Jeremy Bojczuk

According to David Josephs, the noses of 'Harvey' and 'Lee' are "obviously very different".

It's good that a 'Harvey and Lee' believer has at last pinpointed one facial feature that clearly differentiates the two fictional characters, but we are still short on detail. In what way are the noses "very different"? Is one of them wider, narrower, longer or shorter than the other? And which nose belongs to which fictional character?

Perhaps other 'Harvey and Lee' believers could help out here. How, exactly, are the noses of 'Harvey' and 'Lee' "very different"?

This page may be of interest:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2143-stephen-roe

I wrote:

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Which facial features are specific to 'Harvey', and which facial features are specific to 'Lee'?

David Josephs replied:

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The nose is obviously very different

"Obviously"? How, exactly, is the nose "very different"? Is the nose of 'Harvey' wider, narrower, longer, shorter, more bulbous, or less bulbous, than that of 'Lee'?

This obvious difference should be evident in other photographs of 'Harvey' and 'Lee'. Could you point it out, perhaps with reference to the 'evolution of Lee Harvey Oswald' montage from page 48? Which numbered photographs show one type of nose, and which show the other type of nose?

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the sheer size of arms and neck in opposing photos is also obvious ... HARVEY has more squared shoulders and is 2-3 inches shorter as well as 20-40 lbs lighter

People's body shapes change over time, and measurements and recollections are not always accurate. Oswald's adult height, for example, has been given as 5' 8", 5' 9", 5' 10", and 5' 11" (1.73-1.81 m). Which explanation is the more likely: there were four Oswalds running around, or some of those measurements were mistaken? And if you claim there were two Oswalds running around, which of the four heights would you assign to each Oswald, and how would you explain the other two heights?

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Can you explain how the image on the right - with the 13" head - can be real, if the one on the left is also?

The laughable notion of a 13-inch head was taken to pieces nearly three years ago. The real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald did not have a 13-inch head. The solution to the mystery is very simple. You can read it here:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1412-the-13-inch-head-explained-for-sandy

Let's try again: which facial features are specific to 'Harvey', and which facial features are specific to 'Lee'?

If there's no difference in the photographs that can't be explained in obvious ways (different lighting conditions, different poses, normal body changes, etc), we are left with two options:

(a) The fictional characters 'Harvey' and 'Lee' were identical in their facial appearance. Two young boys, unrelated to each other, from different parts of the world (with identical-looking mothers, one of whom, despite being Hungarian or Russian, was somehow a native speaker of American English), were selected for a top-secret doppelganger project, and years later they magically grew up to look identical. What, as they say, are the odds?

(b) The photographs are all of just one person: the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald.

The point I've been trying to get across is that 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine is suspiciously vague about whether the facial features of the fictional characters 'Harvey' and 'Lee' were identical or different. Sometimes the faces of the fictional characters are claimed to be so similar that only detailed biometric analysis can tell them apart. At other times the fictional characters are claimed to be easily distinguishable. Which is it?

If the claim is that they were identical, we can rule out the ridiculous notion, central to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, that two unrelated young boys from different parts of the world were selected for a secret doppelganger project a decade or so before they grew up and their facial features matured.

If the claim is that they were merely similar, it should be easy to tell which is which by looking at the photographic record and identifying which facial features belonged to each of the fictional characters. As far as I'm aware, no 'Harvey and Lee' believer has yet assembled a definitive list of which character had which facial features.

On page 48, Jim brought up the 'Evolution of Lee Harvey Oswald' montage of mugshots assembled by Jack "No Planes Hit the World Trade Center" White. The blurb above the images asks, "Why do some photos of him look so different than others?" Really? Do they? Is there anything there that isn't explained by the normal changes that any person undergoes over the years, or by factors such as different poses and different lighting conditions? If so, which facial features are different in which photos?

Which facial features are specific to 'Harvey', and which facial features are specific to 'Lee'?

According to Laura Kittrell, then, the second 'Oswald' she encountered looked "different" from the first but also "the same". He had "the same general outline and coloring and build" but differed in that he was "slouchy" and "kind of unkempt", and he was louder than the first. In other words, the impostor was a generic young, slim, white man, just like the real-life Oswald.

That doesn't get us very far in answering the questions I asked. Let's try again:

(a) According to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, were 'Harvey' and 'Lee' identical in appearance, or merely similar?

(b) If they were identical, how likely is it that two unrelated boys from different parts of the world could have been predicted to grow up to look identical? (Answer: not very likely at all.)

(c) If they were not identical, which physical features allow us to distinguish 'Harvey' from 'Lee'? Their heights? Whether their shoulders were sloping or not sloping? The size or shape of their noses, mouths, ears, chins, eyes, eyebrows, hair, or some other feature? How, exactly, did the relevant features differ? No answers? It's all down to guesswork, isn't it?

On page 47, John Butler wrote:

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I have finally understood why you and others consider this photo as Harvey Oswald

Jim Hargrove corrected him on this important matter of doctrine:

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No, we think that is American-born LEE Oswald ... there’s little doubt that the photographic records in this case have been seriously compromised

John Butler replied:

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My opinion at an earlier time was that it was Lee, but later decided you couldn't tell who that was and decided it might be someone else, or so edited you couldn't tell. 

He has Harvey's hair pattern, nose, ears, and chin.  But, not Harvey's overall appearance.  All of these things can be argued. I notice that in the 1957 Marine Corps photo of Lee he is beginning to show the same pattern.

The experts' inconclusive conclusion: the photo in question could be of 'Harvey', it could be of 'Lee', it could be genuine, or it could be faked in some unexplained way. They really don't know.

And how could they? It's all based on guesswork. There doesn't seem to be any agreement among the believers about whether 'Harvey' and 'Lee' were:

(a) identical and indistinguishable, to the extent that they could fool their friends and family; or

(b) easily distinguishable, with noticeably different heights and facial features; or

(c) identical some of the time, on those occasions when the theory requires them to look identical, and different some of the time, on those occasions when the theory requires them to look different.

Of course, the photo in question may even be a perfectly genuine photo of the historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald.

Mr Butler continues:

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It is remarkable that some one could pick out two kids that looked alike and determined (maybe) that it was likely they would have the same hair pattern and looks as adults.  Not plausible.

Correct! It is indeed not remotely plausible that two young boys, unrelated to each other and from different parts of the world (with identical-looking mothers of exactly the same age who were also unrelated to each other and from different parts of the world), could have been selected for some top-secret doppelganger project with any confidence that they would turn out to be dead ringers a decade or so later, when they had grown up. It's encouraging to learn that Mr Butler is not afraid to point out how utterly ludicrous the basic premise of the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense is.

Sadly, reality again takes a back seat when Mr Butler writes:

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It is my firm belief that Lee Oswald has been edited out of the photo record ... Lee Oswald was the person handing out leaflets in front of the trade center that has Chauncey Holt in that series of frames.  Lee's face is covered by Harvey's face.

Oh dear. Surely Mr Butler can see that it's Billy Lovelady's face that has been pasted in to cover the face of 'Lee', and that Chauncey Holt's face is covering that of James Files. Judyth Baker's face is covering Beverly Oliver's, but she has been cropped out of the final version, as has the Loch Ness Monster, which was heading down the street towards the camera, riding a bicycle.

Now let's look at the 'evolution of Lee Harvey Oswald' mugshot collection. How many Oswalds can you see there? Official 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine proclaims that there are two. But which is which? Perhaps the believers could tell us:

(a) If you think 'Harvey' and 'Lee' were different in appearance, which photo is of 'Harvey' and which is of 'Lee'? And, more importantly, on what grounds do you make the distinction? What facial and other features were specific to 'Harvey', and which to 'Lee'?

(b) If you think 'Harvey' and 'Lee' were identical, how would you account for the discrepancies in the height of Oswald as recorded on various official documents?

