The Anonymous Phone Call to the Tippits of Connecticut

[Sandy Larsen]

Here is a message for Geo:

Oswald is NOT the name of the Hungarian orphan we are trying to find. We do NOT know the name of that boy. We only know that the he was living with Emil Gardos in New York City in the 1940s.

Because of that, we probably cannot find anything about the orphan.

After the boy was recruited by the CIA, at the age of 13, the CIA gave him the name Lee Harvey Oswald. Which is identical to the name of an American boy, who was also 13.

Therefore, the CIA had doppelganger boys.

 

[Geo Kozma]

On 2/16/2024 at 1:31 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

Your English is really quite good, Geo, but I think we may still have a bit of a language barrier when trying to comprehend what you are saying.  Yesterday, a Kennedy assassination scholar who is banned from this forum sent me a note after reading this thread and the others you have participated in.  Here's what he said, in part:

...I think he gets confused when he is trying to say the young Hungarian boy was given the last name Osvalt in Hungary in order to groom him from the start...I think what Geo is trying to say is whoever was calling themselves Osvalt under the Oswald Project in Hungary was actually from a family with a really Jewish-sounding name like Rabinowitz and those are the people you should be seeking...I think Geo is telling you to get an ancestry expert to try to trace what Jewish family changed their name to Osvalt in order to find the relatives who would be able to recount the family with the young Harvey...I myself think tracing Gardos would yield more results...Geo does make one good point however...Taking the word of an ex NKVD agent that there was nothing there is naive at best...I think you need a good Translator with Geo who could confront Geo and force him to be more clear...A Translator who could interpret Geo...

Does any or all of the above reflect what you are trying to communicate with us?  Also, is it your speculation above that Allen Dulles might be behind the anonymous call?  I find that exceptionally difficult to believe.

Okay. I will try to write more focusedly.

but it is true I am under the shock effect of these things  so close to my own family. (But i did find other assassins among my ancestors so it is kind of a relief to find one in our era too.)

...having an Oval Office OSS strategist as a grandfather twin was a surprise.  Him being a Professor at Harvard with students like H Kissingeer was a surprise a few years ago - and thy both worked at RAND for a decade. 

1

I do admit sadly that my OSVAT -Oswald theory was a mistake. ....

But i know that only now since I found a few days ago on the Jewishgen.com archives site

the almost 400 US  JEWISH OSWALDs  (half are OSWALT)  and among them  ONE  with CARDASH (= GArdosh) spouses.

....we do have now this ARCHIVE proof of Oswald may have been related to a  C/Gardash. 

 

 

 

 

2 

the Gardosh couple  (Oswald cousins by name  despite name-links being unreliable) translated a  huge novel...in 1963  - the Carpathian Rhapsody...

but the Corvina ex-director told me they do not keep ancient copies.

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 3 by Geo Kozma

[Jim Hargrove]

Geo,

As the late John Butler pointed out in THIS POST, Circus Maximus by the Hungarian author Tibor Kajan was was allegedly found among Oswald’s possessions.

Here is the description from Heritage Auctions:

[John F. Kennedy]: Lee Harvey Oswald's Personal Books. Two books owned by Lee Harvey Oswald. Most telling is a paperback copy of the "Communist Manifesto" (5" x 7", Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, 60 pp., 1946). The other is a copy of Tibor Kajan's "Circus Maximus" (5" x 7.5", colored boards, Budapest, Corvina Press, 1963). Wear to corners of spine. A delightful and whimsical book of cartoons directed toward juveniles. These were included in a cleanout of personal papers requested by Marina Oswald following the assassination and given to her personal lawyer. Accompanied by a letter of provenance.
 

However, we have a number of USG and DPD prepared lists of Oswald’s possessions, and, despite a "letter of provenance" listed above, I don’t recall ever seeing this book listed there.  I’m not at all convinced it is legit, although it may have slipped through the cracks or have been suppressed because of the Hungarian connection.

