Jeremy Bojczuk

Jim Hargrove writes: The OSS ceased to exist on 20 September 1945. Shortly after that, some of its functions were taken over by the CIA. The real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was born on 18 October 1939. He was four weeks short of his sixth birthday when the OSS was dissolved. This means that at least one, and presumably both, of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's imaginary Oswald doppelgangers must have been recruited at the age of five. Or possibly at the age of four, or three, or ... And presumably the two Marguerite doppelgangers were recruited at the same time. I realise that Jim is probably making this stuff up as he goes along, and it would be a waste of time asking him to produce specific documentary evidence for any of it. But I'd just like to be clear about this point of doctrine. The double-doppelganger project began when the two unrelated boys were no more than five years old. Is that correct? The implication is that the OSS decided to set up a long-term project involving two unrelated boys who were no more than five years old, in the hope that when they grew up they would turn out to look virtually identical. Is that what Jim thinks happened? The OSS came across an American boy who was no more than five years old. (How? When? Never mind.) They then trawled through their collection of eastern European orphan boys of the same age, and found one who looked similar to the American boy. They thought to themselves, "I bet he'll look just like that American boy when he grows up! Apart from his earlobes and his 13-inch head, of course. And those two women will look identical too, apart from their eyebrows!" Does Jim seriously think that any of this actually happened? As I pointed out to Jim the last time he came up with this nonsensical rationalisation, there would be nothing to deny if there were no doppelgangers involved. It's only the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's insistence on having two doppelganger Oswalds, one with an American background and the other who was only pretending to have an American background, that creates the need to deny anything. If all the OSS or the CIA had was one person with a genuine American background, there would be nothing to deny. Deniability cannot be the reason the CIA would have decided to continue with this ridiculous imaginary project, or the reason the OSS would have set it up in the first place. Would Jim care to have another go? Why would any rational organisation have set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers at all, let alone doppelgangers who were no more than five years old? The advantages of sending a false defector who understood Russian are obvious, but the need for that defector to have been a Russian speaker as a child is not obvious. As I've been pointing out, you don't need to be a native speaker of a language in order to understand what is being said around you. The real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was not a native speaker of Russian, which implies that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's equivalent imaginary doppelganger was likewise not a native speaker of Russian. If you don't require a native speaker of Russian, why go to all the trouble of setting up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, including a pair of five-year-olds? But the case of Konon Molodiy (a.k.a. Gordon Lonsdale) did not resemble the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's imaginary doppelganger project: Most obviously, Molodiy was one person, not a pair of doppelgangers. He moved to the US at a young age, and learned English there. Neither of the imaginary Oswald doppelgangers moved to Russia at a young age and learned Russian there. He took the identity of a deceased Canadian. Neither of the imaginary Oswald doppelgangers took the identity of a deceased Russian, or of any deceased person. He travelled to the west without defecting, unlike the imaginary Oswald doppelganger who travelled to the Soviet Union specifically in order to defect. His use of Lonsdale's identity ensured that the US and British authorities remained unaware for years that Molodiy had any connections at all to the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities, on the other hand, would have suspected immediately that the imaginary Oswald doppelganger might have had connections to the US, simply because of his defection. Molodiy's undercover work required him not to pretend that he did not understand English. The imaginary Oswald doppelganger who defected was required by the theory to pretend not to understand Russian. Molodiy's English appeared to be that of a native speaker. The imaginary Oswald doppelganger's Russian was clearly not that of a native speaker. In short, Molodiy's apparent background and his command of English allowed him to blend in with the society he was spying against, whereas the precise opposite applied to the imaginary Oswald doppelganger who defected. The central feature of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is doppelgangers. Molodiy was not a doppelganger. No doppelgangers feature in the story of Konon Molodiy. Jim is probably on the right lines here. The assassination may have been intended to provoke an invasion of Cuba. Oswald may have been chosen as a patsy in order to implicate Cuba in the assassination. Oswald's probable affiliations with one or other US agencies may have been a factor in provoking a cover-up. The problem is: none of this requires Oswald to have been a pair of imaginary doppelgangers. All of it applies perfectly well if we accept the obvious fact that Oswald was a singular, real person. Doppelgangers were unnecessary (especially five-year-old doppelgangers). The 'Harvey and Lee' theory is incoherent.

Sandy Larsen writes: Yes, and it makes no sense. The theory claims that this mysterious orphan was recruited specifically for his ability to speak Russian like a native, doesn't it? But this orphan (or rather the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) did not actually speak Russian like a native, did he? Did the CIA go to all the trouble of recruiting not only this orphan, but also a doppelganger boy with an American background, and the American boy's mother, and another woman, a doppelganger of the first woman, to act as the orphan's mother, and then keep the charade going for a decade, only for the CIA to let the native Russian-speaking orphan lose the very ability for which he was recruited in the first place? Why would any rational organisation have done that? Alternatively, if the theory now claims that the CIA recruited an orphan who didn't speak Russian like a native, what would their reason have been for recruiting him? Why would they have set up a ridiculously complicated decade-long project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, none of whom were native speakers of Russian? The theory proposes that this far-fetched project was set up, but cannot explain why anyone would have set it up. Armstrong and White simply didn't think it through. That's why I keep calling the 'Harvey and Lee' theory nonsense. It literally makes no sense.

