James Norwood

I'm sorry, but the mastoidectomy operation is not the "cornerstone" of any theory. It is only one minor component of the evidence and one that I have not even given much consideration, given the overwhelming amount of much more significant data. What I am interested in primarily is the complete body of evidence pointing to the existence of two Oswalds. If you are looking for a single component of the evidence that might be considered a cornerstone, it would be Oswald's proficiency in the Russian language at such an early age. How do you or the other users attacking the two Oswald evidence account for Oswald's skills in speaking Russian?

Once again, you are wrong, Jonathan. Jim Hargrove and I are presenting evidence. It is users like Jeremy who write screeds, as opposed to analysis of the evidence. The evidence for the two Oswalds is overwhelming and cannot be dismissed in tract writing. For example, I raised the topic of the manuscript of Laura Kittrell in which she identified two men claiming to be Lee Harvey Oswald whom she interviewed at the Texas Employment Commission. In response, a user named Charles Dunne responded with a quote from the Bible! I'm not making this up; he quoted from Scripture in an effort to derail a perfectly good discussion topic. The idea of this thread is to discuss the far-reaching influence of the Harvey and Lee evidence on major scholars, as identified at the top of this thread. The "irrelevant talking points" are coming in the way of tract writing from you, Jeremy, and Charles Dunne.

Robert Charles-Dunne, In your writing above in response to my commentary on Laura Kittrell, there is nothing to suggest that you have even read the Kittrell document. You are engaging in stream-of-consciousness writing, just like your comic sidekick, Mark Stevens. Failing to offer any concrete evidence, you then resort to the use of the cliché, as in the quoted passage above. I recommend that you look up in the dictionary the terms stream-of-consciousness and cliché. An understanding of those expressions will offer you the help that you need in addressing the many shortcomings of your posts on this site. Doc

There was a recent Ed Forum thread on Laura Kittrell posted by Doug Caddy that included a short youtube lecture focusing on Murray Chotiner. The lecture began with the speaker stating the following about Laura Kittrell: "She worked for the Texas Employment Commission, and she said that she interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination on multiple occasions." When we take a close look at Kittrell's manuscript, we learn right away that the purpose of her recalling the interviews was that she recognized at the time and felt compelled to alert the authorities, including Robert Kennedy, that she had interviewed two different men claiming to be Oswald. Forum member Joe Bauer made an astute observation when he wrote that “I don't see the Oswald we know who was married to Marina here in the states and the one we saw on TV the weekend of November 22-24, 1963 as wearing a black leather motorcycle gang jacket and pounding his open hand on the Employment Department counselor's desk twice, while shouting ‘DAMN, I know that guy!’” Precisely because of these details, I was led to conclude that the man slamming his hand on the desk and knocking over a flower pot was an imposter, leaving the impression of a violent malcontent that Kittrell would recall after the assassination. Another point made in the video is that Oswald had an association with Republican political strategist Murray Chotiner. But in her manuscript, Kittrell recounts that Oswald denied ever working Chotiner. He only recognized the name when he overheard the conversation between Kittrell and the client ahead of him, who acknowledge that she had worked for Chotiner as a maid. When he exclaimed, "DAMN, I know that guy!", it was likely a figure of speech and that he meant "I know who that guy is." It is far too big a leap to speculate that Chotiner had anything to do with the JFK assassination based on the Kittrell manuscript. There was also a lively discussion of this topic on p. 3 of Jim Hargrove's thread entitled "Was It Really Just a MOLE HUNT about 'Oswald'.'"

You haven't "clinched" anything; you are only spewing forth words like your tag-team partner. You can either make an attempt to answer the question in plain English or continue to lose credibility,

As predicted...another filibuster.

Mark, It does not surprise me at all that you wish to claim victory in our debate about the Stripling evidence. For my part, I would prefer that the readers make up their own minds after reading your rationale and my numerous rebuttals. At the same time, I am troubled that you have never directly answered my question about why you believe the words of Vice-Principal Frank Kudlaty are unreliable. To repeat: There is one critical question to ask about Frank Kudlaty’s testimony, and that is whether or not he is persuasive in his recall of the visit from the FBI agents on 11/23/63 in which he handed over to them a file on Lee Harvey Oswald from the Stripling records. Kudlaty recalled that he only had time to glance at the records, prior to the arrival of the FBI agents. And yet, from that “glance,” Kudlaty did what any educator would likely do in his place: he looked at Oswald’s grades and noticed that they were not very good grades. A mundane admission like this gives Kudlaty’s testimony even greater credibility. The quick glance at the file and the observation of the low grades stayed with Kudlaty for decades. Unless you can convincingly challenge Kudlaty’s memory of that specific act carried out on 11/23/63, then the Stripling debate is over. What specifically is the reason that you doubt Kudlaty's recall? Was it due to a poor memory? Did he confuse Oswald with another student? Was he intentionally deceiving the interviewer to promote himself? Was he working in collaboration with the interviewer in a conspiracy to promote a false narrative? In plain English and without resorting to another one of your filibusters, can you or can you or can you not provide a lucid explanation of why Kudlaty is an untrustworthy eyewitness?

Jeremy, In your post, you fail to mention that the Wilcott testimony is only the tip of the iceberg for understanding the Oswald Project. For example, there is overwhelming evidence that in the United States intelligence network the name Harvey Lee Oswald was being used for explicit reasons in contrast to the name of another man Lee Harvey Oswald. In a conference presentation entitled “Oswald, Marine Corps Intelligence, and the Assault on the State Department," Professor Peter Dale Scott summarized the transposition of the names as follows: “At least one of these G-2 records listed Oswald by a slightly different name. This alternative name, which eventually was used by at least four different military intelligence sources, was ‘Harvey Lee Oswald.’ This ‘Harvey Lee Oswald’ reference is no accidental anomaly, but part of an organized pattern, widely dispersed, that suggests an official intelligence deception (and possible dual filing system). Serial 02296-E of 27 Jun 60 is the earliest Harvey Lee Oswald reference we now possess of over two dozen, from the files of ONI, FBI, CIA, Army Intelligence, the Secret Service, the Mexican Secret Police (DFS), and the Dallas Police. A consistent pattern of behavior in these agencies since the assassination has been the tendency to suppress references to ‘Harvey Lee Oswald,’ and replace them by the more standard ‘Lee Harvey Oswald.’” From the precise period that Oswald was in the Soviet Union, references to Harvey Lee Oswald in intelligence files appear over two dozen times. A host of intelligence agencies were using the name Harvey Lee Oswald, and the apparent “dual filing system” implied a distinction between two different men: Harvey Lee Oswald and Lee Harvey Oswald. For Scott, the use of the name Harvey Lee Oswald was “no accidental anomaly, but part of an organized pattern, widely dispersed, that suggests an official intelligence deception.” A “consistent pattern” of suppressing the name Harvey Lee Oswald and replacing it with “Lee Harvey Oswald” followed the assassination. This implies that school records, records from the Marines, Social Security records, and any other references to “Harvey Lee Oswald” were likely changed in the historical record. In your post, you attempt to ridicule the notion of the doppelgänger. But it is not so ridiculous when one looks closely at the documentary evidence. The paper of Peter Dale Scott may be read at this URL: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/S Disk/Scott Peter Dale/Item 02.pdf In closing, I would ask you once again to refrain from casting aspersions on other forum members. You can make your points without resorting to personal attack. Please abide by forum policies. James

