The H&L "two schools at the same time" mystery

[David Von Pein]

8 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I happen to be re-reading Oswald's Game by Jean Davison (BOO! HISS! see Jim's review in which he DEMOLISHES this piece of trash!!!).

Good for you, Lance! Keep reading it---all the way to the end of its 343 sterling pages....because it's really an excellent, outstanding, and fabulous book which dives into the character and personality of Lee Harvey Oswald (despite the incessant criticism that "True Believer" James DiEugenio of Los Angeles frequently heaps upon it).

There are many top-notch quotable quotes to be found in Jean's book, e.g. ....

http://Oswalds-Game.blogspot.com

Edited December 28, 2017 by David Von Pein

[W. Tracy Parnell]

1 hour ago, David Von Pein said:

Good for you, Lance! Keep reading it---all the way to the end of its 343 sterling pages....because it's really an excellent, outstanding, and fabulous book which dives into the character and personality of Lee Harvey Oswald (despite the incessant criticism that "True Believer" James DiEugenio of Los Angeles frequently heaps upon it).

There are many top-notch quotable quotes to be found in Jean's book, e.g. ....

http://Oswalds-Game.blogspot.com

This quote from Jean's book is very relevant to the school records thing and H&L in general.

All these [conspiracy] theories are based on unexplained discrepancies in the record. ... Alternative explanations and the overall pattern of the evidence are given little attention, if any."

[Jim Hargrove]

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

My 7 year old daughter isn't aware of the semesters either. But my wife and I are.

There is no question that both Beauregard and P.S. 44 divided school years into two semesters. Their records plainly show that they did.

The three columns in the P.S. 44 school record (see below) are labeled 7-7, 7-8, and 8-8. Those are from the notation the school district used for identifying school year and semester:

7-7  =  1st semester of 7th grade
7-8  =  2nd semester of 7th grade

8-8  =  1st semester of 8th grade
8-9  =  2nd semester of 8th grade

9-9   =  1st semester of 9th grade
9-10  =  2nd semester of 9th grade

The three columns are also labeled by their begin dates, Sept. 1952, Mar. 1953, and Sept. 1953. So those three columns each represent a semester:

1.  Sept. 1952  =  1st semester of 7th grade
2.  Mar. 1953   =  2nd semester of 7th grade
3.  Sept. 1953  =  1st semester of 8th grade

Our focus is on the Fall Semester (1st semester) of 8th grade, which is column 3.

Similarly, the Beauregard school record has a row for each semester of a school year. The third row for each school year is used to record the average scores of the two semesters. This is easy to confirm. Look at the three rows for the 1954/55 school year. I will take the scores from the first row (1st semester) and add them to the scores from the second row (2nd semester). Then divide by 2 and round off to the nearest integer to get the average scores:

English:
     (62 + 77.3)  =  70

Civics:
     (82 + 84)  =  83

Math:
     (77 + 72)  =  75

Science:
     (75.6 + 77)  =  76

Art:
     (80 + 81.6)  =  80.8

Phys Ed:
     (75 + 80)  =  78

 

Now compare these averages to the scores in the third row of 1954/55 and you'll see they are identical.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the clear explanation, Sandy.  Obviously, though, certain H&L critics simply refuse to recognize the obvious.  

[James DiEugenio]

In other words, its not enough to be shown one is wrong about there not being semesters in JHS and HS.  For example many classes are divided in half, part 1 and 2, and many other classes are simply one semester classes.

That is not enough for Lance.

Now he tries to insinuate that somehow I was wrong to dismantle Jean Davison's book.  And who jumps up and says Yay!  Parnell and DVP.  What a shock.

As far as Davison's piece of obsolete rubbish, can Lance explain to me why Jean did not note that the HSCA had proven the polygraph given to Ruby was flawed and rigged  in about 14 different ways?  Does he know that?  Yet Jean led off her book by scoring Mark Lane for relying on it to show how much Ruby had to hide.  After all the WC said it was fine, right?  Now, check out how many years she had to read the HSCA volumes before she wrote her book.  But somehow she left that out to take a cheap shot at Lane.

That is a ok with Lance right?  Think you would be impeached on that if you did it in court buddy?  Would you try it anyway?

The obvious question that this raises is, would the FBI do such a thing without approval from Hoover?  I kind of doubt it.  But by avoiding the evidence, Davison can sidestep that issue.  This is very important to her work because she wants us to consider the WC as a credible source, both its info and conclusions.  By hiding this, she keeps the true facts from the reader.

