Compilation of JFK Articles

 

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Double Vision

I’ve written often on the theory that Lee Oswald was impersonated. At first, I thought this was a fringe element of JFK assassination research. Really wacky. However, some many phases and events in Oswald’s life are so perplexing and in some circumstances, downright weird, that two Oswalds can be the only explanation to suss out the high strangeness of Oswald’s life.

It’s quite evident that there is a coverup in the JFK assassination from documents that remain sealed to the odd disappearances and deaths of witnesses. As at least one researcher has told me, the doppelgängers present a good reason for a coverup. The government had little problem telling the public that Abraham Lincoln was killed as a direct result of a conspiracy. Why this president?

There is no way to maintain order in a civil society if a government admits that a national leader has been slain and the accused assassin has a double on the loose. On the other hand, what a great way to run such an operation. Have one man develop a legend–making appearances in public places to create a personality type, especially an unlikable, undesirable one. In the meantime, set up his double to take the fall. And the arrested Oswald said such a thing before he was silenced–"I’m just the patsy.”

It all looks like fringe research till you read the June, 1960 memo that FBI Director Hoover sent the Department of State asking for more information regarding Lee Oswald possibly being impersonated. You can rest assured that Hoover sensed something wasn’t right with a former Marine defecting to the Soviet Union and he was developing leads on him early on. Ultimately, he knew the most about Oswald outside of the traditional rings of power and the intelligence agencies. (That memo also shows that Hoover lied immediately following the assassination of JFK when he said for the public record that Lee Oswald was somebody the FBI knew little about. And the FBI agents were showing up everywhere Oswald had worked or went to school in less than 24 hours collecting documents on him. Didn’t take them long did it? And many of those records quickly disappeared.)

There are many instances of Lee Oswald possibly being impersonated but what follows is a few of the many examples of a likely doppelgänger in play.

Arrival in New Orleans, 1963

Lee Oswald arrives in New Orleans supposedly in search of work but as will develop over that summer, he will pursue marxist political operations which will land him in jail resulting in a TV interview and a radio debate which will further build the public legend of a leftwing agitator, one of the forerunners of many more to follow in the decade of the 1960’s.

When Oswald turns up on April 24, he stays with his aunt and uncle, Lillian and Charles Murret. Lillian is his mother’s younger sister. 

Lee starts doing something peculiar. He starts researching Oswalds in the phone directory seeking to get in touch with his father’s brothers. He’s particularly interested in Harvey, the source of his middle name. He eventually makes contact with Hazel Oswald, the widow of William, one of his father’s other brothers. She informs him that all of his uncles are deceased. He then travels to meet her and she gives him a large, framed picture of his father, Robert Sr.

There are several odd things about this story. First, why doesn’t Lee know his uncles are all gone? All he has to do is ask his aunt Lillian. She’s a life-long resident of New Orleans and would probably know if any of the Oswalds were alive since her sister married into the Oswald family. It’s a common thing most people know, regarding families, both blood and by marriage. If anything, he could have called his mother to find out. Even his brothers, Robert and John Pic, might have known.

Apparently, Lee didn’t want anybody in his family to know that he was looking up Oswald family members that by all counts, he should have known were dead.

Maybe because this is the wrongLee, an impostor arriving in New Orleans with a sketchy history of the Oswald family. If he asked anybody in the know, for example his mother or his aunt, he may have been met with, “You don’t know that your uncles are all gone?” Although one would assume that in an operation utilizing doubles, they would both be well briefed in family matters such as this. It’s reminiscent of Marguerite Oswald giving a host of wrong answers when questioned by probation officer John Caro in 1953 regarding Lee being truant from school in New York.

Eventually, he meets up with Hazel Oswald who gives him a large, framed picture of their father, Robert Sr. It should be noted that this picture is not found in Oswald’s possessions after the assassination. Robert Oswald ends up with it. Interesting, because Robert maintains that he never had any contact with Lee after the 1962 Thanksgiving gathering (see below) until the day of the assassination. So how did he get it?

