Jeremy Bojczuk
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Posts posted by Jeremy Bojczuk
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteTotal deniability via the existence of a continuous and automatic alibi is only POSSIBLE via the use of an impostor.
Deniability of what? The actions of two people who use the same name. But if your goal is to produce a lone defector to the Soviet Union, you don't require two people to use the same name. You only require one person. The problem of having to create deniability doesn't arise, because there's nothing that needs denying.
There was no need for any plausible deniability in the Oswald case. None of the imaginary activities of the imaginary non-defecting doppelganger need to be explained as the plausibly deniable actions of a doppelganger. Likewise, the defection of the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald does not need to be explained by inventing any doppelgangers.
I take it that Jim finally accepts that there was no need for anyone to set up a long-term project involving doppelgangers in order to obtain a false defector who could understand what would be said around him. Jim must accept by now that you don't need to invent doppelgangers in order to explain Oswald's knowledge of Russian, because that knowledge was exactly what we should expect of an American who had begun learning Russian in his late teens. Oswald was neither a native speaker of Russian nor a pair of doppelgangers.
It would be nice if Jim would acknowledge this fact. Repeat after me: You don't need doppelgangers; all you need is one American with a knowledge of Russian. There! That feels better, doesn't it?
Can we assume that Jim also accepts the existence of plausible non-doppelganger explanations for most or all of his 'Harvey and Lee' talking points? If he does, why does he not accept them? Pretty much any explanation that doesn't require doppelgangers is going to be more believable than one that does require doppelgangers.
Since alternative explanations exist that are more plausible than Jim's doppelganger explanations, there's no good reason for him to behave like a closed-minded propagandist, repeating the same old talking points over and over again, is there?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
Quoteacts as if they haven’t been answered already numerous times. For example, I have answered the question above HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE, among other places.
Jim has replied to my question several times, but he hasn't answered it.
Let's look at Jim's replies and see if he really has provided credible, honest answers to the question I asked. Here's each reply in turn:
1 - https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27729-which-came-first-the-bus-or-the-rambler/?do=findComment&comment=461957 on page 20:
QuoteThe purpose of the Oswald project was to give a Russian-speaking youth an American identity so he could eventually travel to Russia and secretly understand more of what was being said in Russian by people around him. As almost everyone except Jeremy understands, starting with a youth who already understood the Russian language had a huge advantage over anyone who might begin taking instructions as an adult or near adult.
2 - https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27729-which-came-first-the-bus-or-the-rambler/?do=findComment&comment=461817 on page 19 is an exact copy of the previous non-answer:
QuoteThe purpose of the Oswald project was to give a Russian-speaking youth an American identity so he could eventually travel to Russia and secretly understand more of what was being said in Russian by people around him. As almost everyone except Jeremy understands, starting with a youth who already understood the Russian language had a huge advantage over anyone who might begin taking instructions as an adult or near adult.
3 - https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27729-which-came-first-the-bus-or-the-rambler/?do=findComment&comment=460564 on page 12 is a passage from holy scripture, written by the Venerable Master himself, the prophet Armstrong (doppelgangers be upon him!), about plausible deniability:
QuoteThe use of twins allows an intelligence agency to place "one person" in different places at the same time. The first twin could be involved in an illegal or clandestine
operation, while the second twin was in a different location with people who could provide an alibi if necessary.4 - https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27729-which-came-first-the-bus-or-the-rambler/?do=findComment&comment=460563 on page 12 also mentions plausible deniability:
Quoteone of the major advantages of doubling political operatives is total DENIABILITY for any and every action taken by either player. The example I gave is that one LHO couldn't possibly have been at Bolton Ford in New Orleans because he was in Russia at the time. [There's no good reason to suppose that any LHO was at Bolton Ford, because a plausible alternative explanation exists for the evidence Jim keeps regurgitating. See e.g.: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1408-the-bolton-ford-incident.]
As I've already explained, these replies do not answer my question. Jim makes three points:
- The doppelganger who defected could "secretly understand more of what was being said in Russian by people around him."
- Recruiting "a youth who already understood the Russian language had a huge advantage over anyone who might begin taking instructions as an adult."
- Using doppelgangers provides "total DENIABILITY for any and every action taken by either" doppelganger.
- Point 1: Understanding Russian can be done just as well by a native English-speaking American who had learned a reasonable amount of Russian. You don't need doppelgangers for this, because you don't need to be a native speaker of Russian in order to understand Russian.
- Point 2: There was no "huge advantage" in using doppelgangers. There was no advantage at all, because the hypothetical "youth who already understood the Russian language" must have known exactly the same amount of Russian as the real-life Oswald. The real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald's Russian was entirely consistent with that of someone who had begun learning Russian in his late teens. Again, you don't need doppelgangers for this.
- Point 3: Plausible deniability is only necessary if you have doppelgangers. It is a solution to a non-problem. If you don't have doppelgangers, you don't have any need for plausible deniability. And because plausible non-doppelganger explanations exist for the incidents in question, there's no good reason to believe that any doppelgangers were involved.
Jim still hasn't answered my question. He still hasn't explained why his OSS or CIA masterminds would have decided to recruit doppelgangers rather than choose the utterly obvious and far simpler alternative: just recruit one American and get him to learn Russian.
Why would they not have done that?
There's no answer to that question, is there? If, as Jim proposes, his OSS or CIA masterminds had planned in the 1940s to send to the Soviet Union several years in the future a false defector who understood Russian, they would simply have recruited an American and got him to learn sufficient Russian.
Jim's double-doppelganger project could never have happened.
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I'm curious to find out why Jim hasn't acknowledged that plausible alternative explanations exist for most or all of the talking points he has been regurgitating over the past few years. Does he think they don't exist? They've been pointed out to him numerous times, so he must be aware that they exist.
If Jim knows that plausible alternative explanations exist for his talking points, why doesn't he accept them?
He surely understands that when an item of evidence has both a complicated, unrealistic explanation (big project involving lots of doppelgangers!) and a simple everyday explanation (no project, no doppelgangers, just one person!), it's irrational to prefer the complicated explanation over the simple explanation.
As I pointed out in an earlier comment:
QuoteDoes Jim accept that plausible alternative explanations exist for most or all of his 'Harvey and Lee' talking points? If he doesn't accept this obvious fact, there really isn't much point in continuing this discussion, because he will have admitted that he is just a closed-minded propagandist.