 

[Paul Jolliffe]

On 2/16/2024 at 7:51 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Here is a message for Geo:

Oswald is NOT the name of the Hungarian orphan we are trying to find. We do NOT know the name of that boy. We only know that the he was living with Emil Gardos in New York City in the 1940s.

Because of that, we probably cannot find anything about the orphan.

After the boy was recruited by the CIA, at the age of 13, the CIA gave him the name Lee Harvey Oswald. Which is identical to the name of an American boy, who was also 13.

Therefore, the CIA had doppelganger boys.

 

Sandy,

I agree that the last name "Oswald" had nothing to do with the birth name of the orphan/refugee/waif from Eastern Europe. (If his real last name was any variation of "Oswald", that would be a remarkable coincidence.  Highly unlikely.)

No, our little boy in NYC got stuck with the name "Oswald" because of his resemblance to Marguerite Oswald's third son in Texas. And only someone who had laid eyes on both boys could have noticed that resemblance - there was no internet, no way to search a massive database of photos back then. The only person who could have noticed that resemblance would have been Edwin Eckdahl.

This is NOT to say that Eckdahl was a spook, merely that he moved in spooky circles - he knew people who knew people who would have wanted to utilize that resemblance. 

So, our nameless little Eastern European orphan/refugee/waif was (allegedly) placed with Emil and Grace Gardos and/or Louis Weinstock in Yorkville in the mid 1940's, and according to the anonymous caller on 11/30/63, was going by the name "Oswald" then. (If he was not known as "Oswald" when she knew him in the 1940's, she never could have been certain it was the same person in 1963. But she was certain it was him because he was still using the name "Oswald.")

Why did our orphan/refugee wind up with Gardos et al. in Yorkville? Probably for humanitarian reasons, although if Gardos, Blair and/or Weinstock were secretly working for the FBI in any capacity, then it's possible they were seen as suitable temporary caregivers until a more satisfactory caretaker could be arranged.

Therefore the simplest answer to Jeremy Boczjuk's old question ("why did the plotters go to all the trouble of creating a "Harvey" doppelganger project in the 1940's when they could have used a Russian-speaking American Serviceman in 1959?") is that they hadn't thought of the "Harvey project" when the resemblance between the two boys came to the attention of Allen Dulles or Frank Wisner in 1947 (or so.)

Dulles was enamored with "tradecraft" (including the use of doppelgangers), so much so that in 1963 he wrote (or someone did his name) "The Craft of Intelligence", summarizing and explaining "tradecraft" to the novice.

https://www.amazon.com/Craft-Intelligence-Legendary-Fundamentals-Gathering/dp/1493018795/ref=asc_df_1493018795/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312674999652&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=957451456147524809&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9016840&hvtargid=pla-491723028848&psc=1&mcid=daf7eb13fe7730cdb265b7ce6260b250&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIierc_tq3hAMVTDXUAR0bOgZCEAQYASABEgJClPD_BwE

So, if the physical resemblance between the third son of Marguerite Oswald (Edwin Ekdahl's wife between 1945 and 1948) and the young orphan/waif/refugee from Eastern Europe somehow came to the attention of Allen Dulles circa 1945-47, then it is entirely plausible that Dulles would want to use that resemblance in some way , even if he did not then have a  fully fleshed out plan of action.

My point is that the "Harvey Project" (secreting a Russian-speaking doppelganger behind the Iron Curtain in 1959) did not yet exist in 1945-47, but what did exist then was Dulles' interest in utilizing the apparent resemblance between the two boys in some future TBD operation against the Soviets. 

 

[Paul Jolliffe]

On 2/17/2024 at 7:26 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

Geo,

As the late John Butler pointed out in THIS POST, Circus Maximus by the Hungarian author Tibor Kajan was was allegedly found among Oswald’s possessions.

