Greg Doudna

Anthony Mugan and Bill Simpich, I think I may have something. I have been reading a lot of documents to try to catch up with you on this. I erred; the voice of that Saturday Sept 28, 1963, 11:51 am Oswald/Cuban consulate call certainly is identified by the transcriber as the same voice as the Tue Oct 1 caller who self-identified as Oswald. BUT the Cuban consulate was closed so such a call cannot have come from the Cuban consulate. That led the Lopez report, John Newman, and all discussions to think it may have been an impersonator making that call on Saturday. But an impersonator is no more capable of having called from the Cuban consulate on that Saturday as the real Oswald or Silvia Duran. Consider the following better explanation: what is represented as that SATURDAY Sept 28 transcript actually happened on and is part of Friday's activity on Sept 27. That would remove all of the problems discussed at length in Newman and the Lopez report concerning that call being on Sat Sept 28. 

I have found a CIA document that shows the content of that phone call dated Fri Sept 27. 

The document: a rough draft (therefore from early prior to finished-copy and distributed versions of the same text), with many visible edits and corrections, of a text titled "Contacts between the Oswalds and Soviet citizens 13 June 1962 - 23 Nov". It is a timeline. According to the metadata it was filed in Oswald's file on 5/8/64. (Where was it held physically before then?). Here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96090#relPageId=19&tab=page. 

In that rough draft version, the critical portion transcript of the "Sat Sept 28" Oswald call is part of Fri Sept 27 activity. 

Here is the finished version of that document (the one that undoubtedly was put in Oswald's 201 file originally as the "marked card"). In this finished, edited version that portion of Fri Sept 27 transcript (in the rough draft) has now become a separate item at Sat Sept 28. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=109268#relPageId=2&tab=page.

The disrepancy is smoking-gun. There are only two possibilities: either the finished draft was correcting an earlier mistaken dating of an actual Sat Sept 28 phone intercept fragment in the rough draft version, or, the finished draft changed the correct date to a wrong date of Sat Sept 28. It is one or the other.

Since the Cuban consulate was not open Saturday; and Silvia Duran's testimony is adamant that she was not part of any Saturday phone call or further contact with Oswald after Friday; and since the content of that intercept makes no sense on Saturday (for all of the reasons brought out at length in Newman, Oswald and the CIA, chapter 18); but does make excellent sense on Friday; it is the rough draft, the earliest version, which has the date correct, and it is the finished version with the Saturday date which is incorrect. The finished draft which went into Oswald's file was a "marked card" with the erroneous Saturday date on that phone call.

And with this so much falls into place. All of the reasons why that Saturday call makes no sense on Saturday--seemingly so repetitious from what occurred Friday--as brought out by John Newman, are correct. But the conclusion drawn by Newman and the Lopez report et al. from that is the wrong one. It is not that an imposter Oswald (hired by CIA Mexico City?) started creating an Oswald phone call on Saturday and then on Tue Oct 1. No, it was all the same Oswald, Friday through Tuesday--only a misdating of a piece of a Friday intercept to Saturday, only the change in the date, was the specific creation of what you call a "marked card".     

When I found this at first I wondered if this was simply an early clerical mistake, but that did not seem right and then I wondered if this was somehow part of the LBJ/Hoover coverup of Cuban/Soviet contacts. But in light of the work each of you have done in further developing the marked card idea, was this "mistaken" dating of that portion of actual Friday Sept 27 intercept to Sat Sept 28--itself one more "marked card"--in which minor errors are planted in files and cables to check where they turn up on the other side and detect leaks. Anyone then who detected or got wind of a Sat Sept 28 phone call from inside the Cuban consulate could only have gotten it from the "marked card" from the US side, and could not have gotten it independently from the Cuban or the Soviet side, since though that Oswald call did happen, it did not happen on Saturday. 

I have not been able to find any original documents from the Tarasoff transcribers directly which would identify dates of phone calls in their original handiwork. All documents with transcripts of that phone call dated Saturday Sept 28 that I can find are secondary post-transcriber, to my knowledge. The Tarasoffs in their HSCA interview were not asked concerning this date issue and it did not come up in their testimony. 

The "marked card" of the intercept dated Sat Sept 28 is sent forth by CIA in this cable to the US ambassador to Mexico dated 16 Oct 1963: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40394#relPageId=65&tab=page, showing that the Sat Sept 28 date--the "marked card"--was being circulated by CIA that early.

With this, all argument for supposing more than one Oswald in these phone calls is gone. Since there is evidence Oswald was in Mexico City; in the Cuban consulate; independent accounts of Oswald's in-person visit to the Soviet embassy on Sat Sept 28 from Nechiporenko and Kostikov; and no reason to suppose more than one Oswald in the Oswald phone intercepts . . . it looks like it was Oswald and not CIA going to a lot of work to have someone else pretend to be Oswald. 

I conclude that the alleged Sat Sept 28 transcript is genuine intercept of a Silvia Duran and Oswald phone call from the Cuban embassy but that it actually occurred Fri Sept 27 (perhaps at 11:51 am as represented); there was only one Oswald in the Mexico City Oswald phone calls; the marked card was as simple as a change of a dating by one day to a date that was actually impossible (and therefore, if it turned up, could only have come from the marked card issuance); and all analyses of these Oswald Mexico City phone calls up to now have missed this.

On the voice identification and the characterization of Oswald's Russian as poor in those phone calls: Boris Tarasoff, the likely source of that, told HSCA he would not write that kind of commentary or description in his work product which was solely transcription (the only thing he would add is identities of speakers if he could recognize them from their voices). Furthermore Tarasoff told HSCA he was never asked later about those phone calls, after he turned in his work product. (Curiously the transcriber of the Oswald phone calls is identified as "Douglas L. Feinglass" in this Nov. 23, 1963 cable from Mexico City CIA to Director: https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/russholmes/104-10413/104-10413-10159/html/104-10413-10159_0003a.htm; alias for Tarasoff?) In the rough draft of "Contacts between the Oswalds and Soviet Citizens" linked above in which the "Sat Oct 28" Oswald phone call is dated on Fri Oct 27, that same draft has this: "Speaking in what the [blacked-out about the space of a long word or name] later termed 'terrible, hardly recognizable Russian"--indicating the characterization was not from the original work product, though it could come from some hearsay of what Tarasoff had said. Since Russian was a second language to Oswald and Oswald could be presumed to speak with an accent, poor in comparison to the native-Russian speakers otherwise in the Russian Embassy, that is about all that I see as necessary to read into that, not that it was not Oswald. On the Hoover claim to LBJ that the Mexico City Oswald's voice had been heard by FBI and they did not believe it was Oswald, the existence of any Mexico City Oswald tape flown in to Dallas in the early morning hours of Nov 23, 1963 is disputed, and in any case has never been confirmed or verified as heard by any named person of FBI. Since this was in the exact time of the very rapid decision at LBJ/Hoover level to kill the idea of claiming a Soviet or Cuban hand in Oswald's actions, perhaps that top-level decision may be the explanatory context for that claim of Hoover.

Although this has been lengthy, I believe it may be significant in making better sense of at least that detail of Mexico City. My work in contributing this is intended as a measure of respect for the quality and calibre of the work each of you have already done and which I hope you will continue. 

Steve T.-- a possible reconstruction

Mon Sept 23: Texas Unemployment check is mailed from Austin going out 5:15 pm; mail arrives New Orleans overnight, put in boxes next morning.

Tue Sept 24: Morning: check is in Oswald's PO Box and picked up; Oswald cashes check; files weekly unemployment claim in person, mails a change of address postcard. Ca. 10-12 pm: depart in car for Dallas with "Leopoldo" and "Angel". Ca. 7 pm, Silvia Odio apartment. Overnight somewhere Dallas.

Wed Sept 25: Oswald is driven to Austin (4 hr drive), visits Selective Service office ca. 1 pm (https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1141&relPageId=34&search=Austin_Mexico). Driven to Houston where he is dropped off by drivers who return to Dallas or elsewhere. Oswald phones Twiford residence, FPCC member contact (https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1141&search=twiford#relPageId=329&tab=page), while waiting for 2 am Continental bus Houston to Laredo. (Twiford contact information is in Oswald's address book. Mrs. Twiford reported Oswald phoned saying he had several hours before a "flight" [sic; bus] and although she was not certain, assumed he was calling locally since no operator was involved; meanwhile the only male bus passenger on the Houston-Laredo bus that night is plausibly a description of Oswald.)

Thu Sept 26: 2 am bus to Laredo; cross border into Mexico; bus to Mexico City. 

I admit a vulnerability to this reconstruction is that it was verified Oswald cashed an unemployment check in New Orleans that was put in the mail late Mon PM in Austin, and FBI had determined it could not be in Oswald's Post Office box before the end of Tuesday. I could not find the specific documentation or explanation from postal authorities underlying that FBI finding, but the reconstruction above requires that there be some mistake on the order of ca. one-half day time in airmail and distribution time of that mail to Oswald's New Orleans post office box, from what FBI reported to the Warren Commission. Because in my opinion the Odio visit; the Austin Selective Service office visit; the evening Twiford phone call from Oswald in Houston; and the Houston-Laredo leg by bus on Sept 26 are each independently too strong to dismiss, I assume there must be some error in the FBI determination of time of mail delivery from Austin-New Orleans. What makes dramatically or exponentially less sense to me than some adjustment along that line are theories of multiple Oswalds, invocation of imposters, wholesale fabrication and alteration of documents and witness testimonies, etc.   

