Hasan Yusuf's review of Dale Myers/Asperger's Syndrome

I want to say I admire the review, but I do want to offer one corrective, however  - he writes:
 
"The murderer of a disorganized crime scene was likely below average intelligence and a high school dropout. If he served in the armed forces he may have been discharged within a few months. He has a menial job and a poor work record. He does not own a car and may be unable to drive, so he rides a bicycle or relies on public transportation. He is a sloppy dresser and a loner of solitary interests such as watching television or reading books. He lives alone or with his parents. He may have a physical handicap or a speech impediment and has a poor self- image" (ibid).
  
In yet another attempt to link Oswald to Tippit's murder, Myers writes that like the above character profile, Oswald was a high school dropout, with an employment history of menial jobs " ... none of which lasted long", who didn't own a car and instead used public transportation "religiously", had a small number of friends and was living alone at the time of the assassination (ibid). He also writes that Oswald took a hardship discharge from the U.S. Marines, had a "voracious appetite for reading", but allegedly suffered from Dyslexia; which Myers believes was the cause of his reading, writing, and spelling problems (ibid). However, much of the above can be accounted for by Asperger's syndrome”
 
   
This is not really accurate and is missing the point about Aspergers syndrome by associating it with “below average intelligence… menial job and a poor work record. a sloppy dresser and a loner of solitary interests such as watching television or reading books. He lives alone or with his parents. He may have a physical handicap or a speech impediment and has a poor self- image.” 
 
 Not of these are really prime or even secondary indicators of Aspergers, which really is more complex (though they may ultimately end up as end-stage social characteristics of the person with Aspergers). But for Oswald, I think we should, more pertinently, look at the complex interaction of learning disability and above-average accomplishment (his learning of Russian, most particularly, and DeMohrenschlldst’ accounts of him in his post-Warrren Commision book “I Am a Patsy” as not only  smart but  ‘the first hippy.’). Oswald’s learning disability – which is common in Asperger’s people – combined with a certain social awkwardness (also characteristic, based on difficulty processing not only information but social cues provided by others) are really more to the Asperger’s point.  I’ve always thought that this was the key to the conspirator’s  decision to use Oswald – a certain contempt for his apparent lack of people skills and an assumption that this meant he was stupid and easy to manipulate – and he was, I think, east to manipulate, and naive about it, based on what we know about how Nagell tried to warn him.

I also, btw, find indications for this in his speech, his slight and apparent impediment, and what appears, at least to me, as a very deliberative self-consciousnee.

Other than that, the truth is that many (though of course far from all) Asperger’s people are high functioning and extremely successful, which is why I think we need to clarify our view of it. Oswald’s was also, by the way, a classically mixed intellect – in the Aspergers world we often describe someone as like ‘Swiss cheese,’ meaning that they are incredibly smart in some areas, and shockingly clueless in other (btw, I will add that my 26-year-old son has Aspergers; given him a complex computer game and he will master it in a day; ask him to add 5 and 5 and he will be at a complete loss).

Allen, I cited Tony Attwood in my book, but wrote to him first telling why I wanted to and to make sure he was okay with it.

I don't think he'd mind if I posted his reply. 

Dear Greg,

What a fascinating suggestion regarding lee Harvey Oswald. Other aspects of Asperger’s syndrome to examine are friendships, recognising social conventions and  boundaries and reading body language, as well as sensory sensitivity, special interests and routines and rituals.

Best wishes,

 

Tony

at this vantage point, of course, it's hard to know for certain exactly what was going on with Oswald; though I have always felt very protective of him, strangely enough (or not); they (from the Warren Commission to Gus Russo) have tried to portray him as a flailing idiot, basically taking advantage of that classic American xenophobia; he's different, he's gullible, and over-trusting. All of which are common denominators with a lot of learning disabled people.

I agree Oswald had many traits that would be useful as an expendable "fanatic". It was possibly done by the book, the CIA Assassination Guide.

"He ( the Assassin) should have an absolute minimum of contact with the rest of the organization and is instructions should be given orally by one person only...It is preferable that the person issuing instructions also conduct any withdrawal or covering actions which may be necessary... In lost assassination, the assassin must be a fanatic of some sort. Politics, religion, and revenge are about the only feasible motives. Since a fanatic is unstable psychologically, he must be handled with extreme care. He must not know the identities of the other members of the organization, for although it is intended that he die in the act, something may go wrong." i


i. The National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 4, Document 2: "A Study of Assassination" unsigned, undated, George Washington University, Document 2, p. 3.

greg parker wrote:Allen, I cited Tony Attwood in my book, but wrote to him first telling why I wanted to and to make sure he was okay with it.

I don't think he'd mind if I posted his reply. 

Dear Greg,

What a fascinating suggestion regarding lee Harvey Oswald. Other aspects of Asperger’s syndrome to examine are friendships, recognising social conventions and  boundaries and reading body language, as well as sensory sensitivity, special interests and routines and rituals.

Best wishes,

 

Tony

Forgot to mention that Tony is a leading expert on Asperger's.

