Paul Jolliffe
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Posts posted by Paul Jolliffe
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11 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:
French espionage activities in the USA - I’ve never seen this before. Astounding. Hoover calls Oswald in MC a false story - that I knew.
French espionage in US - two possibilities come to mind. First is Souetre in Dallas. But as that’s not really espionage I’ll go with DeVosjoli, who was working with Angleton prior to his defection to the US. About what? Soviet infiltration into the French Intelligence services. Golitsyn has Angleton’s ear, and he reported the same thing, along with other allegations of a soviet penetration, most notably Harold Wilson. One has to wonder what DeVosjoli has to do with JFK’s assassination. Well, one thing for sure - DeVosjoli left DC by car immediately after the JFK hit and drove to Acapulco, or Dallas (most recently heard PD Scott allege this alternative destination) to see Colonel Frank M Brandstetter in one place or the other, a member (if we are to believe his two biographies) of Jack Crichton’s 488th Military Intelligence Detachment. Brandy and DeVosjoli had become close during their stay in Havana when Castro’s revolutionary forces took over that city. French Intelligence may have had Soviet moles. But another thing they had were connections to DeGaulle’s militant opposition and to French and Corsican assassins. Here we come back to Souetre.
I can’t help but think of Hoover’s memo to George Bush of the CIA. Bush and Crichton were clearly in cahoots, probably as off the shelf financial backers of Operation 40, but also in the Texas Republican Party. Hoover’s memo sounds like a warning to George Bush, basically saying I know what you did, so don’t screw with me.
I might as well mention here that Oswald may not have been in Mexico City or visiting Silvia Odio. It’s false logic to say it was one or the other.
Paul B.,
It's technically true we don't know with absolute certainty where our "Oswald" was between late September and early October, and therefore he might not have been in either Mexico City or visiting Sylvia Odio in Dallas at her apartment.
However . . .
the Odio episode is very, very revealing, if we take the time to dissect it fully.
Remember, it involves two parts: the visit to her apartment door in Dallas on Thursday, Sept. 26, PLUS a follow up phone call a day later.
1. During the actual visit, NOTHING was said or implied to Sylvia Odio about "Oswald" as a potential presidential assassin. While he was standing right there, no one said anything aloud, nor even hinted it!
If this visit (in the company of two other men) was by someone only pretending to be our "Oswald" to further portray the patsy as a future assassin to potential witnesses, they could not have done a worse job. Nothing in anyone's behavior that night - when "Oswald" was standing right there! - indicated this "Oswald" was a future killer! That night, the framers - all three of them, if none of them were truly our "Oswald" - framed no one!
A logical absurdity, if none were really our "Oswald."
2. It was only a day later during the follow-up phone call to Odio that "Leopoldo" revealed all the incriminating details about "Oswald" as a crazy potential killer of JFK. In other words, "Leopoldo" described "Oswald" as an assassin only when "Oswald" was not there to refute it!
Leopoldo even explicitly stated to Odio that this "Oswald" was not knowledgeable of everything "Leopoldo" and "Angelo" had in mind for him: "You know our idea is to introduce him to the underground in Cuba . . ."
Logically, we should conclude that the effect of the Odio episode was to implant in the witness's mind the belief that the "Oswald" she met in person was a potential assassin. But we must remember that effect required two parts: a physical visit (so that she could see "Oswald") and then the phone call (in which "Oswald" was described as a JFK hater/assassin.)
Why was it done that way?
Because our "Oswald" really did accompany "Leopoldo" and "Angelo" to the Sylvia Odio's door at 1024 Magellan Circle in the Crestwood Apartments in Dallas during the evening of Thursday, September 26, 1963. And he had to be kept ignorant of the patsy role that he'd already been selected to play.
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1 hour ago, David Josephs said:
In the new release of docs I found a discussion with AMMUG-1, a defector who described the Standard Procedures at an Embassy staffed with intel assets when someone not knowing the "password" tried to make their way to Cuba shows up.... Especially an American wanting to go ....
Duran reiterates the bogus 15 day visa expiration timeline which is strange wince she should know better... with his paperwork supposedly showing a Sept 26th entry to Mexico, she should know the 15 days started then, not the day he gets his tourist visa...
Below that are the words of Duran and Azcue - both describing a person who was definitely not our Oswald.... so if this is the case, how did Oswald's photos get onto the applications Duran took...??
David asked: " Below that are the words of Duran and Azcue - both describing a person who was definitely not our Oswald.... so if this is the case, how did Oswald's photos get onto the applications Duran took...??
David, we don't know for sure, but the best guess is that the "Oswald" impostor had them with him, ready to go when he arrived for the first time on Friday, September 27 at the Cuban Consulate.
As I recall, Sylvia Duran (Tirado) first gave him the forms to fill out with the requirement for a photograph. The "Oswald" impostor then left and returned some time later with the photo. (Yet the FBI was unable to locate a photo shop anywhere even remotely close to the Cuban offices at which the photo could have been taken - "Oswald's" departure and return to the consulate was a charade.)
So why didn't the "Oswald" impostor readily produce the photo the first time?
Well, I can't say for sure, but I bet it was too risky to pull a photo out of his pocket that wasn't him. She would have to staple it to the application forms right there, and she would probably look at the photo somewhat. The risk of scrutiny was reduced if our impostor took the form with him and then returned with the photo already stapled and ready to go. (Maybe a little crumpled or smudged, too.)
Another possibility is that once U.S. Intelligence got their hands on copies of the "Oswald" visa application, they switched the original photo of the impostor with a photo of our "Oswald".
Either way, our fall guy wasn't down in Mexico City, making an ass of himself at the Cuban and Soviet Consulates. Remember, the CIA told the Mexican DRF to torture Sylvia Duran (Tirado) . . . twice! . . . to make sure she would "identify" the man with whom she interacted was "Oswald."
Azcue denied "Oswald" was that man right from the start, and Duran later told Anthony Summers that our Dallas "Oswald" was NOT the guy she saw/talked to/argued with at the Cuban Consulate on Friday, September 27, 1963.
Just my guess, but then, not even the Warren Commission could say where the photo came from. They didn't even try.
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33 minutes ago, Bill Simpich said:
Jim,
My position is the same as always - I don't know if Oswald was in Mexico City or not. The evidence is wobbly on that point, to put it mildly.
Whether or not Oswald was there - the piggy-backing theory remains the same.
I believe the evidence shows that Duran, Kostikov and company spoke to someone calling himself on Oswald on September 27-28, up till the late morning of the 28th, when the man calling himself Oswald left the Soviet embassy. At that point, I believe that person had given up or competed his task.
The phone calls after that are what I call the piggy-backing. I believe that those phone calls are faked, by someone piggy-backing on the story being told by the man visiting the Soviet and Cuban consulates and introducing himself as Oswald and showing what he claimed to be Oswald's passport.
Bill,
Clarify something for me: were any actual phone calls placed by the "Oswald" impostor to either consulate in Mexico City? Or, were the tapes of "Oswald's phone calls "(translated by Mr. and Mrs. Boris Tarasoff) created after the assassination and then hidden? Do the extant transcripts themselves represent real phone calls from the impostor on September 27, 28 and October 1, or are they artifacts, created later to replace the original transcripts?
Why the hell do the extant transcripts read as if everyone involved was a moron?
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14 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:
I believe it's clear from all the evidence that neither of the two Oswalds was the
person masquerading for LHO in Mexico City.
I agree.
I tend also to agree with those who wonder if there was some other, "legitimate" intelligence operation in Mexico City using the visits to the Cuban and Soviet Consulates, one not originally intended to frame our man as a future presidential assassin?
After all, what kind of murderous frame-up using the patsy's intercepted, taped phone calls to the Commies reads like a bad parody of Abbott and Costello?
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2 hours ago, David Josephs said:
Hey there Paul...
