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

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, James Norwood said:

The hurdle I am unable to overcome in the interviews with Kittrell is why and how Oswald's handlers would conceivably send him on a mission to overtly incriminate himself. 

James,

This might have a bearing on your question, and then again, it might not. I just don't know; but I felt the same way when comparing Dennis Ofstein's and Oswald's encounters with Louise Latham at the TEC.

I believe in the possibility of coincidences as much as the next guy, but there are some coincidences that are kind of eerie. In this area, there are several that I can think of:

• Oswald and Ofstein were the same age. They were both born in 1939

• They both worked at Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall

• They were both referred to JCS by Louise Latham at the Texas Employment Commission

• Ofstein went through the Monterey School of Language and the possibility exists that Oswald may have as well.

 

John Graef testified before the Warren Commission on March 30, 1964.

Mr. GRAEF. That's correct--I'll have to recall as best I can.
“In about October 1962, as director of our photographic department we found ourselves in need of another man, so at this time I called the Texas Employment Commission and spoke to them about sending me someone having as close as possible the abilities that might work out in our photographic department.”

”Mr. JENNER. Would you tell us what you told her in that connection, as best as you can reconstruct it, giving us her name--it was a her?
Mr. GRAEF. “I believe I remember--yes--Louise Latham”. “They have a larger pool to draw from, so I called--in the course of my dealing with them they have various departments and in the course of dealing with them, I became familiar with one person.” “... So, I called this person repeatedly--after the first call or two--this has gone on now over several years and she knew the type person I was looking for and the type of experience that I was looking for, so I called her, and her name was Louise Latham.”

 

Mr. OFSTEIN. For the past 2 years I have been with Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a cameraman.
Mr. JENNER As a cameraman?
Mr. OFSTEIN. Yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. What was your work immediately prior to that, by whom, were you employed?
Mr. OFSTEIN. I was working for Sinclair Refining Co. at a local service station.

 

So, Graef is looking for a skilled camera man, and Latham sends him two people; one  that worked as a gas station attendant and another guy who was a sheet metal worker.

Just sounds very odd to me.

Steve Thomas

 

[Jim Hargrove]

10 hours ago, James Norwood said:

Jim,

I appreciated your detailed reply, and I admired your ability to work closely to Laura Kittrell's manuscript.  In our debate, we agree on the main issue that the interviews with employment counselor Kittrell were staged events.  They were part of a pattern of similar incidents with Oswald imposters creating impressions that would later serve to incriminate him and provide the public with a motivation for Oswald killing the president, following the assassination.  These events go back at least to Sylvia Odio's encounter with men who showed up on her doorstep, including "Leon" Oswald, who was clearly an imposter. 

 

The issue that we are debating is who were the actors in the Kittrell charade.  My argument is that the two men interviewed by Kittrell were both imposters used to create the post-assassination memory of an angry young man, sympathetic to Marxism and prone to violence.  It was only by chance that the two different impersonators were assigned to the same counselor.  Your position is that this was part of a "final test" about how convincing the impersonators could be and that both Oswalds were instructed to meet with the same counselor, Laura Kittrell. 

My position is that this chance occurrence inadvertently provided the opportunity for an eyewitness to experience first-hand how Oswald was being groomed as the patsy.  It is for this reason that Kittrell's manuscript was suppressed until the HSCA convened in the late 1970s.  Your position is that Classic Oswald was the first of the two men visiting Kittrell at the TEC and that he was coached in advance to leave a vivid impression on Kittrell.  My position is that the two different imposters were being used to create confusion in the post-assassination period and that the plotters would never risk alerting Oswald to the method being used to set him up as the scapegoat by asking him to leave such an unfavorable impression of himself.

You make a persuasive case for Oswald as a skilled "performer" who could play a role to the hilt when instructed to do so by his handlers.  The example you give about the phony suicide in Moscow is a good one.  Another instance is his ability to hand out the leaflets in New Orleans, then go on the air to promote the FPCC and speak favorably of Fidel Castro.  You and I would likely agree that for most of his life, this young man had been inculcated in the art of role-playing and deception, referring to Marx's "Das Kapital" in front of school chums or even his fellow Marines.

The hurdle I am unable to overcome in the interviews with Kittrell is why and how Oswald's handlers would conceivably send him on a mission to overtly incriminate himself.  Oswald was carefully being groomed as the assassin of an American president.  Surely, the plotters would not want to arouse Oswald's suspicions by asking him to defame himself publicly by acting belligerent in a public place before a civil servant.  The moment of the interview that strikes me as most "rehearsed" is when the man shifts the conversation away from job-hunting to the topic of guns, explaining to Kittrell the different meanings of the terms “Marksman,” “Sharpshooter,” and “Expert,” as used in the Marines.  That scene fits with the pattern of other Oswald impersonators, boasting about rifles and on multiple occasions actually firing at a shooting range.  But if Oswald were sent on this mission to Kittrell's office, he would almost certainly be curious as to the purpose behind such an act of self-defamation in the employment office. 

By the morning of November 22, Oswald had to have been kept blissfully ignorant of the role he had been assigned as scapegoat.  Nothing could be left to chance.  If he suspected that he was being set up, he simply could have stayed at home from work that day.

So, my question to you is as follows:  If Classic Oswald were given instructions to report to the Texas Employment Commission, behave erratically, mention his years spent in the Soviet Union, and talk about firearms, how would that assignment have been presented to him without this savvy, experienced operative recognizing that he was being duped?

