Jeremy Bojczuk

Chris Barnard writes: That's true, but it's worth pointing out that most of the far-fetched tin-foil-hat theories will be put forward by people who genuinely believe that stuff, rather than by bad guys trying to muddy the waters. Sandy Larsen writes: I'm very much in favour of providing plausible explanations for inconsistencies and contradictions in the evidence. The problem with far-fetched tin-foil-hat theories like the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense and Lifton's body-alteration nonsense is that the explanations they provide are implausible. Not only that, but the theories themselves are incoherent. If there are reasonable, everyday explanations for inconsistencies in the evidence, it's irrational to use far-fetched explanations such as long-term doppelganger schemes or presidential body-snatching squads. A good way to tell whether an explanation is likely to be correct is to look at its basic premise. If the premise is internally coherent and is compatible with how the world normally works, the explanation is worth exploring. If not, it's very unlikely to be correct. Example one: Lifton's body-alteration explanation. This proposes that the wounds in JFK's back and head were surgically altered to implicate Oswald as the lone gunman, firing from the sixth floor of the book depository. But the wounds did not do what the theory says they did. The locations of the wounds, as given by the pathologists who examined the body, were too low to have been caused by shots fired from the sixth floor, by Oswald or anyone else. Lifton's theory is internally incoherent. Unless his body-alteration scenario was very incompetently implemented, it cannot have happened. Example two: Armstrong's double-doppelganger explanation. This proposes that a long-term scheme was set up involving two virtually identical Oswalds and two virtually identical Marguerites so that one of the Oswalds, by definition a native speaker of Russian, would be able to understand what was being said around him in Russian when he defected a decade or so after the scheme was set up. But you don't need to be a native speaker of Russian in order to understand Russian. A non-doppelganger American with a good knowledge of Russian would have been perfectly adequate for the task. The proposed scheme was extravagantly unnecessary. Armstrong's theory is internally incoherent. Unless the authorities set up a long-term doppelganger scheme for no purpose, it too cannot have happened. In each case, there will be inconsistencies in the evidence, mostly witnesses who say one thing versus other witnesses who say a contradictory thing. Whichever set of witnesses you decide to discard, a straightforward explanation is available: people often make mistakes when recalling things, especially traumatic events such as presidential assassinations and events that are supposed to have happened decades earlier, such as the non-existent Oswald doppelganger attending Stripling school, the prime 'Harvey and Lee' talking point which was comprehensively debunked by Mark Stevens here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/ The body-alteration nonsense and the double-doppelganger nonsense each rely on placing too much reliance on apparent inconsistencies in the evidence and too little reliance on obvious everyday explanations. In the case of the double-doppelganger nonsense, we know the likely culprit; the nonsense was partly invented by Jack White, who also believed that the moon landings were faked: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/5911-jack-whites-aulis-apollo-hoax-investigation-a-rebuttal/ Someone who thinks that the moon landings were faked would be a perfect match for the media's propaganda definition of 'conspiracy theorist'. Blatant nonsense like body-alteration and doppelgangers encourages the media to attach that label to critics of the lone-nut theory. That's why it needs to be opposed, at least when the nonsense is heavily promoted. On that note, does Sandy know why Jim Hargrove is taking a break from spamming threads with 'Harvey and Lee' talking points? Has he finally accepted that 'Harvey and Lee' is a lost cause? There is one possible explanation here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2208p50-dear-sandy#34511 Chris Barnard also writes: Indeed we do, Chris. Indeed we do.

I've never come across a plausible explanation of why Oswald would be flaunting two ideologicaly opposed newspapers in the backyard photographs, if he actually was the left-winger he claimed to be. It's like someone claiming to be a religious believer, and flaunting both a Bible and a Quran. Either Oswald's understanding of the ideology was very superficial indeed, or he was pretending. Since he associated in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 with so many right-wingers and so few left-wingers, I think we know the answer to that one.

Thanks for that, James. I'd guess you're referring to one or more of the images on my website's single-bullet theory page. You're welcome to use any of them, of course. If larger versions would work better, let me know; I may be able to find some. One of the media's techniques for deflecting criticism of the lone-nut theory is to portray all critics as raving crackpots: 'conspiracy theorists', in the pejorative sense of the phrase. Far-fetched theories that are obviously wrong and strongly promoted, such as Lifton's body-alteration nonsense or Armstrong's double-doppelganger nonsense, have the potential to be used for this purpose, as indeed Lifton's was in the 1980s. Anyone who questions the lone-nut theory should also be questioning the high-profile genuinely crackpot theories. I replied to Lifton on page 15: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26441-dieugenio-cranor-and-the-mole-my-mole-33120/?do=findComment&comment=418937. If he'd like to continue the conversation, that's fine with me.

