James Norwood

Bill, The double sightings are carefully documented by John Armstrong in his most recent article “Marine Corps and the Soviet Union”: https://harveyandlee.net/Marines/Marines.html In a presentation he gave last Thursday on Len Osanic’s show, John presented the evidence for two Oswalds in the Marines from the point of recruitment in October, 1956 through mid-1957. During this period, the eyewitness testimony of the Marine Alan Felde is linked to documentary evidence for the experiences of Harvey Oswald at boot camp and subsequent training. Marine Corps Unit Diaries confirm that Oswald and Felde were training together in this period, which conflicts with the documentation of the training Lee Oswald was receiving at different times. Lee’s training experiences are documented by records and supported by the testimony of Daniel Patrick Powers. In the article, John weaves his sources into the following narrative account: 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.” 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.” 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.” In every instance above, it is the combination of eyewitness testimony and documentary evidence that makes the case for the men’s dual training experiences. The article continues by exploring the evidence related to the two Oswald Marines until the time of the so-called defection in October, 1959.

John, Thank you for the clarification of the usage of TAD (Temporary Additional Duty) and for your good chronology. I agree with Bill Simpich that all research findings should be subjected to the "toughest scrutiny." So, let's look at the comparative evidence and especially the sources for two Oswalds at two places at the same time--Lee in Atsugi and Harvey in Taiwan. LEE IN ATSUGI (SEPTEMBER 20, 1958 THROUGH OCTOBER 6, 1958) • September 20 (official doctor's report at Atsugi Station Hospital): "Still has profuse disch-somewhat clearer. Received course of penicillin ending 2 days ago." (doctor's initials "J.C.") • September 22-23 (official doctor's report at Atsugi Station Hospital): "Still present...burning urination." (no doctor signature or initial) • September 29 (official doctor's report at Atsugi Station Hospital): "Good response to therapy---has been doing much heavy lifting." (doctor signature Dr. Kuchen) • October 6 (official doctor's report at Atsugi Station Hospital): "severe heavy discharge...has been doing heavy lifting recently." (no doctor signature or initial) • October 6 (Marine Unit Diary 1-58 139) reveals that Lee is dropped from MACS 1 and reassigned to H&MS in preparation for his transfer back to the United States. HARVEY IN TAIWAN (SEPTEMBER 14, 1958 THROUGH OCTOBER 6, 1958) • September 14 (Marine Corps Unit Diary 151-58 [744]): Oswald and his unit depart Japan aboard the USS Skagit. • In 1964, the Warren Commission received a memo from the Assistant General Counsel for the Department of Defense, indicating that Oswald departed Atsugi on September 14, 1958; he was at Ping Tung, North Taiwan on September 30; and he returned to Atsugi on October 5. (Warren Commission Report, 684 and Commission Exhibit 1961, Volume XXIII, p. 5) • Interview with Lieutenant Charles R. Rhodes places Rhodes with Oswald in Taiwan (HSCA Report, p. 353: 29) • 1959 UPI Interview of Oswald by Aline Mosby in Moscow in which Oswald stated that he had served in Taiwan: "After I finished high school, I joined the Marine Corps at 17. I was in Japan, Formosa [Taiwan], the Philippines. I was discharged when I was 20, in Santa Ana, California." (Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. XXII, 705) • October 6: Marine Corps Diary 158-58 [762] lists Oswald's location on October 6, 1958 as: "Ping tung (North) Taiwan." Jim Hargrove has provided a number of the actual documents of this evidentiary record in his posts above.