James

Dr. Norwood,

Thank you for distilling this pivotal question.  I should probably run this by John A. first, but it has recently occurred to me that the Russian-speaking Oswald was most likely given the same story the plotters, including David Atlee Phillips, were trying to place into the record: that "Lee Harvey Oswald" was about to defect to the Soviet Union a second time.

There is substantial evidence for this.  For example, in his PBS article Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City, John Newman wrote this about the vanished audio recordings of an Oswald impostor in Mexico City (emphasis added):

We know about a 30 September tape because of the recollection of the CIA translator who transcribed it, Mrs. Tarasoff. She remembers not only transcribing it but also the fact that the Oswald voice was the same as the 28 September voice—in other words the same Oswald impostor. Mrs. Tarasoff remembers the Oswald character asked the Soviets for money to help him defect, once again, to the Soviet Union. In addition, the CIA officer at the Mexico City in charge of Cuban operations, David Atlee Phillips, in sworn testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), backed up Mrs. Tarasoff's claim about the tape and the request for money to assist in another defection to the Soviet Union.

To anyone who ever wondered why on earth our State Department issued a new passport in 1963 enabling this returned Russian "defector" to travel, once again, to the Soviet Union, this is probably the most logical answer. Spy, spy, and spy again.  My bet is that this is what the Russian-speaking Oswald was told when he began sheep-dipping himself in New Orleans in the summer of '63. And it was probably much on his mind when he appeared at the Texas Employment Commission in early October, 1963.

He might well have looked forward to "defecting" again.  After all, a 23-year-old man with obvious marital problems probably could consider worse fates than being in Russia again and again pursued by women as good-looking as Marina Prusakova.

At the TEC he told Ms. Kittrell about Cuba, Russia and his love of Russian opera.  (Which prompted the funniest line in Ms. Kittrell's long essay: "Men in Dallas do go to the opera, but it is usually under duress, and they are not the same men you see downtown in motorcycle jackets.")  

In many of the pages of her write-up, you can feel how appalled Ms. Kittrell was to think about the Russian experiences of this odd character in front of her. All this commie stuff was just so awful she simply didn't want to believe it. She clearly saw how disappointed the first Oswald was when she failed to criticize Batista sufficiently.  It's all really pretty thick, and this is just her second-hand account.  It was right after the Batista discussion that she wrote, "It struck me all at once that he was play-acting again...." though I doubt the true reasons for the performance ever occurred to her.

The second Oswald, who Ms. Kittrell referred to as the "Teamster," was clearly in on the plot, at least the plot to set up the patsy, and so he needed no other conditioning for his test appearance at the TEC in later October.  I think this line of reasoning makes good sense not only for the encounters of the two Oswalds with Ms. Kittrell, but for the whole set-up of the patsy for the assassination of JFK. And as I say again and again, if you are going to assassinate the President of the United States in broad daylight and get away with it, you simply must have a designated patsy.  Without one, the search for you will be relentless, and you will be caught.

[James Norwood]

10 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

James,

This might have a bearing on your question, and then again, it might not. I just don't know; but I felt the same way when comparing Dennis Ofstein's and Oswald's encounters with Louise Latham at the TEC.

Thanks very much for bringing up Dennis Offstein and his supervisor at Jaggars, Chiles, Stovall (JCS), John Graef.  These names most certainly have a bearing on our discussion of Oswald and the Texas Employment Commission (TEC). 

It is true that as employees at JCS, Oswald and Offstein had a great deal in common.  The one shared trait that stands out to me is that they both spoke Russian.  In conjunction with his military background, Offstein had studied at the famed Monterey foreign language institute, which is known today as the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.  Offstein spent a year studying Russian language at Monterey, yet Oswald ran circles around him in Russian language proficiency.  At JCS, Oswald did a little coaching of Offstein and shared Russian language publications (newspapers and magazines) that Oswald was special ordering from Victor A. Kamkin on the East Coast.  When Offstein asked Oswald if he could meet Oswald's Russian-speaking friends to improve his conversational Russian, Oswald indicated that Offstein's proficiency was not yet satisfactory and up to the standards expected of his friends:  "He said they enjoyed having someone around who could more or less keep up a running conversation with them." (WCH, Vol. X, 211).  When the JCS office manager, John Graef, observed one of the Russian publications in the office, he asked Oswald to refrain from bringing them to work in the future. 

On multiple occasions during his Warren Commission testimony, Offstein stated that he believed that Oswald was an agent of the United States, and he offered three principal reasons to support this conclusion:

(1)  THE CONNECTION OF OSWALD'S FLUENCY IN RUSSIAN TO THE TIME HE SPENT RESIDING IN THE SOVIET UNION:  Offstein was curious as to where Oswald had learned to speak such polished Russian, but when pressed on where he acquired his fluency, Oswald would never give Offstein a direct answer.  Oswald's supervisor, John Graef, recalled that Oswald told him he had studied Russian in Korea. (WCH, Vol. X, 189).  But, as a Marine, Oswald never spent enough time in Asia, let alone Korea, which would afford him the opportunity to learn Russian.  And it definitely was not at the Monterey institute that he studied Russian because the Marine records of Oswald's movements are so well documented that there was no possibility to have spent enough time in Monterey for intensive language training.   After Oswald was terminated from JCS, Offstein wanted to continue their association and extended the offer to bring his wife to meet Oswald and Marina.  Oswald never responded to Offstein’s invitation.