There IS evidence... it's simply that none of it is Authentic. So I began to really wonder whether a real live person went to this embassy posing as Oswald, or was it possible that this was a cobbled together story using elements of truthful encounters with people in these places, just not Oswald and just not what they claim occurred.
Gaudet for example, tells a story about his time getting his tourist visa number 1 before Oswald's.... the rest of the people in the room that day do not corroborate his story...
Guadet is directly in the mix of intelligence going on in New Orleans and knows Bannister as well as knows Oswald had been working with/speaking with Bannister as well... A valued CIA agent who would simply need this office to give him the application with the next # already written on it...Then, when it is photographed as an exhibit it is split over 2 pages.... page 1 without the mention of this being a 6 month 180 day application (it is claimed the same application is used for both 15 and 180 day tourist visas yet there is no evidence to support this) the date stamp, or his actual signature,
Counting 15 days back from Oct 2, 1963... takes us to Sept 17, 1963, the day we are told he gets his 15 day visa.... those involved in creating this evidence were not aware that the clock starts WHEN YOU ARRIVE IN MEXICO... not the day one gets their visa... this kind of oversight occurs repeatedly throughout the evidence. We find the same 15 days referenced in the bogus typewritten letter from the Paine's house... that they added 15 days to Sept 17 to arrive at Oct 2 as his MUST LEAVE DATE, and then pepper it around to reinforce it, is again, imho, pure Phillips/Hunt modus operandi ...
and page 2 without the Number, Series or name. While this does appear to be Harvey's block letter writing style, the number of things wrong with this document... btw - he was never considered a "Catholic" ... Lutheran, Presbyterian, yes....
David wrote: " So I began to really wonder whether a real live person went to this embassy posing as Oswald, or was it possible that this was a cobbled together story using elements of truthful encounters with people in these places, just not Oswald and just not what they claim occurred."
I have wondered the same, but for now, I tend to believe that a real person, intentionally posing as "Oswald", confronted both Sylvia Duran and Eusebio Azcue in the Cuban Consulate on Friday, September 27.
If that unknown man had not used the name "Oswald", then the Cuban officials almost certainly would not have made the connection later to our "Oswald"!
We know that our "Oswald" wasn't there, and we have no reason to believe that the physical resemblance between the Mexico City Cuban Consulate impostor and our "Oswald" was so strong that it would have left an indelible impression on Duran and Azcue. Indeed, the physical likeness did not! They both later said the man they so memorably encountered was NOT our "Oswald"!
No photo in Mexico City of anyone who might plausibly have been mistaken for our "Oswald" has ever surfaced. Instead, the impersonation counted on the name "Lee Harvey Oswald". That's what Duran and Azcue remembered.
And therefore, the use of the name "Lee Harvey Oswald" means a deliberate, specific impersonation for some calculated purpose. Yet, as I asked earlier, are we certain that impersonation at that moment was solely to frame our "Oswald" as a future presidential assassin? If so, why in the world were the transcripts of the intercepted phone calls so . . . innocuous, so blah, so bland?
What kind of murderous frame-up makes the patsy sound like a bad parody of Abbott and Costello?
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On 1/16/2020 at 1:54 AM, Ed LeDoux said:
Yes thanks actually should read Sgt "Jerry" Lynn Gerald Hill.
Good eye Daniel. Clint Hill is an SS agent.
Cheers, Ed
Updated this date, @ ROKCEd,
Thanks for posting this in its entirety. You certainly raised some good questions.
Am I correct in inferring that our "Oswald" (whoever he was) never actually lived at 1026 N. Beckley? Moreover, his supposed "presence" there was really the result of a mash-up of both muddled memories and records of Herbert Leon Lee, plus the deliberate falsifications (both destruction and creation!) of records by witting police framers and opportunists such as Gladys Johnson or Earline Roberts?
You've made a great point that FBI agent Hosty should absolutely have known "Oswald's" address by early November once he got the phone number from Ruth Paine. But officially, Hosty never went to 1026 N. Beckley before the assassination . . . Hosty was no fool. Can we conclude he went somewhere else? To what house or apartment did he truly go when checking on "Oswald"?
I can't visualize a scenario in which the 1026 N. Beckley address was seized upon as a spur-of-the-moment improvisation by cops desperate to hide some other, more sensitive address for our "Oswald." Yet, this seems to be what you are implying. (I am not saying you are wrong, merely that I can't think of such a scheme.)
If 1026 N. Beckley was a cover for some other address, then surely the plan to substitute that address for our "Oswald's" real address must have been in place or some time, right? Or not? Was it a hasty contrivance by somebody at DPD, frantically covering tracks?
Also, I can't tell from your essay what you think about 214 Neely. Did our "Oswald" and his wife live there for seven weeks or so in March and April of 1963, or not? If so, why in the world did our "Oswald" deny it to Will Fritz? (Or, are you skeptical of Fritz's report? I don't trust Fritz, but this one makes no sense. It would seem Fritz wrote it because that's what "Oswald" said: he denied ever living at 214 Neely!)
FWIW, as you may know, Joachim Joesten wrote that "Oswald'" mother told him that "Oswald" never lived at 214 Neely. Instead, "Oswald" mother claimed that Marina lived there with another man!
Bizarre as that claim sounds, it might be psychologically possible - Marina would later claim to have been beaten by "Oswald" between November of 1962 and March of 1963, while she and he shared the residence at 604 Elsbeth, just around the corner from Neely. Did Marina leave Elsbeth in March of 1963 and move to Neely for a brief period that spring?
Is that plausible?
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1 hour ago, David Josephs said:
To bring HARVEY CASH full circle... the evidence of withholding info as needed is rampant... and most probably due to the fact so much of this evidence needed "alteration and omissions" before it was presentable.... like John Ely's biography of Lee Oswald.
How much more blatant can the evidence be here... ?? What would be so important in his BIO that would require MATERIAL ALTERATION - one wonders
David,
Am I correct in summarizing your thesis that there is no evidence at all that either our "Oswald" or anyone calling himself "Oswald" traveled to or from Mexico in any manner even remotely close to that described in the Warren Report? (That was my takeaway from reading your series on Mexico City some years ago.)
I have long suspected that the person who appeared at the Cuban Consulate on Friday, September 27 was neither our "Oswald" nor the real LHO. Further, it has been argued (by others) that visit - approved by some level of U.S. Intelligence - was in furtherance of some unknown operation that may/probably had nothing to do with the impending assassination. Instead (goes this argument), that visit was then seized upon by the conspirators (also in U.S. Intelligence) as a way to implicate "Oswald" as a tool of the KGB by manipulating the transcripts of the ensuing wiretapped phone calls to the Soviet Consulate.
While I personally am not sold on this theory, it might explain why the extant transcripts of the phone calls are not that ominous - if these calls were made by an impostor looking to frame "Oswald" as a future presidential assassin, he could have made them much more sinister.
But still, as I said, the Mexico City "Oswald" phone calls/appearances are pretty mysterious.
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12 hours ago, David Andrews said:
Just a stray thought:
Mentioned in another thread recently was the fact that a pair of flip-flops was included among Oswald's possessions recovered from the Paine house.
Back in the day, flip-flops were also known as "shower shoes." People who wouldn't wear them on the street sometimes wore them when showering in communal facilities, such as at a YMCA, to avoid catching Athlete's Foot and other diseases.
Obviously this can't be made to point at any specific place or time, and Oswald may have owned these because of the vagaries of his housing situation. But I don't see Oswald as a streetwear flip-flop type.
David,
I agree. I, too, wondered about those some time ago. You are absolutely right that people wear these around public pools, showers, locker rooms, etc. Now, conceivably, he could have had them since his USMC days, but those things wear out pretty quickly, right?
