Question About Harvey, Lee, and the "Two Marguerites"

[Jonathan Cohen]

50 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

And therefore we should disbelieve the theory, despite the enormous amount of circumstantial evidence for it? And always accept alternative explanations for the evidence, even when it's quite a stretch and sometimes even ridiculous?

Pretty much, yep .. considering the "Harvey and Lee" theory itself is the pinnacle of absurdity in the assassination research community.

[W. Niederhut]

6 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Yes. The notion that Oswald may have had enhanced auditory-based language learning abilities is much more plausible than a secret government program involving doppelgangers.

I've never denied Hoover referenced a possible Oswald imposter in Mexico City, as this is a matter of record. I trust you'd agree this has absolutely nothing to do with a secret government program involving doppelgangers. Again, you were the one that started this thread by asking what happened to said Oswald and Marguerite doppelgangers, and then went on to express your belief that there were indeed multiple Marguerites. Are you now saying you don't believe there were long-term doppelgangers, but rather just someone impersonating Oswald?

Bunk.  You're talking about something that you don't really understand.

How many adults with Asperger's have you evaluated and treated over the years?

As for "enhanced auditory-based language," are you suggesting that Oswald listened to readings of Fathers and Sons and The Brothers Karamazov in 1960, rather than reading them? 

Oswald's linguistic abilities were rated as mediocre, at best, in the Marine Corps.  Where's the linguistic "enhancement" to which you refer?  In fact, he couldn't even spell.

Speaking as a board certified psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School, (class of '83) my opinion is that it isn't plausible at all that a dyslexic, native English-speaking high school dropout like Oswald would read and discuss the novels of Turgenev and Dostoevsky in Russian.  That's an ability that we would expect to see in native Russian speakers, or grad students in Slavic languages. 

And, like Bojczuk, you're misrepresenting what I said on this thread.  I began with a hypothetical if/then question about Armstrong's theories.  And I never said that I didn't believe there were long-term doppelgangers.

I'm still trying to make sense of the complex data about Oswald-- including Angleton's obfuscation on the subject.

If you guys have to repeatedly distort what forum members say to win an argument, something is seriously wrong here.

As for my passing comment (above) about Hoover, I was merely struck by the fact that Hoover, himself, expressed concerns about a possible Oswald doppelganger/imposter after Oswald's defection.  Then, four years later, he was quite aware of an Oswald imposter.

Edited September 8, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Tom Gram]

Malcolm Blunt worked closely with Armstrong on H&L, and was so upset that Armstrong decided to go with the doppelgänger theory that he stopped talking to him for a year. This is a guy who still supports Palmer McBride and says that the New York witnesses to a husky child Oswald are “rock solid” by the way. Blunt thought that the anomalies in Oswald’s history reflected the use of his identity by various intelligence agencies throughout the years - which may or may not be correct. The point is that Armstrong’s top researcher, who found a lot of the documents and conducted a lot of the interviews on which H&L is based, disowned Armstrong’s core thesis. 

The alternate explanations to the long term doppelgänger theory, at least the ones I’ve read (like from Greg Parker), are not at all ridiculous, are a lot more plausible than H&L, and are backed up by solid evidence.

The problem I have with the research of a lot of lone assassin theorists is that the alternate explanations proposed are often purely speculative or at best ambiguous yet are presented as certainty simply because they point to Oswald’s guilt. I don’t think there’s a very good analogy here, since  Parker (I guess he’s my example) doesn’t do that sort of thing when debating H&L. Maybe I’m biased, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with his counterarguments - and think that Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War is perhaps the best book out there on Oswald’s early life. 

Basically I’m just not convinced. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I haven’t seen anything remotely approaching that standard. 

[Sandy Larsen]

W.,

Are you aware of LHO's attending two schools at the same time? That's what the school records show.

H&L skeptics will say it was an error. A school employee must have accidentally marked somebody else's grades in Oswald's records that one semester.

Well, okay, that's possible. Though quite unlikely. (How often do you think that happens?)

But then, what about the other time Oswald attended two schools at the same time? Where everybody in his family recalls his attending one school, but the records (and the WC) showing that he attended a different school. Oh, and by the way, the assistant principal of the school which Oswald's family said he attended, recalls the FBI taking the records from the school and not returning them.

Skeptics say the vice principal was lying. Armstrong sweet talked him into lying. (He's on video tape, by the way.)

You should check these anomalies out.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

w.,

Two more anomalies.

Evidence shows that Oswald was missing a front tooth, but he wasn't missing the tooth when his body was exhumed.

Also, an x-ray shows that Oswald was missing a molar, but the exhumed body wasn't.

Of course, that's because there were two different Oswald's in each case.

I gave short presentations for these two anomalies.