Jim Hargrove writes: But the use of doppelgangers is not at all common. None of Jim's examples were of preposterously complicated 'Harvey and Lee'-style doppelgangers, in which a pair of unrelated doppelganger boys were recruited at a young age, along with two doppelganger women to act as their mothers, and the scheme was maintained for over a decade. Still, at least he hasn't brought up Mata Hari this time! Oh, wait ... he has. As I've pointed out to Jim several times: doppelgangers are not required for impersonations, and doppelgangers were not required for the task supposedly given to the false defector as imagined by Armstrong and White. Doppelgangers are unnecessary, whether in: real events, such as the false defection and later impersonation of the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald; or fictional events, such as an imaginary false defector who did not have an American background but was recruited specifically for being a native speaker of Russian despite not actually being a native speaker of Russian. The central claim of the incoherent and poorly thought-out 'Harvey and Lee' theory is that the CIA recruited one boy for his authentic American background, and a second, unrelated boy for his native ability to speak Russian. But it was obvious that the second boy cannot have been recruited for that reason, because he (or rather the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) did not have a native ability to speak Russian. Since the defector (the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) was not a native speaker of Russian, all the CIA needed to do, in the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's scenario, was to recruit a genuine American and get him to learn Russian. The 'Harvey and Lee' theory cannot explain why the CIA would not have done this. You see, I told you the theory was incoherent. Sandy suggested that the CIA might have set up a double-doppelganger scheme for some reason unrelated to Oswald's false defection. Maybe they did (though it sounds a bit unlikely, doesn't it?), but that double-doppelganger scheme cannot have been the double-doppelganger scheme that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory conjured into existence, because Sandy's hypothetical scheme involved a native speaker of Russian, and the defection in question did not involve a native speaker of Russian. If Sandy were to adapt his hypothetical scheme to include a non-native speaker of Russian (just like the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald), it would fail for the same reason the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's hypothetical scheme fails. Without a native speaker of Russian, there is no need for any doppelgangers. Why would the CIA have gone to all the trouble of setting up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers when there was no need to do so?

Sandy Larsen writes: What Sandy highlighted was actually my opinion, although I wouldn't be surprised if Jonathan agrees with me: Sandy continues: That would indeed have made sense, although of course it doesn't imply that such an agent would have been recruited at a young age as one of a pair of doppelgangers in the hope that when they grew up they would turn out to look identical. That part is just far-fetched 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense. I'm sure that during the Cold War, the CIA and its foreign equivalents recruited native Russian speakers. They may also have recruited language prodigies who were able to reach that level despite not being native speakers. The problem is: Oswald wasn't one of them. Oswald's Russian was far from flawless. He eventually reached a decent level, but everything we know about his Russian clearly shows that he was not a native speaker. His Marine buddies testified that he was teaching himself Russian. He did poorly in a Russian-language exam. He made grammatical mistakes. Even after living among actual native speakers for years, he was making grammatical mistakes. Marina teased him about the grammatical mistakes he made. Ruth Paine, whose own Russian was nowhere near native level, noticed and commented on the grammatical mistakes he made. Making grammatical mistakes is consistent with what the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald was: an American who learned Russian in his late teens and early twenties. It is not consistent with being a native speaker such as Sandy's imaginary doppelganger Oswald. Incidentally, we now have a plausible account of how the real-life Oswald might have learned Russian while in the Marines: http://www.jfkconversations.com/lee-oswald-russian-language The one who, according to John Armstrong (praise his name!) had not undergone a mastoidectomy, but who in real life had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy, a fact of which Armstrong was aware, thereby presenting Armstrong with the uncomfortable choice of either abandoning his theory or misleading his readers?* That fake Oswald? Or the fake Oswald who vanished without a trace immediately after the assassination? (Whatever happened to that fake Oswald, by the way? And what happened to the fake Marguerite who also vanished into thin air immediately after the assassination?) Or the fake Oswald who was 5' 11" tall in 1959, then somehow shrank to 5' 6" a couple of years later, then miraculously expanded back to 5' 11" by the time of the assassination? Or the fake Oswald who had a 13" head? I don't think the CIA had in mind a role for any of those fake Oswalds, because they didn't exist. * Spoiler alert: The choice Armstrong made was to mislead his readers. Well, it was either that or admitting that his theory was nonsense, so you can't really blame him, can you? I don't know what Jonathan assumes, but that isn't what I assume. There are two problems with Sandy's latest bit of speculation. The first problem is that, as I've already pointed out, the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald didn't "perfect his Russian language". Even after having spent more than two years interacting daily with native Russian speakers, and after marrying one of them and insisting on speaking nothing but Russian with her, his Russian was still far from perfect. If the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald spoke less than perfect Russian, Sandy's imaginary Oswald doppelganger likewise must have spoken less than perfect Russian. The second problem is that there wouldn't have been "a fairly short period of time" available for an American to learn Russian. A fairly long period of time would have been available. According to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, it was around 1950 when the CIA decided to recruit its two pairs of imaginary doppelgangers. The real-life Lee Harvey Oswald defected towards the end of 1959. That's the best part of a decade, which is more than enough time for an intelligent, motivated American to learn the amount of Russian which would be needed to understand what was being said around him. This brings us back to the fundamental problem with the 'Harvey and Lee' theory (yes, I know there are numerous problems with it, but this one is central to the theory). The double-doppelganger scheme could only work if the defector were a native speaker of Russian, and if the task he was given required him to be a native speaker. But the defector, the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, clearly was not a native speaker of Russian. The task he was given, namely understanding what people would be saying around him in the Soviet Union, did not require him to be a native speaker. A year or two ago in several threads on this forum, the 'Harvey and Lee' faithful suddenly became aware of this fundamental problem with their theory. If their imaginary defecting doppelganger not only wasn't a native speaker of Russian but also didn't need to be a native speaker of Russian, there would have been no rational justification for any sort of long-term project involving doppelgangers. Doppelgangers were unnecessary! Such was the shock of this realisation that Jim Hargrove became temporarily incapacitated and was unable to keep on spamming the forum by copying and pasting long-debunked passages of scripture. It was that serious. If the CIA had wanted to create what the 'Harvey and Lee' theory claims they wanted to create (a false defector who possessed both a plausible American background and enough Russian to understand what was being said around him), all they had to do was recruit a genuine American and get him to learn Russian. What reason would the CIA have had for deciding to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to?