Here’s a bit of trivia. William Oswald had a son, also named William. Researcher John Armstrong discovered that William was working as a salesman at the Reilly Coffee company at the very same time Lee was working there (p. 554). It’s unknown what interaction Lee had with this cousin or if William helped Lee get the job there. He is supposed to have seen an ad for a job, applied, interviewed, hired, and went to work the following day. This would be his only job in New Orleans. At least for this version of Lee Oswald.

Thanksgiving Day, 1962

This was the last time all three brothers were together.  They met at Robert and Vada’s home and all of the   brothers had their wives and children present.  Home movies were made which can be easily found online.  Oddly, their mother Marguerite was not invited.  Robert later said in his Warren Commission testimony that her name never came up during the course of the gathering, although John Pic said she was mentioned by Lee.  Some family huh?

Of all the brother’s there, John Pic, the son from Marguerite’s first marriage, noticed the most changes in Lee.  John found Lee to look different than the 10 year old boy he had last seen (actually, in his WC testimony he got Lee’s age off by 2 years).  Seeing a difference would be understandable given that length of time, but there were other more adult features John did not see.  For example, their cousin Marilyn Murret had told him that Lee had developed a bull neck since joining the Marines.  The bull neck Lee can be seen from his Marine pictures.  John did not notice Lee’s neck being any bigger.  When questioned by Commission attorney Jenner, John testified Lee's eyes looked different, sunken in.  When shown the picture of Lee at the Bronx zoo in 1953, John said that it wasn’t Lee in the picture.  And lastly, he was upset that Lee referred to him as a “half-brother,” which of course he was, but Lee had never alluded to him in such a manner in the past or ever introduced him to anybody as a half-brother.

One thing researcher John Armstrong once told me that he had interviewed Rachael Oswald.  He asked her about what interaction she had over the years with her uncle Robert.  None, she said.  Perhaps Oswald’s daughters are fathered by an impostor?  In his actions and statements Robert seems to know more than he ever let on.  He is not approachable by researchers so we can never know for certain what he really knows. 

The Mexico City Trip

I don’t intend to take a trip down that confusing rabbit trail.  But it’s a path littered with references to Oswald being impersonated, and that’s long before he actually gets to Mexico City and is impersonated on the phone calls to the Russian Embassy and the Cuban Consulate  office there.

One instance is when Oswald arrives back in Dallas after his Magical Mystery Tour to Mexico, which was on October 3, 1963.  Simultaneously, four library books he allegedly checked out on September 19, in New Orleans, are returned to the library that day of October 3rd.  Those books were, Goldfinger and Moonraker, by Ian Fleming; Age and Essence and New World by Aldous Huxley.  It’s likely that he did not take the books with him on the Mexico City trip as Oswald would have to make a side trip to New Orleans after his return from Mexico, to deliver the borrowed books.  The apartment on 4905 Magazine Street, as stated by the manager, was cleared out leaving nothing behind.  Did Oswald know somebody in New Orleans to deliver the books to the Library?  And why on October 3rd, the very day that he arrives in Dallas?  Basically, Oswald couldn’t have done it.  Somebody else did.  And who? (p. 597)

There is the famous Sylvia Odio incident where she claims two Hispanic men and one gringo showed up at her sister’s apartment in Dallas either on September 26 or 27 seeking financial help from her father, imprisoned in Cuba, for running operations against Castro (i.e., assassination of the Cuban leader).  The gringo identified himself as Leon Oswald.  But on the day of the assassination, after Oswald’s arrest, Odio identified Lee Oswald as the “Leon Oswald” at her door.  (Her sister also identified Lee Oswald as well, although she was never interviewed by the FBI.) However, Oswald was on the bus in Mexico at this time.  Her testimony was discounted by the Warren Commission, using two ne'er-do-wells who later recanted their statements that they were ever at the apartment.

