Jeremy Bojczuk

10 hours ago, Kathleen Collins said:

A fake Ruby is not my theory.  There are 2 Oswalds and 2 Marguretes (sp).  Most researchers believe that.

 

Kathy C

On related threads on this forum, only a handful of people have actively supported the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory, and none of them has yet come up with a realistic explanation for any of the theory's main weaknesses.

I'd be very surprised if more than a tiny proportion of 'researchers' (i.e. people with a detailed knowledge of the case) take that piece of obvious nonsense seriously.

Thank you for your calm reply, David. In general, Pat Speer seems to me to be one of the most reliable researchers around, but if he got this part wrong, so be it.

Nevertheless, as Michael points out, the objection remains. If all of Chris's cryptic equations are indeed supposed to provide evidence that the extant Zapruder film (and the Towner film, and all the other photographic evidence which matches what we see in the extant Zapruder film) is inauthentic because it doesn't match a particular set of figures supplied by the FBI,* it is still necessary for someone to provide strong documentary evidence that those figures were an accurate reflection of what the FBI saw on an unaltered version of the film. So far, no-one has come close to doing so, either in this thread or the crazy mathematics thread. Until someone does come up with such documentary evidence, the obvious reason for any discrepancy is that the figures were merely the result of a mistake or of conscious manipulation for whatever reason.

* Assuming that that is the point Chris is making with these unexplained equations, of course. It may be that he has actually been discussing the distribution of cod in the north Atlantic, or the economics of the Belgian steel industry.

Jim Hargrove writes:

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Harvey Oswald's Russian fluency was noted by many people before he even "defected" to the Soviet Union, including Rosaleen Queen [sic] and a number of Marines.
 

Firstly, 'Harvey' is not a real person but a fictional character in an internally contradictory book whose main premise was debunked two decades before the book was even published.

Secondly, there is scope for debate about the standard of the real, historical Lee Harvey Oswald's spoken Russian in 1959 when he arrived in the Soviet Union, and then in 1962 when he returned to the USA. What is not open to debate is the fact that Oswald's spoken Russian, even at its best, was nowhere near as good as his spoken English.

The evidence for this is overwhelming. As Tracy points out, "Jim must exaggerate the statements of the Russian community members and others to make his case. While they thought LHO spoke [Russian] very well nobody thought he was a 'native' speaker". Now listen to any of the surviving recordings of Oswald speaking English. His English is indistinguishable from that of a native speaker.

There are only two possible conclusions:

- Oswald was a native Russian speaker who learned English to such a high level that he could be mistaken for a native speaker and who, consistently for several years, severely disguised his ability to speak his own native language from every Russian speaker he met, including his own wife, by deliberately making mistakes typical of those a non-native speaker might make.
- Alternatively, Oswald was a native English speaker who learned Russian to a reasonable level but made mistakes typical of those a non-native speaker of Russian might make.

It isn't difficult to see which of those two conclusions is the more likely to be correct. Unless Jim is now claiming that Oswald deliberately disguised a perfect command of Russian during the entirety of the time he knew Marina, he must admit that Russian was not Oswald's native language, and that 'Harvey' is indeed a fictional character.

In the past, Jim has attempted to avoid this problem by claiming that the poor standard of Oswald's written English shows that English was not Oswald's first language. Of course, this does not follow at all. It is not uncommon for people to speak their native language perfectly while having a poor command of the written form of that language. But it is surely next to impossible for anyone to speak a foreign language perfectly, as Jim claims Oswald did with English, while only being able to speak their native language very imperfectly after spending nearly three years surrounded by other native speakers of that language, as Jim claims Oswald did with Russian. There is ample evidence for the common-sense conclusion that Oswald's native language was English, and that he learned Russian in his teens.

<digression>

Joe Bauer brought up an interesting aspect of Oswald's English:

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the first time I had heard that was when a reporter in the hall "axed" me that question
 

The swapping around of consonants, as in 'ask' > 'aks', is a common linguistic feature known as metathesis. As it happens, the modern English verb 'ask' is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb 'aksian'. A few hundred years ago, one linguistic community in England swapped the consonants around in pronunciation to turn 'aks' into 'ask', and it caught on so well that 'ask' became the standard form of the verb. Now a modern linguistic community in America has swapped the consonants again to produce 'aks'. How far this one will catch on, we'll have to wait and see.

On the subject of catching on, I'd guess that the inversion of the final consonants in 'caught' and 'catch' is another example of metathesis. I'd better stop now, before everyone falls asleep.

</digression>
 

Michael Walton writes:

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No big reveal to WHY or HOW the number spewing helps readers understand the case. Yep, just more meaningless numbers.

You'd think that it would be in his own interests to make his case as clearly as possible, rather than simply pump out these cryptic equations which, I'd guess, just make most readers' eyes glaze over. That's if he's confident about what he's saying, of course. If he isn't, then it makes sense to keep everything as vague as possible, to disguise the weaknesses.

There was actually a hint at an explanation in an earlier post:

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If there is any doubt that 30ft and the 167 frame total of Towner's film is not connected to both WC CE884 documents, let me lay that idea to rest right now.

Again we are presented with a mention of CE 884 without any discussion of why the figures in that document cannot be trusted. It's still very cryptic, but, filling in the gaps, the full reasoning seems to go something like this:

1 - Tina Towner's film is 30 feet long, and contains 167 frames.
2 - The FBI's figures in CE 884 do not correspond to what we see on the film.
3 - This discrepancy means either that the extant film is inauthentic or that the data in CE 884 is wrong.
4 - We know that the FBI fiddled at least some of the figures in CE 884.
5 - Because at least some of the data in CE 884 was made up, there is no reason to assume that CE 884 provides an accurate reflection of what the FBI saw in any of the assassination films.
6 - Because the data in CE 884 is untrustworthy, it has nothing to tell us about the authenticity of any of the assassination films.

Chris seems to have come around at last to the common-sense point of view that you can't use the unreliable data in CE 884 as evidence that any of the assassination films are in some way fake.

