Lee Oswald Was One Weird Dude, Part 4

As seen in the first three segments, Lee H. Oswald has a far more interesting and controversial life than anybody ever imagined. Far more so than anything written in the original Warren Commission report. The outlandish idea that he may have been a special project of the CIA, along with a body double, has some gravitas. It can be easily shown that Oswald was a CIA operative. In fact, it is the easiest thing to prove in the whole case. His SIG 201 file alone assures that sicne one is never filed on anyone but a CIA operative. Over the years various CIA officers have come forward to admit it. In many ways Lee Oswald as CIA agent is the purloin letter. It is so out in the open people stumble over it. But to move on from there thrusts the explorer into a deeper fog. That fog that never really lets one know what happened. All we can ever uncover is a closer approximation to the events surrounding the death of John F. Kennedy.

This final phase of Lee Oswald’s life from the summer of 1962 to the fall of 1963 is marked but four major periods. First, the restless period of going from job to job; second, the Fair Play For Cuba committee of which he is the sole member of in New Orleans; third, the trip to Mexico City dubbed “Oswald’s Magical Mystery Tour” due to the strangeness that surrounds it; and lastly, the lead-up events to the assassination and the post-events that resulted in his death. I have decided for the sake of brevity, and the fact these subjects have been covered elsewhere inn this blog, to concentrate on the final events leading up to the tragic events of November 22, 1963. It’s all weird, but the final events are the strangest of all.

In and Out of New Orleans and Back to Dallas
The last year of Oswald’s life is marked by a series of events that lead nowhere. His stint as the chairman (listed under his alias, Alek Hidell) of the Fair Play For Cuba committee does nothing for Castro and he soon gives it up; his trip to Mexico to allegedly get visas to allow him to return to the Soviet Union hits a dead-end as he never files the proper paperwork. In short, these are all futile attempts to achieve things that have a stated purpose but don’t fit into the general scheme of things, whatever the scheme was. Perhaps they are all a series of ruses to build the character of Lee Oswald, the loser with delusions of grandeur.

Landing back in Dallas, Lee rents a room at a boarding house while Marina and child stay with Ruth Paine. She is separated from her husband Michael during this time. He job hunts through the Texas Employment Commission and collects unemployment checks. He stores his things in Ruth’s garage. (Interesting that on every move since returning from the Soviet Union they always have the ability to rent an apartment, but at this juncture all he can afford is a room.) He begins the final phase living apart from his wife and children. It is similar to John Wilkes Booth living alone in his hotel room just before the assassination of Lincoln, estranged from his girlfriend. Eventually Ruth Paine gives the helping hand for the job at the Texas School Book Depository and the rest as they say, is history.

Lee Oswald, The Omnipresent Man
As stated before in this series there may have been other Oswalds in circulation. It’s a crazy idea until you start cross checking witness testimony and the wealth of conflicting records. It really kicks into overdrive in the last two months before the assassination. It’s particularly telling because Oswald maintains a perfect work record at the TSBD (Texas School Book Depository) with no absences of any kind.

Here is a brief list of Oswald appearances in conflict with his work records:

October 24. Mrs. James Walker says she chatted with an “Oswald Lee” at a gather at the home of Harold Zotch in Grand Prairie. He talked a bit about his background and bore a resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald, though he sported a snake and dagger tattoo on his left forearm. Oswald is in Dallas at the time of this gathering. The pathologist Dr. Earl Rose will document there was no tattoo on the body of the Lee Oswald he autopsied.

October 24 and (November 7). Lee Oswald gets haircuts at Cliff Shasteen’s barbershop in Irving. Seen driving up. Arrives with a blonde, blue eyed, teenage boy both times. It is unknown who this boy was. Oswald was working at the TSBD on both dates.

October 25. Oswald and wife chat with Aldene Magee and takes a look at her garage apartment in Baton Rouge. Unusual to say the least. How was Oswald going to get to his job in Dallas with no car, a distance of 371 miles one way? Another oddity is Marina, or most likely an impersonator, was shown to be pregnant. However, she already had given birth to their second child Audrey, five days earlier. Oswald tells Aldene that he has guns and needs strong locks on the doors. His work records indicate he was filling orders at the TSBD at this exact time.

October 30. Edna Walker sees Oswald standing out front of her barbershop with a tall, thin, swarthy woman in the early afternoon around 1-2 PM. Again, Oswald is working at this time. The woman’s description fits that of Ruth Paine.

November 6 or 7. Edith Whitworth, owner of Furniture Mart, has Lee, Marina, and both children appear at her furniture store. She says he drove up in a two-tone car. Only chats with Lee, Marina is silent. Edith’s friend Gertrude Hunter was there and a witness to them as well. Both would give their testimony to the WC in relation to this event and personally meet Marina and children there. Both women identify Marina and her children. Once again, Oswald is working at the TSBD at this time as either date is a work day.

November 7-8. James Markham would meet Oswald, going by the name “Ozzie” through a mutual friend. They pal around a few days at or near noon and James never sees him again. According to James, Ozzie tries to enlist him in a plot to assassinate Kennedy. James brushes it off as a joke. Oswald’s employment records show him at the TSBD at this time. Of note: James is the son of Helen Markham, the first person to arrive at the murder scene of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippet.

November 12. On another day when Lee Oswald is working, he is spotted along with Jack Ruby at the Contact Electronics store. Owners Robert Patterson and Donald Stuart, along with employee Charles Arndt speak with them. Oswald and Ruby are there for about an hour discussing different PA systems for use in Ruby’s club. Robert Patterson notices the same tattoo on Oswald’s left forearm that Mrs. James Walker did when she met him on October 24.

November 20. Another famous incident of Oswald in a restaurant being rude and cussing at waitress Mary Dowling for eggs not cooked properly. Occurs at 10 AM. Oswald has already started work at the TSBD at 8:00 AM with no absences this day, or any other day while he worked there. Interestingly, J. D. Tippet is in the restaurant at the same time and a witness to Oswald’s behavior.

Of all these instances, probably the most difficult for the Warren Commission and the FBI to resolve is the Furniture Mart appearance. Not only is Oswald not supposed to be able to drive a car, but he is there during a weekday when he is documented to be at the TSBD working. And you have two witnesses whose testimony is unimpeachable. Interestingly, Marina denies ever going to the furniture store. Edith Whitworth and Gertrude Hunter stood firm in their recollections. And Marina might be telling the truth about this if these are indeed impostors of her and Lee and the children visiting the store. The Warren Commission follows a familiar pattern; let the issue lie and move on or just simply state that the witnesses were mistaken. To have all of the sightings of Oswald in two different places at once, where he simply couldn’t be, is a conspiracy in itself. J. Edgar Hoover knew it and had his agents bury it.

There is more going on here at this stage than the doppelganger interactions mentioned in the early parts of this series. Even his wife is being impersonated too. We see a man being publicly provocative and portraying an image of one who is an unstable misfit. Oswald being impersonated during his Mexico trip features solid documentation and is even admitted to by Hoover. Apparently the impersonation did not end there. It followed him the last two months of his life. It is worth nothing that in every single incidence of Oswald shooting at the Sports Dome, he should be someplace else; either at his job, in Irving staying with his wife and children at Ruth Paine’s house, or hanging out in his room in Dallas. There are witnesses for all of these places and incidents. In many ways this period mimics his school days where he has a perfect attendance record at Beauregard Junior High, while his tax records show him a full time employee of the Dolly Shoe Company.

This man’s life is one long running oxymoron.

The part of find most perplexing is why have all of the impersonators out and about at the same time like this? I would have their activities parsed not simultaneously but staggered during the day and night. In other words, have one guy at home while the other guy is out and vise-versa. This has the appearance of a sloppiness in execution if this is indeed, some sort of operation going on here. It does have one good side effect: it cancels out witness testimony of those people seeing Oswald at certain locations with certain people. This happened to waitress Mary Lawrence at the Lucas B&B Restaurant who saw Oswald and Ruby together at 2:15 AM on the morning of the 22nd. Since Oswald was supposed to be sleeping with his wife in Ruth Paine’s house at that time, her testimony was dismissed.

The Framing of the Guilty Man
Lee Oswald was going to jail that day for something. As I documented in my article, The Tale of Two Wallets, Oswald’s wallet was found at the Tippet murder scene. He was arrested with his second wallet on him. This reoccurring theme of framing the guilty man continues with the rarely reported account of the discovery of a second paper bag, similar to the one Oswald is alleged to have used to sneak the rifle into work the morning of the assassination.

Two weeks after the assassination, workers at the Dallas post office found a package addressed to Oswald in the dead letter department. The street address of 601 West Nassau Street which does not exist in Dallas. It was $.12 short of postage and no return address. It was postmarked two days before the assassination and mailed in Dallas. The Post Master opened it to find an empty paper bag of same length and dimensions of the bag found in the 6th floor of the TSBD, the bag that Oswald allegedly made and left there. (It should be noted that his fingerprints were never found on this bag.)

This means that either Oswald was truly a nut and went around mailing empty paper bags to himself using the wrong address and in the process, incriminating himself; or, there were other people that knew what Oswald’s mission was and sought to insure his guilt and cover their own. Whatever happened that package was meant to arrive at the post office and stop. It was there to be discovered and it was.

