Jeremy Bojczuk

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:

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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:

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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:

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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?

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.
 

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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):

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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.

Sandy Larsen writes:

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It is my opinion that most [of] the folks who post against Armstrong's theory have a preconceived bias against the Harvey & Lee concept, and don't even bother trying to understand anything beyond the easiest-to-understand of evidence.

(http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23525-two-marguerite-oswalds-new-details/&do=findComment&comment=346138)

Anyone who isn't inclined to paranoia will "have a preconceived bias against the Harvey & Lee concept", for obvious reasons. Look at the number of improbable requirements the concept contains. Two boys, one of whom is supposedly a Russian-speaking Hungarian for whose existence absolutely no documentary evidence exists, are inducted into a secret scheme at the age of 12 on the off-chance that, several years later, they will look sufficiently alike that one of them is able to impersonate the other. Each boy happens to have a mother named Marguerite. Each Marguerite looks sufficiently similar to the other some of the time, but also sufficiently different when circumstances demand it. One of the boys helps to set up the other to take the blame for killing JFK. After the assassination, the surviving boy and his impostor mother vanish, never to be seen again.

Strictly speaking, none of this is impossible to believe. All of it could, perhaps, have happened. But it isn't very likely, is it? No reasonable person will take such a far-fetched concept seriously in the absence of very strong objective evidence. Yet the evidence we are offered is incredibly flimsy: not much more than uncorroborated recollections and subjective interpretations of photographs and written documents.

Not only that, but the theory contains at least one fatal internal contradiction. According to the theory, a mastoidectomy operation had been carried out on 'Lee', and the person shot by Jack Ruby and buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, Forth Worth, was 'Harvey'. Unfortunately for the theory, the body in the grave in fact contains unimpeachable evidence of having undergone a mastoidectomy operation. Of course, it doesn't help the credibility of the theory when you realise that the existence of the mastoidectomy on the body in Oswald's grave had been published in a reputable scientific journal 19 years before the Harvey and Lee book came out, and that the book's author simply ignored the evidence that demolished his theory (see pages 147, 946 and 947 of  Harvey and Lee for Armstrong's disgraceful treatment of the mastoidectomy evidence).

In the same post, Sandy writes:

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I'll bet the school record evidence is ignored by most. After all, in their minds, regardless of what this evidence shows, there must be some other logical explanation because surely the Harvey & Lee concept is wrong.
 

Of course the most logical explanation for the school records is the one that assumes the least amount of improbable skullduggery! The most logical explanation for anything is the one that assumes the least amount of improbable skullduggery.

For those who want to compare the explanations, here is the 'Harvey and Lee' interpretation of the school records, which implies a large amount of improbable skullduggery:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23525-two-marguerite-oswalds-new-details/&do=findComment&comment=346012

The common sense interpretation of the school records, which implies no skullduggery at all, can be found here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23525-two-marguerite-oswalds-new-details/&do=findComment&comment=346077

and here:

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

I'd like to point out an error in one of Tracy Parnell's posts. It's the first post on page 8:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23525-two-marguerite-oswalds-new-details/&do=findComment&comment=345870

Referring to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, Tracy writes that "when examined closely, it falls apart". I'm afraid that this isn't quite right. The theory doesn't require close examination in order to fall apart. It falls apart with only the slightest application of critical thought.

All anyone needs to do is to read pages 6 to 14 of  Harvey and Lee, which contains every single item of evidence which John Armstrong uses to establish the existence of a Marguerite Oswald impostor. From page 14 onwards, Armstrong treats the existence of the impostor, an essential element in the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, as a proven fact.

And what exactly does that evidence amount to? It comprises one person's recollection, from the 1990s, of the appearance of Mrs Oswald, whom this person had met just once, in the 1950s. That's all there is. Even the most superficial reader will notice that this essential element of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is based on just about the weakest type of evidence you could think of. The notion of a 'Marguerite Oswald impostor' is clearly an invention. The 'Harvey and Lee' theory lasted just 14 pages before crumbling away.

The worrying thing is that most of the believers in this superstition will have read pages 6 to 14 of their Holy Book and must have thought to themselves, "So, one guy met Marguerite Oswald on one occasion in the 1950s, and four decades later he was shown some photographs and he thought she looked a bit different. Yup, that's good enough for me!"

