Which came first, the bus or the Rambler?

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

John Butler writes:

Quote

Did you notice that our anti-fan on the forum, Jeremey, didn't touch that list?

That's because it's just the standard 'Harvey and Lee' stuff that has been covered umpteen times already. Take an uncorroborated claim or dubiously interpreted piece of documentary evidence, ignore every innocent explanation, and declare that one or other of the imaginary doppelgangers was at location X doing activity Y when the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald was elsewhere.

Here's an interesting challenge. It may be difficult for John to do, but he should at least give it a try:

• For each 'Harvey and Lee' claim, search honestly for all the alternative explanations that have been offered over the years. You'll be the first 'Harvey and Lee' believer to do this!
• Throw away all the 'Harvey and Lee' claims for which plausible alternative explanations exist. Every single one! You may find this painful, and it may take some time.
• If there's anything left, try to construct a theory to explain the few remaining pieces of evidence.

What you should have done years ago is not to blindly accept every piece of evidence you can find, no matter how flimsy, but to question every piece of evidence you can find, and discard those that have innocent alternative explanations. Of course, if you do that, the whole theory crumbles away. Sorry about that.

Once you've filtered out every item of evidence for which non-doppelganger explanations exist, turn your attention to the reasoning behind this nonsense, and tell us why the CIA might have decided to set up a scheme involving doppelgangers when there was no need to do so.

What reason would the CIA have had for deciding to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to?

Edited June 8, 2022 by Jeremy Bojczuk
Added a link

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

What I've highlighted above is merely Jonathan's opinion.

What Sandy highlighted was actually my opinion, although I wouldn't be surprised if Jonathan agrees with me:

Quote

As I've been pointing out, using doppelgangers to achieve that goal makes no sense.

Sandy continues:

Quote

I believe that it made a lot of sense to have a CIA agent who spoke and understood the Russian language flawlessly

That would indeed have made sense, although of course it doesn't imply that such an agent would have been recruited at a young age as one of a pair of doppelgangers in the hope that when they grew up they would turn out to look identical. That part is just far-fetched 'Harvey and Lee' nonsense.

I'm sure that during the Cold War, the CIA and its foreign equivalents recruited native Russian speakers. They may also have recruited language prodigies who were able to reach that level despite not being native speakers.

The problem is: Oswald wasn't one of them.

Oswald's Russian was far from flawless. He eventually reached a decent level, but everything we know about his Russian clearly shows that he was not a native speaker. His Marine buddies testified that he was teaching himself Russian. He did poorly in a Russian-language exam. He made grammatical mistakes.

Even after living among actual native speakers for years, he was making grammatical mistakes. Marina teased him about the grammatical mistakes he made. Ruth Paine, whose own Russian was nowhere near native level, noticed and commented on the grammatical mistakes he made.

Making grammatical mistakes is consistent with what the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald was: an American who learned Russian in his late teens and early twenties. It is not consistent with being a native speaker such as Sandy's imaginary doppelganger Oswald.

Incidentally, we now have a plausible account of how the real-life Oswald might have learned Russian while in the Marines:

http://www.jfkconversations.com/lee-oswald-russian-language

Quote

I don't know if the CIA had in mind a false defector role for the fake Oswald (the one later killed by Ruby) when they first recruited him.

The one who, according to John Armstrong (praise his name!) had not undergone a mastoidectomy, but who in real life had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy, a fact of which Armstrong was aware, thereby presenting Armstrong with the uncomfortable choice of either abandoning his theory or misleading his readers?* That fake Oswald?

Or the fake Oswald who vanished without a trace immediately after the assassination? (Whatever happened to that fake Oswald, by the way? And what happened to the fake Marguerite who also vanished into thin air immediately after the assassination?)

Or the fake Oswald who was 5' 11" tall in 1959, then somehow shrank to 5' 6" a couple of years later, then miraculously expanded back to 5' 11" by the time of the assassination?

Or the fake Oswald who had a 13" head?

I don't think the CIA had in mind a role for any of those fake Oswalds, because they didn't exist.