The End Game
It all quickly spirals down to the end. We’ve been there and rehearsed it all before. At 7:30 AM the morning of the final day of John Kennedy and J. D. Tippet’s lives, one more impersonator shows up at the Top Ten Record shop to buy some tickets for Dick Clark’s show at the Dallas Municipal auditorium for that night. This is witnessed by three people. Interestingly, J. D. Tippet is in the same record store at the same time for unknown reasons. In a phase of high strangeness he is in the presence of his alleged killer twice in the same week and not only that but his alleged killer is supposed to be someplace at each of these instances. It is unknown if the tickets were ever used. It seems unlikely that somebody resembling Lee Oswald would go to a show with the most recognized face in the world.

In a maze of conflicting witness testimony, conflicting timelines, strange coincidences, phantom Secret Service agents, warped laws of physics, unusual power and phone outages, two men are dead two others are wounded. John Kennedy, everything he ever was or anything he would ever be, is one with the ages. The assailant, a man that never went to the firing range a week before the event, never practiced shooting at moving targets, an alleged communist and loser is apprehended in a strange turn of events within moments of the disaster. The drama doesn’t end till the assailant is killed a few days later by another alleged lone nut. A swift investigation follows which is more of a sham than anything else, leaving many stones unturned. Public distrust soon follows never to be abated.

John Armstrong the leading researcher in the “Oswald as doppelganger” theory. His research is compelling for such a fringe subject. He has the double doing the shooting on the sixth floor while the other Oswald is fooling around on the first and second floors. The likelihood of having two Oswalds in the same building is an imaginative way to parse the differing witness accounts but is speculation at best. Armstrong follows a similar pattern with Oswald in the Marines. Armstrong falters with this part of the scenario but there still remains the nagging issue of the conflicting records and witnesses to account for more than one Lee Oswald at play.

I still have a lot of issues with the doppelganger idea. Having another Lee Oswald around does solve a lot of inconsistencies and general confusion in some of the events but still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Such as, where did the Oswald double go after that assassination? Did the conspirators kill him too? Why have both out and about around witnesses at the same time? If this starts as a teenager then apparently his mother was a doppelganger too? And where did her double go?

Never the less there is one final caveat. In the autopsy of Lee Oswald, Dr. Earl Rose documents every scar on Oswald’s body. However, nothing is recorded on the face sheet regarding the two main scars--the mastoid scar behind the left ear and the gun shot wound on the back the left upper arm. (One minor scar, the small pox vaccine is not documented either.) The mortician Paul Groody will be asked by both the Secret service and the FBI about these scars as well, and he doesn’t report seeing them either. Groody said the Secret Service agent on the phone stated, “Well Paul, we just don't know who we have out there in that grave.” At the last minute the FBI appears for one last set of fingerprints from Lee Oswald’s (if that is truly him) dead fingers. A show of apparent concern on their part since they have three other sets to examine.

If Lee Oswald was a doppelganger then it remains the biggest secret of the Kennedy assassination and most likely the biggest source of the cover-up that has in-sued since that November day in Dallas in 1963.

The Final Word
I leave you with these mysterious words from the widow, Marina.

“I had two husbands: Lee, the father of my children, an affectionate and kind man; and Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy.”

Sources: Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; Marrs, Jim, Crossfire; Douglass, James, JFK and the Unspeakable; www.history-matters.com

Interview, Paul Groody, www.coasttocoastam.com


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And The Strongman Cometh To Taketh It All Away

Immediately after the assassination of the John F. Kennedy, several remarkable events happened in quick succession.

The first event, largely unknown for years afterward was the ceremonial giving of the evidence collected by the Dallas Police Department to the FBI, four days after the assassination. Notice the word “ceremonial.” Because this was not the first awarding of evidence to the FBI. It had actually occurred within 24 hours of the assassination. The FBI arrived in Dallas took everything and whisked it off to Washington, DC. Where they did God knows what with it. We know things are missing; other items are misnamed or not numbered properly; other items would not be known of till decades later. It is here the chain of evidence is broken forever. But it hints at a larger, behind the scenes machinations of our ruling class and how they took for granted our trust of them. The chain of evidence was not the only thing broken after the Kennedy assassination. So was the confidence of the people in the law enforcement authorities to do the right thing.

The second event, though far more clandestine and mysterious, was the removing of certain records. An unnamed FBI agent arrived at Stripling Junior High in Ft. Worth, Texas on the morning of the 23rd, less than 24 hours after the assassination. He was there to retrieve the school records of a Lee Harvey Oswald from the assistant principle, Frank Kudlaty. This Lee Oswald had attended Stripling in the fall of 1954 for a period of six weeks. Oddly, the file contained no grade transcripts from the pervious school, nor a letter of record of where the Stripling records were sent. If not for his brother Robert’s testimony, and that of his mother before the Warren Commission, the knowledge of Lee Oswald attending Stripling in the fall of 1954 would never have been known to to anyone. Because in 1954 at Beauregard Junior High, in New Orleans, there was another Lee Harvey Oswald attending there as well. There were no missing days totaling six weeks in his attendance records, nor was he found to be truant during this time. A fissure appeared in the dam and it had to be sealed.

And the Strongman cometh to taketh it all away...

The Convergence
So here we have the convergence of two separate events done in secret. I could have probably picked several more since so many unusual incidents surround the death of a president Kennedy. I picked these two because they are the closest to each other in style of operation. Despite the shock, confusion, and horror, of having a president gunned down in broad daylight, there are many wheels already rapidly set in motion. A hint of preplanning? Obviously for the FBI to send an agent to confiscate school records the day after, there was a foreknowledge of said records. To have another agent receive Oswald’s personal effects the day after shows rapid movement to control the leaking of information. The founding of the Warren Commission was to circumvent any other investigations in the works, such as by Congress and the Dallas Police Department.

Since the advent of the JFK Records Act we now have enough documents to show that Director Hoover had memos sent to him and that he sent memos to other departments in regards to Oswald being impersonated as far back as 1960. In a telephone transcript from the day after the assassination Hoover tells LBJ there was somebody impersonating Oswald during his alleged trip to Mexico City. He mentioned agents familiar with Oswald’s voice that could not identify him speaking in the recorded conversations. Near panic must have set in as the
need arose to put a lid on this before it blows out of control. On the 29th of November, the Warren Commission is formed. The course is now set.

In fact the way the FBI is acting in the Kennedy murder is very similar to their actions before, during, and after the attacks of 9-11. Under the official story, as written in the 9/11 Commission Report: “The CVRs and FDRs from American 11 and United 175” - the two planes that hit the Trade Center - “were not found.”

Since then, New York City firefighter Nicholas DeMasi and volunteer Mike Bellone, have come forward to claim they were responsible for finding three of the four Flight Data Recorders and were told to keep quiet about it. They only came forward when they heard the FBI’s claims that no black boxes were ever found. It is good that men like DeMasi and Bellone are still around. Men that honor truth and seek justice. But men like them are often crushed.

And the Strongman cometh to taketh it all away...

It is reminiscent of similar public statements by J. Edgar Hoover that they had no prior knowledge of Oswald when in fact, they had been watching him closely ever since his defection in 1959 till his death in 1963 and had maintained an extensive file on him. We know through the JFK Records Act, the ARRB and other sources, that the FBI had dozens of documents on this guy, including memos from the Office of Naval Intelligence, interviews with friends and family, reports from the State Department and so on. But it was more than that, as the Texas Attorney General discovered he was an FBI informant. When Oswald was arrested in New Orleans after his street scuffle with members of the DRE, he requested to speak with an FBI agent. And one did show up to talk to a man that had been arrested for simply disturbing the peace, hardly something the FBI would normally concern themselves with. A hint of previous involvement with each other? Apparently so. Most importantly, Lee Oswald was on the FBI’s Security Index and was incredibly removed off the list on October 9. That has never been explained. Interestingly documents show that they kept their interest in Oswald and his family, closely watching his and their, movements right up until the final moments before the assassination. The FBI single handily provided the biggest cover-up for what happened. They painted more whitewash than the CIA did and they had a lot of cover since they were working with Oswald for years. All of these denials that were issued by Hoover at the time are now easily proven false. Their method of operation never changes. Just go and try to find the black boxes.

The Strong Man got his reward in 1965 when LBJ signed the executive order that exempted J. Edgar Hoover from Federal retirement regulations and basically made him Director for life. A mean, vindictive man, he would go on to use the power of his office not so much to bring criminals to justice but to also attack those whom he hated. Such as Dr. Martin Luther King, with those insidious wiretaps and blackmail threats. Not to mention the dozens of others he had smeared and blackmailed along the way.

Some men know the truth and honor it and seek to expose it to the chagrin of Kings. Other men know the truth and seek to bury it on order of the Kings they serve. But the truth always outs.


