Armstrong managed to put several blunders in just one paragraph of his book H&L

[Karl Kinaski]

Armstrong managed to put several blunders in just one paragraph of his book H&L 

Quote

 

Quote (page 298) of H&L

CIA  has an interest in Harvey Oswald 

In the summer of  1960 a CIA memo signed by Thomas B. Casasin showed the Agency's interest  in interviewing Lee  Harvey  Oswald.  The  author of the memo  suggested the laying on of interviews through  'KUJUMP'  or other suitable channels  and in a later memo indicated there was an operational  intelligence interest in the  "Harvey  story." But when the memo was written the CIA claimed they  had not yet opened a file on  Oswald.  The CIA never provided a satisfactory  explanation for this memo. 

Close Quote 

 

1. There is no 1960 Memo signed by Thomas B. Casasin, which is 2. the Pseudonym of CIA Japan Station Chief G. B Richardson, and 3. not the Pseudonym of Richard Helms as suggested by a crazy Armstrong-footnote Nr. 39 (page 314 H&L) that reads: 

Quote

Quote, H&L, footnote 39, page 314 
National Archives,  Document  104-10018-10052;  letter from Robert G.  Lamprell  to Chief, SR, Chief, WE, Chief of  station, 
Paris, 12116/63;  memorandum  from Thomas B.  Cassasin  (Richard  Helms)  to Walter P.  Haltigan,  11/25/63. 
Close Quote. 

Armstrong wants make us believe that there are two memos from Casasin (which,  in footnote Nr 39 he suggests is the pseudonym of Helms, while it is the pseudonym of Richardson), one written in 1960 and one written on November 25. 1963. There is only one emo  by Casasin. It is the memo of Nov. 25. 1963, which one can read here Casasin is Richardson not Helms
In that Memo there is an error made by Casasin/Richardson regarding the YEAR of his conversation. Casasin, which is Richardson, not Helms, corrects that error when confronted with his Nov. 25.11.1963 memo 15 years later by HSCA staff.

But that's not the end of Armstrongs blunders he managed to put in just ONE PARAGRAPH of his book.

Taking the Casasin memo of 1960 for real ( a memo that only exists in Armstrongs fantasy), he writes, 

Quote

 

quote H&L (page 298)

 But when the (me: 1960) memo was written (me: 1960 was no memo written by Casasin/Richardson), the CIA claimed they had not yet opened a file on Oswald. 
Close quote

 

...which is bullshit built on bullshit, because there was a CIA-Oswald file in 1960, as one can read here(link) 

Quote. from the site JFK FACTS

Quote

Birch O’Neal is a significant character in the JFK story because he oversaw the unusual handling of Oswald’s file. After Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959, O’Neal did not open the standard “201 file,” that the agency uses to collect information on people of interest. Instead, O’Neal created a file for Oswald held by the agency’s Office of Security (OS). Access to OS files was much more tightly controlled than access to 201 files. If there was mole
inside the CIA who was interested in ex-Marine who defected to the Soviet Union, he would have to identify himself to
Angleton’s staff got access to it. O’Neal and Egerter maintained control of the Oswald file from November 1959 to November 1963 (a story I tell in my
biography of Angleton, The Ghost.)
Close quote

 So there is a Casasin/Helms 1960 memo in Armstrongs head only,  indicating a operational interest in Oswald, when in the real world  there is no such  1960-memo and Casasin is not Helms but Richardson, and then Armstrong wonders how could that be? A  Oswald memo in 1960 when there was no Oswald file in 1960. But there WAS a Oswald file. The 1959-Oswald file created by  Birch O'Neal ...  see how the Armstrong scenario implodes? 

Edited February 24 by Karl Kinaski

[Karl Kinaski]

More  Armstrong blunder:

That is, was Armstrong said about Shushkevich, Oswald Russian teacher in Minsk who died recently at 87,  in his door stopper HARVEY AND LEE:

 

Quote

quote: 
"A young college graduate, Stanislav Shushkevich, was told by the Communist 
Party Secretary at the Horizon plant to teach Oswald the Russian language. Shushkevich 
began to spend a lot of time with Oswald,  but soon found that he didn't  like him and 
found  him annoying.  Oswald  did  not seem  enthusiastic  about  learning  Russian  an·d, according  to Shushkevich,  found the language  difficult." 
close quote

Then, Armstrong quotes Anna Ziger, who he interviewed in 1998, contradicting himself and Shushkevic:

Quote

quote
"According to Ana, the main reason her family was never able to learn much about Oswald was his unwillingness to learn or speak Russian. After hearing Ana's comment I was confused, and asked her how well Oswald spoke Russian when she knew him in Minsk. 
Ana replied,  without hesitating,  "he didn't speak any Russian." "
close quote

That was in 1998.