 

 

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

50 minutes ago, Miles Massicotte said:

Do the Harvey and Lee people have any evidence for how, by what mechanism, and who accomplished this near unheard of feat? How presumably the CIA, or someone else with similar power, could be able to either

1) locate two children with similar names and resemblances and craft an intricately long plan to use one in a spycraft operation against the other

or

2) locate/create two Marguerites, hope they have similar looking children, and proceed with 1)

Am I missing something? Presume it is all true (and indeed Armstrong has uncovered a lot of good stuff). Isn't the fundamental premise of this just pure speculation, and a wild one at that?

Miles, excellent questions. As has been covered here on the forum and in many other places (Greg Parker's forum, Tracy Parnell's Web site), "Harvey and Lee" adherents have a range of answers to the above, all of which strain credulity at best (it was part of some World War II-era CIA scheme to infiltrate Russia!) and are absolutely ridiculous at worst (the doppelgangers just vanished into thin air after Nov. 22, 1963, while the one of the Marguerites was allowed to simply go on living as normal, while giving interviews to journalists for another 18 years; Oswald's brothers were "in" on the plot, as Marina, etc. etc.).

[Ron Bulman]

I've not read Harvey and Lee myself nor been to his website.  I have read several of his articles/parts of it on here/online.  Jim Hargrove's defense of it, points made by others like Sandy's above.

When I first read of the concept, I thought it too incredible for belief.  Ultimately, I asked myself who could have conceived such?  Naturally Dulles and Angleton came to mind.  I then thought of MKULTRA and more.  When I found authors like Jim Dieugenio, Joseph McBride and others giving at least some of Armstrong's work credence I began to consider it a realistic possibility.  Is it the way it happened?  I can't say.  No one can.

To me it's gotten to the point of being like lone nutters with blinders on following the warren omission to the conclusion of Ozzie did it all by himself. 

[Sandy Larsen]

29 minutes ago, Miles Massicotte said:

I've read most everything on Armstrong's website, but not his book. Let's assume that it's all plausible, that there are two Oswalds and two Marguerites. Do the Harvey and Lee people have any evidence for how, by what mechanism, and who accomplished this near unheard of feat? How presumably the CIA, or someone else with similar power, could be able to either

1) locate two children with similar names and resemblances and craft an intricately long plan to use one in a spycraft operation against the other

or

2) locate/create two Marguerites, hope they have similar looking children, and proceed with 1)

Am I missing something? Presume it is all true (and indeed Armstrong has uncovered a lot of good stuff). Isn't the fundamental premise of this just pure speculation, and a wild one at that?

 

Miles,

I wish Jim Hargrove were here to reply to your post. He knows H&L evidence and theory inside out. My theory (speculation) is a bit different, and I think more plausible. It goes like this:

(I need to keep this brief.)

There was a Hungarian boy who spoke Russian but was orphaned (perhaps as a result of the war) and then brought to America and living in one of the northern states (I forget which) with a man who was supposedly his uncle. (This is backed by evidence...  a telephone call in 1963/64 from a woman who said she recognized Oswald as being this boy, IIRC. And said that the "uncle" was involved in crime IIRC.)

Somehow someone in the CIA became aware of the boy and came up with what he thought was a great idea... given that the boy spoke Russian as a native language, and since he has no real family here, he could be groomed to be a spy. But it would be good to give him an all-American background. So they decided to raise him alongside a boy who WAS all-American and let him use this American's background as his own. (This is all speculation, except for the fact that Oswald actually did become a spy and false-defected to Russia.)

The real Marguerite and LHO, who had CIA connections due to her ex-husband being CIA, was recruited for this project. They didn't have to do much... just live a normal life. The fake Marguerite and fake LHO took on the names of the real ones, and tried to live a parallel life. Naturally, they were all given some compensation. (This is speculation, though it seems that I've read that Marguerite's ex-husband might have indeed had a CIA affiliation.)

This was the beginning of the CIA's Oswald Project. (This project's name and existence are based on evidence.)

The switch was made while Oswald was in the Marines. (Evidence based.) After which, the fake LHO used the real LHO's background information as needed.

 

Jim Hargrove's and John Armstrong's theory goes much further than that, saying that the the real LHO became a CIA agent as well, and ended up framing the fake LHO in the JFK assassination.

There clearly was at least one Oswald imposter, but I don't believe it was necessarily the real Oswald. I think there could have been a number of imposters and that none of them were full-time imposters.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Miles Massicotte said:

1) locate two children with similar names and resemblances and craft an intricately long plan to use one in a spycraft operation against the other

or

2) locate/create two Marguerites, hope they have similar looking children, and proceed with 1)

 

I think the CIA may have recruited the real Marguerite to buy properties to be used as safe houses, and then offered her the position of allowing the fake Marguerite and fake LHO to eventually take on her and her son's backgrounds. Not a big deal.

And they recruited a low-income "spinster" to raise the fake LHO.

I think that the two boys were average in their looks... they were not identical.

The two boys went their separate ways after the Marines.

Beginning here, I will refer to the fake Oswald (the one killed by Ruby) simply as Oswald.

