Jeremy Bojczuk
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Posts posted by Jeremy Bojczuk
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Sandy Larsen writes:
Quotewe also shouldn't be here wasting our time studying or believing in a massive government coverup of the JFK assassination. Because as implausible as the H&L and body alteration theories are, the massive government coverup theory is even more so!
What? The "massive government coverup" isn't implausible at all. Political cover-ups happen all the time. There is plenty of evidence that a cover-up happened in the JFK assassination. There are plausible explanations for the behaviour of the people involved in that cover-up.
Body-alteration schemes and long-term doppelganger schemes, on the other hand, do not happen all the time. There is no serious evidence for either of them that does not have an alternative, more plausible, explanation.
More importantly, both the body-alteration nonsense and the long-term doppelganger nonsense contain internal contradictions, as I pointed out in the thread which seems to have prompted Sandy's outburst (http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26441-dieugenio-cranor-and-the-mole-my-mole-33120/). Let's look at each in turn.
According to David Lifton's body-alteration theory, the wounds in the rear of JFK's head and torso were manufactured in order to implicate Oswald as the lone gunman firing from the sixth floor. But that can't be true, because the pathologists' location of the wounds, when combined with other, uncontroversial evidence, showed that the wounds were too low to implicate a sixth-floor gunman, whether Oswald or anyone else.
Lifton also claimed that all the shots were fired from the front. But that can't be true either, because we know that a bullet struck Governor Connally in his back and came out of his chest. As we discovered on the thread I mentioned, Lifton seems to think that Connally's wounds were manufactured too.
According to John Armstrong's 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the long-term doppelganger scheme required the defector to be a native speaker of Russian so that he could understand the language that was being spoken around him when he defected a decade or so after the scheme had been set up. But that can't be true, because you don't need to be a native speaker of a language in order to understand that language.
The hypothetical long-term doppelganger scheme was unnecessary, as I explained in these two comments:
Since JFK's wounds did not do what Lifton's theory claimed they did, the theory is internally inconsistent. Since Armstrong's theory required the doppelganger to be a native speaker of Russian in order to perform a task which did not require him to be a native speaker of Russian, that theory too is internally inconsistent. If a theory is internally inconsistent, it cannot offer a correct explanation, and should be discarded.
The "government coverup" which prevented an honest investigation of the assassination:
(a) was perfectly plausible, since cover-ups are a common feature of the political world; and
(b) made sense on its own terms, since there are obvious institutional reasons to explain why it was done.
Sandy's theories, on the other hand:
(a) were implausible, since presidential body-alteration schemes and long-term doppelganger schemes are not common features of the known world; and
(b) did not make sense on their own terms, since the wounds were put in the wrong places and the defecting doppelganger did not need to be a native speaker of Russian.
QuoteThere are some problems with both the H&L and body alteration theories. But rather than throw the theories out because of this (which is what Jeremy would do), it makes a lot more sense to first try and fix the problems. That is what I do.
As I've pointed out, there's more than enough reason already to discard both of these far-fetched theories. If Sandy wants to try to rescue them, that's fine with me. He could start by returning to the unanswered question which seems to have generated this thread, and explain why the 'Harvey and Lee' theory required its defecting doppelganger to be a native speaker of Russian in order to perform a task which did not require him to be a native speaker of Russian.
Sandy is to be commended for admitting that those far-fetched theories have problems. I don't recall Jim Hargrove ever admitting to such a heretical notion. Perhaps Jim could try to restore his credibility by answering the reasonable question posed by Mark Stevens here:
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteWhen there isn’t an active H&L thread, Mr. Bojczuk posts his attacks against me and H&L in any thread available. Why is he so interested in me? Is he keeping a dossier? Why?
There's no need for paranoia! I'm not attacking Jim, just pointing out problems with the ridiculous theory he has been promoting for "more than 20 years" (a brave admission for anyone to make).
I was just curious about Jim's failure to react in his usual way to a couple of related points on a different thread. Firstly, there's an unanswered question from Mark Stevens about the need for Jim to update his website:
Secondly, on that thread we established two points of 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine:
(a) the hypothetical defecting doppelganger was a native speaker of Russian; and
(b) the purpose of the hypothetical double-doppelganger scheme was to allow the defector to understand what was being said around him in Russian.
But there's an obvious problem here. You do not need to be a native speaker to understand the language that is being used around you.
This is a central feature of 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, and it doesn't make sense. Doctrine required the defecting doppelganger to be a native speaker of Russian in order to perform a task that did not require him to be a native speaker of Russian. The masterminds who supposedly set up the hypothetical long-term double-doppelganger scheme could not have done so for the purpose Jim and others have claimed.
Perhaps, instead, the defecting doppelganger was not a native speaker of Russian but merely a "reasonably fluent" speaker, as Jim suggested elsewhere:
QuoteThe real purpose was to take a youth, reasonably fluent in the Russian language, give him an American ID, and eventually send him as a U.S. spy in the Soviet Union who secretly understood Russian.