According to Georgia Bell, the neighbor of the Marguerite imposter residing on San Saba in Fort Worth, the slovenly neighbor who lived alone with the little boy was periodically visited by "men in suits." Mrs. Bell found that striking and vividly recalled those visits nearly a half century later. I have several questions for Mr. Krome: It is always a taxing experience to make a move, especially for young children. It is stressful and challenging to arrive at a new school in midstream both in the social stress of trying to make new friends and in the cognitive area of trying to get up to speed with the rest of the class. So, how do you explain the frequent moves from the perspective of the young student shuttled around from Fort Worth to New York to New Orleans to Fort Worth to New Orleans and back to Fort Worth, and, in the process, becoming fluent in the Russian language? Why was the mother making such frequent moves, and how did the kid become proficient in Russian? I look forward to your response to my question.

Karl, It is important to keep in mind that the original purpose of the two Oswalds had nothing to do with the JFK assassination. In the postwar years, the so-called Oswald Project (identified and documented by CIA paymaster James Wilcott) was to place a Russian-speaking asset in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For more background, see the article "The Early Lives of Harvey and Lee," especially the text under the subheading of "Frank Wisner and World War II Refugees": https://harveyandlee.net/Early/Early.html The three principal forum critics who write screeds in opposition to the known facts about the two Oswalds rarely mention the overwhelming evidence from John Armstrong's Harvey and Lee or the extremely detailed articles at https://www.harveyandlee.net/ Why would the CIA have built the mission around an obscure teenager who never graduated from high school? The answer is that he spoke fluent Russian. I unfold the evidence for Oswald's Russian language proficiency in the following article: https://www.harveyandlee.net/Russian.html Thanks for your interest in this topic and for your participation on this thread. James

Jim, Here is one point to add to your excellent narrative supported by the outstanding images of David Josephs. As the topic of this thread is the constant switching of schools, the obvious question is why are so many moves taking place? A related topic is the unusual absence of Oswald's school records. An important issue to consider is that the frequent moves were necessitated because the school records from previous institutions had not been forwarded to the new school. If the schools were not receiving the documentation and Oswald's mother was not cooperating with full disclosure about previous schooling, the principal in the current school would have been applying pressure on the mother to account for the kid's previous records. If the pressure became too intense, the Oswald imposter mother would pack up and move out-of-state. Hence the rapid switches from New York to New Orleans to Texas to New Orleans and back again to Texas. The out-of-state moves implied that it would be a more arduous task for schools to request the files. All of those moves were obviously not justified by Marguerite's career choices. The Marguerite imposter was taking jobs that only paid in cash, so as to not declare income (private work as a "practical nurse," bar tending; working in a candy stall). When pressured to disclose her Social Security number at Dolly Shoe, she immediately resigned from her job. The same pattern is apparent in the abrupt changes in schools. In making so many moves, the two Marguerite Oswalds were buying time until the boys reached the age where they could enlist in the Marines. James

