Jim Hargrove

Paul, John A. is agnostic about this, but my guess is that Westbrook DID NOT drive Lee Oswald to the theater, BUT DID drive Harvey Oswald there earlier. There is almost too much evidence about the plans to draw police to the theater—ADA Jim Bowie told Leo Sauvage there were a half dozen calls about the theater... Tommy Rowe... your “IBM men...” and I may be forgetting another or two. But I still haven't been talked out of my suspicion that Lee Oswald’s assignment was to kill Tippit, enrage the Dallas Police, and then lead them to the Texas Theater, where Harvey the Schmuck was waiting to be captured. If that wasn’t the plan, why bother with the nuisance of killing JD Tippit? John A. counters with the entirely sensible argument that the planners surely wouldn't allow Tippit’s killer to risk being picked up by the cops while he walked to the theater—which could expose the entire operation. I can only counter that the planners must have felt Westbrook and/or anyone else in the DPD under their control could make the potential problem go away. Or not! If this was easy, our parents would have solved it, eh?

That sounds pretty persuasive to me, but it is intriguing that John Gardos was born in 1939.

Jake, My guess (and John A’s) is that Lee Oswald met up with Westbrook soon after he shot Tippit and handed the captain his wallet, revolver, and jacket. Harvey was already in the theater. The map idea sounds intriguing. There are a number of graphics on the Nov 22 pages of my website that might help a bit. Good luck!

I can attest that DJ's Harvey and Lee Timeline is an absolutely wonderful resource--and extremely accurate! I must have five or six versions of it he has produced over the years, and, for some reason, I find the spreadsheet version (rather than the pdf file) much more usable. The story of H&L can only be understood by keeping in mind hundreds, probably thousands, of different little facts. David's timeline helps a lot if you can't remember all the details. (I can't, and I've been running a website based on John A's research for two decades.) John's book is a thousand pages long, and the CD with images and documents accompanying it would probably take up another thousand pages if printed. If John doesn't stop adding to it, my website is going to get longer than the book. DJ's timeline helps manage all the information in a clear, strictly chronological way. Thanks, David!

Geez, how many times did they deport this guy? The Cleveland Plain Dealer and several other papers reported he was ordered out of the country in March 1936. John B. finds the Congressional Record reporting him ordered to leave (again) in April 1948. And yet in 1949 he apparently has an address on Eighty-sixth St. in New York. This game of whack-a-commie mole seems weird!

Hi, Jake. These are some pretty tough questions, but here’s my take on them.... 1. According to Dale Meyers writing in With Malice…., Westbrook radioed the following (emphasis added by me): There is nothing to this Marsalis here. Let’s get back up to the place and work to North Jefferson. We got a witness that seen him going north after he shed his jacket.... The above has sometimes been quoted slightly differently, suggesting Westbrook or whoever was speaking claimed a witness saw the suspect take off the jacket. To my knowledge, no one has ever claimed to have seen the jacket being discarded. I believe the Oswald killed by Jack Ruby left the TSBD in a blue jacket, which was later placed back into the building to be “discovered” there. 2. I’m not aware of anyone who specifically said there was no car in the driveway blocked by Tippit’s car. But only Doris Holan (and possibly one or two others) did see it. The driveway was narrow, wedged between two houses and partially obscured by Tippit’s car. Doris Holan from her second floor window directly across the street was perfectly positioned to see over Tippit’s car and look down the narrow driveway. 3. Young Virginia Davis, who lived just two houses away, thought Tippit lived at the 410/408 duplex on E. Tenth, so he must have gone there frequently. 4. The witnesses to the Tippit slaying really are all over the place, but it might be helpful when analyzing them to consider how far away each one was from the killing site. Some often quoted witnesses weren’t even in the same block. One of the closest was Benavides, who thought the killer looked like “Oswald” but had a different haircut in the back. Joseph McBride wrote Into the Nightmare about the Tippit killing and occasionally posts here.

A number of newspaper articles, including the March 7, 1936 Cleveland Plain Dealer, indicate that the “immigration and naturalization service of the Department of Labor” ordered that 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….” What free choice! Still, it is strange that this apparently deported, or otherwise ordered to voluntarily remove himself from the USA, an “alien Communist” (a phrase from the article referenced above), was able to maintain an address at 217 East Eighty-sixth St. in NYC more than a decade later. Is this an indication that he may have been turned?

According to the 3/7/1936 Milwaukee Sentinel, Emil Gardos was born in Romania. Wikipedia indicates that there is a relatively small ethnic sect in the Danube delta area of Romania, called the Lipovans, who speak Russian as their primary language. This is undoubtedly a long shot, but is it possible that the Gardos spoke Russian?