"I worked with Oswald in New Orleans!" OK, could be true. Could also be made up.

"I had a fling with Oswald in New Orleans!" Hmm, maybe it's true, maybe it's a complete invention. And who cares, anyway?

"Oswald and I were involved in a top-secret CIA cancer plot against Fidel Castro!" Oh dear. [Backs away slowly. Looks around for men in white coats with large butterfly nets.]

"Please send me lots of money!" Ah! Now I get it.

Interesting account of this strange person here:

https://gregrparker.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/making-of-a-fantasist.pdf

(If that link doesn't work, go to https://gregrparker.com/essays/ and click on 'The Making of a Fantasist'.)

An unsolved mystery like the JFK assassination is always going to attract its fair share of fantasists, frauds, charlatans and outright nutcases. As Greg points out in his article, it's a serious mistake for genuine researchers to associate with and give credibility to those parasitical hangers-on. As the parasites' credibility increases, the researchers' credibility decreases.

Not only that, but it allows the media to persuade the general public that the only people who criticise the official line are the crazies and the frauds. What on earth was Oliver Stone thinking of?

Jim Hargrove writes:

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Mr. B is clearly unwilling to do so.  Why?

Because, as Mr B and others have pointed out several times, and as Jim knows very well, those topics have been debated over and over again on this forum and elsewhere. If Jim, or anyone else, wants to find out what the arguments are, he only has to look. The links have been provided. Click them and find out.

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H&L critics like Mr. B say that ... people who believe it wear "tin foil hats" and so on.

Of course the 'tin-foil hat' description applies to those few people who take the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy seriously. The theory doesn't just claim that Oswald was impersonated here and there, and that he was involved in some way with one or more US intelligence agencies. Neither of those claims is unreasonable. There's nothing tin-foil-hattish there.

What deserves the 'tin-foil hat' term is the essential feature of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. It posits an enormous and outrageously unlikely plot in which, at a minimum, the following alleged facts were true:

1 - Two unrelated boys from different parts of the world, native speakers of two different languages, were chosen to participate in a long-term doppelganger scheme from an early age.

2 - The two unrelated boys magically grew up to look identical (or not quite identical, whenever that suits the theory better) more than a decade later.

3 - One of the two unrelated but identical-looking boys vanished from the face of the earth immediately after the assassination. No-one connected to the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy seems bothered by this sudden disappearance.

4 - Each boy had a very similar-looking mother named Marguerite. The two similar-looking Marguerites were not related to each other. The foreign-born Marguerite was a native speaker of American English, unlike her son.

5 - One of the two unrelated but similar-looking Marguerites vanished from the face of the earth immediately after the assassination. Again, no-one connected to the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy seems bothered by this sudden disappearance.

6 - On the day of the assassination, one of the Oswald doppelgangers followed the other Oswald doppelganger around Dallas so that he could frame him for the assassination.

7 - The body of the doppelganger who was buried in Oswald's grave had not undergone a mastoidectomy operation, a fact contradicted by solid scientific evidence which was published in a reputable scientific journal two decades before the Harvey and Lee book appeared. The author of the book didn't bother to explain the discrepancy, and in fact didn't even mention the problem, hoping his readers wouldn't notice.

The 'Harvey and Lee' theory is the most absurd explanation for any aspect of the assassination that doesn't involve little green men or shape-shifting lizards. 'Tin-foil hat' is the appropriate description.

As Jonathan Cohen pointed out, one prominent 'Harvey and Lee' fantasist, Jack White, believed that the moon landings photos were faked and that no planes actually hit the World Trade Center. Does anyone seriously think that 'tin-foil hatter' isn't an appropriate description of the late Mr White? If not, how crazy would someone have to be to deserve the term?

You can't get any crazier than thinking that no planes hit the World Trade Center, can you? No fewer than 157 people (including the ten hijackers) died on those planes. Can you imagine the effect Jack White's fact-free paranoid speculation would have on the victims' families and friends? White was not only a tin-foil hatter, but a despicable one at that. It really is no surprise that someone with that mentality helped to invent the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy.

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I started this thread because, in another thread, Mr. Bojczuk repeated his usual refrain that the two Oswald analysis is less than credible.  He wants us to believe there are "alternate facts" to explain it all, and yet when challenged to produce these alternate facts, neither he nor anyone else is able to do so.

Jim started this thread to divert attention from the pasting he was getting in the 'Two Oswalds in the Texas Theater' thread, in which it was pointed out that the evidence for an Oswald doppelganger being arrested in the balcony is very weak and can be much more plausibly explained in other ways. Again, anyone who's interested can click the link and find out what the arguments are.

Mr B does not want anyone "to believe there are 'alternate facts' to explain it all". Mr B pointed out an alternative explanation for the evidence which Jim brought up, namely the police reports and the eye-witness statements. There is a big difference between facts and explanations. This confusion in Jim's thinking may indicate where his one-dimensional, religious-fundamentalist attitude comes from.

Now, let's ask Jim for the seventh time to provide a plausible explanation for John Armstrong's failure to even mention the mastoidectomy defect, the scientific fact which contradicts a central part of Armstrong's theory. He didn't mention it because he wanted to keep his readers in the dark, didn't he? Or does Jim have a more plausible explanation?

I think most people with any interest in the whole 'Harvey and Lee' thing will be aware by now that there are plausible non-H&L explanations for the majority (at least) of the theory's talking points. Even if you don't agree with these explanations, you know that they exist.

Note the word 'plausible'. I'm not referring to evidence which absolutely disproves any of the theory's propositions, in the way that the Wiegman and Darnell films might (if they are ever released to the public) disprove the H&L and Warren Commission's assertion that Oswald was on the sixth floor during the assassination.

All I mean is that explanations exist which provide a plausible alternative interpretation of some of the evidence that is used in the H&L theory. For example, we discovered recently that there are plausible non-H&L explanations for the evidence in the Texas Theater incident: the police reports and the eye-witness accounts.

Tracy has provided links to many of these alternative explanations. Anyone who is interested in finding out more about a particular topic can make use of this new-fangled world wide web thing: follow the appropriate links, and follow the links to Jim's website, then compare the explanations and make up their own mind.

Repeating the same H&L talking points over and over again on thread after thread makes Jim look like a religious fundamentalist. It's also an ineffective way to promote the theory; it certainly hasn't won Jim many converts, and I'm sure everyone else is fed up with having to scroll past the same stuff again and again.

For Jim's sake, it would be better for him to do two things:

1 - To acknowledge publicly that some alternative explanations exist.

2 - To identify any H&L talking points that have not been addressed at all by the theory's critics, and to provide us with succinct accounts of those points, and only those points.

He wouldn't need to even consider the possibility that any of the alternative explanations may be better than his own explanations. But he would need to control his urge to repeat the same talking points over and over again while pretending that no-one has ever argued against them.

Jim would save himself and everyone else a lot of effort by concentrating on topics on which his critics have not yet provided alternative explanations, in the same way that Jim has not yet provided an alternative explanation for Armstrong's treatment of the mastoidectomy defect. Does that sound reasonable?

On five occasions now, Jim has avoided answering a simple question: why did John Armstrong not mention the mastoidectomy defect that was discovered on the body exhumed from Lee Harvey Oswald's grave?

The mastoidectomy defect contradicts a central part of Armstrong's theory. If the scientific evidence was true, Armstrong's theory was false.

He had nearly two decades to think up a way of getting around the problem. He didn't claim that the mastoidectomy defect was faked (the usual 'Harvey and Lee' excuse to explain away inconvenient evidence), or that the scientists were lying, or that the other imaginary doppelganger had undergone a mastoidectomy operation, or that the fictional bodies had been switched.

Armstrong simply ignored the problem. He didn't even tell his readers that the mastoidectomy defect existed.