The notion of a Marguerite Oswald impostor illustrates the faulty methodology that underlies the whole 'Harvey and Lee' theory. Because it is absolutely central to the theory that there were not only two Oswalds, but that each Oswald had a mother named Marguerite, you might expect this part of the theory to be supported by rigorous argument and rock-solid evidence. Unfortunately, the argument is specious and the evidence almost non-existent.

Marguerite makes her first appearance on page 6:

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On one occasion [in the late 1950s] McBride met Oswald's mother, who he described as a short, heavy–set woman. ...

I located a photograph of Marguerite Oswald taken in 1945 (on the day of her marriage to Edwin Ekdahl), and another photograph of Marguerite in 1957 (a group photo of employees at Paul's Shoe store in Fort Worth at Christmas). Both photos show a tall, slender, nice–looking woman, who appeared to be very different from McBride’s description of Oswald's mother. When I showed these photographs to McBride, he said the woman in these photographs was not the woman he met. ...

I then showed McBride a photograph taken in 1954 of a heavy–set, dour–looking Marguerite. ... McBride said, "That’s her. That's the woman I met."

Armstrong makes no effort to question the reliability of his witness. He merely states that "I was convinced that ... [McBride was] honest, sincere, and accurate." On the basis of a single, uncorroborated piece of evidence, Armstrong claims on page 6 that he now "had photographs of two middle–aged woman [sic] who both claimed to be 'Marguerite Oswald', the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald".

On page 7, having cited no more evidence, Armstrong states that "the probability that ... two middle–aged women used the name 'Marguerite Oswald' seemed more and more likely."

This "probability" quickly turned into a certainty, again with no further evidence cited to support it. We meet Marguerite Oswald next on page 13. After a brief account of Marguerite's early life, Armstrong jumps straight in and refers on page 14 to "the 'Marguerite Oswald' imposter who testified before the Warren Commission" and "Edward Pic, who had married the real Marguerite Oswald". The matter is settled! On the basis of essentially no evidence at all, Marguerite Oswald has been magically transformed into two people.

Having proved to his satisfaction that someone had impersonated Marguerite Oswald, Armstrong immediately goes on to refer to "the short, dumpy, heavy–set 'Marguerite Oswald' imposter", using the same form of words three times on page 14 and many more times later in the book, as though repetition would give the idea the support it otherwise lacks. From page 14 onwards, the impersonation of Marguerite Oswald is presented as a proven fact.

The highly improbable notion that Oswald's mother had been impersonated for several years, which is central to Armstrong's 'two Oswalds' theory, was generated from just about the flimsiest type of evidence possible: one person's memory of a woman he had met only once, several decades earlier.

It is remarkable just how little evidence it took for Armstrong to convince himself of the existence of two Marguerite Oswalds. As early as page 14, it will be obvious to even a half–alert reader that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is the product not of solid evidence and argument but of wishful thinking. All but the most credulous conspiracy theorists, who surely make up Harvey and Lee's target audience, would be wondering how many more evidence–free inventions were lurking in the remaining 900–odd pages.

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

Michael Clark writes:

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While much of the time I don't know what to believe of Marina's testimony and statements, the encounter in the Furniture Mart, in early November of 1963, has me at a loss as to whether anyone is lying. I generally come away from it feeling that no-one is lying.

There is no need to suppose that anyone is lying. With the Furniture Mart account, there are three possibilities:

1 - The witnesses were lying, for no obvious reason.
2 - Oswald, his wife and their children were all impersonated as part of a ridiculously complex conspiracy involving a duplicate Oswald, beginning when he was 12.
3 - The witnesses were mistaken, as witnesses often are.

It isn't difficult to see which of these three options is the most likely to be correct (clue: it isn't option number two).

If you can get hold of the Harvey and Lee book, you will have hours of fun identifying this sort of logical error. Almost every time a witness account can be interpreted as part of an Oswald-was-impersonated-from-the-age-of-12 conspiracy, critical thought goes out of the window and the account is accepted without question. It happens over and over again, and with documentary evidence too. Someone made a mistake when filling in a piece of paperwork? Don't be silly! It's all part of the conspiracy! Take away every example of this sort of error, and the 'Harvey and Lee' theory just collapses.

 

21 hours ago, Paul Trejo said:

Only James Bookhout (roughly following Captain Will Fritz, Dallas FBI agent James Hosty, Dallas Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels and Dallas Postmaster James Humes) claims that LHO made this "confession."

