Jeremy Bojczuk

I've replied to the point Jim made. Let's see if he will reply to the point I made. He's avoided it several times, so I'm not optimistic. If he avoids answering the question again, we'll know why, won't we? Jim claimed that Which documents must Hoover have altered? Once we've identified the documents in question, we will be able to judge how likely it is that they were altered. But if there's no good evidence that they were altered, or if Jim is unable to identify any such documents, we will be left with a problem: the mastoidectomy defect on the body in Oswald's grave shows that the operation must have been performed on the wrong imaginary doppelganger, and a fundamental element of 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine will be shown to be false. Here is the relevant passage of Scripture: According to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, the operation was performed on the imaginary doppelganger who was not buried in Oswald's grave. But according to the scientific report of Oswald's exhumation, the body in the grave had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy operation. The few remaining 'Harvey and Lee' believers must find an explanation for this discrepancy. Jim seems to think that the operation had been performed on the other imaginary doppelganger all along, and that this necessitated the alteration of certain documents by the FBI. But he isn't keen on filling in the details, for some reason. Of course, the obvious explanation for the discrepancy is that the operation was performed not on an imaginary doppelganger at all, but on an actual person: the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald. Which documents did Hoover alter in order to cover up the operation that was carried out on the wrong imaginary doppelganger?

Jim Hargrove writes: Was I mocking Mr Butler? All I did was point out that What's wrong with that? It's a factual statement. Mr Butler's approach to the photographic evidence is very much like that of Mr White, who would look at a photograph, spot what appeared to be an anomaly, ignore the obvious everyday explanations for the apparent anomaly, and jump to the conclusion that the photograph must therefore be a fake. You can find an example of John Butler's version of Jack White's approach to the photographic evidence on this thread: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25659-mass-hysteria-in-dealey-plaza/ Here's an excerpt of Mr Butler's wisdom, from that page: Mr White used this technique not just in helping to invent the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense, but also in his other main contribution to human knowledge, his claim that the moon landings were faked. That claim has been taken to pieces several times. Here are a couple of examples: - http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/5911-jack-whites-aulis-apollo-hoax-investigation-a-rebuttal/ - http://www.clavius.org/jackwhite.html Even Mr Butler himself doesn't object to the comparison I made. He writes: Jack White was a genuine tin-foil hatter, the sort of person whose far-fetched and poorly supported claims allow the media to portray all critics of the lone-nut theory as irrational 'conspiracy theorists'.

A few days ago, Jim Hargrove wrote: I've asked Jim a question about this statement a couple of times, and he has yet to offer a reply, so I'll try again. Which document or documents must Hoover have altered? It's all very well to point out that J Edgar Hoover wasn't a very nice person, and that the FBI sometimes altered documents and put pressure on witnesses, and all the rest of it. But we can't assume that just because a document in the JFK case exposes the 'Harvey and Lee' theory as make-it-up-as-you-go-along speculation, the document must be a fake. We need to find out whether there are any other reasons to suggest that a particular document isn't authentic, and to do that we need to know which document or documents Jim is referring to. So which documents must Hoover have altered, in order for the mastoidectomy operation to have been carried out on imaginary doppelganger Y (in contravention of received 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine), instead of on imaginary doppelganger X (as John Armstrong claimed, a claim which was contradicted by solid scientific evidence nearly two decades before he published the believers' holy book)? Which brings us to another, more important question which Jim has so far understandably refused to answer several times. Why did John Armstrong not even mention the existence of the mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave? Armstrong must have known about the mastoidectomy defect, and he must have known that it contradicted a fundamental element of his speculative theory, but he didn't try to explain the contradiction. Instead, he neglected to inform his readers that this inconvenient fact even existed. This deliberate omission must have been done in the expectation that his readers wouldn't be as familiar with the evidence as he was, and that the more gullible of his readers wouldn't be aware that he was misleading them. Is there a credible reason for this behaviour that doesn't make Armstrong look dishonest?

Jim Hargrove writes: If the defector needed to understand what was being said around him, he would have required only a reasonable knowledge of Russian. He would not have required an expert, near-native command of the language. They needn't have sent an imaginary native Russian-speaking doppelganger; they could have sent the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald instead, which indeed they did. The whole idea of the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense is that the doppelganger who defected was an expert speaker of Russian, and one who did not speak with a noticeable accent, as a native English-speaking American almost certainly would. Here is the relevant passage from Scripture: Has there been a change in doctrine? To avoid confusion, perhaps a believer would be kind enough to explain the current, official 'Harvey and Lee' position on a couple of things: Firstly, how well did the defecting doppelganger speak, understand and read Russian? Was he an expert (a native speaker, for example) or was he merely competent (the level you might expect of an American who had learned the language in his teens and early twenties, for example)? Did the defecting doppelganger speak Russian with an accent, or not? Did he make grammatical mistakes, or not? Secondly, how does this level of accomplishment in Russian fit into the long-term doppelganger scheme? In other words, if doctrine still requires the defecting doppelganger to have been an expert speaker of Russian, why did he keep making grammatical mistakes and speaking with a noticeable accent (just as a native English-speaking American would do) even after having lived among fellow native speakers for two and a half years? Or, if doctrine no longer requires the defecting doppelganger to have been an expert speaker of Russian, why invent the fictional doppelganger scheme in the first place? The required level of Russian would mean that the defector could easily have been a native English-speaking American who had learned the language in his teens and early twenties. In this case, Oswald's acquisition of Russian would be just one aspect of his communist-sympathiser façade, helping to make him palatable to the Soviet authorities. Either Oswald learned Russian as part of the plan for his defection, or his independent acquisition of Russian was a happy accident which led him to be chosen to defect. The native Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee / Russian World War Two orphan (delete as appropriate) doppelganger was a figment of a paranoid imagination. It was the one and only, real-life, historical, native English-speaking Lee Harvey Oswald who defected, wasn't it?

