Joe Bauer

Just an aside and for what it's worth...remember Frank Sturgis being interviewed by the intrepid "Capone's Vaults" journalist/scandal TV show host Geraldo Rivera ( or it may have Bill O'Reilly later ) where he stated that Butterfield was CIA as well as Alexander Haig. Sturgis was asked if Nixon's life was ever in danger ( inferred from our own agencies ) and with no pause he said firmly..."yes!"

What was Mailer's take on Oswald's Russian language use and proficiency?

Oswald was in Minsk/Russia for 3 years?

He did meet and socialize with at least some other fellows and ladies ( before Marina? ) in that time.

3 years is certainly enough time to sharpen your language understanding and usage skills when you are constantly surrounded by native language speakers.

Oswald was smart and a quick and willing learner.

I just can't accept that he would go through three years of Minsk working and personal life surrounded by so many who didn't understand or speak English and not be motivated to learn Russian as well as he could.

There is the famous filmed interview of Marina broadcast nationally just 3 months after 11,22,1963. The "Marina, what do you do all day" question one?

In this Marina speaks broken English for sure, but her understanding of her questions and responses to them ( even in broken English ) seemed surprisingly more comprehending than I had imagined. I had read so many articles during that time that made it seem like Marina was unable to speak and understand English except to a much less capable degree.

Paul Gregory ( who recently had published his own memoirs about being close to Marina and Lee for a few months ) had to have spoken to his Russian language tutor Marina in English to improve his own Russian language skills, no?

Did the 19 year old Gregory ( who obviously had a crush on the 21 year old sparkling blue-eyed beauty Marina ) state anything informative about Lee's Russian language skills that he observed?

49 minutes ago, Tony Krome said:

I drive a 1950s truck, no seat belts. Pull up next to cops and wave haha

Our stepfather drove a 1957 Chevy Bel Air 4 door. Metallic copper colored with a continental kit. Huge 8 cylinder engine. Everything solid steel. Big steel front and rear bumpers.

The car seemed to weigh 10 tons! 

And yet, even with it's massive over-all weight, with it's super-charged engine, when you pressed on the gas the entire car would seemingly lift up and shoot off like a rocket! Hitting over 100 MPH in what seemed like mere seconds.

When cars like those super heavy and powerful all steel body 1950's ones hit each other head-on at 70 MPH, even the years later used "Jaws Of Life" devise couldn't pry them apart.

Speaking of Ruth Paine actually giving Lee Oswald driving lessons, did she do this?

Did I once read erroneously or correctly that according to Ruth, Lee didn't do too well? That he loved hitting curbs and bushes while over or under turning the wheel?

That even in open parking lot areas she clung on for dear life as Lee drove like he was on one of those "bumper cars" amusement park rides?

"Okay Lee, give it a little gas, no-no not that much! HIT THE BRAKES ( both her and Lee violently thrown forward ) ... but not THAT hard!  Okay...now, slowly get going again ... but go easy this time...now turn the wheel left ... no, no, don't over-turn...watch out for that bush! OMG you just missed hitting that parked car! 

Stop the car...STOP THE CAR!  Just, just get out...I'm taking over."

No wonder she would never knowingly let Lee take her car out on his own.

There were three things Ruth was ferociously possessive and protective of in her home regards Lee Oswald ever touching them without her permission...her typewriter, her car and her record player.

Ruth testified under oath she was deeply offended and upset when she discovered Lee had used her typewriter without her permission.

Worth a look.

My goodness. Cars back then.

No seat belts.

Everything steel. Bumpers, dash boards.

The most simple and easy to use AM/FM radios.

A dash clock you could correct by just a turn of the dial.

No center console. Tons of open leg room.

Only thanks to Ralph Nader did we finally mandate seat belts which saved 20,000 lives a year and 100,00 more from being brutally thrown about and smashed up.

Simpler, less stressful times.

No portable phones. People weren't on these constantly and instead talked to real people around them.

No weird and often dumbing down TV reality shows.

Seriously I would go back to the 50's and 60's time in America versus present times if I had a choice.

Destruction of official files is destruction of evidence.

No problem with Shanklin and Hosty.

6 hours ago, Max Good said:

A: That was it. Yeah. Okay. It was his first major paid job, for Michael, and he was glad to get it, I think

Michael Paine's first real job? 

