Jim Hargrove

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When author James Douglass asked Butch Burrows if he saw anyone else get arrested at the Texas Theatre the day Kennedy was killed, Burrows answered, “Yes, there was a lookalike—an Oswald lookalike.” He described to Douglass the arrest of an Oswald “lookalike” in the balcony of the theater at nearly the same time “Oswald” was arrested on the main floor. Whatever you may think of Burrows’ belated observation, there is considerable evidence to back up his claim. Two Dallas police documents indicate LHO was arrested in the balcony of the theater, not the main floor. Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers saw Lt. Cunningham and Det. Toney questioning the balcony Oswald. During the filming of Oliver Stone’s JFK, Bernard Haire, the owner of Bernie’s Hobby Shop located near the Texas Theatre, told crew members repeatedly that he saw “Lee Harvey Oswald” escorted out the back of the theater. For decades, he believed it was the man eventually killed by Jack Ruby. According to an old Dallas Police report, the cops noticed a pickup truck with the engine running waiting near the back of the Texas Theater at about the time Oswald was arrested. Although the vehicle was apparently searched for weapons, no note was made about the driver or the owner or even the license plate. What could cause police to so quickly abandon interest in a potential getaway vehicle? One possibility is that they might quickly lose interest in the truck if it was being driven by a Dallas cop. John and I have searched without success, but does anyone know what kind of vehicle Reserve Officer Kenneth Croy drove that day?

No worries, Gene. Let's just try to ignore it and go on.

Sounds like a good idea, Mark. I'd like to get back to discussing something about the Tippit murder in this thread, but there is a distracting glitch that I assume others see on this page as well: a LONG, NARROW column of type starting in Gene's post above and running far down the page. Do others see the same thing? Can this be fixed?

Yes, apparently no one has found any primary source doc backing up Hunt’s claim that he himself was temporary MC station chief in Sept. ‘63, or at least when the “Oswald” nonsense was unfolding. But Bill Simpich’s revelation that Hunt, as [Walter] Twicker, was listed as “Chief of Station, Mexico City” in an Aug. 31 1960 CIA dispatch from “Chief of Station, Habana” suggests it is not impossible to believe he (Hunt) may have assumed the position temporarily in Sept. 63, though it is clear that Scott was the longtime head of MC station both before and after that time.

Thank you for all the detailed background info and source material on Hunt’s claim that he was acting station chief in Mexico City in Sept. 1963. And thank you for pointing out that “Twicker” was a Hunt pseudonym, which I didn’t know and is obviously crucial in understanding the significance of some of these documents. The consensus here seems to be that Hunt’s claim is, at best, highly suspect. But just to play devil’s advocate for a moment.... The 8/31/60 dispatch references both “Chief of Base, JMASH” and “Chief of Station, Mexico City (TWICKER)”, suggesting that Hunt was operating as the full MC station chief at least on that date. Was this written in error, confusing JMASH with the full MC station? It seems unlikely since both are named. Also seemingly unusual is spelling out “TWICKER” as the station chief, since it was surely obvious to all that Win Scott was the long-time boss there. If the reference was NOT written in error, the dispatch seems to show that Hunt, just a few years before 1963, had spent at least a day acting as station chief for Mexico City. Which makes it seem more plausible that he *might* have had an encore performance in August of 1963, though it hardly indicates that he did. Having followed every link in Mr. Simpich’s post above, I see nothing that directly supports Hunt’s claim; and nothing that directly refutes it. Have I missed something?

Hunt’s claim is hard for me to believe as well, but just as Phillips was clearly involved in anti-Cuban operations at the Mexico City station, he was surely working with Morales and others at JM Wave in Miami as well, and possibly elsewhere; I’m not aware of any clear evidence that he was at the Mexico City station at the time Hunt claimed he (Hunt) was temporarily in charge there, though he may well have been. I've been wondering about this for years. Saint John Hunt, if memory serves, named both Morales and Sturgis, among a few others, as JFK assassination organizers listed by his father. And golly, what a great witness Hunt must have been, eh?