Richard Booth writes: As Richard points out, the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense hasn't been thought out properly. We have the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald openly learning Russian, as several of his Marine buddies testified. We have him taking what appears to have been a fairly basic test in Russian and not doing particularly well in that test. We have him making frequent grammatical mistakes in Russian even after having spent two and a half years living among genuine native speakers of Russian. Clearly, he was not a native speaker of Russian, contrary to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine. Nor was he concerned about keeping his knowledge of Russian a secret, which also contradicts 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine. Not only that, but the basic idea behind the 'Harvey and Lee' long-term doppelganger scheme is incoherent. The idea is that the doppelganger who defected must have been a native speaker of Russian, so that he could secretly understand what was being said around him. But you don't need to be a native speaker in order to understand what is being said around you. All you need is a reasonably good command of the language. The whole purpose of the top-secret long-term doppelganger scheme was for a native speaker to do something a non-native speaker could have done. The scheme was unnecessary. There was simply no need to set up and maintain a scheme involving two Oswalds, two Marguerites, and all the other people who would have been necessary to keep the show on the road for a decade or more. If US intelligence wanted a false defector who could understand Russian, they could easily have found one from among the 2.5 million US servicemen who were active in the year of Oswald's defection. Take an intelligent, motivated person with a knack for languages, provide whatever additional training was required, and give him a ticket to Helsinki. The problem is: - If the defector Oswald was not a native speaker of Russian, the 'Harvey and Lee' theory breaks down because the theory requires him to have been a native speaker. - And if the defector Oswald was a native speaker of Russian, the 'Harvey and Lee' theory breaks down because the long-term doppelganger scheme was not necessary to fulfil its own stated purpose. Worryingly, people have been peddling this theory for twenty years or more, and none of them appear to have actually examined the theory's basic premise.

Cliff, Interesting. Harriman is someone I haven't given much thought to. I'll look into it. Sandy, That's good to know! But I think official 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine is that one doppelganger was in the second-floor lunchroom while the other was up on the sixth floor, shooting at Kennedy. Mathias, I suppose the danger of discovering evidence of involvement would depend on who was behind the assassination and on how many levels of insulation they had put in place between themselves and the people on the ground. A thorough and honest investigation could only come about through public pressure, then and now. Immediately after the assassination there wasn't sufficient public pressure for anything like that to happen. The politicians and administrators had no desire to rock the boat. Bureaucrats can easily be persuaded to cover things up if they believe that their institutions might be at risk. Although I wouldn't rule it out completely, I'm not aware of any convincing evidence that Oswald had an active role at all. The notion that he took a rifle to work is strongly contradicted by Frazier and Randle's consistent claims that Oswald's paper bag was much too short to have contained the rifle. The notion that the rifle was stored in the garage relies on dubious statements by Marina Oswald under duress, and on an even more dubious connection between the rifle and the blanket found in the garage. As Andrej points out, there are a number of plausible stories that might have persuaded Oswald to sneak a rifle into the building. The balance of the evidence, however, suggests that he did not do so. Given the ease of access to the book depository by outsiders, let alone insiders, it's not at all far fetched to suppose that the rifle was placed there without Oswald's knowledge.

Mathias Baumann writes: That might be true if the lone-nut scenario was part of the original plan. But this scenario was imposed on the investigating authorities after the event by political administrators like Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover in Washington (Gerald McKnight's Breach of Trust gives a good account of this). Whoever was behind the assassination may well have been happy for it to be interpreted as a conspiracy. If that's the case, the conspirators did not need to know, and wouldn't have cared, where Oswald was. The presence on the sixth floor of a rifle that could be traced to Oswald was enough to link him to the assassination. Oswald's apparent links to the Soviet and Cuban regimes would serve to link one or both of them to the assassination, and that would imply a conspiracy, whether Oswald was on the sixth floor or anywhere else. There's no need to suppose that Johnson, Hoover and others imposed the lone-nut scenario because they themselves were implicated in the assassination. They would have done so for straightforward institutional reasons. If the general public became convinced that a conspiracy had occurred, the public's distrust of established political institutions would increase, as indeed it did to some extent. If people get dangerous ideas in their heads, who knows what might happen? The Washington insiders would simply have been trying to preserve the institutions they identified with. When the shots were fired, Oswald could have been standing on the White House lawn, dressed as the Statue of Liberty and singing 'the Star-Spangled Banner', and he would still have been implicated in the assassination. That's true. We can't rule out the bystander option, and there are one or two other TSBD employees who weren't otherwise accounted for beyond any doubt. But there are good reasons to suppose that the figure in the doorway may be Oswald: (a) It looks not unlike him, in many people's opinion. It appears to be a man, dressed in casual clothing like that worn by Oswald, and with a hint of Oswald's receding hairline. (b) It fits with what we know of Oswald's movements at around the time of the assassination. There is only weak evidence placing him on the sixth floor during the shooting, and strong evidence placing him on the ground floor immediately before the shooting. (c) It also fits with his alibi, especially since the discovery last year of James Hosty's handwritten account of the alibi: http://www.prayer-man.com/then-went-outside-to-watch-p-parade/. On the other side of the argument, none of the people known to have been on the steps identified the figure as Oswald. Equally, they didn't identify the figure as anyone else either. The only way to be know for sure whether it is or isn't Oswald is to examine a good-quality copy of either the Darnell or Wiegman films: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26666-petition-darnell-and-wiegman-films/ These days, it's only Warren Commission defenders and 'Harvey and Lee' believers who need Oswald to have been on the sixth floor. For everyone else, having him conclusively identified as the figure on the steps would be the biggest positive development in the case for decades.