Congratulations, David! Hope there will be an economical way for those of us who weren’t there to see your presentation and that of some of the others. Keep it coming!

Interesting that the wife of this commie ingrate listed as her final residence the the US Consulate in Budapest. I’m assuming she was American born. At any rate, the following Milwaukee Sentinel article (November 19, 1976, p. 22) suggests that Fred Blair WAS the brother of Grace Blair Gardos and therefore the brother-in-law of Emil Gardos. Note the indication from Fred that the couple "lived in Budapest the past 28 years." Could Emil nevertheless have spent time in New York City in the 1950s? What would be far more interesting is any indication that Mr. and Mrs. Emil Gardos preferred to speak Russian rather than Hungarian.

Greg, Ruby apparently listed his friendship with McClendon, but I'm not sure of the details. In a Bill Kelley essay on Kennedy and Kings, Mr. Kelley wrote (emphasis added): Both Gordon McLendon and David Phillips, the men behind the CBS-CIA TV show, were questioned by HSCA investigators. McLendon denied knowing Jack Ruby very well. Even though it had already been established that Ruby listed McLendon as one of his six closest friends, patronized his radio stations, repeatedly made phone calls to McLendon’s home, and visited his radio station studio on the weekend of the assassination.[34] John Armstrong wrote much the same thing on p. 904 of Harvey and Lee. There is lots of evidence that Ruby contacted McClendon's home and radio station at various times, including on 11/22/63, but I'm afraid I can't help much with the "six closest friends" quote.

Hi, Sandy, Hopefully Paul will answer also, but here’s my take. The anonymous phone call to the Tippits has always been intriguing for its specificity and uniqueness, and so let’s make the very reasonable assumption that Emil Gardos was the “father” and Fred Blair was the “uncle” referred to by the unknown woman. From every indication, Gardos was a real communist whose activities attracted the attention of the U.S. government and eventually got him prosecuted. If this is as it appeared, is it likely he (Gardos) would have allowed his young son to become entangled in a U.S. Intel operation? Wouldn’t he have complained publicly? There is, of course, the other possibility, that things were not as they appeared and Gardos was some sort of USG plant, which opens up all kinds of potential avenues leading to the possible accuracy of the anonymous call. For now, though, based on the known facts, it seems more likely to me that both he and Blair were legitimate communists. If so, the approach outlined by John Kowalski on the previous page may hold more hope to unravel this puzzle. Just my two cents worth.

Fascinating! Megathanks for the “Emil Gardos” clarification. This is news to me. The “Woman’s World” magazine referred to in the FBI report was surely the communist “Worker’s World.” Gardos was said to be a magazine editor as well. The “New Masses” article Paul linked mentioned that Gardos had run for Congress in Wisconsin, and I found this about him in the Milwaukee Journal, Mar 20, 1949, p. 3:

From Harvey and Lee: In January 1953 the HUAC in New York made reference to a "Mrs. M. Oswald" in a CIA Office of Security file. The file contained references to 1941, Nazi's, and New Jersey. Judge John Tunheim, of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB ), wrote to Henry Hyde in an attempt to get the HUAC files on Lee and Marguerite Oswald re­leased, but his request was refused. [H&L p. 51] John A. has shown several times that classic Marguerite knew almost nothing about her "son." You're probably already familiar with this, and it is surely a long shot, but here's an FBI report about an anonymous phone call that might shed light on Harvey's father and uncle. The day after the assassination Mrs. Jack Tippit, of Westport, Connecticut was telephoned by an unidentified woman. This woman said she personally knew Oswald's father and uncle in New York City, who were from Hungary, promoted communism and lived at 77th and 2nd Avenue in Yorkville (NYC). This woman asked Mrs. Tippit to relay her information to Dallas authorities. This woman may have thought Oswald's relatives were communists, but in reality they were most likely working undercover for our government. The following FBI document, an internal teletype from 11/30/63, was withheld from public view for three decades. URGENT 11-30-63 7-37 PM EST MB TO DIRECTOR, AND SACS DALLAS AND NEW YORK FROM SAC, NEW HAVEN /100-18158/ NEW YORK VIA WASHINGTON LEE HARVEY OSWALD, IS - R ON NOV. THIRTY INSTANT, JACK D. TIPPIT, SELF EMPLOYED CARTOONIST FOR NATIONAL MAGAZINES AND WIFE, ONE SIX FOUR NEW TOWN TURNPIKE, WESTPORT, CONN., ADVISED AS FOLLOWS. AT APPROXIMATELY ELEVEN THIRTY AM ON INSTANT DATE MRS. TIPPIT RECEIVED A TELEPHONE CALL FROM UNKNOWN WOMAN WHO ASKED IF MR. TIPPIT WAS A POLICEMAN AND IF HE WAS RELATED TO THE POLICE- MAN TIPPIT WHO WAS SHOT IN DALLAS. MRS. TIPPIT REPLIED HER HUSBAND WAS NOT A POLICEMAN, WAS DISTANTLY RELATED TO OFFICER TIPPIT AND ASKED IDENTITY OF CALLER. ON ANOTHER EXTENSION JACK TIPPIT LISTENED TO BALANCE OF PHONE CALL. THE WOMAN SAID SHE COULD NOT GIVE HER NAME AS SHE WAS AFRAID OF BEING KILLED, THAT SHE WAS FROM NEW YORK AND HAD TO COME "HERE" TO MAKE THE CALL SO THAT SHE COULD NOT BE TRACED AS SHE WAS IN FEAR OF HER END PAGE ONE PAGE TWO: LIFE. THE WOMAN REQUESTED THAT NOTHING BE SAID TO THE PRESS ABOUT A WOMAN CALLING AS THEY WOULD KNOW HER IDENTITY AND SHE WOULD BE KILLED. THE WOMAN SAID SHE KNEW OSWALD-S FATHER AND UNCLE WHO WERE HUNGARIANS AND COMMUNISTS. THE WOMAN CONTINUED THAT OSWALD-S FATHER AND UNCLE HAD LIVED AT SEVENTY SEVENTH AND SECOND AVENUE, YORKVILLE, NYC, THAT WHILE LIVING THERE BOTH WERE UNEMPLOYED, GOT THEIR MONEY FROM COMMUNISTS AND SPENT ALL THERE TIME IN COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES. THE WOMAN THEN BEGAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY, DISJOINTEDLY, AND NERVOUSLY. SHE STATED SHE HAD TWO NAMES TO GIVE AND MENTIONED THE NAME EMILE KARDOS AND SAID SOMETHING ABOUT A BROTHER IN LAW. WHEN MRS. TIPPIT TRIED TO FIND OUT WHOSE BROTHER IN LAW THE WOMAN KEPT REPEATING THE WORD BROTHER IN LAW. THE WOMAN STATED KARDOS IS HEAD OF THE COMMUNISTS AND THAT THIS GROUP IN NEW YORK NOW HAS CHARTS AND MAPS. THE WOMAN SAID SOMETHING ABOUT WEINSTOCK THE EDITOR OF QUOTE WOMAN-S WORLD UNQUOTE BUT DID NOT GIVE FURTHER DETAILS.. THE WOMAN SAID THE END PAGE TWO PAGE THREE: GROUP IN NEW YORK PLANS TO TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT, THAT OF COURSE THEY WOULD DENY THIS BUT SHE KNEW IT TO BE TRUE. SHE THEN HUNG UP ABRUPTLY. THE WOMAN NEVER GAVE ANY REASON FOR HER CALL WHICH SOUNDED LOCAL. MRS. TIPPIT THOUGHT THE WOMAN HAD AN AUSTRIAN OR GERMAN ACCENT WHILE MR. TIPPIT BELIEVED IT WAS SPANISH. BOTH FELT THE WOMAN SOUNDED LIKE A MATURE ADULT AND DID NOT HAVE A YOUTHFUL VOICE. MR. TIPPIT EXPLAINED WOMAN MAY HAVE OBTAINED HIS IDENTITY FROM AN ARTICLE ON PAGE ONE OF NORWALK, CONN. QUOTE HOUR UNQUOTE FOR NOVEMBER TWENTYFIVE LAST, WHICH STATED THAT WE MAY BE A DISTANT RELATIVE OF THE DALLAS POLICEMAN. TIPPIT SAID ARTICLE RESULTED FROM TELEPHONE CALL FROM REPORTER WHO WAS CHECKING ALL TIPPITS IN LOCAL TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES. BUREAU REQUESTED TO COORDINATE ABOVE WITH ANY OTHER INFORMATION TO DETERMINE IF PERTINENT AS NEW HAVEN HAS NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE RESIDENCE AND ASSOCIATES OF OSWALD-S FATHER AND UNCLE. END AND ACK PLS 7-45 PM OK FBI WA LLD FOR RELAY 6-47 PM CST OK FBI DL FL TU PLSDISC M CC-MR_ROSEN

