Steven Hager: The Two Oswalds

[Jim Hargrove]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

"Classic Oswald"... a registered trademark? Ha! I like it.

Jim,

You make a good point, and I agree with you. The only reason I am assuming that Felde's story is a cover in my little analysis is because it allows me to consider the possibility that Oswald actually took secret Russian language classes  while in the Marines. If I were to accept Felde's story at face value, then I'd know that Oswald couldn't have taken secret classes and must have known the language prior to entering the Marine Corp. (Either that or he was some kind of language-learning genius.)

To be honest, I do believe Felde 's story is true. And because of that, I don't believe Oswald took secret Russian classes while in the Marines. And therefore Oswald must have known Russian before joining the Marines. In other words, I believe that Oswald was probably a Russian speaking immigrant. (And because of other evidence, I believe there was another Oswald who didn't speak Russian.)

That’s been pretty much my take on this for many years.  It may not be proof that Harvey Oswald was a Russian-speaking immigrant, but it strikes me as the most logical analysis of the evidence we’ve been given.  And it explains several anomalies beyond his comfort with the language even before the so-called “defection.”

For example, the white Russians in Dallas in 1962/63 were surprised by his fluency in their native tongue, although he had spent only two and a half years in the USSR, and had taken no known language courses.  Yet DeMohrenschildt pointed out that, despite the fact that he preferred to speak Russian over English, he made some grammatical mistakes in the Russian language.

Does that not seem entirely consistent with someone who learned Russian as a child and was then brought to America?  Marina said under oath that he was reading classic Russian novels in Russian when she met him.  I remember in high school that Dostoevski and Tolstoi were hard enough for me to read in English, and I had been formally studying English in an English-speaking environment for a decade and a half!  Marina and DeM were not the most reliable witnesses over the years, but how can we ignore their observations not directly related to Oswald’s guilt or innocence?

What has surprised me more than anything else about this, though, is the amount of vitriol that has been directed at this analysis, which strikes both of us as entirely possible and even probable.  Where does all that anger come from?  I’ve had an email address in little tiny letters up on the website for years, and you wouldn’t believe some of the hate mail I’ve received. 

Why?  

Edited July 26, 2017 by Jim Hargrove

[W. Tracy Parnell]

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Marina said under oath that he was reading classic Russian novels in Russian when she met him.

Not sure why you keep presenting this as some sort of "proof" of his ability. Did she say to what extent he was reading them? No-he could have just been studying them for practice with only a marginal understanding.

[Jim Hargrove]

She said "he read a lot when he was in the Soviet Union," Tracy, and in Russian.

Mr. McDONALD. Did Lee read books often?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes.
Mr. McDONALD. Did he read a lot when he was in the Soviet
Union?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes.
Mr. McDONALD. What kind of books did he read there?
Mrs. PORTER. Novels mostly.
Mr. McDONALD. What kind of novels?
Mrs. PORTER. What you call maybe as classical novels, some
Russian classic writers.
Mr. McDONALD. The novels or the books that he read in the
Soviet Union, were they in Russian?
Mrs. PORTER. They were in Russian ; yes.

There may be other reasons to distrust Marina's testimony, but not for any reason you're offering here.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

She said "he read a lot when he was in the Soviet Union," Tracy, and in Russian.

Mr. McDONALD. Did Lee read books often?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes.
Mr. McDONALD. Did he read a lot when he was in the Soviet
Union?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes.
Mr. McDONALD. What kind of books did he read there?
Mrs. PORTER. Novels mostly.
Mr. McDONALD. What kind of novels?
Mrs. PORTER. What you call maybe as classical novels, some
Russian classic writers.
Mr. McDONALD. The novels or the books that he read in the
Soviet Union, were they in Russian?
Mrs. PORTER. They were in Russian ; yes.

There may be other reasons to distrust Marina's testimony, but not for any reason you're offering here.

I don't distrust her testimony at all. I am simply making the point that unless he the books aloud to her, she had no way to know his level of understanding of the material he was reading. 

[Jim Hargrove]

Right!  He mastered Russian by reading difficult Russian texts and telepathically translating them by channeling great Russian authors!  Without ever taking a language course, you want us to believe "Oswald" became amazingly proficient in Russian.

Do you believe this was a fake?

