Black Op Radio #638 Features Brad Kizzia & Debra Conway

Interviews with Brad Kizzia & Debra Conway by Len Osanic are now up at Black Op Radio.

Listen online or download the .mp3.

Also...

• Four great interviews regarding Dealey Plaza
• Lawyer for Robert Groden - Brad Kizzia
• Debra Conway - JFK Lancer
• John Judge - Copa
• Dallas Reporter - Jim Schutze
• A discussion of Dallas City plans for Nov 22
• Interviews and show notes in the Archives now

 Also check out 50 Reasons for 50 Years weekly videos.

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Robert Caro Drops The Ball

“In attaining this influence, he displayed a genius for discerning a path to power, an utter ruthlessness in destroying obstacles in that path, and a seemingly bottomless capacity for deceit, deception and betrayal in moving along it.”

Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power, Introduction

With The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro delivers his forth volume in his award winning biography of Lyndon Johnson.  Caro is the biographer of Johnson and has made it his life's work.  The books in the series of noted for their frank and brutally honest portrayal of LBJ who was a complex character–part brilliant politician and manipulator of events, and part madman with outbursts of rage, cruelty, immorality, uncouth manners, dark depressions and narcism.  Caro from the beginning labels Johnson a pathological liar and then precedes to prove it through hundreds of examples of the pathology.  JFK called him a "chronic liar."  RFK said Johnson would lie even when he didn't have to.  He's a sociopath with little regard or respect for other people, only using empathy when it suited his political aims.  LBJ was his own god.  

If I find any fault in these books, it's not in the writing of them or the details presented but in reading about what a despicable person Johnson was and what depths he went to achieve his goal in life and that was the Presidency of the United States.  With a deep sense of inferiority he wore from hard scrabble upbringing in the Texas hill country, he dreamed of being somebody important and being President was it.  Reading about Johnson in a book it's hard to live with him and harder still to imagine how anybody else could in actual life.  If you haven't read these books before then read one and wait a year or more before you read the next.  Distance is needed, least this vile man’s presence comes to find a home in you.

The main problem with The Passage of Power is that Caro appears to have altered the formula for what made his books so great.  His other books are the epitome of truthful biography and excellent historical research, all superbly edited and they represent fine works of literature.  Caro is the man that is going tell us everything and blow it all wide open.  And he does through the first three books.  However, this latest tome is an empty vessel.  I would term it Robert Caro Lite. In the other books there is information on LBJ’s life and deeds that you will not find in any other book.  New discoveries about Johnson’s character and deeds await the reader.  This tome reads like a summary of what it could have been, as if a large amount of detail was sacrificed; there are odd lapses of scholarship; at least one chapter, such asThe Back Stairs, regarding Johnson’s becoming the vice presidential candidate is a confusing mess spurning Johnson’s knack for blackmail; many major issues are not properly dealt with and numerous personalities are paid no heed.

That Thorny Issue

In The Passage of Power, Robert Caro has to deal with a thorny issue for any mainstream historian and that's the Kennedy assassination.  There is an apparent ease of conspiracy thought in the case, the step child of an incomplete and politicized  investigation.  For a Pulitzer Prize winning author such as Caro, conspiracy in the JFK murder is the creepy uncle that one seeks to avoid sitting by at the holiday dinner table.  To be fair, he documented a host of other conspiracies in Johnson's rise to power and fame.  It's just this one conspiracy, that of the Kennedy murder, that is avoided.  Caro just reports what people at the time would have known, that the President was killed and they nabbed a suspect in the murder.  That’s all we’ll be told about the assassination in this book.  The Warren Commission is assembled in this timeline but no report issued; more on that saga in the final installment.  However, I don’t except Caro to do anything but tow the party line.

Robert Caro, the man that was out to leave no stone unturned, has apparently lost his nerve and left many stones where he found them.  Three stones he doesn't touch at all are:  Billy Sol Estes, Malcolm Wallace and Madeline Duncan Brown.  The obvious question here is why all three are avoided and the answer it a simple one–because they all involve conspiracy of one form or the other.  They all share another thing–they are all problematic with troubling stories regarding their involvement.  