Here is the description from Heritage Auctions:

[John F. Kennedy]: Lee Harvey Oswald's Personal Books. Two books owned by Lee Harvey Oswald. Most telling is a paperback copy of the "Communist Manifesto" (5" x 7", Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, 60 pp., 1946). The other is a copy of Tibor Kajan's "Circus Maximus" (5" x 7.5", colored boards, Budapest, Corvina Press, 1963). Wear to corners of spine. A delightful and whimsical book of cartoons directed toward juveniles. These were included in a cleanout of personal papers requested by Marina Oswald following the assassination and given to her personal lawyer. Accompanied by a letter of provenance.
 

However, we have a number of USG and DPD prepared lists of Oswald’s possessions, and, despite a "letter of provenance" listed above, I don’t recall ever seeing this book listed there.  I’m not at all convinced it is legit, although it may have slipped through the cracks or have been suppressed because of the Hungarian connection.

 

Jim,

If the only book offered was the copy of the "Communist Manifesto", then I too would wonder if it really belonged to our "Oswald."  (Could or would the FBI have planted a copy of it in the commie-loving "Oswald's" possessions after the fact to shape public opinion? Oh you betcha!)

However, as I pointed out on December 2, 2019 (which was then picked up the next day by the late John Butler in his post you referenced above ) the collection included Tibor Kajan's "Circus Maximus". 

That book was by a Hungarian Jew - a man considered by many Hungarians to be a national hero. (Kajan was a multiple Kossuth award nominee.)

I believe we can conclude these books really were owned by our "Oswald" precisely because they were suppressed from the "official" records. After all, people might have started to wonder who "Oswald" really was if they knew this 10th grade dropout from Texas had purchased this book in 1962!

 

[John Kowalski]

4 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

I believe we can conclude these books really were owned by our "Oswald" precisely because they were suppressed from the "official" records. After all, people might have started to wonder who "Oswald" really was if they knew this 10th grade dropout from Texas had purchased this book in 1962!

John A said that there is a list of Oswald possessions, and that this list got bigger after his possessions were sent to Washington. A comparison of these two lists would confirm the planting of evidence.

[John Kowalski]

In Harvey and Lee John A wrote "In January 1953 the HUAC in New York made reference to a "Mrs. M. Oswald" in a CIA Office of Security file. The file contained references to 1941, Nazi's, and New Jersey. Judge John Tunheim, of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), wrote to Henry Hyde in an attempt to get the HUAC files on Lee and Marguerite Oswald released, but his request was refused."

Does this statement suggest that she was spying on them?

Article below says that the Nazi organization The German-American Bund had its headquarters in Yorkville. Jean Stafford in her book about Marguerite Oswald said that her husband believed that her accent was from Hoboken, New Jersey and Astoria, New York. Am speculating that Marguerite Oswald was from the east coast. If her connections to Nazis in 1941 is true, then she may have been working as an intelligence asset, collecting information on them and this could have been how they eventually recruited her for the Harvey project. 

Stafford also said that she believed Marguerite took elocution lessons. Elocution lessons can be taken to remove your accent. Maybe she took them in an attempt to hide her east coast accent if she was planning to move to another part of the country. 

 

 

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/nazi-town-usa-german-american-bund-new-york-hitler-antisemitism-pbs-doc-1234951919/

Edited February 19 by John Kowalski

[Paul Jolliffe]

23 minutes ago, John Kowalski said:

John A said that there is a list of Oswald possessions, and that this list got bigger after his possessions were sent to Washington. A comparison of these two lists would confirm the planting of evidence.

Yes, John A. is correct - the list grew after it came into the possession of the FBI. However, I think that the "Circus Maximus" book probably really belonged to "Oswald". Its presence among his possessions would have raised questions about who he really was. The FBI didn't plant that book - that was exactly the kind of book they wanted to make disappear.

[John Kowalski]

On 2/19/2024 at 4:33 PM, Paul Jolliffe said:

Yes, John A. is correct - the list grew after it came into the possession of the FBI. However, I think that the "Circus Maximus" book probably really belonged to "Oswald". Its presence among his possessions would have raised questions about who he really was. The FBI didn't plant that book - that was exactly the kind of book they wanted to make disappear.

Do you have any theories that would explain why Oswald had this book?

