The Oswald Exhumation

[Eddy Bainbridge]

I would like to ask a Harvey and Lee question : David Josephs has exposed the enormous lengths taken to plant evidence that Oswald went to Mexico by bus. Is it possible that the Harvey and Lee document trail, and testimony is a more long winded but similar project. If the evidence for one candidate is in fact a false trail perhaps to catch a mole, or provide a cover story for Oswald or others, does that explanation fit the evidence? 

[Jim Hargrove]

That’s a reasonable question, Eddy.

The purpose of the Mexico City charade seems to have been, ultimately, to blame the commies for JFK’s murder and therefore provoke an invasion of Cuba.

The most likely reason for the Oswald Project, in my opinion, was to give a U.S. identity to a Russian-speaking youth who could then “defect” to the Soviet Union, walk around pretending to be unaware of conversations around him, but secretly comprehend all of it.

And that appears to be exactly what happened,  The H&L evidence comprises more than just a paper trail.  There are plenty of eyewitnesses and mainstream news stories as well.  I sincerely doubt it was just a file escapade to catch a mole.

[Jim Hargrove]

On 4/30/2020 at 10:10 AM, John Butler said:

Here is a simple comparison of Harvey and Lee's teeth:

The top two photos show the teeth of the man shot at the Dallas Police station.  We call him Harvey Oswald for lack of a real name which certainly isn't Lee Harvey Oswald.  If you go back and review Larsen's evidence you will see that this man has 31 teeth, one less then what is pretty much normal for everyone, 32.  He is missing the lower, right 3rd molar.  This is either it didn't form or was extracted.  Larsen provides very clear and detailed photos showing this.

The bottom two photos show Lee Harvey Oswald has missing front teeth.  There seems to be a difference in which front teeth are missing.  I have no explanation for this.  But, one is not needed.  There are missing teeth. 

The photo on the right (screen left) shows what appears to be a missing left, upper central incisor and a left, upper lateral incisor.  The photo on the right (screen left) seems to show two central incisors and a gap bigger than for one lateral incisor.  This gap may represent the same space in both photos.  The apparent difference may simply be due to camera angles.

As I said earlier, it doesn't matter.  There is a missing tooth or missing teeth for Lee Harvey Oswald and the man killed at the Dallas Police station has all of his upper front teeth.

There is a great deal more evidence then this provided by Sandy Larsen in his post.  Go back and review it. 

John,

Thank you for the montage above.  It's a heckuva post!  It should hardly surprise any of us that your visual analysis of the photographic record agrees precisely with John A's analysis of the written documentary record. According to both you and John A., LEE is LEE and HARVEY is HARVEY from two different perspectives. I always thought the surviving photographic record of "Lee Harvey Oswald" was too compromised to be of any use, but you have proved me wrong.

Do you want to add the earlobe analysis, and anything else that occurs to you, to the above?  Thanks again!  I also wonder if Sandy Larsen would like to contribute anything to this.

[John Butler]

 

48 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

John,

Thank you for the montage above.  It's a heckuva post!  It should hardly surprise any of us that your visual analysis of the photographic record agrees precisely with John A's analysis of the written documentary record. According to both you and John A., LEE is LEE and HARVEY is HARVEY from two different perspectives. I always thought the surviving photographic record of "Lee Harvey Oswald" was too compromised to be of any use, but you have proved me wrong.

Do you want to add the earlobe analysis, and anything else that occurs to you, to the above?  Thanks again!  I also wonder if Sandy Larsen would like to contribute anything to this.

Thanks Jim,

But, Sandy Larsen is the real deal here.  His work is beyond a doubt kind of evidence.  I provided a link sometime back in this thread so folks could review his work.  What I did above was to try to explain to Ron in a simpler, graphic form the difference in the teeth of Harvey and Lee. 

The thing I can pat myself on the back for is finding a photo clear enough of the Civil Air Patrol scene (from Robert Groden's book) where a blow up of Lee Harvey Oswald can be seen clearly.  And, that provides a second graphic evidence that he was missing at least two teeth in his upper set.  It bolsters Sandy's work which with another example of missing teeth in teenage Lee Harvey Oswald. 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 4/30/2020 at 11:50 AM, Ron Ecker said:

Sandy,

I'm still confused. I wasn't wise to Harvey's wisdom tooth but forget about that. If Lee was the Marine with the missing front tooth (or teeth), is John Butler mistaken to post a photo of the Marine as Harvey with all of his teeth? Or maybe I should ask John, which Oswald was which?

 

 

 

Ron,

The photo John posted of Oswald as a marine is of HARVEY. Harvey had all his natural teeth (not counting one wisdom tooth).

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Denny Zartman writes:

Quote

What's your opinion on James Wilcott saying that he distributed military money for a CIA "Oswald project" in the late 1950's?