At what age?

With all his private school and later college education?

Sounds like M. Paine was not used to being in the real world of hard jobs and low pay. Like he was pampered and protected by his family's wealth.

Yet he condescendingly, arrogantly and dismissively described hard scrapple childhood and rough later life until the still young age of 24 Oswald as just a wanna-be intellectual who didn't realize how uneducated he really was and how stupid his political theories and beliefs really sounded.

Michael Paine couldn't have survived Oswald's poor and neglected childhood and later young life struggle to just make it in this world.

Michael Paine probably couldn't have hacked the Marines either...as Oswald did.

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Seems like insightful comments Joe.

Marina also cut herself and her children off from Lee's mother Marguerite, and I believe at least at times from brother-in-law Robert too as well. I recall reading (cannot find the link this moment) that one of the grown Oswald daughters--was it Rachel?--while not wanting to criticize her mother, said while growing up she regretted she never got to see or know her grandmother, Marguerite. She had been told Marguerite did not want contact. Then, I think only after Marguerite's death, she learned that Marguerite actually had made attempts to see her grandchildren but had been refused and turned away, and the granddaughter had remorse that she had not sought out Marguerite herself when she had the chance, just to know her grandmother.

And, although Marina has had a life of pressures that we cannot know, and I think nearly everyone respects her survival ability, it has struck me that Marina received great wealth for a time from public sympathy while Marguerite apparently lived out her years with real poverty issues, and none of that wealth was shared by Marina to make Marguerite's last years a little more comfortable. 

I can understand Marina distancing herself from Lee's mother Margeurite.

What an awful, overbearing and controlling person.

And as soon as two days after her son's death, Marguerite was pressuring news organizations for money for interviews etc. Marina never did anything of the sort.

Marina didn't owe Lee's mother anything imo.

I could totally understand why Marina wanted to keep her two daughters away from Margeurite Oswald their entire childhood.

Robert and Marina?

I understood he expressed some interest in receiving some portion of the large help funds coming in for Marina. Maybe not a lot?

Not sure what Marina's true feelings toward Robert Oswald were.

I sense she never had much engagement with him and his wife enough to develop any kind of close bond at all.

Marina was always a "lone wolf" type person it sounds to me. Even in her youth. Not getting too close to anyone with a possible exception of one of her mother type guardians in Russia.

Although she did take to Jeanne de Mohrenschildt. Who was a super independent and strong ( and Russian ) woman herself.

I also read where Marina developed a close friendship bond to her memoirs book ghost writer Pricilla Johnson McMillan.

Curious what members here think about the fact that for 60 years, Marina Oswald has made so little effort ( if any at all ) to re-connect with or at least express something more in the publicly stated appreciation praise department upon Ruth Paine than she has?

According to what I have read, Marina's cut off from RP was very sudden and hard.

Does MP even send RP an occasional Christmas card?

A woman that took her and her baby into her own home for months right through Marina's delivery of her 2nd child and even through the nightmare of Lee Oswald's arrest and provided them with as much help through all that as even a mother would have provided? 

And apparently doing so without ever once expressing a resentful "you owe me" or gratitude expecting statement toward her?

Ruth could afford the added expenses. But still, nefarious intentions or not, one would assume Marina might have given Ruth Paine at least the minimum of appreciative respect with an occasional note or call instead of an immediate cutoff and then relatively nothing for 6 decades?

Yes, it is certainly normal for anyone who has experienced incredible psychological trauma and pain like Marina Porter did during her Ruth Paine days to want to get as far away from those memories as possible and for the rest of her life.

This includes not wanting to even see people who were around during the trauma and even helped you through it.

This probably explains Marina's stark avoidance of RP all these years to a certain logical degree.

Visiting and maybe even talking to RP in person could trigger a PTSD episode in Marina that would just be too difficult and painful for Marina to bear.

Still, I always had a sense that Marina never liked Ruth Paine on any level personally.

You can't choose who offers you serious help when you need it. You take it regardless whether you truly like the person offering such or not when you are desperate enough as Marina was.

Marina actually liked Jeanne De Mohrenschildt. Felt comfortable around her. Opened up to her. A true mother figure for Marina for sure.