Sources: Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; Douglass, James, JFK and the Unspeakable; www.ctka.net (Probe Magazine article archive); www.history-matters.com; Horne, Douglas, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board


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Dr. Michael Shermer’s Appearance on C2C

Everybody’s lovable skeptic Dr. Michael Shermer appeared on Coast to Coast AM radio broadcast last night. As usual the affable and witty Dr. Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and columnist for Scientific American discussed a variety of topics from conspiracy and 9-11, to UFOs. To me, the most exasperating thing about Dr. Shermer, who comes across as a genuine man pursuing the truth, in that he claims to be a skeptic but throws his skepticism out the window when it comes to anything the government says. And this from a man who admitted on the Larry King show last year that government does in fact lie, and lie often. He turns his doubts on the critics as if they are the source of the problem or are without proper means to investigate a fact. I know of no instance where a government assertion in regards to any major event was refuted or debunked by him.

JFK
You always have to ask these professional skeptics about the Kennedy assassination and host George Noory wasted no time in getting to that. To start off, probably the worse thing Dr. Shermer did was to admit the book that turned him away from conspiracy was Gerald Posner’s Case Closed. A book so bad that Warren Commission attack dog Vincent Bugliosi had to take him to task on numerous issues in Reclaiming History, and rightfully so. (Notice he reads a book that is designed to prove the long gunman theory; not something more objective. ) So on this shaky foundation Dr. Shermer ambles through the same hackneyed arguments as all the debunkers do. Too many people involved, somebody would have talked; Oswald was an excellent marksman; there are no evidence for other shooters, and so on.

Let us just look at two of these arguments.

Somebody would have talked. So, how many people talked in the Booth/Seuret conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln? Answer: none. And there were almost a dozen people, possibly more, involved with that. John Wilkes Booth was clever; he made sure all involved were compromised in some way. For example, he would have his fellow conspirators rent the same horse he did at the livery stable. That way there was a witness who know the men renting the horse and a written ledger containing the names of all involved with him. He would also write letters discussing the plot and should anybody write back he would inform them the letter would be used as evidence against them if he were outed. We would not have clandestine services keeping so well their secrets such as the CIA or the DIA if people were such blabber mouths. Look how many secrets the CIA is sitting on right now in regards to the JFK assassination. A ton.

Oswald was a superior marksman. As usual with lone nut believers, Michael Shermer only gives partial evidence of Oswald’s superior marksmen skills (probably from reading Posner’s faulty analysis). True, Lee Oswald did score high on his first marksmen test and passed with flying colors. However, that was one of three tests that he would take during his time in the Marines. The second test was average. The third and final test he barely passed. Dr. Shermer, who claims to be a seeker of the truth seems content with never mentioning that. How could an honest truth seeker not care about that? In Russia, when hunting with his friends, Oswald always got the shotgun; for obvious reasons. Prior to the assassination Oswald was known to have gone to a firing range but only shot at stationary targets. (Also of interest was the witness accounts have Oswald appearing when he should have someplace else, such as at work. Also, he was seen driving a car and being in the presence of other individuals.) The hardest thing in sniping is shooting at a moving target which Oswald never practiced at any firing range nor in the Marines. Any skilled SWAT sniper or army marksmen knows that you have to practice every day to stay sharp; skills degrade rapidly. You just do not buy a gun, rarely use it and then show up one day and fire off precise shots. His wife Marina said he would practice shooting leaves in the park. Ridiculous. That would be heard by other park goers and is against the law for discharging a firearm in the city limits. Clearly, if that happened, Oswald could have gotten himself arrested.

To further enforce Oswald’s murderous intent, Dr. Shermer brings up the assassination attempt on General Walker. Here, he shows how little he knows about case and how weak his arguments are. After telling the Coast to Coast audience how accurate Oswald is as a Marine marksmen, he then tells them Oswald missed. Missed a man that was sitting still in his own home! But he can incredibly hit two men in a moving car? Which of course, is the hardest shot to make, of which I must add, Oswald never trained for in the Marines or in civilian life. (Naturally Michael Shermer skips on the other controversies such as the recovered bullet that was a 30.06; not the same caliber of that Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano, a 6.5mm. No mention of how Oswald, with no car, got there with a rifle in broad daylight to make the assassination attempt. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in this controversy.) Needless to say, Dr. Shermer shows how far out of his league he is with the most basic facts in the case. Really, he's so much better dancing with Bigfoot.

Same Old Song and Dance
There is a notion that people that believe in conspiracies are just going on blind faith. That must be dispelled. The very reason there are conspiracy believers is exactly because of the evidence that refutes or questions official claims.

For man who promotes reason and evidence to explain reality Michael Shermer really passes the ball on this one. His arguing style is no different here than it is with other topics such as UFOs, Bigfoot, or 9-11. He makes claims of being open minded but I respectfully doubt that. This man after all, has a business being a professional skeptic. He publishes a magazine and he runs a foundation. Do people really think if hard evidence comes along to prove that UFOs and Bigfoot are real, or there is a conspiracy in the death of JFK, he’ll change? People like him always move the goal line if you get too close. Just try him sometime.

(For more on Gerald Posner’s errors in Case Closed, read The Return of Posner by researcher Jim DiEugenio, HERE.)

Book Review: JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass

In a clear and reasonable manner James W. Douglass dresses the table and defines the issue of John Kennedy’s assassination like no other writer in recent times. Ever since it happened it looks suspicious but it’s hard for the average person to define what that is, or what that feeling in the gut that something is not right here. James W. Douglass defines why it happened and in such an elegantly simple way, an epiphany envelopes the mind while taking it all in. You get the “ah-ha” moment as it all comes into focus. It is the defining of a reason why and how, that matters. And that opens it all up to a sensible explanation of how a conspiracy can develop and overwhelm a powerful leader.

Without being excessively wordy James W. Douglass succeeds humbly at providing us a clear, concise, and fast paced treatment of what happened. One can sense, if you read a lot of these books, the “best of” points from other researchers. Such as the Deep Politics of Peter Dale Scott; the Oswald doppelganger of John Armstrong’s research; the CIA manipulations of our leaders as L. Fletcher Proudy documented in The Secret Team; the CIA’s relationship with Lee Oswald from the work of John Newman, and so on, and so on. Douglass weaves it all together into a cohesive whole giving us the key, the motive like one would experience from a true crime story.

And provide a motive he does. We always instinctually knew it was never with the skinny guy in the white tee shirt. It was that cabal of military men hell-bent for war, their corporate suppliers, and the spooks playing puppet master behind the scenes. As John Kennedy found out there, there were more than one King in Camelot. He attempted to reign in this volatile group of players and it backfired. They got him. And this is the main thing to be learned from this book. The major players were setting it up and Douglass lays it all out like a master mason, assembling all of the bricks together to form the tomb.

His book is so well structured Douglass can slay the arguments of the lone nut salesmen without having to mention their names or debate them. Vince Bugliosi’s take on the assassination looks petty and shallow in comparison as he assumes the role of the Warren Commission’s defense attorney, slinging insults and dismissing evidence that betrays the Word of Warren; Norman Mailer is so befuddled at Oswald’s motive, he has to take on the role mind reader to find out what Oswald’s intentions were; Gerald Posner is a troll shilling for his masters and the truth is not for discovery, the narrative is. All these men are in a state of denial, to the point of crafting senseless schemes. Douglass points this out time and time again throughout the book that only a conspiracy works or makes any sense.

Forever it seems, we will be left without the names of the guilty. Douglass is no better with that than any other writer on this task. He is not to be faulted as it is the great unknown of the assassination. What we have and Douglass documents, is the paths to Dallas and the covering up of and by the action teams, but never that core group or a chronicling of their plotting. All that is left behind is their footprints. In many ways it was the perfect crime like only the Nation Security State can assemble and cast into the fire. After all, if the State commits a crime, then how is the State to be prosecuted? If anyone points a finger or lifts a word they will be dealt with by the power invested in them. (Which seems to lessen with time but never fully dies.)

Most people don’t realize we live in National Security State that Harry Truman singed into law in 1947. It became his only regret while in office. And that National Security State now thrives outside of the constitutional framework of our government. Our Founders were wise to institute checks and balances but sly forms of tyranny disguised as security will arise. And it only grows as we saw with the Patriot Act and later the Military Commissions Act. The Founders did the best they could to break the Divine Right of Kings, but that spirit keeps rising from the dead and threatens any leader who believes in liberty.

Until something else is published, James Douglass’ book will not be surpassed for years to come. If you only read one book on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, make it this one.

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass.

Hardcover: 510 pages
Publisher: Orbis Books (April 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1570757550
ISBN-13: 978-1570757556

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The Discovery Channel Frames Oswald Again

In their special broadcast last night, JFK: The Ruby Connection, The Discovery Channel, which by now is getting good at being a helpful tool of government propaganda, landed another rotten egg with their look at Jack Ruby being a mob hit-man out to silence Oswald. I had a bad feeling about this show knowing what a track record the Discovery Channel has in doing JFK assassination specials and always determining the Warren Commission was right and there was no conspiracy in John Kennedy’s death. This was quite evident in the special they aired a few years ago, Inside the Target Car. It was an embarrassment featuring Dale Myers computer animations of the assassination (make sure you check out Pat Speer’s great analysis of this on his at web site at, www.patspeer.com) and other misleading information to assure the viewer that only Oswald was shooting from behind.