Is Jim just a closed-minded propagandist? Or will he admit that plausible alternative explanations exist for his talking points?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
Quotein addition to already having a working knowledge of Russian language and culture, the Oswald impostor (and, of course, the real Oswald) together provided the opportunity to plausibly deny almost anything either Oswald did
As for producing a future defector with a working knowledge of Russian, I've already pointed out numerous times that the OSS or the CIA could have achieved this without going to all the trouble of setting up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers.
If they wanted a false defector with a working knowledge of Russian, someone who could understand what would be said around them in the Soviet Union, all they needed to do was recruit one American and get him to learn Russian. It's a far simpler, cheaper and more obvious way to achieve their goal.
The real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald defected a decade and a half after Jim's imaginary project is supposed to have been set up. That would be more than enough time to learn Russian to the necessary level.
Jim still hasn't explained why those masterminds would have decided to go for the doppelganger solution when they would surely have been aware that a far simpler, cheaper and more obvious alternative existed. No explanation appears to exist for this decision, which indicates that the decision didn't happen.
Until Jim or anyone else can come up with a credible account of why those masterminds decided to go for the complicated solution over the simple solution, he isn't justified in claiming that they did so.
As for plausible deniability, I've already pointed out that this would only apply if doppelgangers existed. Without doppelgangers, there would be nothing that needed to be plausibly denied. It's a solution to a self-generated problem.
QuoteAre you determined to discuss philosophy instead of actual EVIDENCE in this case?
I'm determined to find out why any rational organisation would have set up such a ridiculously complicated scheme, when it's clear that they didn't need to do so. If there was no good reason for their supposed decision to use doppelgangers, they didn't use doppelgangers.
This is something that needs to be sorted out before discussing EVIDENCE, because the EVIDENCE has more than one explanation.
As I've also pointed out numerous times, all or almost all of Jim's 'Harvey and Lee' talking points possess plausible explanations that don't require doppelgangers and certainly don't require a long-term scheme involving two pairs of the things.
Does Jim accept that all or almost all of his talking points have plausible, alternative explanations? A straightforward answer to this question would be appreciated.
If he does accept this obvious fact, it is up to him to explain why we should prefer his doppelganger-based explanations. To do this, he needs to explain why a complicated double-doppelganger scheme would have been set up when there was no need to set it up. What would have been the thinking behind the decision to set it up? Why would the masterminds not have decided to recruit one American instead of four doppelgangers?
If he doesn't accept the obvious fact that plausible alternative explanations exist, there is no point in discussing the matter. Jim will be just like a flat-earther or a religious fundamentalist, pretending that his EVIDENCE can only be explained in the way he wants to explain it.
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteI’ll nevertheless answer his question for the umpteeth time
The question I've been asking is:
Why would the OSS or the CIA have decided specifically to use doppelgangers when they did not need to do so?
Jim has not yet provided a coherent answer to that question. He has dodged around it by suggesting, several times, that the masterminds wanted to obtain a false defector who was able to understand Russian (or learn about Russian culture!). But doppelgangers aren't required for any of that. Jim needs to explain the masterminds' thinking process. Since those masterminds could have achieved their goal without using doppelgangers, why did they decide specifically to use doppelgangers?
- You don't need to be a doppelganger to be able to understand what is being spoken around you in the Soviet Union.
- You don't need to be a native Russian speaker to be able to understand what is being spoken around you in the Soviet Union.
- All you need is to have learned Russian to a reasonable (but not native-speaker) level.
The only thing the masterminds needed to do was recruit one person, an American, and get him to learn Russian.
Why didn't they do that? What was their thinking when they supposedly decided to use doppelgangers despite the existence of a much simper solution? Why can't Jim answer this question? It's because no answer exists, isn't it?
There appears to have been no good reason for deciding to use doppelgangers at all, let alone setting up a preposterously complicated and implausible scheme involving two pairs of them, and keeping that scheme running for a decade and a half. Any number of intelligent, motivated Americans could have learned sufficient Russian in much less time than that.
That's the first problem Jim faces: no-one knows why his double-doppelganger scheme could ever have been implemented. If no good reason existed for implementing that scheme, no rational organisation would have implemented it.
The second problem is that all (or, to be generous, almost all) of the examples Jim keeps regurgitating from holy scripture have plausible alternative explanations. These explanations don't require the use of doppelgangers. They certainly don't require the implementation of a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers.
We've just seen this in the case of Oswald's use of a Russian-English dictionary and his Russian exam. As I pointed out on this page, both of these examples can be plausibly explained as the actions of one American who had begun learning Russian in his late teens while in the Marines.
If we have an incident that can be explained in more than one way:
- a complex explanation involving a long-term double-doppelganger project, or aliens from another planet, or the lizard people,
- and a simple explanation involving one real-life human being but no aliens or doppelgangers or lizard people,
we should use the simplest explanation, shouldn't we?
That's the only rational thing to do. Unfortunately for the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, pretty much any explanation that doesn't involve doppelgangers is going to be much simpler, and thus more plausible, than an explanation that does involve doppelgangers.
Does Jim accept that plausible alternative explanations exist for most or all of his 'Harvey and Lee' talking points? If he doesn't accept this obvious fact, there really isn't much point in continuing this discussion, because he will have admitted that he is just a closed-minded propagandist. These alternative explanations have been pointed out to him numerous times, so there's no excuse for denying their existence.
But if Jim does accept that plausible alternative explanations exist for his talking points, could he tell us why, in principle, he prefers complicated and implausible explanations over much simpler and more plausible explanations?
And if he does insist on believing that sinister masterminds in the OSS or CIA actually set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, could he tell us why, specifically, they decided to use doppelgangers when they had no need to do so?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteAre you now admitting that he [the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald] was a spy?
There's a good case to be made that the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald's defection was not genuine, and that he was acting under instructions from one or another US intelligence organisation. He may or may not have been a formal employee of that organisation. Whether all of that makes him "a spy" depends on one's definition of the word.
He may have been sent over there to report on his experiences of Soviet life, or on the places he visited, or on the workplaces he was assigned to by the Soviet authorities, or on his treatment by those authorities, or for some other relatively mundane reason.
He wouldn't have found it easy to do much traditional spying, such as smuggling top-secret documents out of the country, since he was openly an American defector. He could expect his movements to be closely tracked, and his Russian language skills were not those of a native speaker. And he couldn't drive, so he wouldn't have had access to a bullet-proof Aston Martin.
Needless to say, nothing Oswald did over there required him to have been an alien from another planet, or one of the lizard people, or a member of a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers that had been set up for no good reason a decade and a half earlier when he was a young boy.
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Let's see if Jim has finally managed to explain the central element of his double-doppelganger theory. Why would those masterminds have decided to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to use doppelgangers? Over to Jim:
QuoteNeither of us are prepared to analyze the decision-making process
Oh well. He still can't tell us why that imaginary double-doppelganger project would have been set up.
