John Armstrong's Documented History of the CIA's "Oswald Project"
Website created March 9, 1999 and last updated October 27, 2024 by Jim Hargrove
Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald 
photographed by his brother, Robert Oswald, in Texas in
1958 and printed between pages 96-97 in Robert's book LEE, A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald.when he appeared at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City in Sept. 1963. The Cuban Government provided this photo to the HSCA. when he visited the Russian Embassy in Mexico City in Sept. 1963. The CIA provided this photo of "Lee Harvey Oswald" to the FBI on 11/23/63. in Dallas Police custody two days after the assassination of JFK and officer Tippit. The accused assassin was shot dead by Jack Ruby, who formerly supplied guns to Cuba.
According to the Warren Commission "Lee Harvey Oswald" acted alone in killing President Kennedy, wounding Texas Governor John Connally, and murdering Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. But which Oswald?
In 1964 The New York Times quoted Chief Justice Earl Warren as saying, "Full disclosure was not possible for reasons of national security." But if "Lee Harvey Oswald" was the lone gunman and if he was not a government agent and if there was no conspiracy, then please tell us, Mr. Chief Justice, why cover up Oswald's background for reasons of National Security? Because full disclosure concerning the creation and use of multiple "Lee Harvey Oswalds" would expose the US government agency responsible for the creation of the man accused of killing President Kennedy.
Warren Commission member Senator Richard Russell said, "We haven't been told the truth about Oswald." Russell asked former Army Intelligence officer Colonel Phillip James Corso to conduct a discreet inquiry into the assassination. Corso reported back to Senator Russell that there were two birth certificates in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald and they had been used by two different people. Corso cited his sources as Francis Knight, head of the US Passport Office in Washington, DC, and William 0. Sullivan, head of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division. Russell came to the conclusion the assassination was a project of rogue CIA agents working with anti-Castro Cubans.
In 1978 former CIA accountant James B. Wilcott swore under oath before the House Select Committee on Assassinations that Lee Harvey Oswald was a "regular employee" of the Central Intelligence Agency, and that Oswald received "a full-time salary for agent work for doing CIA operational work." Wilcott testified that he was told by other CIA employees that money he had personally disbursed to an encrypted account (RX-ZIM) was for "the Oswald project or for Oswald." Wilcott's testimony was kept secret for decades, but can now be read in full by clicking on this link.
In 1996 former Deputy Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations Robert Tanenbaum testified at the ARRB hearing in Los Angeles by saying, "the Attorney General of Texas, Henry Wade the District Attorney and Leon Jaworsky counsel to the Attorney General, on the transcript spoke to the Chief Justice and said in substance, as I recall, that they had information from unimpeachable sources that Lee Harvey Oswald was a contract employee of the CIA and the FBI." (Click here for full testimony.)
JFK researcher John Armstrong has shown how the Federal Bureau of Investigation handed the Warren Commission documents creating a fable for public consumption about the Central Intelligence Agency's "Oswald Project." The fictional portrait of "Lee Harvey Oswald" that finally appeared in the Warren Commission Report combined the biographies of two young people, Russian-speaking HARVEY Oswald and American-born LEE Oswald. The Russian speaking youth, possibly of Hungarian parents, was brought to the U.S. following World War II and given the name HARVEY Oswald. HARVEY was of small stature, quiet, slightly malnourished, and lived with a short, heavy-set impostor who was given the name "Marguerite Oswald" but seldom smiled. New Orleans born LEE Oswald was tall, husky, and athletic. As a youth LEE lived with half-brother John Pic, brother Robert Oswald, and his tall, nice-looking mother, Marguerite Claverie Oswald. A program created by US intelligence merged the identities of Russian-speaking HARVEY and American-born LEE Oswald. The result, ten years later, was a young Russian-speaking HARVEY who now had an American background and a birth certificate with the name "Lee Harvey Oswald." HARVEY was an ideal candidate to “defect” to the Soviet Union and work as an undercover agent who secretly understood the Russian language. HARVEY “defected” and two years later returned to America with a Russian wife and child. A year later this former “defector” was handing out literature in support of Castro and Cuba. Unknown to HARVEY, he had been chosen as the ideal candidate to frame for the assassination of President Kennedy. In the late summer and fall of 1963 LEE Oswald surreptitiously impersonated HARVEY and began setting him up as a "patsy" who was the assassin of President Kennedy. The photos below show images of LEE and HARVEY from 1952 thru 1963. The last photo has been cut in half to show this is a composite image. The left half of this photo shows Lee; the right half of this photo is Harvey. With this photo the same ID card could be used by both Oswalds.