Now Lance, do you also agree with Jeannie that Ruby was just a "police buff" who knew several dozen officers in the DPD?  As Sylvia Meagher showed, and later witnesses proved, Ruby knew half the 70 cops in the basement where he killed Oswald.  He hid behind one, Harrison, and the HSCA showed that it was another, Dean, who likely let him in.  Both  cops then cheated on their polygraphs. I mean for God's sake, even Burt Griffin though Dean was lying!  There is even evidence in the WC volumes by a friend of Ruby's that says that he knew about 70 % of the police force, which numbered about 800. Do the arithmetic.(or take out your calculator.)  Also in the WC volumes there are reports of Ruby making out gambling tickets in front of police officers. Not at his club, at his apartment!  How did Jeannie miss that one?  I mean its in the WC.

Can you figure that out Lance?  C'mon, you're a lawyer. Why do people hide things on the stand or in discovery?

Edited December 29, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Now Lance, can you tell me how many original interviews that Jeannie did either in person or on the phone while assembling her book?

How many declassified documents did she get through FOIA lawsuits?  Did she go to places where Oswald had lived to interview new witnesses?  I mean, like NYC, or New Orleans? (I will give her a pass on Russia.)

Well, I can tell you from reading the book three times, the answers are: none, none, zero, no and no and no.

That is really good work huh?  I mean she was utterly determined to write a full scale biography of Oswald and she was going to spare no time nor expense in doing it. Right Lance?  (Yeah, she never left her living room.)

Her book is largely based on the WC volumes, and WR, plus books by Epstein and PJM. Go ahead and check the footnotes. And she has no reservations about Epstein and PJM and does not warn the reader about them at all. That is, the association of the former with Angleton, and the ties of PJM and her family to the CIA.  Which had already surfaced through people like Carl Oglesby and Jerry Poliicoff.

No problem with that, right Lance?

Edited December 29, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

What Jeannie does with Oswald's defection cannot be adequately summarized on a thread.  So I will extract if from my review in order to reveal just how agenda driven that part is:

When Oswald went to Russia, one of the things he told one of the reporters in his room at the Metropole Hotel was that he first got interested in communism when a woman handed him a pamphlet meant to save the Rosenbergs. (Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, by Jim DiEugenio, p. 145; Davison, p. 54) Davison uses this incident throughout the book to somehow indicate that a large and latent psychic chasm was unleashed in Oswald by reading this pamphlet. For her, this is a huge milestone in Oswald's mental evolution, one that started him down the road to murder.

Which, upon analysis, is funny. See, the Metropole was used for many state services in Moscow. As John Newman has shown, it was furnished with infrared cameras, for spying on its residents. Therefore, it's natural to suspect it was also wired for sound. (DiEugenio, ibid) When Oswald surfaced this story about the Rosenberg pamphlet, he was trying to convince the Russian authorities to let him stay in Moscow. Clearly, by letting him hole up at the Metropole, the Russians were deciding on whether Oswald was a genuine defector, or on an espionage mission. Oswald issued many B movie platitudes trying to convince the KGB he was genuine. In one of his interviews with American journalists, he said at age 15 he became seriously interested in communism when "an old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs." (ibid)

It was probably this statement that convinced the KGB Oswald was on a spy mission. For they then kicked him out of Moscow and sent him 450 miles away to Minsk. They set up a ring of human intel around him, and also wired his state furnished apartment for sound. (Ibid) Why? Because Oswald did not have his story straight. Oswald has to be referring here to his sojourn in the liberal New York City. Since it's hard to believe there were Rosenberg committees in New Orleans or Dallas. But when Oswald turned 15 in 1954 he was living in New Orleans, not New York. Further, why would anyone be distributing "Save the Rosenberg" literature at that time? The couple had been executed in June of the previous year. The KGB officers watching and listening to the surveillance tapes must have been both smiling and frowning at Oswald's performance. But Davison is so intent on indicting Oswald she presents this dead on serious. She then follows it with this davisonism:

Whether through force of example or inherited disposition, Lee Oswald had acquired an egocentricity resembling his mother Marguerite. What made the Rosenberg pamphlet memorable to him, surely was that he saw himself in it...Here he held in his hand a message that said to him: Here are allies you can identify with... (Davison, p. 56)

To the professional KGB of course, the reaction was quite different: they saw through the little playlet. But really, Davison's five and dime story psychoanalysis based on faulty assumptions is so strained, so heavy handed, that it reminded me of Woody Allen's hilarious mockumentary Take the Money and Run. With very few alterations, this part of Oswald's Game could serve as a scenario for that type of film.

[James DiEugenio]

Now, what makes the above even worse is that Davison never supplies the reasons as to why the KGB would have been suspicious of Oswald in the first place.

