Criticism and Advocacy

Carmine wrote:Advocate Argument 1:
"JFK researcher John Armstrong has shown the Warren Commission combined the biographies of two different people to arrive at the classic legend of Lee Harvey Oswald. A Russian speaking youth, possibly of Hungarian parents,

Armstrong claimed that the father and uncle were discussed in a call to a Jack Tippit. I have worked out the two men were Louis Weinstock and Emil Gardos and they were not related by blood or marriage. They were however, Hungarian born and raging communists. Close enough, I guess.

was brought to the U.S. following World War II and given the name HARVEY Oswald. HARVEY was of small stature, quiet, slightly malnourished, and lived with a short, heavy-set Marguerite Oswald impostor who never smiled. New Orleans born LEE Oswald was tall, husky, and athletic.

The real historical LHO was not "tall and husky" as a school kid in New York. This comes from misreading school records. Nor was there anyone - let alone a little kid - in Beauregard High in NO wanting to be called "Harvey".  Armstrong simply convinced an old teacher into claiming a little kid she remembered hanging out with Ed Voebel, a friend of Oswald, was "Harvey".  His real name was Bobby Newman - and he wasn't trying to impersonate anyone. LHO in New York = 4' 6" and by some miracle which Armstrong seems never to have heard of called puberty, he grew and filled out a bit over the next few years. Then by some further miracle known as "exercise", he developed a "bull neck" during Marines basic training.

As a youth LEE lived with half-brother John Pic, brother Robert Oswald, and his tall, nice-looking mother, Marguerite Claverie Oswald. A program created by US intelligence merged the identities of Russian-speaking HARVEY and American-born LEE Oswald. The result, ten years later, was that young Russian-speaking HARVEY had an American background and birth certificate. HARVEY was an ideal candidate to “defect” to the Soviet Union and work as an undercover agent who secretly understood Russian. HARVEY “defected” and two years later returned to America with a Russian wife and child. A year later this former “defector” was handing out literature in support of Castro and Cuba. Unknown to HARVEY, he had become the ideal candidate to frame for the assassination of President Kennedy. And also unknown to HARVEY were the activities of LEE Oswald in the summer and fall of 1963, when LEE was impersonating HARVEY and helping to set up HARVEY as the accused assassin of President Kennedy." (John Armstrong - Harvey and Lee Homepage)

CIA Chief of Comedic Relief, Walt Mitty, was the author and leader of this operation.

Armstrong has implied, not shown, that two men were using the same identity. He states, "A Russian speaking youth, possibly of Hungarian parents, was brought to the U.S. following World War II and given the name HARVEY Oswald. HARVEY was of small stature, quiet, slightly malnourished, and lived with a short, heavy-set Marguerite Oswald impostor who never smiled."

The first portion is speculation. Armstrong suggests a Russian speaking youth, "possibly of Hungarian parents was brought to the U.S. and given the name Harvey Oswald." Yet this claim is insufficient without primary evidence of these actions in detail or people involved. Much of Armstrong's accurate primary evidence is lost to the overriding contention of two actual men named Oswald.

Armstrong has used an approximate guess at the height of Edward Ekdahl by John Pic as hard fact, So it became set in concrete that Ekdahl was at least that tall. Then a photo with Ekdahl and Marguerite was used to show how "short" Marguerite was by comparison. Armstrong, with his vast resources, could have done what a correspondent of mine did - check official records to get Ekdahl's height. His passport and ship records show him as 5' 10' and 5' 11" respectively. These records however, where from Ekdahl's youth. What needs to taken into account is that people shrink as they get older. So in  reality, when that photo was taken, Ekdahl was most likely less than 5' 10" - not over 6'. 

Armstrong's idea requires further two unproven long-term imposters (Harvey and Marguerite) necessary to secure the hypothesis. I have no doubt Intelligence programs still use imposters and decoy agents. Yet there is no substantial amount of primary evidence supporting two different doppelganger Oswald's, with two different mothers. This improbable elaborate plan allegedly spans over a decade.[x] Yet evidence to prove this extraordinary claim is not sufficiently offered.

It may well be sufficiently offered - as in amount of - it's just that none of it stands up to even 2 seconds of scrutiny.


Armstrong's main contention remains merely supported by speculation and leaps of faith. He begins using examples of Central Intelligence Agency operations that relocated Soviet exiles. He then offers covert operations included anti Communist refugees, this as well is feasible. Armstrong states some are taught English, and then he diverges from the seemingly factual into speculation.