Mark Stevens writes: Jim should change this sentence from his website: To this: Not quite as snappy as Jim's version, but a lot more accurate.

Sandy Larsen writes: But that isn't a fact. It's speculation which is contradicted by the evidence I just mentioned in my reply to Jim. If anything is a fact, it's that the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald was not a native speaker of Russian. So, on the one hand, the hypothetical designers of the hypothetical 'Oswald Project' deliberately chose someone who did not have an American accent. But on the other hand, the hypothetical point of the hypothetical 'Oswald Project' was to convince the Soviet authorities that the defector was a hypothetical American and not someone who was a native speaker of Russian. It doesn't quite add up, does it? If you want to convince the Soviets that your defector is an American, an American accent is precisely what your defector needs to have. Someone who speaks Russian without an American accent is precisely what you do not want. Then add the problem I mentioned in an earlier comment: the hypothetical 'Oswald Project' did not, in hypothetical practice, require someone who was a native speaker of Russian. The hypothetical defector only needed to understand the language that was being spoken around him. You don't need to be a native speaker to do that. A non-native speaker could have done the hypothetical job perfectly well. The long-term doppelganger scheme was unnecessary. The 'Harvey and Lee' theory is self-contradictory nonsense, isn't it?

Jim Hargrove writes: If you go back to the second comment on page 9, you'll see quotations from four of Oswald's Marine buddies who seemed certain that he was teaching himself Russian while in the Marines. I'd guess the answer to Jim's question is: yes, every rational person believes that Oswald taught himself Russian while in the Marines. It's undeniable that Oswald was teaching himself Russian. Now, if he learned Russian at least partly through self-study, and if he performed less than outstandingly in a basic Russian language test, and if he was making frequent grammatical mistakes in Russian even after having spent two and a half years surrounded by native speakers of Russian, it's equally undeniable that he cannot have been a native speaker of Russian himself. And if he was not a native Russian speaker, the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is wrong.

Sandy Larsen writes: Problem 1: Belief is all it is. What evidence is there to support the notion of "multiple missions in Russia" in which "speaking [Russian] without an American accent would prove useful"? Problem 2: What sort of missions might these have been, given that the doppelganger's original mission involved him pretending to be an American? Was he supposed to re-defect, this time speaking perfect Russian with a native Russian accent, perhaps wearing a wig and fake glasses? Or, during his one trip to the Soviet Union, was he supposed to switch after a year or two as an American to the guise of a native Russian speaker? How would any of this be possible, since there was no way for the 'Harvey and Lee' masterminds to predict where in the Sovet Union the defector would be sent by the authorities? Also, did any of these missions involve the use of a bullet-proof Aston Martin with machine guns in the headlights and an ejector seat? Problem 3: The phrase 'Oswald Project' was coined by James Wilcott, whose concept contradicted all of the crazy features that are essential and unique elements of 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine. His Oswald was one person with one mother (not a pair of doppelgangers, each with a doppelganger mother), a native speaker of English (not of Russian), and was recruited while in the Marines (not several years earlier). Problem 4: When Oswald returned to the USA after two and a half years in the Soviet Union, he was still making frequent grammatical errors in Russian. How is this consistent with the notion that he was a native speaker of Russian? If the defector was not a native speaker of Russian, that's the end of the line for the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. Problem 5: How does Sandy's notion fit in with the thinking of John Butler, who is perhaps the leading theoretician currently working in the field of 'Harvey and Lee' studies? John's in-depth research and clear critical thinking lead him to conclude that there may have been three Oswalds, and that two of them were in the Soviet Union at the same time. Firstly, there were plenty of servicemen to choose from. According to https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1954-2014, there were around 2.5 million US servicemen (of whom 175,000 were Marines) in 1959, the year of the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald's defection. Finding a suitable defector wouldn't have involved much in the way of luck. Secondly, the mission wasn't particularly dangerous. The Soviet authorities executed some of their own traitors, but they wouldn't have done that to American false defectors. Thirdly, an American accent is precisely what would be expected of a defector with Oswald's cover story; see https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2208p25-dear-sandy#34400. Fourthly, it wouldn't have been difficult to find (and, if necessary, train) an American able to understand Russian to the level that 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine demanded. We are left with the problem that 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine required its defecting doppelganger to be a native speaker of Russian in order to perform a task that did not require a native speaker of Russian. The theory has been going for two decades or so. Did none of the believers ever think this stuff through?

