identified himself as "Lee Oswald" and was interviewed by Mrs. Sheppard. He told her he had just returned from Mexico with a friend and that they had tried to proceed from Mexico to Cuba. Oswald told her he was staying at the Savoy apartments two blocks away. II. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9986&relPageId=63&search=Continental_oil Company III. A Houston Chronicle article stating that Oswald stayed at the Savoy for a few days in late September of 1963 while interviewing at Conoco. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Before-it-turned-into-Holiday-Inn-Savoy-Hotel-4583519.php#item-85307-tbla-25 IV. George Ryan, manager of the Stop-N-Go drive-in grocery in Houston told the FBI that Oswald tried on three successive days to cash a $65 check at his store. He told the Houston Press he was under orders from the FBI not to discuss the case.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10477&relPageId=662&search=George_Ryan
So, I am positive that in the Alice/south Texas stories we are looking at the vestiges of the unused backstopped stories of "Oswald's" movements in the days before he would have settled in with a job in either San Antonio or Houston. But once the plotters decided on Dallas (after October 5 but before October 15), then none of these sightings of the false "Oswald" in south Texas/Alice were useful to the plotters.
And so these witnesses were ignored.
"Backstopping" has long been a very important intelligence concept:
http://intelligenceref.blogspot.com/2010/08/backstop.html
Paul,
I’ve been trying for five or six days to respond to your post above. Here’s my first attempt at a real reply.
1. Dick Russell is a major H&L supporter. Back in 1993, in Confessions of a Conspiracy Theorist, he wrote, “Not only do we encounter double- and triple-agents, but double- and triple-Oswalds.” I spent a full day with Mr. Russell a year or two ago but neglected to ask him which Oswald he thought Nagell knew, though it is obvious that Nagell interacted with American-born Lee Oswald, not Classic Oswald®.
Your thoughts about the Leonov-looking “Oswald” at the Cuban Consulate are interesting, and I wish I could offer better, or even comparable, theories. As so often occurs to me in this case, it all seems to boil down to the question of whose spies do we distrust the least, the answer, of course, being none.
2. Remember, though, that Sonny Stewart at KOPY told the AP (unfiltered by our friends at the Bureau): “It’s a strange thing.... The first time I saw Oswald’s picture on TV I recognized him. It was like a song that you can’t remember the name. When it finally hit me who it was I almost fell on the floor.”
There’s no doubt, though, that the mind can play strange tricks on all of us, but that visual ID at least SOUNDED pretty good.
Does it bother me that I’m suggesting the Associated Press is a Trusted Source® in this case? Sheesh!
3 and 4. We agree on a lot here, though I’m not convinced Harvey stayed at the YMCA longer than that Thursday night. As always, I seek a scintilla of evidence for other dates of his stay.
5. Indeed, whoever it was, it wasn’t our Marina.
6. Obviously, some of these purported sightings are more convincing than others, just as anyone would suspect. The evidence you present, though, is compelling and mostly new to me. I’ll get back to you ASAP on this. Thanks for the info, especially about intel “backstoppings.” I’m still reading.
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On 1/9/2020 at 11:09 AM, David Josephs said:
Jim - I took what you said and looked more carefully... whoever copied this was paying much attention either... Room 193 becomes 193 days Present, 87 days present becomes 87 days absent... A 280 day school year... nice. And of course the obvious 2 different forms
Finally, the fact is the on card which starts with 9-9-47 and 2nd grade isn't on his permanent record... and if there was some change that needed Oswald to start a new card after 1st grade, why doesn't it just continue on this new card... add to this the strange tale of Robert claiming Lee/Edwin/Marge go to Boston for 6 months in the winter of 45...
David,
You raise some fascinating issues, but I wanted to concentrate a little more on the term and cumulative fields from the Benbrook school records you showed immediately above. My eyes aren’t so great, but it looks to me like 103 days present (not 193) on the record on the right above, and I can’t find Room 193.
The field on the left in your illustration directly above appears to be the summary of a half school year (87 days present and 1 day absent = 88 days) whereas the record on the right appears to be a full year (103 day present and 87 days absent for a total of 190 days). That’s a lot of absences!
