1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Hi Paul,

You raise, once more, an interesting question.  I had forgotten about an old Milwaukee newspaper article that indicates that Gardos moved around quite a bit while in the U.S., including residencies in in New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, Ohio, and New Jersey.  Please take a look at the last four paragraphs in the left column of the 1949 Milwaukee Journal article below.

My memory isn’t getting any better as I get older.  Did we ever establish solid evidence that Gardos lived in NYC during a time that would make sense for him being a guardian of Harvey Oswald?  This would just about have to be during the 1940s.  Providing such generalized time frames, the article doesn’t preclude NYC stays for Gardos during the 1940s, but it doesn’t explicitly support such a timeline either. 

In other respects, the identification of Gardos (and Blair) by the anonymous caller seems to make sense.  Just how many Hungarian communist men with a known communist brother-in-law (“uncle” to young Harvey Oswald) would have been active in the Yorkville area of NYC during this era?  Manhattan is a densely populated island, but its  Yorkville neighborhood is really quite small, consisting of perhaps a couple of dozen blocks bordering the east side of Central Park.

According to the report, the woman said, “OSWALD-S FATHER AND UNCLE HAD LIVED AT SEVENTY SEVENTH AND SECOND AVENUE, YORKVILLE, NYC, THAT WHILE LIVING THERE BOTH WERE UNEMPLOYED, GOT THEIR MONEY FROM COMMUNISTS AND SPENT ALL THERE TIME IN COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES.”  This matches nicely with this statement from the Milwaukee Journal article: “But at the trial the government showed that during his entire residence in the United States his sole work was as an organizer and editor for the Communist party.”

The FBI report also indicated that the caller said “Kardos [presumably Gardos] is the head of the communists,”  which is a stretch, but from his known biography, he clearly had at least some leadership roles in the party.  And finally….

There is the Hungarian printing of Circus Maximus, a book translated by the wife of Emil Gardos [Geo Kozma believes she must have had help from her husband] in 1963, and allegedly in Oswald’s possession in 1963. If it was a legitimate possession of LHO, it is another strong connection between Gardos and Oswald.  But I’m not sure I believe it.  As far a I know, we have only Marina’s claim that it was in Oswald’s possession.  Perhaps it was yet another miracle find  by Ruth Paine.  What do you think?

Jim,

We know for a fact that Grace Gardos was living in Yorkville in the mid 1940's. John Butler provided these screenshots in 2019:

On 2/29/2024 at 8:23 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

There is little chance that American-born Lee Harvey Oswald was the boy referred to by the anonymous caller. During the 1940s this Oswald lived in Louisiana and Texas. There is no indication that this Oswald set foot in New York City, much less lived there, until 1952, three years after Emil Gardos was deported.  During the mid to late 1940s, the Russian-speaking Oswald lived largely under the radar, his whereabouts, with just a few exceptions, largely unknown.  

Jim,

For yeats I assumed that the anonymous woman caller (Bentley) had stated outright that "Oswald's" Hungarian father was "Emile Kardos" (Emil Gardos) and that the his uncle was (Fred Blair). 

However, a close re-reading of the FBI document merely implies that, but does not quite say it categorically.

David Joseph argued this point years ago, and I have come to suspect he might (may) have been on to something: it is possible that the caller (Bentley) did NOT allege that Gardos and Blair were our "Oswald's" father/uncle?

Yes, she mentioned them (Gardos directly, Blair indirectly) so she obviously connected them somehow with our "Oswald" in Yorkville in the 1940's. 

But maybe she didn't overtly state that Gardos/Blair were "Oswald's" "Hungarian father and uncle", Communists who got all their money from communist activities . . . "

Maybe she meant yet other (unnamed) men.

After all, she (Bentley) also mentioned "Weinstock" of "Women's World", whom we've now identified as Louis Weinstock of "Workers World", yet as far as anyone knows, there is no familial connection between either Gardos and/or Blair and Louis Weinstock. 

So if she (Bentley) did not connect connect the name "Weinstock" with the phrase "Oswald's" Hungarian father and uncle", then how certain can we be that she meant to connect the names "Gardos" and (presumably Blair) with the phrase "Hungarian father and uncle"?

The men (Gardos and Blair) and Weinstock were important to her- she mentioned them in close proximity to her claim that she "knew 'Oswald's' Hungarian father and uncle". These men did indeed play some role in young "Oswald's" life in Yorkville, according to her. 

But whether she meant to imply (as we have inferred) that the "Hungarian father and uncle" were necessarily (Gardos and Blair) might not be so. 

She might have meant they were only (mentors or friends? of "Oswald's" "Hungarian father and uncle."

Might.

Either way, our "Oswald" probably had a copy of Tibor Kajan's "Circus Maximus" cartoon book because it likely had some connection to Grace Gardos, a woman he remembered from Yorkville in the 1940's. 

