The Far-Reaching Influence of “Harvey and Lee”

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Let's see if we can prise an answer out of Jim on the main question that he has been working hard to avoid answering.

His guru, John Armstrong, withheld information which proved that a central element of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory was false. Why did he do this?

Here are a few possible answers:

Answer A

Armstrong forgot. He was so busy with other things, such as tossing a coin to decide which of the many photographs of Oswald belonged to which of his two imaginary doppelgangers, that it slipped his mind. He was going to include that information, honest, he really was, but he was so busy, you know how it is, and he just forgot.

Answer B

There wasn't room in Armstrong's book. Harvey and Lee contains only 900 or so pages of text, and there was simply no room to squeeze in one extra sentence along the lines of:

Quote

The scientists' report of Oswald's exhumation shows that the body in Oswald's grave had undergone a mastoidectomy, falsifying my claim that the body in the grave was that of an imaginary long-term doppelganger who had not undergone a mastoidectomy, and proving that a central element of my theory was false.

Or, as it might have appeared in his book:

Quote

The scientists' report of Oswald's exhumation shows that the body in Oswald's grave had undergone a mastoidectomy, falsifying my claim that the body in the grave was that of an imaginary long-term DOPPELGANGER who had not undergone a mastoidectomy, and proving that a central element of MY THEORY was FALSE.

Also, the dog ate his last sheet of typing paper, so he couldn't have mentioned it even if he wanted to.

Answer C

Armstrong hadn't read the scientists' report, and didn't know that it disproved a central element of his theory. OK, so he mentioned the report several times in his book, but those passages in his book were fakes, inserted by the FBI to make him look like a cheap snake-oil salesman.

Answer D

Armstrong was dishonest. He knew that a central element of his theory was false. He deliberately failed to mention the fact that the body in Oswald's grave had undergone a mastoidectomy. He hoped that his readers wouldn't know that his theory had been disproved two decades before he published his book.

Which of those answers does Jim find the most persuasive?

[Jim Hargrove]

18 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

No, I've posted that list only twice in my life.  You're thinking of Jeremy Bojczuk, who has posted the same material about the mastoidectomy every day for years.  Watch... he'll do it again in less than 24 hours.

I underestimated Mr. Bojczuk.  He has posted the same old stuff about the mastoidectomy three times in the last 24 hours.  I have described to him, repeatedly, possible scenarios explaining the mastoidectomy, but he simply refuses to talk about anything other than the mastoidectomy.  Since he wants to repeat himself endlessly, I'll, again, show real evidence from the exhumation. 

Since Mr. Bojczuk perpetually points out that the LHO killed by Jack Ruby was shown by the exhumation to have had a mastoidectomy, let’s again see what else the exhumation showed.

Mr. JENNER. But you do remember that you attempted to help him when he was struck in the mouth on that occasion; is that right? 
Mr. VOEBEL. Yes; I think he even lost a tooth from that. I think he was cut on the lip, and a tooth was knocked out. 

Ed Voebel told the FBI “that he was taking photographs for inclusion in the Beauregard Yearbook and had been stopping in various classrooms, unannounced, and taking pictures of the classes in session.  He stated that OSWALD’s clown-like attitude in the photograph appeared spontaneous on the part of Oswald and was not posed at the suggestion of VOEBEL.”

Here is the famous photo, and some blow-up details, as it appeared in LIFE magazine 

As if this wasn’t enough proof, Sandy Larsen discovered confirmation of the missing tooth in a Marine Corps dental record indicating that the PROSTHESIS “FAILED 5-5-58.”  

Here is how www.medicine.net defines “Prosthesis:”

Prosthesis: An artificial replacement of a part of the body, such as a tooth, a facial bone, the palate, or a joint. A prosthesis may be removable, as in the case of most prosthetic legs or a prosthetic breast form used after mastectomy.

Can there be any doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald lost at least one tooth at an early age?  H&L critics have to try and create doubt, because the body exhumed in 1981 clearly had these teeth intact.  Below is a high quality copy of an ORIGINAL exhumation photo Marina Oswald Porter handed to John Armstrong during one of their meetings in the 1990s.

[Jim Hargrove]

Mr. Bojczuk refuses to discuss dozens of topics we've presented over the years about the two Oswalds.  One of them is the Bolton Ford incident, and so here's a summary of it.