Michael Walton writes:

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As I've said numerous times even if all of these hidden figures mean something in the overall scheme of things they prove absolutely nothing in the assassination.

Some readers will recall the crazy mathematics thread ( http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/22692-swan-song-math-rules/ ), in which Chris poured out pages and pages of cryptic equations with only hints as to their significance. Here we go again: a new series of cryptic equations, with only hints as to their significance. I'm sure Chris could explain his argument fully in coherent English sentences if he wanted to. The problem is that doing so would make it obvious to everyone that his claim is very flimsy indeed.

With the current thread, as with the crazy mathematics thread, the clue is in the mention of Commission Exhibit 884, the FBI's interpretation of the limousine's position on Elm Street when the various shots were fired. There is a contradiction between, on the one hand, what we see in the Zapruder and Towner films, and, on the other hand, some of the locations given in CE 884. If the figures in CE 884 are correct, it is difficult to see how the extant films can be authentic. Alternatively, of course, if the figures in CE 884 are not correct, they give us no good reason to conclude that the films are not authentic. Chris's assumption (unstated, wisely) seems to be that the FBI must have based its figures on the genuine, original and unaltered Zapruder film. His unstated conclusion seems to be that the Zapruder and Towner films that now exist are altered versions of the originals.

Pat Speer pointed out the problem with this interpretation last October in a post that, unsurprisingly, no film-alteration enthusiast has yet responded to ( http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/18205-forwarned/&page=4 ):

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The first survey had the third shot head shot within a few feet of where the head shot is shown on the Z-film. The SS and FBI then did new surveys in which they suddenly claimed the head shot was well down the street from this location. This stretched out the shooting sequence and gave Oswald more time to fire the shots. The SS and FBI, apparently, never dreamed the WC would double-check their work. The WC, however, tried to resolve the issue, and called a series of meetings in which the SS and FBI watched the Z-film with them, and argued for their scenarios. This led to the realization the SS and FBI were blowing smoke, and thus, more re-enactments.

There is a perfectly good common-sense explanation for the contradiction between the films and the FBI's documentation: the FBI's figures are wrong. And there is a perfectly good common-sense explanation for the FBI's figures being wrong: the Bureau fiddled the figures in an attempt to make the lone-gunman nonsense look plausible. If the figures in CE 884 have been fiddled, all of the mathematical equations that refer to those figures are worthless; they demonstrate nothing. The equations give us no good reason to suppose that the films are inauthentic.

Michael also writes:

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Since I've been corresponding  with you [Chris] on EF you STILL to this day have not answered the simple question of WHAT do your hidden figures prove in relation to the murder.

It's curious that those who promote film-alteration theories almost never explain what the conspirators would have hoped to achieve by altering films and photographs. That's hardly surprising because, especially with the Zapruder film, there isn't even much agreement about exactly which alterations were made.

People seem to be attracted to film-alteration theories not because the theories explain anything worthwhile about the assassination, but simply because the theories supply an extra conspiracy to believe in. It's one thing to accept the evidence that a conspiracy of some sort was responsible for the assassination of JFK and the framing of Oswald. But if you're naturally attracted to conspiracies as an explanation for events, how much more exciting it must be to believe that the Bad Guys also magically altered half a dozen or more home movies and photographs, and that they magically shot Governor Connally from behind despite firing bullets only from in front, and that they magically whisked JFK's body away from Air Force One without anyone noticing, and that they magically impersonated Oswald and his mother for over a decade for no obvious reason. The larger and more elaborate the conspiracy that's being proposed, the more attractive it becomes to some people. To rational people, on the other hand, the larger and more elaborate the conspiracy that's being proposed, the less credible it becomes in principle.

From Armstrong's article:

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The man charged with assassinating President Kennedy was impersonated on many occasions in the months preceding the assassination. The author believes this impersonation continued at the TSBD on 11/22/63, and the impersonator's image was captured by Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Dillard in the west end window on the 6th floor, only seconds after the shooting ... [In] the man's image from Dillard's film ... he is wearing a light-colored shirt as described by witnesses. The author believes the impersonator was LEE Oswald.

The image referred to ( http://harveyandlee.net/TSBD_Elevator/6th_Floor_Oz.jpg ) is of Badgeman quality. Several of the superimposed dotted lines don't actually correspond to tonal boundaries in the image. Take away the dotted lines and you'd have trouble discerning any type of human face there, let alone one that looks like Oswald. The whole 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' concept requires a religious-fundamentalist level of faith, but only the most uncritical believers will go along with this part.

Armstrong's article continues:

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The impersonator left Dealey Plaza in a Nash Rambler, shot and killed JD Tippit, was in the balcony of the Texas Theater when Harvey Oswald was arrested, was taken out the back of the Texas Theater after HARVEY Oswald was taken out the front of the theater, was seen an hour later driving a 1957 Plymouth (owned by Carl Mather, Tippit's best friend), and was seen boarding a military transport plane near downtown Dallas by Robert Vinson.

Leaving aside the facts that 'Harvey' was a fictional character and that there was only one historical Lee Harvey Oswald, I'm curious about the last few words. There are some improbable aspects to Robert Vinson's claim:

Firstly, the lookalike is supposed to have hung around in Dallas for nearly two hours after the arrest of the real, historical Lee Harvey Oswald. Surely a more sensible option would have been to escape quietly by road straight away, or even to hide until the fuss died down. If the plot required a conspirator to be whisked away from the scene of the crime, sending a large military transport plane to Dallas from Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington DC, a distance of around a thousand miles, would have been one of the least practical methods available. According to Vinson, the plane's next stop was Roswell, so perhaps the lookalike is at this very moment enjoying a comfortable retirement in a nearby galaxy.

Secondly, what evidence is there, apart from Vinson's claim, that a large military plane landed and took off on a patch of land close to the downtown area? You'd expect something like that to be widely noticed at any time, let alone three hours after the biggest domestic news event for years had occurred just a mile or so away.

I know that the Vinson episode rounds off the storyline nicely, and was used in that way by James Douglass in JFK and the Unspeakable (on pp.298-304), which contains a far more credible narrative than that of Armstrong. But it seems very unlikely to be true.