For those who don't watch the documentary "Cold Case: Hammarskjold", here is summary overview of the case against the Dutch pilot accused of shooting down Hammarskjold's airplane:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/12/former-raf-pilot-shot-down-un-chief-dag-hammarskjold-1961-plane

Pete,

This documentary from 2019 gives a pretty good summary for those us (like me) who may be unfamiliar with the basics of the case. It is not exhaustive, but well worth watching (the entire video is available on YouTube with ads).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Case_Hammarskjöld

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

I'm confident Geo will approve of me quoting his full answer here which, if Gardos=Gardosh, seems kind of stunning.  Here it is:

Hi Jim

the old 1947 drawing that somone has put on in 2019  (David Josephs I think - or maybe Paul Joliffe ) was from somewhere else not this book ---in this 62 -63 booklet, in the 60s there was no artist left who would root for Communism that turned out to be  just a Police state stifling any individual initiative - hence pepe were starving. Of course they never promised anything else...except the false belief that eating the rich will make the poor less poor.

they are like steinberg in the new yorker - abstract...tongue-in-cheek humour, clearly silently anti Communist

The point in it for us is not the content.

But that the artist was a family relative of Gardosh [ who worked then at Corvina] and the name Gardosh is also up in an Oswald family [ one among hundreds but still there as the Tippit Call also did say...]

So they must have had a way [ maybe by diplomatic post] to send that book.
My twopence is that my Uncle at the Rand working with his former student Kissinger and McNamara and Cyrus Vance and Bob Kenbedy could have the ways and the clout to be a middle man to send the book to link the distant relatives Oswald and Gardos.
Because on a personal level people do not hate an opponent 24/24 as they are also just family...and they could not be aware of the tragic future...certainly my Uncle could not. If Gardos had infos...he might have tried to counteract others and our task now is to see the codes he used to send messages by the books he sent.

The in-law of my Uncle Karl Mannheim had a Memory Card system with all cards having a letter of the ABC

That is a simple method to hide words into a bridge game report.
 

Just got back from an appointment and received Geo's note above.   My first question involves whether "Gardosh" is another version of "Gardos?"  Anyone know?

Jim,

Is Geo saying that the 1962 "Circus Maximus" contained material from various decades which were basically quietly subversive anti-communist cartoons?

If so, then that's yet more evidence that our "Oswald" was critical of Soviet Communism (but also no fan of U.S. Imperialism.)

Also, great question about the "Gardosh/Gardos" possible connection. Could our "Oswald" originally have been a "Gardosh" in Hungary and was placed with Emil Gardos (briefly) because he was (somehow) a distant relative?

Maybe?

15 hours ago, John Kowalski said:

Jim:

Can you explain to me who Russ Geck is.

 

John,

Russ Geck is the husband of Andrea Gardos, the granddaughter of Emil and Grace Gardos. Andrea Gardos Geck's father was John (Janos) Gardos, son of Emil and Grace Gardos. He was mentioned in the infamous 1966 FBI memo in which the FBI was so concerned about Grace's possible return to the USA from Hungary (with her son), that they considered launching some kind of counter-operation against her!

(They were terrified she knew something and might say something at a time, 1966, when the public's doubts about the Warren Commission's conclusions were growing.)

The late John Butler did a masterful job of tracking down Russ Geck through Facebook, and through correspondence, established beyond any doubt that little John Gardos (born in 1939) could NOT have later been our "Oswald."

Apparently there are no surviving family stories or memories of any possible little child/refugee/orphan the Gardos' might have fostered alongside their own biological son for a bit in the 1940's. 

So, we have no evidence (at least not yet) that either the Gardos couple, or Fred Blair or (presumably) Louis Weinstock ever fostered our "Oswald" in Yorkville in the 1940's. 

However, as David Josephs pointed out four years ago, the FBI memo which is the subject of this thread did NOT specifically state that either "Emile Kardos" (Emil Gardos), "brother - in - law" (presumably Fred Blair) or "Weinstock of 'Woman's World'" were either the father or uncle of "Oswald."

The anonymous woman caller (Bentley) connected those men somehow with "Oswald", but left open the possibility that "Oswald's" father and uncle ("Hungarians and Communists") were yet other men. 

If that is correct, then (Bentley) knew these (yet to be identified) other men who had custody of little "Oswald" at a time when he was indeed already called "Oswald." (Otherwise, Bentley could never have been sure that the little boy with whom she interacted in the 1940's was the same person accused of murdering the president in 1963.)

Again, for the general readers (if there are any), we know (Bentley's ) information to the Tippit's was taken so seriously by the FBI that they corrupted the names, classified the memo "Top Secret" and tried to hide it away forever. If the anonymous caller was a crackpot, none of that would have happened. It is because of the FBI's reaction to this call that we can confidently know the information was real. 

So, exactly how many people did (Bentley) know who fit the profile?

10 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I think that you are probably right about Bentley, Paul. Kudos to you for a great discovery and line of reasoning.

Though I wouldn't go so far as to say there is no longer any doubt. I'm a bit more cautious than that.

 

Thanks, Sandy.

Yes, I probably should have assessed my confidence level at 95% +, but of course, there is still a tiny possibility that yet more information might emerge from the notes of Mrs. Jack D. Tippit, information that might point in another direction.

However, based on what have at this time, it seems inconceivable that anyone else could fit besides Elizabeth Bentley.

16 hours ago, John Kowalski said:

Paul:

Had a look at page 2, it mentions 1940, Nazi, does not mention Mrs. Oswald.

John,

Up in the top left of page two supposedly the really blurry name reads "Oswald, Mrs." 

However, it is so indistinct as to be worthless. The CIA analyst apparently did a search on the name "Oswald" and this document came up, according to Malcolm Blunt.