Mark, Thank you for that clear and concise review of Our Man in Mexico. I certainly share your opinion about the Agency brass in Mexico City and certain other locales during the era, and Tom Neal’s remarks above on E. Howard Hunt remind me of the following question…. In December 2000, in a strange magazine called Cigar Aficionado, E. Howard Hunt claimed that he was temporary station chief at Mexico City during “Oswald’s” alleged visit there in September ‘63. My source for this claim (Harvey and Lee, p. 668), doesn’t indicate if Win Scott was absent for some reason to give at least some credence to the possibility that Hunt’s tale is true, and I’ve always wondered about it. Does Mr. Morley have anything to say about that claim?

Thanks, Mark, In On the Trail... Jim Garrison wrote that he suspected Kerry Thornley was the Oswald impersonator referenced in his Playboy interview above. As always with Mr. Garrison, it was a well-informed guess. Thornley had known one of the Oswalds all the way back in the Marines; Thornley moved to New Orleans, if memory serves, toward the end of August 1963, barely in time to be involved in the final sheep-dipping of HARVEY Oswald. Under close examination, however, Thornley presents all sorts of problems. You could write a major chapter about him, but I think, for once, Jim Garrison was incorrect. There are several clues to this in the New Orleans DA’s own documents (which aren’t so easy to find online, and so I’m including one below from the online Armstrong Collection at Baylor University). Look near the bottom of the page. This is contemporaneous material.

A guy from Iowa sent me that picture, with the same labels. I’ve also seen a short video/film that this still was taken from, which, to me at least, doesn’t help much in the IDs. The picture DOES seem reminiscent of the Florida crew Marita Lorenz said Jesuit/CIA adventurer Alexander Rorke photographed while Harvey Oswald was in the Soviet Union. I’ll be that IS Lorenz toward the center. And the guy next to her in the white shirt does look like Florer. I don’t think anyone else is clear enough to even hazard a guess just from the photo, though knowing a bit of the background of Lorenz and photographer Rorke, it does seem at least possible that Sturgis/Fiorini is labeled correctly, and it COULD be LEE Oswald behind him. Even in the video this was taken from, you can see more of the Oswald candidate behind Sturgis, but I still couldn’t say with any confidence that it was LEE, though Lorenz swore under oath he was with the group, which certainly adds to the possibility. As for loose ends, John believes, for example, that LEE couldn’t be killed because he had too many American relatives that might react to his death in unpredictable ways. Would they dare kill Robert, John, Marguerite, the Murrets as well? If I was in charge of the damnable conspiracy to frame LHO, I’d want as few participants as possible, regardless of how many hit men I had at my command. For sharing Google Drive docs, you’ve got to watch the permissions. You could try this: On the Drive site, right click on document or image, select share→advanced→”public on the web” and then capture the link. But I’m not sure this lets you display the linked object on a place like this forum, or just gives you a text link that requires an extra step. Sorry.

Ah, but as Monty Python almost said, Nobody expects the Hispanic Inquisition! On all those Oswald lookalikes you offer, let’s think about this for a moment. If you were dastardly enough to frame a patsy-to-be for the assassination of a city cop and a sitting U.S. president, how many framers would you want running around the city? Each and every one of them would be a potential loose end who could get you caught and and get you burned. Personally, I’d chose just one I thought I could trust to do all the dirty deeds, and preferably one I’d worked with for a long time and knew well.

Which of those people above do you think appeared all those times at the Sports Drome rifle range, or at the Statler-Hilton, or Morgan’s gun shop, or the Irving Furniture Mart, or Redbird Airport, or hitched a ride with Ralph Leon Yates, always more or less pretending to be or mimic “Lee Harvey Oswald”?