Edited February 20 by John Kowalski

[John Kowalski]

1 hour ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Yes, John A. is correct - the list grew after it came into the possession of the FBI. However, I think that the "Circus Maximus" book probably really belonged to "Oswald". Its presence among his possessions would have raised questions about who he really was. The FBI didn't plant that book - that was exactly the kind of book they wanted to make disappear.

Jim:

Do you know if John ever spoke to Marina about why Oswald had this book?

[Paul Jolliffe]

Four years ago, in response to the late John Butler's throwaway comment about Louis Budenz, I raised the possibility that the mysterious women caller was Elizabeth Bentley. (John Butler then followed up my post and discussed it, but he never seriously developed it.)

Here is what I thought then and now believe more strongly: Elizabeth Bentley was very probably the mysterious woman caller to the Tippit house in Connecticut on 11/30/63.

1. The caller feared publicity - "they" could identify her if "they" knew she was a woman. She was known entity to the press - she had a quasi-public persona. She was not some anonymous neighbor of the Gardos/Blair/Weinstock crowd.

2. The caller claimed to be calling from New Haven, Connecticut

3. The caller was a "mature" woman. (Not old, but "mature").

4. The caller believed (like everyone else in America at that moment) that our "Oswald" really had shot the president, and she believed she had inside information on just how connected he was to some dangerous communist group. 

5. The caller referenced Emil Gardos, Fred Blair (albeit not by name) and Louis Weinstock. These men were certainly well known to the FBI and HUAC, but not to the general public. 

6. The caller mentioned an area of NYC (Yorkville) which really did abound with Hungarians and was home to (at least some) Communists.

7. The caller believed her inside information ("Oswald" did it as part of a nefarious commie plot - this group wants to take over the government! They've got charts and maps!) was likely to be ignored or corrupted by the FBI

8. The caller spoke in an accent, apparently, although neither Mr. nor Mrs. Tippit agreed as to what it was. 

OK.

So why Elizabeth Bentley?

1. She was absolutely a known entity and had spent most of her life in and around New York and Connecticut. She was born in New Milford, Connecticut, went to Vassar College as an undergraduate (Poughkeepsie, NY), Columbia University (NYC) as a graduate student, and got her first job spying for the CPUSA at the Italian Library of Information (a front for Fascist Italy) in NYC. 

She rose in rank and importance in the communist world as a spy, eventually earning the nickname "Unmitsa" ("clever girl") for her work running two different communist spy rings in the U.S. She spent most of her life between 1935 and 1945 in and around NYC. 

However, a combination of personal problems, fear and the resentment that her male handlers were cutting her out eventually turned Bentley into a professional anti-communist for the FBI in 1945. (No less than J. Edgar Hoover himself ordered that her defection to the American side be held in the strictest secrecy - the FBI still wanted to use her as a double agent.)

To maximize political damage to communist fronts and communist agents in the USA, Hoover decided to have Bentley go public. She gave a series of interviews and appeared before HUAC in 1948. Her testimony exposed the extent to which the American state was riddled with communist-sympathizers (or worse) and was politically explosive for the Truman Administration. 

in short, for awhile, Elizabeth Bentley absolutely was a public figure.

2.Like the anonymous caller claimed, Elizabeth Bentley really was in New Haven, Connecticut on November 30, 1963. She was there to prepare for abdominal-cancer surgery which would kill her just three days later.

3. Elizabeth Bentley was 55 years old in 1963. Not "old", but "mature".

4. Until 1948, Elizabeth Bentley had spent all of her adult life either working for or against communist groups, much of it in an undercover capacity. Just as the anonymous caller believed (wrongly) her insights into "Oswald's" communist connections could explain the assassination, Bentley believed her insights into the nature of the communist conspiracy in America could explain how Washington worked.

5. I can't prove that Bentley personally knew the names "Gardos", "Blair" and "Weinstock", but as the head of communist spy rings in NYC before 1945 she had to have come across those names. (Who else could have?)