Personally, I doubt it has much to do with any of this, whether that name really is "Oswald, Mrs." or not. Until and unless something better comes along on this, it seems a dead end.

3 minutes ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Jim,

Your question as to why Bentley chose to call the Tippit's in Connecticut is a good one.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is best: Bentley made the call because she was there and had read of the Tippit's connection to J.D. Tippit in the local paper. The ease of making a local call to a family who had a link to the assassination  assured that Bentley's ideas about who did it would be known, but not in a way that could be tracked back to her. 

Since 1948, Elizabeth Bentley was a professional anti-communist crusader. She saw Reds everywhere. Her entire raison d'etre was to alert Americans to the danger posed by communist infiltrators.

In 1950, in the midst of the extended lawsuit brought by William Remington, she was convinced "the communists" were surveilling her. (See page 59 of this document):

https://vault.fbi.gov/rosenberg-case/elizabeth-bentley/elizabeth-bentley-part-01-of/view

The anonymous woman caller (Bentley) believed not only had this "group in New York" of (Hungarians and Communists) had somehow utilized "Oswald" to assassinate the president, but that they had "plans to take over the government, which of course, they would deny. . . "

Jim, compare that phrasing from the anonymous woman caller in 1963 with Elizabeth Bentley's sworn testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee on Saturday, July 31, 1948.

It's the same:

Mr.  Rankin.  You  knew  the  Communist  Party  was  dedicated  to  the 
destruction  of  this  Government,  did  you  not? 

Miss  Bentley.  I  did  not  at  the  time  I  was  in  it.  That  was  one  of 
the  reasons  I  got  out. 

Mr.  Rankin.  When  you  found  that  out,  you  quit.  You learned  that 
the  Communist  Party  was  plotting  the  overthrow  of  this  Government? 

Miss  Bentley.  I  would  say  that  was  correct;  yes. 

Mr.  Rankin.  And  that  that  was  one  of  the  chief  planks — we  will 
say  of  the  platform — or  one  of  the  chief  elements  in  their  program? 

Miss  Bentley.  I  don't  know  if  it  is  in  their  open  program,  but  it 
certainly  is  in  their  basic  secret  program ;  yes. 

Mr.  Rankin.  I  am  not  talking  about  the  open  program,  because 
we  do  not  get  that,  you  understand.  Now,  you  knew  also  that  it  was 
dedicated  to  the  destruction  of  what  they  called  the  capitalistic  sys- 
tem— that  is,  the  right  to  own  private  property  ? 

Miss  Bentley.  That  would  be  correct,  yes. 

Mr.  Rankin.  You  learned  that  in  Russia  they  have  taken  over  the 
land  and  that  private  enterprise  has  been  reduced  and  that  the  people 
of  Russia  have  been  reduced  to  the  status  of  slaves.  You  found  that 
out  before  you  quit  them ;  is  that  true?

Miss  Bentley.  I  do  not  know  that  I  exactly  found  it  out;  but  judg- 
ing by  the  Russians  with  whom  I  dealt,  it  would  be  extremely  plausi- 
ble ;  yes. 

Jim, the anonymous woman caller on 11/30/63, the subject of this post, the subject of a "Top Secret" FBI memo classified for three decades after the assassination, could only have been Elizabeth Bentley.

There simply is no other viable candidate.

There is no longer any doubt.

The exact ramifications of that knowledge are yet to be determined . . . 

The transcript from the full set of HUAC's hearings in the summer of 1948 can be found here:

https://archive.org/stream/hearingsregardin1948unit/hearingsregardin1948unit_djvu.txt

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

It would be helpful to find a specific reference to doppelgangers (or similar terminology) in Dulles’s “The Craft of Intelligence.” I spent a half hour or so trying to find a searchable version of the book, without success.

One of the problems I have convincing myself that the Hungarian book was owned by Harvey Oswald and suppressed by the FBI is that so often the FBI just made evidence it didn’t like disappear.  As one of many, many examples, all the original NYC school records simply disappeared while in FBI possession, despite the best efforts of Judge Florence Kelley to find out what happened to them.  Why would the FBI allow Marina to keep “Circus Maximus” if they understood the significance of the Hungarian connection?

Thanks, Paul, for the link to the news articles on Bentley et al. Fascinating that Bentley apparently said she got “all kinds of information from her strategic contacts in the Office of Strategic Services headed by Gen. William J. Donovan” and had all that information on John Abt.  Since both Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles were active in the OSS, it is easy to see how an apparent CIA project could have had roots prior to the Agency’s inception.

It’s also easy to understand that the Abt/”Oswald” connection could have concerned Bentley, but I’m not sure why that would have prompted her to make that call to the Tippits of Connecticut, especially suggesting all the Commie connections.  Does that make sense?

Jim,

Your question as to why Bentley chose to call the Tippit's in Connecticut is a good one.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is best: Bentley made the call because she was there and had read of the Tippit's connection to J.D. Tippit in the local paper. The ease of making a local call to a family who had a link to the assassination  assured that Bentley's ideas about who did it would be known, but not in a way that could be tracked back to her. 

Since 1948, Elizabeth Bentley was a professional anti-communist crusader. She saw Reds everywhere. Her entire raison d'etre was to alert Americans to the danger posed by communist infiltrators.