Here's my opinion:  Bookhout is clearly lying.  Will Fritz is clearly lying.  James Hosty is clearly lying.  Forrest Sorrells is clearly lying.  James Humes is clearly lying.

James Humes may just have been mistaken. After all, he was really busy over the assassination weekend, what with interviewing Oswald, making sure all the letters and parcels got delivered properly, and performing President Kennedy's autopsy.

Mr Hargrove writes:

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The chutzpah of anyone who would inform us that an anonymous call was central to a book—without actually reading the book—is stunning!
 

How much of the book does one need to read to understand the importance of the phone call claiming that Oswald's father and uncle were Hungarian? The topic is dealt with on pages 66 and 67, which I have indeed read. If it also appears elsewhere, please let me know the page numbers and I'll check it out.

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The only significance of that call is the possible suggestion that Lee HARVEY Oswald was originally from Hungary.

The significance of the phone call is that it is the only piece of documentary evidence for the existence of a Russian-speaking boy named Oswald.

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Contrary to what you suggest, the caller didn’t even say Oswald or his family spoke Russian. Where on earth did you get that?
 

I didn't get that from anywhere. It's the 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine which attempts to link the supposed Hungarian origins of Oswald's family with the Russian language. Have a look at the article you linked to earlier. It includes this sentence: "It should be noted that Russian is an often-spoken second language in Hungary, and it would hardly be surprising that Hungarian immigrants could speak Russian fluently." There is, of course, no attempt in the article or in the Harvey and Lee book itself to corroborate the claim that Oswald had Hungarian relatives, nor to justify the notion that any such relatives might have spoken Russian to a high level. Consequently, there is no reason to give the phone call any credibility at all. And without the phone call, there is no evidence for the existence of the fictional 'Harvey' Oswald.

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Your position, apparently, is that the one and only “Lee Harvey Oswald” taught himself to read and write Russian by reading magazines and newspapers while he was serving in the Marine Corps. Is that correct?

No. What led you to that conclusion? It's quite possible that the historical Lee Harvey Oswald had received tuition in Russian while in the Marines. After all, he was tested in Russian while in the Marines. There is no need to suppose that the only choice is between self-study and a preposterous multi-year plot involving imaginary lookalikes, some of whom had been given unnecessary mastoidectomies at the age of six just on the off-chance that their bodies might need to be dug up years later. Even if that were the only choice, the self-study option would be far more credible than the imaginary lookalike plot.

At least we now have straight(-ish) answers to the questions about the mastoidectomy and the handwriting analysis. Desperate, but at least straight. Forget the common-sense explanations! It's all part of a huge conspiracy! The pathologists were in on it! The handwriting analysts were in on it!

Mr Hargrove appears to be distancing himself from the phone call without actually admitting that it's worthless as evidence for the existence of 'Harvey'. Now he claims that "We think Harvey Oswald was probably a Russian-speaking World War II orphan brought to the U.S. by American intel". Perhaps Mr Hargrove would be kind enough to share the documentary evidence for the existence of this Russian-speaking orphan? Mr Hargrove seems to have given up on Fictional Harvey the First, the child of Hungarian refugees, for whom no documentary evidence exists. Is there any documentary evidence for the existence of Fictional Harvey the Second, the World War Two orphan? Or is he, too, a figment of the imagination?

Mr Hargrove writes:

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You haven't actually read the book, have you? Evidence for a Russian-speaking "Oswald" is all over it's [sic] roughly thousand pages, rarely referring to the anonymous phone call.
 

Has anyone actually read the book from cover to cover? It's an unreadable mess. But that's beside the point.

You're confusing two things:

- The hypothetical existence of a Russian-speaking 12-year-old who later impersonated a similar-looking, English-speaking American as part of a dastardly secret plot.
- The existence of an American called Lee Harvey Oswald who learned Russian, who defected to the Soviet Union, and who was accused of shooting President Kennedy.

The first of these is central to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, and depends fundamentally on the credibility of one anonymous phone call. As this thread has demonstrated, the phone call is worthless; there is essentially no evidence to support this concoction, and hardly anyone believes it.

The second of these is entirely uncontroversial. I'm not aware of any serious student of the case, whatever their opinion of who killed JFK, who does not accept the existence of a historical Oswald who spoke Russian.

It is an undisputed fact that Oswald spoke Russian, to some level at least, before his defection. But this has nothing whatever to do with the fantastical 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense.