Then there is Antonio Veciana of Alpha 66, the anti-Castro group financed by the CIA.  Veciana’s story is famous in JFK lore as it accounts for a witness sighting of Lee Oswald with a major intel operative.  Veciana was in Dallas for the purpose of meeting with his CIA case officer Maurice Bishop (i.e., David Atlee Phillips as ID’d by E. Howard Hunt) in Dallas.  Before he gets there, he see’s Bishop/Phillips chatting with a young man of whom he is not introduced to.  Later, he’ll see this young man on the news charged with the death of a president and a police officer.  This sighting occurred in late summer/early fall, at a time when Oswald was supposed to be nowhere near Dallas.  In fact, not in Dallas anytime in the entire month of September.  But there are many witnesses who can account for Oswald in Dallas/Irving throughout the summer of 1963 such as Cliff Shasteen, the barber that saw Lee Oswald come to shop in Irving numerous times that summer. 

Other Sightings

Oswald, or Oswald #2, or even a #3 was leaving tracks all over the place.  In John Armstrong’s Harvey and Lee, he makes mention of an undercover agent, Roy Frankhauser.  Frankhauser claims to have met Michael and Ruth Paine in 1960 as all three were allegedly infiltrating The Socialist Workers Party.  He claims to have met Lee Oswald in New York city during the week of September 16th, as he and Ruth escorted Lee to an exposition hosted by David Rockefeller (p. 597).  He also claimed that Ruth Paine was Oswald’s “babysitter.”

Also on September 16, somebody in Hubertus, Wisconsin, left a Lee Harvey Oswald signature in a restaurant registry.  Then on the 24th somebody left an Oswald signature at a nightclub 30 miles outside of Milwaukee.  That day, President Kennedy spoke in Ashland, Wisconsin.  Was this to promote a legend of Oswald stalking Kennedy?  If so, this fiction was not used later (p. 595).

Even earlier that summer, on July 26, a Lee Oswald signed the guest ledger at the Atomic Energy Museum at Oak Ridge, Tennessee (p. 551).  This Oswald left dual addresses of Dallas and USSR.  How’s that for a cheap plant?

As you can see, the operators run threads all over the place from New York, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and back to Texas again.  They run a line of alternate scenarios that might be used later, or not, as the situation develops.  Most likely these are not actual physical impersonators at work, but instead, operatives trained in how to replicate Oswald’s signature.  Then send them out marking up guest books, building the legend.  The only real fault with this method is that it leaves a trail; Oswald signatures in diverse places where they should not be, at the wrong dates, making little sense, adding a flare of mystery to the whole shebang.  Meanwhile, Lee Oswald is being monitored and used in ways he probably had no knowledge of.

The poor rube.

Sources

All page numbers relate to John Armstrong’s Harvey and Lee.

New Post at Outward Trends

New article at Outward Trends on the mystery of Barack Obama.  HERE

Podcast #1, Ozzie, Get Your Gun!

New for 2012--podcasting. Posted here is the link to my first one.

The podcast is about Lee Oswald and his obtaining the Mannlicher-Carcano and the anomalies surrounding this event.

To listen, right-click the link and download the MP3 file to your computer. Feel free to share this file anywhere you like online or forward to your friends.

File size: 13.7 megs.

Download, HERE.

The Lonesome Gunman Blues

As any SWAT Team or military sniper would say, good marksmanship requires constant practice. Oswald made many documented trips to the Sports Dome Rifle Range outside of Dallas in early November of 1963. Like all things Oswald it is bound in controversy as he is seen driving up when is supposed to have not known how to drive and should have been at Ruth Paine’s house at that time. Later, he’ll be seen arriving in the company of other men and doing annoying things such as shooting at other people’s targets. Whatever is going on here, he never practiced shooting at moving targets. Either in the Marines or in civilian life prior to the assassination. Any professional marksmen or even a deer hunter, will tell you that shooting at a moving target is the hardest thing to do. It requires fast tracking with little leeway for error.