Place mouse pointer on each image above for more information (do not click). American-born Lee Oswald is shown in the top row of photos above. Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald is in the bottom row. The 1959 photos were taken just eight days apart. The image at far right is from the U.S. Dept. of Defense ID card issued to "Lee Harvey Oswald" on 9/11/59. The photo has been cut in half here to show that it is a composite image. The left half shows Lee; the right half, Harvey. The same ID card could be used by both Oswalds.John Armstrong began investigating Lee Harvey Oswald about forty years ago, in the early 1990s. He soon realized there were many, many discrepancies concerning Oswald's height, weight, eye color, scars, medical records, school records, military records, photographs, etc. For example, the WC said that Oswald was placed in the Youth House in NYC for truancy in 1953, but a quick look at Oswald's school records for the spring semester of 1953 shows that he attended PS #44 in New York City full time with very few absences. The WC published Oswald's New York City school records (PS #44) for the entire fall semester of 1953. The WC also published a school record that showed Oswald attended Beauregard Junior High School in New Orleans at the same time, during the entire fall semester of 1953. John Armstrong discovered that during the decade between 1953 and 1963 a vast number of overlapping records, documents and photographs expose the activities of two different young men--one using the name LEE Harvey Oswald and another using the name HARVEY Oswald. Following are year by year examples:
DATE |
LEE OSWALD |
HARVEY OSWALD |
| 1953, fall semester | Lee attends Public School 44 (PS44) in New York City | Harvey attends
Beauregard Junior High School in New Orleans and lives at 126 Exchange |
| 1954 | Lee and his mother
live at 1454 St. Marys in New Orleans, then move to 1452 St. Marys. |
Harvey and the
Marguerite Oswald impostor live at 126 Exchange; in fall they move to
2220 Thomas Place, Fort Worth |
| 1955, spring | Lee is in the 9th
Grade at Beauregard JHS and living at 126 Exchange; he begins work at
Tujague's in June in June |
Harvey works
full time at Dolly Shoe in February (fired by Louis Marzialle in
April); attends Warren Easton HS in fall, address unknown |
| 1956 | Lee's mother is living at 3830 W. 6th St. in Ft. Worth, TX | On July 1, Harvey, Robert, and the Marguerite Oswald impostor are living at 4936 Collinwood |
| 1957 | Lee joins Student
Squadron 3383 at Radar School in Biloxi, MS. His mother is living at
3830 W. 6th St. in Fort Worth, TX |
Harvey is at the
same Radar School, but in Student Squadron 3386; in October he begins
work at Pfisterer's in New Orleans |
| 1958 | Lee is in Japan;
his mother is at 3830 W. 6th St. in Fort Worth. |
Harvey quits
working
at Pfisterer Dental Lab in June; is in Taiwan in Sept. |
| 1959 | Lee is with CIA
sponsored anti-Castro guerilla groups in LA and FL; mother is working
at Kriegers Dept. Store in New Orleans |
Harvey is at Santa
Ana, CA thru Sept. and "defects"
to the Soviet Union in October |
| 1960 and 1961 | Lee visits Bolton
Ford in New Orleans and asks about purchasing trucks to send to Cuba;
mother is in New Orleans |
While Harvey is still in Russia, FBI director Hoover writes a memo stating someone may be impersonating Oswald |
| 1962 |
Lee visits Texas Employment Commission in April (XIX, p. 399) | Harvey is still in
the Soviet Union, now with his wife and daughter; returns to USA in June |
| 1963 | Lee sets up Harvey as the "patsy" for the assassination of JFK | Harvey is working at the Texas School Book Depository |
| Nov. 22, 1963 | At least five eyewitnesses see Lee depart Dealey Plaza in a Nash Rambler station wagon | Harvey departs Dealey Plaza via bus and taxi, as stated in the Warren Commission Report |
| Later on Nov. 22 | Lee is seen driving a red Ford Falcon with license plates belonging to J.D. Tippit's best friend, Carl Mather, who worked for Collins Radio | Harvey is sitting in the Dallas jail. He claims he is "just a patsy," but is soon murdered by Jack Ruby, who formerly ran guns to Cuba. |
The FBI and the Warren Commission Coverup
In January 1960, five months after Harvey Oswald “defected” to the Soviet Union, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo stating that someone was using Lee Harvey Oswald's birth certificate (click here to see memo). On January 20, 1961, while Harvey Oswald was in Russia, LEE Oswald appeared at the Bolton Ford Dealership in New Orleans to purchase ten trucks for Cuba on behalf of former FBI agent Guy Banister and Gerald Tujague's Friends of Democratic Cuba (LEE Oswald worked for Tujague in 1955-56). On March 31, 1961, a memo was sent from the passport office to John White, an official at the consular section of the State Department, reiterating the concern about two Oswalds originally expressed by Hoover nine months earlier. In the fall of 1961, while Harvey Oswald was still in Russia, Police Officer Charles Noto arrested LEE Oswald and Celso Hernandez on Breakwater Road on the Lakefront in New Orleans. In April, 1962, while Harvey Oswald was still in Russia, LEE Oswald visited the Texas Employment Commission in Ft. Worth and filled out form E-40a, Aptitude Profile Test (APT) B-1002 and the Occupational Aptitude Pattern test (WC XIX, p 491). There is no doubt that Hoover knew about a LEE Harvey Oswald in the United States while Lee HARVEY Oswald was in the Soviet Union.
