Jim Hargrove

Ron, See http://jfklancer.com/Page1.html

Indeed! After thinking about it for 20 years, I think that's what Alice, Texas was all about. I've wondered endlessly also why both Oswalds would show up at the TEC, potentially exposing the whole op. For a long time, I thought it was to clear up a couple of things in Harvey's paperwork, but the more I think about it, it may have been a test to see if the two could pass for each other. After all, this was just about the time the other Oswald started showing up all over the Dallas area doing incriminating things.

Steve, From H&L, pp. 780-781: On November 20 Harvey Oswald left his rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley, boarded a city bus, and shortly thereafter arrived for work at the TSBD. While Harvey was working at the TSBD a car with three passengers arrived at Redbird Airport, five miles south of downtown Dallas on the west side of Highway 67. The car stopped at American Aviation and a heavy-set young man and woman got out of the car and approached the owner, Wayne January. They wanted to rent a Cessna 310, asked how fast the plane could fly, how far it could travel without refueling, and they wanted to fly to the Yucatan Peninsula on the afternoon of November 22. [Nov,63-19] While the man and woman were asking questions about the plane, January noticed a third man sitting in the car. After the assassination January saw Lee Harvey Oswald's photograph on TV and was certain that he was the man who sat in the car. But January, like so many other people, mistook the man in the car (Lee Oswald) for Harvey Oswald, who was busy filling orders at the TSBD.[168] Another indication that someone was impersonating Oswald and making plans to escape after assassinating the President. NOTE: Wayne January told the FBI on November 27, 1963 that the incident occurred on November 20, only 7-days earlier. The FBI, however, ignored Mr. January and reported that the incident occurred in JULY 1963, in an obvious attempt to lessen the significance of his statement. The Bureau apparently forgot that in July 1963 Oswald was not living in Dallas--he was living in New Orleans.

That's very interesting, Michael. Dr. Newman and Peter Dale Scott seem to take the two Oswald business seriously, though I don't think they have the particulars quite right. Thank you for posting this.

Years ago, I decided that Donald O. Norton was NOT the person born as “Lee Harvey Oswald.” I brought him up only because some people wondered if researchers gave any thought as to what happened to the birth Oswald. In fact, John Armstrong spent considerable time and money traveling to Jupiter, Florida and other places to examine this very question and he ultimately decided not to even mention it in his thousand page book. Real evidence just isn’t there. John also got a picture of Norton, and it doesn’t look much like the Russian-speaking Oswald. Anyone interested can probably just search for Norton at Baylor's John Armstrong Collection and find the photo. Bear in mind, though, that there are two Donald Nortons who come up in this case, Donald O. and Donald P. Donald P. was with the CIA. My personal opinion is that the man born as “Lee Harvey Oswald” probably didn’t live long after the assassination of JFK, probably not much longer than the Russian-speaking Oswald, but that is just a guess.

HarveyandLee.net

Mark, I think the birth LHO probably died soon after the assassination of JFK, but John may disagree. To just begin looking at the possible answers to your question, Google this: donald o norton and john armstrong

Gene, This confused me too for several years, because it seems impossible that the WC would have totally ignored Kittrell’s first-hand description of the two Oswalds, especially considering the attention it got from the Feds in 1963/1964. But the WC ignored her. Her name doesn’t appear once in the WC Report. Many of the documents we have on Kittrell were formally put into the National Archives by staff members of the HSCA. For example, the excerpts of two pages below, describing the differences Kittrell observed in the two Oswalds, was from a written report by the HSCA’s Gaeton Fonzi. He did an extensive interview with her while employed by the Select Committee on Assassinations.

Thanks, John. I think you're absolutely correct about the fraudulent photos. As I always say, I'm not very good with faces, but I do believe that Sandy Larsen and others before him have demonstrated that some of the photos were actually composite images of two different people.