One other thing: after reading Lillian Murret's testimony, I was struck by her description of her nephew's appearance. She testified that "he was very poorly dressed." Also that "Lee didn't seem to have anything to wear . . . all he had on at the time was a T-shirt and pants, and I think he had only about two T-shirts with him."
This is very reminiscent of the south Texas "Oswald" description from Oct. 3-5.
Same guy? (The real LHO?)
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh8/html/WC_Vol8_0072a.htm
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15 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:
Paul,
I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph above, as well as much what follows. Perhaps this view is overly simplistic, but . . . .
Both Oswalds (H&L) had roots in Dallas. Beautiful Marina and the couple’s growing family were in Dallas. Ruth Paine was in the Dallas area and, although she may not yet have put the future alleged assassin into the TSBD when Nagel opened fire in that bank, she was already closely involved with the family of the patsy-to-be. George DeMohrenschldt and/or other white Russians were in position to keep a watchful eye on Boris and Natasha, I mean Harvey and Marina. Jack Ruby was in town as well, and apparently had been working with American-born Lee Oswald while Russian-speaking Oswald was in New Orleans framing himself.If “Oswald” was to be the fall guy, why would you want to find a similar cast of characters in another city? How could you be sure that uprooting “Oswald,” or even his whole family, to yet another city would not produce unintended consequences?
My opinion is that Dallas was always the first choice for positioning the Official Patsy.® Alice, TX isn’t all that close to San Antonio or Houston, and seeking a job at a radio station isn’t much of a proving ground for a future assassin. Your reasoning for the SE Texas sightings is the most cogent argument I’ve ever heard for them, but I’m still not convinced.
Fair enough, but the south Texas incidents really happened, they covered a wide geographic area in a very limited time period (on days when our "Oswald" was lying very low - at least one night at a YMCA), and several different witnesses tied the LHO they encountered to either San Antonio or Houston specifically (and not just Alice, Texas!)
I think, though, that we are in danger of overemphasizing "Oswald's" Dallas roots. I believe that if we looked only at "Oswald's" biography through the end of 1962, then we would conclude he was a primarily a creature of Fort Worth, not Dallas.
After all, until he moved to 604 Elsbeth in November of 1962, "Oswald" was working in and living with Marina (and June) in Fort Worth. Before that, "Oswald" lived in the USSR. Before that, he was in the USMC but traveling home to Fort Worth. He went to Arlington Heights High School (Fort Worth) and Stripling Jr. High (Fort Worth.) As a little kid, he bounced around (supposedly) between New Orleans, Fort Worth and NYC.
"Oswald's" connection to Dallas was not strong: nothing would have raised red flags in anyone's mind had the assassination happened somewhere else. "Oswald" was universally described as "rootless" after 11/22/63, NOT as a Dallas native. Hardly anyone in Dallas knew him, not even his co-workers!
As far as George DeMohrenschildt goes, his primary focus was on "Oswald" in Fort Worth. Within a month or so of the "Oswald" family arrival in Dallas at the end of November, 1962, GDM handed off the babysitting/handling/manipulating duties to Ruth Paine, and then in April of 1962, he exited "Oswald's" life, never to see him again.
Ruth Paine was an Irving resident, not of Dallas itself. Maybe I'm cutting a fine line here, but my impression is that Ruth was prepared to manipulate the "Oswald" family to whatever location was selected by the conspirators. I don't think there is any compelling evidence that Dallas had been chosen as the site before October 5, 1963.
Yes, "Oswald" was being framed/groomed as a potential fall-guy long before then, but the final location was still up in the air.
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31 minutes ago, David Josephs said:
I think Abe Bolden would take issue with your statement Ron.... I assume you've read Black's "The Chicago Plot"... for those who have not, it's attached.
"Never believe anything in politics until it is officially denied" I believe that every report related to Valle includes references to Oswald...
I agree, David.
The Chicago Plot sure seems real to me - the fact that no arrests were made until just after JFK canceled his planned trip to Chicago (on Saturday morning!) tells me the assassination was a "go" until that moment.
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4 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:
Ron,
For what it’s worth, I think John A. agrees with your statement above, at least if I’m remembering discussion(s) with him from a couple of years ago. He felt those plots, if real, were designed to fail.
The fact that Paul J. believes differently gives me considerable pause, but it sure seems like a whole lot of effort was put into setting up the Russian-speaking Oswald as far back, and even earlier, than his Aug. 9 altercation with Bringuier, surely a staged event, along with the arrest and television interview.
This Oswald’s U.S. stomping grounds were limited to New Orleans and Dallas and environs. Moving the patsy to Chicago, Miami, or Houston just weeks before the hit might appear suspicious and could result in unanticipated consequences. For the whole charade to work, Classic Oswald® just had to be in the right places at the right times, especially on 11/22/63.
Jim,
You and I agree that our "Oswald" was the pre-selected patsy. I think though we have been too long misled about the certainty of "Oswald's" movements immediately after New Orleans. None of us can say for sure exactly when or how "Oswald" left New Orleans, nor precisely where he next went. (He did NOT go to Mexico City!!!) (David Josephs proved that beyond any doubt years ago.)
I can't comment specifically on the legitimacy of the threats to JFK in Chicago or Miami, but they seemed to be real. Perhaps they were feints to fool JFK's security, but honestly, what's the evidence for that opinion?
However there is NO evidence that the "Oswald" sightings between October 3 and 5 in south Texas/Alice were illegitimate - those witnesses really believed they had encountered someone calling himself "Lee Oswald." Those sightings were entirely consistent with a possible assassination in either San Antonio or Houston, but not Dallas. Which is precisely why those sightings later had to be ignored, distorted or suppressed!
That is very powerful evidence that the final city had not yet been decided.
As far as the Bringuier episode in New Orleans goes, well honestly, there is NOTHING in that entire scenario that meant that DALLAS was the selected city! That whole New Orleans Bringuier charade/debacle in August merely set up our "Oswald" as the patsy, NOT that DALLAS had already been chosen!
If you believe otherwise, please show me the evidence.
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1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:
If Dallas wasn't selected at least a couple of months in advance why was LHO sent there from New Orleans when he was? Why did Dulles visit there for the first time ever a month before? To promote his book, one of only two cities he claimed to have done so in? A coincidence?
I think Chicago and Florida were smoke and mirrors meant to confuse JFK and "Security", including rumors, thus Milteer/an office building(Florida), and unwitting actors in Chicago calling in ("Lee"), people escaping, the guy with the gun and trunk full of ammo that worked in a building overlooking the route. False threats.
But after seeing the Dallas paper the morning of 11/22/63 even JFK was convinced any nut with a rifle could do it. Or so he told Jackie. In Dallas. Where Dallas Morning News owner Dealy had called him a leader on a tricycle to his face in Washington. Where Adali Stevenson was spat upon and hit with a placard. Where LBJ as his running mate and Ladybird were harassed. Where H L Hunt and Reverend Criswell preached against him weekly. Where General Cabell he'd fired from the CIA and his brother the mayor as well as the by then discredited General Walker lived.
He knew it was a dangerous place. Probably thought he had survived the threat when the rounded the corner from Main onto Houston and Nellie Connally said "You can't say Dallas Doesn't Love you Mr. President". But the Secret Service let him down.
Ron,
We can't say for certain specifically when or how our "Oswald" left New Orleans. We don't know precisely where he went. We all agree (I think) that he did NOT go to Mexico City, but exactly where he was in late September is murky. I personally do believe he really was in Dallas by Wednesday, September 25 - the Sylvia Odio story about meeting "Oswald" in the company of two unknown men outside her Dallas Circle Apartments is persuasive to me. Jim Hargrove and I agree that our "Oswald" did indeed stay at the Dallas YMCA on Thursday, October 3. Was he staying at the Dallas YMCA the entire 8 days? I think it is likely, but any evidence of that (if he was there) is long gone.