From his interview with HSCA's Moriarty, it appears that Jack Tatum thought Tippit's killer looked like Lee Harvey Oswald. If this is true (we are dealing with the HSCA after all), and whatever we may think of Tatum's belated observations, then clearly the two closest witnesses (Benavides and Tatum) to the murder of J.D. Tippit both thought the killer looked like Oswald, even though the brown-shirted Oswald we all think we know was almost certainly in the Texas Theatre at the time. And, of course, there are all those police radio transmissions, for example: 1:24 --Wanted for investigation for assault to murder on a police officer: A white male; approximately thirty; about five foot eight; slender build; has black hair; a white jacket; a white shirt and dark trousers. The suspect last seen running west on Jefferson from 400 East Jefferson.  It strikes me as quite a coincidence that Tippit's killer apparently looked like Oswald, although he really couldn't have been the fellow already in the Texas Theatre. What luck, eh?

Although he said his “hairline sort of went square instead of tapered off,” as Classic Oswald’s did, Benavides clearly thought Tippit’s killer looked like Oswald: Mr. BELIN - You used the name Oswald. How did you know this man was Oswald? Mr. BENAVIDES - From the pictures I had seen. It looked like a guy, resembled the guy. That was the reason I figured it was Oswald. So did Jack Tatum, the other witness closest to the Tippit slaying, who said much the same thing. Benavides also seemed unsure of the shirt color. Mr. BENAVIDES - I think the shirt looked darker than that. Mr. BELIN - The shirt was darker? Mr. BENAVIDES - I couldn't tell at the time because he had the Jacket on there. That was a waist-type jacket, wasn't it? And there were numerous police communications indicating the Tippit suspect had a light jacket and white shirt (or t-shirt). For example, from the dispatcher (emphasis added): 1:24 --Wanted for investigation for assault to murder on a police officer: A white male; approximately thirty; about five foot eight; slender build; has black hair; a white jacket; a white shirt and dark trousers. The suspect last seen running west on Jefferson from 400 East Jefferson. Oswald in a brown shirt was in the Texas Theatre at or about the time Tippit was shot. Tippit’s killer, according to DPD radio statements, was in a white shirt and jacket and, according to the closest eyewitnesses, looked like Classic Oswald. Is that a coincidence?

No one seems able to explain why the two witnesses closest to the Tippit shooting (Tatum and Benevides) thought the killer, wearing a light jacket over a white t-shirt, looked like the Oswald in the Texas Theatre, who was wearing a brown shirt. If we don’t believe the brown-shirted Oswald killed Tippit, is it just an amazing coincidence that Tippit’s killer bore a striking resemblance to “LHO?” Why would anyone assassinate a cop in broad daylight in front of numerous witnesses for no apparent reason whatsoever?

Mr. Carter.... The local television Texas Theatre arrest recreation on 11/23/63 is news to me. As Tom Neal said, any additional info would be gratefully appreciated!!!