Obviously, Armstrong knew what his readers would think if they learned about this piece of evidence. By keeping his readers in the dark, he deliberately misled them. His behaviour was that of a snake-oil salesman. Unless, that is, Jim has an alternative explanation for Armstrong's behaviour.

Let's try again to get a straight answer from Jim: why did John Armstrong not mention the mastoidectomy defect that was discovered on the body exhumed from Lee Harvey Oswald's grave?

Jonathan Cohen writes:

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Jack White may have been the nicest guy on planet earth, but his theories have been authoritatively proven wrong time after time, be it on the "Moorman in the street" issue, the moon landing "hoax" or his support for the preposterous and insulting claim that no actual airplanes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. This is someone in whom you expect us to trust?

White's 'Moorman in the street' nonsense is taken to pieces here: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Bedrock_Evidence_-_part_2.html.

White's moon landings hoax nonsense is taken to pieces here: http://www.clavius.org/jackwhite.html. That site includes a transcript of White's public humiliation at the HSCA hearings.

I don't follow the 9/11 stuff, but it doesn't surprise me that White went for the most paranoid interpretation possible. What a lunatic.

Jonathan's comment prompted me to dig out my old copy of James Fetzer's comic masterpiece, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax. If any of you has a copy, turn to page 99 and be prepared to have a good laugh (or cry). Here, White reproduces three photographs of the sixth-floor rifle, each taken side-on but at a slightly different angle, with the obvious result that the proportions of parts of the rifle look slightly different in each image. White took this to mean that they were three different rifles: "Even though all three guns had the same serial number, it appears that the photos show different guns." [Slaps forehead]

Nil nisi bonum and all that, but Jack White was a 100% tin-foil hat loon. It is only fitting that he had a hand in inventing the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy.

Jeffrey Reilley writes:

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do the folks that take this theory with a grain of salt not believe that Oswald was impersonated in the months leading to the assassination?

There are two serious questions: was Oswald impersonated (and if so, when), and was he acting on behalf of one or more government agencies at some points in his life? There's good evidence that the answer is yes, in both cases (sorry, Lance). He does appear to have been impersonated in Mexico City, and possibly in Dallas too. For the Mexico City episode, see https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/State_Secret.html; the Silvia Odio incident is a plausible example of impersonation in Dallas (see arguments for and against here, here and here). Oswald's defection and his actions in New Orleans, in particular the many accounts that have him working with Guy Banister, make it almost undeniable that he was involved in some way with one or another government agency.

But the notion that two boys, from two different parts of the world, native speakers of two different languages, were selected to take part in an elaborate doppelganger scheme from an early age, and that more than a decade later the boys had magically grown up to look identical (or not quite identical, depending on the needs of the theory at any given moment), and that on the orders of the CIA the two Oswalds followed each other around Dallas on the day of the assassination so that one could frame the other, is just about the most absurd explanation for impersonation that you could think of. If a lone-nutter wanted to satirise the tin-foil hat wing of Warren Report critics, he couldn't have done a better job than the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy.

The idea that if someone thinks Oswald was impersonated, he or she must also accept all the 'Harvey and Lee' baggage, is seriously misguided. Question the evidence for each instance of possible impersonation, as happened recently with the Texas Theater incident, and you'll see how much of the 'Harvey and Lee' narrative stands up (answer: not a lot). The evidence for impersonation is stronger without the paranoid baggage.

Most of the people who go to the trouble of arguing against the 'Harvey and Lee' theory are not supporters of the lone-gunman theory. They are rational critics of the lone-gunman theory who are aware of the harm this sort of paranoid speculation can do to the public perception of the JFK assassination debate. Lone-gunman sympathisers (Tracy Parnell is an honourable exception) usually just point to the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense and claim that it shows how irrational everyone is who questions the official account. Lance Payette is a good example of this, as is John McAdams: 

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The whole rickety structure is built on unreliable witness testimony, carefully selected and inaccurate documents, and a mountain of implausible supposition. Which makes it a fitting metaphor for JFK assassination conspiracy theories generally.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/2oswalds.htm

What's ironic about all of this is that the 'Harvey and Lee' version of the assassination is essentially the Warren Report's version, but with added paranoia:

- Was Oswald on the sixth floor, taking pot shots at Kennedy? WR: you bet he was! H & L: you bet he was!
- Was Oswald on Tenth Street, shooting Officer Tippit? WR: yes, sirree! H & L: yes, sirree!

Take the Warren Report, add a fictional doppelganger or two and a huge portion of paranoid speculation, and you have the 'Harvey and Lee' theory.

Tracy Parnell writes:

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BTW, the answer to Jeremy's question is Armstrong did not tell his readers that the theory he was pushing was already refuted by the exhumation because he was hoping they wouldn't notice.

Exactly! Jim has now had four opportunities to think up a reason for Armstrong's behaviour that doesn't make his master look like a snake-oil salesman. Each time, he has dodged the question. It looks as though even Jim accepts that Armstrong knew that his theory had been debunked, and hoped that no-one would notice. Welcome to the club, Jim!

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The H&L theory is based almost entirely on mistaken witnesses and mistakes in the record. ... the Richard Matt and David Sweat escape from upstate New York ... When they escaped from prison, over 2000 people said that they had seen them all over the state. Guess how many of those people actually saw them? Two.

If the proportion of false to real sightings was more than 1000 to one in an ordinary prison escape, how many false sightings must there have been of Oswald, the central figure in the biggest news story for years? I wonder how many of those alleged sightings of Oswald were actually rejected by Armstrong. A thousand? A hundred? Ten? Any at all? Jim could ask his master to provide us with a list.

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Jim and Armstrong may be hoping for a movie deal as some have suggested and they may get one someday.

I wasn't aware of that! Perhaps Armstrong was motivated by money after all.

I'd heard a suggestion that Jim was on Armstrong's payroll, but I wasn't sure whether to believe it. After all, Armstrong wasn't likely to sell many copies of an expensive 1000-page avant-garde novel with bizarre typography even if he paid someone to promote it, so why waste his money? But the Hollywood angle would explain the inconsistency in Jim's evangelical behaviour: copying and pasting excerpts from holy writ, and repeating the same long-debunked points of doctrine over and over in thread after thread, while giving little if any attention to other far-out topics that obsess most tin-foil hatters, such as Lifton's body-alteration invention and all the photo fakery stuff. I'm not sure how the powers that be would react if it turned out that Jim was flooding the Ed Forum with 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense for financial reward (or the prospect of financial reward).

Can you imagine what would happen if Harvey and Lee: the Movie ever got made and was widely distributed? It would turn the JFK assassination into a radioactive laughing stock. The serious media, academics, documentary makers, they would all run a mile. No-one with a reputation to protect would go near the subject for years afterwards. That would be the ideal way to discredit reputable critics of the official line, so maybe it could get made for that reason.

But I'm sure the established film studios wouldn't touch it. They wouldn't be able to publicise the film as a serious take on the assassination once people became aware that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory had been partly thought up by some fantasist who believed that the moon landings were faked (see http://www.clavius.org/jackwhite.html).

It might work as a comedy, though. Watch those two lovable doppelgangers getting into scrapes! Laugh as they both get arrested in the Texas Theater and give the game away by telling the cops they were both named Oswald! Chortle as the wrong one gets buried in the grave! Plenty of comic potential there.

Harvey and Lee! the Musical might work too. I can imagine a big tap-dancing scene, featuring two precisely choreographed identical Oswalds, two Marguerites (one slim, one dumpy), the two surgeons who performed the two mastoidectomies, and a chorus of FBI agents faking thousands of documents in 4/4 time. "You've come a long way from New Orleans to Minsk, Harvey and Lee!" (with apologies to Seinfeld).