In 1950, in the midst of the extended lawsuit brought by William Remington, she was convinced "the communists" were surveilling her. (See page 59 of this document):

https://vault.fbi.gov/rosenberg-case/elizabeth-bentley/elizabeth-bentley-part-01-of/view

The anonymous woman caller (Bentley) believed not only had this "group in New York" of (Hungarians and Communists) had somehow utilized "Oswald" to assassinate the president, but that they had "plans to take over the government, which of course, they would deny. . . "

Jim, compare that phrasing from the anonymous woman caller in 1963 with Elizabeth Bentley's sworn testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee on Saturday, July 31, 1948.

It's the same:

Mr.  Rankin.  You  knew  the  Communist  Party  was  dedicated  to  the 
destruction  of  this  Government,  did  you  not? 

Miss  Bentley.  I  did  not  at  the  time  I  was  in  it.  That  was  one  of 
the  reasons  I  got  out. 

Mr.  Rankin.  When  you  found  that  out,  you  quit.  You learned  that 
the  Communist  Party  was  plotting  the  overthrow  of  this  Government? 

Miss  Bentley.  I  would  say  that  was  correct;  yes. 

Mr.  Rankin.  And  that  that  was  one  of  the  chief  planks — we  will 
say  of  the  platform — or  one  of  the  chief  elements  in  their  program? 

Miss  Bentley.  I  don't  know  if  it  is  in  their  open  program,  but  it 
certainly  is  in  their  basic  secret  program ;  yes. 

Mr.  Rankin.  I  am  not  talking  about  the  open  program,  because 
we  do  not  get  that,  you  understand.  Now,  you  knew  also  that  it  was 
dedicated  to  the  destruction  of  what  they  called  the  capitalistic  sys- 
tem— that  is,  the  right  to  own  private  property  ? 

Miss  Bentley.  That  would  be  correct,  yes. 

Mr.  Rankin.  You  learned  that  in  Russia  they  have  taken  over  the 
land  and  that  private  enterprise  has  been  reduced  and  that  the  people 
of  Russia  have  been  reduced  to  the  status  of  slaves.  You  found  that 
out  before  you  quit  them ;  is  that  true?

Miss  Bentley.  I  do  not  know  that  I  exactly  found  it  out;  but  judg- 
ing by  the  Russians  with  whom  I  dealt,  it  would  be  extremely  plausi- 
ble ;  yes. 

Jim, the anonymous woman caller on 11/30/63, the subject of this post, the subject of a "Top Secret" FBI memo classified for three decades after the assassination, could only have been Elizabeth Bentley.

There simply is no other viable candidate.

There is no longer any doubt.

The exact ramifications of that knowledge are yet to be determined . . . 

4 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

BTW, Geo just emailed me copies of some of the interior pages from Circus Maximus.  Surprisingly to me, the cartoon captions are in English, and many are quite funny.  Here’s one (cropped to preserve bandwidth and hopefully preserve “fair use”).

Jim,

Ask Geo if any of the cartoons in "Circus Maximus" could be seen as anti-communist (or, conversely, as pro-communist).

As to why the FBI didn't make it disappear, well I can only guess, but it's possible that the (presumed) Hungarian roots for "Oswald"/Harvey were unknown to very many in the FBI. We know that Hoover knew the CIA had a doppelganger project going on using "Oswald"/Harvey by 1963, but exactly when did Hoover know the specifics of the origins of that project? 

I wouldn't be surprised if Hoover himself wasn't fully clued in on "Oswald"/Harvey's real origins (whether Hungarian or not), and therefore the FBI may not have realized the significance (if any)  of "Circus Maximus."

One more thing:

When Marina put this book up for auction in 2013, she included a letter of provenance. Maybe she lied about that, but in 2013, outside of you, me, John A., David J., and a very few others, who could possibly have recognized the significance of a Hungarian book of cartoons in "Oswald's" possessions?

There was no commercial value in faking a Hungarian book in 2013. If Marina was going to lie about a book, then she would have produced something much more incendiary, not an obscure book of bland cartoons by a man from a country with (officially) no connection to her infamous husband. 

We probably will have to leave it there - neither of us can prove it was or was not originally "Oswald's" book. 

14 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

John K: 

Megathanks for the MK/ULTRA articles.  They reference events a few years later than we are examining for the earliest Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald's appearances in the U.S., but no doubt Americans who approved of things like MK/ULTRA were well entrenched in the US Government by the mid-1940s.  Does anyone doubt that?

Paul J:

I’d completely forgotten the Elizabeth Bentley info you had posted years ago.  Megathanks for reminding us of it.  You make a great case that she may have been the anonymous caller.

Isn’t it fascinating that Ms. Bentely appeared before HUAC just a year after Jack Ruby did?  Small world, eh?  Do we seriously believe that the Gerald Ford Library referenced a “false document” about Ruby and HUAC from 1947?  See paragraph #1 below.

Nice find, Jim.

Here's one more to add to the "Elizabeth Bentley was the anonymous caller" file: 

Bentley testified repeatedly and said several times in 1948 that John Abt was the spymaster in charge of the "Perlo Group" before she took it over. She claimed that the Abt's apartment in NYC was an informal hangout for communist spies. (Whether any of that was true is irrelevant.) What does matter is that the news of the tenuous connection between John Abt and "Oswald" ("Oswald" asked on Saturday, 11/23/63 that John Abt be contacted for legal help) would have sent Bentley into a frenzy in late November, 1963, just like the anonymous woman caller.