As usual, this latest production was a biased one-sided affair, brushing off Ruby’s intent to kill Oswald not as premeditated but a random event. It featured the typical Discovery Channel stye, the usual cherry picking of the evidence so everything comes out tidy with no loose ends. Of course, nothing is neat or tidy. Seeing it hosted and narrated by Gary Mack was the final nail in the coffin. He was instrumental in the “Target Car” show and many others. When you see his involvement there will only be one conclusion--the Warren Commission was right and there will be no dissenting opinions.

Enter Gary Mack
Gary Mack, dubbed by researcher James Eugenio as, “The Discovery Channel's Dan Rather” is a rather notorious figure in JFK research circles. A man on the side of conspiracy till he went to the dark side of the force. Mack is curator and spokesman for the Sixth Floor Museum, and the purpose of the museum is to promote the Warren Commission’s conclusion of Oswald being the long gunman and to attack all critics of the Commission. (Evidenced by the museum bookstore which features no conspiracy JFK books.) Before his about-face, Mack was instrumental in getting the dictatape recordings to the HSCA and that became the basis of their assessment for a conspiracy. He was also involved with the badgeman photo which some believe is a man wearing a badge firing from the grassy knoll. His conversion apparently came when he was offered a position with a six figure salary, after he lost his job, his marriage, and his house. Obviously, this deal meant no more conspiracy talk.

In his neatly trimmed gray hair and smartly pressed shirts Gary Mack comes off in the show as a reasonable, respectable guy. Certainly not the type to sign up for college classes on the JFK assassination and then heckle featured speakers (along with his pal Dave Perry), but this is exactly what he was observed doing in a class taught by author/researcher Jim Marrs. Or a man that publicly goes by an allis when his real name is Larry Dunkel. To add to the high-tech mood of the show, Mack is shown drawing paths on maps floating holographic style in the air. Looks cool but is mostly eye candy promoting a modern “scientific” look which ultimately doesn’t tell you much except what they want you to know.

The Stuff They Left Out
In these cherry-picked presentations there is a lot left on the cutting room floor. Which of course, is the good stuff. Since the case is built that Jack Ruby just randomly showed up with a gun to kill Lee Oswald, it is never told that Ruby was stalking Oswald from the beginning. When Huston Post reporter Alonzo Huskiness asked Ruby’s attorney Tom Howard, if Ruby was packing his gun at the Friday night press conference, Howard acknowledged that he was. Ruby had called the police department numerous times inquiring when Oswald was going to be moved to the courthouse for sentencing. So close to the DPD, Ruby was in the station building at the time Oswald was being interrogated and tried to enter but was prevented from doing so. The producers of this show want it to seem that Ruby just got lucky and happened to show up at the right place at the right time when in actuality, Ruby was all over the place from the Dallas Police station to the Parkland Hospital.

They went into much detail about the various members of the press and police that were in the basement at the time of the shooting. One person never mentioned was Ruby’s attorney, Tom Howard. He was there at the same time Ruby was and seen at the jail office window. He left just before the shooting but appeared at the Sheriff’s office just a few moments later with a writ seeking Ruby’s release. This was accomplished before the mortally wounded Oswald made it Parkland hospital, making it appear that the writ was crafted far earlier than the shooting. How is that for speedy lawyer work? Can this be so? It would be interesting to research Howard’s background and see who his other clients were. He certainly got there early enough with the proper paperwork. Perhaps too early. In 1965 at the age of 48 Tom Howard died of heart attack, taking his secrets with him.

While it was menaced that Ruby was pretending to be a reporter at the Friday night press conference, complete with a film image of Ruby being there wearing his glasses looking oh, so, journalistic. It was at this press conference that Ruby corrected DA Henry Wade when he mispronounced the name of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee. How did Ruby know? It was not as if the FPCC was a well known organization. Nor was Ruby known to have been affiliated with such pro-Castro groups. Maybe Ruby’s familiarity was because he knew Lee Oswald’s affiliation with it. Of course that was never looked into like an honest, open investigation would have.

In Closing
The amount of facts left out of these so-called documentaries is a travesty that seems to have no end. As if doing this over and over again is going to turn the public away from the conspiratorial view that a majority of us have. You would think to be fair they would employ some balance. It’s not as if there aren’t an army of conspiracy based researchers out there. Or for that matter, just ordinary investigators that have found contradictions in the official narrative. People like Pat Speer. It’s always the critics and their point of view that is under scrutiny, never the government’s claims. I think the public is not as dumb as the producers of these shows perceive them to be. After all, these one-sided dog and pony shows never change the majority opinion.

Pamela McElwain-Brown, an expert on the presidential limousine, was hired by Discovery as a consultant for the Inside the Target Car special. What was supposed to be an investigation of the limousine as a crime scene turned out instead to be more of a method for proving the lone gunman theory, once more. In the end, none of Pamela’s research was used. She said in an interview on Black Op Radio that the show turned out to be, “Too much spectacle without substance.” Watching an alleged expert with a phony name, creating his etch-a-sketch holographic drawings with a finger, is a good analogy for that.

One thing they can never get away from. Lee Oswald was killed before he could have a trial. And if even if it is not true, it will always look like he was silenced on purpose.


Sources:
http://www.ctka.net/2009/target_car_jd3.html; (Pamela McElwain-Brown) http://www.in-broad-daylight.com/; http://www.patspeer.com; http://www.blackopradio.com; Books: Harvey and Lee, Crossfire, Farewell to Justice, Reclaiming History


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Where JFK Researchers Fear to Tread

Most researchers, especially those that are conspiracy bound (which seem to be most writers on the subject these days), mostly do not go near the issue of Oswald being a doppelganger despite the obvious discrepancies in his narrative. Most will agree that Oswald was being impersonated during his Mexico trip, such as Jeff Morley (Our Man in Mexico) and John Newman (Oswald and the CIA). However, it seems for most researchers find the subject is too weird even for them. In fact, it’s almost taboo. Author and researcher John Armstrong is the only person to seriously tackle the subject and he does so in a big way. Besides the doppelganger issue which is the main focus of the book, the sheer amount of detail he documents of the Kennedy assassination is staggering. It makes a good overall source book on the assassination. Jim Marrs has a section in Crossfire on Oswald doubles and Vince Bugliosi in Reclaiming History mentions it but then dismisses the subject as fringe kook material. In my growing library of Kennedy assassination books not much else is available. Why?

The Silvia Odio Incident
Quite well known in the annals of the JFK assassination is the story of Silvia Odio, the daughter of Armado Odio, trucking magnate of pre-Castro Cuba. Well known in that her story is evidence for conspiracy and a thorn in the side of the Warren Commission and its defenders.

The eldest of 10 children Silvia along with other family members fled Castro’s Cuba and in September of 1963 was temporally staying with her sister Annie in Dallas. There father Amador along with their mother were imprisoned by Castro after uncovered plotting against him. Amador had the largest trucking company in Cuba before Fidel Castro came to power. This is an important point to consider because one day in September of 1963, two Cubans and an American came knocking at her door, ostensibly to ask for help for her father’s organization, JURE. The Cubans introduced themselves as Leopoldo and Angelo, with the American introducing himself as Leon Oswald. Suspicious of these men, and later being warned by her father imprisoned in Cuba, she had nothing more to do with them. Later, when watching the results of the assassination on television and seeing the arrest of the alleged killer of the President she recognized Lee Harvey Oswald as the young man that introduced himself as Leon Oswald at her door.

Silvia Odio gave her testimony to the Warren Commission on this incident but shortly before the Warren Report was released they dismissed her story, saying she was mistaken, much to her disgust. She resented be told that she didn’t know who she was looking at and speaking with. Years later she would give her testimony again to the House Select Committee on Assassinations and they agreed her story was true. (It should be pointed out that there is more than one witness to this event. Her sister Annie who answered the door, saw Oswald and the Cubans and overhead the entire conversation. Her testimony was never taken by the FBI, Warren Commission or later, the HSCA.)


Timelines Askew
However, there is more to it than just additional lines of conspiracy and Oswald being seen with people when he was cast as a loner. Authors, Larry Hancock, Gaeton Fonzi, Joan Mellen, Peter Dale Scott, John Newman, and Lamar Waldron all give Silvia Odio credibility in her story of meeting Lee “Leon” Oswald prior to the assassination and his interaction with Cuban exiles. However, none of these authors make the connection of Oswald’s meeting with Odio and his bus trip to Mexico City. Because the FBI narrowed down the timeline of the Silvia/Leon meeting to September 26, the same exact time Oswald is traveling in Mexico. The implications are of more than one Lee Oswald in play. No wonder the Warren Commission (and Hoover behind the scenes) dismissed her account! Oswald being in Mexico at this precise date is verified by almost ten witnesses which includes fellow bus passengers and the hotel staff in Mexico City. There are also Hotel records to verify the date as well.