David Josephs writes:

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Do you suppose it's possible to address the topic without all the sarcasm?
 

Not really. I mean, it's what the topic deserves, isn't it? The 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory is a flimsy structure built on decades-old recollections, trivial anomalies in documents, and the subjective interpretation of photographs. The smallest breeze of critical examination, and the whole thing topples over, as the mastoidectomy issue illustrates. The theory is a joke, and a harmful one at that. It deserves to be made fun of.

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We have a rich history of conspiracy, futile attempts at spycraft, successful attempts at spycraft and all the spycraft for which we are not aware.
 

I understand your repeated reluctance to state it clearly, but it really does look as though you are claiming that "the intelligence community" had had an unnecessary mastoidectomy performed on an imaginary six-year-old boy by an imaginary surgeon in an imaginary hospital, on the off-chance that the imaginary boy's imaginary body might need to be dug up decades later, as part of a hugely elaborate scheme in the remote hope that when the imaginary boy grew up he would turn out to resemble a completely unrelated six-year-old boy, who happened to have a mother with the same name as the imaginary mother of the imaginary boy. Mmm ... nothing far-fetched about any of that!

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, you have so far failed to produce a single piece of documentary evidence to show that any such unnecessary mastoidectomy took place, let alone that it was instigated by "the intelligence community". All we have is the irrational insinuation that, because "the intelligence community" does bad things, it must be capable of doing whatever ridiculously improbable things our imaginations can come up with. That's the same logical error that Jim Hargrove was caught making a little while ago.

Perhaps you would be kind enough to provide us with documentary evidence to support your suggestion that "the intelligence community" (or anyone else, for that matter, up to and including giant lizards) instigated an unnecessary mastoidectomy operation on the alleged 'Harvey', if that is what you believe happened.

Until such evidence materialises, the indisputable fact that a mastoidectomy had been performed on the body in Oswald's grave shows that the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' theory is internally contradictory and therefore false.

David Josephs writes ( http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23677-a-couple-of-real-gems-from-the-harvey-and-lee-website/&do=findComment&comment=350227 ):

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Since you can't seem to figure out what I am actually suggesting.... Let's see if this helps
 

OK!

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There was a conspiracy and cover-up to kill JFK and then to silence any real investigation. They got away with it. The evidence which we are all left with is an incomplete jigsaw puzzle.
 

I agree with that. I'm with you so far!

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The spycraft of the times eludes you. ... There are those who are so confused by spycraft that anything they don't see as logical and explainable as wrong.
 

That's a rather cryptic statement. I suspect that you are referring to one of your previous comments, directed at Tracy ( http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23677-a-couple-of-real-gems-from-the-harvey-and-lee-website/&do=findComment&comment=350178 ):

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Are you of the opinion that the intelligence community could not create a scar which appears like a mastoid operation? Or that two kids in the US in the mid 40's could not both have a mastoidectomy?
 

Ah. I think I understand now! You don't go into detail, perhaps wisely, but you seem to be claiming that the mastoidectomy bone defect on the body in Oswald's grave, as reported by a group of medical specialists, is evidence that "the intelligence community" had had an unnecessary mastoidectomy performed on the imaginary impostor, 'Harvey', by an imaginary surgeon in an imaginary hospital, as part of a hugely elaborate scheme in the remote hope that when the imaginary boy grew up he would turn out to resemble another six-year-old boy, who happened to have a mother with the same name as the imaginary boy. Well, I suppose the bone defect could be interpreted that way. We can't rule that out.

It could also be interpreted in all sorts of other ways. For example, it could be interpreted as evidence that the medical specialists who examined the body deliberately misrepresented the condition of the body, falsely reporting that a bone defect existed, in order to mislead the public about the existence of the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' impostor scheme, and that they did this for some reason known only to their overlords, the giant lizards who went on to have Princess Diana murdered. I mean, we're not ruling anything out here, are we? If we're going to invent ridiculously elaborate impostor schemes for which the only real evidence is decades-old recollections, trivial anomalies in documents, and the subjective interpretation of photographs, and if we're going to invent mastoidectomies performed on imaginary characters according to the instructions of "the intelligence community", for which not a single piece of documentary evidence has been put forward, adding a giant lizard or two won't diminish the credibility of the theory much further.

Alternatively, the existence of the bone defect can be interpreted as evidence that one real, historical person, Lee Harvey Oswald, underwent a mastoidectomy for genuine medical reasons at the age of six, learned Russian in his teens, was murdered not by giant lizards but by Jack Ruby, and was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, Fort Worth.

Hmm. I wonder which of those three interpretations most closely matches the way the world actually works?

Dawn Meredith writes ( http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23677-a-couple-of-real-gems-from-the-harvey-and-lee-website/&do=findComment&comment=349992 ):

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All of the witnesses who testified as to the perfection of Harvey's Russian had zero motive to lie. And was pointed out he had not mastered the English language. Typical of someone whose second language is English.

But there is ample evidence that when Oswald returned to the USA, his spoken Russian, though good, was far from perfect. That's the point: he was clearly not a native speaker, unless, somehow, spending more than two and a half years surrounded by other native speakers of Russian had caused him to forget the grammar of his native language, which is, to put it mildly, not very likely.

What is your evidence for Oswald having "not mastered the English language"? Listen to any of the surviving recordings of Oswald speaking English. He is clearly a native speaker. True, his written English was poor, but that proves nothing. There are plenty of reasons (dyslexia being the best known, though it may not have applied to Oswald) why native speakers communicate poorly in the written form of their own language. The mistakes he made in writing, he did not make in speaking. And his command of spoken English was that of someone born and brought up among native English speakers in the USA. The natively Russian-speaking 'Harvey' was a fictional character.

David Josephs writes:

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HARVEY was buried since it was HARVEY who[m] Ruby shot. LEE has a record of a Mastoidectomy.

Correct! My mistake! It's easy to get the characters' names mixed up when you're dealing with a work of fiction.

