Jim Hargrove

Then how, before ever setting foot in the Soviet Union, did Harvey Oswald get essentially the same marks in Russian and English language tests in the Marine Corps? While in the Marines, how did he manage to carry on a lengthy conversation in Russian with Rosaleen Quinn? • “It was a matter of common knowledge among squadron members that he [Oswald] could read, write, and speak Russian.” –Erwin Donald Lewis • “Oswald subscribed to a newspaper printed in Russian, which I believe he said was published in San Francisco.” –James Anthony Botelho • “I remember that Oswald could speak a little Russian, even when he was overseas.” –Paul Edward Murphy • “I know from rumor that Oswald received a newspaper printed in Russian” –Donald Peter Camarata • “He [Oswald] spent a great deal of his free time reading papers printed in Russian….I believe he also had some books written in Russian, although I do not remember their names.” –Mack Osborne Here is a Russian-language newspaper printed in San Francisco, perhaps the very one James Anthony Botelho said Oswald subscribed to. Can you imagine trying to read this with just a dictionary at hand?

Your English is really quite good, Geo, but I think we may still have a bit of a language barrier when trying to comprehend what you are saying. Yesterday, a Kennedy assassination scholar who is banned from this forum sent me a note after reading this thread and the others you have participated in. Here's what he said, in part: ...I think he gets confused when he is trying to say the young Hungarian boy was given the last name Osvalt in Hungary in order to groom him from the start...I think what Geo is trying to say is whoever was calling themselves Osvalt under the Oswald Project in Hungary was actually from a family with a really Jewish-sounding name like Rabinowitz and those are the people you should be seeking...I think Geo is telling you to get an ancestry expert to try to trace what Jewish family changed their name to Osvalt in order to find the relatives who would be able to recount the family with the young Harvey...I myself think tracing Gardos would yield more results...Geo does make one good point however...Taking the word of an ex NKVD agent that there was nothing there is naive at best...I think you need a good Translator with Geo who could confront Geo and force him to be more clear...A Translator who could interpret Geo... Does any or all of the above reflect what you are trying to communicate with us? Also, is it your speculation above that Allen Dulles might be behind the anonymous call? I find that exceptionally difficult to believe.

Robert Oswald was clearly part of the Oswald Project. For example, on our website HarveyandLee.net, Dr. James Norwood writes: In his book Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother, Robert Oswald published a number of photographs allegedly from his private collection. One of them was an image of Harvey Oswald holding his niece outside Robert’s home in Fort Worth. Robert asserts that the photo was taken just before Oswald’s so-called defection to the Soviet Union in fall 1959. With this photo and the Thanksgiving Day home movie, Robert conveniently left for posterity a visual set of bookends of the period before and after the defection. That visual record with Harvey photographed in close proximity to Robert’s home was essential in maintaining the façade of the identity of Harvey Oswald, the Russian-speaking immigrant, as the American-born Lee Oswald and a member of the Oswald family just prior to departing and then after returning from the Soviet Union. That was precisely how Robert Oswald used the images in his book. John A. read (and still owns) a copy of Robert’s book, but we just don’t believe many of the details in it. Robert was an essential, and carefully used, participant in the Oswald Project. Mr. Kinaski just renewed another anti-Harvey and Lee screed HERE, but note how easily his assertions were debunked right in the thread he brought up again.

Sandy, I think Fred Blair was both the uncle and the brother-in-law the caller referenced. Just a hunch, though. Geo, I have difficulty following your posts. What makes you think the Russian-speaking Oswald had Jewish roots? And, if we were to spend a hundred books consulting a genealogical expert, what question would we ask? If you could make your response simple and clear, I'd gratefully appreciate it.