But what is quite remarkable is that Caro can't say a word about the growing Billy Sol Estes scandal of 1962 which reached the national media and was a huge story at the time and not a word is said about it.  To be fair, this is a long and convoluted story, too detailed to go into here (see links below), but the implications were enormous and Johnson was in deep trouble.  (Johnson claimed no knowledge of Estes, which is a lie, but during grand jury testimony in 1984, Estes would pin various murder conspiracies, including Kennedy’s death, on Lyndon Johnson.)  On the other side of scandals, the Bobby Baker episode is fully documented as if to throw a bone to Johnson’s bad Karma coming due.  But that wasn't the only fire that needed to be put out so Johnson could save his hide and win his prize.  In many ways, not documenting the Estes affair shows Caro has taken a timid approach to this matter–when he is not ignoring other important issues.   

(And that weak-kneed pattern is quite evident with ignoring Johnson's long term lover Madeline Brown.  Caro has no qualms in mentioning the other two paramours, Alice Glass and Helen Douglas in his earlier works, but can't muster up a single word about Madeline Brown.  Of course Brown alleges the famous meeting of conspirators at Clint Murchison's home in Dallas the night before the assassination and claims her son was sired by LBJ.  Her story is well known with numerous interviews, a TV appearance in the History Channel’s The Men Who Killed Kennedy and her book, Texas in the Morning. It’s juicy conspiracy stuff alright and too scary go there!)

Johnson's Side of the Story

A contradictory incident is Robert Caro's reporting of Johnson's reaction to the first shot being fired.  It's all told from Johnson's perspective, a man we are told in the first book is a pathological liar.  LBJ's testimony was that Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood as soon as he heard the first shot, jumped into the backseat and pushed Johnson to the floor and sat on him for protection.  Youngblood told this same story in sworn testimony to the Warren Commission.  

There are two problems with this.  One, is the famous Altgens photograph, which shows the Presidential limo after the first shot with Kennedy clearly clutching at his throat and also shows the Vice President's car and all that can be seen is Lady Bird and Senator Ralph Yarborough in the back seat looking towards the crowd on the sidewalk.  LBJ is nowhere to be seen.  Youngblood said he was up looking around while holding Johnson down, seeking possible shooters.  That business can't be seen in the photograph either.  Also of note is Lady Bird and Sen. Yarborough’s posture in the car, both looking at the crowd but never down to where Johnson and Youngblood are supposed to be.  Shouldn’t Lady Bird’s focus be on her husband?  It’s as if neither of them are aware what is going on with the backseat tussle or noticing the first shot which by this time, has already been fired.

Even more interesting is that Ralph Yarborough denied this event ever happened, that Youngblood never jumped into the backseat and used his body as a shield for Johnson.  He never mentioned it in his sworn affidavit to the Warren Commission.  He maintained his version of what happened till late in life including a 1980 interview he gave to researcher David Lifton.  Caro said he interviewed Yarborough five times.  And this issue never came up?  If it did it won’t be reported in this book.

So what Caro does is relate only Johnson's side of this affair while never giving the reader Yarborough's dissenting view.  Why not give both sides and let the reader decide?  It’s a perplexing thing to do after giving hundreds of incidents of Johnson's lying.  Even his nickname was "Lying Lyndon" (and in college Bull as in bull shit).  And notice the quote above from the first book’s introduction in regards to a “bottomless capacity for deceit, deception and betrayal...”  Yet for some peculiar reason Caro believes LBJ, and wants his readers to believe him as well, despite evidence to the contrary.  

Conclusion

There's a lot more I could say here but I'll pass so I don't go to sleep with an angry heart.  In this book, unlike the others in the series, we are treated to a kinder, gentler, Lyndon Johnson; almost a sympathetic figure.  Poor Lyndon...shunted to the outside, ignored by his Senate colleagues, powerless, lonely, downcast, mocked by the Kennedy insiders and snubbed at every opportunity.  Boo-hoo!  Chickens do come home to roost and with LBJ they would be legion and back breaking in a few years hence.  What fine justice to see the Master Manipulator of people and things cross the ring of fire where he tried everything and it just wasn’t enough.  What a blow to that massive ego!  

