Was it really just a MOLE HUNT about "Oswald?"

[Jim Hargrove]

Steve,

I'm truly surprised that you believe we are talking about images of two different LHOs, and I’m inclined to say yes, the young man with the narrower nose and pointier chin is probably Russian-speaking Harvey, but I can also point to photos that seem to show just the opposite.  The photographic evidence in this case, including the baby photos John B reproduced above, is about as reliable as all the rest of the evidence.  

Toward the very end of Robert Oswald’s life, some never-before-seen photos of LHO and Marguerite began to appear on the internet allegedly from Robert’s collection, including some shots of a baby, but the true provenance of these images is totally unknown, at least as far as I can tell.  I trust the more recently "discovered" images even less than the "old reliables" that went through the FBI/WC process.

In the graphic below, the top row of pictures, according to John A's analysis of the overall evidence, should depict American-born LEE Oswald, the bottom row Russian-speaking HARVEY.  

Edited June 9, 2020 by Jim Hargrove

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

John Butler's photographic knowledge and analytical skills make him the worthy heir of the late Jack "the moon landings were faked" White, co-creator of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. He has even been honoured with his own thread here:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2201-john-butler-photo-analyst-extraordinare

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim Hargrove writes:

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The whole idea of the “defection,” I think, was to send a young man to the Soviet Union who understood the Russian language but pretended he didn’t so he could overhear conversations and read documents no one suspected he could comprehend.

If the defector needed to understand what was being said around him, he would have required only a reasonable knowledge of Russian. He would not have required an expert, near-native command of the language. They needn't have sent an imaginary native Russian-speaking doppelganger; they could have sent the real-life, historical Lee Harvey Oswald instead, which indeed they did.

The whole idea of the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense is that the doppelganger who defected was an expert speaker of Russian, and one who did not speak with a noticeable accent, as a native English-speaking American almost certainly would. Here is the relevant passage from Scripture:

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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)

Has there been a change in doctrine? To avoid confusion, perhaps a believer would be kind enough to explain the current, official 'Harvey and Lee' position on a couple of things:

Firstly, how well did the defecting doppelganger speak, understand and read Russian? Was he an expert (a native speaker, for example) or was he merely competent (the level you might expect of an American who had learned the language in his teens and early twenties, for example)? Did the defecting doppelganger speak Russian with an accent, or not? Did he make grammatical mistakes, or not?

Secondly, how does this level of accomplishment in Russian fit into the long-term doppelganger scheme?

In other words, if doctrine still requires the defecting doppelganger to have been an expert speaker of Russian, why did he keep making grammatical mistakes and speaking with a noticeable accent (just as a native English-speaking American would do) even after having lived among fellow native speakers for two and a half years?

Or, if doctrine no longer requires the defecting doppelganger to have been an expert speaker of Russian, why invent the fictional doppelganger scheme in the first place? The required level of Russian would mean that the defector could easily have been a native English-speaking American who had learned the language in his teens and early twenties. 

In this case, Oswald's acquisition of Russian would be just one aspect of his communist-sympathiser façade, helping to make him palatable to the Soviet authorities. Either Oswald learned Russian as part of the plan for his defection, or his independent acquisition of Russian was a happy accident which led him to be chosen to defect.

The native Russian-speaking Hungarian refugee / Russian World War Two orphan (delete as appropriate) doppelganger was a figment of a paranoid imagination. It was the one and only, real-life, historical, native English-speaking Lee Harvey Oswald who defected, wasn't it?
 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

A few days ago, Jim Hargrove wrote:

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I think it was Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald all along who had the [mastoidectomy] procedure done to him ... Hoover found out about it ... and altered a document or two

I've asked Jim a question about this statement a couple of times, and he has yet to offer a reply, so I'll try again.

Which document or documents must Hoover have altered?

It's all very well to point out that J Edgar Hoover wasn't a very nice person, and that the FBI sometimes altered documents and put pressure on witnesses, and all the rest of it. But we can't assume that just because a document in the JFK case exposes the 'Harvey and Lee' theory as make-it-up-as-you-go-along speculation, the document must be a fake.