Dropped the ball???? Is that what you call this? The FBI took Oswald off the watch list, managed by its “WANTED NOTICE” cards, at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, just a couple of months after his New Orleans arrest for alleged violence in support of Communist Cuba and less than two months before the assassination. These two actions effectively took the federal spotlight off “Lee Harvey Oswald.” The WC didn’t even bother to depose the Division 5 guy (Gheesling) who ordered the FBI's flash cancellation. “Lee Harvey Oswald” had been on that list for nearly four years, since the “defection.” Now that he was taken off it, he’d no longer be under FBI and SS surveillance on 11/22. At the very same time the FBI was taking “Lee Harvey Oswald” off the watch list, the CIA was publishing several confusing things about him. Responding to a query from the Mexico City station, four CIA officers signed a cable giving lots of accurate biographical data on our boy but calling him “Lee Henry Oswald.” The three page cable expressed no security concerns whatsoever about Oswald and, in fact, indicated the Moscow embassy felt “life in the Soviet Union had clearly had maturing effect on Oswald.” Nothing to worry about here! This cable was signed by Jane Roman (Angleton’s assistant), William Hood (also close to Angleton), Thomas Karamessines (assistant to Helms) and John Whitten who, according to Jefferson Morley, was the only CIA officer of the four signers who suffered any adverse consequences for this troubling cable. John Armstrong believes that Angleton ran the Oswald Project. At the same time the FBI was taking “Lee Harvey Oswald” off the watch list, the CIA was giving “Lee Henry Oswald” (biographical data mostly matching LHO’s official biography) a clean bill of political health in the infamous cable of 10/10/63 (see above). It was now no longer officially necessary for the FBI to monitor “Oswald’s” activities in Dallas. And the Secret Service would no longer be expected to investigate him prior to a presidential visit to Dallas. Although “Lee Harvey Oswald” had been arrested for a supposedly violent confrontation in support of Fidel Castro in New Orleans just two months earlier, the entire National Security apparatus of our Federal government now seemed to just stop worrying about him. What happened next, of course, has been documented by scores of writers and filmmakers for more than half a century. “Lee Harvey Oswald,” or more likely someone who looked like him, began making all kinds of appearances in and around Dallas. These appearances were clearly designed to attract attention. Here are just some: “Oswald” visits the Sports Drome Rifle Range on Oct. 26, Nov. 9, Nov. 10, and again on Nov. 17, several times creating a scene and once shooting at another guy's target; On Nov. 2 “Oswald” visits Morgan's Gun Shop in Fort Worth. Also on Nov. 2 “Oswald” visits the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership where he test drives a car at wrecklessly high speeds saying he would soon come into enough money to buy a new car. On Nov. 6 or 7 “Oswald” visits the Irving Furniture Mart for a gun part and is referred to the shop where Dial Ryder works. On Nov. 15, “Oswald” goes to the Southland Hotel parking garage (Allright Parking Systems) and applies for a job and asks how high the Southland Building is and if it had a good view of downtown Dallas. On Nov. 20 “Oswald” hitch-hikes on the R.L. Thornton Expressway while carrying a 4 foot long package wrapped in brown paper and introduces himself to Ralph Yates as “Lee Harvey Oswald,” discusses the President's visit, and asks to be dropped across the street from the Texas School Book Depository (where Russian-speaking “Lee Harvey Oswald” is already working). - - - - - - - The set-up of “Lee Harvey Oswald” was almost complete. Could this have been accomplished if the FBI and the Secret Service hadn’t been put to sleep just a few weeks earlier?

One of the main points of John A’s article on Tippit’s murder (see link below) is that most of the principals involved appeared to be following orders. Consider some of the other unusual actions of the Oswald eventually killed by Jack Ruby: He goes to Ruth Paine’s Thursday night (Nov. 21) instead of Friday, his usual procedure. (Why? Probably to put his fingerprints on a brown sack that was supposed to be delivered to the house but wasn’t due to insufficient postage.) He would be in the lunch room during or immediately after the president passed by? Does that sound like him? He boards the Marsalis St. bus (instead of the Beckley St. bus). For what reason? (At almost the same time, the “Oswald” who shot Tippit got into a Nash Rambler.) The real timings indicate that someone drove him to the Texas Theatre from the area of the Beckley St. rooming house. In the theater, he moves from patron to patron, apparently looking for a contact. Having two torn in half dollar bills suggests who was told a contact would also have one or two in the theater. ... and more. Since the “Oswald” eventually killed by Ruby was at the Theater when Tippit was killed, how do we explain that the two witnesses closest to the Tippit murder both thought the killer looked like “Oswald.” Was that a coincidence? THE MURDER OF J.D. TIPPIT

Roy, In her lengthy essay about her experience, Laura Kittrell herself speculated that the phony Oswald might be Larry Crafard. John Armstrong considered this possibility as well, and he and I discussed it quite few years ago. He also discusses the possibility in Harvey and Lee. One of the reasons he gave for discounting Crafard was that, though you don’t see it in photographs published by the WC, he had extremely bad teeth, including missing front teeth. Both of his arms were also covered in tattoos. John felt this would be particularly obvious in person. Finally, Ruby met Crafard when Crafard was working at the Texas State Fair, which was held October 5-20th of that year. John concludes: "Crafard did not begin working for Ruby and living at the Carousel club until November 1, two weeks after Laura Kittrell interviewed the "Teamster."

