Victoria Adams on the Stairs: Brouhaha Edition

Another rift among Kennedy assassination researchers has erupted within the past month over the integrity of Victoria Adams' testimony given to the criminal Warren Commission. While it could remain a matter of relative inconsequence, these matters rarely stay that way. Our view is that Adams' original published testimony is the canonical and best version.

The background to the argument between researchers John Armstrong and Barry Ernest starts with the latter's important book published in 2011, The Girl on the Stairs. Its author explains that its protagonist's descent down the stairs of the Texas School Book Depository from the 4th floor excludes the possibility that anyone else could have used that route to flee from the 6th floor. Only in the fertile imagination of the criminal Warren Commission could Oswald have been the president's assassin and then flee down the stairs at precisely the time he allegedly did so. There would have been a traffic jam as that stairway was the only path out. Recall that the criminal Warren Commission had Oswald racing at warp speed to get his Coke in the 2d floor lunch room so that he could casually and calmly encounter Dallas police officer Marion Baker and TSBD building manager Roy Truly.

As far as I can discern, there seems to be no disagreement over this general play of events, namely that it would be impossible for both parties to use the stairway without running into each other.

An additional, but important, detail attaches to the story regarding whom Ms Adams saw once she descended with co-workers Sylvia Styles and Dorothy Gardner, the latter the office manager of the Scott Foresman company office occupying part of the 4th floor.

In her testimony to the Warren Commission, Adams stated that she saw two men near the rear elevator on the first floor, which was the only elevator access to the 6th floor. Her testimony stated that she arrived there within seconds - 1 minute tops - of hearing the sniper bullets. These two men are significant in a number of ways, and submerging them under the sediment of history is an important objective of the continuing cover-up of the murder of the president.

Ernest upsets 40 years of silence on this matter by averring that he interviewed Victoria Adams in 2002 who then stated that she saw no men at the bottom of the stairwell. When Armstrong took issue with this development in 2021, Ernest issued a rebuttal on Kennedys and King, a website edited by fellow researcher Jim DiEugenio.

Ernest contends that Adams told him that she did not see two men near the elevator, thus leaving us the options of 1. recantation by Adams 2. Obstruction of Justice by altering her testimony. Ernest enlists the support of Sylvia Styles, still living, to rebut the testimony, and his Boy Scouts' honor that Adams made these confessions. He also suggests that Adams' missing testimony from the criminal Warren Commission archive is a sign of foul play and might vindicate his assertions about Ms Adams who died in 2007.

For his part, Armstrong cites Adams' Warren Commission testimony, Marion Baker's testimony, Billy Lovelady's testimony, and Bill Shelly's testimony to support the general idea that two men were standing near the elevator at the time Adams and her entourage reached the first floor. One would think that this marshalling of testimony was sufficient, but things are never this simple.

The irony of ironies is that Kennedys and King even published Ernest's rebuttal. Given DiEugenio's many castigations of other authors' flimsy and even fake evidence, why did he submit this to the court, so to speak?

To put a point on it, during a moment of insomnia, your Chronicler read one of DiEugenio's  slams, written in 2008, of the likes of James Fetzer, Peter Janney, and Gregory Douglas for using questionable, unverifiable, and 3d hand hearsay as evidence, precisely the methods used by Ernest in his rebuttal.

In 2002, when electronic recording equipment was plentiful and abundant, and when notary publics abounded, Barry Ernest did not bother to document the testimony of a critical witness very troublesome to the criminal Warren Commission. This lapse is unacceptable. We are not left with any substantive evidence that Ms Adams recanted her testimony, made any allegations of discrepancies, or was the victim of obstruction of justice.

Armstrong reports that Adams was given a copy of her testimony to approve and/or make corrections. She made a few grammatical corrections, signed it, and that was the end of it. Ernest reported his attempt to find the original commission transcripts in order settle the matter once and for all, but came up empty handed. So that leaves us with only the 1964 published interview of Adams as found in the criminal Warren Commission's fable known as the Warren Commission Report.

However, Baker's report that he saw "two white men" near the elevator corresponds very nicely with Adams' testimony in which she placed two men near the elevator, using a diagram supplied by the criminal Warren Commission.

Bill Shelley was a CIA agent or operative, and we wouldn't give his testimony any time other than to analyze how he twisted it to conform to the criminal Warren Commission's lies.

The reason that it is so important to bury the "two white men", and Ernest confirms it, is that it provides substantiation for Armstrong's thesis that the 6th floor snipers escaped down the elevator which was stationed just below the 6th floor where it was boarded for escape, aided by Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady. It was Shelly's job to turn off the electricity to keep the elevator out of service until needed.

So why does Ernest wish to make the "two white men" disappear? That is a rabbit hole I prefer to avoid, but he pretty much shows his hand when he somewhat dismissively refers to Armstrong's escape thesis.