John Butler writes: That's because it's just the standard 'Harvey and Lee' stuff that has been covered umpteen times already. Take an uncorroborated claim or dubiously interpreted piece of documentary evidence, ignore every innocent explanation, and declare that one or other of the imaginary doppelgangers was at location X doing activity Y when the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald was elsewhere. Here's an interesting challenge. It may be difficult for John to do, but he should at least give it a try: For each 'Harvey and Lee' claim, search honestly for all the alternative explanations that have been offered over the years. You'll be the first 'Harvey and Lee' believer to do this! Throw away all the 'Harvey and Lee' claims for which plausible alternative explanations exist. Every single one! You may find this painful, and it may take some time. If there's anything left, try to construct a theory to explain the few remaining pieces of evidence. What you should have done years ago is not to blindly accept every piece of evidence you can find, no matter how flimsy, but to question every piece of evidence you can find, and discard those that have innocent alternative explanations. Of course, if you do that, the whole theory crumbles away. Sorry about that. Once you've filtered out every item of evidence for which non-doppelganger explanations exist, turn your attention to the reasoning behind this nonsense, and tell us why the CIA might have decided to set up a scheme involving doppelgangers when there was no need to do so. What reason would the CIA have had for deciding to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to?

John Butler writes: If you really do understand the questions I'm asking, you shouldn't have too much trouble answering them. The CIA's decision to use doppelgangers is right at the heart of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, isn't it? If the CIA really did decide to use doppelgangers, they must have done so for a reason. But what reason could they have had for deciding to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to? You can't think of a reason, can you? You could look for an answer in the 'Harvey and Lee' cult's holy book. What does the holy book say about this? It doesn't say anything, does it? The holy book doesn't explain the decision. It just expects its believers to accept as an article of faith that the CIA decided to use doppelgangers when a far simpler alternative existed. You know why that is, don't you? It's because John Armstrong and Jack 'the moon landings were faked' White never bothered to think this nonsense through. There's a big gap in the theory, and no-one knows how to fill it. The theory makes no sense.

Sandy Larsen writes: Sandy hasn't suggested any goals which the CIA might have wanted to achieve by setting up a long-term double-doppelganger scheme, apart from the general goal of producing a false defector with a plausible American background who understood Russian. In other words, standard 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine. As I've been pointing out, using doppelgangers to achieve that goal makes no sense. You don't need access to the inner workings of the CIA to understand that no institution would have done that, because the institution would have known that a much simpler alternative to doppelgangers existed. There is still a gap in the basic premise of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. No-one has been able to work out the reasoning behind the decision which forms the central feature of the theory. Why would the CIA (or anyone else) have set up a long-term project involving even one pair of doppelgangers, let alone two pairs of doppelgangers, when there was no need to use doppelgangers at all? Why, specifically, use doppelgangers? Sandy can't think of a reason. Jim and John can't think of a reason. I can't think of a reason. There was no reason for using doppelgangers, was there?

John Butler writes: My point, which John does not seem to have grasped, was that everything in his imaginary doppelganger's background would apply at least as well to an actual American. School, family life, general upbringing, experience and areas of expertise in the Marines - all of these things would have been part of the background of a genuine American who defected. There was no need to fake any of this by using a doppelganger who did not have a genuine American background. You could simply use a genuine American instead, couldn't you? You'd save on staff costs by recruiting just one person, a genuine American, rather than recruiting four people: two Oswald doppelgangers and two Marguerite doppelgangers. Not to mention that there would be no need to twist the arms of those family members who were in on the plot so that they wouldn't give the game away (which some of them actually ended up doing - whoops!). Using a genuine American would have another important advantage over using doppelgangers. The defecting doppelganger's false history was at risk of exposure if the Soviets decided to look into it. An American's genuine history could never be exposed as false. So what good reason would there be to use doppelgangers when you could use a genuine American?