I beg to differ with you Mark. Every word that you write above is inaccurate. And, here is the latest feedback I have provided to you. Your work simply does not hold up under close scrutiny. Mark, There is currently an excellent thread running on the Ed Forum entitled “Did EVEN the Warren Commission Believe Howard Brennan?” The posts of various forum members spin off of the excellent article about Brennan written by Jim DiEugenio. The article and the comments get at the heart of a persuasive refutation of one of the most important eyewitnesses used by the Warren Commission in order to place Oswald in the sixth-floor window at the time of the shooting. You could learn a great deal from studying the article and the thread because of the limitations of your attempt to discredit the bona fide eyewitnesses who identified Oswald as a student at Stripling Junior High School in 1954-55. Here are two major flaws in your analysis: (1) In examining eyewitness testimony in a vacuum without reference to other evidence, you fail to ask the right questions, and you lead the reader astray in order to assess the reliability of what the eyewitness is recalling. (2) With a series of non-essential questions, you set an absurdly high threshold to determine the credibility of eyewitnesses such that any eyewitness would be deemed unreliable, based on your criteria. In your discourse, you frequently refer to judges, attorneys, and courtroom situations as a benchmark for determining accurate eyewitness recall. It is as if you have been influenced by television dramas depicting the cross-examination of an eyewitness in the final minutes of the program in which the attorney dramatically pokes a hole in the individual’s veracity through a single tactical question. In the process of relying so heavily on Perry Mason-like melodramas, your analysis is pedestrian, and it reveals a deficiency in your understanding of how human memory works. Here are examples of your flawed methodology in discussing the two most important Stripling eyewitnesses, Frank Kudlaty and Fran Schubert: (1) FRANK KUDLATY There is only one critical question to ask about Frank Kudlaty’s testimony, and that is the one that you refuse to address in your critique: whether or not Vice-Principal Kudlaty is persuasive in his recall of the visit from the FBI agents on 11/23/63 in which he handed over to them a file on Lee Harvey Oswald from the Stripling records. All of your questions about the contents of the file have no bearing on the main issue of Kudlaty remembering the visit from the FBI. Of course, John Armstrong discusses those ancillary issues in his nearly 1,000-page book. But the purpose of the Stripling debate on this forum is to arrive at a conclusion about a single issue: Was Kudlaty’s testimony credible about surrendering a file to the FBI about a student who had attended Stripling Junior High School? Unless you can convincingly challenge Kudlaty’s memory of that specific act carried out on 11/23/63, then the Stripling debate is over. Kudlaty recalled that he only had time to glance at the records, prior to the arrival of the FBI agents. And yet, from that “glance,” Kudlaty did what any educator would likely do in his place: he looked at Oswald’s grades and noticed that they were not very good grades. A mundane admission like this gives Kudlaty’s testimony even greater credibility. Of course, that point is never covered in your critique. Nearly all of your questions about Kudlaty pertain to what might have been in the file that he admitted he was able only to give a quick glance. His recall of the low grades lends even more credibility to his story. (2) FRAN SCHUBERT By falling back on your pop culture legal terminology, you have determined that the key question that Schubert must answer is "How did you know the boy was Oswald?" That question presumes that, after the passing of forty years, Schubert would somehow be able to recall the circumstances in which she first came to know the name of boy she was describing in the interview. Unfortunately, that is not the way memory works, and it is a question that neither she nor any eyewitness should be expected to answer forty years after the fact. In her detailed and persuasive testimony, Schubert recalled discrete moments through triggers, such as the following: • Schubert recalled a physical mannerism of Oswald that appeared to her to be “cocky,” and that visual image remained with her over the years to be able to recall the manner in which he walked in the halls of Stripling Junior High School; • Schubert recalled Oswald on the schoolyard when he was with a group of boys wearing black leather jackets. Oswald’s jacket was uniquely brown, and that made him stand out in her mind and remember him on the playground forty years later; and • Schubert recalled Oswald’s home across the street from the school because he was one of the privileged students allowed to leave the campus and go home for lunch. She and others less fortunate had to remain on the school grounds. The fact that she observed him leaving the campus during the noon hour left an impression that she was able to recall forty years later. Each of the three moments above was tied to a sensory image that triggered the recall of the memory in the eyewitness. There would likely be no such trigger with the mundane occurrence of how Schubert first learned Oswald’s name or what month of the year he was enrolled at the school. The three memories above, plus Schubert’s recall of the academic year 1954-55, and the corroboration of key parts of her testimony by others, makes her a credible eyewitness. In your analogy of the courtroom, your questions would be deemed irrelevant. SUMMARY • Your attempt to refute the testimony of credible eyewitnesses is light years away from the methodology used in assessing the enormous inconsistencies in Howard Brennan’s testimony in the thread noted above. Anyone could write a set of questions that an eyewitness would be incapable of answering, then write off that witness as unreliable. In your analysis of Kudlaty, you have failed to examine all of the details of Kudlaty’s testimony, and you sidestep the defining issue of whether his testimony about surrendering the Oswald file to the FBI is credible. Your analysis of this key witness is unpersuasive because you have failed to ask the right question. Is Kudlaty credible on this single point? • In your analysis of Schubert and the other eyewitnesses, you raise the threshold of credibility to absurd lengths, expecting them to be able to answer questions that were never posed to them by interviewers and that are likely unanswerable. You then rely on the absence of responses to your hypothetical questions as the basis for dismissing the eyewitnesses! The method you are applying to these eyewitnesses could be applied to any eyewitness in the JFK case (doctors at Parkland, Dealey Plaza eyewitnesses, or anyone who came into contact with Oswald) in order to discredit them. In your unpersuasive approach to examining testimony, any eyewitness is thereby deemed unreliable, and you might as well be saying, “We’ll never know the truth about Oswald, and we’ll never know the truth about the death of President Kennedy.” CONCLUSION On numerous occasions, I have pointed the inherent bias in everything you write about the Stripling evidence. An objective observer would examine the evidence impartially. In your case, you found the idea of the two Oswalds impossible to fathom, then proceeded with manic energy to try to refute it by asking a string questions that no eyewitness could possibly be expected to answer forty years after the fact. The transparent bias destroys any credibility in your analysis. It would be well worth your time to study and learn from the Howard Brennan thread.