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. It's possible, but there isn't any corroboration for his specific claims. Tracy Parnell gives a comprehensive account of the problems with Wilcott's credibility in this article, which includes links to the relevant documents:

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2017/03/james-wilcott.html

It's important to note that Wilcott's 'Oswald project' isn't the same thing as Hargrove's 'Oswald project'. Wilcott was talking about the adult Oswald being a paid employee of the CIA in some capacity. Hargrove assumes that this paid employment involved Oswald's participation at an early age in an imaginary long-term doppelganger scheme.

As with most 'Harvey and Lee' claims, the evidence is (to put it mildly) not strong enough to support the conclusion. Wilcott never claimed that his 'Oswald project' involved any sort of decade-long plan beginning when Oswald was a boy. In fact, he implied that the 'Oswald project' only began in the late 50s, when "Oswald was recruited from the military for the express purpose of becoming a double agent assignment to the USSR" (Wilcott, 'The Kennedy Assassination', p.16). Wilcott's 'Oswald project' involved just the one Oswald, just the one Marguerite, no doppelgangers with sloping shoulders and 13-inch heads, and no long-term impersonation going back more than a decade.

One of Wilcott's claims may be on the right lines. He told a Cuban tribunal in 1978 that Oswald's employment with the CIA involved creating a false persona for him:

Quote

Wilcott's colleagues told him the original plan involved passing Oswald off as a man solidly linked to the Cuban Government, so it would be possible to claim the assassination was the work of a Cuban agent.  This then would provide the pretext for attacking Cuba. However, it was not possible to establish solid ties between Oswald and the Cuban Government, and this part of the plan was dropped.

There's good evidence that Oswald had indeed built a false persona for himself as a Castro sympathiser, in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, and that he had done so on the orders of some official agency, or at least on the instigation of someone connected with an agency. It's not unlikely that this manipulation of Oswald allowed him to be cast as a patsy in the assassination. Whether Oswald's creation of a false persona was done specifically with the assassination in mind, or whether it was later co-opted into the assassination plan, is debatable.

Perhaps Wilcott was correct in implying that Oswald's activities in New Orleans were done on the orders of the CIA, or at least someone within the CIA. Or perhaps it was some other agency that had been directing Oswald, and the CIA connection was exaggerated or invented.

But the important point is that, as far as I'm aware, Wilcott said nothing at all about a long-term impersonation involving two unrelated boys from different parts of the world, chosen at a young age, who just happened to grow up to look identical (or not quite identical), with mothers who also looked identical (or not quite identical), and all the other far-fetched nonsense that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory proposes.

Quote

I definitely would bring up what appears to be evidence that Oswald was impersonated in the days and weeks leading up to the assassination.

I agree. It's quite possible that he was impersonated shortly before the assassination, in Dallas or Mexico City or both. But there's no good reason to suppose that this had anything to do with an imaginary 'Harvey and Lee' long-term doppelganger project.

Quote

The thing to point out is that it of course it would be crazy to think that the CIA started the so-called "Oswald project" to assassinate a president that hadn't even been elected yet. That's why it would be important to note that an "Oswald project" was likely started with the intention of creating a better spy to spy on the Soviet Union, certainly not an outlandish concept, in my view.

Yes, that was Wilcott's view. His 'Oswald project' was set up specifically to enable Oswald's unconvincing defection. There's good evidence that Oswald's defection was not genuine, that it had been done with some sort of official encouragement, and that Oswald had been taught Russian for this purpose. Again, the nature of the official encouragement is debatable.

Again also, Oswald's false defection does not require an elaborate impersonation scheme going back a decade or more. Not only that, but the 'Harvey and Lee' version of Oswald's defection is incoherent. Look at what the 'Harvey and Lee' theory actually claims about the defection. The whole point of this long-term 'Oswald project' was to send a native Russian speaker into the USSR. Not just any old American who had learned a bit of Russian in his teens and early twenties, as the real Oswald had, but someone with "an intimate knowledge of the local language":

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.

(John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p.10)

But there is ample evidence that the Oswald who defected did indeed speak Russian with an accent, and that he made the sort of grammatical mistakes that a native adult speaker would not make. 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's exactly what happened. Only ten pages into the book, and the basic premise of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory collapses.
 

[Jim Hargrove]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

But there is ample evidence that the Oswald who defected did indeed speak Russian with an accent, and that he made the sort of grammatical mistakes that a native adult speaker would not make. 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's exactly what happened. Only ten pages into the book, and the basic premise of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory collapses.

Nonsense.  Harvey Oswald made the kind of grammatical mistakes you would expect from someone who learned Russian as a child but switched to English at a young age.  And there is little doubt that he tried to hide his Russian fluency while he was in the Soviet Union.