Hoover's knowledge of two Oswalds became clear the day after the assassination of President Kennedy. Hoover sent agents to Stripling Junior High in Ft. Worth to confiscate HARVEY Oswald's school records. FBI agents were sent to the Pfisterer Dental Laboratory, Gerard Tujague Company, J.R. Michaels, and Dolly Shoe in New Orleans to confiscate all of HARVEY Oswald's employment records. These documents, and others like them, comprised much of the evidence that two young men shared the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald. Most of these documents were never given to the WC and disappeared. And documents that were given to the WC by the FBI were photographs (not originals) and many had been altered or fabricated. In May 1999, Mr. Armstrong found a document at the National Archives indicating the FBI had a procedure in place which routinely allowed the alteration of testimony of its own agents before the Warren Commission, sometimes over the objections of staff attorneys. The document indicated that a procedure was set up to handle these objections and to persuade the staff to go along with the alterations.
Click button at left to see FBI document describing procedures to alter Warren Commission testimony.
The Garrison Investigation
In the late 1960s, an investigation led by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison attempted to go beyond the Warren Commission’s failures and find the truth about the assassination and “Lee Harvey Oswald.” In an internal memorandum dated November 14, 1968, Garrison’s chief investigator, Lou Ivon, answered his boss’s questions about Oswald height discrepancies and concluded that there was an Oswald and an Oswald impostor, one standing 5’ 9” tall as an adult, the other at 5’ 11” and substantially heavier. Ivon also wrote that his “guess is that the impersonation started in the Marines,” which John Armstrong has shown is exactly correct.
Mr. Armstrong Shares his Work with Fellow ResearchersIn the mid-1990's John Armstrong began delivering speeches at JFK conferences. In 1997 he gave a presentation and brought in Dr. Milton Kurian from Massachusetts and Palmer McBride from Sun Valley, CA., who both spoke to the audience. In the 1997 "November in Dallas" conference he presented his most up-to-date research on the two Oswald's. His speech at NID98 expanded on some of the themes of the previous year's talk and included references to very recently released documents. In May, 1999 he gave a presentation at the University of Minnesota's "Death of JFK" conference. This speech included a good introduction to "Harvey and Lee" and clearly showed how the FBI suppressed, ignored, fabricated, altered, and destroyed evidence in order to frame one of the young men for the assassination and to hide the intelligence operation that enveloped both of them. It is probably the best introduction to Mr. Armstrong's work currently available.
Full Text of John Armstrong's 1997 Dallas Conference Speech
Fellow Researchers Respond to "Harvey and Lee"
Five new videos created by John Armstrong about the Tippit murder.
These videos make an excellent introduction to the research of John Armstrong.
OTHER VIDEOS: The following videos are based upon John Armstrong's work, primarily from his interviews with Len Osanic on Black Op radio. They were created, edited, and photographs were added by "MrChrillemannen," a person with whom neither John Armstrong nor myself has had any contact.
Documenting and Writing "Harvey and Lee"
During the past 50 years the JFK assassination has generated thousands of interviews, photographs, reports, books, articles, etc. From the beginning many of these items contained inaccurate and misleading information, sometimes intentional and sometimes unintentional. Authors often added to the confusion by carefully selecting and limiting their "sources" to fit their own preconceived theories. When closely scrutinized, their cited "sources" are often not sources at all and, in some cases, are non-existent. The Warren Report, a well known example of a "report," often cites "sources" that do not support its conclusions. The very strength of HARVEY AND LEE is the documentary evidence behind John Armstrong's analysis--thousands of documents, hundreds of photographs and dozens of interviews. CLICK on each of the following to view examples:
"I was part of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy that involved others...."
--Jack Ruby to Dr. Teuter
"These people are in very high positions...."
--Jack Ruby to news reporter (televised)
"My motive was not patriotism, but rather to silence Oswald...."
--Jack Ruby to Dep. Sheriff Maddox
Click here for more!
HARVEY AND LEE
by John Armstrong
Harvey and Lee Website, based on research by John Armstrong, created by Jim Hargrove (jimbotopia@gmail.com).
Most documents reproduced on these pages are from the National Archives and the FBI "Series 2" microfilm series from UMI.
Web premiere: 3/9/1999; rev 1: 3/12/1999; rev 2: 5/26/1999; rev 3: 1/5/2001; rev 4: 7/1/2013; continuous updates are planned.
Harveyandlee.net domain registered 8/11/13.