Mark, There is currently an excellent thread running on the Ed Forum entitled “Did EVEN the Warren Commission Believe Howard Brennan?” The posts of various forum members spin off of the excellent article about Brennan written by Jim DiEugenio. The article and the comments get at the heart of a persuasive refutation of one of the most important eyewitnesses used by the Warren Commission in order to place Oswald in the sixth-floor window at the time of the shooting. You could learn a great deal from studying the article and the thread because of the limitations of your attempt to discredit the bona fide eyewitnesses who identified Oswald as a student at Stripling Junior High School in 1954-55. Here are two major flaws in your analysis: (1) In examining eyewitness testimony in a vacuum without reference to other evidence, you fail to ask the right questions, and you lead the reader astray in order to assess the reliability of what the eyewitness is recalling. (2) With a series of non-essential questions, you set an absurdly high threshold to determine the credibility of eyewitnesses such that any eyewitness would be deemed unreliable, based on your criteria. In your discourse, you frequently refer to judges, attorneys, and courtroom situations as a benchmark for determining accurate eyewitness recall. It is as if you have been influenced by television dramas depicting the cross-examination of an eyewitness in the final minutes of the program in which the attorney dramatically pokes a hole in the individual’s veracity through a single tactical question. In the process of relying so heavily on Perry Mason-like melodramas, your analysis is pedestrian, and it reveals a deficiency in your understanding of how human memory works. Here are examples of your flawed methodology in discussing the two most important Stripling eyewitnesses, Frank Kudlaty and Fran Schubert: (1) FRANK KUDLATY There is only one critical question to ask about Frank Kudlaty’s testimony, and that is the one that you refuse to address in your critique: whether or not Vice-Principal Kudlaty is persuasive in his recall of the visit from the FBI agents on 11/23/63 in which he handed over to them a file on Lee Harvey Oswald from the Stripling records. All of your questions about the contents of the file have no bearing on the main issue of Kudlaty remembering the visit from the FBI. Of course, John Armstrong discusses those ancillary issues in his nearly 1,000-page book. But the purpose of the Stripling debate on this forum is to arrive at a conclusion about a single issue: Was Kudlaty’s testimony credible about surrendering a file to the FBI about a student who had attended Stripling Junior High School? Unless you can convincingly challenge Kudlaty’s memory of that specific act carried out on 11/23/63, then the Stripling debate is over. Kudlaty recalled that he only had time to glance at the records, prior to the arrival of the FBI agents. And yet, from that “glance,” Kudlaty did what any educator would likely do in his place: he looked at Oswald’s grades and noticed that they were not very good grades. A mundane admission like this gives Kudlaty’s testimony even greater credibility. Of course, that point is never covered in your critique. Nearly all of your questions about Kudlaty pertain to what might have been in the file that he admitted he was able only to give a quick glance. His recall of the low grades lends even more credibility to his story. (2) FRAN SCHUBERT By falling back on your pop culture legal terminology, you have determined that the key question that Schubert must answer is "How did you know the boy was Oswald?" That question presumes that, after the passing of forty years, Schubert would somehow be able to recall the circumstances in which she first came to know the name of boy she was describing in the interview. Unfortunately, that is not the way memory works, and it is a question that neither she nor any eyewitness should be expected to answer forty years after the fact. In her detailed and persuasive testimony, Schubert recalled discrete moments through triggers, such as the following: • Schubert recalled a physical mannerism of Oswald that appeared to her to be “cocky,” and that visual image remained with her over the years to be able to recall the manner in which he walked in the halls of Stripling Junior High School; • Schubert recalled Oswald on the schoolyard when he was with a group of boys wearing black leather jackets. Oswald’s jacket was uniquely brown, and that made him stand out in her mind and remember him on the playground forty years later; and • Schubert recalled Oswald’s home across the street from the school because he was one of the privileged students allowed to leave the campus and go home for lunch. She and others less fortunate had to remain on the school grounds. The fact that she observed him leaving the campus during the noon hour left an impression that she was able to recall forty years later. Each of the three moments above was tied to a sensory image that triggered the recall of the memory in the eyewitness. There would likely be no such trigger with the mundane occurrence of how Schubert first learned Oswald’s name or what month of the year he was enrolled at the school. The three memories above, plus Schubert’s recall of the academic year 1954-55, and the corroboration of key parts of her testimony by others, makes her a credible eyewitness. In your analogy of the courtroom, your questions would be deemed irrelevant. SUMMARY • Your attempt to refute the testimony of credible eyewitnesses is light years away from the methodology used in assessing the enormous inconsistencies in Howard Brennan’s testimony in the thread noted above. Anyone could write a set of questions that an eyewitness would be incapable of answering, then write off that witness as unreliable. In your analysis of Kudlaty, you have failed to examine all of the details of Kudlaty’s testimony, and you sidestep the defining issue of whether his testimony about surrendering the Oswald file to the FBI is credible. Your analysis of this key witness is unpersuasive because you have failed to ask the right question. Is Kudlaty credible on this single point? • In your analysis of Schubert and the other eyewitnesses, you raise the threshold of credibility to absurd lengths, expecting them to be able to answer questions that were never posed to them by interviewers and that are likely unanswerable. You then rely on the absence of responses to your hypothetical questions as the basis for dismissing the eyewitnesses! The method you are applying to these eyewitnesses could be applied to any eyewitness in the JFK case (doctors at Parkland, Dealey Plaza eyewitnesses, or anyone who came into contact with Oswald) in order to discredit them. In your unpersuasive approach to examining testimony, any eyewitness is thereby deemed unreliable, and you might as well be saying, “We’ll never know the truth about Oswald, and we’ll never know the truth about the death of President Kennedy.” CONCLUSION On numerous occasions, I have pointed the inherent bias in everything you write about the Stripling evidence. An objective observer would examine the evidence impartially. In your case, you found the idea of the two Oswalds impossible to fathom, then proceeded with manic energy to try to refute it by asking a string questions that no eyewitness could possibly be expected to answer forty years after the fact. The transparent bias destroys any credibility in your analysis. It would be well worth your time to study and learn from the Howard Brennan thread.

Jim, Many thanks your commentary and documents related to Oswald in North Dakota in the summer of 1953. The three articles published in The Fourth Decade are outstanding. I have enjoyed many conversations with Gary Severson about his research in this area, including his travels to meet with eyewitnesses in the western half of the country. It is a fascinating topic and another piece of piece of the puzzle in understanding Oswald. James