John Butler writes: Exactly! The need for a cover story is why, according to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the false defector needed to have a plausible American background. So why didn't they just send to the Soviet Union someone with an absolutely bullet-proof cover story: a genuine American who had a genuine American background? That would have saved everyone a lot of bother, wouldn't it? What reason could the CIA (or the Boy Scouts, or the Sons of the Desert) have had for not doing that? Personally, I can't think of a good reason for not sending over a genuine American (such as ... um, let's see ... ah yes ... the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald). Sandy and Jim can't think of a good reason either. Even Messrs Armstrong and White couldn't think of a good reason, and they're the ones who came up with the theory. Can John think of a good reason for not using a genuine American?

Sandy Larsen writes: And it's a very weak hypothesis, because it fails to explain why the event postulated by the hypothesis would have taken place. It postulates that in around 1950 the CIA set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers. But it doesn't explain why any rational organisation would have done this. The ultimate goal (as far as I can tell) would have been to create a false defector who had a plausible American background and the ability to understand the Russian that would be spoken around him once he defected. If that was the ultimate goal, two uncontroversial facts show that the CIA would have had no reason to set up a complicated scheme involving doppelgangers, as the theory proposes, because a far simpler and more obvious solution existed. There were millions of Americans whose American backgrounds were as plausible as it's possible to be, and the decade or so that the supposed project took would have been more than enough time for one of those Americans to have learned Russian. I presume Sandy agrees with me that there is no chance that the CIA, or any other organisation, would have failed to work out that the simplest way to obtain a false defector of the sort proposed was to recruit an American and get him to learn Russian. My claim is that there is no good reason to believe that any rational organisation would have set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, because a far simpler and more obvious alternative existed. It's the 'Harvey and Lee' theory that nominates the CIA as the organisation which set up such a project. But the theory doesn't explain why any organisation (the CIA, the Boy Scouts, Laurel and Hardy's Sons of the Desert, whoever) would have done this. The onus is on the 'Harvey and Lee' theory to come up with a plausible explanation for what it claims the CIA did: namely, set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers. Until such an explanation emerges, the theory is incoherent.

Sandy Larsen writes: But you are claiming that those things happened. The 'Harvey and Lee' theory claims that the CIA wanted to recruit a false defector who had an American background and an understanding of Russian. Is that not what the theory claims? The theory also claims that the CIA's method of recruiting one false defector was to recruit four people - two Oswald doppelgangers and two Marguerite doppelgangers - and keep the double-doppelganger charade going for over a decade. Is that not what the theory claims? The theory also claims that the CIA's decision, to recruit one person with an American background who knew Russian, was made roughly a decade before the defector would actually be required to defect. Is that not what the theory claims? We know that there were millions of people with genuine American backgrounds. We know that a decade is more than enough time to acquire the level of Russian that the CIA's supposed plan required. The CIA would have known these things too, wouldn't they? The CIA would also have known that all they needed to do was to recruit one genuine American and get him to learn Russian. The CIA would have worked this out pretty quickly, wouldn't they? But, according to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, the CIA decided not to take advantage of this simple and obvious solution. According to the theory, the CIA decided to do something much more complicated instead. Unfortunately, the theory doesn't offer any explanation of why the CIA would have gone to all this trouble. As far as I'm aware, the cult's holy book contains nothing about this. None of the believers on this forum have been able to offer an explanation either. Why is this part of the theory missing? The CIA's supposed decision to set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers isn't some trivial detail. It is the central element of the theory. If there really was such a project, there must have been a reason for its existence. But no-one seems to know what that reason was. Why is the 'Harvey and Lee' theory unable to explain this? ----- Returning from the realm of doppelgangered fantasy to the real world and the subject of this thread, Ed's scenario makes a lot of sense:

Sandy Larsen writes: I'm not saying what the CIA wanted to do. I'm reporting what the 'Harvey and Lee' theory claims is what the CIA wanted to do: send to the Soviet Union a false defector with a plausible American background. That is what the theory claims, isn't it? The plausible American background is an essential part of the theory, isn't it? I'm just making the observation that if the CIA really had wanted to do that, the CIA could not possibly have overlooked the most obvious way to achieve that goal. If you need someone with a plausible American background, you choose an actual American. That is the easiest way to achieve that goal, isn't it? The 'Harvey and Lee' theory claims that the CIA didn't do that. But the theory is unable to explain why the CIA didn't do that. The theory is incoherent. The fantasists who dreamed it up didn't think this stuff through. But you do presume to know what the CIA did, and what it wanted to do, namely to recruit a false defector who possessed: an American background and a knowledge of Russian that would allow him to understand what was being said around him. You also presume to know how the CIA went about achieving that goal: recruit four people instead of just one, and set up a complicated decade-long scheme involving two pairs of doppelgangers, instead of just letting the one person learn Russian. It is a fundamental claim of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory that the CIA decided to set up a long-term double-doppelganger scheme. If, as the theory claims, the CIA made that decision, the CIA must have had a good reason for doing so, mustn't it? What was the reason for making that decision? You need to fill in this gaping hole in your theory. Why on earth would any rational organisation have made that particular decision?