See these news articles from FBI files, particularly pages 16, 17 and 38: 

https://vault.fbi.gov/rosenberg-case/elizabeth-bentley/elizabeth-t.-bentley-part-11-of 

3 hours ago, John Kowalski said:

In Harvey and Lee John A wrote "In January 1953 the HUAC in New York made reference to a "Mrs. M. Oswald" in a CIA Office of Security file. The file contained references to 1941, Nazi's, and New Jersey. Judge John Tunheim, of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), wrote to Henry Hyde in an attempt to get the HUAC files on Lee and Marguerite Oswald released, but his request was refused."

Does this statement suggest that she was spying on them?

Article below says that the Nazi organization The German-American Bund had its headquarters in Yorkville. Jean Stafford in her book about Marguerite Oswald said that her husband believed that her accent was from Hoboken, New Jersey and Astoria, New York. Am speculating that Marguerite Oswald was from the east coast. If her connections to Nazis in 1941 is true, then she may have been working as an intelligence asset, collecting information on them and this could have been how they eventually recruited her for the Harvey project. 

Stafford also said that she believed Marguerite took elocution lessons. Elocution lessons can be taken to remove your accent. Maybe she took them in an attempt to hide her east coast accent if she was planning to move to another part of the country. 

 

 

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/nazi-town-usa-german-american-bund-new-york-hitler-antisemitism-pbs-doc-1234951919/

John K.,

Here (on page two of this attachment) is the infamous file in question (best copy available - not very useful.)

Note that it does NOT say "Mrs. M. Oswald", but merely "Mrs. Oswald." Also, while the references to "1940" and "Nazis" is handwritten, I see no reference to "New Jersey". I remember reading Malcolm Blunt's guess that a CIA analyst did a search on the name "Oswald" and this popped up.

Does it have any connection at all to anyone we are interested in?

Probably not, but who knows?

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=54631#relPageId=2

37 minutes ago, John Kowalski said:

Do you have any theories that would explain why he Oswald had this book?

Well, the simplest one is that our "Oswald" (Harvey) really was of (somewhat) Hungarian origin and that this book meant something to him personally. Did it remind him of a distant past, one before his new identity as "Oswald"?

Maybe so, but that's just a guess and nothing more.

35 minutes ago, John Kowalski said:

Jim:

Do you know if John ever spoke to Marina about why Oswald had this book?

John,

As far as I know,  neither John Armstrong nor anyone else was aware that "Oswald" had this book until it was offered for auction in 2013.

Four years ago, in response to the late John Butler's throwaway comment about Louis Budenz, I raised the possibility that the mysterious women caller was Elizabeth Bentley. (John Butler then followed up my post and discussed it, but he never seriously developed it.)

Here is what I thought then and now believe more strongly: Elizabeth Bentley was very probably the mysterious woman caller to the Tippit house in Connecticut on 11/30/63.

1. The caller feared publicity - "they" could identify her if "they" knew she was a woman. She was known entity to the press - she had a quasi-public persona. She was not some anonymous neighbor of the Gardos/Blair/Weinstock crowd.

2. The caller claimed to be calling from New Haven, Connecticut

3. The caller was a "mature" woman. (Not old, but "mature").

4. The caller believed (like everyone else in America at that moment) that our "Oswald" really had shot the president, and she believed she had inside information on just how connected he was to some dangerous communist group. 

5. The caller referenced Emil Gardos, Fred Blair (albeit not by name) and Louis Weinstock. These men were certainly well known to the FBI and HUAC, but not to the general public. 

6. The caller mentioned an area of NYC (Yorkville) which really did abound with Hungarians and was home to (at least some) Communists.

7. The caller believed her inside information ("Oswald" did it as part of a nefarious commie plot - this group wants to take over the government! They've got charts and maps!) was likely to be ignored or corrupted by the FBI

8. The caller spoke in an accent, apparently, although neither Mr. nor Mrs. Tippit agreed as to what it was. 

OK.

So why Elizabeth Bentley?

1. She was absolutely a known entity and had spent most of her life in and around New York and Connecticut. She was born in New Milford, Connecticut, went to Vassar College as an undergraduate (Poughkeepsie, NY), Columbia University (NYC) as a graduate student, and got her first job spying for the CPUSA at the Italian Library of Information (a front for Fascist Italy) in NYC. 

She rose in rank and importance in the communist world as a spy, eventually earning the nickname "Unmitsa" ("clever girl") for her work running two different communist spy rings in the U.S. She spent most of her life between 1935 and 1945 in and around NYC. 

However, a combination of personal problems, fear and the resentment that her male handlers were cutting her out eventually turned Bentley into a professional anti-communist for the FBI in 1945. (No less than J. Edgar Hoover himself ordered that her defection to the American side be held in the strictest secrecy - the FBI still wanted to use her as a double agent.)

To maximize political damage to communist fronts and communist agents in the USA, Hoover decided to have Bentley go public. She gave a series of interviews and appeared before HUAC in 1948. Her testimony exposed the extent to which the American state was riddled with communist-sympathizers (or worse) and was politically explosive for the Truman Administration. 

in short, for awhile, Elizabeth Bentley absolutely was a public figure.