If it was Jeanne De Mohrenschildt who had taken Marina and her babies in during that nightmare time, I think MP would have kept in touch with her forever.

For you Tucker Carlson fans:

Not only does TC believe his hidden inside source that the CIA did JFK, he also believes Doug Caddy's Alien ET presence propositions.

Quote from TC reported today:

“And it comes at a time when we can finally say with confidence that the most unlikely sounding theories about UFOs are actually true. Yes, these things are real. They’re not all weather balloons.”

“They’re not experimental aircraft from this or any other country. Whatever they are, they are not of human origin, nor do they behave according to the laws of known physics,” he added.

“And yes, the U.S. government currently has physical evidence that they exist. That means wreckage of the craft as well as the bodies of the beings that flew them. Amazingly, all of this is true.”

And if TC is willing to go on public record saying these things, I trust his buddy D.J. Trump agrees with him.

Easy to see from the morgue picture that Oswald did indeed have noticeably hairy forearms.

Oswald was in the Marines for what 3 years? His hair was obviously cut and kept very short during all that time. He probably got used to the look. He wore his Marine pride ring until 11,22,1963 so we know he valued at least some Marine traditions.

However, what few photos I have seen of Oswald in Russia he seemed to wear his hair longer than he ever did before. Kind of wavy and a little unkempt?

Did they not have barbers in Minsk?  Or just bad ones?

Sylvia Odio said the man Leopoldo introduced her to as "Leon Oswald" was somewhat unkempt looking with a very slight unshaven look.

Was she ever asked about his hair? Or volunteer anything about it on her own?

Did Oswald check in for a hair cut in Clinton when he was driven up there to apply for a job at the mental hospital in nearby Jackson?

Did the barber remember anything about the cut?

If I had to write a thesis on just one aspect of the JFK/Oswald event investigation...it sure wouldn't be this Oswald hair cutting controversy.

Heck, considering the unprecedented older age factor with both candidates ( excluding the 70 year young "kid" Robert Kennedy Jr.) one could argue a Jimmy Carter presidential bid comeback isn't out of the question within the reality confines of this new range of super advanced age tolerant normal.

IMO Jimmy C. looked pretty damn sharp in the photos of him at his beautiful and beloved wife Rosalynn's memorial service.

And how about another look at John Kerry as well?

My first choices have always been Bernie Sanders and/or Elizabeth Warren.

BC...I haven't found the "exact numbers" of independents who voted for Trump in 2020 however I don't think the amount of them who might switch to RFK Jr. would be significant at all in effecting Trump's election chances.

Notice in the figures stated in the Roper link that Trump won the overall "white" ethnic vote by 17%.

That is a huge margin.

If only white Americans voted in the 2020 election Trump would have won in a landslide. 

Trying to understand or predict how Americans would vote in an election with 81 year old Biden/ 78 year old Trump and the uppity upstart blue jeans wearing James Dean rebellious youth vote favorite "young punk" 70 year old RFK Jr. among them will be a mind twisting challenge for even our most accredited pollster analysts.

I've been following presidential elections since 1960 and voting in them since I turned 21 in Sept. 1972.

I'm no degreed mathematics, statistics nor social behavioralist major person.

I'm just a guy who barely graduated high school and was a junky old truck, lawn mower, weed eater and gas blower one-man team private yard and estate gardener most of his adult life. And I never made more than $10 an hour doing so.

Anyway, in those thirty plus years of quiet outdoor isolation I did a lot of thinking and musing. Not just about soil, plants, water, air, sunlight, trees, birds, bugs, etc.

I've always had a natural bent toward social behavior contemplation as well.

I almost can't help myself in mentally obsessing too much about things of that nature. Plus the order ( structure ) of things politically in managing, controlling and influencing the huge machines of large population societies like our own.

American society is simply one of the most fascinating ( and now scary) in its make up. 

Contant  ( almost too much ) flux and fluidity, especially since the 1950's and 60's until today.

Due to so many influencing dynamic changes such as massive illegal immigration increases, dramatic economic ups and downs, wars, incredibly diverse religious followings with competing agendas and values, extreme wealth combined with extreme poverty diversity with one percent owning 85 percent of the entire national wealth. A Dwight Eisenhower warning "MIC" power and control accumulation situation for sure as well.

