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

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Parker on Vladimir Petrov:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1409-hargrove-misrepresents-petrov

[Jim Hargrove]

In his letter to John Tower, Petrov wrote “I am satisified that the letter was not written by him.  It was written by a Russian with an imperfect knowledge of English.  I assume it was signed by Oswald.”

In his diatribe against me, Parker fails to mention that the very next sentence in Petrov’s letter begins “The rest is sheer speculation….”  Parker fails to tell his tiny readership that Petrov was confidant about the letter writer’s Russian-language roots, but was just guessing about everything else. 

Why does Parker leave out that little detail?

All of this was abundantly disclosed in my very first post on page one of this thread, which showed Petrov’s full letter to John Tower, including what he was sure of (that the letter was written by a Russian with an imperfect knowledge of English), and his sheer speculation (which is everything else in the letter.)

Parker concludes with a link to the Petrov section of the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor University, which just includes more on Petrov’s “sheer speculation” about “Oswald.”  Parker still has no legitimate explanation for how “Oswald” attended school simultaneously in New York City and New Orleans, or how he was treated for VD at Atsugi station in Japan while on board the Skagit and in Taiwan.

To return his compliment to me, Parker is a disgrace.

[Thomas Graves]

On 4/5/2017 at 9:43 PM, Thomas Graves said:

 

We've been over this about three times now, Jim.

I'm not trying to impress anyone with my intellectual "chops".

I'm trying to show you how a Russian-born (and 32-year-resident of Russia!), rootin'-tootin' "Ivy Tower" instructor of Slavic languages could be relatively weak at speaking and writing proper English, himself, and how that would explain his obvious-to-me incorrect analysis of Lee Harvey Oswald's letters, which mistaken impression led the Ivy Tower Instructor to conclude, erroneously, that Oswald must have been a Russian-language-speaking person who had "an imperfect understanding of English".

LOL

--  Tommy

Just out of curiosity:  Did you learn any foreign languages in high school or college, Jim?

If so, what?

Have you ever lived in a foreign country, without having any native English speaking friends to hang out with?

 If so, which country, Jim?

bumped

Well Jim, once again -- What languages did you study in high school?  Just English?

Did you ever have to learn another language, you know, just to get along? In other words, have you ever lived in a non English-speaking country?

Edited April 8, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Michael Walton]

Jim, ivory tower professors have been known to be wrong just like amateur sleuths like us. And government agents (as you call them) have also been known to be right, just like amateur sleuths like us.

I read Graves's info above twice - about how he has been down on the streets actually learning and teaching the language vs an ivory tower professor like yours giving his "expert" opinion. He raises these very points here.

Also take note of that document above - the one to Tower.  The ivory tower professor actually says at the beginning that's "...venturing one more theory." That's pretty amazing.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

7 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

To return his compliment to me, Parker is a disgrace.

Parker has replied:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1409-hargrove-misrepresents-petrov

[Jim Hargrove]

The best evidence that Harvey Oswald’s first language was Russian was his sheer mastery of it as a young man.  He clearly spoke Russian and read Russian literature in the Marines prior to his false defection to Russia.  When he returned, the White Russians in and around Dallas were amazed at his fluency, even though he had spent two and a half years there, mostly working full time in a factory.

In his manuscript  I AM A PATSY! I AM A PATSY!  Russian immigrant George De Mohrenschildt, who Harvey in 1963 called his closest friend, described his amazement at Harvey’s Russian fluency.

For those who can’t see the graphic above, here’s what the main paragraph from this page of De Mohrenschildt's manuscript says:

Incidentally I never saw him interested in anything else except Russian
books and magazines . He said he didn't want to forget the language -
but it amazed me that he read such difficult writers like Gorki, Dostoevski,
Gogol, Tolstoi and Turgenieff - in Russian . As everyone knows Russian is
a complex language and he was supposed to have stayed in the Soviet Union
only a little over two years . He must have had some previous training and
that point had never been brought up by the Warren Committee - and it is
still puzzling to me. In my opinion Lee was a very bright person but not
a genius . He never mastered the English language yet he learned such a dif-
icult language! I taught Russian at all level in a large University, and
I never saw such a profficiency in the best senior students who constantly
listened to  Russian tapes and spoke to Russian fiends . As a matter of
fact American-born instructors never mastered Russian spoken language as
well as Lee did .