The Passage of Power is a mixed bag of highlights and lowlights that assures it will never be the best book in the series.  The other books held new discoveries on the life and times of Lyndon Johnson.  To students of the subject this book is much of what they will already know and excludes a lot that they do know.  Some areas do shine such as Johnson's dealings with the Kennedy clan, particularly Bobby, and how smooth the transition of power was after Kennedy's death.  However, that is not enough to rise above the general ho-hum.

In the end, The Passage of Power does not represent an author at the peak of his form but instead on the wain.  I'm hoping the final book returns to prominence, if that is possible.

Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson:

The Path to Power

Means of Assent

The Master of the Senate

The Passage of Power

Addendum

Naval Career.  In describing John Kennedy's naval career, Caro disregards the fact that JFK started out in naval intelligence.  As reported in Curt Gentry's biography on J. Edgar Hoover, Kennedy's career in intelligence was compromised with an affair with a married woman, Ingrid Arvad, who was a friend of Hitler's and a suspected Nazi spy.  Hoover had his agents taping the affair in progress and word eventually got back to daddy Joe Kennedy and Jack was sent to the Pacific (Gentry, The Man and the Secrets, p.467-471). 

Stevenson Aide.  Speaking of flaws, the most unusual one in the book is Caro's accounting of a talk LBJ gave the Adlai Stevenson camp in the 1960 campaign, basically demanding that they have nothing to do with Kennedy.  Caro sources the conversation from an unnamed Stevenson aide (p.93).  Since when do historians resort to using unnamed sources to present historical facts?  I don't recall Caro doing this in the earlier books.  Nor do I recall any author doing this in nonfiction.

Billy Sol Estes.  Going back to the Billy Sol Estes scandal, it was mentioned by Ben Bradlee in his book, Conversations With Kennedy on pages 105-106.  Bradlee, a close friend of the President reports that JFK was very much interested in the case that involved on it’s outer reaches the death of Henry Marshall, a Federal agriculture agent that was shot 6 times and originally ruled a suicide which was later changed to homicide.  It was speculated at the time that Henry was killed as an end result to an extramarital affair.  We know now that this was not the case and other researchers have pinned the crime on LBJ crony Malcolm Wallace.  Once again, Robert Caro makes no mention of the controversy surrounding the deceased agent and the resulting fallout.  (Especially ironic since Conversations With Kennedy is listed in the bibliography.)

Sources and Links

The Estes Scandal

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKestes.htm

Chapter 4, LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination by Philip F. Nelson

Malcolm Wallace Biography

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwallaceM.htm

The Men Who Killed Kennedy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=853LEQLKN6I

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)

assassination

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


assassination

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?
  

assassination

Lee Oswald Was One Weird Dude, Part 1

As you delve into the assassination of JFK and you start going down the various rabbit trails you begin to wonder if you will ever be able to understand it all. It gets so confusing and complicated that anything seems possible. The cover-up is systemic in our government and whatever went on is deeply buried. When Howard Baker asks Richard Nixon what he knows about the Kennedy assassination and Nixon replies, “You don’t want to know…” you have the sense that something out of the ordinary occurred, more than just a loser with a cheap rifle killing the president. Maybe something really far out. Whatever the truth is we have inklings of it in the strange life of one man, Lee Harvey Oswald.

With Lee Oswald no matter how deep you dig there is always another layer. His strange life and circumstances do not begin when he’s in the marines and his health records state he contracted gonorrhea in the line of duty and, “Not of his own fault.” (Or he is treated for tonsillitis though his childhood medical records say they were removed at the age of five.) Surprising as that statement is he could also have been tossed out of the Marine Corps for this infraction but was not. Far stranger things than this had already occurred years earlier when he was going to junior high school.