Now we have Armstrong with Shushkevich teaching him Russian in Minsk and an old Lady who said 36 years after the events in Minsk(1998): Oswald didn't speak any Russian. 
Armstrong choose to believe Ana Ziger, and not the fact that Shushkevich was Oswalds Russian Teacher in Minsk. 

Which is funny because Norman Mailer said in his book OSWALDS TAIL ...
quote:

Quote

"Two interviews, much desired, were not obtained. Don Alejandro Ziger was living in Argentina in 1992, and before we attempted to make contact, he had died. His widow was interviewed by Alex Levine, but Mrs. Ziger was now at that benignly advanced age where the prevailing desire is to initiate no  difficulties  for  anyone.  So,  her  remarks  about  Oswald  were  general —“He was a nice young man.”
close quote

And that is what Oswalds Russian teacher in Minsk, Shushkevich, himself said in an 2013 Interview to Radio Free Europe: 

(link to the full interview-transcript ...)

Quote

quote
"His (Oswalds) behavior was decent. He never allowed himself anything out of the ordinary. Generally, he never asked any questions. We ( Shushkevich and an second man who was ordered to be present during Oswalds Russian lessons) weren't allowed to ask any questions either, about who he was or where he came from. Our
task was to help him improve his Russian a little bit.
(...)
RFE/RL: Did you only teach him Russian or was it a mutual learning
process?
Shushkevich: You see, our studies were pretty basic. He tried to say
something in Russian and we corrected his mistakes to make it sound
like real Russian."
close quote

Shushkevich is saying that Oswald spoke already Russian when he came to Minsk and his task was to improve his Russian-speaking-skills. He never said he didn't like Oswald(what Armstrong claimed in HARVEY AND LEE) or Oswald was unwilling to learn Russian. He never said Oswald didn't speak any Russian at all like Ana Ziger 40 years after the events in Minsk.

Bottom line: 

Since Armstrong needs an Oswald in Minsk who could not speak Russian, to uphold his crazy theory of two Oswalds, the Shushkevich interview to Radio Free Europe in 2013 puts an end to all credibility of the premise of the book HARVEY AND LEE. 

 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2022 by Karl Kinaski

[Karl Kinaski]

 

 

But Armstrong is not only wrong about the Russian speaking Oswald in Minsk, he is wrong claiming, that Marina Oswald and Ella German did speak English with Oswald in Minsk.

Ernst Titovets was Oswalds friend in Minsk and wrote a book: OSWALDS RUSSIAN EPISODE. When confronted with some Armstrong fantasies he said: 

Armstrong: “On October 18 [1960] Lee Harvey Oswald celebrated his 21st birthday. Ella German a girl from the Horizon factory who Oswald had been dating the past two months, and spoke very good English, attended a small birthday party at his apartment.”(p. 311).

Titovets: Ella German did not speak English at all.    

Armstrong:”It is clear that Marina associated with Americans, spoke English with Webster and almost certainly spoke English with Oswald… Marina’s ability to read, write, and speak English fluently before she left Russia is indisputable.” (p. 340). 

Titovets: Marina did not speak English at all.  

Close quote

Edited May 15, 2022 by Karl Kinaski

[David G. Healy]

9 hours ago, Karl Kinaski said:

 

 

But Armstrong is not only wrong about the Russian speaking Oswald in Minsk, he is wrong claiming, that Marina Oswald and Ella German did speak English with Oswald in Minsk.

Ernst Titovets was Oswalds friend in Minsk and wrote a book: OSWALDS RUSSIAN EPISODE. When confronted with some Armstrong fantasies he said: 

Armstrong: “On October 18 [1960] Lee Harvey Oswald celebrated his 21st birthday. Ella German a girl from the Horizon factory who Oswald had been dating the past two months, and spoke very good English, attended a small birthday party at his apartment.”(p. 311).

Titovets: Ella German did not speak English at all.    

Armstrong:”It is clear that Marina associated with Americans, spoke English with Webster and almost certainly spoke English with Oswald… Marina’s ability to read, write, and speak English fluently before she left Russia is indisputable.” (p. 340). 

Titovets: Marina did not speak English at all.  

Close quote

a Soviet citizen writes a book about an alleged US presidential assassin? Who edited/published it, Pravda, TASS? You can do better, Karl...

[Adam Johnson]

Here is something to consider, i can speak Hebrew...I'm a white catholic Australian and i can speak Hebrew. If you sent me to Israel to do business with Israelis and had me in meetings where they believed only they spoke Hebrew, would they possibly let some info slip when spoken amongst themselves that i could understand?

