The Government's Double Standard for Oswald's Handwriting

[Gil Jesus]

In its examination of whether or not Oswald ordered the handgun and rifle, the FBI had only COPIES of those order forms. They were able to determine, without a doubt, that Oswald filled out both of those order forms. 

But when it came to the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter, the FBI said that they could not determine if the handwriting was Oswald's because it was a copy and without the original document, it would be "almost impossible to certify whether it was genuine or not."

So if that is the case, that the original document is needed to compare the handwriting, then the "experts" identification of Oswald's handwriting from COPIES of the order blanks is worthless as evidence.

You can't have it both ways: either you can identify the handwriting from copies or you can't.

Edited March 24, 2023 by Gil Jesus

[Benjamin Cole]

Whenever a government investigation is conducted, remember---there was no counsel for the defense. 

No counter-evidence was introduced, no witnesses from the defense, no counter-narratives. 

Existing government-selected evidence and witnesses are not cross-examined or challenged. 

This applies to all government investigations, and includes the WC investigation. 

The superb Gil Jesus reminds us that government investigations are essentially kangaroo trials.

If you are citing a government investigation as the final world on a topic....hooo-boy. 

[Michael Griffith]

Three handwriting experts consulted by the Dallas Morning News concluded that Oswald wrote the Hunt letter. If Oswald didn't write it, it was a very good forgery.

Federal investigators didn't want to admit that Oswald wrote the letter because it raises several troubling questions, nor did they want to explore who may have forged the letter if it was in fact a forgery, since such a highly skilled forgery would suggest the involvement of intelligence personnel.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Steve Thomas]

On 3/24/2023 at 6:34 AM, Gil Jesus said:

In its examination of whether or not Oswald ordered the handgun and rifle, the FBI had only COPIES of those order forms. They were able to determine, without a doubt, that Oswald filled out both of those order forms. 

 

Gil,

The authorities were able to determine that Oswald had ordered a rifle in the name of Hidell because he had a Selective Service card in the name of Hidell with a Hidell signature on it in his wallet.

In his FBI Report concerning Oswald's second interview on the 23rd, James Bookhout wrote:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=946#relPageId=647&tab=page

“With regard to Selective Service Card in the possession of Oswald bearing photograph of Oswald and the name of Alek James Hidell, Oswald admitted that he carried this Selective Service card, but declined to state that he wrote the signature of Alek J. Hidell appearing on same. He further declined to state the purpose of carrying same or any use he has made of same.”

The handwriting experts commissioned by the HSCA were not asked to analyze the signature on the Hidell Selective Service card, or to compare the signature on the rifle order form with the signature on the DeMohrenschildt rifle photo.

HSCA VOLUME VIII HANDWRITING ANALYSIS OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD p. 223

March, 1979

http://jfkassassination.net/parnell/hscahand.htm

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=961#relPageId=227&tab=page

The HSCA submitted 63 samples from 50 documents items to handwriting experts JOSEPH P. MC NALLY and DAVID J. PURTELL and CHARLES C. SCOTT

What is not included in this batch however, is the Selective Service card in the name of Hidell.

What was not done was to compare the signatures on the Hidell Selective Service card with the signature on the rifle's postal money order.

Steve Thomas

[Greg Doudna]

21 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Three handwriting experts consulted by the Dallas Morning News concluded that Oswald wrote the Hunt letter. If Oswald didn't write it, it was a very good forgery.

Federal investigators didn't want to admit that Oswald wrote the letter because it raises several troubling questions, nor did they want to explore who may have forged the letter if it was in fact a forgery, since such a highly skilled forgery would suggest the involvement of intelligence personnel.

Could the letter have been genuine then later “laundered” by US intelligence via the Soviet mailings looking like a Soviet Cold War operation as a means to discredit a true document? The argument that it is genuine is some handwriting experts thought it was whereas others testifying to HSCA at most said it was uncertain. I don’t think there was a strong finding that it was certainly forged, as most likely would be the case in most forgeries of that quantity of handwritten text. If the Soviets really had the letter it could have come to them as the real letter and then it was utilized, not necessarily they created it themselves. I also think the addressee could have been Lamar Hunt, and that if it was genuine the letter could be understood in a larger context of Oswald attempting to gain information for informant purposes.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Jonathan Cohen]

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Three handwriting experts consulted by the Dallas Morning News concluded that Oswald wrote the Hunt letter. If Oswald didn't write it, it was a very good forgery.

Federal investigators didn't want to admit that Oswald wrote the letter because it raises several troubling questions, nor did they want to explore who may have forged the letter if it was in fact a forgery, since such a highly skilled forgery would suggest the involvement of intelligence personnel.

