Jeremy Bojczuk
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Posts posted by Jeremy Bojczuk
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Michael Walton writes (on p.52 above):
<blockquote>there'll be more quoted text, pictures and the usual Whack A Mole from Jim.</blockquote>
Surely not, Michael! Are you seriously suggesting that Jim is in the habit of changing the subject to deflect attention every time one of his claims has been debunked? Oh, wait. Jim writes (on p.54):
<blockquote>So, let's change the subject. Maybe Mr. Walton would like to explain why, when Lee Harvey Oswald was clearly living in Minsk in the USSR, he was also at the Bolton Ford Dealership in New Orleans.</blockquote>
Jim then goes on to reproduce the account in 'Harvey and Lee' of the Bolton Ford incident that was debunked some time ago. I know how much Jim appreciates Greg Parker's research, so here's a link to Greg's debunking of Armstrong's interpretation of the Bolton Ford incident:
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1408-the-bolton-ford-incident
To summarise, in my own words:
- The earliest account of the incident, the FBI's report of an interview with Oscar Deslatte on 25 November 1963, refers only to someone named 'Oswald', not 'Lee Oswald'. The account states specifically: "OSWALD, no first name given". Jim even reproduces the relevant document (WCD 75, p.677: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10477#relPageId=681 ) at the end of his post on page 54 above.
- An interview with Deslatte's boss, Fred Sewell, several years later during the Garrison investigation, mentions that the name 'Lee Oswald' was given to Deslatte, and that 'Lee Oswald' was written on the paperwork. But (according to Greg; I haven't checked this myself) the paperwork mentions only 'Oswald', not 'Lee Oswald'. Sewell appears to have been mistaken.
- Messrs Armstrong and Hargrove attempt to tie Lee Harvey Oswald to the incident by emphasising the account of Sewell, who admitted that "I wasn't at my desk all the time, I was in and out working because I had customers", and ignoring the more reliable source, the early FBI interview with Deslatte, the salesman who actually dealt with the man he named only as 'Oswald'.
- Deslatte was unable to describe the man named 'Oswald'. Sewell gave a description, but one that does not match the hypothetical version of Lee Harvey Oswald which, according to the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory, was in the US at the time of the incident. Messrs Armstrong and Hargrove do not attempt to reconcile the contradiction.
- All we have is a mention of a man named 'Oswald', of whom there were many in Louisiana. Even if this was an instance of impersonation, which is far from certain, the incident provides no support at all for the existence of a top-secret, and entirely hypothetical, CIA 'Oswald project' involving long-term doppelgänger.
Because one more 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' claim has just bitten the dust, we need to change the subject again, urgently. Everyone, please forget that the Bolton Ford dealership story has been debunked, and consider this: Oswald's school records show that he was in two different schools at the same time! It's true - it says so in the holy book!
What do you mean, that one's been debunked? OK, forget about the school records story, and consider this: Oswald was a Hungarian refugee who spoke Russian like a native! It's true - it says so in the holy book!
What do you mean, that one's been debunked? OK, forget about the Hungarian refugee story, and consider this: Oswald was impersonated at the Bolton Ford dealership! It's true - it says so in the holy book!
Round and round we go ...
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Tracy Parnell writes:
<blockquote>I would take your "evidence" for two Oswalds to the US Congress, an investigative journalist such as Morley, or any other official or person in authority and see how far you get. You will be laughed at.</blockquote>
Of course the evidence will be laughed at by any sensible person. The problem is that this car-crash of a theory is liable to cause rational critics of the lone-nut theory to be tarred with the same brush (Tracy and I will probably disagree about whether this is a good or bad thing).
On the plus side, the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' cult doesn't seem to have attracted many followers.
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Sandy,
Thanks for pointing out that misleading reference on page 5 of Harvey and Lee ("... in December 1958. A month later, he took, and passed, a military language exam in the Russian language.")
Oswald actually took the test two months later, not one month later. Sadly, Armstrong does not provide a source for his claim that Oswald passed the test. In the absence of any such evidence, I think it's safe to conclude that it wasn't a pass-or-fail type of test.
Armstrong's implication, that Oswald passed a test after just one month of studying, sounds a lot more impressive than what actually happened: after at least two months of studying, Oswald rated poorly in a test, just as one would expect from an American who began learning Russian in his teens.
That isn't the only misleading passage. This is from page 4:
<blockquote>One of the unexplained curiosities, which always perplexed and intrigued me, was Oswald's near perfect command of the Russian language, which was allegedly self-taught and mastered within a couple of months ... I wondered how Oswald, with a 9th grade education, could have mastered the Russian language within a few months.</blockquote>
Of course, Oswald never had a "near perfect command of the Russian language", and he never "mastered the Russian language", let alone "within a couple of months" or "within a few months." At the time he took the test, he had a "poor" command of the language. Even at his best, several years later, he made frequent grammatical mistakes. Again, this is exactly what one would expect from an American who had begun learning Russian in his teens.
There is nothing that requires the Oswald who defected to have been a native speaker of Russian, as 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' doctrine demands.
Sandy writes:
<blockquote>The theory is that Russian speaking HARVEY immigrated to the United States when he was in about the 4th grade. And that would explain why Oswald would pass the Russian Test -- designed for native speakers, according to Bugliosi -- with poor scores. He spoke at a 4th grade level. (At least that's my understanding of the theory.)</blockquote>
But there is only a very remote chance that the hypothetical Hungarian boy would have been brought up in a Russian-speaking family, and the only piece of evidence we have about the ages at which Russian was taught in Hungarian schools states that it was taught only from grade 5 onwards. The hypothetical Hungarian boy could not realistically have left Hungary with a native speaker's knowledge of Russian when he was in the fourth grade.
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If Jim or Sandy believe that the information at this link
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1500-one-more-attempt-at-those-darn-school-records
really "proves nothing", perhaps they could explain why. Then anyone who is interested in the topic of Oswald's school records can take the simple step of clicking on the link, to compare the two interpretations.
Here's another link for Jim to either check out (if he sincerely wants to question his beliefs) or scream and shout about (if he doesn't):
https://www.amazon.com/Harvey-Oswalds-Cold-Assassination-Reinvestigated-ebook/dp/B00IXOA5ZK
Anyone who is genuinely interested in the topic of Oswald's school records will find it covered in Volume Two, a few pages into Part One: Symbiosis and Synthesis: 1954-1956.
Happy reading!