We need to find out whether there are any other reasons to suggest that a particular document isn't authentic, and to do that we need to know which document or documents Jim is referring to.

So which documents must Hoover have altered, in order for the mastoidectomy operation to have been carried out on imaginary doppelganger Y (in contravention of received 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine), instead of on imaginary doppelganger X (as John Armstrong claimed, a claim which was contradicted by solid scientific evidence nearly two decades before he published the believers' holy book)?

Which brings us to another, more important question which Jim has so far understandably refused to answer several times. Why did John Armstrong not even mention the existence of the mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave?

Armstrong must have known about the mastoidectomy defect, and he must have known that it contradicted a fundamental element of his speculative theory, but he didn't try to explain the contradiction. Instead, he neglected to inform his readers that this inconvenient fact even existed. This deliberate omission must have been done in the expectation that his readers wouldn't be as familiar with the evidence as he was, and that the more gullible of his readers wouldn't be aware that he was misleading them.

Is there a credible reason for this behaviour that doesn't make Armstrong look dishonest?

[Jim Hargrove]

On 6/9/2020 at 2:39 AM, Steve Thomas said:

John,

It's uncanny how much alike these two individuals looked. It's no wonder so many people got them mixed up. I saw a couple of things though:

the shape of the nose, the shape of the chin, the bony (or supra orbital) ridge above his left eye socket.

I think I know where that square chin in the backyard photos came from.

Steve Thomas

Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but John Butler has made valuable contributions to JFKA research and he certainly doesn’t deserve to be mocked by Mr. Bojczuk, which I believe is a violation of forum rules.  Getting back to what we were talking about....

Again, the photo above left is of LHO and Marina probably taken in Nov. 1962 in a photo booth at a Dallas bus station.  The photo above right shows LHO seven years earlier in a Civil Air Patrol meeting in New Orleans. According to two witnesses, David Ferrie is in the same image (more about this below).

According to John A’s analysis of all the available evidence, the CAP photo shows American-born LEE Harvey Oswald and the 1962 Dallas photo shows Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald.

Due to some cruel trick of fate, I’m just terrible with faces and so I wondered if Steve and John could summarize the reasons they think these pictures depict two different young men.  

More on the Civil Air Patrol picture.  The closeup-up of Oswald is taken from this picture:

The image believed to be Ferrie is circled at the left side, and Oswald is circled on the right.  According to the website auxbeacon.org, which specializes in information about the U.S. Civil Air Patrol:

In 1993, the PBS program Frontline acquired a group photograph showing David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald together at a Civil Air Patrol activity in 1955. The photograph casts some doubt on Ferrie’s claim that he never knew Lee Harvey Oswald.

PBS FRONTLINE revealed that they obtained the photograph from John B. Ciravolo, Jr., of New Orleans. Ciravolo, who identified Ferrie, was also a Civil Air Patrol member in 1955 and says he was in the same unit with Oswald and was standing right in front of him in the photo. Former CAP cadet Tony Atzenhoffer, also of New Orleans, identified Oswald and Ferrie in the photograph.

FRONTLINE located the photographer, Chuck Frances, who says he took the picture for the Civil Air Patrol and that when he was interviewed by the FBI, he told them that Oswald and Ferrie knew each other, but he did not tell them about the photograph.

[John Butler]

Ah, Jeremy's back and once again he has proven to his total satisfaction that he is right and others are wrong.  I don't mind standing in the shadow of Jack White.  That is better than reading such vulgar trash as "Wallowing around in the slime, the xxxx and the putriescence... like Tiresias outside the gates of Thebes" from a fellow called Alex Wilson.

[John Butler]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Due to some cruel trick of fate, I’m just terrible with faces and so I wondered if Steve and John could summarize the reasons they think these pictures depict two different young men

Not a problem Jim,

Just look at the teeth.  Harvey has his front teeth and Lee doesn't. It's just that simple and doesn't take facial recognition skills.  Seven years later Harvey could not have regrown his teeth.