Mark, It is obvious that you have not read my detailed rebuttal to your points. Here again is my rebuttal. Readers can easily make up their minds by reading it and making up their own minds as to whether or not the following is "genuine rebuttal." James Norwood’s Point-By-Point Rebuttal of Mark Stevens, “The Stripling Episode - Harvey & Lee: A Critical Review” (1) Newspaper Coverage of Stripling: It is a fact that Stripling Junior High School was identified in newspapers as one of the schools attended by Lee Harvey Oswald. The critic attempts to discount this evidence and faults the reporters for not interviewing teachers and students to verify that Oswald actually attended classes at Stripling. But when Stripling was first mentioned in the papers in 1959, the focus was on a United States Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union. The reporters had no obligation to visit the schools to confirm Oswald’s status as a student. The schools he attended were facts surrounding the greater story of a local boy turned traitor. In his section on Frank Kudlaty, the critic returns to the newspaper evidence to speculate that “another possibility is that the local FBI was aware of newspaper articles referencing a Marine defector from Fort Worth who attended Stripling” and the article prompted the FBI to pay a visit to Stripling Junior High School to confiscate the school records. In other words, the newspaper evidence was credible enough for the FBI to lead them to Stripling, but not good enough for the critic to take seriously today. The critic has failed to offer any proof that the newspaper reporting about Stripling was erroneous. (2) Robert Oswald: Robert Oswald has been a notoriously unreliable eyewitness to history, as apparent in his pseudo biography Lee—A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother Robert Oswald (1967). To both newspaper reporters and in his Warren Commission testimony, Robert mentions Stripling as a school attended by his younger brother. But in his book Lee, Robert studiously avoids mentioning Stripling, while identifying the names of other schools that his brother attended: Benbrook Elementary School, Ridglea West School, Junior High School No. 117 in the Bronx, Beauregard Junior High School, and Warren Easton High School in New Orleans. With no reference to Stripling, Robert moves on to Lee Harvey’s enlistment in the Marines on October 24, 1956. Robert’s pre-assassination statement that his younger brother attended Stripling, as well as his Warren Commission testimony sworn under oath, must be factored in to the complete body of Stripling evidence. The critic has failed to offer a plausible explanation for why Robert would identify Stripling on multiple occasions to the press and to the Warren Commission, then omit it in his book. (3) Videotaped Interview with Frank Kudlaty: Stripling Vice-Principal Kudlaty, a man of unimpeachable character, describes in the video interview the transaction he made with FBI agents when he surrendered the file on the student Lee Harvey Oswald that had been maintained in the school’s administrative office. The critic works up a tortured argument in the attempt to downplay the FBI’s visit to Stripling by suggesting that “on the morning after the assassination the FBI sent agents to all local schools in areas Oswald lived.” This astonishing statement begs the question of why, one day following the assassination of an American president, the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency would be expending this much effort to track down school records of the alleged assassin. Much time is spent by the critic in pure speculation on what might have been included in Oswald’s academic file, when Kudlaty admitted that he only had time to glance at the file before the agents arrived to collect it. It is obvious that the crucial information that the FBI wanted expunged from the documentary record was that Oswald had been enrolled in a public school in Fort Worth during the academic year 1954-55. Otherwise, why were the contents of the file never disclosed to the Warren Commission, and why did the file vanish from the historical record? It is unfortunate that in his zeal to undermine the testimony of Kudlaty, the critic is missing a golden opportunity to understand a key point about the JFK assassination, which is how the FBI was rewriting history in the days and weeks following the event. One salient point emerges from the testimony of Frank Kudlaty: he was called in to work on a Saturday morning to hand over to FBI agents the school records related to Lee Harvey Oswald, and the eyewitness has consistently maintained the same account over the years. The critic is unable to undermine that unassailable fact. Note: It takes a careful reading of the first 120 pages of Harvey and Lee to understand that, for years, Oswald was being intentionally moved around from school to school in order to create confusion and to avoid the exposure of two boys using the same name and attending different schools concurrently. During the period of 1954-56, there were three consecutive instances in which Oswald enrolled in a school, then suddenly dropped out. The goal of the constant moves was to keep the two boys separate and buy time until they reached the age when they could permanently drop out of school and enlist in the Marines. (4) Videotaped Interview with Fran Schubert: The critic attempts to undermine Fran Schubert’s description of Oswald as both “cocky” and “nondescript” from her experience of him as a fellow student at Stripling. Yet this paradoxical thinking is perfectly in keeping with the fragmentary impressions she would have retained of a student whom she had only passed in the halls and noticed occasionally on the playground. She confidently recalls the academic year 1954-55 as the time when she witnessed Oswald attending the school. She certainly may be forgiven for uncertainty about identifying the season in a state that does not have clearly defined winters, but she does note the time she remembers Oswald occurred in one of the colder months. In a more detailed conversation with John Armstrong than the short video interview, Schubert recalled seeing Oswald cross the street to go home for lunch: “The one thing I remember clearly was him walking home for lunch….it made me mad that he could go home for lunch and I couldn’t.” Living across the street from the school, young Oswald clearly had a perk that made the memory of him leaving the campus at lunchtime stand out in Schubert’s mind. The three main points recalled by Schubert are (a) Oswald was a fellow student at Stripling whom Schubert passed in the halls and saw on the playground; (b) the timeframe that Oswald attended Stripling was clearly identified as 1954-55 at a time when Schubert was in the eighth grade; and (c) Oswald would leave the school grounds at lunchtime to walk across the street to his home at 2220 Thomas Place. The critic fails to offer a persuasive rationale for why Schubert’s recall would be inaccurate on these three points. Note: The sources for the following eyewitness testimony of Doug Gann, Bobby Pitts, and Mark Summers are from interviews personally conducted by John Armstrong in the 1990s. Citations from the interviews appear in the book Harvey and Lee and are carefully documented in endnotes. Armstrong’s work product in conducting the interviews is documented in the massive Baylor University archive. Armstrong tape recorded all of the interviews and still retains the complete audio recordings of these interviews. (5) Doug Gann: Gann’s testimony complements that of Fran Schubert, and he recalls actually attending classes with Oswald at Stripling, possibly in the same home room. He also recalls shooting baskets on the courts after school. Like Schubert, he also recalls Oswald living across the street from the school. Inexplicably, the critic dismisses the entirety of Gann’s testimony with the blanket statement, “there does not appear to be any record of Gann’s statements.” The record is the interview he gave to John Armstrong! The critic then writes this extraordinary statement: “For me to state with good conscience that Gann saw Oswald, I would have to know how he made the distinction and identified the person as Oswald.” Here, the critic appears one step removed from stating that all eyewitness testimony is existentially invalid. If Gann took classes with Oswald and played basketball with him, it naturally follows that he knew the boy’s name and “identified the person as Oswald”! The fact remains that Doug Gann’s recall is precisely what one would expect from a short-lived acquaintance with a schoolmate with whom he shared classes and shot baskets. The critic has failed to offer any reasonable explanation for why Gann is not a bona fide eyewitness. (6) Bobby Pitts: Bobby Pitts’ testimony is important for two reasons: (a) he explicitly recalled Oswald living at 2220 Thomas Place and (2) he recalled the time frame as the academic year 1954-55. The critic challenges the veracity of Pitts’ testimony, arguing that because Pitts was not a student at Stripling at the time, “how did he know this was Oswald?” The answer is simple: Pitts resided next door to Oswald at 2224 Thomas Place. From his perspective as a neighbor, Pitts observed Oswald sanding on the porch at 2220 Thomas Place watching the group playing touch football. The critic continues to grasp for ways to undercut the testimony when he writes that “any person who resided in the rear apartment would not ‘hang out’ on the front porch of the apartment, which would be part of the front apartment.” But the critic has no knowledge of the layout of the duplex and whether or not the front porch may have been shared communally by the two tenants. Fran Schubert recalls the porch at 2220 Thomas Place as “large.” It could have just as easily been a place where both residents could “hang out.” The researcher should not be under the obligation to verify the use of a front porch by the tenants of that building; rather, he is only reporting what Pitts conveyed to him in the interview. Pitts’ testimony corroborates that of both Fran Schubert and Doug Gann with the clear and distinct recall of Oswald residing at 2220 Thomas Place. At the time, Pitts was not a student at Stripling, so he could not verify that Oswald was attending school there. But Schubert, Gann, and Kudlaty are eyewitnesses that do recall Oswald as a Stripling student. The critic has failed to demonstrate any flaws in Pitts’ basic recall of his experience. (7) Mark Summers: Summers was a gym instructor, math teacher, and war hero who began teaching at Stripling in September, 1950. He recalled that Oswald was a student in his class in the seventh grade. But, as the critic points out, this has to be inaccurate because Oswald would have been in the ninth grade in the academic year 1954. The critic has located an anomaly in Summers’ testimony, as apparent in John Armstrong’s typewritten notes on the Baylor site, which suggest that Summers also recalled teaching Robert Oswald for two years. On the face of it, this is impossible because Robert only attended Stripling for a single academic year (1948-49), which was one year before Summers began teaching there. In his written notes taken during the phone interview with Summers and prior to typing up the notes, the single point written by Armstrong was that Summers began teaching at Stripling in September, 1950 and that LHO was student in his seventh-grade class. The following is a screenshot of Armstrong’s written notes from the Baylor archive: I contacted John Armstrong for clarification, and he plans to review his written notes and the audio recording of the complete interview with Summers. In the interim, I made an attempt to contact Mark Summers myself to learn his story first-hand. I was able to reach a relative, who informed me that Summers had passed away in 1998. In his book Harvey and Lee, Armstrong devotes only three sentences to the testimony of Summers. Based on anomalies in the evidence and the passing of Mark Summers, it is impossible to draw any firm conclusions about whether Oswald was a student in one of Summers’ classes at Stripling. (8) Ricardo Galindo: In 1993, Armstrong was in touch with the principal of Stripling at the time, Ricardo Galindo, who indicated that it was “common knowledge” that Oswald had attended Stripling. By “common knowledge,” Galindo presumably means “word of mouth.” Because Galindo was not the principal at the time the school records were rounded up by the FBI, his testimony carries substantially less weight than that of Frank Kudlaty, who physically handled the records and recalls surrendering them to the FBI agents. It is not clear why Galindo’s testimony appears to be the capstone piece of the critic’s argument, when it is clearly a much smaller evidentiary piece of the puzzle than that of the eyewitnesses who knew Oswald first hand and recalled specific details about him. SUMMARY An objective critic should approach the Stripling evidence impartially, but the bias of Mark Stevens is apparent throughout his review of the evidence. Stevens uses the same approach to undermining the testimony of the Stripling eyewitnesses that has been used for decades by Warren Commission apologists to discredit “inconvenient” witnesses in Dealey Plaza who heard gunshots fired from behind the picket fence or to impugn the integrity of the medical staff at Parkland who almost universally recalled that President Kennedy had received bullet wounds from shots fired from in front of the limousine. Stevens offers a valid critique of the anomalies in the interview of Mark Summers. After I followed up with an interview of a relative and learned that Summers is deceased, I am unable to conclude decisively whether Oswald was a student in Summers’ class at Stripling. But, for all of the other eyewitness testimony, the evidentiary record is compelling precisely because it is what one would expect about a student who had spent only a couple of months at the school, prior to dropping out. The recall of shooting baskets, seeing Oswald sitting on a porch, passing him in the halls of the school, or watching him walk across the street to his home at lunchtime, are all examples of the precise kind of memories students would retain about a kid who had spent only a brief time at the school. CONCLUSION The most compelling Stripling evidence is (a) the testimony of the school administrator Frank Kudlaty who recalled surrendering the school records to the FBI and (b) that of a student, Fran Schubert, who recalled Oswald attending the school in 1954-55 and living across the street. In turn, the eyewitness testimony of Doug Gann and Bobby Pitts supports the videotaped interview of Fran Schubert. Taken together, the eyewitnesses corroborate one another in a way that allows the evidence to coalesce around three main points: (a) Lee Harvey Oswald attended Stripling Junior High School for a brief period; (b) the timeframe was the academic year 1954-55; and (c) he resided across the street from the school at 2220 Thomas Place. Newspaper coverage identifying Oswald as a Stripling student and the recall of Stripling by Robert Oswald in both newspapers and his Warren Commission testimony add more weight to a critical mass of evidence placing Lee Harvey Oswald in Forth Worth as a student at Stripling Junior High School for a brief period in 1954-55.