(2)  OSWALD'S DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF MILITARY MANEUVERS IN THE SOVIET UNION:  In his Warren Commission testimony, Offstein recalled Oswald describing “the disbursement of the [Soviet] military units, saying that they didn't intermingle their armored divisions and infantry divisions and various units the way we do in the Unites States, that they would have all of their aircraft in one geographical location and their tanks in another geographical location, and their infantry in another, and he mentioned that in Minsk he never saw a vapor trail, indicating the lack of aircraft in the area." (WCH, Vol. X, 202)  This description squares with other detailed observations that Oswald brought back, which read like the notes of a spy.

(3)  TO OFFSTEIN, OSWALD APPEARED TO HAVE ACQUIRED SPECIALIZED SKILLS IN PHOTO ANALYSIS PRIOR TO HIS HIRE AT JCS:  "He asked me one day if I knew the term 'microdot', and I told him , 'no', I wasn't familiar with it and he told me that that was the method of taking a large area of type or a picture and reducing it down to an extremely small size for condensing and for purposes such as where you had a lot of type to photograph to confine them into a small area."  (WCH, Vol. X, 208)  Had Oswald read this description in a book, or was he speaking from hands-on experience?

In the testimony of Dennis Offstein alone, there was enough information to warrant an investigation of Oswald's ties to intelligence and the possibility that he was a sent to the Soviet Union in 1959 in the capacity of what Offstein calls an "agent" of the United States.  But with the presence of Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission, Oswald’s records in the CIA were effectively screened from the committee.  Otherwise, the truth about Oswald's close ties to the national security state might have been revealed in the Warren Report.

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by James Norwood

[Jim Hargrove]

21 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Ofstein went through the Monterey School of Language and the possibility exists that Oswald may have as well.

Steve,

The opening pages of Harvey and Lee discuss the possibility that Oswald learned Russian at a facility such as the Monterey School of Languages while in the Marines.  As Dr. Norwood noted above, the highly detailed USMC records provide no time for him to have studied there, or anywhere like it, at least officially. It certainly could not seem to have happened during the period of less than one year when Classic Oswald® was  in boot camp (1956), ITR training (early 1957), aviation training in Jacksonville, Florida (March-April, 1957), or radar school in Biloxi (May-June, 1957). There is substantial evidence, including records and eyewitness accounts, that he was at all these places.

Which brings us to Japan.  In August 1957, Oswald boarded the USS Bexar and arrived in Atsugi in September.  After some travel to the South China Sea and Subic Bay (Philippines) this Oswald left Atsugi in November 1958  and, we’re told, was then stationed starting the following month at the  Marine Corps Air Facility in Santa Ana, California, where, just a month later, he got more questions right than wrong in a Russian language test designed for native speaking Russians and suddenly, and loudly, appeared to all around him to read, write, and speak Russian.

Did this Oswald have an opportunity to learn Russian while he was previously stationed in Japan? John Armstrong interviewed Zack Stout, who bunked with Oswald for nearly a year at Atsugi and while traveling to the Philippines.  John asked Zack if he ever saw Oswald study the Russian language.  Mr. Stout said:

"Most of the time we were with a mobile radar unit. Shortly after he arrived we left Japan and traveled constantly from location to location in the South China Sea [beginning in November 1957]. I know Oswald didn't attend any Russian classes or read any Russian books or listen to any Russian records. He didn't have anywhere to get such materials and if he had them we would have known about it. We slept in the same bunkhouse and most of the time worked on the same radar crew. The idea that Oswald studied Russian in Japan is ridiculous--it just didn't happen."

So how did it happen?

The best write-up on this I know of is Dr. James Norwood’s essay on my website:

Oswald’s Proficiency in the Russian Language
 

[Steve Thomas]

13 hours ago, James Norwood said:

(3)  TO OFFSTEIN, OSWALD APPEARED TO HAVE ACQUIRED SPECIALIZED SKILLS IN PHOTO ANALYSIS PRIOR TO HIS HIRE AT JCS:  "He asked me one day if I knew the term 'microdot', and I told him , 'no', I wasn't familiar with it and he told me that that was the method of taking a large area of type or a picture and reducing it down to an extremely small size for condensing and for purposes such as where you had a lot of type to photograph to confine them into a small area."  (WCH, Vol. X, 208)  Had Oswald read this description in a book, or was he speaking from hands-on experience?

 

James,

http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=11247.25;wap2

“OFSTEIN said this statement aroused his suspicions and he asked Sgt. TOM CRIGLER, who is employed with the U. S. Army Recruiting Station, Dallas, and is a resident of the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, regarding this. He said he told CRIGLER he had run into a fellow at work who had spent some time in Russia and he wondered if the FBI should run a security check on him inasmuch as he, OFSTEIN, did not want to jeopardize his own status for any possible future security clearances in the event he ever returned to the U. S. Army."

The problem with the above, is the fact that Sgt. Tom Crigler told the FBI that Ofstein contacted him in August, 1963,.five months AFTER Oswald had left Jaggars. Why would Ofstein suddenly want the FBI to run a check on Oswald in August, 1963 when he allegedly hadn't seen the guy in five months? Why would Ofstein be concerned about "future security clearances" a minimum of five months after Oswald had spoken to him about "microdots" and three months before the assassination? Why did Ofstein say it was the "microdot" conversation that pushed him into the Crigler meeting but fail to mention the meeting was in August?

I have some observations about Crigler, the Army Security Agency and IBM if you're interested, but I don't want to hijack your thread.

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

So how did it happen?

The best write-up on this I know of is Dr. James Norwood’s essay on my website:

Oswald’s Proficiency in the Russian Language
 

Jim,

I think I agree with James that the "Oswald" imposter came from Russia, specifically from the Baltic region.