Jim, Thank you very much for your post above. Yes, there are so many areas where John's research has contributed to the JFK case that are often discussed on this forum. I know that a previous thread was dedicated to his extremely detailed study of the rifle. Also, I listened to your excellent talk on Len Osanic's program on 7/23, and I appreciated your work on Kerry Thornley. It was a great program! Some of the listeners wrote some very good questions. Thanks, James

Jim, Thanks for your great summary of the evidence placing Harvey and Lee in Taiwan and Atsugi concurrently. In John's presentation last evening, he also shared the detailed eyewitness testimony of Marines who spent considerable time with Oswald. The smoking gun in that area is certainly the recall of Alan Felde and Zack Stout. Starting with boot camp in San Diego, Felde recalled moving around the country with Harvey, while Lee was concurrently in different locations for his early training. Stout served with Lee for a lengthy period in the Far East at times when Harvey was in different locations, including an inexplicably lengthy leave of absence when he was in New Orleans. Can you imagine how different the historical record of Oswald would be if Felde and Stout had only been called to testify by the Warren Commission? James

Jim, I listened to the program last evening, and it was terrific. There are many points to discuss about the fascinating topic of Oswald in the Marines. In the program, a theme that really intrigued me was that, beyond the documentary evidence, it is the eyewitness testimony of former Marines who (a) place the two Oswalds in different locations at the same time during their training and (b) in their descriptions of Oswald, it is clear that the two Oswalds were different physically, in their personalities, and in their interests. And this is not merely presented as a "theory." It is meticulously detailed and supported. James

Tony, By authenticity, I meant something much more specific then Getty, such as a record of where and when the photo was taken and by whom, such as Oswald's mug shot when he was arrested in New Orleans in 1963, or a high school yearbook photo that may be verified by dint of the publication in the book and by other students. I just don't get involved with speculation on photos. The discussions are never conclusive, and even our little exchanges this evening have already lapsed into pure guess work, such as "maybe" the moles were airbrushed out. There is rarely consensus about anything when it comes to photos. Perhaps some of the other users on this site will have greater insights into the photos than I can offer. James

Tony, Over the years, I have seen too many students of the JFK case get suckered into drawing false conclusions based exclusively on photos. I would not for a minute begin to draw any conclusions about the three photos with the pearls without first understanding in detail the provenance of each photo. It is not enough to merely accept as bona fide evidence the notation "original photo." Who is saying that photos #1 and 2 above are "original." That needs to be demonstrated by careful research to understand when and where the photo was taken and whether it is genuine evidence. I don't care if the photos are original, but I do care that they are authentic. For these reasons, in the Oswald case, I don't wade into photos...as fascinating as they are! James

Michah, There are at least two photos of a Marguerite Oswald with no discernible mole. They are the 1957 photo of Marguerite taken at Paul's Shoes and the 1960 photo of her with grey hair. I personally do not rely on photo evidence for anything definitive when it comes to understanding Oswald. My main area of interest lies in researching documents and eyewitness testimony. I do not believe that we have enough photos of Marguerite to draw any firm conclusions about her just by looking at the photos. One point that might be relevant: After Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby, the FBI moved quickly to confiscate all photographs in possession of Marina Oswald. Her two daughters, June and Rachel, grew up with no family photo album, no photos of their dad, and no photos any relative, including their grandmother. It might seem appropriate to collect that kind of evidence. But it is suspicious and raises questions about why the photos were never returned to the family. Concurrently, Robert Oswald estranged himself from his two nieces, who, as far I know, never spoke with their uncle again in his lifetime. To my way of thinking, that is the kind of evidence that tells us more about the Oswald family dynamic than the photos. James

Micah, Are you referring to the mole of Marguerite Oswald? If so, that has been discussed as a recurring physical trait of the Marguerite imposter. See this article and scroll down the page to the last major batch of photos of Marguerite: https://harveyandlee.net/Moms/Moms.html James

Jim, The Marine Corps and Soviet Union essay is a great, new contribution to your website. I was especially interested in the human element of the story of Oswald in the Marines. There is exceptional documentation placing the two Oswalds in different locations at the same times. But it is the testimony of the Marines who clearly remembered two different people that I find most compelling. Of course, there are many, many other topics to discuss in this outstanding new essay. James

Aldin, You need to write your posts with greater respect to fellow researchers. If you are incapable of doing that, I won't be wasting time with you in either reading your posts or providing responses. James