There is no way Oswald lets the Russian's know in his initial meetings and first year or two in country that he could understand and speak Russian well. As purely a self preservation tactic, he would not have let slip he understood the language. I certainly wouldn't. 

Boker Tov, or ErevTov wherever you are.

AJ.

[Jim Hargrove]

On 7/11/2021 at 4:58 AM, Karl Kinaski said:

There is no 1960 Memo signed by Thomas B. Casasin, which is 2. the Pseudonym of CIA Japan Station Chief G. B Richardson, and 3. not the Pseudonym of Richard Helms as suggested by a crazy Armstrong-footnote Nr. 39 (page 314 H&L)

This formerly secret document indicates the following: Thomas P. Cassasin (pseudo), resigned. Working abroad for U.N. organization.  (Previously requested). He was Chief SR-6 from October 1960 to August 1962.”

As to the 11/25/63 memo, as you can plainly see, Casasin was talking about activities from  “Summer 1960”:



Adam Johnson is exactly right about Oswald hiding his knowledge of Russian.  On Stanislaw Shuskevich, who was hired to teach Oswald Russian in the USSR:

On Sushkevich:

The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union
By Peter Savodni

Author Peter Savodni interviewed the Russian worker--Stanislaw Shushkevich--who tried to give Oswald a few lessons in the Russian language.   According to the author, Shushkevich told him that Oswald "knew very few words" in Russian and that he "found it hard to communicate with his 'comrades' in any meaningful way."  When Oswald planned to attend a concert by a Russian singer, Shushkevich noted that "it would have been impossible for Oswald to understand the lyrics."

Shushkevich also indicated that he suspected his real assignment was not to teach Oswald Russian but "to get information--in this case, to see how much Russian Oswald really knew...."  Which Oswald apparently tried to indicate wasn't very much.

 

On Ernst Titovets....

Titovets considers the idea that Oswald was connected to either American or Russian intelligence the “wildest speculation.”  “A James Bond fantasy.”  He ignores the evidence of Oswald’s connections to American intelligence as revealed in many books, and seems to hope his readers will ignore it as well, thereby effectively cutting the marionette’s wires.

--Milicent Cranor, 2013

 

Here’s what Dr. James Norwood wrote about Titovets in his article Oswald’s Proficiency in the Russian Language:

One of Oswald’s friends in Minsk was a medical student named Ernst Titovets, who acknowledged in his 2013 book Oswald: Russian Episode that Oswald spoke in a “faltering Russian.” [44]  In JFK studies, Titovets was a johnny-come-lately, waiting until the approach of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination to bring out his memoir.  After his book publication, Titovets has attempted to discredit John Armstrong’s research into the period in which Oswald was in residence in Minsk.  Using sleight-of-hand, specious arguments, and hearsay testimony, Titovets attempts to name individuals who heard Oswald speaking competent Russian during his stay in Minsk.  Undoubtedly, Oswald gave the appearance of attempting to learn the native language over the course of his two-and-a-half years in the Soviet Union.  But nowhere does Titovets provide an example of Oswald’s unsurpassed command of the Russian language, as attested by those in America who appeared before the Warren Commission.  About the best testimonial to Oswald’s language competency while in the Soviet Union was given by Belarusian President Shuskevich, Oswald’s former tutor in Minsk, who described Oswald’s spoken Russian as “passable.” [45]  

Along with his book, Titovets released a set of tape recordings in which he is in conversation with Oswald.  Those tapes offer examples of Titovets and Oswald speaking only in English.  But according to Norman Mailer, who was granted access to the KGB files, Titovets also recorded conversations in which Oswald was attempting to speak in Russian:  “His [Titovets’] Russian-speaking tapes were also studied [by the KGB] to explore any possibility that he [Oswald] was concealing a better knowledge of their language than he pretended to have.” [46]  In other words, the KGB was concerned about the main point raised in this essay, namely, Oswald’s intention of “concealing” to his hosts his fluency in Russian.  

If Titovets genuinely wishes to do a service in the interest of the historical record, he would release the tapes in which he was conversing with Oswald in Russian to offer the public first-hand evidence into Oswald’s Russian language skills while living in the Soviet Union.  Until that happens, Titovets is offering only second-hand evidence with a personal agenda.  At present, there is nowhere in Titovets’ writings an instance of a laudatory comment about Oswald’s fluency in Russian to compare with the superlative tributes given by Oswald’s acquaintances in the United States.  The question is:  Why?   Researcher Millicent Cranor has raised the most pertinent question about Ernst Titovets:  “In his book, Titovets appears to be defending Oswald—but is he really defending the C.I.A.?” [47]

NOTES

[44]  Ernst Titovets, Oswald: Russian Episode (Belarus: Mon Litera Publishing, 2013), 111.