School Days, New York, 1953-54
It doesn’t really begin till Lee and mother Marguerite move to New York in 1953 for reasons that are not altogether clear. They first moved in her son John Pic, from her first marriage. He was married at this time with one child. Family tensions ensued and eventually they moved to their own apartment. Young Lee was enrolled in PS #44 in the 7th grade. He quickly became truant and eventually this came to the attention of the authorities. Lee was processed through juvenile court and sent to Youth House for troubled boys. He served a short time there before returning home to his mother and thereafter, they returned to New Orleans sometime in the late summer of 1954.

Lots of strangeness abounds here with this New York period. In his school records, he is listed at being 5’-4” and a half feet tall. But three psychiatrists and one probation officer describe Lee as being a short, skinny, underdeveloped child for his age. One psychiatrist estimated Lee’s height to be around 4’-6” to 4’-8”. This child gave conflicting testimony in regards to himself and his family. All agreed he was not a well-adjusted youth with noticeable emotional problems. They also agree that he was telling them inaccurate information about his life and troubles.

But it doesn’t end here. Other school records have appeared showing a Lee Harvey Oswald enrolled at PS #117. This Lee has a very good attendance record. This conflict is unresolved. Why are there two records for the same boy with different outcomes? Perhaps the beginning of his life as a body double?

Also, Marguerite Oswald when interviewed by the probation officer gave conflicting accounts of her life as well. She got at least five things wrong, from the number years she had been married (a total of 13 years from three marriages but she said 9) to getting Lee’s birth date wrong. At the age of 44 it seemed as if she did not know her own life story. Also as this time she was working menial jobs but owned a house in Ft. Worth, Texas, which apparently was empty. She could have leased it out to pay for the apartment rent in New York but did not. She eventually sold it to a nearby neighbor.

New Orleans, 1954-55
Arriving back in New Orleans Lee is enrolled in Beauregard Junior High. And here, things get more peculiar. All documentation available has Lee Oswald enrolled at Beauregard in the fall of 1954. However, in his Warren Commission testimony Lee’s brother Robert when asked of this time says that Lee is enrolled at Stripling junior high school in Ft. Worth, Texas. This is never followed up on. In the transcript you can see the lawyer quickly changing the subject. However, years later researcher John Armstrong digs into this and finds an assistant principle, Frank Kudlaty, who when asks does remember Lee Oswald attending Stripling in the fall of 1954. How was he so sure? Because his boss told him to show up at the school Saturday morning—the day after the assassination—to hand over all school records on Lee Harvey Oswald to the FBI! Which he proceeds to do. Though years earlier, Kudlaty does recall something odd about the records. One, the file included no grade transcripts from the previous school, and two, no forwarding school for the Stripling transcripts to go. Apparently this Lee Oswald only spent six weeks there. It appears he had to blow in and blow out because he probably couldn’t get the grade transcripts from New York. The Lee Oswald in New Orleans attending Beauregard was already using them and was listed in attendance at the same time the other Lee was doing his six-week stint in Stripling Junior High school. Researcher Armstrong also found one gym teacher that remembered Lee and several students from Stripling as well. (One note: This Lee Oswald and mother lives across the street from the school. At the time of the assassination his mother would be living in this very same apartment across the street from Stripling.)

And, the FBI apparently knew this very early on as they swooped down on this Ft. Worth school within 20 hours of the President being shot. Something is obviously not right here and “powers that be” had to silence it quick. Of course the Stripling school records have passed into oblivion.

But wait…it gets even stranger! By the spring of 1955 Lee Oswald is still attending Beauregard. His attendance record is perfect with no absences. The Warren Commission insists that Lee had a part time job at Dolly Shoe, where his mother worked as a cashier. She talked her boss into hiring Lee as a stock boy. However, things don’t add up. The tax and employee payment records show that Lee Oswald was employed full time. He cannot do that going to school full time with no absences! School got out at 4:30 PM and the shoe store closed at 5:30 PM. There was not enough time to be considering part time employed. Also, the former owner, Maury Goodman and two employees remember seeing Lee working there during the weekdays. Goodman had to fill out forms with the Louisiana employment commission to allow a child under 18 years old to work there. It’s a strange gig, but the records and witnesses pile up on this one.