QuoteThe whole idea of the Oswald project was to give a Russian-speaking youth an American identity so he could eventually travel to Russia and learn more about its culture.
So the doppelganger who defected was recruited as a young boy in order to learn about Russian culture. If that was "the whole idea", it makes no sense at all. You don't need to be a doppelganger to learn about Russian culture. Learning about Russian culture is one more item on the list of things that don't require doppelgangers.
The party line up to now has been that the doppelganger was recruited as a young boy so that he could use his native knowledge of Russian to understand what was being said around him when he eventually defected, a decade and a half later.
That was the foundation of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. But cracks appeared in those foundations when it was pointed out that:
- You don't need to be a native speaker to understand what is being said around you.
- The real-life Lee Harvey Oswald's Russian was not at the level of a native speaker.
- By definition, the imaginary Oswald doppelganger defector likewise cannot have been a native speaker of Russian.
Since those mythical masterminds at the OSS or the CIA cannot have decided to set up their imaginary double-doppelganger project for reasons of language or culture, the question remains:
Why use doppelgangers when you don't need to use doppelgangers?
Quotethe planners felt that, for the project to work, the long-term impostor needed to have experiences at least similar to his counterpart.
The simplest way for the defector to have the same experiences as a genuine American would be for him to actually be a genuine American. Isn't that obvious? If you need someone with a genuine American background and genuine American experiences, who could possibly be better than a genuine American?
Again, why use doppelgangers when you don't need to use doppelgangers?
QuoteAnd the two needed to have similar appearances.
If you're going to recruit a pair of doppelgangers, of course they need to look similar (apart from their earlobes). But that requirement only arises if you decide to recruit doppelgangers. It doesn't have anything to do with why those masterminds would have decided to use doppelgangers in the first place.
Why use doppelgangers when you don't need to use doppelgangers?
Let's have another look at the list of things that don't require doppelgangers:
- You don't need to be a doppelganger in order to learn about Russian culture.
- You don't need to be a doppelganger in order to understand what is being said around you in a foreign language.
- You don't need to be a doppelganger in order to impersonate someone.
- You don't need to be a doppelganger in order to have a plausible American background.
Jim can't think of anything that required doppelgangers. If there was nothing that required doppelgangers, the 'Harvey and Lee' theory cannot be correct, can it?
If there was something that did require doppelgangers, what was it? Why would those masterminds have decided specifically to use doppelgangers?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteBefore ever setting foot in the Soviet Union, Oswald scored as well in a Russian-language exam as he did in tests of his English. Are we to believe this was merely because he was "motivated" to teach himself Russian?
We are to believe that it was the real-life, one and only, native English-speaking Lee Harvey Oswald who took those language tests, and not some imaginary doppelganger with poorly defined language skills and a 13-inch head.
It was explained to Jim a couple of years ago that the tests Oswald took in English and Russian were not of the same standard.
The Marine Corps offered extra pay to native English-speaking Marines with skills in foreign languages. Their Russian language tests were not aimed at native speakers of that language. Their English language tests, however, were aimed at native speakers of that language.
Equivalent marks in each language would denote a higher level of skill in English than in Russian, which is exactly what we should expect to see if the person taking the test was a real-life native English-speaking American who began learning Russian in his late teens.
There's nothing suspicious about Oswald's exam scores. Jim has been told this already. He knows that doppelgangers are not required in order to explain Oswald's exam scores.
Jim continues:
QuoteHere's an image of a Russian language newspaper printed in San Francisco that is probably similar to the one Oswald reportedly read in the Marine corps while stationed in California. Can you imagine teaching yourself to read, write, and speak this language without any formal instruction?
This point too has been explained to Jim in the past. Oswald was using the Russian-language newspaper not to find out what was going on in the world, but to help himself learn the language.
It's a standard method: once you have acquired a basic competence in a language, you improve your reading knowledge by using a newspaper or magazine in combination with a dictionary. Oswald's Marine buddies testified that this is exactly what Oswald did. He used newspapers in combination with a Russian-English dictionary. Here's Mack Osborne:
QuoteOswald was at that time studying Russian. He spent a great deal of his free time reading papers printed in Russian - which I believe he bought in Los Angeles - with the aid of a Russian-English dictionary.
(Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol.8, p.321: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=329)
Why else would Oswald have used a Russian-English dictionary in combination with a Russian-language newspaper? He was a native English-speaker learning Russian, not a native Russian-speaker brushing up on his English vocabulary.
There's nothing suspicious about Oswald's use of Russian-language newspapers. Jim has been told this already. He knows that doppelgangers are not required in order to explain Oswald's use of Russian-language newspapers.
Back to Jim:
Quotethere are only two possible explanations for Oswald's Russian-language ability before he ever travelled to Russia. The first is that he had extensive training in Russian--suggesting he was being trained as a spy for the Russian assignment coming up
It is very likely that Oswald was given training in Russian. See this article by Greg Parker and Jim Purtell:
http://www.jfkconversations.com/lee-oswald-russian-language
That article provides a plausible scenario in which Oswald learned Russian in two ways: by himself, and through official tuition while he was in the Marines.
You don't need imaginary double-doppelganger projects to explain any of this. Oswald was a native English-speaking American who began learning Russian while in the Marines, at least partly in preparation for his false defection.
Oswald's level of Russian did not require him to have been a doppelganger. Why, then, would the masterminds in the OSS or CIA have decided to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to use doppelgangers?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteThe purpose of the Oswald project was to give a Russian-speaking youth an American identity so he could eventually travel to Russia and secretly understand more of what was being said in Russian by people around him.
Yes, I'm aware of that piece of doctrine: the masterminds are supposed to have set up a double-doppelganger project in order to produce a defector who understood Russian. That would have been the ultimate purpose of the imaginary double-doppelganger project, if it had existed.
What I'm interested in is the specific purpose. The question I've been trying to get Jim and his fellow cult members to answer is: Why doppelgangers?
Why, specifically, would those masterminds at the OSS or CIA have decided to achieve their ultimate goal by using doppelgangers? What would have been the thinking behind that decision?
Quotestarting with a youth who already understood the Russian language had a huge advantage over anyone who might begin taking instructions as an adult or near adult.
Firstly, I'm not sure that a five-year-old would normally be described as a "youth". Secondly, the five-year-old, had he existed, would have been recruited with only a five-year-old's understanding of the language, and would have lived in an English-speaking community for the next 14 years or so, until he defected.