[45] Fred Weir and Marie Eckel, “Why Soviets Were No Fans of Lee Harvey Oswald,” The Christian Science Monitor (November 21, 2013):
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/1121/Why-Soviets-were-no-fans-of-Lee-Harvey-Oswald

[46] Mailer, 121.  Mailer also offers a character sketch of Ernst Titovets from the perspective of one of his friends in Minsk, a young woman named Albina:  “She [Albina] had always thought Erich [Ernst Titovets] was a little strange, and nothing about him was fun….Some students used to speak of him as manerniy—full of mannerisms.  So, nobody liked him much, but then he always wanted to show people he was better….Titovets always wanted to impress people that he was not average, and so he always did things by himself.” (99-100)

[47] Milicent Cranor, “Is US Effort to Block Oswald Friend and His ‘Revelations’ Another Deception?”, Who.What.Why.: https://whowhatwhy.org/2013/08/27/is-us-effort-to-block-oswald-friend-and-his-revelations-itself-a-further-deception/

[Karl Kinaski]

@ Jim Hargrove

In that Memo there is an error made by Cassasin/Richardson regarding the YEAR of his conversation about Oswald. . Casasin, which is Richardson, not Helms, corrects that error when confronted with his Nov. 25.11.1963 memo 15 years later by HSCA staff.

In this HSCA testimony Casasin corrects the 25.11. 63 Memo himself and said: The Conversation about Oswald  took place in the first week of July 1962 not in 1960 ... Armstrong and you are not aware of that ...

KK

And: Casisin is the pseudonym of Richardson, not Helms as Armstrong claims.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Karl Kinaski

[Karl Kinaski]

 

@Jim Hargrove. The impression of Shushkevich you gave citing Peter Savodnik and his book THE INTERLOOPER is wrong.

Shushkevich was no worker he was a nuclear scientist, working on secret military gadgets in the Minsk radio factory where Oswald worked. Shushkevich  later became the first head of state of Belarus. He was only assigned to teach Oswald Russian always with another comrade with him. He was never allowed to met or teach Oswald allone. He never was instructed to sound out Oswald. On the contrary, he was instructed not to ask Oswald anything about his personal live.

Here is the transcript of the interview Shushkevich gave to RADIO FREE EUROPE (RFE) in 2013: 

Stanislau Shushkevich: 'I Never Saw Oswald Get Excited About Anything'
November 19, 2013
08:42 GMT
Belarus's first post-Soviet leader, Stanislau Shushkevich, taught Lee Harvey Oswald Russian during the latter's residency in Minsk.
 
In 1960s Minsk, Stanislau Shushkevich worked on product design at the
same radio factory as Lee Harvey Oswald and taught him Russian.
Shushkevich -- who went on to become the first post-Soviet leader of
Belarus -- spoke with RFE/RL correspondent Pavel Butorin.