I hope your line of research here bears fruit, because I couldn’t agree more that at least some of these school records are FBI forgeries. Which makes me wonder....
My bet would be FBI agents were told to ask for blank forms of each of the documents they were collecting from schools and early employers of “Oswald.” “Just for testing,” dontcha know. However, some of these records at the time the FBI confiscated the originals were well over a decade old and, at least in some cases, the institutions surely no longer had existing blank forms matching the filled out items.
Perhaps we should be looking at these things with a microscope looking for indications that existing data was whited out so that new, improved data could be entered. I’ll try to start doing that!
Again, thank you for this work. My bet is this is the first time a serious researcher has looked into LHO records dating as far back as Benbrook since John A. did it a quarter century ago, without the benefit of a modern internet. Please... keep it coming!
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15 hours ago, John Kowalski said:
Everyone:
Link below is the finding aid for the Blair papers. Can you let me know which ones you want copied of and I will ask them for an estimate. If the cost is too high we can always wait until February or for when Jim will have time to go there.
John,
Thank you for this detailed information. I had no idea the papers were so well organized.
Looks to me like someone would need to look through a total of 6 folders:
Correspondence with Gardos, Grace Blair & Emil (Box 5, Folder 2)
and 5 others Correspondence Folders: (Box 1, Folders 2-4; Box 4 Folders 3A-3B)
If there is still an active curator of this material, perhaps we could describe what we are looking for and seek guidance. Otherwise, it would probably be pretty expensive to get all this material copied and a personal visit would be in order.
Thanks again!
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DJ,
Thank you for your hard work on these elementary school records. This could be important new research clearly suggesting the forgery of school records for Oswald, but I’m having a few difficulties following your presentation, and I wondered if you could help me understand just one small part of it.
Let’s look at image 1, showing us Oswald’s record for the term beginning 1/27/47 on the top row and comparing it to what should be the same data from his cumulative record (image 3) shown in reverse on the second row. There are some obvious differences, but….
Are we comparing apples to apples? Let’s look at the first three headings after “DATE OF ENTRY” from the top grade rows of images 1 and 3. For image 1, those headings appear to be: School, Grade, and Days Present. For image 3, the headings are: School, Grade, and Room. Already, the third element is completely different, suggestion one row cannot be pasted directly underneath another with an expectation of the data being identical.
Another example concerns Oswald’s grades in health and phys ed. Both the term data on the top line of image 1 and the cumulative record in image 3 show that Oswald received an A in both subjects, But image 1 suggests they are different because the columns simply do not line up.
I do believe you may be on to something important here, but your graphical presentation, as far as I can tell tonight, doesn’t yet prove it, at least to me, although it is true that there are eight Bs listed on the top line of image 1 and nine Bs on the line beneath it. Can you make the distinctions you are drawing a bit clearer.
Thanks again for your work on this.
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14 hours ago, David Josephs said:
According to TARRANT COUNTY, there never was a boy named LEE OSWALD attending any of their schools...
?????
But, as you discovered in the Tarrant County records, a HARVEY OSWALD was attending school and living with momma Marguerite at 1505 Eighth Ave. in Fort Worth during the 1947-48 school year. (Let’s not even get into the Nancy Lee mystery at the moment.)
This is a jarring discovery for several reasons. One is that there is some indication that the Russian-speaking kid who was eventually killed by Jack Ruby preferred to be called Harvey in school, but there is no doubt that John A. believes the fellow who lived at 1505 Eighth Ave. in the late 1940s was the American-born LEE Oswald, living with his mother, Marguerite.
In H&L John wrote (p.24):
While Marguerite was residing in Covington, Edwin Ekdahl moved out of the Worth Hotel and into an apartment at 1505 8th Avenue in Fort Worth, apparently with another woman.
1947
In early 1947 Marguerite and Ekdahl ended their 8-month separation and reunited. Lee was withdrawn from the Covington Grammar School on January 23, 1947 and returned with his mother to Fort Worth. Marguerite enrolled Lee at Lily B. Clayton Elementary School (Fort Worth-school #19), located at 2000 Park Place Avenue, and Lee began attending Lois Lowimore's first grade class on January 27.64 52-10/11
Ekdahl, Marguerite, and Lee lived 5 blocks east of the school in Ekdahl's up stairs apartment at 1505 8th Avenue.6 The short, dumpy, heavy-set "Marguerite Oswald" imposter, who was never married to Ekdahl, told the Warren Commission, "It was in the apartment house downstairs."
