Can you reconcile this with your "false defector" narrative?

[Guest]

Hi

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I raised this issue on another thread several years ago, but it seems more significant than ever in light of the continuing focus on Oswald as a possible CIA operative.

My wife’s older sister and brother-in-law worked at the Minsk Radio Factory in the Oswald era. Security was extremely tight. Employees could carry nothing larger than a small purse, and it was checked coming and going. My wife could never enter the factory but had to call her sister from a tiny vestibule and meet with her there. Her sister was a technical illustrator but things were so compartmentalized that she never had any idea of what she was drawing. Things were so secretive that my wife had no idea until after her sister retired about the completely ordinary household products manufactured there, let alone the militarily sensitive ones.

Oswald was assigned to the metal shop where prototypes of new products were made (sometimes referred to as the “experimental shop”). This would seem an unlikely assignment for a recent American defector. My guess is that the KGB wanted to see how much “curiosity” he would show in this environment, as opposed to having him put knobs on TVs on an assembly line. Far from being curious, he was notorious for being openly lazy, argumentative and mocking toward the factory regimen and the Soviet expectations of employees. My wife's relatives never met him, but his reputation was widespread.

Is this the portrait of a false defector? Would this behavior on the part of a false defector have made any sense whatsoever?

Ernst Titovets was probably Oswald’s closet friend in Minsk. He believes (and has been outspoken about his beliefs) that the Oswald he knew could not have become a Presidential assassin. He has impeccable medical and scientific credentials, and I don’t believe anyone seriously thinks he’s some sort of disinformation agent.

In Oswald: Russian Episode, Titovets relates a telling incident. In Oswald’s KGB-bugged apartment, Oswald produced a curious tubelike piece of machined metal and engaged Titovets in a conversation about the chemicals that might be used to make a pipe bomb. This may well have been provocateur Oswald trying to see what reaction he would get from his KGB listeners since he never mentioned the subject to Titovets again.

Titovets later learned that this was a piece of a highly sensitive military device. Oswald had obviously stolen it from the prototype shop. My guess is that it was left in the shop precisely to see what he would do with it. Given the tight security, he could have left the factory with it only if the KGB had instructed the security to allow him to do so.

Perhaps because Titovets never worked in the Radio Factory, he seems to have no grasp of the significance of what he describes (here or in regard to several other high-risk incidents involving Oswald). Quite literally, stealing that piece from the prototype shop would have been, for any other employee, a one-way ticket to Siberia. Talk of pipe bombs by an American defector likewise would have been a one-way ticket to Siberia unless the KGB had decided he was too goofy to be taken seriously.

Is this the portrait of a false defector? Would this behavior on the part of a false defector make any sense whatsoever? According to the false defector narrative, the plan was for Oswald to return home after his mission had been accomplished. Why engage in provocative and almost insane behavior?

This is the problem I always have with conspiracy theories. The actual evidence damningly says Oswald was pretty much who he had seemed to be since his early years: A deeply troubled, perhaps even delusional, idealist with a fascination for Russia and Marxism. This evidence is just waved away. Instead, conspiracy theories are woven around obscure references in obscure documents, speculative about what unseen and perhaps imaginary documents may contain, and the sorts of characters of tale tales – often seemingly credible characters whose motivations are difficult to fathom – who surface in every area of weirdness, from the UFO phenomenon to Bigfoot to the Illuminati to, yes, the JFK assassination.

You are somewhat unfair to much serious and excellent research done by John Newman and Dan Hardway regarding LHO's professional profile. 

CIA officer Tennent Bagley evidently thought LHO was a witting asset.  Bagley certainly knew the CIA well enough. 

Was LHO a sardonic and jaundiced individual at times? Perhaps, perhaps most of us are occasionally. 

Perhaps LHO felt he had been given a dead-end assignment in Russia and wanted out. Ergo stealing the pipe and bragging about it (if LHO actually knew he was bugged, another supposition). 

The LN arguments based upon LHO's personality or character are not compelling, and highly suppositional.  About equal in weight to arguments that LHO could not have done the JFKA as he was nice to kids in his rooming house. 

LHO's true character and personality are impossible for outsiders to determine.

Even his wife Marina, who could be said to know LHO best, came to think of him as innocent of the JFKA. His mother thought LHO had been used somehow, and was a government asset. 

Do the views of LHO's mother and wife prove LHO was innocent? Of course not. 

But they knew LHO about 1000 times better than any of us ever will. 

 

[Tom Gram]

I don’t think you can really come to any conclusions on this episode without seeing Oswald’s KGB file - which according to John Tunheim is something like five feet tall and still locked up in Russia somewhere.

I just think it’s a bit naive to assume that you can understand the decision making process of perhaps the most sophisticated intelligence agency on the planet when you have literally zero evidentiary support. You say that Oswald would have certainly been sent to the Gulag unless the KGB decided that he was “too goofy to be taken seriously.” Is that really the only possibility here? Is there any reason Oswald might have been allowed to take equipment from the factory other than “to see what he’d do with it”? What possible interest could the KGB have had in listening in on an American defector discuss pipe bombs with Soviet citizens? Could Oswald have been cooperating with the KGB? Is a deep cover secret agent mission the only reason the CIA might have wanted to send a Marine with limited training to Russia as false defector? Could the KGB have figured out that Oswald was not a bona fide defector? How could the KGB have figured something like that out? What would they have done with Oswald? 

