Letters to the Cyborgs

by Judyth Baker

  Krokodil and Mad Magazine:

  Besides all the books and newspapers that this voracious reader, Lee Oswald, sucked in, as if he were a veritable reading vacuum sweeper, he enjoyed the satire and humor of Krokidil, a magazine similar to Britain’s Punch. Mad Magazine, which Oswald also enjoyed reading (borrowed copies), was not as politically oriented as Krokodil; or Крокодил, which in Russian is “Crocodile.” First published in 1922, this 1976 abstract about the book, Krokodil: Laughter in the Soviet Union, by Marian Pehowski, tells us what it was all about:

  A 16-page, four-color-on-newsprint magazine, “Krokodil” is among the world’s most popular magazines of humor and satire. As a product of the Pravda Publishing House, it is produced by a branch of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, yet there are no official taboos or guidelines. Connections, popularity, and profits give “Krokodil” clout. Paid circulation is at six million only because of a paper shortage and inadequate presses, which already run 24 hours a day. Contributing to the success of “Krokodil” are its role as national ombudsman between public and government, strong reader identity, reputation for responding quickly to complaints, grass-roots connections, excellent relations with freelancers, and the strong, innovative character of the magazine.29

  Krokidil editors “dumping the remains of Nazis.”30

  Magazine: Friends World News (FWCC) #87

  Found, with subscription receipt, among Oswald’s possessions, this is a Quaker Magazine, founded in 1949. Ruth Paine was raised as a Quaker. 31

  Printed Items Found in Oswald’s Possessions on 11/22/63

  An article from The New Republic, dated 9/12/1960.

  Two world atlases; also, various maps and postcards.

  A subscription to Life Magazine.

  Magazine: The Nation, 1/23/60.

  FPCC pamphlets and flyers, some since traced to CIA supplies.

  Copies of The Daily Worker and The Militant.

  Books:

  The Spy Who Loved Me, by Ian Fleming;

  Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming;

  The Idiot (in Russian) Fyodor Dostoevsky;

  1984 by George Orwell;

  A Gregg shorthand manual/dictionary;

  A Russian-English dictionary; also: Russian-Spanish notes.

  A US Marine Corps Manual.

  Booklets:

  Most of these were used in Oswald’s pamphleteering.

  Ideology and Revolution by Jean-Paul Sartre.

  The Coming American Revolution by James Cannon

  Booklets (various titles) published by the FPCC.

  Adrian Alba, a member of a family involved with the Crescent City Garage next to Reily’s Coffee Company, testified that Lee Oswald was intensely interested in gun and hunting magazines, but Lee told me he had befriended Alba only in order to be able to pass through Alba’s Crescent City Garage’s front bay doors, in order to go on to Guy Banister’s office without being noticed by Reily employees; who were situated in the building next door to the garage on the side further from Banister’s. Not one gun or hunting magazine was found among Lee Oswald’s possessions in Dallas.

  Three boxes of flash cards were found: one for Russian (invoice #11199G), one for Spanish, and one for Phonics (invoice #11199G). Lee struggled with dyslexia, which interfered with his ability to spell correctly, but he read anyway, overcoming whatever problems stood in his way, as the number and type of books he read emphatically demonstrate. Although Oswald’s written Russian appears to have been just as dyslexic in certain features as was his written English, Lee conquered spoken Russian, and exhibited knowledge of high-level Russian writing and literature to such an extent that he astonished USSR-born (Minsk, Belarus native) George deMohrenschildt with his abilities:

  Lee read Russian classics and discussed some at length with me, especially I remember The Idiot by Dostoievski, a psychoanalytical study… it amazed me that he read such difficult writers like Gorki, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy and Turgenev – in Russian. As everyone knows, Russian is a complex language, and he was supposed to have stayed in the Soviet Union only a little over two years. He must have had some previous training and that point had never been brought up by the Warren Commission – and it is still puzzling to me.” Oswald also read difficult poetry by such writers as Pushkin.32

  APPENDIX

  This section includes information from myself, the witness, largely not included in the official record, or elsewhere. It comes to you at some cost, and is provided for those who may want to know more about Lee Oswald’s reading habits that are not documented in any official records. Also, I include a list of trusted books for those who wish to read material other than the corrupt official versions about Lee. I have also added comments about my situation living in exile, which is not as romantic as it’s cracked up to be, but has given me insight and perspective I never would have had. Thank you, fascist America.33

  Cullen Moore Horoscopes in The Times-Picayune

  Cullen Moore, an astrologer and horoscope writer located in New York, had syndicated columns called Stars and Lovers (Sundays) and Moon Messages (weekdays).34 Lee was Libra and I was Taurus. Oddly, some horoscopes Lee read to me when we rode the Magazine Street Bus to work at Reily’s resonated with intrigue. I believe it is entirely possible that these horoscopes were altered when published in New Orleans. Whether by coincidence or by design, words such as “clandestine” “secret” “subversives” and “maneuvers” peppered the horoscopes in New Orleans to an extent that could not be ignored. I saved the dates of some entries that I found fascinating, and copied some of them later. The May 23, 1963 entry for Libra, for example, reads: “Venus, the planet of love, strongly invites you. Avoid the clandestine.” At that time, Lee and I had commenced a love affair.

  A few of the interesting bits of advice from the horoscopes that Lee read:

  May 25: “Keep quiet about financial arrangements. Do not reveal confidences. If you are dealing with underground or behind scenes affairs, do prevent interference.”

  May 30: “Quiet behind scenes maneuvers will gain more ground than airing your views.”

  May 31: (At the same time that I was engaged in clandestine cancer research efforts, with Lee beginning to learn certain lab techniques as well), the column headline was “Today’s Rays Splendid for Research Scientist”

  July 1st: Column Headline: “Rays favorable Today: Detectives May Benefit”

  “Today’s Moonrays are favorable for detectives, investigators, all who deal in behind-scene activities. Medicine, science, may also benefit. The sensitivity of the atmosphere should reveal many strange things.”

  Aug. 1st: “A walk or sudden visit is revealing. You should use the telephone, telegraph, or send important messages.”

  Aug. 11:”…Beware of subversives…” “Your temper is too high. You could cut off your greatest benefactor or lose a loyal friend unless you calm down. See things from more unbiased view.”

  Aug. 20: “A secret matter could take a surprising twist. Be sure you are open-minded, tolerant. (Interestingly, Lee was surprised on Aug. 21 when his status as a returned defector from the USSR was made public during the Latin Listening Post radio “debate” on WDSU).

  Aug. 24: “No one knows how to gain points better than you when armed with advance information. Someone tips you off.”

  August 29: Context: this was the day Lee went to Clinton, then to the Jackson hospital, with Clay Shaw and David Ferrie: their extended stay, waiting for a phone call at a payphone to join a convoy from Angola prison, made their long wait quite visible to those standing in a voting registration line composed of blacks who had responded to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington the day before. Cullen Moore also responded:

  “Rays Favor Religion, Aspiration and Hopes.” “Today’s Moonrays favor religion, aspiration, hopes, dreams, those who dare to attempt impossible ideals. Leaders of noble causes may reach hearts of people.”

  August 31: This was an extremely
important day for me and Lee.35 The horoscope was emblazoned into my memory: “Today’s Rays Conducive to Accuracy, Vigilance.”

  Lee did not seem to take horoscopes seriously, but nevertheless, he often read them, even pointing out to me the entries for Guy Banister (March 7, Pisces), David Ferrie (March 28, Aries), and for his wife, Marina (July 17, Cancer).36 Lee also read the editorial pages, the political cartoons and “funny papers,” as well as keeping up with football games in the sports section. He read all the major news items and took special note of the arrest columns, political precinct news items, and articles about New Orleans’ society.

  Magazines Lee Oswald Almost Certainly Read in New Orleans and Elsewhere in 1963. 37

  October, 1963

  The two magazines whose covers are shown below (Life magazine: “Bay of Pigs,” and The Saturday Evening Post, “Night of the Iguana”) featured front cover articles of interest to us: we read these articles in both these magazines.

  May 10, 1963

  July 11, 1963

  Recommended Books: Exposing the Truth

  Many books on the subject of Lee Harvey Oswald now exist that reliably support the evidence as we have come to know it from both old and new information, witnesses, and the efforts of honest researchers. Several important books have buried the government’s false position, such as Doug Horne’s Inside the ARRB, Dr. James Fetzer’s Assassination Science, James Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, Jim Marrs’ Crossfire, the Plot That Killed Kennedy, and Edward T. Haslam’s book, Dr. Mary’s Monkey. Books by Groden, Livingstone, and Noel Twyman can also be trusted. Within those pages, as well as in the pages of my own book, Me & Lee, How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald, the truth is revealed, to the shame of those who still promote “Oswald did it alone,” for what seem to be monetary/egotistical reasons.

  It behooves us to examine Lee H. Oswald and his ways outside the province of the “official version” box, always striving to utilize a stringent and accurate methodology. I may not live to see the man I loved cleared of all charges, but somehow, someday, he will be.

  Lee Oswald, November 22, 1963: “I’m just a patsy!”

  Endnotes

  1 Efforts to update Wikipedia, or to make the McAdams team correct falsehoods on their highly prominent websites have been futile: the reader, scholar, and honest researcher must look elsewhere for updated, unbiased information. As in all academic fields, assassination science research has its own schools of thought and theory. Efforts to discredit assassination science researchers as “conspiracy theorists” have increased dramatically in the last few years as the McAdams team has found its position of authority eroding. The Internet has expanded everyone’s horizons, however, and the truth about Oswald’s framing has emerged. Nobody who is an honest student of the Kennedy assassination would read only Oswald-did-it books: see the comment section of this article for a list of new books from reputable, hones researchers offering incontrovertible evidence that Oswald was innocent. These books are recent, but are generally ignored by the major media, which continues to adhere to the “official version” – for which it is monetarily rewarded. For example, Vincent Bugliosi received a million dollars for his book Reclaiming History, an Oswald-did-it extravaganza. Bugliosi attacked this author viciously in his end-note section, opining that I was incapable of writing my first published book about my relationship with Oswald, instead suggesting that Harrison Livingstone, the publisher, wrote it. Bugliosi never interviewed me, relying on the McAdams team for his erroneous information. Considering what Bugliosi did to me, how can we trust his treatment of other witnesses whose information points to Oswald’s innocence?

  2 “The working papers of staff lawyer David Slawson reveal that even the Warren Commission suspected Ms. McMillan had ties to the CIA.” Jim DiEugenio, “POSNER in New Orleans …GERRY IN WONDERLAND” Electronic Assassinations Newsletter, Vol. #1, http://www.assassinationweb.com/de.htm .

  Also: “CIA reports on interviews with Priscilla McMillan (nee Johnson) describe her as a “witting collaborator” of the Agency.… many researchers [suspect] that she had close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, a role she has always denied.… She later became a confidante of Oswald’s widow and co-authored Marina and Lee, with her. This book…helped to reinforce the image of Lee Harvey Oswald as a hapless, maladjusted, lone assassin in the public’s mind. REF: “No Smoking Gun, But Something Smells” by Jerry Policoff and John Judge, The Fourth Decade, Volume 4, #1, November, 1996.

  3 Despite abundant evidence to the contrary (viz Russian native George DeMohrenschildt’s I Am a Patsy!) the fiction that Oswald knew only rudimentary Russian is still touted on some websites and encyclopedias pushing the Official Version. For example: “The Marine had subscribed to The Worker and taught himself rudimentary Russian.” New World Encyclopedia : http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lee_Harvey_Oswald

  4 “On 3 October 1963 Oswald arrived by bus at Nuevo Laredo at 6:30 am. He arrived at Dallas, Texas, on the evening of 3 October and took a room at the Dallas YMCA. On 4 October 1963 Oswald returned to and stayed at the YMCA.” NARA Document #104-10017-10037, declassified February 9th, 1996.

  5 Jim Marrs, Crossfire, the Plot that Killed Kennedy. Quote from “On the Tippit Slaying” http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JDT/brundage.tippit . Acquired 2 Dec. 2013.

  6 Allan Dulles, one of the Warren Commission’s members, was not only the former CIA Director who had been fired by President Kennedy, making him a poor choice to sit on a committee investigating who killed Kennedy, but he was also a major stakeholder in United Fruit. That such a man would be appointed to the Commission (and he was not alone in having conflicts of interest) presaged its doom as an unbiased investigative arm of the U.S. government in the Kennedy assassination.

  7 Weberman, Nodule 4: “Oswald in Minsk, Jan. 4, 1960.”

  8 Witnesses who bring out the facts are often attacked on Internet forums, usually involving character assassination, ad hominem arguments, and nit-picking aimed at destroying witness credibility. ARRB witness and board member Douglas Horne, for example, was subjected to appalling rudeness. I, too, have suffered the same treatment. Horne, I am told, has “retired” from any further research efforts due to the harshness of forum criticism, despite the fact that his five volumes of work remove all doubts that evidence was suppressed, destroyed or substituted in the autopsy records of JFK to frame Lee Oswald.

  9 See Crime of the Century, the Kennedy Assassination from a Historian’s Viewpoint, by Dr. Michael L. Kurtz. Kurtz made these statements to Tunheim and other ARRB Board members on June 28, 1995. Note by JVB: Lee despised having to assist Banister, the bigot, racist and Red Raider, on this assignment, but felt he was being tested for his loyalty as a recent returnee from the Soviet Union; Lee told me he had to cooperate with this distasteful assignment.

  10 Let Justice Be Done, Ch. 4. The information is derived from James DiEugenio’s Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case (New York: Sheridan Square Press, ١٩٩٢), pp. ٢١٨-٢١٩.

  11 Soon after the assassination, Hosty, on orders, destroyed a note from Lee Oswald that he and a receptionist at the Dallas FBI office called a “threat to blow up the FBI building.” We have to take their word for it, but logic tells us that if the note helped prove that Lee was violent, it would have landed on Hoover’s desk ASAP.

  12 To get the full quote from Weisberg, follow this link: https://books.google.com/books?id=8cUtAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT167&lpg=PT167&dq=warren+debrueys+new+orleans&source=bl&ots=M9YcRlAV9l&sig=oq65ztlnwU7dZC2DhtVohiFysSg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw6JOZov_KAhWDWCYKHWgqA4oQ6AEIWDAJ#v=onepage&q=warren%20debrueys%20new%20orleans&f=false from Weisberg’s book Oswald in New Orleans: a case for Conspiuracy with the CIA. Acquired Feb. 17, 2016.

  13 One of the beautiful illustrations commissioned by T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) for his book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

  14 Ref: Lancer: “The Big Lie Begins” http://www.jfklancer.com/Katzenb
ach.html accessed April 3, 2010.

  15 Choice Magazine, March, 1978, p. 138.

  16 The New York Review of Books, http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/thomas-powers/

  17 See my book, Lee & Me, as well as Edward T. Haslam’s book, Dr. Mary’s Monkey, regarding Ochsner’s association with Oswald.

  18 The Life of Ian Fleming (1908-1964), by John Cork, The Ian Fleming Foundation, http://www.klast.net/bond/flem_bio.html

  19 In the 1960s, public libraries usually purchased hardcover editions.

  20 By this time, Oswald and I had become lovers: both of us were unhappy with how our mates treated us. I am therefore intrigued by the description on this dust cover.

  21 http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

  22 Dozens of printings of the same edition were made.

  23 A good start in helping the reader assess whether or not Osdwald was a true defector can be found at this website: http://hum.uchicago.edu/~jagoldsm/Papers/JFK/2_Oswald.pdf

  24 See Op Ed News: “The Dartmouth JFK-Photo Fiasco by Dr. James Fetzer and Jim Marrs, Nov. 18, 2009 for the full updated story (it became a front page story immediately there, but was nevertheless ignored by the general media) on the truth behind the “backyard photos” that debunks the findings of Dartmouth professor Hany Farid’s analysis of a copy of a copy of a copy of a single backyard photo, digitalized, which he announced was “not faked” –a statement immediately picked up by the media and broadcast widely. Later it was learned that Farid’s laboratory work receives support by US government secret agency funds. (Farid would make two additional attempts to ‘prove’ the backyard photos were ‘genuine,’ still confining himself to just a single photo and in other ways exposing himself as a mere apologist: his later work has been largely ignored after a flurry of the usual media announcements proclaiming that ‘finally’ Lee Oswald as a gun-and-rifle man was ‘proven.’ (Not so). http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-DARTMOUTH-JFK-PHOTO-FI-by-Jim-Fetzer-091116-941.html