"A young boy, later given the name "HARVEY Oswald" may have been among these Eastern European refugees and, along with his caretaker (a woman who was given the name "Marguerite Oswald"), may have been subjects of a CIA related file." May have and possibly do not substantiate this idea.

But when it's all boiled down, it's all there is.

They attempt to explain a huge portion of time with speculation. Much is also made of photographic claims despite no independent testing by an independent review panel using modern technology.

Again, something Armstrong could do, but won't. Ever.


Armstrong states that a Lee Oswald was living in one city and a Harvey Oswald was living in another. This merely demonstrates two men with the same last name are concurrently living in different cities. A brief search of current phone records state over twenty instances of L. Oswald in various locations worldwide. They also reveal four men named Harvey Oswald in the United States.[xi] Yet these facts are not conclusive proof. They offer that multiple people have and will share the same last name, or even the same name. Both could occur without nefarious context.

Well, in some cases, post-assassination information coming into the FBI may reflect innocent recollections of real people with the same name. But Armstrong is not relying on that. He twists and contorts school, court and Marine records, and combines that with the faulty memory of witnesses such as Palmer McBride. 

Armstrong's unfeasible plot includes a complicit Marguerite Oswald and her doppelganger being in contact. It requires too many components and opportunities for discovery. Armstrong then refers to an adjournment called by Allen Dulles during the testimony of Robert Oswald to the Warren Commission. Armstrong cites the adjournment as proof that Dulles "had intimate detailed knowledge of Harvey and Lee's backgrounds." I agree that Allen Dulles had possible connections to the suppression of evidence based on official investigations. However, no single adjournment is a sign of his knowledge, nor complicity in the Harvey and Lee hypothesis. [xii]

It also requires his brothers being complicit (yet with John Pic giving the whole game away by failing to recognize Lee in the Bronx Zoo photo). It requires the NYC courts to be complicit and it requires Lee's Parole Officer - future Judge John Carro -to be complicit among god knows how many other institutions and individuals. 

Armstrong's contention relies on much later supporting recollections and photographic claims. Portions of the official record are contradictory and likely faced alteration in some instances.

The only evidence of alteration of records are all related directly to the assassination. There is no evidence whatsoever that any records from Oswald's youth have been altered. There was one document that went missing from the court records. 

Yet the seizure and alteration of Oswald's school records, does not support these extraordinary claims. Altered records do not prove two nearly identical men, lived two different intersecting lives. It proves that records were allegedly changed; the purpose of such changes is the question that remains.

There was no seizure of his school records - let alone any alteration of them. Do not believe a single claim made by Armstrong without checking it. School records were handed over legally through the local school boards. In New York, a court order was actually needed. The so-called seizure was at Stripling - a school which Robert attended but Lee did not. The person who made the claim that the FBI came and confiscated records on Saturday 11/23 was apparently the vice principle at the time. He also happened to be an old college friend of Armstrong side-kick in this venture into lala land, Jack White. This friendship was never declared. Jack White let it slip to me in his rush to defend this witness's credibility ("He has been a friend of mine since college and I can vouch for his integrity...") When I brought up that this friendship should have been declared in the book, JW backtracked at a 100 mines an hour, claiming "he was really just an acquaintance - hadn't seen in years etc etc..."

I would also ask what school keeps student records at the school for over 10 years?

It's bullshit, Carmine. 

The hypothesis states just before the assassination of President Kennedy, Harvey was on the Sixth floor of the Schoolbook Depository. Simultaneously, Lee was four floors down in the lunchroom. This in my view is nearly impossible, with over seventy people in the Depository; no one observed Oswald and doppelganger near each other? Armstrong then asserts the combined actions of both support additionally unproven claims made by Roger Craig. The true Oswald supports the official version of the lunchroom encounter. It further concludes while Harvey was in jail, a witness views Lee driving in Fort Worth.

Oswald was nondescript.  He was a generic young white male. The number of young men of around the same age, height and weight in Dallas would not have been insubstantial. 

These ideas are based on rampant speculation. The Bureau, Agency, and some other official groups committed grievous errors, intentionally suppressed evidence, and wantonly deceived investigators. Yet these actions do not prove Armstrong's main contention of two men living the same life. We should not attribute nefarious action to what in most instances were incompetence and inaction. Armstrong further asserts the Warren Commission combined two different biographies to attribute guilt to a single man.