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Jim also writes, concerning Oswald's Russian test:
<blockquote>the fact that he [Oswald] got more answers right than wrong is astounding.</blockquote>
No, it isn't. When combined with the knowledge that Oswald's performance in the test was poor ("His rating was poor throughout"), it merely shows that the one and only, real-life Lee Harvey Oswald had a basic knowledge of Russian in February 1959, just as you might expect of a native English speaker who was in the early stages of learning Russian.
Oswald, however, was supposed to have been a native speaker of Russian, according to the holy book of the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' cult. How does Jim reconcile those two contradictory pieces of information?
Let's see if we can encourage Jim to offer an opinion on this. If the Oswald who defected was actually a native speaker of Russian, how does Jim explain the "poor" performance in the test? Here are the three most plausible options:
- (a) Oswald was deliberately pretending to have only a beginner's knowledge of Russian.
- (b) The Colonel Folsom who pointed out to the Warren Commission ( Hearings, vol.8, p.307: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=315 ) that Oswald's performance in the test was "poor throughout" wasn't actually the real Colonel Folsom but a clone, the product of a top-secret CIA 'Folsom project', who deliberately misled the Warren Commission. If you look at photographs of the so-called 'Colonel Folsom' taken several years apart and in different lighting conditions, they look slightly different, which proves that 'he' was actually two people. Needless to say, each 'Colonel Folsom' had a separate mother. Just look at the photographs! The camera doesn't lie!
- (c) Oswald's marine corps record (Hearings, vol.19, p.662: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1136#relPageId=680 ) was faked by lizard-like creatures from Atlantis who were part of the CIA's top-secret 'Oswald project' and its top-secret 'Folsom project', and who went on to fake the moon landings and the Boston marathon bombing.
Which of these explanations will Jim choose? Was Oswald pretending? Or was there something more sinister afoot?
The common-sense alternative, of course, is that Oswald was a native speaker of English, not Russian, and the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory is moon-landings-level nonsense.
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Jim Hargrove writes:
<blockquote>Despite my many requests for people who think there is actual information at Mr. Parker's site about this subject to post the information here, they ALWAYS refuse to do so. Why is that?</blockquote>
Well, the obvious reason is that you're reading this on a website, and all you have to do is click on the link that has been provided for your convenience, and then you will be able to read the information for yourself.
Here's that link again:
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1500-one-more-attempt-at-those-darn-school-records
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It has been suggested that both Vincent Bugliosi (in Reclaiming History) and John Armstrong (in Harvey and Lee) claimed that Oswald passed the marines Russian test. I've been through both books, and haven't yet found a reference in either book to that effect. Armstrong writes only (on p.225) that:
<blockquote>On February 25, Harvey [sic] Oswald took a Russian language exam... Test results showed that Oswald scored poorly on the exam.</blockquote>
Unless I missed something, which is entirely possible, I think it's safe to assume that the test was simply an assessment of ability, and that it is misleading to claim that Oswald passed the test. After all, neither the Warren Report nor Oswald's marine records suggest that he either passed or failed the test.
It's interesting to see exactly what Armstrong has to say about Oswald's command of Russian before and during Oswald's stay in the Soviet Union. He argues that Oswald did not study Russian before his arrival in California in December 1958. On page 187, he expresses doubts about this passage in the Warren Report (WR, p.257: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=946#relPageId=281 ):
<blockquote>While in Atsugi, Japan, Oswald studied the Russian language, perhaps with some help from an officer in his unit who was interested in Russian and used to 'talk about it' with Oswald occasionally.</blockquote>
The Warren Report cites CE 1385, p.11 (Hearings, vol.22, p.706: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1317#relPageId=736 ), an interview with Oswald by Aline Mosby in Moscow in November 1959, in which Oswald states: "My superiors thought I was just interested in a foreign language. My commanding officer, a major, was studying russian [sic] and we used to talk about it". It isn't unreasonable to suppose that Oswald may have had some help in learning Russian from this officer.
Armstrong argues that Oswald did not learn Russian before being stationed in California. Again on page 187:
<blockquote>None of the Marines who were on maneuvers with Oswald nor anyone who saw him in Japan said that he read or spoke Russian.</blockquote>
But this is untrue. Paul Murphy, who was stationed with Oswald at both Atsugi and Santa Ana, stated that "I remember that Oswald could speak a little Russian, even when he was overseas" (Hearings, vol.8, p.320: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=328 ). Of course, people's recollections are not always reliable, but if we apply that standard there wouldn't be much of the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory left.
The reason for claiming that Oswald did not learn Russian in Japan is, of course, to demonstrate that Oswald's performance in the marines test in February 1959 was not consistent with the common-sense conclusion that he was a native English speaker who had only been learning the language for a few weeks, and that the Oswald who defected must instead have been a native speaker of Russian. On page 10, Armstrong explains why the 'Oswald project' required someone who was not merely a good speaker of Russian but a native speaker of Russian:
<blockquote>One of the requirements for infiltrating an agent into a foreign country is that he/she have an intimate knowledge of the local language. ... And there is little point in sending an American agent, taught in the United States to speak a Slavic or Oriental language, to infiltrate these countries because they would speak with an accent. One way to avoid the problems of physical appearance and accent is to recruit local residents or former residents living abroad.</blockquote>
Armstrong is adamant that the Oswald who defected was a native speaker of Russian. On pages 202 and 203, he writes:
<blockquote>At this point some readers might ask, "Was such an elaborate and multi-year deception plan really necessary in order to infiltrate one person into Russia?" The answer is, quite simply, "Yes." The CIA spent years developing and training a native Russian-speaking person (Harvey) for the sole purpose of placing him in the Soviet Union. ... The infiltration of Lee Harvey Oswald into Russia at the height of the cold war was a dangerous gamble. If the Soviets ever discovered the 19-year-old American "defector" spoke the language perfectly, they would immediately suspect him of being a spy.</blockquote>
There we have it: Oswald was "a native Russian-speaking person", someone who "spoke the language perfectly". But it is clear from Oswald's "poor" performance in the Russian test, as well as the fact that he made frequent grammatical mistakes even after living in the Soviet Union among Russian speakers for nearly three years, that he was not "a native Russian-speaking person" who "spoke the language perfectly". Oswald was a native English-speaking person who began to learn Russian either in California in late 1958 or a short time earlier while stationed in Japan, and who had only a limited knowledge of the language in February 1959.