You're the only one here saying that the supposed purpose of the Oswald Project was to assassinate President Kennedy. None of us here believe anything like that. Sandy, You raise an absolutely essential point here. People need to understand that the idea of the two Oswalds originally had nothing to do with JFK, but rather with a Cold War project to send a Russian-speaking asset into the Soviet Union. A legend had to be created to fool the KGB, and it succeeded insofar as Oswald was able to reside in the Soviet Union and bring back intelligence after a two-and-a-half-year stay. The second period of creating the Oswald legend began after the Cuban Missile Crisis when evidence begins to point to Oswald being groomed as the scapegoat in the carefully planned assassination of President Kennedy. One of the key figures to begin to uncover this evidence was New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. I have attempted to unfold the different evidentiary periods succinctly in my article "Lee Harvey Oswald: The Legend and the Truth”: https://harveyandlee.net/J_Norwood/Legend.html

Jim, Thanks for your careful breakdown of the attendance data above. One of the most fascinating details about the part-time student in New York comes from an interview of psychiatrist Dr. Milton Kurian, who spoke with a boy named Lee Harvey Oswald in 1953. In the interview, Dr. Kurian recalled the child telling him that "he never went to school but, on occasion, his brother would substitute for him and take his place in school." Of course, Oswald's two brothers were far too old to have been the substitute; it had to have been a much younger boy who was the tag-team partner. The entirety of Dr. Kurian's interview may be viewed within the article "The Early Lives of Harvey and Lee" at this site: https://harveyandlee.net/Early/Early.html During the interview, Dr. Kurian recalled that the boy in the room answered to the name of "Harvey." Researcher Steve Thomas has documented on this forum 44 instances when Oswald's name appears as "Harvey Lee Oswald." I had difficulty in understanding the gist of Aldin's critique because the numbers he circled are so fuzzy on the internet document. But, I admired the survey he has prepared for another thread, and I have cast my vote! James

Paul, Thank you for the incisive wrap-up of the evidence related to Lee Oswald, who likely comes in close proximity to Ruth Paine on multiple occasions. In my reading of Laura Kittrell's manuscript, there is the indication that either Ruth Paine or a Ruth Paine lookalike accompanied the second Oswald (Lee) to the office visit at the Dallas employment bureau. Thanks again, James

Mark, Here is a summary of our debate activities during the past two weeks: (1) You posted a 6,822-word critique of the Stripling evidence entitled "The Stripling Episode - Harvey & Lee: A Critical Review" (2) I responded with a 2,500-rebuttal entitled "James Norwood’s Point-By-Point Rebuttal of Mark Stevens, 'The Stripling Episode - Harvey & Lee: A Critical Review'" (3) You responded with a 4,650-word screed to my rebuttal that appears on this thread. (4) After you solicited "feedback" on your response, I wrote you my honest feedback. (5) You wrote a mocking reaction to my feedback above. Now, you want another chance at a debate, requesting that we start from scratch with a convoluted plan to "pose X amount of questions to one another and whoever can decide what the evidence supports and what it does not." Please be advised that I will not be wasting any more of my time in debate with you on this subject. On this forum, I am primarily interested in interacting with individuals on the subject of this thread: the far-reaching influence of Harvey and Lee. I am not interested in spending my time with those who wish to create a toxic environment. You have the totality of my current thinking on the Stripling topic, and you are welcome to respond to any of the eight topics below to your heart's content: 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.