In looking for the earliest mentions of a "Harvey Lee Oswald", I was intrigued by the idea that the earliest mentions I could find came from Russian sources. I think there was some kind of triple agent thing going on, but I've never been able to really flesh it out.

Steve Thomas

[James Norwood]

29 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

I have some observations about Crigler, the Army Security Agency and IBM if you're interested, but I don't want to hijack your thread.

Steve,

I don't want to speak for Jim Hargrove, who started this interesting thread.  But I would personally welcome the information you have about Crigler. 

It is clear from his Warren Commission testimony that Offstein suspected Oswald was "an agent" of the United States government.  Oswald was hired at JCS in October, 1962, which was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  After Oswald's termination from JCS, Offstein wanted to get together again with Oswald, and he extended an invitation for him and his wife to meet with Oswald and Marina.  After months had passed with no reply, Offstein finally approached Crigler.  Those of us who can remember the Cuban Missile Crisis have a vivid recollection of the tense climate at the time.  Offstein may have felt it was his patriotic duty to report Oswald.

Jim Hargrove has presented above abundant data that demonstrates that Oswald could not have been studying Russian during his stint in the Marines because he was already fluent in Russian.  One of the most interesting points to me about Offstein's Warren Commission testimony is his account of spending an entire year studying Russian at the acclaimed Monterey institute, yet he was still unable to carry on a conversation in Russian.  He was especially curious as to how Oswald could be so proficient in spoken Russian and he was even ordering and reading Russian language publications.  It never occurred to Offstein that Oswald was a native speaker.

[John Butler]

As far as Harvey Oswald’s ability to speak and write in Russian the following information from the internet may be helpful.

"In English sentences, word order is very specific. The subject always comes before the verb. To make sentences more descriptive and complex, we add adjectives, adverbs, and indirect objects. In the next three sections, you will learn word order with adjectives, adverbs, and indirect objects."

Russian like English is a Indo-European language related to Germanic languages through Swedish Vikings and other Germanic people of the Baltic Sea area.  But, the Russian language is classified as a Slavic Language (still Indo-European).  Word order or sentence structure in Russian is the same as in English and in the Slavic Language.

"The neutral word order in Slavic languages is Subject-Verb-Object. However, other orders are also possible since inflectional endings make clear grammatical relations and roles of words in the sentence."

However, Hungarian is not a Indo-European language or Slavic language.  It is more closely related to the Finno-Ugaric language group, a Uralic Language.  It’s source is Asian language groups rather than European language groups. 

"Word order I

May 11, 2013

Hungarian language is much more flexible in the sense of word order than the Indo-European languages, especially English. The reason is the suffixes; while in English the location of a word in a sentence determines its word class (part of speech), in Hungarian the suffixes determine it.

In English the word play can be subject, object or verb without any suffixes:

• subject: The play starts at 5 o’lock in the National Theater.
• object: The director presents the play.
• verb: We play soccer every Friday.

In Hungarian the noun játék (game, play) is put to Accusative case (játékot) if its role in the sentence is object, and changes to játszik, if it’s a verb (to play). For this reason it doesn’t have that big importance which order we put the words inside a sentence. However this flexibility doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter at all how we order the words; there are always orders which “sound well”, which is used by native people in converstions, while there are other orders which sound not that well, or sound well only in some situations when we want to emphasize a word, and also there are orders which sound very very weird. In Hungarian we can emphasize words or imply different things by changing the word order (bringing the word to be emphasized earlier in the sentence)."

This information from the internet may suggest from Harvey Oswald’s use of language is that the was a Russian speaking immigrant from Northern Europe as suggested by many who claimed Oswald was fluent in Russian and not Hungarian as thought due to the Tippit FBI document. 

Hungarian would be more difficult for switching from Hungarian to English then switching from Russian to English.   

Oswald could have been from Belarus or a Russian speaking area of Poland in those years the Germans occupied that territory during WWII. 

From Dr. Norwood, “Peter Gregory, a native of Chita, Siberia, told the Warren Commission that “I thought that Lee Oswald spoke [Russian] with a Polish accent, that is why I asked him if he was of Polish descent….It would be rather unusual…for a person who lived in the Soviet Union for 17 months that he would speak so well that a native Russian would not be sure whether he was born in that country or not.” [8]”

Marina Oswald thought Harvey had a Polish or Baltic accent.

These areas sent immigrant children to Switzerland beginning in 1942 and some of these children eventually arrived in the US in 1942 and after.

"Belarus means 'White Russia', a name derived from the fact that this is the one part of Rus that, although conquered by the Mongols in 1240, was never settled by them. The term 'white' refers therefore to the purity of the people, who, unlike their Muscovite cousins, never intermarried with the Mongols."

This could be why Harvey Oswald, an apparent Marxist/Communist (the enemy) was accepted by the White Russian community in Dallas."

Wouldn’t that be something if Harvey Oswald, a Belarusian immigrant child, later goes back to Belarus (Minsk) as an adult spy for the US government.

Lot’s of speculation here.  If that speculation is so then Harvey, an assumed immigrant child, would have left his Russian speaking background early on and would have to be raised by a Russian speaking family in order to retain his Russian speaking abilities while acquiring English speaking abilities.

On the other hand, if Harvey arrived as an immigrant child after WWII, say in 1945 to 1947, then he would have great difficulty adapting to English and the US and may account for Harvey's reserved character.

This is not evident anywhere in the record that Harvey had language problems while in school or as a young child. There is only some comment that Harvey had a northern accent while being in New Orleans. 

Edited May 17, 2020 by John Butler

[James Norwood]

John,

You have provided an extremely valid linguistic analysis.  Very thoughtful and insightful!