A few pages later, John adds, "There is no doubt that the tall, nice-looking Marguerite Oswald and her family lived at 1505 8th Avenue in the summer and fall of 1947."
Adding to the confusion is the fact that phony Marguerite lived at 1605 8th Ave. in Fort Worth around the time her "son" went to the Soviet Union. A strange coincidence of NEARLY identical addresses?
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19 hours ago, John Kowalski said:
Jim:
I will look into the Blair papers. The DP poster will be available on February 2 to access the papers.
That would be terrific. This fellow essentially will be looking for a needle in a haystack (references to a foster child or someone similar in Emil Gardos' care in NYC), and so we should work up some suggestions of what he will be looking for.
If the Deep Politics member finds he can't do this, please let me know. I might be able to get to Madison sometime also.
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On 1/5/2020 at 9:23 PM, John Butler said:
The part about Hungarians and Communists does not fit Emil Gardos and Fred Blair. So, there might be another pairing for father and uncle. But, who?
Huh? The March 7, 1936 Cleveland Plain Dealer indicated that the “immigration and naturalization service of the Department of Labor” ordered that Emil Gardos “must be deported to Roumania, whose territories include Gardos’ birthplace, formerly in Hungary,” or “to any country of his choice” if he “wishes to depart voluntarily….” [emphasis added]
Emil Gardos was a communist AND from Hungary, so it certainly does seem to fit.
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John,
Seems like little reason to give up.
Your note to Sara Mares (Can you remind me of her relationship to Gardos family and/or their descendants?) may be a good place to re-start. I wouldn’t rule out any more information coming from Mr. Geck and/or his in-laws. Seeking family memories of 70-year-old events is surely no easy task, but I’ll bet your communications will be remembered for some time, and someone in the family might think of something that didn’t occur to them immediately.
The other possibilities that come to mind include looking at the Fred Blair papers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and searching for any old yearbooks dating back to the 1940s from the long-defunct Public School 30 on E. 88th St. in Manhattan. This will take some time since little or none of it probably can be done online--with the exception, perhaps, of PS 30 yearbooks.
Brian Doyle just sent me a note wondering if you could use your searching skills to seek any still-living neighbors of Emil and Grace in New York City back in the 1940s. They’d hardly be youngsters, but you never know what someone might recall about a foster child, especially if they played together as children in the 1940s.
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22 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
Jim,
A few things:
1. I agree with you that Nikolai Leonov does not look much like our "Oswald". My point was that Leonov is the spitting image of the man shown in profile on the second picture at the top of your website - the Mexico City "Oswald"! (Regardless of whether Leonov actually pretended to be our "Oswald" or not, he sure looks like the guy on your website!)
2. The descriptions of LHO's appearance in both Mexico City and around Alice are suspiciously similar: short, dirty, blond, unshaven, and sloppily/very casually dressed. Probably (but NOT certainly) the same guy, in at least a few cases.
3. I agree that Laura Kittrell's first encounter with "Oswald" on October 3 does sound very much like Harvey. If so, then "Oswald" (Harvey) probably could not have been in Alice or south Texas on October 3. Still, the whole spending one night at the Dallas YMCA thing is bizarre - why would poor, parsimonious "Oswald" spend $2.25 to stay for a Thursday night in Dallas when Irving was only 15 miles away? (Unless actually he had been there for a week or so, ever since leaving New Orleans several days prior?)
4. If it really was our "Oswald" (Harvey) in Dallas on October 3 at the TEC, and since we can't account for his whereabouts between New Orleans and Dallas in late September, isn't it possible that our "Oswald" (Harvey) really was at the Dallas Circle Apartments outside Sylvia Odio's door on Wednesday, September 25? After all, at that meeting, "Oswald" didn't say anything incriminating. It was only during the follow-up phone call with "Lorenzo" in which "Oswald" was described as "loco", and capable of shooting the president.