 In January 1960, five months after Harvey Oswald “defected” to the Soviet Union, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo stating that someone was using Lee Harvey Oswald's birth certificate... On March 31, 1961, a memo was sent from the passport office to John White, an official at the consular section of the State Department, reiterating the concern about two Oswalds originally expressed by Hoover nine months earlier. In the fall of 1961, while Harvey Oswald was still in Russia, Police Officer Charles Noto arrested LEE Oswald and Celso Hernandez on Breakwater Road on the Lakefront in New Orleans. In April, 1962, while Harvey Oswald was still in Russia, LEE Oswald visited the Texas Employment Commission in Ft. Worth and filled out form E-40a, Aptitude Profile Test (APT) B-1002 and the Occupational Aptitude Pattern test [WC XIX, p 491] (John Armstrong -Harvey and Lee Homepage)

The Hoover Memo has been taken way out of context. There is background to this which apparently Armstrong is unaware of, or would rather his readers did not know about. Marguerite had sent 3 letters to Lee. Those letters got returned unopened. Marguerite wrote to State. She then got interviewed by SA John Fain. The New York Field office then summarized Fain's report and sent it to HQ. In that summary, they advised of the returned mail and opined that Oswald may in fact be elsewhere in Europe (Albert Schweitzer College) and that since he had taken his Birth Certificate, there is a possibility it was stolen and is being used by another in the Soviet Union.

So there it is - there was never any evidence the birth certificate was stolen or that anyone else was using it... it was all looking at worst case scenarios based on the returned mail. By the time Hoover wrote his memo to state "the Chinese Whispers-like effect had kicked in... what was no more than a vague thought was transformed into a major possibility. 

Despite Armstrong's Harvey and Lee hypothesis, many of these things do not support his later speculation. The Hoover document only proved suspicion of a possible imposter; it does not prove the complex Lee and Harvey contention. Oswald is abroad while another person named Lee Oswald is recorded in the United States. This is not conclusive proof of Armstrong's contentions. If someone named Lee Oswald was arrested or taking a test, it only supports a possible imposter or a man with the same name. It does not verify a more vastly complex hypothesis.

It doesn't even prove suspicion. It only proves they considered it in the realms of possibility - based on the very limited information they had at the time. 

"There is no doubt that Hoover knew about a LEE Harvey Oswald in the United States while Lee HARVEY Oswald was in the Soviet Union. Hoover's knowledge of two Oswalds became clear the day after the assassination of President Kennedy. Hoover sent agents to Stripling Junior High in Ft. Worth to confiscate HARVEY Oswald's school records. FBI agents were sent to the Pfisterer Dental Laboratory, Gerard Tujague Company, J.R. Michaels, and Dolly Shoe in New Orleans to confiscate all of HARVEY Oswald's employment records. These documents, and others like them, comprised much of the evidence that two young men shared the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald. Most of these documents were never given to the WC and disappeared. And documents that were given to the WC by the FBI were photographs (not originals) and many had been altered or fabricated. In May 1999, Mr. Armstrong found a document at the National Archives indicating the FBI had a procedure in place which routinely allowed the alteration of testimony of its own agents before the Warren Commission, sometimes over the objections of staff attorneys. The document indicated that a procedure was set up to handle these objections and to persuade the staff to go along with the alterations." (John Armstrong - Harvey and Lee Homepage)

I'm not going to even try to respond to this load of codswallop. I'd have a brain explosion trying to figure out where to start.

Unless primary official evidence offers supported specific details of the Harvey and Lee hypothesis, there is every doubt that Hoover knew of such a plan. Hoover repeatedly ignored the law when he wished, that is true. Subsequent official investigations determined the Bureau conducted a flawed, adversarial, and incompetent investigation. However, these claims do not prove the primary contention of two men sharing the same identity in a long-term intelligence program.

Exactly

I support a feasible conspiracy possibly occurred. Yet it was not a vast conspiracy that relied on too many connected personalities of no importance. A successful conspiracy would converge on the target and then vanish with as little attention and direct evidentiary traces as possible. Hundreds of pieces of primary evidence support a feasible conspiracy. Yet the vast majority does not prove a large network utilized the elaborate plot Armstrong contends. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Carmine, in my mind, the type of conspiracy this was - was the kind that flows from long term goals... philosophies... chance occurrences...chance connections... the ability to use such chance happenings... the ability to jump ship... the ability to change horses midstream... the ability to seize opportunities and create new ones... peripheral vision... no conscience... building, always building on what's already been done toward the goal... doing whatever it takes... there was no secret cabal... no men in suits around the board room table that gave the order for a hit on JFK... it was just another necessary action along the way... and in all that history... the only constant was the goal, the belief systems, the philosophies... the people holding them simply passed through... there was no long-term conspiracy to kill JFK, nor was it, as you say, a vast one. But just like Hoover's memo, there WAS background and context. And when it comes to the Kennedy assassinations, that background and context is indeed, long and vast....