Before “Oswald” first set foot in the Soviet Union, while he was still in the U.S. Marine Corps, “it was a matter of common knowledge among squadron members that he could read, write, and  speak Russian.”

As soon as he arrived in Moscow, the Soviets realized he was a spy and decided to kick him out.  In a desperate but brilliant move, “Oswald” faked a suicide attempt and was able to rescue his mission.  Nevertheless, medics at Botkinskaya Hospital in Moscow who treated his wound realized that “The patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian.  Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what was asked.”

 

In Russia, “Oswald” tried to hide his fluency in Russian from almost everyone.  Pulitzer Prize winning author Norman Mailer was among the earliest people to gain access to Russian Intel documents about “Oswald.”   Mailer wrote that when “Oswald” arrived in Moscow by “Deluxe class,” he hired a personal tour guide named Rimma and, “He didn’t seem to know a single word in Russian, so Rimma spoke to him in English.”

By the time he got to Minsk, “Oswald” continued to pretend he didn’t speak Russian.  Mailer wrote, “People laughed at him when he talked.  His Russian was so bad people laughed, not mocking, but friendly.  He would try to pronounce words, get them wrong. They would laugh…. You have cows in America?  You have pigs in America?  He couldn’t understand their words, so they showed him with sign language, made animal sounds, and he laughed.”

A Belarusian scientist named Stanislav Shushkevich was eventually assigned to teach “Oswald” the Russian language.  A few years ago, Shushkevich was extensively interviewed by an American writer.   There were, apparently, only a dozen or so lessons, and the teacher noted that “He didn’t appear to know a lot.  He didn’t appear to want to know a lot.”  Shushkevich added that he “knew very few words” in Russian.

Shushkevich concluded that he real job (he didn’t speak English) was not to teach “Oswald” Russian, but “to see how much Russian Oswald really knew….”

Nothing could be more obvious than the fact that “Oswald” tried to hide his Russian fluency while in the Soviet Union.  Saying otherwise is merely attempting to hide the fact that he was a U.S. spy who successfully worked in the Soviet Union understanding everything that was said about him but pretending he barely understood a word.  His brilliant and lengthy final report was published by the Warren Commission, hidden in plain sight for all these years.

For much more on all of this, read Dr. James Norwood’s superb essay on my website:

Oswald’s Proficiency in the Russian Language

[Jim Hargrove]

On 4/30/2020 at 4:55 PM, Joseph McBride said:

HARVEY AND LEE confirms Oswald and John Wayne were both on Corregidor when Wayne visited Marines there in January 1958. Jim Hargrove, is this

supposed photo of the two authentic? It first appeared in the Epstein book on Oswald.

Joe,

I sent the photo to John A. and he responded that he suspected the image was altered to show Harvey instead of Lee.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Joe,

I sent the photo to John A. and he responded that he suspected the image was altered to show Harvey instead of Lee.

Question of the day-how does a H&L person know what evidence is faked and which is real? Easy-anything that doesn't support the theory must be faked and whatever they perceive as supporting the theory is authentic.

[John Butler]

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Joe,

I sent the photo to John A. and he responded that he suspected the image was altered to show Harvey instead of Lee.

At that distance and with the quality of the photo it would be hard to say Harvey or Lee.  Lee is supposed to be there at Corregidor for a short time.  Using David Josephs excellent Timeline, Lee Oswald was on Corregidor in Nov. 11, 1957.  Anyone interested can check out John Wayne's visit to Corregidor and the date of that visit.  That's probably what Epstein did.  Wayne was supposedly there during the time he was filming the Barbarian and the Geisha.

Can we prove that is Lee.  Maybe so.  We could look at photos of those times and notice that there is a difference between the hair patterns of Lee and Harvey.  Harvey has a hair pattern with a more receding hairline.  In later times he used a comb over to hide that recession.  Compare these photos of Harvey and Lee during the period 1957-58.

Harvey is the Oswald in the center photo.  I didn't believe this for the longest time.  Not until I looked closer at photos of Harvey in which he hides this recession pattern.  The outside images of Lee Oswald does not have this pattern.  If you look at the Corrregidor John Wayne/Oswald photo, the Oswald figure's hair pattern looks more like Lee. 

That's not much to work on and some would consider a bit far out, but may point out that this is an Oswald and from the record, Lee Oswald.  Their appearance was close enough to fool a lot of people.  IMO, the government tried to change every photo of Lee Oswald into Harvey Oswald, the man shot at the Dallas Police Station.  This even goes back to baby photos.  From their position, there can be only one Lee Harvey Oswald.  They had a great deal of help from Robert Oswald who shows up later years later with these kinds of photos. 