And this not the only sighting of Lee Oswald in Dallas on that date. Henry McCluskey, an Interstate Claims clerk for the TEC (Texas Employment Commission) remarked that Lee Oswald showed up on either the 25th or the 26th of September and gave him an address correction which he filled on an Interstate Claims form. He related this to the Warren Commission and was interviewed at home by attorney Albert Jenner. Jenner would conclude his testimony was hearsay. Typical. He has to so they can avoid the conflict. McCluskey would never be interviewed by the FBI or the WC. Interestingly the Interstate Claims form shows signs of tampering. The top was meant to be cut off in a straight line but that was not possible since the “P.O.” was written too high off the baseline. Whoever cut it did so by carving around the two letters. An amateurish job at best. This was done in the FBI’s possession and represents the tampering of evidence. Why would they do that? Because the date of September 25 or 26 would be written there and would show Oswald at Dallas and Mexico two at the same time.

Fearing to Tread
I must admit when I first started looking into the subject of Oswald doubles there was that sense of it being a far out subject not worthy of exploring. It’s gets even weirder when one considers that if it was an intelligence project, it starts when Lee Oswald is a teenager. That means there has to be a double for his mother as well. It takes a turn for the worse when you have two sets of doubles loose leaving a lengthy and contradicting witness and paper trail. And that is an important point; there is a paper trail to this that is so conflicting the only way to resolve it is to have two sets of sons and mothers. Just hunt through the Warren Commission’s 26 volumes and a lot of vexing things will be unearthed. Still more is waiting for us as there is a ton of paperwork still to be released from the various investigations. One day perhaps we’ll find out who John and Minnie Smith are, or the contents of the still unreleased tax returns of Marguerite Oswald from 1956-62, also marked, “referred...postponed in full.” There is no sound reason for any of this if these are normal people.

I can honestly understand why so many researchers don’t go near the subject even with the evidence staring them right in the face. This is not clearly not the case with John Armstrong who has written the definitive book on the subject in his Harvey and Lee. He’s a voice crying in the wilderness and I applaud him for his courage to pursue this subject. I’ve long held that there is more to the assassination of JFK than his murder. This business of doubles running about, appearing in places they should not be has possibilities for a tie-in to the deep cover that surrounds the assassination.

Epilogue
As I have noted in this piece, virtually no assassination author that believes Silvia Odio’s account of seeing Lee Oswald, connects the timing conflict between her encounter and Oswald being on the bus headed to Mexico City. Either one occurred or one did not. Or perhaps both did occur and Lee Oswald’s double was at her door with the Cubans. I have only stated one example here, but there are many more examples of this occurring all through the investigation.

Obviously, a lot of worms are going to escape if this can is opened. And there is more than one can.


Sources:
Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; Newman, John, Oswald and the CIA; McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust; Warren Commission Report; Douglass, James, JFK and the Unspeakable; www.ctka.net (Probe Magazine article archive); www.history-matters.com; Mellen, Joan, A Farewell to Justice, Marrs, Jim, Crossfire; Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Fonzi, Gaeton; The Last Investigation

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400 Dallas Police Department Photos Online

400 photographs from the Dallas Police Department have been indexed an placed online. Of interest, two photographs of cameras not known of before and more importantly, photographs of fingerprint cards taken from curtain rods. This is quite significant because Oswald is alleged to have brought in a package of curtain rods to work the morning of the assassination. It’s been held that this was actually the disassembled Mannlicher-Carcano rifle concealed in the package. But only one witness, Wesley Frasier testifies to this. At any rate, nothing related to curtain rods has surfaced before.

Also of interest is the curious “cut out” photo of Oswald from the backyard. What were they trying to do there? Frame somebody? Please....

LINK

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Who Bought The Guns?

Who Bought The Guns, has been updated at my Substack page.  

Lee Oswald Was One Weird Dude, Part 3

As discussed in Parts 1 and 2, Lee Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy has a strange and contradictory life history. Some researchers insist this conflicting evidence is proof of a body double, or doppelganger, a clandestine intelligence project. Two stumbling blocks are one, where does the double go after the assassination and two, if the impersonation begins as a youth then Oswald’s mother has to be a double as well. Many records are lost or still classified though enough has been leaked to form a much different picture than what the Warren Report first told the American public. If it is true that Oswald was operating as doppelganger for some secret project, then we can see why the government remains fanatical in its attempts to obscure the truth.

Oswald Defects to The USSR
The news that a U.S. Marine defected to a major enemy at the height of the cold war reverberated through every government agency. Memos were sent to every branch of the government and military. As they should have since Oswald had a “crypto” clearance, one higher up than Top Secret. Later, military codes would have to changed since Oswald told American embassy officials he was going to tell the Russians everything he knew—which is an act of treason but he will not be prosecuted for though it was a breach of national security and he could have been arrested right there in the Embassy. He could also have been arrested upon his return to the U.S. but was not. This is possibly more evidence of Oswald’s covert activities at this time and he is being protected. Just as he was protected at so many other junctures before he arrived in Moscow and will be after he moves on.

So Lee Oswald’s sojourn to the Communist worker’s paradise is another mysterious and strange episode in his life. One of many that would be recycled until his death. It is as fraught with anomalies as his trip to Mexico is. To summarize, he gets an early discharge from the Marines to take care of his mother, books a trip on a steamer and makes his way to Russia. He contacts the American Embassy in Moscow and announces his defecting, says he is planning on sharing military secrets with the Russians, and in a hand written letter renounces his citizenship. Later he gets assigned a job at a radio factory in Minsk, meets his future wife and marries her in six weeks and they have a baby. He becomes disillusioned, gets a loan from the State Department and he and family return to the United States in the summer of 1962.

My summary is perhaps too lean but of interest here is the peculiar issues that arise. Such as Oswald drafting a letter renouncing his citizenship. Due to a 1907 law one must fill out a “Certificate of Loss of Nationality” to relinquish citizenship. He did not. One would think the lawyers at the Embassy would have informed him of this fact. What his letter does is provide him an out should he need to return since it is not legally valid. He can tell the world he is no longer an American but the legal framework is not there. So if you want to know how he got back to the U.S. so easily this why. He was blowing smoke.

Though a good Russian speaker he rarely speaks Russian to anyone except Marina, who though he was a local when they first met. She said he spoke with a Baltic accent. Oswald’s learning Russian is shrouded in mystery with the Warren Report guessing a Marine officer teaching him. Most of the men closest to him report never seeing him doing anything in this regard. Never the less if Oswald is part of a false defector program (the ONI ran one out of Nags Head, NC) then speaking Russian too much is a dead give away to being a spy. Post cold war KGB records indicate his apartment was bugged. The Ziger family who befriended him said he never spoke Russian to them and their father who spoke English had to translate for him. Interestingly, Marina spoke English and Lee wrote her letters in English but she rarely spoke it when she came to America with him. (For more on this please see my article, From Marina Prusakova, With Love)

Oswald’s reasons for returning to America are also shrouded in mystery. He made a high salary but had no place to spend it as consumer goods were hard to find outside of the basics. If Oswald was a cold war spy the Russians had him boxed in the factory in Minsk. Not much in the way of spy activity could be done there. Other defectors like him, such as Robert Webster (who bore a striking resemblance to Oswald and met Marina—who spoke to him in English) defected and came back home after a few years disillusioned with the communist system. If Webster was an agent then he was boxed in too. The Russians had a healthy mistrust of America defectors showing up at their door. As Oswald said to his mother when she inquired about this, “Mother, not even Marina knows why I came back.” He wouldn’t even tell his wife. A Cold War spy probably would not.

The Opening of the SIG 201 File
There is good reason to believe that Oswald was a Cold War spy. Why? Because a former agent said so under oath to the HSCA in 1978. Ann Egerter worked under counter espionage chief James Angleton. In retirement at the time of her testimony, her words were so revealing it is amazing that it did not make a bigger impact in the public consciousness in regards to Oswald and the assassination.

Essentially, a SIG 201 file is opened on a CIA agent or asset in regards to a counter espionage investigation. Ann Egerter referred to SIG (Special Investigations Group) as, “the office that spied on spies.” A SIG 201 file was evidence and result of an internal investigation into one of the CIA’s own people. Egerter also asserted many different times that there was no other purpose for a SIG 201 file to be opened on an individual. That person would have to be a CIA employee in some capacity. As usual with these things, two plus two equals four. Lee Oswald is in effect a CIA spy.

Oswald’s SIG 201 file was started the year following his alleged defection, in December 1960. Oddly, the name on the file is Lee Henry Oswald. However, Ann Egerter said in her HSCA testimony that it was Lee Harvey Oswald’s 201 file. And odd occurrence but perhaps a way to throw off investigators should the truth was revealed? Plausible denial? Also, all information on Oswald should have been filed under the Soviet Affairs division but was not. It was under direct control of James Angleton who was rabid in his pursuit of moles within the Agency. Researcher John Newman (Oswald and the CIA) believes Oswald was a special project under control of Angleton and may have been.

Remarkably, Warren Commission defenders such as Bugliosi, Mailer, McAdams, and Posner continue to deny there was any evidence of Oswald being associated with the CIA. Vince Bugliosi in Reclaiming History totally ignores Ann Egerter’s testimony to the HSCA not only in his 1600 plus pages of his book but also in over 900 pages of End Notes. Buglosi implies that people other than CIA personnel can be appear in a 201 file, saying that a 201 is, “A file kept on an individual, including CIA employees…” Not so according to Ann Egerter.