John Butler's photographic knowledge and analytical skills make him the worthy heir of the late Jack "the moon landings were faked" White, co-creator of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. He has even been honoured with his own thread here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2201-john-butler-photo-analyst-extraordinare

Jim Hargrove writes: The FBI messed about with a camera which may have been owned by Oswald or may have been owned by Michael Paine or may not have been owned by either of them. That proves that there was a top-secret long-term doppelganger scheme involving two boys from two different countries, native speakers of two different languages, who were selected for the scheme at an early age in the hope that they would turn out to look identical! And it proves that the two boys magically did turn out to look identical, except that one of them had a 13-inch head and one of them had a missing tooth! And each boy had a doppelganger mother named Marguerite! And both doppelganger boys were arrested in the Texas Theater within minutes of each other and each told the cops his name was Oswald but no-one in the Dallas police department noticed! And one of the doppelganger boys had been given an unnecessary mastoidectomy operation in a hospital that hadn't been built yet! Back in the real world, there's good evidence that the historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in some way with one or another intelligence organisation. But the idea that he was actually two people, who were members of a long-term doppelganger scheme from an early age, is probably the most ridiculous way to explain this evidence, just as it's the most ridiculous way to explain the evidence that Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City and perhaps also in Dallas. Well, it's the most ridiculous explanation that doesn't involve little green men and shape-shifting lizards. There's a discrepancy between a document and the memories of people who were interviewed several decades after the event by someone with a bizarre agenda to promote. That proves that there was a top-secret long-term doppelganger scheme which involved ... well, you can add all the crazy details for yourselves. You've no doubt also worked out the most likely reason for the discrepancy. Not only is the notion of a long-term doppelganger scheme a very poor explanation for events in the life of the historical Lee Harvey Oswald, but it is contradicted by the solid scientific evidence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in Oswald's grave. The real, historical Oswald had undergone a mastoidectomy operation; obviously, his was the body that was in his own grave. According to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, however, Oswald's grave was occupied by the body of the imaginary doppelganger who had not undergone the operation. The author of the Harvey and Lee book was adamant about this. Unless the few remaining 'Harvey and Lee' believers can produce a reasonable explanation for this discrepancy, that's the end of the road for the far-fetched 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense. But it looks as though they can't agree among themselves on which explanation to go for. In fact, they can't even agree among themselves on how many fake Oswalds there were. Jim Hargrove goes with officially sanctioned doctrine: there were two fake Oswalds. John Butler, who seems to think that almost all the photographs and home movies taken in Dealey Plaza were faked in some unexplained way, daringly claims that there may have been three or more fake Oswalds. Let's see if we can pin them down. Which of the two or three or more fake Oswalds actually underwent the mastoidectomy operation? One of them, both of them, or all three of them? If it was just one of them, which one was it? If you're switching the operation from doppelganger X to doppelganger Y, as Jim seems inclined to do, how do you reconcile this with all the other events that have been allocated to each doppelganger's biography? If, as Jim now seems to think, it was the non-American doppelganger who had the operation at the age of six, where is the documentary evidence that this doppelganger entered the USA before the age of six? Where did the operation or operations take place? Had the relevant hospitals actually been built? Most importantly, where's the documentary evidence for any of this? It's all make-it-up-as-you-go-along speculation, isn't it? On the subject of documentary evidence, let's return to a point I made in my last post. Jim wrote: Which specific documents must Hoover have altered? And what evidence is there that they were altered, apart from the fact that they apparently contradict 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine? Perhaps Jim could finally let us know whether he has come up with a reasonable explanation for Armstrong's failure to even mention the existence of the mastoidectomy defect. This behaviour makes Armstrong look like a charlatan, doesn't it? How else would Jim explain it?

Jim Hargrove writes: So the Hungarian refugee (or Russian orphan, or whatever other made-up origin this fictional character had) must have been settled in the USA with his fictional doppelganger mother by the age of six, when the mastoidectomy operation was performed. What consequences does this have for the rest of the 'Harvey and Lee' fictional narrative? Switching events around so that event A, which was originally allocated to doppelganger X, is now allocated to doppelganger Y, is easy to do if there isn't any actual evidence and it's all speculation. If there is actual evidence involved, this switching around is likely to generate contradictions further down the line, as other events which had been allocated to doppelganger X would also need to be allocated to doppelganger Y, and vice versa. Which other events in the life of the real, historical Lee Harvey Oswald need to be switched from doppelganger X to doppelganger Y, or from doppelganger Y to doppelganger X? It's all made up, isn't it? Which documents, exactly, must Hoover have altered? In 'Harvey and Lee' world, all you need to do is speculate that something happened, and, hey presto, it must have happened. In the real world, a bit more evidence is needed. Perhaps Jim could let us know which documents must have been altered, so that we can see how likely it is that this actually happened. Yes, there are credible claims that some witness statements were interfered with, and that certain witnesses were threatened to change their story or to keep quiet. But the purpose of that was to shore up particularly weak aspects of the lone-nut narrative. You can't go from that to using fakery as an excuse to explain away all the evidence that contradicts the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy. It's worth noting that some of the most credible instances of tampering with witnesses' statements had the effect of supporting, not contradicting, 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine. Victoria Adams's statements, for example, were apparently tampered with to place Oswald on the sixth floor during the assassination. 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, like its close relative, Warren Commission doctrine, requires Oswald to have been on the sixth floor, firing a rifle at JFK. These days it's really only Warren Commission believers and 'Harvey and Lee' believers who think Oswald was anywhere near the sixth floor (see https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/p1016452-lee-harvey-oswald-s-alibi). That nice Mr Hoover was faking evidence to support the 'Harvey and Lee' theory! There are indeed a number of explanations for the existence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave. But the ones Jim has put forward are, to put it politely, not very strong. For example, a housekeeper recalled decades after the event that Oswald was given mental tests at a hospital that hadn't been built yet. In 'Harvey and Lee' world, this is transformed into evidence that a secret and unnecessary mastoidectomy operation was performed on an imaginary doppelganger boy just in case his body might need to be dug up several decades later. Hmm ... nothing far-fetched or desperate about that! By the way, it might be an idea for the 'Harvey and Lee' believers to put their heads together and decide, officially, which excuse to go for. Was the operation performed on both doppelgangers, or just on one of them? Were any of these operations performed in hospitals that actually existed at the time, or were the hospitals just as imaginary as the doppelgangers themselves? If there were two operations, where is the documentary evidence for the second one? If John Butler is correct, and there were at least three Oswalds, how many of them were operated upon, and where, and when? By far the strongest explanation for the mastoidectomy defect is the obvious one: the body in the grave was that of the one and only, real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald. None of Jim's rather far-fetched and desperate explanations appear to have occurred to John Armstrong when he was writing his book. He must have known about the mastoidectomy defect, and he must have known that it made the carefully worked-out biographies of his two imaginary doppelgangers self-contradictory. The wrong doppelganger was buried in the grave! Far more importantly, Armstrong neglected to mention this fact to his readers. In his 1000-page book, he was emphatic that the doppelganger who had the mastoidectomy was not the doppelganger who was buried in the grave. But he knew that solid scientific evidence existed which contradicted this claim. He didn't try to explain the contradiction. He simply failed to tell his readers that the mastoidectomy defect existed. Why did he do this? It doesn't make him look good, does it? In fact, it makes him look slippery and dishonest, doesn't it? A number of people claimed to have seen Oswald with Jack Ruby in Dallas when he was in fact in New Orleans. Let's skim over the notion that the all-powerful evil geniuses who ran the top-secret long-term doppelganger project would allow one of the top-secret doppelgangers to associate publicly with the man who would go on to shoot the other top-secret doppelganger on live TV, thereby blowing wide open the whole top-secret long-term doppelganger project. Blowing the top-secret plot wide open wouldn't cause any problems, would it? After all, the plot was going to be blown wide open on the day of the assassination anyway, when, according to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, both of the top-secret long-term doppelgangers got themselves arrested in the Texas Theater within minutes of each other and each told the cops that his name was Oswald, even though for some reason no-one in the Dallas police department ever remarked on the rather unlikely coincidence that they had arrested two virtually identical young white men with the same name in the same building at the same time, despite the fact that one of those men became world-famous that very afternoon. Before you laugh, we know this happened, because 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine tells us so. Some witnesses made a claim some time after the event. In 'Harvey and Lee' world, that's all the evidence you need. It's solid, 100% proof that there was a top-secret long-term doppelganger project involving not only two virtually identical boys, one of whom vanished into thin air immediately after the assassination, but also their two virtually identical mothers, one of whom also vanished into thin air immediately after the assassination! And one of the two virtually identical boys had a 13-inch head! In 'Harvey and Lee' world, witnesses are never wrong, just as amateurish measurements of 13-inch heads are never wrong and vague accounts of missing teeth are never wrong. These witnesses saw a young white man in Dallas and assumed that he was the same generic-looking young white man who would go on to be all over the news. The man they saw must have been Oswald! Unless it was someone else, of course. Can Jim think of a young white man who we know for a fact associated with Jack Ruby, and who could plausibly have been mistaken after the assassination for the real-life, one and only, historical Lee Harvey Oswald? While he is trying to remember the man's name, perhaps he could answer the following question. What reason can he think of for Armstrong's apparently dishonest behaviour in not mentioning the mastoidectomy defect?