Two major problems, depending on who you think the "Mr. Hunt" was. If It was E. Howard Hunt, why would Oswald have been writing to him using his real name, when Hunt frequently used aliases during intelligence operations? If it was a member of the Hunt oil family, why on earth would they get involved in the assassination and then pay for a full-page ad in the local newspaper advertising just how much they hated and despised President Kennedy? E. Howard Hunt himself believed the document was a forgery made by the Russians to implicate him in the assassination plot.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Jonathan Cohen

[Tom Gram]

38 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Gil,

The authorities were able to determine that Oswald had ordered a rifle in the name of Hidell because he had a Selective Service card in the name of Hidell with a Hidell signature on it in his wallet.

In his FBI Report concerning Oswald's second interview on the 23rd, James Bookhout wrote:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=946#relPageId=647&tab=page

“With regard to Selective Service Card in the possession of Oswald bearing photograph of Oswald and the name of Alek James Hidell, Oswald admitted that he carried this Selective Service card, but declined to state that he wrote the signature of Alek J. Hidell appearing on same. He further declined to state the purpose of carrying same or any use he has made of same.”

The handwriting experts commissioned by the HSCA were not asked to analyze the signature on the Hidell Selective Service card, or to compare the signature on the rifle order form with the signature on the DeMohrenschildt rifle photo.

HSCA VOLUME VIII HANDWRITING ANALYSIS OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD p. 223

March, 1979

http://jfkassassination.net/parnell/hscahand.htm

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=961#relPageId=227&tab=page

The HSCA submitted 63 samples from 50 documents items to handwriting experts JOSEPH P. MC NALLY and DAVID J. PURTELL and CHARLES C. SCOTT

What is not included in this batch however, is the Selective Service card in the name of Hidell.

What was not done was to compare the signatures on the Hidell Selective Service card with the signature on the rifle's postal money order.

Steve Thomas

The WC never even confirmed that the money order Hidell signature was written by Oswald, and very strongly implied that it wasn’t.

Neither of the two WC document examiners provided any testimony on that signature. James Cadigan and Alwyn Cole testified on questioned documents in excruciating letter-by-letter detail with an added emphasis on signatures. The fact that both experts specifically avoided providing an opinion on the money order Hidell signature is highly suggestive that the signature did not match Oswald’s known handwriting. 

Both Cole and Cadigan made it clear that their conclusion that the handwriting on money order was Oswald’s was based strictly on the words: “Klein’s Sporting Goods”, “P.O. Box 2915”, and “Dallas, Texas”. 

The HSCA handwriting report is very general and vague overall, so the lack of any specific discussion on the money order Hidell signature is typical of the ”analysis” of other questioned documents (I’d love to get a hold of the HSCA experts’ working papers), but still.

Is it not a little odd that there is no specific expert analysis of the money order Hidell signature in the entire investigative record of the Kennedy assassination? Is it just a coincidence that the HSCA neglected to examine the SS card, which (as you’ve pointed out) bears a striking resemblance to the money order? 

[Pat Speer]

51 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Two major problems, depending on who you think the "Mr. Hunt" was. If It was E. Howard Hunt, why would Oswald have been writing to him using his real name, when Hunt frequently used aliases during intelligence operations? If it was a member of the Hunt oil family, why on earth would they get involved in the assassination and then pay for a full-page ad in the local newspaper advertising just how much they hated and despised President Kennedy? E. Howard Hunt himself believed the document was a forgery made by the Russians to implicate him in the assassination plot.

As I recall, this was long-ago exposed as Soviet disinformation. They forged the letter to try to implicate H.L. Hunt, not realizing the CT's to whom they leaked it would seize upon it being Howard Hunt.  

Now, some will say the documents linking it as Soviet disinformation were themselves fake, and that the lefter is actually legit. But this is to deny the provenance of the letter--where it suddenly appeared in the hands of CTs in the 70's. 

And this, to me, misses the real take-away. The HSCA handwriting analysts were fooled by the letter, and thought it may have been legit. Knowing it was a fake PROVES that other questionable documents declared legit could similarly be forgeries. And not by the Russians.