Lance, When "Lee Harvey Oswald" took his U.S. Army Russian language affinity test, before he ever traveled to the USSR, he got two more answers right than wrong, which was graded "Poor." However, as Lt. Col. Alison Folsom pointed out to the Warren Commission, Oswald was also given a number of tests in English, and was also graded "Poor." Why did this high school dropout do as well in Russian as in English before he even traveled to the USSR? From Dr. James Norwood's Ed Forum post of 9/19/2017: Regarding Oswald's exam score on the Department of Army's Russian language proficiency test, Lt. Col. Alison Folsom provided a breakdown of the results for the Warren Commission. There were three components to the exam, suggesting that this was a comprehensive test. Oswald's scores were as follows: understanding (-5), reading (+4), writing (+3), with the composite +2 indicating that Oswald answered two more questions correctly than those that he missed on the exam. So, the young man scored better than 50% on this challenging exam. Another factor needs to be considered, based on Col. Folsom's testimony: Oswald was also administered tests in cognitive abilities in English, including reading and vocabulary; arithmetical computation; and pattern analysis. His scores on these tests were all rated as “poor.” Oswald was even administered a “radio code test,” in which Lt. Colonel Folsom indicated that Oswald’s score was in the bottom, or the “lowest” in results. For those who claim that Oswald had an innate intelligence that permitted him to learn Russian by self-study and "immersion," how can one explain the all-around negative scores he received on basic cognitive abilities? The Warren Commission interview with Lt. Colonel Allison Folsom may be read at the following site: http://www.whokilledjfk.net/oswsald_learning_russian.htm

Lance, If you'd like to give the name calling a break and do some actual online research, try Googling this: lee harvey oswald and donald o norton You will learn that John did a vast amount of research into the subject of what may have happened to LEE Harvey Oswald, but in the end decided the results were not worth including even in a book in excess of a thousand pages. My personal feelings are that the man born as LEE Harvey Oswald didn't survive long after the assassination of JFK.

Absolutely, Mr. Copeland! "Lee Harvey Oswald's" feigned ignorance of the Russian language while he was in the USSR, versus his sheer mastery of it when he came back to America, is just stunning. He quite clearly had some considerable Russian language abilities while still in the Marines, but his fluency in that difficult language after just two and a half years in Moscow and Minsk amazed the White Russians in Dallas who met him in 1962 and 1963. George DeMohrenschildt may have said it best in his unpublished manuscript:

Two pages from Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery by Norman Mailer, Random House, 1995.

That's right, the man who had a two hour conversation in Russian with Rosaleen Quinn before ever traveling to the Soviet Union, now needed an English-speaking Russian translator to say the most simple things in Russian. Thank you, Tracy, for making our point for us! Oswald’s Proficiency in the Russian Language.

Gene's statement doesn't sound biased to me. Mr. Kamp apparently takes the side of a Russian who appears in the U.S. fifty years after the assassination to tell us that Oswald's connection to U.S. or Russian Intel was the “wildest speculation.... A James Bond fantasy.”

Virtually everything in Mr. Parnell's blog article relating to Oswald's use of language in the USSR is ultimately attributable to Titovets, a man with a clear agenda to deny Oswald's connections to U.S. Intel.

Mervyn, But what, specifically, do you want to show from the article, and what does it have to do with the Kennedy assassination?