I think there is pretty good evidence (from our discussion last week) that the Alice/South Texas "Oswald" sightings on October 3 and 4 were the vestiges of an assassination plot in either San Antonio or Houston. I argued (persuasively, in my humble opinion) (!) that such sightings were the backstory to "Oswald's" movements had the plotters opted for either city. Since the last known south Texas "Oswald" sighting was on October 5 (a hitchhiking "Oswald" rode from San Antonio to Leming, Texas), I think it is safe to say that as of October 5, the final site - Dallas - had not yet been selected.
Why San Antonio or Houston?
Because those were the two cities on JFK's Texas tour on November 21, 1963. However, once Dallas was selected, then all the south Texas/Alice witnesses had to be "mistaken" or ignored. Their statements were no longer useful to the emerging narrative; actually their statements were dangerous to it.
Note that I am not arguing that our patsy "Oswald" was actually driving around in south Texas on October 3-5, merely that he was being impersonated by someone who may have resembled him somewhat. I think if San Antonio or Houston had been selected, then our "Oswald" would have been placed at a job along the motorcade route in one of those cities.
Once Dallas was selected, our patsy "Oswald" then started work at the TSBD on October 16, and that was that.
Also, as far as Allen Dulles in Dallas is concerned, David Talbot wrote in The Devil's Chessboard that Dulles' infamous book tour promo stop in Dallas was on October 29, 1963. This fits perfectly with what I've argued: Dallas was selected (from a list of possible cities) sometime between October 5 and October 15 (the day Ruth Paine placed her call to Roy Truly at the TSBD.)
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23 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:
Paul,
1. It’s pretty undeniable that evidence of Nagell’s knowledge of the plot pre-dating the assassination is murky at best, but, to me at least, it doesn’t make the timeline impossible. Our “Oswald” was arrested in New Orleans on Aug 9, more than a month prior to Nagell’s arrest. Regardless of how much faith we put into other plots in other cities, many researchers believe the Dallas plot was already underway when “Oswald” was publicly sheep-dipped in NOLA. Even if Dallas was only selected later from among several candidates, isn't it possible that Nagell only knew about the Dallas plot?
2. True enough, but if there once was evidence from G-men that put a fellow who called himself “Oswald” and looked like “Oswald” nearly 400 miles south of where the evidence shows he was on Oct. 3th and 4th, how could that wildly conflicting evidence be allowed to see the light of day?
I once spent days going through just one roll from John A’s set of 33 rolls of microfilm from the “FBI Series 2” set published in 1978 by UMI. All of them were allegedly related to the JFK assassination. There were documents shown in the roll I studied not only from the FBI but from the Secret Service, State Department, Treasury Department, and quite possibly local police departments, though I don’t remember that specifically. Hoover had every opportunity to muck around with virtually ALL the documentary evidence, certainly documents from the Feds. From his activities in the hours after the assassination confiscating school and early employment records of “Oswald,” it’s obvious Hoover was trying to cover-up the real story of LHO.
3. No question that if ANY LHO was in Dallas when ANY LHO was supposed to be in Mexico, that evidence had to disappear, but I don’t remember the story about the Dallas Circle Apartments on September 25. That had to be right after New Orleans, or when Harvey was in transit to Texas. Does the evidence look convincing?
6. If Mrs. Glosson was correct, the man with the valid-looking Texas driver’s license was probably LEE, as I said in the thread you linked. Would the cover-up conspirators have risked putting out multiple “Oswalds” with multiple Texas driver’s licenses? Seems too risky to me. The fact that the Warren Commission attorneys couldn’t go to the bother of calling the Texas Dep’t of Public Safety license records department when they had Marina and the Furniture Mart ladies arguing about “Oswald’s” driving history speaks volumes.
Jim,
You asked " Even if Dallas was only selected later from among several candidates, isn't it possible that Nagell only knew about the Dallas plot?"
The answer of course, is theoretically yes, Nagell may have known only of the Dallas plot.
However, I highly doubt that.
Nagell never met our "Oswald", although he may (MAY) have met the real LHO. Nagell claimed to the FBI that he met LHO in both Texas and Mexico City. We know that the Dallas "Oswald" never went to Mexico City, and the evidence that the real Lee Oswald went there in late September of 1963 is not very good either (no pictures, no clear witness identifications, no clear travel records - thanks David Joseph! - no good hotel records, nothing . . .)
So, who (if anyone) did Nagell meet, and when?
Well, if Nagell really was in Mexico City and really did encounter the real LHO, then it had to be before September 20, 1963, the date of Nagell's arrest in El Paso.
That is vaguely possible because we have two witnesses who also state that the LHO they met had been in Mexico: the barber Clifford Shasteen, and (much more dubiously) Robert Clayton Buick.
Shasteen, the Dallas barber who claimed to have cut LHO's hair on several occasions in the early fall of 1963, stated that LHO had a pair of yellow house shoes that he had purchased in "Old Mexico" for a "dollar, a dollar and a half." "I'll get you a pair the next time I am down there" said this LHO to Shasteen. Since the timing did not fit, the FBI placed no credence in Shasteen's account (especially since Shasteen had LHO driving a vehicle which seemed to be from Ruth Paine's house.)
Yet we know that Shasteen's account fits the H&L scenario perfectly.
Further, most researchers have no idea what to make of the convict/B.S.'er/felon/spy? Robert Clayton Buick's account of meeting LHO in Mexico City in September of 1963. I suppose it just might (MIGHT) have some truth to it: Buick really may have met LHO there then. And if so, that just might support Nagell's claim to have met LHO. Neither man could have met our "Oswald" in Mexico City, but it is possible they met someone - the real LHO at some point.
So, the real LHO may have been in Mexico City in the early/mid part of September, 1963. However, neither the Warren Commission nor the FBI nor anyone else ever came up with any good evidence at all that either our "Oswald" or the real LHO was there between September 26 and October 2, 1963. I doubt that either LHO was there - if either one was there, that evidence would have been presented long, long ago. Instead, we are left with the crappiest, flimsiest pieces of . . . to work with.
To sum up:
Jim, we have powerful evidence that the assassination plot involved multiple possible cities: Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Miami, Chicago (possibly Washington D.C.?), etc. We have no evidence that Dallas had been selected in time for Nagell to have known of it. I doubt he had been told of the location, although he may have met the real LHO at some point, possibly in early September in Mexico City.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10601#relPageId=2&tab=page
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/12/robert-c-buick.html
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On 1/11/2020 at 8:40 PM, Jim Hargrove said:
Paul,
I’ve been trying for five or six days to respond to your post above. Here’s my first attempt at a real reply.
1. Dick Russell is a major H&L supporter. Back in 1993, in Confessions of a Conspiracy Theorist, he wrote, “Not only do we encounter double- and triple-agents, but double- and triple-Oswalds.” I spent a full day with Mr. Russell a year or two ago but neglected to ask him which Oswald he thought Nagell knew, though it is obvious that Nagell interacted with American-born Lee Oswald, not Classic Oswald®.
Your thoughts about the Leonov-looking “Oswald” at the Cuban Consulate are interesting, and I wish I could offer better, or even comparable, theories. As so often occurs to me in this case, it all seems to boil down to the question of whose spies do we distrust the least, the answer, of course, being none.
2. Remember, though, that Sonny Stewart at KOPY told the AP (unfiltered by our friends at the Bureau): “It’s a strange thing.... The first time I saw Oswald’s picture on TV I recognized him. It was like a song that you can’t remember the name. When it finally hit me who it was I almost fell on the floor.”
There’s no doubt, though, that the mind can play strange tricks on all of us, but that visual ID at least SOUNDED pretty good.
Does it bother me that I’m suggesting the Associated Press is a Trusted Source® in this case? Sheesh!
3 and 4. We agree on a lot here, though I’m not convinced Harvey stayed at the YMCA longer than that Thursday night. As always, I seek a scintilla of evidence for other dates of his stay.