What advantage would there have been in:
- recruiting a five-year-old, with only a five-year-old's understanding of Russian,
- and recruiting a doppelganger boy for that five-year-old,
- and recruiting the doppelganger boy's mother,
- and recruiting a doppelganger for the doppelganger boy's mother,
- and recruiting assorted hangers-on,
- and paying to keep the show on the road for a decade and a half,
- all the while crossing their fingers and hoping that the unrelated boys would end up looking virtually identical (apart from their earlobes),
rather than simply recruiting one person and spending a fraction of the time and money in getting him to learn Russian?
On the face of it, no-one in their right mind would have decided to implement such a complicated and uncertain scheme, when a far simpler alternative would have been available. Recruiting one American would have been such an obvious solution that no-one would even have considered the possibility of using doppelgangers.
To justify all that trouble, expense and uncertainty, the masterminds must have decided that there was a significant advantage in using four doppelgangers instead of one American who understood Russian. Why would they have made that decision? What would their thinking have been?
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The remaining cult members are still unable to come up with a plausible explanation for their cult's central point of doctrine. They claim that either the OSS or the CIA recruited two pairs of doppelgangers back in the mid-1940s or thereabouts. They claim that one pair of doppelgangers was made up of one American boy and one eastern European boy, and that the latter was recruited because of his knowledge of Russian.
Admittedly, they're not quite sure whether it was the OSS or the CIA who set up this unlikely project. They're not quite sure when the unlikely project was set up. They're not quite sure where in eastern Europe the doppelganger boy came from, or what his real name was, or how he reached the US. They're not quite sure how old he was when he was recruited: he may have been three years old, or ten years old, or something in between. They're not quite sure whether this boy's knowledge of Russian was that of a three-year-old, or of a ten-year-old, or of someone in between. It all looks rather like guesswork.
More importantly, the cult members are not sure why the project would have been set up. They used to think that the purpose was to produce someone who:
- spoke Russian like a native, and
- could claim to possess a plausible American background.
But that can't have been the purpose, because the person whom the project supposedly produced, the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, did not speak Russian like a native.
So what was the actual purpose of the project?
What was the thinking behind setting up a project that started out with two pairs of doppelgangers and ended up with someone who did not speak Russian like a native?
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John Butler writes:
QuoteI believe Harvey was a native of Russia somewhere in the area of Minsk.
What documentary evidence exists to show that this imaginary doppelganger was "a native of Russia somewhere in the area of Minsk"? By the way, Minsk is in Belarus, not Russia.
QuoteHe was taken from there when he was young due to German military aggression.
What documentary evidence exists to show that this imaginary doppelganger was taken from "the area of Minsk" when he was young? And who was it who took him? What documentary evidence identifies this person?
QuoteHe may even have been Jewish (this is questionable) and saved from the camps or death pits.
What documentary evidence suggests that this imaginary doppelganger was Jewish?
QuoteSomewhere around 1944 or 1945 Harvey was taken to Switzerland
What documentary evidence exists to show that this imaginary doppelganger was taken to Switzerland?
QuoteHarvey is 5 or 6 years old when sent to the US.
What documentary evidence is there of this imaginary doppelganger's date of birth?
QuoteThe route was through Switzerland to France to Spain
What documentary evidence exists to show that this imaginary doppelganger travelled through those countries?
QuoteThey were Hungarian and likely told to keep Harvey's Russian workable.
What documentary evidence exists to show that these particular Hungarians spoke Russian? How good would their Russian have needed to be in order to keep a five-year-old's Russian "workable" in an otherwise English-speaking community?
This is just standard 'Harvey and Lee' stuff: a story constructed out of a huge amount of speculation and a minimal amount (if that) of solid documentary evidence.
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The point I've been trying to get the 'Harvey and Lee' faithful to understand is that they need to produce a plausible model of their theory. A collection of supposed biographical events, all of which (or, to be generous, almost all of which) have plausible alternative explanations, is worthless if no coherent framework exists.
The faithful have proposed that one or other organisation (maybe the OSS, maybe the CIA; they'll get back to us when they've worked out that part) set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, and that more than a decade later this project produced a false defector who spoke Russian less well than a native adult speaker.
But the faithful have not explained how that project produced that defector:
- If the defector's Russian was that of a native adult speaker when he went into the project, why was it not at that level when he came out a decade or more later?
- If the defector's Russian was not that of a native adult speaker when he went into the project, what reason was there for recruiting him and the other three doppelgangers?
The faithful need to explain the thinking behind their supposed double-doppelganger project. Why was the decision made to recruit two pairs of doppelgangers? What was the goal? If the goal was to produce someone whose Russian was that of a native speaker, why did it fail to achieve that goal?
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteHARVEY Oswald scored about what a ten-year-old Russian would score. Which is the approximate age HARVEY was when he immigrated to America and began speaking English.
I realise that the cult's three remaining believers are just making up doctrine as they go along, but surely someone should have sorted all of this out long ago.
It's been two decades now since Armstrong published his novel. The essential element of that work of fiction is an imaginary long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers. But there's still no agreement about why the OSS or CIA (delete as appropriate) would have decided to set up that imaginary project. There's still no coherent explanation of why any doppelgangers of any age would have been recruited.
Jim has plucked from some unmentionable location a doppelganger Oswald who was recruited at the age of five or younger. Sandy has plucked from another unmentionable location a doppelganger Oswald who was recruited as a ten-year-old. And John, the world's most incompetent photo analyst, has implied that his own doppelganger Oswald had been recruited by the age of three, since two photos of the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald from around that age supposedly show the infant Oswald with differently sized earlobes, measurements of which John has not yet supplied.
If our three remaining members of the 'Harvey and Lee' brains trust want to be taken seriously, please could they at least put their heads together and come up with a scenario, however far-fetched and implausible, that they all agree on?
Or, if they insist on retaining their doctrinal differences, perhaps each of them could come up with a coherent scenario that explains their different blind guesses about the age at which their imaginary doppelganger Oswald was recruited.
Jim - why did the OSS recruit a Russian-speaking five-year-old, and how did the CIA end up with someone whose Russian was worse than that of a native adult speaker?
Sandy - why did the CIA recruit a Russian-speaking ten-year-old, and how did they end up with someone whose Russian was worse than that of a native adult speaker?
John - why did the OSS recruit a Russian-speaking three-year-old, and how did the CIA end up with someone whose Russian was worse than that of a native adult speaker?
Whatever the age of the imaginary Oswald doppelganger, the theory makes no sense, does it?
Why would the CIA or the OSS or any other rational organisation have set up a long-term scheme involving two pairs of doppelgangers, only to end up with a defector to the Soviet Union whose Russian was indistinguishable from that of the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, who began learning Russian in his late teens?