RFE/RL: How did you meet Lee Harvey Oswald? What was your first
impression of him?
Stanislau Shushkevich: You know, contact with foreigners was forbidden
back when I was doing scientific research. But I was very curious. And
the party organization [at the Minsk radio factory] tasked me, a non-
Party member, to work with an American. To be honest, I found it very
interesting. So, it was with great pleasure that I agreed. Although,
knowing our system, I made it seem like it wasn't the best thing for me
to do and I wasn't quite prepared for that. But actually I was curious.
There was one condition: I never met with him one on one. There was
always someone else; it was Sasha Rubenchik, who had graduated from
the university about four years later than me. He also worked at the
radio factory. So it was the two of us who met [with Oswald] -- to keep
an eye on each other, so to speak.
[Oswald] made a very good impression on me. First of all, he was
dressed in standard Soviet military rags -- a plush hat with flap ears,
some camouflaged clothes -- but he wore those clothes splendidly. I had
never seen anyone wear that brick-shaped hat more beautifully. He was
handsome and he looked very good.
His behavior was decent. He never allowed himself anything out of the
ordinary. Generally, he never asked any questions. We weren't allowed to
ask any questions either, about who he was or where he came from. Our
task was to help him improve his Russian a little bit.
RFE/RL: Did he speak much about his American life?
Shushkevich: Absolutely not. Not a single word. I think he had received
the same recommendations: we were not allowed to ask who he was,
where he came from, how he had gotten here, why he was working here
-- nothing. As a measure of control, Liabezin, the Party secretary in
[Oswald's] workshop, inquired what subjects we covered in our lessons. I
told him we were covering the usual subjects in accordance with the
Soviet [English-language] curriculum: work, school, street, theater,
cinema, city. Those were the subjects we tried to talk about.
My colloquial English was basically nonexistent. I had been trained to do
passive translations. I translated texts from English, and I still do. But I
still don't speak English very well.
WATCH an RFE/RL exclusive -- Those Who Knew Lee Harvey Oswald In
Minsk Tell Their Stories:
RFE/RL: Did you cover culture or music in your lessons?
Shushkevich: No. Any discussion of culture was limited to how to buy a
cinema or theater ticket, or to ask where theaters were located in Minsk.
RFE/RL: How about any movie titles?
Shushkevich: I don't remember.
RFE/RL: Did you only teach him Russian or was it a mutual learning
process?
Shushkevich: You see, our studies were pretty basic. He tried to say
something in Russian and we corrected his mistakes to make it sound
like real Russian.
RFE/RL: How about "My Family"? Was there such a topic?
Shushkevich: No. No family. My house, yes.
RFE/RL: Could he say in Russian, "I have so many sisters or brothers"?
Shushkevich: Yes, he was able to say that.
RFE/RL: And what would he say?
Shushkevich: He didn't say anything about that. And we weren't
supposed to ask. You see, you can't even imagine what it was like,
following orders from the Party Committee.
[Oswald] never talked about where he had lived or how he had found
himself in Europe. That was completely forbidden to talk about.
INTERACTIVE MAP: Lee Harvey Oswald's Travels
RFE/RL: How about his military service?
Shushkevich: Especially about that. We weren't supposed to know that
he had served in the military. Sasha and I talked among ourselves, about
him being a deserter and being so clever that he hadn't revealed it.
RFE/RL: So, he seemed clever enough.
Shushkevich: Well, you see, he never talked. He carried out his
instructions; we carried out our instructions. I wouldn't believe it now
either, if it hadn't happened to me personally.
RFE/RL: From the limited contact that you had with Oswald, was it
possible for you to make any conclusions about his temperament?
Shushkevich: You know, it was possible. I got the impression that he was
a very calm person. He produced the impression of a hard-working man.
But he also 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." Besides that, he never showed any other habits.
He never showed any emotion. His punctuality was spotless. Our lesson
was always at 18:05 at the laboratory of the radio factory and he was
always there on the dot.
RFE/RL: How would you describe his relationship with other workers?
Shushkevich: Now, that was something completely di erent. Although I
liked some things about him, his manner of work was a big risk to me. I
always asked his mentor, the qualified worker who worked with him,
whose name now escapes me, "Listen, don't let Oswald work on my
designs." He simply did the wrong thing, quietly. I usually needed some
fairly complex metalwork done while working on the mockup of a new
device. And I asked [Oswald's mentor] not to give my orders to him. He
had rather low qualifications as a worker. That is just my opinion. But I
knew him only at the beginning [of his time at the radio factory]. Maybe
he learned later. But for the time I knew him, he was a metalworker of
low qualification. I don't know how they calculated his salary.
RFE/RL: Oswald wrote in his Minsk diary that his job bored him very
much.
Shushkevich: I think everything bored him at the factory. I think we
spoke about it already. I never saw him get excited about anything or
show interest in anything. No, he was pretty calm.
As Belarusians say, he was a "wet herring." In other words, he received