John, I’d like to thank Sandy for pointing out that Workers World has no apostrophe, which seems to make a difference in online searches. Interesting about Daily World, but I don’t think Louis Weinstock was associated with it, right? Like you, John A. and I have significant suspicions about the possible intelligence connections of Edwin Ekdahl. He certainly lived with the American-born LHO for various periods, but he was also in close proximity to the young Russian-speaking LHO. For example, John A. believes that in the summer 1947, the evidence shows that Marguerite, Edwin, and the three boys (including American-born LHO) were living at 1508 8th Ave. in Fort Worth while the Russian-speaking LHO was living with the Marguerite Oswald impostor at 101 San Saba in Benbrook, TX. I just checked Google maps, and it indicates that the two addresses are 10 miles apart. If the anonymous phone call contained some accurate information, the Texas episode above could have happened either a little before or a little after the NYC episode. By 1953, the young Russian-speaking Oswald (Harvey) was clearly in NYC, because he posed for the famous Bronx Zoo photo (one of the pictures John Pic refused to identify as his half-brother).

Emil Gardos’s wife was named Grace A. Blair. She was the sister of Fred Bassett Blair, chairman of the Wisconsin Communist Party for many years. We have no evidence that Emil Gardos and Fred Blair spent time together in NYC, but it seems like a very reasonable assumption that Emil was the “father” and Fred Blair was the “uncle” referred to by the unknown woman. If memory serves, all had Hungarian roots. As Paul Jolliffe once pointed out, “By 1963, Emil Gardos and Fred Bassett Blair had ‘commie’ files a mile thick at the FBI! The FBI knew damn well exactly who the woman meant!” And yet in its report the FBI surely deliberately misspelled “Emil Gardos”, hid the name “Fred Blair,” and turned the Louis Weinstock-edited “Worker’s World” into the imaginary “Woman’s World.” I hope the above information is accurate. It’s been three or four years since many of us went through it all in the long “Evidence for Harvey and Lee” thread. Unless our new Hungarian contact Geo Kozma has new and relevant information to provide, it may be that the others involved in the original research may be reluctant to go through all of this again.

Of course, Tracy should know, according to HSCA staff, government attorney Michael Goldsmith had a “…. desire to insure secrecy of Wilcott testimony. Goldsmith said Committee did not want any public revelation on his committee appearance. “Schapp, Wilcott attormey refused. Agreed not to reveal specifics of specific questions.” Wilcott could not publicly reveal specifics, eh?

In another thread, Sandy Larsen suggested that we start a new topic on the anonymous phone call since the posts are so scattered here and elsewhere. I've started one called The Anonymous Phone Call to the Tippits of Connecticut. Hopefully, people here will add to the information I've posted, which is just barely an introduction. Paul-- I quoted extensively from you in the second post in that topic, and so I hope you'll take a look and see if I copied anything incorrectly.

This is an incomplete start to the topic, but it is all I have time for this morning. Hopefully, others interested in this old report will contribute more.