Why would anyone have gone to all that trouble when they could simply have recruited one American and got him to learn Russian?
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The fundamental problem remains: the defector was not a native speaker of Russian.
If the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald who defected was not a native speaker of Russian, the imaginary Oswald doppelganger who defected must also not have been a native speaker of Russian.
But the 'Harvey and Lee' double-doppelganger project required its defecting doppelganger to have been a native speaker of Russian. Even if the project had been set up without a future defection in mind, it must have involved the recruitment of an Oswald doppelganger who was a native speaker of Russian.
There is only one way in which such a project could have ended up with a defecting doppelganger who was not a native speaker of Russian. The boy in question must have been a native speaker of Russian when he was recruited, but the OSS/CIA must have allowed him to forget so much of his Russian that he resembled a non-native speaker.
That scenario cannot realistically have happened, can it? The OSS/CIA would not have invested so much time and manpower in a project, only to negate the essential purpose of the project by allowing its native Russian speaker to lose the very ability he was recruited for in the first place.
Is there any credible scenario in which the OSS/CIA would have set up a double-doppelganger project and ended up with a defector who was not a native speaker of Russian?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteOf course, it’s possible that Robert got the years wrong, as he did for Stripling School.
It's possible that he got the whole thing wrong, as he did for Stripling school.
According to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, Robert was in on the deception and would surely have been told not to give the game away. But he kept on giving the game away. That's one more aspect of the theory that makes no sense.
QuoteOswald ... was CLEARLY among the most impersonated Americans in our history. The simplest explanation is that there were two of them.
No, the simplest explanation is that there was only one of him, and that most of the alleged impersonations had more plausible, everyday explanations, links to which I'll be happy to supply.
The few strong claims of impersonation also have a plausible non-doppelganger explanation: they were ad hoc impersonations to implicate Oswald as the sort of person who might go on to shoot a president.
Take away the claims that can be explained as faulty memories, or misinterpretations of documentary evidence, or genuine but ad hoc impersonations, and there's virtually nothing left (and I'm being generous with 'virtually').
Impersonations do not require doppelgangers, and certainly do not require long-term projects involving two pairs of doppelgangers, let alone five-year-old doppelgangers.
QuoteThe two Oswalds looked similar, but were hardly identical.
John Butler disagrees:
QuoteThese two photos of Harvey and Lee are separated into Harvey and Lee based upon the character traits I developed
I think John is pulling our collective leg! The earlobes look different? Those are two photos of the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald.
John should stick to identifying back-to-front cars and three-legged men in poor-quality copies of the Zapruder film.
Even among the faithful, there is no agreement about the doppelgangers' physical differences and similarities. The range of claims that have been made about this is laughable. One of the doppelgangers had sloping shoulders. One of them had a 13-inch head. One of them was 5' 11" tall, then shrank to 5' 6", then grew back to 5' 11". The doppelgangers were so similar that even their friends and families couldn't tell them apart. The doppelgangers were so different that eagle-eyed researchers decades later can easily tell them apart just by looking at photos. It's ridiculous, and it sums up the 'Harvey and Lee' cult's cherry-picking approach to the evidence.
Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteWhat's your proof for that statement?
See the second post from the top of this page.
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteOf course he (HARVEY) spoke Russian like a native. That was his native language.
The real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald did not speak Russian like a native. Therefore the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's equivalent imaginary doppelganger also did not speak Russian like a native.
It really is not controversial that Oswald's Russian was not at the level of a native speaker. We settled this a couple of years ago on this forum.
Several of Oswald's Marine buddies testified that he was teaching himself the language by using recordings, newspapers, and a Russian-English dictionary:
He did poorly in a Russian-language exam while in the Marines:
Even after having lived among native speakers for more than two years, Oswald made frequent grammatical mistakes:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=39#relPageId=138
None of this is controversial. Oswald's Russian was poor at first, it improved, it became very good, but it was never at the level of a native speaker.
The Oswald-was-a-real-person theory can explain this: Oswald began learning Russian in his late teens while he was in the Marines, via a combination of self-tuition and official tuition: http://www.jfkconversations.com/lee-oswald-russian-language.
The Oswald-was-a-pair-of-doppelgangers theory cannot explain this.
The 'Harvey and Lee' theory requires the equivalent Oswald doppelganger to have been a native speaker of Russian. It requires that doppelganger to have been recruited specifically for his native ability to speak Russian.
But the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald was not a native speaker of Russian. The theory is incoherent.
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Jim Hargrove writes:
Quotethe project was started before the official organization of the CIA. It probably originated in an Office of Strategic Services program under the direction of Frank Wisner
The OSS ceased to exist on 20 September 1945. Shortly after that, some of its functions were taken over by the CIA.
The real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was born on 18 October 1939. He was four weeks short of his sixth birthday when the OSS was dissolved. This means that at least one, and presumably both, of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's imaginary Oswald doppelgangers must have been recruited at the age of five. Or possibly at the age of four, or three, or ... And presumably the two Marguerite doppelgangers were recruited at the same time.
I realise that Jim is probably making this stuff up as he goes along, and it would be a waste of time asking him to produce specific documentary evidence for any of it. But I'd just like to be clear about this point of doctrine. The double-doppelganger project began when the two unrelated boys were no more than five years old. Is that correct?
The implication is that the OSS decided to set up a long-term project involving two unrelated boys who were no more than five years old, in the hope that when they grew up they would turn out to look virtually identical. Is that what Jim thinks happened?
The OSS came across an American boy who was no more than five years old. (How? When? Never mind.) They then trawled through their collection of eastern European orphan boys of the same age, and found one who looked similar to the American boy. They thought to themselves, "I bet he'll look just like that American boy when he grows up! Apart from his earlobes and his 13-inch head, of course. And those two women will look identical too, apart from their eyebrows!"
Does Jim seriously think that any of this actually happened?
QuoteWhy did the CIA continue the project? I have repeatedly said that one of the main advantages of a project like H&L is built-in deniability
As I pointed out to Jim the last time he came up with this nonsensical rationalisation, there would be nothing to deny if there were no doppelgangers involved. It's only the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's insistence on having two doppelganger Oswalds, one with an American background and the other who was only pretending to have an American background, that creates the need to deny anything. If all the OSS or the CIA had was one person with a genuine American background, there would be nothing to deny.
Deniability cannot be the reason the CIA would have decided to continue with this ridiculous imaginary project, or the reason the OSS would have set it up in the first place. Would Jim care to have another go? Why would any rational organisation have set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers at all, let alone doppelgangers who were no more than five years old?