all information with calm, without any emotions, as far as I remember.
RFE/RL: Did he have any ambitions at the factory? Did he seek a
promotion?
Shushkevich: My impression was that his only ambition was to look
better than others. Whatever he wore -- I can't even use the word
"clothes," it was all just drab rags -- whatever he put on, it looked great
on him. He was a good-looking man of particular cleanliness. His clothes
were always freshly washed -- I don't remember if they were ironed --
but he was a particularly clean person.
RFE/RL: Did he seem to be an intelligent person?
Shushkevich: He was a rather closed person and it was hard to tell how
educated he was. But his knowledge of Russian was pretty decent and he
could exchange views when Sasha [Rubenchik] and I started teaching
him, that's for sure. We never asked him about anything else, it was
forbidden.
RFE/RL: So he didn't speak about the Soviet Union?
Shushkevich: Never. Not about the Soviet Union, or the city, or the metal
shop, or about his metal-shop colleagues. I went to the experimental
shop very often because we sent our blueprints there for production, but
I never saw him having a friendly chat with workers or with his mentor
who was giving him various tasks.
RFE/RL: In an essay titled "The Collective," which he wrote later,
Oswald provides a highly detailed account of every aspect of Soviet living
and working conditions. It's as if he had been on a research mission
here. Did he ever look like a researcher to you?
Shushkevich: (Laughs) You know, if I had been asked to take him into
my research team, I would have refused immediately, even though I
would have been curious to work with an American. I didn't see any
inclination of inquiry or creativity in him.
Maybe I'm being unjust. But he showed absolutely no interest in the
things that seemed important to me.
RFE/RL: Did it seem to you that at some point he became disappointed
in his life in the Soviet Union?
Shushkevich: Over the course of our lessons, his attitude to his studies
didn't change. He studied diligently. After that, I didn't have any contact
with him. His day-to-day life, his marriage plans -- I had absolutely
nothing to do with him at that point.
RFE/RL: We have touched on this but let me ask you again. Was he not
allowed to talk about his ideology, his world view? Or did he simply not
want to? Did he ever discuss his reasons for coming to the Soviet Union?
Shushkevich: Never. Not even a hint. You see, we were categorically
forbidden to ask him about that. And he never talked about anything.
You see, now as I am recalling that time, I don't understand
why we acted like that -- like idiots, if you will excuse me.
There was an outright ban. I had Sasha. And Sasha had me.
We each received individual instructions on how to work
with [Oswald] and we didn't violate our instructions,
assuming that we might rat each other out. Although, I don't
think Sasha would have ever ratted me out, nor would I ever
betray him. He was a good colleague of mine, a young co-
worker. But we stuck to those rules. You see, I had come [to
the radio factory] from a high-security facility. And in the product-
design department at the radio factory we were designing devices of
dual use, including military, and we couldn't talk about what we were
doing in the lab, so we didn't talk to him and he didn't talk to us.
RFE/RL: But on a basic, day-to-day level, did he ever say he didn't like
any particular food, for example?
Shushkevich: Never.
RFE/RL: Nothing at all?
Shushkevich: Nothing at all. He never complained about food. He never
made any remarks. You know, as I'm telling you about it right now, I
don't quite understand why we acted like that. We had been brought up
this way.
RFE/RL: Did you shake hands when you greeted each other?
Shushkevich: We shook hands, yes, quite normally. He would say, "Hi,"
in Russian. We would say, "Hi, come in. Take your jacket o ." When we
studied formal and informal personal pronouns, "ty" and "vy" -- well,
we were saying "ty" to each other. In other words, we were on informal
terms.
RFE/RL: Did he drink vodka with other workers?
Shushkevich: I don't know. Come on, at the factory, you could drink
vodka only on the sly. At the factory, everyone drank factory alcohol. But
in the product-design department, you would be fired if you were
caught drinking, because we were supposed to be an example to the
working class. The working class drank on the sly. Manganese solution
was added to the alcohol, to add color. The workers used paper filters
with coal to make the alcohol transparent, and they showed it to us, too.
RFE/RL: Did Oswald take part in such activities?
Shushkevich: Oswald? I don't know. But I don't think he did. But I will
tell you that at the same factory, when I was still in training, you
couldn't refuse to drink alcohol. But that was in a di erent lab, it was a
measuring-instruments lab -- your coworkers would say, "What's
wrong with you? What kind of worker or what kind of engineer are you?
Come on!" The first time I drank that purified alcohol was to show [I
was a proper specialist], and I was taking a big risk.
RFE/RL: Did he attend labor union meetings or any other meetings?
Shushkevich: He worked in a di erent department. I worked in the
product-design department and he was at the experimental shop. Those
were two di erent institutions. We didn't actually have any union
meetings. They collected money every now and then, we paid our
membership fees. I don't really remember. I worked at the factory a little
