A slightly different perspective on Oswald

[Guest]

I'm surprised how many students of the assassination seemingly have not read Oswald: Russian Episode by Ernst Titovets, Oswald’s closest friend in Minsk.  (Yes, I know it has been discussed here in the past.)

There is absolutely no reason for a CTer to be suspicious of Titovets, http://www.etitovets.com/Titovets_dream.html.  From 2005 to the present time, he has been Head of the Scientific Research Group,  National Research and Clinical Center for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Minsk.  He has made clear that he does not believe that the humorous, “crazy kid” prankster he knew would or could have assassinated JFK.  (I would not have believed that my college roommate, best man, best friend and Christian mentor would or could have ended up rotting in prison for child molestation and spewing Marxist/atheist polemics – but, alas, he did.)

Titovets’ fascinating book unwittingly gives many insights into why Oswald was precisely the sort of loose cannon who might impulsively shoot JFK.  I will highlight only one.

I've mentioned previously that my wife’s sister and her late husband spent their entire working lives in the militarily sensitive section of the Minsk Radio and Television Factory.  The husband was contemporaneous with Oswald (but never met him), the sister just a few years later.  The security throughout the factory was intense, in the way only Soviet security could be.  No one in his right mind would have attempted any sort of funny business unless he had a death wish.

One day when Titovets visited Oswald in his apartment, Oswald surprised him with a curious metal cylinder.  Both men pretty well knew the apartment was bugged by the KGB (as it was).  Oswald nevertheless conversed with Titovets about the appropriate chemicals for making a bomb (Titovets then being a student researcher in the Department of Chemistry at the Minsk State Medical Institute).  To the relief of Titovets, the subject was never mentioned again.

Years later, Titovets described and drew the cylinder for two men who had also been at the Minsk factory.  Both immediately (and separately) recognized it as a key component of a military device that Oswald could only have pilfered from a work bench in the experimental shop at the factory (where Oswald was assigned for a period and which was not quite as mysterious as “experimental shop” sounds).  Because the security was so intense and no one could have left with so much as a pilfered box of paper clips, the only explanation was that the Soviets had planted the cylinder, allowed Oswald to walk away with it, and waited to see what he would do.

The points are:

1.  To do what Oswald did, both in taking the cylinder and discussing a bomb with Titovets, you would have to be a complete and utter loose cannon.  You did not play games with the Soviets.  I don't know what weird game Oswald thought he was playing, but he could very plausibly have ended up dead or breaking rocks in Siberia for the next 50 years.  You can only imagine the astonishment of the KGB when, instead of finding a way to get the device to some mysterious CIA contact, Oswald brazenly discussed making a bomb in his bugged apartment with a respectable Soviet chemistry student:  “Who or what on earth is this guy???  Who in their right mind would do this???”  After this and numerous other incidents, the KGB pretty clearly decided he was simply a loose cannon they would be happy to see leave.

2. What sort of CIA intelligence operative would have done this, would have taken such insane risks for no purpose (not to mention ridiculing his co-workers' worship of Lenin, making fun of Soviet propaganda, teasing co-workers about what sheeple they were, flaunting his disdain for required meetings and activities, and on and on)?  No intelligence operative would have done this.  A complete and utter loose cannon?  Apparently.

When I was finished with Titovets’ book, I saw exactly the sort of self-absorbed, grandiose, risk-addicted loose cannon who might well have taken shots at Walker and Kennedy as his marital and fantasy world collapsed around him.  Things like Titovets’ book, which is only one of several (but probably the best) insights into the actual Lee Harvey Oswald, just makes the typical “conspiracy Oswald” – CIA operative, anti-Castro zealot and general International Man of Mystery – absolutely ridiculous.  You are welcome to disagree, but I have yet to see one conspiracy theory in which Oswald was anything like the actual man, anything other than a cartoon caricature that is inserted into the Grand Conspiracy wherever we can make this cardboard cut-out fit.

Edited August 14, 2019 by Guest

[Michaleen Kilroy]

Just a lone nut loser, eh? 

And yet, for some reason, this anonymous sociopath caused such consternation at the CIA that they chose to withhold material evidence, lie and run domestic operations to obstruct justice in all federal inquiries.

Curious how you can explain this: 

https://medium.com/me/stats/post/377267b73309

[David Andrews]

Or that the Soviets gave Oswald the cylinder and ordered him to test Titovets.