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Anyone can do a search here and find multi-page threads discussing the school records or go to Greg Parker's site (where he has a link titled "alternate explanations") and read a concise explanation

As Tracy has pointed out, all of the 'Harvey and Lee' talking points have been covered umpteen times already, here and elsewhere. If Jim and Sandy are, as they should be, serious about questioning the evidence for the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy (which of course they are not), they could start with these sites and then go on to use the Ed Forum's (not very good, in my experience) search function:

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1588-harvey-lee-links-to-alternative-explanations

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/search/label/Harvey%20%26%20Lee

Sandy Larsen writes:

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the most logical thing to conclude from the fact that Harvey & Lee each had a mastoidectomy scar is that both had the surgery.

"The fact"? These are two characters in a work of fiction that was very loosely based on real events. In this work of fiction, only one of the characters is described as having undergone a mastoidectomy operation. A scar conjured up from an imaginary operation on the other imaginary character in an imaginary hospital by an imaginary surgeon, is not a fact. Even by 'Harvey and Lee' standards, that's insane.

Sandy has actually fallen for a ludicrous explanation which I put forward as something that was so far out that not even the H & L gullibles would go for it; see point (d) in this post. Sandy, it was a joke! You weren't meant to take it seriously!

So far, the 'Harvey and Lee' school of thought has provided three contradictory explanations for the existence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave:

1 - Cecil B. d'Armstrong: fictional character A alone had the mastoidectomy, and fictional character B was buried in the grave.
2 - Jim 'best boy' Hargrove: fictional character B alone had the mastoidectomy and was buried in the grave.
3 - Sandy Larsen, winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Completely Unqualified Amateur Dental Analysis Based On A Quick Glance At Some Old Photos: both fictional character A and fictional character B had the mastoidectomy.

The sane interpretation is that the historical, one and only, Lee Harvey Oswald had the mastoidectomy and was buried in the grave. But that wasn't the question that Jim has been avoiding answering.

Let's give Jim another go at answering the question he has avoided four times already, by giving us an explanation of Armstrong's apparently dishonest behaviour. The exhumation autopsy report described a mastoidectomy defect on the body in Oswald's grave. According to Armstrong's book, however, the body in the grave had not undergone a mastoidectomy; the operation had been carried out on the other fictional doppelganger, the one who was not buried in the grave. If the scientists' report was true, the theory which Armstrong put forward in his book was false.

The report was published two decades earlier than Armstrong's book. When he wrote Harvey and Lee, Armstrong knew that evidence existed which, if true, debunked his theory. In his book, he didn't even try to explain away the mastoidectomy defect. He decided instead to completely ignore the evidence which showed his theory to be false, thereby misleading his readers. For the fifth time, can Jim think of a reason for this behaviour that doesn't make Armstrong look like a con artist?

Remember, the question isn't about whether this or that person had actually had a mastoidectomy, or whether this or that piece of evidence had been faked like all the other evidence that contradicts the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy. It's about Armstrong's treatment of the evidence. The existence of a mastoidectomy defect contradicted a central part of his theory, and he didn't bother to tell his readers about it. Why did Armstrong not mention the mastoidectomy defect?

Jim Hargrove writes:

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Mr B ... knows perfectly well that John gave up an income that, based on past performance, would surely have amounted to millions of dollars to pursue JFK assassination research exclusively for more than a decade

No, Mr B did not know that, although he had read somewhere that Armstrong wasn't short of money. Mr B took it for granted that the prospect of financial reward wasn't what motivated Armstrong to write Harvey and Lee. But none of that has anything to do with the point Mr B raised.

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to say that this kind of behavior makes “Armstrong look like a con man”

That wasn't what Mr B said. Mr B's point, which Jim has now avoided answering three times, was that it is Armstrong's treatment of the mastoidectomy evidence that makes him look like a con man.

Note the phrase "look like". Perhaps there's an alternative explanation for Armstrong's apparently dishonest behaviour. Mr B has invited Jim three times (without success, so far) to provide an explanation other than the obvious one: Armstrong was deliberately ignoring evidence that seriously undermined his theory.

The point is that the mastoidectomy defect contradicted the central element of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy: the carefully detailed biographies of his two fictional characters. The wrong doppelganger was buried in the grave. Scientific evidence proved that Armstrong's theory was wrong. Armstrong must have known this. Yet he failed to even mention the problem. By doing so, he misled his readers.

For the fourth time: is there a plausible, respectable reason why Armstrong did not even mention the mastoidectomy defect in his book?

Greg's latest reply is here:

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2075-an-open-letter-to-lance-payette#31020

Greg has replied here:

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2075-an-open-letter-to-lance-payette#30923

Jim Hargrove writes:

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Mr. B continues to use the mastoidectomy as an excuse to ignore all the evidence for two Oswalds

Actually, Mr B continues to use the mastoidectomy to show that Armstrong's treatment of the exhumation autopsy report appears to be dishonest.

Jim has now failed, twice, to answer a simple question. Let's see if we can prise a straight answer from Jim at the third attempt. Here goes:

Armstrong was aware of the report which showed that the body in the grave had undergone a mastoidectomy. Armstrong must also have been aware that this evidence contradicted his own assertion that the fictional doppelganger who had been buried in the grave was not the one who had undergone the operation:

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It was Lee Oswald who had the mastoidectomy operation ... Harvey Oswald's body ... was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery ... The remains examined by Dr Norton were of Harvey Oswald. ... This man was not Lee Oswald.

(Harvey and Lee, pp.946-7; bold-face in the original)

If the autopsy report was true, a central element of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy was false, and Armstrong knew it.

Armstrong's book was published 19 years after the autopsy report. He had almost two decades to come up with an explanation for the existence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave, a fact which, if true, demolished his theory. How did he deal with this problem?

He didn't claim that the scientists were lying, or that their report had been faked, or (like Jim) that medical records which had been genuine for well over half a century suddenly became fakes in October 2019, or that some aliens who were hovering over the exhumation in their invisible spaceship happened to beam up the body in the grave ('Harvey') and replace it with that of 'Lee'. Instead, Armstrong decided that the best thing to do was simply to ignore this inconvenient piece of evidence, pretend it didn't exist, and hope that no-one noticed.

Armstrong was faced with a problem that's fatal to his theory, and rather than dealing with it he neglected even to mention it, thereby misleading his readers. Why did he choose to mislead his readers in this way?

Is Jim able to explain this apparently dishonest behaviour in a way that doesn't make Armstrong look like a con man?

As usual, Jim avoids the question, which is: why did Armstrong ignore the evidence from the autopsy report?

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The important point is that Armstrong, who must have been aware that very strong evidence existed which was absolutely fatal to his theory, simply didn't bother to mention the problem. It's the behaviour of a snake-oil salesman, not of someone with a credible theory to promote.

All we got was the standard 'Harvey and Lee' excuse: the evidence was faked. Yesterday, the medical records were genuine. Today, they are fakes. You see, in 'Harvey and Lee' world, if a piece of evidence can be made to fit the theory, that means the evidence must be authentic. But if it contradicts the theory, that means the evidence must have been faked. This sophistry makes the theory unfalsifiable, and hence worthless. Jim, just like his revered master, is using the techniques of a snake-oil salesman.

Let's get back to the point I raised. Why did Armstrong refuse to even mention that the autopsy report contradicted the carefully assembled biographies of his two fictional characters? He knew about the mastoidectomy defect. He knew that it destroyed his theory. Why didn't he mention this? Hmm ... let me think ... I wonder what the reason could be ...

If Armstrong had anticipated Jim's reply and had written that "J. Edgar Hoover's dog ate the medical records", he would at least have acknowleged the fact that evidence existed which contradicted a central part of his theory. But not mentioning the fact of the mastoidectomy defect at all seems thoroughly dishonest.