On January 20, 1961, while Harvey Oswald was in Minsk, two men visited the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans. They spoke with Assistant Manager Oscar Deslatte and said they were interested in purchasing 10 Ford Econoline Trucks. As one of the men discussed the purchase with Deslatte the other man, who identified himself as Joseph Moore, made a list of the equipment they desired on the trucks.

Deslatte went to his boss, truck manager Fred Sewell, and told him about the two men who wanted to purchase trucks and said they represented the "Free Democrats of Cuba or some such organization." Sewell told Deslatte to give the men a bid of $75 over their cost for the trucks. Deslatte and Sewell returned to Deslatte's desk and wrote out a bid form to Joseph Moore. As Deslatte was filling out the bid form, Joseph Moore and the other man began talking to both Deslatte and Sewell.42

When Moore saw that Deslatte had written his name on the bid form he asked that the name be changed to "Friends of Democratic Cuba." Moore's friend looked· at the form and said, "By the way, you'd better put my name down there because I'm the man handling the money." When Deslatte asked, "What's your name?" the man replied, "Lee Oswald."

Deslatte gave the original bid form to "Lee Oswald" and kept a copy for his files, which he gave to the FBI following the assassination.

 

\

 

The purchaser was listed as the "Friends of Democratic Cuba," 402 St. Charles Street, New Orleans, LA., phone number JA-5-0763.43 After talking with Deslate for over an hour the two men took the original bid form and left.

The Friends of Democratic Cuba was incorporated on January 9, 1961 in Louisiana. The address of 402 St. Charles Street was listed as vacant in the 1960, 1961 and 1962 New Orleans City directories.

Remarkable about the “Friends of Democratic Cuba” were the names of two of its officers. The image shown below is a composite scan from the beginning and the end of the Louisiana Articles of Incorporation for Friends of Democratic Cuba, Inc.

 

W. Guy Banister worked at the infamous 544 Camp Street address in New Orleans, made famous by the Jim Garrison investigation.

Gerard Tugague employed Oswald briefly in late 1955 and early 1956 at the 300 Sanlin Building in New Orleans.

On our website John Armstrong wrote, “This well-known incident was cited in Warren Commission Document 75 p. 677 and the House Select Committee on Assassinations Vol. X; FBI 67-39565-66. For years some JFK researchers believed that an impostor was using Oswald's name while the alleged future assassin was in Russia. As more and more examples surfaced it became clear that another man, using the name "Lee Harvey Oswald," was associating with anti-Castro Cubans and CIA operatives in the southern United States during the very years the Warren Commission placed him in the Soviet Union. This man was southern born LEE Oswald, and is a clear indication that both Oswalds were active in American intelligence operations.”There are other examples of LEE Oswald operating in the U.S. while HARVEY Oswald was in Russia. For an overview, see THIS PAGE on HarveyandLee.net.

For more, see The Bolton Ford Incident

[W. Tracy Parnell]

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

I underestimated Mr. Bojczuk.  He has posted the same old stuff about the mastoidectomy three times in the last 24 hours. 

Too funny. Jim Hargrove complains about Jeremy and then proceeds to post "the same old stuff" himself that he has dumped here time and time again (and has been debunked time and time again).

[James Norwood]

On 8/11/2020 at 3:08 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

Some H&L critics will just claim Oswald was a fast learner, or that he was given Russian-language training in the military.  John’s interviews with Harvey’s fellow Marines, however, show that it is unlikely that he had any real opportunity for the kind of protracted language training needed to learn Russian that well BEFORE ever reaching the Soviet Union.

Jim,

Another good example of Oswald's exceptional Russian language skills is apparent in the Warren Commission testimony of Dennis Offstein, one of Oswald's co-workers at Jaggars, Chiles, Stovall (JCS).  Offstein was a technician who had studied Russian language for a full year at the famed Monterey institute, yet Oswald ran circles around him in language skills.  In his testimony, Offstein recalled that after a full-year of immersion in Russian language, he still struggled, while for Oswald, speaking Russian seemed second nature.  If Oswald had a special aptitude for learning a foreign language, there is no evidence of this from any of his teachers or classmates by time he dropped out of high school in the tenth grade.  As you indicate above, there was no window of time for him to study a language while in the Marines.  So, when, where, and how did Oswald come to such proficiency in the Russian language?  That is the topic that none of the critics on this forum wish to debate.