Mathias Baumann writes: That's very likely. What sort of native speaker takes a basic test in his own language and then doesn't get full marks in that test? If that's the sort of native speaker the 'Harvey and Lee' long-term doppelganger scheme recruited, the scheme could have managed just as easily with a non-native speaker. And if it only needed a non-native speaker, it might as well not have existed, which of course it didn't. Joe Bauer writes: Mark Stevens writes: Those subtleties are exactly the things that distinguish native from non-native speakers, except in very rare cases of thoroughly assimilated non-native speakers. But we know that Oswald cannot have been a thoroughly assimilated native Russian speaker because of his relatively poor result in his Marines language test, not to mention the fact that he was still making grammatical mistakes in Russian after having lived in the Soviet Union for two and a half years. He was a native speaker of English, not a native speaker of Russian. And since he wasn't a native speaker of Russian, he cannot have been part of the imaginary 'Harvey and Lee' long-term doppelganger scheme. Incidentally, the 'ask/aks' switch is an example of metathesis, a well-known historical feature of many, if not most or all, languages. The modern English verb 'to ask' had in fact been through this process once before, when it was the Anglo-Saxon verb 'axian'. One linguistic community somewhere in medieval England began transposing the consonants, as Oswald's American linguistic community was to do hundreds of years later, and it caught on and became the accepted pronunciation.

Official 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine is that the long-term doppelganger scheme required its defecting doppelganger to have been a native speaker of Russian, so that he could understand what was being said around him in the Soviet Union. I'm glad that's been settled. Unfortunately, it leaves the believers with a problem. The doppelganger who was required to be a native speaker of Russian was given a task which did not require him to be a native speaker of Russian. The masterminds could have sent someone who had only a reasonably good level of Russian. The hypothetical long-term native-speaker doppelganger scheme was redundant. There was no need to have spent years recruiting and maintaining two virtually identical Oswalds, one of whom was a native speaker of Russian, not to mention two virtually identical Marguerites, their support staff, and all the other unlikely elements of this far-fetched scheme. Why bother? Surely there would have been plenty of American servicemen (or women) sufficiently intelligent and motivated to learn Russian to a reasonably good level, given official encouragement. All that the masterminds had to do was find one and provide him (or her) with whatever extra tuition was required. The 'Harvey and Lee' theory is both internally incoherent and unnecessary. You don't need to invent a top-secret long-term doppelganger scheme in order to account for Oswald's competence in Russian, or to explain his defection as some sort of intelligence operation, and certainly not to interpret the JFK assassination as a conspiracy.

Sandy Larsen writes that Jim Hargrove writes: The assumption seems to be that the tests were pitched at the same level. But it is unlikely that they were, since one was aimed at people whose native language was English, and the other at people learning a foreign language. The equivalent score in each test would indicate a higher level of competence in the former than the latter. For those who want to check the sources, Oswald's Marine records were interpreted by Colonel Allison Folsom (a he, not a she) in Warren Commission Hearings, vol.8, pp.309-310 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=317) . The pages of Oswald's records referred to by Col. Folsom are: - Folsom Exhibit no.1, p.106 (Hearings, vol.19, p.745): https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1136#relPageId=763 [Good luck trying to make sense of this one]. - Folsom Exhibit no.1, p.120 (Hearings, vol.19, p.757): https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1136#relPageId=775. This is the relevant section of Folsom's testimony: Mr Ely: And am I correct in asserting that on this [English] test Oswald received a rating of satisfactory? Colonel Folsom: This is correct. I believe USAF1 rates as satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Mr Ely: Right. Well, that is not entirely clear [They are trying to make sense of the document at p.106]. We have a rating code printed in the lower right-hand corner. Colonel Folsom: Well, they have two passing ones - satisfactory, and "D" with distinction, and "U2", unsatisfactory. Mr Ely: So he could have received a higher rating than he did? Colonel Folsom: This is correct. So Oswald may have reached the "with distinction" level for his English, although no-one seems sure of this, since the document on p.106 isn't easy to interpret. The document on p.120 shows that Oswald's score for "RV" (reading and vocabulary in English) was noticeably higher than his score for "arithmetic computation, arithmetical reasoning, and pattern analysis". There are two conclusions to draw from this: 1 - Oswald's English was probably much better than his Russian at that stage, in March 1959. 2 - I've just wasted 20 minutes of my time.

Jim Hargrove writes that Oswald Leaving aside the question of whether or not that's true, what Jim has written is consistent with Oswald being either a native or a non-native speaker of Russian. Jim's earlier comment ("reasonably fluent in the Russian language") suggests that Jim thinks he was not a native speaker. James Norwood appears to think otherwise. I'm unclear about the official 'Harvey and Lee' position on this, if there is one. Is Oswald's behaviour taken to imply that the defector was a native Russian speaker or not? If, according to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, Oswald was a native Russian speaker, why was this necessary if all he had to do was understand what was being said around him? If, according to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, Oswald was not a native Russian speaker, what was the point of the long-term doppelganger scheme?