We suspect that more will be said about this disagreement, but for now, that's our story and we're sticking to it until some substantive verifiable evidence dissuades us.

Reference

John Armstrong, Oswald DID NOT Run Down the Stairs, Harvey and Lee (website), nd, accessed(Oswald DID NOT Run Down the Stairs (harveyandlee.net), accessed 3/13/20201)

Barry Ernest, Barry Ernest Replies to John Armstrong, Re: Victoria Adams, Kennedys and King (website), February 27, 2021, accessed( Kennedys And King - Barry Ernest Replies to John Armstrong, RE: Victoria Adams, accessed 3/13/2021)

Copyright 2021 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Oswald's Puzzle Palace

In some ways, the Oswald Project is far more interesting than the assassination itself of President John F Kennedy in Dallas' Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, for it reveals the real seat of government and the powers who control this nation.

As such, we may regard the work of John Armstrong as among the most important in the annals of assassination research, for it is he who has untangled the Oswald enigma, with all of its paradoxes, in ways which others have fallen far short of the mark. Even so, we believe that there are more prominent discoveries to be made concerning the Oswald Project. Some refinements in Armstrong's works have prompted us once again to consider the mycelium of the Oswald-CIA ecosystem.

James B Wilcott of the CIA testified before House Select Committee on Assassinations that there was an Oswald Project, code named RX-ZIM, for which he was a disbursement officer. He testified that Oswald's defection was fake. Armstrong marshals much evidence that Oswald had deep ties to the intelligence agencies of the US, and we believe to USSR and Mossad.

Before delving into that, a succinct summary of the Oswald configuration is as follows. There were two Oswalds, one of whom Armstrong designates as LEE and another as HARVEY. LEE is the natural son of Robert Edward Lee Oswald who died in 1939 two months prior to LEE's birth. HARVEY is presumed to be a Hungarian national who was brought to the US as part of post war intelligence activities.

LEE is the man who faded into the background as HARVEY assumed the persona of Lee Harvey Oswald. He is the one most Americans recognize as the (alleged) assassin of the president.

In addition to two Oswalds, there were two Oswald mothers. Marguerite Claverie married Robert, cited above, in 1933, resulting in two sons, one of which was LEE. Another mother, whom Armstrong calls a caretaker, but whom we would call a handler, assumed the persona of Mrs Oswald, the mother of the alleged assassin.

The physical characteristics of the two women are quite dissimilar, the real Marguerite being 5-7" taller, reasonably thin, and always attractively dressed. She was continuously employed, but her last known whereabouts reported by Armstrong end about 1960. It would be fascinating to learn of her end. However, Marguerite Oswalds' tax filings and Social Security records are classified. They will never be unclassified as they would reveal the two women.

Marguerite Claverie married for a short period Edwin Ekdahl  whom we have described in previous Chronicles, the most important point being our conclusion that he was involved in intelligence, something which Armstrong surmises in his website writings.

The Fake Marguerite was a short, corpulent, rather unattractive woman, of whom no good words had been said prior to the assassination. She is the one who garnered national attention in the wake of HARVEY's use as the patsy in the assassination of Kennedy. She died in 1981. She rarely worked, but was able to stay in nice places such as the Hotel Senator in New Orleans.

The beginning of the transition of the Oswald fusion began in earnest around 1947, the first year of CIA, and was done with the collaboration of the two women. The mysterious aspect is why Marguerite Claverie would relinquish her identity to someone who was probably a foreign national, and whom we believe worked for Israeli intelligence.

We believe that the formal transition of identity began when Marguerite Claverie Ekdahl purchased a small home at 101 San Saba in Benbrook, TX. She rented the house for the next 4 years, the most important tenant being the Fake Marguerite. So clearly the two Marguerites knew each other.

As for HARVEY and LEE, the former spent a limited time in the Marines, after whose introductory training he returned to civilian life working for Pfisterer Dental Laboratory before re-entering the Marines again. LEE, on the other hand, served continuously in the Marines until he was discharged after an arrest in March 1959. HARVEY was discharged in September 1959 at the pleadings of his mother who faked a work accident - the only reason she took a job for about 3 months.

LEE is seen again during the early 1960s running guns for Cuba with Jack Rubenstein, a conclusion we draw from a detail noted by Armstrong.

HARVEY constantly espoused Communist-Marxist ideals, often at the expense of friendships or social comity. He spoke fluent Russian which comports well with the assumption that he was born outside of the US, most likely central Europe. LEE had no such interests. Many contend that HARVEY was simply developing his legend in support of his clandestine intelligence operations. We disagree. 