Anthony M., when you write:

"Was Oswald impersonated in Mexico City? In terms of the LIENVOY intercepts, definitely. Oswald was fluent in Russian and the original transcript notes the terrible Russian spoken by the caller. In terms of the visits to the embassy the situation is less clear. Some descriptions are of someone in their mid-thirties, five foot six inches and blond, whilst others are consistent with the real Oswald. The photo on the visa application is of Oswald but appears to be from late 1962 from the hairstyle and the lack of a receding hairline. In short, the situation is ambiguous but the credibility of the Odio incident and the clear impersonation of Oswald on the telephone calls lends credibility to the possibility that he was not actually present himself."

I would like to cross-examine the almost universally-held idea assumed here--which you share with WC, HSCA, Newman, and the spectrum of assassination researchers alike--of the existence of an "impersonation" of Oswald in Mexico City. That Oswald made the trip to Mexico City is confirmed by Silvia Duran's phone number in Oswald's address book, and Oswald told Ruth Paine after his return to Dallas that he had gone to Mexico City. Plus, the Silvia Odio visit, which I take to be Oswald, paradoxically supports rather than argues against the Mexico City trip of Oswald to me in this way: it is compatible chronologically by adjusting the date by ca. 1 day earlier than WC's report of Silvia's date which Silvia always said she did not remember for certain, if Oswald was driven to Houston and then to the Mexican border (which explains why WC never could find any evidence of bus travel for LHO for that leg of the trip); and Oswald's companions at Odio's door that evening, according to Odio, said they had come from New Orleans and said they were continuing on a trip, and at least that evening were driving Oswald. So I suggest that the Odio visit in Dallas, even though not in a direct line to Houston and the southern border, rather than being in conflict with Oswald's Mexico City trip was part of Oswald's Mexico City trip.

The non-Oswald CIA Mexico City Soviet consulate surveillance photo which was not Oswald was not of an impersonator, but someone who was not impersonating anyone and simply was not Oswald. CIA had sent a photo and wrongly said it was Oswald, but that does not mean the subject of the photo was pretending to be Oswald.

On the intercepts, so far as I can tell all of the intercepts are consistent with a genuine Oswald trying to get a visa into Cuba except one, which is the Saturday Sept. 28. That one has a male speaker who can barely speak Russian whereas Oswald was fluent in Russian. Sylvia Duran, credible in her HSCA testimony, was adamant that she was not involved in that Saturday morning phone call with Oswald. And Hoover told LBJ that FBI agents who had heard one of CIA's supposedly non-existent recordings of Oswald speaking in Russian did not think it sounded like Oswald, just as the photo provided by CIA certainly was not Oswald. Therefore everyone has concluded: an Oswald impersonator, and often it is added, also a Silvia Duran impersonator.

But the speaker in the Saturday morning Sept 28 intercept never claims to be Oswald. The woman's voice never claims to be Silvia Duran either, although the person who prepared the intercept transcript identified the woman speaker as Silvia Duran, and CIA interpreted it as Silvia Duran and Oswald. Whether Silvia Duran was a mistaken voice ID for another woman employee of the Cuban consulate, or it was Silvia Duran with an unrelated different individual in that phone call, is not important to resolve here, but there is nothing internal to that intercept to identify the male voice as Oswald. The identification error at CIA's end in Mexico City came about because later genuine Oswald phone calls to the Soviet consulate on Tue Oct 1 referred back to an Oswald visit to the Soviet consulate on Saturday Sept 28 which happened and has been recounted by a Soviet official on that occasion. But the Sept 28 intercept attributed to Oswald was a mistaken identification of someone who was not Oswald and concerning whom there is no reason to suppose had any intention to be taken for Oswald. With that reinterpretation, the rest of the minor differences in eyewitness memory, etc. are less substantial and is there sound reason to hang on to an intentional impersonation idea at all? For the Sept 28 intercept and verification that the non-Russian-fluent, non-Oswald voice therein never claims to be Oswald: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5099#relPageId=2&tab=page.

Another on the Curington story: in Joan Mellen, Our Man in Haiti (2012), p. 374f, Mellen basically situates Curington's account of casing the Dallas Police station, the night before Oswald was killed by Ruby, as well as the HL Hunt meeting with Marina, as part of a CIA plot to implicate HL Hunt, and therefore to be disregarded. Mellen's logic is that the Curington story appeared in National Enquirer, National Enquirer has a CIA disinformation history, therefore the Curington story can be disregarded. I submit the #3 conclusion of this syllogism does not follow from the preceding statements #1 and #2.

Here is Mellen's critical argument for dismissing the Curington story: "Along the way the Agency vetoed some [CIA-relevant news] articles and planted others, as seems to be [no evidence cited] the case with the Curington article blaming H.L. Hunt for the Kennedy assassination. So the National Enquirer joined Reader's Digest, Conover Mast Publications, to which CIA assigned the cryptonym LP/OVER, and respectable publishing houses like Farrar, Straus & Giroux, as media entities cooperatin with CIA."

In other words, she establishes a past history of this behavior for CIA; argues that the Curington story "seems" to be another example of this pattern; therefore it is; therefore Curington's story can be dismissed. However, Curington has repeated his story, both in the Dick Russell book and in Curington's own book, and in the interview with me. Whatever his activities in younger years, Curington comes across today as a straight shooter, keeps his word, loyal to family and friends, reclusive, computer-illiterate, and in my opinion not intentionally fabricating anything. Also, to repeat, Curington does not claim any fact or certainty that pins any of the assassinations on HL Hunt. He tells what he knows and experienced, and ends with suspicion that his old boss HL Hunt was involved, but never claims to have heard a confession or know of smoking-gun evidence re HL Hunt culpability even secondhand or from hearsay. Curington tells me the reason he had his story told in National Enquirer, which he realizes being a tabloid tended to diminish the impact of his story, is because they paid him a very large sum of money to tell his story, which I interpret as paying him to go from silence to talking, but do not interpret as buying invention of the story itself. HL Hunt's other right-hand man, Rothermel, looks spooky and perhaps an intentional purveyor of disinformation, but Rothermel is not Curington. 

Mellen follows similar logic on p. 377 re de Mohrenschildt:

"In 1976 and 1977, it wasn't only Rothermel and Curington who suggested that H.L. Hunt and/or his sons were complicit in the Kennedy assassination. CIA asset and former 'friend' of Lee Harvey Oswald, George de Mohrenschildt, began to tell anyone who would listen that 'H.L. Hunt and the bunch were behind the assassination,' with Hunt bearing a major role 'with the conspiracy.' It was as if de Mohrenschildt were reading from the text of Farewell America. He had known Hunt for twenty years, de Mohrenschildt told Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans. Hunt's address, and separately, that of Hunt Oil, do appear in de Mohrenschildt's address book. He had gone to all of Hunt's parties, de Mohrenschilt claimed. The trajectory of the assassination traveled 'upwards to Hunt and downwards to Oswald.' So he followed the CIA's script."

The problem there is Mellen is getting all of that, so far as I can tell, channeled second-hand through Oltmans, who is not entirely credible in his claims. I am unaware of a verifiably genuine de Mohrenschildt statement purporting to pin the assassination on HL Hunt in the way that Oltmans claims the dead de Mohrenschildt orally told him, Oltmans. Oltmans' hearsay MIGHT mean de Mohrenschildt said that but it could be total invention on Oltmans' part. That de Mohrenschildt had a history with CIA as informant, minimally, or more is clear and not disputed here. Only Mellen's assertion that de Mohrenschildt himself pinned the assassination on HL Hunt is what I challenge as unclear--given that the only source claiming de Mohrenschildt ever said that has known truthfulness issues. I am skeptical that de Mohrenschildt said what Oltmans claimed re HL Hunt (I would change on this if evidence from de Mohrenschildt, or credible second-hand from a wife or family member were shown).

I close this with a question to the JFK assassination research community: is there a mechanism or resource by which Curington could be polygraphed, while he is alive and in sound mind, as one of the few surviving witnesses with first-hand testimony arguably highly relevant to the history of JFK and MLK (if it is true)? Is there funding and professional expertise for such a polygraph examination--also professional oral history-collection and archiving--especially concerning: (a) his story of visiting the Dallas police station casing for LHO's security at HL Hunt's direction, then reporting this information to Dallas mob boss Civello, the night before Ruby shot LHO; and (b) Curington's account that he personally conveyed at HL Hunt's direction--who was in very frequent and close communication with J. Edgar Hoover immediately following the MLK assassination--a briefcase of a huge amount of cash, from HL Hunt to defense attorney Percy Foreman, to influence and/or reward Foreman to have James Earl Ray plead "guilty" so that there be no trial where facts were brought out in discovery and testimony. 

I would think these two testimonies as to facts would be relevant to future generations looking back on this history. Curington is now 94. Is there a mechanism (funding and professional expertise) to get a polygraph done, while this is still possible?

Just to be clear, I do not for one moment think Castro was behind the JFK assassination, although the record is clear that elements associated with the CIA--never with CIA on-the-record endorsement, always deniable as rogue or wildcat actions not done by CIA--sought to have the public think that. The Anderson 1988 claim is the first and only instance of which I am aware of a claim that the CIA itself directly claimed that in a briefing to a president. Because Jack Anderson's 1988 claim of a CIA briefing to LBJ within ca. 2 days of the assassination stating that as a CIA disclosure of fact to LBJ--said claim (of a CIA briefing to LBJ saying that) otherwise unknown and unreferenced in any JFK assassination literature that I have seen--I interpret Anderson's 1988 claim as part of this larger narrative of "(false) CIA attempts to implicate Castro". Notably, Anderson gave no hint as to his source for that important and closing allegation in his two-hour 1988 special, nor did he comment on how it had been fact-checked to his satisfaction.