De Mohrenschildt would have made a fascinating witness at the HSCA hearings and, in fact, in early 1977 the HSCA sought to interview him. But on March 30 he was found in his home with a shotgun blast to his head. The last person to see him alive was author Edward Epstein, a close friend of CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton.

There are a number of people here on the Education Forum who will undoubtedly claim there is nothing unusual about Harvey Oswald’s Russian fluency.  But that is not the view of the Russian immigrants who met him in Dallas in 1963.  No doubt the Harvey and Lee critics here will say they know better.

[Sandy Larsen]

"....it amazed me that [Oswald] read such difficult writers like Gorki, Dostoevski,Gogol, Tolstoi and Turgenieff -- in Russian. .... As a matter of fact, American-born instructors never mastered Russian spoken language as well as Lee did "

-- George De Mohrenschildt

 

That says it all, Jim. Anybody who claims that a person -- other than an absolute genius -- living in Russia for a couple of years could possibly learn to read and speak the Russian language as well as Oswald could aren't to be taken seriously. IMO.

 

Edited April 9, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Thomas Graves]

On 4/9/2017 at 7:28 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

 

Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy

How could Harvey's "first language" have been (Indo-European; Slavic) Russian when he was born in Hungary to Hungarian parents and therefore must have learned (non Indo-European, Turkic)  Hungarian first?

--  Tommy

Edited April 10, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Sandy Larsen]

Jim,

These days Russian isn't even considered a minority language in Hungary. Of course, there are people in Hungary who do speak Russian... as a second language or as immigrants.

Where was it that you and John got the idea Harvey was born there? Was it that woman in New York who called and said that... um, I forget what she said... that she recognized Oswald?

[Jim Hargrove]

Sure, but during WW II and immediately afterward, who would doubt that some Russian-speaking people were in (or dislocated to) Hungary? It shared a lengthy border with the USSR. To me, at least, there is no doubt that Harvey Oswald’s native tongue was Russian, regardless of who his parents were or what his earliest history was.

As to his possible Hungarian roots, never considered by JA as anything other than a possibility, it is all based on an anonymous phone call.  Read about it HERE.

What is not based on a vague tip is Harvey Oswald’s mastery of Russian.  It is wildly inconsistent with his official biography.

[Sandy Larsen]

49 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

As to his possible Hungarian roots, never considered by JA as anything other than a possibility, it is all based on an anonymous phone call.  Read about it HERE.

I just read that document and can see that there are many possibilities. For example, the father and uncle may have been Russians living in Hungary. They could have made a comment that they immigrated from Hungary, and people assumed they were Hungarian. Or maybe the two men weren't really related to Oswald. Who knows?

 

[Thomas Graves]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I just read that document and can see that there are many possibilities. For example, the father and uncle may have been Russians living in Hungary. They could have made a comment that they immigrated from Hungary, and people assumed they were Hungarian. Or maybe the two men weren't really related to Oswald. Who knows?

 

So we must assume that even though the mythological "Harvey" was, according to the mysterious Mrs Tippit, from a Hungarian family, Hungarian was not his first language, but Russian was.

Why?  Well, because he spoke it so darn well, didn't he, later in life, I mean.

I mean, I mean ... according to (probable KGB hooker) Marina Prusakova, and those always truthful White Russians in Dallas.

LOL

--  Tommy

Edited April 9, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Sandy Larsen]

49 minutes ago, Thomas Graves said:

Why?  Well, because he spoke it so darn well, didn't he, later in life, I mean.

I mean, I mean ... according to (probable KGB hooker) Marina Prusakova, and those always truthful White Russians in Dallas.

Did the White Russians have an incentive to lie? Did any of them say that Oswald's command of the language was mediocre or typical?

[Michael Walton]

Yes Sandy they did. Just like they all lined up to say  he was a wife beater.