Edited May 2, 2020 by John Butler

[John Butler]

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Nonsense.  Harvey Oswald made the kind of grammatical mistakes you would expect from someone who learned Russian as a child but switched to English at a young age. 

I can't swear to how accurate the Russian is in this letter to Marina.  But, it is translated by some Russian expert who apparently had no problem translating it.  Reading the English translation, there is a fairly sophisticated message there requiring a good knowledge of Russia.  Another thing to indicate Harvey's knowledge is the use of the Cyrillic alphabet/written language.  (Cyrillic- denoting the alphabet used by many Slavic peoples, chiefly those with a historical allegiance to the Orthodox Church. Ultimately derived from Greek uncials, it is now used for Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, and some other Slavic languages.)  The Cyrillic alphabet is very alien when compared to the English alphabet.)

One point to make here is that Harvey's Russian writing appears to be less strained then when he is writing in English.

Edited May 2, 2020 by John Butler

[Jim Hargrove]

John,

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this.  John A. and I both think the middle image two posts above was of LEE.  It was published in Robert Oswald’s 1967 book, LEE, A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald.  John A. believes it is LEE because it fits the time frame when he was on leave from the USMC.  John believes these three pictures of LEE, showing the receding hairline, were taken on three consecutive years.

[John Butler]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

John,

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this.  John A. and I both think the middle image two posts above was of LEE.  It was published in Robert Oswald’s 1967 book, LEE, A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald.  John A. believes it is LEE because it fits the time frame when he was on leave from the USMC.  John believes these three pictures of LEE, showing the receding hairline, were taken on three consecutive years.

This photo, according to Robert was taken in Feb., 1958.  Is there any record of Lee Oswald taking a leave and returning to the US while stationed at Atsugi, Japan in 1957-58?  If so, I have never seen or heard of it. 

I looked at David's timeline and he mentions this event as Lee Oswald in the photo, but with no other information perhaps suggesting he was puzzled by this.  It does appear to be an oddity and maybe David can help clear it up. 

At one point I argued that his photo was Lee Oswald (center photo) due to his features matching the following:

 

Broad nose and broad chin apparent in these 3 photos.  This was part of a greater identification scheme listing the difference one can see in photos of Lee and Harvey. 

And, if memory serves you argued differently.  My files are in such a mess it is hard to pin point at times what I am looking for.  So, no offense intended, the memory problem is most likely mine. 

I changed my view on this (I think because you said something different) to Harvey Oswald.  This was after I reanalyzed the phot and noticed the hair pattern as something that might point to the difference between Harvey and Lee and decided this was Harvey. 

Can you prove that Lee Oswald came home to Texas in Feb., 1958?  Is there any documentation available?  If so, that will settle the argument.

I wondered about Marine Corps overseas leave when this photo was first seen.  I can only vouch for my own experiences in Korea.  There was a policy of allowing a mid-term leave to return home to the US for about 3 weeks leaving another week for travel time.  The US Army gave 30 days leave every year to a GI.  This was why the mid-term leave was available.  For such a leave documentation was a necessary thing.  This leave in the Army is tied to pay records and I believe 201 file so that if you overstayed your leave the Army could recover money that you may have been paid for this leave.

The Marine Corps was probably the same.  There should be a record.

Other than that, I have no problem on disagreements.  These things happen when people look at the sorry documentation call the Oswald graphic record. 

[Jim Hargrove]

John,

From H&L:

November/December-Lee Oswald in Fort Worth
(November 15 thru December 11, 1958)

On November 19, Marine Corps records show that Lee Oswald took a 30-day
leave, but there is no indication where he stayed during his leave. According to Robert
Oswald, Lee spent some of his time in Fort Worth and they hunted with .22 rifles at his
in-laws (the Mercers) farm. Robert said, "I recall this to be in the early fall of the year­
perhaps September."96  Robert Oswald's memory was a bit off. Lee Oswald's leave was from
November 19 to December 18, 1958.

Robert Oswald continued, "I recall two times that we had this type of light hunt­-
ing out there at that farm, at the same place. One time was during a leave that he had
from the Marine Corps. I don't recall any game at that particular time that we shot. I
know we did handle the rifle and fired maybe target practice, something along that
line."97 Robert took a photograph of Lee holding a rifle during one of those leaves. He
published a photograph of his husky, thick-necked brother between pages 96 and 97 in
his book, Lee. 58-27  

-- (From Harvey and Lee, pp. 208-209)

Note also that LEE opened a bank account at the West Side State Bank in Fort Worth on Dec. 8, 1958.

[Sandy Larsen]

8 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

1 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

But there is ample evidence that the Oswald who defected did indeed speak Russian with an accent, and that he made the sort of grammatical mistakes that a native adult speaker would not make.

 

But wasn't that some Eastern European accent Jim, according to Marina? Not American, as Jeremy is certainly suggesting?