Incidentally, anyone who is interested in the apparent inconsistency in Oswald's school records should read this:
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1500-one-more-attempt-at-those-darn-school-records
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Sandy Larsen writes:
<blockquote>I thought that Mathias showed earlier that, for Oswald to have passed the language test at the level he did, he had to have reached the L2/R2 level by that time. Am I wrong?</blockquote>
The test that Oswald took does not seem to have been a pass-or-fail test, but only an assessment of ability.
Mathias's source stated that the L2/R2 level was the minimum requirement for military language analysts. Oswald's performance ("His rating was poor throughout") does not suggest that he would have made a competent military language analyst. Nor does a "poor" performance seem to be consistent with the L2/R2 standard, which requires a "limited working proficiency." Here is part of the definition of the L2 standard:
<blockquote>Sufficient comprehension to understand conversations on routine social demands and limited job requirements. Able to understand face-to-face speech in a standard dialect, delivered at a normal rate with some repetition and rewording, by a native speaker not used to dealing with foreigners, about everyday topics, common personal and family news, well-known current events and routine office matters.</blockquote>
If you have a look at the document Mathias found ( http://www.dliflc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Generic-Fam-Guide-MC-CBu-updated.pdf ), you'll see descriptions of various levels of language competence. Here is part of the definition of the L0+ standard:
<blockquote>Sufficient comprehension to understand a number of memorized utterances in areas of immediate needs. Slight increase in utterance length understood but requires frequent long pauses between understood phrases and repeated requests on the listener's part for repetition. Understands with reasonable accuracy only when this involves short memorized utterances or formulae. Utterances understood are relatively short in length.</blockquote>
And here is the L1 standard ("elementary proficiency"):
<blockquote>Sufficient comprehension to understand utterances about basic survival needs and minimum courtesy and travel requirements in areas of immediate need or on very familiar topics, can understand simple questions and answers, simple statements and very simple face-to-face conversations in a standard dialect.</blockquote>
My guess is that someone who could only manage a "poor" performance in the marines test would be somewhere around the L0+ to L1 level.
Either way, the point is that Oswald's "poor" performance was clearly not that of a native speaker of Russian.
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Mathias Baumann writes:
I don't think Oswald could have reached level L2/R2 in just two months without any instruction. He would have needed at least 4 - 5 lessons per day to get there.
I agree, Mathias, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that Oswald received instruction of some kind before he left the marines. But I doubt that Oswald was at the L2/R2 level at the time he took the test. Perhaps someone who achieved a high grade in the test would have been at that level. Oswald, however, did poorly in the test, which doesn't seem to have been a pass-or-fail type of test, but only an assessment of ability.
All we can really conclude from Oswald's performance in the test is that he had only just begun to learn Russian, and that he was certainly not a native speaker of Russian.
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Jim writes:
<blockquote>Mr. Bojczuk can now attempt to make others believe that "Lee Harvey Oswald" learned to speak, read, and write Russian without a teacher or a textbook, in two months!</blockquote>
Here we go again. Jim is claiming that the person known as Oswald who took the Russian test was able to "speak, read and write Russian" by late February 1959.
To what level could this person "speak, read and write Russian"? Jim doesn't tell us. It certainly wasn't to the level of a native speaker, as Jim might like us to believe, because this person's test results were poor. According to the source I quoted earlier, his score was "poor" in reading Russian, and "poor" in writing Russian, and "poor" in understanding (not speaking) Russian. "His rating was poor throughout."
I wonder why Jim failed to qualify his statement. To give us an accurate description of Oswald's ability, he could have written that the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was able to "speak, read and write Russian" poorly.
Or he could have written that the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was able to "speak, read and write Russian" to a level consistent with the theory that Oswald had only begun to learn the language two months earlier.
Or he could have written that the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was able to "speak, read and write Russian" in a way that was entirely inconsistent with the theory that Oswald was a native speaker of the language.
I asked Jim if he would be kind enough to acknowledge the uncontroversial fact that Oswald's performance in his Russian test was poor, far below that of a native speaker. It doesn't seem much to ask.
The real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald had a poor ability to read, write and understand Russian at the time he took the test. Either that, or Oswald was pretending to have only a beginner's command of Russian. What's your opinion, Jim? Did Oswald really have only a rudimentary knowledge of Russian in February 1959, or was Oswald pretending to have only a rudimentary knowledge of Russian in February 1959? Which is it?
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Chris,
I agree with you about Armstrong's research. The document cache at Baylor is very valuable. It's just a shame that he decided to use his research to promote such a poorly supported and self-contradictory theory.
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I see that Jim is still trying to use Sylvia Meagher to provide some credibility for the self-contradictory 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' fantasy.
Meagher notes, correctly, that there is good evidence that Oswald was being impersonated before the assassination. You could argue about whether any particular incongruous sighting of Oswald was due to impersonation or mistaken identity, but there is no serious doubt that he was impersonated before the assassination.
The point, however, is that there are believable, rational explanations for such impersonation. There is absolutely no reason to invoke an unbelievable, irrational explanation such as the self-contradictory 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' fantasy, which is the sort of nonsense that Meagher herself would have seen through in an instant, and which brings rational criticism of the lone-nut theory into disrepute.
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Dawn Meredith writes:
<blockquote>Have any of these naysayers actually read Harvey and Lee?</blockquote>
I have! Not every word, of course. I can't imagine anyone has managed that.
I realise that you must be very busy, but perhaps you could spare the time to answer a couple of related questions about the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory. As far as I can recall, the questions weren't answered in the book.
The theory requires Oswald to have been indistinguishable from a native speaker of Russian; that was the whole point of the so-called 'Oswald project'. But the Oswald who did poorly in his Russian test, and who made frequent grammatical mistakes even after living in the Soviet Union for the best part of three years, clearly couldn't have been mistaken for a native speaker. How would you explain this contradiction? If he actually was a native speaker, he must have been pretending not to be. Why would he do this, since it would defeat the whole purpose of the so-called 'Oswald project'?
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N.B. Readers who aren't particularly interested in the teaching of Russian in Hungary can skip to section 4 below.
1 - Paedagogica Historica
Again Jim complains that I have ignored "the Journal Paedagogica Historica abstract which states that compulsory Russian instruction in Hungarian schools began in 1945". Unfortunately, the abstract does not state what Jim wants it to state. This is what the abstract actually says (you can check it for yourself at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00309230.2017.1349158?journalCode=cpdh20'& ):
<blockquote>In the period between 1945 and 1989, the learning of Russian as a compulsory subject was introduced, teaching other languages was restricted, and Hungarian-Russian bilingual schools were launched.</blockquote>
The abstract states that three developments in the realm of language learning in Hungary occurred during the period of Soviet domination. It does not state, or even imply, that the three developments began right at the beginning of the Soviet period and ended right at the end of the Soviet period.