From Harvey and Lee.... Harvey Oswald spoke only English while in Russia To learn whether or not Oswald spoke Russian while in the Soviet Union we need only look at the statements and memories of people who knew him in Russia: October 1959-Oswald pretended not to speak Russian while at Botkinskaya Hospital in Moscow. One of the doctors who attended him wrote, "The pa­- tient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian. Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what he was asked."83 This clever doctor spotted, and recorded, Oswald's ability to understand the Russian language. January 1960--Oswald spoke no Russian when accompanied by an interpreter to the Red Cross offices in Moscow. 1960--Oswald sought out and dated only English-speaking Russian girls and befriended young English-speaking Russian men such as Erich Titovets, Yuri Merezhinsky, and Pavel Golovachev. Their conversations were entirely in English. January 1960 thru May 1962--the entire period during which Oswald lived in Minsk. Alejandro Ziger worked with Oswald on a daily basis at the factory. Ana and Elenora Ziger saw Oswald "3 or 4 times a week" at their apartment. None of the Zigers ever heard Oswald speak Russian. 1961--Only one tape recording of Lee Harvey Oswald's voice is known to ex­- ist during the time he lived in the Soviet Union. Oswald was recorded speak­ ing English by his Russian friend, Erich Titovets, in Minsk. Titovets said that he made the recording so that he could study Oswald's Southern accent, in English.84 May 1961--When Stellina Ivanova learned of Oswald's marriage she said, "How can that be? You don't know Russian well enough. How can you communicate to this person? Does she know English?" Oswald told Stellina that Marina knew two phrases "Switch off the light" and "kiss me, please," in English.85 It seems obvious, from her conversations with Robert Webster in 1959 and 1960, that Marina spoke English quite well. Mid-1961 thru Dec 1961--Numerous letters written in Russian, allegedly by Oswald to Marina, were signed by him ("Alik") but the Russian handwriting does not appear to be Oswald's. October 22, 1961--Oswald wrote a letter from Minsk to Marina in Kharkov. The letter is in English while the envelope, which was addressed to Marina in Russian script, was written by someone else. After Oswald returned to the US his friend, Pavel Golovachev, wrote several letters to Oswald, always in English. Marina's Russian friends wrote to her in Russian. Oswald's circle of friends was small and limited to English-speaking Russian Nationals, none of whom said Oswald spoke Russian. The KGB recorded numerous conversations within Oswald's apartment from 1960 thru 1962. If any of the conversations had been in Russian the KGB would have noted the extent of his language ability in their reports and im­- mediately suspected him of being a spy. But neither KGB reports nor interviews with former KGB agents reveal that Oswald spoke Russian. In 1995 Norman Mailer sought out and questioned people who knew Oswald in Minsk, and with the publication of his book it finally became widely known that Harvey Oswald spoke little or no Russian during the time he lived in Minsk. Mailer also published transcripts of Oswald and Marina's conversa­- tions, allegedly recorded in Oswald's apartment and transcribed by the KGB. Unfortunately, no one outside of the Soviet Union has listened to the tapes and the authenticity of the transcripts is unknown. Ana Ziger told the author in 1998 that she never heard Oswald speak Russian during the time she knew him in Minsk. --from Harvey and Lee, pp. 339-340, Copyright © 2003 by John Armstrong. All rights reserved.

Everything you cite is according to Titovets, who goes to great lengths to tell us Oswald had nothing to do with American Intel. Why will he not release recordings of Oswald speaking Russian? Why does Oswald speak only English in all the recordings Titovets supplied? Why did a Russian doctor at Botkinskaya Hospital in Moscow say this of Oswald after his fake suicide attempt? "The patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian. Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what he was asked."

Mervyn, I'd be happy to try to provide any excerpt from the article you wish others to see. Which part do you find more interesting?