As Donald Wilkes, Jr., law professor at Univ. of Georgia, and, to me, a fairly sound analyst, in "Was Castro Behind the JFK Assassination?", Jan. 11, 2017 (https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1278&context=fac_pm), writes:

"...The Enquirer's claim [in Dec 2016 following Castro's death of a bogus alleged 'I did it' deathbed confession of Castro] that Castro was behind the assassination occurred the day after the assassination, when an anti-Castro student exile group here in the United States that was secretly funded and run by the CIA published a special edition of its English language newspaper Trinchera ('Trench') suggesting that Lee Harvey Oswald had killed the President on behalf of Fidel Castro and featuring large side-by-side photos of Castro and Oswald jointly captioned 'The Presumed Assassins.'

"Trinchera's assertions were not fact-based; they were part of the CIA's clandestine anti-Castro campaign to, among other things, smear Castro by propagating derogatory disinformation about him. The base falseness of the allegation and its convenient timing are sure indications that the CIA was attempting to make Castro the false sponsor of the assassination. (In intelligence lingo, a false sponsor is a person who will be publicly blamed for a covert operation after it takes place, thereby diverting attention away form the individuals who actually carried out the operation.) Thus, the theory that Castro was behind the assassination originated in disinformation disseminated by a CIA front group within 24 hours of the President's murder.

<snip>

"Whoever was behind JFK's murder, it was not Fidel Castro. Here are a few of the many reasons we can rest assured of this.

"First, neither the FBI nor the CIA has ever claimed that Castro was behind the assassination or that they had evidence he was behind it. The directors and top echelons of both the FBI and the CIA hated Castro and wanted him dead or deposed and his regime overthrown. If there was evidence that he, a hostile communist tyrant allied with the Soviet Union, had played a role in the brazen public murder of an American President, they would have produced it with alacrity. And if there had been proof permitting the assassination to be pinned on Castro, unquestionably the United States of America would in fury have unleashed its overwhelming military might to destroy the entire Cuban government and obliterate Castro's regime. Eminent JFK assassination researcher Jeff Morley understates this truth when he observes: "If there was any evidence of Cuban involvement, the United States government would have exploited it for diplomatic and geopolitical advantage."

"(Of course, if there was proof that Castro was involved, but the FBI and the CIA overlooked it or concealed it, then the leadership of both agencies should have been sacked and the agencies themselves abolished.)

"Second, both of the principal government investigations of the JFK assassination reached the conclusion that Castro's Cuba was not responsible [. . .]

"Third, the purported evidence of Castro's involvement consists almost entirely of (1) uncorroborated, unverifiable and often highly unlikely allegations made by untrustworthy government informers or by anti-Castro zealots with an ax to grind, and (2) suspicious, misleading or altered or forged documents. [. . .]

"Attributing the assassination to leftists rather than to rightists is now as anachronistic as the view that JFK's murder was carried out by a lone gunman. As former Cuban law professor Arnaldo M. Fernandez correctly notes, at present 'the dominant view of the JFK research community depicts Kennedy as a victim of a plot by his enemies on the right.'

"Unsurprisingly, the majority of the authors or bloggers who obstinately continue to blame Castro are, with few exceptions, right-wingers or spokesmen for conservative organizations or causes. This strongly suggests that the claim that Fidel Castro is to blame for the assassination of President Kennedy is based more on politics than facts."

It seems that the 1988 Jack Anderson "Castro did it as blowback" narrative, underscored by the culminating damning alleged factual claim stated in his conclusion--a non-sourced, nonverifiable assertion of a CIA briefing to LBJ within ca. two days of the assassination in which the CIA allegedly disclosed as fact to the President inside CIA intelligence of knowledge of Castro's responsibility for having assassinated the American President--(a factual claim of a CIA briefing to LBJ that would change everything for historians not to mention the public if that factual claim of that CIA briefing as described by Jack Anderson were ever documented as true)--is itself a Plan B coverup story. In this Plan B, the earlier coverup is acknowledged, but, like Plato's defense of "noble lies" by wise ruling philosophers for the greater good of the lesser rabble, the coverup is framed and self-understood by insiders as having been for understandable and benign motives. For the CIA's own setting forth of this second-stage Plan B retrospective explanation of CIA's behavior re the JFK assassination as a benign coverup there is CIA's in-house historian David Robarge's Sept 2013 article, "DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF).

Totally agree with your assessment, Joe Bauer, well put. And thanks to Larry Hancock for what is likely the actual context from which the later source spun the story told to and broadcast to America by Jack Anderson. 

If Jack Anderson's wording had been "Shortly after Kennedy was shot, President Johnson got a secret briefing from the CIA informing LBJ that they were investigating contacts between Oswald and Castro's Cubans not yet presently understood, but which could have major geopolitical implications (and that LBJ should be aware that there had been CIA attempts to assassinate Castro)"--if the wording had been that instead of the wording that Jack Anderson did give--that could more or less have been accurate in reflecting a CIA briefing to LBJ in the immediate hours following the JFK assassination. Only a "slight" misunderstanding (?) on the part of the source (or alternatively, of Anderson) then need be assumed to account for the way Jack Anderson said it. 

But that "slight" misunderstanding (?) makes all the difference in the world. It is the difference between raising a question or a short-list possibility or investigative lead in the absence of certainty, and stating the considered conclusion of the agency tasked by the United States government to determine matters of fact upon which governing officials then make decisions for action.

The other alternative, of course, is that both the source and Jack Anderson reported accurately and that the CIA did secretly and directly tell LBJ that, but the prior question is whether it happened the way Anderson reported it. 

In a 1988 two-hour special, "Who Murdered JFK?", Jack Anderson ends by citing a "secret briefing from the CIA" to LBJ within "only a couple of days" since he became president. According to Anderson, this CIA briefing informed LBJ that the assassination had actually been done by Castro.

Does anyone know anything further about this CIA briefing of LBJ to which Anderson refers? Do any documents refer to its existence and to the substance of that briefing? Is Anderson's report of this CIA briefing accurate and/or verifiable?

Here is my transcription of the closing words of Anderson in this special, starting at 1:28:18f. I have bolded what is relevant to my question.

"Shortly after Kennedy was shot, President Johnson got a secret briefing from the CIA informing him that, first, Castro was behind the assassination. And second, Castro reportedly acted because of the CIA's efforts, using the Mob, to kill him. President Johnson felt, rightly or wrongly, that the American people could not be told this. They would demand retaliation against Cuba, which might have forced Khruschev to act. This could have meant World War Three. Johnson had been president for only a couple of days. He couldn't take that chance. Besides, the truth was embarrassing. The world would learn that the CIA was plotting to assassinate a foreign leader. Not only that, but with the help of Mafia killers. Not only that, but the plot was bungled. And not only that, the plot was bungled so badly it caused the assassination of their own president. 

"It was just too much to ask the American people to know, and the consequences too great. So Johnson and his advisors felt that it was better that Americans not know the truth. And we may not know the whole truth for decades. Not until the involved government agencies, particularly the CIA, can no longer be damaged by our learning who really murdered John F. Kennedy. Some may differ in their interpretation of the facts, but we are convinced they represent what actually happened. I'm Jack Anderson."

Bill S., after more thinking I think it is your "1b".

I think two basic points are (1) the Jan. 30, 1962 letter went from LHO to Connally in Texas where Connally answered it in Texas. This is established by the "Connally for Governor" with Fort Worth letterhead of Connally's reply, consistent with Connally's whereabouts at that time. This precedes Connally's reply letter going simultaneously to LHO and cc to Secretary of the Navy Korth's office in D.C., as indicated in Connally's reply. That Andrew Kerr in Korth's office, who got that incoming cc, would not have shown it to Korth and processed it without Korth's knowledge does not seem to me to be in keeping with how bureaucracies work--staff get fired for doing things like that. Therefore Kerr's account of first researching the case, then showing it to his boss, makes perfect sense as normal procedure. It could hardly have been any other than that. Therefore Kerr's saying he discussed it with Connally must be a simple mistake for speaking to Korth, and not more complicated than that. Kerr was writing from memory 25 years later, in 1987. Kerr had worked for Connally most of the time up to that point, and Connally's name was involved in the case, and Kerr just conflated from his memory. That is how I interpret that, simply because no interpretation that Kerr's discussion with his boss in Feb 1962 in D.C. could actually accurately refer to Connally makes sense.

The second point (2) is the differences in the copies of the letter as you note, between the Connally letter found in LHO's belongings, and the copy that Korth's office in D.C. received. The content and the type font is the same, but LHO's letter has no "cc Korth" at the bottom, and Korth's cc copy has no Connally for governor campaign logo in the letterhead. The way I interpet that is in mundane office procedure without larger significance. As I imagine it, the typist had the surface sheet being a Connally campaign letterhead, with carbon and blank sheet and carbon and blank sheet. That accounts for the Connally campaign letterhead missing on the Korth cc. The typist typed the body of the letter down to the point of John Connally's name, took out the top sheet with the Connally for Governor letterhead, and that was signed by Connally and mailed to Oswald. The typist then must have removed the carbon paper and typed below Connally's name on the next sheet (the sheet of the first carbon copy) the "cc Korth" information. Then that was sent to Korth's office.