The abstract is vaguer than the article by Krisztina Lukács, and adds nothing to it.
2 - Russian Starting in Grade 5
<blockquote>There is no evidence at all that Russian language instruction in Hungarian school during the years 1945-1947 commenced only at the 5th grade level.</blockquote>
Equally, there is no evidence that Russian was taught at earlier grades immediately after the war. There is only one piece of evidence (so far) about the grades at which Russian was taught in Hungary during the post-war period. That piece of evidence, the article by Krisztina Lukács, states only that Russian was taught from grade 5 onwards. It doesn't specify the year in which this restriction began. The implication is that, once Russian began to be taught during the Soviet domination, it was taught only from grade 5 onwards. If Russian was taught at earlier grades immediately after the war, and then restricted to grade 5 and above at some later time, Lukács might have mentioned it, but she didn't.
3 - Fictional Character
Jim writes:
<blockquote>It is clear from Harvey and Lee, clear from my website, and clear from my posts immediately above that I believe Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald FIRST APPEARED in a Fort Worth suburb in the U.S. during the summer of 1947, not just six years later in New York.</blockquote>
Firstly, there was no real-life Harvey Oswald, unless Jim is referring to the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald's uncle. Secondly, Jim can believe anything he likes about when his fictional character 'Harvey' was conjured into life. But the evidence he keeps citing for the fictional character's existence, the crank phone call, refers to Oswald in New York, at which time the real, one and only, not-yet-Russian-speaking Lee Harvey Oswald was 12 years old.
4 - Oswald Was Not a Native Russian Speaker
Jim writes:
<blockquote>the existing EVIDENCE shows that Oswald learned Russian suddenly and dramatically.</blockquote>
No, it doesn't. It shows that he learned Russian gradually. I explained this in at least two of my earlier posts, and I'll be happy to do so again if necessary.
Jim writes:
<blockquote>The Warren Commission says that Oswald left Japan and reported for duty at the Marine Corps Air Facility in Santa Ana, California, in December 1958. A month later, he took the infamous Russian language test.</blockquote>
No, he didn't. He took the test two months after arriving in California. Oswald arrived in California in December 1958, and took the Russian test on 25 February 1959. That's two months, not one.
I'm sure the mistake was accidental, not deliberate. The significance of Jim's accidental mistake is interesting. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Oswald began learning Russian when he was stationed in California, and that he had only one month in which to learn enough Russian to pass the test with flying colours. Demonstrating a strong command of Russian after just one month's learning - it's preposterous! Oswald must have been a native speaker all along!
But Oswald actually had two months in which to learn Russian before taking the test. How well did Oswald do in the test after just two months' learning? Did he pass the test with flying colours, as a native speaker would have done? Sadly for the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory, he didn't do very well. Colonel Folsom of the marines explained:
<blockquote>Now, under 'understands', the scoring was minus 5, which means that he got five more wrong than right. The 'P' in parentheses indicates 'poor'. Under reading he achieved a score of 4, which is low. This, again, is shown by the 'P' in parentheses for 'poor'... and under 'writes' he achieved a score of 3, with 'P' in parentheses, and this indicates he got three more right that he did wrong. His total score was 2, with a 'P' in parentheses meaning that overall he got two more right than wrong, and his rating was poor throughout.</blockquote>
(Hearings, vol.8, p.307: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=315 . For the document Folsom is referring to, see Hearings, vol.19, p.662: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1136#relPageId=680 )
Jim refers to "the infamous Russian language test in which he [Oswald] got more questions right than wrong," as though this shows that Oswald did well in the test. But Oswald didn't do well in the test. He did poorly. Oswald's poor performance is precisely what we should expect from someone who had spent only two months learning a foreign language.
According to 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' doctrine, the person who did poorly in the test actually spoke Russian like a native. How can this be? Why would the Oswald who spoke Russian like a native pretend to be someone who had only just begun to learn the language? Surely the doctrine can't be wrong? Can it?
After reproducing an image of a Russian-language newspaper, Jim writes:
<blockquote>Exactly who could learn to read the above in a month's worth of spare time ...</blockquote>
Again, Oswald arrived in California in December 1958, and took the Russian test towards the end of February 1959. That's two months, not one. It's that accidental mistake again!
There's a second accidental mistake here. Jim seems to be implying that the Russian test required Oswald to be able to read the sort of complex sentences that you might find in a newspaper, and that Oswald was indeed able to read complex sentences. Does Jim have any evidence that the Russian test was pitched at that level? It doesn't really matter because, as we have seen, and as Jim must have been aware, Oswald really wasn't very good at reading Russian when he took the test ("Under reading he achieved a score of 4, which is low. This, again, is shown by the 'P' in parentheses for 'poor'").
Jim writes:
<blockquote>learning to read, write, and speak Russian well enough to read Russian newspapers in one month</blockquote>
That's the third time Jim has made the accidental "one month" mistake, and the second time he has implied misleadingly, but accidentally, that Oswald was able to read Russian newspapers competently by the time he took his test. Mathias is correct in doubting that "Oswald was able to read that kind of high-brow newspaper" by the time he took his test.
I wonder if Jim would be kind enough to:
- (a) acknowledge the uncontroversial fact that Oswald's performance in his Russian test was poor, far below that of a native speaker;
- (b) explain how Oswald's poor performance is compatible with the notion, central to the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory, that the person who took the test was indistinguishable from a native speaker of Russian. -
Jim claims that "the source Mathias cited for this restriction indicated that the fifth grade rule was put into effect when mandatory Russian language instruction was codified in 1950". I suggest that he reads the article again. Here is the relevant passage:
<blockquote>For 40 years (from 1950 to 1989) Russian was the compulsory first (and in many cases the only) foreign language in schools. The teaching of West European languages became possible after 1958 as a second foreign language, but unlike Russian, which was taught for 8 years (grades 5 to 12), West European languages were taught in 2 or 3 classes a week for 3-4 years only in upper secondary school.</blockquote>
Contrary to Jim's claim, the article does not indicate that Russian was restricted to grade 5 onwards from 1950. The significance of 1950 is clear: 1950 is when Russian became "the compulsory first (and in many cases the only) foreign language in schools", not that Russian tuition was introduced in 1950, or that Russian was restricted to grade 5 onwards in 1950, or that the people who went on to fake the moon landings began their 'Oswald doppelgänger project' in 1950.