In other words she does not inform the reader of the fake defector program.  Nor does she describe the numbers and how they increased radically from 1958 onwards.

Incredibly she never even mentions the name of Robert Webster, a guy who had defected before Oswald and had met up with Marina in Leningrad.  In fact Marina had his address in her notebook!  But even more important, Webster said Marina spoke to him in English!

Gees Lance, did Jean interview Webster?  Did you check?  Don't you think that would have been an important thing to do in writing a book about Oswald?  Or how about this one: Oswald asked about Webster before he left Moscow.  Do you think that would be important for a biography of Oswald?

This is key because the reader needs to be aware of this if he is going to make a judgment on whether or not these matters are all a coincidence or if they were planned.  Without the information one cannot make that judgment. 

What makes this part of the book even worse is that Davison never brings up the Otepka case.  Which is stunning. Because that case went back to the sixties and there was ample material in the record about it, at least one book and one long chapter in a Jim Hougan book. In summary, Otepka was a State Department researcher who noted the increased number of defectors and wrote to the CIA because he wanted to know which were real and which were fake.  Bissell sent his letter to Angleton. The researcher Jim A sent it to was told not to do any reports on Oswald.  We all know what happened to Otekpa, right Lance?  His life became a nightmare and his safe was drilled into in order to get his work on the fake defector program.  That happened less than three weeks before the JFK assassination.

Just a coincidence right Lance?  Well with Jeannie, its not even that since it never happened as far as her book goes.

Edited December 29, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Now, it was only at this time, after the Otepka exchange, that the CIA opened up a 201 file on Oswald.  Even though he had defected one year earlier.

It turns out that the HSCA was very interested in this matter.  Especially after Helms told them he was really amazed something like that could occur.  The 201 file is the most common one in the CIA.  Any person of interest  to the Agency would have one.

Geez Lance, think a Marine who defects to Russia at the height of the Cold War would be of interest to the Agency?  Or is it just us critics at EF who would do think so?  If that is the case, then why was Helms so surprised it was not opened?

It turned out that the HSCA's Betsy Wolf worked on this problem for weeks.  And if Jean had talked to some HSCA people, which she did not, she could have been referred to her.  And according to Malcolm Blunt, she was getting close to the truth.

See, Pete Bagley, who worked for Angleton, told Malcolm that if one follows the routing of the Oswald files into the CIA--that is the places it bypassed and the place it ended up--that betrays the fact that the Oswald file and Oswald himself were all witting--in other words it was a planned defection.  But as Betsy may have known, the icing on the cake was this: it was planned for the reason as to NOT OPEN a 201 file on Oswald.  That is how secret, even inside the CIA, that Angleton wanted the Oswald files kept.  Recall Lancie, that is Bagley and Helms, both inside the CIA on this info.  Not from this band of EF critics.

Now, the HSCA published some material on the CIA, and Oswald and the files in their volumes..  Helms made his comment in public.  See how much of that  is in Jeannie's book about this subject.  Then tell me, OK Lance?

Edited December 29, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[David Von Pein]

Looks like Lance hit a nerve. (Good.)

Edited December 29, 2017 by David Von Pein

[James DiEugenio]

Now, let us give Jeannie a pass on not going to Europe or Russia.

But what would it have cost to just have called Helsinki?  I mean that was important because it was the entry point for Oswald into the USSR.

If she had called, she would have discovered something that was kind of interesting. When Oswald was there, he stayed at the two best hotels in the city.  They were the Hotel Torni and the Klaus Kurki.  According to work done by Ian Griggs, the former is a five star hotel, the equivalent of the Savoy in London.  The second is a 4.5 star, sort of like the Ritz Carrolton.  How expensive was the Torni?   Nelson Rockefeller stayed there.  

Now Lance, would not that be an important piece of info to convey to the reader?  Jennie did not think so. I mean is not that kind of odd? Here was Oswald staying perhaps in the same room that Rockefeller stayed in  a one of kind hotel. In reality, with his funds, Oswald should have been at a Motel 6 don't you think?

The second important question is this: Why did Oswald choose Helsinki?  Maybe because that was the only point in Europe from which one could get a visa into Russia in a matter of days. Well guess what Lance?  In this case, Oswald got his in 24 hours.

Now see if that is in Jeannie's alleged biography of Oswald.  Yet most people would ask: Did Oswald know this?  If so, how?

[James DiEugenio]

In the entire book, Jeannie cannot bring herself to make the obvious notation about Oswald.

Which is this:  If Oswald was a communist why did he have no communist friends, either in New Orleans or in Dallas/Fort Worth?

In fact, he associated with people at the opposite end of the spectrum, namely the White Russians in Texas, and anti Castro Cubans and CIA agents in New Orleans.