Either the typist's behavior was a correction of an earlier oversight (of forgetting to type the "cc" in the first place) or was some routine office procedure obscure to us, but in either case of no further significance. Certainly there was no motive to conceal from LHO that a copy was going to Korth's office since the body of the letter ends with the explicit statement that that is where Connally is forwarding it.

Anyway that is how I read it.

Mr. DiEugenio, fascinating background on Kerry Thornley and Garrison. This is interesting where you write:

"The way he found out about Vietnam was through this professor from Ohio University.  He wrote Garrison a 26 paged handwritten letter entitled something like, "How Kennedy's Murder Escalated the Vietnam War". I always wondered how Garrison got onto that angle and that was it."

Is that 26-page letter accessible online, or published, anywhere? Maybe the professor published on this theme elsewhere? 

It does seem that JFK was considered out of step and then ended up dead, though it also seems that LBJ did not go along with, and with Hoover, killed the idea of blaming Cuba for the assassination as a casus bellus for direct war and invasion of Cuba. 

Although the political circumstances were different, in the mid-1980s Gorbachev and Reagan met in Iceland, took a walk in the woods, and came out with Gorbachev having agreed to Reagan's (rhetorical, in campaign speeches and State of the Union address) desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Gorbachev and Reagan came out of their walk in the woods with agreement to a four-stage plan for world nuclear disarmament and directions to their respective staffs to get to work writing up the specifics of Stage One. Reagan's staff was horrified--as Haig soon explained in Time magazine, Reagan's offer never had been intended to be taken seriously (voters for Reagan were not informed of that slight detail). Reagan's staff quickly walked Reagan back from the horrifying prospect of an end to nuclear weapons on earth, Reagan's campaign promises notwithstanding. A deciding factor was objection from the Pentagon to the idea of multilateral nuclear disarmament, not on the grounds that the Gorbachev-Reagan deal couldn't be done, but rather a budget argument--nuclear deterrence was cheaper than paying for standing armies, to deter invasion.

But never mind that--the detail that stands out to me was a senior Reagan White House staffer (unfortunately I do not recall who, or have details on this, just memory of long ago reading this) who explained in a speech to fellow Republicans words to the effect that "Reagan had gotten out of step with the Reagan Administration".

Nov. 22, 1963 seems to be what happened when JFK got too far out of step with the government. There was a crime, there was a coverup, and the ones who did it got away with it. And at this point, analogous to a dysfunctional family which has no desire to open up skeletons in the closet of grandparents' era, there is no will or perceived realistic prospect of ever solving the crime (referring to mainstream perception). 

Bill S., I agree Sundborg's supposition bears no weight whereas Kerr's memory does bear weight. Also I agree with you in rejecting Sundborg's Connally-shooting-target argument thesis which also is irrelevant to the point here. The relevant point is: do not the uncontested dates and chronology of the facts have even greater weight and conflict with, and because of that conflict do they override, Kerr's memory?

According to this museum's website, Naval Heritage and History, "Fred H. Korth was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Kennedy on 11 December 1961, to succeed John B. Connally, who resigned after one year in office to return to Texas as a gubernatorial candidate. He takes the Oath of Office on 20 January 1962, the effective date of Mr. Connally's resignation" (https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/research-guides/modern-biographical-files-ndl/modern-bios-k/korth-fred-h.html). 

LHO's letter is addressed to Connally in Fort Worth and dated Jan 30, 1962 ("Jan. 30, 1961" in LHO's handwriting on the letter is universally understood to be a mistake for 1962), evidently delivered in Fort Worth where Connally was at this point, with Connally's reply to LHO on Feb. 23, 1962 at the same time as Connally forwarded the materials to D.C.--apparently Connally writing from Fort Worth--saying "As I am no longer connected with the Navy", he, Connally, was forwarding LHO's letter to the "office of the Secretary of the Navy in Washington, D.C." 

How then can the account of Andrew Kerr, who is located at the Dept. of Navy in D.C., of receiving the letter some time later than Jan. 30, and then discussing it with "'the secretary", who had "called me into his office", where there was a thirty-minute discussion of the case and a decision to forward it to the Marine Corps, refer to a conversation and a Secretary of the Navy action decision by Connally?

The only real alternative I can think of is that which would support your argument in your "Part 3", in which you show what seems to be some sleight-of-photocopying (if that is what was going on) with reference to whether Korth was "in the loop" on the LHO discharge status decision. In that case what appears prima facie to be a mistake on Kerr's part is not a mistake but actually accurate, i.e. he did talk to Connally, not Korth. That would, if correct, raise the question of why that was not made clearer in terms of the logistics, and why Korth, Kerr's boss and in the same building and the Secretary of the Navy, was not the "secretary" of the Navy Kerr discussed the matter with. 

In other words, it is either a mistake on Kerr's part, or if it was not a mistake and it was intentional on Kerr's part, it could support the other reasons you give for suggesting "sleight-of-paperwork" related to Korth and Oswald, on that detail. 

Again, Sundborg's opinion has nothing to do with this here. I cited Sundborg since that is where I saw Kerr quoted and I did not have the Kerr book to quote it directly (I have now ordered it). The issue is how to understand or interpret the facts of Kerr's memory in light of the facts of the chronology and dates.

You offer as a possible motive for Korth being intentionally left out of the loop (by Kerr?) that Korth might have acted mercifully on LHO's request (for some reason unwanted by other parties--to have leverage on LHO?). Korth after all in the past, as you bring out, had been a lawyer for Oswald's own stepfather (from the young LHO's point of view, LHO's father) when the stepfather divorced Marguerite; Korth knew of the family from his earlier law practice and might very well for that reason have responded sympathetically to Oswald's plea to review the facts of his case.

Kerr's statement that LHO's letter and military record agreed on the facts but the decision to change his discharge was legitimate makes little sense on the face of it, since the stated basis for the Navy's ex post facto change of Oswald's discharge to "undesirable" was "reliable information that you had renounced your United States citizenship" (Tompkins letter, March 7, 1962). Whereas as LHO labored futilely to explain, he as a factual matter had not renounced his US citizenship, never was other than a US citizen uninterruptedly, and LHO advised specifically how that fact could be verified--by calling the US embassy in Moscow who would back up that fact. Marguerite's letters on LHO's behalf also labored to make this same factual point, to no avail. Oswald's alleged later actions aside, Oswald plea on the face of it had a case, yet Oswald could not even get it reviewed. It gives every appearance of being a predetermined bureaucratic punishment of Oswald at the direction of or a signal from "higher authority".

Normally the decider of Oswald's fate in this case would be the Secretary of the Navy, Korth. However you suggested Korth may never have actually been part of or seen the facts of LHO's case or LHO's letter intended for the Secretary of the Navy.

On the strength of Kerr's memory and odd speaking of Connally instead of Korth--in a time frame in which Korth is expected--I wonder if you may be right on this. I wonder if Korth ever commented on this directly later--on his knowledge or lack thereof of the LHO discharge case at the time. Was Kerr acting solely out of his own or Navy culture's Cold-War bias and ideology in blowing off Oswald's plea and making the recommendation for action to Connally (or Korth, whichever it was). Or was Kerr carrying out some more overt signal outside of himself as to the politically-correct indicated decision?  

But in favor of the "Kerr mistake" interpretation, why does Kerr not make clear, if his references to Connally actually mean Connally, that he is referring to the former Secretary of the Navy, instead of writing as if it is the current Secretary, his current boss? 

Anyway thanks for this as well as all of your research.

Gerry Hemming--professional disinformation, dance of the seven veils, nothing specific and substantial and verifiable, ate up enormous amounts of attention and bandwidth of researchers' and public attention. Hemming appears to me to be the anonymous "Operative A" set forth in a 1977 tabloid "Newsreal" with all sorts of wild and outlandish industrial-strength misinformation (claims of personal knowledge of Oswald in training in the Florida Everglades while another Oswald was in Russia; Gen. Edwin Walker present and in command of a safe house of anti-Castro Cubans in Miami; Castro did the Bay of Pigs invasion on himself so as to embarrass the US, etc.): https://archive.org/details/nsia-Newsreal/mode/2up, pp. 5-22. Is this the first entry of Hemming into the world of JFK assassination testimony? This was at the time HSCA was happening when the deaths of high-profile figures were happening just before they were expected to be called to testify.

When the likely correct identity of Silvia Odio's "Leopoldo" came out (from this forum's James Richards: Bernardo de Torres), Hemming "confirmed" it then sought to defuse and derail where that correct lead might go and its implications by putting forth a fictitious identity of "Angel"--as Angelo Murgado--a story that was bought hook-line-and-sinker by Joan Mellen and the Le Fontaines and spun in a way that wrongly impeaches Silvia Odio's highly credible testimony (as James DiEugenio on Angelo Murgado at https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/mellen-joan-a-farewell-to-justice). Hemming stayed more or less actively involved in JFK assassination conspiracy circles for the rest of his life, including I see presenting to conferences in Dallas.

Hemming seemed to make it his full-time career in the second half of his life to screw up research on the JFK assassination, without offering evidence of a single specific prosecutable action related to the JFK assassination.