5. I am struck by the fact that none of the south Texas witnesses claimed the language in which "Oswald" and his "wife" conversed was Russian. If it was an "Oswald" impostor on October 3 and 4, then it is plausible to me that his "wife" was not necessarily Russian. Actually, there was an FBI report in which a customer at the Carousel Club claimed that Lee Oswald was "dating" one of Ruby's strippers. She was described as "Mexican". While that would seem to be a poor fit for a duplicate Marina, maybe not. Many Mexican women have lighter hair, and I'm sure this stripper was young and attractive. If the real Lee had hooked up with this stripper, then it's possible that quick, quiet conversations in garbled Spanish/Spanglish/Texican (long recognized as a culturally significant linguistic artifact) might have remained unintelligible to eavesdroppers. (And honestly, finding a stripper saddled with a young child in tow is not difficult . . .)
6. So the big question remains: what the hell was this all about?
Well, I suspect we are looking at the traces of a set-up to have "Oswald" in place to be the patsy if the assassination were to take place in either Houston or San Antonio.
Here's President Kennedy at the Brooks Medical Research Center in San Antonio on November 21, 1963.
Here's President and Mrs. Kennedy greeting a crowd in Houston on November 21, 1963.
I am convinced that had the plotters decided on either Houston or San Antonio, then the Alice/south Texas charade would have paved the way for the "Oswald" family to be in place to be framed. But once the plotters settled on Dallas (apparently sometime between October 4 and October 15), then the whole south Texas/Alice pretense was quietly scrapped. After all we never would have known of it had not various witnesses made noise in the local press.
Paul,
1. Yeah, it sure does look like this Leonov fellow.
Can you make any sense of that? Or suggest a theory? According to Jefferson Morley, Leonov was an interpreter for Castro when he visited the USSR in the spring of 1963. Who do we distrust less in this case, Cuban intel, or Russian intel or U.S. intel?
2. Good point but, while admitting that I haven’t studied all the original source material, the best IDs seemed to be from the radio station employees at KOPY and KBOP, especially KOPY, and the witnesses thought the fellow they saw was or could be “Oswald.” Do you know if Leonov spoke English well enough to interact with Americans in south Texas?
3. Yeah, Harvey always seemed poor as a church mouse, at least until he was on assignment. After, we’re told, saving his non-convertible military scrip, he traveled to first class hotels in Europe and Moscow and could afford a private tour guide in Moscow. Then, after several years of apparent poverty in the U.S., suddenly in 1963 he apparently could afford once more to travel to Cuba and Russia, or at least appeared to be making plans to do so. We can probably both think of a potential reason to keep him comfortably settled in a hotel room in Dallas while certain events allegedly unfolded in Mexico City, though I'm not at all sure that's what happened.
4. Absolutely! Based on John A’s research and writing, I think it WAS Harvey Oswald at Sylvia Odio's.
5. If memory serves there is some other evidence as well, going back at least to the USMC, that LEE spoke some Spanish, a little at least.
6. This never occurred to me and is fascinating. If plans were being considered for a hit in San Antonio and/or Houston, does that mean there was a fellow, perhaps going by the name “Lee Oswald,” being prepared for a job in a building along the parade route? Would someone who looked like him have gone to local rifle ranges to shoot at other people’s targets, and so on? Mrs. Paine called Roy Truly on Oct. 15 to start the process in motion to put Classic Oswald® in the TSBD, so the timing here makes complete sense.
The only alternative I can imagine would be that the Alice trip was related somehow to the Mexico City saga, either to show LHO on his way home from meeting a Soviet assassin there, or, somehow, as an alibi indicating the guy wasn’t in MC at all. Your thoughts on this are appreciated.
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16 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
Jim,
It is a puzzler.
These incidents, as related in Chris Courtwright's fine article, may NOT have all been false "Oswald" sightings - I suspect some of them really were just mistaken identity. Particularly those from Chris's page four summary of the "George Parr" allegations. Those appear to be just a crock, with no evidence at all.
William Weston pointed out that our "Oswald" was never positively identified at the Russian or Cuban Consulates in Mexico City a week earlier. I think it notable, however, that the description of the Alice "Oswald" and the Mexico City "Oswald" are similar: dirty, blond, inelegantly dressed and unshaven. Also this "Oswald" was never identified as being more than 5'8" tall. Actually, Sylvia Duran believed he was around 5'3!