more than a year and I don't remember any meetings -- except when
we were falling behind on our production plan. We had just launched the
first transistor radio receiver, the Minsk-T, and it wasn't doing well on
the conveyor belt. And then there was a demand for overnight work, and
there was some decent money in it. I remember that on the first night I
made one receiver work, but after that I got eight receivers to work, and
they stopped the [overtime] payments. I think that policy a ected
[Oswald] as well.
RFE/RL: You mentioned money. Do you know how he spent his money?
Shushkevich: I don't know. But he never complained that he had no
money or that he denied himself anything.
RFE/RL: Oswald wrote in his diaries that, with his Red Cross checks, he
was making as much as the factory director. Was it noticeable that he
was living comfortably?
Shushkevich: Perhaps I was wrong about the quality of his clothes.
Maybe he was wearing simple clothes in an elegant way. Or maybe his
clothes were more expensive than ours, I don't rule that out.
RFE/RL: Did he speak about his favorite places in Minsk?
Shushkevich: That was covered by the ban. I repeat, I can't believe I
followed the Party Committee's instruction so closely.
RFE/RL: How did he address you?
Shushkevich: He addressed us very simply. He said "Sasha" to
Rubenchik and "Stanislau" to me.
RFE/RL: What was your reaction when you learned that Lee Harvey
Oswald was accused of assassinating U.S. President John F. Kennedy?
Shushkevich: I remember that day very well. I was already working at a
university at that time. As a faculty member I worked with Factory No.
32, a restricted-access radio-electronic factory, where we had our
metalwork done.
It was during lunch break that the announcement was made
on factory radio. It was 1963. I couldn't believe it. It seemed
like I had just had contact with [Oswald], in 1961. It was
unbelievable. They said nothing about Minsk. They said "Lee
Harvey Oswald." At first I thought it was someone else. I
knew a few people named Lee, by the way. Then they said it
again. I listened more closely and I thought, "Well, I'm in a
pickle now. Who knows what I could be accused of?"
I walk out to the street. I should say that we had many
Jewish people at the design bureau and they were all good
jokers. Many of them had just been thrown out of the
Molotov factory.
And so this guy came up to me and said, "Why are you still
walking on the street? Liabezin has been arrested, that other
guy has been arrested. And you're still walking. Good for you," he said.
"I don't get you, are you with the KGB or are you a physicist?" -- such
jokes came from everyone you knew. Everyone at the factory knew that
we had taught [Oswald]. The product-design department was a three-
story building and everyone knew that we taught [Oswald]. And
everyone had to make fun of me. At the [May Day] demonstration I
couldn't make a move without being told, "How did they let you come
here?" But there were never any questions from the o cial structures.
Quiz: How Much Do You Know About JFK?
RFE/RL: Did you have any contact with the security services during your
time with Oswald or after?
Shushkevich: No. At the factory, it was [Party Secretary] Liabezin who
served as the instrument of security services. He was the only person I
talked to about this subject.
RFE/RL: So nobody ever spoke to you about Oswald?
Shushkevich: Nobody. Never. Neither before nor after.
However, later, when I became chairman of the Belarusian Supreme
Soviet, [U.S. novelist and author of "Oswald's Tale: An American
Mystery"] Norman Mailer came and asked if he could look at [Oswald's]
personal file. I said, "Before the end of the day tomorrow, I will answer
your question."
After he left, I called [Eduard] Shirkovsky, chairman of the KGB. I asked
if it could hurt our interests. He said, "Of course not. Let him look at it,
right now." That was his answer. Mailer had a big team. They wrote their
book collectively. His representative, accompanied by a very nice lady,
came back to me, and I said they could familiarize themselves [with
Oswald's file].
RFE/RL: A lot has been written and filmed over the past 50 years about
Lee Harvey Oswald. As someone who was in direct contact with him, do
you ever feel that you know something that has been untold to the world
about him?
Shushkevich: You know, a lot more has been said about him than I could
even imagine. To speak more about him, well, first of all, I don't even
want to.
In fact, I don't think it was his work.
I went to Dallas exactly for that, on my own initiative. It was when I
went to the Center for Belarusian Studies in Winfield, 40 miles [65
kilometers] from Wichita,...Kansas. The college director lent us his car,
and my wife and I drove down to Dallas. We drove around the whole city,
and we looked at the street where it happened.
And the only thought I had there was that the chiefs of the U.S.
president's security services were simply idiots or that it was a plot
directed at Kennedy, a plot in line with the traditions of Dallas itself. We
went to some museums in Dallas and looked what the [Ku Klux Klan]
had done there, how they killed blacks and Catholics. It was a gangster
center, in our terms, to my understanding. I hope the people of Dallas
and Texas will forgive me. I had no other feeling.
Therefore, it is my absolute conviction that they found a passive, calm,
compliant boy, and used him as the guilty one. As for the conclusions of
the Warren Commission, I don't believe them one bit. I have studied
them and I don't think [the assassination] was the work of my student.

