What is known about Oswald's time in England?

[Jason Ward]

Mervyn found rhis great link about Oswald and the Albert Schweitzer college:

http://coverthistory.blogspot.com/2005/07/oswald-and-albert-schweitzer-college.html

This is an amazing point from Greg Parker's article.   Oswald needed an educational purpose in order to legally leave the US while still under military service obligation:

 

As an inactive Reservist, Oswald could be called up in a mobilisation any time during the balance of his enlistment (3 months) and therefore could not leave US shores without a legitimate reason. One reason recognized as legitimate by the authorities was "education".

[Mervyn Hagger]

Hi Jason.

Yes, someone else brought that blog to my attention on another thread. I agree that the college angle is one good explanation for LHO being able to leave the Marines.

However, there is indication that he had a scholarship. From whom?

But the blog does what a lot of these conspiratorial blogs do, it wafts off and begins joining everything and everyone together in "what if" format.

However, there is one name on that list that is very interesting.

It is Percival Flack Brundage who ties in both to LHO's college in Switzerland and to European Federalism. Now the subject of European Federalism is probably one of the least understood subjects by most people in the US and UK. I first came across it in context of this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Now

The idea came to a head after WWII when the United Nations Fighting Forces morphed into the United Nations Organization, and it squelched the Federalist World Plan, although one part of it calling for a United States of Europe stretched back in name to the founding of the United States of America. George Washington is alleged to have coined the term United States of Europe. After WWII the movement tried again, but this time it was divided and conquered by the USA. The USE military plan for unified forces was replaced by NATO to stop a powerful Europe from starting a WWIII. But the economic side moved ahead and is with us today as the European Union.

However, the federalists are still pushing for a USE, and the USA is still resisting.

But in the Fifties, CIA operations based in Paris began promoting the confederacy of Europe (which we have right now), while another organization, similar in tone to the ones Percival Flack Brundage promoted, began to emerge from a small breakaway of the Seventh Day Baptists whose leader was raised as a boy in the Quaker faith. The management of that organization was then taken over by a Jewish lawyer/accountant named Stanley R. Rader. In the Sixties its broadcasts were thundering out a fear message that the coming USE would bring about WWIII. It did the same in print. All of the broadcast time was handled by Eugene Bernald.

Then the organization morphed again until in outwork appearance it took on a Universalist-Unitarian type of approach with a cultural foundation and secular concert series and secular publishing house pushing its message, while its leader Herbert W. Armstrong was repackaged as the 'Ambassador for World Peace without portfolio.'

This is where my ship interests collide with the story of LHO.

I personally believe at this stage, that a faction within CIA and Mafia killed JFK for both political and personal reasons.

I also think that the biggest red herring (pardon the pun about color), is this John Birch nonsense. Even Edwin Walker pointed a finger at CIA via Eugene Bernald.

I know that everyone else has gone charging off accusing Castro; Russia and the "right-wingers", but look at what these 'right-wingers' didn't achieve: they were all noise and no action with few supporters! It was almost a cloak for something else. Murchison had a lot to do with the creation of McCarthy, but Murchison had his hands in a lot of different pots as well. What I see are a lot of intentional misdirects away from hard evidence that is there to be seen and studied. The fact that no one ever has looked where I am pointing usually results in scorn being returned in my direction from the know-it-alls who have been talking about the assassination of JFK for 50 years and getting nowhere.

That same head-in-the-sand approach resulted in attacks on me when I began ripping apart the mythology of the 'Swinging Sixties' and its pop-pirate radio stations. But on that score the last laugh will be mine since at long last a lot of the mythology has been destroyed and the actual, documented true story has begun to emerge. The only reason I have held off from publishing this (outside of academia where I have published it article-by-article), is because it has now collided with the story of LHO. For that I have Bill Weaver to thank. He was McLendon's general manager and he wrote a book just before he died of cancer and linked McLendon and Murchison to the death of JFK.

Mervyn

 

[David Josephs]

Hi David, thanks for joining us. 

You guys are doing a great job here... a real pleasure to follow along..

Thanks for the follow up....  I agree with your thought that between New Orleans and La Havre, something changes.  I am under the impression that Albert S college is CIA/Military related...  were you aware of the "Friends of Albert Schweitzer College"?  Another Armstrong notebook...

http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/ref/collection/po-arm/id/30218

Edited May 10, 2018 by David Josephs

[Mervyn Hagger]

Thanks David. I also saw your new and focussed thread. Good work. Mervyn

 

[David Josephs]

3 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

Thanks David. I also saw your new and focussed thread. Good work. Mervyn

 

The advantages of being friends with John Armstrong...  that's from his notebooks at Baylor....