Even stranger is the HSCA’s final report, states there was “no evidence” linking Oswald to the CIA, obviously ignoring Ann Egerter’s testimony as well. Another example of why Congress should never be allowed to investigate tragic events such as this.

Oswald Seen Outside of Russia
Once again, Oswalds appear in places they shouldn’t be. Most telling is one of the few surviving documents from an employment application filed with the Texas Employment Commission in Ft. Worth in April of 1962. It is well documented that Oswald, wife and daughter were in Minsk at that time. In volume 19, page 491 of the Warren Commission evidence volumes, is listed a few surviving applications with the TEC. Such as form E-40a, Aptitude Profile Test (APT) B-1002 and the Occupational Aptitude Pattern test (OAP). Of all of these the OAP is dated for 4/62 when he is in Russia. The other forms are dated for summer of 1962 when he had returned to America.

Of note is the APT B-1002 from which is normally given to insurance claim examiners, something clearly out of Lee Oswald’s league. The FBI or WC never investigates why he would be given this test. Also, on the application listed as Cunningham Exhibit No.1-A, there is listed employment (description barely unreadable—office work?) for one year in New Orleans in 1961. Once again he is Russia at this time.

Lee Oswald, or someone impersonating him, was seen by so many people that it made it’s way all the up to Hoover at the FBI. In a 1960 memo, Hoover is warned that someone is impersonating a Lee Oswald. This memo is written in a simple, matter of fact way, as if this is prior or common knowledge. If the Lee Oswald we have been handed is a malcontent, misfit of a young man why would he be impersonated? The only answer is he was an action guy of some sort playing one role for official history and another one for the National Security State.

In another memo dated from March 31, 1961 a state department official Edward Hickey writes to a fellow official John White informing him that, “there is an imposter using Oswald’s identification data…” and recommending his passport should be forwarded to him on a personal basis—to make sure the right Lee H. Oswald got it. So it was becoming well known in closed circles that this Oswald character had a cloud swirling around him and warnings were being sent out through the proper channels.

Lee Oswald was once again spotted in various places he should not have been while in Russia. He was seen in and out of the Lake Ponchartrain CIA training camp for Cuban operations in Louisiana to as far south as Key West in Florida. Attorney Robert Tanenbaum said during his brief tenure with the HSCA said he saw a film of the Cuban exiles in training at Lake Ponchartrain. Seen in the film was CIA man David Atlee Philips, David Ferrie, and Lee Oswald. This time period could anytime around around 1960-63. Oswald is either in Russia at this time or in New Orleans. Never the less, he is seen in the presence of CIA operatives, while he is not supposed to have known any under the official story. Oh, if we could just see this film!

There are too many accounts to document here but one of interest is the HSCA testimony of Marita Lorenz. Lorenz, a former lover of Castro became involved with the CIA’s JM/WAVE project, which was the driving force behind the Bay of Pigs operation. She claimed to have met Oswald in a CIA safe house in Florida in April of 1961—when he was supposed to be in Russia. In the transcript one can sense the chagrin of the lawyer questioning her, incredulous at her words. He kept trying to shake her off her testimony but she remained steadfast. Later, she would recant her statements, most likely under the threat of perjury. Of course to change her views like that would be perjury as well but she was never indicted. What she said the first time around certainly had the ring of truth to it, especially when compared to other witness accounts and later day documents showing Oswald was being impersonated.

The Luggage
One last note here on this phase of Oswald’s life. Upon arriving with wife and baby in New York, a welfare caseworker was assigned to help them. He took note of seven bags, as he had to help move them from the ship to the hotel they were staying at. Shortly thereafter, when they were taken to the airport, only five bags were available. When asked, Oswald said that two were shipped ahead of them via train. Later when brother Robert arrived at the Ft Worth airport to pick them up there were only three bags to collect. So two bags were missing after landing in New York and two more bags were missing after they returned to Texas, a total of four. Yet neither Lee nor Marina ever complained of missing luggage—an odd occurrence to say the least. What happened here?

Although Marina maintained they were never separated on their trans-Europe train trip to Holland, their passport stamps tell a different story. At the East Berlin border crossing Marina’s passport is stamped. Lee’s is not stamped till they get to the German/Belgium border. Documentation that he crossed from east to west is not recorded. It has been speculated that he was taken aside and debriefed at this point by military intelligence, possibly ONI. It may also be that he was given four extra bags with intelligence files in them to act as a currier. (Later, CIA officer Hunter Leake would say he hired Oswald as a currier in New Orleans in 1963.) Thus, the missing luggage would be no consequence to them.

COMING IN PART 4: High strangeness leads up to the big event.

Sources: Newman, John, Oswald and the CIA; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust; Warren Commission Report; Mailer, Norman, Oswald’s Tale, Douglass, James, JFK and the Unspeakable; www.ctka.net (Probe Magazine article archive)

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From Marina Prusakova, With Love

Nobody in the annals of the JFK assassination is who they appear to be at first glance. Marina Oswald Porter has done a good job at portraying herself as the distraught widow of a man charged with one of the dastardliness crimes of the 20th century. An innocent Russian girl meets an American defector, falls in love and marries after meeting him 6 weeks earlier and with him and baby in tow, returns to America. Of course, she cannot maintain this image alone, and had a great deal of help from writer Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who herself got the first interview in Moscow with Lee Oswald upon his defection. We now know from document releases that she was also a CIA asset. As Donald Jameson, the CIA’s Chief of the Soviet Russia division said in a memo, "I think that Miss Johnson can be encouraged to write pretty much the articles we want." She has in fact spent a career helping the Government’s case of Oswald as the lone gunman in books and articles and wrote Marina and Lee with Marina’s input.

Marina’s Ability To Speak English
One apparent falsehood Marina maintained for years is that she did not speak English when she arrived in America with her defector husband. In her Warren Commission testimony she required the need of a translator to answer questions. Years later in Garrison grand jury testimony, when asked who she spoke to when they landed in New York, she said no one as she didn’t speak English. In fact she stated numerous times in her testimony that she didn’t speak English at all in her first years in America. She also said in grand jury testimony that back in 1963 she was taking English lessons from George Bola who just happened to be Jack Ruby’s next-door neighbor. However, her statements of not being able to speak and understand English are at odds with the facts as we now know them.

Here is a list of points that dispel this myth:

• In 1961 while still in Russia, Lee ​sent Marina a letter written in English.
• Robert Webster, another American defector, said he knew Marina and she spoke good English with a heavy accent.
• Descriptions on the back of photos taken in Russia are in Marina’s handwriting in Russian and English.
• Warren Commission, CE-100. Marina’s stenographic notebook found by the Dallas Police written in English. They also found a second notebook with Marina’s handwriting in English. There are other notebooks with her English writing in the National Archives.
• Business manager James Martin testified that she understood everything said to her in English.
• Robert Oswald in an FBI affidavit said Marina spoke to him in English, without a translator, in regards to a business contract with James Martin. A contract written only in English.
• Marguerite Oswald in Warren Commission testimony mentions numerous conversations with Marina—all in English.
• Marina gets trapped in Garrison grand jury testimony saying she called Reily Coffee Company looking for Lee. She was asked how she could do that, she replied she knew “a few words.”
• Though filled with inconsistencies in the evidence the WC fails to explore these apparent contractions. As usual, don’t tell us more than we want to know. Marina knowing English well enough to write and speak would raise questions of where she learned it; she was after all, a graduate of pharmacy school. And why would she need it anyway? She would only need if she were an operative for the State. And Oswald was not the only American defector she met in Russia. She also met and spoke with Robert Webster, though she denies this though her address book had the address of the apartment building he stayed in.

Interestingly, Lee Oswald spoke excellent Russian but not much of it in Russia. Befriended by the Ziger family, they report Oswald only spoke in English with their father translating. We know from released transcripts that his apartment was bugged by the KGB and fluent Russian speaking could have brought about an arrest for espionage. The Russians were already suspicious of him upon his arrival. It seems he only spoke Russian to Marina as she said he spoke well enough to have a Baltic accent. But why did he trust her to the exclusion of all others? It may be that she was an operative and needed him as her ticket out of Russia and into the United States. Former KGB defector, Petr Deryabin said that any Russian woman that wanted to marry a foreigner and leave had to agree to work for the KGB. Marina got her permission to slip fast—in 7 days. Marriage certificates were issued by the secret police, which were also issued promptly.

Marina And Prostitution
And she seems like such a nice girl. So sweet and innocent in her early pictures, so pained with grief at the ghastly chain of events she became involved with. To find out that she may have been involved with a prostitution ring in Leningrad is quite a shock. Certainly a great departure from what was written by Priscilla McMillan in “Marina and Lee,” the 1974 book describing Marina as a virtuous woman. A woman allegedly thanked Lee for saving herself for him on their wedding night. However, a Mr. Merezhinsky tells a different tale.