Ernst Titovets has plenty of criticism of Harvey and Lee, but he also has gone to great lengths to deny Oswald’s obvious connections to American Intel. According to JFK researcher Millicent Cranor: Titovets considers the idea that Oswald was connected to either American or Russian intelligence the “wildest speculation.” “A James Bond fantasy.” He ignores the evidence of Oswald’s connections to American intelligence as revealed in many books, and seems to hope his readers will ignore it as well, thereby effectively cutting the marionette’s wires. So what are the facts about Oswald's Russian speaking abilities and how he used them? “Lee Harvey Oswald” was clearly able to speak, read, and write Russian before he set foot in the Soviet Union. How did he learn Russian? But did Oswald hide his Russian fluency while in the Soviet Union, in direct contradiction with the claims of Titovets? One person who has studied Oswald’s knowledge of Russian, and how he hid it in the Soviet Union, is Dr. James Norwood, who has an excellent article on the Harvey and Lee website called Oswald’s Proficiency in the Russian Language. Among the information Dr. Norwood provides: Norman Mailer’s 1994 Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery was able to make use of Soviet documents first made available after the end of the Cold War. Dr. Norwood writes, “When Oswald first arrived in Moscow, his Intourist guide, Rimma Shirakova, was puzzled by the strange behavior of the defector. As recounted in Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale—An American Mystery, ‘He [Oswald] spoke quietly, but at first it could have been a closed door between them. He didn't seem to know a single word in Russian, so Rimma spoke to him in English.’" Mailer also wrote about Oswald’s Russian, “People laughed at him when he talked. His Russian was so bad people laughed, not mocking, but friendly. He would try to pronounce words, get them wrong. They would laugh....He couldn't understand their words, so they showed him with sign language, made animal sounds, and he laughed.” Dr. Norwood discusses Ernst Titovets as follows (emphasis added): One of Oswald’s friends in Minsk was a medical student named Ernst Titovets, who acknowledged in his 2013 book Oswald: Russian Episode that Oswald spoke in a “faltering Russian.” [33] In JFK studies, Titovets was a johnny-come-lately, waiting until the approach of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination to bring out his memoir. After his book publication, Titovets has attempted to discredit John Armstrong’s research into the period in which Oswald was in residence in Minsk. Using sleight-of-hand, specious arguments, and hearsay testimony, Titovets attempts to name individuals who heard Oswald speaking competent Russian during his stay in Minsk. Undoubtedly, Oswald gave the appearance of attempting to learn the native language over the course of his two-and-a-half years in the Soviet Union. But nowhere does Titovets provide an example of Oswald’s unsurpassed command of the Russian language, as attested by those in America who appeared before the Warren Commission. About the best testimonial to Oswald’s language competency while in the Soviet Union was given by Belarusian President Shuskevich, Oswald’s former tutor in Minsk, who described Oswald’s spoken Russian as “passable.” [34] Along with his book, Titovets released a set of tape recordings in which he is in conversation with Oswald. Those tapes offer examples of Titovets and Oswald speaking only in English. But according to Norman Mailer, who was granted access to the KGB files, Titovets also recorded conversations in which Oswald was attempting to speak in Russian: “His [Titovets’] Russian-speaking tapes were also studied [by the KGB] to explore any possibility that he [Oswald] was concealing a better knowledge of their language than he pretended to have.” [35] In other words, the KGB was concerned about the main point raised in this essay, namely, Oswald’s intention of “concealing” to his hosts his fluency in Russian. If Titovets genuinely wishes to do a service in the interest of the historical record, he would release the tapes in which he was conversing with Oswald in Russian to offer the public first-hand evidence into Oswald’s Russian language skills while living in the Soviet Union. Until that happens, Titovets is offering only second-hand evidence with a personal agenda. At present, there is nowhere in Titovets’ writings an instance of a laudatory comment about Oswald’s fluency in Russian to compare with the superlative tributes given by Oswald’s acquaintances in the United States. The question is: Why? Researcher Millicent Cranor has raised the most pertinent question about Ernst Titovets: “In his book, Titovets appears to be defending Oswald—but is he really defending the C.I.A.?” To read the article by Millicent Cranor discussing Titovets, CLICK HERE. If we are to believe his claims, Ernst Titovets should release recordings of Oswald speaking Russian in the Soviet Union. Why had he not done so?

I have read Edwin Walker’s entire Dallas speech as it was presented in the Dec. 17, 1961 edition of the Phoenix Arizona Republic newspaper. It is not a terribly interesting article, but it is very much in the zeitgeist of the Cold War era. If I can briefly summarize it, Maj. Gen. Walker seemed to feel that the Commies were out to get us and that, although God was on our side, U.S. leaders, including Truman and Eisenhower and surely Kennedy, were too soft on the Communist Menace. For example, Walker thought that the 1948 Berlin Airlift was a political defeat for us, and he was apparently still angry about the recall of Douglas MacArthur by Truman. Here is an excerpt from the first full page of the article (I couldn’t possibly reproduce the whole thing here.) If there was much in this article that should be of interest to Kennedy assassination researchers, I must have missed it. Again, although Newspapers.com requires a paid subscription to see the page, I easily found it without charge through the "online databases" section of my local public library’s website.