Thank you for the kind words, Mark. Your skepticism that two unrelated youths, selected as fairly young children, would grow up to become twins, or near twins, is well founded. That seems unlikely to me as well. More believable, though, is the possibility that two unrelated children could be selected who would grow up to have similar, if hardly identical, features. In a way, we don’t have to speculate about this. Laura Kittrell, in 1963 an employee of the Texas Employment Commission, apparently spent time with both Oswalds in the fall of that year. Although the two young men who appeared before her both claimed to be “Lee Harvey Oswald,” Ms. Kittrell recognized differences between the two and, immediately after the assassination, she was clearly alarmed. She gave a thirty-page statement to the U.S. Attorney in Dallas. Her statement was hand carried to the Warren Commission by the Secret Service. But her 30-page statement and subsequent 90-page manuscript in which she discusses her interviews of the two Oswalds were ultimately ignored and suppressed. A decade and a half later, Gaeton Fonzi of the HSCA interviewed her. Mr. Fonzi’s notes indicate that that Ms. Kittrell said that the second Oswald “looked the same… the same general outline and coloring and build, but there was something so different in his bearing.” I can easily imagine eyewitnesses being confused by an impostor who had “the same general outline and coloring and build” as the poor patsy schmuck killed by Jack Ruby.

Mark, Sounds reasonable to me. I'm told (but haven't seen his remarks) that Bill Simpich said somewhere that the most important issue today for JFK researchers is to identify the other Oswald (call him an impostor, or LEE, or a second LHO) who set up the Oswald killed by Jack Ruby.

Sheesh! We've talked about this before. At a March 3, 2018 meeting in San Francisco called “Spy Wars,” Peter Dale Scott asked John Newman the following: Mr. Scott: Are you absolutely convinced that the man who was “Lee Harvey Oswald” in Russia was, in fact, the man picked up in Dallas in ‘63? Mr. Newman: Not at all… (goes on to talk about Mexico City). The remarks above come at approximately the 37:30 mark in the video below, which is courtesy of Dr. Gary Aguilar.

Are you unaware of even the basics of this case? At a recent meeting shown on YouTube, both Peter Dale Scott and John Newman showed real openness to the concept of two Oswalds. In his highly regarded 2008 book JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass goes on for pages and pages about two Oswalds, giving at least a dozen and probably more examples, including statements such as, “The Warren Report sought an escape route from it’s double-Oswald corner.” [p.226] Douglass footnotes Armstrong a number of times. Robert Groden’s The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald has a whole section entitled “Too Many Oswalds.” The observations about two Oswalds go back to the very earliest Warren Commission critics. In 1967 Sylvia Meagher wrote the highly respected Accessories After the Fact and had a lengthy session entitled “Two Oswalds.” Do you SERIOUSLY THINK there’s nothing wrong with the Warren Commission biography of “LEE HARVEY OSWALD”? Visit HarveyandLee.net to see what several people here are trying to dismiss. Don't let others tell you what it says. Decide for yourself.

John A. and I just now expanded the James Wilcott page on HarveyandLee.net. Mr. Wilcott, a long-time CIA accountant stationed in Japan, testified to the HSCA that money he personally disbursed from CIA funds went to "Oswald or the Oswald Project." According to HSCA staff notes, Mr. Wilcott said, but wasn't even allowed to say during an Executive Session (a secret hearing) , that the CIA cryptonym for the Oswald Project was RX-ZIM. According to the HSCA notes, Mr. Wilcott also asked to be given a lie detector test. See everything that's new, including HSCA staff notes, at the following link: James Wilcott Testimony and Notes

This is getting easier by the day. Thanks, Sandy!!