Is there a credible reason for Armstrong's behaviour that doesn't make him look like a cheap con artist?

Tracy Parnell writes:

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they themselves just ignore those pesky unanswerable questions that destroy H&L. Like why did the forensic examination of the body of "Harvey" have signs of the mastoid operation that "Lee" had?

Good observation. But it isn't just Armstrong's handful of followers who ignore uncomfortable evidence. It's worth looking at how the master himself dealt with the evidence from the exhumation autopsy report.

Let's start with the relevant parts of his two characters' biographies. Harvey and Lee, p.23:

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On February 8, 1946 Lee Oswald ... was admitted to the Harris Hospital in Fort Worth where he was diagnosed with "acute mastoiditis, left." ... A mastoidectomy was performed on Lee Oswald's left ear.

p.897:

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Lee Oswald had ... a mastoidectomy operation in 1946.

(N.B. The bold-face in these quotations is part of the original text's bizarre typography.)

p.946:

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It was Lee Oswald who had the mastoidectomy operation in 1945 [sic]. ... After Dr Rose completed the autopsy [in 1963] Harvey Oswald's body ... was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth.

pp.946-7:

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On October 4, 1981 Oswald's remains were removed from his grave ... and taken to the pathology laboratory at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. ... the examination team announce that based upon forensic scientific examination, that consisted of matching the teeth with Marine Corps dental records, "The remains in the grave marked as Lee Harvey Oswald are indeed Lee Harvey Oswald."

NOTE: The remains examined by Dr Norton were of Harvey Oswald. ... This man was not Lee Oswald.

In these passages from his holy text, the prophet Armstrong has revealed unto us a central, eternal truth of 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine: it was 'Lee' who had undergone the mastoidectomy operation, and it was 'Harvey' who was buried in the grave.

Unfortunately, the official report of the exhumation autopsy (see http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/norton1.htm), which was published in January 1984, mentioned that the body in the grave was that of someone who had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy operation:

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The mastoid prominence of the left temporal bone revealed an irregularly ovoid 1.0 by 0.5 cm defect pene­trating to the interior of the mastoid bone with the defect edges rounded and smooth. ... The left mastoidec­tomy defect also correlated with the antemortem medical records.

Armstrong must have been aware of the evidence of a mastoidectomy defect, because he cited the scientists' report in his book (in note 37 on page 963), and he quoted part of it. When he wrote Harvey and Lee, which was published in 2003, he must have known that this evidence flatly contradicted his claim that the doppelganger buried in the grave was not the doppelganger who had undergone the mastoidectomy operation. If the scientists' report was true, Armstrong's theory was false.

Armstrong had the best part of two decades to deal with the problematic information about the mastoidectomy defect. How did he respond? He ignored it. There is no mention in Harvey and Lee (at least, none that I can find, and none that is referred to in the index) of the fact that the exhumed body in the grave was of someone who had undergone a mastoidectomy operation, let alone an acknowledgement that the fact demolished his theory.

All we get is the assertion that "The remains examined by Dr Norton were of Harvey Oswald." No evidence or argument is given to support this assertion. No clue is given by Armstrong to anyone who might have struggled through to page 947 that the central part of his theory had been conclusively debunked by professional scientists in a reputable scientific journal two decades earlier.

You might think that Armstrong would have felt obliged to make some sort of effort to deal with the evidence in the scientists' report. But he didn't even try. He could easily have done so, because there are several obvious alternative explanations for the apparent existence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave:

(a) The scientists could have been bribed or threatened.

(b) Their report could have been faked, like every other piece of evidence that contradicts the 'Harvey and Lee' theory.

(c) The undertakers in 1963 could have been forced by bribery or threats to bury the wrong doppelganger. Of course, this wrong doppelganger would have needed to be killed first, and the body of the other deceased doppelganger would have needed to be disposed of somehow without the general public finding out, but anyone powerful enough to run a top-secret long-term doppelganger project, especially a project involving two unrelated boys from different parts of the world who magically grew up to look identical more than a decade later, wouldn't have had any trouble getting around these trivial obstacles.

(d) Armstrong's fictional character, 'Harvey', could have been given an unnecessary mastoidectomy operation at the age of six just in case his body might need to be dug up nearly four decades later.

(e) Little green men could have swapped the bodies of 'Harvey' and 'Lee' during the exhumation in 1981 by beaming one of the bodies up to their spaceship and beaming down the other. No-one would have noticed because ... um, because ... the spaceship was invisible. Yes, that's it! They arrived on earth in an invisible spaceship.

Armstrong failed to mention any of these alternative explanations, each of which is more plausible than the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. Armstrong simply had no answer to the scientists' report. By not mentioning the issue, he misled his readers. The sort of gullible people at whom the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is aimed probably wouldn't be aware of this part of the scientists' report, and Armstrong clearly preferred that they remain in ignorance.

The important point is that Armstrong, who must have been aware that very strong evidence existed which was absolutely fatal to his theory, simply didn't bother to mention the problem. It's the behaviour of a snake-oil salesman, not of someone with a credible theory to promote.

Unsurprisingly, Jim seems to have run out of answers to the criticism of his Oswald-doppelganger-in-the-Texas-Theater fantasy.

So let's recap and provide an overview. Anyone, now or in the future, who is at all tempted to take seriously the 'Harvey and Lee' version of the Texas Theater incident the next time Jim brings it up, can be pointed to this page. And bring it up again he most certainly will (as I will explain further on).

Everyone will be able to see how Jim has ignored arguments that he doesn't have an answer for, and how he has made false statements to bolster his case.

The 'Harvey and Lee' argument

We know that an Oswald doppelganger, someone who looked exactly like the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater because:

(1) Two police reports mentioned it:
    (a) C.E. Talbert, in his report about the murder of Officer Tippit, which was typed at 5pm on 22 November, wrote that "Suspect was later arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theatre".
    (b) L.D. Stringfellow, in a memo to W.P. Gannaway on 23 November, wrote that "Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater".

(2) Warren 'Butch' Burroughs, who ran the concession stand at the back of the auditorium, saw the arrest and saw someone hustled down stairs:
    (a) He claimed to have seen someone who looked like Oswald arrested and taken out through the rear door. We know this from two sources:
        (i) Jim Glover wrote a letter to the FBI in 1993 stating that "Burroughs also saw Oswald's double being arrested and taken out the back door of the theatre at about the same time that Oswald was being taken out the front door."
        (ii) James Douglass, who interviewed Burroughs in 2007, wrote that "he saw a second arrest occur in the Texas Theater ... Burroughs saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed. The Oswald look-alike, however, was taken by police not out the front but out the back of the theater" (JFK and the Unspeakable, pp.292-3).
    (b) Burroughs' claim was corroborated by Bernard Haire, who was standing in the alley behind the Texas Theater. Haire saw a young white man escorted by the police out of the rear door and into the alley, and then driven away in a police car which had been parked in the alley (Jim Marrs, Crossfire, p.354).
    (c) Burroughs claimed for decades that he had seen an arrest in the balcony.
    (d) He told more than one interviewer that the man he had seen was handcuffed.

Reasons to think the balcony location was mistaken

(1) Neither of the authors of the police reports is known to have witnessed Oswald's arrest on the ground floor or to have visited the balcony. Talbert was in the alley at the back of the building for at least some of the time, and Stringfellow probably wasn't at the Texas Theater at all.

(2) The precise location of Oswald's arrest was of no significance. Its inclusion in the reports was an unimportant detail that the report writers would not have bothered to check.

(3) The alert which told the police to go to the Texas Theater mentioned that the suspect may have been in the balcony. When writing their reports, the authors would surely have been aware of this fact and could easily have assumed that that was actually where Oswald was arrested.