A "reasonably fluent" non-native speaker would be suitable for the task prescribed by 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, and would overcome the native-speaker problem.
But there's a problem here, too. If a "reasonably fluent" speaker is all that's required, there would have been no need to go to all the trouble and expense of setting up and maintaining the hypothetical long-term double-doppelganger scheme, with its two Oswalds, two Marguerites, and who knows how many assistants and administrators.
The masterminds could have saved themselves a decade or more of bother simply by recruiting one person with a talent for languages from among the 2.5 million American servicemen active at the time of the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald's defection. As a bonus, almost all of these 2.5 million candidates would have had a genuine, watertight American background, thereby disposing of yet another requirement of the hypothetical 'Harvey and Lee' double-doppelganger scheme.
We're left with a problem. If the defector needed to understand Russian, it doesn't matter whether he was or was not a native speaker of Russian. Either way, the long-term double-doppelganger scheme was unnecessary.
How would Jim resolve this problem? He should feel free to reply to the points raised by Mark Stevens and me on whichever thread he prefers.
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Chris Barnard writes:
QuoteIts very frustratingly plausible that the state or whoever was indeed responsible for the JFK assassination and those looking to maintain the W/C narrative would proliferate disinformation and easily provable false scenarios in order to muddy the waters.
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:
Quotemany researchers believe that contradictory evidence should be explained. That is what the legitimate H&L and body alteration theories attempt to do.
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:
QuoteWe all know there are people with IQ’s less than 90 that are impressionable that pick this stuff up as gospel
Indeed we do, Chris. Indeed we do.
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14 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:
I think Oswald was never genuinely interested in Communisum. He never met a real communist in his life. And a real communist would not subscribe to both a Stalinist and a Trotksyite newspaper.
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.
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7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
BTW, the idea that Jeremy is an "Ozzie did it" zealot is wrong. There should not even be the implication of that. In fact, in a video we are putting up soon at K and K, we are using a demonstration by him of the back wound. Because one disagrees with Armstrong and Lifton does not mean one buys the WC. Not even close. There is some interesting work at ROKC, which Jeremy is, or was, a part of.
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.
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Richard Booth writes:
Quotewhy is he speaking Russian and taking a Russian test when he's in California? You would think that he would NOT be given a Russian test nor would he advertise his interest in the Russian language lest later on down the line Soviets find this out ...
If the whole purpose of having Harvey Oswald is so you have this person who secretly understands, speaks, reads and writes in Russian then you wouldn't be advertising it in ways that could be discovered if the KGB were to go and investigate.
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.
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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,
QuoteHow could they be sure that the investigation would not uncover evidence of their involvement? Only if a thorough and honest investigation could be forestalled.
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.
QuoteNow if Oswald was not on the 6th floor, what was his role in your opinion? ... Why would Oswald bring a rifle to work that day if he wasn't going to use it? Or did someone else put it there? And if so, how did they know that Oswald was hiding it in Ruth Paine's garage?
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.
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Mathias Baumann writes:
QuoteBut for that the conspirators needed to have some control over him. ... So they had to make sure they knew where he was. And what better way than putting him in the 6th floor window with a rifle?
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.
QuoteI also think that we cannot discard the possibility that Prayer Man is not one of the TSBD staff at all but just a random bystander.
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.
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Mark Stevens writes:
QuoteIf I'm wrong, you [Jim] really should update your website.
Jim should change this sentence from his website:
QuoteHARVEY was an ideal candidate to “defect” to the Soviet Union and work as an undercover agent who secretly understood Russian.
To this:
QuoteHARVEY was an over-qualified, far from ideal candidate to “defect” to the Soviet Union and work as an undercover agent who secretly understood Russian, because HARVEY was a native speaker of Russian and you don't need to be a native speaker to secretly understand the language that is being spoken around you.
The whole HARVEY and LEE project was unnecessary. US intelligence could have saved all the trouble and expense of a decade-long project by simply identifying an American with a knack for languages, who would work as an undercover agent who secretly understood Russian.
Not quite as snappy as Jim's version, but a lot more accurate.
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Sandy Larsen writes:
Quotethe fact that the designers of the Oswald Project chose a native speaker of Russian for the mission rather than a Russian-taught spy who'd likely have an American accent.
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?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteDoes anyone here believe Oswald taught himself the Russian language while in the Marines?
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.
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteI believe that the designers of the Oswald Project ... hoped Oswald could perform multiple missions in Russia or with Russians, and that his speaking without an American accent would prove useful for those missions.
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.
QuoteEven if they were lucky enough to find a young man willing to learn Russian and willing to perform a dangerous mission in Russia, they'd end up with a person who spoke Russian with an American accent. And who knows what level of Russian proficiency he could achieve.
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?
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Mathias Baumann writes:
QuoteAs far as I know Oswald took only one Russian test. So it probably was "only" a lower-range test.
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:
QuoteSurely a planted foreign born Oswald double would not be so fined tuned and prepped with such obscure regional and racial difference dialect subtleties in his English speaking.