Jim Hargrove writes: Of course there is! That's what the infamous http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26512-arguments-against-the-harvey-lee-theory-the-missing-tooth/ thread was all about. You remember, it's the thread in which someone gloated on page 1: The evidence is so strong that it proves beyond any doubt that the real Oswald (or one of the imaginary doppelgangers) had a missing tooth! Unfortunately, it quickly turned out that all the evidence for the apparently "missing tooth" had a perfectly ordinary explanation (in fact, in the case of Oswald's Marine dental records, two perfectly ordinary explanations) that did not require Oswald to have had a missing tooth. More here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t227-armstrong-s-magic-tooth-and-the-facts-about-harvey-at-beauregard There is now no good reason to suppose that the real Lee Harvey Oswald (or either of the fictional Oswald doppelgangers) had a missing tooth. One more piece of 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine bites, as it were, the dust. 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine also demands that the body in Oswald's grave was that of the fictional doppelganger 'Harvey', the one who had not undergone a mastoidectomy operation. Unfortunately, we have known for decades that the body in the grave, which was of course that of the real and historical Lee Harvey Oswald, had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy operation. The body cannot have been that of the fictional doppelganger 'Harvey', contrary to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine. A central element of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is contradicted by solid scientific evidence. But we've known that for decades. John Armstrong knew about the mastoidectomy defect nearly two decades before his 'Harvey and Lee' holy text was published. He knew his theory was wrong even as he was writing his infallible holy text. Let's return to the question that Jim has so far refused to answer many, many times. Armstrong knew that the pathologists' report contradicted a central element of his theory, yet he failed even to mention the existence of the mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave. Why did he do this? It was so that his readers wouldn't realise that his theory had been seriously undermined nearly two decades before he published his book, wasn't it? His behaviour makes him look an awful lot like a snake-oil salesman, doesn't it? Or does Jim have an alternative explanation for Armstrong's apparently dishonest behaviour?