We believe that the “Emile Kardos” named in the FBI report was actually the Hungarian immigrant “Emil Gardos,” a Yorkville NYC resident who was deported for communist activities in 1949. The “Woman’s World” magazine referred to was almost surely “Worker’s World,” a communist (or socialist?) publication. Several years ago, forum member Paul Jolliffe made a post that summed up nicely what we can know and reasonably suspect about the FBI report and the anonymous call it referred to. Paul was debating a bit with the late John Butler (Geo Kozma gave us the sad new of John’s passing), and so I’ve deleted the references to Mr. Butler out of respect for his memory. Here is the rest of what Mr. Jolliffe wrote: …. the woman caller asserted that Gardos and his "son" (our "Oswald"/Harvey) were in Yorkville in the 1950's. That was impossible: Gardos was deported in 1949….. although the woman did not have the right years, that by itself did not completely invalidate her call! …. the key to the FBI document was NOTi n whether "Oswald"/Harvey was the biological son of Emil Gardos. Instead the importance of the FBI document was that it demonstrated some kind of relationship between Gardos and "Oswald"/Harvey, a relationship the FBI was desperate to hide! It's entirely plausible to me that the "Oswald" killed by Jack Ruby in Dallas was Hungarian by birth…. the way the FBI hot-potatoed the report of the mysterious woman's call to Mrs. Jack Tippit showed that the FBI was very, very concerned about this woman's information. Further, we know the FBI hid that information - they knew instantly that the woman was referring to Emil Gardos and Fred Blair. (By the way, it turns out that the highly suspicious asterisk over and the underlining of the name "Emile Kardos" on the report itself actually was done by the FBI, not John Armstrong! Someone at the FBI recognized the importance of that name immediately, and marked up the original copy!) The FBI hid that information in two ways: 1. They corrupted Emil Gardos's name ("Emile Kardos"). They also corrupted the name of the publication with which Louis Weinstock was associated ("Woman's World"). 2. The FBI then classified the report on this call to make sure the American public would never know of it. And indeed, had Congress not changed the law in the 1990's, we would not know of it today! Even so, it took some real diligence on John Armstrong's part to dig it out of NARA twenty five years ago! So what does this mean? Well, if we are right that the FBI knew/feared there was something to the woman's claim, then our "Oswald" (Harvey), really was associated with Emil Gardos for a period in the 1940's in Yorkville. Further, we can reasonably conclude that the nature of that relationship was something that appeared familial and paternalistic to an outsider - the caller believed Gardos was the little boy's father. …. (O)thers have been speculating that somehow Emil Gardos's real flesh and blood son, John, might have been the boy (our "Oswald"/Harvey) to whom the woman referred. OK, that is your right to speculate. However, as I pointed out weeks ago, that was mighty unlikely: it meant that Emil and Grace had to be willing to abandon their little son to the care of strangers in a country to which they could not easily return, if ever. The psychological implausibility of that scenario made it extremely, extremely unlikely. (Maybe not completely impossible, but so unlikely as to warrant severe skepticism.) Nonetheless, you and others were hot to pursue it. Fair enough. If John Gardos was indeed our "Oswald"/Harvey, then he was killed in Dallas in 1963. On the other hand, if John Gardos was not our "Oswald"/Harvey, then it would be entirely plausible that he would have accompanied his parents to Hungary in 1949 and lived there. Thanks in part to your tracking down Russ Geck, we now know that is exactly what did happen. Mrs. Russ Geck had a father, John Gardos. Mrs. Russ Geck's grandparents were Emil and Grace Gardos. Just as the 1966 FBI report stated (the one which the FBI had that bizarre reaction to a possible visit to the US by Grace Gardos and her little son), the son of Grace Gardos and Emil Gardos was very much alive and with his mother in 1966. So, now we have two overwhelming pieces of evidence that little John Gardos absolutely could not have been "Oswald"/Harvey! However, as I have now stated plainly many, many times, that does not invalidate the basic thrust of the woman caller's information, nor our suspicions of the FBI's reaction to that call! After all, what was the deepest, darkest secret about the JFK assassination? That the accused dead patsy was NOT who all of officialdom claimed him to be! Unraveling his true identity would lead right into the national security state and probably straight to the ultimate sponsors of the assassination! No, come hell or high water, the killers and their abettors within and without the government would stop at nothing to hide that fact! So, since "Oswald"/Harvey was NOT the biological son of Emil Gardos, then there is only one other possibility: Emil and Grace Gardos (and their real son, John) were his caretakers for a bit in Yorkville in the 1940's. The woman caller saw them together and made the natural (but wrong) assumption that our little boy "Oswald"/Harvey was their other son. Were Emil and Grace Gardos the type of folks who might have looked after a small boy WWII refugee/orphan from Hungary for a few months or longer in the mid 1940's in Yorkville? It seems possible to me. But this is why Russ Geck's wife (what is her first name, again?) could be hugely important: she just might, might, might, have some stories passed from her father about her grandparents and their activities in Yorkville in the 1940's. And maybe, if we are incredibly lucky, some of those family stories might include something about the little boy from Hungary for whom they were foster parents for a bit….

