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

[Glenn Nall]

28 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

From the affidavit of Erwin Lewis:

“It was a matter of common knowledge among squadron members that [Oswald] could read, write, and speak Russian.”
 

I disagree with you Glen. The statement would show in a courtroom that Erwin Lewis himself had knowledge that Oswald "could read, write, and speak Russian.” And that his impression was that others around him had the same knowledge.

If an opposing lawyer objected to Lewis's characterization as hearsay, the other lawyer would rephrase his question and get the results that I just claimed.

Regardless, we are not in a court of law. If you want to wish away Lewis's claim for whatever reason, that's your business. But I think most fair minded people would accept it as probable fact if not challenged by the statements of the other squadron members.

 

 

 

First, I'm not at all wishing away his claim - I'm simply pointing out that some things we think are "proof" are not necessarily proof.

For instance, the first question I ask myself is "what does he mean by 'common knowledge?' Did HE see or hear Oswald's fluency in Russian?" IF he didn't, but bases his knowledge solely on what others "know," then it's not really knowledge - it's something along the lines of a high or low probability. That's it.

In other words, if he did not see it for himself, then he heard it from someone or some place else. And that won't fly.

And since it's in the form of physical evidence, to even get into court it would probably have to pass a judge's scrutiny first. And I think it would be seen as hearsay unless the guy was prepared to swear he knew this first-hand. But he didn't say that in the statement, so...

And having been in a US Navy squadron (VA 105, NAS Cecil Field) at about that same age, along with the all the guys I hung out with, I remember quite well how "knowledge" got passed around. We were young and adventurous.

I am NOT saying that O didn't know Russian. I've just read enough to put me right on the fence on whether he did, whether there were two of him and how well either one of him spoke it. Until I eventually find something that convinces me one way or the other.

But i surely don't put stock in anyone who says "everybody knew it - that's how I know." That's just not good enough for me.

I know we're not in a court of law, but i know what hearsay is, and I know why it's usually not admissible (there are certain types of hearsay that is allowed).

EDIT >>

You know, now that I think about it, in some ways this kind of stuff - sworn statements given to a Presidential Commission - is under more legal scrutiny that were it in a trial - this is on the pretense that the Commission gave a rat's xxx about truth, of course.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Glenn Nall

[Glenn Nall]

12 minutes ago, Glenn Nall said:

But I think most fair minded people would accept it as probable fact if not challenged by the statements of the other squadron members

so, how many other squadron peers of his - both from Atsugi and wherever it was in California - have made statements as to his Russian...?

its a fair question, just as my earlier point was fair - not absolutely correct or incorrect, just fair. I'm not trying to argue or debunk anything.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Glenn Nall

[Sandy Larsen]

52 minutes ago, Glenn Nall said:

.... But i surely don't put stock in anyone who says "everybody knew it - that's how I know." That's just not good enough for me.....

Fair enough Glenn. Following is how I feel about it:

It's been my observation that when someone says something like what Erwin Lewis said, it is more likely to be true than false. I believe that it is even more likely to be true if the person is making a statement for legal purposes. (I don't know if that was a sworn statement or not.)

When I consider further that the statement just happened to be true -- that is to say, that Oswald did actually speak Russian, etc., as corroborated by other evidence -- I am led to believe that what Lewis said likely wasn't just something that he or a squadron member just assumed to be true.

Finally, I feel that if I were to apply your standard of accuracy to all the affidavits I read, there would be very little left in those affidavits that I would trust. If there is no reason for a person to lie, or be confused about something, I usually accept what they say as being likely truthful till such time that I come across something that contradicts it.

 

Edited October 17, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Sandy Larsen]

53 minutes ago, Glenn Nall said:

1 hour ago, Glenn Nall said:

But I think most fair minded people would accept it as probable fact if not challenged by the statements of the other squadron members

so, how many other squadron peers of his - both from Atsugi and wherever it was in California - have made statements as to his Russian...?

I don't know the answer to your question off hand. I do know that Oswald took a Russian test, the results of which I believe were roughly on par with an eight year old Russian child. (I base that belief on comments made by Mathias Baumann, who has experience in foreign language instruction). And that he had a couple-hour long conversation with a woman who was taking Russian lessons while he was in the Marine Corpse.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Here’s a closer look at that missing upper front tooth:

I'll post a brightened version of the same LIFE halftone from the late, great Jack White in a couple of days....

 

Jim,

Thanks for scanning and posting that photo from Life Magazine.