Denny Zartman writes: Sometimes that's true, but not in this case. The central elements of Armstrong's theory are the biographies of his two imaginary doppelgangers. There's the American doppelganger, who had grown up in the USA, and there's the other doppelganger, who came to the USA perhaps around the age of 10, perhaps 12, perhaps from Hungary, perhaps from Russia, perhaps from the planet Zog, but no-one really knows because there's no documentary evidence of how, where and when he arrived (unsurprisingly, since it's all made up). Armstrong's 1000-page book describes the course of each imaginary doppelganger's life. He makes it clear that it was the American doppelganger who underwent the mastoidectomy operation at the age of six, several years before the other imaginary doppelganger appears on the scene. Of course, the attribution of events to each doppelganger's life was entirely invented, but that doesn't mean that it was entirely arbitrary or random. Armstrong may have been wildly imaginative, but he was at least consistent. He created a sequence of events that applies to each imaginary doppelganger, and that sequence goes all the way to the burial of one doppelganger in Fort Worth at the age of 24 and the exhumation of the doppelganger's body in 1981. There's a big problem for anyone who wants to magically remove the non-American, Russian-speaking doppelganger from Oswald's grave and replace him with the American, non-Russian-speaking doppelganger. You will also need to replace him in most or all of the other events in his imaginary life. Armstrong's theory relies on each imaginary doppelganger being in a particular place at a particular time. Swapping these events around won't always be possible, especially when the two fictional characters are supposed to have been thousands of miles apart at the same time. Before you know it, the imaginary doppelganger who defected to the Soviet Union wasn't the Russian-speaking one, as per Armstrong's theory, but the non-Russian-speaking one, which defeats the whole point of his theory. If the right doppelganger can't be placed in the Soviet Union, bang goes Armstrong's theory. And that's without resolving the contradictions with the two imaginary doppelgangers' heights. Instead of having the 5' 9" doppelganger in location A and the 5' 11" doppelganger in location B, it's the other way around. Or maybe the taller doppelganger must actually now be the shorter one, and vice versa. Either way, the theory requires some serious structural engineering to keep it from toppling over. Even when creating works of fiction, you need to be consistent. Breaking Armstrong's carefully constructed (though imaginary) sequence, as the scientists' report does, demonstrates that the whole construction is self-contradictory. Yes, what is far-fetched is the idea that a long-term project existed which involved two boys from different parts of the world, native speakers of two different languages, who were selected at a young age in the expectation that they would grow up to look virtually identical, and that they did magically grow up to look virtually identical, and that their mothers just happened to look virtually identical too, apart from their eyebrows, and that both of the boys ended up being co-opted into the assassination of JFK, one of them following the other around Dallas in order to implicate the other doppelganger as a patsy, and that one of the doppelgangers and one of the two virtually identical Marguerites conveniently disappeared into the ether immediately after the assassination, and all the other highly implausible (to put it mildly) elements that make up the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. It isn't far-fetched to propose that Oswald was being impersonated at some point in the run-up to the assassination, whether as part of the assassination plot or, as in the case of the Mexico City impersonation, for other reasons and that this impersonation was later incorporated into the assassination plot. But we mustn't accept every apparent instance of impersonation without question, as the 'Harvey and Lee' believers do. We know that big news events invariably generate plenty of false sightings of the central characters. If the JFK assassination follows the usual pattern, a large majority of the apparent sightings of Oswald will be mistaken. Sometimes, this will be because witnesses are lying. More often, witnesses will be honest but mistaken (identifying Larry Crafard as Oswald, for example). So it's necessary to examine each instance carefully and critically. The strongest evidence for impersonation in Dallas is probably Silvia Odio's account of meeting either the real Oswald or an imposter (as I point out at http://22november1963.org.uk/silvia-odio-visitors), though even that one is open to doubt (see https://gregrparker.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Sylvia-Odio.pdf). If you examine each of the supposed impersonations, you'll see that most of them fall into the category of 'well, maybe, but maybe not.' Some don't stand up at all, such as the old 'Harvey and Lee' favourite, the notion that an Oswald imposter was arrested in the Texas Theater, which we now know was due to the usual combination of faulty memories and simple bureaucratic errors. Whatever impersonation took place, it certainly didn't take place as part of an absurdly unlikely long-term scheme involving doppelganger boys with 13-inch heads and missing teeth, doppelganger mothers, and all the other far-fetched nonsense.

Jim Hargrove writes: It wasn't a scar that proved that Oswald's exhumed body had undergone a mastoidectomy, but a lack of bone, according to the pathologists' report (http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/norton2.htm) : Jim also writes: No, he hasn't. Proof in 'Harvey and Lee' world is not like proof in the real world. Tendentious interpretations of apparent anomalies in the documentary record may be enough to satisfy 'Harvey and Lee' believers, but they do not amount to proof. Correct: Lee Harvey Oswald, who spoke Russian to a reasonable level, had indeed undergone a mastoidectomy at the age of six, and at the age of 24 was shot dead by Jack Ruby and buried in Fort Worth, only to be dug up 18 years later and have his identity confirmed by a team of scientists. Every piece of documentary, photographic and witness evidence that contradicts 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine is, by definition, fake. If a piece of evidence can be interpreted to support the doctrine, it must be genuine. If it can't, it must be fake. Everyone knows this; it's a central tenet of 'Harvey and Lee' belief, just as the faked fossil record is a central tenet of creationist belief. But which records, exactly, did Hoover fake in this instance? The pathologists' report? Their medical degree certificates? The original medical records which documented young Oswald's mastoidectomy operation? Oswald's dental records? The photographs from the exhumation? The photograph which shows him with a 13-inch head? And what evidence exists to suggest that the records in question were faked, apart from the fact that they contradict 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine? What a very flexible theory it is, if the biographies of its main characters can be swapped around at will! But Armstrong went to a lot of effort to demonstrate that the imaginary doppelganger who had the operation was 'Lee', and that the imaginary doppelganger who was buried in Fort Worth, and who had not had the operation, was 'Harvey'. He didn't succeed, of course; it was the historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald who had had the operation and was buried in Fort Worth. Nevertheless, it is fundamental to Armstrong's case that the body in the grave was that of someone who had not had a mastoidectomy. Unfortunately, we know from the pathologists' report that Armstrong was wrong. The interesting thing is not that a far-fetched theory has been shown to be wrong, but that the far-fetched theory was shown to be wrong nearly two decades before Armstrong published his book. As I mentioned earlier, Armstrong did not inform his readers that the pathologists had found a mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave. He must have known that this evidence disproved a central element of his theory, but he didn't bother even to mention the existence of the mastoidectomy defect, let alone try to explain away the fact that it contradicted his poorly supported theory. Why didn't he even mention it? Surely it was because he knew that his readers would immediately work out that his theory was self-contradictory. Much better to keep quiet and hope that no-one noticed! Not very honest, though, is it? This behaviour makes Armstrong look like a snake-oil salesman, doesn't it? Or does Jim have a more plausible explanation?

Steve, The word гражданин here means citizen in the sense of someone who is permitted to live in a particular place. The document refers to Oswald's legal residence in the Soviet Union, and does not imply that he possessed Soviet citizenship in the usual sense of the word. A pedant writes: гражданин is pronounced 'grazh-da-nin', not 'grach-da-nin' ('zh' as in Dr Zhivago).