I see in the archives of this forum that James Richards wrote July 13, 2007 (I cannot get the link on that to copy as a simple string without opening up a large display--the thread was entitled "Operative A" and was begun July 11, 2007): "I think 'Operative A' was part fact part fiction, ultimately with an agenda. I am of the belief that this man was Ramon Orozco who amongst other things was one of Rip Robertson's commandos." I do not know Richards' basis for the Orozco identification suggestion but it seems to me Hemming was "Operative A": "Operative A" was a pilot, so was Hemming; "Operative A" tells a story about being involved in an action in Haiti, so was Hemming; similar military careers and claims of being operative but not agent of CIA; claims of association with Walker, etc. and etc., cp. Hemming at http://cuban-exile.com/doc_426-450/doc0445.html.

Bill your article raises the question whether Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth saw the Connally Feb. 23, 1962 reply to LHO's letter of Jan. 30, 1962 ("did Korth know about this proceeding at any time before it was final?"). Connally's reply to Oswald stated that he was "no longer connected to the Navy" and that he has "referred your [LHO's] letter to the office of the Secretary of the Navy in Washington, D.C."

It may be of interest that Captain Andy Kerr, counsel in the Secretary of the Navy's office, described receiving the LHO letter and showing it to and discussing it with his boss the Secretary of the Navy, who would have been Korth. I found this and related documents in Chapter 4 of Pierre Sundborg, Tragic Truth (2016), from the memoir of Kerr, A Journey Among the Good and the Great (1987).

There is a wrinkle here though: although Korth was Secretary of the Navy in February 1962, Kerr speaks of his boss in Washington, D.C. with whom he discussed LHO's Jan. 30, 1962 letter, the Secretary of the Navy, as "Connally", even though Korth, not Connally, was Secretary of the Navy at that point. Sundborg notes this anomaly in Kerr's account and in a footnote reconstructs what he, Sundborg, believes is the explanation:

""Kerr wrote 'aboard our 43-foot sailing cutter Andiomo III at anchor in lovely Cook's Bay, Moorea, in Fench Polynesia...from memory. ....Without access to...files...there are doubtless...errors.' There was one problem--Kerr confused the already-resigned Connally with the successor Korth. What you will read here has been corrected in that regard, otherwise it's as Captain Kerr wrote" (Sundborg, fn. Q, p. 95).

Since the Sundborg book is not available online and there are only ca. 300 paper copies in existence (from the author's information), I quote below the account from Kerr in full as it appears in Sundborg. Where Kerr evidently wrote "Connally" Sundborg replaces with bracketed "[new Secretary Korth]" in quoting the Kerr passage. Here is the passage, cited as from pp. 1-3 of Kerr, Journey Among the Good and the Great, quoted in Sundborg at pp. 95-96:

"One day we got a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald. The name meant nothing to us then. The letter was long and handwritten and was mailed from Russia...It had been processed routinely in the secretary's mail room. Someone there decided that I, as special counsel to the secretary, should 'staff' the letter. The decision was logical because [it] had legal overtones. So it fell to me to decide what to do with the letter. ...

"Those unfamiliar with the U.S. military services should know at this point that the Marine Corps is part of the Navy Department. Even the secretary of the navy needed to remind himself of this fact from time to time to avoid oversights damaging to delicate Marine Corps sensibilities. [There was] a sign over the door leading out of this office that read, 'Remember the Marines.' It reminded him to call the Marine Corps commandant to apprise him of important decisions before they became public. The flamboyant commandant at that time, General David Shoup, could become particularly peevish if this was not done.

"When Oswald left the Marine Corps and went to live in Russia, he was given an administrative discharge that was less than commendatory...'undesirable.' He thought that characterization unfair. Later events were to prove the epithet to have been exceptionally mild. The letter was an attention getter. You don't find many Marines defecting to the Soviet Union.

"I sent to Marine Corps Headquarters for Oswald's record, and studied the circumstances of his defection and subsequent discharge. There were no conflicts of fact between his letter and his record. A review of the statutes and regulations governing administrative discharges let to the conclusion that Oswald's discharge was in complete3 compliance with all legal requirements.

"That, however, was not the end of it. The secretary can exercise clemency if he feels that there are strong extenuating circumstances. He may also intervene if an applicant's service was exceptionally meritorious.

"Neither applied to Oswald. He had been a lousy Marine.

"So I prepared the usual two papers that accompany all correspondence going into the secretary's 'action' basket. The first was a brief, setting forth everything I thought the secretary needed to know in order to make an informed decision. It concluded with a recommendation for action. The second was a paper for the secretary to sign that would put the recommended action into effect.

"In Oswald's case, my conclusions were that his complaint had no legal basis, his request was without merit, and that [new Secretary Korth] [[here is where Kerr evidently ACTUALLY WROTE, erroneously, "Connally"--gd]] should not involve himself in any way. I recommended that he refer to the letter to the commandant of the Marine Corps for 'appropriate action.' This phrase meant, in clear officialese, that the secretary was washing his hands of the case. The commandant could do with it as he wished. No one could doubt what the result would be. It was a kiss-off.

"A day or two later, [Korth] [[again, according to Sundborg, Kerr actually wrote "Connally" here--gd]] called me into his office. He had obviously read the entire file and was intrigued. We discussed the case for half an hour or so, and at the end he said, 'I agree with you, Andy--this is the way we should handle it.' He then signed the second piece of paper that sent Oswald's letter on its way, we thought, to oblivion.

"But that's not the way it turned out. On 22 November 1963, while riding beside President Kennedy in a motorcade in Dallas, John Connally, then governor of Texas, was shot through his arm and lung by Lee Harvey Oswald. President Kennedy was shot and killed in the same incident. The history books say it slightly differently--that Connally was wounded during Oswald's assassination of President Kennedy. The assumption is always that Oswald was shooting at Kennedy and that Connally was hit by accident or as a secondary target of opportunity. Could it not, however, have been the other way around? In spite of all of the investigations, including that of the Warren Commission, and the continuing fascination with and theories about the event, no one has yet come up with a credible motive for the shooting of Kennedy by Oswald. Against this, we know for a fact that Oswald once asked Connally for help in what may have been a cri du coeur. He was turned down flat. What greater motivation does a psychopath need?

"Thus, by fortune I am able to provide a footnote to history..."

Ron, on further thinking I have abandoned the idea that Connally was the target. First, it is too coincidental that that head shot to JFK so perfectly killed JFK; the Connally wounds are better explained as collateral damage of shots aimed at JFK than vice versa. Second, the strongest claim in favor of the Connally theory, Dallas Secret Service agent Mike Howard's claim, first voiced in 1993, to have seen "I will kill John Connally" (and three others) written in LHO's blue-green address book on a page which Howard says the FBI removed after it came into their possession, I have now studied quite a bit and I believe I can show that that claim, otherwise unverified, will not stand, for reasons which I may develop into an article. And third, on other grounds I am convinced that the JFK assassination was a hit, a coup d'etat, directed at JFK, not Connally (primarily, because there was more than one shooter). 

Zach Jendro, thank you for your research in your series on "The Possessions of Lee Harvey Oswald". A question: in your article in that series, "Photographic Equipment" (https://debunked.wordpress.com/the-possessions-of-lee-harvey-oswald-photographic-equipment/), you say, "However, in Oswald's address book (found at the Paine residence) is a notation for Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall (JCS), the company address, as well as the words 'micro dots'."

Could you say what is your basis for identifying the Paine residence as where the Oswald address book was found? 

On the claim of Curington that he witnessed Marina Oswald at the Hunt Oil building visiting HL Hunt shortly after the JFK assassination, according to National Enquirer denied by Marina Oswald, I was surprised recently to discover in the original 1992 first edition of Dick Russel's The Man Who Knew Too Much, pp. 602-603, this, which in my interpretation, if this report is accurate, removes the force of the denial from Marina published in National Enquirer:

(D. Russell) "In June 1992 I spoke with Marina--remarried to Kevin Porter and still living in Dallas--by phone. 'I was taken to somebody's office, but I have no idea what I went there for. I don't think it was the FBI that took me. Yes, it is very possible I went to see the oil millionaire, but I can't remember the face. Everything is so vague about that time. I was a walking zombie. I just know that all the different agencies were fighting with each other. What it was all about, I don't know.'"

Curiously, I found that the second edition of this Dick Russell book, published 2003, has that (above) deleted, with the surrounding paragraphs and material intact.

I would like to add this regarding the "Dear Mr. Hunt" Oswald note dated Nov. 8, 1963, and Mr. Curington's claim that he remembered that note had come in to the Hunt Oil offices around the time of the JFK assassination. This was the one point of Curington's reminiscences which most troubled me. While I still do not know what to make of that note, here are some considerations. 

A first point is that the handwriting is seemingly authentic Oswald. This does not exclude forgery since some forgeries can be very good and fool experts. But it is not excluded as forgery in terms of being shown forgery on handwriting grounds. 

