James Norwood

Joe, You and Michael Griffith are raising important questions about the statements made by Paul Gregory related to Oswald’s Russian language skills. It is instructive to compare this recent interview alongside the Warren Commission testimony given by Gregory about Oswald’s Russian-language proficiency, wherein Gregory recalled that “Oswald understood more than I did and he could express any idea, I believe, that he wanted to in Russian.” (Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. IX, p. 149) He also observes that Oswald would make grammatical errors when he spoke, which might be explained by his dyslexia, which Gregory refers to on multiple occasions in the interview. On November 10, 1962, Oswald sent a postcard to Gregory, advising him of his new address at 602 Elsbeth Street in Dallas. The writing was a lengthy run-on sentence. Because Oswald’s English grammar was so poor and because he confused the word “too” for “to” and because there was a perfect complimentary close written in Russian, Gregory concluded that Marina had written the note. As it turned out, Oswald’s feelings were hurt because Gregory did not believe Oswald was writing to him personally. I have included an image of the postcard in my article on Oswald’s Russian language proficiency, which may be read at: http://harveyandlee.net/Russian.html Gregory’s Warren Commission testimony conflicts with the description given in his 2022 interview, in which Gregory believes that Oswald was a genuine defector with no prior preparation in Russian language studies. In the interview, Gregory characterizes Oswald’s Russian language skills as “exactly what it was for someone who spent three years in the Soviet Union.” But for the Warren Commission, Gregory stated that Oswald was “completely fluent” in Russian and spoke with “a very strong accent.” (p. 149) Gregory’s Russian-speaking father speculated that the accent was Polish. The accent is never mentioned in the 2022 interview. How may the discrepancies and omissions between Gregory’s Warren Commission testimony and his interview be explained? In the interview, it becomes abundantly clear that Gregory has a personal agenda in writing about Oswald. His father, the linguist Peter Paul Gregory, had written a generic letter of recommendation for Oswald, who possessed a good enough aptitude in Russian that Gregory Sr. believed him “capable of being an interpreter and perhaps a translator.” As explained in the interview, both the father and son regretted that they had become involved in any way with the alleged presidential assassin. In the interview, Gregory calls their involvement “a black spot on the family.” In an attempt to keep the family image untainted, Gregory is now making every attempt in his power throw Oswald under the bus of history.

Wrong again, Jonathan. You really ought to read more carefully the book you recommended but could not accurately recall the title: Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale. In that book, Mailer's interviews with the locals in Minsk demonstrate that Oswald's spoken Russian was abysmal and did not improve substantially over the course of two-and-a-half years. With his tutors, he appeared lackadaisical, uncooperative, and lazy. After such a lengthy stay, there should be evidence of growth in language proficiency. In Oswald's case, there was none and for the obvious reason that he was concealing his abilities to his hosts.

After Oswald returned from the Soviet Union in 1962, he worked briefly in the Dallas graphic arts company of Jaggars, Chiles, Stovall where one of his co-workers spoke Russian. Dennis Offstein was a technician who had studied Russian language for a full year at the Monterey Institute, yet Oswald ran circles around him in language proficiency. In his testimony to the Warren Commission, Offstein recalled that Oswald gave him a detailed account of Soviet military maneuvers during his residency. Specifically, Offstein remembered Oswald’s description of, "the disbursement of the [Soviet] military units, saying that they didn't intermingle their armored divisions and infantry divisions and various units the way we do in the United States, that they would have all of their aircraft in one geographical location and their tanks in another geographical location, and their infantry in another, and he mentioned that in Minsk he never saw a vapor trail, indicating the lack of aircraft in the area." (Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 10, 202) This perceptive account of the Soviet military activities squares with other detailed observations that Oswald brought back and recorded in detail. In the testimony of Offstein alone, there was enough information to warrant an investigation of Oswald's ties to intelligence and the possibility that he was sent to the Soviet Union in 1959 in the capacity of what Offstein calls “an agent of the United States.” But with the presence of Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission, Oswald’s records in the CIA were effectively screened from the committee.