6. As a longtime resident of NYC, and as a spymistress herself, it is inconceivable that Bentley would not have known that Yorkville was home to a huge variety of Eastern European immigrants, many of communist leanings/sympathies (or more.)

7. Elizabeth Bentley had worked with the FBI at the highest levels since 1945. She knew how it worked - as long as she was useful, she was OK. But by 1963, she was an alcoholic Cold War relic from the 1940's, of little further use to Hoover's FBI. 

8. Elizabeth Bentley had degrees in English, Italian and French. She was a smart, articulate woman who could converse in multiple languages (as a young woman, she spent time in Florence.) Could she have "faked" an ambiguous accent over the phone? Of course she could have. 

Did Elizabeth Bentley have any inside knowledge about the "Harvey Project"? I doubt it. But nor did the anonymous caller - she thought "Oswald" had done it as part of a giant commie plot. 

Here she is on NBC's "Meet The Press" on September12, 1948: 

 

 

 

 

[Paul Jolliffe]

35 minutes ago, John Kowalski said:

Jim:

Do you know if John ever spoke to Marina about why Oswald had this book?

John,

As far as I know,  neither John Armstrong nor anyone else was aware that "Oswald" had this book until it was offered for auction in 2013.

[Paul Jolliffe]

37 minutes ago, John Kowalski said:

Do you have any theories that would explain why he Oswald had this book?

Well, the simplest one is that our "Oswald" (Harvey) really was of (somewhat) Hungarian origin and that this book meant something to him personally. Did it remind him of a distant past, one before his new identity as "Oswald"?

Maybe so, but that's just a guess and nothing more.

[Paul Jolliffe]

3 hours ago, John Kowalski said:

In Harvey and Lee John A wrote "In January 1953 the HUAC in New York made reference to a "Mrs. M. Oswald" in a CIA Office of Security file. The file contained references to 1941, Nazi's, and New Jersey. Judge John Tunheim, of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), wrote to Henry Hyde in an attempt to get the HUAC files on Lee and Marguerite Oswald released, but his request was refused."

Does this statement suggest that she was spying on them?

Article below says that the Nazi organization The German-American Bund had its headquarters in Yorkville. Jean Stafford in her book about Marguerite Oswald said that her husband believed that her accent was from Hoboken, New Jersey and Astoria, New York. Am speculating that Marguerite Oswald was from the east coast. If her connections to Nazis in 1941 is true, then she may have been working as an intelligence asset, collecting information on them and this could have been how they eventually recruited her for the Harvey project. 

Stafford also said that she believed Marguerite took elocution lessons. Elocution lessons can be taken to remove your accent. Maybe she took them in an attempt to hide her east coast accent if she was planning to move to another part of the country. 

 

 

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/nazi-town-usa-german-american-bund-new-york-hitler-antisemitism-pbs-doc-1234951919/

John K.,

Here (on page two of this attachment) is the infamous file in question (best copy available - not very useful.)

Note that it does NOT say "Mrs. M. Oswald", but merely "Mrs. Oswald." Also, while the references to "1940" and "Nazis" is handwritten, I see no reference to "New Jersey". I remember reading Malcolm Blunt's guess that a CIA analyst did a search on the name "Oswald" and this popped up.

Does it have any connection at all to anyone we are interested in?

Probably not, but who knows?

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=54631#relPageId=2

[Jim Hargrove]

John K: 

Megathanks for the MK/ULTRA articles.  They reference events a few years later than we are examining for the earliest Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald's appearances in the U.S., but no doubt Americans who approved of things like MK/ULTRA were well entrenched in the US Government by the mid-1940s.  Does anyone doubt that?

Paul J:

I’d completely forgotten the Elizabeth Bentley info you had posted years ago.  Megathanks for reminding us of it.  You make a great case that she may have been the anonymous caller.

Isn’t it fascinating that Ms. Bentely appeared before HUAC just a year after Jack Ruby did?  Small world, eh?  Do we seriously believe that the Gerald Ford Library referenced a “false document” about Ruby and HUAC from 1947?  See paragraph #1 below.