You mention that "Dr. Rose made no notation of a Mastoid scar on the Fact sheet". Is that piece of nitpicking supposed to prove that the body he was examining had not undergone a mastoidectomy operation a decade and a half earlier? Seizing on trivial anomalies in the documentary record, and assuming that they signify some sort of nefarious activity, is a mistake that occurs over and over again in the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory, not to mention the other moon-landings type of JFK conspiracy theory.

Are you seriously suggesting that the body in the grave did not have what the Journal of Forensic Sciences article describes as a "mastoidec­tomy defect"? This is what the article says: "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".

The body in the grave had undergone a mastoidectomy operation. According to 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' doctrine, however, the body was that of 'Harvey' but the operation had been carried out on 'Lee'. Whoops!

Sandy Larsen writes:

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The mastoidectomy is in no way one of the central elements of the theory.  It is, rather, one of the weakest points.

There are some inessential elements of the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory, such as the speculation about whether the imaginary 'Harvey' character was the imaginary child of imaginary Russian-speaking Hungarian refugees, or whether 'he' was an imaginary Russian-speaking World War Two orphan.

The mastoidectomy issue, on the other hand, is central to the theory, and deserves to be given as much attention as possible. The biography of the two characters requires that the character who was buried had not undergone the operation. If the body in Oswald's grave had in fact undergone the operation, the theory collapses. And because it is undeniable that the body had undergone the operation, the theory collapses. It is conclusive proof that the 'Harvey' and 'Lee' characters were figments of the imagination. The only rational interpretation of that evidence is that there was only one, historical, Lee Harvey Oswald, who underwent a mastoidectomy operation at the age of six and who was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, Fort Worth.

Michael Clark writes:

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It's a shame that people want to have fun by going to the waekest points on the structure and take a sledge hammer to it just to prove a point.

The weakest points in the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory are also the most central points, and fully deserve to be mocked.

For example, one of the central elements of the theory is that the 'Harvey' character, who survived the assassination weekend, had undergone a mastoidectomy operation at the age of six, and that the 'Lee' character, whose body was buried in Oswald's grave, had not undergone the operation. Unfortunately for the theory, the body in the grave was exhumed in 1981. According to the medical specialists who reported their findings in a reputable scientific journal , the body had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy operation.

That alone renders the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory false. Almost two decades before the Harvey and Lee book was even published, one of the central elements of the theory had been proven, by solid medical evidence, to be incorrect. If any theory deserves to be made fun of, it's an internally contradictory theory that had been comprehensively debunked long before it was unleashed on its intended audience of the gullible and the paranoid.

I'm sure most readers will appreciate the pernicious effect that the moon-landings type of conspiracy theory has on the general public's perception of the JFK assassination debate. Plenty of people, unfamiliar with the details of the case, assume that if you question the lone-gunman theory you must be the type of person who believes that, say, Princess Diana was murdered on the orders of a cabal of giant lizards, or that the pyramids were built by creatures from outer space. That perception is at least partly due to the fact that not enough is done to question the crazier JFK theories. The long-debunked 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory may seem like harmless nonsense to many JFK assassination enthusiasts, but it has the potential to cause a harmful amount of guilt by association.

Jim Hargrove tried to argue that because his fictional 'Harvey' spoke Russian well, we should conclude that Russian was this fictional character's native language. I pointed out that:

1 - Several people who knew Russian claimed that although the real Oswald did indeed speak Russian well by the time he returned to the USA, he spoke with an accent and made grammatical mistakes.
2 - This is inconsistent with the behaviour of a native speaker of Russian, especially one who had recently spent more than two and a half years surrounded by other native speakers of the language.
3 - This is entirely consistent with the behaviour of a non-native speaker of Russian, such as the historical Lee Harvey Oswald who learned the language in his teens and twenties.

In response, Jim ignored the objections and simply repeated his claim that because his fictional 'Harvey' spoke Russian well, we should conclude that Russian was this fictional character's native language.

Let's try again. There is solid evidence that Oswald made grammatical mistakes when speaking Russian, and that he objected when Marina corrected those mistakes. The only realistic way this evidence can be reconciled with the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory is by suggesting that Oswald was faking this behaviour, and that he actually possessed a native speaker's knowledge of Russian grammar but he deliberately misled his wife and other speakers of the language by pretending that his knowledge was only that of an American who had learned Russian in his teens and twenties. Is that what Jim is suggesting? If so, what makes him think that this explanation is even remotely credible? If not, what other explanation would he suggest?

I also pointed out that the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' doctrine, as revealed to us in Jim's holy book, specifically required the Oswald defector to have spoken Russian that was indistinguishable from that of a native speaker, and in particular that the defector must have spoken the language without an accent: "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" (Holy Book, p.10). But there is ample evidence that Oswald made grammatical mistakes in Russian, and that he did indeed speak the language with a noticeable accent. Another piece of 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' doctrine crumbles into dust.

As difficult as it must be for a fundamentalist believer to acknowledge that his or her holy book contains blatant errors, I wonder if Jim is strong enough to admit that, on this point at least, his holy book is clearly wrong. The problem he faces, of course, is that this piece of doctrine is central to the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory. If the Oswald who defected could not pass as a native speaker of Russian, there would have been no point in raising two unrelated boys in the remote hope that they would grow up to look alike, and the whole crazy theory collapses.

Michael Walton writes:

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Wow, I  always  thought  this HL caper was farcical, but we're  now moving to Fetzer territory. The twin was up there to blame his clone?

Does Armstrong  and Hargrove have no shame? What would Jack and Jackie  think if they could read this? Thank god she passed away  before the crazies came out  of  the  woodwork  on the Internet.

It just gets crazier and crazier, doesn't it? I suspect that the whole 'Harvey and Lee' thing is actually an elaborate hoax, perhaps a psychologist's experiment, an attempt to see how much ridiculous nonsense it will take before the most gullible everything-is-a-conspiracy fundamentalists ask themselves, "Hang on a minute. I've fallen for the claims about this hypothetical 'Harvey', for whom not the slightest piece of credible documentary evidence exists, and I've fallen for the claims about this hypothetical Marguerite impostor, who was conjured into existence by the recollection of someone who had met her on just one occasion forty years earlier. But this is a step too far. Actually, come to think about it, the whole thing is nonsense. There's next to no evidence for any of it. How can I get out of this without losing too much face?"