Sandy, As you know, the subject that interests me the most about Oswald is the story of how, at an early age, he came to such proficiency in the Russian language. Ruth Paine was studying Russian, and she welcomed the opportunity to practice and learn from the Oswalds. Based on Oswald's exceptional command of the Russian language, I am suggesting that Ruth had to have known that the boy born in New Orleans who had dropped out of school in the tenth grade would not have the mastery of such a difficult language as Russian. In her Warren Commission testimony, Paine even recalls Oswald entering the Paine house and greeting his two little girls, Baby Junie and little Rachel, with a salutation in Russian. I concur that Paine's instructions would be compartmentalized, and I know of no evidence to suggest that she had intimate knowledge of the Oswald project. At the same time, the ties of Ruth Hyde Paine to the American intelligence community ran deep, as documented in Jim DiEugenio's extremely detailed book The Kennedy Assassination--The Evidence Today and Joseph McBride's outstanding book Into the Nightmare. I have not been following a current thread on the Ed Forum devoted exclusively to the Paines. But you might find more bibliographic information from the participants on that thread. If so, I hope you will report it back here. James

Richard, You raise an important question about how much Ruth Paine knew about Oswald. Her Warren Commission comment implies that this man answered to the name of Harvey. It is not clear if she actually knew Lee personally. But she was clearly aware that the defection story was a ruse and that this man who lived briefly in her home and spoke flawless Russian was not the real Lee Harvey Oswald. There is evidence to suggest that she or an imposter was working behind the scenes to create a legend of Oswald prior to the assassination. She played a role in the circumstances of his employment at the Texas School Book Depository. And, most importantly, she was instrumental after the assassination in bringing forth incriminating posthumous evidence against Oswald.

Steve, Very nice breakdown of the ninth of your forty-four examples of known uses of the name "Harvey Lee Oswald." Another point to make about so many instances where the first name appears as Harvey is the human element. The usage is not merely the way the name appears in official documents. Rather, people are actually calling this man by the name Harvey, and he would appear to prefer to be called Harvey over Lee. A particularly striking example comes from Ruth Hyde Paine. In her Warren Commission testimony, Paine informed attorney Albert E. Jenner, Jr. that “I didn’t know Lee had a middle name until I had occasion to fill out forms for Marina in Parkland Hospital,” [1] suggesting that his preferred name was always Lee. But she was caught in the lie when she recalled a tender moment between Oswald and his daughters, wherein she was thinking of him in the familiar not as Lee, but as Harvey: “He went out to buy groceries, came in with a cheery call to his two girls, saying ‘Yabutchski,’ which means girls, the Russian word for girls, as he came in the door. It was more like Harvey than I had seen him before.” [2] In publishing the interviews with Paine, The Warren Commission neatly separated her statement that his preferred name was always Lee in Volume IX from the moment that she let slip that she thought of him as "Harvey" in Volume III. [1] Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. IX, 359. [2] Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. III, 8.

Mark, Here is some feedback for you. In an earlier post, you implied that you were interested in a debate, and I took you up on your offer. I have read all of your comments above, but I cannot discern any issues that you still want to debate. A debate is not so much about errors, but rather the development of an argument. I am sorry, but your writing is not persuasive, and it is shot through with a transparent bias. Amazingly, after all of your abstruse writing, you appear unable to put any of the issues on the table. Your writing is also filled with wild speculation that is neither supported by the evidence nor by sound reasoning. Another user on this site referred to your reasoning as comparable to “The Twilight Zone.” While I might not select that metaphor, it does seem like a number of your sentences carry a meaning that only you understand. If you are hearing from multiple forum participants that your writing is not persuasive and you are willing to accept honest feedback, then you should take what we are saying to heart. James

Jim, Yes, I am enormously surprised by the degree of animosity that exists on this forum. In my rebuttal of Mark Stevens' critique of the Stripling evidence, I attempted to respond to him respectfully. But, I must confess that his writing and thinking, as expressed in his critique, were some of the most incoherent and bizarre that I have ever read in my life. James