On the Harvey & Lee homepage http://harveyandlee.net/ is a picture (second from left) of a man who was the spitting image of a known Soviet agent/asset and politician: Nikolai Leonov. Leonov was posted in Mexico City and was an extremely close confidante of Nikita Khrushchev. He served as a translator for Khrushchev and Castro. He was at very near the apex of the Soviet government in 1963.
https://alchetron.com/Nikolai-Leonov
Nikolai Leonov is a poor candidate for the Alice sightings, but a good one for at least some of the Mexico City sightings.
If it was the same man in both Mexico City and around (some) of the alleged sightings in south Texas in early October, than the Alice sightings were very likely an impostor. However, it is possible these sighting were not of the same man. In a couple of the Alice sightings, the name "Oswald" was mentioned, which makes the possibility of an innocent coincidental lookalike very remote.
The William Weston thesis is that our "Oswald" was NOT in Dallas on October 3 and 4. The documents Jim reproduced were created by a false "Oswald", argued Weston. (See below.)
So, I have to ask: while the Dallas documents from October 3 and 4 are real, what evidence did the Warren Commission produce to show they were written/created by our "Oswald", and not an impostor (possibly even the real LHO!)?
Here is William Weston's take on the issues:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48701#relPageId=8&tab=page
Thanks for the reply, Paul. I think about this odd story often, and so your thoughts are appreciated.
The whole south Texas saga seems so weird because it occurred immediately after the alleged Mexico City affair—the WC/FBI struggled to get “Oswald” back in Dallas in time for his Texas Employment Commission interview on October 3 More on that below. The assassination patsy plot was clearly underway and one would think the management of the two Oswalds (and any other random impersonations) was surely carefully managed by that time.
At least two people at KOPY in Alice thought the fellow who visited them (Stewart apparently wrote down the name “Lee Oswald”) looked like the televised assassination suspect. Ben Parker at KBOP in Pleasantown may have said the suspect had sandy hair, but he also said it could have been the man he saw on television Saturday night. And we have to rely on the FBI to tell us the truth about Parker’s description; there was no ostensibly unfiltered AP report on his encounter.
No doubt strange things can happen with eyewitness accounts, but for the life of me I don’t see how “Oswald” could be confused with Nikolai Leonov. I know you’re quite right in citing the variability of the eyewitness statements but, taken as a whole, it is difficult to deny that an “Oswald,” accompanied by a “family,” sought radio station jobs as far south as Alice, TX on Oct. 3rd and 4th. The enduring question is why.
Now let’s take a look at the “Oswald” in Dallas on October 3 and 4. William Weston is a very good researcher (thank you for pointing me to his write-up in Fourth Decade), but he may be incorrect in his thesis that the “Oswald” in Dallas on October 3rd and 4th was an impostor, though, with “Oswald,” we always have to define our terms. I think the fellow who visited the Texas Employment Commission in Dallas on Oct. 3 was Classic Oswald®, the Russian-speaking fellow eventually killed by Ruby. That Oct. 3 TEC meeting was actually the first of the infamous encounters Laura Kittrell had with two men of similar appearance who both claimed to be LHO.
Here’s an excerpt of how Gaeton Fonzi described his interview with Ms. Kittrell in his 1978 report to the HSCA.
Ms. Kittrell’s description of the two Oswalds almost exactly matches the portrait John A. assembled. Harvey, neat, quiet and introverted vs. Lee, sloppy, loud and boisterous. My guess is the TEC encounters with Laura Kittrell represented a deliberate test by the plotters to see if Harvey and Lee could be perceived as one person in by a witness who observed both in close proximity. I can fathom no equally reasonable explanation for the Alice and environs pantomime, which has always bothered me.
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On 1/2/2020 at 10:38 AM, James DiEugenio said:
Its really kind of surprising how those letters have been relatively ignored.
Much of that may be because few people, including some who try to follow this case, can fathom the sheer volume of fraudulent "evidence" about LHO that is currently in the Archives. Even some media reporters and pundits who seem to work for the Dark Side may have been simply fooled by this so-called “evidence.” Harrison Livingston once wrote something like, "There is plenty of evidence in the National Archives against Lee Harvey Oswald, and all of it is phony."