John Butler writes: It's because, according to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, the CIA required one person with a plausible American background. If you need someone with a plausible American background, what's the first thing you'd think of doing? You'd think about recruiting a genuine American, wouldn't you? I would have thought that was kind of obvious. There was no shortage of Americans with genuine American backgrounds. Why choose an immigrant from Europe instead? And why recruit four people when you only need to recruit one? What, according to the 'Harvey and Lee' theory, was the CIA's thinking process? They must have had a good reason for doing what you say they did, if they actually did it. What was that reason?

John Butler writes: That sums up the mentality of the few remaining believers in this far-fetched, poorly thought-out, incoherent and long-discredited theory. If you believe the theory, you believe that the CIA decided, some time around 1950, that several years in the future they would send to the Soviet Union a false defector, and that this defector needed to possess two things: a genuine American background and an understanding of Russian. You understand that all the CIA needed to do was recruit an American and spend the intervening years getting him to learn Russian. You believe that instead of simply recruiting one American adult and getting him to learn Russian, the CIA decided to recruit four people, including one boy who already understood Russian but didn't have an American background, and one boy who did have an American background but didn't understand Russian, and that the CIA would get one of the boys to impersonate the other for more than a decade. You are unable to explain why the CIA would have chosen this absurdly complicated solution when a far simpler solution existed. You aren't concerned about your inability to explain how this scheme could ever have been chosen. You believe that the CIA recruited a mother for each of the boys, and that the two mothers looked near enough identical to each other, apart from their eyebrows. You believe that the CIA maintained two households, each containing an Oswald doppelganger and a Marguerite doppelganger, for more than a decade, up to the weekend of the JFK assassination. You accept that people can be impersonated without the use of doppelgangers, but you are unable to explain why it was necessary to use doppelgangers in this case. You believe that the CIA hoped that when the two boys grew up, they would magically come to look near enough identical, and that - hey presto! - the boys did indeed end up looking near enough identical, apart from their heights, which were so remarkably flexible that one of the Oswald doppelgangers left the Marines measuring 5' 11", then shrank to 5' 6" a few years later, and grew back to 5' 11" by the time of the assassination. You believe that the boy who was recruited specifically for his understanding of Russian was allowed, by the CIA masterminds who were supervising his development, to forget the language, so that he had to learn the language again shortly before he defected, thereby making the whole double-doppelganger project redundant. You believe that once one of the Oswald doppelgangers was shot by Jack Ruby, the other Oswald doppelganger and one of the Marguerite doppelgangers vanished into thin air. You have no explanation for the sudden disappearance of one Oswald doppelganger and one Marguerite doppelganger. You aren't concerned ("Who knows what happened to Lee") about your inability to explain what happened to the missing pair of doppelgangers. You aren't concerned that the theory you believe in was dreamed up by two people, one of whom believed that the moon landings were faked, and the other of whom was happy to mislead the readers of his book about the results of Oswald's exhumation in 1981. You aren't concerned about the harm that the double-doppelganger fantasy might cause, if newcomers to the JFK assassination debate concluded that all critics of the lone-gunman idea were a bunch of tin-foil hat-wearing crazies.

Robert Charles-Dunne writes: We have to consider the possibility that Armstrong isn't sufficiently concerned about whether what he writes is true or false. I'm sure most of us by now are familiar with Armstrong's approach to Oswald's exhumation in 1981. Armstrong claimed that the body in Oswald's grave was that of an imaginary doppelganger who had not undergone a mastoidectomy operation. The exhumation disproved Armstrong's claim, by showing that the body in question had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy operation. Armstrong's elaborate chronology of his two doppelgangers' lives is central to his theory. The exhumation shows that this chronology cannot be true, and that a fundamental aspect of his theory is wrong. What did Armstrong do? Did he admit that his theory was wrong? No, he simply failed to inform his readers about the mastoidectomy evidence from the exhumation, and repeated his claim that the body was that of the imaginary doppelganger who had not undergone the operation. Armstrong certainly knew about the pathologists' report of the exhumation, since he cited it in his book, which was published nearly 20 years after the exhumation. Armstrong must have assumed that back then, in the early days of the world-wide web, few people would be able to consult the report (L.E. Norton, J.A. Coffone, I.M. Sopher, and V.J.M. DiMaio, ‘The Exhu­mation and Identification of Lee Harvey Oswald,’ Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol.29 no.1 [January 1984], pp.19–38). Unfortunately, a text version is now available online: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/parnell/nreport.htm. Armstrong has been rumbled. Armstrong misled his readers by not telling them that the exhumation report contradicted a central element of his theory. It doesn't look good, does it?