2.Like the anonymous caller claimed, Elizabeth Bentley really was in New Haven, Connecticut on November 30, 1963. She was there to prepare for abdominal-cancer surgery which would kill her just three days later.

3. Elizabeth Bentley was 55 years old in 1963. Not "old", but "mature".

4. Until 1948, Elizabeth Bentley had spent all of her adult life either working for or against communist groups, much of it in an undercover capacity. Just as the anonymous caller believed (wrongly) her insights into "Oswald's" communist connections could explain the assassination, Bentley believed her insights into the nature of the communist conspiracy in America could explain how Washington worked.

5. I can't prove that Bentley personally knew the names "Gardos", "Blair" and "Weinstock", but as the head of communist spy rings in NYC before 1945 she had to have come across those names. (Who else could have?)

6. As a longtime resident of NYC, and as a spymistress herself, it is inconceivable that Bentley would not have known that Yorkville was home to a huge variety of Eastern European immigrants, many of communist leanings/sympathies (or more.)

7. Elizabeth Bentley had worked with the FBI at the highest levels since 1945. She knew how it worked - as long as she was useful, she was OK. But by 1963, she was an alcoholic Cold War relic from the 1940's, of little further use to Hoover's FBI. 

8. Elizabeth Bentley had degrees in English, Italian and French. She was a smart, articulate woman who could converse in multiple languages (as a young woman, she spent time in Florence.) Could she have "faked" an ambiguous accent over the phone? Of course she could have. 

Did Elizabeth Bentley have any inside knowledge about the "Harvey Project"? I doubt it. But nor did the anonymous caller - she thought "Oswald" had done it as part of a giant commie plot. 

Here she is on NBC's "Meet The Press" on September12, 1948: 

23 minutes ago, John Kowalski said:

John A said that there is a list of Oswald possessions, and that this list got bigger after his possessions were sent to Washington. A comparison of these two lists would confirm the planting of evidence.

Yes, John A. is correct - the list grew after it came into the possession of the FBI. However, I think that the "Circus Maximus" book probably really belonged to "Oswald". Its presence among his possessions would have raised questions about who he really was. The FBI didn't plant that book - that was exactly the kind of book they wanted to make disappear.

On 2/17/2024 at 7:26 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

Geo,

As the late John Butler pointed out in THIS POST, Circus Maximus by the Hungarian author Tibor Kajan was was allegedly found among Oswald’s possessions.

Here is the description from Heritage Auctions:

[John F. Kennedy]: Lee Harvey Oswald's Personal Books. Two books owned by Lee Harvey Oswald. Most telling is a paperback copy of the "Communist Manifesto" (5" x 7", Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, 60 pp., 1946). The other is a copy of Tibor Kajan's "Circus Maximus" (5" x 7.5", colored boards, Budapest, Corvina Press, 1963). Wear to corners of spine. A delightful and whimsical book of cartoons directed toward juveniles. These were included in a cleanout of personal papers requested by Marina Oswald following the assassination and given to her personal lawyer. Accompanied by a letter of provenance.
 

However, we have a number of USG and DPD prepared lists of Oswald’s possessions, and, despite a "letter of provenance" listed above, I don’t recall ever seeing this book listed there.  I’m not at all convinced it is legit, although it may have slipped through the cracks or have been suppressed because of the Hungarian connection.

 

Jim,

If the only book offered was the copy of the "Communist Manifesto", then I too would wonder if it really belonged to our "Oswald."  (Could or would the FBI have planted a copy of it in the commie-loving "Oswald's" possessions after the fact to shape public opinion? Oh you betcha!)

However, as I pointed out on December 2, 2019 (which was then picked up the next day by the late John Butler in his post you referenced above ) the collection included Tibor Kajan's "Circus Maximus". 

That book was by a Hungarian Jew - a man considered by many Hungarians to be a national hero. (Kajan was a multiple Kossuth award nominee.)

I believe we can conclude these books really were owned by our "Oswald" precisely because they were suppressed from the "official" records. After all, people might have started to wonder who "Oswald" really was if they knew this 10th grade dropout from Texas had purchased this book in 1962!

On 2/16/2024 at 7:51 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Here is a message for Geo:

Oswald is NOT the name of the Hungarian orphan we are trying to find. We do NOT know the name of that boy. We only know that the he was living with Emil Gardos in New York City in the 1940s.

Because of that, we probably cannot find anything about the orphan.

After the boy was recruited by the CIA, at the age of 13, the CIA gave him the name Lee Harvey Oswald. Which is identical to the name of an American boy, who was also 13.

Therefore, the CIA had doppelganger boys.

 

Sandy,

I agree that the last name "Oswald" had nothing to do with the birth name of the orphan/refugee/waif from Eastern Europe. (If his real last name was any variation of "Oswald", that would be a remarkable coincidence.  Highly unlikely.)

No, our little boy in NYC got stuck with the name "Oswald" because of his resemblance to Marguerite Oswald's third son in Texas. And only someone who had laid eyes on both boys could have noticed that resemblance - there was no internet, no way to search a massive database of photos back then. The only person who could have noticed that resemblance would have been Edwin Eckdahl.

This is NOT to say that Eckdahl was a spook, merely that he moved in spooky circles - he knew people who knew people who would have wanted to utilize that resemblance. 