A second point is the story of Mitrokhin--the Polish high intelligence official who defected to the West (UK) with a mother lode of information on Soviet intelligence files which were published in narrative form in The Sword and The Shield (1983)--has its own set of issues. From reviews I have read of this work, the main criticism from the point of view of historians and Cold War scholars is that no documents are presented or cited; it is entirely taking the word of the defector, Mitrokhin. While Mitrokhin's narrative is loaded with details and much of it is plausible and/or confirmed, there is little way of knowing whether it is all true. The two claims in Mitrokhin most relevant to the JFK assassination are a claim that Mark Lane was funded with KGB money, and a story of forgery in Moscow of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" Oswald letter. A footnote gave a certain box number in an archive held at the Churchill Archives Center at Churchill College, UK. I attempted to find the underlying information or documentation. I wrote the Churchill Archives Center, explained I could not afford a trip to England and did not know Russian, and asked for assistance in accessing and translating the underlying documentation, offering to pay for time and expenses. In reply I received a referral to a private party, a woman who had some experience doing research and translation of the Mitrokhin materials. I contacted her and arranged for this to be done. She prepared and sent me a translation of a text from the location cited. After spending my money and her labor on this, I realized that it was nothing more than a translation of a draft manuscript of Mitrokhin of the section in Sword and the Shield! It contained no new or different information, still no reference to or presentation of any document. So that was a deadend. Mitrokhin himself is deceased, and to my knowledge no other information from Soviet-era files is known which corroborates or sheds further light on this.

My question at the time of my inquiry to the Churchill Archives was whether somehow the Soviets had come into possession of an authentic Oswald document, and the activity in Moscow involved their own checks for authenticity of it, rather than de novo preparation of a forgery out of whole cloth. Mitrokhin said the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter was for the purpose of linking E. Howard Hunt, then of Watergate fame (1970s), as part of Cold War. However, I noticed that the USSR seemed to have no prior or other history of forging documents of this nature; that the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter is so ambiguous that if the intent were to seriously damage the US with an Oswald document it would have been done with more specifics to it; and of course the somewhat equivocal nature of the unconfirmed source for it in the first place.

Another dissonant detail in the Mitrokhin story to me was the part in that story of the Soviets getting authentic paper for use in the forgery, as if the Soviets somehow got paper from Texas ca. 1963. But nothing was ever circulated other than photocopies, nor did the Soviet government ever openly disclose that they had found this document and produced it.

Now I leave what is "known" (very little) to a conjecture. I set this forth not because I am sure it is correct but just as a possibility. The "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter emerged late 1976/early 1977 in a context of (among other things) a series of accusations against HL Hunt and Bunker Hunt (son of HL) from Paul Rothermel, HL Hunt's ex-assistant who apparently had intelligence agency connections. Rothermel was feeding JFK-assassination conspiracy materials to assassination researchers. In the documents of the FBI investigation of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter on the Mary Ferrel Foundation website, the interview with Bunker Hunt has Bunker Hunt denying any knowledge of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter (at this point his father, HL, was dead; he died in 1974) and told the FBI he suspected Rothermel himself had produced that. So that was Bunker Hunt's first thought: this looked like one more thing coming from Rothermel. 

Rothermel would have been in a position to have had a copy of such a document if one had come in to the Hunt Oil offices in 1963. There is no credible allegation or reason to suppose Oswald had anything to do directly with HL Hunt. However it could just be possible that the "Mr. Hunt" of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter could be, not HL Hunt, but Bunker Hunt, the son. Not that Oswald need ever have met Bunker Hunt either. But Bunker Hunt was one of the financiers of the black-bordered anti-JFK ad or flyer put out by Weissman and Larrie Schmidt. There is the story in Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much (pp. 325-29 of the 1992 edition), of Bradford Angers, who says he used to work for HL Hunt and that HL Hunt called him and told him to employ Larrie Schmidt; then Angers' claim that he discovered by accident that Larrie Schmidt and his wife had been beaten up badly by unknown persons warning them to say nothing of either the JFK assassination or HL Hunt; and that he (Angers) had learned from Larrie Schmidt that both Schmidt brothers (Larrie and Bob, who was employed by Edwin Walker) had rode around in a car with Oswald the night that Oswald took a shot at Walker (so Angers' story). 

Nov. 8, 1963, the date on the Oswald "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter, is a Friday, a Friday which was the one Friday that LHO came out to the Paine residence to visit Marina one day later than normal--on Saturday that weekend instead of Friday. It was the day before Oswald typed his letter to the Soviet embassy in D.C. at the Paine residence (Nov. 9). Nov. 8, Friday, is also possibly when LHO either wrote or even delivered the famous hostile note to the FBI office for Hosty, leaving it there since Hosty was gone from the office when Oswald was there. (Although I think most studies reconstruct the Oswald appearance in the FBI office with the hostile note as having occurred maybe Tue Nov. 12). According to Curington--who is adamant that HL Hunt never had any knowledge or anything to do with Oswald and that the note had come in to the office left with a receptionist and was regarded by HL Hunt (whose right-hand assistant Curington was, and claims to remember this) as a crank note, one among hundreds of crank notes they routinely received--but which crank note was then turned over to the FBI at HL Hunt's instruction after the assassination (per Curington)--according to Curington the m.o. of Oswald's method of delivery with the "Dear Mr. Hunt" handwritten letter was exactly the same as Oswald's method of delivery of the (later FBI-destroyed) "Dear Mr. Hosty" handwritten letter: in both cases walked in in person to the respective buildings in downtown Dallas, presumably during Oswald's lunch hour from work, and handed to a receptionist upon failing to get access to the addressee in person.

In other words--while I am not claiming this is actually correct, because I do not know--I can envision a possibility that the LHO "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter of Nov. 8, 1963 is authentic (in agreement with handwriting analysts at the time); that it was prepared and delivered at about or at the same time and delivered in the same way as the "Dear Mr. Hosty" letter; that both originals ended up in custody of the FBI which may have had both--not just one--destroyed; and that the "Mr. Hunt" addressee was Bunker Hunt, not HL Hunt or E. Howard Hunt. The reason Oswald might write such a note to Bunker Hunt--this is just speculation here, but anyway--would be via some renewed LHO contact with the circles being funded by Bunker Hunt in publishing the anti-JFK ad. If the note is genuine, it could further read as Oswald attempting to get information as an informant.

In the 1970s FBI investigation of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter, those documents show the FBI themselves as suspecting Bunker Hunt as the "Mr. Hunt" of the letter, in keeping with other serious allegations Rothermel was making at the time against Bunker Hunt. The theory would be that the note had come in to the Hunt Oil offices, had ended up in Rothermel's hands, for use later after Rothermel had his falling-out with the Hunts. Curington as the other right-hand man to HL Hunt besides Rothermel in the early 1960s would know of the note. To the FBI, Rothermel at first seemed to say he may have heard of the note in the 1960s but Rothermel later clarified that to the FBI saying he could not remember for certain anything of the note before its known appearance in the mid-1970s. The FBI reported that Curington denied he had ever seen or knew anything of the note before the mid-1970s--that was the fundamental discrepancy which troubled me--but in the end that could be equivocal, in light of other known disputes over he-says/she-says genre disagreements over what witnesses said to FBI agents and what FBI agents heard and/or wrote up in their reports. 

The method of dissemination of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" note--from a fake address in Mexico City mailed to three (three known anyway) JFK-assassination researchers--would correspond to Rothermel's interactions with JFK assassination researchers and knowledge of who they were. Of course minimally the disseminator of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter would involve knowledge of Spanish and physical presence at some point in Mexico City, from where the photocopies of the letter were mailed. 

So this long chain of conjecture returns to the original issue for me of the assessment of Curington's living testimony. There is no OTHER instance in which I have found a sign of fabrication of a story on the part of Curington. If there were other instances, that would weigh in favor of dismissing Curington's testimony on the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter. But there are not other clear instances weighing against his credibility. The line of analysis I have given above I believe, to me, renders the whole issue of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" note sufficiently equivocal that although it is possible Curington's memory is confused with the passage of time, another possibility is that Curington's story regarding the "Dear Mr. Hunt" note could in the end be approximately correct after all. 

My problem with the Corbett Report is it attacks Chomsky, Snowden, Ellsburg, and Glenn Greenwald. I am not referring to disagreements on specifics such as Chomsky on the JFK/Vietnam issue (where I believe Chomsky errs), but in attacking these figures in conspiratorial sweeps as covert evildoers. Anyone who attacks individuals I have just named in that way (to which I would add Pope Francis and Soros and am tempted to also add Bernie Sanders), fails my litmus test for being real. Again I am not referring to criticisms on specifics, but in painting these figures as wittingly evil or witting tools of larger evil conspiracies. When Corbett attacks not one on this personal litmus test of mine but four--again, not simply taking issue with specifics but painting these as wittingly evil with intent to discredit their major work and impact in principle--my internal flag goes up to wonder what is going on.

On Bill Gates, I think of it as useful to frame the question in this oversimplified way: which of the following three characterizations most closely approximates Gates' work with the Gates Foundation: (a) intends to do good and is doing good; (b) intends to do good but is doing evil; (c) intends to do evil and is doing evil.