Mark Stevens has demonstrated that he is incapable of examining evidence impartially. Here is a capsule of his argument about Stripling: • All of the newspaper articles noting that Oswald attended Stripling were wrong; • Robert Oswald was wrong on the multiple occasions when he recalled that his brother attended Stripling, including one testimony given under oath; • The student eyewitnesses who recalled attending Stripling concurrently with Oswald in the academic year 1954-55 were wrong; • A neighbor who lived next door to Oswald and recalled that he lived there was wrong; • A distinguished educator who recalled handing over school records to the FBI was wrong. I have written a 2,500-word assessment of the evidence that appears at the top of this thread. Why don't you take the time to write a point-by-point rebuttal to my arguments, Jeremy? Or, is it that you could could not improve upon Mark Stevens' unpersuasive critique, as summarized above?

Jim, Thanks for your alert on this new documentary entitled Oswald and JFK: Unsolved Cases. I viewed both parts, and I had the feeling of watching the programs that aired on The Learning Channel, such as JFK: Inside the Target Car with Gary Mack or JFK: The Lost Bullet with Max Holland. It was almost like a fictionalized presentation more than a documentary film. The program professed to have drawn inspiration from a think tank of "sixty-six campaigners for truth," but the expert consultants were never listed in the closing credits. The film's premise is that Oswald was "a devoted Marxist" and that his defining moment occurred as a Marine in Japan. While consorting with escort girls at the Queen Bee, he made a contact that allowed him to travel to the Soviet Union in 1959 to pursue his utopian communist dream. The screenwriters have drawn heavily on the tag-team testimony of Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald, leading them to conclude that Oswald shot at General Walker and, on the domestic scene, he was a violent and unhinged husband. An early dramatization in the film depicts a brutal scene of domestic violence where Oswald punches Marina and knocks her to the floor. For an audience in the era of the #MeToo movement, the amount of time the film spends in portraying Oswald as a misogynist and wife batterer sets the tone for the filmmakers' approach to Oswald as a person. The filmmakers' conceit for the assassination is that Oswald acted alone, but was egged on by "rogue agents" of the CIA, who promised him a quick getaway to Latin America after the shooting. The way the assassination is portrayed is not a far cry from the conclusions of the Warren Report dressed up with some of the findings about the CIA that emerged in the 1970s. The expression "rogue agents" was frequently invoked by Bob Blakey in the aftermath of the HSCA. As portrayed in the film, Oswald was their "pawn." The best scene in the film was when Jeff Morley provided background on George Joannides. Jeff takes us to a meeting with an eyewitness who reveals that almost instantly after the assassination had occurred, he was instructed by his CIA handler to release a photograph to the press that identified Oswald as sympathetic to Marxism while promoting the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in the summer of 1963. The man appeared on camera to verify convincingly that he complied with the CIA officer's request. But it was curious that Jeff concluded that segment by saying that it will still take years before we will learn the truth about the JFK assassination. To that, I would reply: Nonsense! We can understand a clear picture of the assassination right now. James

