John Kowalski

John B: They must have kept a list of names of all displaced people who emigrated to the US after the war. Maybe Harvey is on one of these lists, but if he is his name will not be Harvey.

John B: Do you recall if anyone reviewed a city directory to see who lived there? Found a book on Internet Archive called Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era by Lauren Kessler. In it she said that Bentley learned to use telephone booths when making calls as part of espionage tradecraft. Book also mentioned that when she met the FBI to report on someone the agent who interviewed her wondered by a New Yorker would travel to Connecticut to report on someone. This pattern of behavior is the same as the Tippit call. If it was her she was just doing things they way she did it in the past.

David: Tina told me that when she spoke to the FBI on the phone the agent would stop the call and watch the TV as there was a football or other sporting event on, then go back tot he telephone and continue to speak to her. This FBI agent did not take call to seriously.

David: Where did you find the photos? Have been researching Eckdahl and found some records but no pics of his son. Research on his time in China could provide some interesting leads, if it can be found.

David: 1947 then is the earliest appearance of Marguerite and Harvey. So much info about them is available after that date but not before. The only other record is the 1941 letter about M.Oswald and Nazis in New Jersey. Any ideas as to where we could look to find info on her prior to 1947? have you ever spoken to John A. about his search for her origins?

David: Shanghai was at this time a center of international espionage. Shanghai was controlled by various foreign governments and I found it interesting that Eckdahl, who would later be involved with LHO, lived there.

John B: She is a good candidate for the Tippit call. She certainly knew who the NYC communists were and probably knew or knew of Louis Weinstock.

David: Interesting story about call traces but with the national security state's hunt for subversives they probably would have developed the ability to do so. In 1963 long-distance calls would have a record because this additional charge would have to be paid by the telephone subscriber. The telephone companies also had the ability at that time to charge LD calls to another number. David Ferrie did this quite often, calling a number from somewhere else and having the LD charges added to his telephone bill. https://archive.org/details/1963longdistancecalls

John B: Do you know what the earliest date that John A. has for Marguerite and Oswald been seen together? A lot of effort ha been expended examining Harvey's origins, have you attempted to locate Marguerite's origins?

John B: The FBI probably knows who the caller is because they could ask the Tippit's telephone company for their telephone records. These records would provide the numbers of all people who called them. Tina made notes on the calls and given that she received a number of calls, the FBI could have matched the dates and times of the calls to the telephone records to obtain the telephone number the woman used to make the calls. If the woman did not make the call from a telephone booth, then the telephone records would have a telephone number and the name of the person that number belonged to. The documents John A. located did not include this information. No doubt, the FBI did not reveal everything they knew about the call.

You make a good point about the 15 year time frame. The Gardos left 15 years prior and she remembered them. Weinstock, however may still have been in NYC in 1963. Can you tell me more about Elizabeth Bentley, how did you find out about her? If she was a government informer then perhaps she was tasked with calling the Tippits to "help them." I raised this issue with Tina Tippit Brown, suggesting that maybe the purpose of the call may have been to smear Oswald as a communist. If the caller was not Elizabeth Bentley then maybe someone in her circle of communist fellow-travelers / informers may know the caller.

Spoke to Tina Tippit Brown, who was married to Jack Dempsey Tippit. She does not recall too much about he event but has some notes that she can't access right now because she is settling her late-husband's estate. She does not know who the woman caller was and did not recognize her accent because she was from Texas and was not familiar with foreign accents. The only accents she knew were Mexican ones. She never met JD Tippit. They may have been be distant relatives but even that may be doubtful because there are different ways the name is spelled. Woman called here several times, always in a rush, fearing that she will be overheard. The woman caller said she called because she wanted to help the Tippit family. She said that she did not know the Blair family. In a prior post I had asked for contacts in Lubbock Texas so I could contact her daughter. Will not be doing so, really doubt that she will know anymore than her mother knows.