Jim writes:
<blockquote>I ask Mr. Bojczuk, again, to provide an explanation for Oswald’s Russian language skills before "defecting" to the USSR.</blockquote>
How many more times do I need to explain this before Jim acknowledges that Oswald was not a native speaker of Russian? As I pointed out earlier, the evidence clearly shows that Oswald learned Russian gradually: he started out not knowing very much Russian, and later his knowledge improved. This means one of two things: either he was not a native speaker, or, alternatively, he spent the last few years of his life actively concealing his ability to speak Russian like a native. Which of those alternatives is the more likely to be true, do you think?
Here, again, is the evidence. At the time he took the Russian test, Oswald had a limited understanding of written Russian and an even more limited understanding of spoken Russian. If you don't believe me, check the source I cited earlier: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=315 . Several months later, he was able to converse in the language, but at a level that must have been well below that of a native speaker because he was still making frequent grammatical mistakes three or four years afterwards.
There's nothing superhuman in Oswald's gradual acquisition of Russian. Why does Jim find this so difficult to accept? The one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was not a native speaker of Russian. Unfortunately, the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory requires him to have been a native speaker of Russian. Consequently, as I'm sure Jim will now agree, the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory is nonsense.
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Jim complains that I use "a statement that Russian became universally mandatory in Hungarian schools in 1950", and that I ignore his "citation of an abstract of an article from Journal Paedagogica Historica". He is missing the point.
Jim's preferred source claims that:
<blockquote>In the period between 1945 and 1989, the learning of Russian as a compulsory subject was introduced, teaching other languages was restricted, and Hungarian-Russian bilingual schools were launched.</blockquote>
( http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00309230.2017.1349158?journalCode=cpdh20'& )
The other article claims that:
<blockquote>For 40 years (from 1950 to 1989) Russian was the compulsory first (and in many cases the only) foreign language in schools. The teaching of West European languages became possible after 1958 as a second foreign language, but unlike Russian, which was taught for 8 years (grades 5 to 12), West European languages were taught in 2 or 3 classes a week for 3-4 years only in upper secondary school.</blockquote>
( http://ludens.elte.hu/~deal/pages/novelty/htm2/vol91/lukacs.html )
The point Matthias made, and which I emphasised, is that the teaching of Russian in Hungarian schools did not begin until grade 5. The year in which Russian began to be taught in Hungarian schools is immaterial.
It doesn't matter how many years this teaching had been going on by the time Jim's hypothetical refugee child reached grade 5 at his school in Hungary. The point is that there was a period of only two years between the time the hypothetical child could have begun learning Russian and the time when the hypothetical child appears in New York with the name of Lee Harvey Oswald and the ability to speak perfect English. If the hypothetical boy existed, he must have learned two foreign languages, Russian and English, to the level of a native speaker in just two years.
I suppose it's possible that someone with a unusual aptitude for learning languages could reach that level in Russian in one year, given the sort of intensive expert tuition that is very, very, very unlikely to have been available in Hungarian schools. But to do that again the next year with English? Where did this course in English take place, given that Western European languages were not taught in Hungary until after 1958, long after the hypothetical Hungarian refugee had hypothetically emigrated to the US without leaving any official documentary trace? Is there any evidence that the US school system offered year-long intensive expert tuition in English? Clearly, the English-speaking Oswald who was at school in New York at the age of 12 cannot have been a Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee.
In his latest post, Jim writes:
<blockquote>If the Russian-speaking Oswald was a Hungarian immigrant, as suggested in the anonymous phone call to Mr. and Mrs. Tippit from Connecticut, then he might have learned Russian in the years 1945 to 1947 in school in Hungary... For this theory to work he would probably have had to have Russian instruction in his earliest elementary grades, not at grade 5 and above.</blockquote>
In other words, for the Hungarian refugee story to be correct, the article which specifies that Russian was only taught from grade 5 onwards must be incorrect. Which source is the more likely to be reliable: a crank phone call without any supporting evidence, or an article in an academic journal?
Of course, it may be that the author of the article has been bribed or tortured by the same people who set up the fictional 'Oswald project', and that the article is incorrect and a deliberate attempt to turn the entirely sane and reasonable 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory into a laughing stock. But in the absence of any evidence of bribery or torture, I think we should give the article the benefit of the doubt, don't you?
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As Michael has pointed out, Jim has no justification for citing Sylvia Meagher in support of his Oswald doppelgänger fantasy. It is a disgraceful tactic.
Meagher was, and remains, one of the most rational critics of the lone-nut theory. Jim must know that she never suggested such a far-fetched explanation for the incongruous sightings of Oswald. Take a close look at the passage Jim quotes, in which Meagher notes four possible solutions:
<blockquote>In each case, the story was susceptible to one of several possible explanations. (1) The alleged Oswald was the real Oswald, despite apparently contradictory evidence to the contrary. (2) It was a case of mistaken identity in which the witness had been misled by a physical resemblance to Oswald. (3) It was a fabrication. (4) It was a case of deliberate impersonation.</blockquote>
Four perfectly credible explanations, none of which requires Oswald to have had a Russian-speaking clone from the age of 12. On the subject of which, Jim has not yet answered Mathias's questions:
<blockquote>At what age did Harvey leave Hungary according to your theory? How long could he have learned Russian if he started in grade 5?</blockquote>
Mathias provided credible evidence that Jim's hypothetical Hungarian refugee child would have had just two years in which to reach the level of a native speaker in two foreign languages, Russian and English, each of which is completely unrelated to the boy's native Hungarian. It could not have happened. The 12-year-old Oswald in New York cannot have been a Hungarian refugee. Will Jim admit this, or is he planning to leave it for a while, and then bring up the Hungarian refugee story again, hoping that everyone will have forgotten that it has been debunked?
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Jim writes:
<blockquote>Oswald learned to read, write and speak Russian in a matter of days while stationed in California.</blockquote>
Jim seems to be claiming that the only alternative to the 'Oswald was actually a non-existent Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee' fantasy is that Oswald learned Russian to a high level "in a matter of days". But he also writes:
<blockquote>you can learn to read and write Russian just like in the newspaper below, and you can do it in less than a month</blockquote>
Ah. Now we've gone from "in a matter of days" to "less than a month". We're getting warmer. Let's see what the actual timescale probably was:
- December 1958: Oswald arrives in Santa Ana, California.