Or that Titovets is compensated to propagate the "Oswald was nuts" sham, which absolves the Soviets of all complicity beyond being wary babysitters.  It absolves US intel as well.

Edited August 20, 2019 by David Andrews

[Jim Hargrove]

To read Millicent Cranor's exposé of Titovets, CLICK HERE.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

To read Millicent Cranor's exposé of Titovets, CLICK HERE.

That's not an "exposé." That's a whole lot of unfounded speculation. As Lance points out, there is no reason to be suspicious of Titovets. Except, of course, there is because Titovets' book provides "insights into the actual Lee Harvey Oswald" as Lance puts it. Therefore, the CTs have to attempt to destroy him. Just like they tried to do to the Russian exiles in page after page of a thread right here at EF which purported to show that LHO was not a wife beater when even his mother said he was. It is all very predictable. But I'm with Lance-you want to know the real LHO then read Titovets' book and read other accounts by people who really knew him and you begin to get there.

Edited August 15, 2019 by W. Tracy Parnell

[Michael Clark]

Peter Dale Scott: “I’m a bit stymied by the book that his friend in Minsk, Titovets. My own feeling is that it’s a very informative book but also I think a controlled book. He’s telling enough to make us realize that there was a KGB interest (In Oswald). But he never says explicitly that the man he knew in Minsk was the man in Dallas but he’s obviously making us assume that it was. “

[Paul Brancato]

2 hours ago, Michael Clark said:

Peter Dale Scott: “I’m a bit stymied by the book that his friend in Minsk, Titovets. My own feeling is that it’s a very informative book but also I think a controlled book. He’s telling enough to make us realize that there was a KGB interest (In Oswald). But he never says explicitly that the man he knew in Minsk was the man in Dallas but he’s obviously making us assume that it was. “

These days Mr. Scott isn’t so sure that the man in Minsk and the man in Dallas were the same man.

[Paul Brancato]

4 hours ago, Michaleen Kilroy said:

Just a lone nut loser, eh? 

And yet, for some reason, this anonymous sociopath caused such consternation at the CIA that they chose to withhold material evidence, lie and run domestic operations to obstruct justice in all federal inquiries.

Curious how you can explain this: 

https://medium.com/me/stats/post/377267b73309

Do I have to be a paying member of Medium to read this? Perhaps you could summarize? 

[Michael Clark]

9 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

These days Mr. Scott isn’t so sure that the man in Minsk and the man in Dallas were the same man.

Yes, in the same video, both he and Newman expressed doubts about that.

Peter Dale Scott: Are you absolutely convinced that the man who was Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia was in fact  the man picked up in Dallas in 1963?

Newman: Not at all.

[Paul Brancato]

Was that in SF last December?

[Michael Clark]

5 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Was that in SF last December?

March of 2018.

[Michaleen Kilroy]

40 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Do I have to be a paying member of Medium to read this? Perhaps you could summarize? 

Forgot I had posted it here before:

FYI, I sent it to Robert Blakey who emailed me back this: 

“I read your piece with great interest. Sadly, I don’t think anything will come of it in our lifetime.”

 

 

[Michaleen Kilroy]

FYI, I spent time looking at live coverage following the assassination. The film of Oswald handing out fliers in NO is broadcasted in the early evening of Nov. 22 by Cronkite and others.  

At that moment, if they didn’t know already, Helms and others at Langley knew the accused assassin had interfaced with their secretly funded propaganda group, the DRE. 

And they never said a word about it to anyone.

Lone nut. Right.

Sure seems obvious to me the highest echelon of the CIA was overseeing an operation to tie LHO to Castro in the public’s mind ASAP.

That’s the ONLY reasonable conclusion. Especially since they covered it up for decades and STILL won’t provide ANY explanation.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Michaleen Kilroy

[Guest]

So far, then, the CT fallback positions are that (1) Titovets cannot be trusted and/or (2) the Oswald whom Titovets knew in Minsk was not the Oswald who was arrested in Dallas.

See how this works, folks?

Maybe Harvey lived to write Titovets' book - no one thought of that yet???

[Ron Bulman]

If you want a different perspective on Oswald why not consider bisexuality?  Taboo at the time for sure.  But Rose Cheramie  called Ruby Pinky and said he and Ozzie had been shackin up.  There are more allegations regarding Ruby.