John, Thanks for your reply. Here is an image of the front page of the article from the Racine-Journal Times. You will notice a large empty space around the top of the page. The editor told me that he was scrambling to make the deadline and was unable to round out the front page, resulting in the gap. I located a library in Wisconsin where there was an original copy of the newspaper. Of course, It would be impossible to find a copy of the photo pulled off the newswire by the newspaper staff. That photo is long gone.

Gene, Thank you very much your insightful and important commentary above. I too am puzzled by the long, rambling screeds. In the case of the discussion of the Stripling evidence, I posted a 2,500-word commentary at the top of this thread. But the only way the critics are refuting the evidence is to say that all of the eyewitnesses were wrong in their recall: the newspapers were wrong; Robert Oswald was wrong; the students were wrong; the Vice-Principal was wrong. That level of argumentation will not hold up under the weight of testimony that is corroborated by multiple witnesses. You wonder above why this extremely mundane instance of a boy's enrollment at a school would be so threatening to members of this forum? Good question. James

2 hours ago, John Butler said: IMO, that's not quite true. It was sent in an hour to the AP, but not to newspapers all over the world. It's first showing was with Walter Cronkite. They had several hours afterwards to realize there were problems and remake the photo. It didn't go on the air until about 5:35 CST with Uncle Walter. That's time to make a fraud and re-wire it to the AP or whoever several times over. This is what I recall. My memory is not as good as once past. If I am wrong on this, please correct. John, On this point about the Altgens 6, I must agree with Jeremy. I was indeed a member of the organization called the Oswald Innocence Campaign because I admired the idea of a group of people dedicated to the study of Oswald. But I was surprised at the emphasis being placed on a single photograph used as an attempt to demonstrate Oswald's innocence. As a result, I decided to research one of the afternoon papers that published the Altgens' photo on November 22, 1963. The paper was the Racine Journal-Times. Many details suggested to me that this was one of the earliest newspapers to run the Altgens6 photo on the day of the JFK assassination. It was an afternoon paper in which customers regularly received their papers in the late afternoon. The edition of November 22 provides very early coverage of the assassination with the main news content reporting the death of the president, but with no details about a suspect. In this early edition, it was reported that a police officer (and a secret service agent!) had been shot at a location away from the scene of the assassination. But there was no mention of a suspect by this time, and even the name of the deceased police officer was not mentioned. I read through the entire paper and could not find a single reference to the name of Oswald. The paper listed the alleged murder weapon as a 30-30 rifle! I was able to contact and interview three of the newspaper's staff members who were involved in producing the afternoon edition of the Racine Journal-Times on the day of the assassination. The newspaper's editor informed me that he was working "in the slot" on November 22. (The expression "in the slot" describes the role of the copy editor in charge of the design and layout for that day's newspaper.) He made the decision to run the Altgens6 photo; he chose AP story; and he prepared the front-page layout of the paper. The editor confirmed to me that by 12:30pm, his afternoon newspaper was ready for printing when the first reports of the JFK shooting came off the wires. For the next hour, the editor and his staff prepared a new front page as the news bulletins were arriving. There were three employees revising the front page, or "working on the rim," in a kind of round table. The decision for the selection of the Altgens6 photo was made by the editor, who indicated to me that there was only a small number of photos received during the first hour after the assassination. When I asked him if he wrote the caption for the Altgens6 photo that appeared in his paper, he recalled that he pretty much ran with the information provided by the AP photo machine. Indeed, the caption of the Racine paper has the same gist as the AP caption with only minor modifications. In the all-important timeline, it is clear that the Altgens6 photo was received in the Racine office no later than 1:30pm along with the other news bulletins, and the photo became the centerpiece of the first page of the paper. The final layout of the front page was completed by 1:45pm. The editor personally handled the Altgens6 photo and assigned it to his assistant working in the photo room. Once received in Racine over the news wire, the Altgens6 photo never left the small news building prior to the time of publication of the edition of November 22. The editor believes that the new front page with (a) the Altgens6 photo, (b) the AP wire story, and (c) Tex Reynolds's short column was prepared by 1:45pm. At that time, the press run began, and the printed papers were distributed around the normal time. The editor believes that on November 22, 1963, the newspapers were being sold on the streets of Racine shortly after 2:00pm, and home delivery subscribers would have received their papers by 4:00pm. From the chronology above, it is obvious that there was no time for the intricate alterations on the photo to be made, as some of the members of the Oswald Innocence Campaign were claiming. Because the hypothesis of Oswald's innocence based on the photo alteration was clearly untenable, I suggested that the focus of the group shift to other issues related to Oswald. Because that proposal was unacceptable, I resigned my membership in the group. Despite the amateurish nature of the organization, I nonetheless applaud the idea of a group of people dedicated to studying the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, a neglected area of JFK studies. I also shared engaging correspondence with such members as Vincent Salandria and Jim Marrs. James