Tracy Parnell writes: Someone with no knowledge of Russian would of course be liable to overestimate Oswald's competence. Whatever level they thought his Russian had reached, Oswald's Marine buddies knew that he was teaching himself the language, as we can see from a quick glance at volume 8 of the Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36) : James Anthony Botelho (p.315): "It was common knowledge that Oswald had taught himself to speak Russian." David Christie Murray (p.319): "When I knew him, he was studying Russian." Henry J. Roussel (pp.320-1): "I remember that Oswald could speak a little Russian ... I knew of Oswald's study of the Russian language ... I am under the impression that prior to studying Russian ..." Mack Osborne (pp.321-2): "Oswald was at that time studying Russian. He spent a great deal of his free time reading papers printed in Russian ... with the aid of a Russian-English dictionary. ... Because of the fact that he was studying Russian, fellow Marines sometimes jokingly accused him of being a Russian spy." The notion that Oswald didn't teach himself Russian is obviously mistaken. The questions that need answering are: - How much, if any, tuition did he receive while in the Marines, in addition to his self-teaching? - If he was a native speaker of Russian, why was he teaching himself the language? - If he was a native speaker of Russian, why was he using a Russian-English dictionary? To brush up on his English vocabulary? - If he was a native speaker of Russian, what was he doing in a top-secret long-term doppelganger scheme? - If he was not a native speaker of Russian, what was he doing in a top-secret long-term doppelganger scheme? Which leads me onto my next comment ...

Mathias Baumann writes: Actually, I was wrong. One of the defectors was not a native speaker of English, but I'll come back to that later. There doesn't seem to be much detailed information on many of the other defectors apart from three mentioned in HSCA Report, Appendix 12, pp.435-473 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=84#relPageId=439) : - Bruce Frederick Davis (p.441) had spent five years in the US Army before defecting, first to East Germany and then to the Soviet Union, in 1960. - Vladimir Sloboda (p.448), like Davis, had been in the US Army in West Germany before defecting first to East Germany and then to the Soviet Union in 1960. Sloboda had been born in Ukraine but ended up in the USA after the war as a displaced person, and became a US citizen. His native language was almost certainly Ukrainian rather than Russian, since he was placed in Lviv in the Ukrainian-speaking western part of Ukraine after his defection. The Russian-speaking minority was mostly confined to the eastern part of the country and to Crimea. - Robert Webster (p.449) had been in the US Navy but was a civilian at the time of his defection, which coincided almost exactly with that of Oswald. I've seen references to seven other men with military-type backgrounds who defected in the 18 months or so before 1960: one more from the Navy, four more from the Army, and two from the National Security Agency. I'm not aware that any of them were given Russian tests. In short, probably the only military-type defector to have been given Russian tests was the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald. As you point out, his performance in the tests was hardly consistent with that of someone whose native language was Russian. Oswald was clearly a native speaker of English. Among all the military defectors, Vladimir Sloboda was the ideal candidate for the role given by the 'Harvey and Lee' believers to the imaginary Oswald doppelganger, since Sloboda was the only defector who was a native member of the language community in which he lived after his defection.

Sandy Larsen writes: I'm sure Sandy is exaggerating for effect. What Jim offered was 0% proof: pure speculation, without any supporting evidence at all. If someone is making a claim about an important aspect of their theory, I think it's reasonable to ask them to provide a little more than pure speculation. Jim tried to resuscitate Armstrong's theory by claiming that "Hoover just altered a report or two to make the medical histories match". Which "report or two" is Jim referring to? That's a reasonable question to ask, isn't it? If you're making a claim like Jim's, it's up to you to at least identify the documents you think were altered. Once Jim has told us which documents he thinks were altered, we can then examine those documents to see whether or not his speculative claim has any merit. We wouldn't need 100% proof either way; the balance of probabilities will do. Which documents relating to Oswald's mastoidectomy did the FBI alter? Until Jim or anyone else puts forward more than speculation about which documents the FBI altered in this instance, we are obliged to assume that no documents relating to Oswald's mastoidectomy were altered. And if that's the case, the medical evidence shows that a central aspect of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is wrong. Armstrong knew that the body exhumed from Oswald's grave had undergone a mastoidectomy, contradicting a central element of his theory. He knew that his theory had been debunked two decades before he published his book. He deliberately withheld this information from his readers. Armstrong was pushing something he knew to be untrue. He was behaving like a cheap snake-oil salesman, wasn't he?