Is it not obvious that a so-called loser like Oswald is suddenly surrounded, as if by magic, by the people  he was surrounded  by?

The odds of that happening  to the average  Joe or Lee are astronomical.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim Hargrove writes:

 

Quote

The best evidence that Harvey Oswald’s first language was Russian was his sheer mastery of it as a young man.

Firstly, there was no 'Harvey' Oswald, unless you are referring to the historical Lee Harvey Oswald's uncle. The existence of 'Harvey' is what you are trying to prove; by simply assuming that the character exists, you are begging the question. That's another example of faulty reasoning, to go with the notion that because the CIA (or any other nefarious organisation) does bad things, it must have the power to do ridiculously improbable things, such as perform an unnecessary surgical operation on an six-year-old boy, for whose existence there is not a single piece of credible documentary evidence, just in case the boy's body should need to be dug up years later, as part of a long-term secret plot that required the imaginary boy to grow up to resemble a completely unrelated six-year-old boy who just happened to have a mother with the same name as the imaginary boy.

Secondly, the level of Oswald's Russian as a young man does not show that Russian was his first language. It shows the opposite: that Russian was not his first language. There is plenty of evidence that Oswald's Russian, though very respectable, was far below the level of a native speaker. Ruth Paine claimed that "his Russian was poor. His vocabulary was large, his grammar never was good" (WC Hearings and Exhibits, vol.3, p.130). George de Mohrenschildt himself pointed out that Oswald spoke Russian with an accent (I am a Patsy, chapter 2), as did Peter Gregory. Marina Oswald noted the same thing, and was in the habit of correcting Oswald's grammatical mistakes, to his annoyance. Unless Oswald was faking every time he made one of his numerous grammatical mistakes in Russian, and unless he was faking every time he reacted angrily to Marina's corrections, this is as conclusive proof as you could expect to find that Russian was not his first language.

By the time Paine, de Mohrenschildt and the Dallas exiles became acquainted with him, Oswald had just spent more than two and a half years surrounded by people who spoke Russian. Of course, no native speaker loses knowledge of his or her own language in those circumstances. There is no good reason to suppose that the person in question, whether you think it was the real, historical, Lee Harvey Oswald or the fictional character, 'Harvey', was a native speaker of Russian, and every reason to suppose that he was an American who had learned the language in his teens and twenties.

Some readers will be wondering why it was necessary for the fictional character, 'Harvey', to be a native speaker of Russian. The reason is given on page 10 of Harvey and Lee:

 

Quote

One of the requirements for infiltrating an agent into a foreign country is that he/she have an intimate knowledge of the local language. ... And there is little point in sending an American agent, taught in the United States to speak a Slavic or Oriental language, to infiltrate these countries because they would speak with an accent. One way to avoid the problems of physical appearance and accent is to recruit local residents or former residents living abroad.

The whole purpose of the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' plan was to produce an American who spoke Russian like a native. Unless the defecting agent could be mistaken for a native Russian, there was no point in spending several years bringing up two unrelated boys in the remote hope that they would turn out to look alike.

Unfortunately for the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory, the Oswald who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 spoke Russian exactly as would be expected of an American who had learned the language in the US. He was competent enough to be able to carry on lengthy conversations, but he made grammatical mistakes and spoke with a noticeable accent.

Oswald was not and could not have been mistaken by the Soviet authorities for a native Russian speaker. During parts of his stay in the Soviet Union, Oswald even pretended to the authorities that his Russian was worse than it really was (Warren Report, p.692).

Although "there is little point in sending an American agent, taught in the United States to speak a Slavic or Oriental language, to infiltrate these countries because they would speak with an accent," that is precisely what happened in the case of Oswald. And, of course, the Oswald who defected never claimed to be anything other than a disaffected former Marine, born and bred in the USA.

The basic premise of the 'Harvey and Lee (and Marguerite and Marguerite)' theory is just as flimsy as the speculation that pads out the theory.

(Taken partly from http://22november1963.org.uk/john-armstrong-harvey-and-lee-theory )