- February 1959: Oswald takes the Russian test, and doesn't do very well ("his rating was 'poor' in all parts of the test" [Warrren Report, p.650; for details, see Hearings, vol.8, p.307: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=315 ]).
- Summer 1959: Oswald spends an evening with Rosaleen Quinn, who "thought Oswald spoke the language well for someone who had not attended a formal course in the language" (CE 2015, p.8).I'm not aware of exactly when Oswald met Quinn, who specified only "the summer of 1959", but it must have been several months after he took the Russian test. The period from his arrival in California to the earliest evidence of something like fluency is not in fact "a matter of days", or "less than a month", but at least half a year.
How good Oswald's spoken Russian was when he met Quinn is uncertain, but it was clearly nowhere near that of a native speaker, since we know that even three or four years later he was still far below that level: Marina was "constantly correcting" Oswald's spoken Russian, according to George de Mohrenschildt.
As I pointed out earlier, there is nothing magical about Oswald's knowledge of Russian. Perhaps he had a better-than-average aptitude for learning languages, but all the evidence is consistent with the unremarkable conclusion that he was a native speaker of English who acquired Russian gradually, beginning in his teens, continuing in his early twenties while living in the Soviet Union, and never approaching the level of a native speaker of Russian.
Casual readers may not be aware that the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory requires the Oswald who defected to the Soviet Union to have been indistinguishable from a native speaker of Russian. This is from page 10 of the cult's holy book:
<blockquote>One of the requirements for infiltrating an agent into a foreign country is that he/she have an intimate knowledge of the local language. ... And there is little point in sending an American agent, taught in the United States to speak a Slavic or Oriental language, to infiltrate these countries because they would speak with an accent. One way to avoid the problems of physical appearance and accent is to recruit local residents or former residents living abroad.</blockquote>
For the theory to be correct, Oswald must have deliberately flunked his Russian test, and he must have deliberately pretended over several years to speak Russian at a level far below his actual level. And let's not forget that he spoke Russian with a non-native accent, which also must have been a conscious deception, carried on for several years.
The attentive reader will have noticed that the fact that Oswald spoke Russian with an accent contradicts the basic premise of the theory. The whole point of the 'Oswald project' was to create an agent who didn't speak Russian with an accent. Oswald was such an agent. He was not supposed to speak Russian with an accent, but he did. So much for the theory.
Now that we have established that there is no good reason to even suspect that Oswald might have been a Hungarian refugee, I wonder what Jim has got to say in reply to Mathias's questions:
<blockquote>At what age did Harvey leave Hungary according to your theory? How long could he have learned Russian if he started in grade 5?</blockquote>
Will he claim that the hypothetical Hungarian refugee child did indeed learn two foreign languages, both of them entirely unrelated to his native language, to a very high level in just two years? Or will he admit that the 12-year-old Oswald in New York cannot possibly have been a Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee?
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Sandy Larsen thinks that my statement ("getting to grips with the Cyrillic alphabet is a trivial matter. It takes at most a few hours to learn how to pronounce written words.") is "nonsense". He writes:
<blockquote>Spend just a "few hours" ("at most!") teaching yourself to read Russian, or any other language using an unfamiliar alphabet. Then let's see if you can read in that language.</blockquote>
Sandy may have misunderstood what I wrote. It's the ability to relate letters to sounds that takes only a few hours to learn. Once you've got to grips with the alphabet, you can start to learn the language itself.
Sandy's misunderstanding may have come about because of the difficulty he had with learning the Persian alphabet. To someone brought up with the Roman alphabet, Cyrillic is far, far easier to learn than the Persian alphabet that caused Sandy problems. A few hours is really all you need!
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Jim Hargrove writes:
<blockquote>While stationed less than a year in the USMC in California, "Lee Harvey Oswald" suddenly, we're told, taught himself to read, write, and speak Russian</blockquote>
Why "suddenly"? Is there any evidence that Oswald's acquisition of Russian was not gradual, just as other people's acquisition of a foreign language is gradual? What superhuman level of competence does Jim think Oswald reached after "less than a year in the USMC in California"? Obviously something so far out of the ordinary that an absurd doppelgänger project becomes a credible explanation.
<blockquote>I'd like to hear Mr. Bojczuk's theory about how "Lee Harvey Oswald" learned to read, write, and speak Russian.</blockquote>
'Theory' would be too grand a word. There's no reason to doubt that Oswald learned Russian in the same way that any other sufficiently motivated person would learn a foreign language. You get hold of some suitable learning materials, then you get your head down and put in some effort.
There is nothing magical about Oswald's knowledge of Russian. As I wrote earlier, everything we know about Oswald's ability to speak Russian is consistent with the common-sense interpretation that he was a native speaker of English who began learning Russian in his teens and who improved his knowledge of Russian in his early twenties while living in the Soviet Union.
Mathias Baumann writes:
<blockquote>At what age did Harvey leave Hungary according to your theory? How long could he have learned Russian if he started in grade 5?</blockquote>
Jim is wise to ignore Mathias's perceptive questions, which have effectively put an end to the far-fetched Hungarian refugee hypothesis. I'll have a go instead. If the hypothetical Hungarian refugee child began learning Russian in grade 5, he had just two years in which:
- (a) to acquire a high level of competence in Russian, a language completely unrelated to his native Hungarian;
- (b) to leave Hungary and emigrate to the United States, without generating any official documentary record of his arrival; and
- (c) to acquire a native speaker's level of competence in English, another language completely unrelated to his native Hungarian.The whole idea is ridiculous. The 12-year-old boy in New York was not a Hungarian refugee who already spoke excellent Russian, but an American who would not begin to learn Russian for several years.
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Jim Hargrove writes:
<blockquote>the Cyrillic alphabet ... seems to be one of the significant obstacles to learning Russian.</blockquote>
On the contrary, getting to grips with the Cyrillic alphabet is a trivial matter. It takes at most a few hours to learn how to pronounce written words. The main complication of Russian is its heavy use of inflection: the way that parts, usually the endings, of the fundamental words of a sentence change to indicate a word's role in a sentence.
Anyone who has learned Latin will be familiar with this (all together now: amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant; mensa, mensa, mensam, mensae, mensae, mensa). Just like Latin nouns, Russian nouns come in three genders and several declensions, each of which has a separate set of endings. Just like Latin verbs, Russian verbs come in several conjugations, each of which has a separate set of endings. Then there are the pronouns, each of which ... You get the picture. There is a huge amount of fiddly stuff to memorise.