I'm not sure the 'Harvey and Lee' believers have thought this whole thing through. Just on one page, they offer two different accounts: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26644-the-far-reaching-influence-of-%E2%80%9Charvey-and-lee%E2%80%9D/page/2/ The first comment is by the thin-skinned James Norwood, who, in a rare break from trying to get his critics banned, wrote: But the final comment on that page, by Jim Hargrove, offers a different opinion: Was the subject of their improbable long-term doppelganger scheme a "flawless" (i.e. native or near-native level) speaker of Russian, or was he just "reasonably fluent"? John Armstrong seems to think that the defecting doppelganger needed to be a native speaker: As I understand it, 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine requires that one of the doppelgangers was a native speaker of Russian; the purpose of this was that the doppelganger who defected should be able to understand what was being said around him in Russian. But this native-speaker requirement fails for two reasons, practical and theoretical: The practical reason: It is far from certain (and that's being charitable) that the defector was actually a native speaker of Russian. Recordings survive of Oswald speaking English. He appears to have been a native speaker of English, just like the other US military types who defected at around the same time, none of whom were involved in an improbable long-term doppelganger scheme. The theoretical reason: You don't need to be a native speaker, or anywhere near that level, to be able to understand the language that's being used around you. Anyone who has learned a foreign language to a reasonable level knows this. The native-speaker requirement was unnecessary; Jim's "reasonably fluent" is all that's needed. Perhaps 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine does not require the defecting doppelganger to have been a native speaker of Russian. In this case, all that was needed was a native English-speaker who had learned sufficient Russian to understand what was going on around him, and the long-term doppelganger scheme was redundant. To put the problem another way: - If your long-term doppelganger scheme requires a native speaker, why did you choose someone who wasn't a native speaker? - If your long-term doppelganger scheme does not require a native speaker, what's the point of the scheme? Why waste time and money maintaining a decade-long charade involving two Oswalds, two Marguerites, and an unknown number of officials employed to fake and destroy inconvenient evidence? Why not just send a defector who had learned Russian in his teens, like ... ooh, I don't know, let's pick an example at random ... the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald? The speculative notion of a long-term doppelganger scheme was internally inconsistent, or it was redundant. Either way, it fails. Incidentally, one of Oswald's Soviet friends, Ernst Titovets, shows that the defector was learning Russian, and speaking it imperfectly, while in the Soviet Union, contrary to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine: http://johndelanewilliams.blogspot.com/2013/07/did-oswald-speak-russian-while-living.html While we're on the subject of internal inconsistencies in the linguistic area of 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, Greg Parker makes a good point here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2228-doc-norwood#34340 I think James Norwood is a member of that forum. I'd be interested to see what he has to say to Greg over there.

Mathias Baumann writes: Exactly. And even on Oswald's return to the USA after spending two and a half years in the company of native Russian speakers, he was frequently making grammatical mistakes. The mistakes were such that even a non-native speaker like Ruth Paine picked up on them. The fact that Oswald's Russian improved over the years, yet remained imperfect, shows clearly that he wasn't a native speaker. The claim that he was a native speaker of Russian seems to be the result of two main errors: Firstly, cherry-picking the evidence: selecting those witnesses who praised Oswald's Russian while ignoring those who pointed out his frequent mistakes. There are plenty of reasons why someone might describe Oswald's Russian as better than it actually was (e.g.: being polite; only describing one aspect of it; only witnessing a small amount of it). But there aren't many plausible reasons why a native speaker would consistently make grammatical mistakes, as Oswald did, even after having lived among genuine native speakers for years. Secondly, the argument from incomprehension: I simply can't understand how anyone could pick up Russian so quickly! The words are all different! And the alphabet looks funny! But it is a fact that some people happen to be much better than others at learning languages, just as some people are much better than others at athletic and artistic pursuits. With a certain amount of natural aptitude, sufficient motivation, and perhaps some tuition, there's nothing earth-shatteringly remarkable about Oswald's Russian.

I can't believe anyone is still repeating Jack 'the moon landings were faked' White's long-debunked 13-inch head nonsense! Oswald did not have a 13-inch head. Details here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1412-the-13-inch-head-explained-for-sandy If the Oswald doppelgangers were genuinely distinct in appearance, and any apparent differences were not due to obvious factors such as different lighting conditions, poses, or quality of photographic reproduction, it should be possible to identify those differences consistently in the photographic record. For example, one of the doppelgangers might have a more pointed chin and the other a more rounded chin. Or his eyebrows or mouth or ears might be longer or shorter or fatter or thinner than those of the other doppelganger. In each case, these differences would be visible consistently across many images. All the images of 'Harvey', for example, would show his wider mouth and thinner lips, or whatever features contrasted with those of 'Lee'. Would a 'Harvey and Lee' believer care to enlighten us as to the physical differences between the doppelgangers? Once you've done that, take Jack 'no planes hit the World Trade Center' White's old montage of 70-odd mugshots and tell us which images are of which doppelganger. If there are differences, those differences will be consistent across the photographic record. After all, the whole point of Jack 'I helped to think up the Harvey and Lee nonsense' White's montage was to show that there were two Oswalds. Alternatively, if you aren't able to point out any consistent differences in the photographs of 'Harvey' and 'Lee', what do you think are the odds that two unrelated boys from different parts of the world, chosen at a young age in the hope that they would end up looking identical when they grew up, did indeed turn out to look identical? Lee Harvey Oswald was one real person and not a pair of imaginary doppelgangers, wasn't he?

