When I first started researching the Oswald-as-double I considered it to be the farthest out I was willing to go in the annuals of the Kennedy assassination. The are wilder theories out there such as Oswald being an MK-ULTRA mind control assassin. (Hmm...would a lone nut gunman also apply here?) The idea of multiple assassins resembling each other running loose remains a troubling issue and adds a strange aura to the tragic event. It is one area that only a hand full of JKF researchers wish to examine as it is viewed as a far-out topic, one worthy of a Moulder and Sculley investigation in the the X-Files.
However, one surprising fact is the actual genesis of Lee H. Oswald as a doppelganger starts out in the highest level of government and in the upper echelon of Federal criminal investigation. Namely, J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI. It was Hoover, in his 1960 memo to the Office of Security, Department of State, that basically sent a warning that there existed a “possibility” that the ex-marine defector to the Soviet Union was being impersonated and someone was using his birth certificate to do so. He doesn’t state his evidence for this nor add any additional details in the memo. In those days, Hoover’s word was etched in stone. Later, in 1961, a State Dept. official will send a memo to another, warning that the next time Lee Oswald is issued a passport, make sure he gets it personally; that way the right Oswald gets the right passport as it was suspected he was being impersonated. Again, no qualifiers for this. Apparently, it was something that was known and treated with great seriousness, at this level. The word at this point, is making the rounds.
By the June of 1962 Lee Oswald and family are back in the United States. When he returns back to Dallas as his ill-fated trip to Mexico City (known as Oswald’s Magical Mystery Tour) in the September of 1963 the CIA is recording all telephonic traffic in and out of the Russian and Cuban embassies. CIA station chief Winston Scott believed that Oswald being impersonated after examining the tapes and kept a back-up copy in his private safe. Hoover had his agents, seven of them, review the tapes and they determined the man speaking on the telephone calls is not Oswald. This man is speaking broken Russian to the Russians, and speaking excellent Spanish to the Cubans. A total reversal of Oswald’s known language skills. Shortly after the assassination, Hoover related this information to Lyndon Johnson. The new President in turn, used this for the final arm twisting of Earl Warren to get him to serve on the Commission.
So while one might consider the doppelganger or impersonator to be a nutty idea, it’s apparently not considered that at all by various authorities within the government. Far from being fringe subject matter, it is accepted as fact in these inner circles. Oswald is being impersonated but by whom is not known, at least by Hoover. Or maybe Hoover did know, just kept it to himself. Sometimes methods and practices have to be concealed so those being surveilled do not become aware of the operations directed against them. Never the less, it was important enough for Hoover to leave a paper trail on this issue warning other departments as did others in the bureaucracy. The President himself knew. Earl Warren knew and made sure it was not a topic that would be investigated later.
Lee Oswald now becomes a far more important figure that first told. After all, who wants to impersonate a nobody?
The Lone Senator And The Lone Gunman
The Senator from Georgia, Richard Russell was the odd man out on the Warren Commission. He has the distinction of being the member with the fewest amount of appearances at Commission meetings. Many people have taken him to task for this but the fact of matter was, he discovered early on that this was not going to be an outfit that was going to get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination. He knew it was going to be “investigation theater” from there on after reading the initial, and wholly inadequate, FBI report and seeing how Earl Warren was going to conduct the whole affair. He was so disgusted with the proceedings he wrote a letter of resignation, dated February 24, 1964, but never forwarded it to President Johnson.
Senator Russell’s most important act being on the Commission was not what he did there, which was not much, but in leading his own personal inquiry into what happened. He enlisted the expertise of Colonel Philip Corso, an expert in military intelligence to research the issue. (Those of you familiar with a certain late night radio talk program that deals in the paranormal and especially UFOs will be familiar with the name of Philip Corso!) He uncovered two things; one, that there were two different birth certificates for Lee Harvey Oswald and they had both been used by two different people. Secondly, there were two different passports issued to a Lee Harvey Oswald and both had been used by two different people.
Colonel Corso’s final conclusion was there was a conspiracy, the plot leading to directly to Lyndon Johnson, allied with rogue elements of the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans. Remember, this is 1964; it’s startling how this idea, with this limited amount of inquiry except by one man, had been fully realized at this early date. Unfortunately, there is only circumstantial evidence for many of these conclusions but many other researchers have since come to this idea of rouge government agents in a plot to kill Kennedy, especially the CIA with Kennedy vowing to scatter them to the winds. The Cubans could be counted on as well, still smarting over Kennedy not committing air support for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Never the less, Senator Russell agreed with Corso’s conclusion knowing he could never convince the other members of the Commission for this scenario. His hunch that things were fishy here with the official story and there was more to it, proved out. Years later, he would become one of the Commission’s biggest critics along with fellow Warren Commission member Hale Bogs.
The Final Phase
As we have seen, the idea of Lee Oswald having a double comes not from conspiracy theorists, or “armchair investigators” as Gerald Ford put it, but from government insiders at the FBI, CIA, Department of State, and so on. And not only Federal but State documents also confirm this. Such as a form from the Texas Employment Commission which documents a series of aptitude tests Lee Oswald completed that starts in April of 1962. As stated earlier, he and his wife and daughter did not return to the United States till June of 1962. In April, he is known to still be in Russia working at the radio factory in Minsk. A lot of documents are missing but every so often a gem like that appears to add new dimensions to the Kennedy assassination and further our knowledge on Oswald and whoever he was.
With the publication of John Armstrong’s Harvey and Lee in 2003, a new layer is added to the matter. Namely, his research showing Lee Oswald being impersonated as young as 13 years old. He contends that this was a long running CIA project most likely operated through the CIA’s Counter Intelligence division under the direction of James Angleton. Adding more fuel to the fire is that if Oswald was being impersonated as a teen, then he has to have a mother that is an impostor as well. To make matters more complicated one of the mothers has two additional sons. It’s seems an impossible fit. If you are running this as a long term intelligence operation, how do you pull this off without the two sons, John Pic and Robert Jr. ever finding out about this?
Nevertheless, researcher Armstrong has documents and witness interviews to show plenty of discrepancies in the life of Lee and his mother Marguerite. High strangeness abounds and it could mean anything. Documents could be faked to make it look like Oswald is being doubled, or not. Ultimately, Armstrong leaves many issues unresolved such as what happens to both doubles, mother and son, in the long run. Also, Armstrong has the notion of both Oswalds being in the same place at the same time; same schools, same naval base, even both in the building the day of the assassination. That is too far out for my inquiry. You can have a pair of twins at school, but both with the same name? I doubt it. That would out to easily. But once again, when one returns to the witnesses and the documents a crazy winding path is laid.
Overall, the Lee Oswald doubles are one of the most problematic areas of investigation. There is a general hint of how things went but nothing can be resolved. Namely, who was Lee Oswald and what was he really up to?
Or for that matter, what has our government become and what are they up to?
Sources
McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; www.history-matters.org; www.ctka.net (Probe Magazine article archive)