The two to three year long Covid virus stressed the entire nation ( and world ) and set us all back socially and economically beyond anything we could have imagined.

Where am I going with all this 72 year old, 10% brain shrinkage old Chauncy Gardener blather?

Heck, even I'm not sure. The reality of where we are as a society and nation and where we are going is just as unsure, especially come this next presidential election in November of next year.

Will this next presidential election be our crossing of the Rubicon?

The first major weakening of our constitutional Democracy foundation?

5 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

JB-

I think some recent polls have showed RFK2 would draw votes away from independent voters, who now support Trump. 

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-v…

How Groups Voted in 2020 | Roper Center for Public 

No American voter who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 (74.3 million of them) will ever switch their votes to RFK Jr. in a future election.

Conversely, huge numbers of what Democrats traditionally considered their locked in voters are responding to polls saying they would consider voting for RFK Jr. as an independent party candidate.

If they do...those 74.3 million locked in Trump voters would bring Trump a huge win in the 2024 election.

It's that simple. No need to waste time debating otherwise.

Arch conservative independent candidate Ross Perot swung the 1992 presidential election to Clinton.

He pulled way more votes away from Bush than he did Clinton.

A mathematical look at the voting numbers in the 1992 presidential election reveals that Bush would have had to win 12.55% of Perot's 18.91% of the vote, 66.36% of Perot's support base, to earn a majority of the vote, and would have needed to win nearly every state Clinton won by less than five percentage points. 

Even though Clinton could not even get a majority of votes ( he won by a plurality number only ) independent candidate Perot took enough votes away from the Republicans to make that happen.

An independent candidate run by RFK Jr. would do the same for the Republicans in 2024.

On 11/28/2023 at 11:08 AM, Ron Bulman said:

One more.

The Cultural Politics Behind America's Continuing Fascination With JFK (msn.com)

A main point I have made about the incredible popularity of JFK ( and Jackie K. ) is it's transition into a realm that was hugely unprecedented in not just it's worldwide scope of personal physical attraction and fascination but also an ever-growing inspirational belief that here was a powerful leader man who was truly populist in his character and values and policy intentions.

A man who really cared about the welfare of all peoples and of all income classes.

Most of the world back then and even now were desperately 3rd world poor according to world health statistics.

I believe Kennedy touched this majority like no other top world leader before or since ( with the exception of Ghandi?) Touched them with hope for a better world of peace and economic fairness and opportunity for all. Including them?

I think JFK and RFK's stance on segregation here in the United States played a part in this view.

Most of the world's poor then and now were/are of color. I am sure they saw JFK and RFK taking risky stands on behalf of black Americans and which they had never seen before. 

Another huge part of JFK and Jackie's popularity was simply their incredible visceral physical attractiveness.

Look at them during JFK's 3 years in office. JFK was kind of the perfect example of manly attractiveness - relatively youngish 43 years old, tall, thin, athletic, tan, great hair, perfect movie star looks facial structure, perfect teeth broad warm smile that would draw anyone's attention.

Smart, sharp and quick witted. Intelligent yet kind looking, perfectly dressed and coifed.

32 year old Jackie classy and pretty and sophisticated beyond her years, speaker of 3 or four languages. She wore the highest fashion as if she was born to do so.

Tall, thin, elegant. Athletic too!

Everyone loved Eleanore Roosevelt. She was a fearless champion for equal rights. A compassionate populist all the way.

But Jackie?

Every popular gossip and fashion magazine publisher in the world couldn't get her on their front covers often enough.

Same with JFK.

If the world voted for the American presidency in 1964...JFK would have won that election by a billion vote margin I think.

Files worldwide are routinely destroyed as much as they are kept.

We all know this.

Within one day after Oswald was whacked by Ruby, the Dallas FBI field office head ordered underling agent James Hosty to "get rid of it ", meaning destroy their Oswald file - which he did.

Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchison testified under oath that Meadows was throwing so many file contents into his burning office fireplace right after the general election you could smell the smoke from outside. So many others were flushed down toilets they had to call the White House Roto-Rooter team to constantly unclog their lines.

Huge chunks of Jim Garrison's files went missing once he was replaced as NO DA.