Armstrong reports of HARVEY's brief stay in North Dakota where he brags to William Timmer, "He told my son He had a calling to kill a President" according to his mother Alma Cole in a letter to Lyndon Johnson in December 1963. This is too intense a conversation to have with a play mate at 14 or so years of age. To me, it appears to be a doctrinaire statement founded upon visceral belief rather than as pretense.

Not only did the two mothers know about the Oswald Project, but so did Robert, Jr, the brother of LEE. In fact Robert stayed with the Fake Marguerite and HARVEY for a few months at 4936 Collinwood in Fort Worth starting in June, 1956. Armstrong documents the address with a bank account which Robert opened listing that address as his home.

Of course all of this leads to the question about why Marguerite Oswald would participate in such a project, for which we have no satisfactory answer. One could argue that it was for money, especially given the poverty in which Marguerite found herself after the death of her second husband, but this does not seem persuasive.

When HARVEY perpetrated his defection to the Soviet Union, with much support from CIA, State Department, US Navy, and other spook houses, he went to his adoptive country with no interest in learning or speaking Russian although he spoke only with Marina in English. (Clearly Oswald did not need to learn the language, but his faked disinterest discomfited many of his acquaintances.) Armstrong notes that he only ever spoke Russian with his alleged wife when he returned with her to the US in 1962.

Our view is that the Oswald Project was run by CIA Counter Intelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton. As we have noted in previous Chronicles, Angleton was a staunch Israeli agent, someone we believe was a double agent working for Mossad and with KGB. This explains Angleton's dispatch of Oswald to the USSR, his arranged elopement with Marina, and his disposal as radioactive goods as the patsy in the murder of the president.

The goal of the elaborate defection hoax was to provide a conduit through which Angleton could funnel US secrets and technology to Israel through the USSR and KGB. Today it is done directly.

Reference
John Armstrong, Marine Corps and the Soviet Union, harveyandlee.net, July 21, 2020, accessed 9/13/2020

Vasilios Vazakas, Creating the Oswald Legend - Part 4, Kennedy and King (website), August 15, 2020, accessed 9/13/2020

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Who Was Ed Voebel?

Even seasoned JFK Murder researchers may not know any details about Ed Voebel, but he turns out to be very important to the Oswald Project in a negative way, and whose importance was such that the CIA murdered him.

Before proceeding, we must confess to an about face regarding Oswald doubles. Previously we had spurned the idea that there were 2 concurrent Oswalds managed by the same dark forces who murdered the president. We knew that there were Oswald impersonators, and that was enough for us. However, after prodding from an article by Ralph Cinque, we decided to explore the matter further, after which we are forced to conclude that John Armstrong's thesis of Harvey and Lee is much more compelling than we originally thought.

To keep the names clear, we will follow Armstrong's practice of referring to the American born Oswald as LEE, and the Hungarian born Oswald as HARVEY. Thus it was Voebel's fate to meet both of them. HARVEY is the man accused of murdering the president and J D Tippit.

Voebel met HARVEY first in 1954 when a piano fell on HARVEY's legs at school. He survived the ordeal and the two became playmates for the spring. A few months later, Voebel befriended LEE after his rockem sockem fight with Johnny and Mike Neumeyer in the fall while in 9th grade at Beauregard Junior High School in New Orleans.

LEE lost a tooth in that fight, after which Voebel and 2 friends helped LEE clean up. Following the fight, Voebel took a picture of LEE in the class room which eventually became plastered around the nation when Life magazine published it in 1964. The picture clearly shows LEE missing a front upper tooth thanks to the fight.

In 1971, Ed Voebel became mildly ill, but went to the Oschner clinic for treatment, a mistake which would cost him his life. Someone, perhaps Oschner himself, murdered Voebel at age 31 just as he murdered Dr Mary Sherman in a most gruesome fashion in 1964.

Oschner was a long time CIA operative who was heavily involved in the conspiracy to murder President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas' Dealey Plaza. One of Oschner's projects for the CIA was the invention of a cancer weapon which was highly lethal, and was ostensibly targeted against Fidel Castro.

The reason for murdering Voebel was that he knew too much about LEE and HARVEY Oswald, knowledge which the CIA could not afford to let propagate since it would expose Allen Dulles' lies about HARVEY and implicate the agency directly in the murder of the president.

The evidence of the missing tooth is highly important in securing the thesis of 2 Oswalds. HARVEY Oswald was exhumed and extensively photographed in 1981, and positively identified based upon his dental records. HARVEY had all of his teeth, proving that he was not LEE, and that LEE was indeed a separate and distinct person from HARVEY.

We do not know what became of LEE Oswald - he may in fact still be alive. His brother Robert, still alive as of this writing, may be the last person to know the fate of his brother. But if he values the few remaining years of his life, he will go to his grave with his secrets.

Reference
John Armstrong, Magic Tooth, Vanishing Scars, harveyandlee.net, nd, accessed 2/10/2017

Copyright 2017 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.