I don’t claim to be a ballistics expert but I grew up around guns and my dad, grandfather, and uncles were gun collectors and hunters. I’ve personally shot various rifles, both bolt-action and semi-automatic with calibers ranging from 30.06, 7.62, 45.70 and .222. I have shot rifles with scopes on them and experienced a determining factor in firearms targeting–recoil. Or, how much the gun kicks once a round is fired. Recoil throws off the sighting of the target. This is extremely important as the target has to be acquired and in Oswald’s case, very quickly, within a fraction of a second. it’s hard enough with a static target let alone one that is moving. You have to sight by the naked eye first and then line up the scope in the general area. As we shall see, this is just one of many problems he faced in trying to accomplish his alleged mission.

Unbeknownst to us at the time, CIA Director McCone had the Zapruder film analyzed by the Agency’s National Photographic Intelligence Center (NPIC) in early 1964. The report was classified until legendary researcher Harold Weisberg obtained a copy of it through his 1982 FOIA suit. In the report (Labeled, 1641-450), the NPIC determines that at frame Z210 the first shot occurs. The second shot occurs at frame Z242. A time period of 1.6 seconds. Even if Ozzie was feeling lucky that day he would not have been able to shift the bolt on his junky Mannlicher-Carcano that fast. Experts take 2.4 seconds to cycle the weapon and that’s being generous. And as I just mentioned, recoil comes in to play, further adding to the time needed to reacquire the target, a target that has already moved out of position and has to be found through what amounts to be a peep-hole in a hotel room door. (Oddly, the scope is found later not to be properly sighted-in. It might have been thrown off since it had to be disassembled in order to get it into the building that morning.) At any rate, the only solution to this mystery is that there was another shooter. Something the Warren Commission would not ever consider. A second shooter is a conspiracy. And remember, we are told time and time again, there is no evidence for this! You can see why this report was buried for 18 years.

(As Gerald McKnight stated in Breach of Trust, relating this matter, it is unclear if the CIA ever mentioned anything from the NPIC report to the Warren Commission. I think it’s a good bet they never did. It would cause insurmountable problems for the Lone Gunman theory.)

A lot of factors affect a bullet’s flight. Cold produces drag on a bullet and will effect the trajectory. Wind and barometric pressure have their effects as well. Gravity produces a noticeable bullet drop even if the marksmen is lying flat on the ground and even more so if shooting from Oswald’s position 60 feet up. Combine all of these factors with a scope that is not properly sighted, and the task at hand is vexing. As Vietnam sniper Craig Roberts, who had an opportunity to look out the sixth floor window said that Oswald’s best angle was Houston street that lead directly to the shooter’s window. Roberts thinks Oswald could have shot up the car with a handgun, the limousine close and braking as it turned slowly on to Elm Street.

So could Oswald have made the shot? Sure, anything is possible. Never the less, it’s a curious thing–half of the evidence is there for a shooter being at the sixth floor window of the school book depository building and shooting. And the other half of the evidence refutes it. Yes, there was a sniper’s nest with stacked boxes, a discarded rifle, a paper bag, spent shells, and people seeing the gun barrel stuck out the window. No, the paraffin test proved negative for nitrates on Oswald’s cheek. (All who test fired the rifle tested positive I might add.) The bolt, trigger, scope, clip, and spent cartridges–none of these things had Oswald’s prints on them. Nobody sees him going down the flights of stairs to get to the first floor. When interrogated by authorities he is able to identify people that were on the first floor at the time of the shooting and even few moments afterwards. It’s like the table is set for dinner–but nobody is home.

I love how Vince Bugliosi in Reclaiming History relates that if Oswald is in a conspiracy why is he doing nothing related to a plot, such as having clandestine meetings with fellow conspirators and so on. As with all things Bugliosi, his arguments seem devastating till you take time to think about it. It’s a good point till one considers the opposite of the argument–what Oswald would have to do to be an assassin. Other than purchasing some guns (and that is problematic too. See my piece, Who Bought The Guns?) and a few trips to the firing range, what is he doing to be good at this? As any SWAT Team or military sniper would say, good marksmanship requires constant practice. Remember that he scored passing grades to qualify as a marksmen in the Marines. First time, pretty good; second time passable; third and last time, barely qualified. He did not belong to an elite sniper unit because his skills were not good enough. Before the assassination, he apparently never did any research, no development of skills, wind tests, shooting from a high elevation to test bullet drop, besides supplying himself with inferior equipment. He just showed up one day and sticks a gun out of the window and goes BANG, BANG, BANG! And the rest is history. Move along now.