Jim Hargrove writes: I'm not just asking you to believe that these witnesses were wrong. I gave a link to Mark Stevens' work which explains why they do not support the claim that an Oswald doppelganger attended Stripling school. None of the witnesses Jim mentions are reliable, for the reasons Mark gave in the thread I linked to. They were variously mistaken, or gave contradictory evidence, or didn't know Oswald, or didn't attend Stripling themselves. On that thread, Jim and his small number of fellow cult members were unable to overcome Mark's arguments. Until they do so (on that thread, please), there is no good reason to believe the claim that an Oswald doppelganger attended Stripling. Unfortunately, the Stripling episode was an essential element of the 'Harvey and Lee' narrative. I understand Jim's need to save face after spending more than twenty years promoting this nonsense. I appreciate that his only remaining tactic is to keep on repeating points of doctrine. But it doesn't look good when he fails to acknowledge the existence of evidence and arguments which undermine that doctrine. Anyone who is genuinely interested in finding out whether an Oswald doppelganger actually attended Stripling merely has to follow the link and read what Mark Stevens and others have written: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/ Why didn't Jim do what Mark did, and examine Armstrong's evidence critically, looking for weaknesses? If you want to know whether a claim is true or false, that's what you have to do. If, on the other hand, you're not concerned about whether a claim is true or false, and you just want to believe, then you do what Jim does. Don't apply any critical thought. Just accept what you're told. Ignore any evidence and arguments to the contrary. To find out the truth about the assassination, it really is necessary to question not only the lone-gunman claims but also the pro-conspiracy claims, and especially the far-fetched conspiracy claims. The more far-fetched they are, the less likely they are to be true, as we have seen here.

Sandy Larsen writes: No, Mark didn't just declare that each piece of evidence was wrong. He examined each piece of evidence and explained why it was inadequate. For each of the supposed eye-witnesses to an Oswald doppelganger at Stripling, Mark showed one or more of the following things: The witness was mistaken. The witness contradicted his or her own statements. The witness contradicted elements of the 'Harvey and Lee' narrative. The witness didn't actually know Oswald at the time. The witness didn't actually attend Stripling himself. The witness was interviewed several decades after the event. Most of the witnesses cited by John Armstrong in his book, and by Jim Hargrove repeatedly in this forum, fall into more than one of those categories. Mark also pointed out the limited amount of evidence for a doppelganger at Stripling. The supposed witnesses cited by Armstrong are only a tiny minority of those who would have encountered the doppelganger at Stripling. He also pointed out that one witness in particular who might be expected to have remembered Oswald, did not do so. Mrs Bratton, who taught at Stripling at the time the Oswald doppelganger was supposed to have been there, later wrote about the Oswald family but somehow failed to mention his attendance at Stripling. In addition to dealing with Armstrong's witnesses, Mark provided a plausible explanation for the repeated mentions in the local newspaper. The paper simply recycled the material in its files, as newspapers commonly did and probably still do. Mark provided evidence for this: several of the reports use the same form of words, and none of the reports cited any new witnesses apart from Robert Oswald. What Mark (and others, such as Robert Charles-Dunne) did in that thread was what John Armstrong and his cult followers should have done. He examined each piece of evidence critically, and searched for weaknesses. I wonder why Armstrong didn't do that. If anyone wants to look at the evidence and arguments in detail, this is where you can find it: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/ There are two points to be made here: Firstly, it is not true that the Stripling evidence was dismissed by simply claiming that the witnesses were mistaken. Each item of evidence was examined and shown to have a more plausible explanation than that offered by Armstrong. If a more plausible explanation exists, we should accept it and discard the less plausible explanation, shouldn't we? Secondly, the Stripling claim was an essential component of the 'Harvey and Lee' narrative. Since the Stripling evidence is worthless and there is no good reason to suppose that an Oswald doppelganger attended Stripling school, that's the end of the theory, isn't it? Can the 'Harvey and Lee' story survive without the Stripling episode? If anyone thinks that it can, perhaps they could explain their reasoning. How many other elements of the double-doppelganger nonsense can be sacrificed before the theory disappears in a puff of smoke? If a plausible explanation exists for, say, the Bolton Ford episode, would the 'Harvey and Lee' story survive? Or the Texas Theater episode? Or the mastoidectomy evidence from the exhumation? Or Oswald's acquisition of Russian? All of these elements are essential parts of the 'Harvey and Lee' story, aren't they? If there is a plausible explanation for any of them, let alone all of them, how can the theory survive? -- P.S. Jim claimed a few posts ago that I have never suggested on this forum that Oswald might have been impersonated. As it happens, I did so a couple of times on page 7 of that Stripling thread, e.g.: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/?do=findComment&comment=438949 Impersonations do not require doppelgangers. They certainly don't require long-term projects involving two pairs of doppelgangers that could never have been set up because a far simpler alternative existed.

Then Jim produces something worth discussing: At last, we have a sort of answer to the question I asked earlier: why did those CIA masterminds use doppelgangers when there was no need to use doppelgangers? According to holy scripture, it's because doppelgangers provide deniability. But deniability is a solution to a non-existent problem. Without doppelgangers, there would be nothing that needed to be denied. All Jim's CIA masterminds needed to do was recruit an American and get him to learn Russian. They would never even have considered the possibility of setting up a long-term doppelganger scheme, would they?