I’m starting this new thread at the suggestion of Sandy Larsen. Much more is scattered around in a number of threads, especially the endless one entitled “EVIDENCE FOR HARVEY AND LEE (Please debate the specifics right here. Don't just claim someone else has debunked it!)” The following FBI document, an internal teletype from 11/30/63, was withheld from public view for three decades.

Welcome to the forum, Mr. Kozma. Hope you’re able to straighten out your password problem. (Btw, I am always happy to share information with John Kowalski, who has worked on this issue for some time. Why would you say otherwise? ) You have sent me a lot of material to go through, and after my recent vacation, I’ll need a few days more to get up to speed on this topic. A couple of quick questions. Do you agree with our assumptions that the FBI report on the anonymous phone call to the Tippits of Connecticut corrupted the name “Emil Gardos” to “Emile Kardos” and the Louis Weinstock periodical “Worker’s World” to “Woman’s World”? In your search for the Hungarian roots of the Russian-speaking Oswald, are you trying to locate someone with a surname such as “Osvalt,” or something similar? I had always assumed the European immigrant’s original name would have been immaterial and probably unrelated to Oswald. Do you have reason to assume otherwise? Some years ago, forum member John Butler corresponded with Russ Geck (married to the granddaughter of Emil Gárdos and Grace Blair) and pretty much established that Emil and Grace’s son John Gardos did not become “Lee Harvey Oswald.” Forum member Paul Jolliffe nicely summed up the multiple reasons that is true. We’ve concluded that if there is any truth to this potential light on the earliest years of the boy who became the Russian-speaking Oswald, he most likely was an immigrant (probably a WWII war orphan) who stayed with the Gardos family at some point in the mid- to late 1940s? Emil Gardos was deported for Communist activities in 1949. Do you agree with this analysis?

According to CIA accountant James Wilcott, the Agency cryptonym for the Oswald Project was RX-ZIM. For much more on this see: https://harveyandlee.net/Wilcott/Wilcott.htm EDIT: Also, Sandy, it's going to take a couple of days for me to absorb at least most of the substance of the fellow from Budapest's messages. It seems like it might be very relevant to the long-suppressed FBI report on the anonymous phone call to the Tippit's of Connecticut, but there is a lot of material to digest, and I've just returned from vacation. Do you think we should start a new thread to go on with this?

As I indicated above, Douglass wrote: "His lookalike sneaked into the theater at 1:45 P.M. and, like Oswald, went immediately up the balcony stairs. By the time Burroughs witnessed the Oswald double’s arrest, he had also come down the balcony stairs on the far side of the lobby, either on his own or already accompanied by police who had been checking the balcony." According to Lt. Cunningham, he and Det. Taylor and Det. Toney were questioning a young man in the balcony when they heard someone shout 'here he is' from the lower level. Deputy Buddy Walters reported: "Some unknown officer was holding a white man at the steps of the balcony and I proceeded on into the balcony." Bill Courson wrote: "I started up the stairs of the balcony because that is where the call said that he was hiding. I'm reasonably satisfied in my own mind that I met Oswald coming down. I was looking for a man in a white or light colored jacket...." And, again, there are not one but two Dallas Police reports indicating "Lee Harvey Oswald" was arrested in the balcony of the Dallas Theater.

Hi, Sandy, Just got back from a vacation in Central America that cost more than I should have spent. It will take a while for me to catch up, but I'm starting now. The fellow from Budapest has sent me a dozen or so long letters, some of which I have difficulty following, but it is interesting. It'll take a while to catch up to that as well. Jim