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John,
We know of only one surviving SS number for LHO and one for Marguerite, but there is plenty of interesting Social Security data John A. uncovered in his research. For example, as John wrote on our website….
In response to Marina Oswald's "Application for Survivors Insurance Benefits" the SSA failed to include Oswald's earnings from Dolly Shoe, Tujague's, J.R. Michaels, the Pfisterer Dental Lab, and the Dept. of the Navy (Marine Corps). The only earnings the SSA included were those from Oswald's earnings in 1962 and 1963, after his return from the Soviet Union. The SSA reported Oswald's total life-time earnings as $3306.85 (based upon the following documents).
He goes on to show that the $3306.85 lifetime earnings were simply a total of “Oswald’s” 1962 and 1963 income from William B. Reily & Co., Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, Inc, Leslie Welding, and the Texas School Book Depository.
In 1978, in response to a request for information from the HSCA, the SSA wrote back and said it was enclosing, among other things, “Copies of three pages of the Warren Commission Report re employment of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to service in the Marine Corps.”
For much more on this, see
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John,
Thanks for the heads-up on photo links. I'll make copies of the images right away. Even if he eventually is unable to turn up any useful information beyond what we already have learned, it is really terrific that Mr. Geck is being so helpful about this! Please keep us posted!
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Thanks for publishing Mr. Bleau’s very detailed write-up on the so-called “comrade Kostin” letter and events and documents related to it. To me, it suggests that David Phillips' role went beyond a mere opportunistic exploitation of the fabricated case of “Oswald” as a Castro agent. Dan Hardway’s observation about how his investigation of CIA files was “cut off by Joannides” is yet another reminder of how instrumental CIA brass was in destroying any hope of a real investigation.
I didn’t realize that many of the letters (Mr. Bleau counted five) linking Oswald to a Cuban hit job were possibly typed on the same machine. It is yet another indication of how sloppy both the set-up and the cover-up were. An IBM typewriter font expert told me that the three of the teenaged employment W-2 forms for Classic Oswald® were also typed, in her opinion, on the same machine.
Obviously, the plotters never expected their work to be placed under such intense, non-government scrutiny. Thanks again!
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On 12/31/2019 at 3:32 PM, John Butler said:
Russ Geck has responded to my latest email this way:
John, thank you so much for everything you have sent us. Andi (John Gardos's daughter) and I really appreciate it. Andi would like to offer to you any information you might be interested in. There are some incorrect things we saw in the documents you sent us. For instance, Grace Blair did not reside in or die at the US embassy. She lived in the 13th District in Budapest (Andi can get the address from her mother) and died in a hospital. Andi says Grace and Emil had a picture of US president Jimmy Carter in their home. I know this is probably unimportant to your overall goal of establishing the fact that John Gardos, son of Emil Gardos and Grace Blair, was not, in fact, Lee Harvey Oswald, but if there's any bit of color we can add to that fact, we'd be happy to do so. Just tell us what you're interested in or what you need. I can provide a photocopy of his US passport that was issued on August 6, 1992, his birth certificate, etc. If you have any information on when Emil Gardos left the US in fact, we would be greatly interested in that as well.
Thank you for contacting me regarding this. I hope we are able to put this conspiracy theory to rest. Best of luck in the New Year, and please keep in touch. Happy New Year.
Russ Geck and Gárdos Andrea (granddaughter of Emil Gárdos and Grace Blair)
And, this is how I responded:
Russ,
If you could, there are a number of questions concerning the Tippit Phone Call document that fellow researchers have concerning the relationship of Emil, Grace, and Fred Blair. We originally thought that, John the son of Grace and Emil, was the Lee Harvey Oswald talked about in the document.
That has now been debunked. So, many folks, including myself, feel that there is something to this call. There has to be a reason that the FBI hid this information for nearly 30 years under a Top Secret/ Not to be declassified status. This phone call material and subsequent FBI documents concerning Grace Gardos went directly to the top of the FBI and to a Group 1, I would think this was the top leadership, and also classified as Top Secret / Not to be declassified. So, there are a number of questions. We believe that the FBI was covering up the true situation and may have misled with the information in the document if it ever was exposed. The FBI does those kind of things to hide the identify of their informants. In this case the two Childs brothers Morris and Jack Childs.