So, our nameless little Eastern European orphan/refugee/waif was (allegedly) placed with Emil and Grace Gardos and/or Louis Weinstock in Yorkville in the mid 1940's, and according to the anonymous caller on 11/30/63, was going by the name "Oswald" then. (If he was not known as "Oswald" when she knew him in the 1940's, she never could have been certain it was the same person in 1963. But she was certain it was him because he was still using the name "Oswald.")

Why did our orphan/refugee wind up with Gardos et al. in Yorkville? Probably for humanitarian reasons, although if Gardos, Blair and/or Weinstock were secretly working for the FBI in any capacity, then it's possible they were seen as suitable temporary caregivers until a more satisfactory caretaker could be arranged.

Therefore the simplest answer to Jeremy Boczjuk's old question ("why did the plotters go to all the trouble of creating a "Harvey" doppelganger project in the 1940's when they could have used a Russian-speaking American Serviceman in 1959?") is that they hadn't thought of the "Harvey project" when the resemblance between the two boys came to the attention of Allen Dulles or Frank Wisner in 1947 (or so.)

Dulles was enamored with "tradecraft" (including the use of doppelgangers), so much so that in 1963 he wrote (or someone did his name) "The Craft of Intelligence", summarizing and explaining "tradecraft" to the novice.

https://www.amazon.com/Craft-Intelligence-Legendary-Fundamentals-Gathering/dp/1493018795/ref=asc_df_1493018795/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312674999652&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=957451456147524809&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9016840&hvtargid=pla-491723028848&psc=1&mcid=daf7eb13fe7730cdb265b7ce6260b250&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIierc_tq3hAMVTDXUAR0bOgZCEAQYASABEgJClPD_BwE

So, if the physical resemblance between the third son of Marguerite Oswald (Edwin Ekdahl's wife between 1945 and 1948) and the young orphan/waif/refugee from Eastern Europe somehow came to the attention of Allen Dulles circa 1945-47, then it is entirely plausible that Dulles would want to use that resemblance in some way , even if he did not then have a  fully fleshed out plan of action.

My point is that the "Harvey Project" (secreting a Russian-speaking doppelganger behind the Iron Curtain in 1959) did not yet exist in 1945-47, but what did exist then was Dulles' interest in utilizing the apparent resemblance between the two boys in some future TBD operation against the Soviets. 

3 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

John,

On a different note, can you link me to your research on the alias "John Howard Bowen" which was apparently shared by both the mysterious elderly "Osborne" on the infamous/nonexistent Mexican bus trip, and also by John Caesar Grossi (of Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall fame)?

Thanks.

John,

Never mind - I found it at "Kennedys and King."

On 2/11/2024 at 9:54 AM, John Kowalski said:

Earlier in this thread some of us did some Weinstock research, it will be very interesting to know what is in these letters.

John,

On a different note, can you link me to your research on the alias "John Howard Bowen" which was apparently shared by both the mysterious elderly "Osborne" on the infamous/nonexistent Mexican bus trip, and also by John Caesar Grossi (of Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall fame)?

Thanks.

On 11/23/2023 at 5:48 AM, Paul Bacon said:

 

You guys aren't referring to Toni Glover in the Hughs film, are you?  She's standing on top of the pedestal across the street from the doorway.

Thanks. Of course.

I should have picked that up earlier.

20 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Who's the tall blue shirted man standing next to the short Billy Lovelady?

 

Good question.

And:

1. Which way is he facing in the Hughes film? (Toward the motorcade or away from it? Are we looking at his back as he lifts his arms above his head?)

2. Why is he not clearly visible in the Towner film? (How could he have disappeared in the one second between the two films? Even if we assume he stepped (back? forward?) into the shadows at that exact moment, the "why?" becomes even more provocative. The president's limo was literally right in front of him yet he retreated at that split second!)

Why?

18 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

The legacy media ossifies into coprolite. 

Again we are told (by TIME) the "definitive" account of the JFKA is the Warren Commission. The HSCA Report, that concluded there had likely been a conspiracy...is erased from history. Orwell, anyone? 

Passing thought is given to the Biden Administration snuff job on the JFKA Records Act. A curiosity, only. The Orwellian "Transparency Board" is also a non-entity. 

You can't make this stuff up. 

 

What We Know and Still Don’t Know About JFK’s Assassination--TIME

U.S. President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and others smile at the crowds lining their motorcade route on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas—just minutes before the President was assassinated as his car passed through Dealey Plaza.Bettmann Archive

BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN

NOVEMBER 21, 2023 2:39 PM EST

This Wednesday marks 60 years since America’s youngest President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, at the age of 46 by Lee Harvey Oswald. He was shot while riding in a car with his wife First Lady Jackie Onassis and Texas Governor John Connally during a tour of the state. Two days later, local nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963.

Sixty years after the JFK assassination, it’s still unclear why Oswald shot the president, fueling countless conspiracies—like whether his successor Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the assassination. (He was not.) The continued fascination over who killed JFK and why helps provide context for the conspiracy theories that continue to dominate American politics today.

The definitive account of what happened the day of the assassination is the report produced by the Warren Commission. Just a week after JFK’s death, Johnson signed an executive order that created the commission, headed by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Earl Warren, to investigate the death of the President. Ten months later, its report confirmed that Oswald fired the shots that killed JFK and wounded Connally, and that there is “no evidence” that Oswald or Jack Ruby were part of a domestic conspiracy or that a foreign government was behind the assassination. The report did not determine why Oswald shot JFK; as TIME reported in 1964, “The explanation of Oswald's motive for killing President Kennedy was buried with him.”