Jim Hargrove writes: And on page 14 I pointed out weaknesses in all of Jim's speculative scenarios: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26644-the-far-reaching-influence-of-%E2%80%9Charvey-and-lee%E2%80%9D/?do=findComment&comment=426790 So far, Jim hasn't responded to the points I made, although he has provided us with a couple of unrelated 'Harvey and Lee' talking points, which was nice of him. Here's what appears to be Jim's favourite speculative scenario: I asked Jim two questions, so far unanswered, about this speculative scenario: - Which documents did Hoover alter? - What evidence can Jim produce to show that these documents were altered? These questions are perfectly reasonable, aren't they? Jim should be able to cite evidence to support his claims. So let's see that evidence. As I pointed out in my reply on page 14, I asked Jim the same questions the previous time he speculated in this way, and on that occasion too he failed to produce any evidence: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26529-was-it-really-just-a-mole-hunt-about-oswald/page/12/ Until Jim comes up with something solid to support his speculations, we are left with the conclusions that one mastoidectomy was performed on one Oswald, and that the theory Armstrong put forward in Harvey and Lee was wrong. I'll try again. If "Hoover just altered a report or two to make the medical histories match", which documents did the FBI alter?

Let's see if we can prise an answer out of Jim on the main question that he has been working hard to avoid answering. His guru, John Armstrong, withheld information which proved that a central element of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory was false. Why did he do this? Here are a few possible answers: Answer A Armstrong forgot. He was so busy with other things, such as tossing a coin to decide which of the many photographs of Oswald belonged to which of his two imaginary doppelgangers, that it slipped his mind. He was going to include that information, honest, he really was, but he was so busy, you know how it is, and he just forgot. Answer B There wasn't room in Armstrong's book. Harvey and Lee contains only 900 or so pages of text, and there was simply no room to squeeze in one extra sentence along the lines of: Or, as it might have appeared in his book: Also, the dog ate his last sheet of typing paper, so he couldn't have mentioned it even if he wanted to. Answer C Armstrong hadn't read the scientists' report, and didn't know that it disproved a central element of his theory. OK, so he mentioned the report several times in his book, but those passages in his book were fakes, inserted by the FBI to make him look like a cheap snake-oil salesman. Answer D Armstrong was dishonest. He knew that a central element of his theory was false. He deliberately failed to mention the fact that the body in Oswald's grave had undergone a mastoidectomy. He hoped that his readers wouldn't know that his theory had been disproved two decades before he published his book. Which of those answers does Jim find the most persuasive?

Jim Hargrove speculates: Which reports did Hoover alter? What evidence can Jim produce to show that these reports were altered? Jim made the same claim in an earlier thread. Even after repeated prompting, he was unable to produce these supposedly altered documents, let alone show that they were altered. I helped him by producing a few candidates myself, but he still couldn't do it: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26529-was-it-really-just-a-mole-hunt-about-oswald/page/12/ To accommodate his speculative switcheroo, Jim needs to rewrite John Armstrong's biographies of his two fictional doppelgangers. Armstrong goes into a lot of detail early in Harvey and Lee, making it clear that the mastoidectomy operation must have been performed on imaginary doppelganger A. How would Jim transfer the operation to imaginary doppelganger B? He can't just click his fingers; he needs to reconstruct the biographies of the two imaginary doppelgangers. How would he go about doing this? Jim also speculates: Where is the documentary evidence for this? Where is the medical report that states the name of the hospital, the name of the surgeon, and the date of the operation? We have such a report for a mastoidectomy operation carried out on the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald. It's Warren Commission Exhibit 2218 (Hearings, vol.25, p.118). You can find it online at https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1141#relPageId=148. Where is the equivalent report for Jim's imaginary doppelganger? All Jim has produced is a decades-old recollection of a completely different medical treatment, at a hospital that hadn't been built at the time mentioned in that decades-old recollection. Jim's third speculation: If this unlikely event happened, we are missing one set of medical reports for a mastoidectomy operation on a boy named Lee Harvey Oswald. We are also missing a body, complete with a mastoidectomy defect, of a Lee Harvey Oswald. We should have two of each, but we only have one. Where is the missing medical report? Where is the missing body? Jim likes the idea of evidence, or as he often puts it, EVIDENCE! Would he be kind enough to produce the relevant physical EVIDENCE! to support the speculations he has given us? In the absence of such EVIDENCE!, all we have is one medical report of one mastoidectomy operation carried out on one Lee Harvey Oswald, and one body exhumed from one grave of one Lee Harvey Oswald bearing one mastoidectomy defect. The only rational conclusion is that the one medical report applies to the one body, and that Oswald was one person and not a pair of doppelgangers. If there was only one mastoidectomy, as the current EVIDENCE! indicates, the theory put forward in Harvey and Lee is wrong. And then there is the question Jim won't answer, the one about his guru John Armstrong's apparent dishonesty. Armstrong deliberately neglected to mention in his book the mastoidectomy defect that falsified the biographies of his imaginary doppelgangers. The obvious explanation would be that he did this in the hope that his readers wouldn't notice that his theory had been debunked two decades earlier. Will Jim admit that his guru, John Armstrong, appears to be no more honest than a snake-oil salesman? Or does Jim have a less unflattering explanation for Armstrong's failure to mention the mastoidectomy defect?