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Do you have any reason to believe that Emil Gardos, Grace Gardos, or Fred Blair could have been temporary foster caretakers in 1945 -47 for any small children refugees from Eastern Europe?
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Were they the type of people who might have been especially concerned with the plight of Hungarian or other European refugee orphans after WWII? Did they have any connection to any organizations that might have had such hunanitarian interests?
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When Emil and Grace, and young John were all living in Yorkville, did any of Emil's activities involve anything that led our mysterious woman caller to conclude (erroneously) that Emil was the biological parent of a Russian-speaking little boy from Europe?
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Did Fred Blair live or visit Yorkville at any time in the 1940s? Particularly, in 1947 during the beginning of the 2nd Red Scare that began after March, 1947?
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Do you or your wife, Andi, have any information about Louis Weinstock. Information about Louis and Emil working together for refugee causes? Or, how Louis Weinstock might relate to the events in the call?
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We ask if you or your wife has any information about any connection, no matter how tenuous or brief, between Emil Gardos and/or Grace Gardos and/or Fred Blair and any small boy (besides his own biological son John) in Yorkville in the 1940's. Could any of them have been a caretaker, a foster parent, a temporary custodian, an attendant, etc. to provide refuge for any little boy or boys for any duration in the 1940's?
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Did the Gardos or Louis Weinstock know Alexander and Mary Fuhrman? They were also Hungarians and not sure whether they were communists or not. They may have been connected to Emil Gardos through coal mine strikes in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
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Do you recognize the address 77th and 2nd Avenue, NYC. This is an address that does not connect to anything know about this FBI document. We think this is part of the misleading information in the call.
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I was going to ask about Grace Gardos living at the US embassy in Budapest. But, you have already answered that.
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Did Emil or Grace know Morris or Jack Childs? Did they know the two brothers were double agents for the FBI? This might explain why Grace was so badly treated by the FBI.
I am sorry for relaying so many questions at one time. Feel free to answer only what you are comfortable with or have some knowledge concerning things.
I, and others will appreciate greatly whatever help you can give us.
John....
Thank you for sending those well thought-out questions to Mr. Geck.
His responses may be far more consequential than our attempts to read between the lines of the FBI report of the anonymous woman’s phone call to the Tippits of Connecticut. Yours is serious research.
No doubt you’ll tell us about Mr. Geck’s response to your queries ASAP. Frankly, I can’t wait.
If you find the opportunity to ask Mr. Geck another question, could you please ask if Public School 30 on 85th St. in Manhattan meant anything to his wife’s father or grandfather? Did they have any memories of PS 30?
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While we’re waiting to see if Mr. Geck and his family can provide any more information on the possible “Oswald” link to Emil Gardos, I’d like to change the subject briefly and ask a question that has been bugging me for decades. In a nutshell that question is, What was the Alice, Texas charade that took place in early October 1963 all about?
ALICE, TEXAS
It is one of the most obvious and well documented incidents of two Oswalds in evidence, but it never made a lick of sense since the Oswald (often seen with his family!) that appeared in and around Alice (nearly 400 miles south of Dallas) said none of the incriminating things we soon heard from the Oswald who made appearances at the Sports Drome rifle range and all those other spots around Dallas. This Oswald merely appeared to be looking for a job.
For anyone who doesn’t recall the story of the Alice, Texas affair, here are the basic details:
The FBI and Warren Commission produced pretty convincing evidence that “Lee Harvey Oswald” was in Dallas on Oct. 3 and 4, 1963. The evidence showed that “Oswald” filed an unemployment compensation claim at the Texas Employment Commission, 2210 Main St. in Dallas, on Thursday afternoon, October 3, and spent the night at the downtown Dallas YMCA.
On Friday, October 4, he applied for a job at the Padgett Printing Company and filed an application with the Jobco Employment Agency, both in Dallas.
Despite that, some 17 witnesses place “Oswald” (sometimes with his family) on those very same days looking for jobs in the broadcast radio business in and around Alice, Texas, some 400 miles south of Dallas. On the evening of October 3, numerous witnesses saw “Oswald” at radio station KOPY in Alice, where he was told to return the next day to meet station manager and vice-president Sonny Stewart.