Among the gazillion books I own is a 1950's era book on the FBI crime lab. This book noted that the FBI's handwriting analysts served a dual function. One was to best assess the ID of those signing signatures and writing up letters. Two was to forge letters themselves that could then be passed off as legit as part of the Cold War. I remember the specific example of forging letters from Russian diplomats to American agents that could then be put to use. They would make sure these forgeries somehow fell into Soviet hands, and that the Soviets would begin a counter-intelligence investigation of the diplomat/agent. They would then swoop in and offer asylum to the diplomat/agent should he/she wish to defect as opposed to facing a decade in the gulag, or execution. 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Two major problems, depending on who you think the "Mr. Hunt" was. If It was E. Howard Hunt, why would Oswald have been writing to him using his real name, when Hunt frequently used aliases during intelligence operations? If it was a member of the Hunt oil family, why on earth would they get involved in the assassination and then pay for a full-page ad in the local newspaper advertising just how much they hated and despised President Kennedy? E. Howard Hunt himself believed the document was a forgery made by the Russians to implicate him in the assassination plot.

Oh, I don't think the letter was addressed to E. Howard Hunt. If it's genuine, I think it was addressed to a member of the Hunt oil family. 

My main takeaway about the letter is that it may prove that even a substantial amount of handwriting can be so expertly forged as to fool a number of handwriting experts, and that this, in turn, should give us pause about the handwriting on the envelope and money order used to buy the Carcano.

 

Edited March 30, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Greg Doudna]

18 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

As I recall, this was long-ago exposed as Soviet disinformation. They forged the letter to try to implicate H.L. Hunt, not realizing the CT's to whom they leaked it would seize upon it being Howard Hunt.  

Now, some will say the documents linking it as Soviet disinformation were themselves fake, and that the lefter is actually legit. But this is to deny the provenance of the letter--where it suddenly appeared in the hands of CTs in the 70's. 

And this, to me, misses the real take-away. The HSCA handwriting analysts were fooled by the letter, and thought it may have been legit. Knowing it was a fake PROVES that other questionable documents declared legit could similarly be forgeries. And not by the Russians.

Among the gazillion books I own is a 1950's era book on the FBI crime lab. This book noted that the FBI's handwriting analysts served a dual function. One was to best assess the ID of those signing signatures and writing up letters. Two was to forge letters themselves that could then be passed off as legit as part of the Cold War. I remember the specific example of forging letters from Russian diplomats to American agents that could then be put to use. They would make sure these forgeries somehow fell into Soviet hands, and that the Soviets would begin a counter-intelligence investigation of the diplomat/agent. They would then swoop in and offer asylum to the diplomat/agent should he/she wish to defect as opposed to facing a decade in the gulag, or execution. 

Good reasoning Pat but—but—a couple of points. The known facts are the letter first turns up mailed from Mexico City to jfk CTs in the US late 1970’s; it is told by Polish high level intelligence defector to the West Mitrokhin to have been a Soviet dirty tricks op, with specifics; and the letter is not clearly determined forged by handwriting experts.

Assuming the Soviet op is true as Mitrokhin says, as it may be, there is no way to know the letter was forged (created) by the Soviet spy agency instead of they had it and utilized it. Mitrokhin himself would hardly have been in a position to have personal knowledge of how they got that letter. When his notes have the KGB saying the agency “prepared” it for the dirty op, maybe they prepared the photocopy. Mitrokhin cites no witness names, no source. He says something he was put in charge of transferring KGB documents to a new building and took notes on all the documents he transferred (which was all of them) for twelve years, typed them up and defected. 

It all could be true as Mitrokhin says. It’s just there is no document, no source cited, no corroboration, no firsthand witness or supporting witness, though he says he saw that in KGB documents.

The conjecture or proposition (if the letter were authentic) would not be that the Hunts were doing the assassination, but that Oswald was phishing for information on something for informant purposes. It could also be somebody’s idea of setting up the Hunts as “patsy”, compare the Soviet embassy letter dated 3 days later considered authentic Oswald handwriting by handwriting experts, which can be read as in a sense similarly setting up the Soviet government (“finish our business”). 

Edited March 31, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Denny Zartman]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Oh, I don't think the letter was addressed to E. Howard Hunt. If it's genuine, I think it was addressed to a member of the Hunt oil family. 

My main takeaway about the letter is that it may prove that even a substantial amount of handwriting can be so expertly forged as to fool a number of handwriting experts, and that this, in turn, should give us pause about the handwriting on the envelope and money order used to buy the Carcano.

 

All good points.

[Jonathan Cohen]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

As I recall, this was long-ago exposed as Soviet disinformation. They forged the letter to try to implicate H.L. Hunt, not realizing the CT's to whom they leaked it would seize upon it being Howard Hunt. 

Pat, Jerry Kroth has an interesting video on this subject, although I'm not sure I agree with his overall conclusion that the letter is genuine based on its repetition of a particular Oswald misspelling. According to his research, the Mitrohkin angle is bunk, and not supported by the trove of Mitrohkin documents housed overseas.