How could such a thing occur and how could a biographer ignore it?   Well, Jeannie did.

And please note how she characterizes Oswald's relationship with David Ferrie.  

Referring to June of 1955, she writes, "That summer he joined the Civil Air Patrol and attended several meetings at which one of the leaders was an eccentric pilot named David Ferrie. Ferrie would become a central figure in many conspiracy theories." (Davison, pgs. 62-63) I kid you not, that is it.

 

[James DiEugenio]

But here is the payoff about New Orleans.  And I should note, the AARC had many of Garrison's memos at this time.  And also, LJ Delsa and Bob Buras were open to anyone who wanted to talk to them, they investigated the Clinton Jackson incident for the HSCA.

Sticking with New Orleans and Garrison, she spends about a page in a bare bones, less than cursory discussion of the Clinton/Jackson incident. She concludes this with a shattering davisonism. She says that if the event occurred it was certainly Guy Banister, not Clay Shaw who was the driver of the car. She then says that since the witnesses there were confused about Banister and Shaw they may have been mistaken about Oswald as well. She also adds, and they did not come forward until 1967. (Davison, pgs. 284-85)

Where does one begin to dissect this drivel? Again, it exposes Davison as the totally amateur researcher she is. For if she would have collected the primary resources on this incident; something she has a phobia against; she would not have written such foolishness. The witness statements make it clear that it was not Banister with Ferrie and Oswald, it was Clay Shaw. For instance, Henry Burnell Clark said the driver of the car was unusually tall, well over six feet. Banister was about 5' 9," Shaw was 6' 4." (William Davy, Let Justice Be Done, p. 105) If that is not enough, Sheriff John Manchester said he approached the car and asked the driver to identify himself. When asked what name he gave, Manchester said under oath, "He gave Clay Shaw, which corresponded with his driver's license." (ibid, p. 106) The witnesses were not confused at all. In her usual lazy way, Davison decided to accept reporters' spin instead of using the primary sources. And if she had gotten out of her living room, she would have discovered that the witnesses did not come forward in 1967. They all talked about the event in the wake of the assassination. Reeves Morgan called the FBI. And local rightwing publisher Ned Touchstone interviewed them in 1965, and wrote about it in his publication called The Councilor. (Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, pgs. 214-15, p. 234)

This is what happens when you do you research from your living room.  You get phone and false and easily exposed results.  

Nice work huh Lance?

Only DVP could write a laudatory review of such a cover up book.

[Michael Walton]

20 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

LOL, quit making stuff up Michael.

That's a particularly rich reply to me, Sandy.  "Making stuff up" - LOL. This is actually a good example, Sandy, of how you pick and choose things to make the Hardly Lee case.  You think that just because you've "solved" the school records that the entire Hardly Lee case has been proven. As a matter of fact, this is how the ENTIRE Hardly Lee story has been concocted.

Obviously you don't want to actually debate the clearly farcical story that is Hardly Lee.  So I'll put this summary of the tale here again and then feel free to address all of the points I've made here:

• That a boy was snatched off the streets of Hungary because secret agents thought he looked exactly like Oswald
• That this boy's mother, also from Hungary, looked exactly like LHO's Mom, except she was frumpy and never smiled and had a unibrow
• That when LHO had his mastoid, the secret agents hurriedly also did a mastoid on the Hungarian boy because, you know, they're clones
• That for 10 whole years before 11/22/63, these two clones were practically living in each other's shadows for some as yet unknown secret mission
• That matching pictures of the one and only LHO do NOT match per Team Hardly because, you know, CONTRAST
• That LHO had shoulders that did not slope while the clone LHO had sloping shoulders
• That the clone was murdered by Ruby on Sunday and the other one escaped never to be heard from again
• That when the body was exhumed, they switched skulls because, you know, they had the other skull on ice waiting for the exhumation to take place 20 years after the fact

So we await that you address everything here.  And I mean everything - even perhaps, as mentioned above, how the secret agents totally lucked out and found, among millions of refugees in Hungary, the exact clone of the US born Oswald. And whose Mother also looked exactly like the US born Oswald's Mom.

And by the way, your "buddy" Tom Graves who seems to have been either booted off here or just got tired of EF, also knew the whole Hardly story is a fairy tale.  Simply go to the "Gems" thread (which he started) for more.

Edited December 29, 2017 by Michael Walton

[Ray Mitcham]

6 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Looks like Lance hit a nerve. (Good.)

Great reposte, up to your usual standard,David.

 

 

[Ray Mitcham]

In view of her support from McAdams, shouldn't Davidsonisms be renamed Davidsonoids?