It will be interesting to see whether anyone other than Jim Hargrove publicly supports the latest crazy assertion. It would also be interesting to find out exactly how ridiculous the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory needs to get before Jim himself throws in the towel. It might have to involve little green men. Perhaps the next announcement will be that 'Harvey' was the child not of imaginary Russian-speaking Hungarians but of Klingon-speaking creatures from the planet Zog. And why not? After all, there's precisely the same amount of documentary evidence for each.

Incidentally, Greg Parker has provided a detailed rebuttal of Jim's response to Michael's post:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1410-jimbo-sees-oswalds-everywhere-i-think-there-may-even-be-one-under-his-bed

The final sentence sums it up: "You [Hargrove] are a disgrace of Fetzerian proportions".

Jim Hargrove writes:

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The best evidence that Harvey Oswald’s first language was Russian was his sheer mastery of it as a young man.

Firstly, there was no 'Harvey' Oswald, unless you are referring to the historical Lee Harvey Oswald's uncle. The existence of 'Harvey' is what you are trying to prove; by simply assuming that the character exists, you are begging the question. That's another example of faulty reasoning, to go with the notion that because the CIA (or any other nefarious organisation) does bad things, it must have the power to do ridiculously improbable things, such as perform an unnecessary surgical operation on an six-year-old boy, for whose existence there is not a single piece of credible documentary evidence, just in case the boy's body should need to be dug up years later, as part of a long-term secret plot that required the imaginary boy to grow up to resemble a completely unrelated six-year-old boy who just happened to have a mother with the same name as the imaginary boy.

Secondly, the level of Oswald's Russian as a young man does not show that Russian was his first language. It shows the opposite: that Russian was not his first language. There is plenty of evidence that Oswald's Russian, though very respectable, was far below the level of a native speaker. Ruth Paine claimed that "his Russian was poor. His vocabulary was large, his grammar never was good" (WC Hearings and Exhibits, vol.3, p.130). George de Mohrenschildt himself pointed out that Oswald spoke Russian with an accent (I am a Patsy, chapter 2), as did Peter Gregory. Marina Oswald noted the same thing, and was in the habit of correcting Oswald's grammatical mistakes, to his annoyance. Unless Oswald was faking every time he made one of his numerous grammatical mistakes in Russian, and unless he was faking every time he reacted angrily to Marina's corrections, this is as conclusive proof as you could expect to find that Russian was not his first language.

By the time Paine, de Mohrenschildt and the Dallas exiles became acquainted with him, Oswald had just spent more than two and a half years surrounded by people who spoke Russian. Of course, no native speaker loses knowledge of his or her own language in those circumstances. There is no good reason to suppose that the person in question, whether you think it was the real, historical, Lee Harvey Oswald or the fictional character, 'Harvey', was a native speaker of Russian, and every reason to suppose that he was an American who had learned the language in his teens and twenties.

Some readers will be wondering why it was necessary for the fictional character, 'Harvey', to be a native speaker of Russian. The reason is given on page 10 of Harvey and Lee:

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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.

The whole purpose of the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' plan was to produce an American who spoke Russian like a native. Unless the defecting agent could be mistaken for a native Russian, there was no point in spending several years bringing up two unrelated boys in the remote hope that they would turn out to look alike.

Unfortunately for the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory, the Oswald who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 spoke Russian exactly as would be expected of an American who had learned the language in the US. He was competent enough to be able to carry on lengthy conversations, but he made grammatical mistakes and spoke with a noticeable accent.

Oswald was not and could not have been mistaken by the Soviet authorities for a native Russian speaker. During parts of his stay in the Soviet Union, Oswald even pretended to the authorities that his Russian was worse than it really was (Warren Report, p.692).

Although "there is little point in sending an American agent, taught in the United States to speak a Slavic or Oriental language, to infiltrate these countries because they would speak with an accent," that is precisely what happened in the case of Oswald. And, of course, the Oswald who defected never claimed to be anything other than a disaffected former Marine, born and bred in the USA.

The basic premise of the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory is just as flimsy as the speculation that pads out the theory.

(Taken partly from http://22november1963.org.uk/john-armstrong-harvey-and-lee-theory )

Jim Hargrove writes:

Quote

During the very era of the early [and completely fictitious] Oswald Project, the CIA was already starting to poison thousands of unwitting Americans with LSD as part of its infamous  MKUltra project.  Do you seriously think officers in an out-of-control agency like that would hesitate to give a boy an unnecessary mastoidectomy so his health records would match the kid whose identity he shared and soon took over?

I'm glad Jim is at last acknowledging that the mastoidectomy on the body in Oswald's grave is fatal to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory put forward in his holy book. He attempts to resolve the contradiction by speculating that not only was 'Lee' given a mastoidectomy at the age of six but so was the fictional character 'Harvey', just on the off-chance that his body might need to be dug up years later. Nothing far-fetched about that!

It's instructive to look at the reasoning that Jim uses:

- The CIA was prepared to "poison thousands of unwitting Americans with LSD".
- This was a bad thing.
- Giving a six-year-old boy an unnecessary mastoidectomy would also be a bad thing.
- If the CIA was capable of doing the first bad thing, it was also capable of doing the second bad thing.

I won't argue about the CIA's ethics. It has done far worse things than give people doses of LSD. But that isn't the point.

The point is not that it is a bad thing to subject a six-year-old boy to an unnecessary mastoidectomy. The point is that it is ridiculously far-fetched to imagine that a six-year-old boy, for whose existence there is not the slightest piece of credible documentary evidence, should have been given an unnecessary surgical operation so that his medical history would match that of a completely unrelated six-year-old boy who, like the first boy, had been chosen for a dastardly secret plot, for whose existence there is not the slightest piece of credible documentary evidence, in the remote hope that the two boys would grow up to look alike, and who, like the first boy, happened to have a mother named Marguerite. Oh, and one of the boys was the child of Hungarian refugees, for whose existence there is again not the slightest piece of credible documentary evidence, and who, despite being Hungarian, somehow managed to be native speakers of a completely unrelated language, Russian, a skill they passed onto their wholly fictitious offspring.