* Spoiler alert: The choice Armstrong made was to mislead his readers. Well, it was either that or admitting that his theory was nonsense, so you can't really blame him, can you?

Quote

Jonathan assumes that it would be easy to pick an American who will learn and perfect his Russian language in a fairly short period of time.

I don't know what Jonathan assumes, but that isn't what I assume. There are two problems with Sandy's latest bit of speculation.

The first problem is that, as I've already pointed out, the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald didn't "perfect his Russian language". Even after having spent more than two years interacting daily with native Russian speakers, and after marrying one of them and insisting on speaking nothing but Russian with her, his Russian was still far from perfect. If the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald spoke less than perfect Russian, Sandy's imaginary Oswald doppelganger likewise must have spoken less than perfect Russian.

The second problem is that there wouldn't have been "a fairly short period of time" available for an American to learn Russian. A fairly long period of time would have been available. According to 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine, it was around 1950 when the CIA decided to recruit its two pairs of imaginary doppelgangers. The real-life Lee Harvey Oswald defected towards the end of 1959. That's the best part of a decade, which is more than enough time for an intelligent, motivated American to learn the amount of Russian which would be needed to understand what was being said around him.

This brings us back to the fundamental problem with the 'Harvey and Lee' theory (yes, I know there are numerous problems with it, but this one is central to the theory). The double-doppelganger scheme could only work if the defector were a native speaker of Russian, and if the task he was given required him to be a native speaker.

But the defector, the real-life, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald, clearly was not a native speaker of Russian. The task he was given, namely understanding what people would be saying around him in the Soviet Union, did not require him to be a native speaker.

A year or two ago in several threads on this forum, the 'Harvey and Lee' faithful suddenly became aware of this fundamental problem with their theory. If their imaginary defecting doppelganger not only wasn't a native speaker of Russian but also didn't need to be a native speaker of Russian, there would have been no rational justification for any sort of long-term project involving doppelgangers.

Doppelgangers were unnecessary! Such was the shock of this realisation that Jim Hargrove became temporarily incapacitated and was unable to keep on spamming the forum by copying and pasting long-debunked passages of scripture. It was that serious.

If the CIA had wanted to create what the 'Harvey and Lee' theory claims they wanted to create (a false defector who possessed both a plausible American background and enough Russian to understand what was being said around him), all they had to do was recruit a genuine American and get him to learn Russian.

What reason would the CIA have had for deciding to use doppelgangers when they didn't need to?

[John Butler]

On 6/8/2022 at 4:24 AM, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Here's an interesting challenge. It may be difficult for John to do, but he should at least give it a try:

• For each 'Harvey and Lee' claim, search honestly for all the alternative explanations that have been offered over the years. You'll be the first 'Harvey and Lee' believer to do this!

Jeremy,

Why should I do that?  You have given insufficient reason to challenge the already factual information and go hunting for alternatives.  People who do that are simply looking for a way to avoid uncomfortable truths and are really looking to satisify and justify their own biases.  Let's take one of the lesser known events in that list.  Lee Oswald's MATS flight to Germany mid-October, 1959.

Harvey Oswald is in Finland and the Soviet Union from Oct. 10, 1959 to Oct. 21, 1959 in other words mid-October.  There are plenty of records to show that.

Lee's taking a plane to Germany is documented by this:

Oswald takes MATs Flight to Defect?

MATS flight from McGuire (McGuire Air Force Base/ Fort Dix, New Jersey) to Germany – October 1959 w/ Lee Oswald, USMC

In September 1978, a chief investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had an assistant contact Louisea Steenbarger – of Peru, Indiana, to see what information she wanted to relay in regards to their investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The assistant made the phone call and talked to Louise Steenbarger and wrote this report:

KENNEDY
OUTSIDE CONTACT REPORT
DATE 9-26-78 TIME

 

I.                    Identifying Information: Name Louise Steenbarger Telphone 317-172-1771Address 128 East Sixth Street, Peru, Indiana Type of Contact – x Telephone ___ Person
 

II.                 Summary of   Contact:

Pursuant to Cliff Fenton’s request, I called Mrs. Steenbarger because she contacted the Committee to give information.