Reasons to think that no doppelganger calling himself Oswald was arrested

(1) No doppelganger in his right mind would have blurted out that his name was Oswald, thereby giving away the top-secret, decade-long multi-Oswald, multi-Marguerite, fake mastoidectomy operated-upon, Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee doppelganger project.

(2) It would have become common knowledge within the Dallas police department that two men with the same name and the same physical features were arrested in the same building on the same day. It is inconceiveable that no-one ever mentioned this outrageously unlikely coincidence, especially since one of the men with the name 'Oswald' was central to a world-wide news story, the biggest Dallas had ever seen.

Reasons to doubt Burroughs' story

(1) There is a perfectly credible candidate for the incident Burroughs saw:
    (a) George Applin, like Oswald, was a young (21-year-old versus 24-year-old) white man.
    (b) Applin spoke to the police on the ground floor and was escorted by them out of the building.
    (c) He probably left by the rear door, for several reasons: the police who spoke to him had entered by the rear door; their cars were parked in the alley by the rear door; they would almost certainly have taken Applin away in the cars they had arrived in; and none of the many witnesses at the front of the building reported that anyone other than Oswald was taken out through the front door.
    (d) Over the decades, Burroughs' memory of seeing Applin being taken away by the police could easily have changed into a memory of an arrest.

(2) We know for a fact that George Applin was taken away by the police, in order to give a signed and witnessed statement (see his affidavit). But no-one in the Texas Theater who would have witnessed the event Burroughs described -- not Burroughs, not Jack Davis, not George Applin himself, not any of the police officers -- reported seeing more than one such incident, apart from the arrest of Oswald.

(3) No witnesses claimed that anyone was "hustled down stairs". Jim made that bit up.

(4) Burroughs had failed to mention his story when he was interviewed by Jim Marrs in 1987. Marrs was keen to learn whether anything even vaguely conspiratorial had occurred in the Texas Theater. He would certainly have questioned Burroughs closely, and would certainly have reported Burroughs' story if it existed in 1987, but he didn't.

(5) Burroughs' story didn't emerge until 1993, three decades after the event.

(6) Burroughs' story evolved and expanded over time:
    (a) 1964, Warren Commission: no arrest.
    (b) 1987, Jim Marrs interview: no arrest.
    (c) 1993, Jim Glover: arrest and taken out the back.
    (d) 2007, James Douglass interview: arrest, placed in handcuffs, and taken out the back.

(7) There is no reason to connect Burroughs' story with any arrest in the balcony:
    (a) He did not explicitly mention to any of his interviewers over the years that he had seen anyone, let alone a suspect under arrest in handcuffs and accompanied by police officers, come down the stairs from the balcony.
    (b) He would certainly have seen such an event, if it had happened, because we know from his Warren Commission testimony (Hearings, vol.7, pp.14-17) that he was at his concession stand, which was close to the stairs (see a plan of the building), and he had earlier seen and reported a much less noticeable incident, a woman walking up the stairs by herself (Marrs, Crossfire, p.353).

(8) Burroughs did not claim for decades that he had seen an arrest in the balcony. Jim made that bit up. The phrase in Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable (p.293) which Jim claimed referred to an arrest in the balcony ("saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed") in fact implies that the event he saw took place on the ground floor.

(9) Burroughs did not see an arrest take place in the balcony at all:
    (a) Burroughs did not tell anyone, ever, that he had seen an arrest take place in the balcony.
    (b) He never claimed to have gone up to the balcony.
    (c) He implied, according to Marrs' and Douglass's accounts, that he stayed on the ground floor and never went up to the balcony while the police were in the building.
    (d) He would not have been able to see into the balcony from his position on the ground floor at the back of the auditorium.

(10) Burroughs did not tell more than one interviewer that the man he saw was in handcuffs. Jim made that bit up. The only mention of handcuffs is in Douglass's account, from an interview in 2007, 44 years after the event.

(11) It is an uncontroversial fact that when people recall past events, especially events from several decades earlier as in Burroughs' case, they forget some details and unwittingly add others. There is no reason to assume that Burroughs' memory was less fallible than anyone else's.

Conclusions

The police reports each contained the same easily understandable mistake, and Warren 'Butch' Burroughs had a normal, fallible memory.

The real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested on the ground floor and taken out of the front entrance. Just one other person was taken out of the Texas Theater by the police: George Jefferson Applin, Jr.

Consequence

Now that there is no reason to suppose that a fictional Oswald doppelganger got arrested in the Texas Theater, there's a big hole in the 'Harvey and Lee' narrative. The 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy is in even worse shape now than it was before Jim used this thread to try and support it.

It will be interesting to see whether Jim (or his revered master) compiles a revised narrative of events, omitting the Texas Theater incident, or whether he simply pretends that his interpretation of the incident hasn't been debunked. We all know the answer to that one: he'll bring it up again and pretend that this thread never happened.

Why should anyone care?

The 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy is just one of many examples of the tin-foil hat speculation that the JFK assassination, like other unsolved mysteries, tends to attract. Most non-paranoid people would probably just shrug their shoulders and laugh about it, but the danger with all of this stuff is that it is liable to give genuine critics of the lone-nut theory a bad name. If the public at large starts to think that the only criticism that's on offer is paranoid speculation, the subject will never attract much active public support.

As we saw with the formation of the House Select Committee and the Assassination Records Review Board, it is pressure by the general public that gets things moving. Without public support, the issue will continue to be reported and discussed unfairly in the media, evidence will remain withheld, and the case won't get resolved.

Each time a piece of tin-foil hattery is debunked, the less likely it is that the JFK assassination debate will be misunderstood by the general public, and the more likely it is that something might actually get done.

Why go to all this bother?

It may seem that methodically trashing one small element of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy is excessive and unnecessary. After all, hardly anyone takes seriously the idea that two unrelated boys from different parts of the world magically turned out to look identical when they grew up more than a decade later, not to mention the fake Marguerite who just happened to vanish into thin air immediately after the assassination, the wrong doppelganger getting buried in the grave (whoops!), and all the rest of it. As Bernie Laverick pointed out, the 'Harvey and Lee' cult has been around for more than two decades and it has still acquired fewer converts than the idea that the Queen of England is a lizard.

Not only that, but debunking this particular element of the fairy tale surely won't stop Jim Hargrove repeating his revered master's claim that a top-secret long-term Oswald doppelganger was arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater. As Jim's friend Greg Parker has pointed out (see my previous post), Jim has made on average around two posts a day since he has been a member of this forum, and almost all of those posts have been repeating the same few 'Harvey and Lee' talking points over and over and over again, copying and pasting the same poorly thought-out rubbish from his holy book, while ignoring all the evidence and arguments that contradict what he's saying.

But the next time Jim does it, people will at least be more aware of his methods. I've noticed that just in the last few days, since Jim in effect threw in the towel, views of this thread have gone from around 15,000 to 17,000 (it's up to 17,030 at the time of writing), so there are a lot of people who are now aware of how weak the whole 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense is.

For those who are interested, there's further criticism of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy here:

- http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/f13-the-harvey-lee-evidence

- http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/search/label/Harvey %26 Lee

Greg has given his side of the story here:

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2051p50-time-to-kill-another-myth-there-was-no-second-oswald-arrested-at-the-theater#30904

Jim Hargrove writes:

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So Burroughs was lying

No, there's no reason to suppose that Burroughs was lying, i.e. deliberately saying something he knew or suspected to be untrue.

He was recalling an event that had occurred several decades earlier. It often happens in such cases that some details get forgotten and other details get added.

We know that George Applin spoke to police officers on the ground floor and was led away by them to give a statement. It really isn't difficult to see how Applin's encounter with the police might have evolved, several decades later, into an arrest.