The choice is between this absurd fantasy and the fully documented and internally consistent account of one person, named Lee Harvey Oswald, who underwent a mastoidectomy operation at the age of six, who appears to have been impersonated on at least one occasion, who learned Russian to a level that many well-motivated people could reach, and who was buried in Fort Worth. The obvious conclusion is that the internally contradictory 'Harvey and Lee' story is just that: a story, a made-up piece of fiction that only the most gullible and paranoid of readers can possibly fall for.

It's worth noting that Jim's faulty reasoning - because the CIA does bad things, it must have the power to do ridiculously improbable things - is not limited to the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense. It also crops up in other examples of the moon-landings category of JFK theory. For instance, because the CIA (or alternative Bad Guy organisation; plenty are available to choose from) does bad things, it must possess the magical ability to have altered the Altgens or Moorman photographs or the Zapruder or Muchmore films, or to have whisked JFK's corpse away from Air Force One without anyone in the plane or on the ground noticing, or to have wounded Connally in the back with a bullet fired from in front. Same faulty reasoning, different nonsense.

1 hour ago, Thomas Graves said:

Michael,

They believe that the "Oswald" you reference in the above films was "Harvey", a guy who was born in Hungary, learned Hungarian language from his parents, then learned Russian while still in Hungary, who finally started learning English when he moved to the U.S., with his parents as a young boy, who eventually joined the Marines, "defected" to Russia, married Marina, returned to the U.S. with her and their infant daughter, and was killed by Jack Ruby on 11/24/63.

http://harveyandlee.net/NID97.htm

--  Tommy

Not only that, but by the time of his exhumation in 1981, the fictional 'Harvey' had somehow managed to acquire a scar from a mastoidectomy operation, despite not having had such an operation during 'his' fictional lifetime.

According to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, the operation had been carried out on 'Lee', not 'Harvey'. That tells you all you need to know about this nonsensical theory, which can't even get its basic plot line straight.

In the real world, of course, the operation was carried out on the historical, real, and far from imaginary Lee Harvey Oswald, whose body it was that was exhumed in 1981.

I'm surprised that Jim Hargrove hasn't yet responded to Tracy Parnell's remark on page 4 ( http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23677-a-couple-of-real-gems-from-the-harvey-and-lee-website/&do=findComment&comment=348655 ).

Tracy pointed out "one of the most egregious misrepresentations of evidence" in the Harvey and Lee book. John Armstrong, arguing that the Marguerite Oswald who appeared on television after the assassination was actually an impostor, cited an old friend of Marguerite's who failed to recognise her. On page 118, he wrote:

Quote

Following the assassination Myrtle and Julian Evans saw this woman on television. When deposed on April 7, 1964 by Warren Commission Attorney Albert Jenner, Myrtle Evans said, "When I saw her on TV, after all of this happened, she looked so old and haggard, and I said that couldn't be Margie."

Armstrong went on to explain the fraud:

Quote

Neither Julian nor Myrtle, who had known the real Marguerite Oswald since 1935, recognized the heavy-set, shabbily-dressed woman they saw on television. They didn't realize this woman was not their friend who lived next door in New Orleans only 8 years earlier. The woman they saw on television was the "caretaker/mother" of Harvey Oswald.

Unfortunately, as Tracy pointed out, Armstrong had edited Myrtle Evans' statement. This is what she actually said: "When I saw her on TV, after all of this happened, she looked so old and haggard, and I said, 'That couldn't be Margie,' but of course it was." (WC Hearings and Exhibits, vol.8, p.51: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=59 )

She testified that Marguerite was indeed the woman she had known, and not an impostor. By omitting the last five words, Armstrong reversed the meaning of Myrtle Evans' statement. Why did he do this? Armstrong must have had the full text in front of him, so this can't reasonably be dismissed as a simple mistake. I can think of three possible explanations:

1 - The Bad Guys, who no doubt included the FBI, the CIA, the Bilderberg Group and several giant lizards, changed Myrtle Evans' statement by deceitfully adding the words "but of course it was" to make it look as though she recognised Marguerite Oswald when in fact she knew that 'Marguerite' was an impostor.

2 - The misleading passage on page 118 of Harvey and Lee was written not by the real John Armstrong but by an impostor who was either the completely made-up child of Russian-speaking Hungarian refugees or a completely made-up Russian-speaking World War Two orphan. This impostor, incidentally, had previously impersonated the late Paul McCartney, and was the stand-in for Buzz Aldrin on the faked moon landings footage.

3 - Armstrong was so desperate to find evidence to support his 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' fantasy that he decided to reverse the meaning of Myrtle Evans' statement, hoping that no-one would bother to check the original source.

I'd be interested to discover which of these three explanations Jim Hargrove finds the most persuasive. Two of them, in proper 'Harvey and Lee' fashion, use impostors for whom there is no credible evidence, so I'd guess he will go for one of them.

Jim,

If you think it "preposterous" that someone could reach Oswald's level of competence in Russian by self-study and two and a half years' immersion, you really should have a go at learning a language yourself some time. It isn't as difficult as you seem to think it is. What Oswald did is within the capabilities of most people, given sufficient motivation.

Your '20 Facts' list supports the relatively uncontroversial conclusion that Oswald (the real one, not the fictional 'Harvey') was connected in some way to one or another agency, perhaps including the CIA. Oswald's connections and his apparently false defection, along with every other aspect of the assassination, can be explained without invoking the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' fantasy. As for your remark about Kenneth Porter who "left his family to marry (and no doubt monitor)" Marina, you might want to run that one past a libel lawyer.

-----

Tommy,

"Elegantly" - thanks for that!