Yuri Merezhinsky, interviewed by Norman Mailer for his book Oswald’s Tale, says she was anything but virtuous, claiming she was a prostitute. He knew Marina quite well and says she was in a group of four people—two women and two men—that were plying their trade in a Hotel Leningrad that were eventually booted out of the city. It was an offence strong enough to be sent to a labor camp, which didn’t happen to Marina. What would lead her to this alleged occupation can only be speculated at but the KGB did maintain “honey traps” for intelligence gathering purposes from various officials, both local and foreign. She would have been known as a “swallow” in the honey trap. Marina was known to associate with diplomats and high government bureaucrats. Her basic clientele would have been foreigners. She would years later admit to being raped by an Afghan ambassador. How would she meet up with this sort of individual? ​ ​Nevertheless, Marina suddenly leaves Leningrad and ends up living with her aunt and uncle in Minsk, where he was a member of the secret police, the MVD. Merezhinsky, though not her lover, said she was quite promiscuous with many of his friends without regard to reputation. He said he never told Lee any of this. (Although Lee, understanding Russian would have picked up on the gossip.)

However, Yuri Merezhinsky is not the only witness to Marina’s sexual history. The aforementioned James Martin, the business manager, was also Marina’s lover and learned a lot about her past. He would relate this account to the HSCA in 1978 that he attempted to tell the Warren Commission about her background; he was suddenly interrupted by Earl Warren who ordered the stenographer to tear up the tape. This is the destruction of witness testimony in front of the witness and the Commission! Of course this makes one wonder how much other testimony was also concealed from the public in this manner. As usual, the WC had more than they wanted to know. Marina being involved with an Afghan ambassador would raise too many questions about how she got access to such high officials and what she was doing with them and for whom.

Marina obliquely commented about prostitution in an interview for Oswald’s Tale. The interviewer commented about her carrying a “great burden” upon leaving Leningrad. She danced around the issue saying she was never paid any money without defining what she was doing to be paid money for. This is all we’ll know for now. Whether or not she was a prostitute is circumstantial at best except the footprints are all over the trail.

Epilogue
As usual, the Warren Commission conceals from us who Lee Oswald was and apparently who his wife was as well. Her testimony down through the years is fraught with numerous contradictions and apparent falsehoods. She is an enigma like her husband. She says she graduated from pharmacy school though she started when she was 14 years old. As a young woman she goes on a two-month traveling vacation of which it is unknown how she paid for it or got the state permission to enter so many cities. The CIA wrote a 29-point report suspecting her of being an intelligence agent. She undertakes major life changes and choices with seemingly little emotional distress, discussion, or forethought. Marrying a misfit foreigner after only knowing him for 6 weeks, having a child with him, and then uprooting her life to move to another country where she does not speak the language (obviously false) or know anyone is achieved with as much aplomb as figuring out what to wear for the day.

Somebody made sure her testimony would be in line with the official story because just before Marina was called to give her testimony, she inked a deal with Tex-Italia Films to produce a movie on her life. She also made other financial dealings with the American and foreign press.   She was paid a total of $132,350.  It must have been off the books money, because Marina's 1964 tax return lists a total income of $40, 935.05. ​ She was unemployed that year, so where is this income derived from? Why is the $132,350​ not recorded as income? ​ ​Lots of unsolved and confusing mysteries here.

If she married a foreigner to come over to play spy all plans were shattered with the assassination of John Kennedy. The KGB wanted no part of that. For the Warren Commission she went along with the flow. Now she says her late husband was innocent of any crime. In the Orleans Parish Grand Jury Transcripts, she comes off as a dunderhead, not remembering anything or knowing much of anything. She comes off strangely detached from all of the events around her. One can read, “I don’t know…” without end.

Marina knows plenty but playing dumb works.

Sources: Newman, John, Oswald and the CIA; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust; Warren Commission Report; Mailer, Norman, Oswald’s Tale

Marina Oswald Porter Orleans Parish Grand Jury Transcripts:
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/garr/grandjury/Porter/html/Porter_0001a.htm

Marina’s IRS from 1964
https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/explore-the-collections/list/collections/10


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JFK Assassination Trivia

Amaze your friends! Confound the skeptics! It’s time friends, for Kennedy Assassination Trivia. Actually, more like one coincidence and mystery piled upon another.

• Texas oilman, D.H. Byrd was the owner of Texas School book depository. Interestingly enough, he was the founder of the Civil Air Patrol. Lee Oswald was a member of the CAP as a teenager. Ironically enough, he would be in the same building owned by Byrd the day of the assassination and later implicated in the crime.
• The Texas School Book Depository building was empty six months prier to the assassination in 1963. It was not associated with the Texas school district or any local or state government agency.
• The person hired to write the final draft of the Warren Commission Report was a German named, Otto Winnacker. He was brought to the US after WWII to under Operation Paperclip. He was officially one of 26 Nazi historians that worked personally for Adolph Hitler, compiling the history of the Third Rich. A former Nazi finished the final report.
• Lee Oswald, through with being a defector to Russia got a loan from the State Department for almost $500. Him, his wife Marina, and their month old Daughter June, traveled back to America on the SS Maasdam, a Holland America luxury liner. There is an SS Maasdam ship is still in service, though a completely rebuilt vessel from the one Oswald and family sailed on.
• Oswald’s Mother, Margurite Oswald's tax returns from 1956-62 are held in the National Archives and are unavailable to the public. Curiously, they are marked, “referred…postponed in full.”
• Interestingly, a John and Minnie Smith have their tax returns from 1956-62 also classified as well. They are also marked, “referred…postponed in full.” Researchers have no idea who the Smith’s were or why their tax returns are classified for a similar period.
• Marilyn Murret was Lee Oswald’s aunt and she testified before the HSCA. Oddly, they asked the CIA for permission to interview her. She is suspected of being a CIA operative. Why else would they need the CIA’s consent to interview a private citizen? Her 23 pages of testimony have never been released. Also marked, “referred…postponed in full.”
• Jim Garrison attempted to look at the Paine’s income tax records but discovered their returns from 1956-1958 were, and still are, classified.
• Lee Harvey Oswald, after defecting to the Soviet Union, received a notice that he had been given an “undesirable discharge” from the Marines. He wrote a scathing letter to the Secretary of the Navy complaining about this as a “gross injustice.” The Secretary of the Navy at that time was John Connelly, the future governor of Texas, and whose path would later cross with Oswald in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.
• Oswald’s mother Marguerite was married three times. The last husband was Edwin Ekdahl. They were divorced in June of 1948. His attorney was Fred Korth. Korth would later go on to have a successful career in Washington DC and replace John Connally as Secretary of Navy. He resigned the position five weeks before the assassination.
• One of the Warren Commission members who later became its biggest critic was Congressman Hale Boggs. In his words,"We have not been told the truth about Oswald." In 1972 his plane went missing in Alaska and he and the pilot were never heard from again. Congressman Boggs was taken to the airport for the first leg of the trip by a young, up and coming man in the democrat party named…Bill Clinton.
• Lucky Lee. While in the marines, Oswald was court martialed twice. Once, for accidentally shooting himself in the arm with a .22 and the second time for an altercation with a non-commissioned officer. His combined punished amounted to 48 days in confinement (brig), and a fine of $105. Neither of these punishments resulted in him losing his security clearance. His medical records show he was treated for a venereal decease but was not kicked out of the service because, as his record states, his infection occurred, “in the line of duty, not due to his own misconduct.” Strange, but what is not strange about this man?
• From the House Select Committee of Assassinations (HSCA) final report on the Kennedy assassination: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy."
• To avoid a media frenzy at the time, Oswald was buried quietly under the name "William Bobo." His final resting place is at Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas.
• Both Lee Oswald and Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth have much in common. Both men were born 100 years apart. Both wrote speeches on the main issue of their eras, but never delivered them. Both accidentally shot themselves with handguns. Both were arrested for petty crimes before the main crimes that would later make them famous. (See more in the Oswald/Booth trivia chapter.)
• Oswald’s favorite soft drink was Dr. Pepper.
• After Jack Ruby killed Oswald on live television he was placed in the same holding cell that Oswald was in just a few moments before his death.
• In Dallas on the day of the assassination was the confluence of three future presidents. Lyndon Johnson, in the motorcade; George Bush, Sr., in Dallas for a campaign stop; Richard Nixon for a business meeting. Both Bush and Nixon were in Dallas the day before and flew out the morning of the assassination.
• George de Mohrenschildt a Russian émigré and oil businessman was asked by a CIA contact to befriend the Oswald’s after they came back from Russia. His wife Jeanne was a member of a Dallas business organization. A fellow member was Abraham Zepruder the man who would film the last moment’s of John Kennedy’s life. Before that they both worked for Navdis, a Dallas fashion company.
• John Jay McCloy was a member of the Warren Commission. He was the High Commissioner of Germany after the war and decided who would be prosecuted for war crimes and who would be given a pass. One such pass was given to Walter Dornberger who worked with Wernher von Braun on the V-2 rocket program. He later went to work for Bell Labs. One of his fellow employees was Michael Paine. Paine’s wife Ruth helped Lee Oswald get his job at the schoolbook depository building.
• John Jay McCloy was the moving force behind the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. One of his cohorts in that disgraceful period was the AG of California, the esteemed Earl Warren. Later they would team up for fun and games on the Commission supposedly investigating JFK's assassination.
  