For those who can't get to the Archives... the notebooks include copies of docs not available anywhere else...

DJ

[Mervyn Hagger]

David, everything points to LHO going to Switzerland to attend college. Even when passing through UK Immigration he claimed the same thing. Then, instead of staying a week in England as he said he would, he boarded a plane at Heathrow for somewhere and he appears next at a luxury hotel in Helsinki.

It is the window of time from Immigration to Heathrow that interests me.

In that brief space of time someone has immediate power of control over LHO to cause him to change his plans - which even his mother thought she knew and then started the investigation to find out where her son was.

Mervyn

 

[David Josephs]

6 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

David, everything points to LHO going to Switzerland to attend college. Even when passing through UK Immigration he claimed the same thing. Then, instead of staying a week in England as he said he would, he boarded a plane at Heathrow for somewhere and he appears next at a luxury hotel in Helsinki.

It is the window of time from Immigration to Heathrow that interests me.

In that brief space of time someone has immediate power of control over LHO to cause him to change his plans - which even his mother thought she knew and then started the investigation to find out where her son was.

Mervyn

 

Perfect...   thanks for clearing that up for me Mervyn. 

I smell MI-6/5...  with Philby a significant player...  do you see any connection there?

Cui bono?

Are we aware if British Military Intelligence was also running a "defector" program?

[Mervyn Hagger]

1 hour ago, David Josephs said:

Perfect...   thanks for clearing that up for me Mervyn. 

I smell MI-6/5...  with Philby a significant player...  do you see any connection there?

Cui bono?

Are we aware if British Military Intelligence was also running a "defector" program?

I don't know what to think about that David. However, I think that his mother is expressing genuine concern for his well being. Someone IMO, intervened in his itinerary and that person obviously had power of immediate control over his plans. It does point to that someone representing an entity of significance, and it also points to that entity having power of control within the UK.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Mervyn Hagger

[Jason Ward]

6 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

It does point to that someone representing an entity of significance,

Hi Mervyn,

As you've seen in another thread I am looking closely at General Walker.  Here is a post-assassination FBI report looking into Oswald's associates and the associates of Oswald's associates. I post the document below not to imply that Oswald is involved with the IRA, but to suggest that there are potent non-government actors who gain loyalty and effective control over people, and who operate in both Europe and America.

 

1. FBI Report of 5DEC63

 

SOURCE

1 - Warren Commission Document 110

[Mervyn Hagger]

11 hours ago, Jason Ward said:

Hi Mervyn,

As you've seen in another thread I am looking closely at General Walker.  Here is a post-assassination FBI report looking into Oswald's associates and the associates of Oswald's associates. I post the document below not to imply that Oswald is involved with the IRA, but to suggest that there are potent non-government actors who gain loyalty and effective control over people, and who operate in both Europe and America.

 

1. FBI Report of 5DEC63

 

SOURCE

1 - Warren Commission Document 110

Hi Jason.

Surely by posting this you are engaging in the very thing that you eschew?

I mean, a few decades ago in Texas, my wife and I sat in the home of an IRA supporter in San Antonio when I was engaged in trying to unravel the take-over of Ireland by the British Crown. That interview was followed another incident years before, also in San Antonio, when I was to be the guest on a three hour talk show (KBAT-AM, if I remember correctly.) I was to be speaking about British offshore commercial radio of the Sixties. But when I arrived at the station for the broadcast, the host showed me the screaming headlines in a San Antonio daily paper that day, about an IRA attack that had resulted in loss of life and significant destruction. So without warning (!) as part of his introduction to his audience about his guest (me), I was presented as a British investigative journalist (which I was), who was going to answer calls from listeners about the IRA! (As a rider, he also said that I would be discussing the matter that I thought I was there to discuss.)

Moral of that story is a question: I wonder what is in the FBI files about me!?

So this woman writes about her husband, his brother and Edwin Walker. All her views are second hand. True her husband probably spoke to her about his brother and possibly Walker, and ditto for her husband's brother who failed to sell a story to a newspaper(!) But it seems that all of her information about Walker is second hand interpretation.