James

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim Hargrove writes:

Quote

I have described to him, repeatedly, possible scenarios explaining the mastoidectomy

And on page 14 I pointed out weaknesses in all of Jim's speculative scenarios:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26644-the-far-reaching-influence-of-%E2%80%9Charvey-and-lee%E2%80%9D/?do=findComment&comment=426790

So far, Jim hasn't responded to the points I made, although he has provided us with a couple of unrelated 'Harvey and Lee' talking points, which was nice of him.

Here's what appears to be Jim's favourite speculative scenario:

Quote

It was Russian-speaking Harvey, not American-born Lee, who had the mastoidectomy all along.  Hoover just altered a report or two to make the medical histories match.

I asked Jim two questions, so far unanswered, about this speculative scenario:

- Which documents did Hoover alter?
- What evidence can Jim produce to show that these documents were altered?

These questions are perfectly reasonable, aren't they? Jim should be able to cite evidence to support his claims. So let's see that evidence.

As I pointed out in my reply on page 14, I asked Jim the same questions the previous time he speculated in this way, and on that occasion too he failed to produce any evidence:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26529-was-it-really-just-a-mole-hunt-about-oswald/page/12/

Until Jim comes up with something solid to support his speculations, we are left with the conclusions that one mastoidectomy was performed on one Oswald, and that the theory Armstrong put forward in Harvey and Lee was wrong.

I'll try again. If "Hoover just altered a report or two to make the medical histories match", which documents did the FBI alter?

[Jim Hargrove]

On 8/12/2020 at 5:53 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Jeremy says it's unlikely that TWO boys each had mastoidectomy surgery, but thinks nothing of ONE boy having school records showing he attended a school in New York City and another in New Orleans simultaneously. Ha! Wow.

Okay, maybe he'll say that one of the school records had a row of clerical errors on it. To which I'd ask, well how likely is that? The odds of that happening are surely lower than the odds of two boy having a mastoidectomy. I've never heard of such a massive clerical error before, but I have seen plenty of boys who have had a mastoidectomy.

That about covers it, Sandy.  Posting only about the mastoidectomy nearly every day for years, Mr. Bojczuk tries to step away from all the other H&L evidence entirely, focusing only on the one issue he likes.   But there is so much more.

[Jim Hargrove]

14 hours ago, James Norwood said:

Jim,

Another good example of Oswald's exceptional Russian language skills is apparent in the Warren Commission testimony of Dennis Offstein, one of Oswald's co-workers at Jaggars, Chiles, Stovall (JCS).  Offstein was a technician who had studied Russian language for a full year at the famed Monterey institute, yet Oswald ran circles around him in language skills.  In his testimony, Offstein recalled that after a full-year of immersion in Russian language, he still struggled, while for Oswald, speaking Russian seemed second nature.  If Oswald had a special aptitude for learning a foreign language, there is no evidence of this from any of his teachers or classmates by time he dropped out of high school in the tenth grade.  As you indicate above, there was no window of time for him to study a language while in the Marines.  So, when, where, and how did Oswald come to such proficiency in the Russian language?  That is the topic that none of the critics on this forum wish to debate.

James

 

Indeed, LHO’s command of the Russian language both before and after the “defection,” as you know better than almost anyone else,  was never adequately explained by any of the USG cover-u… I mean investigations.  

Oswald learned Russian on his own with a dictionary and some books?  What a sad joke! 

We can disagree about the specifics of who the two LHOs were, but at the 2018 Spy Wars meeting in San Francisco, Peter Dale Scott answered a question from John Newman about LHO’s Russian language abilities.

From Spy Wars, Part 2: March 3, 2018 in San Francisco

The part I excerpted below begins at about the 37:12 mark in the YouTube video.

 

Above courtesy Dr. Gary Aguilar and YouTube
 
Speakers in this clip are:

Bill Simpich--BS
Peter Dale Scott – PDS
John Newman – JN

At approximately the 37:12 mark in the YouTube clip above:

BS: There’s two different genuses of false phone calls. 
PDS: Yeah, exactly.  One was a call with a lie in it, the other was an alleged call that did not, in fact, take place.
JN: The Tuesday call didn’t take place?
PDS: No, the Tuesday call did take place by a man, I’m sure, was not the Oswald we think of….
JN: Right
PDS: … and then, by the way… this is just a question… are you absolutely convinced that the man who was “Lee Harvey Oswald” in Russia was, in fact, the man picked up in Dallas in 1963?
JN: Not at all.  And I’ve gone over to the view that in Mexico City that, maybe it’s him, maybe it’s not. So I’m not going to be dogmatic about it. He could have been there and impersonated or could have been not there at all.
PDS: … There is a fragment of a release that says that the man who made the phone calls spoke horrible Russian AND English!  So, I do not think that was the man in Dallas. And I actually think, and this is completely anecdotal, but I once had an hour long conversation with Marina when I was trying my hardest not to bring up the assassination, and we were talking about literature, and I said did she like Henry James and she said that she had never heard of Henry James, who was Henry James, and I said, oh, he's sort of like the American Turgenev, and she said, "Oh, Turgenev, Alec really loved Turgenev." The man who checked out books from the New Orleans Public Library was not a lover of Turgenev."

 

[Sandy Larsen]

13 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Quote

Jim Hargrove said:

It was Russian-speaking Harvey, not American-born Lee, who had the mastoidectomy all along.  Hoover just altered a report or two to make the medical histories match.

I asked Jim two questions, so far unanswered, about this speculative scenario:

- Which documents did Hoover alter?
- What evidence can Jim produce to show that these documents were altered?

 

What Jim said was obviously a hypothesis. Had Jim known the answers to Jeremy's questions, he wouldn't need to hypothesize... he'd have the answer to the question.

But Jeremy won't allow H&L researchers and students to hypothesize. He demands 100% proof of every facet of the H&L theory before he thinks the theory can even be discussed.

This is a ridiculous line of thought that is often used by ideologues. Remember, ideologues believe only what they want to believe, and they want everybody else to believe the same.

 

[John Butler]

11 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

At approximately the 37:12 mark in the YouTube clip above:

BS: There’s two different genuses of false phone calls. 
PDS: Yeah, exactly.  One was a call with a lie in it, the other was an alleged call that did not, in fact, take place.
JN: The Tuesday call didn’t take place?
PDS: No, the Tuesday call did take place by a man, I’m sure, was not the Oswald we think of….
JN: Right
PDS: … and then, by the way… this is just a question… are you absolutely convinced that the man who was “Lee Harvey Oswald” in Russia was, in fact, the man picked up in Dallas in 1963?
JN: Not at all.  And I’ve gone over to the view that in Mexico City that, maybe it’s him, maybe it’s not. So I’m not going to be dogmatic about it. He could have been there and impersonated or could have been not there at all.
PDS: … There is a fragment of a release that says that the man who made the phone calls spoke horrible Russian AND English!  So, I do not think that was the man in Dallas. And I actually think, and this is completely anecdotal, but I once had an hour long conversation with Marina when I was trying my hardest not to bring up the assassination, and we were talking about literature, and I said did she like Henry James and she said that she had never heard of Henry James, who was Henry James, and I said, oh, he's sort of like the American Turgenev, and she said, "Oh, Turgenev, Alec really loved Turgenev." The man who checked out books from the New Orleans Public Library was not a lover of Turgenev."

I have to say this fits my biased interpretations of the Dynamic Duo in Russia and elsewhere.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

Jeremy won't allow H&L researchers and students to hypothesize. He demands 100% proof of every facet of the H&L theory before he thinks the theory can even be discussed.

I'm sure Sandy is exaggerating for effect. What Jim offered was 0% proof: pure speculation, without any supporting evidence at all. If someone is making a claim about an important aspect of their theory, I think it's reasonable to ask them to provide a little more than pure speculation.

Jim tried to resuscitate Armstrong's theory by claiming that "Hoover just altered a report or two to make the medical histories match". Which "report or two" is Jim referring to? That's a reasonable question to ask, isn't it? If you're making a claim like Jim's, it's up to you to at least identify the documents you think were altered.

Once Jim has told us which documents he thinks were altered, we can then examine those documents to see whether or not his speculative claim has any merit. We wouldn't need 100% proof either way; the balance of probabilities will do. Which documents relating to Oswald's mastoidectomy did the FBI alter?

Until Jim or anyone else puts forward more than speculation about which documents the FBI altered in this instance, we are obliged to assume that no documents relating to Oswald's mastoidectomy were altered. And if that's the case, the medical evidence shows that a central aspect of the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is wrong.

Armstrong knew that the body exhumed from Oswald's grave had undergone a mastoidectomy, contradicting a central element of his theory. He knew that his theory had been debunked two decades before he published his book. He deliberately withheld this information from his readers.

