Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

To Bud on McAdams' forum:

The primary question is: how did Oswald come to have the ability in Russian that he manifested in the United States of America BEFORE he went to Russia? Nothing that happened in Russia had any bearing on that. Oswald passed a proficiency exam in the United States BEFORE HE WENT TO RUSSIA. He answered more questions right than wrong. 

And I have you asked you TWICE how you know that the test he took was entirely multiple choice, and your refusal to answer tells me that you don't know it; you just surmised it. 

And it doesn't make sense for it to be that way, not a language test. You really can't determine a person's proficiency in a language by just asking multiple choice questions. I have never heard of an English test being given that way. 

There is no evidence of how Oswald could have learned Russian in the United States. There is no evidence that he ever had a Russian teacher. There is no evidence that he had any audio-visual tools that may have, to some extent, filled in for a teacher. But only shabbily because the audio-visual tools can't listen to you and can't correct you and work with you individually.  There is no evidence he had any specific Russian learning materials. There is only evidence that he had materials that were written in Russian, that plus a Russian/English dictionary. That is NOT enough. It is not nearly enough.  

So, from a practical, nuts and bolts perspective there is NO WAY that Lee Harvey Oswald could possibly have gone from absolute naught to passing a Russian proficiency exam given to him by the Marines in the time and circumstances that prevailed. 

No teacher? No specific learning tools? No course? Not even a helper who could speak a little Russian? It means Oswald couldn't have done it, Bud, and you need to snap out of your trance about this. 

The fact that Oswald bought Russian self-teaching books in Russia doesn't help you because there is no record of him having done that here, and it was here that he passed a proficiency exam. 

And where would he have gotten them here? It's not as though you can buy them on every street corner. He would have had to order them from somewhere, and there would be a record of it. You people try to claim that he ordered a rifle from Klein's in Chicago. He didn't, but that kind of paper trail would exist if he mail-ordered Russian learning materials. 

And no, speaking Russian as well as someone from Lithuania was NOT representative of someone who spoke Russian as a second language. Russian was the PRIMARY language in Lithuania in 1963 and particularly among young people who were brought up in the Soviet system. You are doggedly misrepresenting the situation. Marina taking Lee for a Lithuanian rather than an American is a raving, laudatory, spectacular assessment of his ability to speak Russian. 

You could call this a glass half-full/glass half-empty situation except that, in reality, the glass is at least 3/4 full and maybe 4/5 full, yet you're trying to say that it was nearly empty. 


There is no reason to think that Lee Harvey Oswald, ON HIS OWN, and starting out with no knowledge of Russian, and with the limited time and resources available to him, could have acquired ANY competence in Russian, and certainly not enough to pass a Russian proficiency exam with more answers right than wrong. You can just forget it, Bud, because that the dog don't hunt, that boat don't float, and that plane don't fly. It was impossible, and it is preposterous to claim it.