I'll probably enrage folks once again, but if I am recalling correctly Judith Baker said she had the same problem and supposedly had problems with Carlos Marcello due to her lack of recognizing him.  Leads me to wonder if she cold tell the difference between Harvey and Lee when one showed up in a amorous mood. 

I have posted many times on Lee and Harvey identification traits.  They are simple and easy to understand.  Some are irrefutable and others weaker, but still able to identify either Lee or Harvey when used in conjunction.  They are primarily based on the mug shot of the man shot at the Dallas Police Department.

They are even good enough to recognize Harvey and Lee as children or at least Harvey.  

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by John Butler

[John Butler]

21 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Back when I was in college, I took an anthropology course and spent some time looking at different skull structures. In the various photos taken of LHO, I've tried to look beyond the facial features and tried to analyze the skull structure underneath.

I'm also trying to correlate the surly, uncommunicative, anti-social Oswald with the pointy-chin guy, and the gregarious, outgoing Oswald with the broader-chinned guy.

Steve,

I never thought I would hear a discussion of supra orbital ridges on the forum.  Good work and thinking.  Anthropology is one of my hobbies and keeping up with the ideas on human evolution is one of my interests.  I would like to hear more of your thinking on the behavior traits of both Oswalds.  This is something I have thought about and haven't come up with any good ideas.  Basically, the only thing I could think of is that the two, Harvey and Lee, have noticeable voice differences.  These voice differences would be a tell.  So, one of them mumbles and walks away in an anti-social manner.  And, this stops future confrontations from becoming more noticeable in appearance, manner, and voice differences.  

[John Butler]

Identifying Harvey and Lee:

Speaking of the two children's photos supposedly coming from Robert Oswald, isn't it strange that he would have two photos of different children as Lee Harvey Oswald, his brother?  I'm sure he wasn't a Harvey and Lee supporter.  He was the opposite, a member of the Oswald Project.  It is a mistake that even he didn't recognize when dealing with the things Marguerite had left behind.  The false Marguerite was the key player in the raising of Harvey and Lee.  She would have known and have the necessary back up information to ensure the story of Lee Harvey Oswald.     

[Jim Hargrove]

1 hour ago, John Butler said:

Not a problem Jim,

Just look at the teeth.  Harvey has his front teeth and Lee doesn't. It's just that simple and doesn't take facial recognition skills.  Seven years later Harvey could not have regrown his teeth.

Yes, it certainly does look in that photo that the tooth is completely gone.  I’m not totally certain about the ID, though, because there are pictures of HARVEY that clearly show that tooth being shorter than the ones on either side it.

This appears to be a common occurrence.  Looking in a mirror, it is true of my own teeth as well.  The two central incisors and the canine tooth are significantly longer than the lateral incisor (I think it is called) that they surround. 

Regarding the baby photos, in my opinion it is hard to make comparisons without knowing the true provenance of the images.  There have been, surely, BILLIONS of babies throughout the world who had their pictures taken in the last century or so, including hundreds of millions of Americans. With hundreds of millions of earlobes to chose from, for example, I wouldn't be too certain about identifying a specific person based solely on that characteristic.  We need to know more about these images.

[John Butler]

I did not find this scene in the movie JFK.  I watched the earlier version and the Director's Cut version.  The scene is in neither.  However, I will no longer argue this is Lee and Marina.  The scenes that I did find resemble this somewhat.  I will post several directly.  It could be this scene was cut from the movie, but retained for promotional purposes?

Half right and half wrong.  My ID traits for Harvey Oswald did work in this instance.  This is not Harvey Oswald.  More than likely it is Gary Oldman and Beata Pozniak.  I still have reservations.  The lady featured looks more like Marina than Beata Pozniak.   But, that's just me. 

This was on the internet for years as Lee and Marina.  This was the first instance I known of anyone saying other wise.  And, now as Pozniak and Oldman, it kills a fine speculation about Lee Oswald and Harvey Oswald in the Soviet Union.  This is generally what was shown in the Director's Cut at about 59 minutes into the film.

