The origines of the PO BOX and Hidell ID card

First topic message reminder :

Fritz Notes written after the 23/11/63 interrogation of Lee Oswald;

Marina is an intriguing character for sure. The PO box application with the name Mrs. L H Oswald bears witness to it having been pertinent to Lee's wife - IMO.
Interestingly in or around February '64 Marina would stay for 4-5 nights with Robert Oswald while he was still in possession of the Imperial reflex camera. Speculation - but a secret love affair can do strange things to people. 

Bottom line about the timing of knowing when and where the rifle was purchased from and the San Antonio teletype @ 4.25pm CST gives us reason to believe that there was an SS card with the name Hidell written on it and that this was before the discovery of the Kleins order coupon with Hidell's name on it.

Mick, 

I agree on the SS Card. As per my previous comments in this thread I don't see any other way around the 4:25 San Antonio teletype. Someone had to know about the card prior to that time. Jones testified to the HSCA that his Dallas source, which was apparently Don Stringfellow according to Bart, also told him about the rifle mail order on Friday afternoon, and was quick to remember that detail but "didn't recall" anything about the SS card. It's definitely an interesting topic. 

As for the P.O. Box, I think I did a decent job of showing how the FBI and WC deliberately suppressed any connection of the box to "Mrs. Lee H. Oswald" after discovery of the mail order. One thing that stands out is we have two references to a specific document that has never been seen: the 5/10/63 forwarding order for "Mrs. Oswald" from P.O. Box 2915 to Ruth Paine's house. This forwarding order is mentioned in the 10:29 PM CST Dallas teletype on Friday and Alex Rosen's memo to Alan Belmont on Saturday morning around 8:00 AM CST, which I'll include again in this comment.

Researchers for years have focused on the missing section of the box application and the FBI report on the claims in the book "Who Killed Kennedy":




Along with the testimony of Harry Holmes where he lied about U.S. Postal regulations at the time, this evidence has been used to demonstrate that Oswald could not have retrieved the rifle from P.O. Box 2915, and the parcel would have instead been marked "addressee unknown" and returned to sender. It's a compelling case, made convincingly by Gil Jesus in his Ed Forum post "Destroying the WC lies --- The Rifle, Part III":

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27234-destroying-the-wc-lies-the-rifle-part-iii/

However, I think this is the wrong line of inquiry (Gil, if you read this, I'm a fan, but I disagree on the P.O. Box). The "Who Killed Kennedy" FBI report is provably false beyond a reasonable doubt in my opinion, and there was someone else listed on the application for P.O. Box 2915: "Mrs. Lee H. Oswald". I also think there's a case to be made that the application in the Warren Commission volumes is a forgery, and the primary renter of the box was also the unnamed "Mrs. Lee H. Oswald". Logically, any reasonable person would think that "Mrs. Lee H. Oswald" refers to Marina, but for some inexplicable reason the FBI 'believed' "Mrs. Lee H. Oswald" was Lee's mother. Why the FBI would suggest such a thing I think is an important question. Here is every reference I know of to Box 2915 and Mrs. Oswald/Oswald's mom in rough chronological order. A lot of these are in my previous comment but some are not. This information went all the way to the very top of the government chain of command.

First is the 10:29 PM CST Dallas teletype on Friday night with reference to the two forwarding orders and forward cancellation, which I analyzed in my previous comment:




Next is Alex Rosen's memo to Alan Belmont which I timed at just after 8:00 AM CST in the microfilm thread. 





Next is Belmont reporting what Gordon Shanklin told him at 8:15 AM CST to Clyde Tolson




Next is a FBI summary report of the investigation sent from Hoover to Secret Service Chief James Rowley. I don't know when this report was sent, but either way the information was deemed credible enough to put Hoover's name on it and send it to Rowley, and it shows the chain of command Rosen > Belmont (verified by Shanklin) > Tolson > Hoover:



The 3/28/63 shipment date I think is just an error, like a stenographer hearing "twenty-eighth" instead of "twentieth" or something. 


That's it for direct references that I know of, but we also get some provocative info in Hoover's phone call to President Johnson on Saturday morning:





Hoover's lead-in to talking about the rifle shipment by saying the evidence against Oswald is not very, very strong is telling. How does Hoover know that "A. Heidel", in the context of the P.O. Box and to whom the rifle was shipped is a woman? At first glance one might think he was referring to the Ana Hidell snafu, but just a few sentences later he says Hidell was an alias used by Oswald, along with an eyebrow raising reference to Oswald's mother:





Note that Hoover says nothing explicit about the P.O. Box, who it belongs to, etc. Also, the mother reference can be read in a couple different ways, both of which are bizarre.