In my study of this topic, I came across an interesting quote from the actor Gary Oldman, who played Oswald in Oliver Stone's JFK.  Oldman had to deal with the challenge of Oswald voice, and he can't be faulted for not preparing in listening to the extant recordings of Oswald.  During the rehearsal period, he experimented with Russian phonetics because he had detected what he believed was a slight Slavic accent.  Oldman described his process in researching Oswald’s voice as follows:  “I think I’ve got the accent in the bag, this sort of Southern thing, like Matthew McConaughey, and then I see him (Oswald) speak and he’s got the weirdest accent in the world.” --“Gary Oldman Stumped by Lee Harvey Oswald Accent for JFK”:  https://www.hollywood.com/general/gary-oldman-stumped-by-lee-harvey-oswald-accent-for-jfk-60710757/

Oldman also worked with a dialect coach in which he explored a combination of standard American, Russian, and Spanish, plus a speech impediment.  Oldman may have been sharp in detecting a shade of Spanish, especially if the young Oswald was learning English in New York City with a large Latino population in the 1950s.  http://www.jfk-info.com/pjm-let.htm

In his vocal characterization of Oswald in JFK, I felt that Oldman went overboard with the accent and speech impediment.  But his overall character interpretation was superb, especially in his recreation of the scenes in which Oswald was addressing the media while in police custody in Dallas.

Edited May 17, 2020 by James Norwood

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, James Norwood said:

Steve,

I don't want to speak for Jim Hargrove, who started this interesting thread. 

 

James,

You're right. My apologies to Jim Hargrove, who started this thread.

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, John Butler said:

This information from the internet may suggest from Harvey Oswald’s use of language is that the was a Russian speaking immigrant from Northern Europe as suggested by many who claimed Oswald was fluent in Russian and not Hungarian as thought due to the Tippit FBI document. 

Hungarian would be more difficult for switching from Hungarian to English then switching from Russian to English.   

Oswald could have been from Belarus or a Russian speaking area of Poland in those years the Germans occupied that territory during WWII. 

From Dr. Norwood, “Peter Gregory, a native of Chita, Siberia, told the Warren Commission that “I thought that Lee Oswald spoke [Russian] with a Polish accent, that is why I asked him if he was of Polish descent….It would be rather unusual…for a person who lived in the Soviet Union for 17 months that he would speak so well that a native Russian would not be sure whether he was born in that country or not.” [8]”

Marina Oswald thought Harvey had a Polish or Baltic accent. 

John,

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/oswald_m1.htm

WC testimony February 3, 1964

Mr. RANKIN. Did you know that Lee Oswald was an American when you first met him?
Mrs. OSWALD. I found that out at the end of that party, towards the end of that party, when I was first introduced to him, I didn't know that.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscamar1.htm

HSCA testimony 1977?

Mrs. PORTER. No, I didn't. When he asked to dance, we just talked very little.
Mr. McDONALD. Did he tell you he was an American?
Mrs. PORTER. No, not at that--not during the dancing, no.
Mr. McDONALD. At this time you were speaking in Russian together?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes. He spoke with accent so I assumed he was maybe from another state, which is customary in Russia. People from other states do speak with accents because they do not speak Russian. They speak different languages.
Mr. McDONALD. So when you say another state, you mean another Russian state?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes, like Estonia, Lithuania, something like that.
Mr. McDONALD. Did you suspect at all that he was an American?
Mrs. PORTER. No, not at all.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/demohr_g.htm

Mr. JENNER. What was your impression of his command of Russian?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, he spoke fluent Russian, but with a foreign accent, and made mistakes, grammatical mistakes, but had remarkable fluency in Russian.
Mr. JENNER. It was remarkable?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Remarkable--for a fellow of his background and education, it is remarkable how fast he learned it. But he loved the language. He loved to speak it. He preferred to speak Russian than English any time. He always would switch from English to Russian.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/bouhe.htm

Mr. BOUHE - I never discussed a membership in any organization or hunting club. But I now remember that when I asked him after the week's work is done, what do you do--"Well, the boys and I go and hunt duck."
And he said, "ducklings". The reason why I remember it is because he didn't say "duck," but he said in Russian the equivalent of "duckys-duckys".
Mr. LIEBELER - He used the Russian word that was not the precise word to describe duck?
Mr. BOUHE - Yes; but a man going shooting would not use it. He spoke in Russian and did not try to get the Russian word exactly.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you speak to Oswald in the Russian language from time to time?
Mr. BOUHE - Yes; I did.
Mr. LIEBELER - Did you form an impression as to his command of that language?
Mr. BOUHE - Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER - What was that impression?
Mr. BOUHE - A very strange assortment of words. Grammatically not perfect, but an apparent ease to express himself in that language.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did Oswald's command of the Russian language seem to be about what you would expect from him, having been in Russia for that period of time? Would you say it was good?
Mr. BOUHE - I would say very good.
Mr. LIEBELER - You think he had a good command of the language, considering the amount of time he had spent in Russia?
Mr. BOUHE - Sir, for everyday conversations, yes. But I think that if I would have asked him to write, I would think he would have difficulty.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/raigorod.htm

Mr. RAIGORODSKY. Well, from what I understand, George De Mohrenschildt comes from what we call by-the-Baltic Germans.
Mr. JENNER. What is--by-the-Baltic Germans?
Mr. RAIGORODSKY. The by-the-Baltic Germans are Germans that lived by the Baltic Sea and they were Russians or rather, Russiafied Germans and they were in the service of the Czar for generations and generations and were considered Russians. Most of them were barons, you know, and I don't know whether George's family were or not, but the "de" Mohrenschildt signifies that his family had a title.
 