All of Lee’s records both school, work, and for taxes, as well as his mother’s state they lived at 126 Exchange Place at this time. However, Julian and Myrtle Evans told the Warren Commission that they were leasing an apartment to Marguerite Oswald at 1452 St. Mary St. from early 1954 till May of 1955. All kinds of evidence survives that the Oswald’s were living and using the 126 Exchange address from utility statements to letters Marguerite wrote. Oddly, Marguerite did list the St. Mary address for a job she had in 1954. But when Lee was injured in an accident at school, his homeroom teacher Myrna Darouse drove him home. The street she took him to was the one at 126 Exchange. Even Ed Voebel, Lee’s best friend at this time only visited him at the residence at Exchange Street. Interestingly, he never knew that Lee had a job at the time. Neither did the Evans couple. One way to resolve this conflict is to suggest that somebody was fabricating records in the archives. That works till you get to the witness testimony of seeing these characters at locations they are not supposed to be at. And this happens a lot.

Lee Oswald only lasted about 2 months at Dolly Shoe. He was fired for not doing his job. Not long afterwards his mother was fired as well for refusing to get herself bonded. She gave no clear reason for the refusal. Her employer wanted her bonded because of the money she was handling during the course of the day. Marguerite Oswald spent a great deal of her life working off the books, cash only jobs, such as home nursing. There is probably a lot of income she never reported on her tax returns. It appears she didn’t want to be bonded as it would reveal things about herself she didn’t want known. Most importantly, getting bonded creates a record. Would a bond application bring conflict with another Marguerite? It is also interesting that her tax returns from this time (1956-62) are still classified top secret.

More Conflicts
Things get even hazier. Robert Oswald states in his book, Lee, that he visited the family in July of 1955 and Lee was working at Gerald Tujague, Inc., an export company. Robert also stated this at his WC testimony. He is supposed to be a full time employee here. The snag here, he is supposed to be a full time student at Warren Easton high school in September and October of that year. The Warren Commission absolves this problem by using hand-written employment records, written by the owner himself, showing Oswald being hired on November 10. However, this contradicts numerous witness testimony by people that new Oswald while he was there working full time in July of 1955 through the summer of 1956. That includes his brother and his aunt Lillian Murrant, Apparently, this Lee Oswald never went to school. Also, he is described as being a big kid, around 5’10” tall. A far cry from the little, scrawny, under five foot tall boy of just three month’s earlier at the Dolly Shoe store. Did Lee Oswald grow almost a foot in height in three months?

More inconsistencies abound. Even if the WC is correct in their timing of Oswald’s activities at this point, this export company has to apply for a permit to have an under-age employee. This paperwork has never been found. Also, under federal law all employees of export firms must validated by U.S. Customs. This includes an interview, the filling out of forms, and a photograph among other things. None of this documentation on Oswald is available. If this was not done this company is in trouble with state and federal law. But nothing comes of it.

Apparently, a lot of clean up went on with this phase of Oswald’s life. One employee recalls Gerald Tujague asking him to find all of Oswald’s payroll checks. He says there were dozens of them, implying more than a few months worth. These were handed over to the FBI when they arrived shortly after the assassination, never to be seen again like the school records from Stripling Junior High. Oddly, the FBI appeared at J. R. Michels, another export firm wanting records they didn’t even know they had. Researching, Nick Mazza found one check made out to Oswald and endorsed by him in 1/20/56 for the amount of $34.20. (The FBI produced a W-2 and W-4 forms for the WC that Mazza said he never found or gave them.) Of course he was, by all witness accounts working at Tujague at this time. Unlike the other places the FBI went to, the manager there made a copy of the check. The original went to the FBI agent never to be seen again. So here we have more evidence of contradictory events going on with Oswald and the FBI having prior knowledge of his actions.

The Doppelganger
Never been a fan of the Oswald-as-doppelganger theory but when you look at all of this contradictory documentation and witness testimony it seems as if that just might be the case. Of course you have the main problem of, what happens to the double after the assassination? He vanishes from the face of the earth. He becomes as big a phantom as the grassy knoll shooter. Also, if Oswald is being impersonated, starting out as a youth, then his mother has to be impersonated as well. What happens to her? So, two Lee’s and two Marguerite’s are at play here. That is hard to fathom.