And De Mohrenschildt was making this up?

Natalie Ray was asked by Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler, "Did he (Oswald) speak to you in Russian?" Mrs. Ray replied, "Yes; just perfect; re­ally surprised me ... it's just too good speaking Russian for be such a short time, you know.... I said, 'How come you speak so good Russian? I been here so long and still don't speak very well English."

Mrs. Teofil (Anna) Meller was asked by Liebeler, "Do you think that his com­mand of the Russian language was better than you would expect for the period of time that he had spent in Russia?" Mrs. Meller replied, "Yes; absolutely better than I would expect."

Peter Gregory told Warren Commission Representative Gerald Ford, "I thought that Lee Oswald spoke (Russian) with a Polish accent, that is why I asked him if he was of Polish decent."

Edited July 27, 2017 by Jim Hargrove

[Sandy Larsen]

De Mohrenschildt and Marina corroborated each other with regard to Oswald's high level of Russian fluency . For some reason Tracy keeps forgetting that.

BTW Jim, I think people don't realize how much more difficult it is to learn a language that uses a different alphabet.

 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

He became fluent by speaking Russian every day while in the Soviet Union. His wife spoke no English so he had to keep working on his Russian to communicate properly. But it's more fun to believe that there is a big mystery as to how he learned the language.

Edited July 27, 2017 by W. Tracy Parnell

[Jim Hargrove]

Anyone who reads this discussion should be advised that Mr. Parnell, by his own admission, believes the Warren Report accurately described the assassination of President Kennedy.

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

He became fluent by speaking Russian every day while in the Soviet Union. His wife spoke no English so he had to keep working on his Russian to communicate properly. But it's more fun to believe that there is a big mystery as to how he learned the language.

And within two years he was reading the Russian masters. This by a C- average high school dropout.

 

[Mathias Baumann]

On ‎23‎.‎07‎.‎2017 at 9:03 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

Another question for you, if do don’t mind.  Had Oswald scored the equivalent of an A+ on the Russian exam, do you think the Marines would have published that fact?

I guess if Oswald had scored an A+ we would never have heard of him. They'd have recruited him for some sort of super secret intelligence work. They would not have sent him to Russia because they had to know the KGB would not be fooled by such a threadbare ruse. Whatever the reason was they sent Oswald to Russia for it did not involve any spying.

Edited July 27, 2017 by Mathias Baumann

[Mathias Baumann]

6 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

He became fluent by speaking Russian every day while in the Soviet Union. His wife spoke no English so he had to keep working on his Russian to communicate properly. But it's more fun to believe that there is a big mystery as to how he learned the language.

Tracy,

I work as a language teacher. I know plenty of people who've lived here in Germany for many years and they're nowhere close to a native speaker's level. In fact some people never reach it. So yes, if Oswald's Russian was good enough to fool native speakers that fact is very remarkable.

You're also forgetting that Oswald passed the Marine Corps exam (allegedly) without proper preparation. And that test was probably level L2/R2, which would've required at least 100 to 200 lessons of preparation.

So was Oswald a language genius? I could find no evidence in his High School records that would support this.

By the way, how long did it take Marina to become fluent in English? That's not a trick question, I'm actually curious about this.

Edited July 27, 2017 by Mathias Baumann

[Michael Clark]

58 minutes ago, Mathias Baumann said:

Tracy,

I work as a language teacher. I know plenty of people who've lived here in Germany for many years and they're nowhere close to a native speaker's level. In fact some people never reach it. So yes, if Oswald's Russian was good enough to fool native speakers that fact is very remarkable.

You're also forgetting that Oswald passed the Marine Corps exam (allegedly) without proper preparation. And that test was probably level L2/R2, which would've required at least 100 to 200 lessons of preparation.

So was Oswald a language genius? I could find no evidence in his High School records that would support this.

By the way, how long did it take Marina to become fluent in English? That's not a trick question, I'm actually curious about this.

Last I heard her speak, she still has a thick accent and does not have grasp of English verbs and tenses. 

Some people just Don't have that ability to adapt and adopt a new language. I can't understand 90% of what my Italian barber says, and I've been going to him for almost 25 years.