Perhaps you would be good enough to deal with the following problems with the 'Harvey and Lee' theory:

- In the absence of the anonymous phone call, there is no reason to suppose that anyone called Oswald came from a Russian-speaking family. What evidence do you have that the phone call is credible?
- How do you explain the evidence of a mastoid operation on the body in Oswald's grave? According to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, the mastoid operation was carried out on 'Lee', while the body in the grave is that of 'Harvey'. Given that this evidence was published in a respectable scientific journal a mere 19 years before the 'Harvey and Lee' book came out, why do you think the book does not attempt to explain the contradiction?
- What arguments do you have to rebut the HSCA's handwriting and photographic analysis apart from suggesting that the relevant experts were all part of the plot?

 

19 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Jeremy,

The fact that you use John Armstrong's book as a source to dispute the Harvey & Lee theory tells me that the book does admit when the evidence isn't strong.
 

In the instance I quoted, the book does admit that the anonymous phone call "was tenuous and unverified". The problem is that the book then goes on, quite irrationally, to use this admittedly feeble piece of evidence as the main support for its theory: the existence of a Russian-speaking Oswald lookalike. It's like saying, "Yes, the phone call is almost certainly worthless as evidence. Nevertheless, it's all we have, so we're going to use it." The rational conclusion would be that because the phone call is worthless, we are left with no reason to suppose that a Russian-speaking Oswald lookalike actually existed.

It's not as though the phone call is a minor part of the story. It is the only specific evidence that someone named Oswald came from a family of Russian speakers. It is fundamental, and without it the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is just an invention.

Mr Hargrove recommends that we study http://harveyandlee.net/Harvey Who/Harvey_who.htm . The article starts off ('Who Was Harvey?') badly, by begging the question. It assumes that which it needs to prove: that a character named 'Harvey Oswald', who spoke Russian, actually existed. The article is full of this, as is the 'Harvey and Lee' book. Mr Hargrove makes the same logical mistake; in one of his replies, for example, he writes that "Nor is it [the phone call] proof that Harvey Oswald had Hungarian roots. It is a possibility, though, which is all we ever suggest."

The existence of a Russian-speaking Oswald lookalike is absolutely fundamental to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. But it is supported by next to evidence. All we have is one anonymous, unsolicited phone call, which claimed that Oswald's father and uncle were Hungarian. How exactly does this indicate that Oswald spoke Russian expertly, as the 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine requires? All the article gives us is: "It should be noted that Russian is an often-spoken second language in Hungary, and it would hardly be surprising that Hungarian immigrants could speak Russian fluently."

The article does admit that "an anonymous telephone tip can hardly be considered proof of anything", but that's as far as any reasonable scepticism goes. The article does not mention any corroboration for the anonymous phone call. It does not mention any efforts to look for such corroboration. It does not mention any efforts to identify the caller, in order to gauge her reliability. In the absence of any such supporting evidence, the phone call is as worthless as any other crank call. There is no reason to suppose that Oswald had any Hungarian relatives. And if Oswald had no Hungarian relatives, the most fundamental aspect of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy crumbles into dust. There was no 'Harvey Oswald'. He is a fictional character.

The article cites no evidence to support the hopeful opinion that Hungarian immigrants to the US might have spoken Russian fluently. Among which social groups and age groups of Hungarians was Russian a second language? Did these Hungarians speak Russian well enough to be mistaken for native speakers? Did they only speak it competently? Or did they know just enough to deal with the Soviet occupiers of their country? The fictional 'Harvey' was in New York by the age of 12, and had been in the US long enough to have learned to speak English fluently. He must have left Hungary several years earlier. Given that Hungarian and Russian are quite unrelated languages, how much Russian could the fictional 'Harvey' have learned in his first few years? None of these questions are answered in the article.

So much for the article cited by Mr Hargrove. What about the Holy Book? The phone call and its implications are dealt with on pages 66-67 of Harvey and Lee. Again, there is no mention of any effort to identify the caller or gauge her reliability, although Armstrong does admit that "I knew that the information provided by the unknown woman was tenuous and unverified" (p.67). It was indeed tenuous and unverified, but that isn't enough to stop it being used as the whole basis of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory.