Armstrong was pushing something he knew to be untrue. He was behaving like a cheap snake-oil salesman, wasn't he?

[Jim Hargrove]

On 8/13/2020 at 6:44 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

PDS: … There is a fragment of a release that says that the man who made the phone calls spoke horrible Russian AND English!  So, I do not think that was the man in Dallas. And I actually think, and this is completely anecdotal, but I once had an hour long conversation with Marina when I was trying my hardest not to bring up the assassination, and we were talking about literature, and I said did she like Henry James and she said that she had never heard of Henry James, who was Henry James, and I said, oh, he's sort of like the American Turgenev, and she said, "Oh, Turgenev, Alec really loved Turgenev." The man who checked out books from the New Orleans Public Library was not a lover of Turgenev."

 

14 hours ago, John Butler said:

I have to say this fits my biased interpretations of the Dynamic Duo in Russia and elsewhere.

John,

I thought about your theory of both LHOs in Russia when I read Mr. Scott's remarks again.  It still seems far-fetched to me.  For one thing, there is considerable evidence of one LHO's activities in the U.S. while the other was in the USSR.  Beyond that, it would seem counterproductive to risk sending the birth LHO to Russia at the very time the impostor was there.  What possible reason would there be to take that risk?  Is your theory is based mostly on an analysis of the photographs?

[Sandy Larsen]

[deleted]

Edited August 14, 2020 by Sandy Larsen

[John Butler]

8 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

 

John,

I thought about your theory of both LHOs in Russia when I read Mr. Scott's remarks again.  It still seems far-fetched to me.  For one thing, there is considerable evidence of one LHO's activities in the U.S. while the other was in the USSR.  Beyond that, it would seem counterproductive to risk sending the birth LHO to Russia at the very time the impostor was there.  What possible reason would there be to take that risk?  Is your theory is based mostly on an analysis of the photographs?

Jim,

 Is your theory is based mostly on an analysis of the photographs?   No.  As I have written several times before, the photographic evidence for Lee Oswald in quite weak and vague.

As for the rest,  I'm not certain I want to go through that again just to have it casually dismissed.  Thanks for taking the time to make a comment.

 

[Jim Hargrove]

2 hours ago, John Butler said:

Jim,

 Is your theory is based mostly on an analysis of the photographs?   No.  As I have written several times before, the photographic evidence for Lee Oswald in quite weak and vague.

As for the rest,  I'm not certain I want to go through that again just to have it casually dismissed.  Thanks for taking the time to make a comment.

 

John,

How 'bout going through it one more time....

We can disagree about the specifics of who the two LHOs were, but at the 2018 Spy Wars meeting in San Francisco, Peter Dale Scott answered a question from John Newman about LHO’s Russian language abilities.

From Spy Wars, Part 2: March 3, 2018 in San Francisco

The part I excerpted below begins at about the 37:12 mark in the YouTube video.

 

Above courtesy Dr. Gary Aguilar and YouTube
 
Speakers in this clip are:

Bill Simpich--BS
Peter Dale Scott – PDS
John Newman – JN

At approximately the 37:12 mark in the YouTube clip above:

BS: There’s two different genuses of false phone calls. 
PDS: Yeah, exactly.  One was a call with a lie in it, the other was an alleged call that did not, in fact, take place.
JN: The Tuesday call didn’t take place?
PDS: No, the Tuesday call did take place by a man, I’m sure, was not the Oswald we think of….
JN: Right
PDS: … and then, by the way… this is just a question… are you absolutely convinced that the man who was “Lee Harvey Oswald” in Russia was, in fact, the man picked up in Dallas in 1963?
JN: Not at all.  And I’ve gone over to the view that in Mexico City that, maybe it’s him, maybe it’s not. So I’m not going to be dogmatic about it. He could have been there and impersonated or could have been not there at all.
PDS: … There is a fragment of a release that says that the man who made the phone calls spoke horrible Russian AND English!  So, I do not think that was the man in Dallas. And I actually think, and this is completely anecdotal, but I once had an hour long conversation with Marina when I was trying my hardest not to bring up the assassination, and we were talking about literature, and I said did she like Henry James and she said that she had never heard of Henry James, who was Henry James, and I said, oh, he's sort of like the American Turgenev, and she said, "Oh, Turgenev, Alec really loved Turgenev." The man who checked out books from the New Orleans Public Library was not a lover of Turgenev."