Earlier I didn't say anything about the that photo showing a missing front tooth because frankly I just couldn't see it. But this version is pretty convincing. Especially considering Ed Voebel's testimony that he thought that Oswald lost a front tooth in the fist fight he had with Robin Riley.

If I recall correctly, you said that Voebel took this photo not long after the fight. I believe we see some swelling in the upper lip, which isn't surprising given that the tooth reportedly cut through the lip.

I was on the fence before about the broken tooth. But now I believe the evidence favors that assertion.

I have taken the photo and adjusted the contrast and brightness. I don't know if the result adds anything.

 

 

I checked out my own teeth in the mirror with my head tilted like Oswald's. From doing that I discovered that what we are seeing are the fronts of Oswald's teeth on his left, and the bottoms on his right. Oswald's upper left incisor is missing. And that contradicts with the teeth of the exhumed body.

 

 

 

 

[Bernie Laverick]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Bernie,

Why on earth would the CIA want to chip the corpse's tooth? Everybody knew that the Oswald shot by Ruby had no chipped tooth!

You and Michael Walton need to do a little more thinking before posting.

 

Let's get this straight. 'Lee' had a chipped tooth and had had a mastoid operation. So for that to have been LHO's body there must be a chipped tooth, if you are correct, and evidence of a mastoidectomy.

The mastoidectomy was confirmed, as per the medical record telling us that he had had it. We have something in the medical record and an exhumation which proves just that.

What do you have for the missing tooth? A grainy B&W photo that is impossible to tell. That's it.

Anyway, so you've all switched back to "It was faked" again have you? Eight posts (24 hours) ago it was "most likely" done in 1952/3 in New York, according to Jim. Now you've all gone back to "It was faked"!

Come on Sandy, keep up, you're not slithering and a sliding in time with your gurus. You can't just keep holding the one position here. You have to mix it up a bit more. 

So the boy that definitely had a mastoid operation and who a few think may have had a tooth missing is the one in that coffin. The mastoid is confirmed but the tooth is not.

Rather than accept being wrong about the tooth you have to make up a ridiculous scenario (yet another one!) that to you proves that this is a different body to the one who had a mastoid operation.

Like I said earlier. Ha ha ha

[Bernie Laverick]

9 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Bernie,

Why on earth would the CIA want to chip the corpse's tooth? Everybody knew that the Oswald shot by Ruby had no chipped tooth!

You and Michael Walton need to do a little more thinking before posting.

 

By pure accident unrelated 'Harvey' and 'Lee' managed to grow up looking identical through no help from the CIA. But as an ultra secure expedient they decided to perform a mastoidectomy on 'Harvey' so he would look even more identical to 'Lee' when one of them was inevitably dug up years later.

The question I am asking you Sandy is, erm........ why didn't they chip his tooth at the same time?

Oops!

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

After carefully analysing all the evidence, Jim seems to agree with his critics that the exhumation of Oswald's body wasn't faked, and the scientists' report wasn't faked. The reason for the existence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in Oswald's grave, according to Jim, is not that the historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was given a mastoidectomy operation in February 1946, as medical documentation shows us, but that a fictional character, 'Harvey', was given an unnecessary mastoidectomy "in late 1952 or early 1953" in New York City. Where exactly was the unnecessary operation carried out? Jim doesn't say, but he throws in a mention of Jacobi Hospital, presumably to imply that the operation was carried out there:

<blockquote>To me, it's most likely that Harvey had the procedure done in late 1952 or early 1953, when he was a teenager living in New York City and habitually truant from Public School 117. Louise Robertson, "Marguerite Oswald's" housekeeper, told the FBI that Mrs. Oswald said she had brought her son to New York so that he could have mental tests performed at Jacobi Hospital.</blockquote>

According to the official New York City government website, however, Jacobi Hospital didn't open until 1955: http://www.nyc.gov/html/hhc/jacobi/html/about/history.shtml

So the operation couldn't have been carried out there. Which hospital was it, then? Are there any records from any hospital in the New York City area in 1952 or 1953 which indicate that a mastoidectomy was carried out on a 13-year-old Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee, or possibly a 13-year-old Russian World War Two orphan? If no such records exist, why do they not exist? I bet it was those Bad Guys again, destroying and faking the documentary record to disguise their dastardly plan!

I wonder how much effort has gone into looking for the missing hospital records. I suspect that Jim and the leader of the cult (praise be his name!) haven't actually bothered to look for those records, for the obvious reason that they know perfectly well that no such operation was carried out.

