Oswald's language abilities and evidence related to his Soviet soujourn (1959-63)

[James Norwood]

40 minutes ago, Bill Simpich said:

I don't feel like I can make a statement like "Oswald was an agent"  without providing a pretty accurate yardstick so someone else can judge its reliability.  

The true measurements on the "yardstick" become apparent by placing the Oswald sojourn carefully in its historical context.  The fact that a United States Marine would attempt to defect to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War was a major event.  At this time of the "thaw," there were delicate negotiations for détente in the Paris summit scheduled for the following May.  Fletcher Prouty has made the case that the U-2 spy plane debacle was an intentional act of sabotage designed by Richard Bissell of CIA in order to scuttle the peace talks.  The Oswald defection served the same purpose at a time when Eisenhower was genuinely seeking rapprochement.  When examined in this historical context, the Oswald project was a significant event, and Oswald was a significant asset.

There is an inherent limitation to focusing exclusively on the documents, Bill.  We must examine the totality of the evidence as the basis for our accurate yardstick.

Edited June 15, 2020 by James Norwood

[Paul Brancato]

2 hours ago, Robert Montenegro said:

Here is a link to a website selling an actual Cuban Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Certificate for Common Capital Stock: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/cuban-venezuelan-oil-voting-trust-39499259

Interesting that the seller of the paper stock says the following in there sales pitch:

QUOTE – "...Crichtons personal papers can be found in the Bush Sr. Library. I am really disturbed though that the amount of information on the subject of Cuban pre-revolutionary oil development on the Internet is much less than a year ago including articles in Wikipedia. There used to be information about U.S. oil companies collaborating with Bautista that I can no longer find. Last year, on January 2nd I wrote this article . It tells a very disturbing story that I was easily able to put together from references online. Many of those references do not exist anymore, WTF! Also a large number of articles on the history of U.S. oil companies in Venezuela are gone! History is rewritten in front of our eyes, hello 1984..." – END QUOTE.

Apparently, according to the seller, much of the information that could be found online about C.V.O.V.T. has been deleted over the past five years.

 

What a find. I’m curious if any of the wonderful thinkers and researchers on this thread about Oswald think that in the end he was involved in the assassination conspiracy, as a shooter or anything else. I ask that because analyzing his Russian language ability, or looking at the possibility that their were 2 Oswalds, or figuring out which intelligence agency was running him or them up until his defection, might not reveal the guilty party or parties. To that end, I would say that whoever ran him through his defection, it’s pretty clear that it was Army Intelligence that set him up as the patsy and controlled key members of the Dallas Police Force. 
Do you think that the place to look for Jack Crichton’s papers are in the George Bush Sr. Presidential library? 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Bill Simpich said:

No, Sandy, but what I am saying is that when discussing a possible "Oswald Project" - that's "not supposed to exist" - it's difficult to enter it into an evidentiary database or to use it in any context or any discussion without knowing the origin of the story and corroborating evidence that supports the story.

 

Bill,

FWIW, my reason for saying that I believe Oswald was in deep cover wasn't to persuade you on that point... it was so I could explain how it could be that he -- as an agent -- wasn't being supported by his intelligence agency. (To persuade you of the deep cover thing and the Oswald Project would require a great deal of effort and time.)

BTW, there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence supporting the existence of an Oswald Project.

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Sandy Larsen

[John Butler]

1 hour ago, James Norwood said:

The true measurements on the "yardstick" become apparent by placing the Oswald sojourn carefully in its historical context.  The fact that a United States Marine would attempt to defect to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War was a major event.  At this time of the "thaw," there were delicate negotiations for détente in the Paris summit scheduled for the following May.  Fletcher Prouty has made the case that the U-2 spy plane debacle was an intentional act of sabotage designed by Richard Bissell of CIA in order to scuttle the peace talks.  The Oswald defection served the same purpose at a time when Eisenhower was genuinely seeking rapprochement.  When examined in this historical context, the Oswald project was a significant event, and Oswald was a significant asset.