Sandy Larsen writes: What we have is one set of medical records, and one body to which those records might apply: - One set of records for a mastoidectomy operation carried out on someone with the name Lee Harvey Oswald. - One body exhumed from a grave in which someone with the name Lee Harvey Oswald had been buried. - One mastoidectomy defect on that one body. If there were two Lee Harvey Oswalds, each of whom had undergone a mastoidectomy operation, we should have two sets of medical records and two bodies with mastoidectomy defects. But we don't; we only have one of each. The rational conclusion is that the one set of medical records applies to the one body with the one mastoidectomy defect. This isn't difficult to understand, surely? If you want to propose the existence of a second Lee Harvey Oswald who underwent a second mastoidectomy operation, you really need to explain a few things: - Where and when did the second operation take place? - What happened to the medical records for the second operation? - What happened to the second Lee Harvey Oswald, on whom the second mastoidectomy operation was performed? Until Sandy or anyone else can offer plausible answers to these questions, and not just empty speculation, the only rational conclusion continues to be that only one mastoidectomy operation was carried out on only one Lee Harvey Oswald. And if there was only one mastoidectomy operation, the theory put forward in Harvey and Lee is wrong. The words of the prophet Armstrong are written on the ROKC walls: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2208p25-dear-sandy#34311

James Norwood writes: Since the 'Harvey and Lee' believers have used the word 'screed' more than once recently, I decided to dust off my old hardback dictionary, to see if the word possessed a meaning of which I was unaware: A "long or prolonged ... piece of writing" is what I guess they find objectionable. The post of mine that James objected to contained ... let me just add it up ... 255 words. Was that too much for James to take in at one sitting? I notice that his reading comprehension skills are somewhat lacking when it comes to "Charles Dunne" (real name: Robert Charles-Dunne). Jim's reply to my post contained 836 words. Does that count as a screed? It looks like three-and-a-bit screeds, if you ask me. Of course, the objection isn't really to the number of words, is it? What the believers are objecting to is having to face up to a serious problem with their beloved yet nonsensical theory. John Armstrong's variation on the old Oswald doppelganger notion was debunked by solid scientific evidence two decades before he published his book. You can understand why they don't like to be reminded of this. As for "analysis of the evidence", that is precisely what I was doing, and precisely what Jim avoids doing by repeatedly depositing piles of 'Harvey and Lee' talking points. Jim seems to be under the misapprehension that the strength of the evidence is determined by its quantity. If I put forward 16 pieces of evidence and the unbelievers only put forward 15, I win! I'm certain he isn't really as stupid as his behaviour makes him look. Jim surely understands that you can't argue against the mastoidectomy evidence by piling up a load of talking points that have nothing to do with the mastoidectomy evidence. Again, he is reduced to doing this because his only other option is to admit that Armstrong was wrong and apparently dishonest. Since James is so keen on "analysis of the evidence", let's see what he can do with the mastoidectomy evidence. So far, three 'Harvey and Lee' believers, including the guru himself (praise be unto him!), have offered three analyses, each of them faulty: 1 - John Armstrong: the doppelganger who underwent the operation was not the doppelganger who was buried in Oswald's grave. We know this is incorrect, because it is contradicted by solid scientific evidence. Armstrong himself knew that what he wrote was incorrect. 2 - Sandy Larsen: both doppelgangers underwent the operation. Unfortunately, Sandy has produced neither a second set of medical records nor a second doppelganger with a mastoidectomy defect, so that's the end of that idea. (Incidentally, is it true that Sandy is now a full professor?) 3 - Jim Hargrove: the doppelganger who underwent the operation was the one who was buried in Oswald's grave. Promising, but Jim has failed to explain how his speculation fits with the rest of the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense. He needs to rewrite the biographies of the two fictional characters, something that may not be possible. Would James Norwood like to have a go? It involves some "analysis of the evidence", so I'm sure he'll be keen to add his opinion, fully supported by relevant evidence, of course. If John Butler is reading this, let's see what he has to say, too. When James has done that, perhaps he can do what Jim has been reluctant to do, and tell us what he thinks of Armstrong's apparent dishonesty in failing to mention the mastoidectomy defect on the body in Oswald's grave. As I put it in the post Jim deliberately avoided answering: (Oh dear. I think I've done another screed. James won't be pleased.)