So How Does A Loner Have A Wife And Two Kids?
One of the myths that came out of this was that if you are a lone gunman then you must be a loner. It is as if one has to associate with the other. Jim Garrison remarked, not only was Oswald not the lone gunman, he was never alone. Really, James Earl Ray fits the profile of a lone wolf on the outer fringes of society than Oswald ever could. The Warren Commission supporters have so pigeon-holed him as a loner that they have a hard time accepting that he associated with other people besides his wife and Ruth Paine. Just look at the many photos of the parties he attended in Russia. They all feature a content looking young man surrounded with lots of other people. He’s a regular social butterfly with pictures to prove it. When returning to the United States, he and his wife Marina were befriended by the White Russian community in Dallas. Lots of socializing went on there. He had friends in school and on most of the jobs he had, mingling with them outside of work.

I think another reason the Lone Nut crowd must have Oswald isolated from society is based on who he is known to have associated with. There are plenty of good witness accounts of Oswald in the company of everybody from CIA officer David Atlee Philips to the other lone gunman, Jack Ruby. Entertainers, from strippers to comedians, to customers of Ruby’s Carousel club recall seeing Oswald there in association with Ruby on many occasions. But it goes deeper as Oswald had associations with a lot of nefarious characters including
notorious spooks such as David Ferrie and Clay Shaw. Suspicious to say the least. Remember, Oswald is the loner–he’s not supposed to be this sociable. And hanging with this many government operatives? Oh man, so it ain’t so! This is a long and twisting road filled with mysteries and not for the faint of heart. Trying to make sense of it all can trouble the mind.

Actually, the only thing Lee Oswald is anti-social about his affiliation with other Marxist groups. He never does hook up with any of them. While being a Fair Play For Cuba pamphleteer, he was the only member of the New Orleans branch. And the pamphlets he was handing out either were addressed to the office of the staunch anti-communist Guy Banister (another Oswald contact which the LN crowd denies) or had phony addresses so that no one could contact him at all. The end result is that nobody could join him. It was all Cold War theater.

And the famous backyard photo of him with guns and Marxist newspapers show two divergent groups, one Stalinist and the other Trotskyite. Both are blood enemies of each other. You either belonged to one and not the other. He might as well be holding up a Bible and a Koran. What he was apparently doing was showing how disconnected he was from mainstream Communists in America at the time. In his things after the assassination was found a rough draft of a speech he never gave that was pro-capitalism. I sometimes wonder if the photograph was done for protection. To let everybody know what team he was playing for. That one image, FPCC literature, and the left behind speech contradict the legend of Oswald the commie.

Going It Alone
Could Lee Oswald have done it alone? Or for that matter, could anybody have assassinated John Kennedy alone? One would think the logistics for such an operation are too great for one man to handle if it was his desire to cut down a high profile figure such as a President. As has been pointed out in this piece, the CIA’s own photography analysis group determined the time between the first and second shot was too brief for Oswald to accomplish with a manually operated firearm. It begs for a second shooter. Military snipers operate in a team of one rifleman paired with a spotter. There should be in an operation such as this, besides a highly trained and experienced marksmen, intelligence gathering, operational knowledge of the intended target’s security detail, perhaps an inside man or two, and a backup plan among a myriad of other details. Can a lone individual complete all of these tasks? Not with Lee Oswald working 9 to 5 and visiting his wife and kids on the weekends. Maybe this is why we don’t see much in the way of targeted assassinations, at least in this country, since the 1960’s. Today, the Secret Service employs their own team of snipers on rooftops. An ironic turn of events.

Sources
McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust; Proudy, R. Fletcher, The Secret Team; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; Garrison, James, On the Trail of the Assassins; The Warren Commission Report; Mars, Jim, Crossfire; Bugliosi, Vince, Reclaiming History

Cryptome.org for pictures of the President’s security detail.