Posted in the Education Forum by Jack White April 2, 2010

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/15686-did-harvey-return-from-russia/page/3/

“I am still doing comparisons of the Russian LHO with the Dallas LHO. Some depict the same person, some do not. The point is...we do not really know what the variety of LHOs in Russia represents...a substitute or doctored photos, or both. But the photos show something suspicious was going on. This leaves us to wonder...did the fake defector Harvey return to the US, or was a Russian impostor substituted for the US impostor?

Jack”

 

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

3 hours ago, James Norwood said:

Steve,

 I would personally welcome the information you have about Crigler.

James,

Here is what I have picked up along the way:

On December 6, 1963 Thomas Crigler was interviewed by the FBI. He said that he met Ofstein “accidentally” on the street.

See FBI interview of Crigler December 6, 1963:

CD 205 p. 478

https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10672#relPageId=481&tab=page

 

Thomas H. Crigler, Jr., 1705 McAdams, advised he is currently a Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army Security Agency, Field Representative, assigned to U.S. Army Recruiting Station, Dallas. He advised that he and Dennis Ofstein were assigned to the same U.S. Army branch in Europe and that he knew Ofstein from about June, 1960 to December, 1960 purely as another person attached to the same unit with him. He said that he had never become socially or well acquainted with Ofstein at that time. He said the caption of their group was the 507^th USASA Group, Heilbron, West Germany.”

 

(This is actually spelled Heibronn.)

 

1705 McAdams Ave. is in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, about a thousand feet south of Illinois, just off Rugged Dr.

Colin Crow:

http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=11247.25;wap2

“OFSTEIN said this statement aroused his suspicions and he asked Sgt. TOM CRIGLER, who is employed with the U. S. Army Recruiting Station, Dallas, and is a resident of the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, regarding this. He said he told CRIGLER he had run into a fellow at work who had spent some time in Russia and he wondered if the FBI should run a security check on him inasmuch as he, OFSTEIN, did not want to jeopardize his own status for any possible future security clearances in the event he ever returned to the U. S. Army."

The problem with the above is the fact that Sgt. Tom Crigler told the FBI that Ofstein contacted him in August, 1963. Five months AFTER Oswald had left Jaggars. Why would Ofstein suddenly want the FBI to run a check on Oswald in August, 1963 when he allegedly hadn't seen the guy in five months? Why would Ofstein be concerned about "future security clearances" a minimum of five months after Oswald had spoken to him about "microdots" and three months before the assassination? Why did Ofstein say it was the "microdot" conversation that pushed him into the Crigler meeting but fail to mention the meeting was in August?

Ofstein also states that Oswald gave him the details of his P.O. Box address in Dallas and that he sent a letter to it after Oswald had left the company asking (AGAIN) if Oswald and his wife wanted to visit his house for dinner.”

He said that he met Olfstein “accidentally” on the street, and that, “he knew Ofstein from about June, 1960 to December, 1960 purely as another person attached to the same unit with him. He said that he had never become socially or well acquainted with Ofstein

However, he said later in his FBI interview that about a week after meeting Ofstein in the street in August, Ofstein and his family came to Crigler's house, and that twice more he and his wife visited Ofstein at his (Ofstein's) house.

 

Ofstein's WC testimony was taken at 2 p.m., on March 30, 1964.

Mr. OFSTEIN. No, sir. After Oswald was released from employment, I did ask the recruiting sergeant for Army security here in town, who I was stationed with overseas, about the possibility of getting the FBI to run a routine check on him because of the fact that I have done security work, and the. fact that I also--this was just before I wrote the letter to Oswald inviting him and his wife over--due to the fact that I wanted to keep my record clean. Well, I didn't suspect him as being a spy or anything like that--I just wanted to make sure I was with the right company, and he told me that it was probably nothing.
Mr. JENNER. You wanted to inquire not only with respect to him but also whether you were with the right company?
Mr. OFSTEIN. Well, sir, I wouldn't jeopardize losing any chance of getting a security clearance at anytime I needed it.
Mr. JENNER. And, Sergeant Crozier, did you say his name was--I believe it is Sergeant Geiger.
Mr. OFSTEIN. His first name is Tom--I can't remember his last name now.
Mr. JENNER. Or, is it Kriegler?
Mr. OFSTEIN . Kriegler yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. He had been in the service with you, you had served together?
Mr. OFSTEIN. Yes, sir.

 

So, sometime between August, 1963 (and at least three more times when they had been in each others' homes) and a two-day FBI interview on December 2^nd and 3^rd, 1963, Ofstein forgot Crigler's last name by March, 1964.

 

Seems a little odd.

 

http://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?http&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/ASA%20Europe/USAREUR_319thASABn.htm

 

The 507^th US Army Security Agency Group was established on August 10, 1957/

 

In researching the 507^th UASA Group:

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/ASA%20Europe/USAREUR_ASAE.htm

 

In contrast to Vietnam where airborne COMINT was playing a significant role in the 1960s, there was no need for airborne COMINT assets in Europe where the ASA collected COMINT via a well-established network of fixed Field Stations.”

 

“Our mission was communications monitoring and intercept “

 

According to Wikileaks the Army Security Agency:

“The Agency existed between 1945 and 1976 and was the successor to Army signal intelligence operations dating back to World War I. ASA was under the operational control of the Director of the National Security Agency (DIRNSA), located at Fort Meade, Maryland; but had its own tactical commander at Headquarters, ASA, Arlington Hall Station, VA.”