I’ve spent less than an hour doing online research about MK-ULTRA and children, and the floodgates have already opened. Hardly a hotbed of conspiracy theories, Newsweek magazine last year published published an article entitled, MORE THAN 4,000 NEW MKULTRA DOCUMENTS REQUESTED FROM CIA AFTER CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN. Here is the fourth paragraph in the article (emphasis added by me): Project MKUltra was an illegal program of human experimentation undertaken by the CIA to discover methods, both pharmacological and psychological, for controlling the human mind, particularly in interrogation settings. Amphetamines, MDMA, scopolamine, cannabis, salvia, sodium pentothal, psilocybin and LSD were administered to thousands of unsuspecting people, throughout the United States and Canada. Others were subject to sensory deprivation, psychological abuse and rape, including the sexual abuse of children. Here’s another one from History.com entitled THE CIA'S APPALLING HUMAN EXPERIMENTS WITH MIND CONTROL. From mentally-impaired boys at a state school, to American soldiers, to “sexual psychopaths” at a state hospital, MK-Ultra’s programs often preyed on the most vulnerable members of society. The list of hits for “MK-ULTRA and children” appears to go on… and on. There are even suggestions in a number of well-known periodicals that the hit series “Stranger Things,” which followed a group of kids placed in bizarre sci-fi settings, was based on the CIA’s MK-ULTRA and Stargate projects. There’s a pretty good write-up here in Rolling Stone magazine. I’m utterly astonished at how many references there are to MK-ULTRA and children, and I’ve researched this for less than an hour!!!

John, With limited free time recently, this morning I found a few minutes to do a net search of one sentence you quoted above from p. 163 of Dr. Ross’s book: “Dr. Estabrooks did experiments on children.” The results were substantial. On Google, there were pages and pages of hits. On DuckDuckGo (a privacy oriented search engine), there were also scores and perhaps hundreds of links to the direct quote. Interestingly, on DuckDuckGo the post above by John Kowalski was the second entry on page 1, suggesting this website is highly ranked by the search engine, or that most of the other references to Dr. Ross’s words were ranked significantly lower than the Ed Forum, or both. The third result on DuckDuckGo was a link to this web page: It is a pdf file to a lengthy article by Dr. Ross which begins with the following summary: In this summary of Bluebird, Dr. Ross describes unethical experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new identities, hypnotic access codes, and new memories in the minds of experimental subjects. His research is based on 15,000 pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Dr. Ross is a past president of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation. Please help to spread the word. I have no idea how accurate the lengthy article is, but it is extensively footnoted with often clickable links to things such as peer-reviewed journals and CIA docs. To give an example of just how shocking some of this material is, here are two brief excerpts: As was true of mind control and biological weapon research, radiation research experiments were conducted on children and unwitting civilians. In 1961, researchers at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston University School of Medicine gave radioactive iodine to seventy retarded children at Wrentham State School. At Fernald School, MIT gave radioactive substances to children by putting it in their food. No risks of radioactivity were mentioned in the consent form signed by the parents. The consent form stated that the purpose of the experiments was "helping to improve the nutrition of our children." P. 15, 18 AND Army doctors were actively involved in LSD testing at least until the late 1970's. Subjects of LSD experiments included children as young as five years old, and brain electrodes were implanted in children as young as 11 years of age. Four of the CIA's MKULTRA Subprojects were on children. The mind control doctors included Presidents of the American Psychiatric Association and psychiatrists who received full-page obituaries in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Responsibility for the unethical experimentation lies first with the individual doctors, but also collectively with the medical profession and with academia as a whole. P. 21 These shocking allegations need a whole lot more scrutiny, and I intend to look into this subject much more as time permits. Again, thanks to John Kowalski for bringing this up.

Megathanks for this, John. Subproject 103 is completely new to me, although most of us are surely familiar with the general outlines of the Agency’s infamous MK-ULTRA project. The information in the paragraph you quoted is enough to provoke much more searching and researching. I’ll be spending some more time with this over the next few months. If you have any more information on Subproject 103, please post it if you can. Does Mr. Ross’s book have any other information on experiments with children? Thanks again! I neglected, by the way, in my previous post to provide a link to the current write-up describing Harvey Oswald and Lee Oswald during three consecutive semesters in middle schools. The evidence strikes me as simply overwhelming. It’s still a work in progress, but it can be read here: Lee and Harvey in Three Consecutive School Semesters