Mrs. Steenbarger related the following:

In Mid-October 1959 her husband, Maurice Eugene Steenbarger, was stationed with the Air Force in Phalsbourg France. He husband was a civilian auditor with the Auditor General. At that time she left her home in Marion, Indiana with her eight year old son, David (dob 11/29/51) to join her husband in France. Her travel was arranged through the military and she was issued travel orders. She left from Bunker Hill Base (now called Grissom) in Indiana and flew to MacGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. MacGuire was the point of departure for military transport flights were called MATS.

On the airplane her son sat in the window seat and she sat in the middle. The man sitting in the aisle seat said his name was Lee Oswald; she doesn’t remember him using a middle name. He seemed tense and didn’t say much; he gripped the arms of the seat so tightly that his knuckles were white. She thought he was merely afraid of flying. He was quite taciturn and actually seemed hostile when she tried to talk to him.

The young man relaxed after they had a meal. He seemed to her like he had a lot of pent-up emotion. He said he had served in Japan and the Philippines. He was wearing a Marine Corps uniform. He said he had fallen in love with a Japanese girl and had been imprisoned in either Japan or the Philippines because he wanted to marry her.said he was being shipped to Germany by the military; the departure had been so hastily arranged that he had not even been able to see his mother.

Mrs. Steenbarger described the man as having light to sand hair, light eyes, with sharpshooter medals on his uniform, a name plate saying “Lee Oswald” and a slight Southern accent.

He said his father was named Robert E. Lee Oswald. He talked about putting down the American system. He said he was being shipped to Germany because they needed him right away and that he had a skill he could use there, but she doesn’t recall if he specified what skill.

The plane landed in Preswick in Scotland. Mrs. Steenbarger and her son deplaned to use the restroom. Oswald said he was ill. He stood at a distance and seemed to be watching her coldly and suspiciously. After that, he didn’t speak to her any more.

When they got back on the plane the man named Oswald sat across the isle from her and her son and a couple of rows up. Another man in nice civilian clothing sat next to her. He let a cigarette dangle on the armrest but appeared distracted and did not smoke it. There may have been other civilians on the plane, but she is not sure.

The man named Oswald told her that he was still under surveillance from his trouble with the military police. The man sitting next to her after Oswald moved behaved oddly that she wondered if he was in fact the person who was watching Oswald.

Their plane landed at either Rhine/Maine or Frnakfurt.  That was the last time she saw the man named Oswald. She did not notice how he left the airfield.

Mrs. Steenbarger offered that her travel arrangements and possibly a manifest of that flight could be gotten from the Air Force. She provided the following vital statistics on her and her husband:

Lola Louise Steenbarger

Dob 3/19/23

  

[Jim Hargrove]

35 minutes ago, John Butler said:

Mrs. Steenbarger described the man as having light to sand hair, light eyes, with sharpshooter medals on his uniform, a name plate saying “Lee Oswald” and a slight Southern accent.

That's interesting, John.  I don't remember ever hearing about her, but John A. has a file on her at his Baylor University online site which you can access by clicking on THIS LINK.  For some reason, John either decided not to use it or perhaps forgot about it.

[Jim Hargrove]

5 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Doppelgangers were unnecessary! Such was the shock of this realisation that Jim Hargrove became temporarily incapacitated and was unable to keep on spamming the forum by copying and pasting long-debunked passages of scripture. It was that serious.

Translation: Jim Hargrove keeps posting EVIDENCE of two Oswald’s and Jeremy Boczuk has to work hard to forget it.  For example, he continuously forgets that the use of imposters and look-alikes is common in spycraft. For example:

Russian Spy Gordon Lonsdale/Konon Molody

A Russian named Konon Molody, born in Moscow in 1922, was sent to Berkley, California at the age of seven to learn English and develop familiarity with American customs.  Ten years later, he returned to the USSR, was commissioned in the Soviet Navy, and started espionage training.