Sandy, If what he meant was Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale, then I would offer almost the identical critique that I wrote of Davison's Oswald's Game. Mailer paraphrases entire chunks of the Warren Report to support the lone gunman theory. There is, however, some value in the interviews conducted by Mailer when he visited Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people whom he interviewed in Minsk uniformly acknowledged Oswald's deficiency in the Russian language. Not only was it a struggle for him to communicate, but he showed little desire to improve his skills over two-and-a-half years. One must look deeper into the notion that Oswald was a "player," which is casually used by both Mailer and Davison. Specifically, Oswald was a spy who prepared over a lengthy period for disguising his fluency in the Russian language for his hosts. Mailer's book is enormously frustrating in his inability to raise the question of why Oswald was speaking primarily in English during his stay in the Soviet Union.

Published in 1983, Jean Davison’s Oswald’s Game is one of the most poorly researched and heavily biased studies of Oswald. Instead of analyzing documents and eyewitness testimony and following the trail of evidence, the author starts with the blind acceptance of the Warren Commission’s conclusions, then works in reverse, cherry-picking details from the Warren Report to support the lone gunman theory. Here are some of the gems from this book: p. 180: “[Oswald] saw himself as an experienced political operative who was qualified to work for the Cuban revolution as a soldier, lecturer, organizer, agitator, translator, or spy. ... He expected to be welcomed aboard, and he would then go out and distinguish himself in the Communist world and work his way up.” pp. 241-42: “At 12:30 P.M., Lee Harvey Oswald entered history. Three shots from a sixth-floor Depository window hit Governor Connally once and the president twice." p. 249: “Marina could tell that he was guilty. If he hadn’t been, she thought, he would have been loudly protesting his arrest.” p. 253: “Priscilla Johnson also believed he would never have confessed. Soon after the assassination she wrote that if there was anything that stood out in the conversation she had with him in Moscow, ‘it was his truly compelling need…to think of himself as extraordinary.” p. 254: “On Sunday, November 24, 1963, Ruby rushed forward and shot him once in the abdomen. ... When the crowd outside heard what had happened, it let out a cheer. ... A raised fist was Oswald's last comment." p. 280: “There’s no compelling reason to believe anyone else was involved.” p. 281: “The evidence ‘strongly suggested that Oswald attempted to murder General Walker and that he possessed a capacity for violence.’” p. 296: “It must have seemed to him that fate had spoken. All his past life was a rehearsal for the moment when he decided to act out his violent fantasies against President Kennedy,” **** For those who are gullible enough to buy the Warren Commission’s findings, Oswald’s Game is the perfect book to reinforce your faith in the integrity of the government, the FBI, and the media’s coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy. Regarding the main topic of this thread, there has still been no evidence presented to demonstrate that Oswald learned the Russian language through a tutor of Polish extraction in Southern California while he was serving in the Marines. If Oswald were a beginning student of Russian at this time, there should be a paper trail documenting where and with whom he was studying, as well as eyewitness accounts of him engaged in learning a new language. Instead, the body of evidence (Rosaleen Quinn, Marines' testimony) points to an Oswald who was already fluent and capable of reading sophisticated Russian-language materials.