What's those old sayings?  "Follow the money" and "It's all about the money."  What was Oswald worth to the Russians?  I did some work on this sometime back and this is what I found:

Let’s summarize Oswald’s pay in relation to others:

Kim Philby- The most notorious Cold War British spy received 1670 rubles from the Soviets when he defected.

Lee Harvey Oswald- Oswald received 1400 rubles, 700 for his job and 700 more from the Red Cross (actually the MVD secret police) for a low rate job at the radio factory in Minsk.  This info on the low quality job comes from fellow workers.

Robert Webster- A Rand Company worker who defected to the Soviet Union.  For helping them make a spray gun he had demonstrated was given first 1000 rubles and later a salary of 280 rubles per month with a semi-annual bonus of 50 to 60 rubles.

Workers at the Minsk Radio factory- Average pay there was about the 70 rubles, perhaps a little higher for women, as Oswald stated he would receive at first.

As you can see, whatever Oswald did for the Russians they considered almost as valuable as a spy who worked for them undercover in Britain for nearly 50 years. Philby joined the Communist Part around 1912 as a student.  Philby was a top rank British Intelligence officer in MI6.  (And, lunch partner of James Jesus Angleton.) 

Here I made a mistake through not knowing enough.  I said "for a low rate job at the radio factory in Minsk."  Actually, Oswald was sent to the largest electronics factory in the Soviet Union in Minsk to be a regulator (Supervisor) in the Experimental Shop.  To the Russians what Oswald had to offer was worth far more than what Robert Webster had to offer.  The connection between the two is tenuous. 

This could only be technical information that would give the Russians the edge to shoot down the U2.  This new radar system would be developed in the Experimental Shop.  Oswald's whole career in the Marines revolved around first aircraft maintenance and repair and then his main pursuit radar control.  He spent from 1957 to 1959 in radar related activities at Atsugi, Japan (the CIA's largest post in the orient) and at El Toro in the US.  He was sent to other secret bases perhaps to learn more.  Obviously, this was for the U2 and Atomic Energy secrets.  That is what he was doing in Nevada (near Area 51) and Arizona (the top secret Marine Base involved in NORAD activities). 

I'm with Mae Brussels and now James Norwood on this.  Oswald, an American agent, was sent to the Soviet Union to help the Russians shoot down the U2 and screw up the Eisenhower/Khrushchev talks.

   

 

[Robert Montenegro]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

I’m curious if any of the wonderful thinkers and researchers on this thread about Oswald think that in the end he was involved in the assassination conspiracy, as a shooter or anything else. 

From my personal observations, Mr. Brancato, I personally believe Lee Harvey Oswald, in terms of the events of 22 November 1963, acted as a native management operations liaison of sorts, very similar to what he was doing in the USSR Eastern-bloc countries. 

The assassination teams need men to go into the kill zone, months in advance, and take measurements of roads, buildings, sign posts, angles of elevation (from the assassination mechanic's locations and where their future target would be), the effects of seasonal meteorological data (in terms of what caliber weapon would be effects by wind patterns and humidity in the kill zone), the time tables of privates security teams, the movements of co-workers, ect.

This is especially true of Dealey Plaza, which had several building and the sewer system, under construction.

That is what I see Lee Harvey Oswald doing from the moment he is given the job at the John Sexton & Co. Building (the "...School Book Depository...") from CIA asset Ruth Hyde Paine.

Oswald's other job (and others like him, double-dangles and look-alikes) was to sow the seeds of deception. Give the impression to targeted individuals, that he is an idiot, a loner, a fool, a Marxist-Leninist, in order to create a legend. I certainly do not believe Oswald did this knowing he was going to be sacrificed, but he had done similar cover and deception operations for William Guy Banister, and may have been told he needed to infiltrate liberal establishments in and around Dallas, Texas, in order to protect the industrial interests of the weapons manufacturing factories surrounding the city (think of Oswald's relationship with Max Clark, the industrial security supervisor at General Dynamics).

Another aspect of Oswald's activities may be providing security for the guns-for-drugs smuggling network in Dallas. If you were to move an assassination team into Dealey Plaza, and follow the "ZR/RIFLE" template, then you move those assassins thru an already existing smuggling network. Like Joseph Francis Civello's heroin smuggling network. Or Sergio Arcacha-Smith's white slavery sex trafficking network. Or Jack Ruby's gun smuggling network.