1. A. Heidel is an alias this man has used on other occasions, and according to the information we have received from the house in which he was living, his mother. He kept a rifle like this wrapped up in a blanket which he kept in the house. 

2. A. Heidel is an alias this man has used on other occasions, and according to the information we have received from the house in which he was living, (from) his mother, he kept a rifle like this wrapped up in a blanket which he kept in the house. 

The problem here is the FBI obviously received the information about the blanket from Marina. From 5:39 AM CST Saturday morning Dallas summary teletype:







So since it appears that Mrs. Lee H. Oswald is quite obviously Marina Oswald, where the hell did this Oswald's mother business come from, and why was it reported all the way to the President? It's not like the FBI didn't know who Marina and Marguerite were, and it strains credulity to think mixing them up was just an honest mistake. If anyone has any ideas on this I'd love to hear them. 

According to the FBI the P.O. Box was literally in the name of "Mrs. Lee H. Oswald", with no name given, but there had to have been a signature. Again, at the very least "Mrs. Oswald" was on the box application as entitled to receive mail, and the FBI, Secret Service, and Postal Inspectors all concealed that fact very shortly after discovery of the Hidell mail order. At 10:50 AM CST, Belmont is ordering Shanklin to obtain the box application and other correspondence to "further tie it to Oswald", and Mrs. Oswald's P.O. Box 2915 subsequently disappears from the documentary record, which I discussed in my previous comment:





Bart included a document from the DPD files in his SS Card article that stirs the pot even more:




Another interesting detail is the only handwriting analysis performed that linked the rifle order to Oswald before he was killed was done on the Klein's microfilm documents, so the identification was essentially meaningless. All of the "original" document handwriting analyses, the money order, Post Office documents, etc. were done on the 25th, and I think there’s a solid case, also discussed in previous comment, that the FBI Lab never obtained the originals of the Dallas Post Office documents. 

If I were running a reinvestigation of the JFK case today one of the first things I'd do is call Marina to testify, present these documents plus those in my previous comment, and grill the piss out of her about the P.O. Box. 

There are still plenty of lingering questions, but again I think it's provable beyond a reasonable doubt that Marina's relationship to P.O. Box 2915 was covered up by the FBI. 

Tom

EDIT: Updated to correct quote from the first Belmont-Tolson memo.

Just came across this today. It states that PO BOX 2915 was taken out by "JH Oswald". I can just about forgive the "J" as a typo. The real issue for me is that it is using initials. 
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10697#relPageId=4&

There is also interesting info in the following pages that also suggest the possibility of  PO BOx hijinx

Greg,

I'm working on an essay where this is a part of it. The J.H. Oswald "typo" appears originally in Harry Holmes' 12/3/63 Postal Inspectors report, then again in an outline to CD 296/CE 1799 (linked report) with revised excerpts from all the initial Postal Inspector's reports, then again in the report first draft, and of course in the final report you linked. What's ridiculous about this is that no Postal Inspector report was revised more extensively in each stage of the drafting process than the 12/3/63 report from Holmes, and some very interesting revisions appear in the exact same sentence as "J.H. Oswald". To think that nobody noticed the "typo" is preposterous. This is speculation but all the earliest FBI reports say the box was in the name of "Mrs. Lee H. Oswald", and the letters JH appear directly above and in order of MN on a standard keyboard...kind of interesting.

JFK_FNG wrote:Greg,

I'm working on an essay where this is a part of it. The J.H. Oswald "typo" appears originally in Harry Holmes' 12/3/63 Postal Inspectors report, then again in an outline to CD 296/CE 1799 (linked report) with revised excerpts from all the initial Postal Inspector's reports, then again in the report first draft, and of course in the final report you linked. What's ridiculous about this is that no Postal Inspector report was revised more extensively in each stage of the drafting process than the 12/3/63 report from Holmes, and some very interesting revisions appear in the exact same sentence as "J.H. Oswald". To think that nobody noticed the "typo" is preposterous. This is speculation but all the earliest FBI reports say the box was in the name of "Mrs. Lee H. Oswald", and the letters JH appear directly above and in order of MN on a standard keyboard...kind of interesting.

Excellent! Look forward to reading it.