By 1954, Molody sailed to Canada with a birth certificate and other paperwork for a Canadian named  Gordon Arnold Lonsdale who had died c. 1943.  As “Gordon Lonsdale,” Molody had a significant career as a Soviet spy, including interactions with Rudolph Abel in the U.S. and with the British military.  He was convicted of espionage in London in 1961.

Antonio and Patricio DeLaGuardia

The book “Castro’s Final Hour” included a photograph of Antonio and Patricio DeLaGuardia, top spies for Cuba during the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. They were identical twins, useful, among other ways, for providing an alibi when one or the other got in trouble.
 

Mossad officer Michael Ross

More recently, a fellow named Michael Ross was born in British Columbia in 1961. He traveled to Israel in 1982 where he eventually married an Israeli woman and joined the Mossad.  According to the Canadian daily National Post (1/14/12), “Over the next 14 years, the Canadian-Israeli assumed six different identities — one cover lasted a full seven years — and led a life wildly different from the one his family believed true so he could gather intelligence and seduce defectors.”

Harvey and Lee Oswald

And, of course, we have our own look-alikes who Laura Kittrell, who interviewed both of them, told Gaeton Fonzi that they “looked the same, the same general outline and coloring and build….”

 

[John Butler]

53 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

For some reason, John either decided not to use it or perhaps forgot about it.

Jim,

I neither forgot, nor knew about John A's article at Baylor.  The information I had is in a word doc.  I took this info from the internet.  But, someone one knew about John A's info.  What I used and what's at Baylor is essentially the same.  

57 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Mrs. Steenbarger described the man as having light to sand hair, light eyes, with sharpshooter medals on his uniform, a name plate saying “Lee Oswald” and a slight Southern accent.

This and another observation about Lee Oswald bothered me.  This is not exactly the "correct" description of Lee Oswald.  He had darker hair.  Could be he was down south in Florida and the sun and water affected his hair and lightened it due to wind and water.  That happens.  The other alternative takes me into the outer rings of my speculations.  It is a 3rd Oswald.  That doesn't work for me since one should take the simplest answer and keep it simple.  This was Lee Oswald.

1 hour ago, John Butler said:

He seemed tense and didn’t say much; he gripped the arms of the seat so tightly that his knuckles were white. She thought he was merely afraid of flying. He was quite taciturn and actually seemed hostile when she tried to talk to him.

This sounds like a person's first flight on an airplane.  Or, a fear of flying.  Wouldn't that be something.  Oswald spends his whole military career around airplanes and ends up being afraid to fly.  Maybe he had a bad experience with David Ferrie at air cadet training.  The taciturn and surliness reminds me of that others describe Oswald in the same manner, particularly Marita Lorenz.

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

For example, he continuously forgets that the use of imposters and look-alikes is common in spycraft.

I liked this comment a lot.  I have little information on this.  I'll make a copy and keep it for reference.  Thanks.  

[Jim Hargrove]

3 hours ago, John Butler said:

Jim,

I neither forgot, nor knew about John A's article at Baylor.  The information I had is in a word doc.  I took this info from the internet.  But, someone one knew about John A's info.  What I used and what's at Baylor is essentially the same.

John,

I meant that John Armstrong didn’t make use of the Steenbarger interview.  Her names appears nowhere in his book or our website, even though the report is clearly in his Baylor U. files.  

It is an interesting document. After all, Harvey Oswald boarded the Marion Lykes on Sept. 19, 1959 and by mid-October was in Helsinki and days later in Russia.  

Next time I talk to him, I’ll try to remember to ask John A. why he didn’t use it.  Thanks for digging this up.  First time I’ve seen it.

3 hours ago, John Butler said:

I liked this comment a lot.  I have little information on this.  I'll make a copy and keep it for reference.  Thanks.  

On the spy-craft issues, I read somewhere that Mata Hari used stage doubles to stand in for her while she was involved in espionage activities, and that Allen Dulles talked about the use of look-alikes in one of his books, but I looked a short time ago and couldn’t find evidence about either claim, so I left it out in the post above.

[Sandy Larsen]

18 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Oswald's Russian was far from flawless. He eventually reached a decent level, but everything we know about his Russian clearly shows that he was not a native speaker. His Marine buddies testified that he was teaching himself Russian. He did poorly in a Russian-language exam. He made grammatical mistakes.

 

Everything we know about HARVEY Oswald's Russian language proficiency is consistent with the H&L theory. He spoke far better Russian than how Jeremy characterizes it.

(Some of the following is what I recall from past threads. I hope Jim will correct any mistakes I make.)

The H&L theory says that Oswald was a Russian-speaking orphan who was brought to America at a young age, ten years old or so. This is how he got his Baltic/Polish accent. (How could he have gotten a that accent had he learned Russian in the Marine Corpse?) The fact that he could already speak Russian explains why the Marine Corpse chose to test his Russian proficiency, and why he scored about what would be expected from a ten-year-old.

Oswald improved his Russian abilities by reading Russian newspapers, etc., while in the Marines. He did this in preparation for his future missions.

After living in Russia for a couple of years, his level of Russian comprehension had improved to the point that he was reading Russian novels and was even recommended as a Russian interpreter by a Russian linguist. Many were amazed by his Russian-speaking abilities.

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim Hargrove writes:

Quote

the use of imposters and look-alikes is common in spycraft.

But the use of doppelgangers is not at all common. None of Jim's examples were of preposterously complicated 'Harvey and Lee'-style doppelgangers, in which a pair of unrelated doppelganger boys were recruited at a young age, along with two doppelganger women to act as their mothers, and the scheme was maintained for over a decade. Still, at least he hasn't brought up Mata Hari this time! Oh, wait ... he has.

As I've pointed out to Jim several times:

• doppelgangers are not required for impersonations, and
• doppelgangers were not required for the task supposedly given to the false defector as imagined by Armstrong and White.

Doppelgangers are unnecessary, whether in:

• real events, such as the false defection and later impersonation of the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald;
• or fictional events, such as an imaginary false defector who did not have an American background but was recruited specifically for being a native speaker of Russian despite not actually being a native speaker of Russian.

The central claim of the incoherent and poorly thought-out 'Harvey and Lee' theory is that the CIA recruited one boy for his authentic American background, and a second, unrelated boy for his native ability to speak Russian. But it was obvious that the second boy cannot have been recruited for that reason, because he (or rather the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) did not have a native ability to speak Russian.

Since the defector (the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) was not a native speaker of Russian, all the CIA needed to do, in the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's scenario, was to recruit a genuine American and get him to learn Russian. The 'Harvey and Lee' theory cannot explain why the CIA would not have done this. You see, I told you the theory was incoherent.

Sandy suggested that the CIA might have set up a double-doppelganger scheme for some reason unrelated to Oswald's false defection. Maybe they did (though it sounds a bit unlikely, doesn't it?), but that double-doppelganger scheme cannot have been the double-doppelganger scheme that the 'Harvey and Lee' theory conjured into existence, because Sandy's hypothetical scheme involved a native speaker of Russian, and the defection in question did not involve a native speaker of Russian.

If Sandy were to adapt his hypothetical scheme to include a non-native speaker of Russian (just like the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald), it would fail for the same reason the 'Harvey and Lee' theory's hypothetical scheme fails. Without a native speaker of Russian, there is no need for any doppelgangers.

Why would the CIA have gone to all the trouble of setting up a long-term project involving two pairs of doppelgangers when there was no need to do so?

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

The H&L theory says that Oswald was a Russian-speaking orphan who was brought to America at a young age, ten years old or so.

Yes, and it makes no sense.

The theory claims that this mysterious orphan was recruited specifically for his ability to speak Russian like a native, doesn't it? But this orphan (or rather the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) did not actually speak Russian like a native, did he?

Did the CIA go to all the trouble of recruiting not only this orphan, but also a doppelganger boy with an American background, and the American boy's mother, and another woman, a doppelganger of the first woman, to act as the orphan's mother, and then keep the charade going for a decade, only for the CIA to let the native Russian-speaking orphan lose the very ability for which he was recruited in the first place? Why would any rational organisation have done that?

Alternatively, if the theory now claims that the CIA recruited an orphan who didn't speak Russian like a native, what would their reason have been for recruiting him? Why would they have set up a ridiculously complicated decade-long project involving two pairs of doppelgangers, none of whom were native speakers of Russian?

The theory proposes that this far-fetched project was set up, but cannot explain why anyone would have set it up. Armstrong and White simply didn't think it through.

That's why I keep calling the 'Harvey and Lee' theory nonsense. It literally makes no sense.

[Jim Hargrove]

Jeremy Bojczuk repeatedly asks about why the CIA recruited the Russian-speaking Oswald. He should know that the evidence for two Oswalds indicates the project was started before the official  organization of the CIA.  It probably originated in an Office of Strategic Services program under the direction of Frank Wisner, who relocated thousands of Europeans to the U.S. in the aftermath of World War II.

Why did the CIA continue the project?  I have repeatedly said that one of the main advantages of a project like H&L is built-in deniability, but neither I nor Mr. Bojczuk can pretend to understand the motives of an organization that unleashed MK ULTRA on thousands of unsuspecting Americans, including American children. 

Nevertheless, the advantages of setting up a Russian-speaking child to be a Cold War spy in the Soviet Union are obvious. The Russians sent Konon Molody to Berkely, California at the age of 7 for equally obvious reasons.

Evidence for two Oswalds thunders like a freight train throughout this case.  Mr. Bojczuk almost never debates the actual evidence compiled by John A.  He just claims it is all debunked someplace else, usually at ROKC.  I slogged through much of the material there years ago and have no plans to do so again.  The EVIDENCE doesn’t change, and NONE of John A’s evidence is truly debunked there or anywhere else. If Jeremy felt he truly debunk it here, why wouldn’t he do so?

In one of the few times Mr. Bojczuk pointed to a post on the Ed Forum that attempted to debunk H&L facts, he proudly pointed to THIS POST, which falsely claimed numerous Fort Worth newspaper accounts of LHO at Stripling School were just based on erroneous information supplied by Robert Oswald in 1959.  Even a cursory look at the articles shows that new information was included in the reports from 2002 and 2017. 

The disappearance of the Stripling school records that Frank Kudlaty gave the FBI is entirely consistent with what is in the public record about the disappearance of ALL the original records about LHO from the New York City school system.

 

All the original school records (as well as employment records) for Lee Harvey Oswald disappeared, almost certainly while in FBI possession.  In 1995, the ARRB’s Joe Freeman noted that “all the school and employment records I looked at in the Warren Commission Exhibit files at Archives II were copies, not originals.”

[Jim Hargrove]

8 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Everything we know about HARVEY Oswald's Russian language proficiency is consistent with the H&L theory. He spoke far better Russian than how Jeremy characterizes it.

(Some of the following is what I recall from past threads. I hope Jim will correct any mistakes I make.)

The H&L theory says that Oswald was a Russian-speaking orphan who was brought to America at a young age, ten years old or so. This is how he got his Baltic/Polish accent. (How could he have gotten a that accent had he learned Russian in the Marine Corpse?) The fact that he could already speak Russian explains why the Marine Corpse chose to test his Russian proficiency, and why he scored about what would be expected from a ten-year-old.

Oswald improved his Russian abilities by reading Russian newspapers, etc., while in the Marines. He did this in preparation for his future missions.

After living in Russia for a couple of years, his level of Russian comprehension had improved to the point that he was reading Russian novels and was even recommended as a Russian interpreter by a Russian linguist. Many were amazed by his Russian-speaking abilities.

 

Sandy,

That’s a good summary of H&L.  I’m only hesitant to fully accept Marina’s statement that Harvey spoke Russian with a Baltic accent.  There is some evidence that she was hiding her English language abilities. In an interview with Dick Russell, Robert Webster said that he met with Marina Oswald several times in Leningrad, and that she spoke good English, although with a heavy accent.  There is plenty of evidence that LHO hid his Russian language skills from many people in Russia, although he may have departed that in his pillow talk with Marina.

For example, medics at Moscow’s Botkinskaya Hospital, where Oswald was taken after his suicide “attempt,” noted: “The patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian.  Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what was asked.”