More here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t688-jacobi-hospital

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim is claiming that one of his fictional Oswalds had a tooth knocked out in a fight at school. He reproduces a poor-quality photograph (WCHE vol.16, p.804: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1133#relPageId=828 ) and cites Ed Voebel, a classmate of the historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald: "I think he even lost a tooth from that. I think he was cut on the lip, and a tooth was knocked out." (WCHE vol.8, p.3: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=11 )

This evidence isn't quite as strong as Jim would like it to be. For some reason, Jim doesn't mention another of Oswald's classmates, Bennierita Smith, who remembered the fight but did not claim that Oswald had had a tooth knocked out: "I guess because there was this boy - he wasn't going to Beauregard, this boy he had the fight with, and he was a little guy. I think his name was Robin Riley. He hit Lee, and his tooth came through his lip ... it actually tore the lip." (WCHE vol.8, p.22: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=30 )

There are also several items of evidence which ought to exist but which don't seem to exist. Jim implies that his fictional version of Lee Harvey Oswald went through the rest of his life with a front tooth missing. Are there any other photographs of this particular fictional Oswald? Do they show a missing tooth? If not, why not? Are there any statements from people who met this fictional Oswald which mention a missing tooth?

One of the fictional Oswalds, 'Harvey', is supposed to have had his body surgically altered to match that of the other fictional Oswald, 'Lee'. It was 'Lee' who supposedly had his tooth knocked out, and who had undergone a mastoidectomy operation at the age of six. It was 'Harvey' whose body was supposedly exhumed from Lee Harvey Oswald's grave in 1981. The body showed evidence of a mastoidectomy, but not of a missing tooth. Why did the Bad Guys who ran the fictional two-Oswald scheme go to the bother of fabricating evidence of a mastoidectomy but neglect to remove a tooth? I'm no surgeon, but I'd guess it's a lot easier to take out a tooth than it is to fabricate evidence of a mastoidectomy. And the mastoidectomy would only be discovered if the fictional 'Harvey' ever got dug up after his death, whereas the missing tooth would be visible to the world for the rest of his life. Would Jim (or any of the other believers in this ridiculous nonsense) care to explain why the tooth wasn't removed?

More here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t227-armstrong-s-magic-tooth-and-the-facts-about-harvey-at-beauregard

[Mathias Baumann]

10 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I don't know the answer to your question off hand. I do know that Oswald took a Russian test, the results of which I believe were roughly on par with an eight year old Russian child. (I base that belief on comments made by Mathias Baumann, who has experience in foreign language instruction). And that he had a couple-hour long conversation with a woman who was taking Russian lessons while he was in the Marine Corpse.

 

Sandy,

as I pointed out in a different thread, we still don't know whether Oswald took a lower or an upper range test. My original estimate you are refering to was based on my assumption of the test being upper range. But we definitely need more information on how military language tests in the 1950s looked like to make a truly educated guess on Oswald's abilities. Maybe someone could get into touch with the Defense Language Institute?

[Bernie Laverick]

3 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Jim is claiming that one of his fictional Oswalds had a tooth knocked out in a fight at school. He reproduces a poor-quality photograph (WCHE vol.16, p.804: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1133#relPageId=828 ) and cites Ed Voebel, a classmate of the historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald: "I think he even lost a tooth from that. I think he was cut on the lip, and a tooth was knocked out." (WCHE vol.8, p.3: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=11 )

This evidence isn't quite as strong as Jim would like it to be. For some reason, Jim doesn't mention another of Oswald's classmates, Bennierita Smith, who remembered the fight but did not claim that Oswald had had a tooth knocked out: "I guess because there was this boy - he wasn't going to Beauregard, this boy he had the fight with, and he was a little guy. I think his name was Robin Riley. He hit Lee, and his tooth came through his lip ... it actually tore the lip." (WCHE vol.8, p.22: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36#relPageId=30 )

There are also several items of evidence which ought to exist but which don't seem to exist. Jim implies that his fictional version of Lee Harvey Oswald went through the rest of his life with a front tooth missing. Are there any other photographs of this particular fictional Oswald? Do they show a missing tooth? If not, why not? Are there any statements from people who met this fictional Oswald which mention a missing tooth?