My answer is I put Gates in the "a" category of the three, as best characterization. How Gates made his billions I have not studied but just assume it probably was cutthroat, but that is not the issue here, which is what Gates is doing with his billions with the Gates Foundation. For some reason--I don't know why--some of the right wing is ramping up demonization of Gates with industrial-strength conspiracy theory attacks. I have a friend, who comes from the left, who saw some videos and was telling me recently that Gates is intentionally planning on killing off a significant part of the world's population through vaccines. I asked him which of the a,b,c, above he believed best approximated Gates and he said "c". I asked, if Gates was covertly intent on mass murdering a percentage of the world's population, did he think Gates' staff was in on the plot? Were the physicians and scientists employed by the Gates Foundation in on the plot? He was uncertain but thought some were, some weren't. I asked, if this was the case, why have no whistleblowers come forward? I started listing some investigative-journalist sources with track records and history of credibility in breaking fact-based stories, sources whom I knew he (as I) know have some track record in this area, such as Amy Goodman, Mother Jones, Sixty Minutes, Greenpeace, Oxfam, some of the major newspaper dailies, the McClatchy newspaper chain, journalists such as Seymour Hersh or Leonard Bernstein or Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone, or some courageous state attorney general, etc and etc and etc--why are none of them breaking stories about a Gates Foundation plot to intentionally mass-murder billions of people of the world as covert population-reduction agenda? (if such was happening) 

In a better and just world the welfare of the world and the realization of the vision of e.g. the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, societies and the world would not be at the mercy or goodwill of generous billionaires to fund public or commons goods. But that aside, it seems conspiracy theories can be weaponized, and it requires discernment to know real conspiracies in the forensic sense to do evil, from constructed and weaponized ones.

Ron Ecker, not necessarily a contradiction. Speculating here, but you could have a situation of Oswald indebted to the Marcello organization and told/promised to kill Connally, building upon an already-existing motive of Oswald. This would set up a patsy and JFK assassins could piggyback on to the action carried out by the patsy. Someone put LHO's rifle on the sixth floor and someone fired from that building and LHO behaved after the shooting as if it was him. SS agent Mike Howard credibly insisted he saw "I will kill John Connally" written in LHO's address book before he, Howard, and fellow agent Chuck Kunkel turned that address book with their other materials over to the FBI, then were shocked to see a year later when the WC report was published that that page was missing, corresponding to a visibly torn-out sheet of pages 17-18, in the WC Exhibits of the notebook.

Marina and others who knew LHO such as Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, thought his Marine undesirable discharge, for which he blamed Connally and his exhausting appeal of which was turned down in summer 1963, was a major issue to LHO, interfering with his ability to obtain employment. Marina, as mercurial as she was, nevertheless told the Secret Service in the most direct way possible six days after the assassination, "I swear before God that Lee Oswald did not intend to kill President Kennedy" (note the wording) while at the same time, in that same interview, the agents reported, "Marina Oswald stated ... she is satisfied that Lee Oswald had killed President John F. Kennedy" (again note the wording; Secret Service interview 11/28/63). In other interviews and to the Warren Commission Marina said she thought LHO's shooting target was Connally, not JFK. 

LHO in the summer of 1963 showed signs of desperation: he fought with Marina whom he loved, failed at employment and money, unsuccessfully tried to talk Marina into hijacking a plane with him to Cuba, then sought desperately to defect to Cuba via the Mexico City visa attempt. I suspect his left-Marxism always was for real even as he also variously and unreliably for a time worked for intelligence agencies in the Marines. Perhaps he wanted to get to Cuba for real for a new life, and his attempts to defect to Cuba were to avoid what was shaping up for him to be a nightmare back in the US. Both of the two books which argue for Connally as LHO's target--J. Reston's and the much more extensive and formidably argued work of P. Sundborg--are WC lone-shooter books otherwise, so this is me speculating, not either of those authors. Three shots from LHO trying to hit Connally and one additional professional shot to JFK's head killing JFK, mission accomplished, Oswald blamed, Oswald dead, case closed. What do you think? Is this a plausible scenario? (Also thanks John Butler.)

Ron Ecker, Sundborg argues that from the point of view of the sixth-floor window, there was no shot for Connally on Houston Street until the limousine was very close to being underneath the sixth-floor window, due to the low position of Connally's seating behind a steel bar handrail ca. 4-6 inches in width located ca. 15-18 inches above the top of the front seat. (These inch estimates are from Kellerman WC testimony.) Dignitaries would hold on to it when standing. The bar is in all the photos. Here is Sundborg: 

"In May 1964, County Surveyor Robert H. West made a careful survey of Dealey Plaza to facilitate analysis of the shooting. Measurements are in feet. Oswald's windowsill is at altitude (above sea level) 490.9', the sidewalk in front of TSBD at 430.2'. The windowsill is 1' above the sixth floor. Oswald was almost 5'9" tall, so his eyes were about 4'4" above the windowsill. The sidewalk is 6" above the street. From Main to Elm, Houston Street is level. The limousine's handrail was 4'6" above the pavement. Thus, Oswald's eyes were 4.3+(490.9-430.2)+0.5-4.5=61.0' above the handrail as the limousine drove toward him.

"That same detailed survey map allows measuring precise horizontal distances from Oswald to the limousine. As it straightened from its turn from Main onto Houston, just on the north side of the Main Street crosswalk, as shown in the upper photo on page 515, the limousine's handrail was 283.1' from him. After the limousine neared him but had not yet begun its turn onto Elm Street, shown in both photos on page 516, it was a distance of 154.3'.

"Thus, the downward angle of Oswald's view into the limousine's passenger space at the farthest position is arctan (61.0 / 283.1) = arctan 0.216 = 12.2 degrees. When the limousine was in the closer position, the angle was arctan (61.0 / 154.3) = arctan 0.395 = 21.6 degrees. In other words, when he looked down into the limousine, re-created for the Warren Commission with the carefully positioned but dissimilar white vehicle in the photos on page 516, he (and you looking at those photos) are looking down at an angle of 21.6 degrees. By comparison, Oswald's last two shots that wounded and killed on Elm Street, were at a similar downward angle of 24 degrees.

"Now those rather accurate sightline angles may be applied to a photograph of the actual limousine, taken precisely when Oswald first saw it, as it turned onto Houston Street. This is the photo, previously used in Chapter 6 just before Nellie said the last words Jack ever heard, showing what people at street level saw as the limousine turned onto Houston Street... [photo, and then additional diagram and paragraph concerning interior specs of the limousine]...

"On this page the same photo is shown twice, with dark areas showing the portions of the vehicle and occupants that Oswald could not see at all clearly from his vantage, looking downward into the Lincoln from above its front. For any speculating that Oswald might see Connally through the tinted windshield, please consider that 6'4" agent Kellerman was sitting directly in front of the shorter governor, who was in a much lower seat. You will see this in many photos in this chapter. There could be many images like those below, showing what was blocked from the assassin's view as the car drove toward him. These two should suffice.

"The first shows what Oswald could see and not see at a downward angle 12.2 degrees into the car as it began to drive toward him on Houston Street. This photo corresponds to the first reenactment position on page 515. The Connallys are both hidden behind the windshield, its upturned visors, and tall agents Kellerman and Greer. Over the top of the handrail, Oswald can immediately see the heads and faces of both Kennedys: [photo with angle shading illustration]

"Below, the second image shows what Oswald could see and not see looking into the car at a downward angle of 21.6 degrees, as the Lincoln neared the end of its one-block drive toward him on Houston Street. This is when the limo is ready to turn left onto Elm Street, the reenactment position shown in natural view and through his rifle's scope on page 516. The Kennedys are now fully visible, but John Connally (on the far side of Nellie) is still hidden by the handrail.

"Putting it all together, the realistic situation is that almost the entire drive along Houston Street toward Oswald was required before Connally's head emerged from behind obstructions, and for the assassin to recognize him. There was no adequate time for Oswald to then aim and fire, because to do so after finding Connally would have had him firing almost vertically down into the top of Connally's head, an angle where the human body is smallest. Worse, because his window was only partially raised and had a brick sill projecting outside, the rifle may not have been able to aim down at such a steep angle. Lee then hurried to get off his first shot, the one that was wild and injured Jim Tague, fired in haste as the limousine went under the shelter of the branches and leaves of the oak tree on the curb of Elm Street.

(...) "I seriously submit to your careful consideration that there exists only one logical explanation for the fact that Oswald did not take the easy shot as the limousine drove slowly toward him through level open space, growing closer and larger every second. He saw President Kennedy, but he could not see his target ... If Oswald had been gunning for Kennedy, he would have taken easy shots at him, in plain sight as the limousine approached. The fact that he did not fire then is very strong evidence that his target was the man then concealed from view, John Connally." (Pierre Sundborg, Tragic Truth, pp. 528-532)  

Thanks Mark Knight and Ron Bulman. However I believe I have erred. Digging into the HSCA Appendix to Hearings VII, Firearms Panel Report, I see that according to the firearms experts on that panel, the dent in the shell casing was caused in ejection of the shell casing after it was fired, and therefore was compatible with having been fired from the sixth floor, i.e. three shots are not excluded for that reason. I found this Report here: https://www.history-matters.com/archive/contents/hsca/contents_hsca_vol7.htm. At paragraphs #155 and #156, "It is the opinion of the panel that the dent on the mouth of the CE 543 cartridge case was produced when the cartridge case was ejected from the rifle. This condition was duplicated during test-firing of the CE 139 rifle by the panel (See fig. 2.)"

Visual comparison of Fig. 2, in which the second of four test bullets fired (T-2) has a dent, and Fig. 8B, CE 543, the shell casing with the dent found on the sixth floor, has the same appearing dent, looks convincing to me. (Page views 381, 393, and 397 at that site.) I see an earlier informative discussion on this forum from 2007 on this issue here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/9276-an-unfired-cartridge/. I am not knowledgeable on firearms and capable of contesting the HSCA Firearms Panel's assessment. I retract my entire post above. (With note to self: read the primary sources first next time!) 