Allen,

I'll try and respond to what you wrote when I am able to think more clearly. There is something else which suggests to me that Oswald had Asperger's, which I don't think has been discussed before, but I'll try to get back to that tomorrow.

that's fine; I just wanted to clarify a few things about it; bear in mind, as well, that the term represents a very broad spectrum of conditions, from classic autism to some very high-functioning people; I think  everyone knows of someone who is incredibly smart yet shockingly obtuse (particularly socially); that is one particualr characteristic. Of course it is difficult to diagnose a dead man 50 years after the fact; at the least, I've always felt that Oswald was learning disabled, and so held up, both contemporaneously and historically, as a figure of some contempt.

I think the Asperger's idea is worth considering, given LHO's isolation, his outbursts, etc. I've also considered the notion that he may have had disassociative identity disorder, commonly known as multiple personalities. Of course this has been floated before, and a quick Google of the idea will lead back to Harvey and Lee types of programming during Lee or "Harvey's" early years.

But beyond that non-starter, those with D.I.D. can have vastly different physical appearances, from one personality to the next. They can carry themselves differently, speak with variable intellectual prowess, and a multiple can even learn to drive a car when another personality can't. FWIW.

I always love it when people like Bugliosi say that the CIA would never use anyone as 'unstable' as Oswald; when about half of their agents seem to have personality disorders, and the other half are like members of Alpha 66 who would blow up their grandma if she said a good word about Castro.

With apologies for the delay in getting back to you Allen, what I'm gonna do is email Jim Di to add a link in part 2 of my review to what you wrote above. I think that's the best thing for me to do. I will have something else to add to this discussion re Oswald and Asperger's (hopefully) tomorrow.

I'll put some additional information here as it includes the views of others, not just my own and those are informed views which add substantially to the discussion.

I have said in related threads that one common trait of Aspergers is the ability to be cool, calm and collected in a crisis - but to lose the plot over what most would consider trivial matters.

This is obviously not an aspect that draws a lot of clinical investigation so the evidence is mainly anecdotal.

In any case, here is a perfect example described online:

http://muddlingthroughaspergers.blogspot.com/2014/07/aspergers-and-keeping-calm-in-crisis.html wrote:

Aspergers - and keeping calm in a crisis

Drove into a multi-storey car park last week with a roof box on the top of the car. Trashed the roof box and got myself wedged in there, under a concrete beam, with no way of going forwards or backwards without smashing the roof box up even more.
I cried, of course, and phoned Ethan. He didn't come rushing to my rescue, even though he was at home, with a car, and an afternoon off work, so easily could have done. But neither did he shout at me, get stressed or tell me I was an idiot. He was, in fact, remarkably calm and nice about it, talking me through what I should do. Even saying (once he'd worked out that he could bodge the box back together again with duck tape and fibre-glass putty) that it was 'just a metal box'. This is the thing with Ethan. He can stomp out of the room, slam a door and sulk because Sam's pyjamas aren't where they're 'supposed' to be, but if I burn the house down he's amazingly calm and, if not supportive, then at least not accusatory. It's the little things that other people would barely notice that try his patience and cause multiple small eruptions.
I'm immensely grateful that Ethan can keep calm amidst an actual crisis, and that he doesn't berate me when I do something really stupid. But, actually, life's full of the 1,001 little things that go wrong rather than the occasional big disaster. And sometimes I feel I'd rather trade in one big explosion every now and again rather than the daily sighs, sulks and shut-outs that we all live with.

If you're wondering how I ever got out of the multi-storey by the way, a lovely old man and a rather attractive young man took pity on me as I struggled, through my tears, to try and remove the box from the roof of the car. They helped me get it down and then carried it to the roof of the car park as I drove and met them up there. Once free of the concrete beams, the box could be reunited with my car. The old guy's parting line to me as he drove away was: 'If your husband gives you a hard time, tell him he's crazy for leaving it on there!' Didn't go down the route of blaming Ethan for my mistake though - not sure which one of us would have been behaving more like the person with Aspergers then! 

The meltdown Oswald
Mrs. OSWALD. Generally he was---usually he was quite as he always was. He used to help me. And he was a good family man. Sometimes, apparently with out reason, at least I did not know reasons, if any existed, he became quite a stranger. At such times it was impossible to ask him anything. He simply kept to himself. He was irritated by trifles.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you recall any of the trifles that irritated him, so as to help us to know the picture?
Mrs. OSWALD. It is hard to remember any such trifling occurrences, sometimes such a small thing as, for example, dinner being five minutes late, and I do mean five minutes--it is not that I am exaggerating---he would be very angry. Or if there were no butter on the table, because he hadn't brought it from the icebox, he would with great indignation ask, "Why is there no butter?" And at the same time if I had put the butter on the table he wouldn't have touched it.
This is foolishness, of course. A normal person doesn't get irritated by things like that.



These are the types of things that Allen Lowe has alluded to in this thread as helping to paint Oswald as  a disturbed loser when in fact, if we are right, this has a clinical explanation.

The cool, calm collected Oswald
We all know that he was cool and calm under arrest.

But here is another example, given by John Donovan from their time in the Marines
"Lee Harvey Oswald was dependable and very calm under periods of pressure," 

Oswald was not the disturbed loser the authorities have painted.