Jim Hargrove writes: It isn't remarkable at all, because it isn't true. "Never, ever"? Plenty of people have debated this nonsense "right here" in numerous threads over many years. Unfortunately for Jim, almost no-one finds it convincing. The double-doppelganger nonsense has, of course, been discussed elsewhere too. Look at all the 'Harvey and Lee' talking points mentioned here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/f13-debunked Jim has been invited to join that forum. I'm sure he will if he thinks his evidence can stand up to questioning. I can do that too: Nothing significant about alien abductions has been disproved! Nothing significant about the faked moon landings theory has been disproved! Nothing significant about the flat earth theory has been disproved! Nothing significant about the lizard people has been disproved! When it comes to proof and disproof, it's important to understand that it's up to Jim to prove his claims, but it isn't up to critics to disprove them. All we need to do is show that a plausible alternative explanation exists for a particular claim. This raises an interesting question. How many 'Harvey and Lee' talking points need to be disposed of before the theory becomes worthless? I'd suggest that disposing of any significant claim will invalidate the theory as a whole. Once Mark Stevens disposed of the Stripling evidence, for example, did that discredit the whole theory? After all, one essential part of the theory is the claim that an Oswald doppelganger attended that school, and Mark has shown that no good evidence exists to support that claim. Or what about the evidence that the body exhumed from Oswald's grave in 1981 had undergone a mastoidectomy? It is an essential part of Armstrong's chronology that the doppelganger who underwent the mastoidectomy was not the one who was buried in the grave. That claim has been absolutely disproved. Surely that alone makes the theory worthless. Since there is no good evidence that an Oswald doppelganger attended Stripling, and it is certain that no Oswald doppelganger was buried in Oswald's grave, does the theory still exist? Here we go again. As soon as I pointed out that Jim is like a religious fundamentalist, ignoring criticism and instead repeatedly quoting holy scripture, he vomits up more holy scripture. If Jim thinks he can revive the nonsensical claim that a non-existent Oswald doppelganger attended Stripling, here's where he should do it: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/

Sandy Larsen writes: Sandy should recall it, because he has contributed to many of those threads. The classic example is probably this one: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/ Mark Stevens destroyed the notion that an Oswald doppelganger attended Stripling school, an essential element of the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense. By the way, if anyone wants to argue otherwise, please do so on that thread, not this one. Also of interest in that thread is Jim's reply to Mark's opening comment. Did Jim respond to the points Mark made? Of course he didn't! Did Jim simply regurgitate passages from holy scripture? Of course he did! As Jonathan points out, every substantial piece of evidence put forward by the double-doppelganger gang has been taken to pieces either on this forum or elsewhere. What's worth remembering is that it is up to the double-doppelganger gang to prove their case. It isn't up to anyone else to disprove it. All that the rest of us need to do is show that, for each claim, an equally plausible or more plausible explanation exists. Almost any explanation that doesn't involve doppelgangers is going to be more plausible than one that does. A good example of that is Greg Parker and Jim Purtnell's article about Oswald's acquisition of Russian, which I mentioned earlier: http://www.jfkconversations.com/lee-oswald-russian-language That article gives a plausible explanation that doesn't require the use of doppelgangers. Of course, whenever something like Stripling or the infamous 13-inch head gets thoroughly debunked, that's a bonus. (Again, if anyone wants to discuss Oswald's Russian, there are other threads dedicated to that question, so please use one of them.) Now, can anyone come up with a plausible reason why those masterminds would have set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers when they had a simpler and far more obvious alternative? It cannot have happened, can it?

Jim Hargrove writes: Yes, you did miss it. I have long considered that Oswald was probably impersonated (see here) and probably had connections to one or more US intelligence agencies (see here). As far as I can tell, that view is very common among critics of the lone-gunman theory. The only lone-gunman advocate that I'm aware of who actively questions Jim's far-fetched double-doppelganger nonsense is Tracy Parnell. I assume Tracy doesn't agree with me that Oswald probably was impersonated or probably had intelligence connections. But almost everyone who thinks that Jim's double-doppelganger theory is nonsense also thinks that the lone-gunman theory is nonsense. The double-doppelganger theory is not necessary to explain the assassination as a conspiracy. Not only is it unnecessary, but it has the potential to be harmful, because it is so far-fetched that it allows the media to portray the rest of us as tin-foil hat-wearing crazies. Just because the CIA did bad things doesn't mean they did irrational and unnecessary things. What they did was perfectly rational, in that it served their political and institutional purposes. None of the things Jim mentions were done for no good reason. But Jim is claiming that they did other things for no good reason. There was no good reason for them to have set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, because a far simpler and more obvious alternative existed. Jim is claiming that they did this for a reason. But he has as good as admitted that there was no reason. His claim makes no sense. This is the basic flaw in the notion of a long-term project involving doppelgangers. There was no good reason for its existence. It could never have happened. It isn't pointless at all. It's essential. Jim needs to produce a plausible motive, because he is claiming that they did something they had every reason not to do. We know that doppelgangers are not necessary in order to impersonate people. We know that doppelgangers would not have been necessary in order to produce a false defector who had an American background and understood Russian, which Jim claims is what the CIA wanted to produce. Jim needs to come up with a plausible reason for the decision to set up a long-term scheme involving not one but two pairs of doppelgangers, and keeping it going for over a decade, when all the CIA needed to do was recruit one person and get him to learn Russian. As I've pointed out before when Jim made the same claim using the same examples, none of the examples he gives were part of any long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers. Long-term projects involving two pairs of doppelgangers are not common. In fact, there are no examples of this in the real world, at least that I'm aware of. Nor, of course, are there any examples in the real world of rogue intelligence agencies setting up long-term double-doppelganger projects when they had far simpler alternatives available. That's the problem, isn't it? Jim is like a religious fundamentalist, repeatedly quoting passages from his holy book while ignoring arguments to the contrary: Jim quotes a passage from the Gospel According to Armstrong. Someone provides evidence and argument against it, either pointing out its weaknesses or demolishing it outright. Jim quotes the same passage again, with no acknowledgement of the criticisms that have been made. Someone again provides evidence and argument against it, either pointing out its weaknesses or demolishing it outright. Jim quotes the same passage again, with no acknowledgement of the criticisms that have been made. Repeat ad nauseam. If at first people don't believe you, keep quoting holy scripture at them. Not only is it trolling, but it doesn't work. Jim has been doing this for over twenty years, and next to no-one has joined his cult.