5. Indeed, whoever it was, it wasn’t our Marina.
6. Obviously, some of these purported sightings are more convincing than others, just as anyone would suspect. The evidence you present, though, is compelling and mostly new to me. I’ll get back to you ASAP on this. Thanks for the info, especially about intel “backstoppings.” I’m still reading.
Jim,
A few things:
1. I agree that IF Richard Case Nagell did interact with either LHO, it had to be Lee. I've never understood how in the world the Soviets could possibly have uncovered an assassination plot against JFK using LHO well before Nagell was arrested in El Paso on September 20, 1963! That seems awfully improbable.
What was absolutely impossible was Nagell's later claim (while in custody) that "he did not want to be in Dallas."
We know that Dallas was not selected finally as the city until long after Nagell was arrested. So unless someone believes that Nagell was still collecting information on the impending assassination while he was sitting in federal jail (!), then any such claim (that he was privy to the assassination location) is false.
2. I agree that Sonny Stewart's identification does seem to be based on physical recognition, but since I can't find police/FBI/Secret Service statement with him, we can't say for certain upon what exactly Steward based his identification of "Oswald." We have no other real evidence that our "Oswald" was actually in South Texas in early October.
3. If, as I suspect, our "Oswald" did indeed stay at the YMCA in downtown Dallas for a week or so before Thursday, October 3, then I am certain the FBI would have destroyed any evidence of that. After all, they were trying to make the case that "Oswald" had made this bizarre trip to Mexico City right at that very moment, and NOT holed up at the YMCA in Dallas! But I agree, we don't have any evidence one way or another where he stayed in the nights before October 3.
But since he was in Dallas on Wednesday, September 25 (at the Dallas Circle Apartments) and in Dallas (at the Y) on October 3, and since we have no other credible sightings for him in the interim, I think it remains a solid bet he was at the Y the whole time.
6. This Atlanta LHO sighting (from an unknown date, but recorded on December 4, 1963) is provocative. Permit me to speculate here:
The witness, a Mrs. Elaine Glosson, claimed that "Oswald" stayed at her Atlanta-area motel for a few days at some point before the assassination. Her description matches the South Texas/Alice LHO ("cocky", shabbily dressed, unshaven), but with a pearl-handled revolver. This LHO apparently had some connection to Birmingham, Alabama.
That makes me wonder if this LHO appeared in Atlanta/Birmingham sometime in the late spring/early summer of 1963. After all, JFK's famous Civil Rights Speech of June 11, 1963, was in response to Bull Connor's violence directed at Civil Rights protesters that spring. We've all seen the images - did the plotters anticipated that JFK might make an appearance in Birmingham and/or Atlanta at some point? And could this LHO appearance have been in preparation for such a visit?
Sounds possible to me, but without further evidence, we just can't say for sure.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24964-is-this-something-most-researchers-are-aware-of/
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1 hour ago, David Josephs said:
Edwin Albert Ekdahl lived in NYC when he died on January 26, 1953... - could the Tippit caller think HE WAS OSWALD's FATHER?
And to bring this around to FRED KORTH again.... Not only was he EKDAHL's lawyer of record in the divorce and somehow involved with Lee's life...
In 1956, his sister and her husband release a deed of trust.. for land Ekdahl owned in Ft Worth... I believe he is at the WORTH HOTEL here... so his sister either comes to visit or he simply writes in her name as witness...More importantly is the ongoing relationship with FRED KORTH who is Trustee for Edwin A Ekdahl.....
Also of note re: EKDAHL is the lack of mention of his first wife Rasmine in his will.... (I believe)... An FBI report claims a search for the divorce decree for Ekdahl's marriage to Rasmine has never turned up... (bottom image)
Here is the actual will as recorded by Tarrant County at the time of creation (Dated February 10, 1947 yet changed to May 10, 1947)...
The divorce was final June 15, 1948... a little more than a week later Ekdahl cuts Marge out of the will....
"All that can be ascertained about the dissolution of his first marriage is that he "separated" from Rasmine around 1941-1942. The FBI specifically sought to find a divorce decree in the Boston area for Ekdahl, presumably from Rasmine, but found none. " - The Strange Case of Edwin Ekdahl
QuoteHmm.
Thanks for posting this, David. Was the FBI hinting that Ekdahl may have been a bigamist?
After all, if everything was above board, then the divorce records should have been found in the county in which it took place. Yet they were not there.
If Edwin and Rasmine Ekdahl never legally divorced, then his subsequent marriage to Marguerite Claverie Pic Oswald was null and void. Massachusetts does not recognize a second simultaneous marriage as valid.
Yet, I doubt that - Ekdahl went through the expense and trouble of hiring Fred Korth to represent him at the 1948 divorce proceeding.
So, is it possible that Edwin and Rasmine Ekdahl never legally married? (And therefore, never divorced?) (And therefore, she got nothing in the will?)
I dunno.
David, as to your question about whether our mysterious woman caller might have mistakenly assumed that Ekdahl was "Oswald's" father in 1953, well I doubt that, too. The woman caller might have known (we hope) the "Oswald" from Yorkville, but not the Lee Oswald from Texas. Yet Ekdahl married the mother of the Lee Oswald from Texas, not the "mother" of the boy from Yorkville.
We have no connection between Ekdahl and our "Oswald" (Harvey), either in NYC or elsewhere. The connection was between the real Lee Oswald and Ekdahl. Granted, both Ekdahl and Lee were in NYC for about five months between August of 1952 and January of 1953 (Ekdahl's death), but I can't imagine that the two of them together (even assuming they ever met under any circumstances that fall) would have engaged in anything that might have been mistaken for or remembered later as "Communist activity." The old guy was dying of a bad heart that fall, not hanging out with the youngest son of his ex-wife, a woman from whom he was bitterly divorced!
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2 hours ago, John Butler said:
Louis Budenz was the editor of the Daily Worker at the time Helen Levi Simon, known as the writer Maxine Levi, was working there. Below is an interesting photo of Louis Budenz. I'm sure any resemblance to Harvey Oswald is coincidental and illusionary. When you compare photos there is hardly any resemblance at all.
Honestly John, I really don't see any physical resemblance to our "Oswald" (Harvey) other than facial expression.
However, your post prompted me to take a look at this "professional xxxx" (in Linus Pauling's words) a bit more closely. Budenz was, as you know, a longtime FBI informant, one whom testified that he made $70,000 as a witness in 1953!
It was Budenz's allegations about reds in government that made its way to Joseph McCarthy. What does strike me though is the similarity of language used by both the mysterious woman caller and Budenz when describing the goals of the Communists:
"Uncover a red doing his stuff on a college faculty and a hue and cry is raised over ‘academic freedom,’ as though these people had a God-given right to infect our children with their made-in-Moscow virus….We should understand that this ’cause of peace’ as peddled by the reds is the destruction of the government of the United States.”
-Louis Budenz, November 1951.
This suggests to me that our woman caller shared Budenz's general outlook (paranoia?), regardless of whether she and he had any social or professional connection.
Further, Louis Budenz and Elizabeth Bentley were both paid FBI informers (and both testified before Congress) as former Communists. They both shared the same outlook on the communist threat with the mysterious woman caller. Now, I seriously doubt that Elizabeth Bentley could be mistaken for speaking with an eastern European accent, so I don't think she is a viable candidate to be the mysterious woman caller herself. (Bentley did speak French and Italian, but neither language was mentioned by Mrs. Jack Tippit.)
However, here is a tantalizing clue that Elizabeth Bentley and the mysterious woman caller just might have known each other:
On December 3, 1963, three days after the mysterious local phone call by the unknown woman from New Haven Connecticut, the ex-commie-turned-professional- anti-commie-stooge Elizabeth Bentley died of abdominal cancer . . .
in Grace New Haven Hospital, in New Haven, Connecticut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bentley
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Hmm.