John, There are always going to be minor differences in eyewitness observations. Rather than looking for the magic words "short sleeve shirt," let's look at this more realistically. Follow the descriptions of an Oswald in a dark shirt vs. an Oswald in a white or light shirt. Since Mrs. Reid's "white T-shirt" and Roger Craig's "light tan shirt" apparently strike you as fair descriptions of the dark brown shirt "Lee Harvey Oswald" wore on the bus and taxi ride, there doesn't seem much point in me spending the time to track down other references to the white or light colored shirt worn by the Nash Rambler Oswald. Perhaps you would explain why Dallas police radio broadcast again and again that the suspect in the Tippit shooting was wearing not a brown shirt, but a white shirt.

Thanks for this, Gene. Laura Kittrell's observations are some of the most important in the entire literature of the Kennedy assassination. John compiled nearly 200 pages of material by and about her, all of which is available without cost at Baylor University's John Armstrong Collection. To go directly to the Kittrell file, just follow the link below. When you get there, I'd suggest you click the "Download" button and save the file to your local machine to make viewing easier. Laura Kittrell

To John Butler.... There were only two Oswalds at the TSBD, regardless of all the fuzzy images you wish to conjure (which, for all I know, may show both of them or neither of them). One Oswald wore a white shirt and got into the Nash Rambler; the other wore a dark brown shirt and boarded the bus and then the taxi. Mrs. Reid and Roger Craig, among others, saw the white-shirted Oswald who got into the Nash Rambler. from the testimony of Mrs. Robert A. Reid (emphasis added): Mr. BELIN. Do you remember what clothes he had on when you saw him? Mrs. REID. What he was wearing, he had on a white T-shirt and some kind of wash trousers. What color I couldn't tell you. Mr. BELIN. I am going to hand you what has been marked Commission Exhibit, first 157 and then 158, and I will ask you if either or both look like they might have been the trousers that you saw him wear or can you tell? Mrs. REID. I just couldn't be positive about that. I would rather not say, because I just cannot. Mr. BELIN. Do you remember whether he had any shirt or jacket on over his T-shirt? Mrs. REID. He did not. He did not have any jacket on. Roger Craig described the Oswald who got into the Nash Rambler as wearing a "light tan shirt," which is a lot closer to white than the dark brown shirt worn by the other Oswald. from Craig's testimony.... Mr. CRAIG - Oh, he was a white male in his twenties, five nine, five eight, something like that; about 140 to 150; had kind of medium brown sandy hair--you know, it was like it'd been blown--you know, he'd been in the wind or something--it was all wild-looking; had on--uh--blue trousers-- Mr. BELIN - What shade of blue? Dark blue, medium or light? Mr. CRAIG - No; medium, probably; I'd say medium. And, a--uh--light tan shirt, as I remember it. Mr. BELIN - Anything else about him? Mr. CRAIG - No; nothing except that he looked like he was in an awful hurry. Mr. BELIN - What about the man who was driving the car? As to how much alike the two Oswalds appeared, it's all in the eyes of the beholder. Our own Tracy Parnell insists that the 77 mug shots on Jack White's "Evolution of Lee Harvey Oswald" poster (see my post above) are all "obviously" the same person, even though that poster includes images of both Oswalds that you don't think look alike. Laura Kittrell of the Texas Employment Commission interviewed both Oswalds just weeks before the assassination. She was able to tell them apart, but she observed that they had "the same general outline and coloring and build" but behaved differently. From the HSCA's Gaeton Fonzi's report on his interview with Kittrell: