ROB CAPRIO SAID:
You are presupposing there was a rifle to pick up! We know from the postal application form (page 3) that LHO listed NO aliases or other persons (including Marina) to be allowed to receive mail or packages at this post office box. So how would a supposed package made out to a "A. Hidell" get to him again?
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DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Rob Caprio is making stuff up (again).
The fact is this -- Nobody knows for certain whether Oswald listed Hidell on the Dallas P.O. Box [#2915] form or not. The likelihood is that he probably DID list that name, but the portion of the application that revealed such information was discarded after Oswald closed out the box.
If he listed Hidell on his New Orleans P.O. Box forms (which he definitely did), then why wouldn't he list Hidell on his Dallas P.O. Box form? Common sense would suggest that he likely treated those forms the same and listed Hidell on both.
[MARCH 2011 EDIT -- Although, yes, it is true that Oswald did not list "Hidell" on the application he filled out on 11/1/63 for Box 6225; but by that date, he had already purchased both of his guns via his Hidell alias, and he possibly felt he would no longer have any need to utilize that fake name for post office transactions in the future.]
But Rob doesn't know for a fact that Hidell wasn't on the Dallas P.O. Box application. In fact, Postal Inspector Harry D. Holmes told the Warren Commission that Oswald might very well have put Hidell on the form. Let's take a gander, shall we?:
MR. LIEBELER -- "On the other hand, it is also possible that Oswald had actually authorized Hidell to receive mail through the box?"
MR. HOLMES -- "Could have been. And on the other hand, he had this identification card of Hidell's in his billfold, which he could have produced and showed the window clerk. Either way, he got it."
[Source for the above Warren Commission testimony: 7 H 528.]
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IAN KINGSBURY SAID:
Dave,
Who's speculating now?
There must have been a record. Even the British post keep records.
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DVP SAID:
According to Postal Inspector Harry Holmes:
HARRY HOLMES -- "They pull this out and endorse it so the box has been closed, and the date and they tear off [Part] 3 and throw it away. It has no more purpose. That is what happened on box 2915."
WESLEY LIEBELER -- "They have thrown part 3 away?"
MR. HOLMES -- "Yes. As it so happens, even though they closed the box in New Orleans, they still had part 3 and it showed that the mail for Marina Oswald and A.J. Hidell was good in the box. They hadn't complied with regulations. They still had it there."
MR. LIEBELER -- "It was a lucky thing."
MR. HOLMES -- "We wish they had here."
MR. LIEBELER -- "Now is this regulation that says section 3 should be torn off and thrown away, is that a general regulation of the Post Office Department?"
MR. HOLMES -- "It is in the Post Office Manual Instructions to employees; yes, sir."
MR. LIEBELER -- "So there is no way, as I understand it, to tell from the records maintained, as far as you know anyway, who was authorized to receive mail at Post Office Box 2915 that Oswald had while he was here in Dallas before he went to New Orleans in April of 1963; is that correct?"
MR. HOLMES -- "Other than Oswald himself and his name on the application."
[Source for the above Warren Commission testimony: 7 H 527.]
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DVP SAID:
Post Office Addendum:
BTW, it also makes no sense for Oswald to purchase guns under the name HIDELL and have them shipped to a P.O. Box where he DID NOT have the name HIDELL listed as a person authorized to receive mail.
But, on the other hand, since the post office delivers to ADDRESSES and not specific PEOPLE, it's very likely that Oswald would not have had any problem getting a package addressed to HIDELL even if that name was not on any kind of official authorization form.
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ROB CAPRIO SAID:
Your witness, Harry Holmes, knew for certain when he told the N.Y. Times on 11/29/63 the following:
Quote on:
No one other than Oswald was authorized to receive mail at that box.
Quote off
He either fibbed or violated all Postal regulations when he said he destroyed the page 3 section when LHO closed his box, as he was required by law to keep that for TWO YEARS AFTER THE BOX WAS CLOSED!
IF anyone is so inclined they can look up this regulation/law, Section 846.53b [sic; it's actually 846.53h], in the Postal regs.
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DVP SAID:
I now offer up a replay of a post I wrote on March 14, 2010, when I was in the midst of arguing about this exact "P.O. Box Regulations" subject with another conspiracy theorist at the alt.conspiracy.jfk Usenet newsgroup:
[March 14 Quote On:]
The document [pictured below] doesn't specify whether PART THREE of the P.O. Box application should be specifically saved for two years. It states that the "Box rental applications and control cards showing payment" should be saved. And Oswald's "box rental application" (the top portion with Oswald's name and signature) WAS saved. It is shown in CE791 and CE792.