Let's say (hypothetically speaking ) George Hunter White used his QJ/WIN informant, Jack Ruby, to move “Gladio-Organisation de l’Armée Secrète-Ordine Nuovo” assassins thru Ruby’s “Dirección Federal de Seguridad” protected narcotics/arms trade courier routes. ZR/JEWEL commanders Lt. Col. Lucien Emile Conein, Grayston Leroy Lynch and William “RIP” Robertson met the assassins and set them up in FBN-CIA safe houses in El Paso, controlled by E. Howard Hunt. William King Harvey’s Staff-D provided pasties for the job, and his ZR/RIFLE teams had “scoped out” and ran the security of the Dealey Plaza “Big Event”.

And Oswald is the dupe, and never knew it until the shots were ringing on 22 November 1963.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Robert Montenegro

[James Norwood]

10 minutes ago, John Butler said:

I'm with Mae Brussels and now James Norwood on this.  Oswald, an American agent, was sent to the Soviet Union to help the Russians shoot down the U2 and screw up the Eisenhower/Khrushchev talks.

John,

Many thanks for your post.  I just want to clarify that I do not believe that Oswald was sent to help the Russians shoot down the U-2.  But I do believe that the timing of the apparent defection in 1959 was intended to disrupt efforts in diplomacy during the period of the thaw. 

The matter of the U-2 is a complex one.  It is possible that Powers' aircraft was sabotaged with the intent for the plane to crash, and the Soviets may not have even shot it down.  Here is Fletcher Prouty's analysis:

"When the plane did not restart, Powers was forced to let it continue to spiral toward the earth, and then at a safer altitude either bail out...or continue down to the ground.  Actually some of the early pictures of the U-2 showed an aircraft that was relatively undamaged, when one considers that it was hit by a rocket in the air and then crashed into the ground."  (L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World (Costa Mesa, CA:  Institute for Political Review, 1973), 376.

Oswald may have had no knowledge of Francis Gary Powers or his fateful U-2 flight that occurred on May 1, 1960.  But his handlers may well have been using him as a pawn in the same way they used Powers.  In earlier posts, Bill has discussed the shabby way that Oswald was treated by his superiors, and I agree that the treatment was abysmal.  But if Fletcher Prouty is correct, then Powers wasn't treated any better if the intent was to sabotage his aircraft in the likelihood that he would either die in the crash or take a suicide capsule.

[John Butler]

On ‎6‎/‎15‎/‎2020 at 10:30 PM, James Norwood said:

Many thanks for your post.  I just want to clarify that I do not believe that Oswald was sent to help the Russians shoot down the U-2.  But I do believe that the timing of the apparent defection in 1959 was intended to disrupt efforts in diplomacy during the period of the thaw. 

Thanks James,

For your clarification.  I will keep that in mind.

[Mathias Baumann]

On 6/15/2020 at 2:57 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

Bill,

Thank you for that stipulation.  Foreign language instructor Mathias Baumann stated on this forum that, in his opinion, obtaining Oswald’s tested proficiency in Russian would require, in a language less difficult than Russian, “80 to 120 individual (one-on-one) lessons (a lesson being 45 minutes) or 400 lessons of a group course to reach this level in the German language (provided that you already know the Roman Alphabet). These numbers do not include the time you need for homework, mind you.”

And of course, Mr. Baumann’s estimates did not include time to become familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet, extensively different from our own.  Aren’t you curious about how Oswald obtained that knowledge of Russian?  If he obtained it in the Marine Corps, why was he given this extensive training if not to be a spy in Russia?  If he acquired his Russian abilities earlier, as a child, what does this say about our current understanding of the biography of “Lee Harvey Oswald?” 

Also, as Dr. Norwood pointed out in his Russian Fluency article, it should be noted that of the numerous Marines stationed at the Santa Ana MACS 9 facility who indicated Oswald had knowledge of Russian, James Anthony Botelho said that “Oswald subscribed to a newspaper printed in Russian, which I believe he said was published in San Francisco.”