I think that after the Marines stint, the Oswald Project may have chosen an Oswald imposter who looked like Oswald if the given task needed it.

The Oswald imposter in Mexico City is a good example of the CIA not caring if the imposter looked like Oswald. That imposter was shorter and had blond hair.

 

[Cory Santos]

I read on the internet that the CIA recruits heavy out of Harvard, especially graduate schools.  Since I read it then it must be true.  So I asked Cliff.  He agrees.  So it’s confirmed as fact. 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

W. Niederhut writes:

Quote

you also have a tendency to reference the work of Warren Commission Report apologist W. Tracy Parnell. ... Great resource there.

Tracy is indeed a Warren Report supporter, but that is as relevant as his inside leg measurement, his taste in music, or what he ate for dinner last Tuesday.

He has written a good account of the Hoover memo storm-in-a-teacup, a topic that features in 'Harvey and Lee' lore but which in reality provides no support for the theory, as some basic research would have revealed, had W. Niederhut felt inclined to undertake any.

Quote

I have merely raised some questions

As I have pointed out several times now, most of the questions a newcomer might raise have been answered already, usually several times over. Those answers are readily available, but that still requires the willingness to look for them.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Jeremy Bojczuk
Corrected a typo

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Miles Massicotte writes:

Quote

I think there is strong evidence that Oswald was impersonated at least once and likely several times, but beyond that I think what Tom Gram said above basically sums it up: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Those are two good observations, but I think we can go further.

Oswald almost certainly was impersonated, an event that severely undermines the lone-nut case. But, like some other aspects of the assassination that undermine the lone-nut case, the idea that Oswald was impersonated got co-opted into a theory so far-fetched and inadequately justified that it's liable to undermine criticism of the lone-nut case.

A standard feature of the media's coverage of the assassination is that Warren Commission critics shouldn't be taken seriously because they are a bunch of crackpots: 'conspiracy theorists' in the propaganda sense of the term. Any rational member of the public who stumbled across the double-doppelganger theory (or any of the other far-fetched theories) would be inclined to agree.

Not only does the far-fetched stuff give the wrong impression of Warren Commission critics in general, but it serves to hide the facts that undermine the lone-nut case. The member of the public who ends up laughing at the double-doppelganger nonsense will have remained ignorant about Oswald's genuine impersonation.

[W. Niederhut]

      People interested in the topic of John Armstrong's H&L research might want to study the original (closed) Education Forum thread on the subject from 2004.   It's quite a fascinating read, with good summaries by Jim Hargrove of some of Armstrong's H&L evidence.

     And, contrary to the oft-repeated trope here (by Jeremy Bojczuk and Jonathan Cohen) that Armstrong's data has been "debunked," (by Lone Nutter W. Tracy Parnell, Greg Parker, et.al.) Jim Hargrove, David Josephs, forum administrator Mark Knight, Don Jeffries, and others poked a lot of holes in Greg Parker's arguments allegedly "debunking" Armstrong's data.

     I'm no expert on the subject, (since I have only read Armstrong's two H&L articles in DiEugenio's The Assassinations anthology) but people can judge for themselves about the alleged "debunking" on this original Education Forum thread.

     I must have missed the "debunking."

    

 

 

Edited September 8, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Tony Krome]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

 I must have missed the "debunking."

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

      People interested in the topic of John Armstrong's H&L research might want to study the original (closed) Education Forum thread on the subject from 2004.   It's quite a fascinating read, with good summaries by Jim Hargrove of some of Armstrong's H&L evidence.

     And, contrary to the oft-repeated trope here (by Jeremy Bojczuk and Jonathan Cohen) that Armstrong's data has been "debunked," (by Lone Nutter W. Tracy Parnell, Greg Parker, et.al.) Jim Hargrove, David Josephs, forum administrator Mark Knight, Don Jeffries, and others poked a lot of holes in Greg Parker's arguments allegedly "debunking" Armstrong's data.

     I'm no expert on the subject, (since I have only read Armstrong's two H&L articles in DiEugenio's The Assassinations anthology) but people can judge for themselves about the alleged "debunking" on this original Education Forum thread.

     I must have missed the "debunking."

    

 

 

Addendum:  There is a vast array of H&L data described on this original Education Forum thread, extending to over 100 EF pages, and people studying the thread will notice repeated, unsuccessful efforts by W. Tracy Parnell, Greg Parker, and one or two others (e.g., Paul Trejo) to discredit and "debunk" Armstrong's data.  

This so-called "Anti- H&L Hit Squad" fails to debunk almost anything on this original thread, including Armstrong's evidence that the FBI aggressively confiscated records (school, employment, and residential) relating to the Oswald Project almost immediately after JFK's assassination.

So I find it rather odd that some current forum members have repeatedly claimed that Greg Parker, W. Tracy Parnell, et.al., have "debunked" Armstrong's data.

I also noticed that Greg Parker actually referenced the work of the CIA propagandist John McAdams on some of his anti-H&L posts. A big red flag.