It looks to me like Ralph R. Rea, the man who wrote that 1966 letter to Stewart Galanor (which appears in Mark Lane's book "Rush To Judgment"), has added some information about "Part Three" that doesn't necessarily have to apply to Postal Regulation 846.53h. Rea said this to Galanor on May 3, 1966:
"Section 846.53h, of the Postal Manual, provides that the third portion of box rental applications, identifying persons other than the applicant authorized to receive mail, must be retained for two years after the box is closed."
But as we can easily see above, nowhere in regulation 846.53h does it SPECIFY that the "third portion" of a P.O. Box application should be retained for two years.
It looks as if Rea was merely assuming that ALL PARTS of the application had to be saved via that postal regulation. And I'm not so sure he's right about that at all. And we've got Harry D. Holmes' testimony too, wherein Holmes said that Part 3 of P.O. Box applications are routinely thrown away after a box is closed.
[March 14 Quote Off.]
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GARY CRAIG SAID:
A. Hidell isn't listed. No name is in the box for people to recieve [sic] mail other than LHO. Here's a link to the actual document [Cadigan Exhibit No. 13]. Take a look.
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DVP SAID:
Gary,
Cadigan Exhibit No. 13 [pictured below] doesn't prove what the CTers want it to prove at all. That document doesn't show Part 3 of the application for P.O. Box 2915. It only shows the first part. There's not even a line listed on that part of the document in Cadigan 13 that says "OTHERS ENTITLED TO RECEIVE MAIL".
Why in the world do conspiracists think this document proves that the Warren Commission and Harry Holmes lied? It does no such thing. In fact, it only serves to strengthen the testimony of Holmes, because Part 3 of the application for Box 2915 is not shown in Cadigan #13:
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GARY CRAIG SAID:
David,
Read the printing above Oswald's signature. What does it say?
In case you've misplaced your reading glasses, it says: "Names of Persons Entitled to Recieve Mail Through Box".
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DVP SAID:
You're wrong, Gary. Dead wrong.
You're mixing up the two P.O. Boxes. Check the box number in the upper right-hand corner. (If you need to borrow some reading glasses, I can supply them.)
The application card that says "Names Of Persons Entitled To Recieve Mail Through Box" is on the application that Oswald filled out on November 1, 1963, for Dallas P.O. Box 6225. It's not the application for Box 2915. And Box 2915 is the box where Oswald had the rifle shipped in March '63.
And that's why the "Part 3" portion of the Box 6225 application still existed as of the date of Oswald's death on 11/24/63, because Box 6225 had not yet been closed and therefore the third part of the application had not been discarded (unlike the third part of the application for Box 2915, which was a box closed by Oswald in May 1963).
In New Orleans, however, they saved the third portion of Oswald's P.O. Box application (for some reason), even though the standard by-the-book postal procedure (according to Postal Inspector Holmes) was to throw away that Part 3 section after a box has been closed out.
Gee, you'd think you CTers would have at least looked at the associated BOX NUMBERS at the top of the two separate documents seen in Cadigan Exhibit No. 13. But, I guess not.
[Note --- The bottom half of Cadigan Exhibit No. 13 is exactly the same as
Warren Commission Exhibits 791 and 792, except that CE791 and CE792
don't have all the arrows drawn in on the document.]
So, once again, we're back to where we were previously -- As I said, Cadigan #13 does not prove what the conspiracy theorists think it proves at all, because the silly CTers seem to think that both documents pictured in Cadigan #13 represent parts of the SAME post office box application. But, of course, they do not.
Better try again, Gary. Because this kind of goof on your part sure makes the "Anybody But Oswald" conspiracy crowd look mighty sloppy.
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MILES SCULL SAID:
David Von Pein is making stuff up, again.
[MILES THEN CITED COMMISSION EXHIBIT NO. 2585, AT 25 H 859, WHICH I QUOTE DIRECTLY IN MY NEXT POST.]
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DVP SAID:
"Our investigation has revealed that Oswald did not indicate on his application that others, including an 'A. Hidell,' would receive mail through the box in question, which was Post Office Box 2915 in Dallas. This box was obtained by Oswald on October 9, 1962, and relinquished by him on May 14, 1963." -- Via FBI Report of 6/3/64 [CE2585]
But we know from all the available (and unavailable) evidence associated with the topic of Lee Harvey Oswald's P.O. Box applications that the FBI did not actually see and examine Part 3 of the application Oswald filled out for Box #2915 in Dallas, because that portion of the application simply does not exist. So, how could the FBI, in November 1963 or June 1964, have seen something that was thrown away in May 1963?
Therefore, when the FBI came to the conclusion cited above on Page 4 of its report dated June 3, 1964, the FBI was relying on information OTHER than Part 3 of Oswald's application for P.O. Box 2915.