One of the fictional Oswalds, 'Harvey', is supposed to have had his body surgically altered to match that of the other fictional Oswald, 'Lee'. It was 'Lee' who supposedly had his tooth knocked out, and who had undergone a mastoidectomy operation at the age of six. It was 'Harvey' whose body was supposedly exhumed from Lee Harvey Oswald's grave in 1981. The body showed evidence of a mastoidectomy, but not of a missing tooth. Why did the Bad Guys who ran the fictional two-Oswald scheme go to the bother of fabricating evidence of a mastoidectomy but neglect to remove a tooth? I'm no surgeon, but I'd guess it's a lot easier to take out a tooth than it is to fabricate evidence of a mastoidectomy. And the mastoidectomy would only be discovered if the fictional 'Harvey' ever got dug up after his death, whereas the missing tooth would be visible to the world for the rest of his life. Would Jim (or any of the other believers in this ridiculous nonsense) care to explain why the tooth wasn't removed?

More here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t227-armstrong-s-magic-tooth-and-the-facts-about-harvey-at-beauregard

Perfect.

Good point re the other witnesses. They all say he looked "just like the guy we saw on the telly being shot". But NONE of them ever mentioned that 'Lee' had a tooth missing.

I wonder why.

[Glenn Nall]

11 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I'm just kind of surprised he didn't brush more often.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

There's an interesting newspaper article here, which includes a photograph of the exhumation:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1599-oswald-autopsy-articles

I can make out 22 people in the photograph. It doesn't capture the whole scene, and the article mentions that a number of security guards were present, so I think we can assume that there must have been many more than 22 people in attendance altogether.

Unless the Bad Guys were able to twist the arms of those 22 people plus the photographer plus the other security guards plus whoever else happened to be in the area at the time, we can rule out the notion that the body in the grave was switched during the exhumation.

We can also rule out Jim's preferred solution, that an unnecessary mastoidectomy operation, for which no trace exists in the medical records, had been performed in 1952 or 1953 on a Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee boy, for whom no trace exists in US immigration records, by a surgeon whose name is unknown, in a hospital that wasn't built until 1955.

That leaves just one realistic explanation for the existence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave. It was the little green men. They beamed up the body into their invisible spacecraft and replaced it with a surgically modified clone, before depositing the original body at Roswell. That's the realistic explanation. There's also this far-fetched explanation: the body in the grave was that of the historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, who had undergone a genuine, properly documented mastoidectomy operation at the age of six.

[Sandy Larsen]

21 hours ago, Bernie Laverick said:

On 10/16/2017 at 7:59 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Bernie,

Why on earth would the CIA want to chip the corpse's tooth? Everybody knew that the Oswald shot by Ruby had no chipped tooth!

You and Michael Walton need to do a little more thinking before posting.

 

By pure accident unrelated 'Harvey' and 'Lee' managed to grow up looking identical through no help from the CIA. But as an ultra secure expedient they decided to perform a mastoidectomy on 'Harvey' so he would look even more identical to 'Lee' when one of them was inevitably dug up years later.

The question I am asking you Sandy is, erm........ why didn't they chip his tooth at the same time?

Oops!

Bernie,

That's a reasonable question. I haven't put much thought into that hypothesis, so perhaps you should ask those who have suggested that maybe the CIA tried to keep Lee and Harvey identical.

But off the cuff I can think of a couple reasons. Maybe the loss of the tooth was off the CIA's radar screen. I have a friend whose front tooth was broken off by a wrench that slipped. He didn't go see a dentist and the tooth was still broken many years later when he e-mailed a picture of his family to me. The point being that there was probably never a record made of the lost tooth.

Another possibility is that the CIA tried to keep the two identical only as far as medical records were concerned. And, recognizing that flesh scars wouldn't last long post-mortem, they concerned themselves only with keeping the bone-work identical.

 

Edited October 18, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Sandy Larsen]

17 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:

On 10/16/2017 at 10:16 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

.... I do know that Oswald took a Russian test, the results of which I believe were roughly on par with an eight year old Russian child. (I base that belief on comments made by Mathias Baumann, who has experience in foreign language instruction). ....

Sandy,

as I pointed out in a different thread, we still don't know whether Oswald took a lower or an upper range test. My original estimate you are refering to was based on my assumption of the test being upper range. But we definitely need more information on how military language tests in the 1950s looked like to make a truly educated guess on Oswald's abilities. Maybe someone could get into touch with the Defense Language Institute?

Mathias,

FWIW, here is what Vincent Bugliosi wrote in his book:

"However, since the test was designed to test the proficiency of native speakers and students of the military's rigorous language schools, and Oswald had apparently acquired the language on his own, his [poor] grades were not that bad. He apparently had the rudiments of the language and a base on which to build. It was also apparent that he must have been studying for some time before he arrived in Santa Ana, mainly in Japan."

I don't know what Bugliosi's source was for the part I highlighted.