   

and,

and,

Edited June 10, 2020 by John Butler

[John Butler]

8 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Yes, it certainly does look in that photo that the tooth is completely gone.  I’m not totally certain about the ID, though, because there are pictures of HARVEY that clearly show that tooth being shorter than the ones on either side it.

I don't understand that.  You seem to be confusing the two photos as one or what?.  Lee is in the CAP photo when he was a teenager and has missing teeth.  This is in line with witness statements and Sandy Larsen's work.  Harvey has all of his front teeth including a smaller left lateral incisor that is clearly visible in the photo.  It is not a bridge and you can't regrow teeth in that era. 

 

8 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Regarding the baby photos, in my opinion it is hard to make comparisons without knowing the true provenance of the images.  There have been, surely, BILLIONS of babies throughout the world who had their pictures taken in the last century or so, including hundreds of millions of Americans. With hundreds of millions of earlobes to chose from, for example, I wouldn't be too certain about identifying a specific person based solely on that characteristic.  We need to know more about these images.

Until proven otherwise like the Lee and Marina photo above, I am going to assume this is a photo of Lee at 3 years, and Harvey at two years.  These are allegedly from Robert Oswald who is not a trust worthy person as far as the identity of his mother and Lee Harvey Oswald are concerned.

This is a good assumption.  It relates well with other photos of Harvey Oswald.  It is based on other purported photos of Lee Harvey Oswald (Harvey) and all have this same ear characteristic.  The photos of Lee Oswald do not have this trait. 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

31 minutes ago, John Butler said:

It could be this scene was cut from the movie, but retained for promotional purposes?

Yes, that is certainly a possibility John. I see in the last still you posted it looks like "LHO" has the same shirt as the mystery photo.

Edited June 11, 2020 by W. Tracy Parnell

[John Butler]

3 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Yes, that is certainly a possibility John. I see in the last still you posted it looks like "LHO" has the same shirt as the mystery photo.

Thanks Tracy,

I don't recall saying that.  But, no matter.  That shirt on Oldman does appear to be the same as the shirt on Oswald in some other Russian photos of Oswald.  I would guess Stone wanted as much accuracy as possible.  By picking Beata Pozniak he sure fooled me on Marina.     

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim Hargrove writes:

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John Butler has made valuable contributions to JFKA research and he certainly doesn’t deserve to be mocked by Mr. Bojczuk, which I believe is a violation of forum rules.

Was I mocking Mr Butler? All I did was point out that

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John Butler's photographic knowledge and analytical skills make him the worthy heir of the late Jack "the moon landings were faked" White, co-creator of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory.

What's wrong with that? It's a factual statement. Mr Butler's approach to the photographic evidence is very much like that of Mr White, who would look at a photograph, spot what appeared to be an anomaly, ignore the obvious everyday explanations for the apparent anomaly, and jump to the conclusion that the photograph must therefore be a fake.

You can find an example of John Butler's version of Jack White's approach to the photographic evidence on this thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25659-mass-hysteria-in-dealey-plaza/

Here's an excerpt of Mr Butler's wisdom, from that page:

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Almost all of the visual record in Dealey Plaza was seized and changed to reflect the views of the assassination cover-up.  There is a great deal of this record that has never seen daylight.  It was seized and destroyed by the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and the Dallas authorities.

Mr White used this technique not just in helping to invent the 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense, but also in his other main contribution to human knowledge, his claim that the moon landings were faked. That claim has been taken to pieces several times. Here are a couple of examples: 

- http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/5911-jack-whites-aulis-apollo-hoax-investigation-a-rebuttal/

- http://www.clavius.org/jackwhite.html

Even Mr Butler himself doesn't object to the comparison I made. He writes:

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I don't mind standing in the shadow of Jack White.

Jack White was a genuine tin-foil hatter, the sort of person whose far-fetched and poorly supported claims allow the media to portray all critics of the lone-nut theory as irrational 'conspiracy theorists'.