Guy Banister's files, same thing. 

Watergate era FBI head L. Patrick Grey "admitted" he burned files from E. Howard Hunt's White House office safe.

Nicola Tesla's files just disappeared immediately upon his death.

Same thing with J. Edgar Hoover's home files upon his death.

What's one of the first things 20th century era armies did when they knew they were defeated and about to be overrun? Burn all their important files.

Random analogies aside, the destruction of majorly important files worldwide has always been as routine as keeping them...for centuries.

Based on this historical fact I simply can't believe any "truly revealing" files connected to the JFKA in agency hands are still intact.

Still today, too much to risk.

Our most powerful black budget agencies will never let anything that could threaten their very existence become available to the general public. They would destroy such before they would risk losing their 4th branch of government status and control influence.

Control and influence JFK himself challenged...and lost to.

Why can't Tucker Carlson finally reveal his inside source who he says knows who did JFK...and save us all from this never ending and exhausting 60 year long hidden files frustration angst?

The Landis story had it's 15 minutes of fame.

Timed to increase his book sales. Just before the JFKA 60th.

He and his claim have already faded into old news obscurity.

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

I know, many of us on the forum are seniors. Well... 

Well "what" Pat?

Ha!

10 minutes ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

FWIW all the photos are still frames from a movie shot by Johann Rush for WSDU-TV.  He noticed the men and allegedly wanted to get a reaction from Clay Shaw.   Later on Oswald was invited to the studio.  Both fragments (Trade Mart and Studio recordings, comments etc) here :

 

Great! Thanks for the info.

Still, I find the film maker's explanation for filming Oswald weak.

He wanted to show them to Shaw to see what Shaw's reaction would be?

Please.

54 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

Joe I don't impose my ideas on anybody and yes I am saying the individual talking to the young women in one view, the same as seen in a separate photo closer to Oswald, is Beckham.  He ways he was there, he says he observed Oswald, he provably worked in New Orleans and in that area at the time.  If you want to bring somebody else in strictly based on appearance that's  your call - personally I have always needed more than appearances to prove in a suspect for myself, but that's just me. 

 

There is no other corroborating evidence to verify whether the Trade Mart photo background man is provably Shelley.

Just these pictures of him that even you must admit depict a close resemblance to Shelley.  In my opinion...a doppelganger closeness.

No one has ever contacted the media to reveal who this man was. 

Somebody must have known or recognized this person.

A man wearing a suit and tie like the background man obviously was employed in some business there or somewhere else. And undoubtedly with other co-worker employees.

The Dealey Plaza "Umbrella Man" Louis Steven Witt was eventually found and identified. This after the HSCA put out national press releases asking the public's help finding him.

I think the reason Witt ( a warehouse manager in the Dallas area) was never outed by his co-workers was because his face was shaded and somewhat obscured by his open umbrella.

In the Oswald / Trademart photos however, the background man's face is quite visible and illuminated by the daytime sun.

If he was a New Orleans local business man and the photos had been much more publicized there and in the national media, there was a good chance someone he knew, worked with or was related to could have identified him.

Unfortunately all three of those factors did not exist.

And, if the background man wasn't even from New Orleans, combined with the lack of publicity of the photos and their importance, it would explain why the man was never identified.

And Shelley himself would be the last person on Earth to claim it was him.

I just took another look at the Oswald/Trade Mart photos.

There are several still ones. I had forgotten that there were that many.

All taken in a very short time period of seconds it appears.

In the photos shown, there are "no" young girls very well dressed or otherwise seen in these photos. The men are by themselves.

I think I may have seen another wider angle shot where there are some females farther out on the sidewalk. Were they stopped and engaging Oswald or anyone else in that group of men?

Not in these particular photos.

Our blond background man is farther away from those sidewalk girls than almost all the other men in those photos. He sure doesn't look like he is engaging verbally with them?

Who in the heck took these photos? And then came up with them at just the right time to hugely enhance the obsessive national media promoted image of Oswald as an aggressively active and agitating Castro/Cuba promoting commie?

I've just been informed that the photos are stills taken from film taken of Oswald by a local New Orleans TV station "WSDU."

Oswald knew he was being filmed and photographed doing his public daytime Castro/Cuba promoting thing in Downtown NO.