According to multiple witnesses, he did return to station KOPY the next day, Oct. 4. There was even an AP article about his visit:
When told there were no positions available at KOPY, “Oswald” asked if any other radio stations in the vicinity might be hiring, and he was told about station KBOP in Pleasanton, where he also appeared to speak with Dr. Ben Parker, who accurately described “Oswald” after the assassination. In restaurants and elsewhere, many other witnesses saw “Oswald” in and around Alice and Pleasanton on Oct 3 and 4, 1963.
John Armstrong wrote, “Both the FBI and Warren Commission were aware that "Lee Harvey Oswald" could not have been in both Alice, Texas and Dallas, Texas on October 3rd and 4th at the same time. Chief Justice Earl Warren held up publication of the Warren Report until the FBI completed their "investigation" of the incident at Alice, Texas, because of potentially damaging political issues.” [H&L p. 710]
But no one has ever given a plausible explanation about why this stunt was performed. Why?
For decades, the best write-up on that Alice, Texas incident has been Chris Courtwright’s fine article,
Oswald in Aliceland? A Tale of Two Days: A Tale of Two Oswalds
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John,
I don’t know, but he does believe that the real Marguerite Claverie Oswald was born on July 19, 1907 in New Orleans, so there is probably some sort of birth record. He noted that the FBI “intentionally avoided any company, any employer, and any co-worker who may have known and/or worked with Marguerite Claverie Oswald after 1954,” because of conflicts with the “Marguerite Oswald” who testified to the WC. That probably means Hoover was aware of the chicanery. In 1955, the phony Marguerite was fired by Dolly Shoe for repeatedly refusing to fill out detailed personal information required by Dolly’s insurance company.
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To John Butler….
Congratulations, again!
It is obvious that Russ Geck and his wife by marriage to John (Janos) Gardos’s daughter may possibly be the most important LHO witness to emerge in decades. Please, will you consider asking Mr. Geck the questions offered above by Paul J?
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59 minutes ago, David Josephs said:
The boy in the San Saba car, dog, Marge photos is Lee. Pic took them, so for him to deny knowledge of San Saba is strange.
Marguerite Ekdahl's purchased 101 San Saba on July 7, 1947, but she and her three boys lived at 1505 8th Ave. in Fort Worth. If they EVER lived at San Saba in Benbrook, it was very briefly. There is surely a reason Dulles adjourned when Robert started talking about San Saba, never to return to the subject.
Going through Georgia Bell’s memories, it sure sounds to me that it was Harvey and his caretaker “mom” in residence in Benbrook in 1947. That house right “across from” Stripling School where “Marguerite” kept stuff was surely 2220 Thomas Place.
EVIDENCE FOR HARVEY AND LEE (Please debate the specifics right here. Don't just claim someone else has debunked it!)
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
David,
I don’t have your expertise on MC, but isn’t there another possibility here? As you know, there is a lot of evidence that in the summer of 1963, while Classic Oswald® was in New Orleans setting himself up as a Castro-living commie, another LHO was in Dallas working with Jack Ruby.
A couple of posts above I put a link to the FBI report saying how a fellow named Odell “James” Estes told the FBI that he worked at the Carousel Club from the last week in June until Sept. 2, 1963. The report indicated that Odell saw LHO many times in the club, including in Ruby’s office, and even took two overnight fishing trips on consecutive weeks with LHO to a lakeside cabin in Mineral Wells.
As you know, JA assembled a lot more evidence suggesting one LHO was in Dallas while Classic Oswald was in New Orleans. Now, I don’t believe ANY Oswald actually went to the MC consulates and created the scenes Phillips wanted us to believe in. But it does seem to me quite possible that the LHO who was hanging with Ruby in Dallas was sent at least to the vicinity of Mexico City, all part of the plot to blame the assassination on Castro and Castro-loving “LHO.” My guess is that this Oswald was just told to keep a low profile in a motel or safe house somewhere in or near MC.
This would mean, of course, that the FBI/WC would have to fake all or most of the travel evidence, which you have shown they clearly did.
Does that strike you as possible?