Interview and translation by Pavel Butorin
 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Karl Kinaski

[Jim Hargrove]

Oswald clearly hid his fluency in Russian from the Soviet authorities.  Here's even more evidence of that:

Medics at Botkinskaya Hospital in Moscow, who treated  Oswald’s self-inflicted wrist wound, realized that “The patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian.  Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what was asked.”

 

Marina may have been trying to hide her fluency in English at around the time she met Oswald in the USSR.  Robert Wesbster, the Rand Corporation worker who "defected" to Russia about the same time as Oswald, told Dick Russell in a 1997 interview that when he (Webster) met Marina in Russia, they spoke together in English for hours. Webster said Marina spoke English well but had a heavy accent.  I can't prove it, but my bet is that Marina and "Oswald" spoke English, at least during their earliest meetings.  Harvey Oswald tried to hide his command of Russian from most of the people he met in Moscow and Minsk. 

[John Butler]

13 hours ago, David G. Healy said:

a Soviet citizen writes a book about an alleged US presidential assassin? Who edited/published it, Pravda, TASS? You can do better, Karl...

Jim,

I think David Healy has gotten to the heart of the matter.  And, what James Norwood said about Titovets rings true.

[Karl Kinaski]

Oswald was not fluent in Russian when he arrived in Moscow and Minsk and he did not hid his Russian from anybody.

Oswald was not fluent in Russian that's why two men where assigned to improve his Russian skills (Shushkevic and Sasha Rubenchik) and Oswald was not hiding that he could speak Russian a little bit ... 

Quote Titovets: (OSWALDS RUSSIAN EPISODE)

Quote

As for Oswalds Russian (at the beginning of 1960) it consisted mostly of a few stereotyped phrases and a very limited vocabulary. Body language helped him out considerably in communicating, when worlds failed.

Your own quote

Quote

Medics at Botkinskaya Hospital in Moscow, who treated  Oswald’s self-inflicted wrist wound, realized that “The patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian.  Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what was asked.”

 

Regarding his skills in the Russian language Oswald was not "acting" in any way. 

Stop claiming that Oswald was fluent in Russian and Marina was fluent in English and Ella german was fluent in English but they were all HIDING it, just for the purpose of bolstering the stupid premise of Armstrongs book HARVEY AND LEE.

Listen to Marina Oswalds Pressconference in February of 1964 ... is this fluent English, as you claim, or is she still hiding that she is fluent in English?

Throwing around claims and citing documents with fatal errors and attributing false pseudonyms (Casassin is Richardson not Helms, as you claim) seems all Armstrong and you are capable of, whenever the dorky premise of Armstrongs pseudo-CTer book HARVEY AND LEE  is in danger.

 

 

Edited December 5, 2023 by Karl Kinaski

[John Butler]

41 minutes ago, Karl Kinaski said:

RFE/RL: From the limited contact that you had with Oswald, was it
possible for you to make any conclusions about his temperament?
Shushkevich: You know, it was possible. I got the impression that he was
a very calm person. He produced the impression of a hard-working man.
But he also 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." Besides that, he never showed any other habits.
He never showed any emotion. His punctuality was spotless. Our lesson
was always at 18:05 at the laboratory of the radio factory and he was
always there on the dot.

This part of Shushkevich's testimony rings true.  The inability to say Ya doo ma yu and saying Ya doo MAH yu indicates a southern accent from Louisiana or Texas.  Shushkevich wouldn't know anything about Oswald's southern accent.  Harvey lived in Tx and La long enough to acquire the accent.  Lee acquired his naturally.  

[Karl Kinaski]

Bump, because Hargrove/Armstrong are back. Everybody should know that there are severe blunders and misinterpretations in the Armstrong book "HARVEY AND LEE" that are destroying the Two Oswalds Two Marguerites premise of that book from within. 

[Sandy Larsen]

Bump... by all means, read everything Karl (thinks) he's got on Armstrong.

 

 

[Jim Hargrove]

On 5/16/2022 at 8:04 AM, Karl Kinaski said:

Oswald was not fluent in Russian when he arrived in Moscow and Minsk and he did not hid his Russian from anybody.

Then how, before ever setting foot in the Soviet Union, did Harvey Oswald get essentially the same marks in Russian and English language tests in the Marine Corps?  While in the Marines, how did he manage to carry on a lengthy conversation in Russian with Rosaleen Quinn?

• “It was a matter of common knowledge among squadron members that he [Oswald] could read, write, and speak Russian.” –Erwin Donald Lewis

• “Oswald subscribed to a newspaper printed in Russian, which I believe he said was published in San Francisco.” –James Anthony Botelho

• “I remember that Oswald could speak a little Russian, even when he was overseas.” –Paul Edward Murphy

• “I know from rumor that Oswald received a newspaper printed in Russian” –Donald Peter Camarata

• “He [Oswald] spent a great deal of his free time reading papers printed in Russian….I believe he also had some books written in Russian, although I do not remember their names.” –Mack Osborne

Here is a Russian-language newspaper printed in San Francisco, perhaps the very one James Anthony Botelho said Oswald subscribed to.  Can you imagine trying to read this with just a dictionary at hand?