This thread is dedicated to showing how an understanding of the two Oswalds has served to finally clarify what has heretofore been complete confusion in orthodox biographical profiles of Lee Harvey Oswald. The study of this topic unfolds a narrative that extends from shortly after the end of World War II through the day of the assassination of President Kennedy. The case is made in John Armstrong’s book Harvey and Lee and in extremely detailed essays on the website https://harveyandlee.net This thread invites contributions from those who have studied Harvey and Lee and discovered how the understanding of this topic advances our knowledge of the JFK assassination. For example, researcher Steve Thomas has compiled a fascinating list of 44 instances when LHO was identified as “Harvey Lee Oswald.” It may be that there is a plausible explanation for all 44 examples. But the only way to arrive at that conclusion is to study each example in the original context of its usage. By contrast, unfounded attacks on research into the two Oswalds have been made by untutored, opinionated posters on this forum who have clearly not studied the book or the articles. One user named Jeremy Bojczuk demonstrates his ignorance of the literature of the JFK assassination when he writes that Harvey and Lee “hasn’t [had] an impact with JFK assassination specialists even after more than two decades of promotion.” The exact opposite is true. In the groundbreaking publication of JFK and the Unspeakable, James W. Douglass brings his analysis of Oswald to a close with the two Oswalds who are apprehended in the Texas Theater, one Oswald taken out the front door and the second through the rear exit in the alleyway. Douglass's analysis closely follows the coverage of the Texas Theater of John Armstrong that was published five years prior to Douglass’s book. James DiEugenio, one of the most meticulous of JFK researchers, includes a chapter written by Armstrong in the invaluable book The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X, which DiEugenio co-edited with Lisa Pease, another exemplary scholar of the assassinations of the 1960s. The exceptional researcher Dick Russell includes a chapter in his book On the Trail of the JFK Assassins entitled “The Lingering ‘Double Oswald’ Mystery.” And it is impossible to fully appreciate Russell’s monumental study The Man Who Knew Too Much without a basic understanding of the two Oswalds. John Armstrong appears regularly on the programs of Len Osanic on Black Op Radio. Osanic produced one of the finest JFK documentary series at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination in his 50 Reasons for 50 Years episodes. This is only a short list of “specialists” who have recognized the significance of Harvey and Lee. The reality is not that Harvey and Lee has never gained traction over the past twenty years, but that the JFK assassination has been marginalized in the mainstream media and book publications to the degree that, with the passing of time, we are in danger of forgetting the significance of this turning point in our history. As a starting point for this thread, I have written a point-by-point rebuttal to a nearly incomprehensible critique of the evidence of Oswald having attended Stripling Junior High School written by a user named Mark Stevens. The link to Stevens’ critique is: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26639-the-stripling-episode-harvey-lee-a-critical-review/ The rebuttal appears below. ************ 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.

Steve, This is exceptional work! You've really invested some time in locating these examples. An extremely valuable contribution! Thank you!!! James

Steve, Thanks for your note! If you have taken the time to compile 40 examples of "Harvey Lee" references, that is an important research contribution. If possible, could you post them in list form on this thread or send them to me in a private message? Many thanks, James

As difficult as it is to imagine, there is always the possibility that new documents may surface that touch on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. Through their kind assistance, a journalist in Fort Worth and a family in Texas have shared with me the "Application for Enlistment and Individual Data Card" signed by Lee Harvey Oswald on October 24, 1956. This is a separate document from the official Marine enlistment certificate published in the Hearings and Exhibits of the Warren Report. Below is a scan of the original document, which I do not believe has been published anywhere prior to this date: You will notice on the line of the entry of the recruit's name that it was first typed as HARVEY LEE, then typed over as LEE HARVEY. For those who have read John Armstrong's book Harvey and Lee, the number of occasions in which the names of "Lee Harvey" and "Harvey Lee" have been transposed in this case is mind-boggling, and the pattern continued right up to the day of the assassination. During the afternoon of November 22, 1963, Lieutenant Jack Revill of the Criminal Intelligence Section of the Dallas police met with an official of the Naval Intelligence in Dealey Plaza. When Revill returned to Dallas police headquarters, he typed up a list of the names of employees of the Texas School Book Depository. At the head of the list was the name HARVEY LEE OSWALD. The second page of the data card will follow this post in a separate template.