“I don't think we fully understood how many people just could not give up the idea that there was a conspiracy,” says Burt Griffin, assistant counsel on the Warren Commission, and author of JFK, Oswald and Ruby: Politics, Prejudice and Truth.

Read more: JFK's assassination and the conspiracy industry

The killing of the President helped fuel a climate of mistrust in the 1960s that grew with the assassinations in 1968 of Martin Luther King, Jr. and JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy, says Larry Sabato, author of The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy. The ongoing Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s contributed to a culture of conspiracies. “As a society, we became addicted to conspiracy theories because of the Kennedy assassination,” Sabato says. 

Since the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, the government has been declassifying documents related to JFK’s assassination. But according to experts on the JFK assassination that TIME talked to, no major revelations have been found in these document dumps in the 60 years since the President was killed.

“No new information has been revealed or exposed that really alter the course of our understanding of what happened,” says Nicola Longford, CEO of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, a museum all about the JFK assassination located in the building where Oswald shot JFK. 

Some eyewitnesses to the JFK assassination are still alive. National Geographic’s new docuseries out Nov. 5 is told through archival footage from the Sixth Floor museum and eyewitnesses from the Associated Press reporter Peggy Simpson to Clint Hill, a Secret Service agent who tried to shield the Kennedys from bullets.

“The 60th anniversary is the last round-year anniversary in which we’re going to have eyewitnesses to the assassination coming up with any news,” says Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.

The most prominent eyewitness account that surfaced this year is from Paul Landis, 88, who was on Jackie Kennedy’s Secret Service detail and has opened up about his role on that fateful day in a new memoir that came out in October. Per a Sep. 9 New York Times article, Landis was riding in a convertible behind the presidential limousine and claims that he found an intact bullet in the seam of the limousine’s cushioning, slipped it into his coat pocket, and left it on Kennedy’s stretcher. The bullet then ended up on Connally’s empty stretcher, as a hospital staffer was moving them around. The Warren Commission did not locate the bullet on JFK’s stretcher. 

But the fact that Landis has not spoken up for 60 years has raised some questions about his account and how accurate his memory is, as well as the fact that the Warren Commission didn’t interview him. Even the 2023 Times article concluded that “A couple elements of his account contradict the official statements he filed with authorities immediately after the shooting, and some of the implications of his version cannot be easily reconciled to the existing record.”

One big reason that JFK assassination conspiracy theories still persist is because not all of the files pertaining to that fateful day have been made available by the U.S. government. All of them were supposed to be released by 2017, but the release date has been postponed multiple times during the Trump and Biden administrations. Sabato, who does deep dives into the declassified JFK assassination files with his students at the University of Virginia, says there are thousands of pages that are classified and it’s unclear why. “We don't know what they cover and so that feeds the conspiracies even more,” as Sabato puts it. “What are they hiding?” Posner agrees, but given Oswald never went to trial, he argues, “You're never going to feel as though the case is really settled.”

Ben,

No offense, but really, it's Time Magazine for god's sake!

What did you expect?

Time Magazine was founded in 1923 by "America's Most Influential Private Citizen", Henry Luce (who was still publisher and head honcho in 1963.)

Time is now and has always been the voice of the globalist elite, the very class of people bitterly opposed to President Kennedy's foreign and domestic policies.

Luce (himself a child of Protestant Missionaries in China, intent on saving souls), had a messianic view of the role the United States should play after World War II.

Indeed, Luce invented both the term and concept of "The American Century" which remains to this day the cornerstone economic, political and military philosophy of the American Deep State/Establishment.

 Luce believed "the power conferred was global and universal rather than territorially specific . . . Luce called upon United States "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit".

The Ambiguous Legacy: U.S. Foreign Relations in the 'American Century' - Google Books

(See page 20.)

Henry Luce was the heart, soul and voice of the globalist, economic elite - the very people who would never allow a mere president to stand in the way of their goals.

Time Magazine was Luce's most-prized creation, and today, 56 years after his death, it is still his baby.

Time will never, ever acknowledge that a conspiracy to murder the president was originated and carried out by the highest-level operatives of the American Deep State. 

5 minutes ago, Alan Ford said:

Forgive me, Mr. Jolliffe, I was writing in shorthand (partly so as not to hijack the current thread). But I'm happy to answer your question using the relevant images.

Yes, Towner shows the doorway for a very brief time----------------

Hughes (taken a mere couple of seconds before this) shows Mr. Lovelady standing well over on the west side of the doorway, behind and up a bit from the black man at the white west column---------------

Now let's look more closely at what's happening in Towner in the Lovelady location. It's quite startling---------------

Mr. Lovelady appears to be rather frantically waving a flag or somesuch at Pres. Kennedy.

Hmm.

Could be.

I wouldn't want to make a case against Lovelady on that alone, but still, it does appear he might be waving something. Why? Who knows?

But who could possibly have seen that motion at that moment? Almost no one except for (fortuitously) someone at Tina Towner's exact position. 

I am afraid that I am going to plead agnosticism on this one: I just can't decide what is going on there.