It even seems as if he was enjoying the coverage. He is smiling away in the Trade Mart photos. This shouts a set up commie image promotion agenda.

Or maybe he was excited that there were actually hot looking young muchachas checking him and his bad boys out.

And how could anyone ever find any documentation records of Bill Shelley's absence from his job and hometown on the specific day of Oswald's Trade Mart demonstration? His employer company was so low tech. 

If Shelley wanted to take that day off, he probably needed to do no more than call in sick that day. And he was probably on salary after being with them for 18 years at that time.

I doubt if he as a supervisor had to punch a time clock.

2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

In an expanded view of the leafleting photo he can be seen talking with a group of young, very well dressed girls one of whom I suspect was his new wife.

Respectfully LH, are you saying that the blond pompadoured background man we see in the Oswald/Trade Mart photo is actually speaking to a group of young very well dressed girls in that photo?

That in an expanded view we could see this?

The suited background man is looking downward in that picture. At quite an angle.

Are the girls "in between" the man and the fellows we see in front of him?

If so, they all must have been very short.

I have not seen the expanded view of this photo scene you mention.

However, it seems to me that in the first unexpanded view photo we should be able to see at least a "glimpse" of a "group" of girls standing amongst all those men.

Again however I ask you LH:

Do you really not see the differences in the "mug shot" facial photo of Beckham compared to the older looking, more fairer ( or paler ) skinned, blonder haired, deeper more pronounced sunken cheeked and more protruding brow, suit and tie wearing man in the New Orleans Trade Mart photo?

I'll trust my own eyes in stating those two men are not one and the same.

I would bet my entire weekly recycle income monies that no facial recognition technology analysis would ever find that they are.

On 11/8/2015 at 6:56 PM, Stephen Roy said:

Every professional society - and. for better or worse, we are one - needs to have some level of self-criticism to prevent it from drifting into poor practices. As I said and still emphatically insist, this business of identifying specific people from old photos is highly imprecise and highly prone to a whole host of reasons for misidentification. As poor a practice as this is, the harm is exacerbated by, as was done at the outset of this thread, flatly stating that the specific person appears in an incriminating situation in an old photo.

I could accept: Doesn't this look like so-and-so, but flatly stating them to be in the photo is beyond professional standards. I've seen it happen too many times in the JFK field and it does nothing to enhance our gravitas with the outside world.

I don't think Facebook's facial recognition app can compare to several of the high tech companies who now charge $1,000 to $2,000 to analyze just two pictures

And in 8 years, one would expect improvements in this field of identification.

If some of the most important security agencies in the world use "facial recognition" technology, and spend millions on incorporating it into their programs, I can't believe they would do so if it was as poorly effective as you describe in your experience.

I also simply do not believe the two Rip Robertson photos could not be adequately analyzed to make a credible ID.

And it appears that the majority of posters here do not buy Larry Hancock's proposal that Thomas Beckham is the background man in the Oswald Trade Mart photo.

For the same exact reasons I mention in my Shelley At The Trade Mart photo thread postings.

The photo of Beckham shown above via the link provided by Ian Lloyd is a "mug shot."

A mug shot?

Like I said, the first gut feeling I had when looking at that photo of Beckham was that it had a "carney" vibe.

Beckham just does not look like a "suit and tie" type person.

Respectfully, the background flyer inspecting man in the Oswald/Trade Mart photo is not Beckham.

In my eyes it is Bill Shelley.

Has there ever been any other ID of the Trade Mart background man proposed besides Larry Hancock's Thomas Beckham?

This photo has been in circulation for what ... 50+ years?

And been widely seen by tens of thousands.

You'd think that someone ( family, friends, co-workers, law enforcement ) would have known this man and eventually came forward to reveal his name.

The fact that this man took the time to stop and look at Oswald's flyer and even stand and linger among Oswald's crew rather than just grab one and keep walking is a red flag imo.

Was the background man a security person employed by the International Trade Mart?

Was he an undercover agent for some government agency?

Were any other flyer passers employed by Oswald that day ever IDd and questioned?

If they were questioned, were they asked how much Oswald paid them?

How could Oswald afford to pay 3 extra men when he was on the lowest "unemployment income" level himself at that time?