 

“Composed of soldiers trained in military intelligence, the ASA was tasked with monitoring and interpreting military communications of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and their allies and client states around the world. The ASA was directly subordinate to the National Security Agency and all major field stations had NSA technical representatives present.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Security_Agency

 

These are two very interesting websites. Many of the men went through the Language School at Monterey. They were on the front lines of the East/West tensions at the height of the Cold War in Germany. Their job was to monitor, intercept and translate Russian and East German military radio traffic:

 

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/ASA%20Europe/USAREUR_ASAE.htm

 

In May 1951, HHC, 502nd Communications Reconnaissance (Comm Rcn) Group was activated at Ft. Devens, MA. The unit received orders to move to Germany in June 1952. Upon arrival in Europe, the Group was assigned to HQ ASA, Europe and ordered to Badenerhof Kaserne in Heilbronn. The 502nd was probably further attached to the Seventh Army and assigned the mission of providing signal intelligence and security support to the field army and its subordinate units. At this time, the 502d Group also assumed control of the 302d and 307th Communications Reconnaissance Battalions which were already in country.

On 15 October 1957, the 502nd ASA Gp was redesignated as 507th USASA Gp.

The 507^th reported directly to Headquarters USA Europe.

 

Paul Mowrey, Det K-1, Coburg, 1957-58:

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/ASA%20Europe/USAREUR_ASAE.htm

 

“The primary mission at Coburg when I was there was intercepting Russian and German voice traffic, mostly tank units in some phase of their training cycle. I was part of about 10 students who graduated from the ASA Voice Intercept School in Feb, 1957. After the surge in traffic from the Hungarian Revolution and perhaps to attain more central control over what is going on, the Army decided to upgrade Russian language transcription services. This effort was headed by CWO Owen Yates in the 502nd (GP) in Heilbronn.

All transcription material from Lübeck, Bahrdorf, Coburg, and Passau came to Heilbronn to be checked or cross referenced. After we gained some experience we were sent out to the 302nd and 307th.”

 

So, Ofstein went to the Monterey School of Languages where he studied Russian for a year, and knew German which he had “picked up while he was in Germany” working for a military unit who job it was to intercept and translate Russian and East German military radio traffic.

 

Men who joined the ASA were recruited at the recruiting station, before they went off to basic training.

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/ofstein.htm

 

Mr. OFSTEIN Well, when I went in the service I was interested in radio--I was a disc jockey at the time, and the closest thing my recruiting sergeant said that I could get to radio would be possibly with the Army security agency, so I signed up, and after basic training I went to Fort Devens, Mass., and was held there on a temporary status while the agency determined what type training I should have, and I was given a language ability test and passed that and had a choice of three languages to take, and Russian was my first choice and I was sent to Monterey to study.

http://www.fortdevensmuseum.org/ArmySecurityAgency.php

Submitted by Walter Chisholm

“Most enlistees who joined the Army when I did, did so for a period of three years and that was my intention, too. However, after taking the ordinary battery of tests given to new recruits, I and two others in my group were called aside and taken to a room to talk to another recruiter. He told us that our high scores on those tests qualified us to join an elite group of soldiers in the "Army Security Agency". Of course we had never heard of the ASA and when we asked questions he seemed quite evasive saying only that it was so secret that he couldn't tell us much about it, but he used the words "Top Secret" several times. Sounded very "cloak and dagger. He made a point that "you don't have much time to decide. If you accept, I have to get you on a plane to Fort Jackson SC where you will undergo basic training and then go on to your ASA schooling."

(Source: Email from John O'Neil) (served in 1960)

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/ASA%20Europe/USAREUR_ASAE.htm

 

My next duty station (after Vint Hill Farms) was with the 507th USASA Group (Field Army) at Heilbronn am Neckar. We had 4 -2½ ton trucks with expandable sides that held all our IBM equipment that ran off portable diesel generators (one per truck).

 

Jim Campbell in his email said “(When I was in, no 206 had ever re-enlisted - IBM had a job ready for them when they got out.)” When I got out I went to the IBM office in San Francisco, showed them my diploma with TJ Watson’s signature and asked for a job, they asked me what I knew about computers, so I told them I’d seen one in Germany. I got the hint when they said ‘Goodbye, thanks for stopping in”.

Late in 1962 was not the time to look for a job repairing the soon to be obsolete IBM punched card machines! It all turned out for the best. I worked as a tab operator while I taught myself computer programming and all that stuff and lived happily ever after. My wife, our three children and I moved to Australia 40 years ago.

 

Hielbronn was where Dennis Ofstein of Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall fame and Thomas H. Crigler were stationed.

Thomas Crigler worked as an Army recruiter. There was a recruiting office about one or two blocks from the Texas Theater and Brewer's Shoe store in Oak Cliff. Crigler lived at 1705 McAdams in Oak Cliff.

Did Crigler know the “IBM men” from Johnny Brewer’s shoe store?

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

 

 

[John Butler]

18 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

John,

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/oswald_m1.htm

WC testimony February 3, 1964

Mr. RANKIN. Did you know that Lee Oswald was an American when you first met him?
Mrs. OSWALD. I found that out at the end of that party, towards the end of that party, when I was first introduced to him, I didn't know that.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscamar1.htm

HSCA testimony 1977?