• In 1948 Marguerite Oswald bought a house. In 1950 she wrote a letter to her son John Pic telling him she was behind two months in rent. The Warren Commission never resolved the discrepancy of why she was paying rent when she owned a house or how should could have done that on her small salary.
• Lee Oswald allegedly made a paper bag from packaging paper and tape from his place of work. This bag was supposed to be used to sneak the rifle into the School Book Depository building the day of the assassination. A similar paper bag was found in the Dallas Post Office “dead letter” department after the assassination. It had the right name but the wrong address and insufficient postage. Two bags for one gun? Oswald is supposed to be making his own bags so what is this one doing in the mail?
  

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Lee Oswald Was One Weird Dude, Part 2

All of Lee Harvey Oswald’s medical records state he had a 3” scar on the left side of the neck from a childhood mastoid operation. This scar was never documented in the autopsy by the pathologist nor seen by the mortician. Nor is it visible in this photograph of Oswald after his arrest.

In Part 1, I covered the possibility that Lee Oswald strange life was result of being a doppelganger. No person that lived probably had a more conflicting and contradictory past than this man. Records of school and employment often do not concur; witnesses report knowing a Lee Oswald at several different places at the same time; descriptions of Oswald vary from a tall bull-necked young man to a short skinny waif. What is also interesting is that his mother Marguerite also had varying descriptions in appearance, contradictory work records and addresses, which conflict at a regular basis throughout the history of this chronicle.

Also of interest is how the FBI and the Warren Commission dealt with these paradoxes. Mostly, they were all ignored. In same situations it is apparent that a phony record was created to iron out the problems. As stated by Warren Commission attorney Albert Jenner on the work of another attorney working for the Commission, “…our depositions and examination of records disclose that there are details in Mr. Ely's memoranda which will require material alteration and, in some cases, omission". This was in reference to staff attorney John Hart Ely research into Marguerite and Lee’s lives. So they knew there were problems, serious problems, which had to be dealt with. It can be shown that those in charge did alter records and did commit the sin of omission—and hence crimes of fact. What is most amazing is they did this in such a casual way, as if they were discussing rearranging the furniture in the room. Most likely, this is how things are done behind our backs. And why things never change.

The Marine Phase
For a guy who is supposedly a communist, totally opposed to the United States government and way of life, to enter the Marines is quite an oxymoron. No reason is really known why he joined in the first place. His brother Robert was a marine so perhaps that was his inspiration. The common knowledge as propagated by the Warren Report was that Lee Oswald was a commie malcontent, spouting Marxist dogma and studying Russian. He would get training to be a radar operator and eventually be stationed at Atsugi airbase in 1957-58 where the U2 spy planes operated. Though a military base the operation was run by the CIA.

However, this image of Oswald the commie comes from fellow Marines that barely knew him. One who did, Richard Cyr told the FBI that Oswald was just of the guys; never talking of politics or studying foreign languages. Cyr was present when Oswald accidentally shot himself with a .22 (resulting in his first of two court marital trials). He gave the FBI the names of eight other Marines that associated with Oswald of whom none were interviewed by the FBI. This follows a typical pattern of dealing with troublesome witnesses. Sidney Robinson did the same thing as Richard Cyr, giving the FBI the names of 7 marines who bunked with Oswald. Like Cyr’s information they too were ignored. Even the men around Oswald when he accidentally shot himself were never interviewed either.

Medical Records Clash
Lee Oswald’s medical records are another odd episode in his life. As mentioned in Part 1, Oswald is listed as being treated for contracting gonorrhea. As the notation states, “In the line of duty and, not of his own fault.” A rare entry to say the least. This was an offence that gets a soldier booted out of the service. Here, for some unknown reason he is given a pass. It has been speculated that Oswald was on a mission for the ONI when he contracted the disease and that is the reason for getting off the hook. But not of his “own fault”?

Even stranger is that he is given a course of penicillin for tonsillitis. Yet his childhood medical records state he had his tonsils removed at the age of six. Evidence of an imposter? Or perhaps a simple filing error?

Of note in his medical records is the three-inch mastoid scar from the operation he had at the age of five. The mastoids are a series of bones in the skull that an ear infection can spread to. An incision behind the ear down the neck is required. Amazingly, at Oswald’s autopsy, pathologist Dr. Earl Rose did not document the mastoid scar on the neck nor the gunshot wound on the upper left arm. Likewise, mortician Paul Groody while preparing Oswald’s body did not find those scars either. He was in fact called twice by the Secret Service in regards to this issue. Certainly an indication they were unsure of whom they had. As Groody said on the Coast-to-Coast AM radio program to host George Noory, at the last moment, the FBI showed up for one final set of fingerprints. Another indication that the FBI, along with the Secret Service, was unsure of which body they had as they already had multiple sets of prints of Oswald from the Marine files, his arrest in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, and his arrest for the murder of policeman Tippet and President Kennedy. Whatever the results were from 4 sets of fingerprints is unknown. But somebody was nervous about something to take prints off a dead man.

However, the medical record inconsistencies don’t get an easier to parse. On September 16, 1958 Oswald’s unit leaves Atsugi for work in Ping Tung, Taiwan aboard the USS Skagit. A Marine Corps unit record is called a diary. The event is recorded in the unit diary and Oswald is on that ship—he is mentioned by name. Meanwhile his medical records state during this period he was receiving medical treatment at the base hospital in Atsugi from the time the Skagit leaves throughout much of September of 1958. He was ailing from urethritis to hemorrhoids. It’s hard to comprehend that there are two Oswald’s in the same unit at the same time and place.

The chief counsel for the HSCS Robert Blakey had a dilemma to resolve with this odd issue as well. He contacted Secretary of Defense Harold Brown who wrote back that Oswald didn’t leave with his unit on 9/16 but instead stayed in Atsugi as part of a MAG II rear echelon unit. A pity that his unit diary never mentions a word of this. Maybe that is true and was left out of the unit diary for reasons of security. He could also have been flown back to the hospital for treatment of the reoccurring urethritis; it would have created a lot of flying back and forth. His records state that he was treated five times in September and twice in October.

Robert Blakey easily resolved the issue. He lied. As he wrote in the final report:

“Accordingly, based upon a direct examination of Oswald’s unit diaries, as well as his own-military records, it does not appear that he spent any time in Taiwan.”

One last thing—in his personal effects discovered by the Dallas Police were numerous pictures of the military installations in Taiwan. Lee H. Oswald was there.

One Lee in Japan, One Lee in New Orleans
Even more controversial (as if this can get even more so) is the account of Palmer McBride who from 1957-58 was employed as a delivery boy for the Pfisterere Dental Lab. McBride recalls working with a Lee Harvey Oswald during this time and getting to know him quite well, paling around with him. This is during the same time that Oswald is stationed in Japan in the Marines. The Warren Report fixed this situation by moving the date up a year to 1956 and never calling McBride to testify. In giving his account to the FBI, McBride says the Oswald he knew was very much a Marxist complete with the literature and speaking the dogma. The same type of Oswald that is reported to be in the Marines acting this same way at the time, only not reported by his closest friends and bunk mates there.

Nevertheless, McBride is not the only person to have seen and known this version of Oswald. McBride was a member of the NOAAA, the New Orleans Amateur Astronomy Association. It was common practice to have meetings in a member’s home and on one occasion this happened at the residence of Walter Gehrke in early, 1958. It was a memorable meeting for those there, as the night Lee Oswald showed up with McBride at one point, he launched into his communist diatribe and touted the success of the Soviet space efforts annoying many there and especially Walter Gehrke’s father who was ready to toss Oswald out of his house. He was never invited back.

Walter Gehrke did state at the time FBI officials that he thought this meeting took place in 1956, but was unsure of the date. He offered them the minutes of the meeting but the FBI never followed up on the records. Nevertheless, Palmer McBride stands by the date of 1957-58 for the events of working with Oswald and being with him at the NOAAA meeting.

Final Word
As we can see, Lee Oswald’s records are still in divergence with his movements and the recollections of people that interacted with him. As far as his Marine Corps records go, the idea there are two men of the same name, in the same unit at the same time, is too outlandish to be believable. There is too much potential for a screw-up and too much work to keep them both separate. Of course one Lee in the Marines and another Lee in New Orleans is far-out too but never the less, is backed up by witnesses testimony.

I would think an intelligence operation would not want their double to be so high profile. I would keep my guy in the shadows and make sure he used an alias for any involvement with the public. This guy is all over the place, leaving witnesses in his wake, and most importantly, a paper trail. Of course in the end, this issue is never probed by any official investigation so it all becomes a big wash. The process is politicized and the lawyers are always there to direct everything to its predetermined conclusion anyhow. Notice how they always begin with a conclusion before they start? The Warren Commission to the 9-11 Commission operated under the same model. As an old lawyer friend once told me, always know the answer before you ask the question. Here, they drew up six major areas of inquiry and Lee Oswald was four of the six.

Lee Oswald as doppelganger may be the most volatile element of the Kennedy assassination and why the government has fought so long and hard in revealing even the most minor of facts to this day.

COMING IN PART 3: Oswald Strangeness From Russia and back again. Strange days lead up to the lead up to the big event.

Sources: Newman, John, Oswald and the CIA; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust; Warren Commission Report

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