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I do not understand why some are claiming the LHO charts of 1956 and 1958 which show four wisdom teeth missing (#1,16,17,32) and #30 extracted, are inconsistent with the exhumation report of Norten et al. 1984 which shows all LHO wisdom teeth present and #30 extracted. In 1956 and 1958 LHO, born 10/18/39, was age 17 and age 19, respectively, whereas the exhumation examines teeth of LHO at age 24. Wisdom teeth erupt between ages 17-21 as the most common age range (https://www.healthline.com/health/why-do-we-have-wisdom-teeth#1). Norton et al. 1984 reported each of these wisdom teeth were "consistent" between the 1956, 1958, and exhumation examinations, seeing no discrepancy inconsistent with the same individual in any of those teeth. At LHO's death, age 24, the exhumation showed #1 "partially erupted" (versus not erupted earlier), #16 "partially erupted" (versus not erupted earlier), #17 "partially erupted" (versus not erupted earlier), and #32 "present" (versus not erupted earlier). These four wisdom teeth of LHO erupted some time later than age 19 yet prior to age 24, consistent with the age 17-21 range for most wisdom teeth eruptions. Norten et al noted for #1, "tooth noted as missing on several examinations and radiographs [of 1956, 1958] was actually unerupted and is not normally found in the radiographic view used" (p. 29). 

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On the interpretation of the dental records identified as "OSWALD, Lee H" dated 3-27-58 with the "failed 5-8-58" notation, I checked some dentistry sites to try to understand that record and here is what I offer, in addition to Ron Ecker's sister-in-law dentist comment:

(1) The teeth of the individual of the 1958 record are the same teeth of the person of the 1981 exhumation based on matches of both dental examination and both X-rays. The evidence that the 1958 teeth and the exhumation teeth are from the same individual is brought out in Norton et al. 1984. Specifically with particular reference to Table 3 at the end, at tooth #10 an identical distal amalgam restoration; at #15 an identical "occlusal metallic restoration" at which "restorations show identical radiographic morphology"; at #20 identical "distal occlusal amalgam restoration"; identical extracted #30 tooth, the only tooth extraction in both cases. Both individuals have the same "posterior bilateral crossbite". (This statistically is ca. 2-17% incidence, per sources cited in wikipedia article "crossbite"). And the "exam and bitewing radiographs" dated March 27, 1958 and at the exhumation are consistent as the same individual according to the examiners. 

(2) Therefore since the 1958 and the 1981 are the identical individual, and there are no non-natural front or any other unnatural teeth in the exhumation, it follows there was no non-natural tooth in the individual of the 1958 record, since it is the same teeth.

(3) This means the written notation "failed 5-8-58" cannot mean a failed prosthetic on the individual of the teeth of the 1958 record, notwithstanding that it is written in a space labeled "prosthesis required", because that possibility is excluded on the basis of evidence.

(4) Proposed interpretation of notation: The 1958 record consists of two sheets or pages. The first sheet with the charting has the typed name (Oswald, Lee H) and a typed date (3-27-58). This would be the date of the creation of the record, and the first sheet would entirely be the record of that initial visit, of 3-27-58, both of what was done, and what still needed to be done after that date. The charting at the left is before treatment on that date, and the charting on the right was filled in as treatment was done, both on 3-27-58 and on two later dates. The notation in the printed-form spaces and area below the charting was written there 3-27-58, except for the notation at the bottom right dated 5/14/58. 

(5) Taking into account Ron Ecker's dentist sister-in-law's comment on making use of a form while disregarding some of the labeling on the form--something with which I am familiar in writing receipts on standard forms in business--it seems to me dental work was done on 3-27-58. The first handwritten word at the top left I think means "yes, treatment was done" that day, 3-27-58. The second notation, which is written on a line printed on the form labeled "roentgenograms" which seems to be a radiation term in x-rays, I read as "13/O", referring to tooth #13 and a capital Roman letter "O" for "occlusal", that is there was a treatment done on tooth #13 occlusal (the biting surface of the molar). (Nothing to do with radiation which is the printing on the form at that space.) This is marked on the chart on the right--the chart labeled "dental treatment accomplished"--in the dark black spot marked in the space between teeth #12 and #13. ACTUALLY Norten et al. 1984 found this was an error in 1958 and that the "occlusal amalgam restoration" was on tooth #12, supported both by visual examination in 1981 and by x-rays of both, as explained in their report. The third notation to the right of the first two, now back up on the topmost line again where blank space again permitted, notes "failed 5-5-58". While Ron Ecker's sister-in-law dentist suggested that might mean a no-show appointment, I have a different suggestion: it means "the filling failed" (reported 5-5-58). Having had fillings fail myself in the past shortly after they were done, that seems to me to be a reasonable reading of meaning of the single word "failed" following the notation "tooth #13 occlusal" which is verified to have been an amalgam filling. Not too complicated: the "13/O" indicates the filling, and "failed" indicates it failed, that is, that filling failed. 

(6) The fourth handwritten notation on p. 1, at the lower right, is the most puzzling. It reads "E.T.C. Oper.-5/14/58". What does that mean? I don't know for sure, but my guess is "emergency treatment care" related to the report of the failure (of the filling at the tooth noted). That is, as reconstructed, on 3-27-58 an amalgam filling was put in at tooth #12 (actual location per 1981 forensic analysis), charted in 1958 between tooth #12 and #13, and handwritten notation 1958 (erroneously) #13. On 5-5-58 Oswald calls reporting the filling came out ("failed"). Oswald waits until nine days later when a dentist sees him and fixes it, as noted "Oper.-5/14/58" which is in agreement with a 5-14/58 notation on p. 2 of additional work done on that date.

(7) The second sheet, which based on the fine-print italicized words "over" at the bottom of the first one, and "continued" at the top of the second, may be a photocopy of the reverse side of a single sheet, has spaces for further appointments and record of work done after the opening of the record on the first page on 3-27/58. The busy dentists or staff did not bother with filling in the appointment times part, and only recorded treatment done. This page starts at the top line with handwritten "Exams", then the date (3-27/58), then the name of the dentist. It could seem there is a slight glitch in explanation here in that if the "13/O" filling was done on 3-27-58 it is not specifically noted in line 1 of p. 2 where only "Exams" is written. But presumably that was considered already documented on the top first sheet so no need to write it in again. In any case a filling at tooth #13 (actually #12 but noted as #13) is indicated to have been done at some point on or after 3-27-58 that had not been done before then, since comparison of the before-and-after two charts shows tooth #13 unmarked in the left chart, whereas on the right chart a filling is marked between #12 and #13--and that filling is nowhere else documented on p. 2, therefore it seems the notation concerning it on the first page was considered the documentation of it.

(8) The remaining entries would be, for 4-30-58, probably a followup appointment from 3-27-58, "#20 DO CEMO AM A.R.", would be tooth #20, distal occlusal amalgam filling. I am guessing the final "A.R." could stand for "anesthesia required". The last line, dated 5-14-58, "#10-O-Am-A.R.", would be tooth #10, occlusal, amalgam filling, anesthesia required. This 5-14-58 visit would also have been when the repair was done on the failed tooth #13 amalgam filling done earlier, again not repeated on the p. 2 chart because that was already documented and dated on p. 1.

Interesting Chris N. It is probably only coincidence that 260 pounds is the weight of a corpse, but my favorite detail re Campisi is this: In his House Select Committee testimony in 1978, in the context of being questioned about his relationship to Marcello of New Orleans:

Campisi: ...He [Carlos Marcello] has called me and asked me if I needed any crab claws or softshell crabs, and every year I send them [Marcello family] sausage, 260 pounds of Italian sausage that I send to them for Christmas to give to all of the brothers [of Carlos Marcello] and what friends I have there. I send like 260 pounds of sausage every year that I make special with walnuts and celery.
Q. Is there some reason why you send him 260 pounds to divide between everybody?
Campisi: No. No. I send each [Marcello] brother, and then I have a lot of cousins there. I have a lot of relatives there, and I send sausage to all of them.

While in my interview with Curington, in commenting on Ruby shooting Oswald, Curington, who knew Civello, Campisi, and had met Marcello, happened to use this figure of speech:

"I don't think that Ruby wanted to do the shooting. But then he had no other choice. You know, somebody told him what needs to be done. And he knew if he didn't do it, he could very well have been ground up in a sausage grinder, and all his brothers and sisters and everybody else there. So its not that simple to just say, 'well I don't believe I'll load my gun this morning and go down and shoot somebody.' You don't have, you know, you don't have that choice there."

I think I have a mundane explanation for the classroom photo: Oswald has the cap of an ink pen in his teeth. On the general classroom photo (not the blowup closeup of Oswald's face) on page 1 of this thread, on my computer screen, when I magnify that photo, it becomes clear that the dark spot is actually a perfect circle--a dark perfect circle against an off-white background (of the teeth). The separate blowup/closeup of the face has a more splotchy, ragged, or rough appearance without a clear perfect circle, attributable I assume to decay of the image in making that blowup. But when I magnify the general classroom image on my computer screen and look at Oswald's teeth, the dark spot is a perfect circle. That perfect circle is no missing tooth--it is something Oswald is holding between his teeth directly facing the camera, hence an end-view of the object. Oswald is holding a pen in his right hand. It must be the cap of that pen.

According to the Austin & Frey 11/27/63 interview of Voebel, Voebel said he entered the classroom to take pictures for the school yearbook and Oswald, who knew him, clowned spontaneously when he saw the camera and his friend. What else would a round--round circle--object held between Oswald's teeth be than the cap of a pen.