How many Russian-language newspapers do you supposed were published in San Francisco in 1959?  I can’t prove it, but my guess is there was only one, and it was this one:

Note that, in the upper right corner of page 1 of the 2007 edition shown above,  the Russian-language paper billed itself as a “RUSSIAN NATIONAL ANTICOMMUNIST NEWSPAPER SINCE AUGUST 5, 1921.”  So it was clearly in existence in 1959 when Oswald probably subscribed to it.  Can anyone name another San Francisco paper published in Russian in 1959?

The burning question then becomes, why would an alleged Marine Corps communist sympathizer like Oswald subscribe to an anti-communist Russian-language newspaper? Was he really what he was pretending to be?

Dear Jim,

if I remember correctly your explanation for Oswald's remarkable fluency in Russian was that he learned it in school in Hungary in the late 1940s. I found believable evidence on the internet that  Russian was not taught in Hungarian public schools until many years later. I still think that the most likely explanation for Oswald's language skills is that he took a fair amount of lessons, probably one-on-one lessons. I remember that someone posted an interview with Oswald's Marine buddy Delgado, who thought that Oswald learned Russian in Berlin (Berlitz?). That seems like a plausible explanation to me. Now I accept that there is no evidence that Oswald ever took lessons at a Berlitz school. But he almost certainly did not learn Russian in Hungary. So what is your current theory now? Where and how did Oswald learn Russian, in your opinion?

[John Butler]

From James Norwood on the Harvey and Lee site:

"Shortly after Oswald began work in the Minsk factory, Comrade Libezin, the local Communist Party Secretary, approached a university-educated engineer named Stanislav Shushkevich with the task of tutoring Oswald in Russian, along with an eyewitness named Sasha Rubinchik, so that no single Soviet official would be left alone with Oswald.  Shushkevich related to journalist Peter Savodnik that Oswald knew only a “few words, so it was impossible to discuss anything abstract, and he had trouble expressing anything that was not in the present tense.” [26]  Mailer, who personally met with Shushkevich, recounts how the tutoring work progressed at a snail’s pace:  "Lessons took place in a second-floor room after work....Shushkevich just worked on verbs, and occasionally tried to teach this American colloquial Russian....Their lessons proceeded without great enthusiasm, and Oswald found Russian difficult.  He did get to a point where he could achieve understanding if Shushkevich spoke slowly, used gestures, wrote words on pieces of paper, and sometimes brought out a dictionary." [27]  While polite and cooperative, Oswald was clearly not responding like a competent foreign language student.  In a 2013 interview conducted on Radio Free Europe, Shushkevich vividly recalled one of the tutorials:

“[Oswald] seemed to have very strong habits that weren't suitable for studying Russian -- especially with the accents in Russian words.  I would teach him to say, ‘Ya DOO-ma-yu’ (‘I think’), but he insisted on saying, ‘Doo-MAH-yu.’  We would be going over the tenses, and he kept saying, ‘Ya Doo-MAH-yu.’  You see, I simply could not get him to say, ‘DOO-ma-yu.’” [28]

In the end, Shushkevich was frustrated as an instructor because he could never understand why Oswald had come to the Soviet Union.  Shushkevich informed Savodnik that Oswald’s presence in his country “did not make sense.  He didn’t appear to know a lot.  He didn’t appear to want to know a lot.” [29]  But, it makes perfect sense if Oswald had been sent to the Soviet Union as a spy.  In preparation for the 2013 interview, the Radio Free Europe reporter Pavel Butorin had studied Oswald’s essay entitled “The Collective” that was prepared in the United States after he returned from the Soviet Union.  Butorin recognized that the report was so detailed about Soviet working and living conditions that “it’s as if he had been on a research mission here.” [30]  In other words, Oswald was gathering intelligence about his nation’s greatest adversary during the Cold War.  Savodnik learned that the KGB’s implicit goal in Shushkevich’s tutorials was “to see how much Russian Oswald really knew.” [31]  If that was true, then Oswald was playing his role as a spy to a tee by concealing his skills in the Russian language while observing the landscape and making notes to be used in his future reports."