Some people have an exceptional ability to make such adaptations. I'm not saying it is exceptional intelligence, it is just a knack, so to speak. I am kind of like that; If I spend time away, where there is an accent or different word usages, I start involuntarily picking those usages-up, I can't help it.

[Michael Cross]

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Anyone who reads this discussion should be advised that Mr. Parnell, by his own admission, believes the Warren Report accurately described the assassination of President Kennedy.

And seems to be more than a WC apologist; he's being purposefully obtuse.

[Jim Hargrove]

7 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:

I guess if Oswald had scored an A+ we would never have heard of him. They'd have recruited him for some sort of super secret intelligence work. They would not have sent him to Russia because they had to know the KGB would not be fooled by such a threadbare ruse. Whatever the reason was they sent Oswald to Russia for it did not involve any spying.

Mathias,

I worked up this list a year or two ago....

20 Facts Indicating Oswald Was a CIA Spy

1. CIA accountant James Wilcott testified that he made payments to an encrypted account for “Oswald or the Oswald Project.”

2. Antonio Veciana said he saw LHO meeting with CIA’s Maurice Bishop/David Atlee Phillips in Dallas in August 1963.

3. A 1978 CIA memo indicates that a CIA operations officer “had run an agent into the USSR, that man having met a Russian girl and eventually marrying her,” a case very similar to Oswald’s and clearly indicating that the Agency ran a “false defector” program in the 1950s.

4. Robert Webster and LHO "defected" a few months apart in 1959, both tried to "defect" on a Saturday, both possessed "sensitive" information of possible value to the Russians, both were befriended by Marina Prusakova, and both returned to the United States in the spring of 1962.

5. Richard Sprague, Richard Schweiker, and CIA agents Donald Norton and Joseph Newbrough all said LHO was associated with the CIA. 

6. CIA employee Donald Deneslya said he read reports of a CIA agent who had worked at a radio factory in Minsk and returned to the US with a Russian wife and child.

7. Kenneth Porter, employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, left his family to marry (and probably monitor) Marina Oswald after LHO’s death.

8. George Joannides, case officer and paymaster for DRE (which LHO had attempted to infiltrate) was put in charge of lying to the HSCA and never told them of his relationship to DRE.

9. For his achievements, Joannides was given a medal by the CIA.

10. FBI took Oswald off the watch list at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, weeks after Oswald’s New Orleans arrest and less than two months before the assassination.

11. Oswald’s lengthy “Lives of Russian Workers” essay reads like a pretty good intelligence report.

12. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots.

13. Oswald owned an expensive Minox spy camera, which the FBI tried to make disappear.

14. Even the official cover story of the radar operator near American U-2 planes defecting to Russia, saying he would give away all his secrets, and returning home without penalty smells like a spy story.

15. CIA Richard Case Nagell clearly knew about the plot to assassinate JFK and LHO’s relation to it, but the CIA ignored his warnings.

16. LHO always seemed poor as a church mouse, until it was time to go “on assignment.”  For his Russian adventure, we’re to believe he saved all the money he needed for first class European hotels and private tour guides in Moscow from the non-convertible USMC script he saved. In the summer of 1963, he once again seemed to have enough money to travel abroad to Communist nations.

17. To this day, the CIA claims it never interacted with Oswald, that it didn’t even bother debriefing him after the “defection.” What utter bs….

18. After he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, bragging to U.S. embassy personnel in Moscow that he would tell the Russians everything he knew about U.S. military secrets, he returns to the U.S. without punishment and is then in 1963 given the OK to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union again!

19. Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by JFK, and the Warren Commission clearly wanted the truth hidden from the public to protect sources and methods of intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Earl Warren said, “Full disclosure was not possible for reasons of national security.”

20. President Kennedy and the CIA clearly were at war with each other in the weeks immediately before his assassination, as evidenced by Arthur Krock's infamous defense of the Agency in the Oct. 3, 1963 New York Times. “Oswald” was the CIA’s pawn.

[David Andrews]

I would add:

• No serious interest in Marxist activities in US after defection, yet association with US intel-friendly figures such as George DeMohrenschildt, Michael Paine, Ruth Paine, Guy Banister, David Ferrie.
• Tradecraft-like behavior after leaving Dealey Plaza and while in the Texas Theater.

Surely Jim's list could be doubled

 

Edited July 28, 2017 by David Andrews