There is abundant credible evidence demonstrating that Oswald resided in North Dakota in the summer of 1953. Mrs. Alma Cole, a former resident of Stanley, North Dakota, wrote a letter to President Johnson dated December 11, 1963. In that letter, Mrs. Cole recalled that her son played with young Oswald who “read communist books then.” She also helpfully identified other residents in Stanley who knew Oswald and his mother. Mrs. Cole’s son, William Henry Timmer, was subsequently interviewed by the FBI, and a 7-page interview was prepared. Timmer recalled that he and Oswald rode bikes, went swimming, and visited the local library together. Timmer also noted that Oswald introduced himself as “Harvey,” which is the third documented instance of that name preference for the boy during the period of 1953-54. Earlier in 1953, the distinguished New York psychiatrist, Dr. Milton Kurian, interviewed young Oswald due to his truancy. The boy indicated that he wished to be called Harvey. And in January, 1954, Myra DaRouse, the homeroom teacher of Oswald at Beauregard Junior High School in New Orleans, welcomed into her classroom a student she would always address as “Harvey” at his request. The leading authority on Oswald’s brief time spent in North Dakota is Gary Severson. Gary is a good friend of mine, and we have had many conversations in which he recounted his travels throughout the country to locate witnesses who knew Oswald in North Dakota. Along with John Delane Williams, Gary published multiple articles in The Fourth Decade on his research, which may be accessed as follows: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48715#relPageId=3 https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48716#relPageId=3 https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48716#relPageId=31 This thread is supposed to be focusing on Oswald’s Russian’s language abilities and why he may have spoken the language with a Polish accent. Thus far, we have been presented with no evidence of who was his Polish mentor and where or when the sessions took place. Invariably, researchers grasp at straws for an explanation of Oswald’s mastery of reading and speaking Russian. If he had received formal instruction, tutorials, or taught himself the language, there would be a paper trail leading back to his education in this enormously challenging language. Oswald spoke and read like a native speaker, and if there is no evidence to the contrary, it was likely the case that he was indeed a native speaker or an individual who learned Russian as a second language at an early age.

Hello, Dr. Niederhut, I believe the question you raise above is at the heart of the matter in assessing Oswald’s Russian language abilities. While I appreciated Mr. Lifton’s insights into this topic, I do not find it persuasive that Oswald could have achieved such mastery of the Russian language from tutorials during the year 1958-59. Russian language, literature, and culture, as well as Marxist ideology, were preoccupations of Oswald from a very early age. As early as 1953, Oswald was reading communist literature, which he discussed with a friend in Stanley, North Dakota. In October, 1957, Oswald attended a performance of Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov in New Orleans. The production was given in Russian with no subtitles. In 1958, Oswald discussed with a friend the publication of Boris Pasternak’s novel Dr. Zhivago in a new English translation. At this time, he had in his possession copies of Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. In his final year in the Marines, he not only impressed Rosaleen Quinn, the aunt of a Marine buddy, with his Russian-language skills; he was also reading Russian-language newspapers at the time. There is no indication that he was studying Russian because he was already fully competent in reading and speaking skills, as well as one of the most challenging components of an extremely difficult language: idiomatic Russian. Additionally, he was known to have read in the original Russian such authors as Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky, and he even preferred to speak in Russian, as opposed to English. The main points above are documented in the endnotes of my essay which you have referenced above. Regarding David’s main point of interest in how Oswald may have spoken Russian with a Polish accent, this may be explained by carefully placing the life of this young man in the context of the Cold War. Immediately after World War II, there was the forced relocation of enormous populations as the map was being redrawn in Eastern Europe. Thousands of “displaced persons” were interred in camps. The so-called Displaced Persons Commission made available to the CIA the names of potential assets. As a result, Eastern European refugees were brought to the United States under a program headed by Frank Wisner, the CIA’s director of clandestine operations. Wisner had become the State Department’s and the CIA’s expert on Eastern European war refugees during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Under Wisner’s program, the refugees were granted asylum in return for their cooperation in secret operations against the Soviets. Wisner gained approval from the National Security Council for the “systematic” use of the refugees as set forth in a top-secret intelligence directive, NSCID No. 14 (March 3, 1950). Both the FBI and the CIA were authorized to jointly exploit the knowledge, experience, and talents of over 200,000 Eastern European refugees who had resettled in the United States. Under Wisner, the CIA was running hundreds of covert projects. While the evidence is only sketchy, it appears that one of those projects merged the identities of a Russian-speaking immigrant boy, who likely came from Eastern Europe, with an American-born boy named Lee Harvey Oswald. Many of the Eastern European children grew up bilingual with Russian as a second language. As observed by journalist Anne Appelbaum in her book Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, Eastern European children would as a matter of course be sent to live with another family at an early age in order to learn a second language, especially Russian. The idea behind this project was to groom the Russian-speaking boy as a spy who, when he reached adulthood, would “defect” to the Soviet Union. Because he had assumed the name and identity of an American boy, the Soviets would not suspect that he spoke fluent Russian. The result was that ten years later, as an undercover agent who secretly understood Russian, the Eastern European immigrant posing as a disgruntled United States Marine, defected and spent two-and-a-half years in the Soviet Union. While there, he married a Soviet woman and returned to the United States with his wife and child. This young refugee had been part of a long-term project of the CIA, which was part and parcel of the strategies of both the CIA and the KGB. A modest, long-term endeavor of the CIA was the so-called Oswald Project, and it was essentially a successful operation in deceiving the Soviets. Such a project may seem far-fetched to us today. But in the context of the postwar years in the United States, it was not unusual given the secrecy and lack of accountability that offered unlimited potential for projects exactly like this one. It is especially important to read the Warren Commission testimony of Dennis Offstein, a co-worker of Oswald at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall in Dallas. Offstein studied at the army's famed Monterey institute of languages mentioned by David above. Offstein could not comprehend how Oswald could run circles around him in Russian language skills and he asked him for tutorials. He also mentioned to the Warren Commission that in their talks Oswald described to him in great detail Soviet military installations. Offstein pressed Oswald on where he learned Russian. If the source was a set of tutorials from a Polish woman, Oswald would have almost certainly disclosed it. Instead, Oswald revealed nothing about his background to his co-worker. Offstein urged the Commission to investigate Oswald's ties to intelligence, yet thanks to Allen Dulles, that never happened because it would have exposed that Oswald was not a communist sympathizer but an American asset being framed for the murder of President Kennedy. To sum up: Oswald likely spoke with a Polish accent or that of another Eastern European dialect because he was raised there as a child where he learned Russian at an early age prior to being displaced during or immediately after the war.