Does this describe Harvey or Lee?  Is it the American who couldn't learn Russian or the American who hid his language abilities successfully?  Answer this question and I think you will have a greater understanding of the issue.

[James Norwood]

2 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:

Dear Jim,

if I remember correctly your explanation for Oswald's remarkable fluency in Russian was that he learned it in school in Hungary in the late 1940s. I found believable evidence on the internet that  Russian was not taught in Hungarian public schools until many years later. I still think that the most likely explanation for Oswald's language skills is that he took a fair amount of lessons, probably one-on-one lessons. I remember that someone posted an interview with Oswald's Marine buddy Delgado, who thought that Oswald learned Russian in Berlin (Berlitz?). That seems like a plausible explanation to me. Now I accept that there is no evidence that Oswald ever took lessons at a Berlitz school. But he almost certainly did not learn Russian in Hungary. So what is your current theory now? Where and how did Oswald learn Russian, in your opinion?

Mathias,

I am certain that Jim Hargrove will respond to your post, as he knows the context of your earlier interchange.

In the meantime, here are my perspectives in response to your questions:

(1)  In the postwar years, there was an influx of more than 200,00 refugees to America coming from Eastern Europe.  We cannot say for certain that Harvey Oswald was a refugee from Hungary.  He could have come from any one of the newly formed Eastern Bloc nations.  I would not rule out Hungary as a possibility.  According to historian Agnes Vamos, the teaching of Russian language became compulsory in Hungary from 1945 until the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a half century later.  Vamos writes that

“after World War II, Hungary, similarly to other Eastern European countries, found itself in the Soviet Union occupied zone.  The extension of the hegemony of Russian language started in Eastern Europe and in Hungary as well.  Its aim was to contribute to the cohesion of the Eastern Bloc, a ‘fraternal community’, by promoting the culture through language teaching.”  (Agnes Vamos,  “Hungarian-Russian bilingual schools in Hungary during the Soviet occupation (1945-1989),” Paedogogica Historica (June 2018, Vol. 54, Issue 3, pp. 301-19):  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00309230.2017.1349158

(2)  A second point is that, depending on the family, a child growing up in Eastern Europe either during the war or in the postwar years, may have learned to speak Russian at home, due to bilingual parents.  A colleague of mine was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, who would have been almost the exact age as Oswald.  The colleague informed me that in his childhood he had already learned to speak both Polish and Russian at home prior to starting school.

(3)  Regarding Nelson Delgado and other Marines who witnessed Oswald reading publications in the Russian language, there is no evidence that they saw him engaged in language study, either by the use of a textbook, flash cards, or tutorials with an expert.  Yet somehow, by 1959, Oswald was already competent enough to be reading newspapers, journals, novels, and other literature. 

Russian is challenging language.  It would be even more daunting for a high school dropout with no formal training to become as competent as Oswald was prior to the time he left for the Soviet Union in 1959.  If he were receiving “one-on-one lessons” during his stint in the Marines, the major questions to be answered are:  (a) who was giving him the lessons?; (b) when did the lessons occur outside of his well-documented regular Marine duties?; (c) where did they occur?; and (d) how could he have attained a skill set in such a short time to be able to take an Army Russian-language competency exam?  Zack Stout was a fellow Marine who worked alongside Oswald every day for a ten-month period either in the radar bubble in Atsugi, the Philippines, Subic Bay, aboard ship, and while they were on liberty.  Neither Stout nor any other Marine witnessed Oswald receiving lessons in the Russian language.

James       

[Mathias Baumann]

6 minutes ago, James Norwood said:

Mathias,

I am certain that Jim Hargrove will respond to your post, as he knows the context of your earlier interchange.