QuoteNevertheless, the advantages of setting up a Russian-speaking child to be a Cold War spy in the Soviet Union are obvious.
The advantages of sending a false defector who understood Russian are obvious, but the need for that defector to have been a Russian speaker as a child is not obvious.
As I've been pointing out, you don't need to be a native speaker of a language in order to understand what is being said around you. The real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was not a native speaker of Russian, which implies that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's equivalent imaginary doppelganger was likewise not a native speaker of Russian.
If you don't require a native speaker of Russian, why go to all the trouble of setting up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, including a pair of five-year-olds?
QuoteThe Russians sent Konon Molody to Berkely, California at the age of 7 for equally obvious reasons.
But the case of Konon Molodiy (a.k.a. Gordon Lonsdale) did not resemble the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's imaginary doppelganger project:
- Most obviously, Molodiy was one person, not a pair of doppelgangers.
- He moved to the US at a young age, and learned English there. Neither of the imaginary Oswald doppelgangers moved to Russia at a young age and learned Russian there.
- He took the identity of a deceased Canadian. Neither of the imaginary Oswald doppelgangers took the identity of a deceased Russian, or of any deceased person.
- He travelled to the west without defecting, unlike the imaginary Oswald doppelganger who travelled to the Soviet Union specifically in order to defect.
- His use of Lonsdale's identity ensured that the US and British authorities remained unaware for years that Molodiy had any connections at all to the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities, on the other hand, would have suspected immediately that the imaginary Oswald doppelganger might have had connections to the US, simply because of his defection.
- Molodiy's undercover work required him not to pretend that he did not understand English. The imaginary Oswald doppelganger who defected was required by the theory to pretend not to understand Russian.
- Molodiy's English appeared to be that of a native speaker. The imaginary Oswald doppelganger's Russian was clearly not that of a native speaker.
In short, Molodiy's apparent background and his command of English allowed him to blend in with the society he was spying against, whereas the precise opposite applied to the imaginary Oswald doppelganger who defected.
The central feature of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is doppelgangers. Molodiy was not a doppelganger. No doppelgangers feature in the story of Konon Molodiy.
QuoteI may know why the patsy was chosen. Many of us believe the immediate intention of the JFK assassination plotters was to provoke an invasion of Cuba. With his assignment to Russia, his staged Fair Play for Cuba activities, and his commie-loving history dating back to the Marine Corps, it was simple to depict Oswald as a communist with ties to Castro.
Other factors may well have been instrumental in the setting up of Harvey. Since he had ties to both the CIA and the FBI, it could be assumed in advance that government investigators, especially J. Edgar Hoover, would easily be coaxed into a full scale and elaborate cover-up.
Jim is probably on the right lines here. The assassination may have been intended to provoke an invasion of Cuba. Oswald may have been chosen as a patsy in order to implicate Cuba in the assassination. Oswald's probable affiliations with one or other US agencies may have been a factor in provoking a cover-up.
The problem is: none of this requires Oswald to have been a pair of imaginary doppelgangers. All of it applies perfectly well if we accept the obvious fact that Oswald was a singular, real person.
Doppelgangers were unnecessary (especially five-year-old doppelgangers). The 'Harvey and Lee' theory is incoherent.
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteThe H&L theory says that Oswald was a Russian-speaking orphan who was brought to America at a young age, ten years old or so.
Yes, and it makes no sense.
The theory claims that this mysterious orphan was recruited specifically for his ability to speak Russian like a native, doesn't it? But this orphan (or rather the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) did not actually speak Russian like a native, did he?
Did the CIA go to all the trouble of recruiting not only this orphan, but also a doppelganger boy with an American background, and the American boy's mother, and another woman, a doppelganger of the first woman, to act as the orphan's mother, and then keep the charade going for a decade, only for the CIA to let the native Russian-speaking orphan lose the very ability for which he was recruited in the first place? Why would any rational organisation have done that?
Alternatively, if the theory now claims that the CIA recruited an orphan who didn't speak Russian like a native, what would their reason have been for recruiting him? Why would they have set up a ridiculously complicated decade-long project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, none of whom were native speakers of Russian?
The theory proposes that this far-fetched project was set up, but cannot explain why anyone would have set it up. Armstrong and White simply didn't think it through.
That's why I keep calling the 'Harvey and Lee' theory nonsense. It literally makes no sense.
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Jim Hargrove writes:
Quotethe use of imposters and look-alikes is common in spycraft.
But the use of doppelgangers is not at all common. None of Jim's examples were of preposterously complicated 'Harvey and Lee'-style doppelgangers, in which a pair of unrelated doppelganger boys were recruited at a young age, along with two doppelganger women to act as their mothers, and the scheme was maintained for over a decade. Still, at least he hasn't brought up Mata Hari this time! Oh, wait ... he has.
As I've pointed out to Jim several times:
- doppelgangers are not required for impersonations, and
- doppelgangers were not required for the task supposedly given to the false defector as imagined by Armstrong and White.
Doppelgangers are unnecessary, whether in:
- real events, such as the false defection and later impersonation of the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald;
- or fictional events, such as an imaginary false defector who did not have an American background but was recruited specifically for being a native speaker of Russian despite not actually being a native speaker of Russian.
The central claim of the incoherent and poorly thought-out 'Harvey and Lee' theory is that the CIA recruited one boy for his authentic American background, and a second, unrelated boy for his native ability to speak Russian. But it was obvious that the second boy cannot have been recruited for that reason, because he (or rather the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) did not have a native ability to speak Russian.
Since the defector (the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) was not a native speaker of Russian, all the CIA needed to do, in the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's scenario, was to recruit a genuine American and get him to learn Russian. The 'Harvey and Lee' theory cannot explain why the CIA would not have done this. You see, I told you the theory was incoherent.
Sandy suggested that the CIA might have set up a double-doppelganger scheme for some reason unrelated to Oswald's false defection. Maybe they did (though it sounds a bit unlikely, doesn't it?), but that double-doppelganger scheme cannot have been the double-doppelganger scheme that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory conjured into existence, because Sandy's hypothetical scheme involved a native speaker of Russian, and the defection in question did not involve a native speaker of Russian.
If Sandy were to adapt his hypothetical scheme to include a non-native speaker of Russian (just like the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald), it would fail for the same reason the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's hypothetical scheme fails. Without a native speaker of Russian, there is no need for any doppelgangers.
Why would the CIA have gone to all the trouble of setting up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers when there was no need to do so?
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteWhat I've highlighted above is merely Jonathan's opinion.