All of this makes a heavily inflected language such as Russian a real pain to learn, at least if you want to speak the language flawlessly. It's very easy for a non-native speaker to make mistakes. On the plus side, you can often make mistakes with case endings and the like and still be understood. It's similar to the use of the simple past tense in English: the basic rule is to add a voiced 'd' or unvoiced 't' sound as appropriate to the end of the verb (I moved, I asked, etc), but there are so many exceptions to this rule (I spoke, I ate, I went, I drove, etc), each of which needs to be memorised independently, that many non-native speakers of English often aren't able to use that tense. Instead, they use the present tense, with markers to indicate that they're talking about the past (I come here last year, I speak to him yesterday, etc).
Fluent speakers of English as a foreign language can frequently make grammatical mistakes like this, which an adult native speaker would almost never make, and still be understood. In reading, irregular verb forms cause fewer problems, since the context will very often indicate the meaning of an unfamiliar word. That's the level which the one and only, real-life Lee Harvey Oswald seems to have reached with Russian.
Jim writes:
<blockquote>The significance of this [the teaching of Russian in Hungarian schools] is that, if the Russian-speaking Oswald did have parents from Hungary, as declared in an anonymous phone call to Mrs. Jack Tippit, it would explain how he was so fluent in Russian throughout his short life. He learned it in elementary school.</blockquote>
But let's not forget that the hypothetical Hungarian refugee child, for whose existence not a single piece of documentary evidence has yet been produced, was already speaking perfect American English when he was conjured into life in New York at the age of 12. This boy, if he existed, must have been a native speaker of Hungarian who learned two foreign languages, Russian and English, both of which are entirely unrelated to Hungarian, to a very high level between the time he entered the Hungarian school system (at around the age of five, presumably) and when he was inducted into an imaginary CIA-sponsored 'Oswald project' no more than seven years later, having emigrated halfway across the world in the meantime. Does that sound even remotely plausible?
In fact, it's far worse than that. If the article Mathias cites is correct, our hypothetical Hungarian refugee child could not have even started learning Russian in Hungary until two years before he popped up in New York with the ability to speak perfect English. That fact alone refutes the purely speculative notion that the 12-year-old boy in New York was a Hungarian refugee who had arrived in the USA at some undetermined point in the late 1940s with a good command of Russian. It could not have happened.
Contrary to Jim's claim, the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was not "fluent in Russian throughout his short life." Oswald began learning Russian in his teens. He appears to have become a fluent speaker before his defection, if Rosaleen Quinn is to be believed. But fluency is not at all the same thing as the ability to speak a language like a native. Even after his return to the USA, having spent nearly three years surrounded by native speakers of Russian, his command of Russian was noticeably worse than that of a native speaker, but entirely consistent with that of an American who had spent only a few years learning the language. Marina Oswald "constantly" (in the words of George de Mohrenschildt) corrected his errors. These errors appear to have been grammatical errors; Ruth Paine, who on this occasion had no reason not to tell the truth, pointed out that "His Russian was poor. His vocabulary was large, his grammar never was good."
If you are wondering why there is not a single piece of documentary evidence for the existence of Jim's hypothetical Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee child who was co-opted into a preposterous doppelgänger project at the age of 12, the reason is obvious: the child did not exist. He is a figment of the imagination. Everything we know about Oswald's ability to speak English, Russian and Hungarian is consistent with the mundane, common-sense interpretation that he was a native speaker of English who learned Russian in his teens, who improved his knowledge of Russian in his early twenties while living in the Soviet Union, and who never learned a word of Hungarian.
Sources
- Rosaleen Quinn: Commission Exhibit 2015, p.8: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1140#relPageId=448
- Marina Oswald: According to George de Mohrenschildt, "Marina had a bad habit of constantly correcting Lee when he was speaking Russian": http://22november1963.org.uk/george-de-mohrenschildt-i-am-a-patsy-chapter10
- Ruth Paine: Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol.3, p.130: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=39#relPageId=138 -
Keyvan Shahrdar asks: "Have his statements been verified? Have you verified them? Are there any records verifying his statements? He has his HSCA and FBI testimony, have they been verified?"
You are the one who put forward Officer Wise's HSCA statement as evidence of his involvement in the assassination. I was just pointing out that nothing in the statement supports your claim. If you don't believe his statement, why did you cite it?
You claimed earlier that "A shadow that I believe is him can be seen in the sprocket area of the Zapruder film on the roof top of the records building shooting." You believe it's him, do you? And the evidence to support that belief is ... what, exactly? Perhaps you could show us the relevant frame or frames of the Zapruder film and tell us what makes you believe that the shadow is that of Officer Wise.
Until you are able to show (a) that the shadow is that of someone firing a gun, and (b) that that person is Marvin Wise, there is no reason to doubt the HSCA statement you cited, in which Officer Wise claimed that during the assassination he was "at the far end of South Dallas", several miles from Dealey Plaza.
Is it true that, as Mathias has claimed, you didn't even think up this nonsense by yourself, but instead you just got it from some guy on YouTube?
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Keyvan Shahrdar writes:
QuoteThis is the HSCA testimony of Marvin Wise, the police officer that escorted the Tramps to the sheriff's office in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination. Officer Wise testified that he had cotton in his ears because he had an ear infection, he also testified about his shoes; he was at the roof top of the records building providing cover for the assassins by shooting his rifle with cotton in his ears. Let's see, he is pictured with his pants and shoes full of roof cravel, and with cotton in his ears.
Really? Here is everything Wise had to say about his shoes:
QuoteWise stated that the odd looking shoes he was wearing were in fact low-cut galoshes or overshoes. He worked South Dallas, and very few streets were paved - most were sand and dirt. He wore them because it had rained in the morning and he kept them on.
There's nothing in his statement about having anything in his shoes, let alone gravel from the roof of the records building. Where did you get that from?
As for his location at the time of the assassination, he stated that he was several miles from Dealey Plaza, "at the far end of South Dallas", on his way to investigate a robbery, and that immediately after the assassination he was instructed to go to the book depository.
How did you manage to twist this into "he was at the roof top of the records building providing cover for the assassins"? Where in Wise's statement does he state that he was anywhere near the roof of the records building? He doesn't mention the records building at all, does he?
Quotehe is pictured with his pants and shoes full of roof cravel [sic]
Perhaps you could show us the picture of Officer Wise's pants and shoes full of roof gravel. It would be interesting to find out how the photographer managed to capture the insides of Officer Wise's pants and shoes. What did the photographer have to say about this strange choice of photographic subject? Was he in the habit of stuffing his camera inside policemen's clothing?