Aren’t lawyers supposed to ask these types of questions? How many single witness statements are irreconcilable with the lone assassin narrative? I’m not trying to be a tool - I’m just kind of baffled that you think this alleged Titovets episode is actually  evidence of anything.

When did Titovets’ book come out? 2010? How about an active federal agent telling the Church Committee that Oswald was regularly observed with David Ferrie during surveillance of anti-Castro Cuban groups in New Orleans? That happened, and the agent’s actual testimony along with testimony from at least two of his colleagues (including his boss) plus an additional witness has disappeared. That’s the kind of stuff I have a hard time reconciling - with the narrative of Oswald as a wannabe Communist loner.

It’s the same deal with the handling of Oswald’s file at CIA during the defection. There’s no good explanation for it unless you accept that there’s a hell of a lot about Oswald and the assassination that we’ve never been told. 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I raised this issue on another thread several years ago, but it seems more significant than ever in light of the continuing focus on Oswald as a possible CIA operative.

My wife’s older sister and brother-in-law worked at the Minsk Radio Factory in the Oswald era. Security was extremely tight. Employees could carry nothing larger than a small purse, and it was checked coming and going. My wife could never enter the factory but had to call her sister from a tiny vestibule and meet with her there. Her sister was a technical illustrator but things were so compartmentalized that she never had any idea of what she was drawing. Things were so secretive that my wife had no idea until after her sister retired about the completely ordinary household products manufactured there, let alone the militarily sensitive ones.

Oswald was assigned to the metal shop where prototypes of new products were made (sometimes referred to as the “experimental shop”). This would seem an unlikely assignment for a recent American defector. My guess is that the KGB wanted to see how much “curiosity” he would show in this environment, as opposed to having him put knobs on TVs on an assembly line. Far from being curious, he was notorious for being openly lazy, argumentative and mocking toward the factory regimen and the Soviet expectations of employees. My wife's relatives never met him, but his reputation was widespread.

Is this the portrait of a false defector? Would this behavior on the part of a false defector have made any sense whatsoever?

Ernst Titovets was probably Oswald’s closet friend in Minsk. He believes (and has been outspoken about his beliefs) that the Oswald he knew could not have become a Presidential assassin. He has impeccable medical and scientific credentials, and I don’t believe anyone seriously thinks he’s some sort of disinformation agent.

In Oswald: Russian Episode, Titovets relates a telling incident. In Oswald’s KGB-bugged apartment, Oswald produced a curious tubelike piece of machined metal and engaged Titovets in a conversation about the chemicals that might be used to make a pipe bomb. This may well have been provocateur Oswald trying to see what reaction he would get from his KGB listeners since he never mentioned the subject to Titovets again.

Titovets later learned that this was a piece of a highly sensitive military device. Oswald had obviously stolen it from the prototype shop. My guess is that it was left in the shop precisely to see what he would do with it. Given the tight security, he could have left the factory with it only if the KGB had instructed the security to allow him to do so.

Perhaps because Titovets never worked in the Radio Factory, he seems to have no grasp of the significance of what he describes (here or in regard to several other high-risk incidents involving Oswald). Quite literally, stealing that piece from the prototype shop would have been, for any other employee, a one-way ticket to Siberia. Talk of pipe bombs by an American defector likewise would have been a one-way ticket to Siberia unless the KGB had decided he was too goofy to be taken seriously.

Is this the portrait of a false defector? Would this behavior on the part of a false defector make any sense whatsoever? According to the false defector narrative, the plan was for Oswald to return home after his mission had been accomplished. Why engage in provocative and almost insane behavior?

This is the problem I always have with conspiracy theories. The actual evidence damningly says Oswald was pretty much who he had seemed to be since his early years: A deeply troubled, perhaps even delusional, idealist with a fascination for Russia and Marxism. This evidence is just waved away. Instead, conspiracy theories are woven around obscure references in obscure documents, speculative about what unseen and perhaps imaginary documents may contain, and the sorts of characters of tale tales – often seemingly credible characters whose motivations are difficult to fathom – who surface in every area of weirdness, from the UFO phenomenon to Bigfoot to the Illuminati to, yes, the JFK assassination.

Hi Lance,

I think the human element is being ignored here. He was a young guy, given a task for a limited period. When you are frustrated, it’s pretty hard to hide your contempt for what he may have regarded as mechanised human beings unquestioningly following the diktats of communism. The relatively free environment full of choices in the USA would have been in stark contrast to the Soviet Union. We we so know a fair bit about Oswald’s personality. He would feel he was a chip off the old block having made it into ONI. Not some simple person working in a factory.

I’ll give you an example thats analogous to this. When you put a wealthy celebrity on one of these survival shows on TV, they try to maintain their facade, keep their PR hat on, but, at some stage they drop their guard and we really see what makes them tick, they show their colours. Stress, boredom and frustration can expose this. Am I surprised of reports that Oswald was mischievous, lazy or bored? Not really. He thinks he is a astronaut surrounded by imbeciles or communist slaves. 
 

Lets float another idea that may make an interesting discussion. Was Oswald holding some resentment toward the CIA / US govt, ie wishing he hasn’t taken on this lousy false defector (sheep dipped) role? If so, would that lead toward him informing on a plot to kill JFK? Or, at least ducking out of a plot at the end? Did the CIA sense this? Was it motivation for them to set him up as the patsy?