It's difficult to get a straight answer out of Jim when he's on the ropes, ins't it? I invite everyone to compare his non-answers to the questions I asked: Does Jim accept that someone can be impersonated without the use of doppelgangers? What were the reasons for setting up a complex long-term impersonation project involving two pairs of doppelgangers when there was no need to do so? To the first question, "yes", "no" or "I don't know" would be acceptable, honest answers. The only reasonable answer would be: "no, of course doppelgangers aren't necessary". Jim's repeated refusal to answer this question shows that he agrees with the rest of us that impersonating someone does not require the use of doppelgangers. To the second question, an acceptable answer would involve a statement like: "I can't think of a reason for using two pairs of doppelgangers when there was no need to do so". Or maybe: "I can think of a reason why those masterminds would have set up such an absurdly complex scheme, and I will now give you that reason". Again, Jim's repeated refusal to give a straight answer, not just in this thread but in several others over the past year or two, shows that no good reason existed. Jim's preposterously complex long-term double-doppelganger project could never have been implemented.

Jim continues: No, they are central to Jim's theory. He is claiming that the CIA set up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, in order to produce a false defector with an American background who could understand Russian. I've pointed out that they could have achieved this goal using a far simpler method: recruit a genuine American, and get him to learn Russian. What Jim needs to do is tell us why anyone in their right mind would have set up something as complex and unnecessary as a long-term double-doppelganger project when a far simpler alternative was available. Jim is claiming that the CIA did something that no-one would have done, and he is unable to explain why they did it. Why would they have made the irrational decision to use two pairs of doppelgangers when there was no need to do so? Correct, provided you fill in the rest of the nonsensical claim. There was no reason to pick two people when one would do. There was no reason to pick one American boy (for his genuine American background) and one Hungarian boy (for his partial knowledge of Russian), and hope that when they grew up they would turn out to look identical, and pick two mothers for the two boys, and maintain these two households for a decade or more, when all they had to do was pick one American adult with a genuine American background and get him to learn Russian. Why would they go for the complicated solution when a far simpler solution was available?

Jim Hargrove writes: I'd agree that Oswald appears to have had connections with one or more US intelligence agencies, and that this connection may well have been utilised in the JFK assassination. I'd also agree that Oswald was probably impersonated in the run-up to the assassination. But none of those things demand the use of doppelgangers, do they? I presume even Jim accepts that it is not necessary to use doppelgangers in order to impersonate someone. Will he have the honesty to admit that much? He probably won't, because once he admits that doppelgangers aren't necessary, his whole fantastical claim collapses. If doppelgangers aren't necessary to impersonate someone in the real world, it certainly wouldn't be necessary to use two pairs of them in a fictional world when a plausible alternative would have existed. Let's go over Jim's reasons for the use of doppelgangers: Oswald had intelligence connections - does not require the use of doppelgangers. Intelligence agencies were behind the JFK assassination - does not require the use of doppelgangers. Oswald was impersonated in the run-up to the assassination - does not require the use of doppelgangers. Why would anyone set up a long-term double-doppelganger scheme when there was no need to do so, Jim?

Jim Hargrove writes: All the 'Harvey and Lee' talking points Jim keeps regurgitating have been discussed umpteen times, on this forum and elsewhere. If Jim is genuinely curious about Oswald's knowledge of Russian, and is genuinely prepared to change his mind if he's proved wrong (which I doubt), here are a couple of links which debunk this element of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2313-oswald-and-the-russian-language http://www.jfkconversations.com/lee-oswald-russian-language The matter was also discussed in detail on this forum not too long ago: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26571-oswalds-language-abilities-and-evidence-related-to-his-soviet-sojourn-1959-63/ If Jim has anything new to say on this topic, he should do so on that thread or one of the others that are dedicated to that topic. If he has nothing new to say, he should try to provide straight answers to the questions I asked: Does Jim accept that someone can be impersonated without the use of doppelgangers? What were the reasons for setting up a complex long-term impersonation project involving two pairs of doppelgangers when there was no need to do so?