Mark Stevens writes:
QuoteI don't for a single moment believe the person in the video saying "axed me the question" is anything other than an American born in the South.
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.
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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.
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Sandy Larsen writes that Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteOswald scored as well in a Russian-language exam as he did in tests of his English.
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.
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Jim Hargrove writes that Oswald
Quotewas a U.S. spy who successfully worked in the Soviet Union understanding everything that was said about him but pretending he barely understood a word.
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?
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Tracy Parnell writes:
QuoteHis ability was in the eye of the beholder. To the Marines, most of whom presumably had no Russian speaking ability at all, he seemed to be reading and speaking Russian.
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 ...
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Mathias Baumann writes:
Quotewhat do we know about the "other US military types who defected"? Were they given Russian tests too?
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.
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Sandy Larsen writes:
QuoteJeremy won't allow H&L researchers and students to hypothesize. He demands 100% proof of every facet of the H&L theory before he thinks the theory can even be discussed.
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?
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I'm not sure the 'Harvey and Lee' believers have thought this whole thing through. Just on one page, they offer two different accounts:
The first comment is by the thin-skinned James Norwood, who, in a rare break from trying to get his critics banned, wrote:
Quotethis man who lived briefly in her [Ruth Paine's] home and spoke flawless Russian
But the final comment on that page, by Jim Hargrove, offers a different opinion:
QuoteThe real purpose was to take a youth, reasonably fluent in the Russian language, give him an American ID, and eventually send him as a U.S. spy in the Soviet Union who secretly understood Russian.
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:
QuoteOne of the requirements for infiltrating an agent into a foreign country is that he/she have an intimate knowledge of the local language. … And there is little point in sending an American agent, taught in the United States to speak a Slavic or Oriental language, to infiltrate these countries because they would speak with an accent. One way to avoid the problems of physical appearance and accent is to recruit local residents or former residents living abroad.
(Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p.10)
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.
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Mathias Baumann writes:
Quotethe results from his test in the military were ... quite far from what we would expect from a native speaker (especially if we consider his performance in listening comprehension).
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.
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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?
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteI have described to him, repeatedly, possible scenarios explaining the mastoidectomy
And on page 14 I pointed out weaknesses in all of Jim's speculative scenarios:
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:
QuoteIt was Russian-speaking Harvey, not American-born Lee, who had the mastoidectomy all along. Hoover just altered a report or two to make the medical histories match.
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?
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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:
QuoteThe scientists' report of Oswald's exhumation shows that the body in Oswald's grave had undergone a mastoidectomy, falsifying my claim that the body in the grave was that of an imaginary long-term doppelganger who had not undergone a mastoidectomy, and proving that a central element of my theory was false.
Or, as it might have appeared in his book:
QuoteThe scientists' report of Oswald's exhumation shows that the body in Oswald's grave had undergone a mastoidectomy, falsifying my claim that the body in the grave was that of an imaginary long-term DOPPELGANGER who had not undergone a mastoidectomy, and proving that a central element of MY THEORY was FALSE.
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?
Why Jeremy Bojczuk is wrong about the Harvey & Lee theory and Lifton's body alteration theory.
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted · Edited by Jeremy Bojczuk
I wrote:
Jim Hargrove disagreed:
But in another thread, I asked for clarification on this point of doctrine, and Sandy confirmed that "John Armstrong's H&L theory states that Oswald was a native Russian speaker." (The emphasis was Sandy's.)
So what is the accepted wisdom? Was the defecting doppelganger a native speaker of Russian or not? Either way, there's a problem for the 'Harvey and Lee' faithful:
- If the doppelganger was a native speaker of Russian, why was this necessary if his task was to understand the people around him who were speaking Russian? You don't need to be a native speaker to do this.
- If the doppelganger was not a native speaker of Russian, why was the long-term doppelganger scheme necessary? You don't need such a scheme in order to send to the Soviet Union a false defector who understood spoken Russian.
Whether the defecting doppelganger was a native speaker of Russian or not, the long-term doppelganger scheme was redundant. The masterminds behind the scheme needn't have bothered recruiting two Oswald doppelgangers, two Marguerite doppelgangers, and all the background staff required to make the scheme work. They needn't have spent a decade and who knows how much money keeping this unnecessary show running.
All the masterminds needed to do was recruit one American with a talent for languages. There were 2.5 million American servicemen active at the time of the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald's defection, of whom 175,000 were Marines. There must have been any number of candidates who were capable of learning sufficient Russian for the task.
Not only that, but the chosen candidate would have had a genuine American background, thereby eliminating the need for the defecting doppelganger to fake the identity of the non-defecting doppelganger, and causing another requirement of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory to go up in smoke.
Once the 'Harvey and Lee' brains trust has finally agreed on whether its fictitious doppelganger was or was not a native speaker of Russian, perhaps it could get its collective heads together and decide on what, exactly, the point of the 'Harvey and Lee' double-doppelganger scheme was, and why it was necessary.