Jim Hargrove writes: It wasn't only Eddowes' far-fetched 'Soviet imposter' theory that was disproved by the exhumation of Oswald's body. Also disproved was the even more far-fetched theory that the person buried in Oswald's grave was not just an Eastern European imposter but one who had been selected at a young age to participate in a long-term doppelganger project. This particular imaginary imposter scheme lasted a decade longer than Eddowes' imaginary imposter scheme, and involved an additional cast member, an imposter mother who looked just like the real Marguerite Oswald. One of the doppelgangers and one of the mothers vanished into thin air immediately after the assassination. The far-fetched doppelganger theory claimed that one of the two doppelgangers had undergone a mastoidectomy operation as a young boy, and that the other doppelganger, who had not undergone the operation, was the one buried in Oswald's grave: But the exhumation showed that the body in the grave had indeed had a mastoidectomy. It was a fundamental aspect of this particular far-fetched theory that the doppelganger who was shot by Jack Ruby and then buried in the grave had not undergone a mastoidectomy operation. Once this aspect of the theory was disproved, the whole theory collapsed. Most people would not be surprised to learn that the theory was dreamed up partly by someone who thought the moon landings had been faked and that no planes actually hit the World Trade Center. What is surprising is that the theory was put forward in the form of a book that was published nearly 20 years after the exhumation had disproved the theory. Even more surprisingly, the author of the book must have known that the theory had been disproved by the exhumation, because in his book he actually cited the pathologists' report. But for some reason the author failed to mention the inconvenient fact that, according to the pathologists' report, the body in the grave had undergone a mastoidectomy operation. He knew that the report contained information that clearly disproved his theory. What was he to do? Throw away his manuscript? Since his readers probably wouldn't be aware of what the report said about the mastoidectomy, the easiest thing to do would be simply to avoid mentioning the inconvenient evidence, and hope that no-one noticed. It looks as though the author was deliberately misleading his readers, doesn't it? Does Jim have any idea why the author of the book deliberately misled his readers?

Paul Bacon writes: You are probably correct. But there's more to it than that. Consider the fact that the Zapruder film, in its current state, includes two pieces of information that contradict the lone-gunman scenario (one of them is the famous 'back and to the left' movement of JFK's head; I'll let you work out what the other one is). Why did the conspirators allow this? Perhaps they were indeed stupid, and didn't realise that the film seriously undermined the lone-gunman scenario. Or perhaps they were clever enough to realise that the film contained strong evidence of conspiracy, but they were so stupid that it never occurred to them that there was a very easy way to overcome this problem: destroy the film. Maybe the conspirators were so stupid that after stupidly failing to destroy the film, they stupidly went to a lot of effort to fake it, and then stupidly neglected to remove the bits that undermined the lone-gunman scenario. Perhaps they were so stupid that they performed alterations to the film without being sure that their alterations wouldn't be exposed in the future, should a previously unknown home movie or photograph come to light. As we know, there was no effort to round up all the photographs and home movies taken in Dealey Plaza, or even to track down all the spectators who had cameras with them. Alternatively, perhaps the conspirators never had access to the Zapruder film, and couldn't have faked it even if they wanted to. Or perhaps they did have access to the film but didn't care what was in it. Perhaps, stupid or not, the conspirators weren't interested in putting forward the lone-gunman scenario, which as we know was imposed on the investigating authorities for political reasons after the assassination. Perhaps the conspirators were quite happy for the Zapruder film to provide evidence of conspiracy, which of course it does. There are several scenarios here, each of which suggests a different type of conspiracy, a different group of conspirators, different motives, and different levels of likelihood. Those who claim that the Zapruder film was faked don't appear to have considered the alternatives. Perhaps they get a nice tingly feeling from the idea that the world is controlled by an all-powerful group of evil conspirator masterminds. The JFK assassination these days does seem to attract the type of person who is drawn to the most elaborate and unlikely conspiracy they can think of. The notion that the Zapruder film was faked implies the least likely option: a group of powerful yet strangely incompetent conspirators who were able to perform elaborate but unnecessary alterations to the photographic evidence, and who messed up (whoops!). It probably isn't coincidental that other super-conspiracy theories also posit a powerful group of conspirators who went to great lengths to achieve their ends by faking the evidence but who messed up: Lifton's elaborate body-snatching scheme in which the carefully fabricated wounds were unfortunately placed in the wrong locations (whoops!), and the 'Harvey and Lee' conspirators who unfortunately buried the wrong long-term doppelganger in Oswald's grave (whoops!).

Jim Hargrove writes: No, it wasn't. Wilcott in fact claimed that his 'Oswald project' had only just begun in 1958: "Oswald was recruited from the military for the express purpose of becoming a double agent assignment to the USSR" (Wilcott, 'The Kennedy Assassination', p.16). Jim needs to stop misrepresenting Wilcott, whose use of the term 'Oswald project' referred only to Oswald being a paid employee of the CIA. It had nothing to do with any long-term doppelganger scheme involving fake Marguerites and lookalike imposters with sloping shoulders, 13-inch heads and missing teeth. You can argue about whether Wilcott's claim about Oswald was true or not, but it is dishonest to rope in Wilcott to prop up the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy. James Wilcott actually contradicted the central element of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy: he claimed that the 'Oswald project' began when Oswald was in the military, not a decade earlier. I'm sure Sandy will be quick to chide Jim for bringing up the subject of James Wilcott's 'Oswald project' when this thread is meant to be about the missing tooth which we now know Oswald did not have.

Chris Davidson writes: Thompson's point is not that the Zapruder film is the self-authenticating 'gold standard' against which other evidence must be compared. The self-authenticating 'gold standard' is the whole of the photographic evidence from Dealey Plaza at around the time of the assassination. Thompson's argument went something like this: (a) There will be a lot of overlap among the photos and films that were taken in Dealey Plaza. Often, more than one image will have been taken of the same scene at the same time. An example of this would be JFK's head at around the time of the fatal shot, which is shown in the Zapruder, Muchmore and Nix films, as well as the Moorman photo. Altering one of these images is likely to produce obvious discrepancies when the altered image is compared to the unaltered images. (b) To prevent such discrepancies, those who wanted to alter an image would probably need to alter other images of the same scene. They would also need to be sure that no other images of the same scene would come to light. But they didn't do this: there was no attempt to identify all the photographs and home movies, and images and photographers kept turning up even years after the event. The bad guys had no way of knowing that their alterations would not be exposed in the future. (c) No such discrepancies have been demonstrated. All the attempts to do so (e.g. the 'Moorman in the street' nonsense that Thompson mentions) have failed for obvious reasons. (d) The absence of discrepancies shows that one of two things happened: either almost all the images were altered, or none of them were. Of course, we can rule out the former. Photograph A matches what we see in photograph B; other elements of photograph B in turn match what we see in photographs C and D; and so on. The entire body of photographs and home movies forms a self-authenticating whole.