What Sandy highlighted was actually my opinion, although I wouldn't be surprised if Jonathan agrees with me:
QuoteAs I've been pointing out, using doppelgangers to achieve that goal makes no sense.
Sandy continues:
QuoteI believe that it made a lot of sense to have a CIA agent who spoke and understood the Russian language flawlessly
That would indeed have made sense, although of course it doesn't imply that such an agent would have been recruited at a young age as one of a pair of doppelgangers in the hope that when they grew up they would turn out to look identical. That part is just far-fetched 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense.
I'm sure that during the Cold War, the CIA and its foreign equivalents recruited native Russian speakers. They may also have recruited language prodigies who were able to reach that level despite not being native speakers.
The problem is: Oswald wasn't one of them.
Oswald's Russian was far from flawless. He eventually reached a decent level, but everything we know about his Russian clearly shows that he was not a native speaker. His Marine buddies testified that he was teaching himself Russian. He did poorly in a Russian-language exam. He made grammatical mistakes.
Even after living among actual native speakers for years, he was making grammatical mistakes. Marina teased him about the grammatical mistakes he made. Ruth Paine, whose own Russian was nowhere near native level, noticed and commented on the grammatical mistakes he made.
Making grammatical mistakes is consistent with what the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald was: an American who learned Russian in his late teens and early twenties. It is not consistent with being a native speaker such as Sandy's imaginary doppelganger Oswald.
Incidentally, we now have a plausible account of how the real-life Oswald might have learned Russian while in the Marines:
http://www.jfkconversations.com/lee-oswald-russian-language
QuoteI don't know if the CIA had in mind a false defector role for the fake Oswald (the one later killed by Ruby) when they first recruited him.
The one who, according to John Armstrong (praise his name!) had not undergone a mastoidectomy, but who in real life had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy, a fact of which Armstrong was aware, thereby presenting Armstrong with the uncomfortable choice of either abandoning his theory or misleading his readers?* That fake Oswald?
Or the fake Oswald who vanished without a trace immediately after the assassination? (Whatever happened to that fake Oswald, by the way? And what happened to the fake Marguerite who also vanished into thin air immediately after the assassination?)
Or the fake Oswald who was 5' 11" tall in 1959, then somehow shrank to 5' 6" a couple of years later, then miraculously expanded back to 5' 11" by the time of the assassination?
Or the fake Oswald who had a 13" head?
I don't think the CIA had in mind a role for any of those fake Oswalds, because they didn't exist.
* Spoiler alert: The choice Armstrong made was to mislead his readers. Well, it was either that or admitting that his theory was nonsense, so you can't really blame him, can you?
QuoteJonathan assumes that it would be easy to pick an American who will learn and perfect his Russian language in a fairly short period of time.
I don't know what Jonathan assumes, but that isn't what I assume. There are two problems with Sandy's latest bit of speculation.
The first problem is that, as I've already pointed out, the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald didn't "perfect his Russian language". Even after having spent more than two years interacting daily with native Russian speakers, and after marrying one of them and insisting on speaking nothing but Russian with her, his Russian was still far from perfect. If the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald spoke less than perfect Russian, Sandy's imaginary Oswald doppelganger likewise must have spoken less than perfect Russian.
The second problem is that there wouldn't have been "a fairly short period of time" available for an American to learn Russian. A fairly long period of time would have been available. According to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, it was around 1950 when the CIA decided to recruit its two pairs of imaginary doppelgangers. The real-life Lee Harvey Oswald defected towards the end of 1959. That's the best part of a decade, which is more than enough time for an intelligent, motivated American to learn the amount of Russian which would be needed to understand what was being said around him.
This brings us back to the fundamental problem with the 'Harvey and Lee' theory (yes, I know there are numerous problems with it, but this one is central to the theory). The double-doppelganger scheme could only work if the defector were a native speaker of Russian, and if the task he was given required him to be a native speaker.
But the defector, the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, clearly was not a native speaker of Russian. The task he was given, namely understanding what people would be saying around him in the Soviet Union, did not require him to be a native speaker.
A year or two ago in several threads on this forum, the 'Harvey and Lee' faithful suddenly became aware of this fundamental problem with their theory. If their imaginary defecting doppelganger not only wasn't a native speaker of Russian but also didn't need to be a native speaker of Russian, there would have been no rational justification for any sort of long-term project involving doppelgangers.
Doppelgangers were unnecessary! Such was the shock of this realisation that Jim Hargrove became temporarily incapacitated and was unable to keep on spamming the forum by copying and pasting long-debunked passages of scripture. It was that serious.
If the CIA had wanted to create what the 'Harvey and Lee' theory claims they wanted to create (a false defector who possessed both a plausible American background and enough Russian to understand what was being said around him), all they had to do was recruit a genuine American and get him to learn Russian.
What reason would the CIA have had for deciding to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to?
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John Butler writes:
QuoteDid you notice that our anti-fan on the forum, Jeremey, didn't touch that list?
That's because it's just the standard 'Harvey and Lee' stuff that has been covered umpteen times already. Take an uncorroborated claim or dubiously interpreted piece of documentary evidence, ignore every innocent explanation, and declare that one or other of the imaginary doppelgangers was at location X doing activity Y when the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald was elsewhere.
Here's an interesting challenge. It may be difficult for John to do, but he should at least give it a try:
- For each 'Harvey and Lee' claim, search honestly for all the alternative explanations that have been offered over the years. You'll be the first 'Harvey and Lee' believer to do this!
- Throw away all the 'Harvey and Lee' claims for which plausible alternative explanations exist. Every single one! You may find this painful, and it may take some time.
- If there's anything left, try to construct a theory to explain the few remaining pieces of evidence.
What you should have done years ago is not to blindly accept every piece of evidence you can find, no matter how flimsy, but to question every piece of evidence you can find, and discard those that have innocent alternative explanations. Of course, if you do that, the whole theory crumbles away. Sorry about that.
Once you've filtered out every item of evidence for which non-doppelganger explanations exist, turn your attention to the reasoning behind this nonsense, and tell us why the CIA might have decided to set up a scheme involving doppelgangers when there was no need to do so.
What reason would the CIA have had for deciding to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to?
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John Butler writes:
QuoteI grasp your point with no difficulty. I just don't agree with you. ... There were two Oswalds. Doppelgangers, if you like.
If you really do understand the questions I'm asking, you shouldn't have too much trouble answering them.
The CIA's decision to use doppelgangers is right at the heart of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, isn't it?
If the CIA really did decide to use doppelgangers, they must have done so for a reason. But what reason could they have had for deciding to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to?