And I'm wondering if possibly the FBI made the same mistake that Gary Craig and other people have made: they mixed up the two P.O. Box applications for boxes 2915 and 6225. The 6225 box application still had Part 3 attached to it, but Box 2915 did not.
Maybe the FBI made the same error conspiracy theorists make when those CTers try and prop up Cadigan Exhibit No. 13 as proof that Oswald didn't list A. Hidell as a person entitled to receive mail at Box 2915.
In any event, even if it was an error on the part of the FBI, the error most certainly cannot be considered to be a sinister lie. Not even conspiracy theorists could consider such an error to be conspiratorial or sinister.
Why?
Because J. Edgar Hoover's FBI is almost always thought to be one of the major forces behind a "cover-up" in the JFK assassination investigation by conspiracy promoters. And this possible mistake about the P.O. Box application of Oswald's is a mistake that makes it appear LESS likely that Oswald could have received the assassination weapon through the mail.
So, if Hoover's boys were making up stories, then they would have lied in the OTHER direction and would have claimed that Oswald definitely HAD listed A. Hidell as a person who could receive mail at P.O. Box 2915. Instead, the FBI concluded that he definitely had NOT listed Hidell on the application.
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MILES SCULL SAID [BY WAY OF COPYING-AND-PASTING ANOTHER PERSON'S WORDS INTO HIS POST, WITHOUT CREDITING THE REAL AUTHOR OF THESE WORDS]:
Fortunately, Postal Inspector Holmes is not the final authority on Postal Regulations. The Postal Manual, Section 846.53b, states quite unequivocally that "Part 3 of the box rental application, identifying persons other than the applicant authorized to receive mail must be retained for 2 years after the box is closed."
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DVP SAID:
That's nothing but a flat-out lie, Miles.
You should really start doing at least a little bit of research on your own before slapping together a copy-and-paste post like your last one about the postal regulations.
First off, you're incorrect on the number of the postal regulation that you think is going to save the conspiracy theorists from further embarrassment concerning this issue. It's not 846.53b. The one you're referring to is the regulation concerning post office boxes, and that's 846.53h (highlighted by the arrows here).
I also find it interesting to note that this particular error about the number of the regulation is the exact same mistake made by conspiracy theorist Rob Caprio in an earlier post in this thread. He, too, seems to think it's 846.53b. (This probably means that Caprio and Scull are relying on the same conspiracy-flavored kookbook or website for their "facts" and information.)
Secondly, the copy-and-pasted quote you provided earlier -- "Part 3 of the box rental application, identifying persons other than the applicant authorized to receive mail must be retained for 2 years after the box is closed" -- is nowhere to be found in Postal Regulation 846.53h (and it's not in 846.53b either). So whoever put those exact words inside quotation marks is nothing but a liar. Simple as that.
What probably happened is this: The conspiracy theorist whom Rob Caprio and Miles Scull trust so dearly with their information concerning the 1963 United States Postal Regulations likely just copied the main thrust of Ralph R. Rea's words that appear in Rea's May 3, 1966, letter to Stewart Galanor.
As we can easily see when doing a comparison, the words are almost identical in the two quotes. In fact, beginning with the word "identifying", the quote used by Miles Scull is verbatim to the words that we find in Ralph Rea's 1966 letter [which can be seen HERE].
And Rea's information is obviously not correct, because, as I mentioned earlier, there's nothing at all in Postal Regulation 846.53h that says that "Part 3" of a P.O. Box rental application must be retained for two years after the box is closed.
So many conspiracy myths. And so many people willing to believe in almost all of them--hook, line, sinker, and P.O. Box application.
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DVP SAID:
I contend that's it's logical to conclude (after reading Harry Holmes' testimony on the matter) that the only section of the multi-part post office application that needed to be retained was Part 1, which had the most pertinent info about the applicant on it.
Why would they need to save a useless section of the application that told them who could receive mail---particularly since the box was now closed and they knew that nobody related to the applicant could ever get mail at that P.O. Box ever again anyway? Makes sense to me that Part 3 would, indeed, be discarded, because it was useless after a box had been closed.
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
This reasoning I find absolutely charming in its silliness, given that we are trying to establish who had access to the PO box, the very thing DVP is claiming no one would ever need to know.
Gotta love that LN logic.
DVP SAID:
I doubt very much the post office employees cared whose names were listed on Part 3 of that application. It's absurd to think that the mailmen were checking the applications of every P.O. Box before placing mail in those Dallas post office boxes. It's laughable, in fact, to envision a busy post office ever doing such a thing.
If a piece of mail was addressed to "P.O. Box 2915", the mailman stuck it in Oswald's box. Period. Regardless of whose name was on the envelope (or package).
Part 3 of the application was likely just a hunk of useless red tape that was totally ignored 99.9% of the time.
David Von Pein
July 15-17, 2010
February 13, 2016