Then there is this stuff about the IRA. Well, considering my comments above, I suppose some idiot could have written something similar about me, except that I was not related to an Oswald or a Walker or a Kennedy. I was not "a person of interest", at least, not in that regard. (Due to my other research in both the UK and USA and entanglement with official bodies when trying to solicit information, I am sure that I did become such a person at times. However, whatever the filed comments, I am sure that they have a low-level of interest and are similar to the one you attached.)

Again, the big elephant in the room is not a person but an ideology. The constant use by many of the term "right-winger" is a cover for lack of knowledge about the subject matter. Right wing of WHAT? It is a sports' term adopted for political expression, but in sports it has meaning, in politics it is an orphan.

The ideology shaping everything in Dallas (and a lot of other places) during the Fifties and Sixties, was Pre-millennial-ism. But, while Southern Baptists (who had their HQ in Fort Worth and their biggest congregation in Dallas), were proponents of Premillennial-ism; they were not alone. Not only that but while Premillennial-ism is one part of a subject that includes Postmillennial-ism and Amillennial-ism; the topic gets very complicated when it is understood that many religious groups have different interpretations of Premillennial-ism, and these groups not only don't see eye-to-eye, but they are often hostile towards each other. Same goes for the other versions of millennial-ism.

However, it was Premillennial-ism that was the driving financial force behind Dallas politics of the Fifties and Sixties.

Now although it is a religious concept, it is also a political concept because it does not deal with an abstract 'Heaven', but this Planet, right here, right now. It involves actual, physical political heads of State, right here and right now, and therefore the Military aspects of it are also very physical and in the Fifties and Sixties very nuclear!

A key part of Premillennial teaching (which is where the variants of interpretation come into play), concerns events in Europe and particularly the resurrection of the Roman Empire, and Germany was at the center of these events along with the Vatican.

Rather than brushing off the teachings of the John Birch Society as "right-wing", they have to be examined and understood within the context of the times. John Birch of course had nothing to do with the Society. He was a deceased veteran of the Korean War. But the political views expressed by the organization had to do with the immediacy of the times and the growth of "atheistic" communism being spread by the USSR.

It is within this context that Edwin Walker began to shape his own views, and it sounds if at some point in time a preacher from somewhere had opened his eyes to Premillennial-ism as not just part of a Sunday-only religion, but a threat to civilization and especially the USA to which the U.S. Armed Forces of which he was a part, was bound by oath to defend and protect.

I fully understand your comment that "....there are potent non-government actors who gain loyalty and effective control over people, and who operate in both Europe and America." However, I do see a failure to really comprehend who, what and why those "....non-government actors who gain loyalty and effective control over people...." are able to succeed.

Mervyn

Edited May 12, 2018 by Mervyn Hagger

[Jason Ward]

On 5/10/2018 at 3:56 AM, Mervyn Hagger said:

it wafts off and begins joining everything and everyone together in "what if" format

This is why I do not usually embrace any explanation that has the CIA or a faction of the CIA influencing Oswald.

Once this door is opened, it seems, anyone who opens it from then on invokes the CIA whenever there is a lack of evidence or ambiguous evidence.   

There is something about the CIA in our collective imagination that imbues them with global, superhuman powers and for researchers this becomes a problem because it's like asking for proof of God.   Evidence doesn't exist because it is the CIA.   If evidence of CIA involvement did exist, then they wouldn't be the CIA.  See how that works?

The circular reasoning becomes endemic and inevitably it leads to a master conclusion that explains not only Oswald but the entire history of mankind since the end of WW2.  It's a house of cards built on one assumption after another.   I'm fine with hypotheses and assumptions to work out possibly new avenues of exploration, as long as one assumption doesn't start building on another such that you get remote from any certain fact. 

The CIA may be involved, or a faction of the CIA, I don't know.   Everyone else has pursued and adopted this course since Jim Garrison in the late 60s, which has given us our current state of "understanding."   

I prefer to make other assumptions besides the CIA to see if that arrives at fresh thinking and fresh evidence.

On 5/10/2018 at 3:56 AM, Mervyn Hagger said:

that a faction within CIA and Mafia killed JFK for both political and personal reasons

Ok, if that is your conclusion, I'm probably not going to argue with you.

7 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

Surely by posting this you are engaging in the very thing that you eschew?

I aim to primarily post evidence in the form of documents.  I try to ask questions around the evidence I post.

7 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

second hand interpretation

The point was that the CIA doesn't control 100% off all actors in situations we cannot explain. They don't' have a monopoly on secrecy.  They don't have a monopoly on loyalty.  The CIA doesn't have a monopoly on obedience.