More nonsense from Bojczuk, who simply repeats the same talking point over and over. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Bojczuk is incapable of offering an explanation for the overwhelming evidence that there were two men concurrently in the Marines named Lee Harvey Oswald. One of the two men attempted a false defection during the Cold War. I concur with Sandy that there is no point in writing answers to his questions. His only purpose on this forum is to sow discord.

John, The best analysis of Titovets that I have read is that of the outstanding writer-researcher Millicent Cranor. Her article is entitled "Is US Effort to Block Oswald Friend and His ‘Revelations’ Another Deception?”, Who.What.Why: https://whowhatwhy.org/2013/08/27/is-us-effort-to-block-oswald-friend-and-his-revelations-itself-a-further-deception/ James P.S. While it is true that numerous individuals were asked by the KGB to keep tabs on Oswald during his stay in Minsk, it does not necessarily follow that the snitches were were KGB agents. A case in point is the engineer Stanislav Shushkevich, who was asked by the KGB to tutor Oswald and to be sure that another person was present with him at all times, so that there was never a private, one-on-one conversation. But Shushkevich himself was not a KGB agent.

I have listened to these tapes many times, and I do not believe they are fake. The context here is that the two friends are clowning around recording different voices of dramatic characters, such as those from Shakespeare's Othello. So, of course, Oswald sounds different depending on the character interpretation in these amateur dramatic readings. The more important question for me is why Oswald never speaks in Russian in the recordings. According to Titovets, the goal of the recordings was to improve Titovets' English language skills; yet his English is clearly competent as apparent in the recordings. According to Norman Mailer, Titovets had made recordings of Oswald speaking in Russian. If that is the case, then why did Titovets not release all of the tapes that would offer us a sense of how well Oswald was speaking Russian while in Minsk????