Steve, As a follow-up to your research into the uses of the name Harvey Lee Oswald, I came across a conference paper delivered by Peter Dale Scott in July 1996. Scott is a retired professor from Berkeley and one of the key figures who has brought the expression “Deep State” into common use. Here is a passage from Professor Scott’s conference presentation that is entitled “Oswald, Marine Corps Intelligence, and the Assault on the State Department”: “At least one of these G-2 records listed Oswald by a slightly different name. This alternative name, which eventually was used by at least four different military intelligence sources, was ‘Harvey Lee Oswald.’ This ‘Harvey Lee Oswald’ reference is no accidental anomaly, but part of an organized pattern, widely dispersed, that suggests an official intelligence deception (and possible dual filing system). Serial 02296-E of 27 Jun 60 is the earliest Harvey Lee Oswald reference we now possess of over two dozen, from the files of ONI, FBI, CIA, Army Intelligence, the Secret Service, the Mexican Secret Police (DFS), and the Dallas Police. A consistent pattern of behavior in these agencies since the assassination has been the tendency to suppress references to ‘Harvey Lee Oswald,’ and replace them by the more standard ‘Lee Harvey Oswald.’” Here are some takeaways from the paragraph above: (1) The references from as early as June 1960 to Harvey Lee Oswald in intelligence files have nothing to do with the JFK assassination because the transpositions of Oswald's name were occurring long before Kennedy was elected president. But they have everything to do with the Oswald Project of placing a Russian-speaking American asset in the Soviet Union. (2) A host of intelligence agencies were using the name Harvey Lee Oswald, and the apparent “dual filing system” implied a distinction between two different men. (3) For Scott, the use of the name Harvey Lee Oswald was “no accidental anomaly, but part of an organized pattern, widely dispersed, that suggests an official intelligence deception.” (4) A “consistent pattern” of suppressing the name Harvey Lee Oswald and replacing it with “Lee Harvey Oswald” followed the assassination. This implies that school records, records from the Marines, Social Security records, and any other references to “Harvey Lee Oswald” were likely changed in the historical record by the United States government. The paper of Peter Dale Scott may be read at this URL: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/S Disk/Scott Peter Dale/Item 02.pdf

Jim, The analysis you provide above is a compelling overview of the two Oswalds at the end of the Marine enlistment period. The same conflicts in the evidentiary record are apparent throughout the Marine years spanning 1956-59. Here is a synopsis drawn from your most recent article of the first ten months of enlistment where the Marine records clash and two eyewitnesses, Alan Felde and Daniel Patrick Powers, recalled two Oswalds in different places between October, 1956 and May, 1957: HARVEY’S EARLY TRAINING “From October, 1956 thru early May, 1957 HARVEY Oswald and Allen Felde were in California. In May, 1957, HARVEY Oswald and Allen Felde were transferred to the Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) school in Jacksonville, FL. Marine Corps Unit Diary #104-57 (pp 719, 724) confirm that Felde arrived in Jacksonville, FL on May 2, 1957. Following the assassination of President Kennedy the Dallas Police found a 7-page handwritten account of Oswald's background. HARVEY Oswald wrote that he had served in San Diego, CA from October 1956, to April, 1957 and at Camp Pendleton, CA in April and May, 1957. Felde's statement to the FBI, HARVEY Oswald's handwritten chronology, and the Marine Corps Unit diaries confirm that HARVEY Oswald and Felde were both in California and did not arrive in Jacksonville until May 2, 1957." LEE’S EARLY TRAINING “After graduating, LEE Oswald and 5 other marines were ordered to report to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, MS (radar school). They departed Jacksonville, FL by train on May 2 and arrived in Biloxi, MS on May 4. Marine Corps Unit Diary 105-57 (p 722) confirms that LEE Oswald departed Jacksonville for Biloxi, Mississippi on May 2. Daniel Patrick Powers was in charge of the 6-member group, which included Oswald. Reading from his Marine Corps orders, Powers told the Warren Commission that his group reported to the 3383rd student squadron, attended class # 08057 and received instruction in course # AB27037.” SUMMARY “We now know that when HARVEY Oswald and Allen Felde were in ITR training and Camp Pendelton in California thru the end of April 1957, at the same time LEE Oswald was on leave in February, attended school in Jacksonville in March and April, and on May 2nd boarded a train for Biloxi with fellow Marine Daniel Patrick Powers.” If only a very small number of Marines, such as Allen Felde, had been called to testify, the Warren Commission would have been confronted by a Pandora's Box of conflicting evidence pointing to the dual enlistment.

Jim, It is my understanding that John Armstrong will be talking about this fascinating topic of the Social Security contributions on a future podcast. Would you please keep us informed of the date and time? Thanks, James

Tony, The purpose of this thread is to engage in discussion about the evidence related to the two Oswalds and to engage in debate about the issues. The purpose of the thread is not to engage in parlor games. Yesterday, you wasted a lot time in attempting to use photographs to challenge the truth about the two Marguerite Oswalds. When I pressed you on the provenance of one photo, the best answer you could come up with was that the source of the photo came from Getty! Now, you have shifted your focus to the topic of Beauregard Junior High School. This topic has unlimited potential for discussion and debate. But it has no such potential if you persist in asking flippant questions like the one you raised above, and others that you know very well are unanswerable. Why don't you take the time to study the evidence of two Oswalds studying at the same school in spring 1954, then bring back a question or commentary based on either the abundant eyewitness testimony and/or the documents. If you do that, I will engage in discussion with you. If you persist with your game of "20 Questions," I will stop reading and responding to your posts. James

Sort of like what you do when you say the missing tooth in the Life Magazine photo is really a film defect. Sort of like what you do with ALL the H&L evidence. Sandy, Very well stated! Jim Hargrove wrote an extremely clear statement on 7/24 about how the photographs presented on his website are for ancillary purposes; they are not the primary basis for reaching conclusions from the articles: "Finally, no photos are going to be deleted from my website. I agree entirely with Dr. Norwood that photos by themselves don’t prove much of anything. They are too easy to misrepresent, among other things. John Armstrong dealt with photos by using evidence about the LHOs developed from documentary and witness sources to develop biographies. He then sometimes published photographs associated by the WC (and other “investigations”) and the National Archives with that Oswald, letting readers make up their own minds about the evidence. John agrees entirely that the photographic record may well have been highly manipulated." Anyone who carefully studies the articles on Jim's website will recognize that the narrative discussion and the arguments being made are not primarily dependent upon photographs. To my way of thinking, the most interesting facet of the photographic evidence related to Oswald is how the government and the mainstream media have used suspicious photographs for purposes of propaganda, such as the photos of men taken in Mexico City who clearly were not Oswald, or the notorious "backyard photo" that appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine on February 21, 1964. The photo caption reads, “Lee Oswald with the weapons he used to kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippit.” This conclusion was drawn by the editors of LIFE long before the Warren Commission had prepared its report, reinforcing to the public a perception of Oswald's guilt that has continued in the mainstream media to today. James