In the meantime, here are my perspectives in response to your questions:

(1)  In the postwar years, there was an influx of more than 200,00 refugees to America coming from Eastern Europe.  We cannot say for certain that Harvey Oswald was a refugee from Hungary.  He could have come from any one of the newly formed Eastern Bloc nations.  I would not rule out Hungary as a possibility.  According to historian Agnes Vamos, the teaching of Russian language became compulsory in Hungary from 1945 until the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a half century later.  Vamos writes that

“after World War II, Hungary, similarly to other Eastern European countries, found itself in the Soviet Union occupied zone.  The extension of the hegemony of Russian language started in Eastern Europe and in Hungary as well.  Its aim was to contribute to the cohesion of the Eastern Bloc, a ‘fraternal community’, by promoting the culture through language teaching.”  (Agnes Vamos,  “Hungarian-Russian bilingual schools in Hungary during the Soviet occupation (1945-1989),” Paedogogica Historica (June 2018, Vol. 54, Issue 3, pp. 301-19):  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00309230.2017.1349158

"after World War II" is not the same thing as "1945". It takes many years to establish an efficient foreign language program. Teachers have to be trained, school books need to be written... That just doesn't happen over night. It seems that compulsory Russian language instruction in Hungary started in 1950. -> http://ludens.elte.hu/~deal/pages/novelty/htm2/vol91/lukacs.html

 

6 minutes ago, James Norwood said:

(2)  A second point is that, depending on the family, a child growing up in Eastern Europe either during the war or in the postwar years, may have learned to speak Russian at home, due to bilingual parents.  A colleague of mine was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, who would have been almost the exact age as Oswald.  The colleague informed me that in his childhood he had already learned to speak both Polish and Russian at home prior to starting school.

Poland was part of the Russian empire until World War I. So there were certainly many Russian-speaking Poles.

Hungary on the other hand was part of the Austrian empire. It should also be noted that Russian and Hungarian are completely unrelated languages (in fact Hungarian is more closely related to Finnish), while Russian and Polish are both Slavic languages. So for a Pole it should be much easier to learn Russian than for a Hungarian.

(3)  Regarding Nelson Delgado and other Marines who witnessed Oswald reading publications in the Russian language, there is no evidence that they saw him engaged in language study, either by the use of a textbook, flash cards, or tutorials with an expert.  Yet somehow, by 1959, Oswald was already competent enough to be reading newspapers, journals, novels, and other literature. 

Well, we know he had Russian books and papers. But we do not know how well he understood them.

Russian is challenging language.  It would be even more daunting for a high school dropout with no formal training to become as competent as Oswald was prior to the time he left for the Soviet Union in 1959.  If he were receiving “one-on-one lessons” during his stint in the Marines, the major questions to be answered are:  (a) who was giving him the lessons?; (b) when did the lessons occur outside of his well-documented regular Marine duties?; (c) where did they occur?; and (d) how could he have attained a skill set in such a short time to be able to take an Army Russian-language competency exam?  Zack Stout was a fellow Marine who worked alongside Oswald every day for a ten-month period either in the radar bubble in Atsugi, the Philippines, Subic Bay, aboard ship, and while they were on liberty.  Neither Stout nor any other Marine witnessed Oswald receiving lessons in the Russian language.

 

I've been asking myself these questions for a long time. The Warren Commission seemed to think that Oswald attended a military language institute in Monterey. Delgado thought that Oswald was attending "a university in Berlin". So it seems at least some people believed that Oswald might have received professional language lessons. And that is, in my humble opinion, probably the most reasonable explanation for his proficiency. I think if Oswald had been trained by the ONI (or whoever) for a secret mission in Russia, then all files relating to that Training would've been destroyed. And I think all ONI files on Oswald were indeed destroyed (correct me if I'm wrong).

As we've discussed before, the results from his test in the military were very remarkable if we assume that Oswald had taught himself (and I still don't believe he could've achieved this result withouth professional lessons), but still quite far from what we would expect from a native speaker (especially if we consider his performance in listening comprehension).

    

 

[James Norwood]

Mathias,

Three follow-up points:

(1)  Nelson Delgado's Warren Commission testimony about Oswald's proficiency in Russian is so garbled that it surprises me that you are basing your argument that Oswald may have received formal training in the Russian language on anything Delgado recalls.  Just listen to how hopelessly confused Delgado becomes, as he is clueless as to what language he even heard Oswald speaking, then concludes about the words he heard Oswald speak:  "Where he picked them up, I don't know."!!!