The IRA, al-qaeda, the KKK, and many other non-government actors persuade people to commit murder.   I wasn't offering the evidence I posted for proof of what the evidence says at face value, I was offering the evidence merely to show alternative forces of secrecy, loyalty, and obedience exist apart from the CIA.

7 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

The constant use by many of the term "right-winger" is a cover for lack of knowledge about the subject matter. Right wing of WHAT?

I disagree.   

7 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

 It is a sports' term adopted for political expression, but in sports it has meaning, in politics it is an orphan.

No.

This is quite wrong.

The Right Wing as a term of political understanding began in the 18th century French parliament.

Those who sat on the Right in the parliament (aka Estates General) were supportive of the monarchy, tradition, and the then-dominant institutions of power.

This is a reasonable if basic working definition:

http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/right-wing

https://www.britannica.com/topic/right

7 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

However, I do see a failure to really comprehend who, what and why those "....non-government actors who gain loyalty and effective control over people...." are able to succeed.

Fair enough.

 

 

Jason

Edited May 12, 2018 by Jason Ward

[Mervyn Hagger]

12 minutes ago, Jason Ward said:

This is why I do not usually embrace any explanation that has the CIA or a faction of the CIA influencing Oswald.

Once this door is opened, it seems, anyone who opens it from then on invokes the CIA whenever there is a lack of evidence or ambiguous evidence.   

There is something about the CIA in our collective imagination that imbues them with global, superhuman powers and for researchers this becomes a problem because it's like asking for proof of God.   Evidence doesn't exist because it is the CIA.   If evidence of CIA involvement did exist, then they wouldn't be the CIA.  See how that works?

The circular reasoning becomes endemic and inevitably it leads to a master conclusion that explains not only Oswald but the entire history of mankind since the end of WW2.  It's a house of cards built on one assumption after another.   I'm fine with hypotheses and assumptions to work out possibly new avenues of exploration, as long as one assumption doesn't start building on another such that you get remote from any certain fact. 

The CIA may be involved, or a faction of the CIA, I don't know.   Everyone else has pursued and adopted this course since Jim Garrison in the late 60s, which has given us our current state of "understanding."   

I prefer to make other assumptions besides the CIA to see if that arrives at fresh thinking and fresh evidence.

Ok, if that is your conclusion, I'm probably not going to argue with you.

I aim to primarily post evidence in the form of documents.  I try to ask questions around the evidence I post.

The point was that the CIA doesn't control 100% off all actors in situations we cannot explain. They don't' have a monopoly on secrecy.  They don't have a monopoly on loyalty.  The CIA doesn't have a monopoly on obedience.

The IRA, al-qaeda, the KKK, and many other non-government actors persuade people to commit murder.   I wasn't offering the evidence I posted for proof of what the evidence says at face value, I was offering the evidence merely to show alternative forces of secrecy, loyalty, and obedience exist apart from the CIA.

I disagree.   

No.

This is quite wrong.

The Right Wing as a term of political understanding began in the 18th century French parliament.

Those who sat on the Right in the parliament were supportive of the monarchy, tradition, and the then-dominant institutions of power.

This is a reasonable if basic working definition:

http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/right-wing

Fair enough.

 

 

Jason

Jason, there are a few points where I disagree with what you have stated, but we are mainly going down the same path.

I appreciate your "Joe Friday" approach, and I try to adopt the same methodology.

I disagree with the concept of "right-wingers" because it in itself has become a meaningless term.

I asked, right-wing of what? You answered by saying that you disagree.

Because "right-wing" has become a substitute for "THE" (as in THE CIA, or THE Americans, or THE British, or THE Catholics and of course all of the various shades of human skin), I avoid both "right-wing" and "THE". What is missing in the entire background study of LHO, Dallas and the Fifties/Sixties, is any mention of Pre-millennial-ism. It is that religious concept which itself is fractured by interpretation, but it explains more about the actions of Walker and the movers and shakers in Dallas, and even the John Birch Society, than any other term I can think of.

That ideology literally put the "fear of God into its adherents.

Here is one example, although its specific application was in many ways in conflict with the Southern Baptists and their interpretation, although its political ramifications were not:

https://soundcloud.com/garner-ted-armstrong-ea/1966_twt-from-west

Mervyn

[Jason Ward]

23 minutes ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

I disagree with the concept of "right-wingers" because it in itself has become a meaningless term.

