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

Today, October 18, is the birthday of Lee Harvey Oswald, but not the Lee Harvey Oswald of fame. It's the birthday of the LHO who was born and raised in New Orleans, and you know that the LHO of fame wasn't born and raised there. You know it just from his voice.  He hadn't the slightest hint of a New Orleans accent. 

So, we don't know his birthday, and, as far as I know, this is the earliest picture of him that we have. All of the younger pictures of LHO are of Lee. This picture of Harvey was taken at the Bronx Zoo, reportedly in 1953.

Going by Lee's birthday, he would have been 13 years old. But, how old was he, Harvey? 

First, I'm satisfied that the two guys in the collage are the same person. So, how old was he on the left? You can see that he had quite a lot of muscle tone and definition in his left arm. It seems more than average for a 13 year old. But, he does seem small and short. So, considering everything, I'm content to say that he was 13 too. Of course, I can't be certain, but I am very confident that it had to be within a year of that, either way.

So, where was he born? We don't know, but we do know that he was born in a household that spoke Russian. Russian must have been his first language. Either he learned Russian and English simultaneously or he started learning English soon afterwards. The reason I say that is because he spoke English without any foreign accent. He sounded American. You realize that Russians who learn to speak English as a scond language do so with a strong and conspicuous Russian accent. He didn't have that accent when he spoke English. So, he must have learned English pretty soon after he learned Russian, if not at the same time. 

There are no concrete facts about his origin; nothing that's bankable. John Armstrong has spoken of a woman who told somebody that she knew Oswald's father and uncle in New York City, and that they were from Hungary. That is not bankable. I don't put any stock in it at all. Hungary has its own language, Hungarian, which is unrelated to Russian. It's a completely different kind of lanugage. Over 99% of Hungarians speak Hungarian. Only 1.6% of Hungarians speak Russian, which is much lower than the percentage that speak English (16%). During Harvey's formative years, the early 1940s, there is no explanation for why Hungarians would be speaking Russian. 

I have to think that Harvey's origin was either Russian or Ukrainian. Unlike Hungary, Ukraine has a long history of being Russian-speaking. It goes all the way back to the 16th century (the 1500s). And realize that Russia politically dominated Ukraine for centures too- long before the Soviet era. 

I visited Ukraine in 2005, and everywhere I went, people spoke Russian, and that included Kiev and Odessa. I never heard anyone speak Ukrainian. I had an English-Ukrainian dictionary with me that I threw away.  

The situation is similar for Belarus. So, I think the odds are great that Harvey's parents were from Ukraine or Belarus or from Russia itself. 

But, what happened to his parents? I think the odds are great that they were dead; that he was an orphan. Why do I say that? It's because parental devotion is strong. They wouldn't just give him away.  I have to think that his parents were completely out of the picture, that is, dead. 

There was a program set up after World War 2 to bring war orphans to the United States. 

"The children did not have to have individual sponsors in the United States, but could be sponsored by charitable organizations, who would have to pay for their visas, their tickets, and guarantee that they would not become public charges (be on welfare) once they came to America."

"It took the patience and know how of the United States Committee for the Care of European Children to surmount the red-tape and to obtain visas for children who were supposed to bring their birth certificate to the consulate and who did not even remember their name or place of birth. The first group of 67 young war victims left Europe in May of 1946 for the United States. Eventually under the 1945 Truman directive, which was in force for 2 ½ years, 1387 children came to America."

"Our mandate was that we were to find homes for the children. In order of preference the home was to be with relatives, in a foster home, or in a place in which the young person could live if not legally adopted. This was not an easy assignment. Various agencies helped us to accomplish this directive, but even with that help many children were hard to place. They were the ones that would stay three months with us instead of the more usual six weeks. Life for those left behind was very difficult. That their friends found homes, but they did not was further confirmation of their nightmare."

"Our children came from Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and many other countries." 

RC: So, this was a program that involved agencies of the U.S. government, agencies that had connections to other U.S. government agencies, including the CIA. Harvey may have been one of those orphan refugees, whose Russian-speaking parents didn't survive the war. If he was brought here then, and put in a situation where he started to learn English, he was young enough to learn it without imposing a Russian accent on it. And he must have excelled at it. 

Meanhile, it occurred to someone at the CIA that a child who was Russian-speaking could potentially be a spy for them. Harvey may have shown much greater proficiency than most and stood out for his gifted linguisitic ability. 

"Included in my varied daily routine was to teach English to the recent arrivals. I will never again have students so eager to learn, to master the language of their newly adopted country. " Renate G. Justin, author of Children of War.  

So, what if Harvey was in that group and he stood out for how well and how rapidly he was picking up English and not sounding foreign when he spoke it?  They may have been looking for someone like him, and they found the person they were looking for in him. 

So, it started with finding him, and then they had to find his doppelganger. How did they do it? It may be that they mined elementary school class photos. You know how it was and still is that a class photo is taken every year. Or, they could have circulated Harvey's image among the intellgence commnity, and someone responded with knowledge of Lee.  It was having both boys in New York City in 1952/53 that merged their identities. 

So, don't get too excited about today. It's not the birthday of the LHO of fame. But, it is time for everyone to realize that he was not really Lee Harvey Oswald. Note that in Russia, Harvey went by the name Alek. Then there was the Alek Hidell identity. Was that his real name? I don't know, but maybe it was.