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you hear him speak Russian?
Mr. DELGADO - Well, like I say, he tried to teach me Russian, but then another time I had some thought that what he was speaking to me was German; but according to the agent, he messed me all up, and I couldn't figure whether it was Hebrew or German. I tried to tell him that some of the words he had mentioned to me at the time I didn't recognize them, but when I came back from Germany some of those words I do remember, you know.
Mr. LIEBELER - It seemed to you like it was German?
Mr. DELGADO - Like German; yes.
Mr. LIEBELER - But you only came to that conclusion after you had been to Germany?
Mr. DELGADO - Right. At the time it could have been Yiddish or German, you know.
Mr. LIEBELER - Could it have been Russian?
Mr. DELGADO - No; different gutteral sounds altogether.
Mr. LIEBELER - But you did not know whether Oswald spoke this other language to any extent; he just used a few words?
Mr. DELGADO - No; I just remember his particular language, which I am in doubt about, had a "ch" gutteral sound to it [indicating], you know; and I could only assume it was Jewish or German, and later on when I was in Germany, I think, I am pretty sure it was German that he was speaking.
Mr. LIEBELER - Did he speak it well or did he just use a few words?
Mr. DELGADO - He speaks it like I speak it now, you know, like, just phrases, you know. Where he picked them up, I don't know.

(2)  The linguist Peter Paul Gregory wrote a letter of recommendation for Oswald for prospective jobs as an interpreter or translator.  He also noted that Oswald spoke fluently, "but with somewhat of a Polish accent."   As I noted above:  (a) we have no direct evidence that Oswald fled from Hungary and (b) he could have been a refugee from any of the Eastern Block countries, including Poland, where you assert that it "should be much easier to learn Russian than for a Hungarian."

(3) You completely ignored my point #2 in the previous post that argues that Oswald could have learned to speak Russian at home in a bilingual family.  Your conclusion that "the most reasonable explanation for his proficiency" was during his period in the Marines is pure speculation.  The much more "reasonable explanation" based on all of the evidence is that he was a native speaker.  To review the evidence, I recommend that you read my article which attempts to synthesize the facts and not engage in wild speculation or unfounded conclusions.

James 

Edited August 13, 2020 by James Norwood

[Mathias Baumann]

Dr Norwood:

I agree that Delgado may not be a first class source. But what about the Warren Commission? Why did they believe that Oswald was trained in foreign languages in Monterey? Where did they get this information? That's a question that has never been resolved.

Oswald did well on his exam, much better than could be expected after just three months of self-study. But he could've done much better. He did not reach the level of a native speaker. I think we agree on this, don't we? But if we suppose that Oswald grew up in a bilingual home I would've expected a much better result, especially in listening comprehension.

Concerning his alleged Polish accent: Well, it seems opinions were divided on this matter. His wife believed his accent to be Baltic, if I remember correctly.

[Tony Krome]

6 hours ago, James Norwood said:

A colleague of mine was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, who would have been almost the exact age as Oswald.       

I may have missed something, buy how do you know Harvey's age?

H&L have Harvey's height in 1953/54 as 4'8"

The average Hungarian male height in the 1950s for 12 year olds was 4'8" and they began to level off at around age 18 at 5'8"

If you're Harvey was Hungarian and of average height, would not his probable birth year be 1941/42?

[Steve Thomas]

9 hours ago, John Butler said:

 In preparation for the 2013 interview, the Radio Free Europe reporter Pavel Butorin had studied Oswald’s essay entitled “The Collective” that was prepared in the United States after he returned from the Soviet Union.  Butorin recognized that the report was so detailed about Soviet working and living conditions that “it’s as if he had been on a research mission here.” [30]

John,

You know, I have kind of wondered about that myself.

That "Collective" is so detailed, it seems almost impossible to have been written simply by memory. To me, you would had to have had notes to go by.

My question has been, how did he get those notes out of Russia? Wasn't he searched before he left?

Was he smuggling notes out all along? And, if so, what was his method?

Steve Thomas