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The theory claims that this mysterious orphan was recruited specifically for his ability to speak Russian like a native, doesn't it? But this orphan (or rather the real-life Lee Harvey Oswald) did not actually speak Russian like a native, did he?

 

Of course he (HARVEY) spoke Russian like a native. That was his native language. And he came to America at young enough age to pick up English without a Russian accent.

 

5 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Did the CIA go to all the trouble of recruiting not only this orphan, but also a doppelganger boy with an American background, and the American boy's mother, and another woman, a doppelganger of the first woman, to act as the orphan's mother, and then keep the charade going for a decade, only for the CIA to let the native Russian-speaking orphan lose the very ability for which he was recruited in the first place? Why would any rational organisation have done that?

 

Do you mean, why did the CIA sacrifice HARVEY in the JFK assassination? Maybe they discovered that he wasn't as useful as they had hoped. Or maybe he had double-crossed them in some way. Who knows.

 

[Jim Hargrove]

49 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

49 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Of course he (HARVEY) spoke Russian like a native. That was his native language. And he came to America at young enough age to pick up English without a Russian accent.

 

 

Do you mean, why did the CIA sacrifice HARVEY in the JFK assassination? Maybe they discovered that he wasn't as useful as they had hoped. Or maybe he had double-crossed them in some way. Who knows.

 

Sandy,

I may know.... Many of us believe the immediate intention of the JFK assassination plotters was to provoke an invasion of Cuba. With his assignment to Russia, his staged Fair Play for Cuba activities, and his commie-loving history dating back to the Marine Corps, it was simple to depict Oswald as a communist with ties to Castro.

Other factors may well have been instrumental in the setting up of Harvey.  Since he had ties to both the CIA and the FBI, it could be assumed in advance that government investigators, especially J. Edgar Hoover, would easily be coaxed into a full scale and elaborate cover-up.

It seems to me that a pre-selected patsy was absolutely critical to ensure the plotters could escape detection and prosecution.  Without one, the search for them surely would have been relentless.  And for that role, someone was needed who had demonstrated an ability to follow orders, even difficult ones, in order to be in the right place at the right time.  (Think what Oswald did to stop the Soviet authorities from kicking him out of Russia.  It must have been tough to slit his wrist and fake that suicide attempt.)

On top of all that, the Agency controllers already had a trained look-alike who could run around the Dallas area in the weeks leading up to the assassination and make the patsy seem all-so-guilty.

With all the above, or even some of the above, the poor schmuck Harvey Oswald was a pretty smart choice as the patsy-to-be.  And do we really think that the men who brought us MK Ultra would have any qualms about shafting their loyal asset?
 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Jim Hargrove

[Jim Hargrove]

(This is my second attempt to post this note.  The first attempt got messed up somehow.)

Sandy,

I may know why the patsy was chosen. Many of us believe the immediate intention of the JFK assassination plotters was to provoke an invasion of Cuba. With his assignment to Russia, his staged Fair Play for Cuba activities, and his commie-loving history dating back to the Marine Corps, it was simple to depict Oswald as a communist with ties to Castro.

Other factors may well have been instrumental in the setting up of Harvey.  Since he had ties to both the CIA and the FBI, it could be assumed in advance that government investigators, especially J. Edgar Hoover, would easily be coaxed into a full scale and elaborate cover-up.

It seems to me that a pre-selected patsy was absolutely critical to ensure the plotters could escape detection and prosecution.  Without one, the search for them surely would have been relentless.  And for that role, someone was needed who had demonstrated an ability to follow orders, even difficult ones, in order to be in the right place at the right time.  (Think what Oswald did to stop the Soviet authorities from kicking him out of Russia.  It must have been tough to slit his wrist and fake that suicide attempt.)

On top of all that, the Agency controllers already had a trained look-alike who could run around the Dallas area in the weeks leading up to the assassination and make the patsy seem all-so-guilty.

With all the above, or even some of the above, the poor schmuck Harvey Oswald was a pretty smart choice as the patsy-to-be.  And do we really think that the men who brought us MK Ultra would have any qualms about shafting their loyal asset?