[Greg Doudna]

Mitrokhin archive 

In the link given by Jonathan Cohen above, Prof. Kroth reported an archivist at Cambridge sent him 32 pages of Russian corresponding to the archive locations cited in footnotes for the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter forgery section of The Sword and the Shield (1999), pp. 228-29. Kroth reported that the 32 pages in Russian he received contained no reference whatsoever to Oswald, Hunt, or Nov 8, 1963.

In 2018 I attempted to track down those footnotes. Like Prof. Kroth I did not go to Cambridge, UK due to prohibitive cost but contacted the Churchill Archives Center at Cambridge by email. I was referred to a researcher fluent in Russian who offered for-hire research and translation services in that Archive. She informed me that the footnotes in the Archive did not correspond to the footnotes in the published book, in agreement with what Prof. Kroth reported of his experience.

I see that the Churchill Archives Centre website now offers direct research service for overseas or distance researchers of up to one hour per month by the Centre at no charge, then charges for research time after that: https://archives.chu.cam.ac.uk/copies-and-research/. Photocopies can be ordered. There are apparently indexes with the accurate locations on-site that Centre personnel could assist with in that 1 hr per month, to assist in finding correct locations.

After reading some reviews about the Mitrokhin Archive available on JSTOR (available through libraries), I don't see much question the "Dear Mr. Hunt" operation is part of Mitrokhin's notes from Moscow and was done by the KGB. In reviews of the Andrew and Mitrokhin work by reviewers who seem to be knowledgeable, the main question is whether this was Mitrokhin acting on his own (as Mitrokhin claimed) or whether it was, so to speak, a KGB authorized release of KGB materials designed to show the KGB in its most favorable light telling of all its accomplishments, maybe the ones the KGB is favorable to being told and what was not was purged prior to release to the West via Mitrokhin. I have not found any reviews charge it as being a Western spy agency operation or charging western fabricated material in the Mitrokhin Archive. 

An explanation of the story of the Mitrokhin Archive through Soviet-era history is this, chapter one of the Andrews and Mitrokhin book: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/andrew-sword.html?simple=True. The entire 1000-plus pages ofThe Sword and the Shield is available online here: https://archive.org/details/TheSwordAndTheShield-TheMitrokhinArchiveAndTheSecretHistoryOfTheKGB/mode/2up. 

I report below a few details of my inquiry at that time for research interest, for the assistance of any who may wish to pursue this further. My research question in the below was not whether there was a KGB operation to plant an Oswald letter designed to link E. Howard Hunt/CIA to the JFK assassination, but whether the KGB claimed to have forged that letter in Moscow as opposed to opportunistically making use of an authentic item that had come into their possession. The researcher wrote me:

"First of all just to let you know that the numbering of the files in the Churchill Archive does not correspond to the footnotes in Christopher Andrew and Vasilii Mitrokhin's book The Sword and the Shield (1999). However I did look for the forgery letter 'Dear Mr. Hunt' at the request of other scholars and I am aware of its location. I can also translate for you two pages about this letter from the Mirokhin Archive. My charge for work in the Mitrokhin Archive is..." (email, 3/21/2018)

On 3/26/2018:

"I visited today the Churchill archive and have pictures of the pages about the 'Dear Mr. Hunt' letter for translation, which I can prepare..."

I contracted her services and received a translation of the pages and paid. I sought photocopies of the Russian original of the two pages but was told:

"I was not allowed to send pictures of the original documents from the Mitrokhin Archive to any researchers because of the copyright issue. If you want to get pictures of the original documents you should discuss the matter with the Churchill College Archive directly."

Upon receipt of the researcher's translations I realized it was nothing other than the Russian original of the identical paragraphs in English in Sword and the Shield, with no differences apart from the translator's slightly different renderings in English of the same Russian. The entire section would have come from Mitrokhin's notes in Russia, typed up by him (if as some suspect it was a KGB operation it could have been prepared with some assistance, in either case typed up in Russia), and apparently received no modification or editing in that section from lead author Christopher Andrew.

From my point of view it was a waste of money because the footnotes went to nothing other than a Russian original pre-translation, not to any underlying prior documents, nothing not in the paragraphs in the book published in English.

In response to followup questions, the researcher wrote me, "I don't know when, how and with whose assistance the files in the Mitrokhin Archive were created. The p. 460 A - 460B are typed (they are not printed from the computer). When the file  N 1/6/5  was bound I also don't know. As I mentioned earlier, numbering of the files in the Archive and Christopher Andrew's book do not correspond."