-----

George,

If you find the 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' fantasy believable, that's fine by me. I'm puzzled, however, by your remark about my using a "CIA argument". It's you, not me, who accepts the Warrren Report's account of Oswald's escape from Dealey Plaza. Using your logic, doesn't that make you the CIA stooge?

-----

David,

You go first. How much of Harvey and Lee have you read? Have you read it from cover to cover? How much of that particular book does one need to have read in order to qualify as having read it? I hope you aren't thinking of bringing out that old piece of religious fundamentalist sophistry: if you haven't immersed yourself in our holy book, you aren't justified in criticising our superstitious nonsense. Vincent Bugliosi tried that trick, claiming that those who hadn't read the Warren Report weren't justified in criticising the lone-nut theory.

-----

Sandy,

The apparent anomaly in the school records is explained in this thread, which includes a post addressed to you personally:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1361-creating-mayhem-with-historical-records

George,

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the man running away from the book depository was an Oswald impostor. Since there are plenty of problems with the official account of Oswald's movements immediately after the assassination, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the running man was the actual, one-and-only Lee Harvey Oswald.

But I would rule out the possibility that the running man was someone who had been inducted into a dastardly secret scheme when he was 12 years old, in the remote hope that when he grew up he would physically resemble a completely unrelated person. Anyone who has read the 'Harvey and Lee' threads on this forum, as well as the threads on Greg Parker's forum ( https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/f13-the-harvey-lee-evidence ) and W. Tracy Parnell's website ( http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/ ), will know how poorly supported that particular theory is.

George,

There are many accounts of what appears to be someone impersonating Oswald, not only in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination but also elsewhere in Dallas on other occasions and in other places, most notably Mexico City. But none of these accounts requires the ridiculously improbable 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory to explain them.

There are always more credible explanations available. For example, eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable, and a particular witness may simply have seen someone who looked a bit like Oswald. Even when there is good evidence of an actual impersonation, such as the incident in Mexico City, there is no need to conjure up a vastly complex conspiracy dating back to when Oswald was 12 years old, involving two boys and two mothers and two mastoidectomy operations.

The main problem with all of the moon-landings type of JFK assassination theories is not that they are largely unsupported by credible evidence, as we have seen in the case of the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory, but that they promote the idea that the only available choice is between the official account and some far-fetched paranoid nonsense. There is always a rational, evidence-based alternative that doesn't involve faked films, doppelganger Marguerites and Swahili-speaking Armenian refugee children.

It's no secret that Oswald had been learning Russian while in the Marines. If Mr Hargrove wants to see the evidence, he should turn to volume 8 of the Hearings and Exhibits, which contains the testimony of several of Oswald's Marine contemporaries. This is what he will find:

Charles Donovan:
"He said he was interested in learning Russian. And he took great pride in the fact that he could speak it." (p.292: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=300 )

James Anthony Botelho: 
"It was common knowledge that Oswald had taught himself to speak Russian. Oswald used expressions like 'da' and 'niet' around the squadron. Some of his fellow Marines kidded him by calling him 'Oswaldskovitch'." (p.315: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=323 )

Donald Peter Camarata:
"While in the Marine Corps, I heard from other Marines that Oswald was studying Russian. I personally observed that Oswald had his name written in Russian on one of his jackets, and played Russian songs so loud that one could hear them outside the barracks." (p.316: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=324 )

David Christie Murray:
"When I knew him, he was studying Russian. He often made remarks in Russian; the less intelligent members of the unit admired him for this." (p.319: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=327 )

Henry J. Roussel:
"On one occasion I arranged a date for Oswald with my aunt, Rosaleen Quinn, an airline stewardess who, because she was interested in working for the American Embassy in Russia, had taken a leave from her job in order to study Russian. I arranged the date because I knew of Oswald's study of the Russian language." (p.321: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=329 ; see also CE 2015 [vol.24, p.430]: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1140#relPageId=448 )

Mack Osborne:
"Oswald was at that time studying Russian. He spent a great deal of his free time reading papers printed in Russian ... with the aid of a Russian-English dictionary. I believe he also had some books written in Russian. ... Because of the fact that he was studying Russian, fellow Marines sometimes jokingly accused him of being a Russian spy. In my opinion he took such accusations in fun." (pp.321-322: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=329 )

Richard Dennis Call:
"During this time, Oswald was studying Russian. For this reason many members of the unit kidded him about being a Russian spy; Oswald seemed to enjoy this sort of remark. ... In connection with this general joking about Oswald's interest in Russian, he was nicknamed 'Oswaldskovitch'." (pp.322-323: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=330 )

There's also the testimony of Kerry Thornley:
"I did know at the time that he was learning the Russian language. I knew he was subscribing to Pravda or a Russian newspaper of some kind from Moscow. All of this I took as a sign of his interest in the subject, and not as a sign of any active commitment to the Communist ends." (vol.11 p.87: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=45#relPageId=97 )

I should point out that several of these men had three names, which provides solid proof that, just like Lee Harvey Oswald, each was actually two people. Donald Peter Camarata, for example, was in fact made up of Donald Camarata, an English-speaking American, and Peter Camarata, a poor World War Two orphan from Japan. Richard Dennis Call is clearly both Richard Call, an English-speaking American, and Dennis Call, the child of Swahili-speaking Armenian refugees. Needless to say, both the Japanese orphan and the Armenian refugee child had undergone unnecessary operations as children, performed by the same imaginary surgeon who performed the imaginary mastoidectomy on the fictional 'Harvey'.

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

there is [extremely flimsy] documentary evidence that there were two Oswald's [sic]. In addition, there is [even flimsier] photographic and documentary evidence that they each had a mother named Marguerite Oswald. These mothers and sons share many attributes, for example the same birth dates. Statistic for this occurring naturally are extremely slim [no kidding!]. Reasoning tells us that instead, one mother/son pair is likely a CIA doppelganger for he other.

On the contrary, it is gullibility and an irrational desire to see a conspiracy everywhere you look that tells you that one mother and son were CIA doppelgangers. Reasoning tells the rest of us that one mother/son pair is vastly more likely to be a figment of the imagination, as a result of the poor interpretation of some very dubious evidence.