Let it be noted that there is a declassified memo to J. Edgar Hoover dated June of 1960 informing him that somebody was impersonating a Lee Oswald. If the FBI knows who Oswald is that far back, that puts a whole new light on the situation. One wonders why Hoover was hell-bent to establish Oswald as the lone gunman within 24 hours of the assassination and how heavy handed he was towards the Warren commission that it reach a similar conclusion—which it did. We can see an inkling of why this came about with that memo. Not to mention all the pry knowledge they apparently had to descend upon Stripling or the various businesses Oswald worked for so rapidly after the assassination.

Conversely, intelligence agencies have used twins in operations--the good twin and the bad twin. Castro did with the De La Gardia brothers. The good twin is positioned to have witnesses while the bad twin does the dirty work. If he gets caught or things go awry, the good twin has an alibi. It has also been known that spy agencies cultivate some agents from childhood. Could Lee Oswald have been such a project?

As Richard Nixon once said, “You don’t want to know.”

COMING IN PART 2: Oswald in the Marines and all over the place.

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

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How CBS Screwed Orville Nix

In 1967 CBS News ran a series of programs on the Kennedy assassination. Par to the script, they came to the conclusion as practically all TV investigations since have gone—that Oswald was guilty of the crime and there was no conspiracy in the death of John F. Kennedy just as the Warren Commission said.

One of the people interviewed was Orville Nix, a man who filmed the assassination from across the street from Abraham Zapruder’s position. Nix worked for the General Service Administration as an air conditioning repairman in the Dallas Secret Service building. He sold his footage to UPI for $5000 in 1963.

When interviewed by CBS about what he witnessed, Nix stated he heard shots coming from the direction of the grassy knoll. They would then say to him “Cut!” each time he answered. Finally, they asked him what the Warren Commission said about the shots. Nix stated, the schoolbook depository building. When they edited the tape for broadcast Nix is saying he heard the shots coming from the schoolbook depository building. His original statement had been cut out! Nix always maintained he heard shots coming from the grassy knoll.

What CBS did here is completely unethical and outrageous. When there were only three networks this type of deception was a piece of cake. CBS producer Bernard Birnbaum, who worked on the documentary, denies any of this happened to Nix. As he said, "We never tried to put any words in anybody's mouth, absolutely not." I believe Birnbaum is a liar. After all, somebody edited the tape, right? If we could see the unedited version the lie would be exposed, thus modifying Nix’s original testimony as to what happened. Nix always maintained he heard shots coming from the knoll. His honesty in this is assured.

By CBS doing this they were going to great lengths to support the Government’s case. By why? What would be their interest in helping the government out? Was it because then president William Paley was a former OSS agent and entwined with the National Security State? If the government’s case is so firm then why resort to this trickery? What is in this for CBS?

There would be a replay of this in the early 1980’s when Jim Garrison was interviewed for Speak Up America TV program. Executive Producer George Schlatter made sure the tape was edited to have Garrison saying there were “32 shooters” in Dealey Plaza. Originally he had been asked how many people were involved in the conspiracy. Garrison answered thirty-two. Supervising producer John Barbour (see his excellent documentary interviewing Jim Garrison HERE.) asked Schlatter why he did this and he replied, “Garrison is a nut.”

Where did George Schlatter learn his ethics from—Bernard Birnbaum? There were grounds for libel but Garrison declined to pursue it. As one can see these media insiders love to influence public opinion rather than uncovering the truth. They have largely failed though.

However, there is a silver lining in this cloud. After all the government machinations, undying media support of the Warren Commission’s story, corrupt TV producers, and denigrating of witnesses like Orville Nix, the American People still don’t believe what they are being told.

Thank you American People for your common sense!


Sources:
Mark Lane interviewing Orville Nix. Says frames are missing. Says shots came from the fence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8KgkTtl3qk&feature=related

Nix’s film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xboWTRPEWW0&feature=related

John Barbour audio interview:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/


assassination