Mrs. PORTER. No, I didn't. When he asked to dance, we just talked very little.
Mr. McDONALD. Did he tell you he was an American?
Mrs. PORTER. No, not at that--not during the dancing, no.
Mr. McDONALD. At this time you were speaking in Russian together?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes. He spoke with accent so I assumed he was maybe from another state, which is customary in Russia. People from other states do speak with accents because they do not speak Russian. They speak different languages.
Mr. McDONALD. So when you say another state, you mean another Russian state?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes, like Estonia, Lithuania, something like that.
Mr. McDONALD. Did you suspect at all that he was an American?
Mrs. PORTER. No, not at all.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/demohr_g.htm

Mr. JENNER. What was your impression of his command of Russian?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, he spoke fluent Russian, but with a foreign accent, and made mistakes, grammatical mistakes, but had remarkable fluency in Russian.
Mr. JENNER. It was remarkable?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Remarkable--for a fellow of his background and education, it is remarkable how fast he learned it. But he loved the language. He loved to speak it. He preferred to speak Russian than English any time. He always would switch from English to Russian.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/bouhe.htm

Mr. BOUHE - I never discussed a membership in any organization or hunting club. But I now remember that when I asked him after the week's work is done, what do you do--"Well, the boys and I go and hunt duck."
And he said, "ducklings". The reason why I remember it is because he didn't say "duck," but he said in Russian the equivalent of "duckys-duckys".
Mr. LIEBELER - He used the Russian word that was not the precise word to describe duck?
Mr. BOUHE - Yes; but a man going shooting would not use it. He spoke in Russian and did not try to get the Russian word exactly.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you speak to Oswald in the Russian language from time to time?
Mr. BOUHE - Yes; I did.
Mr. LIEBELER - Did you form an impression as to his command of that language?
Mr. BOUHE - Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER - What was that impression?
Mr. BOUHE - A very strange assortment of words. Grammatically not perfect, but an apparent ease to express himself in that language.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did Oswald's command of the Russian language seem to be about what you would expect from him, having been in Russia for that period of time? Would you say it was good?
Mr. BOUHE - I would say very good.
Mr. LIEBELER - You think he had a good command of the language, considering the amount of time he had spent in Russia?
Mr. BOUHE - Sir, for everyday conversations, yes. But I think that if I would have asked him to write, I would think he would have difficulty.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/raigorod.htm

Mr. RAIGORODSKY. Well, from what I understand, George De Mohrenschildt comes from what we call by-the-Baltic Germans.
Mr. JENNER. What is--by-the-Baltic Germans?
Mr. RAIGORODSKY. The by-the-Baltic Germans are Germans that lived by the Baltic Sea and they were Russians or rather, Russiafied Germans and they were in the service of the Czar for generations and generations and were considered Russians. Most of them were barons, you know, and I don't know whether George's family were or not, but the "de" Mohrenschildt signifies that his family had a title.
 

Posted in the Education Forum by Jack White April 2, 2010

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/15686-did-harvey-return-from-russia/page/3/

“I am still doing comparisons of the Russian LHO with the Dallas LHO. Some depict the same person, some do not. The point is...we do not really know what the variety of LHOs in Russia represents...a substitute or doctored photos, or both. But the photos show something suspicious was going on. This leaves us to wonder...did the fake defector Harvey return to the US, or was a Russian impostor substituted for the US impostor?

Jack”

 

Steve Thomas

Steve,

There's a great deal of variation when it comes to learning a different language.  I don't have the ability except for retaining cursive language. 

What popped into my mind was Sir Richard Francis Burton the author of the Arabian nights, The Book of the Thousand Nights.  He was an Arabophile, if their is such a word, a man who loved everything connect to the Arab people.  It is said he learned fluent Arabic with a time of about 2 weeks.  He could speak Arabic fluently.  Enough to fool Arabs and visit the sacred city of Mecca and the Kaaba (Ka'bah) which was strictly forbidden to non-believers and infidels.

[James Norwood]

2 hours ago, John Butler said:

There's a great deal of variation when it comes to learning a different language

John,

I agree with your statement above.  In the case of Sir Richard Francis Burton, it was recognized when he was a child that he had a great facility for learning foreign languages.  He was born into privilege and had the finest tutors and education of his era.  He eventually graduated from Oxford University.  There is no doubt that he was a brilliant linguist; he could pick up languages quickly; and he was passionate especially about Arab culture, leading to his adaptation of the famous Thousand and One Nights.

In the case of Oswald, he was a high school dropout who never completed his freshman year.  There is no known instance of a teacher, friend, or family member who recalled his interest and facility in learning foreign languages as a youngster.  There is no known instance of anyone witnessing him studying a Russian language textbook, conjugating verbs, or working on vocabulary lists with flash cards.  The inveterate Warren Commission apologist Robert Oswald wrote in his memoir that his "brother" taught himself Russian.  But if that were true, it would have been corroborated by a teacher, friend, or fellow student.

Oswald certainly "could" have taught himself Russian.  But he would have left behind a paper trail of eyewitness or documentary evidence of how he did it.  In this thread, Steve and I were discussing the Warren Commission testimony of Dennis Offstein, who kept badgering Oswald in the attempt to understand how he could speak Russian so well, whereas Offstein still struggled after a year of intensive Russian language study at the Monterey institute.  If Oswald had taught himself Russian, he likely would have been proud of that accomplishment and described his experience.  Instead, he was silent and never offered a clue about his fluency.

 

 

  

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by James Norwood

[Steve Thomas]

33 minutes ago, James Norwood said:

John,

Offstein still struggled after a year of intensive Russian language study at the Monterey institute.

James,

I would only add a note of caution about that. To the best of my knowledge, we only have Ofstein's word on that, and I think I've picked up a couple of instances where he was less than truthful shall we say; such as not remembering Crigler's last name, even after visiting in their respective homes on at least three different occasions.

Steve Thomas