John, This may have been particularly easy for the Russian-speaking Oswald since he almost certainly had no living parents or brother, at least living in the United States. In a short “autobiography” allegedly written in “Oswald’s” own hand as part of an application for employment at the Minsk radio plant, he wrote: “...my parents are dead, I have no brothers or sisters.” Also, this excerpt from page 285 of Harvey and Lee might interest you: Oswald was given Identity Document P311479, a Soviet residence document for people without citizenship, and told that he would soon be sent to Minsk where he would work in a factory and be paid 700 New Rubles a month. NOTE: Oswald's salary of 700 New Rubles per month was changed to 90 Hard Rubles per month on January 1, 1961, when 10 New Rubles were exchanged for 1 Hard Ruble. The following day Rimma Shirakova accompanied Oswald to the Red Cross office where he was given 5000 Rubles, which he used to pay his hotel bill (2200 Rubles), and purchase a train ticket to Minsk (150 Rubles).2 NOTE: The "Red Cross" in Russia (circa 1959) was an organ of the KGB. It was not affiliated with the world-wide International Red Cross founded in 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Since Mr. Burroughs and Mr. Brewer (the “shoe salesman” in Burroughs’ testimony) clearly communicated that afternoon, it might be interesting to ask Mr. Burroughs for everything he could recall that Brewer said. It was more than half a century ago, but that day surely was memorable for everyone present at the theater, and so there might yet be some detail overlooked for all these years.

Awesome! I’ll stop trying to reach him. Suggestions for questions: Who was your boss at the Texas Theater? Is the name John Callahan familiar to you? If so, was Mr. Callahan the manager of your theater? Do you know if he managed other theaters in the area as well? Was Mr. Callahan at the theater that afternoon? When did he leave? During the arrest(s), a man apparently told Dallas policeman John Toney that he was the “manager on duty.” Do you know who that man might be? Did a title such as “manager on duty” actually exist? Who turned on the house lights prior to the arrest(s)? When you saw the Oswald lookalike handcuffed by police, was there any indication he had been brought down from the balcony? Do you recall anything about the clothing worn by the lookalike? For example, the color of his shirt? Why did you wait several decades before talking about the Oswald lookalike? Have you ever suspected that any of your statements to authorities were altered? Did you see Dallas policeman interviewing theater patrons and taking notes? If so, how long did that process take? One theater patron said he saw a man who looked like Jack Ruby at the rear of the theater. Did you see anyone resembling Ruby there? Do you have any idea what time the Oswald lookalike arrived at the theater? Do you think Julia Postal sold the first Oswald a ticket?

Thanks, Ron.... I'll add those questions to the list if I reach Mr. Burroughs and he turns out to be our guy. Some, but not all, of this was covered by James Douglass. What is really a shot in the dark, though, is identifying the manager or acting manager or bogus manager or whatever he turns out to be. Who turned up the house lights for the police? Did Callahan really leave at the same time the 1:30 pm Oswald arrived at the theater?

I found a Warren H. Burroughs, age 78, listed on truepeoplesearch.com with mailing addresses going back to 1990 in Lancaster TX, Dallas TX, Desoto TX and more recently (2016-2017) in Maine. Could this be our man? If it sounds possible, I can start queries on several email addresses given and quite a few phone numbers as well, but I’d like to establish that this contact meets some basic criteria before starting to ask around. Anyone?

All sorts of interesting issues have been discussed in this thread. But as Ron suggested above, the most significant single question may be, Who was the “manager on duty” who told Det. Toney that the balcony suspect had “been in the theater since about 12:05 PM,” well before the theater opened. That man may have been a direct lead to the people who conspired to frame “Lee Harvey Oswald” for the assassinations of JFK and J.D. Tippit.

American-born Lee Oswald was the one who was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro in the late 1950s. For part of that time, Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald was at the much smaller Marine Corps Air Facility in Santa Ana, only about ten miles away. Some researchers, as well as some Warren Commission staffers, didn’t realize these were two different facilities. Five years before the assassination, in November 1958, Lee Oswald opened a bank account at the West Side State Bank in Ft. Worth and listed his address as the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro. Why this same Oswald would list his address as “Toro” in 1963 is a mystery. We believe the American-born Lee Oswald worked extensively with Jack Ruby in the summer and fall of 1963.

Thanks, Joe. The kind words are most appreciated. The period from the last few days of September to the earliest days of October 1963 is the only time I can think of when even two Oswalds may not be sufficient to explain all that happened. In barely a week, we have an “Oswald”: supposedly returning to Texas from Mexico City checking into the downtown Dallas YWCA wandering around Alice and environs, 400 miles from Dallas visiting the Texas Employment Commission trying to purchase rifles from Robert McKeown, Castro’s arms supplier visiting Sylvia Odio No doubt there are other things I’m forgetting from this very period. It’s clear, though, that the plot to establish the patsy was now in overdrive. The purpose of the Alice area encounters has always eluded me. Perhaps it was just to create a “fog” of evidence making a cohesive analysis impossible.