I wonder if Mr Hargrove is able to provide us with answers to the following questions:

- What evidence is there that a Hungarian refugee to the US would have spoken Russian well enough to be mistaken for a native speaker?
- What efforts have been made to corroborate the anonymous phone call?
- What efforts have been made to identify the caller?
- In the absence of such efforts, how is it possible to give the phone call any credibility at all?

 

Thanks for posting that article, Karl. Contrary to the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy, there's plentiful evidence that Oswald spoke Russian while in the Soviet Union.

The foreign language aspects of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory really are quite bizarre. For example, one of the book's fictional characters was Hungarian, which apparently made him a native speaker of Russian. Eh? How does that work? I presume the thinking is that both Russian and Hungarian, being foreign languages and not proper languages like English, are full of strange words and sounds, so if you know one lot of funny-sounding non-English words you automatically also know the other lot. I forget which character was supposed to be Hungarian. Was it 'Harvey', or was it 'Lee'? Perhaps it was 'Harley'. Or 'Vee'. Who cares? It's all a load of made-up nonsense anyway.

Then there is the reasoning, if that's the right word to use, behind the idea that the grand 'Harvey and Lee' scheme required one of the fictional characters to be a native speaker of Russian. As the cult's bible proclaims:

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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. (Harvey and Lee, p.10)

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. Such is the relation between the facts and the 'Harvey and Lee' theory.
 

Some readers may wonder why anyone bothers to question this type of obvious nonsense. Isn't it like questioning the theory that there are fairies at the bottom of your garden? There's a danger with all the moon-landings type of JFK conspiracy theories (The Altgens 6 photograph was faked! The Zapruder film was faked! The Muchmore film was faked! JFK's corpse was faked! The trees on the grassy knoll were faked! JFK's death was faked! Oswald was faked! Oswald's mother was faked!). They bring sensible criticism of the official theory into disrepute. For as long as the critical view of the JFK assassination can be tarred by association with this sort of paranoid drivel, the case is unlikely to be taken seriously by a sizeable proportion of the general public.

Incidentally, anyone who is even slightly tempted to believe in the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy should take an honest look at some of the arguments against it. For example, Mr Hargrove's recent '10 reasons to believe this twaddle' post is nicely rebutted here: http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1283-the-ol-pulling-10-reasons-out-of-the-arse-trick .

Mr Parnell writes that "Hargrove is, of course, still promoting the long-debunked John Armstrong double Oswald theory". "Long-debunked" is far too polite. The theory has the unusual distinction of having been debunked two decades before it was even published, as Mr Parnell demonstrates here: http://jfkassassination.net/parnell/3key.htm .

This Counterpunch article, originally from 2012, slaps down Brian Latell's notion that Castro was behind the JFK assassination:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/25/the-cia-and-castro-an-undying-obsession-2/
 

Denny,

You may be thinking of James and Elsie Wilcott, who worked for the CIA in Tokyo at the time of the assassination. In his testimony before the HSCA in 1978, James Wilcott claimed that it was common knowledge at the Tokyo office that Oswald had been employed by the CIA:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=260

There's a good account of the Wilcotts' claims and experiences on pages 146-147 of James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable.

I don't seem to be getting through. To save everyone the bother, I'll summarise the next few days' interactions and we can all go away and do something more interesting:

CD: on CE884 z186-z207 = 20.3ft traveled in 21 frames.

JB: So what? If the data in CE 884 contradicts what we see in the Zapruder film, the obvious answer is not that the film has been faked, but simply that the data is faulty. What grounds are there for assuming that the data in CE 884 is reliable?

CD: 18.3/18 = 1.0166... x 21.6ft = 21.96ft per second!

JB: So what? If you're using faulty data, you are just playing mathematical games, and none of this has anything to do with the actual Zapruder film.

CD: 21.96/1.47 (1mph) = 14.938mph!

JB: So what? If the data in CE 884 contradicts what we see in the Zapruder film, the obvious answer is not that the film has been faked, but simply that the data is faulty. What grounds are there for assuming that the data in CE 884 is reliable?

CD: z171-z185 = 17.07mph!

JB: So what? If you're using faulty data, you are just playing mathematical games, and none of this has anything to do with the actual Zapruder film.

CD: 41ft / 1.5seconds = 27.33ft per sec = 18.594 mph!

JB: So what? If the data in CE 884 contradicts what we see in the Zapruder film, the obvious answer is not that the film has been faked, but simply that the data is faulty. What grounds are there for assuming that the data in CE 884 is reliable?

[Repeat ad infinitum]