I asked a followup question: 

"Going back to paragraph 2 at the top, where you translate, 'On August 18, 1975, photocopies of a note purportedly by Lee Harvey Oswald, created by the Centre [KGB], were sent from Mexico to...' I am unclear concerning the syntax. Is the Russian saying that the note itself was created by the Centre [KGB], or that the photocopies of the note were created by the Centre [KGB]? Could you give the underlying transcription of that?"

To that question I received in answer: 

"I presume both."

and she provided the Russian original of the above: 

''18 августа 1975 года в адреса трех американских граждан независимых исследователей обстоятельств убийства президента Кеннеди из Мексики посланы фотокопии изготовленной в центре записки Ли Харли Освальда следующего содержания...''

I asked in followup:

"But 'google translate' (Russian-->English) gives a different syntax and meaning than your translation, and I wonder if you would recheck this point. Specifically, where you have "a note purportedly by Lee Harvey Oswald", I cannot find any underlying Russian in the sentence supporting the qualifier word "purportedly". How did you arrive at that translation? I have tried both the sentence as given and several permutations with Google Translate and all consistently render simply "a note written by Lee Harvey Oswald".

I received no response to that question. I asked:

"[W]here you answered my question that you presumed the Russian to be saying that the Centre [KGB] 'created both the note and the photocopies of the note', Google Translate seems consistently to render that only the photocopies of the note were made (not the note), in that sentence. 

"Here is the rendering of Google Translate: 'On August 18, 1975, photocopies of the note written by Lee Harvey Oswald were sent to the addresses of three American citizens of independent investigators about the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy from Mexico...' 

"The Russian transcription (English transliteration of the Cyrillic, per Google Translate) is: '18 avgusta 1975 goda v adresa trekh amerikanskikh grazhdan nezavisimykh issledovateley obstoyatel'stv ubiystva prezidenta Kennedi iz Meksiki poslany fotokopii izgotovlennoy v tsentre zapiski Li Kharli Osval'da sleduyushchego soderzhaniya...' Here is what you rendered: 'On August 18, 1975, photocopies of a note purportedly written by Lee Harvey Oswald, created by the Centre [KGB], were sent from Mexico to the addresses of three American citizens, independent investigators of President Kennedy's assassination, with the following contents:' (. . .) 

"it appears that Google Translate omitted translation of 'izgotovlennoy v tsentre', 'made at the Centre'. You have a rendering of this expression which is 'created by the Centre'. However is not 'v' a preposition 'at' the Centre? Should 'izgotovlennoy v tsentre' be 'made [your "created"] AT the Centre'--referring to location where the photocopies were made? (. . .) Am I wrong? It appears to me that the Russian is simply saying that the KGB made some photocopies of the note and sent the photocopies. Without (in this sentence) saying or implying anything about the origin of the note or that KGB created or made the note itself. Is not the sentence saying that photocopies of the note, which was physically located at ("v") the Centre, were sent (to x, y, z)...? Can you clarify on this? 

"I hope you understand this goes to the very heart of my question of interest which prompted my undertaking your translation services itself--whether this text is claiming that the KGB forged the note itself. Your translation represented the document as strongly implying a "yes" answer to this question, from the Russian of this sentence. But Google Translate gives renderings suggesting a "no" answer to that question, from the Russian of this sentence."

I received no response to that request for clarification. Perhaps someone knowledgeable in Russian may be able to shed light.

I also asked:

"In paragraph 5, lines 1-2, where you translate, 'The note above was composed from specific phrases and expressions borrowed from Oswald's letters during his stay in the USSR, written in imitation of Oswald's handwriting on a piece of genuine writing paper, which Oswald used in Texas', I am unclear concerning this syntax. Is the Russian from which you are translating saying: (a) the KGB created the forgery by writing the forgery on blank genuine paper from Texas used by Oswald? or (b) the KGB had a genuine paper from Texas that had Oswald's writing on it, and created the forgery on a different paper in imitation of the genuine document from Texas which had Oswald's writing on it?"

The answer I received to that question in full (referring to what the Russian text is saying):

"The KGB created the forgery by writing the text on blank genuine paper from Texas used by Oswald. [underlying Russian:] Приведенная выше записка составлена из отдельных фраз и выражений, заимствованных из писем Освальда во время проживания в СССР, исполнена почерком Освальда на обрывке подлинной писчей бумаги, которой Освальд пользовался в Техасе"

The wording quoted in Eng. translation "written in imitation of Oswald's handwriting" sounds like it probably reflects a claim of forgery in Russian. There are other examples in the Mitrokhin Archive of the KGB forging letters in areas different from the JFK assassination.  

Edited March 31, 2023 by Greg Doudna