On page one of this thread, Jim Hargrove wrote: There we have it: the "missing tooth" provides the strongest possible evidence for the long-term doppelganger theory. All the other evidence is weaker than the evidence for the "missing tooth", and that's official! But would you believe it - every piece of evidence for the apparently "missing" tooth turns out to have a plausible explanation. Including, most importantly, Oswald's marine dental records. It is perfectly reasonable to conclude that Oswald did not have a missing tooth. The dental records are consistent with the photographic evidence from Oswald's exhumation. The Lee Harvey Oswald who received dental treatment in the marines was the same Lee Harvey Oswald who was buried in Fort Worth. Unfortunately, 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine states that they cannot have been the same person. So much for 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine. Goodbye, 'Harvey and Lee' theory! It wasn't nice knowing you. Goodbye, possible Hollywood film deal! Goodbye, endless 'Harvey and Lee' spam (we hope)! There is much justified jubilation here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t227-armstrong-s-magic-tooth-and-the-facts-about-harvey-at-beauregard

Bart Kamp writes: Welcome to the world of 'Harvey and Lee' propaganda, Bart. It's all about increasing brand awareness (I don't like using brain-dead marketing-speak, but it's appropriate here). Keep plugging away at the same stuff over and over again, and you keep the idea alive in people's minds. If you can snare the occasional gullible convert while you're at it, so much the better. Each time someone gives a plausible explanation for one talking point, simply bring up the next talking point: - Hey, have you heard the good news? There were two Oswalds in the Texas Theater! No, there probably weren't. - According to my holy book, Oswald was in two schools at the same time! No, he probably wasn't. - The voices in my head tell me that Oswald was buying trucks in New Orleans! No, he probably wasn't. - Have you taken the prophet Armstrong into your heart? Oswald had a 13-inch head! No, he certainly didn't. - The records don't lie! Oswald was 5' 8" tall! And 5' 9" tall! And 5'10" tall! And 5' 11" tall! No, he wasn't. - Hello, my friend! Can you spare a couple of minutes of your time? Oswald had a missing tooth! No, he probably didn't. And so on. Once you've done the full circuit, just bring up the first point all over again, and pretend that no-one has already pointed out the problems with it. As Bernie Laverick pointed out some time ago, the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense has been going on for over two decades, and it still has fewer converts than the idea that the Queen of England is a lizard. It makes you wonder why they bother. Tracy Parnell's idea may be on the right lines: that flooding this forum with 'Harvey and Lee' spam is all about getting a Hollywood film deal.

Jim Hargrove writes: I'm not aware of any evidence that Harvey Oswald spoke Russian at all, let alone that he had learned it as a child. Harvey Oswald was a native speaker of English, as was his nephew, Lee. What's that, you aren't talking about the real-life, historical Harvey Oswald? You're talking about a character in a work of fiction that's very loosely based on Harvey Oswald's nephew? Ah, I see. All the evidence that Jim has cited applies to the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald: he had some knowledge of Russian while in the marines, and tried to minimise the appearance of this knowledge while in the Soviet Union. There's no need to invent a fictional character to explain any of this. The evidence is overwhelming that the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald was not a native (or, to be charitable to Jim, a near-native) speaker of Russian; that he made grammatical mistakes when speaking Russian even after having lived in the country for nearly three years; and that he spoke Russian with an accent. Unfortunately, it is a central point of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory that the defector must have been a native (or near-native) speaker of Russian. That was the whole purpose of the elaborate, decade-long fictional impersonation scheme involving two Oswalds, two Marguerites, 13-inch heads, sloping shoulders, fake mastoidectomy operations in hospitals that hadn't been built yet, and all of the theory's other inventions. The Oswald who defected cannot have spoken with an accent, because doing so would have given the game away. Here again is the relevant sentence from page 10 of Armstrong's Harvey and Lee (Soon to be a major motion picture! Or not!): But the one and only, real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald who defected to the Soviet Union did speak Russian with an accent. He did not speak Russian anywhere near as well as a native. That's because he was an American who had learned Russian in his teens and early twenties.

Jim Hargrove writes: Tracy Parnell points out the obvious: You'd think the believers would at least make an effort to demonstrate that the photo was faked. But it's hardly surprising that they don't, since they can't even agree on which photos depict which fictional character or which physical features belonged to which fictional character. Which one had the 13-inch head? Was that the same one who had the sloping shoulders, or was that the other one? If the faithful can dismiss inconvenient evidence by claiming that it has been faked, their belief cannot in principle be disproved. 'Harvey and Lee' is just a superstitious belief. The faithful are just like creationists. This fossil's a fake! And that one! And that other one over there! They're all fakes! The good lord put them there to test us, but our faith is strong! (Apologies to any religious fundamentalists who are reading this and who might feel insulted by being compared to a 'Harvey and Lee' believer.)

Denny Zartman writes: Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. It's possible, but there isn't any corroboration for his specific claims. Tracy Parnell gives a comprehensive account of the problems with Wilcott's credibility in this article, which includes links to the relevant documents: http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2017/03/james-wilcott.html It's important to note that Wilcott's 'Oswald project' isn't the same thing as Hargrove's 'Oswald project'. Wilcott was talking about the adult Oswald being a paid employee of the CIA in some capacity. Hargrove assumes that this paid employment involved Oswald's participation at an early age in an imaginary long-term doppelganger scheme. As with most 'Harvey and Lee' claims, the evidence is (to put it mildly) not strong enough to support the conclusion. Wilcott never claimed that his 'Oswald project' involved any sort of decade-long plan beginning when Oswald was a boy. In fact, he implied that the 'Oswald project' only began in the late 50s, when "Oswald was recruited from the military for the express purpose of becoming a double agent assignment to the USSR" (Wilcott, 'The Kennedy Assassination', p.16). Wilcott's 'Oswald project' involved just the one Oswald, just the one Marguerite, no doppelgangers with sloping shoulders and 13-inch heads, and no long-term impersonation going back more than a decade. One of Wilcott's claims may be on the right lines. He told a Cuban tribunal in 1978 that Oswald's employment with the CIA involved creating a false persona for him: There's good evidence that Oswald had indeed built a false persona for himself as a Castro sympathiser, in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, and that he had done so on the orders of some official agency, or at least on the instigation of someone connected with an agency. It's not unlikely that this manipulation of Oswald allowed him to be cast as a patsy in the assassination. Whether Oswald's creation of a false persona was done specifically with the assassination in mind, or whether it was later co-opted into the assassination plan, is debatable. Perhaps Wilcott was correct in implying that Oswald's activities in New Orleans were done on the orders of the CIA, or at least someone within the CIA. Or perhaps it was some other agency that had been directing Oswald, and the CIA connection was exaggerated or invented. But the important point is that, as far as I'm aware, Wilcott said nothing at all about a long-term impersonation involving two unrelated boys from different parts of the world, chosen at a young age, who just happened to grow up to look identical (or not quite identical), with mothers who also looked identical (or not quite identical), and all the other far-fetched nonsense that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory proposes. I agree. It's quite possible that he was impersonated shortly before the assassination, in Dallas or Mexico City or both. But there's no good reason to suppose that this had anything to do with an imaginary 'Harvey and Lee' long-term doppelganger project. Yes, that was Wilcott's view. His 'Oswald project' was set up specifically to enable Oswald's unconvincing defection. There's good evidence that Oswald's defection was not genuine, that it had been done with some sort of official encouragement, and that Oswald had been taught Russian for this purpose. Again, the nature of the official encouragement is debatable. Again also, Oswald's false defection does not require an elaborate impersonation scheme going back a decade or more. Not only that, but the 'Harvey and Lee' version of Oswald's defection is incoherent. Look at what the 'Harvey and Lee' theory actually claims about the defection. The whole point of this long-term 'Oswald project' was to send a native Russian speaker into the USSR. Not just any old American who had learned a bit of Russian in his teens and early twenties, as the real Oswald had, but someone with "an intimate knowledge of the local language": But there is ample evidence that the Oswald who defected did indeed speak Russian with an accent, and that he made the sort of grammatical mistakes that a native adult speaker would not make. Although "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", that's exactly what happened. Only ten pages into the book, and the basic premise of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory collapses.