QuoteHis shadow can be seen in the sprocket area of the Zapruder film on the roof top of the records building shooting.
Can it? Perhaps you could show us the frame or frames in question, and point out the distinguishing features of Officer Wise's outline and any movements which indicate that the figure was firing a gun.
Your claim, that Officer Wise was involved in the assassination, is utterly bonkers. So far, you have provided exactly zero evidence to support it. Even the 'Harvey and Lee' and 'Oswald did it' crowd can do better than that.
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Jim Hargrove writes:
QuoteMembers of the Warren Commission must have suspected something was wrong with the copies of “Lee Harvey Oswald’s” school records, because they requested originals from the FBI, which ignored the request.
Would Jim be able to provide a source for this claim, preferably with a link if the relevant document is available online?
Greg Parker has pointed out an FBI memo from Alex Rosen to Alan Belmont on 27 January 1964 that appears to contradict Jim's claim. The memo states that:
QuoteMr Rankin and Mr Willens [of the Warren Commission] were advised ... that we [the FBI] had not asked for original documents, such as school records or employment records. They were told that if the Commission desired original records in any instance and would make it known, the Bureau would attempt to obtain such original documents.
The memo also points out that, at least in the case of New York, "original documents were not available because of certain regulations."
( https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=61490&relPageId=284 )
In other words, there is nothing sinister about the absence of original school records, and there is no reason to suppose that anyone at "the Warren Commission must have suspected something was wrong with the copies of Lee Harvey Oswald's school records".
As a general rule, you should never believe an unsourced claim promoting the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' fantasy. If for some bizarre reason you are tempted to believe one of Jim's claims, always check Greg's forum first:
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/f13-the-harvey-lee-evidence
The fact that Jim presents his final two claims in shouty bold capitals gives a strong clue that the claims are merely the usual unsupported guesswork:
QuoteWHY WERE "OSWALD'S" ORIGINAL SCHOOL AND OTHER RECORDS CONFISCATED AND DESTROYED?
They weren't, though, were they?
QuoteWHAT WAS THE FBI HIDING ABOUT "LEE HARVEY OSWALD'S CHILDHOOD BIOGRAPHY?
Evidently nothing.
A Couple of Real Gems from the "Harvey and Lee" Website
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Jim Hargrove writes:
<blockquote>So let’s see about Bolton Ford that you claim Mr. Parker has "debunked."</blockquote>
He then repeats the misleading version which appears in his holy book, fails to even mention any of the objections I raised, and concludes with:
<blockquote>But please explain, HERE and in detail, how Greg Parker has "debunked" the Bolton Ford incident.</blockquote>
It's like trying to argue with a religious fundamentalist. Anyone who has tried to point out problems with a fundamentalist's beliefs will be familiar with the reaction: you get a blank look, and then the fundamentalist either recites a passage of scripture or repeats the nonsense you've just refuted. The fundamentalist simply cannot comprehend the notion that he or she might be mistaken.
I explained ("HERE and in detail") how Jim's preferred version does not accurately reflect the evidence. Perhaps Jim should open his mind, if he can, and actually read the criticisms, here and elsewhere, of his irrational beliefs. For Jim's benefit, here is a short summary:
The earliest account of the Bolton Ford incident, by Oscar Deslatte, mentions someone called 'Oswald', and specifically denies that a first name was given. Jim, following scripture, ignores this and prefers the account from several years later, in which Fred Sewell, who did not deal directly with the man named Oswald, recalled that the man gave the first name 'Lee' and that Deslatte wrote the full name, 'Lee Oswald', on the paperwork.
But the paperwork only contains the name 'Oswald'. Unless the FBI tampered with its report of Deslatte's interview and with the Bolton Ford paperwork (I'm afraid I may be putting ideas in Jim's head here), Sewell's recollection was faulty. Sewell was wrong to claim that the man gave the name 'Lee Oswald'. Jim cites Sewell's unreliable evidence, which incorrectly ties 'Lee Oswald' with the incident, and simply ignores the evidence which shows Sewell to have been an unreliable witness.
The Bolton Ford incident is not strong evidence of impersonation. Even if it were, common-sense explanations are available for any such impersonation. If a common-sense explanation exists, it is irrational to prefer a far-fetched explanation, such as the notion that the impersonator was one of two unrelated men who, along with their mothers, each of whom happened to be named Marguerite, were inducted as 12-year-old boys into a mysterious 'Oswald project' more than a decade before the assassination in the hope that when the unrelated boys grew up they would turn out to look either identical or merely similar, depending on the needs of the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory at any particular moment. As far as that theory is concerned, the Bolton Ford dealership incident has been debunked.
What I find interesting is Jim's behaviour, and how he seems to be immune to any criticism of his beliefs:
1 - On 4 April this year, he raised the Bolton Ford incident when another of his pieces of 'evidence' was having a hard time. Look at his post on page 11 of this thread: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23677-a-couple-of-real-gems-from-the-harvey-and-lee-website/?page=11 .
2 - The following day, Greg Parker posted his demolition of Jim's argument, on his own forum: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1408-the-bolton-ford-incident .
3 - Tracy Parnell posted a link to Greg's piece on page 12 of this thread: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23677-a-couple-of-real-gems-from-the-harvey-and-lee-website/?page=12 .
4 - Skip forward to a few days ago. Jim's 'Oswald was in two schools at the same time' belief was coming under heavy fire. He changed the subject, by bringing up the Bolton Ford incident again. He repeated his post from 4 April, virtually word for word. He did not mention, let alone deal with, any of the points raised by Greg Parker. See page 54 of this thread: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23677-a-couple-of-real-gems-from-the-harvey-and-lee-website/?page=54 .
5 - I then pointed out the problems with Jim's interpretation of the Bolton Ford incident: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23677-a-couple-of-real-gems-from-the-harvey-and-lee-website/?page=57 .
6 - The same day, Jim repeated his old account of the Bolton Ford incident, again completely ignoring the evidence which contradicted his account. See the passages I quoted at the beginning of this post.
What are the chances that at some point in the future, when yet another aspect of the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' fantasy gets debunked, Jim will try to deflect attention by repeating his faulty account of the Bolton Ford incident, again failing to mention any of the reasons why his account should not be trusted?
P.S. Apologies to any religious fundamentalists who object to their crazy beliefs being associated with something as surreal, evidence-free and poorly argued as the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory.