1955
In the 1950s two teenage boys with the last name "Oswald" (HARVEY and LEE) were living in New Orleans, LA, were attending junior high school, and were employed by several local businesses. US intelligence was sponsoring and directing these boys in a multi-year operation that was designed to eventually allow them to switch identities (the "Oswald project"). Russian-speaking HARVEY Oswald and American born LEE Oswald lived close to each other and often attended the same schools. HARVEY was able to acquire English language skills, become familiar with the American way of life, and learn about LEE Oswald, his family, and his life. Within a few short years, after military service, Russian-speaking HARVEY Oswald would be able to assume the identity of LEE Oswald and "defect" to the Soviet Union. American intelligence would then have an "American" spy inside the Soviet Union who could speak, read, and write near-perfect Russian.
Following the assassination of President Kennedy FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover knew that the true identity of the accused assassin of President Kennedy was not American-born LEE Harvey Oswald. And he also knew that if Russian-speaking HARVEY Oswald's true identity was ever discovered, it would expose the "Oswald Project" and lead directly to the agency responsible for the assassination of JFK. There are indications that Hoover knew about HARVEY and LEE for several years prior to the assassination. He knew that someone was using Oswald's identification in 1960, when (HARVEY) Oswald was in the Soviet Union.The FBI had numerous reports of a LEE Harvey Oswald in the USA, while (HARVEY) Oswald was in the Soviet Union. When Hoover first learned the Dallas Police had arrested Lee HARVEY Oswald he knew, immediately, that all records relating to HARVEY Oswald had to be confiscated because some of those records would conflict with records relating to LEE Oswald.
In February, 1955 fifteen-year-old HARVEY Oswald and his caretaker/mother began working for the Dolly Shoe Company in New Orleans. Store owner Maury Goodman, store manager Louis Marzialle, and co-workers Rita Paveur and Francis Mouton said that both (HARVEY) Oswald and his mother worked full time at the shoe store. Mr. Goodman asked Mrs. Oswald (heavy-set impostor) to fill out bonding forms that were required by the company's insurance group. A few months later, after repeated requests for the forms went unanswered, Goodman had no choice but to terminate Mrs. Oswald. Store manager Louis Marzialle (click here for YouTube interview) fired young (HARVEY) Oswald a short time later. Louis clearly remembered that day, as it was the day his first son was born. While HARVEY Oswald was working full time at Dolly Shoe, LEE Oswald was in the 9th grade at Beauregard Junior High, with a near perfect attendance record (January through May, 1955).
Following the assassination the FBI confiscated all records relating to (HARVEY) Oswald from Dolly Shoe--including time cards, payroll checks, federal and Louisiana income tax statements, payments to Social Security, W-2 forms, Dept. of Labor approval for child employment, and they also confiscated school records from Beauregard Junior High School. In an honest investigation these documents would have been preserved and made available to the public. But these records showed that (HARVEY) Oswald worked full time at Dolly Shoe, while LEE Oswald attended Beauregard JHS at the same time. These records could never be made public. Something had to be done. While in FBI custody, all original documents from Dolly Shoe were destroyed, and quickly replaced with photographs of fabricated documents. The FBI never gave the WC a single verifiable employment record or cancelled check or anything from Dolly Shoe that confirmed Oswald's dates of employment. Instead the FBI fabricated a single document in order to create the appearance that one person, Lee Harvey Oswald, had worked part-time at Dolly Shoe and attended Beauregard JHS at the same time during the spring of 1955. That document was a 1955 W-2 form and was likely created at FBI headquarters between November 23 and November 25, 1963 (see below). How do we know this document is fake, and how do we know when this document was created?
EMPLOYMENT AND SCHOOL RECORDS OF HARVEY AND LEE MERGED INTO "LEE HARVEY OSWALD."
Following the assassination Dallas police detectives searched Oswald's rooming house and Ruth Paine's. Each and every item taken from both locations was initialed and dated by DPD officers. The police made a handwritten inventory of all 225 items taken, which was then typed at DPD headquarters (WC exhibit Stovall A & B listed items taken from the Paine house; WC exhibit Turner #1 listed items taken from 1026 N. Beckley). All items were then photographed on the floor of the police station. But the 1955 Dolly Shoe W-2 form (pictured below) was not found by the Dallas detectives. It was not initialed or dated by DPD officers; it was not listed on the DPD handwritten or typed inventories (WC Exhibits-Stovall 1 & 2; Turner Ex. 1); and it was not photographed on the floor of the DPD station.
At 3:10 AM on 11/23/63 FBI agent Vincent Drain departed Carswell Air Force Base aboard a C-130 tanker with the 225 items collected by the Dallas Police. FBI document specialist James Cadigan received the items at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. Cadigan told the WC, "Initially, the first big batch of evidence was brought into the laboratory on November 23 and this consisted of many, many items.....It was a very large quantity of evidence that was brought in.....time was of the essence and this material [Oswald's possessions], I believe, was returned to the Dallas Police within two or three days." We now know that Oswald's possessions (225 items) were taken to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC on Nov 23rd and held for 2 or 3 days. During this time a W-2 form was created that showed Oswald earned only a small amount of income at Dolly Shoe, in order to make it appear as though he worked part-time at Dolly Shoe (after school). This was necessary because HARVEY Oswald's full time employment at Dolly shoe conflicted with LEE Oswald's full-time attendance at Beauregard JHS. This fabricated W-2 form appears to have been initialed by FBI lab technician Robert Frazier. It was then photographed, and included among the 225 items of evidence received from Dallas on 11/23/63. On November 26 the FBI quietly returned the items of evidence to the Dallas Police.
After the evidence was returned to Dallas on 11/26/63 the FBI and Dallas Police jointly inventoried and photographed each item of evidence. But there were now 455 items of evidence (listed on CE #2003; pp. 259-283), far more items than were sent to FBI headquarters 3 days earlier. The FBI had added 230 items of "evidence" before returning the inventory to Dallas. One of those 230 items was a photograph of the Dolly Shoe W-2 form. A photograph of the fabricated W-2 form was listed on the FBI/DPD inventory as item #168. It was from this inventory that the fabricated Dolly Shoe W-2 form first emerged, and it was soon given to the WC. From this one photograph the Warren Commission, without interviewing any of the Dolly Shoe Company owners or employees and without a single document to confirm the dates of his employment, concluded that "Lee Harvey Oswald" worked part-time at Dolly Shoe (after school) while attending the 9th grade at Beauregard JHS. Below is the fabricated W-2 form:
NOTE: It is easy to determine which items of "evidence" were added to the original 225 items of evidence taken to FBI headquarters on November 23. First, look at any of the 455 items listed on the joint DPD/FBI inventory of November 26, 1963 (WC Ex. 2003
pp. 259-283) and see if that item has the initials of a Dallas Police officer. If the item was initialed by DPD officers it will be listed on the handwritten and typed DPD inventory (WC exhibits-Stoval A; Stoval B; Turner 1). But if a particular item does not have the initials of a DPD officer and is not listed on the original DPD inventory (handwritten or typed), then that item was not found by the Dallas Police. If that item was initialed, it may have been by an FBI lab technician and
was among the 230 additional items that were added to Oswald's possessions in Washington, DC.The item was then taken to the Dallas Police on November 26 and was inventoried, photographed, and listed among the 455 items that appear on Warren Commission Exhibit 2003:
pp. 259-283. We can now understand how certain items of "evidence" were added to Oswald's possessions in order to help frame him for the assassination and to help merge the backgrounds of HARVEY and LEE in order to make it appear as though there was only one "Lee Harvey Oswald."
After LEE Oswald graduated from the 9th grade at Beauregard JHS he began working as a messenger for the Gerard F. Tujague Company, which was located on the 3rd floor of the Sanlin Building at 442 Canal St. After his discharge from the Marines, older brother Robert Oswald briefly resided with his mother and brother (LEE Oswald) at 126 Exchange in New Orleans. Robert wrote in his book, Lee, that during his visit LEE was working for an import/export company in July, 1955. Robert Oswald confirmed the beginning date of his brother's employment at Tujague's. And when LEE Oswald joined the Civil Air Patrol on July 27, 1955 it was Robert who helped buy him a uniform from the Army-Navy Surplus store. Robert told the Warren Commission that during his one week stay "Lee was working for an export firm there in New Orleans." LEE said, "We're sending an order to Portugal this week" or "I received an order from Hong Kong just this morning." Oswald's direct supervisor was Frank DiBenedetto, who told the HSCA in 1978 that (LEE) Oswald worked at Tujague's "a year to a year and a half." Secretary Gloria Callaghan, who still worked at Tujague's in the mid-1990s, recalled, "I went on maternity leave in March, 1956 and he (LEE Oswald) was still working for us at that time." Frank DiBenedetto said, "he quit to join the marines......and when he quit it was hot, very hot." According to Robert Oswald, LEE Oswald was working at Tujague's in July, 1955. According to Frank DiBenedetto and Gloria Callaghan he worked at Tujague's a year to a year and a half and then quit to join the Marines--in the late summer or fall of 1956.
NOTE: JFK researchers may recall that a "Lee Oswald" visited the Bolton Ford Dealership in New Orleans on January 20, 1961 (HARVEY Oswald was in Russia) and spoke with salesman Oscar Deslatte. Oswald and "Joseph Moore" requested special pricing on trucks they wanted to purchase and send to Cuba. The order was placed in the name "Friends of Democratic Cuba," of which Gerard F. Tujague was Vice-President and former FBI SAC Guy Banister was a Board Member. Was LEE Oswald working with Banister and Tujague while HARVEY Oswald was in Russia?
During the early afternoon of 11/22/63 Gerard Tujague told his employees about the assassination. Mr. Tujague said, "The FBI will be here soon, so you can all go home now." Mr. Tujague asked employee Jimmy Hudnell to gather up Oswald's payroll records, time cards, and canceled checks. When the FBI arrived they took anything and everything related to LEE Oswald's employment. They also confiscated Oswald's 1955 school records from Warren Easton High School. The FBI now had records that showed LEE Oswald worked an entire year at Tujague's (July, 1955 through August, 1956), while at the same time HARVEY Oswald was attending Warren Easton High School (Sept. 7 through October 17, 1955). These records could never be made public, and the Bureau (through Guy Banister) had good reason to believe they would receive full cooperation with respect to LEE Oswald's employment from Mr. Tujague. All original documents from Tujague's were destroyed--time cards, payroll checks, federal and Louisiana income tax statements, payments to Social Security, W-2 forms, Louisiana Dept of Labor approval for child employment, etc. But HARVEY Oswald's school records and attendance at Warren Easton in Sept and Oct, 1955 could not be destroyed, and his attendance would be remembered by fellow students and teachers. So, to eliminate the problem of LEE working at Tujague's at the same time HARVEY was attending Warren Easton HS, the beginning date of LEE's employment at Tujague's had to be changed. The FBI provided the Warren Commission with photographs of a few unsigned, handwritten time cards and a fabricated payroll record (see below) that showed Oswald's beginning date of employment as November 11, 1955--after he stopped attending Warren Easton High School in October. But the Bureau never provided a single verifiable employment document to the commission.
The FBI also gave the WC a photograph of a fabricated 1955 W-2 form (shown below), which was not initialed by DPD officers, was not listed on the DPD inventory, and was not photographed on the floor of the Dallas Police station. This photograph was included among the 230 additional items of evidence secretly returned to the Dallas Police on 11/26/63. The joint FBI/DPD inventory listed this fabricated W-2 form as number 169 (CE #2003; pp. 259-283). It was from this inventory that the fabricated Gerard F. Tujague Inc. W-2 form first emerged. To complete the charade of Oswald's employment in 1955, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told the Warren Commission (WC) that the IRS had routinely destroyed Oswald's federal income tax return, but provided no supporting documents from the IRS. QUESTION: How many 16-year-olds file a federal income tax return? And how many 16-year-olds would keep their tax withholding statement for 8 years, but not keep a copy of their tax return?
NOTE: Researchers may want to look closely at the Dolly Shoe and Tujague W-2 forms for 1955, and focus on the social security number "433 54 3937" and "126 Exchange" on both forms. In the mid-1990's I made transparencies of each W-2 form. When these transparencies are overlaid onto one another, the address and social security numbers match perfectly. I then sent copies of both forms to Dawn Stanford, an archivist at the IBM Corporation. Dawn studied the forms and noted that the characters, pitch and typewriter offsets on each of these W-2 forms are identical. In her words these W-2 forms "were typed with the same typewriter."
It is clear that the FBI had been compiling a storehouse of information on Oswald for many years. Given the vast investigatory reach of the FBI, the bureau had the ability to locate and seize any and all documentation related to Oswald. Within 24 hours of the assassination the Bureau had original documents and evidence in its possession relating to both HARVEY and LEE. Their focus of attention, and primary objective, was to merge the identities of HARVEY and LEE into a single "Lee Harvey Oswald" by altering and fabricating evidence received from the Dallas Police. Within hours Hoover was telling President Johnson that Oswald was the lone assassin--no further investigation, no accomplices, case closed. Within a matter of weeks, Hoover was selling the same bill of goods to Warren Commission. A year later, the Warren Report, the official, historical government conclusion about the deaths of both JFK and LHO, was built on Hoover’s initial, flimsy “house of cards.” But when researchers begin to focus on the limited amount of evidence provided by the FBI, and compare it to eyewitness testimony, it becomes clear that a vast amount of evidence has been omitted, suppressed, altered, and fabricated in order to conceal the truth about the identities of the two young Oswalds--HARVEY and LEE. For example: Within 24 hours of the assassination two FBI agents met with assistant principal Frank Kudlaty at Stripling Junior High in Ft. Worth. Mr. Kudlaty gave the agents (HARVEY) Oswald's 9th grade school records for the fall of 1954 (click here for YouTube interview). Those records disappeared because they conflicted with LEE Oswald's simultaneous attendance in the 9th grade at Beauregard Junior High in New Orleans. Top FBI official William Sullivan said, "Hoover did not like to see the Warren Commission come into existence. He showed marked interest in limiting the scope of it or circumventing the scope of it and taking any action that might result in neutralizing it... when an enormous organization like the FBI with tremendous power still can sit back and shuffle the deck of cards and pick up the card they want to show you it may be you're not going to get the entire picture. If there were documents that possibly he didn't want to come to the light of the public, then those documents no longer exist, and the truth will never be known." Warren Commission attorney Samuel Stern was skeptical and aware of potential problems. Stern told the HSCA, "at the outset we realized that there was no possible way to penetrate any official involvement in a cover-up or conspiracy if there was such complicity... the FBI and CIA could formulate and maintain a cover-up which no one would ever penetrate." Mr. Stern's skepticism and analysis proved to be correct.
In the final analysis, the seemingly mundane records of employment at a shoe store and freight forwarding company in New Orleans remain a testament to how the "Crime of the Century" was turned into the "Lie of the Century" by the FBI and the Warren Commission.