We know several things about Burroughs and the Applin encounter:

- Burroughs was in a position to have seen such an encounter.
- Burroughs didn't report more than one such encounter.
- No-one else reported more than one such encounter.
- Applin is likely to have been escorted out of the rear of the building, matching Burroughs' story.
- Burroughs' story didn't emerge until 1993, thirty years after the event.

The obvious conclusion is that Burroughs' story was a flawed recollection of Applin's encounter with the police.

Having disposed of Butch Burroughs, let's turn to the surviving element of Jim's Texas Theater fantasy. I've already pointed out that there is a perfectly credible, non-conspiratorial explanation for the "arrested in the balcony" element of the reports. I wonder what Jim has to say about the other reasons I gave for doubting the accuracy of the police reports:

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If we want to take the reports literally, we need to find a plausible reason why an imposter who looked identical to the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald told the police his name was Oswald, thereby blowing wide open the carefully planned and professionally choreographed impersonation. We also need to find a plausible reason why no-one in the Dallas police department thought it was worth mentioning that two men with the same name and the same physical features had been arrested in the same building at the same time.

What sort of incompetent doppelganger gives the game away by telling the cops that his name is Oswald? Why did no-one notice, in the half-century or more since the assassination, the remarkable coincidence that the police raid on the Texas Theater had resulted in the arrest of two men who looked identical and who were each called Oswald?

Any ideas?

(Apart, obviously, from the usual "Look over there at the Bolton Ford incident! No, stop looking at the Texas Theater stuff! Look at these school records instead! I said, forget about the Texas Theater! Oswald was in Taiwan the whole time, or the Bronx Zoo, or North Dakota or somewhere!")

We might also ask: why was it necessary to send someone who looked identical to the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald into the Texas Theater anyway? If the man's purpose was merely to lead the police to the building so that they could find Oswald, why did the man have to be Oswald's exact double?

P.S. Did Jim seriously think I was claiming that Burroughs was lying? I would have thought that this bit should have given him a clue:

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Burroughs can only have been recounting a confused 44-year-old memory

Incidentally, a friend of Jim's has pointed out that Jim himself is happy to accuse all sorts of people of lying, when it suits him.

Mr B wrote:

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I presume that Jim doesn't take at face value Burroughs' statement that he "saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed".

Jim Hargrove wrote:

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That is NOT a direct quote from Mr. Burroughs.  It is a statement by James Douglass describing what was said.  It could easily mean that the second Oswald had been handcuffed already by the time Mr. Burroughs saw him.

Only by closing one eye and squinting very hard can those words be taken to "mean that the second Oswald had been handcuffed already". Douglass is a competent writer. Unless he was embellishing Burroughs' account, he wouldn't have used that precise form of words ("saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed") if all Burroughs had told him was that he saw someone being taken away, already in handcuffs.

The clear implication is that, if we are to believe Douglass, Burroughs claimed that the fake Oswald was actually "placed under arrest and handcuffed" on the ground floor. Either Burroughs had invented seeing the ground-floor arrest decades after the event, having recalled seeing something happen on the ground floor that looked vaguely like an arrest, or Douglass was embellishing Burroughs' account.

Jim Glover's form of words could be taken to be describing someone who had already been arrested in the balcony, but that's not the case with James Douglass's version. And, of course, Burroughs said nothing about any of this to Jim Marrs in 1987: no arrest, no handcuffs, no balcony.

There are two other reasons to doubt that Burroughs had seen anyone who had already been arrested in the balcony:

(a) Burroughs did not tell Douglass that he had seen a suspect come down the balcony stairs accompanied by police officers, as that person must have been if that person had already been arrested in the balcony.

(b) Burroughs did not tell Douglass that he had seen a suspect come down the balcony stairs at all.

We know both of these things because in amongst all of Douglass's speculation is the phrase, "either on his own or already accompanied by police". If Burroughs had mentioned to Douglass that he had seen a suspect "accompanied by police", Douglass certainly would not have written "either on his own or". And if Burroughs had mentioned that he had seen a suspect come down the stairs already under arrest, Douglass certainly would not have been unsure about whether or not the suspect was accompanied by police.

We can be sure that if a suspect had come down the stairs under arrest (and therefore accompanied by police), Burroughs would have seen it, for two reasons. Firstly, we know that Burroughs was standing close to the stairs. Secondly, we know that he had earlier noticed a much less noticeable event, a woman walking up those stairs on her own, an event he recounted to Jim Marrs in 1987.

Not only would Burroughs have seen a suspect being escorted down from the balcony by the police if such an event had happened, but he would also have seen George Applin being escorted out of the building by the police, an event that we know happened. As a friend of Jim's has pointed out, Burroughs never claimed to have witnessed two similar events:

(1) an Oswald double being led away by the police, and

(2) George Applin being led away by the police.

If Burroughs had seen one such event, he would surely have also seen the other, had both events actually occurred. But Burroughs only claimed to have seen one of them.

The same source points out that Applin himself never mentioned seeing a speculative arrestee being brought down from the balcony and taken out via the rear door. I've just checked Marrs and Douglass, and Jack Davis didn't mention it either. Applin and Davis would surely have seen such an event, had it occurred. Only one person, apart from the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, was escorted out of the building by police officers, and that one person must have been George Applin.

If we want to use Burroughs' statement in 2007 (or at least Douglass's version of it) to support the arrest of an Oswald double in the Texas Theater, we must accept that the arrest took place on the ground floor. If we are claiming that there was no arrest of an Oswald double on the ground floor, Burroughs can only have been recounting a confused 44-year-old memory of seeing the one event that we know for certain took place: George Applin, on the ground floor, speaking to the police and then being escorted by them out of the building so that he could give a statement.

Of course, we can't say for certain that Burroughs' memory was mistaken, just as we can't say for certain that George Applin was 7' 3" tall and disguised as Groucho Marx. But there are very good reasons to doubt Burroughs' reliability as a witness, at least concerning his account of seeing the arrest in the Texas Theater of someone who looked like Oswald but was not him, an incident that first saw the light of day 30 years after the event, and an incident that he didn't think was worth mentioning to an inquisitve, conspiracy-minded researcher several years earlier.

Butch Burroughs' evidence for an arrest in the balcony is very weak. Even weaker is the evidence from the police reports. We know that there is a perfectly rational explanation for the reports' claim that someone using the name Oswald "was arrested in the balcony", as I explained in a previous post.

If we want to take the reports literally, we need to find a plausible reason why an imposter who looked identical to the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald told the police his name was Oswald, thereby blowing wide open the carefully planned and professionally choreographed impersonation. We also need to find a plausible reason why no-one in the Dallas police department thought it was worth mentioning that two men with the same name and the same physical features had been arrested in the same building at the same time.

Without those plausible reasons, we are forced to say goodbye to the police reports. Once we say goodbye to the police reports, we also say goodbye to the presence in the Texas Theater of a long-term, multilingual, Hungarian refugee Oswald doppelganger with sloping shoulders, a fake mastoidectomy defect that he had acquired in a hospital that hadn't been built yet, and a fake mother named Marguerite who vanished without a trace immediately after the assassination.

Not everything that happened on the day of the assassination was part of a massive, all-encompassing conspiracy. Unfortunately, unsolved mysteries do tend to attract paranoid people, who seem to think that the bigger and more implausible a proposed conspiracy is, the more likely it is to be true.

Jim also writes:

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Warren Burroughs told interviewers that the Oswald double he saw arrested in the theater was handcuffed.

No, Burroughs only told one interviewer, James Douglass, that the person he saw being placed under arrest on the ground floor was handcuffed. There's no mention of this in Marrs' Crossfire, nor in either of Jim Glover's brief accounts.

The "handcuffed" element appeared for the first time in 2007, 44 years after the event. Whether it was one of those details that get added to stories when the stories are repeated over and over, or whether Douglass applied some literary licence, there's no way of knowing. But we do know that it's further evidence of Burroughs' story expanding over time.

It gives us one more reason to doubt the story's authenticity. If Burroughs really did see someone who looked identical to Oswald wearing handcuffs, there's even more reason to expect him to have told that story to Marrs. But he didn't.

Cory Santos writes:

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The reality is the Burrogh's story has greatly changed. ... it tends to call his credibility into question. ... Simply, Jim Marrs would have thoroughly interviewed him.  The "no one asked" argument fails at this point because Marrs would have asked.

 I do not think Burrough's account is critical to the two Oswalds theory

 

Burroughs' account is critical to the Texas Theater element of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, because without it all we have are the police reports of an arrest in the balcony. As I have pointed out, there is every reason to believe that the "arrested in the balcony" part of those reports was a simple, everyday mistake. There was no arrest in the balcony.

Without Burroughs, there's no seat in the Texas Theater, either in the balcony or on the ground floor, for Jim's long-term Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee Oswald doppelganger with a 13-inch head and a fake mother named Marguerite who appeared from nowhere and vanished from the face of the earth immediately after the assassination. And without a long-term Oswald doppelganger in the Texas Theater, a major element vanishes from the 'Harvey and Lee' fictional narrative.

Jim Hargrove writes:

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Because Burroughs said he saw someone arrested does not mean he saw the entire arrest process.

It's good to see that Jim has now acknowledged that it's necessary to interpret Burroughs' statements and make allowances for inaccuracies, rather than just accept every word.

I presume that Jim doesn't take at face value Burroughs' statement that he "saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed". Being placed under arrest and handcuffed isn't the same thing as being escorted by the police down the balcony steps and across the auditorium.

If the police really had arrested anyone in the balcony, the arrestee would have been placed in handcuffs before Burroughs caught sight of him. But Burroughs' statement is quite specific: he saw someone being arrested and placed in handcuffs. Is Jim proposing that the police arrested a suspect in the balcony, put him in handcuffs, then took the handcuffs off and let him wander down the stairs by himself, only to arrest him again on the ground floor? Even by 'Harvey and Lee' standards, that is remarkably silly. Burroughs' statement to Douglass is incompatible with an arrest in the balcony, unless we propose that two people were arrested, one in the balcony and one on the ground floor.

Evidently Burroughs was mistaken, 44 years after the event, when he claimed to have seen someone actually being arrested and placed in handcuffs. Or perhaps Burroughs didn't actually make this claim, and James Douglass embellished Burroughs' account so that it would better fit Douglass's narrative. Either way, it doesn't support Jim's balcony-arrest speculation.

If we conclude that Burroughs (or Douglass) was mistaken about this element of his story, what are we left with?

Firstly, there is the fact that Burroughs did not specifically state to anyone (the Warren Commission, Jim Marrs, Jim Glover or James Douglass) that he had seen someone coming down the stairs from the balcony accompanied by police officers. At least two of those people, Marrs and Douglass, would certainly have reported this observation if Burroughs had made it, but they didn't.

We know that Burroughs would have seen such an event if it had occurred, because we know from his testimony that he was by his concession stand, and we know from a plan of the building that his concession stand was close to the stairs. We know that he had noticed a woman going up those same stairs by herself earlier, before the police arrived, because he told Jim Marrs, and Marrs reported it (Crossfire, p.353). But Burroughs never said a word about seeing anyone coming down the stairs accompanied by police officers. Whatever it was that Burroughs saw, it didn't happen on the stairs.

More importantly, we are left with the fact that Burroughs didn't say a word about anything resembling an arrest of a fake Oswald until after 1987. Again, if Burroughs had seen it, he would have mentioned it to Jim Marrs, and Marrs would then have reported it, but he didn't. For the first 24 years after the assassination (not 24 hours, 24 years!), Burroughs didn't consider that the event he saw had any significance. The reason for that is obvious: the event he saw was an innocent 21-year-old white man on the ground floor being escorted out of the building by the police to give a statement.

So much for Burroughs' non-existent corroboration of an arrest in the balcony. How strong is the actual evidence for an arrest in the balcony? Unfortunately, as I explained in my previous post, it's feeble. Firstly, there is a perfectly understandable explanation for the "arrested in the balcony" statements. Secondly, it's inconceiveable that an Oswald imposter would tell the police that his name was Oswald, thereby giving away the plot. Thirdly, it's also inconceiveable that no-one in the Dallas police department would notice that they had arrested two men with the same name and the same physical features in the same building at the same time. It's clear that the police reports were mistaken in claiming that someone named Oswald was arrested in the balcony. No-one was arrested in the balcony.

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there is no mention in Crossfire of Mr. Burroughs saying that he saw the arrest of the Oswald lookalike.  But it most likely didn’t occur to Jim Marrs to ask that specific question.

Burroughs didn't say anything about an arrest of an Oswald doppelganger because Marrs didn't specifically ask him about it? Seriously? Marrs would have asked Burroughs about his recollections of what happened inside the Texas Theater, and whether he had seen anything unusual that day. Marrs had no reason to ask Burroughs specifically whether he had seen an Oswald doppelganger getting arrested, because Marrs had no reason to suspect that anyone other than the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested.

I can't believe that Jim is actually claiming that Burroughs saw an Oswald doppelganger get arrested but didn't think it was worth mentioning because Marrs didn't specifically ask him about it! That is amazingly desperate. There is a good reason why Burroughs' story didn't emerge until 30 years after the assassination, but that isn't it.

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This accounts for one Oswald being seen in the theater by Jack Davis and Warren Burroughs before the official WC time for the murder of Tippit  (1:15)

Ah yes, I forgot that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is essentially the Warren Commission's theory with added paranoia. According to the Warren Commission and the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, someone named Oswald was up on the sixth floor, shooting Kennedy. According to the Warren Commission and the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, someone named Oswald was on Tenth Street, shooting Tippit. According to someone who helped to dream up the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, Stanley Kubrick was in Arizona, shooting the moon landings.*

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This is probably the reason the list of theater patrons assembled by three cops had to disappear.

The reason for the list's disappearance could well be that the witnesses named in it might have blown apart the Warren Commission's Tippit timeline. As I pointed out earlier, I don't have any reason to doubt that the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald entered the Texas Theater shortly after 1 o'clock, as Burroughs claimed.

There's no need to speculate that the list disappeared because it would have exposed some fantastical decade-long impersonation by a Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee orphan with a fake mother named Marguerite and a fake mastoidectomy scar that he had acquired in a hospital that hadn't been built yet, and all the other overblown and contradictory 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense.

Alternatively, it may just have got lost, as documents sometimes do.

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Mr. B. writes above that Applin was “led by police out the rear door” even though he knows there is no evidence indicating which door Applin used to exit the theater

Mr B has already given his reasons for stating that Applin is very likely to have left by the rear door.

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he has no idea if Applin looked anything at all like Classic Oswald

We know for a fact that Applin did look somewhat like the real-life, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald. Applin's affidavit states that he was a 21-year-old white male. Oswald was an unremarkable-looking 24-year-old white male. There's more than enough similarity there to account for a case of mistaken identity, especially in recollections from many years after the event, like those of Burroughs and Haire, who each saw the young white man for no more than a few seconds.

Of course, it's quite possible that George Applin was 7' 3" tall, with only one leg, and was wearing a Groucho Marx glasses-and-moustache kit, a bright orange stovepipe hat, and a dress he'd borrowed from J Edgar Hoover. Until a confirmed photo of Applin turns up, we can't eliminate that possibility. But on the evidence we have, Applin was the man seen by Burroughs and Haire.

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* Exaggeration for comic effect. The 'Harvey and Lee' guy didn't actually claim that Kubrick was involved, as far as I know, but he did seem to think that the moon landings were faked (here, thanks to Bart Kamp, is a link to his work).