There is indeed evidence that Oswald had been impersonated in the weeks before the assassination, in Dallas and in Mexico City, although some instances of apparent impersonation are much less persuasive than others. It's one thing to propose a handful of instances of impersonation. But it's something else to claim that such instances were part of a long-term doppelganger project for which two unrelated boys from different parts of the world were selected at a young age in the hope that when they grew up they would turn out to look identical (or almost identical, depending on the needs of the theory at any given moment), and that each boy's mother also happened to look identical (apart from their eyebrows), and that one of the boys was chosen because he spoke Russian like a native speaker (despite the fact that he clearly didn't, and the fact that he was obviously a native speaker of US English), and that the wrong doppelganger boy ended up getting buried in Oswald's grave, and that one of the doppelganger boys may have been given an unnecessary mastoidectomy operation in a hospital that hadn't been built yet, and all the other crazy 'Harvey and Lee' inventions. Sylvia Meagher would never have taken that nonsense seriously. There is every reason to question whether there were two Oswalds, in the 'Harvey and Lee' sense of an enormously involved long-term plot that's full of improbabilities. Framing a patsy can be done without the vast extra complication of the fictional 'Harvey and Lee' doppelganger project. Jim seems convinced that "Texas Employment Commission employee Laura Kittrell met the two Oswalds in October 1963". Sadly, this 'Harvey and Lee' smoking gun isn't quite as smoking as Jim thinks it is, as Greg Parker points out: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2172-jimbo-baggins-finally-finds-the-harvey-lee-smoking-gun I have a couple of questions for those few people who still take the 'Harvey and Lee' theory seriously. Imagine that you talking to a member of the general public who: (a) doesn't know much about the JFK assassination; (b) is open to hearing criticism of the lone-nut theory; (c) isn't attracted to far-out stuff like faked moon landings. Would you bring up the 'Harvey and Lee' theory? If not, why not? Alternatively, if you were trying to convince a member of the public that critics of the lone-nut theory are a bunch of crazies, would you bring up the 'Harvey and Lee' theory? You would, wouldn't you?

Thanks for reading, or at least mentioning, my slim volume*, Sandy. The point I've been making is that paranoid speculation does not add to the case against the lone-nut theory. "Searching for how the plot was pulled off and by whom" is a good thing. But proposing implausible extra layers of conspiratorial activity does not do that. By adding imaginary extra conspirators who faked this, that and the other, you're getting further from finding out how the plot was pulled off, not nearer. It's necessary to strip away as much speculative stuff as possible, not add as much as possible. The mere accumulation of evidence is immaterial. It doesn't matter how much evidence there is, if that evidence is weak. Supporters of the lone-nut theory often point to the amount of evidence, and the number of pages, in the Warren Report or Bugliosi's tome, as though quantity is more important than quality. The same mistake is made in relation to Armstrong's Harvey and Lee, too. Weak, speculative evidence needs to be questioned, whether it is used for or against the lone-nut theory. It isn't a matter of reducing the case to one or two core pieces of evidence, but of reducing the case to the strongest pieces of evidence. No doubt each person who has detailed knowledge of the case would select a slightly different group of core pieces of evidence, and would interpret the whodunnit side of things slightly differently too. But I'm sure we all understand that there are plenty of poorly supported elements that add nothing substantial and should be discarded. Take our old friend, Badgeman. If there happened to be a good-quality photograph or film, of unimpeachable origin, which clearly showed a police-like figure firing a rifle from behind the fence on the grassy knoll, that would be a knockout piece of evidence, an essential part of the case against the lone-nut theory. But the evidence for Badgeman is very weak. Although we can't rule out the notion that such a person was actually firing from behind the fence, the claim is so poorly supported by the evidence that no-one these days would build their case on that. If you want to persuade the general public that the lone-nut theory is nonsense, you wouldn't bring up the topic of Badgeman. It's no coincidence that, just like Badgeman, all the paranoid stuff is poorly supported by the evidence. The Dealey Plaza photographs and home movies were faked, the moon landings were faked, there was an elaborate body-alteration heist, the earth is flat, there was a long-term Oswald doppelganger project, the attack on the World Trade Center was faked: all these claims are alike. There's some evidence to support each of them, but plenty of evidence against each of them. They are speculative. They may be true but almost certainly are not. The JFK-related stuff in that list of paranoia presupposes a far more complicated and elaborate conspiracy than is necessary. You don't need a lot of people to shoot JFK and plant a rifle on the sixth floor, or even to have a police-like figure behind the fence. But you do need lots of people to alter photographs and films, to run a doppelganger project, and to steal JFK's body from Air Force One without anyone noticing. The more elaborate the proposed conspiracy, the less likely it is to be true. If you wanted to persuade the general public that the lone-nut theory is nonsense, you wouldn't bring up the claim that there were two Oswalds and two Marguerites who looked identical (but sometimes didn't), or that all the shots came from the front (apart from the one that didn't), or that the Altgens 6 photograph was faked despite there being no time to do so. If you did that, you would end up persuading the general public that the case against the lone-nut theory is very flimsy indeed, and that everyone who questions the official line is a paranoid fantasist. * Available from all good booksellers! "The best book ever written on any subject in the whole history of Western literature!" - Mr JB, England. Order your copy today!