Strongly disagree. This is what is known as creating a legend. The role that Oswald was playing was in laying a trail of evidence that would make the "defection" seem plausible to the Soviets. One individual who recognized the legend immediately was Oswald's fellow Marine in Santa Ana, James Botelho, who knew that his buddy was not a genuine Marxist. In an interview given to Mark Lane, Botelho observed that “Oswald was not a Communist or a Marxist. If he was I would have taken violent action against him and so would many of the other Marines in the unit.” After Oswald’s defection was made public, Botelho told how an investigation at the Santa Ana Marine base was conducted purely for show: “It was the most casual of investigations. It was a cover-investigation so that it could be said there had been an investigation….Oswald, it was said, was the only Marine ever to defect from his country to another country, a Communist country, during peacetime. That was a major event. When the Marine Corps and American intelligence decided not to probe the reasons for the ‘defection,’ I knew then what I know now: Oswald was on an assignment in Russia for American intelligence.”

Joe, Thank you for your insights into the process of learning a foreign language. You really get to the heart of the matter when you raise the following questions: "Oswald didn't study the Russian language as a child did he? He never went to a language school did he? Did Oswald listen to Russian language training and study records?" When it comes to the evidence, the answer to all three questions is a resounding "no." Someone playing devil's advocate might argue that certain individuals are uniquely gifted in acquiring a new language. To that assertion, I would respond that if Oswald had a knack for foreign languages, there would be a paper trail left from his teachers and fellow students who witnessed those skills. There is an alternative explanation to Oswald's Russian language proficiency other than official training. And that is simply that he was a native speaker of Russian. It is the study of the evidence of the two Oswald's that offers a window into how this young man was fluent in Russian. James

Karl, Thanks very much for posting the link to the interviews with Shushkevich. Also, I found the video filled with fascinating insights from those who knew Oswald in Minsk. For Shushkevich, the best that he can say about Oswald's spoken Russian was that it was "pretty decent" or "passable." That does not square with the Oswald who allegedly read long and complex works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev or who dazzled Monterey Institute graduate Dennis Ofstein with his command of spoken Russian. As you observe above, all three of the acquaintances appearing on camera believed that Oswald was incapable of killing President Kennedy. These are not "conspiracy theorists," but rather people who had spent their lives living the realities of actual conspiracies in the Soviet Union. James

You haven't done your homework, Tracy. Multiple Marines witnessed Oswald reading Russian-language materials. Rosaleen Quinn, the aunt of one of Oswald's Marine buddies, was teaching herself Russian through the Berlitz language system and was interested in conversing with Oswald. In her Warren Commission deposition, Quinn asserted that “Oswald spoke Russian well.” The meeting of Oswald and Quinn occurred in 1959. Also, prior to leaving for the Soviet Union, Oswald was administered an Army exam in Russian proficiency and answered the majority of the questions correctly. Your statement above is blatantly inaccurate.

Steve, You raise an important question about how Oswald was able to take his notes out of the Soviet Union without them being confiscated. One of the most interesting facets of this story is what he did with the notes upon returning to the United States. On June 13, 1962, Oswald, Marina, and Baby Junie arrive in Hoboken, New Jersey aboard the SS Maasdam. Without detention by the federal authorities for arguably being a traitor to his country, Oswald spends the night with his wife and daughter safely ensconced at the Times Square Hotel in New York. The next day, the Oswalds fly out of New York to Dallas-Fort Worth, arriving on the evening of June 14. On June 18, five days after his return, Oswald hires a professional stenographer to type up his notes. He never lets the notes out of his sight, spending time in the office watching the typist preparing the manuscript and assisting her in reading his handwriting. The typist completes ten pages of single-spaced manuscript, which include only a portion of the complete set of notes. She is paid $10, or $1 per page, for her work. Oswald takes away the finished copy, his original notes, and even her carbon paper used for the copy she prepared. The notes were obviously of special import and priority for Oswald to have them transcribed within a week of his return to the United States. The typist, Pauline Virginia Bates, recalls her work in transcribing the notes in the youtube video linked below. Notice that early in the video there is an image of a UPI news release after the assassination that recalled the time Miss Bates spent with Oswald. The title of the article is "Hinted He was Secret Agent for U.S." For the article, Miss Bates is quoted as saying that Oswald was nervous or scared on the last day of their association: "He was fidgety, jumping up and down, looking over my shoulder, wondering at what point I was in the manuscript." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlnp0HfhLvQ