Since "Oswald" did NOT shoot anyone, who cares what influence comic books and/or pop culture had on him growing up? Why does any of that matter?
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15 hours ago, John Butler said:
I guess what I am trying to say is should we consider the Mrs. Jack Tippit phone call issue dead or keep looking around for an alterative answer?
John,
Thanks for tracking down Russ Geck, even though no hard new information developed about a possible connection between "Oswald"and Emil Gardos, Grace Gardos, Fred Blair or Louis Weinstock.
You may have already asked this of them, but do either Andi Geck or her mother (Mrs. John Gardos) have any idea at all why the mysterious woman in 1963 referenced "Oswald", Emil Gardos, Fred Blair, Louis Weinstock, "father", "brother-in-law", "Hungarians", "Communists", Yorkville and the 1950's in the same frantic phone call?
Can they make any guesses about any of it?
Had they ever seen or heard about the FBI report before you showed Russ Geck?
Do either of these two women have the slightest inkling about WHY the mysterious woman connected "Oswald" (somehow) with a man deported in early 1950?
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18 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:
Paul,
1. Yeah, it sure does look like this Leonov fellow.
Can you make any sense of that? Or suggest a theory? According to Jefferson Morley, Leonov was an interpreter for Castro when he visited the USSR in the spring of 1963. Who do we distrust less in this case, Cuban intel, or Russian intel or U.S. intel?
2. Good point but, while admitting that I haven’t studied all the original source material, the best IDs seemed to be from the radio station employees at KOPY and KBOP, especially KOPY, and the witnesses thought the fellow they saw was or could be “Oswald.” Do you know if Leonov spoke English well enough to interact with Americans in south Texas?
3. Yeah, Harvey always seemed poor as a church mouse, at least until he was on assignment. After, we’re told, saving his non-convertible military scrip, he traveled to first class hotels in Europe and Moscow and could afford a private tour guide in Moscow. Then, after several years of apparent poverty in the U.S., suddenly in 1963 he apparently could afford once more to travel to Cuba and Russia, or at least appeared to be making plans to do so. We can probably both think of a potential reason to keep him comfortably settled in a hotel room in Dallas while certain events allegedly unfolded in Mexico City, though I'm not at all sure that's what happened.
4. Absolutely! Based on John A’s research and writing, I think it WAS Harvey Oswald at Sylvia Odio's.
5. If memory serves there is some other evidence as well, going back at least to the USMC, that LEE spoke some Spanish, a little at least.
6. This never occurred to me and is fascinating. If plans were being considered for a hit in San Antonio and/or Houston, does that mean there was a fellow, perhaps going by the name “Lee Oswald,” being prepared for a job in a building along the parade route? Would someone who looked like him have gone to local rifle ranges to shoot at other people’s targets, and so on? Mrs. Paine called Roy Truly on Oct. 15 to start the process in motion to put Classic Oswald® in the TSBD, so the timing here makes complete sense.
The only alternative I can imagine would be that the Alice trip was related somehow to the Mexico City saga, either to show LHO on his way home from meeting a Soviet assassin there, or, somehow, as an alibi indicating the guy wasn’t in MC at all. Your thoughts on this are appreciated.
Jim,
1. The simplest explanation is that the photo supplied by the Cubans to the HSCA was an artifact and not a real image captured outside the Cuban Consulate in 1963. Instead, at some later date, some CIA operative substituted the image of the "real Oswald impostor" (Lee? Someone else?) with this image of Leonov. The Cubans innocently then gave this switched image to the HSCA, even though it was inauthentic.
However, that "simple" explanation is not very convincing to me.
Another possibility is that the image at the top of your webpage
is not, in fact of Leonov at all, but of a Leonov impostor, probably from the CIA. This has a kind of logic to it: the plotters knew that our "Oswald" (Harvey) never went to Mexico City, but they deliberately planned the impersonation there to FAIL , thus revealing that the "Oswald" impersonator was . . . a known Soviet operative/official! A man who was a close personal confidant of both Castro and Khrushchev - a perfect patsy himself! Thus implicating the USSR in the assassination, somehow . . .
But I don't like that one, either. Too messy, and anyway, the guy doesn't merely resemble Leonov, he is the spitting image of Leonov!
Maybe Dick Russell was on to something when he wrote that Richard Case Nagell was working with Soviet intelligence to kill Oswald and stop the assassination. I don't fully trust Nagell as a source, but could the Soviets have been aware that something funny involving somebody posing as "Oswald" was going on inside the Cuban Consulate on Friday, September 27? And if they did, would they react immediately once they realized that "Oswald" had this bizarre history in the USSR himself? Could a highly trusted Spanish speaking Soviet official have been dispatched by Khrushchev himself to investigate???
That seems doubtful, too, but I just don't have any other ideas at the moment.
We'll have to leave it for now with the agreement that, whoever he was, he sure looked a heckuva lot like Leonov!
2. The identifications by the radio station guys as our "Oswald" may not be 100% based on their memories of the man's appearance, but instead may be based on the fact that the guy used the name "Lee Oswald." After all, Parker did note a difference in hair color, a difference picked up by several witnesses. You and I agree that the south Texas LHO was not our "Oswald" up in Dallas, being interviewed by Laura Kittrell at TEC.
3. and 4.
You and I agree that our Dallas "Oswald" was very probably outside Sylvia Odio's door in Dallas on 9/25/63. We agree that our "Oswald" was at the TEC in Dallas on Thursday, October 3. We agree that there is no convincing evidence that our "Oswald" went to Mexico City at all in the interim. So, since he really was at the Dallas YMCA the night of Thursday, October 3, isn't it probable that his handlers had put him up there for the entire week before while his doppelganger was down in Mexico City? (There is no reason why they should have put him up in a nicer lodging for a few days, and then switched him to the YMCA for the last night. Instead, I bet he was there all along.)
5. I don't know what language the "wife" of LHO was speaking down in south Texas/Alice, but nobody claimed it was Russian. There is no reason to assume the Marina impostor was speaking Russian. She and her "husband" may have been speaking something as simple as garbled Spanish. (Or not, but it doesn't matter. It wasn't Marina.)
6. You wrote "does that mean there was a fellow, perhaps going by the name “Lee Oswald,” being prepared for a job in a building along the parade route? Would someone who looked like him have gone to local rifle ranges to shoot at other people’s targets, and so on? Mrs. Paine called Roy Truly on Oct. 15 to start the process in motion to put Classic Oswald® in the TSBD, so the timing here makes complete sense."
Yessir! That's exactly what I think!
Had the plotters decided on San Antonio or Houston, then you bet there would have been a host of weird "Oswald" sightings wielding a rifle in either city! These south Texas/Alice sightings below were some of the CIA's "backstopping" of the tentative (and ultimately discarded) "Oswald" San Antonio story:
I. The unnamed, not interviewed by the FBI waitress at the B.F. Cafe in Freer Texas whose boss told the FBI that the "Oswald" she met wanted a job in Freer, and asked specifically how far it was to San Antonio. When told it was 100 miles, this "Oswald" reacted in surprise. (The FBI did NOT want any confirmation of this one!)
II. Martha Doyle and Joan Dunsmore of the San Antonio International Airport statement:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96293&relPageId=4&search=Martha_Doyle
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96293&relPageId=7&search=Joan_Dunsmore
III. The Stanley Moczygemba account about picking up a hitchhiking "Oswald" early on Saturday morning, October 5 in San Antonio and driving south to Leming, Texas.