I disagree.   

 

23 minutes ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

I asked, right-wing of what? You answered by saying that you disagree.

I didn't answer because the question is almost absurd.  The word 'right' as a direction is of course no longer relevant.  The term as established in the 18th century French parliament is in use by professional historians and political scientists with a widely accepted meaning.   

The left and right as a physical course or indication of physical whereabouts is only accurate in the original French Estates General where those who support the current or yesterday's arrangement of power sat on the Right, while those who wanted a new arrangement of power sat on the Left.   

Today the terms are useful because of their obvious suggestion of opposition, Left is opposite of Right.  

23 minutes ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

ecause "right-wing" has become a substitute for "THE" (as in THE CIA, or THE Americans, or THE British, or THE Catholics and of course all of the various shades of human skin), I avoid both "right-wing" and "THE"

It seems you have a concern about nomenclature.

As you no doubt are aware, American English attaches "the" in many places where British English does not.  It is, however, meaningless, at least insofar as American English is used on this forum.   

Americans go to the hospital or the university; people in Britain go to hospital or university.  I'm sure you know this.  Likewise, Americans have the CIA while those in Britain omit "the" and simply have MI6.  If it's really bugging you, perhaps you can persuade yourself to simply overlook the word "the" in what is written on the forum?

Me (and Paul Trejo btw) are both working in US research universities and the right wing, the right, radical right and other such terms are very meaningful and hold some degree of precision in both history and political science.   If you find this term meaningless, again, perhaps you can overlook the term or substitute terms that work for you. The definitions of these terms are published and widely accepted in my work, so these are the terms I use.   I understand your point of course, and in mainstream media or the public mind, the Left and Right are drifting towards ambiguous.   If I was writing for People magazine or Facebook, I would perhaps not use these terms.

 

Jason

[Jason Ward]

54 minutes ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

1 hour ago, Jason Ward said:

 

Jason, there are a few points where I disagree with what you have stated, but we are mainly going down the same path.

Great!

Let's move on the, shall we?

I believe we are at a point where we both agree:

• That the evidence suggests Oswald intended to attend school in Switzerland until some time after arriving in Southampton.

However, we depart somewhat with each other because

• You see MI6/CIA as the most likely force influencing Oswald's change of destination to Helsinki
• While I see no evidence for MI6/CIA involvement, although I admit this is possible. 

Basically, my own subjective comfort level with assumptions and speculation ends at admitting Oswald likely changed his destination at or after Southampton.   You feel comfortable about suggesting MI6/CIA, which is fine, you will never be lonely in making this assumption.  I prefer to say we don't know what we don't know, and anyway the CIA assumption has been explored for 50 years and I'm sure I can't find anything new going down the CIA path.

 

 

Jason 

Edited May 12, 2018 by Jason Ward

[Mervyn Hagger]

51 minutes ago, Jason Ward said:

Great!

Let's move on the, shall we?

I believe we are at a point where we both agree:

• That the evidence suggests Oswald intended to attend school in Switzerland until some time after arriving in Southampton.

However, we depart somewhat with each other because

• You see MI6/CIA as the most likely force influencing Oswald's change of destination to Helsinki
• While I see no evidence for MI6/CIA involvement, although I admit this is possible. 

Basically, my own subjective comfort level with assumptions and speculation ends at admitting Oswald likely changed his destination at or after Southampton.   You feel comfortable about suggesting MI6/CIA, which is fine, you will never be lonely in making this assumption.  I prefer to say we don't know what we don't know, and anyway the CIA assumption has been explored for 50 years and I'm sure I can't find anything new going down the CIA path.

 

 

Jason 

Jason, that is not what I had in mind.

I do think that the hard evidence points to a young man entering UK Immigration at Southampton with one consistent course of action, but after emerging from there, sometime before he boarded a plane to somewhere at Heathrow, he had a change of plans. The next thing we know is that he checks into an expensive hotel in Helsinki.

As for the MI6/CIA angle, I am not fixated on that at all.

My reason for focussing on the word "the" - with which "The BBC" likes to identify itself, while ABC, CBS, NBC do not, is because of the puffed-up self-image as the "greatest broadcasting organization in the world", which it is not. It is also far from a balanced and fair operation because that was the intention of its creator - John Reith.

As you know I am following a trail from elsewhere, I am certainly not following the hoard of JFK Assassination buffs.

Mervyn