John B: The letters also lack a sense of continuity. If they had not written to each other from 1948 to 1971, though there is a letter dated 1964 saying that Grace visited the US, they would have had a lot of catching up i.e. telling them about the things they had been doing for so many years. This does not exist in the letters. If they did write during these years, these letters were not included in the collection. Given their surveillance by the FBI they may have established a secret channel for communicating with them. One method they could have used is to get some else to send a letter to a third person unknown to the FBI who would send it to the Gardos. This would allow the letters to evade FBI letter-opening operations. You mentioned that your wife enjoys genealogical research, what websites does she do her research on; Ancestry, Family Search. Has she ever been on Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness? I used this one when researching my Albert Osborne. There are people who will do genealogical research for free in local libraries and archives. Does she have any contacts in New Jersey? John A. found a letter that mentioned a M. Oswald connected to Nazis in New Jersey in 1941. In Jean Stafford's A Mother In History she said that her accent was from New Jersey or New York. If she does know of them I would like to contact them. This could be a good place to more research on her origins.

John B. looks like 60s.

Everyone: There is one last research opportunity that may be worth exploring before moving on from the Tippit call. As I mentioned in a previous post, I contacted Tina Tippit Brown on LinkedIn and also sent her a letter. So far no response from her. I tracked down her daughter, Teresa aka Terri Ranck who now lives in Lubbock Texas, which is where their family and their distant relative officer JD Tippit, came from. Am hesitant about contacting Terri without trying to locate someone who may know her first. Having an intermediary may facilitate getting a response from her or her mother. I know that this is a long shot but does anyone know someone who has friends or relatives in Lubbock Texas where she lives or Bridgeport CT where her mother lives? In my letter to Tina Tippit Brown I asked the following questions: 1. Can you confirm if she mentioned a person named Weinstock and another person named Kardos, Gardos or a name similar to it? Did she say where Weinstock and Kardos worked? 2. Did she tell you how she obtained this information? 3. Do you recall if the woman had an accent, if yes what type of accent was it? 4. Did you keep a written copy of the report you made to the FBI? If yes, may I have a copy of it? 5. Did you or your husband do any research on this telephone call after contacting the FBI? 6. Did you report this telephone call to the media, and if yes did they publish a story about it? 7. What was Jack Dempsey’s relationship to JD Tippit?

Jim: No need to help offset the costs of box 5 folder 2 which contains the Blair-Gardos correspondence. The copying fee has already been paid and the files their files are included in my last post where I provided a link to internet archive. In this thread a lot of effort has been expended on the Gardos connection and their may not be much more info about H & L that can be gleaned from reviewing their papers. If you can visit Madison sometime, it would be interesting to see what other information there is about them.

John B.: Your comment about the dates of the letters is very interesting, why did they not keep up communication after they departed for Hungary? Not sure what to make of this absence of contact between them but the Blairs being communists, they would have have known that letters they sent to the Gardos in Hungary were probably being read by both the FBI, as part of Cointelpro and the Hungarian government, so they had to be careful about writing letters and what they said in them.

Jim: Had another look at the Blair papers finding aid. Most of their documents pertain to their political activities. There is a lot of general correspondence and family correspondence that have not been examined but based on what we have already read, including the 100 pages copied by my DP contact, it is doubtful that we will find anything. However, if everyone wants to look at these files, I will ask the Wisconsin Historical Society to give me an estimate.

John B. Am always glad to make a contribution to this very important thread. Contacted Jack Dempsey's Tippit's ex-wife, Tina Tippit Brown on LinkedIn and also sent her a letter. She still lives in the same home that she and her husband lived in when they received the call. Still no response from her but will update everyone if she does respond.

Have uploaded the Blair papers to Internet Archive. The documents include information about the Gardos family and Blair family genealogy. https://archive.org/details/mss234fredandmarykeithblairpapersbox5folder232pages

John B: Amazing photo, where did you find it?

Yes it does, this material is biographical, there is info about where his family came from but nothing about Gardos. There is a file about Gardos but he did not have time to copy it. I have contacted Wisconsin Historical Society about copying the Gardos file and will update you when they get back to me.

I was wondering why you were spending so much time with discussing H & L with people who will never ever accept John Armstrong's theory.

Some of the Blair papers have been copied. My contact did not have time to copy everything so he will return another time and copy some more. https://archive.org/details/blair-papers-folder-1

I have been researching the Tippit family to see if I can get more info about the Tippit call. Found Jack Dempsey Tippit's former wife on LinkedIn. Will update you if she responds.