John Butler writes: I've had a look, and I can't find anything you've written about how the alteration of the Altgens 6 photograph might have been achieved. Perhaps I've missed it. Could you either provide a link or give a quick explanation here? The problem with Altgens 6 in particular is that there appears to have been no time to perform any alterations. According to the account in Trask, pp.317-318, this is the timeline: (a) Altgens took the photograph at 12.30. (b) He took some more photographs in Dealey Plaza. (c) He gathered his belongings and went on foot to his agency's photo lab inside the Dallas Morning News building, which I believe was at least a couple of blocks from Dealey Plaza. (d) He told the news desk about the shooting. (e) He gave his film to a technician, who developed the film and then made a full-size print. (f) The image was distributed to news organisations all over the world at 1.03pm. The final print must have been in existence half an hour after the assassination, and very likely less than half an hour after Altgens arrived at the newspaper building. If you've ever done this sort of thing yourself, you will understand that they did well just to process the film and make a good-quality print in the time available. There was no time to do any fakery. Speculating about faking a photograph is one thing, but if you want such speculation to be taken seriously, you need to show that the speculation is plausible. In the case of Altgens 6, you need to show how the photograph could have been faked in the time available. If you can't do that, your speculation is not worth considering. How exactly did the conspirators manage to alter the Altgens 6 photograph in the time available?

The inside cover of Richard Trask's Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the Assassination of President Kennedy contains a plan of Dealey Plaza with the locations of the following 18 people who were taking still photographs and home movies: - James Altgens - 'Babushka Lady' - Mark Bell - Hugh Betzner - Wilma Bond - Richard Oscar Bothun - Charles Bronson - Robert Croft - Elsie Dorman - Robert Hughes - John Martin - Mary Moorman - Marie Muchmore - Orville Nix - James Towner - Tina Towner - Phillip Willis - Abraham Zapruder We can add to this list the following 17 people, most of whom were press photographers and cameramen in the motorcade (Trask names them on p.306): - Tom Atkins - Henry Burroughs - Harry Cabluck - Frank Cancellare - Malcolm Couch - Tom Craven - James Darnell - Tom Dillard - Johnny Flynn - Clint Grant - Robert Jackson - Jim Murray - Art Rickerby - Cecil Stoughton - James Underwood - Jack Weaver - David Wiegman That's 35 names I found with just a five-minute search of Trask's book. There may well have been other photographers in Dealey Plaza whose names are on record, as well as others whose names we don't know and whose photographs have not yet come to light. Mr Butler, and indeed anyone else who is interested in the photographic aspect of the assassination, should try to get hold of a copy of Trask's book. It isn't cheap (currently $40 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Pictures-Pain-Photography-Assassination-President/dp/0963859501), but it's comprehensive and very informative. We know that there were plenty of people in Dealey Plaza snapping photographs and shooting home movies. We also know that the authorities paid little attention to the photographic record. There was only a token appeal to the public to make their images available. There was no attempt to round up all the spectators who carried cameras, some of whom only surfaced years afterwards. All of this would cause a serious problem for any conspirators wishing to alter a photograph or a home movie, quite apart from the technical problem of making a convincing fabrication. You have no way of knowing how many other images exist which depict the scene you're trying to fake. How can you ensure that the alterations you make won't stick out like a sore cliché when compared to non-faked images of the same scene? Perhaps Mr Butler will now answer a question of mine. He seems to think the Altgens 6 photograph was altered in some way. Unfortunately, that particular photograph was one of the least likely candidates for forgery, because as well as the risk of alterations being exposed, we know that there was next to no time to actually make any alterations (for details, see Trask, pp.307-325). Could Mr Butler give us a plausible account of how the Altgens 6 photograph could have been altered, given the very limited time available and the risk of exposure?

Joseph McBride writes: Jonathan Cohen replies: Leaving aside the question of why Mr McBride writes his comments in verse, that comment sums up the tin-foil-hat wing of JFK assassination enthusiasts. In their minds, questioning 'Harvey and Lee'-type nonsense is equivalent to expressing support for the lone-nut theory. Do they really not understand that it is possible to question both the lone-nut theory and far-fetched, poorly supported super-conspiracy speculation such as Armstrong's long-term Oswald doppelganger project and Lifton's elaborate body-alteration scheme? It really isn't necessary to believe in the moon-landings-level stuff in order to disbelieve the notion that President Kennedy was killed by a lone nut named Oswald. The evidence and arguments against the lone-nut scenario have nothing to do with 'Harvey and Lee' or Best Evidence or faking the Altgens 6 photo. You can take away all the faked photographs, faked home movies, faked presidential corpses, faked Oswalds, and faked Marguerites, and the arguments against the lone-nut scenario remain as strong as ever. In fact, taking away all the speculative stuff makes the case against the lone-nut theory stronger. Think about how many people it takes to shoot a guy in a slow-moving open-topped car. Now think about how many people it takes to run an Oswald doppelganger project for over a decade, and then to install papier-mâché trees on the grassy knoll, and then to shoot a guy in a slow-moving open-topped car, and then to kidnap Kennedy's corpse from Air Force One without anyone noticing, and then to perform elaborate surgical alterations on the corpse, and then to track down and fake most of the photographs and films taken in Dealey Plaza. The more complications you add, the less likely it is that they actually happened. The smaller the proposed conspiracy, the more likely it is that it actually happened. We shouldn't be surprised that those who are attracted to one area of far-fetched speculation usually sign up for the full package. You name it, it was faked! One does wonder just how vast and implausible a conspiracy needs to be before those inclined to tin-foil-hattery start to think that, hmm, you know, maybe it didn't actually take hundreds of conspirators to pull off the assassination. Unsolved mysteries such as the JFK assassination do seem to attract people who are inclined to see a conspiracy everywhere they look. It would be nice if all these tin-foil hat types would stick to the moon landings and UFOs rather than infest a serious topic such as the JFK assassination. Unfortunately, it's the presence of the tin-foil hat types that allows the media to portray genuine critics of the lone-nut theory as a bunch of crazies, thereby making it more difficult to uncover exactly what happened in Dealey Plaza.