Quote

It is highly unusual for a non-native speaker of Russian to speak it as well as Harvey did after living just two years in Russia.

Really? I'd like to see some evidence for that. The historical Lee Harvey Oswald (not 'Harvey', who is a fictional character) was actually in the Soviet Union for two years and eight months, and had already been learning Russian for a couple of years while in the Marines. It is uncontroversial that on his return to the US, he spoke the language fluently but far from perfectly, just as one would expect of a motivated, non-native speaker who had spent several years studying and practising the language.

It's worth emphasising the fact that Oswald's Russian was far from perfect, even after he had lived among native Russian speakers for more than two and a half years. It is unlikely, to say the least, that a native speaker's command of his own language would actually decrease with practice, as that of the fictional native-speaker 'Harvey' is supposed to have done. Surely that fact by itself destroys the credibility of the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' fantasy.

Quote

So, [flimsy] documentary evidence, [even flimsier] photographic evidence, [poorly interpreted] vocal evidence, and [exceptionally poor] reasoning indicates that [the fictional character] Harvey Oswald is likely a native Russian speaking man who has been paired up with a fake mother at a young age by the CIA.

You forgot to add the latest element in the fairy tale: "... is likely a native Russian speaking man who has been paired up with a fake mother at a young age by the CIA and who was given an imaginary and unnecessary mastoidectomy by an imaginary surgeon in an imaginary hospital as a child on the off-chance that his body might need to be dug up decades later". And some people have the nerve to suggest that the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory is all a load of made-up nonsense!

 

Mr Hargrove seems to be admitting at last that there is absolutely no documentary evidence for the existence of a "Russian-speaking World War II orphan brought to the U.S. by American intel", just as there is no documentary evidence for the existence of a child of Russian-speaking Hungarian refugees, as claimed in the Harvey and Lee book.

"Since we don’t know who Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald was," Mr Hargrove writes, "we can only assume he came from Russia or an eastern Block nation and Russian-speaking parents." In other words, and in keeping with the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory, it's all guesswork. 'Harvey' remains a fictional character.
 

Quote

Since he was such a young man when he obviously knew Russian in the Marine Corps, it is hardly a leap of faith to make the assumption that 'Lee Harvey Oswald' knew Russian as a child.
 

It is actually a huge leap of faith to suggest that anyone, whether a real person such as Oswald or an imaginary person such as 'Harvey', must have known Russian as a child, merely on the grounds that he had some competence in the language in his late teens. I assume that Mr Hargrove has never made a serious attempt to learn a foreign language. It doesn't require magic, and you don't need to be a genius. With sufficient motivation and access to suitable learning tools, almost any normal person will be able to replicate the achievement of the American-born, English-speaking Lee Harvey Oswald who acquired some competence in Russian in his teens. It's worth noting that all the Russian speakers, quoted by Mr Hargrove, who vouched for Oswald's fluency in Russian did so several years after Oswald's time in the Marines, and after he had spent more than two and a half years living in a Russian-speaking community. There's nothing there that requires Oswald to have known the language as a child, either as an imaginary Hungarian refugee or an imaginary Russian orphan.

 

I asked Mr Hargrove to provide the documentary evidence which led him to conclude that "We think Harvey Oswald was probably a Russian-speaking World War II orphan brought to the U.S. by American intel". All he has provided is a passage from Scripture which shows that Oswald spoke Russian fluently after having spent more than two years in the Soviet Union.

It is not controversial that the real, historical, singular Lee Harvey Oswald spoke Russian fluently on his return to the USA. What is controversial, and something that requires documentary evidence for it to be taken seriously, is the notion that the 'Harvey' character was an actual, living "Russian-speaking World War II orphan brought to the U.S. by American intel", as Mr Hargrove claims.

I'll try again: what is the documentary evidence for the existence of this "Russian-speaking World War II orphan"?

Jim Hargrove writes on page 28 (http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23525-two-marguerite-oswalds-new-details/&do=findComment&comment=347501):

Quote

do you honestly believe that an Agency that deliberately poisoned thousands of Americans with LSD just to see what would happen would hesitate to give a little war orphan an unnecessary mastoidectomy just so his health records would match the American kid whose identity he was about to share for an intelligence operation involving a Mission to Moscow?

It's an inconvenient fact that the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory's Holy Book proclaims that a mastoidectomy operation was performed on 'Lee', and that the body in Oswald's grave was that of 'Harvey', because it was already known, long before the Holy Book had been presented to its believers, that the body in the grave had undergone a mastoidectomy. The theory had been conclusively refuted by medical evidence even before it was published.

Now word has come down from on high that an imaginary mastoidectomy had also been performed on the imaginary 'Harvey', no doubt by an imaginary surgeon in an imaginary hospital, as an imaginary Marguerite waited nervously outside the imaginary operating theatre. Hallelujah! We can believe again! Take that, science!

On the subject of making it up as you go along, Mr Hargrove mentions "a little war orphan". This is his latest candidate for the fictional character, 'Harvey'. The original candidate was the child of Russian-speaking Hungarian refugees. When I pointed out in another thread that there is no credible documentary evidence for the existence of such a person, Mr Hargrove in effect admitted that the Hungarian refugee child was a figment of the imagination, claiming that "We think Harvey Oswald was probably a Russian-speaking World War II orphan brought to the U.S. by American intel" (http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23279-steven-hager-the-two-oswalds/&do=findComment&comment=340767).

I asked Mr Hargrove if he would be good enough to share with us the documentary evidence for the existence of the latest candidate, the Russian-speaking orphan. That was about ten weeks ago, and the lack of a reply leads me to assume that there is just as much evidence for the Russian-speaking orphan as there is for the Hungarian refugee child, i.e. none at all. What exactly is the documentary evidence for the existence of the "Russian-speaking World War II orphan", Mr Hargrove?

The existence of 'Harvey' is of course fundamental to the whole 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory, and it would be unfortunate, to say the least, if a similar lack of documentary evidence showed that the latest candidate too is just a figment of the imagination.