And here are some examples of witness statements about the CIA's tentative and ultimately discarded plan to backstop the "Oswald" in Houston story:
From John Armstrong's 1997 speech to C'OPA:
I. A few days later an "Oswald" applied for a job at the Continental Oil Company in Houston. This person identified himself as "Lee Oswald" and was interviewed by Mrs. Sheppard. He told her he had just returned from Mexico with a friend and that they had tried to proceed from Mexico to Cuba. Oswald told her he was staying at the Savoy apartments two blocks away. II. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9986&relPageId=63&search=Continental_oil Company III. A Houston Chronicle article stating that Oswald stayed at the Savoy for a few days in late September of 1963 while interviewing at Conoco. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Before-it-turned-into-Holiday-Inn-Savoy-Hotel-4583519.php#item-85307-tbla-25 IV. George Ryan, manager of the Stop-N-Go drive-in grocery in Houston told the FBI that Oswald tried on three successive days to cash a $65 check at his store. He told the Houston Press he was under orders from the FBI not to discuss the case.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10477&relPageId=662&search=George_Ryan
So, I am positive that in the Alice/south Texas stories we are looking at the vestiges of the unused backstopped stories of "Oswald's" movements in the days before he would have settled in with a job in either San Antonio or Houston. But once the plotters decided on Dallas (after October 5 but before October 15), then none of these sightings of the false "Oswald" in south Texas/Alice were useful to the plotters.
And so these witnesses were ignored.
"Backstopping" has long been a very important intelligence concept:
http://intelligenceref.blogspot.com/2010/08/backstop.html
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On 1/4/2020 at 8:31 AM, Jim Hargrove said:
Thanks for the reply, Paul. I think about this odd story often, and so your thoughts are appreciated.
The whole south Texas saga seems so weird because it occurred immediately after the alleged Mexico City affair—the WC/FBI struggled to get “Oswald” back in Dallas in time for his Texas Employment Commission interview on October 3 More on that below. The assassination patsy plot was clearly underway and one would think the management of the two Oswalds (and any other random impersonations) was surely carefully managed by that time.
At least two people at KOPY in Alice thought the fellow who visited them (Stewart apparently wrote down the name “Lee Oswald”) looked like the televised assassination suspect. Ben Parker at KBOP in Pleasantown may have said the suspect had sandy hair, but he also said it could have been the man he saw on television Saturday night. And we have to rely on the FBI to tell us the truth about Parker’s description; there was no ostensibly unfiltered AP report on his encounter.
No doubt strange things can happen with eyewitness accounts, but for the life of me I don’t see how “Oswald” could be confused with Nikolai Leonov. I know you’re quite right in citing the variability of the eyewitness statements but, taken as a whole, it is difficult to deny that an “Oswald,” accompanied by a “family,” sought radio station jobs as far south as Alice, TX on Oct. 3rd and 4th. The enduring question is why.
Now let’s take a look at the “Oswald” in Dallas on October 3 and 4. William Weston is a very good researcher (thank you for pointing me to his write-up in Fourth Decade), but he may be incorrect in his thesis that the “Oswald” in Dallas on October 3rd and 4th was an impostor, though, with “Oswald,” we always have to define our terms. I think the fellow who visited the Texas Employment Commission in Dallas on Oct. 3 was Classic Oswald®, the Russian-speaking fellow eventually killed by Ruby. That Oct. 3 TEC meeting was actually the first of the infamous encounters Laura Kittrell had with two men of similar appearance who both claimed to be LHO.
Here’s an excerpt of how Gaeton Fonzi described his interview with Ms. Kittrell in his 1978 report to the HSCA.
Ms. Kittrell’s description of the two Oswalds almost exactly matches the portrait John A. assembled. Harvey, neat, quiet and introverted vs. Lee, sloppy, loud and boisterous. My guess is the TEC encounters with Laura Kittrell represented a deliberate test by the plotters to see if Harvey and Lee could be perceived as one person in by a witness who observed both in close proximity. I can fathom no equally reasonable explanation for the Alice and environs pantomime, which has always bothered me.
Jim,
A few things:
1. I agree with you that Nikolai Leonov does not look much like our "Oswald". My point was that Leonov is the spitting image of the man shown in profile on the second picture at the top of your website - the Mexico City "Oswald"! (Regardless of whether Leonov actually pretended to be our "Oswald" or not, he sure looks like the guy on your website!)
2. The descriptions of LHO's appearance in both Mexico City and around Alice are suspiciously similar: short, dirty, blond, unshaven, and sloppily/very casually dressed. Probably (but NOT certainly) the same guy, in at least a few cases.
3. I agree that Laura Kittrell's first encounter with "Oswald" on October 3 does sound very much like Harvey. If so, then "Oswald" (Harvey) probably could not have been in Alice or south Texas on October 3. Still, the whole spending one night at the Dallas YMCA thing is bizarre - why would poor, parsimonious "Oswald" spend $2.25 to stay for a Thursday night in Dallas when Irving was only 15 miles away? (Unless actually he had been there for a week or so, ever since leaving New Orleans several days prior?)
4. If it really was our "Oswald" (Harvey) in Dallas on October 3 at the TEC, and since we can't account for his whereabouts between New Orleans and Dallas in late September, isn't it possible that our "Oswald" (Harvey) really was at the Dallas Circle Apartments outside Sylvia Odio's door on Wednesday, September 25? After all, at that meeting, "Oswald" didn't say anything incriminating. It was only during the follow-up phone call with "Leopoldo" in which "Oswald" was described as "loco", and capable of shooting the president.
5. I am struck by the fact that none of the south Texas witnesses claimed the language in which "Oswald" and his "wife" conversed was Russian. If it was an "Oswald" impostor on October 3 and 4, then it is plausible to me that his "wife" was not necessarily Russian. Actually, there was an FBI report in which a customer at the Carousel Club claimed that Lee Oswald was "dating" one of Ruby's strippers. She was described as "Mexican". While that would seem to be a poor fit for a duplicate Marina, maybe not. Many Mexican women have lighter hair, and I'm sure this stripper was young and attractive. If the real Lee had hooked up with this stripper, then it's possible that quick, quiet conversations in garbled Spanish/Spanglish/Texican (long recognized as a culturally significant linguistic artifact) or possibly some other language might have remained unintelligible to eavesdroppers. (And honestly, finding a stripper saddled with a young child in tow is not difficult . . .)
6. So the big question remains: what the hell was this all about?
Well, I suspect we are looking at the traces of a set-up to have "Oswald" in place to be the patsy if the assassination were to take place in either Houston or San Antonio.
Here's President Kennedy at the Brooks Medical Research Center in San Antonio on November 21, 1963.
Here's President and Mrs. Kennedy greeting a crowd in Houston on November 21, 1963.
I am convinced that had the plotters decided on either Houston or San Antonio, then the Alice/south Texas charade would have paved the way for the "Oswald" family to be in place to be framed. But once the plotters settled on Dallas (apparently sometime between October 4 and October 15), then the whole south Texas/Alice pretense was quietly scrapped. After all we never would have known of it had not various witnesses made noise in the local press.
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42 minutes ago, David Josephs said:
Hey Paul,
Believe it or not, there were 3 Margaret Keatings....
Siblings
Margaret Emma Keating 1892–1972 (m. 1920)
James V. Keating II, Margaret's brother marries Edna Margaret Lloyd Keating 1900–1966
They have a son named JAMES VICTOR KEATING III who leaves one daughter, Margaret Elizabeth Keating of Bethesda
From H&L: This is the last info on Telemachus in the book
Margaret Keating Oswald was the first wife of Robert E. L. Oswald (father of Robert and Lee Harvey Oswald), whom she divorced in 1933. The court restored her last name to Keating, her maiden name, which she kept for the remainder of her life (she apparently never remarried). The name Margaret Keating and her address, 120 N. Telemachus Street, appear in New Orleans City Directories, telephone books, voter registration records, etc., from 1933 thru the early 1960's.Thanks, David. A strange coincidence.
We can rule out Edna Margaret Lloyd Keating as our impostor "Marguerite" too. Have a look:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/102509084/edna-margaret-keating#view-photo=72849193
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/102509084/edna-margaret-keating#view-photo=80021436
It did occur to me that the 1956 New Orleans phone book anomaly might have been unknown to Margaret Emma Keating Oswald (Robert Sr.'s first wife). It was in the cross directory, right? She might never have noticed it.
Do you think there's any chance the 1956 phone book cross directory "Margt Oswald" listing for 120 N. Telemachus was a cover scheme created by the "Harvey Project" handlers as a way to account for the other two Marguerite Oswald's (but both pretending to be the same person) living in New Orleans at the same time? Three Marguerite's but with two different addresses (real address for real Marguerite, but 120 N. Telemachus and "Margt Oswald") would satisfy/confuse/screw up anyone who might stumble across any of them - one would conclude (wrongly) that there just happened to be three women with the same name, not that two of them were supposed to be the same exact woman.
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On 12/31/2019 at 7:32 AM, Jim Hargrove said:
While we’re waiting to see if Mr. Geck and his family can provide any more information on the possible “Oswald” link to Emil Gardos, I’d like to change the subject briefly and ask a question that has been bugging me for decades. In a nutshell that question is, What was the Alice, Texas charade that took place in early October 1963 all about?
ALICE, TEXAS
It is one of the most obvious and well documented incidents of two Oswalds in evidence, but it never made a lick of sense since the Oswald (often seen with his family!) that appeared in and around Alice (nearly 400 miles south of Dallas) said none of the incriminating things we soon heard from the Oswald who made appearances at the Sports Drome rifle range and all those other spots around Dallas. This Oswald merely appeared to be looking for a job.
For anyone who doesn’t recall the story of the Alice, Texas affair, here are the basic details:
The FBI and Warren Commission produced pretty convincing evidence that “Lee Harvey Oswald” was in Dallas on Oct. 3 and 4, 1963. The evidence showed that “Oswald” filed an unemployment compensation claim at the Texas Employment Commission, 2210 Main St. in Dallas, on Thursday afternoon, October 3, and spent the night at the downtown Dallas YMCA.
On Friday, October 4, he applied for a job at the Padgett Printing Company and filed an application with the Jobco Employment Agency, both in Dallas.
Despite that, some 17 witnesses place “Oswald” (sometimes with his family) on those very same days looking for jobs in the broadcast radio business in and around Alice, Texas, some 400 miles south of Dallas. On the evening of October 3, numerous witnesses saw “Oswald” at radio station KOPY in Alice, where he was told to return the next day to meet station manager and vice-president Sonny Stewart.
According to multiple witnesses, he did return to station KOPY the next day, Oct. 4. There was even an AP article about his visit:
When told there were no positions available at KOPY, “Oswald” asked if any other radio stations in the vicinity might be hiring, and he was told about station KBOP in Pleasanton, where he also appeared to speak with Dr. Ben Parker, who accurately described “Oswald” after the assassination. In restaurants and elsewhere, many other witnesses saw “Oswald” in and around Alice and Pleasanton on Oct 3 and 4, 1963.
John Armstrong wrote, “Both the FBI and Warren Commission were aware that "Lee Harvey Oswald" could not have been in both Alice, Texas and Dallas, Texas on October 3rd and 4th at the same time. Chief Justice Earl Warren held up publication of the Warren Report until the FBI completed their "investigation" of the incident at Alice, Texas, because of potentially damaging political issues.” [H&L p. 710]
But no one has ever given a plausible explanation about why this stunt was performed. Why?
For decades, the best write-up on that Alice, Texas incident has been Chris Courtwright’s fine article,
Oswald in Aliceland? A Tale of Two Days: A Tale of Two Oswalds
Jim,
It is a puzzler.
These incidents, as related in Chris Courtwright's fine article, may NOT have all been false "Oswald" sightings - I suspect some of them really were just mistaken identity. Particularly those from Chris's page four summary of the "George Parr" allegations. Those appear to be just a crock, with no evidence at all.
William Weston pointed out that our "Oswald" was never positively identified at the Russian or Cuban Consulates in Mexico City a week earlier. I think it notable, however, that the description of the Alice "Oswald" and the Mexico City "Oswald" are similar: dirty, blond, inelegantly dressed and unshaven. Also this "Oswald" was never identified as being more than 5'8" tall. Actually, Sylvia Duran believed he was around 5'3!
On the Harvey & Lee homepage http://harveyandlee.net/ is a picture (second from left) of a man who was the spitting image of a known Soviet agent/asset and politician: Nikolai Leonov. Leonov was posted in Mexico City and was an extremely close confidante of Nikita Khrushchev. He served as a translator for Khrushchev and Castro. He was at very near the apex of the Soviet government in 1963.
https://alchetron.com/Nikolai-Leonov
Nikolai Leonov is a poor candidate for the Alice sightings, but a good one for at least some of the Mexico City sightings.
If it was the same man in both Mexico City and around (some) of the alleged sightings in south Texas in early October, than the Alice sightings were very likely an impostor. However, it is possible these sighting were not of the same man. In a couple of the Alice sightings, the name "Oswald" was mentioned, which makes the possibility of an innocent coincidental lookalike very remote.
The William Weston thesis is that our "Oswald" was NOT in Dallas on October 3 and 4. The documents Jim reproduced were created by a false "Oswald", argued Weston. (See below.)
So, I have to ask: while the Dallas documents from October 3 and 4 are real, what evidence did the Warren Commission produce to show they were written/created by our "Oswald", and not an impostor (possibly even the real LHO!)?
Here is William Weston's take on the issues:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48701#relPageId=8&tab=page
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David,
When (if ever) did Margaret Keating sell 120 N. Telemachus? Who bought it? When? Did she own it and live in it until she died in 1972?
When Celia died in 1953, Margaret was (presumably) now the sole occupant of 120 N. Telemachus. I agree that the strange entry in the New Orleans phone book for 1956 which lists the owner/resident of 120 N. Telemachus as "Margt Oswald" is very intriguing. She had been divorced from Robert Oswald for a quarter century at that point! Why would the name "Oswald" suddenly pop up?
Yet the sole photo we have of her rules her out as our "Marguerite" impostor. Margaret Emma Keating Oswald was born, bred and died in New Orleans. But the "Marguerite" impostor, according to her biographer Jean Stafford, had an accent indistinguishable from New Jersey and parts of NYC (the "Al Smith" accent.)
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David wrote:
"Call was about 11:30 am on “INSTANT DATE” – what does that mean?"
According to Wikitionary, it is an old reference to the current month. I suspect our FBI memo writer misused it: he meant the current date (i.e. November 30, 1963.) I remember that Richard Case Nagell used "instant" in the same way in one of his notes to Dick Russell. It may have been more commonly used by men of that generation.
From Wikitionary:
Of the current month.
- Synonym: inst. (abbreviation)
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I refer to your letter of the 16th instant in regard to traffic disruption
EVIDENCE FOR HARVEY AND LEE (Please debate the specifics right here. Don't just claim someone else has debunked it!)
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Jim,
I am a little confused here: my post above was in response to David Joseph's good question asking how in the world did our "Oswald's" picture wind up on the visa application forms on Sylvia Duran's desk in the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City?
While none of us know for certain (and since we all agree that our "Oswald" was not in Mexico City), I offered what I thought were two reasonable possibilities:
1. The impostor already had the "Oswald" photos with him, ready to go, and then attached them himself. In this scenario, neither Duran nor Azcue noticed the discrepancy.
2. The impostor really did submit photos of himself, but those photos were later switched (somehow) by U.S . intelligence assets/operatives before they entered the JFK investigation evidence stream. (Simply tear off the impostor's photo, and staple "Oswald's" photo in its place. Can't be that difficult, right?)
I am open to other ideas, and I assumed the purpose of this forum was to explore any and all evidence.
Thanks for posting the 1977 report with Estes.