So, are we to believe that good ole’ George Applin was arrested by the police, handcuffed, placed in a squad car and driven away, BUT HE FORGOT TO MENTION ALL THAT ON HIS AFFIDAVIT AND FBI INTERVIEW? AND NONE OF THE AUTHORITIES OBJECTED? From James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable (emphasis added): Butch Burroughs, who witnessed Oswald’s arrest, startled me in his interview by saying he saw a second arrest occur in the Texas Theater only “three or four minutes later.”[444] He said the Dallas Police then arrested “an Oswald lookalike.” Burroughs said the second man “looked almost like Oswald, like he was his brother or something.”[445] When I questioned the comparison by asking, “Could you see the second man as well as you could see Oswald?” he said, “Yes, I could see both of them. They looked alike.”[446] After the officers half-carried and half-dragged Oswald to the police car in front of the theater, within a space of three or four minutes, Burroughs saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed. The Oswald look-alike, however, was taken by police not out the front but out the back of the theater.[447] What happened next we can learn from another neglected witness, Bernard Haire.[448] Bernard J. Haire was the owner of Bernie’s Hobby House, just two doors east of the Texas Theater. Haire went outside his store when he saw police cars congregating in front of the theater.[449] When he couldn’t see what was happening because of the crowd, he went back through his store into the alley out back. It, too, was full of police cars, but there were fewer spectators. Haire walked up the alley. When he stopped opposite the rear door of the theater, he witnessed what he would think for decades was the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. “Police brought a young white man out,” Haire told an interviewer. “The man was dressed in a pullover shirt and slacks. He seemed to be flushed, as if he’d been in a struggle. Police put the man in a police car and drove off.”[450] When Haire was told in 1987 that Lee Harvey Oswald had been brought out the front of the theater by police, he was shocked. “I don’t know who I saw arrested,” he said in bewilderment.[451] Butch Burroughs and Bernard Haire are complementary witnesses. From their perspectives both inside and outside the Texas Theater, they saw an Oswald double arrested and taken to a police car in the back alley only minutes after the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. Burroughs’s and Haire’s independent, converging testimonies provide critical insight into the mechanics of the plot. In a comprehensive intelligence scenario for Kennedy’s and Tippit’s murders, the plan culminated in Oswald’s Friday arrest and Sunday murder (probably a fallback from his being set up to be killed in the Texas Theater by the police). There is a hint of the second Oswald’s arrest in the Dallas police records. According to the Dallas Police Department’s official Homicide Report on J. D. Tippit, “Suspect was later arrested in the balcony of the Texas theatre at 231 W. Jefferson.”[452] Dallas Police detective L. D. Stringfellow also reported to Captain W. P. Gannaway, “Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater.”[453] NOTES: 444. Author’s interview of Burroughs, July 16, 2007. Butch Burroughs is a man of few words. When asked a question, he answers exactly what he is asked. Burroughs told me no one had ever asked him before about a second arrest in the Texas Theater. In response to my question, “Now you didn’t see anybody else [besides Oswald] get arrested that day, did you?” he answered, “Yes, there was a lookalike—an Oswald lookalike.” In response to further questions, he described the second arrest, that of the “Oswald lookalike.” Ibid. Because Butch Burroughs saw neither Oswald nor his lookalike enter the Texas Theater, each must have gone directly up the balcony stairs on entering. Oswald crossed the balcony and came down the stairs on the far side of the lobby. There he entered the orchestra seats and began his seat-hopping, in apparent search of a contact. His lookalike sneaked into the theater at 1:45 P.M. and, like Oswald, went immediately up the balcony stairs. By the time Burroughs witnessed the Oswald double’s arrest, he had also come down the balcony stairs on the far side of the lobby, either on his own or already accompanied by police who had been checking the balcony. 445. § Ibid. 446. § Ibid. 447. § Ibid. 448. § In the data base of the JFK Records Act at the National Archives, there is no record of Bernard Haire. Archivist Martin F. McGann to James Douglass, July 20, 2007. 449. § In a photo taken about 1:50 P.M., November 22, 1963, that shows people gathering around the police cars in front of the Texas Theater, Bernard Haire can be seen at the edge of the crowd, leaning on a parking meter and trying to see. Photo by Stuart L. Reed; on p. 68, Myers, With Malice. 450. § Bernard J. Haire interview by Jim Marrs, summer 1987. Crossfire, p. 354. 451. § Ibid. 452. § Dallas Police Department Homicide Report on J. D. Tippit, November 22, 1963. Reproduced in With Malice, p. 447 (emphasis added). 453. § Letter from Detective L. D. Stringfellow to Captain W. P. Gannaway, November 23, 1963, Dallas City Archives. Cited in Harvey & Lee, p. 871 (emphasis added). This has to be my last post for a while.

