A Couple of Real Gems from the "Harvey and Lee" Website

[Jim Hargrove]

Alistair Briggs brought the issue of the 1959 “Defection” photo of LHO as published in the Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper.  Here is the image the newspaper printed:

The image was provided by Wide World Photos (now owned by AP) to the Star Telegram and a few other papers.  Why was the image so terrible?

Because there were undoubtedly many people in the Fort Worth area who knew or remembered American-born LEE Harvey Oswald.  But it was Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald who was involved in the false defection program, and a real photo of Harvey Oswald might alert some people to the fact that Harvey had assumed Lee’s identity.  So a crappy photo was shown.

Later, Wide World Photos retransmitted what it said was an improved photo “to provide better copy.” In the late 1990s, John Armstrong purchased the photo from Associated Press/Wide World Photos.  Here it is:

For some of his speeches starting in the 1990s, John Armstrong himself pasted the “improved” Wide World Photos image over the poor image in the original Fort Worth Star Telegram article.  Here is what John’s composite image looked like:

The significance of this story is that a  CIA-friendly asset either at or communicating with Wide World Photos understood that a photo of American-born Lee Oswald could alert the Russians that an impostor was using his identity in Moscow.  A photo of Harvey Oswald might be recognized as different from Lee by some of the residents in and around Fort Worth.  So the crappy, unrecognizable photo was used instead.

To see John’s brief write-up on how the Wide World Photo came into being, go to this link:

http://harveyandlee.net/Marines/Defection_Photo_Evolution.html

[Michael Walton]

Wrong, Jim.  It's got nothing to do with what you're saying and everything to do with general touch ups for newspaper articles.  As you said, the one in that large poster to the left of the weird looking one is the exact same photo.  But it's featureless so they inked in - obviously too much so - to try to fill in the details.

I was just looking on the internet and can't find many examples but I've seen this numerous times in old newspaper articles where they did the same thing.  The best example I can find is Elvis in his coffin.  You can tell they touched that up too a little.  Not nearly as much as the LHO one but I'm guessing they did so to enhance Elvis's features so it would look more like him.

That's all it is, Jim.  You and Johnny just keep piling it on, don't you? It's disgraceful but as you said, it sounds like there's still plenty of (amazing) shills out there still believing in you and buying Johnny's book for $60 bucks.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, David Josephs said:

#20 is of LEE entering the Marines with the gigantic head...

Oh my gosh, I never noticed that! According to this biometric photo, Oswald's head was 13" tall! Nobody's head is that tall. Mine is 9". I've heard of 10". But 13"? No way! This photo alone is proof that something highly unusual was going on.

 

[Thomas Graves]

On 3/27/2017 at 8:43 AM, Thomas Graves said:

GEM # 1  (Let's take them one at a time, shall we?)

"The Russian speaking youth, possibly of Hungarian parents, was brought to the U.S. following World War II and given the name HARVEY Oswald."

Question:  If the mother tongue of "Harvey" (the young boy who eventually joined the Marines, "defected" to the USSR, married Marina, and was killed by Jack Ruby on 11/24/63) was Hungarian (a Turkic language from Central Asia), and he was already speaking Russian (a highly-inflected, Indo-European language) when he came to the U.S., how are we to explain, then, the fact that "Harvey" spoke such grammatically-correct, accent-free English later in life? 

--  Tommy

PS  I think I can speak with some authority on this, having taught English for seven years in a country that speaks a Slavic, i.e. Russian-like language, the Czech Republic.  And I remember the Hungarian Toth brothers at La Jolla High School back around 1965, who probably came to the U.S. around the time of the 1956 Hungarian Revolt against the U.S.S.R.  (How did THAT work out, btw?)

bumped

because it's my thread

and because Hargrove still hasn't convincingly addressed this issue --  he keeps relying of the "analysis" of the Ivy League "Ivory Tower" instructor of Slavic languages who probably didn't speak English very well, himself, having lived in Russia for 32 years before moving to the U.S.

Edited April 12, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Michael Walton]

Sandy we already went over the facial  and head size debate. I  posted that transform animated  GIF showing  it's  the same person.

Remember  that's  the  one  where you went "But but but Jim....."

[Sandy Larsen]

44 minutes ago, Michael Walton said:

Sandy we already went over the facial  and head size debate. I  posted that transform animated  GIF showing  it's  the same person.

Remember  that's  the  one  where you went "But but but Jim....."

I don't recall anybody mentioning in that debate that Oswald's USMC induction photo shows him having a 13" noggin.

BTW, don't you think it's odd that the photo shows Oswald with a 13" tall head? How could that anomaly have happened?

If Oswald had stood closer to the camera rather than back against the measuring chart, that would have made his head look bigger. But it would also have made Oswald look taller. Yet his height is correctly shown at 5' 9".

It could be that Oswald was instructed to stand closer to the camera, and at the same time the chart was raised to compensate and show the correct 5' 9" height. That should work. But why would anybody do such a thing?

 

[Thomas Graves]

31 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I don't recall anybody mentioning in that debate that Oswald's USMC induction photo shows him having a 13" noggin.

BTW, don't you think it's odd that the photo shows Oswald with a 13" tall head? How could that anomaly have happened?

If Oswald had stood closer to the camera rather than back against the measuring chart, that would have made his head look bigger. But it would also have made Oswald look taller. Yet his height is correctly shown at 5' 9".

It could be that Oswald was instructed to stand closer to the camera, and at the same time the chart was raised to compensate and show the correct 5' 9" height. That should work. But why would anybody do such a thing?

 

Sandy,

Do you think this tough-looking kid "with the 13-inch head" is "Harvey," or "Lee"?

--  Tommy

[Sandy Larsen]

Just now, Thomas Graves said:

Sandy,

Do you think this tough-looking kid "with the 13-inch head" is "Harvey," or "Lee"?

--  Tommy

Tommy,

This one is Lee.

 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

58 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I don't recall anybody mentioning in that debate that Oswald's USMC induction photo shows him having a 13" noggin.

BTW, don't you think it's odd that the photo shows Oswald with a 13" tall head? How could that anomaly have happened?

If Oswald had stood closer to the camera rather than back against the measuring chart, that would have made his head look bigger. But it would also have made Oswald look taller. Yet his height is correctly shown at 5' 9".

It could be that Oswald was instructed to stand closer to the camera, and at the same time the chart was raised to compensate and show the correct 5' 9" height. That should work. But why would anybody do such a thing?

 

Jack White promoted the "13 inch head" thing for years but it was debunked a long time ago. I can't remember the details, but It is simply a result of the process they used to take the photo. Researchers found several of these photos including one of Joseph Kennedy Jr. and they all had 13 inch heads. Finding JFK's older brother sort of killed the conspiracy angle of it for most people and it is usually not mentioned anymore.

EDIT: Parker says it was the distance from the camera.

 

Edited April 12, 2017 by W. Tracy Parnell

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Michael Clark writes:

Quote

It's a shame that people want to have fun by going to the waekest points on the structure and take a sledge hammer to it just to prove a point.

The weakest points in the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory are also the most central points, and fully deserve to be mocked.

For example, one of the central elements of the theory is that the 'Harvey' character, who survived the assassination weekend, had undergone a mastoidectomy operation at the age of six, and that the 'Lee' character, whose body was buried in Oswald's grave, had not undergone the operation. Unfortunately for the theory, the body in the grave was exhumed in 1981. According to the medical specialists who reported their findings in a reputable scientific journal , the body had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy operation.

That alone renders the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory false. Almost two decades before the Harvey and Lee book was even published, one of the central elements of the theory had been proven, by solid medical evidence, to be incorrect. If any theory deserves to be made fun of, it's an internally contradictory theory that had been comprehensively debunked long before it was unleashed on its intended audience of the gullible and the paranoid.

I'm sure most readers will appreciate the pernicious effect that the moon-landings type of conspiracy theory has on the general public's perception of the JFK assassination debate. Plenty of people, unfamiliar with the details of the case, assume that if you question the lone-gunman theory you must be the type of person who believes that, say, Princess Diana was murdered on the orders of a cabal of giant lizards, or that the pyramids were built by creatures from outer space. That perception is at least partly due to the fact that not enough is done to question the crazier JFK theories. The long-debunked 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory may seem like harmless nonsense to many JFK assassination enthusiasts, but it has the potential to cause a harmful amount of guilt by association.

[Sandy Larsen]

4 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The weakest points in the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory are also the most central points, and fully deserve to be mocked.

For example, one of the central elements of the theory is that the 'Harvey' character, who survived the assassination weekend, had undergone a mastoidectomy operation at the age of six, and that the 'Lee' character, whose body was buried in Oswald's grave, had not undergone the operation

Jeez Jeremy, the mastoidectomy is in no way one of the central elements of the theory.  It is, rather, one of the weakest points. Your post serves only to prove Michael Clark right, that you guys hammer the weakest points of the theory in order to declare the whole thing a fairy tale.

[Sandy Larsen]

32 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Jack White promoted the "13 inch head" thing for years but it was debunked a long time ago. I can't remember the details, but It is simply a result of the process they used to take the photo. Researchers found several of these photos including one of Joseph Kennedy Jr. and they all had 13 inch heads. This sort of killed the conspiracy angle of it for most people and it is usually not mentioned anymore.

Tracy,

In my query here in this thread, there is nothing to debunk... only something to explain.

I did find a thread where they were talking about other people having 13" heads in mug shots. Two were named, and both may have had ties to intelligence. That, I believe, is the basis for the Jack White theory you mention.

The discovery of other mugshots, with heads measuring as tall as 15", was mentioned in the thread. I'll bet that the reason for those anomalies is that the person taking the mugshot did so incorrectly. He or she didn't have the person stand close to the height chart, as I mentioned above, but rather closer to the camera. This resulted in their height being measured too tall and their heads appearing big. I'll bet that this is the debunking that you are referring to. Except that it is a flawed debunking because it doesn't take the resulting false-height-reading into account.

I am therefore still waiting for a viable answer for this oddity.

 

Edited April 12, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Alistair Briggs]

52 minutes ago, Thomas Graves said:

Sandy,

Do you think this tough-looking kid "with the 13-inch head" is "Harvey," or "Lee"?

--  Tommy

 

48 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Tommy,

This one is Lee.

 

Yeah it's Lee...

... that would be the Lee that is apparently 5ft 11 as oppossed to the Harvey that is 5ft 9. Or something like that. idk...

[W. Tracy Parnell]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Tracy,

In my query here in this thread, there is nothing to debunk... only something to explain.

I did find a thread where they were talking about other people having 13" heads in mug shots. Two were named, and both may have had ties to intelligence. That, I believe, is the basis for the Jack White theory you mention.

The discovery of other mugshots, with heads measuring as tall as 15", was mentioned in the thread. I'll bet that the reason for those anomalies is that the person taking the mugshot did so incorrectly. He or she didn't have the person stand close to the height chart, as I mentioned above, but rather closer to the camera. This resulted in their height being measured too tall and their heads appearing big. I'll bet that this is the debunking that you are referring to. Except that it is a flawed debunking because it doesn't take the resulting false-height-reading into account.

I am therefore still waiting for a viable answer for this oddity.

 

Sandy,

I was referring to the "13 inch head" thing in general has been debunked or explained if you prefer and many years ago at that. I found a post I made on McAdams' forum in 2001 referring to the fact that it had been debunked. Jack White wrote articles discussing the subject and postulating that individuals with "intelligence connections" had 13 inch heads for some sinister unknown reason. The problem is as I mentioned, every photo of this kind I have seen shows an oversized head including Joseph Kennedy Jr., some unknown people and coincidentally, LHO. It is safe to assume that it was a part of the process and a result of the distance from the camera. Someone had discovered the exact process and reported on it but I can't find it now.

Now, as with so many things to do with this silly theory, you have been given an explanation although not a specific one because I no longer have the information. If you want to believe that something funny is going on you certainly may. But I would say that in order to have proof you need thousands of these photos that show a normal head size and that LHO's and Joseph Kennedy Jr.'s were different for some reason.

Edit: The 13 inch head was a "secret identifier" indicating intelligence connections according to a forum post by White I found.

Edited April 12, 2017 by W. Tracy Parnell

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Sandy,

Here is a post from the old JFK Research forum explaining how the distance from the chart can affect the head size. Also included is a photo of a man from Australia that a member found in a magazine which was reporting on the guy because he had triplets. He also had a 13 inch head.

-----------------------

Posted by dennis bartholomew ® , Aug 17,2000,01:59 Post ReplyForum

Jack and Kate,
I saw Kate's note on 13-inch head.
If one is photographed standing a few feet in front of the chart, one's head
will cover more of the chart on the photo, than if he or she had his head
actually against the chart. To verify this I had my wife stand in front of a
chart on the wall - her head covered about 10 inches. Then I moved her about 4
feet away from the wall, and to my eye, and the camera's eye, her head covered
about 15 inches on the chart.
Perhaps the photo of Oswald with the 13 inch head can also be explained this
way.