You can't think of a reason, can you?
You could look for an answer in the 'Harvey and Lee' cult's holy book. What does the holy book say about this?
It doesn't say anything, does it? The holy book doesn't explain the decision. It just expects its believers to accept as an article of faith that the CIA decided to use doppelgangers when a far simpler alternative existed.
You know why that is, don't you? It's because John Armstrong and Jack 'the moon landings were faked' White never bothered to think this nonsense through.
There's a big gap in the theory, and no-one knows how to fill it. The theory makes no sense.
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteThere are any number of goals the CIA may have had to do this [i.e. set up a long-term double-doppelganger project]. I described one possibility that you didn't like.
Sandy hasn't suggested any goals which the CIA might have wanted to achieve by setting up a long-term double-doppelganger scheme, apart from the general goal of producing a false defector with a plausible American background who understood Russian. In other words, standard 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine.
As I've been pointing out, using doppelgangers to achieve that goal makes no sense. You don't need access to the inner workings of the CIA to understand that no institution would have done that, because the institution would have known that a much simpler alternative to doppelgangers existed.
There is still a gap in the basic premise of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. No-one has been able to work out the reasoning behind the decision which forms the central feature of the theory. Why would the CIA (or anyone else) have set up a long-term project involving even one pair of doppelgangers, let alone two pairs of doppelgangers, when there was no need to use doppelgangers at all?
Why, specifically, use doppelgangers? Sandy can't think of a reason. Jim and John can't think of a reason. I can't think of a reason. There was no reason for using doppelgangers, was there?
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John Butler writes:
QuoteThe cover story had two aspects. First, there is who Harvey Oswald was actually. And secondly, what did he have to offer.
My point, which John does not seem to have grasped, was that everything in his imaginary doppelganger's background would apply at least as well to an actual American.
School, family life, general upbringing, experience and areas of expertise in the Marines - all of these things would have been part of the background of a genuine American who defected.
There was no need to fake any of this by using a doppelganger who did not have a genuine American background. You could simply use a genuine American instead, couldn't you?
You'd save on staff costs by recruiting just one person, a genuine American, rather than recruiting four people: two Oswald doppelgangers and two Marguerite doppelgangers. Not to mention that there would be no need to twist the arms of those family members who were in on the plot so that they wouldn't give the game away (which some of them actually ended up doing - whoops!).
Using a genuine American would have another important advantage over using doppelgangers. The defecting doppelganger's false history was at risk of exposure if the Soviets decided to look into it. An American's genuine history could never be exposed as false.
So what good reason would there be to use doppelgangers when you could use a genuine American?
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John Butler writes:
QuoteA fake defector such as [the one and only Lee] Harvey Oswald would have to pass the muster of the KGB in order to stay in Russia and not be charged with being a spy. His cover story would have stand up to questioning by the KGB.
Exactly! The need for a cover story is why, according to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the false defector needed to have a plausible American background.
So why didn't they just send to the Soviet Union someone with an absolutely bullet-proof cover story: a genuine American who had a genuine American background? That would have saved everyone a lot of bother, wouldn't it?
What reason could the CIA (or the Boy Scouts, or the Sons of the Desert) have had for not doing that?
Personally, I can't think of a good reason for not sending over a genuine American (such as ... um, let's see ... ah yes ... the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald). Sandy and Jim can't think of a good reason either. Even Messrs Armstrong and White couldn't think of a good reason, and they're the ones who came up with the theory.
Can John think of a good reason for not using a genuine American?
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteThe theory hypothesizes a number of those things you listed. But a hypothesis isn't a claim. It's a possibility that fits the known data.
And it's a very weak hypothesis, because it fails to explain why the event postulated by the hypothesis would have taken place.
It postulates that in around 1950 the CIA set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers. But it doesn't explain why any rational organisation would have done this.
The ultimate goal (as far as I can tell) would have been to create a false defector who had a plausible American background and the ability to understand the Russian that would be spoken around him once he defected.
If that was the ultimate goal, two uncontroversial facts show that the CIA would have had no reason to set up a complicated scheme involving doppelgangers, as the theory proposes, because a far simpler and more obvious solution existed. There were millions of Americans whose American backgrounds were as plausible as it's possible to be, and the decade or so that the supposed project took would have been more than enough time for one of those Americans to have learned Russian.
I presume Sandy agrees with me that there is no chance that the CIA, or any other organisation, would have failed to work out that the simplest way to obtain a false defector of the sort proposed was to recruit an American and get him to learn Russian.
QuoteWhen you state that these hypotheses are inconsistent with what the CIA would do, you are making a claim... as opposed to a hypothesis.
My claim is that there is no good reason to believe that any rational organisation would have set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, because a far simpler and more obvious alternative existed.
It's the 'Harvey and Lee' theory that nominates the CIA as the organisation which set up such a project. But the theory doesn't explain why any organisation (the CIA, the Boy Scouts, Laurel and Hardy's Sons of the Desert, whoever) would have done this.
The onus is on the 'Harvey and Lee' theory to come up with a plausible explanation for what it claims the CIA did: namely, set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers.
Until such an explanation emerges, the theory is incoherent.
Which came first, the bus or the Rambler?
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Jim Hargrove writes:
Plenty of people, including me, have debated Jim's 'Harvey and Lee' talking points on this forum. We have done this over and over and over again, for years and years. It goes like this:
Anyone who has debated religious fundamentalists will recognise the pattern.
Apart from the first one, all of the examples Jim gives are claims, interpretations of evidence. For each of those claims, the actual primary evidence (witness statements, documents such as school records, etc) can be interpreted in ways that do not require the invention of doppelgangers. Those alternative explanations are always more plausible than Jim's interpretations, not least because they do not require the invention of doppelgangers.
It really isn't controversial that alternative explanations exist for the evidence behind Jim's talking points. If Jim were genuinely interested in finding out the truth, he would acknowledge the obvious fact that these alternative explanations exist. He doesn't, because he is a closed-minded propagandist.
Jim describes his "evidence" as "substantial". By this he means that there are a lot of 'Harvey and Lee' talking points. But if the evidence for each talking point is weak, and can be more plausibly explained in other ways, the amount of such evidence is immaterial. Quality beats quantity. Flat-earthers can probably come up with plenty of talking points too.
Again, I and others have discussed and criticised Jim's talking points on this forum many times. We've given the matter far more time and attention than it deserves.
We have shown that there's no need to believe any of Jim's claims, because more plausible interpretations exist. Until Jim can show that his interpretations of the evidence are more plausible than everyone else's, there is indeed no point in carrying on.