Just as predicted! I'll be back!

The “Oswald lookalike” in the balcony that Butch Burroughs saw detained by police was NOT George Applin, because Applin was seated on the main floor, relatively close to Oswald. I’ll be back in 10 or 15 days to continue this discussion.

I don't have time for protracted arguments right now, but this simply isn't true. And do you seriously expect the Agency would release internal documents on the Oswald Project? Really?

No doubt that’s possible, especially if the facial aging expert blew it back in the day. There is, though, a steady stream of evidence for two LHOs dating back more than a decade from the assassination. It’s surprisingly unbroken. BTW, in a couple of days I’ll have to take a week or so off from the Ed Forum for some family matters. It would be an excellent time for the anti-H&L folk to come back and for at least the ten thousandth time declare Total Victory over the Harvey & Lee Menace®. Maybe this time will be the charm for them!

John: Is the family still in Connecticut? I was born and raised in NYC and the northern ‘burbs and MIGHT be able to locate someone from the area, though it has been (gasp!) more than half a century since I was there for more than a day or two. Sandy: What fun! Does the software supply any public clues about each member’s warning points? We could all compare notes and no doubt earn more warning points! Here’s hoping I’ve been reasonably polite lately. It isn’t always easy!

Anyone knowledgeable about all this might see little evidence that the other Oswald running around Dallas doing incriminating things in the weeks before the assassination was in fact named “Lee Harvey Oswald.” But the best evidence connecting American-born Oswald to Dallas in 1963 comes via Jack Ruby, who himself appears to have been far more involved in the assassination of JFK than most of us previously thought. There is simply a trainload of evidence that American-born Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby worked together. Way back in the New York Journal American of June 6, 1964, Dorothy Kilgallen wrote: “It is known that 10 persons have signed sworn depositions to the Warren Commission that they knew Oswald and Ruby to have been acquainted.” Several of the girls at the Carousel Club said Ruby knew Oswald, and so did quite a few other people. To see some of the sheer volume of evidence that Ruby and Oswald worked together, go about halfway down this page on my website and start reading below the photo above. https://harveyandlee.net/Ruby/Ruby.html And how do we know this was American-born Lee Oswald and not Russian speaking Harvey Oswald at Ruby’s club doing all kinds of errands? Because these errands often involved driving cars, and only Lee Oswald had a valid Texas drivers license. See the evidence at the page linked above. I also have never understood the short, blond Oswald in Mexico City. Someone didn’t even seem to be trying.

Isn't that the truth? I couldn't agree more, with one caveat. Even the best technology can be misrepresented and misused. One of the first things John A. taught me many years ago was, when seeking expert evidence, try to conceal the fact that the evidence concerns "Lee Harvey Oswald." For example, when I sent copies of the high-quality blow-ups John had made of Oswald's teen-age W-2 forms to IBM archivist Dawn Stamford, John cautioned me to black out the name "Lee Harvey Oswald" on each of the three forms because, as John put it, "strange things happen when you start to research Oswald." (The archivist, by the way, said that in her opinion all three forms from different employers were typed on the same machine, which she said, on close inspection, had an odd font that she could not match, despite thousands of different font examples in her files.)

OK, Sandy, we'll just have to agree to disagree about some of these details. I assume you and I agree that the Oswald Project was a creation of U.S. Intel, and that Oswald was framed in order to blame the assassination of JFK on communist Cuba/and or Russia.

Hi, John. Good to run into you again! I mentioned you just yesterday in THIS POST about the anonymous phone call to the Tippit's of Connecticut. It's been awhile, and so I hope I got most of the facts right. If you could take a quick look at that post and tell me if you recalled anything differently, I'd appreciate it.